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      ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ to Slim Down Before Broadway Return

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      Reducio! The play, which had been performed in two parts, will be condensed and restaged in one part when it returns this fall.“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the sprawling stage play that imagines Harry and his friends as grown-ups and their children as wizards-in-training, will be substantially restructured before returning to Broadway this fall.The play, which had been staged in two parts before the pandemic, will return as a single show on Nov. 16.The show was widely acclaimed, winning the Olivier Award for best new play when it opened in London, and the Tony Award for best new play when it opened in New York. But it was costly to develop, costly to run, and costly for theatergoers, who had to buy tickets to two shows to experience it fully.The play’s lead producers, Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, in a joint statement attributed their decision to “the challenges of remounting and running a two-part show in the U.S. on the scale of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’ and the commercial challenges faced by the theater and tourism industries emerging from the global shutdowns.”The show will continue to run in two parts in London; Melbourne, Australia; and Hamburg, Germany, but will be a single part in New York, San Francisco and Toronto. It was not immediately clear how long that single part would be; the two parts have a total running time of about 5 hours and 15 minutes.Structured essentially as a stage sequel to J.K. Rowling’s seven wildly popular “Harry Potter” novels, the show was the most expensive nonmusical play ever to land on Broadway, costing $35.5 million to mount, and another estimated $33 million to redo Broadway’s Lyric Theater. Before the pandemic, the play was routinely grossing around $1 million a week on Broadway — an enviable number for most plays, but not enough for this one, with its large company and the expensive technical elements that undergird its stage magic.The play, a high-stakes magical adventure story with thematic through lines about growing up and raising children, was written by Jack Thorne and directed by John Tiffany, based on a story credited to Rowling, Thorne and Tiffany. Thorne and Tiffany said they had been working on a new version of the show during the pandemic, which, they said, “has given us a unique opportunity to look at the play with fresh eyes.”The writers did not say what kind of changes they would make, but the production promised that the new version would still deliver “all the amazing magic, illusions, stagecraft and storytelling set around the same powerful narrative.”“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” began its stage life in London, opening in the summer of 2016, and winning nine Olivier awards — the most of any play — in 2017. It arrived on Broadway in 2018, picked up six Tony Awards, and initially sold very strongly, grossing about $2 million a week. But the sales softened over time, as average ticket prices fell, apparently because of a combination of the lengthy time commitment and the need to buy two tickets to see the whole story, which made it particularly expensive for families.The show has been expanding globally — adding productions in San Francisco and Australia, and planning its first production in a language other than English for Hamburg — making restructuring complicated. But the producers have apparently decided to go to a one-part structure in North America, while maintaining the two-part structure elsewhere in the world, as they try to find the formula for long-term global success. According to the production, the play has already been seen by 4.5 million people.Tickets for the Broadway production will go on sale July 12; ticket prices have not yet been announced. The San Francisco production is scheduled to resume performances at the Curran theater next Jan. 11, and the Toronto production is to begin performances next May at the Ed Mirvish Theater.The two-part play is already running in Melbourne and is scheduled to reopen in London on Oct. 14 and to resume previews in Hamburg on Dec. 1. More

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      ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ Review: Pride and Pole Dancing Behind Glass

