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      Puppetry So Lifelike, Even Their Deaths Look Real

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      Members of the puppetry team for “Life of Pi” discuss making the show’s animals seem all-too-real on a very crowded lifeboat.Fair warning: This article is riddled with spoilers about puppet deaths in “Life of Pi,” the stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel about a shipwrecked teenager adrift on the Pacific Ocean. He shares his lifeboat first with a menagerie of animals from his family’s zoo in India — large-scale puppets all, requiring a gaggle of puppeteers — and eventually just with a magnificent, ravenous Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker that takes three puppeteers to operate.Now in previews on Broadway, where it is slated to open on March 30 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, the play picked up five Olivier Awards in London last year. Puppetry design by the longtime collaborators Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell was included with Tim Hatley’s set in one award, and, unprecedentedly, a team of puppeteers won an acting Olivier for playing Richard Parker.Caldwell, who is also the production’s puppetry director, and two of those Olivier-winning puppeteers, Fred Davis and Scarlet Wilderink, sat down at the Schoenfeld one morning last week to talk about bringing the show’s puppets to life — and then, in several scenes, to vivid and often gruesome death. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Foreground, from left: Fred Davis, Scarlet Wilderink and Finn Caldwell. Behind the tiger, from left: Andrew Wilson and Rowan Ian Seamus.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIt’s a very crowded lifeboat. Who all is in there, and how complex is that dance?SCARLET WILDERINK That is such a beautiful way to describe good puppetry. Because it is a synchronicity like dance that looks completely unchoreographed. Well, what have we got in there? We’ve got hyena. Rat for a short time.FRED DAVIS Zebra. Orangutan. Tiger. And Pi.FINN CALDWELL In the end of the first act, where we see the tiger’s about to kill the hyena, and the hyena’s killed the zebra and everything else — we call that section Megadeath. How many puppeteers do we use in Megadeath?WILDERINK Three, five, six, eight, 11.CALDWELL Eleven puppeteers. That’s the most puppeteers we’ve ever used on a show in one sequence.Richard Parker is such a cat. He seems plush and furry with padded paws, and he hogs the bed. How do you figure out animal movement?CALDWELL We look at anatomy. We look at pictures of skeletons of tigers, blow that up to a real tiger size and start marking on pieces of paper on the wall where the joints are all going to be. Because when we build on a framework, our armature, it wants to move like a tiger, because the limbs are all the right length. The joints want to move in the right way.Hiran Abeysekera, left, as Pi, with Richard Parker, eventually the last surviving passengers aboard a lifeboat stranded in the Pacific Ocean.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesDAVIS In terms of bringing it to life, we start off by looking at videos of tigers moving in different environments — when they’re relaxed, when they’re hunting, analyzing their foot patterns and how their weight shifts from one paw to another, how their tail flicks when they’re feeling a certain way. One thing that is always challenging for us to do is the noises. Because no human has the same lung capacity or vocal cords as a tiger.WILDERINK One of the most helpful tools for us is imagination. If the puppeteer is really seeing the thing, the audience will see the thing. The tiger’s fur, you know, he doesn’t have real fur. But if you imagine the softness of it, this sort of stretchiness of their skin, the weight — like if he collapses into Pi, how do you make him look like he’s soft in his lap? It’s part of the design because we’ve got all those bungees that tie all of the armature together, which makes him look like that. But the sensory stuff, I think, is in our minds.What is it that makes the audience believe?CALDWELL It’s you and I as 3-year-olds going, “There’s a doll. Should we agree that this is real and play a game together?” That’s the same offer that you make to the audience: “Here’s a tiger. Do you want to agree that it’s real with us?” That means that they then take part in the creation. Intellectually, we know it’s a puppet. But really quickly, most people want to buy into the game.Why is violence sustained by puppet animals so shocking and affecting?CALDWELL If it was the real animal, you’d be really worried about the situation. You’d be like, “Is that a real hyena?” With a puppet, no matter what it’s playing, all you have to worry about is what it’s telling you onstage. The puppets are only there to be themselves, so that when you start to wound them, all the audience is thinking is, well, (a), I’ve taken part in bringing this thing to life, and now you’re killing it in front of me, and (b), this is all that’s happening. All you’re getting is the pure story, the pure thing that’s happening, and so I think you get the straight emotional connection to it.The puppetry team also built and operated a hyena, a zebra, a goat and an orangutan.