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    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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      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

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      Mark Brokaw, Theater Director Known for Slight-of-Set Magic, Dies at 66

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      On and off Broadway, he worked with rising talents like Kenneth Lonergan and Paula Vogel, combining complex storytelling with the simplest possible productions.Mark Brokaw, a director of Broadway, Off Broadway and regional productions, who shepherded the work of rising playwrights like Kenneth Lonergan, Lisa Kron, Paula Vogel and Nicky Silver beginning in the early 1990s, died on June 29 at his home in Manhattan. He was 66.His husband, Andrew Farber, said the cause was prostate cancer.Mr. Brokaw was comfortable with the classics. He directed productions of Molière’s “Tartuffe,” W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Constant Wife” and the musical “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella” — albeit a Cinderella with a fresh, feminist gloss.Sienna Miller and Jonny Lee Miller in Mr. Brokaw’s 2009 production of “After Miss Julie.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMark Ruffalo and Missy Yager in Mr. Brokaw’s 1998 production of “This Is Our Youth.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut he was a specialist in new plays, including Patrick Marber’s “After Miss Julie,” which he directed in 2009; Mr. Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth,” which he directed in 1996 and again in 1998; and Ms. Kron’s “2.5 Minute Ride,” in 1999. And he had something of a subspecialty in the nonlinear storytelling seen in works like Douglas Carter Beane’s “As Bees in Honey Drown” and Ms. Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “How I Learned to Drive”; he directed both in 1997.“Mark was especially good with plays that jump around in time, and you had multiple people playing multiple parts,” said the actor Cynthia Nixon, who worked with Mr. Brokaw on “As Bees in Honey Drown” and Lisa Loomer’s “Distracted” in 2009.Cynthia Nixon in the 2009 production of Lisa Loomer’s “Distracted.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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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      The Best Theater Moments of 2025, So Far

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      Our critic picked 10 moments that tapped into a range of emotions, often all at once.The theater is more than the sum of its parts; it is also the parts themselves. As I began to look back at the first half of 2025, I found myself primarily recalling those parts: the scene, not the script; the props, not the production. Here are 10 such moments, some sad, some funny, some furious, most all at once.Audra’s Turn at the Tonys“Rose’s Turn,” the 11 o’clock number to end them all, is often described as a nervous breakdown in song. It was certainly that when I first saw Audra McDonald slay it in the current Broadway revival of “Gypsy.” But by the time she performed it on the Tony Awards months later, it was no longer just a personal crisis: a mother grieving the lost opportunities her daughter now enjoys. The lyric “Somebody tell me, when is it my turn?” now rang out with greater depth and anger as McDonald, the first Black woman to play Rose on Broadway, invoked the lost opportunities of generations of talented Black women behind her.Read our review of “Gypsy” and our feature about “Rose’s Turn.”A Multiplicity of GreenspansDavid Greenspan as an impeccably dressed palace publicist in Jordan Tannahill’s play at Playwrights Horizons. The actor takes on multiple roles in the production, each meticulously specific.Richard Termine for The New York TimesThough he was the subject of the recent Off Broadway play “I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan,” most people don’t. Nor will Greenspan’s astonishing quadruple performance in the Off Broadway production of “Prince Faggot,” Jordan Tannahill’s shocker about a gay heir to the British throne, help pin him down: He’s that shape-shifty. A bossy palace publicist, a discreet royal servant, even the possibly gay Edward II are among his perfectly etched characters. And the monologue in which he supposedly plays himself? Indescribable (at least here).Read our review of the play.A Face and a Name to RememberNow it can be told. In the Broadway show “Smash,” based on the television melodrama about a Marilyn Monroe musical, the big number (“Let Me Be Your Star”) was deeply undersold in the opening scene. That was a marvelous feint because, at the end of Act I, to bring the curtain down with a huge surprise bang, out came Bella Coppola, as a suddenly promoted assistant choreographer, performing the same song when no one else could. Can you oversell something? Turns out, no.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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      André Bishop Takes a Bow After Hundreds of Shows at Lincoln Center Theater

