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      Sunday in the Trenches With George

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      James Lapine’s book shows how he and Stephen Sondheim invested two years of work to burnish their musical from an avant-garde near-disaster to a mainstream classic.As someone then working in a menial capacity on musicals, I was lucky enough to see the original production of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George” several times: once during its ragged, unfinished Off Broadway workshop at Playwrights Horizons in 1983 and repeatedly during its gleamingly polished Broadway run at the Booth Theater starting the next year. Either way, I thought it was a work of beauty and genius, especially after getting to study the music up close as I proofread parts of the score for the show’s copyist. What I didn’t know was how close, and how often, “Sunday” had come to not working at all.In “Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created ‘Sunday in the Park With George,’” Lapine, who directed and wrote the book for the show, relates the history of the work through memories, memorabilia and interviews with more than 50 people connected with it. They include Sondheim, of course, but also the original stars (Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters), ensemble members (including the as-yet-unknown Kelsey Grammer, Brent Spiner and Christine Baranski), producers, designers, stage managers and grunts.The composer Stephen Sondheim, right, was collaborating for the first time with James Lapine, left, who wrote the book and directed “Sunday in the Park With George.”Gerry GoodsteinFar from being a nostalgic ego trip, though, Lapine’s book is astonishingly frank about the show’s troubles and his own shortcomings. His background in experimental theater was central to the new work’s innovations but did not prepare him, especially as a novice director, for the mainstream pressures that inevitably came to bear once Sondheim was involved, even if Sondheim himself was trying to escape them.That division is recapitulated in the plot, which in the first act concerns the pointillist painter Georges Seurat, his fictional lover, Dot, and the creation of his masterpiece, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” In the second act, it leaps ahead 100 years to focus on a contemporary artist who might be the couple’s great-grandson. Some audiences were unwilling to make that leap. Even Emanuel Azenberg, one of the show’s commercial producers, found it “intimidating and baffling.”The same phrase applies to the many personality clashes, technical problems and existential threats that seemed to pop up constantly during the show’s development. So even as Lapine traces the painstaking process of creating and directing something fundamentally new, he also reveals the role of chance and adversity in the making of a musical that’s now considered a classic.The unexpected flip side of that insight is the realization that even the greatest works, as they come together, are always just a few decisions shy of coming apart.Below, a timeline, with quotations from the book (out on Aug. 3), of the portents, miscalculations and disasters that over the course of two years led — utterly unpredictably — from the postcard of the painting that Lapine first showed Sondheim to a musical that may be, as one lyric puts it, “durable forever.”June 12, 1982With Sondheim, 52, in “a pretty dark place” after the failure of “Merrily We Roll Along” in 1981 — he’s considering giving up theater to make video games — Lapine, 33, a downtown up-and-comer, anxiously heads to their first meeting “through a huge antinuclear march that seemed to have taken over the city.” As the two men share a joint and talk, Lapine realizes they come from different artistic worlds; he has seen only one of Sondheim’s shows — “Sweeney Todd” — and has the thinnest possible knowledge of musical theater in general.Sondheim’s indication in Lapine’s script of where the opening number should go in “Sunday in the Park.”via Stephen SondheimSeptember 1982Sondheim, who typically begins by looking for places to put songs in the book writer’s text, finds one in Lapine’s first pages, as Dot poses for Seurat on a hot Sunday. Lapine expands the moment into a monologue beginning with the words “First a dribble of sweat,” but Sondheim thinks: “Dribble — I can’t do dribble.” He changes it to “trickle.” A good start, yet Lapine waits so long to hear the result, or any result, that he begins to fear Sondheim will leave him “at the altar.” The delay is in part the result of Sondheim’s fundamental concern: “I didn’t think the show needed songs.”Nov. 1, 1982At the first reading of the first act, Sondheim plays the entire score so far, which consists of four arpeggios — about 10 seconds of music.Early 1983The Off Broadway workshop at Playwrights Horizons has been financed mostly by grants and “wealthy widows,” says André Bishop, the theater’s artistic director. But at least one isn’t on board. Dorothy Rodgers, the widow of Richard Rodgers and an éminence grise in New York State arts funding, argues that Sondheim, as a “commercial” composer, doesn’t merit public funds. Bishop recalls writing to her: “If you think this musical that is barely half-written, about a pointillist painter, is commercial, you’ve