Category: theatre

“After the riots comes the drama. The Tricycle theatre in London is responding to the lack of an official public inquiry into the causes of last month’s chaos by mounting its own theatrical inquiry.”

Michael Billington: “I see nothing wrong with the principle that a war and politics writer should be appointed to judge plays. In fact, I think people are in danger of getting a little prissy about the qualifications to be a theatre critic. … I’ve come to believe that a knowledge of public affairs and life’s larger crises is also a useful attribute for a critic.”

“If new musicals are to find the large, popular audience required for a sustained West End run, they need to engage with popular forms of music, not sounds and forms that hark back to a long-distant golden era.”

It’s not just (relatively) stable government funding, argues David Cote – it’s Nicholas Hytner. “Our best artistic directors are probably fine managers and dependable fundraisers – but can any of them hold a candle to the current boss of the National?”

“Eddie, Shrevie and Boogie are heading to Broadway: Production company Base Entertainment announced Tuesday that it will mount a musical version of Barry Levinson’s 1982 seriocomic hit Diner – and has enlisted Levinson to write the book and Sheryl Crow to write the lyrics and music.”

“The City of Vancouver secretly approved a bailout of more than $1-million for the struggling Vancouver Playhouse Theatre and the Museum Of Vancouver (MOV), and will provide an annual operating grant to the theatre company, which had been facing bankruptcy without the emergency help.”

The original, staged version of this deathless camp classic has been around since 1973. But the show is still too outré for Carrollton, Ga. mayor Wayne Garner. After seeing some rehearsal footage on a Facebook page, Garner has cancelled the rental of a city-owned theater to a young company producing the musical.

“Denver loses another theater space when the Vintage Theatre is bounced from its home at 17th Avenue and Vine Street, ending a 28-year tradition of live theater in the neighborhood and sending Denver’s second-most prolific theater company soon scrambling for a new place to play.”

“When somebody fails to appreciate something you yourself have deeply enjoyed, it’s hard not to feel personally affronted. This isn’t logical — why should your own pleasure in something be lessened by somebody else failing to share it? — but it’s human. You may feel that your whole value system is under attack.”

“I feel, going back now, that the early ’90s, the late ’80s, for all the horrors of the AIDS epidemic, were comparatively innocent and carefree times compared to where we are now. … [The] play, and the times, both feel darker to me now than they did back then.”