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Review: In ‘Making Friends,’ a Bitter Grab Bag of Grievances
Tom DeTrinis’s solo show is full of rage, but in a way that’s bizarrely out of touch with this overwhelmingly disastrous year. More
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Miss the N.Y.C. Subway? These Radio Plays Bring It Back to Life
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMiss the N.Y.C. Subway? These Radio Plays Bring It Back to LifeA new audio series from Rattlestick Playwrights Theater imagines the bustle of the trains before the pandemic — one story and one station at a time.From left: Alexander Lambie, Ren Dara Santiago and Julissa Contreras, contributors to an audioplay series with episodes set inside the No. 2 train, at the Wakefield 241 Street station in the Bronx.Credit…Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesDec. 24, 2020Jasmine, a student at Brooklyn College, sprints across the platform to catch an idling train. She had lingered on the No. 2 a second too long, distracted by a performer-cum-mystic doling out free advice that felt eerily relevant. Now she was moments away from missing her transfer.“Don’t close the door, don’t close the door, don’t close the —” she prays under her breath, just as the subway car’s metal doors snap shut in front of her.So ends the first episode of “The M.T.A. Radio Plays,” a new series of audio dramas created by the playwright Ren Dara Santiago and directed by Natyna Bean, among others. The series, presented in collaboration with the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, brings listeners inside a No. 2 train as it snakes from the Bronx to Brooklyn.Conceived as a love letter to city life in pre-pandemic times, each 10-to-15-minute episode is set at a stop on the No. 2 and tells the story of various New Yorkers as they navigate chance encounters with strangers, arguments with lovers or conversations with friends aboard the train.There are the subway buskers who storm train cars like tornadoes. There are eavesdropping riders who offer unsolicited advice and, often, welcomed camaraderie. There are the strangers who will not stand clear of the closing doors, the spirited child staring through a train window with glittering eyes and the omniscient voice of a conductor who keeps the train, and the city, moving through it all.Taken together, the plays elevate those once ubiquitous moments from the mundane trials of a daily commute that bind the city’s collective DNA.“When you claim New York, then naturally everyone who exists here is community,” Santiago said in a phone interview one recent morning. “You can exist in a neighborhood that is very specific, ethnically or otherwise, and feel like that is all of New York. But it’s on the subway where we get to encounter all these other identities.”Contreras wrote about a woman mulling a breakup who receives advice from a stranger.Credit…Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesLambie’s episode follows a single mother diverted from visiting a romantic partner.Credit…Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesFor New Yorkers, the series may feel like a nostalgic embrace. In the scrum of a rush-hour train, everyone from executives to office cleaners were pushed and shoved in a daily reminder that the New York hustle leaves few unscathed. Here too were the round-the-clock performances of Manhattan’s least expensive show, in which New Yorkers were at once audience members and leading actors performing scenes from their private lives on a public stage.That choreography is one Santiago knows well. The 28-year-old Harlem native spent her middle school days squeezing into packed No. 1 trains each morning and her early 20s slipping into No. 2 cars for her daily three-hour round-trip commute to work. (Like many of the playwrights involved in the series, she still relies on the No. 2 today).The first three episodes, which are available online at the Rattlestick website, begin at the northern tip of the line at the Wakefield-241 Street station in the Bronx. There, in a play by the 29-year-old Julissa Contreras, listeners meet the character named Jasmine as she is consumed by thoughts of a recent breakup and a subway performer offers her seemingly prophetic advice.The next episode, written by Alexander Lambie, 29, picks up 15 stops later at the Intervale Avenue station, where a single mother bumps into a friend and abandons a plan to visit a questionably committed lover. And at the Prospect Avenue station, the writer Dominic Colón, 44, introduces a young man whose angry call with his boyfriend prompts another rider to offer some sage advice.In a nod to the New Yorkers who make up the bulk of subway ridership today, every play also features at least one essential worker.Implicit in each vignette are the lofty life questions the playwrights wrestled with as the shrinking of urban life turned their gaze inward: What does a healthy relationship look like? How can you tell when to let go of love? How do we survive a love lost?“A lot of the inspiration are the unspoken love stories that we pass by as commuters each day,” Contreras said. “We wanted to focus on millennial lovers who are in this complicated space of finding themselves.”Of course this spring, those connections felt even more distant. With a suddenness as stunning as its deadly wake, the pandemic brought the city to a standstill.“You can walk around, close your eyes and feel like you’re inside the story,” Santiago says in praise of audio plays.Credit…Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesAs theaters went dark in March, Santiago’s own Rattlestick debut production, “The Siblings Play,” was shut down days before its world premiere. By April, the subway had emptied of riders. Lives that were lived in multiple boroughs were suddenly confined to single neighborhoods.