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      At Soho Rep, Eric Ting and Caleb Hammons to Join Leadership Team

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      Following the departures of Sarah Benson and Meropi Peponides, the two will join Cynthia Flowers as the company continues its shared leadership model.Eric Ting and Caleb Hammons will join Cynthia Flowers as the next directors of Soho Rep, the Lower Manhattan theater announced on Thursday.They will replace Sarah Benson and Meropi Peponides, who had directed the Off Off Broadway company with Cynthia Flowers since 2019 under its shared leadership model. (Both women, who departed in June, have said they wanted to focus more on their own creative output.)“The spirit of the theater centers risk and experimentation,” said Ting, 50, who made his New York City directorial debut with the Jackie Sibblies Drury play “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915” at Soho Rep in 2012 before becoming the artistic director at the East Bay theater company Cal Shakes, a position he held until 2022. “There’s a boldness to the work and a kind of artistic rigor that I’ve never found anywhere else.”The size of the organization — with a 65-seat theater that has long been a home for experimental, formally inventive work — was part of the appeal for Hammons, who comes to the theater from the Fisher Center at Bard, an incubator for commercially promising new work in the Hudson Valley. (He has been the director of artistic planning and producing since 2020, after joining the organization as senior producer in 2013.)“After working at a larger organization outside the city, I knew I wanted to return to my roots in the smaller, scrappier and more experimental realm of theater,” said Hammons, 38, who previously served as a producer for Soho Rep from 2011-13.Flowers, who has been with the theater since 2012, said Hammons not only shares Soho Rep’s vision of trying to make its producing practices more equitable and sustainable, but also “has the practical experience to put those values into action.”And Ting, who recently directed the world premieres of Lloyd Suh’s “The Far Country” at the Atlantic Theater Company and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “The Comeuppance” at the Signature Theater, has long worked “to make theater more anti-racist and humane in a very intense way,” she said.Ting said he was drawn to Soho Rep, which produced Jacobs-Jenkins’s “An Octoroon,” in 2014, and Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Fairview,” in 2018, because of the premium the theater places on having practicing artists in leadership positions. He said he still plans to direct one or two shows each year at theaters in New York, “and also hopefully for Soho Rep from time to time.”As for Hammons, he said he plans to continue his career-long focus on sustainable and humane producing practices, including pay equity. That includes the continuation of Soho Rep’s Project Number One, a job creation program developed early in the pandemic that brings artists into the organization each season as salaried staff members with benefits. But he also wants to prioritize crew members.“We can’t put all our focus on just making strides to provide sustainable wages to artists when we aren’t taking the same consideration to providing sustainable wages to folks who work behind the scenes,” he said.Both men will start their roles in September. More

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      Ato Blankson-Wood on Playing a Hamlet Who ‘Leads With Love’

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      The actor is starring in a modern-dress production of the play through Aug. 6 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.As a veteran of the Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park productions, Ato Blankson-Wood is used to contending with the elements. “The bugs, the helicopters flying overhead: There’s an intense focus that is necessary,” he said.But for this summer’s production of “Hamlet,” he has had to dig deeper: Not only is he feeling the weight of the title role, but, as he put it, “the world is on fire” and air-quality issues have forced the cancellation of four “Hamlet” performances so far.Still, Blankson-Wood is undeterred.“I remember that there’s a person in that audience who is maybe seeing a play for the first time, or who was very excited to come see a show,” he said during a recent interview at a cafe in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. “That’s what I’m focused on. This is not about my experience, it’s for them, and for my scene partners.”This alfresco staging of “Hamlet,” directed by Kenny Leon, is Blankson-Wood’s fifth production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. His first, “Hair,” in 2008, was also his New York professional stage debut. Then he played the narcissistic Orsino in “Twelfth Night” in 2018, and Orlando in “As You Like It,” in 2017 and 2022. He’s also had notable turns in more hospitable environments on Broadway and off, including his Tony-nominated run in “Slave Play.”The actor as Hamlet this summer at the Delacorte Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd as Gary, a man questioning his interracial relationship (with Dustin, played by James Cusati-Moyer, left) in “Slave Play” at Broadway’s Golden Theater in 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn Leon’s modern-dress production of “Hamlet,” Blankson-Wood opted for a contemporary take on the tragic prince: a sad boy dressed in military fatigues, flowy white shirts and a dark hoodie that he said the show’s costume designer, Jessica Jahn, created after learning of his inspiration.“I had this thought that our most Hamletian modern figure is Kanye West,” he said. “We witnessed him losing a parent in the public eye, he’s been called a genius, and he has behaved in ways where people are like, ‘Is he OK?’ I think it’s exciting to imagine his moments of uncertainty, what his soliloquies might be.”The actor, 38, said West’s recent controversies, are less interesting to him. Which is not surprising. In speaking with Blankson-Wood, the sense emerges of an artist with little time for psychic clutter. Each morning, he recites daily affirmations (one he goes back to, borrowed from his “Slave Play” character, is, in part, “I am the prize”) and makes sure to engage his body (workouts at the gym), mind (post-workout podcasts, like “Spark & Fire” or Oprah Winfrey’s “Super Soul Sunday”), and spirit (“morning meditation, in a section of my room where I have a little cushion, altar, and a remembrance of my grandmother”).“I like to engage with the spiritual world,” he said. “It’s a part of my understanding of life on this planet, so I have to touch that every day to center myself.” Since “Hamlet,” he’s added a nightly bubble bath.He came to the production after participating in a collaborative online reading of the play’s “To be or not to be” speech, which was performed by Black actors, and released in 2020 by the Public to coincide with the Juneteenth holiday that year. Leon, a consultant on the piece, said he was struck by the strength and softness of Blankson-Wood’s performance.“I get to purge emotionally every night,” Blankson-Wood said of playing a Hamlet who is begging to be understood. “I can take bits of my day and pour it in there to release, if I need to.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“When it came time to cast Hamlet, I wanted to tell it through the eyes of the young people who felt hurt, betrayed, and unloved in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder,” Leon said in a phone call. “Like Ato, this Hamlet leads with love, and is begging to be understood. We talked a lot about the mental health issues that young people are dealing with, because I wanted this production to have some hope, small as it is, by the end.”Leon made a deal with the cast: Once the Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro completed his edits, the actors would be allowed to add lines back in — though they would need to give up some of their own in exchange. The approach helped trim the five-hour play to two hours and 45 minutes, excising the military and royal aspects to focus on the family dynamics.“We’ve been talking a lot about how Shakespeare is often cut by academics, and sometimes I wonder if there would be a benefit to it being cut by artists; seeing what’s really necessary from an actor’s standpoint,” Blankson-Wood said. “I have my issues with this cut. A lot of the meta-theatricality is gone, and that’s one of the things I love about the character, like his line about holding a mirror up to nature. I did fight to get some things back.”The actor added that Leon’s “fiery” technique, on and off the page, took some getting used to, but credited Leon with pushing him further than he thought he could go. (In his review for The Times, the theater critic Jesse Green credited his performance with bringing “a vivid anger to the role.”)“I get to purge emotionally every night,” he continued. “I can take bits of my day and pour it in there to release, if I need to, and I knew this production would be good for that.”His love of theater, and his drive to define his relationship to it, extends to his childhood.Born the middle of five siblings in Silver Spring, Md., to two Ghanaian immigrants, Blankson-Wood grew up watching movie musicals with his mother. While his home was “culturally, very traditionally Ghanaian,” he said musicals created a cultural bridge to his American interests, which led to acting.He studied acting at New York University and was soon cast as a member of the tribe in a production of “Hair” at the Delacorte — which, coincidentally, shared the 2008 summer season with another “Hamlet,” starring Michael Stuhlbarg. He remained with “Hair” when it transferred to Broadway and then London’s West End but, following a run in the 2011 musical “Lysistrata Jones,” the actor said he felt a gap, “between the work I was doing and what I felt I was capable of.”“The ethos and energy behind commercial musical theater feels like it is really about the product,” he explained. “I don’t think that’s good or bad, but I do think my interests are always in process and craft, which I feel are more valued in plays. That’s where the impulse to go to grad school came from.”“I now really understand what it means to take ownership of my process,” the actor said, “and have found my voice in that way.”Elias Williams for The New York TimesHe enrolled in the Yale School of Drama, where he became friends with James Cusati-Moyer (who would later be his “Slave Play” scene partner). The two became “like a traveling act: this duo that everyone knew of,” Cusati-Moyer said. “And then we started doing drag together.”In 2013, they performed in Yale Cabaret’s inaugural “Yale School of Drag” show as well as a drag play written by their classmates — titled “We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun” — which later had a 2016 presentation in Brooklyn. Blankson-Wood couldn’t reprise his role; he was giving what Charles Isherwood described as a breakout performance in “The Total Bent” at the Public. His replacement? An incoming Yalie named Jeremy O. Harris.The three became friends, and Harris took inspiration from the friendship of the other two as he developed the characters of Gary and Dustin, one of three interracial couples undergoing dubious sex therapy in “Slave Play.”“We had to navigate very difficult territory, as these characters were inspired by us, but were specifically not Ato and I,” Cusati-Moyer said. “But there’s no one else I can imagine doing that role with. He brings every corner of his heart, and that comes with an innate care and appreciation for his own work, as well as the work of those around him.”The show opened on Broadway in 2019 and garnered 12 Tony nominations, including nods for both actors; Harris; and the director Robert O’Hara, who later directed Blankson-Wood in a 2022 Covid-era adaptation of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” at the Minetta Lane Theater.“I’m not necessarily drawn to these internal, isolating roles, but something happened when I went to grad school where it felt like a faucet turned on, and emotional availability became my go-to,” Blankson-Wood said.After “Slave Play,” he continued, “I was very aware of my inherent value, because that’s the journey my character was on. I now really understand what it means to take ownership of my process, and have found my voice in that way.“After that, and ‘Long Day’s,’ and this, I’m ready for something that has levity and is heart-forward.” More

