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Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘New York audiences like weird': ‘Dead Outlaw' cast and creatives on their ‘freight train' of a musical
'It really feels like the most personal show to me,' reveals David Yazbek about his new musical Dead Outlaw. The composer has written music and lyrics for six Broadway productions and has earned Tony Award nominations for each one, winning for The Band's Visit in 2018. Of his latest effort, Yazbek says, 'The reason why the story of Elmer McCurdy has stuck with me for decades is because it works on a lot of different levels, and the deepest level for me has to do with mortality and desire.' Yazbek and many of the cast and creatives of Dead Outlaw recently sat down with Gold Derby and other journalists at the 2025 Tony Awards Meet the Nominees press event. The darkly comic Dead Outlaw chronicles the life and truly bizarre afterlife of McCurdy, a man born in Maine who moves West and unsuccessfully tries his hand at a life of crime before getting gunned down by a sheriff's posse. McCurdy's body was never claimed at the mortuary, and subsequently traveled around the United States for 60-plus years and displayed in wax museums, sideshows, Hollywood films, and amusement park rides before finally being identified and laid to rest in Oklahoma. More from GoldDerby 'Fallout' gets early Season 3 renewal ahead of Season 2 premiere in December 'Barbershop' TV Series ordered at Prime Video with Jermaine Fowler starring 'Shrinking' acting Emmy submissions include Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, Jessica Williams, and these 4 guest stars The score's cowriter Erik Della Penna, a first-time Tony nominee this year, says that while the score encompasses many different styles of American music, the songs came 'organically.' 'I don't think there was a whole lot of searching going on. … We went pretty deep into the story and deep into the themes of the story based on who we are, where we were born, and at these advanced ages, so a lot of the themes are biologically on the horizon,' describes the musician and lyricist. SEE Julia Knitel describes tackling triple roles in 'Dead Outlaw' and performing 'a perfect musical theater song' in the 'weirdest' show Dead Outlaw reunited much of the Tony-winning creative team behind The Band's Visit, which is one of the most awarded musicals in the honor's history, taking home 10 trophies. Librettist Itamar Moses, who was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year for his off-Broadway play The Ally, notes how the process of creating this musical mirrored that earlier work because he, Yazbek, and director David Cromer 'trust one another and have similar tastes.' Even so, he describes how the two musicals could not be more different: 'They're almost exact opposites. The Band's Visit takes place over one night, and Dead Outlaw covers a hundred years. The Band's Visit's all about these quiet, dialogue, spare scenes and people sitting ... and here, we're barreling ahead like a rock concert and like a freight train through all of this time." Andrew Durand, who earned his first Tony nomination for playing the title character, loves the range of the show. 'You get these explosive moments — there are big, exciting, theatrical moments – and then you zero in on these little, intimate, almost play-like moments.' One of those explosive moments is the song 'Killed a Man in Maine,' in which Elmer drunkenly weaves a tall tale about committing a murder, though there is no evidence that the real McCurdy ever did. 'I've really come to love that number, because it used to scare the hell out of me. I would do it and I would blow out all my gas on that number and then I'd have the rest of a show to do. … I've figured out how to incorporate it into the rest of the show.' For Featured Actress nominee Julia Knitel, the Tony Awards embrace of Dead Outlaw echoes what she's finding amongst audiences every night. 'From the time of our first performance, the audiences have really been on board. New York audiences like weird. We forget that it's okay to be different. … It's refreshing to have something that you've never seen before. New York audiences are smart, and I think as soon as they walk in, they realize this is not your typical musical.' Dead Outlaw earned seven Tony Award nominations, the second-most of any musical this year behind Buena Vista Social Club, Death Becomes Her, and Maybe Happy Ending, all at 10. In Gold Derby's current odds, Dead Outlaw ranks in second place for Best Musical and second place for Best Original Score, which would mark Yazbek's second victory. Moses has a commanding lead in the Best Musical Book category, which would be his second victory out of two nominations. Director Cromer and featured actor Jeb Brown both rank third in their respective categories, while Knitel ranks fourth and Durand fifth. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' 'It should be illegal how much fun I'm having': Lea Salonga on playing Mrs. Lovett and more in 'Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends' 'Death Becomes Her' star Jennifer Simard is ready to be a leading lady: 'I don't feel pressure, I feel joy' Click here to read the full article.
