Mark Fisher: “In my review of [a Glasgow] production of Ibsen’s Ghosts, I wrote that Pastor Manders’s ‘homilies about marital fidelity’ produced ‘derisory laughter’, a response the director believes the playwright intended. In Norway, he said, they stage Ibsen more as domestic comedy than the weighty drama we assume here.”
Category: theatre
The Globe – A Theatre That Pays Its Own Way (And More)
“Along with tours in both Britain and the United States, the Globe has played to 480,000 people this year, a beacon of excellence and enlightenment that makes considerable returns to the Treasury while costing the taxpayer nothing.”
Nearly Two Decades Later, “Angels In America” Confirms Its Place As A Masterpiece
“By now there have been hundreds of professional productions worldwide. But the reach of “Angels” into the heartland came with furious protest at first.”
Oscar Hammerstein, 50 Years Later
“He was quoted as saying you learn much more from a flop than a hit because it’s hard to learn anything when everyone is praising you to the skies on those opening nights when everything is going well.”
This Booming Business Of Haunted Houses
“In the past two decades, haunted houses have become a booming national industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars and includes family-friendly theme parks, huge high-tech productions and evangelical Christian hell houses.”
Resurrection for Chicago’s Shattered Globe Theatre
“The end of the venerable off-Loop theater was reported by some outlets [last month], based on an unsigned fax declaring a shut-down. But the ensemble members were never on board with that choice. And it turns out that the company now has a new board of directors and will be run by artistic director Roger Smart.”
Robin Williams Confirms He’ll Star in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
Says Williams of the play, which will open on Broadway this spring, “It just hit me hard, it was so powerful. I read it, and I was going: ‘I’m in. I can come into it and create it from the ground up.’ And I’m hairy enough to be a tiger, so that’s good.”
Playwrights Should Have Their Characters Talk to Each Other, Not to Us
Charles Isherwood: “Direct address, as it is called in the trade, has become the kudzu of new playwriting, running wild across the contemporary landscape and threatening to strangle any and all other dramaturgical devices.”
Forgotten Sondheim Musical Released on DVD
“Evening Primrose was originally broadcast on ABC Stage 67, a cultural TV series that featured dramas, musicals and other entertainment. The musical, with an original score by Sondheim, starred Anthony Perkins, Dorothy Stickney, Larry Gates and Charmian Carr.”
Philip Seymour Hoffman to Play Willy Loman on B’way
“The director Mike Nichols confirmed on Wednesday that he would mount a Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman next fall starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman and Linda Emond as Linda Loman.”