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAnd yet you really do not expect to hear a puppet’s neck crack.WILDERINK It is so rare that you get to do something so grisly with puppets. That’s why I love it so much. If the zebra is being attacked, the orangutan is being killed, the goat’s being killed, I love hearing the audience react to it and then be surprised by their own reaction. Because they don’t realize how invested they are until it happens. They feel the shock and the pain of the orangutan dying, and then they’re surprised by the fact that they believed it so much.DAVIS One of my favorite things that’s happened: The goat’s head came detached from the goat’s body. Something got broken in there. Through that last scene in the zoo in Pondicherry, where the goat gets brought on and shoved in the tiger cage, the puppeteer’s doing a dutiful job of keeping the body and the head attached. And then we get in there and the goat gets attacked by the tiger. As the tiger, you don’t know that the head’s come off the goat. So the neck breaks, and then you see that it’s actually disconnecting. What we decided in the moment, we left with the body, left the head on the stage. The tiger went away, came back, picked up the head and then left. We spoke to the actors afterward and they were like, “I was crying. I’m scarred from seeing that happen. Why did you do that?” I’m like, “Well, you know, it’s a tiger.”Seven puppeteers who operated from “Life of Pi” shared the Olivier Award for best supporting actor in 2022.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesI’m wondering: What did winning the Olivier mean to you?DAVIS It was really big. It’s also really validating, because I think when you’re involved with the puppetry that we’ve done over the last few years, we believe and invest in these puppet characters as much as anyone would a human character.It’s acting, yes?DAVIS It is acting. But I think a lot of the time, from an outside perspective, it cannot be considered acting or judged as harshly as acting. We want people to be looking at it and considering it worthy of criticism. That’s what was so heartening: that what we were doing was believable enough that people wanted to judge it.WILDERINK I had people from all over the world — puppeteers, puppet theater companies — contacting me on social media, saying how many waves it’s created in their communities. It felt very special on a global scale.CALDWELL It was just amazing that the industry sat up and took notice. It mainly just feels like a door opened — and an invitation to what we can do next. More

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      Review: In ‘Hang Time,’ Lynched Men Tell Finely Tuned Tales

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      Zora Howard’s new play at the Flea catches three men during a few moments of their breathless eternity.Walking into the Flea for Zora Howard’s “Hang Time” is like stepping into a horror film. Darkness pervades the black box theater, and cicadas carry on conversations in some unseen woods. A large obstruction — perhaps a statue? or installation? — interrupts the space. Then it becomes clear: Three Black men seemingly hanging from invisible ropes above an elevated round platform. Lights faintly illuminate their slumped heads and shoulders; their shadows are cast on the right wall, evoking Kara Walker’s silhouettes. You have to pass by them to get to your seat.Howard, who wrote and directed this production, certainly knows how to make an impression.In this hourlong premiere, produced by the Flea and WACO (Where Art Can Occur) Theater Center in Los Angeles in partnership with Butler Electronics, the three lynched men, named Bird (Dion Graham), Slim (Akron Watson) and Blood (Cecil Blutcher), have conversations about women, work, fatherhood and loss. The space is bare, and the play stops as suddenly as it starts — as if we’re catching just a few moments in a breathless eternity.Even though there are no visible signs of the men’s restraints, occasionally we hear the sound of ropes tightening, and the men jerk backward and stiffen into their signature pose. The limp lolls of their heads, the surfacing veins of an extended neck, even the synchronized eye movements: This dance of rigor mortis is a master work of small intricacies, even if it grows more gratuitous and less poignant with every reoccurrence.Bird, Blood and Slim are like three chapters in the life of a Black American man: Blood (as in “Young Blood”) is still coming into his own. Slim is the clown, who sings, jokes and brags about his machismo. Bird, the eldest, is the sanctimonious curmudgeon, who preaches a gospel of God, firm morals and hard work, but also has his own losses that have hardened him. Each of the perfectly cast actors manages to straddle the line between realism and the metaphorical space where “Hang Time” exists.Howard draws out every subtlety of her already fine-tuned dialogue, which renders innocuous expressions into brutal double entendres about the men’s hanging bodies (“Look at him getting all red in the face,” Slim jokes at Blood’s expense). But the men don’t just communicate with words; they also grunt, snort and chortle, and at times the wordless exclamations form their own harmony.To accentuate the emotional shifts, Megan Culley’s sound design — which brings the outside world into the space, from rustling leaves to the bellowing of a train — works in tandem with the portentous lighting (by Reza Behjat) and the script’s varied pacing and silences. And the jeans, sneakers and plaid button-down shirts (by Dominique Fawn Hill) worn by the men are discreetly shabby and tattered, so you may not notice the bullet holes and bloody tears until late.There are purposely unanswered questions, including how these men ended up here. Bird, Blood and Slim never mention their deaths; they seem only vaguely aware of their predicament. They repeat exchanges, never seem to grasp the time, and talk about the weather and their plans as if the future were someplace they could actually confront.In both this work and her captivating 2020 play “Stew,” a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, Howard writes her characters into a Möbius strip of trauma and injustice that is Black American history.And while “Hang Time” offers a work of theater that’s undoubtedly moving, it’s also too static to leave a more lasting impression. Even the absurdist purgatories and in-between spaces of Beckett, whose language has the same kind of circuitousness, take us someplace, even if we ultimately end up back where we started.