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    Leslie Odom Jr. on Tony Nomination for ‘Purlie Victorious’

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    The day of the Tony Award nominations is like college acceptance day a bit earlier in the spring, but on the scarcity model: Of the dozens of artists eligible in each category, only five or so are “admitted.” That means some great work gets left by the wayside — but also, because the number of nominators is small enough to be idiosyncratic, that plenty of outcomes defy all prediction. Here are our thoughts on this season’s inadvertent (and possibly advertent) snubs, delightful (or mystifying) surprises and other notable anomalies. Television stars are considered good box office but not always good Tony bait. This year’s crop, including Sarah Paulson, Jeremy Strong, Steve Carell and William Jackson Harper, complicates that wisdom. Paulson is a likely winner but the men are already canceling each other out. Though Carell, in his Broadway debut, and Harper both play characters competing for the love of a married woman in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of “Uncle Vanya,” only Harper, excellent in a role that is usually considered supporting, was nominated as best leading actor in a play. (The production, which featured many lovely performances, was otherwise shut out.) Note that Chekhov let neither man win.Deep cuts for ‘Stereophonic.’How the nominators handled the ensemble in David Adjmi’s recording-studio-set play was going to be one of the morning’s most interesting questions. The answer: Generously, as five members of the young cast were singled out for their supporting performances, including Tom Pecinka and Sarah Pidgeon as the fraying central couple, and Juliana Canfield and Will Brill as their bandmates. Without an instrument in hand, Eli Gelb got in, too, as the ’70s rock group’s frazzled sound engineer. Spreading all that love helped take the show to Number One with a Bullet — the most nominated play in Broadway history.Too many riches to go around.On the other hand, the superb ensemble casts of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and “Illinoise” were skunked. That’s no accident: As more works these days distribute the storytelling burden equally among many members of a cast, odd nomination outcomes — feast or famine — can result.That’s why we often argue here for a new category that honors ensembles. And Actors’ Equity, the national union representing actors and stage managers, goes further, with its annual award for Broadway choruses. Of the 23 musicals that opened this season, 21 are eligible; the winner will be notified on June 15 — pointedly, one day before the Tonys.Women lead in directing.In the history of the awards, only 10 women, beginning in 1998, have won prizes for directing. This year that number seems likely to rise, with seven of the 10 possible directing slots filled by women. Anne Kauffman, Lila Neugebauer and Whitney White have been nominated for best direction of a play, and Maria Friedman, Leigh Silverman, Jessica Stone and Danya Taymor (the niece of Julie Taymor, the first woman to win for direction of a musical) are in contention for best direction of a musical.To love, honor and ignore.The Tony nominating committee said “I do” to two pairs of actors playing married characters: Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara as lovers undone by alcoholism in “Days of Wine and Roses,” and Maryann Plunkett and Dorian Harewood as an older couple grappling with dementia in “The Notebook.” But the shows did not receive the same love. Neither was nominated for best musical, though “Days of Wine and Roses” did pick up a nomination for score and “The Notebook” for book. Guess you can’t always have your wedding cake, and eat it too. A warm Willkommen to ‘Cabaret.’Rebecca Frecknall’s crepuscular revival of Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” was celebrated when it opened on the West End in 2021, eventually winning seven Olivier awards. But its Broadway transfer received a more muted response. (“Too often a misguided attempt to resuscitate the show breaks its ribs,” The New York Times wrote.) So who cares? Not the Tony nominators, who recognized the show with a nomination for best revival of a musical and gave nods to the actors — Eddie Redmayne, Gayle Rankin, Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell — in all four categories.No yellow brick road for ‘The Wiz.’The much-anticipated revival has been one of spring’s early hits, but Tony nominators followed the lead of critics, not audiences, who didn’t have much nice to say about the show’s look, script and performances. “The Wiz,” which earned seven Tony awards when it arrived on Broadway in 1975, didn’t get a single nod this time around.Shaina Taub gets out the vote (mostly).Like “Hamilton,” the musical “Suffs” looks at American history through a contemporary lens. Like “Hamilton,” the show started at the Public Theater before moving to Broadway. And like “Hamilton,” it was written and composed by its multitalented star, here 35-year-old Shaina Taub. When nominations were announced, though, Taub didn’t pull off a Lin-Manuel Trifecta. She received nods for her music and book, two of six nominations for “Suffs,” but not for starring as the suffragist Alice Paul. Nikki M. James, already a Tony winner for “The Book of Mormon,” got the show’s one