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      7 New Musicals Are Headed to Broadway This Fall

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      Behind every new New York season are a lot of wannabes, also-rans and hopeless cases to keep track of.I have friends who keep a spreadsheet of every show they’ve seen, cross-indexed to their Playbill collection.I’m the opposite. I toss my Playbills but keep Excel fired up with compulsive catalogs of what’s coming next.Especially for musicals, it’s a highly unreliable list. Some shows have sat on it undisturbed since the 20th century. I don’t think the stage adaptation of “My Man Godfrey,” first announced in 1985 and occasionally re-announced ever since, will ever actually open on Broadway. And was ABBA really going to write a version of “Marty”? No, that must have been a typo — though I’m not sure for what.On the other hand, at least one show I thought would never make it off the list unfortunately did. (Clue: It involved an escape to Margaritaville.) In my “comments” column for dubious entries, I sometimes include useful information like “Whut?”In any case, it’s around this time of year that I traditionally cull and update the herd, getting excited or terrified about what’s headed my way. So far, seven Broadway musicals are in the “definite” column, having been officially announced for the fall.They make an unusual grouping. To begin with, only one, “1776,” is a revival — and that one might as well be new. As reshaped by Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page in the post-“Hamilton” manner, and featuring a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers, the American Independence pageant aims to offer a more inclusive history than our real past did.Also unusual: Among the six new musicals, only “A Beautiful Noise,” based on the life and songs of Neil Diamond, is a biographical jukebox. (Will Swenson, who does swagger very well, stars.) And only two others — a very modest proportion compared to most seasons — are Hollywood adaptations.One of those is “Almost Famous,” based on Cameron Crowe’s 2000 coming-of-age film about a young man swept up in a 1970s rock ’n’ roll dream. It may ensure some authenticity that Crowe has written the book for the show, and, with the composer Tom Kitt, the lyrics.The other Hollywood adaptation is “Some Like It Hot,” based on the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy. If you think you’ve seen it onstage before, you’re partly right; it was first turned into a musical, called “Sugar,” in 1972. That version’s score was by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill; this one’s by their natural inheritors, the “Hairspray” team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.The remaining incoming musicals, though no less exciting, may be even more familiar. (I’ve already seen two of them in earlier productions.) “Kimberly Akimbo,” based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s play about a girl with a premature-aging condition, ran Off Broadway, at the Atlantic Theater Company, last season. “KPOP,” a behind-the-scenes look at the Korean pop music industry, was another Off Broadway hit, in 2017. Both will have big adjustments to make for larger theaters and audiences, and I’m eager to see how they do it.Then there’s “& Juliet,” which has been playing in London (with a pandemic interruption) since 2019, and which is the only show on my spreadsheet to start with a typographical symbol. From a distance, it appears to be a mash-up of several Broadway tropes: updated Shakespeare, romantic fantasy and hit parade. Its songs, by Max Martin, are mostly familiar from recordings by Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys and the like.But the seven sure musicals this fall are only the tip of my Excel iceberg. Slightly below the water line are shows almost certain to announce their arrival quite soon, including the revival of Bob Fosse’s “Dancin’,” the stage adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada” and the London hit “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.”Diving a bit deeper, we get to a larger school of wannabes. Many seem fascinating; “Lempicka,” for one, about the hedonistic Polish painter, has been getting good reviews for its various tryout productions.Others seem stuck in development hell. “Harmony,” the Barry Manilow show about a singing group in Nazi Germany, had its world premiere in 1997; it took 25 years to get as far as the tip of Manhattan, where it had a brief run this spring. At its final performance there, Manilow’s collaborator Bruce Sussman told the audience, “I’d like to think of today as only the end of the beginning!”Everyone does, even the bottom feeders, those mystifying creatures someone apparently once considered a good idea. “Magic Mike”? “The Honeymooners”? The Baby Jessica Falls in the Well musical? The adaptation of “Paradise Lost”? (Only one of those is made up.)But for list-compulsives like me — my spreadsheet includes nearly 100 titles, from “A Little Princess” to “Zanna” — the quality of the product hardly matters. What I like to contemplate is the vast array. Sometimes I envision the titles as a swarm of planes taxiing at airports all over the country: “Bhangin’ It,” “Trading Places,” “Black Orpheus,” “Beaches,” even the “Untitled Roy Rogers Musical.” They haven’t lifted off yet, and some of them are out of fuel, but they’re on the runway, eager noses all pointed in our direction. More

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      Shakespeare or Bieber? This Canadian City Draws Devotees of Both

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      For nearly 70 years, Stratford, Ontario, has attracted legions of theater fanatics to its Shakespeare festival. About a dozen years ago, a very different type of pilgrim began arriving: Beliebers.STRATFORD, Ontario — It’s a small city that practically shouts “Shakespeare!”Majestic white swans float in the Avon River, not far from Falstaff Street and Anne Hathaway Park, named for the playwright’s wife. Some residents live in Romeo Ward, while young students attend Hamlet elementary. And the school’s namesake play is often performed as part of a renowned theater festival that draws legions of Shakespeare fans from around the world, every April to October.Stratford, Ontario, steeped in references to and reverence for the Bard, has counted on its association with Shakespeare for decades to dependably bring in millions of tourist dollars to a city that would otherwise have little appeal to travelers.“My dad always said we have a world-class theater stuck in a farm community,” said Frank Herr, the second-generation owner of a boat tour and rental business along the Avon River.Then, about a dozen years ago, a new and typically much younger type of cultural enthusiast began showing up in Stratford’s streets: Beliebers, or fans of the pop star Justin Bieber, a homegrown talent.William Shakespeare Street in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesA star dedicated to Justin Bieber outside the Avon Theater where he would busk as a child.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesResidents don’t have much trouble telling the two types of visitors apart. One clue: Look at what they are carrying.“They’ve got the Shakespeare books in their hands,” Mr. Herr said of those who are here for the love of theater. “They’re just serious people.”Beliebers, on the other hand, always have their smartphones at the ready to excitedly document the otherwise humdrum landmarks connected to the pop star: the site of his first date, the local radio station that first played his music, the diner where he was rumored to eat.Unlike Shakespeare — who never set foot in this city, named after his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England — Mr. Bieber has genuine and deep connections: He grew up here and is familiar to many.“I know Justin,” Mr. Herr said. “He was always skateboarding on the cenotaph, and I was always kicking him off the cenotaph,” he added, referring to a World War I memorial in the gardens next to Lake Victoria.A cutout of Justin Bieber in the Stratford Perth Museum. The setting is meant to replicate the steps of the city’s Avon Theater. Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesDiane Dale, Mr. Bieber’s maternal grandmother, and her husband, Bruce, lived a 10-minute drive away from downtown Stratford, where the fledgling singer, now 28, could often be found busking on the steps of Avon Theater under their supervision, collecting as much as $200 per day, she said in a recent interview.Those steps became something of a pilgrimage site for Mr. Bieber’s fans, especially those vying to become “One Less Lonely Girl” during his teen-pop dreamboat era.Another popular stop on the pilgrim’s tour was Ms. Dale’s doorstep. After fans rang her doorbell, she would assure them that her grandson was not home, though that didn’t stop them from taking selfies outside the red brick bungalow.“Justin said, if you don’t move, we’re not coming to visit you anymore,” Ms. Dale, a retired sewer at a now shuttered automotive factory in town, recalled. She has since relocated.Businesses in Stratford that benefited from this second set of tourists began speaking of “the Bieber Effect,” a play on the “Bilbao Effect” in reference to the Spanish city revitalized by a museum.Justin Bieber’s grandparents’ former home in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesBut one of the problems with pop fame is that it can be fickle. As fans have aged out of their teen infatuation with the musician, “Bieber fever” has cooled and the number of pilgrims has dropped.The issues that have long afflicted other Canadian cities, like increased housing prices and drug addiction, are more often peeking through the quaint veneer of Stratford, a city of about 33,000 people bordered by sprawling fields of corn in the farmland region of southwestern Ontario.But more than 400 years after his death, Shakespeare’s magnetic force remains fully intact.The theater festival, which draws over 500,000 guests in a typical year and employs about 1,000 people, features Shakespeare classics, Broadway-style musicals and modern plays in its repertoire.Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the festival returned to its roots, staging a limited run of shows outside under canopies, as it did during its first four seasons, starting in 1953. In 1957, the Festival Theater building opened with a summer performance of “Hamlet,” with the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer in the titular role.The Tom Patterson Theater, a new addition to the Stratford Festival.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThis year’s production stars a woman, Amaka Umeh, the first Black actor to play Hamlet at the festival.While it’s unknown how popular Mr. Bieber will be four centuries from now, the appeal of someone who has sold over 100 million digital singles in the United States alone doesn’t dissipate overnight.And Stratford has taken steps to permanently memorialize his youth here.Mr. Bieber’s grandparents had hung on to boxes of his belongings, including talent show score sheets and a drum set paid for the by the community in a crowdfunding effort — until a local museum presented them with an opportunity to display the items.“It’s changed the museum forever, in a myriad of ways,” said John Kastner, the general manager of the Stratford Perth Museum.After informing the local newspaper that the museum was opening an exhibition, “Justin Bieber: Steps to Stardom,” in February 2018, Mr. Kastner said, he was flooded with calls from international media.“We were going to do one room, like one 10-by-10 room,” Mr. Kastner said. He called his curator. “I said, ‘We have a problem.’”Angelyka Byrne walking through the Bieber exhibit at the Stratford Perth Museum.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThey cut the agricultural exhibition that had been planned for the adjoining space, which proved helpful in accommodating the 18,000 visitors in the first year of the Bieber show, a huge jump in attendance from the 850 who visited the museum in 2013.The Bieber show, on view through at least next year, has brought in thousands of dollars in merchandise purchases, Mr. Kastner said, giving the modest museum some welcome financial cushion.Mr. Bieber has also made a handful of visits, marking his name in chalk on the guest blackboard and donating some more recent memorabilia, including his wedding invitation and reception menu, featuring a dish called “Grandma Diane’s Bolognese.”But even before the Beliebers descended on the town, young people had been coming to Stratford by the busload thanks to organized school visits, with 50,000 to 100,000 students arriving from the United States and around Canada each year.With the exception of the pandemic border closures, James Pakala, and his wife, Denise, both retired seminary librarians in St. Louis, have been coming to Stratford for about a week every year since the early 1990s. Thirty years before that, Ms. Pakala traveled to Stratford with her high school English literature class from Ithaca, N.Y., and the trip has since become a tradition.The Shakespearean Gardens in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“I love Shakespeare and also Molière,” said Mr. Pakala, 78, who was studying his program outside the Festival Theater before a recent production of Molière’s comedy “The Miser.”Other guests enjoy the simplicity of getting around Stratford. The traffic is fairly light, there is ample parking and most major attractions are a short walk from one other, with pleasant views of the rippling river and picturesque gardens.“It’s easy to attend theater here,” said Michael Walker, a retired banker from Newport Beach, Calif., who visits each year with friends. “It’s not like New York, where it’s burdensome, and the quality of the theater here, I think, is better than what’s in Los Angeles or Chicago.”Here for Now Theater, an independent nonprofit that opened during the pandemic and plays to audiences of no more than 50, enjoys a “symbiotic relationship” with the festival, said its artistic director, Fiona Mongillo, who compared the scale of their operations as a Fiat to the festival’s freight train.Performing “Take Care” at the Here for Now Theater in August.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“It’s an interesting moment for Stratford because I think it’s growing and changing in a really lovely way,” said Ms. Mongillo, citing the increased diversity as Canadians from neighboring cities have relocated to a town that was formerly, she added, “very, very white.”Longtime residents of Stratford, like Madeleine McCormick, a retired correctional officer, said it can sometimes feel like the concerns of residents are sidelined in favor of tourists.Still, Ms. McCormick acknowledged the pluses of the vibrant community of artists and creative people, one that drew her musician husband into its orbit.“It’s a strange place,” she said. “There’s never going to be another place that’s like this, because of the theater.”And Mr. Bieber. More

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      Richard Roat, Seen on ‘Cheers,’ ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld,’ Dies at 89

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      A familiar TV face for years, he appeared on many of the most popular prime-time shows of recent decades.Richard Roat, a versatile character actor whose half-century-long career was punctuated by notable guest appearances on three of the most popular sitcoms of recent decades, “Cheers,” “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” died on Aug. 5 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 89.Kathy (Arntzen) Roat, his wife and only immediate survivor, said the cause was a heart attack. She said Mr. Roat, who lived in Glendale, died in a condo while on vacation.On a 1985 episode of “Cheers,” as the imperious boss of the barstool habitué Norm Peterson (George Wendt), he threatened to fire Norm if he didn’t accept a promotion (and raise) to become the company’s “corporate killer” — the person who terminates people.“Studies have shown that it’s particularly humiliating when you’re fired by someone who is clearly and markedly superior to yourself,” Mr. Roat’s character tells Norm coldly. “That wouldn’t be the case with you, Norman. You’re just an ordinary Joe. We checked out your home life. You have absolutely nothing that anyone could possibly envy or resent.”In 1996, on “Seinfeld,” Mr. Roat was a dermatologist who labeled Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) a “difficult” patient when she sought treatment for a rash. His character turned from friendly to stern when he checked her patient history.“Well, that doesn’t look serious,” he says, barely examining her. “You’ll be fine.” He then adds notes to her history when she complains that the rash is “really itchy.”And on “Friends,” in 2000, he was a professor at the college where Ross (David Schwimmer) taught. At one point he tells Ross that he was violating campus rules by dating a student.“They’re going to fire you,” he says.“Really, it’s not just frowned upon?” Ross asks.Mr. Roat worked primarily in television, starting in 1962 with two very different series about police officers: the sitcom “Car 54, Where Are You?” and the drama “Naked City.” He was a regular on the daytime soap opera “The Doctors” from 1963 to 1964, and over the next 45 years was seen on comedies like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Murphy Brown” and “Ellen” and dramas like “The Fugitive,” “Columbo,” “Matlock” and “Dynasty.”In a 1986 episode of “The Golden Girls,” as the boyfriend of Rose (Betty White), he dies in bed after they sleep together.He also worked regularly in regional theater. He starred with Jo Anne Worley in Ken Ludwig’s theatrical farce “Moon Over Buffalo” at the Pasadena Playhouse, and in William Luce’s one-man show “Barrymore,” about the actor John Barrymore, at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont. He played the title role, based on Lyndon B. Johnson, in Barbara Garson’s political satire “Macbird!” at the Players’ Ring Gallery in Los Angeles, and a married character in Mart Crowley’s “The Boys in the Band,” about a group of gay men, at what is now the Montalbán Theater, also in Los Angeles.In 1962 he played Mark Antony in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Julius Caesar.” Mr. Roat, seated, with Jay Leno and Ellen Reagan in the 1978 television movie “Almost Heaven.”G Stein/ABC via Getty Images
      Richard Donald Roat Jr. was born on July 3, 1933, in Hartford, Conn. His father was a glazier, and his mother, Lois (Bowan) Roat, was a homemaker.After graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in Hartford in 1956, Mr. Roat acted with the Mark Twain Masquers and other local theatrical groups. He also earned a living by driving a bakery truck and holding other odd jobs.In 1961 he made his Broadway debut as a replacement for Michael Ebert in “The Wall,” a play about Jews in occupied Poland during World War II. Mr. Roat played Dr. Jerry Chandler during 172 episodes of “The Doctors” and told The Portland Press Herald that he felt grateful for the opportunity to act regularly.“There’s room for less than one percent of the new actors in nighttime television,” he said. “Unless you’re a ‘regular’ and get a running assignment for a season-long series, your chances in nighttime television are practically nil.”His last television role was in the drama “24” in 2009.Mr. Roat had another long-running role, which he pursued as an actor and continued after he retired that year: as a tax preparer for people in the entertainment business. During a slow period in his acting career in the late 1960s, he took a job in an accountant’s office. On April 15 of that first year, the accountant had a nervous breakdown, Kathy Roat said, and Mr. Roat “took some tax forms and decided to become a tax preparer.” More

