"Frodo still has the ring..." "How do you know?" "I can hear him singing about it..."

"Laaaa! I have a Riiiing! The one Riiiing! It's the Ring that makes my heart beat so that I can barely speeeeeak! But even Sauron's Ring can't stop me when I want to Siiiiing!"

The $27-million show, co-produced by Toronto's Mirvish Productions, will open in March 2006 at the Princess of Wales Theatre with a largely Canadian cast, said producer Kevin Wallace, a former Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborator who produced Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar and Sunset Boulevard.
...
The show had been scheduled to debut in London this spring to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of the complete trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. However, there was no theatre available to accommodate the massive and technically complex three-hour production, producers said. The London debut is now set for fall 2006.

The Lord of the Rings meets Lord of the Dance. Unprecedented numbers of nerds, killed by fits of apoplexy, wash up on the stoops of comic book shops across the planet.



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Anti-memory

Is that what kept me from getting the garbage out last night?

Primarily set in a nursing home, Half Life maps out the course of a romance between Clara (Carolyn Hetherington) and Patrick (Eric Peterson) that blossoms despite memory loss, death, transience, a previous encounter during the Second World War and the discomfort of their children. Math scientist Donald, Clara's son, encapsulates the play's underlying philosophy in the first scene: "We wouldn't survive if we remembered everything," later adding that "the way information is lost is as important as the way it is retained." At a time when "memory plays" have exhausted their possibilities and audiences, Half Life is a defiantly "anti-memory play."

I have Mighton's The Myth of Ability and it's quite a good read. Nothing spectacular on the mathematics front, but good for parents, and more than a few teachers, I would think.



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Say it ain't so!

Pinter giving up on writing plays.



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The end of gay...
...theatre in Canada?

In his controversial 1999 treatise, The End of Gay, Bert Archer proposed, essentially, that mainstream acceptance of homosexuals, the Will-and-Grace-ing of the commonweal, meant the end of gay and lesbian distinctiveness, that identities forged through oppression would dissipate in its absence. If this season's offerings reflect a coming trend, he's right. At least in the special enclave of the theatre, identified gay and lesbian playwrights, actors and directors have arrived. But what do they have left from the long slog to professional eminence? Is this the endpoint of liberation -- at last, to have the chance to produce work resembling everyone else's?

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Kiddie opera

Finally, literary adaptation for children that doesn't involve CGI.



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I'm torn

On one hand, I'm pleased to see that any work of literature or theatre can still rouse people to violence. On the other hand, I think, are you fucking crazy?! Death threats!? It's a fucking play!



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The play's done when someone agrees to produce it...

David Gow talks about his writing process and life in the theeeatuh.

"It's nothing to do with craft," he said in a recent interview. "I just get this channel, like an FM dial. Just tune in the playwright's network."

Fuck. I just get Q107.



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The fluck of the luckin Irish

John Doyle takes a shillelagh* to the McCourt brothers' play.

As the world must know by now, Limerick is the international capital of misery.

Look up "misery" in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of Limerick. It has been so since Frank McCourt published Angela's Ashes, his raw, complaining and comic memoir, which established Limerick as the most miserable place on the planet. I'm surprised anyone still has the nerve to live there.

Up on the stage, Frank and Malachy are treating us to a litany of complaints -- the shared outdoor toilet, the unreliable dad, the pompous priest, the sadistic schoolteachers and the backbiting, belligerent neighbours. These complaints are delivered with gusto and glee.

At this point, I'm wondering what the hell we're all doing in the bloody theatre watching these two eejits boast about the horrors they endured.

For what it's worth, most Irishmen I know agree with you, John.



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Play enjoyed by all (except reviewer)

Dorothy Parker: the musical!*



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Nobody's Fool

A literary Mrs. Doubtfire. I'm laughing already... Hopefully Piers Brosnan will take another lime to the coconut. Hehehe...



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The Handmaid's Tale

The opera the English press loves, then hates. Can it be loved again? (As opposed to the porn version, The Handmaid's Tail.)



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Hamlet in Africa
Today was one of the stranger days in literature. But hey, that's show business.


On this day in 1607 Hamlet was performed on board the merchant ship Red Dragon, anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone. Scholars regard this amateur, one-show-only production by the ship's crew as the first staging of a Shakespearean play outside of Europe, one that predates any New World Hamlet by about 150 years. Even if all went "trippingly on the tongue," it is anyone's guess what sense the bard's most puzzling play could have made to the four local chiefs who attended the premiere -- with filed teeth, nose rings, tattoos in the shape of exotic animals, and no English.

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Secretly I long for the drama club to rise up and inherit the earth...

Rise, my pasty skinned brethren! Don your masks of tragedy and comedy and clad yourselves in the raiment of kings (should the dressers have your size on hand)! The time has come to straighten those knobby elbows, point to the heavens and utter your terrible battle cry: "Rubberbabybuggybumpers! Rhubarbrhubarbrhubarb!"

"If we feel that our safety is unable to be secured, then we'll have to consider cancelling the performance," said Jennifer Deon, a spokesperson for the Shakespeare in the Park Festival.

Over the weekend, Deon says members of her troupe were attacked by a group of young people during an afternoon rehearsal.

"They were swinging skateboards, throwing rocks at us, I just said, "That's enough. I can't believe this is happening.'"

In all seriousness, I wish I had a ready contingent of ninjas on hand to send down there to stand around, all menacing-like. We'd dance fight 'em to the strains of Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield! It'll be just like when she throws that drink in the pimp's face! Yeah! "We are young...!" (Slow connection and still want to see Pat pout? Click here.)



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Forget who wrote Shakespeare -- who cares?
After all, what does he have to offer contemporary audiences?


A few weeks ago, I made the mistake of going to see Measure For Measure at London's National Theatre.

As usual with Shakespeare's plays, the audience had to be told the plot beforehand in the programme notes, because everyone knows that Elizabethan English will leave you confused within seconds.

The woman to my left sat still throughout the whole thing, seemingly engrossed. At first, I assumed she must be a renowned Shakespeare scholar. But no, she was fast asleep.

The truth is that Shakespeare is losing his appeal in his own country.


And if you really want to check out some verse plays, give Steven Berkoff a try.

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The Brits love their political theatre
Meanwhile in Canada, we have Stratford and Bard on the Beach. And let's not forget Shaw. Pushing the boundaries, we are.


In theaters all over London these days, debates rage about power and justice, about leadership and its abuses. From the National's production of Euripides' 410 B.C. Iphigenia at Aulis to the New Ambassador's up-to-date Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, curtains rise on works that confront the morality of the coalition's invasion of Iraq and inquire into government's dubious motives.

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Stage Direction: Dies
I thought poets were bad when it comes to squabbling, but this theatre group takes centre stage. Ba-dum.


"In a flourish, his Arden copy of Hamlet is ejected from his nicotined fingers and misses my head by a whisper. Laertes-like, I hurl my copy (heavier due to notes) straight back at him, wounding his shoulder. Proverbial hell now ensues, hot with expletives as the Dane leaps Fairbanks-like at my throat and would surely have garroted me had Osric and Horatio not leapt to my aid."

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