Category: theatre

“The company said Friday that its operation of the 655-seat theatre, adjacent to the much larger Queen Elizabeth Theatre, has built up a debt exceeding $900,000, a spokesman said in announcing the closure Friday.”

“Two years ago, [Jez] Bond took possession of a nondescript office block in Finsbury Park, north London. His plan was almost ludicrously ambitious: to drum up £2.2m in the middle of an economic downturn and build a theatre from scratch. By the end of this year, the shiny new Park Theatre will open its doors.”

“It’s like Whac-a-Mole. Certain moments make sense, then they don’t, then others do, then they don’t anymore. All of a sudden you’ve lost what you found – you thought you knew what that moment in a scene was about, and then you don’t anymore. And then you do.”

“Between full-scale renovations and major building projects, most of the city’s major Off Broadway companies have been in the process of regeneration – and major fundraising – over the past half-dozen years or more, resulting in some major changes in the landscape.”

“Less than a month after inaugurating its new digs in Denver’s RiNo district, the Paragon Theatre ensemble has announced that it will close permanently.”

“Theatre and opera director Sir Jonathan Miller is to stage his first play in the UK for five years. … Sir Jonathan’s last dramatic production was Hamlet at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol in 2008. After Hamlet, he predicted that he would ‘never’ return to the theatre.”

“A theater in Greece’s second biggest city, Thessaloniki, is asking audiences for food instead of tickets to help orphan and single mother charities amid the country’s deepening recession.”

“National Lampoon’s Animal House, the 1978 comedy that put toga parties in the mainstream, is coming to Broadway in a new musical stage version, with a score by the band the Barenaked Ladies.”

Bob Mondello: “[For] the longest time I expected something special from curtain calls. I don’t any more. They’re just bows now, rarely as much fun as I remember them being in my youth, possibly because back then standing ovations were not routine, so directors and stars had to work for them.”

“Overall Broadway admissions reached a record high of 12.5 million (and a gross of $1,080,562,880.00) during 2010/11. Of those 12.5 million admissions, 47.6% represented ticket buyers living outside the New York area, while 14.1% (1.77 million) represented people from other countries – down from 16.5% the previous year.”