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      This array of short plays has viewers in headphones wandering the meatpacking district for stylish, but shallow, theatrical thrills.Sex and spectacle are on the menu in “Seven Deadly Sins,” a sumptuously staged, deliciously outfitted exploration of vice performed in the meatpacking district, once home to slaughterhouses and sex clubs, though now more about trendy dining and swanky shopping.Yet this feast for the eyes — bringing to life seven short plays performed in storefronts to audiences who mostly watch through glass but listen on headphones — turns out to be more about appearances than anything else.Originally conceived by Michel Hausmann for a theater in Miami Beach and directed by Moisés Kaufman, this iteration of “Seven Deadly Sins” features work by its director (covering greed) as well as by the notable playwrights Ngozi Anyanwu (gluttony), Thomas Bradshaw (sloth), MJ Kaufman (pride), Jeffrey LaHoste (envy), Ming Peiffer (wrath) and Bess Wohl (lust).But we begin in Purgatory (a blue neon sign makes that clear) greeted by Shuga Cain from Season 11 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” who arrives like a beautiful, lip-syncing hurricane of gloss and glitter in the first of Dede Ayite’s many stunning costumes.“What better place to look at human nature than the stage,” she purrs, setting in motion how the show will work: Each of three groups will maneuver through the circuit of plays in a different order over a three-block radius, sitting to watch each roughly 10-minute performance before rising and walking to the next.My first sin of the night was gluttony, for which Anyanwu presents an alternative Garden of Eden story with “Tell Me Everything You Know”: Here it’s just Eve, here called “Naked” (a timid Morgan McGhee) and mostly covered in knee-length dreadlocks, and the snake, called “Clothed” (a sultry Shavanna Calder), in a sleek black bodysuit and a ponytail of hair styled into giant interconnected chain links. The snake’s temptation becomes queer in this context, and Anyanwu has linguistic fun with her Eve’s awakening, which comes in a verbal cascade.Sex, queerness and body positivity are central themes of most of the plays. In LaHoste’s envy play, “Naples,” set not in a storefront but in a shipping container on a cobblestone street, a manipulative 18th century French noblewoman (Caitlin O’Connell, stately yet cunning) has a less than friendly exchange with her husband’s not-so-secret boy toy (Andrew Keenan-Bolger).Bradshaw’s “Hard,” about a schlubby, unmotivated gamer (Brandon J. Ellis) whose wife (Shamika Cotton) tries to convince him to have sex, struggles to hit its comedic beats. The slovenly man-child paired with the attractive partner is old hat, and the sitcom dynamic between sad-sack husband and nagging wife feels unintentionally regressive.Cody Sloan in MJ Kaufman’s play “Wild Pride,” which looks at the commercialization of gay rights.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMJ Kaufman’s “Wild Pride” is the most politically conscious play of the batch, a pointed critique of the commercialization of queer advocacy. In a storefront set full of TVs, rainbow streamers and balloons that read “Queer AF,” a trans social media star called the “Guru” (Cody Sloan) believes he’s providing affirmation for his fan base (Bianca “B” Norwood, voicing comments from followers and other influencers) but finds the tide turn against him and is confronted with the shallowness of his brand.It’s a bold and welcome pick for Pride month, sharply underlining the limits of performative advocacy, especially online.Moisés Kaufman’s purely comic greed play, which premiered as part of the original Miami Beach production of the show, reappears here. “Watch,” in which siblings (a comic Tricia Alexandro and Eric Ulloa) fight about their freshly deceased father’s pricey Rolex, feels like the odd man out of this otherwise pretty horny bunch, which include the two most explicitly sex-themed — and powerful — plays in the mix, Wohl’s “Lust” and Peiffer’s “Longhorn.”Donna Carnow pole dances while Cynthia Nixon voices her thoughts in Bess Wohl’s play “Lust.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn “Lust,” a pole dancer (Donna Carnow) does her usual routine as we hear, via voice-over, her internal monologue, performed by Cynthia Nixon in her best matter-of-fact Miranda Hobbes. The mix of mundane thoughts (“Refill prescription for eczema cream”), casually withering judgment (“Oh, sweetheart, do you think I don’t know a toupee when I see one?”) and hefty declarations (“There is no God.”) showcase Wohl’s talent for capturing the quirky ways people think and move through their everyday lives.Carnow’s dancing, however, is the production’s true showstopper. She does splits and body rolls, windmills herself around the pole and performs aerial contortions that look utterly unreal — all with perfect nonchalance. And did I mention the platform stripper heels? When she’s upset, her heels violently stomp down to the floor, and when she’s caught in an anxious spiral her body likewise spins around the pole.Her facial expressions, however, can veer into exaggeration, revealing how Wohl’s otherwise clever script becomes didactic when it comes to the topic of sexual assault. Similarly, Peiffer’s “Longhorn” — tracing the troubling and fascinating power dynamics between a white man (Brad Fleischer) and an Asian dominatrix (Kahyun Kim) — ends on a gratuitously violent note. It’s a painfully explicit political parable that, while valid, banks too much on shock value.It’s a problem throughout “Seven Deadly Sins,” a presentation of Tectonic Theater Project and Madison Wells Live. That’s not to say their money isn’t well spent, both in Ayite’s costumes and David Rockwell’s remarkable scenic and site design.Shavanna Calder, left, and Morgan McGhee in Ngozi Anyanwu’s gluttony-themed “Tell Me Everything You Know.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHe gives Eden dimension with bright flowers and layered panels painted in lush greens in Anyanwu’s “Tell Me Everything You Know.” And the cascade of gilded roses and baroque accents in “Naples,” as well as the sex dungeon props in “Longhorn,” show extraordinary attention to detail.Yet perhaps my favorite of the sets was Christopher and Justin Swader’s clever scenic design for “Watch” — the contemporary, lifeless room of what appears to be a funeral home, bisected by a grave with a coffin in the center, which we see as if from overhead.“Seven Deadly Sins” is eye candy, no doubt, and a fun interactive experience for those who crave a lively outdoor performance with a few raunchy surprises. But given the emphasis on sexuality, and nods to the meatpacking district’s transgressive history, I expected a more exacting sociopolitical statement. There should be more than meets the eye.Seven Deadly SinsThrough July 18 at 94 Gansevoort Street, Manhattan; sevendeadlysinsnyc.com More

