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    Catching Up With Hillary Clinton at “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’”

    The former secretary of state celebrated the opening on Broadway and shared her thoughts on those drag show bans.On Sunday night, Hillary Clinton, fresh from attending the opening night of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” on Broadway at the Music Box Theater, swept into the Rosevale Cocktail Room at the Civilian Hotel on West 48th Street.As candles flickered on tables, with miniature models from productions like “Hadestown” and “Dear Evan Hansen” displayed on a back wall, a few dozen guests at the private after-party sipped glasses of white wine from the bar. Mrs. Clinton mingled among guests including David Rockwell, the architect and Tony Award-winning show designer who designed the hotel; the actress Jane Krakowski; Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s longtime aide; and the “Dancin’” director, Wayne Cilento.“I loved it,” she told Mr. Cilento, who also danced in the original 1978 production of the show. “The dancers were so charismatic and magnetic. That energy was so needed.”Mrs. Clinton had attended the opening at the invitation of Rob Russo, a co-producer on the show who has worked with her in some capacity for nearly two decades. He hardly had to twist her arm, though: Mrs. Clinton, a noted Broadway superfan, has seen numerous shows in the past few months, including “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive” in July, “The Phantom of the Opera” in December and, last week, the new revival of “Some Like It Hot.”From left: Jamie DuMont, Nicole Fosse and Rob Russo. Mr. Russo, a co-producer of the show and a longtime associate of Mrs. Clinton’s, was the one to invite the former secretary of state to the show’s opening.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSo when asked to consider the idea that a touring production of the latter show, in which two men dress as women to escape the mob, could be banned from playing in a state like Tennessee, which recently passed a law limiting “cabaret” shows, part of a wave of legislation across the country by conservative lawmakers against drag performances, Mrs. Clinton’s reaction was clear.“It’s a very sad commentary on what people think is important in our country,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I hope that it goes the way of the dinosaur because people will recognize that it’s just a political stunt.”The range of shows that could potentially be banned under such legislation — such as Shakespeare plays, in which a number of characters cross-dress; “Hairspray,” the popular musical in which the protagonist’s mother is usually played by a man in a dress; and “1776,” whose current touring company features an all-female, trans and nonbinary cast, was, she said, “absurd.”“I guess they’re going to shut the state borders to anything that is Shakespearean?” she said. “Are we going to stop exporting any kind of entertainment?”Ms. Fosse, far left, the daughter of the director-choreographer Bob Fosse, talked to a dancer in the show, Yeman Brown.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAt around 9:10 p.m., Mrs. Clinton departed the party. Some guests followed her lead, while others moved upstairs to the Starchild Rooftop Bar & Lounge on the 27th floor, where Nicole Fosse — the daughter of the director-choreographer Bob Fosse and the actress Gwen Verdon — and Mr. Cilento, the director, were hosting a second party for the show’s creative team and cast of 22 dancers.The dancer Karli Dinardo wore a sleeveless silver gown with cutouts by the Australian designer Portia and Scarlett, while Yeman Brown donned a green Who Decides War cathedral sweatshirt with cutouts across the front. They sipped “Dancin’ Man” mocktails — roots divino bianco, cucumber, pink peppercorn and lemon-lime soda — and munched on “Fosse’s Breakfast” (granola) and shrimp cocktails furnished by waiters on silver platters. (For those with less highbrow tastes, there were also bags of M&M’s by the bar with the dancers’ names printed on them.)Karli Dinardo, a dancer in the show.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesKolton Krouse, who leads the number “Spring Chicken.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesKolton Krouse, a nonbinary dancer in the production whose face-slapping kicks earned a shout-out from the New York Times critic Jesse Green in his review, wore an asymmetrical black dress, gold heels, glittering gold eye shadow and bright red lipstick.“I wanted to do a modern take on Ann Reinking’s original trumpet solo dress,” they said of their sparkling one-shoulder gown.Mx. Krouse, who is among a cast of dancers that is noticeably more diverse in age, ethnicity, body type and gender presentation than a typical Fosse cast, said the best part of the new production was that “we can all be ourselves while we’re doing it.”Mr. Cilento said he purposefully sought a more diverse cast for the revival.“I did a very eclectic, really exciting group of dancers because I felt like you had to embrace the whole culture and not just make it, you know, white bread,” he said.Mx. Krouse, who leads the number “Spring Chicken” in the show, said: “It’s weird doing a show where I can be me, and it’s OK.”M&M’s celebrating the show’s opening night featured dancers’ names.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesQuick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. More

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    Review: ‘The Good John Proctor’ Imagines Girlhood BFFs

