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      The Enduring Appeal of ‘Wagatha,’ Now on Stage and Screen

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      A dramatization of the trial between the wives of two soccer stars is returning to the West End in London, joining TV shows, podcasts and documentaries about the high-profile spat.With its stage transformed into a green soccer pitch, “Vardy v. Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial” at Wyndham’s Theater in London last November promised its nearly sold-out audience a game, and the two women onstage were both trying to score a goal.But as two pundits ooh’ed and aah’ed from the sidelines, the actresses sparring were not playing soccer stars but the women married to them, caught at the center of an Instagram feud turned high-profile libel case that captured the British public’s attention last May and peeled back the curtain hiding the machinations of British celebrity and the glitzy world of English soccer.“I see it as a comedy of manners,” said Liv Hennessy, the writer of the play, which returns to the West End on Thursday at the Ambassadors Theater. “It’s a theatrical way for us to look at the way people behave in our current society.”The play is just one recent retelling of the real-life case that became known as the “Wagatha Christie” trial, in which Rebekah Vardy, the wife of the Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, sued Coleen Rooney, the wife of the former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney, for defamation. The catalyst: Rooney’s accusation, on Twitter, that Vardy had leaked her personal information to the British press.The wives and girlfriends of soccer players — commonly known in Britain by the acronym WAGs — have long been followed by tabloids, but Rooney’s post caused an online furor. Its escalation into the legal realm led to breathless coverage, drawing in powerhouse lawyers and unearthing revelations about both women’s personal lives.The legal side of the long-running saga came to an end last July, with the High Court ruling against Vardy, saying that the reputational damage from the scandal was not libel and ordering Vardy to pay almost all of Rooney’s legal costs, which amounted to about £1.7 million, or $1.9 million.But the case’s power as a story has lived on, with production companies, documentary makers, podcasters and journalists finding the unfolding trial and its cast of characters just too irresistible not to dissect, all helped by the availability of the weeklong case’s court transcripts.“It’s the old adage of: You can’t write this,” said Thomas Popay, the creative director of Chalkboard TV, which produced a two-part dramatization, “Vardy v. Rooney: A Courtroom Drama,” that aired on Channel 4 in Britain last December. “We literally didn’t. We took the transcripts and recreated them.”Alongside the West End play and Channel 4 show, offerings for followers of the feud include a BBC podcast called “It’s … Wagatha Christie” and the Discovery+ documentary “Vardy vs Rooney: The Wagatha Trial.” Rooney has signed a Disney+ deal for a three-part documentary looking at the events leading up to the trial, and the saga is reportedly being considered for a retelling as part of the series “A Very British Scandal.”Rebekah Vardy, left, lost her defamation case against Coleen Rooney, right, in London’s High Court last year. Rooney described how she concocted a sting operation to reveal the betrayer.Daniel Leal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“All of us can relate to the idea of being betrayed — especially betrayed by someone who we trusted,” Popay said. “And on Vardy’s side — we can all relate to not being believed.”In her 2019 social media post, Rooney described how she concocted a sting operation to reveal the betrayer by posting false stories that were visible to a single account — Vardy’s — to test if they would turn up in The Sun, a London tabloid.The popularity of the post led to Rooney being nicknamed “Wagatha Christie” — a portmanteau of WAG and Agatha Christie, the mystery writer — for her detective work. Vardy quickly denied she was the leaker and sued Rooney for defaming her.“We are absolutely interested in people’s misfortunes and what goes on in celebrity lives,” said Adrian Bingham, a professor of modern British history at the University of Sheffield who has studied media and gender issues. The women’s involvement with the soccer world gave their dispute resonance with a wider audience, he added, while the legal case gave the non-tabloid media a legitimate reason to cover it. Producers of the adaptations say they have asked their own lawyers to look over scripts, lest they find themselves accused of defamation.The court transcript itself had moments and revelations that many say were ripe for re-enactment: a phone with key evidence in the form of WhatsApp messages, apparently lost to the bottom of the North Sea; lawyers in wigs formally reading out text messages from the women, some containing profanities; Vardy’s tears on the witness stand after cross-examination by David Sherborne, Rooney’s lawyer.