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    Morgan Jenness, Whose Artistic Vision Influenced American Theater, Dies at 72

    A beloved figure in the theatrical community, she redefined the role of dramaturg, influencing playwrights like David Adjmi and David Henry Hwang.Morgan Jenness, a dramaturg, teacher and theatrical agent who nurtured the work of countless playwrights — including Taylor Mac, David Adjmi, David Henry Hwang, Larry Kramer and Maria Irene Fornés — died on Nov. 12. Ms. Jenness, who in recent years began using the pronouns they/them and she interchangeably, was 72.Mx. Mac confirmed the death. “In Act 3 of her life, she was exploring her gender identity,” said Mx. Mac, who went to Ms. Jenness’s apartment in the East Village of Manhattan with two friends after she failed to show up for a class she taught at Columbia University and discovered her body. The cause of death had not yet been determined.Ms. Jenness was a revered and beloved figure in the theater community — particularly the downtown theater community. (In many ways, she was its embodiment.) She had a deep moral seriousness, colleagues said, as well as a fierce artistic integrity and a passion for subversive work that had depth charges in all the right places. She also had “a complete indifference to material success,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, where Ms. Jenness began her career. “She was frankly repelled by it.”The play was the thing.“She would ask writers, ‘What do you want to inject into the bloodstream of the American theater?’” recalled Beth Blickers, a theatrical agent.“If you said, ‘I just want to tell good stories,’ she would turn to me and say, ‘That was a terrible answer,’” Ms. Blickers continued. “She wanted someone to say, ‘I have a passion for this community or this idea.’ To tell good stories wasn’t enough.”A dramaturg has been defined as a sort of literary and theatrical adviser who helps the actors and director understand the play they’re presenting. “But that was the European model, focused primarily on the classics,” Mr. Eustis said. “Morgan was one of the first generation of people who were defining what a new play dramaturg was: the midwife and support system of a playwright.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ Is a Humanizing Look Into a Great Mind

    Beyond the appropriate awe, this two-part PBS documentary, co-directed by Ken Burns, adds human texture to the hagiography.“Leonardo da Vinci,” a four-hour, two-part documentary airing on PBS on Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. (check local listings), is a thorough and engrossing biography that can’t help but feel incomplete, so vast and unusual is its subject. “Leonardo, for his time, possesses the most knowledge in the world,” one expert explains.Narrated by Keith David and directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, this is a straightforward but still lyrical analysis. We learn about da Vinci’s early life, family, education and lovers, and the doc does an admirable job of explaining not just excellence but innovation. Enumerating the areas of his curiosity alone could take four hours, so the focus here is more on his output, whose scope and impact are singular even now. (Though maybe we could revive a few more aspects of his influence: Painting is cool, but why are there so few weddings in which performers dressed as Greek gods bless the union and cavort around a giant gilded half-egg? Something to consider, party planners; da Vinci orchestrated one such event in 1490.)“For the first time in the history of Western culture, the process becomes the interesting aspect of how art is made,” another expert points out, and “Leonardo da Vinci” follows that path, too.But beyond the appropriate awe, there’s a through line here of half-starts, dead drafts and lemons — flying machines that can never work, hydroarchitecture that fails completely, paintings never realized for reasons unknown. Those efforts are presented here with an endearing “well, nobody bats a thousand” shrug, adding human texture to the hagiography. One of the greatest minds in human history trails off in one of his final mathematic exegeses because, he writes, “the soup is getting cold.” Geniuses: They’re just like us.Also this weekFrom left, Gracie Lawrence, Alyah Chanelle Scott, Pauline Chalamet and Amrit Kaur in a scene from Season 3 of “The Sex Lives of College Girls.”Tina Thorpe/Max“Interior Chinatown,” based on the novel by Charles Yu, arrives Tuesday, on Hulu.“Our Oceans,” narrated by Barack Obama, arrives Wednesday, on Netflix.After many failed attempts over the years, a TV adaptation of “Cruel Intentions” finally arrives Thursday, on Amazon Prime Video.In the vein of “Floor Is Lava” comes “Human vs. Hamster,” a doofy obstacle course series arriving Thursday, on Max.Season 3 of “The Sex Lives of College Girls” begins Thursday at 9 p.m., on Max. More

