King Lear (Play)

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    West End Theatergoers Grumble as Prices for the Best Seats Surge

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    Concern is growing that a night at the theater in London is becoming unaffordable, especially when a production has starry names, like Kenneth Branagh’s “King Lear.”When hundreds of playgoers lined up outside Wyndham’s Theater in London this week, the mood was excited. They had come to see Kenneth Branagh, the revered Shakespearean actor, directing and playing the title role in “King Lear.”But some were still thinking about the price they’d paid to be there.Alan Hooper, 75, a retired teacher, said that, at the box office that morning, he was offered a seat in the first balcony for 200 pounds, around $240, or a standing place for a fraction of the cost. He chose to stand for the show’s two-hour run time. West End prices, Hooper said, were “out of control.”Another audience member, George Butler, 28, said that he was overjoyed to have secured two tickets for 20 pounds, or about $24, each, even if they were in the nosebleeds. “Theater is becoming very elitist,” Butler said. “The minute there’s a well known person in a play, it’s unaffordable.”London’s theater world is increasingly simmering with complaints over soaring ticket prices, and a perception that they are creeping closer to Broadway levels. Even as producers insist that a fraction of tickets must be sold at steep prices to offset cheap seats for low earners, concern is growing that a night at the theater is becoming an unaffordable luxury.The West End’s own stars are fueling the fuss. In April, Derek Jacobi, the veteran actor, told The Guardian newspaper that potential theatergoers were now having to think “more than twice” about attending shows. A few months later, David Tennant stirred debate when he told a Radio Times podcast that rising prices were “strangling the next generation of an audience coming through.”Leicester Square in London’s West End. British actors have spoken out about soaring ticket costs, noting that the prohibitive expense was limiting theater’s reach.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThis fall, theater message boards and social media erupted in indignation when tickets for a production of “Plaza Suite,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, went on sale with a top price of £395, around $477 — a level rarely heard of in London.Yet it was unclear whether these few high-profile cases reflected a wider problem. Alistair Smith, the editor of The Stage, a British theater newspaper, said it was difficult to analyze whether ticket prices were increasing across the board, because producers release so little sales data.To fill the gap, his newspaper annually surveys the cheapest and most expensive tickets across the West End. This year’s results, Smith said, showed that the average price for tickets in the most expensive price group was £141, or about $170 (a decade ago, the figure was a much lower £81). This year’s average was still “a long, long way behind Broadway,” he said, adding that the cost of the priciest tickets had barely changed since 2022, despite soaring household costs.However, Smith added, the average price of the least expensive tickets had risen by more than inflation to £25, or $30. “It would be a concern if that trend continues,” he said.For many West End producers, the perception of a price hike is a source of growing frustration. Patrick Gracey, a producer who sits on the board of the Society of London Theater, said that the news media published articles about high ticket prices because it “gets clicks.” Those stories were “misleading audiences about the availability of affordable tickets,” he said.Last year, Gracey said, theatergoers paid an average £54, or about $66, to see a West End show. (The average price on Broadway last week was double that at $125, according to data from The Broadway League.)Producers were facing soaring costs, Gracey added. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some theaters saw their energy costs spike as much as 500 percent, and there were similar jumps in set-building material prices. Last year, West End actors and technical staff secured a pay deal that saw their wages rise, too.The average West End theater ticket price in 2022 was about $66: high, but considerably less expensive than Broadway tickets.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesEven with those pressures, Gracey said producers were working to keep theater accessible and were offering cheap tickets for those who couldn’t splurge. “It’s only possible to offer those tickets because some people are paying top price,” he said.The producers of “King Lear” said in an emailed statement that they were offering 150 tickets per performance at £20 — equivalent to 19 percent of the house. Those included 17 in the front row, with the rest in the back rows of the theater’s three tiers.The problem was with audience perception, said Nick Hytner, a co-founder of the Bridge Theater. Producers needed to develop “a compelling counternarrative” that theater was affordable or else young people would decide that the art form wasn’t for them. Discounting the worst seats at the back of cramped Victorian theaters didn’t cut it, he said, adding that theaters need to develop more innovative approaches to pricing.Some theatergoers have justified the price of tickets for a once in a lifetime experience of seeing actors like Branagh onstage.