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      When Does the Curtain Rise on Your Favorite Broadway Shows?

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      Here are the plans for 23 productions so far, including old favorites, brand-new musicals and some that were just getting started.After being closed for more than a year, Broadway is showing signs of life. Several long-running musicals, including “The Lion King” and “Wicked,” have recently announced when they will reopen this fall. Shows that were just beginning their runs, and had not yet opened, when the pandemic struck — like “Six,” “Diana” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” — have also released their plans for resuming performances. The revival of “Caroline, or Change” and the new Michael Jackson biomusical “MJ” have taken their first steps toward welcoming audiences, as well.Here is a list of announced first performance dates, and how you can buy tickets. We will update it as more announcements are made.“Chicago” at the Ambassador TheaterSept. 14; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“Hamilton” at the Richard Rodgers TheaterSept. 14; tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com“The Lion King” at the Minskoff TheaterSept. 14; tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com“Wicked” at the Gershwin TheaterSept. 14; tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com“American Utopia” at a theater to be announcedSept. 17; tickets on sale at Americanutopiabroadway.com“Six” at the Brooks Atkinson TheaterSept. 17; tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com“Come From Away” at the Gerald Schoenfeld TheaterSept. 21; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“Aladdin” at the New Amsterdam TheaterSept. 28; tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com“Moulin Rouge! The Musical” at the Al Hirschfeld TheaterSept. 24; tickets on sale May 19 at Seatgeek.com“Caroline, or Change” at Studio 54Oct. 8; non-subscription tickets on sale July 28 at Roundabouttheatre.org“Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” at the Lunt-Fontanne TheaterOct. 8; tickets on sale at Ticketmaster.com“Ain’t Too Proud” at the Imperial TheaterOct. 16; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“Jagged Little Pill” at the Broadhurst TheaterOct. 21; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“Mrs. Doubtfire” at the Stephen Sondheim TheaterOct. 21; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“The Phantom of the Opera” at the Majestic TheaterOct. 22; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“Trouble in Mind” at the American Airlines TheaterOct. 29; non-subscription tickets on sale July 28 at Roundabouttheatre.org“Flying Over Sunset” at the Vivian Beaumont TheaterNov. 4; ticket sales date not yet announced“Diana” at the Longacre TheaterDec. 1; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“MJ” at the Neil Simon TheaterDec. 6; tickets on sale May 18 at Ticketmaster.com“Dear Evan Hansen” at the Music Box TheaterDec. 11; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“Company” at the Bernard B. Jacobs TheaterDec. 20; tickets on sale at Telecharge.com“The Music Man” at the Winter Garden TheaterDec. 20; ticket sales date not yet announced“Birthday Candles” at the American Airlines TheaterMarch 18, 2022; ticket sales date not yet announced More

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      Billie Hayes, Memorable Witch on ‘H.R. Pufnstuf,’ Dies at 96

