1. Punxsutawney Phil, aka Raymond J. Lee, in transit. Amy Lombard for The New York Times

    Relive 'Groundhog Solar day'

    Raymond J. Lee is overlooked when he wears his groundhog costume in rehearsals for "Groundhog Day," a new musical based on the hit motion-picture show that comes to Broadway this spring after a London run. Not because the design is demure; it stands about six-and-a-half-feet tall and would phone call for size 18s if groundhogs could wear sneakers. Merely at 5-foot-9, Mr. Lee has optics sitting somewhere around the critter'south oral cavity. "Everyone looks up at the groundhog'south eyes," he said. "I'chiliad similar, guys I'g right here."

    The groundhog pops upwardly a few times during the musical, a fourth dimension-warping romantic one-act almost a frustrated weatherman, played by Andy Karl, who lives the same solar day over and over after reporting from Punxsutawney, Pa., on the weather-predicting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil.

    Rob Howell, the show'due south Tony Award-winning costume and fix designer ("Matilda the Musical") said he drew inspiration for the bushy conform during a trip to Punxsutawney. Mr. Howell was so taken with a man he saw dressed in a Phil get-up that he designed a homage of sorts, making sure non to arrive look likewise jokey.

    "He's there for selfies, and he's handing out leaflets, and he's probably miserable within this matter," Mr. Howell said. "But you'll never know because he's got his happy face on."

    Mr. Lee's costume, which is repurposed from the bear witness'southward London run, is fabricated of faux fur from top to toe, with "fancy spats," as Mr. Howell put it, that cover the actor'south sneakers to resemble a manus. The head was sculpted in clay and vacuum-formed. The groundhog's face is made of an open-weave fabric that helps Mr. Lee breathe, yet appears opaque under phase lights.

    Mr. Howell is still at work on how to all-time keep Mr. Lee cool when costumed. 1 mode would be to install cold packs inside a body suit that fits snugly against Mr. Lee. Tiny air vents can likewise aid an actor's body breathe.

    Along with his fourth dimension on phase as the groundhog (he'southward also an ensemble member), Mr. Lee is probable to put on the fur in promotional appearances for the show. At a recent photo shoot in Central Park, children ran to the actor to give him hugs.

    "Information technology's automated with this costume," Mr. Lee said. "It merely makes people happy."

    –ERIK PIEPENBURG

  2. The stretcher pratfall has 2 parts. In Act 1, two characters try to remove a dead body, only the canvas rips; the actors go out carrying just the poles, hoping no one will notice that the body is still there. So, in Act Two, at that place'southward some other stiff; the actors endeavor to remove it using but the poles, only they struggle mightily to get through the door. Andrew Testa for The New York Times

    'The Play That Goes Wrong' Well-nigh Went Really Incorrect

    Fires are no joke. Just information technology seemed similar the theater gods might exist playing some kind of prank when flames broke out on Feb. 10 inside Broadway'southward venerable Lyceum.

    The theater'southward adjacent show is a British import, "The Play That Goes Wrong," which is, every bit the title suggests, about a play that goes horribly incorrect. The fire — happily minor — wasn't part of the programme, but it allowed the producers to add a new calamity to their marketing plan:

    But what makes "The Play That Goes Incorrect" so funny that it has been running in London's West End for more than 2 years, touring Britain, and produced in several other countries? And so funny that one of America's most successful motion-picture show directors, J.J. Abrams, signed on as a co-producer to aid bring it to Broadway?

    The premise is simple — a troupe of actors (the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society) is performing a murder mystery. But the group'due south extremely hostage efforts at drama are repeatedly batty by dropped lines, dropped props and dropped bodies — the play is a fiasco from beginning to end, though the characters are not in on the joke. It's a classic farce, with a slapstick sensibility honed through improv.

    "For the cloth that gets the big laughs, the audience understands and knows fully what it would be if information technology goes right," said Jonathan Sayer, who wrote the show with two college friends, Henry Lewis and Henry Shields. "It's funny considering tonally it cuts against what it should have been."

    – MICHAEL PAULSON

  3. Chris Rock Kevin Mazur/WireImage

    Chris Rock on Bout: Quotes from the Stage

    The most anticipated comedy show of the year is Chris Rock's "Full Coma" tour, his first in nearly a decade, which features a new, more than confessional, fifty-fifty melancholy vocalization. Mr. Rock will travel to more than 30 cities.

    –JASON ZINOMAN

    ON RELATIONSHIPS

    In that location is no equality in a relationship. You lot're in a ring. Someone sings pb and someone needs to plays the tambourine.

    ON BULLYING

    Bullies are the fertilizer to aid good people grow.

    ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE

    You don't desire to exist a black man in any courtroom. Fifty-fifty a blackness judge brings his lawyer to court —just in instance.

  4. Male parent John Misty in 2015. Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

    Father John Misty Prepares a 'Love Letter to Humanity'

    Ii years agone, Father John Misty went viral by covering a Ryan Adams song, which was itself a cover of Taylor Swift'southward "Blank Infinite." This deadpan arroyo to irony imbues nearly every track on his new anthology, "Pure Comedy" (April 7).

    When this singer, built-in Joshua Tillman, is feeling generous, he refers to our species as "the globe's most soulful predators." Which is why it comes as a surprise when Mr. Tillman describes the record as "a dearest letter to humanity." "Life for humans is sort of a comedy of errors," he said by phone. "That's the thing that I honey near humanity: our absurdity."

    The songs, written in 2015, were meant to exist funny, but at present, equally Mr. Tillman prepares to release them into a changed world, the big fright is that audiences for his leap tour will no longer be as willing to laugh: "People are really aroused right now, and they're more probable to take these songs maybe a little as well literally."

    Then again, fifty-fifty though Begetter John Misty shows are known for their acerbic and self-aware, off-the-cuff stage banter, Mr. Tillman admits that when he finally returns to the stage, he may not exist able to laugh much himself. "Information technology'due south going to be hard not to cry when I sing 'Each other's all we've got,'" he said, quoting the last line of the new anthology's title rails.

    Then, in telling fashion, fifty-fifty this becomes a joke. "I'll probably be bringing a lot more crying to my shows," he continued. "And tear cannons. Only showering the audience with tears. It volition be like going to see Shamu or something." (Information technology will probably still be very funny.)

    –NICK MURRAY

    Father John Misty is scheduled to appear at Coachella, which runs from April 14 to 23.

