Category: theatre

If “an unknown artist had stumbled so badly creating a new musical, I wouldn’t in fairness review it at all. But there’s an arrogance at work here, a cynicism that gives offense.”

British theatre is getting increasingly squeamish about offending. “A theatre culture that fears to give offence is a theatre culture that is bland and moribund, and pasting warnings all over a theatre suggest that managements fear that audiences may not be grown up enough to distinguish between real life and representation, between someone actually committing infanticide and an actor acting it.”

A couple of high-profile Broadway shows have been getting rough treatment from the critics this week, and the big stars behind them are apparently taking the whole thing personally…

Tom Stoppard’s epic three-evening play about nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals is a big undertaking…

“The genre of horror, a wildly popular moneyspinner in other branches of entertainment, is practically absent from the stage. In fact, there is so little shock and gore available that a tiny fringe theatre in south London can accurately claim to be hosting Britain’s only annual festival of horror theatre. It seems theatre has no desire, or indeed ability, to scare.”

The show took the most money ever at the box office in a single week. “Wicked took £761,000 during its eight performances at the Apollo Victoria Theatre last week, a record for a show on the London stage, they claim.”

“Over the last 10 years a new play development culture – based on American models – has taken root in British theatres and it is now so firmly embedded that it has become an industry in itself. … Access is important, but what’s the point of providing access to schemes to develop plays but not to the stages themselves? It’s like teaching people to swim but then denying them access to swimming pools. There is something cockeyed about a theatre culture that has put so many structures in place to develop plays and so few to stage them.”

“A matinee of ‘The Little Dog Laughed’ was delayed on Sunday because the show’s star was at Bed Bath & Beyond buying mattress pads.” The Broadway play, in previews, had pushed its regular 3 o’clock matinee up to 2 o’clock. “The audience understood the new schedule. So did the stage manager, and the director, and most of the actors. Just about everyone did except for the play’s star, Julie White. ‘It gets to be about noon, which is the time I would start getting ready to go to the theater for a 2 o’clock,’ Ms. White said yesterday. ‘And I think, “Oh wait, I have a whole ’nother hour, and I hate my mattress pads!” ‘ “

“The Lucille Lortel Foundation, which recently started a program to award fellowships to playwrights every two years, announced the first eight recipients. Melissa James Gibson (‘[sic]’), David Greenspan (‘She Stoops to Comedy’), Jessica Hagedorn (‘Dogeaters’), Julia Jordan (‘Tatjana in Color’), Lisa Kron (‘Well’), Lynn Nottage (‘Intimate Apparel’), Dael Orlandersmith (‘Yellowman’) and Adam Rapp (‘Red Light Winter’) will each receive $50,000. … The winners were selected by a seven-member panel that included the playwrights David Henry Hwang and Paula Vogel.” (sixth item)

Twyla Tharp’s new Bob Dylan show has been getting slammed by critics. “When a serious artist produces a dud, a lot of energy can be spent trying to figure out why, but sometimes the reason is just that the artist took on the wrong subject, and later realized this, and couldn’t back out, and ended up having to fake something.”