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      in Music

      In Washington, a Princess Party and a Carnival of Self-Loathing

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      Two shows with Broadway aspirations, “Once Upon a One More Time” and “A Strange Loop,” represent opposite extremes of what a big, mainstream production can be.WASHINGTON — Sidney Harman Hall was bustling before a recent matinee of “Once Upon a One More Time,” a revisionist fairy tale mash-up scored with Britney Spears songs at Shakespeare Theater Company here. People were taking group selfies at one of two step-and-repeats. A few girls — and women — tittered in tiaras. Purple T-shirts and tote bags with the show’s title and the names of storybook princesses were being sold. And the theater, which has a capacity of about 700, had no empty seats in sight. At least from the outside, “Once Upon a One More Time” looked like the kind of splashy show you might find on Broadway.I was in Washington for the weekend, at the first post-opening matinee of the show, and it wasn’t the only musical in the neighborhood with Broadway aspirations; the second show I saw here, Woolly Mammoth’s production of “A Strange Loop,” by Michael R. Jackson, has just announced plans for a Broadway run in the spring. It’s a more daring work: a meta show about a queer Black playwright writing a show about a queer Black playwright that opened Off Broadway in 2019 and won the Pulitzer Prize.Two very different shows in two very different theaters less than a mile apart: “Once Upon a One More Time” and “A Strange Loop” represent opposite extremes of what a Broadway production can be.Written by Jon Hartmere and directed and choreographed by the husband-and-wife team Keone and Mari Madrid, “Once Upon a One More Time” is set inside an abstract representation of the world of children’s storybooks. That’s to say that whenever a child opens a book of fairy tales, the denizens of this magical kingdom must act out the classic plots for the reader. Meanwhile, the princes and princesses — Snow White (Aisha Jackson), the Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), the Princess and the Pea (Morgan Weed), Rapunzel (Wonu Ogunfowora) and several others — hang around like on-call workers, waiting for their boss, the Narrator, to direct them through the scenes of their tales, which they must obediently act out in order to have their happily ever after.Princesses take a stand: From left, Lauren Zakrin, Selene Haro, Ashley Chiu, Adrianna Weir (seated), Wonu Ogunfowora, Aisha Jackson, Jennifer Florentino and Amy Hillner Larsen.Mathew MurphyBut Cinderella (Briga Heelan) isn’t happy, and becomes even less so after she learns that her Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) is being paid for his services while she isn’t. Then Cinderella meets the Notorious O.F.G. (that’s Original Fairy Godmother, comically played by Brooke Dillman), who comes all the way from the mystical land of Flatbush, Brooklyn, to give poor Cin a copy of “The Feminine Mystique.” Suddenly enlightened by feminist theory, Cinderella leads her fellow princesses in protest, demanding that they be allowed to write their own stories.The audience cheered at the more clever pairings of popular Spears songs with important plot points, like an unfaithful prince singing “Oops! … I Did It Again” or Cinderella’s evil stepmother singing “Toxic.”But as I watched the show, I wondered: Who is the target audience for this? So many Broadway shows are aimed at a general audience, and similarly, “Once Upon a One More Time” seems to want to appeal to both children and adults. The fairy tale premise (nodding to shows like “Into the Woods” and “Shrek”) and the earnest sermonizing seem to point to an audience of kids. But the lines of dialogue about microaggressions (the Narrator warns Cinderella about being “difficult,” getting “hysterical” and using a “shrill” voice, all of which made the audience gasp), along with some mild sex jokes, are clearly aimed at knowing adults. Plus, call me conventional, but I doubt a children’s show would include a song called “Work Bitch.” In aiming for a Broadway stage, “Once Upon a One More Time” still seems to be figuring out what its prospective audience would look like.With its blatant messaging about female empowerment and revisionist approach, not unlike two recent Broadway musicals — “Six” and “Diana,” both of which recast famous women from history as self-possessed and self-reliant feminist icons — “Once Upon a One More Time” reflects the broad strokes of modern-day feminism but shies away from anything too hefty or complex. That includes the pink-pigtailed elephant in the room: Spears herself, who has documented what she has called years of exploitation in her quest to end her conservatorship. So particularly the Britney faithful will most likely be disappointed to find the pop star absent from a show largely based on the products of her career.“A Strange Loop” has announced plans to transfer to Broadway in the spring. From left: James Jackson Jr., L Morgan Lee, Antwayn Hopper, John-Andrew Morrison, Jaquel Spivey (seated right), Jason Veasey and John-Michael Lyles.Marc J. FranklinAt Woolly Mammoth’s space, just a few blocks from Sidney Harman Hall, there were no selfie stations or gift kiosks. The theater seats less than 300 people, and the content of Jackson’s “A Strange Loop” could not be more different from “Once Upon a One More Time.”Directed by Stephen Brackett, “A Strange Loop” is a carnival of its protagonist’s self-loathing, his insecurities, his introspective reveries on sexuality and identity, society, family and religion. It’s hilarious until it turns vicious, and vice versa. And it defines itself through a critique of commercial productions, like the long-running Broadway show “The Lion King,” as well as through a deconstruction of the expectations society may have of a Black, queer artist, which can crush brave new work.The musical rejects the polite, family-friendly themes and the tidy endings of what its protagonist, a Broadway usher named Usher (Jaquel Spivey), sees at work. Full of references to sexual assault and racism, and with enough offensive language to fill a gallon-size swear jar, “A Strange Loop” aims to bring taboo topics to mainstream theater. The Woolly Mammoth crowd snapped and mmhmm-ed to lines breaking down queer and race politics; at one point a man in the row behind me got out of his seat and waved his arms around to the music as if he were at a rave — if raves played devastating songs about homophobia and abuse.Walking out of the theater afterward, I overheard a group of friends wonder if “A Strange Loop” could go to Broadway. One woman had reservations; she liked it, she said, but — and here she paused before awkwardly stumbling through her qualifier — it was a musical about AIDS.I held my tongue — because I could’ve mentioned that “Rent” and “Angels in America” were two Broadway shows about AIDS. Or that “A Strange Loop” is about so much more than AIDS. Or that this season, Broadway had “Dana H.,” a show about kidnapping and assault, and “Is This a Room,” about a real F.B.I. investigation — both fantastic, critically acclaimed works of art. Or that “Slave Play” brought similarly explicit language and sexual content to Broadway in 2019 and has now reopened.Or I could’ve simply said that this beautifully brutal work of theater is already headed to Broadway. More

