NFTRW Weekly Top Five

Here are the top five comment generating posts of the last week:

Watch that first step – It’s a doozey!

TheatreFace: "I travel about quite a bit visiting many different types of theatres and arenas. In my climbing about if find one particular hazard time and again: Open ladder wells. These can be present at the ends of catwalks, on the floor of a gridiron deck, or at the edge of a storage platform, and sometimes at loading docks, too.

Posted by David at 4/15/2011 09:11:00 PM <-- Comments Here

‘Spider-Man’ - Julie Taymor’s Vision Takes Its Final Bow

NYTimes.com: "History is being made on Broadway this weekend: The $70 million museum piece that is Julie Taymor’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the most expensive musical of all time, is on display in its final performances through Sunday afternoon, then disassembled out of existence.

Posted by David at 4/15/2011 09:07:00 PM <-- Comments Here

Will anyone care about the revamped "Spider-Man" musical?

Salon.com: "From its conception, 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' has been plagued with problems. It was too expensive. It didn't make any sense; with director Julie Taymor choosing to focus the show around a strange Greek mythology that included a 'Geek Chorus' and a villainess named Arachne, who inexplicably became the central figure in the musical.

Posted by David at 4/17/2011 09:49:00 PM <-- Comments Here

Theater Talkback: Are Musicals Losing Their Voices?

NYTimes.com: "“We didn’t need dialogue! We had faces!” The famous lines spoken by Gloria Swanson’s decrepit silent-movie goddess Norma Desmond sprang to mind the other night at Avery Fisher Hall during the New York Philharmonic’s concert version of “Company.” I imagined there might be a few old-time Broadway performers in the audience muttering similar sentiments to themselves as they watched Lonny Price’s vocally vacuous presentation of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical. “Back in my day, we had voices!” I could picture one seething through his or her teeth to a colleague at intermission.

Posted by David at 4/14/2011 11:17:00 PM <-- Comments Here

Stage Players rework ‘The Wizard of Oz’

The Pitt News: "The much beloved classic “The Wizard of Oz” has undergone an extreme makeover in Rage of the Stage Players’ newest performance, which transforms it into a mature, darkly humorous tale. Set in a mental institution, Dorothy (known here as Dottie) and her companions are patients, trying to find a way out. Each character is more damaged than his original incarnation: Dottie is bipolar, “Skarekrow” is a heroin-addicted goth rocker, The Tin Man (known as Rusty) is a biker with anger issues and an ax and the Cowardly Lion (Mr. Lyons) is a sexually frustrated deviant.

Posted by Dale at 4/18/2011 12:48:00 AM <-- Comments Here