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    Review: A Faithful ‘Kinky Boots,’ With All Its Pizazz and Pitfalls

    The Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein musical, in which the drag queen Lola saves a provincial shoe factory, makes an Off Broadway return at the spacious Stage 42.You can’t keep a drag queen down, at least not for long. It was only April 2019 that the Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein musical “Kinky Boots” closed on Broadway after a six-year run, and already it’s back in town. The Britain-set show, in which the statuesque performer Lola saves a provincial shoe factory by inspiring a line of toweringly outré footwear, is now running Off Broadway.But unlike the comebacks of shows such as “Jersey Boys” and “Rock of Ages,” which both reopened at the underground theatrical mall New World Stages, “Kinky Boots” is at the spacious Stage 42, which stands on 42nd Street and is large enough to accommodate a 25-person company and a minimally downsized version of the director Jerry Mitchell’s va-va-voom production.But enough about real estate: How is Lola?This, after all, is the role for which Billy Porter won a Tony in 2013, and it is a textbook Fierstein creation — bold and brassy, with big hair, bright nail polish and quick-fire quips barely concealing the scars of pain and rejection. There are expectations.Happily, Callum Francis, who has played the part in Britain, Australia and, briefly, on Broadway, meets them. He is a delight not just as Lola but as her alter ego, Simon — it is hard to tell who the real person is, what real means in this context and whether it even matters. Unlike Porter, whose physical intensity often came across as combative swagger, Francis moves with a dancer’s grace, and Lola’s confidence has a slinky playfulness that is especially fun to watch in her early scenes with Charlie (Christian Douglas, whose performance is a little stiff).Charlie is the earnest bloke trying to save his late father’s failing shoe company because the jobs of people he has known since he was a child depend on it. Lola provides him with life coaching and the idea that will eventually reinvent the business — to create and build “tubular sex,” that is, boots that are simultaneously strong and sexy. Both characters have complicated relationships with their fathers, and Lola shows not just Charlie but everyone onstage that there are many ways to be a man. That thread was also in the 2005 movie that inspired the musical, but here, the message feels super-Fiersteinian.Simon’s wounded vulnerability is never too far underneath the glitter and takes center stage in the 11 o’clock power ballad “Hold Me in Your Heart.” The reveal of that song’s context hit harder in the original production because we had seen a little more of Lola’s back story — the roles of Young Simon and Young Charlie have been cut here. More subtle are tiny tweaks such as Lola’s welcome greeting, which has been expanded to “Ladies, gentlemen, theys, them and those who have yet to make up their minds!”But, overall, the show looks and feels like a slightly sized-down photocopy of the original. Danielle Hope, for example, is very funny as Lauren, an employee at the factory, and her big solo, “The History of Wrong Guys,” is perfectly calibrated, but the rendition faithfully duplicates Annaleigh Ashford’s, who originated the role on Broadway. It looks as if Hope might be capable of coming up with her own shtick, and it would have been interesting to see the supporting cast receive a little more agency. But don’t worry, the conveyor belts still turn into treadmills for the exhilarating “Everybody Say Yeah” — a sterling example of Mitchell’s showmanship.Considering this faithfulness to the original template, it is not surprising that the story’s less successful moments remain, too. Among them are the slightly preachy tone as well as Charlie’s sudden dark turn. According to Fierstein’s recent memoir, “I Was Better Last Night,” the show took nearly five years to complete, so you have to wonder how nobody could find an hour to refine this temporary personality transplant. The book also suggests an intriguing line of thought when Fierstein writes that the number “What a Woman Wants” expresses Lola’s “daring sexuality — as a cross-dressing heterosexual male.” You will have to stare extra-hard and perhaps do a bit of projecting to see that onstage, where Lola essentially manifests as a magical being. “The sex is in the heel,” as one song proclaims, but it would have been nice to transfer some from the boot to the character.One seemingly big change that turns out not to matter is the shrinking of the band to half of its Broadway size. But here it is perfectly fine to go big on synthesizers because Lauper’s songs, packed with hooks, and Stephen Oremus’s sharp arrangements and orchestrations always made terrific use of electronics. This is the only score in recent Broadway history that sounds as if it were written by people who had set foot in a nightclub within the past 40 years, and the hi-NRG finale, “Raise You Up/Just Be,” sounds like it’s booming out of a float at a Pride parade. That’s a compliment, of course.Kinky BootsAt Stage 42, Manhattan; kinkybootsthemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. More

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    ‘House of the Dragon’: Who Is Otto Hightower, and Why Does He Matter?

