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    Richard Moll, Towering Bailiff on ‘Night Court,’ Dies at 80

    In a career that spanned more than four decades, the actor was best known for playing the imposing but lovable Bull Shannon on the NBC sitcom.Richard Moll, the 6-foot-8 actor who delighted television audiences with a childlike charm in his role as the hulking bailiff on the NBC sitcom “Night Court,” died on Thursday at his home in Big Bear Lake, Calif. He was 80.His death was confirmed on Friday by his publicist, Jeff Sanderson. No cause was given by the family.In a career of more than four decades, Mr. Moll played a variety of roles on television shows and in films. But he was best known for portraying the baldheaded, wide-eyed Aristotle Nostradamus (Bull) Shannon on all nine seasons of “Night Court,” which ran from 1984 to 1992 and competed with other hit television sitcoms like “The Cosby Show” and “The Golden Girls.”Mr. Moll worked as an actor and voice-over artist as late as 2018.Kathy Hutchins/Hutchins Photo Agency, via Associated PressBull Shannon’s dimwitted persona offered an air of lighthearted innocence on the series, which was set inside a fictional municipal night court in Manhattan and starred Harry Anderson, who played Judge Harry Stone and died in 2018, and John Larroquette as the prosecutor, Dan Fielding.Mr. Moll was “larger than life and taller too,” Mr. Larroquette, said Friday in a post on X.Richard Charles Moll was born on Jan. 13, 1943, in Pasadena, Calif. to Harry and Violet Moll. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, with a degree in history and passed over his father’s wishes that he pursue a law career, to take up acting.He started with theater work, performing in Shakespeare plays in California. His first television and film roles came in the late 1970s, and included a part in the 1977 movie “Brigham” and an appearance in an episode of the television series “Welcome Back, Kotter” in 1978.“Probably auditioning for ‘Night Court’ would be my first big break,” Mr. Moll said in a 2010 interview with MaximoTV. He noted that he had been asked if he was willing to shave his head for the part.“I said ‘Are you kidding?’ ” he recalled. “‘I’ll shave my legs for the part. I’ll shave my armpits. I don’t care.’”After “Night Court” ended in 1992, Mr. Moll went on to do voice-over work on various cartoons, including roles as Two-Face, a disturbed villain with a disfigured mug on the “Adventures of Batman & Robin” on Fox, and as Scorpion, one of the many adversaries on “Spider-Man: The Animated Series,” on the same network.Richard Moll, far right, with the cast of Night Court in 1988.Gary Null/NBC, via Getty ImagesThough largely known for his comedic work, including in movies such as “Scary Movie 2” and “But I’m a Cheerleader,” Mr. Moll was also featured in horror and science-fiction films. His first major movie roles included the 1985 horror feature “House” and the 1986 indie fantasy “The Dungeonmaster.”Mr. Moll worked as an actor and voice-over artist as late as 2018, according to IMDb. His final notable appearance was in the 2010 live-action film “Scooby-Doo: Curse of the Lake Monster,” in which he played the mysterious lighthouse keeper Elmer Uggins.Mr. Moll retired to Big Bear Lake in the Southern Californian mountains, where, according to his family, he reveled in the idyllic scenery and exercised his love of bird-watching.He is survived by a daughter, Chloe Moll; a son, Mason Moll; his ex-wife, Susan Moll; and two stepchildren, Cassandra Card and Morgan Ostling. More

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    Good Times and Bum Times Made These Theater Veterans Even Stronger

    It’s challenging enough for an actor to portray someone who is alive and well. But can you imagine the extra scrutiny that comes when your model is sitting in the director’s chair?In the new musical “The Gardens of Anuncia,” Priscilla Lopez plays the title role, which is largely based on the childhood of the show’s director and co-choreographer, Graciela Daniele. Or at least, Daniele pointed out in a recent conversation, it’s “a version of me. A better version.”When the two stage veterans sat together last week, a day after performances began at Lincoln Center Theater, they laughed continuously, and threw themselves into the conversation with the full-bodied gusto of born performers. They mimed pranks they once pulled on castmates, hummed tunes from long-forgotten shows, and punctuated their stories with enough sound effects to make a Foley artist jealous.There might also have been a little bit of tearing up as they reminisced about their decades in the Broadway trenches — Lopez is 75, Daniele is almost a decade older — and reflected on the new project, a memory musical based on Daniele’s childhood in post-World War II Buenos Aires.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    ‘Covenant’ Review: When Inner Turmoil Is Its Own Ghost Story

