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    Topol, Star of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Onscreen and Onstage, Dies at 87

    Wide acclaim for his portrayal of Tevye helped make him, according to one newspaper, “Israel’s most famous export since the Jaffa orange.”Topol, the Israeli actor who took on the role of the patriarch Tevye, the soulful shtetl milkman at the center of “Fiddler on the Roof,” in his late 20s and reprised the role for decades, died on Thursday at his home in Tel Aviv. He was 87.His son, Omer Topol, confirmed the death. He said in an email that his father had Alzheimer’s disease, which had caused his health to deteriorate over the last year.Topol — born Chaim Topol, he used only his surname throughout much of his professional life — came to international renown heading the cast of the 1971 film version of “Fiddler.” Its director, Norman Jewison, had chosen Topol, then a little-known stage actor, over Zero Mostel, who had created the part on Broadway.The film, for which Topol earned an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award, made him a star. For much of the late 20th century he would be, in the words of The Jerusalem Post in 2012, “Israel’s most famous export since the Jaffa orange.”Topol reprised Tevye in stage productions worldwide for decades, including a 1990 Broadway revival for which he received a Tony nomination. By 2009, he had, by his own estimate, played the character more than 3,500 times.His other films include “Galileo,” the director Joseph Losey’s 1975 adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s stage play, in which he played the title role; “Flash Gordon” (1980), in which he portrayed the scientist Hans Zarkov; and the James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only” (1981), starring Roger Moore, in which he played the Greek smuggler Milos Columbo.On television, Topol played the Polish Jew Berel Jastrow in the 1983 mini-series “The Winds of War” and reprised the role for its sequel, “War and Remembrance,” broadcast in 1988 and 1989.Topol as Tevye in the movie version of “Fiddler on the Roof.” The character is a weary, tradition-bound Everyman who argues with God, bemoans his lot as the penurious father of five daughters and lives warily amid the pogroms of Czarist Russia. United Archives/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesBut it was indisputably for Tevye — the weary, tradition-bound Everyman who argues with God, bemoans his lot as the penurious father of five daughters and lives increasingly warily amid the pogroms of early-20th-century Czarist Russia — that Topol remained best known.“Like Yul Brynner in ‘The King and I’ and Rex Harrison in ‘My Fair Lady,’ Topol has become almost synonymous with his character,” United Press International said in 1989. Over the years, Topol was asked repeatedly whether he ever tired of playing the role.“Let’s face it, it’s one of the best parts ever written for a male actor in the musical theater,” he told The Boston Globe in 1989, when he had played Tevye a mere 700 times or so. “It takes you to a wide range of emotions, happiness to sadness, anger to love.”Throughout his many Tevyes, some critics taxed Topol’s acting as larger than life to the point of self-parody. But most praised his soulful mien and his resonant bass baritone, heard in enduring numbers like “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Tradition” and “Sunrise, Sunset.”By the time Mr. Jewison began work on the “Fiddler” film, Tevye was one of the most coveted roles in Hollywood. The Broadway show, based on stories by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem — with book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and music by Jerry Bock — had been a smash hit since it opened in 1964. It won nine Tony Awards, including best musical, best direction of a musical (for Jerome Robbins) and, for Mr. Mostel, best actor in a musical.“The casting of it was the most agonizing thing I ever went through,” Mr. Jewison told NPR in 2001.Besides Mr. Mostel, aspirants to the screen role included Rod Steiger, Danny Kaye and — in a scenario that can be contemplated only with difficulty — Frank Sinatra.Mr. Jewison’s casting choice was all the more striking in that Topol had not wanted the part in the first place.Topol as the title character in the 1975 film version of Bertolt Brecht’s biographical play “Galileo.” Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesChaim Topol was born in Tel Aviv on Sept. 9, 1935. His parents, Jacob Topol, a plasterer, and Rel Goldman Topol, a seamstress, had fled shtetlach in Eastern Europe to settle in Palestine in the early 1930s. There, Jacob Topol became a member of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization.As a youth, Chaim studied commercial art and trained for a career as a printer. But in 1953, while he was serving in the Israeli Army, an officer overheard him regaling fellow recruits with jokes. He was placed in an army entertainment unit and found his calling there.He spent the next few years touring Israel with the group, entertaining soldiers with songs like “Sprinkler Hora,” a hit in that fledgling state, where making the desert bloom was a national imperative.Discharged in 1956, Topol settled with members of his unit on a kibbutz, where they formed a satirical theater group, Batzal Yarok (the name means “Green Onion”). Its members worked on the land two days a week and onstage for four.