Theater (Broadway)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Casey Likes of ‘Back to the Future,’ Is on a Roll

      by

      “I either suck or I’m awesome,” Casey Likes said as he entered Frames, a snazzy bowling alley tucked into a corner of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. “There is no in-between.”It was shortly after 11 p.m. on a recent Thursday, and Likes, 21, the toothy, wholesome star of the Broadway musical adaptation of “Back to the Future,” was there to bowl as part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.With the alley closed to the public, he strode into the room like the boy-mayor of the place, resplendent in an ultramarine bowling shirt. On his first lap, he greeted friends from “MJ” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” then paused at the bar to order a drink and some fries. He maintains a strict anti-inflammatory diet during the week, but on bowling nights he lets that regime slide. Fries collected, he turned to join some other friends. Clowning, he accidentally streaked a colleague’s hair with ketchup, then helped to clean it. This clumsiness is not new to him. At the opening night party for his Broadway debut, “Almost Famous,” he spilled soda on Joni Mitchell.Thursday night strikes: Likes is part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.George Etheredge for The New York TimesNot many young men can claim that honor. And only a handful have led two Broadway musicals before their 22nd birthday. But Likes has. A mix of the extraordinary and perfectly ordinary, he is a boy-next-door type, as sincere as sunlight, as unthreatening as oatmeal, who can still command a Broadway stage.“He found his way there because of pure joy,” Cameron Crowe, who worked with him on “Almost Famous,” said. “And that joy is infectious.”Likes grew up in Chandler, Ariz., a medium-size city southeast of Phoenix. His mother, a former Broadway actress, managed a theater there, and Likes has been onstage since he was 3, playing Tiny Tim to his mother’s Mrs. Cratchit. He also appeared in several local commercials. Sometimes people ask him when he knew he wanted to be an actor. The better question: When didn’t he?He continued acting all through his childhood. He couldn’t help it. When his elementary school told him that he couldn’t play another lead because other students should have a chance, he headed up the tech crew. In the summer after his junior year of high school, having already starred as Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables” and Jack in a youth theater production of “Newsies,” he was invited to participate in the Jimmy Awards, a competition for high school musical theater students held in New York City. He didn’t win, but his solo (he performed “Santa Fe” from “Newsies”) caught the attention of a casting director of the Broadway-bound musical “Almost Famous,” who brought him in for an audition. Likes, then 17, attended exactly one day of his senior year, then flew out to join a workshop, completing high school online.Roger Bart, left, as Doc Brown, and Likes as Marty McFly in “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which is onstage now at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSolea Pfeiffer as Penny Lane and Likes as William Miller in “Almost Famous,” a stage adaptation of the film that had a short run last fall at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the musical’s brief run at the Old Globe in San Diego and a pandemic pause, it opened on Broadway last year with Likes as William, a teenage journalist trailing a volatile roots rock band. He was the baby of the show, by several years, which made his experience not so different from William’s — awestruck, out of his element, sometimes lonely.Though the reviews for the show were generally unenthusiastic (“You can say bad,” Likes said), critics described Likes as appealing, endearing, and as his name demands, likable. The actor felt pressure, wholly self-imposed, to live up to those notices. Toward the end of the run, he began to experience what he describes as unrelated health problems.“I was worried,” he said. “I was like, ‘Are people going to be disappointed in me?’”When “Almost Famous” closed, he had planned to take some time off to recover. Instead he was quickly offered “Back to the Future,” another musical based on a popular film. Another musical that kept him constantly onstage. He didn’t hesitate. “If you asked me at any point in my life, ‘Do you want to play Marty McFly on Broadway?’ The answer is obviously yes,” he said. “Like, duh.”“I’ve been waiting for this community,” Likes said. “I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesJohn Rando, who directed the “Back to the Future” musical, hired Likes for his youth, his amiability, his soulful rock tenor. Once previews began, he was also impressed with the confidence that Likes brought to the role and his effortless engagement with viewers.“Part of his charm is that he’s fearless with an audience,” Rando said.Likes knows that he has to get the audience on his side, smile by smile, note by note. And he feels that he has to pay homage to the actors who created the roles he plays (Patrick Fugit in the “Almost Famous” movie, Michael J. Fox in the “Back to the Future” franchise), while making the parts his own.“That might be my little hidden superpower,” he said. “To be able to take the things that made them iconic, distill them and put them in a little smoothie with all the things that make me special.”A particular flair for bowling is not necessarily one of those things, though Likes did say that at the previous week’s outing he had bowled a strike. This week the “Back to the Future” team, the Pinheads, would play the “Kimberly Akimbo” team, Pinberly Akimbowl. (Other team names of current Broadway shows: Hamilpins, Some Strike It Hot, Sweet Spareolines and, from “Moulin Rouge,” Bowlhemians.)Asked if his co-star Roger Bart (who plays Doc Brown) was on the team, Likes shook his head and laughed. (As Bart said, in a recent interview, “He’s got one of the great laughs. And the biggest, most contagious smile.”) People like Bart, Broadway veterans with families, don’t come out to bowl. They leave that to their younger colleagues, such as Likes.“I just want friends!” Likes said.Bowling night seems to be more about hobnobbing than actually bowling. “I’ve never played a full game,” Likes said. George Etheredge for The New York TimesIndeed, Likes was so busy hobnobbing that he neglected to register with his team and the game was already in progress when he found them at their assigned lane. Apparently this happens often. Asked about the rules of the league, Likes shook his head. “I’ve never played a full game so I truly do not understand,” he said.An ensemble member allowed him to sub in for one frame. Likes approached the foul line with his typical ease, then bowled a three. (In the interest of fairness, his score was then erased and the frame was bowled again.) He shrugged it off and fed some French fries to a castmate. Two other colleagues staged an impromptu dance-off, trading pirouettes and arabesques.“I just love it. I love the vibes,” Likes said.The evening wore on. Likes bowled another frame.“You got it,” his co-star Jelani Remy called out to him. “You look great.” Likes struck down three pins, then two more. (That frame was also erased.) The Pinheads beat their rivals 1,176 to 943 — though the “Kimberly Akimbo” team was admittedly down a player. A second game began. Likes wouldn’t bowl this one either, he had more circulating to do. He feels that he has spent his whole life getting to a place like this. He is determined to enjoy it.“It’s the reason I’m wearing the bowling shirt,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this community. I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.” More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Theater to See in N.Y.C. This Holiday Season

