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    Continuing ‘The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe’

    Lily Tomlin, who first performed this comically cosmic play, and Jane Wagner, its author, discuss a new production with Cecily Strong and Leigh Silverman, its new star and director.Should you ever have the chance to converse with Lily Tomlin, you don’t have to tell her it’s an honor. “Believe me, it’s not,” Tomlin said recently in her distinctive deadpan.At 82, Tomlin is not precious about her reputation or the esteem she enjoys as a comedian and actor. But she remains fiercely proud of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” the one-woman play that was written for her by Jane Wagner, her wife and longtime creative collaborator.“Search for Signs,” which had its Broadway debut in 1985, is a comedic and philosophical whirlwind in which Tomlin Ping-Ponged across 12 roles, including the sullen teen punk Agnus Angst; the feminist activists Edie, Lyn and Marge; and the wealthy, urbane Kate. Their scenes are framed and interwoven by the character of Trudy, an enlightened vagrant who believes she is in communication with aliens.Tomlin’s performance in the Broadway production of “Search for Signs” won her the Tony Award for best actress in a play. That production ran for more than a year, and the play became an emblematic entry in the careers of its author and its star; Tomlin continued to perform it in other cities, in a 1991 film adaptation and in a Broadway revival that ran from 2000-1.Lily Tomlin in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” in 2000.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Search for Signs” has become a treasured work to performers like Cecily Strong, the “Saturday Night Live” cast member, and directors like Leigh Silverman (“Well,” “Violet”). As Silverman, 47, said, “This play gives us a sense of purpose and a meaning while telling us all the time how meaningless it is. It holds us up and supports us and loves us. It cherishes the audience in a way that no other theater experience I’ve ever had does.”Now Silverman is directing Strong in a new production of “Search for Signs” that will be presented at the Shed. This incarnation, which is choreographed by James Alsop, begins performances Dec. 21 and opens Jan. 11; its limited run is scheduled to end Feb. 6.While they are still working through the play’s ambitious and ample material, Strong and Silverman said their preparations are testing them to their fullest extents. “There’s no plan to this,” Strong, 37, explained. “I said nobody else bug me until February — all of my time and my brain and my heart and my soul is here, and that’s where it has to be.”Tomlin and Wagner, who are executive producing, are content to observe these rehearsals from afar, weigh in when needed and reflect on what the play has meant to them. (Or simply to kibitz affectionately, as in one moment when Tomlin turned to her wife and audibly observed, “We’ve lived a long time, sister.”)Wagner, 86, said she was confident in the approach that Silverman and Strong were taking. “I have such a feeling of security, really, with the two of them,” she said. “But now that you mention it, I’ll start feeling pressured again, I’m sure.”Tomlin, Wagner, Strong and Silverman gathered earlier this month for a video interview in which they spoke about their individual and collective journeys on “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Lily and Jane, can you recount the origins of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”? How was it created?JANE WAGNER I was in a New Age phase. I was reading some philosophy and I began to be aware that I was being aware. [Lily Tomlin laughs.] That’s an insight that I hadn’t even thought about having.LILY TOMLIN I was on the road a good part of that time.WAGNER Which was very good for us.TOMLIN She would send me a load of pages every now and then. I remember the first packet I got, I was playing in Lexington and she sent me a huge stack of papers all about Trudy. Every line, one after another, was so observant and perceptive. I read them at a show one night and there was a raucous and wonderful response. When I read Trudy saying, “Frankly, I think they find us quite captivating,” I knew where the play was headed. But I had no idea how she was going to get there.Tomlin, right, and Jane Wagner in 2001 with their Tony Award nominations for the revival of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”Henry Ray Abrams/Agence France-PresseCecily and Leigh, how did you each discover the play?CECILY STRONG The first time I encountered it was in my library in high school, looking for monologues. I was very serious about being an actor and I remember finding this cover with a long crazy name. What could this show be? I looked at a couple of Trudy monologues and I wanted to do something like this. This is a stupid thought, but I had it: I’ve got to marry a writer. I need to have someone write this show for me. I certainly never thought it would be a possibility to do this.LEIGH SILVERMAN I saw it at the Kennedy Center [after the show’s original Broadway run]. I was 11. My mother took me and we were sitting in the front row. It really sent me on a journey to see a performance like Lily’s. It was radical — written by a woman, performed by a woman who played all kinds of characters. Lily was so masculine, androgynous, highly feminine — she was all of it, the full package. I felt like my whole being was rearranged and maybe for the first time put into place.Lily, you continued to perform the play for many years in different settings. Does it remain in your body from production to production?TOMLIN You have a lot of muscle memory from it. When you start working on it again — this doesn’t feel right, I must have moved over here — then it falls into place. It comes back to you very quickly.WAGNER I’ve gotten by as a writer with no muscles. All my life, I’ve never had muscles.TOMLIN She’s at an age where the muscles would come in handy.Would the play change depending on the time and place where you were doing it?TOMLIN In 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks, we opened in San Francisco. Jane used to collect a lot of old Whole Earth Catalogs from her hippie days, and she cited this quote from Whole Earth Catalog. I used to end the production in San Francisco with this same quote