Chastain, Jessica

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares129 Views

    Jeff Bezos and Jessica Chastain Toast a Daring ‘Sunset Boulevard’ on Broadway

    by

    Outside the St. James Theater on Sunday night, curious onlookers joined a throng of photographers as, amid a sea of flash bulbs, stars descended on a black carpet for the opening night of a buzzy new revival of the classic musical “Sunset Boulevard.”“I’m thrilled to see this,” said Betty Buckley, 77, who played the role of the faded silent-film star Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in London and on Broadway in the 1990s.The show, which tells the story of Ms. Desmond’s descent into madness as she is forced to come to grips with an industry that discards its female stars at an ever-earlier age, stars the 46-year-old Nicole Scherzinger, a former Pussycat Doll, in the role.The new production, helmed by the minimalist director Jamie Lloyd, who also directed a London run last year, is in many ways a daring update of the original musical, which opened in the West End in 1993.The show’s director, Jamie Lloyd, with its choreographer, Fabian Aloise, at the after-party.Tom Francis, who plays the young screenwriter Joe Gillis, received a standing ovation for a sequence in which he sings the show’s title number as he is followed onto the street by a live feed.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJessica Chastain was nominated for a Tony Award last year for starring in Mr. Lloyd’s previous Broadway production, a revival of “A Doll’s House.”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

    More stories

    • 213 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Paul Giamatti, Bradley Cooper, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and More Celebrities at the National Board of Review gala

      by

      The stars were among the 17 honorees at the annual National Board of Review gala, as awards season ramps up.On a not-at-all red carpet inside Cipriani 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday night, Da’Vine Joy Randolph was glowing.“The fact that these people actually even seen my work is just mind-blowing,” said the actress, a star of “The Holdovers,” who was being honored with the National Board of Review’s best supporting actress prize at its annual film awards gala, just days after she had won her first Golden Globe on Sunday for her role in the film.A few feet away on the gray carpet was Celine Song, who came to accept the prize for best directorial debut for “Past Lives.” She was sporting a tuxedo jacket, a long skirt and a bow tie.“Because the movie is so personal, any time somebody connects to the film, I always feel less lonely; I feel very seen and understood and embraced,” said Ms. Song, who based the romantic film partly on her own experience with a childhood friend.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?  More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Memory’ Review: A Contrived Drama With Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard

      by

      In this contrived movie, Peter Sarsgaard stars as a man with dementia, and Jessica Chastain plays a caretaker with buried family secrets.In “Memory,” a woman haunted by her past meets a man who’s scarcely holding onto his. That’s the setup in the writer-director Michel Franco’s contrived drama with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, whose work in this artsified slab of exploitation cinema is strong enough that you wish their characters would run off to an entirely different movie.Chastain plays Sylvia, a recovering alcoholic with a day job caring for disabled adults. She and her sweet teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), have a spacious, sunlit apartment in an industrial-looking building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There’s a tire store next door and multiple locks on their apartment door. Each time Sylvia returns home, she fastens the locks and arms the alarm with great deliberation, a ritual that Franco repeatedly presents. It’s a habit that like Sylvia’s wariness and physical reserve — she doesn’t readily make eye contact and tends to cross her arms in front of her chest — underscores her guardedness.One night, Sylvia and her sister, Olivia (the always welcome Merritt Wever), attend a high-school reunion. There, a visibly uncomfortable Sylvia withdraws into herself, but when a man — Sarsgaard as Saul — approaches her, she splits for reasons that become torturously clear only later. He follows her onto the subway and all the way to her building’s front door, where he stays even when it begins pouring. The next morning, Sylvia finds him shivering and near-incoherent, sitting in a spare tire on the ground. It turns out that Saul has early-onset dementia and lives in his handsome brownstone, watched over by his no-nonsense brother, Isaac (Josh Charles), whose daughter, Sara (Elsie Fisher), comes and goes.Soon, Sylvia begins taking care of Saul part-time, a job that turns intimate and then unsurprisingly romantic. The relationship doesn’t cohere dramatically, alas, despite the demonstrative tenderness and commitment that the actors bring to it, and the story’s multiple gaps in logic don’t help. It doesn’t make sense that Isaac, who comes off as a fairly self-important professional, doesn’t have any hired help when Sylvia arrives, especially given the family’s obvious economic resources. (I also seem to have missed the scene when he runs a background check on her.) Like Olivia’s husband and kids, a collection of bland types, Isaac mainly serves as a convenient bourgeois prop that Franco can swing at before blowing it up.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?  More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Memory’ Review: A Contrived Drama With a Trauma Plot

