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    A Broadway-Bound ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Leads Olivier Award Nominations

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    The musical, starring Nicole Scherzinger, secured 11 nominations at Britain’s equivalent of the Tony Awards.A revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as a former screen idol descending into madness, received the most nominations on Tuesday for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The show, which ran at the Savoy Theater in London and will transfer to Broadway this year, is in the running for 11 awards — two more than any other play or musical — including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger and best director for Jamie Lloyd.When the production opened last fall, it impressed London’s often demanding theater critics. Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said the production was, like its lead character, “a bit mad: reckless and daring, stretching its source material to the limit and beyond.”“I can’t imagine another London show generating comparable buzz this season,” Wolf added.Lloyd’s maverick production features hand-held cameras that are used to spotlight characters’ emotions at pivotal moments. Although critics appreciated the technique, Lloyd faces stiff competition in the best director category. The other nominees include Sam Mendes for “The Motive and the Cue,” which debuted last spring at the National Theater. The play, by Jack Thorne, dramatizes a fraught backstage relationship between Richard Burton and John Gielgud as they rehearse a Broadway production.Justin Martin, who directed “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” also received an Olivier nomination.Manuel HarlanRupert Goold is also nominated for best director, for “Dear England,” a play about the English national soccer team that also ran at the National Theater and transferred to the West End. That show secured nine nominations.Despite receiving mixed reviews, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a theatrical prequel to the Netflix show that is running at the Phoenix Theater, secured five nominations, including best new entertainment or comedy play. Houman Barekat, reviewing the production in The New York Times, said it was “exactly what you’d expect from a show co-produced by Netflix: Cheap thrills, expensively made.”This year’s nominations include a hint of TV glamour in many categories. Among the nominees for best actress in a play are Sarah Jessica Parker for “Plaza Suite,” which runs through April 13 at the Savoy Theater, and Sarah Snook (of “Succession”) for a one-woman “The Picture of Dorian Gray” at the Theater Royal Haymarket, through May 11.They will compete for that title against Laura Donnelly for “The Hills of California” at the Harold Pinter Theater, Sheridan Smith for “Shirley Valentine” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and Sophie Okonedo for “Medea” at @sohoplace.The best actor nominees include Andrew Scott for a one-man “Vanya” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and James Norton for his performance in “A Little Life” at the Harold Pinter Theater. The other nominees are Joseph Fiennes for “Dear England,” Mark Gatiss for “The Motive and the Cue,” and David Tennant for “Macbeth” at the Donmar Warehouse.The winners of this year’s awards are scheduled to be announced April 14 in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. More

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      Fun Things to Do in N.Y.C. This May 2022

