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    A Paris Cabaret Makes Way for ‘Cabaret’

    The 1966 American musical has opened at a venue that for decades hosted one of the city’s most famous revue troupes.For decades, the Lido was one of the glitziest cabarets in Paris, home to extravagant, acrobatic numbers and the Bluebell Girls, a renowned chorus line. Last July, the curtain came down on their feathered headpieces for the final time, and the ensemble was disbanded. Their replacement at the theater this winter? “Cabaret” — the 1966 American musical.On a recent evening, with bejeweled Bluebell outfits still shimmering in window displays by the venue’s entrance, the Lido’s patrons seemed ready for a show. When the Emcee from “Cabaret,” directed by Robert Carsen, introduced the musical’s own ensemble, the Kit Kat Girls and Kit Kat Boys, there were eager cheers, but the lack of topless dancing, not to mention the somber Nazi-era plot, may have come as a surprise to some audience members.Yet the Lido’s move from cabaret to “Cabaret” is no coincidence. It speaks to a larger shift in Paris, where American-style musicals have been on the rise just as historic revues have struggled to maintain relevance.The pandemic only accelerated the decline of mainstream French cabaret, long a tourist attraction at venues like the Lido and the Moulin Rouge: Without out-of-towners, there simply weren’t enough Parisians interested in nostalgic cancan dances to prop up expensive revues. Add to that the genre’s increasingly outdated objectification of women’s near-naked bodies, and cabaret appeared to have fallen out of step with the times.The Lido’s reinvention as a musical theater venue — under a new owner, the hotel conglomerate Accor, and a somewhat silly new name, Lido2Paris — is clearly an attempt to lure back local crowds. To mastermind the transition, Accor hired Jean-Luc Choplin, whose tenure at the Théâtre du Châtelet from 2006 to 2017 saw a string of successes with English-language musicals, including “My Fair Lady” and “42nd Street.”This winter, the Châtelet has again been filled to the rafters, this time for a revival of Stephen Mear’s 2016 production of “42nd Street.” And other venues have been listening to the “lullaby of Broadway,” as one “42nd Street” number puts it. At the Théâtre de Paris, a French-language adaptation of Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” by the director Alexis Michalik has turned into a runaway hit since its late 2021 premiere, and is currently scheduled to run through April.The storytelling in Théâtre du Châtelet’s “42nd Street” is bright, and Broadway in style. Thomas AmourouxWhile performed in different languages — “42nd Street” is in English — “42nd Street” and “The Producers” don’t depart from Broadway habits. “42nd Street” opens with the curtain raising a couple of feet, so all we see are is the ensemble’s legs, tapping away and garnering enthusiastic applause. The storytelling in both productions is bright, with an almost uncanny rendition into French, in “The Producers,” of the upbeat pace of American-style dialogue.“The Producers” didn’t please every critic — the French newspaper Libération blasted its “discriminatory” stereotypes — but as theaters in France struggle to return to prepandemic ticket sales and the cost of living rises, musicals have seemed immune. That includes the French rock opera “Starmania,” recently revived for the first time in decades, but France simply doesn’t have a wide repertoire of musicals to draw on: The genre was long considered minor, and too entertainment-oriented, by French theater makers.That leaves Broadway favorites, and specifically the classics — what’s missing on Paris stages, inexplicably, is more recent musicals, like “Hamilton” and “The Book of Mormon.” Carsen’s “Cabaret” isn’t actually the first version of this musical, with its book by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, to be seen in Paris this century. A French translation, staged by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall, was presented at another historical cabaret venue, the Folies Bergère, in 2006. But the Lido2Paris’s production, in English with subtitles, is a dry, ominous showstopper.Carsen, a renowned Canadian director, takes full advantage of the venue’s layout: The Lido was designed as a cabaret-restaurant, with tables laid out on three sides of a thrust stage, and the Kit Kat Klub, the Weimar-era Berlin venue around which “Cabaret” revolves, is right at home in this atmosphere.Before its revue closed, the Lido offered a high-end dinner service each night. (Over 150 people were laid off as part of Accor’s takeover, from restaurant staff to the permanent ensemble.) Now audience members have to trek to one of two small bars to buy a glass of champagne and nibbles, which left the auditorium feeling a little deserted.The production captures the nihilism of 1929 Berlin and the steady rise of Nazism, which some characters see as little more than a distraction, starting with cabaret performer Sally Bowles (a role made famous by Liza Minnelli, here given restless intensity by Lizzy Connolly). Clifford Bradshaw, a bisexual American writer who has come to Berlin seeking freedom and inspiration, comes to see the growing political threat — yet fails to convince Sally, despite the love between them.As the sardonic Emcee who presides over both the Kit Kat Klub and the show itself, Sam Buttery is an arresting sight from the opening “Willkommen” — bald with heavy, dark makeup, at once charismatic and blasé.Sam Buttery plays the Emcee in Lido2Paris’s “Cabaret,” and gives the production momentum.Julien BenhamouAll the soloists acquit themselves well, but Buttery and the 15-strong Kit Kat Girls and Boys lend Carsen’s production much of its momentum. The choreography, credited to Fabian Aloise, is brilliantly dynamic, its exaggerated sexual innuendo rendered grotesque by the dancers’ distorted, over-it facial expressions. The choreographed opening of the second act, in which the dancers slowly don shorts, boots and swastika armbands, transforming into a high-kicking Nazi line, is especially chilling.Near the end, in video projections, Carsen ties the rise of fascism in “Cabaret” to contemporary events, with images of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as well as protests in Western countries like France. It’s a somewhat vague conclusion for an otherwise biting production, given that, by this point, the audience has likely drawn their own parallels.