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    Cecily Strong to Make New York Theater Debut at the Shed

    The “S.N.L.” star steps into a role originated by Lily Tomlin, and Claudia Rankine’s “Help” gets its pandemic-delayed world premiere in the new Shed season.Cecily Strong has twice been nominated for an Emmy Award for her standout “Saturday Night Live” impressions that have included Melania Trump, Ariana Grande and Lin-Manuel Miranda.Now she will be playing 12 characters, with no costume changes or props, in her New York theatrical debut — in a role made famous by Lily Tomlin.Strong, who recently won acclaim for her portrayal of a musical-loving backpacker in the Apple TV+ comedy “Schmigadoon!,” will star in a new production at the Shed of Jane Wagner’s one-woman comedy “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” The production, starting Dec. 21, will be the show’s first New York staging in two decades. It will run through Feb. 6, 2022; Leigh Silverman (“The Lifespan of a Fact,” “Violet”) will direct.In a review of the original 1985 Broadway production, The New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote that the second act — a compressed history of the feminist movement — was “the most genuinely subversive comedy to be produced on Broadway in years,” and praised Tomlin’s “chameleon-like ability to inhabit a wide range of personalities.” The show was adapted into a film, also starring Tomlin, in 1991.The Shed’s 2021-22 season also includes several postponed commissions from 2020, including the world premiere of the author and poet Claudia Rankine’s “Help,” an examination of white male privilege partly based on questions Rankine, who is Black, asked her white male seatmates on airplanes for a New York Times Magazine article. Taibi Magar will direct the production (Mar. 15-Apr. 10, 2022), which follows a middle-aged Black female air traveler on a plane alongside a dozen or so white male characters. Roslyn Ruff (“Fairview”), who starred in two preview performances of the show, is no longer available, so the role will be recast in the coming weeks, said Alex Poots, the artistic director and chief executive of the Shed, at Hudson Yards.“It’s a terrific and shattering piece that I think could not be more relevant now,” he said of the show, which had just two performances before theaters shut down on March 12, 2020.Other highlights of the season include the Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno’s exhibition “Particular Matter(s),” a large-scale sensory experience that explores climate change and climate inequity (Feb. 9-April 17, 2022); and a new work by the visual artist, filmmaker and MacArthur fellow Wu Tsang (Apr. 15-17, 2022). Anonymous Club, the creative studio led by the fashion designer Shayne Oliver, will also host three nights of events, titled “Headless: The Glass Ceiling,” with a theme of over-the-top extravagance, or “headlessness,” during New York Fashion Week (Feb. 10-12, 2022).Proof of vaccination will be required for everyone 12 and older for all performances, and everyone age 2 and older must wear a mask.A full season lineup is available at TheShed.org. More

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    Gavin Creel Lets His Imagination Run Wild With Gay Stories and House Music