acting nomination, as Ida B. Wells.Pop/rock storms another stage…Squint and you may think you’re at the Grammy Awards on Tonys night, as the best score nominees include Arcade Fire’s Will Butler (“Stereophonic”); David Byrne and Fatboy Slim (“Here Lies Love”); and Jamestown Revival (“The Outsiders”). Plus, of course, Sufjan Stevens, whose 2005 concept album is transcendently reorchestrated for dance in the best musical nominee “Illinoise,” and Alicia Keys, whose existing tunes power the most nominated musical of all, “Hell’s Kitchen.”Except when it doesn’t.Among those who might instead be watching from home: the not-nominated Barry Manilow (“Harmony”); Ingrid Michaelson (“The Notebook”); and Huey Lewis, whose songbook energizes “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” but didn’t rouse Tony nominators.Waving the flag for ‘Illinoise’ and more.Monday’s roster reflected a Broadway season that was notably American, even aside from “Illinoise,” a show actually named for a state. “Hell’s Kitchen,” nodding at the New York City neighborhood where Keys grew up, told a story we like to think of as local: Big dreams come true. “Suffs” took us behind the scenes of American history, as women fought for the vote. “Purlie Victorious” and “Appropriate” took contrasting approaches — one comic, one gothic — to the peculiar American institution of racism. But even aside from their content, the 17 productions nominated for the biggest prizes are overwhelmingly the work of American authors. (One of the touted London imports, Peter Morgan’s “Patriots,” didn’t even make the list for best play.) Is Broadway, which has too often resembled a British colony, finally achieving independence? More

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      Diving Into ‘The Exorcist: Believer’

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      We knew Ellen Burstyn would be back. But what else? A discussion of some of the spoiler moments in the new sequel to the 1973 horror classic.The spooky season has arrived and among this year’s crop of horror franchise resurrections is “The Exorcist: Believer,” the first in a planned trilogy of sequels to William Friedkin’s 1973 classic “The Exorcist.” If you know anything about this revamped version, you’ll know it’s not just one little girl who’s hacked by Satan, but two. For everything else, keep on reading — meaning spoilers ahead.Like the director David Gordon Green’s previous trilogy of “Halloween” reboots, “The Exorcist: Believer” has been critically panned. Given the two movies set to follow — the second installment “The Exorcist: Deceiver” is scheduled for spring of 2025 — it’s a bad start for Green and company. Though I imagine they’re not banking on good reviews so much as the divine power of nostalgia and brand recognition.David Gordon Green narrates a sequence from his film, featuring Leslie Odom Jr. and Lidya Jewett.Eli Joshua Adé/Universal PicturesFor nearly two hours, the film tracks the possession and eventual exorcism of two 13-year old gal pals: Angela (Lidya Jewett), who is Black, and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), who is white. “Believer” starts out in Haiti with a portentous prelude that hearkens back to the original, in which a Catholic priest stumbles upon satanic heirlooms in a very sinister-looking part of Iraq. Angela’s parents are on vacation in the island country when an earthquake hits, gravely injuring the mother and forcing the father, Tanner (Leslie Odom Jr.), to choose between saving his pregnant wife or the baby inside of her.In the present, Tanner is an affable single dad suggesting that he chose the babe. This assumption makes up the film’s emotional backbone. After the girls go missing and return three days later with their feet mangled and eyes tweaky, they hit a monstrous form of puberty. It’s teenage rebellion made sacrilegious, razed of all of the truly crass and nasty edges that made Linda Blair’s Regan, the possessed girl in the original movie, so shocking to behold.The film pivots away from the girls to focus on feels, courtesy of the original cast-member Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil (Regan’s mom), now the author of a book about Regan’s possession. Chris isn’t a final girl, and she’s not uniquely skilled at fending off the baddie. But because she’s a legacy character, “Believer” treats her with an air of reverence that gives her a preternatural connection to the devil — and it makes him, a supposedly omnipotent, unknowable being, a lot less scary. The demonic version of Katherine jabs a crucifix through Chris’s eyes, blinding her for the rest of the movie — a condition that parallels the film’s ideas about belief in the indemonstrable. Chris has long been estranged from Regan, who supposedly cut contact with her mother after the release of her book. Chris holds on to the possibility of Regan’s return, which she does, in a final-act cameo by Blair herself.