Category: theatre

Comedians say that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is becoming too expensive to perform in. “Venue charges, accommodation and promotional costs have prevented new acts from taking part, they claim.”

“It had great buzz from London. It had terrific reviews in New York. It had ‘snob hit’ written all over it. And it had $2 million in the bank before opening night. And yet Democracy — Michael Frayn’s political drama about the spy who brought down West German Chancellor Willie Brandt — has collapsed almost as fast as the Berlin Wall. Once touted as a sure-fire Tony Award contender, the production will close April 17 after only four months on Broadway. It will lose nearly all of its $2.5 million investment.”

In a year when theatre as a whole seemed reinvigorated by politics and activism, Louisville’s venerable Humana Festival fell distinctly flat, says Michael Phillips. “The case of this year’s Humana Festival, the fifth under the stewardship of Actors Theatre artistic director Marc Masterson, is one of artistic Chapter 11. The festival, a venerable and well-known showcase for new work, needs reorganization, a fresh angle, a renewed reason for being in a theatrical world very different from the one in which it began.”

Michael Ritchie’s tenure as artistic director of the L.A.-based Center Theater Group will be a delicate balancing act between honoring the company’s past proven successes and seeking new audiences and new directions that might galvanize the theater community in the city. He is determined to make the three theaters under his control succeed without relying on touring Broadway productions, and says that he won’t hesitate to use the star power available to him from neighboring Hollywood to bring in the crowds.

Idaho law prohibits nude dancing unless it’s part of a performance with “serious artistic merit.” So an adult club “tried to beat the ordinance by distributing pencils and sketch pads to patrons during special twice-weekly ‘art nights,’ when the dancers performed nude.” Police didn’t buy the scheme and raided the place this week…

Any theatre producer will tell you that the key to great sales is getting those people who book big groups to buy the tickets. Though The Lion King is a big world-wide hit, Australian producers are taking no chances as the show comes Down Under. Disney Australia chartered a plane and invited 216 big bookers from Victoria to come along. The hope is they’ll go back home and sell the show.

It used to be that actors did Shakespeare to prove themselves. “Obviously the old standards of judging Shakespeare have to be modified to deal with this new phenomenon. In the old days we might have fussed over how Academy Award winner Denzel Washington lived up to the demands of Brutus. Now it makes more sense to determine how the character of Brutus fits the qualities Washington brings to him.”

“August Wilson has almost completed his series of plays chronicling the 20th Century. “His output over the past 20 years has been prodigious. His name is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams. O’Neill set out to write a cycle of plays chronicling the life of a single American family over time, but he completed only one play before he died. Wilson is about to achieve his ambitious goal, and for years to come his cycle will be studied as a reflection of the black ethos in the 20th century. But Wilson is not without his detractors.”

John Patrick Stanley wins this year’s Pulitzer for drama. “Shanley’s play opened on Broadway just last week to critical acclaim after an off-Broadway run. It tells the story of a confrontation between a nun and a Roman Catholic priest at a Bronx parish; she suspects the priest of molesting a male student. Shanley, who has written a number of successful off-Broadway plays, captured the Academy Award for best screenplay for “Moonstruck” in 1988.”

It’s been seven years since the Lion King went to Minneapolis for a tryout. “Every square foot of the theater — including the lobby, basement and bathrooms — was filled with costume stitchers, prop painters and carpenters, busily assembling the show. There was even a trailer in the parking lot, jammed with accountants.”