  5. Jan LaVoy and Michael Emerson in "Wakey, Wakey," the new play from Volition Eno. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

    Wonder, and Weep, With Will Eno

    "Is it now? I thought I had more time." Those are the opening lines of "Wakey, Wakey," Will Eno's new play which invites us to commiserate with a wry lowest every bit he narrates his own passing. Yet similar much of Mr. Eno's work ("The Realistic Joneses"), the play promises to lace the sadness with unexpected flashes of joy. ("We're non here to mope, correct?" the man continues. "We're here to listen to music and drink some grape juice, perhaps get a gratis T-shirt.")

    So what makes Mr. Eno cry? Here are five things that came to his listen when recently asked:

    Chad Batka for The New York Times

    • 1. Recent photographs of children in war and refugee crises: Alan Kurdi, Omran Daqneesh, and others.

      These are different, in kind and degree, from anything else I could list. Most people were overwhelmed by the intensity of the violence compared to the smallness of the children in the pictures, their Snoopy sweatshirts and the petty apparel. I'm sure we're all however trying to convert our shock and sadness into activity and care.

    • 2. My grandmother dying, trying to tell us virtually this affair she kept seeing.

      She was 102 and kept telling anybody nigh these tiny fiddling men who would march past her window with a brightly colored flag. I didn't know then that dying people are frequently trying to tell us something very specific, simply in a metaphorical way. After all her years of listening, to grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I wish I had listened better and so, and had asked her more nearly what she saw, so that she might take felt heard and understood.

    • three. A young kid sings the national anthem at a small-scale-league baseball game.

      I love that feeling of everyone in the place wanting information technology to become well, but the whole responsibility, the solitary effort to put all that feeling and pride and promise into i vocal, rests with the kid at the mic, alone near abode plate. Those final difficult notes sometimes come right when a person'due south confidence is riding highest and it's such a thrill, that feeling of something being close to catastrophe and y'all can't await to clap for information technology. You lot want it to last, you want it to be over and have gone well, and information technology all means the game is nigh to showtime, so information technology's a pretty moving moment.

    • 4. The Reddish Sox winning the 2004 World Series

      That was just an amazing feeling, or end of pent-upwards feelings, for Sox fans. Incredibly personal and small at the same time it was yard and historical. I felt some version of it when the Cubs won in 2016, too.

    • 5. The Monday Stominy Cub

      This is how our daughter, who'due south two and a one-half, says "The Monday Astronomy Club," which is what we called it when we went outside to look at the moon terminal Monday. Compared to all of the known astronomical scientific discipline and to the immense mystery of the universe, the difference between what she knows and what I know is not that large. I tin pronounce certain words, sure, but we stand up beneath the deep, nighttime heaven in roughly the aforementioned ignorance and awe.

    –Volition ENO

    "Wakey, Wakey" opens February. 27 at the Signature Theater Center; signaturetheatre.org.

  6. Prince, in concert in 1985. Associated Press

    Remember Prince With the Revolution

    April 21 is the anniversary of Prince's death. There are many means to celebrate his remarkable career: listening to his music on all major streaming services for the first time, visiting the museum at his Paisley Park compound in Minnesota. But there'due south simply one selection if y'all want to shed majestic tears while hearing the band Prince formed in 1979 play some of his about beloved songs: The Revolution is going on tour.

    The Revolution backed Prince on several albums, including "Purple Rain," and its current lineup — Lisa Coleman, Matt Fink (who'south called Dr.), Wendy Melvoin, Mark Brownish (a.k.a. Brownmark) and Bobby Rivkin (known equally Bobby Z) — played iii memorial shows in September at the Minneapolis order Outset Avenue, where parts of the picture were filmed. About of the group's members (and a host of guests) took the mike at the memorials, which included songs likely to make the cut on tour: "Let's Go Crazy," "1999," "Raspberry Beret" and, of course, "When Doves Cry."

    –NICK MURRAY

    The tour starts at Paisley Park on Apr xx and 21, and comes to B.B. King'due south in New York on Apr 28 and Webster Hall on May 3.

  7. Irene Sankoff and David Hein Damon Wintertime/The New York Times

    'Come From Away': A Tale of Kindness — Newfoundland-Style — on 9/11

    Irene Sankoff and David Hein had planned to go married in 2002. Merely the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made them reconsider their long engagement: What were they waiting for?

    So on Oct. 12, 2001, they hopped on the subway and rode down to Metropolis Hall in Lower Manhattan; they passed the armed soldiers and the military jeeps and the words "Heroes Live Forever" written in dust on a storefront. And, with i cousin as their witness, they eloped.

    Asserting dear and customs in the aftermath of horror was an impulse motion. But now, 16 years later, information technology is the theme of their emotional musical, "Come From Away," which tells the picayune-known (to Americans) story of a urban center in Newfoundland that in the days after the terrorist attacks sheltered thousands of air passengers whose flights had been grounded.

    The musical is lively — powered by a Newfoundland folk rock score — and funny; the culture clashes are mined for all they're worth. Just invariably audiences cry, not but because of the persistent power of that day (which is non depicted in the testify), just too, surprisingly, because watching human beings be generous to frightened strangers (and the evidence is largely about hospitality) seems to induce tears.

    "We run across information technology and then rarely that it'south almost shocking," Ms. Sankoff said. "We are so used to the fearfully shocking, the disturbingly shocking, that to see something that is refreshingly openhearted and good-natured and just done to brand someone else'south life easier — you never see that, and I recollect people are shocked by that."

    The musical's arrival on Broadway is somewhat remarkable — it is just the second show always by Ms. Sankoff and Mr. Hein, who wrote the music, lyrics and book. Ms. Sankoff, raised on movie musicals in Toronto, wanted to exist an actor and a dancer, while Mr. Hein, raised on folk festivals and roots stone in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, wanted to be a singer-songwriter. They decided to try writing shows so they could spend more than time together, and their first collaboration, a musical about his family called "My Mother'southward Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding," became a Toronto fringe festival hit. (The couple non only wrote that show just also starred in it.)

    Then Michael Rubinoff, a theater producer trying to jump-start Canadian musical theater, gave them an idea, which several more experienced writers had turned down: How about taking a await dorsum at what had happened in Gander, Newfoundland?

    The resultant show has had a circuitous (and buzz-building) path to Broadway — developmental stagings at Sheridan College near Toronto, festivals at Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut and the National Alliance for Musical Theater in New York, and productions at the La Jolla Playhouse, Seattle Repertory Theater, Ford's Theater in Washington, and the Royal Alexandra Theater in Toronto. The entire cast and crew fifty-fifty flew to Gander last fall to perform the songs in a hockey arena then Newfoundlanders would have a chance to see how they were being depicted.

    The creative team has used the opportunity presented by having multiple pre-Broadway productions to fine-melody the emotional arc, and impact, of the story — making sure the desolation is balanced with laughter, and with promise.

