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      Barry Manilow Finally Gets His Wish: a Broadway Show

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      “Harmony,” about a singing group undone by Nazism, has been a decades-in-the-making labor of love for the singer and his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman.Barry Manilow is superstitious.Such a statement may come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the 80-year-old pop legend’s career, with decades of hits, endless Las Vegas residencies and international fame as a still-smooth crooner who wrote the songs that made the whole world sing.Yet, there is one thing that Manilow has always pined for and now inspires some irrational fears: a Broadway show.For nearly 30 years, that goal has proved tantalizingly out of reach despite a labor of love: “Harmony,” a musical he composed with his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman, the lyricist who also wrote the show’s book.“Harmony,” which follows the unlikely story of a sextet of 1930s singing and vaudevillian stars — the Comedian Harmonists, torn apart by the rise of Nazism and World War II — is now scheduled to open on Monday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Barring, of course, some cosmic catastrophe that both Manilow and Sussman joke about.Sort of.“We keep thinking the theater is going to get hit by a tornado,” Manilow joked over lunch in Midtown in September after their first day of rehearsal.Sussman, 74, laughed along: “It’s got to be something.”Not to jinx the opening, both men offer a “kinahora” — a Yiddish locution meaning “no evil eye.” It’s a dash of dark humor that is not completely unfounded, considering the tortuous route that “Harmony” has taken from page to the Barrymore’s stage. Sussman first conceived of the show in the early 1990s after seeing Eberhard Fechner’s 1977 documentary about the Harmonists in New York.“I came out of there and went to a phone booth on Lafayette Street, and I called him and I started babbling away,” Sussman recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m in.’”Both men were immediately intrigued by the story of a popular singing group (they had played Carnegie Hall, for instance, in 1933) that was destroyed by — and lost to — history. Half of the group was of Jewish descent, and the Nazi takeover of Germany would eventually silence them.The musical tells the story of the Comedian Harmonists, a singing group torn apart by the rise of Nazism. It is scheduled to open on Nov. 13 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Manhattan. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut the urge to compose a musical was also deeply seated in Manilow, who says he was never interested in pop music as a child in Brooklyn, when he was already a precocious musician, playing accordion and piano.“It wasn’t interesting enough for me,” Manilow recalled, of pop. “I didn’t know what was on the Top 40. I was into jazz and Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. I was into classical music. And I was into Broadway scores.”He added: “And I memorized every note from every one of those albums. And that started it off.”Manilow played piano in bars, worked in the CBS mailroom and wrote a raft of jingles, something he says that taught him to write a “catchy melody in 15 seconds.” (He and Sussman, both of whom are Jewish, met in New York in the early 1970s.)Still, Manilow says that it was his sudden pop stardom — beginning with ballads like “Mandy” and continuing with later earworm hits like “Copacabana (at the Copa),” which Sussman helped write — that somewhat sidetracked his desire to write for the stage, though Manilow did do a series of Broadway concerts over the years.“You can either write, ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you,’” Manilow said of his masterful Top 40 songcraft. “You go any further than that, you’re writing a Broadway song.”Despite that superstardom — and yes, probably because of it — “Harmony” did debut at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 1997, but got mixed reviews and failed to transfer. Still, interest in the show continued to percolate, including in 2003, when an out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia — before a planned Broadway run — suddenly evaporated when financial backing disintegrated.More iterations followed: In 2013 and 2014, the show had runs in Atlanta and Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle recognized the two men for their score. Again, producers expressed interest in Broadway, but deals fell apart, something Sussman seems remarkably measured about.