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      ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Is Now a Play in London’s West End

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      Much has changed for L.G.B.T.Q. people since Annie Proulx’s short story was published in 1997. But a new theatrical version is a reminder that homophobia is far from over.In 2016, when the theater director Jonathan Butterell was considering a proposal to adapt Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story “Brokeback Mountain” for the stage, he wondered how to translate the prose’s vast landscape and insular emotions into a play.Last month, in a central London rehearsal studio, Butterell and Ashley Robinson, who wrote the play, tried to answer that question. To help the cast connect with Proulx’s story of a cowboy and a ranch hand falling in love against the wide-stretching landscapes of 1960s Wyoming, black-and-white photographs of American plains and mountain ranges were tacked to the walls during rehearsals.“The vastness has been there from the very beginning,” Butterell said in a recent interview. When it came to evoking the story’s emotional landscape, the director had stuck one sepia-toned photograph, of a lone cowboy in a snow-covered Wyoming, behind a pillar. The image “speaks to the bit of us that feels alone in the world,” Butterell said. “Maybe he’s at peace with this, maybe it’s the source of his agony.”Butterell’s “Brokeback Mountain” opened in previews May 10 at @sohoplace in London’s West End. It’s the first time the story has been adapted for theater — an opera by Charles Wuorinen premiered in Madrid in 2014 — and each version now follows in the footsteps of Proulx’s text and the film that popularized it: Ang Lee’s 2005 Academy Award-winning adaptation, which is often cited as one of the best L.G.B.T.Q. films of all time.Faist, left, and Hedges at @sohoplace. During rehearsals, black-and-white photographs of American plains and mountain ranges were tacked to the walls.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesButterell said he was aware of his audience having expectations based on the film. “They’re inevitable,” he said, “but I don’t mind that.”This theatrical version also has some Hollywood clout. Its lead characters, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, are played by the BAFTA-nominated actor Mike Faist and the Oscar-nominated actor Lucas Hedges.In late 2016, Robinson first wrote a treatment for what he called a “memory play” based on the short story, after speaking with the composer Dan Gillespie Sells and Butterell. Robinson’s script stated that the Wyoming setting should not be conveyed “in a purely literal sense,” and his story is set in 2013, with an older version of del Mar reflecting on the years he spent with Twist between 1963 and 1983.Proulx approved of Robinson’s vision. She has “high hopes for the play,” she said in a recent email interview. “When I read Ashley’s script several years ago, I thought he had done a fine job.”In Proulx’s story, del Mar and Twist’s interior worlds are conveyed by an omniscient narrator. In the stage adaptation, music does much of that work.“These two men can’t sing,” Gillespie Sells said, because “they don’t have an emotional dialogue.” Instead, a character called The Balladeer — played by the Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader — sings with an onstage country and western band. “She takes us through time,” Butterell said. “Sometimes it’s from night to day. Sometimes it’s 10 years.”“Brokeback Mountain” will be the first time its two lead actors have appeared onstage in five years. Faist, who plays Twist, originated the role of Connor Murphy in “Dear Evan Hansen” on Broadway, and has had more recent success in film, including Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story.”Hedges “hadn’t acted in a while” when he was sent the script, he said, having been focusing on writing instead. The “Brokeback” offer and playing del Mar changed that. “There wasn’t an angle I didn’t love about this,” he said.“As terrifying and frustrating as it is, I really am having the time of my life,” Faist, left, said of the production.Shona LouiseAs the project entered its final week of rehearsals, both actors were grappling with the process in different ways. Hedges said he was experiencing “tragic and triumphant ups and downs” about his own work. “I have a day where I think I’ve figured it all out, and then a day when it all disappears,” he said. The “collective experience” of theater was daunting compared to working in film, he said, adding that onstage, “I can’t use tricks to make it through.”Faist concurred: “It’s a challenge, and it’s terrifying,” mainly because of the expectations of having to match the source material and 2005 film, he said. “But as terrifying and frustrating as it is, I really am having the time of my life,” he added.Butterell said that Faist and Hedges were “as men, as actors, very different creatures.” Faist, he said, had “a sense of life and vivacity,” while Hedges “has this deeply complex interior landscape that’s very much of Ennis.”Neither Hedges, Faist nor Butterell had revisited Lee’s film since they were approached for the project. “The truth of the matter is, no matter what, he’s not Heath Ledger and I’m not Jake Gyllenhaal,” Faist said of the film’s two lead stars, who both earned Oscar nominations for their performances. He and Hedges, Faist added, would both bring their “own weird things” to the roles.The production has forced Faist to confront his “traumas,” he said. “We can take those traumas, turn them around,” he added, and, he hopes, make the audience “think deeply about their own lives.”Following the success of the “Brokeback Mountain” film, Proulx said fans of her text sent her fan fiction that rewrote the ending of her short story, claiming the original was too sad. She told the The Paris Review that those fans had “misunderstood” the story and stated that it was, most importantly, about “homophobia.”Jonathan Butterell, the play’s director, said his two lead actors had different strengths: Faist, left, has “a sense of life and vivacity,” while Lucas, right, “has this deeply complex interior landscape that’s very much of Ennis.”Suzie Howell for The New York TimesThis is the first adaptation of “Brokeback” to be released since the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all 50 U.S. states. Robinson — who lives in Brooklyn but was raised in the tiny town of Lockhart, S.C. — said he wrote it to remind audiences that gay trauma still exists.“These stories aren’t necessarily being told anymore because of a trend to put onstage what we want the world to be,” he said, referring to the theater community. “That’s a wonderful thing to do, but we shouldn’t cancel out all of the opportunities to talk about what’s going on underneath it.”Butterell added that the fight against homophobia was “not over” in Britain either, citing a recent spike in the number of attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. people.“This is a tragedy,” Butterell said of the play. “Of course love exists — I don’t want it to be solemn — but the tragedy of this piece is that fear wins.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Oliver!’ Returns, With Darker Twists Intact