    "Nosotros've been very careful crafting it to make a safe space," Mr. Hein said. "If y'all're worried about this, don't worry well-nigh information technology. Come to Newfoundland with united states, where nosotros're going to tell a story."

    Theater, of course, is seen through the prism of the time in which it is staged. The onset of the Trump administration, with its skepticism about immigrants and refugees, is likely to shift the way "Come From Away" is perceived, making it feel less near the backwash of a terrorism attack and more near the welcoming of foreigners.

    "It is a story virtually Americans every bit refugees, which is an interesting thing that Americans don't have to deal with very often," said the show's director, Christopher Ashley, who is likewise the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse. "Everyone working on the show feels lucky at this moment to exist telling a story almost generosity."

    –MICHAEL PAULSON

    Now in previews, and opens March 12 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater; comefromaway.com.

  8. Jews existence escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German language soldiers in 1943. Associated Press

    Exist Humbled by the 'Joy' of Beethoven

    The "Ode to Joy" at the cease of Beethoven'southward Ninth Symphony, which Alan Gilbert and the New York Combo will be playing in 5 performances in May, stirs you even when y'all listen to it at home, solitary. Simply there is something about hearing it alive, surrounded by a few chiliad others, that takes information technology from hummable to center-wrenching. Of a sudden the "millions" that the text describes embracing are all around you lot; the "world" that the chorus addresses is correct in that location in the hall.

    Even if you've heard this famous melody dozens of times before, I dare y'all not to crumble. Information technology could hardly be a more tense, divisive time, and no 1 expects Beethoven to solve anything. But his earnest vision of all people uniting is ane that could, especially now, bring tears.

    Mr. Gilbert is pairing information technology with Schoenberg's raw, bristling "Survivor From Warsaw," with a simmering orchestra over which a narrator gives an intense spoken account of suffering in the Holocaust. The work concludes with a passionate setting of "Sh'ma Yisrael," the prayer at the center of Jewish belief. For this music to lead directly into the roiling darkness and gleaming low-cal of Beethoven'southward Ninth will be an experience of rare power.

    – ZACHARY WOOLFE

  9. Bette Midler at Madison Square Garden in 2015. Chad Batka for The New York Times

    Be Dazzled past Bette Midler

    Sometimes an actress and a office seem so fated to come up together on Broadway that if they don't, choirs of angels weep might-have-been tears. So delighted cries were heard that a match had been struck in sky when information technology was learned that Bette Midler would be appearing as the American musical's favorite matchmaker. That's the singing steamroller Dolly Levi in Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart's "Howdy, Dolly!," a prove that has been a diva's delight since Carol Channing created the part 53 years ago. Ms. Midler is fabulous for the Dolly-ish virtues of chutzpah, warmth, song brass, stage-filling presence and a way with the boys. So bring on the dancing waiters. Bette'south back where she belongs.

    –BEN BRANTLEY

  10. In 'War Paint,' a Sing-Off Between Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole

    It'south a sing-off that "The Voice" could merely dream of: Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole going mano a mano (or rather, larynx a larynx) on the same phase. Ms. LuPone and Ms. Ebersole are great musical stars of roughly the same historic period and wattage, only their vocal styles are as different of those of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin (to summon their equivalents of an earlier generation). So imagine the sparks — and the decibels and the perfume bottles and the imitation eyelashes — that should fly when they play battling cosmetic titans in "State of war Paint," the new bio-musical by Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie almost Helena Rubinstein (Ms. LuPone) and Elizabeth Arden (Ms. Ebersole).

    –BEN BRANTLEY

  11. Diana Vishneva's Goodbye Ballet Operation

    Diana Vishneva Oleg Zotov

    Farewell performances tin have a surreal side: How can we come to terms with a final bow? That sentiment is even more astute when considering the inimitable Diana Vishneva, 40, who will footstep down every bit a primary with American Ballet Theater on June 23. Ever since this sultry, fashionable Russian ballerina, revered for her plasticity and daring, fabricated her New York debut in 1997 at a gala celebrating Diaghilev — condign a main with Ballet Theater in 2005 — she has entranced audiences with her glamour and expressiveness. Movement simply about melts off her trunk, so it's fitting that she has called a passionate part that she can really sink her pointe shoes into: Tatiana in John Cranko's stirring "Onegin."

    –GIA KOURLAS

    June nineteen, 23; Metropolitan Opera Firm; abt.org.

  12. Renée Fleming Bids Farewell to Major Roles at the Met

    Renee Fleming Damon Wintertime/The New York Times

    Rarely has a singer, a role, an opera house and a moment come together equally they will this spring, when the soprano Renée Fleming bids farewell to major roles at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production of 1 of her signature pieces: Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier." The Met has been Ms. Fleming'south home going dorsum to 1988, when she was a winner of its National Council Auditions. Near 250 performances later — amongst them gorgeous evenings of Mozart, Verdi, Strauss and Tchaikovsky (an urgent, autumnal "Eugene Onegin") — she is moving ever more into music assistants and slowly leaving the stage behind. She says auf wiedersehen with a work tailor-made for the occasion: Witty and nostalgic, one-half-grinning and half-crying, "Rosenkavalier" is about an aristocrat whose younger lover falls for a girl his own age — and also near a star singer saying goodbye.

    –ZACHARY WOOLFE

    Performances begin April 13 and run through May 13, Metropolitan Opera House.

  13. Bobby Cannavale will play Yank in Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape." Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

    Experience His Fury: Bobby Cannavale

    For months, the actor Bobby Cannavale has pestered the people in his life: What does belonging mean to them, and where do they experience they belong?

    "Even the nearly misanthropic people, they'll give y'all an answer," he said one February afternoon from Miami, where he was visiting family unit.

    What he'due south been trying to put his finger on is what a person loses when his sense of belonging disappears — a key, he thinks, to unlocking his side by side role: Yank, the furious, disillusioned, coal-stoking laborer at the heart of Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape" (1922), offset a limited run on March 25 at the Park Artery Armory.

    "Considering when you lot lose something, what practice y'all do?" Mr. Cannavale asked. "You do everything you lot can to endeavor to reclaim it."

    Richard Jones, the production's Olivier Award-winning managing director, said the show'due south success is "all about the atomic number 82 role player, really." When Mr. Jones staged information technology at the Old Vic Theater in London in 2015, Bertie Carvel ("Matilda the Musical") was his Yank. But for New York, who amend to personify O'Neill's wounded brute than Mr. Cannavale?

