Theatre & Dance

A sharer’s feast: Shakespeare’s birthday party 398 years on

By Bart van Es
April 23rd 1564, or a day or two earlier, saw the birth of William Shakespeare, and on that same day fifty-two years later, also in Stratford, he died. This congruence of dates lends some credibility to the account given by the local vicar many years later of the way the playwright spent his final hours: ‘Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.’

Name that dance

“Shake Shake Shake Señora”! We’ve all heard that song, but do you know how to dance to it? Should you do the Rumba, the Hustle, or possibly the Merengue? Dancing is a universal form of expression and is also unique to different cultures worldwide. In 1982, the International Theatre Institute created the worldwide holiday known as “International Dance Day” on April 29th. In honor of the upcoming holiday, we’ve gathered information from the Oxford Index to test your dance knowledge. Take our brief “Name that dance” quiz, it’s not as easy as you think!

Shakespeare’s fools

Feste is a fool for the Countess Olivia and seems to have been attached to the household for some time, as a “fool that the Lady Olivia’s father took much delight in”. Feste claims that he wears “not motley” in his brain, so even though he dresses the part of the fool, he is not an idiot, and can see through the other characters.

Beware the Ides of March!

By Greg Woolf
Romans measured time in months but not in weeks. The Ides simply meant the middle day of a month and it functioned simply as a temporal navigation aid — one that looks clumsy to us. So one might make an appointment for two days before the Ides or for three days after the Kalends (the first day of the month) and so on.

Richard Burbage: Shakespeare’s first Hamlet

By Bart van Es
The death of Richard Burbage in 1619 caused a minor scandal. So lavish was the outpouring of grief that it threatened to overshadow official mourning for Queen Anne who had died a few days before. Shakespeare’s leading actor had a legendary status in the seventeenth century. It is also a minor scandal that he is not more famous today.

The tragic death of an actor

By Maya Slater
The farce is at its height: the old clown in the armchair is surrounded by whirling figures in outlandish doctors’ costumes, welcoming him into their brotherhood with a mock initiation ceremony. He takes the Latin oath: ‘Juro’, falters. His face crumples. The audience gasps – is something wrong? But the clown is grinning now, all is well, the dancing grows frenzied, the play rushes on to its end. Not till the next day will the audience find out what happened afterwards. They carried the clown off the stage in his chair, and rushed him home. He was coughing blood, dying. He asked for his wife, and for a priest to confess him. They failed to arrive before he died.

Why does “Ol’ Man River” still stop Show Boat?

By Todd Decker
Show Boat is back on the boards, visiting four major opera companies in a new production of yet another new version. Originally debuted on Broadway in 1927, apparently Show Boat will never stop being remade. The new production, directed by Francesca Zambello, had its premiere at the Chicago Lyric Opera a year ago, an appropriate starting place as much of the second act takes place in the Windy City.

The Playboy Riots of 1907

By Ann Saddlemyer
There had been rumours for months. When Dublin’s Abbey Theatre announced that John Millington Synge’s new play The Playboy of the Western World would be produced on Saturday, 26 January 1907, all were on alert. Controversy had followed Synge since the production of his first Wicklow play, The Shadow of the Glen, in which a bold, young and lonely woman leaves a loveless May/December marriage to go off with a fine-talking Tramp who rhapsodizes over the freedom of the roads. Irish women wouldn’t do that!

The changing face of opera

By Meghann Wilhoite

Outreach and innovation are two buzzwords that pop up again and again in relation to established “classical” music institutions such as symphony orchestras and opera companies. In an effort to build younger audiences, many of these institutions have introduced new programs that attempt to do away with the of the concert-going experience, such as expensive tickets or the need for a certain type of attire, that might discourage younger or less experienced listeners from attending.

The women of Les Miz

By Stacy Wolf

On Christmas Day, the eagerly-awaited movie musical Les Misérables — “A Musical Phenomenon” the advertisement promises — will open across the United States. If it makes half the splash that its Broadway source did in 1987, we’re in for a long ride. The musical ran for 6680 performances, and won Tony awards for Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score. It closed and then re-opened for another 463-performance run in 2006. It continues to tour the US.

Hard times no more: The Performers

>By Liz Wollman
One of the largest — and, I admit, most disappointing — revelations I had while researching 1970s adult musicals for my book, Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City, was just how tame they all ended up being. Sure, there was frank talk about sex in most adult musicals. There were also a lot of naked bodies on display.

The top ten dramatizations of Moby-Dick

By George Cotkin

By George Cotkin
Moby-Dick draws readers into it. And many of its more creative readers have sought to capture its grandeur on film and stage. From the first film in 1926 to the present, these attempts have taken liberties with the novel, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. But that is the challenge that Moby-Dick offers its readers, a text that is deep and wide, an ocean of issues and concerns that we must all, in some fashion, navigate

The point of no return

By Alyssa Bender

If a theater noob polled a group of theater fans on what classic musicals she must see to jumpstart her theater education, you would be hard pressed to find a fan without The Phantom of the Opera on their list. The show, which opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London on 9 October 1986, has left an undeniable impact on London’s West End, Broadway, and theater in general.

Beethoven on stage in 33 Variations

By William Kinderman

By William Kinderman
A blend of past and present, art and life: Beethoven’s most challenging work for piano, the Diabelli Variations op. 120, has triggered a mania of interest on the theatrical scene. Several years ago New York playwright Moisés Kaufman visited my wife Katherine Syer and myself — the first of several visits — to shape a play on Beethoven.

West Side Story, 55 years later

By Meghann Wilhoite

Today marks the 55th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. A racially charged retelling of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story is set in the “blighted” West Side of 1950s Manhattan, the potent themes of star-crossed love and gang rivalry successfully translated from 16th century Italy to 20th century New York by book-writer Arthur Laurents and lyricist Steven Sondheim.

Happy Birthday, Irving Berlin

To commemorate the birthday of the great American songwriter, Irving Berlin, we spoke with Jeffrey Magee, author of Irving Berlin’s American Musical Theater.