AmericanTheaterWeb NewsClips

Associated Press

The past haunts the present in 'Saturn Returns' as it opens in New York

New Times Square Ball to Hang Around for Halloween
Next month, it'll be the famous New Year's Eve ball. Next year, it could be the Great Pumpkin.

Gay arts group sues Milwaukee for discrimination

Bloomberg.com

One-Act `Saturn Returns' Has Star's Life Unfold in Three Parts: John Simon
Some bad plays are fun, the way B- movies are, or used to be. Noah Haidle's B-play, ``Saturn Returns,'' however, has the distinction of being the dullest, most pointless piece the venerable Lincoln Center Theater has foisted on us in a very long time.

With Two Tonys, Three Kids, Ebersole Rails Against Global Banking `Cartel'
Broadway actress Christine Ebersole sat in a radio studio at Bloomberg's New York headquarters and laughed when asked to sing a few notes without preparation.

Wall Street Journal

Ticketmaster Drops Fee in an Experiment
Ticketmaster said that it has started experimenting with the sale of concert tickets without the addition of so-called convenience charges.
[alas, not a full story - that's only available to subscribers - still...]

Variety

'Shrek' pulls in green on Broadway
'Billy Elliot' dances to second spot

TWC heads to 'Osage County'
Weinstein, Doumanian, Traxler to produce

Telsey leads Artios casting awards
Honors for casting TV and theater awarded

Five honored with grants
U.S. Artists Fellowship hands out prizes

Review: Saturn Returns
...this is an intimate reflection on grief and loneliness that keeps its sentimentality in check via prickly character shadings. But despite Nicholas Martin's graceful staging, the play is too contrived to be fully affecting.

Review: Made in Poland
As with nearly any competently executed farce, this is a well-oiled machine, but Gay goes the extra mile, teasing out hidden depths in nearly all of the offbeat characters, especially our chronically furious hero.

Review: The School of Night
Judging by the first night crowd's intense perusal of the program's background essays, a quick Elizabethan era brush-up is something of a must for Peter Whelan's dark, dense, difficult "The School of Night."

Review: High School Musical
Show should draw plenty of pre-teens who know the material inside out, and help the ledger of the venerable New Jersey theater, which barely escaped extinction in June via a $9 million bailout by the town of Millburn.

Review: High School Musical 2
...No matter that there's really not much to follow up on. For many in the audience with less-than-discriminating tastes, just revisiting their fave characters in any format is enough as long as it's presented reasonably well. In this stage sequel premiering (like its predecessor) at Atlanta's Fox Theater, their wish is Disney's commercial command.

King Lear, Everyman Theatre, Liverpool
... concrete setting as Great Britain in the early years of Margaret Thatcher's government. But while this decision by helmer Rupert Goold (whose staging of "Macbeth" made a splash on Broadway last season) puts the play's political machinations into interestingly sharp relief, it takes a toll on the tragedy's majestic scale.

Review: La Damnation de Faust

Back Stage

Saturn Returns reviewed by David Sheward
While the work is somewhat slight and overly tricky, it does display solid characterization and a moving situation.The short play comes across as too much like a writing exercise.

Made in Poland reviewed by Jerry Portwood
The characters in Made in Poland are so familiar that it takes a moment to realize that the action is taking place in Poland and not in heavily Polish Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Mindgame reviewed by David Sheward
The trouble is with Mindgame, Anthony Horowitz's mindless thriller, is that twist is fairly obvious five minutes after the show starts. The second act is just as easy to predict.

Bury the Dead reviewed by Gwen Orel
As woman after woman pleads with the dead soldier she loved to allow himself to be buried, in this stylish production of Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead, tears ran down my face.

The Footage reviewed by Andy Propst
Virtual worlds powered by increasingly complex Internet sites send friends from two very different parts of the country into a head-on collision in The Footage.

(Not) Just A Day Like Any Other reviewed by A.J. Mell
Anyone expecting an ensemble of grim, hectoring artistes spouting manifestos and slapping themselves with raw meat can relax -- it's hard to imagine a more companionable bunch.

Five Theatre Artists Receive $50,000 Fellowships
The United States Artists, an L.A.-based grant and advocacy organization, today announced five theatre artists who will receive the third annual $50,000 USA Fellowships.

Pittsinger to Sub for Szot in 'South Pacific'
Opera veteran David Pittsinger will temporarily replace Paulo Szot as Emile de Becque in the Tony Award-winning production of South Pacific.