    The play, directed by Caitlin Sullivan at the Connelly Theater, focuses on two girls in the year leading up to the action depicted in “The Crucible.”Abigail Williams is described by Arthur Miller in “The Crucible” as a “strikingly beautiful girl” of 17 with “an endless capacity for dissembling.” Lusty and conniving, Miller’s Abigail has an affair with her former boss, John Proctor, and after she gets fired, tries to hex his wife out of jealousy by drinking blood and dancing naked with other girls in the woods. Her lies about that night serve as the catalyst for Miller’s 1953 dramatization of the Salem witch trials, which casts John as its tragic hero.Williams was, in fact, only 11 or 12 years old in 1692, when she and her 9-year-old cousin, Betty Parris, made their first accusations. “The Good John Proctor,” a dark comedy by the playwright Talene Monahon, imagines Abigail (Susannah Perkins) and Betty (Sharlene Cruz) as girlhood BFFs and bedfellows in the year leading up to the action depicted in Miller’s play. Speaking in modern vernacular, but wearing Puritan-style bonnets and white nightdresses (in costumes by Phuong Nguyen), the girls whisper about dreams of flying, playact as a king and a peasant maiden and recoil in paranoia as if they were under constant surveillance.There is a threat lurking in the rustling darkness that surrounds them in this Bedlam production, which runs through April 1 at the Connelly Theater, but it’s not the supernatural kind (the stunning chiaroscuro lighting is by Isabella Byrd, and arboreal sound design by Lee Kinney). Mercy (Tavi Gevinson), a seasoned housemaid of 14, calls it the devil, but what she really means is the power and whims of men. “There’s evil everywhere,” Mercy mordantly insists. Is it any wonder the girls assume Satan is to blame for the bloody parts of womanhood that no one else has explained?The Salem witch trials have been endlessly rehashed and reclaimed in pop culture, including onstage; Bedlam presented a stripped-down and pointedly political take on “The Crucible” in this theater in 2019, and Gevinson played Mary Warren in a stylized and bombastic Broadway revival in 2016. “The Good John Proctor” isn’t even the only Salem-inspired dark comedy to play Off Broadway this season; Sarah Ruhl’s “Becky Nurse of Salem” brought a descendant of the accused to Lincoln Center in the fall.So why take audiences to Salem again? Monahon’s playful and precise ear for the rhythms of adolescent dialogue is among the chief pleasures of “The Good John Proctor,” which draws a bit too heavily on its source material (a brief refresher on “The Crucible” and its creepy poppet would be advisable preshow reading). Beautifully staged by the director Caitlin Sullivan, the play is most engaging and provocative when at its most original — mining its characters’ messy, developing psyches, with contemporary and sometimes profane language, rather than placing them within existing narratives.The cast, including a doe-eyed Brittany K. Allen as Mary Warren, nimbly inhabit characters on the edge of innocence, or just beyond it, who belong not entirely to the past or the present. That shadowy ‌in between space opens up fertile ground for investigation, where the only ones who have any basis to be afraid are the girls who’ve been left in the dark.The Good John ProctorThrough April 1 at the Connelly Theater, Manhattan; bedlam.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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    Lauren Ambrose Just Wants to Go to French Clown School

    The actress, who is joining the cast of “Yellowjackets,” talks about British sitcoms, the “On Being” podcast and gardening at night.“What creature is that?” Lauren Ambrose asked, craning her neck during a video interview from her home in the Berkshires. “I see this, like, crazy hawk sitting on a tree outside my window. It just caught my eye.”The setting was fitting, since Ambrose is about to become bonded with, and haunted by, the natural world. Joining the cast of “Yellowjackets,” Showtime’s thriller about a girls’ soccer team stranded in the wilderness and pushed to the extremes, she plays the adult version of Van, short for Vanessa, one of the lucky and savvy few to make it to middle age.Ambrose, who also stars in the Apple TV+ series “Servant,” was excited by the opportunity to help create a character (played in her teenage years by Liv Hewson) and by the women she said she’s grown up watching.“I love looking at the call sheet and seeing that the top chunk is all of these incredible women who I’ve admired and whose careers I’ve followed — who’ve influenced me so much as actors,” she said.“I’ve also never had the experience of being the fan of something and then going in and joining it,” Ambrose added.Before the show kicks off its second season on Sunday, she talked about what moves and comforts her, including crying at the French circus, her love of gardening and the podcast that puts her at ease. