Theater (Broadway)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares62 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Dead Outlaw’ Musical to Close After Disappointing Run on Broadway

      by

      The show was shut out at the Tonys after being nominated for seven awards, including best musical.“Dead Outlaw,” a hard-driving musical about a bandit whose mummified body became a curiosity, announced Friday evening that it would close June 29 after a disappointingly brief run on Broadway.The show announced the closing just 12 days after the Tony Awards. It was nominated for seven prizes, including best musical, but won none. It is the third new musical to post a closing notice since the awards ceremony, following “Smash” and “Real Women Have Curves.”The show began previews April 12 and opened April 27 at the Longacre Theater in Manhattan. The show’s running costs are modest, but so are its box office revenues; it grossed $449,666 during the week that ended June 15. At the time of its closing, it will have played 14 preview and 73 regular performances.The musical is based on the true story of Elmer McCurdy, a turn-of-the-century figure who robbed trains and banks — often ineptly — and died in a shootout with law enforcement. His unclaimed body was preserved and then exhibited for years before being stashed in a California amusement park, where it was rediscovered in the 1970s.The show was first staged Off Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theater, which is operated by Audible; it is the first Audible show to transfer to Broadway. The reviews were quite strong, both downtown and uptown; in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called it “the feel-good musical of the season, if death and deadpan feel good to you.”The musical was capitalized for up to $10 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.“Dead Outlaw” features a score by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna and a book by Itamar Moses; it is directed by David Cromer. The lead producers are Lia Vollack and Sonia Friedman. In a statement they said, “Despite glowing reviews and a loyal following, the commercial momentum just wasn’t fast enough in a crowded season. As the show reminds us, sometimes the most incredible lives are cut short.” More

    • 100 Shares111 Views

      in Theater

      Billy Porter to Star in ‘Cabaret’ on Broadway

      by

      The show’s producers said they plan to end the New York run at the end of the actor’s run, on Oct. 19.Billy Porter, who won a Tony Award for the musical “Kinky Boots” and starred in the television series “Pose,” will return to Broadway as the Emcee in the revival of “Cabaret.”And then, that revival is planning to close.Earlier this year, Porter portrayed the Emcee in the London production of “Cabaret,” opposite Marisha Wallace as Sally Bowles. On Wednesday, the revival’s producers announced that Porter and Wallace would reprise their performances in New York, starting July 22 and running until Oct. 19.The show’s producers said they plan to end the New York run at that point, though it will continue in London. The New York production opened in the spring of 2024, starring Eddie Redmayne; it was nominated for nine Tony Awards, and won one, for its scenic design. (The August Wilson Theater was converted into a club-like setting with preshow performances in the lobby spaces and rings of seats, some with small cafe tables, around the stage.)The show is a hit in London, and it swept the Olivier Awards there. But the initial reception was much cooler in New York. Reviews were mixed — in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called the director Rebecca Frecknall’s staging “misguided.” Although it sold well with Redmayne in the lead role, it has struggled since — its weekly grosses peaked at $2 million in May 2024, but last week they were $763,000.Set in Berlin in 1929 and 1930, it depicts a group of people linked by a nightclub whose livelihoods and lives are threatened by the rise of Naziism. The show has had a succession of performers in the lead roles, starting with Redmayne and Gayle Rankin, followed by Adam Lambert and Auli’i Cravalho; and now Orville Peck and Eva Noblezada.The show is expensive to stage — it cost up to $26 million to capitalize, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission — and has been expensive to run as well. It has not recouped its capitalization costs.With music by John Kander, a book by Joe Masteroff, and lyrics by Fred Ebb, the show is a classic, first staged on Broadway in 1966 and revived three times previously. It was adapted into a Hollywood film in 1972; both the film and the first two Broadway productions starred Joel Grey as the Emcee. More

    • 138 Shares87 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway’s ‘Real Women Have Curves’ to Close Because of Soft Sales

