THE NIGHT SKY, by Frederick Morgan, photographs by Gaylen Morgan, introduction by Emily Grosholz, Story Line Press, Ashland, Ore, 58 pages, $60. The New York-based poet Frederick Morgan, who turned 80 last year, has been coming to Blue Hill with his family since the late… Read More
    EULA MAE’S CAJUN KITCHEN: COOKING THROUGH THE SEASONS ON AVERY ISLAND, Eula Mae Dore with Marcelle R. Bienvenu, 2002, 254 pages, The Harvard Common Press, Boston, $22.95. Those of you who recently made rash promises to shed a few pounds and get in shape can… Read More
    Put a group of inner city boys together in a room. Let them use their voices. Give them a backbeat. Tell them to dance. And watch them be angels. Angels? googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var… Read More
    Every January, ABC faces the same challenge: what to schedule on Mondays after its cornerstone, “Monday Night Football,” concludes its season, especially when most of the series on opposing networks have had four or more months to establish themselves. This year, the network smartly abandoned… Read More
    ORONO – Flutist Kieran Brooks Hutchinson won the 21st Bangor Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition for high school students Saturday, but the rehearsing is far from over. As winner of the Annas-Cupp Award, the Waterville High School senior will no doubt take every opportunity to keep… Read More
    If you ask Dame Edna, the Aussie megastar of Broadway and queen of TV cameos, how she got to be so famous, she will tell you that it’s all a great big accident. Fame fell to her, and she grabbed hold of it with mauve-tinted muscle. A few… Read More
    “THE SUPERNATURAL SIDE OF MAINE” by C.J. Stevens, John Wade, Publisher, Phillips, Maine, 2002, 276 pages, paperback, $12. “I see stuff all the time but I never tell anyone,” the old Swanville man explained after hearing about a triangular-shaped object with white lights hovering over… Read More
    There is something deliciously compelling about Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat minor. It is, at once, bombastic and delicate, harrowing and cajoling, confusing and lucid. There is also something wickedly inviting about soloist Masanobu Ikemiya, a classically trained, internationally known pianist with an unquenchable passion… Read More
    FINDING THEIR OWN VOICES: MAINE WOMEN AT THE MILLENNIUM: THEIR STORIES, text and photographs by James Andrew Mitchell, Down East Books, Camden, 2002, 144 pages, paperback, $14.95. Camden writer and photographer James Andrew Mitchell set out three years ago to compile the life stories of… Read More
    Midseason is a time of diminished expectations on television (that’s why cable premieres many of its original series around this time). Even dubbing these shows “replacements” implies they’re something less than the new shows that debut in the fall. That’s why two series premiering tonight… Read More
    You know the story about Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, the mismatched roommates who share an apartment in New York after their wives kick them out. One is neat. One is messy. They squabble and pout. And, eventually, it’s just like being married all over again. Read More
    GREEN GIRLS, by Michael Kimball, William Morrow, New York, N.Y., 2002, hardcover, $24.95. If you read enough contemporary American fiction, you can tell from the first 10 or 20 pages if the author is going to take you places, get you involved, even frighten you. Read More
    THE DIARIES OF SARAH JANE AND EMMA ANN FOSTER: A Year in Maine During the Civil War, edited by Wayne E. Reilly, Picton Press, Rockport, 2002, 256 pages, $24.50. The year was 1864, and two of the children of Moses and Eliza Foster of Gray… Read More
    SIRIUS THE DOG STAR, by Angeli Perrow, pictures by Emily Harris, Down East Books, Camden, 2002, $15.95. “Four below zero, and it was a thick vapor, and blowing a gale of wind from the northwest … we were all awakened by the barking of a… Read More
    BAR HARBOR – An insightful new documentary airing Thursday night introduces viewers to the man behind an institution that many people from away find synonymous with the state of Maine. Surely, some have wondered who J.C. Penney and Sears and especially Roebuck were. The premiere… Read More
    The original Broadway musical “Swing!” – performed Tuesday at the Maine Center for the Arts – gives new meaning to the lyric: “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Frankly, the show also gives new meaning to the term “musical” because, in fact, it… Read More
