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    Nicole Scherzinger and Other Tony Winners Party After the Awards

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    On Sunday night, after all the Tonys had been handed out, the comedian Alex Edelman took the stage during the official after-party at the Museum of Modern Art.“One day more,” he sang, waving his arms, trying to recruit others to join him behind the microphone in a rousing one-man rendition of a song from the musical “Les Misérables.”“Another day, another destiny … ”Mr. Edelman, who received a special Tony Award last year for his one-man show “Just for Us,” slowly gathered his army of fellow performers: Betsy Wolfe, Jessica Vosk and Casey Likes. Soon, more than half a dozen stars were belting not just their own parts, but every part.A cabaret moment is a familiar scene for any theater party, even on a night celebrating an unusual Broadway season.It has been a banner year on the district’s 41 stages, thanks in large part to a flurry of shows with screen stars on the marquee: “Good Night, and Good Luck” (George Clooney), “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (Sarah Snook, who won a Tony Award for playing 26 different characters), “Othello” (Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal) and “Glengarry Glen Ross” (Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and Kieran Culkin), among others.Many actors were making their Broadway debut.“I’m so lucky to get to do it,” Sadie Sink, best known for her role as the tomboy Max in Netflix’s science fiction drama series “Stranger Things,” said at the MoMA party, celebrating her first nomination.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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      Test Your Broadway Knowledge, Celebrity Edition

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      George Clooney is making his Broadway debut in the stage adaptation of his 2005 film “Good Night, and Good Luck.” In 1994, he had his big break on the popular medical ensemble drama “ER.” Which other “ER” actor also starred in a Broadway show this season? More

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      The Etiquette of Touching a Stranger

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      A tense exchange between the actor Denzel Washington and a photographer at Cannes is raising questions about laying hands on someone you don’t know.In a tense exchange on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival this week, a photographer grabbed the actor Denzel Washington’s arm, apparently seeking another photo.Mr. Washington, perturbed, yanked his arm back, and then repeatedly warned the photographer to stop — a brief squabble between seeming strangers that made headlines, and raised the question: Is it ever OK to touch someone you don’t know?The New York Times reached out to a handful of etiquette experts and therapists who specialize in boundary setting to ask about the rules around making physical contact with a stranger.‘Keep your hands to yourself.’Etiquette, when it comes to spontaneous touching, is nuanced — social rules vary from place to place and culture to culture. Still, the manners experts we spoke with were unanimous: “The hard and fast rule about touching strangers is that you shouldn’t,” said William Hanson, an etiquette coach in Britain and the author of “Just Good Manners.”We ran some scenarios by him. What if you are trying to flag down a server in a restaurant? No, he said. Placing a hand on someone as you are trying to move through a crowd? Nope, he answered. Weave!Others allowed for exceptions. If, say, someone drops a wallet without noticing and doesn’t hear your calls, “you could use touch briefly,” said Juliane T. Shore, a marriage and family therapist in Austin, Texas, and the author of “Setting Boundaries That Stick.” But don’t grab or clasp the person, she said.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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      Spike Lee May Be in Cannes, but His Heart Is Courtside With the Knicks

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      The director brought his latest collaboration with Denzel Washington, “Highest 2 Lowest,” to the festival, but he really wanted to talk basketball.Few things could pull Spike Lee away from a courtside seat for the New York Knicks, but the Cannes Film Festival trumps all.Lee is in France to support his new film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” which means he’ll miss the opening games of the Knicks’ playoff series. Still, he has left no doubt where his heart really lies. At the premiere on Monday, the director paid tribute to his beloved basketball team by wearing a suit in the Knicks’ signature blue and orange. He doubled down at the news conference on Tuesday, showing up in Knicks gear from head to toe.“Knicks in how many?” a journalist asked him.Lee didn’t hesitate: “We only need four.”The director said that even during the production of “Highest 2 Lowest,” which stars Denzel Washington as a wealthy New Yorker whose son is involved in a kidnapping, his filming schedule revolved around the Knicks.“When people know the Knicks are playing that day, they know they get to come home early,” he joked. “They’re calling home like, ‘Honey, I’ll be home for dinner tonight!’”To the chagrin of the baffled French news media, basketball came up again and again in the hourlong news conference. At one point, the director took a question from journalist Chaz Ebert, who introduced herself by noting that she hailed “from the home of the Chicago Bulls.”Lee perked up, ready to do battle. “Can I ask you a question?” he responded. “When’s the last time Michael Jordan played?”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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      George Clooney and Denzel Washington Power Broadway to Prepandemic Heights

