Portal:Theatre

Me and Juliet is a musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II. The story deals with romance between the cast and crew backstage at a long-running musical, a show-within-the-show (also named Me and Juliet). The musical premiered in 1953 and ran for almost a year on Broadway, closing after it exhausted its advance sales. It received no Tony Award nominations. The play required complex machinery, designed by Jo Mielziner, so that the audience could view action not only on the stage but also in the wings and high above the stage near the spotlights. The show garnered less than favorable reviews, though Mielziner's staging won praise from audiences and critics. With the exception of a short run in Chicago, there was no national tour, and the show is rarely seen—although a small-scale production was presented by London's Finborough Theatre in 2010. "No Other Love" from the show became a hit record in 1953 for Perry Como and in 1956 for Ronnie Hilton.

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• July 1996 – First International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama held in Cyprus
• 9 July 1991 – Premier of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, which describes the encounter of a former torture victim with the man she believed tortured her
• 13 July 1934 – Birth of Wole Soyinka, considered Africa's most distinguished playwright and the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature
• 17 July 1951 – Original Abbey Theatre burned down, the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world

John Gielgud (1904–2000) was an English actor and theatre director who, along with Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he became a star in the West End and on Broadway by the 1930s, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Queen's Theatre, London. Though he made his first film in 1924 and had successes with The Good Companions (1933) and Julius Caesar (1953), he did not begin a regular film career until his sixties. He appeared in more than 60 films between Becket in 1964 (his first Academy Award nomination) and Elizabeth in 1998. As the acid-tongued Hobson in Arthur (1981) he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He earned a Golden Globe Award and two BAFTAs, and had the rare distinction of winning an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony. He broadcast more than 100 radio and television dramas and made commercial recordings of many plays, including ten of Shakespeare's. He was knighted in 1953 and was president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1977 to 1989.

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• ... that during their two-minute performance at the Oulu City Theatre, the group Jumalan teatteri caused a huge scandal by throwing excrement, eggs and yoghurt at the audience?
• ... that at the premiere of The Cage, a ballet about female insects preying on their male counterparts, choreographer Jerome Robbins's mother walked out of the theater?
• ... that Princess Rallou Karatza's theater in Bucharest, now upheld as a pioneering institution of modern Greek drama, was described in one Wallachian chronicle as a "temple" for devil-worship?
• ... that the Mark Hellinger Theatre has been occupied by the Times Square Church since 1989, when its then-owner said the church's five-year lease will "pass before you know it"?
• ... that the New Amsterdam Theatre, once described as "a vision of gorgeousness", later had dead cats in the basement and mushrooms growing through the floor?
• ... that American martial artist John Giordano, who taught karate to women alongside men and disabled people in the 1970s, held plays similar to kabuki theatre?

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice. — George Bernard Shaw

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