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    ‘The Half-God of Rainfall’ Review: Basketball Under the Heavens

    Borrowing its powers from Greek and Yoruba mythologies, Inua Ellams’s play tells the story of a demigod who becomes an N.B.A. superstar.Turning verse into action is tricky, especially with ideas as lofty as the ones in Inua Ellams’s epic poem “The Half-God of Rainfall,” now appearing in theatrical guise at New York Theater Workshop.The poem is a melodious, sky-high tale of a basketball superstar born as a result of a celestial contest between the Greek and Yoruba gods of thunder, Zeus and Sango. But the stage adaptation, which opened on Monday, runs into some flaws that, while not fatal, strand this Nigerian writer’s work in the mortal realm.A storm of plot and themes is squeezed into an intermission-less 90 minutes: After defeating Sango (Jason Bowen) in a race, Zeus (Michael Laurence) has his pick of Sango’s subjects. To Hera’s (Kelley Curran) defeated disdain, Zeus rapes Modúpé (Jennifer Mogbock), a Nigerian woman, and soon the mixed-race half-god Demi (Mister Fitzgerald) is born.Neighborhood boys ostracize Demi, who can turn the soil to swamp with his tears. But he gradually comes into his powers and makes his way to the Golden State Warriors, learning about other demigods who had to suppress their own supernatural talents on the court. Demi’s growing celebrity eventually lands him face to face with Zeus, providing a chance to avenge his mother.As the deities Elegba and Osún (Lizan Mitchell and Patrice Johnson Chevannes, fantastic as always) narrate Demi’s ascent to sports stardom, they intersperse meditations on the gendered violence that permeates Greek mythology, and later, on the imperialist violence the West perpetrated to obscure African traditions.Ellams’s scope is staggering, and he mostly pulls it off. Each line, heavy with information and emotion, is shot back and forth by the able actors, who turn Ellams’s vibrant, poetic flow into a nonstop athletic match.But there are few scenes of interactions between characters — instead presentational, narration-driven exposition makes up the bulk of the play. And Taibi Magar’s direction displays an uncertain grasp over whether the piece should play naturally or at a distance: There’s the work’s traditional methods of self-aware, oral storytelling — having the cast address the audience, and change into Linda Cho’s athleisure costumes onstage — and the production’s sumptuous, almost immersive elements, courtesy of Stacey Derosier’s lighting, Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound and especially Tal Yarden’s gorgeous projections.Though Orlando Pabotoy’s fluid movement direction, along with Beatrice Capote’s Orisha choreography, strikes a powerful balance between the seamless and more Brechtian styles, the production finds itself stuck between them.I was reminded of Ellams’s “Icarus,” a short piece presented during the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in 2021. It transformed the parable into the heartbreaking tale of a young Nigerian refugee who, detained at an Italian entry point, takes to the sky. Recited by just two performers, the work, in its simplicity, soared. The poignancy and concision left me wanting a one-by-one re-envisioning of Greek mythology through a contemporary African diasporic lens.Ellams certainly has it in him to assemble a universe of distinctive characters connected by their shared humanity, as he proved in his globe-trotting play “Barber Shop Chronicles.” But here, his ideas, vast and evocative as they are on the page, overwhelm the story onstage, and the sheer amount of talking at the audience becomes draining. Ninety minutes becomes too long for one solidly conveyed story; too short for an entire pantheon of players.His interest in and approach to mixing and remixing Western and African traditions is fascinating, however. This is a writer whose intuitive understanding of the common threads of tradition, globalization and human instinct could very well create a new mythological tapestry for our interwoven times.The Half-God of RainfallThrough Aug. 20 at New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan; nytw.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    Angus Cloud, Actor on ‘Euphoria,’ Dies at 25

    The cause of death was not released, but his family said that he had “intensely struggled” after the recent death of his father.Angus Cloud, the actor best known for portraying Fezco, a lovable drug dealer on the HBO television show “Euphoria,” died on Monday at his family home in Oakland, Calif. He was 25.The death was confirmed by Cait Bailey, Mr. Cloud’s representative, who shared a statement from his family. The statement did not specify a cause, but said that Mr. Cloud had “intensely struggled” after the recent death of his father, Conor Hickey, whom the family buried last week.“The only comfort we have is knowing Angus is now reunited with his dad, who was his best friend,” the family said. “Angus was open about his battle with mental health and we hope that his passing can be a reminder to others that they are not alone and should not fight this on their own in silence.”We are incredibly saddened to learn of the passing of Angus Cloud. He was immensely talented and a beloved part of the HBO and Euphoria family. We extend our deepest condolences to his friends and family during this difficult time. pic.twitter.com/G92zRWkbfH— HBO (@HBO) July 31, 2023
    Mr. Cloud was born on July 10, 1998, in Oakland and attended the Oakland School for the Arts, according to a 2019 profile in The Wall Street Journal. He built sets and worked on lighting and sound for his high school’s theater department, according to the profile. But before his role on “Euphoria,” he had never performed.Mr. Cloud was discovered in 2018 by a casting agent who saw him walking along Mercer Street in Greenwich Village. Mr. Cloud was working as a waiter in Brooklyn at the time and thought that the approach was a scam, but a friend convinced him to follow through.“Before this, I didn’t have any desire to act,” he said in an interview with The New York Times last year. “I guess I was just at the right place at the right time.”On “Euphoria,” Mr. Cloud quickly became a fan favorite, convincing the show’s creator to keep his character alive beyond his planned death in Season 1, according to a casting agent. Mr. Cloud continued playing Fezco through Season 2.Survivors include his mother, Lisa Cloud Hickey and his two sisters, Molly Hickey and Fiona Hickey. More

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    Paul Reubens, Creator of Pee-wee Herman, Is Dead at 70

