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      Alex Brightman Lays ‘Beetlejuice’ to Rest

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      A concussion nearly derailed the actor’s fan-favorite turn as the madcap, black-and-white striped ghoul. But he recovered in time for the closing show.As Alex Brightman disappeared through the doorway to the Netherworld one last time at the Marquis Theater on Sunday night, his black-and-white-striped Beetlejuice suit enveloped by a cloud of smoke, he uttered a few special parting words:“Goooodbye, Broadway!”And he meant it.“I’m very aware that it really could be the last time I am on Broadway,” said Brightman, 35, who for parts of the past four years has played the ghostly guide to the other side in “Beetlejuice,” the Broadway musical based on the 1988 Tim Burton film about a face-off between a goth girl and a devious demon. “So it’s a humbling experience to be up there and to be able to share and be vulnerable.”After his first entrance of the final show, Brightman was met with a two-minute standing ovation.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesHis farewell wasn’t quite the one he had anticipated. At a Christmas Eve performance, Brightman slammed into the show’s giant sandworm backstage at a full sprint — when a door hadn’t opened, Brightman tried an ill-fated alternate route — leaving him with a concussion.“I didn’t realize what had happened,” he said. “I figured I just banged my head.”Symptoms abruptly surfaced two days later, and after spending the next week nauseous, achy and painfully sensitive to light, he thought he’d played his final performance — maybe ever. (Three of the show’s standby and understudy Beetlejuices, Andrew Kober, Elliott Mattox and Will Blum, filled in while Brightman was out.)“I thought I wasn’t going to recover,” said Brightman, who was funny and lively in the eighth-floor cocktail lounge at the Marriott Marquis hotel before getting into costume for Sunday evening’s performance. “It felt like one long 10- or 11-day sickness in one day.”But things improved about a week ago, he said, and after doing a four-hour rehearsal on Thursday, he got the all-clear to return for the show’s final three evening performances.The 1,602 audience members at the sold-out performance on Sunday night, many of whom sported black-and-white striped suits and green wigs, showered Brightman with appreciation. (Everyone in attendance received a special Playbill with a silver sticker on the cover that read “It’s the Final Showtime.”) It started with his first entrance, when he received two minutes of applause and a standing ovation.Brightman received a Tony Award nomination in 2019 for his performance as Beetlejuice.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“I’ve never had that happen before,” said Brightman, who has been in six Broadway shows, earning Tony Award nominations for his role in “Beetlejuice” and as Dewey Finn in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation of “School of Rock.”Though “Beetlejuice” opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater in April 2019 to mixed reviews (the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “absolutely exhausting”), it became a fan favorite — dozens of them would turn up as Lydia, the Maitlands and, of course, Beetlejuice to compete in the musical’s preshow costume contests. Still, the show was handed a closing notice in December of that year when what the Shubert Organization saw as a potentially lucrative production of “The Music Man” needed its real estate. Then the pandemic happened, and the production shuttered in March 2020.The surging sales before the closure led producers to reopen the show last year at the Marquis Theater in April. But attendance dipped again over the summer, and producers announced in October that the show would close in January after 679 performances. (A national touring production began in December, and there are also coming international versions in Brazil and Japan.)To protect his vocal cords, Brightman creates Beetlejuice’s signature gruff voice using a technique called ventricular fold phonation, in which he vibrates the cartilage in his throat.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBrightman and Elizabeth Teeter, who plays Lydia, paid tribute to the show’s fans, known as “Netherlings,” on Sunday night, holding up signs at the curtain call that read “Hey guys” and “Love you guys!”“This is a show about death that’s actually really a celebration of life,” the show’s director, Alex Timbers, said from the stage after a purple-and-green confetti storm. “And you all have given us life.”Before the show and directly afterward in his dressing room — sweaty and smiling in a white V-neck stained with green and red blotches as his team helped him remove his makeup for the final time — Brightman reflected on parting ways with the ghost with the most, the show’s fervent fan following and what’s next for him (other than, of course, sleeping).These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“This is a show about death that’s actually really a celebration of life,” said Alex Timbers, the show’s director, addressing the house on closing night. “And you all have given us life.