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    How the Head of Inside Broadway Spends His Sundays

    There is usually a matinee in store for Michael Presser, who is the founder of Inside Broadway.More young people might be tuning into the Tony Awards this weekend thanks to the work of Michael Presser, the founder of Inside Broadway, a nonprofit organization that brings Broadway musicals to New York City schools and New York City schoolchildren to Broadway musicals.What started in the early 1980s as a free ticket program for local students to see “Cats” now reaches 75,000 students in 90 schools every year with its own touring productions and educational programs. Current shows in rotation include “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Sophisticated Ladies” and “Free to Be … You and Me.”Mr. Presser, 75, lives in Greenwich Village. Though his organization will turn 41 this year, he is not yet done marking its latest milestone birthday. “Since we work on a fiscal year, we’re still 40 until June 30,” he said. “We’re still celebrating.”QUIET FORMALITY I’m not a morning person, so I absolutely love to have quiet around me in the morning. No TV, no radio, and basically I prefer to settle in with the morning papers and spend a good period of time going through the news of the day. I never lie around in pajamas or athletic clothes. I am formal.“I very much enjoy the plants, and I very much enjoy my gardener who takes care of them. I’m not a horticulturalist.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesGREEN SPACE There is a garden connected to my apartment. It’s a lovely place to be on Sunday mornings with the newspapers and tea. I’m not a coffee drinker. I prefer black tea or green tea. Many times when I have guests visit me from outside of New York, they’re fascinated to see a garden in the heart of Manhattan. They assume all New Yorkers live in Times Square. I very much enjoy the plants, and I very much enjoy my gardener who takes care of them. I’m not a horticulturalist.ON THE TELEPHONE I do like to spend a little time in the morning making phone contact with friends and relatives from outside of New York. It’s a very good time to speak with people who are in different time zones. I prefer catching up by phone, because it allows for a more direct and personal exchange. Social media I think tends to be rather superficial.“This particular neighborhood is so rich in history and architecture,” Mr. Presser said of Greenwich Village.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesA GREAT HONOR I take a weekly walk through the neighborhood. This is something I started doing during the pandemic. Back then I was taking these walks daily. Even though I’ve been here a long time, I very much enjoy Greenwich Village. I think sometimes you maybe take for granted your immediate neighborhood. But this particular neighborhood is so rich in history and architecture. It’s a very special area of New York and I actually consider it a great honor to be a longtime resident.Mr. Presser often stops at Murray’s Bagels on Sixth Avenue. “That is lunch.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesPHILLY THROWBACK I always end up stopping for bagels and lox. That’s kind of a Sunday tradition from my childhood in Philadelphia. When I was a boy, one of my uncles used to deliver a bag of bagels and lox to our house every Sunday. It was truly something to look forward to. So I kind of continue it as a fond memory. I’ll stop at Sixth Avenue, Murray’s. I’ll take it home and sit outdoors in the garden. That is lunch.MATINEE Sunday, I feel, is the best day of the week to go to the theater, and I have always loved having a matinee performance to attend. While I do go to many performances during the week, on Sundays I’m well rested and can focus on the performances, something that’s sometimes harder to do during the week. I go to Broadway but also many other kinds of shows, Off Broadway and so on. It’s really wonderful, the wide variety of theater we have here. It’s a good time to sort of take that in. Recently I saw “Kimberly Akimbo” and a brand-new opera at the Metropolitan Opera, “Champion,” and I had a wonderful opportunity to see one of the final performances of “Phantom of the Opera.”“It’s really wonderful, the wide variety of theater we have here.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesTAKE ME OUT Sunday during the baseball season is a great time to get out to Yankee Stadium. I always liked baseball as a child, and then I sort of lost interest in it for a rather long time, and I seem to have rediscovered it again. I think it’s a fascinating game; the strategies, the players that have such unique skills. And during the summertime I think it’s a wonderful experience to be outdoors at a baseball game. Yankee Stadium is a real New York institution. I take the subway. All New Yorkers take the subway.Mr. Presser often meets friends for dinner on Sunday evenings. “We do not discuss politics,” he said. “That’s a firm rule.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesFIRM RULE We have a sort of gang of friends who meet for dinner on Sunday evenings at the Westway Diner in Hell’s Kitchen. It gives us an opportunity to exchange what we’ve been doing this week, particularly about the world of the arts. We have a lot of strong and interesting opinions, and I always encourage everybody to respect other people’s opinions. For instance, we frequently discuss who performed at the opera or what they saw this week. We do not discuss politics. That’s a firm rule. No politics.TRAVEL RESEARCH After dinner, it’s free time, and what I like to do generally is to plan projects and activities and especially travel I’m going to be doing in the coming months. Because I’m not a beach person, I almost always plan travel around major cosmopolitan cities. I can figure out what theater I might like to see and research key people I might like to meet in the local arts community.LATE-NIGHT STACK I’m an evening person. I can stay up late, until 1 a.m. or sometimes later. It gives me some time for personal reading. I am a great fan of the New York Public Library, which I feel is one of the great privileges of living in New York. I always have a stack of books that I’ve gotten from the library. I prefer biographies and history. One of the nice things about the library is you can borrow a book, and if you don’t like it you can send it right back.Sunday Routine readers can follow Inside Broadway on social media at @Inside_Broadway. More