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      Ms. Hayes had quite a cackle, and it served her well in a number of witchy roles, beginning in 1969 on a short-lived but much remembered TV series.Billie Hayes, who rode a memorable cackle to kiddie-TV fame, playing a witch named Witchiepoo in the short-lived but much remembered 1969 series “H.R. Pufnstuf,” died on April 29 in Los Angeles. She was 96.News of her death was posted on her website.Ms. Hayes had built a moderately successful stage career and had portrayed Mammy Yokum in the 1959 film version of “Li’l Abner” (reprising a role she had played on Broadway) when she was cast as Witchiepoo.“H.R. Pufnstuf” was the first of a string of children’s shows made by the brothers Sid and Marty Krofft in the 1970s — trippy, slapdash-looking affairs that contrasted noticeably with the carefully pitched messages of “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which were born in the same era. Krofft shows tended toward the bizarre: “Lidsville,” for instance, which also starred Ms. Hayes (as well as Charles Nelson Reilly), involved a land of living hats.Few of the shows lasted long — “Pufnstuf” survived only 17 episodes — but they made an impression.“The Kroffts dished up a swirl of psychedelia, vaudeville and cheesy production values that might be described as brown acid for the toddler soul,” Emily Nussbaum wrote in The New York Times in 2004, when TV Land broadcast a marathon of Krofft creations.“Pufnstuf” was a sort of comic sendup of “The Wizard of Oz,” with Witchiepoo pursuing a talking flute possessed by a boy named Jimmy (Jack Wild) in much the way Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West craves Dorothy’s ruby slippers.The red wig and elaborate makeup Ms. Hayes wore made her a striking figure, but witchy ineptitude kept Witchiepoo from being too scary. In 1970 she played the character in a film version, called simply “Pufnstuf,” in a cast that also included Martha Raye as a character named Boss Witch and Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas as one named Witch Hazel.For years afterward the role made Ms. Hayes popular among casting directors in search of a witch. In 1971 she played one in an episode of the sitcom “Bewitched” in which she was ultimately bested by Samantha, the series’ star witch, played by Elizabeth Montgomery. In 1985 she was the voice of the witch Orgoch in the animated Disney film “The Black Cauldron.” She was the voice of a cackling witch in “Shrek Forever After” in 2010.Perhaps most memorably, in 1976 the comedian Paul Lynde, with whom she had first worked decades earlier, managed to pair her and Ms. Hamilton in a running sketch on “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special,” which also featured appearances by Betty White, Donny and Marie Osmond and the rock group Kiss, and which has taken on a sort of kitschy fame.“The two witches bookend Mr. Lynde as they cackle their way through the hardcover editions of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Exorcist,’ call ‘The Sound of Music’ a real horror movie and play Witches’ Monopoly, a board game in which contestants can either buy a property or blow it up,” The New York Times wrote in 2007 when a DVD of that television rarity was released.Ms. Hayes played other roles in her somewhat sporadic career, including providing the voices for characters on “The Brothers Flub,” “Transformers: Rescue Bots” and other animated shows. But Witchiepoo was the one that stuck in people’s heads. In 2003 Inside TV ranked her No. 3 on its list of Top 10 witches in TV history, behind only Ms. Montgomery and Catherine Hicks, who played Amanda Tucker on the 1980s series “Tucker’s Witch.”Ms. Hayes at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, Calif., at a party celebrating the release of “H.R. Pufnstuf” on DVD in 2004.Stephen Shugerman/Getty ImagesBillie Armstrong Brosch was born on Aug. 5, 1924, in Du Quoin, Ill. Her father, Charles, was a coal miner, and her mother, Marie (Armstrong) Brosch, was an administrator for the Perry County General Assistance Office.She began performing as a child and continued to do so after leaving high school early, performing in Chicago and with U.S.O. shows. (An agent at the start of her professional career suggested that “Brosch” was not an ear-friendly name for a performer.)She eventually secured a role in a touring show called “What’s New” with Mr. Lynde. In 1956 Mr. Lynde wrote and directed sketches for a Broadway revue called “New Faces of 1956,” and Ms. Hayes found herself as one of those new faces — along with a young British actress named Maggie Smith.Ms. Hayes said her commitment to “New Faces,” which ran for 220 performances, kept her from accepting an offer to originate the role of Mammy Yokum in “Li’l Abner,” a musical based on Al Capp’s comic strip characters, when it opened on Broadway in November 1956, but she later stepped into the part, replacing Charlotte Rae. She won the role in the 1959 film version.Ms. Hayes was also president of Pet Hope, an animal care organization. She leaves no immediate survivors.In a 1969 interview with the Dallas-area broadcaster Bobbie Wygant, Ms. Hayes noted that, though Witchiepoo was the villain of “Pufnstuf,” she received a lot of fan mail from children seeking her help with kid-size problems.“I’m the Ann Landers of the witch world,” she said.“I don’t know why they pick the witch to write to,” she said, “unless they figure either she’s so dumb she’ll give me a funny answer or she’s so smart I’ll get out of trouble.” More

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      Broadway Shows Announce Reopening Plans

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      Broadway Shows Announce Reopening PlansMichael Paulson�� Waiting on BroadwayTimothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThis morning, three of the biggest recent hits on Broadway — “Hamilton,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” — announced plans to resume performances.Here’s what else to know → More

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      In This Trippy Family Drama, Trauma Runs Deep

