Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Lea Michele Returns to Broadway in ‘Chess’

      by

      The “Glee” star will join Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher next fall in a Broadway revival of an Abba-adjacent Cold War musical.The 1980s musical “Chess,” about a love triangle set in the geopolitically charged world of top-level chess tournaments at the height of the Cold War, will be revived on Broadway for the first time this fall, with Lea Michele playing one of the three starring roles.Michele was last on Broadway in 2023 in “Funny Girl,” whose fortunes she revived after stepping in as a replacement when the initial lead wasn’t working out. Best known for portraying an ambitious musical theater actress on the television series “Glee,” Michele will star in “Chess” alongside Aaron Tveit (a Tony winner for “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”) and Nicholas Christopher (a “Hamilton” alumnus who recently thrilled critics in an Encores! production of “Jelly’s Last Jam”).The show is the brainchild and passion project of Tim Rice, the Tony-winning lyricist of “Evita” and “Aida.” Rice collaborated with Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba on the music and lyrics.The revival was announced Wednesday, but the announcement did not include specific dates or the exact theater — only that it would be staged in the fall at a theater operated by the Shubert Organization. The lead producers will be Tom Hulce, Robert Ahrens and the Shubert Organization.“Chess,” set primarily in Bangkok and Budapest, tells a fictional story about two grandmasters, one American (Tveit) and one Soviet (Christopher), facing off at a chess tournament, joined by a woman (Michele) whom both of them, at various points, love.The musical, first staged in London in 1986 and then heavily revised for a Broadway production in 1988, has an ardent fan base, but the Broadway production was a flop, and the show has been reworked for subsequent stagings around the world.This fall’s production features another new book, by the screenwriter Danny Strong. The show will be directed by Michael Mayer, who directed Michele both in her breakout Broadway role, in “Spring Awakening,” and in “Funny Girl.”Mayer and Strong, working with Rice, have been rethinking “Chess” for some time — they collaborated on a 2018 concert presentation of the musical at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      ‘The Counterfeit Opera’ Comes Together Like a Madcap Caper

      by

      “The Counterfeit Opera: A Beggar’s Opera for a Grifter City,” which opens the summer season at Little Island on Friday, wears its influences on its sleeve.It draws not only from John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch’s “The Beggar’s Opera,” which is often credited as birthing the modern musical in 1728, but also that show’s 1928 adaptation, “The Threepenny Opera,” by Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. Indeed, many of the characters’ names — including the scoundrel Macheath and his paramours Polly and Lucy — are the same in all three works.But “The Counterfeit Opera” is also a “fake opera,” according to Kate Tarker, who wrote the book and lyrics. The story is still rooted in underworld figures. Now, though, they are a gang of modern-day burglars who use their plundered loot from places including the Metropolitan Opera, to put on a show.“These thieves are calling it an opera,” the show’s director, Dustin Wills, said with a laugh. “They probably don’t go to the opera very often.”“The Counterfeit Opera” has had a fast and furious gestation; Wills said it has been like “‘Project Runway’ for directing.” It started late last fall, when Zack Winokur, Little Island’s producing artistic director, approached Wills and the composer-arranger Dan Schlosberg, the music director of Heartbeat Opera.The “Counterfeit Opera” creative team, from left, Dustin Wills, Tarker and Schlosberg.Bess Adler for The New York TimesWe 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 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      The Patti LuPone Drama With Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis, Explained

      by

      The offstage tensions between three Broadway stars became public after a dispute over sound levels, an Instagram post and a much-talked-about magazine article.Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald are two of the biggest Broadway stars of recent decades. So when LuPone pointedly referred to McDonald as “not a friend” in a new interview with The New Yorker, it caused quite a stir.LuPone made the comment when she was asked about some supportive emojis McDonald added last November to a social media post by another Broadway star, Kecia Lewis. Lewis had accused LuPone of being “racially microaggressive” after she objected to the sound levels at her Broadway show.Here’s what we know.It began with a Broadway noise dispute.When LuPone was on Broadway last year, starring with Mia Farrow in a play called “The Roommate,” she grew concerned about sounds audible from the Alicia Keys musical playing next door, “Hell’s Kitchen.” Noise is a frequent phenomenon on Broadway, and is especially noticeable at plays, where the sound levels tend to be lower than at musicals. LuPone said that she asked for help from the Shubert Organization, which operates the theaters, and that it was taken care of.Kecia Lewis, who won a Tony Award for playing a piano teacher in “Hell’s Kitchen,” posted an Instagram video in November criticizing LuPone’s actions. In what she called an “open letter” about LuPone’s complaints about the musical’s noise levels, she said, “These actions, in my opinion, are bullying, they’re offensive, they are racially microaggressive, they’re rude, they’re rooted in privilege.”She added: “Referring to a predominantly Black Broadway show as loud can unintentionally reinforce harmful stereotypes.”What does that have to do with McDonald?McDonald, a founding member of Black Theater United, a coalition formed to combat racism in the theater world, added supportive emojis to Lewis’s Instagram post. While comments on the post appear to have been removed, People magazine reported at the time that McDonald “simply commented with a series of emojis, writing: ‘❤️❤️👏🏾👏🏾’. ”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