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    Michael Batayeh, Comedian and ‘Breaking Bad’ Actor, Dies at 52

    Mr. Batayeh starred in three episodes of the Emmy-winning series and performed stand-up comedy.Michael Batayeh, an actor best known for his brief role in the Emmy-winning series “Breaking Bad” and a comedian who was popular in the Arab-American community, died at his home in Ypsilanti, Mich. He was 52.His sister Ida Vergollo said he died on June 1 in his sleep after a heart attack. A coroner later found issues with his heart, she said.Mr. Batayeh appeared in “Breaking Bad” as Dennis Markowski, the steady manager of a laundromat that was a front for a meth lab. The character was killed after he showed interest in speaking to the Drug Enforcement Administration in exchange for immunity.As a comedian, Mr. Batayeh performed in major clubs in New York City and Los Angeles, as well as around the country and internationally.He also had credits on several popular television series, including “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “The Bernie Mac Show” and “Boy Meets World.”Mr. Batayeh’s role as a cabdriver on “Everybody Loves Raymond” in 1998 signaled to his family that he had arrived as an entertainer, according to Ms. Vergollo, “because that’s when my dad first saw his last name on TV.” She said, “My dad was so proud of him and let him know that.”Michael Anthony Batayeh was born on Dec. 27, 1970, in Detroit, the seventh child of Abraham Batayeh, a Ford factory worker, and Victoria (Dababneh) Batayeh.The couple immigrated to the United States from Jordan in 1955. Michael Batayeh attended Wayne State University for three years before dropping out and moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the arts and start his own comedy troupe with a friend.“He was actually made to be a performer since he was very, very young,” said Ms. Vergollo, who recalled that her brother began playing the tabla, a pair of hand drums, at 5 years old and continued throughout his adult life.“My dad used to drag him up onstage at all the weddings,” she said.Mr. Batayeh is survived by his sisters Ida Vergollo, Diane Batayeh-Ricketts, MaryAnn Joseph, Madeline Sherman and Theresa Aquino. His eldest sister, Jeannie Batayeh, died from cancer in 2016.Mr. Batayeh often used his family as fodder for comedy. “He made fun of us a lot,” Ms. Vergollo said.And an affinity for accents made him popular in the Arab-American community, said Ms. Vergollo, who called him “so spot on.”At the invitation of the Jordanian royal family, his sisters said, he performed at a comedy festival in Amman, Jordan’s capital. He was also featured in a comedy special for Showtime Arabia.The family is asking for memorial contributions to an organization that provides recreation and mentoring programs for youth in southwest Detroit.“He would voice to us how important it was and how good he felt when he went back home and talked to kids or mentored people who wanted to start out,” Ms. Vergollo said. She noted that Mr. Batayeh moved back to Michigan from California permanently in 2016 when his sister Jeannie was ill, but would travel back and forth for work.“He cared about his community and wanted to give back,” she said, “and that’s the type of person he was.” More

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    The Tony Awards Are Sunday. Here’s How to Watch.