“The gantlet that a new musical goes through, every step can be the end,” he said. “You do a reading, it’s over. You survive the reading, you do a workshop, it’s over. You survive the reading and you go to a regional and it’s over. And we all know shows that I’ve done that have died at one of those steps. We never did.”Bruce Sussman with Manilow and the director Warren Carlyle during a rehearsal.George Etheredge for The New York TimesManilow was a little less sanguine about the process. “I put it in the drawer many times,” he recalled. “It was so heartbreaking every time it didn’t make it.”During the coronavirus pandemic, however, Sussman and Manilow started to “kick the tires” on the show again with Warren Carlyle, the British director and choreographer who won a Tony Award in 2014 for his work on “After Midnight” and was nominated for Tonys for his work on the revivals of “Hello, Dolly!” (2017) and “The Music Man” (2022).One possible turning point in the show’s luck, Carlyle said, was the addition of a narrator character — an older rabbi played by Chip Zien — who walks the audience through the various eras of the show.“It was massive,” he said. “For me as director, it unlocks the whole show because previously it was kind of a six-headed dragon. You know there were these six guys: They all have wonderful stories. They all have rich lives. And I just didn’t know who to follow and I didn’t know how to focus the show.” To solve the problem, Sussman suggested splitting the existing role of one of the Harmonists in two. In addition to his younger self the show would also include his older self, a rabbi, serving as a narrator. “And suddenly for me, it was like, now the story has a point of view,” Carlyle said.Following that work, the show was staged in 2022 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, where audiences — and critics — seemed to respond in ways that they hadn’t before. Writing in The New York Times, Elisabeth Vincentelli praised the songs “crafted in a defiantly classic mold,” which steer the show back to “solid emotional ground.”She also noted the creative team’s ability in “balancing the shifting moods, which is no easy feat because they must shuffle broad humor and, well, Nazis.”Zalmen Mlotek, the artistic director of the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, which presented “Harmony” at the museum, said that he had heard about “Harmony” after a recommendation from the developer Bruce Ratner, the chairman of the museum.“When I heard that Manilow and Sussman had written a piece about the Holocaust, I looked at it, the idea of the Comedians, this singing group, had had their careers destroyed, it was just very compelling to me,” he said.Sussman and Manilow also said they were aware of a different relevance to their decades-old show when watching it last year at the museum, amid a rising number of antisemitic incidents in the country. That disturbing trend has only been amplified in recent weeks as war broke out in Israel and the Gaza Strip.“I hope the show is strong enough to stand on its own,” Manilow said.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesDuring the Folksbiene run, Sussman said, “I would sit in the back of the house and there’d be audible responses from the audience and certain lines, and I started getting nervous that people would think I was writing into the headlines. But some of those lines are 15, 20 years old.”Most of the major cast members from the Folksbiene production have transferred to Broadway, though most are lesser-known performers, something that may make marketing the show difficult. And while Manilow knows he’s a draw — see all those years in Vegas — he’s also not performing, of course.“I hope the show is strong enough to stand on its own,” he said.Still rail thin and apparently indefatigable, he has been commuting from the West Coast, where he is still doing three shows a week at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino. (He just passed Elvis for the most shows ever at that resort.)A onetime heavy smoker, Manilow is now a vaper, who — unlike his booming singing voice — is a quiet speaker. (Sussman still recalls seeing burn marks on Manilow’s piano keys where his Pall Malls would burn down as he composed.)Sometimes standing to vape, he also conveys a nervous energy about watching a show from the audience for a change. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing: I see all the flaws and faults,” he said with a chuckle.Still, he and Sussman said they hope to avoid any bad luck — theatrical, critical or otherwise — this time around.“People say, you know, ‘Oh, you must be so excited?’” Manilow said. “I don’t know what I am, really. We’ve been just waiting for this moment for so many years.” More

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      It Is Not Dead Yet! ‘Spamalot’ Returns to Broadway. (Cue the Coconuts.)

