Theater (Broadway)

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      A ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Musical Will Open on Broadway Next Year

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      The show, which had a previous run at Atlantic Theater Company, is scheduled to begin previews in February at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Twenty-seven years ago, “Buena Vista Social Club,” an album of prerevolutionary Cuban music that became an unexpected best seller, was released, spawning tours and documentary films and a burst of interest in the Afro-Cuban sound.Now a stage musical inspired by the making of the album is heading for Broadway.“Buena Vista Social Club” is scheduled to begin previews Feb. 21 and to open March 19 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Set primarily in Havana, the show depicts a group of aging and often overlooked musicians gathering in a recording studio, and recalling the tumultuous era decades earlier when they were young and the Cuban Revolution was gaining steam. The narrative loosely tracks with the history of the album, but contains songs that were released separately and elements that are fictionalized.The show had an Off Broadway run, at Atlantic Theater Company, that opened in late 2023; Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, described it as “full-of-riches,” praising the song and dance elements but expressing concerns about some of the storytelling. The Broadway cast will include many of the same performers and musicians as the Off Broadway production.The songs are all attributed to the Buena Vista Social Club, and the show has a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”). The director is Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) and the choreographers are the married couple Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.The musical is being capitalized for $17 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The lead producers are Orin Wolf, John Styles and Barbara Broccoli, who previously worked together on “The Band’s Visit.” Among the co-producers are the comedian-actor John Leguizamo; Luis Miranda, a founder of the Hispanic Federation and the father of Lin-Manuel Miranda; and LaChanze, the Tony-winning actress. More

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      Review: Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow Clean Up in ‘The Roommate’

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      A Bronx grifter and an Iowa homebody share a house and eventually learn from each other in this Broadway star vehicle.“Expansion is progress,” Sharon says sweetly, parroting a phrase from a business journal for the benefit of her new roommate, Robyn.A ditsy 65-year-old divorcée, Sharon is a convert to the virtues of new ventures — even illegal ones — after years of a life in which options for growth seemed few.But Robyn, who encouraged the experimentation from the minute she arrived to rent a room in Sharon’s Iowa City home, is alarmed by the change from meek to monster. A plate of pot brownies for the book club ladies is one thing; larceny is another. “Sustaining and expanding,” she warns, “are two different activities.”Because Robyn is played by the surgically funny Patti LuPone, that line, not especially amusing in itself, gets a big laugh. And because Sharon is played by the preternaturally sympathetic Mia Farrow, her every hiccup and dither evokes a sigh.Most of what either woman says in “The Roommate,” which opened Thursday at the Booth Theater, is greeted by one or the other response. The two actors, old friends and old hands, play beautifully off each other, expertly riding the seesaw of a play, by Jen Silverman, that throws a Bronx grifter looking to reform herself into an unlikely alliance with a flyover frump looking to ditch her flannel ways. The actors’ intense focus and extreme contrast multiply the material exponentially, sending it way past the footlights to the back of the Booth.But as we’ve learned, sustaining and expanding are two different activities. Indeed, the Broadway supersizing of “The Roommate,” which has been produced regionally since 2015, does not necessarily represent progress, even as it no doubt reaps profit.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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      Lincoln Center Theater Chooses Lear deBessonet as Artistic Director

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      DeBessonet, currently the artistic director of Encores!, will work alongside Bartlett Sher, who will serve as executive producer.Lincoln Center Theater, a leading nonprofit theater with a long track record of producing luxe Broadway musical revivals as well as contemporary plays, has chosen new leadership for the first time in more than three decades.The theater’s next artistic director will be Lear deBessonet, 44, a stage director who specializes in musical revivals as the artistic director of the Encores! program at New York City Center. DeBessonet will succeed André Bishop, who has led Lincoln Center Theater since 1992, most recently with the title of producing artistic director; he is retiring in June.DeBessonet will work with Bartlett Sher, 65, a Tony-winning director who is a resident director at the organization, and who will now assume the title of executive producer. DeBessonet will select and oversee the theater’s shows and its day-to-day operations; Sher will focus on strategic planning, fund-raising and global partnerships. They will both report to the board’s chairman, Kewsong Lee.In an interview, DeBessonet said that “there is no greater job I can imagine” than running Lincoln Center Theater. “The American theater is the great passion of my life,” she said. “I’ve wanted to be a director and to run a theater since I was a 5-year-old in Baton Rouge.”The changes come amid a tidal wave of turnover throughout the American theater, prompted by a variety of factors, including the retirements of many regional and Off Broadway theater pioneers, as well as the ousters of some leaders who lost support. Across the industry, leaders are facing a new reality: These jobs have become increasingly challenging as nonprofits face rising costs, dwindled audiences, pressures to feature programming that advances social justice but also sells tickets, and changing entertainment consumption habits.Bartlett Sher, who has been directing at Lincoln Center Theater for two decades, will become the nonprofit’s executive producer. Cindy Ord/Getty Images For Tony Awards ProWe 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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      John Mulaney to Star in a Broadway Comedy About Love and Marriage