“It was great training because we had a very difficult, tired audience,” Topol told U.P.I. “Most of them had been out running tractors and such before performances.”He was later a founder of the Haifa Municipal Theater, where his roles included Petruchio in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” Azdak in Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and Jean in Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” a role that was originated on Broadway by Mr. Mostel. Topol’s first significant international exposure came in the title role of the 1964 Israeli film “Sallah” (also known as “Sallah Shabati”). One of the first film comedies to come out of Israel, it told the tale of a family of Mizrahi Jews — Jews historically from the Middle East and North Africa — uneasily resettled in Israel.“Sallah” won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film; Topol, then in his late 20s, won the Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer for his portrayal of Sallah Shabati, the family patriarch, a man in his 60s.On the strength of that performance, he was asked to play Tevye in a Hebrew-language production of “Fiddler” in Tel Aviv. Unfamiliar with the show, he went to New York to see Mr. Mostel on Broadway.That, Topol, later said, was where his troubles with “Fiddler” began.“Zero was going wild” — even ad-libbing to the audience — he recalled in a 2008 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph. “He said things like, ‘Mrs. Finkelstein, are you yawning because I’m boring you or was it because your husband kept you awake all night?’ I didn’t know what to do with myself. I telegrammed back saying there was no way I wanted to be connected to that show.”But on returning to Israel, Topol saw the Tel Aviv production and had a change of heart. He eventually replaced the actor portraying Tevye and played the role for about a year.Topol in a benefit performance in London in 2013. He was recognized for his charitable work, notably helping to found a holiday camp in Israel for ailing children from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. David M. Benett/Getty ImagesAround that time, the first London production of “Fiddler” was being cast. Someone suggested that the old Jewish actor who had played Sallah Shabati might be a worthy Tevye, and they summoned him to England. When Topol, barely 30, walked into the theater, producers thought they had invited the wrong man. But since he had made the long trip, they relented and let him audition anyway.Topol, who at the time knew “about 50 words of English” by his own account, had learned the songs phonetically from the Broadway cast album. He further impressed the producers with his ability to age 25 years simply through the rigorous control of his carriage.“At 29, I knew I had to restrain some muscles to make sure I didn’t suddenly jump in a way that destroyed the image of an elderly man,” he told The Boston Globe in 2009, in the midst of a multicity U.S. tour of the show. “I walked slower, made sure I wasn’t too erect when I danced. It was quite a job. Now, as I pass the age of 55 by 20 years, I feel totally free to jump and dance as much as I feel like.”Topol opened in London in February 1967, to glowing notices. By then he had jettisoned his first name: The English, he discovered, were flummoxed by the guttural consonant of “Chaim” and pronounced his name “Shame” as often as not.In June, with Israel fighting the Six-Day War, he left the production to return home, where he entertained the troops. (He would make a similar decision in 1991, with the outbreak of the Persian Gulf war, leaving the Broadway revival to be with his family in Tel Aviv.)After seeing the London “Fiddler,” Mr. Jewison made the unexpected decision to cast Topol, still a relative unknown in the United States, in the motion picture.“I wanted a third-generation European actor for the role, a third-generation man who understood the background,” Mr. Jewison told The Globe in 1971. “I did not want a Second Avenue version of Tevye” — a barely veiled swipe at Mr. Mostel and his unstoppable shtick.Topol, who underwent two hours of age makeup every day of the shoot — Mr. Jewison did his bit, contributing white hairs from his beard to be glued over his star’s dark eyebrows — made, in the view of many critics, a most persuasive Tevye.Reviewing the film in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote of him: “He’s a rough presence, masculine, with burly, raw strength, but also sensual and warm. He’s a poor man but he’s not a little man, he’s a big man brought low — a man of Old Testament size brought down by the circumstances of oppression.”Topol married Galia Finkelstein, an actress in his army entertainment unit, in 1956. In addition to their son, they had two daughters, Adi Margalith and Anat Barzilai. All four survive him, along with two sisters, Shosh and Tova, and nine grandchildren.Topol was the author of two books, the memoir “Topol by Topol” (1981) and “Topol’s Treasury of Jewish Humor, Wit, and Wisdom” (1994).His laurels included the Israel Prize, the country’s highest cultural honor, which he received in 2015. The recognition came both for his acting and for his charitable work, notably helping to found Jordan River Village, a holiday camp in Israel for seriously ill children from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Modeled on Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut, it opened in 2011.Year in and year out, Topol found the role he knew best to be a source of continuing illumination.“I did ‘Fiddler’ a long time thinking that this was a story about the Jewish people,” he said in a 2009 interview. “But now I’ve been performing all over the world. And the fantastic thing is wherever I’ve been — India, Japan, England, Greece, Egypt — people come up to me after the show and say, ‘This is our story as well.’”Alex Traub More

