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    ‘God Is in the Details’: Embracing Boredom in Art and Life

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    The Netflix show “Adolescence” and asks audiences to be OK with slower moments and small talk. Is that possible in 2025?The Netflix drama “Adolescence” requires its audience to linger — to sink into the mundane.Each of its four hourlong episodes was shot in one continuous take, allowing its harrowing story — centered on a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a classmate — to unfold in real time. As the visual point of view shifts, its audience is invited to eavesdrop on interactions that are extraneous to the plot, as characters loiter in hallways and cars, and make small talk with strangers.“Adolescence” is unusual because, as a character study without a propulsive plot, it requires its audience be OK with being in the moment. It stands in contrast to most modern television shows, which are increasingly geared toward a smartphone-addicted viewership of people who scroll while watching (think fast-moving shows like “Reacher”).It also stands in contrast to how we live our lives, with shortening attention spans, increasing isolation and an inability to sit still. “Adolescence” challenges us to be OK with small talk and boredom, even if our impulse is to disappear into our screens.“We’re becoming conditioned for these fast filtered interactions that involve constant stimulation,” said Fallon Goodman, the director of the Emotion and Resilience Laboratory at George Washington University. “So the consequences of that are shorter attention spans, making us more impatient with the natural flow of an in-person interaction.”Early in the fourth and final episode of “Adolescence,” Eddie (Stephen Graham, also a creator of the series), drives to a hardware store with his wife, Manda (Christine Tremarco), and daughter, Lisa (Amelie Pease), to buy paint. The ride lasts eight minutes — an eternity in television time. Viewers ride along, too, watching as the family tries to maintain the illusion of normality, even as the couple’s young son, Jamie (Owen Cooper), is sitting in jail. As Eddie puts it, they are “solving the problem of today.” They discuss their love of the band a-ha and how Eddie and Manda met, and they make plans to celebrate Eddie’s birthday.The sequence does not affect the central story line in a meaningful way, and one can imagine a less ambitious show condensing this scene, focused strictly on character work, to a minute or two, or cutting it entirely. But from the passenger seat, viewers learn Eddie and Manda are in therapy and observe the heaviness under which the family is living, despite their smiles as “Take On Me” plays in the background.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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      2025 Tony Awards: George Clooney, Sarah Snook and Sadie Sink Among Nominees

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      The new musicals “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending” tied for the most Tony nominations, with 10 each.George Clooney, Mia Farrow, Sarah Snook and Sadie Sink all picked up Tony nominations on Thursday as Broadway began its celebration of an unusually starry season.In a robust season with 14 new musicals, three tied for the most nominations, with 10 each: “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending.” And Audra McDonald, who has already won a record six competitive Tony Awards, set another record: she picked up her 11th nomination for her role in “Gypsy,” making her the most-nominated performer ever.The nominations were announced at the end of the most robust Broadway season since the pandemic. Box office grosses are approaching prepandemic levels amid a bumper crop of 42 show openings. Several productions have drawn much-desired young audiences, and the season featured a mix of quirky and original shows alongside big-brand spectacle. But the industry faces challenges too: Ticket prices, especially for the hottest shows, have become out-of-reach for many, and fewer shows are turning a profit as the cost of producing has risen.The closely watched race for best new musical, bizarrely enough, features three shows concerning dead bodies: “Dead Outlaw,” which tells the story of a train robber whose corpse became an attraction; “Operation Mincemeat,” about a strange-but-true World War II British intelligence operation involving disinformation planted on a corpse, and “Death Becomes Her,” a stage adaptation of the film about two undead frenemies. The other two contenders are “Buena Vista Social Club,” about the group of beloved Cuban musicians, and “Maybe Happy Ending,” about a relationship between two robots.Hue Park, who wrote “Maybe Happy Ending” with Will Aronson, said the nominations affirmed a stunning turnaround for the show. “We had a very rough start, and we were not sure if the show would stay running,” Park said. “Being an original story, not based on famous IP, was the biggest challenge in the beginning, but at the same time for that reason the entire theater community has tried to support us, and that is one of the main reasons the show is still surviving and getting these nominations.”Three new musicals tied for the most nominations, with 10 each: “Maybe Happy Ending,” “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Death Becomes Her.” 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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      Tony Nominations Snubs and Surprises: Denzel Washington Misses for ‘Othello’ and More