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      in Movies

      Sally Ann Howes, Star of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,’ Dies at 91

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      The English-born actress captivated children in the 1968 film, which became a holiday favorite. It was one of around 140 productions she appeared in during a six-decade career.Sally Ann Howes, an English-born grande dame of American and British musical comedy who captivated children as Truly Scrumptious in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” the 1968 film featuring a magic jalopy that floats and flies into fantasy adventures, died on Sunday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. She was 91.Her son, Andrew Hart Adler, confirmed the death, in a hospital. Ms. Howes had homes in West Palm Beach and London.Born into show business, the daughter of a popular London comedian and his singer-actress wife, Ms. Howes was cast in her first movie at 12 and had a stage, screen and television career that spanned six decades. She starred in some 140 productions — musicals and plays in New York and London, Hollywood movies and television mini-series.She toured Britain and America in musicals; sang at the White House for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; was a frequent guest on television game and talk shows; became a Barbie doll; sang operettas; and later in life lectured, made documentaries and raised funds for AIDS research and other charities.Ms. Howes had starred in a dozen British films and several American musicals, including “My Fair Lady,” “What Makes Sammy Run?” and “Brigadoon,” when, toward the end of 1968 — a tumultuous year of assassinations, a divisive war in Vietnam and widespread political protests — a madcap movie opened in Britain and the United States as a zany antidote for a troubled world.Based loosely on a children’s book by Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond spy tales, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” a British production, starred Dick Van Dyke as a nutty widowed inventor and Ms. Howes as the love interest, Truly Scrumptious. Together, with his two children and his marvelous flying-boat car, they journey to the land of Vulgaria to battle the nasty tyrant Baron Bomburst.Ms. Howes in a London hotel in 1968. She was in the city to attend the premiere of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”Leonard Burt/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesCritics were mixed about the film, directed by Ken Hughes with a script by Mr. Hughes and Roald Dahl, but children were ecstatic. Its popularity spawned mass-marketing phenomena on both sides of the Atlantic, with Truly Scrumptious Barbie dolls, lunchboxes and toys, and a revival of Edwardian fashions, which the cast wore.The critic Roger Ebert called “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” “about the best two-hour children’s movie you could hope for.” Renata Adler, in The New York Times, said: “There is nothing coy, or stodgy or too frightening about the film. And this year, when it has seemed highly doubtful that children ought to go to the movies at all, ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ sees to it that none of the audiences’ terrific eagerness to have a good time is betrayed or lost.”While it lost money initially, the film became a perennial children’s favorite and made Ms. Howes an international film star, her fame renewed every Christmas on video and DVD. It was nominated (though not chosen) in 2006 for the American Film Institute’s list of the 25 Greatest Movie Musicals.Ms. Howes moved to New York in 1958 when she married the composer and lyricist Richard Adler and made her Broadway debut in Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady.” She replaced the original star, Julie Andrews, in the role of Eliza Doolittle, the smudged Cockney flower girl who is transformed into a radiant lady by the demanding speech lessons of Professor Henry Higgins.Audiences and most critics adored her as George Bernard Shaw’s gamine. “Sally Ann Howes, the current Eliza, is a strikingly beautiful young lady with a rapturous voice that sounds like Julie Andrews,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The Times. “Radiating intelligence and guile,” he went on, “she is an alert and versatile actress.”Ms. Howes returned to Broadway in 1961 for “Kwamina,” a musical written for her by Mr. Adler. An interracial love story set in Africa with an almost entirely Black cast, it was apparently too controversial in the turbulent early civil rights era, closing after 32 performances.Ms. Howes and the British actor Peter Wyngarde publicizing a production of “The King and I” on a barge on the River Thames in 1973.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesIn 1962, Ms. Howes starred in a limited-run City Center revival of “Brigadoon,” Lerner and Loewe’s fantasy about two American boys who stumble upon a Scottish village that comes to life only one day every century.“Sally Ann Howes has grown accustomed to Lerner and Loewe songs,” Milton Esterow said in a review for The Times. “She has grace, beauty and a lovely voice.” Since “Brigadoon” was soon to vanish, Mr. Esterow suggested, “Broadway should hurry and find a new show for Miss Howes. Otherwise some smart gentlemen in Scotland might decide to nominate her for public office.”In 1964, Ms. Howes joined Robert Alda and Steve Lawrence in “What Makes Sammy Run?” a Broadway musical written by Budd Schulberg and based on his novel about a ruthless young man who betrays friends and lovers to scheme his way to the top of a Hollywood studio. The show ran for 540 performances, although Ms. Howes, pressed by other engagements, left after a year.Throughout the 1960s she turned increasingly to television, appearing on the Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan shows, and on “The Bell Telephone Hour,” “Kraft Music Hall” and “The United States Steel Hour.” She also had roles in “Mission: Impossible,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Bracken’s World.”Ms. Howes toured Britain in 1973 in “The King and I,” and the United States in 1978 in “The Sound of Music.” In the 1970s and ’80s she sang operettas like “Blossom Time” and “The Merry Widow” in American regional theaters. In 1990, she joined a New York City Opera staging of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” in the role of the theater actress Desiree Armfeldt; the production was shown on public television’s “Live From Lincoln Center.” And a half-century after her triumph as Eliza Doolittle, she toured the United States in “My Fair Lady” in 2007, playing Mrs. Higgins, the mother of Henry Higgins. It was her 64th year in show business.Sally Ann Howes was born in London on July 20, 1930, to the comedian Bobby Howes and the actress Patricia Malone. Her maternal grandfather, Capt. J.A.E. Malone, directed stage musicals; an uncle, Pat Malone, was an actor.Sally Ann and her older brother, Peter, a musician, grew up in a prosperous household with nannies and visits by her parents’ theatrical peers. During World War II, the family moved to its country estate in Essendon, 20 miles north of London, for the duration.Ms. Howes at a reception at the New York Public Library in 2012. The film historian Robert Osborne was at right.John Lamparski/WireImageMs. Howes’s acting in school plays and her family connections attracted an agent, and in 1943 she appeared with Stewart Granger in her first movie, “Thursday’s Child.” It launched her career. She played children’s roles in “Dead of Night” (1945), with Michael Redgrave, and “Anna Karenina” (1948), with Vivien Leigh. At 18, she appeared with John Mills in “The History of Mr. Polly” (1949).Ms. Howes began taking stage roles in the 1950s. With singing lessons to lower her high-pitched voice, she performed in West End musicals, including “Paint Your Wagon,” with her father, and in the stage drama “A Hatful of Rain.” Ms. Howes’s marriage in 1950 to Maxwell Coker ended in divorce in 1953. She divorced Mr. Adler in 1966. Her marriage in 1969 to A. Morgan Maree III, a financier, also ended in divorce. In the 1970s, she married the literary agent Douglas W. Rae, who died this year. In addition to her son, she is survived by two grandchildren. In 2012, Ms. Howes joined 1,500 film fans on a Turner Classic Movies cruise that featured “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and she discussed her life as an entertainer.“The moment you hit 45 — now it’s 55 — your career changes,” she said. “You have to rethink everything, and you have to adjust. I was always aware of it because of the people I was brought up with. We saw careers go up and down and be killed off.“I’ve never prepared for anything,” she continued. “I’ve always jumped into the next thing, and therefore it’s been a strange career. I enjoyed experimenting.”Alex Marshall and Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      in Theater

