Category: theatre

“The Royal Court Theatre has dominated the shortlist for this year’s London Evening Standard Theatre Awards with 11 nominations. By comparison, the National Theatre has received three nominations and the Donmar Warehouse only one.”

“The union contends the producers locked out the musicians beginning with the Oct. 17 performance [of ‘Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding’], replacing them with recorded music.” It argues the show’s “producers are bound by a labor contract that was struck with the old producers, a deal that does not expire until 2011.”

“The decision to open the national tour of ‘Dreamgirls’ at the Apollo, where this 1981 Broadway musical begins and ends, would seem to be a natural. The producer John Breglio recalled that the initial reaction was quite different, however: ‘Everybody thought I was crazy.'”

“We’ve got to get away from the idea that it’s good to go to the theatre,” says young playwright Mike Bartlett over lunch at London’s Royal Court theatre, where his new play is about to open. “It isn’t church. There’s nothing innately good about it. Most theatre is still really bad.”

“Words sort of get in the way sometimes,” says Enda Walsh, whose The New Electric Ballroom is making a highly praised New York debut. When he was rehearsing a play in Italy, “I had a translator for three days, but then I got rid of her because I didn’t need her. I knew the play, they knew the play, and it was about finding the rhythm of it.”

Directing his new piece The Starry Messenger has proven an especially ill-starred process for the playwright, involving his wife and his best friend (the leads), late rewrites, the 11th-hour walkout of one actor, and the distraction of a complicated lawsuit over Lonergan’s latest film.

“As this Spider-Man tale opens, the audience sees New York City ‘on fire and in ruins’ as ‘a section of the Brooklyn Bridge ascends with Mary Jane bound and dangling helplessly from the bridge’.” The show’s money troubles mean it risks passing both the Tony deadline and the expiration of the license from Marvel Comics.

The producers of the long-anticipated musical are to meet with director Taymor and other creative team members to discuss the show’s now-considerable cash flow, logistical and scheduling problems.

“Today, the Montreal-based Cirque said the show will be titled ‘Viva ELVIS’ and that it will premiere in December at its permanent home” in Las Vegas. “Choreographer Vincent Paterson … describes the production as ‘an abstract biography of Elvis Presley’ that will incorporate some ‘acting moments’ spoken in English.”

For National Theatre of Wales artistic director John McGrath, the challenge “is to build an audience for the NTW in a country that has a long tradition of amateur performance, but one of the lowest attendance rates at professional theatre in the UK. McGrath thinks the answer is to make theatre in, and with, those communities. “