“It was positively Shakespearean in terms of how it went down,” said Popay. “We decided the best thing to do and the most accurate thing to do was to completely recreate the trial by using the court transcripts verbatim.” His company’s show, which was commissioned in May during the trial and aired in December, drew 1.5 million viewers.In the Channel 4 show “Vardy v. Rooney: A Courtroom Drama,” Vardy is played by Natalia Tena, seen here arriving at court.Channel 4Hennessy, the writer of the West End play, also relied heavily on the court transcripts, but took liberties by leaning into the soccer world, structuring the play like a game itself. Reading the transcripts, she said she was struck by the humanity of the two women, who have both been criticized (Vardy has said that people made abusive threats toward her and her unborn baby following that fateful post, while the trial laid bare tensions in Rooney’s marriage and her experience growing up with fame).“It does ask how complicit we are in creating public figures, and tearing them down when they don’t meet our standards,” Hennessy said.Even at a rehearsal in late March, before the play’s official return, it was clear the trial continued to intrigue and perplex even the cast members. During a pivotal scene in which Rooney is grilled by Vardy’s lawyer on precisely why she made the fateful decision to share the feud with the world, the actors broke character to pose their own burning questions: Was that decision one of a calculating woman, or a woman at a breaking point? Why had she not privately confronted Vardy? And what did it feel like to live, as they imagined Rooney did, in a world where one’s image could become a public commodity?Though celebrity gossip can be easy to dismiss as frivolous, the two opponents in the trial were both women from working-class backgrounds who laid out one aspirational pathway for others like them, said Rebecca Twomey, an entertainment correspondent who has covered both women closely.“We like to put people on pedestals — and bring them down,” she said, adding that many people enjoyed a modern-day pantomime. “You might think they’re airhead WAGs, but these are two sharp, intelligent women.”Still, the enduring appeal of the high drama of “Wagatha Christie” is also simple, Professor Bingham said.“The reason people are telling it is not because it’s insightful,” he added. “It’s because it’s a great story — with great lines.” More

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      Review: ‘A Little Life’ Is Quite a Lot

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      Self-harm, lashings, child prostitution, rape: Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of the 2015 novel tests the audience’s trauma threshold.How much is too much? The question recurs a lot during “A Little Life,” the theatrical pileup of suffering and woe that opened on Wednesday at the Harold Pinter Theater in London. The play is beautifully acted but surpassingly bleak, and spectators may find their own threshold for trauma tested more than once. I know mine was.Telling of a New York City lawyer who seems to know very little but pain, this is the English-language debut of a much-traveled Dutch-language production, directed by Ivo van Hove, that reached New York last year. That version was first seen in 2018 at the International Theater Amsterdam, where van Hove is the artistic director. To create the English adaptation, he has joined forces with the Dutch dramaturge Koen Tachelet and Hanya Yanagihara, the American writer on whose 2015 novel the show is based. (Yanagihara is also the editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.)This latest iteration — which runs at the Harold Pinter through June 18, then transfers to the Savoy Theater until Aug. 5 — has been selling out and generating tabloid headlines, not least because the show’s fast-rising leading man, James Norton, appears naked for extended sequences.But far more noteworthy is the grievous state in which we find Norton’s character, Jude, whether clothed or unclothed, pretty much throughout. “You’re so damaged,” Jude’s longtime friend-turned-lover Willem (a sweet-faced Luke Thompson) tells him, in the understatement of the night. When Jude does undress, we see a body disfigured by scars. Self-harm, rape, lashings, child prostitution, attempted murder: Jude has known it all. No wonder the play’s website comes with an elaborate content warning and the offer of “post-show support resources.”Yanigahara takes 720 pages to tell the story of four college friends whom we follow through their precarious lives — though Jude’s is the most awful: Willem, a womanizing actor, is his best buddy; then there are J.B. (Omari Douglas), a prickly painter; and Malcolm (Zach Wyatt), an