Category: theatre

“[Artistic director Domonic] Dromgoole argues – and honestly seems to feel – that the kind of theatre the Globe does is emphatically not about pleasing the critics, but involving the audience. As such, he says, you shouldn’t think RSC or the National when you visit the Globe, but Punchdrunk or Improbable – groups who, in their different ways, enfold the audience into the action. They haven’t had an easy ride from the critics either.”

“It’s a measure of how greatly Michael Boyd has transformed the Royal Shakespeare Company’s fortunes since he took over as artistic director in April 2003 that it’s only at the end of an hour’s conversation, just as various assistants materialise to summon him back to rehearsals, that the question of the RSC’s troubled past arises, almost as an afterthought. There was a time … when ‘the problem’ of the RSC would have been the first, second and third item on the agenda.”

“Arts producer Crying Out Loud has launched the inaugural City Circ season, a new five-month showcase of contemporary circus designed to raise the profile of the art form in London. The programme will run from this month through to August and will be presented by a network of 20 venues across the capital, including Camden’s Roundhouse, Lyric Hammersmith, National Theatre, Shunt Vaults, the E4 Udderbelly at the Southbank Centre, Greenwich Dance Agency and Polka Theatre.”

“How does Michael Grandage do it? Since he took over the artistic directorship of the Donmar Theatre in 2002, the 46-year-old has eclipsed the reputation even of his illustrious predecessor Sam Mendes,” deploying a string of seemingly unlikely hits around the world: “Piaf with Elena Roger in Argentina, Frost/Nixon, Mary Stuart and the musical Parade in the States, Guys and Dolls in Australia…. Such success only looks obvious in retrospect.”

Lynn Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, but “no matter which of the three finalists had snagged the prize today, a woman was going to win it.” That matters because, as female playwrights have pointed out recently, “women playwrights are vastly underrepresented on our stages. … The Pulitzer changes the composition of our canon, the stories we as a culture tell ourselves. Women’s voices need to be a much more significant part of that.”

“There must be something in the Lake Michigan water. For the second straight year, a play originating in Chicago has won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. This year’s winner is Lynn Nottage’s ‘Ruined,’ her play set in an African brothel. In an interview Monday afternoon, Nottage described herself as ‘jubilant’ over the honor. “

“More and more, it seems, we treat every audience as though they carry a phantom remote control. We are terrified of losing them.”

“Most artists, of course, are perfectly happy to leave well enough alone, secure in the knowledge that they got it right the first time (even if they didn’t). On the other hand, revised versions of well-known works of art are quite a bit more common than you might suppose, and it turns out that more than a few great artists were near-compulsive tinkerers.”

“Culturally, Britain has always preferred, musically speaking, to trawl the back catalogue (Oliver! again, anyone?), than to push the form forward. How wonderful it would be if a competition could be devised that shone the spotlight on up-and-coming composers and lyricists, so that the material is a fresh as the talent singing it.”

A great poet? Sure, but “what Yeats really wanted to do was write plays.” Says Irish Rep director Charlotte Moore, “Most people have never seen a play by Yeats. And they are quite hard to do. His language is difficult, more difficult than Shakespeare. But the language is also beautiful. Every time through I hear something new.”