      by

      Christmas classics, comedic musicals and a star-studded Sondheim revival: a guide to the shows to see this season.The holiday season is upon us, which means it’s an excellent time for theatergoers to pack into cozy venues for a feast of the eyes. Our critics have selected a handful of options for tourists and locals looking to catch up on Broadway and Off Broadway shows this holiday season. And we’ve included some other choices as well.For those who prefer to be entertained from home, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year will feature performances by Broadway shows like “& Juliet,” “Back to the Future: The Musical,” “How to Dance in Ohio,” “Shucked” and “Spamalot,” along with an appearance by Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells of “Gutenberg! The Musical!”Other theater-related streaming options include “Dicks: The Musical,” with Nathan Lane, and the 2015 documentary that the “How to Dance in Ohio” musical is based on.Here is a selection of notable shows onstage in New York City.Fun for the Whole FamilyBig Apple CircusStraw hats thrown like Frisbees. Death-defying aerial acts. Dizzying foot juggling routines. All accompany the contortionist, trapeze and tightrope circus classics that spectators young and old have come to ooh and aah at. This year, Big Apple presents “Journey to the Rainbow,” a collaboration with the German troupe Circus Theater Roncalli, complete with humans dressed as polar bears and cotton candy galore. Through Jan. 1 at Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, Manhattan. Read the review.Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City RockettesIt’s a New York City classic. It’s a Christmas classic. The Rockettes are back with sensational high kicks set to state-of-the-art lighting and projections. Little ones will be dazzled by animated trains, ribbons and wintry displays. Their adult companions will delight in a Nativity procession and holiday maximalism. Through Jan. 1 at Radio City Music Hall, Manhattan. Read the review.A Christmas CarolSet in a home built in 1862, in an intimate parlor room, this telling of the timeless Christmas tale stars John Kevin Jones as Charles Dickens. Audience members, surrounded by 19th-century holiday décor and candlelight, will travel back more than a century, to when Dickens wrote the story. The production also features a streaming version. Through Dec. 24 at the Merchant House, Manhattan.Craving Song and DanceSweeney ToddJosh Groban stars on Broadway as everyone’s favorite tall, dark and handsome throat slitter. Opposite the demon barber is a superbly zany Annaleigh Ashford as the murder-accomplice-baker Mrs. Lovett (our critic called her “a brilliant comic for whom comedy is not the end but the means”). The two stars will leave the production after the Jan. 14 performance, so be sure to catch them in full bloody glory before they go. Come for the meat pies and Stephen Sondheim’s gigantic score, stay for the shadowy lighting, which won Natasha Katz her eighth Tony Award. At the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Merrily We Roll AlongJonathan Groff stars alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez in this acclaimed revival of the former Sondheim flop, directed by Maria Friedman. Our critic called the show, which sweetly and gravely warns of the dangers of great ambition, “a palpable hit,” with “a thrillingly fierce central performance” by Groff and “high-wattage, laser-focused performances” by Radcliffe and Mendez. Through March 24 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Jonathan Groff, obscured, Daniel Radcliffe, aloft, and Katie Rose Clarke in the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” at the Hudson Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHere We AreUnderfed and yet very full: Will the people who have it all ever find something to eat? Inspired by two Luis Buñuel films, David Ives’s chic, surrealist musical was one of the most anticipated Off Broadway shows of the year, and a star-studded farewell to Sondheim’s final work. Through Jan. 21 at the Shed, Manhattan. Read the review.StereophonicFive members of a rock band try to record a studio album. That’s the premise, which hinges upon heartache, copious drug use and fragile rock star egos, of David Adjmi’s first New York production since 2013, set entirely in a recording studio. It’s a play, not a musical, so it’s not squarely in the song-and-dance category, but the music, written by Will Butler (formerly of Arcade Fire), is chock-full of captivating pop songs and gripping ballads. Through Dec. 17 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan. Read the review.For the FaithfulPurlie VictoriousLeslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young star in Ossie Davis’s raucous 1961 comedy, directed by Kenny Leon, about a charismatic preacher who must outwit a plantation owner to buy and restore the local church. The play exposes racism as laughably absurd in a Broadway revival our critic called “scathingly funny.” Through Feb. 4 at the Music Box, Manhattan. Read the review.Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young, center, lead the ensemble cast in a revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 play, “Purlie Victorious,” at the Music Box Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCovenantIn his New York debut, the playwright York Walker’s Southern gothic, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, follows a small Georgia town’s reaction to a bluesman’s homecoming. The potent little Off Broadway play, about communing with God and making deals with the Devil, is based on the real-life bluesman Robert Johnson, whose technique inspired rumors that he had traded his soul for musical genius. Through Dec. 17 at Roundabout Underground, Manhattan. Read the review.Nearing ExpirationShuckedIf a cornucopia of puns is your thing, this lowbrow comedic musical about a small-town woman who leaves home to save her corn just might scratch the itch. With a book by Robert Horn, songs by the country music songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and campy scenes — including a mini-kickline of plastic corncobs — directed by Jack O’Brien, our critic called the show low humor “but hard not to laugh at.” Through Jan. 14 at the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan. Read the review.Sleep No MoreArguably one of New York City’s crown jewels of immersive theater, the Hitchcock-style take on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is set to close on Jan. 28 after 12 years. In an enchanting act of voyeurism, audiences members wear masks — the Venetian type, not the health-protecting kind (those are optional) — and follow characters from room to room, into densely packed apothecary dens, eerie miniature forests and dark, elaborate dining halls. Through Jan. 28 at the McKittrick Hotel, Manhattan. Read the review. More