    The actor, singer and songwriter, whose new show is inspired by the Met, talks about finding clarity with Yung Pueblo and the spiritual aspects of Grape-Nuts.Gavin Creel was about to come clean, despite his agent’s worry that it might make him sound like an idiot: Until January 2019, after living in New York for 20 years, he had never set foot inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.“But I’m not an idiot, and it is also the truth,” countered Creel, who won a Tony Award for “Hello, Dolly!” on Broadway and an Olivier for “The Book of Mormon” on London’s West End.That truth is the basis for “Walk on Through,” a program of 16 original songs inspired by hours of meandering through the museum on a quest for art that spoke to him, and the opener of the MetLiveArts season on Oct. 25.In only a few visits, Creel discovered that color, light, sex and story captivated him. “If it doesn’t have something or all of those things, I usually just kind of walk by,” he said. “I started finding myself having a dialogue of, ‘What do you have to say to me, Edward Hopper? What do you have to say to me, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux or Jules Breton or Jan Steen?’”“It’s basically letting myself have a relationship with them and remembering that I don’t have to react in a certain way,” he said of the preconceptions about class, wealth and education that had kept him away. “Maybe that sounds obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me.”Creel had just attended the opening of “Six” on Broadway and momentarily questioned where or even if he might fit into the post-Covid-19 landscape before suddenly changing tack. “If you want to know what I’m doing, I will be doing a summer workshop of this piece, and then I will be workshopping it off Broadway and then bringing it to Broadway spring of 2023,” he said with the conviction of someone who wills their aspirations into existence. “That’s literally what this is about. It’s like, ‘Have the courage to dream.’”In a video interview from his Upper West Side apartment, Creel spoke about a few of the things instrumental in turning those dreams into reality, including Yung Pueblo’s books, Jacob Collier’s music and the morning pages with which he begins each day. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Clarity & Connection” by Yung Pueblo Jo Lampert, who’s an amazing singer, exposed me to “Inward,” which was Yung Pueblo’s first book. It’s all about meditative thinking and affirmation and doing the healing. His big thing — it’s not a new thought, but the way he says it is so powerful — is to change the world, you have to change yourself. “Clarity & Connection” is his new book, and I found it even more helpful because it’s a lot about coming into, sustaining and going out of a relationship. He says: “I took fear by the hand. I acknowledged its existence. And then I thanked it for showing me that my happiness does not lie within its walls.” And I was like, “OK, Yung Pueblo, you better break it down.”2. The “Don’t Think. Just Eat.” menu at Sugarfish It is the greatest sushi I have ever had. It’s not cheap, but they bring the most tender, flavorful, beautifully made, artfully presented fresh fish and warm rice. It’s annoying because they don’t take reservations. One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that when they opened back up, there was never a line. And now I go and they have an hour and 45-minute wait, and I’m like, “All right, put me on the list.” It’s worth the wait.3. Grape-Nuts Every day. It’s almost spiritual for me. During the pandemic, they stopped making them. There was a manufacturing shortage. I panicked. So I got on Amazon, and I bought 12 boxes of Grape-Nuts. I spent a ridiculous amount of money. It’s simplicity. It’s substance.4. “Sex and the City” I’ve done this like three times before, but I recently watched “Sex and the City” from start to finish. Something about this time hit me in such a powerful way. I think it’s because I’m 45. I’m in the middle of a midlife crisis. I don’t call it a crisis — it’s like a midlife awakening — but I’m here. There’s some complicated stuff in there that’s dated, that they absolutely would not do now. But what they say about love and owning sex positivity and owning emotion — and frankly communicate it in a way that men can never do — I just found so empowering.5. Jacob Collier’s “Djesse Vol. 3” I offered a class to the graduating class of 2020 at the University of Michigan, which is my alma mater, and in the beginning, I asked them, “What are you listening to?” A bunch of them were listening to Jacob Collier, who I’d never heard of. The music he writes is not instantly palatable in a lot of ways. His mind has a million words, a million things. But hearing him really gave me permission to allow any instinct to exist.6. Morning Pages I did “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity” this year with my friends Benj Pasek, who wrote “Dear Evan Hansen” and “The Greatest Showman,” and Shoshana Bean, who is a brilliant songwriter and actress. The morning pages are what Julia Cameron says you must do. I do it every day, three pages, longhand, stream-of-consciousness. It’s like the brain dump in the morning.7. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s “Ugolino and His Sons” at The Met Sculptors to me are like ballet dancers are to dance. It’s like, “How do you do that? That’s magic.” One of the sons’ hands is resting, and it is completely relaxed yet it is solid marble. There’s sexuality and sensuality in the smoothness of their skin, their musculature, the veining in their arms, the panic as [another son] is pressing his father’s leg. There’s so much emotion in the stone.8. Thé Noir 29 by Le Labo Every time I write, I try to light a candle and have it sitting next to me, not just for the energy of an element but because the smell helps me get into a space of magic or wonder. I was in Nordstrom’s and I smelled this Thé Noir, and it was so specific and beautiful to me. It’s really expensive for a little water to spray on your skin. But this is more a statement to treat myself to something that I wouldn’t normally buy and to carry with me something that can set my brain free.9. “Beat Like This” by Bleu Clair and OOTORO I love listening to electronica and dance music in my free time because it makes my imagination go in a million directions. I was doing my workout in the morning, listening to the house channel on Apple Music, and this song came on. And it is the best beat drop I have ever heard. It accelerates up to where you think it’s going to drop in, which is an amazing thing for the dance floor, but it comes in four beats later. If you listen with headphones on to this track, it’s like the fattest, thickest — it almost sucks the sound out of your ears. It is so hot.10. Bob Smith’s “Selfish & Perverse” Bob Smith, I’m proud to say, was a friend of mine. He was the first out gay comic on “The Tonight Show.” He fought ALS for more than 10 years and was so courageous and kept his sense of humor and wrote books when he lost the ability to talk and use his hands. This was his first novel, about this gay guy who goes to Alaska after a breakup to study salmon fishing because he’s going to write a TV show. And while he’s there, the really hot guy who’s going to play the lead in the show comes up, and it’s so sexy. It was the first time I felt like I read a novel that was for me because I always have to code switch and imagine what love would look like based on the movies that I watch. It’s so rare that our stories are told, given time, given money. And I say it’s imperative that gay stories are told, and told well. More

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    Neil LaBute Seeks ‘The Answer to Everything’ in Germany

