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      ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Postpones Broadway Reopening Until April

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      The musical, which closed temporarily last month as the Omicron variant spread, had hoped to reopen in March.The Broadway musical “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which closed temporarily last month as Omicron battered New York, announced Friday that it would postpone its reopening until April 14, a month later than anticipated, to give the theater economy a bit more time to rebound.“The good news is that it looks like the virus is calming down, but there are still a lot of unknowns,” said the show’s lead producer, Kevin McCollum. “It was just clear that April was a better time to open, given the trends with tourism, and thinking about when families and groups will start to feel comfortable.”The hiatus left the show’s cast, crew and musicians without work (at least at “Doubtfire”), but McCollum said he thought it was the best way to attempt to preserve their jobs longer term. And on Friday, he said he had invited the entire cast to return, and was hopeful that they would do so.The musical, adapted from the popular 1993 film, has traveled a bumpy road: After an out-of-town run at 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle, it began previews on Broadway on March 9, 2020, just three days before the coronavirus pandemic forced all theaters to close. After a 19-month hiatus, the show resumed previews last October and opened Dec. 5, to mixed reviews, just as Omicron was causing cases to spike again.“If there was an award for worst timing for a producer, I will take that award,” McCollum said. “My timing was terrible.”But McCollum said he believes that the show will work if given a chance, and that he is committed to trying to preserve the jobs of his company, many of whom have been working on the show for several years.“The easiest path would have been to say, ‘OK, we’re done,’ but the show was telling us we’re not done,” he said. “We just never got our sea legs because of Omicron.”One additional advantage to reopening in April: Tony nominators and voters who did not catch the show before it began its hiatus on Jan. 10 will now have another chance to do so before casting their ballots. (This year’s Tony calendar has not yet been announced, but the season is expected to end in late April, followed by nominations, voting and an awards ceremony.)“Mrs. Doubtfire” was written by Karey Kirkpatrick, Wayne Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, and directed by Jerry Zaks. A second production of the show is scheduled to begin performances in Manchester, England, in September.“Mrs. Doubtfire” was the first of three Broadway shows to announce a temporary closing as the Omicron surge caused audiences to dwindle — “To Kill a Mockingbird” closed on Jan. 16 and said it would reopen at a different theater on June 1, while “Girl From the North Country” closed Jan. 23 and said it hoped to reopen in the spring. (Six other shows closed for good.)Unions representing actors and musicians did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the “Mrs. Doubtfire” plans. D. Joseph Hartnett, the stagecraft department director at the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), said that his union, which represents stagehands, had not had yet heard from the show and “presumes the production has and still is officially closed.” More

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      Spotify's Joe Rogan Deal Is Said to Be Worth Over $200 Million

