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    Three Former Elphabas in ‘Wicked’ Scored Tony Nominations

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    The Green Girls are making good.Three women who have starred on Broadway as Elphaba in “Wicked” picked up Tony nominations on Tuesday.Shoshana Bean, who inhabited the role for a year starting in 2005, was nominated as best featured actress for “Hell’s Kitchen,” in which she plays a tough-minded single mother trying to protect her adolescent daughter from the temptations of the street. (This is her second Tony nomination — she was also nominated in 2022 for “Mr. Saturday Night.”)Eden Espinosa, who succeeded Bean as Elphaba in 2006, was nominated as best leading actress for playing an artistically and sexually adventurous painter in “Lempicka.”And Lindsay Mendez, who became Elphaba in 2013, scored a nomination as best featured actress for portraying a hard-drinking novelist in this season’s hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” (Mendez already has one Tony, for her portrayal of Carrie Pipperidge in a 2018 revival of “Carousel.”)Who is Elphaba? Well, “Wicked,” a musical based on a novel by Gregory Maguire, is an imagined back story for the Wicked Witch of the West, and Elphaba is that character. (Reconsidering her actual wickedness is the subject of the musical.) Her name is derived from the phonetic initials of L. Frank Baum, who wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”; her skin is green as a nod to the green makeup worn by Margaret Hamilton in “The Wizard of Oz,” the much-loved film adaptation of Baum’s novel.“Wicked” has been running successfully for so long, with so many companies, and with juicy leading roles for two young women, that it now appears on the résumés of many musical theater performers.The actress playing Elphaba needs a big belt; her iconic song is “Defying Gravity.” The role was originated on Broadway in 2003 by Idina Menzel, who won a Tony for her work, and who is expected to return to Broadway sometime in the not-too-distant future with “Redwood,” a new musical about a woman and, well, trees. (The musical had a production earlier this year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.)The other main character in “Wicked” is Glinda (traditionally described as a good witch, although again, your mileage may vary); that role calls for a high soprano and was originated by Kristin Chenoweth, who is also hoping to return soon to Broadway — she is starring in a new musical called “The Queen of Versailles,” adapted from the film, that will have an initial production at the Emerson Colonial in Boston this summer. (A 2023 Glinda, McKenzie Kurtz, is currently starring in another new Broadway musical, “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” while Katie Rose Clarke, who had three separate tenures as Glinda on Broadway, is featured in this season’s revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.”)Meanwhile, “Wicked” is heading for the big screen, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda. The first of the film’s two parts is scheduled to be released in November, as a Thanksgiving weekend movie. More

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      ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Review: Alicia Keys’s Musical Finds Its Groove on Broadway

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      The retooled jukebox musical, with its top-notch performances and exciting choreography, “stands out as one of the rare must-sees” in a crowded season.There was never much doubt that the Alicia Keys musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” was going to be on Broadway. Keys spent 12 years developing a loosely autobiographical jukebox of her songs, incorporating such hits as “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’” and “No One.”The problem is that while it played to sold-out crowds, the show that premiered at the Public Theater in November had herky-jerky pacing, a few too many groan-inducing scenes, and a second act that lost sight of whatever point the story was trying to make. (In his review for The New York Times, Jesse Green pointed out that, after the intermission, the show tumbled “directly into the potholes it spent its first half so smartly avoiding.”)Yet here we are now, with “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Shubert Theater, a few blocks from where the show’s action is set. Having seen the first version last fall, I had jitters. But “Hell’s Kitchen” has earned its place on Broadway: The revised show is thrilling from beginning to end, and easily stands out as one of the rare must-sees in a