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      Review: Idina Menzel Climbs to New Broadway Heights in ‘Redwood’

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      The “Wicked” belter scales a 300-foot tree, and a mountain of songs, in a powerful if woo-woo musical about trauma and resilience.The musical “Redwood,” which opened on Thursday at the Nederlander Theater, features two great stars. One is an awe-inspiring force of nature. The other is a tree.The force of nature is Idina Menzel, who sings in 13 of the show’s 17 songs, of which seven are essentially solos. Has anyone ever belted so much, so tirelessly and hair-raisingly?But the size of the role is nothing compared with its emotional complexity and the depth of Menzel’s immersion in it. Her Jesse is a walking panic attack, an avoidant overtalker, an entitled princess and a grief-stricken mother. More astonishing, she is all of these at once, and right from the start. We meet her speeding westward from New York City with a terrible loss in the rearview mirror and no idea where she’s going.We know, though. The musical, by Tina Landau (book, lyrics and direction) and Kate Diaz (music and lyrics), with additional contributions from Menzel herself, is not named “Redwood” idly. Soon Jesse comes upon a grove of the giant trees near Eureka, Calif., and we meet our other star. She — for Jesse not only genders her but also names her Stella — is 14 feet wide and 300 feet tall and centuries if not millenniums old.I am sure redwoods are awesome in real life; I have never seen one. But the tree that Landau and her designers have put onstage is among the most beautiful and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall.Spectacular video by Hana S. Kim renders the tree’s towering swirl of branches on a series of 1,000 immersive LED panels.Sara Krulwich/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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      Review: In ‘Eureka Day,’ Holding Space for Those You Hate

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      A hilarious new Broadway production asks: Can the superwoke vaxxers and anti-vaxxers at an elite private school learn to get along?Just in time, laughter is making a big comeback on Broadway. Better yet, it comes in several varieties.For catty yowling, check out Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, wringing necks in “Death Becomes Her.” For helpless giggles, there’s Cole Escola as that cabaret legend Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” And if you enjoy the hysteria of family fireworks, “Cult of Love” should leave you gasping.But the funniest character now on Broadway isn’t even a human being — or not exactly. Getting the biggest belly laughs in Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” which opened on Monday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, is a yellow thumbs-up emoji.The emoji appears — chipper then aggravating then weirdly insidious — in a livestream meeting of parents and executive board members at Eureka Day, an upscale private school in Berkeley, Calif. As Don, the principal, tries to handle a looming crisis, using every banality at his new-age disposal, the conversation in the chat veers correspondingly out of control. His attempt to “unpack” issues calmly has instead disgorged a torrent of personal attacks, vulgar language and childish invective. By the end of the scene, the third of the play’s quick seven, the thumb seems like a different finger entirely.Spector’s hilarious poison-pen satire of educational wokeism has led us to that point with great care. A Manhattan Theater Club production, directed bracingly by Anna D. Shapiro, it begins, in 2018, with a kind of dramaturgical canapé to whet our appetites for the main dish. As the lights come up on the school’s bright library, prominently featuring a social justice collection, Don (Bill Irwin) is leading the board in a discussion about a proposed addition to the drop-down menu on the prospective parent application. Should it include “transracial adoptee” as an option among the many other ethnic identities offered?The point is argued with elaborate courtesy bordering on incomprehensibility. Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz) says “the term itself is not offensive,” but Suzanne (Jessica Hecht) thinks it might be offensive “when you contextualize it in that way.” Eli (Thomas Middleditch) feels that failing to add the term would amount to a kind of erasure, given that “our Core Operating Principle here is that everyone should Feel Seen by this community.”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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      ‘Cult of Love’ Review: We Wish You a Wretched Christmas

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      A hilarious, harrowing holiday gift from Leslye Headland, who brings another unhappy family to Broadway. Zachary Quinto and Shailene Woodley star.Though figgy pudding is on the menu, Evie Dahl has a different Yuletide horror in mind. “Christmas is exactly the time to talk about the things we never talk about,” she tells her reluctant siblings.No, Evie, no!Alas, despite the happy presence of stars including Zachary Quinto, Shailene Woodley and Mare Winningham, the annual ritual dinner of the Dahls is doomed from the start of Leslye Headland’s “Cult of Love,” a rip-roaring home-for-the-holidays dramedy that opened on Thursday at the Helen Hayes Theater. What begins as a cheery reunion in a New England farmhouse decked out like Santa’s workshop ends as a collective meltdown with carols.Because Evie, even if she’s bossy, is right. The four Dahl children, now in their late 20s through early 40s, have plenty of grudges that urgently need airing. But how? Ginny, their passive-aggressive control freak of a mother, will not admit into her home any problems, doubts or identities that violate her sense of upbeat Christian propriety. So what if her husband, Bill, is hovering on the edge of the abyss of Alzheimer’s? Ignore it, excuse it; it will go away.The same applies to the couple’s firstborn, Mark, a divinity student turned lawyer who has lost his faith in both callings. (When he says he’s no longer a Christian, Ginny responds, “That’s not true.”) Evie, their second, a chef, is a lesbian. (“Or not,” Ginny adds.) Johnny, their third, of no known profession, is a recovering drug addict. (“If you all say so,” Ginny allows.) And Diana, the youngest? She’s either a Christmas miracle, complete with baby on board, or just psychotic, espying the devil and speaking in tongues.If that setup doesn’t exactly sound funny, there’s a reason. Though “Cult of Love,” like many unhappy family reunion plays, draws big buckets of humor from the toxic brew of religion and repression, those buckets also draw blood.Headland knows just how to get there, suggesting deep familiarity with the territory. But she also has a gift for complication and construction, as was already evident in “Bachelorette,” her Bridezillas Gone Wild breakthrough play of 2010. (That play, like this one, was a Second Stage Theater production, and later became a movie.) Loading pattern on pattern — a holiday-season design don’t for most — is for her an opportunity to dizzy us down to hell.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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      Is the Real ‘Wicked’ Movie the Press Tour?