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      It was the deal that helped make Spotify a podcasting giant, but has now put the company at the center of a fiery debate about misinformation and free speech.Spotify was already the king of music streaming. But to help propel the company into its next phase as an all-purpose audio juggernaut, and further challenge Apple and Google, it wanted a superstar podcaster, much as Howard Stern helped put satellite radio on the map in 2006. Spotify executives came to view Joe Rogan — a comedian and sports commentator whose no-holds-barred podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” was already a monster hit on YouTube — as that transformative star.In May 2020, after an intense courtship, Spotify announced a licensing agreement to host Mr. Rogan’s show exclusively. Although reported then to be worth more than $100 million, the true value of the deal that was negotiated at the time, which covered three and a half years, was at least $200 million, with the possibility of more, according to two people familiar with the details of the transaction who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it.But in recent weeks the show that helped Spotify catapult into a market leader for podcasts has also placed it at the center of the sort of cultural storm that has long engulfed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, over questions about the responsibility tech behemoths have for the content on their platforms.It began when several prominent artists, led by Neil Young, took their music off the service to protest what they described as Covid vaccine misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show. Then clips from old “Joe Rogan Experience” episodes caught fire on social media, showing him using a racial slur repeatedly and chuckling at jokes about sexual exploitation, prompting Mr. Rogan to apologize for his past use of the slur. A #DeleteSpotify social media campaign began calling for a boycott. And some Spotify podcasters publicly criticized Mr. Rogan and the platform.Spotify declined to make company executives available for interviews. Dustee Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to comment on the terms of Mr. Rogan’s deal. Representatives of Mr. Rogan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Even in the frothy podcast market, the deal for “The Joe Rogan Experience” was extraordinary. Spotify had purchased entire content companies, Gimlet Media and The Ringer, for slightly less than $200 million each, according to company filings.With tens of millions of listeners for its buzziest episodes, “The Joe Rogan Experience” is Spotify’s biggest podcast not only in the United States but in 92 other markets, with a following that hangs on every word of his hourslong shows. In its financial reports, Spotify cites podcasts — and Mr. Rogan’s show in particular — as a factor in the long-sought growth of its advertising business. At a recent company meeting, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees that exclusive content like Mr. Rogan’s show is vital ammunition in Spotify’s competition against tech Goliaths like Apple and Google.“We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows,” Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees. But dozens of episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” were recently taken down.Lucas Jackson/ReutersAs Mr. Rogan faced growing public criticism, Spotify responded by reaffirming its commitment to free speech, even as dozens of Mr. Rogan’s past episodes have been removed. It also made its content guidelines public for the first time, said that it would add “content advisory” notices to episodes discussing the coronavirus and promised to contribute $100 million for work by creators “from historically marginalized groups.”The moves came as Spotify faced growing dissension among high-profile creators. This month Ava DuVernay, the film director who announced a podcast deal with Spotify a year ago but has yet to produce any content under it, severed her ties with Spotify, according to a statement from her production company, Array. And Jemele Hill, the former ESPN commentator, said that Spotify’s defense of Mr. Rogan had created problems with her audience, and raised questions about the sincerity of the company’s dedication to minority talent.“What I would like to see,” Ms. Hill said in an interview, “is for them to hand $100 million to somebody who is Black.”A Pivot to PodcastingFor Spotify, the move into podcasting is the culmination of years of strategy to find a business that is more profitable than hosting music, for which it must pay about two-thirds of every dollar to rights holders.The company dipped its toe into video around 2015, but little came of it. By 2018, the year Spotify listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, it was forming plans to pursue Mr. Rogan, hoping to supercharge its market position in non-music audio and to chip away at the dominance of Apple and Google’s YouTube.To make Spotify a player in podcasting, Mr. Ek and his deputies, including Dawn Ostroff, a former television and magazine publishing executive, and Courtney Holt, formerly of Maker Studios, an online video network, set out on a multipart strategy. Spotify would buy audio studios, like Gimlet, and acquire exclusive rights to existing shows. With Spotify Originals, the company would also create buzzy new programs in partnership with creators like Ms. DuVernay’s Array and Higher Ground, the production company of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.Developing a portfolio of podcasts unique to Spotify, as Netflix had built a walled garden for video, was a key aim, according to several employees involved in the strategy discussions.“All music streaming services are offering the same plain vanilla ice cream at the same price,” said Will Page, Spotify’s former top economist, who was not involved in the Rogan deal but is a frequent commentator on the digital media business. “The overarching issue is how do you make your customer proposition distinct.”Growth StrategySpotify has greatly increased its podcast offerings in the last four years — a period of rapid growth in both users and revenue for the company. More

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      Coachella Will Return Without Masks or Vaccines Required

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      When the Coachella outdoor music festival returns for the first time in two years this April, performers will be greeted by a sea of unmasked — and potentially unvaccinated — fans, as the struggling concert industry stirs back to life.On Tuesday, organizers said that attendees will not be required to wear masks or be vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which drew up to 125,000 fans a day to Southern California and was one of the biggest music festivals of the pre-pandemic era.“There is no guarantee, express or implied, that those attending the festival will not be exposed to Covid-19,” Goldenvoice, a division of the global concert giant AEG Live, said on the Coachella website.Goldenvoice noted, however, that the festival’s Covid policies may change “in accordance with applicable public health conditions.”Goldenvoice also said that Stagecoach, a country music festival in Southern California, also said on Tuesday that there would be no requirements for guests to be masked, vaccinated or tested. The festival was set to run for three days at the end of April and the beginning of May.It has been a turbulent two years for the concert and touring industries, as a number of events were canceled because of the virus. In the last year, since the Covid vaccine became widely available, organizers have grappled with decisions over whether to hold the events at all and whether to require masks, vaccines and testing.Over four days last summer, the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago ran at full capacity, with its 400,000 attendees being required to show either proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test. According to data released by the city after the festival, infection rates among the concertgoers were very low.Coachella did not run in 2020 or 2021, and was canceled three times over the pandemic, including a rescheduled date in the fall of 2020.Before the pandemic, Coachella, which is widely seen as a bellwether for the multibillion-dollar touring business, had put on a show every year since 1999 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. It typically runs over two weekends in April.The organizers of Coachella announced in January, after weeks of speculation, that the festival would be back this year. It is set to be headlined by Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West. More

