Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 13 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      I’m

      by

      Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will star in a stage adaptation of the acclaimed 1975 film about a bank heist that goes tragically awry.“Dog Day Afternoon,” a classic New York film about an ill-planned bank robbery in Brooklyn, has been adapted for the stage and will come to Broadway next spring.The production will star Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, both of whom have won Emmy Awards for their work in FX’s “The Bear.” The director will be Rupert Goold, who is the artistic director of the Almeida Theater in London and who has received Tony nominations for two of his previous Broadway shows, “King Charles III” and “Ink.”“Dog Day Afternoon” tells the story of a group of hapless criminals who rob a bank, partly because one of them (a character named Sonny, played by Al Pacino in the 1975 film and to be played by Bernthal onstage) wants money to pay for his partner’s gender-transition surgery. The robbery turns into a hostage-taking and a confrontation with law enforcement. The film, directed by Sidney Lumet, was based on a true story; it won an Academy Award for Frank Pierson’s screenplay.The stage adaptation, a project that was previously announced in 2016, has been written by the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for his drama “Between Riverside and Crazy,” which was produced on Broadway in 2023. Guirgis has an ear for dialogue of down-and-out New Yorkers, and has written a number of acclaimed plays about working-class characters.Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach are best known for their work onscreen — Bernthal stars opposite Ben Affleck in “The Accountant” and “The Accountant 2,” while Moss-Bachrach’s credits include “Girls” and the upcoming movie “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”They will be making their Broadway debuts in this play, but both are experienced stage actors. Bernthal studied theater in Moscow, founded an upstate New York theater company, and has performed Off Broadway and at regional theaters; Moss-Bachrach began his stage career at Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts and has since performed Off Broadway and in California.The play is being produced by Warner Bros. Theater Ventures (Warner Bros. produced the movie), along with Sue Wagner, John Johnson and Patrick Catullo. The announcement on Wednesday did not specify dates or a theater. More

    • 75 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      ‘A Freeky Introduction’ Review: Pleasure Principles

      by

      NSangou Njikam’s latest offering is an ode to the erotic and the divine, set to winking R&B and hip-hop songs, in a new production by Atlantic Theater Company.In “A Freeky Introduction,” the writer-creator, NSangou Njikam plays a quasi-deity, M.C., holy hedonist named Freeky Dee. He is a poet delivering sybaritic couplets above the thrum of R&B tunes. He is a missionary preaching the gospel of freakdom: “All of us are aftershocks of the Divine orgasm.” (The Big Bang, Freeky argues, was an explosive one.) The result is a sort of hip-hop hallelujah — a work of interactive theater that’s funny and familiar in its embrace of Black culture, yet flattened at times by a lack of specificity.Freeky Dee is also a storyteller. He opens the show, now at Atlantic Stage 2 in Manhattan, with the tale of an eagle destined to fly, but born into a nest of bullying buzzards — a not-so-subtle allegory about one species that must resist the self-appointed superiority of another. Accompanied by DJ Monday Blue onstage, Freeky Dee is the sole performer who acts out these scenes, including his pursuit of a fine lady named Liberty (“French, with a splash of Africa” and wearing “a crown that looked like sun rays coming out her forehead” — you get it).Njikam, who wrote and starred in the lively and semi-autobiographical “Syncing Ink,” is a fan of salacious reinterpretations. Under Dennis A. Allen II’s well-paced direction for this Atlantic Theater Company production, he delivers them with the charisma of a folkloric trickster. DJ Monday Blue’s sounds and samples lend a rock-steady groove — a feast of R&B and hip-hop staples. Whenever Freeky Dee sets up for a spoken-word set, the standing bass and sax lines of “Brother to the Night,” from the movie “Love Jones,” ring out. It’s a knowing wink — sonic choices that affirm Black cultural memory as its own special canon.Audience participation also becomes a form of communion for Njikam and Blue. At times, we’re ordered to recite an affirmation-laden “Mirror Song” or do kegel exercises in our seats. The show is always edging the sacred up against the sexual, which set designer Jason Ardizzone-West reinforces, adorning square columns with divine contradiction: half evoke West and North African etchings of figures kneeling in spiritual offering; while the other lean into smut — peach and eggplant emojis, thirst drops, figures on their knees for a different purpose.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 38 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      In One Image:

      by

      In One Image ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ by James Estrin with Laura Collins-HughesOne of this spring’s hottest tickets has been the Broadway production of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney.Like the 2005 movie, the play transports audiences to the 1950s, when the CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow faced off against the communist-hunting Senator Joseph R. McCarthy on “See It Now.”In this scene, a team of journalists, including Clooney as Murrow, watch a recording of McCarthy condemning their work.The Banks of Monitors: Scott Pask, the show’s set designer, lined the proscenium with banks of black-and-white broadcast monitors. “There’s this level of immediacy when you’re closer to those,” he said. “But I also just think it frames an epic space in an epic way.”The Big Screen: “The physical decision we made is that we would look at small screens for the beginning of the show,” said David Cromer, the director. “We don’t bring on that big screen until about halfway through.”The Control Room: “There are switches and toggles and all kinds of technical equipment,” Pask said. “Probably most of it doesn’t work, but you see the dimension of all these objects. It’s like taking bits of technology … but then also adding in weird elements like little lights and literally Mason jars glued on the rim, stuck to the wall.”The Audience: “They’re there watching this thing that we made, it seems like with just full attention,” Pask said. “Heads are up. Those people that we’re seeing are within the first seven or eight rows, probably. And I have to imagine most of them are focused looking at George’s response.”In One Image‘Good Night, and Good Luck’June 4, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ETOne of the most meticulously textured, three-dimensional period sets on Broadway this season might instead have been conjured in two dimensions, on glowing screens.In the script to “Good Night, and Good Luck,” George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s stage adaptation of their 2005 movie of the same name, the authors envisioned a set using LED panels throughout.But the play’s Tony Award-winning director, David Cromer, had other ideas for recreating the 1950s broadcast world of CBS and Edward R. Murrow, the anchor of its news program “See It Now.”“They were sort of suggesting it, thought it might be cool,” Cromer said. “And I said, ‘Let’s do it the hard way.’”So he enlisted Scott Pask, an architecturally trained set designer and three-time Tony winner, to take on the challenge at the capacious Winter Garden Theater.Starring the Tony-nominated Clooney as Murrow in his face-off with the crusading Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the show is one of this spring’s priciest tickets. (Its penultimate performance, this Saturday night, will be broadcast live on CNN and livestreamed on CNN.com.)Pask’s set, which earned him another Tony nomination, is the container for it all — as in this photograph, which captures the April 6, 1954, broadcast of “See It Now” on which McCarthy, shown in archival footage, responds to Murrow’s on-air indictment of him. Studio monitors catch Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly (Glenn Fleshler), listening, while their director, Don Hewitt (Will Dagger), sits just downstage. Overlooking the midcentury Manhattan tableau is one of the distinctive arched windows of Grand Central Terminal, because that’s where the real studio was, upstairs.To tell this story each night at the 1,537-seat theater, the creative team had many details to consider, including ensuring that the audience didn’t lose sight of Clooney. “If someone misses him for a beat,” Pask said, “it’s only for a second.”James Estrin/The New York Times

      section h1:first-of-type,
      article h1:first-of-type {
      display: none;
      }

      section[name=”articleBody”] p:first-of-type a {
      text-decoration: none;
      }

      .nytapp-hybrid-article h1:first-of-type + div > p:first-of-type a {
      text-decoration: none;
      }

      header div > p {
      display: none !important;
      }

      header [data-testid=”reading-time-module”] {
      display: none;
      }

      p.scrolly-text-0 {
      font-size: 1.125rem;
      line-height: 1.5625rem;
      font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, ‘times new roman’, times, serif;
      max-width: 530px;
      }

      p#scrolly-0 {
      font-family: nyt-cheltenham, georgia, ‘times new roman’, times, serif;
      font-weight: 400;
      font-size: 2.25rem;
      line-height: 2.5rem;
      margin-top: -25vh;
      text-shadow: 0 2px 4px rgba(25,25,25,.8);
      }

      p#scrolly-0 em {
      display: block;
      font-style: normal;
      font-family: nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      font-size: 0.875rem;
      letter-spacing: 0.05em;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      p#scrolly-0 strong {
      font-style: normal;
      display: block;
      font-size: 0.9375rem;
      line-height: 1.25rem;
      font-family: nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;
      margin-top: 1rem;
      font-weight: 700;
      border-top: solid 1px currentColor;
      padding-top: 19px;
      }

      @media screen and (min-width: 600px) {

      p.scrolly-text-0 {
      font-size: 1.25rem;
      line-height: 1.875rem;
      }

      p#scrolly-0 {
      font-size: 2.9375rem;
      line-height: 3.4375rem;
      }

      p#scrolly-0 em {
      font-size: 0.875rem;
      line-height: 33px;
      }

      }

      /*scrolly dark overlay*/

      #scrolly-instance-1 > div:after {
      content: ”;
      position: absolute;
      z-index: 1;
      width: 100%;
      height: 100%;
      top: 0;
      left: 0;
      background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
      pointer-events: none;
      user-select: none;
      }