    In the south, the porch is a place where music happens – under a sultry sky, within earshot of the crickets and lit by the moon. That was the projected mood Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono when “Front Porch Blues,” a packaged tour… Read More
    PORTLAND – If you didn’t already know, John Mayer is the next big thing. The 25-year-old singer-songwriter, who gained heavy airplay earlier this year with his single “No Such Thing,” played to a packed house Friday night at the Cumberland County Civic Center, the only… Read More
    ORONO – A regular feature throughout the Maine Center for the Arts’ history has been the amazing feats brought to this country by touring companies of Chinese acrobats. The Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats, who performed Saturday night, provided more of these anticipated pageantry and thrills. While… Read More
    Janis Ian stole her headliner’s musical thunder. Despite Patty Larkin’s considerable prowess as a singer-songwriter, she failed to match Ian’s charismatic energy Friday night at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. Adding to Larkin’s lusterless performance style was a sound system that distorted… Read More
    BANGOR – Everyone should go to at least one wrestling match in his or her lifetime. Seriously. Joke, smirk, tease or taunt this writer if you like, but try it. Why? Because there are few events which offer such pure and earnest entertainment – and where else can… Read More
    In these oh-so-lean days at the University of Maine department of theater, it takes a war-horse like Sandra Hardy to charge ahead and come up with enough tenacious energy to stage a blockbuster musical. With “The Rocky Horror Show,” which plays through next weekend at Hauck Auditorium, Hardy… Read More
    FIRE: POEMS by Wesley McNair, David R. Godine publisher, Boston, 2002, 96 pages, paperback, $16.95; and MAPPING THE HEART: REFLECTIONS ON PLACE AND POETRY, by Wesley McNair, Carnegie Mellon University Press, Pittsburg, 2003, 198 pages, paperback. In an age when poetry baffles most common readers,… Read More
    ORONO – After hearing Dvorak’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B Minor performed Sunday by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and soloist Amos Yang, it’s impossible to know which element to savor the most: the cello, the orchestra or the music. Perhaps the best and… Read More
    If you think of Marvin Hamlisch as a composer only, then you don’t know Hamlisch. He not only is one of America’s leading film score, pop tune and musical composers, all of which is very impressive on its own – go ahead and count the Grammy, Emmy, Oscar,… Read More
    Whether it’s his last evening in Portland remains to be seen, but judging from the reaction of the near-sellout crowd assembled at the palatial Merrill Auditorium, it was anything but worthless. Despite ticket prices ranging from $76 to $91, most of the 1,800 fans in… Read More
    Among the many emotional scenes in the music-world drama “Side Man,” presented through Oct. 27 by the Belfast Maskers, is of three musicians hovering around a cassette player listening to a killer trumpet solo. Their eyes squint, their heads nod, they soulfully snap their fingers. Read More
    Ten Buck Theatre is giving audiences a lesson in the history of drama in its latest offering at the Brewer Middle School. The nearly 2-year-old company, founded by some of Greater Bangor’s best actors, is presenting a tandem of one-acts written by the first and last playwrights of… Read More
    ORONO – Four elements – the national anthem, a song of mourning, a nationalist statement and a meditation on faith – made up the canny program for Bangor Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert of the season Sunday. It may have struck some in the audience at… Read More
    A year after the ratings success of “Smallville,” which tells the story of Clark Kent before he becomes Superman, the same production team is launching a new, youth-oriented drama based on another comic-book legend, Batman. Actually, “Birds of Prey,” debuting at 9 tonight on The… Read More
    When Lily Tomlin comes onstage, you can never be sure who’s going to show up. It could be Edith Ann, the uninhibited girl with indelible insight into adults. It could be Sister Boogie Woman, a Gospel Groove evangelist who complained about having no shoes until she met a… Read More