    The King’s Hand in “Dragon” belongs to House Hightower, a minor presence in “Game of Thrones” but a major player in the prequel. Here’s some background.It’s tempting to read the new characters in HBO’s “House of the Dragon” through a “Game of Thrones” lens, to see the dragon-riding princess Rhaenyra (played as a youth by Milly Alcock) as the new Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). Other parallels between the two shows exist as well, though they are perhaps less obvious.Take the Hightowers, a minor presence in “Thrones”; based on the Sunday series premiere of “Dragon,” set nearly 200 years earlier, the family was clearly once a major player in Westeros’s innermost sanctums of power. Could they be our new Lannisters?There’s a lot we can glean already from the first episode of “Dragon,” from “Thrones” and from the books by George R.R. Martin without spoiling the new series. Let’s take a deeper look.Who are the Hightowers again?Although House Hightower may not feel familiar, we’re already passingly acquainted with this ancient noble family: In “Thrones,” one of the Kingsguard during Bran Stark’s Tower of Joy flashback was Ser Gerold Hightower (Eddie Eyre), and two of the Tyrells, Margaery (Natalie Dormer) and Loras (Finn Jones), shared a Hightower mother.Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) resembles Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) in many respects. Like Tywin, he is a widower Hand of the King, and just as Tywin used his daughter, Cersei (Lena Headey), Otto is using his daughter, Alicent (played as a youth by Emily Carey), as king bait.Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series is here.The Sea Snake: Lord Corlys Velaryon, one of the most powerful people in the Seven Kingdoms, is a fearless sailor. Steve Toussaint, the actor who plays him, does better on land.A Rogue Prince: Daemon Targaryen, portrayed by Matt Smith, is an agent of chaos. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” the actor said.The New King: A string of critically acclaimed roles has lifted Paddy Considine, who stars as King Viserys Targaryen, from hardscrabble roots to a seat on the Iron Throne.The King’s Hand: Otto Hightower is a major player in the prequel. Here is what to know about the character and the history of House Hightower.But the uptight, opportunistic Otto is more powerful than Tywin ever was. He is wealthier. He has more influence over key Westerosi institutions, in what some call the Oldtown Triad (the Citadel, the Faith and House Hightower). And he has convinced the king that he is an honorable man — “an unwavering and loyal Hand,” as King Viserys (Paddy Considine) calls him.By the end of the series premiere, Viserys’s brother, Daemon (Matt Smith), appears poised to be the king’s chief antagonist. Daemon is certainly formidable — and sneaky. But the king should probably also keep his eye on his own Hand, who has the superior spy network. To whom does the maester whisper first? When Daemon makes an unwise comment in a brothel, who hears it from three corroborating witnesses?And what of that mysterious letter Otto sends to Oldtown? From what we’ve seen so far, Otto seems to be our Littlefinger, Varys and Tywin, all rolled into one delightfully devious character.Otto, however, is not the lord of Hightower. That would be his older brother, Hobert (Steffan Rhodri), first glimpsed swearing fealty to King Viserys’s daughter, Rhaenyra.Masterminding the maesters?House Hightower helped found the Citadel, the center of scholarship in Westeros, and provides continuing financial support, earning the head of the family the title “Defender of the Citadel.” It is a honorary title, and the role is more like a patron than a protector. The maesters — who are supposed to disavow family loyalties — are likely to feel some gratitude. Or more.Like Tywin Lannister in “Game of Thrones,” Otto, right, uses his daughter (Emily Carey) as king bait.Ollie Upton/HBOThere are already conspiracy theories floating around about Grand Maester Mellos (David Horovitch), suggesting that he, like Grand Maester Pycelle on “Thrones,” would allow or even cause those under his care to die if it furthered the Hightower agenda. A stretch? Perhaps. But as we learn in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” books, there might be some corruption at the Citadel. It could be that the maesters, who control much of the information in Westeros and are positioned at noble households throughout, are compromised. Otto might benefit from their eyes and ears.Have faithThe period of Westerosi history depicted in “House of the Dragon” takes place before the Sept of Baelor, the great cathedral where Cersei began her walk of shame, was built; back then, the Starry Sept was the center of religious power, and the city of Oldtown was considered holy. In addition to the Hightowers having contributed many sons to the clergy’s ranks, they also built the Starry Sept.The church has a long, fraught history with the Targaryens, who worshiped different gods when they came conquering. In the premiere, Otto warns that Daemon could be a “second Maegor, or worse,” which brings to mind the religious war started by Maegor the Cruel, the third Targaryen king, when a Hightower led the church.Money talksJust as the Lannisters and Tyrells were among the wealthiest families of their era, the Hightowers and Velaryons are among the richest in theirs. The Hightowers, who rule over the center of trade in one of the richest agricultural regions, represent old money, however, while the Velaryons wield new wealth. This makes Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) a threat to Otto.Otto’s alliances are strong, however, among other Small Council members: Mellos, part of the Citadel faction; the master of laws and lord of Harrenhal, Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes), who also studied at the Citadel; and the master of coin and lord of Honeyholt, Lyman Beesbury (Bill Paterson), a sworn vassal of House Hightower.Heir for a dayIn the first episode, Otto seems fixated on removing any candidates for the line of succession whom he can’t control. He dismisses the idea that King Viserys’s cousin Rhaenys (Eve Best) — who is married to Lord Corlys — should become queen, yet he suggests that Rhaenyra be named heir. (Clearly, it’s not just about gender.) He also campaigns against Daemon, who was the presumed heir, a conflict that seems unlikely to subside anytime soon.But Otto wages war by spilling ink, not blood. It’s the Hightower way. And in a war of words, Otto — like the scheming wedding planner Tywin — could wield the mightier sword. More

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    In a Small Mountain Town, a Beloved Theater Company Prevails