got to be nuts!” Instead of cutting funding, he adds, “what I think you should do is get down on your knees and kiss my feet.” Rodgers replies: “Dear André. Point taken.”April 1983Lapine receives a letter from Edward Kleban, the lyricist of “A Chorus Line,” suggesting that “Sunday,” as yet unperformed, appropriates elements of Kleban’s unproduced musical “Gallery.” The implied threat of a lawsuit hovers all the way to Broadway, as does Kleban, seen scribbling notes during previews, but a suit never materializes.May 31, 1983On the first day of rehearsal, Peters gets an emergency call: “Your father is sick.” But it’s just her stalker. Other problems are not so easily dismissed. One cast member quits after a week, and several who remain resist what they call Lapine’s “sophomoric” theater games and directing style. Spiner, who plays a chauffeur, complains, “I don’t have a character. Where is my character?” When Lapine answers, “You’re not a character, you’re a color,” Spiner retorts: “Would you mind telling me what color?”Mandy Patinkin as Georges Seurat and Bernadette Peters as his fictional love, Dot, in the Broadway production.Martha Swope, via The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsJuly 1983Patinkin, later describing himself as “terrified” by the demands of the role, storms out of the theater during the first week of performances at Playwrights, with Lapine chasing him down 42nd Street. Though Patinkin’s wife and agent talk him out of quitting, Lapine isn’t sure he’ll ever trust his leading man again. But trust is a problem all around. After Lapine confuses upstage and downstage and gives inappropriately harsh notes, Grammer, who plays several small roles, reams the director out in front of the company.Late July 1983Near the end of previews, Sondheim finishes “Finishing the Hat,” a song for Seurat that makes the first act gel. Not gelling: the skeletal second act hastily added for the final three performances at Playwrights, introducing the contemporary George as a wacky performance artist. Audiences are mystified, as is Sondheim: “It was really terrible.”Fall 1983To everyone’s surprise, the Shubert Organization decides to produce the unfinished, highbrow show in one of its Broadway theaters by the end of the new season; Lapine selects the Booth, nearly the smallest and thus the least financially feasible option. (The pit is so small that the bass drum has to be sliced in half to fit.) Patinkin almost decamps to play one of the sons in the Dustin Hoffman “Death of a Salesman.” Peters does not immediately sign on for Broadway either, noting that Dot still lacks a major moment in the first act like George’s “Finishing the Hat.” (This isn’t narcissism; she has already declined top billing, pointing out that the show is called “Sunday in the Park With George” — not Dot.) Sondheim, agreeing, fills the emotional gap with “We Do Not Belong Together.”The poster for the Broadway production, which played the small Booth Theater.1984 Fraver April 2, 1984At the first Broadway preview, Lapine writes, the theater is “sweltering” and the first act runs an hour and 40 minutes. “Many people walked out at intermission and more during the second act. By the end of the show, people were so desperate to get out of the theater that if I’d stood in their way, I’d have been trampled.” The crew, who call the show “Sunday in the Dark and Bored,” think it will close on opening night — or maybe before; they joke about kidnapping Patinkin and dumping him “in the middle of the Bronx.”Later that AprilA big technical problem during previews is Dot’s trick dress, which she must step out of during the title song as if it were an exoskeleton. The Off Broadway dress was problematic enough, but the fancier Broadway version, operated by a stage manager with a garage-door opener, is even buggier. The shell does not always open, forcing Peters to fight her way out of it manually, using the “emergency exit.” On one occasion, the opposite happens: The dress suddenly shuts before Peters can get back inside; she grabs it under her arm and walks off with it, getting a huge, unintended laugh.A costume rendering of the trick dress worn by the character Dot and controlled with a garage-door remote.Patricia Zipprodt, via Billy Rose Theatre Division/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsEven later that AprilWith two crucial second act songs still unwritten, the opening night is postponed by two weeks and Michael Bennett, an in-demand play doctor ever since he staged “A Chorus Line,” is brought in for advice. But there are also improvements and good omens. The first act has been cut down to 75 or 80 minutes and more people (even Johnny Cash!) are staying through the second. In the week before opening, when Sondheim finally finishes the last two songs — “Children and Art,” which Lapine says “explained the show,” and “Lesson #8,” which “explained George” — the contemporary story suddenly hangs together, even though the songs aren’t yet orchestrated.May 2, 1984“Sunday in the Park With George” opens to mixed reviews, is nominated for 10 Tony Awards (nabbing only two) but runs for 604 performances and, in April 1985, wins the Pulitzer Prize.On April 24, 1985, from left, Sondheim, Peters and Lapine celebrate the news that the show has won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times More

