Water for Elephants (Play)

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares179 Views

    ‘Water for Elephants’ to Close on Broadway

    by

    The musical, based on the best-selling novel, featured dazzling acrobatics and puppetry. Its final performance will be Dec. 8.“Water for Elephants,” a circus romance adapted from Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel, will close on Broadway on Dec. 8, the latest big-budget musical to shutter during a challenging time for the theater business.The musical was capitalized for up to $25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s at the upper end for Broadway musicals, although producing has generally become more expensive postpandemic; the show, with a large cast of actors and acrobats, is also costly to run, and it will close at a loss.At the time of its closing, it will have had 25 previews and 301 regular performances at the Imperial Theater. The show is planning a national tour to begin in Baltimore in the fall of 2025.“Water for Elephants” had an initial run last year at Alliance Theater in Atlanta; the Broadway production opened March 21 at the Imperial Theater. Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, gave it an enthusiastic review, calling it a “stunning, emotional production” and said “it leads with movement, eye candy and awe.” Most other reviews were also positive.The show has been struggling at the box office; last week it grossed $623,896, according to figures from the Broadway League, which is not enough to sustain a musical of this size. During that week the show played to houses that were, on average, just 62 percent occupied.The show was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including best musical; it won none. Reflecting a trend on Broadway, the show has a huge cadre of credited co-producers; the lead producer is Peter Schneider, a former Disney executive who was also among the lead producers of “The Lion King.”“Water for Elephants” features songs by PigPen Theater Co. and a book by Rick Elice; it is directed by Jessica Stone. The show makes heavy use not only of acrobatics, designed by Shana Carroll, but also puppetry (to depict animals), designed by Ray Wetmore, JR Goodman and Camille Labarre.The show is the fifth musical to announce closing dates since early May, following “Lempicka,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” “The Who’s Tommy” and “The Notebook.” Broadway is always a difficult industry, and most shows fail, but the odds of success are particularly long now that production costs have risen, audience size has fallen and a high volume of shows are competing for attention. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Listen to the Best Songs From 8 Tony-Nominated Shows

      by

      “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Stereophonic” and others are up for top prizes at Sunday’s ceremony. Our critic takes stock of their cast albums, all available now.Cast albums are both keepsakes and fantasies, preserving a show for those who have seen it and implying it for those who have not. At their best, they are also stand-alone works of musical-theater art. Listening to the recordings of the eight shows nominated for Tony Awards in the best musical and best score categories — all of which are now available — I was impressed by how often and how variously they reached that standard. Below, in chronological order by opening date on Broadway, a guide to the latest batch of future treasures.‘Here Lies Love’The first of the season’s best score nominees, this sung-through biography of Imelda Marcos was the only one not to release a cast recording. That’s a shame, but die-hards can seek out the 2014 Off Broadway version or the 2010 concept album, with its whacka-whacka disco-beat ditties by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. Remastered in 2023, and with a very different collection of songs from the Broadway show, the concept album is naturally less theatrical; with each track featuring a different singer in a totally distinctive style — Tori Amos, Florence Welch, Natalie Merchant, Sia — character development is impossible. Instead, it offers hypnotic dance-floor euphoria, as in Cyndi Lauper’s take on Imelda’s “Eleven Days” of courtship.“Eleven Days”“Here Lies Love,” featuring Cyndi Lauper, from the 2010 concept album (Nonesuch)‘Days of Wine and Roses’A story of husband-and-wife alcoholics on diverging paths toward recovery and disaster is bound to be harrowing, but Adam Guettel’s score carefully balances the inevitable lows with the sometimes wild highs. The cast album brilliantly captures that full-spectrum range, especially in the edge-of-danger singing by Kelli O’Hara and Brian D’Arcy James at their finest. Their quasi-operatic cries for relief and forgiveness effectively contrast (but do not contradict) the jazzy mania of songs like “Evanesce,” in which the snockered characters sound like xylophones and leap like dolphins, making you ache if not for drink then for these desperate drinkers.“Evanesce”“Days of Wine and Roses” (Nonesuch)‘Water for Elephants’Jessica Stone’s thrilling staging is a real eye-catcher in this circus-based musical at the Imperial Theater. But the cast album demonstrates how the songs, by PigPen Theater Co., a seven-man indie folk collective, can grab you by the ears. Avoiding the rut of some Americana scores, PigPen, along with its arrangers and orchestrators, offers a wide variety of sounds and formats that suit the milieu and the action: bravura showstoppers for the ringmaster, soaring anthems for the hero, haunting ballads for the woman caught between them. One of those ballads is “Easy,” a heartbreaker even if you have no idea that it’s sung to a dying horse.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

