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    ‘shadow/land’ Review: What the Storm Washes Away

    In the play, at the Public Theater, a mother and daughter endure the devastation of Hurricane Katrina inside the bar that connects them to their pasts.There are mothers who will tell you, no matter the circumstance, exactly what’s what. Even as the sky crashes down, they’ll judge your evacuation outfit and then remind you who’s to thank that you’re still standing on two feet. In Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s “shadow/land,” which opened on Thursday at the Public Theater, that unfiltered candor is both a loving reflex and the lifeline for an endangered legacy.It’s 2005 and Hurricane Katrina is bearing down on Central City in New Orleans, but Magalee (Lizan Mitchell) has forgotten her purse inside the bar that’s belonged to her family for generations, where she and her daughter Ruth (Joniece Abbott-Pratt) dally just long enough to get trapped by the storm. Ruth is ready to cast off the club, named shadow/land, like an albatross; she wants “a bottomless, sweepin joy” that she’s not getting from tending bar, or from her husband, who’s already sheltering in the Superdome with their teenage daughter.As mother and daughter unknowingly await disaster, Magalee urges Ruth not to sell the club, though it’s a husk of what it was in its heyday. In half-lucid reveries, the 80-year-old Magalee recalls its geneology, reaching back to tenuous boom times for Black enterprise. Ruth knows the story well enough to join her mother’s refrain in a kind of call-and-response. “Learn how to desire what you already got,” Magalee bluntly says of her daughter’s hard-won inheritance.Of course, what they already have is about to be drowned in oil-black water. It’s a collision course that Dickerson-Despenza and the director Candis C. Jones render in 90 dread-filled, soul-seeking minutes, zooming in on the devastation of lives otherwise seen by outsiders only from a drone-footage distance. Behind the bar, a wall of black-and-white photos chronicle Magalee and Ruth’s ancestors, as floodwaters gurgle up through the floor and leave their survivors stranded on the bar top (set design is by Jason Ardizzone-West).As in her play “Cullud Wattah,” which explores the fallout of the Flint, Mich., water crisis, Dickerson-Despenza dramatizes the consequences of environmental racism and its disproportionate impact on Black women. “shadow/land,” which the Public Theater produced as an audio play in 2021, is a poetic excavation of memory, tracing the ripple effects of triumphs and trauma through generations. Magalee also remembers, for example, when the authorities blew up a levy that flooded poor Black neighborhoods when she was a girl. Katrina’s wrath would also hit Black residents hardest, and its aftermath reverberated long after the water receded.Dickerson-Despenza’s language is rich in lyricism and figurative association, with annotated influences in the text that include Adrienne Rich and Zora Neale Hurston. And her dialogue calls attention to, among other things, colorism, queerness and the cultural imperialism of New Orleans tourism. It may be that the play tries to take on too much, feeling at times more like a treatise than a character-driven drama, but that’s partly because so much is in danger of being lost. (“shadow/land” is her first in a planned 10-play cycle about Katrina.)Of the expressive tools that “shadow/land” deploys, the cast is the most immediate and legible. A third character, known as the grand marshal, (Christine Shepard) haunts the show’s periphery, snapping limbs in tailored and shimmering Creole finery, interjecting verse that illuminates the allure of the city’s native eroticism and proximity to death. (The movement director is Jill M. Vallery and the costumes are by Azalea Fairley.)Abbott-Pratt and Mitchell are challenged with playing characters who are held captive not only by society, but by the script, which is somewhat weighed down by the exposition inherent to oral histories. But they embody the push and pull of a mother-daughter bond with captivating ease and grace. At once imperious and fragile, Mitchell’s Magalee may not remember what she ate for breakfast, but she will never let Ruth forget the importance of honoring their predecessors, the sacrifices they made and the gifts they left behind. Who else will share their stories when the evidence gets washed away?shadow/landThrough May 28 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    ‘Hong Kong Mississippi’ Review: The Bluesman Next Door

    Wesley Du explores complex intersections of identity in a coming-of-age story about a Chinese American boy who finds escape in Black music.Wesley Du knows that a gawky Asian kid isn’t who you’d expect to wind up playing the blues. Pinkie, the character written and performed by Du in “Hong Kong Mississippi,” now running at La MaMa, in Manhattan, is 11 years old when he first hears the likes of Son House and Elmore James through the walls of the grubby San Francisco apartment he shares with his mother. They run the Chinese restaurant downstairs, but Pinkie’s wistful, adolescent mind belongs to the tunes from the club next door, with their echoes of pain and promise.Pinkie’s gravitation toward the blues, a genre defined by Black artists and legacies of racial injustice, is partly a product of circumstance and osmosis. A Chinese takeout counter abutting a music hall is typical of the Tenderloin district in the 1990s, when Du was listening to Michael Jackson on the radio and absorbing style cues from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” But Pinkie also describes “a certain oddness in being raised Chinese American” that generates his organic affinity with Black artists as fellow outsiders and their vibrant means of expression.When it comes to wooing girls, for example, he comically borrows a touch of hip-hop swagger; and when a woman grinds down his spirit, he channels his pain into soulful music, guitar strings offering a kind of transcendence. That woman, Pinkie’s formative heartbreaker, is his mother, affectionately played by Du with a lilting accent. Pinkie reveres her as his only family, but she sours on her son and