    A Tony nominee for "The ____________ With the Lid" a few seasons back, and more recently the star of the HBO serial "Vinyl," he specializes in handsome, unpolished types. Though he showtime read "The Hairy Ape" in his 20s, Mr. Cannavale, 46, has never done an O'Neill play before. Yet O'Neill's dense, phonetically written dialogue — packed with words like "youse" and "skoit" (brim, that is: a woman) — feels natural to Mr. Cannavale. "It reads to me very much similar music," he said. "It'southward quite gorgeous, I think."

    Yank is a tough guy amid tough guys, and on the ocean liner where he feeds the furnace to proceed the transport moving, he has a proud and romantic vision of the importance of his function. But when a wealthy young passenger comes beyond him on a visit to the stokehole, Yank recognizes her horror. "Oh, the filthy brute!" she says, and faints. Yet Yank is the one who reels, in an instant losing his sense of where he fits in the world. Convinced that she looked at him as if he were a hairy ape, he vows revenge.

    At the Old Vic, Mr. Jones'due south stylized product played out on a proscenium phase, but in the armory'southward vast Drill Hall, the gear up will revolve around the audience on something similar a giant conveyor belt. The cast is new, also, with just one holdover from London: Phil Hill, who plays the gorilla in the concluding scene. ("The costume was £5,000, and it only fits him," Mr. Jones said.)

    Mr. Cannavale doesn't much need to business organisation himself with the play'due south expressionism; the choreography will generally occur around him. Mr. Jones has instructed him to approach the role realistically.

    The setup is real plenty to him, anyway. He has long traveled in glamorous circles — his ex-wife is the screenwriter Jenny Lumet, whose father was the director Sidney Lumet, and Mr. Cannavale is engaged to the actress Rose Byrne — but he grew upwardly working grade. It isn't hard for him to notation parallels between Yank'southward situation and what he has known in his own family unit.

    And it has not escaped him that Yank'due south drama volition unfold on the Upper Due east Side.

    "Information technology's almost similar the armory itself is the ship that he's working on," Mr. Cannavale said. "He says: 'What practise them slobs in the commencement cabin got to do with us? Ane of us guys could have the whole mob with one mitt. Put one of them downwards here for one scout in the stokehole, what'd happen? They'd conduct him off on a stretcher.' You could say the same thing virtually the people that are sitting in the audition."

    –LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES

    Begins performances March 25 at the Park Artery Armory, armoryonpark.org.

  14. Billie Joe Armstrong, with Green Solar day in Amsterdam in January, said, "Our gigs almost feel like political rallies." Ferdy Damman/Agence French republic-Presse — Getty Images

    Stoke the Burn With Green Day

    There was a time when a Green Solar day concert was well-nigh screaming along to three-chord songs about being lazy and feeling crazy. Then came "American Idiot," th is California band'southward ambit i ous 2004 volley against President George West. Bush and the Iraq war, and "21st Century Breakdown," a 2d stone-opera-style anthology about post-Bush angst, 5 years later on.

    The grouping took a lengthy intermission from political punk, but returned in October with its 12th studio album, "Revolution Radio," another ferocious batch of songs about anxious protagonists in an uncertain world. "It's not that I'one thousand Nostradamus or anything like that, simply we knew something unlike was going to happen," the band'south singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong said. "Our gigs near feel like political rallies — plus the craziest party you've ever been to."

    Green Day, which played its commencement testify in 1987, began this year with a brief tour through Europe, where Mr. Armstrong doubled down on the protest vibe by singing certain lyrics through a megaphone. The ready list has been heavy on "American Idiot," whose title runway is recharged by audition reactions to Donald J. Trump'south presidency. "Playing that song has been pretty intense," Mr. Armstrong said. "The style people react, you tin encounter there'south a lot of anger brewing."

    –NICK MURRAY

    Green Day's arena tour begins March 1 in Phoenix and comes to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on March 15.

  15. Patrick Burns/The New York Times

    The Met Opera Celebrates Its M, Erstwhile Domicile

    Opera is e'er at to the lowest degree a trivial cornball. But the reveries will exist more powerful than usual this leap when the Metropolitan Opera celebrates a milestone: the 50th anniversary of its cherry-red-carpeted, aureate-chandeliered, dramatically staircased home at Lincoln Center. due east

    Plácido Domingo, Anna Netrebko, Renée Fleming and many others volition perform at a gala concert on May 7, singing selections from great moments of the opera house's by.

    The "New Met" opened on Sept. sixteen, 1966, "a brightly lighted architectural toy," the Times reported at the time. The audience included Lady Bird Johnson and "hundreds of formally dressed tycooons, aristocrats, nabobs, bankers, moguls, diplomats, potentates, fashion plates, grande dames and other contrasted Great Social club over-achievers."

    And the opera? Leontyne Pryce starred in the premiere of Samuel Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra." Justino Díaz and Rosalind Elias performed with the grand dame, and in these edited interviews, they talked about that night.

    Leontyne Price starred in Samuel Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra" at the Metropolitan Opera. Larry C. Morris/The New York Times

    JUSTINO DÍAZ I have never stopped thinking about that night. The glamour, the glitz. The opera business firm was the showcase; the opera was secondary. Just Leontyne was one of the v or six vocal miracles that I have e'er heard in my life. To be on stage with her, two anxiety away, and feeling those vibrations touch you, time stopped for me.

    The acoustics were wonderful. I beloved that the voice came back to you, that you lot had feedback, which makes it easier to sing piano, or mezzo forte, even if at the Met you lot never run into the dorsum wall. At La Scala, it's similar singing into a pillowcase.

    The solar day of the opening, I was focused on my routine, getting up and getting breakfast. Having lunch, because then I wouldn't consume until afterwards the functioning in those days. I was concentrating on my lines and going over the music. After it was over, in that location was a supper in the lobby, and in that location were so many people that I couldn't get shut enough to see the dignitaries. Maybe they didn't fifty-fifty come.

    ROSALIND ELIAS It does seem like yesterday. Every name was in the audience — the Kennedys, Rockefellers, everyone was there.

    The technology of the new theater was phenomenal, and of course, it didn't piece of work in any of the rehearsals. We would go stuck, Leontyne and I, in the pyramid. The mechanics were so new that they weren't working, up to and including the dress rehearsal. But somehow, everything went smoothly opening night.

    There was a large political party, as usual. Everybody had a skilful time, got a little high; there was lots of champagne. The theater is lovely, of course, and it was fifty-fifty lovelier then because we'd not seen an entrance like that. And people were on the staircase having photos taken, and it was such an honor to be a function of it.

    Those days were but wonderful. The business firm was like a family. The bandage was together, helping each other. It was similar when I starting time came to New York and wanted to make a career in music: Information technology was brand new.

