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      On Broadway, Newly Vital Understudies Step Into the Spotlight

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      As Omicron spreads, shows are relying on replacement actors more than ever. And productions without enough of them have had to cancel performances.One evening in November, just a few hours before showtime, stage management told LaQuet Sharnell Pringle to prepare. A practiced swing, Pringle covers the female parts in the ensemble of the new Broadway musical “Mrs. Doubtfire.” She also understudies the role of Wanda, the social worker usually played by Charity Angél Dawson.The musical was still in previews. Pringle had never really rehearsed as Wanda. But she had studied the script, mastered the choreography and watched dozens of performances. So when Dawson called out (for a reason unrelated to Covid-19), Pringle went on.“It’s the job,” she later explained. “It’s the gig — to be able to be thrown on in a moment’s notice and to be able to deliver.”Swings and understudies are the undersung heroes of Broadway theater. (Off Broadway and regional theater productions may or may not hire them, depending on a production’s budget and priorities.) If a curtain rises when one or more actors has suffered illness or injury, that’s because a swing or an understudy has stepped in, sometimes with just a few minutes to get into costume, sometimes in a costume that isn’t even theirs. At a time of pandemic uncertainty, their contributions have become even more essential.For those unfamiliar with the terminology: Understudies can fill in for one or more of a play or musical’s principal characters. They may regularly appear onstage in a smaller role or they may spend most nights backstage, performing only if needed. Swings have no regular role in a show. Instead they cover up to a dozen ensemble parts in a musical, each with its separate vocal and dance track. Swings may also cover a principal character or two. (Some shows also use alternates, who take over principal roles for a number of performances on a predetermined basis.)In the past week, about half of the shows on Broadway canceled some number of performances. Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the trade association the Broadway League, seemed to blame certain understudies for these cancellations in an interview published Monday in The Hollywood Reporter. “My educated guess is the newer shows maybe have understudies that aren’t as efficient in delivering the role as the lead is,” she said.St. Martin quickly apologized, but not before fans and stars had leapt — or maybe, grand jetéed — to the defense of swings and understudies. “*My* educated guess is that when employers consistently reject our efforts to negotiate for more swings, understudies and sub stage managers, because the industry model has grown dependent on people working sick/injured, it’s short sighted and unsafe,” Kate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity, wrote on Twitter.In an interview a few hours later she expanded on those comments. “I hope that Broadway producers will be as proactive as possible in making sure that there is adequate coverage,” Shindle said. “Covid has changed how that looks.” Shows that don’t have enough coverage are forced to cancel.Hiring practices aren’t the only conventions worth re-examining. Historically, swings and understudies have not typically received dedicated rehearsal time until after a show’s opening night. Thursday night, after the fourth preview of “The Music Man,” Hugh Jackman saluted the understudy Kathy Voytko for going on for an absent Sutton Foster, despite having first rehearsed the part of Marian Paroo earlier that day.Without their own rehearsal schedule, swings and understudies have had to learn scenes, songs and choreography by observation and osmosis. (And in reverse, as they were often relegated to watching from the house.) If they had to go on in previews, like Voytko did, their castmates knew to “shove with love,” nudging them toward their correct positions.But the pandemic has encouraged a reckoning with the “show must go on” culture. Graham Bowen, a longtime swing for “The Book of Mormon,” described the mood backstage as, “Hey, if you’re just not feeling great, don’t come to work. It’s OK. We got this.” He referred to nights when only the Playbill-listed cast performs as “unicorns now.” (In mid-December, Bowen tested positive for Covid-19 and had to quarantine, so other swings, many of whom he has trained, are performing in his place.)In response, a few shows are rehearsing understudies earlier, sometimes right alongside the main cast or with the principal director rather than an assistant. “I told them from the jump, ‘We have to all trust each other because there’s all this intimate work. You can’t just come in halfway through,’” said Robert O’Hara, the director of “Slave Play,” which includes several sex scenes. And there is also a drive to allow some understudies to deliver distinct performances, rather than simply copying the work of listed performers.Rehearsal makes some aspects of the job easier. But it doesn’t alleviate the anxiety of not knowing whether you will go on. Or the weirdness of earning a Broadway salary when you may not set foot on a Broadway stage for weeks at a time. Or the feeling that you may be disappointing ticket holders if they see your name printed on a Playbill slip.Despite her longtime career as a swing for “The Phantom of the Opera,” Janet Saia said she once returned a ticket when she arrived at “The Producers” and found that Nathan Lane was out. “That show is all about him!” she said.Yet understudies and swings are always hired because they can do the role — or the many roles — with the virtuosity that Broadway demands.“We’re the last resort,” said Reynaldo Piniella, an understudy on “Trouble in Mind.” “But I do know, watching my understudies rehearse, these people are incredible artists.”On Wednesday night, about 10 minutes before curtain, Piniella got his own call. Though he had already booked a last-minute job on a different Broadway show, “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” he hurried to the “Trouble in Mind” theater, stepped into a costume he had never worn and made his entrance. “I bumped into pretty much every piece of furniture on that stage,” he said. “But I was prepared to tell the story.”In late November and early December, a few weeks before the current string of cancellations, I interviewed a number of swings and understudies about the rewards, stresses and peculiarities of the job and how Covid-19 has altered waiting in the wings. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Galen J. Williams of “Slave Play” started rehearsals much earlier than usual for an understudy, partly because the play contains quite a bit of intimate work.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGalen J. WilliamsUnderstudy, “Slave Play”What makes you take an understudy job?I’m an Aries, we thrive on spontaneity. It keeps the job exciting, never really knowing when you have to turn the light switch on. Every time you go on, it feels like it could be the last time. So let me really give it my all, go full in and have a good time.Andrea SyglowskiUnderstudy, “Pass Over”What was your rehearsal process like?From the first week, we rehearsed with the main cast, warmed up with them. We were never under any obligation to do exactly what the main cast was doing. We were actually encouraged to create our own characters.The show ended its run before you went on. How did that feel?It was really upsetting. It became increasingly possible that I was going to go on at the end of the run. So the anxiety and the tension increased. I was so excited to be a part of the first Broadway play back. I wanted to be able to show my work. I’m sure every understudy feels that way.“My fantasy is that the actor I’m understudying books some big Marvel movie,” said Reynaldo Piniella, an understudy on “Trouble in Mind.” George Etheredge for The New York TimesReynaldo PiniellaUnderstudy, “Trouble in Mind”How do you feel about understudying?I equate it to being the sixth man on a basketball team. You’re not a starter, but you understand that you play a very vital role. When your number is called, you want to make sure you’re on your game. My fantasy is that the actor I’m understudying books some big Marvel movie. This show is my Broadway debut, and I would love to get on that stage at least one time, feel what that’s like.LaQuet Sharnell PringleSwing, “Mrs. Doubtfire”How do you keep all of those roles in your body and head?I physically need to do choreography every single day, I physically need to say words out loud every day so that it’s a part of my muscles. I will do cross training to make sure I have the stamina to do all of the dance choreography. I increase my voice work so that I am strong enough to sing the songs no matter what. I generally read the script two to three times a week.If you’re not on, do you ever relax backstage?It makes me feel weird if I’m just chilling out. As I’m watching the show, I try to say the lines in real time. I’m trying to go over steps that I want to perfect and really understand. I wait until I get home and I’m in my Epsom salts bath to relax.Graham BowenSwing and co-dance captain, “The Book of Mormon”How does it feel to receive that last-minute call?I have experienced the stage manager coming into a dressing room and saying, “Hey, we need you for the next scene.” And that scene would be in a matter of minutes. It’s kind of one of the best parts of it. You have this adrenaline rush. It’s definitely nerve-racking. But you can ride that and really have a wonderful experience.Janet Saia outside the Majestic Theater, where she’s an understudy in “The Phantom of the Opera.” “You make mistakes, but then you say to yourself, ‘I’m covering eight roles, give me a break,’” she said.George Etheredge for The New York TimesJanet SaiaSwing, “The Phantom of the Opera”What makes a great swing?As a swing, you have to have the fantastic five. First, you have to be fast, you have to learn things fast, you have to adjust to change fast. Second, you have to be fabulous at what you do. The next one is focused, really, really focused. And flexible. And then the last one is fastidious, you’ve got to pay attention to all the details and make sure they’re all in there.With so many roles to cover, have you ever mixed them up?There’s a number in “Phantom,” “Don Juan.” It has all the people I cover in the ensemble around a table with props. One time I went out there and I had the jug and everything. Two seconds before the curtain goes up, somebody came in and said, “That’s my jug.” Then I realized, I’m not this part. Instantly, I had to switch my brain and go into the correct part. You make mistakes, but then you say to yourself, “I’m covering eight roles, give me a break.”Cameron Adams is an ensemble member and understudy in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which recently resumed performances after a 10-day hiatus prompted by coronavirus cases.George Etheredge for The New York TimesCameron AdamsEnsemble member and understudy, “Mrs. Doubtfire”Have you ever felt that you were disappointing an audience?I covered Kelli O’Hara in “Nice Work if You Can Get It.” Her name is above the title, people are excited to come and see Kelli O’Hara. I understand, because I want to see Kelli! I don’t think I’ve ever come off feeling, like, “Oh, my God, they hated me.” But I sometimes think, “Why do I do this to myself?” Because I get so nervous every time. That doesn’t go away.Sid Solomon of “The Play That Goes Wrong” said he has “an even greater personal sense of pride of showing up to the theater every night.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesSid SolomonUnderstudy, “The Play That Goes Wrong”Has Covid-19 made you feel differently about the job?I have an even greater personal sense of pride of showing up to the theater every night, knowing just how important having understudies is, so that nobody is ever put in a position where if they’re sick, if they’re injured, if they have a family issue, they ever have to think, I’m choosing between my well-being and whether or not a show happens that evening. I’m glad to be part of a production that’s really sort of living those values right now. More