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesYou first read the part in 2017. How are you feeling after tonight’s performance?Exhausted. It was very cathartic. I’m thrilled I got to close it after six years.Do you have any lingering effects from the concussion?I still have headaches, but they’re not pounding. I take Aleve. And my doctor said I will probably be prone to more headaches throughout the rest of my life because of it, but nothing too crazy.How important was it to you to make it back for the closing night?I’m not necessarily one of those people that believes in making that miraculous appearance at that last performance because he has to. I value my health, and I want to do more things after this. So running the risk of passing out onstage or reinjuring myself if I wasn’t ready was not in the cards.What has it been like starring in a show with such a devoted fan base?It never, ever gets old. The “Beetlejuice” fans are the warmest fans that I’ve ever encountered in the six Broadway shows I’ve done. It’s a lot of me in there, so for 1,500 people to accept my character in the show and my style of absurdity and comedy and improv is extremely cathartic and emotional.What is it like to spend so long with the same character?The last thing I want to do is be bored with anything I do, and anything this long has that danger, but this part allows me to discover new things not every night, but every minute. I have the ability to be a bit topical, a bit loose — it doesn’t feel like I’m on a track. That’s made it easy to do for six years.The show developed a devoted fan base who call themselves “Netherlings.” They frequently attended shows dressed as “Beetlejuice” characters.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesWhat’s a moment that’s different in every show?There’s a part in the opening number where I have a stand mic and do a Frank Sinatra impression for a “Tip Your Waitress” kind of thing. And in it, there’s space for me to say a couple of things if I want to. The other night, I just screamed “The Kardashians!” and it got a laugh for no reason. And then right after I said, “I can’t keep up with them.” “Gangnam Style!” has also been a popular one.What did your first attempts at the Beetlejuice voice sound like?At my first audition, I was like, “I don’t know how to do a Michael Keaton impression, so let me just try something.” And it went fine, but I paid for it for two days — my voice was on fire.How do you do it now for eight shows a week without damaging your vocal cords?It’s called ventricular fold phonation, and it means you vibrate the cartilage in your throat alongside your vocal cords. I was able to figure out through trial and error that it’s the same muscles I use to clear my throat. I could do this interview better — and more healthfully —[switches to Beetlejuice voice] in this voice than just talking to you with [reverts to normal voice] this voice, because right now I’m using my vocal cords, and vocal cords get tired. Cartilage doesn’t get tired — there’s no nerves, it’s not a muscle.“This part allows me to discover new things not every night, but every minute,” Brightman said.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesWhat’s next for you?I sold a cartoon series to Warner Bros., “Cleaners,” which is a raunchy, slightly musical comedy about a crew from Boston that does biohazard cleanups — crime scenes, meth labs, hoarders. And I wrote a play called “Everything Is Fine,” about the one-year aftermath of a mall shooting from the perspective of the family of the perpetrator, who is no longer with us. Cynthia Nixon directed a number of the readings, and we’re hoping to continue getting that somewhere in New York. And I’m working on a musical with Universal Theatrical with my writing partner, which is an adaptation of the film “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” about a kid who checks himself into a psychiatric ward.So, a lot of writing.I’ve been onstage for 15 years now, kind of consistently, and I’m a little Broadway-ed and musical-ed out, which I know is a very privileged thing to say. But what comes with doing this is scrutiny. People look at you and judge you every night. I want to do my own thing for a second — to just let my work speak for itself and not have to defend it with a musical number.Would you ever want to return to “Beetlejuice”?What I know is that I have the right of first refusal for a London production, were it to happen. There are no designs for it to happen just yet that I know of, but I would consider it.“I’ve been onstage for 15 years now, kind of consistently,” Brightman said. “I want to do my own thing for a second.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesLet’s do a quick round of confirm or deny.Ooh, yes!You have done the voice in a public setting that is not the theater.Confirm. A few months ago, I went into Starbucks and said [in his Beetlejuice voice] “Can I just have one grande Pike Place with a little bit of half and half and just one Splenda?” They said, “What’s your name?” And I said [in Beetlejuice voice], “B.J.” And then they said, “Coffee for B.J.?” And I said [in Beetlejuice voice], “Thanks so much.” And I left. It’s New York. I was the least weird thing to walk into that Starbucks that day.You get nervous when you know someone famous will be at the show.Deny. The only person who would make me nervous would be Mel Brooks, because I revere him to a point that is probably pretty unhealthy.If you had to choose between marrying Beetlejuice or having to wear a single pair of used workout clothes for the rest of your life, you would —Marry Beetlejuice, if only for the fact that I know how much I sweat. More

