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      Theater to Watch at Home: ‘Uncle Vanya’ and an Alice Childress Revival

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      A bare-bones Chekhov, a critically acclaimed revival of “The Wedding Band” and the cult TV series “Smash” are all available for streaming.‘The Wedding Band’Stream it on Stratfest@Home.In 2022, Alice Childress’s play about love and hate, written in 1962, received its first major revival in 50 years, to much acclaim. The following year, “The Wedding Band,” was staged at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, making it a welcome second coming for our theater critic.The play about an interracial couple — a Black woman, played by Antonette Rudder, and a white man, Cyrus Lane — who, in 1918 South Carolina, can’t wed, is a searing examination of a miscegenation nation. Writing for The New York Times, Jesse Green called the 2023 Stratford production, directed by Sam White, a “revelation,” adding that the festival’s revival “confirms the play’s vitality.”From Green’s critic’s notebook:It’s a joyful thing when a great play that seemed to be lost is found. How much more so when its greatness is confirmed and the play takes root in the soil of a new time. That was my experience seeing Alice Childress’s “Wedding Band” … The director Sam White’s production unexpectedly adds another layer of tragedy. Her staging emphasizes the hard-won pleasures of the central relationship, so that something valuable is felt to be lost when the world intervenes. … We see how the tragedy of racism makes victims of everyone.‘Vanya on 42nd Street’Stream it on Amazon Prime, Pluto TV or the Roku Channel.New York is experiencing something of an explosion of Chekhov. “The Seagull” featured prominently in Theaterlab’s recent production of “Nina”; “The Cherry Orchard” is coming to St. Ann’s Warehouse next month, along with “Vanya,” an adaptation of “Uncle Vanya,” starring Andrew Scott, Andrew Scott and Andrew Scott (he plays every role). Its Off Broadway debut comes after a highly praised run in London. The one-man show, adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Sam Yates, won last year’s Olivier Award — Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.But you don’t have to be in a theater to take in Chekhov. If you’ve never seen “Vanya on 42nd Street,” the 1994 Louis Malle film of André Gregory’s production, now is a timely moment to watch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Idina Menzel Climbs to New Broadway Heights in ‘Redwood’

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      The “Wicked” belter scales a 300-foot tree, and a mountain of songs, in a powerful if woo-woo musical about trauma and resilience.The musical “Redwood,” which opened on Thursday at the Nederlander Theater, features two great stars. One is an awe-inspiring force of nature. The other is a tree.The force of nature is Idina Menzel, who sings in 13 of the show’s 17 songs, of which seven are essentially solos. Has anyone ever belted so much, so tirelessly and hair-raisingly?But the size of the role is nothing compared with its emotional complexity and the depth of Menzel’s immersion in it. Her Jesse is a walking panic attack, an avoidant overtalker, an entitled princess and a grief-stricken mother. More astonishing, she is all of these at once, and right from the start. We meet her speeding westward from New York City with a terrible loss in the rearview mirror and no idea where she’s going.We know, though. The musical, by Tina Landau (book, lyrics and direction) and Kate Diaz (music and lyrics), with additional contributions from Menzel herself, is not named “Redwood” idly. Soon Jesse comes upon a grove of the giant trees near Eureka, Calif., and we meet our other star. She — for Jesse not only genders her but also names her Stella — is 14 feet wide and 300 feet tall and centuries if not millenniums old.I am sure redwoods are awesome in real life; I have never seen one. But the tree that Landau and her designers have put onstage is among the most beautiful and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall.Spectacular video by Hana S. Kim renders the tree’s towering swirl of branches on a series of 1,000 immersive LED panels.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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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      David Edward Byrd, Whose Posters Captured Rock’s Energy, Dies at 83

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      David Edward Byrd, who captured the swirl and energy of the 1960s and early ’70s by conjuring pinwheels of color with indelible posters for concerts by Jimi Hendrix, the Who and the Rolling Stones as well as for hit stage musicals like “Follies” and “Godspell,” died on Feb. 3 in Albuquerque. He was 83.His husband and only immediate survivor, Jolino Beserra, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was pneumonia brought on by lung damage from Covid.Mr. Byrd made his name, starting in 1968, with striking posters for the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly and Traffic at the Fillmore East, the Lower Manhattan Valhalla of rock operated by the powerhouse promoter Bill Graham.For a concert there that year by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mr. Byrd rendered the guitar wizard’s hair in a field of circles, which blended with the explosive hairstyles of his bandmates, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.For a 1968 concert at the Fillmore East by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, David Edward Byrd rendered the guitar wizard’s hair in a field of circles, which blended with the explosive hairstyles of his bandmates, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.Design sketch via “Poster Child: The Psychedelic Art & Technicolor Life of David Edward Byrd,” by David Edward Byrd and Robert von Goeben; final poster, Bill Graham Archives, LLCMr. Byrd also put his visual stamp on the Who’s landmark rock opera, “Tommy,” producing posters for it when it was performed at the Fillmore East in October 1969 and again, triumphantly, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York a few months later. In 1973, he shared a Grammy Award for his illustration work on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s rendition of “Tommy.”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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      The N.E.A.’s New Gender and Diversity Edicts Worry Arts Groups