    The American playwright’s first new play since he parted ways with his theater in 2018 during the #MeToo movement finds a stage far from New York.AUGSBURG, Germany — If all you know about Neil LaBute’s new play “The Answer to Everything” is that it’s an artistic response to #MeToo and “cancel culture,” you might brace yourself for an upsetting evening at the theater.A tightly coiled chamber piece about three women who plot vengeance on the men who’ve wronged them, “The Answer to Everything” is the prolific and polarizing playwright’s first full-length stage work since “How to Fight Loneliness” in 2017. Since then, he’s fallen from grace in the rarefied world of New York theater.LaBute has long been a diagnostician of dark, uncomfortable aspects of human relationships. A number of his best-known plays (several of which he’s adapted and directed for the screen, including “In the Company of Men,”) are unsettling examinations of cruelty that can leave viewers wondering whether LaBute supports or condemns his unsavory characters. Cynicism, viciousness and mercilessness — especially toward his female characters — have been some of the tools of his trade.In recent years, these signature themes and attitudes have come under scrutiny. In 2018, one of New York leading nonprofit theaters, MCC Theater, abruptly ended its 15-year relationship with LaBute. No specific reason was given for the break, but the theater’s executive director told The New York Times, “We’re committed to creating and maintaining a respectful and professional work environment for everyone we work with.” The internet was abuzz with speculation that LaBute’s obsessive depictions of toxic gender dynamics had put him out of step with the contemporary cultural climate.This background helps explain why “The Answer to Everything,” in which female retribution looms large, isn’t premiering at any of the New York theaters where LaBute has worked over the past three decades, but instead in Augsburg, a southern German city that is famous for being the birthplace of Bertolt Brecht.It is unusual, to say the least, for a new play by a leading American playwright to debut abroad and in translation. In an email, LaBute explained why he chose a German theater to premiere his latest work.“There are so many brave artists outside the United States who are willing to table material that might be less politically correct or audience-friendly,” he wrote, “and those are the places that I want to be.”Any fears that LaBute’s new work would be a pity party after his exile from MCC, an evening validating misogyny or an anti-#MeToo manifesto evaporated once the curtain went up on Susanne Maier-Staufen’s sleek hotel set. Not only does the play take its female protagonists seriously, it also offers zero apology for entitled (and crude) male behavior.In the play, the nervous and often chatty banter between the three heroines circles a vengeful pact that binds them to one another.Jan-Pieter FuhrIt’s difficult to talk about “The Answer to Everything” without giving spoilers, but I’ll do my best. LaBute does a deft job of keeping us in the dark for the first half of the evening, as the nervous and often chatty banter between the three heroines circles a central issue — a vengeful pact that binds them to one another — without naming it. Maik Priebe, the director, knows how to sustain the suspense and tension, which are carefully rendered in Frank Heibert’s German version of the script, although the odd moments of comic relief are mostly lost in translation.LaBute has funneled a wealth of influences and rendered them in his own signature style, with rapid-fire and naturalistic overlapping dialogue. The plot’s themes are redolent of Patricia Highsmith and Hitchcock, two masters of suspense not exactly known for their positive portrayals of women. Look more closely, though, and you find traces of other works about implacable women that have rubbed off on LaBute, from ancient Greek tragedy to films like “Diabolique” and “Drowning by Numbers.”LaBute loves corkscrew-like plots and although “The Answer to Everything” can feel like a 100-minute ticking time bomb, it doesn’t detonate as one might expect. In lieu of wild twists, we get a gradual series of painful revelations. (LaBute is going for something entirely different from the explosive force of Emerald Fennell’s film “Promising Young Woman,” another recent drama of female retribution.)One of the most refreshing things about “The Answer to Everything” is how it avoids moralizing. LaBute does not manipulate his characters or audience, and the tone is far from judgmental. We are not explicitly invited to either applaud or condemn the “answer” that this group has settled on in order to remove predatory men from their lives. Instead, we’re asked to examine the spectrum of gray between justice and revenge.There is one critical plot twist that flies in the face of the call to “believe all women,” which I could see making American audiences squirm if the play makes it stateside (there are no concrete plans yet for a U.S. premiere).An unflinching approach to examining bad behavior is nothing new for LaBute, but here he goes to uncommon lengths to make us understand his protagonists’ motivations and weaknesses. The group portrait is sobering and also less dreadful than you might expect.Sieder plays Carmen, the gang’s no-nonsense ringleader. Jan-Pieter FuhrThe actresses play off one another skillfully, though not always with the nuance the script seems to require. With her mix of sang-froid and simmering rage, Katja Sieder is the most impressive of the bunch as Carmen, who is the gang’s no-nonsense ringleader. Ute Fiedler’s conscience-stricken Cindy equivocates and pleads with pathos-laden urgency. Paige, who is often stuck in the middle of the battle, feels the least fleshed out, both as a character and in Elif Esmen’s interpretation.There were moments when this production felt like something of an out-of-town tryout. Judging by the enthusiastic response from an audience full of teenagers and older adults at the weeknight performance I attended, local theatergoers in Augsburg were eager to embrace the play’s conundrums and ambivalences, even if it meant going home with more questions than answers.The Answer to Everything. Directed by Maik Priebe. Staatstheater Augsburg, through March 12, 2022 More

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    ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at 50: What Was the Buzz?

