Category: Theater

The catchy, folk-tinged numbers from “Treason the Musical” have been streamed online over a million times, in 96 countries. Its fans — known as “Plotters” — have been listening to an EP, an acoustic record and a live album of the songs, as well as sharing their own performances on TikTok. But until this fall, there hadn’t even been a full-scale production of the show.

Unlike “Beetlejuice,” “Heathers” or “Dear Evan Hansen,” which all parlayed onstage popularity into huge digital followings, “Treason” is turning the formula for musical success around. Its producers cultivated an online fandom for three years before raising the curtain on the show, and are now banking on those fans buying theater tickets, too.

It seems to be working. “Treason” is currently on a 27-show tour of Britain that culminates in two performances at London’s largest theater, the 2,286-seater Palladium, on Nov. 21-22.

Created by Ricky Allan, the musical tells the story of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605: a failed attempt by a group of persecuted English Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London and assassinate the protestant King James I. The show features folk ballads, rousing pop and rock numbers, and spoken word and rap, with period costumes — ruffs and capes, doublets and hose — and candle-like lighting to evoke a 17th-century setting.

As an original retelling of an episode from English history, “Treason” brings to mind another grass-roots British success story: “Six,” the hit musical about the wives of King Henry VIII. “Six” started out as a scrappy student show in the Edinburgh Fringe and grew into a professional production that is playing on the West End and Broadway. Its cast album became the second-most streamed of all time (after “Hamilton”), and its Instagram account has more followers than any West End show ever.

Building a so-called “Queendom” of fans was essential to the success of “Six,”, said Josh Bird, the show’s digital producer. “Very early on, we made the effort in replying to every comment, every message, but also encouraging the cast and creative team to do that,” he said. “So it created this online community that were part of the journey.”

When Allan was developing “Treason,” in 2020, he called on performers with existing online fan bases, including Hadley Fraser and Ramin Karimloo, who shared the show’s songs on social media as they evolved. The fans followed along as “Treason” came together into a recording, a streamed concert and two sold-out live concert performances in London.

“It wasn’t without risks. We were letting audiences in on something that wasn’t finished,” Allan said. “The risk has paid off, but it’s definitely been an interesting way round.”

Trevor Boffone, a lecturer at the University of Houston and the author of “Social Media in Musical Theater” said the sense of direct access that online platforms can provide had been a game changer for musicals. “In the TikTok age,” he said, audiences don’t need a finished product. What they care about is access to this behind-the-scenes, in-the-process footage.”

Boffone pointed to two other musical projects that started online and grew into real-world phenomena, although neither ever achieved a full stage run: “Ratatouille,” a musical version of the Pixar movie, and “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” based on the Netflix show. Both became viral sensations after TikTok users suggested that those existing titles would make good musicals, and people started sharing their own songs, set designs and costume suggestions, he said.

“Ratatouille” was eventually staged as a one-off streamed production, and “Bridgerton” was released as a Grammy-winning album. (A concert version of “Bridgerton’” was shut down when Netflix filed a copyright infringement suit.)

“The more success stories we have,” Boffone said, “the more people are going to take TikTok seriously as a place to create buzz around a musical.”

Developing a show online isn’t just a creative model. Increasingly, demonstrating that a musical has an existing fan base is a way to prove commercial viability. Andy Barnes, who produced “Six” in Britain, said that producers in other countries had approached him about mounting their own productions after seeing the size of show’s online following. Broadway and the West End aside, “Six” has now been staged in countries including Australia, Canada, Germany and South Korea.

Hard data about monthly streams and shares can also help find investors. Allan said that such figures helped secure financial backing for the “Treason” tour, making it seem like a less risky proposition.

One of the “Treason” producers, Dale Franzen — who also produced “Hadestown,” another show that began with an album and had its own twisty journey to stage success — came on board ahead of the musical’s current tour. She said that she had been impressed by the approach the “Treason” team had taken to developing the show and its fan base.

“Anybody who does something differently, I’m going to be listening and watching,” Franzen said recently by phone from Los Angeles. “When I saw they went from streaming to a concert, that made a lot of sense to me,” she said. “Before spending a huge amount on a production, you know a lot more about your product.”

