Category: theatre

What does it take to shock people in the theater these days? Nudity? Certainly not. But celebrity nudity? That’s another matter, as Kathleen Turner’s brief turn in “The Graduate” in London is proving. “It is mystifying that, with the amount of public nudity there is, so many people would really think it worth their time and money for a quick glimpse of unclothed flesh glimmering out from the wings.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

A musician’s union is protesting the eligibility of the hit dance show “Contact” to compete for the Tony Award for best musical. The show uses all recorded music instead of live musicians. – New York Post

What’s up with London’s National Theatre? “The National should be at the centre of the debate about what kind of society we are. It should also be dangerous and controversial.” Sure it’s produced some decent productions of late. But shouldn’t it be “offering us blood, risk and adventure, and an inspirational lead to a theatre already sufficiently mired in caution?” – The Guardian

“As theater artists ponder the future of their form, they return again and again to the idea of longing – and to language that seems to have more to do with the bedroom than the stage. Technology, which promises to bring drastic changes to the arts in terms of style and substance, will affect theater, too, of course. But at root, theater is a Luddite art, one that rests on the same equation as in the days of Sophocles: The theatrical relationship between performer and audience, like the relationship of lovers, depends on being in the same place at the same time.” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Robert Brustein chats with Julie Taymor about life after “The Lion King.” Taymor’s got a new play opening this week on Broadway. – New York Times

At a get-together in London to honor Michael Caine, the actors in attendance moan that the British theater is wracked with snooty class consciousness. Really? – The Guardian

For the future of American musical theater, look at “The Lion King.” For a long time Broadway musicals were defined by a very narrow New York aesthetic. “What Disney has astutely done is create a mythic story that is as accessible in London as it is Tokyo and could be one day in Timbuktu.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Dame Edna – aka Aussie Barry Humphries – has been snubbed by this year’s Tony committee. The decision not to allow “Dame Edna: the Royal Tour” to compete in the two main categories – the season’s best musical or best play – comes as a blow to a show that has been hailed as one of Broadway’s more innovative offerings. It is also something of a slap to Dame Edna, and her real-life alter ego, whose unexpected success has been credited with breathing life into a sometimes lackluster season on the Great White Way. – The Age (Melbourne)

Berlin has struggled mightily to rebuild since the wall fell. But some of the city’s venerable arts institutions have felt stiffed in the change. Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, “once proudly funded by the GDR, has gone through poverty and 11 directors in less than ten years.” Decreased funding has caused ticket prices to soar, and as a result “the company lost its reputation as a theater of the people.” – The Times (UK)

Joe Penhall – one of the “angry young playwrights” who rejuvenated British theater in the mid-90s – will have his latest play produced at the Royal National Theatre. “There’s a raging idealism at play in ‘Blue/Orange,’ which should satisfy those who lament the absence of political theater from the British stage.” – The Guardian