Coming Attractions in Theater: March 2010 »

Highlights on stage this month include the world premiere of a drama about evolution by a respected local playwright and an intriguing collection of plays and musicals that bring an unusual perspective to topics ranging from love and music to extinction and dehumanization. And the wait is over: a show featuring singing dinosaurs has arrived.

By [...]

Coming Attractions in Theater: October 2009 »

By Bill Marx
October includes the usual line-up of plays by seal-of-approval dramatists, Edward Albee and Conor McPherson, but there’s some welcome new blood, from Punchdrunk’s athletic adaptation of “Macbeth” to “Little Black Dress,” playwright Ronan Noone’s latest salvo at our national psyche, and “The Overwhelming,” the Boston premiere of a critically acclaimed study of Americans [...]

Theater Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare? »

By Caldwell Titcomb
Starting in 1769 serious questions have been raised as to whether William Shakespeare (1564-1616) of Stratford-upon-Avon actually wrote the plays and poems attributed to him. For some years the true author was claimed to be Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626). So far, at least sixty persons have been put forward as the rightful writer. [...]

The Story of O »

by Bill Marx
I wanted to review The Nora Theatre Company’s New England premiere production of Steven Berkoff’s The Secret Love Life of Ophelia last weekend, but I didn’t have the heart. I caught the show on its next to last performance. It wasn’t the direction or the performances that left me shaking my head so [...]

Dating Dürrenmatt »

When should a play be labeled dated and consigned to the junk heap of time? No playwright is safe from the charge of being called passé: one reviewer’s breath of fresh air from the past is another’s antiquated wheeze. Nicholas Hytner, Director of London’s National Theater, speculates that in fifty years or so the poetry [...]

At the Trough »

Let me get this straight. President and CEO of the Citi Performing Arts Center (CPAC), Josiah Spaulding Jr., presides over five straight years of budget deficits and arts programming cuts, including slashing the budget of this summer’s Shakespeare on the Common production, and he earns a $1.265 million bonus. This is shameful, especially given that [...]

Picturing Will »

Stephen Greenblatt’s acclaimed biography of Shakespeare is filled with fascinating speculations.
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