Category: theatre

The Stratford (Canada) Festival production of King Lear is much anticipated on Broadway, where’s it has sold $2 million worth of tickets before opening. But there was one big hurdle in making the show work in New York. She show stars Christopher Plummer, 76, who “is only able to perform the emotionally and physically taxing role of Lear for five shows a week. It’s a real stretch to make revenues match expenses when the whole company is being paid for eight shows a week but only performing five. “It was very clear that Christopher was not in a position to do more than five performances a week. The advantage is that Christopher is at that rare moment when he’s able to do Lear.”

Almost half the musicians for Les Miz in London’s West End will lose their jobs when the show moves to a smaller theatre next month. “Nine musicians out of 21 will be replaced by an electronic synthesiser, of a kind being used for the first time in the West End. US producers have said the Sinfonia synthesiser “gives more bangs to the buck than musicians”.

Three new productions featuring African-Americans are coming to Broadway. “Theatergoers today typically have to go to venues well beyond the neon lights of Times Square to find plays that address modern cultural struggles and ideas that aren’t set to music. The triptych of African-American tales spanning the post-World War II era to the present will temporarily add more color to Broadway’s palette, but along the way may also prompt a discussion about what really constitutes diversity on US theater’s most high-profile road.”

Three more shows are closing on Broadway. “This month’s closings will bring the total since the season began last fall to 11, making it one of the more disappointing sessions in recent Broadway history. ‘No one in the Broadway community expected this traditionally challenging season to be so rough’.”

Ticket sales to Broadway’s “Gypsy” have surged since producers announced that the show would close. So it’s not going to…

George C. Wolfe is leaving the helm of New York’s Public Theatre. “Mr. Wolfe has established something of a cult of personality at the Public, in the tradition of the legendary Joseph Papp. And as the leading black stage director in the country and an openly gay man, he embodied the Public’s determination to reach diverse artists and audiences.”

On London stages, there are now plays devoted to true events. “The resurgence of the theatre of fact is perhaps suggestive of a deeper problem for writers, namely that modern life in its unimaginable complexity seems to defy invention itself. The convention-bound play, assembling representative characters in symbolic spaces to rehearse the concerns of the hour, looks as capable of capturing the zeitgeist as a fishing net is of landing a blue whale.”

Playwright Lennie James went to New Zealand to write a play about teenagers there. But he encountered resistance. And it was brutal. “I mean, what is your deal, Lennie James? Are you going to travel the world stealing people’s culture?” When I was thrown out of the club to avoid any more “trouble”, Wiri followed me out, screaming my name at the sky and wishing me well in my quest to rob the “lesser” cultures of the world of their stories. “You go Lennie James! You go, bro!”

This was supposed to be a great year for the Manhattan Theatre Club. “The respected off-Broadway company was planning to have a year of celebration as it opened a second front, on Broadway. It had purchased and was restoring the long-abandoned Biltmore Theater. That project turned out brilliantly – the reopened theater is a small gem: intimate, comfortable, and a pleasure to behold. But everywhere else, the season has seemed to fall apart, as one actor after another left MTC productions.”

Actor Jude Law lends his support for a £12.5 million makeover of London’s Young Vic Theatre. “I remember being thrilled by the proximity of the actors and the versatility of the space. It was an important part of the dream I had to become an actor.”