Theater

Based on the hit 1993 hit film “Sleepless in Seattle,” the production is London’s first fully staged indoor musical in months. Applause for that, at least. More

MCC Theater’s 2020 “Miscast” gala is its first to happen online, but in a way it’s an easy pivot. For years, the theater has posted performances from the star-studded live event on YouTube, where they have attracted quite a following.Here, in alphabetical order, is a highly subjective list of “Miscast” favorites to check out.“Anything Goes” (from “Anything Goes”)[embedded content]If you loved Jonathan Groff as the foppish King George in “Hamilton,” you will find him irresistibly adorable in this deliriously silly, tap-happy 2012 homage to Sutton Foster, which has Groff playing Reno Sweeney, surrounded by a flock of dancers.“A Boy Like That” (from “West Side Story”)In the musical, the song belongs to Anita and Maria, so having men sing it sounds like a recipe for camp. But Lin-Manuel Miranda and Raúl Esparza’s 2014 duet isn’t a sendup — and that’s the source of its loveliness.“I Am What I Am” (from “La Cage Aux Folles”)Jennifer Holliday as Albin, the slighted half of a gay male couple divided about living openly? It’s probably not in the casting cards. But this song is Albin’s assertion of dignity, and that’s a universal human notion. At the 2017 gala, Holliday makes it her own exquisitely powerful affirmation, quite movingly.“If I Were a Rich Man” (from “Fiddler on the Roof”)Katrina Lenk, who was in previews as Bobbie in the gender-flipped “Company” when Broadway shut down, takes on another male role here, fiddling her way through Tevye’s most famous song. The 2018 number was her idea, and it is almost guaranteed to make you want to see her do the show.“The Impossible Dream” (from “Man of La Mancha”)The only part of this 2016 video that you should disregard is in the introduction, when Keala Settle says she would never be able to do the show justice. Hoping to see her play Don Quixote in a full production might be tilting at windmills — but her singing his anthem is an unequivocal victory. More

An in-demand lighting designer, he won Tony Awards for “Hamilton” and “Jersey Boys.” More

Announcing stage productions, and timing, has become a matter of wishful thinking, guesswork and experimentation. Case in point: the no-show plan. More