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      What Three Broadway Shows Tell Us About Racial Progress

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      The female protagonists in “Trouble in Mind,” “Caroline, or Change” and “Clyde’s” show the richness that comes from having a multitude of Black voices onstage.Now that Broadway has returned and made it through the fall, and as it deals with a raft of cancellations because of the resurgent pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of progress. Promoted, in large part, by the racial reckoning of 2020, the theater industry has responded to criticisms about its systemic racism by featuring an impressive number of plays by Black writers or with Black leads.In the last few weeks, I’ve seen a handful of these shows: “Trouble in Mind,” “Caroline, or Change” and “Clyde’s.” Individually, their plots and period settings offer great insight into how far we’ve really come. But taken together, they reveal a full range of aesthetic and racial possibilities that exist for their African American characters once the white gaze is diminished or fully removed.My feelings largely align with the points Alice Childress makes in her 1955 play, “Trouble in Mind,” a comedy-drama about a veteran Black actress named Wiletta Mayer who, while preparing to stage an anti-lynching play called “Chaos in Belleville” for Broadway, begins to challenge the racial paternalism through which its white playwright and director insist on depicting Black Southern life. More specifically, the plot follows Wiletta’s mounting frustrations about her role as a mother who does not protect her Black son from a white mob after he tries to vote. It’s an act that seems inconceivable to Wiletta.“Trouble in Mind,” which was originally produced in Greenwich Village, did not make it to Broadway in 1957 after its white producers insisted that Childress provide a more conciliatory ending for her Black and white characters, and she refused. Now, Charles Randolph-Wright, a Black director, is overseeing the Roundabout Theater Company’s Broadway production of the show at the American Airlines Theater.In the play, Wiletta (portrayed brilliantly by LaChanze) initially accepts her character’s subservience and exaggerated Southern drawl, and the problematic messaging about civil rights in “Chaos in Belleville,” as the price she must pay in order to have one of the few parts offered to Black actors at the time. Set backstage, as Wiletta and her fellow cast members begin rehearsing with the director, Al Manners (Michael Zegen), we follow Wiletta’s progression from a woman trying to school a younger Black actor on how to ingratiate himself to white people, like Manners, who can make or break his career to a woman threatening to leave the production if her role continues to traffic in such offensive and absurd racial stereotypes.As she evolves, the audience is exposed to multiple gazes: the intimate conversations that Black performers have with one another beyond the purview of white people; the figurative masks that Black actors wear in front of their white peers and theater power brokers as a matter of professional survival; and the white gaze that Al and the other white characters don throughout the rehearsals in which they slip back and forth between declarations of how liberal they are and their racist insults.These three perspectives collide when Wiletta fully exposes Al’s racism, a climax that not only puts her career at risk but jeopardizes the future of the play. However, in Childress’s deft hands, this potential loss is not a tragedy, but rather a reversal of fortunes for Wiletta: Once Al is no longer able to determine her fate, she is able to give the performance of a lifetime — and live out her dignity in its fullness onstage.Sharon D Clarke, far left, with Nasia Thomas, Harper Miles and Nya in the musical “Caroline, or Change” at Studio 54.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesI thought a lot about Wiletta’s limited theatrical options — a mammy, a maid, an emotionally repressed Southern mother — while watching Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical, “Caroline, or Change,” which first appeared on Broadway in 2004, and now is also being produced by the Roundabout Theater on Broadway, at Studio 54. Set in Louisiana in 1963, eight years after “Trouble in Mind” made its debut and when the civil rights movement was reaching full bloom, the musical does not focus on the major events affecting the nation at the time — the assassination of Medgar Evers, the March on Washington, or the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.Instead, “Caroline, or Change” is a semi-autobiographical exploration of how the country’s racial dynamics affected an 8-year-old boy named Noah Gellman, his middle-class Jewish American Southern family, their 39-year-old Black housekeeper Caroline Thibodeaux (played by the breathtaking Sharon D Clarke), and her three children.When we first meet Caroline, she is doing laundry in the Gellman’s basement. Physically alone, her world seems to come alive when the radio (Nasia Thomas, Nya and Harper Miles), the washing machine (Arica Jackson), and the dryer (Kevin S. McAllister) become characters onstage and provide Caroline with a sense of camaraderie and comfort that she does not share with her white employers.Public spaces are even more segregated so she finds community in the moon (N’Kenge) and the bus (McAllister again), who speak to her as well. The richness of Caroline’s life, however, is always illusory: The gaze through which we understand her story is never hers, but rather that of Noah’s as he reminisces on his childhood and his family’s (especially his stepmother Rose’s) fraught relationship with her during this turbulent time in American history.To his credit, Kushner’s script never pretends that Noah’s lens is Caroline’s. One of the musical’s most revealing scenes takes Noah’s myopic vision head-on. After Rose (Caissie Levy) tries to teach Noah a lesson by asking Caroline to take home any “change” that she finds in his pockets before she washes them, Noah imagines Caroline’s children at home, happy to spend their entire evening thinking about him and how they will spend the money. This satirical turn challenges Noah’s nostalgia, putting his racial narcissism front and center. It is also a perfect counterpoint to the professed liberalism of Al Manner’s from “Trouble in Mind” and the unacknowledged white male privilege that he wields over his cast and stage crew.And yet, “Caroline, or Change” still feels incomplete. Not because Noah and Caroline are unable to resolve their conflict or because the unrest driving the civil rights movement is nodded to through the toppling of a Confederate statue, but because for the entirety of the show Caroline remains Noah’s fantasy, and thus unknowable to us. She is not a fully realized character.Such distance, of course, is realistic. Memory is fallible and given their differences, I expected Noah to have very little access to Caroline’s inner life or imagination. But I longed to see her unmediated through his sentimentality, and truly on her own terms. Though Caroline is the protagonist of this musical (and Clarke really does own this stage), Caroline is not fully empowered, her agency limited in the story because it was not really hers in the first place.Kara Young, left, and Uzo Aduba as the title character in Lynn Nottage’s play “Clyde’s” at the Hayes Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis is not to say that I need to have an all-access pass to a Black woman’s interiority in order to appreciate the depth of her humanity. In fact, I found the title character in Lynn Nottage’s comedy “Clyde’s,” played by the ever-perfect Uzo Aduba at the Helen Hayes Theater, to be refreshingly inaccessible.The owner of a truck stop diner in Reading, Pa., Clyde also oversees the kitchen that she only staffs with formerly incarcerated men and women. Not only does she impose her exacting demands on her employees — a direct contrast to the Zen-like style of her head cook, Montrellous (the wonderful Ron Cephas Jones) — but she is the only person whose back story we never learn and who, besides her endless stream of costume changes, has no clear character arc.In other words, she is intentionally flat, a feature that Aduba’s nuanced performance leans into with wit and grit, making Clyde a rarity for a Black woman actress: an antihero. She does not have agency, she has full-fledged power. Her omnipresence is most likely a stand-in for state violence or Satan, or both. Unlike Wiletta, who needs to break free of roles that confine her, or Caroline, who, we assume, feels suffocated by the oppressive conditions of the South, Clyde is the one who traps her employees in a permanent space of unfreedom and social purgatory.“One of the things about where we are today is now we have a multitude of Black voices on the stage,” Nottage said to me during a recent interview at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “I feel the freedom to put someone onstage who isn’t perfect, who isn’t heroic, who isn’t necessarily showing the best of us, but showing an aspect of us.” In other words, Clyde’s villainy is also an aesthetic liberation for Nottage, a character that is neither born out of nor now embattled with the white gaze.Ultimately, such provocative personalities are signs of progress for us all, both on and off stage. We can only hope that such roles continue to exist — not as a one-off or in a vacuum — but as a sister among many. This is the Broadway that Wiletta Mayer really fought for as she longed to celebrate the complexity, diversity and messiness of Black life. More