because I felt it was so meaningful. It’s anonymous: “Humans are finally the bits of earth that leap up from the planet’s surface, tell what they see to each other, and then die. The sum total of all this seeing and telling is the story of one planet waking up to itself.” We loved that. That’s how we felt at that time.Did you get protective when other people would ask to put on the play? There were solo shows and versions with larger casts playing all the characters.WAGNER We did once we saw one of the productions you just described. It was pretty awful.TOMLIN In the old days, the requests would come in and I would deal with the agent. He’d say it’s a good theater or whatever, and we’d let them do it. Sometimes they would send us a film of what they’d done.WAGNER That’s where it went wrong, I think. [Laughter.] I’m more easily beaten down than she is.TOMLIN That’s why we keep her from the theater. She stays locked in a hotel room and I go, “I’ll be back in three or four hours”WAGNER I’m thinking about us doing it when we had no producer.TOMLIN I was the producer!WAGNER Well, I didn’t know that. I’d send you pages and you’d do them or toss them.TOMLIN Very often in the development process, I’d come in from a night at the theater and I’d talk to Jane about some monologue. I’d say, “If you can just make it — blah blah blah.” Instead of just adjusting some small phrase, she’d just write another monologue. I had like six or seven drafts of some monologues in my head, and I would move sections around, trying to find what the key would be. I was so steeped in it, I was able to just put it out and fly with whatever I could fly with. That’s what an actor really hopes for.“Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin?” said Strong, who’s been rehearsing with Silverman at the Shed. Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesLeigh, what got you interested in reviving the play?SILVERMAN When we were in the darkest moments of the pandemic, I was feeling so lost. I have done a lot of solo plays in my career. Most recently I did “Harry Clarke” with Billy Crudup. We were actually supposed to do it again during the pandemic and it was canceled. I had this moment where I thought I never want to do another solo show, ever, ever, ever again. I had a conversation with the Shed and they said, “We want to reopen and we’re looking for the right theatrical experience to do that with. Do you have any ideas?” I said no. And then I had a second call and I said, “I really don’t want do another solo show. But I do think this play should be done, and this is the time.”How was Cecily chosen? How did everyone get comfortable with that choice?SILVERMAN When we were talking about people, very serendipitously, there was the finale of “S.N.L.” last season and I was watching Weekend Update, where Cecily dove headfirst into a giant box of wine and drank her way out. Watching that, I had this moment where I was like, she can do it. She had the combination of the stamina, the skill, the courage and deep, deep empathy. The wild curiosity to just be outrageously funny.STRONG Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin? But you hear Leigh talk about it and you start tearing up. It’s like, yes, yes, let’s do this. Just the way the show feels, physically — I get to go through this wonderful catharsis every time we run it.WAGNER Lorne [Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live”] has an uncanny ability to understand talent, and he believed in you so much. You wouldn’t have been on “S.N.L.” if you weren’t pretty great.TOMLIN I was totally for it because I wanted Jane’s authorship to stand. So often, I’m thrown into the mix as her collaborator. It’s just not true. Jane is a solitary writer and that’s all there is to it. She writes pages and pages, and if you asked her now to write about this bottle of water, she’d probably come up with 2,000 words.Cecily, you recently performed a Weekend Update character, a clown named Goober who tells jokes about abortion, that felt like she could have fit into this play. Was that piece inspired by your work on this show?STRONG Not consciously writing it. It came from, I’m going to take Ambien and I’m going to write essays to myself every night, or I’m going to remain frustrated and do weird things. Obviously this is something I wanted to get out. I kept posing it to people — I’m thinking it’s about a clown talking about her abortion — and everybody was like, okaaay. I certainly felt scared, and then I felt like I came closer to earning this show. [Speaking to Tomlin] To your bravery, your courage, and what a bombastic, badass thing it is.Jane and Lily, were you ever criticized for your depictions of feminist characters in this play? They are affectionately rendered but still allowed to be laughed at and joked about.WAGNER Oh, yeah. We heard that a little bit.TOMLIN What was there?WAGNER Do you want me to name names?TOMLIN No, you don’t have to name names.WAGNER There are always people that say you shouldn’t. One time somebody insisted we shouldn’t have a monologue that was a half an hour long.TOMLIN Oh, yeah, well, that’s old stuff. You have to make those decisions yourself. Don’t be influenced.WAGNER When I went to a consciousness-raising session — and I only went to one, because I was kind of in shock — I knew that I had to talk about it. People looking at their genitalia and everything like that, there was something satirical there that you could use. I still love the movement and believe in the movement.Cecily and Leigh, how do you begin to tackle a play like this, where one actor is responsible for this much material?SILVERMAN There’s so much that you put down one coat of paint and then you keep going.STRONG I don’t think I’ve ever taken on anything like this, where I’ve been so challenged. How do I put on a coat and I’m trying to sing and I’m trying to quote Buckminster Fuller? It’s so many things but the minute we get one thing right it just feels so good. I feel like my brain is changing a little.Do you allow yourself to have favorite characters within the play?STRONG Something new tickles me every day. Leigh just gave me a big cart of stuff and was like, put it somewhere. What do you do with this thing? It was a great way to enter into Trudy. The other day, I was talking to a plant. I was like, ooh, I like the sound of how that plant shakes.Do you seek notes or input from Lily and Jane? Do they just weigh in when they want to, like the voice of God?STRONG I’ll take anything I can get.WAGNER We like the voice of God concept. [Laughter.]TOMLIN We’re trying to come [in person].WAGNER I have trouble with my leg. Loss of muscle memory, I guess. SILVERMAN We send them video and they’re with us always. There’s a line in the play where Trudy says that she puts some time aside each day to do “awe-robics,” and I will say that so much of working on the play is an exploration of “awe-robics.”WAGNER They’re wonderful, the way you communicate. I think you’re going to do something that actually makes our brains crack. Which could be good for the run of the show. More

