I asked Charles Dickens yesterday why “A Christmas Carol” has been adapted for the stage more often, and on more stages, than any other novella in history.
“I believe it is because the themes of redemption and generosity resonate deeply with audiences of all ages and backgrounds..creating an immersive experience that captures and inspires,” Dickens told me, in a plummy British voice, although his body was a 3D cartoon, and his words created by Artificial Intelligence.
We were speaking in a virtual lobby before yet another theatrical adaptation of the 1843 story, this one “A Christmas Carol VR,” which uses Virtual Reality. Although the live show, which is running through next weekend, is not the “Christmas Carol” I would pick above all others – not even in my top ten – it is yet another example of the persistent appeal of the ancient art of theater in the world, even in the digital world: I also saw a simulcast of Vineyard Theater’s production of “Scene Partners” starring Dianne Wiest this weekend.
Here are some comments the actual Charles Dickens made during his lifetime about the power of theater:
“Every writer, though he may not adopt dramatic form, writes, in effect, for the stage. “
“It being a remarkable fact in theatrical history, but one long since established beyond dispute, that it is a hopeless endeavor to attract people to a theater unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.”
Broadway Christmas Week Schedule 2023
The Week in Reviews
Is It Thursday Yet?
“Is It Thursday Yet?” is an eclectically inventive work created just three years after Jenn Freeman’s autism diagnosis that explains and explores the way she perceives the world, using dance, theater, voiceover therapy, original songs, a dozen video monitors, several unusual props, even innovative graphic design…and more. Nothing feels out of bounds: At one point, Freeman wears a lampshade on her head, which serves as a screen for home movies from her childhood
Death, Let Me Do My Show
A show about death, Bloom’s personal experience and personal take on it. But in many ways, the show is also still the glitzy musical standup she initially intended…The result is certainly clever, undeniably entertaining at times, but also largely hollow. By framing her experiences through a synthetic comic filter, she keeps us at a distance from much of anything meaningful or memorable about this greatest mystery of human existence, or the reactions it inspires – which is to say, fear, grief, cosmic questioning. Read more
Buena Vista Social Club
Buena Vista Social Club” is electrifying as a concert of fifteen classic Cuban songs performed in Spanish by multitalented singers, dancers and musicians…But it is billed as a new musical, not a concert. And so, threaded through the often thrilling music is a plot that is little more than serviceable and less than trustworthy. Full Review
Book: Crisis: The Theater Responds
t’s refreshing to come across a theater book entitled “Crisis” that’s not about the crisis in theater, but about every other crisis in the world – a book that makes the case that theater has been a good place to address all these other crises. In “Crisis: The Theater Responds“(Salamander Street, 254 pages), author Carol Rocamora offers a selective survey of specific plays and playwrights that have responded to the issues of the day over the past century. In the process, some also have created new forms of theater.
Movie: American Fiction
American Fiction” is both a smart, funny satire of the way the white establishment pigeonholes Black artists, and a warmhearted if cool-eyed family drama.
No small reason for its appeal are the grounded performances by its starry cast, especially the central one by Jeffrey Wright….[who] first made his mark in 1993 with his Tony-winning Broadway debut as the Black, gay AIDS nurse Belize in “Angels in America,” a role he recreated a decade later in the landmark television adaptation of Tony Kushner’s epic play.
The Week in Theater News
The Demographics of the Broadway Audience
2022-2023 SEASON, the latest report from the Broadway League
• Sixty-five percent of the audiences identified as female.
Approximately 35 percent of attendances were by people from the New York City metropolitan area; 17 percent were from other countries.
• The average age of the Broadway theatregoer was 40.4 years old. That was the youngest in the past twenty seasons.
The average annual household income of the Broadway theatregoer was $271,277.
David Hyde Pierce on Here We Are: “It feels like this is typical Sondheim in that it’s something we’ve never seen before… we all love doing the show. We love each other and are having the best time. But the way it was presented to me originally, when they first came to me, Joe [Mantello] said, ‘Look, we are not doing this to move it. We are not doing this as a commercial production. We’re doing this for Steve.’ (LA Times)
In Memoriam
Michael Blakemore, 95, the only stage director in Broadway history to win Tony Awards for both best play and best musical in the same season, the revival of “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Copenhagen.”
Andre Braugher, 61, famous for playing lawmen on TV (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Homicide), was a regular for two decades at the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in Park
Augie Prosperi, 66, longtime sound engineer with the Local One – International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
The Week’s Theater Video
Watch “Old Friends” from Merrily We Roll Along
A walk through lower Manhattan, showing the Lenape landmarks referred to in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s play Manahatta, currently at the Public Theater