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Gardens of Anuncia’ Review: The Broadway Star and the Women Who Molded Her

      by

      Michael John LaChiusa’s beautifully sung tribute to sisterly admiration, starring Priscilla Lopez, was inspired by the early life of the show’s director, Graciela Daniele.At the heart of “The Gardens of Anuncia,” Michael John LaChiusa’s sweet reverie of a musical, is a respect and recognition for the renowned Broadway choreographer Graciela Daniele, a longtime friend and collaborator.The show, which opened on Monday at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, debuted in 2021 at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. It arrives in a Lincoln Center Theater production with its original cast mostly intact, and Daniele back directing and sharing choreography duties with Alex Sanchez. But now the acclaimed stage veteran Priscilla Lopez is the star, and her knowing performance as Anuncia (a present-day version of Daniele) enriches this lovely, slightly repetitive, but beautifully sung tribute to sisterly admiration.While tending to her garden on the day she’s set to receive a lifetime achievement award, Anuncia thinks back to the women who raised her in Buenos Aires during the Perón regime. She’s ambivalent about the prize (“Who needs an award for living so long?”) and jokes that her decades of work in the theater (Daniele has received 10 Tony Award nominations and, yes, one career-spanning award in 2021) simply dominoed from the first English word she ever learned: “OK.”A gifted dancer from an early age, she was hired by a major national dance company before moving on to international success.But she’s passionate when conjuring up her Mami (Eden Espinosa), Tía (Andréa Burns), and Granmama (Mary Testa). In the show we watch this matriarchal triumvirate, which Anuncia credits for her resilience and compassion, interact with her younger self (Kalyn West). Each woman details for Anuncia her particular relationship with men. Granmama is “agreeably separated” from her seafaring husband (Enrique Acevedo), whom she met while working as his housekeeper and still allows to woo her whenever he is in port. Tía, a gal’s gal, entertains lusty advances from the “Moustache Brothers” (Acevedo and Tally Sessions), but also prefers her independence.It’s Mami who presents this work’s richest complexities. Anuncia cannot understand why her mother, after years of sordid abuse from her husband (Acevedo again), tries to steer her daughter away from hating the man. Nor can she reconcile her mother’s distaste for the government even though she works as a gubernatorial secretary.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?  More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Tammy Faye Bakker Is Broadway Bound. As a Musical.

      by

      A show about the televangelist, with songs by Elton John and Jake Shears, had a run in London last year and plans to open in New York next season.A new musical about Tammy Faye Bakker, the singing televangelist whose colorful life and collapsed ministry have repeatedly been dramatized for stage and screen, is pledging to open on Broadway next season.The show, called “Tammy Faye,” features music by Elton John and lyrics by Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters. The musical had a run last year at the Almeida Theater in London, where the critic Matt Wolf called it “spectacularly entertaining.”The musical is being directed by Rupert Goold, the artistic director of the Almeida and a two-time Tony nominee for the plays “Ink” and “King Charles III.” The book is by James Graham, a prolific English playwright whose previous Broadway outings include “Ink” and the musical “Finding Neverland.”John and Shears, although best known for their careers in pop music, have both worked extensively in theater. John has written songs for many shows, including “The Lion King”; won a Tony Award for “Aida”; and is now also reworking a musical adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada” that was poorly received during an initial production in Chicago. Shears has not only written theater songs, but also performed in “Kinky Boots” on Broadway, and is currently starring in “Cabaret” in London.“Tammy Faye” explores the life and work of Bakker (she used the surname Messner in her final years), who had an enormously successful, and lucrative, television ministry in the 1970s and 1980s, that fell apart when her husband and partner in ministry, Jim Bakker, was indicted and then imprisoned for fraud.She was known for her big hair, her big personality and her big heart — her compassion for people with AIDS made her a popular figure among gay people often shunned by evangelicals. The musical explores her life in the context of the rise of a politically potent religious right in the United States.Bakker’s arc has proved irresistible to storytellers. Jessica Chastain won an Academy Award playing her in the 2021 film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and there have been several other stage projects.“Tammy Faye” is being produced by Rocket Stage, which is a theater production company established by John and his husband, David Furnish; Greene Light Stage, which is a production company established by Sally Greene, who has a business partnership with John; and James L. Nederlander, who is the president and chief executive of the Nederlander Organization.The producers said Friday that the musical would open at one of the nine Nederlander Broadway houses in the 2024-25 theater season; they did not specify which theater, and did not announce any casting.Andrew Rannells, who played Jim Bakker in London, and who is now starring in “Gutenberg! The Musical!” on Broadway, recently told Andy Cohen he was expecting the show to arrive on Broadway soon, but did not say whether he was continuing with the project. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Spamalot’ Review: You’ll Laugh in Its General Direction