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Wicked” has been long in the works and perhaps anticipated for even longer. Starring Ariana Grande (billed as Ariana Grande-Butera) as Galinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, it is an ornate adventure that serves as a sort of prequel to “The Wizard of Oz.” (It is also the first of two films; the second one will be released next November.)Grande and Erivo have been praised for their performances onscreen, but they have also been performing in a parallel show, making viral magic on the press tour. The result has been a film rollout that at times feels louder than the film itself.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how “Wicked” survived the transition from stage to film, how Grande and Erivo inscribed new narrative into their roles, and how the real film may well be Grande and Erivo’s public appearances.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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      Avett Brothers Musical ‘Swept Away’ to Close on Broadway After Short Run

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      The new musical, about a shipwreck and its aftermath, opened Nov. 19 at the Longacre Theater.“Swept Away,” a darkly elegiac musical featuring the songs of the Avett Brothers, will end its Broadway run Dec. 15, less than a month after opening.The musical, about a 19th-century shipwreck and its aftermath, explores the lengths to which human beings will go in order to survive. Although set in fictional circumstances, it is based on a real 19th-century tragedy that led to an important legal case in Britain.“Swept Away” began previews Oct. 29 and opened Nov. 19 at the Longacre Theater. At the time of its closing it will have played 20 previews and 32 regular performances.The show cost up to $14.5 million to capitalize, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that money has not been recouped. The weekly grosses were consistently well below what it cost to run, which is unsustainable.“Swept Away” is the second new musical of this season to close shortly after opening, following “Tammy Faye,” at a time when new musicals face an ever-more-challenging path on Broadway.The Avett Brothers have a devoted fan base, and “Swept Away” was praised by the New York Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, who described it as “really about the gravest decisions humans can make, the depths of souls that are darker than the sea’s.”But other reviews were mixed, and the musical, like the actual history that inspired it, includes cannibalism, which, although not featured prominently in marketing materials or press coverage, may have been a turnoff for some potential ticket buyers. Broadway is also packed with shows, many of which feature more familiar titles or performers, and “Swept Away” was unable to break through in that crowded marketplace.Many of the show’s songs were featured on the Avett Brothers album “Mignonette,” and a cast recording is scheduled to be released in February. John Logan, the Tony-winning author of “Red,” wrote the musical’s book, and it was directed by Michael Mayer, a Tony winner for “Spring Awakening.”The 90-minute show centers on four men stranded on a lifeboat — the only survivors of the shipwreck. They are played by John Gallagher Jr., a Tony winner for “Spring Awakening,” as well as Stark Sands (“Kinky Boots”), Adrian Blake Enscoe and Wayne Duvall.The lead producers of “Swept Away” are Matthew Masten, Sean Hudock and Madison Wells Live (founded by Gigi Pritzker). Before arriving on Broadway, the musical had runs at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California in 2022 and at Arena Stage in Washington in late 2023 and early 2024. More

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      Joel Grey: ‘Cabaret’ Was a Warning. It’s Time to Heed It.

