Scenic downsizing is all the rage in Midtown for a range of reasons — skyrocketing costs, cold concepts, quick turnarounds. As a result, storied houses are morphing into university black boxes; shows into showcases; dramas into drab-a-thons. - New York Post
The songs "How to Handle a Woman" and "What Do the Simple Folk Do?" haven't aged well, and the book of the Lerner & Loewe musical, always a weakness, is even worse today. So the producers asked Sorkin to do what he did with To Kill a Mockingbird. - The New York Times
The more pressing question, now that theatres are back in some kind of business, is: How is business? Are audiences coming back at anything like pre-pandemic levels? And are theatres able to make ends meet? The evidence is mixed, and seems to vary by region. - American Theatre
"While the general consensus among industry experts is that digital access provides an opportunity for Broadway to reach new audiences and tap new revenue streams, they told TheWrap that there are many financial and logistical challenges that stand in the way of a broader rollout." - Yahoo! (TheWrap)
Hunter: "I think people have been really reticent to talk about spirituality or religion in these kinds of 'secular spaces.'" Ruhl: "For me, theater is very much a sacred space. … I think of theater almost as an incarnation of 'the word made flesh.'" - The Christian Science Monitor
"In devising an onstage gateway to Ally’s imagination, 'We were like, what if the portal is actually her notebook?' said Sammy Lopez, co-director. 'And what if we gave the audience the opportunity to jump into the notebook with Ally?'" - The New York Times
And it's not just any musical - it's an attempt to adapt the 1972 movie The Harder They Come, the movie that introduced a worldwide audience to reggae via star and musician Jimmy Cliff. - Slate
"The Actors’ Gang Prison Project is a rehabilitation program that offers theater programming to 14 California state prisons, a reentry facility and an L.A. County probation camp" - and it's celebrating 40 years since its inaugural production. - Los Angeles Times
The reviews are in, and, like the book, the play sounds, er, challenging. But the show has been extended thanks to fans who attend "wearing A Little Life-themed sweatshirts and holding copies of the book aloft or cradling them like tiny babies." - LitHub
The show was meant to open on Broadway April 3. Producer Hunter Arnold "told the cast and crew — and soon after, the public — that a lead producer had decided not to 'fulfill their obligations to the production' because of personal reasons." - The New York Times
I feel that we’re in a kind of new and important phase where directors especially, who never get to hang out with each other, feel like we all are trying to build community in a way that I don’t feel was as present pre-pandemic. There’s dialogue happening, and the idea of competition just doesn’t feel like the right way....
The New York-based institution is the favored bank of many Broadway theaters, producers, and related businesses; when New York state regulators closed Signature last Sunday, there was genuine fear that those businesses could lose everything but the FDIC-insured $250,000. For now, though, they're okay. - Broadway News
The show, whose last working title was Square One, is now called Here We Are; it's based loosely on the Luís Buñuel films The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. The commercial Off-Broadway production, directed by Joe Mantello, opens at The Shed in September. - The New York Times
"When Mitsue Nakamura began, she knew of one other woman in the field, but this year, all four of her current apprentices, some of whom study for 10 years, are female. Some adhere to traditional archetypes and techniques, while others radically reinterpret them." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine
My sense of musical theater in America is that we may undervalue that the higher forms of the Broadway musical are every bit the equal in artistic quality of operas like “Don Giovanni.” - The New York Times