“Hang Time” begins with a visual declaration of horror but, amid its chitter and chatter, never seems to finish the conversation.Hang TimeThrough April 3 at the Flea Theater, Manhattan; theflea.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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      Danny and Lucy DeVito Head to Broadway With Roundabout Theater Company’s New Season

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      The actors will play a father and daughter in “I Need That,” a comedy written by Theresa Rebeck.Danny DeVito and his daughter, Lucy, will co-star in a new Theresa Rebeck play on Broadway this fall, presented by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, which announced its 2023-2024 season on Tuesday.Roundabout said that its Broadway season would include two three-hander plays: “I Need That,” the new Rebeck play, as well as a revival of “Home,” a 1979 play by Samm-Art Williams.“I Need That” is a comedy about a widower, played by DeVito, struggling to let go of clutter after the death of his wife. Lucy DeVito will play the character’s daughter, and Ray Anthony Thomas will play his friend; the production, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, will begin performances in October at the American Airlines Theater. Von Stuelpnagel also directed Rebeck’s last Broadway play, “Bernhardt/Hamlet,” in 2018; that show was also produced by Roundabout.Danny DeVito previously starred on Broadway in “The Price,” another Roundabout production, in 2017.“I had such a great time the last time I was there, and we’re chomping at the bit to do this one,” Danny DeVito said in a joint interview with his daughter.In 2021, when many theaters were still closed, Danny and Lucy DeVito collaborated on an audio play, “I Think It’s Worth Pointing out That I’ve Been Very Serious Throughout This Entire Discussion or, Julia and Dave Are Stuck in a Tree,” by Mallory Jane Weiss, for Playing on Air. That show was directed by Von Stuelpnagel, and led to this new venture: The DeVitos said they’d be open to working with Von Stuelpnagel again, at which point he mentioned their interest to Rebeck, who wrote the new play for them. They workshopped it with a staged reading at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont in 2022.“It’s a very humanistic, character-driven, slice-of-life story,” Lucy DeVito said. “The themes speak to loneliness and love, and the hardships you experience with your family while getting older.”“I Need That” will be her Broadway debut.Danny and Lucy DeVito have worked together on a variety of projects: Among them, last year’s “Little Demon,” an FXX animated comedy, as well as “Curmudgeons,” a short comedic film in 2016.“Home,” which Roundabout plans to stage on Broadway next spring, is about a North Carolina farmer who is imprisoned as a draft dodger during Vietnam, and then has a series of adventures in a big city as he tries to put his life back together. The play was first staged Off Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1979 and then transferred to Broadway in 1980.“The play itself is a freshet of good will, a celebration of the indomitability of man, a call to return to the earth,” the critic Mel Gussow wrote in the Times in 1979. “In all respects — writing, direction and performance — this is one of the happiest theatrical events of the season.”The revival will be directed by Kenny Leon, one of the most prolific directors on the New York stage and a Tony Award winner for directing the 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.”Roundabout, which only staged one show on Broadway this season (a revival of “1776” that ran for three months), said it hopes to stage three next season; the third has not yet been announced.Roundabout also announced Tuesday plans to stage two plays Off Broadway next season: “The Refuge Plays,” an intergenerational family drama written by Nathan Alan Davis (“Nat Turner in Jerusalem”), and directed by Patricia McGregor (she is the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, and that theater is also associated with the production), next fall, and “Jonah,” a boarding school coming-of-age story written by Rachel Bonds (“The Lonely Few”) and directed by Danya Taymor (“Pass Over”), next spring. And it said it would produce “Covenant,” about a blues musician who may or may not have made a deal with the devil, written by York Walker and directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene and staged in its Off Off Broadway underground black box space in the fall. More

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      ‘Drinking in America’ Review: Men in a Cracked Mirror