“The Exorcist,” a master class in grief and dread, is quite unlike the formulaic fun of, say, slasher movies that easily breed follow-ups. Famously, Friedkin (and Burstyn, at least until “Believer”) wanted nothing to do with the extended universe that spawned after its release. You don’t need to watch any of the other “Exorcist” movies to understand “Believer,” which only draws from Friedkin’s version — and offers up this extension.The film’s equal-opportunity possession encourages cooperation between racially diverse families, and the jumbo-exorcism in the end doubles as a kumbaya circle for religious harmony. Both families assemble a supergroup of believers to perform the rites: a Protestant minister, a voodoo mistress, an Evangelical speaker-in-tongues, and an ex-Catholic nun. Because believing isn’t about any one religion, it’s a collective act of faith. Circling back to Tanner’s decision in the beginning, the devil, trickster that he is, demands that the parents choose one girl to survive. Katherine’s dad, the most weak-willed of the three, screams out his daughter’s name and — just like Tanner, who had asked for the doctors to save his wife — the opposite happens. Angela survives. But given the shoddiness of the exorcism itself, and the fact that the devil seemed to be calling the shots through the end, I’d imagine Satan has more in store for her. More

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      Watch a Scene From ‘The Exorcist: Believer’

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      The film’s director and co-writer, David Gordon Green, narrates a sequence featuring Leslie Odom Jr. and Lidya Jewett.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A light switch clicking on and off is at the center of an unnerving sequence in “The Exorcist: Believer.”Leslie Odom Jr. stars as Victor Fielding, a father whose daughter (Lidya Jewett) had been missing and only just returned, quite different from when she left. Narrating this sequence, the director David Gordon Green said, “I’m starting to establish the unnerving quality of a father that can’t quite explain the behavior of his daughter.”He does this by using a continuous timeline, with the scene playing out as if in real time even though there are numerous shots.“That slow burn,” he said, “that time where there’s no gimmicks that you can process as a viewer, it adds a strange expectation of when something is going to happen.” The scene’s eerie conclusion helps to set up the mayhem that will soon follow.Read the “Exorcist: Believer” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Purlie Victorious’ Review: Leslie Odom Jr. Shines in Revival

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      Ossie Davis’s 1961 play is no period piece, as a blazing and hilarious revival starring Leslie Odom Jr. testifies.Two years before he made his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. attended the 100th performance of “Purlie Victorious” at the Cort Theater on Broadway. He knew the playwright, Ossie Davis, and his wife, Ruby Dee, from their work in the civil rights movement.Now the couple were starring in Davis’s raucous comedy about a stem-winding Black preacher from Georgia. It would not have been lost on the stem-winding King, likewise from Georgia, that he and “Purlie Victorious” had something in common. They were, after all, in the same fight against racism — in the play’s case by laughing it to death.And yet, did it die? If it did, why are we still laughing?The “Purlie Victorious” that opened on Wednesday at the Music Box — unaccountably its first Broadway revival — is every bit as scathingly funny as the 1961 reviews said it was. (In The New York Times, Howard Taubman called it “exhilarating,” “uninhibited” and “uproarious,” all in the first three paragraphs.) But even though times have surely changed — for one thing, the Cort Theater is now the James Earl Jones — everything dark in the play is still dark, and the lightness no less necessary. There’s a reason the setting, however old-timey it may appear on the surface, is still called “the recent past.”Kenny Leon’s thrillingly broad and warp-speed production aims to keep us in both time zones at once. To do so he begins on a note of contemporary welcome as the actors walk onstage companionably to don the jackets and aprons they’ll wear in the play, as if they’d just come from the street. Among them, Leslie Odom Jr. instantly stands out, not just for the spiffy suit he’s wearing (the terrific costumes are by Emilio Sosa) but also for his wolfish impatience to get going. His Purlie, we sense, will be more than a preacher: He will be a prosecutor.Two thefts are in his sights. One is perhaps a petty larceny: The $500 left to Purlie’s Aunt Henrietta by the white woman in whose home she worked has not come rightfully into his hands. Instead, with Henrietta and her daughter, Cousin Bee, both dead, the sum has been waylaid by Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee, the owner of the cotton plantation on which Purlie grew up with his brother, Gitlow (Billy Eugene Jones). Though a pittance to the rich Ol’ Cap’n (Jay O. Sanders), the $500 is a fortune to Purlie, who plans to use it to buy and restore Big Bethel church, where his grandfather once preached. He wants his inheritance in both senses, the cash and the pulpit.Odom carries the play’s weight as it shifts genres, revealing further layers of character, while Young proves to be a daring comedian unafraid to go as far as the part takes her, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe other theft, at the heart of the play’s power and yet also its comedy, is much larger: the theft of the freedom of generations of Black Americans.It was a practical yet risky choice to weld the outrage over one to the farce of the other. And make no mistake, starting with the subtitle (“A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch”), Davis’s