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      Striking Writers’ Union Denies Waiver, Imperiling Tony Awards Telecast

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      The Writers Guild of America indicated it would not grant a waiver to allow a live telecast of the Tonys on June 11, threatening one of Broadway’s biggest marketing moments.The union representing thousands of striking television and movie writers denied a waiver that Broadway officials had sought that would have allowed the Tony Awards ceremony to proceed with a live televised broadcast on its scheduled date of June 11, two people briefed on the decision said on Friday night.The denial by the union, the Writers Guild of America, described by people who were granted anonymity to disclose confidential discussions, is imperiling one of Broadway’s biggest nights — a key marketing opportunity that is even more crucial in the fragile post-shutdown theater economy. Industry leaders say that without the ability to reach the broad audience that tunes into a Tony Awards broadcast, several of the newest musicals are likely to close.Broadway boosters are still hoping that over the weekend the writers’ guild might be persuaded to change its mind. But industry leaders are acknowledging that such a reversal seems unlikely. Without a waiver from the writers’ guild, a live broadcast ceremony is essentially impossible because much of Broadway, including nominees and presenters, would refuse to cross a picket line.The management committee of the Tony Awards, which is the group charged with overseeing the broadcast, has scheduled an emergency meeting on Monday at which it will discuss how to proceed.One option would be to postpone the entire event until after the strike is settled, in which case some money-losing Broadway shows would most likely close rather than hang on in the hopes of an eventual boost from a broadcast. Another would be to hand out the awards in June in some non-televised fashion, which would significantly reduce the marketing value of the awards. But they could try to make up for that by staging some kind of razzle-dazzle song-and-dance-heavy broadcast after the strike ends.None of the parties would speak on the record on Friday night, but several people close to the discussions described the state of affairs after The Hollywood Reporter reported that the waiver had been denied.For Hollywood, the Tony Awards are not a front-burner issue — it is a niche ceremony watched last year by 3.9 million people, which is fewer than other awards ceremonies like the Oscars (18.7 million) or the Grammys (12.5 million).But for Broadway, the stakes are enormous. The Tony Awards are the industry’s biggest marketing moment — a chance to introduce viewers to shows they have not heard of, and to remind them of the joys of musical theater — and that kind of reach is especially important now, with Broadway attendance yet to reach prepandemic levels. Four of the five nominees for best new musical are not selling enough tickets to cover their running costs many weeks, and all could use the box office boost that a win, or even a well-performed number on the awards show, often provides.“Shucked,” which is also in contention for the best new musical Tony, hoped to get national exposure from a ceremony, its lead producer said.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“The Tony Awards is the biggest commercial for the industry at large, and for a show like mine, which is unbranded and just at the stage where we are finally starting to see some lifeblood, it would be devastating to not be able to be part of this,” Mike Bosner, the lead producer of “Shucked,” one of the five shows vying for the coveted best new musical award, said before the denial was announced.“Our whole timing of when we opened the show was based on being part of the ramp-up to the awards season, when there are a lot of eyeballs on the show and there’s national exposure,” he said.The Tony Awards are one of Broadway’s biggest marketing opportunities. Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo appeared on last year’s broadcast. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEven before news of the W.G.A.’s decision to deny the waiver spread, some producers were pessimistic. “My guess is that there won’t be a broadcast,” Robert Greenblatt, one of the producers of “Some Like It Hot,” which is also a nominee for best new musical, said earlier. Greenblatt is familiar with all sides of the issue — he is not only a frequent Broadway producer, but also a former chairman of NBC Entertainment and WarnerMedia.If the Tonys are delayed or derailed, it will damage many shows. “Particularly this season, when we’re still recovering from the Covid shutdown, it would be especially devastating to not have that opportunity — to not be able to showcase how many great and diverse plays and musicals are on Broadway right now,” said Eva Price, a lead producer of “& Juliet,” another contender for best new musical.Already, the W.G.A. strike has affected one awards show — last weekend’s MTV Movie & TV Awards. The host, Drew Barrymore, dropped out in solidarity with the union and the ceremony turned into a pretaped affair after the W.G.A. said it would picket.On Wednesday, with the prospect of hundreds of demonstrators marching on picket lines, Netflix abruptly announced it was canceling a major in-person Manhattan showcase it was staging for advertisers next week, and turning it into a virtual event instead.Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, also said he would not attend the upcoming PEN America Literary Gala at the American Museum of Natural History, a marquee event for the literary world that was scheduled to honor him. In a statement, Mr. Sarandos said it was best if he pulled out “given the threat to disrupt this wonderful evening.”In 2008, the last time the writers were on strike, organizers of the Golden Globes were forced to cancel the awards ceremony after the W.G.A. was actively organizing demonstrations and actors said they would not cross any picket lines. Winners were revealed in a news conference instead. But during that strike the W.G.A. did grant waivers to some televised ceremonies, including the Screen Actors Guild Awards.The organizations that present the Tony Awards, the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, declined to comment; they are said to be closely monitoring the situation but unsure of how to proceed. Representatives for the W.G.A., and CBS, the Tonys’ longtime broadcaster, also declined to comment. More

