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    Keith Johnstone, Champion of Improvisational Theater, Dies at 90

    The theatrical games and performance techniques Mr. Johnstone developed became a familiar part of the acting arsenal.Early in what became a career in theater, Keith Johnstone was commissioned to write a play for a new company in England and studied up for the job by watching the troupe’s actors rehearse someone else’s play. What stood out to him was not the rehearsal techniques, but the fact that he found the sessions boring — “until the actors broke for coffee or stagehands began moving sets around the stage.”“It was only at these times that there seemed to be moments of truth on the stage,” he told The Calgary Herald many years later, in 1982. “When they resumed acting, the performers abandoned their kinetic dance and entered separate glass cages.”That realization helped fuel Mr. Johnstone’s determination that theater and the people who practiced it could benefit from more spontaneity and creativity, and from emphasizing the quest for truth over the mastery of actorly techniques.He spent the rest of his career preaching the gospel of improvisation, developing games, exercises and live shows that were the opposite of tightly scripted theater. His 1979 book, “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre,” is among the most widely used texts in the world of improvisational theater, and the Loose Moose Theater Company, which he created in 1977 after relocating to Canada, became an institution in Calgary.Mr. Johnstone died on March 11 in Calgary. He was 90.Theresa Robbins Dudeck, his literary executor and the author of “Keith Johnstone: A Critical Biography” (2013), confirmed the death.Mr. Johnstone didn’t invent improv, and he wasn’t alone in promoting the technique; the actress and educator Viola Spolin published “Improvisation for the Theater” in 1963, and troupes like the Second City in Chicago, founded in 1959, were also working the territory. But his contributions were considerable. Among Mr. Johnstone’s liveliest innovations was Theatresports, an idea he began to develop in England when he and some colleagues at the Royal Court Theater took notice of the liveliness of audiences at professional wrestling matches.“Our Royal Court audiences were like whipped dogs in comparison,” he wrote in an essay about Theatresports, “probably because once an event is categorized as ‘cultural,’ it becomes a minefield in which your opinion can damn you.”So he began honing a sort of competitive event in which teams of improvisers would try to outdo each other, with audience howling and booing encouraged and judges rating the efforts.“The judges award points by holding up cards that range from one to five,” he wrote in another book, “Impro for Storytellers” (1999). “Five means excellent, one means bad, and a honk from a rescue horn means ‘kindly leave the stage.’”He introduced Theatresports once he had relocated to Canada, and the concept caught on; variations of the games were soon being performed all over the world.“If the performance has gone well,” he wrote, “you’ll feel that you’ve been watching a bunch of good-natured people who are wonderfully cooperative, and who aren’t afraid to fail. It’s therapeutic to be in such company, and to yell and cheer, and perhaps even volunteer to improvise with them. With luck you’ll feel as if you’ve been at a wonderful party; great parties don’t depend on the amount of alcohol, but on positive interactions.”Mr. Johnstone in the mid-1960s. Early in his career, he determined that theater and the people who practiced it could benefit from more spontaneity and creativity.Mary Evans/Roger Mayne, via Everett CollectionDonald Keith Johnstone was born on Feb. 21, 1933, in Brixham, on England’s southwestern coast, to Richard and Linda (Carter) Johnstone. When he was 9 or so, he decided to stop taking things at face value.“I began reversing every statement to see if the opposite was also true,” he wrote in his 1979 book. “This is so much a habit with me that I hardly notice I’m doing it anymore. As soon as you put a ‘not’ into an assertion, a whole range of other possibilities opens out.”He trained as a teacher at St. Luke’s College in Exeter and began teaching at a primary school in South London. When he won a prize in a short-story contest, the English Stage Company, a new troupe based at the Royal Court, invited him to write a play for it, which he did: “Brixham Regatta,” which Patrick Gibbs of The Daily Telegraph thought was, for a 25-year-old novice, “a creditable — and ambitious — first play.” More important, he joined a writers’ group at the Royal Court and found himself leading improvisational exercises for the group.Published in 1979, Mr. Johnstone’s “Impro” is among the most widely used texts in the world of improvisational theater.He spent 10 years at the Royal Court, leading classes and workshops, screening scripts and producing plays. In July 1959 Mr. Johnstone and William Gaskill produced a largely improvised one-night show called “Eleven Men Dead at Hola Camp,” featuring Black actors ad-libbing scenes about an infamous 1959 massacre of detainees by British troops in Kenya. Alan Brien, reviewing the performance in The Spectator, was not on board with the concept, saying that it “shows the Royal Court in its most militant, inept, radical, ambitious and pretentious mood.”“‘Eleven Men Dead at Hola Camp’ was neither good rhetoric nor good theater,” Mr. Brien wrote. “But if it sent the audience home to study the facts, it will have been worthwhile. And if it sent the producers home reconvinced that acting discipline and writing economy are the heart of drama, then it will also have been worth while.”It did not “reconvince” Mr. Johnstone of that. He continued to develop his improvisation exercises and in the mid-1960s formed an improvisational troupe, the Theater Machine, which performed all over England as well as abroad.In 1972 Mr. Johnstone was offered a two-year visiting professorship at the University of Calgary in Alberta. He ended up staying at the university for 23 years, taking emeritus status in 1995.An early performance by his Loose Moose company, in 1977, was a version of “Robinson Crusoe” that, from Louis B. Hobson’s enthusiastic review in The Calgary Albertan, sounds as if it came close to replicating that professional-wrestling excitement Mr. Johnstone had longed for.“The audience, which is seated in a semicircle, becomes everything from shark-infested waters to offstage spirit voices,” he wrote. “It is a stormy, noisy sea that surrounds Crusoe’s island, and one that never calms down for the play’s 40 minutes.”Mr. Johnstone’s marriage to Ingrid Von Darl ended in divorce in 1981. He is survived by a son from that marriage, Benjamin; a son from another relationship, Dan; and a grandson.Mr. Johnstone’s books and methods have been used in high school classrooms and drama clubs, professional acting workshops and anyplace else where creativity needs to be unlocked and spontaneity encouraged. A passage in his 1979 book describes what set him on the improvisational path.“I began to think of children not as immature adults,” he wrote, “but of adults as atrophied children.” More

