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    in Theater

    ‘Business Ideas’ Review: A Parable in a Cute Cafe

    Milo Cramer’s new comedy about work, survival and the quest for a meaningful life opens Clubbed Thumb’s venerable Summerworks festival.Late each spring at the Wild Project, on East Third Street in Manhattan, crowds bubbling with conversation spill out of the airy lobby onto the sidewalk, awaiting curtain time. For fans of appealingly eccentric downtown theater, this is a seasonal ritual: the return of Clubbed Thumb’s venerable Summerworks festival of new plays.Opening this year’s series, Milo Cramer’s “Business Ideas” is recognizably Summerworks fare — a thoughtful, heightened comedy with a Grade-A cast, a trim running time and a set that instantly draws the eye. A curveball-throwing play about work, survival and the quest for a meaningful life, it takes place in the kind of cafe where a patron could comfortably spend hours, what with the creamy color scheme, the big windows and the potted greenery on the shelves. (The set is by Emmie Finckel.)But for Patty (Brittany Bradford), a miserable and underpaid barista, working there is a shame-inducing, six-days-a-week form of torture: so many customers, so impossible to please. Her only curiosity about them is what they do for a living.Each customer is played by Mary Wiseman, whose over-the-top transformations are a huge part of the fun of this production, directed by Laura Dupper. Wiseman becomes the Slowww Customer, who turns out to be a kindergarten teacher; the Anxious Customer, a therapist; and the Apologizing Customer, an administrative assistant. Also the Hurried Customer, who wears a comically loud dress that clashes wonderfully with what we learn is her vital job. (Costumes are by Avery Reed.)Wiseman plays the cafe’s dreadful owner, too. Sounding like Madeline Kahn, she dryly reads out a series of online customer complaints about Patty, then demands: “Every single Yelp review has to be perfect from now on.”“That’s impossible,” Patty says. “That’s like a fairy-tale task. Like weave straw into gold.”Over in the corner, taking up two tables despite having bought nothing, the recently fired Georgina (Annie McNamara) and her constitutionally embarrassed teenage daughter, Lisa (Laura Scott Cary), are engaged in a challenge with similarly long odds: dreaming up a business idea so irresistible that it will instantly rescue their family finances. Desperation eventually removes any moral framework from schemes they’re willing to consider.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole’ Review: Dimming a Great Talent

    Dulé Hill stars as the silky crooner in a play about the last broadcast of his variety show, in 1957.When Nat King Cole performed “The Party’s Over” on his NBC variety show, he did it with a smile, as he seemed to do everything. But the song bitterly resonated on that particular broadcast, Cole’s final outing as a host, having quit after just over a year’s worth of struggles finding national advertisers. “It’s time to wind up / The masquerade,” he sang. “Just make your mind up / The piper must be paid.”Written by Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor, the formally ambitious, if muddled, “Lights Out: Nat ‘King’ Cole” takes place on that fateful Dec. 17, 1957, when the pianist and singer said goodbye to his audience. (Note that Domingo, who is famous as an actor these days, does not appear in the show.)The framing device is not unlike that of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which is also set in a TV studio, and both shows look at a momentous taping as a mode of resistance against America’s powers-that-be. But “Lights Out” takes a very different tack from the George Clooney and Grant Heslov play’s straightforward embrace of docu-like similitude .“Some of you thought you were going to get a nice and easy holiday show,” Sammy Davis Jr. (Daniel J. Watts) informs the audiences of both the television studio and New York Theater Workshop, where the production is running. “No! Welcome to the fever dream.” The musical unfurls in the minutes before Cole (Dulé Hill) is supposed to go on the air.Time dilates and contracts; guests and family members pop up; conversations are interspersed with musical standards. Davis, who had actually guest-starred on Cole’s show a few months earlier, is ever-present here as a flamboyantly extroverted jester who might represent the id of the more restrained (at least publicly) Cole. The pinnacle of McGregor’s production is a fiery tap number, choreographed by Jared Grimes, between the two men that lands halfway between duet and battle, and is set to “Me and My Shadow.”Juxtaposing an irrepressible scratcher of itches and a debonair charmer as two forces of Black creativity, which the white establishment tried to contain in safe, acceptable boxes, is the show’s best idea. Hill gives it life with a complex, layered performance as Cole, who is revealed to be channeling his anger and frustrations into a smooth, urbane exterior — a review of his show’s premiere in The New York Times described him as having “an amiable personality that comes across engagingly on the television screen.” (Both Hill and Watts were in the “Lights Out” premiere in 2017, with the People’s Light company in Malvern, Penn.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Can Shoplifting Be Justified? This Artist Wants You to Decide.