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      Looking for something to do in New York? Go see the Asian Comedy Fest at Stand Up NY and Caveat or the British singer Nilüfer Yanya at Webster Hall. Take the kids to Our First Art Fair, as part of NADA New York. Or you can still catch “Hangmen” on Broadway and the Jacques-Louis David blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Comedy | Music | Kids | Film | Dance | Theater | ArtComedyJes Tom, above at Union Hall in Brooklyn in February, will be among the performers in this weekend’s Asian Comedy Fest.JT AndersonAsian Comedy FestFriday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Stand Up NY, 236 West 78th Street, Manhattan; standupny.com. Saturday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Caveat, 21A Clinton Street, Manhattan; caveat.nycFor the third straight year, Ed Pokropski, a writer and producer at NBCUniversal, and the producer and comedian Kate Moran have assembled dozens of performers for this festival, and like last year, they’re right on time to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The six shows will feature Julia Shiplett, Michael Cruz Kayne, Usama Siddiquee, Karen Chee with the puppeteer Kathleen Kim, the podcasters from “Feeling Asian,” and Yuhua Hamasaki from “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Friday’s 8 p.m. lineup includes perhaps the festival’s buzziest performer: Jes Tom, a nonbinary trans comedian who co-stars in the new Hulu rom-com “Crush.” (Tom will also headline their own show on May 14 at the Bell House.) Tickets start at $25 per show ($65 for an all-night pass) and are available at asiancomedyfest.com. SEAN L. McCARTHYMusicDarius Jones, above at the Winter Jazzfest in 2018, has programmed this year’s MATA Festival, which concludes at National Sawdust this weekend.Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York TimesClassical MusicMATA FestivalFriday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth Street, Brooklyn; live.nationalsawdust.org.This year’s iteration of the annual contemporary music blowout known as the MATA Festival has been programmed by the composer and alto saxophonist Darius Jones. For the festival’s final two nights, Jones has put together a set of works by younger artists on Friday and one of his own on Saturday. Friday’s concert will feature notable artists like Travis Laplante, who is scheduled to play his solo tenor saxophone opus “The Obvious Place.” And Saturday’s performance will offer the world premiere of Jones’s piece “Colored School No. 3,” which references a Brooklyn building once used as a segregated school for Black children into the early 20th century. Tickets for each night are $25. SETH COLTER WALLSNilüfer Yanya will headline at Webster Hall on Saturday.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesPop & RockNilüfer YanyaSaturday at 7:30 p.m. at Webster Hall, 25 East 11th Street, Manhattan; websterhall.com.Though as a teenager she was tapped to be in a girl group assembled by Louis Tomlinson of One Direction, Nilüfer Yanya chose a self-determined path over the prospect of pop stardom. The British singer’s debut album, from 2019, contained notes of jazz and indie pop but leaned predominantly into alt-rock, showcasing the guitar chops she had honed since picking up the instrument at age 12. Yanya’s sophomore effort, released in March, follows suit but pares her sound down to essential components: wafty melodies, crisp beats, circuitous guitar work reminiscent of Radiohead. Ironically titled “Painless,” the album is spiked with thorns, its lyrics tackling the complicated, damaging side effects of desire. On Saturday, Yanya heads a bill that also features two other singer-guitarists: Ada Lea and Tasha. Tickets start at $25 and are available at axs.com. OLIVIA HORNKidsOur First Art Fair at Pier 36, sponsored by the New Art Dealers Alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts, will feature works by children 12 and under. Above, a display from an after-school class at the museum in 2019.Children’s Museum of the ArtsOur First Art FairThursday from 4 to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at NADA New York, Pier 36, 299 South Street, Manhattan; newartdealers.org.Learn More About the Metropolitan Museum of Art$125 Million Donation: The largest capital gift in the Met’s history will help reinvigorate a long-delayed rebuild of the Modern wing.Recent Exhibits: Our critics reviewed exhibits featuring the drawings of the French Revolution’s chief propagandist and new work by the sculptor Charles Ray.Behind the Scenes: A documentary goes inside the Met to chronicle one of the most challenging years of its history.A Guide to the Met: From the must-see galleries to the lesser-known treasures, here’s how to make the most of your visit.While the New Art Dealers Alliance has always catered to the business’s youngest members, it would be hard to find exhibitors younger than some appearing at this year’s NADA New York exposition. They’re the entrepreneurs 12 and under participating in Our First Art Fair, presented by the alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts. Here, youngsters display and price their creations, receiving all proceeds. Little artists who missed the April submission deadline can still contribute by completing a required form and delivering it, along their work, to the fair. On Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., museum educators will also attend, providing art supplies and helping with last-minute entries. What doesn’t sell goes to the museum’s permanent collection — no small distinction. NADA passes start at $40; they’re free for children. LAUREL GRAEBERFilmThuy An Luu and Frédéric Andrei in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva,” which is screening at Film Forum starting on Friday.Rialto Pictures‘Diva’Ongoing at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.You’ve seen Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out”? “Diva” is the other major film of 1981 (released in the United States in 1982) that involves a protagonist with a hot-potato audio recording, or technically two: Jules (Frédéric Andrei), a postman and opera fan, secretly records a star vocalist, Cynthia Hawkins (the real-life soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who makes a point of only singing live, at a performance in Paris. Soon after, he unwittingly comes into possession of another tape that could expose an international drug-and-sex-trafficking operation.But the crazy convolutions of the plot are hardly the point. “Diva,” directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, who died in January, is perhaps the film most identified with a trend in France that became known as the cinéma du look, movies for which visual style and attitude left the prevailing impressions. In a print showing at Film Forum, the shades of blue are dazzling, and an elaborate chase through the Paris Metro is pretty exciting, too. BEN KENIGSBERGDanceValerie Levine of Ice Theater of New York performing “Arctic Memory” by Jody Sperling on Governors Island in