Category: theatre

“The Festival Fringe has cemented its status as the world’s biggest arts festival by selling a record 1.7 million tickets.”

“Perhaps London is, to some extent, a victim of the 1980s British musical boom: a phenomenon that created long-running shows where the title was the star, not the person in it. With all due respect to their present casts, does the general public have any idea who’s in the West End Les Miserables or Phantom at this very moment?”

“American visitors to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe might have been fewer but US performers scored one of their best results at this year’s prestigious Stage Awards for Acting Excellence.”

The cast of the stage version of “High School Musical” rehearses through the night at Disneyland Paris. “This kind of show might once have been seen as the kind of embarrassing first step that singers and dancers go quiet about when they make it to the West End. While most of these young performers, living in student-dorm style accommodation with the rest of the 12,200 staff, are keen to move on to bigger stages and full-length shows, many are increasingly proud of working at the resort….”

“The National Theatre of Scotland’s smash hit ‘Black Watch’ has been to Scottish theatre what JK Rowling has been to children’s literature, playing to packed audiences in Edinburgh last August and then on tour this year, generating the kind of positive reviews that normally have to be paid for.”

“Police special forces stormed the performance of a play by an underground theatre group in Belarus on Wednesday and arrested 50 people. Political opponents and counterculture groups have been suppressed in the former Soviet republic of Belarus under the leadership of Alexander Lukashenko. The Free Theatre angered the regime this summer.”

“Staged by Susan Stroman with impressive fluidity, given its heft, “Young Frankenstein” has a cast of expert merrymakers; shtick galore; winning dance numbers; elaborate sets by Robin Wagner that are marvels of seamless stage technology; and all the explosions, fog and wowie lighting effects (by Peter Kaczorowski) a rumored $20 million budget can buy. But the humor is choppy, and the one-liners repeated from the film script (by Brooks and Gene Wilder) can fall flat.”

“Young Frankenstein” is still in tryouts in Seattle. But already Mel Brooks and his collaborators are looking at their next project. “It could be ‘High Anxiety’,” Brooks collaborator Thomas Meehan said of the 1977 Hitchcock parody at the ‘Young Frankenstein’ opening-night party. “That’s the leading candidate. We have such a great time. We don’t play golf. We like to work.”

Fans taping Broadway shows have become common. And the videos end up on YouTube. “Spurred by requests from many Equity members, the union has shut down 1,000 online posts of illicitly taped plays, 95 percent of which were on YouTube. The problem has grown so large that the union now has a direct line to YouTube to demand, no questions asked, that content be removed.”

“Leaders of the now-closed Coconut Grove Playhouse said Tuesday that they are exploring a future partnership with a local college or university to reopen and revitalize the historic theater.”