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      ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Was a Flop in 1981. Now It’s a Tony Winner.

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      “Merrily We Roll Along,” long considered one of the most storied flops in Broadway history, found redemption on Sunday when it won the Tony Award for best musical revival, belatedly establishing it in the pantheon of Stephen Sondheim masterpieces.The award, although widely expected, nonetheless represents a miraculous rehabilitation for a troubled title. The original production, in 1981, closed just 12 days after opening, dogged by terrible reviews and reports of audience walkouts. The current production — which features a major movie star, Daniel Radcliffe, alongside two popular Broadway performers, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez — has been a profitable hit met with near-universal acclaim, sold-out houses and high average ticket prices.“Merrily,” about the implosion of a three-way friendship over a 20-year period, features music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Furth. It is based on a 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and the original production was directed by Hal Prince. The debacle was notorious enough that it became the subject of a 2016 documentary, “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened.”But the show lived on and has been repeatedly reworked in the decades since because, despite its difficult birth, a cadre of passionate fans has long found it profound and, with a widely admired score, worthy of reconsideration.Much has changed, in addition to rewrites, to transform the show from failure to success. The show unfolds in reverse chronological order, a device that was less familiar to audiences in the early 1980s than it is now. To portray characters who start the show in their 40s and end it in their 20s, the original cast was made up of adolescents and young adults. Later productions have gone the other way, generally relying on actors who are older, which has proved more emotionally effective for theatergoers.The current production’s starry, appealing cast, who also performed in a 2022 Off Broadway run at New York Theater Workshop, helped make the show a must-see even before audiences discovered that they liked the story and the songs and found the show both affecting and artful.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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      Chita Rivera’s Life and Career Are Honored at the Tonys

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      Chita Rivera, who dazzled Broadway audiences for nearly seven decades, died in January at the age of 91. She “was a Broadway star as long as anyone — and maybe longer,” our chief theater critic, Jesse Green, wrote in an appraisal. Rivera, whose father was born in Puerto Rico, was best known for starring as Anita in “West Side Story” and Velma Kelly in “Chicago,” but had a long list of credits to her name. (She detailed her life in career in “Chita: A Memoir,” written with Patrick Pacheco, in 2023.)The New York Times has extensively covered Rivera’s life and career. Here is a look at some of our recent work remembering her. More

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      Daniel Radcliffe Wins His First Tony for ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

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      Daniel Radcliffe is one of the world’s most famous actors. But he’s never won a major award. Until now.Radcliffe won the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical, for his work in the smash hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” The show is Radcliffe’s fifth on Broadway, but the first for which he was even nominated for a Tony, despite mostly admiring reviews all along the way.Radcliffe, 34, will forever be known as the actor who played the title wizard in all eight “Harry Potter” films. But even before shooting of those films concluded, he had begun making the adventurous choices — onstage and onscreen — that have helped him accomplish the rare transition from child star to respected adult actor.In “Merrily,” Radcliffe plays Charley Kringas, a lyricist-turned-playwright whose long friendship and collaboration with a talented composer (a character named Franklin Shepard, played by Jonathan Groff) has imploded.Radcliffe’s enormous star power is a significant factor in the success of this production, which promises to forever alter how “Merrily” is viewed because the show’s original production, in 1981, was a storied flop.Radcliffe has been with the production since 2022, when he played the same role, with the same co-stars, during an Off Broadway run at the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop. The Broadway production opened last October, and is scheduled to conclude on July 7.He has repeatedly shown a willingness to try new things. Radcliffe first arrived on Broadway in 2008, starring in a revival of “Equus” that required him to appear nude; his next role, in a 2011 revival of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” required him to sing.He has since returned to Broadway to star in two more plays, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” in 2014 and “The Lifespan of a Fact” in 2018, and he also starred in an Off Broadway play, “Privacy,” in 2016 at the Public Theater.He has continued to make movies, many of them indie-ish projects including “Kill Your Darlings,” “Swiss Army Man” and “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”In an interview last month, two days after being nominated for the Tony Award, Radcliffe said that he keeps returning to the stage “because I love it.”“There’s something thrilling about doing something that scares you, live, a bit, every night,” he said. “And just the connection with the audience — being in a room full of people and feeling them react to the story. We’re very lucky it’s such an emotional show: There’s a lot laughs, and there’s a lot of comedy, but you can also hear people being emotionally affected by it towards the end, and that’s a very rewarding thing to be a part of.” More

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      Live Updates: Tony Awards Honors Best of Broadway