his impractical pursuit of music. Pinkie’s unlikely father figure is a gruff bluesman next door known as Cannonball, who at first tries to dismiss him in a flurry of racially modified expletives before eventually becoming his mentor (the play is titled after Pinkie’s stage name).Du — who writes in the program that he was expelled from a playwright program at the University of California, Los Angeles, and now works as a therapist — is a deft and intuitive storyteller, crafting a witty and tender coming-of-age story in concise, vivid detail. Du’s rapport with the audience, as he plays more than a dozen characters in 75 minutes, favors high-fives over confessional hand-wringing, in the manner of a neighborhood kid shooting the breeze. In his writing, Du traces complex intersections of identity with easy assurance, allowing psychological weight to accumulate rather than spelling it out for emphasis.The director Craig Belknap finds ingenuity in simplicity, as with a dishcloth that, at one point, is wadded up into a basketball then later flattened against the waist into a too-tight dress. Fluid, vibe-setting lighting (by Eric Norbury), in Chinese reds and jazz club blues, and cleverly expressive sound (by Bill Froggatt) make the small black box theater fantastically versatile. Like Pinkie’s own escape into the blues, “Hong Kong Mississippi” proves what artists can do with modest means but an abundance of passion, pluck and reasons to play.Hong Kong MississippiThrough May 14 at La MaMa, Manhattan; lamama.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More

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    ‘Ted Lasso,’ Season 3, Episode 8 Recap: Ends and Beginnings

    Ted prepares for a new reality, Nate plunges in and Keeley (maybe) steps away.Season 3, Episode 8: ‘We’ll Never Have Paris’This is yet another episode that feels somewhat disjointed, following multiple story lines that don’t overlap much or offer a strong through-line. One could make the case — as I did in the headline — that this is an episode about the ends and beginnings of relationships. But the subplots nonetheless felt more like separate pieces than parts of a whole.Ted and HenryWe open with the news that AFC Richmond has beaten Aston Villa 3-0 for their second decisive victory in a row, an outcome that was easy to anticipate following last episode’s discovery that Total Football with Jamie as facilitator rather than scorer is a winning recipe. (To underline the point we hear the play-by-play of Jamie passing to Dani for a goal.) Moments later, we learn the win streak is up to four.“You have to think,” one of the commentators declares, “that no one is happier than Coach Ted Lasso.”Well, if you did think that, it surely became unthunk as soon as we cut to a close-up of Ted looking not at all happy. He’s in the pub with his ex-wife, Michelle, and her new beau — and their former marriage counselor — Dr. Jacob. “Please, I insist, call me Jake,” he tells Ted, proving that he is just as bad at reading a room as he is at meeting a minimal standard of professional ethics.Michelle and Jake are dropping off Henry with Ted as they take a surprise trip to Paris. (“Jake told me on the plane,” Michelle explains.) Ted may not know much about Europe, but he is confident of this arithmetic: Paris + newish couple = marriage proposal. This assumption is confirmed when, asked where they would propose if they could do so “anywhere in the world,” Trent and Roy in unison cite the City of Lights.This entails a meeting of the Diamond Dogs — plus the rookie member Trent but minus a cranky Roy — though a brief one. Once the others learn that an engagement is merely Ted’s assumption, they agree to follow Higgins’s advice to “find out before you flip out.” It’s OK, though, because this meeting is largely a setup for … But no, that would be getting ahead of ourselves.Ted — again, not happy — decides not to wait for Michelle’s return but instead to ask Rebecca to procure a private investigator to shadow the couple in Paris. Even when he reads to Henry (a children’s book by the Premier League footballer Marcus Rashford), he is consumed: Does “Mommy’s friend” Jake read to Henry? Watch TV with him?Granted the wish to do whatever he wants on a day that Ted and Beard are taking off, Henry opts for a Premier League game and, wouldn’t you know, the only team playing is Rupert and Nate’s West Ham United. So the fellas go to the game, deck out Henry in a West Ham jersey, and shout and wave to get Nate’s attention on the sideline. Again, more on this soon.We next see Ted, Henry and Beard sitting outdoors at the pub as a busker plays “Hey Jude” nearby. My mind immediately went to the song’s Paul-John-Julian back story, which Beard then helpfully unpacked for Henry before advising him, “I know right now it feels like you’re in a sad song. But you, young man, you have the power to take a sad song and make it better.”Ted has by now absented himself to call Rebecca, who had texted to say she had “info.” Its precise nature, however, was apparently revealed to Ted while we were Beatling with Beard and Henry. The most we hear from Rebecca is, “But seriously, who gives a flying [expletive] if Michelle gets engaged,” which is suggestive but not dispositive.Is the omission deliberate and, if so, what is it intended to accomplish? Time will tell. But the tug that Henry exerts on his father’s heart, while scarcely new, is ever more evident — in particular during the goodbyes that close the episode, when Ted can scarcely let go of Henry’s backpack.NateWhen we first run across Nate this episode, he is in bed in the morning. Moreover, he is not alone but with Jade, our favorite hostess at Nate’s favorite Greek restaurant. Upon waking, she quickly determines that, charmingly, Nate had already gotten up, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth and gotten back into bed. Alas, love-struck boy that he is, he quickly falls into the trap of trying to “label” the “relationship” while claiming he’s trying to do no such thing. Slow down, tiger.I confess I feel somewhat disappointed that we went directly from Jade not standing Nate up at dinner to the two comfortably ensconced in bed for what is evidently not the first