    The playwright York Walker makes a promising New York debut at Roundabout Underground.Much is made over whether one is “with God” or not in “Covenant,” a striking new Southern gothic work by York Walker. Following a town’s reaction to a bluesman’s mysterious homecoming in 1930s Georgia, this small, potent Roundabout Underground production sustains a scorching end-of-days tune as much through its electric cast and design elements as by Walker’s script and Tiffany Nichole Greene’s swift direction.Like each of the play’s four women, the 24-year-old Avery (Jade Payton) craves salvation. But she’s not seeking a flight to heaven, like her overbearing Mama (Crystal Dickinson), or from neglect, like her younger sister, Violet (Ashley N. Hildreth). Rather, she desires a certain kind of freedom. Ruthie (Lark White), a lovelorn neighbor grappling with her nascent sexuality, feels the same.A chance at that freedom appears when a childhood friend, Johnny (Chaundre Hall-Broomfield), returns to town after a yearslong absence, touring faraway juke joints. A smooth-talking guitarist, Johnny has dropped his stutter and — rumor has it — picked up prodigious musical skills from a pact with the Devil.Walker nods at the legend of Robert Johnson, the real-life bluesman whose startling technique gave rise to a claim that he had traded his soul for success playing “the Devil’s music.” But, though that mystery informs this play’s effective ghost story, “Covenant” is more interested in unraveling the women’s trust in faith, self and one another to examine how feelings become codified into mythology.The pious Mama thinks she can spot a dark spirit when she sees one and forbids Avery from spending time with Johnny. Seduced by his promise of a life bigger than her repressive own, she doesn’t obey, naturally, and soon comes home one night with bruises and a funny look in her eye. As the locals chatter, gossiping about midnight sightings of Johnny at the graveyard, the play probes each woman’s relationship to fact and fiction.Greene’s suspenseful production indulges in some elegant horror trappings, with characters often plunged in darkness, holding a single match as they share tales of cheating spouses and bad decisions — personal freedoms marked as evil because they stray from cultural dogma.Lawrence Moten’s claustrophobic set turns the audience into the cramped congregation of a Gothic Revival church, the action taking place on either side of its nave and lit by Cha See. Steve Cuiffo’s illusions and Justin Ellington’s sound design, both chilling, lean deep into the story’s supernatural suggestions.But the play’s terror is best conjured by Walker’s dialogue, which weaves rumor into legend and is delivered in gradient shades by an excellent cast. As Avery and Johnny, Payton and Hall-Broomfield play their scenes alluringly straight, and in her forceful turn as Violet, Hildreth believably generates powerful, skeptical chemistry with White’s awe-struck Ruthie.And Dickinson’s sanctimonious Mama comically punctuates each “lord” and “God” with the emphatic righteousness of a “T” sound, and with her beaded eyeglass chain (courtesy of Ari Fulton’s costumes) appears to have tears permanently fixed on her face.The violence of her devotion is made eerily physical in a choreographed prayer sequence (with movement overseen by Stephen Buescher) that shows the carnality often inherent in religion, which can traffic as much in darkness as in the light it claims to seek.If Walker reverse-engineers certain beats a bit too cleanly in order to expose the characters’ hypocrisies, his twists and developments are still satisfying. Working with great economy, Walker’s “Covenant” is an auspicious New York debut for a playwright who clearly has a gift for richly textured work.CovenantThrough Dec. 3 at the Black Box Theater, at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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    West End Theatergoers Grumble as Prices for the Best Seats Surge