    Here is all the information you’ll need to tune in on Sunday to the annual ceremony honoring Broadway’s top productions and performers.When are the Tony Awards? We’re so glad you asked!The Tony Awards, which each year honor the best plays and musicals staged on Broadway, are Sunday night.The main event, with lots of song-and-dance numbers between the prizes, is at 8 p.m. Eastern, and will be televised on CBS and streamed on Paramount+. And before that, starting at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, is a preshow at which a number of awards for creative work, such as design, will be handed out. That will stream on Pluto TV.This year is going to be different from the usual in several ways.First, the ceremony will take place in a new location: the United Palace, a former movie house in Washington Heights, which is one of Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhoods. The reasons for the move are predominantly financial; the United Palace proved much less expensive to rent than Radio City Music Hall, where the show often takes place.Second, screenwriters are on strike, and that strike initially threatened to disrupt the Tonys as it has disrupted other televised awards shows. In order to secure an agreement from the Writers Guild of America not to picket the telecast, the Tony Awards had to pledge not to use any scripted writing during the awards ceremony. The result is that there will be more singing, and less talking, than in normal years.Who’s hosting?The broadcast will be hosted for a second consecutive year by Ariana DeBose, who this year, because of the absence of writers, is expected to dance more and to make fewer jokes. She won an Academy Award last year for her performance in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake, and she was nominated for a Tony Award in 2018 as one of three actresses playing Donna Summer in the jukebox musical “Summer.” This year’s Tonys preshow will be hosted by Julianne Hough (“POTUS”) and Skylar Astin (“Spring Awakening”).Who’s performing?Each of the five shows nominated for best musical will do a song — that’s “& Juliet,” “Kimberly Akimbo,” “New York, New York,” “Shucked” and “Some Like It Hot.” And all four shows nominated for best musical revival will also perform — that’s “Camelot,” “Into the Woods,” “Parade” and “Sweeney Todd.”But wait, there’s more! Lea Michele is going to lead a number from the revival of “Funny Girl” that opened a year ago. The cast of “A Beautiful Noise,” a jukebox musical about Neil Diamond, will also perform. And Joaquina Kalukango, one of last year’s Tony winners, will sing a song to accompany the In Memoriam segment.Why do the Tonys matter?Broadway is still struggling to recover from the lengthy coronavirus shutdown — attendance remains 17 percent below prepandemic levels — and producers view the Tony Awards as an important way to introduce a large audience to the newest shows.Also, the Tonys are a way to lift up theater as an art form, often boosting the careers of the artists involved. Wins and nominations help plays get staged at regional theaters and taught in colleges, and telecast performances help musicals sell tickets and tour.The Tony Awards, named for the actress and philanthropist Antoinette Perry, are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing. The winners are chosen by voters — there are 769 of them this year — who are mostly industry insiders: producers, investors, actors, writers, directors, designers and many others with theater-connected lives and livelihoods.This Sunday’s ceremony will be the 76th Tony Awards. More

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    How Saycon Sengbloh of ‘The Wonder Years’ Unwinds

    The “Wonder Years” star takes care of herself with satin pillows, costume dramas and food that connects her to her Liberian roots.When Saycon Sengbloh tried out for the role of Lillian Williams, the matriarch in ABC’s reboot of “The Wonder Years,” she was also auditioning to be her boss’s mother. The showrunner, Saladin K. Patterson, had decided that if he was going to remake the beloved sitcom — this time looking at the late 1960s through the lens of a Black family in Alabama — he was going to base the show loosely on his own family, starting with his parents, Bill and Lillian.The central character in “The Wonder Years” is a teenager named Dean (Elisha Williams), but the story lines often revolve around Lillian. During the audition, conducted over Zoom, Sengbloh read a scene inspired by Patterson’s childhood in which Lillian tells Dean that the pornographic magazines he found in the basement aren’t his father’s: “Those are mine.”“When Saycon read that,” Patterson said in an interview, “she was just magic on the screen.”Sengbloh, 45, is a Tony-nominated singer, dancer and actress with years of Broadway, film and television credits, but Lillian Williams is her first starring role in a TV series. To shoot “The Wonder Years,” which returns for its second season on June 14, Sengbloh moved back to her hometown, Atlanta, where she made sure she had a fireplace, a bathtub and access to good okra. These are edited excerpts from our interview last month.1Charlotte, N.C.I left New York during the pandemic and moved to Charlotte, N.C. Everybody was like, what are you doing? But a few months later, I booked a television series in Charlotte called “Delilah.” It only had one season, but work begets work and I swear it helped me get “The Wonder Years,” which brought me back home to Atlanta. Being in Charlotte taught me that making choices that feel right will serve me. It’s also a beautiful town with beautiful people and really good barbecue.2Epsom SaltI’m a bathing beauty and an ex-Broadway showgirl, so I like to soak in the bath with Epsom salt. People associate Epsom salt with our grandmothers or our great-grandmothers. That generation knew about the benefits of magnesium. It really helps to fire your nervous system and fire your muscles.3Fine TeaWith all the singing I’ve done in my life, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking time to wake up the voice and care for the voice — and, yes, I said “the voice” in the third person. All the singers drink slippery elm tea, but I got tired of it and I got into a bunch of different teas, like Earl Grey and rooibos tea, which is really popular in South Africa.4FireplacesI am obsessed with cozy fireplace vibes. It’s part of the hygge lifestyle, the art of cozy. I’ve got a gas fireplace in my home in Atlanta. When I have it on, my dog, she knows where to be. I look at her and I say: You make me look rich.5‘Little Soul’Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of channels on YouTube that have relaxing music accompanied by animated, calming scenes. My favorite is “Little Soul.” I have a lot of busyness going on, so I need to relax — hence the tea, the fireplace, the baths and the lo-fi music.6Le ColonialOne of my favorite restaurants is Le Colonial, which has a location in Atlanta. When you’re there, you feel like you’re on vacation because it has a beautiful view and they have banana trees and plants everywhere.7Vintage TVI love myself a good old vintage drama, honey. When I was living in New York, I probably moved to a new apartment every four or five years. I’d be in the kitchen just packing, watching “Downton Abbey,” “Dangerous Liaisons” or “Emma.”8Okra Soup, or StewMy dad was from Liberia, my mom is American, and my parents got married here in the ’70s. Okra soup is my favorite Liberian food. Like a lot of West African food that’s called soup, it’s actually more like a stew. Whenever I visit my sisters, who were born in Liberia, I try to get some okra soup. Or, here in Atlanta, there’s a spot called Bamba Cuisine that serves the Senegalese version of okra stew called soupou kandja.9Satin PillowsA lot of women have been into satin pillows in the last five or 10 years. It’s supposed to be good for your skin and good for your hair. When you turn your face at night, it feels soft and smooth, not rough.10New WorksWhen I was doing a workshop for a show called “Holler if Ya Hear Me,” Chadwick Boseman was my leading man. He didn’t end up doing the show, and we didn’t last long, but the opportunity to be in a show that’s premiering or originating — watching brilliant directors, writers and creators get a show off the ground and bring it life — is just amazing. More

