Names and faces

The Denzel Washington seen backstage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre is not exactly living a glamorous Hollywood life. He’s more like a college student during finals. He wears a black Yankees cap, black sweat pants and blue sneakers. There are free weights on a counter and a bottle of diet cola. Notebooks and papers are everywhere. But Washington seems completely in his element as he puts the finishing touches on one of America’s greatest plays, A Raisin in the Sun. “It’s just a great opportunity - that’s how I look at it,” Washington said. “It’s like getting back to your roots. It’s going good. But around about the 70th show, I might be going, ‘What am I doing?’” The play marks Washington’s first return to Broadway since his Tony Award-winning turn in Fences in 2010. Set in 1950s Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun centers on the struggling Younger family, who anxiously await a $10,000 insurance check - and then squabble over how to spend it. Washington plays Walter Lee, a chauffeur with dreams of opening a liquor store, a role made famous by Sidney Poitier, who played it in the original 1959 production and reprised it in a 1961 movie. Washington has won Academy Awards for his roles in Glory and Training Day, but he said his dream when he first started acting at Fordham University was to be onstage. Washington said his mother, who turned 90 on Saturday, plans to go to New York to see her son in the play. Poitier has also promised to attend a show.

Nickelodeon’s famous green goo finally caught up with host Mark Wahlberg at the 27th annual Kids’ Choice Awards - thanks to some unlikely slimers. Along the way producer Dan Schneider won the show’s first lifetime achievement award and Robert Downey Jr. got real after winning for best male buttkicker. “This is the highest honor yet bestowed on me - I’m grateful, humble, the whole deal,” the Iron Man star said. More than a dozen former and current teen stars joined on stage to salute Schneider, the creator of several of the network’s most popular shows, including iCarly, Kenan & Kel and Sam & Cat. But the awards show is mostly an excuse to slime some of today’s top stars, and first-time host Wahlberg executed several slimings as he successfully escaped the green goo for the show’s first 80 minutes. It was comedian Kevin Hart who eventually tricked Wahlberg into the goo, with an assist from the actor’s three young children. “I can’t believe my own kids turned on me,” Wahlberg said.