    Concern is growing that a night at the theater in London is becoming unaffordable, especially when a production has starry names, like Kenneth Branagh’s “King Lear.”When hundreds of playgoers lined up outside Wyndham’s Theater in London this week, the mood was excited. They had come to see Kenneth Branagh, the revered Shakespearean actor, directing and playing the title role in “King Lear.”But some were still thinking about the price they’d paid to be there.Alan Hooper, 75, a retired teacher, said that, at the box office that morning, he was offered a seat in the first balcony for 200 pounds, around $240, or a standing place for a fraction of the cost. He chose to stand for the show’s two-hour run time. West End prices, Hooper said, were “out of control.”Another audience member, George Butler, 28, said that he was overjoyed to have secured two tickets for 20 pounds, or about $24, each, even if they were in the nosebleeds. “Theater is becoming very elitist,” Butler said. “The minute there’s a well known person in a play, it’s unaffordable.”London’s theater world is increasingly simmering with complaints over soaring ticket prices, and a perception that they are creeping closer to Broadway levels. Even as producers insist that a fraction of tickets must be sold at steep prices to offset cheap seats for low earners, concern is growing that a night at the theater is becoming an unaffordable luxury.The West End’s own stars are fueling the fuss. In April, Derek Jacobi, the veteran actor, told The Guardian newspaper that potential theatergoers were now having to think “more than twice” about attending shows. A few months later, David Tennant stirred debate when he told a Radio Times podcast that rising prices were “strangling the next generation of an audience coming through.”Leicester Square in London’s West End. British actors have spoken out about soaring ticket costs, noting that the prohibitive expense was limiting theater’s reach.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThis fall, theater message boards and social media erupted in indignation when tickets for a production of “Plaza Suite,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, went on sale with a top price of £395, around $477 — a level rarely heard of in London.Yet it was unclear whether these few high-profile cases reflected a wider problem. Alistair Smith, the editor of The Stage, a British theater newspaper, said it was difficult to analyze whether ticket prices were increasing across the board, because producers release so little sales data.To fill the gap, his newspaper annually surveys the cheapest and most expensive tickets across the West End. This year’s results, Smith said, showed that the average price for tickets in the most expensive price group was £141, or about $170 (a decade ago, the figure was a much lower £81). This year’s average was still “a long, long way behind Broadway,” he said, adding that the cost of the priciest tickets had barely changed since 2022, despite soaring household costs.However, Smith added, the average price of the least expensive tickets had risen by more than inflation to £25, or $30. “It would be a concern if that trend continues,” he said.For many West End producers, the perception of a price hike is a source of growing frustration. Patrick Gracey, a producer who sits on the board of the Society of London Theater, said that the news media published articles about high ticket prices because it “gets clicks.” Those stories were “misleading audiences about the availability of affordable tickets,” he said.Last year, Gracey said, theatergoers paid an average £54, or about $66, to see a West End show. (The average price on Broadway last week was double that at $125, according to data from The Broadway League.)Producers were facing soaring costs, Gracey added. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some theaters saw their energy costs spike as much as 500 percent, and there were similar jumps in set-building material prices. Last year, West End actors and technical staff secured a pay deal that saw their wages rise, too.The average West End theater ticket price in 2022 was about $66: high, but considerably less expensive than Broadway tickets.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesEven with those pressures, Gracey said producers were working to keep theater accessible and were offering cheap tickets for those who couldn’t splurge. “It’s only possible to offer those tickets because some people are paying top price,” he said.The producers of “King Lear” said in an emailed statement that they were offering 150 tickets per performance at £20 — equivalent to 19 percent of the house. Those included 17 in the front row, with the rest in the back rows of the theater’s three tiers.The problem was with audience perception, said Nick Hytner, a co-founder of the Bridge Theater. Producers needed to develop “a compelling counternarrative” that theater was affordable or else young people would decide that the art form wasn’t for them. Discounting the worst seats at the back of cramped Victorian theaters didn’t cut it, he said, adding that theaters need to develop more innovative approaches to pricing.Some theatergoers have justified the price of tickets for a once in a lifetime experience of seeing actors like Branagh onstage.