Category: theatre

“The Pantages Theatre Arts Society (PTAS) has officially pulled the plug on its fight to preserve and restore the theatre. … The group says their decision is the result of the city’s failure to approve a restoration plan by developer and owner Marc Williams, with whom they had been working.”

“Three years ago, the theatre world was shocked to learn that Mark Ravenhill, the author of Shopping and F***ing, would put his name to a new version of Dick Whittington. … This Christmas, it’s the turn of an even more unlikely playwright”: Richard Bean.

DreamWorks has bought the rights to the 1982 novel by Michael Morpugo, on which the play is based. “With its innovative use of life-size puppets to depict the horses of the first world war, the story of a young Devon farmhand who braves the trenches in an effort to find his beloved colt has proved a huge success on stage.”

“Pantomimes — recastings of old children’s stories with vaudeville, audience participation, puns, singing and cross-dressing — are an honorable, even essential, part of the British Christmas season. Meant to appeal to all ages, they are enduringly popular, flamboyantly silly and, if done well, hugely lucrative. They often feature big stars.”

With the Roundabout Theatre Company “expecting to end the fiscal year with its first budget deficit since 1992,” some producers say it’s “a case study of an arts institution overextending itself financially — all the more so after a powerful board member offered the company a new theater — as well as creatively.”

“The Signature Theater Company is to announce on Tuesday that it has raised $41 million of the $60 million goal for its new theater on West 42nd Street, designed by Frank Gehry and developed by the Related Companies.”

“The new deal will improve health-care coverage for roughly 240 workers employed at more than 30 shows in the theater district. The pact also calls for pay raises, which will begin in the second year of the agreement, and a better pension package.”

“The stage bounty of 2009 is a vibrant reminder: A scene this rich in excellent local actors and other stage artists, with droves of avid theatergoers, is worth patronizing, protecting and investing in.”

“In the past decade alone, there have been more than 4,000 productions of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. On Wednesday night, the one that has been playing at the Barrow Street Theater in the West Village broke the record that the original Broadway production from 1938 set for its longest run: 337 performances, and counting.”

“Sorry to have to break it to all those cultural Cassandras out there, but we’re not going to get off that easy. The theater, to borrow from Stephen Sondheim, is still here. Neither the housing bubble nor the financial-services industry free fall were enough to put the nail in the coffin. We’ve made our overpriced bed — now it’s time to figure out how to dream better in it.”