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      ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Review: Imelda Staunton Has the Wow, Wow, Wow Factor

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      The veteran British actress shines in a new revival that is the musical theater highlight of the West End summer.Love affairs in the theater take different forms — between characters onstage, of course, but also between a performer and the public.In a new London revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” the leading lady, Imelda Staunton, grips the audience from the beginning and holds them in a shared embrace throughout. Ths show is the musical theater event of the West End summer, running at the London Palladium, through Sept. 14.“Hello, Dolly!” has always been a star vehicle. Carol Channing first played the matchmaking Dolly Gallagher Levi on Broadway in 1964 and made it her signature part, returning to the role of the deliciously meddlesome widow throughout her storied career. The others to take it on have included Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler and, on film, Barbra Streisand. This production, indeed, owes quite a bit to the 1969 movie, the choice of opening song (“Just Leave Everything to Me”) included.But Staunton — who on Wednesday received an Emmy nomination for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown” — is probably the only English performer who can command as much respect in the role as those American ladies. She occupies a special place in British playgoers’ hearts, which this production, directed by Dominic Cooke’, taps into directly. Her acquaintance with the classics — Albee, Chekhov, Sondheim — lends a gravity to the performance, so that we understand Dolly as a fully realized person, pain and all, and not just a figure of fun.Staunton plays Dolly Gallagher Levi, a widow who has taken on the role of matchmaker in her community.Manuel HarlanWe 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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      A Queer Mountain Lion Leaps From the Page to the Little Island Stage

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      Henry Hoke’s 2023 novel, “Open Throat,” narrated by an animal in peril in the Hollywood Hills, is adapted for a staged reading.The concept behind Henry Hoke’s 2023 novel, “Open Throat,” is an eyebrow-raising one: It’s a story about overdevelopment and climate change narrated by a mountain lion who muses on the lives of hikers and loved ones.Hoke was loosely inspired by the mountain lion known as P-22 whose regular sightings in the hills surrounding Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, successful crossing of two freeways and eventual death captured the public’s attention in 2022. In “Open Throat,” according to the book’s publisher, the animal identifies as queer, and uses they and them pronouns.The book is “what fiction should be,” the novelist Marie-Helene Bertino wrote in her review for The New York Times, and it made several end-of-year best-of lists and awards shortlists.With an internal monologue that has poetically broken stanzas and a fluid sense of time and reality, “Open Throat” does not immediately call for theatrical adaptation. Yet a staged version of the work is premiering Wednesday as part of Little Island’s ambitious summer series of live performances at its outdoor amphitheater.The narration is divided among three performers, including Chris Perfetti, who is holding the book, and Calvin Leon Smith. “I think the beauty of it, and the reason we’re intentionally having three different voices, is making it universal,” Perfetti said.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“It reads beautifully,” Zack Winokur, Little Island’s producing artistic director, said of the book. “The way it’s placed on the page is visually interesting. The way the voice exists is not like anything else. I kept thinking that it being so voice-driven would make an amazing show, and I didn’t know how to do it, which is the greatest thing in the world.”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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      15 Summer Theaters for That Nearby, Out-of-Town Experience

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      Easygoing days of drama and comedy are just a few hours away (or even closer) in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.Summer used to be when playgoing in the city came to a full stop. With no air-conditioning, most shows closed, at least until fall.But now that urban theater is a year-round sport, Memorial Day is more like a comma than a period. Notable productions play straight through the hot months — some even opening in August, even on Broadway.So what has happened to the regional festivals, straw-hat theaters and avant-garde outposts that once flourished as the city languished? Many are struggling. Yet others are surging.Regardless, they’re worth visiting.There’s something different about summer theater outside the city. Subways are rarely involved, though a train ride or overnight stay at a lovely inn might be. Dress is casual — by which I mean “more casual than usual” because I’ve seen people at Shakespeare in the Park in pajamas. And the fare is more varied, including not just the prestige and tourist-bait extremes of the spectrum but also the hokey, offbeat and silly stuff in between.Another plus: what you spend on that inn, you’ll save on the tickets.So here’s a selection of theater that will help you get out of the city — or at least make you feel like you did.The Big MagnetsFormerly the jewel of the summer theater circuit, famous for classics and knotty new works, the Williamstown Theater Festival, in Williamstown, Mass., is regrouping after its production model, dependent on unpaid labor, collapsed. This season includes just one fully staged production: David Ives’s detective drama, “Pamela Palmer” (starting July 23). But much more is going on, including a multigenre, multistage event called “WTF Is Next” (Aug. 1-4). Think of it not as crisis management but as a tasting platter of ideas for the future.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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      Where Can Sondheim’s Operatic Musicals Find a Home?

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      Jonathan Tunick, Stephen Sondheim’s longtime collaborator, unveiled a grand orchestration of “A Little Night Music” that deserves more than a concert.Near the end of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “A Little Night Music,” the orchestra swells to what he is said to have called his Max Steiner moment, something out of “Casablanca” or “Gone With the Wind.”Désirée and Fredrik, former lovers who reconnect but nearly miss out on happiness again, come together and kiss. The instruments respond with a grand, emotive reprise of the show’s 11 o’clock number, “Send in the Clowns.”At a concert performance of “A Little Night Music” at David Geffen Hall on Thursday, the premiere of a new orchestration by Sondheim’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick, the 53-piece Orchestra of St. Luke’s let out a fortissimo tutti. Strings and winds soared with the melody, but there was more: resonant, staggered chords to support it in the low voices, and florid counterpoint. It was a moment fit not only for the movies but for the opera house, which, perhaps, is where this new orchestration belongs.Not all musicals are fit for stages beyond Broadway, but some are. And there has been a resurgence, since Sondheim’s death in 2021, of large-scale revivals of his work. (This, after years of skillfully stripped-down productions by John Doyle.) “Sweeney Todd” returned to Broadway with Tunick’s original orchestration for nearly 30 players, crackling with detail and musical drama. Last week, “Follies” was presented at Carnegie Hall with a similarly sized ensemble and a starry cast in concert.The version of “A Little Night Music” on Thursday had nearly double those forces. If anyone can be trusted with that task, it’s Tunick. He and Sondheim first collaborated on “Company,” in 1970, and Tunick orchestrated the composer’s final, unfinished show, “Here We Are,” last year.Tunick, center, was Sondheim’s longtime collaborator, starting with the 1970 musical “Company.”Joan MarcusWe 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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      Leslye Headland’s ‘Cult of Love’ to Open on Broadway in the Fall

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      The play will be produced by Second Stage, which is also planning an Off Broadway production of a two-character drama by Donald Margulies.“Cult of Love,” a play about a fractious holiday gathering of a Christian family, will come to Broadway this fall via Second Stage Theater, one of the four nonprofits with Broadway houses.The announcement on Tuesday is a further sign that the current season is shaping up to be a robust one for plays, which had been considered an endangered species on Broadway, but which seem to be proliferating as the economic climate for musicals worsens.“Cult of Love” is written by Leslye Headland, a creator of the Netflix series “Russian Doll” and the Disney+ series “The Acolyte.” She has also written and directed films including “Sleeping With Other People.”The play is scheduled to begin previews Nov. 20 and to open Dec. 12 at the Hayes Theater.“Cult of Love” is Headland’s final work in a series, called “Seven Deadly Plays,” that is inspired by the seven deadly sins; this one is about pride. The play was staged in 2018 at IAMA Theater Company in Los Angeles and there was a run early this year at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California. (A planned 2020 production at Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts was canceled because of the pandemic.)The Broadway production, like the Berkeley production, will be directed by Trip Cullman. The play has 10 characters and casting has not been announced.Second Stage also said on Tuesday that it would stage an Off Broadway production of “Lunar Eclipse,” a two-character play by Donald Margulies (a Pulitzer winner for “Dinner With Friends”) that had a run last year at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass.The new production, directed by Kate Whoriskey, is to star Reed Birney (a Tony winner for “The Humans”) and Lisa Emery as a long-married couple. It is to begin previews Oct. 9 and to open Oct. 30 at the Tony Kiser Theater.“Lunar Eclipse” is expected to be Second Stage’s final production in that space, which the company is exiting at the end of the year, citing financial considerations. Second Stage expects to present its spring season at the Pershing Square Signature Center while it explores options for an Off Broadway home. More

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      Ron Simons, Who Brought Black Stories to Broadway, Dies at 63

