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      ‘Back to the Future’ Musical to Open on Broadway Next Summer

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      The show, now in London, has a creative team that combines veterans of the film with some Broadway stalwarts. Performances will begin on June 30.Filmdom’s most famous DeLorean is getting ready to park itself on Broadway.A musical adaptation of the hit 1985 film “Back to the Future” is planning to open on Broadway next summer, its producers announced Friday. (Look at your calendar: Friday is Oct. 21, which is when devoted fans celebrate “Back to the Future Day.”)The musical, with a creative team that combines veterans of the film with some Broadway stalwarts, has already had a life in Britain.It had an ill-timed opening at the Manchester Opera House on March 11, 2020; that production closed a few days later because of the coronavirus pandemic. The show then transferred to London last fall, where it has had much better luck: It won this year’s Olivier Award for best new musical, and it is still running at the Adelphi Theater.The beloved science-fiction film, about a teenager who travels back in time in a DeLorean and disrupts the lives of his future parents, spawned sequels and a variety of spinoff ventures, and also contributed to the fame of its star, Michael J. Fox.“Back to the Future: The Musical” features a book by Bob Gale, the screenwriter who co-wrote and co-produced all three films, and songs by Alan Silvestri, who composed the film’s score, as well as Glen Ballard, a record producer and songwriter. The musical also includes pop songs featured in the film, including “The Power of Love.”The director is John Rando, who in 2002 won a Tony Award for “Urinetown.”Two members of the London cast have signed on to reprise their roles on Broadway: Roger Bart as the inventor Doc Brown, and Hugh Coles as George McFly, the protagonist’s father. Casting for the main role, of the teenager Marty McFly, has not yet been announced.The musical is scheduled to begin performances June 30 and to open Aug. 3 at the Winter Garden Theater, which is now home to a starry revival of “The Music Man” that is planning to close Jan. 1.The musical, with Colin Ingram as its lead producer, is being capitalized for $23.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Gale, who has been working on projects related to “Back to the Future” for more than four decades and is the de facto guardian of the franchise, said he is delighted to finally be working on Broadway, more than 15 years after Leslie Zemeckis, the wife of the film’s director Robert Zemeckis, saw “The Producers” and suggested “Back to the Future” could also be musicalized. “Broadway is the gold standard — musical theater was really invented there — and I’m delighted that we are finally going to get our shot on the Great White Way,” Gale said.Gale said the creative team has been making tweaks to the script and the set as it prepares for a Broadway run, incorporating lessons from the productions in England. They are small changes, he said, “but little things add up.”“One thing people appreciate about the movie: the more they watch, the more details they see,” he said. More

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      ‘The Gold Room’ Review: Gay Sexuality on Shuffle Mode

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      Two men circling each other for a hookup talk through fantasies and everyday doubts in this play by Jacob Perkins.Showing up to a stranger’s house for sex may seem provocative to some, but it’s become a mundane interaction among gay men who use apps like Grindr. Still, such encounters are loaded with profound questions that are often dispensed with in a blink. What does it mean to separate sex from intimacy? How does shame interfere with vulnerability?The two men circling each other in “The Gold Room,” now playing at Here, perform an abstract excavation of gay sexuality, its present-day mores and psychological undercurrents (spoiler alert, daddy issues ahead). But the playwright Jacob Perkins does not throw stones (the set by Emona Stoykova is appropriately glass-walled), indicting the broader cultural forces that influence and constrict gay men, a familiar mode for artists who’ve traversed similar territory. “The Gold Room” rather turns inward, to fantasies and everyday doubts that many who share the playwright’s experience will recognize.A chlamydia scare is not the icebreaker one would think to use with a hookup, but Robert Stanton’s character, an unnamed early career playwright, is recalling how it hurt to pee while his prospect, played by Scott Parkinson, grabs beers in the next room. Did he forget to mention that it was only a dream? The next moment, they’re engaging in aggressive verbal role play, then agreeing to another round. Stanton continues to probe his character’s psyche (he recounts a second elaborate dream, about his father cross-dressing) as Parkinson takes on a series of shifting roles — a reluctant producer encouraging the writer to tone down the eroticism of his work, a proctologist assuring him he did nothing to deserve hemorrhoids, an experienced lover instructing him to use “an ocean’s worth” of lube.One scene moves into the next with the ease and illogic of a subconscious on shuffle mode, with lighting by greer x, and occasional gusts of haze, marking the subtle shifts. Presented by i am a slow tide, and directed by the artistic director Gus Heagerty, the production has an elegant polish that suggests a more assured purpose than “The Gold Room” conveys over its hourlong running time. “I don’t know if it’s a work,” Stanton’s writer admits of the record he’s been keeping of his dreams, adding that they might not mean anything. The expression of insecurity seems to belong as much to Perkins as to his onstage surrogate.There is a therapy-couch feel to the play’s unprocessed reflections, and a lack of perspective that results from such sustained navel gazing. Perkins writes in the script that the two men may be cast with actors of any race, so long as they are both the same, suggesting a kind of mirroring. That note seems blind to the context of privilege, though, at a time when its acknowledgment has become essential to many conversations about difference. When talk turns to feeling unsafe, and to the monsters that always seem to be lying in wait outside the door, it’s tough not to consider that other facets of identity tend to offer some protection.The Gold RoomThrough Nov. 5 at Here, Manhattan; here.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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      ‘He Must Have Superpowers’: Asi Wind and His Sublime Card Tricks