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      June 16, 2024, 8:12 p.m. ETJeremy Strong as Dr. Thomas Stockmann in “An Enemy of the People.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJeremy Strong, who shot to stardom playing the scheming Kendall Roy in the HBO phenomenon “Succession,” won his first Tony Award for playing Dr. Thomas Stockmann in Amy Herzog’s adaptation of the Ibsen drama “An Enemy of the People.”The character, a medical officer who discovers that his town’s beloved spa is dangerously polluted, finds himself in a thankless position: When he speaks the truth, the townspeople turn on him.It’s a role that has been physically demanding for Strong, 45, a famous method actor — buckets of ice cubes are dumped on his body each night, and at one point, he becomes so incensed that he tears his shirt off, buttons flying every which way. (In an interview with The New York Times in April, he likened playing the role to “walking the plank,” “summiting Everest” and “walking a beautiful tightrope over an abyss.”)The Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, wrote that Strong, who won an Emmy award for his work on “Succession,” delivers a “spectacularly accurate yet non-showy” performance that appears to have been modeled on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious disease expert. That encompasses, Green wrote, “not just his messianic faith in science but also his barely mastered disdain, social weirdness and haircut.”Though Strong established mainstream success on the screen, he spent his early career in the theater. His first Broadway role was playing an ambitious moral chameleon opposite Frank Langella in “A Man for All Seasons” in 2008. “Enemy” is the first time he has returned to the stage in more than a decade.“It felt necessary,” he told The Times in April. “The play felt like a summons.” More

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      Tony Award Winners 2024: Updating List

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      The Tony Awards begin on Sunday at 8 p.m. E.T., live from Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater.Follow the latest live updates and photos from the Tony Awards.After a very crowded spring in which 18 Broadway shows opened in two months, theatergoers and actors alike can finally exhale — and celebrate.On Sunday night, the Tony Awards will hand out its annual honors at Lincoln Center during a ceremony hosted, for the third year, by the Oscar-winning actress Ariana DeBose. A handful of awards were presented during a preshow on Pluto TV before the main ceremony at 8 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+.This Broadway season — comprising plays and musicals that opened during the eligibility period between April 28, 2023, and April 25, 2024 — featured scores of screen actors who took to the stage. Daniel Radcliffe picked up his first Tony nomination for a revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” (his fifth Broadway show); Jeremy Strong is nominated for his role in “An Enemy of the People”; Rachel McAdams for “Mary Jane”; and Sarah Paulson for “Appropriate.”In a season packed with star-studded revivals and productions, 28 of the 36 eligible shows picked up at least one nomination, with “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Stereophonic” tied for the most at 13 each. Viewers can expect lively performances and musical numbers from “Cabaret,” “Water for Elephants” and “Illinoise,” among other acts from Tony-nominated shows.An updating list of winners is below.Best Book of a MusicalShaina Taub, “Suffs” (Read our feature.)Best Leading Actor in a PlayJeremy Strong, “An Enemy of the People” (Read our feature.)Best Featured Actor in a PlayWill Brill, “Stereophonic” (Read our review.)Best Scenic Design of a PlayDavid Zinn, “Stereophonic” (Read our feature.)Best Scenic Design of a MusicalTom Scutt, “Cabaret”Best Costume Design of a PlayDede Ayite, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” (Read our Behind the Scenes.)Best Costume Design of a MusicalLinda Cho, “The Great Gatsby”Best Lighting Design of a PlayJane Cox, “Appropriate”Best Lighting Design of a MusicalBrian MacDevitt and Hana S. Kim, “The Outsiders”Best Sound Design of a PlayRyan Rumery, “Stereophonic”Best Sound Design of a MusicalCody Spencer, “The Outsiders”Best ChoreographyJustin Peck, “Illinoise” (Read our feature.)Justin Peck won the Tony Award for best choreography for “Illinoise” during a preshow ceremony on Sunday night.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest OrchestrationsJonathan Tunick, “Merrily We Roll Along” (Read our feature.)Special Tony Award for Lifetime AchievementJack O’BrienGeorge C. Wolfe2024 Special Tony AwardAlex EdelmanAbe Jacob (Read our feature.)Nikiya Mathis (Read our feature.)Isabelle Stevenson AwardBilly PorterRegional Theater Tony AwardThe Wilma TheaterTony Award for Excellence in Theater EducationCJay Philip, Dance & BmoreTony Honors for Excellence in the TheaterWendall K. HarringtonDramatists Guild FoundationThe Samuel J. Friedman Health Center for the Performing ArtsColleen Jennings-RoggensackJudith O. RubinThe Wilma Theater More

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      5 Ways This Year’s Tony Awards Reveal That Theater Is Changing

