Category: theatre

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap celebrates its 30th years in the sme London theatre. “It has to be the defining production in British theatre history.”

Musicians are protesting the use of virtual orchestras on Broadway. Producers say the VO is a new instrument. Musicians disagree. “We think this machine is designed for the sole purpose of eliminating live music for the purpose of reaping profits. Their attempt to turn this machine, and I tell you that this is a machine, into an instrument is just another ploy. The synthesizer is a musical instrument played by a musician. A virtual orchestra machine is just that. I would not equate those two, ever.”

After a two-year run in London’s West End, the musical Bombay Dreams is closing… for a year. Producer Andrew Lloyd Webber wants to retool the show to bring it into line with the updating a new New York production is getting. “By the time the UK production closes, it will have been seen by more than 1.5 million theatregoers. It is due to embark on a national tour early next year, before returning to the West End some months later.”

Anna Scher spent 35 years building one of Britain’s most unconventional theatre schools, teaching thousands of students. Then she fell ill, and was replaced at the school. Though she’s teaching again, the school. Now she’s teaching again, but at the church down the street from her school, which sits empty…

“A $22 million, 299-seat theater designed by the architects Frank Gehry and Hugh Hardy is expected to be the newest ornament of a growing cultural district in Brooklyn.”

Belfast playwright Marie Jones’ play “Stones in his Pocket” has become a big hit on the West End. Now, Pam Brighton, who directed some Jones’ earlier plays, is claiming that she should get a share of the credit and profits because she “contributed a great deal to the ideas and script of the play.”

Nicholas Hytner has become a star leading London’s National Theatre. “From the start his regime has been charged with a dynamism of purpose, a desire to redefine the National and its role, not just in theatre but the country as a whole. ‘A national theatre has never been more necessary because the very word national is up for grabs and the concept is fraught with possibilities’.”

A London theatre is conducting an unusual casting call – for a dead body. “The consent of the donor of the body is being sought beforehand and the production team aim to treat the subject of death with absolute seriousness, challenging modern taboos about a condition that comes to everybody at some point. Called Dead: You Will Be, the play requires a dead body to ‘lie in state’ throughout the proceedings.”

The Vancouver Playhouse Theatre says it is giving up Shakespeare, Ibsn and other classics. “The 42-year-old regional theatre company, the largest in Western Canada, announced a dramatic change in mandate yesterday. As of next season, the Playhouse will only produce contemporary plays written after 1950. ‘This is an evolution, not a revolution’.”

The musicians union in New York, battling use of the “virtual orchestra” on Broadway, says the electronic box “is all part of an interconnected scheme to ultimately replace live music on Broadway and elsewhere with a machine.”