Category: theatre

Who wants to go to London’s West End theatre district anymore? “Whether you travel by car or train, it is a nightmare to get there, and when you arrive the place is squalid. The streets are filthy and poorly lit, there are horribly persistent beggars everywhere, and the place is overrun by groups of marauding yoof, out on the booze and aggressive and foul-mouthed with it. Drug-dealing takes place more or less openly, and the atmosphere is deeply depressing when it isn’t downright threatening. Of a policeman on the beat there is hardly ever a sign.”

“The transition from theatre to film and TV is an art that stage actors in Canada, and particularly Toronto, are becoming more adept at handling. As film and TV production work increases and the economic forecast for creating theatre gets less promising, seeking work opportunities outside theatre is no longer thought of as selling out. Actors dropping out of a play to do a film is becoming the unwritten law of the Toronto theatre jungle.”

“Disney wants to replicate in the theme parks a formula that has paid dividends for another division: Disney Theatricals, which produces the company’s Broadway shows. Take a beloved Disney property (“The Lion King”), turn it over to an accomplished avant-garde stage artist with a distinctive visual flair (director Julie Taymor), and reap critical kudos and huge profits.”

When the UK’s repertory theatre system collapsed in the 1970s “visionary artists ran to the fringe and reinvented their art form from scratch.” But how did those artists support themselves? They went on the dole. And some of today’s best-known artists got their starts that way. Today the dole has been replaced by a system that requires full-time availability for paid work. “To bend the rules and do creative work while ‘signing on’, as we all did in the mad years of early Thatcherism, is no longer possible.”

Part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s plan to reinvent includes being a major player in London’s West End. But that plan is faltering after the company’s last five plays there have taken in only 20 percent of what they needed to at the box office. “The plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries have been rapturously received by critics, and sold out when they were premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon, but London audiences have been staying away.”

In 1999 Denver’s fledgling Curious Theatre tried to get rights to a Paula Vogel play it wanted. But the big Denver Center had first-refusal rights. So as consolation the rights-administrator granted Curious rights to another Vogel play – “How I Learned to Drive,” which the DCTC had passed on, and which then won a Pulitzer Prize. Now Vogel is working with Curious again: “To me, that’s why we are doing theater, to disturb the air; to offend people. There is such a need for these smaller companies that will take risks, that will read new plays.”

Admissions at Disney’s theme parks are down 25 percent since 2001. What to do? How about theatre? Disney has hired some A-list creators to come up with “a new era in theme-park entertainment.” It’s theatre presented continuously in 40-minute loops. First up: “a 40-minute version of the ‘Aladdin’ story, using the score from Disney’s animated film. It will run continuously in the brand new ‘Broadway-style’ Hyperion theater in Disney’s ailing California Adventure Park. ‘We’ve coined a new phrase – destination entertainment’.”

A group of Americans is hoping to build the theatre Shakespeare imagined his plays being performed in. “If all goes well, western Massachusetts will become home to the world’s first historically accurate reconstruction of the Rose Playhouse. But if all goes well, western Massachusetts will become home to the world’s first historically accurate reconstruction of the Rose Playhouse.”

Historically, Broadway’s success as a national theatre district has come from the tremendous number of tourists it draws to its glitzy, glittering shows. But new figures show that Broadway has rebounded from its post-9/11 largely by targeting New York audiences – in fact, New Yorkers accounted for a majority of tickets sold for the first time in recent years.

Which hit show will fold this year without returning its investment? Who’s the next big star on Broadway? Michael Riedel makes his predictions about the bright lights of Broadway…