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    Elton John Says a Serious Eye Infection Limited His Vision in One Eye

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    The entertainer said on social media that it would “take some time” before sight returned to his eye.Elton John said he was recuperating from a severe eye infection that limited his vision in one eye, but that he was optimistic about his recovery.“Over the summer, I’ve been dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye,” the entertainer wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday. “I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.”Thanking a team of nurses, doctors and family members who have cared for him, he added that he was “feeling positive about the progress I have made in my healing and recovery thus far.”John, 77, has faced other medical challenges recently.In January, he won an Emmy for outstanding variety special for his live streamed farewell concert at Dodger Stadium, making him the 19th person to secure an EGOT, or win all four prestigious entertainment awards: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. But he was not present at the ceremony because of a knee operation.The “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour, billed as his last, stretched across 330 concert dates from its start in 2018 to 2023. Some of the tour dates were postponed while he underwent hip surgery after a fall and when he contracted the coronavirus.He decided to stop touring to spend more time with his husband and children, who live in Britain, his representatives have said.John, a longtime leader in gay rights activism, was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Joe Biden in 2022. More

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      How Big Is Taylor Swift?

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      You might have heard: Taylor Swift cannot be stopped. Her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” sold 2.6 million copies in its opening week last month, earning Swift her eighth Billboard No. 1 album since 2020. At the Grammy Awards in February, she became the first artist to win album of the year for a […] More

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      in Television

      Elton John Secures EGOT With Emmy Win

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      Elton John secured an EGOT on Monday night, joining the select group who have won all four major entertainment awards — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony — when he won an Emmy for outstanding variety special for his livestreamed farewell concert at Dodger Stadium.John has won five Grammys, a Tony Award for best original score for “Aida,” and two Oscars for songs in “The Lion King” (“Can You Feel the Love Tonight”) and “Rocketman” (“I’m Gonna Love Me Again”).With his Emmy for “Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium,” which streamed on Disney+, John became the 19th person to gain the title. The rather elite club includes Audrey Hepburn, Rita Moreno, Mel Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson and Viola Davis.John, 76, was not present at the Emmys ceremony because of a knee operation, said Ben Winston, an executive producer of the show who accepted the award on John’s behalf.John said in a statement that he was “incredibly humbled” by the honor.“The journey to this moment has been filled with passion, dedication and the unwavering support of my fans all around the world,” he said in the statement. “Tonight is a testament to the power of the arts and the joy that it brings to all our lives. Thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout my career, I am incredibly grateful.”The live concert, which took place at the Los Angeles stadium in 2022, carried echoes of the pop star’s pair of shows at the same venue in 1975, when, in his late 20s, John played hits such as “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Bennie and the Jets” to a sold-out venue. More

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      Exclusive: Elton John’s Auction Has It All: Boots to Banksy

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      Elton John is downsizing — and the superstar’s former penthouse residence in Atlanta has been emptied for a series of auctions at Christie’s starting on Feb. 21. The items are expected to bring in an estimated $10 million.Want the Yamaha conservatory grand piano where the Rocketman plunked the keys of his Broadway shows “Billy Elliot” and “Aida?” It will cost roughly triple what similar models sell for online, with a high estimate of $50,000.How about Julian Schnabel’s portrait of the superstar dressed in a gown and ruffled collar? The auction house is seeking $300,000.And the most expensive object, a 2017 Banksy painting of a masked man hurling a bouquet of flowers, secured directly from the anonymous artist, is expected to sell for nearly $1.5 million.Included in the auction: prescription sunglasses by Sir Winston Eyeware that Elton John owned; a diamond pendant necklace set with round diamond letters spelling “The Bitch Is Back,” estimated at $20,000-$40,000; a Cartier sapphire ring, 18k yellow gold, $50,000-$80,000.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesJohn declined to comment on the auction. (Agostino Guerra, a Christie’s spokesman, cited “long-planned scheduling conflicts.”) However, the singer’s husband and manager, David Furnish, discussed the sale in a recent interview.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Movies

