PROVIDENCE

Reel-to-reel: A long-lost Malcolm X speech recovered
History Dept. - BY MALCOLM BURNLEY

RISD’s hockey team turns the dick joke into high art — OK, low art

Go Nads!
The third period has just begun and the Nads, the Rhode Island School of Design's club hockey team, is losing 2-0 to a squad from Emerson College.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 15, 2012

Trinity’s delicately balanced Merchant of Venice

The light and the dark
The Merchant of Venice gives modern audiences a lot to think and talk about — including, we can forget, a surprising amount of comedy. But the main concern is it being such a head-shaking case study of the era's anti-Semitism.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 15, 2012

A supersized Mary Poppins at PPAC

The bitter and the sweet
There's no secret why the hit musical Mary Poppins has filled more than 9 million seats around the world over the last seven years.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 15, 2012

On Valentine's Day, a toast to a man wronged

Justice Dept.
They raised a toast this Valentine's Day at McBride's Pub in Providence to John Gordon, much-remembered these past 167 years.

By: BRIAN C. JONES | February 15, 2012

Andre returns to College Hill

Propaganda Dept.
If you found yourself on Benefit Street this past Monday, you could have been forgiven for wondering if Providence's own rascal king had made a stunning return to politics: there, behind the First Baptist Church, was a large "Re-Elect Cianci" billboard.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 15, 2012

Breaking down the cost of Brown; birth control mirth; business as usual

Hill hiking
Mayor Angel Taveras and Brown University are locked in a nasty fight over upping the school's payments to the city. And the university's governing board has announced it will hike tuition and fees by 3.5 percent next year.

By: PHILLIPE AND JORGE | February 15, 2012

Making the ‘Buffett Rule’ LAW

Tax Dept.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has received plenty of ink for his "Buffett Rule" legislation, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 15, 2012

The Phoenix cleans up

Huzzahs
We're just back from the New England Newspaper & Press Association's annual awards gala at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers — $8 beers! — and we've got a nice little stash to report.

By: PHOENIX STAFF | February 15, 2012

Review: Cresta Bar & Ristorante

Diamond in the rough
Cresta Bar & Ristorante, the new restaurant in Pawtucket, is really classing up the place.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 15, 2012

The ‘2012 RISCA Fellowship Exhibition’

Bright spots
Last weekend The New York Times proclaimed Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning , the debut video game of former Red Sox pitcher and outspoken Republican millionaire Curt Schilling's 38 Studios, "one of the finest action role-playing games yet made."

By: GREG COOK | February 15, 2012