      by

      In the first Broadway revival of the Monty Python musical, the old bits are verbatim but the clowns are running the circus.Even the coconuts get entrance applause.If you’ve seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the 1975 movie spoof of all things Arthurian and many things not, you know the coconuts I mean. And if you’re enough of a Python fan to have also seen “Spamalot,” the 2005 Broadway musical “lovingly ripped off” from the film, you’ve probably memorized the whole bit. That’s the one in which Arthur’s trusted patsy, Patsy, slaps coconut halves together so the deluded king can pretend he has a horse. Call it a filly à deux.But the coconuts, whether or not they came to medieval England strung between two migratory African swallows, have stiff competition for beloved silliness in the blissful Broadway revival of “Spamalot” that opened on Thursday at the St. James Theater. They are by no means the only old favorites greeted with entrance applause. Among many others, so are a troupe of self-flagellating monks, a cart of corpses, a vulgar French taunter and a Trojan rabbit.This is the problem, and I suppose the glory, of a property (or should I say a shrubbery) like “Spamalot,” by Eric Idle of the original troupe and the composer John Du Prez. Drilled deep into the culture through thousands of collegiate viewings, many of those viewings enhanced by once-illegal substances, the loosely assembled collection of skits has become holy writ, not to be messed with. If a production dared to change anything, it would surely face an audience of originalists screaming “ni!” — though to be fair, it faces them anyway, as “Spamalot” has become a kind of Python karaoke.So what’s a revival to do?This one, directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, gives the “ni”-sayers what they want. As far as I can tell, the best original bits are all preserved verbatim.Also preserved, obviously, is what passes for the plot, in which Arthur (James Monroe Iglehart) mucks about England with Patsy (Christopher Fitzgerald) in search of knights to sit at the “very round” table. Yet before the assembled half-wits can fully enjoy the Las Vegas floor show that is Camelot, God (Steve Martin in an uncredited voice-over) commands them to stop their tap dancing and shove off in search of the holy grail. Not everyone is impressed. “If God is all-knowing,” says the not-so-brave Sir Robin, who may be looking to avoid personal bloodshed, “surely He must know where it is.”Though uttering the same lines as Idle did in the movie, and as David Hyde Pierce did in the 2005 production, Michael Urie as Robin puts a differently delightful comic spin on them. Throughout, Rhodes has encouraged the cast to personalize the material and, in many cases, enhance it. Taran Killam, expert as Lancelot and several of the quirkiest supporting characters, gives the French taunter not only the requisite outrageous accent but also a raspberry aria worthy of Mozart. In turn, when he sneers “I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and all your silly English knnnniggets,” Arthur and Sir Galahad (Nik Walker) do a brilliant triple take — they are Black.In some hilarious head space between Liza Minnelli and Celine Dion, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, as the Lady of the Lake, essentially steals the show as she scats, belts and mutters private thoughts.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLetting the clowns run the flying circus, at least part-time, is integral to the history of Python’s success. (Idle told The Times that the material survives because “it was written by its actors and acted by its writers.”) It is also a smart move for a show that could otherwise feel calcified; a production I saw at the Stratford Festival over the summer seemed more like an animatronic museum exhibit, making me doubt it was really revivable.And even this mostly excellent production betrays a faint odor of mothballs, especially in the projection-heavy scenic design of Paul Tate dePoo III, so dependent on the feel of Terry Gilliam’s original animations. The key to the comedy is not after all replication but individuation. The Pythons were each their own kind of oddball, and the bits are only funny with fresh bite.Another humor helper is authenticity. When Lancelot (who likes to dance a lot) comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress, and that damsel turns out to be a dopey prince named Herbert (Ethan Slater), the comics calibrate the exact middle point between snark and sincerity. (“Just think, Herbert,” says Lance as they kiss, “in a thousand years’ time this will still be controversial.”) The drag bits are likewise laughable yet honorable, as when Galahad’s blowzy mother, Mrs. Galahad (Jimmy Smagula), the recent widow of Nobby the Cretin, stands up proudly to Arthur: “I didn’t vote for you.” Equal-opportunity offensiveness — to gays, Jews, French, Finns and every kind of Briton — makes the show inoffensive to all.Unless, that is, you are very sensitive about your addled divas in sparkly gowns. Among a cast of performers unafraid to chew scenery, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, as the Lady of the Lake, that “watery tart” who “lobbed a scimitar” at Arthur, is the top masticator. In some hilarious head space between Liza Minnelli and Celine Dion, scatting, belting and muttering private thoughts — including, on the night I saw it, ad-libs about Patti LuPone and Ozempic — she essentially steals the show despite her frequent absences from it. The first line of her big second-act number is “Whatever happened to my part?”The revival leans into such meta-moments, which lean away from the movie and into a wonderland of Broadway self-reference. (Another snake-eating-its-tail song is “The Song That Goes Like This.”) Rhodes knows how to build these beautifully; they take off like roman candles. (Shield your eyes from the brightness of Cory Pattak’s lights and the dazzle of Jen Caprio’s costumes.) And if too many of the big numbers hit the same notes of too-muchness, Rhodes also lands the quiet ones gently, including “I’m All Alone,” in which Arthur laments his solitude while poor Patsy, fulfilling his name, stands next to him singing backup.For all its nostalgia value, and its endless verbal invention, “Spamalot,” like “Holy Grail,” and like the television series that spawned them both, has a very vexed soul. Taunters are angry, the taunted suffer, royals trace their authority to “some moistened bint” and God sends horseless knights to locate misplaced cups. It’s not a nice world out there in the Middle Ages — or ours. Luckily, vexations are evergreen if given half a chance, and, at least on Broadway, are assuageable. Just remember to always look on the bright side of life. And that supposedly harmless bunnies aren’t.SpamalotAt the St. James Theater, Manhattan; spamalotthemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      ‘How to Dance in Ohio’: A Story About Autism and Connection

