Category: theatre

“Theater is undergoing a metamorphosis in Las Vegas. Since the 1990s, when Las Vegas began energetically selling itself not just as a getaway for gamblers and bachelor parties but as a family-friendly destination with theme parks and entertainments for all ages, Sin City has been a port of call for well-known Broadway musicals.”

“Put simply, the aesthetic glow of the Tonys doesn’t shine very far out and barely reaches markets where both audiences and producers are less likely to use awards as a tool in their theater-making and theatergoing decisions. You think the producers of the musical “Billy Elliot,” which has been selling $1 million worth of tickets a week at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre and playing to 90-plus percent of capacity, have been waiting for the blessings of the Antoinette Perry Awards before planning to take the show on the road?”

“Described by The Evening Standard as ‘one of London’s most exciting new writers’, 34-year-old Oxford graduate Hitchings is the author of The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, which in 2008 became the first non-fiction work in six years to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.”

“It makes him sound like a theatrical Queen Mum radiating beneficence over a grateful populace. He’s not nearly as cuddly as the term implies. I see him as a sharp-eyed analyst of contemporary England and a genuinely complex writer…. His talent has always been for satirical nostalgia; and by treating him like a warm tea cosy, we ignore what he has to say.”

“In the last decade, dream work, as it is known, has spread into actors studios and classrooms across the country, taking its place among the ever expanding techniques of actor training and in the long-running debate over what leads to the most authentic performances.”

“A planning application has been submitted to the City of Westminster Council that would see a new residential development on the off-West End site include two performance spaces – a 350-seat main theatre and a secondary studio with room for around 260 standing, which would be used for jazz and world music gigs, as well as cabaret.”

“A new player will be popping up more and more frequently on Baltimore stages next season: The Almighty Dollar. As local companies prepare for the 2009-2010 theatrical season, never in recent memory has the economy played such a prominent role in determining the number and type of shows that will appear on local stages.”

“The abduction, torture and murder of two-year-old James Bulger is an event that is seared into the public memory. … Now, 16 years on, a play about the murder is due to open in London. Originally written in Swedish by Niklas Radstrom, Monsters has been translated into English and will be performed by four adult actors at the Arcola theatre in Hackney, north London.”

“A glut of great acting talent and a scarcity of distinguished new plays and musicals — the Tony nominations for the 2008-09 season, announced this morning, reveal that the more things economically change, the more they commercially stay the same. … The Tony nominating committee members have had no choice but to become connoisseurs of Happy Meals, differentiating among burgers and fries as they wipe the grease from their upper lips.”

“After the Tony nominees were announced yesterday, I put a single question to 15 of the 806 voters, theater professionals all: Did you see ‘Soul of Shaolin’? It played 24 performances in January and February at the Marquis Theater. Now the cast of 33 Chinese kung-fu monks are competing with Liza Minnelli, Will Ferrell and ‘Slava’s Snowshow’ for the Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event.”