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      The emphasis Encores! puts on words and music rather than spectacle allows the cruel realities of Dickensian London to stand out amid the bouncy tunes.It was 10 a.m. on a recent morning in a rehearsal room at New York City Center, and nine boys scurried around the space, clutching parasols of red and white lace, tin cups and jaunty pocket squares.“OK, everyone!” said Lorin Latarro, the choreographer of the show, a new staging of “Oliver!,” the Lionel Bart musical opening at City Center on Wednesday for a two-week run as part of the Encores! series. “Today we’re going to work on ‘I’d Do Anything.’”The boys gathered around Raúl Esparza, who is playing Fagin, the lovable London crime lord, in a battered brown hat with a buckle, tan overcoat and black fingerless gloves.“Would you risk the ‘drop’?” he sang, his eyes bugging as he grabbed his scarf and mimed a noose tightening around his neck. (Translation: Are you willing to go out and commit robbery and possibly face the gallows if you’re caught?) All nine pickpockets in training nodded enthusiastically.“Oliver!,” based on the Charles Dickens novel “Oliver Twist,” is the story of an orphan’s search for belonging in that band of young pickpockets in 1830s London. It mixes fun, candy-coated musical theater crowd-pleasers like “Food, Glorious Food” and “Consider Yourself” with darker Dickensian themes including poverty and domestic violence.“The show has these really harrowing lyrics even in songs that are upbeat,” said the production’s director, Lear deBessonet. “And I think that in some productions, you may just be bobbing along with the rhythm of the song, and you might not really hear those words.”But that’s generally not the case in the concert-like stagings that Encores! is known for. Although there is an orchestra onstage, props and sets are minimal.“Because you strip away some of those other production elements, it really puts a new focus on the lyric,” deBessonet said. “It’s meaty work for me as a director to figure out how to tell the story with so few elements.”When deBessonet, now in her third year as the artistic director of Encores!, was setting the season lineup in late 2021, just before the Omicron surge of Covid-19, she was struck by the parallels between the uncertain present and the perilous world of Dickens’s day.“It’s interesting that ‘Oliver!’ is generally thought of as a family musical,” she said in a recent conversation in her office at City Center. “It certainly has these very winsome tunes, and the cast of children is delightful beyond measure, but there are dark edges of the story that we’re very much leaning into and exploring in this production.”Lilli Cooper, left, as Nancy, and Angelica Beliard, right, dancing with Benjamin Pajak, who plays Oliver in the musical.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMANY OF THE SONGS FROM ‘OLIVER!’ have become well known, thanks to the popular 1968 film adaptation, which starred Ron Moody as Fagin. This crowd-pleasing musical is a staple of school stages across Britain, where it debuted in London’s West End in 1960, and the United States, where it opened on Broadway in 1963 and won three Tony Awards, including one for the score. But “Oliver!,” like many of the shows staged by Encores!, whose mission is to offer revivals of seldom-seen work, is rarely produced in full.It hasn’t been professionally staged in its entirety on a New York City stage in nearly 40 years, since the short-lived 1984 Broadway revival that starred Patti LuPone as Nancy. In fact, neither deBessonet, nor any of the five main cast members except for Benjamin Pajak (“The Music Man”), who plays Oliver, had ever seen a live performance of the show.David Jones as the Artful Dodger (in top hat) and Georgia Brown, beside him, in a number from the musical “Oliver!” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesIn addition to Esparza (“Company”), the show also stars Lilli Cooper as Nancy, the romantic partner of the brutal Bill Sikes (Tam Mutu, recently of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”), and Julian Lerner, who plays the Artful Dodger, the leader of the gang that takes Oliver in.Underscoring the musical’s darker bits, deBessonet said, like the fear and loneliness the orphaned Oliver experiences, was a matter of subtraction rather than addition. Without elaborate sets or showstopping production numbers there are fewer elements competing to divert the audience’s attention from the words of the actors.But neither did the production need to amp up the grim with foreboding lighting or a fog machine, she said — the darkness is already inherent in Dickens’s text, and in Bart’s book, score and lyrics.“We’re trying to have those words be heard with the belief that the complexity is in the lyric itself,” she said.One example, she said, is the titular tune “Oliver!,” a song familiar to many, even those who haven’t seen the show, for its high-spirited chorus.