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1‘Be: An Alphabet of Astonishment’There’s this guy Michael Lipson who’s one of the smartest men alive — a true sage. He worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and worked at Harlem Hospital in the pediatric AIDS unit. He’s a scholar and a teacher and he wrote this book “Be: An Alphabet of Astonishment,” which synthesizes his lifetime of wisdom and learning. It’s sort of this miraculous little thing. It’ll fill you.2Domi and JD BeckThey’re both young, both prodigies. My son just turned 16 and he’s a very serious jazz guitar player. We had a blast at their concert. In this attention economy, what I love about them is to see young people who have obviously logged so much practice. And that they’re making the music they want to make.3‘The Trip’This British sitcom gives me a feeling of being backstage or being at the bar after the play. I love it. It’s got everything I want. It’s got impressions and big ideas and ego. The egoism of being an actor is wonderful to laugh at. And it’s just painful and funny and sublime. There are people in my life who I speak to almost exclusively in lines from “The Trip.”4Cirque D’HiverWe were just in Paris and went to the French circus, and it was the best thing we did. The band was unbelievable, the acts were unbelievable. The clowning was, like, the greatest I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m such a nut, I was the only one there crying because I was so moved by the clowns, who are such geniuses in their silent storytelling. I’m like, I have to go to French clown school. Basically, it’s all I want to do, to be a clown in the French circus.5GardeningIt’s a big part of my life, and of my year. There were times last year while I was working on “Servant” when I was racing home and planting seeds with a headlamp at night. I was like, I’ve got to get this stuff in! It’s been a humbling venture, maybe the most humbling there is. Just watching the garden change throughout the seasons is an amazing thing. That first day when you get salad is kind of a holy day because there’s really nothing like it. It’s like a whole other food, salad from the garden.6Krista TippettI basically can’t imagine my life without “On Being.” She’s such an inspiration to me, and I love that her brand of journalism, her brand of interviewing, is a conversation. Krista holds the space and lets there be silences. For me, with traveling for work, it’s been really important. I get really carsick, and sometimes I’ll play the same episode over and over and let it drift in and out of my consciousness.7Children’s BooksOur kids are a little older now — 10 and 16 — but there are books that we’ve read thousands of times in our house. Some of them are so deeply in our DNA that sometimes we speak in children’s books, to the point where we have a game of who can guess what book that’s from? “Pippi Longstocking” by Astrid Lindgren, “Frog and Toad” by Arnold Lobel, “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak — these are essential in our family, not only the words but the imagery as well.8The Center for Humane TechnologyThe people behind this organization have an optimism that we can have a healthier relationship as a society to tech, which can be unhealthy and destructive to people’s lives and democracies. I am just so grateful for the work that they’re doing, especially as a mother of a teenager and a soon-to-be teenager.9Grateful LivingAs much as I eschew technology, there are some pretty great things out there. The top is grateful.org, which was started by an Austrian monk who purports that gratitude and noticing all of the small, tiny moments is the key to life. There are all kinds of wonderful practices and videos and blessings and mediations. A morning ritual for me, or as close to one as there is, is looking at the word for the day. It’s one of the great interweb experiences.10CatsWe’ve always had cats; they’ve taught my children and me gentleness. I love that a little tiny house cat has the exact same behaviors as a lion or tiger. I love the idea of living with a predator. And they’re just so funny. Each cat has such a distinct personality. I’m so grateful that life on earth includes the ability to inhabit the world with kitty cats. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Dr. Tony Fauci’ and the Mark Twain Prize

    An ‘American Masters’ documentary follows Dr. Fauci, and Adam Sandler receives the Kennedy Center’s annual comedy award.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Mar. 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: STORMING CAESARS PALACE 10 p.m. on PBS. From the Emmy Award-winning anthology series Independent Lens comes a documentary about the activist Ruby Duncan, who led a grass-roots movement of mothers to fight for guaranteed income in the 1970s. After losing her job as a hotel worker in Las Vegas, Duncan joined a welfare rights group and, with thousands of equality activists, marched into the casino Caesar’s Palace to disrupt “business as usual.” The group challenged politicians and mob bosses, along with the beliefs of citizens through their protests and activism.TuesdayAMERICAN MASTERS: DR. TONY FAUCI 8 p.m. on PBS. The Emmy Award-winning series “American Masters” presents a new documentary on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist. The filmmaker Mark Mannucci follows the physician over the course of two years, capturing Fauci as he confronts the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing political backlash. The documentary also gives a more intimate look into Fauci’s personal life and provides a space for him to reflect on his 50-year career.WednesdayFrom left, Jeremy Renner, Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson in “Marvel’s The Avengers.”Zade Rosenthal/Marvel Studios and Paramount PicturesMARVEL’S THE AVENGERS (2012) 7 p.m. on FX. Based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name, this epic film follows the heroes Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans) and the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) as they are recruited to stop Thor’s brother, Loki, who has gained ability to enslave humanity. To save the world, the superheroes must set aside their differences and work together. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote that “this movie revels in the individuality of its mighty, mythical characters, pinpointing insecurities that are amplified by superhuman power and catching sparks that fly when big, rough-edged egos (and alter egos) collide.”DIGMAN! 