“We’ve lost perspective,” said Bean, 28, one of the series’ directors. “Being in our homes every day, we are left to our own assumptions and prejudices. We aren’t forced to engage with people we might not have otherwise if we hadn’t gotten on the train.”That is exactly the void that she and Santiago, approached by Rattlestick, set out to fill. In May they enlisted 17 playwrights to craft stories that reflected the people living in the communities served by the stations.By then, many theaters had moved online, with prerecorded performances and virtual play readings, many of which translated awkwardly onscreen.“There was no creation of community,” Santiago said. “It felt like we were pretending it wasn’t through a screen, instead of embracing that the person watching online also exists and we can write new plays for a new medium.”But if intimacy is where those onscreen productions fall short, it is where radio thrives.The ambient sounds alone can transport a New Yorker into the sprawling underground: The familiar clink-clink-clink of a turnstile grinding forward. The earsplitting screech of a train as it winds across metal tracks. The crackle of a conductor’s voice broadcast inside a subway car.“The voices are in your ears, you can walk around, close your eyes and feel like you’re inside the story. You can see these characters or you put their voice on people walking by you,” Santiago said. “That feels more like true theater to me because it allows the person to be immersed.”The next set of episodes in the series will be available online in February, with the remaining plays released every few weeks through May.As this season nears its end, listeners arrive at the Church Avenue station in Brooklyn, where two friends debate whether or not to help a sick fellow passenger. And just before the train ends its run, Jasmine’s ex-boyfriend enters the car and encounters the same mystical performer whose spiritual counsel opened the series.Santiago plans to continue the series in subsequent seasons devoted to every train line that winds across the city.“I hope the stories will resonate with people,” she said. “They’ll think ‘Oh, I had a moment like that on the train!’ Those small interactions make people feel recognized and now, listening to them, maybe less alone.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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Roger Berlind, 90, Dies; Broadway Impresario Who Amassed 25 Tonys
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRoger Berlind, 90, Dies; Broadway Impresario Who Amassed 25 TonysHe played a role in producing more than 100 plays and musicals. And while he kept an eye on the bottom line, he could be seduced by sheer artistry.Roger Berlind in 1998 near the Cort Theater, where his production of “The Blue Room,” was playing. He was introduced to the theater world by friends and soon immersed himself in the process of putting on a show.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDec. 24, 2020Roger Berlind, who produced or co-produced more than 100 plays and musicals on Broadway, including such critical and box-office hits as “The Book of Mormon,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “City of Angels” and revivals of “Guys and Dolls” and “Kiss Me, Kate,” died on Dec. 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His family said the cause was cardiopulmonary arrest.During a four-decade career in the theater, Mr. Berlind backed some of the most original work on Broadway and amassed an astonishing 25 Tony Awards, one of the largest hauls on record. (Hal Prince, another prodigious Tony-winning producer, collected 21.)Mr. Berlind helped bring buoyant musicals to the stage, like the smash 1992 revival of “Guys and Dolls” with Nathan Lane, as well as sophisticated literate dramas, like the original 1984 production of “The Real Thing,” Tom Stoppard’s dazzling exploration of the nature of love and honesty. “The Real Thing” swept the Tonys, winning for best play and best director (Mike Nichols) and garnering top acting awards for Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Christine Baranski.His route to Broadway was indirect. Able to play the piano by ear, he fancied himself a songwriter, but his dream of making a living that way fell flat and he went to work on Wall Street.He was a partner at a brokerage firm when tragedy struck: His wife and three of his four children were killed in an airliner crash at Kennedy International Airport. Within days, he resigned from his firm.“The whole idea of building a business and making money didn’t make sense anymore,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “There was no more economic motivation.”After a period in the wilderness, he found his way to Broadway, which helped him rebuild his life and establish a whole new career.“The significant thing about Roger is that he made an incredible turnaround,” Brook Berlind, his second wife, said in a phone interview.“His life was utterly bifurcated by the accident,” she said. “There was Act I and Act II. I don’t think many other people could have gone on to such success after such catastrophe.”Success on Broadway came slowly. Mr. Berlind’s first production, in 1976, was the disastrous “Rex,” a Richard Rodgers musical (with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick) about Henry VIII, which the Times theater critic Clive Barnes said “has almost everything not going for it.”James Davis and Ali Stroker in the pre-Broadway run of the 2019 revival of “Oklahoma!” Mr. Berlind was one of several producers on the show, for which Ms. Stroker won a Tony.