That Face, a play by a 23 year-old British playwright (who wrote it when she was even younger), just snagged a 2010 production at Manhattan Theater Company, in an announcement where the New York Times ArtsBeat blog trumpeted her as a “wunderkind.” Elizabeth Marvel, who was in the stellar MTC revival of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, is to star. British critics compared her to Tennessee Williams. Should you be excited? Is this going to be next year’s hot ticket? And is there a British Invasion of New York’s theater scene on the rise? An insider’s take, below the cut.
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Ever the event, The Public Theater announced their six-play subscription series for 2009-2010. Having made waves on Broadway by transferring the Tony-winning revival of Hair form Central Park to the Great White Way, eyes were definitely peeled on what they had to offer this year, at the very least, to see what kind of Broadway-bait they were locking and loading to fire at New York. And they absolutely delivered. Read More »
Theater folk are no doubt freaking out this morning, as they’re want to do around early May every year: It’s Tony Nominations Day! The best way to get a good first impression of what’s going here is by nomination count. Check out our numeric breakdown/running commentary after the jump. Spoiler alert: Those three dancing brats from Billy Elliot managed to smoke everyone else’s ass. Read More »
The Pulitzers (pronounced PULL-IT-ZER, not PYOOL-IT-ZER. Get it right or pay the price: a glare from Columbia intellectualati) are a strange, strange beast when it comes to drama. Sometimes, the shoo-in wins; other times, it’s a pompously off-kilter choice. I’m definitely jinxing whatever chance I want to have of one day winning one by simply writing about it, but that’s a different story. Literally. Anyway. Read More »
That fashion think-tank-cum-magazine renowned for putting mostly undeservedly famous figures on their covers, NYLON, posted a feature on their site in which they delve into an area of coverage they’re not particularly known for: theatre. While theatre professionals (and publicity-seeking producers) can appreciate newcomers to the game, those who enjoy reading about theatre (or even readers of NYLON, who probably aren’t hosed that easily) are likely to be suspect towards this piece on the cast of Hair, who got their — wait for it — hair done by a Bumble & Bumble stylist during the interview. Oof. Read More »
It’s been a grief-ridden week for Broadway: Tony-winning actress Natasha Richardson passed away this week after a skiing accident; she was 45. Typically charming Michael Riedel treated the incident with a slight leaning of insensitivity, running a story headline that screamed: “NATASHA RICHARDSON IS BRAIN DEAD.” Riedel since changed his tone, and is now feeding his investigative impulses, tirelessly covering the incident. The Post is now quoting a Canadian newspaper that ambulances at the resort where Richardson’s accident happened were initially turned away. She’s not the only loss Broadway experienced this week, sadly: Ron Silver — who won a Tony for his performance in the original production of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, also passed away from complications relating to esophageal cancer; he was 62.
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Michael Clayton writer-director Tony Gilroy’s buzzy new Julia Roberts-Clive Owen flick Duplicity lands in theaters Friday; we got a chance to look at it last night, and it’s awesome. But beyond the ringing endorsement a bunch of critics are soon to give it, we had to wonder: is Duplicity‘s plot — in which a former CIA agent (Roberts) and a former MI6 agent (Owen) get hired to be corporate spies for Johnson & Johnson-esque companies — plausible in the slightest?
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So: what happens to a musical in its post-Broadway existence? Often, it goes something like: cast-album, and if they’re lucky, a national tour, a UK production, maybe even a telecast. But what about foreign-language productions? Does Cats get lost in translation? Answer: hell no! Yes, theater freaks exist everywhere, and there’s a large concentration of them in Asia. And if you read the New York Times last Friday, you might’ve learned that (A) South Korea is a huge theater market, especially when it comes to musicals, and (B) the South Korean production of Dreamgirls is such a big deal, Kim Jong-Il is considering full-scale nuclear disarmament in exchange for a pair of house seats.
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Talk about a Cleveland Steamer. Nancy Coyne of Broadway’s premiere ad agency Serino-Coyne recently got the best (and last) line in a New York Times report on the lack of money going into Broadway on both ends (investors and ticket-buyers):
“The last 15 years have been boom years for theater — I always expected the pendulum to swing, and I simply see this as a correction. The good news is that so many straight plays are now coming in the spring, and I think New Yorkers will come out for them once the tourists go away. We’re horrible snobs. We hate tourists from Cleveland.”
Coyne’s comments were sharp, funny, and naturally attacked on all ends.
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Interesting piece in the New York Times last week on the Public Theater’s new agreement they’re using to help transfer their production of Hair — which appeared this summer in Central Park — to Broadway. To sum it up: the piece discusses the Public’s hits and misses with Broadway transfers, and the great risks associated with either (A) selling the rights to the show (thus potentially compromising the artistic integrity of it) or (B) producing the show with their own cash, which is a huge risk for a nonprofit to take.
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