“Cabaret” is worth seeing both for its merits and to say goodbye to the Lido as it existed for decades. In early February, it will close for extensive renovation, with a view to reopening next December. A spokesman for the venue said that it would retain some of its hallmarks, like the tables around the stage, and upgrade its technical equipment.The long-term plan, under Choplin, is simple: more musicals. Tourists may not take to this change of programming, since the genre is hardly associated with Paris, but French audiences seem to approve, and the applause at “Cabaret” was warm.Blow to Parisian history or not, for now, American entertainment is winning the argument. More

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    Prince Harry Engages in ‘Group Therapy’ With a Glass of Tequila

    “This is the other side of the story,” the prince said of his new memoir, “Spare,” while chatting with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday.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.‘The Other Side of the Story’Prince Harry discussed his new memoir, “Spare,” on “The Late Show” on Tuesday, with Stephen Colbert offering Harry a cocktail at the start.“I hear you like tequila,” Colbert said, pouring each of them a glass.Keeping a comfortable and friendly rapport, Prince Harry answered Colbert’s probing but respectful questions about his life and family.“This feels a little bit like group therapy,” Harry said at one point with a laugh.Colbert asked Harry about early leaks of the memoir that were published in the British tabloids. The prince cautioned people to be wary of the stories, stressing the importance of context.“Context is everything, and unfortunately, due to those leaks, the British press, which are central to so much of my story in my 38 years up until this point, and after spending two years focused on context, what I am going to share, how I am going to share it and being able to piece it all together, they intentionally chose to strip away all the context and take out individual segments of my life, my story and every experience that I’ve had and turn it into a salacious headline.” — PRINCE HARRY“This is the other side of the story. There’s a lot in here that perhaps makes people feel uncomfortable and scared.” — PRINCE HARRY“Look, I’m not going to lie — the last few days have been hurtful and challenging and not being able to do anything about those leaks that you refer to. Perhaps — well, not perhaps, without doubt — the most dangerous lie that they have told is that I somehow boasted about the number of people that I killed in Afghanistan.” — PRINCE HARRY“My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words are very dangerous.” — PRINCE HARRYPrince Harry also spoke about leaving the royal family and Britain with his wife, Meghan Markle, and his assumption that they would be left alone.“That was a real eye-opener for me. I never thought that they would be away from it completely, but I did think that we would get some form of peace. But that is when I realized that actually our mere existence outside of that institutional control was more of a threat. And you know, there’s a similar thing that happened to my mom as well. And, look, they always knew that my wife was going to leave because of the way they were abusing her, but I think the most embarrassing thing was that I decided to leave with her.” — PRINCE HARRY“I have never seen the level of abuse and harassment that I witnessed over my wife. Other members of the family, they have experienced different forms of that, but to see it happen the way it happened, I was naïve going into it and I didn’t realize that the British press would be so bigoted. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have accepted or understood that they could get away with it. But here we are, and I’ve created — or we have created — a fantastic life here in California.” — PRINCE HARRYColbert asked Harry what his mother, Princess Diana, would have thought about the current family dynamic, especially between Harry and his brother, Prince William.“It is impossible to say where we would be now, where those relationships would be now, but there is no way that the distance between my brother and I would be the same.” — PRINCE HARRY“I’ve really felt the presence of my mom, especially the last couple of years. I detail in the book my brother and I talking at her grave and how he felt as though she had been with him for a long period of time and helped set him up with life and that he felt she was moving over to me. And I have felt her more in the last two years than I have the last 30.” — PRINCE HARRYHarry admitted that he has watched “The Crown.” Colbert asked if he fact-checks the series while he watches.“Yes, I do, actually. Which by the way, by the way — another reason why it is so important that history has it right.” — PRINCE HARRYThe Punchiest Punchlines (What’s Up, Docs? Edition)“Today, Obama was like, ‘Nothing to worry about. If Joe had access, it wasn’t important.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden was shocked and said he had no idea how the documents got there. Then Hunter Biden was like, ‘OK, so don’t get mad.’” — JIMMY FALLON“There are said to be just under a dozen documents related to Ukraine, Iran and the U.K., and for the MAGA crowd, this was like Christmas and the McRib coming back at the same time.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Is this just what every president does now, just scatter a trail of intelligence like Johnny Document-seed?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Wow, it’s alarming when you realize how much of our national security relies on old men keeping track of loose pages.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingLeslie Jones teased her upcoming gig as a “Daily Show” guest host on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe rapper and actor Common will visit Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutSimona Tabasco broke through to American audiences in the second season of “The White Lotus.” Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty ImagesThe “White Lotus” star Simona Tabasco shares her love of “Titane,” the Tate Modern and other cultural touchstones in this week’s My Ten. More

