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  • The Rape of Lucretia

    Review at Boston Lyric Opera

    By: Doug Hall - Mar 16th, 2019

    Boston Lyric Opera’s production and interpretation of Benjamin Britten’s contemporary tragic opera “The Rape of Lucretia” is once again an example of a willingness and commitment to perform dramatically intense and socially relevant subject matter.

  • Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O'Casey

    NY's Irish Repertory Theatre

    By: Nancy Bishop - Mar 16th, 2019

    Sean O’Casey’s play, The Shadow of a Gunman, now on stage at Irish Repertory Theatre, tricks us into thinking this might be a comedy about drunken and verbose Irishmen.

  • Crossing Delancey In South Florida

    At the Levis JCC Sandler Center Theater

    By: Aaron Krause - Mar 16th, 2019

    Crossing Delancey is heartwarming and life-affirming at the Levis JCC Sandler Center Theater at the J. The stage version of this well-known story is the source material for the 1988 movie starring Amy Irving. The play is faithful to the film, but different. Cast members and behind-the-scenes folks excel in their work on the production in Boca Raton.

  • Mother Road by Octavio Solis

    At Oregon Shakespeare Festival

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 17th, 2019

    Mother Road by Octavio Solis is produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival and plays in repertory at its August Bowmer Theatre in Ashland, Oregon through October 26, 2019. The tone of Mother Road successfully drifts between realism and dream state, between drama and comedy.

  • Hairspray at Oregon Shakespeare

    Baltimore Based Musical Packs Hefty Impact

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 18th, 2019

    Hairspray challenges prejudices against women who lack an idealized body type and pushes for racial integration and acceptance of non-binary genders. It slyly and adroitly conveys its message even to conservative audiences through an entertaining package of sympathetic characters and shared enjoyment.

  • Man of La Mancha in Annapolis

    Patrick Gerard Lynch Plays the Don and his Creator

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 18th, 2019

    Man of La Mancha acted and sung with all the passion it can arouse, is revived by the Compass Rose Theater in Annapolis, Maryland. It is a treat. While its score may be Broadway- lite, a reminder that there is hope for humans who dream is a welcome.

  • WBCN: The American Revolution

    Award Winning Documentary Film by Bill Lichtenstein

    By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 19th, 2019

    Recently, WBCN: The American Revolution had its first public screening at DC Independent Film Festival. It was judged Winner Best Documentary 2019. Bill Lichtenstein launched the project in 2009. There was at the time no archive dedicated to the legendary alternative rock station. Now there is as the film conflates talking heads, images, sound tracks and vintage footage. More than a radio station, WBCN provided the sound track and social media platform for the coming of age of 250,000 college students during an era of war, protest, and a dynamic counterculture.

  • Musical Chess at CVRep

    Premiere at New Venue in Cathedral City

    By: Jack Lyons - Mar 21st, 2019

    “CHESS,” is a musical written by three giants of the Broadway stage: librettist Richard Nelson, lyricist Tim Rice, and a musical score composed by two members of the world-famous Swedish pop music group ABBA: Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. It was a glorious evening several years in the making, but the result is a stunning Broadway-like venue of comfortable 208 seats to please even the fussiest of theatre-goers.

  • A Creative Camelot: The Bauhaus and Harvard

    100th Anniversary of The Bauhaus

    By: Mark Favermann - Mar 21st, 2019

    Founded shortly after World War I in Germany, the Bauhaus was the most famous and influential avant-garde art and design school in the 20th Century. Its artists, architects, designers craftpersons and students generated a creative, all-encompassing conversation about the nature of architecture, art and design in the modern era. Over the course of its relatively short, 14-year history, Bauhaus was at first located at Weimar, then Dessau, and finally Berlin (closed by order of Nazi Party, 1932). Outside of Germany, Harvard University became the center for all things Bauhaus

  • Memphis In South Florida

    A Rousing Production by Actors' Playhouse

    By: Aaron Krause - Mar 21st, 2019

    Memphis the Musical sizzles in South Florida. Cast and crew shine in mounting by Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre. The show's themes resonate powerfully. This production features a mix of local and regional talent, as well as a member of the Broadway national tour of Memphis.

  • Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall

    Thomas Adès Conducts

    By: Paul J. Pelkonen - Mar 22nd, 2019

    Although the first conductors were themselves composers, the wearing of both hats at the helm of a symphony orchestra is always cause for comment. On Wednesday night, the British composer Thomas Adès, who is currently in the new role of "Artistic Partner" with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led that band at Carnegie Hall in a program featuring the New York debut of his Piano Concerto.

  • Richard II at DeSotelle Studios

    C.A.G.E Commited to Shakespeare Realized

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 24th, 2019

    DeSotelle Studios is committed to doing staged readings of eight Shakespeare plays in eight months. Richard II seems perfect for this form. Perhaps no Shakespeare play rests more securely in its lyric laurels. Rhymed couplets and parallel constructions abound for listening pleasure. The cast took full advantage under Katrin Hilbe's direction.