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      As Broadway prepares to celebrate the best of the season, our theater reporter explores what the nominations tell us about the industry and the art form.Tonight’s Tony Awards ceremony will celebrate the best work on Broadway. For those of us who spend a lot of time in and around theater, the event is also a prompt, encouraging us to reflect on what the current crop of shows tells us about how the industry and the art form are doing.Here are some things I’ve been thinking about as this awards season unfolded:Nonprofit theaters are struggling. They’re also developing the most-praised work.Short of money, nonprofit theaters around the country are staging fewer shows, shedding jobs, and in a few cases, closing. Some observers worry that the model that has sustained regional theater for the last half-century is broken.But, at the same time, this year’s Tony Awards tell an amazing success story: 100 percent of the nominees for best new musical, and 100 percent of the nominees for best new play, were developed at nonprofit theaters.Among plays, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” and “Prayer for the French Republic” were all staged on Broadway by the nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club. (“Mary Jane” had an earlier Off Broadway run at another nonprofit, New York Theater Workshop.) “Stereophonic” was transferred to Broadway by commercial producers after an enthusiastically received Off Broadway run at the nonprofit Playwrights Horizons, while “Mother Play” opened directly on Broadway, presented by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater.Among musicals, “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Suffs” were first staged at the nonprofit Public Theater before being transferred to Broadway by commercial producers. “Water for Elephants” had a pre-Broadway run at the nonprofit Alliance Theater in Atlanta, and “The Outsiders” did the same at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. “Illinoise,” a dance musical, had a particularly nonprofit nurturing: it was staged at Bard’s Fisher Center, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and the Park Avenue Armory before commercial producers took it to Broadway.The season was also a big one for American artists.Broadway often frets about the perceived advantages of British productions, which have historically received more government support, cost less to develop, and can benefit from the Anglophilia of some American theater fans. The last five winners of the best play Tony Award all transferred from London (though one of those, “The Inheritance,” was written by an American).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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      Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren to Star in ‘Last Five Years’ on Broadway

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      Whitney White will direct the first Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s popular musical, which plans to open next spring.Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren are planning to star in a production of “The Last Five Years” on Broadway next spring.Jonas appeared in several Broadway shows as a child; his one starring role was in 2012, when he stepped into a production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and his most recent appearance on Broadway was for a Jonas Brothers concert stand last year.Warren is a Tony Award winner for playing the title role in “Tina.” She also had roles in Broadway productions of “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed” and “Bring It On.”“The Last Five Years,” by Jason Robert Brown, is about the breakup of a marriage. Critics have rarely warmed to it, but it has a huge fan base, and is widely staged. It has never been on Broadway, in part because it is so small — just two characters and one act. The show also has an unusual structure: the male protagonist, a novelist named Jamie, tells the story from beginning to end, while the female protagonist, an actress named Cathy, tells it in reverse chronological order.It was first staged in Illinois, at Northlight Theater, in 2001, with Norbert Leo Butz and Lauren Kennedy, and then had an Off Broadway run at the Minetta Lane Theater in 2002, with Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. In the decades since, there have been numerous national and international productions and adaptations. There was a film adaptation, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, in 2015. More recently, Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry starred in a concert version in 2016, and at the height of the pandemic Out of the Box Theatrics and Holmdel Theater Company staged a memorable streaming production filmed inside an apartment with Nicholas Edwards and Nasia Thomas. (The number of licensed productions of the show doubled during the pandemic because the small cast and idiosyncratic narrative structure made it conducive to social distancing.)The Broadway production, directed by Whitney White (a Tony nominee for “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”), will be produced by Seaview, an increasingly prolific producing entity run by Greg Nobile; ATG Productions, a subsidiary of British theater owner ATG Entertainment; and the Season, which is the new producing entity of theater marketers Mike Karns and Steven Tartick. More

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      Ariana DeBose, Tonys Host, Just Might Be the Busiest Woman on Broadway

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      Back in New York City after filming a movie, the actress has been racing to shows while also rehearsing for Sunday night’s ceremony.“Baby,” Ariana DeBose confided, “you are always on.”DeBose, an Oscar winner and a longtime Broadway phenom, was speaking of herself, in the second person, last Saturday evening. Dressed in a beige ribbed tank, athletic shorts and chunky heeled boots, she was still glistening from a rehearsal for Sunday’s Tony Awards broadcast. “On” is an understatement: This will be her third time hosting the ceremony, and her first time producing and choreographing.“Why I did that, I’ll never know,” she said. “Dear lord, the Tonys is just one giant learning experience. You have to be humble.”Humble. And very busy. DeBose is 33 but still very much a theater kid. Her speech was fast, excitable, and when not vaping from a hot pink pen, she had a tendency to reach out to pat my arm or leg, an intimate form of emphasis. Soon, she would take herself out for a hurried plate of pasta before racing to an evening show. For the past two weeks, DeBose has been on a mission, however implausible, to see all of the nominated plays and musicals.Until the end of May, DeBose had been in Winnipeg, Manitoba, shooting an action film, “With Love.” She arrived in New York City the Saturday before Memorial Day and saw her first show that Sunday. On the day we spoke, a week before the broadcast, she had just three shows remaining. (One, “Water for Elephants,” she would see that night.) And this was in addition to arduous rehearsal days.DeBose has said that she will take a break as Tonys host, in large part because she hopes to return to Broadway. OK McCausland for The New York Times“These are opposite processes,” she said of hosting and spectating. “They’re very different disciplines, but you can’t host if you don’t know who’s involved. So to me, it’s a requirement.”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