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    For France’s Protesters, the Streets Are the Ultimate Stage

    The country has a long history of demonstrations, which often feature overtly theatrical elements. Our Paris theater critic marched along on Tuesday to soak up the spectacle.In large-scale theater and dance works, bodies moving in space have a momentum of their own; their collective power often feels like it could move mountains. Yet no number of monumental performances can compare to the enveloping force of tens of thousands of people, announcing as they did in Paris this week: “We are the show.”Street protests — a time-honored French tradition — are generally not for the agoraphobic, but on Tuesday, the crowds were the biggest on record this century. France’s Interior Ministry estimated there were 1.28 million marchers, while trade unions said there were 3.5 million. In Paris, the crowds were so large that some protesters branched off on a different course, along the Left Bank.The mountain the protesters were trying to move, for the sixth time in two months, was President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the legal age of retirement by two years, to 64. Yet beyond that particular policy, demonstrations are frequent enough in the country that they have taken on a ritualistic dimension, and often feature overtly theatrical elements designed to grab the attention.In late 2019, the Paris Opera Ballet made international headlines by performing an excerpt from “Swan Lake” in the cold outside the Palais Garnier, to protest a previous attempt at a pension overhaul. The Comédie-Française, France’s most prestigious theater company, joined in with a Molière performance from the theater’s windows and balcony. (Perhaps to avoid a repeat, both institutions’ bespoke pension arrangements are excluded from this year’s proposed changes.)Artists taking an active role in protests is nothing new in France. During the revolutionary events of May 1968, a number of theater venues were occupied, and performances were staged outdoors and at factories. One company from 1968 hasn’t stopped since: the Théâtre du Soleil. That egalitarian troupe, led by Ariane Mnouchkine, is such a stalwart of demonstrations that even protesters who rarely go to the theater look out for their creative street performances.At regular intervals during the protest on Tuesday, Mnouchkine gave the signal for a spectacle she called “the attack of the crows.”Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesOn Tuesday, its performers were easy to spot from afar, with a giant white puppet, known as Justice, that towered above the surrounding protesters. The slim figure was carried by four bearers on a palanquin, while the company’s actors animated its arms and billowing skirts from the sides. Blood was smeared on Justice’s solemn-looking face, which, like the rest of the puppet, was created by the Théâtre du Soleil’s own technical team.More on FranceRestoring Notre Dame: Experts are trying to revive the centuries-old acoustics of the cathedral, which caught fire in 2019. Here is how the building’s architecture plays a role in the endeavor.Trials by Fire: During her first year as France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra faced chaos and scandals in soccer and rugby. With the Paris Olympics looming, her toughest days may be ahead.Art Invasion: Mosaics by a street artist who calls himself “Invader” have become part of the fabric of Paris. They are everywhere — if you look for them.A Staunch Protester: Jean-Baptiste Reddé has hoisted his colorful signs in nearly every street protest for over a decade, embodying France’s enduring passion for demonstrations.Mnouchkine herself, 84, kept a watchful eye on the proceedings. Justice was created in 2010, she said in an interview, for another strike against pension changes. The puppet has never appeared in a stage production, but she has seen her fair share of demonstrations, including in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015. “We immediately felt that people were happy to have a symbol to rally around that wasn’t just a giant sound system,” she said. “They also want something beautiful, something that carries emotion.”At regular intervals, as the march plodded forward, Mnouchkine gave the signal for what she called “the attack of the crows.” Ten or so members of her company ran forward with black birds on sticks, ambushing Justice. To classical music and thunderous drum beats, Justice leaned forward, then back, fighting the crows off with a small sword; two assistant directors oversaw the struggle, directing the actors in real time. To the delight of protesters, Justice won every time, then took a celebratory spin and gave a bow.Marching not far from the Théâtre du Soleil, a street theater company called Les Grandes Personnes had also brought two oversize puppets, both regulars appearances in their shows: Céline, an older white woman, and K.S., a young Black man. Brought to life by one person each, they bounced along to the sound of horns and cheering marchers, while a nearby performer held a sign that said: “I don’t want to die onstage.”Yet artistic contributions to the march were fewer and farther between than I expected, an impression Mnouchkine confirmed. Two years of pandemic-related closures and cancellations have also left their mark, with fewer theaters willing to go on strike this week.A crow puppet carried by members of the feminist group Rosies.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesPolice on the Place d’Italie, where the demonstration ended.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesPerformers from the street theater company Les Grandes Personnes at the demonstration on Tuesday.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesBringing theatrical craftsmanship to strikes is “a tradition that is getting lost,” she said. While one of the performing arts’ main unions, C.G.T. Spectacle, brought a truck equipped with musical instruments and a sound system, the performances seemed a little subdued.There was more attention to spectacle in the protest style of feminist groups like the Rosies, who draw their name from Norman Rockwell’s feminist icon Rosie the Riveter. Dressed in blue overalls, with makeup that made them look like overworked zombies, the women’s collective has developed a small repertoire of choreographed protest songs, which anyone can learn through videos or workshops.When I spotted them, dozens of Rosies were dancing to Gala’s 1990s hit “Freed From Desire,” which had become “Women On Fire,” with French lyrics about pension reform. From the back of a truck, two women led the motley group, which punched the air to the beat.It was a joyful flash mob, but the strike’s greatest piece of theater remained the spectacle of so many bodies in the streets of Paris — wave after wave, subsuming any individuals, claiming the city as their stage for the day. Many chanted and held signs, but the vast majority simply moved as a collective.Demonstrators on Tuesday protested, for the sixth time in two months, President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise France’s legal retirement age.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesMost of the time, there was a warm, carnivalesque atmosphere, but a crowd’s mood can also change at the speed of light. Nearly four hours into the march, some people around me suddenly stood still, then started walking backward. Something in the air had shifted, as if a coup de théâtre were about to change the narrative; press photographers near me took out their safety helmets.Minutes later, when the sea of people parted, it became clear a group of black-clad protesters, their faces hidden, were ready to face off violently with the rows of police officers on the other side of the boulevard. I hurried back to a less volatile area. Later, when I reached the end point of the march, the Place d’Italie plaza was hazy with tear gas and surrounded by police officers, with people streaming confusedly into the few streets that weren’t blocked.It was a staggering sight, like an immersive show gone out of control. Yet the march also brought out communal emotions, together with a sense of freedom and open self-expression, that even the best theater can struggle to replicate. As collective experiences go, I won’t forget this one any time soon. More

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    ‘Phantom’ Ends. For Musicians, So Does the Gig of a Lifetime.