    CREEDE, Colo. — Last summer, I stumbled onto one of the most singular — and joyful — experiences of my life: a small community, high in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, that has been sustaining a thriving professional theater company since 1966. And I did not even see the regular version of Creede Repertory Theater — because of the pandemic, it had put on a smaller season of down-to-basic productions on a makeshift outdoor stage.Not only were the people uncommonly nice and the shows good, but here was a place where theater was an integral part of the civic fabric. As soon as I left, I dreamed of returning.So there I was last month, on vacation. I wanted to introduce the region to my spouse, but I was also curious to see a normal season, done indoors and in repertory (meaning that the resident acting company alternates shows). And I was really looking forward to seeing Creede Rep’s reigning divas, Christy Brandt and Anne F. Butler, do “Steel Magnolias.” (Brandt’s first season was in 1973, and this is Butler’s 19th season.)John DiAntonio, the producing artistic director at Creede Rep, spoke of the additional expenses the company endured during a Covid-19 surge.Ramsay de Give for The New York Times“This company is founded on everybody working together,” said Kate Berry, the associate artistic director.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesNestled in the San Juan Mountains of Southern Colorado, Creede is a former mining town whose residents decided to start a theater festival after falling on hard times in the 1960s.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesWe came really close to that plan tanking.On July 18, I received an email from the theater informing me that all performances had been canceled because of a coronavirus outbreak. The shows would “return in full swing on Tuesday, July 26” — just two days before our arrival. Admittedly, my stress level was nothing compared to what those on the ground were experiencing.“I’m glad I’m not in charge,” Brandt said when I caught up with her in Creede. “Especially this summer.”Ironically, the very thing that has kept Creede Rep going for decades also helped fuel the Covid surge: “This company is founded on everybody working together,” Kate Berry, the associate artistic director, said. “This becomes your community and your friendship circle.”Berry and the producing artistic director, John DiAntonio, looked visibly weary when I met with them, maybe because they have had to solve one problem after another for months on end. Since some of the staff members live in shared accommodations, for example, isolating during the latest crisis was difficult. “The community really stepped up to help us in that regard,” DiAntonio said. “People went to guest rooms, apartment garage, hotels in South Fork,” he continued, referring to a town 25 minutes away. “Some of these were favors, but some were just additional expenses.”Anne F. Butler, left, with her dog Hercules, and Christy Brandt. The two actresses have been performing with the company for decades.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesEventually the shows resumed, with a mask requirement for audience members. (Keep in mind that Creede draws many visitors from states like Texas and Oklahoma, where mandates don’t go over well.) Brandt said that one night, before “Steel Magnolias,” a couple of women had yelled, in her recollection, “We wouldn’t have come to this stupid theater if we’d known we were going to have to wear a mask!” They ended up staying for the show, but not before screaming out choice expletives in the restroom, making sure everybody heard.But they have been in the minority. DiAntonio pointed out that most audience members had gone along. “These are folks that maybe haven’t worn a mask much in the last year, or ever,” he said, “but they’re like, ‘I’ve seen a show every year for 35 years, you bet I’m going to see one with my family this trip, and I’ll wear a mask if I have to.”Lavour Addison in “Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood.”Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesThe biggest casualty was Marco Ramirez’s boxing drama “The Royale,” which was supposed to hold its technical rehearsals during the temporary shutdown. Things became so logistically complicated that the show had to be pushed to the 2023 season.At least I was able to catch five performances during my three-night stay, a minimarathon not uncommon among Creede Rep’s patrons.John Gress, 59, and Gwen Farnsworth, 56, from Boulder, Colo., were in town in 2017 to hike the nearby San Luis Peak, when they stumbled onto an unexpected sight. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, there’s a theater here. Let’s go!’” Farnsworth said. “And the play was so amazing. I immediately wanted to come back.” The couple’s return was delayed by the pandemic, but the pair made up for it by seeing four shows in a weekend; they even brought along Farnsworth’s 87-year-old mother and a 91-year-old friend.After a temporary shutdown because of a Covid-19 outbreak, the shows resumed with a mask requirement for audience members, which has mostly gone over well.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesPacking one’s schedule is a great reminder of the joys of rep theater. I watched Brandt play half of a genteel couple battling their neighbors in the Karen Zacarías comedy “Native Gardens” at a matinee, then smoothly switch to the witty Clairee from “Steel Magnolias” that evening. Butler was also excellent as the perpetually cranky Ouiser in that show, but she truly killed as Prince John in Ken Ludwig’s rambunctious “Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood,” in which she delivered one flamboyant comic flourish after another.In other signs of a halting return to normal, Creede Rep’s Headwaters New Play Festival is back in person (Aug. 26-28), and the hope is that the actors in the Young Audience Outreach program will perform unmasked, unlike last year. (The latter initiative is expected to bring an original bilingual musical to rural and historically neglected schools in at least seven states.)Where the old normal is not welcome anymore, however, is in some work practices. Like many other companies, Creede Rep is reconsidering the way it makes theater: The company now has a free child care program, and it is trying to shrink the workweek — a challenge in the demanding rep format, but one dear to DiAntonio.“Our vision statement is ‘CRT will be a haven for artistic excellence, belonging and intrinsic joy,’” he said. “It’s that mountain up there in the distance that we’re working toward.” More

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    At Salzburg Festival, Directing Slow and Fast

