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    ‘A Strange Loop’ Wins Best Musical as Tonys Celebrate Broadway’s Return

    “A Strange Loop,” a scalding story about a gay, Black theater artist confronting self-doubt and societal disapproval, won the Tony Award for best new musical Sunday night, giving another huge accolade to a challenging contemporary production that had already won a Pulitzer Prize.The soul-baring show, nurtured by nonprofits and developed over many years, triumphed over two flashy pop musicals, “MJ,” a jukebox musical about the entertainer Michael Jackson, and “Six,” an irreverent reconsideration of Henry VIII’s ill-fated wives, in a six-way race.“A Strange Loop” garnered widespread praise from critics; on Sunday night, Michael R. Jackson, the writer who spent nearly two decades working on it, acknowledged how personal the project was as he collected his first Tony Award, for best book of a musical.“I wrote it at a time when I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life,” he said. “I didn’t know how I was going to move forward. I felt unseen. I felt unheard. I felt misunderstood, and I just wanted to create a little bit of a life raft for myself as a Black gay man.”The ceremony — the 75th Tony Awards presentation — provided an opportunity for Broadway to celebrate its return and its perseverance, hoping that a dash of razzle-dazzle, a dollop of contemporary creativity and a sprinkling of nostalgia will help lure theatergoers back to a pandemic-scarred industry now in full swing but still craving more customers.The season that just ended was a tough one: It started late (most theaters remained closed until September), and was repeatedly disrupted (coronavirus cases obliterated its old show-must-go-on ethos, prompting cancellations and performer absences). With tourism still down, it was also short on audience.Patti LuPone won the Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical for “Company.” It was her third Tony.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Our industry has been through so much,” Marianne Elliott, who won a Tony Award for directing a gender-reversed revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical comedy “Company,” said in her acceptance speech. “It felt at times that live theater was endangered.”But in the glittering ceremony at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, a parade of performers celebrated all that went well: Theaters reopened, long-running shows returned, and an unusually diverse array of plays and musicals arrived to entertain, provoke and inspire theatergoers.The best play Tony went to “The Lehman Trilogy,” a sweeping saga about the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers banking business. Using three shape-shifting actors, contained within a spinning glass box of a set, the play journeyed all the way from the Wall Street giant’s humble origins in 1844 to its ignominious collapse in 2008. The show, written by Stefano Massini and Ben Power, picked up not only the Tony for best play, but also for the play’s director, Sam Mendes; its set designer, Es Devlin; and the great British actor, Simon Russell Beale, who thanked audiences for showing up, despite pandemic protocols and public health concerns.“You trusted us,” he said. “You came with open arms. It wasn’t easy at that point to come to the theater because of all those regulations. But you welcomed us.”“The Lehman Trilogy” won out against four other contenders, “Clyde’s,” “Hangmen,” “The Minutes” and “Skeleton Crew.”“Take Me Out” emerged victorious in the best play revival category, a particularly strong field that included productions of “American Buffalo,” “How I Learned to Drive,” “Trouble in Mind” and “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”Written by Richard Greenberg, “Take Me Out” first ran on Broadway in 2003 and won the best play Tony that year; this year’s revival, presented by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater, was directed by Scott Ellis. It is about what happens when a baseball player, portrayed in this production by Jesse Williams, comes out as gay; Jesse Tyler Ferguson picked up his first Tony for his portrayal of the player’s investment adviser, who is also gay.“Company,” a musical first staged in 1970 that wittily and sometimes bitterly examines married life, won the Tony for musical revival, besting a much-praised revival of “Caroline, or Change,” as well as a starry revival of “The Music Man” that, thanks to the appeal of leading man Hugh Jackman, has been the top-selling show on Broadway since it opened.The award for “Company” reflected not only admiration for the reimagined production but also respect for Sondheim, its composer and lyricist, who is revered as one of the most important figures in American musical theater, and who died in November. The “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was mentored by Sondheim, introduced a tribute to him, saying, “I stand here on behalf of generations of artists he took the time to encourage.”The ceremony was hosted by Ariana DeBose.