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      Reviving ‘The Wiz’ Through ‘the Blackest of Black Lenses’

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      Schele Williams first saw “The Wiz” when a tour of the original Broadway production came through Dayton, Ohio. She was 7 years old, and recalled it being the most “beautiful reflection of Blackness that I had never seen.”Years later, she was cast as Dorothy in a high school production of “The Wiz,” and the thrill of that experience led Williams to pursue a career in musical theater. She even used the show’s soaring finale, “Home,” as one of her audition songs.Now, after working on Broadway as an actor (“Aida”) and an associate director (“Motown”), she is directing the first Broadway revival of “The Wiz” in almost 40 years. It’s a chance, Williams said, to celebrate what “The Wiz” has meant to her and to pass the story along to her daughters.Since becoming a Broadway hit in 1975, “The Wiz,” a gospel, soul and R&B take on Dorothy’s adventures in Oz, largely composed by Charlie Smalls, with a book by William F. Brown, has been a vibrant cornerstone of Black culture. The show blends Afrofuturism with classic Americana to enact a sort of creative reparation, reframing an allegory about perseverance and self-determination to feature Black characters who, in the ’70s, had rarely appeared in popular children’s stories.The 1978 Motown film adaptation, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, was a critical and box-office flop. But the movie has been a trippy favorite of family living rooms for multiple generations, and the musical has remained a staple on local stages around the country.“The weight of that is not lost on me,” said Williams.The new production of “The Wiz,” beginning previews on March 29 at the Marquis Theater, arrives in New York after a 13-city national tour that began in September. The creative team said its goal is to celebrate both the property’s legacy and the richness of Black American history and culture.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Yunchan Lim Plays Chopin at Carnegie Hall

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      For his Carnegie debut, the fast-rising Yunchan Lim gave a confident and dazzling performance of Chopin’s 27 fiendishly difficult études.It was that rare occasion on Wednesday: There was an encore at Carnegie Hall.I mean a literal, French-for-“again” encore, when a musician, brought back at the end of a concert by applause and more applause, gives another rendition of a piece he has already played.Bowing modestly after making his Carnegie debut with a confident, supple, eventually dazzling performance of Chopin’s 27 études, the teenage pianist Yunchan Lim had given three eloquent encores of other Chopin works. But the ovation continued. So he returned to the stage and started the gentle undulations of the A-flat major étude he had played some 40 minutes earlier — now with even more flowing naturalness.Lim was courting comparison with himself after a concert spent courting comparison with the canon. Chopin’s complete études are only an hour of music, but that hour is one of the most difficult and storied in the piano repertoire, a daunting yet irresistible gantlet for musicians who model themselves after the old school.Even precociously old school. At 19, the same age as Chopin when the earliest of these pieces was written, Lim has already shown boldness in taking on standards. When, in June 2022, he became the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition’s youngest winner, his victory was secured with a wholly unafraid version of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. The Cliburn and Steinway have since released a live recording of his electrifying semifinal round, playing Liszt’s “Transcendental Études.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Reports of Cabaret’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