time. (Indeed, in a later scene, she accedes to the label “boyfriend.”) We have not yet seen a single real conversation between the two, a glimpse of why it is they enjoy each other’s company. We’ve gone straight from romantic tension to romantic fulfillment without witnessing the romantic journey at all, at least so far.Which is perhaps part of the reason Nate’s most moving relationship is still his complicated one with Ted. I noted last episode that even as we watched Good Nate’s re-emergence from Bad Nate, it had been some time since we’d seen him at work at West Ham. Could Good Nate survive in the malignant shadow of Rupert?Smitten, he evidently can, even if only briefly and only with Rupert absent. Nate gathers a couple of subordinates together for a meeting of the “Love Hounds,” a shameless rip-off of …well, I hardly need to tell you. It goes about as well as one might expect, which is to say that the drop-off from the “Diamond Dogs” — I told you we’d get here — is comparable to that between Alvy Singer’s first and second lobster dates in “Annie Hall.” Does the awkward fiasco remind Nate of what made his time at Richmond with Ted special? Oh yes, it most assuredly does.And in case he abruptly forgot, he gets another reminder when Ted, Beard and West-Ham-clothed Henry show up at his match. Visibly stunned at first, he then briefly allows a small smile past his lips.Yet it’s soon clear that Nate still has a way to go. When Rupert later texts him, “Sorry about Ted being there. Won’t happen again,” Nate begins to type, “It’s okay, I thought it was funny.” But even that level of moderate snark seems insufficient. So Nate deletes it in favor of a corporately cold “Good. Thank you.”Still, his ongoing path seems clear. Even in the aforementioned “boyfriend” scene with Jade, what lingers is the smile on his face as he looks at a news photo of Ted, Henry and Beard at the match.Keeley and Jack (and Roy and Jamie)Did I mention the preponderance of red flags in this relationship last week? Why, yes I did. But whether or not the relationship is actually over, as this episode suggests it may be, the developments are connected only peripherally to Jack’s creepily over-the-top love-bombing.Rather, we have what could be called a fairly literal “ghost in the machine”: a selfie sex video Keeley filmed for a past paramour that has made its way onto the internet and, by extension, Keeley’s phone. Keeley is mortified and begs the seemingly omnipotent — read: ultrarich — Jack to fix the situation. “I’m gonna take care of it,” Jack promises.But the photos ripple outward quickly. When Sam tells the rest of the team, Roy leaves the room angrily while Jamie looks worried. Could the latter be wondering what terrifying vengeance the former might be contemplating? Jamie doesn’t know about the rope-dipped-in-red-paint scenario, but he had firsthand experience with the genitalia strings.But no, it’s simpler than that. Jamie is genuinely concerned, as he expresses near the end of the episode — and concerned not only that the video was leaked but that he may have been unintentionally responsible. Keeley had sent it to him, of course, and he confirms that his password is the highly crackable “password,” even if he cunningly disguised it by using two “S”es. For anyone rooting for a Jamie-Keeley reunion, this is a clearly promising scene. For the rest of us …Roy is genuinely angry, and not merely at the leak but at what was leaked. He approaches Keeley and, after saying all the right things, moves on to say precisely the wrong thing: “Who’s it for?” — a question to which he has almost certainly guessed the answer. Keeley promptly exits, and who could blame her?An overdue aside here: What in the world is the show doing with Roy and with Keeley? The original sin was not merely breaking up the two of them, but doing it at the start of this season (and so offhandedly) rather than at the end of last one, when the emotional impact would have been exponentially greater. The show has only compounded that misstep with how it has presented each character since — let me start with Roy and then return to Keeley at the end of the section.I made the case last season that Roy had become the star of the show, and it wasn’t a hard case to make. But this season? His screen time is a fraction of what it was, and his charming, obscenity-laden crankiness has devolved into outright sadism. (See, again, the paint-rope and penis-strings.) And now this scene with Keeley?Was Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy, too busy with “Shrinking” — he is one of the creators of the show, which is quite good — to occupy as central a role as he did last season? Were the other writers punishing him for his televisual two-timing? Whatever the explanation, “Ted Lasso” is killing one of the best things it had going. No matter what the intended narrative payoff, happy or sad, it’s hard to envision it making up for the way Roy’s been portrayed for two-thirds of the season and counting.Sorry not sorry: Juno Temple in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+But back to Keeley and Jack. It turns out that the latter’s “taking care of it” is not quite as envisioned, when Keeley receives the abjectly apologetic note that she is expected to post to social media. Confronted about the statement, Jack demurs that her dad’s lawyers drafted it. But her solution to the dilemma is simply another, different apology note for Keeley to put her name to.Keeley refuses. And after showing her hand probably more than she intended — “the person I’m seeing, the person whose company I’m funding” — Jack shows herself the door with no promise she will return.I confess that this scene didn’t really work for me in any direction: On the one hand, Jack seemed far too quick to make such an existential issue of the dispute, even for someone clearly accustomed to getting her way; on the other, Keeley seemed implausibly surprised that a lover or a boss — let alone someone who is both — would be unhappy about the public exposure of her partner/employee’s sex tape.But this relationship has always seemed a bit forced, a way to give Keeley’s P.R. firm story line the semblance of a plot without actually spending any time on her job itself. Keeley