Category: theatre

“There’s no reason why the arts pages shouldn’t be home to the kind of fierce and animated conversation that the best performance tries to provoke, where the critic who’s seen 50 Hamlets can be joined by the critic who’s part of the cultural and social world that inspires new artists and their audiences. It mightn’t be a bad idea to give the five-nights-a-week theatre critics a bit of a break too. Maybe they could go to the movies and to the opera, and tell us what they think.”

“Sir Alan Ayckbourn is stepping down as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, after 37 years. Sir Alan is to quit his post next summer but will continue to direct his plays at the venue and will premiere any new work there. The 68-year-old, who suffered a stroke last year, has been artistic director of the theatre since 1971.”

Playwright Jay Rayner has a play at London’s Royal Court Theatre, which has a long tradition of gritty tradition of working-class protest. But Rayner’s protest is different. “Why should I write something that is not germane to audiences’ lives? Theatre has always been an expensive middle-class pursuit. It is a precious, pretentious thing for precious, pretentious people. You drive in your expensive car to the theatre, get it valet parked, and then watch a play about poor people.”

“This year’s decent new crop of Broadway musicals reveals two major things about the state of the American musical. First, this newly burgeoning art form is healthier than at any time in at least the last 30 years. Second, its current aesthetic identity can only be described as delightfully eclectic.”

“In recent years, even as the Alliance developed a national reputation as an incubator for new Broadway-bound musicals like “The Color Purple,” the company has struggled to retire a $1.5 million debt and revitalize a subscriber base that has been graying and shrinking. Supporters of the Alliance believe the theater is in a good position to take advantage of the honor.”

As the New York theatre world prepares to congratulate itself at the Tony Awards, the critics are having their usual round of ‘what’s wrong with Broadway these days.’ “We decry the pandering. We rage against the casting of movie stars onstage… Yet among the many musty postures we might adopt toward the current season, carping that the theater ignored issues of consequence to the grim national mood simply should not be one of them.”

“The mania for all things British continued unabated this season on Broadway, and there’s no reason to believe it will subside anytime soon… But much of the London-originated product seen in New York this season left me disappointed in one way or another. The cumulative effect has left me wondering whether this was simply an off season, or whether all the money being lavished on plays and productions from across the ocean is bringing much in the way of lasting rewards to the Broadway environment.”

“ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway,” chronicles the success of shows from the 2003/04 Broadway season. “The film is a love letter to theater and the people who make it. It’s a New York story (all roads here lead to Times Square) that’s designed to capture the excitement of every step in the creative process, from conception to rehearsals to press openings to, if you’re good and lucky, the award ceremonies.”

“Amateurs, as the word implies, do it for pleasure – hence the cliche that am-dram is low in quality but high on winning enthusiasm. The pros get all the credibility, the part-timers get bigger audiences: 7.3 million people at 25,760 performances by Noda (the National Operatic and Dramatic Association) members in 2002, the most recent year for which figures are available. While the cultural cognoscenti sneer, am-dram gets on with being our real national theatre, beloved of the kinds of crowds the pros can only dream of attracting.”

“I still remember a row with a colleague – one of those booze-fuelled arguments that consist of hollering pointlessly at the other person until 2am. What triggered it was my suggestion that theatre critics are still not as diverse a crowd as they should be. I do find it disturbing that while black playwrights and actors are making inroads, there isn’t a single black critic writing for a national or Sunday newspaper in this country.”