“It’s this really bouncy song,” deBessonet said, “but the actual lyrics are:There’s a dark, thin, winding stairwayWithout any banisterWhich we’ll throw him down and feed him on cockroachesServed in a canister.The show does preserve many of the musical’s more lighthearted elements. Every song from the original Broadway production remains, including bouncy numbers like “I’d Do Anything” and “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.” The dreamlike sequence “Food, Glorious Food,” with its visions of sausages and mustards, jelly and custard. And 20 additional performers, all New York City public school students, will join the company onstage for “Consider Yourself,” the boys’ full-voiced embrace of Oliver into their ranks — the first true family he has known.“The show is incredibly challenging — the domestic violence, the treatment of children at that time in general is truly harrowing,” deBessonet said. “And yet there’s this buoyant joy about these numbers.”And the emotional core is still the camaraderie that springs up between the striving, working-class characters.“The whole narrative question of the show is ‘Where is the love?’ and Fagin is one answer,” deBessonet said. “But it’s complicated.”Even though the Fagin of the Bart musical is more of a lovable curmudgeon than the child-exploiting criminal in the Dickens novel, deBessonet and Esparza said that they wanted the audience to remain cognizant of the less-savory context of his mentorship.“I fully believe Fagin loves those children, and he is exploiting them,” deBessonet said. “He’s sending them out to rob for him, to keep him alive, and he knows that every time he sends them out, there’s a possibility that they could get caught or killed.”Less complex is Bill Sikes, who is objectively the show’s most loathsome character.“Bill Sikes is a sociopath, and there is no end to his cruelty,” deBessonet said of Nancy’s abusive boyfriend. “The show ends with him murdering her brutally in front of us and in front of a kid.”A model of the stage set of “Oliver!”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesBut Mutu knew he didn’t want to play a one-note villain. Instead he searched for the humanity within the character, to add nuances to his portrayal without offering redemption.“People aren’t black and white,” he said. “There are levels to each of us. Yes, I am playing a sociopath who has violent tendencies —”“— but he has redeeming qualities,” Esparza interjected. “Which are?”They both laughed.“The love between Nancy and Bill is genuine,” Mutu said, referring to their codependency as fascinating. “I’m trying to find the sense of the complexity of our relationship, which I think gets brushed under the carpet.”Normally, deBessonet said, she would have no interest in doing a production that includes violence toward a woman — “I’ve already seen enough of that for a lifetime” — but she was impressed by Nancy’s bravery, how she risked everything to save the life of Oliver.And Cooper and deBessonet said they wanted to make sure Nancy’s murder was not the final word on her story. “Her life is about her heroism and choosing to lay down her life to save this child who not too long ago was a stranger to her,” deBessonet said.Though Nancy allows others to see her as a passive player in her own life, Cooper wanted her performance to underscore the power Nancy wields in moments like the “Oom-Pah-Pah” number, in which her lively and somewhat risqué dance is actually a means of distracting Bill Sikes and Fagin so she can help Oliver escape.“She has this innate maternal nature to her,” Cooper said, “especially with all the boys in Fagin’s den and wanting to protect them. Even with Bill, the man that she loves, she feels needed by those who are wounded and fragile and need help.”“She herself was a child thief, and she’s managed to grab hold of life with this force,” deBessonet said. “In the face of all that difficulty, she’s been able to say, ‘I’m still going to love life.”BACK IN THE REHEARSAL ROOM, the boys continued their run-through of “I’d Do Anything.” Two stood on either side at the front, wielding red parasols, while two with white ones flanked them from behind. As the boys spun the parasols to imitate wheels, Nancy and the Artful Dodger walked to center.“Would you climb a hill?” she sang, as the human “carriage” began to roll.“Anything!” he responded.“Wear a daffodil?”He nodded. “Anything!”“Leave me all your will?”He nodded more vigorously. “Anything!”“Even fight my Bill?” she asked pointedly.He recoiled slightly.“Stop!” Latarro called. She walked over to Lerner. “Bill Sikes is really tall and really scary — he’s like a boxer,” she said. “So you all jump back like ‘No way!’”They tried again.This time when Nancy asked, all nine pickpockets sprung back as though they had just realized they were standing on the third rail. Their eyes hardened.“Anything!” More