has been largely broken off from the story of Ted and the team with the premise of embarking on her own career. Yet instead of giving us any meaningful sense of that career, her season has consisted almost exclusively of Shandy drama followed by Jack drama, with regular scenes to discuss each with Rebecca.Indeed, there are times it’s hard to believe — between traveling to Amsterdam with Rebecca, Aurora Borealising in Norway with Jack, and then taking the day off for mini-golf — that Keeley has a job at all. Likewise with Jack, who was initially introduced as something of a business titan but who seems more and more to be the daughter of a billionaire who dabbles in investing while reserving most of her energy for amusing herself.While I’m on the subject: It’s wonderful that “Ted Lasso” has made such a clear effort to have substantive female characters in a show about a men’s sports team. But it would be awfully nice if one of its two female multimillionaires had achieved her fortune through skill or perseverance rather than marrying or inheriting it from a man. (How much time, for that matter, has the show devoted to Rebecca’s job? Awfully little since Season 1, when her “job” was principally undermining Ted.)Last season, Keeley and Roy were the delightful hub around which much of “Ted Lasso” revolved. This season, they’ve both spiraled out into disappointing spots on the periphery of the show.ColinKeeley’s relationship with Jack is not the only potential casualty of the leaked sex videos, which Colin initially laughs off with a self-protective “I guess I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.” But after Isaac commands the team to empty their cellphones of any signs of past sexual encounters, he sees Colin lagging behind and snatches his device. We don’t see what Isaac sees, and obviously we don’t have to. If we didn’t know it already, Colin’s crestfallen face speaks as loudly as any dialogue.What will Isaac do? I have no more idea than any of you. I expect there will be considerably more to say about this next week.Odds and endsThere was no mention of Rebecca’s charming Dutchman from Episode 6. Does this mean he really was just a one-night love affair to remind Rebecca she still had the ability to fall so happily? Or is he being held in reserve for a late-season surprise? Obviously, I’d prefer (and honestly, anticipate) the latter. But I’d ideally like it sooner than later, by which I mean immediately.So, Keeley sent a topless photo to one of her teachers when she was 15? Are we supposed to find that amusing?On a lighter note, here’s to Jamie’s extensive inventory of deodorant sprays.As with the Episode 5 locker-room banter regarding “She’s All That,” “My Fair Lady” and “Pygmalion,” I thoroughly enjoyed Dani’s reference to “Les Misérables,” followed by another player (left back Jeff Goodman?) concurring, “[Expletive] yeah, 24601!”Likewise, Rebecca’s description, however unfounded, of the Eiffel Tower as a “lamppost with a publicist.”I’m not entirely sure what to make of Alyssa, Jack’s college friend whom she and Keeley meet at mini-golf. Perhaps an ex? More

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    Robert Patrick, Early, and Prolific, Playwright of Gay Life, Dies at 85

    He got his start at Caffe Cino, the birthplace of Off Off Broadway. His first of many, many plays, performed there in 1964, is a milestone of gay theater.Robert Patrick, a wildly prolific playwright who rendered gay (and straight) life with caustic wit, an open heart and fizzy camp, and whose 1964 play, “The Haunted Host,” became a touchstone of early gay theater, died on April 23 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 85.The cause was atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, said Jason Jenn, a friend.Mr. Patrick’s story is intertwined with that of Caffe Cino, the West Village coffee shop that was the accidental birthplace of Off Off Broadway theater. One day in 1961, a 24-year-old Mr. Patrick followed a cute boy with long hair into the place, where the playwrights John Guare, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson and, soon, Mr. Patrick, all got their starts; the cute boy was John P. Dodd, who went on to be a well-known lighting designer and die of AIDS in 1991.The cafe, run by a former dancer named Joe Cino, was scrappy, original and unpretentious, decorated with tinsel and silver stars that hung from the ceiling. Actors performed among the tables and chairs until they built a small stage. No one was paid, except the cops, because Mr. Cino was not just running an unlicensed cabaret but also a gay hangout, which was illegal in the early 1960s. Its young playwrights, particularly Mr. Patrick, churned out plays, playlets and monologues akin to TikToks, Don Shewey, the author and theater critic, said in a phone interview. As Mr. Patrick told Broadway World in 2004: “We wrote for each other, and it turned out there was an audience that, without knowing it, had been dying for personal, political, philosophical theater. And a few years after the Cino began doing original plays, there were over 300 Off Off Broadway theaters.”Actors performing at Caffe Cino in 1961. Mr. Patrick’s story is intertwined with that of that West Village coffee shop, the accidental birthplace of Off Off Broadway theater.Ben Martin/Getty ImagesMr. Patrick worked at the cafe as a doorman, a dishwasher and a waiter before writing his first play, “The Haunted Host.” It features Jay, a gay playwright who is haunted by the ghost of his lover, who died by suicide. Frank, a hustler who happens to be straight, wants help with a play and needs a place to spend the night.The dialogue is tart and snappy, as Jay rebuffs the young man and his work, razzes him about his sexuality — “Tell me, Frank, how long have you been heterosexual? Started as a kid, huh? Tsk-tsk” — and finally throws him out in the morning and in so doing exorcises the ghost.Early in the play, when Frank asks Jay how his lover died, Jay answers curtly, “Alone.”“Oh. Suicide?” Frank asks, to which Jay replies, “No, thanks, I just had one.”The play was not exactly a runaway hit in 1964, but it found new life in 1976, when it was revived in Boston with a very young Harvey Fierstein in the lead role. Mr. Fierstein reprised it again in 1991, at La MaMa in the East Village.