Arts

Lows, highs, and middles

A mixed bag at the RISD Museum
Yousuf Karsh is one of the giants of portrait photography.

By GREG COOK | March 24, 2009

Twilight revists the King riots
Since Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is set in a specific place and time, some theatergoers will want to relegate its incidents and attitudes — which surround the Rodney King riots — to history.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 24, 2009

Muddled musical

A mostly rotten Scoundrels
We sure do love our stage rascals.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 24, 2009

Home unsweet home

2nd Story's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
European existentialist philosophers grandly designated fear and trembling — and subsets — as the default state of the human condition.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 18, 2009

Interview: Mitch Fatel

Fatel hates the Yankees, loves stand-up
Given that he was once an intern for Howard Stern, it's not too surprising that comedian Mitch Fatel is all about clits and tits, and assorted lady bits – not the stuff that feminists would gleefully shave their legs over.

By SARA FAITH ALTERMAN | March 19, 2009

Ideas and emotions

The Gamm delivers Grace at a fever pitch
Grace takes place in the recent memories of the title character as well as in her difficult present. The basic concern here, which nags her like a toothache, is the non-existence of the divine.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 17, 2009

Seeing music

'The Sight of Sound' at Machines With Magnets
"The Sight of Sound" at Machines with Magnets focuses on the impetus behind much locally-made art: music.

By GREG COOK | March 30, 2009

More new than old

Hope gets its close-up at Festival Ballet
Artistic director Mihailo "Misha" Djuric has a polished ensemble of dancers and impressive choreographers at the Festival Ballet Providence.

By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | March 11, 2009

Review: The Kindly Ones

Inside the Reich
Those put off by the soft-pedaling of the SS in the movie adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader might be wary of Jonathan Littell's memoir of fictional war criminal Maximilien Aue.

By PETER KEOUGH | March 11, 2009

Review: Secret Rapture

Trinity can't rescue Hare's play
Art is artifice, as we all accept. But sometimes it's hard for artists to take a deep breath and skillfully apply more of the latter to amplify the former.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 04, 2009

Under construction

Jon Laustsen's surreal minimalist mutations
Jon Laustsen's sculptures are like a contractor's dreams rendered in miniature.

By GREG COOK | March 04, 2009

Currency Events

The Precient Bad Money at Perishable
Meg Miroshnik's new play, Bad Money , at Perishable Theatre (through March 8), couldn't be more timely to the current economic situation.

By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | March 04, 2009

The Secret Rapture at Trinity Repertory Company

Trinity's Rapture spans the compassion spectrum
David Hare's The Secret Rapture , which Trinity Repertory Company is presenting through March 29.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 24, 2009

A Visual Buffet

A visual buffet sampling RISD's faculty; Laska and Kupferschmidt at Stairwell.
The RISD Museum offers work by more than 175 staffers in its "RISD Biennial Faculty Exhibition 2009."

By GREG COOK | February 25, 2009

Dramatic Success

Arts thrive at the Courthouse Center
The little black box theater that is West Kingston's Center Stage, with little room for scenery, has to be ingenious with its space.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 25, 2009

Nature's way

The atmospheric Jazz and Tap Odyssey
Evoking the great outdoors with live jazz, live hoofing, and spoken text.

By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | February 18, 2009

In war and love

PBRC'S A Time of Fire burns slowly
PBRC'S A Time of Fire burns slowly

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 18, 2009

Mixed Magic's When Fate Comes Knocking

Living history
It's been said before and it'll be said again: the election of Barack Obama casts a new light on the Civil Rights Movement. Or, in Ricardo Pitts-Wiley's words, "We get to tell the story in a different way."

By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | February 12, 2009

Black power

Trinity Rep's powerful Raisin In the Sun
The centerpiece of George C. Wolfe's 1986 satire The Colored Museum is a scathing sketch called The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play . A Raisin in the Sun is the über-mama-on-the-couch play

By CAROLYN CLAY | February 12, 2009

Old school

Dyer's thing was watercolors and gouaches of romantic fairy tale country cottages, snowy mountain lakes, and ruins of old stone arches and doorways.
Back in 1928, a Providence Journal headline dubbed painter Hezekiah Anthony Dyer a "militant anti-Modernist." Modern art was just about showing off, he said.

By GREG COOK | February 10, 2009