reviews - POUND - Theatre Artists Studio

Maureen Dias Watson and Steven Mastroieni
photo by Mark Gluckman

 
highlights from local critics reviews - (click link at bottom of each review to read complete review)

Click here for more information on this production that runs through October 10

"In a song from the 1949 musical South Pacific, Oscar Hammerstein II wrote "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" to warn people that a person's prejudices are developed, or taught, by what they hear from others. In the play Pound, which is set in 1958, the controversial expatriate American poet Ezra Pound has been accused of treason for his anti-Semitic and un-American statements that millions heard from the hundreds of Italian radio broadcasts he made in the early to mid-1940s in which he referred to Jews as "filth" and praised Adolf Hitler, Nazism, and Mussolini's fascism. Was Hammerstein's warning correct? Did Pound's words teach people to have hatred of and take action against—or even kill—Jews? That question is at the center of playwright Sean O'Leary's intriguing and captivating drama. Theatre Artists Studio presents the local premiere of this 2018 Off-Broadway play with a superb cast and concise direction that results in a riveting and thought-provoking production...."   -Gil Benbrook, Talkin' Broadway (click here to read the complete review)

"The easy way to sum up Sean O'Leary's fictionalized account of Ezra Pound's final days of incarceration at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital is to proclaim that words matter. Sure they do, but there's something deeper, more troubling, and provocative in the eponymous play (Theatre Artists Studio's compelling Season opener) that challenges one's ethical sensibilities and tolerance...and, I must say, that leaves one wondering if the playwright fell short of fulfilling his own intentions...."  - Herbert Paine, Broadway World (click here to read the complete review)