    Thorsten Lensing takes years between shows; Ewelina Marciniak puts on several each season. Both theater makers are presenting new work in Austria.SALZBURG, Austria — The German director Thorsten Lensing has astonished and provoked for the past three decades, but he feels like one of theater’s best-kept secrets.In the fast-paced world of German theater, where hundreds of playhouses churn out productions by the dozen, Lensing develops his works gradually and in intensive collaboration with his actors and artistic team. His deliberate method makes him a rare practitioner of what might be called slow theater. A new Lensing staging is a big deal — and worth waiting for.“Crazy for Consolation,” which premiered this month at the Salzburg Festival, is only Lensing’s 16th production in 28 years. The previous one, in 2018, was a towering adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s epic novel “Infinite Jest”; before that he tackled works by Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and William Carlos Williams.Like “Infinite Jest,” “Crazy for Consolation” unfolds on a mostly empty stage. The four actors, all Lensing regulars, perform in front of, and on top of, a massive steel roller. With minimal props (a swinging rope, fizzing cans of beer, hundreds of walnuts raining down onto the stage), the play sketches a series of vignettes centered on the siblings Charlotte (Ursina Lardi) and Felix (Devid Striesow), who are orphaned at an early age and go through life processing (or failing to process) their trauma and grief.In the opening scene, sister and brother, aged 10 and 11, play their favorite game at the beach: pretending to be their dead parents. They kiss, lather each other with sun lotion and bark at their (imaginary) children not to swim too far out. A deep-sea diver (Sebastian Blomberg) surfaces and startles the children out of their fantasy world and into even stranger realms where books and dreams come to life. As the play’s narrative becomes increasingly surreal and fragmented, the actors inhabit a variety of roles, not all of them human.The production is full of unpredictable developments and arresting metamorphoses. The adult Felix, incapable of feeling pleasure or pain since his parents’ death, enters into a sexual relationship with an older man (André Jung) who tries to break through Felix’s protective shell. Charlotte, transformed into an octopus, confronts the deep-sea diver with a rancor-filled monologue about life as a cephalopod. What good are her nine brains and three hearts, she asks, when an octopus’s average life span is only four years?Ursina Lardi and Devid Striesow as unhappy siblings in “Crazy for Consolation.”Armin Smailovic/Salzburg FestivalIn this very talky play, Lensing and his actors tackle serious issues with a light touch. Even while examining grief and the craving for human connection, the production lands with ease, modesty and warmth. Throughout, the actors switch fluently between registers, from emotional rawness to slapstick to absurdist comedy, in performances that are closely observed, credible and moving.As a freelance director, Lensing works outside Germany’s subsidized theater system and relies on producing partners. “Crazy for Consolation” has no fewer than eight, including theaters and arts organizations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The show’s next stop, in late September, will be the Sophiensaele, in Berlin.The leisurely pace at which Lensing works is the main exception in the German theater landscape. It’s not unusual for in-demand theater makers to take on heavy workloads — and even the most gifted are likely to stumble from time to time.A contemporary update of“Iphigenia” at Salzburg caps an enormously productive year for the young Polish director Ewelina Marciniak. It’s a co-production with the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, where Marciniak has directed acclaimed adaptations of recent Polish novels, including the Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s “The Books of Jacob.” This year, Marciniak’s feminist deconstruction of Schiller’s “The Maid of Orleans” was invited to two of Germany’s most important theater festivals — Theatertreffen, in Berlin, and Radikal Jung, in Munich — and the director made her Deutsches Theater Berlin debut with a cheeky and energetic production of Goethe’s “Werther.”Yet I was disappointed that Marciniak’s Salzburg Festival debut lacked the freshness and verve of her earlier productions. The play, a reworking of Euripides and Goethe by the Polish writer Joanna Bednarczyk, strives to reinterpret the character of Iphigenia, whose father, the Greek king Agamemnon, sacrifices her to appease a vengeful goddess.In constructing her contemporary parable about victimhood, Bednarczyk draws on Soren Kierkegaard, the #MeToo movement and debates around cancel culture. The play’s excruciatingly long first half plays out as a dysfunctional family drama in which Iphigenia is a budding pianist in an intellectual household. She grows up surrounded by hotshots: her father, a professor of ethics who is about to publish his magnum opus; her mother, Clytemnestra, “the best actress in town”; and her uncle, Menelaus, “the best lawyer in town.” Her parents are dismissive of her boyfriend, the athletic Achilles, who is all muscle and no brains. And her aunt, Helen, is such a nymphomaniac that she needs to periodically be kept in isolation.“Iphigenia,” directed by Ewelina Marciniak. Krafft Angerer/Salzburger FestivalEarly in the production, Bednarczyk subjects us to a lengthy lecture drawn from Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” to establish the family’s intellectual credentials (and perhaps her own) and set up the play’s moral stakes. Shortly after, Agamemnon’s high-minded ethical ideas and his research into the psychology of perpetrators and victims are put to the test after Iphigenia makes a bombshell revelation: For the past decade, her uncle has been molesting her. Agamemnon insists on her silence to save face and protect his career.Agamemnon’s willingness to sweep the abuse under the rug should outrage, but Bednarczyk’s depiction of him as a spineless pseudo-intellectual makes it difficult to feel even a tremor of indignation. The father’s subsequent confrontation with Menelaus is so stilted and jumbled that it nearly derails the play. Only the scene where Clytemnestra counsels her daughter to grit her teeth and bear it is persuasive and sobering.The eight-person cast, drawn largely from the Thalia’s acting ensemble, is uniformly committed, but there’s only so much they can do with such weak dramatic material. The production’s final act, set 20 years later on an island where Iphigenia has fled, is full of poetic monologues and imagery, including a piano on fire in the middle of an onstage pool, but after slogging through the twisted soap opera of the first half, it’s difficult to focus on these scenes that seem to belong to a different production entirely.Part of what makes this “Iphigenia” so awkwardly unconvincing is that moral psychology is a poor substitute for the fury of the gods and the vicissitudes of fate. (Similar problems plagued Maja Zade’s recent version of “Oedipus” at the Schaubühne Berlin.) There have been more successful recent attempts to update the saga of the house of Atreus, the calamity-stricken clan at the center of “Iphigenia,” including a campy sitcom version, by Christopher Rüping, and Robert Icke’s straight-faced rewrite. For all their differences, though, neither of those stagings fully rejected the ancient Greek belief in deities who meddled in human affairs.It’s understandable that emerging directors like Marciniak want to make a splash by staging as many productions as they can each season, but maybe slowing down isn’t the worst thing in the world.Verrückt nach Trost. Directed by Thorsten Lensing. Sept. 30 through Oct. 9 at Sophiensaele Berlin.Iphigenia. Directed by Ewelina Marciniak. Salzburg Festival until Aug. 28; Sept. 22-25 at Thalia Theater Hamburg. More

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    With ‘As You Like It,’ Public Works Aims for a Reflection of Humanity

