Category: theatre

Andrew Lloyd Webber is reviving “Evita” in London. “It was a huge success when it was first staged in 1978 but has not been seen in London for more than 20 years. Argentine singer and actress Elena Roger will take the lead role in the new production when it opens at London’s Adelphi Theatre in June.”

A theme on New York stages, these days? Bush-bashing. “I used to get booed (in Las Vegas) two or three years ago when I made a George Bush joke. Now they laugh and nobody boos because things have changed.”

An ongoing legal dispute between a New York director and the theatre he was working for could wind up having wide implications for the theatre world at large. The director, who was fired after disputes with the producer and the playwright, “claims in his complaint that his staging contributions… constitute a copyrighted work of intellectual property, owned by him, and that the defendants must therefore pay for infringing the copyright,” since the show went on after the director was let go.

The new musical “Lestat”, based on Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles,” is in trouble in its San Francisco run, and might not make it to Broadway. “A production source says Warner Bros., which is producing the $12 million musical, has told the creative team that, unless the changes are sweeping and effective, the lid on the ‘Lestat’ coffin will be hammered shut in San Francisco.”

A model is suing the producers of the hit Broadway musical Spamalot for using her image in a promotional poster without permission.

Is Shunt the most innovative theatre in Britain?

The best play in the Bay Area last year? According to critics, it was Leigh Fondakowski’s “The People’s Temple,” a “documentary theater piece based on the real-life tragedy of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. The play was produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre in association with Z Space Studio.”

Two very successful Off-Broadway plays have been trolling for On-Broadway theatres to move to. But everything is booked…

Dominic Cooke, 39, associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has been named to lead London’s Royal Court Theatre. Anthony Burton, the Royal Court’s chairman, said that Cooke had “dazzled the interview panel with his inspirational vision, innovative programming ideas and plans for change”.

“British theatre has been a broad church – and the result? Tension, perhaps, but for 50 years Britain has arguably led the world in producing top-class theatre-makers, whether they have made it with a pen or a pointy finger or a bit of both. But now, it seems, ‘the play’ – or at least, the model of a script, written by a playwright, directed by a director and performed by an actor – has had its day. Admittedly, those of you who have been to the theatre recently might be forgiven for thinking this prognosis a little premature, but judging by the hand-wringing of a procession of some of the nation’s leading practitioners, the play is dead – especially the well-made one.”