Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

296 Chapter 10 Global Theatre Today
by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which produces
their namesake’s work (and much more) in three theatres
in that town, as well as seasonally in London and on tours
throughout the United Kingdom. Theatre ticket prices in
England are less than in the United States, and an official
half-price TKTS Booth, comparable to the one in New
York, may be found in London’s Leicester Square.
World travelers can explore other English-speaking
dramatic centers as well. Ireland has provided a vast
repertoire to the stage since the seventeenth century.
Indeed, most of the great “English” dramatists of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—George Farquhar,
Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Sheridan, Oscar Wilde, and
George Bernard Shaw—were actually Irish by birth. In
the twentieth century, a genuinely Irish drama became
immensely popular in the hands of William Butler Yeats,
Sean O’Casey, and Brendan Behan. But possibly no
period of Irish drama is as rich as the current one, which
includes major established playwrights such as Brian
Friel (Philadelphia, Here I Come; Translations; Dancing
at Lughnasa) and newer ones such as Sebastian Barry
(The Steward of Christendom, Whistling Psyche), Conor
McPherson (The Weir, The Seafarer, The Night Alive),
and English-Irish Martin McDonagh (The Beauty Queen
of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Pillowman, A
Behanding in Spokane). Most of these plays make their
way to the United States, but seeing them in their natural
surroundings, as at the Abbey or Gate Theatres of Dublin
and the Druid Theatre of Galway, is a special treat.
In Canada, theatre flourishes in every province. The
city of Toronto alone boasts 200 professional theatre companies
and is, after London and New York, the largest
professional theatre metropolis in the English-speaking
world. But Canada is a bilingual country, and its major
playwrights cover a broad international spectrum; its dramatists
today include the veterans Michel Tremblay (a
French Canadian writing in French) and Daniel David
Moses (a Delaware Indian identifying himself as an
“Aboriginal Playwright Poet” and writing in English), and
relative newcomers such as Wajdi Mouawad (born in Lebanon,
educated in Quebec, and writing in French). Canada
is also known for its globally renowned playwright/
director Robert Lepage, its two major theatre festivals (one
for Shakespeare in Stratford, the other for George Bernard
Shaw in Niagara-on-the-Lake), a strong network of repertory
companies and avant-garde groups, and its spectacular
and world-famous Cirque du Soleil performance
troupe. With a virtual flood of new playwrights, directors,
and theatre critics working in multiple languages, Canadian
theatre, in addition to its growing popularity at home,
is developing a wide recognition abroad.
Australia also has a fine theatrical tradition and a lively
contemporary scene. Veteran playwrights David Williamson
(his At Any Cost, a dark comedy on end-of-life
One can always count
on the London theatre
to present, in addition
to new plays and avantgarde
productions of older
ones, “conventional” but
still intensely stimulating
productions of classic
plays, both comedies
and tragedies. Here the
English National Theatre
presents Oliver Goldsmith’s
eighteenth-century classic
She Stoops to Conquer
with Sophie Thompson as
the hilariously scandalized
Miss Oldcastle; this
production, which was
probably not very different
from its premiere in
Goldsmith’s time, was so
popular it was telecast
live (by National Theatre
Live) after its 2012 London
opening. © Geraint Lewis