    Last fall, as show No. 13,781 of “The Phantom of the Opera” came to a close, the applause overpowered the thundering music. The members of the orchestra, packed into the pit under the stage, could not see the crowd, but they could hear and feel them.The standing ovation brought Kristen Blodgette, the show’s associate conductor, to tears. She held her red-nailed hands in prayer, in gratitude to the musicians.Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash hit — the longest-running musical in Broadway history — is scheduled to give its final performance at the Majestic Theater next month. These days, since the announcement of the closing last September, the musical “feels more like a rock concert,” said Kurt Coble, a violinist with the show.Mr. Coble is part of Broadway’s largest pit orchestra, which will disappear along with the show. It holds 27 full-time musicians, 11 of whom have been with “Phantom” since it opened in the late 1980s. The consistent work has allowed many of the longtime musicians, who have essentially grown up and older with the show, to build comfortable, even lucrative lives. And that is no small feat for any artist seeking stability in New York City.Crowds waiting to go into “The Phantom of the Opera” in 1988. The show has been on Broadway for 35 years.Jack Manning/The New York Times“Phantom” will end its run at the Majestic Theater in April, and its 27-member pit orchestra — the largest on Broadway — will vanish along with the show.Unlike the actors who have short-term contracts with “Phantom,” full-time musicians get a “run-of-show” agreement, which guarantees their jobs until the production closes. In 1988, when “Phantom” first opened, “there were some wide-eyed optimists who thought the show could run as long as five to six years,” recalled Lowell Hershey, a trumpeter who has been with the production since the beginning. “And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that would be really good.’”“Phantom,” of course, surpassed that prediction. During its 35-year-run, the musical has created more jobs and generated more income than any other show in Broadway history, according to Michael Borowksi, its press representative.The security of the “Phantom” paycheck has helped many of its musicians start families, send children to college, buy property, save for retirement. “Broadway was never meant to be a steady job, but for us, it was a steady job,” said concertmaster Joyce Hammann, who has been with “Phantom” since 1990. “I can’t overstress how unbelievably lucky we have all been for all these years.”“Broadway was never meant to be a steady job, but for us, it was a steady job.” Joyce Hammann, concertmaster“Phantom” maintains a traditional pit setup, a sunken open cave wedged between the audience and the stage. Although live music remains one of the essential elements of a Broadway musical, many producers have sacrificed pits to build bigger stages or increase seating. These days, it’s common to see musicians onstage with performers, or to not see them at all, as many of them work in distant rooms that pipe their music into the theaters.“Even if we want our musicians to be in the pit, the decision lies in how each production believes it will succeed,” said Tino Gagliardi, the president of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. “Unfortunately, they are not always right — the shows that have had the longest runs have been the shows with large orchestras in the pit.”Many producers have given up on orchestra pits, but “Phantom” keeps a traditional setup.Mr. Coble knows how special the pit experience can be. “Sometimes I feel like I am a blacksmith in the early 20th century, people still had horses but not as many,” he said. “But you can never get rid of musicians. You’ll always need live music.”Pit musicians might not be able to see the show as it unfolds, but they have their tradecraft down pat. “Phantom” runs like a clock. The chandelier always swings over the pit, marking the beginning of the show, and then comes crashing down at the climax of Act 1. The patter of footsteps overhead marks the New Year’s Party in Act 2, which tells the musicians to make way for an actor who snakes his way through the pit and sits below the conductor, waiting to fire a shot into the auditorium. Then, when the shot sounds, they cover their ears and wait for the smell of powder, which signals that it is time for them to pick up their instruments again.“I don’t get terribly sentimental over it because it’s a job after all, it’s work, it’s not easy, it’s not a vacation.”Kurt Coble, violinistRegardless of whether they have a chair on Broadway (a full-time contract) or not, musicians are paid per show and are supported by Local 802, a strong union that provides them with health care and a pension, among other benefits. (When Broadway shows went dark during the pandemic, “Phantom” producers continued to pay the health insurance for their chair musicians.)Ed Matthew, a clarinetist, said that when he started playing on Broadway in 1994, he made about $140 a night. As of this month, the base wage for a musician at “Phantom” is about $291 per show.“We have to get along with each other because we are tucked in like sardines in a can.”Ed Matthew, clarinetistBefore getting hired by “Phantom,” many of its musicians juggled jobs. Peter Reit, a French horn player, made fur coats in the garment district, tended bar and sold vacuum cleaners before joining the orchestra in 1987, when rehearsals for the musical started.“I used to do my budget week to week with all my freelance work, and the first thing I noticed when I had this job was that I could now budget month to month, and that was an incredible stress relief,” said Mr. Reit, 63, who retired in 2021. He now teaches music at SUNY Purchase and Vassar College.The orchestra sits close together in the claustrophobic pit.The regular pay and benefits allowed members of the pit to concentrate on other aspects of their lives, like raising children. “Most of the support for my family was based upon what I could earn, and that took a lot of pressure off as a provider,” said Mr. Hershey, the trumpeter.Ms. Hammann, the concertmaster, has an 18-year-old son who grew up in the theater. When he was a baby, he sat with the stagehands while she played the show. “To have had the flexibility when I needed to be home with him, that’s not something one is able to do in many work environments, so it’s been tremendous,” she said.