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Tonys, hosted by Ariana DeBose and broadcast on CBS, honored not only shows, performers, writers and designers, but also the understudies who saved so many performances this season. And DeBose, who this year won an Academy Award as Anita in the Steven Spielberg remake of “West Side Story,” paid tribute to the season’s extraordinary diversity, saying, “I feel like the phrase Great White Way is becoming more of a nickname as opposed to a how-to guide.”She noted the season’s high volume of work by Black writers, which came about as producers and theater owners scrambled to respond to demands for more representation and opportunity for Black artists after the national unrest over racism during the summer of 2020. This year’s class of Tony nominees featured a large number of Black artists, reflecting the fact that work by Black writers led to more jobs for Black performers, designers, directors, and more.The season being honored — the first since the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close in March of 2020 — featured 56 productions, including 34 eligible for Tony Awards because they opened between Feb. 20, 2020 and May 4, 2022. (The others were returning productions, many of them long-running hits.)The Covid challenges were costly: 6.7 million people attended a Broadway show during the 2021-22 season, down from 14.8 million during the 2018-19 season, which was the last full season before the pandemic; total grosses were $845 million, down from $1.8 billion.The Tonys served as a chance for Broadway to try to entice television viewers to become Times Square visitors. But one challenge: Viewership for all televised awards shows has been steadily falling. The Tonys audience had a recent peak in 2016, at 8.7 million viewers, when “Hamilton” was a contender; in 2019, there were 5.4 million viewers, and last year, when the Tonys held a ceremony in September to coincide with the reopening of theaters, just 2.6 million tuned in.Michael R. Jackson won the Tony for best book of a musical for “A Strange Loop.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis year’s winners featured some Broadway veterans, including Patti LuPone, picking up her third Tony Award for her ferocious turn as an alcohol-addled married friend of the chronically single protagonist in “Company”; and Phylicia Rashad, winning her second Tony for playing a factory worker in “Skeleton Crew.” Among the other performers who collected Tony Awards: Joaquina Kalukango, for her starring role as a 19th-century New York City tavern owner in “Paradise Square”; Matt Doyle, who played a groom with a zany case of wedding day jitters in “Company,” and Deirdre O’Connell, who won for her remarkable lip-synced performance as a kidnapping victim in the play “Dana H.”“I would love for this little prize to be a token for every person who is wondering, ‘Should I be trying to make something that could work on Broadway or that could win me a Tony Award, or should I be making the weird art that is haunting me, that frightens me, that I don’t know how to make, that I don’t know if anyone in the whole world will understand?’” O’Connell said. “Please let me, standing here, be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art.”“A Strange Loop” tells the story of a Broadway usher, named Usher, who is trying to write a musical about a Broadway usher trying to write a musical; his thoughts, many of them self-critical, are portrayed by six performers, who each appear in multiple guises. The musical began its life Off Broadway, with a 2019 production at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions. After winning the Pulitzer, it had another pre-Broadway production at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, D.C. It had support throughout those nonprofit runs from the producer Barbara Whitman, who is now the lead producer of the commercial run on Broadway; she was also a lead producer of the Tony-winning “Fun Home.”The Broadway production, which opened in April, has seen an uptick at the box office since being nominated for 11 Tony Awards (it won two), but has room for growth: During the week that ended June 5, it filled 89 percent of the 912 seats at the Lyceum Theater, grossing $685,772, with an average ticket price of $105.“Six” and “MJ,” although unsuccessful in the six-way race for best new musical, are doing substantially better at the box office, and did notch some big victories at the awards ceremony.“Six” picked up the Tony Award for best score during the first minutes of the ceremony. Its music and lyrics were written by two young British artists, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who came up with the idea while undergraduates at Cambridge University, and who were discovered by a commercial producer following a buzz-building first run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The musical’s costume designer, Gabriella Slade, also won a Tony for her Tudor-style-meets-contemporary-clubwear outfits.“MJ” also landed key prizes, including for the lead performance by Myles Frost, a 22-year-old in his first professional stage role, and for the crowd-pleasing choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, who also directed the musical.The other contenders, “Girl From the North Country,” featuring the songs of Bob Dylan; “Mr. Saturday Night,” starring Billy Crystal as a washed-up comedian; and “Paradise Square,” about race relations in Civil War-era New York, appeared to be less of a factor in the competition.Simon Russell Beale won the Tony Award for best actor for his work in “The Lehman Trilogy,” which won best play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat first hour of the awards ceremony, viewable only on the streaming channel Paramount+, was hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough, both of whom are currently starring in Broadway plays — he in a revival of “American Buffalo,” and she in a new farce called “POTUS.” They began the evening with a Broadway-is-back tribute, written by Criss, extolling the virtues and challenges of theater (the song included a plea for no slapping, in a dig at the Oscars).A lifetime achievement award was given to Angela Lansbury, a beloved star of stage, film and television who was also a five-time host of the Tony Awards, more than any other person. Lansbury, who is 96, was not able to attend in person, or even to accept by video; instead the actor Len Cariou, who starred with Lansbury in the original production of “Sweeney Todd,” for which they both won Tony Awards, paid tribute to her and introduced a video of career highlights. Then the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus performed the title song from “Mame,” which was the show in which she won the first of her five competitive Tony Awards.The Tony Awards, named for actress Antoinette Perry, are presented by the Broadway League, a trade association that represents theater owners and producers, and the American Theater Wing, a theater advocacy organization. The awards have been presented since 1947; there was no ceremony in 2020, and last year’s September ceremony honored shows from the truncated prepandemic season.This year’s awards were spread among 11 shows, with none coming anywhere near the record 12 prizes picked up by “The Producers” in 2001. The biggest hauls went to “Company” and “The Lehman Trilogy,” each of which won five awards; “MJ” won four, and “A Strange Loop,” “Dana H.,” “Six” and “Take Me Out” each won two. Taking home one prize each were “Girl From the North Country,” “Paradise Square,” “Skeleton Crew” and “The Skin of Our Teeth.” More

