> “Life is a tragedy when seen in a close-up, but a comedy when seen > in the long shot.” – Charlie Chaplin Melodrama: the essential link between classical tragedy...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/04/cry-me-river-sweet-sorrow-of-film-noir.html
Christopher Durang and E. Katherine Kerr in LAUGHING WILD, in 1987. It’s hard to imagine a more tragic-ironic fate for the playwright Christopher Durang than the disease from which he suff...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/04/christopher-durang-1949-2024.html
Brian d'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara in DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES. (Photo: Joan Marcus) At first DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, written by JP Miller, was a ninety-minute drama on PLAYHOUSE 90 in 1958, ...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/04/singing-drunks-days-of-wine-and-roses.html
Koto Ishihara in UTOPIVERSE. (Photo: Karolina Kuras. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada) The National Ballet of Canada' s Winter 2024 program — at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre, Ma...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/03/subtly-scintillating-national-ballet-of.html
AIR SIGNS TALKING, 48 x 48 in. > “Tantra is a technique that allows you to connect with your inner > energy and experience transformation. One can visualize energy >�...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/03/in-passing-enigmatic-paintings-of-janna.html
Sanjit De Silva and Toby Stephens in CORRUPTION. (Photo: T Charles Erickson) In his new play, CORRUPTION, which opened last week at Lincoln Center, the excellent American political playwright...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/03/journalism-on-stage-connector-and.html
Tirion Law and Svetlana Lunkina ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. (Photo: Karolina Kuras. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada) The National Ballet of Canada 's presentation of ALICE'S A...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/03/down-rabbit-hole-with-national-ballet.html
The Beatles with Little Richard, 1962 (Photo: Horst Fascher/Redferns) > “Now I'm stepping out of this old brown shoe > Baby, I'm in love with you > I'm so glad you c...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/02/dressed-for-success-fashioning-beatles.html
Leonie Benesch and Leonard Stettnisch in THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE. In the unnerving German drama THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE, a theft in the faculty lounge of a secondary school and a young teacher’s...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/02/german-imports-teachers-lounge-and-afire.html
Milo Machado Graner in ANATOMY OF A FALL. The gripping French film ANATOMY OF A FALL may be the most unconventional courtroom thriller I’ve ever seen. When Samuel Maleski is found dead bene...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/02/in-court-and-at-dinner-anatomy-of-fall.html
Photo by Christophe Raynaud deLage. In a six-day run at Boston’s Paramount Theater under the auspices of Arts Emerson , the Norwegian company Plexus Polaire staged Herman Melville’s MOBY ...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/01/moby-dick-for-puppets.html
Hinata Hiiragi and Soya Kurokawa in MONSTER. The movies of the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda are not just different from those of other filmmakers; they’re also often unlike each oth...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/01/year-end-movies-iv-monster-and-all-of.html
KAIROS Records, 2023. > “Whatever you think can’t be done, someone will come along and > do.” – Thelonious Monk > > “Don’t play the piano part, I’m pla...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/01/inner-sanctum-star-crossed-music-of.html
The heron in Hayao Miyazaki's THE BOY AND THE HERON. One of the cinematic high points of 2023 was surely the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki ’s return from retirement with THE BOY A...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/01/year-end-movies-iii-boy-and-heron-and.html
Taraji P. Henson in one of her spectacularly ugly costumes she wear in THE COLOR PURPLE. Why are most of the recent movie musicals so ghastly? Much as I’d loved Paul King’s PADDINGTON mo...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/01/year-end-movies-ii-color-purple-and-may.html
Dominic Sessa and Paul Giamatti in THE HOLDOVERS. THE REVIEW OF THE HOLDOVERS CONTAINS SPOILERS. In THE HOLDOVERS a prodigiously bright but desperately unhappy teenager with a checkered aca...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2024/01/year-end-movies-i-holdovers-and-ferrari.html
Mireille Asselin as Eurydice, with Artist of Atelier Ballet Xi Yi, in ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE. (Photo: Bruce Zinger) Life after death? The question is purely rhetorical in Christoph Willibald Gl...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/12/out-of-darkness-opera-ateliers-orpheus.html
Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor in FAIR PLAY. There’s nothing wrong with the kind of movie FAIR PLAY purports to be, but there’s everything wrong with what it is. Written and direct...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/12/a-guilty-pleasure-without-pleasure-fair.html
Arnold Schoenberg, MS 96. > “It’s all about starting in the middle of a musical sentence and > then moving in both directions at once.” – John Coltrane Man, we ...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/12/interstitial-music-space-between-notes.html
Natalie Gold, Alyssa Emily Marvin, Michael Esper, Sarah Paulson and Corey Stoll in APPROPRIATE. (Photo: Joan Marcus) A magnificent cast under Lila Neugebauer ’s direction brings Branden Ja...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/12/appropriate-chaotic-american-family.html
Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey in FELLOW TRAVELERS. (Photo: Ben Mark Holzberg) Matt Bomer has a personal triumph in the role of Hawk Fuller, a State Department official whose concealment of ...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/12/fellow-travelers-sex-and-politics.html
Judy Kuhn and Santino Fontana in I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE. (Photo: Sara Krulwich) The composer-lyricist Harold Rome, who died in 1993, has been more or less forgotten, but he was one of...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/11/the-turbulent-thirties-i-can-get-it-for.html
Hannah Galway and Siphesihle November in EMMA BOVARY. (Photo: Karolina Kuras/Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada) EMMA BOVARY RAN AT TORONTO’S FOUR SEASON’S CENTRE FROM NOVEMBER 11-...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/11/feeling-her-pain-emma-bovary-at.html
Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez in MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. (Photo: Matthew Murphy) Every time there’s a new edition of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical MERRILY WE ...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/11/steve-merrily-we-roll-along-and-here-we.html
Elizabeth Marvel and John Turturro in SABBATH'S THEATER. (Photo: Jeenah Moon) Devoted as I am to Philip Roth ’s novels, I had trouble with his National Book Award winner SABBATH’S THEATER...
https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/11/mickey-and-joey-sabbaths-theater-and.html