New York

Broadway Bets Big on a Spring Rebound. Will the Virus Cooperate?

Published

3 years ago

April 10, 2022

Broadway Bets Big on a Spring Rebound. Will the Virus Cooperate?

After a dark winter by which the Omicron variant shriveled Broadway’s profitable vacation season, New York’s vaunted theater trade has been betting on an enormous spring, practically doubling the variety of reveals on supply because the pandemic-battered enterprise thirsts for a rebound.

Including all these performs and musicals — 16 new productions plus three coming back from hiatuses are opening over a five-week stretch — was all the time going to be a bet, since nobody is aware of, on this not-yet-post-pandemic period, whether or not there are sufficient vacationers and theatergoing locals to maintain that many reveals.

And now the cussed persistence of the coronavirus is complicating issues even additional. A rising variety of instances in New York Metropolis, coinciding with the arrival of the virus’s BA. 2 subvariant, has as soon as once more rocked Broadway, infecting a few of its greatest stars, together with Daniel Craig, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and forcing 4 reveals to briefly cancel performances.

“What we thought we have been getting into into this spring, which was all the time going to be busy and crowded, during the last week has modified dramatically,” mentioned Greg Nobile, the lead producer of a brand new farce, “POTUS,” which, whereas nonetheless in rehearsals, has needed to adapt as 4 of its seven actresses examined constructive for the coronavirus. “In some way it looks like, ‘This once more?’ The reply is sure, however this time, we have to ask the query, how can we really hold the present on, and what are the methods we’re adjusting to what’s a brand new regular?”

Broadway’s huge spring started on a chilly evening in late March with the opening of a revival of “Plaza Suite,” a Neil Simon comedy starring Parker and Broderick that was initially scheduled to start out performances on March 13, 2020. Broadway shut down for the pandemic the day earlier than that efficiency, and the Hudson Theater remained vacant, with the married co-stars’ names on the marquee and the set on the stage, for 2 full years earlier than they returned to strive once more.

“Our hope is that this isn’t a second, however slightly that is the way in which we’ll perform now,” Parker, in a pink satin robe with a beaded tulle overlay, mentioned opening evening on the finish of an 80-foot-long preshow crimson carpet. “We’ve got eating places ready to reopen nonetheless, we’ve got lodge staff ready to come back again, we’ve got delis which have been hit, we’ve got ushers who’re desirous to work the entrance of the home.”

The gang that got here out to cheer her on, which included Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laura Linney, Cynthia Nixon and Martin Quick, was buoyant.

Broderick, completed with the gauntlet of digital camera crews arrayed inside a translucent tent, remarked how a lot he had loved returning to the theater as an viewers member, and now as a performer. “We’re studying to dwell with the pandemic or endemic — no matter you wish to name it now — so the stronger theater and all the pieces New York will get, the extra regular life is,” he mentioned. “That is a part of the world coming again.”

However eight days later, he examined constructive, and two days later, so did she.

“Plaza Suite” has been closed since Thursday, as has “Paradise Sq.,” a brand new musical which was already struggling on the field workplace and might unwell afford the misplaced income. Craig’s present, a revival of “Macbeth,” canceled 10 days of previews. And “A Unusual Loop,” a brand new musical which gained the Pulitzer Prize based mostly on its Off Broadway run, scrapped its first 5 days of previews. All cited constructive coronavirus exams amongst firm members as the rationale; all hope to renew performances this week.

The most recent virus-related cancellations have been all at new reveals; reveals which have been operating longer had extra time to arrange for solid absences, and have been in a position to soldier on with understudies. Most notably, a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Firm” that opened final December briefly misplaced six of its principals to constructive coronavirus exams in April, together with its lead actress, Katrina Lenk, however the present went on. (Its greatest recognized performer, Patti LuPone, was not amongst these stricken, probably as a result of she had examined constructive in late February and missed 10 days then.)

And the results usually are not restricted to Broadway: Off Broadway, reveals together with “Suffs,” on the Public Theater, and “On the Marriage ceremony,” at Lincoln Middle Theater, have additionally briefly canceled performances.

