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    ‘Waiting for Godot’ Review: Old Friends Falling in and Out of Sync

    Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks star in Arin Arbus’s pandemic-delayed production at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center.Samuel Beckett left as little as possible to chance when he wrote “Waiting for Godot,” a play that, 70 years after its first production, usually looks substantially the same: the country road, the withered tree, the battered boots arranged at the top of Act II with “heels together, toes splayed.” In his stage directions, Beckett spent 195 words choreographing some horseplay involving hats.Live performance itself, then, would be the wild card. And so it proved on Saturday night at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, where Michael Shannon is starring as Estragon (a.k.a. Gogo) opposite Paul Sparks as Vladimir (a.k.a. Didi). The two actors are old friends playing old friends, yet through the whole first act there wasn’t the faintest glint of chemistry between them.It was deadening to the production, and baffling for anyone who has admired Shannon’s and Sparks’s work separately or together, onstage or onscreen; I, for one, treasure the memory of them in Craig Wright’s “Lady” Off Broadway 15 years ago. Here their performances sprang into three dimensions only with the arrival, shortly before intermission, of a Boy (a lovely Toussaint Francois Battiste), who brings a message from Godot.I have no idea whether I caught the show on an off night, or if after merely a week of previews the production was still somewhat underbaked. But the inertness of Act I gave way to a high-energy Act II — rather denting the idea that one day in the nearly featureless void of Didi and Gogo’s existence is practically indistinguishable from another, but thank goodness anyway.From then on, Shannon and Sparks were in sync as scruffy, aimless, quarreling clowns who fail anew, by each fresh sunset, the test of being human. Buffeted by love and loathing, Didi and Gogo prefer to do their languishing together.“We always find something, eh Didi,” Gogo says, “to give us the impression we exist?”Arin Arbus’s pandemic-delayed production for Theater for a New Audience lacks a discernible interpretation that we can grab onto, or that can grab onto us. But it does make striking use of the space, with a paved, two-lane road (by Riccardo Hernández) running downhill from the middle of the upstage wall to the back of the auditorium. The double yellow line in the center of the road — denoting a no-passing zone — could also be decoded as a no-dying zone. From the first moments of the play to the last, Didi and Gogo speak of ending their lives, but their passing is not to be.Under merciless sunlight (by Christopher Akerlind), Shannon is a crabbed and shambling Gogo, fidgety and peckish, bedeviled by ill-fitting boots. (Costumes are by Susan Hilferty.) Though Shannon does a bit of comic tumbling on the road, he also sometimes barely has to move to land a laugh, his remarkable gestural efficiency combining with a marvelous dryness of tone.Sparks, meanwhile, brings buoyancy to Didi’s roughness, and a palpable, if bizarro, human center. Inspecting the amnesiac Gogo’s legs for proof of an attack the day before, Didi is ebullient when he finds it: “There’s the wound! Beginning to fester!”A chunk of a scene in Act II, involving Didi, Gogo and their only passers-by — the vicious Pozzo (Ajay Naidu) and the man he has enslaved, Lucky (a vivid Jeff Biehl) — would get bigger laughs if the blocking allowed more than half the house a view of the actors’ faces. A sightline worry throughout the performance is the road itself, whose incline puts some audience members at an awkward angle to the action.This “Godot” comes at a time so fraught that real-world resonances ambush us in the most unexpected shows, so it’s odd that that doesn’t happen here, or didn’t to me. Yet in some ways we are all Didi and Gogo, victims and onlookers — perpetrators, too — in the barbarism of the world.Weary of brutal cycles that keep repeating, they despair of their ability to alter the course.“I can’t go on like this,” Gogo says.And Didi tells him: “That’s what you think.”Waiting for GodotThrough Dec. 3 at Theater for a New Audience, Manhattan; tfana.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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    In Texas, a Fight Over Gender and School Theater Takes an Unexpected Turn

