More stories

  • in

    ‘Leopoldstadt’ and ‘Parade’ Take Tony Awards, Making Antisemitism a Theme of the Night

    Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” centers on an Austrian-Jewish family riven by the Holocaust.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe musical “Parade” tells the tragedy of Leo Frank, the Jewish pencil factory manager who was lynched by a mob in 1915.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Leopoldstadt” and “Parade,” two productions about the horrors of antisemitism, took major awards on Sunday, making the topic a central theme of the night.Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which centers on the destructive toll of antisemitism on a family of Viennese Jews and was inspired by Stoppard’s belated reckoning with his Jewish roots, won best play. Earlier in the night, the play’s director, Patrick Marber, won for best direction of a play, and Brandon Uranowitz, one of the central actors in the ensemble cast, won a featured actor award.“Thank you Tom Stoppard for writing a play about Jewish identity and antisemitism and the false promise of assimilation with the nuances and the complexities and the contradictions that they deserve,” Uranowitz said in his acceptance speech. “My ancestors, many of whom did not make it out of Poland, also thank you.” “Parade,” a musical that tells the tragedy of Leo Frank, the Jewish pencil factory manager who was murdered by a mob in 1915, won best musical revival. Its director, Michael Arden, won the award for best direction of a musical, urging the audience to battle antisemitism, white supremacy and other forms of hate.“We must come together, we must battle this,” Arden said, “or else we are doomed to repeat the horrors of our history.” More

  • in

    Alex Newell Becomes First Out Nonbinary Performer to Win a Tony

    Alex Newell, a “Glee” alum who is bringing down the house nightly with a barn-burning number in “Shucked,” won the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical Sunday night, becoming the first out nonbinary actor to win a Tony for performance.Newell, who identifies both as nonbinary and gender fluid, plays a fiercely self-reliant whiskey distiller in “Shucked,” which is a country-scored, pun-rich musical comedy about a small farming community whose corn crop begins mysteriously dying.“To my entire building and cast and crew of ‘Shucked’ — you are my rock,” Newell said, accepting the award. “I love you all. Thank you for seeing me, Broadway. I should not be up here as a queer, nonbinary, fat, Black little baby from Massachusetts. And to anyone that thinks that they can’t do it, I’m going to look you dead in your face. That you can do anything you put your mind to.”Newell agreed to be considered in the gendered actor category, telling The New York Times last month: “I look at the word ‘actor’ as one, my vocation, and two, genderless. We don’t say plumbess for plumber. We don’t say janitoress for janitor. We say plumber, we say janitor. That’s how I look at the word, and that’s how I chose my category.”At least two performers who later came out as nonbinary have previously won Tony Awards as best featured actress in a musical: Sara Ramirez, who won in 2005 for “Spamalot,” and Karen Olivo (also known as K O), who won in 2009 for a revival of “West Side Story.” Also: Last year, the Tony Award for best score went to Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss for “Six,” and Marlow is nonbinary.Newell, 30, is best known for playing the transgender teenager Unique Adams on “Glee,” and previously starred in a Broadway revival of “Once on This Island.” Newell uses all pronouns, according to a “Shucked” spokesman.Also nominated in the featured actor in a musical category was one of Newell’s castmates, Kevin Cahoon, as well as Justin Cooley (“Kimberly Akimbo”), Kevin Del Aguila (“Some Like It Hot”) and Jordan Donica (“Camelot”). More

  • in

    J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell Win Tony Awards, a First for Out Non-Binary Performers

