Category: theatre

“Nearly five years after the death of Lucille Lortel, a clause in her will may determine whether the historic, 148-seat White Barn Theatre in the Cranbury area of Norwalk, Conn., a major summer-stock venue for over 50 years and a key part of her legacy, will be sold or razed, and whether cluster houses will rise on the 18 acres surrounding the site.”

“Several years ago, Rolf Degerlund, the director of the Ice Globe Theatre, had a vision. Returning to Sweden from London and a visit to the newly restored Globe, he thought, why not recreate the theater in snow and ice? ‘What I imagined was actors playing Hamlet with clouds of frost coming from their mouths’.”

Singer Michael Crawford and theatre composer/producer Andrew Lloyd Webber are reuniting for a new musical in London. “The connection made almost 20 years ago with Phantom of the Opera will be renewed in May in Lloyd Webber’s semi-operatic musical The Woman in White when it replaces the 19-year run of Les Misérables at the Palace theatre in London.”

The Manhattan Theatre Club has had a terrible season “marked by backstage strife, artistic feuds and very public cast defections. The season’s woes have also highlighted complaints from upset subscribers and upset artists.”

Why does anyone see the need to take a perfectly delightful movie – When Harry Met Sally – and turn it into stage play? “Why take a quintessentially 80s-America, middle-class masterpiece, a diffidently murmured poem to interpersonal navel-gazing, played out in close-up and tight two-shots, and whack it on one of the biggest stages the 21st-century West End has to offer? Why? Why?”

George Wolfe’s resignation from the Public Theatre brings up nostalgia for the theatre’s founding director Joseph Papp. “On one hand, it’s only natural that the Public’s founding spirit should loom large at a time when the institution is searching for its next leader. On the other, it’s a sign of the trepidation many in the industry feel about the uncertain course of America’s flagship theater when corporatizing trends are buffeting even Off-Broadway.”

Jerry Springer, the Opera has won four Olivier Awards in London. “Based on Jerry Springer’s notorious television talk show, the production has music by Richard Thomas (news) and book and lyrics by Thomas and Stewart Lee.”

Actress Jerry Hall is going to attempt to set a record for the most number of performances on London’s West End in one night. She’ll be appearing in at least half a dozen shows in a single evening. “The bid is part of One Amazing Week, a series of cultural events in London. The 47-year-old will have to dash across London’s theatreland on foot and rickshaw to complete the feat.”

“Nicholas Hytner took over as artistic director last April and in less than a year has turned the sometimes recalcitrant South Bank complex into a house of hits of an order unmatched by his predecessors. Is Hytner’s a one-man fiefdom? No, actually, and certainly not in the style of Trevor Nunn, his predecessor, whose five-and-a-half-year tenure was very much given over to none other than Nunn.”

“Be honest. Aren’t you starting to overdose on escapism? Haven’t you been experiencing cravings that “Mamma Mia!” and vicarious trips down the red carpet just aren’t satisfying? Well, after an autumn of jaw-dropping silliness and thinness on Broadway (witches and drag queens and lounge acts, oh my!), the New York theater is poised to provide deliverance from the culture of triviality.”