BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR has certainly heated up the conversation about women, sex on film, and madmen directors. Since the NC-17 rated movie along with its leading ladies (a first!) won the Palme d'Or the highest honor at this year's Cannes Film Festival, arguments have erupted, accusations have been hurled, and tears have been [...]
The following audio recording brought the horror home to me yet again. The BSO just released this recording and these photos taken in Symphony Hall on that dreadful day. I am passing along the BSO's press announcement today including full transcript, photos, and recording to you now in a spirit of remembrance. Concertmaster Joseph [...]
To see or not to see-- that is the question! Definitely see"MISS SAIGON" up at the North Shore Music Theatre! I just saw it and despite the fact that it took me 35 minutes to get out of the parking lot-- it was worth it. This Tony-Award winning musical based on Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," is [...]
THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN opens on a tight shot of a group of down-home, country bluegrass musicians performing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." They may be "down home"--but not in the country you think. Though their English sounds flawless, they are actually Flemish musicians in Ghent 2006. And that American country classic they're singing? It's [...]
OMG. I just saw what has to be one of the most exciting new plays, productions, and ensembles of the year--by the excellent actor Steven Barkhimer called WINDOWMEN at Boston Playwrights' Theatre. The whole thing takes place in one dingy room of the wholesale lower Manhattan fish market known to the world as the Fulton [...]
ALL IS LOST--Robert Redford's latest as a man alone and adrift at sea-- plays like an extended Viagra commercial. You know-- older, handsome outdoorsman testing his mettle against the elements; there's a broken mast involved. I know, I know. It's Redford--and there's already Oscar buzz about this performance and this movie. Well, I know what [...]
If you see only one play in this life--it might have to be WAITING FOR GODOT. Samuel Beckett's game-changing, landmark tragicomedy that yanks us out of ourselves so we can see the outlines-- and perhaps the substance-- of our own existence, is a mind blower. And the production by Ireland's Gare St. Lazare Players and [...]
The best show I've seen lately -- no question-- is onstage only until November 2 at the Cutler Majestic: Luis Bravo's FOREVER TANGO!!! We're talking 14 gorgeous Tango dancers and an 11 piece orchestra. Theater? you ask. Absolutely! I say. The Argentinian tango-- originally considered indecent, came out of the bordellos of Buenos Aires in [...]
12 YEARS A SLAVE is as unsparing as its title. The film is a shattering experience-- for actors and audience--as we are dragged into the abyss of slavery through the documented real life experience of a free black man in upstate NY who was kidnapped from his family in the middle of his life, and [...]
My sympathies to this cast-- they have worked themselves to a frazzle trying to wring sense out of senselessness-- but this new work at the NEW REP THEATRE proves resistant. RANCHO MIRAGE may be the most preposterous thing I have ever seen. Described as a "dark comedy" by Stephen Dietz, RANCHO MIRAGE is a boneheaded [...]