Boston Globe
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Sister Midnight' finds a very gory solution to the tedium of young married life
In the opening scenes we see the vibrancy and chaos of the city, but Uma (played by Bollywood star Radhika Apte) is isolated from all of it, stuck in a one-room shack waiting to serve her new, buffoonish husband. Advertisement Nearly undone by tedium, Uma begins to rebel in small ways, including getting a job as a cleaning woman at a travel agency in the wealthy part of the city, a world away. Along the way, she begins to change, and while she is initially horrified by her new desires, she eventually accepts herself. The only people she connects with at all are other outsiders — trans sex workers or female Buddhist monks who do not believe in God. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Director Karan Kandhari. Magnet Releasing Several other factors heighten the film's disorienting shift from real to surreal. Kandhari, who is British Indian and was born in Kuwait, began visiting Mumbai when he was young and became 'intoxicated' by the city. 'I visited it many times, like it was a weird addiction,' he says. 'It's a really strange place and I mean that as a compliment. I was always just trying to get my head around the place.' Advertisement But the Mumbai of the movie is neither the one he first visited — 'it's not a period piece' — nor is it exactly contemporary. 'I got stuck in the geography in my head,' he explains, saying he chose to replicate parts of the city that lived in his memory, which have long since vanished in actuality. 'I draw floor plans for things that don't exist and we have to adjust places to fit. So it's a weird mishmash of fragments of things I remember from the '80s or the '90s, or things I've seen from the '70s.' While 'Sister Midnight' has prompted comparisons to Wes Anderson films, Kandhari dismisses the connection, saying the rich colors and the unusual supporting characters are organic to Mumbai. 'We are probably influenced by the same people, but he's creating an artificial world of weirdness, whereas I see the world as inherently weird and strange and I'm trying to find that in the mundane.' Additionally, Uma's experiences are not just set to local music — the soundtrack features songs by Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Holly, The Band, The Stooges, and Motorhead. (Kandhari lives and breathes music and has directed videos for artists including Franz Ferdinand.) Yet the film is also, in an odd way, autobiographical, even though Kandhari's life is nothing like Uma's. He suffers from depression and says the film ponders what it's like to feel different and out of place without knowing how to handle it. Advertisement 'I have the sort of brain that questions things like societal norms if they don't make sense,' he says, so while the film is about this arranged marriage it's really about being trapped by societal expectations. 'We should always question the rules — just because something is old doesn't mean it's right.' Those themes, along with the wildly imaginative script, are what appealed to Apte, who holds together every scene no matter how strange it gets — and it gets quite strange, once some of the creatures she has devoured (birds and goats) come back to life in animated form and are fruitful and multiply. 'I've never read a script like this before. What happens is quite crazy and unexpected,' she says. 'I didn't always know what to think, but it was quite relatable, and I really liked how compassionate Karan was to all his characters.' Apte was fascinated by the fate that befalls Uma when 'All she does is ask 'Why' about the daily way of life that we blindly follow.' That trait resonated with Apte, who went to a progressive school in India when they were new and became 'a proper pain in the ass' because she was taught to question everything. 'If somebody says something that doesn't make sense, I'll ask, 'Can you explain why?' That's not me being arrogant. That's just me genuinely trying to understand.' Still, Apte found the role challenging at first. She studied math in school, so she 'needs logic for everything,' and she loves developing a character's biography to understand why they react to certain things. 'But I knew very little about Uma, whose past was summed up in five lines.' Advertisement Kandhari knew he was asking her to go against her instincts. 'She's a cerebral, intellectual person and analyzes a lot,' Kandhari says. 'My task when we started rehearsals was to get her to de-intellectualize everything, get her rooted in the present moment and impulsively performing with her body. She was a little scared in the first couple of days before it clicked.' So while Apte would normally figure out what her character was doing before taking action and why she'd take that action, she says the director would tell her, 'I want Uma to get up before you can think of why she gets up.' 'I really struggled at first, but then I stopped asking questions and it felt really right,' she says, adding that the role helped her grow as a person too. (Having a baby also furthered that change, she says. 'I've definitely stopped asking why she cries — she's crying, so I must do something.') 'I've become more likely to make a decision and then move on with it,' she says. 'I've started learning to relinquish control in life.' Apte is curious to see what American audiences make of the film, but says that it has resonated with audiences elsewhere. 'People have found it very relatable, which was quite cool, because when I read it for the first time, no matter how crazy the story felt, it also was very relatable.'