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      Hollywood Turns Up Star Power in Search of Audiences

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      Boldface names have always mattered at the movies, but a number of recent casts have been full of them. That hasn’t always helped at the box office.LOS ANGELES — On Friday, Netflix began streaming “Don’t Look Up,” a big-budget satire starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Timothée Chalamet.It sure seemed like a must-watch event, mixed reviews be darned. Casts so ultra-celestial — embarrassments of celebrity riches — don’t come along every day.Except that now they do.One star playing Spider-Man? How quaint. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” released in theaters on Dec. 17, has three A-listers in Spidey spandex: Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. “No Way Home,” a runaway hit at the global box office, taking in $1.05 billion for Sony Pictures Entertainment as of Sunday, also stars Zendaya, Jamie Foxx, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Willem Dafoe and Jon Favreau. About 43 percent of opening-weekend viewers in the United States cited the cast as the reason they bought tickets, according to PostTrak surveys. Twenty percent specifically cited Zendaya.Guillermo del Toro’s latest art film, “Nightmare Alley,” stars Bradley Cooper, Ms. Blanchett, Toni Collette, Mr. Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Mary Steenburgen and David Strathairn. (They have 22 Oscar nominations for acting and three wins among them.) Other recent examples of star ensembles include “The French Dispatch,” “Red Notice,” “House of Gucci,” “The Harder They Fall” and the superhero story “Eternals,” which Disney marketed with 11 names above the title. (Angelina Jolie! Kumail Nanjiani! Salma Hayek!)Angelina Jolie was one of the 11 actors whose names were above the title when Disney marketed “Eternals.”Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images For DisneyIn the months ahead, Universal will release “The 355,” a spy thriller anchored by five female stars, including Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz and Jessica Chastain. Disney will roll out a starry “Death on the Nile” remake, and Focus Features is preparing “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” which reassembles the franchise’s ensemble cast. Netflix is working on “The Adam Project,” a science-fiction adventure (Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Catherine Keener), and “The Gray Man,” a thriller starring Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Ryan Gosling, Billy Bob Thornton and Regé-Jean Page of “Bridgerton” fame.“Someday, someone will decide to make one movie with two Batmans — oh, wait, it’s happening,” Terry Press, one of Hollywood’s top marketers, said with signature dryness. She was referring to “The Flash,” a superhero movie from Warner Bros. that is scheduled for late next year; Ben Affleck’s Batman will appear alongside Michael Keaton’s Batman.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and television series continues to expand. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’: The web slinger is back with the latest installment of the “Spider-Man” series.‘Hawkeye’: Jeremy Renner returns to the role of Clint Barton, the wisecracking marksman of the Avengers, in the Disney+ mini-series.‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’: The superhero originated in comics filled with racist stereotypes. The movie knocked them down.‘Eternals’: The two-and-a-half-hour epic introduces nearly a dozen new characters, hopping back and forth through time.Taken one film at a time, star amassment is nothing new. “Grand Hotel” (1932), “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963), “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), “The Towering Inferno” (1974) and the entire “Ocean’s 11” franchise come to mind, not to mention Marvel’s recent “Avengers” movies.All of a sudden, though, they are everywhere.Why?“Thousands Cheer,” from 1943, is one in a long line of Hollywood films with a host of stars.Warner Bros. Archives“Stars matter — always have, always will — and Hollywood retreats to them, leans harder on them, when it gets nervous about a wandering audience,” said Jeanine Basinger, a film scholar and the author of Hollywood histories like “The Star Machine,” which examines the old studio system. “Stars are insurance — for studio executives who want to keep their jobs, certainly, but also for viewers: ‘Is this movie going to be worth my time and money?’”Describing Hollywood’s customer base as “wandering” is rather kind. AWOL might be more apt.The pandemic seems to have hastened a worrisome decline at the box office for bread-and-butter dramas, musicals and comedies — everything except leviathan fantasy franchises and the occasional horror movie. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” collected $260 million in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend. Total ticket sales for the two countries totaled $283 million, according to Comscore. That means “No Way Home” made up 92 percent of the market. “Nightmare Alley,” which was released on the same weekend, played to virtually empty auditoriums. It took in $2.7 million.The vast majority of opening-weekend ticket buyers for “No Way Home” were under the age of 34, according to Sony.Between Friday and Sunday, the Spider-Men remained the biggest domestic draw, taking in roughly $81.5 million. The animated “Sing 2” (Universal-Illumination) was second, with $23.8 million in ticket sales. Warner Bros. failed to generate much interest in “The Matrix Resurrections,” which took in a feeble $12 million in third place; it was also available on HBO Max.“The King’s Man” (Disney), the third movie in Matthew Vaughn’s action-comedy series, collected $6.4 million, a result that one box office analyst described as a franchise “collapse.” (“American Underdog,” a faith-based sports drama from Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company, managed $6.2 million on Saturday and Sunday alone.)“Spider-Man: No Way Home” collected $260 million in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend.Jordan Strauss/InvisionStreaming services have picked up a big portion of the audience, particularly older people. But competition among the services has grown extreme, with Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, Hallmark Movies Now, BritBox and dozens more fighting for subscriber growth. Stars help: Netflix is writing megachecks for A-list actors ($30 million to Mr. DiCaprio for “Don’t Look Up”) and ensemble franchises ($465 million for two “Knives Out” sequels).“Stars matter more than ever,” said Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists superagent who orchestrated the “Knives Out” deal. “When stars meet material that is their fastball, it cuts through all the noise.”There are other explanations for the barrage. In a severely disrupted marketplace, stars are seeking safety in numbers; no one person can be held responsible for failing to deliver an audience, as with “Nightmare Alley.” Movie marketing has also changed, becoming less about carpet-bombing prime-time TV with ads and more about tapping into social media fan bases. Ms. Grande has 284 million Instagram followers. (Pity Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Holland, with only about 50 million apiece.)Ms. Basinger, who founded Wesleyan University’s film studies department, noted that individual star power has faded. Studios have become fixated on intellectual property — pre-existing franchises and characters. As a result, there has been less of a need to manufacture new stars and keep the older ones burning hot; Iron Man, Dominic Toretto, Wonder Woman and Baby Yoda are the stars now.“In the old days, movie stars were the brands,” she said. “They reached the whole audience. Not a slice of the audience. Everybody. But that all fell apart. Now, it’s about adding up niches.”In other words, few stars remain bankable in and of themselves, requiring Hollywood to stack casts with an almost absurd number of celebrities. Flood the zone.And don’t forget Hollywood’s favorite game: Follow the leader. “The Avengers: Endgame,” which packed its cast with Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Olsen and a dozen other boldface names, became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time in 2019. On a much different scale, an all-star remake of “Murder on the Orient Express” in 2017 was also a box office winner.“It’s trendy at the moment,” Tim Palen, a producer and former studio marketing chief, said of what he called an “all skate” approach to casting. “Not new but certainly symptomatic of the battle for attention that’s raging.” More

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      Nicole Kidman on Lucille Ball in ‘Being the Ricardos’

