Winter, Alex

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    Nick Jonas, Sadie Sink and More Had Broadway Debuts as Kids. Now They’re Back.

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    Nick Jonas, Sadie Sink and Christian Slater are among this year’s unusually large cohort of stars who first appeared onstage as tweens or even younger.The New York stage has some notable nostalgia this year: More than a half-dozen performers in significant roles made their Broadway debuts as children. Some were in hits and some were in flops; they experienced joy and (in one case) trauma. A few have appeared onstage with regularity, while others pursued music or film and are now returning. Here they reflect on those early experiences.☆ ☆ ☆Nick JonasNick Jonas was just 8 when he landed a part as a Tiny Tim understudy in a 2000 production of “A Christmas Carol” at Madison Square Garden (Frank Langella was Scrooge). A year later, at 9, he made his Broadway debut as Little Jake in a revival of “Annie Get Your Gun” then starring Reba McEntire.He did two more Broadway shows in rapid succession: At 10 he played Chip, a teacup, in “Beauty and the Beast,” and at 11 he played Gavroche, a street child, in “Les Misérables.”Though he became a successful pop star in the years that followed, the stage kept calling: At 19, he returned to Broadway in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” And this spring, at 32, he is returning in the first Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s much-loved “The Last Five Years.”Like many of the actors interviewed here, Jonas said that in theater he found a group of peers who understood him in a way that classmates often did not. At school, Jonas said, “I definitely felt like I was strange to them.” But onstage, he said, “I finally felt like I was around my people.”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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      Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter to Star in ‘Waiting for Godot’ on Broadway

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      They played slacker buddies in three “Bill & Ted” films, and next year they plan to reunite for Beckett’s classic tragicomedy.Call it Bill and Ted’s Existentialist Adventure.Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, the actors who incarnated a pair of slacker musicians for three “Bill & Ted” films, are planning to reunite for a Broadway revival of “Waiting for Godot.”The production, planned for the fall of 2025, will be directed by Jamie Lloyd, one of the hottest directors of the moment, whose work is characterized by a spare aesthetic and an emphasis on psychological intensity.Lloyd said that the project was Reeves’s idea, but that as soon as the actor approached him, “it was a no-brainer that this needed to be done.”“Their instant chemistry and their shorthand and their friendship is going to be so valuable,” Lloyd said of Reeves and Winter in an interview. “This is a very deeply complex play, as we all know, but it’s also a very funny play, and they’re very witty people and their shared sense of humor in those movies and in real life is going to be very beneficial to the production.”In “Godot,” Reeves will play Estragon and Winter will play Vladimir, who banter and bicker while waiting for a mysterious figure who never arrives. “Those characters take solace in their companionship as they stumble toward the void,” Lloyd said, adding, “that’s going to be the central thesis of the production, with Keanu and Alex’s own friendship.”“Waiting for Godot,” by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, was first staged in French in 1953 and then in English in 1955. The play was first performed on Broadway in 1956, and has been revived there three times since, most recently in 2013 with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.Reeves, the prolific film star of the “Matrix” and “John Wick” series, will be making his Broadway debut with “Godot.” He likes a challenge: In 1995, he played Hamlet in Winnipeg, Manitoba.Winter, who writes and directs in addition to acting, appeared on Broadway twice in the 1970s, when he was a teenager, in musical revivals of “The King and I” and “Peter Pan.”The two first worked together in 1989 in “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” A second film, “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” arrived in 1991, and a third, “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” in 2020.Lloyd, based in London, has become a regular presence in New York. Last year he directed a revival of “A Doll’s House” starring Jessica Chastain, and this fall he will direct a revival of “Sunset Boulevard” starring Nicole Scherzinger.The “Waiting for Godot” revival is being produced by Lloyd’s production company, as well as ATG Productions, Bad Robot Live (J.J. Abrams’s company) and Gavin Kalin Productions. ATG is a British theater company that has a long relationship with Lloyd and operates seven Broadway theaters; the production said that “Godot” would be staged in one of those ATG theaters. More

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      Review: ‘The YouTube Effect’ Is a Discursive Documentary

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      Alex Winter offers an overview of the world’s second most popular website in this unfocused tech documentary.The numbing experience of web video surfing is recreated — intentionally, I think — in “The YouTube Effect,” a discursive documentary that assembles a fair amount of information about the impact of YouTube on society, but struggles to find something new to say with it. Directed by Alex Winter, the film charts the rise of the video sharing platform and then attempts to trace its Sasquatch-size footprint on the culture.YouTube, the world’s second most popular site (after Google), is a stimulus machine. The film emulates this quality, finding a formal rhythm by layering a hodgepodge of YouTube clips with voice-over analysis from tech experts. It also spotlights several popular YouTube creators, including the social commentator Natalie Wynn, who is best known for her channel ContraPoints. A cogent speaker, Wynn says that she has declined offers to partner with streamers or cable because she values the “creative control” YouTube offers.Interrupting these success stories are tangents into a number of troubling chapters in the site’s history. We hear from the video game developer Brianna Wu, a target of death threats during Gamergate, as well as Caleb Cain, who describes his tumble into a matrix of far-right videos. These events have already been heavily reported on — “Rabbit Hole,” a New York Times podcast, relays Cain’s experience — and the sections often feel like retreads.The internet moves quickly, perhaps too quickly for an overview this unfocused. Even Winter seems overwhelmed by the task of curating this deluge of white-noise news and memes: His rundown of YouTube’s connection to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot lasts about as long as the viral video “Charlie Bit My Finger.”The YouTube EffectNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Zappa’ Review: Portrait of a Rock Star and a Nation’s Hero

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      This documentary directed by Alex Winter opens with a portrait of the ostensibly outrageous musician Frank Zappa in a moment of nobility. It is footage shot in Prague in 1991, two years before Zappa’s death from cancer at the age of 52.Zappa, whose work was one of the cultural inspirations for the future Czech Republic’s Velvet Revolution, became a latter-day national hero there. So on this occasion, which would be the last time he played guitar in public, the perfectionist musician consented to perform with an unrehearsed pickup band, to celebrate the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region. Of the new country his audience will bring into being, Zappa says, “Keep it unique.”[embedded content]“Zappa” foregrounds the laudable and often astonishing aspects of the man’s work and personality. A self-taught musician with a near-maniacal work ethic, over the years he came to regard his efforts in rock ’n’ roll as a day gig, necessary to support his more ambitious composing efforts. Despite his personal aloofness, he continues to inspire the musicians who worked with him; in interviews, the guitarist Steve Vai and the pianist and percussionist Ruth Underwood get very emotional when contemplating his loss.The movie doesn’t ignore the sexism of Zappa’s lyrics, or his occasional smugness in dealing with the press (among others). But it places these features in contexts that give them a certain coherence, while not entirely excusing them. Zappa mavens might be disappointed that some of the man’s bands get short shrift in the linear narrative (the amazing combo that toured behind “The Grand Wazoo” receives no play, for instance). But they’ll be heartened by those details that do get included, and by the sincere tribute paid. And non-Zappa people may be illuminated and eventually moved.ZappaNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More