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      Ensemble-driven plays like “Purpose” and “English” received a slew of nominations, while Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Idina Menzel were overlooked.Stars abounded. Attendance rebounded. Performers raised the roof and so did ticket prices. This was a big season for Broadway, finally achieving a credible post-Covid rebuild — but as what? Think of the Tony Award nominations as tea leaves, hinting at where the commercial theater has been and predicting where it’s going. And also, with 29 of the 42 eligible productions receiving nods, offering plenty of opportunities to celebrate surprises and bemoan omissions (or vice versa).A boys’ club, but women rule.To look at this season’s plays you would think Broadway was still a boys’ club. Men dominated the dramatic leading roles; many nonmusicals had no leading actresses at all. That left just nine women eligible for the standard five nominations, unless you count separately each of the 26 characters played by Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” (She nabbed just one nod.) But on the musical side of the ledger, women totally ruled, with so many star performances that some of Broadway’s biggest names were inevitably going to be snubbed. After the Sondheim revue “Old Friends” shuffled Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga into the supporting category — which didn’t get them nominated anyway — that still left Adrienne Warren (“The Last Five Years”), Sutton Foster (“Once Upon a Mattress”) and Idina Menzel (“Redwood”) out in the cold. Especially Menzel, who in the course of that eco-musical sang a dozen songs while climbing a 200-foot tree and dancing upside-down in midair. As she proved in “Wicked,” it’s not easy being green.‘Othello’ takes it in the back.“My heart is turned to stone. I strike it, and it hurts my hand.” That’s Shakespeare’s Othello talking, but it could well be the cast and creative team of the Broadway revival, which received not a single Tony nomination. Most notably, both Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal were shut out in the category of lead actor in a play, which even made room for an unusual six nominees. “Romeo + Juliet” the season’s other Shakespeare production that drew mixed reviews, did squeak in for best revival of a play. Then again, the “Othello” producers didn’t take the blow lying down; within minutes of the nominations announcement, they issued a news release indicating that the show, which has been earning upward of $3 million a week during its limited run, had recouped its costs.George Clooney gets lucky.“Good Night, and Good Luck,” the other box office blockbuster of the spring, was always an iffy proposition for best new play, given that it closely resembles the screenplay of the 2005 film on which it is based. Still, Tony nominators paid tribute to its co-writer/star/man of conscience George Clooney with a nod as best lead actor in a play for his grave and bracing depiction of the 1950s-era watchdog journalist Edward R. Murrow. The show’s timing paid off — not to mention the star’s willingness to dye his hair oil-black for his Broadway debut.It’s all in the family for ‘Purpose.’Last year, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate” was nominated for eight Tony Awards. “Purpose,” his play about a prominent Black political family didn’t quite best that, but five of its six nominations were in the acting categories, an unusually high number for an ensemble-driven play in which the dining room pyrotechnics are apportioned so equally. (Sadly there was no place at the Tonys table for Alana Arenas, who gave a glamorous and explosive turn as the daughter-in-law, Morgan.) Sanaz Toossi’s “English” and Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain,” two other ensemble-powered dramas, netted three acting nominations each.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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      Tony Awards Nominations 2025: Updating List