      by

      In a first for Broadway, openly autistic actors are playing the autistic characters in this new musical about a doctor helping neurodiverse clients.To get to Amigo Family Counseling, I walked down beige hallways on the first floor of a building in a ho-hum Columbus, Ohio, office park a short walk from a Bob Evans restaurant.The center’s clinical director, Dr. Emilio Amigo, waved at me once I got inside. Behind a closed door I heard the voices of his clients — autistic young adults from mostly working- and middle-class central Ohio families — boisterously chatting about their Friday night plans.I was there to talk about “How to Dance in Ohio,” a new Broadway musical that features Dr. Amigo and seven of his autistic clients as characters. The show — pop in score and sensibility — is based on Alexandra Shiva’s 2015 documentary, which follows Dr. Amigo and many more of his clients as they navigate life and eagerly, but anxiously, prepare for a spring formal. (The musical is in previews at the Belasco Theater in Manhattan, where it is scheduled to open on Dec. 10. The documentary is on Max.)In a room filled with board games and framed illustrations of rainbow-bright robots, I met Tommy Van Atta. I asked him to tell me what it was like to be in the documentary and now be a character in a musical adaptation. Van Atta, 28, who has the frame of a linebacker, paused for a few seconds, then spoke softly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Steve Carell to Make Broadway Debut as Uncle Vanya Next Spring