“All these years later,” Howard Kissel wrote in his review for The Daily News, “‘Host’ has taken on a certain poignancy. It predates the gay rights movement and AIDS. It radiates an innocence no longer attainable.”Its significance was recognized in hindsight as an early example of a work with a gay person as the hero, and with themes that were universal: love, grief, self-respect.“It was so much before its time,” Mr. Fierstein said in a phone interview. “Here you have a play where the strange person, the bizarre person, the person who was the antagonist, was the heterosexual. The normal person, the one with real emotion and real love, was the gay character. We forget our history, and now we have people who want to erase our history. This is why Robert’s work is so important.”Harvey Fierstein, right, and Jason Workman in La MaMa’s 1991 revival of “The Haunted Host,” Mr. Patrick’s 1964 play that became a touchstone of gay theater. La MaMa archivesMr. Cino died by suicide in 1967, and Caffe Cino limped along for a year afterward. Mr. Patrick kept writing, and writing. Over the decades he wrote hundreds of plays as well as countless songs, poems and short stories, a memoir and at least one novel.“They just poured out of him,” Mr. Fierstein said.One work, many years in the making, was “Kennedy’s Children,” an affecting drama set in a bar on the Bowery one Valentine’s Day in the early 1970s. Five characters, including a disillusioned actor who was a proxy for Mr. Patrick, declaim their isolation and anomie in monologues that ruminate on the legacy of the ’60s — its failed promise and heartbreak.Mr. Patrick began working on the play in 1968. It was first produced in 1973 at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan, but, as Mr. Patrick said, nobody came and nobody reviewed it. It then made its way to a tiny theater in London and had runs in similar small theaters around the world before returning to London and opening to great acclaim in the West End, followed by a Broadway production in 1975, for which the actress Shirley Knight won a Tony.“The wit is as hard as nails and as sharp,” Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote in his review. “Mr. Patrick hears well and writes so colloquially, so idiomatically, that you could actually be eavesdropping on the drunken but revealing, paranoid but illuminating meanderings of the barstool set of bad cafe society.”Later work included “T-Shirts” (1980), which Mr. Shewey, in his review for The Soho News, described as a comic romp about the gay generation gap as well as “a schematic attack on the values of the gay male world, charging that money, youth and beauty have become as interchangeable as, well, T-shirts.”“Blue Is for Boys” (1987) is a nutty farce about an apartment converted into a dorm for gay male college students. “Camera Obscura,” a playlet about a boy and a girl who struggle to communicate, was first performed at Caffe Cino in 1966 and became a staple of high school drama festivals and regional theaters.For a while, Mr. Patrick was known, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, as the world’s most produced playwright, with his work performed at small theaters in Minneapolis, Toronto, Vienna, Brazil and New Zealand, often all at the same time. In 1978, The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, “Certain works, such as ‘Kennedy’s Children’ and ‘Camera Obscura,’ are quite probably being done somewhere every day of the year.”For a while, Mr. Patrick was known, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, as the world’s most produced playwright. Becket LoganRobert Patrick O’Connor was born on Sept. 27, 1937, in Kilgore, in eastern Texas. His parents, Robert and Jo Adelle (Goodson) O’Conner, were itinerant workers who moved constantly throughout the Southwest. The family lived in tents, Mr. Patrick said, until he was 6. He recalled attending 12 schools in one year.He spent two years in college before joining the Air Force because he had fallen in love with a “flyboy,” he said. He was kicked out during basic training, however, when a love poem he had written to the airman was found in the man’s wallet. As Mr. Patrick told it, it was discovered during an Air Force sting operation in the restroom of a local hotel that gay servicemen were using as a rendezvous spot. Mr. Patrick’s love poem was for naught anyway; the man had already ditched him, he wrote, for a captain with a Cadillac.Mr. Patrick never stopped writing plays, but in later years he paid the rent by working as a ghost writer and as an usher for the Ford Theater in Los Angeles, where he moved in the 1990s; he also wrote reviews of pornographic movies. For the last decade or so, he performed a cabaret act at Planet Queer, a riotous variety show held weekly at a bar in Los Angeles.He is survived by his sister, Angela Patrice Musick.In 2014, Henrik Eger of The Seattle Gay News asked Mr. Patrick if there was anything he hadn’t yet done but wished he had.“True love,” he said. “And I would like to have the money to build or buy a theater in L.A. with enough ground space that I could call it Robert Patrick’s Free Parking Theater, because in L.A. the theater would fill up for every performance no matter what show was on, just because of the magic words ‘Free Parking.’ Then I could do whatever plays I liked.” More

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    As Broadway Rebounds, ‘Some Like It Hot’ Gets 13 Tony Nominations

