Category: theatre

Stars headlining Broadway productions sometimes don’t make it to the performance. And the problem seems to be getting worse. “Anecdotal evidence does seem to suggest that regular absenteeism has become a more persistent, probably permanent feature of the Broadway landscape. And it may be a symptom – perhaps, too, a cause – of a much larger, more dispiriting phenomenon, the gradual extinction of the musical-theater star.”

Tacoma Actors Guild, that city’s only professional theatre company, is shutting down. “The producing artistic director of eight years tendered his resignation at a board meeting Monday. The rest of the 24 full-time administrative and production staff members will be laid off indefinitely after this weekend. The theater owes between $300,000 and $350,000 to creditors, including at least $30,000 in rent payments to the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts for the use of Theatre on the Square. TAG has lost money in its last four seasons.”

Is government funding for theatre being cut in the UK because of unflattering content? “The possibility has to be considered that the government has engaged in punishment funding in a different area: theatre. Consider one obvious difference between museums and theatres. Except for Hogarth exhibitions, the former rarely editorialise politically, while almost every major theatre has staged at least one play ridiculing the Blair administration over Iraq.”

Boston’s theatre scene is crowded, yet frequently underfunded and in desperate need of structural upgrade. This year, though, the Huntington Theatre’s Michael Maso “achieved what naysayers said would never happen. He oversaw a capital campaign that has raised nearly $20 million and managed the opening of the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts… With the new spaces, the Huntington has made a commitment to developing and presenting new plays and new playwrights. And its partnership with the BCA has made the Huntington a champion of that institution’s aim to become ‘an urban cultural village.'”

Over the past few years, regional theatre in the UK has flourished, bringing quality theatre outside London. But the government’s funding freeze for the next few years could endanger the development of regional theatre. The country’s regional theatre managers protest…

Ethan Mordden’s “The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen” is a new highly-opinionated histry of the American musical. “Just when you think you’re reading a hip encyclopedia, you find yourself immersed in a flagrant gossip column; just when you feel you are getting essential insights, you are submerged in the most esoteric lore or most intimate revelations.”

Playwright Harold Pinter gets a special Evening Standard theatre award as outstanding dramatist of the past 50 years. “Amid cheers, Pinter accepted the award, a statuette, happily – and with a barbed memory. ‘Forty six years ago my [first] play The Birthday Party was performed in London and slaughtered by the critics – particularly by the Evening Standard, by the way. But in the early new year I’m happy to say that rehearsals will start for the fourth revival in London’.”

A new stage musical version of the Mary Poppins movie involves an unusual collaboration between songwriters removed by decades. “Richard and Robert Sherman’s songs from the original film have been joined by eight new songs by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. But it’s not quite as simple as that. Five of the film’s most iconic numbers – including Chim Chim Cher-ee, Feed the Birds and Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious – have been supplemented and extended, not by the older composers, but by the younger ones.”

“When did the idea of a regional theater supporting a resident artistic company become quaint, outmoded and ultimately, insupportable? Somewhere along the line, we lost our belief (or maybe just our interest) in the notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We don’t think of theater companies as teams of artists anymore. They are simply temporary homes for “hot” directors and “star” actors — and the shows they send to Broadway.”

Denver theatre watchers are wondering what kind of director Kent Thompson will be as he takes over the Denver Center Theatre. He’s got a reputation for championing American plays but also someone who can dish conservative fare. “One challenge is making sure you have programming that will appeal to 25-to-49-year-olds, and that material, I think, has to speak in a more contemporary voice. At the same time, though, you must continue cultivating that core audience in their 40s to 60s. So I suspect we will be thinking of ‘cutting edge’ here as cutting edge within a larger season.”