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      Bruce Springsteen Is Back on Broadway. The Workers Are Coming Back, Too.

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      Broadway took its first steps back with the return of Bruce Springsteen’s show, and no one is happier than Jim Barry, an usher at the St. James Theater for 20 years.Jim Barry, masked and ready, perched at the top of the theater stairs, cupping his hands around the outstretched smartphones so he could more easily make out the seat numbers.“How you doing? Nice jacket.”“Go this way — it’s an easier walk.”“Do you need help sir? The bathroom’s right there.”It was Saturday night at the St. James Theater.Bruce Springsteen was back on the stage.Fans were back in the seats.And, 15 months after the pandemic had shut down Broadway, Barry, who has worked as an usher at the St. James for 20 years, was back at work, doling out compliments and reassurance as he steered people toward the mezzanine, the restroom, the bar.“Springsteen on Broadway” is essentially a one-man show, but its return has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James — not only Barry, but also another 30 ushers and ticket-takers, as well as merch sellers, bar staff, porters, cleaners, stagehands, box office workers, a pair of managers and an engineer.The return of “Springsteen on Broadway” has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMore shows, and jobs, will return in August and September as Broadway’s 41 theaters slowly come back to life. Ultimately, a Broadway rebound promises to benefit not just theater workers but hotel clerks and bartenders and taxi drivers and workers in the many industries that rely on theater traffic, which can be considerable: in the last full season before the pandemic, 14.8 million people saw a Broadway show.Barry, a gregarious 65-year-old Staten Island grandfather, loves theater, for sure, but also depends on the job for income and basic health insurance.“This job is not for everybody, but I made it my own,” he said. Barry, a solidly built man with white hair who is often mistaken for a security officer, takes pride at being punctual, and jovial, and polite. “I can tell somebody tapping me on the back where the bathroom is, while telling somebody in front of me where their seats are, and also waving to somebody in the corner. It’s controlled insanity.”As he returned to work following the shutdown, there were a few changes to master. He had to wear a mask — they are required for employees, but not patrons — and struggled to feel comfortable making small talk through the fabric. And tickets were now all digital, which meant his signature move, which involved passing tickets behind his back as he accepted, scrutinized, and handed back the proffered stubs, was no longer useful; instead he needed to figure out how to quickly decipher all those different screen fonts.Still, he was thrilled to be back.“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” he said. “It’s where I want to be.”“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” Barry said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBarry, originally from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, took an unusual path to the theater industry. For 27 years, he had worked in banking, first as a teller, and then as a bank officer in Times Square.He saw theater, occasionally, and loved it. As a teenager he saw Danny Kaye in “Two by Two,” and later he saw “Jesus Christ Superstar.” (“I couldn’t believe it was so fantastic.”) But the production he most excitedly remembers seeing is “Grease,” at the Royale Theater; a friend got him access to walk onto the stage before the show. “It gave me the bug,” he said.So when he decided he needed to earn more money, and began looking for a second job, he reached out to one of his customers at the bank, a woman who worked in payroll at Jujamcyn Theaters, which operates five Broadway theaters, including the St. James. She asked if he’d be open to ushering.That was in 2001. The first shift he worked was at a dress rehearsal for “The Producers,” which was about to open. “You know you belong when your body just gets enveloped in euphoria,” he said.He was hooked. For years, he continued working full-time at the bank, while also working nights and weekends at the theater; in 2016 he left the bank for good, and now he works six days a week at the theater (the shifts are short — a full usher shift is 4.5 hours, but at each show half the staff gets to leave 30 minutes after curtain, which is two hours after their start time).It’s a union job, for which standard pay is $83.78 per show; Barry has the higher rank of director, so he makes about $710 a week, and supplements his income with Social Security and a small bank pension. He was kept afloat during the pandemic by unemployment; although he missed the theater, he also was glad to have more time to spend with his girlfriend.He has a bear of a commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work, depending on whether he drives or takes a bus, and how bad the traffic is. He arrives early, changes into his Jujamcyn uniform (black suit, black shirt, black tie, with a red J on the chest), and sits in a theater doorway on West 44th Street that he calls “my stoop,” enjoying coffee and a roll and greeting passers-by, sometimes posing for a picture with a passing actor.Barry has a long commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlthough he loves the theater, seeing shows other than the ones he’s working is hard — he’s generally on duty when other shows are running. But he usually gets to the big ones.At his own theater, he’s seen a mix of hits and flops. With the latter, he said, “you just feel bad for everybody.” And what if he doesn’t like a show he’s working? “We have the luxury of lobbies.”There are, of course, headaches to manage — intoxicated patrons, and insistent videographers — but he prides himself on doing so with civility. For the cellphone scofflaws, whose ranks have swelled since he began, he will sometimes simply hover, which usually shames people into compliance; other times he will use a flashlight or a headshake to get someone’s attention, and once in a while he’ll say something like, “Please don’t do that. If they see you, I’m going to get in trouble.” (At “Springsteen on Broadway,” no photos or videos are allowed until the bows.)How much does Barry love being part of the business? In March, sad not to be at work for his 20th anniversary at the theater, he and his girlfriend drove into Times Square, and he posed for a photograph in front of each of the 41 Broadway theaters.“There’s that old adage — when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life,” he said. “I am so lucky — I love to make people feel good about coming to our house.” More

