THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Monday, April 4, 2016

FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh

Claire Manning, Amanda Price

PAGES: 21, including this page

April 1, 2016

‘Falsettos’ Revival Casts Its Leads: Christian Borle, Andrew

Rannells and Stephanie J. Block

By Michael Paulson

Marvin and Whizzer, meet Christian and Andrew.

Lincoln Center Theater on Thursday announced that Christian Borle and Andrew Rannells would play the

lovers at the heart of “Falsettos,” a much-admired musical about a complex set of family relationships that is

being revived on Broadway this fall.

Mr. Borle, currently starring on Broadway as Shakespeare in “Something Rotten!”, will play Marvin; Mr.

Rannells, best known as Elijah on the television show “Girls,” will play Whizzer; and Stephanie J. Block will

play Marvin’s ex-wife, Trina. Mr. Borle has won two Tony Awards, for “Something Rotten!” and “Peter and

the Starcatcher.” Mr. Rannells was nominated for a Tony Award for “The Book of Mormon,” while Ms. Block

was nominated for a Tony Award for “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”

“Falsettos,” featuring music and lyrics by William Finn and a book by Mr. Finn and James Lapine, first opened

on Broadway in 1992, and won Tony Awards for book and score. The show has an unusual history: it was

created through the combination of two one-act musicals, “March of the Falsettos” and “Falsettoland,” which

both premiered Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons.

Lincoln Center Theater is producing the revival in association with Jujamcyn Theaters. It is a passion project for

Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn, who said that he believed the musical “was way ahead of its time” and

that now “will resonate even more profoundly.” The artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, André Bishop,

also has a strong connection to the show: He was the artistic director at Playwrights Horizons when each of its

component parts was presented.

The revival is scheduled to begin previews on Sept. 29 and open on Oct. 27 at the Walter Kerr Theater. It is to

be directed by Mr. Lapine, who also directed the original.

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April 4, 2016

Oscar Isaac to Star in a ‘Hamlet’ Staged by Theater for a New

Audience

By Andrew R. Chow

From Shakespeare to “Star Wars” and back again: Oscar Isaac will play the title role in a new production of

“Hamlet,” staged by Theater for a New Audience at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn in June

2017. Sam Gold, who won a Tony for “Fun Home,” will direct.

Mr. Isaac appeared in Shakespeare in the Park production of “Romeo and Juliet” in 2007 and that of “Two

Gentlemen of Verona” in 2007 and 2005. (“More impish than passionate,” Ben Brantley said of Mr. Isaac’s

Proteus in “Verona.”) He has since played leading roles in the film “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the HBO mini-series

“Show Me a Hero” (for which he won a Golden Globe), and the pilot Poe Dameron in the latest “Star Wars”

blockbuster, “The Force Awakens.” . Mr. Isaac and Mr. Gold previously collaborated on the Off Broadway play

“We Live Here,” by Zoe Kazan, in 2011.

“Hamlet” is scheduled to begin previews on June 4, 2017, and open on June 22. More information can be found

at www.tfana.org.

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April 1, 2016

Review: In Arthur Miller’s ‘Crucible,’ First They Came for

the Witches

By Ben Brantley

The Devil has returned to Broadway, with the power to make the strong tremble. It is time to be afraid, very

afraid, of a play that seemed perhaps merely worthy when you studied it in high school English class.

The director Ivo van Hove and a dazzling international cast — led by Ben Whishaw, Sophie Okonedo, Saoirse

Ronan and Ciaran Hinds — have plumbed the raw terror in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” which opened on

Thursday night at the Walter Kerr Theater. And an endlessly revived historical drama from 1953 suddenly feels

like the freshest, scariest play in town.

That its arrival also feels perfectly timed in this presidential election year, when politicians traffic in fears of

outsiders and otherness, is less surprising. Miller’s portrait of murderous mass hysteria during the 17th-century

Salem witch trials was written to echo the “Red menace” hearings in Washington in the 1950s.