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      After two canceled Paris runs, a highly awaited production of Robert Walser’s “The Pond,” starring Adèle Haenel, finally made it to the stage in Switzerland.LAUSANNE, Switzerland — There is a feeling that streamed theater can’t quite replicate. It’s the sense of being immersed in a performance, to the point that you hang on to every sentence, every sound, every gesture. Distractions fade away. All that matters, briefly, is the actors’ next move.In “The Pond” (“L’Étang”), a new production by the French director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne, no move is inconsequential. Its two leads, Adèle Haenel and Ruth Vega Fernandez, aren’t just in the room with the audience: for much of this trippy exploration of family taboos, it feels as if you’re breathing with them.After six months of uncertainty because of the pandemic and two canceled Paris runs, “The Pond” finally made it to the stage earlier this month — in the Swiss city of Lausanne. While theater performances in France and Britain won’t resume until later in May, playhouses in Switzerland cautiously reopened on April 19.Restrictions still apply: No more than 50 audience members are allowed per show. Still, it’s a start. At the Vidy theater in Lausanne, where “The Pond” ran through Wednesday, tickets for the season sold out within hours. (The production is set to tour Europe this year, with a presentation at the Holland Festival, in Amsterdam, in June.)In a way, a world premiere in Switzerland was fitting for “The Pond.” Vienne’s show is based on a short play by the Swiss writer Robert Walser, about a child who pretends to drown in order to test his mother’s love.Walser wrote “The Pond” as a gift to his sister, Fanny, and it was arguably never intended for the stage. (For starters, it is only 20 pages long.) That suits Vienne, a trained puppeteer whose work is rarely driven by text. Her adaptation is in no way literal, yet it takes a magnifying glass to the unsettling allusions in Walser’s play — to child abuse, incest and family trauma.Fernandez stands in for the adults in “The Pond.” Between them, Fernandez and Haenel play 10 different characters.Estelle HananiaIt is also a feat of polyphony, which builds on Vienne’s interest in altering and distorting the voice. (In 2015, she took a close look at ventriloquy in “The Ventriloquists’ Convention.”) Between them, Haenel and Fernandez play 10 characters: Haenel embodies Fritz, the central character who fakes suicide, as well as his siblings and young friends, while Fernandez stands for the adults in the story.Theirs are virtuosic performances, built out of seemingly disparate elements. When the lights first go up on a large white box, designed by Vienne, the audience is greeted by seven puppets — life-size teenage girls, some of them huddled on and around a bed, with clothes strewn on the floor. One by one, to deafening club music, they are carried offstage by a technician.Haenel and Fernandez enter as the last doll disappears, and eerily, the actors appear to have taken their cues from the inanimate characters. Every step they take is in extreme slow motion, yet it doesn’t look robotic: Haenel, in baggy pants, an oversize sweater and a cap, has the slight hunch of an angsty teenager, while Fernandez exaggeratedly sways her hips.When they start speaking, on the other hand, Walser’s lines come fast. The narrative arc is clear, from Fritz’s squabbles with his sister to his attempts to reconnect with his mother, yet what happens visually has relatively little to do with it. When Fritz visits a sick friend, we see Haenel lying on the ground, laughing and emptying a bag of candy over her head.The gap between story and movement lends the proceedings an air of unreality, as does the accompanying soundscape. Haenel and Fernandez both wear body mics, and every sigh and groan is amplified to go with an ominous electronic score, composed by Stephen F. O’Malley and François J. Bonnet.Haenel, who rose to fame as a film actress and has become a prominent voice of the #MeToo movement in France, makes astounding use of this setup. Her voice rises and drops on a dime as she switches back and forth between the children in the story, yet she never plays the characters in a conventionally realistic manner.Some scenes feature life-size puppets. Estelle HananiaInstead, even in stillness, emotions wash over her body with affecting clarity. Time and again, in her performance, pain morphs into pleasure, before regressing back to pain. Between scenes, she climbs slowly onto the bed previously occupied by the inanimate teenage girls, with a hint of erotic charge — also present between Fritz and his sister Klara. At times, it’s impossible to tell whether Haenel is assuming their roles, or making the story up in a dreamlike state.Opposite her, Fernandez plays Fritz’s parents — especially his mother — with hardened distance. While she and Haenel rarely look at each other, there is an unspoken power struggle between them: at one point, Haenel stands over Fernandez as she crumbles to the floor, and unhurriedly spits at her feet.It’s a transfixing performance, which brings to the surface emotions that are often suppressed in dysfunctional family settings. Haenel and Fernandez are by turns sensual and monstrous; Fritz is thrilled to have earned proof of his family’s love after his carefully staged stunt by the pond, while his mother resolves to make amends without quite knowing how.“Now all is good,” Fernandez says. “I will make it up to you.” Briefly, they walk toward each other. A resolution is in sight, until Haenel stops and bends over in pain, gulping for air. While Walser suggests a form of reconciliation, in Vienne’s world, there is no such thing as a happy family ending. Trauma runs too deep.It may sound too bleak for audiences after a tough year, yet as I emerged from the Vidy theater, my mind was as stimulated as it’s been in months. For 90 minutes, artists claimed my full attention, and repaid it in spades. I’m ready for more. More

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      Theater to Stream: Stars Gather for ‘Miscast’ and More