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      There are valuable lessons Nicole Kidman has learned each time she plays a real-life figure: How that person was misapprehended by society at the time. How that era of history is more like the present day than she realized. And, crucially, how to maintain her balance while traipsing barefoot through a vat of grapes.Recounting her preparations to play Lucille Ball, the star of “I Love Lucy,” Kidman suggested that her methodical efforts to learn Ball’s enduring 1956 grape-stomping routine were not fully sufficient when it came time to re-enact it on camera.“I had only practiced on a floor,” Kidman said with a gentle earnestness. “The one thing I didn’t count on was that there were going to be real grapes. They’re actually really slippery, just so you know.”In “Being the Ricardos,” a comedy-drama written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Kidman plays Ball in a story spanning a week at “I Love Lucy,” where she and her husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) fight to incorporate Ball’s pregnancy into the series, fend off accusations that Ball is a Communist and arrive at a fateful point in their marriage.The movie, which is in theaters and on Amazon Prime, includes some recreations of famous “I Love Lucy” scenes. But it is ultimately a story of discovery, for the TV star and for the woman playing her.Kidman, 54, is an Academy and Emmy Award-winning actress, and she is once again a contender for year-end accolades for her performance in “Being the Ricardos.” But she tends to second-guess herself and said she had scant confidence in her comedic abilities.Through her approach to “Being the Ricardos,” Kidman has found more connection than she expected to Ball, another actress who was pigeonholed and underestimated in her day. Their life stories and talents may not fully overlap, but they both understood the necessity of humor to fulfilling their individual goals.As Kidman said, “I’ve got to be funny, and funny’s hard.”A scene from “Being the Ricardos” with, from left, Alia Shawkat (as an “I Love Lucy” writer), Kidman and Nina Arianda (as co-star Vivian Vance).Glen Wilson/AmazonOn a visit to New York earlier this month, before the Omicron surge, Kidman was sitting in a downstairs lounge at a boutique Soho hotel, her fingers ornamented with intricate rings as she sipped a ginger shot.Kidman said that “I Love Lucy” reruns were a hazy background element from her childhood, and that she leaned toward shows like “Bewitched’ and “The Brady Bunch.”What to Know About ‘Being the Ricardos’The Aaron Sorkin-directed drama looks at one very bad week in 1953 for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, played by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem.Review: The not-so-funny side of the “I Love Lucy” stars is the focus of Sorkin’s lively, chatty, somewhat odd and insistently depoliticized biopic.Remembering Lucille: How does Nicole Kidman’s Lucy compare to the real Lucille Ball? A writer recalls his first disorienting meeting with the comedian.Best-Picture Race: ​​Our columnist thinks “Being the Ricardos” is among six contenders with the strongest chances to win the Oscar.Failure on Broadway: In 1960, Lucille Ball fulfilled an old dream: a stint on Broadway. It did not go well.She could point to the occasional comic performance on her résumé, in a dark satire like “To Die For” or a family film like “Paddington,” though she had to be reminded that there was some physical clowning in “Moulin Rouge,” too. (“There was, that’s right!”) Even on a somewhat sardonic series like HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” Kidman said, “It’s Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern who are very funny. I just say to them, I’ll be your straight woman.”And she has no illusions that she was the most logical candidate for the role of Ball or even the first actress sought to play her.At its inception several years ago, “Being the Ricardos” was contemplated as a TV mini-series, according to Lucie Arnaz, the actress and daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and an executive producer on the movie.Cate Blanchett was attached, but by the time Sorkin became involved and the project was set up at Amazon as a film, the actress was no longer available. “It just took too long and we lost her,” Arnaz said in an interview. “I was devastated.” (A press representative for Blanchett declined to comment.)As other stars were contemplated, Arnaz said, “None of them made me happy. It was always like, who’s the flavor of the month? Who’s got the hot movie of the minute?”But when Kidman emerged as a possibility, Arnaz said, she was intrigued. “I thought that’s good — we should only be looking at Australian actresses for this,” she joked.Kidman said that Blanchett’s previous involvement did not diminish her interest. In show business, Kidman said, “I feel like there’s a sacred pact among us all — whoever gets something, that’s where it was meant to land.”She was aware of a backlash online from fans who opposed her casting, some of whom wanted the role to go to the “Will & Grace” star Debra Messing. “I’m not on the internet and I definitely don’t Google myself,” Kidman said. “But things trickle through.”(Arnaz said Messing “just wants to be that person so bad,” but added, “We weren’t doing that. We weren’t trying to be that person.” A press representative for Messing declined to comment.)She was not deeply versed in Ball’s life when she was first approached, but Kidman said she could imagine the freedom in portraying that slapstick queen: “The way she moves and falls, every part of her physicality, you go, oh, I can be an absolute doofus playing her.”Kidman said the role of Lucy interested her because “the way she moves and falls, every part of her physicality, you go, oh, I can be an absolute doofus playing her.”Jody Rogac for The New York TimesStill, after signing onto “Being the Ricardos” with some gusto, Kidman said she began to get cold feet. Her reluctance, she said, was partly about the pace of Sorkin’s dialogue-dense screenplay and partly about making the movie during the pandemic.But on a fundamental level, Kidman said that comedies do not come easily to her — not as a genre and not as acting opportunities. “I don’t get cast in them,” she said. That might be the result of a career spent in dramas, or, “it might be my personality, too.”Reflecting on her upbringing in Australia, Kidman said, “I was the kid that was not allowed to go on the beach during the middle of the day, because I was so fair and I was going to burn. So I would sit in a room and I wouldn’t watch TV — I’d read.” A youth spent with Dostoyevsky, Flaubert and Tolstoy “doesn’t necessarily make you a comedian,” she said.If she’s going to take on a role with any comic qualities now, Kidman said, “I need to be pushed and cheer-leaded in that area.”Sorkin was persuasive, Kidman said, and she was buoyed by past experiences landing a funny line in stage plays here and there. “It’s pretty wow when you say something and a whole theater laughs,” she said. “I can understand getting addicted to that.”What the film really required, Kidman said, was for her to play Lucille Ball (as depicted in Sorkin’s script) and not Lucy Ricardo. “Lucy’s a character — that’s not Lucille,” she explained. “Lucille is extraordinary because she was knocked down, got back up and just doggedly kept at things.”The more she reflected on the screenplay and learned about Ball’s life, Kidman said, the more she saw a multifaceted person who gave her many emotions to play.In Ball’s marriage to the philandering, alcoholic Arnaz, Kidman said, “She loved a person who loved her but couldn’t give her want she wanted most.” Pointing to the fizzled film career that eventually led Ball to “I Love Lucy,” she said, “She was really funny but she wanted to be a movie star.”Kidman stopped short of drawing direct parallels between Ball’s life and her own, but Lucie Arnaz wholeheartedly embraced the comparisons.Arnaz said that like her mother, Kidman “had been married before — she understood divorce and trying to raise your children in the spotlight. She understood a husband who had an addiction problem.” (Kidman’s husband, the singer Keith Urban, has been treated in the past for drug and alcohol abuse.)Kidman threw herself into the physical preparations for the role and worked closely with a dialect coach, Thom Jones, to develop the voices she would use for Lucille Ball and Lucy Ricardo.As Jones explained, “Lucy is Lucille extreme. When Lucille played Lucy, she did a broad, exaggerated version of herself and pitched her voice higher.”Lucie Arnaz said her mother and Kidman had some things in common, like being divorced and trying to raise children in the spotlight. Glen Wilson/AmazonBall’s natural speaking voice was deeper and huskier from years of smoking, though Kidman was not necessarily striving for perfect mimicry. “We wanted her to grab at the essence of Lucille and get that across,” Jones said. “If you’re doing an impersonation, you’re going to be too aware of your outside and not be able to fill your inside as an actor.”Kidman ran lines with her mother, a lifelong “Lucy” fan, though it’s not clear how helpful this was to her overall process. “She’d say, ‘You got this word wrong,’ and I’d go, ‘Mom, just let me get to the end of the sentence before you correct me.’ Rule No. 1, don’t learn lines with your mom.”She also studied personal audio recordings that Arnaz shared with her, and worked with a movement coach while learning to duplicate several “I Love Lucy” routines, though only a handful appear in the film.Kidman has already received nominations for several honors, including a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award, for “Being the Ricardos,” but her performance remains an occasional source of insecurity for her.She seemed surprised to be told about an October teaser trailer for the film that only fleetingly showed her face in a span of about 75 seconds, and that prompted some viewers to ask why Amazon appeared to be hiding Kidman.Asked if she was aware of the teaser or the strategy behind it, Kidman said, “I don’t know how to answer that, you know? I don’t handle the promotional part of it. Maybe they were just scared of showing me.”She drew a breath before adding, “Bummer.”Whatever other notices she receives for “Being the Ricardos,” Kidman will always have the experience of standing on a facsimile of the “I Love Lucy” set, performing Ball’s material from the show and hearing the laughter of scores of extras hired to play the show’s studio audience.Kidman offered a single word to describe how she felt in that moment: “Fantastic.” Then, as if to demonstrate some of the skills she’d picked up on the film, she waited a beat and said: “They were made to laugh, by the way.” More

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      The Artists We Lost in 2021, in Their Words