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      Little Island Unveils Free Monthlong Festival With Over 450 Artists

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      The festival, which runs from Aug. 11 to Sept. 5, features a flurry of music, dance, and comedy performances from both established and emerging artists.Little Island was dreamed up as a haven for the performing arts on the Hudson River, and in its first months, it is also being put forward as a playground for artists who have been kept from the stage for far too long.The operators of the island announced on Tuesday that it would host a free monthlong arts festival starting in mid-August that would feature more than 450 artists in more than 160 performances.There will be dance, including works curated by Misty Copeland, Robert Garland and Georgina Pazcoguin. There will be music, including the pianists Jenny Lin and Adam Tendler, the composer Tyshawn Sorey and the saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and her band. And there will be live comedy, with television stars like Ziwe and Bowen Yang in the lineup.The festival — which is being produced by Mikki Shepard, formerly the executive producer of the Apollo Theater — is another major effort by New York’s performing arts community to revive the arts after the pandemic darkened theaters and concert halls for over a year. For the performers, it is an opportunity to get paid to create new work and explore where their art is heading after months of pandemic restrictions, and in the wake of racial justice protests that swept the country.“We wanted artists to have a voice in terms of, where are they now?” Shepard said. “Coming out of this pandemic, where do they want to be?”By offering free performances, the festival’s objective is to host an audience that combines typical arts patrons with people who might not normally buy tickets to see live music or dance. The performances in Little Island’s 687-seat amphitheater will be ticketed, but shows located elsewhere on the island will not be, allowing tourists and other park visitors to stumble upon them as they’re walking around the 2.4-acre space.“Nothing about it is refined,” said George C. Wolfe, a senior adviser working on the festival, which is called NYC Free. “It’s to give people a place to play.”Copeland and Garland are co-curating a performance on Aug. 18 that features eight Black ballet dancers from three major companies: American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet and the Dance Theater of Harlem, where Garland is resident choreographer. During the performance, Copeland will read aloud from American history texts on top of hip-hop, soul and funk music.Other dance performances include Ballet Hispánico performing an evening of new works by Latina choreographers on Aug. 18, an evening of dance curated by the choreographer Ronald K. Brown on Aug. 25 and a performance by the tap dancer Dormeshia on Sept. 1.As for music, the first day of the festival on Aug. 11 will feature John Cage’s work “4’33”” — in which the score instructs that no instruments be played. It will be performed by students of the Third Street Music School Settlement, led by Tendler. Other musicians include the jazz duo Cécile McLorin Salvant and Sullivan Fortner; Flor de Toloache, an all-women mariachi band; and Ali Stroker, the Tony-winning “Oklahoma!” performer, who will sing and tell stories onstage. The final night of the festival includes an all-women jazz performance, curated by the drummer and composer Shirazette Tinnin.The comedy lineup features a stand-up show hosted by Michelle Buteau and a live show called “I Don’t Think So, Honey!,” hosted by Yang and Matt Rogers, that grew out of a segment on their podcast.The festival is funded by Barry Diller, the mega-mogul who paid for Little Island and whose family foundation will bankroll the first two decades of the park’s operations. It will run from Aug. 11 to Sept. 5. More

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      Elliot Lawrence, Award-Winning Conductor, Dies at 96

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      He led a big band, conducted on Broadway, collected Emmys and for nearly 50 years led the orchestra on the annual Tony Awards broadcast.Elliot Lawrence, who after leading a big band in the 1940s and ’50s won a Tony Award for his conducting on Broadway and spent nearly a half-century in charge of the orchestra that plays on the Tonys’ annual broadcast, died on July 2 in Manhattan. He was 96.His son Jamie confirmed the death, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.A pianist by training, Mr. Lawrence was a leader from a young age, forming one youth ensemble, the Band Busters, at age 12. In his 20s he started Elliot Lawrence and His Orchestra, which was voted the most promising new big band in Billboard’s college polls in 1947 and 1948.His later work as conductor of the Tony Awards orchestra — a job he got because of his success on Broadway and in television — earned him two Emmy Awards.“He was happiest in front of an orchestra,” said Jamie Lawrence, who is also a musician and conductor.The big-band era was waning after World War II, but Mr. Lawrence’s orchestra found success playing colleges, proms and concerts. In 1949 alone, it traveled 65,000 miles.The band’s members variously included the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, who wrote some of its arrangements, and the trumpeter Red Rodney. It performed at the Paramount Theater in Manhattan and at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.