Dear Theater Fans, Hello! It’s Helen Shaw, your theater critic, writing to you about a particularly active week on the theater desk. It’s a tense time to be in Midtown Manhattan, with so many of us anticipating the Tony Awards on June 7. I know my nails are bitten to the quick. So to take the edge off, I recently popped downtown to Dylan MarcAurele’s “Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody,” which is playing at the Culture Club, in what was once the McKittrick Hotel. This tongue-in-mouthguard version of “Heated Rivalry” is a naughty, fond-hearted and often gorgeously sung delight — I enthusiastically recommend it for anyone who loves the TV show. At one point, the (excellent) cast drafts an “actor” from the audience, and the night I went, Tim Teeman, regular contributor to the Times’s theater coverage, was chosen. You could have knocked me over with a hockey stick! Luckily, Tim wrote all about his experience playing the smoothie-guzzling heartthrob Scott Hunter; if you think you’ve got what it takes, get your skates on. (The show plays through Sept. 7.) Of course, this season’s other casting surprise is the film star Alden Ehrenreich playing Max in the barbed comedy “Becky Shaw.” It’s his first professional theatrical engagement, and it’s astonishing. Even in an excellent ensemble, which includes the stage goddess Linda Emond, the Tony-nominated Ehrenreich stands apart for his portrait of a viper-tongued antihero eating his own heart out. In a lovely profile, Melena Ryzik talks to the actor about the influences (Spielberg, Capra, Dean Martin roasts) that made him. Jesse Green wrote a beautiful article this week about the not-quite-lost play “The Emporium,” by Thornton Wilder. Jesse spoke to the playwright Kirk Lynn about what it took to complete an unfinished Wilder text using hundreds of pages discovered in an archive at Yale. The piece includes images of both Wilder’s much-annotated manuscripts and Lynn’s own drafts. I admit, the theatrical result was not for me, but this Great Read of Jesse’s contains the deep humanity and intellectual generosity that is the mark of any truly Wilder-ian project. While we’re on the subject of craft: Roslyn Sulcas talked to Kip Williams about the philosophy behind his screen-heavy version of Jean Genet’s “The Maids,” at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, and Elisabeth Vincentelli explored the development of “Girl, Interrupted” from Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir to the 1999 movie to this year’s stage play, written by Martyna Majok, with music by Aimee Mann, at the Public Theater in Manhattan. On Broadway, Melena took us on a close-up tour of David Korins’s fastidiously detailed “Dog Day Afternoon” set, while Michael Paulson explained (with Sara Krulwich’s spectacular video!) how “The Lost Boys” and its special effects take advantage of the Palace Theater’s unique situation. (The vast venue, like the show’s undead heroes, is actually surprisingly high up in the air.) You can tell that our thoughts are very much with the current season: the artistry of what’s onstage now and in the immediate future. But Michael has also noted several comings — in the fall, dry wits Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Allison Janney will face off in “Other Desert Cities” — and goings. (Faced with the departure of Lea Michele, “Chess” has announced its closure on June 21.) With Memorial Day over, the new season is already rushing toward us! We’ll see you all there. Please reach out to us at theaterfeedback@nytimes.com with suggestions for articles or to offer your thoughts about our coverage. And urge your friends to subscribe to this newsletter. Have a wonderful week, Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here.
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