      Continuing ‘The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe’

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      Lily Tomlin, who first performed this comically cosmic play, and Jane Wagner, its author, discuss a new production with Cecily Strong and Leigh Silverman, its new star and director.Should you ever have the chance to converse with Lily Tomlin, you don’t have to tell her it’s an honor. “Believe me, it’s not,” Tomlin said recently in her distinctive deadpan.At 82, Tomlin is not precious about her reputation or the esteem she enjoys as a comedian and actor. But she remains fiercely proud of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” the one-woman play that was written for her by Jane Wagner, her wife and longtime creative collaborator.“Search for Signs,” which had its Broadway debut in 1985, is a comedic and philosophical whirlwind in which Tomlin Ping-Ponged across 12 roles, including the sullen teen punk Agnus Angst; the feminist activists Edie, Lyn and Marge; and the wealthy, urbane Kate. Their scenes are framed and interwoven by the character of Trudy, an enlightened vagrant who believes she is in communication with aliens.Tomlin’s performance in the Broadway production of “Search for Signs” won her the Tony Award for best actress in a play. That production ran for more than a year, and the play became an emblematic entry in the careers of its author and its star; Tomlin continued to perform it in other cities, in a 1991 film adaptation and in a Broadway revival that ran from 2000-1.Lily Tomlin in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” in 2000.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Search for Signs” has become a treasured work to performers like Cecily Strong, the “Saturday Night Live” cast member, and directors like Leigh Silverman (“Well,” “Violet”). As Silverman, 47, said, “This play gives us a sense of purpose and a meaning while telling us all the time how meaningless it is. It holds us up and supports us and loves us. It cherishes the audience in a way that no other theater experience I’ve ever had does.”Now Silverman is directing Strong in a new production of “Search for Signs” that will be presented at the Shed. This incarnation, which is choreographed by James Alsop, begins performances Dec. 21 and opens Jan. 11; its limited run is scheduled to end Feb. 6.While they are still working through the play’s ambitious and ample material, Strong and Silverman said their preparations are testing them to their fullest extents. “There’s no plan to this,” Strong, 37, explained. “I said nobody else bug me until February — all of my time and my brain and my heart and my soul is here, and that’s where it has to be.”Tomlin and Wagner, who are executive producing, are content to observe these rehearsals from afar, weigh in when needed and reflect on what the play has meant to them. (Or simply to kibitz affectionately, as in one moment when Tomlin turned to her wife and audibly observed, “We’ve lived a long time, sister.”)Wagner, 86, said she was confident in the approach that Silverman and Strong were taking. “I have such a feeling of security, really, with the two of them,” she said. “But now that you mention it, I’ll start feeling pressured again, I’m sure.”Tomlin, Wagner, Strong and Silverman gathered earlier this month for a video interview in which they spoke about their individual and collective journeys on “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Lily and Jane, can you recount the origins of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”? How was it created?JANE WAGNER I was in a New Age phase. I was reading some philosophy and I began to be aware that I was being aware. [Lily Tomlin laughs.] That’s an insight that I hadn’t even thought about having.LILY TOMLIN I was on the road a good part of that time.WAGNER Which was very good for us.TOMLIN She would send me a load of pages every now and then. I remember the first packet I got, I was playing in Lexington and she sent me a huge stack of papers all about Trudy. Every line, one after another, was so observant and perceptive. I read them at a show one night and there was a raucous and wonderful response. When I read Trudy saying, “Frankly, I think they find us quite captivating,” I knew where the play was headed. But I had no idea how she was going to get there.Tomlin, right, and Jane Wagner in 2001 with their Tony Award nominations for the revival of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”Henry Ray Abrams/Agence France-PresseCecily and Leigh, how did you each discover the play?CECILY STRONG The first time I encountered it was in my library in high school, looking for monologues. I was very serious about being an actor and I remember finding this cover with a long crazy name. What could this show be? I looked at a couple of Trudy monologues and I wanted to do something like this. This is a stupid thought, but I had it: I’ve got to marry a writer. I need to have someone write this show for me. I certainly never thought it would be a possibility to do this.LEIGH SILVERMAN I saw it at the Kennedy Center [after the show’s original Broadway run]. I was 11. My mother took me and we were sitting in the front row. It really sent me on a journey to see a performance like Lily’s. It was radical — written by a woman, performed by a woman who played all kinds of characters. Lily was so masculine, androgynous, highly feminine — she was all of it, the full package. I felt like my whole being was rearranged and maybe for the first time put into place.Lily, you continued to perform the play for many years in different settings. Does it remain in your body from production to production?TOMLIN You have a lot of muscle memory from it. When you start working on it again — this doesn’t feel right, I must have moved over here — then it falls into place. It comes back to you very quickly.WAGNER I’ve gotten by as a writer with no muscles. All my life, I’ve never had muscles.TOMLIN She’s at an age where the muscles would come in handy.Would the play change depending on the time and place where you were doing it?TOMLIN In 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks, we opened in San Francisco. Jane used to collect a lot of old Whole Earth Catalogs from her hippie days, and she cited this quote from Whole Earth Catalog. I used to end the production in San Francisco with this same quote because I felt it was so meaningful. It’s anonymous: “Humans are finally the bits of earth that leap up from the planet’s surface, tell what they see to each other, and then die. The sum total of all this seeing and telling is the story of one planet waking up to itself.” We loved that. That’s how we felt at that time.Did you get protective