architect who comes from family money.From left: Thompson, Norton, Zubin Varla as Harold, Emilio Doorgasingh as Andy, Zach Wyatt as Malcolm and Omari Douglas as J.B.Jan VersweyveldIt’s not the fault of Douglas or Wyatt, both fine actors, that J.B. and Malcolm seem to fade from view as the play proceeds. A feisty J.B. drives the opening scene, set at his 30th birthday party in Lower Manhattan, but is soon relegated to painting in silence on the periphery of the designer Jan Versweyveld’s multipurpose set, which manages to accommodate a kitchen, a hospital room and an art studio in one tall space.Video footage of New York on either side of the stage provides a sense of place lacking from the script. And although the play’s events span decades, there’s hardly a mention of politics or culture, as if these topics might detract from the misery unfolding across nearly four hours. (This version is a half-hour shorter than the Dutch one.) An exception is Jude’s fondness for one of Mahler’s “Rückert-Lieder,” which begins with the line, “O garish world, long since thou hast lost me.”Yes, Jude does experience kindness: He is adopted as an adult by his former professor, Harold (an elegant Zubin Varla), whose wife, Julia, has been excised from the stage adaptation.And he finds a companion and ally in Ana (the expert Nathalie Armin, the play’s lone female role), a social worker who helps him push through his concealed trauma.Mostly, though, you just watch as Jude rolls up his sleeves and takes a razor to himself yet again. The production owes an enormous amount to Norton, a likable and attractive stage-trained TV star in a role that playgoers might otherwise recoil from, and this performance is sure to be a contender for the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.But I couldn’t help nodding in agreement when Willem remarks in the second act that he is “sometimes surprised” that Jude’s still alive. You emerge stunned at the sheer mercilessness of it all, but moved? By the acting, yes. But not the play.A Little LifeThrough June 18 at the Harold Pinter Theater, then July 4 to Aug. 5 at the Savoy Theater, in London; alittlelifeplay.com. More

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      Did Your School Play Face Pushback? We Want to Hear From You.

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      Picking plays and musicals has become more complicated in some school districts. We’d like to hear about your experience.The school play is a cherished ritual for many students — and their proud parents. But choosing shows can also be complicated, and there have been instances of pushback against plays or musicals from people raising concerns about content or language.The Times is trying to assess how such concerns have affected school productions. Have concerns about potential criticism influenced which shows are selected for school productions? Have the concerns prompted changes or cancellations to scheduled shows? We’re interested in hearing from teachers, administrators, parents and students.We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. We may use your contact information to follow up with you. (Please fill out this form only if you live in the U.S. and you’re 14 or older. If you’re between the ages of 14 and 17, The Times will ask to get in touch with your parent or guardian before asking any follow-up questions.) More

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      Alex Edelman, ‘Just for Us’ Comedian, Will Bring Show to Broadway

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      The solo performance will open on June 26 at the Hudson Theater.Alex Edelman, a comedian who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and turned the antisemitism of his online critics into material for his monologues, will bring his much-admired memoiristic show, “Just for Us,” to Broadway this summer.For the past five years, Edelman, 34, has been developing “Just for Us” and, with breaks forced by the pandemic, has performed it in Australia, England, Scotland and Canada, as well as in New York, Washington and, beginning next week, Boston, near where he grew up. The show’s sold-out Off Broadway runs, which started at the Cherry Lane Theater in 2021 and moved last year to the SoHo Playhouse and then the Greenwich House Theater, won a special citation this year at the Obie Awards.The one-man show covers a lot of thematic territory, but it is built around Edelman’s seemingly unlikely (and perhaps unwise) decision to drop in on a meeting of white nationalists gathered in Queens.