New York City

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      His ‘Dracula’ Project: Creating a Funny Vampire

      by

      The great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker has written a comic version of “Dracula” that is appearing Off Broadway.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll meet someone who can laugh at Dracula because he’s like family. We’ll also find out why grade inflation has become an issue at Yale University.Matthew MurphyIn the past, Dacre Stoker has written or co-written serious fiction about his great-granduncle Bram, the man who gave the world that famous bloodthirsty Transylvanian at the end of the 19th century. Tonight, the younger Stoker will venture into comedy in an Off Broadway theater where “Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors” is playing.He told me last week that he had put together some funny material to deliver when joining the cast onstage after the performance. He said he would take along a prop and tell the actors: “Loved the performance. You might need a transfusion.”The prop won’t really be a transfusion: It will be red wine from a winery in Romania in which he has an interest. The winery is in Walachia, “the state below Transylvania,” he said. “We have given vampires to the country — why not get involved in commerce?”Stoker said his mission was to raise the profile of his ancestor “so the creator himself becomes at least half as famous as his creation.”He added: “This is how I started getting into writing the books and leading tours — asking, ‘Who is Bram Stoker?’ Bringing him into an Off Broadway comedy is another way to increase awareness of this guy.”He also enjoys making Dracula funny. “It’s nice to see that people can poke fun at a scary, horrifying novel that’s been around for 127 years,” he said. (Our reviewer Elisabeth Vincentelli called “Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors,” at New World Stages, “a gender-bending play” that “pays no mind to the ‘terrors’ part of its title.”)Dacre Stoker said his illustrious relative had connections to the world of theater: Bram Stoker’s “claim to fame before Dracula was running the famous Lyceum Theater in London for 27 years,” he said. He was the accommodating business assistant in the long shadow of the notoriously mercurial star Sir Henry Irving, the first actor ever knighted.“Irving had extravagant tastes,” he said, and Bram, who had a master’s in math, “had to hold him back while he crunched the numbers” at the theater, the great-grandnephew said.He also talked about the time his great-granduncle spent in New York: Bram Stoker joined the Players, the private club on Gramercy Park South, in 1893, when he and Irving were on one of eight American tours.“I saw the book where he was nominated by Samuel L. Clemens, his good friend and neighbor from Chelsea,” Dacre Stoker said, “so Mark Twain nominated him. He had more names seconding him than any other page I saw in the book.” Others have written about Bram Stoker’s fascination with the American poet Walt Whitman.Dacre Stoker, 65, a former member of the Canadian men’s pentathlon team who coached the team at the 1988 Olympics, said he had been “like this Indiana Jones version of a literary guy, trying to find the story behind the story, to bring this writer to life, to find out who Bram Stoker was.” He used material he found for “Dracul,” a prequel written with J.D. Barker and published in 2018 that envisioned what might have prompted Bram Stoker to create Dracula.That book followed a 2009 novel, “Dracula: The Un-Dead,” which Dacre Stoker wrote with the screenwriter Ian Holt, himself a Dracula historian. It was the first Dracula project authorized by the Stoker estate since the 1931 film that starred Bela Lugosi.WeatherA system sliding across the Mid-Atlantic states will mean a partly sunny day, with temperatures reaching the low 40s. At night, clouds will give way to a clearer sky, and the temperature will drop to around 30.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Friday (Immaculate Conception).The latest Metro newsAhmed Gaber for The New York TimesConflict and CrisesIsrael-Gaza: Long before the temporary cease-fire ended in Gaza, the mood in Paterson, N.J., home to one of the largest communities of Palestinians outside the Middle East, was tense.Migrants and the mayor: New York City’s comptroller has restricted the mayor’s ability to quickly spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the migrant crisis — a major blow to his emergency powers.A Changing CityToward a quieter city: New York City, not exactly known for its peace and quiet, is expanding its use of “noise cameras,” which ticket the drivers of loud cars and motorcycles.The rich are back: At the height of the pandemic, the richest New Yorkers left in droves. A new report based on census and state tax filing data has found a reversal.Small theaters: New York’s nonprofit Signature Theater has three performance spaces, a history of cultivating major playwrights, and a board chaired by the Hollywood star Edward Norton. What Signature doesn’t have this fall are plays.Lots of A’s at YaleChristopher Capozziello for The New York TimesOne consequence of the pandemic has proved lasting at Yale University: Nearly everyone is getting A’s.A new report found that nearly 80 percent of the grades given to Yale undergraduates during the 2022-23 academic year were A’s or A minuses. The mean grade point average — 3.7 out of a possible 4.0 — was also up from before the pandemic.My colleague Amelia Nierenberg writes that the findings have frustrated some students and professors. What does excellence mean at Yale if 80 percent of the students get the equivalent of “excellent” in almost every class? Shelly Kagan, a Yale philosophy professor with a reputation as a tough grader, said that when “virtually everything that gets turned in” receives an A, “we are simply being dishonest to our students.”The post-pandemic spike in grades is not unique to Yale. At Harvard, 79 percent of all grades given to undergraduates in the 2020-21 year were A’s or A minuses. A decade earlier, that figure was 60 percent. In 2020-21, the average G.P.A. at Harvard was 3.8, compared with 3.41 in 2002-3.“Grades are like any currency,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation: They tend to increase over time.This is not just happening at elite schools. G.P.A.s have been increasing at colleges nationwide by about 0.1 per decade since the early 1980s, he said. But private colleges tend to have higher average G.P.A.s than public colleges and universities.At Yale, where an A is the new normal, the proportion of A’s and A minuses has been climbing for years. In the 2010-11 academic year, just over two-thirds of all grades at Yale — 67 percent — were A’s or A minuses. By 2018-19, the last full academic year before the pandemic, 73 percent were in the A range.Then, during the pandemic, the figure jumped. Almost 82 percent of Yale grades were in the A range in 2021-22. The figure slipped slightly, to about 79 percent, in 2022-23. The new statistics come from a report by Ray Fair, an economics professor whose work was first reported by The Yale Daily News. He declined to comment on his findings.Does any of this really matter?Pericles Lewis, the dean of Yale College, acknowledged that students could be overly concerned with G.P.A.s.But he added: “I don’t think many people care, 10 years out, what kind of grades you got at Yale. They mostly care that you, you know, you studied at Yale.”METROPOLITAN diaryTiffany frameDear Diary:I was cleaning out my closets when I came across a small Tiffany box. Much to my surprise, it did not appear to have ever been opened. Inside, covered in plastic, was a lovely sterling silver picture frame nestled in a Tiffany blue felt bag.Unfortunately, on close examination I could see that the silver had become tarnished. I tried to clean it, but to no avail.I called Tiffany and was told to bring it in for repair. So I traveled to Rockefeller Center, brought the box into the store and was directed to the repair department downstairs.I showed the frame to one of the women at the counter there. She called two other women over to take a look.The three of them admired it, but then said that they didn’t sell Tiffany items.“How could Tiffany not sell Tiffany?” I asked.“You’re in Saks Fifth Avenue!” one of the women said.— Eileen RosenbergIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Cobi Narita, Tireless Jazz Promoter and Benefactor, Dies at 97