when other people would ask to put on the play? There were solo shows and versions with larger casts playing all the characters.WAGNER We did once we saw one of the productions you just described. It was pretty awful.TOMLIN In the old days, the requests would come in and I would deal with the agent. He’d say it’s a good theater or whatever, and we’d let them do it. Sometimes they would send us a film of what they’d done.WAGNER That’s where it went wrong, I think. [Laughter.] I’m more easily beaten down than she is.TOMLIN That’s why we keep her from the theater. She stays locked in a hotel room and I go, “I’ll be back in three or four hours”WAGNER I’m thinking about us doing it when we had no producer.TOMLIN I was the producer!WAGNER Well, I didn’t know that. I’d send you pages and you’d do them or toss them.TOMLIN Very often in the development process, I’d come in from a night at the theater and I’d talk to Jane about some monologue. I’d say, “If you can just make it — blah blah blah.” Instead of just adjusting some small phrase, she’d just write another monologue. I had like six or seven drafts of some monologues in my head, and I would move sections around, trying to find what the key would be. I was so steeped in it, I was able to just put it out and fly with whatever I could fly with. That’s what an actor really hopes for.“Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin?” said Strong, who’s been rehearsing with Silverman at the Shed. Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesLeigh, what got you interested in reviving the play?SILVERMAN When we were in the darkest moments of the pandemic, I was feeling so lost. I have done a lot of solo plays in my career. Most recently I did “Harry Clarke” with Billy Crudup. We were actually supposed to do it again during the pandemic and it was canceled. I had this moment where I thought I never want to do another solo show, ever, ever, ever again. I had a conversation with the Shed and they said, “We want to reopen and we’re looking for the right theatrical experience to do that with. Do you have any ideas?” I said no. And then I had a second call and I said, “I really don’t want do another solo show. But I do think this play should be done, and this is the time.”How was Cecily chosen? How did everyone get comfortable with that choice?SILVERMAN When we were talking about people, very serendipitously, there was the finale of “S.N.L.” last season and I was watching Weekend Update, where Cecily dove headfirst into a giant box of wine and drank her way out. Watching that, I had this moment where I was like, she can do it. She had the combination of the stamina, the skill, the courage and deep, deep empathy. The wild curiosity to just be outrageously funny.STRONG Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin? But you hear Leigh talk about it and you start tearing up. It’s like, yes, yes, let’s do this. Just the way the show feels, physically — I get to go through this wonderful catharsis every time we run it.WAGNER Lorne [Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live”] has an uncanny ability to understand talent, and he believed in you so much. You wouldn’t have been on “S.N.L.” if you weren’t pretty great.TOMLIN I was totally for it because I wanted Jane’s authorship to stand. So often, I’m thrown into the mix as her collaborator. It’s just not true. Jane is a solitary writer and that’s all there is to it. She writes pages and pages, and if you asked her now to write about this bottle of water, she’d probably come up with 2,000 words.Cecily, you recently performed a Weekend Update character, a clown named Goober who tells jokes about abortion, that felt like she could have fit into this play. Was that piece inspired by your work on this show?STRONG Not consciously writing it. It came from, I’m going to take Ambien and I’m going to write essays to myself every night, or I’m going to remain frustrated and do weird things. Obviously this is something I wanted to get out. I kept posing it to people — I’m thinking it’s about a clown talking about her abortion — and everybody was like, okaaay. I certainly felt scared, and then I felt like I came closer to earning this show. [Speaking to Tomlin] To your bravery, your courage, and what a bombastic, badass thing it is.Jane and Lily, were you ever criticized for your depictions of feminist characters in this play? They are affectionately rendered but still allowed to be laughed at and joked about.WAGNER Oh, yeah. We heard that a little bit.TOMLIN What was there?WAGNER Do you want me to name names?TOMLIN No, you don’t have to name names.WAGNER There are always people that say you shouldn’t. One time somebody insisted we shouldn’t have a monologue that was a half an hour long.TOMLIN Oh, yeah, well, that’s old stuff. You have to make those decisions yourself. Don’t be influenced.WAGNER When I went to a consciousness-raising session — and I only went to one, because I was kind of in shock — I knew that I had to talk about it. People looking at their genitalia and everything like that, there was something satirical there that you could use. I still love the movement and believe in the movement.Cecily and Leigh, how do you begin to tackle a play like this, where one actor is responsible for this much material?SILVERMAN There’s so much that you put down one coat of paint and then you keep going.STRONG I don’t think I’ve ever taken on anything like this, where I’ve been so challenged. How do I put on a coat and I’m trying to sing and I’m trying to quote Buckminster Fuller? It’s so many things but the minute we get one thing right it just feels so good. I feel like my brain is changing a little.Do you allow yourself to have favorite characters within the play?STRONG Something new tickles me every day. Leigh just gave me a big cart of stuff and was like, put it somewhere. What do you do with this thing? It was a great way to enter into Trudy. The other day, I was talking to a plant. I was like, ooh, I like the sound of how that plant shakes.Do you seek notes or input from Lily and Jane? Do they just weigh in when they want to, like the voice of God?STRONG I’ll take anything I can get.WAGNER We like the voice of God concept. [Laughter.]TOMLIN We’re trying to come [in person].WAGNER I have trouble with my leg. Loss of muscle memory, I guess. SILVERMAN We send them video and they’re with us always. There’s a line in the play where Trudy says that she puts some time aside each day to do “awe-robics,” and I will say that so much of working on the play is an exploration of “awe-robics.”WAGNER They’re wonderful, the way you communicate. I think you’re going to do something that actually makes our brains crack. Which could be good for the run of the show. More

