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      ‘The United States vs Ulysses’ Review: The Case That Won’t Go Away

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      When James Joyce’s masterpiece faced banning, the American justice system came to the rescue. A new play wonders if it would today.Though it was a civil case, the defendant faced capital punishment.Or so the defendant’s attorney, Morris Ernst, argued, because his client was a book. And not just any book, but a particular copy of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” that had been impounded at U.S. Customs and charged with obscenity.“If the book loses,” Ernst proclaimed, “it will be destroyed — burned — hanged by the neck until it is dead.”Ernst’s florid oratory in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses was successful. On Dec. 6, 1933, as soon as the judge, John Munro Woolsey, delivered his decision finding “Ulysses” not obscene — thus permitting a hardback of the French edition to pass through customs — Random House began typesetting an American version, the first to be published in an English-speaking country. Woolsey’s landmark order, along with a foreword by Ernst calling it a “body-blow for the censors,” is included in most copies of “Ulysses” to this day.Lawyers and judges are not typically heroes in literature, and of late almost never in plays. They are mostly depicted as preening and eely. Yet in “The United States vs Ulysses,” a play by Colin Murphy now at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan, Ernst and Woolsey (if not Samuel Coleman, who represented the government) are offered as paragons of progressivism in action. Indeed, the playwright has elevated them almost to the level of Joyce himself.And yet for all its worthiness, liberal uplift and pressing topicality, the play, directed by Conall Morrison, proves just how unmatchable Joyce remains. Murphy’s complicated schema, though less complicated than that of “Ulysses,” is ultimately less expressive, as nearly anything would be. Its account of the trial, drawn from transcripts and other historical sources, is but the middle of three shells. The innermost shell is “Ulysses” itself, represented by passages either specifically mentioned in court (like the scandalous “Nausicaa” episode) or thematically relevant to the proceedings (like the fantastical trial of Leopold Bloom, the novel’s main character, in “Circe”).The outermost shell introduces another unlikely hero these days: the media. The play is set two days after Woolsey’s verdict, as the five-person cast of the CBS radio program “The March of Time” awaits the scripts for that evening’s live episode. With the help of sound effects from the foley table — gavel bangs, telegraph taps — the voice actors will play all the roles, both in the courtroom and in the dramatized “Ulysses” segments. Even their director will chip in, playing Bloom.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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      ‘Goddess’ Brings Kenyan Folklore to New York

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      In “Goddess,” an original musical about a mysterious singer in Mombasa, Kenya, Moto Moto is not just an Afro-jazz nightclub, it’s a great equalizer, where Kenyans of all faiths, tribes and social classes shake and spin their bodies in rapture.“I’ve literally met the loves of my life on dance floors,” the director Saheem Ali said. “So I understand the power of a life-changing event that happens in a space of communal dancing and joy.”It’s that electric sense of belonging that Ali sought to recreate in “Goddess,” now in previews at the Public Theater after an 18-year development process.“My first child is Liban,” Ali said to his cast on the first day of rehearsal for “Goddess.” “He was born in 2006.”“My second child is ‘Goddess,’” he said, referring to the musical. “And she was born in 2007. Eighteen years, never again for one show.” (It arrives on the heels of his Broadway production of “Buena Vista Social Club,” the lively stage adaptation of the beloved 1997 album that is set in Havana nightclubs and was nominated for 10 Tony Awards, including for Ali’s direction.)Creating an original musical from scratch is its own tall order. And at the heart of this passion project is the African folklore myth of Marimba, the goddess of music who created songs from heartbreak. It took Ali years to find the right collaborators and hone the plot.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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      ‘Sinners’ and Shows like ‘Severance’ Give an Old Form New Life

