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- in Theater
Broadway Opened 12 Shows in 9 Days. Here’s What That Looked Like.
Even at a challenging time for a pandemic-weakened industry, they found razzle-dazzle.Broadway Opened 12 Shows in 9 Days. Here’s What That Looked Like.Broadway is in the midst of a rolling celebration — of artistic expression, of audience enthusiasm, of song and dance and storytelling itself.The overlapping runs constitute a risky bet by producers and investors, who have staked tens of millions of dollars on their ability to sell seats. Even in the best of times, most Broadway shows fail, and these are not the best of times: Production costs have soared, and season-to-date attendance is 18 percent below prepandemic levels.But the shakeout comes later. First: fanfare and flowers, ovations and optimism.WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17‘The Wiz’Easing on down the road … to BroadwayDeborah Cox, left, who plays Glinda the good witch, and Nichelle Lewis, who plays Dorothy, at the opening night of “The Wiz.” Many of the 1,600 in attendance wore green for the Emerald City.A revival of a 1975 musical that reimagines “The Wizard of Oz” for an all-Black cast.Of course “The Wiz” was going to have a yellow carpet. The show’s recurring song is “Ease on Down the Road,” and that road is the yellow brick one — the path to Oz, but also, to self-discovery.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
- in Music
Mariinsky Dancers Barred From Youth Ballet Gala in New York
Two dancers from the Russian company were set to perform at a benefit for a prestigious competition for young dancers, but they were sidelined after protests by pro-Ukrainian activists.Two dancers from the Mariinsky Theater in Russia were barred from performing at a youth ballet gala in New York this week after their participation drew criticism from pro-Ukrainian officials and activists.The dancers had been set to take part in two performances, at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, that celebrate the 25th anniversary of Youth America Grand Prix, a prestigious ballet competition and scholarship program based in New York.But Youth America Grand Prix’s leaders removed the dancers from the program after critics said the organization was lending support to the Russian government by hosting the artists. The Mariinsky is a state-run theater in St. Petersburg led by the conductor Valery Gergiev, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.Youth America Grand Prix said in a statement that the decision “gives us great pain.” It said that in the hours before the first performance on Thursday, it had learned — along with Lincoln Center and others in the ballet world — of possible protests. After consulting with New York City Ballet, which operates the Koch Theater, it said that “it was agreed to cancel the performances of the scheduled Mariinsky Ballet dancers.”“Art should unite us, not divide us,” Larissa Saveliev, the founder of Youth America Grand Prix, said in a statement. “In a difficult period, ballet should be healing. This is terribly sad.”Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russian artists and institutions have come under intense scrutiny on the global stage. The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Mariinsky have faced cancellations abroad and have lost prestigious partnerships. Some stars, including Gergiev, who also leads the Bolshoi, and the soprano Anna Netrebko, have been shunned in the West because of their ties to Mr. Putin.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
- in Music
Lincoln Center’s Summer Festival to Focus on Civic Bonds
The third edition of Summer for the City will feature hip-hop, comedy, classical music and more, under the motto “life, liberty and happiness.”Lincoln Center said on Wednesday that it would devote its summer festival to themes of community and civic participation, with a mix of hip-hop, comedy, dance, classical music and more under the motto “life, liberty and happiness.”The festival, Summer for the City, will feature premieres of anthems about contemporary hopes and struggles. Classical music concerts will be more participatory than in the past; at one event, audience members will be asked to vote on the program. And civil rights will be prominent, with the New York premiere of an opera about Eric Garner, who died in 2014 at the hands of police officers on Staten Island.“We know the performing arts have a role in strengthening our community and strengthening our civic bonds,” Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center’s chief artistic officer, said in an interview. “This is a time where we can really be together and celebrate the ideas and ideals that we all share.”The third edition of the festival, which will run from June 12 to Aug. 10, is part of the center’s efforts to appeal to a younger, more diverse crowd, in part by promoting a broader array of genres, including pop music and social dance.Under Henry Timms, Lincoln Center’s president and chief executive, the center has shifted its focus from classical music and international theater, prompting some criticism that it is not doing enough to promote traditional offerings. (Timms will depart his post in August; a search for his successor is in progress.)After eliminating the Mostly Mozart Festival, a summer fixture since the 1970s, Lincoln Center renamed the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, saying that it was time to reimagine the ensemble for a modern and more inclusive age. This season, the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, as the ensemble is now called, will convene for the first time under the rising conductor Jonathon Heyward.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
