Larry Stark
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist and reviewer best known for his in-depth coverage of the Boston theater scene at his website, Theater Mirror. In newspapers and online, Stark has written hundreds of reviews of local productions and Broadway tryouts from 1962 to the present. His Boston readers have given him such labels as "head theater angel of Massachusetts" and "Dean of the alternative theater critics."
Between 1950 and 1956, Stark studied English at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
, leaving New Jersey for Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
in January, 1957. In 1956-57 he co-edited the publication Stellar with Ted White
Ted White (author)
Ted White is a Hugo Award-winning American writer, known as a science fiction author and editor and fan, as well as a music critic...
, who recalled:
- I lavished more care on the package than I did on the contents. The contents were good. Larry Stark was a good editor -- much better than I, then -- and when he dropped out I'd learned enough from him to keep up the standards, but the material was mostly by other people.
In the summer and fall of 1957, Stark acted in two Harvard stage productions and then worked backstage at Cambridge theaters for the next five years. In 1962, he began doing theater reviews for MIT's The Tech
under the pseudonym Charles Foster Ford. During this period he used a basement mimeograph machine to print the work of local poets with his Larry Stark Press, notable for publishing Peter Guralnick
Peter Guralnick
Peter Guralnick is an American music critic, writer on music, and historian of US American popular music, who is also active as an author and screenwriter. He has been married for over 45 years to Alexandra...
's first book in 1964.
Theater reviews
Stark was the first to write theater reviews for the alternative weekly, Boston After DarkThe Phoenix (newspaper)
The Phoenix is the name of several alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts including the Boston Phoenix, the Providence Phoenix, the Portland Phoenix and the now-defunct Worcester Phoenix...
, providing a continual coverage of Boston and Broadway-bound productions during the years 1966 to 1972. After circulating his own short-lived review publication, Theatre Journal, he contributed to Time Out, a free college paper published by The Cambridge Phoenix
The Phoenix (newspaper)
The Phoenix is the name of several alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts including the Boston Phoenix, the Providence Phoenix, the Portland Phoenix and the now-defunct Worcester Phoenix...
. During the 1980s, he wrote for Wisconsin's La Crosse Tribune
La Crosse Tribune
The La Crosse Tribune is a newspaper published in La Crosse, Wisconsin, covering the tri-state area of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota in the USA.-History:...
.
Returning to the Boston area, he acquired a computer which he used to create fiction and also to write theater reviews posted on General Electric's online service, GEnie
GEnie
GEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...
. In October 1994, he launched Theater Mirror, an informative online guide to New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
theatres and stage productions. With insightful reviews and entertaining commentary by Stark, plus a continual flow of reviews submitted by several other contributors, Theater Mirror became a focal point for Boston actors, directors and theatergoers over the years. The Plays Up and Running section of Theater Mirror offers an alphabetical listing of current productions throughout New England with links to theatres from Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
to Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
. The Theater Mirror Archive has reviews by Stark and others dating back to 1995.
Stark's approach is much like that of film critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, simply to describe "what it's about," and he often attempts to capture the essence of a play stylistically, as in this 2001 review of Conor McPherson's The Weir:
- Now it's no secret the Irish is great ones for the tellin of stories, especially in them small rural bars in the Northwest country where Conor McPherson sets his hour and a half slice o'life "The Weir". Surely there's not much else to do but to drink and to gossip with a few mates of an afternoon. And once a "small one" or two's been chased down with a bottle of stout, them tales of somethin strange and maybe supernatural just come tumblin out. Better that than a lonely walk home with the wind in yer face, isn't it, now?
- The tales start with what was once heard of a Faerie Road and a knockin in the night, and spirals slowly in toward the personal -- of a figure seen waitin on a stair, of a dead man pointin out his own gravesite, of a phone-call from a dead child. And sure, all these tales come hedged about with doubts and with maybe; they could all be explained away. But it's true too that Rick Lombardo at that New Rep out Newton way has assembled a bunch of blarney-tongued boyo's will fair make a whole hundred hearers quit breathin just to catch the next word.
- And with names like Richard McIlvain an' Colin Hammell and Billy Meleady and Barry M. Press you can be sure the brogue is as thick as a workboot's sole, but as the night moves on and old grudges move on to newer confessions, these tavern orators tear into McPherson's script like sculptors carving time. For it's not each word but each meaning they make clear. And as three of them are unmarried, sure it's Dee Nelson as a woman up from Dublin, out of the tourist season, is their chosen audience for the night -- and she with a story of her own, if she finds friends enough to tell it to.
- And sure, it's a broke-down bar Richard Chambers has built out there, with the Guinness pump not workin and Daniel Meeker's lights makin a peat-fire glow so that Eileen Bouvier dresses them all in workaday woollens to keep the chill out and the whiskey-warmth in. But it's more than a few blazin peat bricks and a coupla small ones makes that inner glow on the New rep stage, I'm tellin ya.
- Y'aughta feel it for yerselves.
On August 10, 2006, Stark was honored by the Boston theater community at a special tribute and celebration of his 74th birthday.
Documentary film
Actress-filmmaker Bernice Liuson Sim of RedDragonfly Films has worked on a documentary about Stark titled Stark Review: The Heart of Boston Theater. On September 17, 2006, pilot footage for Stark Review was screened for an audience of 600 in Arlington, MassachusettsArlington, Massachusetts
Arlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, six miles northwest of Boston. The population was 42,844 at the 2010 census.-History:...
, and 12 days later, Sim, Stark and co-producer Kevin Anderton discussed the Stark Review project with film critic Daniel Berman on Brookline Access Television.
Watch
Listen to
Read
- Larry Stark (writing as Charles Foster Ford) review: Congreve's Love for Love (Loeb Drama Center) in The Tech (December 12, 1962)
- Larry Stark (as Charles Foster Ford) review: "Hollow Crown Is An Empty Evening" in The Tech (January 16, 1963)
- Larry Stark (as Ford) review: Two one-acts at the Image Theatre (Charles Street) in The Tech (February 19, 1963)
- Fiction by Larry Stark (full text of 23 stories and a novella)