farce is full-throttle, blending lowbrow physical humor straight out of vaudeville with traditions of Black satire and classic social comedy like “Pygmalion.” So when Purlie recruits “a common scullion” named Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins to impersonate the college-educated Bee and claim the inheritance, you know something will go vastly wrong. Indeed, bedazzled by the preacher’s attention and overwhelmed by the job, Lutiebelle starts to improvise, leading the plan cartoonishly awry.Originally played by Dee, and now by Kara Young, Lutiebelle is a rich creation, sweet and hungry, down-home and dirty. Young, a two-time Tony nominee known mostly for dramatic roles (“Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven,” “The New Englanders,” “All the Natalie Portmans”), is also a daring comedian, finding in Lutiebelle a cross between Lucille Ball and Moms Mabley. That she is not afraid to go as far as the part can take her — with a gawky pigeon-toed gait and hilariously lustful line readings in a taffy-pulled Southern accent — is a sign of the freedom the play gives her (and everyone else) to represent a character instead of a race.As a result, some touchy old stereotypes, appropriated by whites and perverted as minstrelsy, are reclaimed and reframed. Gitlow’s shucking and jiving is, in Jones’s performance, very clearly a performance itself: a way of getting around the obtuseness of overlords. His wife, Missy, played by Heather Alicia Simms, turns classic one-dimensional stage sass into complicated warmth. Vanessa Bell Calloway’s Idella, a cook who works for Ol’ Cap’n and might in other contexts be framed as a Mammy figure, here has a freedom fighter’s acuity. And even Ol’ Cap’n himself, the snarling villain of the piece, is taken down gently: “Put kindness in your fingers,” Purlie instructs a pallbearer. “He was a man — despite his own example.”But it’s Odom who carries the play’s weight as it shifts from genre to genre and reveals further layers of character. Part of the freedom Davis took for himself, and that Leon emphasizes in his staging, is the right to be many things at once, not all of them reputable.Odom, with the angry intensity of his Burr from “Hamilton,” does not shy from Purlie’s scoundrelly side, his willingness to lie, even to loved ones, as a means of putting down a marker on eventual truth. And yet when it comes time to preach, watch out. The way he winds speeches into sermons and sermons nearly into songs makes it seem natural that “Purlie Victorious,” written partly in blank verse, would be turned into a musical. It nearly was one already.Was it also a loving dig at the great orator himself? Davis disagreed with King about nonviolence but could hardly dispute his silver-tongued leadership. And in “Purlie” he seemed to give Kingism a chance. After mercilessly mocking the trope of the Great White Savior, he allows Charlie Cotchipee, the weakling son of Ol’ Cap’n — a role played by Alan Alda in 1961 and Noah Robbins now — to save the day and redeem his race.“We still need togetherness; we still need each otherness,” Purlie preaches in the final, forgiving moments of this necessary revival, as Derek McLane’s set undergoes a miraculous transformation from shack to temple. And then Purlie adds, “Do what you can for the white folks.”Speaking as one, they did.Purlie VictoriousThrough Jan. 7 at the Music Box, Manhattan; purlievictorious.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      ‘Purlie Victorious’: Ossie Davis’s ‘Gospel to Humanity’ Returns to Broadway

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      The stars Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young and the director Kenny Leon discuss the revival, and why its satirical take on racism is still so timely.Ossie Davis’s satirical play “Purlie Victorious” opened at the Cort Theater in September 1961 with Davis as the charismatic preacher Purlie Victorious Judson and Ruby Dee, his artistic collaborator and wife, playing Purlie’s green but soon-to-be-wise sidekick, Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins. Six decades later, Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) and Kara Young (“Clyde’s,” “Cost of Living”) are stepping into those roles in the play’s first Broadway revival, directed by Kenny Leon at the Music Box Theater.Set in the 1940s on a plantation in the segregated South, the story follows Purlie’s return home to Georgia to claim a $500 inheritance, which he wants to use to buy and integrate the local church. To prevent Cap’n Cotchipee, the white plantation owner, from usurping his family’s birthright, Purlie has to trick Cotchipee — a plan that will also involve recruiting the unsuspecting Lutiebelle to stand in for his recently deceased Cousin Bee, who is the rightful inheritor of the money. In other words, Purlie’s strategy hinges on Cotchipee’s inability to differentiate one Black woman from another, and in so doing, the play uses comedy to expose racism as absurd, arbitrary and detrimental to Black life.That pointed critique of racism, and Davis’s clever use of language, is why the play was so well received. “Although his good humor never falters,” the Times critic Howard Taubman wrote at the time, Davis “has made his play the vehicle for a powerful and passionate sermon.” It ran for nearly a year, and the activists W.E.B. Du Bois, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X all saw it. A film adaptation, “Gone Are the Days!,” followed in 1963, and then came the 1970 Broadway musical, “Purlie.”Davis and Dee’s children, Nora Davis Day, Guy Davis and Hasna Muhammad, remember watching all of those versions. The siblings, who are the executors of their parents’ estate, had personal reasons for reviving the play. “It resonates with us because it is my dad’s specific language,” said Guy Davis, who composed the revival’s incidental music. “My sisters and I just wanted to revisit that part of our lives.”