      Rob Reiner Teases Details of ‘Spinal Tap’ Sequel

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      Speaking on a podcast this week, the director said Paul McCartney and Elton John will appear in the film, among other real musical stars.The director Rob Reiner has said that an upcoming sequel to his 1984 documentary parody “This Is Spinal Tap” is scheduled to begin shooting in late February and will feature Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks, among other stars.“Spinal Tap” satirized a bungled tour by a fictitious British heavy-metal band of that name, as well as the process of documenting it. The film, which was mostly improvised, was inspired by “The Last Waltz,” a Martin Scorsese documentary about the rock group the Band.Plans for “Spinal Tap II” were first announced last year. The entertainment news outlet Deadline reported at the time that the members of the fictitious band — the actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer — would all return for the sequel. Over the years, the three have played real-life concerts as their Spinal Tap characters.Reiner announced new details about the “Spinal Tap” sequel during an episode of a podcast hosted by the comedian Richard Herring that was released on Monday. The film had initially been scheduled for release in 2024, but that was before strikes that disrupted filming schedules in Hollywood. No updated release date has been announced, according to Variety.Without elaborating, Reiner said that there would also be a few other surprise appearances in the film.For most of the podcast episode on Monday, Herring and Reiner mostly talked about Reiner’s new podcast, “Who Killed JFK?” But they also discussed the original “Spinal Tap” movie, his directorial debut, which Herring said was his favorite film of all time.Asked if he regretted anything about what was and wasn’t in the 1984 film, Reiner said no. And did he anticipate how influential it would prove to be? Also no.“When we first previewed it, we previewed it in a theater in Dallas, Texas, and people … they didn’t know what the heck they were looking at,” Reiner said.“They came up to me afterward and said, ‘I don’t understand. Why would you make a movie about a band that nobody’s ever heard of? And they’re so bad! Why would you do that?’” Reiner recalled. “They said, ‘You should make a movie about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.’”“I said, ‘Well, it’s a satire,’” Reiner said on the podcast. “I tried to explain, you know. But over the years, people got it, and they started to like it.”Reiner’s comments on Herring’s podcast were reported earlier by the music magazine NME and other outlets. More

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      Elton John Warns of ‘Growing Swell of Anger and Homophobia’ in U.S.

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      “We seem to be going backwards,” the pop superstar warned as he lamented the curtailing of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in the United States, particularly in Florida.The British pop superstar Elton John lamented the “growing swell of anger and homophobia” in the United States and described several laws recently passed in Florida that curtail L.G.B.T.Q. rights as “disgraceful.”“It’s all going pear-shaped in America,” John, a longtime leader for gay rights and visibility, said in an interview published Tuesday in Radio Times, in which he pointed to a rise in violent incidents and recent legislation curtailing rights. “We seem to be going backwards. And that spreads. It’s like a virus that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ movement is suffering.”More than 520 pieces of such legislation have been introduced in over 40 states this year, a record, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group.“I don’t like it at all,” John said, referring to the increasingly hostile climate. “It’s a growing swell of anger and homophobia that’s around America.”John, 76, will headline Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival, on Sunday, as his lengthy final tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, heads toward its finale in Stockholm on July 8. The tour, which will have had over 330 dates, began in 2018 but was interrupted by the pandemic as well as John’s hip surgery.As he prepared to perform at Glastonbury, the last British date on the tour, John said that he did not know if the rising anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment is as prevalent in Britain. “I don’t know if it’s around Britain, because I haven’t been here that much,” he said.But he called the scandal around the prominent British news anchor Phillip Schofield — who recently resigned after admitting he had a relationship with a younger man — “totally homophobic.”“If it was a straight guy in a fling with a young woman, it wouldn’t even make the papers,” John said.In the interview with Radio Times, John said he might eventually be open to doing a residency after his farewell tour ends, “but not in America.” That, his representatives said, is for the same reason that he had decided to stop touring: He wants to spend more time with his husband and children, who live in Britain.Last year, John — who objected to his songs being played at rallies for former President Donald J. Trump — performed at the Biden White House. “I just wish America could be more bipartisan,” John said as he sat at his piano. After his set, President Biden awarded John the National Humanities Medal. More