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      Review: In ‘On That Day in Amsterdam,’ a Traveler Becomes a Tourist

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      Two young men wander the city before they both must say farewell and return to very different lives.Sammy’s parents used to rhapsodize about the trip they took to Paris once, before he was born. Hearing their stories made the city shimmer in his imagination, but the closest he’s ever gotten to it was on a nonstop drive across France.Hidden in the back of a truck, peering through a hole in its side, he glimpsed a highway sign that said Paris. Then the driver blew past it, on through the darkness toward Amsterdam.In Clarence Coo’s play “On That Day in Amsterdam,” that’s where Sammy is on the night in 2015 when he meets Kevin at a club. They are young and beautiful, something sparks between them, and they wake together the next morning in a houseboat on a canal. Outside, snow is falling.Sammy is Syrian and without a passport, hoping to reach safety in England but terrified of the journey across the water to get there. Kevin is American, not wealthy but privileged anyway, a college student traveling on the credit card his mother pays for.While both are scheduled to leave the Netherlands that night, they have very different notions of how precious it is to be passing through, even briefly. Sammy (Waseem Alzer), who is sweet, eager and daring in his vulnerability, wants to grab this day with both hands and go on a tourist adventure. Kevin (Glenn Morizio), who is callow, arrogant and incurious in ways that he will come to regret, eventually acquiesces.It’s a bit of a Richard Linklater, “Before Sunrise” setup: just-met lovers with mere hours to spend together in a glamorous foreign capital. And on the largest stage at 59E59 Theaters, the set by Jason Sherwood (a two-time Emmy Award winner) conspires with projections by Nicholas Hussong (a 2022 Tony Award nominee for his spectacular projections in “Skeleton Crew”) and lighting by Cha See to bring visual texture and depth to Sammy and Kevin’s ramble through Amsterdam.There is the nagging sense, though, that design is the tail wagging the dog in this Primary Stages production from Zi Alikhan — that the set’s transparent downstage screen, which frames the action, constrains the performers somehow, and that the copious projections, on that screen and another upstage, could have used some editing. Yes to the moody, abstract and dreamy, emphatically yes to the striped blocks of color that represent evening windows; no to the drably literal, which only gets in the way of the poetry that Coo is reaching for.The playwright, too, has also overwhelmed the show, with a surfeit of ideas jostling for limited oxygen. This is a quasi-romance and coming-of-age story set inside a refugee crisis in a world awash in bigotry. But it’s also about art as a necessary solace, which is what it provides to Sammy, who wants to take his mind off the peril he’s in by popping into some museums. Kevin, though, is a tortured would-be writer; the making of an artist is much on Coo’s mind as well.The play might be able to manage all of that, yet it also collapses time to usher in three famous former residents of Amsterdam: Rembrandt (Brandon Mendez Homer), Vincent van Gogh (Jonathan Raviv) and Anne Frank (Elizabeth Ramos). Anne, at least, fits the principal themes: She was both an artist and a migrant fleeing — and hiding from — danger. But these characters’ interstitial-feeling scenes fit awkwardly with the whole.The result is a play too overcrowded for fullness. What sticks in the memory is Alzer’s lovely Sammy, grasping at a few hours of normalcy, cherishing the chance to lose himself in throngs of tourists who, with their documents in order, are free to come and go.On That Day in AmsterdamThrough Sept. 4 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Lea Michele On ‘Funny Girl,’ ‘Glee,’ Her Career and Those Rumors

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      She’s landed her dream role in “Funny Girl.” Now she’s tasked with rescuing the faltering Broadway show and proving that she is not the person she once was.Fifteen years ago, Lea Michele was sulking in her “Spring Awakening” dressing room, heartbroken over a guy, when the Broadway show’s director offered her a bit of advice.The director, Michael Mayer, suggested that she watch “Funny Girl,” which, he explained, was about a performer learning to not let a man drag her down.“I gave it to her as a kind of comfort,” Mayer said in a phone interview last month. “You’ve got this great career, you’re the lead in this significant new musical, and you’re young still.”Michele watched the movie that night. Dazzled, she watched it again the next night, resolving to one day land the lead role of Fanny Brice. A few weeks later, she gushed about “Funny Girl” and its star, Barbra Streisand, at dinner with a television producer, Ryan Murphy, who went on to create a new series, “Glee,” with Michele in mind.This is where it gets meta: Playing a glee club captain who graduates to become a striving theater actress, Michele’s character lands her dream role in the first Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” since its debut in 1964.Murphy’s plan to transfer Michele’s Fanny Brice from the TV screen to stage never materialized. But on Tuesday, a tale that feels to many like life imitating art culminates with Michele’s first performance as Brice, a 20th-century Jewish performer, at the August Wilson Theater.Like the two other actresses who occupied the lead role this year (first Beanie Feldstein, then her standby Julie Benko), Michele must seek to avoid the shadow of Streisand’s star-making performance in the original musical and movie.Unlike the other actresses, Michele, 36, must contend with another shadow: her past self. Two years ago, she faced a wave of criticism from former colleagues who publicly accused her of bullying behavior and a prima donna attitude. And she must step into a show whose behind-the-scenes machinations and cast changes have been one of the juiciest running stories on Broadway this summer, prompting reams of coverage and gossip.Michele during a “Funny Girl” rehearsal. She is playing Brice with the character’s feverish energy dialed up a bit higher than the two Fannies before her this year. Jenny Anderson“I feel more ready than I ever have before, both personally and professionally,” Michele said in an interview three weeks before her debut. She spoke from a dressing room vacated by the actress Jane Lynch, who ended her run as Brice’s mother earlier than planned, ensuring that the former “Glee” co-stars would never perform together onstage.The allegations prompted an “intense time of reflection” about her conduct at work, Michele said — which, she believes, has equipped her to be a part of, and lead, a Broadway company for the first time since leaving “Spring Awakening” in 2008.“I really understand the importance and value now of being a leader,” she said. “It means not only going and doing a good job when the camera’s rolling, but also when it’s not. And that wasn’t always the most important thing for me.”For Michele, who temporarily stepped away from performing after the birth of her son, Ever, in 2020, the explosive internet reaction to her “Funny Girl” casting was not, perhaps, the return-to-Broadway narrative she had imagined.Before the news was announced, Feldstein, who had generally received underwhelming reviews in the role, said on Instagram in July that she would be leaving the show two months earlier than expected, writing that the production had “decided to take the show in a different direction.” The announcement fueled speculation that Feldstein’s departure had something to do with Michele, who was rumored to be taking over the part.“I really understand the importance and value now of being a leader,” Michele said. “It means not only going and doing a good job when the camera’s rolling, but also when it’s not.”Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesRebukes of Michele resurfaced online, with some questioning whether she should have been offered the role at all.To go back to June 2020: After Michele tweeted a message with the Black Lives Matter hashtag, Samantha Marie Ware, a Black actress who appeared on “Glee,” said Michele had been responsible for “traumatic microaggressions” toward her, saying that Michele had threatened to get her fired and made a humiliating remark in front of castmates.A deluge of criticism followed, including from former “Glee” actors who described Michele as exclusionary and demeaning to colleagues. The meal-kit company HelloFresh, saying it “does not condone racism nor discrimination of any kind,” ended its partnership with her.Another co-star from “Glee,” Heather Morris, tweeted at the time that it had been very unpleasant to work with Michele, writing that “for Lea to treat others with the disrespect that she did for as long as she did, I believe she should be called out.” (Morris did not respond to an interview request.)Michele apologized in 2020 for her past behavior. In the interview last month, she declined to address the specifics of Ware’s account, saying she doesn’t “feel the need to handle things” through the media. Ware declined to comment, but shortly after Michele’s “Funny Girl” casting was announced, Ware posted a tweet in which she said, “Yes, Broadway upholds whiteness.” Her account and tweets have since been made private.Michele now acknowledges that her work style is intense, sometimes to a fault. “I have an edge to me. I work really hard. I leave no room for mistakes,” she said. “That level of perfectionism, or that pressure of perfectionism, left me with a lot of blind spots.”She traced that psychology to her days as a child actress on Broadway, where, she said, the expectation to perform at a consistently high level often put her in a “semi-robotic state.”Her performance career started unexpectedly when she was 8, living in Tenafly, N.J., with her father (a Jewish deli owner) and her mother (an Italian-Catholic nurse). As Michele tells it, her mother was asked to drive a friend’s daughter, whose father had just had a heart attack, to an audition for the Broadway production of “Les Misérables.” Michele insisted on coming along, and she ended up landing the dual role of Young Cosette and Young Éponine. Hungry for more, Michele was 9 when she was cast in the new musical “Ragtime.”At 14, she met Mayer when she landed the role of Wendla in a workshop of “Spring Awakening.” The role, as a teenager exploring her sexual desires within the strictures of a 19th-century German household, left no questions about her dedication to the theater. Michele was beaten with a switch onstage by her co-star, Jonathan Groff, and when she was older, she was asked to bare her chest and simulate sex onstage.Groff, who formed a close bond with Michele during the run, remembers Michele being upset by the uncomfortable laughter that beating scene would elicit from audiences.