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      in Theater

      Among Faceless Offices, a Theater Taking Risks

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      The New Diorama in London is placing bets on small troupes, inviting them onto its stage and giving them help to thrive. With two shows now in the West End, its gambles are paying off.Regent’s Place, a business quarter in the Euston district of central London, isn’t a likely location for a theater. Many of the buildings there are the offices of global corporations. The glass-fronted New Diorama could easily be mistaken for one.Since it opened in 2010, the New Diorama, an 80-seat studio theater, has gained a reputation as an incubator of new talent. It presents an innovative program of work by emerging theater companies and offers the artists who work there a level of creative support that’s rare for a venue of its size, with free rehearsal space, interest-free loans and help finding funding from other sources.The theater has nurtured the careers of many small troupes, and, in some cases, its support has been transformative. This season, two shows that originated at the New Diorama are playing on the West End: “Operation Mincemeat,” a comedy musical by the collective SplitLip, and “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy,” a piece exploring Black masculinity and mental health, created by Ryan Calais Cameron. That show, which premiered in 2021, went from the New Diorama to a run at the Royal Court Theater, before a commercial producer snapped it up.“Operation Mincemeat,” a comedy musical about British spies in World War II, began at the New Diorama and is now playing in the West End.Alex Harvey-BrownDavid Byrne, the New Diorama’s artistic director, said in an interview that it was “a theater that would support companies and collaborative work in the way that a new writing theater would support writers.”Byrne added that he always tells artists who work at the New Diorama: “We need you to ask for things that you need. And we will try to provide them.”Cameron, whose show is running at the Apollo Theater through May 7, first came to the New Diorama’s attention in 2018, when he and his company, Nouveau Riche, won the theater’s Edinburgh Untapped Award. That prize gave the young director the funding to take an earlier show, “Queens of Sheba,” to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In an interview, Cameron recalled Byrne telling him that the New Diorama’s support didn’t end with the award: It was the start of a relationship. “He really seemed like he cared about the longevity of myself and the company,” Cameron said.Then, in 2021, when many British theaters were rebounding from pandemic-related lockdowns with low-risk solo shows, Cameron went to Byrne with his proposal for “For Black Boys,” a dance-theater piece for six performers. Cameron said the theater agreed to program the show after a meeting that lasted just eight minutes.The cast of “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy,” performing at the New Diorama in 2021. Ali Wright“New Diorama was the only venue in London willing to take that kind of risk on an artist still relatively new to the mainstream,” Cameron said.Zoe Roberts, a SplitLip member whose previous company, Kill the Beast, also received support from the New Diorama, described the theater’s decision to work with her troupe as “a leap of faith,” because SplitLip had never produced a musical before. (“Operation Mincemeat” is at the Fortune Theater through July 8.)“They held our hands through the entire thing,” Roberts said in an interview. “They’re in their office running the theater, while also helping to produce our show, and even running around with a drill fixing bits of our set, because we didn’t have someone to do that,” she said.One of the key things the New Diorama provides the artists it works with is financial assistance — and not just while they’re developing a show for its stage. In 2016, the theater started offering interest-free loans for companies who had already worked there, to offset the costs of venue hire or taking work to the Edinburgh Fringe. Roberts likened the New Diorama to “the kindest bank in the world.”Its annual budget is around $1.5 million: It receives a small subsidy from the British government, and raises the rest through philanthropy, corporate sponsorship and ticket sales. Byrne makes the New Diorama’s income go further by negotiating deals with local businesses, including hotels to host visiting troupes from outside London and a local restaurant that delivers free post-show pizzas.The New Diorama was “a theater that would support companies and collaborative work in the way that a new writing theater would support writers,” said its artistic director, David Byrne.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesOne of the biggest barriers that small theater companies face, Byrne said, is the cost of rehearsal space, which in London can be up to $60 an hour. So in 2017 the New Diorama made a deal with British Land, the property developer that owns the land that the theater stands on, to take over part of a nearby vacant building. Companies working with the New Diorama could use it as a free rehearsal space.That program was a test run for N.D.T. Broadgate, a temporary artist development complex in an empty central London office space that opened in 2021 and closed last year. N.D.T. Broadgate was also a collaboration with British Land, which again gave over the vacant real estate at no charge. Theater companies from across Britain could apply to use the space free, with the spots filled via lottery.N.D.T. Broadgate featured 16 rehearsal spaces, as well as a design studio. According to an independent report on the project commissioned by British Land and the theater, 724 small theater companies used the resources, creating 250 new shows. Cameron was one of the artists who benefited, creating a studio for Black artists within the space. “It was a kind of utopia,” he said.Byrne said that many British theater companies were struggling to get back on their feet after enforced closures during the pandemic, and that the rising cost of living had only amplified their problems. “Everyone we talked to was exhausted,” he said. Last year, he and the New Diorama’s executive director, Will Young, decided to close the theater for a season and focus on rejuvenation instead. “We wanted to send a signal that it’s all right not to continue growing,” Byrne said.“For Black Boys” cast members in a rehearsal at N.D.T. Broadgate, a temporary creative development complex that the New Diorama ran in an empty central London office space.Guy J. SandersEven though it was closed, the New Diorama continued paying artists to develop new work. It put out an open call for ensembles around Britain and received over 500 responses, Young said.The theater reopened earlier this year with “After the Act,” a musical developed during this period by the multimedia performance company Breach Theater, about the legacy of Section 28, a government policy that banned the promotion of homosexuality in British schools in the 1980s and 90s. According to the New Diorama, “After the Act” is its best-selling show to date.Not being as reliant on public funds as some organizations “means we can take really calculated swings that often pay off,” Byrne said.“It’s about pushing that creative ambition as much as possible,” he added. The New Diorama is about encouraging artists to run with their ideas, to take risks and know that “we’ve got you,” Byrne said. “You have a safety net.” More

