Category: theatre

Rome has built itself a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. “The Roman Globe will no doubt be celebrated as yet further evidence of the ‘universality’ of Shakespeare’s art. Unfortunately, by the same reasoning, the conquest of Italian city centres by the McDonald’s franchise demonstrates the universality of hamburgers (hamburger, in Italian slang, means ‘fool’). Don’t be misled by the difference in the product being sold: the Globe is the perfect icon of globalisation. Globalisation replaces many cultures with one, and the language of that new international monoculture is English.”

The Royal Shakespeare Company is running out of time. If the company can’t find a theatre by the end of the week, it will be the first time in 40 years the RSC hasn’t performed a season in London. “If, as seems likely, that deadline passes without a result, it will be the first time in the RSC’s history that its Stratford season has failed to transfer to the capital. As so often happens with the Bard, tragedy has followed farce: the RSC’s disastrous decision to quit its long-standing London home at the Barbican is blamed for its embarrassing predicament.”

Michael Ritchie, who has led the celebrated Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts since 1996, has been named to be artistic director of the Center Theatre Group, which runs the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and the new Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles.

“People watch an unprecedented amount of drama today, but they generally prefer to experience it through film and television; the appetite for the ‘live’ spoken variety is limited now, and there’s no going back on that. So a regional theatre must programme across the spectrum – stand-up comedy and modern dance as well as Shakespeare and Pinter. The immediate difficulty here is that there simply aren’t enough high-quality acts or shows designed to suit smaller stages.”

Nicholas Hytner’s first season at the head of London’s National Theatre has been a big success. “You come in new, and the continuity of the institution has to be grappled with. It is constitutionally required of us that we should be skeptical and disreputable, and that all the time we should be looking for stories that would not be told unless we are prepared to tell them.”

Broadway internet chatrooms have become a force on the Great White Way. “What is unclear is whether the boards affect a show’s fate. Conventional wisdom says, for instance, that bad Internet buzz about the Boston tryout of the 2000 flop ‘Seussical’ killed the show’s Broadway run. Some disagree, however, saying reviews and, of course, the shows themselves still matter far more than online opinions. Do posts influence shows’ creative teams? If so, no one involved in a production would ever admit it.”

Justin Cartwright puzzles over the allure of Shakespeare in other languages. “I have often wondered what lies behind foreign-language productions of Shakespeare. We would be very different if he had not existed, much more different than if Germany had succeeded in invading, for instance. Hamlet, possibly because of its obvious political themes, is the most produced play in the world and Shakespeare the most-produced playwright.”

Is there too much American theatre on Australian stages? “Australians should get out and see their own stories told on stage, says Playbox Theatre artistic director Aubrey Mellor. He argues that cultural cringe is alive and well and that we know more American and British history than our own.”

“Classics escape the prison of time. Whichever their era, they belong to every other era. People talk of ‘contemporary classics’ but the phrase is tautologous: classics are contemporary by definition. The bad director of an ancient Greek tragedy batters us with parallels to the present day; the good director lets the echoes reverberate for themselves. The classic doesn’t have a sell-by date. If it did, it wouldn’t be a classic.” Still, that timeless aspect is what makes the classics so difficult to stage, and so confounding to bring to a modern audience.

When your city’s image is predicated on a lot of cowboy hats and belt holsters, it might be difficult to envision the rising of a successful theatre scene. But that seems to be what’s happening in Calgary, where an increasingly diverse local populace is slowly coming around to the idea that a rollicking arts scene might not be a bad thing. “Unlike even a few years ago, it seems as if our young artists believe they can make a go of it here, so they’re staying here and doing some very good work.” It may seem like a small step, but at a time when so many cities are taking a budget knife to the arts, Calgary seems to be headed in the right direction.