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesOne West End show that is trying something new is “Operation Mincemeat,” a musical set in World War II. At every performance, all the seats in the house cost the same price, but that amount rises gradually throughout the week, from £39.50 on Mondays to £89.50 on weekends. Jon Thoday, the managing director of Avalon, the show’s producer, said that the production lost money on Mondays, but added that the pricing strategy was good for the musical’s long term future because it brought in a younger audience.“There will always be a fuss about ticket prices, unless others change,” Thoday said.At “King Lear” earlier this week, theatergoers weren’t complaining about Branagh’s show, at least. Marshall Shaffer, 31, a movie journalist visiting from New York, said he had paid $403 for two tickets. “I did not think that was necessarily a bargain,” he said, “but Branagh’s probably the premiere Shakespeare interpreter of his time, and I think it’s worthwhile.”Another audience member, Penny Smith, joked that she’d had to “sell a child” to buy her ticket, but said she was happy to pay to see Branagh. Plus, she said with a laugh, the tickets were “a darn sight cheaper than New York. Have you seen the prices there?” More

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    Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ to Return to Broadway Next Fall

    A new production, directed by Kenny Leon, will feature a diverse cast and will aim to speak to contemporary America.“Our Town,” one of the most revered and enduring American dramas, will return to Broadway next fall in a new production directed by Kenny Leon.Leon has become among the more prolific directors working in New York. Just this year he has directed a revival of “Purlie Victorious,” currently running on Broadway, as well as the summer production of “Hamlet” at Shakespeare in the Park and the spring Off Broadway basketball-fan drama “King James” for the Manhattan Theater Club. He directed two Broadway revivals last season, the Tony-winning “Topdog/Underdog” as well as “Ohio State Murders,” and he has another one coming next spring, “Home.”Leon said he had long wanted to direct a Broadway production of “Our Town,” a 1938 play by Thornton Wilder. He has tackled the play twice in Atlanta, where he lives, first in 2010 with a full production at the True Colors Theater Company, which he co-founded, and then in 2017 with a one-night reading, starring Scarlett Johansson and the cast of an Avengers movie, to benefit hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.“I grew up thinking it wasn’t a play for me, but later in life I thought, ‘If you just include more people, it’s a play about our time and our planet and each other,’” he said in an interview.“The cast will not be all Black and it will not be all white and it will not be all famous,” he said. “I want all of us to feel included, and I want the play to speak to each and every heart in America.”The lead producer is Jeffrey Richards and no cast or theater has been announced. This will be the sixth production of “Our Town” on Broadway; the last one opened in 2002. More

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    Stephen Colbert Calls Out Mike Johnson’s First Fail

    The “Late Show” host chided the new House speaker for offering little more than thoughts and prayers to survivors of the Maine shooting on his first day in office.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Major FailAddressing tragedies like mass shootings has become a regular part of late night. On Thursday night, Stephen Colbert spoke about a shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that killed 18 people and injured 13 others on Wednesday.“Some people are going to say ‘This is a mental health issue,’ others are going to say, ‘It’s a gun issue,’ but there’s no reason it can’t be both,” Colbert said. “For instance, some people are going to look at this tragedy and say, ‘We don’t have enough guns in America.’ That alone proves some of us are mentally ill.”Colbert pointed out that most Americans want bans on assault-style weapons and for Congress to take action to prevent more mass shootings, yet no one on either side of the aisle has successfully stopped them from happening.“So, ask your representative, ‘What will you do?’ If they don’t have an answer immediately at hand, if they say it’s too soon to talk about this, that means they’ve never really given it any serious thought. Because they’ve had plenty of time since Uvalde and Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Sandy Hook and the Pulse nightclub. So if they don’t have an answer now, they will never have an answer.” — STEPHEN COLBERTHe expressed disappointment over a lack of new ideas from recently elected House speaker Mike Johnson, “a self-professed devoutly religious man,” who offered little comfort to Americans in a statement during his first day in office, which amounted to little more than thoughts and prayers.“We’re already capable of hope and prayer ourselves. You’re capable of governing, theoretically. And I’m sorry if that sounds like too hard of a job for you. If that seems like too hard of a job, you know who’s really got a hard job now? The people in Lewiston, Maine.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And there are very few people like Mainers. I know Mainers. I love Mainers. They’re strong people. They’ve got Moxie — literally, it’s the name of the official state soft drink. It tastes like carbonated cough syrup, but they drink it anyway, ’cause Mainers are tough. These are people whose idea of a beach is a collection of jagged rocks near freezing water. Their state flower, the Maine state flower — and this is true — is a frickin’ pine cone!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And I dare anyone in power to show a fraction of the courage of all the families who have faced their tragedies and faced our failure to change.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Getting to Know You Edition)“Republicans yesterday elected Mike Johnson the 56th speaker of the House, which is crazy ’cause a month ago, we were only at 12.” — SETH MEYERS“Meanwhile, earlier today, Mike Johnson met with President Biden for the first time since becoming speaker. Johnson is pretty famous for being an election denier, so it got pretty awkward when he said, ‘Good to meet you, ‘President Biden. ’” — JIMMY FALLON“But the meeting was very friendly. Biden even invited Johnson to pet his dog.” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden told a story about his days in Congress, and by the time it was over, Johnson was already voted out as speaker.” — JIMMY FALLON“Johnson is also extremely anti-LGBTQ, saying: ‘Homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.’ If you’re doin’ it right.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe comedian Jeff Ross dressed down kids in Halloween costumes for “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutCailee Spaeny in “Priscilla.”Sabrina Lantos/A24Adapted from Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, “Elvis and Me,” Sofia Coppola’s new film, “Priscilla,” re-examines the King from his young wife’s point of view. More

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    ‘Boy Parts,’ the Play, Is a Winking Pastiche of Trauma Tropes

    A London production adapted from Eliza Clark’s debut novel refuses to justify its unreliable narrator’s violence, but lacks narrative depth and complexity.How far can you go in the name of art? For Irina, nothing is off-limits. She’s a photographer who takes pictures of young men, with a particular preference for guys that are unprepossessing, shy and biddable. Irina’s “thing” is capturing male vulnerability, so she photographs her subjects in compromising poses; she takes liberties with consent, and violates their dignity in increasingly troubling and violent ways.Irina is the antiheroine of “Boy Parts,” adapted from Eliza Clark’s 2020 debut novel of the same name, and running at the Soho Theater, in London, through Nov. 25. It’s an engrossing and darkly funny one-woman show, but doesn’t quite make the best of its provocative premise.Aimée Kelly plays the role with a winning blend of caustic humor and narcissistic self-pity: She’s highly strung, manipulative and insecure. By modulating her voice and posture, Kelly also plays various other characters, including Flo — Irina’s best friend, whose almost canine devotion is rewarded with casual contempt — and a succession of hapless young men, portrayed a sympathetic, slouchy charm. Irina’s motivations are both aesthetic and political: She idolizes the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini — the director of the infamously graphic feature “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” — and wants to subvert the traditional power dynamics of objectification in the visual arts, by putting men on the receiving end of a violating gaze.Gillian Greer’s adaptation successfully transposes the unsettlingly blithe, almost jaunty narrative style that won over so many of the novel’s readers. (Despite garnering only modest coverage in the mainstream press, it became a viral hit on TikTok.) But some of the finer subtleties are lost. In the novel, Irina’s friends, while predominantly in her thrall, have occasional