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      Online, onstage and onscreen, performers are playing multiple parts. The effect of watching someone shape-shift can be both thrilling and unnerving.The much-anticipated season finale of one of my favorite sitcoms was recently derailed when its creator, Shawna Lander, ran into a few snags. In the story I’ve been following for months, a peppy if scatterbrained woman named Jennifer McCallister has gone into labor after a pregnancy that’s transformed her relationship with her sister-in-law (also named Shawna) from antagonistic to amiable. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s mother, Barb — passive-aggressive to a comically villainous degree — is getting drunk on margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant and terrorizing the wait staff when she gets a call to meet Jennifer at the hospital.But just as Jennifer was about to give birth, the story stopped. Lander announced that due to technical difficulties and illness, the audience would have to wait a few days to see what shenanigans Barb got up to, and whether this birth would help her and her son, Jennifer’s brother John, smooth over their rocky relationship. Illness foils shooting days all the time, but typically one creator’s bout of fever wouldn’t force audiences to wait well past the target air date to find out what happens. The difference with Lander’s show, which chronicles the ever-sprawling antics of the McCallister family — most sketches are actually stealth explorations of relationship dynamics — is that Lander is the show. She writes it. She produces and distributes it. She directs and shoots it.Michael B. Jordan as the twins Smoke and Stack in “Sinners.” He’s one of many performers this season playing multiple parts in a production.Warner Bros. PicturesAnd, most important, like several actors in hit TV shows, big-budget films and Tony-nominated Broadway productions this season, she plays every single character: Jennifer, Barb, Shawna, John, other male partners, assorted friends, the waitress, even Shawna’s two small children. They’re all Lander in wigs and different shirts, shot in close-cropped vertical framing for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where she posts under the handle @shawnathemom. Her performances are so funny and specific that it’s shockingly easy to forget it’s all just her.The McCallister family saga boasts considerable viewership. The chronicles are followed by two million TikTok users, with nearly a million more on Instagram. Add it up, and that’s a bigger audience than watched the Season 3 premiere of “The White Lotus.”Lander’s format — playing every part herself, with shots framed and edited so the characters seem to be conversing with each other — involves a visual vocabulary familiar to comedians on vertical video platforms, who often post satirical sketches about corporate life or marriage. Just recently, a creator who goes by Sydney Jo posted the multi-episode “Group Chat” series, in which she played the multitudinous members of a friend group experiencing mounting drama over one girl’s boyfriend, culminating in a “Real Housewives”-style reunion episode. The series was such a viral hit that Sydney Jo was invited onto the “Today” show to talk about 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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      Book Review: ‘The Butcher’s Daughter,’ by David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark

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      A new novel, “The Butcher’s Daughter,” imagines the haunting past of Mrs. Lovett, the infamous baker who assisted the serial killer Sweeney Todd.THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett, by David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh ClarkFor half a century — much longer, if you go back to the original 1840s penny dreadfuls — people have thrilled to the story of Sweeney Todd, the murderous London barber who cut short the lives of priests, fops, sailors and one especially loathsome judge before he met his own gruesome end. Sweeney’s tragic losses and appetite for vengeance have been well documented, most notably by the musical genius of Stephen Sondheim. But what of his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, who popped his poor victims into her pies? Does her tale not need attending, too?David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark’s epistolary novel “The Butcher’s Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett” gives the woman beside the man her own turn in the spotlight. Part Victorian historical fiction, part grisly horror, the book follows a mysterious woman, Margaret C. Evans, a.k.a. Margery, as she recounts her life story to a never-seen (and, we learn at the opening of the book, missing) journalist, who is investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Lovett 50 years before. Though she does not disclose her true identity outright until fairly deep in the novel, it is clear within the first few pages that Margery is Mrs. Lovett, who — in a departure from the source material, where she is killed by Sweeney — is very much alive and confined to a nunnery.Margery’s harrowing tale reframes Mrs. Lovett not as a villain but as a maligned girl fighting to survive. She’s a seductively evocative narrator, making it easy to forget that her every word should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.It will surprise nobody familiar with the musical that this is a gory book. The violence starts early, at Margery’s father’s butcher shop, where she is awakened each morning by the sounds and smells of sheep being slaughtered, and where it is a shame bordering on sin to let anything go to waste.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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      Pierre Audi, Eminent Force in the Performing Arts, Dies at 67

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      After turning a derelict lecture hall into the daring Almeida Theater, he had a long career as a director and impresario in Europe and New York.Pierre Audi, the stage director and impresario whose transformation of a derelict London lecture hall into the cutting-edge Almeida Theater was the opening act in a long career as one of the world’s most eminent performing arts leaders, died on Friday night in Beijing. He was 67.His death, while he was in China for meetings related to future productions, was announced on social media by Rachida Dati, the minister of culture in France, where Mr. Audi had been the director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival since 2018. The announcement did not specify a cause.Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded the Almeida, which opened in 1980 and swiftly became a center of experimental theater and music. He spent 30 years as the leader of the Dutch National Opera, and for part of that time was also in charge of the Holland Festival. For the past decade, he had been the artistic director of the Park Avenue Armory in New York.The Almeida Theater in London. Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded it in 1980, and it soon became a center of experimental theater and music.View PicturesAll along, he continued working as a director at theaters around the world. Last year, when the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels cut ties with Romeo Castellucci halfway through his new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring,” the company turned to Mr. Audi as one of the few artists with the knowledge, experience and cool head to take over such an epic undertaking at short notice.“He profoundly renewed the language of opera,” Ms. Dati wrote in her announcement, “through his rigor, his freedom and his singular vision.”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 National Endowment for the Arts Begins Terminating Grants

