Wednesday, August 30, 2006

King of All Media

OK, maybe I’m not ready to take on Howard Stern – who would even want to do that? – but I have been tuning into theater news in all sorts of different media lately. First, of course, is print. I hope everyone saw the work of Style’s new theater reviewer, Joseph Quam, in last week’s edition, and his veritable rave for “Beehive.” I’m hoping Mr. Quam will be a more frequent contributor to Style to fill in the substantial gaps in theater coverage my lame-itude creates.

Also, Newsweek came out with their Fall Arts preview. In kind of an interesting strategy, the magazine lumps Museum and Theater events into a “Spectacles” section (versus just “Movies” or “Books”). I can imagine that was an interesting conversation around the Arts Editor’s desk – “Is there anything we can call these things that will justify us cramming them all on to one page?”

Anyway, Newsweek highlights “A Chorus Line” understandably, but also mentions something I’m most curious about, “The Pirate Queen,” which is being developed by the folks behind my favorite musical of all time, “Les Miserables.” Please, oh please, strike gold again, guys!

Finally, I’ve been enjoying news about theater on radio lately, too. Last night, there was a very interesting story on “Black Watch,” the new play showing at the Edinburgh Festival about Scottish soldiers in Afghanistan. It’s supposed to be awesome. Me, I could just listen to those Scottish accents all day long.

Then, earlier in the week, there was a piece about “The Fantasticks” and its revival. I didn’t realize that so much concern had been (appropriately) given to the “rape” lyrics in that show.

Everywhere you turn around – Theater! You’d think there’d be some way to turn coverage of it into a full time job… Any ideas, please let me know.

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