February.Josef PinlacIce Theater of New YorkFriday and Saturday at 7 p.m.; Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Sky Rink, 61 Chelsea Piers, Manhattan; chelseapiers.com.After pivoting to pavement during the pandemic, Ice Theater of New York returns to its true milieu, which is also a fitting place to reflect on climate change. As part of its home season, the company will present the premiere of the choreographer Jody Sperling’s “Of Water and Ice,” which draws on her research in the Arctic and is set to music by D.J. Spooky. It will be joined on the program by 10 other works, many of them also new, with soundtracks ranging from Philip Glass to Rachmaninoff to Madonna. Don’t expect a string of Nathan Chen-like acrobatic feats, though; the company, founded in 1984, is rooted in the art of ice dancing, which combines the ethos of concert dance with the speed, momentum and strength of ice skating. Two of the form’s best-known practitioners, the British champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, will be honored at Monday’s gala performance. Tickets start at $25 and are available at icetheatre.org. BRIAN SCHAEFERTheaterDavid Threlfall, center, with, from left, Richard Hollis, Ryan Pope, John Horton and Alfie Allen in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy “Hangmen” at the Golden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCritic’s Pick‘Hangmen’Through June 18 at the Golden Theater, Manhattan; hangmenbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.In Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award winner, set in the 1960s, a menacing mod from London (Alfie Allen of “Game of Thrones”) walks into a grim northern English pub run by a former hangman (David Threlfall). Pitch-black comedy ensues. Directed by Matthew Dunster, this production was a prepandemic hit downtown. Read the review.‘Plaza Suite’Through June 26 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; plazasuitebroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker revel in physical comedy as they play two married couples and a pair of long-ago sweethearts in the first Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s trio of one-act farces, a smash at its premiere in 1968. John Benjamin Hickey directs. (Onstage at the Hudson Theater. Limited run ends July 1.) Read the review.Critic’s Pick‘American Buffalo’Through July 10 at Circle in the Square, Manhattan; americanbuffalonyc.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss team up for David Mamet’s verbally explosive tragicomedy, set in a Chicago junk shop where an inept pair of small-time criminals and their hapless young flunky plot the theft of a rare nickel. Neil Pepe directs. Read the review.Hugh Jackman as Harold Hill in the Broadway revival of “The Music Man” at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘The Music Man’At the Winter Garden Theater, Manhattan; musicmanonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.Hugh Jackman, a.k.a. Wolverine, returns to the stage as the charlatan Harold Hill opposite Sutton Foster as Marian the librarian in Jerry Zaks’s widely anticipated revival of Meredith Willson’s classic musical comedy. It’s a hot ticket, and one of Broadway’s more stratospherically priced shows. (Onstage at the Winter Garden Theater.)Read the review.Art & Museums“The Oath of the Tennis Court” (1791), a presentation drawing in “Jacques-Louis David: Radical Draftsman” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts a foundational event of the French Revolution.RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NYCritic’s PickJacques-Louis David: Radical DraftsmanThrough May 15 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.“Radical Draftsman,” a momentous and deadly serious exhibition, assembles more than 80 works on paper by this prime mover of French Neo-Classicism, from his youthful Roman studies to his uncompromising Jacobin years, into jail and then Napoleon’s cabinet, and through to his final exile in Brussels. It’s a scholarly feat, with loans from two dozen institutions, and never-before-seen discoveries from private collections. It will enthrall specialists who want to map how David built his robust canvases out of preparatory sketches and drapery studies. But for the public, this show has a more direct importance. This show forces us — and right on time — to think hard about the real power of pictures (and picture makers), and the price of political and cultural certainty. What is beautiful, and what is virtuous? And when virtue embraces terror, what is beauty really for? Read the review.Critic’s PickJonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always RunningThrough June 5 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.A Lithuanian refugee who landed in New York City in 1949, Jonas Mekas became a founder of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Film Culture magazine and Anthology Film Archives. He also made scores of collagelike “diary” films. “The Camera Was Always Running” is Mekas’s first U.S. museum survey, and its curator, Kelly Taxter, approached the daunting task by mounting a high-speed retrospective projected on a dozen free-standing screens.Most of the films in the exhibition are broken up into simultaneously projected pieces, so that the full program of 11 takes just three hours. Many are diary films — abstract kaleidoscopic records of Mekas, his brother Adolfas, also a filmmaker, and the SoHo bohemians and Lithuanian transplants of their circle. Since the point of all this, even more than documenting the variety of Mekas’s life in particular, is to capture the magical incongruity of life in general, Taxter’s inspired staging may even make the works more effective. Read the review.Painted fabric hangings behind the sculpture “The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro,” 1976. This entire installation originated as part of a performance piece.Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY, DACS, London and ACA Galleries; Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesCritic’s PickFaith Ringgold: American PeopleThrough June 5 at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, Manhattan; 212-219-1222, newmuseum.org.Ringgold’s first local retrospective in almost 40 years features the Harlem-born artist’s figures, craft techniques and storytelling in inventive combinations. And it makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now. The show begins with a group of brooding, broadly stroked figure paintings from the 1960s called “American People Series.” All the pictures are about hierarchies of power; women are barely even present. Ringgold referred to this early, wary work as “super realist.”In the ’80s, an elaboration on the painted quilt form, called “story quilts,” brought Ringgold attention both inside and outside the art world. It is the vehicle for Ringgold’s most formally complex and buoyant painting project, “The French Connection.” Overall, it feels, in tone, like a far cry from the “American People” pictures, but there’s politics at work in the French paintings, too. Read the review. More

