By Caldwell Titcomb
September 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29: Free Wednesday afternoon concerts continue throughout the month. September 1: Pianist Benjamin Warsaw plays works by Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Liszt, and Warsaw himself. September 8: A further celebration of Schumann’s bicentenary brings a program of songs, with soprano Lisa Lynch, mezzo Carola Emrich-Fisher, tenor Jason Sabol, [...]

A whole lot of deconstruction of the classics going on this month, along with productions of scripts by familiar homegrown names, from William Inge and David Mamet to Sarah Ruhl. A visit from a master puppeteer and a show about race that’s “recommended for mature audiences” look intriguing.
By Bill Marx
The Real Inspector Hound by Tom [...]

“Under the Skin: Tattoos in Japanese Prints” displays some of the most intricate manifestations of tattoos in woodblock prints, leaving the viewer curious about its footprints in contemporary art and popular culture.
By Yumi Araki
Under the Skin: Tattoos in Japanese Prints is showing at the Museum of Fine Arts through January 2, 2011.
As a cultural prelude [...]

Shakespeare’s tragic characters, on the other hand, suffer from the Christian sin of pride: knowing you aren’t God, but trying to become Him—a sin of which any of us is capable. — W. H. Auden on Othello in Lectures on Shakespeare
Othello by William Shakespeare. Directed by Steven Maler. Staged by the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company at [...]

If you want to know what’s for dinner in the Middle East or Africa, look no further than this marvelous book. Here a Persian dish of eggplant with saffron and yogurt, there a Ghanaian soup of chicken and ground nuts scooped up with a dumpling called fufu, there a Lebanese stuffed grape leaf from Arnold [...]

The summer season winds down with (too) many of the usual crowd-pleasers, enlivened by a couple of world premieres, a re-vamping of an Oscar Wilde warhorse, and an encounter with non-being, courtesy of Edward Albee.

By Bill Marx
The Taster by Joan Ackermann. Directed by Tina Packer. Staged by Shakespeare & Company at the Founders’ Theatre, Lenox, [...]

Reviewed By Caldwell Titcomb
A large audience braved a rainy evening to attend the July 23 concert in Jordan Hall presented by the New England Conservatory Festival Youth Orchestra. (NECYFO’s YouTube Channel) The project was founded in 2000 by New England Conservatory (NEC) faculty member Aaron Kula, who remains its conductor in addition to holding posts [...]

By Bill Marx
Summer has never been a time for theaters taking chances and the sluggish economy only encourages the hot weather drift to safety. But there’s some funky activity around the margins as well as encouraging news about Shakespeare & Company’s finances. Also, the Gloucester Stage Company has forsaken last year’s geriatric lineup and [...]

Like music directors of orchestras and chamber groups, choral conductors cannot resist a program with a theme, and for this one, Steven Karidoyanes struck pay dirt.
Reviewed By Susan Miron
The Masterworks Chorale finished their 70th season at their customary home, Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA on Sunday, May 16. To these ears, it was the chorus’s best [...]

What makes a comedy a sure-fire hit?
Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward. Directed by Spiro Veloudos. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Boston, MA, through June 5.
Reviewed By Helen Epstein
That was one of the few questions I was taking the trouble to ask myself while giving in to the sheer enjoyment of Spiro Veloudos’s [...]