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      On the Scene: ‘Music Man,’ a Big Broadway Bet 🎺

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      On the Scene: ‘Music Man,’ a Big Broadway Bet 🎺Matt Stevens🎭 Reporting from BroadwayThe Omicron variant has made this a tough winter for the theater. “The Music Man,” a big-budget, star-studded musical, opened Thursday hoping to provide Broadway with something of a booster shot in the arm. 
      Here’s what the night looked like → More

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      Hans Neuenfels, Opera Director with a Pointed View, Dies at 80

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      A leading proponent of “director’s theater,” his productions had a provocative stamp that often provoked outrage.Hans Neuenfels, a German director and writer whose provocative, iconoclastic productions made him one of the pioneers of modern operatic stagecraft and the frequent target of audience and critical outrage, died in Berlin on Sunday. He was 80.The cause was Covid-19, his son, the cinematographer Benedict Neuenfels, said.Mr. Neuenfels was among the founding fathers, and arguably the leading exponent, of what came to be known as Regietheater, or “director’s theater,” in which the director’s vision tends to dominate the work.He abandoned performance traditions to interpret operas in light of the present, and aimed to force audiences to engage with what they saw — which they often did with riotous booing. His style earned him the title of enfant terrible of the German opera world.He came to prominence with a production of Verdi’s “Aida” for the Frankfurt Opera in 1981 that portrayed the enslaved heroine as a modern domestic servant — mop, bucket and all.“Mr. Neuenfels’s notions can be inferred from the final duet,” John Rockwell of The New York Times wrote. The temple vault in which Aida usually died turned, in this “perverse but striking” production, into “the Egyptian wing of a museum that becomes a gas chamber.”From then on, critics habitually accused Mr. Neuenfels of violating the works he directed, rather than shedding light on them.The writer and composer James Helme Sutcliffe sputtered in Opera magazine that a “La Forza del Destino” by Verdi at the Deutsche Oper in 1982 was a “coldblooded murder,” an “atrocity” that represented little more than “a puppy rubbing its master’s nose in his own excrement.”Little escaped Mr. Neuenfels’s critical eye. A former altar boy, he made religion a frequent target. In his staging of “Il Trovatore” in Berlin in 1996 Christ descends from the cross, his crown of thorns entwined with twinkling lights, to dance with colorfully dressed nuns.The soprano Karita Mattila as Fiordiligi during a dress rehearsal of a Neuenfels production of Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” at the Salzburg Festival in 2000.  Jacqueline Godany/AlamySexual imagery became graphic and inescapable, gratuitously so to some viewers. Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” in Salzburg in 2000 found sadomasochism latent in the drama; the soprano Karita Mattila delivered her defiant aria, “Come scoglio,” holding leashes attached to men dressed in leather, chains and dog heads. His magic flute in Mozart’s opera of that name was a 3-foot phallus.But Mr. Neuenfels’s interest in opera was genuine, and he developed a deep knowledge of it. He all but abandoned the straight theater of his training and early work for the opera house and the music that transfixed him, writing librettos for operas by Adriana Hölszky and Moritz Eggert and arranging his own “Schumann, Schubert and the Snow,” a chamber opera for the Ruhr Triennale in 2005 that set a fictional meeting of the composers to their songs.“Each libretto mainly interested me in terms of information,” Mr. Neuenfels wrote in his 2009 book “How Much Musik do People Need?” “The main thing, I said to myself, is that it seduced the composer into music.”Hans Neuenfels was born on May 31, 1941, in Krefeld in northwest Germany, the only child of Arthur and Marie (Frenken) Neuenfels. He started writing as a child, and immediately had a capacity to shock.“At the age of 9 I wrote my first poems and stories, which I read to my parents,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 2013. “I remember my father running out of the room because he didn’t like my story.” He later published a novel and made several films.Mr. Neuenfels studied at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen from 1960 to 1964, and at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, where he met the actress Elizabeth Trissenaar. Frequent stage collaborators, they married in 1964, the year Mr. Neuenfels made his debut as a theater director in Vienna. He had built a significant reputation by the time they jointly began an association with the Schauspiel Frankfurt in 1972, and he continued to prefer working freelance; a spell in charge of the Volksbühne, a prominent theater in Berlin, from 1986 to 1990 was troubled by financial problems.Mr. Neuenfels knew little about opera before his debut directing one (“Il Trovatore” in Nuremberg in 1974), he wrote in a 2011 autobiography, “Das Bastardbuch.” But during his cigarette-and beer-fueled preparations, he wrote, Verdi’s music “enveloped me, penetrated me, wove itself into me so that I was convinced it would run through my veins.” He saw no similar passion in the stagings he began to watch; they made opera a “senseless and purposeless undertaking,” he surmised, aiming for no broader relevance.Mr. Neuenfels resolved to change that. Four productions followed for the Frankfurt Opera, a hotbed of radicalism in the 1970s and ’80s, including the infamous 1981 “Aida.” He also directed Schreker’s “Die Gezeichneten” and Busoni’s “Doktor Faust,” showing an early taste for otherwise ignored dramas.As sympathetic critics saw, there was a certain integrity to much of Mr. Neuenfels’s work, which became more apparent as younger generations of directors became more extreme still. Mr. Rockwell wrote in 2001 that a “Die Fledermaus” at the Salzburg Festival was “in poor taste” and a “seething nest of hypocrisy, cruelty, sexual perversion and incipient Nazism,” but granted that it was “at least seriously intended.”Perhaps no production made Mr. Neuenfels’s underlying sincerity plainer than his rat-infested “Lohengrin” for the Bayreuth Festival in 2010, which, like the Patrice Chéreau “Ring” decades before it, was booed vigorously at its premiere but eventually became a beloved classic. At its last appearance in 2015, the Times critic Zachary Woolfe called it a “model of operatic direction.”Even when Mr. Neuenfels did not deliberately court controversy, though, it tended to find him.His production of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” at the Deutsche Oper caused little stir at its premiere in 2003, despite his addition of an epilogue in which the title character pulled out the decapitated heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad.In 2006, however, the Oper canceled a planned revival. The Berlin police said the performances might pose a security risk because months earlier, a Danish newspaper had run caricatures of Muhammad, leading to worldwide protests.The cancellation provoked weeks of debate and was condemned by both Muslim leaders and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and an opera fan, who said that “self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam.”Mr. Neuenfels refused to cut the scene. The performance was reinstated and passed without incident.Mr. Neuenfels noted that the fiasco showed that opera had something to say. “It’s very good,” he told The Wall Street Journal, “that a government would be moved to comment on the situation, which says something about the role of opera and art in general.”Along with his son, Mr. Neuenfels is survived by his wife and two grandchildren.In his 2011 interview with Deutsche Welle, Mr. Neuenfels was asked whether he had to wrestle deeply with “Lohengrin,” a drama that often poses problems for directors.Responding that his Wagnerian work had at one point been “almost ecstatic,” he reflected that “directing really takes you to the absolute limit — it’s almost impossible in a sense. But once you’ve gotten there, it’s a really magnificent and unique experience. Every staging should take the director to the brink of insanity.”“And then,” he added, “comes the next one.” More