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      in Music

      Nora Forster, 80, Who Married (and Stayed Married to) a Sex Pistol, Dies

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      A German publishing heiress and music promoter, she settled in London in time for the 1970s punk-rock explosion and became the muse to its baddest boy.Nora Forster, a German-born publishing heiress and music promoter who gained fame as the wife of John Lydon — otherwise known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols — and the mother of Arianna Forster, or Ari Up, the lead singer of the influential all-female punk band the Slits, died on Thursday. She was 80.Her death was announced by Mr. Lydon on Twitter. “Nora had been living with Alzheimer’s for several years,” the announcement said. “In which time John had become her full time career.” He did not say where she died.For more than four decades, music fans knew Ms. Forster as the emotional rock for the ever-volatile Mr. Lydon, who in the late 1970s became Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of British polite society for spitting invective in every direction, including the Queen’s, as the frontman for the incendiary punk progenitors the Sex Pistols.When the band imploded after its brief, explosive career, he scarcely mellowed; he continued on as the creative force of the fiery post-punk band Public Image Ltd., or PiL.Because of her husband’s enduring notoriety, particularly in England, Ms. Forster’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease unfolded as a public drama after he went public about her diagnosis in 2018.“It’s vile to watch someone you love disappear,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in February. “All the things I thought were the ultimate agony seem preposterous now.”Her illness, he said, had “shaped me into what I am.”“I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” he added. “I don’t see how I can live without her. I wouldn’t want to. There’s no point.”The previous month, he had teared up when taking a more wistful turn in an interview on the television show “Good Morning Britain” about “Hawaii,” a haunting PiL ballad that he had written as a tribute to her and that was the Irish entry in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. (Mr. Lydon was born in England to Irish parents.) “Remember me,” Mr. Lydon sang, “I remember you.”“I can see her personality in her eyes,” he said. “She lets me know that it’s the communication skills that are letting her down.”Nora Maier was born on Nov. 6, 1942, in Munich. After the war, her father, Franz Karl Maier, was a prosecutor who helped bring wartime Nazis to justice. He was later the editor and publisher of the newspaper Tagesspiegel.Ms. Forster went on to work as a model and to marry the singer Frank Forster, who was “kind of a swing pop star, always appearing on TV back in the ’60s,” Arianna Forster said in an interview with the music site Pitchfork in 2009, a year before she died.Nora Forster’s survivors include her husband and three grandchildren.As the 1960s unfolded, Ms. Forster promoted West German tours for acts like Jimi Hendrix and Yes, which gave her prominence on the German rock scene. “People were walking around in the living room back then, like the Bee Gees and all these big groups,” her daughter recalled in the Pitchfork interview.The bohemian lifestyle of her rock friends eventually ran afoul of the local authorities. “In Munich, the police were knocking at the door every night because of the loud acid parties,” her daughter once said. “She was fed up with it. You have to go to London to live that lifestyle.”Ms. Forster did just that in about 1970, and by the middle of the decade she had become enmeshed in the punk-rock scene that was starting to roil Britain and the music industry as a whole. She became “a den mother to all the young punks,” said Arianna, who in 1976, at age 14, would rename herself Ari Up and join with a drummer called Palmolive to found the Slits, which became a leading female punk band of the era.In 1975, Ms. Forster met Mr. Lydon, who was nearly 14 years her junior, at Sex, the boundary-pushing clothing boutique on London’s King’s Road run by the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren.It was anything but love at first sight.“There was no physical attraction at first,” Ms. Forster said in a 2004 interview with The Sunday Mail of Britain. “I didn’t even think to be nice to him. I was at another gig and John passed by my table and said, ‘Drop dead.’”Despite the mutual hostility, Mr. Lydon was intrigued. “Her nose went 10 feet in the air in her ’40s film star outfit,” he said in the same Sunday Mail interview. “Long blond hair, padded shoulders — that entire femme fatale look, which I was a complete ham for.”Eventually she softened. “I fell in love with John because he surprised me,” she said. “He had a sweet attitude. He was more innocent and not like the rest of the group.”The couple married in 1979, to the horror of Ms. Forster’s father. And, to the likely amazement of those who considered Mr. Lydon a human mushroom cloud, the marriage endured.Even so, it might never have happened if Ms. Forster had listened to her friends’ advice in those early days. “One day he came up and asked why I had never invited him to my house,” she later said of Mr. Lydon. “I replied, ‘People told me you would destroy everything.’” More

