Category: theatre

“A survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries reveals, for example, that 88% of surveyed Mexicans like Shakespeare, compared with only 59% of British people; 84% of Brazilians said they found him relevant to today’s world, compared with 57% in the UK; and 83% of Indians said they understood him, far more than the 58% of Britons.”

“But the question is complicated, because this production of ‘Shuffle Along’, a show that first opened in 1921 as one of Broadway’s earliest all-black musicals, features songs from the original but an almost entirely new book. It is arguably as much a production about ‘Shuffle Along’ as it is a production of ‘Shuffle Along.'”

“It was another landmark for the show—since only nine musicals have won the award in the last hundred years.”

“David and Ben Crystal, a father and son team, have recreated what they say is Shakespeare’s original pronunciation, or OP, as they call it – how Shakespeare’s plays would have been sounded around 1600. … The OP accent that emerges from the Crystals’ research sounds closer to the Northern English or even some American accents.” (audio)

Becoming a Jacobean playwright was so much more than a change in terminology.

“Harper Lee, the author who first gave life to the story and became this town’s most famous resident, died in February. The play, which is an adaptation of her novel, is being produced this spring for the first time by a nonprofit she” – and her controversial attorney, Tonja Carter – “created, not the local museum that had relied on it for revenue.”

The other two finalists were Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Stephen Karam’s The Humans.

Playwright David Hare: “When I was young, British theatre was like a tree in which many different birds could nest. But now it’s just for the hawks.”

“I image we’d see chaos and bloodshed in Shubert Alley if it was somehow passed over, the likes of which New York hasn’t witnessed since the Astor Place Riot of 1849, with Lin-Manuel Miranda pleading with his fans for some sanity.”