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      Review: In ‘A Kid Like Rishi,’ Hazy Uncertainty Shrouds a Teen’s Killing

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      A cast of three recount the gripping drama of the death of a teenager by the Dutch police in 2012.No matter where you decide to sit, you won’t see everything in “A Kid Like Rishi,” Kees Roorda’s thrumming documentary play at the Cell Theater, and surely that is very much by design.The task looks straightforward enough, going in — nothing obvious like columns to obstruct a person’s view. The room is deeper than it is wide, and the set consists mainly of a long wooden table and a few microphones, with audience members choosing seats along each wall. Projected feeds from four video cameras show various angles of the space we’re in, which is not large. We would seem to have the area sufficiently surveilled.Yet from the start of this gripping, understated drama, which recounts the killing of a 17-year-old boy of Surinamese descent by the Dutch police in 2012, we can’t always get a clear perspective. An actor’s back is to us, or one of the performers is blocking our vantage on another, or the video is too indistinct to show what we’re looking for. Which, ordinarily, would be maddening.In Erwin Maas’s stark production for Origin Theater Company, it becomes instead an exercise in visceral understanding — because our interpretation of events in the world has everything to do with how clear our sightlines are and what’s blocking our view, literally or metaphorically. And the people who witnessed Rishi Chandrikasing’s shooting early one November morning on a train station platform in The Hague — or participated in the police pursuit of him, or passed legal judgment on it, or were left bereft by it — all saw and heard, or believed they saw and heard, very different things in the same lone teenager and the same abrupt execution.“The District Court in The Hague deems legally and convincingly proven that the defendant intentionally inflicted grievous bodily harm resulting in the death of the victim,” a judge pronounces at the top of the show.The defendant is an unnamed police officer; the victim is Rishi. But this is an acquittal, not a conviction — because, the judge reasons, even lethal force can be justified, and the police “had to assume that the person in question was armed and dangerous.”The acting is for the most part restrained, wisely letting the words — of bystanders, of a police shooting instructor, of Rishi’s haunted mother — speak for themselves.Rory DuffyDid they have to, though? And how much do racist fears shape perceptions of innocuous events, injecting mortal peril where no danger at all had been? Those are the questions at the heart of this Dutch play, assembled from courtroom, interview and other transcripts, and performed by a cast of three (Sung Yun Cho, Atandwa Kani and Kaili Vernoff) in an English translation by Tom Johnston.The acting is for the most part restrained, wisely letting the words — of bystanders, of a police shooting instructor, of Rishi’s haunted mother — speak for themselves. Vernoff strays from this in one portrayal, telegraphing a journalist character’s odiousness, while Kani can’t quite slip into the rhythms of Rishi’s girlfriend. Otherwise, the performances are solid.And Guy de Lancey’s scenography is outstanding: each element of the set, video, lighting and projections shaping our perception of what is murky and uncertain and what is bright and sure.Bits of the dialogue are in Dutch, interspersed throughout the play: audio calls relaying tenuous information to police dispatch centers in the minutes before and after the shooting. (The smart sound design is by Fan Zhang, who also composed the production’s tension-filled underscore.) As the recordings play, we don’t see supertitles projected, just the occasional phrase — “Black man,” “Take this with a grain of salt,” “You be careful.”The full translations of the calls are printed in the program, but our comprehension of those exchanges during the performance is fragmentary, as is the dispatchers’ in what comes to seem like a precarious game of telephone. A nebulous report of a possible firearm, seen by no one, morphs for the police into an urgent, adrenaline-charged, presumed reality: that a threatening man in a white coat has a gun.Not a single grain of salt appears to have been consumed.A Kid Like RishiThrough June 19 at the Cell Theater, Manhattan; origintheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More

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      This High School Musical Teaches Confidence, Power and Teamwork

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      Step dance helps students at Brooklyn Transition Center focus and release excess energy — and it plays a starring role in their musical, “In the Stuy.”“Check one, two, three,” two characters sing into hand-held microphones, grooving in gold-rimmed sunglasses. “This is Benny on the dispatch, yo.”Cut to eight dancers in front of a Monsey Trails bus who start stepping: stomping, clapping, slapping their thighs, doused in rhythm.This scene arrives toward the beginning of “In the Stuy,” a Bed-Stuy adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “In the Heights” — created, performed and filmed by the students and staff of Brooklyn Transition Center, a special education high school in Bedford-Stuyvesant.Each year for a decade, the center’s arts teachers have put on a musical, and in this year’s — filmed because of the coronavirus pandemic — step has a starring role. “In the Stuy” will be screened on June 3 (for friends and family) and June 4 (for the public).Shakiera Daniel, center, a dance teacher and instructional coach, with students.