Category: theatre

“In one-on-one, anything goes. You might find yourself in a coffin, a bath, or dangling from a window, four storeys up. This is front-line theatre with no rules.” Whether despite that or because of it, most one-on-ones “sit on the knife edge of your comfort zone.”

“The great revival of striptease in recent years, which concentrates as much on the tease as the strip and features none of the in-yer-face rudery of the defunct Raymond Revuebar and louche table-dancing clubs, is part of the welcome return of variety and light entertainment to London”

“While horror was once thought of as merely lowbrow entertainment, younger generations raised on a diet of Halloween and The Exorcist are perfectly willing to take a vampire seriously. That’s why a new group of creepy plays is so intriguing: contemporary theater may be developing a horror genre of its own.”

In the Barbican’s fastest-selling show of the year, “[e]ach person, or passenger, is taken on a 40-minute ride by wheelchair where they quantum leap into unrelated scenarios, becoming the main protagonist in each scene, often with hundreds of volunteer performers looking on. … It’s very much like The Truman Show, with all the details very exact.”

“[T]he show was supposed to be another milestone: a production that could compete artistically and commercially with Broadway, blending signature Cirque acrobatics and clowns with elements of vaudeville, dance and musical theater. Instead Banana Shpeel will go down as one of the most frustrating failures in Cirque’s history.”

“When Prospero gives up the ‘art’ of magic and says he’ll ‘retire me to my Milan, where every third thought shall be my grave’ in the final scene … generations of critics have imagined Shakespeare similarly tottering off to Stratford-upon-Avon to putter in the garden. But not everyone is as soft-headed.”

“Michael Wilson, the energetic artistic director of Hartford Stage who embraced the works of Tennessee Williams, Horton Foote and new playwrights during his 13-year tenure, will leave the theater at the end of its 2010-11 [season]. … Wilson’s activities increasingly took him to New York, often waving the banner of Hartford Stage.”

“[T]he decision … reflects a lack of understanding of the theater festival’s unique place in the city’s cultural ecology. There is simply nowhere else to experience the kinds of offerings [its artistic director] was importing to Los Angeles. Beyond the Brooklyn Academy of Music and one or two lonesome xenophilic venues in the U.S., the only option is a pricey European flight.”

“Even many Broadwayites, it seems, find themselves unhappy with the way things are,” as response to this year’s Tony Awards indicates. “If Broadway is purely a business, as commercial theater’s defenders love to maintain, then clearly business as usual has some problems.”

“The series will offer a reduced number of individual performances in dance, jazz, world music and more — 47 this season, down from 85 performances last year. But the entire theater festival was a casualty of budgetary and other economic factors.”