Which Musical Theatre Leading Man Are You, Really?
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UPI
2 hours ago
- UPI
'Pretty Thing' reminded Alicia Silverstone of her film 'The Crush'
1 of 5 | Alicia Silverstone, seen at the 2022 Bloomingdale's and Harper's BAZAAR fête in New York, stars in "Pretty Thing." File Photo by Gabriele Holtermann/UPI | License Photo LOS ANGELES, July 2 (UPI) -- Alicia Silverstone says her new movie, Pretty Thing, in theaters and video-on-demand Friday, reminded her of her first movie, 1993's The Crush. While both are thrillers about stalkers, Silverstone played the teen stalker in The Crush and is the object of obsession in Pretty Thing. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Silverstone, 48, discussed the similarities and differences between the two films. In Pretty Thing, Silverstone portrays Sophie, a successful businesswoman who begins an affair with Elliott (Karl Glusman), a younger man and caterer she meets at a party. Elliott becomes obsessed with Sophie after she ends the relationship. "It's fun to revisit it," Silverstone said of the stalker thriller genre. "They're both in some kind of addictive game. She wants this to stop and he wants it to keep going. They're both equally determined." Silverstone is also clear that Pretty Thing is purely entertainment. Sophie attempts to handle Elliott's stalking herself, which the actress does not recommend. "Sophie doesn't call the cops, for example," she said. "That's a good thing to do. She takes it upon herself because she feels so threatened and she thinks she's in control." In The Crush, it was immediately apparent Silverstone's character, Adrian, was obsessed with an older man -- the tenant of her parents' guest house. In Pretty Thing, Sophie and Elliott enjoy several dates and travel to Paris together before she decides to end it. "It's an erotic thriller and it starts like a romance," she said. "You think, 'Oh, this is like this really beautiful, romantic story' and then it takes a turn. I love that about it." One of the moments that makes Sophie realize Elliott is too young for her is when he plans a date night. He takes her to the production of his friend's play, and Sophie is visibly uncomfortable. "I remember just being like oh God, this is so bad," Silverstone said. "She would've only gone to the finest Broadway performances or if it's going to be off Broadway, it's going to be something that is just hailed as incredible. This is just some sort of amateur play." Elliott also made a miscalculation by thinking the play would be an appealing surprise. "She didn't get told she was going to a play," Silverstone said. "You have to be prepared for that." Pretty Thing filmed under a waiver during the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strike of 2023. Director Justin Kelly, with whom Silverstone filmed King Cobra previously, cast her three weeks before production. Silverstone trained quickly, as Sophie is shown boxing at the gym. She also worked with costume designer Matthew Simonelli on Sophie's look, which involved changing her trademark blonde hair, and enjoying high fashion. "He had a vision for my hair to be dark and it was just fun," she said. "We borrowed clothes from Christian Siriano but also vintage. [Simonelli]'s vision was sort of Helmut Lang." This year also sees renewed interest in another popular Silverstone movie: Clueless turns returned to theaters in June ahead of its 30th anniversary. For Silverstone, however, the teen comedy has never gone away. "It happens almost every year," she said. "I've been hearing about the anniversary of Clueless, I think, for the last 15 years at least." Silverstone attended a sold out screening at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures with director Amy Heckerling and cast mates this summer. "That was really neat to see everybody laughing," she said. "I'm grateful that so many people love the movie so much." Clueless was the ninth film Silverstone made in a two year period. The movie's ensuing popularity created another whirlwind for her. "My life was different then," she reflected. "It was all very new and overwhelming but I'm always grateful for how this film has made people really happy over the years. It's lovely." For years after Clueless, people quoted her character, Cher Horowitz, saying, "I'm Audi" or "As if." Decades later, subsequent teen generations created new lingo like "on fleek" and "delulu," and Silverstone said her now 14-year-old son still springs new words on her. "My son has his own language that he brings to me so he refers to me as 'cuh,'" she said, referring to slang for "cousin." "You know when they go, 'Bruh? Bruh?' Now I'm Cuh. 'What's up, Cuh?' It makes me laugh." Still, Silverstone looks back at The Crush as the beginning of her career. The late director Marty Callner, who directed Silverstone in three Aerosmith videos, cast her after seeing that film. Then Clueless director Amy Heckerling wanted to cast her because of the "Cryin'" video. "I also got two MTV Movie Awards for The Crush - Best Villain and Best Newcomer Actress so that was the beginning," she said. "The Aerosmith videos came alongside all of these films."
