"Blair is played by the comedian Charlie Baker. Saddam Hussein, with moustache and cigar, is given a Groucho Marx makeover. (Playwright Harry) Hill describes the show's Cherie Blair as 'a cross between Lily Savage and Lili Marleen – seductive, but coarse'. And 'we have a woman playing Osama bin Laden'." - The Guardian
If history musicals don't succeed this season, it won't be for sheer effort, or numbers. The doubt is always there: Hamilton made it, but can anything else? - The New York Times
"The whole room just lost it. ... To see her coming full circle, from a little girl watching him serve, and he had worked this luncheon for years, to having his daughter be a nominee was just one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments." - The New York Times
"For more than a decade, Imagineers — Disney designers and researchers — have been looking into LARPs and interactive theatre, and running 'playtests' in the (theme) parks." On the Galactic Starcruiser, the current state of the art, Disney World gives Star Wars fans an immersive LARP experience two nights long. - The New Yorker
Volt, an annual project whose first featured writer is Karen Hartman, is meant to spotlight, as founder Val Day put it, "somebody who (is) more widely produced in the regions, who (has) a fairly large canon of work which deserved to have eyes on it in New York." - The New York Times
"What play did you ever see that's changed your life? That's not the purpose of theatre." "Acting has nothing in the world to do with feelings. Zero. ... What I'm looking for in an actor is the knowledge and courage to stand still and say the stupid fucking words." - American Theatre
"Welcome to Octet, the Dave Malloy musical that acutely captures a life lived Too Online. Making its West Coast premiere ... through May 29, the production doubles as a support group for self-identified internet addicts, disclosing their demons in haunting eight-part harmonies." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
We’ve chased away an audience. The theater owners hate the unions, the unions hate the producers and the producers hate the theater owner. None of them get their way and they all take it out on the customer. - New York Theatre
Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Victor Garber, Jayne Eastwood, Andrea Martin, and Paul Shaffer all walked into a theatre. This is a (rollicking) oral history of the experience. "Jesus starts his narration, and we look up and Andrea has a dinner roll in her mouth." - Washington Post
Anuparna Chandrasekhar has wriiten about a sex tape going viral in conservative India to the notorious 2012 gang rape on a bus in Delhi. Her latest, The Father and the Assassin, examines the journey of Nathuram Godse from boy-raised-as-a-girl to Gandhi-admiring journalist to Hindu nationalist assassin. - The Guardian
At the end of a bumpy Broadway season that started late and was repeatedly disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, the once-ordinary rituals of Tonys time have taken on a new significance this spring, as a beleaguered theater industry grasps for reassurance. - The New York Times
"Broadway performers and stage managers who worked on four shows connected to producer Scott Rudin will be released from nondisclosure agreements under terms of a settlement between the Broadway League and Actors' Equity Association." Excepting financial info and IP, the union has barred NDAs from all future Broadway productions. - Deadline
Five years after "The Greatest Show on Earth" closed down (it said) permanently, performers are being recruited and rehearsals and logistics are being planned for a 50-something-city tour to begin in September of next year. And it's confirmed: there will be no animals. - The New York Times
It's not only that "theater is a team sport." It's not just that some shows (this season, for instance, Six and Take Me Out) simply don't have lead roles. It's that even star turns can't truly sizzle if the rest of the cast isn't cooking, too. - The New York Times
"Depicting the life, persecution, death and resurrection of Jesus, ... the oldest continuous running amateur theatre production in the world will open on Saturday with a 103-performance run until October ... after having been thrown off its usual schedule by two years owing to the latest pandemic." - The Guardian