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    Can You Find the Hidden Titles of These 12 Books About Broadway Icons?

    “Don’t be shy,” said the exhausted milliner, who was frantically finishing the hat for the ingénue’s big number at the end of Act One. “What do you need?”“I’m looking for Lorraine again,” said the assistant director. “I’ve been going from stage to stage in this building. I can’t find her anywhere and Chita wants to go over their number with the latest rewrites.”The fluorescent light failing up above her head flickered and the hatmaker flinched as she accidentally jabbed an unprotected finger with the needle. “She went home hours ago. A little bit wicked of her in the middle of the tech rehearsal, I thought.”“What would I do without you?” sighed the A.D. “The costume crew knows all.”“Don’t be shy,” said the exhausted milliner, who was frantically finishing the hat for the ingénue’s big number at the end of Act One. “What do you need?”“I’m looking for Lorraine again,” said the assistant director. “I’ve been going from stage to stage in this building. I can’t find her anywhere and Chita wants to go over their number with the latest rewrites.”The fluorescent light failing up above her head flickered and the hatmaker flinched as she accidentally jabbed an unprotected finger with the needle. “She went home hours ago. A little bit wicked of her in the middle of the tech rehearsal, I thought.”“What would I do without you?” sighed the A.D. “The costume crew knows all.”“Don’t be shy,” said the exhausted milliner, who was frantically finishing the hat for the ingénue’s big number at the end of Act One. “What do you need?”“I’m looking for Lorraine again,” said the assistant director. “I’ve been going from stage to stage in this building. I can’t find her anywhere and Chita wants to go over their number with the latest rewrites.”The fluorescent light failing up above her head flickered and the hatmaker flinched as she accidentally jabbed an unprotected finger with the needle. “She went home hours ago. A little bit wicked of her in the middle of the tech rehearsal, I thought.”“What would I do without you?” sighed the A.D. “The costume crew knows all.” More

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    At Départ d’Incendies, Young Theater Makers Swing Big