      /* share tools above sign up for science times*/

      .bottom-of-article div[data-testid=”share-tools”] {
      display: none;
      } More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Meet Rachel Hauck, the Set Designer Behind the Tony-Nominated Ship From ‘Swept Away’

      by

      “Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.The first time she saw the shipwreck, Rachel Hauck began to cry.It was during rehearsals at the Berkeley Repertory Theater for the premiere in 2022 of “Swept Away,” a jukebox musical based on the songs of the Avett Brothers about a 19th-century shipwreck off the coast of New Bedford, Mass. The cast and crew had assembled to stage a dry run of the show’s spectacular action centerpiece: a full-scale re-creation of the capsizing of the whaler, which overturns onstage to reveal a slender wooden lifeboat, where the remainder of the show takes place.As a feat of conceptual ingenuity and mechanical engineering, the moment was astonishing — a scene of such extraordinary scale and intensity that, when it occurred nightly during the show’s short run on Broadway last year, the audience would break into thunderous applause. It was too much for Hauck, the set designer, who watched that California dress rehearsal with tears streaming down her face.“It was the emotional journey of it all,” Hauck, 64, said recently, once again tearing up. “I don’t know quite how to articulate this, but it’s space and physical objects and emotion, and how those things lift.”Hauck’s grand vision of the sinking ship was so important to the impact of the musical that it’s impossible to imagine “Swept Away” without it. But in fact, nothing of the kind was suggested in the musical’s original book, by John Logan.“In the script, it’s like, ‘The boat sinks.’ That’s it. Literally,” Michael Mayer, the show’s director, said. “Rachel had this ingenious and beautiful idea of how to do the shipwreck. And this is the reason why you go to Rachel Hauck for these kinds of complicated shows where there’s a giant transformation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      Willem Dafoe Shines His Spotlight on Theater’s Avant-Garde Past

      by

      The Hollywood actor looks back on the experimental performances that shaped him at the Venice Theater Biennale.What happens when an avant-garde becomes history? The question came to mind during the opening weekend of the Venice Theater Biennale, newly under the direction of Willem Dafoe.As a co-founder in 1980 of the New York City-based Wooster Group, Dafoe had a front-row view of the experimental theater of his time. In Venice, he is turning the spotlight back onto it — at the risk of the event turning nostalgic.This year’s edition is a 50th anniversary celebration for an important edition of the Theater Biennale, an annual event put together by the same organization as the (much bigger) Art Biennale. In 1975, the Italian director Luca Ronconi convened a long list of revolutionary American and European ensembles for the theater event, including La MaMa, Odin Teatret, the Living Theater and the Théâtre du Soleil.Only one of them, Odin Teatret, is actually back this year, but others are being honored through talks and exhibitions. And the Wooster Group, which has its roots in that era, opened the festival on Saturday. The next morning, that company’s longtime director, Elizabeth LeCompte, received the event’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award.While the Biennale’s lineup also includes younger stars and emerging artists, this year’s historical dive is unusual. Theater festivals tend to be singularly focused on the present, always looking for new and emerging voices. Yet there is value in revisiting the work of artists who had a significant impact on 20th-century stages.Ari Fliakos, left, plays a fictional U.S. president who is losing his mind in “Symphony of Rats.”Andrea AvezzùWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      How the ‘Purpose’ Writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Cast Juggled Revisions

      by

      Ahead of the Tony Awards, the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the acclaimed ensemble reflected on the challenges of balancing the many script revisions.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Tony-nominated play “Purpose,” set in the Chicago home of a family of Black upper-class civil rights leaders, seems, at first, to be inspired by the political drama involving the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s clan. But those assumptions are upended by the play’s highly original take on the themes of sacrifice, succession, asexuality and spirituality.The family saga, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, showcases even more of the vivid language, spitfire dialogue and sweeping sense of American history that garnered Jacobs-Jenkins a Tony Award last year for “Appropriate.” And like that production, this play’s ensemble has been nominated for multiple acting awards — five in all.Originally staged in 2023 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, and directed by Phylicia Rashad, “Purpose” was revised, refined and expanded throughout its Broadway preview period. Jacobs-Jenkins readily admits that this process is not unusual for him, much less the writers he has studied intently, like August Wilson or Tennessee Williams. On a recent afternoon, however, a conversation about his collaboration with the cast turned lively with Jacobs-Jenkins calling it “family therapy.”We were sitting on the Helen Hayes Theater stage — at the dining-room table where the play’s most memorable fight plays out — with the show’s six cast members, Harry Lennix, who plays the patriarch and preacher Solomon Jasper; LaTanya Richardson Jackson, as the pragmatic and perspicacious matriarch Claudine Jasper; Jon Michael Hill, as the narrator and the monastic younger son, Nazareth; Glenn Davis, as the beguiling older son, Junior; Alana Arenas, as his windstorm of a wife, Morgan; and Kara Young, who plays Nazareth’s naïve friend Aziza. (Arenas, Davis and Hill are all the Steppenwolf members around whom Jacobs-Jenkins originally conceived of the play.)Purpose Broadway“This is so naked,” Jacobs-Jenkins said, “because I never had this conversation in front of you all before. I’ve said all this to individual journalists.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Marjorie Prime’ and ‘Becky Shaw’ Are Coming to Broadway This Season