    J. Harrison Ghee accepting the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical, “Some Like It Hot.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimeAlex Newell accepting the Tony Award for featured actor in a musical, “Shucked.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJ. Harrison Ghee, whose portrayal of a gender-questioning musician fleeing the mob in “Some Like It Hot” has charmed critics and audiences, won a Tony Award for best leading actor in a musical Sunday night, becoming the first out nonbinary actor to win that award.Ghee’s victory came shortly after Alex Newell, who is also nonbinary, won a Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical, becoming the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony.The wins come at a time when gender identity has become a central element of America’s culture wars, as conservatives in multiple states press for legislation on a variety of L.G.B.T.Q.-related issues, including gender-affirming medical care for transgender children and teenagers, bathroom access, sports participation and, in some states, performances.The Tony Awards, like the Oscars, have only gendered categories for performers, and Ghee and Newell agreed to be considered eligible for awards as actors. (Another nonbinary performer this season, Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet,” opted not to be considered for awards rather than compete in a gendered category.)Asked in a recent interview with The New York Times about having been nominated in a gendered category, Ghee said: “Wherever I am, I will show up as who I am. Someone’s compartmentalization of me doesn’t limit me in any way.“I hope for the industry we can remove the gender of it,” they added, “because we are creators and we should free ourselves beyond so many labels and let the work speak for itself.”At least two performers who later came out as nonbinary have previously won Tony Awards as best featured actress in a musical: Sara Ramirez, who won in 2005 for “Spamalot,” and Karen Olivo (also known as K O), who won in 2009 for a revival of “West Side Story.” Also: Last year, the Tony Award for best score went to Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss for “Six,” and Marlow is nonbinary.Ghee’s depiction of a main character in “Some Like It Hot” reflects the way views on gender have evolved since 1959, when the Billy Wilder film it was based on was released. In the movie Jack Lemmon plays a musician named Jerry who dresses as a woman named Daphne to flee the mob; in the musical Ghee plays the same character, but Jerry’s path to becoming Daphne becomes one of self-discovery, not disguise.The performance earned critical praise. Jesse Green, The Times’s chief theater critic, wrote that Ghee “carefully traces Jerry’s transformation into Daphne, and then the merging of the two identities into a third that takes us into territory that’s far more complex than jokey drag.”Ghee, 33, worked as a drag performer before finding success in musical theater, with key roles on Broadway in “Kinky Boots” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” before “Some Like It Hot.” More

  • in

    What Did Michael Arden Say at the Tony Awards?

    Michael Arden, a three-time Tony nominee, won his first Tony Award for his direction of the Broadway revival of “Parade,” the 1998 musical about the lynching of Leo Frank by an antisemitic mob.Arden, who had previously been nominated for revivals of “Once on This Island” and “Spring Awakening,” won acclaim for what Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, praised as a timely and gorgeously sung revival.With Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond cast as Leo and Lucille Frank, Arden tilted a musical about a horrific miscarriage of justice to more strongly emphasize the love story playing out between husband and wife.“‘Parade’ tells the story of a life that was cut short at the hands of the belief that one group of people is more or less valuable than another and that they might be more deserving of justice,” he said in accepting his award. “This is a belief that is the core of antisemitism, of white supremacy, of homophobia, of transphobia and intolerance of any kind. We must come together. We must battle this. It is so, so important, or else we are doomed to repeat the horrors of our history.”Arden went on to recall how he had been called a homophobic slur — “the F-word,” he said — many times as a child. And he drew raucous cheers as he reclaimed the slur, making clear that he was now one with a Tony. “Keep raising your voices,” he said.One of the production’s most talked-about features is Platt’s wordless presence onstage during the entire 15-minute intermission. Arden recently told Michael Paulson that he “wanted to challenge the audience, when they’re getting their cocktail or texting their friends or talking about what they’re having for dinner, to look back and see Ben onstage, and to get a sense that while the world was turning, this man was sitting in a prison cell.”In taking home his first Tony, Arden won a directing category that included Jessica Stone, who directed the beloved new musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” and Casey Nicholaw, whom some saw as a contender for “Some Like It Hot.” More

  • in

    Melissa Etheridge’s Autobiographical Show Is Coming to Broadway

    Combining stories from her life with her musical catalog, the singer’s show will open in September.The singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge’s theatrical memoir in which she weaves stories from her life will be staged on Broadway this fall, the production announced Sunday.Called “My Window,” a reference to one of her hit songs, Etheridge’s show recounts the arc of her life and career, from growing up in Kansas to reaching rock fame and coming out as a lesbian in the ’90s.The show, which had a brief Off Broadway run last fall, was written by Etheridge and her wife, Linda Wallem Etheridge, a television producer and actor who helped create the TV series “Nurse Jackie” and worked on “That ’70s Show.” The production plans to begin previews at Circle in the Square Theater on Sept. 14, with opening night scheduled for Sept. 28.Etheridge, 62, has loved theater since childhood (“‘Godspell’ just set me on fire,” she said last week), and performed briefly in the rock musical “American Idiot” in 2011. She had long wanted to write for Broadway, she said, and so she was delighted to see the industry embrace Bruce Springsteen’s production, which she viewed as setting an example for productions by musicians that are part concert, part storytelling.“I’ve been in front of audiences for 40 years, and I like to talk,” Etheridge said. “I enjoy story and drama, and I’ve always brought that into my music.”Plus, she joked, “It saves on therapy.”The show, directed by Amy Tinkham, verges into deeply personal territory for Etheridge, including when she discusses the death of her 21-year-old son from opioid addiction.“It really helped me to just say it over and over,” Etheridge said. “I found it freeing, actually, to be very open about my life.”In between the recollections, Etheridge plays her hits, such as “Come to My Window” and “Bring Me Some Water,” as well as snatches of more obscure titles, including the first songs she wrote as a child. Currently, Etheridge is figuring out what to cut; the Off Broadway show was three hours, including an intermission, and the singer said the Broadway version will most likely be about a half-hour shorter.The production plans to run through Nov. 19. More

