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Neil Patrick Harris on Hosting the Tonys and Guesting in Sleep No More

When one checks into the McKittrick Hotel, home of the full-immersion dance-theater phantasm Sleep No More, one expects the unexpected. Still, one does not expect to be pulled into a small room with Neil Patrick Harris, dressed as a hotel porter, tearfully exploring the “androgynous side of himself.” (Somehow, James Franco seems more likely.) The quintuple-threat How I Met Your Mother star and once-and-future Tony host was “so envious” when he heard Alan Cumming had done Sleep (as have Evan Rachel Wood and Dita Von Teese), he asked for a walk-on. And he’s going to do it again soon — though he won’t say exactly when. “If there’s ever any production of theirs they want me to be a part of, I am, by default, their lackey.”

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Theater Reviews: The Stage Dive Memorial Day Roundup

FEBRUARY HOUSE (Playing at the Public Theater through June 10)

February House is an ambitious artistic experiment about an ambitious artistic experiment: An attempt by Harpers fiction editor George Davis (Julian Fleisher) to found an art commune in Brooklyn Heights in 1940. Davis’s incandescent brood of tinderbox souls included wunderkind novelist Carson McCullers (the adorable Kristen Sieh), composer Benjamin Britten (Stanley Bahorek) and his lover-muse, the tenor Peter Pears (Ken Barnett), anti-fascist firebrand Erika Mann (Stephanie Hayes), “thinking-man’s stripper” Gypsy Rose Lee (Kacie Sheik), and, as elder statesman (at 33), the revered poet W.H. Auden (Erik Lochtefeld, subtly and sustainedly wrong for a disagreeable and miswritten role).

Old Jews telling jokes. Which is also the name of a show! »

How Can Musical Theater Be Saved? Broadway Veterans Give Their Advice

The droning, half-century dirge for musical theater — lamenting its decline from peculiarly American art form to merely peculiar niche luxury good — reaches a shrill pitch whenever Broadway has a bad year. It so happens we're in the middle of one now: The Tony awards couldn't even scrounge up four new scores to nominate. I've already had my little say on causes and effects, so now it's time to turn the discussion over to the people who do it for a living, often against tall odds. This is, after all, a craft that demands massive amounts of money, discouraging, roulette-like ratios of risk-to-reward, and five to ten years of development, on average, to achieve even a failed result. As you thumb through these meditations on the state of the art, consider a saying of the prophet: "What's hard is simple / What's natural comes hard." Here — in many more words — are some informed ideas from four generations of composers and producers about why that is, and how what's hard might be made (a little) easier.

Michael McKean Hit by a Car on the Upper West Side

Michael McKean, otherwise known as Spinal Tap front man David St. Hubbins (and Laverne & Shirley's Lenny), was struck by a car near his Upper West Side home this afternoon. The actor, who has been performing on Broadway in Gore Vidal's The Best Man, was taken to St. Luke's in critical condition, though his status has since been upgraded to stable. We're comfortable saying a car accident is always better than a bizarre gardening one.

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Andrew Garfield on His Tony Nod, The Amazing Spider-Man, and That Weird YouTube Video

Andrew Garfield, who's already won a BAFTA, may win a Tony next now that Death of a Salesman is the clear favorite for this awards season. The play scored a total of seven nominations, including Best Featured Actor in a Play for Garfield, for his portrayal of Biff opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman's Willy Loman. Garfield, of course, will also be your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man at the multiplexes this summer, so his Death run will be coming to a close on June 2 to give him some time for movie promotion. For now, he's still trodding the Barrymore, even during a bout with bronchitis, for which he refused to cancel any performances earlier this month. Now that he's on the mend, Garfield chatted with Vulture about his Tony nod, wanting a call from Samuel L. Jackson, and that weird YouTube video we came across recently.

