Category: theatre

As union and producers duke it out on Broadway over live music, ‘it’s easy to be misled that it’s all about the numbers. In the talk about minimums and control, we shouldn’t forget what’s most important about the issue: the music. The essence of live theater is in the adjective ‘live.’ No matter what is said, it’s never the same when electronic music or pre-recorded music replaces live acoustic sounds. In this pre-recorded environment the control goes from the baton of the conductor to the dial of the programmer, who has become the actuary of this new musical world. The difference between a live orchestra and a virtual orchestra is the difference between a football game and Game Boy.”

So a much-publicized show doesn’t make it on Broadway. “In recent years several flop productions have all taken to the road and experienced financial and, to a lesser extent, critical success, sometimes by altering their look and content for a national audience hungry for splashy Broadway fare.”

“House of Flowers” was supposed to be the big Broadway hit of 1954. An O. Henry Prize-winning short story by Truman Capote, lyrics by Capote and Harold Arlen, music by Arlen’s, director Peter Brook (fresh from Covent Garden), George Balanchine choreographing, and Pearl Bailey and Diahann Carroll starring. But the show flopped, and remained dormant for almost 50 years. Now it’s back for another look…

Negotiations on a new contract between Broadway producers and musicians began this week, and musician minimums are the big issue. The two sides are well apart. “Producers have taken what one source calls a ‘blood oath’ that they will hang together in the event of a strike. They expect the union to take a divide-and-conquer approach, striking only those shows with weak box offices or that don’t yet have their ‘virtual orchestras’ in place (there are a few). Should that happen, every show will bar musicians from the theater and use pre-recorded music.”

The Moscow theatre where 170 people were killed during a siege by Chechen rebels has reopened. “Moscow’s city government has given $2.5m (£1.5m) to repair the Dubrovka Theatre which now has a high-tech security system. Nord-Ost’s producer and co-writer, Georgy Vasilyev, himself a hostage, had always vowed the show would go on despite 18 cast and crew members being killed.”

Overseas opposition to the Bush administration’s foreign policy has taken an unusual turn in London, in the form of a wildly popular (and wildly unsubtle) satirical play called The Madness of George Dubya. The show, which is about to move to a new venue to accomodate the demand for tickets, portrays the American president as “a pajama-wearing buffoon cuddling a teddy bear while his crazed military chiefs order nuclear strikes on Iraq.”

Actor Kevin Spacey is to become “director of a new, permanent Old Vic theatre company, which will stage shows for eight months a year, leaving the theatre open to other groups, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, for the summer months. The Oscar-winning actor, 43, will star in two productions a year, as well as directing shows and tempting stars keen to follow the growing Hollywood tradition of taking pay cuts for prestigious outings on the London stage.”

News that Kevin Spacey is going to help lead London’s Old Vic Theatre is just the latest of the theatre’s high-profile news. “The Old Vic now stands bang at the centre of the celebrity, glitz and charity nexus. Its board is an awesomely terrifying display of the new establishment. It is well connected, glitzy and hot. All it lacks are shows. This strange anomaly, a furious amount of excitement, spectacle and glittering noise around a peculiar emptiness, is not so surprising since it is so resonant of the age we live in. And the Old Vic, more than any of our theatres, has always reflected the age it lived in back to itself.”

Kevin Spacey “has become such a fixture of London life that he felt compelled to reassure people that ‘in no way should this decision be viewed as abandonment of my own country.’ Asked whether his commitment to the Old Vic had limits, he said, ‘It could be 5 seasons, it could be 10, it could be 20’.”

“In what is shaping up to be one of the most bitter showdowns in Broadway history, theater producers and musicians have begun negotiations on a new contract that will hinge on the size of orchestras. Producers say union rules on the minimum number of musicians squeeze the producers at a time when Broadway rents, salaries and production costs have made mounting a musical almost prohibitively expensive. Union leaders say they are fighting for musicians’ jobs and the tradition of live music in the Broadway theater. Both sides are making preparations for a strike.”