      by

      In this contrived movie, Peter Sarsgaard stars as a man with dementia, and Jessica Chastain plays a caretaker with buried family secrets.In “Memory,” a woman haunted by her past meets a man who’s scarcely holding onto his. That’s the setup in the writer-director Michel Franco’s contrived drama with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, whose work in this artsified slab of exploitation cinema is strong enough that you wish their characters would run off to an entirely different movie.Chastain plays Sylvia, a recovering alcoholic with a day job caring for disabled adults. She and her sweet teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), have a spacious, sunlit apartment in an industrial-looking building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There’s a tire store next door and multiple locks on their apartment door. Each time Sylvia returns home, she fastens the locks and arms the alarm with great deliberation, a ritual that Franco repeatedly presents. It’s a habit that like Sylvia’s wariness and physical reserve — she doesn’t readily make eye contact and tends to cross her arms in front of her chest — underscores her guardedness.One night, Sylvia and her sister, Olivia (the always welcome Merritt Wever), attend a high-school reunion. There, a visibly uncomfortable Sylvia withdraws into herself, but when a man — Sarsgaard as Saul — approaches her, she splits for reasons that become torturously clear only later. He follows her onto the subway and all the way to her building’s front door, where he stays even when it begins pouring. The next morning, Sylvia finds him shivering and near-incoherent, sitting in a spare tire on the ground. It turns out that Saul has early-onset dementia and lives in his handsome brownstone, watched over by his no-nonsense brother, Isaac (Josh Charles), whose daughter, Sara (Elsie Fisher), comes and goes.Soon, Sylvia begins taking care of Saul part-time, a job that turns intimate and then unsurprisingly romantic. The relationship doesn’t cohere dramatically, alas, despite the demonstrative tenderness and commitment that the actors bring to it, and the story’s multiple gaps in logic don’t help. It doesn’t make sense that Isaac, who comes off as a fairly self-important professional, doesn’t have any hired help when Sylvia arrives, especially given the family’s obvious economic resources. (I also seem to have missed the scene when he runs a background check on her.) Like Olivia’s husband and kids, a collection of bland types, Isaac mainly serves as a convenient bourgeois prop that Franco can swing at before blowing it up.Chastain reliably holds the screen even if her performance often feels overly studied rather than lived in, never more so than in her scenes with Sarsgaard, whose delicate, quicksilver expressiveness appreciably deepens both the movie and its stakes. You don’t always believe in Sylvia and Saul as a couple, but Sarsgaard makes you want to. Certainly the two actors give you a reason to watch this movie, which grows all the more complicated and then tauntingly nutso with the entrance of Sylvia’s estranged mother, Samantha (a vivid Jessica Harper as monstrous maternity incarnate). Samantha, who’s remained in contact with Olivia, is thinking of moving nearby, mostly, it seems, so that Franco can destroy Sylvia’s fragile equanimity.Franco, whose movies include “After Lucia” and “Sundown,” likes to approach his anguish-laden stories (of rape, abuse, murder) with relatively calculated coolness and art film-lite trappings. It’s obvious from the get-go that Sylvia is deeply troubled, probably by her past. Although Franco scatters hints here and there, he also withholds the worst until a late, awkwardly staged meltdown filled with tears, shouting and ugly, unsurprising revelations. If until that moment, Sylvia has not yet fully addressed her pain — including in any of the A.A. meetings she attends — it’s not because she’s especially tight-lipped. Rather, Franco saves her big reveal for maximum narrative oomph: It’s the trauma plot’s equivalent of the money shot.MemoryRated R for male nudity. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Venice Film Festival Finds Drama Without Zendaya

