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      Tony Predictions: Expect Wins for ‘Merrily’ and ‘Stereophonic’

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      Our reporter surveyed a quarter of Tony voters before Sunday’s ceremony. One certainty: Sondheim’s onetime flop seems destined for redemption.Everyone loves a comeback story. And this year, Broadway will be celebrating one for the ages.“Merrily We Roll Along,” a Stephen Sondheim show that has long been one of musical theater’s most storied flops, will cement its long-sought redemption on Sunday by winning the Tony Award for best musical revival, according to my annual survey of Tony voters.This week I have connected, by phone or by email, with just over a quarter of the 836 Tony voters, and asked how they were voting. In a season in which lots of new musicals have admirers but none seem to have fully satisfied industry insiders, that race is tight, as are some of the key acting categories.But “Merrily,” more than any show since “Hamilton,” has won over not only the ticket-buying audience, which has made this production a significant hit, but also the group of producers, investors, writers, actors, designers and others whose work or volunteer lives are so theater-involved that they have qualified as Tony voters.The survey is not a scientific poll; some voters haven’t even cast their ballots yet. For the actual winners (and some song and dance, too), tune in Sunday for the awards show, which starts at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and Paramount+ with Showtime. A preshow with some of the awards will stream on Pluto TV starting at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, and we’ll be live-blogging all evening at nytimes.com/theater.Until then, here’s a look at what those surveyed are indicating.Best musical: ‘The Outsiders’ could upset ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’“The Outsiders” is getting lots of love for its vivid depiction of violence and gritty physical production, but less for its score.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMany are loving the vocal performances and the choreography in “Hell’s Kitchen,” but are less enamored with the storytelling.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Hell’s Kitchen,” the Alicia Keys musical, is doing quite well: good reviews, lots of media attention and the strongest sales of any of the season’s new musicals.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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      Listen to the Best Songs From 8 Tony-Nominated Shows

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      “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Stereophonic” and others are up for top prizes at Sunday’s ceremony. Our critic takes stock of their cast albums, all available now.Cast albums are both keepsakes and fantasies, preserving a show for those who have seen it and implying it for those who have not. At their best, they are also stand-alone works of musical-theater art. Listening to the recordings of the eight shows nominated for Tony Awards in the best musical and best score categories — all of which are now available — I was impressed by how often and how variously they reached that standard. Below, in chronological order by opening date on Broadway, a guide to the latest batch of future treasures.‘Here Lies Love’The first of the season’s best score nominees, this sung-through biography of Imelda Marcos was the only one not to release a cast recording. That’s a shame, but die-hards can seek out the 2014 Off Broadway version or the 2010 concept album, with its whacka-whacka disco-beat ditties by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. Remastered in 2023, and with a very different collection of songs from the Broadway show, the concept album is naturally less theatrical; with each track featuring a different singer in a totally distinctive style — Tori Amos, Florence Welch, Natalie Merchant, Sia — character development is impossible. Instead, it offers hypnotic dance-floor euphoria, as in Cyndi Lauper’s take on Imelda’s “Eleven Days” of courtship.“Eleven Days”“Here Lies Love,” featuring Cyndi Lauper, from the 2010 concept album (Nonesuch)‘Days of Wine and Roses’A story of husband-and-wife alcoholics on diverging paths toward recovery and disaster is bound to be harrowing, but Adam Guettel’s score carefully balances the inevitable lows with the sometimes wild highs. The cast album brilliantly captures that full-spectrum range, especially in the edge-of-danger singing by Kelli O’Hara and Brian D’Arcy James at their finest. Their quasi-operatic cries for relief and forgiveness effectively contrast (but do not contradict) the jazzy mania of songs like “Evanesce,” in which the snockered characters sound like xylophones and leap like dolphins, making you ache if not for drink then for these desperate drinkers.“Evanesce”“Days of Wine and Roses” (Nonesuch)‘Water for Elephants’Jessica Stone’s thrilling staging is a real eye-catcher in this circus-based musical at the Imperial Theater. But the cast album demonstrates how the songs, by PigPen Theater Co., a seven-man indie folk collective, can grab you by the ears. Avoiding the rut of some Americana scores, PigPen, along with its arrangers and orchestrators, offers a wide variety of sounds and formats that suit the milieu and the action: bravura showstoppers for the ringmaster, soaring anthems for the hero, haunting ballads for the woman caught between them. One of those ballads is “Easy,” a heartbreaker even if you have no idea that it’s sung to a dying horse.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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      Idina Menzel Will Return to Broadway in ‘Redwood’