      by

      She produced concerts, helped musicians find work and started a women’s jazz festival. “Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” one musician said.Cobi Narita, an indefatigable jazz impresario who for more than 40 years in New York City produced concerts, celebrated female artists in an annual festival and ran performance spaces, died on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles. She was 97.Her death, at the home of a granddaughter, was confirmed by her son Robert Narita.Ms. Narita — who grew up in California, spent most of World War II with her family in an Arizona internment camp for Japanese Americans, and moved to New York in her early 40s — was a unifying force in local jazz circles.“Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” the saxophonist Jimmy Heath told the website All About Jazz in 2006.Loren Schoenberg, the founding director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, called Ms. Narita a respected benefactor who provided much-needed opportunities for performers in New York — a role that was later more formally adopted, at least in part, by Jazz at Lincoln Center.“She started at a time when there was no organized world of jazz institutions to give financial aid to musicians,” Mr. Schoenberg said by phone. “Everybody was out in the ocean doing their own little projects. But Cobi had all these things going, and she handed out money to support people.”He added, “Her affect was low-key, but she had charisma and a gravitational field around her.”In 1976, Ms. Narita started the nonprofit Universal Jazz Coalition, an umbrella organization that for about 10 years helped musicians manage their careers, promoted and produced concerts, and distributed a newsletter about local jazz events.Seven years later, she opened the Jazz Center of New York in a rented loft in Lower Manhattan, on Lafayette Street, where famous musicians like Dizzy Gillespie as well as up-and-comers performed. In 2002, she opened Cobi’s Place, on West 48th Street near Seventh Avenue, as a venue for singers, instrumentalists and dancers.Cobi’s Place stayed in business for about a decade. The Jazz Center of New York closed recently but she had retired during the pandemic.Over the years, Ms. Narita produced concerts and performances by, among others, the singers Abbey Lincoln and Dakota Staton, the saxophonist Henry Threadgill and the trumpeter Clark Terry.“Without producers like Cobi,” Ms. Lincoln told The Daily News of New York in 1993, “musicians like me would have a hard time having careers.”In 1978, Ms. Narita organized the four-day Salute to Women in Jazz, which was renamed the New York Women’s Jazz Festival the next year and ran for more than 10 years. The event was held at the disco Casablanca 2, on the original site of the jazz club Birdland, on Broadway between 52nd and 53rd Streets. The event made news when Robert Tirado, the disco’s owner, abruptly increased the rent after two successful nights. Ms. Narita could not meet his demand, and he locked the festival out.Ms. Narita quickly regrouped. The musicians played outdoors near the club for the third and fourth nights, using electricity from a nearby parking lot, instruments and a public address system from the Sam Ash Musical Instruments store a few blocks away, and chairs from the Roseland Ballroom. The pianist Mary Lou Williams and the singer Helen Merrill were among those who performed.“A thousand people had to have lined up on the street,” Ms. Narita told All About Jazz. “It was amazing.”George Wein, the producer of the Newport Jazz Festival, happened to be walking by and was stunned when he came upon the unscheduled street concert. He paid for Ms. Narita to use Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) for a bonus fifth night.Ms. Narita’s financial backer in most of her ventures was Paul Ash, whose family owns the Sam Ash chain of musical instrument stores; Cobi’s Place was located above Manny’s Music, which was owned by Sam Ash. Ms. Narita and Mr. Ash met in 1973 and married in 1989. He died in 2014.“They were like magnets, man, from the start,” her son Robert said. “Soul mates.”Nobuko Emoto was born on March 3, 1926, in San Pedro, Calif. Her father, Kazumasa Emoto, was a farmer who brought fresh vegetables to Los Angeles markets. Her mother, Kimiko (Hamamoto) Emoto, was a homemaker.Nobuko, her parents, her two sisters and her two brothers were among the estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly relocated during World War II to internment camps, mostly in Western states. Mr. Emoto lost his trucks, his equipment and his land.During her incarceration at the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona, Nobuko wrote a newsletter about goings-on at the camp.She and her family were released in 1945, and she finished high school. She soon married Masao Narita, with whom she would have seven children. She entered Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania in 1948 and studied theater there, but left after one year.After Ms. Narita and her husband divorced in the mid-1950s, she worked in various jobs in the Long Beach, Calif., area. Looking for a better career opportunity, she left for New York City in 1969, taking a job with the International Council of Shopping Centers.Soon after her move, she was walking in Central Park when she heard jazz being played. One of the musicians, the bassist Gene Taylor, urged her to volunteer for the renowned jazz ministry at St. Peter’s Church, on Lexington Avenue near East 54th Street. (In later years the church would be the site of her annual birthday party, which featured live jazz.)In 1972, Ms. Narita was hired as the executive director of Collective Black Artists, a repertory orchestra and support group for needy musicians. But after two and a half years, after raising more than $100,000 for the organization’s projects, she was fired — because, she said, she was not Black.“They really thought a male Black person should be in that job; it just looked better than an Asian woman,” she was quoted as saying in a profile of her on the Library of Congress website.She recovered from that setback by studying corporate organization on a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That program built her skills in time to start the Universal Jazz Coalition.In addition to her son Robert, Ms. Narita is survived by her daughters, Susan Narita-Law and Judith, Charlene, Jude, Lisa and Patricia Narita; another son, Richard; 13 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a sister, Therese Nakagawa.Ms. Narita said that one of her lasting goals was to help lesser-known women and budding young artists build jazz careers.“There were a thousand struggling musicians who never got concerts or promotional help so they could build their own names,” she told The Daily News in 1982. “All these young people who seem to have come to a stopping point after going to school: Where do they play?” More