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    Broadway Shows to See This Fall: ‘Our Town,’ ‘Gypsy’ and More

    Broadway Shows to See This Fall: ‘Our Town,’ ‘Gypsy’ and MoreA guide to every show on Broadway, including new musicals, Tony winning-dramas, quirky hits and veterans like “Hamilton” and “Chicago.”Jim Parsons, at left, as the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” which runs through Jan. 19 at the Barrymore Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMusicals to Leave You HummingCabaret“Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome” — but for real this time. With a sinuous, sensuous Adam Lambert now starring as the Emcee, Rebecca Frecknall’s darkly seductive take on the Kander and Ebb classic has acquired a much more human feel. Inside Tom Scutt’s Tony-winning immersive design of the Weimar-era Kit Kat Club, the show is newly rebalanced for the better with Auliʻi Cravalho as Sally Bowles and Calvin Leon Smith as Clifford Bradshaw, while Bebe Neuwirth as Fräulein Schneider and Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz will still charm your heart, then break it. (At the August Wilson Theater.) Read the review.The Great GatsbyEva Noblezada (“Hadestown”) stars as Daisy opposite Jeremy Jordan (“Newsies”), who plays his final performance as Gatsby on Jan. 19. This musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novel has a book by Kait Kerrigan (“The Mad Ones”), with music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Tysen (both of “Paradise Square”). Marc Bruni (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”) directs. Linda Cho’s luxurious 1920s costumes won the show a Tony. (At the Broadway Theater.) Read the review.GypsyGrabbing the baton first handed off by Ethel Merman, Audra McDonald plays the formidable Momma Rose in the fifth Broadway revival of Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s exalted 1959 musical about a vaudeville stage mother and her daughters: June, the favorite child, and Louise, who becomes the burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Directed by George C. Wolfe, with choreography by Camille A. Brown, the cast includes Danny Burstein, Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson and Lesli Margherita. (Starts previews Nov. 21 at the Majestic Theater; opens Dec. 19.) Read more about the production.Hell’s KitchenAlicia Keys’s own coming-of-age is the inspiration for this jukebox musical stocked with her songs. With numbers including “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’” and “Empire State of Mind,” it’s the story of a 17-year-old (Maleah Joi Moon, a newly minted Tony winner making her Broadway debut) in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, growing into an artist. Shoshana Bean (through Dec. 1) and Brandon Victor Dixon play her parents, and Kecia Lewis plays her piano teacher in a Tony-winning performance. Directed by Michael Greif, the show has a book by Kristoffer Diaz and choreography by Camille A. Brown. (At the Shubert Theater.) Read the review.Maybe Happy EndingRobot neighbors in Seoul, nearing obsolescence, tumble into odd-couple friendship in this wistfully romantic charmer of a musical comedy by Will Aronson and Hue Park, starring Darren Criss and Helen J Shen. Michael Arden (“Parade”) directs. At the Belasco Theater. Read the review.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The ‘Death Becomes Her’ Frenemies Take Their Youth Potion to Broadway