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    Golden Globes Winners 2023: The Complete List

    The winning films, TV shows, actors and production teams at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards.Going into a typical awards show, the big question is, of course, who and what will win the top honors. This year’s Golden Globes ceremony is not a typical awards show.The 80th Golden Globe Awards will be the first edition of the annual spectacle to be on TV since an ethics, finance and diversity scandal involving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group behind the awards, led NBC to decide not to air the 2022 ceremony. So the biggest question is really whether the show’s organizers can win back the trust of viewers, the network and the Hollywood figures whose presence it relies on.Still, there will be formal winners. As in years past, the show will hand out honors in both film and TV categories. Nominees in the top film categories include “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.” TV shows up for multiple awards include “Abbott Elementary,” “House of the Dragon,” “Better Call Saul” and “The Crown.”The ceremony is set to air on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific time) on NBC, and to be streamed on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock. Follow below for updates as winners are announced. More

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    The Riverside Drive Apartment Where a Broadway Play Was Born

    “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning script, is set in a rent-controlled apartment that was inspired by the playwright’s own.The world of “Between Riverside and Crazy,” the Stephen Adly Guirgis play that opened on Broadway last month, is confined to a rent-controlled Upper West Side apartment building, where the dark comedy spools out over kitchen table bickering and rooftop joint passing.It’s the kind of New York City apartment that has stayed in the family despite rising rents and a landlord bent on eviction — the kind of apartment that Guirgis himself inherited from his father, an Egyptian immigrant who managed a restaurant at Grand Central and had little else to pass on when he died.Like the one in the play, the real Riverside Drive apartment is a “grand old railroad flat with chandeliers and a river view,” as Guirgis’s introduction to the play reads, with “beautiful fixtures, family mementos and antique furniture competing for survival with dust, stains, garbage, leaks and unattended junk.”About a decade ago, Guirgis started gathering actors there to read his developing play, about a Black New York City police officer who was shot while off duty at a bar by a white officer and has been seeking justice ever since.A fixture of the living room readings was Stephen McKinley Henderson, a friend and frequent visitor whom Guirgis had imagined in the lead role from the beginning. A parade of well-known actors participated in the readings on Riverside Drive along the West 80s, including John Leguizamo, Ellen Burstyn and Chris Rock, whose Broadway debut was in a Guirgis play.“The first time I read it, it was 15 pages,” Henderson said. “And as it grew, it grew on me.”Colón-Zayas and the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis at his Riverside Drive apartment in 2014, the year the play premiered Off Broadway.Monique Carboni The play that developed from those readings became a patchwork of autobiography and fiction, organized around an idea based on a local news story from the 1990s. Directed by Austin Pendleton, “Between Riverside and Crazy” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama after premiering at Atlantic Theater Company in 2014 and running Off Broadway for a second time in 2015. (In that production, Ron Cephas Jones, a friend of Guirgis’s who once lived at the four-bedroom Riverside Drive apartment, played the lead character’s son, Junior.)Eight years after its premiere, the play has landed on Broadway — the Second Stage production at the Helen Hayes Theater still stars Henderson, with Common now playing Junior — in a radically altered landscape.Since the actors first gathered at Guirgis’s apartment, police shootings of Black men have fueled waves of protest. The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer in 2020 reignited the movement, with myriad industries, including theater, facing calls for large-scale racial justice efforts. In addition, rent rates in New York City have been soaring, boxing out lower-income residents from once-affordable neighborhoods, and evictions have picked back up after a pandemic lull.The actors who have inhabited their characters for years say they approach the work with a new depth and personal understanding, but the dialogue remains almost entirely the same. One short line was added, from Junior, a parolee who struggles to get the kind of love from his father that he received from his recently deceased mother.