Category: theatre

“Its alleged transgressions are, of course, rather less heinous than the real Enron Corporation’s multibillion-dollar fraud, which led in 2001 to the collapse of the once-mighty company. According to Matthew Byam Shaw, one of the producers, Enron the play was guilty of confusing and upsetting conservative Broadway audiences.”

“The WTF has chosen Jenny Gersten to succeed Nicholas Martin, who will leave the position after the upcoming 2010 summer season.” A former associate producer at Williamstown, Gersten has since worked “in New York City: She was artistic director for The Naked Angels … and currently serves as associate producer for The Public Theatre.”

“Last Friday, British theatre took a small step in the direction of free speech. At the Soho Theatre, in the heart of London’s west end, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Behzti was performed in the UK for the first time since it was controversially cancelled in 2004. Let us be clear: this was no great stride for freedom, more an anxious shuffle.”

Michael Billington: “[O]ne reason for the attacks is the entrenched American view that visual pyrotechnics and razzle-dazzle are the special province of the musical. … It’s permissible for Wicked or Legally Blonde to deploy expressionist techniques but, on Broadway at least, plays are expected to conform to the realist rules.”

“At 36, [David] Muse, currently associate artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, will become the youngest chief by far of a first-rank theater company in the capital. … The job, of course, does not come without challenges. It’s never easy, filling the contours of a seat warmed by the person who designed it decades ago.”

“On Tuesday, though, the 2010 Tony Award nominations drew a sharp distinction between commercial interests and artistic success, with recognition going to several shows with few, if any, stars and small audiences.”

“Just a few years ago, off-Broadway was facing its final curtain call. Theaters with fewer than 500 seats–the dividing line between off-Broadway and Broadway venues–were being shuttered at a rapid pace and producers were abandoning Broadway’s lower-priced cousin. Now, a revival is under way.”

“The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, which has been a prominent incubator for American theater for the past 46 years, will receive the 2010 Regional Theatre Tony Award, one of the industry’s top prizes.”

“While these investors will never earn as many dollars as those who made much bigger bets on blockbuster musicals like “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Wicked” with much higher ticket prices, “Fantasticks” backers will still most likely enjoy a more sizable profit in percentage terms: accountants for the show estimated their total return at about 24,000 percent since 1960.”

“No star presence on the order of Hugh Jackman, so majestically miscast as a thuggish Chicago cop in the sold-out autumn bore ‘A Steady Rain.’ No scandalous, headline-grabbing target, a la the wildly overproduced British import ‘Enron.’ And not a trace of the cynical, formulaic approach of the desperately unfunny musical version of ‘The Addams Family.'”