The trade is present process a stress take a look at of types, because the annual crush of Broadway openings, which are likely to cluster simply earlier than an end-of-April deadline to qualify for the Tony Awards, is even larger than traditional as a result of some productions postponed their begin dates within the hopes of avoiding the height of the Omicron variant. This month options the best variety of Broadway openings in any April for greater than a decade.

Broadway is all the time a dangerous enterprise, by which way more reveals fail than succeed. Some producers acknowledge that having a glut of latest reveals vying for consideration and viewers on the identical fraught time is lower than supreme, however they are usually optimists, and every appears to consider that theirs is the present audiences have been ready for.

“You possibly can play a little bit of chicken-and-egg,” mentioned Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which runs 5 Broadway homes. “Ought to we wait till each vacationer is on the town? However why is each vacationer going to be on the town if we wait? In some unspecified time in the future we’ve got to resolve that we’re going to dwell.”

That is truly Broadway’s second try at a rebound. The primary started regularly final June, with the return engagement of Bruce Springsteen’s wildly widespread night of songs and storytelling. The primary play started performances final August, and in September, with a second of hope and celebration, the largest musicals returned.

Early field workplace grosses and attendance have been encouragingly sturdy. However then the Omicron variant arrived in New York, contributing to the untimely closing of 9 reveals and crushing attendance on the worst attainable time of 12 months: Solely 62 % of Broadway’s seats have been occupied in the course of the week ending Jan. 9.

By way of late winter, there have been solely 19 reveals operating in Broadway’s 41 theaters. With little competitors, a lot of these left standing — principally established hits or reveals with well-known titles — did fairly nicely. By the week ending March 20, 92 % of seats have been occupied.

Now, because the variety of reveals grows, and untested titles be a part of the hits, common attendance is slipping, with 85 % of seats crammed in the course of the week ending April 3. Total, 224,053 individuals have been on the 31 reveals operating that week, which is the best variety of ticket holders this 12 months, however is considerably decrease than the 315,320 who attended the 38 reveals operating in the course of the comparable week in 2019.

“The reopening of those reveals is an actual celebration of shifting ahead,” mentioned Tom Harris, the president of the Occasions Sq. Alliance, which is marking this busy spring with a show of 10-foot-tall Playbill monoliths erected on a theater district pedestrian plaza. He famous that whereas Occasions Sq. was rising livelier, it’s nonetheless quieter than it was once: In March there have been about 255,000 individuals passing by way of the neighborhood on a median day, he mentioned, down from about 365,000 day by day guests earlier than the pandemic.

Till the pandemic, Broadway was booming, with 14.8 million ticket holders spending $1.8 billion on the field workplace in the course of the 2018-19 season, which was the final full season earlier than the coronavirus. However vacationers to New York Metropolis, who earlier than the pandemic accounted for two-thirds of the Broadway viewers, haven’t returned in prepandemic numbers; the town’s tourism company is projecting 56.4 million guests this 12 months, down from 66.6 million in 2019.

That helps clarify why Mayor Eric Adams has been celebrating Broadway at each alternative — displaying up on the openings of “The Music Man” and “Paradise Sq.” and attending a pupil efficiency of “Hamilton” in latest weeks.

“Each time I can stroll a crimson carpet,” Adams mentioned in an interview on the “Plaza Suite” opening, “I do know it’s going to convey inexperienced foreign money to our metropolis.”

Now, as the town has dropped vaccine mandates at eating places and different public areas, Broadway should resolve whether or not to do the identical. Its present security protocols, which require that each one ticket holders present proof of vaccination to enter theaters and stay masked whereas inside, besides when consuming or consuming, are in place by way of April 30. Theater house owners and operators had deliberate to announce by April 1 whether or not they would lengthen these guidelines, however they postponed that call till April 15 as case counts rose.

On the identical time, the brand new reveals hold coming. So many are opening this month that “POTUS,” whose stars embody Julianne Hough and Vanessa Williams, wound up rehearsing on the Daryl Roth Theater, in Union Sq., as a result of the manufacturing couldn’t discover appropriate house within the theater district.

