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      My Friend’s Show Was Kind of Terrible. What Do I Say When I See Them?

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      You can always consider telling the truth, but it may not be advisable in this case.Do you have a question for our culture writers and editors? Ask us here.Q: What do you say to a friend at the stage door when their show was kind of terrible? Is there a “nonpliment” you’d recommend?There are three basic options here:Tell the truth, as a form of tough love.Find something to say that is appreciative but also incomplete.Lie.Each approach has its pros and cons.Truth is not always the answer.For some people, being a straight shooter is a point of pride. They view directness as a positive character trait and believe it makes them trustworthy; they may think they’re upholding high standards and prioritizing artistic integrity. But none of the artists I spoke with about this question believe this is the right approach, particularly at the stage door.There are certainly contexts in which expressing your concerns might be appropriate — particularly when you have been asked for such input, and when you have some expertise to offer. So if you are invited to a workshop for a project in development, or you are offered an early draft of a script, or you are asked to watch a rehearsal, and your friend is clear about wanting honest responses that might help them, go for it.“If you are attending an early preview of a play and your friend is genuinely requesting feedback, ground it in your viewing experience, interspersing bits of praise with constructive thoughts about how you encountered specific moments, performances or production elements,” said Lauren Halvorsen, a dramaturg who writes Nothing for the Group, a theater newsletter. “It’s also helpful to check in with your friend on their experience: ‘How are you feeling? What are you learning from these audiences? What are you still working out about the piece?’ and craft your response around their questions and concerns.”But once the show is on its feet, and you are greeting that friend backstage or at the stage door or at an after-party — fessing up that you disliked it is not the way to go.How about finessing the situation?Lots of people opt for an artful dodge. I’ve done that myself, in my case not because of friendship, but because of policy — The Times’s ethics rules say that reporters “may not comment, even informally, on works in progress before those works are reviewed,” so I often fall back on something generic like “congratulations” or “I’m so glad I was here.”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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      Scott Rudin, Producer Exiled for Bad Behavior, Plans Return to Broadway

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      Rudin stepped away from show business four years ago amid reports that he had bullied assistants. He says he has “a lot more self-control” now.Scott Rudin, the powerful producer who was exiled from Broadway and Hollywood four years ago after allegations of bullying led to widespread denunciations and even protesters in the streets, has been quietly preparing to return to show business.After what he called “a decent amount of therapy,” apologies to many people and a period of reading and reflection holed up on Long Island, Rudin said that he had decided he wanted to make theater again. He is at peace, he said, with the reality that not everyone is likely to welcome him back.He called his previous behavior, particularly toward subordinates, “bone-headed” and “narcissistic.” He acknowledged that he had long yelled at his assistants (“Yes, of course”) and that he had on occasion thrown things at people (“Very, very rarely”).“I was just too rough on people,” he said.But Rudin — who produced films including “No Country for Old Men” and “The Social Network” and Broadway shows including “The Book of Mormon” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” — said he was confident that from now on he would be able to maintain his exacting standards without terrorizing others.“I have a lot more self-control than I had four years ago,” he said. “I learned I don’t matter that much, and I think that’s very healthy.” Also, he added, “I don’t want to let anybody down. Not just myself. My husband, my family and collaborators.”Rudin, 66, agreed to discuss his ambitious plans in response to requests to talk about indications that he was planning to return to producing. The result was his first detailed interview about his downfall, his time away from Broadway and his hopes to mount a comeback. His return is likely to be controversial, given that reports of the ways in which he berated and mistreated assistants helped lead to a reconsideration of workplace culture in theater.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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      Review: ‘Picture of Dorian Gray,’ Starring Sarah Snook and 3 Million Pixels