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    Broadway Grosses Drop 26 Percent as Many Shows Cancel Performances

    The surge in coronavirus cases comes at a tough time for the theater industry, which traditionally relies on the holiday season box office.The surge in coronavirus cases is starting to take a real financial toll on Broadway, just as the industry is attempting to rebound from its lengthy shutdown.The Broadway League, a trade association, said on Tuesday that its theaters brought in $22.5 million last week. That’s a 26 percent drop from the $30.5 million in tickets sold the previous week; in the week before Christmas in 2019, total grosses were $40.1 million.The drop in grosses is a reflection of the fact that multiple shows have canceled performances when positive coronavirus tests forced cast or crew members to quarantine and there were not enough understudies or replacement workers for the shows to continue.Last weekend, about one-third of all shows canceled some performances, and this week, multiple shows decided to postpone performances until after Christmas, including “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Aladdin,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Hadestown,” “Hamilton,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “The Lion King, “MJ” and “Skeleton Crew.”Plus, “Tina” canceled until Christmas night; “Jagged Little Pill” closed entirely; “Mrs. Doubtfire” canceled Tuesday night; and “Waitress” canceled Tuesday and Wednesday nights.Attendance also dropped, given the cancellations: 184,227 people saw a Broadway show last week, down from 240,602 the previous week.The resulting revenue drop is a real concern for an industry where most shows, even before the pandemic, fail financially. But the damage is not evenly dispersed — some shows that stay open are benefiting by selling tickets to people scrambling for something to see after their first-choice show canceled. This year the Broadway League is releasing only aggregate weekly grosses rather than breaking them down for individual productions, so it is difficult to see exactly how the financial ramifications are unfolding.Five other shows cited the pandemic shutdown in deciding not to reopen this fall — the musicals “Frozen,” “Mean Girls” and “West Side Story” and the plays “Hangmen” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Two shows cited the ongoing pandemic in deciding to close for good after starting (or restarting) performances this fall, then pausing because of positive coronavirus tests in their companies: not only “Jagged Little Pill,” which announced its closing Monday night, but also the play “Chicken & Biscuits,” which closed last month.The current crisis is coming at the worst possible time for the industry, because the holiday season is traditionally the most lucrative time of year for Broadway, and many shows depend on the holidays to make up for softer periods.Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said she does not envision the industry shutting down again, no matter how many individual shows have to pause. “I do not imagine a shutdown by us, unless every show has people with Covid,” she said. “We’re going to keep as many people employed as we can.”And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a news conference on Tuesday, was similarly shutdown-averse. “No more shutdowns,” he said. “We’ve been through them. They were devastating. We can’t go through it again.” More

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    Revisiting Childhood Wonder With Winnie the Pooh and Emmet Otter

    Our critic takes in two puppet-driven musicals in Manhattan. But with the Omicron variant on the rise, maybe kid-friendly theater is best consumed at home right now.“My, God,” I thought, perhaps 20 minutes into “Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Stage Adaptation” at Theater Row in Manhattan. “Why am I here? That bear couldn’t even be bothered to put on pants.”One of the small private sorrows of last year’s lockdown was that I couldn’t take my children to the theater, a practice I’d begun when I was still carrying them in BabyBjorns. With vaccinations newly available to the 5-to-11 set, I had just started to bring them back. When I’d booked our tickets for “Winnie the Pooh,” the Omicron variant was still mostly an abstract concept, fodder for late-night jokes and Twitter memes. But as we made our way to Times Square this weekend — passing round-the-block lines at testing sites and crowding into a subway car — it felt a lot more real.Written and directed by Jonathan Rockefeller, with songs borrowed from the Sherman Brothers and other music composed by Nate Edmonson, “Winnie the Pooh” is an unremarkable stage adaptation of the Disney franchise, itself an adaptation of A.A. Milne’s short story collections about a human boy and his fuzzy friends. Despite having always agreed with Dorothy Parker’s assessment of Pooh in her Constant Reader column — “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up” — I’d hoped that the show would seem worth the risks.The show follows Pooh, that pantless “bear of very little brain,” and his animal friends through four seasons. The seasons — falling leaves, snowflakes — are absolutely the best part. The scruffy full-size puppets are manipulated by denim-clad actors doing weird voices. (The actors control the puppets by sticking a fist through the backs of their heads, which is somewhat disturbing.)But it’s both much too much, when it comes to the acting, and not nearly enough in terms of story or stakes or reasons for being. At the performance I attended, Pooh’s mic broke, and one of Tigger’s feet disconnected. In the summer section, Pooh became