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    With ‘Floyd Collins,’ Jeremy Jordan Finds Another Challenge Onstage

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    In “Floyd Collins,” playing a hardscrabble Kentuckian trapped while exploring a cave, the actor finds inspiration in the claustrophobic restrictions.When Jeremy Jordan played a young, naïve cop in the Broadway show “American Son” alongside Kerry Washington, in 2018, he was fresh off several seasons on the “Supergirl” series. And so he tried to apply some of the techniques that worked for him on TV to a taut drama about police violence.“I had been making it work for so long, trying to mine gold from every moment, and I think that had stuck with me,” Jordan said. The director Kenny Leon intervened, with advice that Jordan still carries with him. Literally.“He gave me this note on some old piece of script,” Jordan said, fishing a tiny scrap of paper from his wallet and carefully unfolding it. “It says ‘you are good enough to just say these words.’”Leon’s counsel may be evergreen, but it particularly resonates with Jordan’s new project, where he is often unable to use many physical acting techniques.In “Floyd Collins,” which is at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Jordan portrays the title character of Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s musical, a hardscrabble Kentuckian who becomes trapped while exploring a cave in 1925. As a media circus forms on the surface, Floyd withers away underground, stuck between rocks. (The musical is based on a true story, which also inspired the Billy Wilder film “Ace in the Hole,” from 1951.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: In a Musical Comedy Makeover, ‘Smash’ Lives Up to Its Name

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      En route to Broadway, the TV series about backstage shenanigans and Marilyn Monroe has been rejiggered, with the same great songs but a whole new plot.Great musical comedies are great mysteries, and not just because they’re so rare. They’re also mysteries in the way they operate. To succeed, they must keep far ahead of the audience, like thrillers with twists you can’t see coming. They are whodunits with songs instead of murders.“Smash,” which opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, is more of a who’ll-do-it, and when the big song comes, it’s a killer. But the effect is the same: It’s the great musical comedy no one saw coming.Or at least I didn’t. In 2012, I enjoyed the first season of the NBC television series, also called “Smash,” on which the musical is based. Its pilot, setting up a competition between two aspiring modern-day actresses to play Marilyn Monroe in a Broadway-bound musical, was terrific fun. But as the weeks wore on, the story becoming soapier and gloppier, the fizz fizzled out. Only the songs, by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and the dances, by Joshua Bergasse, sparked highs.So I wasn’t sure what to make of the announcement that the material was being retooled for Broadway as a comedy instead of a melodrama. A video of “Let Me Be Your Star,” the thrillingly emotional duet that was the high point of the pilot, left me baffled. Rearranged as a solo at the start of the new show, it sounded all wrong: too cool, too light, with a Las Vegas leer. Was the creative team, led by the director Susan Stroman, planning to fix the property by trashing the few things the series got right?That turned out to be a brilliant feint.The Broadway “Smash” being the kind of mystery I mentioned, I’ll try to be careful about spoilers. But there’s so much to enjoy at the Imperial that I could give away 10, and there would still be 20. In any case, I spoil nothing to say that “Smash” remains the story of a Monroe musical called “Bombshell.” But in this version the actresses are not midlevel hopefuls; rather Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder) is already a star, and Karen Cartwright (Caroline Bowman) her longtime understudy. They are not in competition — at first.That changes dramatically when Ivy reads a book about Method acting. No longer content to play a “bubbly, sparkly” Monroe, she insists on giving her character more depth. Even though this is exactly what the creative team has been trying to avoid — a show that wallows in tawdry tragedy — she hires a coach from the Actors Studio, keepers of the Method flame. When this strange, forbidding coach arrives, pushing absurd ideas and amphetamines, “Bombshell” begins to crater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hear How a ‘Smash’ Song Got a Broadway Makeover

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      “Let Me Be Your Star,” which evokes an actor’s longing to shine, has come a long way from its TV days. Here’s how the song evolved on its way to the stage.On a recent morning at a rehearsal room on 42nd Street, the actress Robyn Hurder stood atop a pedestal, red lips parted, arms outstretched, blond curls vibrating as she sang the final notes of “Let Me Be Your Star.” Then she collapsed, breathless.“This number’s hard,” she said, her face glistening with sweat. “Who did this?”Well, plenty of people. “Let Me Be Your Star” was written over a dozen years ago for the pilot episode of NBC’s “Smash,” a backstage-set nighttime soap about the hectic creation of a Broadway musical, “Bombshell.” There were plans to bring “Bombshell,” a biomusical about Marilyn Monroe, to the real Broadway, but those plans never came to fruition. Neither did “Smash,” which was canceled after two seasons.But “Let Me Be Your Star,” a classic “I want” song that its composer and co-lyricist, Marc Shaiman, has described as a “neck-bursting showstopper,” endures. Originally sung at the close of the pilot by Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee, the song, which was nominated for Grammy and Emmy Awards, has been covered by Andrew Rannells on “Girls,” by Jonathan Groff and Jeremy Jordan at MCC Theater’s Miscast benefit, by Ben Platt and Nicole Scherzinger in concert and by masses of fans (and the occasional Muppet, on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Ostensibly a song about Monroe’s life, it resonates for any actor — and really, anyone — who longs to shine.Now it’s been reimagined as the opening number of “Smash,” a new Broadway musical that riffs on the TV show. Hurder plays Ivy Lynn, a Broadway actress tasked with playing Marilyn in “Bombshell.” This opening version of “Let Me Be Your Star” is staged by the director Susan Stroman and the choreographer Joshua Bergasse (also a veteran of the TV “Smash”) as a Great White Way fever dream featuring elaborate harmonies, athletic dance and a brassy, big-band sound. The song recurs, in a very different style, at the end of the first act, though the producers are keeping those details secret. And it may return a third time.“It’s possible!” Stroman said.The stage version of “Smash” follows the backstage meltdown of a fictional show called “Bombshell” as it approaches opening night.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAt that morning rehearsal, Stroman had Hurder and the ensemble run the number again. There were flips, lifts, mambo moves, thrilling vocal frills. More