Irish Examiner
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
€345k West Cork musicians' retreat is so private 'it's perfect for the witness protection programme'
TEACHING piano to a then-teenage Simon Harris is just one of the many unexpected claims to fame of one of the owners of this Seehanes, Drimoleague, West Cork hideaway home. Have I the right key? Simon Harris in 2016 It's one that has been visited, stayed in, and enjoyed by some of Ireland's musical its owners are too respectful of their privacy to name them. If the walls of the hideaway artists retreat-like house could talk, they'd sing, chant, burst in to choruses and chords and give it a bit of old fashioned, raucous rock-and-roll welly. 'We don't do conventional,' says Ali, one of two serious musician owners of this West Cork charmer, replete now with instruments, rock-and-roll memorabilia and photographs, as well as hens, geese, and a braying donkey. The couple themselves, Stuart and Ali Crampton, are more Greystones than Bray, with multi-instrument playing Stuart having retired from music teaching after 23 years in Wicklow's Greystones, where, among his pupils, there was one 14-year-old Simon Harris, to whom he taught piano; he also wrote the music for a short play that the future Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader had written. Farm home and barn dances at Seehanes, Drimoleague Stuart has performed with a vast array of musicians, from the late Rick Danko, a founder of The Band, to Ronnie Wood, Cork's Cathal Dunne, Colm Wilkinson, and Mary Black's long-time guitar accompanist Pat Crowley: however, high-profile guests who've stayed here remain unnamed. 'We joke this is the perfect house for the witness protection programme, it's so private. There's a kilometre of lane up to it, which the council just redid at a considerable cost and we had to contribute to, but the result is utter privacy; you don't hear another sound here,' says Ali, who grew up working on film sets and rubbing shoulders with movie stars ( her dad had a film catering company). Purple reigns Having fallen for the West Cork lifestyle and now well-embedded in the local music scene, they are on the move to a similar type of traditional house, only nearer the sea. They are selling here at Seehanes, near Drimoleague, and sort of in an equidistant triangle of reach to Clonakilty, Skibbereen, and Bantry. Niamh Moloney, of Sherry FitzGerald O'Neill, is handling the sale (SFON also handled the sale to the Cramptons for US-based previous owners two years ago), and she guides the characterful, three-bedroomed, traditional-style home of over 1,000 sq ft at €345,000. It has good living space in the effectively one-room wide main build, with a rear kitchen, utility and bathroom behind, and above three bedrooms, plus boxroom/home office, with a bathroom off the rear one. Kitchen cabinet Only lightly modernised, with wall-to-wall rock and music images and craftily upcycled furniture finds and still with heaps of retained character and original 'feel,' it has had windows replaced, has oil central heating, and a large wood-burning stove in a wide inglenook fireplace and gets a D1 BER. It has an enclosed garden/music jamming room, several sheds and useful outbuildings, plus traditional, curved steel barn, and is on almost 2.5 acres with a paddock to the rear. Jammy VERDICT: 'A grand-daughter of a previous owner contacted the agents after the photos went online to say the house had always been a happy one and had never looked so good,' says Ali.