Parallels between Miller’s then and latter-day nows have never been hard to reach for. What makes Mr. van

Hove’s interpretation so unsettlingly vivid has little to do with literal-minded topicality.

Instead, following a formula that has proved golden for him in recent seasons, Mr. van Hove divests a historical

work of period associations, the better to see its inhabitants as timelessly tragic and as close to you and me as

the people in the seats next to us — or, if we’re honest, as our fallible selves. And more than any of the many

“Crucibles” I’ve seen, this one insists that we identify with not only the victims of persecution but also with

those who would judge them.

We are made to see what the terrified residents of Salem think they see, in visions formed from a collective,

paranoid fever dream. In rendering these effects, Mr. van Hove and his astonishing set and lighting designer,

Jan Versweyveld, borrow freely from the imagery of horror movies. Then there’s Philip Glass’s icy, rhythmic

music, which seems to emanate not from the stage but from your own rushing pulse.

There is no hint of shabby desperation in these effects, of the sense of a spook house jerry-built over a well-

worn drama. As in his recent masterly reimagining of another Miller classic, “A View From the Bridge,” Mr.

van Hove is aiming for a scalding transparency. It is the kind of openness that lets us see the divided soul

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beneath the skin and, in “The Crucible,” what one character describes as “the wheels within wheels of this

village, and fires within fires.”

The impact of that “View,” which presented a Brooklyn longshoreman’s doomed family within the starkness of

an ancient Greek amphitheater, was such that I feared that this “Crucible” would suffer by comparison. Then

there was the matter of this production’s chic global casting.

The changeling beauty of Ms. Ronan, fresh from her Academy Award nomination for “Brooklyn,” made sense

for the diabolical teenager Abigail. (And, yes, she’s absolutely smashing in the part.) But that willowy, sensitive

plant Ben Whishaw as the strapping, rough-hewed farmer John Proctor? Really?

But Mr. van Hove knew exactly what he was doing here. All the members of his large ensemble find revealing

new shapes within archetypes and insist that we grasp and even sympathize with their characters’ perspectives.

There are other forms of magic afoot, as Mr. Versweyveld’s single set seamlessly becomes everything the script

says it must be. As first seen, occupied by straight-backed, chanting girls at their desks in a fleeting, imagistic

prologue, this would appear to be a contemporary schoolroom of a dreary institutional nature.

You could imagine it doing duty for civic events, such as a town hall forum or a local election. Those who

gather here match the walls in their drab, functional clothing (designed by Wojciech Dziedzic). A chalkboard —

over which is scrawled a prayer encouraging good will to men — occupies upstage center. And without giving

too much away, let me urge you to watch that space. (The uncanny video projections are by Tal Yarden.)

The play’s unwitting catalyst is Mr. Whishaw’s John, whose sexual encounter with a young servant, Abigail,

has left her determined to claim him for herself. She gathers a group of other girls in the forest to invoke the

powers of darkness against John’s wife, Elizabeth (Ms. Okonedo). These would-be witches for a night are

spotted by Abigail’s uncle, the Rev. Samuel Parris (a marvelously soggy-spined Jason Butler Harner), setting

off a chain of accusations that results in scores of deaths.

John Proctor has often been portrayed (by the likes of Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis) as a stalwart Gary

Cooper type, and part of the tragedy in that context is seeing a big man brought to his knees. The slighter-

framed Mr. Whishaw looks more vulnerable, and we fear for his safety from the beginning, not least because

his cardinal virtue appears to be his sanity, and the sane rarely flourish in a world gone mad.

Ms. Okonedo, who brings a welcome earthiness to the role of Elizabeth, exudes a similar spirit of common-

sense humanity. But living far from the town on their farm, they are unaware of the madness that is taking over

Salem. When an officer of the court comes to arrest Elizabeth, they have the incredulity of people caught

unawares by a tide of history that they simply can’t believe could happen in the world they know. Nazi

Germany comes to mind. Certain pundits might even think of the United States today.

