Theater: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you,” says Emily Webb in one of the more famous speeches from Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town. While current taste might find it too sentimental, Wilder’s play has never gone out of fashion, and it remains a classic of the American stage. Its story of nothing simpler than days in the life of a fictional New … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 27-30
The story could easily be a crude Fox sitcom or a schmaltzy reality series: An Israeli newborn and a Palestinian newborn are switched during a bomb scare in Haifa, Israel, a fact that neither discovers until their 18th birthdays. Instead, in The Other Son, this programmatic, easily exploitable story is played with tender care, cultural awareness and fabled resonance by … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 16-18
Film: Do you remember what you were doing on July 24, 2010? Well, neither do we, but that was the day that 80,000 anonymous filmmakers from around the world recorded their activities for a collaborative documentary called Life in a Day. The result was 4,500 hours of film, or at least digital material, which was boiled down to 95 minutes in a masterful task of editing. Of course … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 30-Nov. 2
Art: Handmade quilts have been a cultural part of America’s history for practical reasons (warm bed covers), community building (quilting bees), storytelling and personal artistic expression. But in the African-American community, quilting took on an expanded role. During slavery, quilts with secret symbols were hung on fences to help guide fugitives to freedom. In … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 15-21
Theater: The girl who gave the world the indelible foghorn version of Tomorrow as the star of Annie back in 1977 is a 45-year-old theater veteran now, and tonight in Jupiter she takes on the world premiere of a new musical revue, Love Is Love, written by Annie lyricist Martin Charnin and composer Richard Gray. Charnin also directs the show, which has been in development for a … [Read more...]