stuck in the hollow of a tree, which was nice for a while.A toddler behind me happily narrated the goings on, but one of my children threatened to doze off throughout and the other kept kicking me with her rain boots, which suggests something less than rapture.The cast of “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” at New Victory Theater.Richard TermineTwo days before, we’d had a far more soothing experience, at another puppet-driven musical, the New Victory Theater’s “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” a stage adaptation of the 1977 television special, based in turn on the children’s book by Lillian and Russell Hoban. The theater looked as glorious as ever, though rigorous social distancing kept it less than half full. Onstage were a mix of enchanting puppets (including some really acrobatic squirrels) and humans dressed as animals. Set in Frogtown Hollow, a picture-pretty riverside community, the show tells the story of Emmet and Ma, semiaquatic animals eking out a hardscrabble life of laundry and odd jobs.When they receive news of a talent competition with a $50 reward, they separately decide to enter, though this means hocking Emmet’s tools (to buy a costume for Ma) and wrecking Ma’s washtub (to provide an instrument for Emmet). So it’s very “Gift of the Magi.” I question the wisdom of trading the means of honest work for a fleeting chance at fame. But then again I was a theater major, so really what do I know?Christopher Gattelli, the director and choreographer, and Timothy Allen McDonald, the lead producer, have gussied up the libretto nicely, giving the furry characters a bit more depth and enlivening the talent show. Mostly unchanged are Paul Williams’s superb songs, which draw lightly upon American folk, rock and bluegrass traditions. (Dan DeLange is the orchestrator, he and Larry Pressgrove also provided new arrangements.) Like his best work with the Muppets, Williams’s music is naïve without condescension, as playful as it is heart-whole beautiful. I had “Brothers,” “Our World” and “When the River Meets the Sea” flitting through my head for days after.Though it is a children’s show, it is not exclusively for children. (Our performance was attended almost entirely by adults.) The sets (Anna Louizos, with lighting by Jen Schriever) are charming and transporting, the costumes (Gregg Barnes) elegant. The message, which celebrates fellow feeling and mutual care, is especially welcome right now. I would have taken home every single squirrel.But I don’t know if you should see “Emmet Otter” or “Winnie the Pooh” for that matter, especially with children too young to be vaccinated, despite the care that theaters have taken with their Covid-19 protocols. The day after we saw “Emmet Otter,” the New Victory canceled the next several performances because a company member testing positive for Covid. (Performances resumed two days later.)And the day after “Winnie the Pooh,” we learned that my older child’s fully vaccinated teacher had tested positive, which meant that we would need to quarantine and then test. So it’s possible that we — and not that mom who was leisurely taking maskless selfies at “Winnie the Pooh” — were the real problem. Togetherness has its price right now.Happily, the New Victory has made “Emmet Otter” available for streaming. So you can visit Frogtown Hollow without ever leaving your home. Which isn’t what most of us want. But it may be what a lot of us need. Even a bear of very little brain — or a bear with a brain half-broken from risk assessment — knows that.Winnie the PoohThrough Jan. 30 at Theater Row, Manhattan; winniethepoohshow.com.Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band ChristmasThrough Jan. 2 at New Victory Theater, Manhattan; newvictory.org. More

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    ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Beats and the Universe of ‘Dune’: What ‘Arcane’ Is Made of

    Netflix’s new animated series is based on the popular video game ‘League of Legends,’ but the show’s creators added some ingredients of their own.A word of reassurance to those who have not played — or perhaps even heard of — the sprawling online game “League of Legends”: The new animated series “Arcane” may be inspired by it, but newbies can jump in cold and still be transported. Not only is the action breathless, but the visuals conjured by the French studio Fortiche are breathtakingly, beautifully detailed.The show takes place in a steampunk-ish world where magic functions as technology, with all the benefits and dangers this implies. The upper-crust denizens of Piltover control the so-called “hextech” and lord it over those scrounging in the depths of the city of Zaun. Stuck in the middle of a power play between haves and have-nots — further complicated by personal revenges — are the badass sisters Vi (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell). Their tormented relationship is one of the primary narrative engines in “Arcane.”The show’s showrunners Christian Linke and Alex Yee are creative directors with “League of Legends” producer Riot Games, but they have looked beyond the game world to create the series.In a video call from their office in Los Angeles, Linke, 34, and Yee, 38, discussed some of the inspirations behind “Arcane.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.‘Peaky Blinders’NetflixBoth men really like this stylish, violent British crime drama set in post-World War I Birmingham. “There is writing that’s realistic, where it feels like you just can step into that world, and then there’s a world where characters just sound so much cooler than anything we would hear in everyday life,” Linke said. “In ‘Peaky Blinders,’ there is such an art to those exchanges. I also feel like I genuinely don’t know what the characters will do, and I think that’s something where ‘Peaky Blinders’ really shines.”Yee singled out the way the show, created by Steven Knight, immediately gave a sense of its universe, something they tried to emulate in the “Arcane” pilot. “Really early on, we have this image of Zaun as this kind of thriving under-city black market,” he said. “The kids go down in the elevator, with this huge music drop — it’s dangerous, but it’s exciting.”