On a latest Saturday, the solid gathered to work on scenes on a makeshift White Home set. One of many stars, Rachel Dratch, was nonetheless out with the coronavirus, so her half was rehearsed by an understudy, Anita Abdinezhad, whereas one other star, Julie White, was again for the primary time since ending her isolation interval. White, who had saved an eye fixed on rehearsals through video whereas recuperating, was nonetheless coughing beneath a masks, however had her strains down chilly, and he or she leaned in to the comedy.

As she arrived, she was visibly delighted to be again at work. She famous her aid at lastly seeing unfavourable outcomes on her day by day coronavirus take a look at, saying, “It was so good to see that single line this morning.”

New York

Companies could pass on the cost of congestion pricing tolls to consumers.

Published

5 hours ago

January 6, 2025

Press Room

Companies could pass on the cost of congestion pricing tolls to consumers.

Congestion pricing arrived in New York City exactly one second after midnight on Sunday.

And despite the freezing temperatures, a crowd of about 100 people gathered at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 60th Street in Manhattan to mark the occasion.

It was mainly supporters who showed up to clap and chant, “Pay that toll! Pay that toll!” But one opponent tried to drown them out by banging a cowbell. And the exchanges grew a bit testy at times across the congestion pricing divide.

The tolling program, the first of its kind in the nation, finally became reality on New York streets after decades of battles over efforts to unclog some of the most traffic-saturated streets in the world. In the weeks leading up to its start, the program survived multiple legal challenges seeking to derail it at the last minute, including from the State of New Jersey.

It will most likely be some time, however, before it becomes clear whether congestion pricing works, or whether it can withstand continuing attempts to overturn it by a broad array of opponents, including President-elect Donald J. Trump, who takes office later this month.

Noel Hidalgo, 45, who lives in Brooklyn, was among the first drivers to pay the toll. As he drove his Mini Cooper across the threshold, toll supporters cheered and clapped from the curb.

Another driver posted a photo on social media of a silver car with metal cans dangling from the rear bumper. “Just tolled” was written on the rear windshield.

Most passenger cars are now being charged $9 once a day at detection points set up along the borders of the new tolling zone, from 60th Street to the southern tip of Manhattan.

Congestion pricing scanners above First Avenue at East 60th Street in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday morning. Drivers will be tolled via E-ZPass or license plate readers.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Shortly after noon, about 12 hours after tolling began, transportation leaders declared that the plan had rolled out without a hitch, but cautioned that the tolling system was complicated and that it was too soon to know how it was faring.

“We will start to know specific numbers and have some comparatives within a few days, and we’re going to share that information publicly,” said Janno Lieber, the chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency overseeing the program.

So far, the M.T.A. does not intend to make any adjustments to the program, Mr. Lieber said.

Traffic data for the congestion zone was mixed on Day 1. The average travel speed initially inched upward 3 percent to 15.1 miles per hour at 8 a.m. Sunday, compared with 14.6 m.p.h. at the same time on the first Sunday in January last year, according to INRIX, a transportation analytics firm. But by noon, the travel speed had fallen to 13 m.p.h., slightly slower than in 2024.

The congestion pricing zone extends from 60th Street to the southern tip of Manhattan.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Still, the real test for the tolling program will come during the workweek. The M.T.A. said it had chosen to introduce the program on a Sunday to be able to work out any kinks while traffic was sparse. Light snow was forecast for the region on Monday, which could affect commuter data if fewer people choose to drive.

On a typical weekday, at least half a million vehicles enter the congestion pricing zone, a metric that officials will be tracking “very, very closely,” Mr. Lieber said.

Manoj Bhandari’s car will no longer be among them. Though he normally drives into his Midtown office at least twice a week from New Jersey, he said he would now only take the train. “It’s expensive for me and it’s expensive for everybody,” said Mr. Bhandari, 54, who was parked outside the Lincoln Tunnel on Sunday. “We won’t be using our car anymore.”

Transportation officials have projected that congestion pricing will reduce the number of vehicles entering the congestion zone by at least 13 percent.

Other drivers seemed to accept that there was no way around the new tolls. Oscar Velasquez, 54, a carpenter who lives on Long Island, said he was going to have to pay more now to haul his tools to jobs around the city. “One of these days, they’re going to charge you for walking,” Mr. Velasquez said as he idled on West 66th Street in his Chevy pickup truck.