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      The “Succession” actress plays all 26 roles in this Oscar Wilde classic reimagined as a video spectacle. If only there were less screen time and more IRL contact.An LED screen more than 16 feet tall. Four smaller ones drifting like clouds. Another that has a kind of walk-on cameo. Five camera operators with their electronic burdens. Nine people dashing every which way with wardrobe, wigs and whatnot. Three million pixels, in case you’re counting. Sixteen million colors. Two cellphones, at least on a recent glitchy night when the first malfunctioned. And one Sarah Snook.Or rather a multitude of Snooks.These are among the many wonders you’ll find onstage at the Music Box Theater, where a technologically spectacular adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” with Snook playing 26 roles, opened on Thursday.What you won’t find is “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”The 1890 magazine story by Oscar Wilde, which he novelized in 1891, has proved irresistible to adapters, thanks to its nifty plot device: a portrait that ages instead of the sitter. The more the gorgeous Dorian Gray falls under the decadent influence of Lord Henry Wotton, the uglier the painting by Basil Hallward becomes.To get to that plot, though, adapters have to adapt out a lot because what Wilde wrote is less the psychological thriller they imagine than a perfumed treatise on aesthetic philosophy. Another thing usually sacrificed is the homosexual undercurrent, which, even after expurgation by the story’s first editors, was deep enough to drown in. Convicted of “gross indecency” in 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, with hard labor, and died, just 46, in 1900. “Dorian Gray” was part of the evidence.Like the 1945 M-G-M movie, the current adaptation, written and directed by Kip Williams, downplays the treatise aspects. The queerness, though, is frank if complicated, in part because Snook, an Emmy-winning star of “Succession,” is still a woman while playing a man. Or not even a man. Her cherubic, shiny-cheeked Dorian is less the godlike 20-year-old of the novel than a barely pubescent boy.Snook provides specificity for each character: Her Wotton has a wonderful slouchy physicality, her Hallward nervous and twitchy, her Dorian (top of image) beamish.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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      How ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Brings a Beloved Song to Life on Broadway

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      One night in 1984, Compay Segundo, the Cuban singer and guitarist, heard in his dreams what would become his signature song.“I woke up hearing those four sensitive notes,” Segundo recalled later on. “I gave them a lyric inspired by a children’s tale from my childhood, ‘Juanica y Chan Chan.’”A hypnotic account of peasant life in Cuba, “Chan Chan” has a peculiar power, with four circular, mesmerizing opening chords that make it instantly recognizable. It gained a regional following when it was cut by the guitarist and singer Eliades Ochoa. But a recording of the song, in 1996, by a group of celebrated Cuban musicians who had been assembled for an album to be called “Buena Vista Social Club,” would become a phenomenon.Now more than 25 years after its release, the best-selling world music album of all time has made it to Broadway in a new musical also titled “Buena Vista Social Club.” “Chan Chan” is among eight of the album’s 10 songs featured in the show and, perhaps not surprising for such a dramatic and mysterious track, it plays a crucial role in a pivotal moment in the story.During the “Chan Chan” number, the young singer Omara (Isa Antonetti) is deciding whether to leave Cuba with her sister or remain in Havana and perform the traditional music that has a hold on her heart.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs the album of mostly older Cuban standards became a global sensation upon its release in 1997, Segundo’s song — about sifting sand by the sea and clearing a straw path along a journey to Cuban towns — became a standout all its own. “Chan Chan” was never released as a single, but the opening track has been streamed more than 250 million times on Spotify, almost three times more than anything else on the album. (That number is roughly the same as Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart” and Hanson’s “MMMBop,” both No. 1 hits in 1997.) More

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      How ‘Operation Mincemeat’ Revealed a Family’s World War II Secrets

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      Descendants of characters in “Operation Mincemeat,” a hit British musical now in New York, have gotten more out of seeing it than a few catchy melodies.When William Leggatt was at work as a renewal energy developer a couple of summers ago, he received a bizarre email from a superfan of “Operation Mincemeat,” a British musical about a wacky World War II intelligence plot.As the show outlines, the operation involved British spies dressing a corpse as a military officer, stuffing a briefcase with fake letters implying an imminent invasion of Sardinia, and then dumping the corpse and documents at sea to be discovered by the Nazis.So the email contained a simple question: Was William a distant relative of Hester Leggatt, a prim secretary who appears in the musical and played a key role in the plot?The show’s superfans, who meet in an online forum and are known as Mincefluencers, believed that Hester was involved in writing fake love letters that officials planted on the body to help make the plot believable — and that she deserved to be publicly honored. But William Leggatt had no idea what the email was talking about.The cast members, from left, Claire-Marie Hall, Zoë Roberts, David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson and Jak Malone, during the curtain call last week at the Golden Theater in Manhattan.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIt was only when he started talking to family members who were closer to the great-aunt and, later, reading a document sent by the Mincefluencers, that he realized they were right. In the end, he recalled in a recent interview, the musical “opened a whole side to my family I’d never known.”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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      George Clooney’s ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ Sets Broadway Box Office Record