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. A new adult animated series created by Neil Campbell and Andy Samberg follows the washed-up celebrity archaeologist Rip Digman (voiced by Samberg) and his team of experts. Hoping to gain a reputation as “fearless adventurers,” Digman and his crew face constant peril on their various excavation missions.ThursdayTHEY’RE WATCHING US: INSIDE THE COMPANY SURVEILLING MILLIONS OF STUDENTS 11 p.m. on VICE. At a time when an increasing number of students are being digitally monitored, a documentary by Vice News investigates Gaggle, a company that creates software meant to detect danger in the content created on school-issued accounts and devices. The film demonstrates how Gaggle has helped schools prevent tragedies through its ability to flag kids in crisis, as well as tackles the controversy of student safety versus privacy.FridayPeter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove, a weapons expert, in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”Sony PicturesDR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) 8 p.m. on TCM. Stanley Kubrick’s Academy Award-nominated Cold War satire begins when Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) launches an unauthorized military strike against the Soviet Union — an act guaranteed to start a nuclear war. President Merkin Muffley of United States (also Sellers) alerts Soviet authorities, and both militaries work together to prevent mutually assured destruction. In a 1994 review of the film for its 30th anniversary, Eric Lefcowitz describes it as an “icon” — “the kind of movie that people can remember seeing for the first time.”I GO TO THE ROCK: THE GOSPEL MUSIC OF WHITNEY HOUSTON 8 p.m. on UPtv. This one-hour special, hosted by the Grammy Award-winning gospel singer CeCe Winans, focuses on the pop star Whitney Houston’s faith and love of gospel music, and how those two elements impacted her personal life and career. The documentary follows Houston — who died in 2012 — from her first performance to her best-selling Gospel album of all time.SaturdayAustin Butler in “Elvis.”Warner Bros.ELVIS (2022) 8 p.m. on HBO. This Academy Award-nominated biopic chronicles the life of the rock ‘n’ roll star Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) from childhood to his death at 42, with the central plot focusing on his relationship with his manager for most of his career, Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). “There was never anything pure about Elvis Presley, except maybe his voice, and hearing it in all its aching, swaggering glory, you understand how it set off an earthquake,” wrote Scott in his review for The Times, adding that “‘Elvis,’ for all its flaws and compromises, made me want to listen to him, as if for the first time.”SundayMeryl Streep and Kevin Kline in “Sophie’s Choice.”Universal PicturesMARK TWAIN PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR 8 p.m. on CNN. Named in honor of one of the world’s greatest humorists and given to those who have “had an impact on American society,” the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recognizes an individual who has shaped the world of comedy. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presents the 24th Prize to Adam Sandler, who in his 30-year career has become known for his loopy, lewd sense of humor and amiable charm.SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982) 10:30 p.m. on TCM. Based on the 1979 novel of the same name by William Styron, this Academy Award-nominated film follows the increasingly intersected lives of three residents in a Brooklyn boardinghouse in 1947. The aspiring writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) meets the Polish immigrant Sophie (Meryl Streep) and her emotionally unstable lover, Nathan (Kevin Kline), and as Stingo gets to know Sophie better, he must parse fact from fiction in her stories to uncover what exactly happened to her at Auschwitz. “Though it’s far from a flawless movie, ‘Sophie’s Choice’ is a unified and deeply affecting one. Thanks in large part to Miss Streep’s bravura performance, it’s a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell,” wrote Janet Maslin in her review for The Times. More

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    Review: In Bob Fosse’s ‘Dancin’,’ a Wiggle Is Worth a Thousand Words

    A revival of the 1978 dancical has been substantially revamped to argue for Bob Fosse’s pure dance cred. It’s a joy anyway.Right from the start, we’re advised that “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’,” which opened on Sunday at the Music Box Theater, will be “almost plotless” and include “no messages.”Is that a challenge or an apology?In the often-thrilling, often-frustrating revival of the 1978 dancical, which reincarnates the spirit and choreography of Bob Fosse, the two possibilities are much the same. Substantially revamped and restaged by Wayne Cilento, a standout in the original production, this “Dancin’” argues that Fosse’s genius was constrained by the pedestrian storytelling of musical theater, with its “villains,” “baritone heroes” and “Christmas trees.” True Fosseism, it seems, can fully thrive only in the abstract, Olympian realms of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.The dichotomy is false, and the insistence a little embarrassing; when judged only as a brief for that point, “Dancin’” stumbles. Particularly in a long concluding section drawn from his final musical, “Big Deal,” the new material meant to bolster Fosse’s reputation doesn’t. And the periodic intrusion of ax-grinding Fosse avatars, quoting him at his most maudlin, suggests an inferiority complex not only about his talent but also about the kind of storytelling, in shows like “Chicago,” and movies like “Cabaret,” for which he was best known and deeply admired.But in the spirit of plotlessness and nonmessaging, let me not argue that too much. The show is a joy every time it puts down its ax. In any case, its 16 dancers, representing a wider range by age, ethnicity, body type and gender presentation than you typically see in a Fosse cast, make a much better case for the pure dance qualities of his style than the text does. (Kirsten Childs, herself a former Fosse dancer, provided the additional material.) A wiggle is worth a thousand words.In the sublime “Dancin’ Man,” our critic writes, the dancers synchronize blissfully with the music and with one another.