Feasible sexual chemistry onstage is fairly common; the bonds of a quieter, deeper-reaching love, less so. It’s

that connection that Mr. Whishaw and Ms. Okonedo so beautifully embody here, and it ennobles their

characters as much as their moral stances. When we see them in their last meeting, broken by incarceration and

fearful of hurting each other by embracing, the heart shatters.

One of the miracles of this “Crucible,” though, is its success in presenting all those onstage as all too human and

all too hungry to see themselves as good people. It’s their self-protecting, self-deluding rationalizations that

conjure the devils of distrust that rip a social fabric to shreds.

If I had space, I would single out every one in the cast. But allow me to mention the scheming, petty burghers of

Thomas Jay Ryan and Tina Benko; the anxious, spiritually challenged man of the cloth portrayed by Bill Camp;

Tavi Gevinson’s malleable, craven and poignantly credible serving girl; Jim Norton’s folksy and unexpectedly

heroic farmer; and the suave, snarling hanging judge given such unassailably authoritative life by Mr. Hinds.

In the end, everybody loses, and everybody suffers, with one blazing exception. That’s Abigail, the girl who

cries “witch” and who, as Ms. Ronan so beguilingly plays her, has the power to become alternately invisible

and radiant with focused intent.

“The Crucible” has a diverse and spectacular assortment of moments that make the flesh creep. But there’s

nothing quite as scary as the sight of Ms. Ronan’s Abigail, seated stock still in a chair, bending a vulnerable girl

to her will with the force of a malevolent stare.

The Crucible By Arthur Miller; directed by Ivo van Hove; score by Philip Glass; sets and lighting by Jan

Versweyveld; costumes by Wojciech Dziedzic; video by Tal Yarden; sound by Tom Gibbons; movement by

Steven Hoggett; associate director, Jeff James; production stage manager, Martha Donaldson; production

manager, Aurora Productions; company manager, Katrina Elliott. Presented by Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Roger

Berlind, William Berlind, Len Blavatnik, Roy Furman, Peter May, Jay Alix and Una Jackman, Scott M.

Delman, Heni Koenigsberg, Daryl Roth, Jane Bergère, Sonia Friedman Productions, Ruth Hendel, JFL

Theatricals, Stacey Mindich, Jon B. Platt, Megan Savage, Spring Sirkin and Tulchin Bartner Productions;

executive producers, Joey Parnes, Sue Wagner and John Johnson. Through July 17 at the Walter Kerr Theater,

219 West 48th Street, Manhattan; 877-250-2929, thecrucibleonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 45

minutes.

WITH: Ben Whishaw (John Proctor), Sophie Okonedo (Elizabeth Proctor), Ciaran Hinds (Deputy Governor

Danforth), Saoirse Ronan (Abigail Williams), Bill Camp (the Rev. John Hale), Tavi Gevinson (Mary Warren),

Jason Butler Harner (the Rev. Samuel Parris), Tina Benko (Ann Putnam), Jenny Jules (Tituba), Thomas Jay

Ryan (Thomas Putnam), Brenda Wehle (Rebecca Nurse), Teagle F. Bougere (Judge Hathorne), Michael Braun

(Ezekiel Cheever), Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut (Susanna Walcott), Elizabeth Teeter (Betty Parris), Ray Anthony

Thomas (Francis Nurse), Erin Wilhelmi (Mercy Lewis) and Jim Norton (Giles Corey).