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    Livestreaming ‘Made All the Difference’ for Some Disabled Art Lovers

    When shuttered venues embraced streaming during the pandemic, the arts became more accessible. With live performance back, and streams dwindling, many feel forgotten.For Mollie Gathro, live theater was a once-a-year indulgence if the stars aligned perfectly.Gathro has degenerative disc disease and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, resulting in joint pain, weakness and loss of mobility. Because of her disabilities, going to a show meant having to secure accessible seating after hourslong phone calls with her “nemesis,” Ticketmaster; finding a friend to drive her or arranging other transportation; and hoping her body would cooperate enough for her to actually go out.But when live performance was brought to a halt three years ago by the coronavirus pandemic, and presenters turned to streaming in an effort to keep reaching audiences, the playing field was suddenly leveled for arts lovers like Gathro.From her home in West Springfield, Mass., Gathro suddenly had access to the same offerings as everyone else, watching streams of Gore Vidal’s drama “The Best Man” and of a Guster concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. For a while, it seemed, everything was online: performances by the Berlin State Opera or the Philadelphia Orchestra; dances by choreographers like Alonzo King and a New York City Ballet Spring Gala directed by Sofia Coppola; blockbuster movies that were released to streaming services at the same time they hit multiplexes; even the latest installment of Richard Nelson’s acclaimed cycle of plays about the Apple family for the Public Theater was streamed live.“I was overjoyed, but there was also this tentative feeling like waiting for the other shoe to drop because they could take the accessibility away just as easily as they gave it,” Gathro, 35, said, “which feels like is exactly what is happening.”It is happening. With live performance now back, and some theaters and concert halls still struggling to bring back audiences, presenters have cut back on their streamed offerings — leaving many people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, who have been calling for better virtual access for decades, excluded again.While many presenters have cut back on streaming, there is still more available than there used to be. In September the San Francisco Opera streamed a performance of John Adams’ “Antony and Cleopatra” starring Amina Edris. Cory Weaver/San Francisco OperaLivestreaming “opened up the door and showed us what is possible,” said Celia Hughes, the executive director of Art Spark Texas, a nonprofit that aims to make the arts more inclusive and accessible. The door, she said, has begun to close again.Aimi Hamraie,​​ an associate professor of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University who studies disability access, said that the decisions to cut back on streaming options “were not made with disabled people in mind.”“We’ve all been shown that we already have the tools to create more accessible exhibitions and performances, so people can no longer say it’s not possible,” Hamraie said. “We all know that that’s not true.”One in four adults in the United States has some form of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But more than three decades after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act made it illegal to discriminate based on disability, advocates say that it remains difficult for many disabled people to navigate arts venues: gilded old theaters often have narrow aisles, cramped rows and stairs, while sleek modern spaces can be off-the-beaten-path or feature temporary seating on risers.To be sure, there are far more streaming options available now than there used to be. The San Francisco Opera has been livestreaming all of its productions this season, and last month the Paris Opera announced new streaming options. Second Stage Theater simulcast the last two weeks of its Broadway run of “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Circle Jerk,” a Zoom play that became a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for drama, returned for a hybrid run last summer for both live and streaming audiences. The Cleveland Orchestra has joined the growing number of classical ensembles streaming select performances. And this year’s Sundance Film Festival was held in person in Park City, Utah — but also online.Second Stage Theater simulcast the last two weeks of its Broadway run of “Between Riverside and Crazy.” From left to right: Stephen McKinley Henderson, Victor Almanzar, Common.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut venues and producers have cut back on streaming for a number of reasons: the costs associated with equipment and the work required to film performances; contracts that call for paying artists and rights holders more money for streams; and fears that streams could provide more incentive for people to stay home rather than attend in person.Arts lovers with disabilities are feeling the loss.“It made all the difference because I felt like during the pandemic, I was allowed to be part of the world again, and then I just lost it,” said Dom Evans, 42, a hard-of-hearing filmmaker with spinal muscular atrophy, among other disabilities, and a co-creator of FilmDis, a group that monitors disability representation in the media.The recent experiments with streaming have raised questions of what counts as “live.” Some events are heavily produced and edited before they are made available online.“It’s better than nothing, but it’s not the same,” Phoebe Boag, 43, a music fan with myalgic encephalomyelitis, who lives in Scotland, said in an email interview. “When you’re watching a live performance at the same time as everyone else, you have the same anticipation leading up to the event, and there’s a sense of community and inclusion, knowing that you’re watching the performance alongside however many other people.”More venues are providing programming specifically for people with disabilities and their families. Moments, at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, for example, is geared toward people with dementia and their caregivers. “Our main goal is that everyone has choice, everyone can get access to what they want in ways that work best for them,” Miranda Hoffner, the associate director of accessibility at Lincoln Center, said.Moments, at Lincoln Center, is geared toward people with dementia and their caregivers. Ayami Goto and Takumi Miyake, of American Ballet Theater’s Studio Company, danced.Lawrence SumulongThese types of programs have been welcomed. But others say that presenters must do more to make all of their programming accessible.