Category: theatre

“Christine Ebersole is giving a performance that critics hailed as one of the great star turns in recent Broadway history” in Grey Gardens. But the role is apparently so demanding that Ebersole has begun missing performances because of exhaustion, “causing the show’s producers to fret that she might jeopardize her chances of winning the Tony if she’s unable to do the show eight times a week. They met with her in her dressing room one night last month and told her to take a week off so she could pull herself together before the spring run-up to the Tonys, which are handed out in June.”

“Local theater has offered a kind of life raft from the desolation of waiting for agents to call as days turn into decades. (Somebody once noted that Los Angeles is the only city where one can die of encouragement.) For artists in or out of the Industry, theater provides at least some community, and places to perform or be performed.”

New Jersey state legislators are rallying to save the state’s Papermill Theatre, offering financial help. But that help might not be quick enough. “Faced with a cash crunch so severe that they cannot make payroll next week, theater officials said Monday they will cancel their next set to begin a five-week run next Wednesday — and lay off staff unless they get $1.5 million by tomorrow. Another $1.5 million is needed to mount the season’s final show.”

“Superior artistry was mostly lacking at this year’s festival, unfortunately. The selections at the festival cannot be used as a barometer of contemporary American playwriting. New plays are produced by the dozens each year at regional theaters. But it was dispiriting to come away from immersion in new playwriting with little to celebrate.”

Amanda Fortini sees Joan Didion exerting control in “The Year of Magical Thinking.” “For all her invocation of I, she is never truly confessional. Her autobiographical writing might be described as a literary fan dance, in which she seduces the reader through revelatory feints but ultimately exposes very little.”

“New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, which has presented Broadway stars and up-and-comers in plays and musicals since 1938, has run out of money and needs $1.5 million to survive the week.”

“At the Humana Festival of New American Plays, which takes place every spring in Louisville, Ky., the running joke every year is to come up with that common thread. One year it’s lesbians. Another it’s men in women’s clothing. This year you could say Humana was about male-on-male kissing. Or, like all those other years, you could look past the silly classifications and see that it was about something more.”

When the producers of the new Broadway revival of Grease decided to drum up interest in the production by launching a televised competition to allow America to select the leading performers, they probably expected that the TV show might tank with a broad public that has little interest in Broadway. But what they may not have expected was the backlash from what few viewers the show did have once the winners were announced. Despite strong box office sales, Ticketmaster was swamped with calls from unhappy viewers wanting their money back when their personal faves didn’t land the leading roles.

Louisville’s Humana Festival, which spotlights new plays and emerging playwrights, is underway, and theatrical agents and producers are swarming about, looking for the Next Big Thing. But are they looking in the wrong place? “The best of such work invariably takes place among ensemble artists who live and work together in the same city, not among casts imported for an individual production in a high-stakes festival.”

“In 1984, a survey found that only 12% of artistic directors in British theatres were women. Last year, 22 years on, another survey found this figure had risen – but only to 19%.” But perhaps more important than numbers is the fact that women are becoming far more visible at the helms of the companies they head.