by Bill Marx
“The way of the Samurai is a natural way of the Universe, Ma, and to learn it, one must live one’s life from first to last in self-control. I know all about that stuff now.”
– Wynne in Adam Rapp’s “Stone Cold Dead Serious”
Just how far are American playwrights from dramatizing a […]

By Caldwell Titcomb
The American Theatre Critics Association, which moves around the country for its annual convention, this year spent a recent week in the nation’s capital and environs. The area houses 75 theatres – 43 in the District of Columbia, 17 in nearby Maryland, and 15 in the contiguous portion of Virginia. From the many […]

By Bill Marx

“The best of the regular theater critics … the brightest America ever had.”
– Eric Bentley
“Intelligent play-goer number one.” – George Bernard Shaw
“The truth is that Mr. Nathan is both a theatrical storehouse, full of the most voluminous and astonishing information, and a whole theatre in himself. He maintains an impetus and lustre that […]

By Bill Marx
“It’s remarkable because the nominators tend to skew much older,” said Rocco Landesman, president of Jujamcyn Theaters, none of whose tenants were nominated for best musical. “I guess they want to be young and hip. This is more surprising than usual.” – The Year’s Tony List is Filled with Unusual Suspects, New York […]

By Bill Marx

I narrate disintegration among rulers
And the kindness of the enemy
I report the speed at which fear grips the innovative
And the intolerable loneliness of the habitually free
– From Howard Barker’s poem “Gary Upright”
A Hard Heart by Howard Barker. Directed by Richard Romagnoli.
Presented by Whistler in the Dark Theatre at the Arsenal Center […]

By Bill Marx

“Boston is adrift in the brave new competition among big American cities vying for tourist dollars.” Maureen Dezell, WBUR
Maureen made that charge back in July 2006 in an article that turned out to be one of the last posts on the late WBUR Arts Online. Now that the quote, along with a link […]

By Bill Marx
The Huntington Theatre Company’s Breaking Ground Festival of new play readings turns five this year. The latest lineup runs through Sunday at the shindig’s venue, the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Scripts by Melinda Lopez, Ken Urban, Mat Smart and Nathan Louis Jackson, as well as a […]

by Bill Marx
“Catharsis isn’t a wound being excavated from childhood.” – Sarah Ruhl
NPR as well as New York theater critics think playwright Sarah Ruhl, the “Golden Ruhl” with “The Midas Touch,” is sure money in the artistic bank. A winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 for her comedy […]

By Caldwell Titcomb
If you ask the British public who the foremost actors of the 20th century were, you will likely get the names of Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Laurence Olivier (later Lord Olivier), and Sir Alec Guinness. You are not likely to hear the name of Paul Scofield, who died last week […]

By Bill Marx
“I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.” — Howard Barker
Given the New York Times’s unenthusiastic review of an off-Broadway staging of Howard Barker’s A Hard Heart back in December – “Kathleen Chalfant can perform such miracles onstage that she has even found […]