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    Emcee Squared: Joel Grey and Eddie Redmayne on ‘Cabaret’

    Eddie Redmayne had never seen “Cabaret” when, as a 15-year-old student at Eton, he was first cast as the Emcee, the indecorous impresario of the bawdy Berlin nightclub where the musical is set. So Redmayne did what anyone wondering about the character would do: He watched the 1972 film, and studied Joel Grey’s performance.Redmayne, 42, has played the Emcee three more times — at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe following high school; in London’s West End, winning an Olivier Award in 2022; and now on Broadway, where he has just picked up a Tony nomination.“Cabaret,” set in 1929 and 1930, is about an American writer who has a relationship with a British singer working at the Kit Kat Club; the queerness of some of that nightclub’s habitués and the Jewishness of some of its neighbors become risk factors as the Nazis gain power.Redmayne had never met Grey, who originated the role on Broadway in 1966 and who went on to win both Tony and Academy Awards as the Emcee. So I asked them to lunch, to talk about a character both have played several times, and about a musical that has continued to move audiences.We met at Le Bernardin — Grey’s choice — and for two hours they shared stories, Redmayne reverential and thoughtful, Grey puckish and supportive. At times, when words seemed insufficient, Grey reached out to clasp Redmayne’s hand.Joel Grey won a Tony Award in 1967 for playing the Emcee in the original Broadway production of “Cabaret.”Bettmann/Getty ImagesWe 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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    Darren Criss to Return to Broadway as a Robot in Love

    The actor will star in “Maybe Happy Ending,” an original musical set in a future Seoul. It will begin previews in September.Darren Criss, who parlayed a breakout role on “Glee” into a multifaceted career in television, theater and music, will return to Broadway this fall in a new musical that is nominally about robots but is also about life, love and loss.The show, “Maybe Happy Ending,” is a rarity for Broadway: a fully original musical — not adapted from a pre-existing story or song catalog. Criss will star alongside Helen J Shen and two other actors in the musical, which is set in Seoul in the late 21st century and is about two outmoded helperbots who meet at a robot retirement home and forge a relationship while grappling with their own obsolescence.The musical, by Will Aronson and Hue Park, had an initial Korean-language production in Seoul in 2016, and an English-language production in Atlanta, at the Alliance Theater, in 2020, where Jesse Green, a New York Times chief theater critic, called it “a charming, Broadway-ready new musical about robots in love.”The Broadway production, announced Tuesday, will be directed by Michael Arden, who also directed the Atlanta production, and who last year won a Tony Award for directing a revival of “Parade.” “Maybe Happy Ending” is scheduled to begin previews Sept. 18 and to open Oct. 17 at the Belasco Theater.“It’s a strange, futuristic look at love, with a beautiful score that feels quite classic,” Arden said in a telephone interview. “When I first read it I found it absolutely devastating and heartbreaking and beautiful — it was one of the most human stories I’d come across, even though our leads aren’t human.”Criss, an Emmy winner for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” last appeared on Broadway in a 2022 revival of “American Buffalo”; he had previously starred in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”“Maybe Happy Ending” will be the first Broadway show for Shen, who is currently in “The Lonely Few” at Off Broadway’s MCC Theater. Criss and Shen will play the robots; the cast will also include Dez Duron, a onetime contestant on “The Voice.”“Maybe Happy Ending” is being capitalized for $18.25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The musical’s lead producers are Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold, who on Friday announced that they are also among the producers of a new Off Broadway play, “N/A,” starring Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe. That play, written by Mario Correa and directed by Diane Paulus, is to begin previews June 11 and to open June 23 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. The play, described in a news release as inspired by real people and events, is about tensions between the first female speaker of the House and the youngest woman elected to Congress; the characters have parallels to Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. More

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    Enhancing Broadway, by Any Bodily Means Necessary

