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    ‘Boy Parts,’ the Play, Is a Winking Pastiche of Trauma Tropes

    A London production adapted from Eliza Clark’s debut novel refuses to justify its unreliable narrator’s violence, but lacks narrative depth and complexity.How far can you go in the name of art? For Irina, nothing is off-limits. She’s a photographer who takes pictures of young men, with a particular preference for guys that are unprepossessing, shy and biddable. Irina’s “thing” is capturing male vulnerability, so she photographs her subjects in compromising poses; she takes liberties with consent, and violates their dignity in increasingly troubling and violent ways.Irina is the antiheroine of “Boy Parts,” adapted from Eliza Clark’s 2020 debut novel of the same name, and running at the Soho Theater, in London, through Nov. 25. It’s an engrossing and darkly funny one-woman show, but doesn’t quite make the best of its provocative premise.Aimée Kelly plays the role with a winning blend of caustic humor and narcissistic self-pity: She’s highly strung, manipulative and insecure. By modulating her voice and posture, Kelly also plays various other characters, including Flo — Irina’s best friend, whose almost canine devotion is rewarded with casual contempt — and a succession of hapless young men, portrayed a sympathetic, slouchy charm. Irina’s motivations are both aesthetic and political: She idolizes the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini — the director of the infamously graphic feature “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” — and wants to subvert the traditional power dynamics of objectification in the visual arts, by putting men on the receiving end of a violating gaze.Gillian Greer’s adaptation successfully transposes the unsettlingly blithe, almost jaunty narrative style that won over so many of the novel’s readers. (Despite garnering only modest coverage in the mainstream press, it became a viral hit on TikTok.) But some of the finer subtleties are lost. In the novel, Irina’s friends, while predominantly in her thrall, have occasional moments of clarity, in which they see her for what she was. Onstage, Irina metes out her sadism with relatively little pushback, but those telling little flashes of interpersonal tension would have lent themselves to stage adaptation, and Greer could have teased them out more.The set, by Peter Butler, is bare except for a single stool; a screen at the back of the stage shows a photograph of the garage Irina uses as her studio, switching images to denote different settings. But otherwise, and ironically — given that this is a tale about photography — the visual medium is almost entirely eschewed: We see no actual artworks, and events are relayed mostly through anecdote rather than action. The opening strains of Goldfrapp’s 2000 single “Lovely Head” provide an intermittent soundtrack, with doleful whistling and harpsichord creating a suitably gloomy atmosphere.The one-woman show format is apt, in a way, since the story revolves around an unreliable narrator. By standing in for all the other characters, Kelly as Irina has complete control over the narrative, and the absence of any other physical presence gives a literal expression to Irina’s self-absorption.But the format has its limitations. Toward the end of the show, there is a climactic scene in a gallery where Irina exhibits the photographs we’ve been watching her create. It’s an event that can make or break her career, and the place is meant to be teeming with people, but Kelly’s aloneness on the stage feels too palpable. Moreover, the production is poorly paced, and the gallery scene feels rushed, which exacerbates a sense of anticlimax. After all that leisurely buildup, the play’s momentum fizzles out in a matter of minutes.There is, of course, a tradition of thrillers in which a woman engages in the sort of creepy antics more typically associated with men, dating back to movies like “Fatal Attraction” (1987) and “Single White Female” (1992). The tendency, in recent years, has been to dignify the tawdry sensationalism of such stories by offering up pathological explanations for problematic behavior — a theme that has become drearily familiar in contemporary fiction — or, as in Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” (2020), framing criminal exploits as morally legitimate revenge missions. In “Boy Parts,” Irina issues a pointed rejection of the trauma plot: “Maybe I just like to hurt people,” she says. She is bad, simply because she is bad.It’s refreshing, but it’s also something of a narrative dead end. There are no subplots here, no moral ambiguities, no ifs or buts. There just isn’t enough else going on to provide satisfying complexity or depth as Irina hurtles from one misdeed to the next in a steeplechase of cruelty and self-sabotage.The audience may project tongue-in-cheek irony onto it, if they so please. The trouble, in the end, is that a winking pastiche of schlock doesn’t look and feel all that different from schlock itself.Boy PartsThrough Nov. 25 at the Soho Theater, in London; sohotheatre.com. More

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    A Hairless Cat and Nickelback. What Could Be More Romantic?