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    Phylicia Rashad Wins Tony for Best Featured Actress for ‘Skeleton Crew’

    The actress, director and educator Phylicia Rashad, 73, won the Tony for best featured actress in a play for her performance in “Skeleton Crew,” which was also nominated for best new play.“You don’t come to this place alone. You’ve heard others say it tonight, and it’s true. It’s the work of many people,” Rashad said. “It’s wonderful to present humanity in its fullness and to feel it received,” she added.In the show, Rashad portrayed Faye, a factory worker who has been at the same plant for 29 years and is facing a significant bump in her pension after 30 years. Jesse Green, The New York Times chief theater critic, called it “a wonderfully ungrand performance,” in which she wears flannel shirts, big jeans, work boots and “a look of sour contentment.” He added that in scenes with her co-star Brandon J. Dirden, the two veteran actors “get to use every tool their years onstage have put at their disposal,” and audiences “can’t look away from the many things they’re doing at once.”In 2004, Rashad became the first Black actress to win a Tony for best actress in a play for her role as Lena Younger in a revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.” (She later reprised her role in a 2008 TV adaptation, for which she won an NAACP Image Award.) Last year she wasnamed the dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts. More

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    Best and Worst Moments of the Tony Awards

    With Joaquina Kalukango’s high notes and Billy Crystal’s lowbrow jokes, the Tonys celebrated Broadway’s return after a tumultuous season.The Tony Awards returned to Radio City Music Hall on Sunday for the first time since June 2019. And after such a roller-coaster ride of a year, the ceremony was a welcome chance to celebrate all those people (from understudies and swings to stage managers and Covid safety officers) who made sure the show went on again (and again). Ariana DeBose, the former theater understudy turned recent Oscar winner, was the host of the three-hour broadcast portion of the ceremony on CBS. But it was Darren Criss and Julianne Hough, hosts of the first hour of the ceremony on Paramount+, who delighted one of our writers with their endearing eagerness to put on a show. As for the awards themselves: There were a few pleasant surprises but voters showed that they were craving the familiar. Here are the highs and lows as our writers saw them. NICOLE HERRINGTONBilly Crystal during a performance from his show, “Mr. Saturday Night.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Schtick: Billy Crystal Makes Silly CompellingThe telecast was professional, smooth, well paced and bland. Part of the problem: the generally lugubrious choice of musical material. Another: the overly careful and inoffensively middlebrow tone. Which may be why one of the few moments that broke through the taste and torpor was Billy Crystal’s lowbrow schtick from “Mr. Saturday Night,” the new musical based on his 1992 film. Actually, the “Yiddish scat” he performed — nonsense guttural syllables and spitty consonants sung in the manner of an Ella Fitzgerald improvisation — has been part of his act forever, with good cause: It’s so stupidly funny you can’t help but fall for it. And when he brought it out into the audience, and threw it up to the balcony, he showed how precision delivery and command of a room can make even the oldest, silliest material impossibly compelling. JESSE GREENMichael R. Jackson accepting the award for best book of a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Mid-Show Relief: A Win for ‘A Strange Loop’For the first half of the ceremony, I was sweating over the fact that “A Strange Loop,” which had been nominated for 11 awards, hadn’t won anything. I was expecting the Pulitzer Prize-winner to make a full sweep, but once the broadcast was underway, it was clear that the Tony voters had been more inclined toward the predictable picks for the winners’ circle. So when “A Strange Loop” won its first award of the night, for best book of a musical, it was thrilling to see Michael R. Jackson take the stage to celebrate his “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway” show. Jackson’s boundary-pushing, thought-provoking script manages to be both hilarious and devastating, as well as wide-ranging in every sense of the word. MAYA PHILLIPSMallory Maedke, center, as Jane Seymour in “Six: The Musical.” Maedke, the show’s dance captain, replaced Abby Mueller, who tested positive for Covid-19 just hours earlier.