ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR FEB. 4, 2025
Cultural budget cuts loom in Berlin, Wicked returns to São Paulo, Dear Evan Hansen cancels Australian tour stops, and more
Welcome to the latest edition of ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS, my regular roundup of theater headlines from around the world. New to Jaques? Check out this handy explainer.
“Is Berlin being extinguished as a beacon for arts and culture?” asks Natasha Tripney in The Stage as “the city enters the new year facing a massive cut of €130 million (£110 million), or roughly 12%, to its cultural budget.” (That’s about $135 million in USD.) The cuts are prompting prominent theaters like the Schaubühne and the Berliner Ensemble to reduce programming, as well as spawning a string of protests against the cutbacks, many of which seem to have “an ideological edge” as the right grows in political power. Based on the U.K.’s experience with austerity-era funding, Tripney offers a sense of what to expect in Berlin: “In-house artists will fare better than freelancers. Space for experimentation and risk will dwindle. Some cultural spaces will close. Many artists will simply not be able to sustain their careers.”
The hit Brazilian production of Wicked will return to São Paulo this spring, reuniting stars Myra Ruiz and Fabi Bang, who dubbed the voices of Elphaba and Glinda for the Portuguese release of the recent Universal movie adaptation. As writer Karina Sergio Gomes notes in Neofeed, when the non-replica production played Teatro Santander in São Paulo in 2023, Wicked reported the biggest box office in the theater’s history “with an audience of more than 156,000 spectators and five months of sold-out sessions.” That 2023 staging picked up buzz due to its impressive flying effects; the 2025 return with have three “flight systems” instead of the two previously seen (in sequences involving Glinda’s bubble and Elphaba’s iconic flight). “‘There will be more people flying,’ guarantees the producer [Carlos Cavalcanti].”
The Australian production of Dear Evan Hansen has cancelled tour stops in Adelaide and Canberra due to disappointing sales, according to Walter Marsh in arts news outlet InReview. The non-replica co-production from Sydney Theatre Company and Michael Cassel Group, now in Melbourne following its Sydney premiere, was due to begin its Canberra engagement Feb. 27 and then play a run in Adelaide starting April 3. A spokesperson for MCG is quoted in the story saying, “Despite tremendous seasons in Melbourne and Sydney, we have not seen a similar level of enthusiasm from audiences in Canberra and Adelaide and therefore touring Dear Evan Hansen there was not viable.” That’s the second cancellation to hit Adelaide recently, Marsh adds, after a planned January run of Peter and the Starcatcher was nixed in November.
On the subject of Dear Evan Hansen: In his Marquee newsletter, fellow Substacker
has a review of the current Israeli production of the show (with a Hebrew title that translates to Hi, Evan Hansen) from guest writer Dan Berlfein. Among the takeaways: He gives a thumbs-up to the production’s incorporation of video elements and audience participation, and offers some interesting details on translation choices that, in his estimation, “added a layer of meaning while preserving the emotional resonance of the original.” In the same edition, Benkof himself has a review of the current West End revival of Oliver!, staged by Matthew Bourne and produced by Cameron Mackintosh.
Also featured in a recent edition of Marquee: This newsletter! In which I tell David why it’s an exciting time to take a global view of the musical theater industry and highlight some fave tidbits from my recent coverage:
Popular Korean webtoon-turned-K-drama Itaewon Class is getting a Japanese musical adaptation from a creative team that includes Helen Park, the South Korean-born, New York-based composer of KPOP. She’ll collaborate on the show with Korean composer-lyricist Hee-joon Lee and Japanese writer Riko Sakaguchi; the role of protagonist Sae-ro-yi Park will be played by Nozomu Kotaaki, a member of the Japanese pop idol group West. “The musical is a collaboration among creators from South Korea, Japan, and the United States,” writes Ye-won Yun in Chosun Biz. The show premieres in Tokyo in June.
The late Filipino producer-director Bobby Garcia, who died in December, is the subject of a feature in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, offering a survey of a career dedicated to “uplift[ing] Filipino voices in theatre for almost 25 years through Atlantis Productions, his theatre production company, and Theatre Group Asia, a new Filipino theatre collective he formed post-pandemic,” writes reporter Ilana Lucas. Garcia was based in Vancouver and worked extensively in Canada, where he had been set to direct Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Stratford Festival later this year. His final stage project was the Manila production of Request sa Radyo last fall.
Speaking of Theatre Group Asia, the initiative co-founded by Garcia: The Diarist interviews Lea Salonga for a feature on TGA’s upcoming Manila production of Into the Woods. Salonga’s last musical in the Philippines was Sweeney Todd; she’s soon to open on Broadway in the Sondheim revue Old Friends. “If all I do for the rest of my life is perform in Sondheim shows, I’ll be very happy,” Salonga says in the article. She’ll star as the Witch in Into the Woods this summer.
International production company Stage Entertainment will celebrate 25 years in Hamburg, Germany with Best of Musicals Live in Concert, a show featuring local musical stars performing songs from Stage’s German productions including Dance of the Vampires, The Phantom of the Opera, Tina, The Lion King, and more. According to press notes, the show will run eight performances starting March 31 at Stage Theater Neue Flora Hamburg.
In Delhi, the National School of Drama’s annual theatre festival, Bharat Rang Mahotsav, includes a new musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by playwright Amitosh Nagpal, the author of a popular Hindi version of Twelfth Night. “This one is in our very specific ways of speaking English—Telugu-English, Assamese English. The play mostly explores the chaos in the lives of the middle-class,” Nagpal is quoted as saying in Aheli Das’ story in The Hindustan Times.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is part of an international team that’s developing a videogame based on the character of Lady Macbeth, according to The Stage. “New York-based game studio iNK Stories and the RSC have joined forces to present Lili, a Shakespeare-inspired venture that marks the RSC’s debut in the video game field,” writes Georgia Luckhurst. “Starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi as Lili, or Lady Macbeth, the game is co-produced by Paris-headquartered company Alambic Production and draws from its lead actor’s experience as an Iranian woman in exile.”
The Phantom of the Opera will play Mumbai in March at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre …
… Chicago lands in Barcelona …
… Spamalot comes to Mexico City …
… and Sweeney Todd bows in Dubai.
FURTHER READING
I wrote about Request sa Radyo, which Bobby Garcia directed in Manila in the fall, in this story from October:
And I got some fun insights into the Brazilian Portuguese translation of Wicked in this roundtable discussion from April:
