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    Jonathan Bailey’s Bratty, Bad-Boy ‘Richard II’ at the Bridge Theater

    The actor, on a hot streak after “Wicked,” takes on his biggest stage role to date. In London, he plays Shakespeare’s unfortunate king as a flouncing sociopath.The Bridge Theater is within walking distance of the Tower of London, where in 1399 King Richard II was imprisoned and forced to abdicate England’s throne in favor of his cousin, who became Henry IV. Where better to stage a new production of William Shakespeare’s play about Richard’s downfall? From the playhouse foyer, theatergoers can look out at the tower across the River Thames, and the distance of those 600 years shrinks to nothing.In this modern-dress take on “Richard II” directed by Nicholas Hytner and running through May 10, the hapless king is played by the English actor Jonathan Bailey, who is on a hot streak following recent high-profile screen roles — as Fiyero in “Wicked” and Anthony Bridgerton in “Bridgerton” — and is now taking on his biggest stage role to date.Bailey gives an engrossing performance as Richard, whose corrupt misrule fuels popular support for the usurper cousin, Henry Bolingbroke (Royce Pierreson), despite the medieval doctrine that the monarch is anointed by God and therefore untouchable. After making a series of strategic blunders, Richard is decisively outmaneuvered by Bolingbroke’s rebel army and meets a swift, brutal demise.Historical accounts remarked upon Richard’s effeminacy and in Bailey’s adroit rendering he is a capricious, flouncing sociopath whose every utterance is suffused with performative irony. He declares with mock solemnity that he has no choice but to raise taxes — and then gleefully helps himself to a line of cocaine. Moments after his uncle’s death, he hops onto the recently vacated hospital bed and blithely scoffs down grapes. When Richard finally agrees to hand over power, he proffers the crown and then retracts it — twice — like a petulant child refusing to part with a toy. All this badness is great fun to watch.Bailey with Royce Pierreson, whose Bolingbroke has the abstracted air of a man impelled by forces greater than himself.Manuel HarlanIn contrast, Pierreson’s Bolingbroke has the abstracted air of a man impelled by forces greater than himself. With his hulking frame, balled-up fists and blunt vocal delivery, he is a striking counterpoint to the dissipatedly charming Richard. (After one of the king’s more florid speeches, a bewildered Bolingbroke impatiently asks one of his cronies to translate: “What says his majesty?”) Michael Simkins is the pick of the supporting cast as the Duke of York, who tries in vain to straddle the warring factions. His finger-wagging exasperation, verging at times on slapstick, gives an audience-friendly commentary on the unfolding intrigue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Hundreds of Artists Call on N.E.A. to Roll Back Trump’s Restrictions

    In one of the first signs of collective pushback to the Trump administration’s arts initiatives, several hundred American artists are calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to roll back restrictions on grants to institutions with programming that promotes diversity or “gender ideology.”Among the 463 writers, poets, dancers, visual artists and others who signed the letter are the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Jackie Sibblies Drury, Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel. There is also one name with striking historical resonance: Holly Hughes, a performance artist who in 1990 was one of the so-called N.E.A. Four, denied funding by the agency because of concern from conservative critics at the height of that era’s culture wars.“In some ways this just feels like déjà vu all over again,” Ms. Hughes, now a professor of art and design at the University of Michigan, said in a telephone interview. “These funding restrictions are a good barometer for who is the easy punching bag in American culture at the moment.”The artists on Tuesday sent a letter to the N.E.A. objecting to new requirements for grant applicants that the organization put in place this month to comply with executive orders signed by President Trump. One of the requirements is that applicants “not operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws”; the other is that federal funds not be used “to promote gender ideology,” referring to an executive order, prompted by Mr. Trump’s concern about public policy toward transgender people, that declares that American policy is “to recognize two sexes, male and female.”The artists’ letter asks the N.E.A. to “reverse” the changes, saying “abandoning our values is wrong, and it won’t protect us. Obedience in advance only feeds authoritarianism.”“Trump and his enablers may use doublespeak to claim that support for artists of color amounts to ‘discrimination’ and that funding the work of trans and women artists promotes ‘gender ideology’ (whatever that is),” the letter adds. “But we know better: the arts are for and represent everybody.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Barrie Kosky Is the Director New York Has Been Waiting For

    One of the busiest stage directors in Europe is fully arriving, at last, with “The Threepenny Opera” this spring.When “The Threepenny Opera” returns to New York this spring, for an all-too-brief visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it will be notable for a few reasons.For one, it will be a homecoming. Although “Threepenny” was born in Berlin, an artifact of Weimar-era culture, with music by Kurt Weill and text by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, it had a midcentury resurgence on the level of a pop-culture phenomenon when it was revived Off Broadway in 1954.And it will be performed by the Berliner Ensemble, which was founded by Brecht and still operates out of the theater where “Threepenny” had its premiere in 1928. The group is a trustworthy custodian of a work that is often mishandled today, especially in recent New York productions.But what is most important about this run of “Threepenny,” presented by BAM and St. Ann’s Warehouse April 3 through 6, is that it will be the first real opportunity for New York audiences to see the work of the director Barrie Kosky.Though Kosky, 58, graced local playbills once before, when his production of “The Magic Flute,” a collaboration with the company 1927, came to the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2019, “Threepenny” will be the first show that is purely his own. Which should come as a shock, since Kosky is one of the busiest and most brilliant, not to mention entertaining, directors working in Europe today.He is a director accomplished in theater and opera. His work could fit easily on Broadway and at the Metropolitan Opera, with a balance of intelligence and showmanship that would breathe new life into both. This “Threepenny” will be an opportunity for him to win over New York audiences. Will impresarios be watching?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Hear How a ‘Smash’ Song Got a Broadway Makeover