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      This year, as pandemic deaths ebbed and flowed, a distinctive, eternal beat — that of artist’s deaths — played on as usual, bringing its own waves of collective grief. Some, such as Cicely Tyson and Stephen Sondheim, held the spotlight for generations. Others, like Michael K. Williams and Nai-Ni Chen, left us lamenting careers cut short. Here is a tribute to just a small number of them, in their own words.Cicely TysonAssociated Press“I’m not scared of death. I don’t know what it is. How could I be afraid of something I don’t know anything about?”— Cicely Tyson, actress, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)Melvin Van PeeblesMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“I want people to be empowered and also have a damn good time.”— Melvin Van Peebles, filmmaker, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“I want my steps to speak.”— Liam Scarlett, choreographer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)“I remember my childhood often, I remember a lot of the past. But when it comes to music, I always look forward.”— Nelson Freire, pianist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Bob AvianKarsten Moran for The New York Times“When my parents went out, I would push back the furniture, clear an open space, turn on the record player and leap around the apartment.”— Bob Avian, choreographer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“School was a crashing bore and a terrible chore, until one day when I was cast as the girl with the mandolin in ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”— Carla Fracci, dancer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“As I grew up in Kyoto, the wood of the Buddhist statues, trees, the grain of the wooden pillars, the patterns on the floor, the stones in the gardens, the bamboo, trees and plants in Kyoto are all a part of me — and as I read a script, I borrow from all these things.”— Emi Wada, costume designer, born 1937“I still feel sky-deprived when in the forested places. Many, many people born to the skies of the plains feel that way.”— Larry McMurtry, novelist, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Ed AsnerWally Fong/Associated Press“My father told me, ‘You didn’t make a success as a student, you’re not going to make a success as an actor.’ I said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’”— Ed Asner, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Olympia DukakisAbramorama“I came to New York with $57 in my pocket.”— Olympia Dukakis, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Charlie WattsEvening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“When I first went to New York with the Stones, the first thing I did was to go to Birdland. And that was it. I’d seen America. I mean, I didn’t want to see anywhere else.”— Charlie Watts, drummer, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Jacques D’AmboiseJohn Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images“Spread me in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”— Jacques D’Amboise, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“If you have a leading character, they should be in a hurry. You can slow it down when you’re shooting, but it helps in the writing: Even if they’re not moving, they’re thinking about moving on, or getting away from the scene they’re in.”— Robert Downey Sr., filmmaker, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Joe AllenJim Cooper/Associated Press“I always said I lacked ambition — but that does not mean I was lazy.”— Joe Allen, theater district restaurateur, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t assume an audience’s interest. I assume the opposite.”— Charles Grodin, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jerry PinkneyJoyce Dopkeen/The New York Times“I solve problems — visual problems.”— Jerry Pinkney, children’s book illustrator, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Larry KingAlberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images‘‘If you’re combative, you never learn.”— Larry King, TV host, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Anna HalprinSam Falk/The New York Times“I started to teach people how the body actually works. I looked at the skeleton. I did human dissection. I did all these things to understand the nature of movement, not just my movement.”— Anna Halprin, choreographer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)“I’m not interested in the intentions of artists; I’m interested in consequences.”— Dave Hickey, art critic, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Nai-Ni ChenStephanie Berger for The New York Times“My thirst for expressing myself, both East and West, could only happen through creating my own company.”— Nai-Ni Chen, choreographer and dancer, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)Virgil AblohDavid Kasnic for The New York Times“When I studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, it was the humanities classes that I had put to the side that ultimately started me on this path of thinking about creativity in a much more cultural context — not designing for design’s sake, but connecting design to the rhythm of what’s happening in the world.”— Virgil Abloh, designer, born 1980 (Read the obituary.)Yolanda LópezAlexa Treviño“Those of us who make images must always be very conscious about the power of images — about how they function — especially in a society where we are not taught our own history.”— Yolanda López, artist, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“You’re more anarchic onstage than you are anywhere else.”— Helen McCrory, actress, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)Michael K. WilliamsDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times“The characters that mean the most to me are the ones that damn near kill me. It’s a sacrifice I’ve chosen to make.”— Michael K. Williams, actor, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)bell hooksKarjean Levine/Getty Images“We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor.”— bell hooks, writer and scholar, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Norm MacdonaldMargaret Norton/NBC, via Getty Images“Making people laugh is a gift. Preaching to them is not a gift. There are people who can do that better. Preachers.”— Norm Macdonald, comedian, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)“The thing that everybody thinks is going to work will not. The thing that nobody thinks will work will.”— Elizabeth McCann, theater producer, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“The success of my books is not in the characters or the words or the colors, but in the simple, simple feelings.”— Eric Carle, author and artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I think children want to read about normal, everyday kids.”— Beverly Cleary, author, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)Young DolphPaul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated Press“My whole thing is about giving these folks the real.”— Young Dolph, rapper, born 1985 (Read the obituary.)“I try to use words that fit a pattern, that are musical and expressive, but do not sound mechanical. Above all it should have a speech rhythm that is like the rhythms that the audience would speak.”— Carlisle Floyd, composer, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“Birds were the first composers. They like to sing in spring. Purely serving of the beauty — that’s what we try to do.”— Louis Andriessen, composer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Cloris LeachmanAssociated Press“I don’t have a lot of trappings, I think, in my personality. I’m just a simple person, with a silly bone.”— Cloris Leachman, actress, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“I’m a witness of my time, you know, of a history.”— Hung Liu, artist, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Technology is changing the way people work. With electronic mail, the internet, teleconferencing, people are starting to ask, ‘What is a headquarters or office environment?’”— Art Gensler, architect, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Christopher PlummerTom Jamieson for The New York Times“I’ve made over 100 motion pictures, and some of them were even good. It’s nice to be reborn every few decades.”— Christopher Plummer, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“After you see your work, you always want to go right back and do it all over again.”— Lisa Banes, actress, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“I think of the art as dead when it leaves my studio. I don’t even own it anymore. Installing in a museum or a show that’s coming up, I’m not allowed to touch my own work ever. It just seems strange to me. If somebody puts me in front of my drawings, I’d put more text in it. It’s never finished, but none of my work is ever finished.”— Kaari Upson, artist, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)SophieFrazer Harrison/Getty Images For Coachella“I don’t have the need to bring any more clutter into the physical world. And I like the fact that musical data is weightless and spaceless in that way.”— Sophie, pop producer and performer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)Etel AdnanFabrice Gibert, via Galerie Lelong & Co.“My paintings are not usually titled. Art should make people dream, and when you have a title, you condition the vision.”— Etel Adnan, author and artist, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Michael NesmithMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“We’re a couple of old men, but we sound the same when we play this music — and it nourishes us the way it nourishes you.”— Michael Nesmith, musician, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“We always put music first and marriage second. One night after dinner, for instance, I was going to do the dishes and Jerry said, ‘Forget the dishes. Let’s practice. I’ll do the dishes later.’”— Dottie Dodgion, drummer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Jessica WalterDove and Express, via Hulton Archive/Getty Images“Even my ‘leading ladies’— you know, in air quotes — were characters. They were not Miss Vanilla Ice Cream. They weren’t holding the horse while John Wayne galloped into the sunset.”— Jessica Walter, actress, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“The last note, the high last note — it must say something.”— Edita Gruberova, soprano, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)DMXChad Batka for The New York Times“I’m going to look back on my life, just before I go, and thank god for every moment.”— DMX, rapper, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)Stephen SondheimFred R. Conrad/The New York Times“Life is unpredictable. It is. There is no form. And making forms gives you solidity. I think that’s why people paint paintings and take photographs and write music and tell stories that have beginning, middles and ends — even when the middle is at the beginning and the beginning is at the end.”— Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, born 1930 (Read the obituary.) More

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      Sally Ann Howes, Star of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,’ Dies at 91