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      Kevin Spacey Is Acquitted of Sexual Assault Charges

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      A British jury on Wednesday found the actor not guilty of nine charges.A jury in London deliberated for more than 12 hours, and ultimately cleared the actor of nine charges.Susannah Ireland/ReutersKevin Spacey, the two-time Oscar-winning actor known for his movie and TV roles including “House of Cards,” was on Wednesday found not guilty by a jury in Britain of nine counts of sexual assault.Almost six years after allegations of inappropriate behavior began to emerge against Mr. Spacey on both sides of the Atlantic, a jury at Southwark Crown Court in London took just over 12 hours to reach its decision.As the verdicts were announced, Mr. Spacey, 64, stood in a transparent box in the middle of the courtroom, wearing a dark blue suit and looking unemotional as he faced the jury.But when the final “not guilty” was read out, the actor, whose birthday falls on Wednesday, began to cry and sighed heavily with relief.Shortly after the verdict, Mr. Spacey walked out of the courthouse — shaking the hands of several jurors on the way and kissing two security guards on the cheek — and gave a brief statement to a throng of waiting reporters.“I imagine that many of you can understand that there’s a lot for me to process,” he said. “I’m enormously grateful to the jury for having taken the time to examine all of the evidence.”“I am humbled by the outcome,” he added, before getting into a taxi.During the almost monthlong trial in London, the court heard from four men who said that Mr. Spacey assaulted them between 2001 and 2013. For most of that time, the actor was the artistic director of the Old Vic theater, a major London playhouse.One complainant told the British police that Mr. Spacey touched him multiple times without his consent. The complainant described incidents included once in either 2004 or 2005 when he said the actor grabbed his genitals so hard that he almost veered off the road as they were heading to Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara Ball.During the trial, Mr. Spacey — who appeared under his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler — said that the pair had a consensual “naughty relationship.” The actor added that he felt “crushed” by the complainant’s characterization of their encounters. Elton John, giving evidence for Mr. Spacey’s defense, said that Mr. Spacey only attended his ball once, in 2001, several years before the complainant said he was groped.Another complainant said that he wrote to Mr. Spacey hoping that the actor would mentor him, and eventually went for a drink at Mr. Spacey’s London home. That complainant said that he fell asleep in the apartment, and later woke up to discover Mr. Spacey on his knees, performing oral sex on him. Mr. Spacey said during the trial that the pair had consensual oral sex, then the man “hurriedly left,” as if he regretted the encounter.On July 20, Patrick Gibbs, Mr. Spacey’s legal representative, claimed that three of the complainants were lying and only made their accusations in the hope of financial gain. Mr. Spacey’s promiscuous lifestyle made him “quite an easy target” for false allegations, Mr. Gibbs added.The trial in London was the latest that Mr. Spacey has successfully defended. In 2022, a federal jury in Manhattan found Mr. Spacey not liable for battery after the actor Anthony Rapp filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Spacey of climbing on top of him and making a sexual advance in 1986, when Mr. Rapp was 14.But what Wednesday’s verdict will mean for Mr. Spacey’s career was not immediately clear. In June, Mr. Spacey said in an interview with Zeit Magazin, a German magazine, that he intended to return to acting after the trial. “I know that there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges,” he said. More

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      ‘Back to the Future’ on Broadway: Buckle Your (DeLorean) Seatbelt

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      If he could go back in time and do it again, Bob Gale probably wouldn’t change much about “Back to the Future.” This 1985 science-fiction comedy, about a teenager taking a whirlwind trip to the year 1955 in a time-traveling DeLorean built by an eccentric inventor, became an endearing and endlessly quotable box-office smash.The film, which Gale wrote with its director, Robert Zemeckis, also turned into a cultural phenomenon. It bonded its stars, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, to their quirky characters and spawned two hit sequels that its creators envisioned as a self-contained saga.When the words “The End” appeared onscreen in “Back to the Future Part III,” Gale explained in a recent interview over lunch, it was a message to audiences. “We told the story we wanted to tell,” he said. “And we’re not going to milk you guys for a substandard sequel.”But like its emblematic DeLorean, the “Back to the Future” franchise has continued to reappear in the ensuing decades, in authorized books, games and theme park rides, in cast reunions and countless pop-cultural homages.The gang’s all here: Doc Brown, Marty McFly and, at the center of some of the show’s much-anticipated stunts, a replica of the DeLorean time machine.