moments of clarity, in which they see her for what she was. Onstage, Irina metes out her sadism with relatively little pushback, but those telling little flashes of interpersonal tension would have lent themselves to stage adaptation, and Greer could have teased them out more.The set, by Peter Butler, is bare except for a single stool; a screen at the back of the stage shows a photograph of the garage Irina uses as her studio, switching images to denote different settings. But otherwise, and ironically — given that this is a tale about photography — the visual medium is almost entirely eschewed: We see no actual artworks, and events are relayed mostly through anecdote rather than action. The opening strains of Goldfrapp’s 2000 single “Lovely Head” provide an intermittent soundtrack, with doleful whistling and harpsichord creating a suitably gloomy atmosphere.The one-woman show format is apt, in a way, since the story revolves around an unreliable narrator. By standing in for all the other characters, Kelly as Irina has complete control over the narrative, and the absence of any other physical presence gives a literal expression to Irina’s self-absorption.But the format has its limitations. Toward the end of the show, there is a climactic scene in a gallery where Irina exhibits the photographs we’ve been watching her create. It’s an event that can make or break her career, and the place is meant to be teeming with people, but Kelly’s aloneness on the stage feels too palpable. Moreover, the production is poorly paced, and the gallery scene feels rushed, which exacerbates a sense of anticlimax. After all that leisurely buildup, the play’s momentum fizzles out in a matter of minutes.There is, of course, a tradition of thrillers in which a woman engages in the sort of creepy antics more typically associated with men, dating back to movies like “Fatal Attraction” (1987) and “Single White Female” (1992). The tendency, in recent years, has been to dignify the tawdry sensationalism of such stories by offering up pathological explanations for problematic behavior — a theme that has become drearily familiar in contemporary fiction — or, as in Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” (2020), framing criminal exploits as morally legitimate revenge missions. In “Boy Parts,” Irina issues a pointed rejection of the trauma plot: “Maybe I just like to hurt people,” she says. She is bad, simply because she is bad.It’s refreshing, but it’s also something of a narrative dead end. There are no subplots here, no moral ambiguities, no ifs or buts. There just isn’t enough else going on to provide satisfying complexity or depth as Irina hurtles from one misdeed to the next in a steeplechase of cruelty and self-sabotage.The audience may project tongue-in-cheek irony onto it, if they so please. The trouble, in the end, is that a winking pastiche of schlock doesn’t look and feel all that different from schlock itself.Boy PartsThrough Nov. 25 at the Soho Theater, in London; sohotheatre.com. More

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    A Hairless Cat and Nickelback. What Could Be More Romantic?

    When performers Kayla Pecchioni and Colin Barkell met at a Tonys viewing party, a kitten named Paw McCatney helped break the ice.On Sept. 26, 2021, Colin Ernest Barkell spotted Kayla Dianne Pecchioni stroking her hairless kitten at a screening of the Tony Awards. He was instantly attracted. Especially to the cat.In the lounge of the Chicago apartment building where theater fans had gathered for the show, “I was like, ‘I need to see this guy’,” he said of the creature. By the time “Moulin Rouge!” had racked up its final award that night, he was halfway in love with the blanket-swaddled kitten in Ms. Pecchioni’s arms. Three nights later, he fell fully in love with Ms. Pecchioni.Mr. Barkell and Ms. Pecchioni, who reside in Harlem, are performing artists. She is currently the swing role and an understudy for the character Sugar Kane in Broadway’s “Some Like It Hot.” Before he formed the rock band King Vaudeville last year, he was a professional Irish dancer.Their meet-up in the lobby of Marquee at Block 37 apartments was not random: That September, both had been cast in “Paradise Square,” a musical that started its run in Chicago before moving to Broadway in April 2022. Each had made their way to the lobby for the Tonys screening with their castmates 12 days into rehearsals.Colin Barkell, left, also performed in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKayla Pecchioni, in the coral-colored dress, performs in “Paradise Square.”Kevin BerneFor Ms. Pecchioni, 31, the viewing party had given rise to dueling instincts. “It was our first opportunity to hang out as a cast, which was great,” she said. But the gathering in an unfamiliar city with a roomful of newish faces was also anxiety producing. Paw McCatney, the kitten she had adopted four months earlier as an emotional support animal to help her through the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, helped with that. A hairless cat, she said, is a reliable conversation starter.