    When performers Kayla Pecchioni and Colin Barkell met at a Tonys viewing party, a kitten named Paw McCatney helped break the ice.On Sept. 26, 2021, Colin Ernest Barkell spotted Kayla Dianne Pecchioni stroking her hairless kitten at a screening of the Tony Awards. He was instantly attracted. Especially to the cat.In the lounge of the Chicago apartment building where theater fans had gathered for the show, “I was like, ‘I need to see this guy’,” he said of the creature. By the time “Moulin Rouge!” had racked up its final award that night, he was halfway in love with the blanket-swaddled kitten in Ms. Pecchioni’s arms. Three nights later, he fell fully in love with Ms. Pecchioni.Mr. Barkell and Ms. Pecchioni, who reside in Harlem, are performing artists. She is currently the swing role and an understudy for the character Sugar Kane in Broadway’s “Some Like It Hot.” Before he formed the rock band King Vaudeville last year, he was a professional Irish dancer.Their meet-up in the lobby of Marquee at Block 37 apartments was not random: That September, both had been cast in “Paradise Square,” a musical that started its run in Chicago before moving to Broadway in April 2022. Each had made their way to the lobby for the Tonys screening with their castmates 12 days into rehearsals.Colin Barkell, left, also performed in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKayla Pecchioni, in the coral-colored dress, performs in “Paradise Square.”Kevin BerneFor Ms. Pecchioni, 31, the viewing party had given rise to dueling instincts. “It was our first opportunity to hang out as a cast, which was great,” she said. But the gathering in an unfamiliar city with a roomful of newish faces was also anxiety producing. Paw McCatney, the kitten she had adopted four months earlier as an emotional support animal to help her through the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, helped with that. A hairless cat, she said, is a reliable conversation starter.“It’s 50-50 for people,” she said. “They’re either, ‘I’m very intrigued!’ or ‘Get that thing away from me.’” That Mr. Barkell so instantly placed himself in the former category qualified him as new friend material right away.Ms. Pecchioni is from Louisville, Ky. Until she was 4, she lived with her maternal grandparents, Andrea and Frank Pecchioni, so her mother, Deedee Cummings, could finish her bachelor’s degree at Bennett College. “I had this fun hippie life with my grandparents,” she said. “We’d garden and listen to the Beatles. It was very, very lovely.”Soon after Ms. Cummings earned her diploma and returned to Louisville, she met Ms. Pecchioni’s stepfather, Anthony Cummings. She has two younger brothers, Anthony II and Nicholas.Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.A love of musicals came early. “Chicago,” the 2002 movie, “rocked my world,” she said. But in high school at the Youth Performing Arts School of Louisville, she majored in dance. Later, at Northern Kentucky University, she focused on acting and singing, graduating in 2014 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in musical theater.The bride’s shoes and bouquet.Perri LeighTwo years of performing on Norwegian Cruise Line cruises followed, something she could have done forever, she said. “The only thing that broke me out of it was my mom kind of tapping me on the shoulder and saying, ‘You have bigger goals.’”In 2016, she moved to Inwood, in Manhattan, and days later booked her first gig as a singer with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. A year later, she landed a leading role playing Nabulungi in “The Book of Mormon.”In lean times, before she was cast in “Paradise Square,” she worked retail jobs at stores including Lululemon. Her social life didn’t slip through the cracks. “I dated a lot” in New York she said. “But I always dated with the intention of finding my person, and nothing ever really stuck.”On Tonys night in Chicago, she didn’t see Mr. Barkell as a potential boyfriend. She had noticed him on day one of rehearsals, first because of his height — Mr. Barkell is six-foot-six — and then because of his baritone voice, which everyone else paid attention to, too. “It’s something the entire room took notice of, like ‘Who is this person?’” she said. But “I was like, he’s just a guy, you know?’” Once he had established his appreciation for Paw McCatney, he became just a guy she trusted enough to escort her on a sightseeing tour around Chicago.Mr. Barkell, 32, was born in Long Beach, Calif., and moved to Sterling, Va., with his parents, Leland and Nancy Barkell, and older sister, Erin, at the start of high school for his father’s career as lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marines. Though the family is “barely Irish,” he said, he had taken a few Irish dance lessons before he left California. As a teenager, he picked it up again, enrolling in classes at the Maple Academy of Irish Dance in nearby Vienna.