Category: theatre

British players and British players haven’t been doing well on Broadway this season. “The suspicion occurs that New York critics are tiring of British directors presuming to show them how great classics, and particularly American classics, ought to be staged.” But “the really good news in New York is that the renaissance of the home-grown Broadway musical is continuing apace, though it is odd that so many of them appear to be based on old movies.”

Boston’s theatre space crunch may be eased a bit next year, if all goes according to plan for a local troupe. The Huntington Theatre Company announced yesterday that it is halfway to its fundraising goal to build two new theatres in the Boston Center for the Arts complex. One of the new theatres would seat 360, the other 200, making them a welcome addition to the Boston scene, which has lacked adequate small and mid-sized venues for years.

What’s going on with playwrights who feel they have to have a character talk directly to an audience to explain some plot point? It’s just plain lazy. “Many playwrights have forgotten the art of exposition, of revealing the story through dialogue, of letting us find our own way. It feels like spoon-feeding to me when an actor enters, steps into a follow-spot and tells me, ‘Hi. I’m Mary. This is my house. I’m a flight attendant. I just found out my boyfriend’s cheating on me.’ I always think, Is this a play or an AA meeting?”

Plans are underway in New York to build a mobile ticket booth – a kind of TKTS-on-wheels to “help shows below 14th Street to fill the house and spread the word. Dubbed the ‘ArtsVan,’ this distribution depot for downtown ducats is a project of DowntownNYC!, a not-for-profit coalition of theater companies, performing artists, galleries, museums, restaurants, businesses, and organizations and associations, formed after Sept. 11 to boost business and rally the spirits of those living and working below 14th Street.”

“What gives suddenly with Hollywood stars and musicals? Inside every movie and TV actor is there an inner Merman screaming to get out? Has every screen star who played in ‘Peter Pan’ in grade school remembered that long ago in drama school there were three audition songs and a pair of tap shoes in the closet? And while we’re asking, how many of the moonlighting movie stars would be on Broadway now if they had to sing without a mike – or if they had to dance in a movie without a virtuosic editor?”

The show “XXX,” currently playing in London, is said to be shocking and sexually explicit to a degree not seen in the London theatre. “At a time when there’s no shortage of dildos and bare butts (even bare butts that you might know) on TV, it seems that flesh on the stage is still peculiarly ‘real’. Which is, you might think, an argument for the power of the theatre. But not for this show. Of course, it shouldn’t be banned: all you have to do to avoid it is not to go. But it is a con: it’s commerce mas querading as taboo-breaking creativity.”

A non-union production of “The Music Man” now touring America is upsetting theatrical unions. Unlike most shows, this production never was on Broadway. But its ticket prices are cheaper than the typical touring show. “The AFL-CIO and Actors’ Equity announced a boycott when the show first hit the road, in Des Moines. Since then, actors union representatives have organized small public protests, garnering media attention at most stops. The only problem: the protests haven’t dissuaded many ticket buyers from seeing the show.”

The Kennedy Center begins a five-year relationship with the Royal Shakespeare Company. But the RSC is a troubled company right now, and its first production at the Kennedy Center amply illustrates some of the problems, writes Peter Marks.

Who’d want to be a Broadway theatre producer? It’s a business where 80 percent of projects fail, investors lose millions, and, let’s face it, producers are rarely liked… But more than 300 aspiring producers have signed up for a three-day course in how to become “that rare breed of theater lovers who seldom get credit or a return on the investment.”

Kenny Ireland is leaving Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. He’s got lots of criticism for local theatre, but he’s hoping to come back for bigger things. “He has also turned the Lyceum round from a debt-ridden and under-maintained venue into a successful and rather lovely theatre. He wants to do the same for the whole of Scottish theatre and he wants to create a Scottish national theatre to make it happen. When Ireland took over 10 years ago, the theatre owed £1m to the city and had a £400,000 deficit…”