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      The Monty Python-inspired show wants to give audiences a reason “to laugh and enjoy and be taken away by this lunacy, in the best way possible.”The terrifying knights still say “Ni!” The dead? Well, they are not quite dead yet. And King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table (not dawn, not dusk, not late afternoon, but knights) still trot around to the sounds of coconuts banging together.All that is to say: “Spamalot” is back on Broadway, and it is still quite silly.The silliness was on display last month during a rehearsal at the Gibney Studios in Manhattan. David Josefsberg, one of the show’s standby actors, was having difficulty staying in character as the incompetent warlock Tim the Enchanter. The scene required him to adopt an outrageous accent to warn the knights about a scary beast, which ends up being a rabbit. (And the rabbit ends up being quite homicidal!) But he couldn’t keep it together as members of the cast and crew giggled while watching from the sides of the room. The giggles were contagious, filling the room throughout the rehearsal, including when the knights had to vary the banging of the coconuts between “trot” and “not trot.”The actors have been breaking character “all the time,” Josh Rhodes, the show’s director and choreographer, said after the rehearsal.“It’s lonely trying to land jokes. It’s a lousy thing to do to repeat it over and over again to a dead room,” Rhodes said. “Right now we’re still crafting it. So you want the energy in the room to still be a little silly.”Rhodes has a personal connection to the show: His husband, Lee Wilkins, was a replacement swing in the original Broadway production, which opened in 2005. They married during the run. As King Arthur, James Monroe Iglehart is among a who’s who of Broadway notables in the cast: “I make a joke all the time that there are two kings on Broadway — Mufasa and me.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFor the uninitiated, “Spamalot” is a Monty Python-inspired spoof adapted from that comedy troupe’s 1975 cult film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” A sendup of King Arthur’s mythical quest for the Holy Grail, the movie was written by and starred the group’s members — John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Graham Chapman and Terry Jones. It was Idle who had the idea to adapt it as a Broadway musical. (“Spam” is a reference to a Python sketch.)Idle wrote the original book and lyrics, and wrote the music with John Du Prez. Mike Nichols directed, and Casey Nicholaw choreographed. It was a smash, winning the Tony Award for best musical and running for nearly four years. In The New York Times, Ben Brantley called the show “resplendently silly” and a “fitful, eager celebration of inanity.”At the time of that initial Broadway run, it had been decades since any truly new Python material — the 1983 film “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” — and the musical, which has since had productions in the West End and international tours, exposed a new generation to the quintessential British brand of humor. The revival, which opens Nov. 16 at the St. James Theater, is in a similar position. The last meaningful Python collaboration was in 2014, when the group united for a series of shows at the O2 Arena in London. (Two members of the group have died: Chapman in 1989 and Jones in 2020.)Idle said he had “no idea” how Python’s brand of humor had continued to hold up today.“Python is portmanteau comedy,” Idle, 80, wrote in an email via a spokeswoman. “It has a bit of everything. People always found it funny but they didn’t always agree on which bits. I think it survives because it was written by its actors and acted by its writers. It is executive-free comedy.”This revival was the brainchild of the producer Jeffrey Finn, an executive at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Rhodes’s production of “Spamalot” had a critically well-received run there this past spring, and garnered enough of an audience response that Finn thought a Broadway production could overcome the ticket sale malaise that pervades the industry.“What I feel like we proved at the Kennedy Center is that the escapism and the joy in the theater that this show delivers is what I feel audiences are looking for now,” Finn said. “Because it’s a crazy, harsh world out there, and having two and a half hours just to laugh and enjoy and be taken away by this lunacy, in the best way possible, is just joyful.”“Spamalot” was adapted from the 1975 movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which satirizes the Arthurian legend. Columbia PicturesThe revival doesn’t update the book or music substantially, if at all, but the show does offer new staging, choreography and improv from a who’s who of Broadway notables, including James Monroe Iglehart (King Arthur), Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer (the Lady of the Lake), Ethan Slater (Prince Herbert) and Taran Killam (Lancelot).