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      Kate Mulgrew Walks the Creative and Emotional Plank in ‘The Beacon’

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      Holding tightly to the Dublin accent of her character, the actress talks about starring in Nancy Harris’s feminist thriller at Irish Rep.Sitting in her dressing room on Tuesday at Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan, talking to me about her latest role, the actress Kate Mulgrew initially sounded like herself: an American from Iowa who happens to share a voice with Kathryn Janeway, the Starfleet captain she played on “Star Trek: Voyager.”A minute or two into the interview, though, a Dublin accent started shading some of her phrases, and soon it was coloring all of them. That’s the first thing you need to know, because when you read her words here it helps to imagine their cadence as they hit the air.The second thing to know is why she would slip into that lilt and sustain it for nearly an hour. She was simply holding tight to Beiv Scanlon, the character she is playing in Nancy Harris’s thriller “The Beacon,” on the Irish Rep main stage.Not that Mulgrew, 69, has been speaking with that accent constantly, but she has been doing it “a lot,” she said. “Yesterday I didn’t. I had to go off and do some things, and I didn’t want to disconcert people who’ve known me for years. Right? That would be odd.”But if, offstage, the accent can be discombobulating even for those of us who don’t know her personally, it’s all in service of Beiv (rhymes with wave).Kate Mulgrew and Zach Appelman in “The Beacon,” at Irish Rep in Manhattan. The play opens Sunday, and is scheduled to run through Nov. 3.Carol RoseggWe 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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      Courting Dark Emotions in ‘See What I Wanna See’ and a Celine Song Play

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      Revivals of a Michael John LaChiusa musical and an early work by the “Past Lives” filmmaker toy with and challenge audience expectations.The title of Michael John LaChiusa’s “See What I Wanna See” suggests a single perspective, but the show actually offers a kaleidoscopic approach to the truth. It ravels out one story about a murder and a rape only to follow it up, in Rashomon-like fashion, with variations on the same tale that features a businessman, his wife and a sociopath.In this Out of the Box Theatrics revival of LaChiusa’s 2005 musical, loosely adapted from short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the doomed husband is first represented by a puppet and is later played by Kelvin Moon Loh. In one version, he is knifed by the sociopath (Sam Simahk), and his wife (Marina Kondo) is raped; in another, his wife cheats on her “patronizing” husband, who kills himself out of grief.Indeterminacy — of the truth, of storytelling writ large — is the driving theme and it requires a precise balance. Happily, this production, directed by Emilio Ramos and featuring an Asian American and Pacific Islander cast, never lets us determine which multiverse is the “real” one. And having a puppet portray the husband before substituting a real actor (to play his spirit) is another clever way of shifting our certainties — or alliances.The second act centers on a priest (Zachary Noah Piser), whose faith is waning after 9/11. His life is like “a sentence in which every word seems to be missing a letter.” Tired of providing absolution, he posts a message about an imminent miracle. News spreads like wildfire — or a conspiracy theory — in the song “Gloryday.”As original as these stories are, “See What I Wanna See” is strewed with clichés: The thief sings about being the “devil in disguise,” and the husband, resuscitated as a ghost by a medium (a delightful Ann Sanders), needs “some sort of release.” If the lyrics are not on par with, say, the great, similarly macabre “Sweeney Todd,” the actors (especially the compelling Kondo) keep us on our toes through quicksilver changes in mood.Though tonally different, the two acts feel like different shows rather than two halves of the same musical. What binds them are sequences about two lovers in medieval Japan that precede each act. They are told first from the perspective of the woman, Kesa (Kondo), and then her lover, Morito (Simahk). Both end as Kesa is about to plunge a knife into Morito’s throat. Whose is the truer tale? It’s impossible to say.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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      ‘Forbidden Broadway’ Review: Let Them Somewhat Entertain You