April 1, 2016

Review: ‘1776,’ a Musical Portrait of Squabbling Politicians By Ben Brantley Even in times of tumult, history moves at different paces. To see the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” is to experience the American Revolution as a hotheaded, hotfooted affair, sped forward by impatient firebrands who act as fast they talk. But take a look at the same era as it’s portrayed in “1776,” the 1969 musical by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone about one excruciatingly protracted session of the Continental Congress in the year of its title. As Garry Hynes’s stately Encores! concert production of that show reminds us, the birth of great change often involves a slow and difficult labor, especially when a hidebound institution called Congress is involved. Consider the opening lines of this production, spoken with deliciously ripe disgust by Santino Fontana in the role of John Adams: “I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace — two are called a law firm — and that three or more become a Congress.” I don’t know how that definition played to audiences 40-odd years ago. But on Wednesday night, when the production opened at City Center, it brought the house down. Adams goes on to sing, in further describing the august body he serves, “You see/we piddle, twiddle and resolve/Not one damned thing do we solve.” As Adams’s fellow Americans, assembled in delegation in Philadelphia, deliver on the promise of these acerbic words, “1776” can sometimes feel like C-Span set to music. (The plus ça change impression is underscored by the fact that the men onstage, in costumes by Terese Wadden, are wearing not quaint breeches and powdered wigs but contemporary business suits.) And therein lies what’s radical about a musical often regarded as a square show from a hip era, the age of swinging-’60s frolics like “Hair” and “Promises, Promises.” Running boldly in the face of the belief that a show has to be dynamic to be entertaining, “1776” delivers a portrait of men locked in stasis. Its suspense hinges on whether its politically constipated characters will ever agree to create and sign that deathless document that begins, “When in the course of human events …” Your instinct is to yell down the corridors of history, “Pick up the pace, guys!” You may occasionally feel like shouting the same instructions at the cast members onstage.

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This cleanly mounted production, which features a set by Anna Louizos and lighting by Ken Billington, begins with marvelous gusto, with an adversarial call-and-response number. “For God’s Sake, John, Sit Down” is its mouthful of a title, and it pits Mr. Fontana’s agitating Adams, who wants the Congress to commit to independence from England, against his increasingly annoyed and obdurately stolid fellow politicians. Mr. Fontana serves much the same function for this show as his character does in Congress. Adams is the prodder in chief, the man who keeps trying to goose everyone around him into active engagement. In like manner, Mr. Fontana, whose earlier Broadway credits include “Act One” and “Cinderella,” here shoulders the responsibilities of a leading man (in all senses of the term) with irresistible focus and passion. Adams may be routinely described as “obnoxious and disliked.” But in theater, you tend to follow the energy, and here it emanates mostly from Mr. Fontana’s person. (John Larroquette, as a drolly lackadaisical Benjamin Franklin, is his natural comic foil.) Mr. Fontana also sings beautifully and articulately, whether in exasperated political calls to action or epistolary love duets with his wife, Abigail (Christiane Noll), who is tending the family farm in Massachusetts, while dressed up like a model for L. L. Bean. Such songs are catchier than you may remember. Before “1776,” Mr. Edwards (who died in 1981) had worked as a Brill Building composer. (His hits include “See You in September.”) And his work combines vintage all-American flourishes with the melodic hooks of pop hits. The Encores! orchestra, led by Ben Whiteley, suavely melds these disparate elements. (Love the fife and drum work throughout.) The supporting ensemble — which is ethnically mixed, à la “Hamilton” (to occasionally jolting effect) — is most persuasive in song. In “Cool, Cool Considerate Men,” Bryce Pinkham (of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”) impeccably leads a chorus line of conservatives, who “dance together the same minuet, ever to the right, ever to the right, never to the left.” (Chris Bailey is the choreographer.) As Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, Alexander Gemignani brings a rich baritone and ominous purpose to the show’s most lush-sounding and perversely beautiful number, “Molasses to Rum,” in defense of slavery. And John-Michael Lyles, as a young military courier, delivers the elegiac soldier’s song that concludes the first act with haunting simplicity. There is, however, less music than you may recall in “1776.” The stretches between songs here, far more than in the sprightly 1997 Roundabout Theater Company revival, feel long and parched, as the delegates piddle, quibble and insult one another, as well as debate manners of policy. They are also given to nudging, off-color innuendo, particularly regarding poor Thomas Jefferson (the amiably lanky and laconic John Behlmann), whose loins burn for his ravishing wife, Martha (Nikki Renée Daniels), from whom he has been separated for weeks. The charming Ms. Daniels must deliver a charmless ode to Jefferson’s skills as a lover, “He Plays the Violin.”

