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

by JAMES FORITANO BOSTON-According to reliable weatherpersons, my theater-going wife and I missed a frightening outbreak of multiple lightning strikes followed by sudden hail from the lowering skies of Boston prior to heading out for a night of theater. If those weatherpersons had wanted to experience truly frightening weather they should have been front and center with us in the “sheltered bowl” of the Lyric Stage Company of Boston. Although the “weather” on stage builds slowly and deftly, nothing prepares one for the fireworks that erupt when Asher Lev accuses his devoutly Hasidic father of “esthetic blindness” and dad ripostes with an equally felt accusation of “moral blindness.” Maybe you haven’t studied the universe of the Hasidim, which, according to the theater program’s glossary, is “a highly religious sect” convinced that “everything one does could be a spiritual act.” Or … [Read more...] about Theater Review- “My Name is Asher Lev”