“This soars as a true work of art,” said Kenny Leon, the show’s director. “Everything about being American, definitely about being Black in America, you can find in his play.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“Purlie Victorious” itself was inspired by Davis’s childhood. “Dad grew up in the deepest part of Georgia, and had cause to be irate about the conditions there,” Day recalled. “He tried to write a play that was full of anger, vitriol, and righteousness, but it just didn’t work until he began to look at it and laugh and say, ‘This is ridiculous, that one group of people feels like they can control and own other people.’”But Dee had reservations about Davis’s use of satire.“She didn’t like it,” Muhammad said. “She thought it was stereotypical. How could he have these characters? And then he read it aloud to her, and then she was laughing and realized the power of the language and the value of the piece.”Now Leon, Odom and Young say they are excited to share a work that they consider a classic with new audiences. During an interview last month before a rehearsal, they discussed their history with the play, the power of its satire and what it means to stage this production today. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The Davis-Dee children, from left: Guy Davis, Nora Davis Day and Hasna Muhammad, who together helped bring the revival to Broadway.Elias Williams for The New York TimesHow did this production come about?KENNY LEON Our producer Jeffrey Richards, whose mom [Helen Stern Richards] was the original company manager of the play and the general manager of the musical, began talking to me about this seven years ago. But I also spent time with Ossie and Ruby when they came to the rehearsals for my first Broadway show, “A Raisin in the Sun” [in 2004]. When Jeffrey approached me about possibly doing this on Broadway, I said, “I’m your guy,” because I love Ossie Davis. And I love this piece. I directed the musical [in 2008 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta]. It’s an exciting play and an outrageous comedy that is somewhere between rage and hope.LESLIE ODOM Somebody had shoved the script in my hand as a young theater student. It was one of those plays that you should look at for an audition or a scene study class. The musical was also done in Philly when I was a kid, at the Freedom Theater, where I started acting as a 13-year-old.LEON But Leslie is what made this production a possibility — being that anchor. I found out that he always loved the play, so to have him want to be in it and produce it with Jeffrey Richards made it a reality. KARA YOUNG I was really surprised that Ossie Davis wrote a play like this. At that time, and this is just my imagination, because “A Raisin in the Sun” was so prolific, he really had the chance to change the world and the way that people thought about Black life. [Dee starred in the original 1959 Broadway production with Davis joining the cast later that year.] He dissected the absurdity of the social and racial structures of this world, and America in particular, and the legacy of slavery in this country. It is Ossie’s gospel to humanity. There are just so many amazing lines here that are the voices of a million people and a million spirits.LEON I don’t want people to shortchange Ossie Davis’s craftsmanship and his writing an outrageous comedy that embraced different styles, like vaudeville, broad comedy, and a little bit of the drama from “A Raisin in the Sun.” Look at this penmanship, poetry, movement and song. Many times, I think for an African American work, they have a different set of rules to gauge its greatness. But this soars as a true work of art.In addition to Young and Odom Jr., the cast includes Vanessa Bell Calloway, far left, and Heather Alicia Simms, far right. Elias Williams for The New York TimesHow do you think it will land at this moment?ODOM I’m curious, too. When I think about the last incredible experience I had in this town with a piece of work [“Hamilton”], and I think that if that piece of work had been written five years before, it might not have done the thing. So, I am excited to discover why now, and I am along for the ride.YOUNG I feel like the timing is almost perfect.LEON We were talking earlier about how every generation has to fight for democracy. We have to fight for true freedom and beauty, and what better time to be reminded of that than right now as we engage in the 2024 election? As we think about those things that Ossie Davis talks about, we got to stay in truth.YOUNG And remember our history.LEON What’s that line Purlie says? “Give us a piece of the Constitution.”ODOM “We want our cut of the Constitution and we want it now: and not with no little teaspoon, white folks. Throw it at us with a shovel.”How do you balance the play’s humor and its politics?ODOM It’s a romp. It’s a real