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      in Theater

      Review: ‘Berlusconi: A New Musical’ Is Hammy and Hamstrung

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      The show, in London, skewers its protagonist through maximalist kitsch, but it comes with a tone of finger-wagging moralism that’s no fun.When we first meet Silvio Berlusconi, the title character in “Berlusconi: A New Musical,” the former populist prime minister of Italy is awaiting the verdict of a tax fraud trial in 2012. But this is not some courtroom drama about white-collar crime: The case is merely a framing device for a more comprehensive indictment of Berlusconi’s life and character.As he awaits his fate, a succession of women reproach the beleaguered media mogul in song: The state prosecutor, Ilda (Sally Ann Triplett), enumerates his alleged sexual and financial wrongdoings; his ex-wife Veronica (Emma Hatton) laments his many infidelities; Fama (Jenny Fitzpatrick), a TV reporter who had a relationship with him during the early stages of her career, tells her story, as does Bella (Natalie Kassanga), a young woman whom he seduced at one of his notorious “Bunga Bunga” parties; and his mother (Susan Fay) chides him from beyond the grave — “I raised you to be good!”Running at the Southwark Playhouse, in London, through April 29, “Berlusconi: A New Musical” is a maximalist kitsch cabaret that carries a serious message about power and hubris. Written by Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan, it skewers its protagonist for the vacuous cynicism of his political demagogy, as well as his considerable personal shortcomings. But it is also hamstrung by its earnestness, with a tone of finger-wagging moralism that is the antithesis of fun.Sebastien Torkia performs the title role with a smirking, camp swagger. It feels like an amusingly counterintuitive rendering of the famously macho womanizer, until we recall that Berlusconi was a cruise ship crooner in the 1960s; in Torkia’s rendering, he still is. The music comprises a broad repertoire of finger-clicking ditties and soaring power ballads. But there’s a shift in tone for Bella’s segment, which deals with sexual exploitation: The director James Grieve and the choreographer Rebecca Howell render it in an appropriately sensitive and solemn manner, though the timbre of this sequence sails dangerously close to gooey melodrama, and may strike some as patronizing. This is tricky terrain.From left: Emma Hatton, Jenny Fitzpatrick, Torkia and Sally Ann Triplett. Throughout the show, a succession of women reproach Berlusconi in song.Nick RutterThere are some smart touches with the set design, by Lucy Osborne. The stage is filled by a steep staircase representing the courtroom steps, cleverly opening up the space for the performers to caper on multiple levels. Fitzpatrick delivers the standout vocal performance as Fama, whose parts are addressed to a camcorder synced up to the big screen in the back, as well as smaller TVs on either side. She appears onscreen in real time, complete with news graphics and captions that vividly evoke the psychological stress of personal drama played out in the media glare.Like many a puffed-up strongman, the figure of Berlusconi is ripe for satire. But Simmonds and Vaughan, the show’s writers, haven’t made the most of the comic potential in his vanity and libidinousness. The gags — including a dig at his penchant for facial filler and a somewhat puerile riff on the supposed homoeroticism of his friendship with Vladimir Putin — are mildly funny but not exactly sidesplitting.The show also suffers slightly from a lack of narrative thrust. Since everything is being chewed over in retrospect, we don’t get a sense of a personal journey unfolding. Torkia’s Berlusconi only really has two registers: the arrogant bluster that is his default mode (“I am the Jesus Christ of politics!”), and occasional moments of fretful self-doubt. After the first hour, these registers start to wear thin.With lyrics featuring pointed allusions to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, “Berlusconi: A New Musical” is clearly trying to speak to the moment, channeling a long and distinguished tradition of lampooning demagogues that dates back to Charlie Chaplin. But the discourse on populism is saturated, to put it mildly, and this production would probably have felt more urgent about seven years ago: Its core insights, about the symbiosis between personal immorality and the corruption of the body politic, are almost self-evident by now.Either way, the point is labored. By the closing number, which urged theatergoers to “Be careful who you vote for,” the message was pretty clear. Insufficiently trenchant as satire, and not quite hilarious enough as entertainment, “Berlusconi: A New Musical” is caught between two stools. It’s a moderately enjoyable romp, but not much more. More

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      ‘Prima Facie’ and ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ Win Big at the Olivier Awards

