Drama

Just as the hurt feelings on both sides finally seemed to be smoothed after the Urinetown brouhaha, Chicago's local theatre scene again finds itself facing Broadway's ire. Apparently, Eric Rosen, who is a phenomenally talented director and who will be greatly missed when he departs for Kansas City later this year, made some cuts in his production of The Little Dog Laughed without Douglas Carter Beane's approval. Specifically, he changed the nude scene so that both actors were wearing underwear, and changed some lines to reflect this visual change. Well, seeing as how this is one of the first regional productions of the show, Beane showed up a few days ago to check it out and was outraged that anyone had dared to change his show, no matter how much they may have known the audience and what would fly, and threatened to have the show closed, which would have cost About Face Theatre several thousand dollars. Eric personally interceded and got Beane to withdraw his threats but had to send out a humiliating letter to local critics outlining how he had "substantially" changed the show. Let me see if I understand this; first, a Chicago theatre gets in trouble for being too similar to a Broadway production, now, another one is in trouble for being too different. How is a regional theatre supposed to know what to do? Is the Mariott going to get in trouble for their production of Les Miz because they don't have a turntable stage? Or, conversely, if they installed a turntable, would they then get in trouble for being too similar? These producers in New York need to figure out what they want or they're going to find regional theatres demanding fewer and fewer licensed productions and going the route of Drury Lane (and Mariott for that matter) and starting to produce more original materials. That actually wouldn't be a bad thing for theatre in general. Looking at it that way, let's see how else we can piss off New York.