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      “Good Night, and Good Luck” grossed $3.3 million last week, breaking a record that was set earlier this month by Denzel Washington’s “Othello.”Broadway box office records are falling like dominoes this season as a handful of starry plays entice fans to pay sky-high ticket prices to see their favorite movie stars up close and emoting.“Good Night, and Good Luck,” a new play starring George Clooney, grossed $3.3 million last week, the most money a nonmusical play has ever made during a single week on Broadway, according to data released Tuesday by the Broadway League. And it did so with just a seven-performance week: It is still in previews, and not yet doing Broadway’s typical eight.It shattered the previous record, which was set just two weeks earlier by a new production of “Othello” starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, which grossed $2.8 million in the week that ended March 9. (Before that, the record had been held by “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which grossed $2.7 million during a holiday week in late 2023.)“Othello” still has higher ticket prices — its top seats were being sold on its website for $921, compared to $799 for “Good Night, and Good Luck” — but “Good Night, and Good Luck” is playing in a larger theater, so it is taking in more money overall.The average ticket price for “Othello” was $303.15 last week — down from previous weeks because of free seats for journalists attending press performances and guests attending opening night. The average price for “Good Night, and Good Luck” was $302.07. But “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which is adapted from the 2005 movie about the broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, is playing in the 1,545-seat Winter Garden Theater, while “Othello” is in the 1,043-seat Ethel Barrymore.Broadway’s box office has traditionally been dominated by musicals, which tend to be more popular, to play longer, and to run in larger theaters than plays. The record for the most money made by a Broadway musical was set late last year, when “Wicked” grossed $5 million during a Christmas week when there were nine performances.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 Price of a Show

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      Tickets for the hottest Broadway plays are now out of reach for many. There’s a starry production of “Othello” opening on Broadway tonight. And if you’re among the many people who really, really want to see Denzel Washington as a jealous general, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as a scheming Iago, it’s going to cost you: Most of the center orchestra seats, as well as a few rows in the mezzanine, are being sold for $921 apiece.The high prices for this Shakespeare classic are setting records. During its second week of previews, “Othello” grossed more at the box office than any other nonmusical play had ever grossed on Broadway.Tickets for the hottest Broadway shows are now out of reach for many. And the same is true for other sought-after live events, such as pop concerts (which now cost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars per ticket) and big sports games. (A few weeks before the Super Bowl, the cheapest available tickets were reselling for more than the average monthly mortgage payment.)In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how Broadway seats became so eye-poppingly pricey.Trying to break evenProducing Broadway shows has become more expensive since the pandemic, and a vast majority of them lose money. So producers have been staging more short runs of plays with stars in lead roles — the stars attract ticket buyers, and the short runs allow those stars to more quickly return to filmmaking, which pays better than Broadway. Limited runs also seem to incentivize potential ticket buyers, because people find the now-or-never aspect motivating.There is, of course, a tension between profitability and accessibility. These prices are preventing some potential theatergoers from seeing high-profile productions of important work.Investors who spend money to bring shows to Broadway embrace high ticket prices because they want at least a shot at recouping their expenses. But many theater lovers, as they reminded me in a rollicking comments thread on the story I wrote about this subject last week, find these prices upsetting, because they want to see the shows they want to see at price points they consider reasonable.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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      Phylicia Rashad Knows Her Purpose

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      The first time Phylicia Rashad realized what she wanted to do with her life, she was making her way to the exit of a bustling auditorium. This was November 1959, in Houston, after a student music festival at the 9,000-seat Sam Houston Coliseum.Rashad, who was then Phylicia Allen, had been the festival’s mistress of ceremonies. Only 11 years old, she had won the role in a contest, beating out students from other Black elementary schools in her district, which remained defiantly segregated five years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Rashad spent six weeks preparing for the concert — practicing introductions for the performers and memorizing a libretto for an orchestra. On the night of the show, she wore a brand-new yellow pinafore dress over a white shirt, white shoes, white socks with a ruffled trim and a flower tiara on top of freshly done curls.“When I walked out to the microphone to speak, I was suddenly in the spotlight for the first time,” she recalled in a recent interview. “The light was so bright, I couldn’t see anybody in the audience. So, every time I went up, I just talked to the light.”As she was leaving the venue, Rashad overheard the mothers of some students talking among themselves.“There she is,” she recalled hearing one say, gesturing toward her. “There’s that little girl who spoke so beautifully. Isn’t she beautiful?”Rashad had never thought of herself as beautiful. Among her family, she was sometimes teased because her rich brown skin was darker than that of her older brother, Tex, and younger sister, Debbie.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