    Ariane Mnouchkine, a grande dame of French theater, helped to set up a new festival where emerging companies can try out ambitious stagings.When the revered French director Ariane Mnouchkine set up her own playhouse in 1970 in a disused munitions factory on the outskirts of Paris, she vowed to turn the space into a “laboratory for popular theater.” Over a half-century later, she is staying true to her word. This month, Mnouchkine has handed the keys to five emerging companies, at no cost, to stage a new festival: Départ d’Incendies, or “Starting Fires.”The idea came from Annabelle Zoubian, a 28-year-old theater director. In an interview, Zoubian said that the pandemic and the rising cost of touring had made it difficult for early-career artists to take on ambitious stagings. So, in 2021, she reached out to Mnouchkine and asked if she would be willing to host an event dedicated to young troupes.The answer, an instant “yes,” left Zoubian slightly stunned, she said before the opening performance of the festival last weekend. “It’s exactly what we needed — for someone to trust us to learn,” she said.Starting Fires, which runs through July 2, has taken over a rehearsal hall belonging to Mnouchkine’s company, Théâtre du Soleil, which regularly hosts performances. The five groups involved have taken a leaf from that ensemble’s egalitarian model: When they’re not performing, artists take turns staffing the ticket booth and the bar.Onstage, there was no shortage of talent. The three productions I saw all boasted large casts of up to 15 performers: a rarity for emerging companies, given the cost involved. They took big swings, and sometimes missed, but overall, their hard work paid exciting dividends.Mona Chaïbi, left, as Antigone and Benjamin Grangier as the Sentry in “Antigone.”Jérôme ZajdermannThe future is bright for Sébastien Kheroufi, a first-time director who imbued Sophocles’ ancient “Antigone” with personal touches. His starting point, according to the playbill, was his own fractured family history: His father left Algeria after the country’s bloody war for independence, yet fell on hard times in France.Perhaps as a result, a quiet sense of pain runs through Kheroufi’s “Antigone.” Set against the melancholy background of a well and a fallen tree, it earnestly captures the interplay between moral principles and family trauma in Sophocles’ play, only losing momentum in a couple of scenes. The rift between Antigone, who wants to bury her brother against the orders of Thebes’s leader Creon, and her sister Ismene is more balanced than usual: The somber, effective Louisa Chas makes it clear Ismene has already suffered too much to revolt.In 2021, while still a drama student, Kheroufi took a leading role in the occupation of Paris’s Théâtre de la Colline, protesting the closure of theaters across France. Here, he proves that he has the chops to steer a diverse group of actors, too. “Antigone” features experienced artists — like François Clavier, who makes a toweringly self-satisfied Creon — as well as a chorus of four amateur women who have experienced exile. Kheroufi met those women while working with an emergency shelter, and in one scene, each one curses at Creon in a different language, with arresting gravitas.Thomas Corcessin, left, and Lula Paris in “Platonov.”Conrad AllainAnother director, Zoubian, opted to tackle a classic drama: “Platonov,” Anton Chekhov’s first four-act play, from 1878. There is a chaotic energy to the characters — who drink and party around Platonov, a local Casanova, to evade ennui in a Russian province — that makes it especially well-suited to young actors.Zoubian’s cast took time to settle into this marathon, which clocks in at well over three hours, and there were a couple of technical mishaps: Chekhov’s proverbial gun didn’t fire in the final scene, for instance. But the production ultimately stayed the course, in no small part thanks to Léo Nivet (a charismatic, wide-eyed Sergei) and Romane Bonnardin (trusting and poignant as Sacha, the wife Platonov betrays).Starting Fires moved outdoors, to a corner of the parking lot, for one production: “Macabre Carnival,” inspired by the Tupamaros, a far-left revolutionary movement active in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. For this show, which had its premiere in 2021, the 15-strong troupe Théâtre de l’Hydre conducted significant research in the country, and features artists born there, as well as in Chile, France and Peru.Clément Delpérié, center, in “Macabre Carnival.”Mathieu VouzelaudMnouchkine, herself an epic narrator of historical events, is named as an inspiration several times in the playbill, and her influence was clear throughout. With just a handful of platforms on wheels and drawings on a blackboard, the cast set out the main characters and the political context, zipping along with verve. Their director, Stéphane Bensimon, is adept at finding ingenious transitions, and the cast’s many talents — music, dance, even acrobatics — are used at exactly the right times to enhance group scenes.Even as a few cars hummed in the background, “Macabre Carnival” was wholly engrossing, with a utopian streak that set the tone for the festival. At a time when many young French companies are leaving Paris to bring theater to rural areas, Starting Fires is a welcome new showcase. It deserves to become a permanent fixture on the summer festival calendar.Festival Départ d’IncendiesThrough July 2 at La Cartoucherie in Paris; festival-depart-d-incendies.com. More

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    Tony Predictions: Expect Wins for ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ and ‘Leopoldstadt’