    As Broadway’s rebound from the pandemic shutdown picks up pace, Tony nominators showered much-sought attention on a wide variety of shows, from razzle-dazzle spectacles to quirky adventurous fare.“Some Like It Hot,” a musical based on the classic Billy Wilder film about two musicians who witness a gangland slaying and dress as women to escape the mob, scored the most nominations: 13. But it faces stiff competition in the race for best new musical — ticket buyers have not made any of the contenders a slam-dunk hit, and there does not appear to be a consensus among the industry insiders who make up the Tony voting pool.Three other musicals picked up nine nominations apiece: “& Juliet,” which combines pop songs with an alternative narrative arc for Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers; “New York, New York,” a dance-driven show about a pair of young musicians seeking success and love in a postwar city; and “Shucked,” a pun-laden country comedy about a rural community facing a corn crisis. “Kimberly Akimbo,” a critical favorite about a high school student with a life-altering genetic condition and a criminally dysfunctional family, picked up eight nominations.The Tony nominations also feature plenty of boldfaced names. Among the stars from the worlds of pop music, film and television who earned nods are Sara Bareilles, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer, Josh Groban, Sean Hayes, Samuel L. Jackson, Wendell Pierce and Ben Platt. Another went to one of Broadway’s most-admired stars: Audra McDonald, who, with nine previous nominations and six wins, has won the most competitive Tony Awards of any performer in history.The musical “Shucked,” the rare Broadway show about corn, got nine nominations. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis year’s Tony Awards come at the end of the first full-length season since the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close for about a year and a half. Given that tourism remains below prepandemic levels, many workers have not returned to Midtown offices, and inflation has made producing far more expensive, the season has been surprisingly robust, with a wide range of offerings.“Entertainment is like food — sometimes you’re in the mood for an organic small plate, and sometimes for a burger and fries, and the best thing about New York is we’ve got the variety,” said Victoria Clark, the Tony-nominated star of “Kimberly Akimbo.”Broadway shows this season had grossed $1.48 billion as of April 30, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. That’s nearly double the grosses at the same point last season — $751 million — but lower than the $1.72 billion at the same point in 2019, during the last full prepandemic season.Other key metrics are better, too: 11.5 million seats have been filled on Broadway this season, compared with 6 million at the same point last season, but still down from the 13.8 million that had been filled by this point in 2019.The Tony nominations, which were chosen by a panel of 40 theater industry experts who saw all 38 eligible shows and have no financial interest in any of them, are particularly important to shows that are still running, which try to use the vote of confidence to woo potential ticket buyers.“It’s all about what’s going to make a show run longer and create more jobs for more people,” said Casey Nicholaw, the director and choreographer of “Some Like It Hot.” “Hopefully we’ll sell more tickets, and the show will be more of a success.”The Tony nominations can also boost the employment prospects, and the compensation, of artists. And, of course, they are a tribute to excellence. “It means something when your peers and your colleagues see beauty in something you make,” said James Ijames, whose play “Fat Ham” was among the nominated productions.“Between Riverside and Crazy” was among the nominees for best new play. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a complicated place, dominated by commercial producers but also with six theaters run by nonprofits, and the work this season, as is often the case, featured everything from experimental plays tackling challenging subjects to more mainstream fare that aims primarily to entertain.Among the five nominees for best new play, three have already won the Pulitzer Prize in drama, including “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s story of a retired police officer trying to hang onto his apartment; “Cost of Living,” Martyna Majok’s exploration of caregiving and disability; and “Fat Ham,” Ijames’s riff on “Hamlet,” set in the North Carolina backyard of a family that runs a barbecue restaurant.The two other Tony-nominated plays are each significant in their own ways: “Leopoldstadt” is Tom Stoppard’s autobiographically inspired drama about a European Jewish family before, during and after World War II, while “Ain’t No Mo’” is Jordan E. Cooper’s outlandish comedy imagining that the United States offers its Black residents one-way tickets to Africa.The nominations for “Ain’t No Mo’” were especially striking given that the show struggled to find an audience and closed early. “I’m just so elated, I can barely find the words,” said Cooper, who was nominated both as writer and actor. “There was a lot of turbulence, but we landed the plane.”Stoppard is already the winningest playwright in Broadway history, having won Tony Awards for four previous plays (“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia”). He is now 85 years old, and “Leopoldstadt” is his 19th production on Broadway. Stoppard said he was proud of the nomination, but sorry the play had come to seem so timely at a moment of rising concern about antisemitism.“Nobody wants society to be divided,” he said in an interview, “and I like to think ‘Leopoldstadt’ works against a sense of human beings dividing up and confronting each other.”Jordan E. Cooper in his comedy “Ain’t No Mo’,” which was nominated for best play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOf the 38 Tony-eligible plays and musicals this season, 27 scored at least one nomination, leaving 11 with no nods. Among the musicals snubbed by the nominators were “Bad Cinderella,” the critically drubbed new musical from one of the most successful musical theater composers of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as a progressive rethink of “1776,” about the debate over the Declaration of Independence, which was revived with a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers.One of the musicals that did not score any nominations, a revival of “Dancin’,” quickly declared plans to close: A little more than nine hours after the Tony nominations were announced, the revue’s producers said its last performance would be May 14. Among the seven plays shut out was “The Thanksgiving Play,” which is thought to be the first work on Broadway by a female Native American playwright, Larissa FastHorse.The season featured shows examining a wide variety of diverse stories, and the nominations reflect that.At a time when gender identity issues have become increasingly politicized in the nation, nominations were earned by two gender nonconforming actors: J. Harrison Ghee, a star of “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell, a supporting actor in “Shucked.”Helen Park, who is the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the musical “KPOP.” “The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories,” she said, “the richer the Broadway soundscape and Broadway landscape will be.”Five plays by Black writers were nominated in either the best play or best play revival category, and four of the five nominees for leading actor in a play are Black.