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      in Theater

      Review: Praise the Lord for ‘Tammy Faye’

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      A new musical about the life of the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, composed by Elton John, makes spectacular entertainment from a righteous subject.LONDON — Praise the lord for “Tammy Faye,” the new musical that opened Wednesday at London’s Almeida Theater. Telling the unlikely story — for the English stage at least — of the American televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, the show has a heart as big as the title character’s bouffant hairdo, and runs through Dec. 3.Rupert Goold’s vigorous production is also an increasing London rarity: a musical with an original score at a time when most repackage existing hits. That the composer is Elton John has only intensified interest in a project that also includes the Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears as lyricist and the prolific playwright James Graham as book writer. John’s most recent musical, “The Devil Wears Prada,” ran aground in Chicago over the summer, so it’s a relief to report that “Tammy Faye” is, for the most part, spectacularly entertaining, even if it could do with some trims and the toning down of a few tasteless sections.And when the astonishing Katie Brayben in the title role seizes center stage to rock out at the close of both acts, you can feel the intimate Almeida transformed into the sort of pulsating arena that Tammy Faye would surely love. “Show me mercy, open your hand,” she sings, letting rip in one of several impassioned numbers, “Empty Hands,” that comes from the gut. I was right there with her, as I was in the comparable “If You Came to See Me Cry” near the end, in which Tammy Faye reflects on her legacy from heaven. (Where else?)We know she’s headed there right from the start. The show begins with the revelation that Tammy Faye has colon cancer, and a sexually explicit joke that comes after the diagnosis indicates that this won’t exactly be family fare.We then turn back the decades to chart her progression from her modest Minnesota origins to a wealthy televisual messiah with a hotline to God. “If I hadn’t lived it,” she says, “I wouldn’t believe it.”Bunny Christie’s deliberately antiseptic set consists of a back wall of TV screens that allows for a recreation of the Praise the Lord satellite network that Tammy Faye and her first husband, Jim Bakker (the Broadway star Andrew Rannells, making a firm-voiced London debut), founded in the 1970s. Her second husband, Roe Messner, is never mentioned.Brayben, left, and others in “Tammy Faye.” Brayben displays such fervor and commitment in the title role that you fall under her sway.Marc Brenner John’s score throughout is a savvy amalgam of country twang and rousing pop-rock ensemble numbers. The musical, as expected, has campy fun with its subject, but doesn’t condescend, and Graham’s canny script always places the Bakkers in the historical context of a larger conservative movement whose presence is felt to this day. We note the importance at the time of Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart, three men in the couple’s orbit who are presented as meanspirited foils of sorts to Tammy Faye’s worldview; Tammy Faye, by contrast, is all smiles and eyelashes, and Brayben communicates her generosity of spirit with ease.The show’s prevailing villain is Jerry Falwell (a sonorous Zubin Varla), who looks on in loathing at the Bakkers and is given more brooding solo numbers than the musical really needs: One would be enough. Falwell becomes the resident Iago of the piece, a rival consumed by envy who has no time for Tammy Faye’s tolerance of gay people.The second act dramatizes Tammy Faye’s famous 1985 interview with Steve Pieters (Ashley Campbell) the gay pastor and AIDS patient who finds in her a celebrity soul mate. (Love, Tammy Faye reports, gets many more mentions in the Bible than hate: 489 vs. 89, by her tally). It also charts the breakdown of the Bakkers’ blissful domestic life, when it was revealed that Jim had had a sexual encounter with Jessica Hahn, a church secretary, and was also sentenced to 45 years in prison for fraud.“Tammy Faye” is Goold’s third show this season on the stage of the Almeida, a theater he runs, after a coronavirus pandemic-delayed “Spring Awakening” and “Patriots,” a play about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch, that transfers to the West End next year. Goold and the choreographer Lynne Page have assembled a splendidly drilled ensemble that writhes and snakes across the stage in collective ecstasy. The show also hints at the fickle nature of that same crowd, who at one revealing moment turn on the couple in fury.Through it all, Brayben displays such fervor and commitment in the title role that you fall under the sway not just of Tammy Faye, but of a performer giving her career-enhancing all to a part that Brayben was born — Tammy Faye would surely say destined — to play.Tammy FayeThrough Dec. 3 at the Almeida Theater in London; almeida.co.uk. More

