Latest news with #BelascoTheater
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Darren Criss Wins First Tony Award for ‘Maybe Happy Ending'
Darren Criss is now a Tony winner. Criss won his first Tony Award on Sunday night for best actor in a leading role in a musical for Maybe Happy Ending, which is an original musical. He thanked his co-star in his acceptance speech. More from The Hollywood Reporter Tony Awards: 'Maybe Happy Ending' Wins Big, Nicole Scherzinger Takes Home First Tony BET Awards Set to Go Ahead as Planned Despite Los Angeles Protests; Organizers "Monitoring" Situation Nicole Scherzinger Wins Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical After Heated Race 'Helen J. Shen, I'm so proud of you and your Broadway debut for the books. This is where you belong,' he said before thanking the rest of the show's crew and his fellow teachers. The show also won best musical. Criss continued, 'Also my wife Mia, who took a massive swing on allowing me to do this and to allow this crazy upheaval in our life, to make this logistically possible and for bearing the brunt of raising two tiny friends under three so that I could raise a singing robot at the Belasco Theater eight times a week. Mia, you are the very pedestal that upholds the shiny spinny bit in our lives and your love and your support for me and our beautiful children combined with the miracle of working on something as magical as Maybe Happy Ending has been and will always be award enough.' Other nominees in his category included Andrew Durand (Dead Outlaw), Tom Francis (Sunset Blvd.), Jonathan Groff (Just in Time), James Monroe Iglehart (A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical) and Jeremy Jordan (Floyd Collins). Criss recently was featured in THR's Broadway roundtable where he spoke about his relationship to the show. 'Because I've done shows like Little Shop [of Horrors, Off Broadway] and Hedwig [and the Angry Inch, on Broadway] where people know the material, that can also be an obstacle and something that you have to overcome, for better or for worse. For me, I've never been a part of anything where audience has been completely unencumbered by expectation or experience. That in itself is an obstacle, because now I have to try and convince them that this is something somewhat worthwhile, but it is amazing to feel that the gasp of, 'What is going on?!,'' he said. 'But in short, this came to me in 2018, and it was just a matter of being available — the pandemic and then a strike and so many things that happened until finally the stars aligned in a way that I'm so grateful for.' Maybe Happy Ending is currently playing at the Belasco Theatre. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Seeing Double? 25 Pairs of Celebrities Who Look Nearly Identical From 'Lady in the Lake' to 'It Ends With Us': 29 New and Upcoming Book Adaptations in 2024 Meet the Superstars Who Glam Up Hollywood's A-List
Korea Herald
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
'Maybe Happy Ending' wins top award from New York Drama Critics' Circle
The original Korean musical "Maybe Happy Ending" has been named Best Musical by the New York Drama Critics' Circle. According to the organization's website on Wednesday, the musical -- a collaboration between writer Park Chun-hue, also known as Hue Park, and composer Will Aronson -- won the prestigious award at the 89th annual ceremony. It secured a majority on the first ballot, receiving 15 out of 23 votes from active New York-area drama critics. The New York Drama Critics' Circle, presented annually since 1936, is the second-oldest American playwriting honor, after the Pulitzer. Originally premiering in Seoul in 2016, "Maybe Happy Ending" has been staged multiple times in Korea due to its popularity. This critically acclaimed show made its Broadway debut last November, opening at the Belasco Theater in Manhattan, New York. Its US run, starring Darren Criss and Helen J Shen, has been extended through Jan. 17. Early this month, the musical also earned 10 nominations for the Tony Awards, which recognize excellence in live Broadway theater, including Best Musical and Best Direction. It is also nominated in three categories of the Drama League Awards: Outstanding Production, Outstanding Direction and Distinguished Performance. (Yonhap)
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Just Before It Was a Cult Film, ‘Rocky Horror Show' Was a Broadway Flop
Fifty years have passed, but the actor Tim Curry isn't sure he has ever forgiven the reception that 'The Rocky Horror Show' received in its original Broadway production, which was also his Broadway debut. 'I try not to think about it,' he said the other day by phone from Los Angeles. 'There's not much point in paddling through old failures.' Curry was back on Broadway the fall after 'Rocky Horror,' in Tom Stoppard's 'Travesties.' But, wanting not to be reminded, he has never returned to the Belasco Theater on West 44th Street, where the musical spoof that would soon become a cult-film phenomenon started previews on March 7, 1975, opened on March 10 and lasted just a month. On the heels of the show's successes in London, where it began in 1973 in the tiny upstairs theater at the Royal Court, and then in Los Angeles, at the Roxy nightclub, it was the kind of Broadway fizzle that seems baffling in retrospect — not least because some of its cast overlapped with the movie's. Arriving on Broadway after 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' was shot but several months before it was released, the musical starred Curry in the role he had originated in London, as the sexually omnivorous, corset-clad, extraterrestrial mad scientist Frank-N-Furter. Richard O'Brien, who wrote the musical, played the disquieting butler Riff-Raff, and Meat Loaf doubled as the doomed delivery boy, Eddie, and the scientist Dr. Scott. Jim Sharman, who directed the film, restaged his Los Angeles production for Broadway. Lou Adler — the record executive, an owner of the Roxy and producer of the 'Rocky Horror' film — produced. The Broadway reviews reflected a peculiar mix of chip-on-the-shoulder indignation: about sitting at the cabaret tables that had replaced the theater's orchestra seats; about enduring yet another British import; about being subjected to what some critics called 'trash.' (Roundabout Theater Company plans a second Broadway revival next spring at Studio 54.) Clive Barnes, who had enjoyed Sharman's production in London, argued in The New York Times that it had lost some vital craziness en route to Broadway and should have been staged in 'a filthy old cinema in the East Village.' Curry, now 