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      Enhancing Broadway, by Any Bodily Means Necessary

      by

      The choreographers nominated for Tony Awards this year have a broader vision than usual of the possibilities of dance in theater.In the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Outsiders,” something shocking keeps happening. It isn’t that the characters throw punches, or not exactly. These are teenagers who rumble, so it isn’t surprising that they’re violent. What’s shocking is the kinesthetic impact. You seem to feel the blows yourself.The impact is electrifying, but it doesn’t operate alone. It serves the storytelling and engages the emotions of an audience by bodily means. This is what choreography at its best can do, and it isn’t limited to what you might think of as dancing.The choreographers of “The Outsiders” and of the four other shows nominated for the Tony Award in that category this year understand this. None dole out the usual stuff. This broader vision of theatrical choreography is worth noticing and applauding.Hell’s KitchenMaleah Joi Moon plays the lead role in “Hell’s Kitchen,” which has choreography by Camille A. Brown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA loosely autobiographical jukebox musical of songs by Alicia Keys, “Hell’s Kitchen” takes place in the 1990s, in the Manhattan neighborhood of the title. Camille A. Brown’s choreography fits the setting. It looks, delightfully, like dancing that the people who live there would do, like regular folks getting their groove on.But it’s also a throwback to an older, neglected mode of integrating dance into a musical, the tradition that Agnes de Mille inaugurated with shows like “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” in the 1940s. Like de Mille, Brown individuates the ensemble with detail: This guy is extra flamboyant; that gal pops her gum bubbles on the beat. Moving like this, the dancing chorus becomes the appealing community that draws the show’s 17-year-old protagonist, Ali, into the world — and out from the apartment building where her mother wants her to stay sheltered.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Water for Elephants’ Review: Beauty Under the Big Top

      by

      The circus-themed love story, already a novel and a movie, becomes a gorgeously imaginative Broadway musical.First come her ears, floating like ginkgo leaves. Then, from behind a screen, her shadow appears, followed by the marvelous sound of her trumpet. Next to arrive is her disembodied trunk, with a mind of its own, snuffling out friends and enemies and food. Finally, at the end of Act I of the new musical “Water for Elephants,” she is fully assembled: Rosie, the star of the circus, big as a bus and batting her pretty eyes.This gorgeous sequence, played out over perhaps 20 minutes, is emblematic of the many wonders awaiting audiences at the Imperial Theater, where “Water for Elephants” opened on Thursday. After all, Rosie is not a living creature potentially vulnerable to abuse. Nor is she a C.G.I. illusion. She is not really an illusion at all, in the sense of a trick; you can see the puppeteers operating and inhabiting her. Rather she is a product of the human imagination, including ours in the audience.What a pleasure it is to be treated that way by a brand-extension musical, a form usually characterized by craftlessness and cynicism. Indeed, at its best, “Water for Elephants” has more in common with the circus arts than it does with by-the-books Broadway. Sure, it features an eventful story and compelling characters, and apt, rousing music by PigPen Theater Co., a seven-man indie folk collective. But in the director Jessica Stone’s stunning, emotional production, it leads with movement, eye candy and awe.That’s only appropriate, given the milieu. The musical’s book by Rick Elice, based not just on the 2011 movie but also on the 2006 novel by Sara Gruen, is set among the performers and roustabouts of a ramshackle circus at the depths of the Depression. Escaping an unhappiness we learn about only later, Jacob Jankowski (Grant Gustin) jumps onto a train heading (as his introductory song tells us) “Anywhere.” But really, because the train houses the failing Benzini Brothers troupe, it’s heading everywhere — downhill and fast.Elice has smartly sped up the action by eliminating one of the two introductory devices that kept the movie’s story at a distance. In the one he retains, a much older Jacob (Gregg Edelman) serves as the narrator of the long-ago events. With pride but also anguish he recalls how, as a young man trained as a veterinarian, he quickly established himself in the chaotic and sometimes violent company of the circus: a hunky James Herriot caring for the medical needs of the animals. Soon, though, he becomes involved in more complicated, dangerous ways.The complication comes in the form of Marlena, the circus’s star attraction, who performs on horseback. The danger comes from her husband, August, Benzini’s possibly bipolar owner and ringmaster.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