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      After 15 years away from the stage, Andre Royo of ‘The Wire’ goes all in with an evening of Eric Bogosian monologues at the Minetta Lane Theater.Andre Royo practically glows with pleasure as he walks onstage at the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. That’s the first surprise at “Drinking in America,” an evening of Eric Bogosian monologues peopled with misfits, screwups and creeps.We’re not expecting Royo’s shy smile, either, or what seems like genuinely warm feeling when he opens by telling the audience how good it is to be home, meaning both back in New York and back onstage. It has been 15 long years since this actor, a Bronx native best known for portraying the heroin addict Bubbles on the HBO series “The Wire,” has done a play.Yet it takes him just a couple of minutes of patter to forge an easy, sure connection with the crowd. And once he slips into the monologues, you can sense how attuned he is to our presence, even while he stays firmly in character. Royo understands deeply the symbiosis of theater, and it is beautiful to watch him tap into it.“Drinking in America” had its premiere in 1986, when Bogosian’s name was synonymous with provocatively hip, hetero-masculine theater. These dozen monologues are a cracked mirror held up to American men of that wealth-obsessed era, variously pursuing, embracing and rejecting the American dream. If it’s not a flattering look for them — several of Bogosian’s guys are outright Neanderthals with women — it still makes good theater, because of Bogosian’s observational acuity, and because of the fireworks that ensue when an actor is all in.Royo is all in, from the first monologue, “Journal,” a mini-comedy about the jejune reflections of a young guy on an acid trip, to the last, “Fried-Egg Deal,” about an alcoholic panhandler whose flattery of a prosperous passer-by turns to truth-telling.“If I wasn’t where I was, you couldn’t be where you was,” the panhandler says. “’Cause, you know, ’cause you can’t have a top without a bottom.”The pièce de résistance, though, is “Our Gang,” a wild ride of a comic tale about an out-of-control, drug-fueled night that spirals into rampant violence and destruction. Like characters in plays by Stephen Adly Guirgis and Mark O’Rowe, both of whom owe something to Bogosian, Royo’s narrator views it all through the lens of hilarity, and regales us accordingly.Directed by Mark Armstrong, this handsomely designed revival leans into the ’80s-ness of the script, which is peppered with boldface names of that decade. (The set is by Kristen Robinson, costumes by Sarita Fellows, lighting by Jeff Croiter, sound by John Gromada.) But Bogosian has made a few subtle changes for this Audible Theater production.In “Wired,” Royo plays a Hollywood wheeler-dealer, the kind of guy who snorts a line of cocaine and downs a generous shot of bourbon to get going in the morning. On the phone with someone who wants a big star for a project, he explains that an unnamed actor is out of the running because he has a broken hand.“He couldn’t punch out Ricky Schroder today,” the wheeler-dealer says, referring to the child star of the ’80s sitcom “Silver Spoons,” who in more recent years has made headlines as an anti-vaxxer.Schroder wasn’t the original celebrity named in that bit of dialogue, but the tweak is perfect — for practicality and snark.Other monologues are chilling. In “The Law,” a preacher rails against “satanic abortion clinics” and cultural enemies who have been brought down by gunfire and “only understand the discipline of the bullet.” In “Godhead,” a heroin addict insists he doesn’t want any part of the American dream, merely his fix.“Just let me have my taste,” he says. “Have my peace.”Throughout, Royo’s performance crackles with liveness — the kind of lightning in a bottle that Audible intends to capture on audio for wide release. You could wait for the recording. Far better, you could get yourself to the Minetta Lane and experience this show in the moment, in all of its dimensions.Drinking in AmericaThrough April 8 at Minetta Lane Theater, Manhattan; drinkinginamericaplay.com. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More

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      Catching Up With Hillary Clinton at “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’”

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      The former secretary of state celebrated the opening on Broadway and shared her thoughts on those drag show bans.On Sunday night, Hillary Clinton, fresh from attending the opening night of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” on Broadway at the Music Box Theater, swept into the Rosevale Cocktail Room at the Civilian Hotel on West 48th Street.As candles flickered on tables, with miniature models from productions like “Hadestown” and “Dear Evan Hansen” displayed on a back wall, a few dozen guests at the private after-party sipped glasses of white wine from the bar. Mrs. Clinton mingled among guests including David Rockwell, the architect and Tony Award-winning show designer who designed the hotel; the actress Jane Krakowski; Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s longtime aide; and the “Dancin’” director, Wayne Cilento.