  • John Guare’s Nantucket Sleigh Ride

    At Lincoln Center in New York

    By: Nancy Bishop - Mar 25th, 2019

    Nantucket Sleigh Ride by John Guare is a revised version of an earlier play, Are You There, McPhee?, produced at McCarter Theatre at Princeton in 2012. It’s a farce, a puzzle and a jumble of pop culture references with a lot of laughs, and may leave you feeling unglued.

  • John Hochheimer on WBUR 1968 to 1971

    Progressive Programming Terminated by John Silber

    By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 25th, 2019

    Now retired, professor John Hochheimer of Southern Illinois University, recalls undergraduate years at Boston University’s then progressive station WBUR. He started as a high school volunteer in New York at WBAI. During sophomore year at BU, in 1968, he started at WBUR. He was influenced by the free form programming of Tom Gamache, AKA Uncle T. Rock archivist, David Bieber, was a friend and flat mate. He once spent five hours on air with David Bowie and became friends with B.B. King and Elton John. The programming staff was fired not long after John Silber took over at BU in 1971.

  • Huntington Theatre Company

    Lineup of the 2019-2020 Season

    By: Huntington - Mar 26th, 2019

    Huntington Theatre Company announces the lineup of the 2019-2020 season, featuring three world premieres, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a classic Tony Award-winning comedy by one of the world’s most celebrated playwrights, and two adaptations of powerful literary works.

  • Reconnecting: MCLA Alumni Show

    At Gallery 51 in North Adams

    By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 29th, 2019

    The current exhibition at Gallery 51 “Reconnecting: MCLA Alumni Show” is eclectic, fun, and here and there, somewhat whimsical

  • Choir of King's College at Saint Thomas

    Lenten Season Music

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 29th, 2019

    Concerts at Saint Thomas continue their 2018-19 season with a guest performance by the acclaimed Choir of King’s College, Cambridge at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. This marks the choir’s final North American tour with current Director of Music Stephen Cleobury, who will retire after 37 years in September. His position will be filled by current Saint Thomas Organist and Director of Music Daniel Hyde.

  • Twelfth Night By William Shakespeare

    Co Production of Lyric Stage and Actor’s Shakespeare Project

    By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 08th, 2019

    Start with a shipwreck and twins tossed up far apart on a beach. Each assumes the other to have drowned. Add a bit of gender bending and a gaggle of outlandish characters and fools. Stage a bit of slapstic and add a welter of romantic subplots. Set it in New Orleans and serve Twelth Night as a spicy hot gumbo. From now to April 28 at Boston's Lyric Stage.

  • SOWA in Springtime

    April Exhibitions

    By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 08th, 2019

    During a week in Boston we attended the First Friday gallery openings in SOWA the Harrison Avenue based gallery district. It proved to be a lively adventure catching up with so many artist and gallerist friends

  • Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish

    Language Roots the Musical in its Native Soil

    By: Rachel de Aragon - Apr 08th, 2019

    Directer Joel Grey delivers a rare and rich revival. Fiddler on the Roof has come back, a comment and conversation in Yiddish about a time and place that indeed did shake the world. In the language of the people who lived it, this production is more rooted in their world, earthy, funny, deeply-moving.

  • Norma Jeane Baker of Troy at The Shed

    Ben Whishaw and Renee Fleming Star

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 10th, 2019

    Poet Anne Carson has a special touch, embedding a conversational tone in lilting lines. While Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is billed as a melologue in which some words are sung and some spoken. It asks the question opera composers always ask: what words should be spoken, and what words sung? As a struggling writer's secretary, Fleming becomes muse, moving from speech to song. She is glorious. So too is Ben Whishaw, who moves from writer to the embodiment of Marilyn Monroe.

  • DeCordova New England Biennial 2019

    On View in Lincoln Through September 15

    By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 11th, 2019

    The impact of DeCordova New England Biennial 2019 is its focus on inclusion and diversity. There is a spectrum from traditional forms of painting, sculpture and photography to social justice approaches to a range of hot button agendas. The latter work conforms to Marxist theories of art as agitation and propaganda.

  • Oldcastle Theatre Company Announces Its Season

    Season Begins on June 23

    By: Oldcastle - Apr 12th, 2019

    The Oldcastle Theatre season in Bennington, Vermont starts on June 7 with Red by John Logan. The 48th season features four plays through October 20.

  • Mfoniso Udofia's In Old Age.

    At Magic Theatre in San Francisco

    By: Victor Cordell - Apr 13th, 2019

    As part of a nine-play cycle, In Old Age and the multi-play aggregation from which it comes, beg particular analysis. The broader question is the standing of this Ufot family saga against other cycles. The obvious comparison is August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, which shares the commonality of exploring the African-American experience.

  • Verb Is the Word

    Rediscovering Boston’s Late 1960s Counter Culture

    By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 13th, 2019

    In 2017 San Fransicso celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. By 1968 the torch of the counterculture, with a radical twist, was passed to Boston. Cops and feds cracked heads when hippies and radicals protested in Boston and Cambridge. Just as in 1776, there were shots heard round the world. There has been no such celebration in Boston. In feisty increments there is ever increased interest and attention to a forgotten era. You can see it at The Verb Hotel, in the new film WBCN; The American Revolution, and books like Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968.

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