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      With a new one-man show, deploying a single deck of cards, the performer’s 20-year run as magic’s best-kept secret may be nearing its end.“Every now and then, this fails,” said Asi Wind, pausing for a suspense-maximizing moment during his new one-man magic show, “Asi Wind’s Inner Circle.” “This could fail. If it does, remember all the fun we had before.”There is little chance anyone took this whimsical disclaimer seriously. By the time it was offered, Wind, a 43-year-old Israeli-born New Yorker with the effervescent wit of a good dinner party host and the cunning of a master jewel thief, had already pulled off so many seemingly impossible feats that only a sucker would have bet against him. If he’d told us that we were all about to start floating around the room, half of the audience would have reached for a Dramamine and braced for lift off.Detailing what happens during this giddily mystifying 70-minute production — which opened last month and runs at the Gym at Judson, next to Washington Square Park in Manhattan, until Jan. 1 — would spoil more than a few surprises and much of the fun. Suffice to say, the entire show revolves around a single deck of playing cards, and the cards behave in ways that defy reason and, occasionally, the laws of physics.But Wind’s niftiest trick, honed over more than 20 years and thousands of private events, is his ability to eliminate any sense that he and his audience are locked in a contest. He does it with a combination of charm and humility that peers say is just one reason he ranks among the great magicians of our time.“When he was in his late 20s, I was describing him as one of the finest close-up performers in the country, and I think he’s been at the top of the magic world ever since,” said Jamy Ian Swiss, author of six magic books and co-producer of the long-running show Monday Night Magic at the Players Theater in Greenwich Village. “Very often a performer has a big personality onstage or he’s got great technical chops or he’s just inventive. And you can get by on any one of these qualities. Asi has all three. He’s the complete package.”For “Asi Wind’s Inner Circle,” audience members are asked to write their first and last names on blank playing cards, which are then spread on a round table where Wind conjures his mischief.Joan MarcusMany magicians imply that they are performing miracles and dare onlookers to divine their methods. Wind turns that approach on its head. He tells spectators that he can’t do magic and then makes any other explanation seem inconceivable.And he does it with ease and self-deprecating humor — “C’mon,” he said at one point, faux-pleading for a big reaction, “in Israel that’s a miracle!” — that will disarm even the most ardent Card Trick Columbos, those spectators too busy trying to bust the performer to enjoy the performance.Though a star among insiders, Wind has remained a relative unknown to the public. He had an Off Broadway show in 2013 called “Concert of the Mind,” and there was his wickedly bamboozling appearance on the competition television show “Penn & Teller: Fool Us,” in 2019, which has been viewed on YouTube nearly 14 million times. That video and a few other clips are about the only glimpses available of the man at work. He’s maintained a surprisingly low profile, earning his living at corporate shows and consulting with David Blaine, a producer of “Inner Circle” who calls Wind “my favorite magician.”“Fame is not his goal,” Blaine said in a phone interview. “What interests him most is answering the question, ‘How can I make magic a great experience for my audience?’ That’s what he’s chasing.”Wind’s status as magic’s best-kept secret may end with “Inner Circle,” which is built around a simple, ingenious premise. Before the action begins, ushers ask audience members to write their first and last names on blank-face playing cards that all have identical backs. The cards are then spread on a round table where Wind will sit and conjure his mischief.So every trick is performed with a deck missing any of the standard suits, faces or numbers, and that changes every night. A card might start off as “Zach Alexander” then transform, in Zach’s hands, into “Rachel Silver.” Rachel may then open a sealed envelope she’s been guarding, only to find “Zach Alexander” inside.“A playing card has information on it, but to most people, the six of hearts, for example, means nothing,” Wind said one recent afternoon. “But if a spectator puts his name on that card, suddenly it is significant. It’s not a card. It’s a person.”Wind was sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, a place that has a cameo in the show — a spectator is dispatched here to ask a stranger for a random number — and a key role in his origin story. In 2001, he flew to the United States, intending a quick visit with his brother, but fell hard for New York City and tore up his return ticket. With no job prospects, let alone a work visa, he took a regular deck of cards to this park and performed for tips for anyone who could be convinced to stand still for a few minutes.“It was hard, and I failed,” he recalled, with a smile. “But it taught me a valuable lesson — that magic is about connecting to people. It’s about them.”Wind was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, a go-to outfit that he augments for performances with a dark sports jacket, a look that says TED Talk more than “I do magic.” During a two-hour interview, he was animated, funny and candid about his struggles, which include a somewhat debilitating streak of perfectionism that he described as a curse.“It’s never being satisfied, never being super happy with something,” he said. “It really takes a toll on me, emotionally.”Wind in Washington Square Park, where he used to perform for tips.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesHe pronounced himself “60 to 70 percent” pleased with the show during this talk in late September, and said he’d never stop refining it. For years, he’s kept vampiric hours in his Upper East Side apartment, spending all night practicing sleights and polishing routines. “Inner Circle” includes effects that Wind has been fine-tuning for decades. There’s no hint of methods in the show, let alone the daredevilish risks he takes through the evening, because he’s spent thousands of hours rendering his techniques invisible.When he’s in the mood for more visible handiwork, he paints watercolors. Many are portraits of his magic heroes, several of which are projected onto the round table at the end of “Inner Circle” during a monologue about those who have influenced him.“Harry Houdini,” he said, introducing the first image. “He understood that it’s not enough to fool people with magic. You have to make them care.”Wind began his life as Asi Betesh in Holon, a city near Tel Aviv. An uncle showed him the first tricks he ever saw, and the owner of a magic shop later scrambled his brains with a card trick that he can still describe in detail.He left Israel after developing a comedy-magic act inspired by Steve Martin and lived with his brother in Brooklyn while working the lowest rungs on the entertainment ladder — twisting balloon animals for tips at a Toys “R” Us in the Bronx or performing at kids’ parties dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants, in a costume that once gave him scabies.“Oh my God, was that hard to get rid of,” he said. “I had to take so many showers and take every sheet, every fabric in my apartment to the laundromat.”He started landing gigs at parties and, eventually, a spot at Monday Night Magic, which first let him perform during intermissions and seven years later, in 2008, as a headliner. As his reputation grew, Penn and Teller tried to coax him on to “Fool Us” and succeeded only after agreeing to let Wind perform without having to dupe the hosts.“For all his talk about not wanting to compete,” said Penn, a bit grumpily, “he did a trick backstage that had one purpose — to fool me. So shut up, Asi.”Today, and for the run of “Inner Circle,” Wind has a theater of his own, a bespoke and painstakingly fabricated 106-seater that is based on a venue for magicians in Munich. Judging from audience reactions, the design yields an intimacy that makes the effects astonishing from every vantage point.“I was sitting there thinking that all the people he was calling on were shills — and then he called my name,” Wendy Rogers, a public-school teacher from Brooklyn, said after the show. “He must have superpowers or something because what he does isn’t possible on earth. And yet he does it.” More