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesThere has been a step club for five years at Brooklyn Transition Center, which serves students ages 14 to 21. Step, the tradition of percussive movement that gained popularity in Black fraternities and sororities, helps the students at the Center who benefit from highly specialized instruction — like those on the autism spectrum or with emotional and behavioral issues — release excess energy, focus better in class, learn a skill to be proud of and socialize.Shakiera Daniel, a dance teacher and instructional coach, leads the step club, which she started in 2017. “In addition to just dancing, it’s a lot of life lessons that come out of it,” Daniel said recently in a courtyard of the school. “And just helping them grow into young adults.”The step team tends to attract students with behavioral issues, Daniel, 31, said, and their home room teachers will often reach out to her, asking for her support.“They know that I’ll go and talk to the kids,” she said, and “what I say will hold some weight because again, they really like dance, they like step, they like socializing with the kids that they’re with. They like performing.”Daniel “goes hard” with recruitment in September, she said, then holds three-part auditions in October. This year 60 students showed up to try out, compared with just a handful when she began.Annette Natal, an assistant choreographer, running through moves with the students.Nathan Bajar for The New York Times“If they can hold a steady beat, then that’s all I need,” Daniel said “A lot of the students that I have never have stepped in their lives, or even heard of it. And then they’ll try it with me, and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, you’re amazing.’”In the “Benny’s Dispatch” scene of “In the Stuy,” three women start stepping, clapping and slapping in mesmerizing synchronization. Dressed in black, their T-shirts read “#DanceSavesLives,” “#LoveWins” and “#TakeAKnee.”It was Daniel who came up with the twist for the show’s title. “‘In the Heights,’ it was not sitting well with me,” she said. “We need to gear it toward where our students live and the area that they see, that they’ve been exposed to.”Kate Fenton, a drama teacher who directed the musical, used the same artistic license to thread in story lines about inflation and gentrification. The show addresses the challenges facing Bed-Stuy, a historically Black neighborhood, but also celebrates the culture it’s steeped in.In one scene, Daniel’s step team dances to Iggy Azalea’s “Work” inside a hair salon — reminiscent of the “No Me Diga” scene in “In the Heights.” When possible, Fenton used songs students already knew and incorporated them into the story.Tahir Tate, also known as Rafiq, has a lead role in “In the Stuy.”Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesAnd she also incorporated neighborhood spots familiar to the students. The hair salon scene was shot at Da Shop barbershop around the corner from the school. Next door to Da Shop is Genao, a Dominican restaurant with a luxe lounge, where a step routine was shot, this one evoking the club scene of “In the Heights.” Set to Panjabi MC’s “Beware,” the number has a Bollywood flair, and dancers sport vibrant scarves knotted around their waists.Desiree Wilkie, 16, a student who lives in the neighborhood, often goes to Genao with her mother. Wilkie, who started stepping with Daniel this year, said she wanted to try it because so many in her family grew up stepping.“Since we all got siblings, little ones,” she said, she wants to show them how the students express themselves through step, so the kids can “see how high school feels.”The opening routine, to the title song from “In the Heights,” was filmed on Ellery Street, right outside the school. In that number, Abigail Bing, 19, dances front and center, performing an intricate step sequence with flow.Asahiah Hudson and Desiree Wilkie. Hudson said that for him, step is about confidence.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesBing joined the step team this year, and participated in the musical for the first time. She said that since she was little she has wanted to be an actor, dancer and stepper. “I always wanted to become one of them,” she said. “That’s my biggest dream now.”Also in that number is Asahiah Hudson, 21, who has been stepping since middle school. At Brooklyn Transition Center, he said he had found friends through dance and mentors in Daniel and her assistant choreographers, Annette Natal and Mikyaa Haynes.“Step means to me, it means confident and be powerful and be stronger as a team,” Hudson said. “When I work with Ms. Daniel and the team I feel happy and powerful.”Daniel has been stepping since she was in seventh grade in Hershey, Pa. While choreographing the musical, she said, she would get home from work to Corona, Queens, and stand in front of a big mirror, playing songs and trying out new footwork.Daniel with her step students and assistants.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesStep practice, which happens during school hours, was increased to two days a week in preparation for “In the Stuy.” Step, Daniel said, is a great incentive for students to stay focused and teaches them how to vocalize their feelings.For Dante Neville, 16, who started stepping with Daniel last year, step is a way to let out extra energy. When he returns to class after a rehearsal, he said, his concentration is improved.“When I’m in class,” he said, “I don’t pay attention and I feel like if I do something that makes me focus, I’ll feel much happier.”That sentiment rings true for many members of the Brooklyn Transition Center’s step team. Onstage at rehearsal, they light up after a practice well done, hugs and high fives ringing through the auditorium. Step, as Hudson put it, means confidence.“This place would be a lot more hectic had step not been a thing,” Daniel said of the center. “That feels good to say.” More

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      ‘The Thanksgiving Play’ Sends Up America. Now It’s Coming to Broadway.