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      Library of Congress Acquires Neil Simon Papers

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      The collection of approximately 7,700 items, donated by Simon’s widow, includes dozens of unfinished shows, including a screenplay written for Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg.As Mark Eden Horowitz, a senior music specialist at the Library of Congress, was digging through the playwright Neil Simon’s manuscripts and papers earlier this year, he made a surprising discovery.Simon, the most commercially successful American playwright of the 20th century, could also draw. Like, really draw.“They’re almost professional,” Horowitz said in a recent phone conversation of some of the pen-and-ink drawings and paintings he found tucked among the scripts. “There are two watercolors in particular that are quite beautiful landscapes.”More than a dozen notepads filled with drawings, cartoons and caricatures by Simon, who died in 2018, was just one of the surprising discoveries Horowitz made in the trove of approximately 7,700 of the playwright’s manuscripts and papers (and even eyeglasses), a collection that the library on Monday announced had been donated by Simon’s widow, the actress Elaine Joyce.An event on Monday at the library in Washington, which will stream live on its YouTube channel at 7 p.m., will include a conversation with the actors Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are starring in the Broadway revival of Simon’s 1968 comedy “Plaza Suite,” as well as remarks by Joyce.The collection includes hundreds of scripts, notes and outlines for Simon’s plays, including handwritten first drafts and multiple drafts of typescripts — often annotated — as well as handwritten letters to luminaries like August Wilson. There are more than a dozen scripts (sometimes many more) for some of his most celebrated shows, including “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “The Odd Couple” and “Lost in Yonkers,” Simon’s dysfunctional-family comedy that won a Tony Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991.Sometimes, Horowitz said, it took some detective work to identify a famous play, which existed in an early version under an alternate title. (An early script for “Lost in Yonkers” has the title “Louie the Gangster,” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” was once “The War of the Rosens.”)“Sometimes you’re not sure when you open the title and then you realize, ‘Oh, this became that,’” he said.The collection includes materials from the 25 screenplays Simon wrote, including “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” “The Heartbreak Kid” and “The Goodbye Girl,” for which he won a Golden Globe in 1978. There are also several scripts for shows never completed or produced, such as one titled “The Merry Widows,” written for Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg, and a musical that uses the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, called “A Foggy Day.”“Every time you open a carton, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to be in here?’” Horowitz said.Beyond dozens of unknown works in progress — some comprise just a few scenes, while others have multiple drafts — the archive also includes Simon’s Pulitzer Prize, his special Tony Award and at least two Golden Globes, as well as photographs, programs, original posters and even baseballs signed by several Hall of Famers, among them Tommy Lasorda, Eddie Murray and Tony Gwynn. (Simon was a noted baseball fan.)Dozens of spiral notebooks are also packed not just with revisions and “miscellaneous attempts at plays,” as Simon wrote in one, but drafts of speeches and tributes Simon delivered. In one case, a script for a show called “202 and 204” is interrupted by handwritten letters to cast members of “Lost in Yonkers” for opening night — plus the set designer, lighting designer, even the casting director, Horowitz said.Horowitz said that, once the library finishes combing through the items and putting scripts in alphabetical order, it plans to develop a digital tool similar to the ones they have to search other collections of work by theater professionals like Simon’s close friends Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, with whom he collaborated on the musical “Sweet Charity.”He also hopes that not just researchers, but also producers, might dive into the archives — and that some of the unproduced works might be staged, and the unfinished ones perhaps completed.“It’s so frustrating,” he said, laughing. “I desperately want to know how they end.” More

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      ‘Macbeth’ Plans to Restart Broadway Performances on Tuesday

