By James Foritano CAMBRIDGE — The Bad Habit Theater Company is up to its old habits, this time acting out Lanford Wilson’s scathing indictment, loving celebration of rural, small-town America in his comic and disturbing Book of Days. Their usual venue, the Durrell Theater of the Cambridge YMCA, is appropriately “down home” for this third in a cycle of three plays Bad Habit has produced to illustrate: “the trials of being good and the temptations of being bad.” Every locale has its unique temptations and trials, not least, small towns. Here in the fictional town of Dublin, Missouri, population 4,780, give or take, “badness” is coated, and not always superficially, with a sweet layer of neighborliness. Nearly everyone knows everyone else, more or less, and loves his or her neighbor, according to the tenets of Protestant Christianity, more or less. Trouble is, self-love, especially if … [Read more...] about Theater Review: Book of Days

By James Foritano BOSTON-In Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Venice is a frenetic, even a mad world. It spews up and swallows merchant princes and their hangers-on, gilded heiresses and their pursuers. In director Darko Tresnjak’s staging, the ornate Cutler Majestic theater turns high-tech. Players of all stripes scurry back and forth, cell-phones to ear, dancing on multiple levels of scaffolding to the tune of getting and (excuse the expression) lending. Three flat screens stream numbers, or, alternately, picture an unquiet ocean where fortunes are afloat. Serenissima, or the Queen of the Adriatic, might cultivate airs of aristocratic leisure, but she is a world “on the make,” of deals, clasped with a warm handshake — or not. So, Bassanio tells his friend Antonio, who, in case you didn’t know, is the merchant of Venice, that he is, well, somewhat “our of pocket,” but, has … [Read more...] about Theatre Review: ARTSEmerson presents The Merchant of Venice

By James Foritano BOSTON --- In celebration of the stagecraft of legendary director Peter Brook, ArtsEmerson is producing “The Grand Inquisitor,” which opened March 24 at the Black Box Theater in the Paramount Center and runs through April 3. The play is based on a passage from Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” and was adapted by Marie Helene Estienne. The concept of the play is that Christ is strolling the streets of Seville on a sultry evening during the most terrible time of the inquisition in Spain, sometime in the 1500s. Around 100 heretics, give or take, have been “burned at the stake” just the other evening, so there is unusual activity in the streets. Nevertheless Christ himself is easily recognized by the citizens who not only acclaim him, but also urge him to perform a miracle — which he does. The Grand Inquisitor, played by Bruce Myers, happens on the scene and has … [Read more...] about Theater Review: The Grand Inquisitor