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      Brené Brown Resumes Spotify Podcast Amid Joe Rogan Uproar

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      Brené Brown, who had put her podcasts on hiatus last month, returned to Spotify, expressing misgivings about Rogan but noting her contract with the service.The social psychologist Brené Brown said Tuesday that despite misgivings she would resume her two Spotify podcasts, which she had put on hiatus while considering the streaming platform’s policies and responsibilities amid accusations that its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, was spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.After several prominent recording artists, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, announced last month that they were removing their music from Spotify because they were not comfortable sharing a platform with Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Brown had announced that she was indefinitely pausing her podcasts, “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead,” to learn more about Spotify’s misinformation policy.“As you may or may not know, I’m under a multiyear, exclusive contract with Spotify,” Brown explained in a message posted to her website Tuesday about her decision to resume her podcast. “Unlike some creators, I don’t have the option of pulling my work from the platform.”Brown continued to express dismay over having to share a platform with Rogan, whom she criticized for past comments, saying that he had made “dehumanizing” comments about transgender people and referring to a 2011 segment in which Rogan laughed as a visiting comedian boasted about “demanding sexual favors from young female comedians wanting to perform onstage” at a club.“If advertisers and listeners support ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ and Spotify needs him as the cornerstone of its podcasting ambitions — that’s OK,” Brown wrote. “But sharing the table with Rogan puts me in a tremendous values conflict with very few options.”Brown is a professor at the University of Houston whose 2010 TEDx talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the most popular in TED history; her podcasts are produced by Parcast, a studio known for true-crime and mystery shows that Spotify acquired in 2019.After Young and Mitchell removed their music, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, published the service’s platform rules and said Spotify would add “content advisory” flags on podcast episodes about the pandemic. Over the weekend, Ek confirmed that Rogan had removed a number of episodes after meetings with Spotify executives and after “his own reflections.”Spotify removed the episodes after the musician India.Arie shared a compilation video showing Rogan using a racial slur in past episodes. That prompted an apology from Rogan, who two years ago signed an exclusive multiyear deal with Spotify reported to be worth $100 million.Brown insisted she was not attempting to censor or deplatform Rogan, but rather was concerned with herself and her own audience, and trying to understand how Spotify sees its responsibilities, adding that she thinks podcasters with a wide reach should vet and challenge their guests.“It doesn’t appear to me that ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ takes any responsibility for the health information that it puts out in the world,” she said, “and I do believe that leads to people getting sick and even dying.”The controversy has moved into the political realm in recent days, with former President Donald J. Trump issuing a statement urging Rogan to stop apologizing.On the latest episode of his podcast, released Tuesday, Rogan called the release of the compilation video “a political hit job” but disputed the notion that comedians should never apologize. “You should apologize if you regret something,” he said. More