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs it happened, the music of Mr. Rodgers bookended Mr. Berlind’s career. His last show, of which he was one of several producers, was the darkly reimagined Tony-winning 2019 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” (That show made Broadway history when the actress Ali Stroker became the first person who uses a wheelchair to win a Tony.)After “Rex,” Mr. Berlind co-produced six other shows before he had his first hit with the original 1980 production of “Amadeus,” in which a mediocre composer burns with jealousy over the genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The play, written by Peter Shaffer, directed by Peter Hall and starring Ian McKellen and Tim Curry, took home several Tonys, including best play.Two more successes quickly followed: “Sophisticated Ladies,” a 1981 revue with music by Duke Ellington; and “Nine,” a 1982 musical based on the Fellini film “8½” about a tortured film director facing professional and romantic crises.Along the way were plenty of flops. Producing on Broadway is always risky, with no surefire formula for a hit. It became even more challenging in the late 20th century, as theater people migrated to Hollywood, labor and advertising costs soared and high ticket prices discouraged audiences. Getting shows off the ground required more and more producers to pool their resources, and even then they were unlikely to recoup their investments.One of Mr. Berlind’s achievements was staying in the game. Despite the challenges, he took chances on shows because he believed in them, and because he could afford to lose as often as he won.“I know it’s not worth it economically,” he told The Times in 1998. “But I love theater.”His successes included “Proof,” “Doubt,” “The History Boys,” the 2012 revival of “Death of a Salesman” with Philip Seymour Hoffman and the 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!” with Bette Midler.Even as he experienced flops, Mr. Berlind had many successes, like the 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” starring Bette Midler. He had “enormous fortitude and persistence,” said Scott Rudin, one of his co-producers on this and many other shows.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesScott Rudin, who produced about 30 shows with Mr. Berlind, said that Mr. Berlind was propelled by “enormous fortitude and persistence.”“He was not dissuaded by the obstacles that dissuaded other people,” Mr. Rudin said in an email. “He had enormous positivity, which is much, much more rare than you might think.”That became evident after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when Broadway went dark for 48 hours, a sign of the economic uncertainty that hung over the city.At the time, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani urged theaters to reopen quickly, and they did. But a half-dozen shows closed, and one on the verge of doing so was “Kiss Me, Kate,” in which Mr. Berlind had been deeply involved and of which he was enormously fond. He was enthralled with Cole Porter’s music, and everything in the show had clicked. The winner of five Tonys, including best revival of a musical, “Kate” had been running for nearly two years and was not scheduled to close until Dec. 30, 2001.Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie in the 1999 revival of “Kiss Me, Kate.” The show had been scheduled to close early in 2001, but Mr. Berlind took to the stage on what was supposed to be its final night and declared, “The show will go on.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut because of a sharp drop in ticket sales, the production was going to close early. A closing date of Sept. 23 was announced.Just before the curtain rose on what was supposed to have been the final performance, Mr. Berlind, a modest man who evinced little of the showmanship typical in the theater, took to the stage. He held the closing notice in his hand and ripped it up.“The show will go on,” he declared, to an already emotional audience.The cast and crew had agreed to give up 25 percent of their pay and to donate another 25 percent to buy tickets to the show for rescue workers. The move allowed “Kate” to keep running until its scheduled Dec. 30 closing.“That was my Merrick moment,” Mr. Berlind later told The Guardian of London, referring to David Merrick, one of Broadway’s famously outsize showmen.The Guardian went on to praise Mr. Berlind’s exuberant London production of “Kate,” which opened that October, as “a symbol of the indomitability and grace under pressure of a community, indeed a city, that has been reeling since 11 September.”Roger Stuart Berlind was born on June 27, 1930, in Brooklyn to Peter Berlind, a hospital administrator, and Mae (Miller) Berlind, an amateur painter who gave painting lessons while raising her four sons.The family moved to Woodmere, on Long Island, when Roger was 3. He attended Woodmere Academy and went on to Princeton, where he majored in English.His campus life revolved around the theater. He joined the Triangle Club, which performs student-written comedies, and Theatre Intime, a student-run theatrical organization. Years later, in 1998, he donated $3.5 million to build the 350-seat Roger S. Berlind Theater as part of an expansion of Princeton’s McCarter Theater.After graduating in 1952, he joined the Army and served in the Counterintelligence Corps in Germany. At one point he was on a troop ship with Buck Henry, the comic actor and writer who died this year, and the two regularly created shows for the soldiers.When Mr. Berlind returned to New York in 1954, he was determined to become a songwriter.