    The musical adaptation, part of Free Shakespeare in the Park, is a remounting of an acclaimed production that had a short run in 2017.Eric Pierre, a pastor who teaches fifth-grade English in the Bronx, has taken up an additional title this summer: royal duke. At least that’s the role he’s playing onstage in the Public Works production of “As You Like It.”He’s one of dozens of community members, ages 7 to 81 and from all five boroughs, performing alongside several professional actors in the 90-minute musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy. The show, now in previews, is set to open on Tuesday at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.Pierre plays the cruel Duke Frederick, who banishes his brother, among others, to the Forest of Arden in this tale of camouflage, love and self discovery.The role was not a natural fit for Pierre, who described the difficulty of channeling his nefarious character and trying to identify the pain associated with his quest for power. “We all have a Duke Fred inside of us,” said Pierre, 49, who, through his Public Works performances, has been able to join Equity, the professional actors’ union.The show’s composer and lyricist Shaina Taub, center, also stars as Jaques.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis production, a remounting of an acclaimed one that ran in 2017, is part of the Public Theater’s Public Works program, which has produced streamlined and musicalized versions of works — like “The Tempest” in 2013 and “Hercules” in 2019 — that feature amateur performers from eight partner groups, including the Fortune Society and Children’s Aid Society. These productions usually have a short run in September after the regular season of Shakespeare in the Park. But this one was scheduled to have a longer run during the summer of 2020, before being delayed by the pandemic. Now, it is finally onstage, through Sept. 11, as Public Works celebrates its 10th anniversary.Laurie Woolery, the director of the show and Public Works, called the diverse experiences and authenticity of the community cast members their secret sauce.“Theater is a reflection of humanity,” Woolery said, “and if we only reflect a portion of humanity, we aren’t doing our job as cultural workers and citizen artists. We need to be speaking to the world that we’re living in — and that includes everybody.”As the musical begins, families of twos and threes — made up of the community performers — walk on a stage filled with cherry blossom trees and a bridge illuminated by a violet-purple light. Shaina Taub, the show’s composer and lyricist, also appears onstage as an inquisitive yet cynical Jaques who provides a bird’s-eye view and additional context for audience members. As she sings “All the World’s a Stage,” her character contemplates the journeys of the young lovers Orlando and Rosalind (played by Ato Blankson-Wood and Rebecca Naomi Jones, well-known professional actors returning to the roles they played in the 2017 production) to their authentic selves as they shed their disguises.“A process of healing and growth is letting go of all those expectations of the role you’re supposed to play,” Taub said.Ato Blankson-Wood as Orlando, fighting a lion in the Forest of Arden.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe musical drives home themes of love and optimism, a message especially important amid social division, disease and unrest, Taub said.“Still, we’re going to get together and sing and dance on the stage of the Delacorte,” she added. “Still, we’re going to show up every day and tell the story and be kind to each other. It really feels like this beautiful act of resistance.”One of the other community performers, Lori Brown-Niang, who has also obtained an Equity card, has built a second family with Public Works over the last decade. She said she remembered feeling relieved when women from Domestic Workers United, a partner organization that uplifts and mobilizes domestic workers of color, watched over her young son, JonPaul Niang, as she rehearsed her speaking roles. In other instances, her son, whom she described as a “good mover,” worked with older cast members on the dance moves and continued rehearsals in their Bronx backyard.“Are we doing this?” Brown-Niang recalled having asked her son. “Yes, Mommy, we have to get used to singing and dancing outside.”In “As You Like It,” Brown-Niang and her son, now an 18-year-old Hostos Community College sophomore, are working together as puppeteers steering the head and front leg of a lion who challenges Orlando in the Forest of Arden.“It’s been a blessing to be able to raise my son, as a single mother, in this community,” she said.Nestor Eversley joined Public Works this year as a member of the Fortune Society, a partner organization that helps the formerly incarcerated re-enter society. Eversley, who was incarcerated for 17 years, became interested in the Public Works program after watching its 2019 production of “Hercules” and said he wondered what it would feel like to step onstage. (He admits underestimating the time commitment for rehearsals.)“In the streets, you have to be defensive, watch your back, all that kind of stuff,” Eversley said. “Here, it’s a different world.”In a pristine white suit, Eversley emerges as an older version of Orlando, marrying an older version of Rosalind. The two walk unified, showing off their defiant, timeless love, below a decorative arch.In the final number, the stage is bathed in a rainbow of colors, with cast members swaying while singing “Still I Will Love.” It’s a lively celebration and testament to the power of community strength and devotion.“Hopefully people leave the theater with their hearts a little more open,” Woolery said. More

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    This Season at La MaMa: Dance-Theater and a Puppet Rock Opera

    The experimental theater company’s 2022-23 season will showcase a packed lineup under the theme “Remake a World.”For its 61st season, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club will present more than 40 productions from eight countries, including the in-person stage debut of a pandemic-era virtual play, several puppetry productions and a dance-theater-music work.“This artistic community is coming out of a time of huge limitation, of deep questioning,” said Mia Yoo, the artistic director of La MaMa. With “Remake a World” as its theme, she said, the season asks, “What are the paradigm shifts that will help us reimagine?”The 2022-23 offerings include the return of the acclaimed 2021 large-scale puppet production “Lunch With Sonia” (March 16-26), which Laura Collins-Hughes, a New York Times theater critic, called “achingly beautiful”; the U.S. premiere of “Radio 477!” (March 9-19), a Yara Arts Group production inspired by songs by the Ukrainian composer Yuliy Meitus and adapted from the 1979 revue “Hello, This is Radio 477!”; and “Last Gasp: Recalibration” (Oct. 13-30), a version of a piece that the theater duo Split Britches created and recorded on Zoom and premiered digitally in 2020, which will have its live stage debut at the Ellen Stewart Theater.Also on the lineup after pandemic postponements is the world premiere of Elizabeth Swados’s musical “The Beautiful Lady” (dates to be announced). Directed by Anne Bogart, the poetry-heavy piece is set in an artists’ cafe during the Russian Revolution.Come winter, John Kelly will present a new dance-theater work, “Underneath the Skin” (Dec. 1-18), about the fantastical life of Samuel Steward, a gay novelist and tattoo artist, combining movement with Steward’s words, tattoo designs and illustrations.The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater will present “The Conference of the Birds” (Feb. 2-19), a rock opera about humans yearning to fly, as part of La MaMa’s February Puppet Slam.“Broken Theater” (April 20-30), by Bobbi Jene Smith — formerly a member of Batsheva Dance Company — considers a performer’s dissolving boundaries when an audience leaves.And the original home of La MaMa, at 74A East Fourth Street, where a multiyear $24 million renovation is underway, will open temporarily on Nov. 10 for a gala. Until the reopening, all La MaMa performances will be staged at 66 East Fourth Street, in the Ellen Stewart Theater and the Downstairs Theater.Attendees are no longer required to show proof of vaccination; masks, however, are required. For more information, visit lamama.org. More

