Category: theatre

“The problem for people in the arts using populism as a reason to diminish the value of arts criticism is that their own arguments can just as easily be used against themselves.”

Susannah Clapp explains the change in the voting procedures that led to the kerfuffle over Helen Mirren’s best actress award – and points out why this is a difficult matter for just about everyone involved, not least the entirely innocent Mirren herself.

“Sundance’s growing influence on theater comes after two decades of gradually increasing the number of labs and workshops it holds each year and broadening its search for the next great, risk-taking playwright.”

“There is scandal in theatreland following the resignation of three judges from the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Charles Spencer, one of the resigning judges, reveals what really happened and why he quit.”

Every so often, a student campaign works.

“Comparisons are odorous, as the linguistically challenged Dogberry contends in “Much Ado About Nothing,” but they can also be instructive. These productions are a study in cultural contrasts, shedding light on the difficulty of translating Shakespeare from the page to the stage on either side of the pond but ours especially.”

“Theatrically, the Kennedy Center over the past decade has been like some lumbering, dozing giant that occasionally wakes, gets some exercise — and goes back to sleep.”

Go into Manhattan real estate, of course.

“About half of Equity members undertook unpaid work in the past 12 months, with a similar proportion earning less than £5,000 over the year.”

John Lahr: “[Barry] Humphries’s retirement marks the end of the vaudeville tradition, whose singing, dancing, and low-comic folderol he almost single-handedly carried into the twenty-first century.” (Yes, that’s Dame Edna.)