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      The new musical, about a woman seeking healing, is to arrive early next year.Idina Menzel will return to Broadway early next year in a new musical called “Redwood,” about a grieving woman who seeks healing among ancient trees.Menzel, who has not worked on Broadway for a decade, remains one of the industry’s most-loved stars, forever associated with two iconic roles: Maureen, in the original production of “Rent,” and Elphaba, in the original production of “Wicked” (she won a Tony Award for that one). She then belted her way into the lives of millions of children by voicing Elsa in the “Frozen” films and recording the first film’s monster hit, “Let It Go.”“Redwood” is an original musical that was conceived by Menzel and Tina Landau (“Mother Play,” “SpongeBob SquarePants”), who wrote the musical’s book and is directing the production. The score features music by Kate Diaz and lyrics by Landau and Diaz.The show had an initial production earlier this year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. The Broadway production will be produced by Eva Price (“& Juliet”), Caroline Kaplan, a film producer, and Loudmouth Media, a company founded by Menzel, and is being capitalized for up to $16 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The producers announced Thursday that the show would open on Broadway next year, but during the current theater season, which means they anticipate opening between January and April; Landau is also committed to directing a production of “Floyd Collins” that is scheduled to open on Broadway next April. The producers did not specify which theater “Redwood” will play, and they did not name any other cast members. More

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      The Writer Behind “Stereophonic,” the Most-Nominated Play in Broadway History

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      David Adjmi felt out of place in the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn, where he grew up. He felt uncomfortable at the Juilliard School, where he studied playwriting. Some of the earliest productions of his plays taught him that his theatrical style could be frustrating and alienating for his collaborators and his audiences. In a review of a 2013 Off Off Broadway production of Adjmi’s play “Marie Antoinette,” the Times theater critic Ben Brantley called Adjmi “a polarizing playwright who specializes in sounding the depths of shallowness.” Adjmi decided that mainstream success was out of reach for him. He considered giving up writing altogether.But that’s not what happened. Adjmi told Melissa Kirsch the story of how he came to write “Stereophonic,” his newest play, which was recently nominated for 13 Tony Awards, a record for a play.On today’s episodeMelissa Kirsch, the deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle for The Times and the writer of The Morning newsletter on Saturdays.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; Illustration by The New York TimesThe New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

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      This Year’s Tony Nominees in Portraits

