Category: theatre

St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre is one of only three full-season African-American companies in the US, and while success has sometimes meant struggling, the company has become a mainstay of the local scene. “It’s a delicate wedding of realism and idealism, with works tackling social issues yet remaining grounded in the alchemy of a group of people establishing trust over a long period of time.”

After facing accusations of abandoning Britain by launching a new work in New York last year, playwright David Hare is returning home with two plays set to hit the London stage in 2008.

Paula Vogel is high on a new generation of playwrighs. “In the past 30 years I have not seen such an extraordinary flowering of talent — so attention must be paid. I think these playwrights are post-post-modern. They are using different strategies other than irony.. television has brought irony to its height and perhaps that’s why theatre is turning away from that.”

“A state-of-the-art off-Broadway theater owned and operated by two of Broadway’s top producers is riddled with debt and faces possible foreclosure and bankruptcy… The theater – 37 Arts, recently home to In the Heights – was supposed to revolutionize off-Broadway when it opened to much fanfare in 2005.”

The Wooster Group, the acclaimed experimental theater group, will be the resident company in a new theater in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s arts center in Manhattan

“I know it’s happening under the brilliant Michael Grandage, I know he won award-nominations as a young thesp, I know he’s a decent age for the part – but still my heart thuds instinctively to the floor. … Hamlet can be many things – sardonic or guileless, fey or brutish, heart-rending or clownish, emotionally transparent or impossibly remote – and in the best performances he (sometimes she) succeeds in being all of those things at once. One thing Hamlet can’t be, though, is mediocre.”

“One thing critics share with all theatregoers is the essential fact that they need to get to the venue, since one perk the profession doesn’t stretch to is a chartered limo to ease the journey. As I made my lengthy, elaborate way last week to two destinations, one of which remained out of reach, I had to ask myself how many shows justify the efforts involved these days in getting there, especially for audiences who then have to fork out copious amounts of dosh upon arrival?”

Ealier this month a Florida Episcopalian bishop got a high school production of “La Cage aux Folles” canceled. This weekend “the students took the show to Orlando Repertory Theatre after a week of debate about whether the bishop overstepped his bounds or held his moral ground. At least three other theaters also opened their doors to the group.”

Despite an astronomic $450 top ticket price, “Young Frankenstein” drew a line stretching down the street on the first day of ticket sales. By midmorning Monday, an estimated 150-200 people were waiting patiently to purchase tickets for “Young Frankenstein,” the Mel Brooks musical, whose box office at the Hilton opened at 10 a.m.

“In terms of sheer special-effects firepower, Vegas blows Broadway away. As for traditional musical theater, not so much. The much-ballyhooed Broadway-West trend has fizzled out after “Avenue Q” and “Hairspray” flopped here. Jukebox smash-musicals (“Mamma Mia!” and the soon-to-arrive “Jersey Boys”) may be exceptions to the rule, but most of the tuners that pop at the box office in Vegas qualify as Broadway-lite, watered-down 90-minute versions of the originals, easy on narrative and heavy on glam.”