    • 88 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Extinction Rebellion Climate Protesters Interrupt Met Performance

      by

      Met officials were forced to bring down the curtain halfway through the opera as protesters unfurled banners that read “No Opera On A Dead Planet.” The performance later resumed.The opening night of a revival of Richard Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York was interrupted Thursday night by climate protesters shouting “No Opera” from the balconies on both sides of the opera house.Protesters with the group Extinction Rebellion NYC unfurled banners that read “No Opera On A Dead Planet,” according to Peter Gelb, the general manager at the Met. Met officials were then forced to bring down the curtain at around 9:30 p.m., halfway through the second act.About eight minutes passed before security officials ushered out the protesters perched on the balconies, Mr. Gelb said.The crowd jeered the demonstrators and burst into applause when the curtains again opened, but the elation was short-lived.A woman sitting in the orchestra section of the audience then stood up and began to shout.The curtains closed again. While security removed the woman, Mr. Gelb consulted with other officials on how to proceed.Many audience members shouted back at the protesters, with people screaming “Go away!” “Go home!” and “Shut up!” Some attendees walked out, with one person questioning “is there no security here?”The show was delayed for 22 minutes, Mr. Gelb said.Mr. Gelb appeared onstage to inform the audience that the house lights would remain on so security could quickly identify and remove any additional protesters who might pop up during the rest of the four-and-half-hour performance.The production was scheduled to end shortly after 11 p.m. but will instead end closer to midnight because of the interruptions.Mr. Gelb said the protesters were removed from the premises and referred to the police.A New York Police Department spokesman said no arrests were reported.The return of Otto Schenk’s classic production was eagerly anticipated among opera goers because it marked the Met debut of the highly-sought-after baritone Christian Gerhaher, who sang the role of Wolfram. The Austrian tenor Andreas Schager sang the title role, Elza van den Heever was Elisabeth and the opera was conducted by Donald Runnicles.In a statement, Extinction Rebellion said the demonstration was timed to “coincide with the main character’s declaration that ‘love is a spring to be drunk from.’”It added: “contrary to those words spoken on stage, springs are not pure now, because we are in a climate crisis, and our water is contaminated.”“Everyone was just so startled,” said George Chauncey, a history professor at Columbia University, who was seated in the orchestra section. “We didn’t know what was going to happen.”Mr. Chauncey said some audience members were concerned about their safety, while others were annoyed that opening night was interrupted.“I agree there’s a climate emergency and I understand the frustration that leads people to do something like this,” he said. “But I’m not sure it’s very effective.”Before the show, several demonstrators were at the house protesting the Israel-Hamas war, including Nan Goldin, the photographer and activist.Thursday’s interruption was just the latest example of climate activists disrupting a classical music concert.In September, climate activists interrupted a performance in Switzerland. And last year during a performance of Verdi’s Requiem in Amsterdam, according to Opera Wire, climate activists shouted: “We are in the middle of a climate crisis and we are like the orchestra on the Titanic that keeps playing quietly while the ship is already sinking.” They were escorted out minutes later.Climate activists have also targeted museums, sometimes harming paintings, and interrupted sporting events. In September, Extinction Rebellion NYC also interrupted the U.S. Open semifinal match between Coco Gauff and Karolina Muchova. Four protesters in the upper levels of Arthur Ashe Stadium called for an end to fossil fuels, and one activist glued his feet to the ground. Their protests delayed the match for 49 minutes.Javier C. Hernández More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Casey Likes of ‘Back to the Future,’ Is on a Roll