‘Lord of the Rings’Pierre Vinet/New Line CinemaWhile working on “Arcane,” Linke referred to Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Tolkien epic so much that his colleagues joked that he should start paying up every time he mentioned it. “You want to have things that are somewhat grounded and it’s giving characters arcs, even smaller characters with limited screen time,” he said of looking to Jackson’s dense tapestry as an inspiration. “It’s not easy to create rules around magic and this and that, and still create a relatable character arc.”Yee, for his part, tends to look at “Dune” (“In my head I’m thinking of the book,” he specified) for inspiration, noting how it and “Lord of the Rings” helped him figure out how to design sprawling fantasy universes. “What both of those properties do really well is they take a look at the entire world and try to figure out how all of the elements play with each other. They also both straddle the tone spectrum really well.” “Arcane,” for example, brilliantly handles the balance between epic action sequences and intimate scenes, complex political intrigue and thorny personal bonds (including that between Jinx and the villainous Silco).‘Cowboy Bebop’SunriseMusic plays a big part in “Arcane,” with many original songs often providing a jolting, surprisingly effective contemporary counterpoint to the story — as when Curtis Harding and Jazmine Sullivan’s vintage-sounding soul song “Our Love” plays over a montage slowly revealing that Vi is going to sacrifice herself for her sister’s sake. A big influence on this approach is this delirious anime series from the late 1990s (which has recently been remade as a live-action show).“The grittiness of ‘Cowboy Bebop’ was an inspiration,” Yee said. “And the integration of music with the visuals. We quickly discovered that Fortiche can really accomplish a lot when you set them free with a little bit of music, just sort of chase whatever visuals they like. In Episode 7, the fight between Jinx and Ekko was very different in the script,” he continued, referring to a scene scored with Denzel Curry, Gizzle and Bren Joy’s “Dynasties & Dystopia.”‘Metropolis’TriStar PicturesHere Linke and Yee are not referring to Fritz Lang’s Expressionist silent classic but to Rintaro and Katsuhiro Otomo’s anime movie from 2001. “It’s a noir-ish setting in a near future where we have sentient robots and ships that feel like they can leave the planet, but it’s also a very stacked, layered city — a big part of the story is about ascending the different floors of the world,” Yee said. “There’s this sort of vibrance in the world that makes you feel like, ‘I don’t know that I want to be there,’ but you can’t take your eyes away from it.”That balance came into play when, for example, creating the street kids’ cool hide-out, which looks like a cross between a theater’s backstage and a semi-abandoned arcade. “We had to figure out how to make it look like a home, even though it’s dangerous,” Linke said. “‘Metropolis’ did some very cool locations: It feels like it’s this vertical maze and then someone took a little corner and made it there.”‘The Dark Knight’Ron Phillips/Warner Bros.There have been many iterations of Batman, from the silly to the tragic, and these swings were familiar to the “Arcane” pair. “There was definitely a parallel in, How do you ground characters from our game that in some cases are closer to the Adam West Batman — an animated character that never had to answer to more realistic story and world considerations?” Linke said. “What Christopher Nolan did with Batman became more about these grounded, emotional journeys and stakes.”A particular challenge was how to handle the character of Jinx, who is playful and colorful, and a loose cannon. “She couldn’t just be this cackling, loud character that if you see for the fifth time, you’re just going to be like, ‘OK, I got it now — is there anything else?’” Linke said. “We had to make sure that we turn game characters into real people.”Yee also points out as an inspiration the various ways the characters are “manifested,” as he put it, in “The Dark Knight.” In “Arcane,” the disfigured Silco is the kind of tortured soul whose distorted dreams become lifelong obsessions — not unlike the Batman villain Two-Face, for example. “What he really missed, or what he really wanted his entire life, was this feeling of being whole, of being respected and seen as someone worth your time and respect,” Yee said of Silco. “He just never had that.” More

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    LaChanze, at Home in ‘The Color Purple’ House

    The Westchester house where the Tony-winning actor lives is ideally sized for family reunions — and for spending time alone.“The Color Purple” house — that’s how the actor LaChanze refers to her five-bedroom home in lower Westchester County, N.Y. This has nothing to do with the exterior (it’s gray) or the interior (plum, lavender, lilac, fuchsia, mulberry and violet are underrepresented).But it has everything to do with LaChanze’s Tony-winning performance in the 2005 musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s celebrated novel. “Being in ‘The Color Purple’ was how I was able to buy the house,” said LaChanze, who is currently starring in the limited-run Broadway production — through Jan. 9 — of Alice Childress’s 1955 comedy-drama “Trouble in Mind.”Her other Broadway credits include “Once on This Island” (1990),“If/Then” (2014) and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” (2018). She won an Emmy in 2010 for the PBS special “Handel’s Messiah Rocks: A Joyful Noise.”Sixteen years ago, after considering various housing possibilities, LaChanze settled on the suburbs, because she wanted her children, Celia Rose Gooding, now 21, an actor, and Zaya LaChanze Gooding, 20, a college student, to have firsthand knowledge of lawns and trees. For herself, she wanted relatively new construction.“I knew I’d be living alone,” said LaChanze, 60, whose husband of three years, Calvin Gooding, a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, died in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. “I knew I didn’t know how do repairs. It narrowed my options, because many of the properties in Westchester are much older.”“My mother always stressed that when you walk in the front door you should leave behind everything from the world outside,” said LaChanze. “I’ve incorporated that feeling into our living space.”Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesLaChanze, 60Occupation: ActorGreat performance: “People love to watch me make fried chicken on Instagram. My mother used to say, ‘If you can’t make a meal in under 30 minutes, then you’re not a good cook.’”“I was lucky,” she continued. “I found a house that was built in 2000. I’m the second owner.”She was, perhaps, even luckier in what surrounded the house: abundant greenery and a yard that was hard by both a park and the Bronx River.“People can’t cross over, so it’s like my own piece of the water,” LaChanze said. “It’s quiet and scenic. That’s pretty much what sold me.”She has since added a firepit and affixed a set of wind chimes to a birch tree near the deck. They ring in the key of A. “I love that,” she said. “A lot of Negro spirituals are written in that key. You hear that chord? It’s just beautiful.”Unlike those chimes, the house needed some fine-tuning. It had style, for sure; it just wasn’t LaChanze’s particular style.LaChanze’s three cats have the run of the house.Tony Cenicola/The New York Times“There were gold-plated fixtures and I was, like, ‘Nooooo,’” she said. Out they went, replaced by nickel.Down came the columns between the den and the kitchen to create an expansive space, and bookcases were built on either side of the fireplace. (One of the shelves holds a steel remnant from the twin towers.) Marble countertops, a marble floor, a glass-tile backsplash in shades of brown and copper, and a few coats of butter-yellow paint were part of the kitchen overhaul.“I kind of went to work in here a little bit,” LaChanze said with a laugh. “All my friends and fans who follow me on Instagram know what my kitchen looks like.”You can easily tell that this is the residence of someone who works in the arts. The framed awards and piles of scripts in the office, the area set up for recording sessions, the show posters on the wall in the basement gym, all make the point.“I recently did Spike Lee’s documentary on HBO,” LaChanze said, referring to “NYC Epicenters 9/11→2021 ½”. “He gave me a copy of the poster for the show and signed it for me.”LaChanze, a fan of the game bid whist, estimates that she has some 100 decks of cards.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIt’s equally clear that this is the home of someone who cares about art. “I’m a little bit of a collector,” LaChanze said. “I call my foyer my international space, because I travel quite a bit and I have a bunch of art from a lot of different places” — a door from Nigeria, a drawing etched on the bark of a tree from Tonga, dung art from Rwanda.The foyer also holds a thriving fiddle-leaf fig, one of two that LaChanze, an enthusiastic gardener, bought this summer at Costco — for the bargain price of $69 each, she is proud to tell you — and has been tending ever since, first out on the deck, now by the stairs that lead to the second floor.“I just love it to death. Look how big it is,” she said, sounding like a very proud mother.And there, in a nutshell, you have the primary business that’s conducted at LaChanze’s house: nurturing.Here is where the actor’s large, far-flung family gathers twice a year for reunions, and where falling asleep on the custom-designed, brown crushed-velvet sectional in the den is encouraged. Here, too, is where a group of card-playing cronies comes every month for an evening of bid whist.“It’s something that’s big in my culture,” LaChanze said. “When I was young, my parents were playing with their friends, but then someone had to leave. They came and got me and taught me the game, so they could keep going, because you need four people.”Her affection for the game and its key component has stuck: She has amassed 100 decks of very elegant cards.“OK, so one night I was going down the internet rabbit hole, and I discovered this group of people in a card-collection club,” LaChanze said. “I joined, and every few months I get sent a new deck by a new designer. There are a lot of, I would say, biker dudes and magicians in the club, and it’s really a lot of fun to talk to these guys across the country about what we love about our cards.”“My mother used to say, ‘If you can’t make a meal in under 30 minutes, then you’re not a good cook,’” said LaChanze, who demonstrates how to pull off this culinary trick to her fans on Instagram.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesNear where LaChanze sets up the card table in the basement is a sofa upholstered in green velvet. “This is the first sofa my husband and I bought together,” she said, gently patting a cushion. “We were at Bloomingdale’s, and I was telling him that I’d love a good deep couch that we could spoon on and not feel uncomfortable. We both fit on this.”She added: “I’ve kept it so that my girls can have a little piece of their daddy in here.”When LaChanze comes home from the theater, she greets her three cats and then heads out to the deck, often with a glass of wine in hand, and listens to the wind chimes, or takes a walk down to the water or to the firepit.“I love my home,” she said simply. “My friends are telling me, ‘Well, LaChanze, you’re getting older. Your daughters are gone all the time. Why do you want to live in this big place alone?’”Alone? That’s not how she views it.She has her slice of the river. She has the stars. She has what she calls the heart-of-the-house light, a lamp in the dining room that is never switched off. She falls asleep every night to the lullaby of the Metro-North train whistle.“I love hearing that sound,” LaChanze said. “Because it reminds me I’m not by myself.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    ‘Hamilton’ and Other Broadway Shows Cancel Performances Through Christmas