“It would really crush her,” he said, “like, ‘Oh gosh, are we not doing the scene well enough? The people are laughing!’”Groff was the person who invited her to dinner with Murphy, setting the stage for Michele’s “Glee” role. At 22, Michele became known to the world as Rachel Berry, an anal-retentive high school glee club member whose middle name, Barbra, is after a certain Brooklyn-born diva.By the time Berry lands the “Funny Girl” role in the series, her affinity for the musical is well established, having already sung “Don’t Rain On My Parade” and the movie-specific “My Man.” In the show’s fifth season, Berry belts “I’m the Greatest Star” on a Broadway stage, with Lynch watching from the audience.You can be forgiven for mixing up which plot points belong to Michele and which to Berry. “It all kind of morphed together a little bit,” Michele said.In a moment of Rachel Berry-like perfectionism, she admitted that during a “Glee” concert tour, she asked that “Don’t Rain On My Parade” be removed from the set list because she had messed up during a live performance.Behind the scenes, Michele said, she was getting a “quick education on addiction” while dating Cory Monteith, her co-star who had long struggled with substance abuse. Monteith died in 2013 of a combination of heroin and alcohol, devastating Michele and other cast members.Performing in 2010 with Cory Monteith, who died of a combination of heroin and alcohol in 2013.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesNot long after, Michele got within reach of her dream role, as Murphy snagged the rights to a Broadway revival of “Funny Girl.” It was a difficult time, Michele said, and she felt uncertain about the plan because she had just performed many of the show’s songs on TV.“I didn’t feel like there was anything new that I could bring,” she said.The new emotional material came in the years since — when, as Brice does in the show’s second act, Michele got married and had a child, reordering her priorities.Her friends started to notice changes. Groff recalled that at Michele’s wedding to Zandy Reich, a businessman, in 2019, Murphy, who officiated, told a story about his first dinner with them as a couple. According to Groff, Murphy lightheartedly said, “This was the first time I’ve had dinner with Lea where the main topic of the conversation wasn’t about her, what she wanted to do next creatively.” (A representative for Murphy said he was unavailable to comment for the story.)Michele gave birth to Ever the next year after months of pregnancy complications. He was still a baby when the team behind the London production of “Funny Girl” was casting for the transfer to Broadway. Mayer said that even though Michele was at the top of the list for Brice, he sensed she would not be ready to return to work.After the show cast Feldstein, Mayer had a conversation with Michele to explain the decision. “I said, ‘Look, I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but this is what we’re doing,’” Mayer remembered telling Michele.Down the road, he added, “‘I would love to do ‘Funny Girl’ with you some time.’”Michele said she had not been set on returning to Broadway until November 2021, when she performed in a one-night-only “Spring Awakening” reunion concert. Around that time, she said, she had another conversation with Mayer, in which she said that if Feldstein’s run ended, and they wanted a replacement, she would be “honored” to step in.After Feldstein initially announced her planned departure in June, the wheels for Michele to take over were set in motion, Mayer said. He added that he loved Feldstein’s performance and stands by her “100 percent.” Asked why Feldstein decided to leave earlier than expected, he said he was unsure.“I haven’t spoken to her about it,” Mayer said. “I think it was hard for her once she knew she was going to be leaving and that someone else was taking over.” (A representative for Feldstein didn’t respond to requests for comment.)Mayer said Michele’s deal went through relatively quickly because she and Feldstein had the same agent, who already knew the details around the show. By late July, Michele was in the rehearsal room. Benko took over as Brice for the month of August, with the assurance she’d perform one show a week in the role after Michele’s debut.On one of Michele’s first days with the full cast, she sang “Don’t Rain On My Parade” onstage, and an ensemble member, Leslie Blake Walker, said she remembered watching her perform the song on “Glee” — Walker’s first exposure to “Funny Girl.”Rehearsing “Greatest Star” onstage last month, Michele played Brice with the character’s feverish energy dialed up a bit higher than the two Fannies before her this year. The comedy was her way of taking things to the extreme: grabbing a fistful of Jared Grimes’s sweatshirt when trying to convince him of her talent, or hoisting herself on top of the piano, as Mayer suggested, standing partially on the keys.Referring to her “Funny Girl” colleagues, Michele said, “Everyone here has been through a lot, and I just have to come in and be prepared and do a good job and be respectful of the fact that this is their space.”Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesThe structure of the show itself will see some changes, including a new interlude of a Brice song, “I’d Rather Be Blue Over You,” that Streisand sings in the movie.Michele, like her predecessors, has tried to remove the pressure of the comparison, saying, “​​I will never be as good as Barbra Streisand.” Whatever performance she delivers, it will not be eligible for a Tony: Only the originating actress in that production, Feldstein, can be considered for the award.But the pressure on her to save this revival is hard to dismiss. Mayer said he sees this as a “second chance” for “Funny Girl,” whose ticket sales had been on the decline, dropping to an average weekly gross of about $760,000 in Feldstein’s final month from $1.2 million in the first two, according to data from the Broadway League. Prices have now skyrocketed for Michele’s debut: The most expensive ticket on her first night is more than $2,600, as of Wednesday.Despite the evident star power, Michele seems aware that she should avoid behaving like a diva.“Everyone here has been through a lot, and I just have to come in and be prepared and do a good job and be respectful of the fact that this is their space,” she said.A humbling element of the process is that she had to learn how to tap dance from square one, practicing with a nursery rhyme tap video one of the show’s choreographers, Ayodele Casel, sent her. (After the first tap rehearsal, she said, she cried in the bathroom, wondering if she really could pull this role off, before the steps eventually clicked.)Still, Michele admits that she is only just learning how to be publicly vulnerable. Online hatred of her can verge on gleeful, and she fears that if she responds to criticism — or a bizarre rumor that she is illiterate — it will fuel the fire.“I went to ‘Glee’ every single day; I knew my lines every single day,” she said. “And then there’s a rumor online that I can’t read or write? It’s sad. It really is. I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldn’t be the case.”Right now, Michele said, she is focused on what’s in front of her: inhabiting the role, and this time, doing it as a wife and mother rather than a fame-hungry former glee club captain.Maybe Rachel Berry would throw a fit if her performance was ineligible for a Tony Award, but present-day Lea Michele insists that she isn’t bothered.“You might think that’s the biggest piece of bull that I’m going to say to you all day,” Michele said, using the stronger version of the word, “but I really don’t care about that at this point. It’s just about being able to play this part.” More

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      At Shakespeare’s Globe, a Nonbinary Joan of Arc Causes a Stir