“I broke down in tears,” Pierce said about learning that he was among those nominees, for playing Willy Loman in a revival of “Death of a Salesman” in which the traditionally white Loman family is now African American. “I did not know how profoundly moving it would be. It was the culmination of years of hard work and a reflection on how much effort and toil went into the challenge of playing the role.”This was a strong season for musical revivals, and the nominated shows include two with scores by Stephen Sondheim — “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd” — as well as the Golden Age classic “Camelot” and “Parade,” which is a show about the early 20th-century lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia.“Into the Woods” was one of two Stephen Sondheim revivals to earn nominations.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re so happy audiences are taking to it, and we hope that Sondheim would be happy this morning as well,” said Groban, starring as the title character in “Sweeney Todd.”The nominated play revivals are also a compelling bunch: a hypnotically minimalist version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” adapted by Amy Herzog and starring Chastain as a Norwegian debtor trapped in a sexist marriage; a bracing production of Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog,” about two brothers ominously named Lincoln and Booth; a rare staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” featuring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan; and a ghostly performance of “The Piano Lesson,” August Wilson’s classic drama about a family wrestling with the meaning, and monetary value, of an heirloom.The 769 Tony voters now have until early June to catch up on shows they have not yet seen before they cast their electronic ballots. The awards ceremony itself will be held on June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in a ceremony hosted by Ariana DeBose.Julia Jacobs More

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    ‘Dancin’’ to Close on Broadway, a Casualty of Tony Nominations

    The production, a revue celebrating the choreography of Bob Fosse, received no Tony nominations on Tuesday. Its last show will be May 14.This season’s Broadway revival of “Dancin’,” a revue celebrating the choreography of Bob Fosse, will end its short run on Sunday, May 14, the show’s producers announced on Tuesday evening, just hours after receiving zero Tony nominations.The show, with little narrative but virtuosic dance, opened on March 19. At the time of its closing it will have played 17 preview performances and 65 regular performances.The original production, which opened in 1978, fared far better, running for a total of 1,787 performances. The original was nominated for seven Tony Awards and won two, including for best choreography; among the nominees was the dancer Wayne Cilento, who is directing the current revival.The New York Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called the current production “often-thrilling, often-frustrating,” and other reviews were mixed.The production was one of 11 that received no Tony nominations on Tuesday. The revival had a pre-Broadway production last year at the Old Globe in San Diego.The revival’s lead producer is Joey Parnes, and Fosse’s daughter, Nicole, was also involved with the production. It was capitalized for up to $15 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped. More

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    Helen Park on the ‘KPOP’ Tony Nomination: It ‘Feels Like an Encouragement to Continue’

    Helen Park was tucked in bed in her New Jersey home when her talent agent texted her news of her Tony Award nomination. Park, the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the Korean- and English-language musical “KPOP,” which follows three K-pop acts challenged by strict routines and personal struggles as they prepare for a U.S. concert tour.“It was great to wake up to the news,” said Park, who wrote the show’s score and lyrics with Max Vernon. The production also received nominations for best choreography and costume design of a musical.The Tonys recognition was significant given that “KPOP” struggled at the box office and closed after only 44 preview performances and 17 regular performances.In an interview on Tuesday, Park reflected on her Broadway experience and the importance of productions that embrace the Asian American experience. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How does it feel to be nominated next to other members of the “KPOP” creative team?A lot of us have been working on this show for eight years and for people to be recognized, it really feels like a celebration and recognition of the hard work that everybody put in.In a Playbill guest essay, you mentioned taking your son to see “KPOP” and how his favorite song was “Halfway,” sung by the biracial character Brad. How have Asian and Asian American audience members responded to the show?Our show really spoke for them, the experience of being an immigrant and being in between cultures. I’m surrounded by those people. I am one of those people. My son is biracial. I belong to both American culture and Korean culture, and I speak both languages and sometimes I feel like I have no language of my own.How have you felt since it closed?I’m still struggling with the closure of the show, because I do think that everyone who came to see the show really enjoyed it. It was a celebration of the genre and the diverse stories within the community of K-pop stars and Korean people.We saw the potential and the growth of love toward the show after we opened. The fact that it was still too late to sustain the show — that was very painful.Will “KPOP” come back to Broadway?I certainly won’t say no if anyone wants to bring it back! But, it feels like one step forward.There are reasons K-pop is beloved across languages and cultures, and we wanted to capture that. This recognition definitely feels like an encouragement to continue. The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories, the richer the Broadway soundscape and landscape will be. More