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      Other highlights include a new show by Kristina Wong, Joshua Harmon’s “Bad Jews” and “Broadway by the Year.”“It is about access.” That, put plainly, is the main reason the Young Vic in London will continue to livestream shows even after in-person theater resumes. “Access is our driver,” Kwame Kwei-Armah, the theater’s artistic director, said in a recent interview. “And this is a way that we make that access just a little more here and now.”As Broadway and theaters around the United States prepare to return to live performances, there are still many questions around issues of ticket price, fairness and programming. Streaming is likely to remain part of those discussions since, as you can see in the selections below, it is more varied and, well, accessible than ever.‘Miscast21’Since 2001, the annual “Miscast” benefit for MCC Theater has created an alternate universe in which gender roles are not so much erased as gleefully subverted, with performers taking on numbers they would be unlikely to land in typical productions. This year will see the return of Gavin Creel and Aaron Tveit for another power duet after their take on “Take Me or Leave Me,” from “Rent,” became an instant classic five years ago. Other participants include Kelly Marie Tran, Annaleigh Ashford, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Cheyenne Jackson (welcome back!), LaChanze, Idina Menzel, Kelli O’Hara and Billy Porter. May 16-20; mcctheater.org.TheatertreffenWhat is mainstream theater to German eyes can be completely wild to American ones. So this annual event should blow a few minds. Like the Golden Mask Festival in Russia, Theatertreffen showcases exciting shows from diverse companies. This year’s productions — online, with subtitles — include revisited classics and new works, both livestreamed and on demand. Dive in. May 13-24; berlinerfestspiele.de/enKristina Wong in “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord.”via New York Theater Workshop‘Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord’The writer and performer Kristina Wong continues to use her own experiences to interrogate politics and civics with this follow-up to “Kristina Wong for Public Office” last year. In that monologue, Wong talked about her stint on the Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles. Now, she turns her attention to how she enrolled family and friends to make face coverings during the pandemic. May 14-16; nytw.org.Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of being Earnest” on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘The Importance of Being Earnest’When Brian Bedford took on the role of Lady Bracknell in 2011, Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times that the formidable character had “perhaps never been more imperious, more indomitable — or more delectably entertaining.” Now L.A. Theater Works is making the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Oscar Wilde’s best play available again. The ace supporting cast includes a rising Santino Fontana as Algernon Moncrieff. Through May 31; theatermania.stream.If one gender-reversed Lady Bracknell just isn’t enough, check out the L.A. Theater Works audio production starring Charles Busch. latw.org.Michael Zegen, left, and Tracee Chimo in “Bad Jews” Off Broadway in 2013.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis Jewish American LifeThe excellent Play-PerView series is rolling out a reading of Joshua Harmon’s lacerating “Bad Jews” with the original cast members Tracee Chimo Pallero, Philip Ettinger and Michael Zegen. Harmon went on to bigger things, including “Significant Other” on Broadway, but this show is arguably his sharpest — or at least his funniest — and was propelled by Chimo’s etched-in-acid portrayal of venomous self-righteousness. May 15-19; play-perview.com. ​Happily, Chimo also turns up in the Spotlight on Plays reading of Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Sisters Rosensweig” as Pfeni, the youngest of the title siblings (a role originated by Frances McDormand in the Off Broadway premiere, in 1992). There’s more: Lisa Edelstein will read Sara (Jane Alexander way back when) and Kathryn Hahn will be Gorgeous (once the great Madeline Kahn). May 20-24; stellartickets.com.Jassa Ahluwalia, left, and Sophie Melville in a rehearsal for “Herding Cats.”Danny Kaan‘Herding Cats’This livestreamed version of Lucinda Coxon’s twist-filled dark comedy about a pair of roommates will star Jassa Ahluwalia (“Unforgotten”) and Sophie Melville in Britain, with Greg Germann (“Grey’s Anatomy”) joining from the United States. Coxon is a fine writer, of the play “Happy Now?” and the film adaptation of “The Danish Girl,” and this trans-Atlantic setup should make for an interesting experiment. May 19-22; stellartickets.com.The cast of the opera adaptation of Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel,” whose premiere was delayed by the pandemic.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBackstage StoriesLet’s face it: Behind-the-scenes shenanigans are often more fun than what’s onstage. In the virtual benefit “Tales from the Wings: A Lincoln Center Theater Celebration,” stars including Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Rosemary Harris, Paulo Szot and Ruthie Ann Miles will share what we hope will be juicy anecdotes, interspersed with footage from some classic productions as well as teasers for two shows that were postponed by the pandemic: the musical “Flying Over Sunset,” from James Lapine, Tom Kitt and Michael Korie; and Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage’s operatic adaptation of her play “Intimate Apparel.” May 13-17; lct.org.In Britain, “For One Knight Only” gets an encore airing after its premiere in November. Kenneth Branagh hosts Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen and Maggie Smith as they reminisce about their incredibly long careers — imagine a highbrow installment of the “Red” film series, except with stars firing off bons mots rather than guns. May 21-30; www.stream.theatre/season/116.‘Crave’In the United States, it’s hard to fathom how wildly popular the playwright Sarah Kane is on European stages: Her uncompromisingly bleak “Crave” hits a raw nerve and responds to a malaise that is often hard to pinpoint. Now, the Chichester Festival Theater in England is again making available its acclaimed production of this “throat punch of a play,” from November. May 19-29; cft.org.uk.‘Grey Matters’The company Colt Coeur may be small, but it has an impressive track record unearthing intriguing shows, so we’re ready to gamble on this play about an interracial marriage in 1970s and ’80s Brooklyn, by Eden Marryshow. Steve H. Broadnax III, of Katori Hall’s “The Hot Wing King” and the coming “Thoughts of a Colored Man” on Broadway, directs. May 22-26; coltcoeur.org.‘Broadway by the Year’As this cabaret series’ name suggests, it usually focuses on musicals that opened in a given year, but this spring the attention is shifting to songwriters. Start off with “The Kander & Ebb Years” (through May 12), in which Beth Leavel, Ute Lemper and Tony Yazbeck tackle material from “Chicago” and “Cabaret,” but also “Flora, the Red Menace.” Next, Max von Essen, Liz Callaway and Ethan Slater help celebrate everybody’s favorite pandemic hero with “The Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber Years” (May 24-26). So, “Love Never Dies”: yea or nay? thetownhall.org. More

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      Everything Was Canceled in 2020. What About 2021?