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Shout-Out: Nods to Understudies and SwingsIn the weeks leading up to the Tony Awards, a buzz had been building — on various social media platforms — around demands that the Tonys honor swings, understudies and standbys. In a season often disrupted by Covid-19 transmission, these performers filled in for named players at show after show, sometimes at just a few moment’s notice.As the evening’s host Ariana DeBose noted in her opening monologue: “A show is put on by many people, not just the faces that you know and love.”No understudy could be nominated, but winners and presenters found ways to salute them. During the “Act One” special on Paramount+, the director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, a winner for “MJ,” shouted out “all the swings and understudies who kept us onstage this season. I bow to you.”During the main program, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, a winner for “Take Me Out,” thanked his own understudy. Patti LuPone, a winner for “Company,” hailed not only understudies, but also the Covid-19 compliance officers. And in the big production number, DeBose, took another moment, while being hoisted into the air, to thank the swings.Perhaps the greatest tribute came during the production number for the musical “Six.” Playing Jane Seymour was Mallory Maedke, the show’s dance captain, who had subbed in hours earlier after the actress who usually performs the role, Abby Mueller, tested positive for Covid-19. Maedke stepped in. The show went on. ALEXIS SOLOSKIDarren Criss and Julianne Hough during the “Act One” opening number.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest ‘Glee’ Alum: Darren CrissIt’s fitting that Darren Criss was one of the hosts at the 2022 Tony Awards: Before starring on Broadway, he got his big break in “Glee,” a series that was instrumental in bridging pop music and Broadway. He and Julianne Hough — a former “Dancing With the Stars” pro who didn’t miss a step even as her costume was coming off before the scheduled moment — had a sparkly showbiz quality peppered with an adorably enthusiastic nerdiness during their hourlong hosting gig of the “Act One” portion of the Tonys. And their opening number, written by Criss, for the Paramount+ stream, had more zest than Ariana DeBose’s opener in the flagship section hosted by CBS. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIAriana DeBose, this year’s Tonys host, sang directly to audience members.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorst Display: The Evening-Long AmnesiaImagining alternate worlds and stepping right into them is what theater people do. But there was some serious cognitive dissonance on display in the collectively imagined world of the Tony Awards ceremony, a four-hour celebration of a post-shutdown Broadway season that made it through thanks to stringent Covid-safety measures — most visibly, masks strictly required for audience members.Disturbingly, the picture that the industry chose to present to the television cameras at Radio City Music Hall was a sea of bare faces, as if Broadway inhabited a post-Covid world. In the vast orchestra section, where the nominees sat, there was scarcely a mask anywhere.A brass band from “The Music Man” paraded through the aisles; Ariana DeBose, this year’s Tonys host, sang right in audience members’ faces; and three winners from the revival of “Company” — Patti LuPone; her director, Marianne Elliott; and their producer Chris Harper — made mocking reference to a mask-refusing audience member at their show. Funny, sure, but they, too, were now barefaced in a crowd.For all the loving shout-outs that the Tonys and Tony winners gave to understudies, swings and Covid safety teams for their indispensability in allowing so many productions to go on, it was hard not to wonder about Broadway choosing a normal-looking TV visual over caution, knowing how scary it can get when positive test results start rolling in. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESBilly Porter during the “In Memoriam” performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesVanessa Hudgens’s big, gold abstract planetary earrings.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Look: Theater Stars Deliver Shine and SparkleThe Tony Awards aren’t exactly known for being a major fashion event, at least compared to the other awards shows that make up the initials of EGOT. But maybe it should be. On Sunday, we saw major stars in major looks, with the biggest trend being found in high shine and sparkle, befitting of theater’s big night.Just look at Joaquina Kalukango, who won the Tony for lead actress in a musical while wearing a golden gown dripping in gems, tied with an electric lime green bow — a dress that was designed, she said in her acceptance speech, by her sister.Then there was Ariana DeBose’s head-to-toe black sequined gown; Kara Young’s metallic two-piece ball gown; Utkarsh Ambudkar’s suit covered in pearly buttons; Vanessa Hudgens’s big, gold abstract planetary earrings; and Billy Porter’s space-age jacquard silver tuxedo. There were women who wore their crystals and beading like armor. There were men who channeled Michael Jackson (with fringed epaulets) and Elvis (in a high-collared, low-cut shirt) — bringing enough glitz, glamour and intricate embroidery to occupy several Broadway costume designers. JESSICA TESTAMyles Frost and ensemble members in a performance from “MJ.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorst Attempt at Nostalgia: Not So ‘Smooth Criminal’I have numerous grievances about “MJ,” the Michael Jackson jukebox musical, so perhaps it’s no surprise that I found the Tonys performance — the star, Myles Frost, and some of the company performing “Smooth Criminal” — a bit lackluster. The musical is inherently hollow; the opacity of Michael Jackson and his life of traumas and controversies make it difficult to find material compelling and cohesive enough to tell a story onstage. So the name of the game is nostalgia, and the show moonwalks by with the momentum of fans happy to see and hear some of the most iconic performances of Jackson’s career. But everything is an impression, with even the choreography restrained to the tried and true with little nuance and variation. The airless enormity and formality of the Tonys stage drained what little bit of charisma “MJ” might have otherwise had — though by the end of the evening the show was still a big winner, with Frost nabbing the best leading actor in a musical award. MAYA PHILLIPSThe Off Broadway veteran Deirdre O’Connell won best leading actress in a play for “Dana H.