“What more can we ask for than to have had this show for 35 years?”Kristen Blodgette, associate conductorIn the late ’80s, when Ms. Blodgette, the associate conductor, was eight months pregnant with “the first ‘Phantom’ baby,” as she calls her daughter, the show’s conductors, who were all men, wore tuxedos, she said. She opted for a dress. Thirty-four years later and now a grandmother, Ms. Blodgette wears a thick velvet black gown with black socks (and no shoes) because she likes “to feel grounded” while conducting.Broadway chairs may play up to eight shows a week and are required to attend at least 50 percent of the shows per quarter, according to union rules. This allows some musicians to work side gigs for extra money and to pursue passion projects. When Mr. Matthew, the clarinetist, joined the company in the early aughts, he was able to hold onto his job at G. Schirmer, a classical music publishing company. The combined paychecks allowed him and his wife to buy a co-op apartment in Long Island City, Queens, and to save for retirement, he said.“There were some wide-eyed optimists who thought the show could run as long as five to six years. And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that would be really good.’”Lowell Hershey, trumpeterMr. Coble, the violinist, joined the pit 25 years ago. Though grateful for the stability, he still yearns for more creative outlets. “I think of myself more like an artisan than an artist because I have very little freedom when it comes to playing music by someone else,” he said.But the flexibility of his work schedule has allowed him to write scores for horror films and to play, as his mother likes to call it, “unpopular music.” When he is not working at the Majestic, he spends his time with the PAM Band (Partially Artificial Musicians), a robotic orchestra that he built to play whatever songs he wants. Now that “Phantom” is coming to an end, he said, “I’ll spend a lot more time on my own project, but it’s certainly not as well-paying as the show.”“You don’t want to take up too much space and you also want to fit in,” said Mr. Matthew, a clarinetist, about the orchestra pit.There are five substitute musicians on call for each Broadway chair. Although substitutes receive the same union benefits as full-time chairs, they lack the consistency of an eight-show week. “Being a sub is hard because you are constantly waiting for the next call, you have no control in your life,” said Nick Jemo, a trumpeter who started subbing at “Phantom” in 2009 before joining the pit full-time five years later. Some subs have been filling in at “Phantom” for more than 10 years, and they keep coming back.“You want to bring your entire being into that show — it’s got everything you’d ever want to express in an instrument,” said Brad Bosenbeck, who started subbing for one of the two viola chairs at “Phantom” when he was 26. Mr. Bosenbeck, now 31 and still a substitute, said he doesn’t take the job for granted. “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I get to do what I love and get paid for it.”“Being a sub is hard because you are constantly waiting for the next call, you have no control in your life.”Nick Jemo, trumpeterWith the show’s closing, many of its musicians are thinking about their next chapters. Some believe that “Phantom” might return to Broadway in a few years with a reduced orchestra, like the production in London. A few veteran musicians, including Mr. Hershey, will retire. Ms. Hammann looks forward to teaching, which she started doing when the pandemic kept her away from the pit. Ms. Blodgette will conduct at “Bad Cinderella,” Mr. Lloyd Webber’s new musical. Most say they will try to sub at other shows.“The show closing feels liberating,” said Mr. Coble, who admitted to fantasizing about being a strolling violinist in a fancy restaurant, dressed up as the phantom and playing variations of the score. “I’ll play my last performance like I’ve tried to play every other show, and when it’s over I’ll just move on to something else. I don’t get terribly sentimental over it because it’s a job after all, it’s work, it’s not easy, it’s not a vacation.”“You want to bring your entire being into that show — it’s got everything you’d ever want to express in an instrument.”Brad Bosenbeck, violistThe musicians won’t miss some aspects of the show, like the claustrophobic pit, where they sit so close to each other that if one of them opens a candy bar the rest can smell it. “We have to get along with each other because we are tucked in like sardines in a can,” Mr. Matthew said. “You don’t want to take up too much space and you also want to fit in.” The radio program “This American Life” produced a segment a few years ago about some of these frustrations.Despite the intimate, tense energy of the “Phantom” pit — “it is its own magical elixir,” Mr. Bosenbeck said — most musicians said they didn’t have many opportunities to connect with each other outside the theater. “One of the things that makes this ending bittersweet is that everyone has been in my life for so long and I’ve been in theirs for so long, and yet we didn’t get an opportunity outside of waiting in the bathroom line or arriving early to really speak to everybody,” Ms. Hammann said.The musicians have few opportunities to connect outside the theater, but they have fixed routines while they are working.During these final weeks, as audience members watch the tortured love story onstage, the pit musicians will continue their routine underneath it. A ghostly image of Ms. Blodgette will appear on four small screens scattered throughout the orchestra so musicians can follow her lead. Mr. Jemo, after a temporary stint with “Bad Cinderella,” will return, repositioning his chair to catch a glimpse of his girlfriend, a dancer in the show. One music stand will continue to showcase a collection of miniature toys — a smiling crocodile, a head-shaking turtle, a deer’s face and a tiny plastic hand holding fresh radishes.“I may be the only musician in the world who has radishes in their music stand,” said Karl Bennion, a cellist who accidentally took the vegetable to a show in 2017 and since then has made it a tradition.“I may be the only musician in the world who has radishes in their music stand.”Karl Bennion, cellistThe music stand of cellist Karl Bennion, who has done it up with tchotchkes.In between songs, some musicians will play Sudoku and crossword puzzles; others will read. “A good book can really make going to work even more joyful,” Mr. Jemo said. He and Mr. Hershey, his trumpet partner, had a big French dictionary that sat between them, and often they reached for it at the same time.At the end of every show, musicians will continue to interact with audience members, some of whom like to peek into the pit to thank them as they pack their instruments.“What more can we ask for than to have had this show for 35 years?” Ms. Blodgette asked. “When I started doing this, I was single, I did not have a child, my parents were alive,” she said. “Through all of the chaos of life, this was here.”The security of the “Phantom” paycheck has helped many of the show’s musicians start families, send children to college, buy property, save for retirement. More