“I loved it,” she told Mr. Cilento, who also danced in the original 1978 production of the show. “The dancers were so charismatic and magnetic. That energy was so needed.”Mrs. Clinton had attended the opening at the invitation of Rob Russo, a co-producer on the show who has worked with her in some capacity for nearly two decades. He hardly had to twist her arm, though: Mrs. Clinton, a noted Broadway superfan, has seen numerous shows in the past few months, including “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive” in July, “The Phantom of the Opera” in December and, last week, the new revival of “Some Like It Hot.”From left: Jamie DuMont, Nicole Fosse and Rob Russo. Mr. Russo, a co-producer of the show and a longtime associate of Mrs. Clinton’s, was the one to invite the former secretary of state to the show’s opening.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSo when asked to consider the idea that a touring production of the latter show, in which two men dress as women to escape the mob, could be banned from playing in a state like Tennessee, which recently passed a law limiting “cabaret” shows, part of a wave of legislation across the country by conservative lawmakers against drag performances, Mrs. Clinton’s reaction was clear.“It’s a very sad commentary on what people think is important in our country,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I hope that it goes the way of the dinosaur because people will recognize that it’s just a political stunt.”The range of shows that could potentially be banned under such legislation — such as Shakespeare plays, in which a number of characters cross-dress; “Hairspray,” the popular musical in which the protagonist’s mother is usually played by a man in a dress; and “1776,” whose current touring company features an all-female, trans and nonbinary cast, was, she said, “absurd.”“I guess they’re going to shut the state borders to anything that is Shakespearean?” she said. “Are we going to stop exporting any kind of entertainment?”Ms. Fosse, far left, the daughter of the director-choreographer Bob Fosse, talked to a dancer in the show, Yeman Brown.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAt around 9:10 p.m., Mrs. Clinton departed the party. Some guests followed her lead, while others moved upstairs to the Starchild Rooftop Bar & Lounge on the 27th floor, where Nicole Fosse — the daughter of the director-choreographer Bob Fosse and the actress Gwen Verdon — and Mr. Cilento, the director, were hosting a second party for the show’s creative team and cast of 22 dancers.The dancer Karli Dinardo wore a sleeveless silver gown with cutouts by the Australian designer Portia and Scarlett, while Yeman Brown donned a green Who Decides War cathedral sweatshirt with cutouts across the front. They sipped “Dancin’ Man” mocktails — roots divino bianco, cucumber, pink peppercorn and lemon-lime soda — and munched on “Fosse’s Breakfast” (granola) and shrimp cocktails furnished by waiters on silver platters. (For those with less highbrow tastes, there were also bags of M&M’s by the bar with the dancers’ names printed on them.)Karli Dinardo, a dancer in the show.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesKolton Krouse, who leads the number “Spring Chicken.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesKolton Krouse, a nonbinary dancer in the production whose face-slapping kicks earned a shout-out from the New York Times critic Jesse Green in his review, wore an asymmetrical black dress, gold heels, glittering gold eye shadow and bright red lipstick.“I wanted to do a modern take on Ann Reinking’s original trumpet solo dress,” they said of their sparkling one-shoulder gown.Mx. Krouse, who is among a cast of dancers that is noticeably more diverse in age, ethnicity, body type and gender presentation than a typical Fosse cast, said the best part of the new production was that “we can all be ourselves while we’re doing it.”Mr. Cilento said he purposefully sought a more diverse cast for the revival.“I did a very eclectic, really exciting group of dancers because I felt like you had to embrace the whole culture and not just make it, you know, white bread,” he said.Mx. Krouse, who leads the number “Spring Chicken” in the show, said: “It’s weird doing a show where I can be me, and it’s OK.”M&M’s celebrating the show’s opening night featured dancers’ names.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesQuick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. More

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      Review: ‘The Good John Proctor’ Imagines Girlhood BFFs

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      The play, directed by Caitlin Sullivan at the Connelly Theater, focuses on two girls in the year leading up to the action depicted in “The Crucible.”Abigail Williams is described by Arthur Miller in “The Crucible” as a “strikingly beautiful girl” of 17 with “an endless capacity for dissembling.” Lusty and conniving, Miller’s Abigail has an affair with her former boss, John Proctor, and after she gets fired, tries to hex his wife out of jealousy by drinking blood and dancing naked with other girls in the woods. Her lies about that night serve as the catalyst for Miller’s 1953 dramatization of the Salem witch trials, which casts John as its tragic hero.Williams was, in fact, only 11 or 12 years old in 1692, when she and her 9-year-old cousin, Betty Parris, made their first accusations. “The Good John Proctor,” a dark comedy by the playwright Talene Monahon, imagines Abigail (Susannah Perkins) and Betty (Sharlene Cruz) as girlhood BFFs and bedfellows in the year leading up to the action depicted in Miller’s play. Speaking in modern vernacular, but wearing Puritan-style bonnets and white nightdresses (in costumes by Phuong Nguyen), the girls whisper about dreams of flying, playact as a king and a peasant