Category: theatre

“However, after years of negotiations, the two parties have finally come to an agreement for a completely revamped package for stage, lighting and sound technicians, which includes provision for Sunday working, as well as a significant increase to basic pay rates.”

“Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the two male members of pop quartet ABBA, have settled a long-running legal dispute with a Swedish playwright over credits for a musical that was once Broadway-bound.”

The West End may currently be running with 25 “musicals” but “the idea of a revitalisation of the form is very much overplayed. Six are blockbuster films reworked in the hope that they will already have a receptive audience, five are jukebox musicals using the well-worn hits of popular artists such as Abba or Buddy Holly, five are revivals of old favourites such as The Sound of Music, one is a catalogue show of the works of the composer-lyricist William Finn, another an African take on Mozart, which leaves seven original works, some of which have been running for close on 20 years, such as Phantom of the Opera or Blood Brothers.”

“Chiwetel Ejiofor stole the limelight at the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards last night, eclipsing two of Britain’s leading Shakespearean actors, Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.”

“Musicals that choose not to sing of moons and Junes will be familiar to anyone paying attention to the evolution of American theater. In the last few decades, as its stock in the cultural marketplace has steadily slid, the musical has been liberated, in a way, to go places where the masses may not be ready to follow.”

“In recent years many of the 75 companies that form the League of Resident Theaters have looked at their aging or unaesthetic homes and joined what amounts to a nonprofit theatrical building boom. [But] one can’t help sensing… a plaintive question behind the platitudes: Who are these buildings for?”

The artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, André Bishop, said the goal is to replenish Lincoln Center “with new generations of writers and directors and designers and audiences” and to “broaden the scope and diversity” of the work the theater produces.

“The trade union is currently pushing for the existing basic pay rate for actors working in the West End to increase from £381 per week to £550. A new second minimum wage of £650 is also being sought for performers who are required to work on Sundays.”

“If theatres enter into contracts with audiences that really put the audience at the centre of their work, perhaps they will discover that the much derided traditional middle-class, middle-aged audience isn’t as adverse to risk and innovation as they imagine.”

Desperate Housewives is set to be made into a musical, according to one of the hit show’s stars.