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      Rachel Chavkin will direct Larissa FastHorse’s satire, which takes aim at American mythology, next spring at the Helen Hayes Theater.“The Thanksgiving Play,” Larissa FastHorse’s satirical sendup about an elementary school drama teacher attempting to organize a culturally sensitive holiday pageant, is coming to Broadway next spring.Second Stage, a nonprofit theater that owns the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway, said it would present the play there in a production directed by Rachel Chavkin, the Tony-winning director of “Hadestown.” The theater did not announce dates or casting information.“The Thanksgiving Play” was staged at Playwrights Horizons in 2018, and has been widely produced around the country. A starry version, featuring Bobby Cannavale, Keanu Reeves, Heidi Schreck and Alia Shawkat, was streamed online last year by the producer Jeffrey Richards’s pandemic-era online play series.FastHorse is a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation of South Dakota, and Second Stage said she would be the first female Native American playwright produced on Broadway. Last year she won a so-called genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.“The Thanksgiving Play” will follow a production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Between Riverside and Crazy” on the Hayes stage. That production, directed by Austin Pendleton, is scheduled to begin performances this fall.Luke Thallon and Patsy Ferran in Bess Wohl’s “Camp Siegfried” at the Old Vic in 2021.Manuel Harlan/ArenaPALSecond Stage also said Thursday that at its Off Broadway theater it would present “Camp Siegfried,” a play by Bess Wohl set at a German American summer camp where adolescents flirt not only with one another, but also with fascism. The fall production will be directed by David Cromer; the play had a previous run at the Old Vic in London last fall. More

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      ‘MJ’: Dancing the Pain, and Dancing the Pain Away

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      What is the role of choreography on Broadway? Two musicals, “MJ” and “A Strange Loop,” shed light on the dancing body.Don’t get me wrong: The musical “MJ” is a misfire on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. “Thriller” looks like a scene out of “Cats.” The segment showing Michael Jackson’s dance influences — the Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse — is so poor in terms of skill level that I felt sorry for dance, the art form. Irritatingly, yet predictably, the show, directed by the ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards. It will run for ages. Michael Jackson — for all his flaws — is still Michael Jackson.But the production does have something to show about Jackson’s dancing body in all of its articulate anxiety. It made me think: What happened to that body when the boy became a man? How did his dancing change? Was something of his internal landscape exposed in his dancing for all to see? Did we ever really see it?When he was alive and building his pop canon of music and dance, it wasn’t always so easy to grasp how, beyond the nervous twitches of the choreography, his spirit was reflected in his dancing. So much about him was wrapped up in the fashion of the moment that you could forget about his body. (You couldn’t, after all, ignore the ever-morphing features of his face.) There were so many distractions along the way — the skin, the plastic surgery, the allegations of molestation against him.He was always hiding. His costumes were armor, masking his body, his interior life and even, for all of his extraordinary prowess, his physicality. In a sense, he made it possible for his impersonators to exist by crafting and perpetuating a Michael Jackson that anyone could borrow and put on. Like a rhinestone glove. Or a moonwalk.The Broadway musical tries its best to focus on Jackson, the perfectionist artist, MJ, as the adult Jackson is listed in the Playbill. By contrast, the role of Little Michael makes the adult seem more fragile and more bizarre. (There’s a third Michael, too, in between them in age; he makes less of an impression.) You can’t help but notice the dramatic, drastic changes that his dancing body displayed over time. From his childhood as the youngest brother in the Jackson 5 to the final rehearsals for his Dangerous tour of 1992, the moment that frames the show, we see the way turmoil ripples through his body. For Little Michael, tormented by his father, dance is an escape; for the older MJ, it’s a way for his body to scream in ways he couldn’t with words. His voice, high and whispery, never had the same emphatic force.Christian Wilson, front, as Little Michael in “MJ.” Wilson’s “ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom,” bring the musical to life, our critic says.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe older MJ, in the show, fights for rigid precision — movement phrases are knotty, spiky, full of angles, while Little Michael is smooth and enviably relaxed. (Obviously, dance styles changed drastically during that time, but the contrast seems as emotional as it is physical.) Two young boys alternate as Little Michael, Walter Russell III and Christian Wilson. I can only speak for Wilson, whose performance I saw, but it was his dancing that repeatedly snapped me back to attention.