Theater

Fifty years ago, when director-choreographer giants still walked the earth, two of the biggest — Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett — created highly influential shows that have attained legendary status and lasted: “Chicago” and “A Chorus Line.”These were musicals with dancing at the center. The showbiz-cynical attitude of “Chicago,” a tale of 1920s murderers who go into vaudeville, was inseparable from its choreographic style. “A Chorus Line” was about Broadway dancers, built from their real-life stories and framed as an audition.To celebrate the golden anniversaries of these shows, The New York Times invited Robyn Hurder, who has performed in productions of both over the past two decades (and recently received a Tony nomination for her performance in “Smash”), to demonstrate and discuss what makes the choreography so special. To coach her, direct-lineage experts were on hand.Robyn Hurder performs part of “One,” a signature song of “A Chorus Line.”For “A Chorus Line,” Hurder could turn to Baayork Lee, an original cast member who has been staging and directing the show ever since. (She’s directing an anniversary benefit performance on July 27.) For “Chicago,” Verdon Fosse Legacy — an organization dedicated to preserving and reconstructing the choreography of Fosse and his chief collaborator, Gwen Verdon — sent Dana Moore, who worked with Fosse in his 1978 “Dancin’” and his 1986 revival of “Sweet Charity.” She also danced in the 1996 “Chicago” revival and in revivals of “A Chorus Line,” too.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

Just two musicals open on Broadway during the summer of 1975. “Chicago,” in June, is received warily, like a stranger at the door. It’s “a very sleek show,” writes Walter Kerr in The New York Times. “It just seems to be the wrong one.” But “A Chorus Line,” in July, elicits unthrottled raves. “The conservative word” for it, writes Kerr’s colleague Clive Barnes, “might be tremendous, or perhaps terrific.”Yet the musicals have more in common than their initial reception reveals. Both shows are about performers: “Chicago” featuring 1920s vaudevillians with a sideline in murder; “A Chorus Line,” contemporary Broadway dancers. Both are masterminded by director-choreographers of acknowledged (and self-acknowledged) brilliance: “Chicago” by Bob Fosse; “A Chorus Line” by Michael Bennett. Both are seen, regardless of reviews, as exemplars of style-meets-content storytelling in a period of confusing change in musical theater. And both shows remain touchstones today, albeit of very different things.Donna McKechnie (center, in red) and the cast of the original Broadway production of “A Chorus Line.”Indeed, their differences now seem more salient than their similarities, and fate has been funny with their reputations. For 50 years, “A Chorus Line” and “Chicago” have tussled for primacy like Jacob and Esau, at least in the eyes and ears of Broadway fans. Which show is “the wrong one” now?To answer that, you might look uncharitably at their faults. “A Chorus Line” is shaggy and gooped up with psychobabble. “Chicago” is mechanical, a big hammer pounding one nail. But both are so well crafted for performance that those faults fade in any good production. For me, having seen each many times, the highlights are more telling.Jerry Orbach and the cast of the 1977-78 national tour of “Chicago.”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

Realizing a childhood dream, he created scenery that was highly conceptual yet playful for the Glimmerglass Festival, New York City Opera and other companies.John Conklin, a celebrated designer of scenery for opera and theater, who tapped a boundless knowledge of music and art history, as well as an instinct for disruption, to create memorable sets for New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera and, most notably, the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York, died on June 24 in Cooperstown, N.Y. He was 88.His death was confirmed in a statement by Glimmerglass, the nonprofit summer opera company in Cooperstown.Mr. Conklin was the scenic designer for all four shows of this year’s summer season at the Glimmerglass Festival, including “Tosca,” above.Kayleen Bertrand/the Glimmerglass FestivalMr. Conklin designed the scenery — and, in some cases, the costumes — for more than 40 Glimmerglass productions, starting in 1991. He remained active with the company even after his retirement in 2008, and he served as the scenic designer for all four shows of this summer’s season: “Tosca,” “Sunday in the Park With George,” “The House on Mango Street” and “The Rake’s Progress.”Mr. Conklin also designed the 2025 Glimmerglass production of “Sunday in the Park With George.”Brent DeLanoy/the Glimmerglass FestivalThe term “prodigy” rarely applies to set designers, but Mr. Conklin’s instincts were on full display in his youth. Growing up in Hartford, Conn., he attended symphonies and operas with his family, and by 10, he was building his own models, based on photographs he found perusing the magazine Opera News.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

