ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR JUNE 24, 2025
Edinburgh's early buzzmagnets, Seoul's Sleep No More, Dorian Gray's $10 million boost to Sydney Theater Company, 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.
August approaches—which means it’s time for the U.K. theater press to start weighing in on which shows might be worth a look among the thousands jostling for attention at the upcoming Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Longtime Edinburgh correspondent Mark Fisher offers one early guide in The Guardian, as does Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out; among the shows singled out in both pieces are:
Make It Happen, the new James Graham play starring Brian Cox as the ghost of Adam Smith in the story of the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland,
Consumed, a family drama about four generations of Irish women from the Paines Plough company,
She’s Behind You, pantomime dame Johnny McKnight’s celebration of Scottish panto,
Ordinary Decent Criminal, featuring actor-comedian Mark Thomas in a piece described by Fisher as a “look back to the 25-day Strangeways prison riot in 1990 and the liberal experiment that followed,” and
Thanks for Being Here, the latest boundary-pushing work from the experimental Belgian troupe Ontroerend Goed.
One of this newsletter’s most popular stories ever is this jam-packed edition from last summer about the Fringe:
The poster child for immersive theater’s meteoric rise over the last 15 years, Sleep No More starts performances in Seoul next month in a staging described by Mee-yoo Kwon in The Korea Times as “the largest iteration of Sleep No More ever staged, following runs in New York and Shanghai.” Produced by Korean company Ms. Jackson, this Sleep No More, which starts July 24, will take place in a renovated cinema “in Chungmuro, a symbolic site at the heart of Korea’s film industry”—a site-specific nod to the show’s film-noir aesthetic.
Meanwhile on the other side of the Pacific, the latest immersive outing from Sleep No More creator Punchdrunk, Viola’s Room, started performances earlier last week at Manhattan venue The Shed, where it’ll play through Oct. 19. Alexis Soloski in The New York Times has the backstory on the production, with (recorded) narration provided by Helena Bonham Carter.
Sydney Theatre Company has recorded an AUD $10 million (~$6.4 million US) boost in revenue due in part due to the West End success of The Picture of Dorian Gray, according to Kelly Burke in The Guardian, and stands “poised to reap millions more when it receives a cut from this year’s even more lucrative Broadway run.” The numbers come from STC’s recently released annual report for 2024, which “showed the company was still not out of the red but its total deficit shrunk from $1.8 million [~$1.2 million US] in 2023 to $566,000 [~$365,000 US]. Gross revenue from continuing operations, which includes local box office takings and income from touring, licensing and royalty payments, came to $37.7 million [~$24.3 million US] in 2024, $10 million more than the company earned the previous year.” Jade Kennedy notes in Variety Australia that STC’s 2024 revenue marked the “highest income in its 45-year history … a milestone driven by a major uptick in touring activity, box office success, and increased audience reach.”
How the megamusical Les Misérables has resonated with political moments around the world is the subject of a story by Zachary Pincus-Roth in The Washington Post. Prompted by Trump’s seemingly counterintuitive embrace of the show (now playing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.), the story touches on a 2019 production in Venezuela “at the height of the demonstrations raging against the authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro,” as well as on the protest movements in Belarus, the Philippines, Turkey, and South Korea that have taken up the musical’s song “Do You Hear the People Sing?” “After Hong Kong protest movements deployed the show’s stirring anthem in 2014 and 2019, Chinese authorities reportedly blocked the tune from streaming services,” writes Pincus-Roth.
Even the French like Les Misérables now! Find out why in this story from last year:
In an intriguing crossover of Canada’s commercial and non-profit theater sectors, Come From Away producer Michael Rubinoff has been named the new artistic director at Toronto’s Musical Stage Company. As reported by Aisling Murphy in The Globe and Mail, Rubinoff comes to the post after establishing the Canadian Music Theatre Project and serving as co-chair of the National Centre for New Musicals’ advisory committee. In the commercial realm, he produced the Tony-nominated Broadway musical Come From Away, now makings its way around around the world, and more recently dipped a toe into brand-extension theater with Tim Hortons musical The Last Timbit. “Under Rubinoff’s leadership [of Musical Stage Company], audiences can hope to see more Canadian musicals produced (and remounted) across Canada, as well as existing international musicals reimagined for a Canadian context,” Murphy writes. “Rubinoff also intends to continue his advocacy for a Canadian live performing arts tax credit.”
Broadway pitched itself to international tourists last week at IPW 2025, the annual travel industry convention that aims to drum up inbound travel to U.S. destinations from abroad. As noted in travel outlet Panrotas, shows that performed segments at this year’s IPW in Chicago included Buena Vista Social Club, Death Becomes Her, Maybe Happy Ending, Hell’s Kitchen, The Outsiders, and The Great Gatsby. Also at IPW, Broadway’s Wicked got the attention of Brazilian travel industry site Mercado & Eventos, which touted the show’s tourist-friendly “multilingual audio guide system” offering simultaneous translation in seven languages including Portuguese.
Speaking of Brazil’s interest in Elphaba’s story: The popular, non-replica production of Wicked in São Paulo has extended by a month, reports CNN Brasil. It now runs through Aug. 10.
Homegrown Spanish musical Los Pilares de la Tierra (The Pillars of the Earth) will tour Spain this summer before circling back to Madrid for a return engagement in November. An adaptation of the Ken Follett novel from beon Entertainment, one of Spain’s most ambitious theater creators, the large-scale production recently wrapped up its first season in Madrid prior to stops in Bilbao (Aug. 15-30) and Saragossa (Sept. 27-Oct. 25). The musical returns to Madrid’s Teatro Gran Vía for a second season of performances that starts Nov. 20. Reporter Lorena Pastor Romero has a story on the show’s summer plans and its new cast member in BroadwayWorld Spain.
I wrote about beon’s ambitious impresario and the opening of Los Pilares de la Tierra in this story from November:
One of Athens’ most famous ancient theaters will close for renovations at the end of the summer, writes Theodora Tongas in The Associated Press. More than 18 centuries old, the Odeon of Herod Atticus (located “at the foot of the Acropolis”) is a summertime arts hub in Athens thanks to the Athens Epidaurus Festival, now starting its 70th season of summer programming at the venue. Tongas’ story has the details on all the ways the old venue struggles to accommodate modern productions, and also explains that the extent of the renovations—and the exact length of time the venue will be closed—remains to be determined following structural studies still being conducted. The venue is expected to be dark for, at minimum, three years. “Its closure will be a profound loss for spectators who have long enjoyed first-class performances under the stars in one of the world’s most iconic open-air theaters,” Tongas says.
IN LAST WEEK’S SPOTLIGHT STORY
I looked at how Trump’s travels bans and executive orders on gender have further complicated the famously difficult process of securing work visas for international artists in the U.S.:
INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS, TRAVEL BANS, AND TRUMP 2.0
How travel restrictions and transphobia threaten to make presenting and producing international work even harder than it already is in the U.S.