      by

      The production, a new translation by Heidi Schreck, will also star Alison Pill, William Jackson Harper, Alfred Molina and Anika Noni Rose.Steve Carell, the screen actor best known for his breakout role as a blundering boss in the NBC comedy “The Office,” will make his Broadway debut in a revival of the Chekhov classic “Uncle Vanya.”Carell will lead a cast of television, film and stage veterans in the production, which is to begin performances April 2 and to open April 24 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a Broadway house at the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater.“Uncle Vanya” is a dark Russian drama, first performed in 1899, about a rural family whose dreary but stable routine is disrupted when the property’s long-absent owner, a retired professor, comes to visit with his new, and much younger, wife. The play has been staged and adapted many times — this will be the 11th production on Broadway — and this iteration will be based on a new translation by Heidi Schreck, whose previous Broadway venture, an autobiographical show called “What the Constitution Means to Me,” is expected to be the most-staged play at U.S. theaters this season (not counting those by Shakespeare and Dickens).Carell, who played a regional manager in “The Office,” will also play a manager in “Uncle Vanya.” His character is the country estate’s long-suffering administrator (and the brother of the professor’s first wife); he oversees the property with a niece, Sonya, who will be played by Alison Pill, who last appeared on Broadway in a revival of “Three Tall Women” and was a Tony Award nominee for “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” They will be joined by William Jackson Harper, an alumnus of the NBC comedy “The Good Place” who this year wowed Off Broadway audiences with his starring role in “Primary Trust”; he will play Astrov, the local doctor.Alfred Molina (a three-time Tony nominee, for “Red,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Art”) will play the professor, while Anika Noni Rose (a Tony winner for “Caroline, or Change”) will play the professor’s wife. Jayne Houdyshell (a Tony winner for “The Humans”) will play Vanya’s mother, and Mia Katigbak (an Obie winner for “Awake and Sing!”) will portray a household nurse.“Uncle Vanya” is being directed by Lila Neugebauer, who is also directing a Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play “Appropriate,” which is scheduled to open next month. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      ‘Harmony’ Review: Barry Manilow Writes the (Broadway) Songs