  • in

    How the Head of Inside Broadway Spends His Sundays

    There is usually a matinee in store for Michael Presser, who is the founder of Inside Broadway.More young people might be tuning into the Tony Awards this weekend thanks to the work of Michael Presser, the founder of Inside Broadway, a nonprofit organization that brings Broadway musicals to New York City schools and New York City schoolchildren to Broadway musicals.What started in the early 1980s as a free ticket program for local students to see “Cats” now reaches 75,000 students in 90 schools every year with its own touring productions and educational programs. Current shows in rotation include “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Sophisticated Ladies” and “Free to Be … You and Me.”Mr. Presser, 75, lives in Greenwich Village. Though his organization will turn 41 this year, he is not yet done marking its latest milestone birthday. “Since we work on a fiscal year, we’re still 40 until June 30,” he said. “We’re still celebrating.”QUIET FORMALITY I’m not a morning person, so I absolutely love to have quiet around me in the morning. No TV, no radio, and basically I prefer to settle in with the morning papers and spend a good period of time going through the news of the day. I never lie around in pajamas or athletic clothes. I am formal.“I very much enjoy the plants, and I very much enjoy my gardener who takes care of them. I’m not a horticulturalist.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesGREEN SPACE There is a garden connected to my apartment. It’s a lovely place to be on Sunday mornings with the newspapers and tea. I’m not a coffee drinker. I prefer black tea or green tea. Many times when I have guests visit me from outside of New York, they’re fascinated to see a garden in the heart of Manhattan. They assume all New Yorkers live in Times Square. I very much enjoy the plants, and I very much enjoy my gardener who takes care of them. I’m not a horticulturalist.ON THE TELEPHONE I do like to spend a little time in the morning making phone contact with friends and relatives from outside of New York. It’s a very good time to speak with people who are in different time zones. I prefer catching up by phone, because it allows for a more direct and personal exchange. Social media I think tends to be rather superficial.“This particular neighborhood is so rich in history and architecture,” Mr. Presser said of Greenwich Village.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesA GREAT HONOR I take a weekly walk through the neighborhood. This is something I started doing during the pandemic. Back then I was taking these walks daily. Even though I’ve been here a long time, I very much enjoy Greenwich Village. I think sometimes you maybe take for granted your immediate neighborhood. But this particular neighborhood is so rich in history and architecture. It’s a very special area of New York and I actually consider it a great honor to be a longtime resident.Mr. Presser often stops at Murray’s Bagels on Sixth Avenue. “That is lunch.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesPHILLY THROWBACK I always end up stopping for bagels and lox. That’s kind of a Sunday tradition from my childhood in Philadelphia. When I was a boy, one of my uncles used to deliver a bag of bagels and lox to our house every Sunday. It was truly something to look forward to. So I kind of continue it as a fond memory. I’ll stop at Sixth Avenue, Murray’s. I’ll take it home and sit outdoors in the garden. That is lunch.MATINEE Sunday, I feel, is the best day of the week to go to the theater, and I have always loved having a matinee performance to attend. While I do go to many performances during the week, on Sundays I’m well rested and can focus on the performances, something that’s sometimes harder to do during the week. I go to Broadway but also many other kinds of shows, Off Broadway and so on. It’s really wonderful, the wide variety of theater we have here. It’s a good time to sort of take that in. Recently I saw “Kimberly Akimbo” and a brand-new opera at the Metropolitan Opera, “Champion,” and I had a wonderful opportunity to see one of the final performances of “Phantom of the Opera.”“It’s really wonderful, the wide variety of theater we have here.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesTAKE ME OUT Sunday during the baseball season is a great time to get out to Yankee Stadium. I always liked baseball as a child, and then I sort of lost interest in it for a rather long time, and I seem to have rediscovered it again. I think it’s a fascinating game; the strategies, the players that have such unique skills. And during the summertime I think it’s a wonderful experience to be outdoors at a baseball game. Yankee Stadium is a real New York institution. I take the subway. All New Yorkers take the subway.Mr. Presser often meets friends for dinner on Sunday evenings. “We do not discuss politics,” he said. “That’s a firm rule.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesFIRM RULE We have a sort of gang of friends who meet for dinner on Sunday evenings at the Westway Diner in Hell’s Kitchen. It gives us an opportunity to exchange what we’ve been doing this week, particularly about the world of the arts. We have a lot of strong and interesting opinions, and I always encourage everybody to respect other people’s opinions. For instance, we frequently discuss who performed at the opera or what they saw this week. We do not discuss politics. That’s a firm rule. No politics.TRAVEL RESEARCH After dinner, it’s free time, and what I like to do generally is to plan projects and activities and especially travel I’m going to be doing in the coming months. Because I’m not a beach person, I almost always plan travel around major cosmopolitan cities. I can figure out what theater I might like to see and research key people I might like to meet in the local arts community.LATE-NIGHT STACK I’m an evening person. I can stay up late, until 1 a.m. or sometimes later. It gives me some time for personal reading. I am a great fan of the New York Public Library, which I feel is one of the great privileges of living in New York. I always have a stack of books that I’ve gotten from the library. I prefer biographies and history. One of the nice things about the library is you can borrow a book, and if you don’t like it you can send it right back.Sunday Routine readers can follow Inside Broadway on social media at @Inside_Broadway. More