      by

      Day 1 brought challenges but not “Challengers,” the film that had been scheduled to open this usually starry event until it was delayed by the strikes.The sky in Venice wept on Wednesday, for there were no pictures to be taken of Zendaya in couture clambering from a speedboat.No? Too much? Well, it’s hard not to sound melodramatic at a film festival where the movies are big but the mood swings are even bigger. Let me clear my throat, take a swig of this Aperol spritz, and start again …The 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival kicked off on this rainy Wednesday with several big-name auteurs in attendance but few of the stars that this event has come to count on. With dual strikes by the writers and actors guilds forcing a Hollywood shutdown, and the actors forbidden from promoting studio films during the labor action, Venice will inaugurate a fall film season that is still in significant flux.The first day was meant to be turbocharged by the presence of Zendaya, who turned heads here two years ago in a series of stunning dresses while publicizing the first installment of “Dune.” But the shutdown cost Venice the new film she stars in, Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” in which she plays a tennis pro who has to make a romantic choice between two best friends, played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist (the cheeky marketing materials tease that on at least one night, she chooses both).Without its lead available to support the film, MGM delayed the release of “Challengers” to spring 2024 and yanked it from the Venice lineup. Taking its place as the festival’s opening-night film was “Comandante,” a World War II film told from the point of view of Italian submariners. While it’s well-shot and full of suspenseful battle sequences, “Comandante” features exactly zero tennis hotties contemplating a threesome, which may hinder its ultimate appeal with a Venice audience that was promised starry romantic high jinks.Though the festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, admitted at a news conference on Wednesday that the likes of Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) and Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”) will not be attending Venice because of the strike, other actors who hail from more independent productions have managed to secure guild waivers, including “Ferrari” star Adam Driver, “Memory” lead Jessica Chastain, and the cast of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.” They’re expected to show up on the Lido this week alongside a posse of high-powered directors that includes David Fincher (“The Killer”), Ava DuVernay (“Origin”) and Richard Linklater (“Hit Man”).Still, the strikes loom large. At Barbera’s news conference, the jury president, the filmmaker Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”), dressed for maximum solidarity, donning a “Writers Guild on Strike!” shirt and a similar button on the lapel of his sport coat. He noted that as of Wednesday, the writers had been on strike for 121 days, with the actors joining them for the last 48 days, and he called on studios to compensate those artists fairly.“I think there’s a basic idea that each work of art has value unto itself, that it’s not just a piece of content, to use Hollywood’s favorite word right now,” Chazelle told reporters, adding that that idea “has been eroded quite a bit over the past 10 years. There’s many issues on the table with the strikes, but to me, that’s the core issue.”Chazelle was joined by the directors Martin McDonagh and Laura Poitras, who both wore shirts supporting the Writers Guild. They are part of a jury that includes the filmmakers Jane Campion and Mia Hansen-Love, among others.“I’m not sure I entirely deserve this spot, but I will do my best to live up to it,” Chazelle said. “I thank Mr. Barbera for his foolishness in letting me try it out.”Though Chazelle has been to Venice a few times before, to debut “La La Land” and his follow-up, “First Man,” he said he still found the place quite surreal. “That fact that you take a boat to a screening, it’s silly,” Chazelle said. “Cinema, to me, is a waking dream and that, to me, is Venice.”See what I said about melodrama? When you’re in Venice, where even the paint peels in the most picturesque way, you just can’t help yourself from indulging. That’s how your columnist felt last night in the rain, mulling over two of the worst disasters to hit Italy in quite some time: St. Mark’s Square was flooded, and there was no Zendaya. But at least the sun will come out tomorrow here, as will the new films by Michael Mann and Wes Anderson. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Inside the 2023 Tony Awards After-Parties