BBC News
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Sheffield musical casting young men as Take That
A casting call has gone out for men aged 18-25 to appear in a musical about the passionate fans of boyband Take theatre company Sheffield Teachers' Operatic Society (STOS) will stage a production of The Band at the Lyceum Theatre in show features Take That's songs and premiered in Manchester in 2017 before a West End chairman Mark Harris said the group wanted to audition actors to play the five members of the band and added: "We're not necessarily looking for the next Gary Barlow or an imitation Robbie Williams, but boyband members that teenage girls would scream at." The Band tells the story of five female best friends who reunite after 25 years over their mutual love of the boyband they worshipped in their will be held on the evening of 16 May at Charnock Hall Primary Academy in Sheffield. Performers are asked to prepare a one-minute "blast" of a Take That song to showcase their vocal range. Harmonies will also be tested on the Harris added: "It's not full-on dancing. They need rhythm but think of those early Take That videos. High energy, that's the vibe we're going for." STOS formed in the city in 1901, but Mr Harris said it was a challenge to attract and entertain modern audiences."The theatre family is changing, generations are evolving, it's tricky to get people to come now unless it's a celebrity with a star billing."They see our amateur status and it scares them off, but we strive for professional standards and we do a brilliant job, we hire some professional people behind the scenes and a professional orchestra." He said there had also been changes in people's ticket-buying habits since Covid."People don't book online early anymore, they decide three weeks before the show."It definitely gets a bit squeaky bum time."Despite the uncertain environment, Mr Harris is confident that the new production in the autumn will be a hit."We'd love the original Take That fans of Sheffield to come along, perhaps with their daughters or other family members. It would be a wonderful family thing." Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Arnold Schwarzenegger Hilariously Reacts to His Son Patrick's Nude Scene in The White Lotus
Arnold Schwarzenegger's son bares all on The White Lotus this season… and Arnold is one proud papa. Patrick Schwarzenegger, the eldest son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, plays entitled rich kid Saxon in Season 3 of HBO's luxury vacation dramedy (debuting this Sunday at 9/8c), and after the show's L.A. premiere on Tuesday, Arnold spilled the beans that Patrick has a nude scene in the first episode. He was impressed, too. More from TVLine Ben Stiller to Star in Music Industry Dramedy The Band at HBO House of the Dragon Season 3 Casts James Norton as Ormund Hightower The Righteous Gemstones Sets March Premiere Date for Fourth and Final Season 'I was so pumped to take a break from filming to celebrate [Patrick] at the White Lotus Season 3 premiere,' Arnold wrote in an Instagram post. 'What a show! I could claim to be surprised to find out he has a nude scene, but what can I say — the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Don't miss it this Sunday — trust me.' (Arnold might be referring to his own nude scene in the 1984 sci-fi classic The Terminator, where his cyborg character travels back in time, arriving completely naked.) Joining Patrick in The White Lotus' Season 3 cast are Parker Posey and Jason Isaacs, who play Saxon's parents Victoria and Timothy, along with Sarah Catherine Hook as sister Piper and Sam Nivola as brother Lochlan. Also in the cast: Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood as couple Rick and Chelsea; Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb as gal pals Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate; and Lalisa Manobal and Tayme Thapthimthong as hotel staffers Mook and Gaitok. Plus, Natasha Rothwell reprises her Season 1 role as spa manager Belinda. Will you be booking another stay at ? Let us know what you're hoping to see in Season 3. (Besides, you know, that nude scene.) Best of TVLine The Emmys' Most Memorable Moments: Laughter, Tears, Historical Wins, 'The Big One' and More 'Missing' Shows, Found! The Latest on Severance, Holey Moley, Poker Face, YOU, Primo, Transplant and 25+ Others Summer TV Calendar: Your Guide to 85+ Season and Series Premieres
