Plays
The masked man of Broadway is going out strong. “The Phantom of the Opera” — Broadway’s longest-running show — has postponed its final performance by eight weeks, pushing its closing curtain from February to April after at spike in ticket demand.
A jury sided with Kevin Spacey, finding he didn’t sexually abuse fellow actor Anthony Rapp in 1986. The jurors reached a verdict Thursday after deliberating for just over an hour.
“Time be flyin’,” it’s said in Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin.” It’s a sentiment shared by McDonagh and his two stars, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who have reteamed 14 years after McDonagh’s pitch-black feature debut, “In Bruges.”
What if, one day, your best friend decided that they didn’t want to be friends anymore? Not because of something that happened like a fight or some offense.
Wendell Pierce hopes that heading a Black-led cast in a historic revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” goes beyond exposing the classic American play to a new audience.
Charles Fuller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of the searing and acclaimed “A Soldier’s Play” who often explored and exposed how social institutions can perpetuate racism, has died.
Rapper and actor Common will make his Broadway debut this fall in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Between Riverside and Crazy.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright Ken Ludwig isn’t a fan of seeing his old shows, no matter how successful they’ve become. It makes him feel like he’s not moving ahead.
Bob LuPone, who as an actor earned a Tony nomination in the original run of “A Chorus Line” and went on to help lead the influential off-Broadway theater company MCC Theater for almost 40 years, has died.
Katori Hall felt her popular play about Black strip club culture could easily become a television series.
Paul Sorvino, an imposing actor who specialized in playing crooks and cops like Paulie Cicero in “Goodfellas” and the NYPD sergeant Phil Cerreta on “Law & Order,” has died.
Painters have long been the subject of stage shows — think Mark Rothko, Seurat, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Lucian Freud. Next up is Frida Kahlo.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — New Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met with China’s top diplomat Wednesday to take up long-simmering disputes in the South China Sea, as he waded into foreign policy dilemmas that include the U.S.
Flowers, art, and Dior’s world-famous ateliers collided on Friday at Paris Fashion Week for a sweet-smelling explosion of creativity.
James Rado, co-creator of the groundbreaking hippie musical “Hair,” which celebrated protest, pot and free love and paved the way for the sound of rock on Broadway, has died.
HODGENVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park is observing Juneteenth with two free presentations.
“A Strange Loop,” an irreverent, sexually frank work about Blackness and queerness took home the best new musical crown at the Tony Awards on Sunday, as voters celebrated Broadway’s most racially diverse season by choosing an envelope-pushing Black voice.
Philip Baker Hall, the prolific character actor of film and theater who starred in Paul Thomas Anderson’s early movies and who memorably hunted down a long-overdue library book in “Seinfeld,” has died.
NEW YORK (AP) — The list of winners at the 75th Tony Awards, being held Sunday in New York:

— Best Play: “The Lehman Trilogy.”
“A Strange Loop,” an utterly unforgettable, idiosyncratic trip into one man’s psyche, has won the best new musical Tony Award, beating more commercial fare. Michael R.
A theater in Ukraine’s capital has reopened over for the first time since Russian forces invaded the country, and tickets quickly sold out.
NEW YORK (AP) — Seven years ago, Moisés Kaufman was approached to direct the Broadway musical “Paradise Square” and, after reading it, he immediately said yes.
NEW YORK (AP) — When Jaquel Spivey found out he was nominated for a Tony Award as lead actor in “A Strange Loop,” he was shocked.
John Leguizamo is back with a new stage project that has a historical bent. He’s the co-writer of the musical “Kiss My Aztec!”
Juan Mayorga, one of Spain’s most popular and respected playwrights, has won this year’s Princess of Asturias Award for literature.
NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright and actor Tracy Letts was inspired to write his latest Tony Award-nominated play while watching one of those old black-and-white Frankenstein movies.
Jesse Williams vowed not to be discouraged after leaked video and images of his onstage nude scene in the Broadway play “Take Me Out” were posted online.
Video of a naked Jesse Williams captured onstage in a shower scene from a Broadway play has been posted online, prompting an outcry from the producers and the union that represents actors and stage managers.
Some reactions from Tony Award nominees on Monday:

“Coming out of the pandemic, I just feel a validation and a further mandate to keep digging down into the Blackness of my art and to put that forward as something that’s worth paying attention to and shelling out money to produce and shelling out money to come and see because it is worth it. Because
“A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s critically cheered theater meta-journey earned a leading 11 Tony Award nominations Monday as Broadway joined the national discussion of race by embracing an envelope-pushing Black-written and Black-led musical.
After a two-year delay due to the coronavirus, Germany’s famous Oberammergau Passion Play is opening soon.