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    How Do You Measure a Season on Broadway? In Cast Albums.

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    From “A Strange Loop” to “Funny Girl,” most Broadway musicals of 2022 were recorded, offering listeners a chance to love or hate them again.Last year was a pretty good one for Broadway musicals, if by “pretty good” you mean “not as dreadful as usual.” Of the 15 that opened, just a handful were outright disasters both critically and financially. And though only six are still running, that’s not a bad number these days.Even better, most of last year’s shows made cast albums, so you can judge for yourself. True, you will not find “1776” or “The Little Prince” among them; they were not recorded. Nor was the original Broadway revival cast of “Funny Girl,” which instead opted to preserve its replacement cast, led by Lea Michele. (Following its November digital release, the CD goes on sale Friday.)Another absentee is “Paradise Square,” which, because of litigation between the show’s producer and its unions, is available only piecemeal — and only on its composer’s Instagram page. What I’ve heard of it there is better than what I saw of it onstage.That is often the case with the 2022 cast albums. Among the 10 I’ve played in their entirety (the remaining two — “KPOP” and “Almost Famous” — are scheduled to be released in the coming months), some improve on the shows they preserve merely by jettisoning most or mercifully all of the book. In other cases, you can actually hear what the authors had in mind, which you can’t always do amid overexcitable stagings.Even so, it remains generally true that the best and freshest musical theater recordings — omitting standout solo albums like Christine Ebersole’s “After the Ball” and Victoria Clark’s “December Songs” — arise from the best and freshest underlying material. That means that in my breakdown below, the quality tends to improve as you move from jukeboxes to revivals to originals.But not always. Another reason 2022 was a pretty good year for Broadway musicals is that, often enough, they were pretty surprising.Clockwise from top left: Myles Frost in “MJ the Musical”; Lorna Courtney in “& Juliet”; Billy Crystal in “Mr. Saturday Night”; and Joshua Henry, left, and Gavin Creel in “Into the Woods.”Photographs by Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJukeboxesWhatever you think of jukebox musicals as a theatrical genre — and I generally don’t think much of them — they make exceedingly strange cast albums. The worst offenders are biographical jukeboxes, which purport to tell the story of the singer or songwriter (or record company) that owns the songs or made them famous. When those songs are stripped from their jimmied narratives and returned to their native format as recordings, they devolve into something peculiar: greatest hits tribute albums.That’s especially problematic with “MJ the Musical,” based on Michael Jackson’s life and catalog. Because the songs — and Jackson’s idiosyncratic original performances of them — are (like “Billie Jean”) so unforgettable, there’s little Myles Frost, in the title role, can do with just his voice to suggest something new. Instead we are stuck with a slick impersonation, accurate but wan. Why not just get the original?That problem is somewhat attenuated in “A Beautiful Noise,” the Neil Diamond bio-jukebox. For one thing, Will Swenson, as Diamond, does not aim for a carbon copy. Exaggerating some of the singer’s vocal qualities — the basso burr and steel-wool growls — he instead adds value while suggesting character. And when he is backed up by the show’s terrific ensemble in a joyful number like “Holly Holy,” you hear it in a new way, as an unexpected cover. Yes, some of these “covers” are a little too unexpected: When Diamond’s intensely interior musings are turned into duets and awkwardly refitted as plot numbers, it’s hard not to roll your ears.That problem is triply avoided in “& Juliet.” (1) It’s not a rumination but a romp. (2) It has no biography to be true (or false) to. (3) It’s built on hit songs, by Max Martin, that, having been written for many different singers, are generic enough to suit many situations. So when Lorna Courtney, as Juliet, wakes up by her tomb to sing Britney Spears’s “ … Baby One More Time,” or a song like Celine Dion’s “That’s the Way It Is” is repurposed as a feminist anthem, it’s additive, not subtractive. And it’s hard to be very critical when the Katy Perry hit “I Kissed a Girl” becomes a flirty wink to nonbinary attraction.RevivalsMusicals that have previously produced a superb recording pose a different problem. Other than bonus tracks and extended dance music sequences — the result of technology that offers almost limitless capacity — what new can a cast album offer?I’m afraid I didn’t find much of an answer in the revival cast recording of “The Music Man,” even though, or rather because, it’s an accurate rendering of the hit stage production. Is that because Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, avoiding comparison to Robert Preston and Barbara Cook, offered very different readings (and singings) of the roles? Both went darker — and Foster lower, dodging Cook’s high notes — resulting in a somewhat grim take on songs that once were joyous. (Passages of Jackman’s “Ya Got Trouble” are almost terrifying.) At least there’s joy to be had around the edges, especially in the funky chromaticism of the barbershop quartet, whose rendering of “Sincere” is like a roller coaster that keeps going up and up.If rethinking did not serve “The Music Man,” it certainly did “Into the Woods.” After several revivals and the 2014 movie, this Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical could almost seem too familiar, yet the stripped-down version directed by Lear deBessonet restored its warmth, humor and strangeness. Not all of that survives in the cast recording, especially in complicated ensemble numbers that mix dialogue and song at top speed. Yet in solos and duets — like the alternately hilarious and gorgeous “Agony,” sung by Gavin Creel and Joshua Henry, the score shines anew.As a record of raw Broadway talent, there may never be a greater cast album than the one on which Barbra Streisand, at 21, was captured in a state of wild, almost feral daredevilry. At 36, Lea Michele is past the feral stage, but she’s still a thrill on the revival cast album of “Funny Girl.” In some ways, it’s even more of a feat, as she gets thin support from the watered-down orchestrations, even juiced with three additional strings. And if her renditions of barnburners like “Don’t Rain on My Parade” owe more than a little to their originator, Michele brings her own banked fires to the ballads, especially “The Music That Makes Me Dance” and a triple crème “People.”OriginalsBy comparison, new musicals are too often skim milk. Whether it’s the overwhelming costs or the coolness of so many stories, they do not lend themselves to Golden Age butterfat. That’s fine, but the grooves on their cast albums can feel like ruts as a result, both emotionally and aurally. How nice to hear four that are so rich in varied craft and feeling!Even “Mr. Saturday Night,” a middling entertainment onstage, shines in its recording. Not that it isn’t cynical; the story of a washed-up borscht belt comic naturally evokes an acrid Rat Pack score (and matching orchestration) from the composer Jason Robert Brown. But Billy Crystal, in excellent voice, provides a nice balance in the title role, especially when highlighting the pathos behind the aggressive humor of Amanda Green’s lyrics, as in “A Little Joy.” “I’m gonna bring a little mirth/To celebrate our time on earth,” he hectors an unresponsive old age home audience. “Of course it helps to have a pulse.” This recording does.Oddly, it’s the cast album of “A Strange Loop,” a terrific musical — and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama — that has the pulse problem. Michael R. Jackson’s brilliant concept, in which unhelpful “thoughts” persecute a gay Black musical theater writer trying to write a gay Black musical, is so innately theatrical that, without Stephen Brackett’s staging, it’s hard to track its ups and downs through music alone. Still, with Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell and Liz Phair as his “Inner White Girl” inspirations, Jackson writes songs that sting, his lyrics merging poetry and perseveration.Kimberly Levaco doesn’t have time to perseverate; she’s aging at four times the normal speed and already looks 60-ish at 15. Her upbeat attitude in the face of early mortality gives “Kimberly Akimbo” (due out Feb. 14, though two songs are now available for streaming) its tragic undertow but also its uncanny, uncloying delight. The songs by Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire, especially as sung by Victoria Clark and Bonnie Milligan, rarely waste time stating the obvious, thus allowing us to experience both dawning rapture (“Anagram”) and hilarious sociopathy (“Better”) without condescension. As the cast album moves from high to high with no explanations, you may wonder where that lump in your throat came from.How much story a cast album needs to tell has from the start of the format been a defining question. The first recordings of Broadway shows were essentially glorified singles, with no context at all. (There was no room.) But even with dialogue and liner notes, new musicals today, in which songs are narrowly tailored to narratives, can leave you perplexed if you haven’t seen them live. That will not be a problem for the cast album of “Some Like It Hot” (due out on March 24); it’s designed, like so many Golden Age musicals, to give pleasure both within and without the story. As they did in “Hairspray,” Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman write numbers — including the ear-wormy title song — that find the sweet spot between generic pop and overspecificity: songs that can sound like just one character’s blues, or anyone’s. More