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Water for Elephants’ Brings the Circus to Broadway

      by

      At the sound of a gunshot, a performer, wreathed in white silks, tumbles from the ceiling. His body somersaults, over and over, faster and faster, until it hangs suspended, just above the stage floor. This scene, in the first act of “Water for Elephants,” a new musical that begins previews Feb. 24 at the Imperial Theater, portrays the death of an injured horse. And it captures the singular methods of the show — a synthesis of theater and circus, bedazzled for a Broadway audience.“In musicals, you talk until you have to sing and you sing until you have to dance,” Jessica Stone, the director of “Water for Elephants,” explained. “And in our case, you dance until you have to leap into the air.”With a book by Rick Elice, and music and lyrics by PigPen Theater Co., the musical is based on Sara Gruen’s 2006 novel, which also inspired a 2011 film. Set in the 1930s and in the very early 2000s, it centers on the memories of Jacob Jankowski (Grant Gustin, playing the younger version, and Gregg Edelman as the elder), a veterinarian who recalls the long-ago days when he hopped a train and fell in with the members of the Benzini Brothers circus, a ragtag outfit that crisscrossed the country delivering low-rent, high-excitement marvels.“You wanna feel something/You know is real, something/beyond the paler things,” the chorus sings in the opening number, describing the promise of the big top.Antoine Boissereau’s aerial silk performance in which he portrays the death of a horse during the song “Easy.”That promise is kept by the ensemble’s seven dedicated circus performers, as well as two swings, many of them veterans of the 7 Fingers circus company. Shana Carroll, a founding director of that company, was tasked with circus design. (With Jesse Robb, she is also the show’s co-choreographer.) In their initial meetings before the show’s premiere last summer in Atlanta, Carroll and Stone agreed that the circus stunts should never appear without cause. They had to tell the story (as in a scene set during a Benzini show) or enhance moments of high emotion (as in the case of the horse).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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      What to Know About This Crazily Crowded Broadway Spring Season

      by

      Why are 18 shows opening in March and April, and which one is for you? Our theater reporter has answers.Is Broadway facing a bonanza or a blood bath?The next two months are jam-packed with new productions — 18 are scheduled to open in March and April — while the industry is still struggling to adapt to the new, and more challenging, realities of a postpandemic theater era.For potential ticket buyers, there will be a dizzying array of options. In early April, about 38 shows should be running on Broadway (the exact number depends on unexpected closings or openings between now and then).“From a consumer point of view, we’re excited about the amount of choice there is on Broadway,” said Deeksha Gaur, the executive director of TDF, the nonprofit that runs the discount TKTS booths. Anticipating that bewildered tourists will need help figuring out what shows to see, TDF is already dispatching red-jacketed staffers to preview performances and updating a sprawling cheat sheet as the employees brace for questions on what the new shows are about and who is in them.But the density of late-season openings — 11 plays and musicals over a nine-day stretch in late April — has producers and investors worried about how those shows will find enough ticket buyers to survive.“On the one hand, how incredible that our industry perseveres, and that there is so much new work on Broadway,” said Rachel Sussman, one of the lead producers of “Suffs,” a musical about women’s suffrage that is opening in mid-April.“On the other hand,” Sussman added, “we’re still recovering from the pandemic, and audiences are not back in full force, so there is industrywide anxiety about whether we have the audience to sustain all of these shows. It’s one of those things that only time will tell.”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