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, the first to recognize shows that opened after a long Broadway shutdown during the pandemic, will be given out on June 12.Lifetime Achievement: Angela Lansbury, an acclaimed and beloved star, will be honored with a special award during this year’s ceremony.Hugh Jackman: The actor may potentially win his third Tony Award for his role in “The Music Man.” He shared some thoughts on his life between film and theater.A New Star: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process.Feinstein’s/54 Below: The beloved basement club, which bills itself as “Broadway’s living room,” will receive an honor at the Tony Awards for excellence in the theater.As a musical, “MJ” can feel as distant and as inaccessible as a music video. Wilson’s presence — his ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom — brought it to life. Even during the curtain calls, his hips kept flowing, perhaps more quietly, more internally than when he was in character, but he never lost hold of his gentle yet powerful groove.That unselfconscious fluidity throws into relief the rigidity and the constraint of MJ, as played by Myles Frost. Frost’s dancing accuracy is extraordinary; it reveals a body turning in on itself and hardening — lonely, brittle, concave. The tipped hat and rounded shoulders weren’t just about Jackson imitating one of his idols, Bob Fosse. Weren’t they also a way to hide (and guard) himself from the world?Jackson’s music was pop, but the way he used his body had such a hard edge that to watch footage of his actual Dangerous tour is to see something related to punk — not in sound, but in angst and speed, anger and attack. The tone is confident and clipped, but beyond the gleaming exterior, you sense pain. Did he even want to move in front of people? I can’t decide. At the start of a performance in Bucharest, he stands still, in profile, with his arms tense at his sides, for what seems like ages while the camera pans to a crowd on the brink of hysteria.Wait for it: Michael Jackson in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on the Dangerous tour.Alain Benainous/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesIt’s impossible to know who Jackson really was. “MJ” delivers yet another impersonation of the man we saw onstage and in videos. Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide behind, like another costume; it was a place he could control his body. He could be himself or the person he wanted to be: strong, powerful, sexy. Maybe the dancing body was the man, or his fantasy of himself.I don’t want to honor the choreographic approach in “MJ,” which is mostly cartoonish. But watching the dancing left me thinking about Jackson and what dancing became for him — something he was chained to, rather than a way to break free of the box he found himself in.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      Édouard Louis, Miserable in the Spotlight

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      The French writer played himself onstage and hated the experience, according to a new work he developed with the Swiss director Milo Rau. This time around, there’s an actor in the role.PARIS — Édouard Louis isn’t happy right now. That is one of the takeaways from “The Interrogation,” a new play he was set to star in, then canceled, then rewrote for another actor, working with the Swiss director Milo Rau. In May, “The Interrogation,” which was co-produced by the Belgian playhouse NTGent and had its world premiere in Amsterdam, made its way to the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris — and perhaps fittingly, left more questions than answers in its wake.It is a deeply meta addition to what I guess we could now call the Édouard Louis theatrical universe. The recent onslaught of French and international productions based on his work — with star directors including Thomas Ostermeier and Ivo van Hove — has been curious to watch, because Louis doesn’t write primarily for the stage. Most of his books, including “The End of Eddy,” which delved into his difficult childhood as a closeted gay child in a homophobic, violent, working-class environment, have been billed as memoirs or autobiographical novels.For a little while, it seemed as though Louis had happily rekindled an early passion through the medium, since theater classes were his escape as a teenager. Louis has even played himself onstage in Ostermeier’s version of “Who Killed My Father,” a monologue commissioned and originally performed by the French actor and director Stanislas Nordey.Yet if Rau’s “The Interrogation” is to be believed, Louis hated that experience. In this production, he appears only through video and in voice-overs. Onstage, he is played by the Belgian actor Arne De Tremerie. “Something didn’t feel right” about his stage debut, we learn via De Tremerie; Louis also calls the life of an actor “exhausting” and “not the dream life I had hoped for.” It’s too bad, then, that while “The Interrogation” was on in Paris, Louis was in New York to perform “Who Killed My Father” at St. Ann’s Warehouse (through June 5).There is a mild absurdity to this situation, which goes unacknowledged in Rau’s self-serious production. It starts with a letter, read in voice-over, in which Louis apologizes to Rau and tells him he doesn’t want to commit to being onstage again. “The Interrogation,” which was originally supposed to premiere in May 2021, was hastily canceled as a result. “Once again, I failed at being happy,” Louis laments.Enter De Tremerie, who took over so the production could go forward. With his blond hair and slight build, he can easily pass for Louis, and offers a heightened, more theatrical version. Where Louis, an inexperienced actor, aimed for naturalness onstage, De Tremerie has homed in on some of his quirks: the way he carries himself with his head slightly forward, the nervous flutter of his lips.De Tremerie’s performance is commendable, yet “The Interrogation” doesn’t give him enough space to exist separately from Louis. In fact, Louis keeps appearing on a screen, in a hooded sweater identical to