LA Times hires a theater critic

Finally! It's been 4 years or so that we've been without a head theater critic in LA. Good coverage in the LA Weekly.

Yes, of course it's unfortunate and incredibly stupid that we've been without anyone in the position for so long. It implies that LA theater is more marginalized and less vibrant than it really is. The theater scene here is in many ways strange and unique, and it deserves recognition. That's not to say that there's no coverage happening - the LA Weekly has been doing a pretty great job picking up the slack, actually, but you have to wonder if there would have been more coverage of the CTG disaster if there were someone at the Times whose job it was to care.

In another conjunction of theater and news, the NY Times has a huge piece on Dead End at the Ahmanson. It's not often that LA theater rates coverage in NY newspapers, and I have to wonder if this has to do with Ritchie's East Coast connections rather than the worthiness of the production.

The most disturbing bit of the story is this paragraph:

"To make it all work, Mr. Ritchie struck a one-time agreement with Actors Equity, the theater actors' union, to allow nearly half of the cast to be nonunion and work free, or nearly. Many of those 19 cast members are students at the University of Southern California who are getting course credit for their work."

Does anyone else find that profoundly upsetting? This major professional theater is cutting costs by using unpaid college students as slave labor?!? The Ahmanson is not a teaching program and has no business exploiting its name and connections in order to get out of paying its actors, whether they enjoy the experience or not.

And the revival production isn't even a particularly new idea! Ritchie revived the show WITH THE SAME DIRECTOR at Williamstown in 1997. It's also ironic that this play that in the 1930s brought attention to class issues and the conditions in urban slums, inspiring some of FDR's housing programs, is now notable chiefly for its spectacle and the ability to use real water and 42 actors. Is that really what's important? Does the spectacle detract from the class issues? I find the whole thing a little bit gross, but I'm also curious.