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      How Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster and ‘The Music Man’ Withstood Covid

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      Nearly 60 cast and crew members have tested positive since rehearsals began. Now, following a 10-day shutdown during previews, opening night is near.As soon as Hugh Jackman learned that the leading lady of “The Music Man,” Sutton Foster — whom he spent a substantial portion of every night breathing on, sweating on and locking lips with onstage — had tested positive for the coronavirus, he knew it was just a matter of time.“I’m pretty sure on every C.D.C. guideline, making out with someone with Covid is not recommended,” Jackman, 53, said in a phone conversation in late January. He is starring opposite Foster as the scam artist Harold Hill in the high-profile revival of Meredith Willson’s 1957 musical, which is scheduled to open Feb. 10 at the Winter Garden Theater.And, sure enough, five days later, came the positive proof on his at-home Covid test. Already down about a third of the show’s 46-person cast, and with both leads out, the producers canceled the next 11 performances. (The cast and crew were still paid during the shutdown, Kate Horton, one of the musical’s producers, said.)Though performances resumed a little over a week later, it was just the latest setback for a starry, star-crossed revival of the feel-good comedy, which won the Tony Award for best new musical in 1958. Originally scheduled to begin previews in September 2020, the show had already pushed back its opening night twice and weathered the departure of its lead producer, Scott Rudin, amid renewed scrutiny of his bullying behavior.The production, which is capitalized for up to $24 million, reunites much of the creative team behind the Tony-winning 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” including the director, Jerry Zaks. Its cast includes six Tony winners: Jackman; Foster, who plays the librarian Marian Paroo; Shuler Hensley; Jefferson Mays; Jayne Houdyshell; and Marie Mullen.In phone interviews last month, six members of the show’s cast and creative team outlined the measures they took to keep the show going amid a coronavirus outbreak; the vital role of actors known as swings, who have no regular role in a show and cover up to a dozen ensemble parts; and how they kept their spirits up amid a challenging preview period. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.When the “Music Man” revival was announced in March 2019, it looked as if it would be the marquee event of the fall 2020 Broadway season. Amid the industrywide shutdown, opening night was pushed to May 2021, and then again to Feb. 10, 2022. Finally, this past October, the show started rehearsals.The show’s director, Jerry Zaks, left, and its choreographer, Warren Carlyle, overseeing rehearsals.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesJERRY ZAKS (director) We felt we had gotten past Covid, and we were just happy to be there. We dived in and went nonstop.HUGH JACKMAN (Professor Harold Hill) It was so great to be back in the room.KATHY VOYTKO (swing/Marian understudy) It was a thrill to test negative every day.On Dec. 20, amid the Omicron surge, “The Music Man” had its first preview. Four covers — an actor who goes on for another actor who calls out of a show — were onstage.KATE HORTON (producer) I would look at the situation we were facing each day, and I would have conversations with stage management and the creative team and we would decide what to do.SUTTON FOSTER (Marian Paroo) At one point, there were 14 people out of the show. We had swings covering seven roles and trying to hold up that show. And they did. It was remarkable. One of our swings, Emily Hoder, is 10 years old, and she was covering three tracks.ZAKS I couldn’t do the critical work of addressing the material, making changes in the lighting, fixing the sound, because we had so may people out. There was a moment when we asked ourselves if we’d have to push opening night.Then it happened: On Thursday, Dec. 23, the morning of the fourth preview, Foster tested positive.FOSTER We’ve been vigilant, but I have a 4 ½-year-old daughter who goes to preschool. On December 20, the night of our first preview, she hadn’t been feeling good, and my husband took her to the doctor and she tested positive. But every day I was testing negative, negative, negative. Then on Thursday morning, I did a rapid test at home, and it immediately was just this rude red line. And I was like, “OK, here we go.”But the show still went on that night, thanks to Voytko, a swing and an understudy for Marian, who mainlined the role in eight hours.VOYTKO I had an 11 o’clock costume fitting, and, just before noon, our costume designer, Santo [Loquasto], said “Kathy, call Thomas [Recktenwald],” who’s our production stage manager. And I sort of had that sinking feeling. And sure enough, he said, “You’re on.” I voice-texted my husband because my hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t possibly have used my phone. Then I put my phone on silent, and I grabbed my emergency cheat sheet I had made.