Category: theatre

“The 13th-century Chinese drama, which has been adapted by James Fenton and will be directed by the RSC’s new artistic director Gregory Doran, includes two east Asian heritage actors performing with puppets as a dog and one playing a maid, out of a cast of 17.”

“Suddenly the West End seems flooded with jukebox theatre. It has its place, but it’s not taking us anywhere or getting us very far in the development of musical theatre.”

“Laurie Sansom is to take over at the National Theatre of Scotland when Vicky Featherstone leaves at the end of the year to become artistic director of London’s Royal Court theatre, it will be announced on Wednesday.”

Lyn Gardner: “As a major of revival of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey opens in Sheffield, it’s time to remember the debt owed to the playwright, who died last year, by many writers – even the songwriter Morrissey.”

“Glen Berger, the Off-Broadway playwright whose plum assignment to collaborate with Bono and the Edge of U2 on a Broadway musical turned into the media circus known as Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, has signed with Simon & Schuster to write a book about his experience.”

“Theatre too often tries to box off different forms and genres from each other, while cabaret thinks nothing of putting live art and plate-spinning side by side. Both can be damned good entertainment, and both mean something.”

“Of the 17 actors cast in the forthcoming production of The Orphan of Zhao,” a play often referred to as China’s equivalent of Hamlet, “only three are of east Asian heritage. James Fenton’s new version of the fourth-century play … is the first Chinese drama the RSC has produced.”

“Sydney’s Belvoir theatre company has been forced to reinstate the final scene of Arthur Miller’s famed Death of a Salesman after an anonymous tip-off to the US agent that handles the rights about changes made to the local production.” The director cut the script’s concluding “Requiem” and changed Willy Loman’s death from an auto collision to a suicide.

“That’s because consequences, like those portrayed in Glengarry, no longer play a role in this new era of mountaintop capitalism, where so few control the fate of so many while being so vastly removed from the actual sale.”

“The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Bruce Norris has called for a boycott in Germany of theater productions in which white actors are cast in roles explicitly written for black performers.”