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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

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    Robert Downey Jr. to Make Broadway Debut in Ayad Akhtar Play

    The Oscar-winning actor will star as an A.I.-curious author in “McNeal,” starting performances in September at Lincoln Center Theater.Robert Downey Jr., who earlier this year won an Academy Award, will make his Broadway debut this fall in “McNeal,” a new drama by the Pulitzer-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar.The play is about a gifted novelist with a difficult family life and a potentially problematic interest in artificial intelligence. Downey will play the writer.The production is being staged by Lincoln Center Theater, one of four nonprofits with Broadway houses, at its Vivian Beaumont Theater. Previews are to begin Sept. 5, and the opening is scheduled for Sept. 30.“McNeal” will be directed by Bartlett Sher, a resident director at Lincoln Center Theater and a Tony winner for “South Pacific.”Downey, 59, has been a prolific and enormously successful film actor, overcoming significant challenges (he had a long battle with substance abuse and served time in prison on drug charges). He has built a career that has been lucrative (he starred as Iron Man in multiple Marvel movies) and acclaimed (he won the Oscar for best supporting actor for a widely praised performance as Lewis Strauss, a government official, in “Oppenheimer”).His stage experience is limited — his one Off Broadway credit, “American Passion,” opened and closed on the same date in 1983 — and he said in a statement, “It’s been 40 years since I was last on ‘the boards,’ but hopefully I’ll knock the dust off quick.”Akhtar is a playwright and a novelist with an appetite for complex and thorny subjects whose previous plays have explored finance and Islam. He has had a long relationship with Lincoln Center Theater, which first produced his Pulitzer-winning play, “Disgraced,” on its Off Off Broadway stage, and also presented his plays “The Who & The What” Off Off Broadway and “Junk” on Broadway.Akhtar is also working on a musical: He is one of the book writers for a stage adaptation of the film “La La Land” that is now in development. More

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    ‘Lempicka’ to End Broadway Run a Month After Opening

    The first show to fall in the wake of the Tony nominations on Tuesday, this musical about an art world individualist was years in the making.“Lempicka,” a new musical about an artistically and sexually adventurous painter, announced Thursday evening that it would close on May 19, just a month after opening.This is the first show to fall after this year’s Tony nominations were announced on Tuesday. “Lempicka” scored three nods — for the actresses Eden Espinosa and Amber Iman, as well as for scenic design — but was shut out of the best musical category. It really needed a boost, because its grosses have been anemic — last week it grossed $288,102, which is unsustainably low for a Broadway musical.The musical, which has been in development for years, had productions at the Williamstown Theater Festival and the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego before arriving on Broadway during a crush of openings this spring; it began previews March 19 and opened April 14.The show, which explores the life of the 20th-century painter Tamara de Lempicka, was written by Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould and directed by Rachel Chavkin. Reviews were mixed to negative.The show, produced by Seaview and Jenny Niederhoffer, was capitalized for up to $19.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money will be lost. In a statement, the producers said, “We are so proud of our production and the family of artists and artisans who’ve shaped it. Few knew better than Tamara de Lempicka that art isn’t easy but always worth the effort.”Broadway is packed with shows right now — there are 35 running, 12 of which opened in the nine days before the April 25 deadline to qualify for the Tony Awards. They are facing significant challenges, because production costs have risen and attendance has fallen since the pandemic. Many industry leaders believe that most of the new musicals will not succeed financially. More