Warwick Thompson
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Trevor Nunn’s London production of “The Tempest” with Ralph Fiennes has already racked up advance ticket sales of 1 million pounds ($1.6 million).
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London theater used to be quiet in August. What happened? A spectacular “Batman Live,” a Broadway transfer of “South Pacific” and a new “Don Giovanni” opened this week. Did someone cancel holiday for showpeople?
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A child murder trial, a lynching, and cakewalking anti-Semites are the unlikely ingredients of the musical “Parade,” playing under a Victorian railway arch near London Bridge.
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Jude Law has gotten an Irish accent, grown a beard, and gone to the gym. When he flops semi-naked out of a stormy sea in “Anna Christie,” the barometer sizzles.
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In one sense, Investec Plc’s sponsorship of Opera Holland Park in London concludes this season on a low note. At the bottom of a ravine, in fact. In another sense, it couldn’t be higher.
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Alfredo Catalani’s rarely performed opera “La Wally” (1892) ends with an avalanche killing the hero and the distraught heroine flinging herself into a snowy abyss. It’s the sort of thing that drives directors mad.
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Tenor Placido Domingo recently added the role of privateer in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” to his repertoire. Now, as digital thieves steal his income, he’s turned from operatic piracy to real-life pirate catching.
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When the hero Sam gets killed near the beginning of “Ghost: the Musical” it seems like the best thing that could happen to such a cardboard character. Then something magical happens.
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In Rufus Wainwright’s concert of Judy Garland songs at London’s Royal Opera House, it was a surprise to hear him warble “fatty rain, oh cinnamon shelf.”
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Cate Blanchett, the new Duke of Cambridge and Robert Downey Jr. have all trodden the atmospheric boards at Wilton’s Music Hall in east London. They’ve also confronted its ripe 1720s drains and leaky roof.
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Although mezzo Joyce DiDonato swings both ways, operatically speaking, now even she has a juicy new opportunity for gender bending.
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When a little-known opera is staged as a vehicle for a superstar, that singer had better be worth the ticket. Kansas-born mezzo Joyce DiDonato proves every inch a box-office draw at London’s Royal Opera House.
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The hero of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is called “a lump of foul deformity” by his future wife. Rarely has foulness produced so many gallows laughs as it does with Kevin Spacey as the cunning crookback.