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Experimental Inspiration: Love for ‘Weird Art’Deirdre O’Connell’s win for “Dana H.”— which earlier in the evening presenters had referred to as both “Donna H.” and “Diana H.” — came as a marvelous surprise. O’Connell, 70, an actress of absolute passion and precision, has made her career Off and Off Off Broadway, enriching the work of two generations of playwrights, in works both traditional and very strange. (She is currently starring in Will Arbery’s “Corsicana” at Playwrights Horizons.)In “Dana H.,” she lip-synced to harrowing audio recorded by the mother of the playwright, Lucas Hnath. And in her acceptance speech, which came midway through a ceremony in which more traditional fare was typically rewarded, O’Connell dedicated her Tony to every artist who has worried if the art they are making would prove too esoteric for Broadway. She insisted that her presence should inspire haunting art, frightening art, art that no one else may understand.“Please let me standing here,” she said, “be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art.” So go ahead, writers and directors of Tonys future: Make the weird art. ALEXIS SOLOSKIBen Power accepts the Tony for best new play for “The Lehman Trilogy.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Spotlight: A Playwright MedleyOn typical Tony Awards shows, playwrights are about as prominent as animal trainers and child wranglers. (It’s a permanent embarrassment that they seldom get to talk even if their work wins.) This year’s presentation may not have heaped upon them the glory they deserve — they are, after all, at the heart of the entire enterprise — but it gave them a longer-than-usual segment that was also clever and insightful. Each of the five best play nominees answered a few simple questions about themselves and their work; their answers were edited together like a medley. What one word would Tracy Letts, the author of “The Minutes,” use to describe it? “Hilarious,” he said, with a self-serving twinkle. What is Lynn Nottage’s favorite line from “Clyde’s”? “A little salt makes the food taste good. Too much makes it inedible.” And how would Ben Power, the author of “The Lehman Trilogy,” describe a play about his own life? “As long as ‘The Lehman Trilogy,’ but with a happier ending.” JESSE GREENEnsemble members in the gender-flipped “Company” at the Tonys on Sunday night. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorst Trend: Rewarding Marquee NamesThe worst part of the evening was not a single moment but the fact that almost every time the most famous person or show won. It felt as if the voters were craving something familiar for the first full post-Covid Broadway season — even when that familiarity was draped in a seemingly (but not really) edgy concept like a gender-flipped Sondheim show (“Company”) or a fun retread of the Spice Girls (“Six”).There were two major exceptions to that trend: the Off Broadway veteran Deirdre O’Connell winning best actress in a play for “Dana H.” and Michael R. Jackson’s bracing “A Strange Loop” winning for best musical. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIJoaquina Kalukango singing “Let It Burn,” during a performance from “Paradise Square.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Heroine: Joaquina Kalukango Lifts ‘Paradise Square’“Paradise Square” is not the best musical. And that makes Joaquina Kalukango’s moving performance, as the show’s tough-broad-heroine Nelly O’Brien, that much more impressive. In an otherwise drab Tonys broadcast, the excerpt from “Paradise Square” brought some much-needed vitality to the stage. Beginning with an ensemble song and dance that showed off the musical’s jaunty choreography, the segment then turned into a solo showcase for Kalukango, who blazed through her character’s big number “Let It Burn.”Thanks to the camera close-ups (something we don’t often get in the world of theater) we got to see the particulars of Kalukango’s performance; her face seems to open up into a dauntless roar, and by the end of the song her whole visage darkens with tears. It’s no surprise that she later won the award for best actress in a musical; watching her perform is like watching the bursting of a Roman candle in a starless night — that kind of powerful, that kind of beautiful. MAYA PHILLIPS More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Old Man’ and Juneteenth Specials

    Jeff Bridges stars in a new thriller series on FX. And several networks air programs recognizing Juneteenth.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, June 13 – 19. Details and times are subject to change.MondayDEADLY FRIEND (1986) 6:15 p.m. on TCM. Two years after “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” the filmmaker Wes Craven released this artificial-intelligence fable about a young computer wiz (Michael Sharrett) who implants a microchip into the brain of his injured teenage neighbor (Kristy Swanson). The chip is meant to save her life — and it does, sort of, but it puts others’ lives in danger. (The story is based on a novel by Diana Henstell.) In her 1986 review for The New York Times, Caryn James praised the “unpredictable goofiness” of the film. She called it “a witty ghoul story, a grandson of ‘Frankenstein’ that plays off the conventions of recent teen-age horror movies while paying homage to the classic starring Boris Karloff.”TuesdayBrian Wilson in “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.”Barb BialkowskiAMERICAN MASTERS: BRIAN WILSON — LONG PROMISED ROAD 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). A