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      Ali Wong and Hannah Gadsby Paint Different Portraits of Fame

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      Her gossipy portrait of singlehood as a celebrity is a sunny contrast to the darker view of her Netflix stablemate Hannah Gadsby.The last time we saw Ali Wong doing standup, she was delivering an earnest tribute to her husband and their relationship. The final line of “Don Wong,” her 2022 special, went: “And that, single people, is what a healthy marriage looks like.”Later that year, she got divorced.In Hollywood, it’s a tale as old as time. But in stand-up, where the parasocial relationship with fans is more intense than ever, this news lit up group chats and created expectations. What would Wong, who has talked about her husband in three specials, add to the fertile genre of comedy about divorce?Two years after her 2016 breakthrough, “Baby Cobra,” transformed Ali Wong from a veteran but obscure comic into a phenomenon, “Nanette” did the same for Hannah Gadsby. To the extent that Netflix established a reputation for making — as opposed to promoting — stand-up stars, it’s largely because of these two artists, whose new hours present perspectives on fame from such different angles that it almost feels like they’re in conversation.Gadsby, whose superb show, “Woof!,” is currently running at the Abron Arts Center on the Lower East Side, takes a dark view, worrying that success, and specifically money, has had a corrupting influence. Wong’s latest Netflix special, “Single Lady,” is a juicy, aspirational portrait of celebrity singlehood that exudes optimism.Walking onstage to songs from pop divas (Beyoncé for Wong; Madonna for Gadsby) and referring to previous specials, they both aim for thematically coherent productions alert to their reputations. But Gadsby, who uses they/them pronouns, considers and confronts their own brand, presenting their experiences as eccentric. Wong takes the comic tack of teasing generalizations out of her experience. Describing the realization in the middle of a breakup that the experience would make a good joke, Wong quipped: “We turn it into lemonade real fast.”Wearing a flowy white dress, Wong addresses her divorce at the top, saying in a soft voice that she felt “really embarrassed and ashamed.” Embarrassment and shame are fertile comedic territory, but not areas Wong has dug deeply into in the past. She doesn’t here, either, moving quickly to the flip side of a highly public separation: Tabloid coverage, she says, has been a “bat signal” for men.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Robert Lepage’s Latest Is as Unstable as a Deck of Cards

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      Robert Lepage’s latest play, “Faith, Money, War and Love,” runs for five hours, and aims to depict Germany since the end of World War II.The new theater season in Berlin has opened under a cloud of uncertainty, amid a proposal to drastically cut the city’s cultural budget that has raised alarm and drawn criticism. Against this gloomy backdrop, the Schaubühne playhouse’s decision to open its season with a five-hour-long world premiere by an internationally acclaimed director felt defiant.Robert Lepage’s “Glaube, Geld, Krieg und Liebe” (“Faith, Money, War and Love”), which premiered in early October, is an ambitious work that strives, and occasionally achieves, epic sweep and emotional impact during its mammoth running time.It all started with a deck of cards.Lepage, a polymathic Canadian director whose credits include films, Cirque du Soleil spectacles and the Metropolitan Opera’s divisive Ring cycle, devised “Glaube, Geld, Krieg and Liebe” with seven Schaubühne actors, who were initially guided by chance: they used a deck of playing cards to help generate characters and situations.“Cards are charged with meaning, symbolism and themes,” Lepage, who has used a similar technique in previous productions, states in the program. The director matched each suit to a theme and encouraged his performers to use the numerical and metaphorical value of the cards to brainstorm and improvise.The result of all this shuffling and play is an expansive melodrama about Germany since the end of World War II. Divided into four acts, or episodes, “Glaube, Geld, Krieg and Liebe” whisks us from Wiesbaden in 1945 to Ukraine in 2022. That’s a lot a ground to cover, and the script boasts more characters than there are cards in a deck; geographic, linguistic and temporal shifts are frequent.In the first and best act, a baby is left on a convent’s doorstep shortly after World War II. Raised by the nuns, who name her Jeanne Bernard, she grows up to become an ingénue in Paris in the early ’60s, an haute couture runway model in the ’70s and a middle-aged philanthropist shortly after German reunification.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can You Guess These Novels That Were Made Into Broadway Musical Flops?

