Movies

If you, like me, have an emotional default set to low-level dread, terror lurks everywhere. Consider the climate emergency, the coronavirus, rising far-right extremism, the disappearance of frogs, crimes over avocados. Last week, I stumbled on a study of hair dye toxicity that sent me into an hourslong Google spiral, and I now know uncomfortable things about p-Phenylenediamine. Which is to say that modern life is scary. So it’s baffling that two new adaptations of horror classics — “Frankenstein” and “Dracula,” running in repertory at Classic Stage Company — are not. In fact, they summon all the terror of a cooling mug of chamomile tea.Individually, the plays have their pleasures, with “Dracula” the more (sorry!) toothsome. Collectively, running these versions in repertory is a thing that goes flop in the night.Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” published in 1818, and Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” released in 1897, are stranger, squirmier novels than their pop-culture legacies suggest. Works that both defy and create genre, they adopt peculiar forms. “Frankenstein” opens and closes with a letter from a polar explorer to his sister. “Dracula” assembles itself from telegrams, diary entries, doctor’s notes and ship’s logs.Both books operate on at least two levels — as thrilling tales and elusive allegories. “Dracula” has been read as a metaphor for capitalism, colonialism, sexual desire, anxieties around the New Woman. “Frankenstein,” invented by a teenager on a wet vacation, has inspired interpretations centered on scientific responsibility, climate change, a horror of childbirth. Theatrical adaptations can’t and shouldn’t encompass all that, but they need to integrate both story and symbolism in some graceful, playable way, which neither of these scripts manages.“Frankenstein,” adapted by the English writer and performer Tristan Bernays, field-dresses Shelley’s novel, skinning and deboning it to less than 80 minutes. It approaches the text in ways both abstract and overly literal, sometimes excerpting entire paragraphs. The only figures onstage are Stephanie Berry, who plays both the unscrupulous biology major Victor Frankenstein and his creature, and Rob Morrison, an actor and musician, who plays the Chorus and briefly, Victor’s doomed bride. Under Timothy Douglas’s direction, the storytelling is vexed, the themes evasive. If you are not closely acquainted with the novel, you might find yourself confused or merely bored, which might explain why late in the play, with the creature poised to wreak terrible vengeance, you could see a dozen or so audience members sweetly sleeping.Bernays’s version, which skips the arctic intro and the chapter’s on Victor’s childhood and education (an entirely defensible move), dashes straight to the reanimation part. As Morrison makes a guitar howl and moan, Berry, wearing a watch cap and a white tunic that splits the difference between lab coat and hospital gown, arranges herself on what looks like a Restoration Hardware woodshop table. (John Doyle, Classic Stage Company’s artistic director, designed both sets.) Abruptly, the creature shudders into life. In a long sequence, wordless and dancelike — save for Berry’s exclaimed huhs — the creature learns the use of his limbs, with Berry articulating each joint. Animate, the creature galumphs to what is presumably a forest, where he finds canisters full of Swiss chard and berries. With the help of an obliging audience member, he acquires language, too.The birth and forest scenes occupy about half the show’s running time. (“Shouldn’t he have strangled someone by now?,” I scribbled in my notes.) Then, after a brief conversation between the creature and his maker, Berry transforms into Frankenstein, then back into the creature, before the piece rushes to its absurd, icebound conclusion.Bernays’s reimagining doesn’t lack for theatricality. And by foregrounding the creature’s experience and delaying the violence, Bernays solicits our empathy for him — a provocative choice, as Shelley skews a lot more equivocal. In denaturing the stage action from the narrative, though, the play makes it possible to admire Berry’s certified-organic artistry and Morrison’s haunting accompaniment, without feeling anything like unease. Is it alive? It is not.With “Dracula,” Kate Hamill, an actress and go-to adapter of literary classics, doesn’t stint on story or symbolism. The script, which Hamill labels “A bit of a feminist revenge fantasy, really” is fun. Yet it is also fearless, and not in the Cosmo way. Hamill reads “Dracula” as a tale of toxic masculinity. Her scenes underline the theme with all the subtlety