Word: theatered
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...York in the global economy, they immediately think of Wall Street. But that's not the whole story. In 2005 the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank, issued a study of the city's cultural sector, which it defined broadly to include art, design, music, theater and dance, as well as TV and film production, architecture, publishing, fashion and even advertising. It found that taken together those professions were second only to financial services as an economic force, employing 309,000 people, or more than 8% of the New York City work force...
...complaints have become as predictable as the patter for the villain's henchmen in a Disney cartoon: Disney shows are too big, too commercial, too over-marketed - not real theater so much as bloated "theme park" extravaganzas that only children and undiscriminating tourists could love (though the criticism of Disney's last show, Mary Poppins, was somewhat different; the critics found it too heavy, not theme-parky enough.) Disney's latest offering - The Little Mermaid, based on Disney's 1989 animated hit, which opened at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre last week - has received the usual fusillade. "Washed...
That sort of thing makes me wonder whether the critics are actually sitting in the same theater I am. In fact, the show is notably lacking in sparkles, and garish is just about the last word I would use to describe the subtle and airy visual design. A gorgeous color palette of pastel blues, oranges and pinks. Translucent, lighter-than-air panels, billowing plastic waves, scepter-like deep-sea sculptures, which manage to convey not just one undersea world but a host of neighborhoods within that world. Costumes that manage to be both lush and witty - the exaggerated, bunched-crinoline...
...Little Mermaid is more than just a visual feast. In fact, I think it comes closer than any Disney show since The Lion King to combining story, song and inventive staging into something that lifts our spirits and renews our faith that theater for "children" can be enjoyed by everyone. Acclaimed opera director Francesca Zambello, doing her first Broadway show, can't match Julie Taymor's innovative staging in The Lion King (but then, who can - not even Taymor since then), but she has the same inventive, less-is-more, determinedly theatrical approach. Instead of wires and pulleys or complicated...
...fairy tale, aimed chiefly at children. But would it be rude to ask why Broadway's fairy tales for adults (Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls) can become musical theater classics while the ones directed at kids become critical dartboards? Or to point out that most of the children's theater I've seen in the past few years has had more theatrical verve and originality than most of the serious stuff I've had to sit through on Broadway? Or to wish, just once, that Disney might get a little credit for recruiting some of the most adventurous theater artists...