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      Britney Spears and Elton John’s Mash-up, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Margo Price, Julia Jacklin and Michael Kiwanuka.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Elton John & Britney Spears, ‘Hold Me Closer’By presenting Britney Spears’s first new music since the end of her conservatorship, Elton John adds newsiness to his already canny late-career playbook. As he did last year with Dua Lipa in “Cold Heart,” he has reclaimed hooks from his old songs over a plush disco track, then enlisted a headlining duet partner. “Hold Me Closer” — with choruses from “Tiny Dancer” and verses from “The One” — is produced by Andrew Watt with an echoey, nostalgic haze, floating into earshot and eventually dissolving like a mirage. In between, Spears and John mostly sing in unison, but she grabs just enough melismatic flourishes — and a distinctive “baby” — to make her presence known. JON PARELESRema & Selena Gomez, ‘Calm Down’Exposure to new audiences, or colonialism? Let’s hope the lawyers worked it out. “Calm Down,” by the Nigerian singer Rema, has been an international hit — more than 100 million plays on Spotify — since February. It’s carried by a cunningly syncopated track that uses acoustic guitar and a synthesizer blip alongside Afrobeats drum programming. Now, Selena Gomez has wisely latched on to it, and she coos boasts — “My hips make you cry when I’m moving around you” — to Rema’s own seductions. The rhythm leads; the voices affirm. PARELESMargo Price, ‘Been to the Mountain’Margo Price contains multitudes on her rollicking new single “Been to the Mountain”: “I’ve been a dancer, a saint, an assassin,” she sings with a hard-living swagger atop a chugging guitar riff. Perhaps representing a new sonic chapter for the Nashville singer-songwriter, “Mountain” hews closer to straight-ahead rock than her usual alt-country sound — there’s even a punky freakout in the middle of the song that allows her to show off the more guttural side of her voice. The striking, desert-hued music video finds Price exploring and embodying the many different aspects of her identity during a particularly potent ayahuasca trip. Embracing psychedelia may have allowed Kacey Musgraves to get spacier than ever, but here, Price sees it as an invitation to unleash her wildest side yet. LINDSAY ZOLADZJulia Jacklin, ‘Be Careful With Yourself’The Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin implores a loved one to take care on the sweetly cautious “Be Careful With Yourself,” the latest single from her third album, “Pre Pleasure,” which comes out Friday. In her conversational delivery, Jacklin offers a font of healthy and practical advice: Quit smoking, drive the speed limit and put away some money in case of an emergency because, as she admits, “I’m making plans for my future and I plan on you being in it.” It’s a tender sentiment, but the song crackles with an undercurrent of jangly, distorted guitar and palpable anxiety, as Jacklin frets that a love so pure is doomed to be lost. ZOLADZThe National featuring Bon Iver, ‘Weird Goodbyes’The National and Bon Iver — a.k.a. Justin Vernon — have long been close. Aaron Dessner has worked with both as songwriter, musician and producer. Their overlap is in stately songs with hymnlike chords, and that’s what “Weird Goodbyes” is: Matt Berninger of the National and Vernon sharing harmonies in lyrics about self-doubt. It’s glum and thoughtful and neatly crafted for both; it’s not particularly new, but it is substantial. PARELESMichael Kiwanuka, ‘Beautiful Life’A love song could hardly sound more desperate than “Beautiful Life,” a song Michael Kiwanuka first released in 2021 for the Covid documentary “Convergence: Courage in a Crisis.” With mournful vocals over descending chords, eventually joined by full orchestra and choir Kiwanuka sings about how love “rescued me from a nightmare.” Now he has re-upped the song with a grim video by Phillip Youmans that envisions a game of Russian roulette and makes life seem even more precious. PARELESNoah Cyrus and Benjamin Gibbard, ‘Every Beginning Ends’Here’s an unexpected collaboration that works: Noah Cyrus with, of all people, Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. “Every Beginning Ends” is a bleak folk-rock waltz about lovers growing estranged: “I can’t remember the last time you touched me,” he sings, in his plaintive high tenor, and she answers, “I can’t recall you making the move.” It’s matter-of-factly heartsick. PARELESNosaj Thing featuring Julianna Barwick, ‘Blue Hour’Nosaj Thing — the electronic musician Jason Chung — conjures nothing less than rapture with the multilayered “Blue Hour.” Julianna Barwick sings forgiveness and “flying into bliss” in a track that swathes a brisk, double-time beat in edgeless, reverberating synthesizer chords, her voice answered by the raw tone of a viola, balancing the ethereal and the earthy. PARELESBitchin Bajas, ‘Amorpha’Bitchin Bajas is the jokey name of a serious instrumental trio from Chicago that explores the possibilities of repetition where minimalism, psychedelia, jazz, dub and electronica overlap. “Amorpha” starts with plinking mallet percussion patterns that recall Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” but the 10-minute piece soon takes its own dizzying path, with undulating synthesizers, flickers of hyperspeed and slyly shifting meters behind its steady pulse. PARELES More