    Dries Verhoeven has constructed a replica grocery store for his latest provocative performance.Between two aisles of a grocery store, a woman is having a destructive meltdown. She opens a jar of applesauce, spits in it and returns it to the shelf. She squirts a tube of mayonnaise onto the floor, then smears tomato sauce from a container on her chest.Climbing the shelves, she recites a soliloquy on the joys of shoplifting. “Why call it stealing?” she says, with surprising calm. “I call it a love affair.”All of this takes place within a giant glass box on the stage of the International Theater Amsterdam as part of the six-hour performance installation “Everything Must Go,” by the Dutch artist Dries Verhoeven. Through Thursday, spectators can enter and exit the theater during the performance to peek into the box or can watch the performer unravel on TV monitors displaying CCTV footage.It is the latest disquieting offering from Verhoeven, 49, who combines elements of theater and visual art to create performances that are engineered to leave the audience trembling.“I’m quite a nervous person, and I like this feeling of nervousness, because it means there’s something at stake,” he said, while the glass box was being assembled at the theater earlier this week. “When we’re nervous, we are activated.”The installation takes place over six hours …Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times… and features disquieting elements to unsettle the audience.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tom Hanks Will Perform His Play ‘This World of Tomorrow’ Off Broadway

    “This World of Tomorrow,” based on the actor’s 2017 short story collection, is scheduled to begin performances in October at the Shed.Tom Hanks, the acclaimed film actor, has written a new play about love, longing and time-travel, and is planning to star in an Off Broadway production of it this fall.The play, “This World of Tomorrow,” will be staged in a 550-seat theater at the Shed, a performing arts venue on Manhattan’s Far West Side that has been helping Hanks develop the work over the last year. The play is scheduled to run for just eight weeks, from Oct. 30 to Dec. 21.“This World of Tomorrow” is about a scientist from the future who travels back in time — to the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens — searching for love. It is based on elements of Hanks’s “Uncommon Type,” a collection of short stories published in 2017.Hanks, who will play the scientist, will lead a cast of 10 to 12 performers, some of whom will take on multiple roles. A two-time Oscar winner (for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump”), Hanks has one Broadway credit, “Lucky Guy,” a 2013 newsroom drama for which he received Tony Award nomination.Hanks wrote the new play with James Glossman, a playwright and director with whom he has collaborated on other projects, including “Safe Home,” which had a production in 2022 at Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, N.Y. (It was also based on “Uncommon Type” stories.) The director of the new play will be Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in 2014 for “A Raisin in the Sun.”Alex Poots, the artistic director of the Shed, said Hanks’s team approached him last year when they were looking for a place to develop the show. Poots leapt at the opportunity, he said, thinking “he’s one of the most beloved and trusted storytellers of our time.” Poots called the play “a classic love story,” but also noted that, because parts of it take place in 1939, “there is reference to the rise in authoritarianism.”“This World of Tomorrow” is one of three upcoming theater pieces to be staged at the Shed. It will present, in collaboration with Los Angeles’s Geffen Playhouse, a revival of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play “The Brothers Size,” starring André Holland, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 28. And from June 17 to Oct. 19 it will present “Viola’s Room,” an immersive audio production narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. It was created by Punchdrunk, the company behind “Sleep No More.” More