“He knew how to rehearse, and he had great ears,” Joe Soldo, who played saxophone for Mr. Lawrence’s band from 1949 to 1951, said by phone. “He had instrumentation, like a separate oboe and a French horn. He brought classical input to his arrangements.”But Mr. Lawrence decided to stop touring in 1954 after a trombone player in his band, Ollie Wilson, had given him bad news about some of the other musicians.“He came to me one night on the road and said, ‘El, I’m sorry to tell you this, but out of the 16 guys in the band, 14 of them were junkies.’ Only Ollie and I were clean,” Mr. Lawrence recalled in 2009 in an interview with the alumni magazine of his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.He occasionally reassembled the band in various configurations to record albums, including “Elliot Lawrence Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements” (1955), “Swinging at the Steel Pier” (1956) and “Jazz Goes Broadway” (1957).By then he had begun to find work in television. In 1959, he conducted a 42-piece orchestra that the television host Ed Sullivan took to the Soviet Union.While there, one of the many performers on the trip, the choreographer Gower Champion, asked Mr. Lawrence to be the musical director of “Bye Bye Birdie,” which Mr. Champion was directing and which was to open on Broadway the next year.Mr. Lawrence was conducting the “Bye Bye Birdie” orchestra — on his way to a Tony nomination — when the composer Frank Loesser hired him for the same job on his new musical, “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” which opened in October 1961.Their collaboration proved fruitful. Mr. Lawrence won a Tony, one of seven that the show received, including best musical and best actor (Robert Morse).Mr. Lawrence, at the piano, in 1946. He found success leading several bands, including Elliot Lawrence and His Orchestra.CBS RadioElliot Lawrence Broza was born on Feb. 14, 1925, in Philadelphia. His father, Stan Lee Broza, was a founder and executive of the local radio station WCAU. He and Elliot’s mother, Esther (Malis) Broza, produced the long-running variety show “The Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour” on radio and later on television.Elliot began taking piano lessons at age 3. In 1930 he contracted polio, which affected his fingers and neck, but he recovered and began playing again, and at 10 he was accompanying his mother when she sang tunes from the Great American Songbook at parties in their home.He went on to perform with the Band Busters on his parents’ “Children’s Hour.” At 16 he entered the University of Pennsylvania on a music scholarship and became student director of the marching band, writing, he recalled, jazz arrangements for the school’s fight songs when the football team faced Army in a sold-out game at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.After graduating in 1944 with a bachelor’s degree in music, Mr. Lawrence took over WCAU’s house band, which played live on the air. He formed his big band a year later. Around that time he changed his surname to Lawrence and made Broza his middle name.In 1949, as a veteran bandleader of 24, he was focused on the music as well as the business of overseeing a touring group of 17 members, including two singers, that was grossing $300,000 a year but losing money nevertheless because of salaries, transportation, uniforms, booking agency fees and other costs.“You can see it isn’t a way to get rich quick,” Mr. Lawrence told The Kansas City Star, adding: “My father is my business manager. I don’t have to worry about my money being stolen.”The big-band work yielded to conducting on Broadway, where, after “How to Succeed,” he was the musical director of eight more shows, including “1776,” which opened in 1969. By then he was a year into his run as conductor of the Tony Awards orchestra, a gig that would last until 2013.In addition to the Emmys he won for his work on the Tonys, Mr. Lawrence also won Emmys for his musical direction of the television specials “’S Wonderful, ’S Marvelous, ’S Gershwin,” a tribute to George and Ira Gershwin in 1972, and “Night of 100 Stars” (1982), an all-star variety show celebrating the centennial of the Actors’ Fund of America.His television credits include writing music for soap operas like “The Edge of Night,” for which he won two Daytime Emmys, and two ABC Afterschool Specials, which earned him two more Daytime Emmys.He also wrote music for the opening sequence of “The French Connection” (1971) and for “Network” (1976). But most of his “Network” score was cut, Jamie Lawrence said.“Paddy Chayefsky came into the edit room and said, ‘I don’t want to hear music,’” Mr. Lawrence said, referring to the film’s screenwriter. “He only wanted dialogue.”“My dad,” he added, “was very proud of that score.”In addition to his son Jamie, Mr. Lawrence is survived by his daughters, Alexandra and Mia Lawrence; another son, Danny; and five grandchildren. His wife, Amy (Bunim) Lawrence, died in 2017.Ricky Kirschner, the executive producer of the Tonys broadcast, recalled Mr. Lawrence as a gentlemanly leader of the orchestra until he was nearly 90.“Think about it,” he said by phone. “It’s a three-hour show, with 15 performances, and you have to arrange and rehearse music for every possible winner. And when they say who the winner is, you have to be fast enough to play it while the director is in your ear, telling you to cut after 20 or 30 seconds”He added, “Think of doing that when you’re 88.” More

