Category: theatre

“TAKE a floppy-haired Muppet. Dress it as a waiter. Rearrange its face until its features slope to one side. Throw it across the room. Repeatedly. If that puppet came to life it might look something like the actor Tom Edden in the British comedy One Man, Two Guvnors, now on Broadway at the Music Box Theater.”

“A lacklustre response to its 2011 season and a splurge on IT systems have combined to push Sydney’s premier theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, into the red for the first time in three years … a sharp turnaround from a profit the year before of nearly $1 million.”

“Titled Death and Metamorphosis, the performance was to take place this week at a small theatre in Spandau. The artist – who has not been identified – planned to use cable ties to strangle the dogs, followed by a brief meditation accompanied by funeral procession music and a giant gong.”

It’s Daisey himself who made the production possible. After his This American Life episode became the most popular podcast in the program’s history, with almost one million downloads, he decided to post a version of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs online, inviting groups and individuals to perform the transcript royalty-free and allowing them to amend it “in any way that furthers the needs of your particular production.”

Lee Siegel: “While Death of a Salesman has consolidated its prestige as an exposure of middle-class delusions, the American middle class – as a social reality and a set of admirable values – has nearly ceased to exist. … Instead of humbling its audience through the shock of recognition, the play now confers upon the people who can afford to see it a feeling of superiority – itself a fragile illusion.”

“The 150m rand (£12m) structure of concrete, ceramic tiles and glass has a multicoloured, curving design reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s architecture. It contains three auditoriums with a total of about 630 seats.”

“While the name of William Shakespeare is slapped ever more enthusiastically across theatre posters and radio and TV billings, universities are reducing the size of his typeface to make space for collaborators: most recently, the suggestion that Thomas Middleton wrote significant sections of All’s Well That End’s Well.”

“Although Jacob Gordin (1853-1909) was Russian, and his literary sources were indeed extremely well known, he himself was not particularly famous. Gordin became better known after he derived some of his plots and characters from Tolstoy and Turgenev … for theater audiences on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, transforming himself from journalist and religious reformer into a playwright who was actually famous.”

“So often the playwrights are just alone in the garret and [then]they’re subjected to gang dramaturgy and actors and everyone trying to fix their play. So we felt, especially on a piece like this, the design would affect the dramaturgical development of the piece.”

“Disappearing Broadway investments prove, especially this season, that there is still no formula for commercial success in the entertainment business, but the wicked track record of the prequel is really starting to stand out. Clearly, there is something extraordinarily potent about revealing, or positing, to an audience how we got to the starting point of some beloved and familiar story.”