Category: theatre

“High-concept and immersive, intimate theater has been cropping up for years, but now in Europe it has reached such a critical mass that the Battersea Arts Center in London, known for innovation, hosted the largest one-person-audience festival this month.” Funding problems notwithstanding, the phenomenon is growing stateside as well.

“[D]uring the approximately 40 minutes I spent being pushed through the halls … I was exalted and excoriated, hailed as a genius, reviled as a charlatan and mistaken for both a rock star and a bag of garbage. I mean a real bag of garbage.”

“Purpose: To determine why so few good plays about maths and science are written, when fine dramas about other academic disciplines – art, literature, history, politics – abound. (And why has wood shop never yet produced even a comedy?)”

As Dancap Productions prepares for the closing of its two current musicals, Jersey Boys and South Pacific, the company has made redundant more than 30 staff members, mostly in sales. Because Dancap has not yet announced any shows for the upcoming season, said the company’s publicist, “there’s nothing to sell.”

“On Monday, the Public Theater said it will transfer its Shakespeare in the Park production of The Merchant of Venice to Broadway in the fall. Al Pacino will stay on in the role of Shylock,” as will “most” of this summer’s cast. The run is scheduled from Oct. 19 through Jan. 9.

Okay, it’s not, strictly speaking, a Sinatra musical; it’s a Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen/Rat Pack musical. Robin and the Seven Hoods, an adaptation of the 1964 Frank/Dino/Sammy movie which opens July 30 at San Diego’s Old Globe, incorporates such Ol’-Blue-Eyes standards as “Come Fly With Me,” “My Kind of Town (Chicago Is),” and “High Hopes.”

“Elton John and Lee Hall, who wrote the musical Billy Elliot, are teaming up to create a new show based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Lee, who won Olivier and Tony awards for his book and lyrics for the stage Billy Elliot, and an Oscar nomination for the screen version, told me Orwell’s novella was perfectly suited for the stage.”

“Unlike anything now in New York, [London’s Menier] Chocolate Factory is the rare commercial theater operation that pumps out critically acclaimed hit shows on shoestring budgets … Its recent successes on Broadway has inspired [director David] Babani to envision a branch of the Chocolate Factory in New York someday.”

Over less than three decades, Madame Arnfeldt – the elderly former courtesan in A Little Night Music – has been played by an remarkable list of acting legends: Hermoine Gingold, Claire Bloom, Margaret Hamilton, Zoe Caldwell, Vanessa Redgrave, Elaine Stritch, Leslie Caron … Why do they fiud such a small role to be such a plum?

Jason Zinoman: “His hardheaded new performance [in Central Park] seems like a direct rebuke of his previous one [in the 2004 film], going against the grain of the usual cheap humanizing. This Shylock is strong, humorless, and not quite as smart as he thinks he is.”