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesOne West End show that is trying something new is “Operation Mincemeat,” a musical set in World War II. At every performance, all the seats in the house cost the same price, but that amount rises gradually throughout the week, from £39.50 on Mondays to £89.50 on weekends. Jon Thoday, the managing director of Avalon, the show’s producer, said that the production lost money on Mondays, but added that the pricing strategy was good for the musical’s long term future because it brought in a younger audience.“There will always be a fuss about ticket prices, unless others change,” Thoday said.At “King Lear” earlier this week, theatergoers weren’t complaining about Branagh’s show, at least. Marshall Shaffer, 31, a movie journalist visiting from New York, said he had paid $403 for two tickets. “I did not think that was necessarily a bargain,” he said, “but Branagh’s probably the premiere Shakespeare interpreter of his time, and I think it’s worthwhile.”Another audience member, Penny Smith, joked that she’d had to “sell a child” to buy her ticket, but said she was happy to pay to see Branagh. Plus, she said with a laugh, the tickets were “a darn sight cheaper than New York. Have you seen the prices there?” More

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      Theater to Stream: ‘Wicked in Concert,’ Christopher Lloyd as Lear

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      An all-star lineup sings Stephen Schwartz’s indelible score, and Doc from “Back to the Future” is intriguing casting for a Berkshires production.Was there a “Hunger Games”-style backstage contest for who got to sing “Popular” and “Defying Gravity”?That was my first question when I saw the lineup for the PBS special “Wicked in Concert,” hosted by the original stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, on Aug. 29. My personal pick for the first song is Alex Newell, who turns up alongside Mario Cantone, Gavin Creel, Ariana DeBose, Cynthia Erivo, Jennifer Nettles, Amber Riley, Ali Stroker and more. This tribute to Stephen Schwartz’s songs should keep fans happy until the show returns to Broadway (Sept. 14) and hits the big screen (eventually, one day, possibly-maybe, who knows).Quick: What performance so stunned Sheryl Lee Ralph that she described her reaction like so? “You ever see the cartoons where the lion roars, and the people are pinned to the wall? It was like that.” The answer — Jennifer Holliday’s in “Dreamgirls” — can also be found at PBS, where “Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age” is now streaming. The documentary covers musicals from 1959 to the early ’80s and includes interviews with Carol Burnett, Liza Minnelli and Dick Van Dyke. pbs.org.Lloyd as LearAdmit it: You are curious to know whether Christopher Lloyd, still best known for his comedic roles in “Taxi” and the “Back to the Future” trilogy, could pull off “King Lear.” Maybe not curious enough to travel all the way to Lenox, Mass., where the actor recently took on the daunting title role outdoors, but streaming the show from home is an easier way to find out what went down in the Berkshires. Nicole Ricciardi’s production for Shakespeare & Company earned wildly divergent reviews, which is often a sign that at least something is going on. Through Aug. 28; theatermania.stream.If you are really feeling adventurous, head to the Hollywood Fringe, which takes a “free-for-all approach,” unfettered by that tyrannical institution known as a “curative body.” Will it be exciting, terrifying, or both? Just select “streaming” as a filter, take a deep breath and dive in. Through Aug. 29; hollywoodfringe.org.‘George M. Cohan Tonight!’The title character of this biographical show is not a household name, unless the house hosts a coven of musical-theater experts. Yet if you have ever been on Times Square, chances are good you have at least glimpsed a representation of Cohan: It’s his statue next to the TKTS booth. Cohan was such an influential songwriter, director and producer in the Broadway of the early 20th century that he has earned two biopics, “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “George M!” — portrayed by James Cagney in 1942 and Joel Grey in 1970, respectively, which is a quite a range of actors — and this bio-show, which premiered at Irish Repertory Theater in 2006. The company is now bringing back an abridged digital version of Chip Deffaa’s musical, starring Jon Peterson. Through Aug. 29; irishrep.org.‘Bagdad Cafe’The indefatigable British director Emma Rice is a master at translating films to the stage — which is a lot harder than you might think. Only a few of those productions have crossed the Atlantic, most notably the lovely “Brief Encounter,” which made it to Broadway in 2010. Now comes her adaptation of “Bagdad Cafe,” Percy and Eleonore Adlon’s 1987 art-house staple, in which two women form a bond in a Mojave roadside joint. It was an unlikely project (a West German production set in America and starring the great CCH Pounder long before she found television fame), boosted by an unlikely hit song, “Calling You.” The show is in person at the Old Vic and streaming for a limited time as part of the company’s famed In Camera series. Aug. 25-28; oldvictheatre.com.‘The Blackest Battle’Emmanuel Kyei-Baffour, left, and Gary Perkins in “The Blackest Battle.”Theater AllianceIn this new hip-hop musical by Psalmayene 24 and nick tha 1da, Bliss (Gary Perkins) and Dream (Imani Branch) fall in love in a dystopian America. Unfortunately, they belong to enemy factions that engage in fiery rap battles, which goes to show that futuristic America is just like Shakespearean Verona of “Romeo and Juliet.” Raymond O. Caldwell’s production is presented by Theater Alliance, in Washington, D.C. Through Aug. 29; theateralliance.com.