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesAnd now on Broadway: “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which opens Aug. 3 at the Winter Garden Theater, follows a story that will be familiar to fans of the film. Using a time machine devised by Doc Brown, Marty McFly travels to 1955, meets his parents Lorraine and George as teenagers and must help them fall in love after he disrupts the events that led to their romantic coupling.On its yearslong path to Broadway, “Back to the Future” has faced some challenges that are common to musical adaptations and others unique to this property.While the show’s creators sought actors to play the roles indelibly associated with the stars of the film and decided which of the movie’s famous scenes merited musical numbers, they were also trying to figure out how the stage could accommodate the fundamental elements of “Back to the Future” — like, say, a plutonium-powered sports car that can traverse the space-time continuum.Now this “Back to the Future” arrives on Broadway with some steep expectations: After a tryout in Manchester, England, its production at the Adelphi Theater in London’s West End won the 2022 Olivier Award for best new musical. The show also carries a heavy price tag — it is being capitalized for $23.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Throughout its development process, the people behind it — including several veterans of the “Back to the Future” series — tried to remain true to the spirit of the films and keep intact a story that has held up for nearly 40 years.Bob Gale, who wrote the original movie with Robert Zemeckis, said of the stage adaptation: “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We just want to make the wheel smooth.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAs Gale, now 72, put it: “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We just want to make the wheel smooth.”But, he added, “It cannot be a slavish adaptation of the movie. Because if that’s what people want to see, they should stay home and watch the movie. Let’s use the theater for what theater can do.”Gale’s inspiration for “Back to the Future” came in 1980 after seeing a photo of his father as a teenager in an old high-school yearbook, and he has become a passionate custodian of the franchise. That role dates back to at least 1989, the year a notorious “Back to the Future” Nintendo game was released. “One of the worst games ever,” he said. “I was so horrified by that I actually gave interviews to tell people, ‘Do not buy it.’”In 2005, after Zemeckis and his wife, Leslie, attended a performance of the Broadway musical “The Producers,” the “Back to the Future” creators began to contemplate a stage adaptation of their film. They hired Alan Silvestri, who wrote the scores of the “Back to the Future” movies, to create new songs with Glen Ballard, the pop songwriter who had worked with Silvestri on Zemeckis’s 2004 film version of “The Polar Express.”Gale said that as he and Zemeckis started to meet with Broadway producers, “They said all the right things. But their agenda really was, let’s get Zemeckis and Gale off this and give it to our own people to do it.”That was something Gale said he would never allow to happen. “These characters are like my family,” he said. “You don’t sell your kids into prostitution.”Instead they enlisted the British producer Colin Ingram, whom Ballard had worked with on the musical adaptation of the film “Ghost.” They hired the highly sought-after director Jamie Lloyd, and then parted ways with him in 2014. “The creative differences and the chemistry just didn’t work,” Ingram said. (Through a press representative, Lloyd confirmed that his departure was a mutual decision over creative differences but declined to comment further.)Behind the scenes: The show’s designer, Tim Hatley, was charged with evoking the spirit of the beloved film.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesUpon regrouping, the creators met with John Rando, who had directed “Urinetown” and “The Wedding Singer.” Rando said that after their initial meeting, “I grabbed Bob by the shoulders, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Bob, I love these characters. And I promise you I’m going to take really good care of them.’” Within a half-hour Rando said he got the call that he was hired.In conceiving “Back to the Future” for the stage, Gale said certain signature moments from the movie could never work: No scene of Doc Brown being attacked by disgruntled Libyan terrorists. (Now Marty speeds off in the DeLorean after Doc is overcome by radiation poisoning.) No set piece in which Marty races through the town square on a skateboard while the meathead bully Biff pursues him in a convertible. (Now the chase occurs on foot at school.) No pet dog named Einstein for Doc Brown. (Sorry, there’s just no dog.)A scene from the film where Biff is stopped before he can assault Lorraine remains in the show, though Gale acknowledged that this moment was “edgy.”“We want the audience to feel the jeopardy, and they do,” Gale said, adding that there were many elements from “Back to the Future” that might not withstand scrutiny if the film were being pitched today.Yet other familiar scenes presented opportunities for invention. Silvestri said he and Ballard were not given an exacting road map for where songs should go or what they should sound like. “We just kept trying to find our way,” Silvestri said. “It’s calling for a song here. It’s demanding music there.”The composers felt there had to be a rousing opening number to establish the show’s popped-collared, neon-colored version of the year 1985 and use the “Back to the Future” fanfare, and that became the song “It’s Only a Matter of Time.” There also had to be a love song for the smitten young Lorraine to serenade the enigmatic visitor she doesn’t realize is her own son, which yielded the doo-wop pastiche “Pretty Baby.”The curtain has lifted on “Back to the Future: The Musical,” but the creators of the franchise said they have no intention of pursuing more films.