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      As the National Endowment for the Arts adjusts to comply with President Trump’s executive orders, “gender ideology” is out and works that “honor the nation’s rich artistic heritage” are in.The National Endowment for the Arts is telling arts groups not to use federal funds to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “gender ideology” in ways that run afoul of President Trump’s executive orders — causing confusion and concern.Black Girls Dance, a Chicago-based nonprofit that trains and mentors young dancers, was recently approved for a $10,000 grant to help finance an annual holiday show called “Mary.” Now the small company is wondering if it still qualifies for the money.It was the company’s first grant from the N.E.A., and Erin Barnett, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, said that receiving it had been “a step of validation — like ‘We see you and we support the work that you’re doing.’” But she said that if the grant were canceled for running afoul of the new requirements, she would persist. “I serve a God that sits on the highest throne of all, and he’s not going to stop this show,” she said.It is unclear what the new rules will mean for groups seeking grants, or for those that already have them in the pipeline. Many arts organizations have pledged to support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and several groups that have received funding in the past have presented works about transgender and nonbinary people.The new N.E.A. rules require applicants to agree not to operate diversity programs “that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws” and call on grant applicants to pledge not to use federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” They refer to an executive order Mr. Trump signed that declares that the United States recognizes only “two sexes, male and female.”The N.E.A. did not answer questions about whether organizations that have already been told they would receive grant money would be affected.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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      ‘Henry IV’ Review: Two Plays Become One

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      The relationship between Prince Hal and John Falstaff, a favorite of Shakespeare scholars, is the focus of this condensed adaptation.A young prince and an old knight walk into a tavern …So much of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” plays like a setup, either to a joke or to a significant turning point in English history. It’s perhaps the most defining, and trickiest, element of the Henry plays, which often combine the interpersonal high jinks of a comedy with the politics and knavery of a war drama, sans the typical dramatic structure.In a new production from the Theater for a New Audience, the two “Henry IV” plays are combined into a single adaptation that clocks in at nearly four hours. The script, by Dakin Matthews, condenses and restructures the material, while the direction by Eric Tucker opts for a more classic, toned-down staging. For all the successful work this “Henry IV” does to combat the unwieldy bloat of the two history plays together, it does not probe the central characters enough to uphold the stakes and maintain the tension throughout the lengthy running time. The result is a serviceable production that lacks fresh revelations.The “Henry IV” plays are part of the Henriad, the series of history plays that begin with “Richard II” and end with “Henry V.” Often considered the less glamorous section of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, the plays are about the making and unmaking of kings, the burdens of the crown, revolts, betrayals and the disastrous clashing of many male egos.At the start of “Henry IV,” Henry Bolingbroke (played by Matthews) has usurped the crown with the help of the Percys, a family of English lords who now lead a rebellion against Bolingbroke for that same crown they helped him procure. Meanwhile, Bolingbroke’s son, Prince Hal (Elijah Jones), fetters away his time drinking and palling around with the crooked old knight John Falstaff (Jay O. Sanders) and his reprehensible cohort. Hal and Falstaff’s trivial pursuits are interrupted, however, when they’re called to the battlefield, and by the end of “Henry IV,” Hal has renounced his old habits, brutally rebuffed Falstaff and taken his place on the throne as King Henry V.The relationship between Hal and Falstaff, a favorite of lit majors and Shakespeare scholars, is the true heart of the material. The young prince and the old knight are like father and son, mentor and mentee, but also serve as each other’s foils. They represent opposite sides of age and privilege, and their gradual dynamic shift reveals the nuances of their characters. For all his comedic purpose in the story, Falstaff emerges as a tragic figure — the niggling sideshow act in a grander story about nobility and a nation’s evolution. He’s the sacrificial lamb to Prince Hal’s ascension.Each of the three acts ends with a major scene between Hal and Falstaff, marking another dramatic crux in their story. One of the production’s strengths is how Matthews cleverly structures the script to steadily follow the arc of these two characters. However, the same nuance and decisiveness is less present in the direction and some of the performances.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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      ‘Night Sings Its Songs’ Review: Rare Staging of Nobel Winner Jon Fosse’s Play