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      The English-born actress captivated children in the 1968 film, which became a holiday favorite. It was one of around 140 productions she appeared in during a six-decade career.Sally Ann Howes, an English-born grande dame of American and British musical comedy who captivated children as Truly Scrumptious in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” the 1968 film featuring a magic jalopy that floats and flies into fantasy adventures, died on Sunday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. She was 91.Her son, Andrew Hart Adler, confirmed the death, in a hospital. Ms. Howes had homes in West Palm Beach and London.Born into show business, the daughter of a popular London comedian and his singer-actress wife, Ms. Howes was cast in her first movie at 12 and had a stage, screen and television career that spanned six decades. She starred in some 140 productions — musicals and plays in New York and London, Hollywood movies and television mini-series.She toured Britain and America in musicals; sang at the White House for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; was a frequent guest on television game and talk shows; became a Barbie doll; sang operettas; and later in life lectured, made documentaries and raised funds for AIDS research and other charities.Ms. Howes had starred in a dozen British films and several American musicals, including “My Fair Lady,” “What Makes Sammy Run?” and “Brigadoon,” when, toward the end of 1968 — a tumultuous year of assassinations, a divisive war in Vietnam and widespread political protests — a madcap movie opened in Britain and the United States as a zany antidote for a troubled world.Based loosely on a children’s book by Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond spy tales, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” a British production, starred Dick Van Dyke as a nutty widowed inventor and Ms. Howes as the love interest, Truly Scrumptious. Together, with his two children and his marvelous flying-boat car, they journey to the land of Vulgaria to battle the nasty tyrant Baron Bomburst.Ms. Howes in a London hotel in 1968. She was in the city to attend the premiere of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”Leonard Burt/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesCritics were mixed about the film, directed by Ken Hughes with a script by Mr. Hughes and Roald Dahl, but children were ecstatic. Its popularity spawned mass-marketing phenomena on both sides of the Atlantic, with Truly Scrumptious Barbie dolls, lunchboxes and toys, and a revival of Edwardian fashions, which the cast wore.The critic Roger Ebert called “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” “about the best two-hour children’s movie you could hope for.” Renata Adler, in The New York Times, said: “There is nothing coy, or stodgy or too frightening about the film. And this year, when it has seemed highly doubtful that children ought to go to the movies at all, ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ sees to it that none of the audiences’ terrific eagerness to have a good time is betrayed or lost.”While it lost money initially, the film became a perennial children’s favorite and made Ms. Howes an international film star, her fame renewed every Christmas on video and DVD. It was nominated (though not chosen) in 2006 for the American Film Institute’s list of the 25 Greatest Movie Musicals.Ms. Howes moved to New York in 1958 when she married the composer and lyricist Richard Adler and made her Broadway debut in Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady.” She replaced the original star, Julie Andrews, in the role of Eliza Doolittle, the smudged Cockney flower girl who is transformed into a radiant lady by the demanding speech lessons of Professor Henry Higgins.Audiences and most critics adored her as George Bernard Shaw’s gamine. “Sally Ann Howes, the current Eliza, is a strikingly beautiful young lady with a rapturous voice that sounds like Julie Andrews,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The Times. “Radiating intelligence and guile,” he went on, “she is an alert and versatile actress.”Ms. Howes returned to Broadway in 1961 for “Kwamina,” a musical written for her by Mr. Adler. An interracial love story set in Africa with an almost entirely Black cast, it was apparently too controversial in the turbulent early civil rights era, closing after 32 performances.Ms. Howes and the British actor Peter Wyngarde publicizing a production of “The King and I” on a barge on the River Thames in 1973.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesIn 1962, Ms. Howes starred in a limited-run City Center revival of “Brigadoon,” Lerner and Loewe’s fantasy about two American boys who stumble upon a Scottish village that comes to life only one day every century.“Sally Ann Howes has grown accustomed to Lerner and Loewe songs,” Milton Esterow said in a review for The Times. “She has grace, beauty and a lovely voice.” Since “Brigadoon” was soon to vanish, Mr. Esterow suggested, “Broadway should hurry and find a new show for Miss Howes. Otherwise some smart gentlemen in Scotland might decide to nominate her for public office.”In 1964, Ms. Howes joined Robert Alda and Steve Lawrence in “What Makes Sammy Run?” a Broadway musical written by Budd Schulberg and based on his novel about a ruthless young man who betrays friends and lovers to scheme his way to the top of a Hollywood studio. The show ran for 540 performances, although Ms. Howes, pressed by other engagements, left after a year.Throughout the 1960s she turned increasingly to television, appearing on the Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan shows, and on “The Bell Telephone Hour,” “Kraft Music Hall” and “The United States Steel Hour.” She also had roles in “Mission: Impossible,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Bracken’s World.”Ms. Howes toured Britain in 1973 in “The King and I,” and the United States in 1978 in “The Sound of Music.” In the 1970s and ’80s she sang operettas like “Blossom Time” and “The Merry Widow” in American regional theaters. In 1990, she joined a New York City Opera staging of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” in the role of the theater actress Desiree Armfeldt; the production was shown on public television’s “Live From Lincoln Center.” And a half-century after her triumph as Eliza Doolittle, she toured the United States in “My Fair Lady” in 2007, playing Mrs. Higgins, the mother of Henry Higgins. It was her 64th year in show business.Sally Ann Howes was born in London on July 20, 1930, to the comedian Bobby Howes and the actress Patricia Malone. Her maternal grandfather, Capt. J.A.E. Malone, directed stage musicals; an uncle, Pat Malone, was an actor.Sally Ann and her older brother, Peter, a musician, grew up in a prosperous household with nannies and visits by her parents’ theatrical peers. During World War II, the family moved to its country estate in Essendon, 20 miles north of London, for the duration.Ms. Howes at a reception at the New York Public Library in 2012. The film historian Robert Osborne was at right.John Lamparski/WireImageMs. Howes’s acting in school plays and her family connections attracted an agent, and in 1943 she appeared with Stewart Granger in her first movie, “Thursday’s Child.” It launched her career. She played children’s roles in “Dead of Night” (1945), with Michael Redgrave, and “Anna Karenina” (1948), with Vivien Leigh. At 18, she appeared with John Mills in “The History of Mr. Polly” (1949).Ms. Howes began taking stage roles in the 1950s. With singing lessons to lower her high-pitched voice, she performed in West End musicals, including “Paint Your Wagon,” with her father, and in the stage drama “A Hatful of Rain.” Ms. Howes’s marriage in 1950 to Maxwell Coker ended in divorce in 1953. She divorced Mr. Adler in 1966. Her marriage in 1969 to A. Morgan Maree III, a financier, also ended in divorce. In the 1970s, she married the literary agent Douglas W. Rae, who died this year. In addition to her son, she is survived by two grandchildren. In 2012, Ms. Howes joined 1,500 film fans on a Turner Classic Movies cruise that featured “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and she discussed her life as an entertainer.“The moment you hit 45 — now it’s 55 — your career changes,” she said. “You have to rethink everything, and you have to adjust. I was always aware of it because of the people I was brought up with. We saw careers go up and down and be killed off.“I’ve never prepared for anything,” she continued. “I’ve always jumped into the next thing, and therefore it’s been a strange career. I enjoyed experimenting.”Alex Marshall and Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Peter Dinklage on ‘Cyrano’ and Life After ‘Game of Thrones’