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      The art form has faced challenges as nightlife norms shift — and as its audience ages — but it has also evolved. Five figures from the New York scene discuss.Cabaret has been integral to New York nightlife for more than a century, but every so often, reports of its death — however exaggerated — cause a stir. The singer and educator Natalie Douglas, who arrived from Los Angeles in 1988 and has performed steadily at the storied jazz club Birdland and other venues, figures the premature mourning started “at least 70 years ago — as soon as people moved from the cities to the suburbs and had room to entertain at home.”Douglas (age: “Not as young as I look”) is noted for her tributes to Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and the great Stevies of pop (Wonder and Nicks). Recently on a brisk afternoon, she arrived at a loft in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, for a confab with four other veterans of the cabaret scene. Tammy Lang, 57 — who has earned a devoted following through her titular comedic persona as Tammy Faye Starlite, an evangelical country crooner, and through her homages to Marianne Faithfull and Nico — perched beside her on a sofa.Jennifer Ashley Tepper, 37, the creative and programming director of 54 Below — a Midtown hot spot known for showcasing Broadway stars, cult heroes and aspirants — joined, along with Lance Horne, 46, an Emmy-winning composer, arranger, singer and music director whose collaborators include Liza Minnelli and Kylie Minogue. Horne holds court Mondays at the East Village’s Club Cumming, playing piano for singalongs that stretch into the wee hours. Such late revelry is less common than it used to be, pointed out Sidney Myer, 73, who, as longtime booking manager of Don’t Tell Mama near Times Square, has nurtured careers for decades and is a performer himself.“I don’t appear onstage with all-white bands anymore because I can’t be the only Black person onstage, especially since my shows are so political,” Douglas said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesMyer mused that when he got his start in cabaret, some 50 years ago, “the whole culture was different” in a few key ways. “People didn’t have a thousand channels at home; they didn’t have the world in their hands in the form of a phone.” And, he added, “They weren’t as health-conscious; there was smoking in all the rooms, and people weren’t watching their alcohol intake as much, or thinking about getting up to jog.”Since originating in Europe, cabaret has accommodated both traditional and experimental artists; here it has encompassed comedy, drag and burlesque alongside curated American songbook compilations and more contemporary and quirkier musical fare. In New York, venues range from the tony Café Carlyle to downtown “alt-cabaret” spots such as Joe’s Pub and Pangea. At 54 Below, where Tepper programs some 700 shows a year, guests can catch rising composers and performers or the cast of a musical on its night off; Myer noted that award-winning stars were born at Don’t Tell Mama — “even a Pulitzer Prize winner.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Market Hotel, A Brooklyn D.I.Y. Club, Changes With the Times

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      Just before midnight on Saturday, hard techno began pulsating from the Market Hotel, a D.I.Y. music venue located beside the elevated tracks of a Myrtle Avenue subway station in Bushwick, Brooklyn. A crowd of 20-somethings, many of them wearing sunglasses, ripped jeans and fanny packs, lined up in the cold before they threw themselves onto the dance floor.The party, “Market Hotel Sweet Sixteen,” was meant to commemorate the venue’s legacy as a D.I.Y. rock club. But as the beats continued toward dawn, the celebration was more about the current moment in a vastly changed underground scene.Over a decade ago, the Market Hotel nurtured a middle-class bohemia, providing a stage to punk and indie bands like Real Estate, Vivian Girls, Titus Andronicus and the So So Glos. Defiantly underground in its early years, it operated without a liquor license and offered housing to musicians who slept in its cubbies. Its address was passed along by word of mouth. If you knew, you knew.They were at the Market Hotel’s Sweet Sixteen.Allen Ying for The New York TimesFounded by the So So Glos and Todd Patrick, the music promoter known as Todd P, the Market Hotel became a hotbed of millennial Brooklyn nightlife back when a Pitchfork writer could lift a noise rock band from obscurity with a favorable review. At the recent Sweet Sixteen party, it was clear that the place had moved beyond the moment when flannel shirts were in vogue and craft beers were sipped from Mason jars.“I don’t really know much about the indie rock scene that used to be here but I’m grateful for this space as it is now,” said Ashley Van Eyk, 26. “It’s become a liberating queer space I feel I can express myself in.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Live Performance in New York: Here’s What to See This Spring