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      Williamstown Theater Festival Tries to Weather the Storms

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      The annual summer festival in Massachusetts has tried to adapt amid the pandemic and calls for more diversity onstage.I hate getting caught in the rain. But lately, with the mercurial weather and my new dog-walking schedule, I’ve found myself caught in bright sun showers, swampy mists and downright tempests. In my humble opinion, rain is nothing to sing about — Gene Kelly be damned.After a sunny bus ride to Williamstown, Mass., walking with a pup, a tote and a backpack, I was caught again — soaked down to the soles of my Converse. Roughly 15 minutes later the skies settled as suddenly as they had erupted. It’s a problem the Williamstown Theater Festival, which I was attending for the first time, has had to contend with all summer. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the usually indoor festival has tried to adapt with three outdoor productions. But the area has received an above-average amount of rainfall this season, disrupting these plans and leading the festival not to open its shows for reviews from critics.Adaptation, how the festival has successfully or unsuccessfully readjusted to the climate and the politico-cultural climate (namely the pandemic and the protests), was the theme of my weekend.One of the first sights I saw on my damp walk from the bus to the hotel was of a Black woman on a stage: delightful. This was an outdoor rehearsal for one of three 30-minute plays curated by the playwright-director Robert O’Hara for “Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination: Nine Solo Plays.” In “The Master’s Tools,” cleverly written by Zora Howard (“Stew”), a Black enslaved woman named Tituba (a wonderfully devilish Rosalyn Coleman), like the victimized slave from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” recounts a treacherous storm that led to her mother’s decapitation. A storm is a “great equalizer,” she says, describing how nature howls “like it’s in heat” and how the trees shake “as though possessed.”It made me glance up to the sky again from my seat on the front lawn of the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance, where the production was presented. A clamshell arched over the stage where Tituba told her story. Just a few minutes before she stepped onstage, ushers had handed out rain ponchos to the audience; the forecast had predicted afternoon rain.Rosalyn Coleman in Zora Howard’s “The Master’s Tools.”Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisThe rain never came. But by that point the audience, who sat on the lawn without any covering, had already been exposed to the vicious midday sun for an hour while watching the two other short solos, all directed by Candis C. Jones, that were being featured in the last week of the anthology production’s run: “Mark It Down” by Charly Evon Simpson, and “The Last……(A Work in Progress),” by Ngozi Anyanwu.In “The Last,” a queer Black man (Ronald Peet) reflects on a relationship, reeling from his isolation — a literal quarantine — and sense of loss. And in “Mark It Down,” a Black woman (Naomi Lorrain) takes account of her grief over her grandmother’s death during the pandemic.These works by Black playwrights were another way the festival reacted to the moment — not to the coronavirus, but to the recent calls for more diversity onstage. But when the plays were taken within the context of the community where they were being staged, there was a disconnect. My mother, who had joined me, and I barely saw any Black people in town all weekend, with the exception of the festival’s Black cast members. What’s the point of producing new work about Blackness in America if there’s not a more concerted effort to attract Black audiences to receive it?I asked the same question when I attended the experimental “Alien/Nation,” from the director Michael Arden and his company, the Forest of Arden. An immersive experience, “Alien/Nation,” written and devised by Eric Berryman and Jen Silverman, begins as a walking tour through the Williams College campus. (There’s also a version by car.) The audience is split into groups of about eight, and each group is led, via an app, along a path dotted with performers who act out bite-size, dance-heavy scenes about real events that happened in Western Massachusetts and beyond in 1969.Not only does this first act — mostly about Black student protests at Williams College — ring out as particularly relevant right now, but so does the second, which takes place at a Covid-19 vaccination center. The third, which includes an odd but beautiful reproduction of the moon landing and a planetary fashion show, makes a sloppy effort to tie the ending back into the racial themes of the beginning.“Alien/Nation” is an immersive theatrical experience that takes audiences on a walking tour through Williamstown, Mass.Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisWhile some parts of the production connect (the site-specific format, the wondrously fluid synchronized choreography of Jeff Kuperman and Eamon Foley), others show how the festival’s attempts to adjust to an innovative, pandemic-friendly experience failed. The complicated tech — audience members need to download an app, and must forfeit their driver’s licenses in exchange for earbuds — was prohibitive to many, myself included. The app didn’t work well, the tour ate up more than half my data, and my audio kept going in and out. And the first part of the lengthy production, which one of the company members described, understatedly, as “a little bit of a walk,” wasn’t very accessible, especially given the ample hills of the Williams campus. (“This is too much for someone my age,” my 56-year-old mother testily complained to a company member. “Especially for someone who had a hip replacement.”)And, again, when looking at the makeup of the audience, my mother and I appeared to be the only Black people attending a play about Black civil rights and political action.It was my final show of the weekend, however, that best captured the festival’s attempts to adapt theater in unpredictable circumstances. With a book by Daniel Goldstein and music and lyrics by Dawn Landes, “Row,” directed by Tyne Rafaeli, is staged on wooden platforms in the beautiful reflecting pool at the Clark Art Institute.This musical was inspired by Tori Murden McClure’s memoir “A Pearl in the Storm,” about her effort to become the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic. By presenting “Row” outside at the Clark, the festival uses a local setting (the gorgeous views) to present a tale of resiliency. Led by Grace McLean as Tori with a soaring voice (best showcased in the cascading bellows of the classic-rock-inspired “Drowning”), the show intercuts Tori’s narrative account of her journey with scenes from her past. Her story — acting out, growing up in a difficult home, then finding herself in a fight against nature — hits many familiar notes but is still novel, if only for the site-specific setup and the fact that her quest really happened a mere 22 years ago.Grace McLean as the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic in “Row” at the Clark Art Institute.Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisBut the show has also been plagued by the poor weather, and some of the sound crew walked off the job one night, complaining of unsafe and unsatisfactory working conditions in the rain. In switching gears to deliver outdoor theater, the festival has been able to step up during a challenging time for the performing arts, but it has struggled to manage the logistics.“Bad weather’s on the way,” Tori says at one point in the show. During her long, treacherous time at sea, she constantly has to acclimate to the conditions in order to survive.The same could be said of theater during the pandemic; easier said than done.The morning after I returned from Williamstown, I got caught in the rain yet again. I’ve started wearing my rain boots, I just got a new raincoat, and at Williamstown I bought a blue rain poncho just in case. I’d rather be prepared for any bad weather on the way — not just run for cover.RowThrough Aug. 15 at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; 413-458-3253, wtfestival.org. Running time: 2 hours.Alien/NationThrough Aug. 15 in Williamstown, Mass; 413-458-3253, wtfestival.org. Running time: 2 hours and 25 minutes. More

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      Positive Coronavirus Test Halts Shakespeare in the Park for Third Night