    It was the spring of 1970, and Yvonne Elliman, an 18-year-old singer and guitarist from Hawaii, had just finished performing at a London nightclub when a breathless young man rushed the stage.“You’re my Mary Magdalene!” a wide-eyed, 22-year-old Andrew Lloyd Webber announced.“I thought he meant the mother of God,” Elliman, now 69, said in a recent phone conversation, explaining that she had been unfamiliar with the biblical story. “He was like, ‘No, no, no, no, it’s not the mother, it’s the whore.’”They had a laugh, and she went on to sing the part in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the seminal rock opera by Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, for the concept album, the first arena tour, the original Broadway production and the feature film.The musical, which opened 50 years ago on Oct. 12, 1971, turned the story of one of history’s most notorious executions into a splashy spectacle. In doing so, it married rock and musical theater, ushering in Broadway’s British invasion of the 1970s and 1980s and paving the way for shows like “Les Misérables” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”But the nearly 90-minute concept album came first in 1970, because, as Lloyd Webber recalled recently to The Telegraph, no producer wanted to put “the worst idea in history” onstage.“We never knew how it was ever going to get staged,” Lloyd Webber, 73, said in a recent phone conversation. “So it wasn’t a collection of rock tracks or something put together. It had to be read to you and you could understand — the dramatic context of the whole thing had to be the recording.”Jeff Fenholt in the Broadway production. The rock opera portrays Jesus as simply a man, who loses his temper, doubts God and gets caught up in his own celebrity.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesThough the album fizzled in England, the rock opera with a full orchestra and gospel choir took off in America, climbing to No. 1 on the Billboard charts by February 1971. A year after its release, the initial album had sold 2.5 million copies in the United States.“We were staggered by the success,” Rice, 76, the show’s lyricist, said in a video call from his home in Buckinghamshire, England. “MCA let us make a single — two unknown guys — with a huge orchestra and a rock section. And with rather a controversial title. And it worked.”A national concert tour followed in 1971, and audiences packed stadiums to hear Elliman (Mary Magdalene), Carl Anderson (Judas) and Jeff Fenholt (Jesus) belt out hits like “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” “Heaven on Their Minds” and “Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say).”“It was crazy,” Elliman said. “I was asked to go to a hospital and put my hands on a girl who’d been in a car accident. I didn’t know what to say — I held her hand and sat with her. But a few weeks later, her parents wrote to me that she got better immediately after me seeing her.”Broadway OpeningAndrew Lloyd Webber was 23 and Tim Rice was 26 when their show opened on Broadway on Oct. 12, 1971, at the Mark Hellinger Theater on 51st Street.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesAt last, they got the green light: Broadway.Tom O’Horgan (“Hair”) was tapped to direct after Lloyd Webber missed a telegram from the director Hal Prince, who had expressed interest. “The one person I’d have loved to have seen do it would have been Hal Prince,” Lloyd Webber said in the interview. “Would it have turned out differently? Would it have been good? I don’t know.”The show, which narrates the last seven days of Jesus’s life through the eyes of one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater on 51st Street to an audience that included Lloyd Webber, 23, and Rice, 26. But in a joint interview with The New York Times later that month, both men practically disowned their director.“Let’s just say that we don’t think this production is the definitive one,” said Lloyd Webber, who in later years would call O’Horgan’s $700,000 staging a “brash and vulgar interpretation” and opening night “probably the worst night of my life.”Reviews were mixed. Dick Brukenfield of The Village Voice praised Lloyd Webber’s “energetic music” but noted that the ocular dazzle — the sets included a large special-effects “chrysalis,” a bridge of bones, and a giant set of dentures — distracted from the story. “It looks like a record that’s been reproduced onstage with visual filler by Tom O’Horgan,” he wrote.The New York Times critic Clive Barnes panned the production, writing that it “rather resembled one’s first sight of the Empire State Building. Not at all uninteresting, but somewhat unsurprising and of minimal artistic value.”Cries of “Blasphemy!”Opening night attracted crowds of leaflet-bearing Christian and Jewish protesters, who regarded what The New York Times writer Guy Flatley called “the strutting, mincing, twitching, grinding, souped‐up ‘Superstar’” as theatrical sacrilege.“Going into the theater it’d be ‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’” said Ben Vereen, now 75, who played Judas.Lloyd Webber added: “I’m not convinced that Robert Stigwood, our producer, might not have actually orchestrated one or two of them. I think it might have had a much rougher ride today than it did then.”Rice and Lloyd Webber were accused of denying the divinity of Christ and making a hero of Judas, who is the unambiguous villain in the New Testament. Jewish leaders were alarmed that the musical made it appear as if Jews were responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion, which they feared would fan antisemitism.“We were criticized for leaving out the Resurrection,” Rice said. “But that was not part of our story because, by then, Judas was dead. And his story was over.”Conservative Christians were also startled by the sexual overtones between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who finds herself falling in love with him.“I’d get evil letters from people who said they wanted to kill Mary so Yvonne could come out again,” Elliman said.But Rice is clear: There was never an affair in the “Superstar” story line.“I would imagine he would have been a very attractive man and yet not somebody who was out looking for a girlfriend,” he said. “He was somebody who was charismatic and powerful. And, and this woman is slightly afraid of that, maybe afraid of what her own feelings are.”Jesus and JudasBen Vereen, center, played Judas. The character was inspired by the Bob Dylan lyric “Did Judas Iscariot have God on his side?” from the song “With God on Our Side.”Bettmann, via Getty ImagesJesus Christ, played by Jeff Fenholt, loses his temper, doubts God and gets a bit caught up in his own celebrity. He’s simply Jesus, the man, with all the attendant problems and failings.“He could feel pain,” Rice said. “If he was only a god, then things like a crucifixion, which is a horrible, horrible torture and death, wouldn’t really be a problem. If he’s a man, whether or not he’s a god, he has to suffer. He has to have doubts.”Those doubts are most on display in the “Gethsemane” rock scream, in which Jesus pleads — with a wailing G above high C — for God to let this cup pass from him.“We wanted to have a rock tenor who contrasted with the voice of Judas,” Lloyd Webber said.Vereen, who was cast as Judas, was nominated for a Tony Award for the role. He said the biblical account of the relationship between Jesus and Judas left him room for interpretation.“Jesus never wrote the book, and Judas never wrote the book,” he said. “All we hear is the hearsay of these men from the disciples in the Gospels.”Inspired by the Bob Dylan lyric “Did Judas Iscariot have God on his side?” from the 1964 song “With God on Our Side,” Rice set out to humanize the New Testament’s unambiguous villain.“I thought, well, ‘This is a very good character, which I can expand from what’s in the Bible, because there isn’t very much in the Bible,’” Rice said. “He was a human being. He had good points and bad points. He had strengths and weaknesses.”At first, Vereen said, he struggled to understand his character’s motivation. Then, after combing through the Bible, he came up with a theory.“Hypothetically speaking, maybe Judas really loved Jesus more than any of the other disciples and wanted him to be the hero that ruled the country,” Vereen said. “And he felt that if he betrayed him, the Israelites would rebel and put Jesus in the role.”A Musical Radio PlayYvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene. She was one of the few actors to not only perform on the concept album, but also to appear in the Broadway show and the movie.Rolls Press/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesBecause the show began as what Lloyd Webber calls a musical radio play, meant to be listened to straight through for 90 minutes without any visuals “on a turntable, in those days,” he said, he had to come up with strategies to keep the listener’s attention.“A lot of that has to do with how you plant themes and how you deal with them,” he said. “My idea for the overture was to introduce every ingredient that I could think of within the musical palette we were going to hear through the rest of the recording.”And then those themes recur, one by one, as when the whole of the overture is mirrored in the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate, or when a song reappears with a twist, like “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” To Mary Magdalene it’s a love song about Jesus; when it returns as a motif sung by Judas as a lament, the lyrics change: “He’s not a king, he’s just the same/As anyone I know/He scares me so.”“Judas understood Jesus, and he obviously was clearly obsessed and loved him,” Lloyd Webber said. “And then at the same time, you’ve got this woman, who was also, if you follow the Bible, clearly very, very much in love with him.”And then, of course, there’s the musical’s oddball track.Herod, Paul Ainsley’s glitter-flecked, platform-sandaled drag queen, commands the son of God to “Prove to me that you’re no fool/walk across my swimming pool” in “King Herod’s Song (Try It and See).” The bouncy ragtime number serves as comic relief after Jesus’s gut-wrenching “Gethsemane” aria.“It’s taking a conventional showbiz number and making it something really very, very nasty,” Lloyd Webber said. “When Herod turns around and says, ‘Get out of my life!,’ that’s a number that’s gone wrong.”Rice said: “Musically, I think it’s a brilliant stroke on Andrew’s part. Just as everything’s getting heavier and heavier and heavier, and suddenly you have a very catchy melody. We wanted people to almost be misled into thinking, ‘Oh, well, you know, maybe it’s going to be a happy ending.’”The Show’s LegacyWith $1.2 million in advance sales, the Broadway show sold out almost every performance for the first six weeks. But the hype quickly dimmed. It ran for 711 performances in all and failed to win a Tony Award despite five nominations, including one for best score.But the musical’s legacy has endured, spawning three Broadway revivals (in 1977, 2000 and 2012), a 2012 Lloyd Webber-produced televised competition series to cast the titular role for a British arena tour, a 2018 televised NBC production that starred John Legend as Jesus and resulted in Emmy wins for Rice and Lloyd Webber — and now the 50th anniversary American tour, interrupted by the pandemic, that resumed performances in Seattle late last month.“51 years since the album came out … blimey!” Rice said.Lloyd Webber, looking back, said, “Everything I was doing was all instinct.” He added, “Yes, I’d had some amateur productions, but we’d never had anything in the professional theater — and I don’t know whether that would have influenced us for good or bad.”He thought for a second.“Without sounding immodest” — he chuckled — “it’s actually rather good.” More

