Category: theatre

So the National Endowment for the Arts is paying to bring Shakespeare to the far corners of America. “On the face of it, it seems like a sound idea, but you don’t have to scratch far beneath the surface to detect the icky stench beneath,” writes Dominic Papatola. “By aiming high, the program targets the lowest common denominator: The NEA’s decision to do a nationwide Shakespeare program speaks more to the once-controversial agency’s fear of offending than it does to bringing a master playwright to the masses.”

A play about the Iraq war opening in London, has posted an audition notice for a Saddam Hussein lookalike. “Open auditions for the part start next week at the Riverside Studios in west London. According to an advert in today’s edition of the Stage, “a black beret and flak jacket will be provided”, and in a further concession to lookalikes now gone to ground, moustaches will also be on offer.”

A play billed as the “most sexually explicit ever to open in London” has made its debut. “The two-hour multi-media show involves naked actors performing simulated sex acts in front of video screens depicting further explicit sexual activity. Based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade, the performance ‘aims to challenge boundaries of what is acceptable without a moral judgment’.”

A couple of prominent Broadway producers have complained about New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley for disparaging shows in reviews of other shows. In a review of “Frog and Toad”, Brantley wrote that: “I’d far rather spend an airy 90 minutes with the woodland characters of ‘Frog and Toad’ than revisit a spangled runaway elephant like ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie.’ ” Producers of “Millie” say the swipe was gratuitous. “Perhaps very few of your readers would have noted your comments on ‘Millie’ – but it is very demoralizing to performers who have to get out there every night and give it their all.”

Thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, “the Shakespeare in American Communities project, which is to be officially unveiled today (the 439th anniversary of Shakespeare’s presumed birthday) will bring professional-quality performances of some of his fundamental works, accompanied by educational programs, to some 100 small and midsize American cities in all 50 states.”

Daredevil Evel Knievel has given his okay for a rock musical about his life. “I think it’s a wonderful compliment, said Knievel, who gained fame in the 1970s by jumping his motorcycle over cars and canyons. His daredevil career left him with 37 fractures, including broken bones in both legs, before he retired in 1980.”

“The community of theater critics is turning itself inside out over whether to storm the barricades at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in late June and buy our own tickets to review ‘Bounce.’ This is the first collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince since their brilliant partnership imploded with the failure of “Merrily We Roll Along” in 1981. Sondheim and Prince don’t want national press. They claim we can review the show when a later edition plays the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in the fall. But this is a big deal. It is being offered as part of the Goodman’s regular nonprofit series, which should be open to national critics. It is not an out-of-town commercial tryout.”

More and more playwrights are finding themselves writing for TV, as the lines between who works for stage and who works for screen get blurry. “For young playwrights, the new opportunities offer another way to make a living as the theater world is pummeled by a faltering economy. They move to Los Angeles, dividing their time between television and theater productions, writing plays and screenplays. And they do it without hearing the cries of ‘Sellout!’ that met earlier generations who charted similar paths.”

Seussical the musical was not a hit when it got to Broadway, and the critics were not kind. But after a $2 million makeover, wholesale tinkering from top to bottom, the remade show has been out on the road, and doing pretty well. “The reviews in other cities have been kinder than those of the original production, and the show has performed well at the box office, if a bit unevenly. And, of course, there’s a wide range of Seuss souvenirs raking in cash at intermission.”

David Edgar says political theatre will never disappear. “For most of the 30 years in which I have been doing political theatre, it has been on its last legs. Over those years, I have spent more time than I care to consider sitting on panels in black-box theatres discussing whether this much-contested genre has any future. In fact, as I argue roundly on such occasions, the anatomising of contemporary society has been the great project of British theatre-writing since 1956, and whenever one wave seemed spent, another arrived to take its place.”