“The show is about the costs of sublimating parts of ourselves to fit in,” Edelman said in an interview.The Broadway run, scheduled to last for eight weeks, will begin performances on June 22 and open on June 26 at Hudson Theater. The lead producer, Jenny Gersten, is the interim artistic director of the Williamstown Theater Festival, in Massachusetts, which presented Edelman’s show last summer in the Berkshires. This will be Gersten’s first Broadway outing as a lead producer; she will produce it along with Rachel Sussman (“Suffs”) and Seaview, the theater company established by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea. (Seaview is also producing this season’s “Parade” and “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.”)Edelman said he had repeatedly reworked the show, primarily at the advice of the comedian Mike Birbiglia, who has had two of his one-man shows on Broadway; Birbiglia produced the Off Broadway runs of Edelman’s show and will help produce the Broadway run as well. The show is directed by Adam Brace, who is an associate director at Soho Theater in London.Edelman splits his time between New York and Los Angeles, where he has done some screenwriting — he worked on an adaptation of the novel “My Name Is Asher Lev” that has stalled — and said he continues to tweak “Just for Us.” A variety of prominent comedians have come to see the show, including Jerry Seinfeld and Billy Crystal, and each time, Edelman has made a point of asking for advice.“Part of the reason you can live with a show for a long time is if you’re meticulous, little changes feel like big changes — one word can change a whole joke,” Edelman said.He is obviously jubilant about the Broadway transfer — he visited the Hudson, where Jessica Chastain and Arian Moayed, who are now starring there in a revival of “A Doll’s House,” showed him around.“I never thought I’d get to do a show on Broadway, and I genuinely can’t believe that I have this chance,” he said. “It feels a bit like fantasy camp.” More

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      ‘Thanksgiving Play’ by Larissa FastHorse Comes to Broadway

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      As Larissa FastHorse worked with the Broadway cast of “The Thanksgiving Play,” which centers on four white people trying to put on a “culturally sensitive” holiday production, one of the actors, Katie Finneran, spoke up in a rehearsal with a suggestion: Perhaps she could drop a swear word during one of her more exasperated lines?“I’m the drama teacher!” Finneran’s character exclaims as her plan to make a socially progressive elementary school play begins to fall apart.FastHorse politely declined. From the work’s conception in 2015, she had intended it to be curse-free, in the hopes of finally having a widely produced play. Her other work — including the play “What Would Crazy Horse Do?” — involved Native American characters, leading producers to call them “uncastable.”So, FastHorse wrote one with white characters, while still focusing on contemporary Indigenous issues. If the play were littered with profanity, FastHorse decided, some theater producers or audiences might reject it.Larissa FastHorse instructs children dressed as turkeys on their choreography for the films, which were made at a school in Brooklyn. In the play, the films are shown between scenes.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“Being from the Midwest, there are people who won’t go to a play with swearing,” said FastHorse, who grew up in South Dakota. “And those are some of the people I want to reach.”Her gambit worked. After “The Thanksgiving Play” had its Off Broadway debut in 2018, it became one of the most produced plays in America, as it found homes at universities, community theaters and regional groups. In 2021, a streamed version starred Keanu Reeves, Bobby Cannavale, Alia Shawkat and Heidi Schreck as the quartet of bumbling thespians. FastHorse has even heard from people who have read the play aloud on Thanksgiving with their families, turning the activity into a yearly tradition.Now, “The Thanksgiving Play” has made it to Broadway, where it is in previews and is set to open on April 20 at the Helen Hayes Theater. This production, directed by Rachel Chavkin, includes a multimedia element not seen in the Off Broadway version: a series of filmed scenes, featuring children who act out cutesy Thanksgiving pageantry — think feathers and pilgrim attire — while also giving voice to some of the casual brutality with which white American culture has long portrayed Native Americans.In one of the films, older children dressed as pilgrims pretend to shoot down younger children dressed as turkeys. (Lux Haac designed the costumes.) The adults instructed the turkeys to “take a nap” when it was their turn to fall.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesFastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, will be among the first Native American artists to have their work on Broadway. It’s the kind of achievement that the theater world likes to applaud, while perhaps also cringing at the fact that it has taken this long.The play’s skewering of the performative progressivism of the white theater world adds another layer. Its central characters tie themselves in knots trying to stage a play for Native American Heritage Month without actually including any Native Americans. They fret over fulfilling the requirements of a grant, sweat over gender stereotypes, debate the merits of colorblind casting and employ terminology like “white allies” and “emotional space.” To make this production even more of the moment, FastHorse added an exchange about pronoun sharing and references to the “post-B.L.M.” world.