Category: theatre

“As the Iraq war approaches year three, a new volley of war-themed plays is landing on the stages of the United States and Britain, the countries that led the assault on Saddam Hussein. Most express strong opposition to U.S. and British policies. Many of these scripts will surely have a short shelf life. But most of the playwrights say that the theater offers ways of thinking and feeling about the war that go deeper than the images on TV — and that the communal experience of theatergoing is likelier to change attitudes than the solitary experience of looking at a screen.”

Ontario’s Stratford Festival “currently has the ruddy bloom of financial fitness in its cheeks.” But Richard Ouzounian writes that “a distressing number of voices feel that its artistic arteries are clogged to the danger point.”

When Oprah Winfey announced that she was contributing $1 million towards the production costs of the upcoming Broadway production of The Color Purple (Winfrey starred in the movie version of Alice Walker’s acclaimed novel,) the show’s producers saw stars in the shape of dollar signs dancing before them. But while the Oprah branding (which is now prominently trumpeted in every ad for the show) has helped advance sales, it hasn’t yet turned into the fiscal windfall some expected. “Conventional wisdom is that as soon as Oprah starts plugging The Color Purple regularly on her television show, the box office will take off. But there are some red flags here that are worth waving.”

It’s a facility designed to emcourage experimentation. “This ethos – encouraging people to throw around ideas, and paying them for the privilege – is the driving force behind the whole building. Aside from the two big spaces, the Studio comprises a huddle of small offices in which writers, directors and composers can do anything they like. What these people are given is ‘a room, a computer, a telephone, free coffee and a weekly wage’. What they aren’t burdened with is an expectation to ‘perform’.”

“When Les Misérables turns 20 this weekend it looks likely to become the longest running musical of all time, on course to overtake Cats next year and, on the evidence of one night last week, still inspiring people to squeeze a little tear for Eponine and applaud the noble forbearance of Jean Valjean.” The question is – Why?

What kind of changes will mark Kent Thompson’s new regime at the Denver Center Theatre Company? “Some kind of change not only was coming, but necessary. But how sweeping that change should be to one of the nation’s few remaining resident regional theater companies would be only Thompson’s second major test. The first had been how he would craft an 11-play season that would invigorate the company with more urgent and underrepresented voices.”

“On Broadway, I think reviews are less and less relevant. So much of the Broadway audience now is tourists, who want to approximate the experience of going to a theme park. At the moment we are in the midst of ‘the theatre of celebrity’. If you can get a star, preferably from TV or the movies, and especially if they are willing to take their clothes off – you are guaranteed a hit.”

“Twenty years and 49 million regular viewers later, Winfrey’s sudden and unexpected endorsement of the upcoming musical version of that very same Alice Walker story has propelled what was looking like a midtier Broadway opening heavily dependent on positive reviews into a critic-proof international megahit. Oprah’s impact on a Broadway show is unknown territory — Winfrey has never before formally got behind a Broadway show (or any other piece of theater, for that matter).”

London’s West End is stuffed full of Old Chestnut revivals. “All the big musical shows are designed to make audiences feel safe about going to the theatre. This is a valid, indeed admirable, function of the art form; most people don’t want to buy a £50 ticket for the shock of the new. We hanker after entertainment as a comfort zone. But there is a danger that by leaving new work almost entirely to the subsidised and fringe theatres, the West End will prosper only as a money-making mausoleum.”

Minnesota’s Ordway Theatre is joining four other comparable nonprofit performing arts centers in Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Hartford, Connecticut, to form Five Cent Productions “to develop new works of musical theater and breathe new life into the art form. ‘The industry has come to rely on the retread, on the revival. People are tired now of seeing the revivals. I mean, these are great classic works of Americana. But people need to see new things’.”