Rick Chason

Hidden in the middle of a quiet, tree-lined street in Cambridge, there lies a secret gem of artistic work. Touch Art Gallery, an intimate gallery of contemporary international artwork, specializes as a haven for Iranian art and culture. Lush and bewitching paintings line the hall walls and provide a backdrop for lectures, film screenings, and, […]

  Rick Chason

One day, as a teenager, I was about to read a copy of Pygmalion and my father said to me, “Why do you want to read Pygmalion? Isn’t it just My Fair Lady?” That question struck me as odd at the time, but I’ve come to realize that there’s something of a consensus among American […]

  Rick Chason

Nothing says feminism quite like equal opportunity fat jokes; enter Theatre@First’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry the 4th. Gender-bending such a grotesque, masculine figure as Falstaff might sound unworkable, but as with most other elements of this production it’s a surprisingly serviceable and believable approach to giving the play contemporary appeal. It’s always a challenge to […]

  Rick Chason

Odyssey Opera is coming just in time. Three years ago, there were two regional-theater-sized opera companies in town, the Boston Lyric Opera (the “BLO”), which tends to stage standard classics of the opera repertoire; and Opera Boston, which specialized in infrequently-heard, along with new and experimental works. Opera Boston’s controversial and surprise closing in 2011 […]

  Rick Chason

Plays are short. Obviously, we’ve all been to plays that feel far too long, but when it comes down to it, a full-length play has only a few hours to express everything that the playwright wants to say. A novelist can ramble for hundreds of pages but a playwright must be brief, confining all the […]

  Rick Chason

How did they do all that? That was the prevailing thought left in my mind at the end of visionary director Jakop Ahlbom’s Lebensraum (Habitat), ArtsEmerson’s latest presentation of a piece of Dutch experimental theater. It’s part mime, part Cirque du Soleil-esque festivity of pictorial theatrical imagination, part alternative rock concert. The production soars with […]

  Rick Chason

Opera and subtlety don’t often go well together. Opera comes from the greatest possible highs and lows of the human experience, from the glorious pain of love, murder, and suicide. So, it is stunning to see a new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto full of subtle nuance in its direction and acting, bringing out its grandiose […]

  Rick Chason

There’ve been a lot of plays about race in Boston over the past couple of years. We had Lydia Diamond’s Stickfly and Kirsten Greenidge’s Luck of the Irish moving to Broadway and off-Broadway, respectively; last spring’s acclaimed production of Clybourne Park and the powerful The Color Purple at Speakeasy; and a host of race-themed plays […]