    No one loved a musical more than Jonathan Larson. He grew up in White Plains, N.Y., and went to the theater regularly with his family. Still, he had a yearning to change musical theater to reflect the sounds of a generation approaching the millennium. While working as a… Read More
    PORTLAND – Thank the rock gods that moshing is now so passe. Call me perverse, call me a prude, but I’ve always preferred the disaffected mod shuffle, the pogo, and the rock-affirming head nod to the knucklehead flail. Nevertheless, there will always be kids who want a rock… Read More
    Scrap Arts Music, which performed Thursday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, is a zippy percussion quartet that reconfigures industrial material to make wacky musical instruments. In the beat-seeking hands of these trained drummers, sewer pipes, giant steel springs, PVC piping and recycled boat aluminum… Read More
    BLOODY JACK, By L.A. Meyer, Harcourt Children’s Books, New York, 2002, hardcover, $17. Take one measure of “Treasure Island,” another of “Robinson Crusoe,” add a bit of Oliver Twist, sprinkle with Horatio Hornblower and season with a generous dollop of Sex Ed 101 and you… Read More
    If you had to judge by Wynton Marsalis’ stage manner, you would never know he is considered one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time. At the gala season opener at the Maine Center for the Arts on Saturday, Marsalis came onstage demurely with the 15-piece Lincoln… Read More
    Another variety of specialty investigation is detailed in tonight’s new CBS series “Without a Trace,” debuting at 10. The series takes viewers inside the world of the FBI’s Missing Persons Squad. That group uses psychological profiling to determine the victim’s whereabouts. Their goal is to… Read More
    Tonight’s only new program is a timely look at the health-care system in the United States. On “MDs,” premiering at 10, compassionate hospital workers seek to find ways around the profit-conscious health-care industry in order to better take care of their patients. While other recent… Read More
    PORTLAND – A Neil Diamond show is like a trip to Vegas. It’s glittery. It’s cheesy. But if someone offered you two tickets right now, you’d probably go. Why? Because even though you hate to admit it, you know it will be fun. googletag.cmd.push(function ()… Read More
    The award for most bizarre new show goes to “Push, Nevada,” premiering at 9 tonight on ABC. “Push,” produced by Ben Affleck and his partner, Sean Bailey, wants to be both a mystery and a game show. (That sounds like an old “Saturday Night Live”… Read More
    THE DELIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: The Triumph of American Politics, by Christian P. Potholm, Cooper Square Press, New York, hardcover, 200 pages, $27.95. Christian P. Potholm, a Bowdoin College professor and the state’s top political pundit, has collected his columns for the Lewiston Sun Journal in… Read More
    Max, a vaudevillian comic, thinks he’s a funny guy. But his routine is falling short of keeping the audience in stitches. When he sees Maxie, a dancer, he sees the chance to not only develop a new show but to fall in love. Max and Maxie do the… Read More
    MAINELY POWER, by m. Langdon Cost, 1st Books Library, Bloomington, Ind., 190 pages, paperback, $11.95. Goff Langdon is a private detective who works out of the back room of his more profitable business, the Coffee Dog Bookstore. He drinks too much, gambles too often, pines… Read More
    THE PESTO MANIFESTO – RECIPES FOR BASIL AND BEYOND, by Lorel Nazzaro, Chelsea Green Publishing Co., New York, 2002, paperback, 200 pages, $14.95. Basil has an ability to attract. Only the other day, as I was buying a couple of verdant bunches of the stuff,… Read More
    LOBSTERS GREAT AND SMALL: How Scientists and Fishermen Are Changing Our Understanding of a Maine Icon, by Philip Conkling and Anne Hayden, Island Institute/Down East Books, 2002, softcover, $24.95. This is not hammock reading. It’s close to the sort of detailed and technical writing demanded… Read More
    In Paul Zindel’s 1971 family drama, “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little,” Anna Reardon, who teaches science, is off her rocker. She may also have molested one of her male students. Her sister Ceil is superintendent of schools and has strong recommendations – and official paperwork – for… Read More