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      Even before the production debuted, it had inflamed a rancorous debate about sex and gender that plays out almost daily in Britain.LONDON — When the playwright Charlie Josephine watched the first performance of their play “I, Joan” at Shakespeare’s Globe last week, they sat in the theater, wracked with nerves.The play, based on the story of Joan of Arc, is Josephine’s first on a major London stage. But that was not the only reason that the playwright, who identifies as transgender, queer and nonbinary, and uses the pronoun they, was anxious. Throughout last month, “I, Joan” had been at the center of a media furor in Britain because of Josephine’s decision to depict Joan of Arc as nonbinary.In the play, which runs at the Globe through Oct. 22, Joan of Arc comes to terms with their gender identity while inspiring French soldiers to repel English forces from their soil. “I’m not a girl,” Joan says at one point. “I do not fit that word.”When The Daily Mail, a tabloid newspaper, reported details of the Globe production in August, it led to a barrage of complaints on social media and in print. Allison Pearson, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, a conservative newspaper, wrote that recasting Joan of Arc as nonbinary was “an insult.” Sophie Walker, a former leader of Britain’s Women’s Equality Party, wrote on Twitter that when she “was a little girl, Joan of Arc presented thrilling possibilities about what one young girl could do against massed ranks of men. Rewriting her as not female and presenting it as progress is a massive disappointment.”Shakespeare’s Globe, where “I, Joan” is running through Oct. 22.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe Globe warns patrons about details in “I, Joan” that some may find upsetting. This is not the first show there that has caused a stir.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesBefore anyone had even seen it, the Globe’s show touched a nerve in Britain, where a perceived conflict between the rights of women, and transgender and nonbinary people, has ignited a furious debate that plays out almost daily in the news media, in lawmakers’ speeches and in the courts. Some feminists in Britain have long called for the maintenance of rights based on biological sex, rather than gender identity, which they say threatens women’s-only spaces. Many transgender and nonbinary people say those campaigns discriminate against them and create a hostile environment.The story of Joan of Arc — a 15th-century teenage girl who is said to have heeded God’s instructions to put on men’s clothing and lead French soldiers in battle, only to be tried for heresy and burned at the stake — has been the subject of plays for centuries. Daniel Hobbins, a historian at the University of Notre Dame, said many of those depictions played fast and loose with historical truth. Shakespeare, in “Henry VI, Part 1,” portrayed Joan of Arc as a witch, in keeping with British views at the time, Hobbins said. In the early 19th century, Friedrich Schiller, in “The Maid of Orleans,” showed Joan falling in love with an English knight. “That didn’t happen,” Hobbins said. “She has been reimagined forever to suit contemporary needs.”Joan of Arc was tried for heresy in the 15th century and burned at the stake.Helen MurrayLucy Delap, a professor of gender history at the University of Cambridge, said Josephine’s reinvention of Joan of Arc had fed into a debate in Britain that had become “so heightened” that there was little communication between the two sides. A play like “I, Joan” could have been a way to open a conversation that would cross that divide, she said, but it had instead become a “useful dog whistle” for people “who were hot under the collar about trans issues.”Heather Binning of the Women’s Rights Network, a group that aims “to defend the sex-based rights of women,” said in an email that she objected to “I, Joan” because a nonbinary identity was “a 21st-century idea.” Joan of Arc “existed in a time where her struggles were that of being a woman,” she wrote. “Being female, and the biological sex of her body, lies at the root of this story.”Binning said she thought “I, Joan” was “trying to attract attention by riding on the wave of gender identity ideology that is sweeping not just the U.K., but many other countries.”Sitting on the roof terrace of the Globe’s offices last week, Josephine, the playwright, said they had anticipated most of the complaints, and felt they were misguided. The play was not trying to erase women from history, Josephine said. It was meant to open up new ways of thinking about a historical figure. If anyone wanted to keep thinking of Joan as a young woman, they said, “then, cool — you still can.”Josephine, 33, said the French martyr’s story had meant little to them growing up in a working-class family in Hemel Hempstead, southern England. The Globe asked them to write the play last year; the playwright’s main concern, at first, was nothing to do with gender, but how to talk about Joan’s religious beliefs in a way that would resonate with a largely nonreligious theatergoing audience.Thom as Joan of Arc.Helen MurrayMembers of the “I, Joan” cast, including dancers the script describes as “young, queer and fierce.”Helen MurrayJosephine said the decision to make Joan nonbinary came after studying Joan’s life and realizing that Joan of Arc had been willing to die at the stake rather than stop wearing men’s clothing. This was “not a casual fashion statement,” Josephine said. “It was a deep need for them.” Josephine wanted to depict what it would have been like for “a young person in a female body, who is questioning gender in a very different society than what we live in now,” they said. “My younger self really needed a protagonist like this,” they added.Michelle Terry, the Globe’s artistic director, said the playhouse had a history of causing a stir by playing with gender onstage. In 2003, Mark Rylance, the company’s artistic director at the time, upset some patrons with all-female productions of “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Richard III.” More recently, Terry said she received complaints for playing Hamlet there in 2018, and again this year, when the Globe toured a production of “Julius Caesar” in which the main male characters were played by women.“Everyone’s got an idea of how plays should be done and how historical figures should be treated,” she said. All “I, Joan” was doing, Terry said, was asking, “Who is Joan for now?”For all the media fuss, the one place where few people seemed concerned about Joan of Arc’s gender was in the auditorium of the Globe itself. At a recent performance of “I, Joan,” the audience of nearly 1,000 was made up of the theater’s usual mix of British theater lovers, tourists and school groups. At 7:30 p.m., Isobel Thom, who plays Joan, walked onstage and began the show’s opening speech: “Trans people are sacred. We are the divine.” The monologue was interrupted by cheers of support.Audience members seem to have embraced the depiction of Joan of Arc as nonbinary. In interviews with nearly 20 spectators, no one said they had a problem with it.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesRobin van Asselt, 23, a transgender woman from Amsterdam in the audience, said she had cried watching the “casual queerness” onstage. Joan’s “aggressive push to be seen and respected” as nonbinary “was just so cathartic,” van Asselt added.In interviews with nearly 20 more audience members, no one said they had a problem with a nonbinary Joan of Arc. Wanda Forsythe, 72, a retired college administrator on vacation from Toronto, said she “didn’t feel offended as a woman — just that it could have been done a bit better, and shorter.” (The show runs almost three hours.)Jackie Warren, 62, a retired government official, said she and her husband came to two plays at the Globe every year and had picked “I, Joan” at random. Portraying Joan as nonbinary was “really clever,” Warren said.“I’m old, aren’t I?” she added, “so I don’t understand a lot of it. I just think we need to open our hearts to everybody, and I can’t understand why we can’t.” More

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      Michael Schultz on Breaking the Mold for Black Directors

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      When Michael Schultz began work on his first film, in 1971, there was no road map for a lengthy career as a Black director in Hollywood. The first two studio movies to employ Black directors — Gordon Parks’s “The Learning Tree” (1969) and Ossie Davis’s “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (1970) — had only relatively recently left theaters. And the movement that would soon be known as Blaxploitation — mimicking the work of Davis, Parks and the trailblazing independent filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles — did little to suggest a promising future.Schultz was 32 at the time and a rising star of the New York theater scene. He had been tapped to direct a public television documentary, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Though he didn’t know it, Schultz had already begun an improbable course that would take him to the heart of the mainstream film and television industry, where he has essentially remained for the past five decades.Although he has cast a more modest shadow than some of his peers, Schultz holds a singular résumé. He has directed more than a dozen films, including the classics “Cooley High” (1975), “Car Wash” (1976) and “Krush Groove” (1985); is responsible for the first feature-film appearances of Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and Blair Underwood; and has worked consistently in television since the 1990s.At 83 — and due behind the camera this fall, for Season 5 of the CW drama “All American” — he is probably the longest-working Black director in history.Last month, I met Schultz in New York at the offices of the Criterion Collection, which in December will release a remastered special edition of “Cooley High” — a coming-of-age drama set in the 1960s at a school in Chicago. Schultz is slim and energetic, with an easygoing manner and a guitar-pick-shaped face framed by wavy silver hair. In a darkened editing suite, he directed a sound engineer to raise the soundtrack of a pivotal scene by four decibels.