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      “The Notebook” and “Cabaret” land on Broadway. Olivia Rodrigo’s tour stops in Manhattan. Plus: Herbie Hancock, Heartbeat Opera and Trisha Brown Dance Company.BroadwayTHE NOTEBOOK Nicholas Sparks’s 1996 novel (adapted for the screen in 2004) is now a sweeping musical tale of romantic idealism and the decades-long love between Allie and Noah. The Chicago Tribune gave a glowing review to the 2022 Chicago Shakespeare Theater premiere, and several performers from the Chicago cast, including Maryann Plunkett as Older Allie, will reprise their roles. The show features a book by Bekah Brunstetter (“This Is Us”) and music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson, with Michael Greif and Schele Williams directing. Now playing at the Schoenfeld Theater, Manhattan.THE WHO’S TOMMY The show, with music and lyrics by Pete Townshend who wrote the book with Des McAnuff, was on Broadway 30 years ago, but this new take, which had its premiere at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, is very heavy on visual spectacle (and, egad, how theatrical effects have changed in three decades!). Tommy is a traumatized child who witnesses violence and loses his ability to see, hear and speak. He plays mean pinball, though, and in the strange spectacle becomes something of a messiah. The leads, including Ali Louis Bourzgui (Tommy), Alison Luff (Mrs. Walker) and Adam Jacobs (Captain Walker), are revisiting the roles they played at the Goodman. Choreography is by Lorin Latarro (“Waitress”), and McAnuff directs. Performances begin March 8 at the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan.Louis Bourzgui in “The Who’s Tommy.”Liz LaurenLEMPICKA The life of the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka was not a screamingly obvious topic for a Broadway musical, but an impressive team has collaborated on this show. The Polish-born Lempicka (1898-1980), who was married, twice, to men, but had female lovers as well, lived through two world wars, surrounded by cultural and political change in Russia, Paris and California. Rachel Chavkin directs a cast led by Eden Espinosa as Lempicka, who returns to the role that wowed critics in productions at the Williamstown Theater Festival and La Jolla Playhouse. The show features music by Matt Gould and lyrics by Carson Kreitzer; they collaborated on the book. Performances begin March 19 at the Longacre Theater, Manhattan.SUFFS The hard-fought passage of the 19th amendment, which codified women’s right to vote in 1919, is the focus of this musical by Shaina Taub. In addition to the challenge of being book writer, lyricist and composer, Taub also stars as Alice Paul (1885-1977), a leader of the National Woman’s Party. She and a group of like-minded women, including Ida B. Wells (Nikki M. James) and Carrie Chapman Catt (Jenn Colella), battle the patriarchy and, at times, one another. Directed by Leigh Silverman. Performances begin March 26 at the Music Box Theater, Manhattan.HELL’S KITCHEN Alicia Keys makes her Broadway debut with this semi-autobiographical jukebox musical about a 17-year-old girl named Ali, raised in a small Manhattan apartment by her protective single mother alongside a community of artists. The show features music and lyrics by Keys, a mix of hits, including “Fallin’” and “Empire State of Mind,” and new songs. The show’s premiere last year at the Public Theater received decent, if not exceptional, reviews, but c’mon, this girl is on fire. The book is by Kristoffer Diaz and choreography by Camille A. Brown. Maleah Joi Moon, Shoshana Bean and Brandon Victor Dixon will reprise their roles. The busy Michael Greif (see also “The Notebook”) directs. Performances begin March 28 at the Shubert Theater, Manhattan.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Damo Suzuki, Singer Who Ignited the Experimental Band Can, Dies at 74

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      His free-spirited music ignored genre boundaries. “If you’re a creative person,” he once said, “it’s important to break rules.”Damo Suzuki, a Japanese vocalist best known for his role with the revered and influential German experimental rock group Can during its most crucial period, died on Feb. 9 at his home in Cologne, Germany. He was 74.His death was announced by Can’s label, Spoon Records. No cause was given, but Mr. Suzuki had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2014. Initially given a 10 percent chance of recovery, he endured more than 40 surgeries in the ensuing decade.Mr. Suzuki was a free spirit who left Japan as a teenager for a nomadic life in Europe. His music ignored genre boundaries, and his singing often sounded like shamanic incantations in an invented language.“If you’re a creative person,” he said in a 2013 interview with The Japan Times, “it’s important to break rules. If you’re in the middle of the system, you can’t create much. But if you’re on the outside, you can just avoid it, start from zero and make your own stuff with no influence at all.”With Can, his enigmatic, sometimes indecipherable utterances wove through free-flowing grooves. His vocals could be as lilting as a lullaby — the Can guitarist Michael Karoli once called him a “loud whisperer” — or as startling as a shriek. In performance, while his bandmates concentrated on their instruments, Mr. Suzuki shimmied around the stage like a psychedelic imp, often barefoot and shirtless, his face hidden by an undulating mane of long black hair.Mr. Suzuki in front of his fellow members of the German band Can in Hamburg in 1971. From left: Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, Uli Gerlach (the band’s tour manager) and Holger Czukay.Jacques Breuer/Picture-Alliance — Deutsche Presse-Agentur, via Associated PressWe 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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Review: ‘I Love You So Much I Could Die,’ an Experiment in Distance

