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      Trump’s Kennedy Center Comes Into Focus With Theater and Dance Plans

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      Some big shows and troupes will perform, while others will stay away. And in a shift, the center will present some Broadway shows with nonunion casts.As the Kennedy Center reinvents itself for the Donald J. Trump era, it announced on Monday that its next season would feature some big names in theater and dance, but also some conspicuous absences. And, in a break with the past, the center said it would present several touring Broadway shows with nonunion casts.Artists have been divided about whether to perform at the center since President Trump became its chairman after purging its previously bipartisan board of members appointed by Democrats.The upcoming theater season will feature “The Outsiders,” which won last year’s Tony Award for best musical, but not “Hamilton,” which canceled a planned run there, citing dismay over Mr. Trump’s takeover. And its dance season will include performances by American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet but not by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, an annual fixture at the center in recent years, which said in a statement that it would pursue another opportunity next season.Mr. Trump, who continues to play a big role in trying to reshape the center, was expected to meet Monday evening with Kennedy Center board members and executives for dinner at the White House. He attended a board meeting at the center in March, recently requested $257 million from Congress to help with capital repairs and plans to attend a gala fund-raiser performance of “Les Misérables” in June.The upcoming theater season underscores some of the changes unfolding at the center. In addition to “The Outsiders” it will include tours of “Back to the Future,” “Moulin Rouge!” and “Spamalot,” all of which feature unionized casts, as has been standard at the center in recent years.But two of the tours coming to the Kennedy Center next season will feature nonunion casts, which tend to be paid less and cost less to present: “Chicago” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.”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

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      ‘We Are Gathered’ Promises to Love, Honor and Cherish

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      When JaDonna Harris and Marquian Harris married in 2015, they did it alone, before a justice of the peace. As their 10th anniversary approached, they contemplated a do-over that would include friends and family. But the cost was an issue, as was agreeing on a venue. Then JaDonna Harris received an email from Arena Stage. An upcoming play was looking for real couples interested in getting married or renewing their vows. She and her wife replied immediately.“We were like, this is kismet,” JaDonna Harris recalled.That play, “We Are Gathered,” is a new work by Tarell Alvin McCraney that began Friday, overlapping with Washington’s World Pride festivities. A celebration of love, each performance will culminate with what Arena Stage is calling “Love Takes Center Stage,” an immersive experience in which one or more couples will join the actors for a real marriage ceremony or vow renewal. One of the stars, Craig Wallace, has been ordained. Over the course of the show’s 30 scheduled performances, several dozen couples will participate. After each show, Arena Stage will hold a reception with cake, champagne and dancing.“We’re going to be discovering a great deal each night,” said the director Kent Gash, right, with the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney.Maansi Srivastava for The New York TimesThe Harrises can’t wait.“We are happy to celebrate queer love, to celebrate the love in general all over the world and everybody’s ability to find a person that they are attached to,” JaDonna Harris said. “That’s all that matters.”McCraney began to dream up “We Are Gathered” during World Pride in Sydney, Australia, in 2023. A theater there was staging a revival of his 2012 play “Choir Boy,” a drama about a young gay man at an all-Black preparatory school. McCraney admired the production, but he wished that the play, which deals with anti-gay prejudice, didn’t feel quite so relevant. He decided that by the time the next World Pride came around, two years later, he would offer actors a script that felt more playful, more joyful.In searching for a subject, McCraney, now 44 and the artistic director of the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, kept returning to the idea of marriage. When he was growing up, marriage wasn’t available to gay men, but a 2015 Supreme Court decision had changed that. Now friends were asking him why he wasn’t married and he was beginning to ask that question of himself. Recent opposition to gay rights and transgender rights — including book bans and a Florida law nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay” — had made that question feel more urgent. “Those things were happening pretty regularly and beginning to remind me there isn’t a lot of time and nothing is promised,” he said. “I decided, OK, I’m going to find out what this means to me.”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

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      ‘Creditors’ Review: Who Pays the Price for a Bankrupt Marriage?