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      A new production of “Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga resumed performances on Tuesday night, 11 days after it shut down because of positive coronavirus tests among company members.The resumption comes as four Broadway shows, as well as several Off Broadway productions, that have canceled performances as coronavirus cases rise in New York City are all attempting to get back on their feet, in some cases after those who test positive recover, and in some cases even sooner by deploying understudies.“Macbeth” got through just three preview performances before shutting down on April 1, citing a positive test in the company; the next day, it said Craig too had tested positive. But on Tuesday, “Macbeth” returned; the production suggested earlier in the day that both principals were healthy, posting on Twitter that “Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga return to their throne.”Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga return to their throne. Performances resume tonight. pic.twitter.com/llcjZAf7rh— Macbeth on Broadway (@macbethbway) April 12, 2022
      Meanwhile, a revival of the Neil Simon comedy “Plaza Suite” starring the married couple Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick planned to resume performances Thursday, with Broderick performing opposite Parker’s standby, Erin Dilly, while Parker continues to isolate. (Both she and Broderick tested positive for the virus, and the show has been canceled since April 7.) The production said Wednesday that it expected Parker to rejoin the cast on Saturday.A new musical called “A Strange Loop,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 after an Off Broadway production, hopes to begin performances Thursday, according to the production. The show had been scheduled to start previews April 6, but postponed the start of its run, citing positive virus tests in its company.“Paradise Square,” a new musical that opened April 3 but then canceled performances starting April 7, citing virus cases, is now planning to resume April 19.“Macbeth” and “A Strange Loop” face particular pressure because they have not yet officially opened, and must do so by April 28 to qualify for this year’s Tony Awards. But the cancellations are costly to all shows, which must continue to pay running costs without box office revenue and which are losing opportunities for Tony nominators and voters to attend.Off Broadway, the new musical “Suffs,” about the American women’s suffrage movement, also resumed performances Tuesday, after canceling performances starting April 5 because of virus cases. The show’s author and lead performer, Shaina Taub, is still recuperating, so the central role of Alice Paul is being played by Taub’s standby, Holly Gould.Both “Plaza Suite” and “Suffs,” which had been selling very strongly, have extended their limited runs to accommodate ticket holders affected by the cancellations. More

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      Will the Virus Cooperate With Broadway’s Spring Rebound?

