Category: theatre

Poor reviews, philosophical disagreements, and controversies over preferred seating have plagued the New York Public Theater’s famous Shakespeare In The Park series in recent years, and the troupe may be rethinking its strategy. Free performances may soon be a thing of the past, for one thing. Still, Public Theater is debt-free for the first time in years, and the company appears to have plenty of options.

“The producers of the $14 million musical about Bollywood, which is hanging in there at the Broadway Theater despite some crushing reviews, have approached the pop singer and half-time flasher about joining the cast at some point, production sources confirmed yesterday.”

The new Monty Python musical Spamalot is due to open on Broadway in February 2005. “Based on the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it will star Frasier actor David Hyde Pierce, alongside Tim Curry and Simpsons star Hank Azaria. Python star Eric Idle wrote the book for the musical, and collaborated on music and lyrics with John Du Prez.”

London theatre has become very poiltical in the past 18 months. “In theaters all over London these days, debates rage about power and justice, about leadership and its abuses. From the National’s production of Euripides’ 410 B.C. Iphigenia at Aulis to the New Ambassador’s up-to-date Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, curtains rise on works that confront the morality of the coalition’s invasion of Iraq and inquire into government’s dubious motives.”

“In London, where theater often has a fraternal closeness to the morning’s headlines rarely known across the Atlantic, the ancient Greeks are hot this summer.”

Will the actors union call a strike against American theatres? “The Production contract between Equity and the League of American Theatres and Producers expired last week, with tempers suddenly turning hostile at the last minute and both sides leaving the table.”

A hundred years after his death, Chekhov still exerts a major pull on the theatre. What is it about his work that makes it endure?

The sleepy little river town of Winona, Minnesota is not a place where you would expect to find a major theater festival, but the founders of the new Great River Shakespeare Festival are banking on the allure of small-town America and its own no-frills approach to the Bard to draw a crowd ad build a lasting theatrical tradition. “It will take years of artistic nurturing, civic investment and theatrical brilliance to accomplish such goals. This first season is filled with education panels, discussions, music concerts — a regular Chatauqua — to energize the local population and lure the curious from around the region.”

Arielle Tepper is one of Broadway’s youngest impresarios, “armed with the romantic notions of a stage-door Annie, the energy of youth and, not incidentally, a considerable fortune derived from the real estate empire of her maternal grandfather, Philip Levin, who died in 1971, the year before Ms. Tepper was born. In 2001, Ms. Tepper inherited a third of the family real estate portfolio, which Crain’s New York recently estimated at $1 billion. Ms. Tepper has used part of her share to make herself into an eager new player in the treacherous world of theatrical producing.”

Broadway producers are anxious about the possibility of an actors strike this summer. Many show would close. How many? “Almost a third of the shows running right now probably would cut their losses in the event of a strike and close. That’s partly because of timing. The musicians’ strike occurred in March, so Broadway had plenty of time rebound during the robust spring run-up to the Tony Awards. But the summer is a lot dicier.”