crowded season.All this happened without a major overhaul to Michael Greif’s production, which has a book by Kristoffer Diaz. The cast and creative teams are essentially the same, and there have been judicious tweaks and trims rather than radical changes. The main differences are further refined technical elements and, most important, a subtle but crucial change in focus.That adjustment is evident from the start, with a new line that kicks off the story: “Because I’m your mother, that’s why.” We are thrown in the middle of what is clearly a recurring argument between the Keys stand-in, 17-year-old Ali (the sensational Maleah Joi Moon), and her mother, Jersey (Shoshana Bean, in top form). Jersey has been raising her daughter on her own, without much help from Ali’s father, Davis (Brandon Victor Dixon), and is very protective of her kid. Mother and daughter live just off Times Square, in the neighborhood of the show’s title, and Jersey is fearful that her daughter will fall prey to the streets’ many dangers — we are in the late 1990s, and Jersey is eager for Mayor Giuliani to “clean all of this right up.”The relationship between Ali (Moon) and her mother, Jersey (Shoshana Bean), has been sharpened in the Broadway iteration of this coming-of-age show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alicia Keys’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ to Open on Broadway This Spring

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      The musical, now midway through a sold-out Off Broadway run at the Public Theater, will transfer to the Shubert Theater in March.Alicia Keys’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” has been selling out night after night during its Off Broadway run at the Public Theater. Next up, to no one’s surprise: The show is transferring to Broadway.Keys, a singer-songwriter who has sold millions of albums and has won 15 Grammy Awards, announced at a Public Theater fund-raiser on Monday night that the musical, which ends its 12-week downtown run on Jan. 14, will transfer to the Shubert Theater — one of Broadway’s most desirable houses. The first preview is scheduled for March 28, and opening night is set for April 20.“I’m out of my mind with joy, excitement, thrill,” Keys said in a telephone interview. She noted that her mother, as a teenager, had moved to New York from Ohio to pursue an acting career, and said she saw in this moment the arrival at a long-sought destination for her family.“We get to announce the ultimate dream — the dream that my mother chased from a little girl, that brought her here, which is the reason why I’m here, which is the reason why this city raised me, and the reason why I can even tell this story,” she said. “Hell’s Kitchen,” a loosely fictionalized story inspired by Keys’s own childhood, depicts a short chapter in the life of a 17-year-old growing up surrounded by artists in a New York housing development where most of the units are subsidized for performers. The protagonist, a girl being raised by her single mother, discovers a love for piano, and an attraction to an adult man, while chafing at her mother’s efforts to keep her safe in a gritty neighborhood.The musical features new arrangements of Keys’s biggest hits, including “Fallin’,” “Girl on Fire,” “No One” and “Empire State of Mind,” as well as several new songs the pop star wrote for this show. Keys, who does not perform in “Hell’s Kitchen,” has been working on it for more than a decade with the playwright Kristoffer Diaz, who wrote the book.In an unusual move that demonstrates Keys’s long determination to retain control of her own intellectual property and career arc, the musical’s lead producer will be AKW Productions, which is a company Keys owns and describes as “focused on creating diverse, real, authentic and genuine stories in film, television, theater and music.” Asked whether the stage production, like most commercial Broadway musicals, would also have investors, Keys said, “Yes, there’s going to be some really special people that are coming along for the ride.”The musical is directed by Michael Greif, and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. The downtown cast is led by Maleah Joi Moon as the protagonist, joined by Shoshana Bean as the mother, Brandon Victor Dixon as the absentee father, and Kecia Lewis as the piano teacher. The Broadway cast has not yet been announced.Reviews were mixed, with many critics praising the performances and the production but saying they wanted more from the story. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called the first act “thrilling,” but said it “disappoints after the mid-show break.” In The Washington Post, the critic Peter Marks was underwhelmed, calling it “a perfectly nice musical,” but in The Los Angeles Times, the critic Charles McNulty was far more enthusiastic, writing, “I was surprised by how rapturously I fell under the musical’s spell.”Keys said she does not concern herself with reviews.“I’m not a huge, huge review reader — that’s been a practice of mine since I did my second album, because I’ve realized everybody’s going to have a thought, everybody’s going to have an opinion,” she said. “The true critics, to me, are the people in the seats, and when they come away feeling uplifted, inspired, ignited, transformed — they’re crying because they feel so connected to the stories in their lives — those are the critics that I really pay attention to.”Having said that, Keys also added that the creative team would continue to work on the show.“Of course, you always are able to refine, you’re always able to find places that you want to bring more, bring less, try this, do that, and that’s going to, of course, happen as we transfer to make it just better and better and better,” she said. “But I’m really proud that the spirit is there. It’s been there since the beginning of it, and now the goal is to keep that spirit and make it even better.” More

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      ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Review: Alicia Keys’s Musical Is Ambitious

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      A promising Off Broadway jukebox musical features hits by the R&B star (including “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You” and “No One”) and a story much like her own.Even in the Golden Age of musical theater, shows so commonly died after intermission that critics came up with a name for the disease. “Second act trouble” presented in many ways: unmoored songs, desperate cutting, illogical crises, hasty workarounds. Yet all those second act symptoms arose from the same underlying condition: first act ambitions.So it’s not really surprising that an enormously ambitious new musical like “Hell’s Kitchen,” the semi-autobiographical jukebox built on the life and catalog of Alicia Keys, disappoints after the mid-show break, tumbling directly into the potholes it spent its first half so smartly avoiding. What’s surprising in this promising show, which opened at the Public Theater on Sunday with the obvious intention of moving to Broadway, is how thrilling it is until then.Surprising to me, anyway. I find that jukeboxes — especially biographical ones, like “Motown” and “MJ” — almost inevitably add to the ordinary difficulties of musical construction with difficulties unique to their provenance. The involvement of the original artists (or their estates) leads to historical sugarcoating. A rush to hit all the high points results in a cherry-picked résumé. The catalog retreads, written for a different reason, fail to move the action forward. And since those songs are the show’s selling point, they wind up wagging the story.But Keys, working with the playwright Kristoffer Diaz and the director Michael Greif, steps around most of those pitfalls in the show’s first hour, setting up the story with notable verve and efficiency. In neat succession it introduces the main characters (17-year-old Ali and her single mother, Jersey), the primary setting (the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen in the late 1990s), the parameters of the plot (Ali’s thirst for love and art) and an imminent source of conflict (Mom).At the same time, it floods us with music to establish the worlds it’s taking us into, well beyond the R&B and pop that Keys is best known for. In a marvelous elevator sequence, Ali encounters opera, jazz, merengue and classical piano as she descends from the one-bedroom 42nd-floor apartment she shares with Jersey, a sometime actor juggling two jobs. (The building, Manhattan Plaza, offers affordable housing for artists.) Then, when Ali reaches the street, a giant rush of sound enfolds her; all of New York, it seems, is singing, playing and, in Camille A. Brown’s excitingly contextual choreography, dancing.Shoshana Bean, left, and Brandon Victor Dixon as the young protagonist’s parents.