“I wanted to make sure that people can hear it,” he said. “They’re going to be watching at home, and all kinds of stuff is happening at home.”At lunch later that afternoon, and over several earlier phone and video interviews, we discussed the winding trajectory of his career. These are edited excerpts from our conversations.From left, Corin Rogers, Joseph Carter Wilson, Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs in “Cooley High.”Olive FilmsWhen you look at “Cooley High” today, what do you see?I see really good performances by Glynn Turman, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Garrett Morris. I see some things I wish I could have done better.Like what?Like showing Larry as a basketball superstar. That little swish he does is pretty hokey. It would be nice to set his character up a little better. Little nitpicky things like that.Do you always have that feeling when you’ve completed a film?You’re never satisfied. Because there’s always something you missed or something that you didn’t think of in the shooting of it. But there’s also always wonderful things that happen that you didn’t think of because of the communal creativity of the actors and the cameraman and all of the elements that make up the film. It’s a dual universe: good and evil, black and white, up and down.How did “Cooley High” come to you?The editor of a film I’d done, “Together for Days” (1972) [a kind of gender-swapped, post-civil rights-era update of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”], connected me with the producer Steve Krantz. He had met the writer, Eric Monte, and they had a script based on all of these incredible stories Eric had from growing up in the Cabrini Green [housing project] of Chicago. But the script wasn’t really a script — it was still mostly just stories. So I met with Eric for seven or eight hours a day for four weeks. Every night, me and my wife [Gloria Schultz] would cut everything down until we had the completed script.What did you see in Eric’s stories? What was the vision?It had this perfect dramatic twist in the death of a friend that sends the main character off to pursue his dreams. That really happened to Eric. And I thought it could be a window into the lives of Black kids that had never been seen before. My theory was that if it was as culturally specific as possible, and as Black as possible, it would translate across the racial divide and people would fall in love with these kids and their humanity.It’s become famous for its soundtrack, as well, which is wall-to-wall Motown — The Supremes, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson. How did you get all of those songs?I was using Motown music on the set and in the editing room, just because I loved it. But nobody valued that music at the time.Really?Yeah. We were able to get it for a very reasonable fee, which was good because the budget for the whole film was like $900,000. The problem came when they wanted to put it out on cassette, because by then the music had had this resurgence and the studio couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t until much later, after Motown got bought by Universal, that they were finally able to do a deal.You started out in the theater in New York, with the Negro Ensemble Company. How did you end up there?I had moved to New York after studying theater at Marquette in Milwaukee, where I grew up. My wife and I were working with the McCarter Theater in New Jersey when Douglas Turner Ward and Robert Hooks were just starting the Negro Ensemble Company. My wife suggested I drop my résumé off with them before we went on the road to do a play that she was acting in and I was directing. Douglas Turner Ward ended up coming out to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to see it and offered me any of the plays in the Negro Ensemble Company’s opening season. I chose “Song of the Lusitanian Bogey” [Peter Weiss’s drama about Portuguese colonialism in Angola], which ended up being their very first production.Schultz, left, with Douglas Turner Ward, working together at the Negro Ensemble Company.Edward Hausner/The New York TimesYou made the transition to features in the same year “Super Fly” (1972) came out; right after “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” and “Shaft” (both in 1971). What did you make of Blaxploitation?I thought what Melvin [Van Peebles, the director of “Sweet Sweetback”] was doing was very inspirational. He self-distributed that film. And I learned a lot from watching Gordon [Parks, the director of “Shaft”]. But when it devolved into all this stereotypical stuff, “Hell Up in Harlem,” “Sheba, Baby,” all the pimps and fur coats, I said, “Wait till I get my break, because I’m gonna do it a lot better than this.”There was a huge backlash at the time within the Black community — in editorials in Ebony; from the Coalition Against Blaxploitation, which included the N.A.A.C.P.; from Jesse Jackson. The argument was that the movies were degrading and setting us back. Did you participate in those debates?I agreed with [the criticism] in a way. But to me, providing work for actors who couldn’t get work was a very important thing to do. And so it wasn’t so black and white. Yeah, they’re putting white people on top of the pyramid [most Blaxploitation films, after the initial wave, were directed by white men], but they’re keeping Black people working. I was against the tired imagery, especially given the power of the medium and the influence that it has on people’s minds. Unless you have a counter, unless you can see other versions of who we are, it’s damaging.When you started working in Hollywood, did people ever think that you were white, because of your name?All the time. And there was an assumption that I was Jewish, even though it’s a German name. It happened in New York, actually. My agents got me a meeting with the producers of a big Broadway show. They had seen my name on other hit shows in town, but they had never seen my face. I’ve never done a lot of PR. So I walk into this meeting and all of the faces in the room just fall. They couldn’t even keep it together.Oh, wow. What happened?I didn’t get the gig. It was “Oh. Oh — we thought … well, it’s good to meet you.” And then I didn’t hear from them again.Do you have German in your family?Not that I know of. I did the DNA thing and there’s significant European [ancestry], but it’s so far back that who knows?After “Cooley High,” you did “Car Wash,” which was a big hit for Universal. It was also the first of three movies you did with Richard Pryor [followed by “Greased Lightning” and “Which Way Is Up?,” both released in 1977]. What was your bond with him?Richard and I were supposed to do another movie before “Car Wash” called “Simmons From Chicago,” a comedy about a pimp who becomes president. It never got made, but I went to his house to talk about it and we got along very well. I thought he was a brilliant comic — my friends and I all loved listening to his stuff — but he hadn’t really broken onto the scene in films yet. And he respected the work I had done in the theater. We were simpatico. Even though we had completely different backgrounds, we had similar energies. We were both dedicated to the work and wanted to make an impact.Schultz on the “Carbon Copy” set with George Segal and Denzel Washington.Avco Embassy Pictures/Getty ImagesYou also cast Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and Blair Underwood in their first feature films (“Carbon Copy” in 1981, “Together for Days” and “Krush Groove”). What was your secret?Sam was a student at Morehouse. We were shooting “Together for Days” in Atlanta and he came in to audition for a background role. When I watched him, I said this guy needs a speaking part. He was very natural. He was the kind of kid who you didn’t see the acting with — there was a certain ease.When Denzel came in for “Carbon Copy,” [a race comedy, also starring George Segal, about a white businessman who finds out he has a long-lost Black son], I knew immediately that he was the guy. He was centered and focused, with a real self-assuredness that made him seem mature for his age. He wasn’t in awe of any of the things around him. And he was very handsome. I did tell him, though, “Hey, if you want to be a leading man, you better get that gap in your front teeth taken care of.” [Laughs] And he did.Wait …He did. I said, “It’s not a requirement. You got the part. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve never seen a leading man with a gap in his teeth.” [A representative for Washington declined to comment.]And Blair?Another audition [for “Krush Groove,” an early hip-hop film about the founding of Def Jam, in which Underwood plays a character based on Russell Simmons]. Matter of fact, I almost hired another kid. We were getting ready to make the call, but I saw Blair out in the hallway. I said, “Cancel the call. This is the guy.” He read and he was great. He just had this energy, this aura about him.You directed the Beatles musical “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which was a big pivot and had a big budget and a high profile. How do you get an assignment like that?Robert Stigwood [the producer of the film and the manager of the Bee Gees] was a big fan of “Car Wash.” He had wanted me to do “Grease” [which Stigwood was also a producer on]. I tried to work it out, but I was editing “Which Way Is Up?” and Travolta had a hard out because he had to go back to his TV show [“Welcome Back, Kotter”]. So then Stigwood offered me “Sgt. Pepper’s” as a consolation prize.Did you ever wish you had done Grease?It wasn’t really the kind of musical I wanted to do. I never liked musicals growing up; they always seemed phony to me. So even if I had accepted it, I would have done it differently. “Sgt Pepper’s” wasn’t like a traditional Hollywood musical. It was more like an opera or an extended music video — a different approach to music as a filmic experience. Would it have been nice to have done “Grease”? Yeah. It made a lot more money than “Which Way Is Up?”Critics savaged “Sgt. Pepper’s,” especially the Bee Gees, who were kind of in an impossible position, standing in for the Beatles, who don’t appear in the film. How did it feel when you were shooting?The Bee Gees were cool when they were playing music, but trying to get them to act was quite tedious. Peter Frampton, as well. When the guys were singing, they were fine. But otherwise it was elementary school theater. Barry Gibb couldn’t get out of bed unless he had a stogie; he was high constantly. [A representative for Gibb didn’t respond to a request for comment.] Peter was a really sweet guy, but the Bee Gees hated him. I think they resented the fact that he had this huge hit album out [“Frampton Comes Alive!”]