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThroughout the show’s development, there was a consensus that high-tech engineering and video projections would help recreate complicated scenes like Doc Brown’s perilous ascent of the Hill Valley clock tower during a fateful lightning storm.But Rando said he entrusted these elements to the show’s designer, Tim Hatley, and his production colleagues while the book, songs and performances were being nailed down.“They would keep asking me, ‘Hey, let’s talk about the clock tower sequence,’” Rando explained. “And I said, ‘Not until we get this musical right.’ And we would do readings and readings, and then finally there was a moment where we’re like, OK, now we can do it.”The actor Roger Bart, who has starred in musical comedies like “The Producers” and “Young Frankenstein,” was an early candidate to play Doc Brown. He landed the role with the help of a video audition in which he wore a lampshade on his head (to mimic a mind-reading device Brown uses) and sung the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.”Though Christopher Lloyd is associated with the Doc Brown character, Bart said he felt it was not his job to copy that performance.“I’m 60,” Bart said. “There’s a certain point where I have to go, I know I’m entertaining. I’ve been in front of enough audiences to know that. If you really get bogged down with that thinking, you’re going to paralyze yourself.”The best way to play Doc Brown, Bart said, is to honor the spirit of Lloyd’s performances, “which is to create the idea that anything can happen at any moment, by being unusual in your choices.”Casey Likes joined the show as Marty for its Broadway run, after making his Broadway debut last year in “Almost Famous.” He said that his mother often compared him to Michael J. Fox when he was growing up. (The actor, who is 21, was born 16 years after “Back to the Future” was released in theaters.)At his audition, Likes said, “I wanted to convey something that was reminiscent of Michael but not an impression.”He added, “I went with the kind of vocal inflections that he had done, while trying to deliver the bright-eyed, somewhere between cool and dorky thing that he did. And I guess it worked.”As the curtain goes up on this “Back to the Future,” its creators are hopeful that it is a faithful representation of the franchise — one that they say they have no intention of continuing cinematically. As Gale put it, “We don’t need ‘Back to the Future 18.’”For its stars, their day-to-day hopes are more focused on steeling their courage when they step into the show’s mechanical DeLorean and trusting it will execute its stunts consistently.With a wry chuckle, Bart said he’d rather not have a day of work that ends with anyone “being sent to the hospital while the stage managers say, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I called that wrong,’ and you go, ‘Oh, it’s OK, I have insurance, it’s all good.’ I don’t ever want to have that conversation.” More

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      ‘New York, New York’ Will End Its Broadway Run

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      The big-budget musical that tried to position itself as a nostalgic love letter to the city will close after a summer of dropping sales.“New York, New York,” a big-budget musical that tried to position itself as a nostalgic love letter to the city, will close on July 30 after underwhelming critics and failing to find a sufficient audience to sustain a Broadway run.The musical was the costliest swing of the last theater season, with a $25 million capitalization, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped. The show’s budget was bigger than that of other musicals currently arriving Broadway, although costs have been rising, and the musicals with the largest companies and the most stage spectacle are increasingly costing more than $20 million.“New York, New York” started off respectably at the box office, with weekly grosses initially hovering around $1 million. But the musical has been expensive to run, with a large cast and a sizable orchestra, and its sales have been dropping problematically this summer. During the week that ended July 16, “New York, New York” grossed $692,051 and played to houses that were only 68 percent full, according to the most recent figures released by the Broadway League.At the time of its closing, “New York, New York” will have played 33 preview and 110 regular performances.Very loosely based on Martin Scorsese’s 1977 film of the same title, the musical tells the story of a young couple — he a musician, and she a singer — trying to find work and love in the city just after World War II. The book is by David Thompson and Sharon Washington.The show features songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, some of which also appeared in the film. The title song, which is the musical’s closing number, has become a standard. Ebb died in 2004; for the stage musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda contributed lyrics, working with Kander, who is now 96 and who won this year’s Tony Award for lifetime achievement.The musical, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, opened on April 26 and faced mixed to negative reviews. In The New York Times, the critic Elisabeth Vincentelli called it “sprawling, unwieldy, surprisingly dull.”The show was nominated for nine Tony Awards, and it won one, for Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design.Sonia Friedman and Tom Kirdahy are the musical’s lead producers. In May they announced plans for a national tour of the musical starting in January 2025, but on Sunday evening, when they announced the closing date, they said only that “discussions are underway for a North American tour.”The closing announcement comes amid a tough stretch for Broadway shows, many of which have struggled as the industry rebuilds following the lengthy closing of theaters at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. On Sunday, three shows played their final performances: a musical revival of “Camelot,” a stage adaptation of “Life of Pi” and the comedy “Peter Pan Goes Wrong.” More