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      in Theater

      ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Review: An Adaptation That Needs Tailoring

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      The new Elton John-Shaina Taub musical, based on the popular film about a fashion-world ingénue and her demanding boss, isn’t yet ready-to-wear.CHICAGO — A movie-to-musical that wants to have its cake and eat it, too, and still fit into a sample size, “The Devil Wears Prada,” opened at the James M. Nederlander Theater here on Sunday. With music by the rock god Elton John and lyrics by the Off-Broadway sweetheart Shaina Taub (“Suffs”), it had seemed poised to set a trend or two.Though the show takes place at a fashion magazine, its creative team doesn’t seem to have agreed on a style. Is this a sincere story of a young woman’s education — sentimental, professional, sartorial — or a Fashion Week party? An inquiry into toxic workplace culture or an excuse to put an Eiffel Tower (technically, two Eiffel Towers) onstage? This is a show that has tried on everything in its closet. Nothing fits.Adapted from the 2006 film, itself adapted from Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 roman à clef of her year at Condé Nast, it follows Andy Sachs (Taylor Iman Jones), a recent journalism graduate. Andy has big dreams. The Big Apple quashes them quickly in “I Mean Business,” the show’s efficient opener. After six months of rejections, she somehow lands a coveted job at Runway — a fictional stand-in for Vogue — as the second assistant to its imperious editrix, Miranda Priestly (Beth Leavel.)Andy doesn’t care about fashion. She has the cable-knit tights to prove it. But she needs a job to pay the rent. (Yes, the musical assumes that an entry-level media gig guarantees financial security. How dear.) So she makes what she perceives as the first of many Faustian bargains — to put her dreams on hold and stick it out for a year.“My voice can wait,” she tells Miranda. I mean, Joan Didion got her start at Vogue. But sure.The trouble is, Andy isn’t very good at her job. Certainly she lacks the maniacal perfectionism and bonkers wardrobe of Emily Charlton, the venomous first assistant (Megan Masako Haley, wasted until the second act). For help, she turns to the magazine’s creative director, Nigel Owens (Javier Muñoz), who gives her the makeover she so desperately needs, in “Dress Your Way Up,” a power ballad inspired by the Met’s costume collection and the coffee mug platitude that you should dress for the job you want.But Andy remains ambivalent about her work. And is a hot pink romper and thigh-high boots really anyone’s idea of office wear? (The costumes, which range from the flamboyant — the chorus — to the unpersuasive and oddly wrinkled — the principals — are by Arianne Phillips.) The musical is ambivalent, too. The film, with its sleeker wardrobe and more substantial visual pleasures, seemed grudgingly admiring of the fashion industry, as commerce, as art. The show, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, a serious-minded artist I would not have associated with glitter or caprice, can’t make up its mind.The songs unfold pleasantly enough, with flashes of glam and morsels of wit, but they tend to feel last-season. The choreography, by James Alsop, defers to Broadway vernacular, with glimmers of ballroom. Of course there is voguing. Though Kate Wetherhead’s book makes a few updates — there’s a reference to collagen powder — it doesn’t take a point of view. And in a show with a stated aversion to starches, the jokes are deeply corny.