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
Six-thirty may not be a traditional starting time for theatre. But then in the 16th and early 17th-century, before the advent of the indoor playhouse, afternoon performances were the norm; in the interwar-period 8.30pm was common. - The Stage
That's the gambit being tried with a new adaptation, co-directed by Tony Goldwyn and Savion Glover, that's getting a five-day run in New York this week. (Another change: the addition of tap-dancing ancestral spirits called the Griots.) - The New York Times
It’s certainly arguable that the company overreached in pursuing such an extensive rebuild, rather than limping along in what was left of the old space. - Oregon Arts Watch
It's not easy to get one of the slots at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre's Festival of New Music, but this countries-spanning musical beat hundreds of others on its way to the show. - KLCC (Oregon)
