Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Shit. Meet. Fan.’ Review: Packed with Stars and Vulgarity

      by

      Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Krakowski, Debra Messing and Constance Wu star in the vulgar and entertaining new work from Robert O’Hara.The script to Robert O’Hara’s new play is prefaced with a trigger warning: “This play is a blistering vulgar satire on Male Toxicity and White Privilege.”Blistering? Yeah. Vulgar? Certainly. And viciously entertaining. But when it comes to the show’s loftier ambitions — the “satire” part of “blistering vulgar satire” — its execution is edgy but not necessarily sharp.“Shit. Meet. Fan.,” which opened Monday at MCC Theater and is based on the 2016 Italian film “Perfect Strangers,” opens in a chic Dumbo condo where Rodger (Neil Patrick Harris) and Eve (Jane Krakowski) live with their teenage daughter, Sam (Genevieve Hannelius). But for all the apartment’s swanky accouterments (including a home bar and spacious terrace, all courtesy of Clint Ramos’s Zillow-perfect set design), there’s no domestic bliss here, especially not between the married couple.But for tonight Rodger and Eve are the hosts of a gladiatorial fight night disguised as a party of friends who’ve come to watch an eclipse. This coterie includes Claire (Debra Messing), a heavy drinker with some mother-in-law issues, and Brett (Garret Dillahunt), her tone-deaf lawyer husband; Frank (Michael Oberholtzer), the bro-iest of the bros, and his new wife, Hannah (Constance Wu, again playing the precious outsider); and Logan (a sharp Tramell Tillman), who shows up sans his new girlfriend. The men are brothers from frat days past, which means alcohol, cocaine, bawdy tales and shared secrets, often dividing the party among gender lines.But the real trouble of the night begins when Eve suggests a game: for an hour everyone must share the texts, emails and calls they get on their phones. The reveals revolve around exes, affairs, hidden sexual preferences, plastic surgery appointments, timeshares in the Swiss Alps, even crimes. It soon becomes clear that, unsurprisingly, these friends are awful in a Whitman’s sampler assortment of ways. O’Hara, who wrote and directed the show, gleefully pokes at these characters’ insecurities, hypocrisies and resentments as a stream of Bravo TV-sized revelations steadily raises the stakes. The direction is brilliantly cued and paced, so the party’s movement (both the movement of the characters in relation to one another in the two-story space, and the flow of the dialogue in each scene) keeps the play going at a taut and lively momentum.And it helps that this is no cast of slouches. The comedic chemistry of the group is palpable, and each actor brings their own delicious affect to their role. Harris shows off his impeccable comic timing with Rodger’s sardonic quips and Krakowski fully inhabits the snide mean girl. A hilariously clowny Messing goes full “Will & Grace” with Claire’s hyperbolic drunken reactions, and Dillahunt takes hearty bites of his character’s casual bigotry.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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Morgan Jenness, Whose Artistic Vision Influenced American Theater, Dies at 72

      by

      A beloved figure in the theatrical community, she redefined the role of dramaturg, influencing playwrights like David Adjmi and David Henry Hwang.Morgan Jenness, a dramaturg, teacher and theatrical agent who nurtured the work of countless playwrights — including Taylor Mac, David Adjmi, David Henry Hwang, Larry Kramer and Maria Irene Fornés — died on Nov. 12. Ms. Jenness, who in recent years began using the pronouns they/them and she interchangeably, was 72.Mx. Mac confirmed the death. “In Act 3 of her life, she was exploring her gender identity,” said Mx. Mac, who went to Ms. Jenness’s apartment in the East Village of Manhattan with two friends after she failed to show up for a class she taught at Columbia University and discovered her body. The cause of death had not yet been determined.Ms. Jenness was a revered and beloved figure in the theater community — particularly the downtown theater community. (In many ways, she was its embodiment.) She had a deep moral seriousness, colleagues said, as well as a fierce artistic integrity and a passion for subversive work that had depth charges in all the right places. She also had “a complete indifference to material success,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, where Ms. Jenness began her career. “She was frankly repelled by it.”The play was the thing.“She would ask writers, ‘What do you want to inject into the bloodstream of the American theater?’” recalled Beth Blickers, a theatrical agent.“If you said, ‘I just want to tell good stories,’ she would turn to me and say, ‘That was a terrible answer,’” Ms. Blickers continued. “She wanted someone to say, ‘I have a passion for this community or this idea.’ To tell good stories wasn’t enough.”A dramaturg has been defined as a sort of literary and theatrical adviser who helps the actors and director understand the play they’re presenting. “But that was the European model, focused primarily on the classics,” Mr. Eustis said. “Morgan was one of the first generation of people who were defining what a new play dramaturg was: the midwife and support system of a playwright.”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