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      Liev Schreiber stars in an update of the bleak Strindberg classic about a husband and wife and the man who seeks to destroy them.If a man hates women but also everyone else, is he still a misogynist?I ask for an acquaintance: August Strindberg, the Swedish playwright whose three tempestuous marriages were not enough to exhaust his fury at wives, muses, temptresses and others. Also, it would seem, at himself.His excess of rage found its way into plays — “Miss Julie” (1888) and “The Dance of Death” (1900) are today the most famous — that feature male characters only slightly less awful than the women in their lives. That ought to be unbearable, and not just as an affront to feminism; his pox-on-both-your-genders cussedness can sometimes feel self-canceling as drama. Still, Strindberg sticks to the canon of European classics like a tick: ugly, bloodthirsty, alive.The contradiction is at its most vexing in “Creditors,” a follow-up to “Miss Julie” that flips the earlier play’s love-triangle geometry so that one woman and two men stand at its vertexes instead of one man and two women. Believe me, two men are worse: The lone woman, in this case a writer named Tekla, is literally outmanned. When Adolph, her second husband — having fallen under the influence of Gustav, his new friend — prosecutes Tekla for the theft of his happiness, Strindberg barely allows a defense.That “Creditors” is nevertheless wretchedly compelling has previously been sufficient to keep it onstage. Perhaps in a post-#MeToo age no longer. At any rate, the production that opened Sunday at the Minetta Lane Theater — starring Liev Schreiber as Gustav, Maggie Siff as Tekla and Justice Smith as Adolph, now called Adi — sets out to shift the play’s balance of power and mostly succeeds. In Jen Silverman’s thoroughgoing adaptation, Tekla is given full voice, and the men are finally held to account.The new version, set in a vague present, opens like the original in the parlor of an out-of-season seaside hotel. There, Adi, a young painter, and Gustav, a teacher of “dead languages,” are discovered in the depths of a whiskey-enhanced discussion of women and art. At first idly, then with what appears to be solicitude, and finally with the glee of a cat cornering a mouse before killing it, Gustav pokes into Adi’s professional failures, connecting them to Tekla’s galling success. Having dumped her first husband after humiliating him in a popular roman à clef, what’s to stop her from doing the same to her second?The author of dramedies that foreground women — among them “The Roommate,” “The Moors” and “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties” — Silverman is not about to let that wife-as-witch framing stand. Still, Strindberg’s three-part structure, with its bear-trap teeth, is too ingenious to mess with. In the second part, Adi, empowered or perhaps just empoisoned by Gustav, confronts Tekla with his newfound and possibly bogus insights into what he had thought was a happy marriage. Because Smith is so sincere and appealing, his vulnerability reading as openness instead of petulance, we are at first willing to allow his line of thought.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

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      The Broadway Best of Charles Strouse

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      The composer’s musicals, including “Annie” and “Bye Bye Birdie,” captured essential elements of American culture. Here are five of his most memorable songs.“Bye Bye Birdie” and “Annie,” the composer Charles Strouse’s most popular musicals, were not just big hits that are regularly revived on professional and amateur stages. They captured essential elements of American culture, including a yearning for escape from an older generation’s shackles and a can-do spirit to overcome adversity.Strouse, who died Thursday at 96, wrote jingles, pop songs and movie scores, but he remains famous for his Broadway shows. In addition to those two blockbusters, three others help make up his career peaks.Here are five numbers that illustrate Strouse’s suppleness as a composer and his knack for instantly hummable melodies.1960‘Bye Bye Birdie’Few musicals showcase as many great numbers as this hit about the Elvis Presley-like star Conrad Birdie, who, as a publicity stunt, visits a Midwest family before shipping off to the Army. The movie version, from 1963, is one of Hollywood’s best musicals of that decade, even though it made big changes to the show. The most egregious was casting Janet Leigh in the role of Rose Alvarez, played by Chita Rivera on Broadway. But it is hard to nitpick with the focus being shifted to Kim, a teenager discovering her sultry side, because she was played by Ann-Margret in an explosive performance that made her a star — she was particularly electric in the number “A Lot of Livin’ to Do.”Bonus video: In 2024, Vanessa Williams performed that song at the annual Miscast event, keeping the pronouns originally sung by Conrad Birdie intact.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

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      ‘Is Betty Buckley Still Alive?’ Trump Asked. She Certainly Is.