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      “Merry Wives,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy, had already pushed back its opening night by nearly two weeks after an injury to its leading man.The merriment is still on hiatus.The Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park production of “Merry Wives,” which had already pushed back its opening night by nearly two weeks after its leading man was injured, announced on Friday that it would cancel its third consecutive performance after learning a production member had tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.The theater had canceled the Wednesday and Thursday performances at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in accordance with its existing protocols. It announced on Twitter on Friday that it would call off Friday’s performance as well “to support the artistic and logistical efforts required to restart performances.”A spokeswoman for the theater, Laura Rigby, said the theater planned to resume performances on Saturday. The production is scheduled to run through Sept. 18, with a special gala performance on Sept. 20.The theater noted on Twitter that it practiced “rigorous testing and daily health and safety protocols to ensure everyone’s safety.” It said on Wednesday that the cast, crew and staff members would isolate and take additional tests if needed.Earlier this week the theater postponed the play’s opening night to Aug. 9, from July 27, after Jacob Ming-Trent, who plays Falstaff, sustained an undisclosed injury. (He is recuperating, the theater said, and his understudy Brandon E. Burton will perform the role in his absence.)The show, a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” has been running in previews since July 6. Written by Jocelyn Bioh and directed by Saheem Ali, it is set in South Harlem and represents African immigrant communities not often seen onstage. Bioh and Ali have said they hope the production makes Shakespeare accessible to all audiences, especially people of color who may have been told Shakespeare was not for them.“We want it to be antiracist,” Ali told The New York Times this month. “We want it to have opportunities for people of color that didn’t exist before.”In June, the theater announced that it would fill the Delacorte Theater to 80 percent capacity after initially saying it would allow only 428 attendees in the 1,800-seat theater for each performance.People who show proof of vaccination can occupy full-capacity sections, and distanced sections are available for those who are unvaccinated (and those theatergoers do not need to show proof of a negative test to enter). Face masks are required for people in both sections when entering and moving around, though those in the full-capacity sections may remove them while seated.On Friday, Rigby said the theater was monitoring Covid-19 cases in New York City and would adjust its policies if needed in collaboration with its city, state and union partners.The cancellations come amid the rise in cases caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, which has been responsible for the postponement of a number of stage productions and delays in television and film projects in Europe over the past month. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cinderella” musical recently moved its opening night in London’s West End back about a month after a cast member tested positive, while productions like “Hairspray” at the London Coliseum and “Romeo and Juliet” at Shakespeare’s Globe have also experienced delays following positive tests.In the United States, the Delta variant is now responsible for a majority of cases, and some experts are recommending that fully vaccinated people wear masks again to protect the unvaccinated. More

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      Goodbye, Dolly: With Their Bids, Fans Hold Onto Carol Channing