. They were always ignoring him and trying to make his life as difficult as they could. But I ended up really liking the movie and thought it was going to be a big hit. At the very first screening, the audience loved it. The studio was ecstatic. But it got really damning reviews. It was like “The worst musical in the history of modern Hollywood moviemaking.”How did you deal with that?It was a big hit internationally. I made more money on that film than on most of my earlier films put together. But the response in America was devastating, depressing, deflating. It took me about a year to recover. I had been doing one film after the other before that and was pretty wiped out. Going through that emotional disappointment and taking that break kind of slowed down the trajectory of my career.Schultz says, “It’s extraordinarily gratifying to see the talent” of Black directors today, “to see so many avenues for young people to develop and get in the mix. And they’re coming with the goods.”Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesSince the ’90s, you’ve worked most frequently as a television director. What do you like about the medium?When I was starting out, everybody in film looked down their nose on television. I always thought that was stupid. My feeling was, “Hey, television reaches millions of people.” It’s crazy not to want to get your story out to an audience of that size.But would you rather have been making features?No. [Pauses]. Because around that same time, our family was going through some personal difficulties. Our oldest son was stricken with schizophrenia and I had to have a steady stream of income coming in.I’m so sorry.Thank you. I had to keep working to get him the level of care that he needed. I couldn’t wait around for six months to get the green light for a feature.That sounds really scary.It was. But we had really good psychiatrists, therapists and these new medicines — psychotropics. The scary thing was when he would have a relapse. You’re always afraid that they’ll end up on the street and the cops will get involved, or shoot them down. But we just weren’t willing to let him go. Fortunately, our son is OK today.How do you think you’ve been able to survive through so many seasons of change in the industry?I’m good at what I do and focus on what’s best for the project. Maybe it’s my theater background, but I like to work very collaboratively and make everyone a part of the process. I don’t need to be Michael Bay or James Cameron, or whoever. I remember, after we finished “The Last Dragon” [a 1985 Black kung fu comedy, produced by the Motown founder Berry Gordy], Berry Gordy decided that he should be credited as the director. But the Directors Guild wouldn’t let him. So Berry went and changed the title to “Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon,” just to get his name in there. I’ve never understood that kind of ego. [A representative for Gordy didn’t respond to a request for comment.]Were you angry?Well, I was not happy about it. But I wasn’t going to spend a whole lot of energy being upset. [Gordy] is very slick. It’s no wonder he made all that money.In the last decade, there’s been a real resurgence in Black filmmaking, with many more Black directors working regularly than in the past. What has it been like for you to see that evolution?It’s extraordinarily gratifying to see the talent, and to see so many avenues for young people to develop and get in the mix. And they’re coming with the goods. I don’t think it would have happened, though, if there weren’t Black executives, as well. Ryan Coogler had a Black executive supporting “Black Panther” [Nate Moore, Marvel Studios’ vice president of production and development]. When you have the creative and the executive in sync, that’s when extraordinary things can really happen. We saw that way back when with the Negro Ensemble Company.When you’re on set today, is it still as fun as it used to be?Oh yeah. I still get the butterflies when I’m starting something new — “Am I going to mess this up?” But once I’m in there, it just flows. People keep asking me when I’m going to retire and I always say, “Retire from what? Having fun?” I’ll retire when either my body gives out or it starts to feel like work. But, right now, I’m having fun — and they’re still paying me. More

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      Lea Michele Is Well Aware That the Pressure Is On

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      She’s landed her dream role in “Funny Girl.” Now she’s tasked with rescuing the faltering Broadway show and proving that she is not the person she once was.Fifteen years ago, Lea Michele was sulking in her “Spring Awakening” dressing room, heartbroken over a guy, when the Broadway show’s director offered her a bit of advice.The director, Michael Mayer, suggested that she watch “Funny Girl,” which, he explained, was about a performer learning to not let a man drag her down.“I gave it to her as a kind of comfort,” Mayer said in a phone interview last month. “You’ve got this great career, you’re the lead in this significant new musical, and you’re young still.”Michele watched the movie that night. Dazzled, she watched it again the next night, resolving to one day land the lead role of Fanny Brice. A few weeks later, she gushed about “Funny Girl” and its star, Barbra Streisand, at dinner with a television producer, Ryan Murphy, who went on to create a new series, “Glee,” with Michele in mind.This is where it gets meta: Playing a glee club captain who graduates to become a striving theater actress, Michele’s character lands her dream role in the first Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” since its debut in 1964.Murphy’s plan to transfer Michele’s Fanny Brice from the TV screen to stage never materialized. But on Tuesday, a tale that feels to many like life imitating art culminates with Michele’s first performance as Brice, a 20th-century Jewish performer, at the August Wilson Theater.Like the two other actresses who occupied the lead role this year (first Beanie Feldstein, then her standby Julie Benko), Michele must seek to avoid the shadow of Streisand’s star-making performance in the original musical and movie.Unlike the other actresses, Michele, 36, must contend with another shadow: her past self. Two years ago, she faced a wave of criticism from former colleagues who publicly accused her of bullying behavior and a prima donna attitude. And she must step into a show whose behind-the-scenes machinations and cast changes have been one of the juiciest running stories on Broadway this summer, prompting reams of coverage and gossip.Michele during a “Funny Girl” rehearsal. She is playing Brice with the character’s feverish energy dialed up a bit higher than the two Fannies before her this year. Jenny Anderson“I feel more ready than I ever have before, both personally and professionally,” Michele said in an interview three weeks before her debut. She spoke from a dressing room vacated by the actress Jane Lynch, who ended her run as Brice’s mother earlier than planned, ensuring that the former “Glee” co-stars would never perform together onstage.The allegations prompted an “intense time of reflection” about her conduct at work, Michele said — which, she believes, has equipped her to be a part of, and lead, a Broadway company for the first time since leaving “Spring Awakening” in 2008.“I really understand the importance and value now of being a leader,” she said. “It means not only going and doing a good job when the camera’s rolling, but also when it’s not. And that wasn’t always the most important thing for me.”For Michele, who temporarily stepped away from performing after the birth of her son, Ever, in 2020, the explosive internet reaction to her “Funny Girl” casting was not, perhaps, the return-to-Broadway narrative she had imagined.Before the news was announced, Feldstein, who had generally received underwhelming reviews in the role, said on Instagram in July that she would be leaving the show two months earlier than expected, writing that the production had “decided to take the show in a different direction.” The announcement fueled speculation that Feldstein’s departure had something to do with Michele, who was rumored to be taking over the part.“I really understand the importance and value now of being a leader,” Michele said. “It means not only going and doing a good job when the camera’s rolling, but also when it’s not.”Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesRebukes of Michele resurfaced online, with some questioning whether she should have been offered the role at all.To go back to June 2020: After Michele tweeted a message with the Black Lives Matter hashtag, Samantha Marie Ware, a Black actress who appeared on “Glee,” said Michele had been responsible for “traumatic microaggressions” toward her, saying that Michele had threatened to get her fired and made a humiliating remark in front of castmates.A deluge of criticism followed, including from former “Glee” actors who described Michele as exclusionary and demeaning to colleagues. The meal-kit company HelloFresh, saying it “does not condone racism nor discrimination of any kind,” ended its partnership with her.Another co-star from “Glee,” Heather Morris, tweeted at the time that it had been very unpleasant to work with Michele, writing that “for Lea to treat others with the disrespect that she did for as long as she did, I believe she should be called out.” (Morris did not respond to an interview request.)Michele apologized in 2020 for her past behavior. In the interview last month, she declined to address the specifics of Ware’s account, saying she doesn’t “feel the need to handle things” through the media. Ware declined to comment, but shortly after Michele’s “Funny Girl” casting was announced, Ware posted a tweet in which she said, “Yes, Broadway upholds whiteness.” Her account and tweets have since been made private.Michele now acknowledges that her work style is intense, sometimes to a fault. “I have an edge to me. I work really hard. I leave no room for mistakes,” she said. “That level of perfectionism, or that pressure of perfectionism, left me with a lot of blind spots.”She traced that psychology to her days as a child actress on Broadway, where, she said, the expectation to perform at a consistently high level often put her in a “semi-robotic state.”Her performance career started unexpectedly when she was 8, living in Tenafly, N.J., with her father (a Jewish deli owner) and her mother (an Italian-Catholic nurse). As Michele tells it, her mother was asked to drive a friend’s daughter, whose father had just had a heart attack, to an audition for the Broadway production of “Les Misérables.” Michele insisted on coming along, and she ended up landing the dual role of Young Cosette and Young Éponine. Hungry for more, Michele was 9 when she was cast in the new musical “Ragtime.”At 14, she met Mayer when she landed the role of Wendla in a workshop of “Spring Awakening.” The role, as a teenager exploring her sexual desires within the strictures of a 19th-century German household, left no questions about her dedication to the theater. Michele was beaten with a switch onstage by her co-star, Jonathan Groff, and when she was older, she was asked to bare her chest and simulate sex onstage.Groff, who formed a close bond with Michele during the run, remembers Michele being upset by the uncomfortable laughter that beating scene would elicit from audiences.“It would really crush her,” he said, “like, ‘Oh gosh, are we not doing the scene well enough? The people are laughing!’”Groff was the person who invited her to dinner with Murphy, setting the stage for Michele’s “Glee” role. At 22, Michele became known to the world as Rachel Berry, an anal-retentive high school glee club member whose middle name, Barbra, is after a certain Brooklyn-born diva.By the time Berry lands the “Funny Girl” role in the series, her affinity for the musical is well established, having already sung “Don’t Rain On My Parade” and the movie-specific “My Man.” In the show’s fifth season, Berry belts “I’m the Greatest Star” on a Broadway stage, with Lynch watching from the audience.You can be forgiven for mixing up which plot points belong to Michele and which to Berry. “It all kind of morphed together a little bit,” Michele said.In a moment of Rachel Berry-like perfectionism, she admitted that during a “Glee” concert tour, she asked that “Don’t Rain On My Parade” be removed from the set list because she had messed up during a live performance.Behind the scenes, Michele said, she was getting a “quick education on addiction” while dating Cory Monteith, her co-star who had long struggled with substance abuse. Monteith died in 2013 of a combination of heroin and alcohol, devastating Michele and other cast members.Performing in 2010 with Cory Monteith, who died of a combination of heroin and alcohol in 2013.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesNot long after, Michele got within reach of her dream role, as Murphy snagged the rights to a Broadway revival of “Funny Girl.” It was a difficult time, Michele said, and she felt uncertain about the plan because she had just performed many of the show’s songs on TV.“I didn’t feel like there was anything new that I could bring,” she said.The new emotional material came in the years since — when, like Brice does in the show’s second act, Michele got married and had a child, reordering her priorities.Her friends started to notice changes. Groff recalled that at Michele’s wedding to Zandy Reich, a businessman, in 2019, Murphy, who officiated, told a story about his first dinner with them as a couple. According to Groff, Murphy lightheartedly said, “This was the first time I’ve had dinner with Lea where the main topic of the conversation wasn’t about her, what she wanted to do next creatively.” (A representative for Murphy said he was unavailable to comment for the story.)Michele gave birth to Ever the next year after months of pregnancy complications. He was still a baby when the team behind the London production of “Funny Girl” was casting for the transfer to Broadway. Mayer said that even though Michele was at the top of the list for Brice, he sensed she would not be ready to return to work.After the show cast Feldstein, Mayer had a conversation with Michele to explain the decision. “I said, ‘Look, I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but this is what we’re doing,’” Mayer remembered telling Michele.Down the road, he added, “‘I would love to do ‘Funny Girl’ with you some time.’”Michele said she had not been set on returning to Broadway until November 2021, when she performed in a one-night-only “Spring Awakening” reunion concert. Around that time, she said, she had another conversation with Mayer, in which she said that if Feldstein’s run ended, and they wanted a replacement, she would be “honored” to step in.After Feldstein initially announced her planned departure in June, the wheels for Michele to take over were set in motion, Mayer said. He added that he loved Feldstein’s performance and stands by her “100 percent.” Asked why Feldstein decided to leave earlier than expected, he said he was unsure.“I haven’t spoken to her about it,” Mayer said. “I think it was hard for her once she knew she was going to be leaving and that someone else was taking over.” (A representative for Feldstein didn’t respond to requests for comment.)Mayer said Michele’s deal went through relatively quickly because she and Feldstein had the same agent, who already knew the details around the show. By late July, Michele was in the rehearsal room. Benko took over as Brice for the month of August, with the assurance she’d perform one show a week in the role after Michele’s debut.On one of Michele’s first days with the full cast, she sang “Don’t Rain On My Parade” onstage, and an ensemble member, Leslie Blake Walker, said she remembered watching her perform the song on “Glee” — Walker’s first exposure to “Funny Girl.”Rehearsing “Greatest Star” onstage last month, Michele played Brice with the character’s feverish energy dialed up a bit higher than the two Fannies before her this year. The comedy was her way of taking things to the extreme: grabbing a fistful of Jared Grimes’s sweatshirt when trying to convince him of her talent, or hoisting herself on top of the piano, as Mayer suggested, standing partially on the keys.Referring to her “Funny Girl” colleagues, Michele said, “Everyone here has been through a lot, and I just have to come in and be prepared and do a good job and be respectful of the fact that this is their space.”Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesThe structure of the show itself will see some changes, including a new interlude of a Brice song, “I’d Rather Be Blue Over You,” that Streisand sings in the movie.Michele, like her predecessors, has tried to remove the pressure of the comparison, saying, “​​I will never be as good as Barbra Streisand.” Whatever performance she delivers, it will not be eligible for a Tony: Only the originating actress in that production, Feldstein, can be considered for the award.But the pressure on her to save this revival is hard to dismiss. Mayer said he sees this as a “second chance” for “Funny Girl,” whose ticket sales had been on the decline, dropping to an average weekly gross of about $760,000 in Feldstein’s final month from $1.2 million in the first two, according to data from the Broadway League. Prices have now skyrocketed for Michele’s debut: The most expensive ticket on her first night is more than $2,600, as of Wednesday.Despite the evident star power, Michele seems aware that she should avoid behaving like a diva.“Everyone here has been through a lot, and I just have to come in and be prepared and do a good job and be respectful of the fact that this is their space,” she said.A humbling element of the process is that she had to learn how to tap dance from square one, practicing with a nursery rhyme tap video one of the show’s choreographers, Ayodele Casel, sent her. (After the first tap rehearsal, she said, she cried in the bathroom, wondering if she really could pull this role off, before the steps eventually clicked.)Still, Michele admits that she is only just learning how to be publicly vulnerable. Online hatred of her can verge on gleeful, and she fears that if she responds to criticism — or a bizarre rumor that she is illiterate — it will fuel the fire.“I went to ‘Glee’ every single day; I knew my lines every single day,” she said. “And then there’s a rumor online that I can’t read or write? It’s sad. It really is. I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldn’t be the case.”Right now, Michele said, she is focused on what’s in front of her: inhabiting the role, and this time, doing it as a wife and mother rather than a fame-hungry former glee club captain.Maybe Rachel Berry would throw a fit if her performance was ineligible for a Tony Award, but present-day Lea Michele insists that she isn’t bothered.“You might think that’s the biggest piece of bull that I’m going to say to you all day,” Michele said, using the stronger version of the word, “but I really don’t care about that at this point. It’s just about being able to play this part.” More