reflection of the depth of influence of the Beach Boys singer-songwriter Brian Wilson, this documentary includes interviews with music figures as disparate as the Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins (who died in March) and the star classical-music conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Those interviews and many others, including ones with Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Don Was and Al Jardine, accompany an extended conversation between Jason Fine, the editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and Wilson, who drive around Los Angeles together discussing Wilson’s life and career.WednesdayElsie Fisher in “Eighth Grade.”Linda Kallerus/A24EIGHTH GRADE (2018) and LADY BIRD (2017) 5:45 p.m. and 7:25 p.m. on Showtime. Here’s a double feature with enough coming-of-age awkwardness to fill a few college-ruled composition books. “Eighth Grade,” from the comic and filmmaker Bo Burnham, follows a very online adolescent (played by Elsie Fisher) navigating her final week of middle school in suburbia; “Lady Bird,” from the actress and filmmaker Greta Gerwig, follows a high school senior (Saoirse Ronan) balancing school drama (in multiple senses) and a complicated relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf) in the suburbs of Sacramento, Calif., in the early 2000s.ThursdayTHE OLD MAN 10 p.m. on FX. Jeff Bridges, long an old soul (see “True Grit,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Crazy Heart”), is a natural fit for the title role of this new series — though he’s not often quite this imposing. He plays Dan Chase, a former C.I.A. operative who abandoned the agency long ago. When we meet him, he’s grizzled and living off the grid. But his past catches up with him, as pasts are wont to do, and he finds himself being hunted by an F.B.I. director (John Lithgow). Amy Brenneman and Alia Shawkat also star alongside Bridges, in his first regular role in a series.FridayQuinn Kelsey and Rosa Feola in “Rigoletto.”Richard Termine for The New York TimesGREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET: RIGOLETTO 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The Tony-winning director Bartlett Sher relocates Verdi’s “Rigoletto” from Renaissance Italy to Weimar Berlin in this version of that dark three-act opera. The production, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera at the beginning of this year, stars the baritone Quinn Kelsey and the soprano Rosa Feola as the jester Rigoletto and his beloved daughter, Gilda, under the conducting of Daniele Rustioni. Anthony Tommasini’s review for The Times was positive, with some caveats. “If shifting the opera’s setting from Renaissance Italy to 1920s Berlin was not entirely convincing, this was still a detailed, dramatic staging, full of insights into the characters,” Tommasini wrote. Rustioni, he added, “led a lean, transparent performance that balanced urgency and lyricism.”WATERGATE: HIGH CRIMES IN THE WHITE HOUSE 9 p.m. on CBS. It was through the mouths of CBS reporters including Walter Cronkite, Lesley Stahl and Dan Rather that many Americans heard of developments in the Watergate scandal — and about the infamous break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, which happened 50 years ago this week. This new feature-length documentary about the events takes advantage of the reams of footage in CBS’s archives. It also features new interviews with Stahl, the reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the F.B.I. investigator Angelo Lano and others, including Hugh W. Sloan Jr., a treasurer of President Nixon’s re-election committee who was a major source of information for Woodward and Bernstein.SaturdayACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007) 8 p.m. on HBO Signature. Paul McCartney turns 80 on Saturday. Consider tipping your hat (or your mop-top hairdo) to him by revisiting this oddball jukebox musical from Julie Taymor, in which the visually sumptuous love story between a Liverpool bloke (Jim Sturgess) in search of his father and a young American activist (Evan Rachel Wood) is peppered with Beatles songs. It’s a “phantasmagoria,” Stephen Holden wrote in his review for The Times. “Somewhere around its midpoint, ‘Across the Universe’ captured my heart,” Holden wrote, “and I realized that falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you’ve tumbled.”SundayEarth, Wind and Fire performing in New York last year. The group is on the lineup for “Juneteenth: A Global Celebration of Freedom,” which will air on CNN on Sunday.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesJUNETEENTH: A GLOBAL CELEBRATION FOR FREEDOM at 8 p.m. on CNN. Sunday is Juneteenth, and many networks have programming lined up to recognize the holiday. One of the highlights is this blowout concert, which is slated to include the Roots; Earth, Wind and Fire; Mickey Guyton; Robert Glasper; Yolanda Adams; Billy Porter; and many more performers. Questlove and the producer, songwriter and instrumentalist Adam Blackstone are the night’s music directors. Other Juneteenth-related programming throughout the day includes BET SPECIAL: THE RECIPE: JUNETEENTH at 1 p.m. on BET; a Juneteenth episode of the family show YOUNG DYLAN at 7 p.m. on Nick; and the 30TH ANNUAL TRUMPET AWARDS, which honor Black performers and other figures (this year’s honorees include the actor Courtney B. Vance and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia), at 7 p.m. on Bounce TV. 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    Tony Award Winners 2022: Full List