    Our theater reporter talked to one-fifth of the Tony voters ahead of Sunday’s ceremony. Here’s hoping they steered him right.What do you get when you toss together a brassy grifter, an Elvish-speaking anagrammist, a show choir and, oh yes, a teenager with a life-threatening genetic condition? This year, it seems, you get a Tony-winning musical.“Kimberly Akimbo,” a small show with a huge heart, is likely to win the most coveted prize at the 76th Tony Awards ceremony on Sunday, according to my annual survey of Tony voters.Over the last week, I have connected, by email or telephone, with 158 voters who generously agreed to discuss their picks (and, often, their concerns about, and hopes for, the theater business); they are distributing their votes widely among the nominees after a season with few consensus favorites.There are a total of 769 Tony voters, and they are mostly industry insiders — producers, investors, actors, writers, directors, designers, and many others with theater-connected lives and livelihoods. Although in recent years, voters have been allowed to cast ballots only in categories in which they had seen all nominees, this year, because health and economic disruptions (and, over the last few days, wildfire smoke) made it hard for some voters to catch some shows, there is more leeway: Voters can cast ballots in any category in which they have seen all but one nominee.This is not a scientific poll, but in past years this exercise has provided a reliable forecast of the ultimate winners in key categories. For the actual results (and the songs!) tune in on Sunday for the telecast at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and Paramount+ (and, if you want to see the awards for design and other creative categories, stream the preshow at 6:30 p.m. Eastern on Pluto TV).Until then, here’s what I am hearing:‘Leopoldstadt’ leads in the race for best play.In each of the last four Tony Awards, voters have chosen as best play an epic production imported from London. Last year was “The Lehman Trilogy,” and before that were “The Inheritance,” “The Ferryman” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”This year, that trend seems certain to continue. By a significant margin, voters are favoring “Leopoldstadt,” a play by Tom Stoppard about how the Holocaust affected an assimilated and affluent Jewish family in Austria.The play proved inadvertently timely: Although written several years ago, it arrived on Broadway last September, just as concern about resurgent antisemitism was rising in the United States and beyond.“Leopoldstadt” is leading the second-place favorite, “Fat Ham,” two-to-one among the voters with whom I spoke, suggesting that it is all but certain to win. Three other nominated plays, “Ain’t No Mo’,” “Cost of Living” and “Between Riverside and Crazy,” are further behind.“Fat Ham,” now running on Broadway with, from left, Nikki Crawford, Marcel Spears and Billy Eugene Jones, won a Pulitzer Prize, but it looks likely to be the runner-up in the Tony race for best new play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStoppard, who is 85, is already the winningest playwright on Broadway: He has previously won the best play Tony four times, for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia.”“Leopoldstadt,” directed by Patrick Marber and featuring an ensemble cast of 38, is about a fictional family, but is inspired by Stoppard’s own life experience: He was born in what was then Czechoslovakia; his parents fled invading Nazis when he was a toddler; he has spent his life in Britain; and, like a character in “Leopoldstadt,” only late in life came to understand his family’s Jewishness and the impact of the Holocaust on his relatives.The play, which transferred to Broadway after winning the Olivier Award for best play in London, opened last October to strong reviews and healthy box office sales in New York. Its sales have softened considerably this year, and it is scheduled to close on July 2.Among new musicals, ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ is favored.“Kimberly Akimbo” is the smallest of the nominated new musicals, with just nine characters and a budget that is about one-third that of its splashiest competitors.But it is shaping up to be the little engine that could: It opened last fall to the strongest reviews of any of the season’s new musicals, and now a plurality of voters interviewed say they are voting for it as the season’s best new musical.Not all voters love “Kimberly Akimbo” — some are finding it extraordinarily moving, while others are left cold — but the show’s odds are good because those who are not voting for it are splitting their votes between two comedies: “Some Like It Hot,” adapted from the Billy Wilder film, and “Shucked,” a pun-filled and country-scored fable. The two other nominated musicals, “& Juliet” and “New York, New York,” lag considerably behind.J. Harrison Ghee, in the red dress, is heavily favored to win a Tony Award as best leading actor in a musical for “Some Like It Hot.” Ghee’s dancing partner, Kevin Del Aguila, is also a Tony nominee.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Kimberly Akimbo,” which opened in November, is about a high school student, 15 going on 16, whose life is threatened by a genetic disorder that causes her to age prematurely; that sounds sad, and it is, but the musical is also quite funny, as the protagonist navigates a dysfunctional home life, a gawky peer group, and the criminal aunt who connects those worlds. The show, directed by Jessica Stone, is adapted from a play by David Lindsay-Abaire; he wrote the musical’s book and lyrics, and Jeanine Tesori wrote the music.The revival categories are tougher to predict.This was, by all accounts, a good season for revivals, many of which were praised by critics and a number of which sold well at the box office. But that is making these categories tougher for voters, who liked so many of the offerings that they are torn over which to single out for prizes.Among play revivals, a production of Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog” appears to have a modest but real lead, and is likely to win the Tony Award. If it is upset, it would be by the revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” but there is enough support for revivals of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” and Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” to make it difficult for any of them to catch up.Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, left, and Corey Hawkins as the two brothers at the heart of Suzan-Lori Parks’s play “Topdog/Underdog.” Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Topdog/Underdog,” first staged Off Broadway in 2001, is about two Black brothers, portentously named Lincoln and Booth, living together in a one-room apartment, trying to get by in a world that makes their lives difficult. The play is an undisputed classic — it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2002, and in 2018 was named the best American play of the previous quarter century by New York Times critics. The revival, directed by Kenny Leon, ran from September 2022 to January.The musical revival category is even closer. A production of “Parade,” a 1998 musical written by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown about the lynching of a Jewish man in early-20th-century Georgia, has a narrow lead among voters I spoke with, but there is also substantial support for revivals of two shows with songs by Stephen Sondheim: “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd.” Any of those three could win; a revival of “Camelot” is not a significant factor in the race. “Parade” opened in March and is scheduled to close in August; “Camelot” and “Sweeney Todd” are running indefinitely, while “Into the Woods” is wrapping up a national tour.Three of the top acting races are sewn up. One is not.J. Harrison Ghee, Jodie Comer and Victoria Clark can start writing their acceptance speeches. Each of them is almost certainly going to take home a Tony Award.The category of best leading actor in a play, on the other hand, is way, way, way too close to call, but has boiled down to two of the five contenders: Sean Hayes and Stephen McKinley Henderson.Sean Hayes, left, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, right, seem to be the front-runners in the very tight race for best leading actor in a play.Photographs by Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGhee, who is nonbinary, is winning over voters with an empathetic, but also entertaining, portrayal of a musician whose gender identity is evolving in “Some Like It Hot.”Comer wowed voters with her physically and emotionally exhausting tour-de-force performance in “Prima Facie,” a one-woman play about a lawyer who defends men accused of sexual assault until she becomes a victim herself. Amazingly, this is her first stage role.And Clark is heavily favored for her mind-bending star turn in “Kimberly Akimbo,” in which the 63-year-old actress plays an ailing adolescent with all the awkwardness, resilience and premature wisdom that such a role requires. Clark previously won a Tony Award in 2005 for “The Light in the Piazza.”As for that race for best leading actor in a play: A little less than a third of voters I spoke with chose Hayes, who in “Good Night, Oscar” portrays Oscar Levant, a pianist whose bitter humor made him a popular talk-show guest while he battled serious psychological problems. But nearly the same number of voters are supporting Henderson for his portrayal of a retired police officer trying to hang onto a rent-controlled apartment in “Between Riverside and Crazy.”Who will win? Check back on Sunday night. More