      by

      The immigration-themed musical is the second show to announce a plan to close in the aftermath of this year’s Tony Awards.“Real Women Have Curves,” an immigration-themed musical about a young woman whose academic aspirations conflict with her mother’s desire for her to stay close to home and to help out at the family’s small business, announced on Tuesday that it would close on June 29 after struggling to find an audience on Broadway.Based on Josefina López’s 1990 play and a 2002 film, the musical began previews April 1 and opened April 27 at the James Earl Jones Theater. At the time of its closing, it will have played 31 previews and 73 regular performances.The musical is set in 1987 in an East Los Angeles dressmaking shop owned and operated by Latina women, some of whom are undocumented immigrants; it has echoes of events currently unfolding in Los Angeles, where immigration raids have prompted protests.“Real Women Have Curves” was nominated for two Tony Awards, for best original score (by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez) and for best featured performance by an actress (Justina Machado), but won neither. It is the second show to post a closing notice after going home empty-handed from the June 8 awards ceremony, following “Smash.”Reviews for “Real Women Have Curves” were mostly positive. In The New York Times, the critic Laura Collins-Hughes called it “a bouncy, crowd-pleasing comedy about female empowerment, self-acceptance and chasing one’s ambitions.” She added, “It is also a tale of immigrant life in this country, and the dread woven into the fabric of daily existence for undocumented people and those closest to them.”“Real Women Have Curves” has had difficulty selling tickets throughout its run. It has been grossing about $400,000 most weeks, which is well below today’s running costs for a large-scale Broadway musical. The producers, in a last-ditch effort to boost ticket sales, picked up the costs for the cast to perform a song on the Tony Awards broadcast (not a given, since the show was not nominated for best musical), but that did not save the show.The musical was capitalized for up to $16.5 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.“Real Women Have Curves” features a book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin; it is directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. Produced by Barry and Fran Weissler and Jack Noseworthy, the show had an initial production that opened in 2023 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. More

    • 150 Shares153 Views

      in Theater

      Harris Yulin, Actor Who Perpetually Played the Bad Guy, Dies at 87

      by

      As an award-winning actor and director, he appeared in scores of stage plays, movies and TV shows over six decades, most often as unsavory characters.Harris Yulin, a chameleonic character actor who for more than six decades portrayed guys whom critics described as unsympathetic, soulful, menacing, corrupt and glowering, both onstage and onscreen, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 87.His wife, Kristen Lowman, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was cardiac arrest.Inspired to pursue an acting career when he first took center stage at his bar mitzvah, Mr. Yulin never became a marquee name. But to many audiences he was instantly recognizable, even as a man of a hundred faces. He played at least as many parts, including J. Edgar Hoover, Hamlet and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Other roles ranged from crooked cops and politicians to a lecherous TV anchorman.“I’m not always the bad guy,” he told The New York Times in 2000. “It just seems to be what I’m known for.”Mr. Yulin, left, earned an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of a mobster in a 1996 episode of the sitcom “Frasier,” with David Hyde Pierce, center, and Kelsey Grammer. Gale M. Adler/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesHe wasn’t just any bad guy. One reviewer characterized him as “an eloquent growler.” Another wrote that “his whiskeyed voice sounds just like that of John Huston.”Honors followed. Mr. Yulin was nominated in 1996 for a prime time Emmy Award for playing a crime boss in the TV comedy series “Frasier.” For his work in theater, he won the Lucille Lortel Award from the League of Off Broadway Theaters for his direction of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” in 2006. In the late 1990s he won Drama Desk nominations for acting on Broadway in “The Diary of Anne Frank” and Arthur Miller’s “The Price.”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

    • 125 Shares87 Views

      in Theater

      Review: Jean Smart, Gritty and Poetic in ‘Call Me Izzy’

      by

      The “Hacks” star returns to Broadway after 25 years in a triumph for her, if not for the old-fashioned, flowery play about spouse abuse.Two things can happen when a big star appears in a small play. She can crush it, or she can crush it.The first is almost literal: She leaves the story in smithereens beneath her glamorous feet. The second is colloquial: She’s a triumph, lifting the story to her level.Returning to Broadway after 25 years in “Call Me Izzy,” which opened Thursday at Studio 54, Jean Smart crushes it in the good way.Naturally, Smart plays the title character, a poor Louisiana housewife who writes poems on the sly. In the manner of such vehicles, she also plays everyone else, including Ferd (her abusive husband), Rosalie (a nosy neighbor), Professor Heckerling (a community college instructor) and the Levitsbergs (a couple who have endowed a poetry fellowship).You could probably write the play from that information alone, but I’m not sure you’d achieve the level of old-fashioned floweriness and deep-dish pathos that the actual author, Jamie Wax, has achieved.For this is quite self-consciously a weepie, one that with its allusions to Melville’s lyrical prose (“Moby-Dick” begins with the phrase “Call me Ishmael”) aspires to poetry itself. The play’s first words are an incantation: six synonyms for “blue” as Izzy drops toilet cleaner tablets in the tank. (“Swirlin’ cerulean” is one.) Shakespeare comes next, after a visit to a local library she didn’t know existed. Ears opened, she is soon devising sonnets of her own.This she does in secret, lest Ferd, who sees her hobby as a betrayal, should discover the evidence and beat her up. (He has been doing that with some regularity since their infant son died years earlier.) In a detail that’s a few orders of magnitude too cute, Izzy’s sanctum is the bathroom, where she scratches out her lines in eyebrow pencil, on reams of toilet paper.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