    The Tony Awards were held Sunday at Radio City Music Hall.The Tony Awards were back at Radio City Music Hall for the first time since June 2019. The awards ceremony, which honors the plays and musicals staged on Broadway and resumed its traditional calendar after a long pandemic disruption, honored work that opened on Broadway between Feb. 20, 2020, and May 4, 2022. (“Girl From the North Country” opened on March 5, 2020, just a week before theaters shut down for the pandemic.)Ariana DeBose, the former Broadway understudy turned Oscar winner, hosted the three-hour broadcast portion of the Tony Awards on CBS, which was preceded by a one-hour segment hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough on Paramount+. “A Strange Loop” won best musical and “The Lehman Trilogy” was awarded best play at a glittering ceremony celebrating Broadway’s comeback. Myles Frost won his first Tony for best leading actor in a musical for “MJ,” his Broadway (and professional acting) debut. And there were performances from some of the past year’s most prominent musicals: “Company,” “Girl From the North Country” and “Paradise Square,” among others. A complete list of winners is below.Barbara Whitman, center, accepting the Tony for best musical for “A Strange Loop.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Musical“A Strange Loop”Best Revival of a Musical“Company”Best Play“The Lehman Trilogy”Best Revival of a Play“Take Me Out”Best Book of a MusicalMichael R. Jackson, “A Strange Loop”Lucy Moss, left, and Toby Marlow accepting the Tony for best original score for “Six: The Musical.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Original Score“Six: The Musical,” music and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy MossBest Direction of a PlaySam Mendes, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Direction of a MusicalMarianne Elliott, “Company”Best Leading Actor in a PlaySimon Russell Beale, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Leading Actress in a PlayDeirdre O’Connell, “Dana. H”Best Leading Actor in a MusicalMyles Frost, “MJ”Best Leading Actress in a MusicalJoaquina Kalukango, “Paradise Square”Jesse Tyler Ferguson accepting the Tony for best featured actor in a play for “Take Me Out.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Featured Actor in a PlayJesse Tyler Ferguson, “Take Me Out”Phylicia Rashad accepting the Tony for best featured actress in a play for “Skeleton Crew.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Featured Actress in a PlayPhylicia Rashad, “Skeleton Crew”Best Featured Actor in a MusicalMatt Doyle, “Company”Patti LuPone accepting the Tony for best featured actress in a musical for “Company.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Featured Actress in a MusicalPatti LuPone, “Company”Best Scenic Design of a PlayEs Devlin, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Scenic Design of a MusicalBunny Christie, “Company”Best Costume Design of a PlayMontana Levi Blanco, “The Skin of Our Teeth”Best Costume Design of a MusicalGabriella Slade, “Six: The Musical”Best Lighting Design of a PlayJon Clark, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Lighting Design of a MusicalNatasha Katz, “MJ”Best Sound Design of a PlayMikhail Fiksel, “Dana H.”Best Sound Design of a MusicalGareth Owen, “MJ”Christopher Wheeldon accepting the award for best choreography for “MJ.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest ChoreographyChristopher Wheeldon, “MJ”Best OrchestrationsSimon Hale, “Girl From the North Country”Special Tony Award for Lifetime AchievementAngela LansburyIsabelle Stevenson AwardRobert E. WankelRegional Theater Tony AwardCourt Theater (Chicago)Special Tony AwardJames C. NicolaTony Honors for Excellence in the TheaterAsian American Performers Action CoalitionBroadway for AllFeinstein’s/54 BelowEmily GrishmanUnited Scenic Artists, Local USA 829, IATSE More

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    Angela Lansbury Honored for Lifetime Achievement at the Tonys

    Angela Lansbury, a beloved star of stage, film and television, was honored on Sunday night with a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.Len Cariou, 82, who starred opposite Lansbury in the Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd,” presented the award. Lansbury, 96, was not present to accept the award in person at Radio City Music Hall.The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus also sang “Mame” as a special tribute to Lansbury. (Read on for more about that show.)The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus perform a tribute to Lifetime Achievement Award winner Angela Lansbury.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“There is no one with whom I’d rather run a cutthroat business with,” Cariou said. “Angela’s extraordinary 75 year career was marked with many joyful moments onstage.”Lansbury first appeared on Broadway in 1957, in a farce called “Hotel Paradiso,” and in 1964 she starred in her first Broadway musical, “Anyone Can Whistle.” She landed her breakout Broadway role, starring as the free-spirited title character in “Mame” in 1966. She won her first Tony Award for that performance.Lansbury, center, in hat, appearing in “The Best Man” in 2012.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHer most recent Broadway appearance was in a 2012 revival of “The Best Man,” a play by Gore Vidal.In total, Lansbury has been nominated for a Tony seven times, winning in all but two instances. Here is some of what critics from The New York Times have said about those Broadway performances over the years:Mame (1966)“This star vehicle deserves its star, and vice is very much versa. No one can be surprised to learn that Angela Lansbury is an accomplished actress, but not all of us may know that she has an adequate singing voice, can dance trimly, and can combine all these matters into musical performance.” — Stanley KauffmannDear World (1969)“But for one minor miracle I suspect that ‘Dear World’ would never have seen the gloom of day. That minor miracle is Miss Lansbury and whether or not the musical is worth seeing — for it is extraordinarily tenuous — no connoisseur of the musical comedy can afford to miss Miss Lansbury’s performance. It is lovely.” — Clive BarnesGypsy (1974)Lansbury