She said that she didn’t think the “Treason” model would work for every show. But just as fans like to feel involved, Franzen said, some investors she had approached about putting money into the show were excited by the sense of taking part in its development.

“I said, ‘This isn’t the final product; you’re seeing the process,” she said. “People love that.”

It’s challenging enough for an actor to portray someone who is alive and well. But can you imagine the extra scrutiny that comes when your model is sitting in the director’s chair?

In the new musical “The Gardens of Anuncia,” Priscilla Lopez plays the title role, which is largely based on the childhood of the show’s director and co-choreographer, Graciela Daniele. Or at least, Daniele pointed out in a recent conversation, it’s “a version of me. A better version.”

When the two stage veterans sat together last week, a day after performances began at Lincoln Center Theater, they laughed continuously, and threw themselves into the conversation with the full-bodied gusto of born performers. They mimed pranks they once pulled on castmates, hummed tunes from long-forgotten shows, and punctuated their stories with enough sound effects to make a Foley artist jealous.

There might also have been a little bit of tearing up as they reminisced about their decades in the Broadway trenches — Lopez is 75, Daniele is almost a decade older — and reflected on the new project, a memory musical based on Daniele’s childhood in post-World War II Buenos Aires.

She and the show’s lyricist, composer and book writer, Michael John LaChiusa, have worked together several times, first when she directed his 1994 Off Broadway musical “Hello Again” and later on the Tony-nominated “Marie Christine” (1999), and their conversations spurred him. “I remember all the stories she was telling me about growing up in Argentina,” LaChiusa said. “A lot them had to do with how a woman became a ballerina, and then a dancer, a choreographer and a director. And that was all on her own terms and on her own talent.”

LaChiusa thought this journey would make for a good musical, but his friend was resistant. Daniele finally gave in, under one condition. “One day, I said, ‘If you want to write something about my life, write about the three women who created me,’” she said. “And it’s not only me: Always somebody has somebody. I think that’s the reason why it’s so emotional. You connect not to my story, but to what you have inside, your experience.”

Lopez chimed in: “We are all Anuncia in one way or another. When my husband saw the show last night, he said ‘It’s your story, too, Priscilla.’” Daniele’s formidable support group consisted of her mother (played in the show by Eden Espinosa), her aunt (Andréa Burns) and her grandmother (the LaChiusa regular Mary Testa). Kalyn West plays the young Anuncia, while Enrique Acevedo and Tally Sessions handle the various male roles. All of them were in the world premiere of the show at the Old Globe in San Diego two years ago; Lopez joined the cast in New York, replacing Carmen Roman.

For LaChiusa, Lopez was an obvious choice. “For one thing, she has pedigree and I wanted to have a 70-year-old play this, or even older,” he said. “And she’s a star, and Graciela is a star — she shines when she walks in a room. When Priscilla’s on the stage, you can’t keep your eyes off her.”

The two women did not talk much about the project itself in an early meeting. “We spent an afternoon trading family stories,” Lopez said. “We talked about our lives, which are —”

“Very, very similar,” Daniele picked up. “Starting as dancers and then going into shows, and then she becoming a star and me becoming a choreographer-director.”

Daniele’s early years were spent in Perón’s Argentina, where she studied ballet as a young girl. Her career as a dancer eventually took her to Paris, then New York, where she made her Broadway debut in “What Makes Sammy Run?” in 1964. Two years later, Lopez, who grew up in a Puerto Rican family in New York City, landed her first Broadway show — the musical adaptation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

That production’s claim to infamy is that it closed after four previews. A dejected Lopez took the first job that turned up — at a club in Miami Beach. Used to saucy showgirls, the locals did not take well to what Lopez described as “an All-American revue, very wholesome,” and started shouting for more skin. “I was mortified,” she said.

When the songwriter Bob Merrill told her about his new musical, “Henry, Sweet Henry,” she flew back to New York to audition. That 1967 production’s choreographer asked if she would like to be a swing. “I had no idea what a swing was,” Lopez said. “I thought a swing was, like, you sit on a swing.” (She and Daniele hooted in unison.)