The steam train departed the station with a gentle chug, belching clouds of steam that streamed past the carriage windows. Gathering speed, the locomotive transported its passengers through a damp green valley, past gray stone buildings, rain-dripping oak trees, banks of ferns and hillsides dotted with sheep.For many visitors to the Keighley and Worth Valley heritage railway, the picturesque five-mile route through northern England from the town Keighley to Oxenhope village is the main attraction. But for the passengers on Tuesday, it was just the beginning.A theater adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s classic children’s book, “The Railway Children,” awaited them when they stepped down from the train in Oxenhope. To take their seats, passengers headed into a large engine room shed next to the platform, where they sat on either side of a railway track. The scenes played out on a movable set that shunted up and down the tracks. And at certain key moments in the play, a second real steam train rolled in as part of the action.It was a fitting setting for a play set entirely around a small village station in the steam age. “The Railway Children” follows three children — Bobbie, Peter and Phyllis — who must leave their comfortable London home for a simple cottage in the countryside after their father is imprisoned on suspicion of being spy. The children are cheerfully resilient in the face of sudden poverty and are soon welcomed into the rural community.The audience for “The Railway Children” boards a steam train in Keighley, a town in northern England.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesKeighley is a stop on a railway line that opened in 1867 and closed in 1962. Locals and locomotive enthusiasts later revived the route as a heritage line.Ellie Smith for 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

The Hollywood upstart has upgraded the Cherry Lane Theater for plays and more. Coming this fall: films chosen by Sofia Coppola, food from Frenchette and the voice of Barbra Streisand.In the two years since A24, the artistically ambitious film and television studio, purchased Manhattan’s Cherry Lane Theater, the historic West Village building has been dark, at least from the outside. But inside, the company behind “Moonlight,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Euphoria” has been quietly overhauling the facility, and in September Cherry Lane will reopen as the first live performance venue run by the indie powerhouse.The company says it plans a wide-ranging slate of programming, prioritizing theater — Cherry Lane describes itself as the birthplace of the Off Broadway movement — but also featuring comedy, music and film.Another attraction: food. A24 has enlisted the Frenchette Group, which runs several lauded eateries in Manhattan (including Frenchette, Le Rock and Le Veau d’Or), to open a small restaurant and bar at Cherry Lane. The restaurant, called Wild Cherry in a nod to the theater’s name, will be Frenchette’s second collaboration with a downtown cultural institution — it also operates a bakery cafe inside the Whitney Museum.Among the initial programming highlights will be a Sunday film series curated by Sofia Coppola (first film: Adrian Lyne’s “Foxes” from 1980) and a five-week run of “Weer,” a one-woman show from the clowning comedian Natalie Palamides (each half of her body plays a different partner in a romantic couple). There will also be a week of opening events, starting Sept. 8, that includes comedy, music, a play reading and a block party. The venue does not plan to announce a season, or to have subscribers — it wants the nimbleness to extend or add events as it goes.In keeping with theatrical tradition, Cherry Lane has a ghost light, which is used for practical and supernatural safety when other lights are off.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“First and foremost, we really want this to be a place where people can be sure they’ll see a great, good quality piece of live performance,” said Dani Rait, who spent a decade at “Saturday Night Live,” helping to book hosts and musical guests, before A24 hired her to head programming at Cherry Lane. “And it’s an opportunity for discovery — for artists to have a stage and connect with audiences in a really intimate way.”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

The show is the sixth musical to announce a closing date since last month’s Tony Awards, reflecting financial challenges facing producers.A boundary-breaking Broadway revival of “Gypsy” starring Audra McDonald will end its run on Aug. 17, much earlier than its producers had hoped.The run was originally open-ended, meaning that no closing date had been set, and tickets were on sale through Oct. 5. But on Wednesday night, the production announced the new closing date; at the time of its final performance, it will have played 28 preview and 269 regular performances at the Majestic Theater.The show is the sixth musical to announce a closing date since last month’s Tony Awards (following “Boop!” “Cabaret,” “Dead Outlaw,” “Real Women Have Curves” and “Smash”), reflecting Broadway’s difficult financial dynamics (nonmusical plays have been faring much better). “Gypsy” was nominated for five Tony Awards, including as best musical revival and for McDonald’s performance, but won none.The revival, directed by George C. Wolfe, was highly anticipated because McDonald, with six Tony Awards, is Broadway’s most-honored contemporary performer, and she is the first Black actress to play on Broadway the lead role of Rose, the ur-stage mother whose daughter becomes a stripper. The musical, with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, was inspired by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee; it first opened in 1959 and is generally considered one of Broadway’s best golden age musicals.When the revival opened in December, it received overwhelmingly positive reviews. In The New York Times, chief theater critic Jesse Green named the show a critic’s pick and wrote of McDonald, “Doing a psychological striptease, showing more of the character’s rage than her predecessors, she is stupendously affecting.”At the box office, the show seemed to be selling well for much of its run, grossing well over $1 million most weeks in its early months, and peaking at $1.9 million during a week in mid-January.But the show is costly to run, thanks to a large orchestra and sizable cast that includes children, who can be costly to employ because they require supervisors who need to be hired by the production.“Gypsy” also lost a substantial amount of potential revenue over the normally lucrative Christmas holidays when illnesses forced the cancellation of seven performances. Its weekly grosses have been heading in a troubling direction — last week the show sold only 61 percent of its seats and grossed $816,086.And musicals have been fetching much lower ticket prices than starry plays. For example, during the week that ended June 1, when all three shows were running, the average ticket price at an “Othello” revival starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal was $425, and at “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney, it was $339. The average ticket price for “Gypsy” was $114. More