    With his bow tie, short drainpipe pants and flattop hairdo, Pee-wee became enshrined in the popular imagination as a symbol of childlike whimsy.Paul Reubens, the comic actor whose bow-tied, childlike alter-ego Pee-wee Herman became an unlikely if almost uncategorizable movie and television sensation in the 1980s, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 70.His death, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, was confirmed on Monday by his longtime representative, Kelly Bush Novak, who said he had “privately fought cancer for years with his trademark tenacity and wit.”“Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” Mr. Reubens said in a statement released with the announcement of his death. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”Mr. Reubens had scores of acting credits in a career that began in the 1960s, including roles on “Murphy Brown,” “The Blacklist” and many other television series and in movies like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992), “Batman Returns” (1992) and “Blow” (2001).But Pee-wee, a character he created in the late 1970s as a 10-minute bit when he was a member of the Los Angeles comedy troupe the Groundlings, overshadowed all else, morphing into a bizarre and savvy cultural phenomenon, a character aimed (at least in its TV incarnation) at children but tapping into adult sensibilities and ambiguities.After being disappointed after auditioning unsuccessfully for the “Saturday Night Live” cast in 1980, Mr. Reubens set about creating “The Pee-wee Herman Show,” which was billed as a “live onstage TV pilot.” It had its premiere in early 1981 at the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles. A national tour followed, and HBO broadcast a version of it as a comedy special in 1981.Pee-wee started turning up on late-night talk shows, especially “Late Night With David Letterman,” where the juxtaposition of the idiosyncratic Pee-wee and the laid-back, somewhat befuddled Mr. Letterman was comedy gold. “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” a feature film directed by Tim Burton, was a hit in 1985.Then, in 1986, came “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” a children-friendly version of the world according to Pee-wee that would air on CBS for five years and carve out an enduring place in the memories of 1980s children and, often, their parents.“Pee-wee’s Playhouse” stands as one of the oddest, most audacious, most unclassifiable shows in television history. The man-boy Pee-wee and a vast collection of human and nonhuman characters — there was, for instance, Chairry, a talking armchair that gave hugs — held forth in each episode about, well, it’s hard to summarize. There was a word of the day. There were bizarre toys. In one episode, Pee-wee married a fruit salad.The show arrived in the midst of Ronald Reagan’s presidential administration and harked back to another button-down era, the one Mr. Reubens lived as a child: the 1950s.‘‘I saw it as very Norman Rockwell,” he told The New York Times in 2016, ‘‘but it was my Norman Rockwell version of the ’50s, which was more all-inclusive.”Laurence Fishburne, S. Epatha Merkerson and other actors of color were in the cast. Gilbert Lewis, who was Black, was the King of Cartoons.“Not just anybody — the king!” Mr. Reubens said. “That came out of growing up in Florida under segregation. I felt really good about that.”Paul Reubens and S. Epatha Merkerson on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” in 1986. Several actors of color were cast on the show. John Kisch Archive/Getty ImagesThe show was a world away from standard educational TV for children — its lessons, if any, were delivered through wackiness rather than didactically, and its presentation was decidedly nonlinear.“I never set out to do a big educational show,” Mr. Reubens told Newsday in 1989. “We’re trying to expose children to as much creativity as we can muster in a half-hour, to be entertaining and to transmit some subliminal messages, like nonconformity isn’t bad.”The show had not been on long before academics and cultural critics were analyzing its appeal with weighty papers and other commentaries, but Mr. Reubens was having none of that.“I’ve been almost paranoid about dissecting it too much,” he said, “because the character always has been a kind of instinctual gut thing. I’m able to turn it on, and it just kind of flows. I do what I want and hope it connects.”The wheels of his career came off in July 1991, when he was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Fla., where he had grown up. The arrest led to a small fine, but the headlines damaged his reputation.“Pee-wee’s Playhouse” was in reruns at the time, and CBS pulled them off the air. There were no more new episodes. Mr. Reubens said later that he had been planning a hiatus from show business anyway.In any case, he took a long break from his alter-ego, but neither Mr. Reubens nor Pee-wee was done.Mr. Reubens continued to act, receiving an Emmy Award nomination for a guest appearance on “Murphy Brown” in 1995. (His character arc on that show continued for five more episodes.) He also weathered a second scandal: In 2002, he was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of possessing child pornography as a result of images found by the authorities in his collection of vintage erotica. He was sentenced to probation on a reduced charge of possessing obscene material.“The moment that I realized my name was going to be said in the same sentence as children and sex, that’s really intense,” Mr. Reubens told NBC in 2004. “That’s something I knew from that very moment, whatever happens past that point, something’s out there in the air that is really bad.”Fans in Los Angeles were remembering Mr. Reubens on Monday where his star appears on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThen, about 2008, some producers began suggesting that he revive the Pee-wee character and some version of the 1980s stage show. He was somewhat reluctant.“There were age-related issues to it,” Mr. Reubens told The Times in 2010, since he was by then in his 50s. “There were career-standing issues.”He waffled.“Every two months, I would change my mind,” he told The Chicago Sun Times in 2010. “And then, finally, one day I woke up and decided, ‘This is it, I’m coming back.’”The new version of “The Pee-wee Herman Show” opened at Club Nokia in Los Angeles in January 2010, featuring elements of the original stage show and characters from the TV series. It opened on Broadway that November for a limited run.