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Shows to See This Fall: ‘Our Town,’ ‘Gypsy’ and More

      by

      Broadway Shows to See This Fall: ‘Our Town,’ ‘Gypsy’ and MoreA guide to every show on Broadway, including new musicals, Tony winning-dramas, quirky hits and veterans like “Hamilton” and “Chicago.”Jim Parsons, at left, as the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” which runs through Jan. 19 at the Barrymore Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMusicals to Leave You HummingCabaret“Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome” — but for real this time. With a sinuous, sensuous Adam Lambert now starring as the Emcee, Rebecca Frecknall’s darkly seductive take on the Kander and Ebb classic has acquired a much more human feel. Inside Tom Scutt’s Tony-winning immersive design of the Weimar-era Kit Kat Club, the show is newly rebalanced for the better with Auliʻi Cravalho as Sally Bowles and Calvin Leon Smith as Clifford Bradshaw, while Bebe Neuwirth as Fräulein Schneider and Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz will still charm your heart, then break it. (At the August Wilson Theater.) Read the review.The Great GatsbyEva Noblezada (“Hadestown”) stars as Daisy opposite Jeremy Jordan (“Newsies”), who plays his final performance as Gatsby on Jan. 19. This musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novel has a book by Kait Kerrigan (“The Mad Ones”), with music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Tysen (both of “Paradise Square”). Marc Bruni (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”) directs. Linda Cho’s luxurious 1920s costumes won the show a Tony. (At the Broadway Theater.) Read the review.GypsyGrabbing the baton first handed off by Ethel Merman, Audra McDonald plays the formidable Momma Rose in the fifth Broadway revival of Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s exalted 1959 musical about a vaudeville stage mother and her daughters: June, the favorite child, and Louise, who becomes the burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Directed by George C. Wolfe, with choreography by Camille A. Brown, the cast includes Danny Burstein, Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson and Lesli Margherita. (Starts previews Nov. 21 at the Majestic Theater; opens Dec. 19.) Read more about the production.Hell’s KitchenAlicia Keys’s own coming-of-age is the inspiration for this jukebox musical stocked with her songs. With numbers including “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’” and “Empire State of Mind,” it’s the story of a 17-year-old (Maleah Joi Moon, a newly minted Tony winner making her Broadway debut) in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, growing into an artist. Shoshana Bean (through Dec. 1) and Brandon Victor Dixon play her parents, and Kecia Lewis plays her piano teacher in a Tony-winning performance. Directed by Michael Greif, the show has a book by Kristoffer Diaz and choreography by Camille A. Brown. (At the Shubert Theater.) Read the review.Maybe Happy EndingRobot neighbors in Seoul, nearing obsolescence, tumble into odd-couple friendship in this wistfully romantic charmer of a musical comedy by Will Aronson and Hue Park, starring Darren Criss and Helen J Shen. Michael Arden (“Parade”) directs. At the Belasco Theater. Read the review.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