“We need arts programs that are fully integrated,” Evans, the filmmaker, said.Even as presenters have cut back on streaming options, many have stopped requiring proof of vaccination and masks — placing new barriers to attendance for some of the estimated seven million American adults who have compromised immune systems that make them more likely to get severely ill from Covid-19.“It’s easy to feel just like you’re farther and farther behind and not only forgotten, but just completely disregarded,” said Han Olliver, a 26-year-old freelance artist and writer with multiple chronic illnesses who would like more access to the arts. “And that’s really lonely.”Still, new opportunities have led to more connections for and among disabled people.Theater Breaking Through Barriers, an Off Broadway company that promotes the inclusion of disabled actors onstage, has presented more than 75 short plays since 2020 that have been designed to be performed virtually. Last fall, it streamed a series of plays, including some that were created on Zoom and others that were performed in front of live audiences. Nicholas Viselli, the company’s artistic director, said the goal is to make streaming more regular.There is an idea that “‘doing virtual stuff is not really theater,’ and I don’t agree with that,” Viselli said.“It’s not the same as being in the room and feeling the energy from the audience and the actors,” he said, “but it is when you have artists creating something in front of your eyes.”Gathro continues to take advantage of streaming options when she can from her home in West Springfield. But she hopes that more presenters will stream their work in the future.“I wish I always had options for livestreaming, for really everything, because I would,” Gathro said. “For me, it’s worth paying as much as I would pay to see it in person. The accessibility is just that much more helpful.” More

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    ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: Hunter/Gatherer

    Teen Lottie goes out in search of prey as her allies back at the cabin become more and more like followers.Season 2, Episode 4: ‘Old Wounds’There’s a lot of driving in this week’s episode of “Yellowjackets.” The adult characters are on the road. Misty and Walter are searching for Natalie and the “purple people,” who they assume have taken her hostage. Shauna takes her daughter, Callie, into the middle of nowhere where she confesses the full extent of her crimes. Natalie sets out with Lisa (Nicole Maines), a member of Lottie’s group, with the ostensible goal of selling honey. And then there’s Taissa, who empties her gas tank on the way to an unknown destination. She hitchhikes the rest of the way there thanks to a kindly trucker.But all of these journeys end not in horror — as is typical in this show — but in something that maybe comes close to solace. Misty and Walter don’t spend the night together, but a montage showing them getting ready for bed indicates just how simpatico they are in their precise routines. There’s a moment when they both seem to consider reaching out before settling into their pillows.Shauna’s family is more stable than it has ever been once she tells Callie everything. Instead of recoiling at her mom’s confession of murder, Callie actually seems to trust her parents again.At the same time, Natalie realizes that she actually understands Lisa, a girl she previously stabbed with a fork. They have both been depressed and suicidal, and they end their day sharing a drink at a bar with Lisa’s pet fish, stolen from her overly critical mother’s house.And Taissa? Well, Taissa ends up in front of a new but familiar face: Adult Van (Lauren Ambrose). “Tai?” she says incredulously from behind the counter at a retro video store, her hair and scars unmistakable. “Hey, Van,” Taissa responds, hesitant, almost a little ashamed.The arrival of Ambrose has been one of the most eagerly anticipated aspects of the season, in part because Ambrose, best known for “Can’t Hardly Wait” and “Six Feet Under,” seemed like perfect casting, given her red hair, her 1990s cred and her perfect deployment of sarcasm. We don’t get much of her here, but it’s a relief when Taissa’s trek leads to this cozy-seeming L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly shop.There’s a hope too that the arrival of Ambrose’s Van will help illuminate some of what’s going on with Tai, in both the past and the present. At this point, her story line has been reliant more on creepy vibes than on concrete progress. Introducing her old girlfriend may give us a better picture of what’s going on inside Tai’s head.Back in the wilderness in the 1990s, Tai’s instincts also lead to the return of another character: Javi. While Natalie and Lottie are embarking on their hunting competition — more on that shortly — Van cajoles Tai to keep searching for trees that bear the mark of the mysterious symbol that is plaguing (or helping) the survivors. Their investigation leads them to a bizarrely melted patch of snow, and then, out of nowhere, Javi appears darting through the forest. They grab him and bring him back to the cabin, where he is disoriented and unable to recognize his older brother, Travis.It’s a celebration tinged with suspicion. Travis starts to suspect that Natalie fooled him about Javi’s death, while Van tries to convince Tai of her own role in saving the younger boy. “There is something deep inside of you that is connected to all of this,” Van says, while Tai looks scared and doubtful.Teen Van, despite her sardonic demeanor, has become a true believer. She first bought into Lottie’s mysticism, and now she is trying to convince Tai and the rest of the girls of Tai’s potentially magical qualities. In the present, Tai has seemingly gone to Van for help, but, in the past, Van coaxes her to darker and darker places. Their dynamic has whiffs of toxicity.That sourness is seeping into all of the interactions in the cabin as some of the Yellowjackets look for meaning in their desolate lives. Mari (Alexa Barajas), for instance, has made Lottie the center of her entire belief system. In her mind, Lottie is the one who has been keeping them alive. Lottie slew the bear at the end of Season 1. Lottie embroidered the symbol onto Shauna’s