Category: theatre

Ron Rosenbaum: “You have to read the whole play to understand how truly, madly, deeply bad it is, but let me exhibit some snippets of evidence. The play’s flaws lie not just in the language but in the laughable plotting.”

Each musical won “four kudos apiece including top new musical (for ‘Memphis’) and top revival (for ‘La Cage’). ‘Fences’ nabbed three trophies: one for play revival and acting awards for topliners Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.” Meanwhile, “Red” won outstanding Broadway play.

“Tradition dictates that about half the village must take part in the passion play. Oberammergau’s foresters, mechanics, innkeepers, dentists and carpenters have been growing their beards and learning their lines for the past year. This year, 2,400 villagers were involved, including 650 children.”

“I think I’ve had one of the best possible jobs in what has been the best period for the theatre since Shakespeare signed off with The Tempest in 1611. … [T]he sheer quality of theatre writing and acting in Britain since 1956 has only sporadically been matched in what, sorry, I would call the almost endless bread-and-butter pudding of the previous 399 years.”

“Sexual chemistry is a tricky illusion to pull off. Its enemy is not heterosexuality versus homosexuality. On the contrary, the generation of sensual ambivalence is one of the key components of a successful juicy on-screen (or on-stage) relationship. Its enemy is nothingness and the denial of complexity.”

“We haven’t been that big on outing our stars in Canada. The music business, I guess, has the most free-speakers and even then, once you’ve pointed to k.d. lang, Ashley MacIsaac and Rufus Wainwright, the pickings get kinda slim. But once you get into the world of actors, there are a lot fewer willing to stand up and be counted … as I discovered this week, especially those who act in the more conventional or commercial theatres.”

“In the same year in which Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Academy Award as best director, for “The Hurt Locker,” the frustration among Broadway artists over the lack of great opportunities and epic-size characters for women is anything but below the surface.”

“A change of leadership can test the mettle of even the strongest cultural institution, pointing it towards greater success, a dogged continuation of the status quo, or over a cliff. That challenge is compounded when the ones being replaced are the founding leaders.”

“Is it time to stop talking about sex and sexuality, as Mr. Setoodeh’s piece appears to suggest? On the contrary, I think the opposite – that this article points to the sexual hypocrisy that’s still in evidence in North America today, permeating the entertainment industry, which is as virulently homophobic as it ever was.”

“Glee” creator Ryan Murphy is urging an immediate boycott of Newsweek until the magazine apologizes to all of its gay readership for what Murphy calls a “needlessly cruel and mind-blowingly bigoted piece” by Ramin Setoodeh that seems to imply that gay actors shouldn’t be playing straight characters, a position that Murphy calls shocking and “blatantly homophobic,” in part because Setoodeh is gay himself.