“He loved the big-band music of the ’40s, he could play almost any song from the American songbook and he had a great memory for lyrics,” his son William said in a phone interview. His own tunes ran to the simple and nostalgic, as reflected by their titles, “Lemon Drop Girlfriend” and “Isn’t It a Rainbow Day?” among them. But Tin Pan Alley was uninterested, and, needing a job, Mr. Berlind was pointed by friends to Wall Street.“I had never had an economics course in college,” he told Playbill in 2005, “and I had 26 or 28 interviews before anyone would hire me.”Mr. Berlind, center, in 1968, during his Wall Street days, with his partners Arthur L. Carter, left, and Sanford I. Weill.Credit…Edward Hausner/The New York TimesHe worked for four years at an investment house, then in 1960 co-founded a brokerage firm, Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill, which went through various iterations until it was acquired by American Express in 1981. His partners along the way included Sanford I. Weill, who became chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, and Arthur Levitt Jr., the future chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.It was a heady time for Mr. Berlind. But on June 24, 1975, his world stopped.He had gone to the airport that day to meet his wife, Helen Polk (Clark) Berlind, and three of their children — Helen, 12; Peter, 9; and Clark, 6 — who were returning to New York from New Orleans after visiting Helen Berlind’s mother in Mississippi.While on approach to Kennedy in a severe storm, the Boeing 727, Eastern Air Lines Flight 66, was swept down by a wind shear and crashed, killing 113 of the 124 people on board, including Mr. Berlind’s family.Their son William, 2, was at home in Manhattan with his nurse at the time. As he grew up, he had unresolved issues around what had happened.“Roger was so damaged by the accident that he didn’t spend as much time with William on this subject as he could have,” Ms. Berlind, who married Mr. Berlind in 1979, said.Finally, a psychiatrist told Mr. Berlind that he needed to answer William’s questions, even if he asked the same thing over and over. Eventually, this proved therapeutic for both father and son.“He was present and strong for me,” said William Berlind, a former reporter at The New York Observer and writer for The New York Times Magazine, who followed his father to Broadway and collaborated with him on several shows.“He was marked by the tragedy,” he added, “but it didn’t consume him, and he persevered.”Mr. Berlind in 1993. He had originally wanted to be a songwriter, but his dream of making a living that way fell flat.Credit…Fred Conrad/The New York TimesIn addition to his wife and son, Mr. Berlind is survived by two granddaughters and a brother, Alan.In time, friends connected Mr. Berlind with people in the theater, and he was soon immersing himself in the entire process of putting on a show. He had a reputation for generally being more mindful than many producers about not interfering with the creative process.But Mr. Berlind always insisted that the work he backed have merit. While he kept a cold eye on the bottom line, he could be seduced by sheer artistry.“He had been a tough and successful businessman, but in his theater life he was besotted by talent, and that’s what he invested in,” Rocco Landesman, who produced “Guys and Dolls,” “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Proof” with him, said in an email.“He loved his flops almost as much as his hits,” Mr. Landesman added. “And whenever one of his shows closed, Roger was ‘available’ again.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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5 Things to Do This Christmas Weekend
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This Christmas WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 24, 2020, 11:03 a.m. ETTheaterLet Them Entertain You, Pandemic-StyleTelly Leung, with Joe Goodrich on piano, in a number from “Sondheim Unplugged,” which premieres on Saturday.Credit…Ordinary SundayIn the fantasy version of a December evening, we would sweep in off West 54th Street, down the staircase and into the cozy, enveloping glamour that always makes Feinstein’s/54 Below feel like it’s ready for its close-up. We would slide into a booth and order a little something lovely. Then the long-running cabaret series “Sondheim Unplugged” would begin — one more shimmering perk to spending the holidays in New York.Happily, the pandemic version of “Sondheim Unplugged” is quite nice, too: elegant, consoling, peppered with deadpan humor. Shot on five cameras and streaming on Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern time (and then available on demand from Sunday to Jan. 9), it’s an hour of Sondheim hits and obscurities, sung by Broadway performers, with only piano for accompaniment. High points include Telly Leung’s heartstring-plucking “Being Alive,” Lucia Spina’s seethingly angry “Could I Leave You?” and T. Oliver Reid’s exquisitely regretful “Good Thing Going.” Tickets to access the performance are $25 at 54below.com. Pour a glass of something bubbly and enjoy.LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESDanceEnding 2020 CalmlyA scene from Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s film “The Last Moon in Mellowland,” which is streaming until Dec. 31.Credit…Jordan Demetrius LloydIf you need a respite from holiday activities, or some space to reflect on the past year, consider spending time with Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s dreamy, entrancing short film “The Last Moon in Mellowland.” Lloyd, a Brooklyn-based dance artist, transitioned into making work for the screen when theaters shut down