    –ZACHARY WOOLFE

  16. The Dissimilar Flavors of the Aforementioned Processed Man

    "And what an extraordinary little human he was!"

    50-three years agone, Roald Dahl introduced Willy Wonka to the world, an ebullient and eccentric candymaker who Dahl described as "the greatest inventor and maker of chocolates that in that location has ever been" in the at present beloved children'south book, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

    In the years since, screen and stage actors take donned the top hat to bring Wonka to life, portraying him in a multifariousness of means — some mannerly, some creepy, some a mix of both. This spring, a new musical accommodation of "Charlie," significantly reworked after playing to mixed reviews in London, arrives on Broadway, with Christian Borle leading the American cast every bit the kooky chocolatier. As the character is reimagined, over again, for theater's biggest phase, hither'south a look at Wonkas onetime and new, in terms he might well understand.

    Quentin Blake

    1964

    "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (novel)

    Illustrated by Quentin Blake

    Wrapping Black top hat, plum-colored velvet tail coat, canteen green trousers, pearly gray gloves, and a gold-topped walking stick. This original Wonka wore a goatee, and, according to Dahl, had a "loftier and flutey" phonation.

    Flavor A scrap paranoid — afterward falling prey to corporate espionage, he allows no ane in or out of his factory for x years — and cruel — comically harsh punishments are meted out to misbehaving children. But he is too affable and, ultimately, generous.

    Tasting notes "He was like a squirrel in the quickness of his movements, similar a quick clever old squirrel from the park." (Roald Dahl in "Charlie and the Chocolate Manufactory.") hoping to supervene upon this quote if i notice a better one

    Silvery Screen Collection/Getty Images

    1971

    "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (movie)

    Played past Gene Wilder

    Wrapping A regal velvet jacket, with pockets (Wilder thought that looked less feminine), sandy colored pants ("Slime green trousers are icky," he wrote in a letter to the managing director), and a brown top hat (to match the shoes). This Wonka made his entrance with an affected limp.

    Flavor More often than not genial, just too cavalierly indifferent as the children suffer their comeuppances. And, of course, he sings.

    Tasting notes "Wilder's graphic symbol is rather cynical and sadistic until virtually the end of the film." (Review in Multifariousness.)

    Warner Bros., via Associated Press

    2005

    "Charlie and the Chocolate Manufactory" (movie)

    Played by Johnny Depp

    Wrapping Now the glaze is cerise; Wonka has a bob haircut, wears goggle-like sunglasses, and a "W" pin at his neckline.

    Flavor This is the weirdest Wonka — the portrayal is dark, haunted by a new backstory, and quite hostile to children.

    Tasting notes "Like an unholy mash-up of Mr. Rogers and Truman Capote " (Review past A.O. Scott in The New York Times.)

    Helen Maybanks

    2013

    "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (Due west Finish musical)

    Played by Douglas Hodge

    Wrapping The traditional purple coat, greenish pants and black hat, plus the goatee and a pencil handlebar mustache. Mr. Hodge kept pictures of David Bowie and Michael Jackson in his dressing room for references.

    Season Childlike, with problem relating to adults, but more asocial than antisocial, and obviously brilliant.

    Tasting notes "Torn by alien obligations to be both a crowd-wowing vocal-and-dance man and an abstracted, ambivalent introvert." (Review past Ben Brantley in The New York Times)

    Marker Thompson

    2017

    "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (Broadway musical)

    To be Played by Christian Borle

    Wrapping The classics — a plum colored tailcoat, light-green pants, and black top hat — with splashes of color throughout. hoping for a touch more detail — a specific hue or an accompaniment —- hither

    Season Portrayal still in development, only Mr. Borle said he imagines Wonka every bit "a solitary genius who is seriously contemplating his own mortality."

    Tasting notes "What happens to a human being who has basically been solitary with Oompa-Loompas and chocolate for years? Nosotros started from a place of wanting him to be recognizably human being, and then figuring out how to nautical chart all of his eccentricities." (Interview with Christian Borle.)

    –MICHAEL PAULSON

  17. The Edge, left, and Bono of U2 performing in 1987. Larry Marano/Getty Images

    U2 Resurrects 'The Joshua Tree'

    In 1987, an Irish band was grappling with its ballooning fame while keeping an middle on the global outcome of the politics of Margaret Thatcher and contemplating the big idea of what America could exist. Thirty years later, pausing to reflect on how newly relevant its fifth anthology is in the era of Brexit and the Trump presidency, U2 booked its beginning-ever trip to the past: a stadium bout featuring "The Joshua Tree" performed in full. The tour starts on May 12 in Vancouver and comes to MetLife Stadium on June 28 and 29. The Edge, to a higher place left, and Bono performing in 1987.

    — CARYN GANZ

  18. Nacho Flores will negotiate gravity at the Tilt Kids Festival. Erik Damiano

    'Tesseract,' a Erudite, Cube-Climbing Acrobat for Kids

    Children who accept stopped sucking their thumbs tin kickoff bitter their nails when the circus artist Nacho Flores brings his gravity-flouting act to the Tilt Kids Festival, produced by the Cultural Services of the French Diplomatic mission and the French Found Alliance Française. Mr. Flores, a shambolic figure in a man bun, is a particularly brainy acrobat. A onetime estimator programmer, he's named this evidence in honor of a fourth-dimensional representation of a cube. He'll be risking those brains in this new routine — ascending stacks of wooden cubes held together by luck and his own torso weight. That ought to exist enough to excite the younger set. Parents can experience extra thrills when their enterprising kids try some of the more sensational stunts at home.

    –ALEXIS SOLOSKI

    March 5, New York University Skirball Middle for the Performing Arts, tiltkidsfestival.org.

  19. Feeding in the Dark

    Julia Jarcho's "The Terrifying" volition be at the Abrons Arts Center. Heather Phelps-Lipton

    "We'll meet a kid walking home through the forest at dark. Nosotros'll hear animate behind him. We'll hear the vox of someone who's dead, and nosotros'll see him react to that. Then nosotros will hear more and more the sounds of something approaching, and and so it will black out just as we see the kid existence snatched up. We'll hear the sounds of an attack, and we'll hear the child screaming and maybe nosotros'll hear some eating and then lights will come upwards and the kid won't be there. Only we'll meet a pool of blood." — The playwright Julia Jarcho on an early scene from her new play "The Terrifying."