“Mr. Reubens’s Silly Putty face is a little puttier, but it remains as stretchable as ever,” Charles Isherwood wrote in his review in The Times. “His Popsicle-stick posture retains its comical rigidity; the flapping arms express exasperation and excitement with no loss of tone; the bopping Pee-wee dance is still beach-ball-buoyant. And of course Pee-wee’s restless imagination and childish mood swings are as extravagant as ever.”A new movie, “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” followed in 2016 on Netflix, produced by Mr. Reubens and Judd Apatow. Mr. Reubens told The Times in 2010, when the film was in the early talking stages, that it was no surprise that Pee-wee had endured.“There’s never been anything from the fans other than, please do more,” he said.Paul Rubenfeld was born on Aug. 27, 1952, in Peekskill, N.Y., to Milton and Judy (Rosen) Rubenfeld. His mother was a teacher, and his father had been a pilot who, according to The Forward, helped smuggle fighter planes into Israel in 1948 during its war of independence.The family moved to Sarasota when Paul was 9. His parents ran a lamp store there. Paul had been in school and camp theatrical productions when he graduated to a bigger stage: At 11, he had a key role as the young nephew in a custody dispute in Herb Gardner’s play “A Thousand Clowns,” staged by the Sarasota Players.“The 12-year-old is played with remarkable assurance and stage-wise technique by Paul Rubenfeld, himself only 11 years old, a genuine talent discovery,” Ray Perkins wrote in a review in The Tampa Bay Times.“Young Actor Big Crowd Pleaser” read a headline in the same newspaper a few days later over a feature article about him.He appeared in several other shows with the Sarasota Players and also acted with the Asolo Theater Company (now Asolo Repertory). He spent a year at Boston University after graduating from Sarasota High School in 1970, but then went to the West Coast, studying at the California Institute of the Arts and eventually falling in with the Groundlings, working at a pizza parlor and selling brushes while he developed his comedic skills.Mr. Reubens’s first film role, uncredited, was as a wedding guest in the 1968 drama “The Brotherhood,” and he had a smattering of other roles before Pee-wee took over. The first name of his enduring character, he said, was borrowed from the tiny Pee Wee harmonica brand. The last name, Herman, was inspired by an irritating childhood acquaintance.He is survived by a sister, Abby Rubenfeld, and a brother, Luke Rubenfeld.Just months ago Mr. Reubens said he was working on a memoir and a documentary. And in an interview with The Times around that time, one of his last, he reflected on the longevity of Pee-wee, on the adjustments that were made to keep the character fresh, and on how the creative landscape had changed since Pee-wee first appeared some 40 years ago.“Today, it seems to me, it’s a lot more difficult to stand out,” he said. “You know, if you want to be weird, good luck.”Jesus Jiménez and Melena Ryzik contributed reporting. More

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    To Keep TV Shows Afloat, Some Networks Are Cutting Actors’ Pay

    In a shrinking business, actors on some shows are being guaranteed less money, an issue that’s helping to fuel the Hollywood strike.Starring on the CBS sitcom “Bob Hearts Abishola” has been good for Bayo Akinfemi. Being a regular cast member for four years has given him financial security and made him a star in his native Nigeria, where the show is wildly popular. It even helped him branch out from acting, when producers gave him the opportunity to direct an episode.But Mr. Akinfemi and 10 of his castmates were told this year that the only way the half-hour show was going to get a fifth season was if budgets were cut. How the actors were paid was going to change.No longer would they be guaranteed pay for all 22 episodes of a season. Instead, Mr. Akinfemi and his castmates would be reclassified as recurring cast members. They would be paid the same amount per episode, but unlike regular cast members, they would be paid only for the episodes in which they appeared and would be guaranteed only five of those in a truncated 13-episode season, once the actors’ strike was over and performers returned to work. (Only Billy Gardell, who plays the white middle-aged businessman Bob, and Folake Olowofoyeku, who plays Abishola, the Nigerian nurse he loves, will remain series regulars.)“It was a bit surprising, for all of 10 seconds,” Mr. Akinfemi said in an interview before SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, went on strike. “We are disappointed, but we also understand at the end of the day it’s a business.”For decades, actors playing supporting characters on successful network television shows have been able to renegotiate their contracts in later seasons and reap financial windfalls. But this is a new era for network TV.It’s a business that has been struggling with depressed ratings, decreased advertising revenue and fierce competition from streaming services, resulting in millions of viewers cutting their cable subscriptions. And one way networks and production companies are trying to deal with the changing economics is to ask the casts of some long-running shows to take pay cuts.“Bob Hearts Abishola” was not the only show facing budget cuts, Channing Dungey, the chairwoman and chief executive of Warner Bros. Television Studios, said. David Livingston/Getty Images“The glory days of linear television are sadly behind us,” said Channing Dungey, the chairwoman and chief executive of Warner Bros. Television Studios, the studio behind “Bob Hearts Abishola.”This new reality in network television is one of the reasons behind the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes. Those on strike say the economics of the streaming era have effectively reduced their pay and cut into money they get from residuals, a type of royalty. The studios say they aren’t making the kind of money they used to, meaning that they’re having to shave costs wherever they can.The sides are at a standstill. The writers haven’t spoken to the studios since going out on strike on May 2, and the actors haven’t since walking out on July 14. No negotiations are scheduled.“Blue Bloods,” a CBS drama starring Tom Selleck, is returning for its 14th season only because the entire cast agreed to a 25 percent pay cut when the strike is over. On the CW network, “Superman & Lois,” which is entering its fourth season, and “All American: Homecoming,” which is hanging on for a third season, saw their budgets cut and cast members reduced to day players or eliminated.Not even the juggernaut represented by Dick Wolf’s lineup of shows on NBC is immune. A number of the actors on shows like “Chicago P.D.” and “Chicago Fire” are being guaranteed appearances in fewer episodes for the coming season, according to two people familiar with the productions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.