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      in Theater

      Bernadette Peters Loves a Day Out in New York

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      Back on Broadway for “Old Friends,” the actress reflects on the art she saw with Sondheim and the delights of the High Line and Central Park.Growing up in Queens, Bernadette Peters was enraptured by trips into Manhattan to see the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History.“There’s something special about revisiting them as an adult, with fresh eyes,” said Peters, 77, a two-time Tony-winning actress who originated the roles of the Witch in “Into the Woods” and Dot in “Sunday in the Park With George.”She’s doing much the same thing in her latest turn on Broadway — her first in nearly seven years — in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” a concert-style revue of songs by the acclaimed composer and lyricist who died in 2021, in which she stars opposite Lea Salonga.Though Peters has played a number of the featured roles, her song choices are surprising — singing “I Know Things Now” as Little Red Riding Hood, for instance, in the “Into the Woods” segment.“I like a challenge,” said Peters, who put her stamp on half a dozen Sondheim characters, including Momma Rose in “Gypsy,” Desirée Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music” and Sally Durant Plummer in “Follies.”In a phone interview last month from Los Angeles, where “Old Friends” was wrapping up a pre-Broadway run, Peters, who was anxious to get back to home to New York City and her rescue dogs Charlie and Rosalie, shared 10 of her Big Apple-inspired cultural essentials.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

    • 175 Shares117 Views

      in Music

      Alice Tan Ridley, Subway Singer Who Dazzled on ‘America’s Got Talent,’ Dies at 72

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      The mother of the actress Gabourey Sidibe, she spent decades singing full time as a busker in the New York City subways.Alice Tan Ridley, who rose to fame after decades singing for tips in the New York City subway with an unexpected run in the television show “America’s Got Talent,” died on March 25 in New York City. Ms. Ridley, who was the mother of the Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe, was 72.Her family announced the death in an obituary published online. It did not cite a cause.Ms. Ridley’s public life as a singer began underground in the mid-1980s, and she spent decades belting out songs in New York City subway stations. At first, the subway busking was meant to supplement income from her day job in education. Eventually, she quit to sing full time.In her early days of busking, the performances were collaborations with her brother Roger Ridley and their cousin Jimmy McMillan, the political activist who would become famous for founding the Rent Is Too Damn High Party in New York.“We are not homeless,” she told “Good Morning America” in 2010, referring to buskers. “We are not beggars. And we’re not under drug influence, you know? There are traditional jobs, and there are nontraditional jobs.”She compared busking in New York to “being in a cathedral.”“It’s wonderful,” she said. “There’s just music all over this city, and especially down underground.”For Ms. Ridley, singing underground fulfilled a calling. In 2005, she appeared in the film “Heights,” directed by Chris Terrio, as a subway singer.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

    • 113 Shares100 Views

      in Television

      Jon Hamm Finds His Way Back to the Hilltop

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      As we ascended the trail into Griffith Park, Jon Hamm gazed up at the scrubby ridge to our left. From our perspective, the ridgeline traced a clean horizon, uninterrupted by cell towers or midcentury modern palaces. He nodded toward a man sitting up there alone.“See that dude sitting on the point there?” he asked. I looked: The dude could have been meditating or having a Don Draper moment, dreaming up the next big Coca-Cola campaign.For Hamm, the image of the man brought him back to 2017, when he first moved to the Hollywood Hills. His career-making, Emmy-winning role as Draper in the AMC drama “Mad Men” had ended two years before, as had a romantic partnership of 18 years. It had been by most accounts, including his, a tough period of transition.“I was newly single — I was like, I just need to concentrate on myself again,” he recalled with some apparent wistfulness. “And I would just take this walk, every day,” to the top of that ridge, and then back toward his house, memorizing lines along the way.Eventually he began to settle into his new home, his new neighborhood, his new rhythm. He turned a corner, pushed ahead.Jon Hamm has appeared in multiple series in the past two years, including “Fargo” and “The Morning Show.” Next up is the Apple TV+ drama “Your Friends & Neighbors,” his first lead TV role since “Mad Men.”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

    • 150 Shares95 Views

      in Theater

      At James Earl Jones Memorial, Denzel Washington and Whoopi Goldberg Share Stories

