Theater (Broadway)

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      5 Years After Covid Closed the Theaters, Audiences Are Returning

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      Broadway is almost back, and pop music tours and sports events are booming. But Hollywood, museums and other cultural sectors have yet to bounce back.It was five years ago today — March 12, 2020 — that the widening coronavirus pandemic forced Broadway to go dark, museums to shut their doors, concert halls and opera houses to go silent and stadiums and arenas to remain empty.At the time, they hoped to reopen in a month. It took many a year and a half.Since live performances resumed, the recovery has been uneven, but there are signs that audiences are finally coming back. Here’s a snapshot of where things stand:Broadway is 95 percent back.It’s been a slow road back for Broadway, but the industry is finally nearing its prepandemic levels. Attendance so far this season is at about 95 percent of what it was at the same point in the 2018-2019 season, its last full season before the pandemic, when it was setting records.“Oh, Mary!” has been a surprise hit this season, reminding the industry that shows can work without known I.P. or famous stars. “Wicked” is defying gravity thanks to the renewed interest brought by the film adaptation. For the first time since 2018, all 41 Broadway theaters have had shows in them this season. And there are more shows than usual regularly grossing more than $1 million a week.The crowds have returned to Broadway, and to the Times Square area. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut — and this is a big but — profitability is down. That’s because the costs of producing on Broadway keep rising, so even reasonably strong ticket sales are not enough.Beyond Times Square, the picture is decidedly mixed. Touring Broadway shows have been selling quite strongly. But nonprofit theaters, both Off Broadway and in cities across the country, are struggling. Having burned through the government assistance that came at the height of the pandemic, many regional theaters are now reporting budget deficits and are programming fewer shows and attracting smaller audiences than they did previously.— More

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      Jean Smart Will Star in a One-Woman Broadway Show

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      The new play, “Call Me Izzy,” will begin previews in May and open in June at Studio 54.Jean Smart, a veteran stage and screen actress whose oft-praised comedic chops reached new audiences via the Max series “Hacks,” plans to return to Broadway this spring and summer in a one-woman show.Smart will star in “Call Me Izzy,” a dark comedy about a rural Louisiana woman. The play, which has not been previously staged, is written by Jamie Wax, a CBS News contributor, and is directed by Sarna Lapine, who also directed the last Broadway revival of “Sunday in the Park With George.”Smart, 73, is best known for her prolific work on television; she has won six Emmy Awards, for “Frasier,” “Samantha Who?” and “Hacks,” and has been featured in shows including “Designing Women” and “Mare of Easttown.”She made her Broadway debut in 1981 in the play “Piaf.” She has returned just once since, in a 2000 revival of “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” and was nominated for a Tony Award for that performance.“Call Me Izzy” is scheduled to begin previews on May 24 and to open June 12 for a 12-week run at Studio 54. The play is being produced by Robert Ahrens and P3 Productions (Ben Holtzman, Sammy Lopez and Fiona Howe Rudin), and is being capitalized for up to $5.4 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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      ‘Operation Mincemeat,’ a Very British Hit, Lands on Broadway

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      Now in previews, the musical comedy about an outrageous World War II spy mission is working to adjust to the particular sensibilities of its New York audience.Last year, the hit West End musical “Operation Mincemeat” embarked on a mischievous publicity campaign. “Are we too British for Broadway?” it asked, inviting Americans on its email list and via social media to fill out an online questionnaire about whether, for instance, they had trouble understanding British accents. (“No,” 90.2 percent of the respondents said.)After making its way across the ocean armed with high expectations and an Olivier Award for best new musical, the show, a screwball comedy about an unlikely World War II spy operation, will open March 20 at the Golden Theater on Broadway. Its lengthy preview period is giving it ample time to adjust to the particular sensibilities of a New York audience, unaccented or otherwise.Some of what the cast and crew have found has been surprising, said the director, Robert Hastie, who was so eager for early on-the-ground feedback that he strode onstage before the curtain rose at the first preview and boldly (or maybe recklessly) gave out his email address to the packed house.“This show has always grown and developed from what the audience has been kind enough to give back,” he told the crowd. “If you have any thoughts when you come away from tonight, we’d be really, really grateful.”The real Operation Mincemeat was a sleight-of-hand spy mission in 1943, in which the British dressed a dead body as a Royal Marines officer, outfitted it with fake invasion plans designed to hide the Allies’ real intentions and then dumped it into the sea to be discovered by the Nazis. Its musical version has had a charmed trajectory in London, opening in 2019 at the tiny New Diorama Theater before settling in at the Fortune Theater in the West End, where it’s still playing.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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      Just Before It Was a Cult Film, ‘Rocky Horror Show’ Was a Broadway Flop