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      Patina Miller Chooses High Drama

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      The Tony-winning Broadway actor has made a career playing powerful women. Her latest is a drug queenpin inspired by 50 Cent’s mother in the newest “Power” series on Starz.At Screaming Mimi’s, an upscale vintage emporium just south of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, the store’s manager, Dani Cabot, held out a variety of belts: a wide band from Donna Karan, a minimalist cincher from Claude Montana and what Cabot described as a “high-drama Moschino moment.”The actress Patina Miller considered the options, but not for long. “I think we’re high drama,” she said. She clasped the gold buckle around her waist, smoothing the fabric of a Bill Blass tiger print skirt.Miller, 37, who broke out about a decade ago in the Broadway production of “Sister Act” and then won a Tony for her starring turn in “Pippin,” is no stranger to high drama. Or a tight fit. While promoting the second season of the Starz series “Power Book III: Raising Kanan,” which premiered on Aug. 14, she is also appearing nearly nightly as the Witch in the Broadway revival of “Into the Woods.” (In September, when she begins shooting the third season of “Raising Kanan,” she will stick with the musical through its latest extension, performing on the weekends only.)Still, she had sneaked away on a recent weekday afternoon to comb through the racks of luxury secondhand clothing, looking for inspiration for her “Raising Kanan” character, Raquel, and for herself.“It takes me hours to find anything,” she said, as she headed toward a rack of 1990s designer looks. “Sometimes I just like to look around at all the colors that I won’t wear.”She wears dazzling hues in “Into the Woods,” including a purple gown, complete with cape. In “Raising Kanan,” a prequel to the original “Power” series, Raquel, the mother of the title character, favors a more muted palette, mostly lustrous blacks and blood reds meant to convey her status as an early ’90s queenpin. (As an adult, Kanan was played in previous “Power” series by Curtis Jackson, better known as 50 Cent, who is an executive producer of the franchise and whose own mother inspired Raquel.)Miller, above center, plays the Witch in a Broadway production of “Into the Woods.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the prequel series “Power Book III: Raising Kanan,” Miller plays a drug queenpin in the ’90s. The series is inspired by 50 Cent’s upbringing in Jamaica, Queens.Cara Howe/StarzOn this afternoon, costumed only as herself, she had arrived in a swirl of muted earth tones — brown sandals, brown-and-blue sundress, blue straw hat, gold hoops. Medium drama.She held up a purple suit with a Muppet-y feel. “Definitely not,” she said.Sorting through the racks, she recalled her own acid-washed ’90s styles, modeled on the girl groups of the day, Salt-N-Pepa, TLC, En Vogue. Those same looks, she noted, have become fashionable again. “I just love how the things that were popular then keep coming back around,” she said, fingering a Geoffrey Beene blazer.Back then, in small-town South Carolina, Miller’s clothing came from Goodwill, which was what her single mother, a minister, could afford. With the money she saved on clothes, Miller’s mother paid for piano lessons and encouraged her daughter to sing in the church choir. (That encouragement helped her secure a spot at Carnegie Mellon’s theater program, which propelled her to Broadway, then onto shows like “Madam Secretary” and “Mercy Street.”)“This is a woman who had me at 15, who didn’t have her high school education, but she found a way to nurture me and invest in me,” Miller said. “I just come from really strong women.”Is she interested in strength and power herself? “I would be lying if I didn’t say, like, a little bit,” she said. “I want to have control of my life. I want to be as strong as I can.”“I just love how the things that were popular then keep coming back around,” Miller said about the ’90s-inspired styles that are currently in fashion. Sara Messinger for The New York TimesThis explains, at least in part, why she has made a career of playing strong women. The Witch can hex anyone in her radius. Raquel, an iron fist in a series of sumptuous leather jackets, refers proudly to herself as “the last bitch standing.” Both want to protect their children from the world, but the world — and the children — has other plans in mind. It would be easy enough to play either as a villain, but Miller prefers other choices.“They’re fighting for something; they’re fighting for their voice to be heard,” she said. “It’s more interesting to play the love,” she added.She retreated to the dressing room with an armful of hangers, emerging first in that Bill Blass skirt (“Ooh, dress up!” she said), topped with a grommet-studded Gianfranco Ferré blouse. The high-drama belt shifted the outfit into overdrive, so she switched out the blouse for a more restrained Calvin Klein shirt, adorned with bugle beads. She adjusted the hem of the skirt then pulled the waist lower.“The problem with me is my hips,” she said. Describing anything about Miller’s physique as a problem seems like a stretch. But sure.She asked for some shoes, but the store carried few size 10 pairs, and when Cabot brought her a pair of Ferragamo flats, Miller politely dismissed them as “a little bit church girl.” (She had enough of church girl looks in the actual ’90s.) In her bare feet, Miller made a Raq-like face in the mirror, eyes slit, mouth set.“Separately they’re both a vibe,” she said of the blouse and skirt. “And this belt, definitely a vibe.” But none of the vibes felt right for her, she decided. Next she tried a Missoni three-piece from the 1970s. “It’s not Raq,” she said as she slid on the coat. “But with my skin tone, perfect.” And yet the fit of the blouse was off. Back to the racks.Thrift shopping is a different proposition today for Miller, who shopped at Goodwill when she was young because it was what her single mother could afford. Sara Messinger for The New York TimesA Comme des Garçons blouse was too girlish, a white turtleneck too thick for summer. She tried on a leopard print Vivienne Westwood tunic, finished with the Donna Karan belt. It almost worked. A sea-green Halston caftan? “I’m so boring. I always go for the black,” she said. She tried on a jacket in palest pink. And then, in the men’s wear section, she found a black blazer, which Cabot styled with a gold collar, which made Miller look like a dance-floor queen.“Very, very Beyoncé,” Miller said, admiring herself in the mirror. “Totally Beyoncé on the horse. It’s a vibe, but not necessarily me.”She has been working, she said, to find the vulnerability within the powerful characters, she plays, and to find it within herself. “Because I think softness is a great thing, too,” she said. “It’s not bad to be soft. Black girls don’t get to do that. We always have to be strong, because that’s the best way we know. But when I see hardness, strongness on the page, I’m always like, What else can we say?”So from the rack she picked a softer item and a colorful one: a silk Karl Lagerfeld blouse in a rich shade of emerald.“That color would be amazing on you,” Cabot said.“Oh I know,” Miller replied.She decided to buy the blouse and the Donna Karan belt too. But Cabot, and the store owner, Laura Wills, surprised her, offering the blouse as a gift. “Come back and see us again!” Cabot said.“Absolutely,” Miller said as she paid for the belt.Back in her sundress, she stepped out onto 14th Street, where her own image, as Raq, looked back at her from a bus shelter. “I’m everywhere,” she said proudly. More