in March. Part of Issue Project Room’s “soft bodies in hard places,” a series organized by the curator Benedict Nguyen and timed to planetary events (like a new moon or a solstice), “Mellowland” draws the viewer into a 20-minute meditation that loosely traces the arc of a day. Lloyd describes this world as a place that “viewers already remember,” and there is a calming familiarity in its rhythms and repetitions, as the camera rests on a spinning ceiling fan or two dancers at the ocean’s edge.With performances by Lloyd, Breeanah Breeden, Ariana Speight and Demetries Morrow, and dramaturgy by Stephanie George, the film, which was released in November, is available free through Dec. 31 at issueprojectroom.org/event/last-moon-mellowland.SIOBHAN BURKEGospelAn Empty Hall Full of SpiritThe Harlem Gospel Choir will perform a livestream from Sony Hall on Friday.Credit…Simone di LucaOn the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday next month, the Harlem Gospel Choir will celebrate 35 years as one of the country’s leading contemporary gospel groups, and a globally recognized ambassador for the genre. During any normal year the choir would do a world tour at least once, and whenever it wasn’t on the road, the group would play a Sunday brunch each week at Sony Hall near Times Square, joined by a full band, bringing the sounds of praise to a mix of devotees and tourists.The group will return to (an empty) Sony Hall on Friday for the first time since March, for a special Christmas Day performance at 5 p.m. Eastern time, doing its part to sustain the spirit of communion at a social distance. Tickets to view the livestream cost $25 and can be purchased at sonyhall.com. Archived video of the performance will remain available to ticket holders through Jan. 1.GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKIDSShe’s Got the BeatClockwise from top left, Emily Lang, Alexis Aguiar, Cassandra Barckett, Brian Criado, Lexy Piton and Jamiel Tako L. Burkhart in the Amas Musical Theater production of “Hip Hop Cinderella,” which is available on demand until Jan. 31.Credit…Jim RussekForget magic and fairy godmothers. The title character of “Hip Hop Cinderella” needs rap and rocket science.Charmingly played by Alexis Aguiar, she masters both in this 35-minute space-age adaptation, which streams on demand on Stellar through Jan. 31. (Tickets are $15-$25.) Presented by Amas Musical Theater in association with HipHopMusicals.com, the show still pits Cinderella against a scheming stepmother (Lexy Piton) and stepsisters (Cassandra Barckett and Emily Lang), but the prize isn’t a royal marriage. Instead, a prince (Jamiel Tako L. Burkhart) intends to crown the winner of a hip-hop ball and rap contest. With the help of her loyal robot (Brian Criado), Cinderella, a.k.a. Ella C, just might get the galaxy’s groove back.Conceived by Linda Chichester and David Coffman and directed by Christopher Scott, this production incorporates clever graphics and even a little space shuttle footage. The show, which features a book by Scott Elmegreen and music and lyrics by Rona Siddiqui, will also amuse adults when the stepmother makes a familiar-sounding complaint: “That competition was rigged!”LAUREL GRAEBERComedyThe Ultimate Kosher ChristmasJudy Gold will headline Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, which will livestream on Zoom and YouTube Live Friday through Saturday.Credit…M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesFor the first time in its 28-year history, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, a.k.a. “Jewish Comedy on Christmas in a Chinese Restaurant,” is online, which also means you needn’t go to San Francisco to enjoy the shows.The headliner is Judy Gold, who appears regularly on “The Drew Barrymore Show” and published a book this year, “Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians We Are All in Trouble.” Also performing is Alex Edelman, whose piece about attending a neo-Nazi meeting in New York, “Just for Us,” earned him a nomination for best show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018.Kung Pao Kosher Comedy’s founder, Lisa Geduldig, hosts the events, which air on Zoom and YouTube Live at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday and Friday, and at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets to access the broadcast are $25-$50 and available at cityboxoffice.com.SEAN L. McCARTHYAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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‘Christmas Carol’ Review: Brooding Scrooge Gets Ghosted
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Christmas Carol’ Review: Brooding Scrooge Gets GhostedAn elaborate production streamed live from London makes a miser out of Andrew Lincoln and the rest of us rich with holiday cheer.Andrew Lincoln makes for a particularly charismatic, if obstinate, Scrooge in the Old Vic production of “A Christmas Carol.”Credit…Manuel HarlanPublished More
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Actors and Writers and Now, Congressional Lobbyists