    “Hadestown,” “Aladdin,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and more temporarily shut down amid a surge in coronavirus cases. “Jagged Little Pill” is closing for good.Several of Broadway’s biggest shows, including “Hamilton,” “Hadestown” and “Aladdin,” are canceling all performances until after Christmas, and “Jagged Little Pill” announced it was closing for good, as a spike in coronavirus cases batters the performing arts throughout North America as well as in London.The cancellations, prompted by positive coronavirus tests among cast or crew members, come at the worst possible time for many productions, because the holiday season is typically the most lucrative time of year.It has been a trying week for the performing arts.On Saturday and Sunday, about a third of Broadway shows canceled their performances.On Monday, “Jagged Little Pill,” a rock musical featuring Alanis Morissette songs that had paused performances on Saturday after positive tests, said it would not reopen at all. The musical had still been finding its financial footing when the pandemic hit, and then was rocked again by the Omicron variant; its producers said in a statement that “the rapid spread of the Omicron variant has, once again, changed everything.”And, with the Omicron variant driving a surge in cases, there were multiple Covid-prompted cancellations Off Broadway, as well as in Chicago, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and other cities.“Hamilton,” a sold-out juggernaut that had been the top-grossing show on Broadway, cited breakthrough Covid-19 cases in its company as the reason for the cancellation. The show has been dark since Dec. 15 — the matinee went on as scheduled that day, but the evening performance was scrapped — and the first possible next performance is on Dec. 27.“Hadestown,” a contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, also canceled performances until Dec. 27, as did “Dear Evan Hansen,” about a high school student with anxiety; “Ain’t Too Proud,” about the Temptations; “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a sequel to the novels, and “MJ,” a new musical about Michael Jackson that is still in previews. And “Aladdin,” which weathered a 12-day shutdown in October, announced on Monday that it would be closed until Sunday.Most shows are still running — there are currently 31 productions on Broadway, and at least two-thirds of them, including long-running hits like “The Lion King,” “Wicked” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” continue to perform. And a strong-selling revival of “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, started previews Monday night.But sporadic cancellations are now widespread, on Broadway and beyond.In recent days, many of the Broadway cancellations have been at large-cast productions, for reasons that are not entirely clear. But there are exceptions: On Monday, the Manhattan Theater Club announced that it was delaying its Broadway production of “Skeleton Crew,” a new play by Dominique Morisseau; previews, which had been scheduled to start Tuesday, would instead start on Dec. 27, “due to company members having tested positive” for the virus. Also Monday: the musical “Six” canceled a performance, citing “Covid breakthroughs.”In most cases, producers say, the positive coronavirus tests are associated with mild or asymptomatic cases, but the performances are being canceled because there are not enough understudies or replacement workers to substitute for those who must miss the show.The news of the last few days has been grim for those hoping the performing arts had finally moved past the devastatingly long pandemic shutdown.The timing was particularly terrible for the Rockettes, who last week canceled all remaining performances of their annual Christmas Spectacular, a holiday staple for many tourists. Other holiday shows were affected, too: A production of “A Christmas Carol” at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles canceled all performances until after Christmas, while in Houston two performances of the Alley Theater’s production of the Christmas staple were canceled as well. In Ontario, the Shaw Festival Theater canceled all remaining performances of “Holiday Inn” and cut capacity in half for “A Christmas Carol.”A performances of Handel’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall by Musica Sacra that was scheduled for Tuesday was postponed after a small number of positive tests, the ensemble announced.Britain has been dealing with a raft of cancellations — so much so that the National Theater in London simply shut down until January.Concerns about the Omicron variant are also starting to take a toll on future productions: The first North American production of Tom Stoppard’s acclaimed new play, “Leopoldstadt,” was canceled entirely; it had been scheduled to begin a seven-week run in Toronto on Jan. 22. And in Ottawa, “Hamilton” postponed a scheduled run by six months.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 5The holiday season. More

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    ‘A Strange Loop’ Won the Pulitzer. Now It’s Coming to Broadway.

    The playwright Michael R. Jackson describes his musical as “a big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show.”“A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning meta-musical, is coming to Broadway this spring.The show’s producers announced on Monday that the musical would run at the Lyceum Theater; they did not announce specific dates, but it is planning to open before the eligibility deadline for this season’s Tony Awards, which is expected to be in late April.The show is a self-referential musical comedy about a Black gay musical theater writer trying to write a musical about a Black gay musical theater writer. Unsparingly introspective and sexually straightforward, it was staged Off Broadway in 2019 at Playwrights Horizons in a collaboration with Page 73 Productions. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “jubilantly anguished” and said it featured “an assortment of the kind of infectious, richly harmonic melodies that would have your grandparents leaving the theater humming. That is, if they hadn’t walked out before.”The musical went on to win the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in drama, and was described by the Pulitzers as “a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities.”Since November, “A Strange Loop” has been running at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, where it received a rave review from The Washington Post. The critic Peter Marks called it “marvelously inventive” and “exhilarating.”Jackson said he was delighted to see the musical find a home on Broadway. “I think it’s significant because this show is one that made its way out of nowhere, and stuck to its guns and to itself,” he said. “That doesn’t happen often with new musicals.”And does he believe the musical can succeed in a Broadway dominated by jukebox musicals and adaptations of movies? “The challenge I laid out for myself is that ‘A Strange Loop’ is a big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show,” he said. “I believe we can entice audiences from all over to come take part.”The musical is directed by Stephen Brackett and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly; the Broadway cast has not yet been announced. The Broadway run will be produced by Barbara Whitman. More