“This is something that’s happening across the board,” Ms. Dungey said, adding that CBS wanted to renew “Bob Hearts Abishola” only if Warner Bros. was able to produce it for the network at a reduced cost. “There are a number of different shows, both on CBS and elsewhere, where the same kinds of considerations are coming into play.”CBS and NBC declined to comment.Word of the salary adjustments for “Bob Hearts Abishola” came out in late April, just days before SAG-AFTRA authorized its strike with a 97.9 percent vote in favor.“This is the beginning of the end for working-class actors,” the actress Ever Carradine, who has been in shows like “Commander in Chief” on ABC and Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” wrote on Twitter at the time. “I have never worked harder in my career to make less money, and I am not alone.”Today, first-time series regulars often earn anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 an episode, depending on the budget of the show, the size of the role, and the studio or network that’s footing the bill. Commissions for agents and management are subtracted from those sums.To some, the recent reductions are an inevitable correction from the era of peak television, when studios were eager to lure talent with lucrative contracts. Some executives argue that paring back salaries will ultimately allow more shows to be made, at a more reasonable price.Network shows do not draw anywhere close to the viewer numbers they did when 20 million people were watching “Seinfeld” and “Friends” every week in the 1990s.At the end of its fourth season, “Bob Hearts Abishola” was averaging 6.9 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen’s Live +35 metric, which measures the first 35 days of viewing on both linear and digital platforms. Hits had bigger audiences, like CBS’s “Ghosts,” which averaged 11 million viewers over 35 days, and ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” which averaged 9.1 million.But the rise of streaming has cannibalized network television on a scale the networks weren’t prepared for, and not even scaling back on scripted offerings has been enough to stem the bleeding. “Bob Hearts Abishola” is one of four prime-time scripted comedies left on CBS.“It is hard now to get shows to Seasons 5 and beyond, but it doesn’t mean that it can’t happen,” Ms. Dungey said. “It just is less likely to happen as often as it did in the past.”Yet the new reality means actors must decide whether to remain on a show at a reduced rate but with some job security or leave to see if they can find other jobs.The management team for Kelly Jenrette, an actress on the CW’s “All American: Homecoming,” told the trade publication Deadline that she had chosen to become a recurring character rather than “opt for a return as a series regular on reduced episodic guarantees.”Ms. Jenrette declined to be interviewed because, she said, she was told that doing so would violate the actors’ union’s ban on promoting projects associated with struck companies. The CW declined to comment.For some, the pride they take in their shows is also an enticement to stay. On “Bob Hearts Abishola,” Mr. Akinfemi plays Goodwin, an employee of Bob’s compression sock company who was on his way to becoming an economics professor in Nigeria before he left the country.Fans have stopped him in the Nigerian airport, in the streets of Toronto, even at the CVS near his home in Los Angeles to marvel that whole scenes of the show are spoken in Mr. Akinfemi’s native Yoruba tongue. (He also serves as the language consultant for the sitcom.)“The idea that there could be a show like this that really showcases Nigerian culture, it’s just unfathomable,” Mr. Akinfemi said. “That we are really representing Nigerian culture as accurately as possible and in a positive light, on American television, is mind-blowing to a lot of Nigerians and Africans.”He and the 10 other cast members affected by the pay changes on “Bob Hearts Abishola” all chose to stay.“These actors are attached to good, important, groundbreaking work,” said Tash Moseley, Mr. Akinfemi’s manager. “I think they knew that the actors would come back and do it no matter what.” More

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    Liz Kingsman’s ‘One Woman Show’ Lands in N.Y.C.

    The comedian talks about her slightly goofy, slightly surreal style, and why New York has proved to be “the hardest translation” yet.When it came time to create a trailer for her one-woman show — which is titled, of all things, “One Woman Show” and is playing at the Greenwich House Theater — Liz Kingsman researched what other productions had done. One video especially made her laugh.“It was for one of the Shakespeare histories and it was just close-ups of a man fondling his cuffs and touching his tie,” Kingsman said on a recent afternoon. “You’re like, ‘Is that Kit Harington?’ And then a bit of hair. It’s teasing Kit Harington, and in the end it is Kit Harington.”She decided to deploy the same gimmick for her own promotional trailer, complete with none other that Harington himself (though that “Game of Thrones” star, to be clear, is not in Kingsman’s show). “I’m not famous, so a trailer where it teases me…,” Kingsman said. “No one’s ever heard of me, so who cares?”A similar slightly goofy, slightly surreal style is at work in the Olivier Award-nominated “One Woman Show,” in which Kingsman sends up both a specific subgenre and its stars — boldly confessional, sexually frank, endearingly messy young women — for a “sharply observed satire,” as Jason Zinoman put it in his review for The New York Times.