    The choreographers nominated for Tony Awards this year have a broader vision than usual of the possibilities of dance in theater.In the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Outsiders,” something shocking keeps happening. It isn’t that the characters throw punches, or not exactly. These are teenagers who rumble, so it isn’t surprising that they’re violent. What’s shocking is the kinesthetic impact. You seem to feel the blows yourself.The impact is electrifying, but it doesn’t operate alone. It serves the storytelling and engages the emotions of an audience by bodily means. This is what choreography at its best can do, and it isn’t limited to what you might think of as dancing.The choreographers of “The Outsiders” and of the four other shows nominated for the Tony Award in that category this year understand this. None dole out the usual stuff. This broader vision of theatrical choreography is worth noticing and applauding.Hell’s KitchenMaleah Joi Moon plays the lead role in “Hell’s Kitchen,” which has choreography by Camille A. Brown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA loosely autobiographical jukebox musical of songs by Alicia Keys, “Hell’s Kitchen” takes place in the 1990s, in the Manhattan neighborhood of the title. Camille A. Brown’s choreography fits the setting. It looks, delightfully, like dancing that the people who live there would do, like regular folks getting their groove on.But it’s also a throwback to an older, neglected mode of integrating dance into a musical, the tradition that Agnes de Mille inaugurated with shows like “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” in the 1940s. Like de Mille, Brown individuates the ensemble with detail: This guy is extra flamboyant; that gal pops her gum bubbles on the beat. Moving like this, the dancing chorus becomes the appealing community that draws the show’s 17-year-old protagonist, Ali, into the world — and out from the apartment building where her mother wants her to stay sheltered.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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    Tony Awards 2024: Who Will Win (and Who Should)

    Our chief theater critic names the shows and artists he thinks will win, should win and should have been nominated — and suggests a few new categories.The 2023-24 Broadway season was rich with new plays and, let’s say, crowded with new musicals. Revivals were rarer — not a bad thing, necessarily. But the combination of factors makes for quite a horse race as the Tony Awards presentation approaches. So take my annual Tonys “ballot” with the usual caveats, listed below, and with a grain of salt for my highly unscientific commentary within each category. As always, that includes a plea for the addition of new awards; if we can change, why can’t the Tonys?1. I’m not an oddsmaker. I don’t actually vote. Prizes for artistic merit are silly. You could probably do better by flipping a coin.2. The people and productions listed in the “Should Win” category are not necessarily more deserving than those in “Will Win.” There’s often little if any excellence gap between the two groups.3. The “Should Have Been Nominated” category obviously includes Broadway work that was eligible but spurned. Less obviously, it also includes work from Off Broadway and beyond (indicated by an *asterisk*) that’s totally ineligible for the Tonys, just because.Best PlayWILL WIN“Stereophonic”Should win“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”“Mary Jane”Should have been nominated“Primary Trust”*“Infinite Life”*“The Comeuppance”*“Jonah”*Four cheers for Off Broadway, where so many Broadway plays start — including this year’s “Stereophonic, “Mary Jane,” “Appropriate” and “Prayer for the French Republic.” And a fifth cheer for “Primary Trust,” which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.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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    Tony Awards 2024: Print Your Ballot!

    Best New Play
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ “Mary Jane”
    ☐ “Mother Play”
    ☐ “Prayer for the
    French Republic”
    ☐ “Stereophonic”
    Best New Musical
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    “Illinoise”
    ☐ “The Outsiders”
    ☐ “Suffs”
    “Water for Elephants”
    Best Play Revival
    ☐ “Appropriate”
    ☐ “An Enemy of the People”
    “Purlie Victorious”
    Best Musical Revival
    ☐ “Cabaret”
    ☐ “Gutenberg! The Musical!”
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    “The Who’s Tommy”
    Best Book
    of a Musical