“Pops, it’s 2014,” Junior says, situating the audience in time. Guirgis said he asked that the line be added to prevent references to Donald J. Trump and Rudy Giuliani from sounding outdated.The actress Liza Colón-Zayas, who has been involved since early script readings as a character called the Church Lady, said people who have seen this production and previous ones (including her mother) are convinced that the play has been significantly altered over the years.In the play, a widower fights to keep his home and win a long-running lawsuit against the New York Police Department, as messy relationships and messier politics surface among his housemates and guests.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThough the writing is largely unchanged, the actors approach the work with a new depth and personal understanding in light of the cultural conversation surrounding police shootings since the play’s premiere.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“The writing didn’t change,” Colón-Zayas said. “The pain, and the years, and what we’ve survived has changed this play in ways that I can’t exactly articulate.”The seed for the story came in 1994, when a white off-duty New York City police officer opened fire on a Black undercover transit officer on a Manhattan subway platform, seriously injuring him. The white officer, Peter Del-Debbio, said he was responding to a shotgun that had discharged and had fired when he saw the plainclothes transit officer, Desmond Robinson, running with a gun.Part of the white officer’s defense was that the Black officer wasn’t wearing his badge or the color that would identify him as a plainclothes officer, so Guirgis remembered the story as the “color of the day” case. Del-Debbio was convicted of second-degree assault and was sentenced to probation and community service.“It always stayed with me,” Guirgis said.Years later, the playwright said, he was visiting Henderson when the veteran actor, having health troubles, remarked that his career would be slowing down.“I just lied and I was like, ‘Oh I started writing two plays for you: one where you’re the lead and one where you’re the supporting,’” Guirgis said. “When I went home I was like, OK, now I’ve got to come up with something.”By the time he started holding script readings, Colón-Zayas, who met Guirgis when they were students at State University of New York at Albany, had been visiting the Riverside Drive apartment for decades. When Guirgis’s mother died in 2006, he recalled, his family returned to the apartment to find Colón-Zayas and other friends cleaning it.After his mother’s death, Guirgis moved into the apartment, getting his father a dog, Papi, for additional companionship. The apartment became a haven for friends who needed one, Guirgis said, including a recovering addict who started to see Guirgis’s father like he was his own.“Anybody who walked into my apartment with me or with my sister was automatically given a blank check of love and acceptance,” he said.Common, right, is making his Broadway debut as Junior. He said part of what attracted him to the role was the message of redemption.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesThe unconventional household is intimately depicted in the play. The ex-cop, Walter Washington, welcomes his son’s sweet but clueless girlfriend, Lulu (Rosal Colón), and his friend Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar), who spent time in prison and is trying to stay sober.Like Guirgis did for his father, Junior brings a dog into the household to keep him company; Walter calls the dog by a choice curse word instead of his name, but the emotional attachment is apparent underneath the derision. (Papi, the fox-like mutt that Guirgis had adopted for his father, died recently, and the cast has mourned the loss of an original attendee of those early script readings.)A stubborn and ailing alcoholic, Walter gripes about his housemates and expresses love begrudgingly, but the core of the play is his inclination to welcome them into his home no matter their mistakes.“As with all of his characters, it’s a lesson in, ‘Who are we to judge anybody, really?’” Colón said.Common, who is making his Broadway debut as Junior and has done advocacy work within the prison system, said part of what attracted him to the role was the message of redemption.When he entered the cast as the only newcomer in a tight-knit group of actors, he received a welcome not unlike the kind Walter tends to give: matter of fact but unconditional.“One day Liza came up to me,” he recalled, referring to Colón-Zayas, “and she said, ‘You aight, you aight. You can roll with us.’”(Colón-Zayas was replaced in the role this month by Maria-Christina Oliveras because of a scheduling conflict.)In the play, as Walter fights to hold on to his home and win his long-running lawsuit against the New York Police Department, a series of characters passes through the apartment — ostensibly there to help a solitary widower. Two police colleagues gather for dinner and a serving of nostalgia; the Church Lady comes to chat and give communion.But in “Riverside,” the intentions of the houseguests are never clear-cut. The relationships get messy, and the underlying politics of the story even messier.Henderson’s character is portrayed as both noble and, at times, misguided. He maintains both a righteous grudge against the New York Police Department and a fierce pride for it. His children, biological and not, are both trying to change their lives for the better and backsliding into old ways.Guirgis is well aware that the persistent character flaws have the tendency to rankle some audience members who would have preferred to see their worldviews affirmed more emphatically. But he’s interested in telling a more complicated story, and says he thinks present-day audiences will see that, just as they did in 2014.“If the characters all just have white hats and black hats, then we’re watching a cartoon, and there’s nothing to learn from it,” he said. “I try to make it messy but I try to lead with love.” More

