(Photo: A.R.T.) A young woman possesses no powers of gravity. She can neither walk on terra firma nor can she possess serious thoughts or tears of genuine emotion. She must take the journey to claim that quality of groundedness for herself that the rest of us take for granted. This fairytale, based on a Victorian […]
Theater
The Heart of Robin Hood, A.R.T’s Latest Hit
Jordan Dean, Christina Bennett Lind, and Christopher Sieber in American Repertory Theater’s production of “The Heart of Robin Hood.” (Photo: Evegnia Eliseeva/ART) Theater that is highly physical and breathtakingly kinetic is more common in Boston than ever before. This explosively energetic, acrobatic style requires actors who can both act and move to develop their character […]
Distraction Therapy
Bryan Cranston as LBJ in All the Way (Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva) With what is going on in Washington DC this week it is hard to stay on track with the work that matters to each of us, individually. How do you steer clear of the weeds with this latest caper? I don’t want to be […]
The Space Between
Rob McLean and Matt Kahler in the Hypocrites’ “Pirates of Penzance,” an update of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera (Photo: Matthew Gregory Hollis) We know that consciousness has no boundaries. It is for that reason that the connectedness of everything running through us is utterly overwhelming. In an effort to manage our day to […]
A Stunning The Glass Menagerie
Zachary Quinto as Tom, Cherry Jones as Amanda Wingfield, and Celia Keenan-Bolger as Laura in the A.R.T.’s production of “The Glass Menagerie.” (Courtesy A.R.T./Michael J. Lutch) The Glass Menagerie is a play that has touched me in a tender place for a long time. I grew up with this Tennessee Williams masterpiece, first seeing it […]
Small Swishings of Joy
The last page of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations . . . Life Is Not What You expected — cows ruminate by the highway even in rain or bat their ears forward and back and how you thought the story of your life would get told: the children you thought you’d already have by now partially grown […]
That’s Extraordinary
Rehearsing for Pippin at A.R.T. (Photo: Dina Rudick/Boston Globe) In my previous post I wrote about how surprising it was to find such striking beauty in the overstated, extremist interior of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia. It brings to mind one of my art professor’s words to me from so long ago, “To make a great painting […]
A Distant Mirror: Coriolanus on the Common
Coriolanus, on the Boston Common (Photo: Tamir Kalifa for the Boston Globe) How invigorating to revisit something you thought you knew (and might have dismissed as “been there, done that”) and find it utterly compelling. That was my response after seeing the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of Coriolanus last night. Not one of my favorite […]
Two Chords Are Enough
The cast of Woody Sez (Photo: Wendy Mutz) One of the things I love about India is that the stories most sacred to the culture are preserved everywhere. From street shrines to oversized temple statues, references to the ancient Sanskrit epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are ubiquitous. After a while even interlopers like […]
Loving Schubert, in Any Form
Three Pianos, currently playing at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, is another successful production in line with the theatrical proclivities of artistic director Diane Paulus—theatrical mastery, audience engagement, crisp production values, meaningful content (and context,) and the delivery of an evening out that is both fun and informatively rich. Paulus has demonstrated a deft […]