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      How to Undress Someone Quickly

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      Don’t start frantically grabbing at someone’s garments; trust is key. Let the person you’re disrobing do some of the work. “Wear kneepads, there’s lots of kneeling involved,” says Lacie Bonanni, 36, who works as a so-called dresser, a theatrical worker who helps actors into and out of their costumes. Bonanni got her start on Broadway 11 years ago on a show called “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” which involved stripping off a multitude of skintight bodysuits. Although Bonanni’s husband occasionally jokes about her taking people’s clothes off for a living, her skills don’t necessarily translate outside the theater, where the focus of undressing is never singularly speed and where sometimes fumbling is part of the fun. During a show, it’s not uncommon that a complete costume change, including mask and shoes, needs to happen in less than 30 seconds.Let the person you’re disrobing do some of the work. Bonanni tends to go for the bottom half of the body and lets the actor undress up top. At first, you both might stumble, reach for the same garment simultaneously, bump heads even. You’ll get faster as you become more familiar with clothing and bodies. By the time a show opens, costume changes should feel like a choreographed dance.Undressing happens mostly in a theater’s darkened wings and backstage. “Wear a headlight,” says Bonanni, who learned the craft from her mother, a longtime dresser on shows like “Rent” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” Costumes get what wardrobe people call “quick rigged,” which mostly means replacing buttons with Velcro. Some garb is unavoidably time-consuming. “A corset is the thing you’re dreading,” Bonanni says. Once you’ve got a person’s clothing off, toss it into a basket to be sorted and cleaned later. Unless, of course, you’re required to put the same outfit back on, as Bonanni had to do repeatedly for the musical “Groundhog Day.” In that case, keep it organized and lay it out in such a way so that the sweat can dry. Backstage is often hectic and crowded; don’t start frantically grabbing at someone’s garments or you’ll exacerbate their nervousness and discomfort. The person needs to trust you. “You want them to feel like they’re in a safe space,” Bonanni says. More

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      Review: Martha Washington, Hilariously Haunted by Her Slaves

