Category: theatre

Mark Rylance has made a big success of the Globe Theatre in London. “In the mid-’90s, the whole Globe experience – building and costumes made by 16th-century methods; no scenery, lighting or assisted sound for actors, productions as close as possible to Shakespeare’s directions – smacked, many said, of an Olde England “theatre experience”. But Rylance has proved his critics wrong and pulled off a remarkable success story. Most of the Globe’s productions have met critical acclaim, and it sells an astonishing 90 per cent of its seats during its summer-only season.”

In the past 20 years an astonishing number of plays have been influenced by the AIDS epidemic. “With all the loss, it would be a mistake to ignore the astonishing theater that has grown in the dark soil of cataclysm. We can almost put our arms around a definable body of AIDS dramatic literature that has energized the theater in the years between the first “Normal Heart” and this one.”

Kenneth Tynan was one of the great theatre critics of the 20th Century. “Now Tynan, the brilliant writer who made his name on The Observer in the 1950s and helped to launch a new tradition of stagecraft in Britain, is about to become the subject of a Royal Shakespeare Company play.”

Where’s the interesting theatre in New York? “Everyone knows that 99 percent of the most interesting work is happening someplace other than on Broadway. Indeed, on any given night, more than 40,000 people are attending the theater somewhere in New York City, and about 14,000 of them are parked at one of New York’s nearly 300 off-Broadway playhouses.”

Though Bombay Dreams was a hit in London, it was not a big critical success. So before it comes to Broadway, the show has been extensively remade. “Though it is typical to tweak London imports like “Mamma Mia!” for Broadway, the “Bombay Dreams” revision is one of the most drastic in recent memory, along with the Broadway flop “Taboo” this season. Andrew Lloyd Webber, who produced the London production, has announced that the Broadway version is such an improvement that he will close the London version on June 13 and reopen it next year, in a different London theater, with the Broadway revisions in place.”

“A rare copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet failed to sell on Wednesday because no one was willing to pay the minimum price set by the seller’s estate. Christie’s had estimated the 1611 edition of the classic tragedy — the last such copy in private hands — would fetch $1.5 million to $2 million.”

Broadway producers have proposed to actors that they lower their pay in national touring companies. “Over the last several years, the road has changed dramatically. Today, low-cost non-Equity and nonunion touring companies and alternatives to theatre such as ‘Riverdance,’ etc. are everywhere. This competition has meant fewer opportunities for us, league producers, to produce. That’s why there are fewer jobs and fewer workweeks for Equity members. If we cannot produce, you cannot work.”

Nationwide, black theatre companies have “cut programming and reduced staff. Some troupes have had to cancel shows or suspend production in recent years. Other respected companies, like the Freedom Theater in Philadelphia and the New Jomandi in Atlanta, have struggled financially as public and private support continues to dwindle.” But one hardy soul is traing to “establish something almost unheard of since the heyday of the black theater movement in the 1960’s and 70’s: a national black theater company.”

The New York Fringe Festival has shaken off its financial misfortunes and says that more than “800 applications were received this year, a better than 10% jump over the 2003 total of 716. This was the first year artists could submit applications online; if one includes incomplete and late submissions (which are not adjudicated), that figure rises to over 900. The total two years ago was 585.”

The New York musicians union has made an agreement with an Off-Broadway theatre to allow use of a virtual orchestra. “The deal will allow shows at the theater to use the machine, which can closely replicate the sound of musicians, but only with union consent. No other Off Broadway theater currently has such an agreement with the union; Broadway producers are banned from using the machine.”