Revolution on Broadway! The Season’s Most Electrifying Productions
“Alexander Hamilton’s story grabbed ahold of me and never let go,” says Hamilton’s Pulitzer Prize winning creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda. “I knew this guy.” Not since Rent has a work of theater so thrillingly upended the thinking about what, and for whom, a musical can be. Miranda (center) with his costar Leslie Odom Jr., who plays Hamilton’s frenemy Aaron Burr. On Joan Smalls: Erdem cape and dress.
Photographed by Mikael Jansson, Vogue, June 20161/6Counter Culture
The season teems with iconoclastic Broadway productions. From left: Heléne Yorke lights up Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho; Michael Zegen and Russell Tovey play brothers in the ruthlessly modern staging of A View from the Bridge; Reed Birney leads the ensemble cast of the riveting family drama The Humans; a showstopping Cynthia Erivo reinvigorates The Color Purple; and Adrienne Warren is a breakout in Shuffle Along, a sweeping new show about one of the early all-black Broadway musicals. On Smalls: Maison Margiela jacket, sweater, and dress. Tracy Reese earrings. Miu Miu shoes.
Photographed at Café de La Esquina, Williamsburg
Photographed by Mikael Jansson, Vogue, June 20162/6The Room Where It Happens
From left: Thomas Kail, the director of Hamilton; director Michael Arden, who reimagined Spring Awakening with deaf actors in the cast; Shuffle Along choreographer Savion Glover; Grammy-nominated solo musician Sara Bareilles, of Waitress; The Humans playwright Stephen Karam; Eclipsed writer Danai Gurira, who also stars on AMC’s The Walking Dead; and Belgian director Ivo van Hove, who reinvented two Arthur Miller plays this season. “I read the text as if it were written yesterday,” says van Hove. “Otherwise it becomes a museum piece.” On Bareilles: Gucci dress. On Gurira: Proenza Schouler dress. On Smalls: Altuzarra dress.
Photographed at the St. George Theatre
Photographed by Mikael Jansson, Vogue, June 20163/6Cab-aret
“It’s a monumental year,” says James Corden, who is taking a break from CBS’s The Late Late Show to host the seventieth annual Tony Awards. The British comedian, who won a Tony for his outrageously entertaining performance in 2012’s One Man, Two Guvnors, is sure to bring his singular sense of hilarity and high jinks to the night. On Smalls: Saint Laurent blouse. Corden in Burberry.
Photographed by Mikael Jansson, Vogue, June 20164/6Bewitched
Originally an allegory for McCarthy-era scare tactics, The Crucible resonates just as vividly during this presidential election. In van Hove’s production, a hauntingly spare score by Philip Glass bolsters a sensational international cast—including Tavi Gevinson, second from right, Sophie Okonedo, Ben Whishaw, and recent Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan. On Smalls: Marni top. Vetements pants.
Photographed by Mikael Jansson, Vogue, June 20165/6Girl Talk
From left: Eclipsed’s Akosua Busia, Zainab Jah, Pascale Armand, Lupita Nyong’o, and Saycon Sengbloh in Nyong’o’s dressing room, designed by Mike Harrison, at the John Golden Theatre. “This play is not only the first to feature an all-female cast, author, and director,” the Oscar-winning actress says, “but it is also very explicitly about five women brought together by the perils of war. It’s one of the most emotionally exhausting and spiritually rewarding experiences of my life.” On Smalls: Duro Olowu dress. Gucci earrings and rings. For Nyong’o: Hair: Vernon François for RnD.