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      James Ijames’s amusingly cynical and eclectic new play, “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” is at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival through July 30.On an evening train back from the Hudson Valley last weekend, I overheard two drunken friends — one white, one Indian American — having a loud, expletive-ridden debate two rows behind me.History was irrelevant, the white friend was saying. Between Cold Spring and Yonkers, they argued about police brutality, institutional racism and citizenship, but they kept circling back to the topic of reparations. “If my grandfather was a serial killer, why do I have to pay for his crimes?” he asked. He said history was being used against him. The past is the past — so why should he suffer?That this experience followed a performance of James Ijames’s stunning new play, “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” directed by Taylor Reynolds at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, was an event of stage-worthy irony. The theater gods certainly have a sense of humor.And so does Ijames (“Fat Ham,” “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever”), though his is laced with a brutal sense of cynicism. I say that as a compliment: What else could be more appropriate to the obscene joke that is this country’s treatment of its Black residents? In “Miz Martha Washington,” George Washington is dead and his wife, Martha (played by Nance Williamson), seems about ready to follow him to the grave. Ann Dandridge (a sharp Britney Simpson) — her slave and also her half sister, who is unfortunately tangled up in Martha’s line of ancestry — tends to the former first lady while raising her own son, William (a perfectly jejune Tyler Fauntleroy).Martha is weak and feverish, talking nonsense and having hallucinations while Ann and the rest of her slaves — the Washingtons held hundreds, historically — continue to cook her food, clean her floors, chop her wood and polish her silverware, as they’ve done her whole life. But now they’re antsy and less accommodating: In his will, Washington offered the slaves freedom upon his wife’s death.In a series of hallucinations, her slaves appear as lawyers, prosecutors and historical figures who try to show her how accountable she is in a system of oppression. Her fever dreams include chats with Abigail Adams, Betsy Ross and Thomas Jefferson, all of them Black; a game show hosted by a Black King George and Queen Charlotte; and a “People’s Court”-style trial. She should just do the right thing and free her slaves while she’s still alive, but it’s hard to be ethical when you’re accustomed to a certain lifestyle.“Miz Martha Washington” bears the signature of Ijames’s clever wit: He writes the slaves as more than docile stereotypes; these slaves have personality to spare, and they joke and sing with a threatening jocularity. You know how baring one’s teeth can be a sign of joy or hostility? Ijames does.Two female slaves, Doll (Cyndii Johnson) and Priscilla (Claudia Logan), act as twin jesters in the play, clowning and gossiping at Martha’s expense — as when Priscilla acts out what she hopes will be Martha’s “death rattle,” a hilariously odd sound that falls somewhere between a groan and a screech. They don’t talk purely in the expected dialect of stage slaves, but in an anachronistic mix of that with modern Black American vernacular.All of the elements of the production have a bit of this playful mash-up approach (which recalls the style of other great Black playwrights like George C. Wolfe, Adrienne Kennedy and Suzan-Lori Parks). In terms of plot, the play recalls, of all things, “A Christmas Carol,” as Martha is haunted by her wrongs. But “Miz Martha Washington” is never as procedural as that; scenes set in the real world are broken up by dance interludes with disco lights and by surreal fantasies like a reverse auction in which the slaves, posed as owners, examine and bid on Martha.Even the costumes, by Hahnji Jang, are sportively eclectic, with clashing patterns and colors — along with additional anachronistic details, like hoop earrings and sneakers. Under Reynolds’s puckish direction, the tone, too, whips from exaggerated sitcom-style humor (hammy facial reactions, quick comedic beats) to poetic surrealism (a young slave boy’s prophetic monologue) to tragedy (accounts of abuse, sexual assault).Cyndii Johnson, foreground center, plays a slave who also serves as a kind of jester, joking and gossiping at Martha’s expense.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhen the slaves sing and dance and drum around poor, sick Martha’s bed, it looks like a dark sacrificial ritual or an exorcism of America’s evils. And when one slave laughs, and the sound is joined by an offstage chorus of laughter from other slaves, the thunder is spirited at first but then quickly becomes unnerving. As Ijames notes in his script, “Laughter is a weapon.”And yet Martha isn’t a meek, quivering pupil to the slaves’ lessons on the debts America owes to its Black people; Williamson pivots from pleas to commands, fear to rage, declaring herself America’s mother, a woman who “did right” by her slaves, and refusing to be spooked into more righteous behavior.Behind the simple staging of Martha’s bed on a sandy patch of ground, an opening in the tent on the beautiful lawn of the Boscobel House and Gardens, in Garrison, N.Y., revealed a backdrop of mountains and a hazy blue sky. This view, which dimmed over time into the buzzing, uninterrupted darkness of the evening, for me recalled the ways our American mythos is tied to grand landscapes — “amber waves” and “purple mountain majesties” for white explorers and white landowners. All fitting for a show confronting questions about freedom, inheritance and birthright. (“Miz Martha Washington” is part of the festival’s 34th and final season before it moves to a new location.)I couldn’t help but imagine how much greater the show would be on a big Broadway stage with all the fixings, so to speak. After all, Ijames’s revisionism works, in many ways, as the inverse to “Hamilton.” “Hamilton” uses its Black and brown actors to reclaim history as a story of hope for immigrants, minorities, the disenfranchised. It’s a rebranding of the American dream. “Miz Martha Washington” uses its Black actors to expose the blights of the American dream and the hypocrisies of our historical narratives.And so the hilarious Brandon St. Clair is the obliging slave Davy as well as a very Black — and priceless — George Washington, resurrected from the dead. And another slave, Sucky Boy (Ralph Adriel Johnson), appears as a humorously tactless Black Thomas Jefferson.Does the play have a happy, inspirational ending? Well, let me just say that despite Ijames’s antic fabrications, he is ultimately tethered to the tragedy that is America. And we all know how that story goes.On the train after the show, the conversation between the two friends seemed to stretch on forever. When the white friend got off, after saying he had enjoyed the “discourse,” a fresh silence took over. Infuriated by the ignorant, racist statements I had been hearing, I walked over and spoke to the Indian American man, a lawyer named Ash.“You’re totally right on everything,” I said. “I’m not sure you should bother.” He gave me a fist bump and said that he still wanted to try.About halfway through the play, Priscilla says to Doll, “Hard work openin’ folks’ eyes,” to which Doll responds, “Huh … you can say that again.”But are we all accountable for our fellow citizens who are, if not explicitly racist, at least complicit in the systems and institutions that degrade and oppress? Does Ijames consider his work educational, a corrective? I would wager not. History has taught us that even our most high-minded foundational ideals — “all men are created equal” — can be interpreted to a single group’s advantage or be a basis of manipulation. You can’t teach a person humanity if it’s a lesson they don’t want to learn.In the fairy tale version of our country’s racial politics, we all learn about justice and skip happily toward the future. I, for one, am done with fairy tales as history — and patient explanations. Give me the harder truth of Ijames’s fantastical version any day.The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha WashingtonThrough July 30 at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Garrison, N.Y.; 845-265-9575, hvshakespeare.org. More