“It’s 50-50 for people,” she said. “They’re either, ‘I’m very intrigued!’ or ‘Get that thing away from me.’” That Mr. Barkell so instantly placed himself in the former category qualified him as new friend material right away.Ms. Pecchioni is from Louisville, Ky. Until she was 4, she lived with her maternal grandparents, Andrea and Frank Pecchioni, so her mother, Deedee Cummings, could finish her bachelor’s degree at Bennett College. “I had this fun hippie life with my grandparents,” she said. “We’d garden and listen to the Beatles. It was very, very lovely.”Soon after Ms. Cummings earned her diploma and returned to Louisville, she met Ms. Pecchioni’s stepfather, Anthony Cummings. She has two younger brothers, Anthony II and Nicholas.Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.A love of musicals came early. “Chicago,” the 2002 movie, “rocked my world,” she said. But in high school at the Youth Performing Arts School of Louisville, she majored in dance. Later, at Northern Kentucky University, she focused on acting and singing, graduating in 2014 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in musical theater.The bride’s shoes and bouquet.Perri LeighTwo years of performing on Norwegian Cruise Line cruises followed, something she could have done forever, she said. “The only thing that broke me out of it was my mom kind of tapping me on the shoulder and saying, ‘You have bigger goals.’”In 2016, she moved to Inwood, in Manhattan, and days later booked her first gig as a singer with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. A year later, she landed a leading role playing Nabulungi in “The Book of Mormon.”In lean times, before she was cast in “Paradise Square,” she worked retail jobs at stores including Lululemon. Her social life didn’t slip through the cracks. “I dated a lot” in New York she said. “But I always dated with the intention of finding my person, and nothing ever really stuck.”On Tonys night in Chicago, she didn’t see Mr. Barkell as a potential boyfriend. She had noticed him on day one of rehearsals, first because of his height — Mr. Barkell is six-foot-six — and then because of his baritone voice, which everyone else paid attention to, too. “It’s something the entire room took notice of, like ‘Who is this person?’” she said. But “I was like, he’s just a guy, you know?’” Once he had established his appreciation for Paw McCatney, he became just a guy she trusted enough to escort her on a sightseeing tour around Chicago.Mr. Barkell, 32, was born in Long Beach, Calif., and moved to Sterling, Va., with his parents, Leland and Nancy Barkell, and older sister, Erin, at the start of high school for his father’s career as lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marines. Though the family is “barely Irish,” he said, he had taken a few Irish dance lessons before he left California. As a teenager, he picked it up again, enrolling in classes at the Maple Academy of Irish Dance in nearby Vienna.“It was something I really loved to do, even though it’s not necessarily something that comes naturally to a tall person because there’s balance and coordination involved,” he said.Kennedy Caughell, a “Paradise Square” castmate and wedding guest, said, “I watched their love grow from this kind of nervous affection for each other to falling head over heels.” As a couple, “they heat up a room.”Perri LeighAt first he struggled to find his footing. But by 2012, when he moved to Galway, Ireland, for two years to further his dance studies, he had won multiple regional championships. A year later, he placed eighth in the World Irish Dancing Championships. His 2016 bachelor’s degree in geography and geographical information sciences from George Mason University took him seven years to complete. “I kept leaving to do dance,” he said.Like Ms. Pecchioni, he performed on cruise lines after college and later bounced between New York and Nashville working as a dancer and singer. Then, in 2021, “I got this crazy opportunity to be in a Broadway show, which wasn’t on my radar as something to pursue,” he said. The opportunity landed because of his background: “Paradise Square,” set in the Civil War era, is about an intersecting community of free Black people and Irish immigrants in New York’s Five Points neighborhood.On meeting Ms. Pecchioni in Chicago, his first thought wasn’t that