    MONMOUTH – The Shakespearean Theater of Maine started down a treacherous road last season when it condensed “Henry IV” Parts I and II into one mangled production. A midcourse correction was desperately needed before the Theater at Monmouth launched “Henry V.” Alas, director Bill Van… Read More
    The worst you can say about the Opera House Arts production of “Twelfth Night,” which is playing through next weekend at the Stonington Opera House, is that it is occasionally annoyingly cartoonish and unpleasantly loud. The best is that the show has a vision that is fresh, fun… Read More
    In a summer of explosive blockbuster sequels, there’s a kinder, gentler alternative for families. E.B. White’s famous mouse returns in “Stuart Little 2,” a worthy successor to the original 1999 holiday hit. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes =… Read More
    Watching “Talley’s Folly” at the Theater at Monmouth is like eavesdropping on a seduction. Granted, the audience is invited to watch, but the actors in this two-character play create such an intimate atmosphere that seeing the production is tantamount to invading their privacy. Lanford Wilson… Read More
    “Rediscovering S.P. Rolt Triscott: Monhegan Island Artist and Photographer.” By Richard H. Malone and Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. Tilbury House, Gardiner, Me. 228 pages. By the time the English artist S.P. Rolt Triscott moved to Monhegan Island in 1902, he had lived in America for… Read More
    THE BEST AMERICAN RECIPES 2001-2002, series editor Fran McCullough, Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2001, 360 pages, hardcover, $26. The genuinely astute and dedicated need never buy a cookbook. Recipes are somewhat ubiquitous; promiscuous even, appearing everywhere you turn: Cookbooks, sure, but also in magazines, newspapers,… Read More
    Superheroing has a new face. Actually, it has three new faces, very young faces with great big eyes. And, as on display in “The Powerpuff Girls Movie,” these faces are adorable. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = [];… Read More
    L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” has delighted young female readers since her series about the life of an orphan girl on Prince Edward Island first appeared in 1908. Penobscot Theatre Company turned to the P.E.I. native’s work for its summer children’s show. The production,… Read More
    Already on its Sunday night lineup of original series, Lifetime features a medical drama (“Strong Medicine”) and a police drama (“The Division”). So “For the People,” debuting at 10 p.m. Sunday, was the logical next step – a courtroom drama. The new series, starring Lea… Read More
    With Ken Stack’s production of “Pygmalion,” Acadia Repertory Theatre steps gingerly into classic territory. It’s not just that the story of the pedagogue Henry Higgins and the flower girl Eliza Doolittle is loosely based on Greek legend, or that it is, perhaps, George Bernard Shaw’s most famous stage… Read More
    HERE FOR GENERATIONS: THE STORY OF A MAINE BANK AND ITS CITY, by Dean Lawrence Lunt, Islandport Press, Frenchboro, 334 pages, hardcover, $24.95. Dr. Edmond Abbot. Caleb C. Cushing. Winthrop E. Hilton. Rebecca Graves. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var… Read More
    Bangor got a taste of the eclectic musical mix the National Folk Festival’s expected to bring to town next month as the South American band Inca Son warmed up a riverfront audience Thursday night for folk icon Arlo Guthrie. More than 2,500 people filled the… Read More
    Quirkiness has always been an element of TV detectives. “Monk,” debuting with a two-hour movie at 9 tonight on USA, takes this to another level. Adrian Monk is TV’s first obsessive-compulsive detective. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes =… Read More
    With its recent release of “Lilo & Stitch,” the original home of movie animation, Disney, has made its presence felt on the summer movie scene. The most accomplished animated feature of the season thus far, “Lilo & Stitch” successfully examines the age-old question of “nature… Read More
    AVIATION LEGENDS PAPER AIRPLANE BOOK, by Ken Blackburn & Jeff Lammers, Workman Publishing, New York, paperback, $15.95. It’s a book! It’s a plane! It’s an interactive history of flight! googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner… Read More