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    Review: A Text-to-Speech Meet-Cute in ‘All of Me’

    Laura Winters’s romantic comedy pays careful attention to the dynamics of living with disabilities.Lucy has impeccable comic timing and a sense of humor as dry as a gin martini. Her expression deadpan but for a slightly furrowed brow, she delivers punchlines with Amazon Prime efficiency in a calm, even tone that may sound familiar to people who use Alexa or ride the New York City subway.Played with wry assurance by Madison Ferris, Lucy communicates using a text-to-speech tool built into her motorized scooter. As heroines go, she is a young Katharine Hepburn type: headstrong and outspoken but eagerly in search of tenderness. Her verve and vulnerability are the lifeblood of “All of Me,” an affecting if formulaic new romantic comedy by Laura Winters that opened on Tuesday at the Pershing Square Signature Center.Lucy meets Alfonso (Danny J. Gomez), who uses a motorized wheelchair and similar technology to communicate, outside a hospital while awaiting their rides. Proposing a game, Lucy asks him to pick a random key on his screen; when he chooses “B,” there’s a prolonged pause while she types. Then her device’s flat staccato sounds out the raunchy rhymes of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”Typical of Lucy, it’s a funny bit with a mordant edge, bemoaning her situation by making light of it. As we soon learn, Lucy used to love to sing but has lost the ability to pronounce consonants (the play’s title refers to the jazz standard by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons). Lucy received a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy when she was 16; now in her early 20s, she has been managing the disease long enough to laugh about it with a trace of cynicism.Where Lucy sees only limitations, Alfonso, who has been paralyzed since infancy, maintains a broader sense of life’s possibilities — largely because he has the money to. So, what follows is a classic case of opposites attract. Lucy shares a cramped, less-than-accessible home with her mother, Connie (Kyra Sedgwick), who works two jobs; her older sister, Jackie (Lily Mae Harrington); and Jackie’s fiancé, Moose (Brian Furey Morabito).Alfonso, on the other hand, is a white-collar professional with enough means to hire help and buy a tricked-out house (the furniture-swapping set is by Brett Banakis and Edward T. Morris); his mother, Elena (Florencia Lozano), is only in town to help with the move (the story takes place in Schenectady, N.Y. in 2018).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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    Betty Buckley Is Not Wedded to the Same Old Songs

    The actress is back in concert mode at 76, and doing new material. She’s also looking forward to a bold new take on “Sunset Boulevard.”On her 35-acre ranch in Texas, the actor-singer Betty Buckley has been dreaming of playing a Western heroine at last — ideally in something by Taylor Sheridan, the “Yellowstone” creator, who shoots nearby.“I have literally contemplated going to his ranch and just knocking on the door,” Buckley, 76, said the other afternoon, and laughed.This week, though, she is slated to perform in Manhattan, Thursday through Saturday at Joe’s Pub, with songs and arrangements new to her show. After a year and a half of physical challenges including long Covid and compression fractures in her spine, she has worked her way back into concert mode.A veteran of the 1976 movie “Carrie” and the musical adaptation — a cult favorite that was a Broadway flop in 1988 — she is also back on-screen as an unsettling neighbor in the horror movie “Imaginary,” released in March, and with an animated short that she wrote and narrates, “The Mayfly,” scheduled for the Tribeca Festival in June.The actress played Norma Desmond in both the West End and the Broadway productions of “Sunset Boulevard” in the mid-1990s.John Stoddart/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesSissy Spacek and Buckley in “Carrie,” which was Buckley’s big-screen debut in 1976. She later starred in a stage adaptation of the movie.United ArtistsA 1983 Tony Award winner for playing Grizabella in “Cats,” and famed for her trans-Atlantic 1990s turn as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” Buckley spoke from her ranch by video call. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Darren Criss to Return to Broadway as a Robot in Love

