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 […]
1. Providence Mayor – Democrat Ordinarily the Democratic primary IS the election, because no Republican has been elected as Providence mayor since 1978 – the final time Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., ran as a Republican, before winning re-election as an independent in 1982. The general election is expected to be a three-way contest between […]
The political situation in the Gaza Strip has dominated the news recently, and there is a substantial variety of reasonable views that reasonable people might have about it. My own views are not, however, my subject here. As a theater and film critic, I am deeply disturbed – indeed, shocked – by recent news reports […]
One of their most successful productions, Contemporary Theatre Company (CTC) in South Kingstown brings back playwright Michael Frayn’s Noises Off as a revival from their 2009 season. A favorite of both actors and audiences, it is a play within a play in three acts, the first and third seen from in front of the stage […]
Beautiful late spring weather favored the crowds sampling the diner fare from the iconic truck parked in front of the Columbus Theatre on Broadway early in the evening of Saturday, June 7, at the Providence premiere of Haven Brothers: Legacy of the American Diner, the directorial debut of independent Rhode Island film maker Jeff Toste. […]
Rhode Island director Richard Griffin premiered his new film Future Justice that has the look of a movie with a $10 million dollar budget, despite the real budget being a lot closer to $10,000. Director Richard Griffin, perhaps Rhode Island’s most enthusiastic devotee of 1970s genre cinema, pays homage to the post-apocalyptic thriller in his […]
Morality is personal, not political; this is, to a large extent, the theme of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, a theatrical experiment written by Nassim Soleimanpour. Because the playwright is an Iranian who is not allowed to travel outside of his country, he is unable to participate in performances and therefore has written his play to […]
When director Jeff Toste’s documentary Haven Brothers: Legacy of the American Diner has its Providence premiere on Saturday, June 7 at the Columbus Theatre, the iconic food truck itself will be there selling burgers, fries and its other famous fare. Begun as a horse-drawn food cart in 1888, in various incarnations and under a series […]
Decades before playwright Caryl Churchill in her dotage earned a notorious reputation as arguably the most virulent anti-Semite active in mainstream British theater, her plays, despite the heavy baggage of Marxist Brechtian dialectical conventions, were plausibly entertaining. Indeed, like “Saturday Night Live,” her best and funniest work was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, […]
Christian de Rezendes discusses documentary When Rhode Island-based director Christian de Rezendes was approached by a mutual acquaintance about making a documentary on the life of the recently deceased Matthew “Matty” Christian (1983-2009) of Canton, MA, who was born without full limbs or a tongue, de Rezendes was apprehensive about repeating the “emotionally grueling process” […]