    Bekah Brunstetter,
    “The Notebook”
    Kristoffer Diaz, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Rick Elice,
    “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Adam Rapp and Justin
    Levine, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Shaina Taub, “Suffs”
    Best Leading Actor
    in a Play
    ☐ William Jackson
    Harper, “Uncle Vanya”
    Leslie Odom Jr.,
    “Purlie Victorious”
    ☐ Liev Schreiber, “Doubt”
    Jeremy Strong,
    “An Enemy of the People”
    ☐ Michael Stuhlbarg, “Patriots”
    Best Leading Actress
    in a Play
    ☐ Betsy Aidem, “Prayer for
    the French Republic”
    0000
    Jessica Lange, “Mother Play”
    Rachel McAdams, “Mary Jane”
    Sarah Paulson, “Appropriate”
    ☐ Amy Ryan, “Doubt”
    Best Leading Actor
    in a Musical
    ☐ Brody Grant, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Jonathan Groff, “Merrily
    We Roll Along”
    Dorian Harewood,
    “The Notebook”
    ☐ Brian d’Arcy James,
    “Days of Wine and Roses”
    ☐ Eddie Redmayne, “Cabaret”
    The New York Times
    2024 Tony Awards Ballot
    Best Leading Actress
    in a Musical
    Eden Espinosa, “Lempicka”
    ☐ Maleah Joi Moon,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    Kelli O’Hara,
    “Days of Wine and Roses”
    ☐ Maryann Plunkett,
    “The Notebook”
    ☐ Gayle Rankin, “Cabaret”
    Best Featured Actor
    in a Play
    ☐ Will Brill, “Stereophonic”
    Eli Gelb, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Jim Parsons, “Mother Play”
    Tom Pecinka, “Stereophonic”
    Corey Stoll, “Appropriate”
    Best Featured Actor
    in a Musical
    ☐ Roger Bart,
    “Back to the Future”
    ☐ Joshua Boone, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Brandon Victor Dixon,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Sky Lakota-Lynch,
    “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Daniel Radcliffe,
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    ☐ Steven Skybell, “Cabaret”
    Best Featured Actress
    in a Play
    ☐ Quincy Tyler Bernstine,
    “Doubt”
    ☐ Juliana Canfield,

    “Stereophonic”
    Celia Keenan-Bolger,
    “Mother Play”
    Best Direction
    of a Musical
    ☐ Maria Friedman,
    ㅁㅁㅁ ㅁ
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    Best Lighting Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ Brandon Stirling
    Baker, “Illinoise”
    Michael Greif, “Hell’s Kitchen”

    Isabella Byrd, “Cabaret”
    Leigh Silverman, “Suffs”

    ☐ Jessica Stone,
    “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Danya Taymor, “The Outsiders”
    Best Scenic Design
    of a Play
    Natasha Katz, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Bradley King and David
    Bengali, “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Brian MacDevitt and Hana S.
    Kim, “The Outsiders”
    Best Sound Design
    dots, “An Enemy of the People” of a Play
    ☐ dots, “Appropriate”
    Derek McLane,
    “Purlie Victorious”
    David Zinn,
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    David Zinn, “Stereophonic”
    Best Scenic Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ AMP featuring Tatiana
    Kahvegian, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Robert Brill and Peter
    Nigrini, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Tim Hatley and Finn Ross,
    “Back to the Future”
    ☐ Riccardo Hernández and
    Peter Nigrini, “Lempicka”
    ☐ Takeshi Kata,
    “Water for Elephants”
    David Korins, “Here Lies Love”
    ☐ Tom Scutt, “Cabaret”
    Best Costume Design
    of a Play

    Dede Ayite, “Appropriate”

    Dede Ayite,
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ Sarah Pidgeon, “Stereophonic” ☐ Enver Chakartash,
    ☐ Kara Young, “Purlie Victorious”
    Best Featured Actress
    in a Musical
    ☐ Shoshana Bean,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Amber Iman, “Lempicka”
    Nikki M. James, “Suffs”