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      Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.After a gloomy winter in which the Omicron variant shriveled Broadway’s lucrative holiday season, New York’s vaunted theater industry has been betting on a big spring, nearly doubling the number of shows on offer as the pandemic-battered business thirsts for a rebound.Adding all those plays and musicals — 16 new productions plus three returning from hiatuses are opening over a five-week stretch — was always going to be a gamble, since no one knows, in this not-yet-post-pandemic era, whether there are enough tourists and theatergoing locals to sustain that many shows.And now the stubborn persistence of the coronavirus is complicating matters even further. A rising number of cases in New York City, coinciding with the arrival of the virus’s BA. 2 subvariant, has once again rocked Broadway, infecting some of its biggest stars, including Daniel Craig, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and forcing four shows to temporarily cancel performances.“Our hope is that this isn’t a moment, but rather this is the way we will function now,” Parker said as she reflected on the high number of spring Broadway openings.OK McCausland for The New York Times“What we thought we were entering into this spring, which was always going to be busy and crowded, over the last week has changed dramatically,” said Greg Nobile, the lead producer of a new farce, “POTUS,” which, while still in rehearsals, has had to adapt as four of its seven actresses tested positive for the coronavirus. “Somehow it feels like, ‘This again?’ The answer is yes, but this time, we need to ask the question, how do we truly keep the show on, and what are the ways we are adjusting to what is a new normal?”Broadway’s big spring began on a cold night in late March with the opening of a revival of “Plaza Suite,” a Neil Simon comedy starring Parker and Broderick that was initially scheduled to start performances on March 13, 2020. Broadway shut down for the pandemic the day before that performance, and the Hudson Theater remained vacant, with the married co-stars’ names on the marquee and the set on the stage, for two full years before they returned to try again.“Every time I can walk a red carpet, I know it’s going to bring green currency to our city,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York said at the “Plaza Suite” opening.OK McCausland for The New York Times“Our hope is that this isn’t a moment, but rather this is the way we will function now,” Parker, in a pink satin gown with a beaded tulle overlay, said opening night at the end of an 80-foot-long preshow red carpet. “We have restaurants waiting to reopen still, we have hotel employees waiting to come back, we have delis that have been hit, we have ushers who are wanting to work the front of the house.”The crowd that came out to cheer her on, which included Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laura Linney, Cynthia Nixon and Martin Short, was buoyant.Broderick, finished with the gauntlet of camera crews arrayed inside a translucent tent, remarked how much he had enjoyed returning to the theater as an audience member, and now as a performer. “We’re learning to live with the pandemic or endemic — whatever you want to call it now — so the stronger theater and everything New York gets, the more normal life is,” he said. “This is part of the world coming back.”But eight days later, he tested positive, and two days later, so did she.Broadway openings remain starry, even in an era of few parties. Among those at the “Plaza Suite” opening: Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor. OK McCausland for The New York TimesThe crowd that came out to cheer Parker and Broderick on included Mikhail Baryshnikov and his wife, Lisa Rinehart.OK McCausland for The New York Times“Plaza Suite” has been closed since Thursday, as has “Paradise Square,” a new musical which was already struggling at the box office and can ill afford the lost revenue. Craig’s show, a revival of “Macbeth,” canceled 10 days of its preview period. And “A Strange Loop,” a new musical which won the Pulitzer Prize based on its Off Broadway run, has postponed the start of its previews. All cited positive coronavirus tests among company members as the reason; all hope to resume performances this week.The latest virus-related cancellations were all at new shows; shows that have been running longer had more time to prepare for cast absences, and have been able to soldier on with understudies. Most notably, a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” that opened last December temporarily lost six of its principals to positive coronavirus tests in April, including its lead actress, Katrina Lenk, but the show went on. (Its best known performer, Patti LuPone, was not among those stricken, possibly because she had tested positive in late February and missed 10 days then.)And the effects are not limited to Broadway: Off Broadway, shows including “Suffs,” at the Public Theater, and “At the Wedding,” at Lincoln Center Theater, have also temporarily canceled performances.The industry is undergoing a stress test of sorts, as the annual crush of Broadway openings, which tend to cluster just before an end-of-April deadline to qualify for the Tony Awards, is even bigger than usual because some productions postponed their start dates in the hopes of avoiding the peak of the Omicron variant. This month features the highest number of Broadway openings in any April for more than a decade.So many shows are opening that Times Square rehearsal space is scarce, so the farce “POTUS” turned to Union Square. Among those in the cast are Julianne Hough, front left, and Vanessa Williams, front right.OK McCausland for The New York TimesBroadway is always a risky business, in which far more shows fail than succeed. Some producers acknowledge that having a glut of new shows vying for attention and audience at the same fraught time is less than ideal, but they tend to be optimists, and each seems to believe that theirs is the show audiences have been waiting for.“You can play a bit of chicken-and-egg,” said Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which runs five Broadway houses. “Should we wait until every tourist is in town? But why is every tourist going to be in town if we wait? At some point we have to decide that we’re going to live.”This is actually Broadway’s second attempt at a rebound. The first began gradually last June, with the return engagement of Bruce Springsteen’s wildly popular evening of songs and storytelling. The first play began performances last August, and in September, with a moment of hope and celebration, the biggest musicals returned.Julie White, right, was among the members of the “POTUS” cast who tested positive during rehearsals. On White’s first day back, still coughing and wearing a mask, the play’s director, Susan Stroman, helped silence prop watches.OK McCausland for The New York TimesEarly box office grosses and attendance were encouragingly robust. But then the Omicron variant arrived in New York, contributing to the premature closing of nine shows and crushing attendance at the worst possible time of year: Only 62 percent of Broadway’s seats were occupied during the week ending Jan. 9.Through late winter, there were only 19 shows running in Broadway’s 41 theaters. With little competition, many of those left standing — mostly established hits or shows with famous titles — did quite well. By the week ending March 20, 92 percent of seats were occupied.Now, as the number of shows grows, and untested titles join the hits, average attendance is slipping, with 85 percent of seats filled during the week ending April 3. Overall, 224,053 people were at the 31 shows running that week, which is the highest number of ticket holders this year, but is substantially lower than the 315,320 who attended the 38 shows running during the comparable week in 2019.“The reopening of these shows is a real celebration of moving forward,” said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance, which is marking this busy spring with a display of 10-foot-tall Playbill monoliths erected on a theater district pedestrian plaza. He noted that while Times Square was growing livelier, it is still quieter than it used to be: In March there were about 255,000 people passing through the neighborhood on an average day, he said, down from about 365,000 daily visitors before the pandemic.The play did not miss a day of rehearsals, despite cast absences; in this scene, Anita Abdinezhad, seated, filled in for Rachel Dratch. OK McCausland for The New York TimesUntil the pandemic, Broadway was booming, with 14.8 million ticket holders spending $1.8 billion at the box office during the 2018-19 season, which was the last full season before the coronavirus. But travelers to New York City, who before the pandemic accounted for two-thirds of the Broadway audience, have not returned in prepandemic numbers; the city’s tourism agency is projecting 56.4 million visitors this year, down from 66.6 million in 2019.That helps explain why Mayor Eric Adams had been celebrating Broadway at every opportunity — showing up at the openings of “The Music Man” and “Paradise Square” and attending a student performance of “Hamilton” in recent weeks.“Every time I can walk a red carpet,” Adams said in an interview at the “Plaza Suite” opening, “I know it’s going to bring green currency to our city.”On Sunday, he too tested positive for the coronavirus.The play is a comedy by Selina Fillinger about seven women who try to shore up a problematic president. OK McCausland for The New York TimesNow, as the city has dropped vaccine mandates at restaurants and other public spaces, Broadway must decide whether to do the same. Its current safety protocols, which require that all ticket holders show proof of vaccination to enter theaters and remain masked while inside, except when eating or drinking, are in place through April 30. Theater owners and operators had planned to announce by April 1 whether they would extend those rules, but they postponed that decision until April 15 as case counts rose.At the same time, the new shows keep coming. So many are opening this month that “POTUS,” whose stars include Julianne Hough and Vanessa Williams, wound up rehearsing at the Daryl Roth Theater, in Union Square, because the production could not find suitable space in the theater district.On a recent Saturday, the cast gathered to work on scenes on a makeshift White House set. One of the stars, Rachel Dratch, was still out with the coronavirus, so her part was rehearsed by an understudy, Anita Abdinezhad, while another star, Julie White, was back for the first time since finishing her isolation period. White, who had kept an eye on rehearsals via video while recuperating, was still coughing beneath a mask, but had her lines down cold, and she leaned in to the comedy.As she arrived, she was visibly delighted to be back at work. She noted her relief at finally seeing negative results on her daily coronavirus test, saying, “It was so good to see that single line this morning.”Audio produced by More