De Tremerie’s. At several points, De Tremerie looks up at Louis, or playfully imitates him; Louis, mostly shot in close-up, looks down at the stage. Fiction meets reality, a common trope in Rau’s stage work, but here, neither appears to enrich the other.De Tremerie alone onstage in “The Interrogation.” Tuong-Vi Nguyen“The Interrogation” could have made much more of its central paradox. At its heart, it is about a literary star who unsuccessfully sought meaning in success, since he had pictured it as his “vengeance.” (“Now I exist,” De Tremerie says as Louis, after retracing his rise to the top.) Yet as the text zooms in on the backlash against Louis’s work, and the demands that come with fame, it becomes clear that the author’s dissatisfaction extends beyond acting.At the same time, “The Interrogation” feeds the frenzy around Louis, whose story has become bigger than himself, at once a lightning rod and part of French folklore. The show pores over episodes of his life that he has already recounted elsewhere without much new insight, from the bullying he endured as a child to his life-changing encounter with the writer Didier Éribon, who became a mentor. “I feel like I’ve been robbed of my freedom,” De Tremerie says onstage of Louis’s situation, before addressing the audience directly: “I am not your little clown.”But he doesn’t need to offer himself up for consumption so exhaustively. Just last year, Louis published two books that joined the flurry of stage productions. A TV adaptation of “The End of Eddy,” by the Oscar-winning screenwriter James Ivory, is also in the works, Louis said recently on Instagram. Near the end of “The Interrogation,” De Tremerie says with a sigh: “No more stories. No more revenge. Just life.” Perhaps Louis should take his own advice, at least for a time.On a much smaller stage in Paris, another real-life figure who has unwittingly become a symbol found a striking home. “Free Will” (“Libre Arbitre”), a new play co-written by Léa Girardet and Julie Bertin (who also directed), delves into the life of Caster Semenya, the South African runner and Olympic gold medalist who has been repeatedly barred from competition since 2009 because of elevated testosterone levels.Girardet had already scored a hit with a soccer-inspired one-woman show, “The Syndrome of the Bench,” and “Free Will” is equally lively and punchy, though darker. If you have lost track of the saga around Semenya, an intersex woman who was asked by World Athletics, the sport’s governing body, to take medication to suppress her natural hormones, this play is a sobering reminder.Juliette Speck as Caster Semenya, the South African runner and Olympic gold medalist, in “Free Will,” directed by Julie Bertin at the Théâtre Dunois. Simon GosselinJuliette Speck is quietly excellent when she portrays Semenya, and all four cast members perform multiple roles. They depict the sex verification tests Semenya had to undertake, imagine meetings between high-ranking members of World Athletics and recreate the 2019 case Semenya brought to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, using verbatim excerpts from the trial. At the end of the play, the court’s ruling — that the restrictions applied to Semenya were discriminatory, but a “reasonable” way to preserve the integrity of women’s sport — is, quite simply, heartbreaking.Bertin and Girardet do a superb job of explaining the complex issues and vocabulary involved, with more playful scenes interspersed. In one, the cast pretends to call World Athletics to suggest a new category for competitions: “reassuring women,” whose dainty running style (in heels, complete with a demonstration) would be more in keeping with the expectations of femininity placed on athletes.“Free Will” had its Paris premiere at the Théâtre Dunois, which caters to young people, but older adults have much to learn from it, too. Unlike Louis, Semenya isn’t in the spotlight enough for theater audiences to know the entirety of her journey — but her story deserves to be told.The Interrogation. Directed by Milo Rau. Théâtre de la Colline.Libre Arbitre. Directed by Julie Bertin. Théâtre Dunois. Further performances at the Théâtre 13 through June 4 and at the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe next season. More

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      ‘Dreaming Zenzile’ Review: A Tribute to Mama Africa

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      The musical is Somi Kakoma’s thank-you note, written across generations, to the South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba.If you want to see a performer in full command of her instrument and her powers, take the F train to Second Avenue and walk the few blocks to New York Theater Workshop to savor Somi Kakoma in “Dreaming Zenzile,” her tribute to the South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, born Zenzile Miriam Makeba.Makeba, a star from the 1960s through her death in 2008, pioneered the form broadly known as world music. Singing in Xhosa, Swahili, Sotho, Zulu and English, Makeba popularized African songwriting among American and European audiences, earning the nickname Mama Africa. Throughout her life, she lent her voice to social justice causes, particularly that of Black South Africans living under apartheid. Onstage, at New York Theater Workshop, in collaboration with the National Black Theater, Kakoma, in a marigold dress, with a voice like a sunrise, plays her through 76 years of her eventful life.Makeba was a vocal shapeshifter who could triumph in practically any genre — folk, jazz, American songbook, Afropop. Vocally, Kakoma has that chameleonlike quality, too, varying her big, bright voice with husky breaths, vivid ululation and the Xhosa clicks for which Makeba was famous. Her singing seems as effortless as it is varied, as easy as it is virtuosic. “Dreaming Zenzile,” directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz with music direction by Hervé Samb, is best understood and enjoyed as Kakoma’s gift of love and dignity, across generations, from one artist to another.The set, by Riccardo Hernández, suggests a concert stage, illuminated by Yi Zhao’s vibrant lights.