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      From the French Open and the Tokyo Olympics to New York Pride, a look at which global events are canceled, postponed or moving ahead (with altered plans) in 2021.Early last year, as international lockdowns upended daily life, they took with them, one by one, many of the major cultural and sporting events that dot the calendar each year. The N.B.A. suspended its season, the French Open was postponed for several months and the Tokyo Olympics were delayed a year. The future of the Glastonbury Festival and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival were in doubt. It was a bleak time.Recently, as conditions in many places around the world have slowly begun to improve, and as countries have begun mass vaccination campaigns, some events and cultural staples have made plans to return, albeit with modifications. While few events, if any, have plans to go ahead free of restrictions this year, some are taking a hybrid approach. Others remain postponed or canceled.Here’s the status of some of the major events around the world.The Tokyo Olympics are set to start on July 23.Shuji Kajiyama/Associated PressSports: The Olympics are full steam ahead.The Tokyo Olympics, which were delayed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, are scheduled to begin on July 23 with an opening ceremony. The bulk of the athletic events will begin the next day. The first round of Wimbledon begins on June 28 and will run through mid-July. Officials said they were working toward a spectator capacity of at least 25 percent.The 125th Boston Marathon, which is usually held in May, is now scheduled for Oct. 11, and the 50th New York City Marathon is set for Nov. 7.The 105th Indianapolis 500 will go on as planned on May 30. Officials will allow about 135,000 spectators in — 40 percent of the venue’s capacity. The event was organized with state and local health officials and was approved by the Marion County Public Health Department, race officials said.The French Open, one of the premier tennis competitions, has been postponed one week to a new start date of May 24. The decision was made in agreement with the authorities in France and the governing bodies of international tennis, said officials, who want the tournament played in front of the largest possible number of fans.Coachella was canceled in 2020, and again in 2021.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressMusic: Coachella and Glastonbury are holding off.The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which typically draws big headliners like Beyoncé and is an annual pilgrimage for the more than 100,000 fans who trek to Southern California, is canceled again this year.In January, organizers for the Glastonbury Festival said it would not take place this summer.The Essence Festival of Culture, which usually draws more than a half million people to New Orleans over the Fourth of July weekend every year, will host a hybrid experience this year over two weekends: June 25-27 and July 2-4.Headliners like Billie Eilish, Post Malone and ASAP Rocky will take the stage at the Governors Ball Music Festival, which is scheduled for Sept. 24-26 at Citi Field in Queens. Organizers say the event will return to its typical June dates in 2022.Burning Man, the annual countercultural arts event that typically draws tens of thousands of people to Black Rock Desert in Nevada, has been canceled again this year because of the pandemic. It will return in 2022, organizers said.After being canceled last year, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, the event in the capital of Texas, is scheduled to return to Zilker Park on Oct. 1-3 and Oct. 8-10.Lady Gaga at the Met Gala in 2019. The event this year is scheduled for September.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesCultural events: Broadway is coming back.A delayed 2021 Met Gala, the annual benefit at the Metropolitan Museum that draws scores of celebrities and fashion-industry elites, will happen on Sept. 13. A second event is scheduled for May 2022.NYC Pride 2021 will move forward in June with virtual and in-person events. The Pride March, which was canceled last year, will be virtual this time. (San Francisco Pride, also in June, is planning similar adjustments, while Atlanta Pride is planning to hold an in-person event in October.)The Lucerne Festival, which offers a range of events featuring classical orchestras, ensembles and more in Switzerland, will run from Aug. 10. In order to keep concertgoers safe, organizers said events will not have intermissions and its venue will have a limited number of available seats. Similarly, the Salzburg Festival in Austria kicks off in mid-July with modifications.The Edinburgh International Festival, a showcase for world theater, dance and music in the Scottish city since 1947, will run Aug. 7-29. Performances will take place in temporary outdoor pavilions with covered stages and socially distanced seating.E3, one of the video game industry’s most popular conventions where developers showcase the latest news and games, will be virtual this year from June 12-15.The New York International Auto Show, which showcases the newest and latest automobiles from dozens of brands, will run Aug. 20-29. The event last year was postponed and eventually canceled because of the pandemic.The Cannes Film Festival in the South of France, one of the movie industry’s most revered and celebrated events, has been postponed to July 6-17 from mid-May. The 2021 edition of the event, which was canceled last year, is currently scheduled to be in person.After more than a year of no theater performances, Broadway shows will start selling tickets for full-capacity shows with some performances starting on Sept. 14. (Some West End shows will resume as early as May 17.)After being virtual last year, New York Comic-Con will return with a physical event Oct. 7-10 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. The convention will run at reduced capacity to ensure social distancing, organizers said. This year’s Comic-Con International event, which is normally held in July in San Diego, has been postponed until summer 2022. There are plans for a smaller event called Comic-Con Special Edition however, that will be held in person in November. More