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      A play by the Nobel winner Jon Fosse gets a rare staging, but New Yorkers will have to wait a little longer to see a production that captures the Norwegian writer’s haunting universe.When the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023, he joined the small circle of dramatists to have received that honor, including two men he is often compared to: Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.Unlike Beckett and Pinter, however, Fosse is largely unknown in the United States — outside of shows like “A Summer Day” in 2012 and “I Am the Wind” in 2014, productions in supposedly cosmopolitan New York are few and far between. This makes New Light Theater Project’s middling new take on Fosse’s “Night Sings Its Songs” at least noteworthy.Like much of his stage work, “Night Sings Its Songs” — which premiered in Norway in 1997 and was staged in New York in 2004 by Sarah Cameron Sunde, a translator and Fosse evangelist — is simultaneously elliptical and brutally precise. The main characters in these scenes from a miserable marriage are the Young Man (Kyle Cameron) and the Young Woman (Susan Lynskey). They have been together since high school, and their new baby seems to have brought buried issues to the surface.He spends his days and, apparently, nights reading on the couch, and fruitlessly submits manuscripts to publishers. She’s going stir crazy and eventually decides to head out on the town. At one point, she desultorily says of her husband: “He is nice. But he understands little about nothing.” For most of the play, the couple’s conversations revolve around variations on “you never want to go out” (she) and “who were you out with?” (he). They both suffer from a mutually soul-destroying postpartum funk, and it is grueling.In his Nobel acceptance speech, Fosse said that “in my drama the word pause is without a doubt the most important and the most used word — long pause, short pause, or just pause.” The script for “Night Sings Its Songs” includes stage directions and, yes, many, many requests for pauses, but no punctuation. Concretely, this means that a Fosse staging must hit an almost musical rhythm, inducing a kind of entranced fascination — the repeated motifs are like ostinatos in minimalist music.And that is where Jerry Heymann’s production falls short. It struggles to settle into the particular groove the play requires, and leans into a fairly naturalistic approach that not only fails to sync up with the text, but often also tussles against 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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      With ‘Mindplay,’ Vinny DePonto Wants to Bring More Awe Into Your Life

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      In this mentalist show, the magician asks his audience: “What is most meaningful to you?”When Vinny DePonto was a student at Manhattanville University, he really wanted to major in magic. But that wasn’t an option, so he created his own course of study, combining theater and psychology into a major he called psychology of performance art.“I used a little trickery to major in magic,” DePonto, 38, recalled during a recent interview at a West Village coffee shop.The intersection of stage and psyche is where DePonto takes audiences in his mentalist show “Mindplay,” directed by Andrew Neisler and running through April 20 at the Greenwich House Theater. In it, DePonto alternates between tender remembrances of growing up in a close-knit Italian American family in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and seemingly supernatural feats that involve him calling audience members onto the stage to talk about their most personal memories.“Mindplay” is scheduled to run through April 20 at the Greenwich House Theater in Manhattan.Chris RuggieroDuring the performance I attended, sniffles and gasps could be heard around the theater as DePonto, who wrote the show with Josh Koenigsberg, sat across from a man and discerned details about the man’s dead father and his beloved harmonica.DePonto has been reading minds for roughly 20 years, and he has cited as inspiration Ricky Jay, the renowned magician and mentalist who died in 2018. He said he caught the magic bug as a boy when his father gave him a shoe box of disappearing handkerchief-style tricks.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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      ‘Dutchman’: An Electrifying Dance of Death

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      A newly restored film adaptation of Amiri Baraka’s provocative 1964 play evoking racial and sexual anxiety is showing at the Museum of Modern Art.A subway car encounter between a button-down Black man, Clay, and a provocative white woman, Lula, ends in violence: The enigmatically named “Dutchman,” a half-hour play-cum-exorcism by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) was the Off Broadway sensation of 1964. Two years later, it was filmed by a neophyte director, Anthony Harvey. The response was mixed in the United States, and the film disappeared.Now newly restored, “Dutchman” is showing through Feb. 19 at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.A one-act two-hander modeled on Edward Albee’s menacing “Zoo Story,” “Dutchman” shared a bill with plays by two reigning “absurdists,” Samuel Beckett and Fernando Arrabal Terán; it reaped all the attention, received an Obie and was retained for a second run, billed with Albee’s “American Dream.” Generally faithful to the play, Harvey’s film expanded it to just under an hour with contextualizing shots of deserted subway platforms and trains barreling through dark tunnels. Lula (Shirley Knight) has ample time to slink around an otherwise empty car and, munching on an apple, writhe into the seat next to the uptight Clay (Al Freeman Jr.). Toward the end of the film, Harvey adds a half-dozen passengers, silent witnesses to their mortal combat.The dialogue is often terrific (Baraka was, after all, a poet) and until the climax “Dutchman” is essentially a verbal sparring match. Knight and Freeman, both members of the Actors Studio, were matched in the play’s Los Angeles production and, both electrifying in their own ways, returned to the fray with relish.In addition to evoking racial and sexual anxiety, “Dutchman” channels the urban nightmare of subway harassment or entrapment. Recalling “No Exit,” it might have been named after a 1930s race film, “Hellbound Train.” Harvey incorporates a current ad poster in which Bert Lahr’s devil proffers a bag of Lay’s potato chips, but nothing may be more allegorical than snaky Lula’s endless supply of apples. There are autobiographical aspects as well. Lula’s taunting lines are sprinkled with coded digs at Baraka’s white patrons (Allen Ginsberg and Albee), his Jewish wife at the time (Hettie Jones) and the author himself, calling Clay by Baraka’s original first name, “Everett.”Shock value notwithstanding, the play was respectfully received in the United States. Not so the film. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called it “a drawn-out, rancorous gabfest” lacking “consistency or conviction.” The movie fared better in Europe. It opened the Venice Film Festival (where Knight won an acting award) and received enthusiastic notices in Britain, earning Harvey a gig directing Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole as the jousting royal couple in “The Lion in Winter.”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