maiden and recoil in paranoia as if they were under constant surveillance.There is a threat lurking in the rustling darkness that surrounds them in this Bedlam production, which runs through April 1 at the Connelly Theater, but it’s not the supernatural kind (the stunning chiaroscuro lighting is by Isabella Byrd, and arboreal sound design by Lee Kinney). Mercy (Tavi Gevinson), a seasoned housemaid of 14, calls it the devil, but what she really means is the power and whims of men. “There’s evil everywhere,” Mercy mordantly insists. Is it any wonder the girls assume Satan is to blame for the bloody parts of womanhood that no one else has explained?The Salem witch trials have been endlessly rehashed and reclaimed in pop culture, including onstage; Bedlam presented a stripped-down and pointedly political take on “The Crucible” in this theater in 2019, and Gevinson played Mary Warren in a stylized and bombastic Broadway revival in 2016. “The Good John Proctor” isn’t even the only Salem-inspired dark comedy to play Off Broadway this season; Sarah Ruhl’s “Becky Nurse of Salem” brought a descendant of the accused to Lincoln Center in the fall.So why take audiences to Salem again? Monahon’s playful and precise ear for the rhythms of adolescent dialogue is among the chief pleasures of “The Good John Proctor,” which draws a bit too heavily on its source material (a brief refresher on “The Crucible” and its creepy poppet would be advisable preshow reading). Beautifully staged by the director Caitlin Sullivan, the play is most engaging and provocative when at its most original — mining its characters’ messy, developing psyches, with contemporary and sometimes profane language, rather than placing them within existing narratives.The cast, including a doe-eyed Brittany K. Allen as Mary Warren, nimbly inhabit characters on the edge of innocence, or just beyond it, who belong not entirely to the past or the present. That shadowy ‌in between space opens up fertile ground for investigation, where the only ones who have any basis to be afraid are the girls who’ve been left in the dark.The Good John ProctorThrough April 1 at the Connelly Theater, Manhattan; bedlam.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      Review: In Bob Fosse’s ‘Dancin’,’ a Wiggle Is Worth a Thousand Words

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      A revival of the 1978 dancical has been substantially revamped to argue for Bob Fosse’s pure dance cred. It’s a joy anyway.Right from the start, we’re advised that “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’,” which opened on Sunday at the Music Box Theater, will be “almost plotless” and include “no messages.”Is that a challenge or an apology?In the often-thrilling, often-frustrating revival of the 1978 dancical, which reincarnates the spirit and choreography of Bob Fosse, the two possibilities are much the same. Substantially revamped and restaged by Wayne Cilento, a standout in the original production, this “Dancin’” argues that Fosse’s genius was constrained by the pedestrian storytelling of musical theater, with its “villains,” “baritone heroes” and “Christmas trees.” True Fosseism, it seems, can fully thrive only in the abstract, Olympian realms of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.The dichotomy is false, and the insistence a little embarrassing; when judged only as a brief for that point, “Dancin’” stumbles. Particularly in a long concluding section drawn from his final musical, “Big Deal,” the new material meant to bolster Fosse’s reputation doesn’t. And the periodic intrusion of ax-grinding Fosse avatars, quoting him at his most maudlin, suggests an inferiority complex not only about his talent but also about the kind of storytelling, in shows like “Chicago,” and movies like “Cabaret,” for which he was best known and deeply admired.But in the spirit of plotlessness and nonmessaging, let me not argue that too much. The show is a joy every time it puts down its ax. In any case, its 16 dancers, representing a wider range by age, ethnicity, body type and gender presentation than you typically see in a Fosse cast, make a much better case for the pure dance qualities of his style than the text does. (Kirsten Childs, herself a former Fosse dancer, provided the additional material.) A wiggle is worth a thousand words.In the sublime “Dancin’ Man,” our critic writes, the dancers synchronize blissfully with the music and with one another.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat wiggle — of the fingers, of the hips — joins the familiar Fosse vocabulary here: the isolated shoulder rotations, the off-center jumps, the pelvic contractions that look as if the dancer is being hit in the stomach with a cannonball. But in a context mostly stripped of overt story, the movements feel more extreme, and even overexuberant, as if let loose from jail: not just high kicks but kicks so high the shins bang the face.The first number after the opening sequence, a holdover from 1978, is in fact set in jail. “Recollections of an Old Dancer,” built on the Jerry Jeff Walker tune “Mr. Bojangles,” seems to be about the foundational legacy of Black dance in American culture, as the spirit of Bill Robinson shares his moves with a prisoner. I say “seems” because the effort to reframe numbers like this one as plotless when they clearly aren’t sometimes renders them merely murky, no matter how good the dancing. (It’s excellent.)The persistence of story is even more noticeable in the sequences that are new, newish or substantially altered. They make up perhaps half of the revival’s 14 numbers.