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      Awards and autographs, costumes and wigs have recently been sold at auction. Even the glamorous red gown from “Hello, Dolly!” found a home.LOS ANGELES — For men of a certain age — and it is mostly men — Carol Channing was something of an obsession. They waited by stage doors from Broadway to Tampa for her to emerge. They devoured the “Hello, Dolly!” cast album as teenagers, watched her on television and in the movies and, at times, dressed up in drag to impersonate her — the exaggerated red lipstick, the drone of a nasal voice, the wide-eyed comedic delivery and the burst of puffy hair.So there was an audience ready and waiting when much of the Channing estate went to auction last month, more than two years after she died at the age of 97 in Rancho Mirage, Calif.All 400 items sold out in eight hours, of course, and the auction, authorized by Channing’s heirs, raised close to $406,000 from 6,000 registered bidders, with some of the proceedings going to charity. Fans snatched up the Tony and Golden Globe Awards, the gowns, shawls and shoes, the tattered scripts, the needlepoint pillows and the wigs. Some of this Channingabilia was quite costly: A 1964 Tony for “Distinguished Achievement in Theater” went for $28,125, while a glamorous red costume she wore parading down a staircase in the title role of “Hello, Dolly!” drew $23,750.Memorabilia from the estate, including a flag from the touring production of “Sugar Babies,” was on display at a warehouse, though all the bidding was done by phone or online.Alex Welsh for The New York Times“We have held celebrity sales in the past, but this was different,” said Joe Baratta, the vice president of development at the Abell Auction Company, which is handling the estate. “There were items that were worn, were used, were touched by her, and gifts that were given to honor her career.” (Another 300 Channing items will be auctioned in September).Given the pandemic, there was no in-person thrill — paddles in the air, an auctioneer with a gavel on a podium. It was all done online and by telephone, with bidders, and lurkers, at their screens. People who wanted to inspect the merchandise could head to the Abell warehouse in Commerce, a city just east of downtown Los Angeles. But most of the items were bought sight unseen.By whom? Here’s a look at three superfans who brought their checkbooks (or at least Venmo accounts) and walked away with a piece of Carol Channing’s six decades in public life.David Turner: Hanging onto the ‘zing’Turner in a coat that Channing wore in the London production of the musical “Lorelei.”Amy Lombard for The New York TimesDavid Turner is an actor (most recent Broadway show: “The Boys in the Band” revival) and a commercial pilot who flies for Angel Flight East. As a college student, he waited hours for Channing by the door of a Hartford, Conn., theater after a “Hello, Dolly!” performance. He was a trouper; by the time she emerged, Turner and his boyfriend were the only two fans left.“I didn’t say a word,” Turner, 46, recalled the other day. No autograph request, either. “I felt it would be predatory. I just watched her move.”By that night in Hartford, his Channing bona fides were beyond dispute. Back in 1977, he was already playing — and playing and playing — a song off the “Free to Be You and Me” children’s compilation on which Channing performed (more talking than singing) “Housework.” As a 15-year-old in New Jersey, he began doing an impersonation at the suggestion of an 18-year-old boyfriend who told him that when he had a cold, he sounded like Carol Channing.He still does it to this day, and is hoping that one of the Channing gowns he now calls his own can be pressed into service for a drag performance, assuming he can squeeze into it.“I do ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,’” he said of the song from her breakout role as Lorelei Lee in the 1949 musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”It was Turner’s first auction, and he found it a little intimidating. But by the end, he had bought 25 items: an Al Hirschfeld sketch of Channing, eyes wide and with an exaggerated grimace; a few dresses and costumes; a blouse monogrammed with her initials; a pair of tap shoes; and that 1964 Tony.Truth be told, it made him a little queasy — was this ghoulish? he wondered — before deciding that this was a fine way to preserve the memory of someone who had been such a huge part of his life.“She had a way of getting a room to zing,” he said. “For me, being part of the auction was wanting to hang on to that feeling.”“I loved her,” he added. “And Carol is in many ways a very weird person. She was the first person who really took whatever it was that was weird and hitched her wagon to it.”Nicky Ciampoli: Almost familyNick Ciampoli with one of the two Bob Mackie dresses he purchased from the auction.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesNicky Ciampoli lived with Carol Channing for the last years of her life. Don’t read too much into that. He was her personal assistant, a job he began when she was still touring, and he stayed on as age caught up with her and she stepped out of the spotlight.Channing divided her time between Modesto and Palm Springs, and Ciampoli remained with her in both places.For $25,000 he snagged 18 pieces to hold on to the memories: the wedding outfit from her 2003 marriage to Harry Kullijian (she later repurposed it for book signings); two flapper dresses by Bob Mackie; a red tuxedo Ciampoli helped her put on for performances.“I would have bought more if I could,” he said. “I didn’t buy the stuff because it was Carol Channing, the Broadway actress. I bought it because it was very sentimental on a lot of levels for me.”Ciampoli met Channing in January 2006, when he was 21 and working for a theater producer who had booked her in Tampa for three performances of her solo show “The First Eighty Years are the Hardest.” He was assigned to attend to Channing and Kullijian during their stay. A bit later, back in California, she called to ask if he could become her full-time personal assistant.As part of his job, he would go through a large garage in Modesto crammed with artifacts of her life — costumes, wigs, letters from people like Joan Crawford and Barbara Walters. Much of that material was destroyed by water, bugs and rats, and at one point, he hired a 1-800-GOT-JUNK dump truck.“You wouldn’t believe what we threw away,” he said. “Old phone books. Pictures and scripts. Scrapbooks.” But some was saved — “scrapbooks that didn’t have rat poop” — and made it to the auction.Ciampoli never got to see Channing in “Hello, Dolly!,” which, over several stints on Broadway and on tour, she performed some 5,000 times. And now? You guessed it. “I have started impersonating Carol,” he said. “I’m not just a fan. I had so much personal involvement with them.”“My bedroom was right next to them in Palm Springs,” he added of Channing and Kullijian, who died in 2011. “They were like grandparents to me. I used to sit in her bedroom watching old TV shows — Andy Griffith.”A wig and headpiece were also part of Turner’s winnings.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesBrig Berney: Pouncing on a TonyBrig Berney logged on to his computer on auction morning with his eyes on one big item: the 1995 Lifetime Achievement Tony that Channing won for bringing “Dolly” back on tour. Berney had been company manager for that revival, overseeing the day-to-day business affairs of running the show, from payroll to travel.But that was way down on the list of trophies on the block, and Berney, now the company manager for “Hamilton,” decided that waiting it out in such a competitive auction was too risky.Instead, he snapped up her special 1968 Tony in a winning bid of $14,000.It is now is perched on “a lovely old music stand” in the living room of his Manhattan apartment. “If you have a Tony Award, you might as well display it in a place of honor,” he said. “No reason to put it in a drawer.”Also in his take: needlepoints that fans sent to Channing and a Theater World Award naming her a promising personality of the 1948-49 season.Berney had actually met Channing years before he started working on her shows. “Hello, Dolly!” came to to the Morris A. Mechanic Theater in Baltimore in 1978 and Berney, a wide-eyed teenager, wrangled his way backstage to get his program signed.She no doubt forgot that encounter some 20 years later when they connected again. But she was, he said, charming and patient as he peppered her with the questions of a theater fanboy: “What was David Merrick like? What was it like to open ‘Dolly’ in New York?”“I loved asking questions,” he added. “She loved to talk, and I loved to listen.” More

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      Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago Names New Artistic Directors