“Even though it does openly poke fun at a lot of the folks that I work with who are more on the liberal side,” FastHorse said, “I was really trying to make it so everybody can kind of see each other.”The play’s avatar for the more conservative audience members is a newcomer named Alicia (played by D’Arcy Carden), a hired actress who is unfamiliar with the language of social progressivism.What distinguishes Alicia is a complete lack of concern about so-called political correctness. The others are eager to prove themselves as “enlightened white allies,” including the loudly vegan drama teacher (Finneran), her yoga-loving boyfriend (Scott Foley) and a know-it-all history teacher (Chris Sullivan) who likes to preface his insights with, “Actually …”Rachel Chavkin, the director of the Broadway production, with some of her young actors ahead of filming. Chavkin envisioned this video as embodying the “colonialist narrative” that many American students are taught.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesOn Broadway, as in many industries, the anxiety around screwing up was magnified three years ago, after the murder of George Floyd prompted a wider reflection on racism and inequity in myriad industries and fields. In the theater world, that re-evaluation led to the publication of “We See You, White American Theater,” a document calling for an elevation of works by playwrights of color and more people of color in leadership positions, among other demands.So when FastHorse asked Chavkin, the Tony-winning director of “Hadestown,” to oversee the Broadway run of “The Thanksgiving Play,” Chavkin first wanted to make sure that the playwright wouldn’t prefer a person of color to direct.FastHorse said she wanted someone on the creative team — otherwise made up of people of color — who understood what it was like to be a “well-meaning liberal white person.” In other words, someone who has felt the urge to say all the right things and appear as progressive as possible.“She said, ‘I need your expertise,’” Chavkin recalled.FASTHORSE, 51, has had a winding path to Broadway. She started out as a professional ballet dancer, before an injury led her toward film and television. After she became exhausted by that industry’s handling of Native American issues, she switched to theater, where she observed that people tended to be more open to doing the work necessary for sensitive and accurate portrayals, she said.Around the same time that she started writing “The Thanksgiving Play,” she co-founded a consulting firm called Indigenous Direction that began advising arts groups on Indigenous issues.From left, Henrik Carlson, Ruhaan Gokhale and Christopher Szabo prepare for their scene. The adults directing them explained that they were demonstrating the troubling way that Thanksgiving has been discussed in schools.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesAlong with Ty Defoe, an artist from the Oneida and Ojibwe Nations, FastHorse began working with an important company in Thanksgiving — Macy’s — on a question not unlike the one at the center of her play: How could they make it so the Thanksgiving Day Parade, a celebration of colonialism to many Native Americans, was not causing continued harm?Under FastHorse and Defoe’s counsel, the 2020 parade included a Wampanoag blessing and a land acknowledgment recognizing that Manhattan is part of Lenapehoking, or the land of the Lenape people. Last year’s parade added a float designed in consultation with Wampanoag artists and clan mothers.Macy’s also agreed to make a cosmetic — but, to the consultants, important — change: Tom Turkey lost his belt-buckle hat, and in its place appeared a top hat. He is no longer portrayed as a pilgrim, Defoe said, but a “show turkey.” A Macy’s spokeswoman said the change was part of their “re-evaluation of potentially upsetting symbolism.”On Broadway, it is perhaps unsurprising that the process of staging a play about white people discussing Native American representation can start to mimic the script itself.