      by

      “I either suck or I’m awesome,” Casey Likes said as he entered Frames, a snazzy bowling alley tucked into a corner of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. “There is no in-between.”It was shortly after 11 p.m. on a recent Thursday, and Likes, 21, the toothy, wholesome star of the Broadway musical adaptation of “Back to the Future,” was there to bowl as part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.With the alley closed to the public, he strode into the room like the boy-mayor of the place, resplendent in an ultramarine bowling shirt. On his first lap, he greeted friends from “MJ” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” then paused at the bar to order a drink and some fries. He maintains a strict anti-inflammatory diet during the week, but on bowling nights he lets that regime slide. Fries collected, he turned to join some other friends. Clowning, he accidentally streaked a colleague’s hair with ketchup, then helped to clean it. This clumsiness is not new to him. At the opening night party for his Broadway debut, “Almost Famous,” he spilled soda on Joni Mitchell.Thursday night strikes: Likes is part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.George Etheredge for The New York TimesNot many young men can claim that honor. And only a handful have led two Broadway musicals before their 22nd birthday. But Likes has. A mix of the extraordinary and perfectly ordinary, he is a boy-next-door type, as sincere as sunlight, as unthreatening as oatmeal, who can still command a Broadway stage.“He found his way there because of pure joy,” Cameron Crowe, who worked with him on “Almost Famous,” said. “And that joy is infectious.”Likes grew up in Chandler, Ariz., a medium-size city southeast of Phoenix. His mother, a former Broadway actress, managed a theater there, and Likes has been onstage since he was 3, playing Tiny Tim to his mother’s Mrs. Cratchit. He also appeared in several local commercials. Sometimes people ask him when he knew he wanted to be an actor. The better question: When didn’t he?He continued acting all through his childhood. He couldn’t help it. When his elementary school told him that he couldn’t play another lead because other students should have a chance, he headed up the tech crew. In the summer after his junior year of high school, having already starred as Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables” and Jack in a youth theater production of “Newsies,” he was invited to participate in the Jimmy Awards, a competition for high school musical theater students held in New York City. He didn’t win, but his solo (he performed “Santa Fe” from “Newsies”) caught the attention of a casting director of the Broadway-bound musical “Almost Famous,” who brought him in for an audition. Likes, then 17, attended exactly one day of his senior year, then flew out to join a workshop, completing high school online.Roger Bart, left, as Doc Brown, and Likes as Marty McFly in “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which is onstage now at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSolea Pfeiffer as Penny Lane and Likes as William Miller in “Almost Famous,” a stage adaptation of the film that had a short run last fall at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the musical’s brief run at the Old Globe in San Diego and a pandemic pause, it opened on Broadway last year with Likes as William, a teenage journalist trailing a volatile roots rock band. He was the baby of the show, by several years, which made his experience not so different from William’s — awestruck, out of his element, sometimes lonely.Though the reviews for the show were generally unenthusiastic (“You can say bad,” Likes said), critics described Likes as appealing, endearing, and as his name demands, likable. The actor felt pressure, wholly self-imposed, to live up to those notices. Toward the end of the run, he began to experience what he describes as unrelated health problems.“I was worried,” he said. “I was like, ‘Are people going to be disappointed in me?’”When “Almost Famous” closed, he had planned to take some time off to recover. Instead he was quickly offered “Back to the Future,” another musical based on a popular film. Another musical that kept him constantly onstage. He didn’t hesitate. “If you asked me at any point in my life, ‘Do you want to play Marty McFly on Broadway?’ The answer is obviously yes,” he said. “Like, duh.”“I’ve been waiting for this community,” Likes said. “I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesJohn Rando, who directed the “Back to the Future” musical, hired Likes for his youth, his amiability, his soulful rock tenor. Once previews began, he was also impressed with the confidence that Likes brought to the role and his effortless engagement with viewers.“Part of his charm is that he’s fearless with an audience,” Rando said.Likes knows that he has to get the audience on his side, smile by smile, note by note. And he feels that he has to pay homage to the actors who created the roles he plays (Patrick Fugit in the “Almost Famous” movie, Michael J. Fox in the “Back to the Future” franchise), while making the parts his own.“That might be my little hidden superpower,” he said. “To be able to take the things that made them iconic, distill them and put them in a little smoothie with all the things that make me special.”A particular flair for bowling is not necessarily one of those things, though Likes did say that at the previous week’s outing he had bowled a strike. This week the “Back to the Future” team, the Pinheads, would play the “Kimberly Akimbo” team, Pinberly Akimbowl. (Other team names of current Broadway shows: Hamilpins, Some Strike It Hot, Sweet Spareolines and, from “Moulin Rouge,” Bowlhemians.)Asked if his co-star Roger Bart (who plays Doc Brown) was on the team, Likes shook his head and laughed. (As Bart said, in a recent interview, “He’s got one of the great laughs. And the biggest, most contagious smile.”) People like Bart, Broadway veterans with families, don’t come out to bowl. They leave that to their younger colleagues, such as Likes.“I just want friends!” Likes said.Bowling night seems to be more about hobnobbing than actually bowling. “I’ve never played a full game,” Likes said. George Etheredge for The New York TimesIndeed, Likes was so busy hobnobbing that he neglected to register with his team and the game was already in progress when he found them at their assigned lane. Apparently this happens often. Asked about the rules of the league, Likes shook his head. “I’ve never played a full game so I truly do not understand,” he said.An ensemble member allowed him to sub in for one frame. Likes approached the foul line with his typical ease, then bowled a three. (In the interest of fairness, his score was then erased and the frame was bowled again.) He shrugged it off and fed some French fries to a castmate. Two other colleagues staged an impromptu dance-off, trading pirouettes and arabesques.“I just love it. I love the vibes,” Likes said.The evening wore on. Likes bowled another frame.“You got it,” his co-star Jelani Remy called out to him. “You look great.” Likes struck down three pins, then two more. (That frame was also erased.) The Pinheads beat their rivals 1,176 to 943 — though the “Kimberly Akimbo” team was admittedly down a player. A second game began. Likes wouldn’t bowl this one either, he had more circulating to do. He feels that he has spent his whole life getting to a place like this. He is determined to enjoy it.“It’s the reason I’m wearing the bowling shirt,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this community. I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.” More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Theater to See in N.Y.C. This Holiday Season