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    How to Play Drunk

    It’s one of the hardest feats of performance. Find the right balance between subtlety and audience expectations.“Acting drunk convincingly is about the hardest thing you can do,” says D.W. Brown, 60, an acting coach based in Santa Monica, Calif., who has worked with both film and stage actors. There are famous film scenes for which actors are said to have drunk alcohol, but getting intoxicated for real is ill advised, especially for stage actors, who perform the same scene day after day. Figure out how to fake it instead, which will require practiced motor-skill impairment and discernible psychological shifts.Alcohol relaxes the body. “Shake it out, get very loose,” Brown says. Sometimes it helps to start by spinning yourself into dizziness and noting what it feels like to stand or walk when your balance is off-kilter. When he’s working with actors on a scene, Brown will often have them start by acting more drunk than what’s required and then dialing it back and trying to conceal it, just as tipsy people do. “You’re trying to fight off that disequilibrium,” Brown says. Be particularly deliberate about actions a sober person would do with ease, like buttoning a shirt or counting out money.Find the right level of intoxication. “Subtlety is a tremendous mark of virtuosity,” Brown says. Still, you have to meet what Brown calls “audience expectation.” If drunkenness is written into a scene, the audience wants to see you sufficiently soused. On an inebriation scale of one to 10, Brown says most scenes call for a seven or eight. In order for the audience to register you as drunk, he says, “you need to slur more than most drunk people would in the wild.” Consider the type of drinker your character is. Brown helps actors choose from his taxonomy of archetypes: aloof drunk, happy drunk, maudlin drunk and angry drunk. Usually, you’ll want to stick to one type unless something in the scene triggers a switch — like, say, a kiss, or the mention of someone’s name. Note that alcohol blunts reactions, creating a kind of emotional sogginess. “For an angry drunk, you want a generalized foulness and misanthropy, as opposed to a pointed rage,” Brown says.A drunken scene might be comical, but that humor should not come from an actor mocking his or her character. Your job is to embody a character, not judge it. “Never think you’re better than anybody you’re playing,” Brown says. More