    –ERIK PIEPENBURG

  20. David Hallberg, back with American Ballet Theater. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

    Concur Your Breath for David Hallberg

    Injuries happen. But David Hallberg, the illustrious primary at American Ballet Theater, has been haunted by an injury to a deltoid ligament in his talocrural joint since 2014, when he was forced to pull out of performances with Ballet Theater and the Bolshoi Ballet, where he became the commencement American principal in 2011. He would probably rather exist haunted by the ghost of Giselle. After more than a year spent rehabilitating with the Australian Ballet, though, he'southward coming dorsum.

    What shape will his dancing take? For his fans, in that location was a question not simply of when he would render, but if he would at all. Before Ballet Theater's spring season at the Metropolitan Opera Business firm, which begins May fifteen, he is scheduled to perform the role of Prince Coffee in Alexei Ratmansky'south new "Whipped Foam," which has its California premiere in March. Mr. Hallberg, 34, made his official return to the stage in December as Franz in "Coppélia" with the Australian Ballet. Later what he chosen an "existential shakeup," he's ready for Act Two.

    Mr. Hallberg spoke by telephone from Australia. These are edited excerpts from that chat.

    What's your comeback approach?

    My approach is step by step, performance past operation. I am but not going to become ahead of myself. It's not a flash-in-the-pan kind of improvement, all guns blazing. I'll take each performance every bit it comes.

    What was your rehab like?

    It was 14 months at the Australian Ballet. More or less, they just gave me a complete educational activity of how to maintain my instrument and an teaching that the majority of dancers in the dance globe aren't given, sadly. We are not the Federers, we're non the Williamses — we don't have teams of people traveling with us. We are left to our own devices a lot, and my device was ignorant. [Laughs]

    Are you lot excited to be back in the ballet earth?

    Yeah. In a manner, I stopped trying to control my life. With this injury I never, in my worst nightmare, would have thought that information technology would have gone the manner it went, simply coming face to confront with either ending a career or continuing to fight is actually this Human action Two of me every bit an artist. I feel different.

    How then?

    At this age, I idea that I'd be thinking about moving on, maybe taking more leadership positions. But that's not what life had in store for me. I've realized there's so much for me to give every bit an artist and non necessarily as the technician that y'all are in your 20s.

    Do you encounter now that information technology was necessary to have off so much fourth dimension?

    I needed information technology. I didn't know I needed information technology. Everything in my life was reconsidered, and I had to face it. I couldn't only push button it under the carpet and run off and dance somewhere and ignore it.

    Do you hateful the physical attribute of your injury or more?

    Oh, no, I mean everything. Concrete, emotional, mental — it became all-consuming. It was the crazy loftier to the crazy depression.

    –GIA KOURLAS

    May 15 to July 8, Metropolitan Opera House, abt.org.

  21. Don't Open That Door! Or the Others!

    The classic suspense-film play tricks is the ane that makes a viewer want to scream: "Don't open up that door!" Well, Bartok'southward creepy one-act opera "Bluebeard's Castle" does that again, and once again, and again — seven times in all.

    The libretto of the psychologically charged, symbolically loaded piece of work, which the gleaming Philadelphia Orchestra volition perform on Tuesday, March 7, at Carnegie Hall nether Yannick Nézet-Séguin (the Metropolitan Opera's next music manager), calls for a Gothic space with 7 swell doors. This is the hall of Bluebeard (John Relyea), who has brought dwelling his new helpmate, Judith (Michelle DeYoung). He tells her not to disturb the doors; naturally, she wants to open them. One past one, they reveal horrors: endless gold, dripping with blood; a lake of tears; and, at last, the three previous wives Bluebeard has murdered, who guide Judith dorsum inside with them.

    While this is a concert performance, Bartok's music to accompany each door's opening is bright enough that no sets or costumes are necessary: trumpet fanfares for the armory behind the second door; sparkling harps and celesta for the jewels of the tertiary; a stunning C-major blast for the fifth, as Judith takes in the full vista of Bluebeard's domain. Opera gets no eerier.

    –ZACHARY WOOLFE

  22. Alexandro Segade

    Eyes on Yous

    In "We're Watching," a performance festival at Live Arts Bard, writers, directors, theorists and theater groups volition explore the ubiquity of surveillance in everyday life. Highlights include a multimedia work from the video and operation artist Alexandro Segade imagining a queer police state, and a collaboration among the academic Homi K. Bhabha, the poet Claudia Rankine, the filmmaker John Lucas and the choreographer Will Rawls.

    –ALEXIS SOLOSKI

    Performances brainstorm April 27 at the Richard B. Fisher Centre for the Performing Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson; fishercenter.bard.edu.

  23. Seek Some Peace In Worlds Without It

    Three plays opening on Broadway explore economic dislocation, the Centre Due east peace process, and the stupor and outrage that back-trail a lesbian romance in the 1920s. Here are excerpts.

    'Oslo' by J.T. Rogers

    A scene from "Oslo." Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

    Yep, it'south three hours. And yes, information technology'due south about the 1993 Oslo Accords. Simply even if you don't dont' take much interest in relations between State of israel and the Palestine Liberation System, the play focuses on one Norwegian couple — Mona Juul and Terje Rod-Larsen — who played a crucial behind -the -scenes part. In its the telling, the play says a lot abouttells us much how homo folly and hope tin can change the course of history.

    LARSEN: And hither we are all friends. While we are together, this will be our 1 unbreakable rule.

    (He points to a close door.)

    In that room, when that door is closed, you volition converse. Disagree. Worse. But out here we will share our meals, talk of our families, and calorie-free the fire.

    (To them all.)

    My friends, I must insist upon this dominion. For information technology is only through the sharing of the personal that we tin can come across each other for who we truly are.

    (Larsen gestures to the closed door.)

    (Silence.)

    'Sweat' By Lynn Nottage

    A scene from "Sweat." Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

    In "Sweat," a Pennsylvania factory is closing its doors, which jostles the security of a its workers, who are friends and family members. In this early scene, a grouping is hanging out at a bar, and Stan, the bartender, remembers his time at the institute, before anorth plant blow at that place took his leg. Tracey and Cynthia still piece of work at the plant.

    STAN: At present, the old human being, he used to be on the floor every unmarried 24-hour interval. I didn't similar him, but I respected him for information technology. You know why?

    TRACEY: He was a prick and a perv —

    STAN: Because he knew what was going on, and y'all tin only know that past existence there. A machine was broken, he knew. A worker was having trouble, he knew. Yous don't come across the young guys out there. They find it offensive to exist on the flooring with their Wharton MBA's. And the problem is they don't wanna get their feet dirty, their diplomas soiled with sweat … or understand the existent cost, the man cost.... of making their shitty product. — oy!!!

    CYNTHIA: Amen to that.