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    in Television

    Ronny Chieng Takes Issue With Kristi Noem’s Takes on Immigration

    “We’re going to have to take you out of U.S.A.,” the “Daily Show” host said after the homeland security chief couldn’t correctly define habeas corpus and suggested a game show for citizenship.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Flunking OutPop quiz time — what’s the definition of habeas corpus? The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, fumbled the answer to this question during congressional testimony on Tuesday, and “The Daily Show” was not about to let it slide.“If Kristi Noem was just a random person on the street, I’d get it if she was, like, ‘Habeas corpus? That’s a Harry Potter spell, right? Makes you invisible?’” Ronny Chieng said.“But the secretary of homeland security should know that habeas corpus prevents the president from deporting you without due process, not that it lets the president deport you without due process. That’s the opposite of what it means! And I didn’t know you could have dyslexia for laws.” — RONNY CHIENG“A reality TV show for citizenship is somehow the most un-American and most American thing I’ve ever heard of. Although we already have a contest to prove who’s the most American, and it’s called the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. What’s more American than eating until your colon explodes and then going bankrupt from medical bills?” — RONNY CHIENG“It might be a nicer way to get deported. Instead of I.C.E. agents disappearing you up in unmarked vehicles, Ryan Seacrest walks into your living room with a TV crew, and is, like, ‘Carlos, we’re taking you out of the U.S.A.” — RONNY CHIENG“Kristi Noem, you still don’t know the basics of American law, so I’m sorry to say, we’re going to have to take you out of U.S.A.” — RONNY CHIENGThe Punchiest Punchlines (Big, Beautiful Edition)“Right now, Trump’s little Republi-buddies are on Capitol Hill trying to figure out a bill, but they’re coming close to fisticuffs over his heartless, tax-cutting boondoggle, which he’s been calling his [imitating Trump] ‘big, beautiful bill.’ It really sounds less like legislation, and more like the husky guy at a male strip club. ‘OK, ladies. Coming up on the main stage is Big Beautiful Bill! You know him, you love him, the dad-bod Adonis! He’s going to eat a whole potpie with his bare hands. Grab onto those handles, ladies, before he runs off to Home Depot!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“They’re trying to get Republicans to fall in line with what he keeps calling his ‘big, beautiful bill.’ And now, he somehow has got all the dummies around him calling it that, too. Big Beautiful Bill would be a good wrestling name, right?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’ll take food out of the mouths of millions of hungry children who get SNAP benefits, and it contains a provision to eliminate a sales tax on gun silencers. It will make what they call suppressors more affordable, to which I say, it’s about time. One thing I think we can all agree on is the gun violence in this country is too loud.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I read that Americans who are anxious about tariffs are skipping the salon and opting for at-home beauty treatments. Yeah, and after people cut their own bangs, tariffs will be the least of the their problems. ‘Summer’s ruined!’ Hey, here’s my advice: If you want a hot stone massage, just put your phone on your body and open five apps at once.” — JIMMY FALLONWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Theater

    ‘Bowl EP’ Review: Sessions in Love

    Nazareth Hassan’s play follows the tender romance (and acid-fueled hallucinations) two skateboarders share.The play “Bowl EP,” written and directed by Nazareth Hassan, is really more of a double LP.The titles of its discrete scenes (25 in total!) are projected as track names onto the sunken, in-the-round skatepark set of this exuberant premiere at the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, co-produced with the National Black Theater in association with the New Group. The first half conjures a fun flirtation between two queer aspiring rappers, while the second is a jagged refraction of its ideas. At 80 minutes, the whole play pulses with a concentrated immediacy.The main M.C.s, if you will, are the jovial Quentavius da Quitter (Oghenero Gbaje) and the seductively internal Kelly K Klarkson (Essence Lotus): two 20-somethings who skate absent-mindedly while spitting potential rhymes. While deciding on a name for their duo, they strike up a playful romance over an indeterminate period of time.The two are tender with each other, fooling around between skate tricks and occasionally revealing glimpses of inner turmoil. Hassan charts these low-key adventures through impish scene titles (projected in inventive typefaces by Zavier Augustus Lee Taylor) like “picking a name for their rap group attempt four” and “skating and drinking.” The drained swimming pool that is Adam Rigg and Anton Volovsek’s set, and the skateboarders’ “bowl,” often places the actors below the gaze of the audience, which is seated on all four sides, lending an analytical lens to the stage interactions.Substances, from the casual vape pen to MDMA, help the pair find inspiration and grow closer. But like most of what’s played off as typical youthful behavior, this recreational habit returns under a new light in the piece’s second half, which is triggered by an acid-fueled sex act between the couple.That jarring shift comes with the arrival of Lemon Pepper Wings, a pangender demon who haunts Quentavius’s mind, and is suggested to have once pestered Kelly. (Hassan, who is nonbinary, winks at the clunkiness of communicating gender by referring to the creature as every combination of “he/she/they.”)Lemon is played by Felicia Curry in a bravura psychedelic freakout of a commedia dell’arte performance that begins in full anime cosplay, plush head mask and all. (DeShon Elem’s costume design here wildly expands from D.I.Y. skater outfits.) Shattering the fourth wall — all four of them, in this case — as the “patron demon of the intimate,” Lemon cuts through the issues pushing the lovers together and pulling them apart.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Review: How Music Came Down to Earth, in ‘Goddess’