baby blanket, which in Mari’s view resulted in that mass starling death, and therefore in more food. To Mari, Natalie’s skepticism toward Lottie is hindering their survival: When Natalie doesn’t accept Lottie’s blessing when she goes on a hunt, she is decreasing the likelihood of finding sustenance.So Natalie proposes a contest: She will compete versus Lottie for who can find food first. There are no winners. Natalie stumbles upon a frozen moose in the lake and runs back to get help, but the moose disappears into the icy water when the gang tries to dislodge it. Lottie, meanwhile, almost dies of hypothermia alone.Neither of the Lotties seem as sure of themselves as they once appeared — or as their followers are wont to believe they are. After ’90s Lottie sets out on her hunt, she finds one of the symbols carved into a tree. Placing her hand on it, she tries to connect with her surroundings. She gets nothing and is frustrated. Later, finding herself in front of the shrine where she laid the bear heart last season, she hesitantly cuts open her palm, hoping the blood will yield something.Again nothing, no food. Instead, she is led to a hallucination of Laura Lee’s plane, which takes her into a fantasy of a mall where her teammates gather and eat Chinese takeout as if nothing ever went wrong.Adult Lottie knows not to trust these visions. She goes to her psychiatrist to ask for an increase in her medication so that the visions might stop. But her regular doctor isn’t there, and this unfamiliar woman challenges her request. “I would urge you to reframe the way you are thinking about these visions,” she says. “The stress of constantly pushing them away could potentially cause more to surface. So maybe ask yourself: What do you think they are trying to tell you?”Lottie responds firmly. “Nothing,” she says. “Because they’re not real.”Does she really believe that? Or is that what she is telling herself? Later, she kneels by a tree stump and once again slices open her hand, letting the blood drip and asking, “Can this just be enough?” Last week she heard a voice say, “Il veut de sang,” which translates as “He wants blood” in French. Now she is giving “him” what he wants.As the other grown up Yellowjackets tentatively open up their circles and reach out for help, Lottie is retreating into herself. She knows the results will most likely be disastrous.More to chew onNot sure how Van’s business, called “While You Were Streaming,” stays afloat, but I’m all for the revival of physical media.Once again, a banger of a music cue: Misty’s and Walter’s nighty night routines are set to Sparks’s “Angst in My Pants”Akilah (Nia Sondaya) found a cute little mouse friend in the cabin, and I am almost positive something terrible will happen to that creature before the season is up.Lottie and Laura Lee were friends, yes, but I can’t help but think that there’s some other reason Laura Lee keeps showing up in her visions. I’m just not sure what it is yet.I’m not fully grossed out by Walter’s ham, egg, syrup and mustard taco. What does that say about me?I always appreciate a “Starlight Express” burn. Thank you, Misty. More

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    Stephen Colbert Can Tell When Fox News Is Lying

    A judge said he would probably appoint a “special master” to investigate whether Fox had misled the court. The “Late Show” host thinks he’s up to the job.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.Fox News NewsA judge sanctioned Fox News on Wednesday for withholding evidence relevant to Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit. He said he would probably appoint a “special master” — an outside lawyer — to investigate whether the network had misled the court.“So the job is to figure out whether Fox News lies?” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday. “Hold on, hold on — am I a special master? Do I get a sash?”“Over in Fox News News, today they began jury selection in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox, and this trial’s gonna be juicy. For instance, the judge has ruled that Dominion can compel testimony from Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro. And to make sure Jeanine Pirro tells the truth, they’re swearing her in on a box of wine.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So the judge is furious because Fox withheld the tapes. Although to be fair to Fox, they might not have known which embarrassing Rudy Giuliani tape they were being asked for. The one where the oil was leaking from his head or the one where he’s farting in court? The one where he’s unbuttoning his pants for Borat’s daughter? Or could it be the one where he held a press conference outside a dildo shop? How are they supposed to keep track of them all?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (‘Solitary Confinement for Dummies’ Edition)“This afternoon, the FBI arrested a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman in connection with the leaking of classified documents that were posted online. The leaker is described as a lonely young man who is part of a chatroom group that shares a love of guns and military gear. You know how sometimes — you know you find yourself going, ‘It’s always who you least suspect, isn’t it?’ This isn’t one of those times.” — JAMES CORDEN“Teixeira was taken into custody in Massachusetts, where just moments before, he was seen from a helicopter reading a book on his porch. That book: ‘Solitary Confinement for Dummies.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, for taking these classified documents home, Teixeira could face charges under the Espionage Act and could get up to 10 years in prison per document. So he’s in trouble unless he declassified them with his mind.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, referring to a Donald Trump declassification technique“As a 21-year-old, he’s devastated that this mistake may cost him his future, but he’s also thrilled that he’s posted something online and it totally went viral.” — JAMES CORDEN“He posted some of the documents in a chatroom for gamers, and I don’t even know how this works. Does someone like write, ‘Hey guys, how do I win in Fortnite?’ and you respond like, ‘I don’t know, but here’s some satellite images of Ukraine.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingBen Affleck revealed a secret from his youthful past on Thursday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This Out“Hilma” is about Hilma af Klint, who believed that spirits guided her to paint.Juno FilmsLasse Hallstrom’s biopic “Hilma” follows the life and career of the mystical artist Hilma af Klint. More

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    Review: In a Sorkinized ‘Camelot,’ That’s How Conditions Are. Alas.