in “Gypsy” in London in 1973.Donald Cooper/Alamy“Most important of all, this new Broadway ‘Gypsy’ has brought over Angela Lansbury as Rose. Her voice has not got the Merman-belt, but she is enchanting, tragic, bewildering and bewildered. Miss Lansbury not only has a personality as big as the Statue of Liberty, but also a small core of nervousness that can make the outrageous real.” — Clive BarnesSweeney Todd (1979)“Her initial number, in which she sings of selling the worst pies in London, while pounding dough and making as many purposefully flailing gestures as a pinwheel, is a triumph.” — Richard EderDeuce (2007)“After an absence of nearly 25 years Angela Lansbury has returned to the New York stage. And she is so vitally and indelibly present that she even occasionally gives flesh to a play as wispy as ectoplasm.” — Ben BrantleyBlithe Spirit (2009)Lansbury in “Blithe Spirit” in 2009.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“But it’s Madame Arcati who walks — or rather dances — away with the show, as she has always been wont to do. Those who know Ms. Lansbury only as the bland, levelheaded Jessica Fletcher of television’s ‘Murder, She Wrote’ may not be aware of this actress’s depth and variety of technique.” — Ben BrantleyA Little Night Music (2009)“But there is only one moment in this production when all its elements cohere perfectly.That moment, halfway through the first act, belongs to Ms. Lansbury, who has hitherto been perfectly entertaining, playing Madame Armfeldt with the overripe aristocratic condescension of a Lady Bracknell.” — Ben Brantley More

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    Review: In ‘Spindle Shuttle Needle,’ History With Strings Attached

    With war as a backdrop, Gab Reisman’s lively comedy is content to hang out with a motley group of women at the dawn of modern capitalism.A siege is terrifying. It is profoundly disorienting. It is also, as Gab Reisman argues in her lively, quasi Marxist comedy “Spindle Shuttle Needle,” kind of a bummer.“I should be painting outside and going to book club!” moans Charlotte, a young woman of good family. “I should be visiting Dresden and studying Swedish.”Instead, Charlotte (Monique St. Cyr), who may have done something dumb with some sensitive diplomatic letters, spends her days hiding in the rough-hewed cottage of Tilda (Mia Katigbak), a weaver. Hanni (Zoë Geltman), Tilda’s daughter, and Jules (Florencia Lozano), an Italian refugee with a criminal past, also sojourn there. The time is late in the Napoleonic wars and the place is somewhere in or near Saxony. As the women spin wool into yarn and weave yarn into blankets, the sound of a battle rumbles just outside the wooden doors.“Spindle Shuttle Needle,” a winner of Clubbed Thumb’s past biennial commission, joins a jauntily postmodern company of plays that refract history through the insouciant lens of the present. (Watching it, on the narrow stage of the Wild Project, I thought of recent and semi-recent Off Broadway plays such as David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette,” Jordan Harrison’s “The Amateurs,” Jen Silverman’s “The Moors.”) The commission prompted writers to think through the work of the playwright Caryl Churchill, and Reisman’s comedy has echoes of Churchill’s early plays, like “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” and “Vinegar Tom.”But that comparison isn’t all that instructive. Reisman has a couple of big themes in mind — the transition from an artisan economy to a capitalist one, the role of women in war. But the Marxist analytics are pretty limited. And the depredations of war (embodied in the arrival of a young soldier, played by Seth Clayton) are never staged with enough realism to fully register. There’s a frisky refusal to reckon with what life might have been like in a besieged Germany two centuries ago and an incomplete attempt to suggest what any of this might mean to us now. None of which means that “Spindle Shuttle Needle” isn’t a very nice time.Under Tamilla Woodard’s direction, the play works best as a hangout comedy about the borderline witchy things that women get up to when they are left in close quarters and cramped circumstances, when they are left mostly alone. Occasionally, Reisman flirts with a plot. Will Hanni find her brother? Will Charlotte’s secret be discovered? Will Tilda, a loom genius, be permitted to join the all-male weaver’s guild? And hey, what’s that brand on Jules’s neck? Yet Reisman’s greater interest is in how these very different women fill their time and their stew pot, how they jostle along together.And so we get scenes in which they dose one another with herbal tinctures; they pick nits out of one another’s hair; they kill a chicken for dinner; they clean the pelt of a rabbit; they tell stories, like one involving a crow, a mouse and a sausage. (That fable is a little Aesop, a little Brothers Grimm, a lot Reisman.)Also, they spin, which is played here as a frankly erotic activity. Even Tilda’s instructions for handling the thread seem freighted with double entendre.“Wet your fingers then slide it along the twist,” she says. “Push and release. Push and release. Find the rhythm for yourself then keep it steady. Slide. You feel it?” Let’s just say that yes, Charlotte feels it.Katigbak is a treasure of Off Off Broadway, and remains so here, as does Tina Benko, who plays a rascally entrepreneur. St. Cyr, Geltman and Clayton are somewhat less familiar, and Lozano is better known from television. Each is given space and language to dazzle in the tidy confines of Frank J. Oliva’s stonework set, lit by Barbara Samuels, in playful, slightly silly costumes by Dina El-Aziz. The overall pattern of “Spindle Shuttle Needle” isn’t especially imposing, but the individual threads still shine.Spindle Shuttle NeedleThrough June 16 at Clubbed Thumb, Manhattan; clubbedthumb.org. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. More