  • in

    Can You Find the Hidden Titles of These 12 Books About Broadway Icons?

    “Don’t be shy,” said the exhausted milliner, who was frantically finishing the hat for the ingénue’s big number at the end of Act One. “What do you need?”“I’m looking for Lorraine again,” said the assistant director. “I’ve been going from stage to stage in this building. I can’t find her anywhere and Chita wants to go over their number with the latest rewrites.”The fluorescent light failing up above her head flickered and the hatmaker flinched as she accidentally jabbed an unprotected finger with the needle. “She went home hours ago. A little bit wicked of her in the middle of the tech rehearsal, I thought.”“What would I do without you?” sighed the A.D. “The costume crew knows all.”“Don’t be shy,” said the exhausted milliner, who was frantically finishing the hat for the ingénue’s big number at the end of Act One. “What do you need?”“I’m looking for Lorraine again,” said the assistant director. “I’ve been going from stage to stage in this building. I can’t find her anywhere and Chita wants to go over their number with the latest rewrites.”The fluorescent light failing up above her head flickered and the hatmaker flinched as she accidentally jabbed an unprotected finger with the needle. “She went home hours ago. A little bit wicked of her in the middle of the tech rehearsal, I thought.”“What would I do without you?” sighed the A.D. “The costume crew knows all.”“Don’t be shy,” said the exhausted milliner, who was frantically finishing the hat for the ingénue’s big number at the end of Act One. “What do you need?”“I’m looking for Lorraine again,” said the assistant director. “I’ve been going from stage to stage in this building. I can’t find her anywhere and Chita wants to go over their number with the latest rewrites.”The fluorescent light failing up above her head flickered and the hatmaker flinched as she accidentally jabbed an unprotected finger with the needle. “She went home hours ago. A little bit wicked of her in the middle of the tech rehearsal, I thought.”“What would I do without you?” sighed the A.D. “The costume crew knows all.” More