“It was something I really loved to do, even though it’s not necessarily something that comes naturally to a tall person because there’s balance and coordination involved,” he said.Kennedy Caughell, a “Paradise Square” castmate and wedding guest, said, “I watched their love grow from this kind of nervous affection for each other to falling head over heels.” As a couple, “they heat up a room.”Perri LeighAt first he struggled to find his footing. But by 2012, when he moved to Galway, Ireland, for two years to further his dance studies, he had won multiple regional championships. A year later, he placed eighth in the World Irish Dancing Championships. His 2016 bachelor’s degree in geography and geographical information sciences from George Mason University took him seven years to complete. “I kept leaving to do dance,” he said.Like Ms. Pecchioni, he performed on cruise lines after college and later bounced between New York and Nashville working as a dancer and singer. Then, in 2021, “I got this crazy opportunity to be in a Broadway show, which wasn’t on my radar as something to pursue,” he said. The opportunity landed because of his background: “Paradise Square,” set in the Civil War era, is about an intersecting community of free Black people and Irish immigrants in New York’s Five Points neighborhood.On meeting Ms. Pecchioni in Chicago, his first thought wasn’t that they should date. “It’s such a roller coaster,” he said of his career, that dating anyone with intention seemed nearly impossible. But he changed his mind quickly on Sept. 29, when he arrived at her temporary digs for their tour of the city.Mr. Barkell gets choked up at the memory of the music she was playing when he knocked. “No way,” he said, when she opened the door. “You’re playing Nickelback?” Ms. Pecchioni braced herself for what she thought would be a polarizing conversation. “For whatever reason, it’s always been fun for people to hate Nickelback,” she said. But “I frigging love Nickelback.” Same with Mr. Barkell: “I said, ‘These guys have had hit after hit. They’re bangers. They should be respected.’”Ms. Pecchioni describes herself as “a big music person.” Hence Paw McCatney, a nod to her lifelong love of the Beatles, introduced to her by her grandparents. Mr. Barkell is also a Beatles fan. But both consider the Nickelback moment a defining one.The 140 guests ate beef tenderloin and chicken piccata at dinner. The bride is from Louisville, Ky., where the wedding was held. Perri Leigh“That was the spark,” she said. “There was a quick switch where it went from getting to know each other to something else.” At Chicago’s Riverwalk, over beers at the Northman Beer & Cider Garden, they established that both were single. Before they walked home, he kissed her. Then “it was, I’m going to spend every day with her. I knew it and I very nearly said that,” he said.A week and a half later, he told her he was in love with her. “A day after that I said, ‘So, you want to be my girlfriend?’” Falling for Ms. Pecchioni had delivered him clarity. “For me it was, ‘Oh, so this is what it’s supposed to feel like.’” Ms. Pecchioni felt the same.“Paradise Square” ran in Chicago until early December. For the holidays, the couple road tripped to Nashville, where Mr. Barkell was performing with a band that predated King Vaudeville, and then to Louisville and Calumet, Mich., where Mr. Barkell’s parents had retired. Both had given their families a heads-up about the seriousness of their romance. A sense of instant acceptance greeted them in both hometowns. “Everything naturally fell into place,” Ms. Pecchioni said. “That’s the theme of our whole relationship.”When the show made its Broadway debut last year, Mr. Barkell moved into Ms. Pecchioni and Paw’s Harlem apartment. When it closed in July, he was already planning to propose. His parents knew a jeweler in Michigan who helped him design a diamond and blue topaz toi et moi ring; on Oct. 3, after a night spent performing Irish dance at a charity event at Chelsea Factory, he presented it in their living room.“He was crying and I was screaming,” Ms. Pecchioni said. Her excitement aside, it wasn’t the proposal she had imagined. In her fantasy version, she looked down at her suitor as he dropped to one knee. In real life, “he’s so tall we were still eye-to-eye.”Both bride and groom studied and made a career of dance, so, not surprisingly, dance — including an Irish dance session — was a big part of their reception.Perri LeighOn Oct. 8, Ms. Pecchioni and Mr. Barkell were married at Hazelnut Farm in Louisville. Derwin Webb, a Pecchioni family friend and a judge of the Jefferson County Court, officiated a traditional ceremony for 140 guests that included several former “Paradise Square” castmates.When Mr. Webb pronounced them married, they looked out on a sea of damp-eyed, cheering loved ones. With a double-fist bump and happy tears of their own, the couple recessed down the grassy aisle to what both considered the role of a lifetime: as partners for life.On This DayWhen Oct. 8, 2023Where Hazelnut Farm, Louisville, Ky.They’re the Tops At a cocktail hour steps from the altar, guests were shown Southern hospitality in the form of a grazing table piled with fresh fruit, cheeses and caviar. For dinner, they chose from beef tenderloin and chicken piccata. Dessert was a strawberry cake topped with a Polaroid picture of the couple in their wedding clothes (a Martina Liana gown for her; a black tuxedo for him). “We always wanted to look like the cake topper couple at our wedding,” Ms. Pecchioni said.Step Lively After the couple danced with their parents, a dance floor was cleared for an Irish dance session led by Mr. Barkell. More than a dozen guests joined in, with Ms. Pecchioni making a late entrance to dance her way into the heart of the group.From Day 1 Kennedy Caughell, a “Paradise Square” castmate and wedding guest, was there the night the couple bonded at the 2021 Tony Awards. Back in Chicago, “I watched their love grow from this kind of nervous affection for each other to falling head over heels,” she said. As a couple, “they heat up a room.” More