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    Eldjarn and Das Are Stars at Home, but Not at Edinburgh Fringe

    Over 1,000 stand-ups play the Edinburgh Festival Fringe each year, hoping for a big break. Some are already huge names elsewhere.EDINBURGH — When Ari Eldjarn, one of Iceland’s most popular comedians, takes the stage in his native country, it’s usually to sold-out crowds. In the spring, he played 15 dates in a 1,000-capacity auditorium in Reykjavik. The total audience for the run was equivalent to over 10 percent of the city’s population.Yet at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Eldjarn, 40, has found himself in less celebrated surroundings: the fourth room of the Monkey Barrel Comedy Club. On a recent evening, there were about 50 people in that space for Eldjarn’s daily show, “Saga Class,” with three rows of empty seats at the back. The air conditioning whirred loudly, and the thud of dance music occasionally intruded from another show upstairs.“Can you hear me all right?” Eldjarn asked as he came onstage. “I hear myself really well,” he said, pointing to the venue’s main speaker, which was just feet from his head. “But I have no idea if the people at the back hear anything.” Eldjarn then introduced himself as an Icelandic comedian, getting one of his first laughs of the act. “I love being in Edinburgh,” he added, “because there are actually other comedians here.”Vir Das’s Edinburgh show, “Wanted,” is focused on a stir he caused in India with a monologue that examined the country’s paradoxes and divisions.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesThe Edinburgh Fringe has for decades been an event that stand-up comedians flock to, hoping to make it big. Hannah Gadsby, an Australian comedian, won the festival’s main comedy award in 2017 with “Nanette,” a show that went on to become a Netflix phenomenon the next year; previous nominees for that prize include Eddie Izzard, Bo Burnham and James Acaster. At this year’s Fringe, which runs through Aug. 29, more than 1,300 comedians are performing. Most are little known in Britain, and some have to drum up their own audiences by handing out fliers on the street. Yet among them are a handful of comedians, like Eldjarn, who are actually big stars in their homes countries.Also appearing at this year’s Fringe is Stian Blipp, a Norwegian TV star, and Vir Das, an Indian comedian who has 7.7 million Twitter followers and multiple Netflix specials to his name. In Edinburgh, Das is playing to just over 100 people a day, if his show sells out.After his recent show, Eldjarn discovered that audience members had left him just over £20, or about $24, in a tip bucket by the door. He then walked across the street to spend the money on burgers for himself and one of his daughters.“This is definitely like starting over again,” Eldjarn said. In Iceland, he could “just go confidently onstage, make stuff up and people will laugh,” he added. But in Edinburgh, he said, “you really need a lot of good material.”To make his show — which includes jokes about turning 40 and disliking vaping — Eldjarn said he had taken one of his Icelandic sets, deleted anything that would not translate to a British audience, then tried to “salvage as much as possible” as he translated it into English. He was tweaking the routine daily in Edinburgh to try to get bigger laughs, he added.Blipp, the Norwegian comic, said in a telephone interview that he was also nervous about performing in Edinburgh. “I feel like a little boy again,” he said, “like I’m doing a second debut.”Inside the Teviot Row House Student Union, a small Fringe venue for stand-up acts.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesThe Monkey Barrel Comedy Club, where Eldjarn is performing.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesYet not all of the international stars at this year’s fringe were anxious. Das, the Indian comedian, said being in Edinburgh was “very much a holiday, if I’m honest.” He said he was usually on the road so much that it was a luxury to spend a month in Scotland working on his next special and soaking up experiences that might inform future comedy routines.Das, 43, is an old hand at the festival. He first performed in 2011, he said, in a venue “at the back of a pool hall at the back of a video game arcade.” For most of that run, he got only three or four audience members a night, he recalled. Another year, he said he built an audience with the help of a unique take on handing out fliers: He printed the show details on fake bank notes and dropped them around the city.This year, Das was not using any gimmicks to promote his hourlong show, “Wanted,” which was mostly sold out. (It is playing in a 102-capacity basement venue — a far cry from his last tour dates in Mumbai, where he said he played 10 shows at the 1,109-seater Jamshed Bhabha Theater over five days.)“Wanted” is focused on a furor Das caused in India last year, after he posted a monologue online called “Two Indias” in which he examined the country’s paradoxes and divisions. Das said the monologue, which had been performed at a show in Washington, was a way of showing his love for India and calling for social unity, but some accused him of defaming the nation. A spokesman for the governing Bharatiya Janata Party filed an official complaint (Das said in his show that the police had decided not to take it forward, and had dismissed other complaints) and a prominent Bollywood actress accused Das on social media of engaging in “soft terrorism,” a comment widely picked up on Indian news media. In his Edinburgh show, Das said, “I remember thinking, ‘This is so insulting to actual terrorists.’”Das said he used to adjust his material for Edinburgh audiences, but does not do that anymore. Many in the audience were British Indians, who came to his show to hear what India was like today, Das said, whereas Western audiences wanted to learn something new about Indian life. “Strangely, it’s become more important to tell an authentically Indian story for both the Indian and Western audiences,” Das said.In India, Das plays theaters that hold more than 1,000 spectators. In Edinburgh, he’s performing at a 102-capacity venue.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesAt a recent show, Das walked into the sweaty basement to booming music, as if he were entering an arena. He drew immediate laughs by remarking on the racial mix of the crowd. “I see Indian people,” he said. “I see people sleeping with Indian people,” he added. “I see random locals who thought Vir Das was a German comedian and are now thinking, ‘This isn’t what we thought it’d be.’”Then, he told a few preliminary jokes to give latecomers a chance to arrive before he started his routine. “It takes a while to get British crowds warm, and Indian crowds in,” he explained. (In India, a warm-up act does this before he comes on.)When the show ended, Das posed for a group selfie with audience members outside the venue — a requisite of the star comic the world over. After a gig in India, Das said, he would typically jump in a car to his hotel like any other celebrity. But here, he simply walked off, carrying a backpack. Barely anyone gave him a second glance. More