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    Ben Platt to Lead ‘Parade’ Revival on Broadway This Season

    The musical’s exploration of antisemitism is timely, with rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond.Ben Platt, the Tony-winning star of “Dear Evan Hansen,” will return to Broadway next month to lead the cast in a revival of “Parade,” a musical about an early-20th-century lynching of a Jewish businessman in Georgia.The revival, directed by Michael Arden (a two-time Tony nominee, for revivals of “Once on This Island” and “Spring Awakening”), had a seven-performance run at New York City Center last fall. Platt plays Leo Frank, a factory boss convicted of killing a young girl in a case tainted by antisemitism; Micaela Diamond, who previously played the youngest version of the title character in “The Cher Show” on Broadway, will co-star as Frank’s wife, Lucille.The show, with songs by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Alfred Uhry and co-conceived by Hal Prince, had a brief run on Broadway that opened in 1998; it was commercially unsuccessful, but won Tony Awards for both book and score. The history it depicts is real: Frank was convicted in 1913, lynched in 1915 (at age 31), and in 1986 he was posthumously pardoned.The musical’s exploration of antisemitism has made it more timely now, when there is rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond. The City Center production garnered uniformly strong reviews: in The New York Times, Juan A. Ramírez called it “the best-sung musical in many a New York season.”The “Parade” revival will begin previews Feb. 21 and open March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, where the musical “Almost Famous” closed on Sunday. The “Parade” production is planning a short run, to Aug. 6.The revival is being produced by Seaview, a company created by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea that previously produced “Slave Play” and “POTUS,” and Ambassador Theater Group, a large British theater company that operates two Broadway houses (the Hudson and the Lyric) and also produces shows. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel: McCarthy Won After Near-Knockout Punches

    “It got so out of control, I thought I was watching the Oscars,” Kimmel said of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s 15-round ordeal.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.‘A Full Ali-Frazier’After 15 rounds of voting, Kevin McCarthy was sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives early on Saturday morning.Jimmy Kimmel called it “a full Ali-Frazier,” saying “it was the political equivalent of handing your kid an iPad to shut him up.”“Things really started to spin out on the floor of the House. It got so out of control, I thought I was watching the Oscars.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ahead of the last round of voting for House speaker, Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers appeared to charge at fellow Republican Representative Matt Gaetz. And, out of habit, Gaetz yelled ‘I’ve never even met your daughter!’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s a face mask violation — 15 yards. It was really the most exciting hour of cable news in quite some time.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Oh, my God. I don’t know if men should hold political office. They’re just too emotional!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s one thing to hold a dude back by his shoulders, but by his face? Is this the House of Representatives or a Long Island wedding?” — SETH MEYERS“Republicans resorting to violence on the House floor? What a perfect way to honor the two-year anniversary of Jan. 6.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (New But Not Improved Edition)“After 15 rounds of voting, McCarthy pulled off the impossible — he got people to watch C-SPAN for an entire week.” — JIMMY FALLON“I can’t even imagine what McCarthy was going through. It must have felt like sitting outside Applebee’s and waiting four days for your disc to buzz.” — JIMMY FALLON“McCarthy was like, ‘I’m just glad it didn’t go to a 16th vote. That would have been humiliating.’” — JIMMY FALLON“We have a new, not improved, but we have a new speaker of the House.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“They chose McCarthy the same way you choose Thai food on New Year’s Day: ‘You guys want Thai? Well, nothing else is open!’” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actress Gwyneth Paltrow offered some post-divorce dating advice on Monday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightPrince Harry will pop by Tuesday’s “Late Show” to discuss his new memoir, “Spare,” with Stephen Colbert.Also, Check This Out“M3GAN,” about a robot doll programmed to befriend and protect a young girl (Violet McGraw), riffs on some of the classic conundrums that arise when a machine develops humanlike qualities.Universal PicturesIn the scary movie “M3GAN,” the titular robot doll’s dancing is part of the horror. More

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    Frigid Fringe Festival Is ‘Uncensored’ No More After Pulling a Work About Gender

