The Cable Car Cinema in Providence was among a phalanx of independent theaters that screened The Interview after all of the major chains abandoned it, fearful of controversy and terrorist threats generally assumed to emanate from North Korea, where some were unhappy to see their dictator Kim Jong-Un portrayed as an assassinated buffoon. The first two […]
No motion picture could live up to its hype after the unprecedented rollercoaster ride The Interview has had. Still, The Interview is a much better film than many of the reviews would have you believe. To be clear, the film is no contender to be a cinematic classic, but it also is a lot more […]
North Korea is one of history’s most brutal, irrational, vicious, and cruel regimes. The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not democratic, views its people as dehumanized slaves to the collective, and sullies the notion of republicanism through rule by a monarchic dynasty now in its third generation. Despite its status as the closest […]
The closing of The Providence Phoenix last week after 36 years is “a sign of the times,” said Ty Davis, the founding publisher of The NewPaper in 1978. He continued in that role until its sale to The Boston Phoenix group that led to its eventual re-branding as The Providence Phoenix. During that decade running […]
Premiering their new black box theater space off Glenbridge Avenue on the West Side of Providence with a Halloween musical, the Academy Players of Rhode Island put on a fun and entertaining show, albeit with a plot so thinly obvious as to amount to deliberate self-parody, in The Addams Family Musical. Something of the flip […]
Actor Mark Carter is well-known in theatrical circles for many years of performing, but he has been working for over a decade on a personal dream project as a scriptwriter, bringing to the stage something of the life of Vlad III, a 15th Century monarch of Balkan Wallachia (in modern Romania, near Transylvania) who became […]
Former Cool Moose party leader Robert J. Healey, Jr., was approved to appear on the ballot as the Moderate Party nominee for governor of Rhode Island as the State Board of Elections rejected a challenge from the Republican Party at a hearing on Wednesday, September 17. The Moderate Party, recently created in 2009, in order […]
Kevin Broccoli is a serious man: artistic director of Rhode Island’s Epic Theatre, author of plays and monologues that have been performed by literally hundreds of actors, and an acclaimed director and actor himself. Yet nothing of his prior years of committed work in theater attracted the kind of viral publicity as his recent Kickstarter […]
Plays with titles intentionally chosen to be unprintable in the mainstream press are usually terrible. The New York Times reviewed the off-Broadway American premiere under the title “___ (The Cockfight Play)” apparently thinking that a long low line would preserve the innocence of their readers, and separately profiled author Mike Bartlett as “The Playwright Who […]
It’s hardly any secret that the Rhode Island economy is in bad shape. In the most recent monthly data from June 2014, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 7.9 percent – a tie for worst in the nation between Rhode Island and Mississippi. It has been a lot worse, and Rhode Island improved since June […]