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      On the Scene: ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ 🎸

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      On the Scene: ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ 🎸Michael PaulsonReporting on theater Even before entering the St. James Theater, the theater district was clearly more alive than it was a year ago, at the height of the pandemic. Times Square, even with all but one theater still closed, was mobbed. More

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      Bruce Springsteen Reopens Broadway, Ushering In Theater’s Return

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      On Saturday, “Springsteen on Broadway” became the first full-length show to take the stage since the Covid-19 pandemic forced performances to shut down in March 2020.I have seen the return of Broadway, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.In a city whose cultural soul had been shuttered for more than a year with boarded up windows and empty streets, it was Springsteen who called it back to life on Saturday night, his gruff and guttural rasp the first to echo across a Broadway stage to a paying audience in 471 days.Of course, “Springsteen on Broadway” is no traditional Broadway production — no mesmerizing choreographed musical numbers, no enchanted sets, no multi-page bios of cast members in the Playbill. The show consists of a man alone onstage; his ensemble a microphone, a harmonica, a piano and six steel strings stretched across a select slab of spruce wood.“I am here tonight to provide proof of life,” Springsteen called out early on. It was a line from the monologue of his original show — which ran for 236 performances, in 2017 and 2018 — and now it carried extra weight. That proof, he continued, was “to that ever elusive, never completely believable, particularly these days, us.”For the “us” that packed inside the St. James Theater — 1,721 filled seats, very few masked people, all vaccinated — that first arpeggiated three-note chord from “Growin’ Up” was indeed proof that the rhythms that moved New York City were emerging from behind a heavy, dark and weighty curtain.The 15 months that Broadway had been shuttered was its longest silence in history. In years past, strikes, hurricanes, blizzards and blackouts had managed to tamp down the lights on Broadway only for a few days, weeks or a month. But the pandemic forced the Theater District into an extensive darkness on March 12 of last year, as New York was quickly becoming the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States.And while marquee shows like “Hadestown,” “Hamilton” and “Wicked” are still awaiting their September reopenings, it was Springsteen who took one of the most meaningful strolls to center stage in Broadway history, and sang.Bruce Springsteen, left, and his wife, Patti Scialfa, taking a bow at the St. James Theater. They sang together on “Fire,” one of the new additions to the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThough the show largely hewed to the original incarnation, there were some notable additions, and new phrases, soliloquies and tales woven into the performance. Springsteen mentioned his new record, “Letter to You”; his new film of the same name; and his dismissed drunken-driving charges. (He was arrested after taking two shots of tequila with fans in Sandy Hook, a public beach that does not allow alcohol, and then hopping on his motorcycle.)But he also tried to make sense of the moment, of a long year filled with loss and isolation during the pandemic.“It’s been a long time coming,” Springsteen said to the crowd after finishing the first song, stepping away from the microphone and speaking directly to the crowd. “In 71 years on the planet, I haven’t seen anything like this past year.”He spoke at length of his mother, Adele Springsteen.“She’s 10 years into Alzheimer’s,” he said. “She’s 95. But the need to dance, that need to dance is something that hasn’t left her. She can’t speak. She can’t stand. But when she sees me, there’s a smile.”And he addressed the civil unrest throughout the country.“We are living in troubling times,” Springsteen said. “Certainly not in my lifetime, when the survival of democracy itself, not just who is going to be running the show for the next four years, but the survival of democracy itself is deeply threatened.”He then launched into one of three new songs to the show, “American Skin (41 Shots),” a ballad written about Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant, who was fatally shot in 1999 by New York City police officers.Amid the new material (including a new duet, “Fire,” with his wife, Patti Scialfa), the rhythms that marked the initial run of “Springsteen on Broadway” were quickly finding their groove. Hours before the show, a crowd amassed outside the side stage door, a relic of Springsteen’s earlier Broadway run when fans clamored for a glimpse of the rock star’s arrival every night.