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are only a few minutes into the show and its armature is fully in place. We know that this is going to be a mother-daughter love-and-letting-go story, as Jersey (Shoshana Bean, warm and pyrotechnic) tries to keep Ali fed and safe. Though race isn’t explicitly an issue between them, Jersey is white and Ali is biracial, and Ali (Maleah Joi Moon in a sensational debut) will gradually be drawn away from her mother’s smothering by the wider group of people she encounters.One is the classical pianist, Miss Liza Jane (the magisterial Kecia Lewis), who will demand that Ali take lessons from her — though in truth Keys started studying at 7, not 17. And out on the street, to the strains of the 2003 hit “You Don’t Know My Name,” Ali will flirt with a bucket drummer named Knuck (Chris Lee, sweet as pie) even though he’s in his mid-20s. He’ll resist — at first.And so, over the course of 11 songs, the first act does the work of ambitious first acts everywhere: expanding the show’s horizon to the larger world in which the action takes place (not a fair world for young Black New Yorkers) and deepening our knowledge of the main characters through conflict. Also humor: Diaz — whose hilarious professional wrestling play, “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist — saves the story from too much earnestness. Credit Greif, too, whose steady management of tone and tension coaxes drama from a tale that could easily have been too interior.Together with Keys they also solve, or at least delay, many of the jukebox problems. By keeping a very narrow focus on just a few weeks in Ali’s life, “Hell’s Kitchen” chooses the possibility of dramatic depth over career highlights. Nor is there much sugarcoating: Keys seems quite willing to present her ambitious stand-in as a hormonal teenager immune to common sense — and Moon, 21, is precociously clever and fearless in delivering that complex portrait.Most important, Keys’s songs, even hits like “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You” and “No One,” fit into the story (and into the mouths of a variety of characters) without too much jimmying. If they don’t, the situation is acknowledged effectively. When Ali finally does spend the night with Knuck — right on time, just before the various story lines merge in a dreadful event at the end of the first act — Ali’s friend Tiny (Vanessa Ferguson) is miffed, for this is supposed to be an unapologetically woman-centered story. “The world is hers ’cause she got a man now?” she complains, interrupting the 2012 banger “Girl on Fire,” here repurposed as a joyful “I’m on top of the world” song. “That’s what we’re doing?”Moon’s dreamy Ali tries to woo Chris Lee, who plays a bucket drummer named Knuck.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlas, “that’s what we’re doing?” is how I felt the moment the second act started. As if the creators had run out of time for finesse — though Keys and Diaz have been working on “Hell’s Kitchen” for more than a decade — its wit curdles into lectures as the story, especially Jersey’s, goes blurry. Her strained relationship with Ali’s father, here a jazz pianist though in reality a flight attendant, bears the characteristic signs of dramaturgical whiplash. (On the other hand, he’s played by Brandon Victor Dixon, a human aphrodisiac, vocally and otherwise.) An argument between Jersey and Miss Liza Jane feels similarly trumped up, until it is resolved in an obvious twist of pathos. And despite Bean’s skill, Jersey’s love for her daughter, the core of the show, gets lost in the attempt to complicate it.The second act songs follow suit; it is no coincidence that the three new ones Keys wrote for the production, all good, are at the top of the show. And though well-structured musicals typically have far fewer songs in the second half than the first to make way for the complexities of plot resolution, here there are a whopping 14, ending indulgently if unavoidably with the 2009 New York anthem “Empire State of Mind.” As a result, “Hell’s Kitchen” nearly becomes what it tried to avoid at the start: a hit dump.But because those hits are hits for a reason, there is still pleasure in hearing them. The singing, arrangements and orchestrations (by various hands including Adam Blackstone, Tom Kitt, Dominic Follacaro and Keys herself) are thrilling, if strangely unbalanced in Gareth Owen’s sound design. The fire-escape sets (by Robert Brill), expressive projections (by Peter Nigrini), saturated lighting (by Natasha Katz) and often hilarious costumes (by Dede Ayite) are all Broadway-ready.I hope “Hell’s Kitchen” will be too. Of course, many musicals make the transfer without ever solving their first act problems, let alone their second. That would be a shame here. Though not perfectly told, Ali’s discovery that art is love, with or without the guy, is too rich not to reach a bigger audience, and a million more girls on fire.Hell’s KitchenThrough Jan. 14 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      Review: Billy Crystal Carries the Tune in ‘Mr. Saturday Night’