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      How These Sign Language Experts Are Bringing More Diversity to Theater

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      As productions increasingly include characters and perspectives from a variety of backgrounds, deaf and hearing people who translate the shows for deaf audiences are trying to keep up.Zavier Sabio didn’t have much exposure to theater growing up. But when he was asked to join the Roundabout Theater Company’s production of “A Soldier’s Play” and help make the show — about race relations in the military in the segregated South — accessible to deaf theatergoers, he decided to give it a shot.“I really wanted to present this story, as well as the interpretation, through a Black lens,” Sabio, who is Deaf and Black, said through an interpreter. To do that, he also relied on his knowledge of Black American Sign Language (a variation of American Sign Language) and Black Deaf culture.Sabio joined the 2020 production as a co-director of artistic sign language, or DASL, a position that some shows fill in order to create a more cohesive theater experience for deaf audiences. DASLs collaborate with American Sign Language interpreters who specialize in theater, translating the script into ASL and establishing how to perform the signing — while staying true to the spirit of a show. That also entails accounting for representations of race in source material and casting.Amid a racial reckoning in theater, the work of DASLs and theatrical interpreters from a variety of backgrounds has become increasingly sought after in the past few years — both by deaf audiences and theatrical productions. But while there have been efforts to recruit more diverse interpreters, the push for better representation is not without challenges.That became evident in November, when Keith Wann, who is white, filed a lawsuit against the Theater Development Fund and its director, Lisa Carling, accusing them of discrimination. In the suit, Wann charged that a job offer from TDF — for theatrical interpreting for “The Lion King” on Broadway — had been retracted because of his race. A spokesperson for TDF, a nonprofit organization focused on making theater more affordable and accessible, declined to comment. The show, which has a racially mixed cast, draws on African imagery.Some deaf people took to social media when news of the lawsuit (which was eventually settled) broke, calling for more alignment along racial lines between productions and those providing interpreting services.“The interpreting field itself is very white-dominated,” said Kailyn Aaron-Lozano, who has worked as a DASL for “My Onliness” at the New Ohio Theater and “Sweeney Todd” at IRT Theater, speaking through an interpreter.Aaron-Lozano, who is Deaf and Afro-Latina, explained that having theatrical interpreters and DASLs who are BIPOC (an acronym that stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color) can have a big impact on the audiences of the productions that focus on those groups. “We are screaming for more BIPOC individuals to be in these positions,” she said. “There are not enough BIPOC interpreters who can fit the roles — and to better understand those nuances and those cultural pieces.”Jina Porter, a hearing theatrical interpreter and a person of color, said that when there is a mismatch between the interpreting team and what is happening onstage, it can be jarring for deaf viewers. “I feel like you should look at the team and then look at the show and feel like they would all kind of be in the same place together,” she said.Porter said that ensuring more diversity in theatrical interpreting is also a matter of providing equal access and opportunity. “That’s just the way the world should be,” she said.Patrice Creamer, a Black and Deaf theater artist who also works as a DASL, says that not every show requires a perfect racial match of actors and those making the show accessible. (She is currently a DASL for “The Lion King” but was not named in Wann’s lawsuit.)But having that alignment, Creamer said through an interpreter, can help the viewer form a more immediate connection with a show. That was the case, she added, with her work in the 2000 Broadway revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” where she interpreted for the role of Mary Magdalene, played by Maya Days, who is Black.“I played that character so that the Deaf audience could really take everything in with their eyes,” she said, “since their focus isn’t as much on what is happening on the stage, but on what’s happening with the interpreter.”Having deaf people whose first language is ASL working in artistic sign language direction brings a whole other perspective — a deaf one — to a production, Michelle Banks, a Black actress, director and writer who is Deaf, said through an interpreter. DASLs can also have a say in hiring, and can choose interpreters who are a better fit for the characters, the culture represented and the chosen signing style, Banks added.Banks has served as a DASL on shows including Camille A. Brown’s Broadway revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” which starred Alexandria Wailes, a deaf and mixed race actress, and incorporated ASL into the fabric of the show.“I worked with Deaf actors, but I also worked with hearing actors,” Banks said of “For Colored Girls.” “So it’s not just Deaf culture that I brought to the production, but also the Black Deaf culture. And I did that with signing that showed that specific culture that is specific to the Black Deaf community.”She described one scene, for example, in which Wailes signs in Black American Sign Language, or BASL, which relies in a unique way on body language and rhythm. Onstage, Wailes’s signing became almost sensual, she said. “It was totally different from everyday conversational ASL.”“It became a lot more emotive,” Banks added. “There was a lot more feeling in that.”Sabio, who also incorporated BASL in the interpreting for “A Soldier’s Play,” said that for authenticity, he also researched and used signs from the historical period in which the play is set.Monique Holt, a professor in the theater and dance program at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., who also works as a director, actor and DASL, said that although more diversity exists in theater these days, there are not enough interpreters from diverse backgrounds — especially those who, like her, are Asian and Deaf.Offering more training opportunities and scholarships for those hoping to have a career in the field could make a difference, added Holt, who also mentors people interested in becoming artistic directors for sign language.Banks believes that theatrical interpreters can also be more thoughtful when booking interpreting roles and “really do some self-assessment: Am I the right person for this role? Am I the right interpreter for this job?”Theaters that provide interpreting should be part of the solution, too, Creamer said, adding that some of them tend to rely on a narrow group of established interpreters who are predominantly white. “They don’t have people of color on their list,” she said. “And there are excuses: ‘We can’t find them. We don’t know where they are.’ But how hard are those people really looking?” More

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      Farewell to ‘Stomp,’ a Show at the Beating Heart of New York