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      Her Books and Movies Provoked France. Will Her Plays Do the Same?

      by

      Virginie Despentes is pivoting to theater. Playgoers “really show up, even for demanding or radical works,” she says.Over the past three decades, Virginie Despentes has cemented her place as one of the most admired — and argued over — feminist authors in France. “King Kong Theory,” her 2006 book about sex, gender and her own experience of rape, sparked conversations around sexual violence in the country; her award-winning “Vernon Subutex” trilogy of novels, released between 2015 and 2017, drew international attention for its vivid depiction of misfits adrift in French society. (The first volume made the Booker International Prize shortlist in 2018.)Yet recently, Despentes, 55, has been quietly pivoting from books toward writing and directing for the stage. In 2024, she wrote the play “Woke” with three other authors, Julien Delmaire, Anne Pauly and Paul B. Preciado; in it, they confronted France’s reaction to progressive ideas on race and gender.Despentes directed the production at the Théâtre du Nord in Lille, in northern France, and now she’s back with a follow-up: “Romancero Queer,” which had its premiere last week at Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris and runs through June 29. In “Romancero Queer,” she explores power imbalances in the making of a stage show: Behind the scenes of a new production of Federico García Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba,” a fictional group of actors struggle with their older male director for greater creative control.While Despentes has directed several movies, including “Baise-Moi” (2000) and a documentary about pro-sex feminists, “Mutantes (Féminisme Porno Punk)” (2009), she said in an interview in Paris that theater has turned out to be a better fit. Shortly after “Romancero Queer” had debuted, she spoke about the art forms that she has tried her hand at: literature, film and theater. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.What prompted your pivot to theater?I attend a lot of plays, and I realized that theater audiences are very curious. They really show up, even for demanding or radical works, which made me want to try it. I feel good when I’m in a theater auditorium — and these non-virtual moments feel important nowadays. I’m not at all technophobic — I spend quite a bit of time online — but I enjoy this kind of counter-rhythm, away from social media. During performances of “Romancero Queer,” I sit in the back, behind the audience, and I have yet to see anyone take out their phone.A rehearsal of “Romancero Queer,” the new play by Despentes.Teresa SuarezWe 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

      Blue Man Group’s Longtime Home Will Stage Off Broadway Dramas

      by

      A commercial producer active on Broadway and in the West End has signed a long-term lease for Astor Place Theater with plans for shows there.For 34 years, Astor Place Theater, a humble venue in a historic building in Lower Manhattan, was occupied by a single show, Blue Man Group, which spun profits out of performance art.But Blue Man Group closed its New York production in February, and now another company will take a turn making art in the space: No Guarantees Productions, a venture established in 2017 that has put money into multiple Broadway and West End shows.“We love the location, and the theater is in fabulous condition,” said Megan O’Keefe, executive vice president of No Guarantees. She said the company hopes to present three to four Off Broadway shows a year at Astor Place, some of which it will produce, and some of which will be projects developed by other producers who would rent the space.No Guarantees is the latest for-profit company taking over an Off Broadway theater at a time when the commercial Off Broadway sector has been enjoying an unexpected rebound. Another example: Seaview Productions is now operating a Midtown Manhattan venue previously run by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater; the first show at what is now called Studio Seaview is “Angry Alan,” a play starring John Krasinski and currently in previews.“What we’re seeing more and more is that there are a lot of really beautiful shows that just are never going to attract the audience, and/or support the budget, that you increasingly need to put on a flashy Broadway show,” O’Keefe said. “And that’s why I think we’ve seen a real resurgence of interest and popularity in the commercial Off Broadway space.”The theater, with 298 seats, is still owned by some of the co-founders of Blue Man Group, but will be leased by No Guarantees, a theatrical production company.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWe 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

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      Colman Domingo’s Nat King Cole Play Explores the “Psychology of an Artist’