“I want people to understand that these are unprecedented times in theater,” said Jackman, who plays the scam artist Harold Hill opposite Foster’s Marian Paroo.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesJACKMAN She had her first rehearsal as Marian at 1; we had until 5. We got through every scene once. I think maybe she got to redo something twice.WARREN CARLYLE (choreographer) There are three really tricky sequences that could take an actress down: the finale; “Shipoopi” at the top of Act II because there’s a lot of dance for her there; and the library sequence, which is very prop heavy. There are something like 75 library books and a million different things that have to go in a million different places.VOYTKO A big goal post was getting through “My White Knight” because the lyrics have a patter section, which is a bit of a tongue twister. And I only had two shots at the dance for “Shipoopi” with Hugh and the tap finale before we had to do them in front of an audience.And she did. She got a standing ovation, and Jackman delivered a curtain speech praising understudies and swings that went viral.JACKMAN I want people to understand that these are unprecedented times in theater. I was so moved by what Kathy had gone through. I’ve never seen anything like that.After other breakthrough cases, the production canceled its Saturday evening and Sunday matinee performances on Dec. 25 and 26. On Tuesday, Dec. 28, Jackman tested positive.JACKMAN I was already feeling a bit funky when I was doing the show the night before, even though I was testing negative at the time, so it wasn’t a surprise. I was pretty nauseated, with a scratchy throat and a runny nose. My wife was amazing — we’d been sleeping in the same bed together, obviously, so I think she expected to get it too, which she did. But I’m vaccinated and boosted, so I was fine after a few days.The show eventually canceled its next 11 performances, through Wednesday, Jan. 5.HORTON Every time somebody is out when you’re so early in the life of the show, you need to do a technical rehearsal with the stand-in. But when you get to a certain number of people being out, there isn’t enough time to do that and make sure everyone onstage is safe. We got to a point where there were over 10 people off, so it was a very straightforward decision, actually.But the production never considered postponing its opening or following in the footsteps of “Mrs. Doubtfire,” whose producer, Kevin McCollum, decided in January to pause performances for nine weeks, with plans to resume in March (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” like “The Music Man” co-produced by Barry Diller, announced a hiatus later that month).And there was music: The show is scheduled to open on Feb. 10 at the Winter Garden Theater.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesHORTON We knew mathematically we would get through it. Once a certain number of people are out and you know they’re coming back, it was just a revolving-door situation, like who was going to be back when. And the demand for the show is so huge that we knew we had audiences waiting for us.Previews resumed on Thursday, Jan. 6. Finally, the full company was onstage together for the first time, with no covers or swings.ZAKS It wasn’t until the end of January that I was able to make the changes and cuts that I wanted to make.FOSTER We had an extraordinarily long preview process — over six weeks. In shows I’ve done in the past, the preview period has been about four weeks. So even though we lost 10 days, we’re still in good shape.HORTON Things have stabilized hugely. Advance sales have been fantastic. We’ve gone a couple of weeks now with no positive tests.VOYTKO I did three shows in a row with Hugh — smooching, panting under dance numbers in each other’s faces — but I never tested positive! We were joking that an epidemiologist should do some sort of study.Now, with opening night in less than a week, the cast, crew and creative team are ready to celebrate.JACKMAN It’s amazing to be on a stage with a cast that’s near 50 people and a 25-piece orchestra. It’s a story about faith, belief and community that’s so timely. It’s one of those perfect musicals.VOYTKO Nothing will ever be as stressful as going on in a fourth preview as Marian. My greatest hope is that everyone is healthy on opening night, and I can cheer them on from the audience! More