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      Jeremy Strong to Star in Broadway Revival of ‘An Enemy of the People’

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      The production, with a new script by Amy Herzog and directed by Sam Gold, will begin early next year.“Succession” is ending. So what’s next for Jeremy Strong? He’s returning to Broadway.Strong, whose celebrity has skyrocketed with his portrayal of the scheming Kendall Roy in HBO’s “Succession,” will star next year in a Broadway revival of the classic play “An Enemy of the People.” Strong will portray the title character, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, a physician who becomes a pariah when he decides to reveal that the water in local spa baths is contaminated.The play was written in 1882 by Henrik Ibsen and has been staged on Broadway 10 times, most recently in 2012. There have been other New York productions, too; a socially distanced one-woman version of the show was staged at the Park Avenue Armory in 2021, while the coronavirus pandemic was raging.This new production will feature a script rewritten by the playwright Amy Herzog, who is no stranger to reimagining Ibsen: Her revised version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is now on Broadway, with Jessica Chastain in the starring role.Strong, who won an Emmy award for his work on “Succession,” previously appeared on Broadway in a 2008 revival of “A Man for All Seasons.” He has also appeared in several Off Broadway productions.The “Enemy of the People” revival will be directed by Herzog’s husband, Sam Gold, who won a Tony Award for directing the musical “Fun Home,” and whose more recent Broadway ventures have been polarizing productions of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and “Macbeth.”“An Enemy of the People” is scheduled to run for 16 weeks in early 2024; an announcement on Friday did not specify the exact dates or the theater, and did not reveal any further casting. The producers are Seaview (Greg Nobile and Jana Shea) and Patrick Catullo, who previously collaborated on Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show “The Old Man & the Pool.” More

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      ‘Bad Cinderella’ to Close on Broadway, Ending Lloyd Webber’s Streak

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      When it concludes on June 4, an unbroken string of Andrew Lloyd Webber shows since 1979 will come to an end. His latest opened only in March.“Bad Cinderella,” a revisionist riff on the classic fairy tale, will close on June 4, bringing to an end, at least for the time being, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 43-year-long streak of shows on Broadway.The latest musical, which opened March 23, was not the pinnacle of that career — it was greeted on Broadway by hostile reviews, garnered zero Tony nominations and struggled at the box office. Last week it played to houses that were only 54 percent full and grossed just $326,303, which made it the lowest-grossing musical on Broadway.It had fared slightly better in London, and not just because “bad” was not part of the title there — critics had looked on it more favorably when it opened in the West End after multiple pandemic-related delays, but it had only a modest run and a closing clouded by the way the cast was informed and some of the words Lloyd Webber used to describe the turn of events.The musical is, like most Cinderella stories, about a shabbily treated young woman whose fortunes change when she meets a prince. The twists, in this production, are that the protagonist is rebellious, Prince Charming is gay, and beauty standards are oppressive.In addition to music by Lloyd Webber, who is best known as the wildly successful composer of hit musicals like “Cats,” “Evita” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” the musical features a book created by Emerald Fennell (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Promising Young Woman”) and then adapted by the playwright Alexis Scheer (“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord”), and lyrics by David Zippel (who won a Tony years ago for writing the lyrics for “City of Angels”). “Bad Cinderella” is directed by Laurence Connor, who previously enjoyed more success directing Lloyd Webber’s 2015 musical, “School of Rock.”“Bad Cinderella” was capitalized for up to $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped. The musical’s lead producer is Christine Schwarzman, a lawyer; together she and her husband, the Blackstone billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, are major players in New York financial and philanthropic circles. Christine Schwarzman has become increasingly active as a producer on Broadway through her production company, No Guarantees; she is also a lead producer of “Fat Ham,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in drama and is nominated for the best play Tony Award.At the time of its closing, “Bad Cinderella” will have played 33 preview performances and 85 regular performances. More