As the editor of the Culture department at The New York Times, Gilbert Cruz relies on critics, reporters and editors in every field of the arts for their expertise. Now we’re bringing his questions — and our writers’ answers — to you. Currently on his mind: how to enjoy streaming theater, which he posed to Jesse Green, the co-chief theater critic.Gilbert asks: Jesse, before the pandemic, I’d go to the theater several times a month in New York City and one of the things that I most appreciated about the experience was the forced focus — no phones, no distractions, pure absorption. Since the lockdown began, I’ve tried several times at home to watch Zoom productions, or even filmed productions like stuff from the National Theater, and I find myself largely unable to sit down and commit. What is my problem?Jesse answers: It’s not just your problem. One of the things we’ve all lost is the blurring of public and private, of self and community, that theater traditionally plays on. Everything is private now because we’re all stuck in our homes. If you’re by yourself in a comfy chair with the phone nearby and the lights blaring, that blur is impossible. To mitigate the problem, I turn the lights down, shut off notifications and sit on the weird sofa no one ever sits on. It helps to watch with someone else. Or maybe you just need some zippier fare?Gilbert: I tried to start with zippier fare, so many months ago. I recall trying to watch James Corden in“One Man, Two Guvnors,” which by all accounts is a madcap time! And my mind just kept drifting and drifting … Didn’t make it more than 20-30 minutes. Have you seen that there is there a certain type of theater production that works best online?Jesse: Yes, and “One Man, Two Guvnors” is not it. That production was never intended to be experienced remotely. The online theater I’ve found most successful is designed for the medium, and sometimes even for the specific platform. In both Richard Nelson’s hourlong, contemplative five-hander “What Do We Need to Talk About?” and Noelle Viñas’s heartbreaking 10-minute monologue “Zoom Intervention,” families communicate via Zoom — and we watch them as if on Zoom ourselves. The form and the content are working together, not at odds.Gilbert: Yeah, I suppose you sort of need to be in the theater to feel the collective giddiness that the audience of “Two Guvnors” seemed to be experiencing. It makes sense that Zoom-based theater would feel natural; you’re steering into the curve there, using a format of communication that many of us have had to become quickly comfortable with. But what other genres or forms should I be looking for, then? I want to be successful here!ImageWhen an actor seems to be speaking directly to you, even if you know it’s an illusion, you feel a version of the intimacy live theater thrives on.Jesse: One-person works in general — like the ones that appear every week as part of the ongoing “Viral Monologues” series, are a good bet. When an actor seems to be speaking directly to you, even if you know it’s an illusion, you feel a version of the intimacy live theater thrives on. (It’s an illusion in the theater too!) Physical comedy is another genre that seems to work well, at least when conceived for the computer’s rectangle instead of the stage’s. (Bill Irwin and Christopher Fitzgerald in “In-Zoom” are delightful.) The avant-garde and surreal, never having depended much on traditional presentation, are thriving. But I have a sense that’s not what you’re looking for.Gilbert: I feel terrible saying this, but I think what I might be looking for (in part at least) is short-form theater? If the debate over the blurring lines between film and TV involve, at least in part, length versus compactness, what is the type of in-and-out “theater” I can experience online that I probably would be less inclined to do in person because I would be expecting “a night out”? One of the things that most moved me early in quarantine was watching Andrew Scott do “Sea Wall.” And that’s, what, an hour?Jesse: Just 30 minutes! I get your point, though: Theater, done right, asks a lot of you, which is one reason we typically leave the distractions of home to experience it. So let’s go bite-size. The monologues I keep pushing make a great all-you-can-eat buffet. If you prefer the feeling of multiperson plays, comedy is a good bet, like Jordan E. Cooper’s 14-minute “Mama Got a Cough.” And though full-length musicals are at this point pretty hopeless online, individual songs suit the medium well. If you didn’t watch “Take Me to the World,” the Sondheim 90th birthday celebration, you should sample it. Or this rendition of “Being Alive,” from the Antonyo Awards. Or this Zoomtastic “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from “Hairspray.” Five minutes of joy before you check the wash. More

LONDON — Ruth Mackenzie broke boundaries as the artistic director of the Théâtre du Châtelet, one of Paris’ most famous stages.In 2017, she became the first woman to run the theater, which opened in 1862. Shortly after she took office, the Châtelet closed for a two-and-a-half-year, $35 million renovation, and Mackenzie used that time to reinvent the institution. When it reopened last fall, the revamped programming made headlines and appealed to new audiences, including from Paris’s poor suburbs. Last October, for example, it staged “Les Justes,” a rap musical based on a work by Albert Camus. The production’s director, Abd al Malik, was the first Black artist to direct a play at the theater.Now, Mackenzie has been fired.The theater’s board dismissed her with immediate effect on Thursday, she said in a telephone interview. A letter from the board said that she had bullied employees, Mackenzie said, an accusation that she denied.“There’s a level of betrayal,” she said of her feelings about the decision. “It’s a high price to pay for moving here, writing a 10-year vision and starting it with some beautiful work with artists and audiences that hadn’t had a chance to go to this theater before.”She said she would seek legal advice to challenge the decision.In a short news release, the theater said Mackenzie had left with immediate effect, and a spokesman declined to answer any questions about her departure.Mackenzie’s time at the Châtelet was not without problems. In 2019, before its official reopening, the theater hosted “DAU,” a much-hyped but poorly executed immersive theater work. Visitors complained of waiting in line for hours to see a half-finished spectacle.The grumbling continued once the official programming began. Many critics said that the theater’s opening show, “Parade,” a reworking of a famous ballet that premiered at the Châtelet in 1917, was shallow; others complained that it used amateur performers who weren’t paid. The thumping music in “Room With a View,” a dance piece developed with the French electronic music producer Rone, led to noise complaints from a nearby hotel.Ariane Bavelier, the deputy culture editor at Le Figaro, a conservative French newspaper, criticized several productions from Mackenzie’s tenure in a text message exchange. “Parade,” she said, was “more showbiz than the sophisticated refinement expected in that house,” while she described “DAU” as “a fiasco.” It was “poorly organized, slow, pretentious and without much to see,” she said. Other works in the season, she said, were unoriginal or had already been shown elsewhere.But, Bavelier said, Mackenzie “wasn’t fired because of her programming.”Mackenzie said that two employees from the theater’s marketing department had complained about her while the theater was closed during the coronavirus lockdown, which had led to an official inquiry. “I had Covid and then pneumonia, so it was quite tough being interrogated by Zoom,” Mackenzie said.Mackenzie said that the inquiry’s final report had cleared her of the bullying accusations. “It says some rude things about me,” she said. “It says I don’t speak French very well, and it says some people in the theater found it culturally hard to adjust to my vision. But it could not prove bullying. Nonetheless, they have fired me, citing bullying.”She conceded that some of her programming decisions had not been popular with the theater’s traditional audience. “It was exactly the readers of Le Figaro who found the adjustments from the old Châtelet to the new Châtelet difficult,” she said.Mackenzie said she was “heartbroken” by being fired, but hoped that the theater would continue on the path she had set for it.“My vision is a citizens theater, it’s an activists theater,” she said. “We want the theater to show to the world Paris’s values. I hope that continues.” More