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      At a gathering in the Broadway theater renamed to honor the star, speakers including Denzel Washington and Phylicia Rashad described Jones as an inspiration.Denzel Washington called him his “northern star.” Whoopi Goldberg said “getting to see him onstage was heaven.” Some of the most notable names in show business gathered in Times Square on Monday afternoon for a starry, and sometimes emotional, send-off for James Earl Jones, who died last year at the age of 93. He was remembered for his thunderous voice and his enviable acting chops, as well as for being a gentle guiding presence in the lives of young actors.For more than 90 minutes, at the Broadway theater that now bears his name on West 48th Street in Manhattan, a packed house laughed, cried and shared numerous personal stories that not only painted a bright picture of Jones, but cast him as an important figure who inspired fellow actors to reach their personal bests.“He was powerful, he was present, he was purposeful, he was humble,” Denzel Washington said of Jones.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn a short speech, Denzel Washington described Jones as having personified grace, power and dignity. Washington, who is currently starring in a Broadway revival of “Othello,” a role that Jones had made his own on Broadway more than six decades ago, said he hoped to be as good a stage actor as Jones. “He was powerful, he was present, he was purposeful, he was humble,” Washington said. “He is not only the greatest African American actor; in my opinion he is one of the greatest actors ever to be on a Broadway stage.”The actress Linda Powell recalled starring with Jones in a Broadway revival of “On Golden Pond,” which opened 20 years ago this week. She said Jones had pushed for her to be cast in the role of his daughter. “It was one of the best jobs of my life, one of the best experiences of my life, and his faith in me was a gift,” she said.Phylicia Rashad recalled seeing Jones perform when she was a young adult, and later performing as Big Mama to his Big Daddy in the 2008 Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Television

      Walton Goggins Knows ‘The White Lotus’ Had to End This Way

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      “I realized that there was really no other conclusion,” the actor said in an interview on Monday about the season finale.This interview includes spoilers for the season finale of “The White Lotus.”A man with a name like Rick Hatchett was unlikely to die in his bed.He didn’t. In the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” Rick, played by Walton Goggins, gunned down Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), whom Rick had long believed to be his father’s killer. (A posthumous twist: He was actually Rick’s father.) Then Rick was shot, in the back, by the gentle but ambitious security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong). Most tragic: Rick’s sunshiny girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), was mortally wounded in the crossfire. With her dying in his arms, Rick fell into the hotel’s lily pond. In that moment, Goggins believes, Rick finds peace.“For me, it was being released from pain,” he said.On the morning after the finale, Goggins, a celebrated character actor currently also starring in “The Righteous Gemstones” and “Fallout,” discussed fate, love and why the story would have turned out differently if he and Rick could have somehow had a few beers together. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Did you feel that this ending was inevitable? Was Rick always meant to die?Yeah, I do believe that. I didn’t see it coming when I read the scripts. But after I read them and absorbed them, I realized that there was really no other conclusion. It couldn’t have ended any other way.In the previous episode, he stopped himself from killing Jim. In the finale, he can’t resist. Why?His life has been defined by this single event [Jim’s murder of his father, which turns out to be a false story his mother told]. He has allowed this event to become his life story. Who is he without this villain in his life? Because without it, he would have to take responsibility for the decisions that he’s made and for not moving past it. Being face-to-face with his tormentor allowed him to express this deep feeling — all he needed in that moment was for this person to bear witness to his pain. That surprised Rick as much as anyone else. Reading it the first time, I thought that he was going to pull the trigger. When he didn’t, I was in tears about that and overjoyed for this revelation and this moment of peace.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