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    ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: A Sinking Ship

    In this week’s “Picard,” the crew of the Titan is powerless in more ways than one.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘No Win Scenario’All the world’s a stage, and all the cadets are merely players.Jean-Luc Picard, on some level, has been playing a part. That much is clear in this week’s “Picard.” When he sits down with his haddock and regales the eager cadets with stories of his biggest professional successes, he is putting up a front. The purposeful blocking makes this clear: The lunch table is the stage. The cadets are the audience. And in a brilliant bit of acting by Patrick Stewart, you can see that he’s hamming it up for the cadets. Underneath it, there’s a loneliness.It’s an interesting window into Jean-Luc: He likes the attention, but especially because he doesn’t get it from other places. It’s not ego. It’s insecurity.In that same bit of theatrics, Jean-Luc blithely discusses the accident that killed Beverly’s husband, Jack Crusher’s namesake, and smiles as he describes himself as being “a little bit reckless” in those days.So later in the episode, when the cadets part to reveal a younger Jack at the bar asking Jean-Luc about a life outside of Starfleet and “a real family,” it’s a visual “Let’s cut through the garbage” moment. Jean-Luc’s answer: “Young man, Starfleet has been the only family I have ever needed,” followed by applause from Starfleet cadets. But that’s not as revealing as the visual: They are applauding him, but Jean-Luc is eating alone.One can understand why Jack didn’t feel the need to have Jean-Luc be a part of his life. Jack is established to be a teenager when he shows up to this bar. He learns that Picard never cared about having a family and views the death of the man Jack is named after as an amusing story to be used to charm cadets. It surely rings hollow to Jack on the holodeck in the present day story line when Jean-Luc remarks to Jack, “I think we all need connection, don’t we?”In some ways, Jean-Luc and Jack are very alike: They are both putting up a front about not needing other people and mostly focusing on work; Jean-Luc on his career in Starfleet and Jack on his medical supply runs.Meanwhile, Riker and the rest of the crew’s situation on the Titan is quite bleak. The ship is sinking in a gravity well and losing power rapidly. The officers on the bridge inform Riker that the situation is nearly hopeless. So hopeless that Riker tells Jean-Luc to get his affairs in order and that everyone is essentially about to die. Jonathan Frakes puts in a wonderful performance describing the death of Riker and Troi’s son, and how it created a gulf between grieving parents — one who thrives on sensing emotion, and the other trying his hardest to be numb to the pain.“This is the end, my friend,” Riker tells Picard. “And if I were you, I’d take the next few hours to get to know your son.”I would put Frakes’s work in this episode among the best of any he has done as Riker, including the movies and “Next Generation.”But when Jean-Luc takes his son to the holodeck for some father-son bonding, it’s an extraordinarily distracting plot point. One of the first scenes of the show features officers talking about the hopelessness of the situation because the power is draining from essential systems. Yet, Jean-Luc and Jack go to a perfectly functioning holodeck to have a drink? Jean-Luc waves this away by saying the holodeck relies “on a small, independent power cell for this very reason so that in times of distress it can be a kind of sanctuary.”In other words: plot armor. No one thought to tap into the holodeck for extra power when they are so desperate?(The Picards can handle their whisky. In the “Next Generation” episode “Relics,” Picard throws back a glass of whisky with Scotty as if it is absolutely nothing.)As Jean-Luc and Jack bond, they are interrupted by several crew members who arrive to commiserate. Uh, hey Titan crew? Your ship is falling. Maybe the bridge crew could use a hand with repairs? Or you know, anything? Why are you in a bar?This goes double for Shaw. Seven recruits him to help find the changeling, which is, on its face, a great idea. But why is Shaw in his quarters rather than on the bridge of the ship he is supposed to be commanding? If he’s well enough to perform a complex maneuver to save the ship, why isn’t he well enough to, you know, be captain?And that’s before does he go to the holodeck himself to hang out! In the previous three episodes, Shaw has been painted as putting the concerns of his crew above all. So the notion that as the ship is rapidly losing power, he would just go chill at the bar to yell at Jean-Luc while his bridge crew and Riker try to figure out a way out feels ridiculous.But let’s leave that aside — because I don’t want my head to explode — and examine the big reveal here: the reason for Shaw’s antipathy toward Jean-Luc and Riker. Shaw angrily (and unprofessionally) yells to the whole bar that he was at Wolf 359, and saw many of his fellow crew members die as a result of Locutus, a.k.a. Captain Picard. (Benjamin Sisko was angry at Picard for similar reasons in the pilot of “Deep Space Nine.”) Jean-Luc is accustomed to adoring crowds in bars. He’s not used to being confronted about all the deaths that he — or a version of himself — caused.Todd Stashwick does a nice job conveying Shaw’s righteous anger at Jean-Luc, but it is a bit odd that he selected Seven to be his first officer. Unless she was thrust upon him, he chose a former Borg to be his most trusted commander. (Then again, people are complicated. Maybe he wanted to see past that, and that’s why he insists she go by Annika.)Odds and EndsA cadet asks Jean-Luc about an encounter with the Hirogen. The Hirogen were a predatory species that Voyager encountered in the Delta Quadrant, and I am certainly curious how Jean-Luc’s Enterprise would have encountered them.Riker offers to keep Seven in an “unofficial capacity” to root out the changeling, rather than reinstating her command. You can see how much more comfortable Seven is with an off the books arrangement rather than playing by the rules.Jack mentions offhand to Jean-Luc in the holodeck that he’s been to M’Talas Four, a “vile place.” Raffi has been doing intelligence work at M’Talas Prime this season, and one wonders if these two things are connected. (I’m not entirely clear what M’Talas Four is.)I am also wondering if Vadic’s boss — obscured by, uh, changeling goo — is someone we will find familiar in the future. It demands that Vadic go on a suicide mission, while also making clear the Shrike does not matter in the grand plan.Beverly’s solution of moving “with the wave,” and seeing the old “Next Generation” pals work together to get out of the sticky situation had the feel of the old show. Beverly had the best line: “Look where we are. Here, all of us in this moment. So let’s do what we spent our entire lives learning to be great at.”Does anyone want to command the Titan? Shaw hands it off needlessly to Riker for no discernible reason in a previous episode. In this one, Riker hands it to Jean-Luc for no reason. More

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    Late Night Can’t Believe Tucker Carlson’s Texts About Trump

    “Oh, my God, it turns out the Trump hatred was coming from inside the house!” Seth Meyers said.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.Fox News and FrenemiesNew documents released as part of the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News revealed that the popular host Tucker Carlson sent several denigrating texts about former President Donald Trump. In one text, Carlson wrote of Trump, “I hate him passionately.”“Oh, my God, it turns out the Trump hatred was coming from inside the house!” Seth Meyers said.“Wait, wait, are you telling me Tucker Carlson is secretly sane? I would feel so betrayed if I was a Fox viewer. This is like if you joined a cult, sold all your belongings, shaved your head, moved to the desert, and then it turns out the cult leader is just, like, a Methodist.” — SETH MEYERS“You hate him? But talking about him is the thing that pays your big salary!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, Tucker Carlson said he couldn’t wait to ignore Trump and that he hated Trump passionately. That’s as damning as the time I got caught texting Trump, ‘Real talk, I also think windmills kill birds.’” — SETH MEYERS“The only thing I thought Tucker was capable of hating with a passion were female M&M’s who are a seven or lower.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s fighting words! White-on-white crime, let’s go!” — MARLON WAYANS, guest host of “The Daily Show”“To be fair, I feel like every friend group has a second group text for that one person they secretly hate.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Banned by Biden Edition)“Well, guys, the White House just backed a bipartisan Senate bill that would give President Biden the power to ban TikTok, or as they’re calling it on TikTok, the ‘trying to lose the election’ challenge.” — JIMMY FALLON“I wouldn’t worry just yet. As of now, Biden thinks TikTok is the clock on ‘60 Minutes.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course, Biden could end TikTok at any time simply by making an account.” — SETH MEYERS“Don’t worry — to make it up, Biden promised us that he’d give everybody 100 free hours of AOL.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, officials think China is using TikTok to spy on us, and China was like, ‘Yeah, well, we had a backup idea, but you shot it down.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingKerry Washington played a guessing game with Jimmy Fallon called “Mmm Hmmm Hmmm” on “The Tonight Show” on Wednesday.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightLily Tomlin and Jane Fonda will appear on “Late Show” on Thursday.Also, Check This OutFans and new readers alike will appreciate this list of essential works by the mystery writer Patricia Highsmith. More

