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STEVE VINEBERG
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Clown show
The challenge in any production of Twelfth Night isn't the love triangle.
Sons of the Prophet can't live on laughs
Sons of the Prophet can't live on laughs
ASP's Henry IV, Part I
The work of Actors' Shakespeare Project is generally smart and imaginative, so the company's thoroughly misbegotten Henry IV, Part I , the first half of ASP's The Coveted Crown (at Midway Studios through November 21), comes as a surprise.
All aboard for this smooth ride
Bus Stop is hardly a neglected masterpiece, or even William Inge's best play (that would be Picnic ), but when you watch Nicholas Martin's production, the Huntington's season opener (at the Boston University Theatre through October 17), you understand why it was a hit on Broadway in 1955.
Johnny Baseball is stuck in the minors
The high point of Johnny Baseball , the new musical receiving its world premiere from the American Repertory Theater (at the Loeb Drama Center through June 27), comes two-thirds of the way through the second act.
Mostly high points at the Harvard Film Archive
Vittorio De Sica, the subject of a major retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive, "Vittorio De Sica — Neo-Realism, Melodrama, Fantasy," was a movie star in Italy before he became a filmmaker.
And mostly masterpieces, at the Museum of Fine Arts, June 2-13.
The definition of film noir has become elastic through the years. Of the five movies included in the MFA’s series “Rialto’s Best of British Film Noir” only two, strictly speaking, are noirs: Brighton Rock, Graham Greene & Terence Rattigan’s adaptation of Greene’s novel, and The Third Man, Greene’s most famous collaboration with the filmmaker Carol Reed.
Timon of Athens from Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Prelude to a Kiss from the Huntington
Timon of Athens is Shakespeare’s least characteristic tragedy, and the toughest to pull off.
In Memoriam
J.D. Salinger was 91 when he died in his New Hampshire home on January 27, 45 years after he published his last known story, "Hapworth 16, 1924," in the New Yorker .
Lions in winter: a Tolstoyan feast
Traversing the spectrum from farce to tragedy, Michael Hoffman's magnificent The Last Station suggests what the story of Count Leo Tolstoy's final days would look like if Chekhov had told it.
'Celebrating Chekhov' at the Museum of Fine Arts
Given that every theater season seems to bring a new production of a Chekhov play, it's surprising that so few movies have been made of his dramas, or of his short stories. Or maybe not so surprising: Chekhov is perilously difficult for filmmakers.
In Memoriam
No other filmmaker mined precisely the same territory as the French director Eric Rohmer, who died Monday at the age of 89.
Gordon Willis at the Harvard Film Archive
Gordon Willis, the master cinematographer to whom the Harvard Film Archive pays tribute in a seven-film retrospective beginning this Friday,
Sleep No More brings Macbeth to Brookline
Sleep No More , the second entry in the American Repertory Theater’s mini-season of revisionist Shakespeare, is the least orthodox production of Macbeth you’re likely to see. In fact, it’s linked to Macbeth as much by poetic allusion as by narrative — which is to say that it’s a little of both.
Kiss Me, Kate at the Lyric
With its supreme Cole Porter score and its robustly entertaining book by Sam and Bella Spewack, the 1948 Kiss Me, Kate is surely one of the half-dozen best Broadway musicals.
James Whale at the HFA
James Whale's career as a purveyor of marvelous film entertainments was brief.
Israel Horovitz returns to Gloucester
The title of Israel Horovitz's Sins of the Mother (through September 13 at Gloucester Stage) is an ironic misnomer.
Elia Kazan at the HFA
The arc of Elia Kazan's professional life has its origins in the Group Theatre, where he was trained as an actor and performed in the original 1930s productions of Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy .
Dillinger and Manhattan Melodrama
In anticipation of the July 1 release of Michael Mann's Public Enemies with Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, and as part of its week-long "Classic Gangsters" series, the Brattle is screening two rarely seen films this Sunday: John Milius's 1973 Dillinger and W.S. Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama.
Film noir and the Production Code at the MFA
The Production Code, Hollywood's notorious self-censorship program, was instituted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1930, but it didn't go into effect till 1934, when it was administered by Joseph I. Breen.
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