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      From its perch way Off Broadway, the long-running satire slings its affectionate arrows at Patti, Audra and the rest.At its best, topical satire, which is what the “Forbidden Broadway” franchise has been slinging for 42 years, is both timely and well targeted. The timeliness means that audience members know the material being ribbed; the targeting makes sure they know why.Admittedly, timeliness is a vague concept when your subject is Broadway, where the targets recur at regular intervals. It’s thus not a big problem that many of the songs in the show’s latest edition — which opened on Thursday at Theater 555 in the far west reaches of Hell’s Kitchen — send up musicals and performers that Gerard Alessandrini, who created, writes and directs the series, has sent up before.But the targeting in this outing, subtitled “Merrily We Stole a Song” in a nod to the flood of Sondheim revivals, including “Merrily We Roll Along,” is too often hazy. The opening number, repurposing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from “Guys and Dolls” as “Sit Down, You’re Blocking the Aisle,” feels like a title that went looking for a topic. (It’s about rude patrons.) A segment about the upcoming “Gypsy” revival posits the unlikely idea that Audra McDonald is haunted by the ghosts of previous Roses. (“Merman’s gotta let go!”) Having to admit that Lincoln Center’s revival of “South Pacific” was terrific (even if its “Camelot” was “horrific”) turns a Tchaikovsky-themed takedown of that institution into a shrug.To be sure, those numbers, and most of the others, are performed well by the four-person company, if rarely as well as they would be if performed by the people they are parodying. That’s a built-in problem when satire has little to satirize; if the worst snipe you can take at McDonald is that she’s a glorious soprano and Merman wasn’t, you’re not going to be able to throw much shade.Punching wild is also a problem here. Instead of using relevant songs to make his points, Alessandrini sometimes conscripts baffling outliers into service. A takeoff called “Great Gatsby for Dummies,” featuring a wicked Jeremy Jordan impersonation by Danny Hayward, is paired with the irrelevant song “Good Morning” from a 1939 movie. And a running gag in which Doc Brown and Marty McFly visit Broadway past and future, with a young Sondheim strangely in tow, is so in the weeds it has ticks. (It does, however, offer a glimpse of the 23rd century’s Ozempic Theater.)Punches perfectly thrown at the ripest subjects provide the evening’s better moments, even if some of the low blows are mere sideswipes. Of Ariana DeBose’s recent award show hosting, Alessandrini writes: “A girl like that/Could kill the Tonys.” Chris Collins-Pisano does a deadly Ben Platt channeling Liza at the Palace in his recent run there: “Everybody loves charisma/So nobody loves me.” And a rewrite of “The Ladies Who Lunch” provides Jenny Lee Stern, a longtime “Forbidden Broadway” standout, with the opportunity for a pithy comment on Patti LuPone’s extreme mannerisms in the 2021 “Company” revival: “I’ll sink to that.”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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      With ‘Drag Race France Live,’ France’s Drag Queens Answer Hatred With Glitter

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      Answering hatred with glitter is a time-honored drag tradition that France’s answer to “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is keeping alive in a new stage spectacle.The Paris Olympics may be over, but the event is still on the minds of many in the city — and not just sports aficionados. On Tuesday, the audience at “Drag Race France Live,” a stage version of France’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” equivalent, erupted in cheers at the mere mention of the Games’ opening ceremony.The host of both shows, the drag queen Nicky Doll, made jokes about her own appearance in the outsize display on the Seine river, which was directed by Thomas Jolly. Then she hinted at the international backlash to the tableau she took part in, which some people read as a mockery of the biblical Last Supper — or even a display of Satanism.“If I’m a Satanist, I sold my soul for waterproof products,” Nicky Doll told the crowd, referring to the downpour of rain that marred the show in July.For French drag, the Olympics’ opening ceremony came at a pivotal moment.France was relatively late to embracing American-style drag: While the country has a long cabaret tradition, it used to favor “transformiste” drag performers, who impersonate real-life artists instead of creating a character of their own. “Drag Race France,” the TV show, didn’t premiere until 2022. (“RuPaul’s Drag Race” first aired in 2009.) Yet the French show’s winners, and Nicky Doll, quickly became mainstream figures. The inclusion of drag queens in the opening ceremony pointed to their newfound prominence within French culture.Yet what could have been a moment of cultural consecration soon turned sour. Shortly after the broadcast in July, a number of conservative figures in France and abroad took aim at the scene featuring drag queens. In it, the queens gathered around a table surrounding the DJ and activist Barbara Butch, who wore a halo-like headdress. While Jolly denied that the tableau was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” describing it instead as “a grand pagan festival,” he was nonetheless accused of insulting Christianity and received death threats.Nicky Doll performing in Cannes, France, in May. The Olympics opening ceremony, which she took part in, drew ire from right-wing activists and some Christians.Jerome Dominé/Abaca/Sipa USA, via Associated PressWe 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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      Atri Banerjee, a Nice Young Man, Stages an Angry Old Play