    After a high school production of “Oklahoma!” was halted in conservative Sherman, Texas, something unusual happened: The school board sided with transgender students.A school district in the conservative town of Sherman, Texas, made national headlines last week when it put a stop to a high school production of the musical “Oklahoma!” after a transgender student was cast in a lead role.The district’s administrators decided, and communicated to parents, that the school would cast only students “born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.” Not only did several transgender and nonbinary students lose their parts, but so, too, did cisgender girls cast in male roles. Publicly, the district said the problem was the profane and sexual content of the 1943 musical.At one point, the theater teacher, who objected to the decision, was escorted out of the school by the principal. The set, a sturdy mock-up of a settler’s house that took students two months to build, was demolished.But then something even more unusual happened in Sherman, a rural college town that has been rapidly drawn into the expanding orbit of Dallas to its south. The school district reversed course. In a late-night vote on Monday, the school board voted unanimously to restore the original casting. The decision rebuked efforts to bring the fight over transgender participation in student activities into the world of theater, which has long provided a haven for gay, lesbian and transgender students, and it reflected just how deeply the controversy had unsettled the town.The district’s restriction had been exceptional. Fights have erupted over the kinds of plays students can present, but few if any school districts appear to have attempted to restrict gender roles in theater. And while legislatures across the country, including in Texas, have adopted laws restricting transgender students’ participation in sports, no such legislation has been introduced to restrict theater roles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Community members attend a school board meeting at the Sherman Independent School District on Monday night.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThe board’s vote came after students and outraged parents began organizing. In recent days, the district’s administrators, seeking a compromise, offered to recast the students in a version of the musical meant for middle schoolers or younger that omitted solos and included roles as cattle and birds. Students balked.After the vote, the school board announced a special meeting for Friday to open an investigation and to consider taking action against the district superintendent, Tyson Bennett, who oversaw the district’s handling of “Oklahoma!,” including “possible administrative leave.”Suddenly, improbably, the students had won.“I’m beyond excited and everyone cried tears of joy,” Max Hightower, the transgender senior whose casting in a lead role triggered the ensuing events, said in a text message on Tuesday. He and other theater students were at a costume shop on Tuesday, a class trip that had been meant as a consolation after the disappointment of losing their production. Instead, it turned into a celebration. “I’m getting new Oklahoma costumes!!” he said.Before the school board vote Monday night, high schoolers and their parents had gathered at the district’s offices along with theater actors and transgender students from nearby Austin College. Local residents came to talk about decades of past productions at Sherman High School of “Oklahoma!,” which tells the story of an Oklahoma Territory farm girl and her courtship by two rival suitors. Many scoffed at the district’s objections to the musical, which school officials complained included “mature adult themes.”Sherman High made national headlines last week when it put a stop to a high school production of the musical “Oklahoma!” after a transgender student was cast in a lead role.Desiree Rios for The New York Times“‘Oklahoma!’ is generally regarded as one of the safest shows you could possibly pick to perform,” said Kirk Everist, a theater professor at Austin College who was among those who came to speak. “It’s almost a stereotype at this point.”Every seat in the room was filled, almost entirely with supporters of the production. Some lined the walls while others who were turned away waited outside. Of the 65 people who signed up to speak, only a handful voiced support for the district’s restrictions.The outpouring came as a shock, even to longtime Sherman residents.“What you’re seeing today is history,” said Valerie Fox, 41, a local L.G.B.T.Q. advocate and the parent of a queer high schooler. Ms. Fox said she was taken aback by the scene of dozens of transgender people and their supporters holding signs and flags outside the district offices. “This is one of the biggest things we’ve seen in Sherman.”The town, a short drive from Dallas, has been a place where many conservatives have gone to escape the city. Some were supportive of the superintendent’s initial decision to restrict the musical.“Adult content doesn’t belong in high school; they’re still kids,” Renée Snow, 62, said earlier on Monday as she sat with her friend on a bench outside the county courthouse. “It’s about education. It’s not about lifestyle.”Her friend, Lyn Williams, 69, agreed. “It doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to stand up for anything anymore,” she said.At a local shoe store, no one needed to be reminded of the details of the controversy. One shopper, shaking a pair of insoles, said that she believed that God made people either male or female, and that the issue was a simple as that.