    A revival of the 1960 musical with the famously great score and infamously bad book gets a gorgeous makeover that makes no difference.About 30 minutes into its 90-minute first act, the Lincoln Center Theater revival of “Camelot” finally wakes up, as if from a pleasant drowse. That’s when Jordan Donica, as Lancelot, who has arrived in England to join King Arthur’s Round Table, tears into the boastful “C’est Moi” like a lion ripping huge bites of dramatic flesh with his teeth.And then, apparently sated, the show, which opened Thursday at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, goes back to sleep for another spell, as if this were “Brigadoon.”If only it were! But “Camelot,” the 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical based on T.H. White’s Arthurian tales, has what you might call a post-operetta problem. Neither content to be agreeable piffle nor ready to be Sondheimesque psychodrama, it aims for a middle path, welding Arthur’s romantic life with a free-spirited queen to his rethinking of governance with a recalcitrant gentry. Both fail, as does the show, in a way that “Brigadoon,” the team’s 1947 hit, aiming lower, does not.In “Camelot,” the clever, lightweight style of Lerner’s dialogue, and the show-off triple rhymes of his lyrics, clash with his ambition. They make Loewe’s profoundly polished music, in songs like “I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight?” and “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood,” which open the show, come off as charming tea party tunes. Only in flashes does the “serious” part recover, but by then it’s too late. After Lancelot finishes “C’est Moi,” the story goes back to bed for 40 minutes, at last reawakening to the clangs of a thrilling sword fight.Burnap, left, fighting Jordan Donica as Lancelot. Aaron Sorkin could not solve the riddle of the love triangle connecting Guenevere to the boyish Arthur on one side and the hunky Lancelot on the other, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat’s not a problem a rewrite could readily solve, or at any rate it’s not one that Aaron Sorkin did. His revisions for the director Bartlett Sher’s spare-no-expense production — visually and sonically gorgeous — do make some improvements. The silly supernatural subplots have been excised (along with a beautiful song, “Follow Me”) and Guenevere, Arthur’s involuntary queen, has been strengthened with snappy backtalk. She’s now a kind of medieval Katharine Hepburn.But Sorkin cannot solve the riddle of the love triangle connecting Guenevere (Phillipa Soo) to the boyish Arthur (Andrew Burnap) on one side and the hunky Lancelot on the other. The riddle is: When is a triangle a flat line? Because only by rigging up questions of fidelity that make everyone look silly does Lerner’s plot engine turn over at all. Is Arthur still in love with the sorceress Morgan Le Fey, a woman he hasn’t seen since he was 15? Does Guenevere desire Lancelot? Who doesn’t? And why, in any case, should we care?Sorkin tries to shore up Lerner’s droopy stories by rooting the personal conflict in the political and social experiments of the time — or of some time, anyway. The new book, which is set on “the eve of the Enlightenment,” even though that was about a millennium post-Arthur, is not fussy about period. Indeed, it winks at its muddled chronology: “The Middle Ages won’t end by itself,” Arthur says, as if he knew he were middling.The historical backfill is present in White’s and Lerner’s versions, too: The idea of changing a culture of violence to one of justice is at the heart of the story. (It’s the reason Arthur convenes his knights.) The problem is that the musical doesn’t musicalize that, which is why after an hour of brittleness you desperately need the sword fight. (The fight director, still full of surprises, is the great B.H. Barry.) Even the title number, which Sorkin has Guenevere call “that stupid song about the weather,” praises the Camelot revolution in purely sybaritic terms. “The rain may never fall till after sundown” sounds like a boast on Airbnb.Lacking songs to support them, Sorkin’s historical enhancements fall flat. Particularly unconvincing is his sidebar on the evolution of magic into science, with Merlyn (Dakin Matthews, excellent) now a sage, not a wizard, and Morgan (Marilee Talkington) some kind of chemist. (Let’s not even get into Mordred, the mortifying Plot Necessity played by Taylor Trensch.) Forced to maintain the Lerner framework, he can neither justify the romantic story on modern terms nor distract from it in ways that make musical sense.The romance at least gives the principals something to do besides spouting ideas, and gives the audience, especially with Lancelot, something to hear. (After “C’est Moi,” he sings the almost-too-rich “If Ever I Would Leave You” and “I Loved You Once in Silence.”) And though Guenevere mostly gets the tea party numbers, delivered creamily, and Arthur (perhaps in deference to the vocal talents of the role’s originator, Richard Burton) gets almost nothing, both are appealing and play the West Wing of the Castle banter beautifully.Not that there’s a castle. In this, his fifth Golden Age musical revival, and fourth for Lincoln Center Theater, Sher has changed his visual approach. Not so much the costumes, by Jennifer Moeller, which are just as stunning as ever; if you wear velvet gowns or quilted tabards, you’ll want to collect them all. But instead of scenic coups like the orchestra reveal in “South Pacific” and the 52-foot ship in “The King and I,” the set designer Michael Yeargan, the lighting designer Lap Chi Chu and the projection designers at 59 Productions have pared everything to a few basic elements: arches, screens, snow, branches, shadows and “Seventh Seal” silhouettes.From left, Danny Wolohan, Anthony Michael Lopez, Soo and Fergie Philippe. The costumes, by Jennifer Moeller, are just as stunning as ever.