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
The Best Theater Moments of 2025, So Far
The theater is more than the sum of its parts; it is also the parts themselves. As I began to look back at the first half of 2025, I found myself primarily recalling those parts: the scene, not the script; the props, not the production. Here are 10 such moments, some sad, some funny, some furious, most all at once. Audra's Turn at the Tonys 'Rose's Turn,' the 11 o'clock number to end them all, is often described as a nervous breakdown in song. It was certainly that when I first saw Audra McDonald slay it in the current Broadway revival of 'Gypsy.' But by the time she performed it on the Tony Awards months later, it was no longer just a personal crisis: a mother grieving the lost opportunities her daughter now enjoys. The lyric 'Somebody tell me, when is it my turn?' now rang out with greater depth and anger as McDonald, the first Black woman to play Rose on Broadway, invoked the lost opportunities of generations of talented Black women behind her. Read our review of 'Gypsy' and our feature about 'Rose's Turn.' A Multiplicity of Greenspans Though he was the subject of the recent Off Broadway play 'I'm Assuming You Know David Greenspan,' most people don't. Nor will Greenspan's astonishing quadruple performance in the Off Broadway production of 'Prince Faggot,' Jordan Tannahill's shocker about a gay heir to the British throne, help pin him down: He's that shape-shifty. A bossy palace publicist, a discreet royal servant, even the possibly gay Edward II are among his perfectly etched characters. And the monologue in which he supposedly plays himself? Indescribable (at least here). Read our review of the play. A Face and a Name to Remember Now it can be told. In the Broadway show 'Smash,' based on the television melodrama about a Marilyn Monroe musical, the big number ('Let Me Be Your Star') was deeply undersold in the opening scene. That was a marvelous feint because, at the end of Act I, to bring the curtain down with a huge surprise bang, out came Bella Coppola, as a suddenly promoted assistant choreographer, performing the same song when no one else could. Can you oversell something? Turns out, no. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Chicago Tribune
17 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘The Color Purple' renews its Chicago welcome at the Goodman Theatre
Chicago loves Celie, Sofia and Shug Avery, and has embraced 'The Color Purple,' the 2005 Broadway musical based on both the beloved Alice Walker novel of strife, resilience and triumph in rural Georgia and the romantically hued Steven Spielberg movie for more than 20 years. So its warmly received return at the Goodman Theatre on Monday night felt very much like a well-fitting pair of Miss Celie's pants. The original Broadway production, directed by our own Gary Griffin and featuring our own Felicia P. Fields, opened its first national tour at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, staying for months in 2007; I remember watching Oprah Winfrey, a co-producer, go backstage in a heady era when the rise of Barack Obama was making Chicago feel like the epicenter of a hopeful world. The tour soon returned here, followed by a new tour of the 2015 Broadway revival, and then local stagings aplenty followed, at the Mercury Theater and the Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace, to name but two. I reviewed the pre-Broadway tryout of this show in Atlanta (where, improbably, it did not have an all-Black cast) and, all in all, I've seen the work of book writer Marsha Norman and songwriters Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray at least a dozen times. The great Willis, who co-wrote both 'September' and 'Boogie Wonderland' for Earth, Wind & Fire, died in 2019, although the Goodman Theatre program seems to think she is still alive. Only through her music, alas. That 2019 Drury Lane production was directed by Lili-Anne Brown, who also staged this show at the MUNY in St. Louis in 2022 and who is in charge again this summer on Dearborn Street. The Goodman's production uses much the same group of talent from that 2019 Drury Lane staging, including set designer Arnel Sancianco, costume designer Samantha C. Jones, music director Jermaine Hill and choreographer Breon Arzell and also many of the actors, including (among others) Gilbert Domally (as Harpo), Sean Blake (Ol Mister) and Nicole Michelle Haskins, who appeared both in Oakbrook Terrace and now downtown as Sofia. No wonder Brown brought back Haskins; she's a consummate, powerhouse Sofia. The newcomers are mostly Chicago-based and Chicago-raised talent, including Brittney Mack ('Six') as Celie, the former Black Ensemble Theater star Aerie Williams, a fine vocalist, as the Shug whom everybody loves, and Evan Tyrone Martin, ranging far from his wheelhouse as Mister, the abusive husband who eventually embraces redemption. It's fair to say that the Goodman staging uses a similar aesthetic palette as the prior suburban production, a presentational, relatively minimalist staging that keeps houses and cars off stage, suggests rather than builds a juke joint and wisely avoids bucolic, Spielberg-esque vistas of purple flowers. This matches the trajectory, really, of this particular musical, a show that has some structural limitations and has come to be be seen as most effective in a minimalist, almost concert-style staging, even though it started out very differently. After all, this is a musical based on an epistolary novel, driven by letters sent between Celie, trapped in an early 20th century world of impoverished Black hurt and her beloved Nettie (Shantel Renee Cribbs), driven away from that world in order to survive. For all the similarities, though, this is a vastly improved staging, filled with stellar singing and a more robust confidence. Over time, Brown and Hill clearly have figured out to deepen the mostly pop melodies in this score, a catchy and accessible song suite, to fit their vision of a more soulful interpretation, closer to the Black church than Top 40. And, this time, they have the singers who can follow through with their ideas. Mack's intensely focused performance suggests she long has been waiting for this particular role. She sings it superbly, which is no surprise, but her work in Act 1 is most striking in how intensely she captures the capturing of a wonderful young woman by a pair of brutally abusive men, and how she manifests the physical trauma that evokes. It's a rich and empathetic performance and it is, of course, key to the success of the production. I have my quibbles. The musical and dramatic tempos in Act 2 drag some and I don't care for how Sofia gets blocked by Celie for most audience members in the crucial dinner-table scene where she literally comes back to life by what both Walker and Norman imply is by the grace of God. I felt that way in 2019 and that scene is staged much the same. (I also still miss the much larger original orchestrations, although 'The Color Purple' now is often and effectively staged with eight musicians, as is the case at the Goodman.) But the heart of the show beats here with intensity. Martin has probably the hardest job on the stage and he's surely more comfortable with where Mister goes than where he begins. But he and Brown also don't shy away from the pain behind his journey. Mack and Haskins operate with great gravitas and, just as importantly, Brown always includes the audience in the storytelling, more than I've seen before with this title. And at least on opening night, the response proved that is the way to go with this show. Review: 'The Color Purple' (3.5 stars) When: Through Aug. 3 Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes Tickets: $33-$143 at 312-443-3800 and