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    An Accidental First Date Leads to Lifelong Partnership

    Lily Ramirez and Michael Fasano were not looking for love … until they missed a few flights and attended a Denver Broncos game.When Lily Gene Ramirez and Michael Anthony Fasano attended the same December 2017 holiday party in Denver, both were nursing wounds from recent romantic woes.“I recall just saying hi to each other very quickly, and I didn’t really give him the time of day,” Ms. Ramirez said.The next day one of their shared personality quirks emerged, and the seeds of an accidental first date were planted.Mr. Fasano has a propensity to ignore boarding times for his flights, and on Sunday morning he skipped his departure to his home in New York City altogether. Ms. Ramirez, who tends to postpone travel plans depending on the situation, also decided to stay. She had planned to fly to Gainesville, Fla., for the holidays that day.Their friends had persuaded them to attend a Denver Broncos game later that Sunday.Both got tickets at the last minute and sat together, just the two of them (they took in a 23-0 thrashing of the New York Jets). For three hours, they got to know each other. Both liked what they saw and heard.“We weren’t looking for anything romantic,” Ms. Ramirez said. “We just went to the game and had a fun time together.”“I moved my flight again to Tuesday, and we ended up spending the day together on Monday,” Mr. Fasano said.They exchanged numbers, kept in touch, and quickly began to communicate every day.“It was super easy,” Mr. Fasano said. “There was never any conversation about ‘where we stood.’ We both just knew we wanted to be together.”The couple visited each other every other weekend. Their shared background as athletes also bore out a love of food, traversing the culinary scenes of Denver, New York and beyond. Mr. Fasano eventually moved to Denver where they briefly lived together. Then Ms. Ramirez passed the Florida bar exam and found a new opportunity in Miami, where they now reside.Ms. Ramirez, 33, was born and raised in Gainesville, Fla. She has a bachelor’s degree in criminology and was an all-American swimmer at the University of Florida, following in the footsteps of her father, Robin Ramirez, a member of the class of 1981 and Alumni Hall of Fame Honoree. She has a law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2016 and practiced law in Colorado until moving to Miami in 2022, where she is a senior associate with Kasowitz Benson Torres.Mr. Fasano, 36, was born in Bridgeport, Conn., and grew up in nearby Southport. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Arizona State University and was a member of the rugby team. He is now a director at RIPCO Real Estate in Miami.Matt Wilson PhotographyThe couple’s bond deepened about two months into their relationship when Ms. Ramirez traveled to the Fasano family home in Vermont. She recognized another important facet of their personalities — love of family.“My parents are madly in love and have been together for more than 35 years,” Ms. Ramirez said. “They were a model couple for me to find the love of my life. I knew that night I had found him.”Their mothers echoed similar sentiments about their relationship.“They really ‘get’ each other,” Ms. Ramirez’s mother, Susan Ramirez, said. “I liked Mike immediately because Lily seemed so taken with him, and I could tell he was a good person.”Mr. Fasano’s mother, Laura Fasano, said: “There’s so much joyfulness when they’re together. There’s never any drama with them.”The couple flew to Portugal right after Christmas 2021 to ring in the New Year at a black-tie event, for which they purchased formal attire. The couple spent a great deal of time planning this trip only to realize after strolling up that night to the party in Cascais that they had not purchased tickets to the event.“We decided to make the best of it. We ordered a nice takeout dinner and had a great night exploring the city,” Ms. Ramirez said.[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]Both knew the proposal was coming on this trip — Ms. Ramirez simply didn’t know when. In truth, Mr. Fasano didn’t either. Until the morning of Jan. 1, 2022.“Every time we were doing something romantic on the trip, I could see her looking at me to see if it was time,” Mr. Fasano said. “But I wanted to surprise her. So that morning we had just got back to the hotel with an amazing view of the sunrise on the Mediterranean Sea, and Lily was distracted. I knew that was the perfect time.The couple married Oct. 13 at the Addison of Boca Raton, in Florida, in front of 165 guests. Karen Steinhauser, a lawyer Ms. Ramirez used to clerk for who was ordained by Universal Life Church for the occasion, officiated.When it came to the moment of allowing anyone to object to this union, Ms. Steinhauser proclaimed, “To the many lawyers here, we know that motion should’ve been filed a long time ago.”Under the canopy of two gargantuan banyan trees in the Addison courtyard, the couple exchanged impromptu vows.“He’s always put me first and been there for me unconditionally,” Ms. Ramirez said. “He makes me a better person.”Mr. Fasano said in his vows, “I’m truly at my happiest when I can make her happy. And I’m going to chase that feeling for the rest of my life.” More

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    Dave Chappelle and the Perils of Button-Pushing Comedy