    The actor will star in “Maybe Happy Ending,” an original musical set in a future Seoul. It will begin previews in September.Darren Criss, who parlayed a breakout role on “Glee” into a multifaceted career in television, theater and music, will return to Broadway this fall in a new musical that is nominally about robots but is also about life, love and loss.The show, “Maybe Happy Ending,” is a rarity for Broadway: a fully original musical — not adapted from a pre-existing story or song catalog. Criss will star alongside Helen J Shen and two other actors in the musical, which is set in Seoul in the late 21st century and is about two outmoded helperbots who meet at a robot retirement home and forge a relationship while grappling with their own obsolescence.The musical, by Will Aronson and Hue Park, had an initial Korean-language production in Seoul in 2016, and an English-language production in Atlanta, at the Alliance Theater, in 2020, where Jesse Green, a New York Times chief theater critic, called it “a charming, Broadway-ready new musical about robots in love.”The Broadway production, announced Tuesday, will be directed by Michael Arden, who also directed the Atlanta production, and who last year won a Tony Award for directing a revival of “Parade.” “Maybe Happy Ending” is scheduled to begin previews Sept. 18 and to open Oct. 17 at the Belasco Theater.“It’s a strange, futuristic look at love, with a beautiful score that feels quite classic,” Arden said in a telephone interview. “When I first read it I found it absolutely devastating and heartbreaking and beautiful — it was one of the most human stories I’d come across, even though our leads aren’t human.”Criss, an Emmy winner for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” last appeared on Broadway in a 2022 revival of “American Buffalo”; he had previously starred in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”“Maybe Happy Ending” will be the first Broadway show for Shen, who is currently in “The Lonely Few” at Off Broadway’s MCC Theater. Criss and Shen will play the robots; the cast will also include Dez Duron, a onetime contestant on “The Voice.”“Maybe Happy Ending” is being capitalized for $18.25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The musical’s lead producers are Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold, who on Friday announced that they are also among the producers of a new Off Broadway play, “N/A,” starring Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe. That play, written by Mario Correa and directed by Diane Paulus, is to begin previews June 11 and to open June 23 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. The play, described in a news release as inspired by real people and events, is about tensions between the first female speaker of the House and the youngest woman elected to Congress; the characters have parallels to Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. More

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    Enhancing Broadway, by Any Bodily Means Necessary

    The choreographers nominated for Tony Awards this year have a broader vision than usual of the possibilities of dance in theater.In the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Outsiders,” something shocking keeps happening. It isn’t that the characters throw punches, or not exactly. These are teenagers who rumble, so it isn’t surprising that they’re violent. What’s shocking is the kinesthetic impact. You seem to feel the blows yourself.The impact is electrifying, but it doesn’t operate alone. It serves the storytelling and engages the emotions of an audience by bodily means. This is what choreography at its best can do, and it isn’t limited to what you might think of as dancing.The choreographers of “The Outsiders” and of the four other shows nominated for the Tony Award in that category this year understand this. None dole out the usual stuff. This broader vision of theatrical choreography is worth noticing and applauding.Hell’s KitchenMaleah Joi Moon plays the lead role in “Hell’s Kitchen,” which has choreography by Camille A. Brown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA loosely autobiographical jukebox musical of songs by Alicia Keys, “Hell’s Kitchen” takes place in the 1990s, in the Manhattan neighborhood of the title. Camille A. Brown’s choreography fits the setting. It looks, delightfully, like dancing that the people who live there would do, like regular folks getting their groove on.But it’s also a throwback to an older, neglected mode of integrating dance into a musical, the tradition that Agnes de Mille inaugurated with shows like “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” in the 1940s. Like de Mille, Brown individuates the ensemble with detail: This guy is extra flamboyant; that gal pops her gum bubbles on the beat. Moving like this, the dancing chorus becomes the appealing community that draws the show’s 17-year-old protagonist, Ali, into the world — and out from the apartment building where her mother wants her to stay sheltered.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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    Tony Awards 2024: Who Will Win (and Who Should)

