“When a group of New York producers announced they were bringing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White to Broadway, there was plenty of head-scratching around Shubert Alley. The $8 million show, which opened last year in London, had three strikes against it: West End critics gave it mixed reviews; reporters and critics for the [New York] Post and the New York Times who attended the opening night performance registered their reservations; and the box office never took off (an investor in the London production says it’s nowhere close to paying back).” Still, tweaks have been made, and the producers are assuring everyone within earshot that the show is much better now. Unfortunately, they tried to prove it by inviting the critics back…
Tag: 10.12.05
CBC: Glad To Be Back, But Hurt Feelings Linger
The CBC is finally back up and running at something approaching normal speed, following a nearly two-month lockout by the corporation’s management, which was seeking more flexible hiring practices. And though most of the returning staff are just happy to be back at work, “there [is] a sense that the decisions of upper management will now be watched much more closely by staff. Guild officials have also said that they will police the new agreement, while also saying that political pressure will continue to be put on Ottawa to hold management accountable for the lockout and to conduct an audit to find out how money was spent.”
Colorado Ballet Director Director Sacked
An ugly fight has broken out at the Denver-based Colorado Ballet, with artistic director Martin Fredmann being ousted by a board he says is “trying to destroy the company.” The surprise firing is only the latest crisis for the company, which earlier this year had to cancel a major premiere after failing to raise the needed money to pay for it. The co-chair of the ballet’s board bizarrely described Fredmann’s ouster as being “part of the board’s long-term strategic planning.”
The People’s Choice Awards (Minus The People)
“J.K. Rowling, Jon Stewart, and Stephen King were among the winners last night of the first annual Quills Awards, people’s choice book prizes better known so far to the industry than to the public. Rowling, author of the multimillion-selling Harry Potter books, won for book of the year and best children’s chapter book for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince… But the Quills can hardly claim a broad mandate with readers. According to comScore Networks Inc., which tracks the Internet, the Quills site attracted so little Web traffic during the voting period, fewer than the threshold of 25,000 unique visits a week, that it can’t even offer an exact number.”
Will ISPs Kill Off Municipal Wi-Fi Before It Starts?
“Plans are afoot in [cities across the U.S.] to provide residents with low-cost or free wireless internet access. It’s a great idea whose time has come, like drinking fountains, public toilets and park benches.” But that doesn’t mean that municipal wi-fi will get done without some major fights – after all, those high-cost internet providers (otherwise known as your cable and phone companies) are dead-set against the idea of competition in general, and city-wide internet access would pretty much kill a profitable chunk of their business. “Without legislation, ISPs have no legal basis for stopping community Wi-Fi. But legislation is a distinct possibility.”
Arguing Evolution For Your Entertainment
This week, a trial over the increasingly contentious issue of human genetic history began in Pennsylvania, where a school board member is suing to get “intelligent design” included in the curriculum alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution. Meanwhile, in California, a performance kicked off a tour of a play based on the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. The rhetoric coming from both venues is white-hot, as religious conservatives and secularists continue to square off across the U.S., and while the theatre company presenting the tour says it isn’t taking sides, the question of evolution, long thought to have been settled, has suddenly become fodder for dangerously political drama.
Trying To Make A Narnia For All Audiences
Disney’s new film version of C.S. Lewis’s classic children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia, comes out next month, and the studio is preparing to ratchet up the PR machine. “But Disney’s tricky marketing strategy for Narnia – which includes aggressively courting Christian fans who can relate to the story’s biblical allegory while trying not to disaffect secular fans – is particularly tricky when it comes to music. The spiritual character of “Narnia” is being reinforced with the debut on the charts last week of a Christian pop album of music inspired by the film. But prospects for a previously announced secular soundtrack now seem cloudy… The Christian-oriented album’s status as the only Narnia musical project in the marketplace, for now at least, could upset the studio’s plan to balance two audiences.”
Big Donation For MoMA
“[New York’s] Museum of Modern Art has received a gift of 174 contemporary works from a Los Angeles real estate developer, including prime examples of paintings, sculptures and drawings by artists like Philip Guston, Vija Celmins and Christopher Wilmarth… These works not only help fill many gaps in the Modern’s contemporary art collection, but also enlarge its previous holdings of certain artists.”
Team Commission
One of the reasons that new works of classical music don’t turn up more often on the programs of smaller orchestras is that they’re damned expensive. Commissioning a new work from an established composer can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and few ensembles outside of the top orchestras have that kind of cash to kick around (and if they did, they’d likely have more important things to spend it on.) But this week, a new work by composer Joan Tower will get its premiere, courtesy of a first-of-its-kind commissioning program that brought together no fewer than 65 small orchestras from across the U.S. to fund the creation of the work. The composer will see an added benefit from the unusual process as well: when all is said and done, her new work will have been performed 80 times over the course of 18 months.
Bring On The Lawyers
The discussion of whether the Richmond PAC’s agreement with the city is null and void may be headed for a court battle, and the city’s mayor has struck a defiant tone, saying “Let’s get it on! It doesn’t bother me. Heck, courts scare other people, not me.”. The foundation supporting the PAC has called a news conference for this morning to respond to the city’s refusal of a $2 million buyout, and unless some accomodation is reached between the warring sides, it seems likely that a court will have to make the final decision on the future of the project.