Category: theatre

The production company known as Dodger Stage Holdings has become notorious for a string of high-profile Broadway flops, leading critic Michael Riedel to suggest that the company has “done more damage to Western civilization than the Visigoths.” And it appears that Dodger’s unbroken streak of futility is continuing this season with Good Vibrations, the Beach Boys-inspired musical meant to draw in nostalgic baby boomers and pop-loving tourists. Instead, the show has been vilified in the press, and is so hated by Broadway insiders that other producers are openly rooting for it to fold. The best review the show has received so far is one that declared it to be “not quite the history-making train wreck trumpeted in advance.”

Almost three years ago plans were announced to mount a revival of the musical Sweet Charity. Between then and now, the stars are in, the stars are out. The director leaves, then comes back, songs are dropped, then they’re added. And now comes the out-of-town try-outs… Whew, you’d think redoing a show that’s already been a success would be easier…

Nicholas Hytner’s new season for the National Theatre in London is full of controversial issues. “What we are finding is that when we do plays about politics the place is really buzzing. We are plugged into and responding to the world we are part of, and making great entertainment, as well as provocative debate and artistic insight. Theatre is now back where we are sniffing things out as they happen.”

National funding for theatre in the UK is going down in the next couple of years. But funding from local governments will also decline too, warns the chair of the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers. “This is devastating for the arts. There will certainly be closures [of companies]. This is a slow, downward spiral at a period when there is so much that is positive.”

“Films have become bankable entities in the West End, sure-fire brands ripe for conversion into hot-ticket shows. It’s hard not to confuse today’s theatre listings with a Christmas TV guide: here are Mary Poppins, The Producers, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Saturday Night Fever, Grand Hotel and The Lion King. Even “difficult” movies are getting the treatment.”

Seattle’s Empty Space Theatre will resume operations after raising enough money to continue. “Crippled by debt and non-existent financial reserves, the board decided in October that unless $350,000 could be raised by Jan. 31, the Space would go out of business. As of yesterday, $403,865 had been raised.”

A proposed law against incitement of religious hatred would have a chilling effect on UK theatres, says National Theatre boss Nicholas Hytner. “I claim the right to be as offensive as I choose about what other people think, and to tell any story that I choose. No one has the right not to be offended.”

Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Outward Spiral Theater Company is Minnesota’s “longest-lived theater company dedicated to telling the stories of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender America.” But the company has suspended operations. What’s led to the crisis? “The very idea of gay theater has become – if you’ll pardon the expression – kind of a queer one”, writes Dominic Papatola. Why? Because niche theatre like this has been absorbed into the mainstream. Perhaps there is no longer a place for theatre with an issue-based focus…

There’s been no shortage of worry in Scotland about how the new National Theatre would take shape. Maybe that’s because of the many years it took to get the idea off the ground. “But now that the National Theatre of Scotland is beginning to take shape, even the sharpest critics of the idea are being forced to concede that those fears may have been misplaced. For one thing, the organisation is being set up on an innovative commissioning model designed to ensure that the NTS works through Scotland’s existing companies, investing its budget in developing world-class new projects with them, and helping them to raise their game with every new production.”

“Burdened by ever-higher costs and increased competition from Broadway and beyond, the successful commercial Off Broadway play is a rarity these days, producers say. Long considered a cheaper, more viable alternative to the high costs of Broadway, the average Off Broadway production now regularly runs more than $500,000 to produce, with some costing nearly $1 million. Predictably, those higher costs have been passed on to the consumer; good seats for Off Broadway shows now commonly run more than $50, with some shows asking $65 or $75.”