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      The endowment told arts organizations that it was withdrawing or canceling current grants just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency in the next fiscal year.The National Endowment for the Arts withdrew and canceled grant offers to numerous arts organizations around the country on Friday night, sending a round of email notifications out just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency in his next budget.The move, although not unexpected, was met with disappointment and anger by arts administrators who had counted on the grants to finance ongoing projects.In Oregon, Portland Playhouse received an email from the endowment just 24 hours before opening a production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” an acclaimed work that is part of the playwright’s series of 10 dramas about African Americans through the course of the 20th century. The N.E.A. had recommended a $25,000 grant for the show, which would have paid about one-fifth of the production’s personnel costs.“Times are tough for theaters — we’re already pressed, and in this moment where every dollar matters, this was a critical piece of our budget,” said Brian Weaver, the theater’s producing artistic director. “It’s ridiculous.”The emails were sent to arts administrators from an address at the endowment that did not accept replies. “The N.E.A. is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the president,” the emails said. “Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities.”The emails went on to say that the endowment would now prioritize projects that “elevate” historically Black colleges and universities, and colleges that serve Hispanic students. The emails also said the endowment would focus on projects that “celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster A.I. competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities.”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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      Trump Seeks to Eliminate the NEA

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      The president’s budget proposal also called for getting rid of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.President Trump proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the budget he released Friday, taking aim once again at two agencies that he had tried and failed to get rid of during his first term.The endowments, along with the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, were among the entities listed in a section titled “small agency eliminations” in his budget blueprint for the next fiscal year. The document said that the proposal was “consistent with the president’s efforts to decrease the size of the federal government to enhance accountability, reduce waste, and reduce unnecessary governmental entities” and noted that Mr. Trump’s past budget proposals had “also supported these eliminations.”In 2017, during his first term, Mr. Trump proposed eliminating both the arts and the humanities endowments. But bipartisan support in Congress kept them alive, and in fact their budgets grew during the first Trump administration.Since Mr. Trump returned to office this year, his administration has taken aim at the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, canceling most of their existing grants and laying off a large portion of their staffs. But the arts agency had yet to announce major cuts.The proposal to eliminate the endowments drew a quick and furious reaction from Democrats. One, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, vowed to fight the plan to eliminate the N.E.A. “tooth and nail.”Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, who serves as the top Democrat on the House subcommittee overseeing the N.E.A., said in an interview that Mr. Trump was “making a broad-based attack on the arts, both for funding and content.” She cited his proposals to eliminate the endowments as well as his takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and his efforts to influence the Smithsonian Institution.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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      Stephen Mo Hanan, Who Played Three Roles in ‘Cats,’ Dies at 78

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      He sang arias on the streets of San Francisco, performed on Broadway and collaborated on a musical about Al Jolson, which he also starred in.Stephen Mo Hanan, a vibrant performer who sang arias and other music as a busker in San Francisco before playing Kevin Kline’s lieutenant in the acclaimed 1981 Broadway production of “The Pirates of Penzance” and three felines in the original Broadway cast of “Cats,” died on April 3 at his home in Manhattan. He was 78.Gary Widlund, his husband and only immediate survivor, said the cause was a heart attack.At his audition for “Cats,” Mr. Hanan (pronounced HAN-un) told Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer, and Trevor Nunn, the director, that he had spent several years singing and accompanying himself on a concertina at a ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco.“As a matter of fact, I’ve brought my concertina,” he recalled telling Mr. Nunn in an interview with The Washington Post in 1982. “He said, ‘Give me something in Italian.’ Well, I’ve never had a problem with shyness. I sang ‘Funiculi, Funicula.’”Mr. Hanan was ultimately cast in three parts: Bustopher Jones, a portly cat, and the dual role of Asparagus, an aging theater cat, who, while reminiscing, transforms (with help from an inflatable costume) into a former role, Growltiger, a tough pirate, and performs a parody of Puccini’s “Turandot.”During rehearsals, Mr. Hanan kept a detailed journal, which he published in 2002 as “A Cat’s Diary.”Mr. Hanan was cast in the original production of “Cats.” During rehearsals, he kept a detailed journal, which he later turned into a book.Smith & KrausIn an entry about the second day of rehearsal, he described an assignment from Mr. Nunn: to “pick a cartoon cat we know of, withdraw to ourselves and prepare a vignette of that cat, then return to the circle and each in turn will present.”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