A.R.T.

Theater

The A.R.T.’s Latest Import: Beowulf

May 2, 2013

The A.R.T’s most recent hip New York import is Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage, now running at Oberon. The show opens with three speakers talking in a kind of broken academic cant in something that’s part book talk and part lecture. Their takes on the book are humorously weighed down by their personalities. This […]

Theater

The Glass Menagerie at the A.R.T

February 16, 2013

All the pieces are in place to send the ART’s production of The Glass Menagerie to Broadway. And I mean the Broadway that still kinda matters, not the tourist traps state officials would bribe producers to have Boston become a proving ground for. There’s the gushing review from Ben Brantley, there are actors with New […]

Theater

Off with Her Head: The A.R.T.’s “Marie Antoinette”

September 17, 2012

Reading over the reviews of the ART’s Marie Antoinette, the consensus seems to be that it’s just not that good. I think there was a lot of pent up anticipation for the play based on the success, and quality, of last season’s smash hit at the Huntington, Candide. The ART here, of course, feigns to […]

Theater

True Oklahoma Story: “Woody Sez” at the A.R.T.

May 20, 2012

In a seamless blend of song, narration, and brief vignettes, Woody Sez (at the ART through June 3rd) brings the life and politics of America’s greatest folk hero to the stage. A cast of four performs 28 songs that survey the Guthrie songbook and essay his life. As much as Woody Sez is about what […]

Theater

The A.R.T.’s Indie Rock Musical “Futurity”

April 8, 2012

The ART’s indie-rock musical, Futurity (runs through next weekend), is indicative of one trend at the Loeb/Oberon that I’m happy about. And that’s putting the ART Institute (the ART’s graduate school for theater) students on mainstage, rather than keeping them tucked away doing unpublicized shows in the Loeb blackbox, when HRDC isn’t using it. It’s […]

Theater

Wild Swans at the ART: Parodying Propaganda with a Little Tragedy

February 28, 2012

Jung Chang’s memoir about growing up during the Cultural Revolution is adapted inside of a propaganda play satire.

Music

Three Pianos and a Little Schubert at the A.R.T.

December 17, 2011

The A.R.T. throws a killer Schubertiade.

Music

On Porgy and Bess

September 11, 2011

On the A.R.T.’s “Porgy and Bess” and adaptation.

Theater

The Trojan Hurt Locker: The A.R.T.’s “Ajax”

February 24, 2011

Everything about the ART’s production of Sophocles’ Ajax (through March 14th at the Loeb) screams contemporary relevance. David Zinn has the cast dressed in desert fatigues and has installed a kind of abandoned mess hall on the Loeb stage. Athena (Kaaron Briscoe) comes dressed in a (politician’s) business suit and speaks through the cafeteria’s distortive […]

Theater

A Brief History of Buckminster Fuller

January 31, 2011

I can’t imagine a play that could better fit the M.O. of an “academic theater” (if you were to take that epaulet literally) than D.W. Jacobs’ R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe. The ART’s current show takes the form of a meandering while didactic lecture, delivered by the inimitable Thomas Derrah. […]

Theater

♩Da, Da, Da♩ A.R.T.’s “The Blue Flower”

December 15, 2010

With characters based on German Expressionists Max Beckmann and Franz Marc, Marie Curie, and Dada artist Hannah Höch The Blue Flower, at the American Repertory Theater through January 8th, is certainly not a musical that strikes up an immediate familiarity with most audiences, like I imagine Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark might. But this somewhat […]

Theater

Breaking the Curse: The A.R.T.’s “Johnny Baseball”

June 9, 2010

Theater……and sports? Bryce Lambert reviews the ART’s “Johnny Baseball.”

Books

Elevator Repair Service Reads “Gatsby” Part 2

January 27, 2010

A late follow-up to my earlier post on the play. Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz continues at the ART through February 7th (tickets $20-75 per part), though it’s clearly not as successful as Sleep No More, which is impossible to get tickets to any more unless (I hear) you make a nice little membership donation, or […]

Books

Elevator Repair Service Reads “Gatsby” Part 1

January 14, 2010

Elevator Repair Service‘s Gatz (@ the American Rep through Feb. 7) at six hours (not counting the breaks and intermissions) is marathon theater. Even if you do all ten hours of the Boston Theater Marathon, this is something entirely different. It takes the patience of an ardent reader, or at least someone set on getting […]

Lectures

Opera, from the Future?

October 8, 2009

Elly Jessop, a master’s student in Tod Machover’s MIT Media Lab research group, gave a talk Wednesday night at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on the upcoming production Death and the Powers, billed the opera of the future. Set to premier in Monaco September 2010, and tour internationally with a stop at the A.R.T., […]