    Leslie Rodriguez
    Kritzer, “Spamalot”
    Kecia Lewis, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Lindsay Mendez,
    “Merrily We Roll Along”
    ☐ Bebe Neuwirth, “Cabaret”
    Best Direction of a Play
    Daniel Aukin, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Anne Kauffman, “Mary Jane”
    Kenny Leon, “Purlie Victorious”
    Lila Neugebauer, “Appropriate”
    Whitney White,
    ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ ☐
    “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Justin Ellington and
    Stefania Bulbarella,
    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”
    ☐ Leah Gelpe, “Mary Jane”
    ☐ Tom Gibbons, “Grey House”
    ☐ Bray Poor and Will
    Pickens, “Appropriate”
    ☐ Ryan Rumery, “Stereophonic”
    Best Sound Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ M.L. Dogg and Cody Spencer,
    “Here Lies Love”
    Kai Harada,
    “Merrily We Roll Along”

    Nick Lidster, “Cabaret”

    Gareth Owen, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Cody Spencer, “The Outsiders”
    Best Original Score
    Will Butler, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Adam Guettel, “Days
    of Wine and Roses”
    ☐ Jamestown Revival and Justin
    Levine, “The Outsiders”
    ☐ David Byrne and Fatboy
    Slim, “Here Lies Love”
    ☐ Shaina Taub, “Suffs”
    Emilio Sosa, “Purlie Victorious” Best Choreography
    David Zinn,
    “An Enemy of the People”
    Best Costume Design
    of a Musical
    ☐ Dede Ayite, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Linda Cho, “The Great Gatsby”
    ☐ David Israel Reynoso,
    “Water for Elephants”
    Tom Scutt, “Cabaret”
    ☐ Paul Tazewell, “Suffs”
    Best Lighting Design
    of a Play
    ☐ Isabella Byrd,
    “An Enemy of the People”
    ☐ Amith Chandrashaker, “Prayer
    for the French Republic”
    Jiyoun Chang, “Stereophonic”
    Jane Cox, “Appropriate”
    ☐ Natasha Katz, “Grey House”
    ☐ Camille A. Brown,
    “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Shana Carroll and Jesse
    Robb, “Water for Elephants”
    ☐ Rick and Jeff Kuperman,
    “The Outsiders”
    ☐ Annie-B Parson,
    “Here Lies Love”
    Justin Peck, “Illinoise”
    Best Orchestrations
    ☐ Timo Andres, “Illinoise”
    ☐ Tom Kitt and Adam
    Blackstone, “Hell’s Kitchen”
    ☐ Will Butler and Justin
    Craig, “Stereophonic”
    ☐ Justin Levine, Matt
    Hinkley and Jamestown
    Revival, “The Outsiders”
    D Jonathan Tunick,
    “Merrily We Roll Along” More

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    George Clooney to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’

    A stage adaptation of the film is planned for next spring, with Clooney playing the journalist Edward R. Murrow.George Clooney is planning to make his Broadway debut next spring in a stage adaptation of his 2005 film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”Clooney will play Edward R. Murrow, the pioneering newscaster whose storied broadcast career in the mid-20th century made him a journalism icon. That role was played by David Strathairn in the film.“Good Night, and Good Luck” portrays the period when Murrow’s work brought him into conflict with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican of Wisconsin who became notorious for the excesses of his anti-Communist crusade.Clooney wrote the movie with Grant Heslov; the two are teaming up again to adapt it for Broadway. Clooney also directed the film, and performed in it as Fred W. Friendly, Murrow’s collaborator.Reviewing the film for The New York Times, the critic A.O. Scott called it “a passionate, thoughtful essay on power, truth-telling and responsibility.”The stage adaptation will be directed by David Cromer, who won a Tony for directing “The Band’s Visit.”The play’s producing team — Seaview, Sue Wagner, John Johnson, Jean Doumanian and Robert Fox — announced on Monday the plan to stage “Good Night, and Good Luck” next spring at a Shubert theater, but offered no other details.Clooney, 63, has won two Academy Awards, as an actor in “Syriana” and as a producer of “Argo.” More