      by

      The pop star of the 1970s and ’80s crosses over to musical theater with a dark story about pop stars of the 1920s and ’30s.How strange and, in the end, how ironic that a German singing group, founded in the chaotic last years of the Weimar Republic and forcibly disbanded less than 10 years later, should call itself the Comedian Harmonists.Yet on the evidence of the Barry Manilow musical “Harmony” — for which, yes, he wrote the songs (along with his longtime lyricist, Bruce Sussman) — the internationally famous all-male group had the “harmonist” part of their name just right. As rendered by Manilow in an often skillful, surprisingly theatrical score, the men’s tightly spaced six-part singing, sometimes reminiscent of barbershop, sometimes jazz, sometimes operetta on LSD, is so dense as to seem geological, its pitches heaving and twisting toward some new stratum of sound.But comedians? No. Neither the guys nor the grim and eventually bludgeoning show have a gift for levity.You might wonder why the show, at least, should. Though its title makes it sound as if “Harmony” would be calm and golden, its story isn’t an uplifting one. The group, consisting by chance of three Jews (one of whom marries a gentile) and three gentiles (one of whom marries a Jew), inevitably falls victim to the antisemitic restrictions of National Socialism. Soon the brotherhood, symbolized in sound by their questing choral closeness, goes sour — a story that, to be effective, needs vivid contrast so we know what’s been lost.But the version of “Harmony” that opened on Monday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, after a potholed, decades-long trek to Broadway, makes a beeline for the bleakest parts of the tale and then bleakens them further. Sussman’s script, relentlessly focused on historical trauma, takes reasonable dramatic license with the group’s actual history, but only in one direction: darker. And though Warren Carlyle’s production is smart and slick, it traps the tale in a figurative and literal glassy black box (by Beowulf Boritt) from which only pathos escapes.Even the opening scenes, which might have been upbeat, feel booby-trapped by the invention of a narrator looking back from 1988. He is Rabbi (Chip Zien), the last surviving Harmonist, who now lives in California, plagued by guilt. The attempt to lighten him by making him talk like a latter-day Tevye, with Yiddish inflections (“A cockamamie name, no?”) and cute codger phrases (“We were hot as horseradish”), feels both distracting and patronizing. As his twinkliness turns to anguish — and despite Zien’s forceful performance — the prominence of the character turns “Harmony” into a passive show about memory at the expense of the actual action.From left: Sierra Boggess, Zal Owen, Julie Benko and Danny Kornfeld in the musical at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe time could be better spent individuating the six-headed protagonist. As it is, each Harmonist gets just one or two traits. The younger version of Rabbi (Danny Kornfeld) is indecisive. Harry (Zal Owen) is a musical genius. Chopin (Blake Roman) is a hothead. Erich (Eric Peters) has secrets and a saying for every occasion. Bobby (Sean Bell) is all about business. And Lesh (Steven Telsey) — well, the authors seem to have run out of traits. He’s just Bulgarian.When working with the music, that’s sufficient; blending, not standing out, is the hallmark of the style. (Manilow’s vocal arrangements, written with John O’Neill, the show’s music director, are marvelous.) But as the story spreads from unison group mechanics to separate life conflicts, the texture thins to the point of flimsiness.Given that Young Rabbi is so prominent in the back story, it’s a problem, for instance, that his courtship of the gentile Mary (Sierra Boggess) is