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      Atri Banerjee has channeled his own experiences into a new production of John Osborne’s groundbreaking 1956 work “Look Back in Anger.”The night before the theater director Atri Banerjee was due to leave London for Manchester to start rehearsals for a new show, burglars broke into his house. First he was assailed with racist abuse, then physically assaulted.It was May 2019, and the Manchester job, directing an adaptation of “Hobson’s Choice,” at the prestigious Royal Exchange Theater, was a big break for Banerjee, who was stepping up after another director withdrew.“It was a landmark moment for me,” said Banerjee, 30, whose parents are Indian and who grew up in Italy and the Britain. “I had never felt victimized or oppressed because of my brownness,” he said. “Suddenly you realize it’s very easy to be put into a box. It sharpened my political awareness about why theater, so good at celebrating the multiplicity of identity, is important.”Banerjee was speaking in an interview at the Almeida Theater, in London, where he was rehearsing John Osborne’s groundbreaking 1956 play, “Look Back in Anger,” which opens at the playhouse on Friday. Part of a repertory season called “Angry and Young,” it will run in tandem with Arnold Wesker’s 1958 “Roots,” directed by Diyan Zora.“Look Back in Anger,” teeming with fury and frustration at the hidebound British class system, sparked the Angry Young Men movement in literature and theater in the 1950s. (The writers Kingsley Amis, John Wain and Alan Sillitoe were also associated with it.) “A watershed in the history of modern drama,” Martin Esslin wrote in The New York Times on the tenth anniversary of the play’s West End premiere, which was followed the next year by a Broadway run.From left: Morfydd Clark, Ellora Torchia and Billy Howle rehearsing a scene from “Look Back in Anger.”Marc BrennerWe 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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      ‘You’re Basically on a Broadway Stage, With New Friends’

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      At the touring dance party Broadway Rave, the playlist is all show tunes. But don’t worry, no house remixes of “I Dreamed a Dream” here.Julia Cochrane drove for four hours, to New York from Boston, so she could spend last Saturday night immersed in all things Broadway. But not in Manhattan.Instead, she headed to Huntington, Long Island. There, over 100 people packed into Spotlight at the Paramount, a small bar attached to a concert hall, for a touring dance party called Broadway Rave, at which theater kids turned theater adults dance and sing onstage in between shots of tequila.“People who love this, they just want to come together,” said Cochrane, 22, who attended with her friend Hannah Opisso, 23, a Long Island resident who learned about the dance party via Instagram. “It’s like you’re basically on a Broadway stage, with new friends.”“You see these folks get onstage and have the courage to be up there,” said Ethan Maccoby, whose company presents Broadway Rave.Ye Fan for The New York TimesCochrane and Opisso met as students at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, where Broadway cast albums were their pregame music of choice. Last weekend, Broadway musicals brought them together again, and at one point they took the stage to sing “Meet the Plastics” from the “Mean Girls” musical.Attendees don’t have microphones — this isn’t karaoke — but they are encouraged to rush the stage to sing and dance when their favorite songs come on. And the term “rave” is a misnomer: The playlist is mostly uncut cast album material — though last weekend those theater fans may have caught the remix flair at the beginning of “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” Other songs that night included “Out Tonight” (“Rent”), “Popular” (“Wicked”), “Sincerely Me” (“Dear Evan Hansen”) and a few tracks from “Hamilton,” including “The Schuyler Sisters” and “Wait for It.”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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      ‘A Face in the Crowd’ Isn’t About Trump. It Just Seems Like It.