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      As Broadway Rebounds, ‘Some Like It Hot’ Gets 13 Tony Nominations

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      As Broadway’s rebound from the pandemic shutdown picks up pace, Tony nominators showered much-sought attention on a wide variety of shows, from razzle-dazzle spectacles to quirky adventurous fare.“Some Like It Hot,” a musical based on the classic Billy Wilder film about two musicians who witness a gangland slaying and dress as women to escape the mob, scored the most nominations: 13. But it faces stiff competition in the race for best new musical — ticket buyers have not made any of the contenders a slam-dunk hit, and there does not appear to be a consensus among the industry insiders who make up the Tony voting pool.Three other musicals picked up nine nominations apiece: “& Juliet,” which combines pop songs with an alternative narrative arc for Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers; “New York, New York,” a dance-driven show about a pair of young musicians seeking success and love in a postwar city; and “Shucked,” a pun-laden country comedy about a rural community facing a corn crisis. “Kimberly Akimbo,” a critical favorite about a high school student with a life-altering genetic condition and a criminally dysfunctional family, picked up eight nominations.The Tony nominations also feature plenty of boldfaced names. Among the stars from the worlds of pop music, film and television who earned nods are Sara Bareilles, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer, Josh Groban, Sean Hayes, Samuel L. Jackson, Wendell Pierce and Ben Platt. Another went to one of Broadway’s most-admired stars: Audra McDonald, who, with nine previous nominations and six wins, has won the most competitive Tony Awards of any performer in history.The musical “Shucked,” the rare Broadway show about corn, got nine nominations. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis year’s Tony Awards come at the end of the first full-length season since the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close for about a year and a half. Given that tourism remains below prepandemic levels, many workers have not returned to Midtown offices, and inflation has made producing far more expensive, the season has been surprisingly robust, with a wide range of offerings.“Entertainment is like food — sometimes you’re in the mood for an organic small plate, and sometimes for a burger and fries, and the best thing about New York is we’ve got the variety,” said Victoria Clark, the Tony-nominated star of “Kimberly Akimbo.”Broadway shows this season had grossed $1.48 billion as of April 30, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. That’s nearly double the grosses at the same point last season — $751 million — but lower than the $1.72 billion at the same point in 2019, during the last full prepandemic season.Other key metrics are better, too: 11.5 million seats have been filled on Broadway this season, compared with 6 million at the same point last season, but still down from the 13.8 million that had been filled by this point in 2019.The Tony nominations, which were chosen by a panel of 40 theater industry experts who saw all 38 eligible shows and have no financial interest in any of them, are particularly important to shows that are still running, which try to use the vote of confidence to woo potential ticket buyers.“It’s all about what’s going to make a show run longer and create more jobs for more people,” said Casey Nicholaw, the director and choreographer of “Some Like It Hot.” “Hopefully we’ll sell more tickets, and the show will be more of a success.”The Tony nominations can also boost the employment prospects, and the compensation, of artists. And, of course, they are a tribute to excellence. “It means something when your peers and your colleagues see beauty in something you make,” said James Ijames, whose play “Fat Ham” was among the nominated productions.“Between Riverside and Crazy” was among the nominees for best new play. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a complicated place, dominated by commercial producers but also with six theaters run by nonprofits, and the work this season, as is often the case, featured everything from experimental plays tackling challenging subjects to more mainstream fare that aims primarily to entertain.Among the five nominees for best new play, three have already won the Pulitzer Prize in drama, including “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s story of a retired police officer trying to hang onto his apartment; “Cost of Living,” Martyna Majok’s exploration of caregiving and disability; and “Fat Ham,” Ijames’s riff on “Hamlet,” set in the North Carolina backyard of a family that runs a barbecue restaurant.The two other Tony-nominated plays are each significant in their own ways: “Leopoldstadt” is Tom