Category: theatre

Susan Trausch has been a newspaper writer for three decades, and a playwright for, um, about 5 minutes now. “Someday when I grow up, I may be a playwright. Right now I’m an apprentice, a journalist in transition who has taken theater-as-a-second-language classes at adult education centers over the past eight years.” Along her journey from one side of the critical glass to the other, Trausch has gained a new respect for collaboration, broad thought, and most of all, ambiguity.

“A look at the latest Broadway casts of ‘The Producers,’ ‘Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune’ and ‘Oklahoma!’ has confirmed one basic truth of the theater: if the chemistry of casting is an elusive and mysterious science, the alchemy of recasting is even more complicated. No matter how much electricity performers give off naturally, when you plug them into roles that don’t fit, short-circuiting is to be expected.”

A new production of Eugene ‘Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into ight” is going to charge $100 a ticket when it opens in May on Broadway. “The hefty price tag – which does not include a $1.25 per ticket “restoration fee” – is usually reserved for big-budget Broadway musicals such as ‘The Producers’, ‘Hairspray’ and ‘Movin’ Out’. A $100 ticket is rare for a straight play. “The Iceman Cometh,” also by O’Neill, and starring Kevin Spacey, charged a $100 top price in 1999.”

Think the inflight entertainment is bad? For actors it’s worse. “The overcrowded cabin, tasteless food and germ-infested air-conditioning usually found on aeroplanes held no terrors for me – after all, I’ve worked at the Barbican – but I also knew that, with a journey time of just over 11 hours, the in-flight entertainment was likely to include several hours of recent television favourites. Actors go on holiday to forget all the jobs they have missed, not to be reminded of them, and I braced myself for the worst.”

The lives of people in North Yorkshire were ruined a few years ago when foot-and-mouth virus was detected, and livestock by the thousands were destroyed. Now a local theatre has produced a play about that time, using local people. “The non-professional cast have had only minimal rehearsal time, which gives the production a rough-and-ready quality. That doesn’t diminish its effect, however. In fact, the lack of ‘acting’ only adds to the piece’s power and the sense that what you are witnessing, rather than a mere performance, is a genuine dialogue between stage and audience.”

An increasing number of English theatres are “introducing a captioned performance in the run of their plays. The obvious beneficiaries of being able to read, and therefore ‘hear’ performances, are people with hearing loss. But the technique also helps those for whom English is not their first language, but who want to experience and enjoy English theatre – i.e., tourists.”

A Denver production of a play about murderer Charles Manson is having a poster problem. No sooner do posters for the play go up in local businesses when they’re taken down. “The average poster life is about 48 hours, we’re finding. They’re either coming down because somebody’s offended or because they’re hanging them on their wall.”

So Nicholas Hytner decrees London’s National Theatre won’t be producing the big flashy musicals anymore. “This seems, at first blush, somewhat dog-in-the-mangerish of him. As a guest director, he was responsible a few years ago for a production of ‘Carousel’ that ranks as one of the National’s most successful and enlightening musical revivals. It’s as if, having had his fun, he’s all set to stop other directors – not to mention other audiences – having theirs. He has a point or two, though.” These big musical revivals – do they really work artistically?

Producers of a production of “The Vagina Monologues” in Moncton, New Brunswick are finding a chilly reception there. “People get all giggly and squeamish when they hear the word. But worse, we’ve had companies very reluctant to support us, people who wouldn’t return our phone calls. One person I spoke to wouldn’t send out our e-mail poster to their 700 employees because he didn’t think his boss would think it is a good idea.”

Last year when “The Vagina Monologues” came to Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee carried ads for the play – no problem. But evidently the “p” word is a bigger deal. The paper has refused ads for “Puppetry of the Penis,” the hot Australian show currently touring the US.