The tolls are expected to help generate $15 billion to pay for crucial repairs and improvements to New York’s aging subway system, buses and two commuter rail lines. The work includes modernizing subway signals, making stations more accessible for riders with disabilities and expanding the city’s electric bus fleet.

Those upgrades could improve the commute for Emily Rose Prats, 36, of Brooklyn, who supports congestion pricing. She has spinal degradation and standing for long periods can cause her great discomfort, so she has avoided the subway and the bus, which can be unreliable.

“The improvements from congestion pricing are supposed to be an upgrade to the signals, which will mean faster trains, shorter headways, shorter commutes, less wait times,” Ms. Prats said. “All of that is something that will help me be able to take advantage of a public amenity that we pay for.”

Congestion pricing is being introduced in New York at a time when traffic has surged on city streets since nearly disappearing five years ago in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. New York was named the world’s most congested city, beating out London, Paris and Mexico City, in a 2023 traffic scorecard compiled by INRIX.

Though congestion policy has successfully reduced traffic in other global cities, including London, Stockholm and Singapore, it has never gotten far in this country. Besides New York, a handful of other cities, like Washington and San Francisco, have explored the concept.

The program has been unpopular in the polls, and some transit experts noted that neither Mayor Eric Adams nor Gov. Kathy Hochul had commented on the start of congestion pricing by Sunday afternoon even though it will have a major impact on the city and state.

Mr. Adams has supported the plan while expressing reservations about it, and is running for re-election this year. Ms. Hochul paused the program in June over concerns that it would hurt the city’s recovery and brought it back in November with a 40 percent reduction in the tolls, down to $9 from $15.

The tolls will increase to $12 by 2028, and to $15 by 2031. The new plan is set to generate about $500 million per year during its first three years, and then $700 million when fees first go up, then close to $1 billion when the original toll is restored. The money will be used to secure $15 billion through bond financing, which would be paid back with tolling revenue.

Revenue from the tolling plan will be used to finance crucial improvements and upgrades to New York City’s aging public transit system.Credit…Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Mr. Lieber of the M.T.A. said that officials did not expect New Yorkers to change their behavior overnight.

“Everybody’s going to have to adjust to this as more and more people become aware of it and start to factor it into their planning,” he said.

At a coffee shop near Lincoln Center, Terry Kotnour, a retired consultant, praised congestion pricing. “That’s the cost of living here,” said Mr. Kotnour, 82, who gave up his car long ago. “We have fairly good mass transit, so use it instead.”

Another supporter, Kevin Chau, 27, a software engineer from Queens who rides Citi Bike, said that he hoped Manhattan would become safer for cyclists. “Less cars on the road means it’s less dangerous for sure,” he said.

But many critics, including suburban commuters, said the program will do little to reduce traffic while punishing drivers who live outside Manhattan.

On the same day that congestion pricing began, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey also began to charge drivers higher fees to travel between New Jersey and New York on bridges and tunnels, which it controls. (The rate is now $16.06 for passenger vehicles during peak hours, up by 68 cents from the previous fee.)

Empty lanes at the New Jersey entrance of the Holland Tunnel. New Jersey residents have been among the loudest critics of congestion pricing.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Roselyn Cano, 21, just bought a car last week to commute from the Bronx to her job at an exercise studio on East 59th Street in Manhattan because she did not feel safe taking the subway. “And then a couple of days later we get hit with the congestion toll,” said Ms. Cano, who sat at a reception desk at the studio tallying up the costs of the new toll along with her car payment, auto insurance, parking and the toll she already pays crossing from the Bronx into Manhattan.

Some New Yorkers were already devising workarounds to avoid paying the new tolls.

Cynthia Jones, who lives on the Upper West Side, was taking an exercise class at the studio. Her husband had dropped her off at 61st Street, one block north of the tolling zone. “I walked the rest of the way here,” she said.

Reporting was contributed by Wesley Parnell, Bernard Mokam, Nate Schweber, Olivia Bensimon, Anusha Bayya, Camille Baker, Sean Piccoli and Emma Fitzsimmons.