      by

      Second Stage Theater, a nonprofit, will put on the two plays, both of which were Pulitzer finalists, at its Helen Hayes Theater.Second Stage Theater, one of the four nonprofits with Broadway houses, said it would present the plays “Marjorie Prime” and “Becky Shaw,” both of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in drama, at its Helen Hayes Theater this season.The organization, beginning the first season programmed by its new artistic director, Evan Cabnet, said that it would continue its focus on work by contemporary American writers.“Marjorie Prime,” written by Jordan Harrison, is about an older woman whose companion is a hologram of her dead husband fueled by artificial intelligence. The play was staged by Center Theater Group in Los Angeles in 2014, then by Playwrights Horizons in New York in 2015, and was adapted into a movie in 2017. Ben Brantley, then a theater critic for The New York Times, called the play “elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling”; the Pulitzer board described it as “a sly and surprising work about technology and artificial intelligence told through images and ideas that resonate.”The new production will be directed by Anne Kauffman, who also directed the Off Broadway production. It is scheduled to begin previews on Nov. 20 and to open on Dec. 8.“Becky Shaw,” written by Gina Gionfriddo, is a dark comedy about a bad date. The play was staged at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky., in 2008, and then opened at Second Stage’s Off Broadway theater in 2009. Charles Isherwood, then a theater critic for The Times, called the play “as engrossing as it is ferociously funny, like a big box of fireworks fizzing and crackling across the stage from its first moments to its last”; the Pulitzer board described it as “a jarring comedy that examines family and romantic relationships with a lacerating wit while eschewing easy answers and pat resolutions.”The new production will be directed by Trip Cullman, beginning previews on March 18 and opening on April 8.Second Stage did not announce casting for either play. The nonprofit organization said its new season would also include three Off Broadway plays: “Meet the Cartozians,” written by Talene Monahon and directed by David Cromer; “Meat Suit,” written and directed by Aya Ogawa; and a revival of “The Receptionist,” a 2007 play written by Adam Bock. All three will be staged at the Pershing Square Signature Center, where Second Stage has presented its Off Broadway work since giving up its lease on the Tony Kiser Theater. More

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Beetlejuice’ Is Coming Back to Broadway

      by

      The national tour production will haunt the Palace Theater for 13 weeks, beginning Oct. 8.“Beetlejuice” isn’t dead quite yet.The national tour production of the fan-favorite musical comedy, which has had two previous Broadway runs in 2019-20 and 2022-23, will head to the New York stage this fall, producers announced Tuesday.The show, which is adapted from Tim Burton’s 1988 film and tells the story of a goth girl and a pushy poltergeist, is set to play the Palace Theater for 13 weeks, beginning Oct. 8 and running through Jan. 3, 2026. Casting will be announced at a later date.In his review of the original Broadway production, which starred Alex Brightman as the titular ghoul in a striped suit, The New York Times’s Ben Brantley praised Brightman’s performance and the “jaw-droppingly well-appointed gothic funhouse set” by the set designer David Korins (“Hamilton”), though he lamented that the show “so overstuffs itself with gags, one-liners and visual diversions that you shut down from sensory overload.”No matter: The musical became a fan favorite, with people dressing in costume, lip-syncing to the cast recording on TikTok and showering the show’s cast with fan art.With a book by Scott Brown and Anthony King, music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect, and direction by Alex Timbers (who won a Tony Award for directing “Moulin Rouge!”), the stage production was nominated for eight Tony Awards, but won none.“Beetlejuice” is having a bit of a cultural moment: A popular sequel film, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” also directed by Burton, was released last year, more than three decades after the original, which starred Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice), Alec Baldwin (Adam Maitland), Catherine O’Hara (Delia Deetz) and a young Winona Ryder (Lydia Deetz).The national tour production, which began performances in 2022, has played 88 cities over the last two and a half years. The musical has also had productions in Tokyo; Seoul; and Melbourne, Australia; and is heading soon to Sydney. More