    “Let Me Be Your Star,” which evokes an actor’s longing to shine, has come a long way from its TV days. Here’s how the song evolved on its way to the stage.On a recent morning at a rehearsal room on 42nd Street, the actress Robyn Hurder stood atop a pedestal, red lips parted, arms outstretched, blond curls vibrating as she sang the final notes of “Let Me Be Your Star.” Then she collapsed, breathless.“This number’s hard,” she said, her face glistening with sweat. “Who did this?”Well, plenty of people. “Let Me Be Your Star” was written over a dozen years ago for the pilot episode of NBC’s “Smash,” a backstage-set nighttime soap about the hectic creation of a Broadway musical, “Bombshell.” There were plans to bring “Bombshell,” a biomusical about Marilyn Monroe, to the real Broadway, but those plans never came to fruition. Neither did “Smash,” which was canceled after two seasons.But “Let Me Be Your Star,” a classic “I want” song that its composer and co-lyricist, Marc Shaiman, has described as a “neck-bursting showstopper,” endures. Originally sung at the close of the pilot by Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee, the song, which was nominated for Grammy and Emmy Awards, has been covered by Andrew Rannells on “Girls,” by Jonathan Groff and Jeremy Jordan at MCC Theater’s Miscast benefit, by Ben Platt and Nicole Scherzinger in concert and by masses of fans (and the occasional Muppet, on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Ostensibly a song about Monroe’s life, it resonates for any actor — and really, anyone — who longs to shine.Now it’s been reimagined as the opening number of “Smash,” a new Broadway musical that riffs on the TV show. Hurder plays Ivy Lynn, a Broadway actress tasked with playing Marilyn in “Bombshell.” This opening version of “Let Me Be Your Star” is staged by the director Susan Stroman and the choreographer Joshua Bergasse (also a veteran of the TV “Smash”) as a Great White Way fever dream featuring elaborate harmonies, athletic dance and a brassy, big-band sound. The song recurs, in a very different style, at the end of the first act, though the producers are keeping those details secret. And it may return a third time.“It’s possible!” Stroman said.The stage version of “Smash” follows the backstage meltdown of a fictional show called “Bombshell” as it approaches opening night.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAt that morning rehearsal, Stroman had Hurder and the ensemble run the number again. There were flips, lifts, mambo moves, thrilling vocal frills. More

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    In ‘The Years,’ an Abortion Scene Is Causing Audience Members to Pass Out

    “The Years,” running in London, dramatizes a woman’s life from teenage thrills to later-life sex. One intense scene is causing audience members to pass out.About 40 minutes into a recent performance of “The Years” in London, Stephanie Schwartz suddenly felt ill and had to put her head between her legs.Onstage at the Harold Pinter Theater, the actress Romola Garai was holding two knitting needles while portraying a young Frenchwoman trying to give herself an abortion. The scene was set in 1964, a time when medical abortions were illegal in France, and Garai’s character wasn’t ready for motherhood.Schwartz, 39, said she had started feeling faint as Garai’s character, Annie, described her attempt to carry out the procedure in stark, if brief, detail. But then, Schwartz recalled, there was a commotion in the balcony above. An audience member had actually passed out.Since opening last summer for a short run at the Almeida Theater, then again last month on the West End, “The Years” has been the talk of London’s theaterland. That has as much to do with audience reactions to the six-minute abortion scene as the near-universal critical acclaim that the production and its five actresses received for their powerful portrayal of one woman’s life.While fainting theatergoers are nothing new — several passed out over the onstage torture in Sarah Kane’s “Cleansed” at the National Theater almost a decade ago — the sheer number keeling over at “The Years” stands out. Sonia Friedman, the show’s producer, said that at least one person has fainted at every performance despite a warning to ticketholders.Romola Garai assumed that British theatergoers were so accustomed to viewing bloody productions of Shakespeare that they were unlikely to have a strong reaction to the play’s abortion scene.Helen MurrayWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Live Performance in New York City: Here’s What to See This Spring

