In this web voters’ guide, you’ll find information about the candidates in the March 2 Democratic presidential primary. (There is no Republican primary; President Bush has no Republican challenger.) We compiled the guide by studying candidates’ voting records, web sites, campaign material, media reports, and information from organizations focused on specific issues. New York […]
Arts & Entertainment
Crossing time, the Channel, and convention
Tina Howe’s romantic play Pride’s Crossinghas something for everyone: re-creation of historic periods and events, Upstairs Downstairs-style social reflections on the role of women, time-shifts from 1920 to the present day, realistic New England local color, fantasy dalliances, and a climactic, exciting swim across the English Channel. Blackfriars Theatre has assembled an attractive, strong […]
NASCAR: not just talking moonshine
Let’s do away with all your high-horsed jokes before we continue. Yes, NASCAR’s roots are in the Deep South, where terms like “y’all” and “you’ve got a pretty mouth” are common vernacular. Yes, NASCAR apparel is the most ungodly thing ever created, full of wraparound-print T-shirts and hats that are louder than a hot […]
Sad monsters in a cage
Shipping Dock Theatre is back in strong form with a disturbing, haunting drama about prison life: Bruce Graham’s Coyote on a Fence. In a straightforward, potent performance, a small cast holds the audience spellbound with material that is neither pleasant nor ennobling but is certainly thought-provoking and very hard to forget. Playwright Graham doesn’t […]
Wives run wild
Everybody runs in Ray Cooney’s Run For Your Wife. John Smith, the taxi driver who’s married to two different wives, runs all over London trying to hide them from each other and, for that matter, also trying to hide two different policemen and two upstairs tenants — all from one another, and the truth from […]
The pin (and) ball wizard
Once upon a time, there were two Greek painters, Parrhasius and Zeuxis. Zeuxis was considered the greatest painter of still life in the ancient world. In a competition between the two artists, Zeuxis chose to paint an arrangement of grapes and placed the painting outside. It was so realistic that birds flew down to […]
Martha Stewart run amok
In 1971, Ms. Magazine ran a satire by Judy Syfers titled “Why I Want a Wife.” In the now-classic piece of feminist humor (and as this play points out, feminism and humor are not incompatible), Syfers discussed how a male friend of hers, recently divorced, was looking for a new wife, and the author realized […]
Everybody was Kung Fu fighting
Art and privilege have a lot in common. To produce images, you must be connected to the apparatus that allows images to be made, disseminated, and seen. When dealing with images of the underprivileged, the artist is responsible for the context in which the images will be viewed. For some, it may be just enough […]
Everybody was Kung Fu fighting
Art and privilege have a lot in common. To produce images, you must be connected to the apparatus that allows images to be made, disseminated, and seen. When dealing with images of the underprivileged, the artist is responsible for the context in which the images will be viewed. For some, it may be just enough […]
Getting frisky
As stories of the North Pole and its jolly goings-on get updated for television and movie screens year after year, so too do those sweet stories’ foils. Jeff Goode’s The Eight: Reindeer Monologues is a dark comedy that has enjoyed success in the only society that could understand it: a society obsessed with celebrity and […]
Humbug uncontrolled
p>To spice up the holidays, Shipping Dock Theatre openedlast weekend in its new location at Visual Studies Workshop with an anti-Christmas Carol. Make that an Aunty Christmas Carol. It’s called (take a breath!) The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of A Christmas Carol,and, in deference to Dickens, it requires every one […]
Gathering and pasting a collage of dance
After 33 years of writing about them, it’s difficult to find a new way to describe Garth Fagan Dance. Yet, though the dances are always definably Fagan’s, they are newly inventive. Fagan adds unique work every year. How difficult must it be to achieve that level of creativity? The performances are equally remarkable. Fagan’s […]






