Conventional wisdom says that Broadway only has room for one smashingly successful blockbuster musical per season. But this year, Spamalot will be going head-to-head with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with plenty of star power, Hollwyood glitz, and industry buzz on each side. Michael Riedel can’t wait to see who wins: “At this point, I’m not betting on either combatant. I’m just looking forward to the struggle. Let’s hope it’s bloody, with dashed hopes and dreams all over the place.”
Category: theatre
Royal-Shakespeare-In-A-Can
The Royal Shakespeare Company is building a temporary 1,000-seat theatre in a car park in Stratford-upon-Avon, using a technology more commonly associated with oil rigs…
Study: Broadway Audience Is Out-Of-Towners
“Confirming many long-held beliefs, a new demographic study shows that 6 in 10 Broadway audience members do come from outside the city and its suburbs, and that the single most important factor in ticket buying is “personal recommendation.” The study, conducted by the League of American Theaters and Producers, a trade group, found that during the 2003-4 season only 16.7 percent of the Broadway audience came from inside the New York City limits, with an additional 22.9 percent coming from suburban areas in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. About half of the 2003-4 crowd came from the rest of the United States, while a little more than 10 percent consisted of international tourists.”
Redgrave’s Return To RSC Canceled
Vanessa Redgrave’s much-anticipated return to the Royal Shakespeare Company after 43 years has been canceled. “Redgrave, 68 this month, was to have opened in a new version by Tony Harrison of Euripides’ tragedy Hecuba at the Royal Shakespeare theatre on February 17. Rehearsals for the play’s chorus began in London last week. The run has been scrapped to give her time to recover from an operation.”
Playwright Speaks Out Against Sikh Protests Of Her Play
Playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti says her life has been upended by the controversy surrounding the cancellation of her play last month at Birmingham Rep after Sikh protests. “My play, Behzti, has been cancelled, I’ve been physically threatened and verbally abused by people who don’t know me. My family has been harassed and I’ve had to leave my home. I have been deeply angered by the upset caused to my family and I ask people to see sense and leave them alone.”
Chorus Line Back On Broadway
Sixteen years after it closed a record-setting run at the Shubert Theater, Michael Bennett’s landmark musical about the lives of Broadway dancers is to be restaged with the help of three of the original production’s creators: the composer Marvin Hamlisch, the designer Robin Wagner and the choreographer Bob Avian.
Spamalot – This Year’s Big Hit? (The Reviews Are In)
Sure, the Pythonalia is all there. But it all has undergone a drastic sea change, too — crossbred with a century’s worth of Broadway conventions, and with bits of additional genetic material lifted from Las Vegas and Super Bowl halftime shows, from pop music sound bites and the trans-Atlantic trills of Andrew Lloyd Webber. A wacky hybrid (with Broadway proving to be the dominant strain, especially in the show’s second act), it has arrived with such a blindingly bright sheen — and at the same time with such a sense of the loopily quirky teamwork that made the original Pythons who they were — that you don’t know whether you should sing ”Hail to the Queen,” ”The Star-Spangled Banner,” ”Havah Nagilah” or ”YMCA.”
Spamalot – An “Agreeable” Evening
“With book and lyrics by Python co-founder Eric Idle and music by Idle and composer John Du Prez, “Spamalot” hits and misses for much of its first act but ultimately makes it home on sheer comic goodwill. It’s nice to be in the hands of comic professionals, and “Spamalot” has a few. I liked it, even when it seemed to be the work of a bunch of highly talented Python fans re-enacting scenes from a cherished film and making up some highly variable songs to go with it.”
Looking For The Great Scottish Musical
“Sir Cameron MackIntosh has joined the Scottish Executive in funding the Highland Quest, a competition to find a piece of musical theatre to mark the Highland Year of Culture in 2007. The winning entry will be staged at a new 250-seat studio venue at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, which is undergoing a £15 million refurbishment, before going on tour, possibly as far as London’s West End.”
British Theatre – Ready For Some Big Themes?
Last month’s Birmingham Rep Sikh protests proved that theatre still matters. But what to do with that energy? “New writing in British theatre seems at a real crossroads, facing a choice between bite-sized, narrative-dominated star vehicles or a renewal of the kind of large-scale statement that is thought to have perished under Mrs Thatcher’s tank tracks but has clearly re-emerged in the past 12 months. The re-creation of a culture of large-scale new writing in British theatre won’t just happen – without Monsterism, minimalism will triumph.”