New York

Tom Johnson, Minimalist Composer and Village Voice Critic, Dies at 85

Published

13 hours ago

January 5, 2025

Press Room

Tom Johnson, Minimalist Composer and Village Voice Critic, Dies at 85

Tom Johnson, a composer and critic whose Village Voice columns documented the renaissance of avant-garde music in downtown New York during the 1970s, and whose own compositions embraced minimalism and mathematical clarity, died on Tuesday at his home in Paris. He was 85.

His wife and only immediate survivor, the performance artist Esther Ferrer, said the cause was a stroke following long-term emphysema.

Mr. Johnson was a young New York composer in need of income in 1971 when he noticed that the exciting performances he heard downtown were not being covered by local news outlets. He offered to write about the contemporary music scene for The Voice, and he soon began a weekly column.

It was an opportune moment: Art galleries, lofts and venues like the Kitchen were presenting concerts by young experimenters like Steve Reich and Meredith Monk, and Mr. Johnson became the emerging scene’s chief chronicler.

“No one realized at the time that one of the most significant genres of serious music of the century was developing, a genre that was to become known as American minimalism, and which would find imitators all over the world,” he wrote in 1983, in his final Voice column.

He charted the rise of musical minimalism, including the transformation of the local composer Phil Glass to an international phenomenon, but he also documented radical work by lesser-known figures: Yoshi Wada, who sang through massive plumbing pipes; Jim Burton, who amplified bicycle wheels; and Eliane Radigue, who created uncanny drones on a synthesizer.

“I learned some interesting things about gongs on May 30 at a Centre Street loft concert,” Mr. Johnson wrote of a 1973 show by the young composer Rhys Chatham. “That gongs have many different pitches, most of which don’t make much sense in terms of the overtone series; that different tones stand out, depending on how the gong is struck; that when a gong makes a crescendo, a wonderful whoosh of high sound streams into the room; that loud gongs vibrate the floor in a special way and put an odd charge in the air; that listening to gongs, played alone for over an hour, is an extraordinary experience.”

By describing such outré happenings in matter-of-fact, observational prose, Mr. Johnson provided a national readership with access to performances that might be attended by only a dozen listeners, and possibly never heard again. He saw himself as a participant within the scene, and he provided such generous coverage that he became known among composers as “Saint Tom.” His writings, collected in the 1989 book “The Voice of New Music,” offer a uniquely intimate portrait of a galvanizing musical era; for one memorable column, Mr. Johnson sang in the chorus for a rehearsal of Mr. Glass’s landmark opera “Einstein on the Beach.”

But Mr. Johnson was also unafraid to critique concerts that he thought didn’t work conceptually, or note when he fell asleep. Some columns took formal risks. He once devoted a thousand words to reviewing “one of the most impressive performances I ever heard”: the warbling of a mockingbird on Long Island.

He was among the first writers to begin using the term “minimal” to describe much of the repetitive music he heard, and he applied the word to his own compositions, such as the hypnotic 1971 work “An Hour for Piano.” “I have always been very proud of it, because that’s the only word that really describes what I’m doing,” he said in a 2014 interview. “I always worked with reduced materials and tried to do simple music.”

In Mr. Johnson’s dryly postmodern “Four Note Opera,” a quartet sings arias about arias — on only the notes A, B, D and E. The first performance, in 1972, had an audience of about 10 people; the opera has since received more than 100 productions. For “Nine Bells” (1979), he walked among a grid of suspended burglar alarm bells for nearly an hour, chiming them in predetermined sequences, a feat of geometric precision and physical exertion.

In the 1980s, he immersed himself in Euclid’s number theories and Mandelbrot’s fractals, eager to find new musical structures. His compositions of this period include “Rational Melodies,” a series of entrancing miniatures built from simple, symmetrical patterns, and “The Chord Catalog,” a methodical two-hour presentation of the 8,178 chords that can be found in a single octave.

Though undergirded by his mathematical exercises, Mr. Johnson’s music is visceral and intelligible — and, often, deliberately predictable — rather than abstruse. “There is something particularly satisfying about projects where the logic (the music) seems to arise naturally from some discovery outside of myself, and where everything comes together with a minimum of tampering (of composing),” he once wrote.