“I’m beyond excited and everyone cried tears of joy,” Max Hightower, the transgender senior at the high school whose casting in a lead role triggered the ensuing events, said in a text message on Tuesday. Desiree Rios for The New York TimesInside the courthouse, Bruce Dawsey, the top executive for Grayson County, described a rural community coming to terms with its evolution into a place where urban development is altering the landscape. Not far away, more than a half-dozen cranes could be seen towering over a new high-tech facility for Texas Instruments. The high school, with more than 2,200 students, opened on a sprawling new campus in 2021, its grass still uniform, its newly planted trees still struggling to provide shade. With all the growth, the school is already too small.“The majority is Republican, and it’s conservative Republican,” Mr. Dawsey said. “But not so ultraconservative that it’s not welcoming.”Still, some in and around Sherman have chafed at the changes. When Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for governor, campaigned through the county last year, he was met with aggressive protesters who confronted him over gun rights, some carrying assault-style rifles. A few wore T-shirts suggesting opposition to liberal urban governance: “Don’t Dallas My Grayson County.”But the controversy over “Oklahoma!” came as a surprise. The musical had been selected and approved last school year, casting was completed in August and more than 60 students in the cast and crew — as well as dozens of dancers — had been preparing for months. Performances were scheduled for early December.Max, 17, had been cast in a minor role. But then, in late October, one of the leads was cut from the production, and Max got the part, the biggest he had ever had. He was elated.Days later, his father, Phillip Hightower, got a call from the high school principal, who told him that Max could not have the part because, under a new policy, no students could play roles that differed from their sex at birth. “He was not rude or disrespectful, but he was very curt and to the point,” Mr. Hightower recalled.Phillip Hightower got a call from the high school principal who told him that Max could not have the part because, under a new policy, no students could play roles that differed from their sex at birth.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThe district later denied having such a policy. But the principal also left messages for other parents whose children were losing their roles, one of which was shared with The New York Times.“This is Scott Johnston, principal at Sherman High School,” a man’s voice said on the recording. “Moving forward, the Sherman theater department will cast students born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.”The message diverged from the rules for high school theater competitions in Texas, which allow for students to be cast in roles regardless of gender.The district did not make Mr. Johnston or the superintendent, Mr. Bennett, available for an interview.In his previous role as an assistant superintendent, Mr. Bennett had objected to the content of a theater production by Sherman High School, according to the former choir director, Anna Clarkson. She recalled Mr. Bennett asking her to change a lesbian character into a straight character in the school’s production of “Legally Blonde” in 2015, and to cut a song entitled “Gay or European?”At the school board meeting on Monday, theater students from the high school described how things had become worse for gay and transgender students at school since the production was halted. Slurs. Taunts. Arguments in the halls.“People are following me around calling me girl-boy,” said Max.Kayla Brooks and her wife, Liz Banks, arrived at the meeting bracing for a tough night. Their daughter Ellis had lost a part playing a male character, and they had been actively working with other parents to oppose the changes.Max Hightower, 17, had originally been cast in a minor part in the musical, but was promoted in October to a leading role, the biggest he had ever had.Desiree Rios for The New York Times“We were both nervous, because we live in Sherman,” said Ms. Banks. Then they saw the large, supportive crowd outside. “We began weeping in the car,” Ms. Brooks said.The school board sat mostly stone-faced as dozens of people testified in support of the theater students, sharing personal histories. A transgender student at Austin College said he had not before come out publicly. Sherman residents lamented the way the school district’s position had made the town look.“I just want this town to be what it can be and not be a laughingstock for the entire nation,” one woman, Rebecca Gebhard, told the board.After nearly three hours, the board went behind closed doors. The crowds left. Few expected a significant decision was imminent.Then, after 10 p.m., the board took their seats again and introduced a motion for a vote: Since there was no official policy on gender for casting, the original version of the musical should be reinstated. All seven board members voted in favor, including one who had, months before, protested against a gay pride event.“We want to apologize to our students, parents, our community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through,” the board president, Brad Morgan, said afterward.Sitting in their living room on Tuesday morning, Ms. Banks and Ms. Brooks recalled how their daughter delivered them the news. “She just said, ‘We won,’” Ms. Brooks said. “She was beaming, smiling ear to ear.” The musical would be performed in January.The couple decided, for the first time, to hang a pride flag in the window of their home. For now, they felt a little more confident in their neighbors than they had a day before.Alain Delaquérière More