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut as a work of theater, “Dreaming Zenzile” struggles among the competing forms of recital, dream play, memory play and biography. The bare set, by Riccardo Hernández, suggests a concert stage, illuminated by Yi Zhao’s vibrant lights and backed, less helpfully by Hannah Wasileski’s banal projections of waves, flowers and rainbow abstractions. Is this an auditorium or some astral way station? Is it the afterlife? Lacking the style and thematic force that defines Blain-Cruz’s best work, the show feels less like a narrative than a tone poem, which can make time hang heavy in the first half; it takes an hour just to bring young Miriam to her professional debut.Amplified by a four-person chorus (Aaron Marcellus, Naledi Masilo, Phumzile Sojola and Phindi Wilson) and a four-person band, the music feels electric, often joyful, a sharp shock of pleasure that Marjani Forté-Saunders’s supple, elegant choreography enhances. But the interplay between book passages and Makeba’s songs, which are not subtitled, rarely feels essential. Why these songs, in these moments? By contrast, Kakoma’s emotion-heavy, jazz-inflected songs are too on the button. Really, they’re all button. Those who arrive without a working chronology may feel lost.Though it touches briefly on some central themes — exile, responsibility — and limns, however elliptically, most of the major life events of its subject, “Dreaming Zenzile” withholds what most of us desire from a work of this kind: a greater understanding of how a performer’s life shapes and impacts her art, the relationship between experience and oeuvre. This desire isn’t necessarily fair or sensible. Sometimes that relationship doesn’t exist. Sometimes it is too oblique to parse. But because “Dreaming Zenzile” too often favors symbol and abstraction, the audience is denied this connection.Only in its closing moments, which occur shortly before Makeba’s death, does the show achieve a kind of cohesion and vigor. Throughout, Makeba has taken up the burden of activism with sturdiness and poise, freeing her voice in the hope that others might be made free. Finally, she announces the cost.“Do you know what it is to be the first?” she says, choking on the words. “Do you know the weight of that? The loneliness?”To ask one woman to stand in for an entire continent was always too great a burden. Mama Africa? It was impossible. That Makeba bore it for so long, and with such grace, is a wonder and a gift. At its best, “Dreaming Zenzile” is a thank-you note, written with deep and abiding gratitude.Dreaming ZenzileThrough June 26 at New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan; nytw.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      With Cameras on Every Phone, Will Broadway’s Nude Scenes Survive?

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      Audiences are increasingly asked to lock their phones in pouches at comedy shows, concerts and some plays. But what happens onstage doesn’t always stay onstage.Jesse Williams was nominated for a Tony Award last month for his work in “Take Me Out,” an acclaimed play about baseball and homophobia. But when his name trended on Twitter the next day, it was not because of the accolade: it was because someone had surreptitiously taken a video of his nude scene and posted it online.In a recent interview Mr. Williams, who became a star through his appearances on “Grey’s Anatomy,” said he was undeterred by the incident. “I come here to do work — I’m going to tell the truth onstage, I’m going to be vulnerable,” he said. But he also made it clear that he was not all right with what had happened to him, saying that “putting nonconsensual naked photos of somebody on the internet is really foul.”Mobile phones have long disrupted live performances by ringing at inopportune moments, and have irked artists when people use them to illicitly film their work. Now the ubiquity of smartphones with ever-better cameras is leading some actors, particularly celebrities, to reconsider whether to appear nude onstage, given the risk that what is intended as an ephemeral moment can live online forever, out of context.“Ten years ago, I don’t think the first thing out of my mouth would have been: ‘Are you OK knowing that there is a decent chance that this will be filmed or photographed and be out there on social media?’” Lisa Goldberg, a publicist who represents actors in Broadway, television and film, said of the discussions she has when a performer is asked to appear nude. “That would be one of the first things I would bring up to a client today.”Jesse Williams, right, said “putting nonconsensual naked photos of somebody on the internet is really foul.” He appeared in “Take Me Out” with Carl Lundstedt.