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      Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis, both ensemble members, will be the first pair to lead the company in its history.Steppenwolf Theater Company, an ensemble in Chicago with a track record of premiering critically acclaimed works that land on Broadway, announced its new artistic leadership on Thursday, and for the first time in the company’s decades-long history, that means two people, not one.The ensemble members Glenn Davis, who is best known in New York for starring in “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” alongside Robin Williams on Broadway, and Audrey Francis, who co-founded a Chicago acting conservatory, will both serve as artistic directors, the company said. Davis, who is Black, is the first person of color in the company’s history to be in the role.In an unusual process for a theater company, the ensemble voted to appoint Davis and Francis in an election, after the pair put themselves forward as a team.The new leadership structure comes at a transitional time for Steppenwolf: This fall, it plans to open a new $54 million addition to the company’s headquarters in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, which will include a 400-seat theater-in-the-round and a floor dedicated to education. The debut will coincide with the company’s return to live performance — with Tracy Letts’s “Bug” in November — after a 20-month pandemic shutdown.“The ensemble has always been the heart and soul of Steppenwolf,” Davis said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “As the company has grown so, too, has the ensemble, now reflecting a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and passions.”The current artistic director, Anna D. Shapiro, who has led the ensemble since 2015, announced in May that she would be resigning at the end of August, which coincides with the completion of her second three-year contract. Shapiro’s resignation came shortly after two people of color who have worked with the theater shared grievances about the institution that were published on the website Rescripted.Lowell Thomas, a video producer at Steppenwolf, resigned in April, accusing the company of burying “claims of harassment, racism, and sexism to avoid accountability and real change.” And Isaac Gomez, a playwright who worked with the theater, said he considered pulling one of his plays from the company’s programming because of Thomas’s departure.At the time of her resignation, Shapiro told The Chicago Tribune that the timing of her announcement was unrelated to the published accounts, saying, “There’s not a theater in this country worth its salt that is not dealing with these questions of systemic racism and trying to look at its culture.”In a statement about the new leadership, Eric Lefkofsky, the chairman of Steppenwolf’s board of trustees, said that Davis and Francis’ different backgrounds would lead to a “more comprehensive worldview in decision making.”Steppenwolf — which employs a 49-person ensemble and operates programming for teenagers and educators — has a history of producing works that draw national recognition and transfer to New York stages.In 2007, Shapiro directed the premiere of Letts’s play “August: Osage County.” Letts, who is a Steppenwolf ensemble member, also debuted a recent play, “The Minutes,” at the Chicago theater; the show’s Broadway run was interrupted by the pandemic. And the second Broadway show to reopen this summer, “Pass Over,” a play about two Black men trapped by existential dread, had its premiere at Steppenwolf, and two of the company’s ensemble members will appear in the Broadway version.Davis, an actor and producer, joined the ensemble in 2017, appearing in plays like Bruce Norris’s “Downstate” and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “The Brother/Sister Plays.” In February, he will star in Steppenwolf’s “King James,” a play by Rajiv Joseph about LeBron James that was scheduled to have its debut in June 2020, then was delayed.Francis, who also joined the ensemble in 2017 after attending its acting residency in 2004, has performed in 10 productions with the company, including Clare Barron’s “You Got Older” and Rory Kinnear’s “The Herd.” Francis co-founded the conservatory Black Box Acting and works as an acting coach for entertainment companies like Showtime and NBC.In a statement, Francis said that one of their objectives as leaders will be to “re-examine how we support artists on and off stage.”“We are inspired by the changes we see in our industry,” she said, “and aim to redefine how artists are valued in America.” More

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      ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ Review: Shakespeare, With a Hint of Celine Dion

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      The Drilling Company returns to live theater with this slapdash tragicomedy about two cousins who fall for the same woman.For its return to live performance, the Drilling Company’s Shakespeare in the Parking Lot series did not rely on a familiar crowd-pleaser from a catalog of greatest hits. It instead chose a deep cut: “The Two Noble Kinsmen.” This play was not even a solo effort for Shakespeare, who shares the credit with John Fletcher, like a Jacobean version of James Patterson sharing authorship with lesser-known collaborators for his thrillers. This new version might also include a third culprit, the director Hamilton Clancy, since it is unlikely that the original contains references to Celine Dion and the ballad “I Will Always Love You.” (We are double-checking with the Folger Shakespeare Library.)The popcorn aspect isn’t incidental, either: While this isn’t top-shelf drama, there certainly is potential for entertainment in the slapdash, bordering-on-incoherent adventures of two cousins who fall for the same woman, with somber notes inserted at seemingly random intervals, and a time-consuming comic subplot grafted on because why not? This is a tragicomedy so you need a bit of everything, plus plays greater than this one have thrived despite devil-may-care logic.Unfortunately, Clancy’s staging does not exploit this potential, and on a recent evening in Bryant Park, the production relied mostly on a certain earnest enthusiasm. (The show moves to the parking lot of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, on the Lower East Side, next week.)In this iteration, the cousins are the sockless, chino-wearing Palamon (Bradford Frost) and the slightly more brooding Arcite (John Caliendo, in a role played by, fun fact, David Harbour in the 2003 Public Theater production). They actually feel more like mismatched brothers from Delta Tau Chi, hitting the brewskis until they both fall for Emilia (Liz Livingston). Mind you, all it took was seeing her through the window of the cell where they ended up after fighting the power, that is Theseus (Lukas Raphael).This shared passion for a comely lady who happens to be Theseus’s sister-in-law turns the young men into rivals, then they are friends again, then there’s a fight, which does not end well for one of them. As for Emilia, it does not really matter which of the cousins she prefers because the dying one just gifts her to the survivor.Meanwhile, the jailer’s daughter may not be deemed worthy of a character name but still lands a lot of juicy comic scenes after she becomes obsessed — also after just one look — with Palamon. This is an excuse for the actress Jane Bradley to gleefully chew the scenery, except we are on the park’s upper terrace behind the New York Public Library and there isn’t any. To indicate the moment when the jailer’s daughter totally loses the plot (like many of us in the audience), Bradley turns up with smudged lipstick, like a long-lost relative of the Joker. A production interested in subtlety might have excavated poignant resonance from her descent into madness, as when Malvolio garners our sympathy upon being humiliated in “Twelfth Night,” but this is not it.Apparently, Clancy’s concept was some kind of “modern espionage story,” which is not evidenced in what we see. Then again, so many such modern movies are far-fetched and incomprehensible that maybe the idea is perfectly executed.Two Noble KinsmenJuly 28-30 at the Clemente, Manhattan; shakespeareintheparkinglot.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More