Category: theatre

Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club is on the ropes. “In fact, the Pudding has been going broke since at least 1986, when the club sold the land under the theater to Harvard for back taxes and agreed to pay rent to the World’s Greatest University. The Pudding, as the old joke goes, has been getting a little behind in the rent – $480,000 behind. The university plans to take over the building Aug. 31, and what happens next is anyone’s guess.” – San Jose Mercury News

Marc Masterson, leader of Pittsburgh’s City Theatre for 20 years, has been named the new artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville. ATL is home of the Humana Festival of New Plays, the country’s premiere showcase for new plays. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Jerry Hall made her official debut on the London stage. “On Tuesday night the critics’ knives were out – and sharpened – as 44-year-old Hall still failed to make anything more than just an adequate impression.” – BBC

“Without my stopwatch on the night, I had to resort to the trusted old method of counting seconds, muttering “One elephant . . . two elephants . . . three elephants,” and so on. By the time I reached the fifth elephant, my neighbours in the stalls were pushing me under my seat and sitting on my head to shut me up, because they thought my comments would upset Mick Jagger, who was in the audience.” – Sydney Morning Herald

Scotland hasn’t had great luck in recent years with its major performing arts companies – the national ballet and opera companies are deeply in debt. Nonetheless, the Scots want a national theatre of their own. “Arts institutions are like Pokémon cards: every country wants the complete set.” – The Guardian

— dies at age 86. – The Age (Melbourne)

• TRIBUTES: “He was one of the last surviving members of a great generation of UK actors, which included Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir John Mills.” – BBC

“Now approaching its 25th anniversary, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre is mentioned by critics in the same breath as U.S. legends such as the Group Theatre from the 1930s and New York’s Circle Repertory. Variety magazine calls it the country’s foremost actors’ theatre. ‘A name synonymous with a visceral acting style full of raw passion,’ said Playbill magazine, ‘the uncompromising, in-your-face school of acting dubbed ‘rock’n’roll theatre.’ ” – The Globe and Mail (Canada) (Guardian)

• An unfinished Oscar Wilde play is discovered in a California library. – BBC

A new play, “based on files released by MI5 last year which revealed that PG Wodehouse was almost prosecuted for treason by the British Government at the end of the Second World War, has caused some protests in the UK. – The Telegraph (UK)

“When one of Germany’s most celebrated theatrical directors, Peter Stein, determined to mount a production of the complete uncut ‘Faust,’ Parts 1 and 2, it became an event of national magnitude. Asserting that no one has ever presented an unedited staging of the work, Mr. Stein calls his “Faust” a world premiere, and it has certainly gained the equivalent attention. Tickets for the production, which opened on July 22 at Expo 2000 in this northwestern German city, sold out within hours when sales began in January. The premiere was front-page news in every paper in the country.” – New York Times