“Liz’s comedy has a sense of authorship that not lots of other comedians are lucky enough to have,” the comedian Alex Edelman said on the phone. (His Broadway solo, “Just for Us,” and “One Woman Show” were directed by Adam Brace, who died in May.) “She’s both totally committed to the character and totally committed to the laceration of the character.”And she has found an audience: Since a one-off outing of the concept in 2019, “One Woman Show” has traveled to the West End and at the Sydney Opera House. Now Kingsman is ready to move on, and says the New York run, which ends on Aug. 11, will be the production’s last.Jason Zinoman called Kingsman’s show a “sharp satire” about a messy attention-seeker grasping at relevance.Joan MarcusAfter growing up in Sydney, Australia, she attended Durham University in England. There she formed the sketch-comedy trio Massive Dad with Tessa Coates and Stevie Martin, and they performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2014 and 2015. Kingsman went solo, firming up a drolly understated sensibility. Most notably, she has spent three seasons as the eye-rolling, unflappable British assistant-turned-lobbyist Rose Pilkington in the French series “Parlement,” a witty cross between “Veep” and “The Thick of It.” (It’s available on Topic in the United States.) “No one I know has ever seen the show so it feels like I’ve made the job up,” she said, laughing.Kingsman, who declined to give her exact age but said “I remain 12 years old,” arrived for the interview with her cockapoo, Emmett, and marveled at the access he enjoyed in New York. “You can go shopping with your dog here,” she said. “Like, you can take them into clothes shops, and you can’t do that in London. That’s really revolutionizing things.”The pair sat down for some hummus and a doggy biscuit at a West Village restaurant near Kingsman’s rented home away from home. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Why did you move to Britain?My mom is British, one of the “Ten Pound Poms”: They needed an immigration boost in Australia so they handed out 10-pounds tickets to British people. When it came to [university], I just went to England — I wanted to go and live in an old building and read books in a little nook somewhere. I quickly learned that it is cold and damp [laughs]. But there is a brilliant industry in London and once I started working, it was very hard to leave.How does humor travel?I’ve definitely found New York to be the hardest translation of the show because I think an American audience believes things that are meant to be ironic at the top. When my character says “Women’s voices aren’t getting heard in theater,” a U.K. audience knows that’s me doing a joke about a woman who would say that very sincerely onstage. But an American audience has been clapping at that line. I don’t know what to do with that because I can’t be, “No, that’s ironic!” I don’t want to generalize too much, but my experience is that there has been a tendency to sort of buy into it a little bit more here.What makes you laugh?I find very serious theater amusing. I saw “Sweeney Todd.” I really enjoyed it, but there’s a sort of big moment where a character dies and the next line was “Oh, no.” The actor had to deliver it with gravitas and I was like, “How are you going to do that? Somebody’s died: ‘Oh no.’ ” I just started laughing at a very serious-themed play. I can’t help it, I just find it funny.The lady does not prefer dungarees: “It was never a specific reference but people started saying that my costume was a reference to one episode of one TV show. And I was like, ‘ecch.’” OK McCausland for The New York TimesOK, but what kind of comedy do you find funny?Commitment to something incredibly stupid makes me laugh — really stupid stuff taken very seriously. There’s a clip from “Parks and Recreation” when [Leslie Knope] is on her campaign run and she has to give a speech in the middle of an ice rink. I’ve watched the clip so many times. It’s quite physical and I love slapstick. The scene generally is very funny, but I also like the idea of how much fun those actors would have had that day. It makes me want to be in a show like that more than anything.I love that you’re wearing dungarees in “One Woman Show,” although apparently it’s a nod to one Phoebe Waller-Bridge wore in “Fleabag”?It’s not, actually. All the one-woman shows I saw, they wear overalls or dungarees because there’s a little bit of “girl next door” about it. If you ever go to any of those festivals like Edinburgh or Brighton, it’s just a sea of women wearing overalls, dungarees or boiler suits. I couldn’t do the show in a boiler suit so I was like, “It’s got to be dungarees.” It was never a specific reference but people started saying that my costume was a reference to one episode of one TV show. And I was like, “ecch.” Also, if I wanted to parody a costume, I’d do a better parody.American female comedians don’t appear to be into dungarees to the same extent.It’s just an unflattering outfit, basically.I think they’re cool! Like something the tomboy George would wear in an Enid Blyton book.But don’t you think there’s a slight kink about that? It’s very hard to describe. Maybe it’s very specific to the U.K. In the script it’s written that she’s wearing messy braids that have been made to look deliberately a little bit messy. She basically has to look casual, like she’s thrown it on but thought has gone into it. It’s all character: It’s what this woman would wear — I would not wear that outfit. Now I will never wear dungarees ever again. And I’m never doing a French braid ever again after August 11! More

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    Review: Young Bros and Maidens Harmonize in ‘Love’s Labor’s Lost’

    This peculiar early Shakespeare comedy gets updated with 10 songs for a youthful alfresco production.“Let’s rock!” is something I’m pretty sure no character in Shakespeare ever said. But on a sandy stage under a jaunty tent, with a green hillside as a welcoming backdrop, it seemed an apt way to begin “Love’s Labor’s Lost.”It is, after all, a young man’s play, both in its authorship (Shakespeare was about 30) and story (four callow bros fall madly in love with four sharp maidens). And this production, directed by Amanda Dehnert for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, intensifies the youth-crush factor with 10 emo songs. Neither fully true to the strange original nor completely remade as a viable musical, it swings between those poles in ways that are both tiresome and charming.Let’s start with the charming: The catchy songs, by Dehnert and the Chicago-based composer André Pluess, tap the sappy heart of summer and are danceable to boot. (You may be the audience member asked at one point to prove it.) Whether folky or funky, and despite lyrics that sound little like Shakespeare — “she’s a nice girl, always thinking twice girl” — they match the story emotionally, with titles like “The Infinite Ones” (as youth always sees itself) and “Change to Black” (as youth at some point must do).That the songs don’t match the story structurally is probably an insuperable problem. “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” with or without the British “u,” is a very youthful, disjointed text, its thin thread of plot repeatedly cut by