Category: theatre

“Professionally produced, modern plays with a dozen or more actors in the cast are rare sightings lately. The average cast list in professional theaters in Seattle and beyond has been shrinking for a few decades.”

“Asked to respond to Stephen Sondheim’s blistering critique of the planned revamp of Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater,” director Diane Paulus issued a one-sentence statement. (Lots of other people have weighed in, however.)

It’s a form “that makes its experiences available to the few rather than the many. … [P]lays made for theatres have an almost infinitely extendable audience and have a potential for economies of scale that simply don’t work in the one-on-one context; it’s like readymade clothes as opposed to couture.”

“Whether bestowed on the lips, the cheek, the hand or any other part of the anatomy, the simple application of the lips to someone else’s body can illuminate all sorts of different, and often contradictory, feelings.” Ben Brantley unpacks three memorable moments of onstage osculation from this summer.

“If you’re a newspaper editor on stage or screen, you are, as often as not, crusty, loud and easily exasperated. … In fact, almost as antique as newspapers these days is the fictive depiction of the hard-boiled editor, sometimes played as an all-bark, no-bite softie and other times as an incorrigible schemer.”

“The theatre, which is housed in the vaults beneath the station, will have to vacate the premises in December 2012. The building project will allow London Bridge station to cope with increased capacity and the Thameslink line.”

Anne Midgette: “Opera companies all over the country are putting new emphasis on presenting classic musicals in the original orchestration, without amplification … [But] fetishizing authenticity is of questionable value when it comes to the Broadway tradition.”

Michael Musto: “Cats, but changed to be about lions? (A big possible comeback for Julie Taymor.) … A Titanic where they avert the iceberg and keep pouring the cocktails? A Chorus Line where they all get the part?”

So far none in the West End…

“Tonight’s shows at London’s Landor, Arcola, Union and King’s Head Theatres have been cancelled, and Battersea Arts Centre is also closing early in response to the riots across London.”