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      In a mishmash new musical based on his 1992 movie, he charms the audience as a has-been comic reconnecting with family.On the heels of “City Slickers,” just a few years after “When Harry Met Sally,” Billy Crystal was at the apex of his film stardom when he made the 1992 movie “Mr. Saturday Night.” If you watch it now, you can see why it flopped, not least because Crystal was playing against type as Buddy Young Jr., a ruthlessly selfish has-been comic with a vicious streak.At the time, Crystal was in his 40s; for much of the film, Buddy is in his 70s. And Crystal embodied him with a middle-aged comedian’s idea of that later phase of life: under old-guy makeup so egregious that viewers couldn’t possibly suspend disbelief, and with the physical mannerisms of an ancient — like Miracle Max, Crystal’s indelible elder from “The Princess Bride,” but without the charm.Three decades later, Crystal too is in his 70s, and in the new musical comedy “Mr. Saturday Night,” which opened on Wednesday night, he slips much more naturally into Buddy’s skin. As a piece of theater, the show is a bit of a mess; the jokes, even some of the hoary ones, work better than the storytelling, and the acting styles are all over the place. Still, it makes for a diverting evening — because it will almost surely make you laugh, and because of how acutely tuned into the audience Crystal is.Ad-libbing his way through the script, fine-tuning the funniness, he feeds off the energy of the crowd at the Nederlander Theater. Like Buddy, who mopes around his New York apartment in a tragic cardigan, lamenting the gigs he’s been reduced to taking — the morning slot at a retirement center is, after all, no comedian’s dream — Crystal is utterly in his element performing live. If you are a fan of his, or simply someone who has missed that kind of symbiosis between actor and audience, it’s a pleasure to watch.The musical, though, is an ungainly beast, by turns zany and sentimental. Directed by John Rando, with a mood-setting score by Jason Robert Brown (music) and Amanda Green (lyrics) that goes vocally easy on its star, it has a book by the film’s screenwriters, Crystal, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Less cynical and more hopeful than the movie, it gives us a Buddy who is still cruel but not so callous, and thus a better candidate for our sympathy.That’s despite the myriad ways in which he has failed his brother, Stan (the immensely likable David Paymer, an Academy Award nominee for the same role in the film), who has sacrificed his own ambitions to be Buddy’s manager; his wife, Elaine (Randy Graff, stymied by an almost total lack of chemistry with Crystal), who has put Buddy first for half a century; and their daughter, Susan (Shoshana Bean, in a beautifully calibrated performance), who at 40 has been justifiably angry with her father since she was 5.David Paymer, left, as Buddy’s brother and Randy Graff, right, as his wife.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Mr. Saturday Night” traces Buddy’s second chance at life and fame, set creakily in motion one night in 1994, when he catches the in memoriam montage on the Emmy Awards broadcast and sees his own face and name appear right after John Candy’s. Buddy gets booked on the “Today” show to crack wise about the error.As his career wobbles toward possible resuscitation, he gradually notices that he’s been a schmuck to the people who love him. “Hurt them” is the command he has always used to psych himself up before he goes onstage, but however many audiences he’s killed, he’s done lasting harm at home.In the film, the brothers’ relationship is paramount. In the musical, the father-daughter fracture comes to the fore, while Elaine — whose only solo, a fantasy about going to Tahiti, is the show’s most cuttable song — is again strikingly under-imagined. (The six-piece orchestra, which sounds terrific, is conducted by David O.)“Mr. Saturday Night” means to be a valentine to both the bonds of family and the comedians of a bygone age — pros like Buddy, who got his big break in the 1940s at a Catskills resort and hosted a hit TV show on Saturday nights in the ’50s, before he blew a hole in his career with his loose-cannon arrogance.The costume designers, Paul Tazewell and Sky Switser, have their silliest fun dressing Buddy’s wacky sidekicks — Joey (Jordan Gelber), Bobby (Brian Gonzales) and Lorraine (Mylinda Hull) — for the musical’s ’50s flashbacks. A singing, dancing pack of cigarettes, anyone? (The choreography is by Ellenore Scott.)As for Crystal’s singing, he doesn’t have the range to play Fanny Brice, but he doesn’t need to. He does OK. Paymer, in Stan’s one emotional outburst set to music, kind of, sort of, almost approaches singing but doesn’t have those chops. Which works on a meta level, because Buddy is the brother who’s at ease onstage.What’s surprising is how unpersuasive the show is when the principals play decades-younger versions of their characters — a transformation that in theater, so much less literal a medium than film, can require no more than an altered demeanor. Bean is the only one to tap into that simplicity.Shoshana Bean as Susan, Buddy’s estranged daughter, in the musical, which is based on a 1992 film.