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      Julia Lester on Her ‘More Knowing’ Little Red Riding Hood

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      Her bold choices for “Into the Woods” have garnered the 22-year-old actress critical acclaim and a Broadway debut.Conventional wisdom has it that actors should not audition in costume. But Julia Lester did so anyway — fashioning a red cape out of a circle skirt — when she videotaped her audition for the part of Little Red Riding Hood in the Encores! production of “Into the Woods” this spring. Two weeks later — without even a callback — she heard from her agent: “Stephen Sondheim wants you to play Little Red.”Indeed, it was her many bold acting (as well as sartorial) choices for the fabled girl bound for grandmother’s house — her raised eyebrow, brassy willfulness and wry sophistication — that captured the attention of critics in May and catapulted Lester to a Broadway debut at just 22 years old after the show transferred there this summer. (The Broadway run has just been extended through Oct. 16.)“In Lester, we witness a major new comedic talent emerge,” said Johnny Oleksinski in The New York Post. “All her well-known jokes feel fresh, and she is unbelievably funny. My face was a lot red from laughing so hard.”The New York Times called her “pert and twinkling”; The Washington Post, “uber-confident, rough-and-ready”; The Wall Street Journal, “deliciously impish and knowing.”It was her aura of worldliness and tenacity that made the show’s director, Lear deBessonet, so certain in casting Lester. “I knew she was right 10 seconds into her audition video,” deBessonet said. “Having seen a number of Little Reds over the years, any sort of cutesy, girlie, victim thing was totally not of interest to me. As a woman, there are certain things I don’t ever want to see onstage again.“There is a lot of pressure on actors to live through other people’s eyes,” Lester said. “Learning to live unapologetically and as myself has been really important.”Raphael Gaultier for The New York Times“For me, the defining quality of the character is hunger, this delicious power lust which is so refreshing and unexpected,” deBessonet continued. “It was immediate upon seeing Julia. I was like, ‘Yup, well: There she is.’”Sipping water in a theater district hotel before a recent performance, in a braid and Doc Marten lace-up boots, Lester did come across as preternaturally comfortable in her own — admittedly callow — skin.Despite her cherubic face and wide-eyed words about getting to share the stage with so many veterans (including Sara Bareilles, Gavin Creel and Phillipa Soo), Lester talked about how she has grown increasingly self-assured over the last few years.“There is a lot of pressure on actors to live through other people’s eyes,” she said. “Learning to live unapologetically and as myself has been really important for me.“Our whole career is based on what other people think about us,” Lester continued. “It’s quite a struggle to know that other people are silently or non-silently judging you on a daily basis.”If onstage she seems experienced beyond her years, that’s because she is, having performed professionally since she was 5 and just completed her third season as Ashlyn Caswell in the Disney+ series “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,” the musical drama about high school theater students. (The fourth season starts shooting in Salt Lake City in September.)Lester, at the piano, with Olivia Rodrigo in the TV series “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.”Fred Hayes/Disney +Show business also runs in Lester’s blood. Her great-grandfather and his siblings were part of a Yiddish opera company in Poland at the turn of the century. Her maternal grandparents, Helen and Peter Mark Richman, met doing summer stock theater. Her mother, Kelly, and father, Loren, continue to perform, as do her two older sisters, Jenny and Lily.“We’re a big performing family,” Lester said. “I can’t stress enough how supportive we all are of each other.”Her version of Take Your Daughter to Work Day was going to the Universal Studios lot and hanging out with her dad on commercial shoots. “I always knew from the second I was born that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” Lester said. “So being able to be surrounded by it on a daily basis, and really learn from my family, is such a blessing.”Born on Jan. 28, 2000, in Los Angeles, Lester had been in productions of “Into the Woods” twice before: first as the cow Milky White in a community theater production when she was in elementary school (her sisters played other parts) and the next time at age 18 as Little Red in a 99-seat theater in Los Angeles.While many actors dread having to try out for parts — given their nerves and the statistical likelihood of rejection — Lester said she loves auditioning.“You’re being given the opportunity to do what you were put on this earth to do,” she said, “which is to perform.”Lester is also personally drawn to the character of Little Red, who, after being rescued from the mouth of the wolf, goes on to carry a knife for protection, to look after Jack (of beanstalk fame) and to grow up before the audience’s eyes. “She is so feisty and so funny,” Lester said. “In a lot of the moments when it’s really high stakes and dark themes are happening, she is a beacon of comedy and light. That’s always really fun — to be able to bring down the house during a quiet, serious moment.”Lester as Little Red Riding Hood and Cole Thompson as Jack in the Broadway revival of “Into the Woods.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWith her performance in this Encores! revival, which originated at New York City Center before moving to the St. James Theater on Broadway, the actress said she “wanted to reinvent the way people see Little Red.”“When I was working on the script, I tried my very best to look at every line that she says, and really think about, ‘What’s the most unexpected way to portray what’s written?’” she said.James Lapine, who wrote the show with Sondheim (who died in November), said it was the first time that he had seen an adult play the part, which its usually played by actors under 18. “She’s bringing something a little punchier to it and more emotional shadings,” he said. “She’s a more knowing Little Red Riding Hood.”The show’s actors say they, too, have been struck by Lester’s sure hand in getting big laughs and by how she brings a modern sensibility to the role without bastardizing it. “She has that radar which the greats have — they know when to put their foot on the brake or the gas,” said Brian d’Arcy James, who plays the Baker, adding that Lester’s interpretation is “totally fresh but also honoring what’s preceded.”Bareilles, who plays the Baker’s Wife, said she had been pleasantly surprised by Lester’s “natural fire” as well as by her palpable respect for the opportunity she had been given, for her fellow performers and for live theater itself. “She feels like an old soul to me,” Bareilles said. “She doesn’t carry any neediness or urgency to get seen. There is a reverence in how she approaches the work.”From left: Sara Bareilles, Brian d’Arcy James, Phillipa Soo and Lester in the show. “She has that radar which the greats have — they know when to put their foot on the brake or the gas,” James said of Lester.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs “a real die-hard theater kid,” Lester said, there is a pinch-yourself quality to what she’s living through, since she long admired from afar the very people she now finds herself performing next to onstage.“I never expected that I would be making my Broadway debut in a Sondheim show, let alone be surrounded by so many people that I’ve grown up loving and watching,” she said, adding, “Every single person has taken me under their wing.”While she is only committed to the show until Sept. 4, Lester said she would love to return to this Broadway production and to see it live on. “I’m sort of hoping for this show to be the new ‘Chicago’ and just be long-running forever and I can come back to it like home base whenever I am available,” she said. “This is definitely a show that I am not ready to say goodbye to anytime soon.”The personal response she has received from members of the audience has been particularly rewarding. Well aware that, as a full-figured young woman, she may not meet the traditional physical definition of an ingénue, Lester said she was gratified that other young women have looked to her as an affirming role model.“It’s taken a second to grow into myself and be comfortable with who I am, but it’s got to start somewhere,” she said. “If someone can say, ‘I see myself in you when you’re playing Little Red’ — when I’m standing on a Broadway stage — that’s exactly why I’m an actor and a performer.”“I’m really grateful to the people who have seen beyond what I look like,” she added, “and seen what I can offer to the world.” More

