Articles
6207 results
Page 352
An African "Julius Caesar' in Brooklyn
Just how do you topple a dictator?
Director Gregory Doran has made a bold, believable choice in setting his Julius Caesar in today's strife-torn Africa. As a result, he shines new light on the Shakespearean play we all memorized in high school and thought we knew inside and out.
Articles
5 minute read
Danny Boyle's "Trance'
Hypnotists rule!
Even a flawed premise can be swept away by real moral quandaries, sparkling dialogue, charismatic actors and characters we actually care about. Unfortunately, Danny Boyle's alleged thriller, Trance, offers no such perks.
Articles
3 minute read
The Barnes raises its rates
Get thee gone, peasants! The Barnes seeks more refined visitors
The Barnes Museum, short of cash and also apparently seeking a better class of visitor, has raised its admission rates just 11 months after it opened. But wasn't bringing the art of the Barnes collection to the common people at an affordable cost the whole point of moving it in the first place?
Articles
6 minute read
Who needs architecture school?
How self-taught architects changed the Western world
From Louis Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright, some of the world's most creative modern architects never went to architecture school, and some never went to college. They got the hang of good design on the job by watching pros do it— and then they did it, their way.
Articles
3 minute read
Orchestra 2001 plays Crumb and Gorecki
From Hitler to Apollo, in just 30 years
Small music groups get short shrift in this year's Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. Orchestra 2001 earned a spot by contriving a program that focused on two wildly different historic events.
Articles
4 minute read
Marcel Proust, poet
… And he wrote poetry, too!
It probably shouldn't come as a shock that Marcel Proust set his hand to writing verse. His poems about great artists of the past are pleasant but unremarkable— no better or worse than those of his Symbolist contemporaries.
Articles
2 minute read
Hooked on "Project Runway'
My ‘Project Runway,' myself
Why am I hooked on “Project Runway” when I should be watching Public TV documentaries about global warming? For the same reason anyone gets hooked on a reality show. It's the psychodrama that seduces us— specifically, our identification with the players in these simulations of real-life conflicts.
Articles
5 minute read
Nora Ephron's "Lucky Guy' on Broadway
Swept away
The rise, fall, comeback and ultimate demise of the relentlessly ambitious newspaper columnist Mike McAlary makes a great story— but only in the romantic world of the Broadway stage.
Articles
5 minute read
My ticket to glory, 1950 (a memoir)
How do you get to Philadelphia? Practice, practice
I was a small town boy of eight when I was drafted into a children's accordion band. My musical efforts paid off with a TV appearance and my first mind-boggling visit to a real city— Philadelphia— where I rode my first elevator and subway train, ate in my first automat, and saw my first black people.
Articles
10 minute read
Verdi's "I Lombardi' in concert in NY
Verdi's forgotten stepchild
Verdi's much-neglected I Lombardi has much to offer in the way of innovative music and vivid scenes. A concert version featuring the superb voices of Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano may help rescue it from its undeserved obscurity.
Articles
4 minute read