    The Frigid Fringe Festival in New York said it would no longer bill itself as “uncensored” after deciding not to move ahead with a performance it deemed anti-trans.Since its 2007 founding, the Frigid Fringe Festival in New York has selected the plays it produces randomly, like many other fringe festivals around the world that aim to highlight voices from outside the theatrical establishment. It boasted that it was both “unjuried,” since it did not rely on gatekeeping panels, and “uncensored.”But that changed this past fall, when Frigid decided for the first time that it would not stage one of the productions it had chosen. A staffer at the festival had red-flagged the work, “Poems on Gender,” after its author, David Lee Morgan, submitted a blurb drawn from the show that began: “There are two sexes, male and female.” Further investigation led organizers to conclude that it “featured material we deem to be anti-trans.”In canceling its production of “Poems on Gender,” Frigid announced that it would stop calling itself “uncensored,” and that it would reserve the right to withdraw future plays. “Our commitment to freedom of expression does not obligate us to lend our efforts to platform what we consider to be hate speech, or even just very offensive and hurtful speech,” it said in a news release. It added, “In this case we choose to just say no.”The festival was “uncensored” no longer, becoming the latest example of a wider rebalancing in the worlds of culture, publishing and academia, as many institutions that once emphasized freedom of expression and artistic license have curbed speech that they deem hateful or offensive to members of marginalized groups.Morgan, a busker and spoken-word poet based in London who performs “Poems on Gender” as a recited monologue, said in an interview that he did not expect Frigid to tolerate absolutely everything. “If I were presenting a recruiting film for the Ku Klux Klan,” he said, “I’d be astounded if they’d be fine with putting it on.”On Being Transgender in AmericaFeeling Unsafe: Intimidation and violence against gay and transgender Americans has spread this year — driven heavily, extremism experts say, by increasingly inflammatory political messaging.Puberty Blockers: These drugs can ease anguish among young transgender people and buy time to weigh options. But concerns are growing about their long-term effects.‘Top Surgery’: Small studies suggest that breast removal surgery improves transgender teenagers’ well-being, but data is sparse. Some state leaders oppose such procedures for minors.Generational Shift: The number of young people who identify as transgender in the United States has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a new report.But he disputed that his show, which he performed last year at the prominent Edinburgh Festival Fringe, was deserving of censorship. “Is it reactionary?” he said. “Is it anti-trans? Is it bigotry to say there are two sexes, male and female?”Erez Ziv, a founder of Frigid New York and its managing artistic director, said he could not ask his increasingly diverse staff, which includes several transgender and nonbinary people, to be part of a production that denied their realities. The Frigid Fringe Festival, which will run in February and March, supplies shows with theatrical space and publicity, and tech and front-of-house workers. Productions keep all box office revenue. (Frigid relies on grants and small fees from the productions.)“In November, I boastfully said to an entire room full of fringe producers in North America that I would allow a show to happen no matter what,” Ziv said. “But then it happened: We actually got a show that I just couldn’t ask my staff to work.”“I support free speech,” he added. “I think all speech should be legally protected, but not all speech should be platformed.”David Lee Morgan said he did not believe his work “Poems on Gender” deserved censorship: “Is it bigotry to say there are two sexes, male and female?”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesBefore deciding, Ziv, who never reads production scripts for Frigid, viewed several online videos of Morgan performing other works. He also consulted a colleague: the co-artistic director at Frigid, Jimmy Lovett, partly because Lovett is trans.Lovett said that some of Morgan’s online performances of related works were “very minimizing of our experiences” and framed transition-related surgery and other medical care as “damaging to the body rather than necessary and healthy for the individual.”In sometimes elliptical language, “Poems on Gender” raises questions about how some people define their genders (“You tell me I can’t be your friend/Unless I believe you are a real woman/I can’t do that”) and about transition-related medical care (“You took a rainbow and forged it into a knife”).Morgan, who grew up in Washington State, describes himself as left-wing and feminist and said that “Poems on Gender” was partly inspired by conversations with trans friends from the spoken-word poetry scene. “I’m looking at people I have a lot of respect and unity with, and then seeing where we disagree,” he said, noting that he believes some of the friendships have ended because of his views.Frigid’s evolution away from its stage-anything ethos is striking, because the festival exists precisely to ensure that even unusual or outré works get a chance to go up in New York City.Fringe festivals share a mandate to elevate edgier voices. The concept originated when troupes that were not invited to the first Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 put on a counter-festival, which a journalist later described as “round the fringe of official festival drama.” They have earned a reputation for giving opportunities to new talent: the hit Broadway musical “Six,” about the wives of Henry VIII, was written by college students and was one of the 3,398 shows the Edinburgh Festival Fringe put on in 2017.Xela Batchelder, a veteran fringe producer who studied fringe festivals for her Ph.D. dissertation, said that generally “the audience is the curator,” and that it would be a challenge for festivals to begin deciding which works to stage and which to rule out. “It’s going to be very hard for the arts organizations and the artists trying to figure out how to work through all this,” she said.The fringe model has been tested in recent years. The Chicago Fringe Festival, which like Frigid selected works entirely by lottery, faced backlash in 2017 for staging “A Virtuous Pedophile.” (Its author, Sean Neely, said the play did not advocate pedophilia.) The outcry was “very detrimental” to the festival, said Anne Cauley, its executive director at the time, and the festival’s largest foundation