hoot. We’re having a ball. As joyful and as light-filled as this experience is, he realized it was too painful to ask an audience to sit through it. It’s already an act of great generosity and grace that he decided to put it together in this way. He wanted us to be able to witness these people that he grew up with, this country that he grew up in, this farm that he knew so well, but he wanted you to be able to stand it and to tolerate it. LEON We’re telling it in a joyous way and dealing with some real stuff.YOUNG There are just so many gems about the violence of our just existing. There is a line I said the other day that reminds me of gentrification. Lutiebelle says, “The whole thing was a trip to get you out of the house.” I’m a Harlemite, and I’ve been feeling the violence of gentrification for years. I know that’s not what the play is about, but these things are dropped in the story, and because it is so dramaturgically sound, they can live on their own.LEON That’s so beautiful because that, to me, is what artists are supposed to do. We’re supposed to revisit the work from the previous generation and say, “How does that relate to me now?” I treat revivals like they’re new plays. Everything about being American, definitely about being Black in America, you can find in his play.Is that why you changed the structure from three to two acts, without an intermission?LEON I read plays five times to inform me of what I will do with them. After the fifth reading, I came away with the idea that it is about getting to that last page and scene. And getting to that last scene meant it’s about the rhythm of what’s happening onstage and people in the audience not thinking about time. I don’t want the outside world to come in. I just want them to get lost in this world.Kara and Leslie, what is it like to invoke the spirit of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis onstage?YOUNG I’m a huge fan of Ruby, oddly also as a Harlemite. Ruby and Ossie are great examples of what it means to be organizers and activists and to be a force of change. But what it means to step into a role that Ruby Dee originated, I can’t quite put that into language. But this is also a role about a young woman and her journey, about finding a sense of self and her importance in the world for the first time and standing in that. It feels like a very universal story for a Black girl.ODOM The thing about these drama schools around the country is that they train you in the classics. My training prepared me for this. But I think my responsibility as an artist is to choose the projects that I’m a part of thoughtfully, collaborate with people that I respect, and work on things at the highest level. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing. It takes a while to get there. We’re doing this play as written in 1961, but people will be so surprised at how hip it is and how much it stands up. The more we learn, the more we build trust with Mr. Davis and his words. It rises to support us. How do you want people to feel after leaving “Purlie Victorious”?LEON That this feels like a new play. I think that’s what Ossie would want: us to introduce this to live human beings whose lives are affected daily.YOUNG The irony of racism. When you really break it down, the construct of racism is just really absurd. But, even in those power structures, these characters need each other. We need each other.ODOM Recently, I read Clint Smith’s book “How the Word Is Passed.” He paints a more honest picture of chattel slavery and the truth of that in this country. “Nostalgia is a fantasy about the past using no facts,” he says. “And somewhere in between is memory, which is kind of this blend of history and a little bit of emotion.” Man, did that strike me. I want this “Purlie” to feel like a memory. I hope that it feels like the facts need emotion. More

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      Leslie Odom Jr. Plans Return to Broadway in ‘Purlie Victorious’

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      Kenny Leon will direct the revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 play, which is expected to run this summer at an unspecified Broadway theater.Leslie Odom Jr., who won a Tony Award for his breakout performance as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” plans to return to Broadway this summer to star in, and co-produce, a revival of a 1961 comedy about a preacher trying to acquire a church in his hometown while challenging a local segregationist.The play, “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch,” was written by Ossie Davis, the actor and civil rights activist, who also starred in the original Broadway production alongside his wife and frequent collaborator, Ruby Dee. (The original cast also featured Alan Alda.) The play was quickly adapted into a movie, called “Gone Are the Days!,” and then into a musical, simply titled “Purlie.”The revival will be directed by Kenny Leon, who has had a lot on his plate lately: He directed this season’s Broadway runs of “Topdog/Underdog” and “Ohio State Murders,” and is directing an Off Broadway production of “King James” (about LeBron James fandom) this spring and “Hamlet” at Free Shakespeare in the Park this summer.