Culture Watch

A Brooding, Psychotic New Joker Joins the Batman Legend

by Bruce Chadwick

Bruce Chadwick examines the history of the character of the Joker and reviews the latest film. 

A Chilling Play Grapples With How We Are All Connected to Slavery

by Bruce Chadwick

Can you shake off American history?

In The Great Society, We Get a Marvelous, If Painful, Look at LBJ and the War that Won’t Go Away

by Bruce Chadwick

This powerful play is a painful reminder of history lost, of all those brave Americans who fought so gallantly for their country in that war, and came home battered and defeated.

Playwright Stalks Caesar, Cleopatra, Ptolemy, the Roman Navy, Good Weather, Free Beer and Wacky History

by Bruce Chadwick

It is a lot of fun, but nowhere near the true story. Cleo and Caesar did have a son and there were not a lot of storks flying about the Nile in those days.

Hooray for the Return of Downton Abbey!

by Bruce Chadwick

Downton Abbey is back, and back with a roar that will shake everyone from 1927, when it is set, to those who awaken tomorrow morning.

Gloria Steinem, the Women’s Movement and a Big Question

by Bruce Chadwick

Gloria, A Life, the new play by Emily Mann about women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem leaves a big, big question.

The Cultural History of Woodstock and a Message of Hope

by Harlan Lebo

 The Woodstock weekend marked the beginning of a new era in America, a new consciousness about the way the world could be.

Romantic Angst in the 1950s Drought Stricken Midwest of The Rainmaker

by Bruce Chadwick

Would the old magic of the charlatan rainmaker still be there? Would the powerful grip of the old film still drown its audience in emotion?

Art and Defacement: Basquiat at the Guggenheim

by Sam Ben-Meir

The Guggenheim’s glance back to 1983 and the death of Michael Stewart accomplishes what art exhibitions should, but all too rarely do – it grants us perspective on our present moment.

The Cultural History Behind Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

by David L. O'Connor

Like most folktales, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is filled with interesting characters, events, and messages from a bygone era.  

Woodstock, The Moon Landing and Sesame Street, Too: 50 Years of American Cult Art

by Bruce Chadwick

The Norman Rockweel Museum is celebrating the year 1969 not with an exhibit about politics or history, but one about how artists showcased their work in that one, single year.

How an Accidental Invention Changed What Americans Eat for Breakfast

How the invention of cereal impacted American breakfast. 

Leonardo da Vinci: Still a Genius 500 Years Later

by Bruce Chadwick

The Berkshire Museum, in Pittsfield, has a large and impressive exhibition called “Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion,” produced by the Da Vinci Museum, in Florence, Italy.

Can You Ever Tame the Shrew? Is She Really the Shrew?

by Bruce Chadwick

This Taming of the Shrew  is a madcap romp through history, literature and the woods. It is a lot of fun.

Will We all Survive by the Skin of Our Teeth?

by Bruce Chadwick

The Skin of Our Teeth is a colossal success, a perceptive look back to the past and to the future and from post-World War II life to the present day and to our future, too. 

Delightful but Dizzying Romp as the 17th Century Meets the 1950s

by Bruce Chadwick

There is merriment galore in this new production of William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, that just opened at the Shakespeare & Co. theater in Lenox, Massachusetts in the Berkshires.

HBO’s Chernobyl and the Rendering of History

by Walter G. Moss

The value of HBO’s Chernobyl is not just what it tells us about the failings of the Soviet system. It offers much more.

DJ Alan Freed: The Inventor of Rock and Roll

by Bruce Chadwick

Rock and Roll Man is a treasure house of entertainment history and the payola scandal.

Soccer pioneers recall the first Women’s World Cup

Female soccer players have made great strides since the quadrennial tournament was first held in 1991. But the fight for equality continues.

When the Future is the Past: A ‘Star Wars’ Summer at Tanglewood

by Bruce Chadwick

This Sunday afternoon, the star fleet from the evil Empire, the storm troopers of Darth Vader and the nasty masters of the Death Star will once again battle the good guys at, of all places, the renown Tanglewood music center in Lenox, Massachusetts, as part of a three-concert film tribute to music composer John Williams.