Thomas Floyd Johnson was born on Nov. 18, 1939, in Greeley, Colo., a small farming community. His parents, Harold Francis Johnson and Irene (Barber) Johnson, were teachers.

When he was about 7, Tom began playing the piano intermittently, and he found his passion for music at age 13 under the tutelage of a local piano teacher, Rita Hutcherson, who also encouraged his composing.

Though many of his peers attended nearby universities, Ms. Hutcherson urged Mr. Johnson to apply to Yale, where he received a bachelor’s degree in arts in 1961 and a master’s in music in 1967. As an undergraduate, he took a seminar with the prestigious composer Elliott Carter and dabbled in 12-tone composition, the lingua franca of the musical academy, but he found himself embracing repetition and stasis instead of cerebral complexity. He moved to New York in 1967 to study privately with the experimental composer Morton Feldman, who helped him find his artistic voice.

After documenting the New York scene for The Voice but struggling to have his own work performed, Mr. Johnson decamped to Paris in 1983, where fresh opportunities awaited, as European audiences were newly drawn to the American avant-garde. There he remained a prolific writer, theorizing about his own music in several books. He had been publishing his own scores since the 1970s, and he maintained an active web presence with a video series elucidating his music.

His major works have included the satirical “Riemannoper,” based on excerpts from a famed German music lexicon, which has received more than 30 productions; and a more serious oratorio drawing on the writings of the German dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But much of Mr. Johnson’s output remained resolutely abstract, including an orchestral work that lays out a sequence of 360 chords and a series of recent pieces that systematically explore various rhythmic combinations.

Mr. Johnson’s marriage to the choreographer Kathy Duncan ended in divorce. He married Ms. Ferrer in 1986.

One of Mr. Johnson’s compositions has become canonic in the double-bass community: “Failing” (1975), a fiendishly difficult and hilarious exercise in which a soloist is instructed to bow tricky passages while reading a lengthy text aloud that self-reflexively comments on the music. “These pieces all had to do with making music as real life,” Mr. Johnson said of the work in a 2020 interview. “I wanted the performer to confront an unknown situation and deal with it as well as possible in a one-time-only context.”

New York

Here is what to know about congestion pricing.

Published

20 hours ago

January 5, 2025

Press Room

Here is what to know about congestion pricing.

Congestion pricing was first proposed in the 1950s to manage crowded roads and subways.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Congestion pricing has spread around the world to cities including London, Stockholm, and Singapore. But the idea was born in New York City in the 1950s.

William Vickrey, an economics professor at Columbia University who won the Nobel Prize in 1996, has been called the “father of congestion pricing.” He proposed the use of economic incentives to better manage crowded roads — as well as the packed subway system.

As early as 1952, Mr. Vickrey recommended charging higher fares on the New York City subway for the most crowded times and sections. “Just like hotels charge more during Christmas, and planes charge more for longer flights, he said the subways ought to do that,” said Samuel I. Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner and a longtime proponent of congestion pricing.

But congestion pricing for the subway did not catch on. City leaders “considered it risky, and the technology was not ready,” according to a 1997 report in the Columbia University Record.

Mr. Vickrey later turned his attention to the city’s perpetual gridlock. He called for varying road tolls to reduce congestion during peak times and keep traffic flowing.

In the late 1970s, Mr. Vickrey used to show up at public meetings and push for congestion pricing, said Mr. Schwartz, who was an assistant city traffic commissioner back then. “He pestered me,” Mr. Schwartz said. “He kept saying a lot of our approach to traffic congestion wouldn’t work — and that we had to use pricing.”

Though Mr. Vickrey died in 1996, his idea has lived on. Mr. Schwartz and many others — including business, civic, and transportation and environmental advocates — have fought for decades to bring congestion pricing to New York’s streets.

In 2007, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed a congestion-pricing plan as part of his efforts to improve the environment. But the plan faltered the next year in Albany amid staunch opposition from state legislators.

A decade later, facing a breakdown in subway service, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resurrected congestion pricing to finance repairs to the aging subway system. “Congestion pricing is an idea whose time has come,” he said at that time. (Mr. Cuomo has since questioned whether it is the right time to start congestion pricing.)

It was another two years before congestion pricing was finally approved by the State Legislature in 2019 as part of the state budget.