Category: theatre

“Sahr Ngaujah has spent the last two years playing the great Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti on stage in New York and London. Last month he took the production back to Kuti’s native Nigeria. Here, he describes the extraordinary and emotional trip.”

Lyn Gardner: “The obvious reason for this decline is space, the difficulties of being truly descriptive in just 320 words. The only form of critical writing in print I can think of in which performances are routinely – and often exquisitely and poetically – described is the football match report. … It’s not just space, though. … There is also, perhaps, less consensus today about what constitutes good acting.”

“Still bruised over losing some guaranteed seats in orchestra pits during their 2003 contract negotiations with Broadway producers, leaders of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians have chosen to make an example of ‘Priscilla’ by objecting to its employment of only nine musicians and use of some taped music.”

“Despite the worldwide economic collapse, a slow recovery in Ohio and an exodus from Cleveland, more people kept buying more tickets to see more plays — Shakespeare plays, mind you — after Great Lakes moved from a 1,000-seat theater to one with 550 chairs.”

“These four: Hull House, the Little Theatre, Second City, and Steppenwolf–they’re idealistic guideposts of what the theater can be. Together, they create the mythic Chicago theater. And there aren’t really other towns in this country that have a mythic theater profile. With the exception of New York.”

“Aside from a couple of technical glitches and one late entrance, the show unfolded fairly smoothly, without any of the obvious accidents, injuries or mechanical malfunctions that turned “Spider-Man” into an unusually vivid news story (for Broadway) and frequent punch line for late-night comics throughout the winter.”

It’s a cooly calculated process…

“We very much don’t want to do a 21st-century idea of a 16th-century idea of late-15th-century England — because I don’t know what that is. And you know what? No one else does, actually.”

“A show spokesman said tickets to the new show are ‘selling briskly,’ though the show’s own website indicated dozens of available seats for the next few days. Some ticket brokers were even offering up to 40 percent off orchestra and balcony seats.”

Ben Brantley: “[For] at least a couple of decades the commercial New York theater’s main business has been recycling, and not just old plays and musicals but also old movie and television scripts and even, I might add, old stars. … But take a stroll around the Square or through Shubert Alley today … and you’ll note a surprising tang of freshness emanating from the posters and billboards there.”