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNudity has grown common onstage over the past 50 years, and major stars including Nicole Kidman and Daniel Radcliffe have performed scenes without clothes on Broadway when their scripts have called for it. But the chances of being photographed au naturel have grown considerably. Being Broadway royalty offers no protection: Audra McDonald, who has won six Tonys, noticed in 2019 that someone had snapped a photo of her during a nude scene from “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” “Not cool at all,” she wrote in a tweet.The recent videos of Mr. Williams surfaced despite the extraordinary steps that Second Stage Theater, the producer of “Take Me Out,” has taken to protect the privacy of the actors who appear nude. Audience members are required to switch off their phones and place them in pouches that are kept locked until the end of the show. The pouches, made by a company called Yondr, have grown increasingly common in recent years, especially at stand-up shows, since comedians are both fiercely protective of their jokes and concerned that some, taken out of context, could cause blowback.Roughly a million Yondr pouches were used at live events in April, nearly five times as many as were used the same month in 2019, the company said. Other shows with nude scenes are now trying them: At the end of May, Penguin Rep Theatre announced that it would deploy Yondr pouches at its upcoming Off Broadway production of “Mr. Parker” because the show contains a brief moment of nudity.Graham Dugoni, who founded Yondr in 2014, lamented that many people still have difficulty figuring out how to “be a human in the world with a computer in your pocket.”“A nude photograph is obviously one very far extreme,” Mr. Dugoni said. “But a comedian’s bit being taken out of context and repackaged on social media and reinterpreted — all of these things don’t enhance the art form. They kind of nibble away at it in a way that makes people go into hedgehog mode.”But the precautions are not foolproof. A night of comedy at the Hollywood Bowl last month was supposed to have been cellphone free, but when its headliner, Dave Chappelle, was tackled onstage, video emerged from a few people who had managed to skirt the rules. And earlier this spring, when Chris Rock had his first public stand-up set after Will Smith slapped him onstage at the Academy Awards, attendees at the Wilbur Theater in Boston were required to put their phones in Yondr pouches, too. They were only allowed to use them in a designated space near the lobby, where one ticketholder sheepishly asked for his phone back because he had forgotten to text the babysitter. Video of that show emerged, too.The ease of recording and uploading video has given pause to people thinking of disrobing in other situations, including some college students who have reassessed the wisdom of traditional naked campus runs and habitués of nude beaches, who are increasingly on the lookout for cameras. But it is becoming a particular issue in the theater, where actors who are asked to appear nude must consent to it when they sign their contracts.Many major stars have appeared nude on Broadway over the years, including Daniel Radcliffe, center, in “Equus” in 2008.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity Association, said in an interview that many actors believe that live theater is “meant to be participated in within four walls” and that “if that sanctity is compromised, the work suffers.” Recording from the audience, she said, can feel “like a violation — even if you have all your clothes on.”Advanced written consent is required for any filming or photography that involves nudity, union officials said. That includes any video that will appear in Theater on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, said Patrick Hoffman, the director and curator of the archive, which holds more than 4,400 video recordings of live theater productions. Most agree. But over the years, some actors have declined to have their nude scenes recorded for the archive. In some cases understudies have gone on in their places, and in others, their productions have simply not been recorded. Some videos of shows featuring nudity in the archive are specially formatted so researchers can watch them, but cannot pause, rewind, or fast forward.Surreptitious photography posed a challenge to actors appearing nude onstage long before the iPhone debuted in 2007.The theater environment today, where nudity is a regular feature on Broadway and even in some productions at the Metropolitan Opera, is a far cry from what it was like in 1969, when Margo Sappington, the choreographer and a cast member of the original production of “Oh! Calcutta!,” which featured extensive nudity, was among those arrested on charges of indecent exposure after a performance in Los Angeles.Even in that pre-smartphone era, cameras were a nuisance, Ms. Sappington said. So the company decided on a low-tech mitigation measure: If someone spotted a camera from the stage, they would stop the show, break the fourth wall, and call for the ushers.“Now it’s impossible in a Broadway theater in the dark to see cellphones,” she said. “People are so disrespectful. It amazes me.”And the leak of the video featuring Mr. Williams had an all-too-familiar feeling for Daniel Sunjata, who played the same character, Darren Lemming, when “Take Me Out” first ran on Broadway in 2003. Photos of his nude scenes leaked too, but were somewhat more contained in the era before Facebook and Twitter made social media so pervasive.“The main difference between now and then is amplitude,” Mr. Sunjata said, “the speed, the rapidity with which things like this can be spread.”But the leaks troubled Mr. Sunjata, who had found the nude scenes a challenge to begin with. He said he consulted his lawyers and had “wanted heads to roll.”Tatianna Casas, who works for Yondr, helped people seal their phones before a recent comedy show.