“Purlie Victorious” is a satire of Southern stereotypes, and both Leon and Odom said they believe it will resonate with contemporary audiences. “It explores the truth in a way that we know and we can receive it,” Leon said. “To me, when I read this play, I don’t feel paralyzed, I feel joyous, and I say, ‘What can I do to make our country better?’”Odom, who gave his daughter the middle name Ruby after Ruby Dee, said he has been interested in the play for some time. “First and foremost, we want to make a kick-ass, entertaining, joyful revival production of this great play,” he said. “We want to make a seminal production of ‘Purlie Victorious,’ this thing that hasn’t been seen on Broadway for decades and that was so important to Mr. Davis.”In the years since “Hamilton,” Odom has had a thriving film and television career, with significant roles in “One Night in Miami” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” a guest starring role in “Abbott Elementary,” and he is now in Atlanta, filming a sequel to “The Exorcist.” Before committing to “Purlie Victorious,” which will be his first professional stage play, Odom said he test-drove the material, to reassure himself that it would still work, and that he felt comfortable in the role.“We did a small private reading just to begin the exploration, and what we found is that, absolutely, it holds up,” he said in a telephone interview. “Mr. Davis left us a road map to all the moments of magic that I’m looking for in this play, and it really is a matter of us committing this text to memory and letting it have its way with us.”The revival’s lead producer is Jeffrey Richards. The production said in a statement Wednesday that the revival would begin performances “in late summer 2023” at an unspecified Broadway theater. More

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      Don Cheadle, Lindsay Lohan and Other Stars Share Their Favorite Holiday Movies

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      Don Cheadle, Hong Chau, Leslie Odom Jr., Zoey Deutch and Lindsay Lohan explain what films they turn to at this time of year.How do actors entertain themselves when they gather with family and friends for the holidays? They watch movies, just like the rest of us. Here, a few of the stars from this season’s releases talk about the films that have become longstanding seasonal traditions, and the others they hope will one day.Hong ChauThis season the actress can be seen in “The Whale” and “The Menu.”Her favorite: “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940), Ernst Lubitsch’s romantic comedy with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as seemingly antagonistic clerks in a Budapest store.Why: It’s just got everything. It is set during Christmastime, even though it’s not a typical holiday movie. It’s a workplace comedy. It’s a romantic comedy. And even the supporting characters are all memorable, and the comedy is just timeless. I really love Pepi [William Tracy as a comically cocksure delivery boy], oddly. I like that he wins in the end, and he’s taking over for the Jimmy Stewart character, basically. If they ever do a sequel, he should be the main character. And the music is romantic and sweet, even that little song in the bit about the cigar box. I like being transported whenever I watch a movie. And getting to be in that shop full of wonderful little items, and having all of the signage in Hungarian, does that. I wish I could be in there and just get to examine and touch everything.My daughter is 23 months and I think it will be a good one for her. She actually watches a lot of older movies, like “Singin’ in the Rain” and the “That’s Entertainment” compilation. So she has seen a lot of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds.Don CheadleTerry Jones, left, Graham Chapman and Michael Palin in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” a favorite of the Cheadles.Sony PicturesThis season the actor can be seen in “White Noise.”His family’s favorites: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), the medieval send-up directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War satire starring Peter Sellers.Why: I don’t really have a “put us in the spirit of Christmas” movie. I mean, the low-hanging fruit is “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which is a great movie, and if it’s on, I’m going to watch it. But the ones that we would somehow always end up watching when my kids were home on Christmas break — they’re adults now and out of the house — are “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Dr. Strangelove.” Neither are holiday movies, but they always seem to find their way onto our TV.Every character that Peter Sellers played in “Dr. Strangelove” was hilarious. The president, the captain, the Nazi doctor — they are all insane. And for “Monty Python,” it’s the whole cast. My kids know all the lines forwards and backwards, and we sometimes text each other out of the blue. “What makes you think she’s a witch?” “Well, she turned me into a newt!” “A newt?” “I got better.” They’re both just great movies, very funny in very different ways. And they’re dark, which fits my family’s brand of humor.Zoey DeutchTaylor Momsen and Jim Carrey in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Zoey Deutch’s holiday go-to.Ron Batzdorff/Universal PicturesThis season the actress can be seen in “Something From Tiffany’s.”Her favorite: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000), Ron Howard’s live-action remake of the animated Dr. Seuss classic, starring Jim Carrey as the holiday