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      Feature: Adriana Randall on Method Acting

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      Why method acting is more suited for the stage than the screen

      All images courtesy of Adriana Randall
      Adriana Randall is a film and theatre actress, and experienced theatre producer. A trained method actor, Adriana found the switch to film acting challenging in some unexpected ways. She also gained unique insights as an executive producer on a number of films into the world of method acting.

      She trained in method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, having previously been at University College London. Since graduating with a degree in Method Acting, Adriana Randall landed key supporting roles in a number of films, including The Price of Desire and Experimenter.

      Below, Adriana argues why The Method is different for acting on the screen versus on the stage.

      Adriana says: “I found that, even after the two-year conservatory programme in method acting, you still are not totally prepared for acting on screen. For me personally, there is a huge difference in the necessary method preparation for theatre versus film acting.”

      The development of The Method

      Method acting was, of course, developed in the theatre. At its core, The Method encourages expressive and sincere performances through living, breathing, and identifying with the character’s inner world.

      Based on the acting methodology formulated and developed by Russian theatre expert Konstantin Stanislavski in the first half of the 20th century, method acting is all about truly experiencing the part.

      Three key practitioners are widely considered to have built on Stanislavski methodology to create The Method:

      Lee Strasberg for the psychological insights.Stella Adler for the sociological insights.Sanford Meisner for the behaviour insights.

      Together they created the method acting approach when they worked at the Group Theatre in New York.

      Method acting on stage versus on screen

      Adriana Randall argues: “Method acting is all about saturating yourself in the real-life sensory experience of the subject that you’re portraying. In order to bring the requisite truth to the character, you have to become the character, not the actress. This takes a lot of time, focus, energy, and the kind of approach that is more difficult to deliver when acting on film.

      “For me personally, it was immediately more difficult to keep the level of focus you need on a film set. The nature of film production means a lot of distractions all around you. Added to this is the time constraints and the sheer number of people executing their own parts to play in the process.

      “So, while you’re trying to immerse yourself in the psychological makeup of the character, there’s the costume designer or make up artists needing to complete their tasks between takes. There is a lot of chat and downtime on a movie set between cast and crew and a totally different pressure on the actor compared with theatre. You have to account for that.

      “On stage and in plays you have time to focus and prepare in your private space beforehand. There are far fewer people involved in the whole process compared with on film sets with more space and time to focus.

      “Of course, when you step on stage it’s with the knowledge that all of the preliminary preparation is complete. Your character unfurls and develops on stage and your body becomes the instrument to play your emotions. There’s no interruptions or stopping and starting.

      “On camera, by contrast, you complete take after take using different camera angles that it becomes very difficult to maintain the level of energy and focus that method acting demands. You can find that you’ve wasted efforts on a shot that ends up being a wide or establishing scene, rather than on you.

      “So, if you are full of the complexity of emotions that are necessary to bring your specific character to life and subsequently find out that the camera was not on you, this can take its toll on the next shot and the next. This can make it extremely tiring to maintain.

      Final thoughts

      “I’ve found that film acting is more about technique and repetition while theatre acting allows you to live and act more in the moment. Acting on stage allows time to feel your way into the character and enjoy the linear experience of the story unfurling. You may find that your reactions on stage aren’t controlled in the same way as they are on film, but they tend to be more real.

      “That’s not to say that the method acting techniques (many of which I learnt at the Lee Strasberg Theatre) before you go on stage don’t count. If you do the work before, then sooner or later you will find a plethora of real-life emotions to draw on.

      “At Lee Strasberg, I learned through the technique of dedicated relaxation followed by sensory and emotional memory exploration. It can feel difficult graduating from a school of method acting into a space where you have to make fast choices for your character scene by scene. There is also the added pressure on the film and television set of being under time constraints, and it can be extremely difficult to maintain the depth of sensory experience that keeps you grounded in authentic characterisation.

      “Method acting goes far beyond the surface portrayal of a character and, I think it can be argued, often separates good actors from great actors. You need to tap into your lived experiences, emotions, that you have gained over your many years. Lee Strasberg himself always said that method acting is what all actors do when they’re acting well. Immersing yourself in The Method can result in the performance of your life. However, transitioning to film acting brings with it new challenges that must be overcome for the actor keen to fully inhabit their character. In many ways I would have liked to have done post graduate degrees in pure method acting (if the even exist).”

