Category: theatre

“The Tony Awards will inaugurate the Isabelle Stevenson Award next year, with the nod going to a member of the legit community with a notable track record as a volunteer for humanitarian, social service or charity orgs not necessarily tied to theater.”

“The Arizona Project tells the stories of former Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, as well as those of more than 30 women with relationships to the American judicial system, including prison system employees, incarcerated women, lawyers, and activists.”

The new Broadway production of Spider-Man, directed by Julie Taymor, is set to become the most expensive show in history, at $35m to $40m. “If – and it’s a big “if” where Julie The Lion Taymor is concerned – they do bring it in for $35 million, Spider-Man, with a weekly running cost of $1 million, will have to run about 8,000 years in a Broadway theater just to break even.”

“Roger Daltrey wants to turn his cult movie Quadrophenia into a West End musical – and would love Carl Barat and Amy Winehouse to star in it.”

“House Full” signs are in markedly short supply of late in a climate in which you can buy tickets on the day to erstwhile sellouts such as Joseph and Hairspray. To that extent, London’s theatreland now bears comparison with New York, where big-deal Tony winners such as Spring Awakening and Spamalot would appear from their grosses to be winding down.

“This increasing importance of sound in the theatre is, in part, down to new and improved technologies, but productions at the vanguard of sound design are as likely to be lo-fi as high-tech. And it goes hand in hand with the trend towards more immersive theatre, and cross-fertilisation between theatre, film and radio.”

“In yet another dose of bad news for Broadway, the producers of the long running hit musical Hairspray, announced on Friday that the show will close on January 18. The announcement makes Hairspray the fourth Broadway show to post a closing notice in the last two weeks.”

“Broadway theaters will dim their lights on Friday to honor the late Paul Newman, who first set foot on a Broadway stage in 1953. … The Broadway League said the marquees of the New York theaters that line the streets fanning off Broadway and Times Square would be dimmed for one minute at 8 p.m. (midnight GMT) on Friday.”

“The writing reared up and resisted what normally happens when I make friends with a text… Beckett has taken phrases that sound like real speech, yet they disintegrate just as the images form. The effect on the hearer is genius: instead of frustrating the audience, he keeps them on tenterhooks hoping that the launch of the next phrase will make sense of what has gone before.”

The Eisenhower Theater at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center reopens this week after an $18m renovation. In addition to removing some of the more obviously dated decorative features, the renovation brings the theater into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and updates the in-house audio/visual system.