Arts

On the jazz

Legacy's Chicago dazzles
The fluid line between repulsion and fascination is a quintessentially American seduction — think of P.T. Barnum's creepy chimerical "creatures," of Lizzie Borden, of a certain rogue hate-monger up in the Great White North. Perhaps because of the nation's Puritan underpinnings, moral disgust holds a particular allure, prompting that guilty-pleasurable urge to rubberneck.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | July 15, 2009

The Market Messiah

How Sam Walton changed America
Many Americans feel as if they'd been living helplessly amid the handiwork of extraterrestrials, as if a spaceship had suddenly blown in and zapped the landscape with suburban sprawl while sucking up middle-class wages in exchange for low-paid service work.

By CATHERINE TUMBER | July 07, 2009

Cirque du Dieu

Arundel Barn's Godspell
Charisma, daring, showmanship, whimsy — these are just a few of the character qualities expected under any given Big Top. But they might be just as at home in the discovery and passing on of religious ideas, as a teacher delivers and seekers explore the possible tenets of spirituality.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | July 01, 2009

Deep impact

Ron Currie Jr. has a blast with the apocalypse once more
In the most memorable piece in Waterville author Ron Currie Jr.'s 2007 debut short story collection, God is Dead (Viking), God is reincarnated as a Dinka woman in a refugee camp in Sudan, who enlists a jive-talking Colin Powell in an effort to find a young boy.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | July 01, 2009

Under scrutiny

MECA visiting faculty at the ICA
Portland summers can be a time of scarcity for art lovers seeking conceptually challenging artwork, or a selective sampling of widely exhibiting international artists. Cue the annual visiting-faculty lecture series and accompanying exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art.

By ANNIE LARMON | July 01, 2009

K is for clown

The lighter side of global annihilation
The lighter side of global annihilation

By CLIF GARBODEN | June 30, 2009

Profit secrets

Seacoast Rep has the keys to Business success
Considering the current climate of our feelings toward big business, it's kind of a relief to revert from the present to a bygone era, and from dreary reality to colorful stylizations. In Seacoast Repertory's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying , the clock spins back to 1959.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 24, 2009

Your own personal Darwin

Dorothy and Elliott Schwartz meditate on the man behind the theory
Dorothy and Elliott Schwartz meditate on the man behind the theory

By ANNIE LARMON | June 24, 2009

Newman's own

Mainstream life, good read
Among Shawn Levy's books is one of my favorite film bios, King of Comedy , with crazy-guy Jerry Lewis, so show-off goofy and schmaltzy, spilling all on every exuberant, excessive page.

By GERALD PEARY | June 24, 2009

Dark secrets

Hidden by The Light in the Piazza
Even the quotidian is lyrical here among Roman columns, lush sunsets, and the bare contours of ancient heroes. In this Florence of 1953, daily life is filled with flowers, fedoras, and waiters transporting girls on beautiful bicycles.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 17, 2009

Endurance Reads

Summer-Book Therapy Sessions
Beach reading . The very phrase is abhorrent to book lovers, connoting as it does cheap paperbacks, tumescent with air-dried seawater and crunchy with sand, paragraph after paragraph of poorly written pulp meant to be read as fast as the passing of summer itself.

By MIKE MILIARD | June 17, 2009

Weight + measure

Aaron Stephan's sculpture takes center stage
The centerpiece, conceptually and physically, of Aaron Stephan's show at Whitney Art Works is "Flat World/Round Map," a cast-iron sphere about six feet in diameter. While not exactly the largest ( "18 Columns" covers more ground and "The Burden Crates" is taller) it creates a center of gravity around itself.

By KEN GREENLEAF | June 17, 2009

Snapping towels

Fenix's Taming of the Shrew gets wet
Through the rest of June, a classic battle of the sexes will be waged at the wading pool of Deering Oaks Park. The Fenix Theatre Co., Portland's premier purveyor of outdoor Shakespeare for the summer, stages a smart, wet, and aggressive Taming of the Shrew as its first summer show.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 17, 2009

More Bard, please

Lots of Shakespeare for summertime
The sultry season is soon upon us, and as always, it will bring area theater-goers such dependable balms as Shakespeare (both in and out of the park), classic musicals, and giddy misbehavior of various sorts. Between that manna and a few original productions, written and performed by local artists, we've got a rich season line-up.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 10, 2009

Summer people

Artists have long visited Maine, too
Ever wonder why there is so much professional-level art made and shown in Maine, a state with a total population less than that of many minor cities? One answer is that following the fame of people like Winslow Homer, creative types flocked to Maine, often to artists' colonies.

By KEN GREENLEAF | June 10, 2009

States of the art

New England museums worth traveling for
In New England, where you can't swing a sack of cranberries without hitting a venerable cultural institution, anyone with access to a car (or even a subway pass) can scope out these topnotch art museums.

By SHAULA CLARK | June 09, 2009

It's not simple

Talking stories, sex, and children with author Diana Joseph
Diana Joseph's new essay collection I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog begins with an account of her father giving her the sex talk: "When a girl goes with this one, and then that one, and then that one over there ... what happens is people will start to talk.

By EMILY PARKHURST | June 03, 2009

Uniquely human

The social underpinnings of A Chorus Line
When A Chorus Line won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976, America was experiencing what was then the worst economic downturn since the Depression, vibrant women's-lib and gay-rights movements, and such trends in popular psychology as the encounter group.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 03, 2009

Owning her identity

Portland zinester's tales become a book
After twice seeing the one-woman stage adaptation of The Passion of the Hausfrau at Portland Stage Company, and perusing several issues of the Hausfrau mutha-zine , I was curious to see how Nicole Chaison's tales of motherhood would translate to book form.

By DEIRDRE FULTON | June 03, 2009

Keeping faith

Piers Paul Read looks inside the Church
His publicist calls Piers Paul Read "the anti-Dan Brown." She's capitalizing on a buzz - worthy name, sure, but it's a fairly insightful description of a man whose latest book, The Death of a Pope , explores not the Brownish theme of the Catholic Church secretly at work in world affairs, but rather its inverse.

By JEFF INGLIS | June 03, 2009