Category: theatre

• Livent showman Garth Drabinsky was a spinner of dreams and high ambition. Among them was Chicago’s Oriental Theater, which he said would be the centerpiece of a North American empire of theaters to create and house new touring productions. The City of Chicago invested $13 million in the Oriental, but since Drabinsky crashed and burned, there’s little going on there. Is there a market to keep the place lit? – Chicago Tribune

What happens when a theater company’s artistic director, its life’s force, leaves – but the money supporting the theater stays? In the case of one Scottish theater, it drifts on for a couple of seasons, then folds. Maybe National Arts Council policies expect too much in the way of numbers and not enough in the way of art? – The Herald (Scotland)

It’s easy to be amused and entertained on Broadway this season, but serious drama is MIA. The new economics don’t encourage chances. – Seattle Times

— dominate nominations for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s top theater honors. – BBC

Alton Fitzgerald White, the lead actor in Broadway’s “Ragtime,” has sued New York City and its police department, alleging that he was illegally arrested and strip-searched last July because he is black. – Boston Herald (AP)

— Andrew Lloyd Webber certainly has his detractors in the theater world. But reviews of his purchase of ten of London’s West End theaters have pretty much everyone cheering. “Indeed, it is Lloyd Webber’s standing in London’s creative theater community that makes his victory so welcome. Under Lloyd Webber’s influence, it is widely believed, the West End will be more open to productions with an element of edge and commercial risk.” – Los Angeles Times

August Wilson makes it to the 80s with his “King Hedley II” the latest in his decade-by-decade tracing of the black American 20th Century experience “True to form, Mr. Wilson has endowed his struggling souls with a metaphysical grandeur and a titanic vigor of language that is like no other dramatist’s.” – New York Times

Hartford Stage has no problem filling its house for classic plays. But new plays – even acclaimed high-octane productions of new plays – greet rows of empty seats. Now a plan to try and change it. – Hartford Courant.

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who made his name with a string of hit West End musicals, is buying the Stoll Moss group, which owns ten of London’s best-known theaters, including the London Palladium, the Garrick, and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in an £85 million deal. – BBC

New York Times report.

“Women’s voices in the theater continue to be seriously underrepresented.” Two festivals in the Bay Area step up to the issue. – Backstage