      About Adriana Randall

      Adriana Randall is a professional film actor, and a feature-film producer and theatre producer (West End and Broadway) with her father David Randall at Marzipan Productions where she has multiple co-producer credits. Adriana made her motion picture debut in The Price of Desire. For more information on Adriana, please visit her personal website or theatre production company. More

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      Tiago Rodrigues’s Theater of Compassion

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      Three stage works in Paris by the incoming director of the Avignon Festival continue his preoccupation with empathy and human complexity.PARIS — There is something about the Portuguese writer and director Tiago Rodrigues that inspires affection. It is an odd thing to feel about an artist in his position: As the incoming director of the Avignon Festival, one of the biggest events on the European performance calendar, he is suddenly a very powerful man in French theater — and with that comes a new level of critical scrutiny.Yet time and again over the past month, as three of Rodrigues’s productions were presented in quick succession in Paris, the heartfelt, considerate way in which he approached characters melted my heart. First, there were the stories of humanitarian workers teetering between miracle and catastrophe in “Insofar as the Impossible.” “Lovers’ Choir,” a chamber work in which two voices speaking in unison somehow become a potent metaphor for mutual devotion, followed.And then came “Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists,” a work that simply shouldn’t work the way it does. Just try to picture a successful play about a family whose quirky little tradition is to hunt down and kill fascists — until the youngest daughter struggles with becoming a, you know, murderer.If the premise of “Catarina” sounds histrionic, the result is anything but. As a rule, Rodrigues isn’t a showy director: He is a humanist at heart, preoccupied with empathy and the ways in which today’s world undermines it. His actors tend to address the audience frontally yet modestly, as if asking us to bear witness to each character’s doubts and flaws.“Catarina” and “Lovers’ Choir” were programmed as a double bill of sorts at the Bouffes du Nord. The 45-minute “Lovers’ Choir,” in an early evening slot, is an unassuming sequel to the first play Rodrigues wrote, in Lisbon, 15 years ago. In it, a couple experience a life-or-death emergency: A woman suddenly can’t breathe, so her partner drives her to the hospital, against the clock.Rodrigues has revived and expanded the story in this new version, created last year for French actors. At the start, Alma Palacios and David Geselson stand side by side, looking ahead at the auditorium yet united in fear, as they begin their race to find medical help. They speak in sync throughout. When she says, “I can’t breathe,” he says, “She can’t breathe” at the same time; on a nearly bare stage, they bring the scene to life solely through their intertwined words, a chorus of two.It makes for a delicately urgent narrative, in which breathing together comes to represent both love and life. When Palacios and Geselson are purposely out of sync, here and there, you know danger lurks.Alma Palacios and David Geselson in “Lovers’ Choir” at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.Filipe FerreiraThe second half throws this new version of “Lovers’ Choir” out of balance, however. Once the emergency is dealt with, the story suddenly accelerates. The characters zoom through the ensuing decades, listing milestones in their lives without giving us much time to latch onto them.“Insofar as the Impossible” and “Catarina” show how much Rodrigues’s work has gained in ambition over the years. His rise to prominence in France in the 2010s came via intimate, confessional works, like 2013’s “By Heart,” in which he shared the life of his grandmother and asked audience members to memorize a poem, and 2017’s “Sopro,” which starred the longtime prompter of the theater Rodrigues directed in Lisbon until recently, the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II.There are real stories at the heart of “Insofar as the Impossible,” too. The script of this production, at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, wove together excerpts from 30 or so interviews that Rodrigues and his team conducted with humanitarian workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.It fits into a style of documentary theater that has become popular in recent years. While French directors like Didier Ruiz have brought interviewees to the stage, however, Rodrigues has entrusted their words to four actors, who speak in a mix of French, English and Portuguese, in keeping with Rodrigues’s love of multilingualism. (He announced recently that under his direction, there would be a special focus on a different language every year at the Avignon Festival, starting with English in 2023.)Throughout, the geographical areas that humanitarian workers travel to — to provide relief from war, disasters or other emergencies — are referred to as “the Impossible,” and the comfortable Western homes they leave behind are “the Possible.” It means the audience can’t connect the anecdotes with what they may know of the region or the conflict; instead, we are invited to consider how violence, inhumanity — and dignity, too — manifest regardless of culture.Wisely, given the gut-punching nature of many scenes, Rodrigues treads lightly as director. The sets stop at a large white cloth that is slowly pulled above the stage. Many of the situations described are too harrowing to summarize neatly; suffice to say that, while humanitarian workers generally choose their line of work out of a desire to do good, “doing good” turns out to be a lot more complicated than it seems.Making a virtuous contribution is also what drives the family at the heart of “Catarina,” a work of fiction Rodrigues created with a Portuguese cast. To this family, however, that means capturing a fascist each year, following a tradition passed down by a female relative who, in the 1950s, avenged the death of her friend Catarina under Portugal’s military dictatorship. Per her wish, all her descendants are called Catarina, regardless of gender, and in Rodrigues’s engaging production, wear long dresses and aprons.Romeu Costa, left, and Rui M. Silva in “Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists” at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.Filipe FerreiraEach death and garden burial is celebrated with songs and a banquet. Yet the youngest Catarina, who was raised to kill and is about to shoot her first victim, starts experiencing doubts about her right to take a life.In a recurring joke, the characters keep quoting the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, and like Brecht, Rodrigues nudges the audience to adopt a critical perspective. Rodrigues’s father was an antifascist activist, and “Catarina” is preoccupied with weighty political questions: When fascist forces are on the rise in a democracy, what are the best means of countering them? Is “doing harm in order to practice good,” the family’s motto, morally acceptable?Many of the conversations that result between relatives — a mother urging her daughter to violence; a sister angling to take her place — could easily turn into caricatures, yet Rodrigues refuses to give the audience an easy path out of these ethical dilemmas. He doesn’t shy away from showing us what he means by fascism, either. One lengthy scene is devoted to a far-right political speech full of such hatred toward minorities that Rodrigues seems to be testing our endurance.Yet even this part of “Catarina” feels like an invitation to grapple with what humanity is capable of, rather than a didactic demonstration. Complexity is always the answer in Rodrigues’s work — and it is one of the best ways to the audience’s heart.Dans la Mesure de l’Impossible. Directed by Tiago Rodrigues. Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe/Festival d’Automne. Further performances in 2022 and 2023 around France and in Madrid.Chœur des Amants. Directed by Tiago Rodrigues. Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, through Oct. 29.Catarina et la Beauté de Tuer des Fascistes. Directed by Tiago Rodrigues. Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord/Festival d’Automne, through Oct. 30. More