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      Fifty years have passed, but the actor Tim Curry isn’t sure he has ever forgiven the reception that “The Rocky Horror Show” received in its original Broadway production, which was also his Broadway debut.“I try not to think about it,” he said the other day by phone from Los Angeles. “There’s not much point in paddling through old failures.”Curry was back on Broadway the fall after “Rocky Horror,” in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties.” But, wanting not to be reminded, he has never returned to the Belasco Theater on West 44th Street, where the musical spoof that would soon become a cult-film phenomenon started previews on March 7, 1975, opened on March 10 and lasted just a month.On the heels of the show’s successes in London, where it began in 1973 in the tiny upstairs theater at the Royal Court, and then in Los Angeles, at the Roxy nightclub, it was the kind of Broadway fizzle that seems baffling in retrospect — not least because some of its cast overlapped with the movie’s.Arriving on Broadway after “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was shot but several months before it was released, the musical starred Curry in the role he had originated in London, as the sexually omnivorous, corset-clad, extraterrestrial mad scientist Frank-N-Furter. Richard O’Brien, who wrote the musical, played the disquieting butler Riff-Raff, and Meat Loaf doubled as the doomed delivery boy, Eddie, and the scientist Dr. Scott.Jim Sharman, who directed the film, restaged his Los Angeles production for Broadway. Lou Adler — the record executive, an owner of the Roxy and producer of the “Rocky Horror” film — produced.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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      ‘Oedipus’ and ‘Rocky Horror Show’ Are Returning to Broadway

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      The Roundabout Theater Company will also present Noël Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara.Roundabout Theater Company, the largest nonprofit on Broadway, will present three very different classics next season: a Greek tragedy, a drawing-room comedy and a monster musical.The English writer and director Robert Icke’s “Oedipus,” a new version of the seminal Sophocles drama about a king who inadvertently kills his father and marries his mother, will come to Broadway in the fall. The production, starring Mark Strong (“A View From the Bridge”) and Lesley Manville (“Phantom Thread”), had an enthusiastically reviewed previous run in London, and just received four Olivier Award nominations (for best revival as well as for the work by Icke, Strong and Manville).“Oedipus” is a commercial venture, with Sonia Friedman, Sue Wagner, John Johnson and Patrick Catullo as lead producers; Roundabout is presenting it this fall at Studio 54 and will offer it to subscribers as part of the nonprofit’s season.There were multiple versions of “Oedipus Rex,” as the show is traditionally called, on Broadway in the early 20th century, but then it largely disappeared — the last production, a weeklong run in 1984, was performed in modern Greek.After “Oedipus,” Roundabout will pivot to lighter fare: The musical “The Rocky Horror Show” in the spring of 2026 at Studio 54, and the play “Fallen Angels,” that same spring, at the Todd Haimes Theater. (The Haimes will close this fall for a renovation, which will include a restoration of the interior and an upgrade to the bathrooms, elevators and seats.)“The Rocky Horror Show” is a 1973 sci-fi spoof by Richard O’Brien; it first ran on Broadway in 1975 and was revived once before, in 2000. The new production will be directed by Sam Pinkleton (“Oh, Mary!”), who had been scheduled to direct a version of the musical in 2020 at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, but that production was scuttled by the pandemic.“Fallen Angels” is a 1925 comedy by Noël Coward about two married women with a shared ex-lover. This revival will be directed by Scott Ellis, the Roundabout’s interim artistic director, and will star Rose Byrne (“Bridesmaids”) and Kelli O’Hara (a Tony winner for “The King and I”).“Fallen Angels” has had two previous Broadway productions, in 1927 and 1956.Roundabout also has an Off Broadway theater, the Laura Pels, where next fall it plans to stage “Archduke,” a play by Rajiv Joseph (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”) about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Darko Tresnjak (a Tony winner for “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”) will direct, and Patrick Page (“Hadestown”) will star.Roundabout plans to follow “Archduke” next winter with an Off Broadway production of “Chinese Republicans,” a satirical workplace drama by Alex Lin, directed by Chay Yew. More

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      ‘Hamilton’ Cancels Kennedy Center Run Over Trump’s Takeover