    'Indecent' Past Paula Vogel

    A scene from "Indecent." Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

    "Indecent," a drama play with music, explores the controversy surrounding the 1923 Broadway play "God of Vengeance," which was shut down after the constabulary charged the cast members with obscenity, in part because it depicted a lesbian relationship. Hither, Rabbi Joseph Silverman gives a sermon at Temple Emanu-El.

    RABBI JOSEPH SILVERMAN: We go perhaps to the theater for a little relief —

    And what is in the theater?

    THE GOD OF VENGEANCE! By Sholem Asch!

    I expect scurrilous lies to my face from the crackpots who telephone call themselves Christian —

    But to be hitting by a rock in my dorsum by a fellow Jew!

    I know you have heard me denounce this play before. I acted on my words. I registered the complaint. And I am happy to tell yous that equally of last dark, the play has been airtight downwardly by the Vice Team, and all cast members have been arrested for obscenity.

    Mayhap, decades from now, prostitution will be legalized in this country, and we volition see ladies of the evening every bit we take our nightly constitutional with our wives.

    Perhaps, decades from now, 2 Jewish women will exist able to exchange vows, and who knows? Stand nether the huppah together …

    Perhaps, perhaps pigs will wing, and we will dine on flying sus scrofa as we do on the feathered birds of the air….

    Information technology is now in the hands of an American jury. We pray that they defend our good name.

    'Oslo' begins performances March 23, Vivian Beaumont Theater; telecharge.com.

    'Sweat' begins performances March four at Studio 54; telecharge.com.

    'Indecent' begins performances April 4, Cort Theater; telecharge .com.

  24. Richard Motility as Martha Graham. Josef Astor

    Dual Provocations From Richard Movement

    Leave it to Justin Vivian Bond, the transgender creative person who has curated the latest edition of the Live Ideas festival, to envision what it might be similar to live in a nonbinary globe. As part of his "Mx'd Messages" theme — Bond uses the prefix "Mx." as a gender-neutral alternative to "Mr." or "Ms." — the choreographer Richard Move is presenting a double bill. Known for his engrossing impersonations of Martha Graham, Mr. Move is unveiling "XXYY," which explores transgender and gender nonconformists. He'south intrigued by the idea of a "ii-spirited" person, every bit defined by the acronym L.G.B.T.Q.2. "I feel that speaks to my own gender identity," he said, "and directly to my trunk of work."

    In "XXYY," which features costumes past Alba Clemente, Mr. Movement takes inspiration from the lives of Alessandro Moreschi, the only castrato singer to make solo recordings, and Ralph Werther, who wrote "Autobiography of an Androgyne" (1918), in which he chronicled his experiences as transgender. Mr. Motility sees them every bit connected spirits. "Information technology feels like a long time ago because the perception is nosotros've come then far," Mr. Movement said. "Simply in this current culture and political climate, these lives are under siege in a real way."

    He will also revisit Graham in "Martha@20." "It's always been a very comfortable skin to be in," he said. "I'm not me, but I'k not not me."

    –GIA KOURLAS

  25. A scene from "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Armada Street," at the Barrow Street Theater. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

    Grub Down on Fresh Pies, If Yous Dare

    A new reimagined "Sweeney Todd," the Stephen Sondheim musical about a "demon barber" on a vengeance-fueled murder spree in 19th-century London, never smelled or tasted so skillful.

    The Barrow Street Theater in Greenwich Village has been transformed, top-to-lesser, into a butter-and-herb scented British pie-and-mash shopwith real pies on the menu. That'southward pie every bit in a flaky rectangle of chaff with a savory craven or vegetarian filling, and brew as in mashed potatoes. The British batter "liquor," a parsley sauce, comes on the side. The pies are made from an original recipe by Nib Yosses, a former White Firm executive pastry chef nether Barack Obama and George W. Bush and the possessor of the Perfect Pie company.

    Audience members can pay actress to have a pie dinner. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

    Audition members are encouraged to arrive up to 90 minutes before the evidence to sit down at long communal tables for a pie dinner in the meaty cantina-way dining room that doubles every bit an immersive stage. The space was crafted by Simon Kenny, the show's set and costume designer, to resemble Harrington's, the tiny southward London pie store where this production originated in 2014 by the Tooting Arts Club, a London theater visitor, for an audience of just 35. The show received glowing reviews and became such a hot ticket — Mr. Sondheim himself was a huge fan — that it moved to the W End, where the producer Cameron Mackintosh mounted information technology at a old nightclub that Mr. Kenny turned into a replica of Harrington'south, with seats for 70.

    In New York the audience has grown to 130, but the setting remains all Harrington'southward, downwards to the errant spelling ("likkor") on the shop's original carte. Mr. Kenny said he deliberately avoided ironing out some of the pattern kinks he faced at the Barrow Street.

    "We could have very easily moved a doorway and or fabricated things a bit bigger or a chip more comfy," he said. "But nosotros've always felt that one of the exciting bits and the charm of the show originally was that it worked brilliantly in this slightly inconvenient space. Nosotros wanted to brand it a comfortable experience for the audience but continue as many of the quirks in it as we can."

    The tables and service counter double as the play infinite for the bandage, which for the beginning of the run includes Jeremy Secomb and Siobhán McCarthy reprising their London roles as Sweeney and his deranged human meat pie-making sidekick, Mrs. Lovett. (Beak Buckhurst once more directs.) Starting time April xi the Tony Award nominees Norm Lewis and Carolee Carmello will take over.

    Before a recent operation, Paula Hearle, who grew upwards eating handheld pies in England, was a few bites into her dinner when she declared her pie to be "delicious." She wasn't exactly certain what was in it, simply her fingers were crossed that Mr. Kenny's dedication to authenticity didn't extend to her plate.

    "I'm hoping information technology's non-people," she said.

    –ERIK PIEPENBURG

  26. Alison Ingelstrom, center, and others in "Seeing You lot," starting May two. George Etheredge for The New York Times

    Gamely Duck Arms Burn

    Ever longed to lose yourself in the airstrikes of the Coral Sea or the battle on Iwo Jima? Or perchance just a pub from the early 1940s?

    An interactive theater piece that may have audiences ducking for cover, "Seeing You" promises to transport viewers to the Pacific Theater of World War Ii.

    A cosmos of the immersive impresario Randy Weiner, a producer of "Sleep No More," and the choreographer and director Ryan Heffington, "Seeing You" is named for the misty, swinging Frank Sinatra song that promises "I'll exist seeing you lot in all the old, familiar places."

    But don't expect a historically faithful trip. What immersive theater often does best is to accept audiences to unfamiliar places or to make the familiar ones strange. (You'll have felt this if you've wandered from blasted heath to candy store in "Slumber No More.")

