Category: theatre

The movie version of the long-running theatrical hit, Rent, is not pulling much business by Hollywood standards, but the opening appears to have given a boost to the staged original, which last week had its best sales week ever. “The same thing happened last year with The Phantom of the Opera. The movie, which cost about $100 million to make, grossed just $150 million worldwide. But it lifted the fortunes of the Broadway show… As more and more stage shows are being adapted for the silver screen, theater producers are discovering that even if the movie isn’t very good, the stage production benefits. The spike in ticket sales registers as soon as the trailer for the movie starts playing in theaters.”

“From Billy Elliot, winner in the best musical category, to Harriet Walter, winner of best actress for her role as Elizabeth I in Schiller’s play Mary Stuart at the Donmar Warehouse, commercial theatre accounted for 18 nominations and all six of the major category wins at the ceremony at the Savoy Hotel in London.” Non-commercial theatre, and the National Theatre in particular, were shut out.

In New York, the idea of the Rockettes dancing to fake music hurts your teeth. But in Chicago? “Here in the Midwest, the leggy chorus line always has danced to a computer. The music was fake when this show first came to the Rosemont Theatre. Now it’s back after a couple of years. And whadaya know, the music is fake again. The lack of live musicians in a colossal attraction that surely could afford them is an irritation because there’s otherwise a lot to recommend this show as a holiday amusement.”

The stage version of Billy Elliot won Best Musical at this year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards for London’s West End. Brian Friel’s The Home Place was named best play, while Michael Grandage took the best director title for Don Carlos.

The Royal Shakespeare Company records an operating surplus of £1.7 million for 2004/5. “The company has now more than eliminated the £2.8 million deficit inherited by Michael Boyd when he took over as artistic director in 2003.”

Gerald Schoenfeld is by most accounts “the most powerful person in American theater. A round, wryly funny man whose formal manner seems held over from another era, Mr. Schoenfeld is the chairman of the Shubert Organization, the largest Broadway theater chain. He took over sole leadership of the organization in 1996, when Bernard B. Jacobs, its president, died at the age of 80. Now that Mr. Schoenfeld is in his 10th year in that role and his ninth decade on the planet, his succession and what it means for Broadway remains a dominant mystery in an industry famed for its uncertainties.”

It’s taken eight years for “The Color Purple” to get to Broadway. “Along the way, lead producer Scott Sanders had to replace the original playwright and choreographer, recast a pair of major roles, raise $10 million in capital, and revamp the adaptation in time for its Dec. 1 opening.”

“If we consider it reasonable to apply a modern evaluation of what is offensive or prejudiced to a script written nearly 40 years ago, why is it so complex to apply it to a text written 400 years ago? Should we allow contemporary revivals of Shakespeare and Marlowe to repeat attitudes and language considered acceptable at the time of writing, but untenable now, or should we attempt more culturally sensitive rereadings?

On January 9, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” will become the longest running show in Broadway history. “The performance will be number 7,486 — surpassing the current champion Cats, which held at 7,485 shows and was also written by Webber.”

Taking the Broadway hit to the screen is a tricky thing. “Rent is the eighth-longest-running show in Broadway history, and since 1996 has grossed $460 million from its various North American productions. And Rentheads attending early film screenings are having a go at the movie online, parsing all 2 hours 10 minutes of it, song by song by song.”