Category: theatre

The British Musicians’ Union concedes that it can’t stop producer Cameron Mackintosh from using a virtual orchestra for Les Misérables. The virtual music box Sinfonia, “widely used in US touring productions, needs only one operator who can synchronise its output with that of any real instruments left in an orchestra and with the voices of singers on stage.”

A new play in Chicago turns Boston Cardinal Bernard Law’s testimony about the priest sexual abuse case into drama. “Part of the power of ‘Sin’ comes from its being strictly documentary. Michael Murphy, a playwright who lives in California, distilled it from the 11,000 pages of Cardinal Law’s depositions and from hundreds of newspaper articles. He took some dramatic liberties, like condensing the dozen lawyers who questioned Cardinal Law into just two, but did not add any dialogue.”

“Sometimes referred to as urban theater or chitlin’ circuit plays, these popular live productions tour major cities, selling out venues by using a moneymaking mix of comedy, music and melodrama to draw large crowds of African-American patrons. Filled with stereotypes and base cultural elements, gospel plays have been accused of promoting negative images within the African-American community. On the other hand, the productions employ and make money for scores of black actors, singers, comedians and playwrights.”

Tony Kushner is so successful as a playwright that his new plays are performed as soon as he writes them. But he never stopps tinkering and rewriting them. “People think that I’m self-indulgent. I try not to be. My job is to entertain an audience. It’s not to teach them, it’s not to improve them.”

As another round of Shakespeare gets underway on Broadway, the directors of this year’s installments share their vision of the Bard’s work through contemprary lenses. Jonathan Miller argues that King Lear is not remotely the “cosmic” play it is often mistaken for; Edward Hall makes the case for his all-male production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and Bartlett Sher discusses the importance of establishing a common rhythmic pulse within the cast of any Shakespeare production.

Last week, theater mogul Andrew Lloyd Webber suggested that it might be time to let some UK theaters (not any of his, it should be stressed) close, rather than spend public money to repair or refurbish them. It may be a legitimate point of view, but to actress Nichola McAuliffe, it’s a joke coming from Sir Andrew. McAuliffe has worked in several of Lloyd Webber’s West End theaters, and from rotting windows to audience-assaulting chunks of plaster to rodent infestations, she encountered deplorable conditions at every one of them. So where does such a man get off complaining about other people’s theaters being in disrepair?

Edward Albee on writing for the theatre: “What’s the best way of dealing with audience expectations? Forget them. Write work that interests you. It’s an unfortunate trend, he says, that audiences think they know what they should see, and theater companies and playwrights respond.”

If you want to see plays about serious issues of the day, New York’s not the place. Instead, the enterprising playwright heads to London. “Clearly there is a hankering in Britain for dramatic work that grapples with contemporary issues. Call it, if you will, the theater of dissent. ‘London’s the important place in my book, not New York or anywhere else in America. London’s where the interesting stuff happens’.”

Last week, just before a performance of the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof was scheduled to begin, the sister of theater legend Jerome Robbins, who was attending the show, collapsed and died in the aisle. The show was delayed for nearly an hour, as paramedics attempted to revive Sonia Cullinen, but the performance eventually went on. But where most in attendance saw an unavoidable tragedy, the musicians playing in the Fiddler pit apparently saw a chance to grab some extra cash, and demanded multiple units of overtime pay to compensate them for the delay. Michael Riedel reports that the pit orchestra wanted the stagehands’ union to join them in requesting overtime, but were turned down.

Five new theatres are opening in manhattan. “All are in Midtown. Combined, they represent the continuation of one of the city’s broadest theatrical building booms in decades, perhaps the most active period since the landmark Broadway venues were erected back in the 1910s and 1920s.”