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      Peter Dinklage doesn’t consider himself much of a singer, and swordfighting is outside his usual area of expertise. But the opportunity to master those skills is precisely what appealed to him about the new movie musical “Cyrano,” which Dinklage leads as a crooning, jousting poet.“I’ve got to be intimidated by it,” he said. “Anything that scares me gets my interest.”The 52-year-old actor first tackled the material in a stage musical written and directed by Erica Schmidt, Dinklage’s wife, with songs written by members of the band the National. After an Off Broadway premiere in late 2019, Schmidt’s “Cyrano” has now been made into a lavish film directed by Joe Wright (“Atonement”), which finds the title character covertly courting his true love, Roxanne (Haley Bennett), in the form of letters sent by the besotted soldier Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.).Of course, that begs a very contemporary question: Did Cyrano de Bergerac invent catfishing? Though the new film retains the period setting of the 1897 Edmond Rostand play it was based on, Dinklage detects many modern-day parallels. “It’s exactly what we’re doing today with online dating, where you’re putting up a profile of yourself out there that is not necessarily true to who you are,” he said. “We all pretend to be other people to varying degrees.”Dinklage with Haley Bennett in the new movie musical “Cyrano.”Peter Mountain/MGMBut few pretend better than Dinklage, a four-time Emmy winner who played the sly and short-statured Tyrion Lannister for eight seasons of “Game of Thrones,” culminating with its controversial finale in May 2019.“‘Game of Thrones’ wasn’t really a TV show — it was like my life,” Dinklage said. “My family was there in Ireland six months out of every year, for almost 10 years. You dig roots down there, my daughter was going to school there. She developed an Irish accent because she was with little Irish kids all day long.”Still, in a recent and wide-ranging conversation via video call, Dinklage told me that he has found life since “Game of Thrones” to be quite liberating: “You feel this void, but then you also go, ‘Oh, wow. I don’t have to do that, so what am I going to do next?’ That’s the exciting thing.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.It’s my understanding that your wife, Erica, was fairly far along in adapting “Cyrano” before you read it and decided to star in it. What convinced you?Yeah, she was commissioned to write an adaptation of “Cyrano,” and she had the great idea of stripping it down to its bare essentials, replacing the long monologues about love with love songs. Most importantly for me, I finally connected with it because she got rid of Cyrano’s most famous attribute, which is the obviously fake nose on the handsome actor’s face.I’m an actor, I’ve worn prosthetics before, but the pretense of that didn’t jive with me. I’d always thought, “What’s the big deal? You get to take that off at the end of the show.” And then Erica removed it and I thought I had to play this part because now it’s about a guy who doesn’t know what to do in the face of love, who has nothing to blame but himself.What do you mean by that?I think Cyrano is in love with love, and so many of us are, but we have no idea what it is. I always jump ahead and think, well, what if Cyrano really got what he wanted? Would he and Roxanne start to annoy each other? Because he keeps her on a pedestal, is that why he loves her? I think so many people do that. They don’t want to get too close. They want to know the good stuff without the bad.How did you feel about love when you were in your 20s? Were you in love with the idea of love?Yeah, I think so. I think there’s a “Wuthering Heights” quality to all love when you’re younger, you know? “Romeo and Juliet” wasn’t written for 40-year-olds. I was guilty of always falling for someone where it wasn’t reciprocated, because keeping it at a distance is more romantic than bringing it up close. You fall for people you know aren’t going to return that, so it’s even more tormented, and you’re not interested in the people interested in you. That’s how my brain worked because I was a self-saboteur when I was young.When it comes to love, Dinklage said, “I was a self-saboteur when I was young.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesHow do you grapple with that?You get a bit older and you realize that has nothing to do with anything. But it’s OK, because in your 20s, everybody should be a mess. I meet so many ambitious, professional young people in their 20s and they have everything together, and it seems like they haven’t made any of those really important mistakes, as opposed to when me and my friends were in New York in our early 20s and we’d go out drinking all night and smoke cigarettes and howl at the moon. We were all just fools, and it was fun.Do you remember the first time you met Erica?Of course. It was about 18 years ago now. We were all at a friend’s house and someone said, “They’re walking the elephants through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.” The circus was in town and it was snowing, and they were walking the elephants through Manhattan, a long line of them. It was like something out of a beautiful, fantastical, end-of-the-world, crazy, romantic movie. See? I always think about movies. So that’s the night we met, the night the elephants walked through Manhattan.By that point, had you been able to move past your tendency to torment yourself about love?I don’t think you do that. I think other people do that to you. If anybody’s been lucky enough to experience love, it just grabs hold of you. You don’t control how you feel, but you can choose what to do with it.Which is part of the issue with Cyrano, who may feel unworthy of love.I was raised Irish Catholic, so I totally feel unworthy of everything. That’s what hopefully this movie is speaking to, that unworthiness we all go through. When you meet somebody you love, they’re suddenly so important and so powerful that of course your go-to is, “I’m not worthy of this, because why would I be? This is so much bigger than me.”Do you think Erica removed the fake nose and reconceived Cyrano because she had you in mind for the role?Subconsciously, perhaps, because we had worked together before and we’re partners in life. But I definitely think she wasn’t just replacing the nose with my size in terms of a physical difference of the character. She just wanted to unearth. It’s kind of what I do: Every time I approach a role, I’m not just approaching it as someone my size, I’m approaching it as a flesh-and-blood human being with many more complications to the character.It’s so funny, just talking about this movie, I’m asked, “How does it feel to play a leading man?” That’s still part of the conversation because we’re still inundated by clichés. The domain of romantic leads has been beautiful white people for a hundred years now. That’s just what we’ve been served up, like Burger King, and then if we eat it, they’re going to make more of it. But my favorite filmmakers have been the ones who take risks, like Hal Ashby. I just worship “Harold and Maude” because look at who the romantic characters are. It’s a brilliant movie.Dinklage opposite Jasmine Cephas Jones and Blake Jenner in the stage version of “Cyrano.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn the ’90s, you gave an interview where you said, “What I really want is to play the romantic lead and get the girl.”I think I was speaking more to the idea that they get to thread the whole narrative, and that’s sort of a joy. I had been playing a number of fun parts, but they were supporting parts. Behind the curtain of filmmaking, so much of it is continuity of character: If you come in for one or two scenes, you can just lay some dynamite, have some fun, and then you’re out of there, but there’s no real arc to your storytelling.I think what’s fascinating about “Game of Thrones” and why a lot of actors are now drawn to television, is because they get to do that slow burn. For example, if you take the character of Tyrion’s brother Jaime, he pushes a little kid out the window at the end of the first episode, but two seasons later, he’s a hero to the audience. It’s like, did you forget he pushed a kid out the window? It’s crazy the way you can just surf this narrative and take it wherever you want to go. I got to do that with Tyrion and you get to do that in the movie if you’re the lead, though you have to condense it a little bit more.What was it like to be famous at the height of “Game of Thrones” mania?It’s myriad different reactions I get on a daily basis. People mean well, but when you’re walking down the street with your kid and people take your picture without asking … I start to talk this way and then I stop myself, because for an actor to complain about that reflects poorly on you. Everybody is like, “You have a great life. What’s wrong with me taking your picture? You’re a performer, that’s my right.”But it’s not about that. It’s more about just on a human level, I’m not a zoo animal. I’m a person. Let’s say I’m having a really bad day, or I just got off the phone and you’re right in my face. Am I supposed to smile for you? And why aren’t you actually communicating with me? More often than not, people take pictures without asking, and sometimes when I respond, even kindly, they don’t say anything because they’re almost surprised I’m talking to them. It’s really wild. If you’re a fan of what I do, why would you pay me back with that?Dinklage with Sophie Turner in “Game of Thrones.”Helen Sloan/HBOSo what’s your read on why they act that way?I think a lot of people are totally removed from each other. Camera phones have become like fingers, an extension of themselves, and they don’t even think about it because that’s how everybody’s living. Much more famous actors than me can walk down Broadway if they hide themselves correctly, but I’m unable to do that, so it can be hard. I moved to New York City to be anonymous: “Who cares? Nobody looks twice.” And now, because of the technology, everybody does.George R.R. Martin wanted “Game of Thrones” to go on for two more seasons. Do you think it should have, or was that the right time to end?It was the right time. No less, no more. You don’t want to wear out your welcome, although I’m not sure that show could have. But I think the reason there was some backlash about the ending is because they were angry at us for breaking up with them. We were going off the air and they didn’t know what to do with their Sunday nights anymore. They wanted more, so they backlashed about that.We had to end when we did, because what the show was really good at was breaking preconceived notions: Villains became heroes, and heroes became villains. If you know your history, when you track the progress of tyrants, they don’t start off as tyrants. I’m talking about, spoiler alert, what happened at the end of “Game of Thrones” with that character change. It’s gradual, and I loved how power corrupted these people. What happens to your moral compass when you get a taste of power? Human beings are complicated characters, you know?I think some people really did want a happily-ever-after ending, even though “Game of Thrones” told us it was not that show from the very beginning.They wanted the pretty white people to ride off into the sunset together. By the way, it’s fiction. There’s dragons in it. Move on. [Laughs] No, but the show subverts what you think, and that’s what I love about it. Yeah, it was called “Game of Thrones,” but at the end, the whole dialogue when people would approach me on the street was, “Who’s going to be on the throne?” I don’t know why that was their takeaway because the show really was more than that.One of my favorite moments was when the dragon burned the throne because it sort of just killed that whole conversation, which is really irreverent and kind of brilliant on behalf of the show’s creators: “Shut up, it’s not about that.” They constantly did that, where you thought one thing and they delivered another. Everybody had their own stories going on while watching that show, but nobody’s was as good as what the show delivered, I think. More

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      Continuing ‘The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe’