      by

      Christmas classics, comedic musicals and a star-studded Sondheim revival: a guide to the shows to see this season.The holiday season is upon us, which means it’s an excellent time for theatergoers to pack into cozy venues for a feast of the eyes. Our critics have selected a handful of options for tourists and locals looking to catch up on Broadway and Off Broadway shows this holiday season. And we’ve included some other choices as well.For those who prefer to be entertained from home, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year will feature performances by Broadway shows like “& Juliet,” “Back to the Future: The Musical,” “How to Dance in Ohio,” “Shucked” and “Spamalot,” along with an appearance by Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells of “Gutenberg! The Musical!”Other theater-related streaming options include “Dicks: The Musical,” with Nathan Lane, and the 2015 documentary that the “How to Dance in Ohio” musical is based on.Here is a selection of notable shows onstage in New York City.Fun for the Whole FamilyBig Apple CircusStraw hats thrown like Frisbees. Death-defying aerial acts. Dizzying foot juggling routines. All accompany the contortionist, trapeze and tightrope circus classics that spectators young and old have come to ooh and aah at. This year, Big Apple presents “Journey to the Rainbow,” a collaboration with the German troupe Circus Theater Roncalli, complete with humans dressed as polar bears and cotton candy galore. Through Jan. 1 at Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, Manhattan. Read the review.Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City RockettesIt’s a New York City classic. It’s a Christmas classic. The Rockettes are back with sensational high kicks set to state-of-the-art lighting and projections. Little ones will be dazzled by animated trains, ribbons and wintry displays. Their adult companions will delight in a Nativity procession and holiday maximalism. Through Jan. 1 at Radio City Music Hall, Manhattan. Read the review.A Christmas CarolSet in a home built in 1862, in an intimate parlor room, this telling of the timeless Christmas tale stars John Kevin Jones as Charles Dickens. Audience members, surrounded by 19th-century holiday décor and candlelight, will travel back more than a century, to when Dickens wrote the story. The production also features a streaming version. Through Dec. 24 at the Merchant House, Manhattan.Craving Song and DanceSweeney ToddJosh Groban stars on Broadway as everyone’s favorite tall, dark and handsome throat slitter. Opposite the demon barber is a superbly zany Annaleigh Ashford as the murder-accomplice-baker Mrs. Lovett (our critic called her “a brilliant comic for whom comedy is not the end but the means”). The two stars will leave the production after the Jan. 14 performance, so be sure to catch them in full bloody glory before they go. Come for the meat pies and Stephen Sondheim’s gigantic score, stay for the shadowy lighting, which won Natasha Katz her eighth Tony Award. At the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Merrily We Roll AlongJonathan Groff stars alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez in this acclaimed revival of the former Sondheim flop, directed by Maria Friedman. Our critic called the show, which sweetly and gravely warns of the dangers of great ambition, “a palpable hit,” with “a thrillingly fierce central performance” by Groff and “high-wattage, laser-focused performances” by Radcliffe and Mendez. Through March 24 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Jonathan Groff, obscured, Daniel Radcliffe, aloft, and Katie Rose Clarke in the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” at the Hudson Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHere We AreUnderfed and yet very full: Will the people who have it all ever find something to eat? Inspired by two Luis Buñuel films, David Ives’s chic, surrealist musical was one of the most anticipated Off Broadway shows of the year, and a star-studded farewell to Sondheim’s final work. Through Jan. 21 at the Shed, Manhattan. Read the review.StereophonicFive members of a rock band try to record a studio album. That’s the premise, which hinges upon heartache, copious drug use and fragile rock star egos, of David Adjmi’s first New York production since 2013, set entirely in a recording studio. It’s a play, not a musical, so it’s not squarely in the song-and-dance category, but the music, written by Will Butler (formerly of Arcade Fire), is chock-full of captivating pop songs and gripping ballads. Through Dec. 17 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan. Read the review.For the FaithfulPurlie VictoriousLeslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young star in Ossie Davis’s raucous 1961 comedy, directed by Kenny Leon, about a charismatic preacher who must outwit a plantation owner to buy and restore the local church. The play exposes racism as laughably absurd in a Broadway revival our critic called “scathingly funny.” Through Feb. 4 at the Music Box, Manhattan. Read the review.Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young, center, lead the ensemble cast in a revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 play, “Purlie Victorious,” at the Music Box Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCovenantIn his New York debut, the playwright York Walker’s Southern gothic, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, follows a small Georgia town’s reaction to a bluesman’s homecoming. The potent little Off Broadway play, about communing with God and making deals with the Devil, is based on the real-life bluesman Robert Johnson, whose technique inspired rumors that he had traded his soul for musical genius. Through Dec. 17 at Roundabout Underground, Manhattan. Read the review.Nearing ExpirationShuckedIf a cornucopia of puns is your thing, this lowbrow comedic musical about a small-town woman who leaves home to save her corn just might scratch the itch. With a book by Robert Horn, songs by the country music songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and campy scenes — including a mini-kickline of plastic corncobs — directed by Jack O’Brien, our critic called the show low humor “but hard not to laugh at.” Through Jan. 14 at the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Sleep No MoreArguably one of New York City’s crown jewels of immersive theater, the Hitchcock-style take on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is set to close on Jan. 28 after 12 years. In an enchanting act of voyeurism, audiences members wear masks — the Venetian type, not the health-protecting kind (those are optional) — and follow characters from room to room, into densely packed apothecary dens, eerie miniature forests and dark, elaborate dining halls. Through Jan. 28 at the McKittrick Hotel, Manhattan. Read the review. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      John Morris, Who Brought Rock Legends to the Stage, Dies at 84

