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    Dolly Parton Musical’s Nashville Debut Draws Flocks of Fans

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    Parton’s life and career have always been rooted in Tennessee. For her fans, it was only fitting to see the debut of her biographical musical here, too.They came from across the country and drove in from the rest of Tennessee on Friday, braving the steamy heat of Nashville after a summer storm in sparkling boots, sequined jackets and butterfly accessories. There was even a blonde wig or two, piled high.It was fitting for the first public performance of the musical biography of the woman Tennessee proudly claims as one of its own: Dolly Parton.“She wanted her people to see it,” said Kim Mynatt, 61, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., the first in line with her husband at least two hours before the curtain rose at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on Friday. “That’s one of the things I love about her.”Nashville, of course, has its own Broadway: the downtown strip of honky-tonks and performance venues that has cultivated generations of musical talent. Yet it is an unusual place for a theater production, already aiming for a 2026 opening on Broadway in New York, to hold its world premiere.Unless, of course, that show is the story of Dolly Parton.Mallory Peterson, 7, center, of Erwin, Tenn., going through the Dolly Parton makeup with her mother, Jasmine Peterson, right, 28, and aunt, Caelyn Maden, 16.William DeShazer for The New York TimesKim Mynatt of Murfreesboro wears Dolly Parton shirts and jewelry.William DeShazer for The New York Times“Dolly’s what got me here,” said Mynatt, who wore a 1989 Dollywood seasonal shirt — one of at least 30 Parton-themed shirts she owns — and one of Parton’s official pink butterfly statement necklaces. “The woman has never disappointed.”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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      Taye Diggs Can’t Resist a Good Rom-Com

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      “There is the element of love, which can be so serious and so complicated, but when you add the dynamic of humor, it makes it so much more real and exciting and fun to watch.”Taye Diggs got his big break when he played the landlord Benny in the original Broadway cast of “Rent,” back in 1996, and he credits the stage for creating, as he put it, “who I am and why I am who I am.” Problem is, live performance had been taking a back seat in his life.“Once one is lucky enough to cross over to film and TV, it’s easy to get kind of stuck and become an audience member when it comes to theater, and then fear starts to set in,” Diggs said. “I found myself in the audience wondering how these actors onstage memorized all their lines. That’s when I started to get scared.”Not scared enough to turn down the opportunity to step into “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” though — Diggs is currently in rehearsals for the show, in which he’ll play the scheming, wealthy Duke of Monroth starting Tuesday and through Sept. 28.Diggs’s presence on New York stages has been sporadic in the decades since “Rent.” One reason is that he has been living in Los Angeles; the other is why he’s in California.His screen career took off a couple of years after “Rent,” when he helped Angela Bassett track down her mojo in his film debut, “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.” This led to lead roles in the beloved rom-coms “Brown Sugar” and “The Best Man.” Diggs has also been a steady presence on television, with lengthy runs on “Private Practice” and “All American.”But now he’s putting his summer to good use by returning to Broadway, his first appearance there since a stint in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” in 2015. It helped that he’s a fan of “Moulin Rouge,” having seen the show, he said, about 10 times. And the Duke is a juicy character.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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      in Theater

      Martin Izquierdo Dead: Costume Designer Who Made Wings for ‘Angels in America’ Was 83