Jujamcyn Theaters, the operator of five Broadway houses, has sued its insurers for denying it millions of dollars that the theater company says it deserves as payment for the losses suffered during the monthslong coronavirus pandemic shutdown.The theater company said that one of the insurance companies, Federal Insurance Company, denied it “even a penny” of pandemic-related coverage, while the other company, Pacific Indemnity Company, paid it a fraction of what the Broadway operator believes it should be paid.The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, is the latest challenge to the insurance industry’s refusal of coverage for the deluge of business losses experienced during the pandemic.After Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York shut down theaters in March and then closed all nonessential businesses, arts institutions of all kinds filed insurance claims for business income loss. But the insurance industry has issued a torrent of denials, arguing that its policies never promised this kind of coverage in the first place and that fulfilling all of these requests would bankrupt the industry.On March 12, when Mr. Cuomo ordered an end to all gatherings of more than 500 people — effectively shuttering all 41 Broadway theaters — Jujamcyn was forced to cancel the hit musical “Hadestown” at the Walter Kerr Theater, as well as four other shows, including “The Book of Mormon” and “Frozen.”The theater company submitted its business income loss claim to Federal Insurance, but the insurer denied coverage, saying that there was no “direct physical loss or damage,” which is needed to trigger payments. Such policies are designed to replace lost income in cases of building damage or when a civil authority has shut down the surrounding area. In its lawsuit, Jujamcyn argues that the coronavirus pandemic does cause physical loss or damage, explaining that the virus can adhere to surfaces for days and linger in the air inside buildings for hours.In a July letter to the insurer’s parent company, Chubb, Jujamcyn’s lawyer requested that the insurer withdraw its denial, writing that its theaters might not generate box office revenue for the rest of the year and that its business income losses may exceed $29 million.“Chubb has seized upon excuses to abandon its insured in its time of need,” the lawyer, Jeffrey L. Schulman, wrote.Chubb, which is also the parent company of Pacific Indemnity, is a common insurer of arts organizations. Weeks into the pandemic, the company’s chief executive, Evan Greenberg, caused a stir among clients when he said in an earnings call that business interruption insurance “doesn’t cover Covid-19” and that “the industry will fight this tooth and nail.”The Coronavirus Outbreak ›Frequently Asked QuestionsUpdated September 1, 2020Why is it safer to spend time together outside?Outdoor gatherings lower risk because wind disperses viral droplets, and sunlight can kill some of the virus. Open spaces prevent the virus from building up in concentrated amounts and being inhaled, which can happen when infected people exhale in a confined space for long stretches of time, said Dr. Julian W. Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester.What are the symptoms of coronavirus?In the beginning, the coronavirus seemed like it was primarily a respiratory illness — many patients had fever and chills, were weak and tired, and coughed a lot, though some people don’t show many symptoms at all. Those who seemed sickest had pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome and received supplemental oxygen. By now, doctors have identified many more symptoms and syndromes. In April, the C.D.C. added to the list of early signs sore throat, fever, chills and muscle aches. Gastrointestinal upset, such as diarrhea and nausea, has also been observed. Another telltale sign of infection may be a sudden, profound diminution of one’s sense of smell and taste. Teenagers and young adults in some cases have developed painful red and purple lesions on their fingers and toes — nicknamed “Covid toe” — but few other serious symptoms.Why does standing six feet away from others help?The coronavirus spreads primarily through droplets from your mouth and nose, especially when you cough or sneeze. The C.D.C., one of the organizations using that measure, bases its recommendation of six feet on the idea that most large droplets that people expel when they cough or sneeze will fall to the ground within six feet. But six feet has never been a magic number that guarantees complete protection. Sneezes, for instance, can launch droplets a lot farther than six feet, according to a recent study. It’s a rule of thumb: You should be safest standing six feet apart outside, especially when it’s windy. But keep a mask on at all times, even when you think you’re far enough apart.I have antibodies. Am I now immune?As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that’s perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?Employers have to provide a safe workplace with policies that protect everyone equally. And if one of your co-workers tests positive for the coronavirus, the C.D.C. has said that employers should tell their employees — without giving you the sick employee’s name — that they may have been exposed to the virus.In a statement responding to Jujamcyn’s lawsuit, Chubb said that it had paid out millions of dollars this year for the pandemic-related disruption of Broadway performances but that most standard property insurance policies do not cover pandemic risk when it comes to business interruption.“Creating false expectations about coverage that does not exist, including filing baseless lawsuits, will not solve this crisis,” it said.Jujamcyn said in its lawsuit that it should also be granted insurance payments based on the fact that state and local government had shut its theaters down. The state’s phased reopening does not yet include indoor theaters.According to the lawsuit, which accuses both Federal Insurance and Pacific Indemnity of a breach of contract, part of the reason that Jujamcyn’s business income insurance claim was denied was because the governmental orders did not prohibit access to the theaters, meaning theater employees were not barred from entering and checking on the buildings. Mr. Schulman called that a “ludicrous position.”The second part of the lawsuit argues that Pacific Indemnity, which provides Jujamcyn with performance disruption coverage, was wrong in its decision to only grant the theater company one payment of $250,000 for its five theaters. The insurance company said that the pandemic qualified as a single “occurrence,” requiring only one performance disruption payout. Jujamcyn countered that the insurer was suffering from a “serious case of seller’s remorse” and actually owed it more than $1 million. More