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      ‘Into the Woods’ and a Missing Giant’s Boot

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      When the Stephen Sondheim musical opened in 1987, a huge boot hung over the theater’s facade. The producers of the current revival would love to get it back.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Scroll down for a look at when a plane smashed into the Empire State Building — 77 years ago today. But first, a Broadway mystery.From 1987 to 1989, a giant boot dangled over the theater where “Into the Woods” was playing.Ann SlavitThe producers of the revival of “Into the Woods,” the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical, have a wish. It is to locate a something you might call a prop from the original production. It is missing.It is a giant inflatable boot with a long vinyl leg attached.The boot was a fixture when “Into the Woods” opened in 1987. It was anchored to what was then the Martin Beck Theater (now the Al Hirschfeld). “The boot was like a beacon,” said Jordan Roth, the lead producer of the current revival at the St. James, which is extending its run to Oct. 16. “It was literally the beacon that called us all to the theater. I think why it captured our imagination was the way it really physicalized this impossible balance of the show between whimsy and weight.”Michael David, the executive producer for the original run, said there was a more practical concern. The theater, an “outlier” west of Eighth Avenue, had not had a long-running show in some time when “Into the Woods” arrived, he said. The boot gave the theater an identity “to help people find us, not where they’d think ‘what is the address’ but ‘the one with the boot above it.’”A 1987 sketch of the boot for “Into the Woods.” Ann SlavitWhen “Into the Woods” closed in 1989, the boot went into storage. It came out for a revival in 2002, this time at the Broadhurst Theater.The mystery is what happened to the boot when that production closed after 18 previews and 279 performances.“It’s in storage — I just don’t know where in storage,” David said, adding that there were two facilities in New Jersey still to be checked.The boot, which conjured up the giant who creates mayhem in the story, was the work of Ann Slavit, who had done a 30-foot-tall pair of red shoes that hung on the Brooklyn Academy of Music as a tribute to the celebrated ballet movie “The Red Shoes.”“I don’t think Michael David said to me, ‘Oh, can you do a boot?’” she said. “Maybe we were talking about the giant and I thought, ‘You never see him in the show so we could have this ominous presence.’” There was a second shoe that looked as if it was coming over the parapet of the theater.She said she suspected it had been discarded after it was taken off the Broadhurst on a day with particularly bad winter weather.But Chic Silber, a special effects designer who was involved in installing and removing it at the Broadhurst in 2002, said it was “neither destroyed nor thrown out” when it came down. But it had been cut into at least a couple of pieces. “What happened to either half after that, I don’t know,” he said.Roth, the lead producer of the revival, put out an all-points bulletin for the boot almost as soon as the arrangements to move “Into the Woods” into the St. James were completed in late spring. He recalled seeing the boot the first time he saw “Into the Woods,” as a 12-year-old in 1988, with Phylicia Rashad in the cast. If it were found and mounted on the St. James, he said, “the knee would bend right above my office window.”But Silber had advice for Roth: Call off the search.“Even if it could be found,” he said, “there is no way it would inflate again and work on the roof of any building.” And making a new boot would cost far less, he said.WeatherPrepare for a chance of showers on a mostly sunny day near the mid-80s. At night, expect a chance of showers and thunderstorms, with temperatures dropping to the mid-70s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).The latest New York newsCathy Linh Che scrambled to find another apartment in the Two Bridges neighborhood in Manhattan after the rent on her pandemic-deal apartment increased by 65 percent.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesThe pandemicThe ‘Covid discount’: More than 40 percent of the available units in Manhattan currently come from tenants priced out of apartments they leased in 2020 and 2021, according to a new StreetEasy report.Your economic situation: The pandemic has drastically changed the global economy. We’re checking in with readers about their financial circumstances, and how they feel about the future.More local newsSchool budget cuts: More than $200 million in cuts to New York City public schools have been put on hold by a Manhattan judge, the latest move in an escalating fight over how to fund schools.Monkeypox vaccines: There were only 1,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine available. Within two hours, the only clinic offering the shots began turning people away. At that same moment, some 300,000 doses of a ready-to-use vaccine owned by the United States sat in a facility in Denmark.Do you know the ice cream man? Owning an ice cream truck in New York City used to be a lucrative proposition, but for some, the expenses have become untenable.Honoring a baseball legend: Jackie Robinson accomplished a great deal on the field, but a museum celebrating his life — which will have a ribbon-cutting this week — puts as much focus on his civil rights work.LOOK BACKThe day a plane hit the Empire State BuildingErnie Sisto/ The New York TimesFor the city that had been defined by skyscrapers — and even for a skyscraper that had been defined by a monster movie — what happened on a densely foggy morning 77 years ago today was unthinkable. An airplane crashed into the Empire State Building.Fourteen people were killed: The pilot, Lt. Col. William Smith Jr., and the two others aboard his Army B-25, and 11 in what was then the world’s tallest building. Burning fuel rained down an elevator shaft after the fuel tanks exploded. An engine and part of the landing gear tumbled into a subbasement.Smith had been scheduled to fly to La Guardia Airport, but as he approached, he said he wanted to land at Newark. The change sent Smith’s unarmed training plane over Manhattan and into the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building. A government investigation later concluded that he had “erred in judgment” and should not have been cleared to proceed.Up in the Empire State Building, where clouds sometimes drifted into the not-yet air-conditioned offices, the roar of the two propeller-driven engines became louder as the B-25 cruised along. And then it hit.Soon office workers were rushing down the stairways to safety, and firefighters were rushing in. So were photographers lugging bulky 4-by-5 Speed Graphic cameras.One of them was Ernie Sisto of The New York Times, who talked his way past the police officers on the street and rode to the 67th floor in an elevator that was still in operation. He then took the stairs, finding a vantage point above the 79th floor.There, he dangled over the parapet after asking two competing photographers to hold his legs. He repaid the favor by snapping shots for them, along with the photograph above.Therese Fortier Willig, a secretary in the Catholic War Relief office on the 79th floor, huddled with co-workers. She recalled in 1995 that she was so upset that she yanked off the rings she was wearing and hurled them out the window. One was her high-school graduation ring, the other a friendship ring from her boyfriend, whom she never expected to see again.She eventually escaped, and firefighters not only discovered the rings in the debris on the street, they tracked her down and gave them back. She married the man who had given her the friendship ring and had a son — George Willig, who climbed the World Trade Center in the 1970s.“She hardly ever talked about it, kind of like I hardly ever talk about climbing the World Trade Center,” he said this week. “After a while your life goes on, it’s part of your history.”But sometimes he thinks about his mother’s association with one tall New York building and his association with another. “I have a hard time putting that all together and making sense of it,” he said.METROPOLITAN diaryPhones offDear Diary:As an original subscriber to City Center’s Encores! series, I was thrilled to attend the eagerly anticipated reopening after a two-year hiatus.Subscribers generally know all the audience members who sit near them, so there’s a bit of a buzz when someone new appears. And at a February performance of “The Tap Dance Kid,” everyone in my row noticed a new face in the row in front of us.As the standard announcement was made about the rules against taking photographs and videos and using phones, this woman took out her phone and appeared to start texting.The orchestra began to play, and the audience applauded. The light from the phone was still visible. I was about to tap her on her shoulder and ask her to turn off the phone, when the person beside her turned to her.“Please turn that phone off,” he said.“And by the way,” he added. “You’re way off track. The Wordle is ‘pleat.’”— Dennis BuonaguraIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero More