clowns, dullards, puns, pomposities and noodling that goes nowhere. Misdelivered letters and absurd disguises contribute. By the time you get to the masque near the end, featuring impenetrable spoofs of the nine classical “worthies,” you may doubt young Shakespeare’s judgment of worthiness.And yet his ear for the painful paradoxes of love is already fully in evidence. The four young men of Navarre, who form a “Seinfeld”-like pact to abjure the company of women for three years, break it almost instantly when a delegation of four visiting gentlewomen arrives from France to resolve a diplomatic issue. (After many readings and viewings of the play, I still don’t know what that issue is.) In supple pentameter, Shakespeare explores the difference between the book learning the young men meant to engage in and the learning that emerges, despite their plans, from “the prompting eyes of beauty’s tutors.”From left, Mayadevi Ross, Emily Ota, Antoinette Robinson and Phoebe Lloyd in the play, with music and lyrics by Amanda Dehnert and André Pluess.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStill, theirs is a bumpy road to maturity. Spurred on by Berowne, “a man replete with mocks,” they double down on whimsy, dressing up for some reason as Russians to bamboozle their intendeds. (In Dehnert’s staging, the “Muscovites” are a rock group.) In response, the women, spurred on by Rosaline, whose eye “Jove’s lightning bears,” disguise themselves as one another to confuse and trump the men. But just as all of this gets sorted, with a quadruple marriage (or more) in sight, a last-minute death delays the nuptials and forestalls a normal resolution.“Our wooing doth not end like an old play,” Berowne says. “Jack hath not Jill” — which if true enough to life, is way too sudden for dramaturgy.The Hudson Valley Shakespeare production is not the first to struggle with such problems in musicalizing “Love’s Labor’s Lost.” But unlike the 1973 opera by Nicolas Nabokov, with a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, or the musical comedy presented by the Public Theater in 2013, with songs by Michael Friedman, Dehnert’s version does not use its songs to deepen character and propel the story.They are generally too short and atmospheric for that, most being sung between scenes instead of during them, and by members of the multitasking cast-slash-band (guitars, drums, accordion) who are observing the action, not experiencing it. The addition of songs, however beguiling, thus winds up emphasizing the play’s ungainliness by adding another unintegrated element and stretching the run time. A full-blown musical might have worked better, but at two hours and 40 minutes, it’s already too long for a summer romp.That’s a shame, because some of the singers — including Melissa Mahoney, who plays the “wench” Jaquenetta, and Luis Quintero, one of the dullards — have great voices. Others compare favorably only with the chorus of mosquitoes that always accompanies a Hudson Valley Shakespeare outing. But if discipline is not the top vocal note, rawness verging on excessiveness is a kind of authenticity in a show about raw, excessive youth.Authenticity is not sufficient when speaking the verse, though; it requires more finesse than some of the young actors yet possess. Getting your mouth around the overlapping and oddly shaped dialogue can be like eating an unpeeled pineapple.Luckily, Stephen Michael Spencer as Berowne and Antoinette Robinson as Rosaline are standouts, fully inhabiting the process of growing up and growing wise. At first almost adversaries — he impulsive and she haughty — they gradually move toward the middle as the invented trials of infatuation give way to the real ones of love. Both are also generally spared the over-emphatic jollity that Dehnert has evidently encouraged as a way of plowing through difficult passages of dialogue and forcing the weird jokes to bloom. It’s no fun when the people onstage are having more fun than you.Still, despite its lapses and longueurs, “Love’s Labor’s Lost” remains in this version a fascinating and feelingful taste of Shakespeare to come. And if in his later works he generally improved on many of the tricks pioneered here, that too is apt. Like those tricks, this musical, as it develops for future productions, may one day improve on its first, green outing.Love’s Labor’s LostThrough Aug. 27 at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Garrison, N.Y.; hvshakespeare.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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    At Two Summer Theater Festivals, Reassuring Signs of Life

    The industry is facing challenges, but in western Massachusetts the quality of the works is as rich as ever, our critic writes.Suddenly, out of the darkness, came one of the most thrilling sounds an audience can make: a collective gasp. This is how you know that the crowd is rapt, that the storytelling has taken hold. And so it had the other night during a performance of “Blues for an Alabama Sky” at Barrington Stage Company, where a different plot twist elicited another welcome noise: a mid-scene eruption of delighted applause. Humans can be a lot of fun to see a show with.That’s something to keep in mind at this crisis moment in the theater, whose prepandemic audiences have yet to return in their former numbers, and whose programming has shrunk accordingly. But that doesn’t mean the work itself has withered. Over a couple of days in Western Massachusetts last week, I saw two plays, one play reading and one cabaret, and if you looked at the quality of what was there — rather than the quantity of what was not — you’d hardly know that anything was amiss. And Barrington Stage, anyway, has not scaled back this year.“Blues for an Alabama Sky,” directed by Candis C. Jones on the Boyd-Quinson Stage in Pittsfield, Mass., is a tone-perfect production of Pearl Cleage’s 1995 play, set in the summer of 1930, that has plenty of resonance in the summer of 2023. It also shimmers with the charisma of a terrific cast playing funny, likable, fully dimensional friends.Angel (Tsilala Brock), a role originated by Phylicia Rashad, is a Harlem nightclub singer with a voice to fit her name. Guy (Brandon Alvión) is a chicly fabulous costume designer with exquisite taste. In the middle of the Great Depression, they are both freshly out of work — since the night Angel told off her gangster ex from the stage, and Guy defended her. Now they’re roommates, sharing his apartment.Angel hopes that Leland (DeLeon Dallas), a conventionally religious Southern stranger, will swoop in and save her, even though they are a catastrophic mismatch. Guy plans to be rescued by Josephine Baker, whose portrait hangs from his wall like a deity. He sends his designs to her in Paris, fantasizing that she will whisk him there.Across the hall, Angel and Guy’s earnest, impassioned social worker friend, Delia (Jasminn Johnson), is helping to open a family planning clinic — and maybe falling for their nightlife-loving doctor friend, Sam (Ryan George), who delivers babies all over the neighborhood.