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    Seth Meyers Muses on Trump’s Weekend Iowa Rally

    The host said that seeing the former president speak was like “watching an open-mic night at the senior center.”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.Far From the Madding CrowdDonald Trump held a rally in Iowa on Saturday, but Seth Meyers found the crowd lacking enthusiasm for the former president’s routine.“And you can tell Trump was waiting for a crowd reaction, too. I mean, look at him — it’s like watching an open-mic night at the senior center,” Meyers said on Monday night.“He treated supporters to an hour and 43 minutes of bitching about the election he lost and how he didn’t lose it, and how he didn’t concede because it was stolen from him, and all that stupid nonsense that runs on a loop in his brain.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Wow, and I was worried about bringing audiences back. I never thought I’d say this, but maybe you should go into lockdown. You know, remote shows might be better for you. You could borrow my attic.” — SETH MEYERS“Also, I love the cutaways to sullen Trump fans just standing there in silence like tourists watching one of those gold statue guys in Times Square: [Imitating tourist] ‘So is he going to, like, do something?’” — SETH MEYERSBut if the Iowa rally wasn’t his crowd, Jimmy Kimmel joked about the protesters on Jan. 6 who were. Kimmel reported that Jonathan Karl’s new Trump tell-all, “Betrayal,” details Trump’s bragging about the size of the crowd that stormed the capitol.“Of course, he was. Is there anything this guy won’t brag about? It’s like bragging about the size of your tumor. It’s not good.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Size matters so much to him. It’s almost as if he’s insecure about something.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Someday he’ll be looking up from the bowels of hell, elbowing his buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, saying, ‘Can you even believe how many people are dancing on my grave right now?’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Mutually Exclusive Edition)“Happy Indigenous Peoples’ or Columbus Day, depending on which cable news channel you watch.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Today was Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Now, of course, some people still call it Columbus Day, and to those people, I say: ‘How you getting back to Jersey? Path train?’” — SETH MEYERS“It’s weird to celebrate these on the same day. It’s like celebrating herpes on Valentine’s Day — they don’t really go together.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He was never here, and yet, we named a whole city in Ohio after him.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Tonight Show” guests Chelsea Handler and Finn Wolfhard faced off in a game of True Confessions.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightPhoebe Bridgers will perform on Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutJonathan Kent, the new Superman, who is the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, shares an unexpected kiss with his friend Jay.John Timms/DC ComicsThe new Superman (son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane) comes out as bisexual in a forthcoming DC comic book. More