they should date. “It’s such a roller coaster,” he said of his career, that dating anyone with intention seemed nearly impossible. But he changed his mind quickly on Sept. 29, when he arrived at her temporary digs for their tour of the city.Mr. Barkell gets choked up at the memory of the music she was playing when he knocked. “No way,” he said, when she opened the door. “You’re playing Nickelback?” Ms. Pecchioni braced herself for what she thought would be a polarizing conversation. “For whatever reason, it’s always been fun for people to hate Nickelback,” she said. But “I frigging love Nickelback.” Same with Mr. Barkell: “I said, ‘These guys have had hit after hit. They’re bangers. They should be respected.’”Ms. Pecchioni describes herself as “a big music person.” Hence Paw McCatney, a nod to her lifelong love of the Beatles, introduced to her by her grandparents. Mr. Barkell is also a Beatles fan. But both consider the Nickelback moment a defining one.The 140 guests ate beef tenderloin and chicken piccata at dinner. The bride is from Louisville, Ky., where the wedding was held. Perri Leigh“That was the spark,” she said. “There was a quick switch where it went from getting to know each other to something else.” At Chicago’s Riverwalk, over beers at the Northman Beer & Cider Garden, they established that both were single. Before they walked home, he kissed her. Then “it was, I’m going to spend every day with her. I knew it and I very nearly said that,” he said.A week and a half later, he told her he was in love with her. “A day after that I said, ‘So, you want to be my girlfriend?’” Falling for Ms. Pecchioni had delivered him clarity. “For me it was, ‘Oh, so this is what it’s supposed to feel like.’” Ms. Pecchioni felt the same.“Paradise Square” ran in Chicago until early December. For the holidays, the couple road tripped to Nashville, where Mr. Barkell was performing with a band that predated King Vaudeville, and then to Louisville and Calumet, Mich., where Mr. Barkell’s parents had retired. Both had given their families a heads-up about the seriousness of their romance. A sense of instant acceptance greeted them in both hometowns. “Everything naturally fell into place,” Ms. Pecchioni said. “That’s the theme of our whole relationship.”When the show made its Broadway debut last year, Mr. Barkell moved into Ms. Pecchioni and Paw’s Harlem apartment. When it closed in July, he was already planning to propose. His parents knew a jeweler in Michigan who helped him design a diamond and blue topaz toi et moi ring; on Oct. 3, after a night spent performing Irish dance at a charity event at Chelsea Factory, he presented it in their living room.“He was crying and I was screaming,” Ms. Pecchioni said. Her excitement aside, it wasn’t the proposal she had imagined. In her fantasy version, she looked down at her suitor as he dropped to one knee. In real life, “he’s so tall we were still eye-to-eye.”Both bride and groom studied and made a career of dance, so, not surprisingly, dance — including an Irish dance session — was a big part of their reception.Perri LeighOn Oct. 8, Ms. Pecchioni and Mr. Barkell were married at Hazelnut Farm in Louisville. Derwin Webb, a Pecchioni family friend and a judge of the Jefferson County Court, officiated a traditional ceremony for 140 guests that included several former “Paradise Square” castmates.When Mr. Webb pronounced them married, they looked out on a sea of damp-eyed, cheering loved ones. With a double-fist bump and happy tears of their own, the couple recessed down the grassy aisle to what both considered the role of a lifetime: as partners for life.On This DayWhen Oct. 8, 2023Where Hazelnut Farm, Louisville, Ky.They’re the Tops At a cocktail hour steps from the altar, guests were shown Southern hospitality in the form of a grazing table piled with fresh fruit, cheeses and caviar. For dinner, they chose from beef tenderloin and chicken piccata. Dessert was a strawberry cake topped with a Polaroid picture of the couple in their wedding clothes (a Martina Liana gown for her; a black tuxedo for him). “We always wanted to look like the cake topper couple at our wedding,” Ms. Pecchioni said.Step Lively After the couple danced with their parents, a dance floor was cleared for an Irish dance session led by Mr. Barkell. More than a dozen guests joined in, with Ms. Pecchioni making a late entrance to dance her way into the heart of the group.From Day 1 Kennedy Caughell, a “Paradise Square” castmate and wedding guest, was there the night the couple bonded at the 2021 Tony Awards. Back in Chicago, “I watched their love grow from this kind of nervous affection for each other to falling head over heels,” she said. As a couple, “they heat up a room.” More