For many, spending months trying to really understand why they have lost investment and feeling they are no closer to an answer has made them less confident in the way English arts funding is assessed and distributed. - The Stage
Well, the stated reason was this: "It was brought to the District’s attention that the current production contained mature adult themes, profane language, and sexual content." In "Oklahoma!" ... Okay … (It seems the real reason had to do with one particular detail of casting.) - Howard Sherman
"Created by the British theater troupe Punchdrunk, … the Macbeth-inspired immersive theater experience that is hosted in three empty, hulking warehouse spaces in downtown (Manhattan) will say goodbye early next year on its 5,000 performance." - AP
One didn’t read Brustein to determine which Broadway shows to buy tickets to. One read Brustein to understand a play or musical in its larger historical context and to be reminded of the artistic values that guided his judgments. - Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Branagh's King Lear in the West End is getting panned, but sometimes (as with Paul Mescal and Daniel Radcliffe) they're terrific. But half the audience comes just to see the celebrity in person, and sometimes producers blow the budget on the star while everything else looks cheap. - The Guardian
In the 1880s, the script was rejected by major theaters all over Europe. Its first London performance (1891) was denounced by the Telegraph as "a dirty act done publicly." (The plot involves incest, syphilis, and euthanasia.) Michael Billington identifies three productions that changed attitudes toward the play. - The Guardian
"After complaints from students and faculty ... , growing murmurs of protests at performances and an anonymous vote by student participants in the production, By the River Rivanna was canceled hours before its opening night." - MSN (Los Angeles Times)
One comedian says that comedians exaggerate for laughs all of the time, but "what Minhaj did was different ... because he altered the story to coax an emotional response from the audience, not to make them laugh." - CBC
"District Judge Michael Snow told the defendants cancelling the show cost the theatre around £80,000. He said that they could be liable to pay the full amount if they were found guilty." - BBC
Veteran TV writer/showrunner Warren Leight (Law & Order: SVU): "Be open. … Some writers come in with a notion of what they’re going to write and how many actors they’re going to take. And they draft two actors and then they stop. And inevitably when they do that, they fail." - American Theatre
"Unlike Beetlejuice, Heathers or Dear Evan Hansen, which all parlayed onstage popularity into huge digital followings, Treason is turning the formula for musical success around. Its producers cultivated an online fandom for three years before raising the curtain on the show." - The New York Times
Peter Marks: "How do you analyze the artistic circuitry of a new musical when the musical’s lyricist is just circuits? I faced this challenge the other night at an off-Broadway theater. ... Living, breathing actors performed the musical, but no human brain put the words in their mouths." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Laura Collins-Hughes travels to Donegal, in the northwestern corner of Ireland, to visit Glenties — not Friel's own hometown, but that of his mother and aunts (think of the five women of Dancing at Lughnasa), where he spent childhood summers and is now buried. - The New York Times
I have been told that staff, tasked to phone up lifelong supporters and subscribers who didn’t renew for the first time, had to be given counselling after hearing the harrowing explanations they were told for why. - The Stage
