Theater

Subterms

    Latest story

    188 Shares

    ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Is Now a Broadway Show. Here Are 5 Things to Know.

    by

    The new musical is based on Josefina López’s original play and the 2002 film adaptation that starred America Ferrera.Joy Huerta wasn’t so sure about musical theater.When the director and choreographer Sergio Trujillo approached Huerta in 2019 about adapting Josefina López’s play “Real Women Have Curves” into a musical, she had her doubts.Huerta, best known as half of the brother-and-sister pop duo Jesse & Joy, was unfamiliar with the 1990 play, and she had never seen the popular 2002 film adaptation starring America Ferrera. But then she began reading the script. And it was then, she said, that she understood why the story could be so compelling set to song.“I remember being so excited about it, because I was like, ‘Anyone can relate to this,’” said Huerta, 38, who composed the music and wrote the lyrics with Benjamin Velez, 37, for the show, which is now a Broadway musical scheduled to open on Sunday.Set in 1987 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, “Real Women Have Curves” explores immigrant experiences through the story of a group of Latina women working at a garment factory. The focus is on an 18-year-old who is torn between staying home to help her undocumented family members and relocating to New York to attend Columbia University on a scholarship. The production had an earlier run in 2023 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.Shortly after performances began on Broadway this month, Huerta, Velez and Lisa Loomer, who wrote the book with Nell Benjamin, discussed their inspirations and approach to adapting the story for the stage. In a separate conversation, Tatianna Córdoba, 25, who stars as the musical’s young heroine, Ana García, spoke about making her Broadway debut in a role she identifies with so closely. Here are five things to know about the production.“Real Women Have Curves” is at the James Earl Jones Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares17 Views

      in Theater

      Patrick Adiarte, Actor Seen in Musicals and on ‘M*A*S*H,’ Dies at 82

      by

      As a young immigrant from the Philippines, he had roles on Broadway in “The King and I” and “Flower Drum Song.” He was later a familiar face on TV.Patrick Adiarte, who was imprisoned as a baby in the Philippines during World War II and then found a new life in the United States as an actor and dancer on Broadway, in Hollywood and on television, died on April 10 in Los Angeles. He was 82.The cause of death, in a hospital, was complications of pneumonia, said Stephanie Hogan, his niece.Mr. Adiarte had a varied career, in which he played many characters, of various ethnicities, before he was cast in the first season of “M*A*S*H” as Ho-Jon, the Korean helper of the wisecracking doctors Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) and Trapper John (Wayne Rogers).As a child, Patrick portrayed one of the children of the king of Siam (now Thailand), who are tutored by a widowed schoolmistress in the original 1951 Broadway production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The King and I.” As a teenager, he played an assimilated Chinese American character in another of their shows, “Flower Drum Song” (1958).Mr. Adiarte, center, with Mike Lookinland, left, and Christopher Knight in a 1972 episode of “The Brady Bunch.”ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesHe also appeared in the movie versions of both shows, in 1956 and 1961.In the 1960s and early ’70s, he was seen on several TV series. On “Bonanza,” he played a Native American named Swift Eagle; on “Ironside,” he was a Samoan boxer; on “CBS Playhouse,” he was a Viet Cong guerrilla. He played a Hawaiian tour guide in two episodes of “The Brady Bunch,” filmed in Hawaii.In “High Time,” a 1960 film directed by Blake Edwards, he played an Indian exchange student who rooms with Bing Crosby, whose character returns to college in his 50s.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