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    in Theater

    ‘Is This a Room’ Review: A Transcript Becomes a Thrilling Thriller

    Beneath the dry words of an F.B.I. interview, a new play unearths a world of interior terror.Short of grocery lists, raw transcripts may be the most boring things ever written. With their halts and hesitations and dust bunnies of fuzzy logic, they beg to be thoroughly tidied before use, and disposed of quickly after.Nevertheless, a 65-minute verbatim transcript has now become the basis for one of the thrillingest thrillers ever to hit Broadway. “Is This a Room,” which opened on Monday at the Lyceum Theater, turns the ums and stutters and bizarre non sequiturs of recorded speech into astonishing — and astonishingly emotional — theater.How does mind-numbing banality become heart-racing excitement? In “Is This a Room,” the transcript is only the starting point. More salient is the way the production, conceived and directed by Tina Satter, views the document through an expressionistic lens, allowing Emily Davis, in a heartbreaking performance, to make words into windows on a world of interior terror.Davis plays the ironically named (yet quite real) Reality Winner, who on June 3, 2017, returning from some Saturday chores, finds F.B.I. men waiting outside the barely furnished house she rents in Augusta, Ga. They have come, one of them tells her, “about, uh, possible mishandling of classified information.”“Oh my goodness,” she replies. “Okay.”At first you believe her when she insists she has “no idea” what the agents are referring to. In cutoff denim shorts, a white button-down shirt and yellow high-tops that perfectly replicate what Winner wore that day — the costumes are by Enver Chakartash — she seems like a teenager. She often sounds like one too, with a hiccuppy delivery and an excuse-my-existence upspeak.But she is 25, keeps three guns and, as she later confirms, has top-secret clearance with a local military contractor, where she works as a linguist specializing in Farsi, Dari and Pashto.If those languages of South and Central Asia make you think Winner has mishandled documents about the war in Afghanistan, that’s a red herring — or rather, a pink one; wherever the F.B.I. transcript redacts information as sensitive, as it does when the specific subject of the leak is discussed, the stage lights blink pink for a moment. A scary “Law & Order”-style thunk may also jolt you from your seat.Pink lighting punctuates moments when pieces of the actual F.B.I. transcript have been redacted. Becca Blackwell, left, portrays the third agent alongside Cobbs and Simpson. Davis is at right.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe superb lighting (by Thomas Dunn) and sound (by Lee Kinney and Sanae Yamada) are just two weapons in Satter’s arsenal of disorienting effects. Aiming, as she recently told The New York Times, to imagine what “Reality is feeling second by second,” she avoids naturalism, which would hide those feelings — there’s barely a set — in favor of an almost sculptural abstraction, increasing and abating tension by the shaping and massing of bodies in space.So as the interview zips along, and Winner, a CrossFit aficionado, realizes she has been caught in an action she can barely justify even to herself, we watch as she seems to decompose muscle by muscle. Her hands wring and flop, her hips give way and finally her torso drops perpendicular to the floor so her tears drip down as if from a leaky showerhead.It’s hard not to cry with her, especially when “Is This a Room,” named for a strange question asked by one of the agents, gets you there without gimmicks. It does not present Winner as a lefty firebrand or a noble whistle-blower but as a maddeningly squirmy, fed-up desk jockey.Nor are the agents demonized. Pete Simpson as the smiley one, Will Cobbs as the wary one and Becca Blackwell as a hilariously oblivious “unknown male” all excel at mitigating their implicit menace with varieties of insouciance. Still, their glad-handing and good ol’ boy chivalry barely disguise their own nervousness; they are just as lost in their absurd script as Winner is in hers, whether huddling in a pack as if to man up or getting right in her face with small talk.Yet has small talk ever seemed so big? Though at least half of the transcript finds the men aimlessly — almost flirtatiously — gabbing with Winner about their own CrossFit experiences and pets they have known, eventually they can’t help revealing a subtext too deep and cold for words. That subtext concerns gender, and part of the fear you feel for Winner comes from the unequal distribution of the sexes. She feels it too: When she offers the information that her dog and cat, both female, “don’t like men,” she adds, in a joke that curdles instantly, “Starting to see a trend here.”Davis (with Simpson) delivers a heartbreaking performance as a linguist who received a five-year prison sentence for leaking documents.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIndeed. Winner, who later admitted guilt in a plea bargain, was the first person sentenced under the Espionage Act after President Trump cracked down on leaks upon entering office. According to a Times report, hers was the longest sentence — more than five years — “ever imposed in federal court for an unauthorized release of government information to the media.” And even though she was granted an early release this June for “exemplary behavior,” she is still prohibited from making public statements or appearances.Plays based on transcripts would seem to face a similar prohibition, their verbatim nature acting as a hard brake on editorial indulgence. (Another transcript-based play, “Dana H.,” by Lucas Hnath, opens next week at the Lyceum, where it will run on an alternating schedule with “Is This a Room.”) Yet in practice, such works are sometimes richer than fiction, if not in words then in implication.For me, the implications of “Is This a Room” are clear. The documents Winner leaked to a publication called The Intercept contained proof of Russian interference in the 2016 election, interference President Trump was at pains to deny. However wrong her actions, I find it difficult not to connect the dots between her excessive punishment and Mr. Trump’s many other attempts to shame and silence women, whether Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll or Christine Blasey Ford.Far from mitigating the play’s power, such hindsight deepens it; it’s a story that can’t be spoiled. Even if you saw “Is This a Room” when Satter’s company, Half Straddle, premiered it Off Off Broadway at the Kitchen in January 2019, or at the Vineyard Theater later that year, its drama would not be diminished now.That’s because, to the extent it is a mystery, the question is not what Winner did but what doing it did to her. “Is This a Room” asks whether it’s possible to live in a lawless world without becoming lawless ourselves. Is there a room for that? The answer, I’m afraid, is not in the transcript.Is This a RoomThrough Jan. 16 at the Lyceum Theater, Manhattan; thelyceumplays.com. Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes. More

