Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Toronto's Kelly Nestruck writes up Robert Lepage's innovative idea to publish his latest play as a comic book:
Instead of publishing the script of his recent play, The Blue Dragon, Lepage'…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 09:39AMThursday, December 8, 2011
“Nothing we do sells a ticket...People on the TKTS line can’t pronounce the title, and if you can’t pronounce the title, you’re not going to see the show.”
-A producer for...Ly…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 07:14PMTuesday, December 6, 2011
My latest for Time Out: Peccadillo's revival of Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner. (Online only.)
Photo: Carol Rosegg
The current lead, Jim Brochu, is fine. But as you'll see…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 10:09AMMonday, December 5, 2011
If you have already subscribed to the Playgoer Twitter-feed, you'll notice I've been sending out more "bonus content" lately and plan to do more of that. More links, random political thought…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 10:42AMWednesday, November 30, 2011
TCG's annual "Theatre Facts" survey has some sobering news for subscription-based theatre companies. As Chris Jones reports:
According to Theatre Facts 2010, the annual research snapshot rel…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 04:03PMMonday, November 28, 2011
And they said it wouldn't last...
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark celebrates a...um, bittersweet anniversary of that disastrous first preview, exactly one year ago today. And after all …
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 03:05PMMonday, November 21, 2011
"[H]ow could a man who had only a grammar-school education and spoke Latin and a little Greek possibly have written something as bad as All’s Well That Ends Well?"
-Eric Idle, satirically…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 08:59AMFriday, November 18, 2011
These seeming transatlantic opposites are collaborating on what promises to be the weirdest Troilus yet:
The Wooster Group is teaming up with the Royal Shakespeare Company on a production of…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 12:17PMMonday, November 14, 2011
That's what Indie Theatre web publisher/impresario Martin Denton calls his new brainchild, Indie Theater Now, a deluxe online "bookstore" for the latest in scrappy scripts.
How does it work…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 12:33PMWednesday, November 9, 2011
Such buzz did Charles Isherwood's online surrender to Adam Rapp create that Riedel had him on Theatre Talk this past weekend to explain.
By the way: Isherwood's piece only ran on the…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 06:19PMMonday, November 7, 2011
Straight outta Israel! "Pangs of the Messiah" is a play Motti Lerner wrote about the Jewish West Bank settlements...back in the 80s, believe it or not. He's now revised/updated it and …
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 09:47AMFriday, November 4, 2011
"What I think that has happened to Mr. Mamet is that he is an artist and a contrarian, and I think that somehow, living under the shade of the Southern California palm tree engendered a ki…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 12:22PMTuesday, November 1, 2011
My Time Out review of the Irish Rep's Dancing at Lughnasa is now available as an exclusive online bonus feature!
Ok, exclusive to anyone with a computer...
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 03:23PMMonday, October 31, 2011
Three years after the man's death, they're still finding new stuff by Harold Pinter. Well, old stuff, really, but previously unpublished. The Guardian last week reprinted a 1960 comedy sketc…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 11:26AMFriday, October 28, 2011
David Cote offers a primer on who the big critics are--all around the country.
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 08:20PMTuesday, October 25, 2011
The Royal Shakespeare Company is having something of a succès de scandale with playwright/director Anthony ("in yer face") Nielson's new modern-dress production of Marat/Sade at their spiff…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 04:10PMMonday, October 24, 2011
One of my favorite Sunday Times features is actually in the Real Estate section. No, not listings. It's Christopher Gray's "Streetscapes" column, a kind of weekly excavation of old bui…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 09:41AMFriday, October 21, 2011
I'm pleased naturally with the multiplicity of comments on my last post on the anti-Shakespeare movie, Anonymous. And I can't help notice that those who have sworn to defend the good n…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 07:46PMTuesday, October 18, 2011
The Shakespeare-denying swashbuckler Anonymous, certainly Hollywood's oddest premise for an action flick in ages, is about to open wide and thankfully some scholars are getting out there to …
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 01:22PMMonday, October 17, 2011
Frank Langella in the Roundabout's Man and Boyphoto: Sara Krulwich, NY Times
Another Krulwich gem.
The perfect caption for this might actually be this from Michael Feingold's review …
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 06:16PMThursday, October 13, 2011
So who ruled that all plays must be 2 to 3 hours, anyway?
As cultural consumption increasingly focuses on smaller and smaller forms of entertainment--IPod-able songs, YouTube vids, E-reader…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 09:12AMTuesday, October 11, 2011
A philanthropy watchdog group reports that "billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emer…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 11:52AMFriday, October 7, 2011
Times critic Charles Isherwood today finally addresses the long obvious, barely under the surface tension between him and playwright Adam Rapp, whose work he has consistently, um...disliked.…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 11:11AMWednesday, October 5, 2011
"When you’re grossing $700,000 a week, which is not bad, and losing money, there is a problem.”
-Billy Elliot lead producer Eric Fellner on why he's decided to quit while he's ahea…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 03:56PMTuesday, October 4, 2011
Ok, not quite riots.
Three women and six teenage girls were escorted from the theater during intermission of "Newsies" on Thursday night, after patrons complained about a scuffle an…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 11:28AMFriday, September 30, 2011
Rob Kendt in Time Out clears up some misconceptions about The Threepenny Opera on the eve of the sold-out(!) run at BAM next week of Robert Wilson's staging with the Berliner Ensemble.
In fa…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 03:39PMWednesday, September 28, 2011
I imagine David Cote's expression of National Theatre-envy got a friendly reception on the UK's Guardian website. And I totally am with him on the sentiment--namely that the thing to envy mo…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 05:36PMTuesday, September 27, 2011
Declan Kiberd reminds us why Synge's Playboy of the Western World, now a cozy mainstay of the repertory, was once the most shocking play Ireland had ever seen:
Ireland in 1907 saw …
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 12:05PMMonday, September 26, 2011
Playwriting class at the New School for Social Research, New York, circa 1941. At left: Tennessee Williams. At right: Arthur Miller.
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 12:31PMThursday, September 22, 2011
I'm back in print this week with a review in Time Out of Seed, courtesy of Classical Theatre of Harlem and Hip Hop Theatre Fest.
Not seedy, I'll say that much.
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 10:00AMWednesday, September 21, 2011
Typical of overreacting school boards...
The Associated Press reports that the Richland School District in Johnstown, PA, canceled its February 2012 production of Kismet following concerns…
SOURCE: The Playgoer at 01:56PM 