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      ‘Purlie Victorious’Kara Young“My mime teacher had a double-jointed hand, and she taught me this skit about a dying butterfly in a forest. You find the dying butterfly, and you pick it up and your hand becomes the butterfly. And I performed this very often because I was the one who was able to do the double-jointed hand.”‘Purlie Victorious’Leslie Odom Jr.“I played Martin Luther King in our Black history show in kindergarten. The pictures that I hold the dearest are of my grandmother and my father clapping in the front row. My dad looks like I just won the Nobel. He’s so proud that I’ve memorized my little four lines as Martin Luther King.”‘An Enemy of the People’Jeremy Strong“One of the real formative experiences for me was seeing Ian Holm do ‘Lear’ at the National in the ’90s. He was a little man with tremendous, immense power and vulnerability. And I remember him on the heath at the end — he was naked in front of the well-heeled audience, and I remember being very affected by a human being willing to be that open and unprotected in front of people. It changed my life.”‘mary jane’Rachel McAdams“I saw ‘Cats’ in Kitchener, Ontario. My dad was a mover, and he actually helped move the company, so we got free tickets. I was 8. I was walking on air when I came out of that show. I still remember looking down at my little white patent leather shoes and thinking my whole world has been cracked open.”‘Merrily We Roll Along’Daniel Radcliffe“The first time I was onstage was in a school play called ‘Nellie the Elephant,’ when I was 5 or 6 — I was dressed as a monkey. But my first proper stage appearance was when I was about 13, in ‘The Play What I Wrote,’ that Kenneth Branagh directed, and they had a different celebrity in every night, and I did like three performances. As the guest, if you knew the lines, you could get laughs. So even knowing very little about comedy, I got laughs, and I remember feeling, ‘Oh, that’s incredible fun.’”‘Merrily We Roll Along’Jonathan Groff“The first time I remember being onstage was playing Sandy, the dog, in a dance recital. I was 4 years old, and they were doing a number from ‘Annie,’ and I was in a dog head costume, and I remember hearing the audience laugh at me moving my head back and forth, and I was hooked.”‘Merrily We Roll Along’Lindsay Mendez“The first show I saw on Broadway was at the Gershwin Theater. I saw ‘Show Boat.’ It was just so grand and incredible. I was, I think, 12 years old. I had loved theater as a little kid, but getting to see it at that level, it hit me for the first time that I could pursue it as an adult for a living.”‘Appropriate’Sarah Paulson“Janet McTeer in ‘A Doll’s House’ — that was a very early, if not the first, Broadway show that my mother took me to see. I was in the first row of the mezzanine, and I’ll never forget the energy with which she came onstage. It was like watching a lightning bolt.”‘Appropriate’Corey Stoll“Courtney B. Vance was playing Corey in the original ‘Fences,’ and I remember seeing that production with James Earl Jones, who was so obviously this powerhouse. But I remember seeing this young man going toe to toe with him, and holding his own against this colossus. It really blew me away that the theater was a place where there were all these different forms of power, and each person can hold an audience’s attention and affection.”‘Stereophonic’Will Brill, Eli Gelb, Juliana Canfield, Sarah Pidgeon and Tom Pecinka“My parents took me to see ‘Peter Pan’ at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. I was 3, and I was sitting on my mom’s lap, and Captain Hook had Peter Pan tied up, and apparently I stood up on my mom’s lap, and I screamed, ‘You poo-poo head!’ at Captain Hook.” — Will Brill“I saw Mark Rylance play Olivia in ‘Twelfth Night.’ And I was so astonished by his tragic sense of humor. I had been planning on doing an Olivia monologue to audition for school, and I was like, ‘I can’t do it because he’s too brilliant.’ I changed my monologue.” — Juliana Canfield“I did three different productions of ‘Grease.’ I played Danny every time, at 12, 14, and then my senior year of high school. When I was Danny my senior year, all of a sudden the girls started to take notice.” — Tom Pecinka‘Cabaret’Eddie Redmayne“The first show I ever saw was ‘Cats,’ when I was about 7 years old. I was up in the circle, and a cat crawled out of a hole somewhere and gave me the fright of my life. I found it utterly terrifying and completely exhilarating.”‘Cabaret’Gayle Rankin“The thing that drew me to theater was, I was always fascinated by people. I was really quiet as a kid, and so people watching was like my TV. I remember sitting at a Starbucks in Glasgow when I was, like, 12, watching people for hours on end.”‘Cabaret’Bebe Neuwirth“It wasn’t until I saw ‘Pippin,’ when I was 13, that I decided that I was going to be a dancer on Broadway and do that guy’s choreography. I didn’t know I was talking about god [Bob Fosse]. I didn’t know anything. It just resonated so deeply for me — I could feel that movement in my body, and I knew that I was watching an aspect of myself when I saw that.”‘Cabaret’Steven Skybell“I did children’s theater in Lubbock, Tex. My first show was ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ I played [a] king — I was already character-typed as the older character even then. And from the time I was 10, I knew I wanted to be an actor. I’ve just slowly been pretending all along the way.”‘Hell’s Kitchen’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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      Jessica Lange and Paula Vogel on Breaking, and Keeping, the Family Contract