It is this show’s contention that it is the sexual relief of conjugal reunion that allows Jefferson to overcome writer’s block and pen the Declaration of Independence with the necessary virile eloquence. Now that’s a classically hokey musical comedy premise. What was, and remains, revolutionary about “1776” is that, in following the long and winding deliberations of contentious men in a closed room, it dares to be as dull as real politics can often be.

April 4, 2016

Review: ‘House Rules’ and All Kinds of Games

By Alexis Soloski

People play a lot of games in A. Rey Pamatmat’s intriguing, untidy “House Rules,” produced by Ma-Yi Theater

Company. They compete at gin rummy and Monopoly, arguing over whether to leave money on the Free

Parking space. They try to learn a variation of mah-jongg and battle over sungka, a traditional Filipino pastime

played with cowrie shells.

Of course the most complicated games are the ones that people play with one another — contests of attraction

and repulsion, affection and aversion.

Set in New York (although, because of the play’s haphazard exposition, it takes a while to figure that out), the

play centers on two Filipino-American families who inhabit different apartments in the same building. Ernie

(Jojo Gonzalez) — now in the hospital after a pair of heart attacks — is the father of Rod (James Yaegashi), a

doctor, and JJ (Jeffrey Omura), a hotshot comic book artist. Vera (Mia Katigbak) is mother to Momo (Tiffany

Villarin), also a doctor, and Twee (Tina Chilip), a dilettante photographer. Henry (Conrad Schott), Rod’s ex-

boyfriend and colleague, rounds out the cast.

Mr. Pamatmat has compelling ideas about human psychology and dramatic structure, but the completed play,

under Ralph B. Peña’s somewhat busy direction, doesn’t always serve them well. Despite the talent and

magnetism of the actors, the characters and their relationships can too often feel like constructs rather than fully

realized men and women, though there are sometimes flashes of surprising truth, particularly in the sibling

interactions.

And while building the play around various games is a fine conceit, it sometimes seems too pat. It also distracts

from the more interesting conversation about family and assimilation, although there’s a reward here, too,

especially in a tour de force speech by the ever-engaging Ms. Katigbak, which joins the several themes. “I came

here so you could be better than me,” her Vera says. “Happier than me. So you could take the rules I made up

and come up with your own.”

But when the game is life, in all its fullness and complexity and confusion, it’s a hard one to win.

“House Rules” runs through April 16 at Here, 145 Avenue of the Americas, Manhattan; 212-253-3101; ma-

yitheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

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April 4, 2016

Review: ‘Death for Five Voices,’ About a Vanguard Composer

By Alexis Soloski

You can’t fault the composer Peter Mills or the director and Mr. Mills’s co-writer Cara Reichel for lacking

ambition. It took nerve to write the new musical “Death for Five Voices,” playing at the Sheen Center, about a

vanguard composer, and it took further brio to begin that work with the line, “It is finished,” Jesus’s final words

on the cross. And as members of the Prospect Theater Company, Mr. Mills and Ms. Reichel also demonstrate

no little audacity in producing elaborate musical theater works on what seems to be a negligible budget.

But “Death for Five Voices,” a sometimes stiff and sometimes silly biographical musical about the early

modern composer Carlo Gesualdo, is not one of their more successful efforts. The topic is certainly juicy

enough. Gesualdo was not only an innovative artist but also a multiple murderer, having stabbed both his wife

and her lover in a crime of passion and then mutilated the corpses for good measure. (I first learned of the tale

by way of Wesley Stace’s playful modernist retelling, “Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer.”)