    The campy supernatural movie comes to Broadway as a big, bawdy musical starring Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard.To be a marquee name after the ingénue years and to feel validated in a cutthroat business: For many actresses on Broadway or anywhere, those can be constant cravings. For Megan Hilty, one of the stars of the new Broadway musical “Death Becomes Her,” they’re urgent themes.“I have this number in the show that’s quite funny,” Hilty said during a recent interview. “But also it taps into something unbearably honest about the lengths to which women, mostly, can torture themselves thinking: How far am I willing to go to be what this world and industry wants and needs me to be in order to feel relevant?”But this isn’t the earnest-minded “Suffs,” not by a long shot.“Death Becomes Her” is a big, bawdy musical of to-the-rafters power ballads, va-va-voom costumes, zippy one-liners and vogueing chorus boys. It’s based on Robert Zemeckis’s supernatural horror comedy, from 1992, about two women — Madeline Ashton, a pompous actress played by Meryl Streep, and Helen Sharp, an unhinged novelist played by Goldie Hawn — who become frenemy immortals after they drink a potion that a mysterious glamourpuss named Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini) assures them will impart eternal youth.No spoiler alert: It does, but it’s not pretty. Rotting flesh never is.Forever young: Hilty as the pompous Madeline Ashton and Simard as the unhinged Helen Sharp, roles made famous by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe show comes to Broadway after a Chicago run last spring that received mostly good reviews, with much of the praise saved for Hilty and her co-star, Jennifer Simard, who plays Helen to Hilty’s Madeline. As with any Broadway transfer, the show’s creative team, led by its director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli, has spent months futzing — finessing new illusions, adding a new second-act song, redesigning costumes.What hasn’t changed is that Madeline seduces and marries Helen’s husband, Ernest, played by Christopher Sieber (Bruce Willis in the film). And the show still has, as Simard put it, its “nougaty center”: A story about two women who make a ghastly but farcical Faustian bargain that’s rooted in private shame and universal heartache over youth, beauty and self-worth.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    7 Days in the Cultural Life of a Broadway Stage Manager

    When he’s not herding performers at “Once Upon a Mattress,” Cody Renard Richard is bowling, catching up with theater friends and, to his surprise, bumping into Beyoncé.Cody Renard Richard is backstage at the Hudson Theater eight performances a week, wrangling actors and calling cues at “Once Upon a Mattress.”When he has free time, he crams in as many fashion shows, museum visits, board meetings, teaching gigs and other cultural events as possible.“My entire journey in New York is about trying new things and expanding my reach,” Richard, 36, who grew up in Waller, Texas, said in a phone conversation on a Monday, the one day of the week he isn’t working on “Mattress.”Richard has been stage managing since his teenage years, when he was a self-described “troublemaker” before his high school’s theater director, Carrie Wood, encouraged him to channel that energy into a role backstage.Richard at the Hudson Theater, the current home of “Once Upon a Mattress.” “Sometimes people wonder if it gets boring working on the same show every night, but I never do,” he said.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesHe’s now managed nearly 50 television, opera and stage productions in New York, including the MTV Video Music Awards, the Broadway productions of “Lempicka” and “Sweeney Todd,” and “Ragtime” at New York City Center earlier this month. He’s next headed to Los Angeles, where he’ll oversee a monthlong “Mattress” run.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls,’ Plus 7 Things to Watch on TV this Week

    Catch up with the group from Essex College, go behind the scenes of Ridley Scott’s new movie and get your Bravo fill.Things in college are heating up.Before Reneé Rapp toured sold-out shows or performed songs from her new album on “Saturday Night Live,” she played Leighton Murray, a mean-girl-turned-softy in “The Sex Lives of College Girls.” The show is returning this week for its third season, but Rapp will be absent from most of it — she renegotiated her contract from a series regular to a guest star. It will continue to follow the roommates Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), Bela (Amrit Kaur) and Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), who left things on rocky footing at the end of the last season. Available to stream at 9 p.m. on Thursday on Max.From left, Sara Silva, Sarah Catherine Hook and Zac Burgess in “Cruel Intentions.”Jasper Savage/Prime VideoThe 1999 film “Cruel Intentions,” about a stepsibling duo who set their sights on the same girl as a power play, is now getting a modern television reboot. In this show, it is the Vice President’s daughter the stepsiblings are after, and instead of a prep school, it takes place at a college where a hazing scandal moves the plot along. Fitting for “Gossip Girl” rewatch season (a.k.a. fall), this show gives the same high-society cutthroat vibes. Streaming on Thursday on Prime Video.A blast of Bravo.There’s a whiff of designer purchases, mansions and good old fashion screaming in the air — and that can only mean one thing: “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” is back on our small screens. Kyle Richards, Dorit Kemsley and the other housewives navigate their friendships with each other but also deal with marital issues and work drama. Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Bravo.Bravo’s longest-running franchise, “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” is wrapping up its three-part reunion this week. And the women have not been holding back — calling for certain castmates to be fired, accusing each other of “throwing venom” and generally squabbling. Thursday at 9 p.m. on Bravo.Though “Housewives” is Bravo’s bread and butter, I also love the network’s stand-alone shows (I am looking at you “Summer House” and “Below Deck.”) This one, “Married to Medicine,” follows women in Atlanta who are either doctors themselves or married to doctors. This season is back with a few new faces, as Dr. Jacqueline Walters takes on the role of mediator. Sunday at 9 p.m. on Bravo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Sick Burn