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat wiggle — of the fingers, of the hips — joins the familiar Fosse vocabulary here: the isolated shoulder rotations, the off-center jumps, the pelvic contractions that look as if the dancer is being hit in the stomach with a cannonball. But in a context mostly stripped of overt story, the movements feel more extreme, and even overexuberant, as if let loose from jail: not just high kicks but kicks so high the shins bang the face.The first number after the opening sequence, a holdover from 1978, is in fact set in jail. “Recollections of an Old Dancer,” built on the Jerry Jeff Walker tune “Mr. Bojangles,” seems to be about the foundational legacy of Black dance in American culture, as the spirit of Bill Robinson shares his moves with a prisoner. I say “seems” because the effort to reframe numbers like this one as plotless when they clearly aren’t sometimes renders them merely murky, no matter how good the dancing. (It’s excellent.)The persistence of story is even more noticeable in the sequences that are new, newish or substantially altered. They make up perhaps half of the revival’s 14 numbers.“Big City Mime,” the 21-minute centerpiece of Act I, is one of the newish ones. Cut in Boston in 1978, it has been recreated from Fosse’s written scenario and snippets of his choreography for other works. The scenario is an exaggerated Fosse autobiography in dance, depositing a wide-eyed rube — the curly haired, lean-lined Peter John Chursin — in a modern-day Sodom. After encounters with prostitutes, masseuses and a naughty bookstore clerk, he emerges from his urban initiation ready to embrace the lessons of the body.Those lessons reach a sublime climax in the Act I finale, “Dancin’ Man,” the first time (and, until the curtain call, the last time) we see a unison number for the full ensemble. Dressed identically in pale blue suits, bow ties and straw hats, the dancers synchronize blissfully with the music (a soft-shoe tune by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer) and with one another.Ron Todorowski is among the eclectic cast of 16 dancers and six understudies. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut Act II, even leaving aside the “Big Deal” letdown, is a bumpier ride once you get past its astonishing opening: “Sing, Sing, Sing,” built on the Louis Prima number made famous by Benny Goodman. “The Female Star Spot,” a weak feminist comedy sketch in which singers question the woman-as-doormat lyrics of the 1977 Dolly Parton hit “Here You Come Again,” immediately lets the dance energy out of the room.A bit later, a long sequence set to a medley of patriotic songs, updated to include quotes from the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Amanda Gorman — and to remove the objectionable “Dixie,” which was part of the original — suffers from the grim feeling that it’s stepping around land mines.Though many of the interstitial numbers are entirely successful — and the hot arrangements by Jim Abbott for a 14-person band are ceaselessly exciting — they cannot always compensate for the larger missteps. The drama doesn’t accumulate, as it does in a musical, making “Dancin’” more like a variety show with guest stars. The design, too, is deliberately more presentational than theatrical, with arena lighting (by David Grill), a 49-by-28-foot LED wall (video design by Finn Ross) and four three-story towers (by Robert Brill) engaged in a kind of choreography themselves.But it’s the costumes, by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, a team known mostly for its work with ballet companies, that slip the leash of narrative most successfully. Strappy crop tops with strategic cutouts and peekaboo panels are perhaps to be expected in a Fosse show. But did I really see bumblebees, beekeepers, knights in body-baring armor, a sexy chicken with backup roosters and clowns with chartreuse polka-dot pussy bows?Happily, even airy whimsy cannot suppress the dancers’ specificity. If we do not know the story, they certainly do. Your favorites may depend on the night you see it (six understudies are part of the company as well) but of the 16 I saw on Friday I can highlight, aside from Chursin, Dylis Croman for her humor, Yeman Brown for his poetry, Jacob Guzman for his ferocity, Ron Todorowski for his athleticism, Manuel Herrera for his poignancy and Kolton Krouse for, well, their everything. (Krouse is the one with the face-slapping kicks.)Face-slapping kick: Kolton Krouse during the Act II opener set to “Sing, Sing, Sing.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf that list seems male dominated, so is “Dancin’,” despite its new sprinkling of gay, lesbian and nonbinary content. Fosse, after all, was creating in his own image, whether rendering himself as a satyr, a sot or a snake. Absent a text that makes a woman the star, he makes himself one, over and over. He was an interesting guy, so it’s an interesting story.Ah, but there’s that word “story” again. To me it seems that Fosse, however limited he may have felt by the specificities of musical theater, was best when working at the place where pure movement is pulled down from Olympus to meet real people, with lit cigarettes dangling from their lips. It’s there (and in so much of “Dancin’”) that he reliably finds what passes, despite all warnings, for a message: the necessity of sharing the body’s expressiveness and its endless capacity for pleasure.Bob Fosse’s Dancin’At the Music Box Theater, Manhattan; dancinbway.com. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More