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway’s Crunchtime Is Also Its Best Life

      by

      Eighteen openings in two months will drive everyone crazy. But maybe there should be even more.Broadway is the pinnacle of the commercial theater, a billion-dollar cultural enterprise and a jewel of New York City. So why is it run like a Christmas tree farm?I don’t mean that it invites too much tinsel. I mean that it operates at a very low hum for 10 months of the year and then goes into a two-month frenzy of product dumping.This year, 18 shows, more than half of the season’s entire output, will open on Broadway in March and April — 12 in just the last two weeks before the Tony Awards cutoff on April 25. Like the film industry in December, angling for Oscars before its end-of-year deadline, theater producers bet on the short memory of voters (and a burst of free publicity on the Tonys telecast) to hoist their shows into summer and beyond.From a business standpoint, this is obviously unwise. Instead of maintaining a drumbeat of openings throughout the year — as Hollywood, with hundreds of releases, can do despite its December splurge — Broadway, with only 30 to 40 openings in a typical season, keeps choosing to deplete the airspace, exhaust the critics and confuse the audiences with its brief, sudden, springtime overdrive.Of course, I shouldn’t care about the business standpoint; I’m one of those soon-to-be-exhausted critics. Please pity me having to see a lot of shows from good seats for free.But regardless of the as-yet-unjudgeable merits of the work, I find myself enthusiastic about the glut. I might even argue for more.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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Water for Elephants’ Musical to Arrive on Broadway Next Spring

      by

      The show, with a group of circus artists as part of the cast, is adapted from Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel.“Water for Elephants,” Sara Gruen’s novel about a Depression-era veterinary student whose life is transformed when he joins a circus, became a surprise best seller after it was published in 2006. Five years later came a film adaptation, and next spring, a spectacle-rich stage musical version will open on Broadway.The musical, as befits a show set primarily at a circus, will feature seven circus performers, who make up about one-third of the onstage cast. As in the novel, the story is told through the recollections of the main character in his older years.“Most people think of the story as about this young man who jumps on a train and joins the circus, but I’m really compelled by his older self, looking back on the chapter that changed the course of his life forever,” said the musical’s director, Jessica Stone, who also directed “Kimberly Akimbo,” the winner of this year’s Tony for best musical. “The show is about the kind of person you are when you lose everything, and it’s also about chosen family, and the choices you make with the time that you have.”“Water for Elephants,” a big-budget musical that has been in development for about eight years, had an initial run in June and July at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. After some reworking aimed at strengthening the storytelling, it is scheduled to begin previews on Feb. 24 and to open March 21 at the Imperial Theater.The musical is set largely in 1931; its book is by Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys,” “Peter and the Starcatcher”) and the score is by PigPen Theater Co. The circus design is by Shana Carroll, who is an artistic director of The 7 Fingers, a prestigious Montreal-based circus collective; Carroll is also collaborating on the choreography with Jesse Robb.The show is being capitalized for up to $25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which could make it the biggest-budget production of the current Broadway season.The producing team is being led by Peter Schneider, a former Disney animation executive who played a key role in bringing “The Lion King” to Broadway, and Jennifer Costello, a former executive at the John Gore Organization, where Schneider is the chairman of the board. The other lead producers are Grove Entertainment, Frank Marshall, Isaac Robert Hurwitz and Seth A. Goldstein. More