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      Review: ‘Flex’ Hits the Right Rhythms on the Court and Off

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      The writer Candrice Jones and the director Lileana Blain-Cruz show a mastery of the game in this play about a girls’ basketball team in rural Arkansas.Their knees are bent, palms outstretched, eyes darting and alert.The young women of Lady Train, a high school basketball team in rural Arkansas, are training for every possibility on the court — which, in the beloved tradition of sports-powered coming-of-age stories, also means preparing for adult life.Perhaps it should be no surprise, then, that in the first scene of “Flex,” which opened at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse on Thursday, all of the players appear to be pregnant. As this tip-off to a slam-dunk New York debut makes clear, the playwright Candrice Jones excels equally in sly, sitcom humor and in the swift-tongued rhythms of teenage and athletic talk.The lumpy bumps beneath Lady Train’s various fly-casual printed tees (it’s 1997, and the spot-on costumes are by Mika Eubanks) are obviously fake, contraband from a home-ec class. But for April (a tender Brittany Bellizeare), the prospect of childbearing is no joke; she’s been benched since the team’s zero-nonsense coach (Christiana Clark) learned of her pregnancy. The bumper-belly drills are both a protest and show of solidarity.Threatening that bond is the requisite rivalry between two top players: the scrappy and headstrong team captain, Starra (a glowering Erica Matthews), who is trying to prove her mettle to her late mother, and Sidney (Tamera Tomakili, delightful), an eye-rolling, hair-flipping transplant from Los Angeles who talks smack with a smile. There’s a delicate romance, too, between the even-keeled Donna (Renita Lewis, the show’s subtle M.V.P.) and Cherise (Ciara Monique), a youth minister whose faith is at odds with her desires, and with April’s consideration of an abortion.Jones and the director Lileana Blain-Cruz (both former high school basketball players) demonstrate a dexterous mastery of the game, not only in narrated action sequences on the blond-wood, half-court set (by Matt Saunders), but also in the pass-or-shoot dynamics that bind these friends and teammates.The teammates bond while driving around in a dusty-blue Chrysler convertible and singing along to Aaliyah.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere’s even an alchemy to “Flex” that conjures ardent home-team affinity from the audience (whoops and applause escalated in enthusiasm throughout the performance I attended). Maybe that’s inspired by Lady Train’s spelling-bee cheers (“big,” “bad” and “boss” are prominent), or their Aaliyah singalong with the top down on Donna’s dusty-blue Chrysler convertible (another impressive feat of design).But the special sauce is also in the careful economy of Jones’s character development, which offers just enough detail to inspire curiosity about who these women could become without claiming to know exactly who they are. (They’re teenagers, after all.) Whether Starra ascends to the W.N.B.A., she’ll have to wrestle with her ego. And Cherise doesn’t seem likely to let go of God, but what will happen if her devotion comes to feel like a trap?That “Flex” manages to garner such interest in its characters’ potential is a testament to the extraordinary synergy among Jones, Blain-Cruz and the cast members, who are as present and engaged in dialogue as they are nimble at the net.Tropes of the sports genre trotted out here — a betrayed purity pact, competition for scouts’ attention — are attended by the broader considerations that make young people and team sports such fraught and fertile ground. What do we owe ourselves, and at what cost to one another? Why learn the meaning of fairness when life is so unfair? To rebound when it knocks you down, and to savor the moments when it delivers on your wildest dreams.FlexThrough Aug. 20 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      The Grenfell Tower Fire, Now Onstage at the National Theater

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      Six years after 72 people died in a fire at a London high rise, artistic projects, including a verbatim play, have been made about the blaze.“I remember my knees giving way, thinking, ‘This is it now,’ because I cannot take another breath.”On Monday night, the actor Ash Hunter stood onstage at London’s National Theater portraying Nicholas Burton, one of almost 300 people who, six years ago, found themselves trapped inside a burning London apartment block. Hunter spoke Burton’s own words.“Every breath was just hot black smoke,” the actor said, visibly sweating and breathing quickly.On June 14, 2017, a refrigerator caught fire in a 24-story London high rise called Grenfell Tower. That blaze should have been easily contained, and residents were advised to stay in their apartments. But within minutes, flames had engulfed the structure, which lax building regulations had allowed to be clad in a flammable material. It became Britain’s deadliest fire in more than a century.That night, Hunter said in the play, Burton fell asleep while watching a DVD, near his wife, Pily, who had Alzheimer’s disease. He woke to banging on his front door, which he opened, causing thick smoke to billow into the room. Burton knew he couldn’t carry his wife down dozens of flights of stairs, so he took her into the bathroom, where they waited for help.Burton thought he was going to die, Hunter said onstage. Later, his wife did, becoming the fire’s 72nd, and final, victim.Burton is one of 10 Grenfell residents whose stories are told in Gillian Slovo’s “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors,” a verbatim play running through Aug. 26 at the National, one of Britain’s most significant playhouses. On Monday, some audience