Category: theatre

Regular theatergoers take it for granted that there’s nothing like a live performance – which, I think, is why the theater is perennially in trouble. The uniqueness should not be taken for granted. – Boston Globe

“We all know that what makes theater irreplaceable (and, on dream nights, irresistible) is that it combines live performance and fakery in ways no other form of art or entertainment can match. Call it the unities of the primal, the artificial and the mythic.” – New York Times

“Truth being stranger than cliché, the very notion of re-inventing theatre spaces – or, to borrow estate agent terminology, location, location, location – is spreading through theatre like wildfire for the simple reason that the biggest problem facing the allegedly dying art form is the buildings themselves.” – The Observer (UK)

There are Christmas pageants and then there are Christmas pageants. “Three camels cross a 300-foot panoramic stage, five white horses prance down the aisles, and three actor-angels swing four stories above 2,069 gape-mouthed audience members simultaneously. Lasers, clouds, fog, more angels, and the release of 16 white pigeons. Mary’s mother, stunned by her daughter’s predicament, launching into the song ‘I’d Be God’s Grandma’…” – Philadelphia Inquirer

“Jeffrey Archer, the best-selling author and member of the House of Lords who is one of Britain’s most colorful political figures, was last year alleged to have perjured himself in a past court case. He was forced to give up his candidacy to become London’s mayor and was thrown out of the Conservative party in disgrace. Did this most self-confident of public figures give in to despair and seclusion? Not Archer. In a move that seems defiant even by his famously bullheaded standards, Archer fell back upon the power of the pen. He has written ‘The Accused’, a courtroom drama in which a man played by Archer himself is accused of murdering his wife.” – Time Europe

Next week in London “The Mousetrap” is to give its 20,000th performance. “Next year, assuming it continues its run, will be the play’s 50th year of continuous production. A long time ago, it ceased being an adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s slighter works and became something else: a record-breaker, a curiosity, a fixture for tourists, an ambiguous example of infinite success. To a certain sort of theatre-goer or stage professional, the Mousetrap is heaven – a fragment from a lost dramatic age of polite dialogue and sets with floral sofas. To lots of other people – fans of new drama, most critics – the play is a glimpse of hell.” – The Guardian

The $12 million invested in the show “Pan” in Australia, which recently closed after a lacklustre 10-week run, will probably never be recouped. “It’s wrong that people can come from overseas, invest in a show and then avoid payment of their debts merely by getting on an aeroplane and leaving the country.” – Sydney Morning Herald

Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” opened on Broadway in 1981 and lasted only 16 performances before the hostile reviews won out. So why is it being revived in London, when even the show’s creators acknowledged it wasn’t one of their best efforts? – The Telegraph (UK)

Translations of plays into English can often sound fussy or academic. Now there is a “growing movement to take the job of translating foreign-language classics away from scholars and linguists and hand it over to dramatists – whether or not they speak the original language.” – The Globe & Mail (Canada)

Performance artists are moving out of the museums and performing arts centers and into nightclubs. These nightspots are far from the galleries, museums and other art spaces that historically hosted performance art, and they attract a different crowd. The clubs, in need of performers, are embracing the artists. – Los Angeles Times