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    In Rehearsal One Minute, Laid Off the Next: The Fate of Broadway’s ‘Room’

    Actors were two weeks into rehearsals when the show, which was set to star the Tony-winning actress Adrienne Warren, was postponed indefinitely.Two weeks into Broadway rehearsals for “Room,” a show about a mother held captive with her young son, the first act had been fully blocked. Tickets were on sale. Critics had been invited.It was 18 days until the first preview performance, and on Thursday, actors were continuing to work through Act II. But then, inside the rehearsal studio on 42nd Street, a lead producer gathered members of the cast and crew to announce that a financial shortfall meant the show would be postponed indefinitely.“It just became pin-drop silent,” said Michael Genet, one of the show’s actors.The churn of Broadway machinery had ground to a halt. The producer, Hunter Arnold, explained to those present — including the star, the Tony-winning actress Adrienne Warren — that an attempt to save the show through dozens of phone calls to potential investors had been unsuccessful.“I said, very truthfully, that this is the most painful thing I’ve ever had to do in my professional life,” Arnold said in an interview on Friday. “We had spent the last few days doing everything in our combined power to try to save something that we believe is really beautiful, and failed.”Genet, who has been acting on Broadway since 1989, said he had experienced plenty of turbulence in the industry: One musical he was in, “Lestat,” shuttered in 2006 after 39 performances.“But I had never had the rug pulled out in the middle of rehearsal,” he said.“Room” had been scheduled to start performances on April 3 and run through mid-September.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Room,” adapted from a novel by Emma Donoghue, who later turned it into a film starring Brie Larson, had been preparing for its Broadway debut after premiering in London in 2017 and staging productions in Ireland, Scotland and Canada. Directed by Cora Bissett, the production, which was also slated to feature Ephraim Sykes and Kate Burton, was scheduled to start performances on April 3 and run through mid-September.Arnold, whose current shows include “Some Like It Hot” and “Leopoldstadt,” told the cast and crew — and soon after, the public — that a lead producer had decided not to “fulfill their obligations to the production” because of personal reasons.In an interview on Friday, Nathan Gehan, a Broadway producer and general manager, said he had decided to withdraw his producing company, ShowTown Productions, from being a general partner on “Room” because of a family crisis. As a general partner, Gehan’s company assumed the show’s financial liability, along with Arnold and the British producers who had shepherded the show from its overseas beginnings, Sam Julyan and James Yeoburn.Gehan said he had planned to continue to raise funds and do “boots on the ground” producing work despite announcing his intention to withdraw as a general partner on March 7. He said he believed that his company had enough financial commitments to “hold up our end of the bargain.” But in the days since, Gehan said, he and his producing partner, Jamison Scott, had been cut out of the process by the other producers; they learned of the postponement with the rest of the public.“To have to go through rehearsal and not have anything to show for it is just gut-wrenching,” he said.The show had been seeking to raise up to $7 million overall, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.In a statement, Arnold said that the exiting producer provided the remaining producers with a list of “interested parties” with regard to fund-raising, but that “it became quickly apparent that list was neither viable nor sufficient to close the economic gap we were facing.” They reached out to more than 200 contacts looking for potential investors, Arnold said, but could not find the necessary support.“We are still processing this turn of events and since this is ongoing, cannot speak to each statement made by Mr. Gehan,” he said. “Suffice to say, we do not entirely agree with his version of events.”The story told in “Room” is a particularly raw and emotional one, following a mother (played by Warren) who was kidnapped as a teenager and has been living in one room for seven years, raising a child she bore after being raped by her captor. Warren appeared to respond to the news about the show with a broken heart emoji on Twitter.The two child actors who play the young boy, Christopher Woodley and Aiden Mekhi Sierra — both of them anticipating their Broadway debuts — were told about the show’s postponement after their parents had arrived, Genet said. In the rehearsal room, some people cried and some hugged, but the conversation quickly turned toward ways they could get the show back on track.