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      When Covid Dropped the Curtain on Broadway Actors, TV Kept the Lights On

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      New and returning TV series like “The Gilded Age” and “The Good Fight” have been a lifeline for celebrated theater actors during the pandemic. Will TV, or theater, ever look the same?Back in March, the actress Kelli O’Hara arrived on Rhode Island’s Gold Coast. A company of theater heroes, with enough combined Tonys to crowd a mansion’s mantels, met her there. “It was almost like Broadway said, ‘We’re shutting down,’” O’Hara recalled during a recent telephone interview. “So 20 of us got together and said, ‘Let’s go do a play in a seaside town.’”But O’Hara — and colleagues like Christine Baranski, Nathan Lane, Debra Monk and Cynthia Nixon — hadn’t come to Newport to for a summer stock job. Or even for the clam cakes. They were on location for “The Gilded Age,” a robber baron costume drama from Julian Fellowes that will premiere on HBO in 2022.With Broadway theaters closed since last April, “The Gilded Age” joins current series like “The Good Fight,” “Younger” and “Billions” and upcoming ones like “The Bite” and a “Gossip Girl” reboot in providing a glitzy refuge for theater stars during the shutdown. Broadway performers have always appeared here and there on scripted series. (No 2000s Playbill bio was complete without a “Law & Order” credit.) But this past year, television work — which is typically better paid than theater and more luxurious in its perks — was pretty much the only show in town.Benton as Natasha in the musical “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,” which earned her a Tony nomination. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“People are just really excited to be working and to have human contact and to be on set and telling a story again,” Allison Estrin, the casting director of “Billions,” said. “Every actor I’ve talked to has just expressed nothing but gratitude and excitement for being able to work right now.”And because every stage actor was suddenly available, television has never seemed so theatrical. (You could cast a credible Sondheim revival with actors on “The Good Fight” alone.) Will television ever look the same? Will Broadway?A year or so ago, casting directors would have had to compete with — or maneuver around — Broadway commitments. “It was always a scheduling nightmare to work around people’s curtain times,” Robert King, a creator of “The Good Wife” and “The Bite” said.“Sorry to say it, but it worked for us,” he added about the shutdown, “because we could schedule more freely.”Tavi Gevinson.The CWAdam Chanler-Berat.The CWTavi Gevinson and Adam Chanler-Berat, stars of the new “Gossip Girl,” had both committed to a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins.” “We were going to work overtime and do back flips to make it work for them,” Cassandra Kulukundis, the “Gossip Girl” casting director, said. The pandemic put an end to back flips. Did that make Kulukundis’s life easier?“It made my life sad,” she said. “I want to see those people working.”Although some shows had completed casting before Covid-19 hit New York, many have stepped up with an express desire to employ stage actors. “Everyone’s aware that it’s a horrible time,” Warren Leight, the showrunner for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” said. “And if you can help out, you do.”“So I just made the call early on,” he continued: “Let’s make this the year where the first pool of actors we go to is a Broadway actor, the Off Broadway actors.” He estimates that he has employed an average of 10 theater actors — Jelani Alladin, André De Shields, Adriane Lenox and Eva Noblezada among them — per episode this season.Robert and Michelle King conceived the goofy horror comedy “The Bite,” in part, to keep stage actors working. “Employing people that were out of work from the theater was uppermost in our mind,” Michelle King said. She doesn’t think that the six-episode show, which debuts May 21 on Spectrum, would have worked without stage performers. Filmed comparatively early in the pandemic, it was mostly shot remotely, in actors’ homes.“Because people are acting by themselves, you really need people that are at the very top of their craft,” she said. “If we hadn’t had access to those people, the show wouldn’t have come together creatively.”Like Gevinson and Chanler-Berat, Steven Pasquale (as seen in “The Bite”) was committed to a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins” before Covid-19 hit New York.Spectrum Originals/CBS StudiosFor Steven Pasquale, a Broadway veteran who was also slated for the “Assassins” revival, “The Bite” provided a welcome alternative. “It felt a little bit like we were making theater, even though we were making a TV show, because there were so many theater people involved.”“The Gilded Age,” which employs 17 Tony winners and nominees in its cast, had a similar put-on-a-show ethos. “There is something about theater actors on a television set,” said Audra McDonald, a six-time Tony winner and a star of “Gilded,” “The Bite” and “The Good Fight.” “It feels like it’s a repertory company.”Nixon said that “Gilded” had brought her back together with theater co-stars from her 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. During a recent shoot, Nixon recalled, she looked at the cast members in the scene and said to Baranski, “We could totally do ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ right here.”This isn’t to suggest that casting stage performers is an act of charity or an excuse for an impromptu reunion. Yes, Broadway actors may have less on-camera experience than some of their Hollywood counterparts. But they bring an ease with stylized language, as well as a professionalism and can-do attitude that inures them to the hectic rhythms and sudden changes of a