    • 100 Shares137 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Musical ‘Smash’ to Close After Tonys Disappointment

      by

      The musical, which follows a group of theater artists putting on a show about Marilyn Monroe, opened in April to mixed reviews. It has struggled at the box office.“Smash,” a stage musical inspired by the NBC television series about a group of theater artists trying to make a show focusing on Marilyn Monroe, announced on Tuesday that it would close on June 22 after failing to find sufficient audience to defray its running costs on Broadway.The show announced the closing just two days after the Tony Awards. It had not been nominated for best musical, and its request to perform on the awards show was rebuffed; it was nominated for best choreography (by Joshua Bergasse) and best featured actor (Brooks Ashmanskas) but won neither.The musical began previews on March 11 and opened on April 10 at the Imperial Theater. At the time of its closing, it will have played 32 previews and 84 regular performances.Set in the present day, the musical depicts a development process that is thrown into chaos when the actress portraying Monroe (played by Robyn Hurder) comes under the influence of a coach (Kristine Nielsen) whose devotion to method acting causes the actress to behave impossibly in rehearsals. The making-of-a-show concept and the rehearsal room characters are similar to, but not the same as, those in the television series, which was created by Theresa Rebeck and aired for two seasons, in 2012 and 2013, before being canceled.Reviews were all over the map. In The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green gave it a rave, calling it “the great musical comedy no one saw coming.” But there was no critical consensus, and box office grosses have fallen since the opening — weekly grosses peaked at $1 million during the week that ended April 20, and were down to $656,000 during the week that ended June 8.The musical was capitalized for $20 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.“Smash” features a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and a book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice; it is directed by Susan Stroman. The show’s producing team is led by Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron and Steven Spielberg, all of whom played key roles in developing the television series. More

    • 175 Shares156 Views

      in Theater

      How ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Overcame a Shaky Start and Won Big at the Tonys

      by

      Broadway’s best musical winner had to delay its opening last fall and was selling poorly. But strong word-of-mouth and reviews helped this quirky show triumph.“Maybe Happy Ending” had a very unhappy beginning.The show’s triumph at Sunday night’s Tony Awards, where it won six honors, including best new musical, capped a remarkable turnaround for a small production with a baffling title and a hard-to-sell premise that was seen by industry insiders as dead on arrival when it began previews last fall.But in the wee hours of Monday morning, as the quirky show’s performers and producers partied with their creative team and investors at the Bryant Park Grill, the celebrants finally allowed themselves to acknowledge that their against-all-odds show is breaking though.Shen and Criss play robots in a story about isolation, memory and love that received overwhelmingly positive reviews.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“We didn’t know if this show would even open,” said its star, Darren Criss, who won his first Tony for playing Oliver, an outdated helperbot who strikes up a life-changing (well, shelf-life-changing) relationship with a robot across the hall. Criss, an Emmy winner (for “American Crime Story”) and “Glee” alumnus, is also a member of the show’s producing team.“We didn’t have the luxury to dream about a scenario like this,” he said. “This was definitely the little show that could.”How bad did things get? Last summer, the show’s lead producers, Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold, postponed the first performance by a month, citing supply chain issues, which the producers insist were real (there was a delay in the availability of digital video tiles from China), but which many thought was a cover story to hide financial problems.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

    • 125 Shares140 Views

      in Theater

      Nicole Scherzinger and Other Tony Winners Party After the Awards

      by

      On Sunday night, after all the Tonys had been handed out, the comedian Alex Edelman took the stage during the official after-party at the Museum of Modern Art.“One day more,” he sang, waving his arms, trying to recruit others to join him behind the microphone in a rousing one-man rendition of a song from the musical “Les Misérables.”“Another day, another destiny … ”Mr. Edelman, who received a special Tony Award last year for his one-man show “Just for Us,” slowly gathered his army of fellow performers: Betsy Wolfe, Jessica Vosk and Casey Likes. Soon, more than half a dozen stars were belting not just their own parts, but every part.A cabaret moment is a familiar scene for any theater party, even on a night celebrating an unusual Broadway season.It has been a banner year on the district’s 41 stages, thanks in large part to a flurry of shows with screen stars on the marquee: “Good Night, and Good Luck” (George Clooney), “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (Sarah Snook, who won a Tony Award for playing 26 different characters), “Othello” (Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal) and “Glengarry Glen Ross” (Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and Kieran Culkin), among others.Many actors were making their Broadway debut.“I’m so lucky to get to do it,” Sadie Sink, best known for her role as the tomboy Max in Netflix’s science fiction drama series “Stranger Things,” said at the MoMA party, celebrating her first nomination.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