Category: theatre

The stage adaptation of Lord of the Rings, which debuted this spring in Toronto, is coming to London in June 2007. “The show promises to be a spectacle on a big scale with a cost to match – £25m. It will have a cast of more than 50 actors and about 90 musicians and crew. Seventeen hydraulic lifts will be used underneath the huge stage… [The] announcement comes against a backdrop of change in the industry. The budgets for theatre productions are getting bigger for an obvious reason – audiences want spectacle if they are paying up to £60 for a ticket.”

My Name is Rachel Corrie will be coming to New York after all. A planned production was canceled earlier this year. But “Pam Pariseau and Dena Hammerstein, partners in James Hammerstein Productions, are bringing the play, critically acclaimed in London, to the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Previews are to begin on Oct. 5, with an opening scheduled for Oct. 15. The play is to run for 48 performances, closing on Nov. 19.”

The Royal Shakespeare’s new temporary theatre, built to house the company while its new permanent home is being built, is a real stunner. And that poses the perhaps heretical notion that “the best theatres aren’t always those over which architects have laboured long and hard…”

“When God created the middle class, He had only the British in mind. New York theatergoers’ Anglophilia is an incurable case of reverse snobbery, however, and the ghost of Noël Coward, for one, wishes to say from his chaise lounge in the sky, ‘Ta ever so’.”

“Denver Center took home eight out of 20 awards – including best season for a theater company – during the event at Denver Civic Theatre. The new awards, administered by the Colorado Theatre Guild, are named after local theater veteran Henry Lowenstein.”

Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company is hoping to open a second home in October 2007. The new home will feature a repertory style of presentation twice a year. “Shakespeare Theatre officials said they are still raising money for the new complex, the price tag for which has increased from $77 million to $85 million.The company has $55 million and needs about $30 million more.”

Play on Earth is “the world’s first attempt to stage a theatrical event in three separate continents at the same time. The scheme is the brainchild of Station House Opera’s artistic director Julian Maynard Smith, who has pioneered the art of linking up live theatrical performances via the internet.”

“With its reach, history, and unique mix of uptown glamour and downtown ideals, the Public has long occupied a pivotal place in New York culture, but New York is not what it was when Joseph Papp, the Public’s founder, outdueled Robert Moses to bring Shakespeare to the park. At a complicated time, the place has a uniquely complicated leader. Oskar Eustis is bold and cautious, radical and judicious.”

Minnesota’s Guthrie Theatre has always been a giant on the local theatre scene. But what impact will the theatre’s huge new building have on the Twin Cities? “Will the new Guthrie, with an invigorated regional and national profile, create a rising tide that will help lift all theaters in the area? Or, with its increased need for audience and financial support, will it become the Theater That Ate the Twin Cities?”

A week from today, Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater will inaugurate its massive new home on the Mississippi riverfront. It’s a big deal for the theater, of course, but the opening will also be a watershed moment for a city that has spent the last decade transforming a moribund downtown into one of the most vibrant urban areas in the country. “At 285,000 square feet, the new building is more than three times larger than the old Guthrie. Its bends, bows and cantilevered, 12-story-high ‘Endless Bridge’ render the architecture of Frenchman Jean Nouvel unmistakable along the riverfront. Three theaters within will draw thousands of people to the area, but the Guthrie also will be open day and night.”