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      His work was seen in “Angels in America” and Victoria’s Secret runway shows. He also made outlandish ensembles for Heidi Klum and Marc Jacobs.Martin Izquierdo, a theatrical costume designer whose career took off after he designed the feathery wings that gave phantasmic flight to the spiritual messenger in “Angels in America,” Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 play, both onstage and in the 2003 HBO version directed by Mike Nichols, died on June 25 at his home in Manhattan. He was 83.The cause was cardiovascular disease, his partner, the costume designer John Glaser, said.At the conclusion of “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches,” the first part of the two-part play, the angel of the title makes an impressive entrance, crashing through the ceiling of an AIDS-stricken gay man’s New York apartment and proclaiming, “The great work begins.”Ellen McLaughlin and Stephen Spinella in a scene from “Perestroika” (1993), the second part of Tony Kushner’s two-part play “Angels in America.” Mr. Izquierdo designed the wings.Joan MarcusIt was Mr. Izquierdo’s ingenuity, and his flamboyant imagination — assisted by a certain amount of technical wizardry — that allowed Ellen McLaughlin, who played the angel on Broadway, and Emma Thompson, the angel in the HBO version, to hover convincingly some 30 feet overhead, framed by prodigious wings that were illuminated from behind. Those wings became a symbol of the production itself, an indelible part of its “astonishing theatrical landscape,” as Frank Rich of The New York Times described the show in a 1993 review.Their creator arrived in the United States in the 1940s, a young undocumented immigrant from Mexico who had been recruited to do agricultural work in California.Mr. Izquierdo (pronounced IZZ-key-AIR-doe), who never became a citizen, eventually gravitated to a career as an artist, painting scenery for the theater before becoming a costume designer. In 1978, he left California for New York, where he opened his own studio and spent nearly four decades making costumes and props for film, theater, and the music and fashion industries.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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      in Theater

      The Moves That Make ‘Chicago’ and ‘A Chorus Line’ So Special

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      Fifty years ago, when director-choreographer giants still walked the earth, two of the biggest — Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett — created highly influential shows that have attained legendary status and lasted: “Chicago” and “A Chorus Line.”These were musicals with dancing at the center. The showbiz-cynical attitude of “Chicago,” a tale of 1920s murderers who go into vaudeville, was inseparable from its choreographic style. “A Chorus Line” was about Broadway dancers, built from their real-life stories and framed as an audition.To celebrate the golden anniversaries of these shows, The New York Times invited Robyn Hurder, who has performed in productions of both over the past two decades (and recently received a Tony nomination for her performance in “Smash”), to demonstrate and discuss what makes the choreography so special. To coach her, direct-lineage experts were on hand.Robyn Hurder performs part of “One,” a signature song of “A Chorus Line.”For “A Chorus Line,” Hurder could turn to Baayork Lee, an original cast member who has been staging and directing the show ever since. (She’s directing an anniversary benefit performance on July 27.) For “Chicago,” Verdon Fosse Legacy — an organization dedicated to preserving and reconstructing the choreography of Fosse and his chief collaborator, Gwen Verdon — sent Dana Moore, who worked with Fosse in his 1978 “Dancin’” and his 1986 revival of “Sweet Charity.” She also danced in the 1996 “Chicago” revival and in revivals of “A Chorus Line,” too.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 Chorus Line’ and ‘Chicago’ at 50: Who Won?

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      Just two musicals open on Broadway during the summer of 1975. “Chicago,” in June, is received warily, like a stranger at the door. It’s “a very sleek show,” writes Walter Kerr in The New York Times. “It just seems to be the wrong one.” But “A Chorus Line,” in July, elicits unthrottled raves. “The conservative word” for it, writes Kerr’s colleague Clive Barnes, “might be tremendous, or perhaps terrific.”Yet the musicals have more in common than their initial reception reveals. Both shows are about performers: “Chicago” featuring 1920s vaudevillians with a sideline in murder; “A Chorus Line,” contemporary Broadway dancers. Both are masterminded by director-choreographers of acknowledged (and self-acknowledged) brilliance: “Chicago” by Bob Fosse; “A Chorus Line” by Michael Bennett. Both are seen, regardless of reviews, as exemplars of style-meets-content storytelling in a period of confusing change in musical theater. And both shows remain touchstones today, albeit of very different things.Donna McKechnie (center, in red) and the cast of the original Broadway production of “A Chorus Line.”Indeed, their differences now seem more salient than their similarities, and fate has been funny with their reputations. For 50 years, “A Chorus Line” and “Chicago” have tussled for primacy like Jacob and Esau, at least in the eyes and ears of Broadway fans. Which show is “the wrong one” now?To answer that, you might look uncharitably at their faults. “A Chorus Line” is shaggy and gooped up with psychobabble. “Chicago” is mechanical, a big hammer pounding one nail. But both are so well crafted for performance that those faults fade in any good production. For me, having seen each many times, the highlights are more telling.Jerry Orbach and the cast of the 1977-78 national tour of “Chicago.”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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      Broadway’s ‘Gypsy’ Revival, Starring Audra McDonald, Will Close