    Our chief theater critic names the shows and artists he thinks will win, should win and should have been nominated — and suggests a few new categories.The 2023-24 Broadway season was rich with new plays and, let’s say, crowded with new musicals. Revivals were rarer — not a bad thing, necessarily. But the combination of factors makes for quite a horse race as the Tony Awards presentation approaches. So take my annual Tonys “ballot” with the usual caveats, listed below, and with a grain of salt for my highly unscientific commentary within each category. As always, that includes a plea for the addition of new awards; if we can change, why can’t the Tonys?1. I’m not an oddsmaker. I don’t actually vote. Prizes for artistic merit are silly. You could probably do better by flipping a coin.2. The people and productions listed in the “Should Win” category are not necessarily more deserving than those in “Will Win.” There’s often little if any excellence gap between the two groups.3. The “Should Have Been Nominated” category obviously includes Broadway work that was eligible but spurned. Less obviously, it also includes work from Off Broadway and beyond (indicated by an *asterisk*) that’s totally ineligible for the Tonys, just because.Best PlayWILL WIN“Stereophonic”Should win“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”“Mary Jane”Should have been nominated“Primary Trust”*“Infinite Life”*“The Comeuppance”*“Jonah”*Four cheers for Off Broadway, where so many Broadway plays start — including this year’s “Stereophonic, “Mary Jane,” “Appropriate” and “Prayer for the French Republic.” And a fifth cheer for “Primary Trust,” which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.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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    Review: A New Lens on Auschwitz in ‘Here There Are Blueberries’

    Archivists are the heroes of a documentary play about a photograph album depicting daily life among the perpetrators of the Holocaust.You do not expect a camera to be the first thing you see in a play about the Holocaust. Yet even before “Here There Are Blueberries” begins, a spotlight illuminates a Leica on a pedestal. A period advertisement projected behind it promotes it as “the camera of modern times.”That’s apt for a dramatized documentary that looks at its subject from an unusual angle: the discovery of photographs taken at Auschwitz and the archivists who brought them to light.“Blueberries,” which opened on Monday at New York Theater Workshop in a co-production with Tectonic Theater Project, focuses on the so-called Höcker album, which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired from an anonymous donor in 2007. Uniquely, none of the album’s 116 photographs depict victims of the Nazis — only the Nazis themselves, going about the banal daily business of living and enjoying their lives at the camp.That the play takes a similar approach, keeping the victims mostly out of frame, is a blessing and a problem. A blessing because in so doing it avoids both active horror and the cynicism of Holokitsch, in which the murder of six million Jews is appropriated to zhuzh some emotion that might otherwise be absent.But in backgrounding the tragedy, even with the noblest intentions, “Blueberries” (conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman; written by Kaufman and Amanda Gronich) gets caught in a different dramatic problem: a problem of moral scale. What it’s about, however worthy, is so much smaller than what it insistently isn’t.It’s not just that the album at the center of the story, being the keepsake of an assistant to the commandant of Auschwitz in 1944, makes no reference to major atrocities in its portrayal of minor pleasures like the title blueberries. We do not see — as we do in the film “The Zone of Interest,” which features some of the same characters and locations — smoke from crematories or glowing evil light at night. In keeping with the museum’s efforts to “avoid undue attention to the perpetrators,” the play’s Nazis are characterized almost as little as their victims.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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    Tony Awards 2024: Print Your Ballot!

