Category: theatre

There was a time there, during the mega-musical era when Broadway seemed to forget what it was like to dance. Now most of the best musicals are energized by movement as the street remembers how much fun it is to dance. – The Times (UK)

Broadway’s “dizzyingly uneven” season had lots to offer this year, reminding us of the immediacy of the form. “Books are consumed in the head, in a private dialogue between writer and reader; movies, while often experienced communally, are inevitably distanced by being confined to two dimensions. Theater, taking place in the flesh in real time, is the most public and the least lonely of the narrative arts.” – New York Times

Chicago’s three big commercial theaters are about to come under the joint control of the giant Nederlander Organization and SFX Entertainment companies. The consolidation of these theater operations is sure to affect what Chicago audiences will see, and how much they pay for it. – Chicago Tribune

Dance. All the best shows gotta have it these days. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

At least once a year, a London musical fails so badly it is all but booed off stage. This year’s candidate for the honor appears to be “Notre Dame de Paris. “It’s a lot of rubbish. The actors can’t act, their voices are not very good and the lyrics are so banal they make Abba songs sound like Gerard Manley Hopkins.” – Sunday Times (UK)

David Hasselhoff? The Harlem Globetrotters? Upcoming attractions on Broadway read more like a cheap weekend in Vegas than a serious stab at serious theatre. – Inside.com

Trying to handicap this year’s theatre work up for honors at this Sunday’s Tony Awards is difficult as usual. In the running is “an odd mishmash of daring new work and lukewarm fare that has left theater professionals searching for a cohesive theme.” – New York Times

Broadway’s “Copenhagen” is a play about science – physics no less. “Presenting difficult concepts is always risky for a playwright, but it is particularly so in an era when audiences have been conditioned by lowbrow entertainment to have their senses tickled but not to have their brains massaged.” That hasn’t discouraged a growing number of productions about science that seem to be popping up.  – New York Times

The contest for best play in this Sunday’s Tony Awards is likely to come down to a two-way contest between Britain’s “Copenhagen” (about the atomic bomb) and the US’s “Dirty Blonde” (about Mae West). “The result may have less to do with nationalism than the increased influence of Tony voters who are road presenters. (Their percentage on the judges’ panel rose last year when 100 New York producers lost their voting eligibility.) On the road, the late blonde bombshell Mae West is probably more powerful than the atomic bomb, audience-wise.” – The Times of India (Reuters)