Category: theatre

David Tennant, star of the popular TV series, “was forced to pull out of the show in December just as it transferred to the West End’s Novello Theatre, due to a recurring back injury. Thousands of fans were left fearing that he would sit out the entire run.” Now he’s back in the title role for the production’s final week.

Bassist John Miller is a Broadway orchestra contractor, the go-to guy if you’re trying to put together a Frankie Valli-style combo for Jersey Boys, replace an oboist or violinist in the orchestra for Les Miz or find a pipa player for M. Butterfly.

“Seven senior lawyers convened in New York last month to reconsider the case against Shylock, Shakespeare’s money lender in The Merchant of Venice. One of those lawyers, Anthony Julius – best known for representing Princess Diana in her divorce from Prince Charles – explains why he voted to let merchant Antonio keep the money after all.”

“Broadway grossed $940,871,190 during the 2008 calendar year — about on par with last year’s $938 million, although that tally was hobbled by the 19-day stagehands’ strike that in 2007 darkened the majority of Rialto shows during some of the Street’s most profitable frames. … Attendance hit 12.32 million, just above the 12.29 million logged in 2007.”

“As movie adaptations of stage plays go, the recently released ‘Frost/Nixon’ and ‘Doubt’ are among the best of recent vintage, not least because the writers of the sourcing play also penned the screen versions. … But ‘Frost/Nixon’ and ‘Doubt’ are also, in very different ways, revelatory examples of how certain themes, emotions and truths simply cannot be fully and effectively transferred from stage to screen.”

“The first Sunday of 2009 saw the closing of nine Broadway shows. It’s a safe bet that no performance was more raucous than the ‘Hairspray’ finale after 6 1/2 years at the Neil Simon Theatre.”

“Mark Lamos is back leading a Connecticut theater, this time in Westport. The 62-year-old Lamos, who built Hartford Stage into a Tony Award-winning, internationally known theater from 1980 to 1997, is the new artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse starting Feb. 1.” Longtime Lamos colleague Michael Ross, formerly of Baltimore’s Center Stage and New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, will be managing director.

The Twin Cities arts community has been buzzing about the recent disclosure that Guthrie Theatre director Joe Dowling “was paid $682,229 in salary and benefits in 2007. Even discounting a one-time bonus of $100,000, his compensation surpassed that of his peers not only in New York but also at nonprofit theaters elsewhere in the United States.”

Northeast Ohio’s only professional dinner theater, founded in 1973 in Ravenna and moved to a former Vegas-style nightclub in Akron in 1988, has shut its doors after 35 years.

Charles Isherwood: “In the interest of accentuating the positive as we embark on an unusually tension-inducing new year, why not focus on a single ray of sweetness amid the gloom: For those who love the theater, this month will be a bonanza of emotional farewells and festive goodbyes in front of adoring audiences.”