“Henry, Sweet Henry” turned out to be another flop, but that choreographer was none other than Michael Bennett. A few years later, Lopez would be one of the dancers whose stories formed the backbone of his classic show “A Chorus Line.” She originated the role of Diana, who sings “What I Did for Love” and “Nothing” — the latter drawing from Lopez’s time at the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan.

It’s to those formative years that, once again, Lopez reaches back when asked who her boosters were. First was her mother, who said that young Priscilla had worked too hard to get into the elite school and should not quit. Another early supporter was her acting teacher Vinnette Carroll. “As horrible as Mister Karp was, that’s how wonderful she was,” Lopez said, referring to the teacher who makes memorable running appearances in “Nothing.”

Bennett played a key role in Daniele’s life as well. He spotted her dancing in “Promises, Promises” in 1968, and took her under his wing. He incorporated some of her suggestions in “Coco” the following year, and made her one of his assistants in “Follies” (1971). She also played the young Vanessa in that production, but her increased responsibilities did not interfere with her impish humor. One of her dance partners, Steven Boockvor, was driving her up the wall with his jokes, so she decided to strike back in the “Loveland” number. “We were looking at each other closely for a long time,” Daniele said, “and one day I went …” She lets a string of spittle dangle from her lips. “Michael said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I had a problem in my mouth and I was drooling.’”

In the 1970s, Lopez and Daniele participated in “The Milliken Breakfast Show,” a series of industrial musicals bolstered by the likes of Ann Miller, Robert Morse, Gwen Verdon and … Michael Bennett. One year, Lopez was Chita Rivera’s understudy. “It was a run-through and she had some appointment or something,” Lopez said. “Michael said, ‘Priscilla, get up here. Do it!’ I went [to a jaunty tune] bump-bump-bump-bump.”

As for Daniele, Bennett encouraged her to choreograph one of the Millikens, and she never looked back. She would go on to earn a total of 10 Tony nominations for choreography and directing, including for her work on “Once on This Island” and “Ragtime,” and in 2021 she received a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

Anuncia does mention such an award, but for the most part the new show is about the women who surrounded her, and about looking back in the twilight of your life. Living memories are an essential component of the story, along with the acknowledgment that there are some that we may want to tweak.

When asked if she had any memories she would like to change, Lopez could not think of anything on the spot. Daniele, however, brought up her father, who deserted the family when she was 6.

“I wish I could forgive him,” she said. “I’m 84 years old, and I can’t. There’s nothing I can do about it. That was too huge a pain to my mother, to my family, to everything. So it’s still there.”

In the show, the elder Anuncia intervenes when That Man is hitting her mother, admonishing him: “No forgiveness for you. Never.” For Daniele, it’s a cathartic moment. “I love when Anuncia says ‘Neveeeeeer!’” she said. “I live it in you. Thank you, Priscilla.”

“So I finally got it right?” Lopez asked. They cackled with delight.

A lot can happen in seven years. When the Théâtre de la Ville — a flagship venue for Paris’s contemporary dance and theater scene — last welcomed audiences, in late 2016, TikTok had just launched. A pandemic seemed like a far-fetched idea. La(Horde), the influential dance collective featured prominently during the theater’s reopening festivities this month, was still wholly unknown.

Roughly half of the Théâtre de la Ville’s current employees joined during the closure and didn’t set foot in the building during renovations, its director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota said during a tour of the playhouse last month. (While it was closed, shows continued at a temporary location, the Espace Cardin, at partner venues and on the Théâtre de la Ville’s second stage, Les Abbesses.)

Anticipation for the reopening was high, and the Théâtre de la Ville does look — and feel — different. First, it boasts a new, slightly unwieldy name: the Théâtre de la Ville-Sarah Bernhardt, a nod to its most famous owner, the French actress who ran the space between 1899 and 1923. (The venue’s website has yet to reflect the rebrand.)

The biggest change, however, hits when you walk through the doors. The heavy-looking concrete staircase that led from the entrance into the auditorium has been eliminated. Discrete stairs are now hidden in the back of the hall, and two curved mezzanines in warm wood tones hug the facade — with panoramic views of the neighborhood, including the Théâtre du Châtelet, the rival playhouse that stands across the street.