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      Elvis Costello and Sarah Ruhl’s musical adaptation of the 1957 film, a satire about a hustler turned power-hungry TV personality, hits the London stage.Stop me if you think you have heard this one before: A man gains television fame on the strength of his purported connection to everyday Americans and their resentment of elites, and before long he converts that fame into political influence in a right-wing presidential campaign.That is the rough outline of the 1957 film “A Face in the Crowd,” which featured a pre-sitcom Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes, a wild-eyed, guitar-slinging hustler who is discovered in an Arkansas jail by an ambitious radio producer and becomes a national phenomenon — until a hot mic moment reveals his bottomless contempt for his fans and they abandon him. Written by Budd Schulberg, based on a short story he had written years earlier, and directed maximally by Elia Kazan, “A Face in the Crowd” was an outlandish but eerily plausible speculative satire about the dangerous seductions of mass media.Now it has been adapted as a musical with a book by Sarah Ruhl and songs by Elvis Costello, which is scheduled to open at the Young Vic in London on Sept. 20. Ruhl and Costello, talking amid rehearsals last month, took pains to stress that they don’t see their show as directly addressing the rise of Donald Trump, who turned television fame into political capital. But there is no escaping that, much as Schulberg’s original was partly responding to the hysteria of the McCarthy era, their musical version began gestating during Trump’s 2016 campaign for president, and a large part of it was written during that year.“We’ve been careful not to tie the thing directly to Trump,” said Ruhl, “partly because it’s all there — Budd Schulberg was so prescient. There have been lines I’ve had to take out because they seemed too on the nose. At one point, some of the merch that Lonesome was selling included steak, something that Trump was also pushing.”The story is “about what is within us that we can be persuaded to desire, and the fact that we desire it means it’s within us in the first place,” said Elvis Costello, right, with the show’s director, Kwame Kwei-Armah.Ellie KurtzCostello also brushed aside a narrowly timely interpretation. “I’m resistant to the notion that this is an analogy,” he said. “It’s right in the title: It’s ‘A Face in the Crowd,’ not ‘The Face of Lonesome.’ It’s about what is within us that we can be persuaded to desire, and the fact that we desire it means it’s within us in the first place, like original sin.”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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      A ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Musical Will Open on Broadway Next Year

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      The show, which had a previous run at Atlantic Theater Company, is scheduled to begin previews in February at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Twenty-seven years ago, “Buena Vista Social Club,” an album of prerevolutionary Cuban music that became an unexpected best seller, was released, spawning tours and documentary films and a burst of interest in the Afro-Cuban sound.Now a stage musical inspired by the making of the album is heading for Broadway.“Buena Vista Social Club” is scheduled to begin previews Feb. 21 and to open March 19 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Set primarily in Havana, the show depicts a group of aging and often overlooked musicians gathering in a recording studio, and recalling the tumultuous era decades earlier when they were young and the Cuban Revolution was gaining steam. The narrative loosely tracks with the history of the album, but contains songs that were released separately and elements that are fictionalized.The show had an Off Broadway run, at Atlantic Theater Company, that opened in late 2023; Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, described it as “full-of-riches,” praising the song and dance elements but expressing concerns about some of the storytelling. The Broadway cast will include many of the same performers and musicians as the Off Broadway production.The songs are all attributed to the Buena Vista Social Club, and the show has a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”). The director is Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) and the choreographers are the married couple Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.The musical is being capitalized for $17 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The lead producers are Orin Wolf, John Styles and Barbara Broccoli, who previously worked together on “The Band’s Visit.” Among the co-producers are the comedian-actor John Leguizamo; Luis Miranda, a founder of the Hispanic Federation and the father of Lin-Manuel Miranda; and LaChanze, the Tony-winning actress. More