The Public Theater, a leading Off Broadway nonprofit, is giving small grants to several hundred freelance artists as many grapple with the impact of joblessness and expiring unemployment benefits.The theater said it has given $1,000 “financial relief payments” to 368 people including technicians and crew members like carpenters, truck drivers, engineers and programmers; teaching artists, who facilitate classes, workshops and talkbacks; and members of working groups, which support artists as they develop.“Freelance theater workers are in total economic distress, almost universally,” said Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director. “It feels pathetic — this isn’t enough money — but it’s just what we can do right now.”The Public, like other nonprofits, has seen its ticket revenue disappear with the closing of theaters; the organization says it faces a shortfall of over $10 million this year. Last month, the theater furloughed 105 of its 232 full-time employees — it is continuing to pay their health insurance through the end of the year — and it has cut the pay of all remaining staff members who make over $100,000 a year.Eustis said the initial round of relief payments went to freelancers who worked on shows at the Public from September through March, when the coronavirus pandemic prompted a shutdown of in-person performances. The Public said it anticipated giving a second round of grants to actors, stage managers, designers and other creative team members later in the year.“We’re trying to let them know we see them,” Eustis said, “and we also hope it will inspire other institutions to recognize that preserving the field isn’t just preserving our staffs or our buildings, but the people who do the vast amount of work.”Several other institutions have also made microgrants to theater artists during the pandemic. The Public said it was inspired to act in part by Artist Relief, a coalition of grant makers funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, that is giving money to creative workers facing financial emergencies. The League of Chicago Theaters offered $500 grants to Chicago-based theater professionals, and a new organization called the Black Theater Alliance of Philadelphia is offering $200 apiece to 20 local Black artists.And individuals have sought to help, too: the playwright Jeremy O. Harris, for example, worked with the Bushwick Starr to distribute 152 grants, each $500, to playwrights. More