    In a former industrial site, built nether and around the High Line and now busy by by David Gallo, performers volition propel audiences into a cozy pub, out to a field of battle and through other locales.

    It remains to be seen how Mr. Heffington's previous work, which includes witty, wild choreographic collaborations with the singer Sia and the managing director Spike Jonze, will inform the evidence. As a producer and a manager, Mr. Weiner ("Queen of the Nighttime," "Caligula") has favored a grand and lavish manner, sometimes at the expense of substance. Speaking by telephone, he wouldn't disclose the specifics of "Seeing You," but he did pledge a "loftier-fashion meets punk" sensibility. With naval artillery?

    –ALEXIS SOLOSKI

    Performances showtime on May 2, 450 West 14th Street, seeingyou.nyc.

  27. Alok Tewari in "The Strangest." Stephanie Keith

    Naming the Expressionless

    The unknown Arab killed in Albert Camus's 1942 existentialist novel gets a proper name, a resurrection and plenty of company in this immersive play inspired by "The Stranger" and produced by the Semitic Root. Written by Betty Shamieh ("The Black Eyed") and directed by May Adrales ("Vietgone"), "The Strangest" will plunk audiences into a traditional Arab storytelling buffet in sunstruck French Algeria, then turn those cafe tables on Camus. Now it's the Frenchman with a borrowed gun who goes unnamed and the Arab characters — three brothers in love with the aforementioned woman — who are at the tale's center.

    — ALEXIS SOLOSKI

  28. The Weeknd at the Roxy in Los Angeles in January. Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Interscope Records

    Find Lovin' With the Weeknd

    In the Weeknd'south early days — just after he had emerged from his cloak of anonymity — he became famous fast, and his first big tours were like grand gothic theater, rendering his viscous, provocative soul music equally part of a sexually charged visual thrillscape, equal parts pornographic and shocking.

    Things take changed, though. The Weeknd is ane of the most reliable hitmakers in pop music now, having remade himself as someone who peddles ecstatic fantasy with a seamy underbelly, nodding to the lean, muscular singing of Michael Jackson. "Starboy," which was released in November and debuted at No. i on the Billboard album chart, is his smoothest album to date, especially on "I Feel It Coming," a slinky duet with Daft Punk, and probably the most tender song the Weeknd has ever recorded.

    He performed that song earlier this month at the Grammys, the former lord of darkness fully thrust out into the light. And at present that hiding is no longer part of his strategy, his concerts are focused more on bliss, sometimes dangerous but just every bit often sweet. What was once about narcotic lust now holds hope for love.

    –JON CARAMANICA

    The Weeknd's North American tour begins Apr 25 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and comes to the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn June half dozen and seven.

  29. Sarah Ruhl and Joshua Harmon Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

    Explore the Stages of Delivery

    Sarah Ruhl and Joshua Harmon met cute — in a Times Square candy emporium on Valentine's Day.

    The meet was tentative at starting time. She sat quietly, eating soup, while he took a cursory look at the mountains of sweets, deemed a Britney Spears-branded lollipop expensive at $26 "for one use," and settled on a cappuccino.

    But the chat loosened upwardly once these playwrights realized their respective new shows have quite a lot in common.

    Ms. Ruhl's "How to Transcend a Happy Marriage" and Mr. Harmon'south "Significant Other" both tackle dear, albeit at different stages in people's lives. Mr. Harmon'south dramedy, which transferred to Broadway after a successful Off Broadway run in 2015, centers on a gay human in his late 20s whose quest for romance gains increasing urgency as he watches his best friends marry off in quick succession. Ms. Ruhl, whose previous works include "Stage Kiss," looks at "two fairly settled bourgeois couples," as she put information technology, who reconsider their relationships after meeting a free-spirited younger woman prone to killing her own meat.

    "I just wanted to write something that I couldn't bring my kids to," the soft-spoken Ms. Ruhl, 43, said. "I'thou sure my female parent will come. She'll be fine with polyamory and brute slaughter, but I think my children — this one's not for them."

    Mr. Harmon and Ms. Ruhl are in different phases in their careers and lives. She has been married for 11 years and has three children; a couple of years ago, he admitted in an interview that he did not even own a plant. Asked nigh his current plant status, Mr. Harmon, 33, said: "I don't love to talk near it. I always think it's better for the evidence for at that place to be this mystery for the audience."

    "She fabricated you lot blush!" Ms. Ruhl interjected, referring to this reporter. "I applaud your cartoon the line. I was reading [Elena] Ferrante'due south letters to her publicists and her editors about whether or not she'll do interviews. It's hilarious and mannerly and devastating what she says about why she protects her privacy then fiercely."

    While Hashemite kingdom of jordan, the lead of "Pregnant Other," struggles with dating and feelings of abandonment, the couples in "How to Transcend a Happy Union" are restless without being entirely aware of it. If Mr. Harmon's show is about navigating the beginning of romance, Ms. Ruhl's is near what happens 10 or xx years downward the line.

    "If you don't keep mystery live in a marriage over fourth dimension, information technology's tricky to sustain information technology," Ms. Ruhl said. "I remember marriage is really a huge human action of imagination and creativity all the time."

    To research her play, she looked into polyamory groupings — Mr. Harmon, an avowed fan of reality television, brought upward an "amazing" episode of the MTV serial "True Life" on that subject — and was intrigued by their semantic resourcefulness. "There's really amazing language in the polyamory motion," Ms. Ruhl said. "Like, if you add one person who has sex with everybody, that's called a 'comet.' An 'adult buffet' is when you have a party, and everyone has sex with everybody. It'due south interesting to me because the new configurations actually invite the linguistic communication."

    In his play, Mr. Harmon puts a spin on a large pop-civilization genre tackling honey.

    "Normally in romantic comedies there is a gay-sidekick character who comes on and has these sassy quips, and then goes offscreen," he said. "And so the idea was to say, 'What happens when you put that character in the center of the frame and follow him after he makes his sassy quip?'"

    "I love that you're writing near friendship because I feel information technology's so nether-talked about, underwritten about," Ms. Ruhl said, "and it's something that we would all dice without, only it's non intrinsically dramatic in the way that romantic love is. Nosotros've elevated so much romantic love, we've elevated this myth so much to the exclusion of other forms of love."

    "Our culture doesn't take many words for love the manner that the Greeks would take 'philia' or 'eros,''' she added. "They even have a word for the beloved of your pupil. Isn't that beautiful?"

    –ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

    "How to Transcend a Happy Marriage" begins performances this month at the Mitzi Eastward. Newhouse Theater; lct.org. At present in previews, "Significant Other" opens March 2 at the Booth Theater; significantotherbroadway.com .