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut most of the show unfolds in 1994. By then, Buddy’s old sidekicks are fixtures at the Friars Club, and so is he. Though if Lorraine is a member, she must be a relatively recent one; in the real world, the Friars Club of New York admitted its first female member, Liza Minnelli, in 1988.This is where nostalgia gets tricky. That boys’ club territoriality is the backdrop to an encounter at the Friars that the authors have kept largely, and unwisely, unchanged from the movie: when Buddy, expecting a powerful male agent to join him for lunch, is met instead by a smart young female agent, Annie (a sunny Chasten Harmon, who has a fizzy chemistry with Crystal).Annie, who will prove to be a godsend for Buddy, handles comics for a major agency. Yet she has never heard of any of the comedy greats whose names he fires off at her in a bullying pop quiz, or even, apparently, of the Friars Club — implausible for an industry professional, and almost impossible so soon after the Friars’ infamous 1993 roast of Whoopi Goldberg. Annie is written as ignorant just so that Buddy can school her, which carries a strong whiff of dinosaur on the authors’ part.Of course, Buddy himself is a caveman. When his old pals called him and Elaine “Fred and Wilma” — as they did, affectionately, at the performance I saw, Crystal not being the only one enlivening the script with variations — it was funny because it’s true.But Buddy does want to evolve, at least a little. If his epiphany about his need to change seems to arrive out of nowhere, buoyed by piano and brass in a lovely, impassioned solo, we root for his redemption anyway.This is a musical that wants its guy to get a happy ending. Despite all of the show’s faults, and all of Buddy’s, it turns out that so do we.Mr. Saturday NightAt the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan; mrsaturdaynightonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes. More

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      Break a Leg but Never Whistle: How Stage Superstitions Live On

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      The return of the Scottish play (that’s “Macbeth” to the rest of you) is a reminder of the idiosyncratic rituals and routines that bring actors comfort.Theaters are superstitious places, sites of myth, ceremony and invocation. And no stage superstition has more adherents than the one shrouding Shakespeare’s Scottish play: Anyone in a theater who speaks the name Macbeth aloud, except when rehearsing or performing the play, risks catastrophe.“I said the Scottish play’s title onstage,” the playwright Lynn Nottage recalled recently. “And the next day my mother died.”When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at this year’s Oscars ceremony, Twitter wags invoked the curse. Moments before the fracas, Rock had hailed Denzel Washington, a star of Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” saying: “‘Macbeth!’ Loved it!” When performances of the current Broadway revival of “Macbeth” were canceled after its leading man, Daniel Craig, tested positive for coronavirus, talk of the curse swirled again.Daniel Craig in the title role of “Macbeth.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAdmittedly, the “Macbeth” prohibition has its origins in nonsense, as an invention of the 19th-century critic and essayist Max Beerbohm. In 1898, Beerbohm wrote a column claiming, falsely, that a young male actor had died just before the play’s debut. But the taboo took, and stories of “Macbeth”-adjacent injuries, accidents and deaths began to accumulate. (Don’t fear: If you pronounce the name by accident, you can counteract the curse by leaving the theater, performing a ritual that often involves spinning and spitting, and then asking to be let back in.)More recently, this taboo has kept company with other stage shibboleths — don’t say “good luck,” don’t wear green, don’t give flowers, don’t whistle, don’t put mirrors onstage, always leave a light on.Superstition isn’t unique to the theater, of course. But as Marvin Carlson, a theater professor and the author of “The Haunted Stage,” pointed out, theater does