This week Jared Bowen takes us to the world premiere of “The Purists,” reviews the new film “The Goldfinch” and recaps his weekend with the Mayflower II, which launched at Mystic Seaport.
“The Purists,” presented by the Huntington Theatre Company through October 6
Tony and Grammy Award-winner Billy Porter returns to the Huntington Theatre Company to direct the world premiere of “The Purists.” This new play written by Dan McCabe centers on the lives of a rapper, a DJ and a theater buff who all hang out on the same stoop in Queens, New York. Coming from entirely different walks of life, the unlikely trio exchange ideas about music and life in this humorous play about coming together, coming apart and choosing to understand one another. “We're all different, and there's nothing wrong with being different,” says Porter when describing the show. “We're all sort of born into this world and into this space, and we deserve to walk through this life like we deserve to be here.”
“For its rhythm, tightness and crackling comedy this is a must-see show,” says Jared. “But also for it’s purity of humanness, of who we are at the end of the day and even more revealing who we are in the dark, late-night hours.”
“The Goldfinch,” in theaters September 13
Donna Tartt’s best-selling novel gets the Hollywood treatment in “The Goldfinch.” Directed by John Crowley, the film follows the life of Theo, who loses his mother at a young age in an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He holds on to one keepsake from that tragedy: The Goldfinch. One of the few surviving paintings by Carel Fabritius which he picked up in the aftermath of the explosion. As Theo grows older, he continues to reconcile the grief and guilt he feels he bears for his mother’s death.
Jared describes the movie as “an engrossing story that both for better and for worse, feels like we’re sifting through passages of a great novel.”
The Mayflower II was launched by Plimoth Plantation on September 7, 2019 at Mystic Seaport Museum
Plimoth Plantation’s historic tall ship Mayflower II recently launched at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Designed by William Avery Baker, Mayflower II is a full-scale recreation of the original Mayflower that the Pilgrims sailed on to come to the new world in 1620. After a christening involving water from all 50 states as well as Plymouth, England and the Netherlands, the ship was lowered into the Mystic River to float for the first time in almost three years. The refurbished Mayflower II will sail back to Massachusetts in the Spring of 2020 commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims landing on Cape Cod.
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