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    ‘Emily in Paris’ Season 2: Looks to Watch For

    The Netflix show was derided for, among other things, an unrealistic approach to French dressing. What can viewers expect this season?After “Emily in Paris” arrived on Netflix last fall, the series — about a young American marketing wiz stumbling through life in a new city — was derided for portraying a fantasy version of French culture. Parisians bristled at the show’s inaccuracies and clichés, from people smoking in the office to the number of berets onscreen.“It’s the series that French people love to hate,” said Marylin Fitoussi, the show’s costume designer.Still, the show provided a welcome escape for those stuck at home. It was a warm bath for weary souls; a silly, romantic, candy-colored romp through a beautiful city untouched by the pandemic. The clothes played a part in that.Ms. Fitoussi had originally tried for realism with certain outfits. For Mindy (Ashley Park), an heiress moonlighting as a nanny and Emily’s first real friend in Paris, her instinct was to dress her in comfortable clothes and sneakers. But that changed after a conversation with the show’s costume consultant, Patricia Field, known for her fantastical costuming on “Sex and the City.”“They said to me the magical sentence: ‘Marylin, we don’t care about reality,’” said Ms. Fitoussi, who appeared on a Zoom call wearing a black turban, a gold collared shirt under a printed yellow jacket, and an array of enormous sculptural rings. “That is my mojo in life.”For Season 2, out on Dec. 22, Ms. Fitoussi and Ms. Field were determined to push the show’s fashions even further. Emily (Lily Collins) is navigating a sticky love triangle but settling into life in Paris, and her style has become more sophisticated, if no less eye-catching. Even Emily’s imperious boss, Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), is pushing the boundaries of French work wear, turning up in metallic suits and dramatic fringe.As these outfits show, more is always more in Emily’s Paris.From left: Lily Collins as Emily and Ashley Park as Mindy. In dressing them for the show, the costume designers leaned into Emily’s penchant for obviousness and Mindy’s new place in the spotlight.Stéphanie Branchu/NetflixA Bold Print and a Power SuitEmily has evolved beyond a certain Eiffel Tower print from Season 1, but obviousness remains her signature. For a party on the Seine promoting a heart-shaped jewelry collection by Chopard, she wears a white Anouki dress covered in red hearts. Ms. Field was not sold on the dress when Ms. Fitoussi bought it. “In the beginning, I just didn’t know where in hell I would use it, because it just seems so silly in a way,” Ms. Field said over a video call. “But along came that scene.”Ms. Fitoussi said she loved the puffy sleeves. “Pat hated the sleeves, and I said, ‘The dress without the sleeves is nothing. It’s just a tube with some hearts,’” she said. (The red-and-pink striped jacket Emily wears with the dress had to be custom made to fit over them.)Mindy, meanwhile, has joined a band, bringing her vocal talents to the streets of Paris. (Ms. Park has been nominated for both a Tony and a Grammy.) Her performance scenes gave the costume team a chance to go wild with glitter and feathers. Case in point: the shimmering green Zadig & Voltaire suit she wears to sing at the Chopard soiree, paired with sparkly Roger Vivier pumps.“We’re so used to having Mindy look very sexy, very feminine, very outrageous,” Ms. Fitoussi said. “I said, ‘Why not a suit?’”To give this look “the Mindy touch,” in Ms. Fitoussi’s words, they raised the glamour quotient with a vintage rhinestone necklace that streams down her throat.Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as Sylvie, Emily’s boss. Ms. Fitoussi had no interest in dressing her as the archetypal Frenchwoman, opting instead for bold colors and metallics.Stéphanie Branchu/NetflixA New Take on French StyleSylvie is the first to call Emily out on her ignorance of French culture and her American arrogance, reprimanding her for talking shop at parties and for treating Paris like her personal “amusement park.” But while Emily’s boss is in many ways the show’s archetypal Frenchwoman, Ms. Fitoussi had no interest in dressing her as such.“I know how to design the perfect Frenchwoman,” she said, rattling off “boring” basics: bluejeans, T-shirt, white sneakers, black or navy jacket, “beige if we are crazy today.”For Season 2, Ms. Fitoussi dressed Sylvie in several suits in shades of bright red and silver. (The silver one came to be known on set as her “Mick Jagger suit.”) One eye-catching office look includes a low-cut gold Saint Laurent button-down, a black Maje skirt with a thigh-high slit, and an Alaïa belt.“That is my idea of a business outfit,” Ms. Fitoussi said. “Black skirt, but instead of a white, black or navy blue, you put gold.”Jeremy O. Harris, center, as Gregory Elliott Dupree — a new character this season.Carole Bethuel/NetflixDesigning for a New CharacterSome of the most extravagant looks of the season belong to a new character, a fashion designer named Gregory Elliott Dupree (Jeremy O. Harris). He first appears in Saint-Tropez with a green and white Casablanca faux fur coat slung over his shoulders and a floppy Patou hat on his head (accessorized with a yellow Dolce & Gabbana flower pin).“The truth is, when Jeremy O. Harris walked in the door, he was dressed,” Ms. Field said. “I’m like, ‘Perfect. I don’t have any work to do.’”While Ms. Fitoussi has a special affinity for Gregory — “If I was a man, I would look exactly like Gregory Dupree” — she identifies strongly with Emily’s fashion sensibility. “I’m always very colorful, and I mix patterns because I was a textile designer,” she said. “In Paris, people call me ‘the parrot,’ call me ‘the clown.’”To her, the point is for Emily to retain her bold sensibility, even as she begins to learn the language and customs of her new city.“I don’t want her to look like an ordinary French girl,” Ms. Fitoussi said. “I don’t want to make a clone of what is French or what is supposed to be French fashion. If I do that, I fail.” More