“Have you ever seen a person of color play the king? No,” said Iglehart, who originated the role of the Genie in the Broadway adaptation of “Aladdin.” (This is his first leading role on Broadway.) “I make a joke all the time that there are two kings on Broadway: Mufasa and me.”At the rehearsal, the run-through was chock-full of inside jokes about Broadway and references to current events. But ultimately the troupe’s material — exhibited in several films, a television show, tours and albums — is still the backbone of the show.Killam, the “Saturday Night Live” alum, called himself a “dyed-in-the-wool” Python fan and said that the “intelligent absurdist humor of Python is in my veins.” (Killam will be replaced by Alex Brightman in January. Brightman was in the Kennedy Center production, but the opening of the Broadway run conflicted with his current Broadway production, the play “The Shark Is Broken.”)“They were a true variety sketch group,” Killam said. “There were six different voices with different points of view and different objectives. So that brought such good balance. I think the sort of life spirit of their comedy is absurdity and certainly aiming that absurdity at social and economical structures of power, be it the monarchy or the church or banks or a class system. There is an intelligence about their absurdity.”The Python inclination to poke fun at institutions is present throughout “Spamalot,” as when God commands Arthur and his knights to find the Holy Grail. In response, a knight wonders why God himself — if he is all-knowing — doesn’t know where it is.The show’s director Josh Rhodes, center, flanked by the producer Jeffrey Finn, and the associate director Deidre Goodwin during rehearsals last month.Gregg Delman for The New York TimesThe biggest difference between “Holy Grail” and “Spamalot” is the Lady of the Lake character, who does not exist in the movie. The role has become a launching pad of sorts. Sara Ramirez won a best featured actress Tony for originating the role on Broadway. Hannah Waddingham, a star of the hit Apple show “Ted Lasso,” performed the part in the West End and was nominated for an Olivier.Kritzer, a theater veteran who last appeared on Broadway in “Beetlejuice,” wasn’t as familiar as Killam with the work of Monty Python, but she did see the original production with Ramirez.“I never thought of myself doing this role, simply for the fact that very tall women have played this part — and I am 5-foot-3,” Kritzer said. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s perfect for you.’ And I was like, ‘Really?’ I always think of it as this tall person role. And then when I got into rehearsal, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is like my modern Carol Burnett showcase.’”In this version, Kritzer said, “they let us improvise a lot. I’m doing things that were never in the original, ever, ever. Musically and otherwise.”When Monty Python burst onto the scene in the 1960s, its brand of comedy was considered revolutionary. They broke the rules of traditional comedy at the time with unusually structured sketches that would routinely break the fourth wall, end abruptly and not rely on simple punchlines, not to mention Gilliam’s zany animations.Now, “Spamalot,” at least in 2023, is a safe comedy with an enduring fan base who devour all things Python. This was apparent at an early preview, when Killam emerged as one of the Knights of Ni. The crowd started chanting “Ni!” before Killam said a word, prompting Killam to gesture to the crowd as if to say, “You get it.”“Even in any of the comedies that I’ve done on Broadway, there’s always some like, ‘We’re going to learn something,’” Kritzer said. “We don’t really learn something in this. We just have a great time, and that’s OK.”As to whether this will be the last-ever newish Monty Python project, Idle responded, “We can only pray.” More

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      ‘I Need That’ Review: It’s Always Messy in New Jersey

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      Danny DeVito returns to Broadway in a Theresa Rebeck comedy about a lonely old man lost in a houseful of junk.Even before the lights dim at the start of “I Need That,” the new Theresa Rebeck play at the American Airlines Theater, the show curtain and what’s in front of it offer plenty of exposition. The curtain is painted to depict the street grid of a neat New Jersey town, with neat houses on neat lots. But, uh-oh, creeping out from beneath it, on the floor of the stage, are boxes and bins overflowing with junk: ancient copies of Popular Science, bruised holiday decorations, stacks of old clothes, a sad single sneaker.So we know before the curtain rises on what one character describes as a “hellhole” of a home that we’ll be dealing with hoarding — and the orderly world that is horrified by it. Making the point even sharper is the entrance of the star, Danny DeVito, as Sam, the impish, 80-ish widower who lives there. Well, it’s not so much an entrance as a disclosure. Only after a series of knocks at the door wakes him up do we realize that amid the clutter submerging almost every surface of this once-handsome living room is Sam himself, indistinguishable from the trash.Alas, the busy set, by Alexander Dodge, leaves little for the rest of the play to do. Hyper-competently, like a good three-camera sitcom, Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s production for