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Artscope Magazine | September/October 2021

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Theatre

A ‘HOPSCOTCH’ SHARING OF EMOTIONS BRING VIEWERS TOGETHER AT GALATEA FINE ART

// Artscope Online, Theatre, Visual Arts

by Jack Lynch

With the world in an unusual era with society changing rapidly in regards to the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is calming to have a means of expressing one’s emotions regarding these events. It is also calming to view something that perfectly surmises the emotions that people share with the work’s creator regarding these events. The artists on view this September in three exhibitions at the Galatea Fine Art gallery, located in Boston’s SoWa District, have used their art as a means of expressing the different emotions regarding society's current need for its citizens to distance themselves from each other. Emotions in regards to the divided climate of today’s society are primarily shown in Jo-Ann Boback’s “An Enigma,” an oil/mixed media on canvas piece work that uses graffiti-like markings to depict two figures next to each other. This piece, and the rest of Boback’s work, is … [Read more...] about A ‘HOPSCOTCH’ SHARING OF EMOTIONS BRING VIEWERS TOGETHER AT GALATEA FINE ART

THEATERS OPEN THEIR VAULTS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

// Artscope Online, Audio/Visual, Movie, Theatre

by J. M. Belmont

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, live performance has been put on ice. But even though theaters have closed their doors, many are rummaging through their video archives and making productions from the past available for online viewing. Artscope has picked some of the best companies in this country and around the world that have opened their vaults for the locked-in public. THE NATIONAL THEATER: One of the United Kingdom’s most lauded theaters has begun a program they call “National Theater At Home.” An extension of their popular “National Theater Live,” which had broadcast plays live from London’s South Bank to cinemas across the globe, “At Home” will be offering a production a week. Currently showing at time of posting is the company’s frightening and technologically innovative adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Frankenstein, starring Benedict … [Read more...] about THEATERS OPEN THEIR VAULTS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

SWEAT AT THE HUNTINGTON AVENUE THEATER

// Artscope Online, Theatre, Visual Arts

by J. M. Belmont

“Sweat,” Lynn Nottage’s lauded 2015 play, is difficult — in the best possible ways — for two reasons. First is the adulation it garnered following its 2017 transfer from the Public Theater to the Broadway house Studio 54. The play was grasped onto as an answer for all the political uncertainty levied by the election of Donald J. Trump. It was seen, in some cases shallowly, as a “how-to” in understanding the disaffection of Midwestern working class white voters. It won the 2017 Pulitzer for drama. The second difficulty sits beyond the platitudes and awards: “Sweat” is a play about the alienation and distress inflicted on the majority of Americans whose annual income comes in under six figures. It is a small, specific tile that helps to complete an uncomfortable mosaic of similar struggles an incredibly large number of Americans face every day. In “Sweat,” Nottage guides us … [Read more...] about SWEAT AT THE HUNTINGTON AVENUE THEATER

Evan Turissini, Paul Melendy, David Keohane and Debra Wise (Photograph by Nile Scott Studios).

VANITY FAIR, AN (IM-)MORALITY PLAY AT CENTRAL SQUARE THEATER

// Artscope Online, Review, Theatre

by James Foritano

For my money, the Underground Railway Theater’s presentation of “Vanity Fair, An (Im-)Morality Play,” at Central Square Theater through February 23, couldn’t be a more timely and engaging burlesque of the surplus of hypocrisy and disguised cruelty that runs just below even the most distinguished of civilizations. In this case, the narrative is based on novelist William Makepeace Thackery’s mid-19th century novel, “Vanity Fair," which, judging from this dramatic adaptation, looked minutely and scathingly at an England nearing the height of an empire so globally broad that upon it, “the sun never sets.” The directing and the acting were, in this reviewer’s perception, superb. It was a delight to see hypocrisy so fully inflated with its own pomposity it seemed to float like a gas-filled balloon across the narrow stage with only its tiny, well-shod feet showing — the more pleasure to … [Read more...] about VANITY FAIR, AN (IM-)MORALITY PLAY AT CENTRAL SQUARE THEATER

DENIS O’HARE SHINES IN “AN ILIAD” ON EMERSON MAJESTIC’S ORCHARD STAGE

// Artscope Online, Theatre, Visual Arts

by James Foritano

In a near faultless production, actor and mime Denis O’Hare enacts, in a solo performance, the agony and ecstasy of Homer’s ancient epic of the Trojan War in a modern condensed and critiqued version on the Emerson Paramount Center’s Robert J. Orchard Stage. Homer’s epic poem, a recasting of oral fragments, come down through the ages to be, finally, written in the new Greek alphabet, a celebration and questioning of the fury of war and the heroic tradition that seems to perpetuate war beyond any rational goal. The genius of “An Iliad" lies in its modern focus on the futility of war whereas with Homer both the celebration and the questioning seem about equal. This was, after all, the heroic age of Greece, when the favorite sport of kings and heroes — and Gods, war, could be questioned only so far. O’Hare, though, is a Homer come down through the ages to present-day Boston. He … [Read more...] about DENIS O’HARE SHINES IN “AN ILIAD” ON EMERSON MAJESTIC’S ORCHARD STAGE

THE ARLEKIN PLAYERS PLAY CHEKHOV’S THE SEAGULL

// Artscope Online, Theatre

by James Foritano

Most of the Chekhov dramas I recall seeing on other stages were what I remember as ‘drawing room’ comedies where aristocratic Russians arrived in their own coaches to doff fur coats and silk wraps to deferential servants and fall into each other arms — their host presiding warmly. As I sit at my desk, my memory of the Arlekin Player’s guests is altogether different: gone are the furs and silk, the languorous embraces, the sips of champagne. Instead I’m remembering guests who relished undressing and then skinning their opposites while they clinked goblets of each other’s blood, grinning toothily. Oh, the stage directions stipulated a mansion in the countryside and woods surrounding a tranquil lake, but these directions were not interpreted literally. And who amongst those thirsty cannibals spared a glance at the lake, filled with (Ugh!) weak water, let alone wandered its … [Read more...] about THE ARLEKIN PLAYERS PLAY CHEKHOV’S THE SEAGULL