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      He is moving on from 33 years at Lincoln Center Theater and will head to Rome to focus on his memoirs.André Bishop, the longtime producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, could have chosen almost anything for the final Broadway production of his tenure. He’s known for Golden Age musicals, and has a long history with new plays. But he opted to exit with “Floyd Collins,” a dark and tragic 1996 musical about a trapped cave explorer.Why would anyone select that as their swan song?“I just thought it’s the kind of serious musical that I want to go out on, because everything in it is something that I believe, in terms of the musical theater,” he told me in an interview last week at his nearly empty office — nearly empty because he’s been giving away his theater memorabilia after deciding he didn’t want his home to turn into a museum. He donated his archives — 174 cartons of papers, photos and notebooks — to the Houghton Library at Harvard University, his alma mater.“Now there would be some people who say, ‘Why do you have to do all these sad shows? Why can’t you do something toe-tapping?’ Well, that’s just not my nature,” he said. “I felt that Floyd’s looking for a perfect cave was very close to mine looking for a perfect theater — that somehow these theaters that I’ve worked in for 50 years were these perfect caves that I happened to stumble on.”Jason Gotay, in the background, and Jeremy Jordan in “Floyd Collins” at Lincoln Center Theater. “It’s the kind of serious musical that I want to go out on, because everything in it is something that I believe, in terms of the musical theater,” Bishop said.Richard Termine for The New York TimesBishop, 76, has spent the last 33 years running Lincoln Center Theater, which has a $50 million annual budget, 22,000 members, 65 full-time employees, two Off Broadway stages, and one Broadway house (the Vivian Beaumont). He programmed over 150 plays and musicals, 15 of which won Tony Awards, and then announced in 2023 that he would retire this summer; Monday was his last day on the job, and he is being succeeded by Lear deBessonet, the artistic director of the Encores! program at City Center.His departure is part of a wave of change at Broadway’s nonprofits; all four of the nonprofits with Broadway houses are naming successors for artistic leaders with decades-long tenures.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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      Taraji P. Henson to Make Broadway Debut in August Wilson Play

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      The actress will star opposite Cedric the Entertainer in a revival of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” next spring.Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer have signed on to co-star in a revival of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” on Broadway next spring.The production — the play’s third on Broadway since 1988 — will be directed by Debbie Allen.“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is a part of Wilson’s Century Cycle, which chronicles Black life in America with one play set in each decade of the 20th century. “Joe Turner” is set in 1911; like most of the plays, it takes place in Pittsburgh.The drama is set in a boardinghouse peopled by migrants from the rural South who are searching, suffering and spiritual. Henson and Cedric will play the couple, Bertha and Seth Holly, who run the boardinghouse.Henson studied theater at Howard University, but her career has been spent in film (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) and television (“Empire”). This will be her Broadway debut as an actor; she was credited as among the producers of a 2023 Broadway play, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”Cedric, a comedian who has also worked on television (“The Neighborhood”), has one previous Broadway credit; he starred in a very short-lived 2008 revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.”Allen, best known as a performer and choreographer, has one previous directing credit on Broadway — she directed a 2008 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The “Joe Turner” revival is being produced by Brian Moreland, who previously produced a 2022 revival of Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” as well as last season’s production of “Othello.”Moreland said in a statement that the show would open next spring at an unspecified Shubert theater; the rest of the cast has not yet been announced. More

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      Jordan Roth, a Broadway Big Shot, Is Now Reinventing Himself

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      Jordan Roth, the scion of a New York real estate fortune, a convention-challenging fashionista and a social media habitué, spent 15 years as a Broadway macher, running one of the big three theater landlords. He programmed hits like “The Book of Mormon” and “Hadestown,” nurtured plays and musicals in development, and joined the theater industry’s inner circle at its cloistered confabs, all the while showing up at openings in increasingly fabulous couture.But it’s fairly obvious to anyone watching Roth’s evolving public persona that he’s been looking for a new adventure.He has sold most of his stake in Jujamcyn, the company through which he owned five Broadway theaters, and he has dialed back his theater producing.Jordan Roth rehearsing what he’s calling a “narrative fashion performance” in a black box studio in Brooklyn.Now he is moving on to a different stage, combining his love of fashion, his hunger to perform, and his taste for storytelling. He is pursuing “narrative fashion performance,” and he plans a debut on July 10 at the Louvre in Paris.“I worked for a long time facilitating other people’s creativity, and that was very meaningful and very fulfilling, but I started to miss my own,” Roth, 49, told me during a rehearsal break at a black box studio in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.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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      Lynne Meadow, Who Led Manhattan Theater Club for 53 Years, Is Stepping Down