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    Kate Berlant Can’t Hide Any Longer

    The experimental comic is known for freewheeling sets. Then Bo Burnham asked, “What if you actually tried to make something?” The transition has been hard.As soon as Kate Berlant walked offstage at the Elysian Theater in Los Angeles in May, she started spiraling. After months of workshop performances, her new solo show felt like a mess. The comic Tim Heidecker came backstage and told her he loved it. She didn’t look like she believed him.Over the next few minutes, Berlant, 35, speculated about what went wrong. Lack of focus? Not funny enough? Her sensibility not coming through? Her director, the comic Bo Burnham, had been emphasizing the same point: clarity, structure, clarity, structure. “I operate more with fragments,” she said, before her expressive face flattened: “I just don’t know what the show is.”Such anxiety is a normal part of the artistic process, but perhaps especially so for Berlant, whose show, titled “Kate,” is now in previews at the Connelly Theater in New York. After more than 15 years of improvisational, experimental stand-up, this is a departure: a play with a beginning, middle and end that tells a satirically formulaic story of a starry-eyed actress who moves to New York to make it big. This is real theater stuff, with props and multimedia and even a plot in which personal secrets are revealed.You may not know her name, but Berlant is influential in comedy circles, and her digressive style stands for everything that a scripted autobiographical play doesn’t. And she is having trouble wrapping her head around it. “It would be funny if this show is so bad,” Berlant said three days earlier in her Silver Lake apartment, her eyes lighting up, head swiveling, curls swinging, before pivoting into a parody of her rationalizing the flop. In the overly enunciated voice of the pretentious intellectual she had perfected in her stand-up, she said with a dismissive flip of her hand: “I don’t participate in the economy of distinction.” Then she cackled.In more than two decades as a critic of live performance, only a handful of times have I stumbled upon an artist so radically different, so thrillingly alien, that it scrambled my sense of the possible. Kate Berlant was one. It was at a sparsely attended stand-up show in 2013. Following a couple of setup-and-punchline craftsmen, her entrance felt less like the next act than an interruption. The first thing that stood out was her singularly silly physicality, herky-jerky, gesticulating clownishly, a parade of buffoonish confidence. Flamboyance baked into every gesture, her hyperarticulate monologues, which could also spiral, delivered stream of consciousness nonsense with the gravity of a religious epiphany.Berlant workshopped the show in Los Angeles, where she lives.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWhat she did was not a performance of comedy so much as a narration of the experience of someone performing comedy. And while her cerebral-minded material had the sound of coherence, the music of a mind at work, its meaning fell apart upon scrutiny, which was part of the joke. Every time she began to tell you about herself, she either changed the subject, contradicted herself or, most often, criticized her own act, as if the commentary track infiltrated the show itself. The result had the ineffability of experimental theater yet the ingratiating gusto of showbiz, full of cross-eyed expressions and flirtations with the audience. Was it a satire of a certain brand of charismatic egghead? Maybe.She made me laugh hard, but it was difficult to figure out why. She resisted categorization, which made me try harder, perhaps an occupational hazard. The more I saw her, including the first time she did a half-hour set, I started noticing common themes: The performance in everyday life, the space between reality and artifice, confession and disguise. Even though she had no special or show, I wrote a column arguing that her elusiveness went against the grain of the dominant culture of prestige stand-up. Berlant seemed to be making a mockery of confessional comedy, emphasizing the artifice of her own performance, talking about herself but revealing nothing. Its title was “Keeping It Fake.”In fact, Berlant’s comedy grew organically, a product of studying experimental performance at New York University, improvising at open mics at night and bringing the academic language from one into the other. “I started taking these big ideas but abandoning them midsentence,” she told me. And when people laughed, she kept doing it.Offstage, warm and eager to joke, she really does speak with a certain academic cocktail-party flair. The more time spent with her, the less her stand-up seems like a character or a parody than a heightened version of herself. She says she might have been influenced by the language of the internet or her dad, an artist known for his mixed-media collages, but quickly contradicts herself: “It wasn’t a decision. It just happened.”Upon meeting a decade later, she recalled my review with a shudder. “It was the first time I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what I’m doing,’” she said, before explaining: “Stand-up is a person up there baring all, a direct channel to who I am. Authenticity. What I’m doing is devising this persona that’s hard to pin down. Resisting legibility.”Her comedy reflects her background studying experimental performance at New York University by day and performing at open mics by night. Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAvoiding the legible (not to mention listening to critics) can be risky. Over the next few years, Berlant’s reputation grew; she became especially beloved in comedy circles though never quite found a breakout vehicle. She did an episode of Netflix’s comedy show “The Characters,” made sketch series with her friend and frequent collaborator, John Early, and got cast in cameo roles in movies by Boots Riley and Quentin Tarantino.She became a cult comic, both in the sense of the level of her popularity, but also the intensity of her fans. Many younger comics seemed to borrow her mannerisms and style. One night in 2018, after seeing a bunch of comics doing that flamboyant Berlant-style narration, I wondered on Twitter about her impact, and Bo Burnham responded by calling her the “most influential/imitated comedian of a generation,” saying that even he “slipped into stealing Kate’s vibes without trying.”The Great ReadMore fascinating tales you can’t help reading all the way to the end.Elsie Eiler is the sole resident of Monowi, Neb., where she operates a tavern that serves as one of the last gathering places for the remaining residents of the county. What will happen once she’s gone?TikTok is flooded with health misinformation. Meet the medical experts fighting bogus science, one “stitch” at a time.Viewers of the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building” know the Upper West Side apartment building as the Arconia. But it has a name — and a dramatic story — all its own.But her act