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    Recap: Timothée Chalamet Hosts ‘Saturday Night Live’

    Timothée Chalamet hosted an episode that presented former President Trump as an aggrieved forerunner. The musical guest was boygenius.Come on, you didn’t really think that “Saturday Night Live” would begin this weekend with a parody of the third Republican presidential debate, did you?OK, let’s indulge this little fantasy for a moment and pretend that this broadcast — hosted by Timothée Chalamet and featuring the musical guest boygenius — might actually open on a sketch featuring the candidates who aren’t Donald J. Trump, impersonated by the “S.N.L.” cast including Heidi Gardner as Nikki Haley, John Higgins as Ron DeSantis and Ego Nwodim as Vivek Ramaswamy.Well, not long after Gardner and Nwodim reenacted a testy exchange between Haley and Ramaswamy and Devon Walker (as Tim Scott) began to rhapsodize about his girlfriend, the entire sketch was frozen and the lights were dimmed on the debate stage.Enter James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as Trump: “How adorable,” he said, mocking the other candidates. “They actually think they’ve got a chance. Sad in some ways, but in other ways, funny. Can you believe it, folks? Ninety-one indictments, four trials. And I’m still the best choice. They’re all stuck behind me and there’s nothing they can do about it. Just like in real life.”Johnson went on to mock the low poll ratings of his Republican rivals: “One percent, very low,” he said, indicating Walker. “Lower than, frankly, milk. Apparently there’s a milk lower than 1 percent. People are calling it skim, we’ve never had it, we don’t drink it.”And he offered a satirical meta-commentary on Higgins, the actor playing DeSantis. “Poor Ron DeSantis,” Johnson said. “Even ‘S.N.L.’ doesn’t think he has a chance. If they did, it’d be like Paul Rudd or something in there, right?”But mostly, he talked about himself: “Isn’t it sad, folks?” Johnson said. “None of them can beat Joe Biden. The worst president since, frankly, me.” Why hasn’t Trump appeared at the debates? As Johnson explained it: “I’m very, very busy. I’m going from trial to trial. I’m basically doing ‘House Hunters’ but with courtrooms.”Johnson complained about the fact that he was being put on trial at all: “They’re saying I committed fraud,” he said. “Not true, OK? Not true. I’ve committed a lot of things. Adultery, treason, a lot of fraud, perhaps.”But on the witness stand, Johnson said he was on his best behavior: “The judge asks, ‘Did you approve these financial reports?’” he explained. “And I very respectfully say, ‘You’re a dumb-ass. This is a sham. When I’m president again, I’ll have you executed.’”Bringing the debate and the sketch to a conclusion, Johnson said, “I’ll pick one of these lucky five to be my VP, or in many ways, I will not at all. Maybe in my third term.”Opening monologue of the weekChalamet, who was hosting “S.N.L.” for the second time, expressed relief that a deal had been reached between the actors of the SAG-AFTRA union and the Hollywood entertainment studios, ending a monthslong strike and allowing him to flog upcoming projects like his film “Wonka.”Picking up a cane, Chalamet began to poke fun at the self-promotional opportunities that he could now indulge, singing a song set to “Pure Imagination” from the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Its lyrics ran, in part:“If you want to view a three-and-a-half hour filmGo see ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’Or just wait for Part 2 of ‘Dune’Just make sure before to use the bathroom …”In the latter part of the monologue, Chalamet and Marcello Hernández performed a bawdy tribute to their status as baby-faces — presumably, the material they had prepared in case the strike wasn’t resolved by this weekend.Not-phoned-in performance of the weekA round-table segment paying satirical homage to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop may not be the most revolutionary idea for a comedy sketch, though it provides a great showcase for cast members like James Austin Johnson and Punkie Johnson to show off their impressions of people like Rick Rubin and Mary J. Blige.But what makes this memorable is Chalamet’s delightfully committed performance as a fictional (if frightfully successful) young rapper with the stage name of SmokeCheddaThaAssGetta, who knows nothing about the history of his chosen genre and has no business being on the panel. There’s also the sight of Chalamet being spanked by Kenan Thompson (playing Cornel West), the soon-to-be viral GIF from which the whole sketch, one assumes, was reverse engineered.Impersonation showcase of the weekYes, there was already the sketch about the Republican debate and the hip-hop round table. But for good measure, why not throw in one more segment that lets Chloe Fineman and the “S.N.L.” cast show off their talents for pretending to be other famous people?That is the duty fulfilled by this short film in which the best-selling memoirist Britney Spears (Fineman) reveals that, before choosing Michelle Williams to read the audiobook of “The Woman in Me,” she had tried out other readers as well. Feel free to admire the sheer versatility of Fineman (who also plays Chalamet, Julia Fox and Natasha Lyonne in the sketch); the levels of inside baseball (Sarah Sherman and Michael Longfellow as the “S.N.L.” alums John Mulaney and Bill Hader); or the weirdness of James Austin Johnson as Werner Herzog.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the Republican debate, the F.B.I. investigation into Mayor Eric Adams of New York and President Biden’s re-election efforts.Jost began:The third Republican debate was held this week, and Vivek Ramaswamy started by saying that the GOP had become “a party of losers.” Weirdly, “a party of losers” was also how NBC advertised the debate. Ramaswamy then criticized Nikki Haley’s daughter for having a TikTok account. He also stressed that it’s not important how he knows her daughter has a TikTok account. Then Nikki Haley responded to the attack by saying, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” which was pulled directly from the Japanese subtitles of the Will Smith slap.Che continued:Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign got a major boost after Iowa governor Kim Reynolds endorsed him. Also giving DeSantis a lift: his leather hooker boots. The F.B.I. has launched a corruption investigation into New York mayor Eric Adams by seizing two of his cellphones. One named “work phone” and the other named “shorties and shady stuff.”Jost resumed:After new polls showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden, Democratic strategists are calling Biden’s re-election campaign a five-alarm fire. Which is scary for Biden, because in a fire, you have to use the stairs. More

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    A Parkland Father Stages the Unthinkable: Losing a Son in a School Shooting

