MORE RECENT ARTS HEADLINES
Kennedy Center Honors back once more, Biden attends
Honorees include Motown Records creator Berry Gordy, “Saturday Night Live” mastermind Lorne Michaels, actress-singer Bette Midler, opera singer Justino Diaz and folk music legend Joni Mitchell.
MUSIC REVIEW
Julian Lage Trio stretches out at Berklee Performance Center
The trio played an expansive set that emphasized songs from their most recent album, "Squint," but fleshed out into something grander and more in-the-moment than those recordings.
Matthew Aucoin’s adventures in opera
His opera "Eurydice" just made its New York debut at the Met and his first book comes out this week. At 31, Medfield native Matthew Aucoin has emerged as one of the country’s most sought-after composers.
TELEVISION
GBH puts ‘Talking Politics’ in old ‘Beat the Press’ time slot
Hosted by Adam Reilly, the new show will be panel-based, with GBH News’ City Hall reporter Saraya Wintersmith, State House bureau reporter Mike Deehan, and politics editor Peter Kadzis on board as “key contributors,” according to GBH.
MUSIC REVIEW
An especially robust season’s greetings from the Holiday Pops
Thursday's concert marked the first time that the Boston Pops had performed live in front of an audience in its Symphony Hall home in two years.
ART
In new exhibit at Beacon Gallery, Caron Tabb explores privilege — and the past — with mixed results
Tabb’s thorny exhibition “Humanity Is Not a Spectator Sport” at the South End's Beacon Gallery grapples with whiteness.
MATTHEW GILBERT
The 10 best TV shows of 2021 (and 10 more that almost cracked the list)
Rich people behaving badly. An all-female Muslim punk band. A stand-up comic who’s lost her zing. This was the stuff of some of the season’s very best series.
THEATER
Idina Menzel stars in ‘WILD’ at the ART in Cambridge — a show that imagines the world in better hands
The world premiere musical starring Idina Menzel begins performances Sunday at the Loeb Drama Center. Menzel will star in the show through Dec. 23, with a yet-to-be-named actress taking over for the rest of the run.
Art school confidential
Three students at Massachusetts College of Art and Design are thrilled to be back in their studio spaces on a (mostly) normal basis.
MUSIC REVIEW
Conrad Tao makes magnetic Celebrity Series solo debut
The former child prodigy improvised and inspired in a live Cambridge performance.
TELEVISION
‘Schmigadoon!’ sends up old musicals while sending relevant messages
The six-episode musical comedy on Apple TV+ stars Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key.
THE TICKET
Things to do around Boston this weekend and beyond
Music, theater, comedy, museum, and family events, and more, selected by Globe critics and writers.
ART REVIEW
Artemisia Gentileschi takes justice into her own hands
At Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, "By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800" puts female empowerment — and revenge — on display.
Attention must be paid, but maybe a different kind, as ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ turns 75
The greatness of Frank Capra’s holiday classic owes far more to its darkness than its light.
BOOK REVIEW
The mystery of Garbo
Glamorously elusive onscreen and famously reclusive off it, Greta Garbo was the rare silent-movie idol who finessed the transition to talkies. In “Garbo,” his lively new appraisal of her life and films, Robert Gottlieb explores how “more than any other star she invaded the subconscious of the audience.”
TELEVISION REVIEW
In HBO’s ‘Landscapers,’ two great performances emerge from a thicket of stylized storytelling
Olivia Colman and David Thewlis are brilliant in this miniseries based on a bizarre, real-life murder case, but a series of narrative tricks embedded in the show are unnecessary and distracting.