386 stories by "Bill Marx"
"It's not just some generic 'evil'Â "The Arsonists" protests, it is willful blindness to fascist and authoritarian agendas. Denial and hiding behind "bourgeois" comfort is the theme."
A relaxed, humane kindness shines through this staging of Shakespeare's hymn to reconciliation.
The Lyric Stage Company's production of David Henry Hwang's Obie award-winning play is serviceably absorbing.
The script is representative of the pitfalls of current theatrical minimalism -- less can so easily be less.
"We need hope in the possibility of change in order to survive what's coming."
If only "Becoming a Man"'s pathos were less streamlined, its theatricality more ambitious.
By Bill Marx Must the stage only discreetly charm the bourgeoisie? "I have long argued that theater alone cannot achieve any social change," posited the Scottish dramatist and director John …
The time is overdue for a substantial discussion of what is happening (or not happening) in Boston-area theaters. Just don't expect to see anything in our sheepish mainstream media.
Set in New York in the mid-'50s, "Trouble in Mind" is a backstage dramedy that draws on the genre's interest in the ambiguities of role-playing to condemn racial bias.
The journalistic value of blathering out weekend tips to the ears of the comfortable in a social media world awash with likes is dubious.
In "Fat Ham," Black pain and repressed desire are transformed into a celebration of liberation and empowerment -- once the villain de jure, the violent, tyrannical patriarchy, has been dispa…
Dramatist Donald Margulies seems to be putting his hand on the heart of the heartland -- as well as taking the pulse of a pair of aging boomers.
Canada is far enough from New York and Broadway to ignore their siren drum beats.
For a semi-Shavian like myself, the Shaw Festival once again proved that it was the place to be.
This uncomplicated version of Shakespeare's tragedy comes off as a rousing tale of murder under a starlit Boston sky that obligingly lights Macbeth's "black and deep desires."
Anna Ziegler's play is based on a true story that still resonates powerfully: how science (and society) hides uncomfortable truths.
In the Actors' Shakespeare's Project's likable staging of As You Like It, love looks pretty durable.
The Gaaga's humor is driven by rage, anger, and disgust, emotions that are not often found in our domesticated (for easy consumption) theater scene.
How can we create theater that practices critique and empathy in relation to climate change that simultaneously challenges and lifts us, provokes and provides a muscular hope?
If the production sends at least some of the audience members back to the magnificent poetry of The Canterbury Tales, it would have done a mitzvah.
It is refreshing to encounter a script that is so determined to keep audiences off-kilter as it goes about undercutting domestic business as usual.
Made in China 2.0 is valuable as an act of theatrical witnessing, the voice of a rebel who is facing considerable challenges from the powers that be.
Our theater critics pick some of the outstanding productions in a year haunted by COVID.
Do we feel the environment breakdown in our gut? Will people looking back see art that conveyed the existential threat of the emergency?
In his virtuoso one-man show, Bill Irwin pays adroit homage to the language and vision of Samuel Beckett.