    Manuel Oliver has a one-man show about the life and death of his son, Joaquin, who was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.Manuel Oliver had arrived at the point of his one-man show where it was time to re-enact the murder of his son, Joaquin, who was one of 17 people killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.He donned a paper mask of the face of Joaquin, who was a 17-year-old senior when he was killed. He grabbed a hammer and turned to a life-size portrait of Joaquin and methodically banged it four times — once for each bullet that had struck him — creating a jagged hole. Then Oliver crumpled to the ground, as if lifeless.The searing re-enactment of the shooting was part of “Guac: The One Man Show,” a show about Joaquin that Oliver has been performing around the nation, and that he brought this month to the Theater Row Studio Theater in Manhattan. About 50 people watched as Oliver opened the play with a question: “When you lose a son, what do you do?”In the show “Guac,” Oliver paints on a life-size portrait of Joaquin.Ron DonofrioFor Oliver, part of the answer came in the form of 90 minutes in which he tried to sketch the life of Joaquin: a Venezuelan American boy who was known to his friends as Guac and who loved bacon, buttery popcorn, Guns N’ Roses and the Miami Heat. It was a haunting portrait of a life, and of the abruptness with which it was cut short on Valentine’s Day of 2018 — the moment, as Oliver put it, “that cuts your life in two.”“It makes me feel very connected to my son,” Oliver, 55, said in an interview last week before his latest performance. “I’m a father. I’m Joaquin’s dad. Fathers, that’s what we do. We sit around the table, and we talk about our kids. I want to feel that I also have that right. How am I using that right? Through theater.”“Guac,” which was co-written by Oliver and James Clements and directed by Michael Cotey, is co-produced by ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence and ChangeTheRef, an anti-gun violence advocacy group founded by Oliver and his wife, Patricia.Since Joaquin was killed Oliver, a painter, has used art and activism to push for stronger gun regulation. He created a mural about the demand for change that went viral online, unfurled a picture of his son atop a 150-foot-high crane near the White House, traveled to the sites of other school shootings around the country in a retrofitted school bus and filed a claim against the U.S. government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.A few years ago Oliver, who had never acted before, came up with the idea of creating a play after realizing that theater could be an effective way to raise awareness about gun violence.“When you’re working in these areas of activism and looking for justice, you do have the chance to go to rallies and talk to people and they give you five to 10 minutes,” he said. “They may or may not be paying attention. There’s always another speaker after you. So I thought what if I have a full 100 percent attention for an hour about Joaquin’s life? How do I make that happen?”Oliver, center, with his wife, Patricia, and David Hogg, a Parkland survivor, at the March for Our Lives protest against gun violence in Washington in 2022. Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe first performance was in July 2019 at the Los Angeles headquarters of Toms Shoes, a company that was sympathetic to Oliver’s cause, and he later performed it in New York, Orlando, New Orleans, Dallas and other cities until the pandemic brought the tour to a halt. His first post-pandemic performance was in Chicago this summer, and he returned to New York on Nov. 3 and Nov. 11 as part of the United Solo Theater Festival. He hopes to perform it again in New York in 2024, and to bring the show to Europe.The play began with special memories Oliver shared about Joaquin, which he called “magic moments”: He spoke about going to a rock concert together, or about the time a 7-year-old Joaquin accidentally wore his sister’s pants to school.The audience included several people who have survived a mass shooting or who are activists for stricter gun laws. Diego Pfeiffer, who attended the Saturday performance, is a 23-year-old actor who survived the Parkland shooting. He called the show a form of “loving suffering” for Oliver.After the moment when he took a hammer to his son’s portrait, Oliver painted on it. On Saturday, with “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd playing, Oliver painted dark blue wings over Joaquin’s shoulders and drew a message in black on his son’s white shirt: “I wish I was here.”“Hope evolves,” Oliver said in the show, tears in his eyes, recalling the frantic moments he and his wife searched for their son, calling repeatedly with no answer. “I was hoping that you left the phone behind. I was hoping that you dropped the phone. I was hoping you were injured but not that bad. And I ended up hoping that it was not painful but fast.” More

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    Steve Carell to Make Broadway Debut as Uncle Vanya Next Spring

    The production, a new translation by Heidi Schreck, will also star Alison Pill, William Jackson Harper, Alfred Molina and Anika Noni Rose.Steve Carell, the screen actor best known for his breakout role as a blundering boss in the NBC comedy “The Office,” will make his Broadway debut in a revival of the Chekhov classic “Uncle Vanya.”Carell will lead a cast of television, film and stage veterans in the production, which is to begin performances April 2 and to open April 24 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a Broadway house at the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater.“Uncle Vanya” is a dark Russian drama, first performed in 1899, about a rural family whose dreary but stable routine is disrupted when the property’s long-absent owner, a retired professor, comes to visit with his new, and much younger, wife. The play has been staged and adapted many times — this will be the 11th production on Broadway — and this iteration will be based on a new translation by Heidi Schreck, whose previous Broadway venture, an autobiographical show called “What the Constitution Means to Me,” is expected to be the most-staged play at U.S. theaters this season (not counting those by Shakespeare and Dickens).Carell, who played a regional manager in “The Office,” will also play a manager in “Uncle Vanya.” His character is the country estate’s long-suffering administrator (and the brother of the professor’s first wife); he oversees the property with a niece, Sonya, who will be played by Alison Pill, who last appeared on Broadway in a revival of “Three Tall Women” and was a Tony Award nominee for “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” They will be joined by William Jackson Harper, an alumnus of the NBC comedy “The Good Place” who this year wowed Off Broadway audiences with his starring role in “Primary Trust”; he will play Astrov, the local doctor.Alfred Molina (a three-time Tony nominee, for “Red,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Art”) will play the professor, while Anika Noni Rose (a Tony winner for “Caroline, or Change”) will play the professor’s wife. Jayne Houdyshell (a Tony winner for “The Humans”) will play Vanya’s mother, and Mia Katigbak (an Obie winner for “Awake and Sing!”) will portray a household nurse.“Uncle Vanya” is being directed by Lila Neugebauer, who is also directing a Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play “Appropriate,” which is scheduled to open next month. More