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWith so little furniture onstage, Sher, incapable of not making pretty pictures, keeps everyone moving busily; if the story refuses to make a triangle, he’ll compensate with dozens in his blocking. However fascinating that is to watch, the result feels abstract and analytical, of a piece with Byron Easley’s dainty choreography and, not to harp on them, Lerner’s lyrics. For “My Fair Lady” Lerner was able to find words that expressed character and period; in “Camelot” (with no underlying Shaw play to assist) he finds words that mostly express himself, on the bubble of the 1960s, sophisticated and dry.That is not, however, what you hear coming from the pit, where, under Kimberly Grigsby’s baton, 30 musicians play the original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J. Lang. Their superb characterization of the story in pure sound makes you feel what the show onstage doesn’t.It may also make you feel a bit sad. What’s to be done with such beautiful work, wedded to such intractable problems? How many more Golden Age musicals can Sher and Lincoln Center Theater lavish their love on before the project turns into Encores! with elephantiasis? Is Kelli O’Hara in “Flahooley” next?Well, to be honest, I’d be there for that. But “Camelot” is a show promoted above its station because of its music and Kennedy-era associations. Neither, it seems, is sufficient today. When Arthur reports, in “How to Handle a Woman,” that the answer is simply to “love her, love her, love her,” you can’t help thinking Lerner is not in his wheelhouse. (He married eight times.) Love, with both people and musicals, isn’t enough when the differences are irreconcilable.CamelotAt the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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    Review: In ‘Hamnet,’ Shakespeare Becomes Soap Opera

    The Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s hit 2020 novel is elegant and tasteful — but also formulaic and sentimental.Writers of historical fiction are allowed to take liberties — they are in the business of filling in blanks, after all. But how much is too much? At what point does something become so speculative, its connection to the factual record so tenuous, that it ceases to be historically credible?At the Royal Shakespeare Company, just a few hundred yards from the site of William Shakespeare’s family home, a new play is turning an imaginative spotlight on the Bard’s domestic life. “Hamnet,” an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel, portrays the vicissitudes of Shakespeare and his wife’s marriage, culminating in the death of the couple’s young son.Adapted for the stage by Lolita Chakrabarti — her recent adaptation of “The Life of Pi” is currently on Broadway — and directed by Erica Whyman, “Hamnet” runs at the Swan Theater, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, through June 17, before transferring to London’s West End in the fall. The production is essentially a high-end, 16th-century soap opera, a delicately wrought portrait of a couple — their coming together, their travails and their sorrow — that carries an uplifting message about the generative power of grief. It could be completely inaccurate, but no one can disprove it.Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway married in 1582; he was 18, she was 26 and pregnant with the first of their three children. Two years later, they had twins, Judith and Hamnet; at age 11, Hamnet died of unknown causes. Beyond these bare facts, almost everything is conjecture.In this telling, Shakespeare’s wife — called Agnes Hathaway, rather than Anne — is a healer and a clairvoyant, the subject of “rumors of witchery.” She takes a chance on Shakespeare when he is a lowly Latin tutor with few prospects, and encourages him in his endeavors. When Hamnet dies of bubonic plague, his father falls into a writing frenzy — “Work holds me straight … it’s the only thing that’s real” — that culminates in his most famous play, “Hamlet.” The pain of the couple’s bereavement is thus transmuted into a timeless work of art — the ultimate tribute.Madeleine Mantock plays Agnes with a serene and stoical grace, while Tom Varey’s young Shakespeare is a feckless dreamer with plucky charm. (Later, when Shakespeare moves to London and makes his name, he is an altogether different presence — mature, understatedly commanding.) Mantock and Varey have a playful, tender onstage chemistry, and Ajani Cabey performs the title role with such a wide-eyed, fey energy that you almost forget he is much older than 11.It is Peter Wright and Elizabeth Rider, as Shakespeare’s parents, John and Mary, who get the best lines. Wright is grimly compelling as a boorish and sometimes violent oaf, and Rider is very funny as a cynical, matronly naysayer, perpetually exasperated by Agnes’s oddness. Mary’s frantic interventions, along with the droll repartee among Shakespeare’s troupe during the London scenes — in which the excellent Wright features again, as the Shakespearean comic actor Will Kempe — provide much-needed light relief.Ajani Cabey performs the role of Hamnet with a wide-eyed, fey energy.Manuel HarlanThe Stratford scenes play out before a large, A-shaped wooden structure that represents Shakespeare’s childhood home. The impressive design, by Tom Piper, comprises two very tall ladders, and its stroke is an elevated platform high above the stage that the characters can scurry up to. It’s a deft use of space, and pleasing on the eye — and, of course, the “A” stands for Agnes. Prema Mehta, the lighting designer, deploys fine mist to generate a hazy ambience that is complemented by mournfully evocative melodies on viol and lute, played by Alice Brown and Phill Ward; these instruments, musical mainstays in Shakespeare’s time, lend some period realism to the proceedings.The pacing, however, is a little uneven. Whereas the first half, which recounts the story of the couple’s relationship up until the birth of their twins, is told at a leisurely pace, Hamnet’s death, its aftermath, and the gestation of “Hamlet” are all crammed into the second half. One wonders if those latter segments, with their hallucinations and flashbacks, might be better suited to film. We’ll soon find out, because a big-screen adaptation, directed by Chloé Zhao and with O’Farrell as a co-writer, is in the pipeline.In interviews, O’Farrell has said she wanted to rescue Agnes and Hamnet from obscurity and redress unkind assumptions about the Shakespeares’ marriage: that it was a loveless arrangement, thrust upon the playwright by circumstances and endured grudgingly; that he was indifferent to his son’s death. This elegant production does justice to those aims — albeit with considerable creative license — but whether it does much else is questionable. The literary-historical context is essentially window dressing for a story that leans heavily into a fairly formulaic, heartstring-tugging sentimentalism and the relatable banalities of everyday life: hostile in-laws; a father and son at loggerheads; the demands of work impinging on domestic life. It happens to be the Shakespeares, but it could be anyone, really. This is tastefully crafted melodrama — but melodrama, nonetheless. More