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      Times Square May Get One of the Few Spectacles It Lacks: A Casino

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      The battle to win a New York City casino license has heated up in Manhattan, with real estate and gambling giants offering competing proposals for Times Square and Hudson Yards.Times Square, New York City’s famed Crossroads of the World, could hardly be considered lacking. It has dozens of Broadway theaters, swarms of tourists, costumed characters and noisy traffic, all jostling for space with office workers who toil in the area.Now one of the city’s biggest commercial developers is pitching something that Times Square does not have: a glittering Caesars Palace casino at its core.The developer, SL Green Realty Corporation, and the gambling giant Caesars Entertainment are actively trying to enlist local restaurants, retailers and construction workers in joining a pro-casino coalition, as the companies aim to secure one of three new casino licenses in the New York City area approved by state legislators earlier this year.The proposal has enormous implications for Times Square, the symbolical and economic heart of the American theater industry, and a key part of the city’s office-driven economy. Although foot traffic in Times Square was almost back at 2019 levels during recent weekends, theatergoers and office workers have been slower to re-embrace a neighborhood where violent crime has risen.Overall attendance and box office grosses on Broadway are lagging well behind prepandemic levels, and there is considerable anxiety within the industry about how changes in commuting patterns, entertainment consumption and the global economy will affect its long-term health.A casino in Times Square faces substantial obstacles. There is already a competing bid for a casino in nearby Hudson Yards from another pair of real estate and gambling giants, Related Companies and Wynn Resorts.And with casino bids also taking shape in Queens and Brooklyn, there is no assurance that the New York State Gaming Commission will place a casino in Manhattan, let alone Times Square, one of the world’s more complex logistical and economic regions.Few things change in Times Square without notice or protest. When the city installed pedestrian plazas in the area more than a decade ago, the move was widely condemned and even lampooned by late-night talk show hosts, before being eventually embraced as an innovative foray in urban design. When the neighborhood’s army of costumed characters gained a reputation for aggressive solicitation, the city restricted them to designated “activity zones,” raising free speech concerns.Now critics worry that putting a casino at 1515 Broadway, the SL Green skyscraper near West 44th Street, would alter the character of a neighborhood that can ill afford to backslide toward its seedier past, and further overwhelm an already crowded area.In a copy of a letter soliciting support for the casino, which was obtained by The New York Times, the companies promised to use a portion of the casino’s gambling revenues to fund safety and sanitation improvements in Times Square, including by deploying surveillance drones.Yet the idea of a casino has already found an influential opponent: the Broadway League, a trade association representing theater owners and producers. On Tuesday, the league sent an email to its members saying it would not welcome a casino to the neighborhood.“The addition of a casino will overwhelm the already densely congested area and would jeopardize the entire neighborhood whose existence is dependent on the success of Broadway,” the league said in a statement. “Broadway is the key driver of tourism and risking its stability would be detrimental to the city.”The congestion in Times Square is both a closely watched sign of vibrancy and a potential irritant, particularly for commuters and theatergoers who sometimes cite the crowds and the cacophony as reasons to stay away.For New York, Times Square is an important financial engine — the city relies heavily on tourists to spend money at the neighborhood’s hotels, restaurants, stores and entertainment venues.There are ample indicators that Broadway is still struggling: Several productions, including “The Phantom of the Opera,” which is the longest-running Broadway show in history, and “A Strange Loop,” which won this year’s Tony Award for best musical, have announced plans to close.Last week, there were 27 shows running on Broadway, seen by 225,731 people and grossing $29 million; in the comparable week in October 2019, before the pandemic, there were 34 shows running that were seen by 286,802 people and grossed $35 million.Still, the Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing actors and stage managers, is among those supporting the casino bid, suggesting a contentious road ahead for a proposal that will face a lengthy approval process.“The proposal from the developer for a Times Square casino would be a game changer that boosts security and safety in the Times Square neighborhood with increased security staff, more sanitation equipment and new cameras,” Actors’ Equity said in a statement. “We applaud the developer’s commitment to make the neighborhood safer for arts workers and audience members alike.”The simmering tensions between local power brokers, months before the formal bidding process has even begun, foreshadow the fight ahead for developers hoping to cash in on what could become the most lucrative gambling market in the country, at a time when traditional office-using tenants have become more scarce.A state committee formed this month to review casino applications said the process would open by Jan. 6, and that no determinations on locations would be made “until sometime later in 2023 at the earliest.”In their letter seeking support for the casino, SL Green and Caesars said that gambling revenues could be used to more than double the number of “public safety officers” in Times Square and to deploy surveillance drones.The letter said a new casino would result in more than 50 new artificial intelligence camera systems “strategically placed throughout Times Square, each capable of monitoring 85,000+ people per day.” The safety plans were developed by former New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, according to SL Green.Mr. Bratton did not respond to a request for comment.“As New Yorkers, it’s incumbent on us to keep making sure Times Square is keeping up with the times, and doesn’t go back to what I’ll call the bad old days of the ’70s or the early ’90s,” said Marc Holliday, the chief executive of SL Green. “And we all remember what that was like, when it comes to crime, and, you know, open drug use.”The casino is expected to include a hotel, a wellness center and restaurants, right above the Broadway theater that is home to “The Lion King” musical and a stone’s throw from the site of the ball drop on New Year’s Eve.Earlier this year, the state authorized up to three casino licenses for the New York City region. Legislators have touted the union jobs, tourists and tax revenue that a casino would attract, citing the fact that the bidding for each license will start at $500 million.Two existing “racinos” — horse racetracks with video slot machines but no human dealers — are considered front-runners for two of the three licenses: Genting Group’s Resorts World New York City in Queens and MGM Resorts International’s Empire City Casino in Yonkers, N.Y.The competition for the third license features many of the country’s major casino companies. Steven Cohen, the owner of the New York Mets, has been talking with Hard Rock about a casino near the baseball team’s stadium in Queens. Las Vegas Sands has been finalizing plans for its preferred casino location in the area, and Bally’s Corporation has been scouting for a development partner.The Wynn-Related proposed casino would be on the undeveloped western portion of the Hudson Yards, which was supposed to be completed by 2025 and include residential units and parks. Related, the developer of Hudson Yards, said it plans to fulfill all of its prior housing and public space commitments for the area.In a private pitch deck obtained by The Times, Wynn and Related wrote that Hudson Yards, near the Javits Center, was the ideal location to target “diverse upscale” guests for a casino resort complex.“Because it attracts the upper tier of gaming consumers, Wynn is able to dedicate less than 10 percent of its resort space to gaming, yet still generate significant gaming revenue and tax benefits for municipalities,” reads a slide in the deck.The deck also features photos of an outdoor man-made waterfall — and of a couple enjoying cocktails while watching a cigarette-holding animatronic frog, apparently from Wynn’s “Lake of Dreams” show.In their pitch letter, SL Green and Caesars said the casino was a “once in a lifetime opportunity to once again solidify Times Square as the world’s greatest entertainment area.”Community support is an integral ingredient to winning state approval for a casino license.The Broadway League’s “influence and clout and understanding of what theatergoers want is crucial to the future of Times Square, and if they’re opposing this proposal, I don’t see how it proceeds,” said Brad Hoylman, the state senator representing the district that encompasses Times Square.But Andrew Rigie, president of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which represents the city’s restaurants and bars, said the group would support a casino in Manhattan if it used local restaurant operators or provided vouchers to nearby eateries. A major question surrounding the economic impact of casinos is whether they incentivize guests to stay and eat inside the building, which could hurt surrounding businesses.Alan Rosen, the owner of Junior’s Cheesecake, a restaurant chain with locations in Times Square and at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, said he was unconcerned.“I can’t see it hurting my business,” he said. “Look at Las Vegas. What do people do? They eat. They go to shows. It’s a lot more than gambling these days.” More

