Category: theatre

Gordon Davidson could have ended his legendary career with Los Angeles’s Center Theater Group with Shakespeare or some other classic. But that really wouldn’t have been in keeping with the Davidson the theatre world has come to know. So it shouldn’t be any real surprise that Davidson’s swan song will be the highly controversial, politically charged drama, Stuff Happens, which purports to examine the decisions that led the U.S. and U.K. into war in Iraq.

The Minnesota Fringe Festival is in its twelfth year of existence, and boasts of being the largest such fest in America. Naturally, organizers felt it was time for a new logo that reflects such a reputation. And naturally, the logo sports a giant pair of lips. And a giant tongue. And a tiny foot. And, um… okay, does anyone know what the hell this thing is supposed to be?

This year’s Broadway season featured “a bevy of big men on campus, a dearth of decent old musicals, and $768 million in sales. A big chunk of that figure came from shows that opened in the spring, and the Tonys should follow suit, with productions like “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” “Doubt, A Parable” and “The Light in the Piazza” all favored to win multiple awards. Indeed, most on Broadway predict a remarkably democratic distribution of Tonys, though a few old-timers sense the possibility of a big “Spamalot” sweep.”

Who’s going to win this year’s Tony awards? John Heilpern handicaps the field…

It’s been an unusually strong year on Broadway, according to Michael Riedel, and while not everyone’s efforts on stage will be rewarded in gold next Sunday night at the Tony awards, the year has brought an embarrassment of riches in the honorable mention category…

“Come January 2007, all of Washington will seem a stage and its leading cultural institutions players in an ambitious six-month citywide festival devoted entirely to the works and influence of William Shakespeare. More than 20 local, national and international organizations are scheduled to participate in the venture, called ‘Shakespeare In Washington,’ which will take place in various venues, including theater, dance, music and visual-art institutions from January through June 2007.”

The first-ever play by a British-born black playwright has hit London’s West End. “That the play should be a groundbreaking event in London may strike Americans as odd, given the longer tradition of African-American playwrights dramatizing the black experience. But subjects like the lives of West Indians, former colonials, in Britain have rarely been given such a platform here, not to mention plays that examine the pressures on young black Londoners today to live outside the law.”

“Leading figures in British theatre have made impassioned pleas for London’s Arts Theatre – which staged the director Sir Peter Hall’s English-language premiere of Waiting for Godot 50 years ago – to be saved from demolition.”

“The resurgence of the musical as a creative form, evidenced in the length and diversity of West End queues, is no mere coincidence. Seeing several hits in close succession suggests a chain reaction, a common attitude. The Producers introduced a genre of self-mockery in which the action halts momentarily to reflect sourly upon itself. This hiatus device appeared at the NT as the so called Jerry Springer Moment and now, in Billy Elliot, as the episodes at the start of each act when the audience is exposed to the legend of British coalmining without the requirement of empathy that came with Daldry’s film.”

Playwright David Hare had mixed feelings going into production of his play about the buildup to the Iraq war. “The power of theater is its unpredictability, the strange alchemy of response that happens only when a group of people examine something together. It’s a bad playwright who seeks to demand a particular reaction. Everyone knows that in performance unpleasant people may begin to acquire charm through energy. Good people, it is said, may seem dull. It was interesting how often members of the audience came out of the show saying “Goodness, I never knew that.” But even more often — and this is where theater really comes into its own — they emerged uneasy to have found their view of the leading players not quite the one they might have anticipated.”