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      ‘Into the Woods’ Review: Do You Believe in Magic?

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      The Encores! revival of this fairy-tale musical, with songs by Stephen Sondheim, arrives on Broadway with its humor, wonder and humanity intact.After the woods and the wolf and the dark and the knife, Little Red Riding Hood has learned a thing or two. In the first act of “Into the Woods,” while modeling a cloak made from the wolf’s pelt, she shares her wisdom. Be prepared, she advises in “I Know Things Now.” Watch out for strangers. Stephen Sondheim’s bone-dry lyrics supply one more maxim: “Nice,” Little Red concludes, “is different than good.”True. But isn’t it splendid when a work of musical theater is absolutely both?Lear deBessonet’s superb production of the Sondheim and James Lapine modern classic “Into the Woods,” which originated at Encores! in May, has made the journey west and south to Broadway. Despite some cast changes, its humor, wonder and humanity have arrived intact. Indeed, they may glimmer even more brightly at the St. James Theater than they did at City Center. So if you saw that recent staging, should you go into the woods again? Unless your budget doesn’t run to Broadway prices, of course you should. To put it another way: Wishes come true, not free.A pastiche of a half-dozen Perrault and Brothers Grimm fairy tales, “Into the Woods” debuted at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego in 1986 and on Broadway the following year. It had a respectful Broadway revival, directed by Lapine, in 2002, and a misbegotten stint at Shakespeare in the Park in 2012. Disney adapted it into a pretty, somewhat empty live action film in 2014. For decades it has remained a favorite among high school drama clubs though many of those clubs stage only the first act, when happily ever after seems possible.As Sondheim and Lapine knew, a happy ending depends on where you stop the story. Turn enough pages and death puts in an appearance, disillusion, too. Perhaps this seems like a grim lesson from a show with Cinderella (Phillipa Soo), Jack the Giant Killer (Cole Thompson) and Little Red Riding Hood (Julia Lester) among its central characters. But if you reread those original tales, they skew pretty dark. Of Sondheim’s work, only “Sweeney Todd” has a comparable body count. Yet somehow its tone is hopeful.The cast of “Into the Woods,” includes, from left: Kennedy Kanagawa (with Milky White), Cole Thompson, Brian d’Arcy James, Joshua Henry, Patina Miller, Phillipa Soo, David Patrick Kelly, Sara Bareilles and Lester.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA work of giddy playfulness and moral seriousness, “Into the Woods” forges a path from innocence into experience. It asks its characters (the surviving ones, anyway) to exchange the narcissism of childhood — the wishing, the wanting — for a more nuanced ethical framework that emphasizes interdependence. This is the message of the show’s heartbreaker ballad, “No One Is Alone,” which Sondheim articulated even more directly in a 1991 PBS interview. “We are all responsible for each other,” he said.The mood at the St. James on a recent evening did not, however, suggest deep moral inquiry. And judging by the hats worn indoors, the masks not worn at all and at least one surreptitious phone camera, everyone was handling responsibility a little differently. So what were the vibes? Pleasure, anticipation, celebration. When the lights came up, the crowd screamed and screamed and screamed. I expected panties — or given the source material, the occasional dancing slipper — to be thrown at the stage.DeBessonet’s staging, refined but little altered from the Encores! outing, uses only a wide set of stairs and a downstage strip in front of them. The set, designed by David Rockwell, with storybook lighting by Tyler Micoleau, sketches a forest in the simplest terms — descending birch trunks, a rising moon. Behind the actors, sit the musicians, conducted by the invaluable Rob Berman. If your eye should stray from the actors — a big if — you can watch them implement the chiming score, magic made visible.If the production’s style is minimal, it is never austere and on this mostly blank canvas, deBessonet, aided by Lorin Latarro’s playful choreography, paints in rich and plentiful tones. Kindness is a watchword of deBessonet’s work, as seen in her many Public Works productions. A recognition of shared humanity, too. Here it seems to extend everywhere, to actors and audience both. I have rarely seen a show in which the cast had this much fun. In the case of Gavin Creel, who went up on the second verse of “Any Moment” and covered — sort of — by kissing his co-star Sara Bareilles, arguably too much fun. Throughout there is a feeling of largess that only occasionally shades into indulgence. And honestly, some of that indulgence (as in “Agony,” sung to pieces by Creel and his co-prince, Joshua Henry) is a joy, too.Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife and James as the Baker. “Together they find some fine rhythms in the roles of a married couple only beginning to know each other,” our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBareilles’s performance as the Baker’s Wife has only grown, beanstalk-like, since the Encores! production. Best known as a singer-songwriter and the composer of “Waitress,” she has more recently established herself as a comic actor on “Girls5Eva.” Here, her comedy has both broadened and deepened. While she and Neil Patrick Harris had a wild, nervy chemistry at Encores!, she is now partnered by the mellower Brian d’Arcy James. Together they find some fine rhythms in the roles of a married couple only beginning to know each other.Soo, a shimmering soprano who can make each emotion as legible as skywriting, gracefully replaces Denée Benton. (Benton replaced her in “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” when it moved to Broadway; fair’s fair.) And Patina Miller, replacing Heather Headley, renders the Witch with a fierce, dangerous glamour, trading Headley’s initial restraint for more ardent shadings. On this recent evening, the puppeteer Kennedy Kanagawa was out sick, but his understudy, Cameron Johnson, was an able herdsman for Jack’s pal, Milky White. That cow still kills. And the children’s chorus is gone. Thank God.During the second act, I worried — though worry is too strong a word — that maybe this production had become too funny, too lightsome. The devastations of the second act didn’t flatten me the way they had two months ago. But really, who wants flattening right now? Instead this show values resilience, connection.At the end, once Soo had trilled the final ambivalent syllables, the audience leaped to its collective feet. The actors bowed and curtsied and smiled. The rest of us clapped and clapped.No one was alone.Into the WoodsThrough Aug. 21 at the St. James Theater, Manhattan; intothewoodsbway.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. More