“We’ve had a lot of questions: a lot of questions about Larissa’s life experiences, a lot of questions about what she wants to accomplish,” said Sullivan, who portrays the history teacher. “I’m coming awake to all of the things I didn’t even realize I needed to be thinking about.”There tends to be some guilt, FastHorse said, in the rehearsal room over a lack of knowledge of the horrors perpetrated against Native Americans, including the Pequot Massacre in 1637, which figures prominently in the show.Though it is first and foremost a comedy, the play does not shy away from violent imagery and rhetoric, even when the actors involved are children.TO FILM THE VIDEOS, which are shown between the live scenes, Chavkin and FastHorse gathered two dozen children and teenagers in February inside the auditorium of the St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf in Brooklyn. Some were dressed as flamboyant turkeys and others wore stereotypical pilgrim costumes, with belt-buckle hats and wooden guns.For the New York City-based elementary and middle school students dressed as pilgrims for the video, Thanksgiving pageants are an unfamiliar relic of history.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesThe vision, Chavkin said, was to chart the course of how young people are taught to understand Thanksgiving, from 5- and 6-year-olds singing a silly song involving pumpkin patches and teepees, to high schoolers discussing the 1997 police crackdown on a march of Native Americans in Plymouth, Mass.“You watch young people move through the educational system,” Chavkin said. “What we’re trying to do over the course of these four films is make that arc really palpable, starting with sort of obediently following a very nationalist, colonialist narrative.”In one scene, four Indigenous children, some flown in from across the country, perform a punk rock version of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” complete with a dummy of Theodore Roosevelt with a plastic saber stuck in him.Of course, if you’re asking 12-year-olds to sing part of “Ten Little Indians,” a 19th-century nursery rhyme that includes disturbing lyrics involving the death of Native Americans, you need to explain why.FastHorse told the children before filming that she had found these lyrics (including the couplet, “Two little Indians foolin’ with a gun …. One shot t’other and then there was one”) in a student activity posted online for teachers.“We want adults to be aware that this isn’t OK,” FastHorse told them. “The song actually exists and is still being put out into the world.”The young actors nodded that they understood. For them, as elementary and middle school students in New York City, Thanksgiving pageants are an unfamiliar relic of history. These days, they said, their teachers mostly avoid the subject. More

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      Review: ‘Berlusconi: A New Musical’ Is Hammy and Hamstrung

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      The show, in London, skewers its protagonist through maximalist kitsch, but it comes with a tone of finger-wagging moralism that’s no fun.When we first meet Silvio Berlusconi, the title character in “Berlusconi: A New Musical,” the former populist prime minister of Italy is awaiting the verdict of a tax fraud trial in 2012. But this is not some courtroom drama about white-collar crime: The case is merely a framing device for a more comprehensive indictment of Berlusconi’s life and character.As he awaits his fate, a succession of women reproach the beleaguered media mogul in song: The state prosecutor, Ilda (Sally Ann Triplett), enumerates his alleged sexual and financial wrongdoings; his ex-wife Veronica (Emma Hatton) laments his many infidelities; Fama (Jenny Fitzpatrick), a TV reporter who had a relationship with him during the early stages of her career, tells her story, as does Bella (Natalie Kassanga), a young woman whom he seduced at one of his notorious “Bunga Bunga” parties; and his mother (Susan Fay) chides him from beyond the grave — “I raised you to be good!”Running at the Southwark Playhouse, in London, through April 29, “Berlusconi: A New Musical” is a maximalist kitsch cabaret that carries a serious message about power and hubris. Written by Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan, it skewers its protagonist for the vacuous cynicism of his political demagogy, as well as his considerable personal shortcomings. But it is also hamstrung by its earnestness, with a tone of finger-wagging moralism that is the antithesis of fun.Sebastien Torkia performs the title role with a smirking, camp swagger. It feels like an amusingly counterintuitive rendering of the famously macho womanizer, until we recall that Berlusconi was a cruise ship crooner in the 1960s; in Torkia’s rendering, he still is. The music comprises a broad repertoire of finger-clicking ditties and soaring power ballads. But there’s a shift in tone for Bella’s segment, which deals with sexual exploitation: The director James Grieve and the choreographer Rebecca Howell render it in an appropriately sensitive and solemn manner, though the timbre of this sequence sails dangerously close to gooey melodrama, and may strike some as patronizing. This is tricky terrain.From left: Emma Hatton, Jenny Fitzpatrick, Torkia and Sally Ann Triplett. Throughout the show, a succession of women reproach Berlusconi in song.Nick RutterThere are some smart touches with the set