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      In the Tony-nominated “Mother Play,” the writer conjures warm memories and thorny ones, not to judge her mother, but to understand — and to forgive.It is one of life’s great strokes of luck to have an excellent mother. The playwright Paula Vogel didn’t get one. The actress Jessica Lange did: sweet and nurturing, accepting of her children, the kind of mom the other kids wished was theirs.“I had a perfect mother,” Lange, 75, said on a June afternoon in a lounge at the Helen Hayes Theater in Midtown Manhattan, her tone making clear that she wasn’t boasting or being hyperbolic. She was simply stating a fact, one that she realizes is “beyond fortunate,” and sets her own warm familial dynamic apart from that of the characters in Vogel’s “Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions.” At the drama’s center is a painfully less than ideal parent. Lange is up for a Tony Award for portraying her.To Vogel, 72, a Pulitzer Prize winner for “How I Learned to Drive,” a backward-spooling 1997 memory play inspired by her uncle, the scenario of a mother who doesn’t exactly throw herself into the job is as familiar as her personal past: autobiography spun into drama.“I’m the kid that found other friends’ mothers, and went home with them after school,” she recalled, perched across a high, round-topped table from Lange. “I remember once coming into a friend’s house drenched from the rain, and her mother brought me a bathrobe and said, ‘Take your clothes off in the bathroom. I’m drying your clothes.’ I’m like” — and here Vogel channeled a child’s voice, wonder-struck — “‘You are? You’d do that for me?’”Lange in “Mother Play” with Celia Keenan-Bolger, who plays a younger, fictionalized version of Vogel.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStill, “Mother Play,” a best-play Tony nominee, is not an exercise in demonization or revenge. Condemning Phyllis, the mother — who shares Vogel’s mother’s name — is not the point. Understanding her is.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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      All in the Details: Tony-Nominated Set Designers on Getting It Right

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      What are all those buttons for?That’s one of the many questions David Zinn is frequently asked about the sound console that spans nearly the length of the set he designed for “Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s backstage drama about a band’s discordant recording sessions in the 1970s.“I think that,” he said, laughing. “What are all those buttons?”A music studio, a Harlem hair salon, a church sanctuary: These were a few of the worlds that Broadway audiences were whisked away to this season courtesy of the Tony Award nominees for best scenic design of a play. Zinn received two nominations, for “Stereophonic” and “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.” Derek McLane was nominated for the revival of “Purlie Victorious.”In its second year working on Broadway, the design collective dots (Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk and Kimie Nishikawa) was nominated twice, for “Appropriate” and “An Enemy of the People.”Ahead of the Tony Awards on Sunday, the nominees talked about the inspirations and challenges of playmaking with make believe.‘Appropriate’The design collective dots aimed to create a “realistic feeling” of a plantation house in “Appropriate.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s a cliché to say a house is a character in a play. But that is eerily the case in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s dark comedy about the racist legacies of a white family and a grand plantation home that feels alive and haunted. Lived in too, but by a dark spirit with the power to make sure a photo album of lynching victims finds its way into the family’s hands.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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      On Broadway, ‘Suffs’ Has a New Tune (and 6 Tony Nominations)

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      A reworked opening number, less historical bulk and a general push to “have fun with these women” helped a musical find its way.Two ambitious overhauls are on Broadway right now: the Palace Theater and the musical “Suffs.”When “Suffs,” a show about the suffragists’ crusade for the right to vote, staggered to its Public Theater premiere in April 2022, few people would have bet that it had much of a future. Yet here we are with “Suffs” on Broadway, where it received generally positive reviews and six Tony Awards nominations, two for Shaina Taub’s score and book.What happened? The director Leigh Silverman (who also received a Tony nomination) recalls struggling with supply-chain issues and having to cancel 18 performances, including opening night. “No theater maker, no artist of any kind I think anywhere was able to do their best work in any circumstance coming out of Covid,” she said.Silverman and Taub (who also portrays the suffragist Alice Paul) said they immediately began tinkering. “We were working on it before it was even closed,” Silverman said in a joint interview in Taub’s dressing room at the Music Box Theater. Taub, laughing, added: “Sometimes people are like, ‘Oh, you went back to the drawing board.’ But we never left the drawing board.”The original score has been whittled down from 38 songs to 34. But numbers are a poor indicator of the extensive renovation that took place in the past two years (some songs have the same title but different lyrics, for example). Here are five ways “Suffs” changed on its journey to Broadway.More book“The biggest substantive formal change has been book,” Taub said. While the show’s earlier version was essentially sung-through, the story was so dense with historical material that she realized she needed spoken scenes to “tee up” the songs, as she put it. Taub revisited some of her favorite book musicals, like “Ragtime” and “Into the Woods,” to study how they handled those passages. One of the most apparent changes in “Suffs” is the number “The Young Are at the Gates.” Taub described the first version, which previously closed Act I, as “a 12-minute sung-through odyssey”; now it opens Act II and incorporates brief book scenes. “I felt free, finally, of the confines of having to musicalize everything,” said Taub, who called book writers “the unsung heroes of the American musical.”From left, Ally Bonino, Nadia Dandashi, Kim Blanck and Taub in the musical on Broadway.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