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesFor Mr. Sunjata, the main difference between performing naked onstage eight times a week before a live audience, and having a photo taken of the nudity, is less about the photo’s permanence then about the lack of context surrounding it. “Someone who hasn’t seen the play just sees naked guys onstage,” he said.The current revival of “Take Me Out” has taken further steps to keep people from filming its actors. As a backup to the Yondr pouches, Second Stage Theater has installed an infrared camera with the ability to pan, tilt and zoom so that security officials can see if any members of the audience are trying to film the nude scenes.At a performance of the play last month, two theater staff members were stationed at the front of the theater at either end of the stage. They stood up during scenes that included nudity. For all the precautions, a phone rang five minutes into the first act. The crowd audibly groaned.When Mr. Williams was asked whether he would sign up again for a show in which he must appear nude, he demurred. “I don’t know,” he said. “My reaction is never as hot, or loud or miserable as everybody expects it to be.”Michael Paulson and Julia Jacobs contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill and Alain Delaquérière contributed research. More

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      Review: Amy Adams in a Too-Fragile ‘Glass Menagerie’

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      In a rare stage outing for the actor, in London, she plays the central character in Tennessee Williams’s play as more of a fusspot than a harridan.LONDON — A treasured figurine isn’t the only thing that gets smashed in “The Glass Menagerie,” the Tennessee Williams play that has brought the film star Amy Adams to London in a rare stage outing. This comparatively muted revival of the 1944 classic opened Tuesday at the Duke of York’s Theater in the British capital and runs through Aug. 27.Williams’s breakout drama chronicles a family’s disintegration. The best productions should leave the audience as shattered as the unicorn that gets toppled from its perch at the play’s devastating climax.And yet my eyes remained pretty much dry, unusually for a play whose most memorable versions pull you into a tortuous family dynamic. This production’s quieter, less urgent approach comes into its own in the second act, but elsewhere, it is too removed from the play’s intensifying sadness.The story is as potent as ever. We look on as the fretful Amanda Wingfield (Adams, speaking in an ace southern accent) runs roughshod over her two children in their cramped St. Louis home. Tom, a budding writer, is trapped in a soul-crushing job at a warehouse, and Laura (Lizzie Annis), his older sister, is an indrawn, self-described “cripple.” The anxious trio are joined for a fateful dinner by Tom’s co-worker, Jim (Victor Alli), the much-anticipated “gentleman caller” who turns out to have been Laura’s longtime schoolgirl crush.Lizzie Annis, as Laura, and Tom Glynn-Carney, as Tom, in “The Glass Menagerie.”Johan PerssonJeremy Herrin, the director, has increased the number of actors to five, casting two men in the role of Tom, Williams’s portrait of himself as a restless young artist.Paul Hilton, a Tony nominee last year for “The Inheritance” on Broadway, plays the older Tom, who looks back remorsefully on the family he could never fully escape. Hilton’s soliloquies bookend the production, and the actor prowls the stage throughout, often peering at his family through a large display case of fragile ornaments that dominates Vicki Mortimer’s bleak set. (Above the action for this “memory play” is a screen on which the video designer Ash J. Woodward projects hazy images that come in and out of focus, as recollections tend to do.)And Tom Glynn-Carney plays the young Tom, forever facing off against the domineering mother who derides her son as a “selfish dreamer.” Worse than that, he commits the cardinal sin of introducing Jim, an outsider who awakens a romantic spark in the lovesick Laura that is quickly dashed: Jim, we learn, has a serious girlfriend in the (unseen) Betty.The sharing of the role, while intriguing in principle, doesn’t add up to much. The two Toms acknowledge one another in passing at the start but seem otherwise to inhabit separate universes: The compact, feisty Glynn-Carney couldn’t be more different, physically and emotively, from the lanky, slightly affected Hilton, who takes a while to settle into his American accent. (Glynn-Carney’s, by contrast, is pitch perfect.)There’s far more power to the candlelit encounter between the shy Laura and the well-meaning Jim, who overreaches in his affections to catastrophic effect. Not long out of drama school, Alli is immediately likable as the “nice, ordinary, young man” — to quote Williams’s description of the character — who exerts an extraordinary hold over Laura. And Annis, who has cerebral palsy and is here making her professional stage debut, prompts a palpable stillness in the theater as Laura seizes up when Jim departs.What of Adams, the name attraction, who last appeared onstage in an alfresco production of the musical “Into the Woods” in New York a decade ago? The six-time Oscar nominee is a far younger Amanda than such recent interpreters of this role as Cherry Jones, Sally Field and Isabelle Huppert, and her softly-spoken demeanor makes for more of a fusspot than the harridan this matriarch can sometimes become.What’s lacking is the gathering sense of fury from Amanda at a lifetime of betrayal and disappointment, though the most frequent projection above the stage is that of the children’s errant father, the “telephone man” who “fell in love with long distances” and quit his family altogether.Adams’s natural appeal makes Amanda’s account of the gentleman callers that once brought her cheer believable, but she, like the production itself, could do with being less subdued. “The Glass Menagerie” may make a plot point of fragility, but the play’s depiction of a family in free fall needs a more robust performance at its center.The Glass MenagerieThrough Aug. 27 at the Duke of York’s Theater, in London. More