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      Sarah Jessica Parker Tests Positive for Coronavirus

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      Sarah Jessica Parker, who is currently starring on Broadway in a revival of the Neil Simon comedy “Plaza Suite,” tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the production.Parker’s co-star, Matthew Broderick, who is also her husband, had tested positive earlier this week, and has been out of the show since Tuesday. The show had continued with his understudy, Michael McGrath, but will be canceled Thursday night, and it was not clear when it will resume.“Plaza Suite” is now one of four Broadway shows currently shuttered by the resurgent coronavirus in New York City, an increase in cases powered by the Omicron subvariant known as BA.2.A revival of “Macbeth” canceled more than a week of performances after its star, Daniel Craig, and other members of the company tested positive, and a new musical called “A Strange Loop,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2020, postponed the start of its preview performances, also citing positive tests. Both shows are hoping to be back onstage on Monday.And “Paradise Square,” a new musical that opened last weekend, canceled its Thursday night performance, citing “Covid cases in the company.”Off Broadway, a much-anticipated musical, “Suffs” at the Public Theater, has also canceled its performances this week, including its scheduled opening night, because of virus cases. More

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      Matthew Broderick, Starring in Broadway’s ‘Plaza Suite,’ Tests Positive

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      Matthew Broderick, who is now starring on Broadway in a revival of the Neil Simon comedy “Plaza Suite,” has tested positive for the coronavirus. He did not perform Tuesday night, and it is not clear when he will return to the show.Broderick’s co-star, Sarah Jessica Parker, who is also his wife, has tested negative, and went on Tuesday night opposite Michael McGrath, who is Broderick’s Tony Award-winning understudy. (McGrath won in 2012 for a production of “Nice Work if You Can Get It” that starred Broderick.)Broderick’s positive test result comes as coronavirus cases have once again been rising in New York City, and a number of Broadway shows have been affected.Last Saturday, the actor Daniel Craig was among several members of the company of a new Broadway production of “Macbeth” to test positive, and that show has since canceled all performances until Monday. More

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      Review: In ‘Plaza Suite,’ the Ghosts of #MeToo Haunt the Halls

