Category: theatre

With Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick back in their accustomed roles, The Producers racked up a Broadway box office record of $1.6 million last week.

“There’s always a fair bit of Canadian talent represented on the stages of New York and London, but over the next few months, the figures are more than usually impressive. London’s West End opens its arms to welcome a pair of Toronto productions on two successive nights this month.” Then there’s…

“Phillip Pullman’s writing has been dubbed ‘Harry Potter for grown-ups’, and his Dark Materials trilogy was voted the nation’s third favourite book in the BBC’s Big Read poll.” Now his “Dark Materials,” a two-part, six-hour adaptation of the bestselling epic fantasy, has opened at London’s sold-out National Theatre after “early word-of-mouth praised it as ‘thrilling’, ‘momentous’ and ‘the ultimate children’s show’.”

After 1,560 performances in Toronto, the Lion King closes. “During the 195 weeks of the run, the show will have played to 2.9 million theatregoers, all drawn by a winning combination: the potent allure of the Disney name and the spectacular physical production concocted by director Julie Taymor.”

Peter Hackett, who has resigned as artistic director of the Cleveland Play House, was never ever the right choice for the job, writes Tony Brown. Hackett has “handed the Play House board a golden opportunity to reinvigorate a theater that is slowly choking to death on its own mediocrity. But does the board have the will and the guts to seize the opportunity and make the Play House a theater Cleveland can be proud of?”

The Broadway revival of Cabaret, which is still playing to full houses, is closing this week to make way for Stephen Sondheim’s edgy musical, Assassins. “The second longest-running revival in the history of Broadway musicals ends its storied run — in this its third incarnation — after 2,378 performances and nearly six years.” The show was a favorite with New York critics, with the current revival described as “much darker, deeper and far sexier than either of its predecessors.”

Broadway’s current troubles may be bad news for the moneymen bankrolling the lavish productions, but it’s turning out to be great news for understudies, the unsung actors who stand at the ready, should the stars of the show be suddenly stricken and unable to perform. Broadway is, of course, crawling with big-name Hollywood talent at the moment, but it turns out that big-name Hollywood talent is tough to keep around when the box office is suffering, and more than a few understudies have been unexpectedly catapulted into leading roles.

Just in case you missed it (as if that were even possible,) Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane are back on Broadway, reprising their starring roles in The Producers. “The two actors, whose performances so delighted critics and audiences that the show has not been able to sustain its once formidable ticket sales without them, were enticed to return for 14 weeks at a salary of $100,000 a week each, an enormous sum for the theater.” It’s a situation that seemed ripe for a huge, high-profile flop, but the reviews this morning, a day after the pair’s re-debut, are unanimous in their assessment: Lane and Broderick own these roles, and the public is unlikely to accept anyone else.

The Broadway public is on record: Lane and Broderick are Bialystock and Bloom, and no one else will do. Michael Riedel agrees, and chalks it up to the easy, almost improvisational interaction between the two stars: “They broke each other up several times throughout the show, and, during the final number, when Broderick dropped his cane, Lane burst out in joyous laughter. That chemistry is in many ways a key to the success of the show, which, at its heart, is a love story between two lonely misfits.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s biggest critic these days comes from the stage, where Dario Fo unleashes his criticisms. “For all its grave accusations, “The Two-Headed Anomaly” is an almost vaudevillian romp. The show consists largely of short, fat and bald jokes about the prime minister and his councilors. It stages bawdy attacks not only on Mr. Berlusconi’s politics but also on his personal life and his ethics. But that is exactly what Mr. Fo’s fans expect and want.”