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    in Theater

    Maryann Plunkett Says Goodbye to Her Lives in Rhinebeck

    She has portrayed three characters over the course of the 12 plays in Richard Nelson’s “Rhinebeck Panorama.” A decade later, it’s time to move on.Talking with the actress Maryann Plunkett recently, it was hard to know, at times, whether she was speaking as herself or Barbara, Mary or Kate — the three characters she has played over the course of Richard Nelson’s “Rhinebeck Panorama” cycle.Plunkett, 68, has, after all, spent a lot of time immersed in Nelson’s created world: She and her husband, Jay O. Sanders, have appeared in each of the Rhinebeck cycle’s 12 plays. And when the final installment, “What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad,” closed on Sunday, she ended an 11-year journey that documented the lives of three families in upstate New York.There were the Apples, who lived through and reminisced about epochal moments in American history, such as Sept. 11, and came together on Zoom during the pandemic lockdown. Then came the Gabriels, whom Nelson visited three times during the 2016 presidential election year. And after that, the Michaels, an artistic family facing the death of its matriarch, a luminary of modern dance.Along with her husband, Jay O. Sanders, Plunkett has performed in each of the 12 Rhinebeck plays.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesPlunkett, right, hugging her fellow cast member Rita Wolf before “What Happened?”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesPlunkett made her Broadway debut in 1983, replacing Carrie Fisher (herself replacing Amanda Plummer) in “Agnes of God,” and opened the musical “Me and My Girl” as the lead three years later. But while she had established herself as a New York treasure, seeing Plunkett in Nelson’s plays, with their profoundly humane intertwining of politics and family relationships, felt revelatory. Over the years, you could see the most subtle emotions float on her face; she would draw the audience in without appearing to be acting at all.Barbara, Nelson said, is “sort of the heart” of the Apple family. “And that’s very much something that comes out of Maryann just naturally,” he added. “She’s an extraordinarily truthful actor, and because of that each time it’s alive, it’s fresh, it’s real. And it’s present, it’s immediate.”With the conclusion of the “Rhinebeck Panorama,” Plunkett is taking on other projects, including a new musical in development and the Kelly Reichardt film “Showing Up,” in which she plays Michelle Williams’s mother.None of that, though, makes leaving her Rhinebeck characters any easier. In a video interview from her home in Manhattan ahead of the last performance, Plunkett talked Apples and pimentos, a certain election night and moving on. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.The “Rhinebeck Panorama,” Plunkett said, “has been the experience of my lifetime.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThere are similarities among the three women you have played in the cycle, yet they are not the same people at all. How did you work it out with Richard Nelson?His writing is so specific, without giving you directions on how to do it, that you would just go: “Oh, only Barbara would say this,” or “Kate would never say this.” So it’s very clear without being obvious that, yeah, this is Barbara’s soul, this is Mary’s soul, this is Kate’s soul. I mean, who gets a chance to do a project like this in their lives? Not a lot of people. And to do it with your husband? What a gift that we have been given.And you never played a couple in the cycle.[laughs] No! We were brothers and sisters, then he was my brother-in-law, and in this one I’m the widow of his ex-wife. It was very easy to play brother and sister because we really like each other, and we’re playful with each other. I suppose in a strange way maybe you don’t want to play lovers or something because people might go “Oh, they have no chemistry together.” That would be really embarrassing.The characters all feel real, and lived in. Did anything particularly resonate with you?My mom died three weeks before our first read-through of the first Apple play. She had dementia, and I spent a lot of time with her. Uncle Benjamin, in the Apple plays, had a stroke. It wasn’t dementia, but it manifested itself in things that are similar to dementia, and I felt a great closeness. The yearning maybe was for my own mother, with the protectiveness and responsibility toward him. So much so that after the final performance of the fourth play I said to John DeVries, who played Benjamin, “I feel like I’m having to say goodbye to my mother again.”“Richard’s characters feel deeply, but they are strong people and they will survive, you know,” Plunkett said. “They will move forward.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThe conclusion of the Gabriels trilogy, “Women of a Certain Age,” takes place on election night 2016. What was it like to do the show, at the Public Theater, that specific evening?After the play they had a reception downstairs, and they had monitors all around the lobby. I was looking at Richard, and I said, “Oh come on, how bad can it be?” And he said, “Don’t look” [laughs]. And this pall fell over the crowd. My son and his girlfriend were there, it was only the second election they had ever voted in. The next night we were, mercifully, off. When we came back on Thursday, the audience was so somber. Things that used to be a laugh line — it was just these sounds of grief.Food has played a central part in the shows. In the Gabriels plays, you even had to cook in real time. Was it hard to focus on your lines?There was a lot to prepare: Slicing a sausage or an onion, and some things had to be in the oven by a certain time. Of course I’m not looking at a timer, it had to be in by a certain line. It’s almost like music: There is a rhythm. This one [“What Happened?”] is the first play where I have nothing to do, preparing or serving the dinner, and during rehearsal it was weird for me. “Can I do this?” “No, you can’t come in and start cooking; this isn’t your home.”Sanders, left, with Plunkett and Nelson. The trio have worked together on the Rhinebeck plays for over a decade.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesWhat has it been like to spend 11 years on this project?It has been the experience of my lifetime. Our son was in high school, and now he’s 27 years old. My mom had just died, my dad had died three and a half years before the first play. It’s crazy. When we did the 9/11 one, “Sweet and Sad,” you could tell when there were people in the audience who had perhaps lost someone because you would feel the grief. And some nights in this one, when I’m talking about Rose’s death and say it was the virus, sometimes you will hear reactions [makes a gasping sound]. And it’s very hard to just stay focused.What is it like to face down the last performance?I have to say to myself, “We’re going to do a tour” [laughs]. I can’t be self-indulgent and go “Oh my God, it’s over, poor me!” The other day during the show, I got emotional so I picked up the jar of pimentos on the table, and that grounded me. I held on to them until I finished that section. Richard’s characters feel deeply, but they are strong people and they will survive, you know. They will move forward.It looked like he was done with the Apples after four plays, but then he wrote three more for Zoom. Is the “Rhinebeck Panorama” really finished?Sad as I am to say that, yes, I believe it is. It’s this decade, in this country, and in the lives of these three families. And the decade is over, plus one. More