could be rarefied. The comic Jacqueline Novak, a friend, recalls going to the Stand comedy club and watching Berlant’s act bomb but impress the club comic Rich Vos, who was hosting the show. “Rich is laughing and looking around at me with delight, astonishment and wonder,” Novak said. “He gets up there and says he’s never met her before, then scolds the crowd and says, ‘She’s a star.’”Another time, a show-business manager called Berlant, who grew up in Los Angeles with dreams of movie stardom, and said, “Have you ever thought of being more normal and doing jokes?” She didn’t know how to respond.Asked if she would be happy as an experimental artist, a niche star, she adopted the glamorous hard-boiled voice of the Hollywood studio era: “I want to be on billboards, baby.”She had a running joke with Early that her greatest fear was a documentary in which more famous people talk about how influential she is. She was starting to feel trapped by her act. And her confidence had faded after she shot a special in 2019, filmed in black and white by Burnham and produced by Jerrod Carmichael, that was shelved. (FX just announced it will air in the fall.)In the pandemic, Berlant stopped performing for the longest stretch of her career. She filmed the series reboot of “A League of Their Own” and started a podcast with Novak. But she felt the pull of stand-up and in December returned to the stage. Burnham attended the show and afterward administered some tough love. “He said, ‘This is great and you could do that forever, but what if you actually tried to make something?’” she said he told her.Berlant, third from left, in the new series “A League of Their Own.”Anne Marie Fox/Amazon PrimeThe comic, playing a character called Kate, tries to cry on cue in her new stage show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis comment stung. But Burnham — coming off the success of “Inside,” an acclaimed special that leveraged themes he had worked on for years in an ambitious new form — pushed her out of her comfort zone to craft something structured, narrative-driven, a little less elusive. “Story,” she said, “is not where I live.” (Burnham turned down interview requests.)What she came up with centered on a struggling, self-involved actress, Kate, putting on an autobiographical solo show, a vanity project. The character is trying to mine her personal pain for entertainment. Burnham and Berlant started watching solo shows and working with those tropes. At first, she was making fun of this form and imagining the unraveling of her show with a multitude of technical problems, including fights with a production guy rooted in real issues she once had.Like her previous work, it’s about the embarrassment of performing. But she isn’t narrating a character so much as playing one and digging into her own insecurities to do so. “I am realizing there is a larger joke about my anxiety about not having anything to say,” she said. “I don’t have anything to say. It’s the semiotics of theater without the content.”Since I saw her performance three months ago, she has added several monologues in which she breaks character and talks directly to the audience as she criticizes and apologizes for her own show. It more closely resembled her old standup but also the spiraling that she did in May. “I’ve allowed myself to have moments in my familiar language,” she said in July. “It needs to be fun for me.”She also added a scene about her character’s childhood trauma that clarified the central challenge that repeats itself in the show several times: her inability to cry on cue. After failing to do so in a high-stakes audition, she ends up trying to cry in a small theater show, like, well, the one Berlant is doing now. If that sounds as meta as a Charlie Kaufman script, she did watch “Adaptation” on the flight back from London, where she performed the show to sold-out crowds. The part in “Adaptation” that stood out to her was the advice from a screenwriting guru: “Wow them in the end and you got a hit.”The climax of Berlant’s show — her trying to cry for a camera on command one last time and telling the crowd out of desperation that no one is leaving until she does — had always played well. But the structure has been streamlined to more clearly build up to it. She fails to cry, again and again and again, a close-up on her face projected on the wall showcases her clownish expressions. It’s oddly suspenseful, a sequence that builds like a joke but isn’t merely played for laughs. Even though this is a moment marked by artifice and absurdity, Berlant really commits to the emotional performance in a way that’s different from anything she’s done before.Crying can be something of a trick for an actor. But the way it operates in this show now is also more fundamental. “I’m realizing that this has to change her,” Berlant told me, speaking of the character. The change is not in finding a trauma, but in her relationship to the show she is putting on. She discovers that making the audience happy, the audience in the room, is enough.Scenes in which she criticizes and apologizes for the show have been added to “Kate.” As she explained, “It needs to be fun for me.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“For me, Kate Berlant,” she said, shifting to talking about herself, “to have a show in New York that works and people like, that is enough.”In an East Village coffee shop a few days before previews start, Berlant sounded more confident than ever, assured of the intent of her show if still uneasy, especially about finding ways to stay present and alive as she says the same lines over and over. In the Connelly Theater, the show now cleverly introduces itself like a parody of a pretentious art installation, with a lobby decked out in comically self-serious photos of Berlant, including several paragraphs of a mission statement that gives cult-leader vibes. In the theater, a vast video screen shows a film that positions her in a long line of great acting gurus (Meisner, Strasberg, Berlant) after lovingly scrolling through her IMDb page. You can sense the slickly ironic Burnham touch in the framing of the play.Berlant said the show had the silly comedy of her standup but was more emotional, adding that audience members have told her they’ve cried watching her try to.As much as this new show is about making something with a clear narrative, she still clings to the power of obliqueness. “This is the question I’m still facing: How much clarity does there need to be?” she said. “My character is doing a vanity project. It’s convoluted and half-baked. Does it really matter how clear it is?”The transition from comic to scripted actor is tricky, especially for an improvisational artist who has always poked fun at and reveled in the embarrassment of being a performer. She describes this is as being much more vulnerable. “I created a style of performing to avoid work,” she said of her comedy career, in what may or may not be a joke. “But there’s effort all over this show.”She paused dramatically, with just enough self-consciousness to wink at her own actorly flourish: “I can’t hide.” More