“Big City Mime,” the 21-minute centerpiece of Act I, is one of the newish ones. Cut in Boston in 1978, it has been recreated from Fosse’s written scenario and snippets of his choreography for other works. The scenario is an exaggerated Fosse autobiography in dance, depositing a wide-eyed rube — the curly haired, lean-lined Peter John Chursin — in a modern-day Sodom. After encounters with prostitutes, masseuses and a naughty bookstore clerk, he emerges from his urban initiation ready to embrace the lessons of the body.Those lessons reach a sublime climax in the Act I finale, “Dancin’ Man,” the first time (and, until the curtain call, the last time) we see a unison number for the full ensemble. Dressed identically in pale blue suits, bow ties and straw hats, the dancers synchronize blissfully with the music (a soft-shoe tune by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer) and with one another.Ron Todorowski is among the eclectic cast of 16 dancers and six understudies. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut Act II, even leaving aside the “Big Deal” letdown, is a bumpier ride once you get past its astonishing opening: “Sing, Sing, Sing,” built on the Louis Prima number made famous by Benny Goodman. “The Female Star Spot,” a weak feminist comedy sketch in which singers question the woman-as-doormat lyrics of the 1977 Dolly Parton hit “Here You Come Again,” immediately lets the dance energy out of the room.A bit later, a long sequence set to a medley of patriotic songs, updated to include quotes from the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Amanda Gorman — and to remove the objectionable “Dixie,” which was part of the original — suffers from the grim feeling that it’s stepping around land mines.Though many of the interstitial numbers are entirely successful — and the hot arrangements by Jim Abbott for a 14-person band are ceaselessly exciting — they cannot always compensate for the larger missteps. The drama doesn’t accumulate, as it does in a musical, making “Dancin’” more like a variety show with guest stars. The design, too, is deliberately more presentational than theatrical, with arena lighting (by David Grill), a 49-by-28-foot LED wall (video design by Finn Ross) and four three-story towers (by Robert Brill) engaged in a kind of choreography themselves.But it’s the costumes, by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, a team known mostly for its work with ballet companies, that slip the leash of narrative most successfully. Strappy crop tops with strategic cutouts and peekaboo panels are perhaps to be expected in a Fosse show. But did I really see bumblebees, beekeepers, knights in body-baring armor, a sexy chicken with backup roosters and clowns with chartreuse polka-dot pussy bows?Happily, even airy whimsy cannot suppress the dancers’ specificity. If we do not know the story, they certainly do. Your favorites may depend on the night you see it (six understudies are part of the company as well) but of the 16 I saw on Friday I can highlight, aside from Chursin, Dylis Croman for her humor, Yeman Brown for his poetry, Jacob Guzman for his ferocity, Ron Todorowski for his athleticism, Manuel Herrera for his poignancy and Kolton Krouse for, well, their everything. (Krouse is the one with the face-slapping kicks.)Face-slapping kick: Kolton Krouse during the Act II opener set to “Sing, Sing, Sing.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf that list seems male dominated, so is “Dancin’,” despite its new sprinkling of gay, lesbian and nonbinary content. Fosse, after all, was creating in his own image, whether rendering himself as a satyr, a sot or a snake. Absent a text that makes a woman the star, he makes himself one, over and over. He was an interesting guy, so it’s an interesting story.Ah, but there’s that word “story” again. To me it seems that Fosse, however limited he may have felt by the specificities of musical theater, was best when working at the place where pure movement is pulled down from Olympus to meet real people, with lit cigarettes dangling from their lips. It’s there (and in so much of “Dancin’”) that he reliably finds what passes, despite all warnings, for a message: the necessity of sharing the body’s expressiveness and its endless capacity for pleasure.Bob Fosse’s Dancin’At the Music Box Theater, Manhattan; dancinbway.com. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More

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      In Rehearsal One Minute, Laid Off the Next: The Fate of Broadway’s ‘Room’

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      Actors were two weeks into rehearsals when the show, which was set to star the Tony-winning actress Adrienne Warren, was postponed indefinitely.Two weeks into Broadway rehearsals for “Room,” a show about a mother held captive with her young son, the first act had been fully blocked. Tickets were on sale. Critics had been invited.It was 18 days until the first preview performance, and on Thursday, actors were continuing to work through Act II. But then, inside the rehearsal studio on 42nd Street, a lead producer gathered members of the cast and crew to announce that a financial shortfall meant the show would be postponed indefinitely.“It just became pin-drop silent,” said Michael Genet, one of the show’s actors.The churn of Broadway machinery had ground to a halt. The producer, Hunter Arnold, explained to those present — including the star, the Tony-winning actress Adrienne Warren — that an attempt to save the show through dozens of phone calls to potential investors had been unsuccessful.