Category: theatre

“Jukebox musicals have always been controversial, inspiring hate and devotion in equal measure. Some have defended them on the grounds that they are harmless entertainment; others have dismissed them as not like ‘proper’ musicals (Chicago, Evita, The Producers), just the cynical repackaging of dusty back catalogues and fading reputations.
What no one could deny is that these hybrids of pop nostalgia and theatrical sawdust are here to stay.”

There is no Pulitzer for drama this year. Adam Rapp’s Red Light Winter, Rolin Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, and Christopher Durang’s Miss Witherspoon were expected to be frontrunners the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

A patron complains that at a Broadway Theatre recently, audience members were forced to surrender their cameras upon entering the theatre. “At the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre to catch a preview of Richard Greenberg’s ‘Three Days of Rain,’ starring Julia Roberts and opening officially Wednesday, he and other patrons were ordered — rather rudely, he says — to surrender their cameras before going in or to give up their tickets. Despite years of theatergoing, he says, he’s rarely experienced treatment so brusque.”

“How daringly political will we allow our stages to become? The question urges us to move beyond the self-congratulatory platitudes and catchphrases that we who love this art form all too readily dispense. It comes down to something more difficult: Can we envision (and, more to the point, finance) a theater that embraces what the great midcentury Italian critic Nicola Chiaromonte called its inherent and potentially liberating ‘unpopularity’?”

Disney’s new “Tarzan” musical is “one of the most expensive shows ever mounted on Broadway, with a budget rumored to be between $15 million and $20 million. It is also one of the riskiest, even for Disney, a company which has had an excellent Broadway track record, with three hits in three tries. Most shows open out of town, where problems can be identified and fixed far from prying eyes. But “Tarzan,” based on the hit 1999 animated film and the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that inspired it, will land on Broadway cold.”

Two prominent Scottish politicians want to reconsider the decision made earlier this year to cut off funding for the Borderline Theatre. “Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson and Des Browne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, want to reverse the decision to cut the theatre’s £215,000 funding.”

A year ago Las Vegas was being talked up as the new Broadway as high-profile shows opened in fancy theatres built for them. It hasn’t exactly worked out as planned. But producers of “The Producers” are still eager to give the Silver State a try with a 90-minute version of the Broadway hit. “The intermissionless Las Vegas version of the musical, which has a book by Brooks and Thomas Meehan and a score by Brooks, will be directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, who also supervised the original stage production.”

Apparently, not every critic in the UK has it in for Kevin Spacey and his (perhaps) quixotic quest to revive the Old Vic. “Mr Spacey has used his energy to put on original work in a theatre which has daunted directors for decades. He should be thanked for it rather than moaned at.”

Kevin Spacey isn’t taking the latest blasts from the London press lying down. Despite the early closure of his latest production at the Old Vic, Spacey insists that audiences love what he’s doing, and accuses the city’s notoriously sharp-tongued critics of having it in for him. “In the end, Spacey is confronted by two dilemmas. One is the celebrity trap of which he is both beneficiary and victim. The other is the anachronistic position of the Old Vic in the modern world.”

The film adaptation of Edward Albee’s classic play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, has become a classic in its own right. But 40 years ago, when filming began, not everyone was thrilled about the production, particularly some alumni of New England’s Smith College, where much of the movie was shot.