of a highway billboard. Can’t a stake be just a stake? At least sometimes?Hamill married the actor Jason O’Connell during previews. While some women might have flown away for a tropical honeymoon, she is opening each show as Mrs. Renfield, an asylum inmate, in sad-panda eye makeup and a deconstructed straitjacket, writing in what seems to be her own blood. The action then swoops to Transylvania with the introduction of Count Dracula (a suave, wild-eyed Matthew Amendt), who looses his demon brides on an uptight London lawyer, Jonathan (Michael Crane, beautifully uptight). “It’s your own fault, darling,” the women hiss. “Coming in here. Dressed like that.”Back in England, Jonathan’s pregnant wife, Mina (Kelley Curran, a still point even in the silliest of storms), is holidaying with her friend Lucy (Jamie Ann Romero) and Lucy’s fiancé, Doctor Seward (Matthew Saldivar), who runs the asylum. This intercontinental scurrying settles down with the introduction of Van Helsing (Jessica Frances Dukes, whom you should always invite in), a vampire hunter, imagined by the costume designer Robert Perdziola as a gutterpunk gunslinger. She enlists Mina and a reluctant Doctor Seward (a Victorian #NotAllMen type) in maintaining the sanctity of England’s blood supply.Under Sarna Lapine’s antic, hectic direction, with heavy use of red gels from the lighting designer, Adam Honoré, “Dracula” strikes a tone more comic than serious and more contemporary than period, but rarely wholly confident. The language ranges from Victorian pastiche to modern vernacular and inanity. “You can say this phenomenon is caused by poltergeists or hobgoblins or tiny glowing worms from Planet Bellybutton,” Doctor Seward fumes. Several good bits seem borrowed from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” “Pointy end, Mina!” Van Helsing instructs.Hamill writes juicy, munchy, crunchy roles that actors like to play. Their enthusiasm produces a kind of thrall. But the characters, undead and otherwise, never feel fully human. Their peril generates no horror. The play’s stakes, I kept thinking, ought to be higher. Pointier, anyway.Dracula and FrankensteinIn repertory through March 8 at Classic Stage Company, Manhattan; 866-811-4111, classicstage.org. “Dracula” running time: 2 hours 20 minutes; “Frankenstein” running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

Nikita Pearl Waligwa, the young Ugandan newcomer who starred in “Queen of Katwe,” the 2016 Disney film about a chess champion’s coming of age, has died of a brain tumor. She was 15.Her death was announced on Sunday by Gayaza High School, an all-girls boarding school outside the Ugandan capital of Kampala where Ms. Waligwa had been a student.“You were a darling to many and we have lost you to a brain tumor at such a tender age,” the high school said on Twitter.The announcement prompted an outpouring of tributes from some of Ms. Waligwa’s co-stars in “Queen of Katwe,” which was based on a 2011 essay in ESPN The Magazine about a chess prodigy in Uganda who grows up in a slum and wins international competitions. The film starred Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo. It was listed as Ms. Waligwa’s only film credit.In the movie, Ms. Waligwa played Gloria, a friend of the protagonist, Phiona Mutesi, who was played by Madina Nalwanga.Phiona becomes a chess whiz with help from Gloria and under the tutelage of Robert Katende, played by Mr. Oyewolo. The film was directed by Mira Nair and starred Ms. Nyong’o, an Oscar winner for “12 Years a Slave,” as Phiona’s mother.“She played Gloria with such vibrancy,” Ms. Nyong’o said on Instagram. “In her real life she had the enormous challenge of battling brain cancer. My thoughts and prayers are with her family and community as they come to terms with having to say goodbye so soon.”“Queen of Katwe” was the film debut of both Ms. Waligwa and Ms. Nalwanga.“We mourn the loss of our beautiful Nikita Pearl Waligwa,” Mr. Oyewolo wrote on Instagram. “She was a ball of light in @queenofkatwemovie and in life. Her battle with a brain tumor was humbling to witness. Her light will live on.” More