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      in Music

      A ‘Nutcracker’ Performance Is Canceled, as the Virus Halts Holiday Shows

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      New York City Ballet canceled Tuesday night’s performance, and a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall was called off.New York City Ballet canceled a performance of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” on Tuesday after several people involved in the production tested positive for the coronavirus, in the latest sign of how the surge in cases is disrupting attempts to bring back some of the city’s most beloved holiday performances.As the production, one of City Ballet’s most popular, was called off at Lincoln Center, plans to fill Carnegie Hall on Tuesday evening with the “Hallelujah” chorus were canceled when Music Sacra postponed a performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” citing the virus. And there are no more holiday kicklines at Radio City Music Hall: The remaining performances of the “Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes” were canceled Friday.The cancellations came shortly after it was announced that some of Broadway’s biggest hits would not resume until after Christmas, forgoing one of their most lucrative periods of the year amid concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant.It was not immediately clear when performances of “The Nutcracker” would return.“We are very disappointed to have to cancel this evening’s performance,” Jonathan Stafford, the company’s artistic director, said in a statement, “but the safety of our artists, staff and audiences has been New York City Ballet’s No. 1 priority since the Covid-19 pandemic began.”The company has worked hard to bring back the holiday favorite under difficult circumstances. It turned to a cast of dancers 12 and older — it typically casts younger, smaller children as its angels, soldiers and mice, and for its party scene — since only children of those ages were eligible for vaccinations when rehearsals began in the fall.The company said that ticket holders could exchange tickets for a future performance, get refunds or donate the tickets to the company. Music Sacra, which postponed its Tuesday night performance because of positive coronavirus tests among members of its performing ensemble, said that it would perform later this season at Carnegie Hall.It is not only New York that is seeing holiday performances canceled. A number of performances of “A Christmas Carol” at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles were recently canceled, with the theater saying that it would not come back until after Christmas. More

