London’s West End is in trouble, and the debate is on concerning the best direction to take London’s theater district. Should the West End be imitating Broadway, where producers “take risks and maintain a buzz”? And should such buzz be more important than maintaining some gauzy image of theatrical integrity, especially if going Broadway puts rears in the seats? “What London needs is a stonking great hit.”
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Axelrod Strads Can’t Travel To Canada
“The efforts of Stratford Summer Music to bring the Axelrod Stradivarius String Quartet to Canada for a series of concerts have fallen through — and have left the Stratford concert presenter and Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution pointing fingers at each other.” The quartet plays on instruments worth $50 million, and the Smithsonian has clamped down on how often it allows them to travel in recent years. What actually caused the breakdown in this case is still murky, but the connection of the instruments to now-incarcerated philanthropist Herbert Axelrod is high on the list of speculative hang-ups.
Bickering Radicals Choose A Leader
“For most of its 33 years, Pilobolus Dance Theater has styled itself as a radical democracy, with four artistic directors making decisions in concert. But like so many utopian societies, this experimental collective based here in the bucolic hills of Litchfield County has struggled to live up to its ideals. Friction between the directors — Robby Barnett, Alison Chase, Michael Tracy and Jonathan Wolken — has pushed the troupe to the verge of disbanding in recent years… Enter Itamar Kubovy, an energetic theater director with a knack for tempering backstage rivalries.”
Shakespeare In The Park Arrives At A Crossroads
Poor reviews, philosophical disagreements, and controversies over preferred seating have plagued the New York Public Theater’s famous Shakespeare In The Park series in recent years, and the troupe may be rethinking its strategy. Free performances may soon be a thing of the past, for one thing. Still, Public Theater is debt-free for the first time in years, and the company appears to have plenty of options.
All Those Museums In Search Of An Identity
“Just as New York is shaking off its sorrows and crawling out of debt, making new claims on the world stage with a bid for the Olympics, our museums seem to be going through weird convulsions, falling apart, abandoning their collections, being hijacked by trustees or suffering delusions of grandeur. This is their most precarious moment in many years.” From the “perennially insecure” Whitney to the dumbed-down Brooklyn Museum to the cash-strapped Guggenheim, it seems that none of the city’s venerable art institutions are safe from the new malaise.
Juilliard’s New Fundraising Strategy
This week, the Juilliard School, possibly the world’s most famous training ground for classical musicians, will put on a benefit concert featuring… um, Elton John? “The benefit is only one of the renowned music school’s latest fund-raising strategies, part of an effort to find new donors to support a major capital and endowment campaign estimated at around $290 million. The funds will be used to expand the campus and increase the scholarship money available for students.”
A Good Year In Philly, Mostly
It was a good season for classical music in Philadelphia, but there are more than a few storm clouds on the horizon. The city’s music critics go over the good (“Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia music director Ignat Solzhenitsyn went several extra miles with Shostakovich’s darker-than-dark Symphony No. 14”), the bad (“the elimination of the city’s arts and culture office by Mayor [John] Street”), and the profoundly worrisome (“Now that most listeners have tired of talking about the acoustics of the Kimmel… let’s not forget that the city spent $265 million to build a great orchestra hall and didn’t get one.”)
Gehry’s New Chicago Landmark
“It’s hard to say which part of Frank Gehry’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion, opening Friday as the $50 million centerpiece of Chicago’s new Millennium Park, is the most striking. Is it the bandshell itself, with its 50-foot steel-and-glass doors that roll in and out from the sides? Is it the almost baroque proscenium… that frames the stage with a 120-foot-tall fantasia of billowing shapes clad in brushed stainless steel? Or is it the metal trellis that crisscrosses like a vast spider-web above the heads of the potentially 11,000-member audience? Whatever the answer, it’s clear that many people are happy with the combined result.”
Dyke’s Golden Parachute
When BBC director general Greg Dyke was forced out following the Hutton Inquiry, BBC staffers protested and many commentators bemoaned the loss of Dyke at the helm of Britain’s largest broadcaster. But as it turns out, Dyke was able to laugh all the way to the bank, with a £456,000 severance package.
PBS Takes Aim At FCC
Ever since Congress started murmuring about abolishing the supposedly left-leaning and elitist institutions of American public broadcasting over a decade ago, NPR and PBS seem to have been running either to the right or just to blandness. So the fact that an action-packed new cop drama is being produced by public television might qualify as a minor surprise. Even more surprising is that the producers of “Cop Shop” are taking some serious shots at the FCC’s recent crackdown on “indecency.”