On a set with a lot of exposed brick and pillar candles — somewhat menacing, somewhat Pottery Barn — the

spoiled royal Carlo (Nathan Gardner) is urged by his controlling mother into marriage with his beautiful cousin

Maria D’Avalos (Manna Nichols). But Carlo is deeply and unrelentingly creepy, both in Mr. Mills and Ms.

Reichel’s book and in Mr. Gardner’s less than subtle performance, so it’s no surprise that Maria turns to the

hunky Fabrizio Carafa (Nicholas Rodriguez, who seems born to play a Disney prince).

The score sometimes borrows from Gesualdo’s madrigals and religious works, sometimes from a more familiar

operetta vocabulary, but few of the songs stand out, apart from a sweet, if somewhat soppy ballad, “You Should

Not Have Loved Me.” All are nicely sung and finely accompanied by live musicians, although some screeching

microphones and a tumbling music stand were occasional distractions at a preview performance.

Unfortunately, “Death for Five Voices” has little feel for the period or the personalities. The vocabulary and the

psychology are contemporary, the characterizations and plotting shallow. (The overbearing mother of a troubled

child is this musical’s own clichéd invention; so is the reasoning behind Gesualdo’s turn to religious music.)

The writers mean to suggest a connection between the disturbing innovation of Gesualdo’s works and the dark

cast of his mind, but they haven’t yet found a way to put these ideas in tune.

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April 1, 2016

James Noble, Absent-Minded Governor on ‘Benson,’ Dies at 94

By Liam Stack

James Noble, the actor best known for his role as the absent-minded governor on the hit 1980s sitcom

“Benson,” died on Monday in Norwalk, Conn. He was 94.

Douglas Moser, a family spokesman, said Mr. Noble, who lived in Norwalk, had a stroke a few days before his

death, in a hospital.

Mr. Noble was primarily known as a stage actor when he took the role of Eugene Gatling, the well-meaning but

somewhat bumbling governor of an unnamed state on “Benson,” which appeared on ABC from 1979 to 1986.

The show starred Robert Guillaume, playing the same character he had played on the sitcom “Soap.” Benson

was originally the governor’s “director of household affairs,” but over the course of the series he rose to state

budget director and then to lieutenant governor.

The two men’s friendly if sometimes fraught working relationship was the focus of the series. After its original

run ended it has been seen in syndication on the cable channels Nick at Nite and TV Land.

James Wilkes Noble was born in Dallas on March 5, 1922. He studied drama and engineering at Southern

Methodist University but left to join the Navy during World War II. After the war he studied acting under Lee

Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York.

Mr. Noble made his Broadway debut in 1949 in a production of the comedy “The Velvet Glove” and went on to

appear in four more Broadway shows, including the musical “1776.” (He was also in the 1972 film version.)

His other movie and television work included the soap operas “One Life to Live” and “Another World” and

played Bo Derek’s father in the hit 1979 film “10.”

Mr. Noble was married to the actress Carolyn Coates, whom he met when they were both appearing in a

production of Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” She died in 2005. He is survived by his daughter, Jessica Katherine Noble

Cowan.

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April 3, 2016

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April 3, 2016

Bringing ballet to Broadway -- and beyond Lesley Stahl profiles Tony Award-winner Christopher Wheeldon, one of the most celebrated

ballet choreographers today

The following script is from "Christopher Wheeldon" which aired on April 3, 2016. Lesley Stahl is the

correspondent. Ruth Streeter and Kaylee Tully, producers.

Christopher Wheeldon is one of the most celebrated choreographers in the world today; turning the tradition-

bound dance form into something athletic, sensual and edgy.

Wheeldon was born in England and trained at The Royal Ballet where he is artistic associate. He's only 43, but

has already created over 90 works, many for the world's major ballet companies.

