Category: theatre

Plenty of musicals being made from films these days. The new Billy Elliott is the best of them, writes Charles Spencer. “This is not a time to beat about the bush. Billy Elliot strikes me as the greatest British musical I have ever seen, and I have not forgotten Lionel Bart’s Oliver! or Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. There is a rawness, a warm humour and a sheer humanity here that is worlds removed from the soulless slickness of most musicals.”

Three American clasics on Broadway have been directed by Brits. “The continuing tragedy of American theater is that it doesn’t have confidence in its own culture. It doesn’t reveal security in its own glorious past. If it did, there would be no need to ask British directors to stage American classics. There would be no need for Anglophilia. Now, on the one hand, I don’t believe in cultural borders. Theater is an international art form, and artistic exchanges can revitalize both cultures. On the other hand, I strongly believe that American artists should not be treated as also-rans because the British are cravenly thought of as somehow “better.”

It’s taken a team of scholars 10 years to “compile every piece of scholarship and criticism about Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and then to link it, line by line, to the text in an online database. The mammoth project, supported by some $1-million in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is nearing completion — although editors plan to add to it as they find more material.”

“Doubt by John Patrick Shanley today won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best play of the 2004-2005 season. The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh received the award for best foreign play. No award was given for best musical.”

It wasn’t too long ago that British theatre meant London’s West End. No more. “Regional theatre is becoming bigger, bolder and better, led by some extremely talented artistic directors, making use of the extra £25m pumped into regional theatre as a result of the Arts Council Theatre Review. Over the last few years, visionary artistic directors working at regional theatres have actually set the agenda for national theatre as a whole, and have done so with huge box office success.”

“Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the inventive theater troupe conceived in Paris in 1978 before moving permanently to Minneapolis in 1985, has won this year’s Tony Award for best regional theater. The award, announced Tuesday in New York City, honors a company’s general artistic excellence and achievement. It comes with a $25,000 purse and will be presented June 5 at the Tony ceremonies.”

New York Magazine has fired longtime theatre critic John Simon. “Jeremy McCarter, theatre critic for the New York Sun, was named as Simon’s replacement. McCarter’s first review for New York will appear June 1. Simon is known equally for his considerable erudition, his longevity as a critic (he is 79) and his vituperative style. His stinging reviews—particularly his sometimes vicious appraisals of performers’ physical appearances—have periodically raised calls in the theatre community for his removal.”

Terry Teachout on John Simon: “As the saying goes, John Simon has forgotten more about theater than I’ll ever know. For all the controversies he stirred up over the years, he was and is a critic of the very first rank, not least because of his ability to place what he sees on stage in so wide and deeply informed a cultural context. Even when I disagree with him, I take no one else’s opinions as seriously.”

Who will win this year’s Tony Awards? Terry Teachout handicaps the field…

“Agreed, commercial theatre is too expensive. And, agreed, theatre, unlike TV and film, doesn’t always look like ‘real life’. And, yes, theatre can seem middle class and unexciting – particularly when, like these critics, you judge the entire art form on the basis of a few middle-of-the-road West End examples. Theatre, though, is alive. The performers are right there, their awfulness (if awful they be) as hard to avoid as beads of their sweat and spittle. Other people are there too, in the audience next to you. Theatre is an inescapably communal, corporeal experience.”