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      “Hamilton,” the musical theater juggernaut about the birth of American democracy, is canceling plans to perform next year at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, citing President Trump’s moves to impose his ideological and cultural values on the long-cherished venue.The musical had been slated to be part of the Kennedy Center’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But after Mr. Trump ousted the Democratic members from the center’s once-bipartisan board, became its chairman and replaced its president, “Hamilton” decided not to come.“This latest action by Trump means it’s not the Kennedy Center as we knew it,” the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, said in a joint interview on Wednesday with its lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. “The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re just not going to be part of it.”Mr. Seller said the “Hamilton” team believed that Mr. Trump “took away our national arts center for all of us.”“It became untenable for us to participate in an organization that had become so deeply politicized,” he said. “The Kennedy Center is for all of us, and it pains me deeply that they took it over and changed that. They said it’s not for all of us. It’s just for Donald Trump and his crowd. So we made a decision we can’t do it.”Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s new president, called the cancellation “a publicity stunt that will backfire” in a post on social media. He accused Mr. Miranda of being “intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically” and said that it was clear that he and Mr. Seller “don’t want Republicans going to their shows.”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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      ‘Mamma Mia!’ Is Returning to Broadway This Summer

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      The musical’s original run was the ninth-longest in Broadway history; a six-month return engagement will start in August.“Mamma Mia!” is returning to Broadway this summer after a decade away.The big-hearted musical, which combined Abba songs and abs to become a huge hit onstage and then on film, is scheduled to start previews on Aug. 2 at the Winter Garden Theater — where it spent much of its original run. The opening date is set for Aug. 14, and the run is expected to last at least six months.“I hope it will be a bit of an end-of-summer treat for New York,” said Judy Craymer, the British producer who initially commissioned the musical and has transformed it into a global business.The musical’s first New York engagement, with 5,773 performances from 2001 to 2015, made it the ninth-longest-running show in Broadway history. Its 50 productions around the world, in 16 languages, have been seen by more than 70 million people and have grossed more than $7 billion, the show’s publicists said.The musical’s mother-daughter story is set on a fictional Greek island, where family and friends have gathered for a wedding. The daughter is determined to use the occasion to figure out which among three of her mother’s ex-boyfriends is her father, whose identity she has never known.The plot, for many fans, is largely a scaffolding for an extremely popular set of Abba tunes and a lot of upbeat dance numbers (performed by actors in exuberant, and sometimes skimpy, costumes) that prompted occasional dancing by patrons in the aisles.“It’s the idyllic Greek holiday,” Craymer said, “and everyone wants to be on that island, cellphone free, having a fun time.”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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      Sadie Sink Heads Back to School, in Broadway’s ‘John Proctor Is the Villain’

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      For much of her high school career, Sadie Sink took her lessons inside an old lifeguard shack that had been converted into a schoolhouse for the child actors on the set of “Stranger Things.” When the cast wasn’t battling Demogorgons in a parallel dimension, “everyone was studying different things at the same time,” Sink told me recently of her experience in the shack. “It was chaos.”With that hit Netflix series nearing its end, and as Sink plotted her next move, she read the script for Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain,” a play about teenagers reading “The Crucible,” together, in a more typical school setting — though one that hides troubles of its own.On a February afternoon, Sink sat at a desk in a rehearsal space in Manhattan’s Flatiron district, in a simulated classroom that had a timeless quality. There were pencil grooves atop the melamine desks, tennis balls at the bottom of the chair legs. On a blackboard in the back, cryptic remnants of a lesson: “SEX IS POWER” was scrawled in chalk in uppercase letters, and below that, in lowercase, the words “changes nothing.”Sadie Sink made her Broadway debut at the age of 10 in “Annie,” and is returning this spring in the play “John Proctor Is the Villain.”Hannah Edelman for The New York TimesJust as “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s 1953 classic, used the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthyism, “John Proctor Is the Villain” uses “The Crucible” to interrogate the complexity of growing up in the #MeToo era. In an English class in Appalachia in 2018, the students are studying Miller’s play just as that movement against sexual violence tears through their one-stoplight town, breaches the doors of their school and collides with their reading of the play itself.The result is a prismatic revelation: “John Proctor Is the Villain” is, at turns, a literary critique, a tender bildungsroman, a loopy comedy, a study of rural America and a Taylor Swift appreciation post. This month, it becomes a Broadway show, directed by the Tony Award-winning Danya Taymor.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