Last spring, he pulled off a coup only a very few dance-makers have ever done: he directed and choreographed

a smash Broadway musical. It was inspired by The Gene Kelly movie "An American In Paris," with music by

George and Ira Gershwin. It received 12 Tony nominations and proved that Wheeldon can make ballet fun to

watch, even for people who think they'll hate it.

"An American in Paris" is a love story. It's also a valentine to dance, all kinds: Broadway hoofing, tap and

above all: ballet. Sensual, dazzling, daring ballet. Not only did Christopher Wheeldon choreograph the show, he

also directed it, something he'd never done before, and that was scary.

[Christopher Wheeldon: Good. OK, good guys. Well done.]

Lesley Stahl: You gave new meaning to the expression, "Learn on the job"?

Christopher Wheeldon: Yea.

Lesley Stahl: For sure.

Christopher Wheeldon: In at the

deep end.

Lesley Stahl: Because you had

never directed anything with

words?

Christopher Wheeldon: They

probably couldn't see the sweat

kind of trickling down the back

of my neck.

It didn't hurt that he had music

by the Gershwins to work with. He started with what he knew best: the dancing and ballet dancers, Robbie

Fairchild and Leanne Cope. For Wheeldon, learning on the job turned out pretty OK. The show is a big hit and

he won a Tony for best choreography.

Lesley Stahl: The critics just loved the show. Was it a turning point in your life?

Christopher Wheeldon: I certainly felt like a door was flung open.

For now, Wheeldon is taking what he learned from Broadway back into his first and abiding love, classical

ballet, which he discovered as a little boy growing up in a small village in the South West of England.

When he was seven, he talked his parents into letting him take ballet lessons.

Christopher Wheeldon: I was hooked from the get-go.

Lesley Stahl: What was the get-go?

Christopher Wheeldon: The get-go was a little ballet school in a village hall and a bunch of girls around the

barres on the side of the hall and it was the first place that I felt really at home.

At 10, he auditioned and was accepted at The Royal Ballet School known as White Lodge, a boarding school in

London's Richmond Park -- originally the hunting lodge for the royal family. Up to then, he had kept his

dancing a secret from his classmates.

Christopher Wheeldon: I went to an all-boys prep school and my headmaster was so proud that one of his

students had been accepted into this big institution that he announced it in school assembly one morning. And I

still had about six months to go at the school. So my secret was out and it was b-- it was a pretty-- it was a

pretty hellish six months.

Lesley Stahl: They did tease you.

Christopher Wheeldon: I was teased, yeah.

Wheeldon lived at White Lodge between the ages of 11 and 16. It was competitive and grueling. Students here

spend 4-to-5 hours a day dancing, and have to re-audition every year. In his time, Wheeldon was taught by a

tough, old-school Russian ballet master.

Christopher Wheeldon: He was strict with us. He picked me up by my hair once 'cause I wasn't jumping high

enough. It was-- I don't think I'll ever forget that.

Lesley Stahl: Did you ever want to

quit?

Christopher Wheeldon: I don't think so.

I really do feel that I was meant to be a

dancer and I knew that.

Actually, he was meant to be a

choreographer. But first he danced for

The Royal Ballet and then the New

York City Ballet which asked him at

the age of 28, to become its first

resident choreographer. He won

acclaim making pieces that pushed the

boundaries of classical dance, like this,

"After The Rain," performed here to commemorate the attacks of September 11th.

Christopher Wheeldon: I was thinking shape, structure, sculpture, and then what came out of it was something

very emotional. People see different things. Some people see loss, some people see love, some people see death.

Lesley Stahl: You have said that's your favorite. Tell us why.

Christopher Wheeldon: People love it. You know, I'm not gonna lie: It's a n-- it's a good feeling when people

love your work and they tell you, and they're-- and they're moved by it.

Moving people has made Christopher Wheeldon an international superstar. Every major ballet company is after

him. We followed him to Amsterdam where he was creating a brand new piece for the Dutch National Ballet.