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      Nominations for the 78th Tony Awards will be announced on Thursday morning. See below for a live list of nominees.The Tony Awards nominations are here. And it’s been a starry Broadway season, with a host of new plays and musicals as well as a bounty of screen actors.George Clooney is starring in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal have been sparring as Othello and Iago.Stars of HBO’s “Succession” have also flocked to the stage: Sarah Snook plays Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton and 24 other characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”; Kieran Culkin makes deals as a wily salesman in “Glengarry Glen Ross”; and earlier in the season Sydney Lemmon and Peter Friedman did a pas de deux as a twisted patient and therapist duo in “Job.”The nominees for this year’s Tony Awards, which are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, will be announced Thursday morning by the Tony winners Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce.Some of the top contenders for a best new musical nomination include “Operation Mincemeat,” a British comedy about a planted corpse; “Maybe Happy Ending,” a sweet tale of two robots grappling with love and obsolescence; and “Buena Vista Social Club,” a joyous flashback to the Havana music scene inspired by the 1997 album.Select nominations will air on CBS at 8:30 a.m. E.D.T. The remaining categories will be announced on the official Tony Awards YouTube page at 9 a.m. The full list of nominees will be available at TonyAwards.com immediately after the broadcast and livestream.The 78th Tony Awards are planned for June 8 at Radio City Music Hall. The ceremony’s host will be Cynthia Erivo, a 2016 Tony winner for her role as Celie in “The Color Purple,” who is fresh off a whirlwind year of “Wicked” press tours and an Oscar nomination.Follow below for a full list of nominees, which will be updated as the announcements are made.Best Leading Actress in a PlayLaura Donnelly, “The Hills of California”Read our profile.Mia Farrow, “The Roommate”LaTanya Richardson Jackson, “Purpose”Read our review.Sadie Sink, “John Proctor Is the Villain”Read our profile.Sarah Snook, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”Read our feature.Best Leading Actor in a PlayGeorge Clooney, “Good Night, and Good Luck”Read our profile.Cole Escola, “Oh, Mary!”Read our profile.John Michael Hill, “Purpose”Read our review.Daniel Dae Kim, “Yellowface”Read our profile.Harry Lennix, “Purpose”Read our review.Louis McCartney, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”Read our review.Best Leading Actress in a MusicalJasmine Amy Rogers, “Boop!”Read our feature.Megan Hilty, “Death Becomes Her”Read our feature.Audra McDonald, “Gypsy”Read our feature.Nicole Scherzinger, “Sunset Boulevard”Read our profile.Jennifer Simard, “Death Becomes Her”Read our feature. More

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      2025 Tony Nominations Announcement: What to Know and How to Watch

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      Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce will announce which performers and which productions from a crowded 2024-25 Broadway season will vie for awards.Broadway has lots to brag about this season: a bumper crop of 42 Tony-eligible plays and musicals, lots of movie stars treading the boards, several productions that are drawing young audiences, and a healthy mix of quirky and original shows alongside big-brand spectacle.On Thursday, the industry begins its annual celebration of the best of Broadway with the announcement of this year’s Tony Awards nominees. Over the next five weeks, Tony voters will finish seeing the latest shows, and will then cast their ballots for the productions and performances they admired most. On June 8, the awards ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall.The Tony Awards are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing. Here’s what to know about the nominations:When is the announcement?The Tony Award nominations will be announced Thursday morning in New York by the actors Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce. A few marquee categories will be announced at 8:30 Eastern on “CBS Mornings,” and then the full slate will be revealed at 9 a.m. on the Tony Awards YouTube channel. (We’ll publish the list of nominees, along with news and commentary, at nytimes.com/theater.)Which shows are eligible?The 21 plays and 21 musicals that opened on Broadway between April 26, 2024, and April 27, 2025, are eligible. (This season also included a two-week concert run by Ben Platt; that show is not Tony-eligible.)What show and which actors are the leading contenders?Keep an eye on “Maybe Happy Ending,” “Dead Outlaw” and “Buena Vista Social Club” in the best musical category, and “Purpose,” “John Proctor Is the Villain” and “Oh, Mary!” in the new play category. (There will be at least five nominations in each of those categories.)There are a number of strong contenders for best actress in a musical, but the front-runners seem to be Audra McDonald, already a six-time Tony winner, for “Gypsy,” and Nicole Scherzinger, a former member of the Pussycat Dolls, for “Sunset Boulevard.” The race for best actor in a musical is more open, but is likely to feature Darren Criss of “Maybe Happy Ending,” Andrew Durand of “Dead Outlaw,” Tom Francis of “Sunset Boulevard,” Jonathan Groff of “Just in Time” and Jeremy Jordan of “Floyd Collins.”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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      Who Should Be a Tony Awards Nominee in 2025?