    His comments on the Mideast conflict have been the subject of news reports, but the polarizing coverage has ignored how comics have treated the situation.Halfway through a sold-out show at the PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C., on Wednesday, Dave Chappelle stopped to ask the audience about screaming coming from the balcony. “I’m scared it might be the Jews coming for me,” he said, a mischievous tone in his gravelly voice.This was a reference to a previous show, in Boston, where Chappelle’s criticism of Israeli policies reportedly led to cheers and pushback from the crowd, hundreds of walkouts and one patron posting online that she never felt more “unsafe.” Press descriptions of the event were often vague. The reports of cheers for Hamas didn’t specify if they were coming from one person or a large group. But what seems clear from the reports is that along with defending Harvard students who had signed a letter saying Israel was “entirely responsible” for the violence, Chappelle had denounced the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis and got sidetracked when someone in the crowd told him to be quiet.Chappelle’s follow-up show on Wednesday was as much the work of a diplomat as a provocateur, telling the audience to pray for both Israelis and Palestinians and calling the situation for both a nightmare. At one point, he addressed American Jews, saying, “Whatever they can do to take the violence or the danger out of a situation, they should do it.” Then he added, “I’m not about antisemitism, but I’m allowed to disagree with whoever I want to.”Chappelle, wearing a sleeveless flannel shirt that hung down to his thighs, never figured out what the commotion at the top of the arena was about, but he said he had heard someone say there was a medical issue. Chain-smoking, Chappelle made a few jokes, then added: “You know what it will say in the paper tomorrow: Dave Chappelle makes fun of man as he dies.”It’s an understandable complaint. Of course, Chappelle seeks out contentious subjects — his lawyerly explanation of the antisemitism of Kanye West on “Saturday Night Live” last year does not help his cause in this current controversy — and no one exaggerates their own victimhood more. He’s still saying, “Any minute they’re going to cancel me” despite the fact that he’s performing for huge crowds and has another Netflix special on the way. But the media attention that Chappelle’s comedy gets is obsessive, polarized and often tediously literal.It brings to mind one of the most memorable bits of this century, his 2004 joke about Ja Rule being asked to weigh in on Sept. 11. Mocking how our media ask celebrities to be sober authorities making sense of tragic events, Chappelle said, “I want some answers that Ja Rule might not have right now.”This joke has aged tremendously well. Social media has only amplified the opinions of the Ja Rules of the world. The algorithms that run our feeds are making sure you have Justin Bieber and Gigi Hadid to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now every corporation and middle school seems to have its own foreign policy. Comedians have been perhaps the most outspoken of artists, with Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer consistently commenting on Israel and antisemitism on social media, earning praise and condemnation. The comic Bassem Youssef went viral for his appearance on Piers Morgan’s show. Obviously, in a democratic society, it’s important for people to feel free to speak out on matters of gravity, and an emotional response on this issue is not only understandable but necessary. But it’s also reasonable to think that you should want some answers that Dave Chappelle might not have right now.Chappelle is a tricky case, because since his Ja Rule joke, he has embraced the sober truth-teller role, telling magnetic stories that sometimes end in lessons, not punchlines. His take on Israel has been mostly sober, but other comics are incorporating the issue into their work. Matt Ruby put 10 minutes of his jokes from a club set online, defending himself by saying, “This is how Jews handle crisis.” The German stand-up Shahak Shapira released a 25-minute special, “Baklavas From Gaza.” Both sounded like rough drafts, but they seem motivated less by a blunt interest in changing hearts and minds than in comforting them.The seeming hopelessness of the conflict in the Middle East has always drawn comics looking to push buttons. In one of the most high-risk “Saturday Night Live” monologues ever, Louis C.K. likened Israelis and Palestinians to his daughters fighting, with him as America trying to mediate. Since he had sandwiched this metaphor between a joke about his “mild racism” and another about trying to understand pedophilia, he managed the feat of making the subject seem safe.In recent years, several sharp Muslim comics have made funny comedy on television from the Palestinian perspective. In “Mo,” set in Texas, the Palestinian American comic Mo Amer, who plays a likable fool, gives his pitcher nephew a pep talk on the mound of a Little League game, telling the boy that he’s a Palestinian so “if there’s one thing you can do is throw things accurately.” Then, as another adult tries to shuttle him off the field, he advises the boy to imagine a tank coming at him.This show was created with another comic, Ramy Youssef, whose own superb, self-named Hulu series, “Ramy,” recorded an episode in Israel portraying daily life in the occupied territories of the West Bank, including the tedium of waiting at a checkpoint to cross over. Playing a jerky American bull in a China shop, Youssef tries to relate to a Palestinian love interest by saying he gets it, comparing the experience to traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel. Both these shows humanize the Palestinian experience in ways that feel new.No one has been funnier on this least funny of subjects than Larry David and an episode of his “Curb Your Enthusiasm” about an incredible Palestinian chicken restaurant that causes controversy by moving next door to a Jewish deli. It’s invariably high on lists of the greatest installments of the series. It ended with David walking between competing protest groups: one from the chicken restaurant led by his Palestinian girlfriend (dirty talk during sex includes her calling him an occupier and him quoting Theodor Herzl) and another made up of many of his Jewish friends waving signs in front of a deli.The anguished look on David’s face, eyes bulging, face contorting in confusion, has become a popular meme. It’s used so often that people don’t even realize what it refers to. My sense from Chappelle’s show is that he could relate.While Chappelle still jokes about transgender people, which was the focus of his last special, his new hour, due in December, throws fewer bombs than his last one. It’s a bit humbler and even has a silly side along with some moony philosophizing about the Will Smith slap, with him calling Smith and Chris Rock “fellow dreamers I met along the way.”In Raleigh, the one time he told the crowd he would do a “dangerous joke,” it turned out to be something like a parody of one: “Two Jews walk into a bar. I’d say the punchline, but there might be a transgender person here.” He smiled as if he knew how corny this sounded.When a woman in the audience yelled out, “Free Palestine,” he told her he heard her but added: “Don’t start that up or there will be a news cycle for another week.” More

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    Dave Chappelle Laments ‘Nightmare’ Facing Israelis and Palestinians