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      Mona Pirnot’s crisis-centered play uses all its resources to keep the audience at a physical and emotional remove from her sorrow.Whether it’s thought through or instinctual, turning your back to the audience certainly makes a statement. The person onstage might need to hide from an intrusive gaze, or might be deliberately trying to recalibrate the nature of spectacle and the expectations we place on it. Or maybe it’s all part of a grand conceptual design involving the subconscious connections we make when absorbing art.It’s tempting to reach for that last explanation when considering Mona Pirnot’s “I Love You So Much I Could Die,” partly because this New York Theater Workshop production is directed by Lucas Hnath (her husband), who explored the link between storytelling and sound in his plays “Dana H.” and “A Simulacrum.” But this show is too slight, too wan, to bear the weight of analytical dissection.Pirnot, who wrote and stars in “I Love You,” spends the entire 65-minute running time sitting at a table, facing away from the audience. When she picks up a guitar and sings the songs that dot the narrative, we cannot see her expression.We can’t see it during the spoken sections, either, because her words, generated by a speech-to-text application, are piped out of a laptop in a male-sounding voice. A cursor is visible moving across the screen, highlighting the text as the gnomic A.I. interpreter works its way through; at times it feels as if we are sitting in on a willfully dull karaoke session.Interweaving songs and stories, Pirnot pieces together a traumatic event from her life, in a manner that feels solipsistically granular. “I’m the kind of person who will think and think and think, and then think about what I’m thinking, and then think about what I think about what I’m thinking,” she says. “My mom calls it having a pity party.”If that’s her own mother’s take — especially in light of the show’s subject, which gradually comes into relief — imagine the challenge it is to elicit interest, not to mention compassion, from a theater full of people not related to Pirnot. It is a challenge “I Love You” struggles to meet.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beyoncé Fan’s Radio Request Reignites Country Music Debate

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      A fan asked his Oklahoma radio station to play a new Beyoncé song. The request was rejected, spurring hundreds of calls and emails about the exclusion of Black musicians from the genre.In Oklahoma, a small country music station that refused a listener’s request to play a new song by Beyoncé was forced to change its tune after an uproar from fans who say that Black artists are too often excluded from the genre.On Tuesday morning, Justin McGowan requested that the D.J.s at KYKC, a country music radio station in Ada, play “Texas Hold ’Em,” one of two new songs Beyoncé released as announced in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday.Beyoncé, who grew up in Houston, sings about hoedowns, and the twangy song also features a fellow Black Grammy winner, Rhiannon Giddens, on banjo and viola.The station manager, Roger Harris, emailed Mr. McGowan back with a concise rejection: “We do not play Beyoncé at KYKC as we are a country music station.” In sending the email, Mr. Harris unwittingly ignited a new flame in a long-simmering debate over how Black artists fit into a genre that has Black music at its roots.In the Super Bowl ad, Beyoncé joked that her new release would “break the internet.” She wasn’t kidding.Mr. McGowan put a screenshot of the rejection on social media, tagging a Beyoncé fan group in a post that drew 3.4 million views on X and sparked conversations on Reddit and TikTok.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More