sponsor declined to renew its support the next year. The festival ceased after 2018.The Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, whose guiding principles call for convening no juries for selecting plays and allowing no interference with artistic content, added a new plank in 2017 that said, “Festivals will promote and model inclusivity, diversity and multiculturalism.”A spokeswoman for the association, Michele Gallant, said that Frigid, which is one of its members, had still abided by the principle that says “festival producers do not interfere with the artistic content of each performance,” because it had not altered the show — but simply pulled it entirely.Morgan still hopes to take “Poems on Gender” to other fringe festivals.He won the Canadian association’s lottery in November, which gives him entry to fringe festivals next summer in the cities of Victoria and Vancouver, in British Columbia. The Vancouver Fringe declined to comment, and an official at the Victoria Fringe did not respond to a request for comment. More

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    Alex Brightman Lays ‘Beetlejuice’ to Rest

    A concussion nearly derailed the actor’s fan-favorite turn as the madcap, black-and-white striped ghoul. But he recovered in time for the closing show.As Alex Brightman disappeared through the doorway to the Netherworld one last time at the Marquis Theater on Sunday night, his black-and-white-striped Beetlejuice suit enveloped by a cloud of smoke, he uttered a few special parting words:“Goooodbye, Broadway!”And he meant it.“I’m very aware that it really could be the last time I am on Broadway,” said Brightman, 35, who for parts of the past four years has played the ghostly guide to the other side in “Beetlejuice,” the Broadway musical based on the 1988 Tim Burton film about a face-off between a goth girl and a devious demon. “So it’s a humbling experience to be up there and to be able to share and be vulnerable.”After his first entrance of the final show, Brightman was met with a two-minute standing ovation.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesHis farewell wasn’t quite the one he had anticipated. At a Christmas Eve performance, Brightman slammed into the show’s giant sandworm backstage at a full sprint — when a door hadn’t opened, Brightman tried an ill-fated alternate route — leaving him with a concussion.“I didn’t realize what had happened,” he said. “I figured I just banged my head.”Symptoms abruptly surfaced two days later, and after spending the next week nauseous, achy and painfully sensitive to light, he thought he’d played his final performance — maybe ever. (Three of the show’s standby and understudy Beetlejuices, Andrew Kober, Elliott Mattox and Will Blum, filled in while Brightman was out.)“I thought I wasn’t going to recover,” said Brightman, who was funny and lively in the eighth-floor cocktail lounge at the Marriott Marquis hotel before getting into costume for Sunday evening’s performance. “It felt like one long 10- or 11-day sickness in one day.”But things improved about a week ago, he said, and after doing a four-hour rehearsal on Thursday, he got the all-clear to return for the show’s final three evening performances.The 1,602 audience members at the sold-out performance on Sunday night, many of whom sported black-and-white striped suits and green wigs, showered Brightman with appreciation. (Everyone in attendance received a special Playbill with a silver sticker on the cover that read “It’s the Final Showtime.”) It started with his first entrance, when he received two minutes of applause and a standing ovation.Brightman received a Tony Award nomination in 2019 for his performance as Beetlejuice.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“I’ve never had that happen before,” said Brightman, who has been in six Broadway shows, earning Tony Award nominations for his role in “Beetlejuice” and as Dewey Finn in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation of “School of Rock.”Though “Beetlejuice” opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater in April 2019 to mixed reviews (the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “absolutely exhausting”), it became a fan favorite — dozens of them would turn up as Lydia, the Maitlands and, of course, Beetlejuice to compete in the musical’s preshow costume contests. Still, the show was handed a closing notice in December of that year when what the Shubert Organization saw as a potentially lucrative production of “The Music Man” needed its real estate. Then the pandemic happened, and the production shuttered in March 2020.The surging sales before the closure led producers to reopen the show last year at the Marquis Theater in April. But attendance dipped again over the summer, and producers announced in October that the show would close in January after 679 performances. (A national touring production began in December, and there are also coming international versions in Brazil and Japan.)To protect his vocal cords, Brightman creates Beetlejuice’s signature gruff voice using a technique called ventricular fold phonation, in which he vibrates the cartilage in his throat.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBrightman and Elizabeth Teeter, who plays Lydia, paid tribute to the show’s fans, known as “Netherlings,” on Sunday night, holding up signs at the curtain call that read “Hey guys” and “Love you guys!”“This is a show about death that’s actually really a celebration of life,” the show’s director, Alex Timbers, said from the stage after a purple-and-green confetti storm. “And you all have given us life.”Before the show and directly afterward in his dressing room — sweaty and smiling in a white V-neck stained with green and red blotches as his team helped him remove his makeup for the final time — Brightman reflected on parting ways with the ghost with the most, the show’s fervent fan following and what’s next for him (other than, of course, sleeping).These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“This is a show about death that’s actually really a celebration of life,” said Alex Timbers, the show’s director, addressing the house on closing night. “And you all have given us life.