      by

      Spirited celebrations that included a block party in Washington Heights and a gathering at the Carlyle Hotel extended past 4 a.m.It wasn’t hard to spot J. Harrison Ghee at the official Tony Awards after-party outside the United Palace theater in Washington Heights on Sunday night — they towered over much of the crowd in a vibrant blue gown, with a statuette in hand and a trail of well-wishers close behind. After their groundbreaking win for best leading actor in a musical — they became the first out nonbinary performer to win in the category — the gown color, it seemed, was fortuitous.“I felt like this is such a Cinderella moment,” they said.Hundreds of the ceremony’s attendees spilled out, shortly after 11 p.m., almost directly into the party: a tented extension of the fuchsia carpet and its lush floral backdrop, with catering that reflected both the culinary traditions of the neighborhood’s surrounding communities (paella, ceviche, mango on sticks) and also the immediate hunger of nominees who had sat snackless for hours. (About 800 hamburgers from Shake Shack were gone within 90 minutes.)Suzan-Lori Parks, left, with LaChanze at the after-party near the United Palace theater. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesThe Tonys, which celebrate Broadway’s best plays and musicals, were held uptown for the first time this year at the United Palace — an ornate movie house at 176th Street in Washington Heights, nearly eight miles north of Times Square. The theater is tucked within the largely Dominican neighborhood where Lin-Manuel Miranda shot the 2021 film adaptation of his musical “In the Heights.”“To show off one of the cultural gems of the city to a national audience is super exciting,” Heather Hitchens, the president and chief executive of the American Theater Wing, which puts on the Tonys with the Broadway League, said in an interview on Saturday.“The after-party is always important, but to celebrate that we made it through a season and we gave some awards out and actually had a telecast?” she said, continuing, “We haven’t been able to do that for so long.”Sunday’s ceremony was certainly an unusual one. With the Writers Guild of America still on strike, the show featured unscripted commentary from presenters, abundant musical performances from the year’s productions — plus Lea Michele’s rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from last season’s “Funny Girl” — and a wordless opening dance number by Ariana DeBose, the show’s host.Kelli O’Hara, a presenter at the Tonys, at the party in Washington Heights. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAbout 800 hamburgers from Shake Shack disappeared within 90 minutes at the after-party outside the United Palace.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesBowls of Frosted Flakes were scattered around the official after-party. Tony the Tiger attended the Tonys this year.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“Ariana DeBose,” Wayne Brady, who is set to star in the 2024 Broadway revival of “The Wiz,” said later in the evening, shaking his head. “She was tremendous. She can improvise like no one’s business.”“It went so smoothly,” said Bonnie Milligan, a Tony Award winner for best featured actress in a musical for her performance as a scheming aunt in the offbeat musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” which was the top winner of the night with five trophies overall. “So many people were able to speak in solidarity with the strike.”With a long list of celebrations still ahead, many of the night’s winners and nominees stayed at the official after-party only briefly before moving on to smaller soirees hosted by individual productions across the city.Myles Frost, last year’s winner for best leading actor in a musical for playing Michael Jackson in “MJ,” at the official after-party. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesJulia Lester, a nominee for her turn as Little Red Riding Hood in the revival of “Into the Woods,” was leaving with her father as many attendees were still arriving. Ms. Lester said she was “just seeing where the night takes me.” She wore a voluminous green ball gown, sheer elbow-length gloves, a black choker and a bow in her red curly hair. “I’m wearing a hoop skirt, so I can’t do that much. Sitting down was a nightmare.”Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, donned a sparkling scarlet outfit meant to elicit, he said, “Big Red Riding Hood.” His after-party plans, he added, would extend “until the hood falls off, which is literally impossible. It’s pinned, glued, sewn — I probably won’t be able to take it off to go to sleep.”The event at the Carlyle Hotel, hosted by the theater publicist Rick Miramontez and the producer John Gore, picked up after midnight. Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBy 12:30 a.m., many had left the official after-party, and most of the nominees began heading to the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, where the theater publicist Rick Miramontez — dressed in a white blazer with red-and-white striped shorts — was hosting his famed late-night shindig for several hundred guests with the producer John Gore.“This is the party,” Mr. Brady proclaimed from a couch nestled alongside an open bar near the hotel’s entrance.Kolton Krouse, who starred in a recent revival of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” and uses the pronouns they and them, also opted for business-on-top-party-on-the-bottom, sporting a black blazer that barely covered their torso atop gold heels.Bonnie Milligan, left, who won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical, and Miriam Silverman, who won for best featured actress in a play, at the Carlyle Hotel.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesVictoria Clark, who won the Tony for best leading actress in a musical for her role in “Kimberly Akimbo,” at the Carlyle party.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJessica Chastain, with her grandmother Marilyn Herst, whom the actress said she brings to “all the parties.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times“Congratulations!” they said, lunging to stop Jessica Chastain, who was wearing a caped, sunshine-yellow Gucci gown, her long red hair in a high ponytail, as she swept in around 12:30 a.m. — accompanied by her grandmother, Marilyn Herst.“I bring her with me to all the parties,” said Ms. Chastain, who was nominated for best leading actress in a play for her performance as the housewife Nora Helmer in Jamie Lloyd’s bare-bones revival of “A Doll’s House.”The English actress Jodie Comer had won the category for her performance as a lawyer who defends men accused of sexual assault in the one-woman show “Prima Facie,” but you would not know it by Ms. Chastain’s cadre of photographers, who temporarily clogged the passageway between the upper lounge and a bar area, and a receiving line of those congratulating the actress after the play’s final performance this past weekend.“I hope it’s not over forever,” Ms. Chastain said as shutters clicked away.Alex Newell, left, and J. Harrison Ghee at the Carlyle, hours after becoming two of the first out nonbinary performers to win a Tony Award.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, at the Carlyle. His after-party plans would extend “until the hood falls off,” he said.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBuckets of Moet & Chandon champagne were placed around the room, while waiters in white blazers ferried silver trays of sliders and cartons of French fries around four rooms. On side tables sat slender trays of nuts and chips, which nominees appreciatively munched.In a back room alongside a bar, a cabaret singer crooned Frank Sinatra’s “Nice ‘n’ Easy” accompanied by a pianist and a cellist. (The Tony-winning soprano Kelli O’Hara, in a feathery white gown, bopped to the music.)Julia Lester, a nominee for “Into the Woods,” arriving at the Carlyle party, hoop skirt and all.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBen Platt and Micaela Diamond, the stars of “Parade,” at the Carlyle.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesZachary Prince, left, with Brandon Uranowitz, who won a Tony for best featured actor in a play for his role in “Leopoldstadt.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesThe party began to pick up around 1 a.m. Ben Platt, accompanied by his fiancé, Noah Galvin, in a matching black suit, got a hug from Micaela Diamond, his co-star in “Parade,” which won best revival of a musical. Ms. Lester — whose night had apparently taken her to the Carlyle — was deep in conversation in a corner with Julie Benko, the “Funny Girl” alternate for Michele’s Fanny Brice.Attendees discussed the beauty of the United Palace, a dazzling remnant of the golden age of cinema, which many had been inside for the first time that night.“I am so in love with that house,” Mr. Brady said.Natasha Katz, who won the Tony for best lighting design for her work on the Josh Groban-led “Sweeney Todd” revival, received a hug at the Carlyle.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesShortly before 3 a.m., many of the performers began heading out, though the party would last until after 4 a.m.“I’m excited to have a shot at the Tonys next year,” Mr. Brady, “The Wiz” star-to-be, said around 2:30 a.m., before heading for the door.“In the bigger sense, I’m excited about making history with such a melanated cast, a mostly Black creative team.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      As Broadway Rebounds, ‘Some Like It Hot’ Gets 13 Tony Nominations