    • 150 Shares27 Views

      in Theater

      How a Kentucky Man Trapped in a Cave Became a Broadway Musical

      by

      Floyd Collins was pinned under a rock while exploring a cave in 1925. That history, recounted in song, is now on Broadway.When Roger Brucker heard that the story of a trapped Kentucky cave explorer who slowly starved to death was being turned into a musical, he was doubtful. “Aren’t musicals supposed to be fun?” he thought.Brucker, 95, knows more than most about the doomed explorer Floyd Collins. He co-wrote the book “Trapped!,” which is considered the definitive history of the events that unfolded during the so-called Kentucky Cave Wars, a period of rapid subterranean exploration in the 1920s when the state commercialized its extensive cave systems for tourism opportunities.Collins was an accomplished spelunker in 1925 when he entered Sand Cave alone, only for a 27-pound rock to pin his ankle and trap him underground. Over the course of 14 days, he died of thirst, hunger and exhaustion, compounded by hypothermia.Turning that story into “Floyd Collins,” which made its Broadway debut at Lincoln Center Theater this week, was an exercise in bringing a bleak history to life through song.Tina Landau, the show’s director, bookwriter and additional lyricist, was an undergraduate student at Yale University — decades before she conceived “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical” and “Redwood” — when she came across a blurb about Collins in an anthology on American history. It focused on the media circus around the failed rescue, one of the most prominent national news stories between the two world wars.Landau, 62, said her perspective on the story was different from when she wrote the show, which premiered in 1996 at Playwrights Horizons, in her late 20s. She understands it now as an individual confronting his mortality.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

    • 138 Shares38 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Hold Me in the Water’ Review: Smitten, and Primed to Flirt

      by

      Ryan J. Haddad follows up his Obie-winning “Dark Disabled Stories” with a rom-com.In a lake off a beach, on a sun-warmed afternoon somewhere in upstate New York, Cupid was practicing his archery. An arrow, when it flew, pierced a young man’s torso, lodging firmly in his heart.Now, technically, there is no mention of the Roman god of love in “Hold Me in the Water,” the deliciously funny romantic comedy from the playwright-actor Ryan J. Haddad, but there doesn’t need to be. Watching his solo performance at Playwrights Horizons, we sense that arrow strike just as surely as if we’d been there with him, the summer he was 26 and taking a dip with his hot new crush.“This boy who’s holding both of my hands and facing me … Well, he never let go,” Haddad tells us in this slender memoir of a show, in which he plays a version of himself called Ryan. “Not for the entire hour. He held me in that water.” Then, lightly, he adds the crucial fact: “He made me feel safe.”Haddad, who has cerebral palsy, means physically safe; a lake, with its uncertain footing, poses dangers for him. But this attractive acquaintance, whom he has just met at an artists’ residency, seems to understand intuitively what his body needs. The day before, when an already interested Ryan asked for assistance up the steps into a bookshop, the guy (whose identity he blurs: no name, few particulars) knew exactly how to help, as if he had been doing it for years.“No questions had to be asked,” Haddad says. “No mishaps. The trust between our bodies — my hand, his hand — was magnetic and instinctual.”Swoon.Thus begins an exhilarating infatuation, physical trust leading quickly to emotional investment, along with palpable chemistry. But this is a rom-com, so there must be obstacles, separations, mixed signals — and agonizing over all of it, which Ryan does once he is back home in Manhattan.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

    • 113 Shares30 Views

      in Theater

      After ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Malfunction, Nicole Scherzinger Sings With Bullhorn

      by

      The “Sunset Boulevard” star briefly entertained the crowd when “a technical malfunction on the sound side” forced the cancellation of a matinee performance.In one of those moments that is likely to become Broadway lore, the actress Nicole Scherzinger grabbed a bullhorn to sing “With One Look” from “Sunset Boulevard” when the sound system failed on Wednesday afternoon at the St. James Theater.The packed matinee crowd had settled into the seats and was awaiting the start of the performance, which had been delayed for unspecified technical reasons. When it became clear backstage that the issues could not be resolved, Scherzinger, the show’s much-praised star, was not going to send the fans home empty-handed.So Scherzinger, a former Pussycat Doll, grabbed a bullhorn, and took the stage to sing one of the show’s best-known songs.“When it became apparent they couldn’t do the show, it was her idea to go out and speak to the audience, so she and Tom Francis came out,” said Rick Miramontez, a spokesman for the show, referring also to one of Scherzinger’s co-stars. “She asked stage management for a bullhorn, and she gave them a performance of one of the show’s biggest numbers.”The show was then canceled, and audience members were given a letter offering them a refund.“It was very disappointing, because we booked this a long time ago,” said Emily Feurring, a nutritionist who was in the audience, “but it was also kind of exciting because it was a New York moment, and no one else will ever get that.”“It was very sweet in a way,” she added. “And we live here, so we’ll get to go again.”Miramontez called the problem “a technical malfunction on the sound side,” and said the show’s producers were hopeful, but not certain, that the Wednesday evening performance would proceed as scheduled.The moment is reminiscent of others in which Broadway stars have vamped for audiences when technical issues have forced delays or cancellations to shows, many of which are dependent on electricity not only for voice amplification but also for automated set pieces, projections and building safety.On Tuesday, Darren Criss, Helen J Shen and Dez Duron, three of the lead performers in the musical “Maybe Happy Ending” entertained the crowd with songs when a medical emergency in the audience forced a lengthy pause in that show.And earlier this year, at the first preview of the new musical “Redwood,” a mid-show delay was caused by an issue with the set’s LED screens. Idina Menzel, the star, spent the time fielding questions from the audience, which was filled with fans looking for stories about her experiences performing in “Wicked” and “Rent” and as a voice actor in the “Frozen” films.But these incidents go way back — in Atlanta in the late 1990s, an early performance of the Disney musical that became “Aida” had to be stopped because of a technical problem, and the cast did the rest of the show concert-style. More

