Cameron Mackintosh’s new £4.5 million production of “The Witches of Eastwick” opens in London to an enthusiastic audience. – BBC
A “razzle-dazzle” production. – Washington Post
Author: Douglas McLennan
THIS TIME NO FIGHTING
Rome’s Coliseum will stage its first performance before a paying audience in 1,500 years. Instead of fighting lions of gladiators, Greek tragedy will be on the bill. “The performances were made possible by building a wooden structure over a section of underground labyrinth that once housed gladiators and wild beasts, capping years of restoration work.” – The Times of India (Reuters)
BUT AT LEAST IT’S OUTDOORS
Ah, it’s the British summer theatre season. “Of course, many of these performances with their accompanying picnic hampers may be jolly social occasions, but have as much to do with theatre as a summer’s evening at Kenwood for the 1812 overture and fireworks has to do with classical music. Essentially these affairs are a substitute for the village fete, or a form of cocktail party where the culture is gulped down as easily as the Chardonnay. They are marked by the exclusivity that so dogs theatre.” – The Guardian
DIFFICULT TO LOVE
The theatre world gathers to memorialize producer David Merrick. “It was Mr. Merrick’s difficult, enigmatic personality that pervaded the memorial yesterday. While several speakers expressed a love of the shows he created, few conveyed a comparable love of the man.” – New York Times
CUSTOMS AGENTS WHO AREN’T ART EXPERTS
The export of art – any art – out of St. Petersburg, Russia has stopped because customs officials at the airport there say the value of artwork leaving is too difficult to determine and therefore too tough to figure the taxes owed. – St. Petersburg Times (Russia)
WRITERS FESTIVAL CANCELED
Next year’s Perth Writers’ Festival has been canceled after the festival’s artistic director quits in a dispute with the organization’s management. – Sydney Morning Herald
IN THIS CORNER, LEONARDO…
Experts believe they have discovered a long-lost Leonardo fresco on a wall in in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Problem is, there may be another wall in front of it with a Vasari fresco on it. Scientists are using thermographics to pinpoint the Leonardo, but if it’s really there and in good shape do you remove the Vasari in front of it? – The Age (Melbourne) (The Telegraph)
PLAYING WITH THE RULES
Britain has rebuilt its embassy in Berlin now that the capital has moved back there. But Hans Stimmann, Berlin’s chief architect laid down very conservative architectural rules (no wonder Norman Foster dropped out of considering the project). The structure that has emerged, however, ” pays formal lip-service to Stimmann’s concerns but then deliberately subverts them by cutting a great hole in the centre of the façade and projecting through it an angular glass box and purple drum.” – The Telegraph (UK)
LIVING A HIGH “C” LIFE
Placido Domingo miscalculated when he took on directing the Washington and Los Angeles opera companies. He thought he’d be about finished singing by now. But at age 60 the voice still works, and the conducting, directing and singing are easily three full time jobs. What next? – The Telegraph (UK)
VALENCIA’S MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INVESTMENT IN CULTURE
The Spanish city of Valencia is building Europe’s most ambitious millennium project. “At an all-in cost of £2 billion the project eclipses the Dome in Greenwich and even the Getty in Los Angeles. The prodigious investment provides Valencia with a spectacular new Science Museum, an IMAX cinema, a music school, a magnificent new 1,800-seat opera house, seven kilometres of promenades and two streamlined road bridges.” – The Times (UK)