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      “What’s happening these days,” the singer said at the start of a Joe’s Pub residency, “is weird, and not cool.”An hour into Betty Buckley’s first set at Joe’s Pub, she began the aching ballad from “Cats” that has won her legions of fans. Among them, she now knows, is President Trump.Ms. Buckley, 77, who regularly reposts social media content critical of the Trump Administration, did not mention the president when she tore into “Memory,” which brought the reverent Thursday evening crowd to its feet, whistling and whooping. She didn’t mention him when she finished the number, either.But then she pivoted to Paul Simon’s “American Tune” — with lyrics like “I don’t have a friend who feels at ease” and “I wonder what’s gone wrong” — and called it “particularly perfect for what’s happening these days, which is weird, and not cool.”This has been an odd few months for Ms. Buckley, who has known for years that Mr. Trump loved “Memory,” but did not know her version, from the 1982 Broadway production, made her his favorite Grizabella, the once glamorous but now shunned feline whose plea for connection is the musical’s emotional high point.“I didn’t know he knew my name,” Ms. Buckley said of Mr. Trump. “It left me really gobsmacked that my name actually resides in his consciousness.”Graham Dickie/The New York TimesHow does she know now? Well, in March, Mr. Trump reminisced about seeing Ms. Buckley in that Andrew Lloyd Webber show while addressing the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where his handpicked trustees had appointed him chairman. “The place went crazy,” he recalled of the “Cats” performance, before musing, “Is Betty Buckley still alive?” He continued: “Of all the great voices and stars, bigger stars than her, she had the best voice.”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

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      Theater to Stream: ‘Yellow Face,’ Joaquina Kalukango and More

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      Watch the Tony nominee Daniel Dae Kim in David Henry Hwang’s comedy, and take in cabaret at 54 Below, all from your living room.‘Broadway’s Best’Watch on PBS, online or on the PBS app.At this year’s Tony Awards ceremony, on June 8, the PBS series “Great Performances” will be honored for excellence in theater. Its spring slate alone should remind everybody why “Great Performances” has been a theater gateway for so many people. Already available is a 2024 recording of the London premiere of the Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt musical “Next to Normal,” starring Caissie Levy as a woman whose bipolar disorder has a ripple effect on her family. The New York Times’ review praised Michael Longhurst’s production for giving the show “a renewed sting.”Next, you can catch the Roundabout Theater Company’s recent revival of the acidic David Henry Hwang comedy “Yellow Face,” starring Daniel Dae Kim and Francis Jue — both nominated for Tonys this year. The glorious Bob Dylan jukebox musical “Girl From the North Country,” set in 1934 Duluth, Minn., arrives May 23. A week later, American audiences can discover last year’s London production of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate” — a very funny twist on “The Taming of the Shrew” — with Stephanie J. Block as the fiery diva Lilli Vanessi and Adrian Dunbar (yes, Superintendent Hastings from the procedural “Line of Duty”) as her egotistical ex-husband, Fred Graham.‘The Other Place’ and ‘Vanya’Rent them on National Theater at Home.The National Theater at Home’s catalog is a veritable treasure trove, and a recent addition well worth checking out is “The Other Place” from the writer-director Alexander Zeldin (“Love”). Loosely based on the Greek tragedy “Antigone,” it is not driven by a high-concept staging like Simon Stone’s “Yerma” or Robert Icke’s “Enemy of the People,” which are also drastic reworkings of classics. Rather, Zeldin slowly builds a stifling sense of impending doom until an ending that hits as hard as it is quiet. Emma D’Arcy (“House of the Dragon”) appears haunted by bottled-up pain as the disrupter at a family reunion, while Tobias Menzies portrays a seemingly even-tempered uncle.Compared with that tragedy, Andrew Scott’s solo interpretation of “Uncle Vanya” feels almost cheery. If you missed the critically acclaimed, very sold-out recent run of “Vanya” in New York, you can watch an excellent capture of the original London version here. Sam Yates’s production offers not just a modernized take on the Chekhov classic but, as Jesse Green wrote in The New York Times, “a new way of seeing into the heart of its beauty.”‘Friends and Romans’Stream it on Tubi.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

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      Darren Criss Does the Robot

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      Darren Criss stood up, fast asleep, his head heavy. When he awoke, he reverse body rolled, slowly turned his head from side to side, then brushed his teeth, mechanically moving his toothbrush — left, right, left — like a cartoon character.But this was no cartoon come to life (that would be “Boop!,” playing a block away). This was a scene from the Broadway musical “Maybe Happy Ending” in which Criss and Helen J Shen play Oliver and Claire, android attendant robots called Helperbots.Playing a character onstage comes with its own process of world building. But playing a nonhuman character requires a different — or additional — calculation. Where is a robot’s center of gravity?As Claire, a Helperbot 5 with a defective battery (and heavy dose of sarcasm), Shen moves as a human would. As Oliver, a Helperbot 3, an earlier model, Criss moves stiffly, his reflexes stilted. He’s all elbows and knees and sharp lines. Her limbs move in bell curves. The challenge of playing an aging robot has been a field day for Criss, an opportunity to draw upon his formal training in physical theater.“In many ways I joke that Oliver is my excuse to overact for two hours,” Criss said, adding, “the joke being how beep boop bop are we going here without it feeling too, frankly, ridiculous.”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

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      Tonys 2025 Predictions: Who Will Win? And Who Should?

