Category: theatre

“Nearly 18 months after Jackson’s death, the star’s estate announced details of the first of two Cirque du Soleil shows to be based on his music and dancing. … The lavish production is to cost $57million and include more than 60 performers.”

“A restructuring, which also entailed an average pay reduction of 5% across all staff, followed what the theatre called “severe cuts” in its annual grant from the Arts Council. That, it claimed, had fallen by 28% in three years, from €10 million to the current level of €7.2 million.”

“There’s a show opening in Toronto this week that’s billed as the first authentic Indian dance-music spectacle of its kind. It’s live, but it draws heavily on the cinematic production values of Bollywood, including this specific tenet: To do it right, you have to do it big.”

“A major redundancy programme at one of the country’s premier cultural venues last year resulted in the Abbey Theatre recording losses of €1.8m.”

The Polish company Teatr Piesn Kozla (Sing of the Goat Theater) presents Shakespeare’s original text (in English), “chopped this way and that, … half-sung, half-spoken” by simply clad actors who are “more than just agile – their sinuous movements appear to be totally in-tune with the vocals.”

“For a critic, Kushner’s intense, exhilarating grapple with intimate relationships and major political issues – homophobia and the AIDS epidemic, Cold War paranoia and red-baiting, the problematic legacy of Ronald Reagan – was a new dawn.”

He’s said to be Gilmor Brown, the theatre’s founder. “Brown’s ghost has never been seen, but he’s made his presence known in other ways, such as moving things around, stomping about and taking control of the elevator, according to Pasadena Playhouse archivist Ellen Bailey, who has been associated with the theater since the 1940s.”

“Musicals generally come from somewhere else. But the movies have also handed the American musical theater some of its biggest successes of the last decade…”

“A five-year project to help up-and-coming theatre companies and artists is being launched by National Theatre Wales. WalesLab will help hundreds of artists develop their ideas, sharing their work online and at ‘summer camps’.”

Ben Brantley: “I have become increasingly and woefully aware of a number of plays that shouldn’t be on Broadway. By that, I don’t mean they’re not good enough. Goodness, as Mae West would say, has nothing to do with it. The issue at hand is size. The Broadway of the 21st century wants big.”