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    Audra McDonald Makes History With 10th Tony Award Nomination

    Audra McDonald has been here before.And before. And before. And before. And before. And before. And before. And before. And before.The actress earned her 10th acting Tony Award nomination on Tuesday, for best leading actress in a play, for her role as the writer Suzanne Alexander in Adrienne Kennedy’s 1991 play “Ohio State Murders,” the 91-year-old Kennedy’s Broadway debut. The feat ties her with Chita Rivera and Julie Harris as the most nominated individual performers in the 76-year history of the awards.“It’s an honor,” said McDonald, who has won six Tony Awards, the most of any performer. “But the work is the true joy.”McDonald, 52, previously won four featured actress Tonys in the play and musical categories for her roles in “Carousel” (1994), “Master Class” (1996), “Ragtime” (1998) and “A Raisin in the Sun” (2004). She won leading actress Tonys for her performance as the strongheaded Bess in the musical “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” in 2012 and her turn as the famed jazz singer Billie Holiday in the play “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” in 2014. She is the only person to win in all four acting categories.In his review of “Ohio State Murders,” which he called a “piercing production,” the New York Times critic Jesse Green praised McDonald’s performance, “ripped from her gallery of harrowing women,” and noted that it builds to “a shattering catharsis.”In an interview during her lunch break from a workshop in Manhattan on Tuesday, McDonald discussed her milestone achievement, why it still feels special to be recognized for this particular production and what she hopes people took away from her performance. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.This is your 10th nomination, and you’ve already secured the record for the winningest performer, with six Tonys. Is it still special?It’s incredibly special. Being able to be a part of Adrienne Kennedy having her Broadway debut and getting her work seen by a larger audience was something that was very important to me. Even if I hadn’t gotten a nomination, I’d still feel very proud of the work. I was honored that she trusted our vision and what we wanted to do with the play.The older and younger versions of Suzanne Alexander are usually played by two different actors, but you played both. Why?Because Suzanne is going back in time to remember these things, I thought being able to actually step into those memories and feel them in her body would inform even more when she stepped back out of them to a narrative, reflective place. So I asked Adrienne for permission for that and she said, “Sure, that’s great, let’s see what happens.”What spoke to you about the show?How often do we have plays that really center a Black woman’s experience? This is a chance for the character Suzanne — and it’s semi-autobiographical, so Adrienne, to an extent — to be able to speak her experience. Being able to play this incredibly brilliant, wounded and, in some ways — at the end of the play — triumphant woman was very appealing, even though it was very, very difficult. And it was an indictment that needs to be delivered in terms of what systemic racism does to people, and how it destroys.In his review, Jesse Green praised your “astonishing access to tragic feeling.” Where did you go to find that?When you’re playing a role you have to be that character’s advocate at all times, even when you’re playing a villain. Part of being an advocate for Suzanne is trying to find the empathy for the pain and the terror and the tragedy and the trauma that she experienced. The powerful question in acting is, “What if that were to happen to me?” What would I be thinking? What would I be feeling?How did your performance evolve over the course of the run?Because the play is so incredibly dense and the language is so full and poetic, for me the evolution came in becoming more at ease with Adrienne’s language, which I don’t think I had at the beginning of the run.Your character’s babies are represented, not with dolls, but as slips of pink fabric. Why?That was the brilliance of Kenny Leon, who’s an incredible director. We knew that once you bring babies onstage, even if they’re dolls — which was one thought at one point — it was going to be very difficult to set them aside for times when the focus isn’t necessarily on them. We wanted to make sure the audience wasn’t distracted by them.What do you hope people took away from the show?I hope they had a broader understanding of the destructive power of racism. I also hope that people who are not Black could see that we are not a monolith. This is a woman, as a character, who is not always represented onstage, and I wanted this very educated and smart and brilliant, yet wounded, woman out there telling her story and centering her story and demanding that it be heard.What did Kennedy tell you after seeing it?She was very moved. I still speak with her. I got an email from her a couple of days ago, actually, and I’m going to go visit her in a couple of weeks. She was very happy that we had done it. She’s had a lot of people play the role and I think loved all the interpretations of it.How does it feel to have been able to bring a lesser-seen work to the stage?Plenty of people have known who Adrienne Kennedy was for years, but there was a younger generation that was introduced to Adrienne Kennedy with that production, and that makes me happy. More