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      “All In: Comedy About Love,” a new play by Simon Rich, includes a celebrity cast taking on the roles of pirates, dogs and other zany characters.John Mulaney is coming back to Broadway.The comedian will star in a new play, “All In: Comedy About Love,” staged as vignettes about relationships, marriage and heartbreak and written by the humorist Simon Rich, Mulaney’s former “Saturday Night Live” collaborator.The production, set to feature a rotating group of actors, will be directed by Alex Timbers, who helmed Mulaney’s most recent Netflix special, “Baby J,” as well as his Broadway debut, the 2016 comedy “Oh, Hello on Broadway.”“It’s a weird fantasy camp of things I always wanted to do with my very good friends,” Mulaney said in a video interview.The comedian, who has two Emmy Awards for his stand-up specials “Kid Gorgeous” and “Baby J,” will lead an ensemble cast of four actors portraying pirates, the Elephant Man, dogs looking for love and other characters: Initially, Mulaney will be joined by Richard Kind (“Spin City,” “Mad About You”), Renée Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton,” “Girls5eva”) and the “S.N.L.” alum Fred Armisen.“We jump around between eras and countries and species, but they’re all love stories,” said Rich, a former “S.N.L.” writer who is making his Broadway debut with the play, which is adapted largely from tales that have previously been published in his 10 short story collections and in The New Yorker.The idea for the show, which will also feature songs from the indie band the Magnetic Fields, came about when Timbers approached Rich about adapting some of his short stories for the stage. And once Mulaney, who first met Rich when they were writing partners on “S.N.L.” from 2008-11, was on board, the built-in rapport between the two proved irresistible, Timbers 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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      ‘The Notebook’ Will End Its Broadway Run in December. A Tour Is Next.

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      The show, nominated for three Tony Awards, opened March 14 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. It will go on a national tour starting next September.“The Notebook,” a musical adapted from the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks, will end its Broadway run on Dec. 15 after struggling to find sufficient ticket buyers during a competitive spring and summer.But this is not the end of the road for the musical. The producers, who announced the closing on Friday, said they plan a national tour of the show starting next September at Playhouse Square in Cleveland; some musicals, particularly those with well-known titles, fare better on tour than in New York.The musical, like the 1996 book and a 2004 film adaptation, is the story of a lifelong romance, told from the point of view of an older couple, one of whom has Alzheimer’s disease. Featuring songs by Ingrid Michaelson and a book by Bekah Brunstetter, “The Notebook” is directed by Michael Greif and Schele Williams.The show began previews Feb. 10 and opened March 14 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. A pre-Broadway production at Chicago Shakespeare Theater had been well-received, but in New York, reviews were mixed; The New York Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called it “meretricious” (look it up: It’s not a compliment).Onstage, three pairs of actors play the lead characters at different stages of their lives; the musical is set in a coastal mid-Atlantic town in the 1960s, the 1970s and the present day. “The Notebook” was nominated for three Tony Awards but won none.It is the fourth musical to announce earlier-than-hoped-for closing dates since May, following “Lempicka,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll” and “The Who’s Tommy.” Broadway is always a difficult industry, and most shows fail financially, but the odds of success are particularly long now because production costs have risen, audience size has fallen, and there is a high volume of shows competing for attention. At the time of its closing, “The Notebook” will have played 35 previews and 317 regular performances.“The Notebook,” with Kevin McCollum and Kurt Deutsch as lead producers, was capitalized for up to $15 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money has not been recouped. More

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      Sydney Lemmon Puts the Twisted Humanity Behind Tech on Broadway

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      After a small part in “Succession,” the actor has a breakout role in “Job,” in which she plays a content moderator having a mental breakdown.Jane is a young professional living in the Bay Area whom you might find at SoulCycle. The actor Sydney Lemmon has taken that description of her character in “Job” with a grain of salt.The young woman she is presenting to Broadway audiences is not a stereotypical millennial. Instead, Lemmon’s Jane is a formidable vessel of reckless passion, someone who has been shaped by the corporate grind of a Silicon Valley job monitoring the heinous acts that people upload onto social media. She is a self-described “Xanax girlie” white knuckling her way through a mandated therapy session meant to determine whether she is ready to return to work after a psychological breakdown that went viral.Oh, and Jane has a gun, too.“She loves her job,” Lemmon said last week during an interview in her dressing room at the Helen Hayes Theater in Midtown Manhattan. “But the thing that most people seem to connect with when I talk to them at the stage door is her feeling of isolation.”Lemmon has played the character for more than a year, charting an unlikely path in a hit commercial production nearly seven years after she first appeared on Broadway, following her graduation from the Yale School of Drama. Smaller roles in film and television — including a short run on the acclaimed HBO series “Succession” — helped raise her profile within the industry; theater, however, is where she has developed a cult following.Lemmon and Peter Friedman in “Job,” which is running through Oct. 27 at the Helen Hayes Theater.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“All of the show was crafted around Sydney,” said Michael Herwitz, the production’s director.“When we cast her, she was absolutely not what we thought we wanted,” he recalled. “We thought Jane was going to be someone demure, a petite white woman who graduated college two years ago and wouldn’t necessarily pose a physical threat.”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 Winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Returns to Broadway With ‘Purpose’