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    ‘Jury Duty’ Becomes a Surprise Hit

    “Jury Duty,” a unique comedy on the Amazon streaming platform Freevee, became a surprise hit thanks to word-of-mouth social media buzz.On the night of April 6, the creators of “Jury Duty,” a hybrid documentary-sitcom in which an ordinary man unwittingly participates in a staged trial among actors, came together in Culver City, Calif., for a cast and crew screening of the series.The atmosphere was muted. Early reviews had been unflattering — The Hollywood Reporter, earlier that day, had called it “a bad show for benign reasons.” And with it premiering the next day on Amazon Freevee, an ad-supported streaming platform few were familiar with, expectations for the show’s success were modest, if not outright low.“The vibe at the screening I would describe as very much like, ‘We made a show, we should be proud of that,’” Todd Schulman, an executive producer, said in a recent video interview. “I believed in what we had made. But there’s so much content out there, and this is on a platform that’s not as well-known as the other ones, so let’s be realistic about what’s going to happen.”“Then the next three weeks unfolded,” he continued. “And it felt insane.”After a slow start, “Jury Duty” rapidly found an audience, building ecstatic word-of-mouth buzz to become a bona fide social media sensation, with clips of the show racking up hundreds of millions of views on TikTok.Broader interest in the show spiked accordingly, more than doubling in the month after premiere, according to research by Parrot Analytics. (The company assesses the popularity of shows by analyzing audience demand — a combination of streaming, social media, search and other online behaviors.) Interest in “Jury Duty” remains higher now than it was during the show’s initial run, in April, suggesting that plenty of viewers are still discovering it, Parrot said.Like most streamers, Amazon declines to give viewing numbers, but it confirmed that “Jury Duty” has been Freevee’s most watched show since it premiered. Last week, seeking to capitalize and build on the popularity, Amazon released a line of “Jury Duty” merchandise as well as new versions of the episodes that include cast commentary.All of which has prompted a lot of people to ask the same question: How did this happen?“Jury Duty” feels like a minor miracle. The premise is fraught with peril: The nominal star, a contractor named Ronald Gladden, has no idea that he is in a sitcom — he had been told that some parts of the trial were being recorded as a documentary — and one of the thrilling things about watching is the constant sense that at any moment it could all implode. Ronald could have discovered the ruse; the actors playing the other jurors could have broken character or flubbed lines. But all involved managed to pull it off.Gladden, center, was the only non-actor in the series, and viewers were charmed by his agreeable demeanor.Amazon FreeveeSchulman and his team weren’t even sure that they could. When they were pitching the concept around Hollywood, they received little interest, with most networks passing on the grounds that it posed too much of a creative risk. It was ultimately Freevee and its head of originals, Lauren Anderson, who was eager to take that chance.“Usually when you say ‘They took a chance on us,’ it means they took a chance because the show could have been bad,” Schulman said. “But they could give us millions of dollars and not get a show — that’s a different scale of chance-taking.”In an interview, Anderson said that when she first heard the pitch, at the start of the pandemic, Freevee — which was known at the time as IMDb TV — hadn’t released any original content and was looking for “noisy, buzzy and unique” programming to set its slate apart. “I got the feeling that this could be really special,” she said.James Marsden was less confident. The star of “Westworld” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” has a recurring role in “Jury Duty,” playing an exaggeratedly arrogant, pretentious version of himself who is ordered to be a backup juror for the trial. While Marsden was initially intrigued by the idea, he said in a phone interview that his doubts set in once the production began.“I started thinking, ‘Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? Can we even do this? Can we pull this off?” he said. Even if it worked, he didn’t think it would land: “I thought this would either be the end of my career or something that maybe a handful of people would see.”Even Gladden didn’t expect much to come from it once the production had wrapped. (That he was on a TV show was revealed to him in the final episode, but he had to wait months for it to make it to air.)