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      The show is the sixth musical to announce a closing date since last month’s Tony Awards, reflecting financial challenges facing producers.A boundary-breaking Broadway revival of “Gypsy” starring Audra McDonald will end its run on Aug. 17, much earlier than its producers had hoped.The run was originally open-ended, meaning that no closing date had been set, and tickets were on sale through Oct. 5. But on Wednesday night, the production announced the new closing date; at the time of its final performance, it will have played 28 preview and 269 regular performances at the Majestic Theater.The show is the sixth musical to announce a closing date since last month’s Tony Awards (following “Boop!” “Cabaret,” “Dead Outlaw,” “Real Women Have Curves” and “Smash”), reflecting Broadway’s difficult financial dynamics (nonmusical plays have been faring much better). “Gypsy” was nominated for five Tony Awards, including as best musical revival and for McDonald’s performance, but won none.The revival, directed by George C. Wolfe, was highly anticipated because McDonald, with six Tony Awards, is Broadway’s most-honored contemporary performer, and she is the first Black actress to play on Broadway the lead role of Rose, the ur-stage mother whose daughter becomes a stripper. The musical, with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, was inspired by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee; it first opened in 1959 and is generally considered one of Broadway’s best golden age musicals.When the revival opened in December, it received overwhelmingly positive reviews. In The New York Times, chief theater critic Jesse Green named the show a critic’s pick and wrote of McDonald, “Doing a psychological striptease, showing more of the character’s rage than her predecessors, she is stupendously affecting.”At the box office, the show seemed to be selling well for much of its run, grossing well over $1 million most weeks in its early months, and peaking at $1.9 million during a week in mid-January.But the show is costly to run, thanks to a large orchestra and sizable cast that includes children, who can be costly to employ because they require supervisors who need to be hired by the production.“Gypsy” also lost a substantial amount of potential revenue over the normally lucrative Christmas holidays when illnesses forced the cancellation of seven performances. Its weekly grosses have been heading in a troubling direction — last week the show sold only 61 percent of its seats and grossed $816,086.And musicals have been fetching much lower ticket prices than starry plays. For example, during the week that ended June 1, when all three shows were running, the average ticket price at an “Othello” revival starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal was $425, and at “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney, it was $339. The average ticket price for “Gypsy” was $114. More

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      in Theater

      ‘The Gospel at Colonus’ Review: Singing Hallelujah on the Hudson

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      In an open-air revival on Little Island in Manhattan, Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s musically sumptuous play follows Oedipus at the end of his life.Back at the start of this century, Tom Stoppard raised some eyebrows with the copious program notes theatergoers received at his brainy Broadway play “The Invention of Love.” The Times review advised reading them, as context for understanding the performance, “before the curtain goes up.”Audience members traipsing onto Little Island in Manhattan for the handsome revival of Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s “The Gospel at Colonus” don’t get anything of the kind, but it would have been a help. An aurally sumptuous quasi-Passion play that sings hallelujah to the heavens in the island’s open-air amphitheater, the show retells an ancient Greek drama through the prism of a Black Pentecostal church service.“Welcome, brothers and sisters,” the Preacher (Stephanie Berry) says at the beginning, with the Hudson River glinting as a backdrop in lieu of an upstage wall. “I take as my text this evening the Book of Oedipus.”It is a clever line. But while a pastor might be able to presume a congregation’s familiarity with a book of the Bible, it is riskier to count on a crowd knowing Sophocles’ drama “Oedipus at Colonus.” Breuer, the great downtown experimentalist who died in 2021, was all about risk. Still, let’s recap, shall we?In “Oedipus at Colonus,” Oedipus is old, infamous and exiled from Thebes, where he once was king. His life has been a litany of scandals, which you might recall from another of Sophocles’ Theban tragedies, “Oedipus Rex”: Abandoned as an infant, he did not know his parents, so when he later killed his father in a fight, he didn’t realize who it was, and when he married his mother and had children with her, he likewise had no idea. After learning the truth, he gouged his eyes out.Now, in his wanderings, his beloved daughter Antigone is his indispensable guide. Upon their arrival at Colonus, Theseus, the king of Athens, takes pity and offers them sanctuary.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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      in Theater