television set, especially a set operating under Covid-19 precautions.From left, Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo in “The Good Fight.” “There is something about theater actors on a television set,” McDonald said. “It feels like it’s a repertory company.” Patrick Harbron/CBS“People who work in live theater, where anything can go wrong, they’re always on their toes,” said Kulukundis, the “Gossip Girl” casting director. Christine Baranski, a Tony winner and a star of “The Good Fight” and “The Gilded Age,” put it this way: “We have a skill set and a respect for process. You hire a theater actor and they’ll come in prepared.”Theater actors are unruffled by specialized jargon. Estrin can always tell when a stage actor walks into the audition room for “Billions.” An exuberant drama set among financiers and the regulators who love-hate them, its current season includes the Tony nominees Daniel Breaker, Stephen Kunken and Sarah Stiles.“It isn’t easy dialogue to say,” Estrin said. “They walk in the door and make it look easy.”Brandon Victor Dixon and McDonald in the Broadway musical “Shuffle Along.” McDonald tried for years to get a song written into “The Good Fight,” finally succeeding in Season 3.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Younger,” a pacey comedy set in the world of Manhattan publishing, often relies on musical theater stars to deliver its zingers. “These are actors that are able to make the words sing,” said Steven Jacobs, one of the show’s casting directors.When it comes to words that people might have used a century ago, stage actors typically have an advantage. Not every film or TV actor has done period work, but theater-trained actors usually have at least a few Shakespeare plays and Shavian comedies under their era-appropriate belts.“We tend to have experience with having to wrap our mouths around different types of texts,” Denée Benton, a Tony nominee who stars in “The Gilded Age” said. “I’ve spent my entire career in corsets. So when this show came around, I was like, ‘Yeah, I know how to do this.’”Doing this without giving up theater wasn’t always an option. Back in the ’90s, when Baranski needed to earn more money and decided to seek television roles, she had to move to Los Angeles.“There wasn’t enough TV work in New York back then,” she said. “Now there is, and it’s a great thing for the theater community. God, I wish it had happened earlier.”The Emmy- and Tony-winning actor André De Shields in scene from “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” The show employed an estimated 10 theater actors per episode this season.Virginia Sherwood/NBCDuring this lost Broadway season, New York-based series have allowed Broadway talent to keep their health insurance and pay their mortgages without having to uproot their lives. Television has also provided a spiritual solace, a means to practice their art when other modes were unavailable. (Or as in the case of Zoom theater, glitchy and not always satisfying.)“The creative safety of knowing I’m going to get to use my gifts, the financial safety of knowing that I’m going to be able to pay my bills for a time period, it’s priceless,” Benton said. O’Hara put it even more feelingly. “It’s the most beautiful gift I’ve ever had,” she said of her work on “The Gilded Age.” “It fooled me into thinking I’m still doing theater.”Mandy Patinkin, a Broadway legend and a series regular in the coming season of “The Good Fight,” tried out retirement last year, after a nearly decade-long run on “Homeland.” He hated it. Returning to television gave him a renewed sense of purpose.“Part of what Covid taught me, among so many things, was the appreciation of the privilege of having a vocation that would structure my day and my life and my evenings and my time on Earth,” he said.De Shields won a Tony for his performance in the Broadway production of “Hadestown.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSlowly, Covid’s heavy curtain is starting to rise. Most of New York’s capacity restrictions, including those governing live theater, are scheduled to end on May 19 with social distancing requirements still in place; Broadway theaters, which depend on tourists and are too expensive to operate with limited audiences, have been cleared to reopen at full capacity beginning on Sept. 14.But with so many actors having found comfort and health insurance in television in the past year, will they return to the stage?Even before the pandemic, casting plays and musicals had become more difficult, said Bernard Telsey, a casting director for “The Gilded Age” and a co-artistic director of MCC Theater. “Everyone is wanting to do television now,” he said. This applies as much to younger stage actors as to seasoned ones. “They’re five minutes out of Juilliard, and they’re looking at a television show,” he said.But there are pleasures — for actors and audiences — that television can’t offer, at least not often and not without a lot of begging first. There are few high Cs on TV, and fewer kick lines. But “Younger” has included a few songs, among them a blissful “9-to-5,” led by Miriam Shor, an original cast member from “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” There’s also a scene this season in which the series lead, Sutton Foster, dances to a song from “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” a show she starred in.“I’m always looking for little excuses to see her really step out and perform a little bit,” Darren Star, the creator of “Younger,” said.McDonald tries to make TV just a little more theatrical. For years, she asked the Kings to write a song into “The Good Fight.” They finally agreed and in the third season, McDonald and Baranski’s characters break into “Raspberry Beret” during late-night case prep.“We had a ball doing that,” McDonald said. “Because we knew it was as close to a musical number as we would ever get.”Matt Stevens More