Stoppard’s autobiographically inspired drama about a European Jewish family before, during and after World War II, while “Ain’t No Mo’” is Jordan E. Cooper’s outlandish comedy imagining that the United States offers its Black residents one-way tickets to Africa.The nominations for “Ain’t No Mo’” were especially striking given that the show struggled to find an audience and closed early. “I’m just so elated, I can barely find the words,” said Cooper, who was nominated both as writer and actor. “There was a lot of turbulence, but we landed the plane.”Stoppard is already the winningest playwright in Broadway history, having won Tony Awards for four previous plays (“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia”). He is now 85 years old, and “Leopoldstadt” is his 19th production on Broadway. Stoppard said he was proud of the nomination, but sorry the play had come to seem so timely at a moment of rising concern about antisemitism.“Nobody wants society to be divided,” he said in an interview, “and I like to think ‘Leopoldstadt’ works against a sense of human beings dividing up and confronting each other.”Jordan E. Cooper in his comedy “Ain’t No Mo’,” which was nominated for best play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOf the 38 Tony-eligible plays and musicals this season, 27 scored at least one nomination, leaving 11 with no nods. Among the musicals snubbed by the nominators were “Bad Cinderella,” the critically drubbed new musical from one of the most successful musical theater composers of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as a progressive rethink of “1776,” about the debate over the Declaration of Independence, which was revived with a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers.One of the musicals that did not score any nominations, a revival of “Dancin’,” quickly declared plans to close: A little more than nine hours after the Tony nominations were announced, the revue’s producers said its last performance would be May 14. Among the seven plays shut out was “The Thanksgiving Play,” which is thought to be the first work on Broadway by a female Native American playwright, Larissa FastHorse.The season featured shows examining a wide variety of diverse stories, and the nominations reflect that.At a time when gender identity issues have become increasingly politicized in the nation, nominations were earned by two gender nonconforming actors: J. Harrison Ghee, a star of “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell, a supporting actor in “Shucked.”Helen Park, who is the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the musical “KPOP.” “The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories,” she said, “the richer the Broadway soundscape and Broadway landscape will be.”Five plays by Black writers were nominated in either the best play or best play revival category, and four of the five nominees for leading actor in a play are Black.“I broke down in tears,” Pierce said about learning that he was among those nominees, for playing Willy Loman in a revival of “Death of a Salesman” in which the traditionally white Loman family is now African American. “I did not know how profoundly moving it would be. It was the culmination of years of hard work and a reflection on how much effort and toil went into the challenge of playing the role.”This was a strong season for musical revivals, and the nominated shows include two with scores by Stephen Sondheim — “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd” — as well as the Golden Age classic “Camelot” and “Parade,” which is a show about the early 20th-century lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia.“Into the Woods” was one of two Stephen Sondheim revivals to earn nominations.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re so happy audiences are taking to it, and we hope that Sondheim would be happy this morning as well,” said Groban, starring as the title character in “Sweeney Todd.”The nominated play revivals are also a compelling bunch: a hypnotically minimalist version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” adapted by Amy Herzog and starring Chastain as a Norwegian debtor trapped in a sexist marriage; a bracing production of Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog,” about two brothers ominously named Lincoln and Booth; a rare staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” featuring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan; and a ghostly performance of “The Piano Lesson,” August Wilson’s classic drama about a family wrestling with the meaning, and monetary value, of an heirloom.The 769 Tony voters now have until early June to catch up on shows they have not yet seen before they cast their electronic ballots. The awards ceremony itself will be held on June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in a ceremony hosted by Ariana DeBose.Julia Jacobs More