    The comedian, whose remarks about the Israel-Hamas war last week made headlines, returned to the subject at a show in North Carolina.Dave Chappelle was about 24 minutes into his set on Wednesday night in Raleigh, N.C., when he briefly touched on remarks he had made about the Israel-Hamas conflict at a show in Boston last week that had led to cheers, some walkouts and headlines.“Right now, I’m in trouble because the Jewish community is upset,” Mr. Chappelle told a packed crowd of more than 20,000 people at PNC Arena. “But I cannot express this enough: No matter what you read about that show in Boston, you will never see quotation marks around anything I said. They don’t know what I said.”“It’s all hearsay,” said the comedian, who, like many others, requires audience members to surrender their smartphones at shows.Mr. Chappelle, a satirist whose reputation for diving into polarizing topics has increased in the latter stages of his comedic career, returned to the Israel-Hamas conflict near the end of his set Wednesday.“The other night, I said something about Palestine in Boston and got misquoted all over the world,” Mr. Chappelle said. “And I will not repeat what I said.”A woman in the crowd responded by shouting, “Free Palestine.”“Please, please, miss,” Mr. Chappelle responded. “Listen. Don’t start it up or I’m going to be in the news cycle for another week. This thing that’s happening in the Middle East is bigger than everybody.”“This is what’s happening and, believe me, I understand what’s happening in Israel is a nightmare,” Mr. Chappelle said. “What’s happening in Palestine is a nightmare.”He continued: “There’s only two kinds of people in the world: people who love other people and the people that have things to make them afraid to love other people. Pray for everyone in Israel. Pray for everyone in Palestine.”“And remember that every dead person is a dead person,” he said, calling the situation a “tragedy.”At the show last Thursday in Boston’s TD Garden, Mr. Chappelle was drawn into speaking about the conflict by members of the audience. He raised concerns about how a group of Harvard students had been treated since signing an anti-Israel letter, condemned the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and criticized Israel for its role in causing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, according to remarks first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Los Angeles Times reported that perhaps 200 people in the roughly 17,000-person audience in Boston had departed toward the end of the show.A few minutes after initially discussing the interaction on Wednesday, Mr. Chappelle noticed a commotion stemming from the arena’s upper level. “That still might be the Jews coming for me,” said Mr. Chappelle, who has often used his penchant for causing offense as fodder for jokes.He urged for someone in the crowd to call emergency medical responders before being reminded that audience members did not have their phones. He said he had never thought about what would happen without them in an emergency.“Sorry,” Mr. Chappelle said, stretching out the word. “I don’t want the Jews to know what I said.”On Wednesday night, Mr. Chappelle, wearing a red, black and gray flannel shirt with cutoff sleeves and taking frequent drags from a cigarette, filled his set with jokes about Madison Cawthorn, a pro-Trump former North Carolina congressman and material about transgender people that has drawn widespread criticism. He also joked about being attacked onstage last year by an armed man while performing at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.The audience cheered him loudly, and the hour-and-15-minute set did not appear to have caused the kind of walkouts that marked the Boston show. More

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    ‘The Great Gatsby’ Review: A Musical Take on Tragic Desire

    This new version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic remains largely faithful to the novel, but it trades subtle prose for a straightforward production.F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” requires no critical endorsement. His slim 1925 novel still takes up permanent residence in the book bags of students across the nation. Often it is crushed under tomes of greater size, but what “Gatsby,” lacks in length it makes up for in heart, opulence and tragedy. A new musical adaptation trades Fitzgerald’s subtle blend for a blunter approach.“The Great Gatsby,” now playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., replicates its literary prototype. Jay Gatsby (Jeremy Jordan) is the elusive seigneur of a mansion in West Egg, a fictional Long Island town. His newfound wealth fronts lavish parties that brim with bubbly and gossip. He is satisfied by none of it.What Gatsby most craves is Daisy (Eva Noblezada), a product of old money who lives across Manhasset Bay with her adulterer of a husband, Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski). Gatsby hatches a plan to have Daisy’s new-to-New York cousin Nick Carraway (Noah J. Ricketts) move in next door to him, with the intent to lure Daisy. But the scheme results in calamity.Though the musical remains largely faithful to that plot, Kait Kerrigan, the book writer, takes liberties with the point of view. Her Nick is no neutral narrator ransacking his memories, but a morally upright man who condemns both Gatsby’s initial pursuit of Daisy and the flagrant behavior of other characters. While others indulge in whiskey and sex, Nick sings desperately about wanting to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Under the direction of Marc Bruni (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”), all the characters get a moment like this to divulge their desires. The result is a more democratic story freed from Nick’s control, but also one stripped of compelling subtext and Fitzgerald’s enviable prose.Jason Howland’s swanky score follows suit. There are traces of contemporary influence (groovy rock refrains, pop music rhythms), yet the overall sound, particularly in the ensemble numbers (with rousing choreography by Dominique Kelley) conjures 1920s percussive swing. What Howland does best is compose solo songs that showcase his leading actors. When speaking, Jordan’s Gatsby is grounded and debonair, which makes it all the more thrilling when his voice scurries up to a delicious falsetto. Noblezada (“Miss Saigon”) captures Daisy’s longing with an emotive and powerful voice.Company members provide great support, particularly Samantha Pauly as the rambunctious Jordan Baker, Daisy’s unmarried best friend. Pauly taps into the skills she previously displayed in “Six,” carrying pop belts with a modern-day spunk that counter Noblezada’s ballads in a meeker tenor. It makes for two characters that effectively foil one another, but oddly belong to different decades.The design team’s choices do not suffer this confusion. Art Deco abounds in Paul Tate DePoo III’s scenery and projection, whether the geometric décor in Gatsby’s home to the haunting projections of the hazy Long Island Sound. Cory Pattak, the lighting designer, intricately balances darker emerald tones and bouncy bright ones. The overall effect, further complemented by Linda Cho’s dazzling costumes, is bewitching. More than once I wished I were sitting farther back in the audience because a production this lush, however unadventurous in narrative direction, deserves, like the novel, the long view.The Great GatsbyThrough Nov. 12 at Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes.This review is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in the work of cultural critics from historically underrepresented backgrounds. More