  • in

    At Départ d’Incendies, Young Theater Makers Swing Big

    Ariane Mnouchkine, a grande dame of French theater, helped to set up a new festival where emerging companies can try out ambitious stagings.When the revered French director Ariane Mnouchkine set up her own playhouse in 1970 in a disused munitions factory on the outskirts of Paris, she vowed to turn the space into a “laboratory for popular theater.” Over a half-century later, she is staying true to her word. This month, Mnouchkine has handed the keys to five emerging companies, at no cost, to stage a new festival: Départ d’Incendies, or “Starting Fires.”The idea came from Annabelle Zoubian, a 28-year-old theater director. In an interview, Zoubian said that the pandemic and the rising cost of touring had made it difficult for early-career artists to take on ambitious stagings. So, in 2021, she reached out to Mnouchkine and asked if she would be willing to host an event dedicated to young troupes.The answer, an instant “yes,” left Zoubian slightly stunned, she said before the opening performance of the festival last weekend. “It’s exactly what we needed — for someone to trust us to learn,” she said.Starting Fires, which runs through July 2, has taken over a rehearsal hall belonging to Mnouchkine’s company, Théâtre du Soleil, which regularly hosts performances. The five groups involved have taken a leaf from that ensemble’s egalitarian model: When they’re not performing, artists take turns staffing the ticket booth and the bar.Onstage, there was no shortage of talent. The three productions I saw all boasted large casts of up to 15 performers: a rarity for emerging companies, given the cost involved. They took big swings, and sometimes missed, but overall, their hard work paid exciting dividends.Mona Chaïbi, left, as Antigone and Benjamin Grangier as the Sentry in “Antigone.”Jérôme ZajdermannThe future is bright for Sébastien Kheroufi, a first-time director who imbued Sophocles’ ancient “Antigone” with personal touches. His starting point, according to the playbill, was his own fractured family history: His father left Algeria after the country’s bloody war for independence, yet fell on hard times in France.Perhaps as a result, a quiet sense of pain runs through Kheroufi’s “Antigone.” Set against the melancholy background of a well and a fallen tree, it earnestly captures the interplay between moral principles and family trauma in Sophocles’ play, only losing momentum in a couple of scenes. The rift between Antigone, who wants to bury her brother against the orders of Thebes’s leader Creon, and her sister Ismene is more balanced than usual: The somber, effective Louisa Chas makes it clear Ismene has already suffered too much to revolt.In 2021, while still a drama student, Kheroufi took a leading role in the occupation of Paris’s Théâtre de la Colline, protesting the closure of theaters across France. Here, he proves that he has the chops to steer a diverse group of actors, too. “Antigone” features experienced artists — like François Clavier, who makes a toweringly self-satisfied Creon — as well as a chorus of four amateur women who have experienced exile. Kheroufi met those women while working with an emergency shelter, and in one scene, each one curses at Creon in a different language, with arresting gravitas.Thomas Corcessin, left, and Lula Paris in “Platonov.”Conrad AllainAnother director, Zoubian, opted to tackle a classic drama: “Platonov,” Anton Chekhov’s first four-act play, from 1878. There is a chaotic energy to the characters — who drink and party around Platonov, a local Casanova, to evade ennui in a Russian province — that makes it especially well-suited to young actors.Zoubian’s cast took time to settle into this marathon, which clocks in at well over three hours, and there were a couple of technical mishaps: Chekhov’s proverbial gun didn’t fire in the final scene, for instance. But the production ultimately stayed the course, in no small part thanks to Léo Nivet (a charismatic, wide-eyed Sergei) and Romane Bonnardin (trusting and poignant as Sacha, the wife Platonov betrays).Starting Fires moved outdoors, to a corner of the parking lot, for one production: “Macabre Carnival,” inspired by the Tupamaros, a far-left revolutionary movement active in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. For this show, which had its premiere in 2021, the 15-strong troupe Théâtre de l’Hydre conducted significant research in the country, and features artists born there, as well as in Chile, France and Peru.Clément Delpérié, center, in “Macabre Carnival.”Mathieu VouzelaudMnouchkine, herself an epic narrator of historical events, is named as an inspiration several times in the playbill, and her influence was clear throughout. With just a handful of platforms on wheels and drawings on a blackboard, the cast set out the main characters and the political context, zipping along with verve. Their director, Stéphane Bensimon, is adept at finding ingenious transitions, and the cast’s many talents — music, dance, even acrobatics — are used at exactly the right times to enhance group scenes.Even as a few cars hummed in the background, “Macabre Carnival” was wholly engrossing, with a utopian streak that set the tone for the festival. At a time when many young French companies are leaving Paris to bring theater to rural areas, Starting Fires is a welcome new showcase. It deserves to become a permanent fixture on the summer festival calendar.Festival Départ d’IncendiesThrough July 2 at La Cartoucherie in Paris; festival-depart-d-incendies.com. More