the Roundabout Theater Company, which opened on Thursday, will inch out Sam’s story — as well as that of his daughter, Amelia, and his old pal Foster. It will calibrate the requisite unsurprising surprises. It will cut its laughs with pathos and plump for a tear at the end.That’s no small feat, of course. Rebeck has a keen feeling for structure and the larger movements of storytelling. This is her 21st major New York production, and fifth on Broadway, since 1992. (She is also the creator of the TV series “Smash,” so she obviously knows plenty about sustaining conflict.) And there’s certainly pleasure to be had when an expert like DeVito, for 15 seasons a star of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” gets his mouth around a morsel of fragrant patois (he describes a worthless bottle cap as a meaningful souvenir “from my yout’”) or a juicy monologue. At one point he plays all sides of a game of Sorry!, complete with vicious kibitzing and gloating.But in the same way the monologue leans too heavily on foul-mouthed-grandpa laughs, the play overall, within its neat architecture, feels cluttered and obvious. Amelia, played by DeVito’s daughter Lucy, arrives in a flurry to tell her father that town authorities will condemn and evict him if he doesn’t get the mess — which is both a firetrap and an eyesore — under control. (A neighbor lady has reported the dishevelment.) Foster (Ray Anthony Thomas) offers to help clean up, but something always stops Sam in his tracks. “I’m organizing,” he insists. “I’m being selective.”Lucy DeVito, center, is a fine comic actor, hitting every joke and clapback with a clean thwack. Ray Anthony Thomas, left, plays a friend who offers to help clean up.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt around this point you realize that the play, having set Sam up as a mild hoarder — he doesn’t buy new things; his kitchen and bathrooms are clean — has not given him much to do but dither amusingly as he tries to decide what to part with. “It’s like ‘Sophie’s Choice,’” he whines. Nor much for Amelia to do but push back. (To her it’s more like “the end of ‘Carrie,’ where the house is so full of terrible things it just sucks itself into the earth.”) Eventually one of them will win, or this being a comedy, probably both.But because whatever will happen cannot do so until the last few of the play’s 100 minutes, most of what Rebeck offers is filler. Both Amelia and Foster are given grudges and secrets to pass the time. At least Amelia’s feel real enough, perhaps because Lucy DeVito, in her Broadway debut, is no nepo baby; she’s a fine comic actor, hitting every joke and clapback with a clean thwack. But Thomas is unable to make Foster more than a codger-comedy contrivance, despite or because of a tacked-on sad story and a not-very-credible interest in Sam’s trash.It’s hard to imagine what more one could make of an upbeat play about hoarding. The condition is not funny. Some hoarders suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder; more show strong indications of depression. To avoid a psychiatric rabbit hole, Rebeck has not only made Sam a sprite instead of a slug but also given him sympathetic, almost sensible, reasons for clinging to his stuff. (He misses his wife.) In a disposable society, hostile to aging, in which anything or anyone no longer obviously useful belongs in the landfill, he believes in hanging on. (He keeps refilling the same water bottle from 1976.) His hoarding isn’t a condition, it’s a protest.Though his only previous Broadway appearance was in the 2017 revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” Danny DeVito commands interest without having to do much, and rewards it with funny readings of even unfunny lines. Yet despite his likability, the only parts of “I Need That” that feel authentic are those, near the end, in which the nonissue of Sam’s hoarding is momentarily swept offstage to make space for a few minutes of real father-daughter drama. To this, the DeVitos bring a vibrant understanding — part pride, part dismay, all mess — of what it means to be related. Sometimes what’s neat just isn’t as compelling as what’s not.I Need ThatThrough Dec. 30 at American Airlines Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Huey Lewis and the News Musical Is Coming to Broadway in March

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      “The Heart of Rock and Roll” is a romantic comedy featuring songs by the chart-topping 1980s band.“The Heart of Rock and Roll,” a new musical powered by the songs of Huey Lewis and the News, is coming to Broadway in the spring.The show, which had an initial run in 2018 at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, is a comedy about a couple whose romance must navigate their rock band and corporate life aspirations.The musical is scheduled to begin previews March 29 and to open April 22 at the James Earl Jones Theater. Casting has not yet been announced.Marketed as a “feel-great musical,” the show features the upbeat songs of Huey Lewis and the News, a pop-rock band whose heyday was in the 1980s, and whose hit “The Power of Love” is also featured on Broadway in “Back to the Future: The Musical.”“The Heart of Rock and Roll” (that title is also the name of one of the band’s most popular songs) is directed by Gordon Greenberg (“Holiday Inn”), choreographed by Lorin Latarro (who is also choreographing a Broadway revival of “The Who’s Tommy”), and features a book by Jonathan A. Abrams based on a story by Abrams and Tyler Mitchell. Abrams and Mitchell have worked primarily in film and television.Mitchell is also producing the show with Hunter Arnold and Kayla Greenspan; the production is being capitalized for up to $16 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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      ‘Lempicka,’ New Musical About Art Deco Artist, to Open on Broadway