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    ‘Make Noise Enough’: Excavating Shakespeare’s Songs

    In Shakespeare, music is an integral part of the action. But the First Folio, which turns 400 this year, failed to transmit how it should sound.Musicians from the early-music ensemble Collectio Musicorum were practicing a 17th-century round on a recent afternoon in Manhattan. The tune was jaunty, full of the cantering rhythms and mimetic horn calls that fit a song about hunting. But sung in canon, some of the notes bumped roughly against one another in daring dissonance. The singers broke off, looking at their conductor for guidance.Jeff Dailey, the group’s director, glanced up encouragingly from his music stand. The dissonances they were hearing were not a mistake, he said, then added: “If you want to make it any more chromatic, like you’ve just killed a deer, you could do even more shouting than singing. Remember, you’re drunk at this point.”The performers were preparing a program of songs, ballads and rounds from Shakespeare plays that brings to life the tunes scholars think might have been part of the earliest productions. Some of the numbers that will be featured in a concert on Friday at the Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side are exquisite settings for voice and lute by composers like Robert Johnson and Thomas Morley.But there are also humble songs laced with innuendo, the kind that would have appealed to the groundlings in the cheap section of the Globe Theater, like the one Dailey and his singers were rehearsing, “What shall he have that kill’d the deer?” from “As You Like It.” A nobleman commands a forester to “Sing it: ’tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough.”This year is the 400th anniversary of the publication of what is known as the First Folio, which comprises 36 Shakespeare plays, half of which had never been published previously. Put out by members of his company only a few years after his death in 1616, in the weighty format normally reserved for important religious works or histories, the First Folio determined how Shakespeare’s writings would be transmitted.Dailey leads singers in a rehearsal. From left, Christopher Preston Thompson, Chad Kranak and Alex Longnecker.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesBut the folio failed to transmit one vital part of Shakespeare’s vision: the music. His plays are punctuated by drum rolls, fanfares and dances, indicated in stage directions. And they are teeming with verses meant to be sung. In the First Folio these verses are clearly marked as “song” in the stage instructions and set apart typographically with italics. Singing is essential for rendering Ophelia’s madness, Ariel’s magic and the inebriated antics ratcheting up the comic confusion in “Twelfth Night.”In much of Shakespeare, Dailey said in an interview, “music is an integral part of the action.” But figuring out what it sounded like is another matter.Music printing was a specialized craft, and it would have been too expensive for even a luxury edition like the First Folio to include notated music. And though settings of Shakespeare lyrics appear in many 17th-century English song collections and lute books, these often date to later decades, making it difficult to determine their origin. A few popular songs can be traced back to Shakespeare’s time, but even then, Dailey said, “it’s a chicken and egg question: Did Shakespeare include them because they were famous, or did they become famous because they had been in his plays?”Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesMaansi Srivastava/The New York TimesIn 2004, the musicologist Ross W. Duffin published “Shakespeare’s Songbook,” which sets hundreds of lyrics to tunes he identified as likely matches. Among them is the hunting round “What shall we have” that was first published, with textual variants, in a collection from 1652. In a manuscript in the Folger Library, Duffin found a version appearing to date back as far as 1625, with a text that more closely aligns with the First Folio. That’s nearly contemporaneous with the play’s publication, but it’s still a quarter century off from 1599, when scholars think Shakespeare first wrote “As You Like It.” In the play, moreover, a single forester is bidden to sing it, whereas this is a round for four voices. Which characters would have joined in onstage?Another song from the play, “It was a Lover and his Lass,” survives in a setting by Morley printed in 1600, which some see as evidence that it was the original song, perhaps even commissioned by Shakespeare. Yet even such a seemingly clear attribution raises questions in performance. Morley’s setting is for a solo voice, whereas in the play it is sung by two pages.“How do you then perform it?” Dailey asked. “Do you have two singers sing it in unison? Do you have two actors alternate verses? Or do you compose an additional part for the second singer?”In concert, Dailey will have his performers take turns with the verses and then sing the refrain in unison. But Duffin, in a recent article, makes a case for reconstructing the song as a duet. He argues that the lute accompaniment in Morley’s printed version is so unusually awkward that it was probably adapted from a previous version for two voices.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesMaansi Srivastava/The New York TimesRecords show that Shakespeare and Morley were neighbors, leading some to conjecture that they were friends and collaborators. But Duffin sees no reason to believe that Shakespeare ever commissioned specific music. The clues linking him to Johnson, a master lutenist and the author of artful settings in the plays, are also inconclusive. “The evidence that he was the composer of the King’s Men is so circular,” Duffin said in an interview, referring to Shakespeare’s company of actors. “Everybody wants him to be. The songs are beautiful, but were they the original songs? Probably not.”Much of Duffin’s research has focused on the humble tunes that were the currency of popular culture in Shakespeare’s time. He said ballads in particular were so ubiquitous that an actor presented with a particular meter and rhyme schema would have known which tune to supply. Looking into the names of actors listed in the First Folio, he said he found evidence that many were “tumblers, jugglers and song-and-dance men,” adding that they would have brought their musical skills into the theater.A few popular songs can be traced back to Shakespeare’s time. But, Dailey said, “did Shakespeare include them because they were famous, or did they become famous because they had been in his plays?”Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesDuffin believes that there is even more music in Shakespeare’s works than is evident from the italicized lines in the First Folio. He has identified dozens of what he calls “snatches” of songs embedded in dialogue that turn out to be the opening lines or key phrases of popular songs. These would have sparked a shower of associations in contemporary audiences.In “Winter’s Tale,” a brief allusion to a ballad about a murderously jealous husband would have raised the stakes for an audience following the play about a jealous king. In “Twelfth Night,” an otherwise out-of-context reference to “The 12th Day of December” would have been recognized as the title of a famous ballad about a battle, evoking the noise of war in a scene of domestic mayhem.“Everybody would have known these ballads from down the pub,” Duffin said, “so when he quotes a line everybody would have made the connection.”Part inside jokes, part cryptic crossword clues, these brief references would have made performances interactive experiences for contemporary audiences. In 1623, the readers of First Folio would have still been able to listen between the lines, as it were. But over time, the brilliance of Shakespeare’s imagination would come to be defined by what the First Folio was able to capture: the language, divorced from the real and imagined music of the plays. More