"That was just me and Emma taking the piss." »

The Stage Dive Weekend Review: Cock and pool (no water)

Cock (at the Duke on 42nd Street)

John (Cory Michael Smith) has a decision to make: Does he stay with M (Jason Butler Harner), his longtime male lover? Or commit to his new girlfriend W (Amanda Quaid), the first woman he’s ever slept with? But this isn’t a drearily literal diddle on the nature of bisexuality, or even some milquetoast meditation on small-i “identity.” There’s a bigger question on the table: “Why are you telling me I have to know what I am?” asks John, not impishly, not pertinently, desperately even. “It doesn’t matter. I love him because he makes me toast in bed and he’s scared of plastic bags. I love her because she makes me feel as old as I really am.”

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Brooke Shields to Star in Exorcist Play

Brooke Shields and Richard Chamberlain will headline an upcoming stage production of The Exorcist, L.A.'s Geffen Playhouse announced today. Shields will play the mom, Chamberlain will play the sage Father Merrin, and 23-year-old Emily Yetter will play Regan, the little girl who tells priests that their mothers suck cock in hell. According to playwright John Peilmeier, "The story of the battle between faith and evil needed no spinning heads or green vomit," which others might argue is what makes The Exorcist different from, oh, the epilogue in Spoon River Anthology. Anyhow, barf-free play opens in July.

Latest Broadway Casualty: Priscilla Queen of the Desert

Following the news that Leap of Faith and the Nick Jonas–led How to Succeed in Business would lose their Broadway marquees, the drag spectacular Priscilla Queen of the Desert is also bidding the Great White Way farewell. The play will close after just one year and 526 performances — not even long enough to recoup its production costs. It looks like theatergoers are less interested in shows teeming with glitter and anal sex puns than previously thought.

  • Posted 5/16/12 at 11:45 AM
  • Theater

Ever After Is Headed to Broadway

And your next movie-to-musical extravaganza will be Ever After, the 1998 real-life-Cinderella movie that put Drew Barrymore in glass slippers and fairy wings. The show is slated for the 2013–2014 season; Kathleen Marshall will choreograph and direct. Barrymore is in no way attached, but frankly, can you think of a better post-baby comeback for the Daisy Queen? Vulture cannot.

  • Posted 5/14/12 at 12:00 PM
  • Theater

Dan Stevens Signs Up for Jessica Chastain’s Heiress

Dan Stevens, better known as Downton Abbey's resident heartthrob Matthew Crawley, will court Jessica Chastain's Catherine Sloper in an upcoming Broadway revival of The Heiress. Stevens will play Morris Townsend, meaning: (1) You're going to have to learn to dislike Matthew Crawley a little, and (2) you're going to have to accept Matthew Crawley with an American accent. Only for two hours, though.

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Theater Reviews: The Stage Dive Weekend Roundup

Lonely I'm Not (at 2nd Stage through June 3)

Paul Weitz’s Lonely I’m Not is precisely the sort of play I’m wired to despise: the tale of a mopey male genius/fuckup — damaged by the “wrong” sort of success, emotionally compartmentalized, sexually desolate yet unquestionably beddable — written in small, cartridge-like scenelets so slick and modular, they feel like they’re being ejected onto the boards by an offstage Gillette.

A great many of these plays seem to spring from the iPads of Hollywood screenwriters, and I’ve come to regard them with suspicion: Weitz’s own Trust, for example, I found muddled, miscast, and ill-tempered, a dark tale about privilege and domination awkwardly rewritten as some sort of icky wish-fulfillment scenario. That was a play with a lot on its mind but no real moral or philosophical spool to wrap it all around; the show lacked the courage to be the pitch-black downward-spiral it wanted to be.

Cullman demonstrates an impressive ability to match the high-speed emotional transactions of driven young comers. »

  • Posted 5/11/12 at 9:15 AM
  • Casting

Zooey Deschanel to Star in Coal Miner’s Daughter

Zooey Deschanel will play Loretta Lynn in an upcoming Broadway staging of Coal Miner's Daughter, Lynn announced at a concert at the Grand Ole Opry last night. She then brought Deschanel onstage, and the two sang a duet together. ("There’s a little girl backstage that’s going to do the play of Coal Miner’s Daughter," Lynn said by way of introduction.) The details of the show — like who's writing and directing it, or when it will be staged — haven't been announced yet, but this will mark Deschanel's Broadway debut.