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      The ‘Death Becomes Her’ Frenemies Take Their Youth Potion to Broadway

      by

      The campy supernatural movie comes to Broadway as a big, bawdy musical starring Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard.To be a marquee name after the ingénue years and to feel validated in a cutthroat business: For many actresses on Broadway or anywhere, those can be constant cravings. For Megan Hilty, one of the stars of the new Broadway musical “Death Becomes Her,” they’re urgent themes.“I have this number in the show that’s quite funny,” Hilty said during a recent interview. “But also it taps into something unbearably honest about the lengths to which women, mostly, can torture themselves thinking: How far am I willing to go to be what this world and industry wants and needs me to be in order to feel relevant?”But this isn’t the earnest-minded “Suffs,” not by a long shot.“Death Becomes Her” is a big, bawdy musical of to-the-rafters power ballads, va-va-voom costumes, zippy one-liners and vogueing chorus boys. It’s based on Robert Zemeckis’s supernatural horror comedy, from 1992, about two women — Madeline Ashton, a pompous actress played by Meryl Streep, and Helen Sharp, an unhinged novelist played by Goldie Hawn — who become frenemy immortals after they drink a potion that a mysterious glamourpuss named Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini) assures them will impart eternal youth.No spoiler alert: It does, but it’s not pretty. Rotting flesh never is.Forever young: Hilty as the pompous Madeline Ashton and Simard as the unhinged Helen Sharp, roles made famous by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe show comes to Broadway after a Chicago run last spring that received mostly good reviews, with much of the praise saved for Hilty and her co-star, Jennifer Simard, who plays Helen to Hilty’s Madeline. As with any Broadway transfer, the show’s creative team, led by its director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli, has spent months futzing — finessing new illusions, adding a new second-act song, redesigning costumes.What hasn’t changed is that Madeline seduces and marries Helen’s husband, Ernest, played by Christopher Sieber (Bruce Willis in the film). And the show still has, as Simard put it, its “nougaty center”: A story about two women who make a ghastly but farcical Faustian bargain that’s rooted in private shame and universal heartache over youth, beauty and self-worth.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

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      7 Days in the Cultural Life of a Broadway Stage Manager

      by

      When he’s not herding performers at “Once Upon a Mattress,” Cody Renard Richard is bowling, catching up with theater friends and, to his surprise, bumping into Beyoncé.Cody Renard Richard is backstage at the Hudson Theater eight performances a week, wrangling actors and calling cues at “Once Upon a Mattress.”When he has free time, he crams in as many fashion shows, museum visits, board meetings, teaching gigs and other cultural events as possible.“My entire journey in New York is about trying new things and expanding my reach,” Richard, 36, who grew up in Waller, Texas, said in a phone conversation on a Monday, the one day of the week he isn’t working on “Mattress.”Richard has been stage managing since his teenage years, when he was a self-described “troublemaker” before his high school’s theater director, Carrie Wood, encouraged him to channel that energy into a role backstage.Richard at the Hudson Theater, the current home of “Once Upon a Mattress.” “Sometimes people wonder if it gets boring working on the same show every night, but I never do,” he said.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesHe’s now managed nearly 50 television, opera and stage productions in New York, including the MTV Video Music Awards, the Broadway productions of “Lempicka” and “Sweeney Todd,” and “Ragtime” at New York City Center earlier this month. He’s next headed to Los Angeles, where he’ll oversee a monthlong “Mattress” run.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

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      Elf on Broadway Review: Grey Henson Is on the Nice List

      by

      The musical, starring Grey Henson, has gotten Buddy delightfully, entirely right. But he is trapped inside a creaky adaptation.Santa Clauses are pretty interchangeable. The real Santa’s close friend Buddy the elf would disagree, but it’s true: Put on the red costume, hide behind the glossy beard, manage a few ho, ho, hos and anyone will do.Buddy, though? That’s a much tougher role to cast — and not only because Will Ferrell made him such an indelibly adorable doofus in the 2003 movie “Elf.” In “Elf the Musical,” Buddy is the one character in whom we must absolutely believe: a full-grown man in a green elf suit with curl-toed boots, naïve and wonder-struck in the big city.Get it wrong and it’s a recipe for cringe. Get it right and you’ve cracked the code of all-ages comedy, the kind that will leave children and grown-ups equally helpless with laughter.In its latest Broadway outing, starring an exuberant Grey Henson in the title role, “Elf the Musical” has gotten Buddy delightfully, entirely right. From his first spoken line — the word Santa, cried joyously with what sounds like at least five exclamation points — he is enchanting in his silliness.He cartwheels across the stage because why wouldn’t he? A trusting, uninhibited goofball, he lives in his body the way children do, nearly bursting with eagerness. But Buddy is 30; he can show you how many that is on his fingers, flashing what look like boneless jazz hands.Directed by Philip Wm. McKinley, “Elf” is loaded with playful, energetic dance numbers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Why ‘Tammy Faye’ the Musical Feels Like a Redemption