“People were hopping on calls trying to figure out who could help,” said Justin Ellington, the sound designer, who had been preparing to show the director the music and cues for the first act on Thursday. “It didn’t feel like people were like, ‘Oh, I’m missing out on all this money’ — that was not the talk. What I was feeling and hearing in the space was connected to the piece and telling this story.”Still, actors who had signed on for more than five months of work were suddenly looking at empty schedules. Arnold said he assured them they would receive their paychecks for the work they had done, though he cautioned that the checks could take a few days to clear because they were coming from an account at Signature Bank, which was recently seized by regulators as part of a larger banking crisis.A spokesman for the Actors’ Equity union said it was working to ensure that the production was following the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Arnold added in a statement that union company members would be “fully compensated on the terms of their contracts.” Baseline Broadway contracts for actors and stage managers include a stipulation that if a show is discontinued, the workers must be paid for the rest of the rehearsal period, plus at least two more weeks.In his statement, Arnold said he was “committed to creating comparable compensation terms” for nonunion employees.Even as the actors and crew members hold out hope for a new investor to swoop in, the bubble of excitement around staging a new show with a major Broadway star had been punctured.“I’ll just do my taxes I guess?” Ellington said. “I really haven’t thought that far.” More

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    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Trump’s New Lawyer

    Kimmel joked that Joe Tacopina “seems to have been born in the ashtray of Rudy Giuliani’s Lincoln Continental.”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.‘He-Hulk: Attorney at Law’Former President Donald Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday, where he defended his client and argued that Trump was not a liar, specifically in regard to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.Jimmy Kimmel jokingly referred to Tacopina as “He-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” saying he “seems to have been born in the ashtray of Rudy Giuliani’s Lincoln Continental.”“It looks like he holds meetings in the back office at the Bada Bing!” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ralph Macchio had better representation in ‘My Cousin Vinny’ than Donald Trump has with this man.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump is either going to jail for zero years, or 1,000. There’s nothing in between.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bye Bye, TikTok Edition)“The Biden administration is ordering the Chinese parent company of TikTok to either sell the app or face a possible ban. It is a bold move by Biden. If he bans TikTok, China will only be able to spy on us with literally everything else.” — JIMMY FALLON“Don’t mess with this man — he has no use for your addictive apps. Biden’s the kind of guy who can make it through a whole two-week vacation with nothing but a deck of cards and a print edition of Sports Illustrated.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingKal Penn ended his “Daily Show” run with a look into how young voters are being suppressed.Also, Check This Out“I didn’t think I was this brave, no sirree,” Dominique Fishback said about finding what it took to play a killer. “I’m from Brooklyn, I’m an Aries and all that stuff, but I’m very, very sensitive.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesDominique Fishback plays an obsessive fan of a Beyoncé-like pop star in “Swarm,” Amazon’s new series cocreated by Donald Glover. More

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    in Theater

    Review: A Pageant of Love and Antisemitism, in ‘Parade’

    Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond star in a timely and gorgeously sung Broadway revival of the 1998 musical about the Leo Frank case.You do not expect the star of a musical about a man lynched by an antisemitic mob to be his wife. Especially when that man, Leo Frank, who was murdered in Georgia in 1915, is played, with his usual intensity and vocal drama, by Ben Platt.Yet in the riveting Broadway revival of the musical “Parade” that opened on Thursday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, it’s Micaela Diamond, as Lucille Frank, you watch most closely and who breaks your heart. With no affectation whatsoever, and a voice directly wired to her emotions, she makes Lucille our way into a story we might rather turn away from.True, this alters the balance of the show as originally staged by Harold Prince in 1998, further tipping it toward the marriage instead of the miscarriage of justice. Also toward the rapturous score by Jason Robert Brown, which won a Tony Award in 1999. But since the legal procedural was never the best part or even the point of “Parade,” the enhanced emphasis on a love story tested by tragedy and set to song is a big net gain.It’s strange, of course, to talk about net gains in relation to such a horrible tale. But “Parade” has always been strange anyway, seeking to make commercial entertainment out of a violent history and, because he’s a victim, a hero of a nebbish.As Alfred Uhry’s book — also a Tony winner — relates, Leo, the manager of a pencil factory owned by Lucille’s uncle, is a misfit in Atlanta: a New York Jew but also a cold fish. In Platt’s highly physical interpretation, he is scrunched and sickly looking, as if literally oppressed by the gentile society around him. That Lucille’s family, longtime Southerners, seems warmly assimilated into that society makes their marriage, at the start, a curdling of cream and vinegar.Michael Arden’s staging, imported with a slightly