Category: theatre

“I had this feeling of complete ecstasy,” actor Ed Harris says. “It’s probably the most high I’ve been ever, in any way.”

“I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should cease to celebrate, cherish and, indeed, support our rich theatre culture – and that includes what has gone before. But by playing it too safe, hunkering down and not shifting investment into grassroots, new forms and genuine risk-taking productions, there is a real possibility that you will destroy theatre’s many possible and as yet undreamed of futures.”

Bartlett Sher will direct the musical’s latest incarnation in the fall of 2015. No casting has been announced, though the director has reportedly talked informally with Broadway stalwart Danny Burstein about playing Tevye.

“In a social media joke circulating on Twitter, a fake playbill notice for the Broadway musical “If/Then” states that its star, Idina Menzel, will be replaced by her alter-ego, Adele Dazeem.”

“Has the theatre pipeline that supplies Canada’s regionals really sprung a leak? One piece of good news is that, this season, for the first time in recent memory, the most-seen new play in the country hasn’t been a recent Broadway or West End hit, but one born in Toronto.”

The much-awarded director warns that we “make sure that young people have access to West End theatre, and the only way you can do that is through pricing. It stands to reason that if we don’t do it, the West End will close when this generation becomes senior citizens. Because who will replace the people who are now old?”

Using Angela Lansbury’s upcoming West End turn as Madame Arcati as a jumping-off point, Lyn Gardner looks at the theatrical techniques and elements used by the early-20th-century séance conjurers who inspired Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit.

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s two-part staging of Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novels about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII have been playing to packed houses in Stratford-upon-Avon since December.

“I was in the middle of a circle of actors and I was being bombarded with stinking fish and rotten eggs – or rather, scraps of paper bearing the names of such things. Each missile was accompanied by an accusation, to which I had to respond.”

Currently, the average ticket price for Wilma Theatre shows is between $31 and $35. “But houses are running at about 70 percent of paid capacity. The thinking is that while the theater will reap a lower per-ticket price, more tickets will be sold. The goal is to fill houses to 90 percent, with total earned ticket income therefore expected to remain at current levels.”