Category: theatre

The close association of several winners of the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize, the richest award in Canadian theatre, to the Toronto theatre company Necessary Angel has led one former finalist to speak out about what she calls the “appearance of a conflict of interest.”

The director of Amsterdam’s top theater company – known in New York for his daring stagings of A Streetcar Named Desire, Hedda Gabler and The Misanthrope – is making a specialty of producing great screenplays as live theater. Sure, we’ve seen it for years on Broadway with musicals (The Producers, Hairspray, The Lion King, Xanadu and so on and on and on), but van Hove stages such art-film classics as the Cassavetes scripts Faces and Opening Night, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, and Bergman’s Cries and Whispers.

The scrapping of a standardized test on Shakespeare in UK schools was meant to give teachers the freedom to approach the Bard’s plays more creatively. “However, one of the unintended consequences of the announcement seems to be that Shakespeare is falling off the curriculum by default.”

“If the 2008 election signals a sea change in American racial and class attitudes, the first signs are likely to come from African-American comedians. At comedy venues all over Los Angeles, they’re trying out new material about Obama – his nearly angelic politeness, his youth, vigor, good looks, and model family.”

“How handy it is these days for producers to blame ‘the economy’ whenever a show falls apart. And how easily the media accept it. The latest example: The cancellation, on the eve of rehearsals, of John Guare’s new play, ‘A Free Man of Color,’ at The Public Theater.”

“Eugene O’Neill rewrote compulsively; Bertolt Brecht published three alarmingly different versions of Galileo; and Leonard Bernstein’s musical Candide burned through three book writers and lyricists (Dorothy Parker and James Agee among them). … Instead of inventing an entirely new work, playwrights instead reduce, reuse and recycle. But is this really good for the theatrical environment?”

“Broadway went from ‘In the Heights’ to ‘Under the Sea’ in front of the entrance of Macy’s in New York, as the city’s beleaguered theater industry sought to sell itself to a national audience. After a grim two months in which 11 Broadway shows closed or announced their intention to close, producers looked to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to jumpstart the survivors.”

The little powerhouse took three big prizes: Best Director – Michael Grandage for Ivanov, Othello and The Chalk Garden; Best Actress – Margaret Tyzack and Penelope Wilton, jointly, for The Chalk Garden; and Best Actor – Chiwetel Ejiofor, beating out Kevin Spacey, Alan Rickman, Kenneth Branagh and Simon Russell Beale with his performance as Othello. Spacey received a special award for his work as director of London’s Old Vic.

The Evening Standard‘s judges explain their choices.

The members of British Equity who perform in musicals have voted to accept a proposal which will bring the minimum wage up to £600 per week. In exchange, Equity has agreed to allow Sunday performances.