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      She’ll Have You at Moo: Milky White and the Power of Puppetry

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      Once upon a time on Broadway, back in 1987, the skinny old “cow as white as milk” in the new James Lapine-Stephen Sondheim musical “Into the Woods” was played by a prop as still as a statue. The cow, Milky White, has no lines, so it worked.Years went by, the fairy-tale mash-up musical returned to Broadway in 2002, and this time Milky White was played by an actor in a cow suit. Now she could dance, and that worked, too.Decades passed, and in the frenzied spring of 2022 came a hit Encores! revival so delicious that it transferred almost instantly from New York City Center to Broadway. Now in previews at the St. James Theater, where it opens on July 10, this “Into the Woods” presents Milky White as a puppet who breathes, coughs, moos and mourns — which works enchantingly.Or as an enchantment? It is a mysterious thing, the preternatural dynamic between a puppet onstage and the people in the seats, even the grown-up ones.”We’re best friends,” the actor Kennedy Kanagawa said of the cow puppet that he brings to life in “Into the Woods.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWe, the savvy spectators, know that the puppet isn’t what it pretends to be. We can plainly see, for example, that Milky White is not an actual cow, that her scrawny ribs are built of cardboard, that an agile actor — the Broadway newcomer Kennedy Kanagawa — is operating her. But we look right past the artifice and invest in the puppet. Whereupon it unlocks in us a less guarded, more primal sympathy than we might allow ourselves to feel for a human performer.“There is a funny sort of yes-and that has to take place,” said James Ortiz, the Obie Award winner (for the puppet-filled Tin Man prequel “The Woodsman”) who designed Milky White. “There’s a magical sort of agreement that automatically happens. I really can’t explain fully why, but an audience just leans in and goes, ‘It’s real.’”In the musical, Milky White is the cow traded by Jack — the not-so-bright boy of beanstalk fame — for a pittance of five magic beans. With floppy ears, a free-swinging udder and a head of soft foam textured with paper, she has a handmade aesthetic that’s ideal for Lear deBessonet, the revival’s director, who confessed to having “almost an inverse emotional relationship” to slickly engineered production elements.For her, high-tech means low emotion. Whereas with Milky White, deBessonet melted as soon as she saw her move — though that initial glimpse was digital, in a short video that Ortiz shot after he first built Milky White.Kanagawa, Milky White and Cole Thompson during a rehearsal of “Into the Woods” at New 42nd Studios.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“He conceived a cow that has a full range of ecstasy and sadness and embarrassment and longing and all of these things,” said deBessonet, the artistic director of Encores!, who is making her Broadway debut with this production. “He knows how to leave just that right amount of space for the actor’s imagination, the puppeteer’s imagination and the audience’s imagination to combine and lift that object into this whole other stratosphere of meaning and play.”As high-profile Sondheim revivals tend to be, deBessonet’s is packed with stars: Brian d’Arcy James as the Baker, Sara Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife, Phillipa Soo as Cinderella, Patina Miller as the Witch, Gavin Creel as the Wolf and Joshua Henry as Rapunzel’s Prince.Milky White is the principal puppet, but Ortiz has designed her some puppet company: a gargantuan and sinister pair of witch’s hands; the Giant’s elegant, open-weave boots (for which Ortiz tapped the wicker expertise of a fellow puppet designer, Camille Labarre); and, as Cinderella’s loyal friends, a flock of normal-size birds. Their wings have fragments of text on them, even though Ortiz knows the detail is too tiny for the audience to see.“The feathers are made out of torn-up pieces of poetry,” he said. “There’s also bits of Shakespeare in there from ‘Twelfth Night,’ because it’s about a young girl who disguises herself and finds love.”Early one evening in June, after the first rehearsal for the Broadway run, Ortiz and Kanagawa were sitting in a rehearsal studio on West 42nd Street, giving an interview for this article. A few feet away Milky White hung next to the birds on a metal rack, looking as lifeless as any puppet does without its puppeteer.Phillipa Soo, right, as Cinderella and Albert Guerzon, rehearsing a scene in which he operates a flock of birds, Cinderella’s loyal friends.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesKanagawa walked over and, after checking with Ortiz to make sure it was OK, took her down. Holding her by the handles, Kanagawa played with her spindly, splaying cardboard legs and recounted how he learned to shift her udder to one side when she needs to sit down. But he wasn’t puppeteering her just yet; she was still inanimate.Then he tilted her head ever so slightly, and instantly there she was: imbued with life and seemingly quizzical — even if her big, almost teary eyes are really just beveled foam coated with clear epoxy that catches the light.“Yeah, we’re best friends,” said Kanagawa, who was praised for his expert puppeteering in Alexis Soloski’s review of the Encores! production in The New York Times.It’s a recent skill for Kanagawa. Ortiz asked him to play Milky White because of his playfulness and imagination as an actor and his deep-rooted passion for the show. Then he taught him how to do it.This production has offered both of them the space to evolve the musical’s performance tradition, considering the sparsely written Milky White as a full character in puppet form.“We just kind of talk endlessly about cow logic,” Ortiz said.“Which honestly is kind of dog logic,” Kanagawa said. “Milky is a pet.”There’s the “right amount of space for the actor’s imagination, the puppeteer’s imagination and the audience’s imagination to combine and lift that object into this whole other stratosphere of meaning,” said Lear deBessonet, the revival’s director.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesOrtiz, 38, grew up in Dallas, and made his Broadway debut this spring, designing the frolicsome mammoth and dinosaur puppets for “The Skin of Our Teeth” — and, the season being what it was, filling in for three performances as that show’s head puppeteer. The first live musical he ever saw was a high school production of “Into the Woods,” with a statue-style cow.Kanagawa, 37, was born in Tokyo and moved to the Washington, D.C., area when he was 10. In seventh grade, at a birthday party, he watched the video recording of “Into the Woods” with its original Broadway cast and original Broadway cow — then got his own VHS copy and, he said, “absolutely destroyed it with watching it so many times.”More recently, in Rob Marshall’s 2014 movie version (with James Corden as the Baker, Emily Blunt as the Baker’s Wife, Anna Kendrick as Cinderella, and Meryl Streep as the Witch), a genuine cow played the cow — not a casting decision likely to be emulated by many stage productions.Long before that, though, an idea percolated in Hollywood that might have permanently altered the performance tradition of “Into the Woods.” The Muppets creator Jim Henson was interested in making a film adaptation. He “saw the show and was a fan,” Lapine wrote in an email. “He was a wonderful fellow.” But Henson died in 1990.Five years later, the idea moved forward anyway at Columbia Pictures. As Sondheim recalls in his book “Look, I Made a Hat,” the animals in the movie were to be played by “Henson creatures.” The script got a couple of readings with a couple of deliriously starry casts (one had Robin Williams as the Baker, Cher as the Witch and Carrie Fisher and Bebe Neuwirth as Cinderella’s stepsisters) before, Sondheim writes, the project was killed in a studio shake-up.It’s easy to envision a profusion of puppet Milky Whites, a whole generation’s worth, blossoming forth onstage if that film had happened. Instead, the cow that deBessonet asked for, and Ortiz designed, and Kanagawa operates, will be Broadway’s first puppet Milky White.Just lean in and look into her eyes. There’s no question at all: She’s real. More