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      Lynne Meadow was just 25 when she took a job running the Off Off Broadway Manhattan Theater Club. Now the nonprofit is a major player on and off Broadway.Lynne Meadow, the last of the long-serving artistic directors who for decades led the four nonprofits with Broadway theaters, plans to step down from her current position, she said in an interview.Meadow, 78, has served as artistic director of Manhattan Theater Club since 1972, and by her own count has produced or presented more than 600 shows, making her one of the most prolific and successful figures in the American theater. Among the successes: the repeatedly extended Lynn Nottage play “Ruined,” which won a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2009, and Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” which won a Tony Award earlier this month.She said she will stay with the organization as an artistic adviser, but that a search for a new artistic director is already underway.Her move will follow that of André Bishop, whose 33-year run leading Lincoln Center Theater ends next week; Carole Rothman, who in 2023 ended a 45-year tenure atop Second Stage Theater; and Todd Haimes, who died in 2023 after running Roundabout Theater Company for 40 years.The departures mean that, after decades of constancy, a new generation of leaders will oversee the nonprofit presence on Broadway. These institutions, which together control six of the 41 Broadway theaters, over the years have been an important ballast for the industry, preserving a place for new plays, risky work and large-orchestra musical revivals during periods when those types of projects have been less appealing to commercial producers.“I’m doing this because I feel that the timing is right to do this — there are things that I want to do,” Meadow said. “I’m not tired, and I’m not bored, and I’m not depressed, but I’m excited for Chapter 2.”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 Musical ‘Boop’ Set to Close Amid Weak Ticket Sales

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      ‘Boop! The Musical’ imagines the cartoon character leaving 1920s filmdom for 2020s New York City. Ticket sales were weak.“Boop! The Musical,” based on the iconic flapper from early animated shorts, announced on Wednesday that it would close July 13 after failing to find sufficient audience to defray its running costs on Broadway.The show is the fourth new musical to post a closing notice in the 17 days since the Tony Awards, following “Smash,” “Real Women Have Curves” and “Dead Outlaw.”“Boop!” had a disappointing Tonys season — it was not nominated for best musical, and its request to perform on the awards show was rebuffed. It was nominated for best lead actress (Jasmine Amy Rogers), best choreography (Jerry Mitchell) and best costume design (Gregg Barnes) but won no awards.The show’s weekly grosses, consistently too low, ticked upward last week, but remain well below its running costs. During the week that ended June 22, “Boop!” grossed $602,017, and 19 percent of the seats went unsold.The musical began previews March 11 and opened on April 5 at the Broadhurst Theater. At the time of its closing, it will have played 25 previews and 112 regular performances.Set primarily in New York City, the musical imagines that Betty Boop, an actress in films of the 1920s, time travels to present-day Manhattan seeking a greater sense of her self; in the city she finds friendship, love and clarity.The musical, led by the veteran producer Bill Haber, had been in development for more than a quarter century, with shifting creative teams, and had a pre-Broadway production in Chicago in 2023. The version that finally made it to Broadway has a book by Bob Martin, music by David Foster, and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead; it is directed as well as choreographed by Mitchell.Reviews were mostly positive. But in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green was unenthusiastic, praising Rogers’s performance and other elements of the show, but questioning its rationale, saying that “a well-crafted, charmingly performed, highly professional production that nobody asked for” is “disappointing,” and that “one feels at all times the heavy hooves of a marketing imperative.”“Boop!” was capitalized for up to $26 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money — the amount it cost to finance the show’s development — has not been recouped. More