Christopher Wheeldon: This room is a blank canvas, and you come in here with the bodies and with the

beginnings of a new score, and you have no idea whether it's going to flower or sort of wither away. And--

Lesley Stahl: That sounds terrifying--

Christopher Wheeldon: It is. But it's exhilarating.

Lesley Stahl: Where do you start?

Christopher Wheeldon: It begins with the music. And then it's about making that first brushstroke.

Christopher Wheeldon: 'Cause it really is like painting. It's like painting music.

Lesley Stahl: When you're choreographing 'cause we've now seen you do it a couple of times, you close your

eyes, you kinda go away. And when you're away your hands are moving as if we're actually watching that

creativity happen. We're seeing you do it.

Christopher Wheeldon: It's a way of trying to picture the music. The shape of a musical phrase, whether it's

something that's a spiral, or circular or angular.

Anna Tsygankova: It's magic to be with him in his studio, to witness how he makes this idea seated in his mind

and his heart, he makes it visible for the rest of us.

Wheeldon is making his magic with Jozef Varga and Anna Tsygankova, a Russian-born star of The Dutch

Ballet. He calls her one of his muses.

Lesley Stahl: When you're choreographing for a ballerina you almost take on-- you become her in a funny way.

Christopher Wheeldon: You

know, everything has to pass

through me. So much of

communicating what it is

that you want to a dancer is

about showing. So yeah, so I

do. I have to-- I have to play

the men, I have to play the

women.

Lesley Stahl: So you're an

actor?

Christopher Wheeldon:

Nobody actually pays to see

me up onstage, but I do get

to perform.

Lesley Stahl: You are pushing the dancers to do athletic things that go across the boundary almost.

Christopher Wheeldon: Dancers love to be challenged and we come up with crazy ideas sometimes just to see

how far we-- we can push. And I will push until I'm sure that it's not possible.

Once in performance, it looks fluid and effortless. Wheeldon's reputation has been built on intimate duets like

this with difficult but beautiful lifts and partnering.

or Wheeldon it's nonstop. Between May and September, he worked in seven different countries. In Toronto, he

rehearsed his two-and-a-half-hour imagining of Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale"for the National Ballet of

Canada.

This is one of his story ballets with characters and a plot -- that are big box office. It has lots of moving parts, 52

dancers including children, and Wheeldon is the ring master.

Christopher Wheeldon: There are so many aspects that are kind of, you know, bearing down on you. The

dancers are looking to you. There's a lot of expectation. They want a fabulous role so that they can be

celebrated. The director of the company wants you to make a hit ballet. So there's a lot of responsibility that

goes with the job.

And a lot of pressure. Which got to him early in his career as a choreographer when he was working in London.

Christopher Wheeldon: I had been working on a lot of ballets back-to-back. And I started work on a new piece.

And I just felt I couldn't do it. There was nothing. It was kind of like suddenly switching all the lights off. So

rather than facing it head-on I actually kinda turned and ran.

Lesley Stahl: You ran?

Christopher Wheeldon: I got on the plane and I flew back to New York. It was a really, really tough moment.

Lesley Stahl: What do you think you learned?

Christopher Wheeldon: That it can't always be output, output, output. You have to take in. And take a step back.

With the exception of a rough time running a ballet company he co-founded then left, he's been on a creative up

ever since.

Happily married for two and a half years, Christopher Wheeldon's become an ambassador for ballet bringing it

into the mainstream, this time with Stephen Colbert, showing him some moves from "An American in Paris."

Lesley Stahl: You once said that you wanted to show that ballet need not be, quote, "A big, puffy, pink, glittery

nightmare." This is your ambition, to change that, that image?

Christopher Wheeldon: You know, it is possible for ballet to be young, sexy, dynamic, exciting. To tell complex

stories, not just stories about sleeping princesses. But to take audiences on breathtaking journeys.

April 2016

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April 3, 2016

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April 2, 2016

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