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      Our chief theater critic makes his picks.Clockwise from top left: “Oh, Mary!”; “Maybe Happy Ending”; “Yellow Face”; and “Gypsy.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; top right: Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThough the official Tony Awards nominations aren’t scheduled to be announced until Thursday, I give you my unofficial ones right now. If it were up to me, these would be the nominees.They include some, marked with an asterisk, that because they were seen Off Broadway or were otherwise ineligible, the real Tonys won’t include. Call it theatrical license that I do so anyway. Also bucking the rule book is my Best Ensemble category, which I argue for every year even though choosing among the Broadway riches is all but impossible.Best Play“Cult of Love”“English”“The Hills of California”“John Proctor Is the Villain”“Oh, Mary!”Best Musical“Dead Outlaw”“Death Becomes Her”“Maybe Happy Ending”“Smash”“Swept Away”Best Play RevivalAndrew Scott in “Vanya.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Eureka Day”“Our Town”“Vanya”*“Yellow Face”Best Musical RevivalCats: The Jellicle Ball*“Floyd Collins”“Gypsy”“Once Upon a Mattress”Best Actor in a PlayCole Escola, “Oh, Mary!”Jake Gyllenhaal, “Othello”Louis McCartney, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”Jim Parsons, “Our Town”Andrew Scott, “Vanya”*Best Actress in a PlayLaura Donnelly in “The Hills of California.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLaura Donnelly, “The Hills of California”Susannah Flood, “Liberation”*Deirdre O’Connell, “Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.”*Lily Rabe, “Ghosts”*Sarah Snook, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”Best Actor in a MusicalDarren Criss, “Maybe Happy Ending”John Gallagher Jr., “Swept Away”Jonathan Groff, “Just in Time”Joshua Henry, “Ragtime”*Jeremy Jordan, “Floyd Collins”Best Actress in a MusicalJasmine Amy Rogers, center, in “Boop! The Musical.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMegan Hilty, “Death Becomes Her”Audra McDonald, “Gypsy”Jasmine Amy Rogers, “Boop! The Musical”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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      William Finn, Tony-Winning Composer for ‘Falsettos,’ Dies at 73

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      An acclaimed musical theater writer, he won for both his score and his book and later had a huge hit with “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”William Finn, a witty, cerebral and psychologically perceptive musical theater writer who won two Tony Awards for “Falsettos” and had an enduringly popular hit with “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” died on Monday in Bennington, Vt. He was 73.His longtime partner, Arthur Salvadore, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was pulmonary fibrosis, following years in which Mr. Finn had contended with neurological issues. He had homes in Williamstown, Mass., and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.Mr. Finn was widely admired for his clever, complex lyrics and for the poignant honesty with which he explored character. He was gay and Jewish, and some of his most significant work concerned those communities; in the 1990s, with “Falsettos,” he was among the first artists to musicalize the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic, and his musical “A New Brain” was inspired by his own life-threatening experience with an arteriovenous malformation.“In the pantheon of great composer-lyricists, Bill was idiosyncratically himself — there was nobody who sounded like him,” said André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater. He presented seven of Mr. Finn’s shows, starting at Playwrights Horizons in the late 1970s and continuing at Lincoln Center.“He became known as this witty wordsmith who wrote lots of complicated songs dealing with things people didn’t deal with in song in those days,” Mr. Bishop added, “but what he really had was this huge heart — his shows are popular because his talent was beautiful and accessible and warm and heartfelt.”Mr. Finn played varying roles across his career, as a composer, a lyricist and sometime librettist. His songs often feature “a wordy introspective urbanity,” as Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times in 2003. In “A New Brain,” Mr. Finn seemed to distill his passion for the art form, writing, “Heart and music keep us all alive.”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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      Denis Arndt, Who Was a First-Time Tony Nominee at 77, Dies at 86