members shook their heads as they listened to the survivors’ experiences and the catalog of mismanagement that led to the blaze. Others were in tears at the end of the minimally staged production.Ash Hunter, portraying the Grenfell Tower resident Nicholas Burton in “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” at the National Theater in London.Myah JeffersA scene from Steve McQueen’s 24-minute film “Grenfell,” shot using a helicopter. “I was determined that it would never be forgotten,” McQueen said of the tragedy. via Steve McQueenYears after the fire, Grenfell continues to cast a shadow over British life. Most of the units in Grenfell Tower were a part of Britain’s social housing system and the blaze drew attention to neglect within that system and to unsafe building practices across the country. An official inquiry into the blaze is ongoing, as is a police investigation.With so little resolution for the bereaved, some of Britain’s major cultural institutions and artists have started making works about the tragedy. In addition to the National Theater’s production, the BBC earlier this year announced plans for a TV drama about the fire, and in April, the artist and director Steve McQueen presented a 24-minute video work at London’s Serpentine Galleries. Filmed using a helicopter, McQueen’s “Grenfell” shows the burned tower block as it stood in December 2017, days before it was hidden behind white plastic sheeting.“I was determined that it would never be forgotten,” McQueen said in a statement accompanying the piece.Survivors of the tragedy and local residents have had mixed responses to these projects. Shortly after the BBC’s TV drama was announced, Cecilia Corzo, a resident of the housing project that includes Grenfell Tower, started an online petition calling for the show to be canceled. The petition has more than 61,000 signatures.Corzo wrote in an email interview that she found the idea of anyone wanting to watch a dramatization of the fire “overwhelmingly disgusting.” Survivors have been waiting years for justice, she wrote, and in that time “the only thing that seems to be moving quickly is plans to make entertainment” from the tragedy.Slovo, the playwright, said in a recent interview at the theater that she understood such reactions, but hoped the play’s critics would “come and see what we’ve done.” Her aim was to “amplify” survivors’ voices, Slovo said, adding that the fire was an important example of how governments and businesses were “putting profit over people’s lives.” Grenfell “stands as a lesson to us all, not just in Britain,” she said.Gillian Slovo, who assembled the play “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” from around 80 interviews, said the fire showed how governments and businesses were “putting profit over people’s lives.”Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesSlovo, a South African-born playwright who has made several previous verbatim plays including one about British riots, began work on “Grenfell” six months after the fire. She said she was shocked that the blaze could happen in a city as rich as London, and by how the survivors’ voices were missing from most media coverage and official discussion of the tragedy. Instead, tabloids were filled with uninformed theories or articles portraying the bereaved as “poor, or as asylum seekers,” Slovo said.Over several years, Slovo conducted around 80 interviews, sending survivors their transcripts so they could remove anything they didn’t want performed onstage. She bolstered those interviews with transcripts from the official government inquiry.Turning that material into the play had its challenges, Slovo said, including “not wanting to turn this into a melodrama in any way” and making sure the play wasn’t traumatizing.To try to guarantee that, “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” is being performed in unusual conditions. The production opens with the house lights up and the actors introducing themselves and the survivor each is portraying. The cast then reassures the audience that the play won’t include any images of the actual fire and that theatergoers are free to leave the auditorium at any point and return when they’re ready. During previews, therapists sat in the audience to provide additional support.Pearl Mackie, who portrays Natasha Elcock, a woman who used bath water to extinguish flames and lost her uncle in the blaze, said she was angry at the horror of the event before reading the script. Even after being cast, Mackie said, she “worried that my own personal reaction was something that would come across every night, and it wouldn’t be serving the truth of the person I’m playing.”After meeting Elcock, though, Mackie said she realized she could depict the community onstage in full, rather than defining Elcock by this one tragedy. The play is “the most important thing I’ve ever done,” Mackie said.All the survivors portrayed have been invited to see the play, and some have done so. Ed Daffarn, who lived on the 16th floor, said in a recent interview that he couldn’t find the words to describe how he felt while watching it. “Almost as a defense, I kind of distanced myself,” he said.He knew other survivors couldn’t bring themselves to go, Daffarn added, but he insisted that the play, and other creative Grenfell projects, were vital to keeping the tragedy in the public consciousness. Homes across England were still encased by flammable cladding, Daffarn said, adding “we haven’t had a single clink of handcuffs.”After a performance, the audience gathered outside the National Theater near the green heart placards. Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAt the end of Monday night’s performance, a short film was shown featuring survivors and bereaved family members — including Burton — discussing their lives today, and what they wanted the audience to take from the play.The cast then gave audience members placards shaped like green hearts — a symbol that’s associated with Grenfell — with words like “Justice” written across them, and asked everyone to follow them outside.Silently, the audience did as asked: Hundreds of people carrying those placards high into the London night. For a moment, the evening became more than theater. It became a call for change. More

