Category: theatre

“The Madison Repertory Theatre has officially closed its doors. ‘We are not going to be producing theater again,’ said artistic director Trevin Gay. Friday was his last day on the job. Madison’s premiere professional theater company since 1987 first announced dire financial trouble at the end of January. The Rep canceled the remainder of its season and did not renew space in Overture Center at the Playhouse.”

“Facing dwindling ticket sales from U.S. theatregoers and its first deficit since the early 1990s, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is appealing to government for financial support to help it through the recession. The Stratford, Ont., festival revealed in a press release sent out on Saturday that it had suffered a $2.6-million deficit in 2008 despite a program featuring Christopher Plummer in a critically acclaimed production of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.”

“Last night the judges of the leading awards in British theatre sealed Black Watch’s status as a modern classic when they gave it four Laurence Olivier Awards – the most for any single production.”

“Alan Ayckbourn is a national treasure. He was helpful to me in putting on two of my plays and he’s a hero of mine. I don’t believe there was anything malicious in what he did, but his play has clearly been based on mine without any acknowledgement.”

“A team from the Museum of London found the remains of the theatre in Shoreditch last summer. Built in 1576, it is thought the Bard acted there and that it also hosted the premiere of Romeo and Juliet.”

The latest installment in the controversial list sweepstakes comes from Harper’s Bazaar. Dames Judi Dench and Helem Mirren top the list, which also includes such well-known figures as Caryl Churchill, Sonia Friedman, Fiona Shaw and “honorary Brit” Gillian Anderson. Names you probably don’t (yet) know include Lisa Makin, Paule Constable and Bola Agbaje.

“Wisconsin’s oldest operating theater building is undergoing some repairs in Oshkosh.
A problem with bindings on beams in the Grand Opera House’s attic has caused the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar to postpone shows or temporarily move them to the Alberta Kimball Auditorium, also in Oshkosh.”

Charles McNulty: “No matter how conniving, gossiping or suspicious those denizens of Harrison, Texas – the name he bestowed on his hometown of Wharton to protect the privacy of friends, family and neighbors – may have been, they were never insentient to the poetry of loneliness and loss, which were Foote’s twin themes and the ground that made him an American Chekhov.”

Ben Brantley: “Chekhov’s characters are endowed, for better or worse, with a painful awareness of their existential lot. They whine and moan and soliloquize about it, as figures in classic Russian literature are wont to do. Mr. Foote’s characters, being thoroughly American, aren’t big on self-analysis. They know on some level just how lonely life really is, but they tend to avoid the subject as if it were indecorous, like talking about bathroom or sexual habits.”

“Plans are underway to build a 400-seat, state of the art theatre on a graveyard just metres from the site of Shakespeare’s original playhouse in London. The £5 million venue will be built on land attached to St Leonard’s church in Shoreditch.” Opening is expected in 2012.