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    In ‘Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,’ Aubrey Plaza Steps in the Ring

    The actress makes her stage debut alongside Christopher Abbott in an Off Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s compact and combative play.Nursing beers and munching on pretzels, Danny and Roberta are sitting at neighboring tables in a Bronx bar as Hall & Oates’s slinky hit “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” booms out of the jukebox. “Where do you dare me/To draw the line?/You’ve got the body/Now you want my soul,” the song goes, as if laying out a playbook for the complicated courtship that they are about to enact.These two hopeless loners are the only people in the bar in this Off Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Though modest in scale, the show is one of the fall’s hottest thanks to its stars, Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott. Plaza, who is making her stage debut, has seen her screen career shift to a higher gear in the past few years, with acclaimed performances in the film “Emily the Criminal” and Season 2 of “The White Lotus.”It’s easy to see why she and Abbott (an in-demand actor since making a name as the boyfriend of Allison Williams’s character on “Girls”) decided to do Shanley’s compact piece. Since its premiere, in 1984, the play has become a favorite of actors looking for audition monologues or mettle-testing exercises. Shanley’s writing sometimes devolves into hard-boiled mannerisms, but it also has a sharp pugnaciousness. As the story progresses, cracks appear in the barrage of hostilities, as the characters reveal flashes of circumspect vulnerability. Similarly, Abbott and Plaza’s performances move beyond histrionics and gain confidence as their characters start letting themselves feel.When Danny and Roberta finally strike up a conversation, it immediately reveals their combustible approaches to life itself. She is a 31-year-old divorced mother who is unhappily living with her parents. He is 29, and informs Roberta that he plans to kill himself when he turns 30. (He puts it in blunter terms; most of the play’s best lines are laced with profanity.)As quickly as their push-pull attraction is made clear, we realize that the characters’ default attack mode is a manifestation of their pain and self-loathing: Danny doesn’t know how to express himself without resorting to violence (we learn he recently beat up a man and left him for dead); Roberta is haunted by a traumatic episode that has filled her with soul-sapping guilt. The big question, then, is whether they will stop snarling long enough to realize solace is possible.Abbott and Plaza are more at ease with their roles and with each other as their characters try to navigate the possibility of trust and emotional intimacy, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis early Shanley work feels like a matrix of some of the playwright’s themes: Guilt is also at the heart of his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Doubt: A Parable” (a 2004 play that is being revived on Broadway in February), and a romance between two prickly people is central to his screenplay for the 1987 film “Moonstruck.”“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” also bears quite a few markers of a certain kind of gritty theater from the 1970s and ’80s, centering as it does on bruised working-class characters whose lives are permeated with brutality. The New York Times review of the original production, which starred John Turturro and June Stein, mentions that as Danny, Turturro skillfully elicited laughs from the audience. Mores concerning depictions of and reactions to abuse have considerably shifted since then, and levity is mostly absent from Jeff Ward’s production, aside from some isolated line readings.Tonally, the show struggles most to nail the first scene, which is nearly always at top volume. The characters can’t decide if they will throttle or embrace each other. We get it, but we still have to buy their picking the second option, and Abbott and Plaza don’t click enough at that point to entirely sell that scenario.Fortunately their performances deepen in parallel with the accord between Roberta and Danny. Fittingly for a play subtitled “An Apache Dance,” after a type of belle epoque ruffians, the production’s turning point is a wordless danced transition: they push and pull, fight their attraction and give in to it. They end up in her room, where they have sex. (The movement direction is by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber; Scott Pask designed the appropriately dingy set.)As Roberta and Danny gingerly try to navigate the possibility of trust and emotional intimacy, the actors are more at ease with their roles and with each other. It is a testament to their skill that they are better at listening than at yelling.Yes, Danny’s final turnaround stretches credibility close to its breaking point, and the way he finally pierces Roberta’s abscess of shame and fury is rather over the top — not to mention the idea that a physical remedy would shock a psychic wound into healing. But by then Abbott and Plaza have made us care enough for these two misfits that we are ready to believe that maybe, just maybe, they can get a break.Danny and the Deep Blue SeaThrough Jan. 7 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; dannyandthedeepbluesea.com. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. More