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      A Starry ‘Into the Woods’ Will Play Broadway This Summer

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      The fairy-tale musical, with songs by Stephen Sondheim, will feature Sara Bareilles and a cast of much admired theater performers.A production of “Into the Woods” that garnered ecstatic reviews during a sold-out two-week run at New York City Center this month will transfer to Broadway this summer.The Broadway production, scheduled to run for just eight weeks, will again feature the singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife and Gavin Creel as a prince, but the other lead roles will be played by newcomers to the production — including Patina Miller, a Tony winner for “Pippin,” as the Witch; Brian d’Arcy James (“Something Rotten!”) as the Baker; Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton”) as Cinderella; and Joshua Henry (“Carousel”) as the other prince.“When things don’t make sense anymore, this is the show that holds our hand,” Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters and the production’s lead producer, said. “That’s why it resonated so profoundly deeply, and why we need to allow more people to have that experience.”“Into the Woods,” which first opened on Broadway in 1987, is one of the great collaborations between the songwriter Stephen Sondheim, who died last fall, and the book writer James Lapine. The show, a cautionary mash-up of various fairy tales, is widely staged, both professionally and at schools, and in 2014 Disney released a film adaptation.This new production, which began as part of the Encores! program at City Center, will start performances June 28 and open July 10 at the St. James Theater. It is again directed by Lear deBessonet, the Encores! artistic director. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Alexis Soloski declared the City Center production “glorious,” and many other critics agreed.The Encores! cast featured several performers who are not joining the Broadway production because of filming commitments, including Heather Headley, who played the Witch; Denée Benton, who played Cinderella; and Neil Patrick Harris, who played the Baker.The Broadway run will be produced by Jujamcyn, Roth, and City Center, as well as Hunter Arnold, Nicole Eisenberg, Michael Cassel Group, Jessica R. Jenen, Daryl Roth, ShowTown Productions, and Armstrong, Gold & Ross.Jordan Roth said that the physical production would be the same as at City Center, with an onstage orchestra and minimal sets and costumes. “The simplicity and poetry of this production delivered this story right to our hearts,” he said.A New York City Center production of “Sunday in the Park With George,” also written by Sondheim and Lapine, followed a similar path to Broadway. That production, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford, had a four-performance run at City Center in 2016, followed by a 10-week run on Broadway in 2017. More

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      Terry Gilliam's Disputed Sondheim Show Finds a Home

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      The director was set to stage a revival of “Into the Woods” in London. After a clash at the Old Vic theater, the much-anticipated production will now debut 115 miles away, in Bath, England.LONDON — For weeks, a question hung over London theater: What would happen to Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”?On Nov. 1, the Old Vic theater canceled a revival of the musical, co-directed by Terry Gilliam, after a dispute in which the renowned director was accused of endorsing transphobic views and playing down the MeToo movement. That left the production in limbo and London’s theater world wondering if anyone would dare to take it on.Now, there is an answer. On Aug. 19, 2022, Gilliam’s “Into the Woods” will debut at the Theater Royal in Bath, 115 miles from London. The show will run through Sep. 10, 2022, the theater said in a statement.The fuss around the revival — which had received Sondheim’s blessing before his death — began in May, when the Old Vic announced the production as the centerpiece of its new season. That news caused a stir on British social media, because of comments Gilliam had made, in a newspaper interview, about the MeToo movement and so-called cancel culture.In January 2020, Gilliam told The Independent that MeToo “was a witch hunt” and that he was tired of white men “being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world.” Anyway, he added, he now identified as “a Black lesbian in transition.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}According to a report in The Stage, a British theater newspaper, “some within the Old Vic team” felt Gilliam’s comments were “at odds with the theater’s culture and values.”On May 12, Kate Varah, the Old Vic’s executive director, addressed staff concerns at an internal meeting. She said that she had spoken with Gilliam and that the conversation had reassured her that he shared the theater’s values.But the dispute escalated after Gilliam wrote a post on Facebook about “The Closer,” the Dave Chappelle comedy special on Netflix. In the show, the comedian comments mockingly on transgender issues and aligns himself with some feminists who say a transgender woman’s biological sex determines her gender and can’t be changed. Dozens of Netflix employees in Los Angeles staged a walkout over the special, accusing Netflix of endorsing bigotry.“There is a storm brewing over Netflix’s support for the show,” Gilliam wrote on Oct. 14. “I’d love to hear your opinions.”On Nov. 1, the Old Vic and Scenario Two, the musical’s co-producers, announced that they had “mutually agreed to cancel the production,” leading British newspapers to speculate that the Facebook post was the reason behind the decision. The theater and the director both declined to comment for this article. But on Monday, Gilliam said on Facebook that a group of up-and-coming playwrights, directors, costume designers and others at the theater was responsible for the cancellation.The Theater Royal in Bath, England. “Into the Woods” is set to open at the playhouse on Aug. 19, 2022.Nigel Jarvis/ShutterstockGilliam said that members of a short-term artistic development program at the theater, called the Old Vic 12, had “intimidated” the playhouse into canceling the musical after he recommended Chappelle’s special to his Facebook followers.Members of the program were “closed-minded, humor-averse ideologues,” Gilliam said, adding, “Freedom of Speech is often attacked, but I never imagined that Freedom of Recommendation would be under threat as well.”Three members of the Old Vic 12 declined to comment, but one did note that the program had ended several months before the Old Vic reached its decision on “Into the Woods.”In a phone interview, John Berry, a co-founder of Scenario Two, declined to comment on the Old Vic’s decision. His focus was on making an entertaining show, he added. “For me, nothing else matters.”The controversy around “Into the Woods” is not the only recent scandal involving accusations of bigotry in London’s theaters. In November, several prominent Jewish celebrities and journalists accused the Royal Court Theater of perpetuating antisemitic tropes after it staged a new play by the British playwright Al Smith, called “Rare Earth Mettle.” Early performances in the show’s run featured a character called Hershel Fink, a big-nosed, greedy billionaire who seemed to embody negative stereotypes about Jewish people.After a barrage of criticism on social media and in British newspapers, the character’s name was changed. The theater said in a statement that a Jewish theater director had raised concerns about the character in a September workshop: “We acknowledge our wrongdoing and will include antisemitism in future anti-oppression practices and training,” the statement said.Berry declined to comment on whether the two controversies had implications for theater makers, but added, “I have my own views.”He was certain of one thing, though: “There’s certainly not going to be anything controversial” in his production of “Into the Woods.”“It’s going to be vintage Terry Gilliam,” he said. More