“I’m not trying to make a revolution,” Delia says, and if her drably sensible suits are any indication, she means it. “I’m just trying to give women in Harlem the chance to plan their families.”But self-determination — control over one’s own body in particular — has always been revolutionary, and freedom from straitjacketing social mores is what Angel and Guy have been chasing ever since they left Savannah for Harlem. As a Black woman and a gay Black man, they’ve each encountered violence aimed at them for that.“Blues for an Alabama Sky” is about the tenacity of hope, the limits of forgiveness and the romance of defiance. It’s a glittering spoken blues, layered with yearning.Bill Irwin in master-clown mode at the Williamstown Theater Festival, which is hosting a series of cabaret performances this summer.Emilio MadridAbout 20 miles north of Pittsfield, Williamstown Theater Festival is producing a drastically cropped season, none of whose offerings are open to review — because, a publicist said, they “are all in active development.” Fair enough. But the festival — which landed in trouble in 2021 when workers accused it of exploiting them, and in response produced a streamlined 2022 season — hasn’t lost its stardust, even without its customary fully staged productions.In the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College, the festival’s longtime home, the WTF Cabaret set (by Se Hyun Oh) is stark, the lighting (by Emily Schmit) glamorous. Both audience and performers are onstage, with the auditorium’s rows of empty seats forming the backdrop for the show. A sculptural array of illuminated bulbs hangs in the air, like a constellation of ghost lights. Simplicity, this summer, is the festival’s friend.So, last weekend, was the actor Jeff Hiller. Lately risen on the cultural radar thanks to HBO’s heart-stirring friendship dramedy “Somebody Somewhere,” he hosted the cabaret, trying out comic material for an August show at Joe’s Pub. Bill Irwin performed in master-clown mode, and Jacob Ming-Trent knocked his songs so far out of the park that he could not have been a better advertisement for seeing him down the road in Lenox, Mass., playing Bottom in Shakespeare & Company’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Aug. 1-Sept. 10).The cabaret hosts and guests change each weekend, but the band and the core performers (Eden Espinosa, Asmeret Ghebremichael and Jon-Michael Reese) are constants. Reese’s fresh, textured interpretation of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” given a soulful flourish by the music director, Joel Waggoner, ought to be a constant, too.Nearby at the Clark, I saw a Williamstown Theater Festival reading of Cindy Lou Johnson’s “Plunder and Lightning,” directed by Portia Krieger. It would be unfair to evaluate the play, about a family of schemers teetering on the edge of ruin, but it was a genuine joy to watch Annie Golden rip into a substantial comic part, with the brilliant Johanna Day alongside her. Not a bad lineup for a Friday afternoon, or for a $15 ticket. And the legroom? Miles of it.Barrington Stage Company presented the world premiere of Mike Lew’s “tiny father,” a comedy set in a neonatal intensive care unit, featuring Andy Lucien as the father of a premature baby.Daniel RaderBack in Pittsfield, Barrington Stage Company was also engaged in new work: the world premiere of Mike Lew’s “tiny father” — a comedy set in a neonatal intensive care unit, where Daniel (Andy Lucien) has become the father of a daughter born 14 weeks premature, and is soon a solo parent. Caroline (Jennifer Ikeda), a nurse on the unit, is his guide through this alien landscape — and sometimes, Daniel thinks, his opponent there.Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, it’s a smart play about parenthood, and the ways race and gender play into expectations and outcomes in health care and elsewhere. (Daniel is Black, his baby’s mother is Asian, and Caroline is written to be played by an Asian or Latina actress.) But the script demands an exceptionally tricky balance of comedy and emotional complexity in the portrayal of Daniel, which this production has yet to find. Talking to the baby, Sophia, though, Lucien is lovely always.Good news, then, from a theatrical landscape lately festooned with co-productions. Though this “tiny father” has ended its Barrington Stage run, it will get a chance to go deeper when it moves to Chautauqua Theater Company in Chautauqua, N.Y., next week. Butts in seats, please.Blues for an Alabama SkyThrough Aug. 5 at the Boyd-Quinson Stage, Pittsfield, Mass.; barringtonstageco.org.tiny fatherAug. 4-17 in the Bratton Theater at the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, N.Y.; chq.org. More

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    A Guide to Summer Theater Festivals in New York and the Berkshires

    In summertime, a lot of stage talent heads for the Hudson River Valley and western Massachusetts, where curious audiences follow. Here is some of what theaters there have on tap this year.Hudson Valley Shakespeare FestivalAmong this summer’s offerings at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is a production of “Henry V,” directed by Davis McCallum, the company’s artistic director.T. Charles EricksonThis company has a knack for magnificent vistas. Its new home is high above the Hudson River in Garrison, N.Y., with breathtaking views. Picnicking, should you care to, is very much part of the preshow experience, and performances are alfresco, under a sturdy, festive, big white tent. But productions here often use the landscape just outside for striking tableaus, with the tent’s wide, arced entrance framing bits of action on the sloping lawn.This season’s shows are Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (through Aug. 21), directed by Davis McCallum, the company’s artistic director; a musical spin on Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labor’s Lost” (through Aug. 27), adapted and directed by Amanda Dehnert, who wrote the pop-rock score with André Pluess; and “Penelope” (Sept. 2-17), a solo musical re-envisioning of “The Odyssey,” directed by Eva Steinmetz, with