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      The stage has no curtain. The set is littered with highway signs and mass transit insignia. And then there are the gigantic oil drums, ominous and puzzling. It could be a storage facility. Or the site of an industrial warehouse party. But then the sweepers start to trickle in, swooshing across in balletic punk pageantry.Since its debut at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village in 1994, “Stomp,” the wordless percussion spectacle of twirling, tapping, sweeping, banging, clanging and yes, stomping, has gone from a scrappy neighborhood attraction to a mainstay of the culture of New York City.In honor of the show’s 10th anniversary in 2004, a mayoral proclamation declared March 14, 2004, as “Stomp Day.” For its 20th birthday in 2014, the Empire State Building shone in red light in its honor. That year, the production was also the centerpiece of the city’s “Stomp Out Litter” campaign, shot across the five boroughs; and in 2015, the show’s performers participated in a collaboration with another city cultural institution, the Harlem Globetrotters. The city once even temporarily renamed Second Avenue between Seventh and Eighth Streets “Stomp Avenue.”In its history, only three occasions have disrupted the continuity of the New York run: Sept. 11, a gas explosion on Second Avenue and the Covid pandemic. Even as commercial stores booted out local businesses, rents shot up and students and artists moved farther downtown, the show hung on in an ever-shifting neighborhood.The Orpheum Theater, which has been home to “Stomp” since the ’90s.Zack DeZon for The New York TimesIn the world of “Stomp,” anything can be used to create rhythm: garbage cans, radiator hoses, match boxes.Margaret Norton/NBC, via Getty ImagesBut after 29 years, the production will close for good on Jan. 8 because of declining ticket sales.“Say it ain’t so!” said the music producer Lou George, who is widely known as Bowlegged Lou. A “Stomp” super fan, he said he had seen the show 225 times and planned to see it once more before the cast takes its final bows.“I’m having withdrawals,” he said. “‘Stomp’ was such a fixture in New York.”Part drum line, part step team, part ensemble of city buskers, “Stomp” is a show in which timing is everything. The cast of eight perform with repurposed household objects and urban detritus, creating rhythm out of garbage cans, suitcases, radiator hoses and precision choreography, all while threading in humor through one-upping showdowns and zany mishaps. Anything can become music: fingernails scratching against match boxes; basketballs passed back and forth with a thud.“Stomp” has had unusually global reach. It has been spoofed on “The Simpsons,” included as an answer on “Jeopardy!” and performed in 45 countries — including at the Acropolis and the 2012 London Olympics closing ceremony.A Farewell to ‘Stomp’After nearly 29 years onstage, the percussion and dance spectacle will close in New York on Jan. 8.Sound of the City: Part drum line, part step team, part ensemble of city buskers, “Stomp” became part of the fabric and culture of New York.Memories: We asked our critics and Times readers to share what the show has meant to them. This is what they told us.10 Things: There’s more to the show than banging on a can. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Off Broadway institution.1994 Review: The wordless show “speaks so directly to one of the most basic human impulses, the urge to make rhythmic noise,” our critic wrote when “Stomp” opened in New York.Still, it remained a symbol of the cultural landscape of New York. But it wasn’t born here.The 1997 cast of “Stomp,” which included one of its creators, Luke Cresswell, fourth from left.Lois GreenfieldIt was conceived by two Britons — the creators and directors Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, who met as street performers in Brighton, England, in the early ’80s. Together they formed musical groups that mixed percussion, vocals and comedy, and after experimenting with one-off performances using only brooms and garbage bins, they premiered “Stomp” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1991.“We concentrated on the rhythmic elements,” McNicholas said, “but I think we remained aware of the inherent absurdity of the concept of using everyday objects as instruments, so the humor was there from the start.”When the show arrived in New York in the early ’90s, the East Village was home to Blue Man Group, CBGB and the indie-rock club Brownies. Cresswell and McNicholas found the punk downtown — far from the bright lights of Broadway — a perfect fit for their deadpan show.“Stomp” has been spoofed on “The Simpsons,” featured as an answer on “Jeopardy!” and performed in 45 countries.Rachel Papo for The New York Times“It’s not glamour; it’s not cute sets,” Cresswell said. “It’s a small, funky little theater with people doing it really close to you. You feel and smell the sweat.”Cresswell and McNicholas weren’t sure if the show would make it through its original four-month run, yet it has outlasted much of the neighborhood’s arts ecosystem from those early days.Brownies went dark in 2002, CBGB in 2006; and Blue Man Group was acquired by Cirque du Soleil in 2017. And one by one, many of the “Stomp” cast and creators’ go-to East Village locales shut their doors: the adjacent luncheonette Stage Restaurant, the corner bar and bistro Virage, and Gem Spa, the nearly 100-year-old bodega across the street, which closed in 2020.Still, “Stomp” endured for nearly three decades, rivaling “The Phantom of the Opera,” which is set to close this year after 35 years onstage. Throughout the show’s touring and Orpheum Theater productions, Cresswell and McNicholas retained artistic control and directorship.Jackie Green, the publicist for “Stomp,” said that flagging international tourism after pandemic lockdowns was a factor in deciding to close, but she declined to share financial figures. (The North American and European touring shows will continue to run.)McNicholas said that he felt for the New York performers, who in the last year were performing for “tiny” houses, though neither the energy onstage nor the enthusiasm in the audience had let up, he said.“It’s a small, funky little theater with people doing it really close to you. You feel and smell the sweat,” Cresswell said.Rachel Papo for The New York Times“I’m a little bit sad, because I feel like we were part of the East Village,” McNicholas said. “We were part of the landscape of the Village, and it’s a shame to say goodbye to that.”“Playing on objects to create music has been around forever,” said Alan Asuncion, a member of the final New York “Stomp” cast who has been performing at the Orpheum since 2007. “But the creators brilliantly put it into a piece of theater that has become a household name. And that legacy will live on.”Because the show is wordless, save for a few gibberish sounds and some good-natured grunting, its cadence and comedy are accessible to a wide variety of audiences.At a recent performance, children bubbled over with delight, adults clapped their hands and stomped their feet wildly in a packed house. The audience was carried by the pulse of drums and call-and-response cues.In any other setting, seeing a group of muscled men and women in work boots wielding yellow rubber gloves and industrial sinks around their necks might be cause for alarm. At “Stomp,” it’s a moment of giddy anticipation. The audience can sense something big is coming. There’s a collective prolonged inhale. And then the Stompers started rocking. As they swayed their bodies, so did the giant sinks. Water sloshed from side to side creating a swishy melody, before the performers began to heave their bodies to and fro, banging on the sinks and pipes.“I’m going to miss the audience interaction, being able to look out and see the audience look back at you,” Asuncion said. After 15 years, “it surprisingly doesn’t get old.” More

