Category: theatre

“Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption is to receive its UK stage premiere at the West End’s Wyndham’s Theatre this September. Written by Owen O’Neill and Dave Johns, the play is based on King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption and follows the seven-time Academy Award nominated film of 1994, which starred Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.”

“The project to rebuild Belfast’s Lyric Theatre has received a boost with the offer of a £500,000 grant from a US-based charitable foundation. The Kresge Foundation will hand over the money if the Lyric can raise £800,000 by June next year. … The new theatre will consist of a 394-seat main auditorium, a 150-seat studio theatre, a rehearsal room, extensive riverfront foyers and bar, backstage facilities and office accommodation.”

“Fringe theatre companies have warned that the sector will be ‘destroyed’ if proposals by Equity seeking to enforce the National Minimum Wage for all actors become law.”

In The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer, a chamber music-theater piece opening this week in Vienna, Malkovich plays Jack Unterweger, an Austrian poet/journalist/murderer who was released from prison in 1990 following a campaign by “Viennese cafe intellectuals” – and went on to kill 11 prostitutes by strangling them with their bra straps. “[A]s a journalist for the state broadcaster, he was reporting on the very crime wave for which he was responsible.”

“[I]magine the potential for a multimillion-dollar Broadway musical based on the ‘Thriller’ video and brandishing the seal of approval from Jackson himself. The Nederlander Organization,” which announced that project in January, “may be sitting on a gold mine. But the gold mine won’t be producing for a while. The musical has yet to be written, and Jackson’s sudden death has thrown the production into confusion.”

By cutting “Joan D’Arc” from its fall lineup, saying the show wasn’t ready for Chicago, the Goodman Theatre has enraged its producing partner, Austria’s Linz09 festival. “We are appalled by the Goodman Theatre’s actions and wording as it represents an insult to the artistic integrity of the project and the work of all involved artists,” wrote the festival’s Airan Berg, who called the Goodman’s decision “censorship.”

“[T]he recent rise to prominence of several actors recognized by regional theaters for their high school-era performances is lending regional theaters credibility” even as “television shows like ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and ‘American Idol’ have also directed attention to young people in the performing arts.” Into this milieu step the Jimmy Awards, named for producer James M. Nederlander and honoring high school musical theatre performers from across the country.

“That collective ‘oooh’ you just heard from Broadway is the sound of theatergoers whose solid (or sullied) flesh has melted and resolved itself into a dew after learning that Jude Law is headed their way.”

“The revival of David Mamet’s 1992 play, starring Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman and directed by Doug Hughes, opened at the Mark Taper Forum on June 5 to largely positive reviews. It will open at the John Golden Theater on Oct.  11.  … Oleanna had its world premiere in May 1992 in Cambridge, Mass., around the time of the he-said/she-said Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings … [and] premiered off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre the same year.”

“Ariel and her underwater friends have officially run out of air. Producers … announced today that the musical will end its run Aug. 30 after 685 performances and 50 previews. A national tour is set to begin in fall 2010. Based on the 1989 Disney animated film, The Little Mermaid opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in January 2008 to scathing reviews.”