Category: theatre

“The Black Rider” is an unconventional musical now playing in Los Angeles. The piece has polarized reactions, provoking a rash of audience desertins in the middle of the play; they’re walking out. “As playgoers continue to abandon seats costing as much as $95, a night with “Rider” has turned into the showbiz equivalent of red states versus blue, two camps seeing the same thing and reaching polarized conclusions.”

The live theatrical ad for London comes to the stage of Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre. “We thought it was a joke at first. Then we told them we wouldn’t do it unless they compensated us. They said tell us what you have in mind, we threw out a figure and they said ‘OK.’ They made it worth our while.”The Post-Gazette sent its theater critic to watch a dress rehearsal, and I can report that, at just over five minutes, it feels long, and the acting is better than what you can only call the product placement dramaturgy of the writing.

The future of Liverpool’s Royal Court theatre is hanging in the balance after the collapse of Rawhide comedy club.

Playwrights in Zimbabwe say they are being targeted by the government. “Nervous that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change is getting ready to launch a violent campaign to end his 26 years of rule, the head of state has targeted poets, playwrights, satirists – even nightclub stand up comedians – and branded them all as “enemies of the people.”

After only 33 regular performances, the Broadway vampire musical “Lestat” is to close. “Lestat — which is said to have cost more than $12 million — was the Broadway debut of Warner Brothers and involved creative best sellers like Elton John, Bernie Taupin and Anne Rice.”

Movie theatres have been running ads for years. Now live theatre is getting them. “The advertisement, which is itself advertised as the world’s first live theatrical commercial, is a creation of Visit London, a tourist organization. There have already been performances of the live commercial on stages in Dublin and Hamburg. ‘They’re a captive audience. They can’t switch channels or change over or walk out once the thing is started’.”

Protesters are planning to demonstrate at the opening of this year’s Stratford Festival. “The protesters are demanding the Ontario government raise welfare rates by 40 per cent. The groups have said they are targetting Stratford’s black tie event because the opening night gala usually draws both prominent government officials and business and community leaders, ‘a Who’s Who of the rich and vile,’ says a notice on the OCAP website.”

The Washington Shakespeare Company is “scheduled to lose its longtime home in the unglamorous but spacious Clark Street Playhouse. The company was supposed to move into a kind of time-share in Signature Theatre’s old Shirlington space (along with Classika Theatre and perhaps others), but construction delays on Signature’s new theater mean the company will need its old venue next fall.”

“The Drowsy Chaperone was chosen best musical of the New York theatre season, and The History Boys was named best play in awards given Sunday by the Drama Desk, an organization of theatre journalists and critics… Lead musical performance prizes went to John Lloyd Young for playing pop star Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys, and Christine Ebersole for her work as both a mother and daughter in Grey Gardens, a look at two eccentric Long Island relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.”

“The dispiriting quality of last Tuesday’s nominations for the Tony award — including double-digit nods for “The Drowsy Chaperone” and “The Color Purple” — are hardly cause for celebration. True, bulletins on the musical’s failing health have been posted with weary regularity since at least the 1960’s. But in the Broadway season that just ended officially, this once lively art seemed finally to have crossed the border that divides flesh from ectoplasm.”