“It’s just epic to have the Boss open us back up,” said Giancarlo DiMascio, 28, who drove down from Rochester to see the show (his 49th Springsteen concert). “It’s big for New York, its big for arts and culture here, and to have this open up is a sense of normalcy.”A line began to form at the theater and eventually snaked down 44th Street, as fans clad in vintage Springsteen paraphernalia — old concert T-shirts, Stone Pony shirts and a few Springsteen face masks — were eager to get inside and see a stage in person for the first time in months. But, true to Broadway form, plenty of theatergoers staggered in just as the house lights were dimming, including Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Steven Van Zandt, the actor and guitarist for Springsteen’s E Street Band.The transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, standing left, and Steven Van Zandt, seated center, were among the famous faces in the crowd at Saturday night’s performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’ve been a Broadway fan for as long as I can remember, and this has been a challenging year,” said Jacob Persily, 26, from Monmouth County, N.J. He said he had been to “hundreds” of Broadway plays but had never seen Springsteen (though he lives around the corner from Springsteen’s gym in New Jersey). “I’m also a health care worker, so it’s been a challenging year in many other ways.”Outside the theater, dozens of anti-vaccination protesters gathered, shouting and harassing attendees. A similar group had come to protest the Foo Fighters concert at Madison Square Garden last week. Both performances required proof of vaccination to attend.But for many in the audience, it felt good to be back in the theater, back to live music, and just simply “back.” But other fans, for whom music — and particularly Springsteen’s music — brings an irreplaceable form of comfort, the show felt especially important.Kathy Saleeba, 53, drove from Rhode Island for the show. A self-described “No. 1 Bruce fan,” Saleeba said she had seen 51 Springsteen shows, many with her childhood friend Jane.In 2005, Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer, Saleeba said, but the two continued to go to as many Springsteen shows as possible, and they even met the Boss in Connecticut in 2008 before his show. He ended up playing a song for her, “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart.”On Saturday, Saleeba brought a picture of Jane, who died in 2016, along with the lyrics printed out from “Land of Hope and Dreams.” She hoped to give it to Springsteen in person.A line stretched down 44th Street as ticket holders waited to enter the St. James Theater. Audience members were required to provide proof of Covid-19 vaccination, and entry times were staggered.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Springsteen on Broadway” is part concert, part comedy, part tragedy, part therapy, but also so much more in an undefinable sum. It’s a performance and a conversation, with a hero and an icon baring himself onstage, offering a portrait of his life through his own eyes, his own voice, and how he has seen the world.It’s a show that reckons so rawly with loss and change in an unfair world, and even Springsteen at one point choked up, tears winding down his face as he recalled all those he’s lost: his father, his bandmates, his friends.“I’m glad to be doing this show again this summer because I get to visit with my dad every night that I’m here, and it’s a lovely thing,” he said, wiping his eyes.Though through somber resilience, Springsteen also finds ways to celebrate.In paying tribute to Clarence “Big Man” Clemons, the larger-than-life saxophone player from the E Street Band who died 10 years ago this month, Springsteen recalled when “Scooter and the Big Man” took the city on and whispered rock ’n’ roll stories into the ears of millions. “He was elemental in my life,” Springsteen said, softly vamping through the chords of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” “And losing him was like losing the rain.”Like so many in the audience, I too lost a “Big Man” in the pandemic. My cousin Big Nick, who had a heart so big it could have been the inspiration for Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” was one of the more than 600,000 American people who succumbed to the coronavirus.And so has this city grappled with extraordinary loss, where almost every street, block and building, every inhabitant and every visitor has been forever changed by the pandemic.As I, and so many others, shared the pain of Springsteen as he recounted the death of his friend, and promised to “see ya in the next life, Big Man,” there was also comfort in seeing him onstage again, on Broadway again, and all of us, strangers and not, together again in music.And when Springsteen belted out the climactic third verse to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” — “Well the change was made uptown and the Big Man joined the band” — the only audible sounds were cheers. More