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    Sarah Paulson Dares to Play the People You Love to Hate

    Sarah Paulson still doesn’t fully understand why fans call her “mother.”At first, when she started seeing the word used online to describe her, she was bewildered and a bit irritated. She was in her 40s and childless. Did these people really think she looked like their mother?Once she began to understand it as an age-neutral compliment — a term Gen Z likes to use for famous women they adore — she leaned into the meme, appearing on “Saturday Night Live” last year, alongside Pedro Pascal, in a sketch in which he was “father” and she “mother” to a group of enamored high schoolers.“How did this happen to us?” Paulson wondered about her and Pascal, a longtime friend. “We were two 18-year-old kids who used to go to Sheep Meadow and smoke pot and go see Peter Weir movies. How did we become the mother and father of children on the internet?”For Paulson, the answer is a 30-year career that has wound its way from television bit parts to meaty lead roles as fraught real-life people. It is animated by an eclectic cast of characters orchestrated by the television producer Ryan Murphy, including conjoined twins, a Craigslist psychic, a ghost with a past as a heroin addict, an evil nurse and two of the most ridiculed and obsessed-over women of the 1990s.Paulson has long dared to play characters that viewers are liable to dislike — or downright loathe — and the role that has led to her first Tony nomination is one of her most provocative yet.In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s family drama “Appropriate,” her character is often the one audience members are rooting against: a sharp-tongued elder sister who lashes out against mounting suspicions that her recently deceased father harbored racist convictions.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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    The Tony Nominee Starring in Alicia Keys’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ on Broadway

    Maleah Joi Moon almost gave up on theater. Now, in her first professional role, the “Hell’s Kitchen” star is a Tony nominee.Maleah Joi Moon has come a long way in a short time.Just a few years ago, she was a theater kid in suburban New Jersey, listening to her dad’s Alicia Keys records, starring in a high school production of “Rent,” waiting outside a Broadway stage door hoping to meet the cast of “Waitress.”Now, at 21, she’s a Tony nominee for her Broadway debut as the star of the new Alicia Keys musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” which opened last month. That means she is working alongside the people she had just been fangirling — getting vocal advice and the occasional breakfast with Keys; honing her acting instincts with the show’s director, Michael Greif, who directed “Rent” 28 years ago; and learning to manage an eight-show week from Shoshana Bean, the actress she stage-doored in “Waitress,” who has taken Moon under her wing while portraying her mother.Moon’s confident performance — smoky voice, headstrong attitude, gestural dance moves — has caught the attention of critics. “Sensational,” Elisabeth Vincentelli declared in The New York Times. For Vulture, Jackson McHenry called her both “a great discovery” and “a virtuoso.” And Adam Feldman of Time Out went for wordplay: “With apologies to astronomers: Moon is a star.”“It’s surreal and it’s ridiculous and crazy and insane and all the things,” Moon told me as we stood in Shubert Alley, just under a digital marquee featuring her atop a piano, not far from the stage door where she now signs autographs for her own fans. “But my inner child — the one that wanted to be Nala on Broadway — is like, this is aligned. It’s divine alignment. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t meant.”Moon is dancing a delicate dance in “Hell’s Kitchen,” sort of playing Alicia Keys and sort of not. The show is about a few formative months in the life of Ali, a 17-year-old girl chafing under her mother’s vigilance, hooking up with a street musician and discovering a gift for piano. It is a fictionalized remix of Keys’s own childhood chapters, but it is partly Moon too — she has been with the show through developmental workshops and an Off Broadway production, and her personality and physicality, as well as her very recent adolescence, inform those of her character.“Hell’s Kitchen,” a semi-autobiographical Alicia Keys musical, was nominated for 13 Tony Awards.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