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    ‘Television’ Review: Small-Screen Dreams

    A new show at the Wild Project in Manhattan imagines how a small 1950s community weathers the arrival of the mass media age.In “Television,” which opened Wednesday in a Thirdwing production at the Wild Project, the playwright and director Cameron Darwin Bossert once again zeros in on America’s most sprawling form of soft power: its homegrown media. It’s an uneven production, but one that continues Bossert’s examination of the clash between the country’s cozy self-image and its greedier actions.Here, he imagines what happens to a small Colorado town in the late 1950s once its local TV station loses its CBS affiliation. As with his previous diptych, “A Venomous Color” — a pair of plays, “Burbank” and “The Fairest,” about the labor conditions during the early years of Disney’s animation studio — he is interested in the small, midcentury moments when mass media quietly lost its innocence.With “Television,” Bossert reaches for a more epic canvas: wider and wholly fictionalized, like the ongoing soap operas that populated the era’s airwaves. But, over a period of just over two hours, he slowly loses his focus, and the piece overflows with expanding motivations and plotlines.The action begins quickly, at least, with Wesley (Arash Mokhtar), the owner of the ailing station, meeting a neighboring family, the Fitzwaters, and taking an interest in their son, Billy (Cian Genaro). Soon headed off to study psychology in Denver, of which his veteran father, Arnold (Dikran Tulaine), disapproves, Billy has been passing the time writing conveniently episode-length plays whose nuanced mundanity Wesley thinks would make great counterprogramming to the overwrought offerings, like “Gunsmoke” and “Johnny Staccato,” currently crowding the broadcast schedule.Along with his colleague Barry (Bobby Underwood), Wesley begins producing the kid’s scripts, which, starring the dreadfully serious actress Sandra (Aprella Godfrey Barule), become a regional sensation. Soon enough, the independent network starts looking to fill up their programming schedule, and mother Fitzwater (Mary Monahan) gears up to host her own cooking show.Success, naturally, takes its toll on everyone. Taking on issues as macro as shell-shock, imperialism and media saturation, and as intimate as the particular sins of the Fitzwater father, Bossert struggles to maintain his usual precision. He rushes through and doesn’t sketch the piece’s many characters thoroughly enough for us to be really invested.But they are all compelling threads, drawn intelligently from modern American legends — there is more than a little of Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network” here, especially regarding Lionel (Wesli Spencer), an affable mailman who slowly begins to lose it after being plucked to host a talk show.Bossert’s acuity for matter-of-fact dialogue, and directing it tensely, is still incredibly engaging, initially coming across as jarring before revealing the lively emotion behind it; the air in his plays is not dead, but rather dense. It’s underscored by Deeba Montazeri’s sparsely deployed sound design, whose melancholy piano is immediately reminiscent of golden age melodrama, and nicely serves Bossert’s larger intentions of compounding the personal and historical.“Television” might not rise above the sensory overload it seeks to address, but still shows Bossert as a keen observer of the origins of our current media landscape.TelevisionThrough April 22 at the Wild Project, Manhattan; thewildproject.org. Running time: 2 hours. More

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    ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3, Episode 9 Recap: A Familiar Home

    Home is where the ship is. In this week’s episode of “Picard,” the crew goes home.Season 3, Episode 9: ‘Vox’If you’re going to lean into nostalgia, might as well go the whole way. If you’re going to bring back the old cast, bring back the old ship and the old villains, too.Resistance to fan service is futile. Recall that in this season’s premiere, Jean-Luc wanted to give Geordi a gift of a painting of the Enterprise D.“She wasn’t the first,” he said. “But she was certainly my favorite.”Little did he know that Geordi was preparing a gift himself the whole time: the real Enterprise D, somehow excavated from Verdian III, where the ship unceremoniously crash landed in “Generations.” It’s the ship that many of us fell in love with, just as much as we did with the characters that served on the ship. The “Picard” showrunner, Terry Matalas, has used this season of “Picard” to right many of the previous wrongs of the “Next Generation” franchise. Giving the Enterprise D a proper send-off seems as appropriate as giving the crew one.Seeing the crew take its familiar stations on the bridge felt like putting on your favorite sweater that you can never throw out. It just fits, no matter what. Seeing the renovated ship in high definition? Even better.It’s not too much nostalgia at the expense of story either. It turns out only an old Starfleet ship can be dusted off to save the day, not one of these newfangled, high-tech ones Starfleet is at the mercy of now.Once again, the Enterprise crew is all that stands between — surprise — the Borg and the Earth’s annihilation. The face that Vadic was referring to the whole