mostly a mixtape of banalities. (“This is our time!”) Only Mary, in choosing a life that may include persecution and exile, carries enough conflict to be meaningfully characterized in song. Manilow, and Boggess, come through, with the gorgeous “And What Do You See?”The other semi-fleshed-out story has an even bigger problem than lopsidedness. Chopin, whose real name was Erwin Bootz, marries Ruth, a Jew (and a firebrand Bolshevik to boot). That we never really understand the strife between them may be the result of conflation: Ruth (Julie Benko) is a composite of three of Bootz’s actual wives. No wonder she’s blurry — and worse, sacrificial. I feel I must spoil a plot point by revealing that, despite the overwhelming atmosphere of tragedy throughout, this invented Ruth is the only character who does not survive the war, a tensioning convenience that is also a red herring.Wherever it can — in the plot, in the characterizations and in the sometimes bombastic orchestrations for a heavily synthed and amped orchestra of nine — “Harmony” wields a truncheon instead of the needle it needs. It might have helped if the supposedly comic numbers were actually funny, but neither Manilow and Sussman nor Carlyle excel at that here. The lighthearted charm song (“Your Son Is Becoming a Singer”), the slapstick centerpiece (“How Can I Serve You, Madame?”) and the second-act opener (“We’re Goin’ Loco!” — which features the Harmonists and Josephine Baker in a “Copacabana”-like samba) are all manic duds.Only when the story offers a song hook that is also a dramatic one does the attempt at humor pay off, in part by offering Sussman opportunities for sharp lyrics. The title number introduces the musical style of the show but also the characters’ ideals. (“In this joint/All encounters with counterpoint/End in harmony.”) And an anti-Nazi satire called “Come to the Fatherland,” perfectly staged by Carlyle as a human marionette show, has the two-sided stickiness of real wit: “The Führer has decreed:/If you’re Anglo-Saxon/And your hair is flaxen/We want you to breed!”The group dressed as human marionettes while performing the anti-Nazi satire “Come to the Fatherland.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStill, “Harmony” is no “Cabaret.” It doesn’t take the risk of letting you think for yourself; everything is a billboard. The Nazis — including some who scream “Save Germany from the Jews” in the aisles of the theater, an unnecessary touch — are generic slimeballs. The Harmonists are over-animated, smiling for all they’re worth, except when they’re furious or harrowed. (Having missed a chance to alter history in 1935, Rabbi sings the bathetic “Threnody” 53 years later.) The wives are uniformly noble, facing deprivation and worse.None of this is as interesting as what actually occurred. The lives of the Harmonists were mostly full and long. (Roman Cycowski, the real “Rabbi,” made it to 97.) Instead of miring the show in horrified memory, what “Harmony” might have considered with less contortion is the accommodation we make to history as it happens. I wish it had followed through on the question Mary asks while deciding whether to marry Rabbi: “Tell me how do we live/In a world that is crumbling away/And be happy, as we are today?” But we never see that happiness.Instead, like a lot of current theater that hitches a ride on the Holocaust for dramatic propulsion, “Harmony” makes guilt and anguish its through line, unintentionally suggesting that survival and the solace of music are somehow undeserved. Luckily, after a rough ride of an evening, the finale — an intensely chromatic song called “Stars in the Night” — offers exquisite evidence to the contrary.HarmonyAt the Ethel Barrymore Theater, Manhattan; harmonyanewmusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes. More