Category: theatre

Juke-box musicals, those shows built around the pop songs of this or that band or performer seems to be dying as a genre. “With the departure of the King from Broadway’s Palace Theater when All Shook Up closes on Sunday, it looks increasingly as if the era of the tribute musical may be coming to an end. Between them, the Beach Boys show, the Lennon show and All Shook Up have lost $30m.”

“The move is likely to immediately expand the box-office potential of a show that has been extensively revised since receiving mixed reviews in its initial performances in Atlanta last year. Now titled “Oprah Winfrey Presents: ‘The Color Purple,’ ” the musical will begin previews at the Broadway Theater on Nov. 1 and open on Dec. 1. In what is her first Broadway venture, Ms. Winfrey will contribute more than $1 million of the musical’s $10 million production cost.”

“The Old Globe Theatre has received a $10 million gift – the largest in the company’s 70-year history – from Conrad Prebys, a former pizzeria owner who came to San Diego almost penniless 40 years ago.”

“We cannot be sure of Shakespeare’s intentions. Indeed, some would say we can’t be sure of anything about Shakespeare. Who was he? Did he really write the plays? We are living through a time when a barrage of nonsense is making the rounds about Shakespeare’s supposed or hidden identity. Shakespeare, whose genius uncovers every aspect of the human condition, has been identified as a dry essayist moonlighting as a playwright, or as one or another of a couple of extraordinarily privileged aristocrats, who, for some reason (which varies according to their proponents), could never reveal their involvement in such a lower-class pastime as the theatre. It is true that we don’t know very much detail about Shakespeare’s life, or his theatre, and therefore what he expressed as his intentions.” But, it turns out, there is quite a lot we do know…

Why the ongoing obsession with Shakespeare? His presence runs through every new theatre season. “Is it audiences that clamour for such well-worn tales or the powers that be? Are Mr Darcy, Anne Boleyn and Macbeth so much more interesting than what’s going on today? In this turbulent time of war and money, of natural disasters and manmade destruction, are our contemporary stories so dull, so unfabulous, so irrelevant?”

“Last week, in front of hundreds of group-sales executives, Disney unveiled plans for a $10 million (at least) stage version of its animated movie “Tarzan” that will open at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in May. Usually at these events, the sales people are treated to a few musical numbers, and, if you sneak into the theater, you can get a pretty good idea of whether the show’s going to be a stinker or a hit. But “Tarzan” isn’t even in rehearsal yet, so Tom Schumacher, the popular head of Disney’s theater division, hosted what amounted to an informal chat show that might have been called Tom and Friends.”

Tony Kushner has a knack for being ready with a play that fits the time. “Six years ago, he began writing a play about a remote Central Asian nation; by the time Homebody/Kabul opened in December 2001, the United States was fighting a war there. Now, amid the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, his 2003 musical Caroline, or Change seems even more eerily prescient. ‘There ain’t no under ground in Louisiana,’ run its newly harrowing opening lines. ‘There is only under water’.”

New laws are needed in the UK to limit the hours that child actors work. “The old law stipulated a maximum of 80 days’ paid work a year for performers under the age of 17, 40 days if they were under 13. Since 2000, however, the limit has been abolished, leaving the period to the discretion of each child’s local educational authority.”

“Subversive theatre in the Arab world? Try Shakespeare. “Hidden within everything that is sometimes construed as tame, inoffensive and establishment about the Bard to the modern western sensibility lies – to the Arab theatre practitioner – a heaving underworld of illicit meanings, transgressive actions and contentious critique.”

The town of Stratford, Connecticut is trying to revive the venerable American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Conn. in “a long-range, $50 million redevelopment plan intended to turn it into a ‘prominent player in American drama and the entertainment industry.’ The theatre fell on tough financial times during the late ’60s and early ’70s due to a slowdown in the economy and the loss of some key financial supporters. [It] struggled along into the 1980s, but when hoped-for success failed to follow ‘Othello’ in 1981, the theatre closed.”