Category: theatre

Sam Mendes, finishing up his last season as director of London’s Donmar Theatre, has been named Best Director at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his farewell productions of Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya.

Mark Rylance, artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe in London, was accepting the rarely given Special Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards this week when he suddenly made a sharp political turn. After saying he was proud to receive the award, he “suddenly made a passionate outburst against the money Britain spends on the arms trade. He held up a copy of yesterday’s Evening Standard Just The Job supplement on the Territorial Army and said: ‘This appalling trade is being promoted on these islands and is a reason I am ashamed to be here’.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams has become a hit in London, partly by “tapping into London’s thriving Indian community (population: more than 500,000).” Now the show is moving to Broadway, and observers are wondering if it will find an audience. Critics haven’t been enthusiastic about the show, and while there are 200,000 Indians in the New York area, Bollywood style is not familiar to most New Yorkers. “If you don’t know much about Bollywood (and the majority of the audience will not), it can often seem ridiculous.”

The London production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap celebrates its 50th anniversary onstage with a performance for Queen Elizabeth (also celebrating her 50th year in production). “Christie’s famous whodunnit is the first stage production to achieve the milestone of half a century, opened on 25 November, 1952. More than 10 million people have seen the classic since it opened and the play has been performed in more than 40 countries and been translated into over 20 languages.”

Everyone forgets a line now and then. But a Philadelphia performance of a Tom Stoppard play last week spiralled out of control when one of the actors missed a line, then another and another. Finally, a script was deposited onstage and the poor actor made his way through recovery. “To anyone who has been onstage with much to do, not knowing what to do next, the experience is like the centipede stopping to think which of its many legs it should move – and becoming paralyzed. Quick recovery is possible. Or not. An actor spooked by the experience is cast out of the world of that character and into the cold, with no protection.”

Fewer people are buying season tickets to the theatre. That’s got theatre people anxious. “But a drop in subscriptions nationwide doesn’t translate that fewer people are going to the theater. Actually, more people than ever are going. A recent survey by Theatre Communications Group showed that 22.5 million people attend nonprofit theaters, a slight rise from the previous year. But the safety net that a large subscription base affords is now becoming increasingly frayed, making theaters vulnerable to the downturns in the economy, increasing competition for the leisure dollar and fickleness of audiences.”

Linda Winer finds herself watching great theatre by theatre people who never play on Broadway. And why aren’t these talented performers and writers there? “Broadway isn’t hip enough, doesn’t pay enough, doesn’t reach a broad enough audience to be worth eight hard performances a week. For others, however, the problem is the theater that has defined many of the brightest sensibilities out. Also, unlike England, this country has forced many of its most gifted actors to make life-altering choices between making movies on one coast and making theater on another.”

Brian Stokes Mitchell is at the top of the acting game in New York. “No other actor can match his singing voice. No other singer can claim his acting range or experience. No other man — at least, no one who works in the theater regularly — can say, ‘I want to play Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha’ and bring it about. Mr. Mitchell has reached a rare perch in the American theater: he can make his dreams come true with other people’s money.”

Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre is one of country’s best. But it’s hardly wealthy. Which just makes the deal for its new $5.5 million, two-theater complex located in the middle of the city’s high-rent Magnificent Mile retail area more amazing. If the theatre were paying market rent for its new 16,000-square-foot facility, “it would be spending millions of dollars per month ($4.8 million if you do the math and ignore the discounting that can go on in real estate deals).” But “it has signed a 10-year lease with the City of Chicago, with an option to extend for a further 10 years. The rent is $1 per year.”

The historic Chicago Theatre has lost money for years. It’s a cash guzzler. And yet, after its most recent failure, suddenly there are groups clamoring to take it over. What’s changed? “The Chicago Theatre has suddenly proved so attractive for one major reason. Even though the previous owners of the theater defaulted on a $21 million loan from the city of Chicago, the city has decided to write off the debt that drove the previous owners into default. Thus the new owner gets the theater free and clear, and will, in effect, be handed a $21 million gift from Chicago taxpayers.”