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      Our chief theater critic looks at this year’s nominees and weighs in on the plays, musicals and artists he thinks will — and should — take home trophies on June 8.Tony voters do not have it easy. As the quality of (some) shows on Broadway improves, so does the difficulty and futility of ranking them. Yet not fully futile, at least for me in my fictional Tonys: A long look back at the 2024-25 season, during which I saw all 42 eligible Broadway productions, offered a chance to recall, reorganize and enjoy in memory the work of thousands of very talented artists.Thus, below, my take on the likely winners (marked with a ✓) and my personal “shouldas” (marked with a ★) in 17 of the 26 competitive categories. I hope your own Tonys, no doubt different from mine, prove as rewarding.Best PlayCole Escola, left, and James Scully in “Oh, Mary!”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“English”“The Hills of California”“John Proctor Is the Villain”✓ ★ “Oh, Mary!”“Purpose”It’s a strong season when five new plays (with options to spare) all deserve their nominations — and one of them, “Purpose,” won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, while another, “English,” won in 2023. But though both, like the other nominees, are startling in some way, Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!,” in which Mary Todd Lincoln’s dreams of becoming a cabaret star are nearly foiled by her very Gaybraham husband, is almost freakishly so, barely containing its demented story in the very disciplined frame of a super-tight production. As good as the other nominees are, this comedy trumps them by ripping open the notion of what camp — and Broadway — can be.Best MusicalDarren Criss and Helen J Shen in “Maybe Happy Ending.”Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“Buena Vista Social Club”“Dead Outlaw”✓ “Death Becomes Her”★ “Maybe Happy Ending”“Operation Mincemeat”Despite its brand-extension birth, “Death Becomes Her” is a classic Broadway musical in at least this sense: It brings home the laughs. That’s no mean feat, but my vote usually goes to shows that advance Broadway instead of compromising with it. In their intimacy, their delicacy, their seriousness and faith in themselves, “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Dead Outlaw” both do that. For me, “Maybe Happy Ending,” by Will Aronson and Hue Park, has the slight edge because, on top of all that, it’s shattering (in the quietest way possible).Best Play RevivalFrom left, Amber Gray, Bill Irwin, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz and Jessica Hecht in “Eureka Day.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times★ “Eureka Day”“Romeo + Juliet”“Our Town”✓ “Yellow Face”In this season’s death match between “Our Town,” the quintessential American drama, and “Romeo + Juliet,” the everlasting English tragedy, the Thornton Wilder revival won by a knockout. (Nobody really seemed to die in the Shakespeare.) But “Yellow Face,” by David Henry Hwang, complicating its story about colorblind casting with piquant ironies, will likely defeat them both. Still, I’d go for Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” a satire of vaccination politics that skewers both sides: anti-science know-nothings and trip-on-your-tongue progressives. It lets every kind of American cringe.Best Musical RevivalFrom left, Charlie Franklin, Jeremy Davis and Dwayne Cooper in “Floyd Collins.”Richard Termine for The New York Times★ “Floyd Collins”“Gypsy”“Pirates! The Penzance Musical”✓ “Sunset Boulevard”So sue me, I disliked “Sunset Boulevard,” which did everything in its considerable power to bury the property’s many shortcomings. That doesn’t seem to me to be a worthy goal in reviving a show. But you know what is? Getting to see our era’s biggest musical theater star (Audra McDonald) play one of the canon’s greatest roles (Rose in “Gypsy”). And though I’m loath to vote against a stage mother and a gaggle of strippers, for me, “Floyd Collins,” by Adam Guettel and Tina Landau, is the necessary revelation. It’s like “Our Town” in a cave: cosmic, brutal. (Since I worked with Guettel’s mother, Mary Rodgers, on her memoirs, I refrained from reviewing the show, but I do think it should win.)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