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      For Broadway’s ‘1776’ Revival, the Drama Is Offstage

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      A cast member criticized the consciously progressive revival for its handling of race in rehearsals, saying there had been “harm done.” She later apologized for her comments.The current Broadway revival of “1776” was hoping to spark a conversation about power and representation. And it has, if not quite in the way it intended.It assembled a diverse cast of women, nonbinary and transgender actors to play the white men who signed the Declaration of Independence, as a way of highlighting those whose perspectives were not considered.The show, which has been in the works for several years, made adjustments after the police murder of George Floyd prompted intense debates over race, justice and hierarchy in the theater business. A new co-director, Jeffrey L. Page, who is Black, was added to shape the work alongside its original director, Diane Paulus, who is Asian American.But now, just two weeks after opening on Broadway to mixed reviews and soft sales, “1776” has become the talk of the industry — not because of its contemporary dramaturgy, but because of a cast member’s criticisms.One of the show’s standout performers, Sara Porkalob, who is making her Broadway debut, was quoted in an interview with Vulture on Friday saying “there was harm done” during the rehearsal process, and calling some of the staging decisions “cringey.”She was referring to her big second-act number, “Molasses to Rum,” in which her character, a South Carolina delegate named Edward Rutledge, calls out the “hypocrisy” of Northern delegates who criticized slavery while their states profited from it.Porkalob, who is Filipino American, told Vulture that during the rehearsal process the directors had sought “consent from the Black folks in the play” to carry out its vision for the staging, which includes an evocation of a slave auction — but not from the rest of the cast, including the non-Black actors of color. This decision, she said, using an acronym for people of color, “unconsciously held up a false narrative by assimilating non-Black POC folks into whiteness.”Porkalob said that while she liked her fellow cast members, the experience was artistically unsatisfying, and that she was giving the show “75 percent.”“The social aspect and the salary aspect are fulfilling,” she said. “The creative aspect, not so much.”The interview quickly drew attention on social media, where some hailed Porkalob for speaking her truth while others denounced her for undermining her own collaborators.Page, who is the show’s choreographer as well as one of its directors, posted an apparent rejoinder on Facebook, which he addressed to a “nameless person” whom he called “fake-woke” and “rotten to the core.”“You are ungrateful and unwise,” Page wrote in the post, which was later taken down. “You claim that you want to dismantle white supremacist ideology … I think that you are the very example of the thing that you claim to be most interested in dismantling.”Page, Paulus and Porkalob all declined to comment. But over the weekend, Porkalob emailed an apology to the show’s company, writing that she was “reaching out in an attempt to repair harm I’ve caused.”“I see how my opinions and the tone of the article have hurt, offended and upset some of the folks internal to this process,” she wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times. “I’m sorry for that.”In the email she apologized for violating what she described as the “‘What’s said in the room, stays in the room’ agreement.”“My intention was to share an important moment of learning I had in the piece, specifically how I was proud to be a part of an ensemble that was able to deftly handle these complex issues, rather than not saying anything and pretending things didn’t happen,” she wrote. “But it is clear that the impact was me breaking the above community agreement and I’m sorry.”Reviving “1776,” with its dated humor and all-white cast of historical characters, was always going to be a delicate task, even before the 2020 racial justice protests. (The show is a joint production of two nonprofits, New York’s Roundabout Theater Company and the American Repertory Theater of Cambridge, Mass.)In an interview with The Times in August, Paulus said one of the things that drew her to the 1969 show was the startling bluntness of “Molasses to Rum,” which might surprise anyone who assumed the musical (by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone) was a whitewashed Bicentennial-era relic.Performing that song is emotionally taxing, particularly for Black cast members, even after the show’s team created a Black “affinity space” to help guide the show’s explorations of race.“There’s not a night where it doesn’t hit me,” Crystal Lucas-Perry, who plays John Adams, told The Times before the production opened. (Lucas-Perry is leaving the show on Sunday to join the cast of the new Broadway play “Ain’t No Mo’.”)Porkalob is a fixture of the Seattle theater scene, known for “Dragon Cycle,” her trilogy about three generations of her family. Paulus, who won a Tony Award directing the 2013 revival of “Pippin,” saw Porkalob in a production of one of the installments at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, where Paulus is artistic director, and cast her in “1776.” Porkalob chose the role of Rutledge, a baddie with a big number.In the interview with Vulture, Porkalob described the in-between position of actors of color who are not Black. “I have certain privileges that Black folks don’t have, but I’m also not white, so I don’t have certain privileges that other people have,” she said.But she criticized the directors’ “binary” approach to race, which she said caused harm.After the show’s initial run in Cambridge, she said, there had been an affinity group for the non-Black performers of color “to talk more about what that harm felt like, and to give our consent to the enactment.”Porkalob, who uses she/they pronouns, also said the directors had paid insufficient attention to gender identity, considering it secondary to questions of race. “When we were all in the room together, there wasn’t any conversation about how we marry our queer identities with these characters, which is disappointing,” she said.The interview drew strong criticism, including from some Black performers and writers. Among those who responded to her on Twitter was the playwright Douglas Lyons, whose “Chicken & Biscuits” was staged on Broadway last year. He asked to talk with Porkalob, saying: “BIPOC artists were hurt by that article. Harm has now inflicted harm. But we can heal.”Ashley Blanchet, an actor whose Broadway credits include “Frozen,” “Beautiful” and “Memphis,” also said Porkalob had harmed colleagues. “Being a person of color does not excuse you from arrogance,” she wrote on Twitter. Porkalob, she suggested, was “messing with the livelihood of your peers to get ur 15 minutes of fame.”In a Twitter thread early Monday morning, Porkalob publicly apologized for “the pain I’ve caused my team.”But Porkalob also stood by the substance of her comments. “I’m not afraid of the great White Way,” she wrote. “I’d be sad to lose the job but my termination would only be further proof of this industry’s inability to adapt & change for the better. The work I care about can be done on Broadway or off.” More