music and lyrics by Alex Bechtel, who wrote the book with Grace McLean and Steinmetz. (hvshakespeare.org)New York Stage and FilmThe dance musical “Paradise Ballroom,” featuring choreography by Princess Lockerooo, above, will close out New York Stage and Film’s season next weekend.Kenny RodriguezThere is a particular excitement to seeing theater by daring artists while it is still taking shape. Such is the allure of New York Stage and Film’s readings and workshops, on the campus of Marist College in Poughkeepsie. Last weekend, people filing in to see Lauren Yee and Heather Christian’s new musical adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” were handed a slip of paper advising that many lyrics would be spoken, not sung. “There is much music still to be written,” it said. Disappointing? Not if you approach these shows knowing that they are incubating. Also, Katrina Lenk was playing Mrs. Whatsit, fabulously.The company’s new-play readings this weekend are “The Good Name” (July 29), written by Sopan Deb, a New York Times reporter, and directed by Trip Cullman; and “Downstairs Neighbor” (July 29), by Beth Henley, directed by Jaki Bradley. The season closes with the dance musical “Paradise Ballroom” (Aug. 4-6), directed by Colette Robert, with book, lyrics and choreography by Princess Lockerooo, and music by Harold O’Neal; and a workshop presentation of “Like They Do in the Movies” (Aug. 5-6), a solo show written and performed by Laurence Fishburne, directed by Leonard Foglia. (newyorkstageandfilm.org)Williamstown Theater FestivalFrom left, Jon-Michael Reese, Natalie Joy Johnson and Eden Espinosa at a recent WTF Cabaret performance. The loose and lively weekend concert series has a rotating roster of performers.Emilio MadridWestern Massachusetts’s most powerful magnet for boldface-name stage artists is taking a sparer approach this year — minimal physical production, a focus on works in progress, blink-and-you-miss-them runs. But even as the company looks for a less costly, more sustainable way forward, it has not left glamour behind.At the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College, in Williamstown, Mass., the play reading on the main stage this weekend is Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (July 29-30), with Meryl Streep’s daughters, Louisa Jacobson, Mamie Gummer and Grace Gummer, in the title roles, and her son, Henry Wolfe Gummer, as the sisters’ brother. Next weekend, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Michael Chernus and Alison Pill star in a reading of Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman” (Aug. 5-6).The loose and lively WTF Cabaret, on the same intimate stage, is hosted this week by the comedian Lewis Black (July 27-29) and next week by the comedian Jaye McBride (Aug. 3-5). The band is terrific.The festival’s Fridays@3 reading series takes place close by, at the Clark Art Institute, where you might want to leave time to see the exhibition “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth” or dip your toes in the three-tiered reflecting pool outside. (It’s allowed.) With Diana Oh in the cast, Clarence Coo’s “Chapters of a Floating Life” (July 28) is about two couples from China in postwar New York City. The series finishes with Aurora Real de Asua’s “Wipeout” (Aug. 4), a septuagenarian surfing comedy with Emily Kuroda, Becky Ann Baker and Candy Buckley. (wtfestival.org)Barrington Stage CompanyA revival of Pearl Cleage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” with Tsilala Brock, left, and Ryan George, is at Barrington Stage Company through Aug. 5.Daniel RaderIn downtown Pittsfield, Mass., this theater has a slate of full productions this summer. A beautifully acted, vibrantly designed revival of Pearl Cleage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky” is on the Boyd-Quinson Stage (through Aug. 5), followed by a revival of William Finn and James Lapine’s musical “A New Brain” (Aug. 16-Sept. 10). With a cast that includes Adam Chanler-Berat, Andy Grotelueschen and Mary Testa, it’s produced in association with Williamstown Theater Festival.A few blocks away, on the St. Germain Stage at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center, Julianne Boyd directs Brian Friel’s classic “Faith Healer” (Aug. 1-27), a drama told in monologues. Downstairs, Mr. Finn’s Cabaret presents a lineup of Broadway veterans: Lillias White (Aug. 13-14), currently playing Hermes in “Hadestown”; Hugh Panaro (Aug. 21), a former Phantom in “The Phantom of the Opera”; the composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown (Aug. 31-Sept. 1), whose musical “Parade” just won the Tony Award for best revival; and Alan H. Green (Sept. 2-3), a company favorite. (barringtonstageco.org)Berkshire Theater GroupChristine Lahti in Berkshire Theater Group’s production of the actress’s autobiographical solo show “The Smile of Her.”Emma K. Rothenberg-WareThis is the final weekend to catch Christine Lahti in “The Smile of Her” (through July 29), an autobiographical solo show about her suburban family in the patriarchal 1950s, at the Unicorn Theater in Stockbridge, Mass. Next up, also at the Unicorn, is the world premiere of the musical “On Cedar Street” (Aug. 12-Sept. 2), about two widowed small-town neighbors who start sleeping side by side to alleviate their loneliness. Adapted from Kent Haruf’s final novel, “Our Souls at Night,” it has a book by Emily Mann, music by Lucy Simon and Carmel Dean and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. (berkshiretheatregroup.org)Shakespeare & CompanyBrian D. Coats and Ella Joyce in a production of August Wilson’s “Fences,” through Aug. 27, at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass.Eran ZelixonNot a lot of Shakespeare is among the theater happening this summer in green and gorgeous Lenox, Mass., but “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Aug. 1-Sept. 10) is coming right up in an open-air production, with the excellent Jacob Ming-Trent as Bottom. Ken Ludwig’s two-hander “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” (through July 30) is wrapping up its run in another of the company’s outdoor spaces.Indoors are August Wilson’s “Fences” (through Aug. 27), William Gibson’s “Golda’s Balcony” (Aug. 5-20) and Donald Margulies’s “Lunar Eclipse” (Sept. 15-Oct. 22), making its world premiere with Karen Allen and Reed Birney at the tail end of summer. Also inside: a staged reading of “Hamlet” (Sept. 1-3), with Finn Wittrock in the title role and Christopher Lloyd, who played the mad monarch in Shakespeare & Company’s “King Lear” two summers ago, as Polonius. (shakespeare.org) More