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      Carlin Glynn, Actress Whose Comeback Brought Her a Tony, Dies at 83

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      After putting her career on hold to raise children, she won the part of the madam in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” — and then a statuette hailing her performance.Carlin Glynn, a stage actress who, after a long hiatus spent raising a family, stepped back into the footlights, sang onstage for the first time and walked away with a Tony Award for her performance as the madam in the 1978 hit “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” died on July 13 at her home in upstate New York, in the Hudson Valley. She was 83.Her daughter Mary Stuart Masterson, the actress, said the cause was lung cancer.Ms. Glynn’s breakout performance, at 38, came about almost by accident. Her husband, the actor and director Peter Masterson, had read a 1974 article in Playboy by Larry L. King about the closing of a Texas bordello and saw the ingredients for a musical. He and Mr. King began working on a script and brought in Carol Hall to create the music.For the early readings, Ms. Glynn, though she had been largely out of the acting business for at least a dozen years, covered the role of Mona Stangley, the strong-minded but sensitive madam at the center of the story. She was still holding down the role in a workshop production mounted by Mr. Masterson and his collaborators at the Actors Studio in 1977. And when the musical opened Off Broadway in April 1978. And when it moved to Broadway that June.“I initially worked on the play only to help out,” Ms. Glynn told The New York Times in July 1978. “Peter was hesitant to force his wife on his collaborators. Finally, all four of the organizations who wanted to take the show to Broadway wanted me to stay in the part. So then I stopped worrying about nepotism.”It was her Broadway debut, and she won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical. She played the role for almost two years on Broadway and for another six months in a production in London. Michael Billington of The Guardian, reviewing her there, wrote, “Carlin Glynn endows the madam with the refined good breeding and slight romantic forlornness of the head of a very classy, fee-paying American girls’ school.”Although “Best Little Whorehouse” was Ms. Glynn’s only Broadway appearance, her acting career continued for decades. She appeared in productions by Second Stage and Signature Theater Company in Manhattan, Hartford Stage in Connecticut, the Alley Theater in Houston, the Goodman Theater in Chicago and more. She also landed roles in more than 20 television series and films, including “Continental Divide” (1981), “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Trip to Bountiful” (1985, directed by Mr. Masterson) and “Judy Berlin” (1999).The Tony Award, she told The Times in 1979, was a game changer for her.“It means I’ve been invited to hundreds of places by people who offer to send their cars to pick me up,” she said. “It also means I’m not just the girl who does the Texas madam in a musical; I’m someone who’s considered an actress.”Ms. Glynn with Henderson Forsythe holding their Tony Awards after she won as best featured actress in a musical and he as best featured actor in a musical, both for “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Bettmann, via Getty ImagesCarlin Elizabeth Glynn was born on Feb. 19, 1940, in Cleveland to Guilford and Lois Wilkes Glynn. Her father worked at Union Carbide but, when Carlin was 9, moved the family to Texas, where he had bought a gas station in Centerville, north of Houston. Later the family moved to Houston, where, at Lamar High School, Ms. Glynn first met Tommy Tune, who years later would choreograph “Best Little Whorehouse” as well as direct it with Mr. Masterson.Ms. Glynn and Mr. Masterson met when both were apprenticing at the Alley Theater. They married in 1960 and settled in New York. Both became members of the Actors Studio, but Ms. Glynn spent much of her time taking care of their three children while Mr. Masterson built his career. She acted in the occasional television commercial, was co-host of a syndicated television program called “Today’s Health” in the mid-1970s and had a small role in the 1975 film “Three Days of the Condor.”A film version of “Best Little Whorehouse” was being planned when, in the 1978 Times interview, Ms. Glynn said she would love to play Mona onscreen, though she acknowledged, “I probably won’t be asked.” She was right; a bigger marquee name, Dolly Parton, got the part. The movie came out in 1982.Ms. Glynn, left, with Marsha Mason in 1998 in an Off Broadway production of “Amazing Grace,” a play by Michael Cristofer. Ms. Glynn continued to act for decades after her Broadway debut in “Best Little Whorehouse.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Masterson died in 2018. In addition to her daughter Mary Stuart, who starred in such films as “Some Kind of Wonderful” (1987) and “Fried Green Tomatoes” (1991), Ms. Glynn is survived by another daughter, Carlin Alexandra Masterson; a son, Peter Masterson; a brother, Philip Glynn; and six grandchildren.Mary Stuart Masterson recalled spending weekends backstage at “Best Little Whorehouse” watching her mother from the wings. One night Ms. Glynn started a song an octave too high but smoothly acknowledged the mistake mid-song, not only slipping in the impromptu lyric “I think I’m off key,” but also doing so in a spot where it rhymed.“The audience was in the palm of her hand after that,” Ms. Masterson said by email. “Well, they already were. She had a kind of authority onstage that you can’t learn. She always made everyone feel they were in good hands.” More