Sometimes I write essays and sometimes they get published. Sometimes they don’t and they sit in my hard drive until I share them with you here. Here’s one that seemed like a great premise a year or more ago but seems a tad optimistic today (and the references are getting stale). I still like it…
The Huntington Theatre recruited director Maria Friedman and two of her lead actors from the 2012 West End production of Merrily We Roll Along to stage the Stephen Sondheim musical in Boston, and for good reason. The show, told backwards in time, about three friends who end with acrimony and selling out, but start with…
In an ongoing attempt to remember what we do in our annual-ish trips to Toronto, I write these travelogues. They are peculiar to our taste and meanderings. Be warned! This year, we figured the 150th birthday of Canada would feature lots of fun stuff. (By the way, when I was a kid, we celebrated the…
I thoroughly enjoyed Ann Patchett’s new novel, Commonwealth. In it, she tells the story of an extramarital affair and the blended family of six children that results. The stepsiblings mostly live on opposite coasts except for summer vacations when they become a tribe, wandering around the Virginia countryside. Patchett’s books tend to be about groups…
Like a few million other people, I went to see the new movie Wonder Woman soon after it came out. Like a few hundred other people, I’ve taken a course in the Sumerian language and was surprised when, as a minor plot point, our heroine reads a few lines of that ancient tongue. So I wrote…
I believe Anton Chekhov wrote that if you introduce the idea of a sky diving company in the first Act, someone better be jumping out of a plane before the end of the play. With a title like Ripcord, I don’t think I’m spoiling anything about David Lindsay-Abaire’s latest play, a 90 minute comedy (plus…
Our local NPR station, WBUR, has an “op-ed” type page on their website called “Cognoscenti.” There’s something I wrote about watching the Netflix series “Stranger Things” with my family: Like many people, I indulged in nostalgia this summer watching the Netflix television series “Stranger Things.” But not because of the content of the show. For…
I took the kids (and some of their friends) to see Captain America: Civil War at 10:30am on Saturday morning the day after in opened. In other words, we have bought into the Disney/Marvel Cinematic Universe in a big way. (In contrast, when my son went to see Batman v Superman and asked if I…
My latest missive is a love letter to a Broadway Musical on behalf of me and my kids: The New York Times recently reported that the Rockefeller Foundation would be paying for 20,000 eleventh graders to see the musical “Hamilton,” the Broadway phenomenon that tells the story of the founding father Alexander Hamilton. Perhaps they should consider…
Great guacamole at Tito’s Tacos This summer, my daughter (age 10) and I took a trip to Los Angeles. We were there to visit my sister, and also just to explore the city; my daughter had never been to L.A. and I hadn’t been since she was born (!). We had a great time and…
Jack Cheng, PhD 