Arts

Five Women use the power of booze for good

In Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
At this upper-crust Tennessee wedding, we never see the bride, but her quintet of reluctant bridesmaids gets down to some deep and dirty truths in the sassy, irreverent Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, an early comedy by Alan Ball.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 19, 2008

Sara Crall climbs a staircase to the heart

Sara Crall's expert hand is on show at Franklin Street Art Space
Viewing Sara Crall's new show, "observations of," at Franklin Street Art Space in Biddeford is like listening to a musician interpret her own song.

By: IAN PAIGE | November 19, 2008

Excerpt: Carolyn Chute's latest novel

One week only: an exclusive excerpt from the acclaimed author's new novel
In the cold parlor of the St. Onge farmhouse, deep in the old collapsing couch, sort of wrapped in the couch, in its waves of whimpering springs and hills of upholstery of frazzled blue nap, are 15-year-old Brianna and Gordon.

By: CAROLYN CHUTE | November 14, 2008

Review: A Lie of the Mind

Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind
A disturbing restlessness lies at the heart of Sam Shepard's rugged, dysfunctional American West. Men run off and then return, rebel and then cleave.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 12, 2008

Interview: Artist Chad Verrill

An interview with Chad Verrill of CVIC works
Chad Verrill, 34, makes drawings and prints at his home in Portland, where he's lived since he arrived in 1992 for a short-lived stint at the Portland School of Art.

By: IAN PAIGE | November 12, 2008

Works from Karsh, Christenberry, and at the PRC

Photos from Yousuf Karsh, William Christenberry, and the PRC
In "Karsh 100: A Biography in Images," which is now up at the Museum of Fine Arts, his iconic shots of Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Ernest Hemingway are defining portraits of the men in all their crusty manliness.

By: GREG COOK | November 14, 2008

The 2666 giant has arrived

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 may be the Great American Novel
Jorge Luis Borges wrote of the desert as a labyrinth without walls or center, unending and inescapable. That's a fair description of Roberto Bolaño's last work, the 912-page opus 2666 .

By: PETER KEOUGH | November 11, 2008

Pathos prevails in The Lonesome West

AIRE’s Lonesome West hits home
Under Tony Reilly’s direction, the American Irish Repertory Ensemble makes rich, wicked, and poignant work of the brothers’ murderous one-upmanship.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 05, 2008

Must see Stones

Good Theater’s duo throw a few Stones
The excellent Brian Chamberlain and Christopher Reiling slip in and out of leads and extras alike in the Good Theater’s superb, must-see Stones in his Pockets .

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 05, 2008

The bare bones of Widow Clicquot

A Mainer's new book explores the queen of champagne
Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin (say that a few times fast) is a woman after my own heart.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | November 05, 2008

Crucial moments of history in Forever War

A decade in the war on terror
Through journalistic instincts, hunches, and sheer luck, Dexter Filkins has, for the past ten years, managed to frequently be in the wrong place at the right time.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | November 05, 2008

Elements + islands

Dennis Pinette's identity is on display at CMCA
Dennis Pinette, who was born in the Penobscot Bay town of Belfast and lives there still, makes completely contemporary paintings whose roots extend back through those epic early days of American painting.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | November 05, 2008

Photos: Warhol Pop Politics

Andy Warhol: Pop Politics, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, September 27 – January 4

By: | November 05, 2008

Sharp, sassy Soccer Moms

The Public Theatre explores motherhood
Secrets of a Soccer Mom is a sassy feel-good comedy by Kathleen Clark, sharply directed by Christopher Schario for the Public Theatre.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 29, 2008

Visible Silence gives limited voice

A new film examines Marsden Hartley’s life
Everyone has their own Marsden Hartley. That happens with great painters, and Hartley was one of the greatest of 20th-century American artists.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | October 29, 2008

Table of content

Jim Harrison’s road trip
Jim Harrison’s fiction and essays are built from his particular blend of earthiness and erudition.

By: BILL BEUTTLER | October 28, 2008

Three Viewings engulfs audience

Harbor Light’s dark and funny Three Viewings
Harbor Light Stage, the adventurous new Kittery-based theater company, loves to play with its locations.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 22, 2008

No man is an island

“The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.” _Allan Kaprow
When Allan Kaprow presented his first performance at New York’s Reuben Gallery in 1959, the conception for the first Happening was tightly scripted.

By: IAN PAIGE | October 22, 2008

Excerpts from Hippos

An excerpt from And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
I got home about 3:45 after eating breakfast at Riker’s on the corner of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue

By: JACK KEROUAC AND WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS | October 22, 2008

A historical beat in Hippos

At last, Kerouac and Burroughs's co-authored noir novel, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, resurfaces.
On a Sunday afternoon in December of 1997 I hooked up with the poet Jim McCrary at a Greenwich Village saloon.

By: GEORGE KIMBALL | October 24, 2008