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    ‘Lyonesse,’ With Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas, Is a Starry Mess

    In London, Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas do their best in a new play that careers between near-slapstick one minute and speechifying the next.“We dream big,” says a no-nonsense film executive early in “Lyonesse,” the starry, if overstuffed, new play that opened Wednesday night at the Harold Pinter Theater, in London. And so, too, does this West End debut from Penelope Skinner, a British playwright whose works have long enlivened small theaters on both sides of the Atlantic.The themes arrive thick and fast across nearly three hours: #MeToo, cancel culture, the tyranny of men and many others. But not even Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas, the production’s commercial draws, can transform the scattershot material into a coherent whole.It takes courage to open a new play in the West End without a previous run somewhere else, but “Lyonesse” whimpers where it should roar. You emerge less enlightened than bewildered at the inability of so much talent — including the show’s usually excellent director, Ian Rickson — to come up with something better.James shoulders the bulk of the narrative, playing Kate, an eager-beaver movie exec whose habit of continually apologizing doesn’t inspire confidence in her judgment.Her boss, Sue (Doon Mackichan), nonetheless has enough faith in Kate to send her on a mission to Cornwall, southern England, where she meets Elaine (Scott Thomas), an actress who has emerged from a decades-long hibernation and wants to tell her story on film.Doon Mackichan plays Sue, Kate’s boss, who sends Kate to Cornwall to work on a film project about a long-forgotten actress.Manuel HarlanThe women’s first encounter isn’t especially auspicious, though Elaine’s entrance certainly catches the eye. Waddling onstage in Wellington boots, a swimming cap and a fur coat worn over a swimsuit, she suggests an English seaside equivalent to Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard.” She also comes bearing an ax that she’s been using to chop up furniture, and you feel from her bizarre behavior that she could put it to other uses, as well.“It is time for me to step into the light,” Elaine announces with a flourish, and at first, you think she will send Kate packing, frustrated by this new arrival’s flightiness and her inability to light a fire. Instead, the two bond over a shared desire to take ownership of their lives. Elaine is reckoning with the fallout of a brutal relationship with a now-dead film director, just as Kate, a generation younger, chafes at the control exerted by her own film director husband, Greg (James Corrigan, in the play’s lone male role).Freed from her own difficult relationship, Elaine encourages the impressionable Kate to leave Greg and start afresh. But any hope of a clean break is dashed when Sue suggests that he be hired to direct the film of Elaine’s life.Keeping an eye on these complications, and others, is Elaine’s calm neighbor and friend, Chris (Sara Powell, first-rate), a poet who develops feelings for Kate that aren’t reciprocated.Sara Powell as Chris, Elaine’s neighbor.Manuel HarlanAnd yet the play’s tone is so wayward — near-slapstick one minute, speechifying on societal ills the next — that any focus is lost. Skinner writes tremendous parts for women, as her earlier plays “Linda” and “The Village Bike” have shown. But the principal performers in “Lyonesse” are sufficiently confounded by the gear shifts in the writing that you start to look toward the gentler presence of Chris for respite. The playwright is clearly drawn to this secondary character, too, and Chris ends the play onstage alone.The likable James has an animated stage presence, but it’s hard to believe that a serious company would employ such a flibbertigibbet. Chattiness in both life and art can grate, and so it proves here.Scott Thomas looks fantastic as the willfully daffy Elaine. And as a onetime film star herself, who has enjoyed a renewed career onstage, she may understand Elaine’s desire, however misguided, to put herself in the public eye once more. The role couldn’t be further from the cool, cryptic women Scott Thomas often plays, so is a welcome change of pace.But the fact remains that the character of Elaine never rings true: She’s an amalgamation of eccentricities, most of which feel borrowed from elsewhere. For her big set piece, Scott Thomas careers about the living room of Lyonesse, her decaying house, in a wig, recounting the details of Elaine’s bruised and bruising life.But when she later poses the question, “What if I’m no longer spellbinding?,” it feels like time for the character, and the play, to face facts.LyonesseThrough Dec. 23 at the Harold Pinter Theater in London; lyonesseonstage.com. More