Category: theatre

The stage adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings may be the biggest thing to hit the Toronto theatre scene in years, but that still may not have been enough to make it profitable. “A new closing date for the Toronto production will be announced within days or weeks, sources say. Although tickets are on sale until Sept. 24, the show may not continue beyond Labour Day… Until now, attendance has been good enough to meet the show’s running costs and pay its marketing bills — but not high enough to allow investors to recoup more than a fraction of the money they put up.”

What? “At the moment, the minimum number of toilets required at a venue is based on an equal male/female split of the largest possible audience. But women end up queuing interminably because they spend an average of 90 seconds in the john, while men are in and out in 35 seconds. West End theatres are especially bad.”

“Des McAnuff, who directed this year’s Tony-winning musical “Jersey Boys,” has been named artistic director at the Stratford Festival, the classical repertory theater in Ontario, Canada. As part of a new arrangement for Stratford, Mr. McAnuff will become one of three artistic directors, along with Marti Maraden, who has recently completed an eight-year term as the artistic director of English theater at the National Arts Center in Canada, and Don Shipley, currently the artistic director and chief executive officer at the Dublin Theater Festival. The team will be led by Antoni Cimolino, who was appointed as Stratford’s general director in April.”

“The Lord of the Rings took top honours at the 27th annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards last night. Despite some contrary reviews following its March opening, the mega-musical rendering of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy was the clear favourite among Toronto’s theatre cognoscenti, in particular for stagecraft.”

Other Broadway musicals might be finding Las Vegas a tough town, but “Phantom” has opened in a lavish production. “It reportedly cost $75m to stage, including $40m to create a replica of the Paris Opera house inside the Venetian hotel.”

A British TV show is a search for theatrical talent. “Is it possible, the series asks, not only to select a credible winner from a pool of inchoate works in progress, but also to muscle it into shape — rewrite it, cast it, design it, stage it — in the space of a few months, so that it can open in the West End? And perhaps even more to the point, can it ever make money?”

As Minneapolis’s huge new Guthrie Theater opens for business this weekend, there’s no question that the company has succeeded in building serious national buzz about its new home. But some observers wonder whether local audiences used to the old Guthrie’s intimate surroundings will be put off by the grand scale of the new complex. And it’s not as if theatregoers don’t have other choices. “Guthrie’s challenge in 1963 was to educate a market with only one Equity house, a few short-lived professional companies and a dozen community theaters. [Today, the company] is facing a mature — some would argue saturated — market in which he hopes to sell 140,000 more tickets each year.”

“The residents of Stratford-upon-Avon awoke yesterday to find a flotilla of hot air balloons drifting over their roofs serenading them with ambient music and readings from Shakespeare. The abstract sound-dream music, the composer called it – was pumped out of speakers attached to seven balloons which, for 45 minutes, brought sleeping residents slowly and serenely to their waking senses as they floated overhead. That was the idea, anyway. The reality was, hovering sometimes as little as 150ft up, they provoked a rush of pyjama and dressing gown-clad men, women and children into their gardens to get a better look.”

“In Washington DC “theater activists at least temporarily derailed a plan to create a roughly $2 million endowment for small area theaters. The endowment would have come from the sale of the Source Theatre’s longtime home, which is being bought by Bedrock Management for $2.8 million. The activists argued that the funds would be quickly dissipated and forgotten and that the artistic community would be better served by preserving the stage.”

A London theatre critic is upset that “a performance of musical Into the Woods was spoiled by involuntary noises made by a group of mentally-disabled people. He has called for performances where such disruption is likely to be flagged up so others can choose whether to go. But managers at Derby Playhouse said their shows were open to all and the idea was unworkable and unfair.”