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      Review: ‘Are We Not Drawn Onward to New Era’ Stages a Disaster in Reverse

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      The Under the Radar festival kicks off with an allegory about climate destruction by the Belgian provocateurs Ontroerend Goed.Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A woman. A man. A tree. An apple. So begins “Are We Not Drawn Onward to New Era,” a performance piece by the Belgian provocateurs Ontroerend Goed, presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music in association with the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival. In the show’s first minutes, an apple is plucked and eaten, a paradise destroyed. Then the story changes.For nearly three decades, this collective (its name is a Flemish pun that translates loosely to “feel estate”) has goaded theatergoers, sometimes gently and sometimes (“The Smile Off Your Face,” “A Game of You”) less gently. “Are We Not Drawn,” directed by Alexander Devriendt, falls on the milder end of that spectrum, even as it functions as an allegory about climate destruction.After the apple is devoured, the tree that held it is torn apart by one of the six actors. Not everything in the show is entirely real; the tree very much is. On opening night on Wednesday at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space, audience members groaned as he ripped branch after branch. If I’m honest I groaned, too — that poor defenseless sapling — even though there’s currently a Christmas tree in the corner of my apartment slowly turning into tinder. Soon a rainbow of plastic grocery bags, the kind that have recently been outlawed in New York, litters the stage. (OK, fine, I have a few of those in my apartment, too.) Then the smoke begins to billow.This first half-hour, which ends with the stage strewn with trash and filled with smoke is ugly, deliberately, and just a little unintelligible. There’s sparse dialogue throughout, rendered without supertitles. The non-Belgians in the theater will probably assume that it is Flemish. (I did.) It is not. This is one more show in which the troupe toys with its audience, though here it displays better than usual sportsmanship. To say more would ruin the show’s central surprise. But remember that its title is a palindrome, a type of wordplay in which a word or phrase reads the same backward and forward. So after advancing, the show must then reverse. “Are we not drawn” is a parable of disaster, but run the tape backward and it instead promises repair. Paradise, it suggests, can be regained.But if the ideas are wobbly, the craftsmanship is astonishingly sturdy. The ensemble works with incredible precision, selling gestures and movements that might otherwise seem bizarre or arbitrary. Nothing here is arbitrary. Each step, each syllable has purpose. And each is set to William Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops,” a composition that is designed to deteriorate.Maybe it doesn’t pay to think too hard about the show. Unless you’re a fervent believer in carbon capture and probably even then, the odds that humans can remediate the ecological harm they have done seems slim. The show acknowledges this, winkingly, as brute realism gives way to something closer to magic. (There are a few other winks, too. At one point, sparks fly, literally, courtesy of what looks like a mini circular saw.) I’m ultimately not sure if “Are we not drawn” is hopeful or hopeless, a hymn to human endeavor or futility. Certainly it celebrates what a committed group of artists can achieve. Isn’t that enough?Are We Not Drawn Onward to New EraThrough Sunday at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space, Brooklyn; bam.org. Running time: 75 minutes. More

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      ‘Ohio State Murders,’ Starring Audra McDonald, to Close on Broadway