- in Television
As ‘Sex and the City’ Ages, Some Find the Cosmo Glass Half-Empty
As the show became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye. But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.Most weeks, hundreds of people board a “Sex and the City” themed bus in Manhattan that takes them to the show’s most recognizable sites: Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, her favorite brunch spot, a sex shop in the West Village. The tour usually ends with — what else? — a Cosmopolitan.“It never gets old,” said Georgette Blau, the owner of On Location Tours. It’s a three-and-a-half-hour entry into an aspirational world many of the riders had been watching for decades, she said.Twenty years since the series finale of “Sex and the City” aired, a new generation of television watchers has grown into adulthood. After all of the episodes were released on Netflix this month, media watchers wondered how the show — and Carrie’s behavior — might hold up for Gen Z.Would they be able to handle the occasional raunchiness of the show, the sometimes toxic relationships? Were the references outdated? “Can Gen Z Even Handle Sex and the City?” Vanity Fair asked. (For its part, Gen Z seems to vacillate between being uninterested and lightly appalled about what they consider to be a period piece.)The show had a very different effect on its longtime fans, many of them a generation or two older. When it aired, “Sex and the City” changed the conversation around how women dated, developed friendships and moved about the world in their 30s and 40s.Even if some of the show’s character arcs aged poorly, many of its original fans still relate to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, no matter how unrealistic it may have been to live on the Upper East Side with a walk-in closet full of Manolo Blahniks on the salary of a weekly newspaper columnist.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
- in Theater
It’s April on Broadway. This Man Wants to Sell You on a Show.
Rick Miramontez, a veteran theater press agent, is gearing up for the craziest stretch of the Broadway season.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at what the spring has in store for Rick Miramontez, a leading Broadway press agent.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesRick Miramontez is both a night owl and an early bird.He has to be. As the president of DKC/O&M, the theatrical public relations agency he founded in 2006, he is always on call. His agency represents eight shows currently running on Broadway, including “Hadestown” and “MJ.”And the nine-day stretch from April 17 to 25 — when 12 plays and musicals will open by the cutoff date to be eligible for Tony Award nominations — is the equivalent of the theatrical Super Bowl.“It’s absolutely seven days a week right now,” Miramontez said in a recent phone conversation from his office, which sits in a penthouse on West 39th Street above the Drama Book Shop.April is always a busy time for Broadway openings. Like the crush of Oscar hopefuls that open in late December, productions want to open as close as possible to the Tonys deadline to be fresh in the minds of nominators and voters. Tony nominations will be announced on April 30, and the televised awards show takes place on June 16.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
- in Theater
Howard Atlee, Showman Who Promoted Dramas and Dogs, Dies at 97
As a press agent, he had his first big hit with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” In dog competitions, his first big hit was a dachshund named Virginia.Howard Atlee, an eclectic publicist who represented award-winning shows during a now bygone Broadway era and, as an avocation, also bred dachshunds that won best in show at dog competitions, died on March 15 in Silver Spring, Md. He was 97.His death, in a hospital, was announced by his friend and caretaker, Harpreet Singh.Transplanted from an Ohio city of 10,000, Mr. Atlee set his sights on Broadway after attending his first professionally staged production while serving in the Navy in Boston. After he was discharged, he was a theater major in college.As a publicist, he would help launch the career of the playwright Edward Albee by promoting his first full-length play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” at the Billy Rose Theater in 1962. Some critics dismissed it as salacious, but Howard Taubman raved in The New York Times that it was written by “a born dramatist” and “marks a further gain for a young writer becoming a major figure of our stage.”Mr. Atlee also helped found the Negro Ensemble Company, which offered opportunities to fledgling Black actors and other theater professionals, including would-be publicists.In 1956, when he was 30 and working as a press agent for a summer theater in Camden, Maine, Mr. Atlee began what became more or less a behind-the-scenes gig, even for a press agent accustomed to operating backstage.“One day driving to the theater I saw a kennel,” he told The New York Times in 1970. “I stopped, and when I left I owned a smooth dachshund.”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
