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      Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai Toast Their New Broadway Show ‘Suffs’

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      Dozens of theater, film and media stars turned out on Thursday night for the opening of “Suffs,” a new musical about women’s suffrage.“This is thrilling,” Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, said on a chilly Thursday night outside the Music Box Theater on 45th Street, as women in strapless gowns walked a purple carpet.Ms. Clinton, a noted Broadway superfan, was making her Broadway producing debut with “Suffs,” a new musical about women’s suffrage that traces the campaign for the right to vote from 1913 through the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which was celebrating its opening night.The show not only arrives in a presidential election year, as states attempt to tighten voting laws, but also as Broadway is bringing more female-centric stories to the stage. Audience interest in such stories has also been strong — in the previous week, “Suffs” ranked in the top 10 of the 36 shows on Broadway in the percentage of its seats filled.“I’m so excited that audiences are embracing this story,” Ms. Clinton said. “It’s historic and relevant, and it’s emotional, and it shows the relationships among these women who fought so hard to get us the right to vote.”Huma Abedin, at the opening night of “Suffs” at the Music Box Theater on Broadway.Lin-Manuel Miranda, right, with his father, Luis A. Miranda Jr.Anna Wintour, left, the global editorial director of Vogue, with Sara Bareilles, the performer. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Review: In ‘Suffs,’ the Thrill of the Vote and How She Got It

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      Shaina Taub’s new Broadway musical about Alice Paul and the fight for women’s suffrage is smart and noble and a bit like a rally.Depicting extremes of human emotion, the oldest extant Western plays invited the citizens of ancient Greece to confront vital issues of contemporary justice.Only the men could act on them, though, because the women couldn’t vote.Perhaps Aeschylus and Euripides and the other big winners of fifth century B.C. Tony Awards will not be front-of-mind for you at “Suffs,” the musical about women’s suffrage that opened on Thursday at the Music Box on Broadway. But subwaying home, feeling jubilant yet dissatisfied, I couldn’t help mulling what the show says about the uses of theater 2,500 years later.Or even 100 years later. “Suffs” traces the heroic, single-minded and sometimes dangerous campaign in its final push, from 1913 through ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. I can’t imagine anyone who would not be thrilled to hear again, or for the first time, about the twisting path — the strategizing, lobbying, finagling, money-raising and course-correcting — that led to the joyful if incomplete victory.Much the same could be said of the show itself. Shaina Taub, who wrote the book, music and lyrics, started work on the project 10 years ago, creating a meaty role for herself in Alice Paul, a leader of the effort. Taub’s approach was as much about infighting as outfighting, pitting Paul against older suffragists like Carrie Chapman Catt, Black feminists like Ida B. Wells and workers’ rights firebrands like Ruza Wenclawska, each demanding a slice of the movement’s agenda.It seemed propitious that “Suffs” would start out, like that other historical fantasia “Hamilton,” at the Public Theater. But the 2022 Off Broadway premiere was a jumble of earnestness and sarcasm, its impact compromised by overreach. In her review for The New York Times, my colleague Maya Phillips wrote that it was so “scared to miss anything” that it became “bloated with information.”“Suffs” on Broadway is vastly improved. It has been beneficially recast and heavily rewritten. Half the score is new, including, crucially, the opening number. Formerly a tongue-in-cheek warning called “Watch Out for the Suffragette,” it is now a catchy welcome called “Let Mother Vote,” introducing Catt (Jenn Colella) and her nonconfrontational strategy. Men, she believes, and especially President Woodrow Wilson (Grace McLean), will only respond to a feminine touch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Gun & Powder’ Review: Twin Vigilantes Stake Claim to the American West

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      The musical traces the story of Black twin sisters who pass as white, and exact their own form of justice for the crime of slavery, in 19th-century Texas.The title of “Gun & Powder,” a thrillingly original new musical about mixed-race twin sisters who cut a path through Texas in 1893, refers to their travel essentials: a shrewd parting gift from their sharecropping mother and a touch of makeup to brighten their toasted-ivory complexions.The legend of Mary and Martha Clarke, who purportedly robbed white people while themselves passing for white, stretches back generations for the show’s book writer and lyricist, Angelica Chéri. She based this rousing Western, now playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., on her great-great-aunts. (“But you know how family stories do,” sings a gospel Greek chorus of narrators, “so we believe the story is mostly true.”)With a wide-ranging, powerhouse score by Ross Baum, “Gun & Powder” refashions a classic myth of the American West — white men who fancy themselves above the law — into an irresistible revenge fantasy: Mary and Martha, who go from toiling in the fields to coolly stealing money made off their ancestors’ backs, aren’t outlaws but vigilantes, exacting justice for the crime of slavery.It’s another triumph that their extraordinary history, directed with vibrant panache by Stevie Walker-Webb, assumes the form of a big-throated American musical filled with star-making roles for Black women.Mary (Ciara Renée) and Martha (Liisi LaFontaine) seem much alike at first, driven by a shared affection for their mother, Tallulah (Jeannette Bayardelle), whose white lover left her brokenhearted with their daughters and under another white man’s boot. The bond among the three women forms a compelling emotional throughline, and there’s stirring harmony among the actors’ dynamite vocals.Jeannette Bayardelle, center, with Renée, left, LaFontaine, right, and other cast members. The production features belt-heavy R&B numbers that the cast sends soaring, our critic writes.Jeremy DanielWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      How to Begin a Creative Life