killjoy.Why: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” came out when I was 7. I remember watching it for the first time and not knowing who I was more jealous of, Jim Carrey or Taylor Momsen. I wanted to be both the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who at the same time. They were filled with humor and heart and everything in between. I loved everything about the world that was created and how it was executed. The story, the costumes, the music, the camera movements, the direction, the set design, the acting. I find myself going back to it every year and marveling at how original and fun and moving it is.Lindsay LohanThomas Sangster as a boy in love and Liam Neeson as his stepfather in “Love Actually,” a film Lindsay Lohan often returns to.Peter Mountain/Universal StudiosThis season the actress can be seen in “Falling for Christmas.”Her favorites: “Love Actually” (2003), Richard Curtis’s relationship comedy; “Miracle on 34th Street,” the 1994 remake (from director Les Mayfield) about a department-store Santa; and “Elf” (2003), the Jon Favreau-directed comedy with Will Ferrell as Santa’s helper.Why: I love the movie “Love Actually.” It’s just really heartwarming. That scene when Hugh Grant dances [through 10 Downing Street] is hysterical. And Liam Neeson’s story line with his son, where he runs through the airport as his crush is leaving on a plane, always gets me crying.And then “Miracle on 34th Street.” When I was really young, I remember I watched it at my Grandma Sullivan’s house with her and I was sitting on the floor. I remember this actually very well. It just made me want to be in Christmas in New York City and the whole meeting Santa thing.Especially during the holidays, I always like to reminisce, and whenever I’m with family, we go to “Elf” at some point. That’s why it was special to do “Falling for Christmas.” My sister got to play a little role and she did a song. I was lucky to have my husband come to the set, and it’s the first time he’d seen me acting. It was very sentimental. I’ve never done a Christmas movie, so this is a special feeling because it’s something that I’ll be able to show our kids.Leslie Odom Jr.Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone,” which Leslie Odom Jr. has watched since he was a child.20th Century FoxThis season the actor can be seen in “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”His favorite: “Home Alone” (1990), the Chris Columbus comedy with Macaulay Culkin as Kevin, left behind by his family.Why: I was 9 or 10 when I first saw it — the same age as Kevin — and he was the perfect avatar for every boy who wanted to be as clever as he was when he took down the bad guys. And who maybe wanted to escape from their parents for even a day. The movie has all the traditional trappings of the season: snow and fire, wreaths hung on the door, pizza night, late-night packing for early flights the next morning. It’s a record of all we love about the holidays. All that stresses us out about the holidays. It’s portrayed with honesty and real charm and so ends up being a classic story that stands the test of time. And the score, by John Williams, is so signature. It has just as much to do with the overall effect of that film as the great performances and the great set pieces and gags.My kids are 5 and 1½, and they’re a little too young to understand it. But one day, I hope we’ll watch it together. And I’ll tell you: When they spend the night with their grandparents, my wife and I have our own fun home alone. It’s good for the parents, too.Now I’m working on my own Christmas movie: “The Exorcist.” More

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      ‘Needle in a Timestack’ Review: Put a Pin in It

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      The director John Ridley, who wrote “12 Years a Slave,” tries to combine time travel and romance, and comes up short twice.Who among us has never dreamed of turning back time and changing a decision or event, just like Cher and the Terminator? That possibility is a reality in John Ridley’s sluggish, blandly slick time-travel romance, “Needle in a Timestack.”Nick (Leslie Odom Jr.) is a fancy architect and his wife, Janine (Cynthia Erivo), is a fancy photographer. We know they are soul mates because they constantly talk about their great love, maybe to make up for the fact that they have no real personalities.One day, Nick realizes there has been a so-called time shift — a slight realignment of reality after someone traveled back in time to change the past — thus modifying the present. Further, more consequential alterations in the timeline keep happening, until we end up in a reality where Janine is married to Tommy (Orlando Bloom), their old friend. Nick realizes that Tommy has been fiddling with the past to finally land the woman he wanted.The most fascinating idea in “Needle in a Timestack” is that “time jaunting” is a mundane activity, up to a point: It is so expensive that only wealthy people like Tommy can afford it on a regular basis. But Ridley (the writer of “12 Years a Slave”) decides to stick to the shiny surfaces of aspirational lives, and keeps layering on banalities like “Love is drawn in the form of a circle” and “Have we really thought through the cause and effect of our choices?” That needle was clearly used to stitch slogans on pillows.Needle in a TimestackRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More