Category: theatre

“Running a daring, high-quality theater in this town is nearly impossible. Whether you head the tiny Vineyard Theatre on East 15th Street (120 seats and an annual budget of $2 million) or the elephantine Roundabout Theatre Company (two Broadway spaces, an Off Broadway house, an Off-Off studio, 44,000 subscribers and $43 million to burn), you’ve got divided loyalties. Are the artists happy? Are the funders happy? Is the board happy?” So who can save the city’s stages?

“On a daily basis, creative producers are potentially artists’ best allies as they combine a highly developed aesthetic with the kind of resourceful, tenacious and innovative behaviour that theatre desperately needs if it is to thrive and flourish.”

The Monty Python-inspired musical is a smash on Broadway. It’s a smash in London. The national US tour is a hit as well. So what in the name of Arthur went wrong in Australia?

“It is somehow appropriate that during an election year threatening to cause a collective national headache, at least among Democrats, the most migraine-inducing plays of the New York theater season should both concern themselves with politics. What is surprising is that these troublesome plays should come from two of the most renowned playwrights working today.”

One of the reasons that South Pacific hasn’t been revived more often is the problem of casting Emile de Becque, the male lead. “Not even the biggest names in musical theater would have satisfied all the expectations that come with a difficult role in a beloved show seen in New York only a few times.”

One New York theatre critic has clearly had it with the city’s scene. “After years of private bitching and public grumbling about our nonprofit theaters’ toothless seasons, homogeneous production designs and timid, old-man marketing, I’ve finally found a person with the taste and courage to be the ideal artistic director of the 21st century: me.”

“The coming showdown between [Broadway revivals of] Gypsy and South Pacific is going to rip open a long-simmering dispute between commercial producers and nonprofit theater companies. The commercial producers, who take big risks with their investors’ money, bitterly resent competing for Tonys against subsidized theaters. Some producers privately say they’d like to ban the nonprofits from the Tony Awards.”

James Gardiner and Nick Blaemire are just 23, but the show they wrote together last year, Glory Days is about to make the leap to Broadway, and the two showbiz kids are on the verge of theatrical stardom. “They are young enough for you to entertain troubling thoughts about misspent youth when you consider what they’ve already accomplished.”

“More than 35 simultaneous performances of plays by Shakespeare are to take place around the world on April 23 to mark his 444th birthday. The shows – which include a Russian production of Much Ado About Nothing, featuring a mail-order bride, and a Serbian version of Romeo and Juliet – will all be performed by youth groups at 7pm, starting in New Zealand and ending in Hawaii.”

Michael Billington’s State of the Nation, an analysis of British theatre since 1945, has today been named theatre book of the year by the Society for Theatre Research.