      by

      As Broadway’s rebound from the pandemic shutdown picks up pace, Tony nominators showered much-sought attention on a wide variety of shows, from razzle-dazzle spectacles to quirky adventurous fare.“Some Like It Hot,” a musical based on the classic Billy Wilder film about two musicians who witness a gangland slaying and dress as women to escape the mob, scored the most nominations: 13. But it faces stiff competition in the race for best new musical — ticket buyers have not made any of the contenders a slam-dunk hit, and there does not appear to be a consensus among the industry insiders who make up the Tony voting pool.Three other musicals picked up nine nominations apiece: “& Juliet,” which combines pop songs with an alternative narrative arc for Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers; “New York, New York,” a dance-driven show about a pair of young musicians seeking success and love in a postwar city; and “Shucked,” a pun-laden country comedy about a rural community facing a corn crisis. “Kimberly Akimbo,” a critical favorite about a high school student with a life-altering genetic condition and a criminally dysfunctional family, picked up eight nominations.The Tony nominations also feature plenty of boldfaced names. Among the stars from the worlds of pop music, film and television who earned nods are Sara Bareilles, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer, Josh Groban, Sean Hayes, Samuel L. Jackson, Wendell Pierce and Ben Platt. Another went to one of Broadway’s most-admired stars: Audra McDonald, who, with nine previous nominations and six wins, has won the most competitive Tony Awards of any performer in history.The musical “Shucked,” the rare Broadway show about corn, got nine nominations. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis year’s Tony Awards come at the end of the first full-length season since the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close for about a year and a half. Given that tourism remains below prepandemic levels, many workers have not returned to Midtown offices, and inflation has made producing far more expensive, the season has been surprisingly robust, with a wide range of offerings.“Entertainment is like food — sometimes you’re in the mood for an organic small plate, and sometimes for a burger and fries, and the best thing about New York is we’ve got the variety,” said Victoria Clark, the Tony-nominated star of “Kimberly Akimbo.”Broadway shows this season had grossed $1.48 billion as of April 30, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. That’s nearly double the grosses at the same point last season — $751 million — but lower than the $1.72 billion at the same point in 2019, during the last full prepandemic season.Other key metrics are better, too: 11.5 million seats have been filled on Broadway this season, compared with 6 million at the same point last season, but still down from the 13.8 million that had been filled by this point in 2019.The Tony nominations, which were chosen by a panel of 40 theater industry experts who saw all 38 eligible shows and have no financial interest in any of them, are particularly important to shows that are still running, which try to use the vote of confidence to woo potential ticket buyers.“It’s all about what’s going to make a show run longer and create more jobs for more people,” said Casey Nicholaw, the director and choreographer of “Some Like It Hot.” “Hopefully we’ll sell more tickets, and the show will be more of a success.”The Tony nominations can also boost the employment prospects, and the compensation, of artists. And, of course, they are a tribute to excellence. “It means something when your peers and your colleagues see beauty in something you make,” said James Ijames, whose play “Fat Ham” was among the nominated productions.“Between Riverside and Crazy” was among the nominees for best new play. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a complicated place, dominated by commercial producers but also with six theaters run by nonprofits, and the work this season, as is often the case, featured everything from experimental plays tackling challenging subjects to more mainstream fare that aims primarily to entertain.Among the five nominees for best new play, three have already won the Pulitzer Prize in drama, including “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s story of a retired police officer trying to hang onto his apartment; “Cost of Living,” Martyna Majok’s exploration of caregiving and disability; and “Fat Ham,” Ijames’s riff on “Hamlet,” set in the North Carolina backyard of a family that runs a barbecue restaurant.The two other Tony-nominated plays are each significant in their own ways: “Leopoldstadt” is Tom Stoppard’s autobiographically inspired drama about a European Jewish family before, during and after World War II, while “Ain’t No Mo’” is