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      Theater to Watch at Home: ‘Uncle Vanya’ and an Alice Childress Revival

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      A bare-bones Chekhov, a critically acclaimed revival of “The Wedding Band” and the cult TV series “Smash” are all available for streaming.‘The Wedding Band’Stream it on Stratfest@Home.In 2022, Alice Childress’s play about love and hate, written in 1962, received its first major revival in 50 years, to much acclaim. The following year, “The Wedding Band,” was staged at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, making it a welcome second coming for our theater critic.The play about an interracial couple — a Black woman, played by Antonette Rudder, and a white man, Cyrus Lane — who, in 1918 South Carolina, can’t wed, is a searing examination of a miscegenation nation. Writing for The New York Times, Jesse Green called the 2023 Stratford production, directed by Sam White, a “revelation,” adding that the festival’s revival “confirms the play’s vitality.”From Green’s critic’s notebook:It’s a joyful thing when a great play that seemed to be lost is found. How much more so when its greatness is confirmed and the play takes root in the soil of a new time. That was my experience seeing Alice Childress’s “Wedding Band” … The director Sam White’s production unexpectedly adds another layer of tragedy. Her staging emphasizes the hard-won pleasures of the central relationship, so that something valuable is felt to be lost when the world intervenes. … We see how the tragedy of racism makes victims of everyone.‘Vanya on 42nd Street’Stream it on Amazon Prime, Pluto TV or the Roku Channel.New York is experiencing something of an explosion of Chekhov. “The Seagull” featured prominently in Theaterlab’s recent production of “Nina”; “The Cherry Orchard” is coming to St. Ann’s Warehouse next month, along with “Vanya,” an adaptation of “Uncle Vanya,” starring Andrew Scott, Andrew Scott and Andrew Scott (he plays every role). Its Off Broadway debut comes after a highly praised run in London. The one-man show, adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Sam Yates, won last year’s Olivier Award — Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.But you don’t have to be in a theater to take in Chekhov. If you’ve never seen “Vanya on 42nd Street,” the 1994 Louis Malle film of André Gregory’s production, now is a timely moment to watch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Stage Adaptation of ‘Smash’ Is Setting Its Sights on Broadway

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      Producers including Steven Spielberg have been exploring several possible incarnations of the decade-old TV series. Now they have a plan.A long-discussed stage musical version of the television series “Smash” is finally coming to Broadway … but fans are going to have to wait a bit more.The adaptation’s producers, who include Steven Spielberg, announced Wednesday that they expect to bring the show to Broadway during the 2024-25 theater season. They said the musical will be directed by Susan Stroman, a five-time Tony winner whose latest endeavor, “New York, New York,” starts previews on Friday.The “Smash” musical will be based on the two-season series, broadcast on NBC in 2012 and 2013, about a group of New York City theater artists struggling to bring “Bombshell,” a musical about Marilyn Monroe, to the stage. The show, with plenty of soap-style backstage drama and exuberant production numbers, was dreamed up by Spielberg, developed by Robert Greenblatt and created by Theresa Rebeck, and, although its TV run was canceled because of declining ratings, it retains a passionate fan base.“It’s crazy that we’re still talking ‘Smash,’ but not a week has gone by where somebody doesn’t tell me they miss the show, so it’s kind of great to be seeing it in another incarnation,” said Neil Meron, who was an executive producer of the TV series.Meron and Greenblatt, who will produce the adaptation with Spielberg, said the stage version would be funnier than the television show, and that it would include some of the same characters, but also new ones, and would be set in the present day.“It’s a backstage comedy about the putting on of a Marilyn Monroe musical,” Meron said, while Greenblatt’s summation was: “We’ve been calling it a comedy about a musical.”The musical will feature a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, including songs they wrote for the television series as well as new ones; the team is best known for the Tony-winning score of “Hairspray” and is represented on Broadway this season by “Some Like It Hot.” The book will be written by Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys”) and Bob Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone”). Joshua Bergasse, who choreographed the television series, will do the same for the stage show.The producers oversaw a developmental reading of the script about a year ago, and said they expect more workshops before the move to Broadway. The long lead time was needed to accommodate the schedules of the creative team, they said; casting has not yet been determined.“Every few years the show comes back into our lives, and now we’re excited to go on a new adventure with it,” Greenblatt said.The creative team has always imagined there would be a path from the television show to the stage, but its form has changed over time. In 2013 there was a concert performance of songs from “Hit List,” the musical that was a subject of the second season, and in 2015 an effort to develop a Broadway adaptation of “Bombshell,” the musical that was the subject of the first season, was announced after a concert performance of songs from that show.But then in 2020, the current producers announced that they would develop a loose adaptation of the series itself, rather than working with one of the musicals-within-the-television-show.“What we didn’t want to do was just put the TV series onstage — we wanted our own spin on it,” Meron said. “We are very conscious of our fan base, and very conscious that there’s a new audience that’s never been exposed to ‘Smash’ before. So our take is more comedic and more of a love letter to Broadway.” More