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    Review: A Star Director Takes a Back Seat in ‘The Seagull’

    Thomas Ostermeier’s surprisingly traditional production of the Chekhov classic came to life via the cast’s performances, and without radical interventions by the director.Konstantin, the aspiring playwright in Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” dreams of inventing “new forms” for the theater. Sensitive, moody and a bit ridiculous, Konstantin isn’t exactly a mouthpiece for the great Russian author, although Chekhov was himself out to innovate and reform. His chamber drama, filled with unheroic, frustrated figures propelled by life’s bitter ironies rather than melodramatic flourishes, proved too much for the play’s first audience to bear.Now a canonical work, “The Seagull” remains devilishly tricky to pull off, however, not because Chekhov’s theatrical form still confounds, but because of the difficulty of corralling an acting ensemble to play off each other with naturalness and ease while slipping between Chekhov’s shifting and overlapping emotional registers.In a surprisingly traditional staging of “The Seagull” that opened on Monday at the Berlin Schaubühne, Thomas Ostermeier ceded the floor to the actors, in a production that was free of the directorial interventions or distractions that classic works are often subjected to on German stages. Instead, this production largely came to life with the purest and most economical of theatrical means: the individual and collective performances of the 10-person cast. (The Schaubühne staging is also far tamer than “The Seagull/Woodstock, NY,” Thomas Bradshaw’s irreverent adaptation, which is transposed to the Catskill Mountains and is currently playing Off Broadway.)That approach may seem surprising for Ostermeier, a director best known to New York audiences for his furious and exuberantly messy reimaginings of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” and “Hamlet” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But Ostermeier’s more recent work has largely gone in a tamer, more conventional direction. And so it was with this “Seagull,” which had precious little to do with discovering new forms.There are some updates in this modern-dress production. In the opening scene, Masha, a secondary character who is hopelessly in love with Konstantin, vaped. At one point, the loud engine of a plane roared overhead — the only time the outside world intruded on the characters’ country idyll.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.Ostermeier has allowed the Schaubühne’s ensemble of actors to tweak their lines and make them more natural, or contemporary, and this production also includes some rather blunt new meta-theatrical dialogue. (“Why perform the classics nowadays? They sell well.”) The first-act play-within-the-play that Konstantin writes to demonstrate new forms has been rewritten by the actor playing that role, Laurenz Laufenberg. Despite these emendations, this “Seagull” remains surprisingly faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of Chekhov’s original.Alina Vimbai Strähler, left, as Nina, and Joachim Meyerhoff, who plays Trigorian.Joachim MeyerhoffThe most gripping thing about the staging is the space in which it unfolds, an area dominated by a massive plane tree. The seating in the auditorium has been reconfigured and the audience is arrayed around the actors, who perform in front of the imposing tree. Occasionally an actor lies on, or hangs from, its thick branches. Several characters hide behind its mighty trunk; another urinates in it.The actors frequently got up close and personal with the audience members, circling the small stage, or tearing down the aisles to enter or exit, achieving a degree of intimacy that was exciting but not without risk. Experiencing the performances at such close range meant that both their merits and their shortcomings were magnified.Such a gambit only stood a chance of succeeding with a top-flight troupe of actors. However, the cast, drawn largely from the theater’s permanent ensemble, left a mixed impression. To their credit, the cast showed remarkable cohesion — and things never got monotonous — over the duration of a very chatty show, set in a single location. But there was only one standout performance, that of Joachim Meyerhoff as Trigorian, the older writer who ends up running away with the aspiring actress Nina. Meyerhoff, one of the Schaubühne’s finest actors, injected fresh life into his character, a popular second-rater who probably suspects that he’s a hack. His performance was shot through with twitching, neurotic energy, humor, and self-deprecating charm. Whenever he wasn’t onstage, the production glowed less brightly.Laufenberg overdid Konstantin’s temper tantrums in Act I, but found a convincingly pained and broken register for the closing scene. The women in the cast fared less well. As Arkadina, an aging starlet and Konstantin’s mother, Stephanie Eidt’s histrionic performance was pitched halfway between Blanche DuBois and Norma Desmond. As Nina, Alina Vimbai Strähler never fully inhabited her complex and demanding role; her journey from wide-eyed optimism to crushing disillusion seemed largely superficial.“There are no new forms here, but simply bad behavior,” Arkadina comments after seeing her son’s play. The only time you could accuse this production of bad behavior is when Meyerhoff takes a leak against the tree. For the majority of its intermissionless 165 minutes, this “Seagull” is handsome and skillfully rendered, but curiously bloodless, much like the stuffed specimen at the play’s end. More

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    Stephen Colbert Ponders a Trump-Kari Lake Ticket