‘Ni Mi Madre’The intimate Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, in New York City, has decided to expand it footprint by making the shows in its new season available in person and online. First out of the gate is this solo, written and performed by Arturo Luís Soria (who was in the Broadway cast of “The Inheritance”). The story, inspired by Soria’s own mother, looks at the relationship between a parent and her queer son. Through Sept. 19; rattlestick.org.Two Leading Men Open UpBack in 1996, Adam Pascal brought some rock hunkiness to musical theater when he played a guitar-strumming bohemian who made shapeless sweaters look sexy in “Rent.” Pascal went on to build a solid career through shows as diverse as “Aida” and “Something Rotten!” Now he looks back in wonder in his concert “Adam Pascal … So Far.” Through Aug. 24; stellartickets.com.Another Broadway star exploring solo waters is Norbert Leo Butz, who a few months ago found himself in Vancouver, shooting the science-fiction series “Debris.” (He plays a C.I.A. operative, and if you think that’s a stretch for this amiable star, check out his expert turn as a loser marina owner in “Bloodline.”) The gig left Butz time to work out new arrangements for some of his favorite pop tunes, which he’s now performing in his acoustic concert “Torch Songs for a Pandemic” at Feinstein’s/54 Below. Happily, one of the performances is livestreaming. Aug. 21; 54below.com.‘Lava’The British press showered Ronke Adekoluejo with praise for her performance in Benedict Lombe’s “Lava,” a continent-spanning monologue that explores issues pertaining to identity via the travails of a British-Congolese woman. The show recently had an in-person run at the Bush Theater and worldwide audiences can now check out a streaming version. Aug. 16-21; bushtheatre.co.uk. More

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      André De Shields Isn’t Done With ‘King Lear’ (or ‘Hadestown’)

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      The actor is performing the coveted role for a second time, and is already aiming for a third. But first: He’s returning to Broadway in September.A throne fit for André De Shields: The actor is portraying “King Lear” at the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. “The lesson we learn about empathy is for 21st-century America still going through the woes of the pandemic,” he said of the play.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesST. LOUIS — It takes André De Shields two and a half hours to lose his mind.His turbulent descent into madness, as King Lear at the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival in Forest Park here, comes with the moments of grandiosity we now expect from the man who won a Tony Award for playing a god, Hermes, in “Hadestown” on Broadway. He dances onto the stage in one early scene, jubilantly waving an automatic weapon in the air alongside the Afrofuturistic soldiers of his North African nation; later he stumbles through the park in a leafy makeshift crown, hollering in the face of an unsuspecting patron seated in the grass.But De Shields’s towering presence is somehow more captivating in the quiet beats — perhaps most strikingly when he carries the corpse of his daughter in his arms, unwavering, halfway across the stage.“André has a natural majesty and regality in his being that to me denotes majesty and command, just the way he moves through time and space,” the director, Carl Cofield, said in an interview. “And I’m happy to report that he brings it.”De Shields, 75, has kept remarkably busy through the pandemic: When Broadway theaters were shuttered, he portrayed Frederick Douglass in a one-man performance at Flushing Town Hall in Queens, starred in “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical,” did a virtual reading at Red Bull Theater, narrated a Greek mythology-inspired audio series. And between his closing-night performance of “King Lear” on June 27 and his return to “Hadestown” on Broadway on Sept. 2, he has concert performances lined up at the Cabaret in Indianapolis and Feinstein’s/54 Below.During a recent phone interview, De Shields discussed returning to Broadway, the importance of believability in storytelling and playing Lear a second time. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How do you have the strength and stamina to pull off the kind of physically demanding performance you’re giving in “King Lear”?We had a long discussion about, first of all: Was André De Shields fit enough, strong enough, to carry his daughter Cordelia, who is actually taller than he is? I convinced my collaborators that is not the question to be asked — because I am strong at 75, I’m physically fit.The real question is: Considering the emotional roller coaster that King Lear has to ride in this play, how could you even consider that he wouldn’t have the delicious burden of having to carry the corpse of his daughter that he so mistreated? To have the king not carry the body, you’d have the entire audience questioning the validity of the performance. I use as my evidence the film version of King Lear that was done by the master Lear, Sir Laurence Olivier. He does the “howl, howl, howl” speech, and he’s holding Cordelia in his arms, but cinematic technology had not advanced so much then that if you looked very hard, you could see the piano wires holding up the body.Even then as a young person, I thought, this is outrageous. It absolutely undoes the excellence of the performance to know that any part of it is false. Now, I had no dreams of doing “King Lear” at the time, but it was a lesson that I took into my toolbox about the