“What should I do?” Andy wails as Miranda approaches.“Find a better exfoliant, for starters,” Nigel says.Javier Muñoz, center, as the creative director of Runway magazine, which is overseen by the imperious editor Miranda Priestly, played by Beth Leavel.Joan MarcusAt times, I wondered what a writer who takes bigger, more trenchant comic swings — Bess Wohl, say, Jocelyn Bioh, Halley Feiffer — might have done with this material. Would a score that acknowledged the last 40 years of popular music have made a difference? This version takes Jones, a charismatic actress with a lithe, flexible voice, and gives her little to do except stress and dither. (She glows, by the way, no exfoliant needed.) And though magazines like Vogue have finally admitted a lack of diversity, the musical never acknowledges that everyone mistreated by Miranda, who is white, is a person of color.“The Devil Wears Prada” wants to impart a vision of luxury and style — which explains the makeover scene, the gala scene, the Paris fashion week scene. Christine Jones and Brett Banakis, the set and media designers, have a lot of fun with Paris. But Andy, a woman with no professional bylines, seems to feel that fashion is somehow beneath her. Even when she comes to appreciate couture on a personal level (“Who’s She?”), she never recognizes it as substantive, rejecting the chance to write about it. It remains frivolous, unserious, girl stuff, which gives the musical, despite the presence of so many women on the creative team, a shade of antifeminism.None of the female characters in the show support one another until nearly the finale. Andy’s two roommates (Christiana Cole and Tiffany Mann) are sketched so thinly I never caught their names. They still make time to judge her. As looks go, it’s not great.Another nervous day at Runway: Jones, left, Muñoz and Leavel, with members of the ensemble.Joan MarcusWhich brings us, of course, to the Miranda of it all. In the film, Meryl Streep played Miranda with sleek silver hair and a voice like liquid nitrogen — an ice queen to sink the Titanic. But Leavel is an actress of humor and warmth with a gift, demonstrated in “The Drowsy Chaperone” and “The Prom,” for arch self-parody. Miranda should have her underlings shaking in their Louboutin boots. Here, everyone stands pretty tall.Has Wetherhead’s book melted Miranda or does Leavel lack the necessary frost? Both, really. The musical gifts her a late confessional, “Stay On Top.” Because if you have a voice like Leavel’s, of course you should showcase it. But Miranda isn’t built for self-reflection. And “Stay On Top” doesn’t offer much anyway.Curiously, the character the musical represents most fully isn’t uncertain Andy or meanie Miranda, but cucumber-cool Nigel. In addition to “Dress Your Way Up,” the musical’s best number, he also delivers the second act’s “Seen,” a poignant song about how fashion magazines succored him as a gay adolescent. Muñoz, a consummate performer, elevates both.The musical’s first act closes with its title song, a suggestion that the fashion world is a kind of inferno. “Hell is a runway,” the chorus sings (with a sound mix so muddy that I had to look up the lyrics later), “where the devil wears Prada.” But nothing in the show confirms this. The worst anguish Andy suffers? Her boss calls too often. “The Devil Wears Prada” isn’t as sumptuous as it should be or as bitingly incisive. If it wants a life beyond Chicago, it could use some alterations.The Devil Wears PradaThrough Aug. 21 at the James M. Nederlander Theater, Chicago; devilwearspradamusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. More