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      in Theater

      Broadway Grosses Drop 26 Percent as Many Shows Cancel Performances

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      The surge in coronavirus cases comes at a tough time for the theater industry, which traditionally relies on the holiday season box office.The surge in coronavirus cases is starting to take a real financial toll on Broadway, just as the industry is attempting to rebound from its lengthy shutdown.The Broadway League, a trade association, said on Tuesday that its theaters brought in $22.5 million last week. That’s a 26 percent drop from the $30.5 million in tickets sold the previous week; in the week before Christmas in 2019, total grosses were $40.1 million.The drop in grosses is a reflection of the fact that multiple shows have canceled performances when positive coronavirus tests forced cast or crew members to quarantine and there were not enough understudies or replacement workers for the shows to continue.Last weekend, about one-third of all shows canceled some performances, and this week, multiple shows decided to postpone performances until after Christmas, including “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Aladdin,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Hadestown,” “Hamilton,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “The Lion King, “MJ” and “Skeleton Crew.”Plus, “Tina” canceled until Christmas night; “Jagged Little Pill” closed entirely; “Mrs. Doubtfire” canceled Tuesday night; and “Waitress” canceled Tuesday and Wednesday nights.Attendance also dropped, given the cancellations: 184,227 people saw a Broadway show last week, down from 240,602 the previous week.The resulting revenue drop is a real concern for an industry where most shows, even before the pandemic, fail financially. But the damage is not evenly dispersed — some shows that stay open are benefiting by selling tickets to people scrambling for something to see after their first-choice show canceled. This year the Broadway League is releasing only aggregate weekly grosses rather than breaking them down for individual productions, so it is difficult to see exactly how the financial ramifications are unfolding.Five other shows cited the pandemic shutdown in deciding not to reopen this fall — the musicals “Frozen,” “Mean Girls” and “West Side Story” and the plays “Hangmen” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Two shows cited the ongoing pandemic in deciding to close for good after starting (or restarting) performances this fall, then pausing because of positive coronavirus tests in their companies: not only “Jagged Little Pill,” which announced its closing Monday night, but also the play “Chicken & Biscuits,” which closed last month.The current crisis is coming at the worst possible time for the industry, because the holiday season is traditionally the most lucrative time of year for Broadway, and many shows depend on the holidays to make up for softer periods.Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said she does not envision the industry shutting down again, no matter how many individual shows have to pause. “I do not imagine a shutdown by us, unless every show has people with Covid,” she said. “We’re going to keep as many people employed as we can.”And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a news conference on Tuesday, was similarly shutdown-averse. “No more shutdowns,” he said. “We’ve been through them. They were devastating. We can’t go through it again.” More

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      in Theater

      Revisiting Childhood Wonder With Winnie the Pooh and Emmet Otter

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      Our critic takes in two puppet-driven musicals in Manhattan. But with the Omicron variant on the rise, maybe kid-friendly theater is best consumed at home right now.“My, God,” I thought, perhaps 20 minutes into “Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Stage Adaptation” at Theater Row in Manhattan. “Why am I here? That bear couldn’t even be bothered to put on pants.”One of the small private sorrows of last year’s lockdown was that I couldn’t take my children to the theater, a practice I’d begun when I was still carrying them in BabyBjorns. With vaccinations newly available to the 5-to-11 set, I had just started to bring them back. When I’d booked our tickets for “Winnie the Pooh,” the Omicron variant was still mostly an abstract concept, fodder for late-night jokes and Twitter memes. But as we made our way to Times Square this weekend — passing round-the-block lines at testing sites and crowding into a subway car — it felt a lot more real.Written and directed by Jonathan Rockefeller, with songs borrowed from the Sherman Brothers and other music composed by Nate Edmonson, “Winnie the Pooh” is an unremarkable stage adaptation of the Disney franchise, itself an adaptation of A.A. Milne’s short story collections about a human boy and his fuzzy friends. Despite having always agreed with Dorothy Parker’s assessment of Pooh in her Constant Reader column — “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up” — I’d hoped that the show would seem worth the risks.The show follows Pooh, that pantless “bear of very little brain,” and his animal friends through four seasons. The seasons — falling leaves, snowflakes — are absolutely the best part. The scruffy full-size puppets are manipulated by denim-clad actors doing weird voices. (The actors control the puppets by sticking a fist through the backs of their heads, which is somewhat disturbing.)But it’s both much too much, when it comes to the acting, and not nearly enough in terms of story or stakes or reasons for being. At the performance I attended, Pooh’s mic broke, and one of Tigger’s feet disconnected. In the summer section, Pooh became stuck in the hollow of a tree, which was nice for a while.A toddler behind me happily narrated the goings on, but one of my children threatened to doze off throughout and the other kept kicking me with her rain boots, which suggests something less than rapture.The cast of “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” at New Victory Theater.Richard TermineTwo days before, we’d had a far more soothing experience, at another puppet-driven musical, the New Victory Theater’s “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” a stage adaptation of the 1977 television special, based in turn on the children’s book by Lillian and Russell Hoban. The theater looked as glorious as ever, though rigorous social distancing kept it less than half full. Onstage were a mix of enchanting puppets (including some really acrobatic squirrels) and humans dressed as animals. Set in Frogtown Hollow, a picture-pretty riverside community, the show tells the story of Emmet and Ma, semiaquatic animals eking out a hardscrabble life of laundry and odd jobs.When they receive news of a talent competition with a $50 reward, they separately decide to enter, though this means hocking Emmet’s tools (to buy a costume for Ma) and wrecking Ma’s washtub (to provide an instrument for Emmet). So it’s very “Gift of the Magi.” I question the wisdom of trading the means of honest work for a fleeting chance at fame. But then again I was a theater major, so really what do I know?Christopher Gattelli, the director and choreographer, and Timothy Allen McDonald, the lead producer, have gussied up the libretto nicely, giving the furry characters a bit more depth and enlivening the talent show. Mostly unchanged are Paul Williams’s superb songs, which draw lightly upon American folk, rock and bluegrass traditions. (Dan DeLange is the orchestrator, he and Larry Pressgrove also provided new arrangements.) Like his best work with the Muppets, Williams’s music is naïve without condescension, as playful as it is heart-whole beautiful. I had “Brothers,” “Our World” and “When the River Meets the Sea” flitting through my head for days after.Though it is a children’s show, it is not exclusively for children. (Our performance was attended almost entirely by adults.) The sets (Anna Louizos, with lighting by Jen Schriever) are charming and transporting, the costumes (Gregg Barnes) elegant. The message, which celebrates fellow feeling and mutual care, is especially welcome right now. I would have taken home every single squirrel.But I don’t know if you should see “Emmet Otter” or “Winnie the Pooh” for that matter, especially with children too young to be vaccinated, despite the care that theaters have taken with their Covid-19 protocols. The day after we saw “Emmet Otter,” the New Victory canceled the next several performances because a company member testing positive for Covid. (Performances resumed two days later.)And the day after “Winnie the Pooh,” we learned that my older child’s fully vaccinated teacher had tested positive, which meant that we would need to quarantine and then test. So it’s possible that we — and not that mom who was leisurely taking maskless selfies at “Winnie the Pooh” — were the real problem. Togetherness has its price right now.Happily, the New Victory has made “Emmet Otter” available for streaming. So you can visit Frogtown Hollow without ever leaving your home. Which isn’t what most of us want. But it may be what a lot of us need. Even a bear of very little brain — or a bear with a brain half-broken from risk assessment — knows that.Winnie the PoohThrough Jan. 30 at Theater Row, Manhattan; winniethepoohshow.com.Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band ChristmasThrough Jan. 2 at New Victory Theater, Manhattan; newvictory.org. More