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      Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker star in a Neil Simon comedy that no longer feels very funny.The first thing you see when the curtain goes up on “Plaza Suite” is an aquatint image of that grand hotel in its antique glory. But when it comes to datedness, the faux-French pile that opened its doors in 1907 has nothing on the Neil Simon comedy — itself a faux-French pile — that debuted on Broadway in 1968. Despite the wearying efforts of a likable cast headed by Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, the passage of 54 years is more than enough to reveal the triptych of one-act plays as uninhabitable in 2022.That may be why the creative team, led by the director John Benjamin Hickey, has taken pains to set the revival, which opened on Monday at the Hudson Theater, so squarely in its period. The grand but dowdy décor of John Lee Beatty’s champagne-colored rooms, along with Jane Greenwood’s transitional costumes (sometimes mod Pucci, sometimes seamed stockings) and Marc Shaiman’s groovy interstitial pop, put a velvet rope around the action to mark it off as a museum piece.But it would need something more like a cordon sanitaire to protect the audience from the trickle of smarm that leaks from the play. Structurally it barely stands, the three stories joined only by the setting they share — Suite 719 — and the two stars playing the leads in each. Beyond that, if you were looking for a theme, you would have to conclude that Simon, still early in his record-breaking career, was mostly interested in demonstrating that men may bluster, but women — whether wives, mothers or sirens — are dopes.The wife arrives first. In “Visitor From Mamaroneck,” Parker plays Karen Nash, a woman who does not know her age because she has not mastered basic arithmetic. (She’s 47.) On what she asserts is her 24th wedding anniversary but is really a day shy of her 23rd, she has arranged for a romantic evening with her husband in the suite she thinks they shared on their wedding night. But Sam Nash (Broderick) is in no mood for romance; as men in such stories always do, he has contracts to work on, with the audience meant to understand that by this he means having an affair with his secretary. (Molly Ranson gives the brief role more dignity than Simon did.)If it’s hard to find the funny in this setup, it’s harder to buy the sad in its payoff; the evident affection between Parker and Broderick, who are married in real life, extinguishes the spark of fury needed to ignite both laughs and pathos. (The original stars were the far more tempestuous George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton.) Or perhaps Broderick alone is the culprit; he’s about as fiery as a frozen dinner. Parker fares better, occasionally spinning a line to show us that Karen is not as dumb as Sam and Simon think — but she’s pedaling uphill in a story that posits knowledge as a threat to womanly happiness.Broderick and Parker as old flames in the second one-act, “Visitor From Hollywood.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt least it posits something. The second act, “Visitor From Hollywood,” evidently meant as a post-intermission palate cleanser, has barely any content at all, and what it does have is icky. This time the ditz is Muriel Tate, a New Jersey woman who comes to the Plaza to see, for the first time in nearly 17 years, her high school boyfriend, Jesse Kiplinger. Jesse is now a famous movie producer whose every film, we are told, makes money. And though Muriel from Tenafly, like Karen from Mamaroneck, is an innumerate homemaker — her three children, she says, are “a boy and a girl” — she has the saving grace in Simonland of being “extremely attractive” and thus available for mashing.In the manner of a Benny Hill sketch or an off-brand French sex romp, “Visitor From Hollywood” is single-minded, its action consisting solely of Jesse’s escalating stabs at seduction. But when neither his extreme unctuousness nor a pitcher of vodka stingers quite do the trick, he resorts to the ultimate aphrodisiac: name-dropping. It’s finally the likes of Charlton Heston and Yvette Mimieux who get Muriel into bed.That she eagerly falls for this transparent ploy is not the worst part of the story, which is meant as a satire of celebrity culture; Parker makes Muriel’s star-struck, suburban shallowness, if not exactly funny, then at least endearingly odd. And Broderick, in a hilarious wig and eye-bruising plaid pants, begins to thaw a little, intermittently attempting a New Jersey accent and emitting some lustful grunts.But the possibility of responding to this ruttishness with a lenient giggle is forestalled by the ghosts of #MeToo stalking the play; when Jesse, painting himself as the victim of his unfaithful ex-wives, describes them as “three of the worst bitches you’d ever want to meet,” you may find yourself looking, on Muriel’s behalf or your own, for the exit.Parker and Broderick as the increasingly frustrated parents of a jittery bride in the third one-act play, “Visitor From Forest Hills.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlas, as the third act demonstrates after a pause, the doors in this kind of comedy tend to be locked. In “Visitor From Forest Hills,” Roy and Norma Hubley are at their wits’ end trying to get their daughter, Mimsey, who’s supposed to get married downstairs any minute, to leave the bathroom she’s bolted herself into. As a quasi-violent farce ensues, in which Roy (Broderick) tries smoking her out, screaming through the keyhole and turning himself into a battering ram, Norma (Parker) stands by simpering, contradicting and driving Roy to distraction.The joke, not a bad one in itself, is that in their response to Mimsey’s jitters about the wedding, the bickering Hubleys exemplify exactly what’s worrying her. Will she and Borden, her fiancé, wind up fighting just like her parents? But the problem Simon actually dramatizes isn’t, as he seems to think, marriage: It’s men. The act’s punchline, in which we get a sour taste of the peremptory Borden, only underlines that inadvertent point.You could, I suppose, investigate “Plaza Suite” as a catalog of male failings in midcentury America; certainly “The Odd Couple,” a Simon comedy from 1965, can support such a reading, even if its two female characters are birdbrains. In any case, that’s not what the current production is offering. Rather, it seems to hope we will look forgivingly enough on our benighted past to excuse it with a “that’s how things were” shrug and laugh.But that’s not how things were, it’s just how Simon saw them, at least until he began to grant women some intelligence and agency a decade later, in “Chapter Two.” Looked at now, his “Plaza Suite” jokes, however well formed, keep dying on the vine. The past is not yet past enough to find such an unfair battle of the sexes funny.Plaza SuiteThrough June 26 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; plazasuitebroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More