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      This past week marked 58 years since the opening night for the Broadway premiere of “Cabaret” in 1966. At the time, the country was in deep turmoil. Overseas, the Vietnam War was escalating, and at home, our most regressive forces were counterpunching against the progress demanded by the civil rights movement. The composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb and the playwright Joe Masteroff wrote “Cabaret” in collaboration with the director Harold Prince as a response to the era. The parallels between the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin as depicted in the show and the mounting tensions of the 1960s in America were both obvious and ominous.I played the Emcee — the Kit Kat Club’s master of distraction, keeping Berlin mesmerized while Nazism slipped in through the back door. Night after night, I witnessed audiences grappling with the raw, unsettling reflection that “Cabaret” held up to them. Some material was simply too much for the audience to handle. “If You Could See Her,” which has the Emcee singing of his love for a gorilla — a thinly veiled commentary on antisemitic attitudes — ended with the lyric: “If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.”When we first performed it, in Boston, audiences gasped and recoiled. It was too offensive, too raw, too cruel. Producers fretted and the line was changed to “She isn’t a meeskite at all,” softening the blow, yes, but also the impact. I resented the change and would often, to the chagrin of stage management, “forget” to make the swap throughout that pre-Broadway run.I’m hearing from friends in the current Broadway production of “Cabaret” that the line is once again getting an audible response, but of a different sort. On more than one occasion in the past two weeks — since the election — a small number of audience members have squealed with laughter at “She wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” In the late 1960s, we softened the line because the truth was too hard to hear. Today, it seems the line is playing exactly as the Nazi-sympathizing Emcee would have intended.My initial assessment, when word first reached me about this unusual reaction, was that these must be the triumphant laughs of the complicit, suddenly drunk on power and unafraid to let their bigotry be known. Now I find myself considering other hypotheses. Are these the hollow, uneasy laughs of an audience that has retreated into the comfort of irony and detachment? Are these vocalized signals of acceptance? Audible white flags of surrender to the state of things? A collective shrug of indifference?I honestly don’t know which of these versions I find most ominous, but all of them should serve as a glaring reminder of how dangerously easy it is to accept bigotry when we are emotionally exhausted and politically overwhelmed.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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      ‘Glicked’ Fans Rejoice in Bloodshed and Broadway Songs

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      Swords clashing and blood curdling screams of gladiators emanate from one room. Across the hallway, witches belt out show tunes.That’s the sound of “Glicked.”Last year, moviegoers swarmed to see “Barbenheimer” — the combined name for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — when the films opened on the same day. Now, there is a push from the casts and fans of “Gladiator II” and “Wicked” — which both opened across the country on Friday — to recreate that energy for another double feature with a blended name.Isabelle Deveaux and Emma Rabuano skipped out of theater six at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Brooklyn at 2:38 p.m. on Friday, after watching “Gladiator II.”At 6:15 p.m., the pair, both 25, planned to return to the Alamo Drafthouse to see “Wicked.” The crossover, Ms. Deveaux said, “felt so specifically catered to our interests.”Diego Gasca of Los Angeles went with friends to the opening day of “Wicked” at AMC Lincoln Square 13 in Manhattan, but he said that he was not interested in seeing “Gladiator II.”Colin Clark for The New York TimesOn the surface, the two films, which have a combined running time of over five hours, appear vastly different. One is a family friendly musical prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” while the other is an R-rated epic sequel about murder, war and the Roman Empire. But Ms. Deveaux and Ms. Rabuano see some common ground in the films.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 Blood Quilt’ Review: An Elaborate Tapestry

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      Katori Hall’s new play about sisters gathering after their mother’s death features standout performances but an overabundance of themes.Quilting is about more than just fabric and stitches; it’s about blood, love, memory and trauma. That’s the premise at the center of Katori Hall’s “The Blood Quilt” at Lincoln Center, about four sisters gathering to complete a quilt three weeks after their mother’s death. The play itself a beautiful patchwork of themes and ideas that feel packed to the seams.It’s the first weekend of May, which means it’s time for the Jernigan sisters to convene at their family home at Kwemera, an island off the coast of Georgia where the Jernigan clan have lived for generations. But Kwemera isn’t what it used to be, and more change is imminent; there are plans for a bridge that will connect the mainland to the island, which means locals are being bought out by developers. Still, Clementine (Crystal Dickinson, with perfect gravitas), the eldest sister, remains staunchly a Kwemera woman, having lived her whole life there, where she nursed their mother in the last years of her illness.Clementine is the fierce guardian of family traditions, including the annual quilting ritual, so Gio (a riotous Adrienne C. Moore), the heavy drinking second oldest, has reported for duty, as has Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson, perfectly demure), who has brought her teenage daughter Zambia (Mirirai) for her first quilting circle. And there’s an unexpected guest — Amber (Lauren E. Banks), the youngest, who’s a successful entertainment lawyer in California and has been absent for the last few years.Quilting is a days long project, with each sister assigned her own separate duties. But the quilt isn’t the only reason for this reunion: there’s the matter of their inheritance, if any, and the financial loose ends remaining after their mother’s death. The money issues stir up the women, but it’s their contrary, complicated and self-contradictory ways of grieving, along with their long-held grudges against one another, that truly unleashes the storm of drama inside the home.The world of “The Blood Quilt,” which opened Thursday, is inviting: Hall’s characters are fully formed and clearly motivated, the family’s history is rich and Kwemera feels alive, in part thanks to the eclectic homespun set design by Adam Rigg. Quilts are draped everywhere in this tiny cabin, which is so close to the water that the front of the stage drops off into a grassy basin.Hall, who won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play “The Hot Wing King,” uses the same level of artistry and meticulousness in crafting a metaphor that the sisters do in crafting their quilts. Their roles and quilting preferences mirror their places within the family. Zambia, caught in the messy adolescent process of defining her identity, takes the role of stitching the centerpiece — an apt, if heavy-handed, representation of a younger generation taking the baton in a family tradition. And the quilts themselves embody memories and even a bit of magic. A Jernigan story about a family matriarch who gave a quilt square away to each of her children sold off to slavery isn’t just emotionally resonant; it proves that these quilts are literal scraps of history.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