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    in Television

    Late Night Isn’t Sad to See the Presidential Hopeful Tim Scott Go

    Jimmy Fallon joked that the Republican senator’s decision to suspend his presidential campaign “has really shaken up the race for fifth place.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Not-So-Great ScottRepublican presidential hopeful Tim Scott dropped out of the race on Sunday.On Monday, Jimmy Fallon joked that “everyone responded by saying, ‘That’s too bad’ and, ‘Who is that again?’”“If you don’t know who Tim Scott is, it’s why he decided to suspend his campaign for president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But the announcement has really shaken up the race for fifth place.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, he knew it was the right decision when absolutely no one tried to talk him out of it.” — JIMMY FALLON“Not everybody in the news is going to be living happily ever after, because we just learned that South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race — which means [audience groans] I know, which means I can now confirm Tim Scott was in the 2024 presidential race.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“South Carolina Senator Tim Scott announced that he has suspended his presidential campaign in a Fox News interview yesterday, and said he thinks the voters are telling him, ‘Not now, Tim.’ And I think he made the right call because half of them said, ‘Not now, Jim.’” — SETH MEYERS“‘Not now’ is an interesting way to describe a total loss. It’s like saying, ‘Doctor, how was the surgery? Is my husband alive?’ ‘Uh, not now. Not now, but he has high hopes for 2028.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Karma Edition)“On Saturday night, Travis Kelce went to Taylor Swift’s concert in Argentina, and during Taylor’s performance of ‘Karma,’ she changed the words of the song to say, ‘Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me.’ Yeah, she changed it to be about a guy on the Chiefs. Meanwhile, the Chiefs’ punter Tommy Townsend was like, ‘Oh, my God, is Taylor singing about me?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Actually, it’s a little embarrassing. She got that one wrong. ‘Karma’ is not the guy on the Chiefs; Kelce is the guy on the Chiefs. Here’s a tip, Taylor. Their names are on the back of the shirts.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I mean, she is on tour around the world and still makes it to his games on Sundays. He’s in the middle of a football season and he’s flying to Buenos Aires. They’re making it very hard for every other couple that’s in a long-distance relationship right now: ‘Oh, you can’t make it to my mom’s house for Thanksgiving this year? Travis flew to Singapore for Taylor!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And then after the show, she comes offstage, and he’s there. She runs, jumped into his arms, and then he ran her back 57 yards for a touchdown. It was incredible.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingStephen Colbert dreamed himself into a “The Way We Were” scenario with his special guest Barbra Streisand on Monday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe NBC political correspondent Steve Kornacki will sit down with the “Daily Show” guest host Leslie Jones on Tuesday.Also, Check This OutElizabeth Debicki as Diana, the Princess of Wales, in Season 6 of “The Crown.” The first four episodes focus on the run-up to, and aftermath of, Diana’s death.Daniel Escale/NetflixThe first four episodes in the final season of Netflix’s royal drama, “The Crown,” explore the lead-up to and fallout from the 1997 car accident that killed Princess Diana. More

