Category Archives: Critics
Another Book review
Another review of Friday’s world premiere of Book of Longing drops in Toronto, this one from the Globe and Mail. The wrap graf:
“In the end, Book of Longing was a chance worth taking, and enjoyable to witness. You could hear the two participants greeting each other across their different disciplines, if not always embracing. It [...]
Starred Book review
There’s finally a review of Philip Glass’ new work Book of Longing from its Friday night world premiere at Toronto’s Luminato Arts Festival. Writing for the Toronto Star, columnist Greg Quill seems to have mixed feelings about the work, which had Leonard Cohen in attendance for its opening. Cohen’s new book of poetry and drawings, [...]
Dood! You rule!
Last night’s premiere of Dutch theatre group Dood Paard’s (it means “dead horse”) medEia is bound to provoke some griping from people who prefer their big-dollar theatre served up a la The Constant Wife – with lots of lavish costumes, a gorgeous set, witty repartee, bon mots aplenty, a pleasantly linear plot, and an unbreachable [...]
Our foreign correspondance
The New York Times’ James R. Oestreich continues to be the sole representative of the major U.S. news media in town for the festival. Ironically, the Toronto Globe and Mail seems to be the only other out-of-towner with a reporter, Paula Citron, on the streets of Charleston for some critical reportage – possibly because that [...]
Big Bang
Last night’s program was exactly the prescription needed to heal what’s been ailing this Spoleto Buzz blogger in the past eight days. Faustus and L’ile de Merlin both tousled festival audiences’ hair in their ways, but so far Spoleto 07’s been absent any real, knock-your-hat off-and-lick-you-up-and-down surprises. We got it Thursday evening with the Foundry [...]
Sign of the Times
New York Times reporter James Oestreich files two more reports for his ArtsBeat blog on the festival this afternoon. One’s a bemused rumination on the festival’s frenetic social calendar, which should satisfy Party Blogger Jonathan Sanchez (apparently Oestreich was at last night’s post-Wei/Bang party). In the second, he muses on the ubiquity of Philip Glass’ [...]
Chamber of Horrors?
Writing on the 2007 festival for the New York Times’ new ArtsBeat blog yesterday, in a post about Thursday’s Chamber Music V program reporter James Oestreich goes straight for the jugular: “In the Dock Street Theater, a jewel box of an auditorium,” he writes, “Charles Wadsworth presented one of his notorious concerts of chamber music [...]
Talking dirty: a defense of Closer
In today’s Post and Courier, Spoleto overview critic Joshua Rosenblum strokes his chin over a pair of festival plays that have infidelity as their common theme – Spoleto’s drawing room comedy The Constant Wife and Piccolo’s production of Closer, in the little festival’s Stelle di Domani series. In his smartly written argument, Josh observes that [...]
New York Times on the local arts beat
There’s a new Spoleto blogger on the scene, at least for the moment: New York Times arts reporter James R. Oestreich, posting yesterday evening at 9pm on the Times’ new Arts Beat blog. In the past year, the Times has rolled out a seemingly endless series of blogs administered by staff writers and reporters. One [...]
The little festival that could
The Big Festival’s opening premieres monopolized most of this Spoleto Buzz blogger’s attention and energy over the Memorial Day weekend, but I’ve not forgotten that there’s an entirely separate festival going on in Charleston right now. If the dissonant warbling in Faustus, the Last Night or nigh on three hours of Marxian, Teutonic spectacle in [...]