Harriet Tubman was to be commemorated by appearing on the $20 bill in a design that would have been unveiled this year, but the treasury secretary said in May that plans for the bill would be delayed until after President Trump left office.Enter OneUnited Bank, which this month revealed it was honoring the abolitionist in its own way — by featuring her on a debit card.The backlash was almost instant, and it was difficult to pinpoint what offended people more: Was it her crossed arms that resembled the “Wakanda Forever” salute from the movie “Black Panther”? Was it the combination of a gold chip above her right shoulder and the Visa logo on the left? Maybe it was the whole thing.Regardless, OneUnited, the nation’s largest black-owned bank, soon found itself the target of jokes and jabs after announcing the card design on Thursday.Social media users accused the bank of pandering, while others pointed out the disconnect of featuring a former slave on a monetary device like a debit card.“‘Bury me in the ocean, with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than Harriet Tubman hitting the Wakanda salute on debit cards,’” one Twitter user posted.Another wrote, “It’s amazing how differently the idea of Harriet Tubman on U.S. legal tender feels than putting her face on a debit card.”Teri Williams, the bank’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement that it put Tubman on the card in celebration of Black History Month. “This symbol of Black empowerment in 2020 will pave the way for the Harriet Tubman design on the $20 bill,” she said.The card’s image comes from the painting “The Conqueror” by the artist Addonis Parker, the bank said. On Twitter, it explained Tubman’s crossed-arms gesture was the sign language symbol for love.“Harriet Tubman is the ultimate symbol of love — love that causes you to sacrifice everything, including your own life,” the bank said.Those who saw echoes of “Black Panther” in Tubman’s gesture were not far-off.In 2018, the film’s director, Ryan Coogler, revealed that the “Wakanda Forever” salute comes from Egyptian pharaohs and West African sculptures, as well as the words “love” and “hug” in American Sign Language.On Sunday, Mr. Parker said he moved the gesture higher in the card’s image to keep it visible.Ms. Williams said in an interview on Sunday that she understood and respected the reactions the card has drawn, but that OneUnited had the power to push for Tubman to appear on the $20 bill. She said the bank had also received messages of support.“Even though it’s symbolic, it matters,” she said, adding that it boiled down to: “Why is it that only white people are on money? Why is that?”The Tubman card is the one bank customers had selected the most since Thursday, she said, declining to give specific figures.The card was the ninth in a series that began in 2016, featuring what Ms. Williams said were “unapologetically Black” figures. The bank said using the images was a way to “make a statement that #BlackMoneyMatters with every dollar” spent.The goal of OneUnited, which has its headquarters in Boston, is to use banking for the benefit of black people, Ms. Williams said.Tubman was against the dehumanizing capitalism that was practiced in America, but “she recognized the value of economic empowerment for security,” Ms. Williams said. More

David Byrne ended the remarkably successful Broadway run of his “American Utopia” on Sunday with a surprise announcement: He will reprise the show for another 17 weeks next fall and winter.“American Utopia,” an energetic and tightly choreographed theatrical concert, has won acclaim from critics and audiences, and has proved to be a financial hit, consistently selling out the 961-seat Hudson Theater with tickets priced at as much as $649.Spike Lee has announced that he would direct a filmed version of the show, to be released this year. Byrne is also scheduled to perform with the “American Utopia” musicians on “Saturday Night Live” on Feb. 29.The return engagement, also at the Hudson Theater, is scheduled to run from Sept. 18 through Jan. 17. The theater will be occupied this spring and summer by a revival of “Plaza Suite,” a Neil Simon comedy starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.“American Utopia,” initially the title of a Byrne album and performed in concert venues around the world, arrived on Broadway last October, and recouped its $4 million capitalization just 10 weeks after opening. Byrne, a 67-year-old pop star who became famous as the lead singer of the Talking Heads, generally performed 6 shows a week, for a total of 121 performances; the show includes songs from the recent album, as well as classic hits.Writing in The New York Times, Ben Brantley called the show a “cloud-sweeping upper.” It is choreographed by Annie-B Parson. The Broadway run features the stage director Alex Timbers as a production consultant, and is produced by Kristin Caskey, Mike Isaacson, Patrick Catullo and Todomundo, which is Byrne’s record label.The Broadway run grossed a total of $18.8 million, and had been seen by 107,575 people, as of Feb. 9, according to the Broadway League. During the week that ended Feb. 9, the show’s average ticket price was $211, second only to “Hamilton.” More