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      The Jodie Comer-starring legal drama won best new play at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys and an adaptation of ‘Totoro’ won six gongs — the most of any production.“Prima Facie,” a Broadway-bound play about a lawyer who represents men accused of assault, then is herself sexually assaulted, was the big winner on Sunday at the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The one-woman show, starring Jodie Comer and written by Suzie Miller, was named best new play during a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Comer was also named best actress for her performance at the West End’s Harold Pinter Theater.The awards come just days before “Prima Facie,” and Comer, transfer to New York. The show is scheduled to begin previews at the Golden Theater on Apr. 11.Its success at the Olivier Awards was perhaps unsurprising given that “Prima Facie” was a critical and commercial hit in London during its run last year. Matt Wolf, reviewing the play for The New York Times, said that Comer took a big risk making her West End debut in an “emotionally fraught solo play.” But, he added, “there’s no denying the visceral power of an evening that owes its sellout status to a theatrical neophyte who possesses the know-how of a seasoned pro.”“Prima Facie” beat stiff competition to the best new play title, including Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of “To Kill A Mockingbird” at the Gielgud Theater; “Patriots” at the Almeida — a timely look at President Vladimir V. Putin’s rise in Russia; and “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy” at the Royal Court, a tale of six young Black men in group therapy.Comer accepted her award, thanking “the sisterhood” who worked on the show, then giving a message to viewers online. “To any kids who haven’t been to drama school, who can’t afford to go to drama school, who’ve been rejected from drama school — don’t let anybody tell you that it is impossible,” she said.Although it won one of the night’s most coveted awards, “Prima Facie” was not the only big winner. “My Neighbour Totoro,” an adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animated film, at the Barbican Theater in London, won six gongs — the most of any production — including best entertainment or comedy play, and the best director award for Phelim McDermott.The show, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, was a crowd-pleaser in London partly thanks to featuring several giant, fantastical puppets — including a furry Catbus that is part motor vehicle, part feline. Dominic Cavendish, reviewing the play in The Daily Telegraph, said those puppets were “worth the price of admission alone.”Other major winners included Paul Mescal, the Irish star, who was named best actor for his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Almeida Theater.Matt Wolf, in a review for The New York Times, wrote that “Mescal brings both swagger and sensitivity to the role, in the process stepping out of the long shadow cast over this part by its stage and screen originator, Marlon Brando.”The best new musical award went to “Standing at the Sky’s Edge,” a show at the National Theater in London about the intertwined lives of the residents of a housing complex. It triumphed over several higher-profile titles including “Tammy Faye,” about the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, featuring music by Elton John. More

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      Review: ‘The Great British Bake Off Musical’ Is Sweet but Underbaked

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      In London, a stage show based on the popular TV series tries to capture the warmhearted appeal of the original.The first question you’re likely to ask about “The Great British Bake Off Musical” is, surely, “Is it sweet?” Such a tone, dusted with lots of sugar, has been crucial to the success of the popular TV program this new stage show adapts, and which pits amateur bakers against one another to see who can perfect the petit four or come up with the most luscious Key lime pie.And the show, which opened on Monday at the Noël Coward Theater for a limited run through May 13, really is generous-spirited. During its two-and-a-half hour running time, the musical’s likability is never in question, even if its craft sometimes is: You can’t help wishing the creators had been as exacting with their own material as some of the contestants are with their ovens.Newcomers to this milieu should know that “The Great British Bake Off” first aired in Britain in 2010 on the BBC, before moving to the commercial broadcaster Channel 4, and spawning various offshoots along the way: “Junior Bake Off,” for one, to showcase those adolescents, and younger, who have a penchant for pastry. (In the United States, the original is known as “The Great British Baking Show.”)This stage iteration, written by Pippa Cleary and Jake Brunger and directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, was first seen last summer in the spa town of Cheltenham, in the west of England, and has been put together in conjunction with Love Productions, the company behind the TV show.On home turf, the TV series has regularly made headlines, but you don’t have to be familiar with the so-called “Hollywood handshake” — the gesture of approval from Paul Hollywood, one of the judges — to grasp the terrain of the musical. Devotees of its small-screen original will note various in jokes, not to mention the visual match that has been achieved between Hollywood and Prue Leith — his bespectacled fellow judge — and the musical’s co-stars John Owen-Jones and Haydn Gwynne.Owen-Jones, right, and his fellow judge in the musical, Haydn Gwynne, left, look remarkably like the TV show’s judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith.Manuel HarlanBut perhaps the biggest appeal of the TV material is the cross-section of British society the competitors represent. The musical, perhaps inevitably but also rather drippily, whisks dollops of uplift into the mix. You get a comic number in which the two judges appear as dueling scones alongside life lessons elsewhere about “the recipe of me,” and it’s suggested that baking can make you feel better about yourself.An introductory sequence announces, with mock-biblical fervor, the birth of flour and sugar. And before we know it, we’re in the show’s iconic white tent — Alice Power designed not just the sets and costumes but also the cakes — and meeting the disparate group of eight bakers who will be whittled down to one winner. Their fates are accompanied by continual innuendo about soggy bottoms, spotted dicks and any other culinary double entendres that might induce a snicker (let’s not forget cream-filled buns).The self-regarding Izzy (Grace Mouat) is so sure of her success that she gets a dance number, “Obviously,” in praise of her own bravura. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the nervous chatterbox Gemma (Charlotte Wakefield), a depressive health aide from Blackpool whose climactic anthem, “Rise,” draws directly from the “Wicked” playbook of self-empowerment. In keeping with the “Wicked” theme, the older, notably fastidious Russell (Michael Cahill) speaks separately of people “coming into your life for a reason” — a familiar sentiment from the earlier show. The pie-themed musical “Waitress” hovers in the wings, as well.From left, Hassan (Aharon Rayner), Izzy (Grace Mouat) and Kim (Zoe Birkett) are some of the characters in the musical. Manuel HarlanThere’s something of a rummage-sale feel to Cleary and Brunger’s eclectic score, which draws upon such diverse sources as Cole Porter (a jaunty duet for the judges) and Stephen Sondheim: The wonderful Gwynne starts the second act with a sequined dance number that could have come from “Follies.” She also reprises the cartwheel that wowed audiences some years back in “Billy Elliot,” and when she speaks of dipping “your little finger in my raclette,” the image sounds notably lewd.Hassan (a winning Aharon Rayner), an immigrant based in Wembley, northwest London, hankers for the smells of Syria, his onetime home, while Francesca (Cat Sandison), a teacher with infertility issues, sings of how panforte and panettone are part of her Italian heritage.I wish it weren’t quite so preordained that the outspoken, thrice-married Babs (the redoubtable Claire Moore) would get a lusty showstopper in which her libido is revealed in all its power; the song’s title, “Babs’ Lament,” nods directly toward “Guys and Dolls,” a revival of which happens to be previewing across town at the moment.And as soon as we have glimpsed the widower Ben (Damian Humbley, in characteristically fine voice), it’s clear the contest will find him a companion: he’s even got a precocious 9-year-old daughter, Lily, to urge him on his amorous path, though not before she rather implausibly rattles off a list of today’s ills, the war in Ukraine among them.This musical occupies a different, more innocent world — one in which strudels are restorative and, as the show puts it, “cake is the cure.” I’m as fully on board with that message as anyone. What’s needed is more art to accompany the heart.The Great British Bake Off MusicalThrough May 13 at the Noël Coward Theater in London; bakeoffthemusical.com More