    Donald Trump is said to be considering the Arizona politician, who also denies having lost an election. Colbert says she’s the “governor of the state of denial.”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.Who’s the Lucky Lady?A report says Donald Trump is considering a female running mate for 2024, in hopes of winning over suburban white women. On Tuesday, Stephen Colbert noted that Kari Lake, who still denies that she lost Arizona’s gubernatorial race last year, was said to be a contender.“Lake lost her election and refuses to admit it, but she has got one win under her belt,” Colbert said, referring to a conservative conference in Washington where a straw poll found her to be the top choice for the vice presidency.“She must have been so honored to have MAGA voters choose her as the next vice president they try to hang.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Of course, since it’s Trump, he’ll make the decision after holding a Miss Vice President pageant.” — JIMMY FALLON“But Lake found a way to deny this election as well, saying through a spokesperson, ‘We’re flattered, but unfortunately, our legal team says the Constitution won’t allow for her to serve as governor and V.P. at the same time.’ That’s a good point — Kari Lake is currently the sitting governor of the state of denial.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Mona Lisa Edition)“Sightseeing, my Black [expletive]. If you have to punch a cop on your way in, you’re not sightseeing, you fightseeing.” — MARLON WAYANS, on the Fox host Tucker Carlson’s insistence that the Jan. 6 Capitol protesters were “sightseers”“All Tucker Carson proved is that you can make anything better by not showing the bad part.” — MARLON WAYANS“You guys know we can see what you’re doing, right? Kevin McCarthy, who is Trump’s Waylon Smithers, gives all the footage to Tucker, Tucker shows only the tame parts, and then Trump claims the rioters were framed. It’s like watching a magic show where the magician is wearing sheer sleeves.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden reacted to scary new wax figures of British royalty on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightSt. Vincent will perform on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutThe writer Adam Bradley offers a “new Black canon,” listing 20 undervalued books that reflect “the infinite number of ways of being Black in America — and of being in the world.” More

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    ‘Crumbs From the Table of Joy’ Review: Dreams on the Cusp of Womanhood

    In Keen Company’s revival of Lynn Nottage’s 1995 play, a Black girl comes of age amid the churn of social change in midcentury Brooklyn.If Ernestine Crump were a Hollywood actress, she would change her name to something suitably alluring.“Like ‘Sylvie Montgomery,’” she says. “Or ‘Laura Saint Germaine’ — that’s French.”At 17, on the verge of graduating from high school, Ernestine is given to celluloid dreams and other flights of fancy.“But don’t you worry yourself,” she says, all teasing practicality. “When I’m onscreen I sure can act very white. That’s why I’m a star.”In Lynn Nottage’s bittersweet memory play “Crumbs From the Table of Joy,” at Theater Row, the year is 1950. Ernestine (a terrific Shanel Bailey), our narrator, is a recent transplant to Brooklyn, where she lives in a basement apartment with her rigid father, Godfrey (Jason Bowen), and impish sister, Ermina (Malika Samuel). They are a Black family on a largely white block; few of the neighbors will even speak to them.The death of the girls’ mother was the catalyst for the Crumps’ move north from Florida. Each of them is still undone by grief, perhaps Godfrey most of all. A baker by trade, he is newly sober and celibate, clinging to the teachings of the messianic leader Father Divine, whose portrait hangs on the living room wall. (The set is by Brendan Gonzales Boston.)More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This Spring‘The Invisible Project’: The new show by the choreographer Keely Garfield at NYU Skirball is a dance, but it is also informed by her work as an end-of-life and trauma chaplain.Life in Photos: Larry Sultan’s photography, now starring in the play “Pictures From Home” and a gallery show, raise issues of who controls a family’s image.Musical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Asceticism is anathema to the girls’ glamorous Aunt Lily (Sharina Martin), their mother’s sister, who shows up unexpected from Harlem one day. Luggage in tow, flask ever-present, she announces that her own mother has asked her to take care of the girls.“She don’t think it’s proper that a man be living alone with his daughters once they sprung bosom,” Lily says, vividly.And that’s that, despite how objectionable Godfrey finds Lily’s fervent Communism and how disconcerting he finds her sexual availability.In Colette Robert’s quiet, mostly sure-handed production for Keen Company, “Crumbs From the Table of Joy” is a pleasure for several reasons: rarity, for one, this being the play’s first New York revival since its premiere in 1995.There’s also the fun of spotting — in a work that feels, improbable as it sounds, like a cousin to Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” — glimmers of plays to come in Nottage’s oeuvre. Ernestine’s silver-screen fantasies bring to mind the satire “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” (2011), about a trailblazing Black actress in Golden Age Hollywood. And Ernestine’s dressmaker’s dummy, draped with her graduation gown in progress, prefigures “Intimate Apparel” (2003).That dress, prim and white with lace at the neckline, is as much an emblem of achievement and possibility as Lily’s elegant tailored skirt suit — though Lily’s outfit also serves as an armor of bravado over dented dreams. (Costumes are by Johanna Pan.) A revolutionary at heart, and a life-altering inspiration to Ernestine, Lily is a determined counterpoint to the version of Black womanhood that the cautious Godfrey tries to instill in his daughters: chaste, sober, grateful and with only the tamest of ambitions.Lily, alas, doesn’t have the necessary resonance in this production. There’s a hollowness to Martin’s interpretation that unbalances the otherwise strong ensemble and the dynamics of the Crump household, which Godfrey throws into turmoil when he abruptly remarries.Like Father Divine, he chooses a white woman — Gerte (Natalia Payne, excellent), who lived through the war in her native Germany. Their first meeting, by chance, on the subway, is intensely fraught: she, lost, hungry and alone; he, terrified to engage because, as he has told his daughters more than once, “I don’t want to wind up like them Scottsboro boys.”Such are the clamorous forces shaping Ernestine’s coming-of-age. In the middle of the 20th century, in a corner of the big city, she’s figuring out who she wants to be.Crumbs From the Table of JoyThrough April 1 at Theater Row, Manhattan; keencompany.org. Running time: 2 hours. More