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStanding Up For TheaterActors and Writers and Now, Congressional LobbyistsBe an #ArtsHero started with a failed effort to extend unemployment benefits. It’s gone on to be a prime proponent of the message: Cultural work is labor.The founding members of the advocacy group Be an #ArtsHero, clockwise from top left: Jenny Grace Makholm, Carson Elrod, Brooke Ishibashi and Matthew-Lee Erlbach.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Art is what binds us. It illuminates the human condition. It’s good for the soul.Those are the kind of arguments you usually hear when artists and cultural institutions ask for money. The advocacy group Be an #ArtsHero, which was created this summer by four New York theatermakers, takes a different approach.“We are an industry, not a cause,” one of the volunteer group’s four organizers, the writer-director Matthew-Lee Erlbach, said of the arts sector in a recent video interview. “According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we generated $877 billion. It’s more than agriculture and mining combined.” Yet, he pointed out, there’s no federal department of arts and culture, while transportation and agriculture have spots in the cabinet.Erlbach and his Arts Hero founding colleagues — the actors Carson Elrod and Brooke Ishibashi and the writer-director-performer Jenny Grace Makholm — are not cultural mucky-mucks used to the corridors of power. When the performing arts shut down, what was on their mind was their own survival.Ishibashi said the campaign began simply as a way to rally the sector to advocate for the extension of Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation that was due to expire in August.“We started by cold-calling people and building out assets and saying, ‘Here’s a tool kit, please spread the word.’ We lobby differently because we lobby for ourselves and our own desperate need. We are all worried about how we’re going to pay our rent and our mortgages.”The unemployment compensation wasn’t extended at the time, but Be an #ArtsHero forged ahead. They started creating economic reports for members of Congress — in a joint conversation, Ishibashi and Erlbach referred casually to relief efforts the group is backing, an alphabet soup of acronyms like CALMER (Culture, Arts, Libraries and Museums Emergency Relief) and DAWN (Defend Arts Workers Now).Following up on the lobbying efforts of long-running organizations like Americans for the Arts, the group has pushed to help shape legislative language so bills include relief to artists and workers, not just institutions. Erlbach’s widely circulated open letter to the U.S. Senate arguing for emergency relief drew 16,000 signatories, including rank-and-file members of the culture sector and celebrities, institutional and union leaders, and advocacy groups.The letter hammered the group’s essential point: The arts matter because they represent a lot of money and they create jobs.“We’re here to change the conversation so arts workers can understand their intrinsic value because it’s tied to an economic worth, a dollar amount,” Ishibashi said. “Those numbers are unimpeachable.”Erlbach added, “Ironically, the arts has a story problem in this country.”“We are here to become a legislative priority, and part of doing that is reframing the paradigm that we are labor,” he said. “Whether you’re an usher, a milliner, a museum docent, an administrator or a publicist, you’re an arts and cultural worker. ”Erlbach, who leads the group’s political-outreach team, says that Be an #ArtsHero has met with representatives from dozens of House members and over 60 Senate offices.“It felt like the legislative process is something someone else does,” he said. “Now that’s something that we do.”The stimulus bill just passed by Congress delivered some good news for the arts, including weekly unemployment supplements. “At $300, what passed was not enough,” Be an #ArtsHero said in an email statement. “But it was something, and we are proud to have lent our voice to the cause of getting it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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With a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a Show
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a ShowFans in the theater world, including Matthew Broderick and Debra Messing, will appear in a Christmas Day telethon to try to save the West Bank Cafe.Janet Momjian performs for a GoFundMe video for the West Bank Cafe at the restaurant in Manhattan.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Updated 1:29 p.m. ETWhen Tom D’Angora got the news that the West Bank Cafe — a popular show business hangout whose basement theater hosted the first “Sunday in the Park With George” rehearsals and Joan Rivers’s final performance — was in danger of closing, he sprang into action.“You’re not closing,” D’Angora, a theater producer, told the restaurant’s owner, Steve Olsen, in an early December text. “Over my dead body.”But Olsen could see no way out: His outdoor dining revenue had dropped to almost nothing since Thanksgiving as temperatures plunged, and, even before the city moved to ban indoor dining, his new air filters and constant cleaning efforts had failed to draw many eaters into the 42-year-old restaurant. He was already thinking about how to empty out the space, and considering where to put the artwork.D’Angora wouldn’t hear of it. He and his husband, Michael, a fellow producer, put their heads together about trying to save the restaurant, a Hell’s Kitchen mainstay on 42nd Street just west of Ninth Avenue.Broadway stars have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“I was like, ‘Between the six billion famous, talented, brilliant people who also love this place, we’re going to figure this out,’” D’Angora said.The actor Tim Guinee overheard their conversation while picking up an order of chicken enchiladas at the restaurant, and together they came up with the idea for a virtual Christmas Day telethon that would feature musical performances, skits and West Bank Cafe stories from as many actors as they could find. In the meantime, D’Angora created a GoFundMe page, and within 10 days, more than 1,400 donors had raised more than $168,000 of the $250,000 goal.