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 […]

By Bill Marx
Shining City, by Conor McPherson. Directed by Robert Falls. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company, through April 6 at the Boston University Theatre.

John Judd and Jay Whittaker gas on about a pesky ghost
At their best, ghost stories frolic in the freedom of the imagination: the writer generates his or her delicious shocks […]

By Bill Marx
Television offers so little discussion of local stages that I had to check out WGBH’s Greater Boston segment on the state (artistic and financial) of the city’s theater, which aired last week. Of course, I wasn’t expecting much, but I was surprised that – in a predictable effort to assuage the anxieties […]

by Bill Marx
Avenue Q, though March 23 at the Colonial Theatre, Boston, MA.
Music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, book by Jeff Whitty. Based on an original concept by Lopez and Marx. Directed by Jason Moore.

Puppets and people warbling up a storm in the touring production of Avenue Q
Where is Avenue […]

by Bill Marx
A recent study in Editor & Publisher delivers the lowdown; with its circulation down about 20% in four years, The Boston Globe is in free fall. Two major investors in The New York Times, which owns the Globe, are “challenging the company’s investment decisions, including its commitment to the struggling newspaper industry beyond […]

by Bill Marx
In a New York Times article I wrote about earlier this week, dramatist Marsha Norman suggests ways to soften nasty stage reviews, which she claims chase audiences away from the glories of theater and into the decadent arms of television. But how would she discipline a successful homegrown dramatist, Neil LaBute, when he […]

by Bill Marx
Has anyone actually read the recent Boston Foundation Arts Report? A column in Boston.com suggests that the sputtering economy is essentially to blame for what The Boston Foundation sees as an increasingly tough time for nonprofit theaters. The solution for Boston’s theaters, suggests the starstruck observer, boils down to new and improved Rolodexes […]

By Bill Marx
The war over critics-as-bullies is over, but some diehards keep fighting the same old battles to the point of arthritic absurdity, like Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune as old and forgotten American and Japanese veterans of WWII slugging it out in the 1968 movie Hell in the Pacific.The latest retread salvo comes in […]

By Bill Marx
For any self-respecting Shavian, the major attraction of Canada’s Shaw Festival is the chance to see first-rate productions of plays by GBS and his contemporaries, especially the opportunity to take in ace stagings of scripts that fall outside of the greatest hits list. But during the `80s a close second was the opportunity […]

By Caldwell Titcomb
NEW YORK, NY: Founded in 1971, the Theater Hall of Fame inducted new members at a January 28 ceremony in the Gershwin Theatre. Multiple Tony-winning Tommy Tune officiated at the 37th annual celebration as Master of Ceremonies. Inductees are voted on by the nationwide American Theater Critics Association and living Hall of Fame […]