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      Rachel Chavkin of “Hadestown” will direct the show, which had developmental productions in Massachusetts and California.“Lempicka,” a new musical about the painter Tamara de Lempicka, will open on Broadway next spring after a decade in development.The show will join a Broadway season crowded with new musicals — at least a dozen are expected — at a time when the industry is facing smaller audiences, and higher costs, than it had before the coronavirus pandemic.An Art Deco portraitist who was married and had female lovers, Lempicka was born in Poland in 1898 and lived in Russia, which she fled because of the Russian Revolution; France, which she fled because of World War II; and then the United States and Mexico. Though her art and her social life glittered for a period, she later faded from prominence, and died in 1980. In recent years, her art has sold strongly; contemporary collectors of her work include Madonna.The show, scheduled to begin performances March 19 and to open April 14 at the Longacre Theater, features music by Matt Gould and lyrics by Carson Kreitzer, who also collaborated on the book. The director is Rachel Chavkin, the Tony Award-winning director of “Hadestown,” and choreography is by Raja Feather Kelly.“This is a massive epic, in the company of ‘Les Mis’ or ‘Evita,’ about this incredible artist who has been, for a variety of reasons, dismissed from our history books,” Chavkin said. “It’s fierce and queer and traces the first half of the 20th century through the eyes of this very complicated and ambitious and visionary woman.”Eden Espinosa, a onetime Elphaba in “Wicked,” will star in the title role. She is currently appearing in a new musical, “The Gardens of Anuncia,” running Off Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. The rest of the “Lempicka” cast has not yet been announced.The musical has had two previous productions, at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts in 2018 and last year at La Jolla Playhouse in California, as well as several workshops and presentations over the years. (A previous effort to dramatize Lempicka’s life, a play called “Tamara,” ran in New York in 1987.)“Lempicka” is being produced by Seaview, a production company founded by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea, and Jenny Niederhoffer. It is being capitalized for up to $19.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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      Joanna Merlin, Known for Her Work Both Onstage and Off, Dies at 92

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      Soon after appearing in the original Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” she began a new career as a prominent casting director.Joanna Merlin, who, after originating the role of Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, in the hit Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” became a renowned casting director, notably for Stephen Sondheim musicals including “Into the Woods” and “Follies,” died on Oct. 15 at her younger daughter’s home in Los Angeles. She was 92.Her older daughter, Rachel Dretzin, said the cause was complications of myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disease.The idea of becoming a casting director came from Hal Prince, the powerful producer of “Fiddler,” after she had left “Fiddler” to raise her two young daughters. He had interviewed several candidates and told Ms. Merlin that most of them “just didn’t like actors,” she told Backstage magazine.“He felt that since I was an actor and a mother, that I might be a good choice,” she added. “He understood that I was raising children and told me that he didn’t care what hours I put in, just as long as I got the work done.”She set to work in 1970, casting replacement actors in “Fiddler” during its last two years on Broadway. For the next two decades, she cast six musicals that were composed by Sondheim and produced (and usually directed) by Mr. Prince on Broadway: “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures,” “Side by Side by Sondheim” and “Merrily We Roll Along.”From left, Ms. Merlin, the composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, the director Harold Prince and the playwright George Furth during a casting session for the 1981 Broadway musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”Martha Swope/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsHer casting credits also include two other Sondheim musicals, “Sweeney Todd” and “Into the Woods”; Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Evita”; and “On the Twentieth Century,” by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Cy Coleman. All those shows except “Into the Woods” were directed by Mr. Prince.