Category: theatre

“The spotlight that needs to be intensified is on dramatic writing, and on the practitioners who can make American drama a real force in the world again. It’s embarrassing that many embassies in Washington are more aggressive about showcasing their nations’ plays and players than is the hometown administration.”

“There have been comic playwrights who were more daring (George Kelly), more witty (S. N. Behrman), more rebarbative (S. J. Perelman), and more up-to-the-minute (George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart), but no playwright in Broadway’s long and raucous history has so dominated the boulevard as the softly astringent Simon.”

“Glee,” which just returned after a four-month hiatus, has struck a chord among high school choral students. It has emboldened students who are tired of being seen as dorky, and bolstered music programs across the country, with students lobbying for show choirs at their own schools.

“At the moment, the battle is being waged in a most entertaining fashion on two of London’s stages: In Sloane Square, where the hair and hedges seem to be cut daily with manicure scissors, the Royal Court Theatre has a huge hit with Posh, Laura Wade’s new play about aristocratic bully boys whose capacity for moaning over the lost land of privilege is outstripped only by their capacity for drink.”

“Mark Ravenhill, Eve Ensler and Frank McGuinness are creating original plays that will be shown live on [the UK-based satellite television network] Sky Arts as part of the broadcaster’s” new program, Sky Arts Playhouse – Live.

Michael Billington: “Given that there is so much drama in sport, why is there not more sport in drama? Not only does sport reveal humanity at its best and worst; it is also inseparable from politics, finance and race.”

“The urge to be commercially successful has driven producers to rely on tried-and-true material that boomers are likely to relate to and it’s resulted in a lot of projects high on energy and entertainment, but low on originality and serious content.”

Actress Marian Seldes will get her second Tony, this one for lifetime achievement, at the June 13 awards ceremony. “Also receiving a lifetime Tony will be Sir Alan Ayckbourn, the British playwright whose [comic trilogy] ‘The Norman Conquests’ won the award for best revival of a play last year.”

The “160-seat theater-cum-restaurant in an unfashionable London district” now regularly exports productions to the West End (eight of them, including revivals of Sunday in the Park With George and Sweet Charity) and Broadway (the current Little Night Music with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury and La Cage aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer).

The playwright, whose version of “The Liar” is having its world premiere at Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre, says he was “handed a gorgeous, intricate plot with extraordinary comic turns. And so all I had to do really in taking this was turn it up to 11 and increase the dials and increase the comic turns.” But, you know, in rhyming couplets.