Category: theatre

High School Musical is a small screen phenomenon. It has a huge following. But will it translate to the West End stage?

Want to know what your audience thinks about your play? There are much better ways than making them fill out audience surveys…

West End musical Hairspray has become the quickest show ever to recoup at the Shaftesbury Theatre, earning back its entire £3.5 million capitalisation in 29 weeks.

Cirque du Soleil is dismissing reports that an oil-rich Dubai investment fund has approached the Canadian company with a takeover bid.

August: Osage County was a hit at the Tonys, and producers around North America are interested. But: “We have found our subscribers will accept the F-word if it is not repeated all evening long. But they won’t tolerate the C-word, which also figures prominently in Osage.”

“In Britain, I think it’s fair to say that we have a pretty established tradition, if not a hard and fast rule, that critics don’t read new plays before they see them. There are also cultural reasons why a British critic won’t read a play before they see it…”

So thinks playwright David Wood. “Children’s theatre should be getting, if not as much as, more funding than adult theatre. Our seat prices have rightly to be kept low, yet the production values we keep as high as possible, and there is a natural gap there between revenue and expenditure. How do you fill that? We try to get sponsorship, we try to get funding, but small people attract only small funding.”

“It’s true that London has something very special to offer; it is the theatre capital of the entire world. But the variety on offer in the West End is being completely eroded. The reason for that is marketing and the ways that these enormous musicals are promoted; televising the casting of musicals is having a great impact on straight theatre, because we just can’t use those sorts of gimmicks to sell tickets. The length of runs is also problematic.”

“In one of the fastest-paced, happiest Tony shows in memory, what stood out was how, in conclusion to a troubled season, the theater’s most commercial awards looked for once a lot like the viewers watching it across the nation.”

“While it’s true that corny, old-fashioned song and dance is enjoying a resurgence thanks to “High School Musical,” that phenomenon has nothing to do with the Great White Way. For kids with a throbbing thing for Zac Efron, I suspect the Tonys is a square, graying old dame, like spending an evening with the school librarian.”