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      Review: A Darkly Satirical Glimpse Into Life ‘Off Broadway’

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      Torrey Townsend’s backstage fiction is an indictment of the real world’s overwhelmingly white, disproportionately male theatrical establishment.It is the fall of 2020, and the American National Theater is desperate to survive the pandemic.In Torrey Townsend’s blistering and hilarious satire “Off Broadway,” presented by Jeremy O. Harris and streaming free on Broadstream, this tenaciously middling nonprofit is millions of dollars in the red, and operating with only a skeleton crew.But it sees one route out of financial calamity. When it finally reopens, it will do so with a surefire smash: Al Pacino in “Othello,” playing the title role. In blackface.Andy, the company’s staggeringly underqualified artistic director, doesn’t recognize this as regressing to a shameful and banished tradition. Rather, he frames it as a brilliant provocation, a metatheatrical challenge to quaintly limited thinking.“Y’all are gonna get eaten alive,” Marla, his horrified associate producer, warns during a Zoom meeting, but no one pays the slightest heed. She is Black; the others are white. They are happy to rationalize the idea.And that, like most of what happens in “Off Broadway,” doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.Directed by Robert O’Hara, who also directed Harris’s “Slave Play” and is an accomplished satirist in his own playwriting (“Bootycandy”), this backstage fiction is both raucously funny and devastatingly on point. It is an indictment of the real world’s overwhelmingly white, disproportionately male theatrical establishment — not just in New York, but nationwide.This spiky critique arrives with perfect timing: as the industry begins to emerge from well over a year of shutdown, with many companies having publicly pledged their allegiance to the goals of the initiative We See You, White American Theater. Will this indeed be a reset to a more vital, inclusive theater, or merely a blip? “Off Broadway” wants to know.Structured as a series of Zoom calls, it’s powered by a top-notch ensemble. The company’s ailing founder, Daryl, is deliciously played by Richard Kind as a shambling, pretentious gasbag, untethered from reality. He is on the verge of retirement when a ticked-off letter writer mocks him as a “morally insensitive, artistically incompetent fraud.” His rage kills him before his cancer can.Andy, played by Dylan Baker, is his chosen successor. That casting is our first clue that Andy will turn out to be a deeply unnerving guy. (This is a compliment; no one does creepy like Baker.) At least as thin-skinned as Daryl, and just as aggressively certain of his own laudable intentions, Andy shuts down any internal criticism of the company’s racism — in hiring, in programming and in what Marla calls its “fusty, elitist, Anglo Saxon neoclassical fetish.”He sees himself as a hero for retaining two people of color, Marla (Jessica Frances Dukes) and Steph (Kara Wang), on his ravaged staff. He is thrilled at “the optics” of promoting Marla from literary manager, and when he promotes Steph to replace her, he promises a raise — eventually. “Fingers crossed,” he says.The surprising beauty of Zoom here is that the format doesn’t prioritize one character over another. Even when Andy monopolizes a meeting, steamrolling Marla and Steph, the eye of the camera in their little rectangles is unblinking. We see in their faces how strenuous it is to endure him silently.And when he is alone online with Steph, we also see that working from home is no barrier to sexual harassment. With that plot twist comes a new layer of grievance. The company’s managing director, Betty (Becky Ann Baker), reflexively defends Andy. And when Steph takes graphic evidence to The New York Times, no #MeToo article comes of it.Well paced at nearly two hours, but segmented to allow watching in shorter chunks, “Off Broadway” entreats us to notice whose voices, perspectives and experiences are dismissed, talked over, ignored. It asks who in the theatrical establishment is willing to listen, and who is willing to act — and act differently — based on what they hear.That is the question of the moment. Whether we get a healthier, more urgent and empathetic American theater depends on the answer.Off BroadwayThrough Sunday; broad.stream/off-broadway More