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      in Television

      LaChanze, at Home in ‘The Color Purple’ House

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      The Westchester house where the Tony-winning actor lives is ideally sized for family reunions — and for spending time alone.“The Color Purple” house — that’s how the actor LaChanze refers to her five-bedroom home in lower Westchester County, N.Y. This has nothing to do with the exterior (it’s gray) or the interior (plum, lavender, lilac, fuchsia, mulberry and violet are underrepresented).But it has everything to do with LaChanze’s Tony-winning performance in the 2005 musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s celebrated novel. “Being in ‘The Color Purple’ was how I was able to buy the house,” said LaChanze, who is currently starring in the limited-run Broadway production — through Jan. 9 — of Alice Childress’s 1955 comedy-drama “Trouble in Mind.”Her other Broadway credits include “Once on This Island” (1990),“If/Then” (2014) and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” (2018). She won an Emmy in 2010 for the PBS special “Handel’s Messiah Rocks: A Joyful Noise.”Sixteen years ago, after considering various housing possibilities, LaChanze settled on the suburbs, because she wanted her children, Celia Rose Gooding, now 21, an actor, and Zaya LaChanze Gooding, 20, a college student, to have firsthand knowledge of lawns and trees. For herself, she wanted relatively new construction.“I knew I’d be living alone,” said LaChanze, 60, whose husband of three years, Calvin Gooding, a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, died in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. “I knew I didn’t know how do repairs. It narrowed my options, because many of the properties in Westchester are much older.”“My mother always stressed that when you walk in the front door you should leave behind everything from the world outside,” said LaChanze. “I’ve incorporated that feeling into our living space.”Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesLaChanze, 60Occupation: ActorGreat performance: “People love to watch me make fried chicken on Instagram. My mother used to say, ‘If you can’t make a meal in under 30 minutes, then you’re not a good cook.’”“I was lucky,” she continued. “I found a house that was built in 2000. I’m the second owner.”She was, perhaps, even luckier in what surrounded the house: abundant greenery and a yard that was hard by both a park and the Bronx River.“People can’t cross over, so it’s like my own piece of the water,” LaChanze said. “It’s quiet and scenic. That’s pretty much what sold me.”She has since added a firepit and affixed a set of wind chimes to a birch tree near the deck. They ring in the key of A. “I love that,” she said. “A lot of Negro spirituals are written in that key. You hear that chord? It’s just beautiful.”Unlike those chimes, the house needed some fine-tuning. It had style, for sure; it just wasn’t LaChanze’s particular style.LaChanze’s three cats have the run of the house.Tony Cenicola/The New York Times“There were gold-plated fixtures and I was, like, ‘Nooooo,’” she said. Out they went, replaced by nickel.Down came the columns between the den and the kitchen to create an expansive space, and bookcases were built on either side of the fireplace. (One of the shelves holds a steel remnant from the twin towers.) Marble countertops, a marble floor, a glass-tile backsplash in shades of brown and copper, and a few coats of butter-yellow paint were part of the kitchen overhaul.“I kind of went to work in here a little bit,” LaChanze said with a laugh. “All my friends and fans who follow me on Instagram know what my kitchen looks like.”You can easily tell that this is the residence of someone who works in the arts. The framed awards and piles of scripts in the office, the area set up for recording sessions, the show posters on the wall in the basement gym, all make the point.“I recently did Spike Lee’s documentary on HBO,” LaChanze said, referring to “NYC Epicenters 9/11→2021 ½”. “He gave me a copy of the poster for the show and signed it for me.”LaChanze, a fan of the game bid whist, estimates that she has some 100 decks of cards.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIt’s equally clear that this is the home of someone who cares about art. “I’m a little bit of a collector,” LaChanze said. “I call my foyer my international space, because I travel quite a bit and I have a bunch of art from a lot of different places” — a door from Nigeria, a drawing etched on the bark of a tree from Tonga, dung art from Rwanda.The foyer also holds a thriving fiddle-leaf fig, one of two that LaChanze, an enthusiastic gardener, bought this summer at Costco — for the bargain price of $69 each, she is proud to tell you — and has been tending ever since, first out on the deck, now by the stairs that lead to the second floor.“I just love it to death. Look how big it is,” she said, sounding like a very proud mother.And there, in a nutshell, you have the primary business that’s conducted at LaChanze’s house: nurturing.Here is where the actor’s large, far-flung family gathers twice a year for reunions, and where falling asleep on the custom-designed, brown crushed-velvet sectional in the den is encouraged. Here, too, is where a group of card-playing cronies comes every month for an evening of bid whist.“It’s something that’s big in my culture,” LaChanze said. “When I was young, my parents were playing with their friends, but then someone had to leave. They came and got me and taught me the game, so they could keep going, because you need four people.”Her affection for the game and its key component has stuck: She has amassed 100 decks of very elegant cards.“OK, so one night I was going down the internet rabbit hole, and I discovered this group of people in a card-collection club,” LaChanze said. “I joined, and every few months I get sent a new deck by a new designer. There are a lot of, I would say, biker dudes and magicians in the club, and it’s really a lot of fun to talk to these guys across the country about what we love about our cards.”“My mother used to say, ‘If you can’t make a meal in under 30 minutes, then you’re not a good cook,’” said LaChanze, who demonstrates how to pull off this culinary trick to her fans on Instagram.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesNear where LaChanze sets up the card table in the basement is a sofa upholstered in green velvet. “This is the first sofa my husband and I bought together,” she said, gently patting a cushion. “We were at Bloomingdale’s, and I was telling him that I’d love a good deep couch that we could spoon on and not feel uncomfortable. We both fit on this.”She added: “I’ve kept it so that my girls can have a little piece of their daddy in here.”When LaChanze comes home from the theater, she greets her three cats and then heads out to the deck, often with a glass of wine in hand, and listens to the wind chimes, or takes a walk down to the water or to the firepit.“I love my home,” she said simply. “My friends are telling me, ‘Well, LaChanze, you’re getting older. Your daughters are gone all the time. Why do you want to live in this big place alone?’”Alone? That’s not how she views it.She has her slice of the river. She has the stars. She has what she calls the heart-of-the-house light, a lamp in the dining room that is never switched off. She falls asleep every night to the lullaby of the Metro-North train whistle.“I love hearing that sound,” LaChanze said. “Because it reminds me I’m not by myself.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Hamilton’ and Other Broadway Shows Cancel Performances Through Christmas