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      The 75-minute memory play by Adrienne Kennedy had been scheduled to run until Feb. 12; it will close on Jan. 15.“Ohio State Murders,” a short, powerful and pointed play starring Audra McDonald as a writer recalling racism and violence the character encountered as an undergraduate, will close sooner than expected on Broadway after struggling to sell tickets.The play was the Broadway debut for its 91-year-old writer, Adrienne Kennedy, a much admired playwright whose surrealistic work has generally been presented on smaller stages and taught at universities.“Ohio State Murders” is one of her most accessible works — it is essentially a 75-minute memory play in which the protagonist tells a gripping story about her college years — but nonetheless proved a tough sell in the commercial arena, even with strong reviews and McDonald, who is one of Broadway’s best-loved performers, in the starring role.The production began previews Nov. 11 and opened Dec. 8 at the James Earl Jones Theater. It was scheduled to run until Feb. 12; instead it will close Jan. 15.The production has had a hard time finding an audience — last week, when Broadway was flush with tourists, “Ohio State Murders” filled only 49 percent of its seats, and many weeks had been worse. It grossed $311,893 for nine performances last week; that was the high-water mark for the run thus far.Produced by Jeffrey Richards, the play was capitalized for up to $5.1 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped.Broadway is always a financially risky proposition — far more shows fail than succeed — and the climate has become more challenging since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, because costs have risen and attendance has fallen. Last week was the best week the industry has seen since late 2019, but the riches are not evenly distributed: “Ohio State Murders” follows “Walking With Ghosts,” “KPOP,” “Ain’t No Mo’” and “Almost Famous” in announcing an unexpectedly early closing this season. More

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      Broadway Bounces Back With ‘Best Week Since the Before Times’

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      Broadway shows grossed $51.9 million during the holiday week, the most since 2019, and “The Lion King” set a record for the most earned by any show in a single week.Broadway, still struggling to rebound from the lengthy pandemic shutdown, is starting the new year with a sign of hope: Last week was, by far, the best for the industry since the arrival of the coronavirus.The 33 shows running grossed $51.9 million, which is the most since the final week of 2019. And “The Lion King,” which last fall celebrated its 25th anniversary on Broadway, notched a remarkable milestone: It grossed $4.3 million, which is the most ever taken in by a show in a single week on Broadway.The boffo numbers — 21 shows grossed more than $1 million last week — come with caveats. Both Christmas and New Year’s days fell on Sundays, concentrating holiday travelers into a single week. Twenty shows added extra performances for the holiday week, giving nine instead of the usual eight. And ticket prices were high: The average Broadway seat went for $166, up from $128 just four weeks earlier.But the strong week sent a signal that under the right circumstances, Broadway can deliver. During the holiday week — the week that ended Jan. 1 — the 22 musicals and 11 plays running were, on average, 92 percent full. Overall attendance was 312,878, which is not a record (in fact, it was the 27th-best-attended week in history, according to the Broadway League), but is good (by comparison, attendance over Thanksgiving week was 259,298).The two final weeks of the year saw combined grosses of $86.7 million, which is up 115 percent over the previous year, but down 12 percent compared to those key holiday weeks in 2019.“What you see is that we’re continuing to build and maintain our audience,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and theater owners. “We’re not back to where we were, but we’re doing very well at a time of uncertainty.”According to the League, last week was the third-highest-grossing in history. The highest was the week ending Dec. 30, 2018, when grosses were $57.8 million and attendance was 378,910; the second-highest was the week ending Dec. 29, 2019, when grosses were $55.8 million and attendance was 350,714.“The Lion King,” with a nine-performance week, toppled the previous record for the top-grossing week by a single show, which had been held by “Hamilton,” which grossed $4 million for eight performances during the week that ended Dec. 30, 2018. (The figures are not adjusted for inflation.)“The Lion King” earned $4.3 million last week, the most a single show has ever earned in one week. It resumed performances in September 2021.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesThe holidays are traditionally strong for Broadway, but in 2021 the final weeks of the year were a bloodbath because the Omicron variant led to cancellations of multiple shows. Now, despite the “tripledemic” of circulating respiratory illnesses, Broadway has largely figured out how to keep going: During the last three weeks, 12 scheduled performances were canceled, compared to 221 cancellations during the final three weeks of 2021.Throughout the industry, shows were trumpeting breaking records last week.“Chicago” had the highest-grossing week in its 26-year history, as well as its highest single-performance gross. The once-struggling “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which revived its fortunes after the shutdown by consolidating from two parts into one, was already the highest-grossing play in Broadway history, and last week set a record (nearly $2.7 million) for weekly gross by a play. And a starry revival of “The Piano Lesson” was on track to being the highest grossing play by August Wilson — the much-celebrated and oft-performed bard of 20th-century African American life — in Broadway history.Several shows set house records at the theaters where they are being performed, including the revival of “Funny Girl,” which had been floundering financially until its producers brought in Lea Michele to star. Also setting records were shows including “Beetlejuice,” which closes Jan. 8 after a bumpy ride; “Six,” the pop-concert-style reconsideration of the wives of Henry VIII; “& Juliet,” a new musical imagining an alternative history for Shakespeare’s famously star-crossed lover, and “MJ,” the Michael Jackson biomusical.“We had our best week since the before times,” said Victoria Bailey, the executive director of TDF, a nonprofit organization that runs the TKTS discount ticket booths, who said her staff is noticing increasing geographic diversity among ticket buyers.“We were seeing people from lots and lots of states and lots and lots of countries — it wasn’t the same folks making the numbers bigger, but it was folks from further away,” Bailey said. “I don’t have any reason to say we’re out of the woods, but I don’t think this was just a one-off. And if we get to a point where you periodically have good weeks, that will be helpful.”Bailey and St. Martin both noted that tourists from China have not yet returned in significant numbers as that nation battles surging coronavirus cases. But both said they were particularly heartened by returning domestic tourism.Broadway now enters a period of greater challenge: January and February have historically been weak months for the industry. There are 12 shows scheduled to close this month, which is at the high end of the normal range for January closings. But there are a raft of openings planned in March and April — it looks like the overall number of new shows this season will be within the typical range — and St. Martin said she is feeling good about the industry’s trajectory.“I am overwhelmingly optimistic about the spring,” she said. More