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      Norman Lloyd, Veteran Hollywood Hyphenate, Is Dead at 106

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      In his long career as an actor, producer and director, he worked with some of the best-known names in show business, even if his own was barely recognized.He was the young actor who moved the audience as Cinna the poet in Orson Welles’s 1937 theatrical production of “Julius Caesar.”He was the chilly fascist sympathizer who kept audiences on the edge of their seats as he dangled from the Statue of Liberty in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 film “Saboteur.”And he was the kindly Dr. Auschlander on the popular 1980s hospital drama “St. Elsewhere.”His face was recognizable to generations of people. But his name? Well, just consider this: When a filmmaker decided to make a documentary about him, he ended up titling it “Who Is Norman Lloyd?”Mr. Lloyd, who died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles at 106, carved out a successful career over seven decades as an actor, producer and director, working with some of the best-known names in the business — even if his own was barely recognized.His death was confirmed by the producer Dean Hargrove, a longtime friend.In addition to acting under Welles and Hitchcock, Mr. Lloyd worked with Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht, John Houseman and Jean Renoir. He became good friends with Hitchcock and a frequent tennis partner of Chaplin’s. And he had stories to tell about all of them.“He is a fount of stage and movie lore, full of juice at the age of 93,” The New Yorker wrote when “Who Is Norman Lloyd?” was released in 2007.When Mr. Lloyd spoke, he did so with the sort of delivery that suggested an upper-crust upbringing and impeccable schooling. As it happened, he was born in Jersey City, N.J., on Nov. 8, 1914, and the only social climbing his family did was to move to Brooklyn. The aristocratic voice came later, when it was suggested that he take elocution lessons to erase his accent.“He sounds like he was born in London,” a friend, Peter Bart, the editorial director at Variety, once said. “It’s not an affectation. It’s just the way he sounds.”Mr. Lloyd began performing when he was very young, appearing before ladies’ clubs, he told The Star-Ledger of Newark in 2007. “‘Father, Get the Hammer. There’s a Fly on Baby’s Head’ — that was my big number,” he recalled dryly. “So you can imagine what that act was like.”But the young man was set on an actor’s path, and eventually he began working under Welles at the Mercury Theater in New York. The pay was poor, but it was the Depression, and he was better off than many of the people who crammed the theater in search of a cheap diversion. Mr. Lloyd’s performance as Cinna, in a version of “Julius Caesar” that Welles set in Mussolini’s Italy, brought him acclaim.“By many accounts, the most electrifying moment in ‘Caesar’ was the brief scene in which Cinna the Poet is mistaken for one of the conspirators and is set upon by the mob,” Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker in 2015 in an article about Welles.When Welles moved to Los Angeles in 1940 to make films, the young Mr. Lloyd went with him.Welles’s first movie project fell through, however, and Mr. Lloyd, who was expecting a baby with his wife, Peggy, a fellow performer, decided to look for work elsewhere. Welles’s next project went better: It was “Citizen Kane.”But while Mr. Lloyd missed a chance to have a role in that classic film, he did manage to get cast by Hitchcock in “Saboteur.” His role was a big one: Fry, a fifth columnist bent on attacking American targets during World War II.At the film’s climax, he topples over the edge of the Statue of Liberty’s torch and dangles as the film’s hero (Robert Cummings) tries to pull him to safety by his sleeve. (If a spoiler can be forgiven after all these years, Fry’s fate is less like that of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint as they perch on Mount Rushmore in another Hitchcock film, “North by Northwest,” than that of King Kong on the Empire State Building.)Other roles followed, including in Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945), Chaplin’s “Limelight” (1952) and Jean Renoir’s Hollywood movie “The Southerner” (1945). But Mr. Lloyd gradually began to turn to producing and directing.During the Hollywood blacklist period, his work dried up because of his past associations with leftist performers. He credited Hitchcock with reviving his career by insisting that he be allowed to hire Mr. Lloyd to produce and direct episodes of his television shows, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.”Mr. Lloyd took whatever work he could get until almost the end of his life. He had roles in an episode of “Modern Family” in 2010 and in the 2015 Judd Apatow movie “Trainwreck.” He also continued to spend a lot of time on the tennis court.Mr. Lloyd “still plays tennis and still follows the serve to the net, which is daunting,” Mr. Bart said in an interview when his friend was well into his 90s.In 2014, the year he turned 100, the Los Angeles City Council proclaimed Nov. 8, his birthday, “Norman Lloyd Day.”Peggy Lloyd, who was born Margaret Hirsdansky and who was married to Mr. Lloyd for 75 years, died in 2011. She and Mr. Lloyd had met when they co-starred in a play called “Crime,” directed by Elia Kazan.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Matthew Sussman, who directed the documentary about Mr. Lloyd, said its title came late in the game, as he was telling acquaintances what he was working on.“That would be the question,” he said, “almost every time: ‘Who is Norman Lloyd?’”Neil Vigdor contributed reporting. More