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      “Hadestown,” “Aladdin,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and more temporarily shut down amid a surge in coronavirus cases. “Jagged Little Pill” is closing for good.Several of Broadway’s biggest shows, including “Hamilton,” “Hadestown” and “Aladdin,” are canceling all performances until after Christmas, and “Jagged Little Pill” announced it was closing for good, as a spike in coronavirus cases batters the performing arts throughout North America as well as in London.The cancellations, prompted by positive coronavirus tests among cast or crew members, come at the worst possible time for many productions, because the holiday season is typically the most lucrative time of year.It has been a trying week for the performing arts.On Saturday and Sunday, about a third of Broadway shows canceled their performances.On Monday, “Jagged Little Pill,” a rock musical featuring Alanis Morissette songs that had paused performances on Saturday after positive tests, said it would not reopen at all. The musical had still been finding its financial footing when the pandemic hit, and then was rocked again by the Omicron variant; its producers said in a statement that “the rapid spread of the Omicron variant has, once again, changed everything.”And, with the Omicron variant driving a surge in cases, there were multiple Covid-prompted cancellations Off Broadway, as well as in Chicago, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and other cities.“Hamilton,” a sold-out juggernaut that had been the top-grossing show on Broadway, cited breakthrough Covid-19 cases in its company as the reason for the cancellation. The show has been dark since Dec. 15 — the matinee went on as scheduled that day, but the evening performance was scrapped — and the first possible next performance is on Dec. 27.“Hadestown,” a contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, also canceled performances until Dec. 27, as did “Dear Evan Hansen,” about a high school student with anxiety; “Ain’t Too Proud,” about the Temptations; “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a sequel to the novels, and “MJ,” a new musical about Michael Jackson that is still in previews. And “Aladdin,” which weathered a 12-day shutdown in October, announced on Monday that it would be closed until Sunday.Most shows are still running — there are currently 31 productions on Broadway, and at least two-thirds of them, including long-running hits like “The Lion King,” “Wicked” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” continue to perform. And a strong-selling revival of “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, started previews Monday night.But sporadic cancellations are now widespread, on Broadway and beyond.In recent days, many of the Broadway cancellations have been at large-cast productions, for reasons that are not entirely clear. But there are exceptions: On Monday, the Manhattan Theater Club announced that it was delaying its Broadway production of “Skeleton Crew,” a new play by Dominique Morisseau; previews, which had been scheduled to start Tuesday, would instead start on Dec. 27, “due to company members having tested positive” for the virus. Also Monday: the musical “Six” canceled a performance, citing “Covid breakthroughs.”In most cases, producers say, the positive coronavirus tests are associated with mild or asymptomatic cases, but the performances are being canceled because there are not enough understudies or replacement workers to substitute for those who must miss the show.The news of the last few days has been grim for those hoping the performing arts had finally moved past the devastatingly long pandemic shutdown.The timing was particularly terrible for the Rockettes, who last week canceled all remaining performances of their annual Christmas Spectacular, a holiday staple for many tourists. Other holiday shows were affected, too: A production of “A Christmas Carol” at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles canceled all performances until after Christmas, while in Houston two performances of the Alley Theater’s production of the Christmas staple were canceled as well. In Ontario, the Shaw Festival Theater canceled all remaining performances of “Holiday Inn” and cut capacity in half for “A Christmas Carol.”A performances of Handel’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall by Musica Sacra that was scheduled for Tuesday was postponed after a small number of positive tests, the ensemble announced.Britain has been dealing with a raft of cancellations — so much so that the National Theater in London simply shut down until January.Concerns about the Omicron variant are also starting to take a toll on future productions: The first North American production of Tom Stoppard’s acclaimed new play, “Leopoldstadt,” was canceled entirely; it had been scheduled to begin a seven-week run in Toronto on Jan. 22. And in Ottawa, “Hamilton” postponed a scheduled run by six months.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 5The holiday season. More