“I said, very truthfully, that this is the most painful thing I’ve ever had to do in my professional life,” Arnold said in an interview on Friday. “We had spent the last few days doing everything in our combined power to try to save something that we believe is really beautiful, and failed.”Genet, who has been acting on Broadway since 1989, said he had experienced plenty of turbulence in the industry: One musical he was in, “Lestat,” shuttered in 2006 after 39 performances.“But I had never had the rug pulled out in the middle of rehearsal,” he said.“Room” had been scheduled to start performances on April 3 and run through mid-September.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Room,” adapted from a novel by Emma Donoghue, who later turned it into a film starring Brie Larson, had been preparing for its Broadway debut after premiering in London in 2017 and staging productions in Ireland, Scotland and Canada. Directed by Cora Bissett, the production, which was also slated to feature Ephraim Sykes and Kate Burton, was scheduled to start performances on April 3 and run through mid-September.Arnold, whose current shows include “Some Like It Hot” and “Leopoldstadt,” told the cast and crew — and soon after, the public — that a lead producer had decided not to “fulfill their obligations to the production” because of personal reasons.In an interview on Friday, Nathan Gehan, a Broadway producer and general manager, said he had decided to withdraw his producing company, ShowTown Productions, from being a general partner on “Room” because of a family crisis. As a general partner, Gehan’s company assumed the show’s financial liability, along with Arnold and the British producers who had shepherded the show from its overseas beginnings, Sam Julyan and James Yeoburn.Gehan said he had planned to continue to raise funds and do “boots on the ground” producing work despite announcing his intention to withdraw as a general partner on March 7. He said he believed that his company had enough financial commitments to “hold up our end of the bargain.” But in the days since, Gehan said, he and his producing partner, Jamison Scott, had been cut out of the process by the other producers; they learned of the postponement with the rest of the public.“To have to go through rehearsal and not have anything to show for it is just gut-wrenching,” he said.The show had been seeking to raise up to $7 million overall, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.In a statement, Arnold said that the exiting producer provided the remaining producers with a list of “interested parties” with regard to fund-raising, but that “it became quickly apparent that list was neither viable nor sufficient to close the economic gap we were facing.” They reached out to more than 200 contacts looking for potential investors, Arnold said, but could not find the necessary support.“We are still processing this turn of events and since this is ongoing, cannot speak to each statement made by Mr. Gehan,” he said. “Suffice to say, we do not entirely agree with his version of events.”The story told in “Room” is a particularly raw and emotional one, following a mother (played by Warren) who was kidnapped as a teenager and has been living in one room for seven years, raising a child she bore after being raped by her captor. Warren appeared to respond to the news about the show with a broken heart emoji on Twitter.The two child actors who play the young boy, Christopher Woodley and Aiden Mekhi Sierra — both of them anticipating their Broadway debuts — were told about the show’s postponement after their parents had arrived, Genet said. In the rehearsal room, some people cried and some hugged, but the conversation quickly turned toward ways they could get the show back on track.“People were hopping on calls trying to figure out who could help,” said Justin Ellington, the sound designer, who had been preparing to show the director the music and cues for the first act on Thursday. “It didn’t feel like people were like, ‘Oh, I’m missing out on all this money’ — that was not the talk. What I was feeling and hearing in the space was connected to the piece and telling this story.”Still, actors who had signed on for more than five months of work were suddenly looking at empty schedules. Arnold said he assured them they would receive their paychecks for the work they had done, though he cautioned that the checks could take a few days to clear because they were coming from an account at Signature Bank, which was recently seized by regulators as part of a larger banking crisis.A spokesman for the Actors’ Equity union said it was working to ensure that the production was following the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Arnold added in a statement that union company members would be “fully compensated on the terms of their contracts.” Baseline Broadway contracts for actors and stage managers include a stipulation that if a show is discontinued, the workers must be paid for the rest of the rehearsal period, plus at least two more weeks.In his statement, Arnold said he was “committed to creating comparable compensation terms” for nonunion employees.Even as the actors and crew members hold out hope for a new investor to swoop in, the bubble of excitement around staging a new show with a major Broadway star had been punctured.“I’ll just do my taxes I guess?” Ellington said. “I really haven’t thought that far.” More