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      Lars Eidinger Might Be the Greatest German Actor You’ve Never Heard Of

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      He might be the greatest Shakespearean actor you’ve never heard of. At last, New Yorkers will get to see his no-holds-barred portrayal of Hamlet in Thomas Ostermeier’s production at BAM.The German actor Lars Eidinger could not have been more easygoing at the photo shoot for this article. After arriving sans entourage in front of the Plaza Hotel, he clambered up a couple of stacked N.Y.P.D. concrete barriers, precariously posing like a gigantic besuited stork. As the photographer eyed a gurgling fountain nearby, Eidinger casually asked: “I go in?”It was a chilly, drizzly October afternoon in New York, but he took off his socks and shoes, pulled up his pants and waded into the water. Afterward, he stripped down to his underwear and changed into the sweats he’d brought along (just in case), unfazed by gusts of wind and gawkers on the street.That go-with-the-flow spontaneity won’t come as a surprise to anybody who’s seen Eidinger onstage. His Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017, for example, was a chaotic-evil rock ’n’ roll goblin, the performance simultaneously illuminating and unhinged. This monarch was “a bogeyman guaranteed to haunt your nightmares for weeks to come,” Ben Brantley wrote in his New York Times review of Thomas Ostermeier’s production for the Berlin Schaubühne theater company.Now New York theatergoers will be able to take in another Eidinger tour de force when he and Ostermeier bring their “Hamlet,” also from the Schaubühne, to BAM on Oct. 27. (The short run concludes Nov. 5.) By the end of the gripping, delirious show — which includes a hip-hop interlude, cross-dressing and Eidinger stuffing dirt into his mouth — you might be tempted to call an exorcist on this prince of Denmark.Thomas Ostermeier’s production for the Berlin Schaubühne company debuted in 2008, and finally arrives in New York with its star ready to wear the upside-down crown.Arno DeclairYet the actor does not set out to get a rise out of audience members. Rather, he uses a good old technique to draw them into the world of the play by creating a highly physical, no-holds-barred performance.“This has much to do with my love for Bertolt Brecht,” the jovial 46-year-old actor said in between sips of a latte outside a Midtown cafe. “Brecht said, ‘Zeigt, dass Ihr zeigt’ — ‘Show that you are showing.’ I’m all the time showing that I’m an actor onstage in a play. It’s the opposite of the understanding of a Method actor: I never become somebody else.“The only thing I try to achieve is to become myself,” he continued. “Maybe I’m more myself when I’m onstage as Hamlet than I am right now talking to you.”Eidinger has toured the world with the Schaubühne, and his charisma and all-in approach have earned him far-flung fans. This may help to explain why in recent years he has become a familiar presence on international screens — chances are you’ve seen that really tall guy with the wide jaw line and narrowly set blue eyes without knowing who he was. He has played his share of extremists, including an industrialist plotting against the Weimar Republic in the Netflix series “Babylon Berlin” and an ice-cold Nazi officer in the BBC alt-historical show “SS-GB.” He has also effectively mined restraint in naturalistic dramas, most notably as a newly separated dad visiting his parents in the German film “Home for the Weekend,” and as an actor dying of cancer in the affecting Swiss film “My Little Sister.” (In that film, his character portrays “Hamlet” in a staging by a director played by … Ostermeier.)“Somehow he’s like the Who breaking their guitars onstage,” the writer-director Olivier Assayas said of the actor who starred in the HBO series “Irma Vep.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesTellingly, our conversation took place while Eidinger was in town for the New York Film Festival, where he helped introduce Noah Baumbach’s latest feature, “White Noise,” in which he stars alongside Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver. The in-demand actor then had to leave our interview in a mad rush because he was running late for a meeting with the director Shawn Levy, for whom he has been starring in a series adaptation of the Anthony Doerr best seller “All the Light We Cannot See.”One of Eidinger’s recent (and most memorable) screen turns was in the HBO series “Irma Vep,” in which he portrayed Gottfried, a flamboyant, crack-addicted German star who loves pushing people’s buttons. “I liked the idea that Lars carries the torch of the madness of 1970s German cinema,” the writer-director Olivier Assayas said this summer in a video chat about his show. “Somehow he’s like the Who breaking their guitars onstage. It’s stuff I grew up on and I think that’s something that’s missing in contemporary cinema.”It’s missing on contemporary stages, too, giving Eidinger’s self-aware hyper-theatrical performances a unique power. But if they resonate with theatergoers past the initial shock to the