Before the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus shuts down forever after nearly a century, their second-to-last shows will be at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, May 4-7. Facing persistent severe criticism from animal welfare campaigners, the circus announced in 2015 that it would retire its use of elephants, long the definitive trademark […]
Important: Remember that items made with cannabis may be illegal in your jurisdiction unless you have proper medical certification, and must always be kept strictly away from children and pets. Cannabis has been known since ancient times, and some claim that the mysterious קַנַּבּוֹס (“kaneh-bosim,” singular “kaneh-bos”) listed as an ingredient of the holy anointing […]
Nominated for nine Tony Awards and winning two, Lend Me a Tenor by playwright Ken Ludwig is an unambitious and ridiculous farce that depends upon numerous perfect coincidences and character stereotypes. The central plot element is a case of mistaken identity that depends upon both parties to the confusion wearing blackface makeup to perform the […]
Inherit the Wind is one of the great plays of the past century and Ocean State Theatre Company does it due justice as a masterpiece, originally produced in 1955 at the height of McCarthyism. In his “director’s note” in the program, Fred Sullivan, Jr., compares it to other political plays that reach general principles beyond […]
If you know the music of Tom Lehrer, underground satirist of the 1950s and counter-cultural television star of the 1960s, Tom Foolery is a revue that will trigger waves of nostalgia. The musical and its song selection date from 1980, only a few years removed from Lehrer’s active performance days which, it is worth noting, […]
The latest in a series of biography plays written by Leonard Schwartz, Goodbye and Hurry Back is about the romance between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that began in 1944 on the set of her first movie, To Have and Have Not, when she was 19 and he was 44. Although at the Arctic Playhouse, […]
Three federal government agencies have been targets in the culture wars for decades: the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Their funding is tiny by federal standards – about $148 million each for the NEA and NEH, and about $445 million for […]
Around the World in 80 Days is a stage version of what is very likely the most popular novel by Jules Verne, the prolific 19th century grandfather of technological fiction, by which I mean fiction dependent upon and heavily influenced by then-current or just slightly futuristic technology as distinguished from science-fiction that is more speculative. The […]
Murder at the Howard Johnson’s tries to be a nostalgic look back to the late 1970s when leisure suits, the sexual revolution and proto-New Age gurus were the thing, but as a relic actually written in 1979 and set in 1978 it never achieves the necessary distance needed for genuine reflection. People did a lot of […]
An annual event since 1998, the Providence French Film Festival will be held this February 25 through March 4, with all screenings at the Cable Car Cinema. Although the event is presented by Brown University, the films are not academically oriented and are open to the public. Richard Blakely, director of the festival, credited Dan Kamil, […]