    The first installment of HBO’s “Dune” prequel series suggests there is a “burning truth” very few are capable of seeing. It may be too hot to handle.Season 1, Episode 1: ‘The Hidden Hand’“Humanity’s greatest weapon is the lie,” says Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen of the Sisterhood (Olivia Williams). “Human beings rely on lies to survive. We lie to our enemies, we lie to our friends, we lie to ourselves. Lying is among the most sophisticated tasks a brain can perform.”The acolytes under Tula’s tutelage in this first episode of “Dune: Prophecy,” the new prequel series developed by Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker, are learning to lie more effectively in order to better control the people they supposedly serve. As recipes for political success go, it’s hard to argue with the results.As related in a lengthy flashback at the beginning of Episode 1, the Sisterhood’s story begins over 10,000 years before the birth of the messianic Paul Atreides, the antihero of the “Dune” films, played by Timothée Chalamet. Humans have won a hard-fought victory in a universe-wide war against the “thinking machines” they built, overthrowing their robotic would-be masters. Known in the source novels as the Butlerian Jihad, this successful struggle against artificial intelligence birthed heroes and villains among its human participants. (The source novel for the movies, “Dune,” was written by Frank Herbert; this series is based on both “Dune” and “Sisterhood of Dune,” a prequel novel by Herbert’s son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson.)Here, as we learn in a voice-over by Emily Watson, is where the great rivalry between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, the warring families at the heart of the “Dune” saga, began. According to the commonly accepted history, an Atreides led the fight while a Harkonnen slunk away from it. That act of cowardice led the triumphant emperor to banish the Harkonnens to a remote and desolate world.But not all the Harkonnens — notably Tula and her fierce older sister, Valya (Watson) — accepted that version of history, or exile. As the exposition continues, we watch Tula and Valya (played as young women by Emma Canning and Jessica Barden) leave home to join an organization of women founded by the legendary war hero Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson). The group is called simply the Sisterhood — known later as the Bene Gesserit, a name familiar to fans of the “Dune” books and movies. Through intense mental and physical training, Raquella and her acolytes hope to harness powers that will enable them to guide the rulers of the various great houses.At this early stage, the Sisterhood’s primary power is “truthsaying,” an inerrant ability to detect lies that makes them invaluable to any emperor or aristocrat who can convince the increasingly powerful organization to send such a human polygraph their way.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Elf on Broadway Review: Grey Henson Is on the Nice List

    The musical, starring Grey Henson, has gotten Buddy delightfully, entirely right. But he is trapped inside a creaky adaptation.Santa Clauses are pretty interchangeable. The real Santa’s close friend Buddy the elf would disagree, but it’s true: Put on the red costume, hide behind the glossy beard, manage a few ho, ho, hos and anyone will do.Buddy, though? That’s a much tougher role to cast — and not only because Will Ferrell made him such an indelibly adorable doofus in the 2003 movie “Elf.” In “Elf the Musical,” Buddy is the one character in whom we must absolutely believe: a full-grown man in a green elf suit with curl-toed boots, naïve and wonder-struck in the big city.Get it wrong and it’s a recipe for cringe. Get it right and you’ve cracked the code of all-ages comedy, the kind that will leave children and grown-ups equally helpless with laughter.In its latest Broadway outing, starring an exuberant Grey Henson in the title role, “Elf the Musical” has gotten Buddy delightfully, entirely right. From his first spoken line — the word Santa, cried joyously with what sounds like at least five exclamation points — he is enchanting in his silliness.He cartwheels across the stage because why wouldn’t he? A trusting, uninhibited goofball, he lives in his body the way children do, nearly bursting with eagerness. But Buddy is 30; he can show you how many that is on his fingers, flashing what look like boneless jazz hands.Directed by Philip Wm. McKinley, “Elf” is loaded with playful, energetic dance numbers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More