design, by Lucy Osborne. The stage is filled by a steep staircase representing the courtroom steps, cleverly opening up the space for the performers to caper on multiple levels. Fitzpatrick delivers the standout vocal performance as Fama, whose parts are addressed to a camcorder synced up to the big screen in the back, as well as smaller TVs on either side. She appears onscreen in real time, complete with news graphics and captions that vividly evoke the psychological stress of personal drama played out in the media glare.Like many a puffed-up strongman, the figure of Berlusconi is ripe for satire. But Simmonds and Vaughan, the show’s writers, haven’t made the most of the comic potential in his vanity and libidinousness. The gags — including a dig at his penchant for facial filler and a somewhat puerile riff on the supposed homoeroticism of his friendship with Vladimir Putin — are mildly funny but not exactly sidesplitting.The show also suffers slightly from a lack of narrative thrust. Since everything is being chewed over in retrospect, we don’t get a sense of a personal journey unfolding. Torkia’s Berlusconi only really has two registers: the arrogant bluster that is his default mode (“I am the Jesus Christ of politics!”), and occasional moments of fretful self-doubt. After the first hour, these registers start to wear thin.With lyrics featuring pointed allusions to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, “Berlusconi: A New Musical” is clearly trying to speak to the moment, channeling a long and distinguished tradition of lampooning demagogues that dates back to Charlie Chaplin. But the discourse on populism is saturated, to put it mildly, and this production would probably have felt more urgent about seven years ago: Its core insights, about the symbiosis between personal immorality and the corruption of the body politic, are almost self-evident by now.Either way, the point is labored. By the closing number, which urged theatergoers to “Be careful who you vote for,” the message was pretty clear. Insufficiently trenchant as satire, and not quite hilarious enough as entertainment, “Berlusconi: A New Musical” is caught between two stools. It’s a moderately enjoyable romp, but not much more. More

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      In ‘Public Obscenities,’ the Transgender Activist Tashnuva Anan Makes Her New York Debut

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      Tashnuva Anan Shishir, who became her country’s first transgender news anchor in 2021, is performing in “Public Obscenities” at Soho Rep.When Shayok Misha Chowdhury wrote the character of Shou for his new bilingual play, “Public Obscenities,” about a couple who interviews queer locals in Kolkata, India, he was “super worried” about casting the role. The performer would not only need to be of the appropriate gender but also a Bangla speaker with the right “linguistic fluency” to capture the character, who speaks “exuberantly and forthrightly and confidently,” he told me recently.Shou identifies as kothi, an Indian gender that encompasses a breadth of expressions, Chowdhury said. So he reached out to a friend for advice: Debanuj DasGupta, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who is “very in the sort of Bangali queer and trans space.” After the professor mentioned Tashnuva Anan Shishir, Chowdhury searched her name online, and several questions came into his head: Is she even in New York? Would she be interested in auditioning?When he posted a casting call on Instagram, and Anan responded, a plan started to coalesce. She was in New York, performing in Queens, in “I Shakuntala,” a play by Golam Sarwar Harun and Gargi Mukherjee, a married couple who would also go on to star in “Public Obscenities.” Anan’s role was small, but she “stole the show,” Chowdhury said.After she auditioned for his play, it was practically unanimous, he said: “We have found the person.” While Shou doesn’t appear until 50 minutes into “Public Obscenities” — its run at Soho Rep (in a coproduction with the National Asian American Theater Company) has been extended through April 16 — the character has been among its most memorable.In “Public Obscenities,” Anan, center, plays a scene-stealing interview subject, our critic wrote in a review of Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s play.Julieta CervantesIn March 2021, Anan made history as the first transgender news anchor in Bangladesh. For three minutes, on International Women’s Day, she spoke on the air and was seen by millions of her compatriots. She went on to anchor occasionally for the network, Boishakhi TV, through November 2021.In December of that year, she came to New York, her first time in the United States. Her trip was primarily to receive care related to what she calls her transformation. And while here, professional opportunities have arisen: Last year she became the first transgender model from Bangladesh to walk in New York Fashion Week.Anan, 31, grew up in a conservative Muslim family and has had a grueling journey to this point. She has endured relentless harassment and survived suicide attempts; been shunned by family members, including her father; and lived penniless in a slum.