    Best New Play
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ “Mary Jane”
    ☐ “Mother Play”
    ☐ “Prayer for the
    French Republic”
    ☐ “Stereophonic”
    Best New Musical
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    “Illinoise”
    ☐ “The Outsiders”
    ☐ “Suffs”
    “Water for Elephants”
    Best Play Revival
    ☐ “Appropriate”
    ☐ “An Enemy of the People”
    “Purlie Victorious”
    Best Musical Revival
    ☐ “Cabaret”
    ☐ “Gutenberg! The Musical!”
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    “The Who’s Tommy”
    Best Book
    of a Musical

    Bekah Brunstetter,
    “The Notebook”
    Kristoffer Diaz, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Rick Elice,
    “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Adam Rapp and Justin
    Levine, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Shaina Taub, “Suffs”
    Best Leading Actor
    in a Play
    ☐ William Jackson
    Harper, “Uncle Vanya”
    Leslie Odom Jr.,
    “Purlie Victorious”
    ☐ Liev Schreiber, “Doubt”
    Jeremy Strong,
    “An Enemy of the People”
    ☐ Michael Stuhlbarg, “Patriots”
    Best Leading Actress
    in a Play
    ☐ Betsy Aidem, “Prayer for
    the French Republic”
    0000
    Jessica Lange, “Mother Play”
    Rachel McAdams, “Mary Jane”
    Sarah Paulson, “Appropriate”
    ☐ Amy Ryan, “Doubt”
    Best Leading Actor
    in a Musical
    ☐ Brody Grant, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Jonathan Groff, “Merrily
    We Roll Along”
    Dorian Harewood,
    “The Notebook”
    ☐ Brian d’Arcy James,
    “Days of Wine and Roses”
    ☐ Eddie Redmayne, “Cabaret”
    The New York Times
    2024 Tony Awards Ballot
    Best Leading Actress
    in a Musical
    Eden Espinosa, “Lempicka”
    ☐ Maleah Joi Moon,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    Kelli O’Hara,
    “Days of Wine and Roses”
    ☐ Maryann Plunkett,
    “The Notebook”
    ☐ Gayle Rankin, “Cabaret”
    Best Featured Actor
    in a Play
    ☐ Will Brill, “Stereophonic”
    Eli Gelb, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Jim Parsons, “Mother Play”
    Tom Pecinka, “Stereophonic”
    Corey Stoll, “Appropriate”
    Best Featured Actor
    in a Musical
    ☐ Roger Bart,
    “Back to the Future”
    ☐ Joshua Boone, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Brandon Victor Dixon,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Sky Lakota-Lynch,
    “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Daniel Radcliffe,
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    ☐ Steven Skybell, “Cabaret”
    Best Featured Actress
    in a Play
    ☐ Quincy Tyler Bernstine,
    “Doubt”
    ☐ Juliana Canfield,

    “Stereophonic”
    Celia Keenan-Bolger,
    “Mother Play”
    Best Direction
    of a Musical
    ☐ Maria Friedman,
    ㅁㅁㅁ ㅁ
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    Best Lighting Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ Brandon Stirling
    Baker, “Illinoise”
    Michael Greif, “Hell’s Kitchen”

    Isabella Byrd, “Cabaret”
    Leigh Silverman, “Suffs”

    ☐ Jessica Stone,
    “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Danya Taymor, “The Outsiders”
    Best Scenic Design
    of a Play
    Natasha Katz, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Bradley King and David
    Bengali, “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Brian MacDevitt and Hana S.
    Kim, “The Outsiders”
    Best Sound Design
    dots, “An Enemy of the People” of a Play
    ☐ dots, “Appropriate”
    Derek McLane,
    “Purlie Victorious”
    David Zinn,
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    David Zinn, “Stereophonic”
    Best Scenic Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ AMP featuring Tatiana
    Kahvegian, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Robert Brill and Peter
    Nigrini, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Tim Hatley and Finn Ross,
    “Back to the Future”
    ☐ Riccardo Hernández and
    Peter Nigrini, “Lempicka”
    ☐ Takeshi Kata,
    “Water for Elephants”
    David Korins, “Here Lies Love”
    ☐ Tom Scutt, “Cabaret”
    Best Costume Design
    of a Play

    Dede Ayite, “Appropriate”

    Dede Ayite,
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ Sarah Pidgeon, “Stereophonic” ☐ Enver Chakartash,
    ☐ Kara Young, “Purlie Victorious”
    Best Featured Actress
    in a Musical
    ☐ Shoshana Bean,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Amber Iman, “Lempicka”
    Nikki M. James, “Suffs”


