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      Book Review: ‘The Hypocrite,’ by Jo Hamya

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      In Jo Hamya’s second novel, “The Hypocrite,” a 20-something playwright puts her absent, aging writer dad on blast.THE HYPOCRITE, by Jo HamyaEven bad, absent daddies can set aside ego to appreciate the trappings of a classic. In “The Hypocrite,” Jo Hamya’s sharp and agile new novel, an unnamed, aging writer admits the brilliance of a nearly 10-minute sex scene to open his daughter’s latest play. It’s a shame the actor thrusting onstage is a venereal, self-regarding avatar of the writer himself, otherwise he’d tell his daughter how clever she was.We are in London, in the summer of 2020. The city is cautiously stirring to life after months of lockdown. The play has been warmly received by critics, and its 20-something playwright, Sophia, is unquestionably talented. Also: wounded, blinkered, petulant.Her father is a middle-aged novelist of moderate renown who is said to “offend people for a living,” and whose views aren’t quite prehistoric but are premodern enough that I’d prefer not to hear his feelings about women breastfeeding in public. At a glance, he resembles Martin Amis during a low moment. He saw Sophia only intermittently during her childhood, hasn’t published a book in years, hasn’t navigated the shifting cultural tides terribly well. Settling into his seat at the theater, he had no idea what he was in for.Their longest stretch of time together, a Sicilian vacation a decade earlier in which Sophia took dictation for his novel-in-progress, is the play’s subject. Her memory is ferociously loyal, but unsparing: She nails precise details of the dill-scented kitchen where they worked, his cherished purple shirt, the sexual encounters he thought he’d kept secret. Within moments, the humiliation sets in — he is reduced to a version of himself that had sex “like a pig and wrote like a dictator,” as the audience howls with laughter.Still, there are crumbs of mercy. Thank God Sophia hasn’t cast someone who can replicate the sputtering of his orgasms.And thankfully, nobody in this appropriately claustrophobic story emerges the clear hero. No one is that doomed L-word, likable. Hamya bats our sympathies between characters: Sophia, the neglected child who craves both her father’s approval and his artistic toppling; her father, who seems baffled by how quickly he’s encountered irrelevance; and Sophia’s mother, who is justifiably fed up after loving two self-engrossed yet profoundly un-self-aware writers.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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      Sutton Foster and Michael Urie Reunite in the Zany ‘Once Upon a Mattress’

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      The hit Encores! production has transferred to Broadway, with a cast fiercely dedicated to entertaining its audience.Princess Winnifred and Prince Dauntless are goofy and playful characters. In most musicals, they would provide comic relief from the main story line. But in “Once Upon a Mattress,” it’s the funny people who rule, both literally and figuratively.All the more so since Winnifred and Dauntless are played by Sutton Foster and Michael Urie in symbiotic performances that are highly controlled and precise while maintaining the appearance of off-the-cuff abandon.And with the rest of the cast mostly following suit, it is refreshing to see actors so actively dedicating themselves to entertaining their audience. This kind of unabashed reveling in the joys of strutting your stuff appears to be in demand, too, judging by the recent success of “Oh, Mary!” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.”The family-friendly “Once Upon a Mattress,” which premiered in 1959, is a good fit for the Encores! series — which stages shows that are rarely revived and presented this one in January. Now the production has transferred, with some changes in the supporting cast, to the Hudson Theater on Broadway.Like many Encores! entries, Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer’s variation on the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Princess and the Pea” would probably struggle to crack anybody but a tween’s Top 10 list of the best musicals ever.Also like many of those entries, “Once Upon a Mattress” turns out to be surprisingly sturdy in the right hands. Rodgers’s music is zingy and Barer’s lyrics often deploy sneakily enjoyable wordplay (“I lack a lass; alas! Alack!”). Just as important, the book by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller is engineered to let gifted comic actors run loose — it is no coincidence that Carol Burnett originated the role of Winnifred.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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      This Theater Company in Wisconsin Banks on the Glory of the Human Voice