“It was on a brand-new streaming platform that no one had ever heard of, so I didn’t really think it was going to go anywhere,” Gladden said over the phone from Los Angeles. “I truthfully didn’t think anything was going to come from it.”Leading up to the premiere, the buzz was virtually nonexistent, but there were signs the show could resonate. A trailer put out by Freevee didn’t cause much of a splash, but then one of the show’s writers, Kerry O’Neill, shared the trailer to her Twitter account with the caption, “We truman showed a man,” and the tweet blew up. The idea that someone had recreated “The Truman Show,” the Jim Carrey movie about a man unknowingly living life on TV, “really contextualized everything for people,” said Nicholas Hatton, one of the show’s executive producers. The trailer embedded in O’Neill’s tweet received 1.3 million views.While middling reviews dampened expectations, show clips put out by Freevee found an immediate foothold on TikTok. “I’m a 44-year-old man; I’m not on TikTok,” Schulman said dryly. “I couldn’t believe how many people my age or older were telling me that they heard about the show from their teenage kids. It was working its way generationally upward.”The fan TikTok videos — which Freevee had no part in creating, though it also posted clips to its own TikTok account — were like short, self-contained advertisements for the series. Users shared scenes out of context with a line or two of explanation, and it proved more than enough for people to understand the conceit and get hyped.Marsden felt the impact immediately after the first episode aired. “I started getting texts from friends and random people I hadn’t heard from in years,” he said. “What I kept hearing was, ‘You’re blowing up on TikTok.’ I didn’t even know what that meant.” The excitement spilled over into real life: “I walked out of my hotel room in New York to get a coffee and literally every other person under 30 was stopping me to talk about ‘Jury Duty.’”James Marsden, right, played an arrogant version of himself in the series. “I thought this would either be the end of my career or something that maybe a handful of people would see,” he said.Amazon FreeveeAt the same time, Gladden — who returned to contracting work after the show and had a minimal online presence — was thrust into social media stardom. “I figured that on Instagram that I might gain a few thousand followers out of it,” he said. “But when I very quickly gained over 10,000, I realized it was actually becoming a thing.”Essential to the show’s appeal, especially on TikTok, has been Gladden’s warmth and positivity as the unwitting lead. Faced over and over again with oblique ethical quandaries engineered by the writers (such as whether to take the blame for an embarrassing bathroom accident caused by Marsden) and forced to endure the bizarre behavior of his fellow “jurors,” Gladden exuded an unflappable sweetness that viewers have found touching and inspiring.Not surprisingly, the more than 200,000 Instagram followers he now has have been flooding Gladden’s inbox with positive messages. “People have been telling me things like, ‘You’ve inspired me to be a better person,’ or ‘you make me want to be nicer to people,’” he said. “It’s the best reaction I could have gotten.”Every network hopes to cultivate this kind of grass-roots furor, and modern streaming content can feel as if it is actively courting viral success (consider the “Wednesday” dance). But no one involved with “Jury Duty” intended for it to be a TikTok hit.“This show took off in a way that you can’t buy,” Anderson said. “It took on a life of its own, in the way that you want to happen for every show you make but which you just can’t predict.”That it was a happy accident hasn’t stopped others in the industry from lusting after the recipe, of course. “I’ve had people who work at other platforms call me and say, ‘OK, what’s the secret? What did Freevee do to make this go viral?’” Schulman said. “It was completely organic.”As for what it was about “Jury Duty” in particular that resonated with audiences on TikTok, Marsden has a theory. “Young people go onto YouTube or their explore feed on TikTok or Instagram, and they watch people slipping on the ice or doing a silly dance,” he said. “They want to see what’s going on out there in all its absurdity or its hilariousness or its scariness. They want to watch something real, and not fake.”The centerpiece of “Jury Duty” is a real guy, and that edge of reality, Marsden feels, is what captures the imagination of the young. “Every 20-year-old can see themselves in that position and think, ‘What if that was me?’ There’s something kind of dangerous and exciting about that.” More