      by

      As a coordinator of the Woodstock festival and the hallowed New York venue Fillmore East, he helped showcase the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.John Morris, who brought an element of spectacle to the rock explosion of the 1960s as a coordinator and M.C. for the era-defining Woodstock festival, and who also helped run the storied rock venues Fillmore East in New York City and the Rainbow theater in London, died on Friday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 84.The cause was complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease following treatment for lung cancer, his longtime partner, Luzann Fernandez, said.A New York native, Mr. Morris got his start as a lighting designer — first for theater productions in his home city and on London’s West End, and later for rock concerts — before he began producing concerts himself. He gained prominence in 1967 when he organized a free concert by Jefferson Airplane in Toronto that drew some 50,000 people, and he went on to mount tours by that band, as well as by the Grateful Dead and others.In 1968, Mr. Morris cemented his place in rock lore when he helped Bill Graham, the powerful and feared West Coast rock impresario, open an East Coast answer to his hallowed Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Fillmore East became a magnet for top acts like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers, who recorded a searing live album there, and was often called “the church of rock ‘n’ roll.”Still, no Fillmore East concert could come close to matching the impact of Woodstock, where legions of rock disciples turned a mass migration to a dairy farm in upstate Bethel, N.Y., into a pilgrimage that marked the apotheosis of the hippie era.The crowd on the first day of the festival. It was Mr. Morris who announced, as unanticipated masses converged on the festival, that Woodstock was “a free concert from now on.”Clayton Call/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMr. Morris served as the production coordinator for the three-day event, formally known as the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, which featured more than 30 acts. Organizers originally sold tickets for $18 (the equivalent of about $150 today), anticipating a crowd of about 50,000.Before the festival began, Mr. Morris helped the festival’s creators lure cutting-edge talent, using every means at their disposal given budgetary restraints. “We famously got the Who for $11,000 because that was all we had left in the budget,” he said in a 2019 interview with the music site Pollstar, “and we plied Pete Townshend with wine to get him to agree.” (Other sources give the amount as $12,500.)The festival, of course, became a signature event of the 1960s, a rain-soaked counterculture convention at which an estimated 400,000 people or more got high, listened to wailing guitars and lived communally in muddy fields, as memorialized in the Academy Award-winning documentary “Woodstock” (1970), directed by Michael Wadleigh.Mr. Morris, who usually worked behind the scenes, found his own taste of fame after Michael Lang, one of the festival’s organizers, without warning deputized him and Chip Monck, the lighting director, to serve as masters of ceremonies.It was Mr. Morris’s voice that echoed over the hillsides, in his famous announcement, as unanticipated masses converged on the festival, that Woodstock was “a free concert from now on,” to which he added: “That doesn’t mean that anything goes. What that means is that we’re going to put the music up here for free.”But, as he later clarified, it was Mr. Monck, not he, who made the equally famous announcement warning festival goers to avoid the unreliable batch of LSD known as the “brown acid.” “I did not do drugs,” he said, “because I was usually in charge and I didn’t feel I could. So me saying the brown acid is not particularly good would be very out of character, because I would not have the vaguest idea.”However transcendent Woodstock proved to be for the hordes of revelers, Mr. Morris had to deal with continual crises. “You can see me in that film announcing and coming as close to a nervous breakdown as humanly possible,” he said in a 2017 interview with The Malibu Times. “On Sunday, we had what was later on called a tornado that shot through the festival, poured rain, wind — the stage started sort of sliding, feeling dangerous.”However chaotic things got, Mr. Morris later expressed pride in pulling off the seemingly impossible.“We dealt with what became one of the largest cities in New York State at that point,” he said, and “managed to put on one of the best music concerts of all time.”Mr. Morris, center, shared his Woodstock memories at a 2019 panel discussion in Los Angeles with Bill Belmont, left, the festival’s artist coordinator, and Joel Rosenman, one of the festival’s producers.Alison Buck/WireImage, via Getty ImagesJohn Hanna Morris Jr. was born on May 16, 1939, in Manhattan, the elder of two sons. His father was a deputy New York City police commissioner and later an advertising executive. His mother, Louise (Edwards) Morris, had run national youth programs under the New Deal during the Great Depression.The family eventually settled in Pleasantville, a village in Westchester County. After graduating from high school in Somers, N.Y., Mr. Morris spent two years studying theater production at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh.Following his tenure at Fillmore East, Mr. Morris spearheaded the reopening of London’s Rainbow theater in Finsbury Park as a rock temple in its own right, starting with a fiery opening show by the Who in November 1971.In addition to Ms. Fernandez, Mr. Morris is survived by his brother, Mark.Mr. Morris continued producing concerts by major acts, including David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Stevie Ray Vaughan through the 1980s. He later produced antiques shows and was a dealer of Native American art and artifacts.For all his later accomplishments, he never stopped expressing pride in helping to make Woodstock, a festival created by the young and for the young (its principal organizers were in their 20s) an unlikely success.“I was the adult in the room, charged with keeping the thing running,” he told Pollstar. “I was older than most everybody else, all of 30 at that point.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Park Avenue Armory Will Host ‘Illinoise’ and ‘Indra’s Net’ in 2024