Jordan E. Cooper’s outlandish comedy imagining that the United States offers its Black residents one-way tickets to Africa.The nominations for “Ain’t No Mo’” were especially striking given that the show struggled to find an audience and closed early. “I’m just so elated, I can barely find the words,” said Cooper, who was nominated both as writer and actor. “There was a lot of turbulence, but we landed the plane.”Stoppard is already the winningest playwright in Broadway history, having won Tony Awards for four previous plays (“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia”). He is now 85 years old, and “Leopoldstadt” is his 19th production on Broadway. Stoppard said he was proud of the nomination, but sorry the play had come to seem so timely at a moment of rising concern about antisemitism.“Nobody wants society to be divided,” he said in an interview, “and I like to think ‘Leopoldstadt’ works against a sense of human beings dividing up and confronting each other.”Jordan E. Cooper in his comedy “Ain’t No Mo’,” which was nominated for best play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOf the 38 Tony-eligible plays and musicals this season, 27 scored at least one nomination, leaving 11 with no nods. Among the musicals snubbed by the nominators were “Bad Cinderella,” the critically drubbed new musical from one of the most successful musical theater composers of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as a progressive rethink of “1776,” about the debate over the Declaration of Independence, which was revived with a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers.One of the musicals that did not score any nominations, a revival of “Dancin’,” quickly declared plans to close: A little more than nine hours after the Tony nominations were announced, the revue’s producers said its last performance would be May 14. Among the seven plays shut out was “The Thanksgiving Play,” which is thought to be the first work on Broadway by a female Native American playwright, Larissa FastHorse.The season featured shows examining a wide variety of diverse stories, and the nominations reflect that.At a time when gender identity issues have become increasingly politicized in the nation, nominations were earned by two gender nonconforming actors: J. Harrison Ghee, a star of “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell, a supporting actor in “Shucked.”Helen Park, who is the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the musical “KPOP.” “The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories,” she said, “the richer the Broadway soundscape and Broadway landscape will be.”Five plays by Black writers were nominated in either the best play or best play revival category, and four of the five nominees for leading actor in a play are Black.“I broke down in tears,” Pierce said about learning that he was among those nominees, for playing Willy Loman in a revival of “Death of a Salesman” in which the traditionally white Loman family is now African American. “I did not know how profoundly moving it would be. It was the culmination of years of hard work and a reflection on how much effort and toil went into the challenge of playing the role.”This was a strong season for musical revivals, and the nominated shows include two with scores by Stephen Sondheim — “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd” — as well as the Golden Age classic “Camelot” and “Parade,” which is a show about the early 20th-century lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia.“Into the Woods” was one of two Stephen Sondheim revivals to earn nominations.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re so happy audiences are taking to it, and we hope that Sondheim would be happy this morning as well,” said Groban, starring as the title character in “Sweeney Todd.”The nominated play revivals are also a compelling bunch: a hypnotically minimalist version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” adapted by Amy Herzog and starring Chastain as a Norwegian debtor trapped in a sexist marriage; a bracing production of Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog,” about two brothers ominously named Lincoln and Booth; a rare staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” featuring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan; and a ghostly performance of “The Piano Lesson,” August Wilson’s classic drama about a family wrestling with the meaning, and monetary value, of an heirloom.The 769 Tony voters now have until early June to catch up on shows they have not yet seen before they cast their electronic ballots. The awards ceremony itself will be held on June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in a ceremony hosted by Ariana DeBose.Julia Jacobs More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘A Doll’s House’ Review: Jessica Chastain Plots an Escape