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      After more than 40 years as a stage and television actor, he broke through in “Heisenberg” as a butcher who has a romance with a much younger woman.Denis Arndt, a former helicopter pilot whose acting career reached its zenith when he made his Broadway debut at age 77 in the comedy “Heisenberg” and earned a Tony Award nomination, died on March 25 at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 86.His wife, Magee Downey, confirmed the death. She said the specific cause was not known. Mr. Arndt built his reputation as a stage actor at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 1970s and ’80s. He later became a familiar face on television series like “L.A. Law” and “Picket Fences” and played one of the detectives who interrogate Sharon Stone in a famous erotically charged scene in “Basic Instinct” (1992).He first appeared in “Heisenberg,” a two-character play by Simon Stephens, which the Manhattan Theater Club produced at City Center’s Studio at Stage II in 2015. The play transferred to the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway the next year.Mr. Arndt played Alex, a reserved, 75-year-old Irish-born butcher, who is in a London train station when he is unexpectedly kissed on the neck by Georgie (Mary-Louise Parker), a loud, impulsive and mysterious 42-year-old American. Her boldness ignites a romance.Ben Brantley, reviewing “Heisenberg” in The New York Times, called Mr. Arndt and Ms. Parker “the sexiest couple on a New York stage now.” Mr. Arndt, he wrote, “makes what has to be the most unlikely and irresistible Broadway debut of the year. He lends roiling, at first barely detectable energy to the seeming passivity of a man who, on occasion, finds himself crying for reasons he cannot (nor wants to) explain. But this ostensibly confirmed celibate oozes a gentle, undeniable sensuality.”Mr. Arndt with Mary-Louise Parker in “Heisenberg.” Ben Brantley of The New York Times called them “the sexiest couple on a New York stage now.”Richard Termine for The New York TimesWe 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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      Cynthia Erivo Will Host This Year’s Tony Awards

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      The actress won a Tony Award for “The Color Purple,” and is now nominated for an Oscar for playing Elphaba in the film adaptation of “Wicked.”Cynthia Erivo, the Tony Award-winning actress whose Oscar-nominated performance in the “Wicked” film has brought her wide recognition, will host this year’s Tony Awards.The American Theater Wing and the Broadway League — the two organizations that present the awards — announced on Wednesday that Erivo would host the ceremony on June 8 at Radio City Music Hall. Much of the event will be broadcast on CBS.Erivo, 38, is a British actress who had her breakout role in “The Color Purple,” starring as Celie in a revival of the musical adaptation of the Alice Walker novel. That production opened on Broadway in 2015; Erivo’s performance was the talk of the town that season, and she won the Tony Award for best leading actress in 2016.She pivoted quickly to work in film and television, picking up two Oscar nominations, for best leading actress and for best original song, for the 2019 film “Harriet,” and this year she is nominated as best leading actress for “Wicked,” which is the first installment of a two-part film. (The second half, in which Erivo also stars, is to be released in November.) In the “Wicked” films, Erivo plays Elphaba, the green-skinned witch whose debatable wickedness is the subject of the story.Erivo has been busy this year — ubiquitous as she has promoted “Wicked” with her co-star Ariana Grande, but also pursuing her own projects. On Tuesday, the Hollywood Bowl announced one more: in August Erivo will star as Jesus in a one-weekend revival of the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”The Tony Awards honor plays and musicals staged on Broadway; this year’s ceremony will consider shows that open between April 26, 2024, and April 27, 2025. This year’s nominees are to be announced on May 1. More