Category: theatre

The backstory: There wouldn’t be an Intiman Theatre in 2017 if it wasn’t for Russell.  For audiences, for the company and the Seattle theater community at large, Russell has been nothing less than a turn-around artist — in some ways, a controversial one — whose upfront progressive politics and improvisational style made him a real mover and shaker.

This is practical info. First of all, silence around accessibility is not going to help. Second, plan ahead. “If you want to produce a play that has three Deaf characters, start allocating money for professional ASL interpreters several months in advance. If you want to stage an inclusive musical in a ‘historical’ venue that is inaccessible to performers who use wheelchairs, start researching retro-fits and accessible ramps, and make friends with an architect or designer who can help.”

The list of performers who came to sing Sondheim and so much more is long, and those who couldn’t be there in person sent audio and video songs as well. “In at least one moment, Ms. Cook seemed to signal that she was hearing them, according to [singer Jessica] Molaskey. ‘We started singing and she lifted her finger up to her mouth. … She tapped her lips twice and I thought she was singing with us.'”

“Whenever anyone tries to argue that theatre shouldn’t ‘be political,’ I like to tell them the story of A Game at Chess. Thomas Middleton’s last play, which premiered in 1624, is mostly unknown outside of academia today; in the seventeenth century, however, it made quite a splash and resulted in the closure of the Globe theatre.”

“While rap aficionados and theater nerds have exhaustively cataloged the rich referential web of Mr. Miranda’s “Hamilton” score, little attention has been paid to the show’s engagement with the music that Alexander Hamilton would have known in his lifetime.”

Well, perhaps most of it wasn’t funny enough, argues James Kettle – and when we see it these days, as with John Oliver, it tends to be cooler and more wry and less, well, outraged than in the ’80s.

Peter Marks meets Donna Migliaccio, Patti LuPone’s understudy in War Paint, and the subs from Come From Away, who each have to have five roles committed to memory.

“Albert Finney sobbed like an animal, Harold Pinter ramped up the terror and John Hurt even resembled Beckett himself.” Why do actors and viewers keep coming back to the play – even, as Michael Billington writes, “someone like myself, who is not a fully paid-up member of the Beckett club”? Well, Billington says, “it is partly because of its perfect alliance of form and content.”

“Nelson and Winnie Mandela were in the crowd. Miriam Makeba was the female lead. Abdullah Ibrahim played inconspicuously in the orchestra, as did a teenage Hugh Masekela, on a trumpet given to him by Louis Armstrong. Thrilled by what they saw and heard, the audience members, at first roped into ‘white’ and ‘nonwhite’ sections, refused to leave the theater after the show … On the opening night of the musical King Kong [in 1959], a black composer, Todd Matshikiza; a white creative team; and a 72-strong black cast offered the audience a vision of another kind of country, in which creativity and collaboration prevailed.” After nearly 60 years, King Kong is being updated and revived in Cape Town.

If you know much about Orton, it won’t surprise you that “before its West End debut in 1966, [his] play fell foul of the lord chamberlain, who removed scenes that hinted at homosexuality and mocked the church and police.” The original version of the piece premieres next week in London to mark the 50th anniversary of Orton’s murder by his lover.