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      Branden Jacobs-Jenkins had Broadway success this year with a drama starring Sarah Paulson. In February, he’ll return with a new play directed by Phylicia Rashad.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins won a Tony Award in June for the Broadway production of “Appropriate,” his blistering play about a white Southern family grappling with some serious baggage.This season, Jacobs-Jenkins will return to Broadway, now with “Purpose,” a stormy play about a Black Midwestern family wrestling with its own legacy.“Purpose,” which had a well-received run earlier this year at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, is to begin previews Feb. 25 and to open in mid-March at the Helen Hayes Theater. The Broadway production is being directed by Phylicia Rashad, who also directed the play at Steppenwolf; Rashad, best known for “The Cosby Show,” has won two Tony Awards as an actor, for “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Skeleton Crew”; this will be her first time directing on Broadway.Set in contemporary Chicago, “Purpose” is about the Jaspers, a civically engaged family of preachers and politicians. There are some parallels to Jesse Jackson’s family, but the story is fictional.In the play, the family gathers at the home of its patriarch — a civil rights activist and preacher who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — to welcome the eldest son, a politician, home from prison as his wife prepares to serve her own sentence. The gathering is complicated by the presence of the younger son, a divinity school dropout, who shows up with an unexpected friend.The critic Chris Jones, writing in The Chicago Tribune, called it an “absolutely not-to-be-missed” play.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, with the Tony for best revival of a play for “Appropriate.”Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressPhylicia Rashad, with her Tony for best actress in a play for “Skeleton Crew” in 2022. This will be her Broadway directorial debut.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJacobs-Jenkins, 39, has for a decade been touted as among the nation’s most important young playwrights. He is a two-time Pulitzer finalist (for “Gloria” and “Everybody”), but “Appropriate” was his first play on Broadway. It took so long for it to get there that the production, which starred Sarah Paulson, was deemed a revival and won the Tony Award in that category. Now, Jacobs-Jenkins is working on a musical adaptation of Prince’s “Purple Rain” that will have an initial production in Minneapolis next spring, while also preparing to return to Broadway with “Purpose.” (And before then, he has a new Off Broadway show this fall: “Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!” at Soho Rep.)“I’m shocked, honored, surprised, confused, nervous,” Jacobs-Jenkins said in a phone interview, referring to having two Broadway plays in a row. “I definitely feel like there’s some kind of turnover: In this post-recovery period, lots of surprising things are happening.”“I feel like suddenly my cohort is stepping into some new space that wasn’t available to us before,” he added.And are “Appropriate” and “Purpose” related? “Not really,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “But it wouldn’t be ridiculous to read them against each other.”Though the nonprofit Second Stage Theater owns the Helen Hayes Theater, this will be a commercial production. The lead producers include David Stone and Marc Platt, who are the lead producers of “Wicked”; the film producer Debra Martin Chase; the actress LaChanze; and Rashad V. Chambers, Aaron Glick and Steppenwolf. More

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      Sutton Foster and Michael Urie Reunite in the Zany ‘Once Upon a Mattress’

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      The hit Encores! production has transferred to Broadway, with a cast fiercely dedicated to entertaining its audience.Princess Winnifred and Prince Dauntless are goofy and playful characters. In most musicals, they would provide comic relief from the main story line. But in “Once Upon a Mattress,” it’s the funny people who rule, both literally and figuratively.All the more so since Winnifred and Dauntless are played by Sutton Foster and Michael Urie in symbiotic performances that are highly controlled and precise while maintaining the appearance of off-the-cuff abandon.And with the rest of the cast mostly following suit, it is refreshing to see actors so actively dedicating themselves to entertaining their audience. This kind of unabashed reveling in the joys of strutting your stuff appears to be in demand, too, judging by the recent success of “Oh, Mary!” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.”The family-friendly “Once Upon a Mattress,” which premiered in 1959, is a good fit for the Encores! series — which stages shows that are rarely revived and presented this one in January. Now the production has transferred, with some changes in the supporting cast, to the Hudson Theater on Broadway.Like many Encores! entries, Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer’s variation on the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Princess and the Pea” would probably struggle to crack anybody but a tween’s Top 10 list of the best musicals ever.Also like many of those entries, “Once Upon a Mattress” turns out to be surprisingly sturdy in the right hands. Rodgers’s music is zingy and Barer’s lyrics often deploy sneakily enjoyable wordplay (“I lack a lass; alas! Alack!”). Just as important, the book by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller is engineered to let gifted comic actors run loose — it is no coincidence that Carol Burnett originated the role of Winnifred.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