      by

      The televangelist defended gay men during the AIDS crisis. Now she’s getting perhaps the gayest tribute: a Broadway show led by Elton John.Anyone interested in Tammy Faye Bakker — the chirpy televangelist queen of the ’80s — can watch a documentary and a biopic about her, both called “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” or read the autobiography “Tammy: Telling It My Way.”There’s also plenty out there about Bakker’s bonds with gay men, which was exhibited most poignantly in 1985, when on Christian television she did what many conservatives considered unthinkable: She interviewed a gay man who had AIDS, the Rev. A. Stephen Pieters. She admonished Christians — “we who are supposed to be able to love everyone,” as she put it — for not embracing the dying.Now the most famous daughter of International Falls, Minn. — who died of cancer in 2007 at 65 — is getting perhaps the gayest tribute a person can have: a Broadway musical.“If you were an outcast or pariah, Tammy Faye loved you even more,” said Elton John, the composer of “Tammy Faye,” which opened Thursday at the Palace Theater in Manhattan. “That’s what happened with her and gay people.”Through bald farce, earnest biography and a pop-country score, “Tammy Faye” details how she and her husband, Jim Bakker, started the television program “The PTL Club” in the 1970s and became highly successful televangelists, only to have a fall from grace in the late 1980s, amid sex and financial scandals, and later divorcing.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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      11 Broadway Shows to See Before They Close This Winter

      by

      Many Tony Award-winning musicals and starry plays (Robert Downey Jr., anyone?) are wrapping up their runs in January. Catch them while you can.McNealRobert Downey Jr. makes his Broadway debut in this new drama by the Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar (“Disgraced”), playing an esteemed novelist dangerously fascinated by artificial intelligence. This Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Bartlett Sher, has a cast that includes Ruthie Ann Miles and a scene-stealing Andrea Martin. (Through Nov. 24 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.) Read the review.Critic’s PickYellow FaceDavid Henry Hwang’s 2007 satire stars Daniel Dae Kim (“Lost”) as DHH, a fictional version of the playwright, navigating anti-Asian racism in the theater and culture, while — whoops — mistakenly casting a white actor in an Asian role. With Francis Jue sublimely reprising his Obie-winning performance as DHH’s father, Leigh Silverman directs this Roundabout Theater staging. (Through Nov. 24 at the Todd Haimes Theater.) Read the review.critic’s pickOnce Upon a MattressSutton Foster stars as the intrepid swamp creature and formidably delicate sleeper Princess Winnifred, opposite Michael Urie as her man-toddler love interest, Prince Dauntless, in this revival of the composer Mary Rodgers’s musical comedy riff on “The Princess and the Pea.” Adapted by Amy Sherman-Palladino, and directed by Lear deBessonet. With Ana Gasteyer as Queen Aggravain. (Through Nov. 30 at the Hudson Theater.) Read the review.Critic’s PickWater for ElephantsThe world of the circus springs into three dimensions in this musical adaptation of Sara Gruen’s 2006 novel about a young man who joins a traveling circus during the Great Depression and bonds with an elephant. This is a spectacle, incorporating circus design and performers. (Through Dec. 8 at the Imperial Theater.) Read the review.The NotebookTwenty years after Nicholas Sparks’s debut novel became a silver-screen romance, its latest incarnation is this musical. The story of a couple, Allie and Noah, it stretches from their adolescence to old age, when she has dementia and he reads to her, hoping to rouse her memory. With a book by Bekah Brunstetter (“This Is Us”) and a score by the singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson. (Through Dec. 15 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.) Read the review.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