Category: theatre

“With rights finally available … the mounting of a high-school or college production of Phantom may be a question of resources. Chuck Vassallo, director of performing arts at the Professional Performing Arts School, in Midtown, said high schools may find it challenging to accommodate the production standards required of a technically sophisticated show like Phantom.”

“Occasionally American-English does that; serves up a word or phrase that is so direct, so baldly descriptive that at once it destroys the elegance of the language while adding admirable elemental clarity. ‘Want ads’ is a good example of the form. It’s a vulgar expression but, like a drunk on a train, beguiles more than repulses. I wrote it down.”

“ArtsEmerson’s inaugural season, which kicks off in September, features an ambitious slate of 17 productions,” and while its “$5 million annual operating budget won’t approach those of the Huntington Theatre Company ($11 million) and ART (nearly $10 million),” presenting is not all it will do. Developing new work is in the mix, too.

“The complete installation, made mostly of plain gray corrugated cardboard, includes barracks, guard towers, crematoriums, gas chambers with buckets of gas pellets, a dining hall for the guards, a train and tracks, and the notorious gateway sign, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei,’ ‘Work Makes You Free.'”

“In less than a decade, the architecture of Washington theater has undergone the most radical revision in history. … While the physical expansion has given the theaters of Washington more flexibility, it has also upped the pressure, compelling boards and artistic directors to consider new methods of putting the spaces to work. In many cases, that has meant including in their seasons more plays by visiting companies.”

Libby Purves: “[W]hat is a critic but an audience member with the duty to pass on the word? Stepping into his shoes as chief theatre critic of The Times today, not without apprehension and with more humility than you can possibly guess, I take that message in.”

“It is a question that baffles me because of the adventurous nature of Chicago theater and I mean, it’s CHICAGO, land of Wright, Brooks, Hansberry, Forrest…. I know there are theatres in Chi that presently stand and are successful but I am talking about one that speaks to an America of the 21st Century, the one that voted in the US’s first black president (from Chicago!).”

“Eighty per cent of our crime is grand larcenies,” said the commanding officer of one of the two NYPD precincts being honored at this year’s Tony Awards. “You go out to the theatre, you go out to dinner, you put your pocketbook on the back of your chair–and somebody comes and steals your wallet.”

“Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection has turned down a request from the city of Miami that the state take back the deed to long-dormant Coconut Grove Playhouse.”

The biggest selling live tour in Britain this year is not a superannuated rock band but Peter Kay’s 90-date Tour That Doesn’t Tour Tour, which has sold more than 750,000 tickets and includes 35 nights in Manchester alone. The manager of the Manchester Evening News Arena in the city described Kay’s tour as the “the biggest arena tour by anybody, ever, in this country”.