different cast from the City Center gala he directed in November, rightly relishes such contrasts. He signals the primacy of the love story by starting, in the 1860s, with sex: a young Confederate soldier bidding goodbye to his girl. A foreboding Dixie anthem called “The Old Red Hills of Home” leaps 50 years forward to connect the white Christian bigotry that fueled the Civil War to the war against Leo as well.His troubles begin with the murder of Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle), a 13-year-old white employee who works, for 10 cents an hour, fastening erasers to pencil caps. Lacking conclusive evidence and in dire need of a conviction, the district attorney, Hugh Dorsey (Paul Alexander Nolan), railroads Leo by suborning testimony from many sources: friends of Phagan, a cleaner at the factory (Alex Joseph Grayson) and even Minnie, the Franks’s maid (Danielle Lee Greaves). After a sensational trial that cynically pits Jewish Atlantans against Black ones, Leo is sentenced to hang.The minimal set by Dane Laffrey is essentially a high platform on a low one, suggesting a witness box, a cell and a scaffold, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhen the first act ends on that awful note, we still do not know Leo well. His first song, usually in musicals a moment for ingratiation, is instead a bitter snit called “How Can I Call This Home?” His last before the verdict is “It’s Hard to Speak My Heart.” Whatever that heart really holds is further blurred by Uhry’s device of having Leo enact the false testimony of other characters, so we see him as a rake and a maniac before we’ve grasped him as a man.Arden begins to correct for that during the intermission, which Leo, now imprisoned, spends sitting onstage with his head in his hands. In Act II, as he recognizes his growing dependence on Lucille, she finally becomes real to him and thus he to us.It’s too bad that some of this enlightenment is achieved through huge elisions and license in relating what is still a contested history. Though it’s true that Georgia’s governor (Sean Allan Krill) opened an inquiry that led to the commutation of Leo’s death sentence — but only to life in prison — it’s doubtful he did so as a result of Lucille’s buttonholing him at a tea dance. Nor that she accompanied him like a lay detective as he reinterviewed witnesses and obtained their recantations.Even if true, it’s unconvincing here, presented almost as a series of Nancy Drew skits. Still, Diamond maintains her dignity, allowing the final phase of the tragedy — in which Leo, after two years of appeals that are summarized in one line, is kidnapped from his cell and hanged — to commence with the drama righted.It is never wronged as long as Brown’s music plays. In this, his first Broadway show, he demonstrates the astonishing knack for dirty pastiche that has informed such follow-ups as “The Last Five Years,” “13” and “The Bridges of Madison County.” “Pastiche” because of his inerrant ear for just the right genre to fit any situation, in this case including Sousa-style marches, work songs, blues, swing ditties for the factory girls, a dainty waltz for the governor’s party. “Dirty” because he roughs them up with post-Sondheim technique, scraping the surface to bring up the blood.Douglas Lyons and Courtnee Carter sing the mordant “A Rumblin’ and A Rollin’” as hysteria about the case grows.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd as one of the few musical theater composers to write his own lyrics successfully, he gives singing actors something to act. He also manages to achieve in a rhyme what would otherwise take a scene of dialogue. As the politicians and journalists foment local hysteria and national media interest in the case, he gives two Black workers in the governor’s mansion a mordant triplet in the song “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’”: “I can tell you this as a matter of fact/that the local hotels wouldn’t be so packed/if a little Black girl had been attacked.”That the Black workers (Douglas Lyons and Courtnee Carter) are otherwise barely characterized is one of the more obvious signs that the show’s book was written in the 20th century. (Uhry has made some revisions for this production.) Arden addresses this by keeping the ensemble as particular as possible, never letting it devolve into vague masses making generic gestures. And in minimizing the visual elements — the set (by Dane Laffrey) is essentially a high platform on a low one, suggesting a witness box, a cell and a scaffold — he keeps our attention on the people and what they sing.If actual history plays second fiddle to that — by the way, there’s a terrific orchestra of 17 players, just two shy of the plush original — current history steps in as a pretty good substitute. Not just in the guise of revitalized antisemitism, though the show’s first preview, on Feb. 21, was greeted by a small gaggle of neo-Nazi demonstrators.What struck me even more vividly in this well-judged and timely revival is the quick path hysteria has always burned through the American spirit if fanned by media, politicians and prejudice of any kind. When a chorus of white Georgians chants “hang ’im, hang ’im, make him pay,” the words can’t help but echo uncomfortably in the post-Jan. 6 air. And another song, a prayer for a return of the day when “the Southland was free,” sounds a lot like current talk of a second secession.Our historical wounds never really heal over. Though Frank’s death sentence was commuted, he was killed anyway and, as “Parade” points out, never exonerated. That case is ongoing.ParadeThrough Aug. 6 at the Jacobs Theater, Manhattan; paradebroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More