      Richard Greenberg, Playwright Whose ‘Take Me Out’ Won a Tony, Dies at 67

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      More than 30 of his plays were produced on Broadway and off. Many of them dealt with the manners and mores of New York’s upper middle class.Richard Greenberg, who won frequent praise as the American Noël Coward for his sharp-witted plays about the manners and mores of urbane, sometimes smug New Yorkers, and who received a Tony Award in 2003 for “Take Me Out,” his play about a gay baseball player, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 67.His sister-in-law, Janet Kain Greenberg, said the cause of his death, in a hospice, was cancer.A child of the middle-class Long Island suburbs, Mr. Greenberg rose to theater fame in the 1980s with a string of scripts that delved into the interior lives of the people he knew best: young, upwardly mobile urban professionals — yuppies, in the parlance of the time.Works like “Eastern Standard” (1987) and “The American Plan” (1990), two of his first major plays, were incisive and biting, but never cruel. His goal was to examine the bourgeoisie, but never to épater them.From left, Kieran Campion, Lily Rabe, Brenda Pressley, Mercedes Ruehl and Austin Lysy in the Broadway revival of Mr. Greenberg’s “The American Plan” in 2009.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHaving once aspired to be an architect himself, he used that profession as both an identity for many of his characters and an unspoken metaphor in his plays: How do the relationships we build on love and family and friendship bear up over time and under the stress of imperfect, if caustically funny, partners?“We’re always trying to make a cogent story out of our existence,” Mr. Greenberg told Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2016, “and people in my plays often feel they have the story, but almost invariably they’re wrong.”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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      in Theater

      Laurie Metcalf to Star in Broadway Play Produced by Scott Rudin

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      The production, of the Samuel D. Hunter play “Little Bear Ridge Road” that got strong reviews in Chicago will be the first produced by Rudin since news reports of his bullying behavior in 2021.“Little Bear Ridge Road,” Samuel D. Hunter’s acclaimed small-cast play about loneliness, compassion and a search for connection between an aunt and her nephew in rural Idaho, will come to Broadway this fall in a production starring Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock.The production, directed by Joe Mantello (“Wicked”), will mark the return to Broadway of the producer Scott Rudin, who in 2021 paused his producing activities and resigned from the Broadway League amid reports of bullying behavior toward assistants and others.Rudin is producing the show with Barry Diller, the billionaire media mogul who has frequently backed his shows.The play is scheduled to begin previews Oct. 7 and to open Oct. 30 at the Booth Theater for an 18-week limited run.Hunter, the playwright, is best known for “The Whale,” which was adapted into a 2022 film. He was raised in Idaho and many of his plays are set there and feature socially isolated working-class characters. This will be Hunter’s first play staged on Broadway.“My initial impulse for writing the play — which I told to Joe and Laurie, and I credit them that they still had faith in me after I said this — is that I wanted to write a play about people watching television,” Hunter said in a telephone interview. “That was the platform for the play, but the play became this story of this aunt and this nephew who have almost no relationship, and a lot of painful history between them, hunkering down together during the pandemic, and both of them trying to figure out a path forward in a deeply complicated reality.”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