      by

      The Armory’s upcoming season also includes the North American premiere of ‘Inside Light.’The Park Avenue Armory announced its 2024 season on Thursday, including the New York City arrival of “Illinoise,” a dance-theater work based on a Sufjan Stevens album and staged by Justin Peck, and the North American premiere of “Indra’s Net,” an immersive installation performance inspired by a Buddhist story and created by the interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk.Rebecca Robertson, the founding president and executive producer of Park Avenue Armory, said the season of performances would provide audiences with opportunities to explore themes of interdependence and spirituality.“It’s a special journey about joy, contemplation and spiritual exploration,” Robertson said.“Illinoise,” which will run for several weeks starting March 2, is an adaptation of Stevens’s 2005 concept album “Illinois,” leading the audience through the American heartland from campfire storytelling to the edge of the cosmos. This music-theater production, adapted by Peck and the Pulitzer-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, will feature new arrangements by the composer and pianist Timo Andres.Performances of “Indra’s Net,” featuring Monk’s vocal ensemble, as well as a 16-piece chamber orchestra and an eight-member chorus, will start on Sept. 23. The work draws on music, movement and architecture to tell a tale of interconnectedness and interdependence inspired by an ancient Buddhist and Hindu legend in which an enlightened king stretches a net across the universe, placing a jewel at each intersection.The Armory’s season will also include the North American premiere of “Inside Light,” in which Kathinka Pasveer, director of the Stockhausen Foundation for Music, performs five electronic compositions from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 29-hour opera cycle “Licht.” The performance, which opens on June 5, was conceived specifically for the Armory and will include lasers and a high-definition video projection.In addition to those performances, the Armory’s upcoming season includes:The world premiere of “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful,” from the choreographer Kyle Abraham, with digital design by Cao Yuxi and a score composed and performed live by yMusic.The North American premiere of “R.O.S.E,” a homage to club culture by the choreographer Sharon Eyal that is directed by Gai Behar and Caius Pawson.“Shall We Gather at the River,” a musical call to climate action that weaves together Bach cantatas and Black American spirituals. It will be staged by the director Peter Sellars and performed by the Oxford Bach Soloists and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Why a Boston Tea Party Patriot Is Being Honored in Brooklyn

