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Artscope Magazine | September/October 2023

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Theatre

REVIEW: ALVIN AILEY CELEBRATES 60TH SEASON AT THE BOCH CENTER WANG THEATRE

// Artscope Online, Featured, Theatre

by James Foritano

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater celebrated its 60th year as a leading American and world company during its annual Celebrity Series of Boston appearance from May 2 though 5 at the Boch Center Wang Theatre. This year, acclaimed choreographer Rennie Harris’ “Lazarus,” composed in 2018, was featured on Friday evening. “Lazarus” is based on the biblical story in the gospel of John of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from a tomb where he had lain dead for four days. Fact or legend, this dramatic spectacle has been celebrated in Western culture by superstar painters such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt as well as countless icon paintings from the Eastern regions of the Roman empire. Harris is a choreographer raised in an inner-city community on the North Side of Philadelphia. His rise to his present status in the dance world is itself a miracle of an artistic talent blossoming in the … [Read more...] about REVIEW: ALVIN AILEY CELEBRATES 60TH SEASON AT THE BOCH CENTER WANG THEATRE

ENDICOTT REPERTORY DANCE ENSEMBLE’S ARMATIONS: ANTHROPOCENE AN IMMERSIVE PERFORMANCE

// Artscope Online, Featured, Theatre, Visual Arts

by Flavia Cigliano

Every electrifying minute of the Endicott Repertory Dance Ensemble production of Armations: Anthropocene, presented in late April at Tia’s Black Box Theater at the Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts, was a sensory experience, professionally executed, and laden with layers of intellectual content. The production explored the Anthropocene epoch, the geological period characterized by the dominant influence of human activity on climate and the planet’s ecosystems. With dance, visual art, lighting and sound, the production addressed the interrelationship of humanity, the role of technology in our lives, and the future of the natural world. A tall order, no doubt about it, but successfully realized because every element was carefully thought through, resulting in a unified performance that showcased an outstanding corps of young dancers, all students at Endicott College. The … [Read more...] about ENDICOTT REPERTORY DANCE ENSEMBLE’S ARMATIONS: ANTHROPOCENE AN IMMERSIVE PERFORMANCE

REVIEW: INDECENT AT THE HUNTINGTON AVENUE THEATRE

// Artscope Online, Featured, Review, Theatre

by James Foritano

The original author of “Indecent,” now playing at the Huntington Avenue Theatre through May 25, was a poet living in a small village in Poland in the first decade of the last century. Sholem Asch was newly married, young and hopeful that he had the talent to express himself not only in a few volumes of respectable verse but on the wider stage of drama, thereby impressing a larger audience with the passions that stirred his soul. The birth then, of “Indecent” came not in English but in Yiddish. It was a drama titled “Got fun Nekome,” which translates to the melodramatic “God of Vengeance” starring a strong-minded Jewish father and brothel entrepreneur who was determined to marry his daughter to a learned and pious Jew in order to capture a higher social status than the one which bubbled so profitably, but, let’s face it, meanly, tucked away in the basement of his mansion. The … [Read more...] about REVIEW: INDECENT AT THE HUNTINGTON AVENUE THEATRE

Nurse Bianca (Margaret Lattimore, r.) consoles Lucretia (Kelley O’Connor) who pines for her husband Collatinus in Boston Lyric Opera’s production of “The Rape of Lucretia” March 11-17 at Artists for Humanity EpiCenter.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA’S ‘THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA’

// Artscope Online, Featured, Review, Theatre

by James Foritano

Excellence can seem such a simple achievement. Merely assemble practiced, solid parts such as singer/actors, music and libretto (on a timeless theme) and put them on a stage-in-the-round so all their virtues wrap the audience in easy accessibility — not to mention three electronic boards with the dialogue raised high so it’s readable from every angle — and continue, for the duration, to stay out of the way, for goodness sake, until the play is done! Actually, there is some meddling with this simple formula which is so professional that one barely notices, but feels, the enhancements it delivers, while watching Benjamin Britten’s new Boston Lyric Opera production of “The Rape of Lucretia.” Three toughs who also happen to be aristocrats occupy a steep flight of stairs at stage rear of the opening scene. Between battles with a Greek army threatening Rome, they are contemplating what … [Read more...] about BOSTON LYRIC OPERA’S ‘THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA’

Yinka Shonibare’s “The American Library” installation at Cleveland Public Library’s Brett Hall.

REVIEW: FRONT INTERNATIONAL: CLEVELAND TRIENNIAL FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

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

by Nancy Nesvet

The FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, which opened on July 14, presented a new take on art exhibitions in this nation. In Cleveland, a city with multiple art venues, Akron and Oberlin with art, history and spaces of their own, 110 artists at 28 locations, including a Frank Lloyd Wright house, two churches and one decommissioned steamship, presented film, video, installation, painting, sculpture, performance and community art. Open until September 30, each venue contributed to a critical mass of art in three Northeast Ohio cities. The brainchild of Frederick Bidwell, an art collector on the board of The Cleveland and Akron Art Museums, FRONT refers, he said, to the Erie lakefront that Cleveland embraces, and to its standing at the forefront of art in the region. Artistic director Michelle Grabner, a celebrated painter and professor at the Art Institute of … [Read more...] about REVIEW: FRONT INTERNATIONAL: CLEVELAND TRIENNIAL FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Central Square Theater

// Artscope Online, Theatre

by James Foritano

“Les Liaisons Dangereuses” by Christopher Hampton currently playing at the Central Square Theater is based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, an army officer and aristocrat who saw action both on and off the battlefield in the heated days of the late 18th century, just before the French Revolution. A subtly deluxe staging and costume design puts one back in the day when love among the monied and titled French aristocracy was a blood sport, a hunt, a game of one-upmanship tempting to players of either gender.  It’s an age-old sport, love, however phrased, and this production though so far back in history, so above most of us in rarified social station translates pretty well — sometimes.  On the plus side the acting by the principle as well as the minor characters is always solid and sometimes heroic, violent emotions seizing not only pretty faces but the whole bodies of those … [Read more...] about Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Central Square Theater