March 5, 2024

Coming up on The Culture Show: scaling down Ibsen’s sprawling five act play to a mere 75 minutes. That’s the challenge writer, director and composer Bill Barclay took on when the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned him to downsize Peer Gynt, a giant of a play with incidental music composed by Edvard Grieg . This adaptation premiered at the BSO in 2017, now Barclay is back with an updated version of Peer Gynt. He joins us ahead of its performances at the BSO. After that, to encounter the work of artist LaToya Hobbs is really to enter into it. She is a painter and a printmaker whose themes are expressions of motherhood, home and cultural identity. Her monumental series, “Carving Out Time” Is intimate, deeply personal and utterly relatable. Hobbs joins us to discuss her work and its contemporary resonance. Finally, we continue our Oscars coverage with a look at “Maestro” and the burden that biopics have to get it right.