Category: theatre

“Too often, big stage deals have hit the screen, large or small, with an audible thud, making viewers wonder what was so special about the originals anyway. For some of us, “Angels in America” is a happier story. Building on his astute and graceful 2001 HBO adaptation of the Margaret Edson play “Wit,” director Mike Nichols has taken the hospital bed so prominent in that drama, about a cancer patient, and wheeled it over to another, more expansive wing.”

The amateur Scottish theatre association is organizing protests against the Scottish Arts Council for its funding cuts announced last week. “The Scottish Community Drama Association (SCDA), a clearing house for some 200 drama clubs across Scotland that was founded in 1926, was told this week that it will lose its £58,000 annual grant. The money is a tiny fraction of the SAC’s £60 million annual budget, but its loss left the mostly volunteer association shell-shocked.”

The Scottish Arts Council is cutting back on adult theatre to fund a new children’s theatre initiative. But is this a wise trade-off? “Instead of finding new money for children’s theatre, they are cutting what seems to be the adult projects. I think that is extremely short-sighted.”

Having already made a mark on Broadway, Disney is planning an all out assault. “The company has another three musicals nearing production, each based on a Disney movie. Having already changed Broadway, Disney may soon dominate it, with possibly as many as six musicals running simultaneously.”

“After a disappointing October and much of November, the New York theatre has seen, in less than a week, the best reviewed shows of the fall: an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, starring a rapturously received Kevin Kline, and a revival of Wonderful Town, the Bernstein-Comden and Green musical, with the equally acclaimed Donna Murphy. Along with the good notices has been good box office.”

Scotland’s 7:84 Theatre is suddenly in a precarious place, after the government announced it was thinking about quitting the theatre’s subsidy. That subsidy accounts for 48 percent of the theatre’s budget. “While 7:84 will tell you this has come out of the blue, concern has been growing about the company for some time. Reviews of recent productions have been mixed, two board members have resigned, and the company took a long time to appoint artistic director Lorenzo Mele. The job was, in fact, advertised twice.”

In a surprise move, one of Scotland’s best-known theatre companies – 7:84 – has lost its core funding from the Scottish government, and its future is in doubt. “It stands to lose about £225,000 a year – half of its annual income – as part of a package of cuts, worth nearly £1m, from nine organisations.”

Connecticut’s Goodspeed Musicals has a $45 million theatre it wants to build. Now the theatre is being enticed to Middletown with a package of incentives. “If accepted, the Goodspeed offer would be the cultural crown jewel Middletown is seeking for its downtown development, which includes a newly built hotel, restaurants and cinemas and a tourist-friendly link to its proposed South Cove riverfront development.”

Ned Beatty is one of America’s most respected stage actors, currently starring in a Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The production is receiving good reviews, but in an interview, Beatty appears to rip his co-stars, Hollywood darlings Jason Patric and Ashley Judd, for being part of a new theatrical culture which favors celebrity over acting ability. “In theater you want to go from here to there, you want it to be about something… Stage actors learn how to do that. Film actors often don’t even think about it. They do what the director wants them to do, and they never inform their performance with — call it what you wish — through-line, objective.”

London’s National Theatre was nominated for ten Evening Standard theatre awards, and won three.