believability of storytelling. So when it came for my first experience in assaying the role of Lear, which was in 2006 with the Classical Theater of Harlem, the director said to me, “As much as I want you to play the role, if you cannot carry Cordelia’s body onstage, I can’t cast you.” And I said, “Well, you’ve chosen the right guy. Because not only can I carry her body onstage; I can do the entire monologue with her in my arms.”That was during the marking of my 60th birthday, and I thought then, I’d like to revisit Lear in about 10 years. So this was 15 years later, and the question comes up again. And my response was the same. I must. I can, but it must happen.From left, Brian McKinley, André De Shields, Nicole King and Michael Tran in an Afrofuturistic “King Lear.”Phillip Hamer PhotographyIt is believed that Shakespeare wrote this play on the heels of a pandemic. Has that been on your mind in preparing for this show during such a unique time?Yes. It is informed by that bubonic plague, where the ordinary citizen, if you will, was reacting to the same things we were reacting to: fear, outrage, chaos, stasis, all of the rules of society that come to bear when the playing field has been finally leveled. What the pandemic did was to create a kind of society where everyone had to obey the same rules — whether you’re rich or poor or white or Black, you have to wear the face mask, you have to practice physical distancing, you have to shelter in place. And this drove people nuts. It drove me nuts.So part of what we are revealing here is that the king that we are encouraged and taught to have so much empathy for is probably one of the most specific illustrations of unmitigated white male supremacy, and all of the evils that go with it — like homophobia, misogyny — that’s all part of the king’s character. You can’t see it immediately because it’s hidden by so much language. But when you strip that language away, you see exactly that this is a man, to put it mildly, who does not like womanhood and blames everything on what he sees as the evil of his daughters. So the lesson that he knows at the end, when he bemoans the death of Cordelia, is a lesson for us in the 21st-century world. The lesson we learn about empathy is for 21st-century America still going through the woes of the pandemic.Did you approach this role differently than you did 15 years ago?The first thing I did was to forget that I had done “King Lear” before. I had to look at this man through the eyes of someone who was now closer to his specific age. That’s why I mentioned that the first time I did it, I was 60. The second time I’m doing it, I’m 75. So the next time I do it, I will be age-specific: King Lear is remembered to be 83. And I am going to do it a third time.But what is more important than the relativism of age is the curiosity that is lodged by doing the play a second time. One of the things we lose as we mature is curiosity: being interested in things other than yourself, other than your corner of the world. But returning to “King Lear” during a pandemic has actually opened me up. And that muscle of curiosity is stronger than it’s ever been — which is one of the reasons why, for two and a half hours, I can assault the stage the way I do.“I want to get to the pinnacle of ‘Hadestown’ and then look up and keep climbing,” André De Shields said of why he’s eager to return to Broadway in September.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesIn a year in which many of us have struggled with staying productive and creative, how have you kept this busy?I’ve been answering the call that is obvious, to me anyway, that the zeitgeist, the paradigm, is changing. And it’s calling for healers, those of us who see the malady, who want to look for the people who understand that this is the time for coordination, cooperation, communication, collaboration. We need one another.The need now is those of us who want to build bridges, not destroy them. Those of us who want to help the new world come to life, not those of us who look over our shoulders and say, “Oh, wasn’t that a better time.” And that would keep you busy. There’s a lot of work to be done.How does it feel to be coming back to “Hadestown”?I don’t know if you’re familiar with my Tony Award acceptance speech — I received my award and shared with the audience what I called my three cardinal rules for sustainability and longevity. Because they tell you if you’re fortunate enough to receive the award, you have only 90 seconds to speak — and I’ve seen too many of my colleagues try to thank 100 people in 90 seconds. You can’t do it. So I thought, let me drop a wisdom bomb.The first thing I said was, surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming. Rule No. 2 was: Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be. And then the third, which is why I’m bringing this whole thing up: The top of one mountain is the bottom of the next. As you achieve different pinnacles, don’t ever think you’ve made it. Don’t ever think you’ve arrived. Take a few moments, take in the view, the vista, the panorama, then lift your chin and see there is another mountain that you have to ascend. That’s called life.The pandemic interrupted the timing of that particular mountain. So I want to get to the pinnacle of “Hadestown” and then look up and keep climbing. Now I’ve already mentioned, but one of the other mountains is the third time that I play the role of King Lear — and then I want to direct it.But here’s my mountain of mountains: I want to break the Methuselah Code. Methuselah is the longest living individual in the history of mankind. He lived to be 969 years. I want to live to be 970. More