encourage otherworldly thinking. “There are very few haunted banks,” he said. “But most theaters are said to be haunted. It’s a very, very common feature. Clearly there is something about the aura of theaters.”Anjna Chouhan, a lecturer in Shakespeare studies, agreed: “They’re bizarre spaces, right? They’re weird spaces where people are performing fantasy, and emotions run so high.”A lot can go wrong during live performance — a flubbed line, a missed cue, a wonky prop. Chouhan suggested that actors may subscribe to superstitions and engage in some very particular preshow and post-show rituals as a way of keeping this contingency at bay. “There’s a lot to be said for ritual and routine,” Chouhan said. “It’s the way that you enforce your control over things that can’t be controlled.”Some actors always leave the dressing room on a certain foot, others say a prayer. Some carry lucky charms. “When you take on a character, you’re doing something dangerous. You’re in some way playing with your essence or your soul,” Carlson explained. “You take a charm to protect yourself as much as you can.”Revisiting the Tragedy of ‘Macbeth’Shakespeare’s tale of a man who, step by step, cedes his soul to his darkest impulses continues to inspire new interpretations. On Stage: Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga star in Sam Gold’s take on the play. Despite its star power, the production feels oddly uneasy, our critic writes. Onscreen: In the “Tragedy of Macbeth,” Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand embody a toxic power couple with mastery. Break a Leg: Shakespeare’s play is known for the rituals and superstitions tied to it. How does the supernatural retain its hold on the theater world? Beyond ‘Macbeth’: This spring, there’s an abundance of Shakespearean productions in New York City. Here is a look at some of them. The Times spoke to a handful of performers currently in Broadway shows — believers and skeptics — about superstitions, personal rites and whether they have ever had a moment in the theater that flirted with the supernatural. (No “Macbeth” actors would participate. Is there a superstition associated with speaking to reporters?) These are edited excerpts from the conversations.D. Woods, foreground, in “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesD. Woods‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf’Are there any theater superstitions that you subscribe to?Definitely the one about “Macbeth.” Definitely break a leg.Have you ever had an experience in theater that felt out of the ordinary?The first day that we moved into the Booth, the original theater that “For Colored Girls” opened in, there were things falling. In our dressing room, we put a bag up on a shelf, and it would just fall down. Kenita Miller is my dressing room mate. We both looked at each other, like, “Oh, Ntozake is here. She is here to greet the space.”Do you have a preshow ritual?I light palo santo for good vibes, good energy. And I play a lot of music just to get me in the mood. I do wear a couple of crystals that one of our wardrobe team gave us. If I need to stay focused, I’ll wear a tiger’s eye. If I want to make sure that I’m really on top of my voice, I’ll wear the blue one. That’s the throat chakra.Is there anything special that you keep in your dressing room?I have a picture of my great-aunt. Her name is Mary Childs. She was a performer in her day. A tap dancer. When I was coming up, she was so encouraging. So I bring her to the theater.Michael Oberholtzer‘Take Me Out’Are there any theater superstitions that you subscribe to?I subscribe to most of them. I broke the cardinal one about a week ago, I said the name of the Scottish play. So I had to go outside. I had to do the whole thing.Have you ever had an experience in the theater that felt out of the ordinary?All the time. Some people get freaked out by that type of thing. I welcome it. Interestingly enough, we went out to Yankee Stadium a week or two ago. We went out to the bullpen in the outfield. There was so much energy there. So yeah, I absolutely believe in it. And I like to think I’m attuned to it. I try to submit to it, embrace it.Do you have a preshow ritual?Before I go onstage, I find a place in the theater and I get down on my knees and just give over to the universe, just express gratitude for this opportunity.A.J. Shively‘Paradise Square’Have you ever had an experience in the theater that felt out of the ordinary?Never in any kind of scary or frightening way. But whenever I go into an old Broadway house, I go onstage and look at the house and think about the incredible people who have seen this exact view before me. I went out on the stage here at the Barrymore, where the original “Streetcar” was. I said, “Stella!”Do you have a preshow ritual?I made my Broadway debut in “La Cage Aux Folles.” An actress, Christine Andreas, told me to go down to the stage when the audience is filing in to just feel their energy and send your energy out. I’ve done that ever since.What about a postshow ritual?I reward myself with a pint of ice cream.Ramin Karimloo (right, with Beanie Feldstein) as Nick Arnstein in “Funny Girl.