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on popular books that had less than successful adaptations into Broadway musicals.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie adaptations.4 of 5“The Red Shoes,” Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 dark fairy tale about enchanted footwear, has inspired film, theater and ballet productions — as well as a Kate Bush album, a South Korean horror movie and other adaptations. In 2006, a jukebox musical that blended the story with the songs of Earth, Wind & Fire opened and closed on Broadway in just a few months. What was the name of the musical? More

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      ‘The Big Gay Jamboree’ Review: A Golden-Age Fantasia on Steroids

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      The goofball spirit that made Marla Mindelle’s “Titaníque” a hit is missing from her equally campy new show drenched in pop-culture references.When “Titaníque” opened in a cramped basement space two years ago, few would have imagined that the show, a commingling of the James Cameron disaster movie and the Celine Dion songbook, would amount to more than a short-lived lark. Yet it is still running — in a proper, aboveground theater — and has spawned productions in Britain, Canada and Australia.Now Marla Mindelle, a writer of “Titaníque” who played the Dion role, is back with “The Big Gay Jamboree,” another raunchy, campy, hyperactive musical drenched in pop-culture references (though, this time, there is an original score). But whereas “Titaníque” had the casual flair of a tossed-off joke that somehow landed, “The Big Gay Jamboree” works itself into a tizzy with little to show for it. At least this time the production is starting off at a street-level venue, the Orpheum Theater, where it opened on Sunday.In “The Big Gay Jamboree,” Mindelle, who wrote the book with Jonathan Parks-Ramage and the score with Philip Drennen, takes on the juicy lead role of Stacey, an aspiring actress who, after a drunken blackout, finds herself transported to Bareback, Idaho, in 1945. Stacey may be awake, but she feels as if she is in a dream and a nightmare rolled into one. The dream part is that this hard-core show-tune fiend is not in a regular small town but in the musical-theater version of one. The nightmare is that she can’t leave. It’ll be familiar territory for fans of the TV series “Schmigadoon!,” in which a couple are marooned in a golden-age musical.As Stacey tries to figure out a way back to her regular life and her godawful millionaire boyfriend, Keith (Alex Moffat, a “Saturday Night Live” alumnus), she gets to know her new supporting cast, including the man-hungry Flora (Natalie Walker) and the man-hungry Bert (Constantine Rousouli, the “Titaníque” co-writer and co-star).It’s not long before Stacey realizes that life in a Broadway fantasy is not all it’s cracked up to be, and the good old days weren’t so great for men of a certain persuasion and women who enjoy a good time. Idaho in the 1940s probably wasn’t all too hot for Black men either, even if the town loves its music director, Clarence (Paris Nix), especially — only? — when he leads the gospel choir.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ken Page, Who Starred in ‘Cats’ and Voiced Oogie Boogie, Dies at 70

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      His career on Broadway spanned decades. But he has probably best known for providing the voice of the boogeyman in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”Ken Page, whose extensive Broadway career included standout roles in “The Wiz” and “Cats,” but whose rich baritone voice reached its widest audience as Oogie Boogie in the perennial hit animated movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” died on Monday at his home in St. Louis. He was 70.His death was confirmed by Dorian Hannaway, a longtime friend. She did not cite a cause.Mr. Page, a St. Louis native, arrived on the New York theater scene in 1975 as the understudy, and later the replacement, in the role of the Lion in “The Wiz.” The next year, his showstopping rendition of “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” as Nicely-Nicely Johnson in a revival of “Guys and Dolls” brought him his first acclaim.Mr. Page revisited the role of Old Deuteronomy, which he had originated on Broadway. in the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theater’s 2010 production of “Cats.”The Muny“Sometimes it really does happen. Sometimes the fairy tale comes true,” Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote in 1976. “It happened on Wednesday night at the Broadway Theater to a young unknown, Ken Page.”His many other Broadway credits included the original Broadway productions of “Cats,” in which he played the dignified Old Deuteronomy, and “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” the musical revue built around songs written or recorded by Fats Waller. Offstage, he was probably best known for voicing Oogie Boogie, the infamous boogeyman in Henry Selick and Tim Burton’s 1993 stop-motion classic, “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” It was a role that Mr. Page would revisit often, in video games and at Halloween celebrations.According to a statement released by his agent, Mr. Page was preparing for upcoming appearances as Oogie Boogie when he died.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Good Bones’ Review: A Gentrification Drama at Public Theater