“What I found so interesting with Joanna,” James Lapine, who directed “Into the Woods” and wrote its book, based on the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, said in a phone interview, “was her determination to pursue nontraditional casting in the theater, which for me, at a young age, was something I hadn’t thought much about.”Ms. Merlin’s pursuit of diverse casting led Mr. Lapine to choose a Black actress, Terry Burrell, to replace the white one who had played one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, and Phylicia Rashad, who is Black, as a replacement for Bernadette Peters in the leading role of the Witch.In 1986, Ms. Merlin was a founder of the Non-Traditional Casting Project (now the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts), which seeks more opportunities for actors of color and actors with disabilities.Ms. Merlin, noting that there were many talented, nonwhite actors, told The Record of Hackensack, N.J., in 1990. “The reason they should be cast is because they’re good,”Ms. Merlin also cast six films, including Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” (1987), for which she won the Casting Society of America’s Artios Award. She also won an Artios for “Into the Woods.”Ms. Merlin, far right, with Zero Mostel, center, and three other “Fiddler on the Roof” cast members (from left, Maria Karnilova, Tanya Everett and Julia Migenes) backstage after the show’s opening night in 1964. Associated PressJo Ann Dolores Ratner was born on July 15, 1931, in Chicago. Her parents were Russian immigrants: Her father, Harry, owned a grocery store, and her mother, Toni (Merlin) Ratner, helped in the store and became a sculptor in her 60s.She moved to Los Angeles with her parents and her sister when she was 15.She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, for a year in the early 1950s and, after acting in plays in the Los Angeles area in the early and mid-1950s, appeared in her first movie role, a small part in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956).After some more screen work and roles in Off and Off Off Broadway plays, Ms. Merlin made her Broadway debut in 1961 in Jean Anouilh’s “Becket,” as Gwendolen, the mistress of Thomas Becket, one of Britain’s most powerful figures in the 12th century, who was played by Laurence Olivier. Later that year, she returned to Broadway to portray Sigmund Freud’s wife in Henry Denker’s “A Far Country.”After four unsuccessful auditions for a role in Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,” which was staged by Jerome Robbins, she auditioned eight times for Mr. Robbins when he was casting “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened in 1964. Although she lacked a strong singing voice, she was cast as Tzeitel, the oldest daughter of Tevye the milkman, the show’s principal character.The syndicated columnist Leonard Lyons wrote that when Ms. Merlin was pregnant in 1965 with her daughter Rachel, Zero Mostel, who played Tevye, told the stage manager: “Joanna’s baby just kicked. Send baby a note — not to kick.”She left the show in 1965 after Rachel was born, returned as Tzeitel a year later, and departed again in 1967 when she was replaced by her understudy, Bette Midler (who was also Rachel’s babysitter). After Julie’s birth in 1968, Mr. Prince made his offer.She continued to act, mostly in films and on television. Her roles included the dance teacher in “Fame” (1980), Julia Roberts’s mother in “Mystic Pizza” (1988) and an old Jewish woman in a short film, “Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn” (2008), which she and Ragnar Freidank adapted from a one-woman play by Ellen Cassedy.TV viewers might be most familiar with Ms. Merlin’s recurring role in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” She played Judge Lena Petrovsky 43 times from 2000 to 2011. No other actor has played a jurist more often in the “Law & Order” franchise. She also appeared, as two different defense lawyers, in five episodes of “Law & Order.”Ms. Merlin as a lawyer in a 1994 episode of “Law & Order.” She also played a judge in 43 episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” setting a record for the franchise.Jessica Burstein/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesHer career as an acting teacher began in 1998 at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a year later she began holding workshops dedicated to the acting technique of her teacher, Michael Chekhov.In the foreword to her book, “Auditioning: An Actor-Friendly Guide” (2001), Mr. Prince wrote: “Her taste is impeccable. In no instance can I remember her recommending anyone less than interesting for a role.”In addition to her daughter Rachel, a documentary filmmaker, and her daughter Julie Dretzin, an actress, Ms. Merlin is survived by five grandchildren. Her first marriage, to Marty Lubner, ended in divorce. Her marriage to David Dretzin ended with his death in 2006 after a car accident in which he suffered a traumatic brain injury. Her sister, Harriet