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      For a regular theatergoer, a recent July evening in rural Wisconsin was peak surreal.It could have been the sight of an amphitheater packed to its 1,075-seat capacity for a weeknight performance of the fairly obscure French comedy “Ring Round the Moon.”Or maybe it was that the actors didn’t have mics, which is a rarity nowadays. From my seat, I could see audience members leaning in, transfixed by those unamplified voices.“They’re here to listen,” Brenda DeVita, the artistic director of American Players Theater, said of the faithful who flock to Spring Green, about an hour west of Madison.A.P.T., in its 45th season, describes itself as a language-based company, which explains why it has doubled down on idiosyncratic choices in the current theatrical landscape. One is not doing musicals. Another is eschewing mics.That last is partly a practical choice since A.P.T. productions — nine this season, with the last closing on Nov. 10 — are done in repertory. This means the actors are always busy rehearsing or performing, leaving little spare time to add microphones to tech rehearsals. But banking on the glory of the human voice is primarily an artistic decision: Nothing comes between the actors, their words and the public.“Much Ado About Nothing,” featuring Sydney Lolita Cusic, lower left, and Samantha Newcomb and Briana J. Resa on the balcony, is running through September at American Players Theater’s 1,100-seat outdoor amphitheater.Eric Ruby for 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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      How Hollywood Glamour Is Reviving the Endangered Broadway Play

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      George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Denzel Washington and Mia Farrow are coming to Broadway, where some producers see plays with stars as safer bets than musicals.Robert Downey Jr. is deep in rehearsals for his Broadway debut next month as an A.I.-obsessed novelist in “McNeal.” Next spring, George Clooney arrives for his own Broadway debut in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and Denzel Washington returns, after a seven-year absence, to star in “Othello” with Jake Gyllenhaal.Then comes an even more surprising debut: Keanu Reeves plans to begin his Broadway career in the fall of 2025, opposite his longtime “Bill & Ted” slacker-buddy Alex Winter in “Waiting for Godot,” the ur-two-guys-being-unimpressive tragicomedy.Broadway, still adapting to sharply higher production costs and audiences that have not fully rebounded since the coronavirus pandemic, is betting big on star power, hoping that a helping of Hollywood glamour will hasten its rejuvenation.Even for an industry long accustomed to stopovers by screen and pop stars, the current abundance is striking.It reflects a new economic calculus by many producers, who have concluded that short-run plays with celebrity-led casts are more likely to earn a profit than the expensive razzle-dazzle musicals that have long been Broadway’s bread and butter.For the actors, there is another factor: As TV networks and streaming companies cut back on scripted series, and as Hollywood focuses on franchise films, the stage offers a chance to tell more challenging stories.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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      Overlooked No More: Renee Carroll, ‘World’s Most Famous Hatcheck Girl’

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      From the cloakroom at Sardi’s, she made her own mark on Broadway, hobnobbing with celebrity clients while safekeeping fedoras, bowlers, derbies and more.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.For 24 years, as the hatcheck girl at Sardi’s, the storied theater district restaurant on West 44th Street in Manhattan, Renee Carroll found fame from within the close confines of a cloakroom.From that post, she hobnobbed with celebrity clientele, fed insider gossip to newspaper columnists and wrote an immensely popular, chatty book that dished about which stage actress ate too much garlic (Katharine Cornell, if you must know) and how fading stars wistfully reacted when rising newcomers like Joan Crawford entered the dining room.Checking hats at a restaurant might seem like a menial job, and in fact the salary for safekeeping homburgs, fedoras, bowlers and derbies was measly, but Caroll saw the position as an opportunity to make her own mark on Broadway.With her wisecracking personality, she won over actors, writers and producers while earning dime or quarter tips. If someone checked a play script with her, she perused it and offered canny critiques, sometimes unsolicited, by the time the patron had finished lunch.Her approbation was considered such a good-luck charm that even hatless playwrights and producers were known to leave her money. Eugene O’Neill once entrusted her with his wristwatch when he had nothing else on hand to check.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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      Broadway Revival of ‘Glengarry’ to Star Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr

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      A revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s classic play about unscrupulous real estate agents, is to open next spring.“Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the world of unscrupulous real estate agents, is returning to Broadway next spring with a starry cast for its seedy offices.Kieran Culkin, boosted to stardom by his role as a scheming son of a media titan in “Succession,” will be featured alongside Bob Odenkirk, the “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” alumnus, and Bill Burr, one of today’s most successful standup comics.The production — which will be the fourth “Glengarry” outing on Broadway — is to be directed by Patrick Marber, a Tony Award winner for Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” Marber was 19 when he saw the first production of “Glengarry” in London in 1983.“Glengarry” is one of the plays that solidified Mamet’s reputation as a great American dramatist. It is an ensemble drama, set in a Chinese restaurant and a real-estate office, about a group of salesmen competing to market real estate developments to unwitting buyers.The play arrived on Broadway in 1984, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama that same year. It was adapted as a film in 1992, with a cast led by Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon.The play was revived on Broadway in 2005, with Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber, and again in 2012, with Pacino and Bobby Cannavale.Culkin, who will play Richard Roma, the alpha dog salesman, has appeared on Broadway once before, in a 2014 production of Kenneth Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth.” Odenkirk will play Shelly Levene, the sad-sack veteran salesman, and Burr takes on the role of Dave Moss, Roma’s blustery rival; they will both be making their Broadway debuts in “Glengarry.” The rest of the cast and the production’s dates have not yet been announced.The 2025 revival is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, who has worked on every previous Broadway production of “Glengarry” and who often produces Mamet’s work on Broadway, as well as by Rebecca Gold, a frequent Richards collaborator. In 2018, Richards and Gold had plans to stage an all-female production of “Glengarry,” and in 2019, Patti LuPone said she was slated to star, but that production never happened.Mamet has become a polarizing figure in recent decades — his later plays have not been well-received, and his rightward political turn has alienated some onetime fans. But his early plays remain admired; most recently, “American Buffalo” was revived on Broadway in 2022, and Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, although critical of Mamet, called the production “electric.” More

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      Compassion Is in Short Supply at This Grief Support Group

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      In “Someone Spectacular,” Domenica Feraud skewers group therapy and the futility of sharing trauma in a fishbowl.The Irish literary critic Vivian Mercier once wrote that “Waiting for Godot” is “a play in which nothing happens, twice.” Domenica Feraud’s “Someone Spectacular,” with its own missing Godot-like figure, is a play in which nothing happens, six times.The nothing, in this case, refers mainly to the plot: Six members of a grief support group sit in a circle and wait for their counselor, Beth, to show up. Ten minutes pass. Then 20. Someone halfheartedly suggests they play a game; someone else speculates that Beth might have died, which gets a lungless laugh from a group member. Another belatedly wonders aloud: Should they even be talking without the mediating presence of their counselor?A modest proposal from Julian (Shakur Tolliver), who is grieving his aunt’s death, to start breathing exercises is roundly ignored, as is an idea to vote for a “Replacement Beth.” Nelle (Alison Cimmet), who is allergic to the idea of wasting time, proposes a vote on whether to proceed with the meeting sans Beth or disband. After some wrangling — “No one here is qualified to lead a session,” gripes the youngest attendee, Jude (Delia Cunningham) — votes are tallied. The yeas outnumber the nays.So: Progress?Not a snowflake’s chance in hell. In this meticulously crafted play, partly inspired by the death of Feraud’s mother, each attempt to begin the meeting is quickly derailed.When the matronly Evelyn (Gamze Ceylan), who has a worrisome cough, sensibly suggests a group check-in, she’s promptly dismissed. Only Jude, who is mourning a miscarriage, takes the invitation seriously; her “grief is at a 5 today. Maybe a 6. It gets worse at night, I’m not sure why.” Yet she’s immediately upstaged by Lily (Ana Cruz Kayne, flop sweatingly fine), a retired actress who thinks she killed her mom. Lily’s grief is at a 10, she says, because it’s always at a 10: “Every day I wake up shocked I haven’t killed myself. Happy?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened.

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      The muted reaction to the Edinburgh Fringe show “TERF” suggests that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, offense can quickly vanish.There are more than 3,600 shows in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and most will struggle to get even a single newspaper review. Yet for months before the festival opened on Friday, one play was the subject of intense global media attention: “TERF,” an 80-minute drama about J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, and her views on transgender women.Before anybody had even read the script, a Scottish newspaper called the play, which imagines Rowling debating her views with the stars of the “Harry Potter” movies, a “foul-mouthed” attack on the author. An article in The Daily Telegraph said that “scores of actresses” had turned down the opportunity to play Rowling. And The Daily Mail, a tabloid, reported that the production had encountered trouble securing a venue.On social media and women’s web forums, too, “TERF” stirred outraged discussion.The uproar raised the specter of pro-Rowling protesters outside the show and prompted debate in Edinburgh, the city that Rowling has called home for more than 30 years. But when “TERF” opened last week, it barely provoked a whimper. The only disturbance to a performance on Monday in the ballroom of Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms came from a group of latecomers using a cellphone flashlight to find their seats. About 55 theatergoers watched the play in silence from the front few rows of the 350-seat capacity venue.The play imagines a showdown in a restaurant between Rowling and the stars of the “Harry Potter” movies.Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGiven the regular disagreements between some feminists and transgender rights supporters, the uproar around “TERF” was not unexpected.But the muted response to the show itself suggests that fewer British people are riled by the debate than the media coverage implies — or at least that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, outrage can quickly vanish.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