The closure was never intended to last this long. The initial plan was a partial renovation to bring the Théâtre de la Ville, which hadn’t had a significant upgrade since 1967, up to current security and technical standards. Difficulties quickly piled up, initially because of extensive lead and asbestos, then owing to the Covid pandemic. The total cost, first estimated at 26 million euros, or $27.5 million, ultimately rose to €40 million ($42 million).

The result is a distinctly 21st-century update, which adds yet another layer to what was already an architectural mille-feuille. Inaugurated in 1862, the building was destroyed during the Paris Commune of 1871 and rebuilt a few years later. It was then rebranded several times before the city of Paris chose to reimagine it in 1966. While the facade and roof remained, the Italian-style interior was gutted in favor of a more egalitarian, Brutalist-style auditorium, designed by Jean Perrottet and Valentin Fabre.

The auditorium still feels familiar. While the seats are now a muted shade of sand instead of gray, its concrete underpinnings — dotted here and there with gold leaf — still hang over visitors in the hall. Behind the scenes, however, the stage machinery has been entirely updated. Even the mezzanines are now equipped with curtains and professional lighting, for smaller in situ performances.

And Demarcy-Mota, Théâtre de la Ville’s director since 2008, is attempting to make up for lost time. In early October, the reopening was marked with a free 26-hour performance marathon, “The Great Vigil,” starring around 300 artists from the fields of dance, theater and music.

Some, like the choreographers Angelin Preljocaj and Lucinda Childs, were regulars long before the Théâtre de la Ville closed. Another frequent visitor, the flamenco star Israel Galvan, made a surprise appearance for a brilliant duet with the French harpsichordist Benjamin Alard.

Others were making their Théâtre de la Ville debut, like the pianist Yi-Lin Wu, who set a meditative tone around 1 a.m. with a performance of Ravel’s shimmering “Gaspard de la Nuit.” There was something eerie about wandering the halls late into the night, encountering a highly theatrical statue of Bernhardt playing Phaedra, by a staircase, and climbing up to a newly opened studio, La Coupole, to watch “Ionesco Suite,” a five-play mash-up of the French dramatist’s works, directed by Demarcy-Mota — until well past 3 a.m.

For many visitors at the opening, it was a joyful reunion with a playhouse that shaped much of the French dance scene in the last decades of the 20th century. At that time, the Théâtre de la Ville fiercely promoted avant-garde contemporary dance, and became known as the Parisian home of the Tanztheater luminary Pina Bausch, who visited each year.

This identity had begun to shift in the years before the Théâtre de la Ville closed, with a greater diversity of choreographic trends represented on its stage. Still, during its seven-year absence, other Parisian venues like the Grande Halle of La Villette have stepped up their dance offerings or reoriented their focus to favor more diverse voices and collectives, many of them steeped in street dance styles.

So as the Théâtre de la Ville-Sarah Bernhardt kicked its first season into gear this month, it was sometimes hard to discern what sets it apart from other theaters. High-profile choreographers are no longer identified with individual venues, the way Théâtre de la Ville once was with Bausch: Every programmer in town seems to want the same names.

The collective La(Horde), which took over the stage after “The Great Vigil,” is one example. Less than a week before its run of “Marry Me In Bassiani,” a production the group created for a Georgian company, Iveroni Ensemble, La(Horde) was across the street at the Théâtre du Châtelet with its newest creation, “Age of Content.”

There will be plenty more opportunities to see what Théâtre de la Ville-Sarah Bernhardt does with its revitalized venue as its season progresses. Demarcy-Mota, a theater director who splits his programming between dance, theater and a smattering of music events, said in his inauguration speech last month that he sees the stage as “a space for contradiction.”

And the thrill of discovering new work in a theater known for groundbreaking performances could already be felt last week when La Coupole, the upstairs studio, hosted “En Addicto,” a one-man show inspired by a monthslong residency in a hospital wing devoted to addicts.

Its director and performer, Thomas Quillardet, let the voices of staff and patients alike flow through him with just the right mix of empathy and levity. It brought to mind Demarcy-Mota’s commitment to sending Théâtre de la Ville artists to local hospitals during the pandemic, to share poems or mini-performances. It’s been a long wait, but these artists can finally come home.