Category: theatre

“The Wedding Singer” has found an unexpectedly ardent audience. “The feel-good play, based on the 1998 movie starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, received a ho-hum from some critics when it opened April 27, but it is a certified smash with the young-and-in-love set who are using the show’s joyful ambience to create their own personal Kodak moments. With the blessing of the show’s managers and promoters, a half-dozen couples have become engaged on stage at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, and women are lining up for the theater’s Bachelorette Box package.”

Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage has pulled the second of two new musicals from its upcoming season. “The company said yesterday it has been forced to postpone ‘A Civil War Christmas,’ an ambitious piece by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel that was to have been the company’s major holiday offering.” Earlier, it delayed “The Women of Brewster Place,” based on the Gloria Naylor novel.

London theatres are playing loose with critics’ quotes to hawk their shows. “More than one third of West End theatres have been found to use highly selective quotations, from the optimistic to the downright misleading. One of the most blatant offenders is Sinatra, a musical mixing footage of the late singer performing alongside a live band.”

What is it about professional wrestling that draws so many people to become fans? More importantly, could the arts, which so often struggle to attract new audiences, learn anything from the ultraviolent soap opera that is the WWE? “No, I don’t want Martha Henry to show up in a leather halter-top to tell us how she’s going to smackdown Ibsen in the upcoming Stratford production of Ghosts. But I’d like our theatres to have one-tenth of the bravura, imagination and downright nerve of the WWE when it comes to promoting and presenting their own.”

For Americans tired of Broadway’s seemingly endless appetite for commercialism and tired revivals of decades-old shows, London’s theatre scene has always seemed like a mystical promised land. But a closer look shows that London’s West End is suffering from many of the same problems that plague Broadway: notably, the lack of almost anything new on the stage. “The fragile health of the drama became a subject of national publicity in Britain recently with a televised competition, vaguely in the spirit of ‘American Idol,’ among untried playwrights.”

Now that Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre has moved into a new home, what’s to become of the old one? It will be demolished. A local college had suggested moving the building to its campus, but the idea proved not to be feasible. “We were really excited about saving the Guthrie and putting it up there for retirement. It would fit on that campus, which was built in the same period,”

“Ethnic favoritism has been a part of city politics ever since there were cities. Furthermore, 98 percent of L.A.’s theaters are run by Caucasians, who are now a statistical minority of the local population. What was announced as an open-bid process had become, by the final act, a tainted and disturbing story of the power of political connections.”

The Broadway show “Hot Feet” is closing and its investors will lose their entire $8 million. The show’s backer, Transamerica didn’t get into the show to make money. “Transamerica’s motives were more along the lines of corporate sponsors like Visa, Fidelity Investments and Mercedes-Benz, which make deals with shows so their names can be seen.”

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is coming up, but it’s Irish theater companies, not their Scottish colleagues, who are in a position to showcase their work. “What should set alarm bells ringing is not only that Scotland is failing to make the most of an international festival on its doorstep, but it’s also lagging behind in the promotion of Scots artists abroad.”

“The Guthrie Theater announced Monday that it had a happy ending to its 2005-2006 fiscal year, finishing in the black for the 10th straight year, despite an expected drop in attendance as the company ended its tenure at one venue and began in another.”