  • Posted 5/9/12 at 12:30 PM
  • Casting

Tom Hanks Circling Nora Ephron Broadway Play

Quick, someone's making a run for the EGOT! The New York Times reports that Tom Hanks is in negotiations to star in Nora Ephron's play Lucky Guy, which would mark his Broadway debut. If Hanks signs on, he'd play crime-covering Daily News columnist Mike McAlary, who died at age 41 in 1998. Hanks himself is currently 55, but, you know, such is the magic of the the-a-tuh.

How to Succeed and Leap of Faith Closing on Broadway

The carnage continues on Broadway: Leap of Faith will close this Sunday, despite earning a Tony nomination for Best Musical just last week. Also setting an end date is the revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which recouped its investment in December with original star Daniel Radcliffe still toplining, but has since faltered with replacement Nick Jonas. Somehow, we think Ellis is to blame. Don't try to talk sense into us, we just do.

Topher Grace on His Off-Broadway Debut, Star Wars Mania, and Learning to Project

As we know from his stint as Star Wars editor, Topher Grace likes to branch out. And so, despite his initial reservations about doing theater (including a fear of hecklers), he's opening his first play, Lonely, I'm Not, at Second Stage on May 7. His character, Porter, is an ex-businessman who made seven figures at a way-too-young age and, consequently, had a nervous breakdown. Olivia Thirlby plays his eventual love interest, an ambitious upstart with baggage of her own. It's all very emo, and if it reminds you a little bit of Grace's role in In Good Company (in which he played a reluctantly sharkish ad exec), that could be because both scripts were written by Paul Weitz, whose most recent film, Being Flynn, featured Thirlby. Vulture spoke with Grace about making his off-Broadway debut, going by Topher, and learning to project.

"I was having nightmares about people in the back row saying, 'Speak up, sitcom boy.'" »

Theater Review: The Stage Dive Weekend Roundup

Saint Joan (at the Access Theater at 380 Broadway through May 13)
Do you have three-plus hours for Joan of Arc, i.e., the George Bernard Shaw liberal-individualist version? Believe me, you do. And I have four actors for you: Andrus Nichols (as Joan), Tom O’Keefe, Ted Lewis, and Eric Tucker (who also directs). This doughty quartet, armed with minimal costume and light and no set to speak of, burn like meteors through Shaw’s meta-historic epic. Oh, for a muse of muslin! Without a flat or a caster, the Bedlam theater company works genuine miracles. Can the unworthy scaffold of the Access Theater bring forth so great an object? Can a cockpit that looks like it’s hosted actual cockfights hold the vast fields of France? You bet it can.

(Nearly) nekkid Shakespeare! »

Dustin Lance Black’s Star-Studded Prop 8 Play Reading Getting Digital Release

The March reading of Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black's Prop 8 play 8, which featured George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Jane Lynch, Kevin Bacon, and everyone else, will be available as a digital audio download beginning June 1, and on demand at latw.org starting June 9. The 90-minute production took place at Los Angeles's Wilshire Ebell Theatre and "served as a benefit for marriage equality that raised more than $2 million," the L.A. Times reports. If you can't wait, it's on YouTube, too.

Which Other Avengers Should Head to Broadway?

When news that Avengers co-stars Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner will star in a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reached Vulture's airborne hoverfortress, we put on our thinking-spandex and considered the implications for the Great White Way. While the duo will be appearing as different, non-superpowered characters, their blockbuster bona fides will be what draw many people into the theater. So just imagine what damage their other superteammates could do if they jumped onto Broadway, but fully suited! We all saw what Spider-Man did, all by his lonesome: Now think of what an entire team of slumming superheroes could accomplish and/or lay waste to!

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