By Caldwell Titcomb
It was something of a scandal a half century ago when West Side Story lost the best -musical Tony award to the mediocre and formulaic The Music Man. But time has a way of righting major mistakes. And the pervading verdict now places West Side Story at the pinnacle of […]

By Caldwell Titcomb

August Wilson
Although playwright August Wilson wrote a half dozen plays in the 1970s, his crowning achievement was a cycle of ten plays depicting the Black experience decade by decade through the twentieth century. The project occupied him from the early 1980s, and he finished the last play just before succumbing to liver cancer […]

By Caldwell Titcomb
To mark the dedication of the New College Theatre at Harvard on October 17, a panel of four playwrights gathered to address the question “Does Playwriting Have a Future?” To allay suspense, the answer is yes (whew, that’s a relief).
Adam Rapp, boston globe, Caldwell Titcomb, harvard university, John Guare, Melinda Lopez, New College […]

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 […]

by Bill Marx
The schizophrenia is instructive if somewhat dizzying. At the Calderwood Pavilion, the Huntington Theatre Company kicks off its season with “The Atheist,” a cynical exercise in scatological anti-heroism about a sleazy reporter who blackmails his way to fame. On its main stage at the Boston University Theater the HTC wallows in PG […]

Machiavellian monsters aren’t what they used to be in the theater. The gloriously godless creeps that memorably rampage their way through the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Shaw and Brecht scale the dizzying heights of inhuman ambition and self-admiration. The closest contemporary American theater comes to that kind of mountain-sized ego is Roy Cohn in Angels […]

When George Bernard Shaw’s comedy Misalliance, subtitled “a debate,” premiered in 1910, critics couldn’t make heads or tails of the play. It didn’t matter if the reviewer was sympathetic to Shavian excess — the evening’s self-parodying polemics and prophetic theater-of-the-absurd trappings were too much. The production closed after 11 performances: the script, along with the […]

Given the timidity of so many American theater companies, who seem to reserve their courage for implementing new marketing schemes, reminders of what creative risk is all about serve a useful purpose. Some theater artists around the world face jail when they perform on stage. On August 22, special forces of the Belorussian police raided […]

After four movie versions of Alexandre Dumas’s nineteenth-century novel, does it make any sense to make a musical out of The Three Musketeers? The film versions efficiently present the book’s mix of comic book mayhem and romance and are available on DVD and video.
alexander john, alexandre dumas, Broadway, buck the trend, carolyn clay, critics, dramatic […]

Some show biz flair-ups are dead debacles walking. Producers sparked a flap in Chicago recently by tossing accusations of foul play at a critic whom they claimed wrote about shows she didn’t have permission to review.
actors guild president, annual festival, chicago reader, chicago sun times, critics, dramatists guild, Featured, hedy weiss, in development, john weidman, […]