Williamstown Theater Festival, long one of the nation’s most highly regarded summer theaters, has been fighting for its life recently, struggling to regain its footing after complaints about its workplace practices, leadership turnover and the economic challenges that have vexed other performing arts organizations.This summer, the Western Massachusetts nonprofit’s latest leadership team has opted for a radically new and risky reboot: Instead of a summer-long season with two shows at a time, the company is leaning into the “festival” part of its name, offering eight shows simultaneously, but only for three long weekends, starting July 17 and ending Aug. 3.The shows — which include dance, opera and music as well as theater — are being curated by Jeremy O. Harris, the audacious playwright best known for “Slave Play,” and several of the productions are based on stories written by, or inspired by, Tennessee Williams. Most unexpected: an ice dance show inspired by a Williams novel.Why does Williamstown matter?This summer’s festival includes two plays by Tennessee Williams, “Not About Nightingales” and “Camino Real.”Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThe Williamstown Theater Festival had been a destination not only for culture-loving visitors who flock to the Berkshires every summer, but also for theater performers, writers and directors seeking to hone their craft and develop new work. It was also an important training ground for many aspiring theater industry workers. Numerous shows moved from Williamstown to New York, including, during the last full prepandemic season, three that transferred to Broadway: the plays “Grand Horizons” and “The Sound Inside” as well as a revival of another Tennessee Williams play, “The Rose Tattoo.”Why has the festival been struggling?At the start of the pandemic, following the death of George Floyd, the calls for a social justice reckoning that rocked many corners of society also shook theater. Staff and alumni of the festival objected to the nonprofit’s history of relying on young workers who were often unpaid or underpaid; there were also complaints about how the company responded to safety concerns. The turmoil, chronicled by The Los Angeles Times, led to the departure of the festival’s artistic director, Mandy Greenfield, and a review of the festival’s practices. Ultimately, the festival decided all staff would be paid; that decision was followed by a sharp reduction in programming.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

Can’t catch the live revival of this retelling of “Oedipus at Colonus”? Stream a version with Freeman and Robert Earl Jones, or four more stage-related shows.‘The Gospel at Colonus’Stream it on YouTube.“The Gospel of Colonus” has built a fervent following over the past four decades or so — its number “How Shall I See You Through My Tears?” even popped up in the cult-favorite movie “Camp” — so expectations are running high for the new revival at Little Island in Manhattan (through July 26). Those not in New York or who couldn’t get a ticket to Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s new staging can check out a production from the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, from 1985, that’s streaming on YouTube. This superlative take on Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s gospel retelling of Sophocles’ tragedy of Oedipus boasts a powerhouse cast, including Morgan Freeman, Jevetta Steele and Robert Earl Jones (James’s father), who went on to Broadway with the show three years later. The score, which features some of the funkiest, most rousing numbers ever heard in a musical, surges to vivid life. Tip: Blast this at full volume.‘Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical’Stream it on Disney+.The stage version of the animated megahit movie “Frozen” played just two years on Broadway (a short spell by Disney standards), but this newly available capture of the West End production may well kick-start renewed interest in the United States. For the stage version, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez expanded their score with a dozen new songs — my favorite is the catchy duet “What Do You Know About Love?” between Anna (Laura Dawkes) and Kristoff (Jammy Kasongo). The movie and the show share a bone structure, but they are different animals, with the show able to spend more time on the complicated bond between the sisters, Anna and Elsa (an excellent Samantha Barks). Michael Grandage’s staging captures the story’s supernatural side well, and, let’s face it: We’re all going to watch Elsa’s eye-popping costume change during “Let It Go” a million times, wondering how they pulled it off.Krista Apple in “A Summer Day” by Jon Fosse.Johanna Austin, AustinArt.org‘A Summer Day’Stream it from the Wilma Theater.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