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      A new play from James Ijames, who won a Pulitzer for his “Fat Ham,” has intriguing ideas about identity and community that never fully take shape.In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” In James Ijames’s “Good Bones,” which opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater in Manhattan, it’s not a parking lot that’s the issue but a sports complex. This project is being nudged along by Aisha (Susan Kelechi Watson), a former local who is promoting the arena and building a luxe new home in her old hood as a way to revitalize it.Still, “Joni Mitchell never lies,” at least according to Earl (Khris Davis), the contractor working on Aisha’s house. Earl has fond memories of the housing project (in an unspecified city) known to its residents as the Heat. Aisha doesn’t; she sees the Heat as a place of fear, crime and lost prospects, and doesn’t mourn its potential replacement. Now, with her husband, Travis (Mamoudou Athie), she has returned to help transform the Heat into the up-and-coming neighborhood of Fennbrook. Oh, but their fabulous home may be haunted.“Good Bones” has great foundations: It’s a play about property and community exclusively featuring Black characters, and Black characters from different ends of the economic spectrum. How often do we see stories featuring the gentrified and the gentrifiers, all of whom are the same skin color? But “Good Bones” is meager with its plot and noncommittal in its intrigue, so even when the play offers its wry charms and astute reflections, it feels largely stuck in place.This production, directed by Saheem Ali, opens with a Brontë vibe; Aisha wanders in a shift dress through her in-progress modern mansion, with plastic sheets draping down from the high ceilings so the characters move through a haze of construction material. (Don’t worry, the sheets are gradually ripped down throughout the play to expose an Ikea showcase-worthy kitchen and dining room, beautifully designed by Maruti Evans.) The follow-through is a little less impressive.There’s an argument about kitchen knobs (Travis wants the handcrafted $40 ones; Aisha wants to stick to their budget) and whether they should have kids. Earl brings his sister Carmen (Téa Guarino) over for dinner. Occasionally Aisha hears a ghoulish giggle or watches her French doors spookily open on their own. But even our protagonist comically shrugs off these humble hauntings. (“I ain’t got time for this,” she snaps, turning on her heel.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sarah Snook to Make Broadway Debut in One-Woman ‘Dorian Gray’

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      The “Succession” actress will play all 26 characters in a stage production of the Oscar Wilde novel.Sarah Snook, the Australian actress who captivated and chilled television audiences as Siobhan Roy on “Succession,” will make her Broadway debut next year in a much-praised and technologically innovative adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”Snook plays all 26 characters in the play, which she previously performed to great acclaim earlier this year in London, winning an Olivier Award for best actress.The play will transfer to New York in March, playing at a Shubert theater. The specific dates and theater have not yet been announced.“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a late 19th-century novel by Oscar Wilde about a man who sells his soul so that he may remain young and beautiful, while the titular artwork ages. The story has repeatedly been adapted for stage and screen.This new “Dorian Gray” is adapted and directed by Kip Williams, who is the artistic director of Australia’s Sydney Theater Company, where the show began its life with another actress. Although Snook will be the only actor onstage, there is an onstage camera crew that captures, projects, and plays with her image.The lead producers are Michael Cassel, an Australian producer who has become increasingly active on the global stage, and Adam Kenwright, a British producer who was previously an executive at Ambassador Theater Group.Snook is one of many members of the “Succession” cast to turn to the stage following the end of the HBO series. Among them: Jeremy Strong, who played her brother Kendall, starred on Broadway earlier this year in a revival of “An Enemy of the People” and won a Tony Award for his performance; Kieran Culkin, who played her brother Roman, is also scheduled to come to Broadway in the spring for a revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross.” More

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      Review: Daniel Dae Kim as a Playwright Unmasked in ‘Yellow Face’

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      David Henry Hwang’s 2007 play, now in a fine Broadway revival, is a pointed critique of identity, masquerading as a mockumentary.To write yourself into your own play is to put on a very curious mask. If it’s flattering, is it honest? If it’s honest, why bother?Those questions, both as artistic choices and as problems of social identity, are powerfully and hilariously engaged in the revival of David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face” that opened on Tuesday at the Todd Haimes Theater. The answers are deliberately equivocal. On one hand, this Roundabout production, directed (as was the 2007 original) by Leigh Silverman, stars the exceedingly likable and handsome Daniel Dae Kim as Hwang’s stand-in, called DHH. On the other, this DHH is a worm.So too is the sinuous story, which requires a ton of exposition to get on its way. DHH, exactly like Hwang, won a 1988 Tony Award for his Broadway debut, “M. Butterfly.” His 1993 follow-up, “Face Value,” won only notoriety. Closing before its official New York opening, it earned the nickname “M. Turkey.”From left, Kevin Del Aguila, Kim, Shannon Tyo and Marinda Anderson. The supporting cast, mismatched to roles without regard to gender or race, are all wonderfully inventive, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Face Value” was Hwang’s theatrical response to the “Miss Saigon” controversy, in which the producer Cameron Mackintosh, importing that megamusical from London in 1991, sought to import its star, Jonathan Pryce, as well. But because Pryce is white, and his character is Eurasian, protests against the casting ensued. Nevertheless, the show went on — and on and on — with Mackintosh dismissing the dispute as “a storm in an Oriental teacup.”Hence “Face Value”: a broad farce, set in part at the “Imperialist Theater,” about the casting of a white actor in the title role of a musical called “The Real Fu Manchu.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More