ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR JULY 9, 2024
A Tim Hortons musical faces the critics, the Festival d'Avignon resists, a long-term Disney deal brings Aladdin to Seoul, 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.
The Last Timbit, the musical that’s also a publicity stunt for the Canadian donut chain Tim Hortons, has gone through a whole press cycle in the last couple of weeks: First, pre-opening coverage of the one-act musical—based on the true story of a group of people trapped in a Tim Hortons during a 2010 snowstorm—positioned the show as a contemporary take on an old form. “The Last Timbit strikes me as a new spin on the long, illustrious tradition of corporately commissioned ‘industrial musicals’ that were a regular source of income for composers and lyricists on the rise in the 20th century,” writes J. Kelly Nestruck in the Globe and Mail, with Jackson Weaver of CBC adding, “in a difficult time for the [theater] industry, some say these kinds of projects could be a lifeline for Canadian creatives.” Then came the reviews, which run the gamut from Joshua Chong’s one-star pan in the Toronto Star (“A who’s who of Canadian musical theatre talent can’t salvage this 75-minute Tim Hortons ad, masquerading as a wannabe ‘Come From Away’”) to Aisling Murphy’s upbeat take in the Globe and Mail (“there’s a lot to like about The Last Timbit—if it takes capital from Big Doughnut to bring this creative team together, so be it”). Murphy even adds, “With tweaks (and, say, 20 per cent fewer subliminal messages to buy baked goods), this show could enter the canon for good.”
Now in his second year in the post, Festival d’Avignon director Tiago Rodrigues is making activism an increasingly high-profile part of the annual arts festival during a turbulent time in French politics, according to Laura Cappelle in the New York Times. Rodrigues, she writes, has “turned out to be a combative, politically outspoken leader for the French festival, a marquee event on the international theater calendar. … Avignon, he told the broadcaster France Info, would become a ‘festival of resistance.’” Days before the snap election that saw the left-wing alliance New Popular Front beat back the far-right National Rally—but fail to win enough seats to give the left definitive power—Rodrigues programmed a late-night offering on the festival’s biggest stage, “given over to willing artists, politicians and union leaders from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.” According Cappelle, the 2,000-seat venue was packed for the performance. Then, in a separate story in the Times, Cappelle reviews a handful of shows from the unusually inclusive festival lineup, which includes a dozen productions created by Spanish-language artists from around the world. “As the first week of the festival unfolded, the spotlight shone repeatedly on amateurs and artists from countries rarely represented on the biggest European stages,” she writes.
Speaking of elections and annual festivals, a story in the Guardian details the ways that recent political developments in the U.K. have thrown some Edinburgh Fringe creators into a frenzy of last-minute revisions. The surprise July 4 election that installed Keir Starmer as the new Prime Minister had been widely expected to happen in the fall, and as writer Rachael Healy reports, “when the announcement came that [the election] would be done and dusted less than a month before the fringe opens, comedians who dared to tackle politics in this volatile year were suddenly faced with serious rewrites.” As satirist Matt Forde says of the timeline, “It’s going to give me three weeks to write a show and that’s a big pressure.”
In a geographical first for Disney Theatrical Group’s ten-year-old Broadway success, Aladdin will play Seoul and Busan in a South Korean run that begins later this year. The production—the first to come out of a long-term pact (announced back in February 2023) between DTG and South Korean production companies S&Co, Lotte Cultureworks and Clip Service—plays Seoul’s in-demand Charlotte Theater (Nov. 22, 2024-June 22, 2025) before moving on to an engagement at Busan’s Dream Theater that starts in July 2025. According to Sol-hee Lee at The Musical (via Google Translate), the deal that birthed this Aladdin “is expected to serve as a new growth engine for the Korean musical industry and the development of a new musical population [i.e. audience] … and is also expected to shake up the Korean performing arts industry in 2024-2025.”
For more on the current state of the thriving South Korean theater business, check out last week’s story about my recent trip to Seoul:
A Chinese immersive stage adaptation of the BBC TV series Inside No. 9 has become a notable success in Shanghai. “Since the opening of the residency at the Shanghai Grand Theater on December 27, 2023, the play has been performed more than 160 times in the city, always maintaining a high attendance rate, ranking as the champion of the box office of Shanghai’s small theater residency in the first half of 2024,” write Miao Zhenyang and Xu Wei in Shanghai outlet City News Service. The series’ British creators, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, recently visited the production ahead of a separate stage adaptation of the show that opens in the West End next year. The Chinese production, meanwhile, was produced by a division of Damai, the Chinese ticketing platform: “Damai’s theater brand ‘Theater Rocks’ will continue to introduce outstanding overseas scripts and IPs to China and, combined with China's localized creative concepts and increasingly youthful market characteristics, to bring more high-quality theater content to the market.”
The New York Times brings further cultural context to the ongoing trial in Moscow of Russian director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, who face up to seven years in prison for producing a play that prosecutors say justifies terrorism. “Even before the verdict, the case is sounding alarms in the Russian theater community, which had been flourishing despite years of creeping pressure on the cultural establishment,” writes reporter Valerie Hopkins. The story also notes the stark contrast in the show’s reception prior to Russia’s attack on Ukraine: “Before the war, Finist the Brave Falcon had little trouble getting to the stage, and initially received the blessing of the state,” Hopkins says, adding that the show was even financed by state institutions and won two top theater awards following its 2020 debut.
In a mark of its ongoing local success, The Book of Mormon played its 300th performance in Madrid. According to Broadway World Spain, the Talía Award-winning, non-replica production will play through the summer without interruption—a rare move in a market that usually sees theater productions in Madrid shut down for six or eight weeks during the summer.
I wrote about the success of The Book of Mormon as part of a broader look at how Madrid became one of the biggest musical theater markets in Europe:
Following Australian actress Sarah Snook’s big win at the Olivier Awards, the Sydney-based paper Daily Telegraph published a feature in which writer Danielle Gusmaroli argues that in London, “the real Australian expats to watch out for are the lesser known talents stunning the West End in some of the most ambitious musicals.” Among the Oz natives making the round-up are performers Clancy Ryan (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Ross Chisari (Moulin Rouge), Rob Tripolino (Les Misérables), Baylie Carson (Six) and Jeremy Secomb (Old Friends), plus producer Garry McQuinn (Priscilla Queen of the Desert).
Did you know the Venice Biennale does theater too? I didn’t either, not until Variety’s recent report that Willem Dafoe was named artistic director of the Venice Biennale Theater Department for 2025 and 2026. “The Biennale’s theater department was founded in 1934, following the establishment of its art, music and cinema branches … and it is programmed yearly alongside major cultural events like the Venice Film Festival,” writes Ellise Shafer. Dafoe said of his upcoming tenure: “I worked with the Wooster Group for 27 years, I have collaborated with great directors from Richard Foreman to Bob Wilson. The direction of my theater program will be charted by my personal development. A sort of exploration of the essence of the body.”