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      He left a career in tech and found success as a producer, winning four Tonys. His mission: staging productions about underrepresented communities.Ron Simons, who left his job as an executive at Microsoft to pursue his dream of acting but later found his métier as a theatrical producer — one of the relatively few Black ones on Broadway — and won four Tony Awards, died on June 12. He was 63.His death was announced by Simonsays Entertainment, his production company. A spokesman declined to say where he died or provide the cause of death.Mr. Simons had been acting for about a decade, but was unhappy with the roles he was being offered, when he started producing in 2009. He believed that his experience as an actor and businessman would serve him well as a producer.“I’ve found that many businesspeople can handle the question of financial viability but can’t judge a good story, so as an artist I also have that area of expertise,” he told DC Theater Arts in 2020. “Plus, even if it’s a good story, it has to be crafted to take it to the stage, so the leadership must understand how to get it there.”Success came quickly. He was a producer of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” starring Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, which won the Tony for best revival of a musical in 2012. Mr. Simons won a second Tony a year later for best play for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” a comedy by Christopher Durang about three middle-aged siblings.Audra McDonald, center, in the musical “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” which Mr. Simons produced.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFrom left David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen and Sigourney Weaver in the Tony-winning “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”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: A 10th Life for Those Jellicle ‘Cats,’ Now in Drag

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      Resetting the “Memory” musical in the world of ballroom competitions makes for a joyful reincarnation.A D.J. pawing through a carton of old LPs — Natalie Cole, Angela Bofill — comes upon a curiosity: the original cast album of “Cats.” When he opens the gatefold, glittery spangles fly everywhere.That’s how “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” begins, and it’s basically what the Perelman Performing Arts Center’s drag remake of the Broadway behemoth does to the drab original. It sets the joy free.Whether upper- or lowercase, cats never previously offered me much pleasure. The underlying T.S. Eliot poems, ad libbed for his godchildren, are agreeable piffle, hardly up there with “Prufrock” as fodder for the ages. The musical, instead of honoring the material’s delicacy, stomped all over it, leaving heavy mud prints. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, and especially the rigged-up story and original staging by Trevor Nunn, tried so hard to make big statements from little ditties and kitties that it wound up a perfect example of camp.Camp, cleverly, is the new version’s base line, neutralizing that criticism. It turns out that the show once advertised vaguely (and threateningly) as “now and forever” — it ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000 — works far better in a specific past.That past is the world of drag balls, which at the time of the original “Cats” was beginning to achieve mainstream awareness. Madonna’s appropriation of the participants’ style and dance moves in her videos and concerts, as well as Jennie Livingston’s celebration of them in her documentary “Paris Is Burning,” helped pave the way for the supremacy of RuPaul and dragmania today. But beneath that triumph lay a darker truth: that the thrill of ball culture depended on its drawing extravagance from destitution, meeting prejudice with bravery, and staring down death with style.The key insight of this “Jellicle Ball,” which opened on Thursday at the new downtown arts cube, is that at least some of those themes could resonate with Eliot’s subtext and Lloyd Webber’s score. The directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch have thus transported Grizabella, Skimbleshanks, Rum Tum Tugger and the rest from a metaphysical junkyard to a hotel ballroom for a vogueing competition, accompanied by new versions of the songs that go heavier on the synthesizers, turn some lyrics into raps and add a distinctive house beat.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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      BAM Announces Artistic Director and Fall Season Lineup

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      BAM, which has faced cutbacks in recent years, unveiled a reorganization as it announced its Next Wave Festival for the fall.The Brooklyn Academy of Music, a haven for international artists and the avant-garde that has been forced to reduce its programming and lay off workers in recent years, unveiled plans for a reorganization on Thursday as it announced its fall season.The institution said that Amy Cassello, who has been with BAM for more than a decade, would officially become its artistic director, a position she had been holding on an interim basis. And it announced a new strategic plan that calls for programming more works that are still in development, establishing more partnerships with other presenting institutions and hiring a new community-focused “resident curator.”BAM executives said they hoped that the plan would help usher in a new era for the institution after an exceptionally difficult period.Like many nonprofit arts organizations, BAM has struggled financially since the pandemic, and its annual operating budget dropped. It has also been buffeted by leadership churn in recent years after decades of stability in its senior leadership ranks.“I’m feeling really confident about our future,” said Gina Duncan, BAM’s president since 2022. “We were able to gain alignment across all of BAM’s communities and really arrive at a point in which we had a shared understanding of our history and what the future holds for us.”The upcoming Next Wave Festival in the fall will have 11 events, up from eight in 2023, a difficult year when BAM laid off 13 percent of its staff to help fill what officials called a “sizable structural deficit.” But it will still not be as robust as it was in earlier eras, when the festival regularly staged many more programs.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