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    in Theater

    Shirley Jo Finney, 74, Dies; Addressed the Black Experience Onstage

    After an acting career that included playing the Olympic sprinter Wilma Rudolph in a TV movie, she became known as a director for her work at regional theaters.The actor and director Shirley Jo Finney in 1974 in Sacramento, Calif., where she studied drama. “I have, basically, always been ‘the first African American,’” she once said.Frank Stork/Sacramento Bee, via the Center for Sacramento HistoryShirley Jo Finney, an actor who became a prolific and award-winning director of plays that dug deeply into the Black experience, died on Oct. 10 in Bellingham, Wash. She was 74.The cause of her death, in a hospital, was multiple myeloma, said Diana Finney, her sister and only immediate survivor.Ms. Finney worked for nearly 40 years at regional theaters, where she directed dramas like Pearl Cleage’s “Flyin’ West, which tells the story of late-19th-century Black female homesteaders in Kansas; Ifa Bayeza’s “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” about the 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped, tortured and shot by two white men in Mississippi in 1955; and Dael Orlandersmith’s “Yellowman,” which examines interracial prejudice through the story of two young lovers, one with a light complexion and one with a dark one.“She was very much drawn to material by great playwrights of color,” Sheldon Epps, the artistic director emeritus of the Pasadena Playhouse, where Ms. Finney directed twice, said by phone. “But it was also a result of the categorization that artists of color still suffer, where they are assigned to Black plays and not thought of for plays by other writers.”Ms. Feeney was, Mr. Epps said, “passionate and relentless in all the right ways.”When asked about her choice largely to direct plays about Black characters and themes, Ms. Finney recalled her background.“I have, basically, always been ‘the first African American,’” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1999, during the run of “Flyin’ West” at the Pasadena Playhouse. “My family was the first African American family to move into the neighborhood that I integrated, and then I had to go to the elementary school there — so I’ve always done that. At U.C.L.A., I was the first African American to be in their M.F.A. program.”She added: “How do you break out of the box, and where do you fit into society? How do we maintain the tradition of a tribe and still transcend our own humanity?”Among the many venues at which Ms. Finney worked were the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Play House, the Actors Theater of Louisville and the Goodman Theater in Chicago. But if she had a professional home, it was the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles, where she had directed eight plays since 1997, including “The Ballad of Emmett Till.”In 2015, Ms. Finney was asked by Stephen Sachs, the Fountain’s artistic director, to direct his adaptation of “Citizen: An American Lyric” (2014), Claudia Rankine’s book-length poem and series of essays about race in today’s society.“I read it, and I went, ‘Oh, this is my life,’” she said in a 2017 interview featured on the website of the Center Theater Group, home to the Taper, Kirk Douglas and Ahmanson Theaters in Los Angeles. “Citizen,” she said reminded her of “walking through and navigating those torrential waters of mainstream America when you are a person of color or ‘other,’ and what you have to swallow in order to survive.”When the Fountain observed its 25th anniversary in 2015, Charles McNulty, The Los Angeles Times’s theater critic, wrote that Ms. Finney had infused “Citizen” with “the spirit of public reckoning” and added, “Her cast didn’t so much portray characters as stand in solidarity with the nameless voices reflecting, mourning and expressing outrage over the micro and micro aggressions (from a careless bigoted remark to police abuse) confronting Black people on a daily basis.”Shirley Jo Finney was born on July 14, 1949, in Merced, Calif., about 55 miles northwest of Fresno. Her mother, Ricetta (Amey) Finney, was a teacher and counselor. Her father, Nathaniel, sold auto parts. In 1959 she moved to Sacramento with her mother, her sister, her stepfather, Charles James, a municipal court judge, and her stepbrother, also Charles James.In high school, she was in the drama club. She then attended Sacramento City College for one semester before transferring to Sacramento State College (now California State University, Sacramento). At a party, she met Wilma Rudolph, the sprinter who had won three gold medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome and was teaching at the school. They became friends, and Ms. Finney became a babysitter for Ms. Rudolph’s children.“I told her, ‘One day, I’m going to make a film about you,’” Ms. Finney recalled in an interview with The Sacramento Bee in 2000.She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in drama in 1971 and earned a master’s degree in theater arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, two years later.After appearing in several television series and films, she was cast by the director Bud Greenspan in the TV movie “Wilma” (1977), which also starred Cicely Tyson as Ms. Rudolph’s mother. It received mixed reviews, but John J. O’Connor of The New York Times wrote that it was “given a touch of substance through a good performance by Shirley Jo Finney.”Ms. Finney as the sprinter Wilma Rudolph, who won three gold medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics, alongside Jason Bernard playing Ed Temple, her coach, in the 1977 television movie “Wilma.”Archive PL/AlamyShe continued to act occasionally into the 1990s, on series like “Lou Grant,” “Hill Street Blues” and “Night Court,” but by that time she had also begun to direct plays.“I love actors, and I love that process of bringing people who are strangers together, to work for a common purpose,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1999. “I love creating an atmosphere where you feel comfortable enough to share who you are, to create. And then you can go within to give the best you can give.”She called that process “orgasmic.”Mr. Sachs of the Fountain Theater said that Ms. Finney developed her own shorthand to communicate with actors.“Actors had to learn to speak ‘Shirley Jo,’” Mr. Sachs said by phone. “She spoke a language unto herself, with body movement and her cackling laugh. She had a way. When she spoke, she’d stand up, pace around the room, or rock on a chair and say, ‘I’m feeling it, I’m feeling it.’ She was almost like a shaman.”Among the honors Ms. Finney received were three Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for her direction of individual plays and the organization’s Milton Katselas Award for her career work.Although she worked around the country, Ms. Finney never directed on Broadway. Her only chance at it ended in 2008, when financial backing fell apart for a revival of Ntozake Shange’s play “For Colored Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”Ms. Finney received a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Eric Charbonneau/WireImage, via Getty ImagesIn 2010, shortly before rehearsals were to begin for “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” the play’s director, Bennett Bradley, was stabbed to death. Mr. Sachs asked Ms. Finney to take over.“She came into the rehearsal room that day, unprepared, and took over like she had been destined to do it,” Mr. Sachs recalled. “She delivered a benediction to the company; she brought the cast together to tell this story and said that what happened to Ben echoed what happened to Emmett Till. In five or 10 minutes, she turned us around.” More