We really don't care about theatre do we?

Haha now I see I posted almost the exat same thing four years ago, except I didn't think theatre had caught up yet!

I saw a guy reciting Joseph Conrad's complete "Heart of Darkness" on saturday. Deadly stuff it was.

(It's almost never the playwright's fault, because inferior scripts rarely get as far as their first performance.)

This comment only makes sense if we're talking Broadway, where the financial stakes are so high. Most of the new plays I have the opportunity to see in Chicago are in small storefront theaters, and while I've been lucky to see mostly good productions, I'm sure there are plenty of badly written plays that are put on for the cast and crew's friends week after week.

lolol there are lots and lots of bad plays guys

If you're in Chicago and want to see something on par with the Wooster Group (without the budget, though), see Lucky Pierre's current show.

how come i've never posted on this thread? how odd...

the wooster group were the main reason i was going to go to embra this year, so i'm glad i didn't (kinda).

i saw some of the older forced ents shows (first night, dirty work and and on the thousandth night) over the summer that i'd missed in my HATE ALL THEATRE period (c. 95-03) and they still totally rock more than any other theatre group, even if last year's words and pictures was a bit disappointing...

the world in pictures was amazing, i thought. i totally agree that they are the ones pushing the boundaries at the moment.

hmmm, i thought it was a bit of a one-trick pony, like a sketch that had expanded to fill two hours (obviously if it had expanded to fill 12 hours i'd have been happier ;)), rather than a show on it's own...

I missed both the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma and the Elevator Repair Service this week. Oh well!

put on for the cast and crew's friends week after week.

It seems wrong to call that theater. It's just the dramatic equivalent of third graders writing poems that their mothers put up on the refrigerator.

i'm sure tracer was exaggerating. a large number of the, literally, thousands of fringe shows get very small audiences. it doesn't make them not-theatre though.

re. forced entertainment - i saw the revival of the sophie calle show in london recently and thought it was terribly boring. it didn't put me off them though.

Aimless says that as if most third graders aren't better than most published poets (or certainly better than anything that gets published in, say, the New Yorker).

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117974574.html?categoryid=15&cs=1

LOGIN?

Brits, should I go see Stoppard's Rock 'n Roll (or however he punctuates it)?

well, it doesn't matter for now as the stagehand strike has shuttered it...

not Cymbeline or Pygmalion

i find theatre incredibly offensive

although i should point out all ive seen are cats, les miserables and rozencrantz and guildenstern are dead.

well, that's offensive.

They were interviewing sad Irish tourists who'd come all the way to NY to see PHANTOM, and all I could think was Lucky for you, bugger off and get some actual culture while you're here, now.

"Phantom," my sole exposure to that variety of "theatre," was quite possibly the worst 2-3 hours of my life

how has the person who bought tix made it up to you?

Okay I just realized the other day that the Webber target that is in need of some serious, vicious bagging is STARLIGHT EXPRESS. It is about TRAIN PEOPLE. He wrote it for his GRANDKIDS, which is always an ill omen.

http://www.ramada.de/bildarchivdb/16025_1156921595.jpg

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/51868170.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19390335F8FA9CA92A691656D5B1677BA2578A0E721FD50B7AE

http://www.nrw-tourismus.de/fileadmin/user_upload/images/starlight-express.jpg

I have to admit the poster is awesome, though:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/2/25/200px-StarlightLogo.jpg

Poppa, an old steam engine and past racing champion, tells Rusty the legend of the Starlight Express, a midnight train who helps engines in distress. The Starlight visits Rusty in a dream, telling him that true power comes from within. In the end, the underdog, Rusty, triumphs over the more powerful engines, winning the final race, Pearl's love and his self-confidence.

"A Lotta Locomotion" was changed on the US/UK tours to "A Whole Lotta Locomotion". There have also been three different raps:

* Hey, you! (1984-1991)
* Check it out, can you believe this? (1992-2001)
* It's race time! (2004 onward)

Six Starlight posts is sufficient for now...

thread title made true: no broadway strike discussion! at least i couldn't find a thread.

thoughts anyone?

hoping that it kills off The Miserables

did the other critics flip for the Broadway revival of The Homecoming like Brantley?

I think John Lahr did in this week's New Yorker, as proof that the play is the masterpiece he always thought it was.

I'm going to see the new (not sure if it actually is or not) David Mamet play tonight. (By which I obviously really mean that one with Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum in it.) Is it going to be shit? I'm quite hard to please when it comes to the theatre.

Definitely not a new play. I was tempted by this - I love Goldblum but not so sure about Spacey. It's a great play though.

Thanks for that, I'm looking forward to it now.

It seems it is not at all new. 1988 according to wiki.

Spoke to a couple of people at the weekend who'd seen it, they were impressed.

I live just round the corner but haven't seen anything there since Spacey took over - this is the first one that's looked vaguely tempting.

Newsnight Review savaged it, but other than that I know very little about it. And Nick Broomfield was one of the people doing the reviewing and he hates everything.

Has anyone seen The Masque of The Red Death?

'the new David Mamet play' is on now in nyc

The London play is Speed-the-Plow?? I saw it on Broadway w/ Ron Silver, Joe Mantegna, and Madonna. It was meh.

has anyone in nyc seen the new richard foreman, um, "theater-machine?" been curious to see something of his for awhile now..

theatre be too expensive for much of ilx i suspect.

I saw that Mantegna/Silver/Madonna Speed-The-Plow too. Direction was top-notch. In retrospect, I wish I had also seen the replacement cast (Bob Balaban, David Rasche, Felicity Huffman).

macbeth is opening tonight! at bam... should be exciting except the weather is gonna keep people away ;(

I bet they'll make the Trek. :)

=)

Newsnight Review savaged it

OK, this is probably definitely worth seeing then.

has anyone in nyc seen the new richard foreman, um, "theater-machine?" been curious to see something of his for awhile now..
Haven't seen this but I've seen his stuff in the past and it was really good.

The play was really good, although very short. Hard to get over the 'that's Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey' aspect of it though. Seemed to me to be more about sex and power contextualised by the movie business that an actual critique of Hollywood itself, but what the hell do i know?

My ticket for last night was only twelve quid so if ILXors go to gigs they can afford to go to plays.

Patrick Stewart notes possibility of unnamed production that will reunite him with McKellen on stage within next 18 months.

xcited to see macbeth