time was Jean-Luc’s old nemesis: The Borg Queen. Just as the “Trek” universe keeps finding ways to bring Data back to life, it does the same with the Borg. I must confess some disappointment in seeing this become the Big Reveal that the season was building up to. Ever since “First Contact,” the Borg have been the well “Trek” writers keep going back to, including in “Voyager” and both seasons of “Picard.”It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise: Vadic hinted at this on the bridge with Seven in last week’s episode.The Borg Queen was already a major part of the story line last season with Picard’s friend Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill). You might remember, and it’s likely you don’t, since the season was so convoluted, that Jurati became the leader of a new, benevolent Borg. This goes totally unmentioned by Jean-Luc here. This felt odd, especially when Beverly said, “No one has seen or heard from the Borg in over a decade.” Well, it has assuredly not been a decade since Season 2. And what about the Borg cube in the first season that was being repurposed as a Romulan reclamation site? And the season ended with an unexplained transwarp conduit that Queen Jurati suggests is a threat! Worth a mention from Jean-Luc, methinks.It’s possible there is some timeline shift or something I’m missing, and I am eager to see the comments correcting me. (Annie Wersching, who played the queen in Season 2, died earlier this year.)Now, it’s a New and Improved Borg. When Jean-Luc was Locutus, they implanted an assimilation gene inside Jean-Luc that would be passed on to his offspring. The changelings helped the Borg place the altered DNA into the transporter systems to assimilate anybody who uses them, which explains why changelings wanted to use shuttles before. But it affects only the youngest members of the crew, not anyone over, say, the age of the main cast of “Picard.” Got it? Me either. The Borg essentially have taken over Starfleet without anyone noticing: a coup without a shot fired. Until the shots are fired. And now, Earth can be saved only by the Olds.Poor Jean-Luc: First he finds out that he has unwittingly been an absentee father and now he may have accidentally turned his son into a homicidal robot. As Jean-Luc remarks to Beverly: “He inherited the best of you. And the worst of me.”(Also: Poor Jack, who now doesn’t have a solid answer to his question, “How much of me is me?”)Jack is, in many ways, not your ideal candidate to lead the Borg collective. He has long been an independent, rogue actor who doesn’t want to play by the rules, while the very notion of individuality is anathema to the Borg. Jean-Luc’s use of Starfleet protocols to try to keep him confined to quarters was always doomed to fail, especially after he told Jack that the solution was to institutionalize him on Vulcan. Not exactly a great parental approach from Jean- Luc! In his defense, he is not exactly experienced.Jack snarls: “What about the protocols of a father? Or were you never issued those?”A fair point, and one that stands out even more when one considers how many times Jean-Luc broke protocol in this season alone. Remember when he stole a ship and put members of the Titan in mortal danger?Jean-Luc has not had his fastball this season, but luckily, his former teammates have. Geordi dusting off the Enterprise D was a shrewd maneuver. Beverly and Data are able to quickly figure out what happened to Jack and the plot to overrun Starfleet. Troi discovers the Borg connection to begin with. Riker and Worf are in prime quip form and absorbing punches when necessary.Now, they’ll have to find a way to keep Jack from becoming chief executive officer of the New Borg, which they have experience with from Data’s experience on “First Contact.”All in all, a fun penultimate episode.Odds and endsIn the opening scene with Troi and Jack, Jack references a planet Beverly used to take him to as a boy: Raritan IV. The planet is named after Matalas’s hometown, Raritan, N.J., and is also featured in the second season of “Picard.” Soji and Jurati visited deltans there in last season’s premiere.Beverly mentions her other son, Wesley, again. That guy just doesn’t seem to be checking his phone as the universe threatens to implode again!Some fun ship names in the fleet: Reliant (the commandeered ship in “Wrath of Khan”); Okuda (a reference to Michael Okuda, the longtime “Trek” graphic designer; and Sutherland (a ship that Data briefly took over as captain in “Next Generation”).Cool cameo from the now Admiral Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy). We met her in the classic “Next Generation” episode “The Best of Both Worlds” as the ambitious commander angling to take Jean-Luc’s chair. She makes a rare reference to “Enterprise” and the NX-01. Jean-Luc points out the irony of Shelby’s schilling for a synchronous Starfleet system that is similar to the Borg, given her own history of fighting them. We don’t get to see her for very long before she is killed. At least she died doing what she loved: being in charge.A bit unclear on why the Borg need Jack to begin with. They’re already assimilating the fleet! (This is similar to “First Contact,” in which the Borg Queen didn’t really need Data. Or going back further, did the Borg need Locutus?)How did Starfleet set up fireworks to go off in space?A (presumed) goodbye to Captain Shaw. He handed command of the Titan to Seven as he dies, which felt like an unearned moment given what their dynamic had been all season. Seven’s competence has been, shall we say, not exactly high, and in a similar moment earlier in the season, he gave command to Riker, not Seven. Seven hasn’t done much since then to justify earning Shaw’s trust. Even so, after all time spent being a huge jerk to the elder Starfleet officers, Shaw still dies saving them — a contribution which is barely mentioned by Jean-Luc and the rest of the crew. He also refers to Seven by her preferred name, instead of Hansen. Overall, his character seemed like a wasted opportunity.I’m curious about the Enterprise E, which gets a glancing mention. It appears the ship was destroyed, somehow, and Worf had a lot to do with it. More