Glickman, died in 2020.For “Pacific Overtures,” which takes place in Japan after Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s visit in 1853 and which had an all-Asian cast, Ms. Merlin engaged in “what may be one of the most poignant talent searches undertaken for a Broadway show,” according to a 1976 article in The New York Times.Racism and economics often forced Asian actors out of the profession at the time. So when she had no luck finding actors in New York, she worked with Asian community and theater groups, Asian newspapers and the State Department to fill the roles. A third of those ultimately signed for the production were nonprofessionals.Among them was the actor Gedde Watanabe, who was a young street singer in San Francisco when she approached him and invited him to audition.“I didn’t believe her,” Mr. Watanabe said. More

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      in Theater

      Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ to Return to Broadway Next Fall

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      A new production, directed by Kenny Leon, will feature a diverse cast and will aim to speak to contemporary America.“Our Town,” one of the most revered and enduring American dramas, will return to Broadway next fall in a new production directed by Kenny Leon.Leon has become among the more prolific directors working in New York. Just this year he has directed a revival of “Purlie Victorious,” currently running on Broadway, as well as the summer production of “Hamlet” at Shakespeare in the Park and the spring Off Broadway basketball-fan drama “King James” for the Manhattan Theater Club. He directed two Broadway revivals last season, the Tony-winning “Topdog/Underdog” as well as “Ohio State Murders,” and he has another one coming next spring, “Home.”Leon said he had long wanted to direct a Broadway production of “Our Town,” a 1938 play by Thornton Wilder. He has tackled the play twice in Atlanta, where he lives, first in 2010 with a full production at the True Colors Theater Company, which he co-founded, and then in 2017 with a one-night reading, starring Scarlett Johansson and the cast of an Avengers movie, to benefit hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.“I grew up thinking it wasn’t a play for me, but later in life I thought, ‘If you just include more people, it’s a play about our time and our planet and each other,’” he said in an interview.“The cast will not be all Black and it will not be all white and it will not be all famous,” he said. “I want all of us to feel included, and I want the play to speak to each and every heart in America.”The lead producer is Jeffrey Richards and no cast or theater has been announced. This will be the sixth production of “Our Town” on Broadway; the last one opened in 2002. More

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      in Music

      ‘The Who’s Tommy’ Will Return to Broadway This Spring

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      An acclaimed revival of the musical plans to open in March at the Nederlander Theater.“Tommy” is returning to Broadway.A Chicago-born revival of the classic rock opera, which got strong reviews and sold well at Goodman Theater over the summer, will open at the Nederlander Theater in March.Set in and around London over a number of years starting during World War II, the show is about a boy who stops communicating after several early traumas, embraces and excels at pinball, and begins to have messianic delusions. The story is considered an expression of generational anger.The musical, whose full title is “The Who’s Tommy,” began as a concept album in 1969, and the original stage production opened on Broadway in 1993. It won five Tony Awards, including for its score by Pete Townshend of the Who. Townshend not only wrote the music and lyrics, but is also credited with writing the book with Des McAnuff, who directed the original and is now directing the revival.Writing in The Chicago Tribune, the critic Chris Jones called the revival “truly a ready-for-prime-time stunner” and said “Broadway has nothing else like this wizardry going on.”The revival’s lead producers are Stephen Gabriel and Ira Pittelman. Gabriel said he had loved the show since his high school band played the songs at a school dance, and jumped at producing the project when McAnuff said he wanted to revisit the material.“What we saw in Chicago reaffirmed my original thought that the piece was ahead of its time,” Gabriel said. “I always knew the music would resonate again, but I think the story, with its themes of trauma and bullying, goes toward conversations we have today — that’s discussed more freely and thoughtfully now, and when the show presents those themes, the audience leans in.”The revival is scheduled to begin previews March 8 and to open March 28; casting has not yet been announced. The show is being capitalized for up to $17 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; Gabriel said he expected the actual budget to be closer to $15.5 million.“Tommy” is at least the fifth musical revival announced for this season, joining “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Spamalot,” “The Wiz” and “Cabaret.” More