      by

      Ebenezer Stevens was among those who boarded three British ships in a symbolic act that helped jump-start the American Revolution.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out why a grave in Brooklyn is getting a plaque about the Boston Tea Party. We’ll also find out about a new theater at the site of what is widely considered the first Black theater company in the United States.The Boston Tea Party took place in Boston.So why will officials from groups based in Boston that are preparing to celebrate the uprising’s 250th anniversary spend Wednesday morning at a cemetery in Brooklyn, 230 miles from where the tea was thrown overboard?To commemorate Ebenezer Stevens, a patriot who boarded one of the ships in Boston Harbor.“He’s a classic example of an ordinary person who does an extraordinary thing,” said Jonathan Lane, the executive director of Revolution 250, a consortium of Massachusetts organizations that is preparing for the anniversary on Dec. 16.“He doesn’t do it alone — he’s in concert with many of his friends and neighbors,” Lane said, “but he was part of a moment in time where people stood up for what they believed were their individual rights and liberties.”Lane will attend this morning’s ceremony at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, during which a plaque for Stevens’s grave will be presented to Jeff Richman, Green-Wood’s historian. The medallion will be the 136th placed on the grave of a Tea Party participant; Stevens is the only one buried in New York City.“He was a rather spirited individual, rather brave, of course,” said Evan O’Brien, the creative manager of Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, who devised the campaign to mark the graves of the Tea Party patriots. And, O’Brien added, Stevens “risked everything for this cause he believed in — you get a glimpse of his personality that he was involved in this rather outrageous event.”Stevens was one of about 150 people assigned to board three ships in the harbor to protest a British tax on tea and, more broadly, to protest taxation without representation.“What a lot of people think about is it was this unruly mob,” O’Brien said. “That is not true at all. It was a well orchestrated, finely tuned operation. Each man knew his job. Some would haul the chests of tea out of the holds. Others were waiting at the rails to break them open and shake the tea out.”Stevens went on to fight in the Revolution. He took part in the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 and was there when the British general John Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga in 1777. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and eventually served under the Marquis de Lafayette.Later, as a major general in the New York State Militia, he mobilized soldiers to defend New York City in case of a British attack during the War of 1812. A fort named for him guarded Hell Gate and the East River channels.Richman, the Green-Wood historian, said that Stevens’s life outside the military was also eventful: He amassed a fortune as an owner of ships — a notice in The Evening Post in 1807 advertised passage and freight shipping to Bordeaux, France, aboard one of Stevens’s “new and fast” sailing ships. He sold liquor to Thomas Jefferson. And a granddaughter became famous: the author Edith Wharton.WeatherLook for a sunny to partly sunny day with temperatures in the mid-50s. Tonight, under a partly cloudy sky, the low will be in the 40s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Nov. 23 (Thanksgiving Day).The latest New York newsJeenah Moon for The New York TimesMore local newsTurkey ties: A major federal corruption investigation into Mayor Eric Adams’s fund-raising is examining whether his campaign conspired with members of the Turkish government to receive illegal donations. Here’s what we know.Guilty plea: Samuel Miele is the second person who worked on Representative George Santos’s House election campaigns who has pleaded guilty to federal charges.E-bike blaze: After scooter batteries burst into flames on Sunday and killed three people at a home in Brooklyn, the fire commissioner blamed big corporations for contributing to a rising death toll from electric-vehicle batteries.Deadly dispute: A landlord was arrested and charged with murdering his tenants on Tuesday after three people were found stabbed to death in the bedrooms of a Queens home.A new theater that honors what was there beforeCarl Cofield, an associate arts professor at New York University, on the stage of the African Grove Theater.Jonathan KingFor the opening tonight of New York University’s new African Grove Theater, the site’s the thing. The original African Theater, widely considered to have been the first Black theater company in the United States, presented classics like “Richard III” and “Othello” at the same corner, Bleecker and Mercer Streets.“If the model of the African Theater had been followed, American theater would be different,” said Michael Dinwiddie, professor of dramatic writing at N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, who spearheaded a campaign to name the new performance space in the African Theater’s honor. “It helps us understand the complexity of the American theater.”Appropriately, the play being staged tonight is based on the story of the play that opened the earlier theater on the site, “The African Company Presents Richard III.”The original theater was organized by William Alexander Brown, a retired ship steward from the West Indies. The location at Bleecker and Mercer was his second. He had started out in what is now known as TriBeCa, staging poetry readings and short plays for Black New Yorkers. He moved to the location now occupied by N.Y.U.’s Paulson Center in 1821. Appearing as the king in “Richard III” on opening night was an enslaved man; New York would not outlaw slavery until six years later.Brown presented “Othello” in the second month, but he lasted only two years at the new location. “When he dared to go toe-to-toe with a nearby white theater, each presenting rival Shakespeare productions,” our critic Maya Phillips wrote in 2021, “he was harassed by police and his theater was raided. His performers were attacked. He changed the theater’s name and moved it several times, opening and closing and reopening until the financial well ran dry.”Carl Cofield, an associate arts professor at N.Y.U.’s Tisch School of the Arts and the associate artistic director of the Classical Theater of Harlem, said that Brown was competing against a theater that was “bringing in the biggest stars from Europe,” including Junius Brutus Booth, a British actor whose actor sons included one who was famous, Edwin Booth, and one who was infamous — John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln.Dinwiddie told me that he had noticed a plaque commemorating the African Theater at the corner when he moved to the neighborhood in the 1990s. “I was like, I remember that — I had read about it,” he said, including a chapter in “Black Manhattan” by James Weldon Johnson, N.Y.U.’s first Black professor.Hopper’s paintings as operaThe opera “Later the Same Evening” takes five Edward Hopper paintings and imagines what happens to the figures in them. John Musto, who composed the music for Mark Campbell’s libretto, described “Later the Same Evening” as “a love letter to New York, set in 1932.”It’s a love letter as complicated as New York (and New Yorkers), with Hopper-esque moodiness and estrangement.There is a couple that is not getting along. There is a widow who has come to the city for a date she is not sure she wants to go on. There is dancer who is leaving town, her dreams of stardom dashed. The director, Alison Moritz, writes that all of the characters eventually “converge for a moment of true New York serendipity at — where else? — a Broadway show.”Backstage, there is a moment in one scene when four singers converge around a microphone. “Hopper could have done some painting around this one mic,” said Michelle Rofrano, the assistant conductor, who cues them for an old-fashioned radio commercial that is heard onstage. The four sing a made-up toothpaste jingle — “It’s not just white, it’s Pearladent white.”Without a Hopper to capture it, the little tableau dissolves. The singers have other roles in the opera, which will be performed tonight and Friday at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at the Juilliard School.“The odd thing is people keep talking about Hopper and his sense of color,” Musto said. “I have to keep telling them color means nothing to me. I am colorblind.”METROPOLITAN diary‘You are everything’Dear Diary:I was waiting for a friend outside a building on East 73rd Street when an S.U.V. pulled up and parked.The driver stayed in the car with the radio on and the windows open. “You Are Everything” by the Stylistics came on, and I began to sing along (quietly).As the song got to the chorus — “You are everything, and everything is you” — a guy walked past me. He was singing along too, and we exchanged man-this-is-such-a-great-song nods.Just then, the driver turned off the radio. The other guy and I shared a confused look. Then he approached the car.“Bro,” he implored the driver. “Turn that back on!”And he did.— Joe KatzIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Kellina Moore and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More