Category: theatre

Samuel Beckett would have been 100 this year, and in Dublin, the celebrated Gate Theatre is commemorating the occasion by staging a full season of Beckett, including a play originally written for television, but never before seen on stage. “[The Beckett Estate] has intervened to stop certain productions that broke with Beckett’s exceptionally precise instructions, but the Gate has co-operated with it to permit certain changes in a number of Becketts. Taking Eh Joe from film to stage brings this collaboration to a new peak of imagination.”

“At the age of 36, the Chicago playwright Lydia R. Diamond has suddenly drilled her way out of a respectable but muted Midwestern career. This month, this articulate and self-revealing African-American scribe has two world premieres in simultaneous production at respected Chicago theaters — a highly unusual and impressive feat. And Chicago is by no means the end of it. On a national level, she’s white-hot.”

Spring has sprung in New York, and as usual, the gossip birds are out in force in the city’s theatre scene. Latest tidbits out of the rumor mill: Tarzan may have issues, but it’s a Disney show, so it’s raking in the cash regardless; no one on Broadway knows what the hell a “Drowsy Chaperone” is supposed to be, or why anyone would pay money to watch it; and the supposedly dead-and-buried vampire musical “Lestat” may actually have some life left in it.

A new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, directed by John Doyle and currently playing in Cincinnati, is headed to Broadway in time for the 2006-07 season…

It was just over a year ago that UK playwright Bryony Lavery’s career appeared to be on the verge of imploding. Accused of plagiarizing large portions of her award-winning play, “Frozen,” from a New Yorker profile of a psychologist specializing in serial killers, Lavery argued vociferously against the charges, but faced an avalanche of publicity. But instead of killing her career, the accusations caused the artistic community to rally around her, and even the New Yorker author rushed to her defense.

They’re making musicals about everything these days. Next up? How about Britain’s national Health Service? Really: “Featuring such toe-tapping numbers as The Morning Song of the Poor Hard-Pressed GP and The Great Hospital Sweepstake, NHS The Musical! is described as a “living autopsy” by its director.”

Peter Hinton, the new head of Ottawa’s National Arts Center English is planning a bold first season. He’s offering an all-Canadian program that “draws heavily on the work of small, independent theatre groups across the country and includes five world premieres. Gone are the familiar classics or the recent Broadway hits that are the foundation of subscription seasons in big theatres across North America. In their place, Hinton is daring Ottawa’s notoriously unadventuresome audiences to try something new and unknown.”

The Humana Festival turns 30 this year, and the festival’s playwrights are thinking big. “The three stages at the Actors Theater of Louisville are awash in bold ideas wrapped in colorful theatrical packaging.”

“The success of the annual Comedy Festival — now in its 20th year and one of the world’s Big Three — has become the starting point for most aspiring comics rather than the objective it once was for those who had spent years proving material and building confidence in rough-and-tumble rooms that ran year-round. Has Melbourne lost its reputation for funny bones?”

Producers of the Lord of the Rings musical now playing in Toronto are offering audience members bribes to answer questions about the show. “According to LOTR producer Kevin Wallace, the surveys are principally intended to determine the show’s demographic — who’s coming, and where they’re coming from — in order to target media and public relations campaigns more precisely. But it also asks respondents to cite elements they liked and didn’t like about the production.”