THE ENCORES! REVIVAL of Mary Rodgers's Once Upon a Mattress and the Broadway premiere of her son Adam Guettel's Days of Wine and Roses makes for a whiplash-inducing double feature.
Mattress is abundantly light and springy, while Guettel's musical rendering of the 1962 film by Blake Edwards (itself based on a teleplay by J.P. Miller) is a darkly adult affair-though it's also clearly a labor, and a story, of love. Actress and singer Kelli O'Hara floated the idea of adapting Edwards's film to Guettel 20 years ago, when they were at work on The Light in the Piazza, a show that would put them in the bright lights, O'Hara with a first-time Tony nomination and Guettel a win for Best Original Score. O'Hara knew she wanted to work with Brian d'Arcy James on the project; Guettel recruited his Piazza collaborator Craig Lucas to write the book. Now, two decades on-and after an Off Broadway run at the Atlantic-the show is palpably personal.
"It is a partnership like no other that I've had," James told the New York Times, while O'Hara said, "I've never been so passionate about anything in my life." Those are some big superlatives, but they feel fair: Days of Wine and Roses was built for O'Hara and James, both of whom are at the peak of their artistry. O'Hara sings all but four of the play's songs, and her voice is the kind of instrument that sends people scrabbling for metaphors. It's a prism, an alpine stream, a Golden Snitch-clear, shimmering, endlessly agile and controlled. She sings like Ginger Rogers dances. James's suave, deceptively mutable baritone is a beautiful complement for her. He's playing a PR man of the Mad Men era and persuasion, and his voice fits the part. Sometimes it's all pleasant surface. Other times, we're let in: It gets high and vulnerable, gains a nasty edge, or-as when he sings the show's imploring central ballad, "As the Water Loves the Stone, to O'Hara-it goes soft and gentle enough to support a newborn's head.
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Denne historien er fra February 12-25, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
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On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
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Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
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