Category: theatre

As “Phantom” becomes the longest-running show on Broadway, surpassing “Cats”, Andrew Lloyd Webber goes to New York, keeping a diary along the way…

“It looked a lot like a reality show. Last month, [Toronto’s] Soulpepper Theatre Company held the ultimate audition… Unlike most drama training programs (such as the National Theatre School, George Brown College, and so on) in which inexperienced students pay tuition in exchange for training and connections to the ‘real world,’ Soulpepper Academy is the real world, and its students working artists. As such, it reverses the financial equation. It will pay its students for their time. Each will receive an annual income of $30,000.”

Lee Sankowich is quitting as director of the Marin Theatre Company after 16 years. “His tenure at Marin has been marked by improvements in general production quality as the budget has grown from about $800,000 to $2 million. He also attracted some national recognition with a commitment to developing new works.”

What is it about “Phantom” that made it the longest-running show on Broadway? Emma Brockes: “I think it’s about the importance of not judging people by appearances, although the moral is undermined a bit when the phantom goes on a killing spree after being dumped. Still, the tunes are catchy and it thrills audiences without making them uncomfortable. This is the secret of its success.”

“This year, the Royal Court Theatre celebrates 50 years as Britain’s leading national company dedicated to new work by innovative writers. Its most important achievement has been to put on new plays by new writers about vital contemporary issues – and to make them matter to people who don’t normally go to the theatre.”

The record-setting run of Phantom of the Opera is getting plenty of press, but the show’s success is about more than just the popularity of Andrew Lloyd Webber and a masked antihero. “Although the price of tickets [on Broadway] has skyrocketed — the top regular price seat is $110, and up to $360 for ‘premium seating’ — Berlind says a booming economy has meant that people are willing to dig deep into their wallets if shows warrant it. And so far, people have been showing up. In the last week of 2005, 20 shows were at more than 90% capacity, with Wicked bringing in an unprecedented $1.61 million.” In other words, Phantom is where it is because of a Broadway theatre scene that has never been more robust, and that shows no signs of slowing down.

The splashy, big-budget, supposedly Broadway-bound musical version of Anne Rice’s bestselling vampire novels has run squarely into a wall of critical derision in its tryout run in San Francisco. “The creative team has nearly driven a wooden stake through the heart of author Anne Rice’s much-loved Vampire Chronicles,” says one Bay Area daily, and that’s one of the kinder reviews. San Francisco’s largest daily summed up the brickbats nicely: “Didactic, disjointed, oddly miscast, confusingly designed and floundering in an almost unrelentingly saccharine score by Elton John, Lestat opened Sunday as the latest ill-conceived Broadway hopeful.”

“Theater people are whispering that [Lestat director Rob Jess Roth] has to be replaced by a stronger and more imaginative director if [the show] is going to have a chance in New York… Roth has a poor track record on Broadway. He directed Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, a third-rate production that no one will confuse with Julie Taymor’s great staging of The Lion King. He was given a shot at directing Aida, but was fired after his production opened to poor reviews out of town. His third musical — The Opposite of Sex — was aborted out of town, also because of poor notices.”

What does it mean to be an actor at the various stages of one’s life?

“We forget that the live performing arts, and particularly theatre, are more than almost anything else at the mercy of the whims of producers. It’s difficult enough, of course, to persuade anyone to mount a new play. But once that play has finished its initial run, and at best the production revived once in a subsequent season by the same theatre, even a very good play is likely to disappear into oblivion. It’s almost a unique problem.”