      by

      In November 1956, Nat King Cole was given his own variety show on NBC. It drew major guest stars and got good ratings, but was abandoned just over a year later because it couldn’t secure a single national sponsor; brands were too nervous about boycotts from racist viewers.“Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark,” Cole observed at the time.He couldn’t have been too shocked. Cole may have been one of the biggest pop stars of his time, charting 86 singles and 17 albums in the Top 40, but he was, after all, the first Black man to host a nationally broadcast program. (He referred to himself as “the Jackie Robinson of television.”) In 1948, when he moved into Los Angeles’s all-white Hancock Park neighborhood, a cross was burned on his lawn. A few months before the TV show debuted, Ku Klux Klansmen attacked him onstage at his concert in Birmingham, Ala., shoving him off his piano bench.Daniel J. Watts, left, as Sammy Davis Jr., and Dulé Hill as Nat King Cole in the show “Lights Out: Nat ‘King’ Cole” at New York Theater Workshop.Marc J. FranklinThose experiences and the story of the final episode of “The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show” in December 1957 is now the focus of “Lights Out: Nat ‘King’ Cole,” which is running through June 29 at New York Theater Workshop. Written by Colman Domingo, an Academy Award nominee for “Rustin” and “Sing Sing,” and Patricia McGregor, the theater’s artistic director and the show’s director, the play had a long gestation period, premiering in Philadelphia in 2017. It also had a Los Angeles run in 2019.Domingo described “Lights Out,” which stars Dulé Hill as Cole, as a “dark night of the soul” that explores “the psychology of an artist.”Though today he’s best known for his recording of the holiday perennial “The Christmas Song” and for his daughter Natalie’s technology-assisted duet with him, “Unforgettable” (from her Grammy-winning album of songs associated with her father), Cole was an astonishing talent.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

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      With ‘Dead Outlaw,’ the ‘Coroner to the Stars’ Is Getting One Last Act

      by

      For much of his early career, Thomas Noguchi spent his days as a civil servant toiling away in the basement of a building in downtown Los Angeles.But even in a city filled with larger-than-life celebrities, Noguchi, a Japanese immigrant, managed to become a household name. Because over a span of 15 years as the chief medical examiner of Los Angeles County, he inspected the bodies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate and many others to determine how they died. He was, as many around town called him, the “coroner to the stars.” And as such, he became something of a notorious star himself, delivering news that, he contends, people sometimes did not want to hear.“The public might not be ready, but I felt I had the responsibility to inform the public,” Noguchi, now 98, said in an interview at his home this month. “They might not accept it. But they actually heard it from the right source.”Now, more than four decades after he was demoted from his administrative post amid accusations of mismanagement, he is getting one last brush with fame. A fictionalized version of Noguchi pops up in several scenes in the Tony-nominated musical “Dead Outlaw,” and a new documentary about him, “Coroner to the Stars,” is making the rounds of the festival circuit. There’s even a new book.Thom Sesma singing the number “Up to the Stars” as Dr. Thomas Noguchi in “Dead Outlaw,” the Broadway musical about a long-lived corpse.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“With what I would find out from death investigations, the public and news people would be very interested in knowing what I feel,” he said.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

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      ‘O.K.!’ Review: When the Abortion Clinic Cancels

      by

      In Christin Eve Cato’s new backstage dramedy, an actress’s plan to terminate a pregnancy collides with the rollback of reproductive rights.In a shared dressing room of a theater somewhere in Oklahoma, an actress named Melinda is the first to arrive. It’s 90 minutes before the curtain rises, and to the keen-eyed stage manager, Alex, she seems not quite herself.“You look like you’ve been throwing up,” Alex says, getting it right in one guess, not that Melinda is about to admit that she is pregnant. She has an abortion scheduled, and no one needs to know.But in Christin Eve Cato’s new backstage dramedy, “O.K.!,” Melinda’s timing is on a collision course with the rollback of reproductive rights. The date is June 24, 2022, and the U.S. Supreme Court has just overturned Roe v. Wade. Soon the clinic calls to cancel Melinda’s appointment permanently, and the clear vision she had of her future clouds over with panic.“O.K.!” is about how Melinda (Danaya Esperanza) moves through that fear as the clock ticks down to showtime, with the help of her fellow actors Jolie (Yadira Correa) and Elena (Claudia Ramos Jordán) and their collective reverence for tarot-card wisdom. Also instrumental: the calming competency of Alex (a very funny Cristina Pitter), who herds unruly cast members like cats.The barely glimpsed show within a show is a nonunion tour of a musical called “Okla-Hola,” a parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s cowboy-Americana classic “Oklahoma!,” told from a Latino point of view. Melinda stars as Lori (a version of Laurey, of course, the farmhouse beauty pursued by two suitors), with the jaded, politically engaged Jolie as Titi Elder (a variation on Laurey’s Aunt Eller) and the high-spirited, Spanglish-speaking Elena as Ada Ana (the inveterate flirt Ado Annie). In a corner of their dressing room stands a scaled-down, rustic farm windmill, which will transform into the tarot deck’s glowing, 3D Wheel of Fortune. (The set is by Rodrigo Escalante.)Directed by Melissa Crespo for Intar Theater and Radio Drama Network, “O.K.!” blends a loving critique of the theater with a historically minded explication of threats to women’s health and autonomy, leavens it all with comedy and sprinkles it with the surreal. Tonally, that is quite a mix to pull off, particularly with the script’s didacticism working against its drama.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