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      At Under the Radar, Theater That Jumps Right Off the Page

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      Literary influences suffuse this year’s festival of avant-garde performance. Artists from six shows share the stories that inspired them.“A story,” the director Yngvild Aspeli said, “is something that makes us connect to each other, something that manages to go beyond time or cultural difference.”Theater, even in its more experimental corners, has long been in the business of telling stories. At this year’s Under the Radar festival, the Public Theater’s annual survey of avant-garde theater and performance in New York, some of these stories may seem familiar. Half a dozen of the main works are deliberately in dialogue with literary classics and ephemera, from sources as diverse as Mark Twain’s satirical monologues, James Joyce’s erotic letters, the Epic of Gilgamesh and “Antigone.”“I’m interested in the contemporary as the ancient comes through it,” Mark Russell, who founded and programs the festival, said. “And I was very moved by these primal theater impulses and primal texts.”Running through Jan. 22 at the Public and five partner venues, this is the first iteration of Under the Radar since 2020. The 2022 festival was canceled just weeks before opening because of an upsurge in Covid-19 cases. Though somewhat less international than in years past (an acknowledgment of the difficulty and expense of obtaining visas for artists), it still represents a substantial array of narrative, style and tone. Aspeli’s piece, for example, an adaptation of “Moby-Dick,” is performed by 50 puppets and an underwater orchestra.Annie Saunders and Jesse Saler in “Our Country.”Gema GalianaNot all of these projects were conceived during the pandemic, but even those dreamed up before it seem intent on finding language — textual and visual — to apply to this uncertain cultural moment. Much of that language happens to be literary, and it centers on themes of isolation and community. While several of the programmed works survey grief and loss, others offer alternatives, such as friendship and pleasure. Some do both.“Perhaps in a moment where we’re in crisis, we can use this past poetics to bring us joy and relief and connection,” said Rachel Mars, the creator of the performance piece “Your Sexts.” (The show has a longer title, but it is, like many sexts, unprintable.)The New York Times spoke to artists associated with six of this year’s shows about the literary works that inspired them and how the pages of the past speak to the present. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.‘Our Country’Inspiration: Sophocles’ “Antigone”Annie Saunders, co-creator and performer: As a person who struggles with self-belief, I’m interested in “Antigone,” in the idea of believing in yourself that much. The other thing that really interests me is the brother-sister dynamic, having a brother who you feel you have to save. My brother has a criminal history. He’s actually great now. But for many, many years, that was the dynamic. I spent a few days with my brother in the summer of 2016 and made about 10 hours of tape of us talking to each other about “Antigone,” our childhood, criminality, the law. That became a major part of the show.“Antigone” is an anchor. I always come back to that core story dealing with fundamental human themes about right and wrong, self-belief, familial obligation. These are core human experiences.‘Otto Frank’Inspiration: “The Diary of Anne Frank”Roger Guenveur Smith, creator and performer: I was invited to a theater festival in Amsterdam. I went to the Anne Frank House. I was very inspired and very moved. I’m always trying to bring the past into the present moment. The idea that Otto Frank should come to know his daughter through that diary, especially having lost her the way that he lost her, must have been an extraordinarily daunting exercise. I thought that would be something worth pursuing, because of this ongoing crisis that we’re still engaged in.The fundamental challenge is: How does a man reverse the natural order of things and create a memorial for his daughter? To simultaneously serve the living and the dead is the great challenge for Otto Frank and for many of us, who are in the current moment, dealing with loss.‘Your Sexts’Inspiration: The erotic letters of James Joyce, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, etc.Rachel Mars, creator and performer: I was on a residency. Brexit had just happened. It took the wind out of my sails creatively. Then Scott Sheppard [the writer and performer] was like, “I have something to cheer you up.” He read me this James Joyce 1909 letter. I was bowled over by the explicitness, the poetics, the imagery, how much it was all about butts. It was super life-affirming.I began this search for who else was writing these letters. I worked with two sexologists. It was obviously more difficult to find the women and the queer women, because history, but it was easier than I thought. There’s an illicitness to it, definitely. It does feel like opening a crack into people’s private lives. But there’s this sanctity to it, a kind of respect.‘KLII’Inspiration: Mark Twain’s “King Leopold’s Soliloquy,” Patrice Lumumba’s independence speechKaneza Schaal, creator, co-director and performer: My practice is about remembering. Today, we look at a figure like Leopold [the Belgian king who presided over atrocities in his administration of the Congo Free State] with mock horror, his atrocities stun and outrage. But there are new Leopolds every day. For me, this was a way of exorcising this evil. I’m interested in looking inward and looking outward, exorcising these catastrophic figures and catastrophic events.Christopher Myers, co-director and designer: Mark Twain was interested in the Congo, and he understood the relationship between the oppression of Africans there and the oppression of Africans at home. This text of Mark Twain was in line with the internationalism and cross-cultural, cross-pollination that has inspired so many anticolonial causes. It’s about seeing not only the histories of these specific texts, but also how these texts bump up against each other. One of the things that theater does really well is allow you to rub a text against other texts.‘Moby Dick’Inspiration: Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”Yngvild Aspeli, director and puppet maker: This story, even though it’s an old story, it touches on these things that go beyond time. Out on the sea hunting a whale with a harpoon, or lost in our cyber world, human beings are still tackling the same issues. We use this older story as a mirror, a prism.Our inner struggles are somehow always the same, the questions are the same: the complexity of being human, how we struggle with our inner demons, how we try to figure out our place in society, existential questions of life and death and everything that lies in between. The mysteries of life.‘King Gilgamesh & the Man of the Wild’Inspiration: the Epic of GilgameshAhmed Moneka, creator and performer: I’m from Iraq, born in Baghdad. I grew up with this myth. I was exiled. I ended up in Toronto. Jesse became my first friend in the theater scene. The parallel to that is the relationship between Gilgamesh and his best friend Enkidu.Jesse LaVercombe, creator and performer: We’re toggling between this contemporary story and this totally ancient, sometimes cartoonish, sometimes tragic epic.Seth Bockley, creator and director: I didn’t want to just riff on the themes. I wanted that story retold. There’s something sacred about that. We need each other to get through the world. That’s the Gilgamesh and Enkidu story. More