    • 113 Shares18 Views

      in Theater

      Review: Little Adds Up in the Elusive ‘Grief Camp’

      by

      Les Waters’s production for Atlantic Theater Company is marvelously realized, despite the limitations of the play’s often maddening script.The campers in Eliya Smith’s new play are not the happy kind. The show is called “Grief Camp,” after all — though Smith delays even mentioning what ails her characters. And when she finally gets to it, she parcels out information in fragmentary exchanges and scenes.This strategy does help the show steer clear of therapeutic bromides and conventional catharsis, but it creates a different problem: “Grief Camp,” which leans heavily on whimsy, feels unmoored, tentative.Les Waters’s staging of this play — Smith’s Off Broadway debut — for Atlantic Theater Company is marvelously realized, as much, at least, as Smith’s often maddening script allows. The set designer Louisa Thompson has recreated a cabin that feels so lived in, you can almost smell the wet towels and hear the soft creak of the bunk beds. The six teenagers who inhabit it can be tender or they can be aggressive. Sometimes they shut down and sometimes they open up. Always, communication proves slippery.Every morning, the kids are summoned to breakfast by P.A. announcements from the unseen Rocky (Danny Wolohan) that grow increasingly lengthy and surreal as the show progresses. Sometimes, a guitar player (Alden Harris-McCoy) comes in and strums a guitar by the side of the cabin. Is he a counselor? Do those teenagers really want to hear the country song “Goin’ Away Party”?Smith paints the campers in quick brush strokes as they go through their daily activities. The girls have a little more individuality than the boys — the underwritten Bard (Arjun Athalye) and Gideon (Dominic Gross) almost feel like payback for decades, if not centuries of malnourished female roles — but little adds up. The characters harbor emotions yet come across as numb, they have quirks yet are undifferentiated. You could consider this elusiveness as a commentary on grief itself, but it’s a challenge to bring an audience along.The most elaborate interactions take place between two characters whose shared scenes pique our attention: the counselor Cade (Jack DiFalco) and the camper Olivia (Renée-Nicole Powell), whose prickly relationship gives this nebulous show a source of narrative tension. He is not much older than his charges and like them he carries an emotional burden. But somehow he appears to incite tumultuous reactions in Olivia, who already has a tendency to hide her distress under a tough attitude and provocative statements — “Damn need to change my tampon,” she tells Cade, seemingly apropos of nothing. (Referencing Chekhov, the script describes Olivia as “a Yelena who thinks she’s a Sonya,” but she feels more like a Cady pretending she’s a Regina.)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

    • 113 Shares40 Views

      in Theater

      With ‘Floyd Collins,’ Jeremy Jordan Finds Another Challenge Onstage

      by

      In “Floyd Collins,” playing a hardscrabble Kentuckian trapped while exploring a cave, the actor finds inspiration in the claustrophobic restrictions.When Jeremy Jordan played a young, naïve cop in the Broadway show “American Son” alongside Kerry Washington, in 2018, he was fresh off several seasons on the “Supergirl” series. And so he tried to apply some of the techniques that worked for him on TV to a taut drama about police violence.“I had been making it work for so long, trying to mine gold from every moment, and I think that had stuck with me,” Jordan said. The director Kenny Leon intervened, with advice that Jordan still carries with him. Literally.“He gave me this note on some old piece of script,” Jordan said, fishing a tiny scrap of paper from his wallet and carefully unfolding it. “It says ‘you are good enough to just say these words.’”Leon’s counsel may be evergreen, but it particularly resonates with Jordan’s new project, where he is often unable to use many physical acting techniques.In “Floyd Collins,” which is at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Jordan portrays the title character of Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s musical, a hardscrabble Kentuckian who becomes trapped while exploring a cave in 1925. As a media circus forms on the surface, Floyd withers away underground, stuck between rocks. (The musical is based on a true story, which also inspired the Billy Wilder film “Ace in the Hole,” from 1951.)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