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      ‘Dancin’’ to Close on Broadway, a Casualty of Tony Nominations

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      The production, a revue celebrating the choreography of Bob Fosse, received no Tony nominations on Tuesday. Its last show will be May 14.This season’s Broadway revival of “Dancin’,” a revue celebrating the choreography of Bob Fosse, will end its short run on Sunday, May 14, the show’s producers announced on Tuesday evening, just hours after receiving zero Tony nominations.The show, with little narrative but virtuosic dance, opened on March 19. At the time of its closing it will have played 17 preview performances and 65 regular performances.The original production, which opened in 1978, fared far better, running for a total of 1,787 performances. The original was nominated for seven Tony Awards and won two, including for best choreography; among the nominees was the dancer Wayne Cilento, who is directing the current revival.The New York Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called the current production “often-thrilling, often-frustrating,” and other reviews were mixed.The production was one of 11 that received no Tony nominations on Tuesday. The revival had a pre-Broadway production last year at the Old Globe in San Diego.The revival’s lead producer is Joey Parnes, and Fosse’s daughter, Nicole, was also involved with the production. It was capitalized for up to $15 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped. More

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      J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell, Gender Nonconforming Performers, Earn Tony Nominations

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      Even as gender identity has become an increasingly politicized subject in a polarized America, Broadway shows are featuring a growing number of gender nonconforming performers, and two of them scored Tony nods Tuesday morning.J. Harrison Ghee, one of the stars of a musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,” was nominated in the best leading actor in a musical category. And Alex Newell, who plays a whiskey distiller in the country musical “Shucked,” was nominated in the best featured actor in a musical category.Both performers use he/she/they pronouns, and both agreed to be considered as actors (rather than actresses) for Tony purposes.Another gender nonconforming performer on Broadway this season, Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet,” opted out of awards consideration, rather than choosing between the actor and actress categories. More

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      ‘Harmony,’ a Manilow Musical Set Under Nazis, Is Broadway-Bound

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      The show about the Comedian Harmonists, a real-life sextet that ran afoul of the Nazi regime, was first staged in 1997.“Harmony,” a musical about a German singing group upended by the rise of Nazism, will finally open on Broadway this fall with songs by Barry Manilow and his longtime collaborator, Bruce Sussman.The show, which Manilow and Sussman have been developing for more than 25 years, tells the true story of a sextet that ran afoul of the Nazi regime because the group featured both Jewish and non-Jewish members. The ensemble was called the Comedian Harmonists.“They represent everything I love — they’re a combination of The Manhattan Transfer and the Marx Brothers, with complicated harmonies — and funny as hell,” said Manilow, who wrote the show’s music. “When we dug into it, it just killed me: Why don’t we know about them?”Sussman, who wrote the book and lyrics, said the show was “about the quest for harmony in what turned out to be the most discordant chapter in human history.”Musicals often take a long time to reach Broadway, but “Harmony” has had a particularly protracted journey. The show was first staged in 1997, at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, and since then has had productions, with varying creative teams and casts: in 2013 at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, in 2014 at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, and last year at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York. There have been previous efforts to bring the show to Broadway, including a planned 2004 production that fell apart over a lack of funds.“We’re not letting go of this,” Manilow said. “We knew we had something that was special, even though we kept hitting brick walls.”The show is arriving at a time when antisemitism has become, once again, a growing concern in the United States and beyond; the issue is currently explored on Broadway in the play “Leopoldstadt” and the musical “Parade.” “It is sadly more resonant,” Sussman said, “with the rise of not only antisemitism but of autocrats around the world.”The Comedian Harmonists have been explored by other storytellers in the past: There was a 1997 movie, “The Harmonists,” and an unsuccessful 1999 musical, “Band in Berlin.” This latest musical is based in part on a historical archive compiled by Peter Czada.The Broadway production will be directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, who won a Tony Award for choreographing “After Midnight,” and who also helmed last year’s “Harmony” production with the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The Broadway cast has not yet been announced.The production is scheduled to start previews on Oct. 18 and to open on Nov. 13 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The lead producers are Ken Davenport, Sandi Moran and Garry Kief. More