Okay, Theater Audiences: ‘Sit Up And Engage – It’s Not Feeding Time’

Andrew Upton of Sydney Theatre Co. : “The hardest audience burden of all to tolerate is sitting back and waiting to be fed. This sort of blobby ‘tell me a story while I chew my cud’ has left me wondering if seats should be removed from theatres altogether. … Sit up and engage. It’s not feeding time; it’s haranguing, coaxing, wooing time.”

How Is Matthew Bourne Changing Sleeping Beauty?

For starters: the baby Princess Aurora is a puppet (three different ones, in fact, including one they call “the Exorcist puppet”); the three fairies are named Tantrum, Ardour and Feral; the Lilac Fairy is male (what’s a Matthew Bourne ballet without gender changes?); and Beauty goes to sleep in the Edwardian era and wakes up after 100 years – in the present day.

Is Cirque Du Soleil Losing Its Touch?

Iris, the company’s Los Angeles show which is closing in January, “isn’t the company’s only high-profile bust. The show joins a list of flops that have tarnished the global Cirque brand in recent years” – including Viva Elvis in Las Vegas, Zaia in Macao (which had been planned, like Iris, for a ten-year run), Zed in Tokyo and the touring show Banana Shpeel.