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      ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ Dominates Olivier Award Nominations

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      Studio Ghibli’s fantastical movie was an unexpected choice for a stage adaptation. Now, it is up for 9 awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.A stage adaptation of “My Neighbour Totoro,” an animated Japanese children’s movie filled with fantastical creatures, emerged on Tuesday as the front-runner for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The show, which ran at the Barbican Theater in London and included numerous giant puppets, secured nine nominations for the awards — more than any other play. Those included nods for best comedy, best director for Phelim McDermott and best actress for Mei Mac as a girl who discovers a magical world near her home.The play’s high number of nominations was perhaps unsurprising given that “My Neighbour Totoro” received rave reviews when it opened last year.Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said the play’s puppets were “the most endearing sight on the London stage” at the time. Sarah Hemming in The Financial Times said the Royal Shakespeare Company production was “a tender, remarkably beautiful family show that extols kindness.”Although “My Neighbour” secured the most nominations, it did not get a nod for best new play. Instead, four more grown-up dramas will compete for that title. Those include “Prima Facie” at the Harold Pinter Theater, a Broadway-bound one-woman show about sexual assault that stars Jodie Comer; “Patriots” at the Almeida Theater, a retelling of President Vladimir V. Putin’s rise in Russia; and Aaron Sorkin’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” adaptation at the Gielgud Theater.Those shows will compete with “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy,” a play at the Royal Court in London about six young Black men who meet for group therapy.Jodie Comer’s performance in “Prima Facie” struck a chord with West End audiences and she was also nominated for best actress. She is up for that title against Mei Mac of “My Neighbour Totoro,” as well as Patsy Ferran for “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Almeida Theater, Janet McTeer for “Phaedra” at the National Theater, and Nicola Walker for “The Corn Is Green,” also at the National.Before Tuesday’s announcement, many British theater critics had expected Emma Corrin to receive a nomination for “Orlando,” a play based on Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid novel, at the Garrick Theater.That would have likely caused a media stir as Corrin, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, has over the past year repeatedly urged award show organizers to make their acting categories gender neutral. Last year, Corrin told the BBC that it was “difficult for me” to be nonbinary and nominated in female acting categories.Emma De Souza, a spokeswoman for the Society of London Theater, the award’s organizers, said that Corrin was considered in the best actress category, but did not make the cut. “It was an incredibly competitive year,” De Souza added.The best actor award is set to be equally hard fought. Among the nominees are the rising Irish star Paul Mescal for “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Rafe Spall for “To Kill a Mockingbird” and David Tennant for “Good.” They will compete against Tom Hollander for his role as an oligarch in “Patriots” and Giles Terera, who starred in “Blues for an Alabama Sky” at the National Theater.In the musical categories, the nominations are led by “Standing at the Sky’s Edge,” also at the National. The show, about the residents of a housing complex in the northern English city of Sheffield, secured eight nominations, including best new musical. It will compete for that title with the “The Band’s Visit” at the Donmar Warehouse and “Sylvia” — a hip-hop musical based on the life of the suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst — at the Old Vic.Those three titles will face stiff competition from “Tammy Faye,” a high-profile production at the Almeida Theater that told the story of the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker using new music by Elton John.The winners of this year’s Olivier Awards will be announced on April 2 in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. More