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      Alice McDermott, 70, writer There are three kinds of novels I’ve never taken to heart: science fiction, murder mysteries and novels about novelists. So I’ve decided to try my hand at each. If I fail, they’re probably not books I’d want to read anyway. Thurston Moore, 65, musician and author I’m putting the final touches […] More

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      Ten Debuts Happening Right Now: Ice Spice, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyla

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      Alice McDermott, 70, writer There are three kinds of novels I’ve never taken to heart: science fiction, murder mysteries and novels about novelists. So I’ve decided to try my hand at each. If I fail, they’re probably not books I’d want to read anyway. Thurston Moore, 65, musician and author I’m putting the final touches […] More

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      in Television

      How Meg Stalter Went From Social Media to a Leading TV Role

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      Alice McDermott, 70, writer There are three kinds of novels I’ve never taken to heart: science fiction, murder mysteries and novels about novelists. So I’ve decided to try my hand at each. If I fail, they’re probably not books I’d want to read anyway. Thurston Moore, 65, musician and author I’m putting the final touches […] More

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      ‘The Wiz’ Review: A Black Classic Returns to Broadway

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      Almost 50 years after it debuted, this classic Black take on “The Wizard of Oz” tries to update its original formula.Let me start with a confession: I’ve never liked “The Wizard of Oz.” But give me a retelling with, say, a Black Dorothy and Black Oz, and I’m immediately clicking my heels.When “The Wiz” debuted on Broadway in 1975, it was a colorful exclamation of Blackness on the stage. That’s to say a Black score, by Charlie Smalls, including gospel and R&B; a Black cast; and Black audiences at the forefront.Then three years later the beloved Motown film adaptation, starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor, pulled a Black Dorothy from her home, not in Kansas but in Harlem, and the New York City boroughs were cleverly transmogrified into the stylish, futuristic Oz.Now “The Wiz” returns to Broadway in a revival directed by Schele Williams and an updated book by Amber Ruffin, with the aim of creating a take “through the Blackest of Black lenses.” This new production, which opened at the Marquis Theater on Tuesday, showcases creative visuals and some standout performances, but stops short of bringing modern Blackness to Broadway.Here, Dorothy (Nichelle Lewis, in her Broadway debut) is a city girl who’s moved to Kansas to live with her Aunt Em (Melody A. Betts, who later doubles as the deliciously brass-throated witch Evillene). But Dorothy doesn’t feel at home and is being bullied by her classmates. A sudden meteorological anomaly flies Dorothy to Oz, where she seeks the counsel of the great and powerful Wiz (Wayne Brady) on how to get back home. Along the way she’s joined by a scarecrow (Avery Wilson) in need of a brain, a tinman (Phillip Johnson Richardson) wanting a heart and a lion (Kyle Ramar Freeman) desperate for some courage. (Sorry dog-lovers, there’s no Toto.)There’s plenty of gold to be found along this yellow brick road. Deborah Cox’s Glinda, the good witch, in a shimmering gold gown, looks like a jewel and sounds like one, too, with her crystalline voice switching from jazzy scatting to a sparkling falsetto in “He’s the Wiz” and later offering a triumphant performance of “Believe in Yourself.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Abe Koogler’s New Play Is an Ode to Intense Culinary Experiences

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      In “Staff Meal,” in previews at Playwrights Horizons, a restaurant becomes a refuge as the world ends.Abe Koogler didn’t grow up going to many restaurants. He was raised on Vashon Island, Wash. — sparse and bucolic with an artsy populace, a few miles southwest of Seattle — in a house without a TV, where meals were mostly eaten at home, his free time spent fashioning handmade puppets onto chopsticks.So when he moved to New York, a city with restaurants on virtually every corner, he found the hustle and bustle of Manhattan’s highbrow establishments fascinating.“Living in New York, you walk by all these highly curated, beautiful, warm spaces where people are in the middle of this intense culinary experience,” Koogler said on a rainy afternoon in Midtown Manhattan. “And I like looking at these windows and imagining what it’s like for the people inside.”“A lot of it is being fascinated and not knowing why,” he added.Koogler, 39, is known for his darkly comedic plays about labor-intensive jobs in, for example, package inventory centers and slaughterhouses. Works about work. His latest, “Staff Meal,” about a beloved restaurant with a mysterious owner, has a similar setting (much of the story takes place in the prepping of food and serving of drinks) but with a notable diversion from his previous productions: Here is a job where the employees enjoy their work. In fact, they revere it.The restaurant’s culture of veneration for food, wine and care-taking nods to Danny Meyer’s hospitality manifesto, “Setting the Table,” and though the play, which opens on April 28 at Playwrights Horizons, begins as a familiar meet-cute, it “progressively gets weirder and weirder,” said the show’s director, Morgan Green.After first reading the script, she wondered, “How the hell do you stage it?”“I was really excited about this down-the-rabbit-hole feeling,” she said, and about mapping out “that trajectory.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More