system, it’s because he never loses sight of his characters.EIDINGER GREW UP in Berlin, where he still lives with his wife and daughter, and studied theater there. He became a salaried member of the Schaubühne ensemble in 1999, though he admits that it took him a while to find his bearings as a professional actor. A production of “Troilus and Cressida” with the British director James Macdonald, in 2005, proved to be a turning point. “I was really lost as Troilus, and I asked James, ‘Can you please help me understand his situation?,’” Eidinger recalled. “He said, ‘Lars, just the words. Just the words.’”Eidinger with Alicia Vikander in “Irma Vep.” He portrayed Gottfried, a flamboyant, crack-addicted German star who loves pushing people’s buttons.Carole Bethuel/HBOEidinger confessed that at the time he didn’t quite get what Macdonald meant. It hit him a few years later, when he started to rehearse “Hamlet,” which premiered in 2008 and has been touring on and off ever since.“Suddenly I thought, “OK, he was absolutely right — it’s just about the words,’” Eidinger said. “Just try it at home: Say the line ‘To be or not to be’ and try to understand what it means for you. I guarantee that there will be an emotion coming up. I don’t have to go onstage with any kind of preparation for the way I go into a mood or to a certain kind of emotion. I go onstage and try to be as open and blank as possible, and then it’s just about the words.” (Eidinger is so attached to “Hamlet” that a forthcoming documentary about him is titled “To Be or Not to Be.”)While it takes some preparation to achieve that state of readiness, Eidinger claims that he doesn’t start from high concepts. “There’s a very nice quote from Helene Weigel: ‘If you have an idea, forget it,’” Eidinger said, quoting Brecht’s wife and the director of the renowned Berliner Ensemble. “I believe in the genius of creation out of the moment. You invent something out of an impulse because you are open-minded, but you are not aware how meaningful it is. For example, in ‘Hamlet’ I wear the crown upside down,” he continued. “We tried several crowns and then we had one that was a bit too big for my head and always fell off. So I put it on the other way around, and then it worked.”It probably helps that he and Ostermeier seem to have a complicated relationship that involves trust but also a degree of one-upmanship. Speaking about their rehearsals in a video conversation, the director said: “We were constantly competing on who has the more crazy idea, who is more funny, who is more inventive, who is more creative. Because we know each other so well, it’s often, ‘OK, but I know even better, it can be even more crazy.’”“I’m aware of everything,” Eidinger said of his acting onstage. “I see the person in the first row taking candy out of his pocket and eating it. It doesn’t distract me: It makes it more complex.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesAnd this does not stop once a show reaches the stage. Jenny König, who plays Gertrude and Ophelia in “Hamlet” and Lady Anne in “Richard III,” knows all too well that acting with Eidinger requires being constantly on alert. “I think he’s really good at creating an illusion that it’s happening the first time right now — he can’t just play the scenes like he did it a hundred times before,” she said in a video chat. “It’s always this special moment where something else could happen. Sometimes it doesn’t work, that’s the risk, but the aim is to be in the moment and to experience real reactions.”Onstage, Eidinger is in a heightened state of consciousness that allows him to experience a hyper-awareness of his environment. That, in turn, helps him modulate and adjust his performance on the spot. “Some actors describe acting like being a tunnel, but it’s the complete opposite for me: I’m aware of everything,” he said. “I’m standing onstage, maybe I’m emotional and crying real tears, but at the same time I see the person in the first row taking candy out of his pocket and eating it. I can think about bringing my daughter to school. It doesn’t distract me: It makes it more complex.”This openness to his surroundings is also expressed into an interest in exploring other mediums. Eidinger, who mentions music as a primary inspiration, released a trip-hoppy album, “I’ll Break Ya Legg,” in 1998; quotes the rapper Tyler, the Creator as freely as Brecht; and has been deejaying for decades, including regular gigs at the Schaubühne. (“I’d say his taste of music is much too commercial,” Ostermeier sniffed. Someone needs to write a play à clef about these two.) He also loves taking photographs and has directed a few shows — this fall he is reprising the adaptation of “Peer Gynt” that he hatched with the artist John Bock and starred in.“For me, there’s not a big difference in how I express myself, so I’m completely satisfied just doing photography, I’m completely satisfied just directing or doing music,” Eidinger said. “Acting is something I stick to because maybe I’m most talented. In all the other art forms, I feel limitations; when I act, I feel no limits. And that’s very attractive, of course.” More