    • 163 Shares114 Views

      in Theater

      Denis Arndt, Who Was a First-Time Tony Nominee at 77, Dies at 86

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      After more than 40 years as a stage and television actor, he broke through in “Heisenberg” as a butcher who has a romance with a much younger woman.Denis Arndt, a former helicopter pilot whose acting career reached its zenith when he made his Broadway debut at age 77 in the comedy “Heisenberg” and earned a Tony Award nomination, died on March 25 at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 86.His wife, Magee Downey, confirmed the death. She said the specific cause was not known. Mr. Arndt built his reputation as a stage actor at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 1970s and ’80s. He later became a familiar face on television series like “L.A. Law” and “Picket Fences” and played one of the detectives who interrogate Sharon Stone in a famous erotically charged scene in “Basic Instinct” (1992).He first appeared in “Heisenberg,” a two-character play by Simon Stephens, which the Manhattan Theater Club produced at City Center’s Studio at Stage II in 2015. The play transferred to the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway the next year.Mr. Arndt played Alex, a reserved, 75-year-old Irish-born butcher, who is in a London train station when he is unexpectedly kissed on the neck by Georgie (Mary-Louise Parker), a loud, impulsive and mysterious 42-year-old American. Her boldness ignites a romance.Ben Brantley, reviewing “Heisenberg” in The New York Times, called Mr. Arndt and Ms. Parker “the sexiest couple on a New York stage now.” Mr. Arndt, he wrote, “makes what has to be the most unlikely and irresistible Broadway debut of the year. He lends roiling, at first barely detectable energy to the seeming passivity of a man who, on occasion, finds himself crying for reasons he cannot (nor wants to) explain. But this ostensibly confirmed celibate oozes a gentle, undeniable sensuality.”Mr. Arndt with Mary-Louise Parker in “Heisenberg.” Ben Brantley of The New York Times called them “the sexiest couple on a New York stage now.”Richard Termine 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

    • 150 Shares153 Views

      in Television

      Jay North, Child Star Who Played ‘Dennis the Menace,’ Dies at 73

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      Mr. North was best known for playing the towheaded Dennis Mitchell on the television series, which ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963.Jay North, who played the well-meaning, trouble-causing protagonist of the popular CBS sitcom “Dennis the Menace” from 1959 to 1963, died on Sunday at his home in Lake Butler, Fla. He was 73.His death was confirmed by Laurie Jacobson, a friend of Mr. North’s for 30 years. The cause was colorectal cancer, Ms. Jacobson said.Mr. North played the towheaded Dennis Mitchell, who roamed his neighborhood, usually clad in a striped shirt and overalls, with his friends, and often exasperated his neighbor, a retiree named George Wilson, who was played by Joseph Kearns. Herbert Anderson played Dennis’s father, and Gloria Henry played his mother.Dennis winds up causing lots of trouble, usually by accident.In one episode, a truck knocks over a street sign, and Dennis and a friend stand it up — incorrectly. Workmen then dig a gigantic hole, meant to be a pool for a different address, in Mr. Wilson’s front yard.The show, which was adapted from a comic strip by Hank Ketcham, presented an idyllic, innocent vision of suburban America as the 1950s gave way to the tumultuous ’60s.But things were not easy for Mr. North behind the scenes.Many years after “Dennis the Menace” ended, Mr. North said that his acting success came at the cost of a happy childhood.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Olivier Awards Winners 2025: ‘Giant,’ ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and More

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      The play, about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism, took home three awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys. So did a “Fiddler on the Roof” revival and a folk rock “Benjamin Button.”“Giant,” a play about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism starring John Lithgow as the truculent children’s author, was one of the big winners at this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The play, which was staged at the Royal Court last year and is transferring to the West End on April 26, took home three awards at Sunday’s ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London: best actor, for Lithgow; best supporting actor for Elliot Levey as a publisher trying to get Dahl to apologize for his statements about Jews; and the coveted best new play award.For that final prize, “Giant” bested four other titles, including “The Years,” an acclaimed staging of a Frenchwoman’s life (featuring a back-street abortion and late-in-life affair) that is running at the Harold Pinter Theater until April 19.The success for “Giant” was perhaps unsurprising given how much critics praised its opening run. Clive Davis, in The Times of London, said the “subtle, intelligent and stylishly crafted” drama, written by Mark Rosenblatt and directed by Nicholas Hytner, “deserves to transfer to a bigger stage.” (Lithgow has said in interviews that he wants to take the play to Broadway.)Houman Barekat in a review for The New York Times said that Lithgow was “superb as the beleaguered but unrepentant writer, blending affable, avuncular esprit with scowling, cranky prickliness and nonchalant cruelty.Lara Pulver and Adam Dannheisser in “Fiddler on the Roof.”Johan PerssonWe 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