by Bill Marx

Who would have guessed that a writer who proudly earned the reputation as the Oscar the Grouch of contemporary literature would have so many loving fans? But there were few empty seats two nights ago at New York’s Austrian Cultural Forum, which hosted a PEN panel, proudly entitled “The Art of Failure,” on the Austrian novelist, poet, playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), a man who turned his ferocious hatred of his native Austria and obsession with misery and failure into literature.

Thomas Bernhard
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by Bill Marx

I’m down in New York for PEN American’s annual Festival of International Literature, five days of readings, panels, and discussions on writing around the globe that emphasizes the plight of imperiled authors, particularly those that write in languages other than English.

Chinese dissident writer Ma Jian
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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 for the Arts, Watertown, MA, through April 26.

Playwright Howard Barker epitomizes his vision of the Faustian urge in the poem “Gary Upright,” whose narrator proclaims himself to be a ‘god unnamed.’ Barker’s art often focuses on the furies of the will-to-power unchained: the consequent construction and destruction ends with the meltdown of an ego blind to its own fallibility. For Barker, the residue of instinct and/or hope that remains after the catastrophe testifies to the elemental vitality, the primal resilience of humanity. Read the rest »

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 to the piece, is part of an invitation to an Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston workshop on April 23 where, for $50, attendees can listen to experts talk about ways that we can “create for Boston and Massachusetts what Philadelphia and Pennsylvania have successfully done” to encourage cultural tourism. The latest news out of Philadelphia is that Boston has its work cut out for it — Philly is surging ahead. Read the rest »

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 new musical by Michael Friedman and Daniel Goldstein, are the dramatic ear candy.

Ilana Brownstein, HTC Literary Manager, relaxes

I figured that it was a good time to pose a few questions to Huntington Literary Manager and BG producer Ilana Brownstein about the health of the Festival and on what separates effective play development programs from flashy wannabes. Read the rest »

By Caldwell Titcomb

The Spectrum Singers, founded in 1980 and still led by John W. Ehrlich, presented a concert on March 29 entitled “An American Sampler.” Taking place in Emmanuel Church, the program was devoted to six composers of distinction, with particular emphasis on Aaron Copland (1900-1990) and Irving Fine (1914-1962).

American composer Aaron Copland Read the rest »

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 “The Clean House,” Ruhl proffers plays that please trend-spotting New Yorkers. And when Big Apple reviewers rave en masse (aside from the sturdy John Heilpern), Boston theaters and critics tend to follow suit.

Squeaky clean scene from the New York production of “The Clean House”

This season The New Repertory Theatre produced “The Clean House”; “Eurydice” will kick off the company’s 25th season. The coronation of Ruhl as The Next New Thing reaches its apex with a recent New Yorker profile by Critic-at-Large John Lahr, a mash note whose intellectual ethereality matches that of its subject. Unsurprisingly, the piece doesn’t make much sense of an artist whose credo — refried from the ‘60s – is to stop making sense. Read the rest »

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 of leukemia at the age of 86.

The late Paul Scofield — a titanic figure in theatrical history
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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 the lifeblood in Howard Barker’s bloodless essay question of a play” — the chances that the script would receive a Boston production didn’t look good, at least among the city’s cautious medium-sized and larger theaters.

A scene from Howard Barker’s latest play I Saw Myself Read the rest »

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 rubbing the supernatural and the psychological together. Unfortunately, Irish playwright Conor McPherson could care less about inducing spooky electricity in the ironically (and mysteriously) titled Shining City. Aside from a rabbit-out-of-a-hat climax designed to jolt dozy audiences awake, the script is ninety minutes of dull chatter, an exploration of guilt too mired in therapeutic cliches to inject any pizazz into its poltergeist or its pair of haunted characters. Read the rest »