Category: theatre

Producer Cameron Mackintosh says he’ll invest £20 million in fixing up West End theatres in London. “We have a unique treasury of Edwardian and Victorian theatres designed by great architects and we are committed to improving the UK and overseas public’s experience of visiting our theatres and the West End. These are important buildings.”

Does the success of “Chicago” and “Moulin Rouge” mean movie musicals are making a comeback? “It wouldn’t be the strangest trend to ever sweep through pop culture, but it wasn’t that long ago when talking about a revival of movie musicals would have been akin to speculating on the horse-and-buggy craze that was just around the corner. In fact, today’s 18-34 crowd has been watching musicals since they were kids, in the form of all the Disney movies that got popped into the VCR whenever mom and dad needed a break.”

Happens every year. But this year somehow it seems more dramatic. The post-holiday January drop in Broadway ticket sales is dramatic – 75 percent in at least one theatre. “Broadway producers said they weren’t panicking — it was a good fall and very strong holiday season, after all — but they were rolling out all manner of marketing to combat the cold.”

A small Vancouver theatre company was tired of staging plays that didn’t get reviewed or else received poor notices, and needed a fresh idea to promote their latest production. So they kidnapped four local theatre critics, tied them to chairs in front of their theatre, and yelled insults at them. (Okay, okay, the critics were willing participants. But it’s still a pretty cool image…)

The West End is fine for what it is. But the real risks, the real experiments, are to be found in the fringe. “Freedom, spontaneity, risk, imaginative challenge: all these things were central to the experience of the fringe. They are all notably elusive in the other available theatrical environments, where those considerations drearily familiar from Arts Council feasibility studies – audience expectation of spectacle, long-term planning, product recognisability – reign.”

Lighting for one of every eight shows that have opened on Broadway in the past two years has been the work of one man – Brian MacDevitt. Why is he so special?

Scotland’s Cutting Edge Theatre, which pioneered giving outdoor performances of classic plays in some of Scotland’s most historic castles and palaces, has had to cancel plans for a new season because of lack of funding. “In the wake of a series of complaints at the end of last year over the level of Scottish Executive support for theatre in Scotland, Cutting Edge’s fate will seem almost predictable to critics of arts funding.”

“At the midpoint of the 2002-03 season, it looks to be in many respects lively, productive and financially healthy. Halfway through the season – which begins and ends in early May – there’s a certain comfort level. And if this spring starts to heat up, as it traditionally does, then it could mean a record-breaking season.”

If last year was the year of the revival on Broadway, this year three shows have shaken up the cynic’s view of how business is conducted. “Chances are being taken, rules are being broken and — as a result — attention is being paid.”

Some 20 years ago, Salman Rushdie’s sweeping novel “Midnight’s Children” was an international bestseller. Decades later, “after abortive adaptations by the BBC and a leading West End producer, it has taken the combined efforts of Rushdie, the Royal Shakespeare Company and two American universities to end the wait, with a stage version of ‘Midnight’s Children’ that previews in London next week.”