Category: theatre

It’s easy to think that the big musical wins all the Tonys. But sometimes the little guy wins too. “The most intriguing possibility – and the one most discussed by voters who were interviewed for this article – is a showdown between the blockbuster “Spamalot” and another little Off Broadway musical that made its way to the big time: “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

In a major surprise, Dominic Dromgoole has been tapped to lead London’s Old Globe Theatre. “Dromgoole, who has led the Oxford Stage Company for seven years, will become only the second artistic director of the reconstructed Elizabethan venue when he replaces Mark Rylance at the end of the year. Speaking about his new role yesterday, Mr Dromgoole said that although Shakespeare would remain the core work of the open-air theatre he hoped to present new writing and a wider range of European and British classics.”

The performance of Shakespeare has changed enormously in the past few decades. “Olivier and Gielgud gave to their times a vital new sensibility and naturalness. The skill with which they adapted to changing styles, as well as creating them, was a remarkable feature of both actors. But both had finished with live Shakespeare by the mid-1970s, and so stood apart from the many revisions that followed. Who knows what either would have thought about the three very different Macbeths earlier this year; or what Gielgud would have made of an audience breathing down his neck from three sides, having parked their plastic tumblers on the edge of a tiny studio stage; or how eagerly Olivier would have welcomed the kind of rehearsal in which the Duke of Exeter’s opinion can be rated as highly as that of King Henry.”

The big Broadway theatres usually stay dark between major productions. But “to keep the revenue streaming in during the summer, their owners are thinking small, as in the one- and two-month engagements commonly associated with smaller, Off Broadway theaters. This kind of microprogramming can be a smart financial hedge; it can also be risky business. You really have to do sell-out business before you open, because you can’t play catch up – there’s not enough time.”

Doesn’t Donald Trump seem a classic operatic figure? Now there are plans to turn Trump’s “The Apprentice” into a Broadway musical. “The producers, whose other credits include Chicago and Sweet Charity, are assembling a team to shepherd the new show through the development stage. It will open in the spring of 2006 in New York.”

It’s Tony season! Wooooo-hoo! The exciting leadup to that magical night when all of America tunes in to see what Broadway shows will be honored with… well, okay, America writ large actually doesn’t seem to care much. But still! It’s the night when a modest little statue can lead to salvation for a quality show that needs an influx of revenu… oh, that doesn’t work anymore either? Hmmmm. So, um, why do we have these awards again?

“Russia’s most famous drama school, the Moscow Art Theater School, will graduate its first class of Americans on Monday, including six alumni of the LaGuardia High School for the performing arts in Manhattan. The drama school is the training grounds for the Moscow Art Theater, where Konstantin Stanislavsky developed his famous method for actors and where most of Chekhov’s classic plays, including The Cherry Orchard, were first staged… In a kind of extreme form of Stanislavsky method acting – which is based on personal experience and immersion in emotional depths – the LaGuardia students came to Moscow as teenagers in 2001 with no Russian language skills and no ties to the country but a love of theater and a passionate Soviet émigré acting teacher who inspired their leap of faith.”

The American Music Theatre Project is a $2 million, multiyear endeavor designed to turn Northwestern University into the “leading collegiate incubator of new works of musical theater. If all goes according to the long-range plan, future summers in Evanston will feature a variety of music-theater professionals working with students on new musicals in a developmental atmosphere somewhat akin to the Sundance Theatre Institute or a musical version of the Williamstown Theatre Festival or the Iowa Writers Workshop.”

“The American Music Theatre Project, which has a $2 million budget for its initial three-year trial period, will bring top artists in the field to the Northwestern Unigversity campus to collaborate with the school’s students, and with a faculty that already includes professional artists — among them Frank Galati and Mary Zimmerman — who have national and international reputations. During this period, four new shows, each in various stages of completion, will receive high-level public productions in one of the school’s many theaters.”

Producers told the cast of Little Women the Musical May 17 that the production at Broadway’s Virginia Theatre would close May 22 after 55 previews and 137 performances. There are still plans for a national tour starring Maureen McGovern…