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      Broadway’s box office has finally surpassed its prepandemic peak, fueled by three starry dramas and one green witch.The Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, released data on Tuesday showing that grosses for the current theater season, which ends later this month, have now reached $1.801 billion. That’s higher than the $1.793 billion grossed at the same point in the record-setting 2018-2019 season, which was the last full season before the coronavirus pandemic shut down Broadway in March 2020.CLOONEY HAS FIRST$4 MILLION PLAY WEEK!“Good Night, and Good Luck” grossed $4,003,482 the week ending May 4. That number, for eight performances, was the highest amount ever grossed in a week by a play on Broadway.There are caveats. This season is not quite over. The numbers are not adjusted for inflation. Attendance is still down about 3 percent from its prepandemic peak. And, because the costs of producing shows on Broadway have skyrocketed, the financial failure rate is up and profitability is down.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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      George Clooney’s ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ Sets Broadway Box Office Record

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      “Good Night, and Good Luck” grossed $3.3 million last week, breaking a record that was set earlier this month by Denzel Washington’s “Othello.”Broadway box office records are falling like dominoes this season as a handful of starry plays entice fans to pay sky-high ticket prices to see their favorite movie stars up close and emoting.“Good Night, and Good Luck,” a new play starring George Clooney, grossed $3.3 million last week, the most money a nonmusical play has ever made during a single week on Broadway, according to data released Tuesday by the Broadway League. And it did so with just a seven-performance week: It is still in previews, and not yet doing Broadway’s typical eight.It shattered the previous record, which was set just two weeks earlier by a new production of “Othello” starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, which grossed $2.8 million in the week that ended March 9. (Before that, the record had been held by “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which grossed $2.7 million during a holiday week in late 2023.)“Othello” still has higher ticket prices — its top seats were being sold on its website for $921, compared to $799 for “Good Night, and Good Luck” — but “Good Night, and Good Luck” is playing in a larger theater, so it is taking in more money overall.The average ticket price for “Othello” was $303.15 last week — down from previous weeks because of free seats for journalists attending press performances and guests attending opening night. The average price for “Good Night, and Good Luck” was $302.07. But “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which is adapted from the 2005 movie about the broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, is playing in the 1,545-seat Winter Garden Theater, while “Othello” is in the 1,043-seat Ethel Barrymore.Broadway’s box office has traditionally been dominated by musicals, which tend to be more popular, to play longer, and to run in larger theaters than plays. The record for the most money made by a Broadway musical was set late last year, when “Wicked” grossed $5 million during a Christmas week when there were nine performances.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 ‘Othello,’ Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal Are Prey and Predator

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      Shakespeare’s leanest tragedy gets a starry, headlong production that embraces the action but misses the mystery.Just moments earlier, he was an infatuated new husband, and she his “gentle love.” Now, in Act III, Scene 3 of “Othello,” he vows to kill her.What has happened? Why does Othello, the great Black general, the savior of Venice in a war with the Ottomans, resolve to murder Desdemona, the pearl of the white aristocracy he has won at great risk?The scene in which this strange alteration occurs is one of the most gripping, baffling episodes in Shakespeare, and it remains so in the starry Broadway revival of “Othello” that opened on Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.We can be grateful for that — and yet, in Denzel Washington’s commanding performance, what’s especially gripping is perhaps too baffling. As in his many movies, he leads with action, giving us a general whose psychology is as obscure to us as it is to him. Speaking very fast, with a slight mid-Atlantic accent, and stiffened by his ramrod military bearing, he betrays little evidence of the sorrows and injuries that moved Desdemona when he wooed her. Speed and decisiveness (“to be once in doubt is once to be resolved”) seem to matter more than emotion.Usually the obscure one is Othello’s ensign, Iago. Though Shakespeare provides many possible reasons he might have wanted to poison his commander with lies about Desdemona, awakening the famous green-eyed monster of jealousy, we are typically still in the dark at the end, when the cur is sent to his punishment. “I am not what I am” is his paradoxical, irreducible credo. Then what is he?Yet in a fascinating reversal, this “Othello” offers an Iago far more legible than his master. Jake Gyllenhaal’s eely take, with a physical wiggle to match his moral one, is a little bit mad scientist, a little bit Travis Bickle. His blue eyes pierce the atmospheric murk as he tracks all possible routes to his goal, like a rat in a maze, in the process allowing us to see how a twisted man thinks. He is a calculator of grievance; havoc is the carefully tabulated result. He adds up.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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      With $921 Seats, Denzel Washington’s ‘Othello’ Breaks a Box Office Record