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesYou first read the part in 2017. How are you feeling after tonight’s performance?Exhausted. It was very cathartic. I’m thrilled I got to close it after six years.Do you have any lingering effects from the concussion?I still have headaches, but they’re not pounding. I take Aleve. And my doctor said I will probably be prone to more headaches throughout the rest of my life because of it, but nothing too crazy.How important was it to you to make it back for the closing night?I’m not necessarily one of those people that believes in making that miraculous appearance at that last performance because he has to. I value my health, and I want to do more things after this. So running the risk of passing out onstage or reinjuring myself if I wasn’t ready was not in the cards.What has it been like starring in a show with such a devoted fan base?It never, ever gets old. The “Beetlejuice” fans are the warmest fans that I’ve ever encountered in the six Broadway shows I’ve done. It’s a lot of me in there, so for 1,500 people to accept my character in the show and my style of absurdity and comedy and improv is extremely cathartic and emotional.What is it like to spend so long with the same character?The last thing I want to do is be bored with anything I do, and anything this long has that danger, but this part allows me to discover new things not every night, but every minute. I have the ability to be a bit topical, a bit loose — it doesn’t feel like I’m on a track. That’s made it easy to do for six years.The show developed a devoted fan base who call themselves “Netherlings.” They frequently attended shows dressed as “Beetlejuice” characters.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesWhat’s a moment that’s different in every show?There’s a part in the opening number where I have a stand mic and do a Frank Sinatra impression for a “Tip Your Waitress” kind of thing. And in it, there’s space for me to say a couple of things if I want to. The other night, I just screamed “The Kardashians!” and it got a laugh for no reason. And then right after I said, “I can’t keep up with them.” “Gangnam Style!” has also been a popular one.What did your first attempts at the Beetlejuice voice sound like?At my first audition, I was like, “I don’t know how to do a Michael Keaton impression, so let me just try something.” And it went fine, but I paid for it for two days — my voice was on fire.How do you do it now for eight shows a week without damaging your vocal cords?It’s called ventricular fold phonation, and it means you vibrate the cartilage in your throat alongside your vocal cords. I was able to figure out through trial and error that it’s the same muscles I use to clear my throat. I could do this interview better — and more healthfully —[switches to Beetlejuice voice] in this voice than just talking to you with [reverts to normal voice] this voice, because right now I’m using my vocal cords, and vocal cords get tired. Cartilage doesn’t get tired — there’s no nerves, it’s not a muscle.“This part allows me to discover new things not every night, but every minute,” Brightman said.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesWhat’s next for you?I sold a cartoon series to Warner Bros., “Cleaners,” which is a raunchy, slightly musical comedy about a crew from Boston that does biohazard cleanups — crime scenes, meth labs, hoarders. And I wrote a play called “Everything Is Fine,” about the one-year aftermath of a mall shooting from the perspective of the family of the perpetrator, who is no longer with us. Cynthia Nixon directed a number of the readings, and we’re hoping to continue getting that somewhere in New York. And I’m working on a musical with Universal Theatrical with my writing partner, which is an adaptation of the film “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” about a kid who checks himself into a psychiatric ward.So, a lot of writing.I’ve been onstage for 15 years now, kind of consistently, and I’m a little Broadway-ed and musical-ed out, which I know is a very privileged thing to say. But what comes with doing this is scrutiny. People look at you and judge you every night. I want to do my own thing for a second — to just let my work speak for itself and not have to defend it with a musical number.Would you ever want to return to “Beetlejuice”?What I know is that I have the right of first refusal for a London production, were it to happen. There are no designs for it to happen just yet that I know of, but I would consider it.“I’ve been onstage for 15 years now, kind of consistently,” Brightman said. “I want to do my own thing for a second.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesLet’s do a quick round of confirm or deny.Ooh, yes!You have done the voice in a public setting that is not the theater.Confirm. A few months ago, I went into Starbucks and said [in his Beetlejuice voice] “Can I just have one grande Pike Place with a little bit of half and half and just one Splenda?” They said, “What’s your name?” And I said [in Beetlejuice voice], “B.J.” And then they said, “Coffee for B.J.?” And I said [in Beetlejuice voice], “Thanks so much.” And I left. It’s New York. I was the least weird thing to walk into that Starbucks that day.You get nervous when you know someone famous will be at the show.Deny. The only person who would make me nervous would be Mel Brooks, because I revere him to a point that is probably pretty unhealthy.If you had to choose between marrying Beetlejuice or having to wear a single pair of used workout clothes for the rest of your life, you would —Marry Beetlejuice, if only for the fact that I know how much I sweat. More