“We’d seen ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” D’Angora said, referring to the film in a which a community comes together to save an endangered family banking business. “And we just told Steve, ‘OK, it’s your George Bailey moment.’”The telethon, which will begin streaming at noon on Friday, will include appearances by around 200 artists, among them Matthew Broderick, Pete Townshend, Debra Messing, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming, Isaac Mizrahi and Alice Ripley. Joe Iconis, the composer and lyricist of the Broadway musical “Be More Chill,” is producing the fund-raiser, which he said would last at least five hours.Broderick, the star of “The Producers” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and a cafe regular, said he was sad to see another New York City business with a rich history on the verge of closing forever.“There are whole swaths of places that have closed since March, not just in Hell’s Kitchen or Times Square, but everywhere,” said Broderick. “It’s terrifying. These places are what make New York New York.”Broadway stars including André De Shields and Nathan Lane have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses, and Bruce Willis, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller all dined there.The cafe’s 100-seat basement theater, which opened in 1983, a few years after the restaurant, has had its own memorable moments: Warren Leight’s Tony Award-winning play “Side Man” had its debut there, Lewis Black spent more than 10 years as its playwright in residence, and it staged early Aaron Sorkin plays and occasional drag shows.Olsen, 66, has spent his entire adult life running the restaurant, which he opened in 1978 in a Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood that was still considerably grittier, and more dangerous, than it is today. “This location was considered Siberia,” Olsen said. “42nd Street and Ninth Avenue was as far west as anyone was willing to venture.”Members of an Irish gang, the Westies, were among the fledgling restaurant’s clientele. He resisted pressure to hire one of their men as a bartender, and to bring in their female friends as waitresses. “Everyone said it was because I was courageous,” he said, laughing. “But I just didn’t know. I was in my early 20s. I was immortal.”The empty bar at the West Bank Cafe in Manhattan. Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWhen Broadway theaters shut down in March, D’Angora remembered, Olsen was the one worrying about his clientele. “He was concerned about how I was holding up,” D’Angora said. “He’d hand me a bottle of champagne or wine. He was never worried about himself.”Now that clientele wants to return the favor. After closing the second week of March and laying off all but six of his 53 employees, Olsen reopened with outdoor dining last summer. The restaurant also began delivering out of the neighborhood, which brought in a few thousand dollars a week. “I was making deliveries down to TriBeCa in eight minutes,” Olsen said. “There were no cars on the streets. I racked up four speeding tickets from the cameras in the first three months.”“But after Thanksgiving, business went down to nothing,” he said. “I don’t know very many people who can put up $10,000 a week indefinitely to keep a business going out of their own pocket.”Olsen said the $250,000 goal for the GoFundMe campaign would pay off the debt the restaurant has taken on because of the pandemic, and make a dent in some of their future expenses to help them get back on their feet in the spring. “At first, I was a little bit embarrassed to admit I needed help,” he said. “But my family and friends have stepped up, and I’m grateful.”He’s given himself some homework. “I owe the 1,400 people who’ve donated so far thank you letters,” he said. “Those will come out — individually — after the holidays.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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Rebecca Luker, a Broadway Star for Three Decades, Dies at 59
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRebecca Luker, a Broadway Star for Three Decades, Dies at 59Her Broadway career, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her Tony Award nominations for “Show Boat,” “The Music Man” and “Mary Poppins.”Rebecca Luker as Maria, surrounded by the von Trapp children, in the 1998 Broadway revival of “The Sound of Music.” She also starred in hit revivals of “Show Boat” and “The Music Man.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Rebecca Luker, the actress and singer who in a lauded three-decade career on the New York stage embodied the essence of the Broadway musical ingénue in hit revivals of “Show Boat,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Music Man,” died on Wednesday in a hospital in Manhattan. She was 59. The death was confirmed by Sarah Fargo, her agent. Ms. Luker announced in February that she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig’s disease.Ms. Luker’s Broadway career, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her three Tony Award nominations. The first was for “Show Boat” (1994), in which she played Magnolia, the captain’s dewy-fresh teenage daughter, whose life is ruined by marriage to a riverboat gambler. The second was for “The Music Man” (2000), in which she was Marian, the prim River City librarian who enchants a traveling flimflam man who thinks — mistakenly — that he’s just passing through town.In between, Ms. Luker delighted critics by playing against type in a 1997 Encores! production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” As Adriana, the neglected wife who gets her groove back (with her husband’s long-lost twin brother), she wore slinky 1930s gowns and exuded what Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times, called “a disarmingly confectionary sexiness.”Ms. Luker, center, with Debbie Gravitte, left, and Sarah Uriarte Berry in the 1997 Encores! production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPlaying Adriana was fun, Ms. Luker admitted. “For the first time in my life, I got to do a bit,” she told The Times in 1998. “Learning to turn to the audience, learning to hold for laughs — I ate it up with a spoon.”But by the end of that year, she was deep into ingénue territory again, playing Maria, the undisciplined novice nun turned live-in governess of seven, in “The Sound of Music.”When she earned her third Tony nomination, this one for best featured actress in a musical, it was for playing Winifred Banks, a married Englishwoman with two children and a gifted nanny, in “Mary Poppins” (2006).For all her success in musicals, Ms. Luker did not identify as a show-tunes type. “I am so not a musical theater person,” she told Playbill in 2003. “I love rock music and jazz. I love the ’70s stuff I grew up with.”Rebecca Joan Luker was born on April 17, 1961, in Birmingham, Ala., and grew up in Helena, a small town nearby. She was one of four children of Norse Doak Luker Jr., a construction worker, and Martha (Baggett) Luker, the local high school’s treasurer. Rebecca sang in her church choir (First Baptist of Alabaster) and was a member of the Thompson High marching band.In high school, she entered a beauty pageant. Singing “Much More,” the ballad of girlish dreams and determination from “The Fantasticks,” she won a college scholarship as first runner-up to Alabama’s Junior Miss.That took her to the University of Montevallo, just 14 miles from her parents’ home, where she was a music major and received her diploma in 1984. Graduation was a year later than planned because she took a break to work with Michigan Opera Theater, where she met her future New York agent. Just five years after college, she was on the Broadway stage, assuming the lead female role in “The Phantom of the Opera”— Christine, the chorus girl who is the object of the phantom’s affections.“Phantom” was her Broadway debut; she began as the understudy to the original star, Sarah Brightman; became an alternate; and took over as Christine in 1989. She remained with the show until 1991.Ms. Luker moved on immediately to another Broadway show: She played a ghost, the little orphan girl’s dead Aunt Lily, in “The Secret Garden.” In his review in The Times, Frank Rich singled out “I Heard Someone Crying,” Ms. Luker’s haunting trio with Mandy Patinkin and Daisy Egan, for special praise.Ms. Luker in performance at the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2005. In addition to her theater work, she had a thriving cabaret career.Credit…Rahav Segev for The New York TimesIn several of her later Broadway roles, Ms. Luker replaced the original actress in a long-running hit. She took over as Claudia, the director-protagonist’s movie-star muse, in “Nine” (2003); Marie, the temperamental fairy godmother, in “Cinderella” (2013); and Helen, the frustrated wife and mother who misses being an actress — just as Mrs. Banks had in “Mary Poppins” — in “Fun Home” (2016).She grew older gracefully in a number of her later Off Broadway roles. Twenty years after starring in a 1996 revival of “Brigadoon” as Fiona, a Scottish lass so rare she really does come along only once a century, she played a droll Buffalo matron in A.R. Gurney’s comic drama “Indian Blood” (2006). In 2011, she was an Italian duchess grieving her son’s death in Maury Yeston’s musical “Death Takes a Holiday.”Ms. Luker also had a thriving cabaret career, appearing at intimate venues like Café Carlyle and Feinstein’s/54 Below, but she professed a special love for “the live experience in front of an orchestra.”The stage was always her first home, but she did finally make her screen acting debut in her late 30s when she appeared in “Cupid and Cate” (2000), a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie in which she played the heroine’s perfect and perfectly sensible sister. Between 2010 and 2020, she had guest roles on series including “Boardwalk Empire” and “N.C.I.S. New Orleans” and appeared in three feature films, including “Not Fade Away” (2012), a drama about a teenage rock band.Her final stage role was as a small-town minister’s narrow-minded wife in a 2019 Kennedy Center production of “Footloose.” She performed at a concert in honor of the lyricist Sheldon Harnick in March 2020.Ms. Luker at home in 2015 with her husband, the actor Danny Burstein.Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesHer last performance was in June, via Zoom, in a prerecorded benefit performance, “At Home With Rebecca Luker.”“When I sing,” she told The Times shortly before that show, “I think it heals me. It helps me feel like I’m still a part of something.”Ms. Luker married Gregory Jbara, an actor, in 1993; they divorced in 1996. In 2000 she married the actor Danny Burstein, whom she met when they starred together in “Time and Again” in San Diego.Mr. Burstein survives her, as do two stepsons, Zachary and Alexander Burstein; a brother, Roger; a sister, Suzanne Luker; her mother, Martha Hales; and her stepfather, Lamar Hales. Another brother, Stephen, died last year.Looking back on her career in a 2016 Theater People podcast, Ms. Luker expressed gratitude for the roles she’d had but admitted that she probably should have broken out of the leading-lady mold — studied acting longer and more seriously, appeared in more plays, done more comedy.“I wish I had branched out a little more,” she said cheerily. “Maybe played a bitch or something.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