78; O'Brien, 82; Sharman, 79; and Adler, 91, recently spoke in separate interviews about that Broadway production, which came only a year before late-night movie screenings started turning 'Rocky Horror' into a goth-camp classic. These are edited excerpts from those conversations. JIM SHARMAN It was a very unusual show. It was kind of immersive and subversive in its original form. [In London] we played it in what appeared to be, with Brian Thomson's design, demolished cinemas. Then Lou wanted to do it in the Roxy in L.A., and so it became a bit more of a rock 'n' roll horror show there. A touch of a Weimar cabaret to it. TIM CURRY A huge part of its charm was the small, insignificant places that we played in. That we made them hip. RICHARD O'BRIEN We had a lovely time. It was a commitment to fun. SHARMAN After the movie, I thought we were done, and I was getting ready to go back to Australia and do other things. And then it was kind of, 'No, we're doing Broadway.' It was certainly spoken of that they wanted to do Broadway prior to releasing the film. LOU ADLER It was more a personal thing than anything else, feeling like I'd like to have it be successful in New York. I wasn't looking for a traditional theater on Broadway. I was looking in the boroughs, something outside of Manhattan. I found a place that I really liked. A local theater that had bar mitzvahs and weddings and those kinds of things. And the guy, first he said I could have it, then he said he had to change the date because he had a bar mitzvah that was scheduled. So I started looking for another theater. I liked the history of the Belasco. But I wanted to make it into a theater similar to what I had done at the Roxy. CURRY I wasn't sure at all about Lou Adler's idea that, because when we played it at the Roxy there were tables and chairs and drinks, it should be the same kind of ambience. I didn't know whether that would work. And it didn't. O'BRIEN That was a fatal mistake. So many people had to sit sideways-on. And you can't ask people to watch a show sideways-on. CURRY Some of the highlights of the show were dangerous, because there was a sort of tawdry feel about it. I don't know that the new audience at the Belasco were up for that. They were just rather confused, I think. ADLER At that time, Broadway was much stiffer. It was more traditional, and they weren't really happy with anything that came from L.A. O'BRIEN Meat Loaf was great. He had a voice to die for back then. CURRY He was a force of nature. Good old boys believe in themselves. He was convinced that 'Rocky Horror' was going to make him the kind of star that he wanted to be. SHARMAN He did a very amusing Dr. Everett Scott, along the lines of Orson Welles. CURRY I used to barge about the theater down a ramp, and I think I probably got way too close to the audience for some people. Audiences, on Broadway at least, were expecting substance. And the substance they got at the Belasco was not particularly to their taste. O'BRIEN Theater in New York in those days was more precious. Those critics could make and break a show. CURRY I lost so much confidence. SHARMAN What we were doing with 'Rocky Horror' back then was trying to move the theater out of theater, in a funny kind of way. Because it was still captive to a 19th-century proscenium idea of itself, and middle-class people seeing middle-class lives in middle-class rooms. O'BRIEN It was far more stylized when we first started. The movie turned Frank-N-Furter glamorous. He wasn't. We weren't. It was much more expressionistic, you know, ghoulish, more gothic in a sense, and dirty, perhaps. But the weird thing was that this creature [Frank-N-Furter] would strut down the aisle and the women in the audience found him attractive. That was a change in social understanding, because that was a surprise to all of us as well. And not only that, the chap sitting next to the woman would go, 'I see what you mean.' CURRY I wasn't skin-deep gorgeous. I was gorgeous in attitude. And I was gorgeous, I think, in a certain kind of courage. It took a certain amount of courage to do the show in the first place, let alone translating it to New York. But then I started going to Elaine's, and that was my shelter. I used to go up to 88th Street and hide at Elaine's and eat the veal chop. O'BRIEN Recently, of course, and now with the authoritarian, far right, anti-gay, anti-rainbow brigade being loud and obnoxious, ['Rocky Horror' has] become a kind of sanctuary. It's a rainbow event in a way. SHARMAN Though the way the show's being done these days, which is a bit like an imitation of the movie, it's more like a Broadway show. It's now the show that probably they would have loved in 1975. ADLER What I learned immediately is if the critics didn't like you, you didn't have long. So at that point, not to spoil any of the excitement of coming out of London and L.A., and about the release of the film, I wanted to close as quickly as possible. If I regret it, I only regret it because I didn't give it the chance to grow. I don't know if it could have, but that might have been interesting, too. CURRY I had to go to the Algonquin Hotel, where I was staying, and tell them that I couldn't pay the bill. Because the show had been a flop. The manager was incredible and said, 'Don't worry, Mr. Curry. We know that you'll be back — on Broadway, in New York. One or the other. Probably both.' Which was super encouraging and so generous. The next time I was in New York, I went in there and counted out the money in $5 bills. O'BRIEN I remember standing with Tim outside the Algonquin — well, of the Royalton, actually, where I was staying. The Royalton was 40 bucks a night, which was fantastic. And I'm saying, 'Well, I suppose that's it.' We'd done the movie, and the show had closed. We both agreed that it had been a jolly nice ride. CURRY But I had high hopes for the movie, and I really wanted it to be wonderful. When I went back to London, there was a screening, and I was very disappointed by the movie and particularly by my performance in it. Because I thought that it could have been a bit more subtle. SHARMAN An interesting thing did happen because [the musical] lasted, what, a month? There was an audience that was still hungry for it. The film, which didn't have any names in it, kind of opened and shut like a door. But when the late-night [screenings] started, which was also in New York, at the Waverly, there was an audience that hadn't seen it that wanted to see it. And so the same city that had slightly punished it, in a way, on Broadway, became the kernel for what is still playing today, 50 years later. Karma.