“I really wanted to be an actress,” Anan, who performed in theater in South Asia and in a small Bangla film, “Kosai,” told me recently in a video interview. “People shouldn’t be considered by their gender. People should acknowledge their work. People should acknowledge their skill.” Being a news anchor in Bangladesh was eye-opening, she said, but it couldn’t quite open up the world for her like the United States could. “I was feeling that I have to swim. So I should swim in the ocean, not in a pond, not in a river. So if I can achieve, I can achieve. If not, then not.”Here are excerpts from our conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.“I had to pay a lot. I had to leave my family to prove my identity,” Anan said.Desmond Picotte for The New York TimesHow has life in New York been for you?It’s a lot of adaptation. I’m born and raised in a village, not a city. The city is highly competitive, but I like this competition. Being an activist, this is a great eye-opening for me to learning, to adapting to each other, to teaching how is the activism going on. When I was in Bangladesh, I was working in a national level. Now I’m in New York, and I’m working globally. I’m contributing internationally. So this is a good opportunity for me.You’ve shown remarkable perseverance. What gives you strength?For myself, that I believe: Do your own job. Just do hard work. There is no shortcut in life. Just believe in yourself. And just, first, inspire yourself. I have competition only with myself, because I’m trying to do a little bit better than yesterday.Why do you think Shou has been so memorable to audiences?Shou is intelligent, Shou is extra-talented, an extrovert, and Shou knows actually about this scenario: the situation of queer people, queer activism, especially in Kolkata, Bangladesh, Pakistan. So Shou is charming everyone. Shou is connected with everyone.Shou is very common character in South Asia because Shou is kind of a feminine guy, so Shou would like to wear femininity in her body or in their body. So this feminine guy represents South Asian queer community also.How do you see yourself in this character and how are you different?Tashnuva bold, Tashnuva sexy, Tashnuva brave, Tashnuva iconic — and the brand I created, I had to pay a lot. I had to leave my family to prove my identity. Shou is also powerful. Shou is also entertaining. Shou is also jolly. Shou is also friendly. Tashnuva is sometimes moody, because people can consider my self-esteem or people can consider my self-respect as an ego, but I had to maintain it. But Shou doesn’t have that; Shou is more friendly.When I get confirmation from my team, I was a little bit tense actually, because, see, I have long hair, and the show is going to put, like, a wig. Then I asked Misha, “Should I cut my hair? I can’t!”First time, when I watched myself with that wig, with proper costume, I was so low — believe me, I was so low. I didn’t feel well because still, then, I didn’t believe Shou. So I was trying to just discover what was going on. Now, I literally fall in love with that wig. Yeah, this is me, this is Shou.How has the reception been from South Asian audiences?Oh my God, they appreciate a lot. They were looking at their sorrows in front of them. They’re looking at their life in front of them, through Shou’s eyes. I got lots of messages from my friends — “Tashnuva, you’re doing really well because this is not doing acting, this is very natural.” I wanted to be a natural actor. I want to play a character that should be more natural, that should be believable. I really believe when I am doing something, people should believe.Last night, when I’m coming toward audience, a girl literally was crying, and she was from Bangladesh, and she born and raised here. She only heard me by social media, and this is the first time we get connected in person. And she was telling me, “Tashnuva, this is the story that we know but we couldn’t tell in front of people.”What’s next for you?I don’t like to say my dream because people are always critics. So I love to keep my dream inside. I am looking for opportunities to act more. So I think now, just now, after this project, I want to jump into another project. There I can play a more powerful character. There I can say another story. I don’t want to pursue any character that is very common.When I think about performance — light, camera, action — I love Broadway performance. Today and tomorrow, is my dream that I will perform in Broadway, or I will perform in a Hollywood film. When I start working, I just forget my every pain. I just forget everything. And this is the performance that inspired me a lot, that did a lot for me. More