    Leslie Rodriguez
    Kritzer, “Spamalot”
    Kecia Lewis, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Lindsay Mendez,
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    ☐ Bebe Neuwirth, “Cabaret”
    Best Direction of a Play
    Daniel Aukin, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Anne Kauffman, “Mary Jane”
    Kenny Leon, “Purlie Victorious”
    Lila Neugebauer, “Appropriate”
    Whitney White,
    ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ ☐
    “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Justin Ellington and
    Stefania Bulbarella,
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ Leah Gelpe, “Mary Jane”
    ☐ Tom Gibbons, “Grey House”
    ☐ Bray Poor and Will
    Pickens, “Appropriate”
    ☐ Ryan Rumery, “Stereophonic”
    Best Sound Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ M.L. Dogg and Cody Spencer,
    “Here Lies Love”
    Kai Harada,
    “Merrily We Roll Along”

    Nick Lidster, “Cabaret”

    Gareth Owen, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Cody Spencer, “The Outsiders”
    Best Original Score
    Will Butler, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Adam Guettel, “Days
    of Wine and Roses”
    ☐ Jamestown Revival and Justin
    Levine, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ David Byrne and Fatboy
    Slim, “Here Lies Love”
    ☐ Shaina Taub, “Suffs”
    Emilio Sosa, “Purlie Victorious” Best Choreography
    David Zinn,
    “An Enemy of the People”
    Best Costume Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ Dede Ayite, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Linda Cho, “The Great Gatsby”
    ☐ David Israel Reynoso,
    “Water for Elephants”
    Tom Scutt, “Cabaret”
    ☐ Paul Tazewell, “Suffs”
    Best Lighting Design
    of a Play
    ☐ Isabella Byrd,
    “An Enemy of the People”
    ☐ Amith Chandrashaker, “Prayer
    for the French Republic”
    Jiyoun Chang, “Stereophonic”
    Jane Cox, “Appropriate”
    ☐ Natasha Katz, “Grey House”
    ☐ Camille A. Brown,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Shana Carroll and Jesse
    Robb, “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Rick and Jeff Kuperman,
    “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Annie-B Parson,
    “Here Lies Love”
    Justin Peck, “Illinoise”
    Best Orchestrations
    ☐ Timo Andres, “Illinoise”
    ☐ Tom Kitt and Adam
    Blackstone, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Will Butler and Justin
    Craig, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Justin Levine, Matt
    Hinkley and Jamestown
    Revival, “The Outsiders”
    D Jonathan Tunick,
    “Merrily We Roll Along” More

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    George Clooney to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’

    A stage adaptation of the film is planned for next spring, with Clooney playing the journalist Edward R. Murrow.George Clooney is planning to make his Broadway debut next spring in a stage adaptation of his 2005 film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”Clooney will play Edward R. Murrow, the pioneering newscaster whose storied broadcast career in the mid-20th century made him a journalism icon. That role was played by David Strathairn in the film.“Good Night, and Good Luck” portrays the period when Murrow’s work brought him into conflict with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican of Wisconsin who became notorious for the excesses of his anti-Communist crusade.Clooney wrote the movie with Grant Heslov; the two are teaming up again to adapt it for Broadway. Clooney also directed the film, and performed in it as Fred W. Friendly, Murrow’s collaborator.Reviewing the film for The New York Times, the critic A.O. Scott called it “a passionate, thoughtful essay on power, truth-telling and responsibility.”The stage adaptation will be directed by David Cromer, who won a Tony for directing “The Band’s Visit.”The play’s producing team — Seaview, Sue Wagner, John Johnson, Jean Doumanian and Robert Fox — announced on Monday the plan to stage “Good Night, and Good Luck” next spring at a Shubert theater, but offered no other details.Clooney, 63, has won two Academy Awards, as an actor in “Syriana” and as a producer of “Argo.” More