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      Demand to see Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal play Shakespeare has set a record in a year when big stars have been driving up the prices of Broadway plays.The hottest play on Broadway was written more than 400 years ago. Demand to see Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal face off in Shakespeare’s “Othello” is so strong that many center orchestra seats are selling for $921, helping the show break box office records.During its first week of previews, its average ticket price was $361.90, more than double that at the next highest-average-price show (“The Outsiders,” at $155.02). And last week “Othello” grossed $2.8 million, more than any nonmusical has ever made in a single week on Broadway.The huge numbers, for a show that has not yet been reviewed and that was selling briskly long before anyone had seen it, come at a time when the prices for the most sought-after pop concerts and sporting events are also quite high.And theater prices — at least for the most sought-after shows — are no exception.At its peak, “Hamilton” charged $998 for the very best seats during holiday weeks, and at one point a revival of “Hello, Dolly!” charged $998 for front row seats, which allowed fans of Bette Midler the possibility of being brushed by her glove as she strolled along a passerelle.Washington, seen leaving after a performance, is both highly acclaimed and enormously popular.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesBut “Othello” is distinguished by the large number of seats being sold at the highest prices, which is driving up its average ticket price. At many upcoming performances, the show is asking $921 for the first 14 rows in the center orchestra, and for much of the first two rows in the front mezzanine.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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      ‘The Interview’: Denzel Washington Has Finally Found His Purpose

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      So many of Denzel Washington’s greatest performances — from the majestic title role in “Malcolm X” to the unrepentantly corrupt cop Alonzo Harris in “Training Day” — have been defined by a riveting sense of authority, an absolute absence of pandering or the need to be liked. There’s an inner reserve deep down inside his characters that is unassailable, a little enigmatic, and that belongs to them alone.The commanding qualities that have helped Washington become a cinematic legend are also, as I learned firsthand, the same ones that make him an unusual — and unusually complicated — conversationalist. The first of our two discussions was done remotely. He was at a photo studio in Los Angeles as the fires were still burning there, and I was at home in New Jersey. Even putting our physical distance aside, the discussion felt, well, distant. Or let me put it this way: We never quite figured out how to connect.The second time we talked, it was different. I met Washington in person, at a spare, drafty room in a Midtown Manhattan building where he was rehearsing for an upcoming Broadway appearance. He’s playing the lead in a new production of “Othello” that goes into previews on Feb. 24; it co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago and is directed by the Tony Award winner Kenny Leon. I can’t with any certainty really say why, but things just felt easier on the second go-round. What I do know, though, is that the entire interview experience was, for me, as indelible as one of his performances.Listen to the Conversation With Denzel WashingtonThe legendary actor discusses the prophecy that changed his life, his Oscar snub and his upcoming role starring alongside a “complicated” Jake Gyllenhaal in “Othello” on Broadway.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppI saw that at the end of last year you were baptized and earned your minister’s license. I got baptized, and I have to now take courses to obtain a license. I’m not an ordained minister.Can you tell me about the decision to go through that process at this point in your life? I went for a ride one day. I decided to get in my car and drive up to Harlem. I stopped in front of the church that my mother grew up in. The door was cracked, so I went in. They were celebrating young students, members of the church, that were going to college. And I got involved in that, and one thing led to another, and weeks later, months later I got baptized. More