      by

      Jamie Lloyd’s compelling, surgically precise revival of Ibsen’s 1879 drama throbs like an episode of “CSI: Norway.”Many plays end with a breathtaking coup, but Jamie Lloyd’s incisive Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House,” which opened on Thursday at the Hudson Theater, also begins with one. After all, it’s not every day you find Jessica Chastain rotating on a turntable like an angry bird in a giant cuckoo clock.Yet there she is for 20 minutes as you take your seat and peel off your coat. Nor is she alone: The five other cast members gradually join her, seated on plain wooden chairs nearby. You can’t help seeing them through her steely gaze as she circulates from one to another, her blazing red hair pulled back and her arms and legs crossed as if sizing up suspects.Clearly, this “Doll’s House” is going to be a procedural. The forbidding, throbbing music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto suggests an episode of “CSI: Norway.”But pay attention to something else as you enter: the year 1879 projected on the back wall of the stage. Without it you might forget that’s when Ibsen wrote the play, and never imagine that’s when this production, using a script adapted by Amy Herzog, is set. With one big exception, “A Doll’s House” is that modern.Certainly it’s chic and visually minimal in the manner of Lloyd’s bucket-of-tears “Betrayal” starring Tom Hiddleston and his rapturous “Cyrano de Bergerac” starring James McAvoy. The black and midnight blue costumes by Soutra Gilmour and Enver Chakartash might be worn on 44th Street today, with Chastain in knitwear and kicky zip boots.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.And don’t look for props. Even when specific objects are mentioned — a cookie, a wedding band — no effort is made to mime them or acknowledge their absence. Indeed, except for the chairs, the stage is utterly empty; the set (also by Gilmour) depends on light rails descending ominously from the flies to suggest the contours, and pressures, of a home.The home in question is of course the dollhouse of the title: the place where Nora Helmer (Chastain) is kept as a plaything for her husband, Torvald (Arian Moayed). Even as she tries to understand how she got trapped there, and how she’ll get out, Ibsen’s ingenious plot demonstrates that marriage is not the only cage. Any woman who dares to venture beyond the security of the place society has made for her — who tries to discover herself as a full human — will meet with disaster.Except for wooden chairs, the stage is empty. Instead, Soutra Gilmour’s set depends on light rails descending from the flies to suggest the contours of a home.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat’s what happened to Anne-Marie (Tasha Lawrence), who left her own child years ago to become Nora’s nanny, and is now the nanny of Nora’s three children. And that’s what happened to Nora’s schoolmate Kristine Linde (Jesmille Darbouze), who shows up at the Helmer home at Christmastime, widowed and in need of a job.Nora’s disaster has been less visible. To the outside eye she has lacked for little, and with Torvald about to become the manager of a bank, she will soon lack for nothing. But unknown to him, that security has come at a terrible price, with more yet to be paid. Having borrowed money secretly to save his life during a health crisis, she finds herself under a new threat from the lender, the disreputable Nils Krogstad (Okieriete Onaodowan).Deprived of any independent vision of the world, she can imagine only three solutions. One is to tell Torvald the truth, hoping he will offer to do “the most beautiful thing” — take the blame. Another is to ask their best friend, Dr. Rank (Michael Patrick Thornton), who has long been in love with her, to pay Krogstad off. But the first would be to defer again to the supposedly greater moral fortitude of men, and the second to make herself not just Torvald’s doll but Rank’s. The third is suicide.That we see these options so starkly is because everything else is pared away. Herzog’s dialogue, pruning the social floweriness and conversational whorls of Ibsen’s naturalism, gets right to the point of every line, leaving the text raw and red, as if exfoliated. What the first English translation of the play, by William Archer in 1889, rendered as “You see, it is very difficult to keep an account of a business matter of that kind” becomes, for Herzog, “It’s impossible to keep track” — five words instead of 17. The play, usually nosing past three hours, comes in shy of two.But in cutting and modernizing the language, Herzog does not make the mistake of trashing the social conventions that create the drama in the first place. She doesn’t need to; most of them are still too familiar. In Torvald’s presence, Nora remains a recognizable type, the strategically chirpy songbird pursing her lips and cooing in baby talk. Yet in her superb scenes with Kristine and Rank, the only two people she is not afraid of, we see her other side: calculating, callous and kind when she can afford it.Chastain puts this all across beautifully. As Nora begins to understand the cracks in the stories she’s been told about the world, we feel the cold air of knowledge shivering her. Sharply, she asks Torvald why only mothers are blamed when children turn out badly. Outraged, she wonders how a law that punishes a wife for saving her husband can be moral. And when her options shrink almost to none, she short-circuits; the seductive tarantella she dances to keep Torvald from reading a fateful letter becomes a kind of seizure.Jesmille Darbouze, left, as Nora’s schoolmate Kristine Linde, a widow seeking employment. Darbouze and Chastain’s scenes together are superb, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe staging enhances that interiority at every turn. The children are mere voices. Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design makes the dialogue sound as if it’s piped direct from the hypothalamus. In rotating each new scene toward Nora on the turntable, Lloyd highlights the transfer of information from character to character as if it were a shuttlecock — or contraband.Exhilarating as the approach is in vindicating Nora, this modern take on “A Doll’s House” does hit a wall with Krogstad and, crucially, Torvald. Casting Onaodowan, a Black actor, as the play’s most obvious villain, and then underlighting him for scary, shadowy effects (the lighting is by Jon Clark), may be a way of provoking and then subverting a racist response. And it’s true that the character is greatly softened here in Onaodowan’s ultimately sympathetic performance.But Moayed, a daring actor, has less leeway with Torvald. If the other characters feel comfortably at home in 2023, his insufferable, inexcusable paternalism leaves him utterly behind, a relic of 1879.It’s worth noting that linguists generally translate Ibsen’s title — “Et dukkehjem” — as “A Dollhouse” instead of “A Doll’s House.” The prison isn’t just Nora’s; she and Torvald are equally trapped in it. My only real quibble with this compelling, surgically precise revival is that it doesn’t seem to be interested in preserving that unity: in keeping our sympathy for both characters as balanced as Ibsen evidently intended. When the astonishing curtain coup finally comes, you should feel his loss no less than her liberation.A Doll’s HouseThrough June 10 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; adollshousebroadway.com. Running time: 1 hour and 50 minutes. More