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRamin Karimloo‘Funny Girl’Have you ever had an experience in the theater that felt out of the ordinary?I’ve been in theaters on my own. When I was on tour in Scotland, there was this one room that had a piano that I would play. One night I was up there on my own. And I certainly felt something. There was nobody there, but I felt like someone was there.Do you have a preshow ritual?I have to floss and brush my teeth before I go onstage. I want that clarity in my mouth. It’s a reset point. So before the show, and at intermission, I floss and brush.Or a postshow ritual?I do like a sipping tequila and a nice Japanese whiskey waiting for me. But it depends on the part. Sometimes it’s hard to shake it off and I’ll need a shower. It’s that idea of cleansing.Shoshana Bean‘Mr. Saturday Night’Have you ever had an experience in a theater that felt out of the ordinary?I’m often the last person to leave. You would think because of all those rumors and stories, that it would be a scary place. But there is no more peaceful, comfortable place to be than alone in a theater. It really is the most magical feeling, just feeling protected and not alone.Do you have a preshow ritual?The only ritual I have is making sure I warm up. It takes like 45 minutes. I like to do it at home. I want to not be worried about who can hear me.Or a postshow ritual?During “Waitress” [while playing the show’s protagonist, Jenna], I did — whiskey and usually a bag of potato chips. My voice doctor at the time was like, “You have to leave her at the theater. You can’t bring her home with you. It’s literally hurting you, taking her pain home with you.” I loved her so much. I didn’t want to leave her.John Earl Jelks‘Birthday Candles’Are there any theater superstitions that you subscribe to?Not whistling is one. The other one is having a light on somewhere. You never want to see a dark stage.Have you ever had an experience in the theater was out of the ordinary?At the Hackney Empire. That’s in London. It’s a place where Laurence Olivier performed and all the other great British actors. They were always talking about how it had ghosts. I remember coming early one day, and I was hearing dressing room doors close. I went up and there was no one there.Do you have a preshow ritual?I have a piece of a chain that August Wilson gave me on opening night of my first Broadway show, “Gem of the Ocean,” and I have a picture of my deceased wife. So that’s the ritual: I blow her a kiss and hold on to this piece of chain.Shuler Hensley (left, with Hugh Jackman) as Marcellus Washburn in “The Music Man.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShuler Hensley‘The Music Man’Do you have a preshow ritual?When I get to the theater, which is usually at least an hour before curtain, the first thing I always do is put on my costume. I’m not really functioning in my part until I get the costume on. People make fun of me, but if I don’t do that, I get really nervous.Or a postshow ritual?I try to be the last actor out of the building. It honestly feels like I’m locking up the theater for the night. I don’t know why I enjoy that.Is there anything special that you keep in your dressing room?I’m very big on smells. I have a cold mist diffuser and 12 bottles of different scents. I try to never have the same scent twice.Jennifer Simard‘Company’Are there any theater superstitions that you subscribe to?I don’t say good luck. It’s always break a leg. The good news is, I am incapable of whistling. So I don’t have to worry about that.Do you have a postshow ritual?It’s either a hot Epsom salts bath or a cold immersion bath, which is a nightmare. And I have these air compression boots that I put on at home. If I don’t do one of those, I feel like it’s going to affect the show the next day.Is there anything special that you keep in your dressing room?It’s called a miraculous medal [a devotional item]. I first found out about them from my late mother. Whenever someone was ill, or going through loss, she would give them to people. There was one that she had, that was very special. We had it pinned to her when she was passing. It means a great deal to me. So when I get nervous, that is my talisman. More