Rendering 7: 'Theatre about theatre shows there's no business like show business'

The article ‘Theatre about theatre shows there's no business like show business’ was published by Mark Lawson in The Guardian on March 8, 2013. It discusses a ‘Chorus Line’, which is one of several successful shows that put the focus on theatre itself. 

   Speaking of the success, it is interesting to note that readers and critics are traditionally sniff about novels and novelists: a publisher in Harold Pinter's play Betrayal has an enjoyable riff about a writer who leaves his wife and moves to a flat, where he writes a novel set in an apartment containing an author whose marriage has collapsed and who is writing a book about it. However, Pinter's own medium is notably tolerant towards the generic equivalent – theater about theater. 

   Analyzing the examples of this form, it is necessary to emphasize that have just been revived in London: the 1975 Broadway musical A Chorus Line and Arthur Wing Pinero's 1898 farce Trelawny of the Wells. And there is every reason to believe that both shows are celebrations of the power of theatre and affectionate depictions of the rituals and figures of the profession. 

   Giving appraisal of the situation, it’s necessary to point out such sentiment from Irving Berlin's 1946 ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ as t here's no business like show business. Moreover, it could be the subtitle of both ‘A Chorus Line’ and ‘Trelawny of the Wells’ and of ‘Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate’ (1948). The others are: ‘The Judas Kiss’, ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, ‘Billy Elliot’, ‘Jersey Boys’, ‘Viva Forever!’, ‘Thriller’ and ‘The Bodyguard’. The author draws our attention to the fact that almost all these shows are musicals, which helps to excuse the frequency with which theatre people fail to look beyond their own workplace for a setting. Besides, there is every likelihood that musical theatre suffers from the fundamental structural problem of why the characters have suddenly started singing. 

   There are signs that in spoken drama, where there is no equivalent pressure to justify why the people keep making speeches, characters who are performers will tend to have a metaphorical significance, exploring issues of presence and simulation. And i n this area of drama, it is hard to avoid the influence of Shakespeare's Hamlet, with its troupe of travelling actors. 

   In addition, it’s an open secret that the use of the performer as an image of the way in which all people take on roles and say things that they may not believe developed into a subgenre of theatre, including, later in the 17th century, Philip Masinger's ‘The Roman Actor’. The early 19th-century tragedian Edmund Kean became the subject of an 1836 play by Alexandre Dumas. 

   Thus in resolute terms the author makes it clear that enjoyable though 'A Chorus Line' and 'Trelawny of the Wells' are, their boasting about the joy of show business occasionally feels like one of those Christmas letters about how wonderfully someone's offspring have done. As for me, I like musicales as well as simple theatrical performances. I think you’ll agree with me that while watching the performance (directly in the theatre) you forget about the reality, as really talented actors make any performance a masterpiece.