    Onstage, Denzel Washington is Othello, and Paul Mescal is Stanley Kowalski as stars illuminate the theater marquees. Plus: FKA twigs takes “Eusexua” on tour. Bang on a Can, Twyla Tharp, and much more.BroadwayOPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES)Mel Semé and Natalie Venetia Belcon in the musical “Buena Vista Social Club.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB This jukebox musical about the Cuban artists who made the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album of the title isn’t straight biography. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”), it uses real people and events as a jumping-off point for its storytelling. Rooted in the recording sessions, and choreographed by Patricia Delgado and the Tony winner Justin Peck (“Illinoise”), it was an Off Broadway hit last season for Atlantic Theater Company. Performances begin Feb. 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.OTHELLO Denzel Washington made a Broadway box-office hit out of “Julius Caesar” two decades ago. On the big screen, he has played Macbeth. Now he takes on Shakespeare’s Othello — the honorable general and smitten newlywed. Jake Gyllenhaal is his foil as the perfidious Iago, who goads Othello into unreasoning jealousy with lies about his beloved Desdemona (Molly Osborne). Directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony winner for his revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which also starred Washington. Feb. 24-June 8 at the Barrymore Theater.PURPOSE Fresh off his Tony win for “Appropriate,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns with a new drama about the members of a famous, albeit fictional, Black political dynasty in Chicago, reckoning with history, morality and legacy as they gather for a celebration. Phylicia Rashad directs this Steppenwolf Theater production, whose ensemble cast includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix and another 2024 Tony winner, Kara Young. Feb. 25-July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater.GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s luxuriantly crude, bare-knuckled real estate drama, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, gets its third Broadway revival. Kieran Culkin, last on Broadway a decade ago in “This Is Our Youth,” stars as Richard Roma — the Al Pacino role in the movie adaptation — opposite Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and John Pirruccello. Patrick Marber, a 2023 Tony winner for his production of “Leopoldstadt,” directs. How’s that for a lead? March 10-May 31 at the Palace Theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lea Salonga Is Never Getting Tired of Sondheim

    Nobody doubted that Lea Salonga could sing.She had won a Tony Award at the age of 20 for her breakout role as the besotted Vietnamese teen Kim in “Miss Saigon,” and sung her heart out as Éponine, and later Fantine, in Broadway productions of “Les Misérables.” She provided the crystalline vocals of not one but two Disney princesses: the warrior heroine of 1998’s “Mulan” and the magic carpet-riding Princess Jasmine in 1992’s “Aladdin.”But could the singer handle Sondheim — a composer heralded for creating some of the most challenging, idiosyncratic work seen on the American stage — on Broadway? Could she inhabit a character like Momma Rose, the monstrous, pathologically ambitious stage mother from “Gypsy”? Or Mrs. Lovett from “Sweeney Todd,” the butcher/baker who breaks down the marketing challenges of hawking pies filled with human meat, in a Cockney accent, no less?“Some of it’s hard,” Salonga admitted.But she is doing all that and more in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” currently playing at the Ahmanson Theater here in Los Angeles after a 16-week run in London’s West End. Scheduled to begin previews on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater next month, the show features more than three dozen songs from some of Sondheim’s biggest musicals, including “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “A Little Night Music” and “Into the Woods.” The tribute revue also stars Bernadette Peters, who, no stranger to Sondheim, put her own indelible stamp on the character of Momma Rose in 2003.Salonga, center, stars in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” with, from left, Jasmine Forsberg, Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Maria Wirries and Joanna Riding.Matthew MurphySalonga, Peters said, “has one of the great Broadway voices, and she just brings down the house.”For Salonga, “I’m getting the chance to sing some of the most incredible lyrics ever written. I’m getting to dip, not just a toe, but my entire body, into this incredible work.”“Nobody was surprised how terrific she was as a performer,” said the show’s producer Cameron Mackintosh, who also cast Salonga in “Miss Saigon” and “Les Misérables.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Ken Wydro, Who Helped Create an Off Broadway Phenomenon, Dies at 81

    He and his wife, Vy Higginsen, poured all they had into “Mama, I Want to Sing,” a long-shot musical that became an enduring staple of Black theater.Ken Wydro, a playwright, director and producer who with his wife, Vy Higginsen, poured their life savings into the Off Broadway gospel musical “Mama, I Want to Sing,” an enduring work of Black theater that ran for more than 2,800 performances, died on Jan. 21 at his home in Harlem. He was 81.The cause was heart failure, his daughter, Ahmaya Knoelle Higginson, said.“Mama, I Want to Sing” tells the tale of a minister’s daughter who rises to international fame as a soul singer. The show is loosely based on the life of Ms. Higginsen’s older sister, Doris Troy, who honed her singing chops at her father’s Pentecostal church in Harlem and later tasted the big time by co-writing and recording “Just One Look,” which was a Top 10 single for her in 1963 and later became a hit for both the Hollies and Linda Ronstadt.Ms. Troy also made her mark as a backup singer on rock anthems like the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and in 1970 she released a solo album on the Beatles’ label, Apple Records, with a supporting cast that included George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Billy Preston.“Mama, I Want to Sing” is “a Black Cinderella story,” Mr. Wydro said in a 2013 interview with Call Me Adam, an entertainment website. “Coming from behind, finding oneself through loss, pain and family love.”A 1988 performance of “Mama, I Want to Sing” at the Heckscher Theater in East Harlem. Nearly every major theatrical producer in New York rejected the show before it found a home there.Martha SwopeAlthough “Mama” ultimately had a marathon run, success was anything but guaranteed. Nearly every major theatrical producer in New York rejected the show, fearing that a gospel-heavy musical would attract a limited audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More