    • 150 Shares25 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’: An Origin Story for the Broadway Stage

      by

      This Broadway production delivers lots of spectacle as it winds back to the teenage years of Henry Creel, an antagonist from the Netflix series.If the economic point of entertainment franchises is to generate new forms of interconnected content, then theater is merely another logical outlet for a property, alongside movies, TV shows, comic books, video games and theme parks. So now here we are with “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” the latest pop-culture phenomenon to manifest into the Broadway dimension.As far as its plot is concerned, the play that just opened at the Marquis Theater fits neatly into the lore of “Stranger Things,” a wildly popular Netflix series about a fictional Indiana town at the juncture of terrifying government experiments and supernatural forces. This production is big, loud, often ingenious and occasionally breathtaking, in a “how the hell did they do this?” kind of way.In other words, “The First Shadow” fulfills its franchise requirements in terms of spectacular art direction and compliance to the series’ canon (to which it adds tantalizing tidbits). Whether it is satisfying as a piece of theater is a dicier proposition.Based on a story by the Duffer Brothers (who created the series), Jack Thorne (“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a co-creator of the current Netflix phenomenon “Adolescence”) and Kate Trefry, “The First Shadow,” written by Trefry, is a prequel to the series. More specifically, it piggybacks on Season 4, which is set in 1986, and tells the origin story of that season’s primary antagonist, Vecna — the teenager Henry Creel in 1959, when the main plot of the Broadway play takes place.If Vecna doesn’t ring a bell, or if you don’t know that Eleven is better than One, don’t fret: It’s possible to follow the show anyway, and to enjoy it. But it’s hard to deny that audience members who understand those references will have access to more layers of “The First Shadow.”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

    • 138 Shares39 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Macbeth in Stride’ Review: A Leap and Stumble Into a Classic

      by

      One of the most performed and reimagined works of English literature becomes a fourth-wall-breaking musical revue.“You gon’ rework a 400-year-old play just for your ego?” asks one of three witches in the new show “Macbeth in Stride.” Whitney White, who stars as Lady Macbeth in this quasi-feminist concert reimagining of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, smugly responds: “Yup. Sure did! Sure did!”I don’t fault “Macbeth in Stride,” which is now running at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, for its ego. We can always use work exploring what it means for a woman to proudly assert herself, to show her agency, to dare to grasp at power in spaces where she is meant to be secondary to a man. In this show, the artist invites us to see her through the role of Lady Macbeth, breaking the fourth wall to bring us into her process of recreating a character from one of the most frequently produced and remade works of English literature. But “Macbeth in Stride” is more ego than execution, more gestures than statements. And White’s heroine is much less substantial than the very character she’s critiquing and reworking in her own image.White, who wrote and performs this piece, is one of the city’s essential director-performers and is having an extended moment on New York stages this spring. Throughout her career she has focused on directing works by and about women and Black artists, including Bess Wohl, James Ijames and Aleshea Harris.In this work, White is centered as a kind-of Lady Macbeth (she’s just called “Woman” in the script) who’s a glam queen, a lead singer in a black bodysuit. She’s on a concert stage with a live band (the effortlessly talented Bobby Etienne on bass; Barbara Duncan, a.k.a. Muzikaldunk, on drums; and Kenny Rosario-Pugh on guitar), and those three witches (played by Phoenix Best, Holli’ Conway and Ciara Alyse Harris) are her backup singers and commentators.The main medium here is song, and “Macbeth in Stride” is an almost perilously eclectic mix of genres. The first song, “If Knowledge Is Power,” features the show’s music director and conductor, Nygel D. Robinson, on piano singing with glossy John Legend-style vocals. The melody suggests something lush and romantic, like a nocturne, but when the witches join in, they evoke the TLC days of 1990s R&B, with matching dance moves courtesy of Raja Feather Kelly.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