      by

      Lily Tomlin, who first performed this comically cosmic play, and Jane Wagner, its author, discuss a new production with Cecily Strong and Leigh Silverman, its new star and director.Should you ever have the chance to converse with Lily Tomlin, you don’t have to tell her it’s an honor. “Believe me, it’s not,” Tomlin said recently in her distinctive deadpan.At 82, Tomlin is not precious about her reputation or the esteem she enjoys as a comedian and actor. But she remains fiercely proud of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” the one-woman play that was written for her by Jane Wagner, her wife and longtime creative collaborator.“Search for Signs,” which had its Broadway debut in 1985, is a comedic and philosophical whirlwind in which Tomlin Ping-Ponged across 12 roles, including the sullen teen punk Agnus Angst; the feminist activists Edie, Lyn and Marge; and the wealthy, urbane Kate. Their scenes are framed and interwoven by the character of Trudy, an enlightened vagrant who believes she is in communication with aliens.Tomlin’s performance in the Broadway production of “Search for Signs” won her the Tony Award for best actress in a play. That production ran for more than a year, and the play became an emblematic entry in the careers of its author and its star; Tomlin continued to perform it in other cities, in a 1991 film adaptation and in a Broadway revival that ran from 2000-1.Lily Tomlin in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” in 2000.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Search for Signs” has become a treasured work to performers like Cecily Strong, the “Saturday Night Live” cast member, and directors like Leigh Silverman (“Well,” “Violet”). As Silverman, 47, said, “This play gives us a sense of purpose and a meaning while telling us all the time how meaningless it is. It holds us up and supports us and loves us. It cherishes the audience in a way that no other theater experience I’ve ever had does.”Now Silverman is directing Strong in a new production of “Search for Signs” that will be presented at the Shed. This incarnation, which is choreographed by James Alsop, begins performances Dec. 21 and opens Jan. 11; its limited run is scheduled to end Feb. 6.While they are still working through the play’s ambitious and ample material, Strong and Silverman said their preparations are testing them to their fullest extents. “There’s no plan to this,” Strong, 37, explained. “I said nobody else bug me until February — all of my time and my brain and my heart and my soul is here, and that’s where it has to be.”Tomlin and Wagner, who are executive producing, are content to observe these rehearsals from afar, weigh in when needed and reflect on what the play has meant to them. (Or simply to kibitz affectionately, as in one moment when Tomlin turned to her wife and audibly observed, “We’ve lived a long time, sister.”)Wagner, 86, said she was confident in the approach that Silverman and Strong were taking. “I have such a feeling of security, really, with the two of them,” she said. “But now that you mention it, I’ll start feeling pressured again, I’m sure.”Tomlin, Wagner, Strong and Silverman gathered earlier this month for a video interview in which they spoke about their individual and collective journeys on “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Lily and Jane, can you recount the origins of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”? How was it created?JANE WAGNER I was in a New Age phase. I was reading some philosophy and I began to be aware that I was being aware. [Lily Tomlin laughs.] That’s an insight that I hadn’t even thought about having.LILY TOMLIN I was on the road a good part of that time.WAGNER Which was very good for us.TOMLIN She would send me a load of pages every now and then. I remember the first packet I got, I was playing in Lexington and she sent me a huge stack of papers all about Trudy. Every line, one after another, was so observant and perceptive. I read them at a show one night and there was a raucous and wonderful response. When I read Trudy saying, “Frankly, I think they find us quite captivating,” I knew where the play was headed. But I had no idea how she was going to get there.Tomlin, right, and Jane Wagner in 2001 with their Tony Award nominations for the revival of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”Henry Ray Abrams/Agence France-PresseCecily and Leigh, how did you each discover the play?CECILY STRONG The first time I encountered it was in my library in high school, looking for monologues. I was very serious about being an actor and I remember finding this cover with a long crazy name. What could this show be? I looked at a couple of Trudy monologues and I wanted to do something like this. This is a stupid thought, but I had it: I’ve got to marry a writer. I need to have someone write this show for me. I certainly never thought it would be a possibility to do this.LEIGH SILVERMAN I saw it at the Kennedy Center [after the show’s original Broadway run]. I was 11. My mother took me and we were sitting in the front row. It really sent me on a journey to see a performance like Lily’s. It was radical — written by a woman, performed by a woman who played all kinds of characters. Lily was so masculine, androgynous, highly feminine — she was all of it, the full package. I felt like my whole being was rearranged and maybe for the first time put into place.Lily, you continued to perform the play for many years in different settings. Does it remain in your body from production to production?TOMLIN You have a lot of muscle memory from it. When you start working on it again — this doesn’t feel right, I must have moved over here — then it falls into place. It comes back to you very quickly.WAGNER I’ve gotten by as a writer with no muscles. All my life, I’ve never had muscles.TOMLIN She’s at an age where the muscles would come in handy.Would the play change depending on the time and place where you were doing it?TOMLIN In 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks, we opened in San Francisco. Jane used to collect a lot of old Whole Earth Catalogs from her hippie days, and she cited this quote from Whole Earth Catalog. I used to end the production in San Francisco with this same quote because I felt it was so meaningful. It’s anonymous: “Humans are finally the bits of earth that leap up from the planet’s surface, tell what they see to each other, and then die. The sum total of all this seeing and telling is the story of one planet waking up to itself.” We loved that. That’s how we felt at that time.Did you get protective when other people would ask to put on the play? There were solo shows and versions with larger casts playing all the characters.WAGNER We did once we saw one of the productions you just described. It was pretty awful.TOMLIN In the old days, the requests would come in and I would deal with the agent. He’d say it’s a good theater or whatever, and we’d let them do it. Sometimes they would send us a film of what they’d done.WAGNER That’s where it went wrong, I think. [Laughter.] I’m more easily beaten down than she is.TOMLIN That’s why we keep her from the theater. She stays locked in a hotel room and I go, “I’ll be back in three or four hours”WAGNER I’m thinking about us doing it when we had no producer.TOMLIN I was the producer!WAGNER Well, I didn’t know that. I’d send you pages and you’d do them or toss them.TOMLIN Very often in the development process, I’d come in from a night at the theater and I’d talk to Jane about some monologue. I’d say, “If you can just make it — blah blah blah.” Instead of just adjusting some small phrase, she’d just write another monologue. I had like six or seven drafts of some monologues in my head, and I would move sections around, trying to find what the key would be. I was so steeped in it, I was able to just put it out and fly with whatever I could fly with. That’s what an actor really hopes for.“Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin?” said Strong, who’s been rehearsing with Silverman at the Shed. Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesLeigh, what got you interested in reviving the play?SILVERMAN When we were in the darkest moments of the pandemic, I was feeling so lost. I have done a lot of solo plays in my career. Most recently I did “Harry Clarke” with Billy Crudup. We were actually supposed to do it again during the pandemic and it was canceled. I had this moment where I thought I never want to do another solo show, ever, ever, ever again. I had a conversation with the Shed and they said, “We want to reopen and we’re looking for the right theatrical experience to do that with. Do you have any ideas?” I said no. And then I had a second call and I said, “I really don’t want do another solo show. But I do think this play should be done, and this is the time.”How was Cecily chosen? How did everyone get comfortable with that choice?SILVERMAN When we were talking about people, very serendipitously, there was the finale of “S.N.L.” last season and I was watching Weekend Update, where Cecily dove headfirst into a giant box of wine and drank her way out. Watching that, I had this moment where I was like, she can do it. She had the combination of the stamina, the skill, the courage and deep, deep empathy. The wild curiosity to just be outrageously funny.STRONG Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin? But you hear Leigh talk about it and you start tearing up. It’s like, yes, yes, let’s do this. Just the way the show feels, physically — I get to go through this wonderful catharsis every time we run it.WAGNER Lorne [Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live”] has an uncanny ability to understand talent, and he believed in you so much. You wouldn’t have been on “S.N.L.” if you weren’t pretty great.TOMLIN I was totally for it because I wanted Jane’s authorship to stand. So often, I’m thrown into the mix as her collaborator. It’s just not true. Jane is a solitary writer and that’s all there is to it. She writes pages and pages, and if you asked her now to write about this bottle of water, she’d probably come up with 2,000 words.Cecily, you recently performed a Weekend Update character, a clown named Goober who tells jokes about abortion, that felt like she could have fit into this play. Was that piece inspired by your work on this show?STRONG Not consciously writing it. It came from, I’m going to take Ambien and I’m going to write essays to myself every night, or I’m going to remain frustrated and do weird things. Obviously this is something I wanted to get out. I kept posing it to people — I’m thinking it’s about a clown talking about her abortion — and everybody was like, okaaay. I certainly felt scared, and then I felt like I came closer to earning this show. [Speaking to Tomlin] To your bravery, your courage, and what a bombastic, badass thing it is.Jane and Lily, were you ever criticized for your depictions of feminist characters in this play? They are affectionately rendered but still allowed to be laughed at and joked about.WAGNER Oh, yeah. We heard that a little bit.TOMLIN What was there?WAGNER Do you want me to name names?TOMLIN No, you don’t have to name names.WAGNER There are always people that say you shouldn’t. One time somebody insisted we shouldn’t have a monologue that was a half an hour long.TOMLIN Oh, yeah, well, that’s old stuff. You have to make those decisions yourself. Don’t be influenced.WAGNER When I went to a consciousness-raising session — and I only went to one, because I was kind of in shock — I knew that I had to talk about it. People looking at their genitalia and everything like that, there was something satirical there that you could use. I still love the movement and believe in the movement.Cecily and Leigh, how do you begin to tackle a play like this, where one actor is responsible for this much material?SILVERMAN There’s so much that you put down one coat of paint and then you keep going.STRONG I don’t think I’ve ever taken on anything like this, where I’ve been so challenged. How do I put on a coat and I’m trying to sing and I’m trying to quote Buckminster Fuller? It’s so many things but the minute we get one thing right it just feels so good. I feel like my brain is changing a little.Do you allow yourself to have favorite characters within the play?STRONG Something new tickles me every day. Leigh just gave me a big cart of stuff and was like, put it somewhere. What do you do with this thing? It was a great way to enter into Trudy. The other day, I was talking to a plant. I was like, ooh, I like the sound of how that plant shakes.Do you seek notes or input from Lily and Jane? Do they just weigh in when they want to, like the voice of God?STRONG I’ll take anything I can get.WAGNER We like the voice of God concept. [Laughter.]TOMLIN We’re trying to come [in person].WAGNER I have trouble with my leg. Loss of muscle memory, I guess. SILVERMAN We send them video and they’re with us always. There’s a line in the play where Trudy says that she puts some time aside each day to do “awe-robics,” and I will say that so much of working on the play is an exploration of “awe-robics.”WAGNER They’re wonderful, the way you communicate. I think you’re going to do something that actually makes our brains crack. Which could be good for the run of the show. More