166 stories by "Matthew Westphal"
“Shakespeare’s Globe is to slash the cost of tours at the venue by 26% when guides begin two days of strikes later this month. … Tour guides who are members of backstage un…
“Each major character in Ann Liv Young’s Elektra Cabaret tries to break the tragedy with a different emotional code. All of us at times react sorrowfully like the wounded Elektra…
Lyn Gardner: “While the producers of any show may argue that as it’s their party, they can invite whoever they want, the principle of extending invitations across the board to es…
Mark Shenton allows as how a banned critic will probably get to see the show somehow and write about it anyway.
“The numbers were removed from the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical after the show's first preview in February 1956 on Broadway. They were discovered, alongside a ballet pen…
“The National Comedy Center, which is scheduled to open next year in Jamestown, N.Y., is to unveil plans for a comedy club that will feature holograms of stand-ups and comic actors fro…
Do screenings of stage productions from London steal audiences from local theatre or expand them? Nobody can agree on the answer. (Yet.)
When Tony LoBianco starred in a one-man show about New York City’s 99th mayor on Broadway in 1989, the production closed after 12 performances. Then the actor started rewriting the scr…
At the award ceremony for the Molières, the country’s top theatre honors, Sébastien Thiéry came onstage completely nude to scold Fleur Pellerin: “Do you know, madame minister,…
“Five years ago, Athol Fugard, the great chronicler of South Africa’s apartheid past and its post-apartheid present, heard a surprising tale. It was about a farm laborer named Nu…
“If an overarching narrative exists, it’s willfully postmodern. … Stare long enough into the chaos, however, and a few patterns, can be divined.”
“Over the last four months, the boldface names have come, one after another, to this cozy downtown theater to see the show’s creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, rap and sing an…
Charles McNulty: “Producers have built flourishing shoestring operations on the backs of virtually unpaid actors. If the majority of performers aren’t complaining, why should the…
“The producers of the long-running Off-Broadway staple, who announced last month that they would close the show in early May, said on Saturday that two unnamed fans had contributed eno…
“It’s a paradox. In TV studios and on Twitter, British politics seem trapped in a spin cycle of claim and counter-claim, carefully massaged soundbites and kitchen-sink (or kitche…
Does it really “represent a moment in feminism that has passed”? Or is it an important piece of history? On the other hand, observes Lisa Kron, “Does this question get aske…
“After 80,000 miles, 96 countries and more than 150 shows, the two-year worldwide tour of Hamlet has reached its halfway point in Spain – on Shakespeare’s birthday. Here…
“The latest iteration of intimate, in-home performances – think home concerts – Salon Ariel hopes to fill a void in the theater world.”
“Religious drama is one of the oldest forms of British theatre, with the incorporation of performance into worship recorded from the time when Christianity was only 500 or so years old…
The majority stake went to a U.S. private equity firm, with minority stakes going to a Chinese investment firm, Quebec’s pension fund, and founder Guy Laliberté. Plans are for a major…
“[A] play about the police, race, a suspect shooting, and real estate,” with a retired African-American cop (shot and wounded by a white colleague) at its center, Between Riversi…
“Co-founder [and owner] Guy Laliberté sent an email to staff on Thursday saying that he had not yet wrapped up the company sale, after CBC/Radio-Canada and other media outlets reporte…
“Under the eaves of a hospice for Syrian refugees in Amman, Jordan, a wounded young Romeo reaches out to the blurred image of a girl on a screen. From the besieged and bombed-out city …
Lyn Gardner: “Ditching the label ‘fringe’ would put all theatre-makers on an equal footing, wherever they work and in whatever form. It would stop the segmentation of audie…
“As hard as a revival is, a new musical is just on steroids harder. You’re constantly looking at your book, your music, your structure, and at the same time you’re trying t…