    Amber Iman lives up to the title of a musical about the divine gift of song.If you’re going to call your show “Goddess,” you’d better have one handy. Luckily, the musical with that name that opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater stars Amber Iman, who fully fits the bill. Whether scatting or belting or just standing tall in gold eye shadow and regal gowns, she conveys the combination of power and ease that inevitably elicits words like “otherworldly.”When Saheem Ali, the director of “Goddess,” gives Iman and the rest of the talented cast a chance to display that otherworldliness, mostly while performing the songs by Michael Thurber and dances by Darrell Grand Moultrie, the show makes a strong case for live performance as a central expression of our divided nature. “What is human? What is divine?” goes one of Thurber’s better lyrics. “Do either exist until they intertwine?”But when merely talking, “Goddess” descends. The book by Ali, with additional material by James Ijames, is labored, with a conventional plot about a young Kenyan man torn between furthering his family’s political dynasty and baring his artistic soul. (He plays saxophone.) It doesn’t take long to get bogged down in banalities of both the domestic and the folkloric variety.Because yes, the goddess of the title is literal. Iman plays Marimba, a mythic East African queen who, we learn in a flashback, taught humans to sing and gave them their first instruments. But like Omari, the saxophonist, Marimba has parent problems. Her mother wants her to go into the family business, which to judge from Julian Crouch’s amazing puppets and masks is evidently Evil Incarnate. But Marimba, refusing to accept the mantle of war goddess, instead escapes to Mombasa to live under a new name, Nadira, in an underground nightclub called Moto Moto.Arica Jackson, left, plays a spunky nightclub owner and Nick Rashad Burroughs, seated in the chair, is its exuberant emcee.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt is there that Nadira becomes a queen in the secular sense: a star. Singing Thurber’s mélange of music, which encompasses smooth jazz, R&B, theatrical pop and an aura of Afrobeat, she draws an audience that is similarly diverse. Moto Moto, run by the spunky Rashida (Arica Jackson) and emceed by the exuberant Ahmed (Nick Rashad Burroughs) becomes a hotbed of heterogeneity (there’s even a shaman) in a culture that is otherwise intolerant of mixing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    George Wendt’s Norm Made Every ‘Cheers’ Entrance Feel Fresh

    George Wendt of “Cheers,” who died on Tuesday, could walk into a bar and imply his character’s entire life outside it.Man walks into a bar.It’s the starting point for a million jokes. And for season after season on “Cheers,” some of the best of those were delivered by George Wendt, who died on Tuesday at age 76, as the long-suffering Norm Peterson.We knew him, above all, from his entrances, throwing open the door of the show’s namesake tavern, greeted with a hearty — all together now — “Norm!” You could say that he was the character whom the show’s theme-song lyrics (“Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name”) were about.Making his way in the world today, Wendt’s performance suggested, took everything Norm had got. A bedraggled accountant (later unemployed, later a house painter), Norm spent his days getting the stuffing kicked out of him by life, then returned to Cheers to replace that stuffing with beer.“Cheers” did not take place entirely within the bar that gave the sitcom its name, but it mostly did. The setting was a place people came to escape somewhere else. And that meant that the actors portraying those suds-drinking refugees had to portray that somewhere-else entirely through the strength of their performances.Wendt was the champion of that. His stage entrances — tie loosened, top collar button open, drawn to his bar stool as if it were a magnet — implied everything that he was hustling to get away from, every trouble he wished to drown. His wife, Vera, existed almost entirely offstage, but Wendt made their relationship real with his cheerful griping. You didn’t see his work day, but you saw how eagerly he washed down the aftertaste of it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More