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      British Comedy ‘Peter Pan Goes Wrong’ Plans Spring Broadway Bow

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      The farce, by the team behind “The Play That Goes Wrong,” is about a bumbling theater company attempting to stage the popular children’s play.Six years ago, the Mischief Theater Company arrived on Broadway from Britain with “The Play That Goes Wrong,” a madcap comedy about a hapless amateur theater company attempting to stage a whodunit.That farce was a success, with outlandish physical comedy that led to a Tony Award for best set. A national tour was also successful, and a production has since been running Off Broadway.Now Mischief is planning a return to Broadway with “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” a sort of sequel in which the same theater company attempts to stage J.M. Barrie’s beloved play about a boy who doesn’t grow up.“Peter Pan Goes Wrong” is scheduled to start performances March 17 and to open April 19 at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater. The play is planning a limited run of 16.5 weeks (the unorthodox run length reflects the company’s off-kilter brand).The comedy has already had a rich production history — it opened at a small theater in London in 2013, toured Britain in 2014, ran in London’s West End over the Christmas seasons in 2015 and 2016, and was adapted for a BBC television special in 2016. The show’s North American journey began last year with productions in Edmonton and Vancouver, Canada. It has had generally positive reviews: The Vancouver Sun declared that the play “has absolutely no redeeming social value. But at its height it offers a gag about every 10 seconds, many of them hilarious.”The play’s creators are Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, who also wrote “The Play That Goes Wrong”; the three will again star in their production. “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” features the same slapstick sensibility as the earlier play, but has a bit more character development, and an even crazier set.“The fictional theater company is taking on a much more ambitious production, with flying, crocodiles and a revolving stage, and they put on the play with the same disastrous results,” Lewis said. “You get more behind the scenes into what’s going on with the characters, as well as all the farce and the madcap comedy.”The writer-performers said they are looking forward to returning to Broadway, and are mindful that the industry is in a very different place than it was when they were first there.“Before the pandemic, you could say that our work was very silly and not that important,” Sayer said. “Now I think this kind of work is very important — there’s something very profound in silliness right now, because that’s something everybody needs after what we’ve all been through.”The play is being produced by Kevin McCollum, Kenny Wax, Stage Presence and Catherine Schreiber. McCollum said he has been eager to transfer the show to Broadway for some time, believing that “people want to laugh.” More