Though Bombay Dreams was a hit in London, it was not a big critical success. So before it comes to Broadway, the show has been extensively remade. “Though it is typical to tweak London imports like “Mamma Mia!” for Broadway, the “Bombay Dreams” revision is one of the most drastic in recent memory, along with the Broadway flop “Taboo” this season. Andrew Lloyd Webber, who produced the London production, has announced that the Broadway version is such an improvement that he will close the London version on June 13 and reopen it next year, in a different London theater, with the Broadway revisions in place.”
Tag: 04.18.04
Utah’s Culture Boom
Utah arts groups are struggling. But voters have recently approved bonds for several big cultural building projects. Indeed, there’s a building boom going on in Salt Lake City as about $500 million in new cultural facilities are contemplated.
Is New Jersey In For An Arts Funding Increase?
“After two years of budget cuts totaling about $4 million, the New Jersey arts community has something to celebrate: a proposed increase of $6.6 million in state funding for arts organizations and projects.”
Photos – Does Size Matter?
There was a time – not all that long ago – when photographs were small and handheld. But “photographs have been steadily expanding in size, along with their importance in the eyes of critics and their value in the marketplace.” Is there a relationship between size and importance?
Is Mickey Mouse Over As A Cultural Icon?
What’s happened to Mickey Mouse? Once one of America’s most-loved cultural icons, the Mouse doesn’t cut it in today’s culture. “Boring,” “embalmed,” “neglected,” “irrelevant,” “deracinated” and, perhaps most damning, “over” are some of the adjectives that cropped up in recent interviews with people in the cartoon, movie and marketing businesses. And strangely for such a well-known figure, Mickey doesn’t even have a back story: no clearly defined relations, no hometown, no goals, no weaknesses.”
Stern To Satellite? Execs Hope…
As Howard Stern gets forced off the radio airwaves by the morality police, satellite radio execs hope Stern will jump to them. “Like cable television, satellite radio does not face federal indecency scrutiny because it is only available to paid subscribers. So the indecency dust-up has satellite radio companies executives salivating.”
Close Quarters – Art All Around
Washington DC’s Renwick Gallery has hung paintings in the way of old – stacked one atop another, cheek by jowl. “They knew how to blow minds back then. And their trick still works. Paintings palpitate inches apart, in skylit orgies of imagery that revives the now-forgotten aesthetics of the sublime, in particular the sublime of being overwhelmed and transported by sheer mass: by Niagara Falls, by world’s fairs or by molding-encrusted public rooms crammed with oil paintings — everything that the puritans of modernism would oppose.”
Designing A Museum: A Campaign Of Ideas
Winning a high-profile competition to design a public building is as much a campaign as a proposal of ideas. Mary Voelz Chandler observes the process of choosing an architect for the new Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver. “It’s not a comparison of negatives, but a comparison of positive matches with the organization’s goals. All these people could deliver a beautiful building.”
A Crescendo Off A Single Piano Note?
Lars Vogt is a pianist who seems to believe the impossible. “Power, he says, ‘has nothing to do with the force of hitting a key. You see some pianists attack; that’s what makes the sound ugly and not resonant,’ he says, demonstrating with a welter of loud but indistinct notes. ‘If the fingers are very close to the keys, you always have a feeling of drawing the sound out – rather than pushing the sound into the key. You can be a lot more intense in the playing while still making the piano sing.’ Sit down and try to do it yourself, and you realize that much of Vogt’s success comes from his head rather than his hands. He imagines the sound and wills it into being.”
A Bad Row At London’s British Academy
“Reports this week of a conflict at the Royal Academy between the head of exhibitions, Norman Rosenthal, and the secretary, Lawton Fitt, may be the most serious crisis a British gallery has faced since 1988, when an inexperienced director at the V&A caused an international outcry by dismissing five of the museum’s senior keepers.” Richard Dorment observes that “the president and council of the Royal Academy would be mad even to contemplate sacking a man of Rosenthal’s stature. Is it possible that they have forgotten what he has done for the Academy – or, for that matter, done for this country?”