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      Interest in Stephen Sondheim's Music, Books and Shows Soar After His Death

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      Fans have been streaming his music, buying his books, and trying to get in to see his shows, with a new revival of “Company” opening this week on Broadway.Streams of Stephen Sondheim’s music are up more than 500 percent. New York’s Drama Book Shop sold out the first volume of his collected lyrics. And close to 5,000 people have been entering a lottery to win tickets to weekend performances for a sold-out run of “Assassins.”In the days since the unexpected death of one of the most important writers in the history of musical theater, interest in his work has surged.“There’s even greater demand to see the work of Sondheim, and we’ve been feeling the benefit,” said Chris Harper, a lead producer of the revival of “Company,” one of Sondheim’s most acclaimed musicals, which opens on Broadway on Thursday. “What has also been pretty extraordinary to watch is that audiences are listening much more intently, and it feels like a much richer and deeper experience.”Sondheim died, unexpectedly, on Nov. 26, at the age of 91; the cause of death was cardiovascular disease, according to his death certificate. Broadway theaters decided to dim their lights Wednesday night for one minute in his honor.Sondheim’s popularity had its peaks and valleys during his lifetime, and many of his shows were not commercially successful. But much of his work is now frequently performed, and his importance to the art form is undisputed; on Sunday he was hailed by President Biden, who said, “Stephen was in a class of his own as a composer and a lyricist.”The evidence of a spike in appetite for work by Sondheim is everywhere.Look, for example, to the Off Broadway revival of “Assassins,” directed by John Doyle and now running at the Classic Stage Company in Lower Manhattan. The production was fully sold out before Sondheim’s death, but now the number of people regularly entering a digital lottery hoping to score $15 tickets is ballooning. And the roughly 5,000 people seeking tickets to weekend shows face long odds: the theater seats just 196 people..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“We’re definitely seeing an uptick in interest since his passing,” said Phil Haas, the nonprofit’s director of marketing and communications. “It’s hard to judge the exact amount, because the show is sold out and has been sold out for some time, but we have seen increased numbers of people joining our lottery, more people waiting on the cancellation line, and people waiting for longer.”Then there is the Drama Book Shop, a specialty store in Midtown that stocks scripts and other theater-related publications. Needless to say, Sondheim was always popular there, but now, even more so.“We almost immediately sold out, and had to reorder, ‘Finishing the Hat,’” said Pete Milano, who oversees the store’s operations, referring to the first volume of Sondheim’s collected lyrics. After Sondheim’s death, the store assembled much of its Sondheim material for a display near the entrance, and now the second volume of Sondheim’s lyrics, “Look, I Made a Hat,” is selling strongly, as are the texts for the musicals he co-authored..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“It’s not just one, but across the board, which was nice to see,” Milano said. “Plus, a lot of people are talking about him when they come in.”Online, streams of Sondheim’s music soared 523 percent in the U.S. during the week after his death, according to MRC Data, a tracking service that powers the Billboard charts.Sondheim was cheered last month when he attended the first preview of the new revival of “Company,” which opens Thursday.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAt the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, a new display of Sondheim memorabilia — letters he wrote to prominent artists as well as set models and sketches from some of his shows — was mounted in response to his death. And on Instagram, a new account called @sondheimletters has sprung up to collect and display letters Sondheim wrote to fans as well as collaborators.The “Company” opening, for a re-gendered production directed by Marianne Elliott that stars Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone, is proving to be a hot ticket — among those expected to attend are Meryl Streep and Lin-Manuel Miranda.And there are other productions of Sondheim shows in the works. The Encores! program at New York City Center had already announced it was planning a two-week run of “Into the Woods” next May, with public school students and older adults joining Sara Bareilles, Christian Borle, Heather Hedley and Ashley Park in the cast; last week Encores! announced that the production will now be dedicated to Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics. “I’ve been hearing from some of the performers that are in it, who are weeping as they relisten to his music and prepare for their roles,” said the Encores! artistic director, Lear deBessonet, who is directing the “Into the Woods” production. “This is a moment of grace, to celebrate Steve and all he brought to this world.”MasterVoices, a New York based chorus, is planning a concert version of the rarely staged “Anyone Can Whistle” in March at Carnegie Hall, starring Vanessa Williams. Barrington Stage Company, in the Berkshires, announced Tuesday that it would produce “A Little Night Music” next summer, directed by Julianne Boyd in her final season as that theater’s artistic director.And New York Theater Workshop, an Off Broadway nonprofit, is close to confirming plans for a production of “Merrily We Roll Along,” directed by Maria Friedman, for late next year.Plus, of course, the Steven Spielberg-directed movie remake of “West Side Story,” which Sondheim wrote the lyrics for, is already generating awards buzz in advance of its release on Friday. (“I think it’s just great,” Sondheim said of the film in an interview a few days before he died. He added, “The great thing about it is people who think they know the musical are going to have surprises.”)A film version of “Follies” is also in the works; the script is “in active development,” according to a spokesman for the production company, Heyday Films.Ben Sisario More