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      Jack Charles, Grandfather of Aboriginal Theater, Dies at 79

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      One of Australia’s leading Indigenous actors, he had a resonant voice, a charismatic personality and a troubled personal life that often landed him in jail.MELBOURNE, Australia — Jack Charles, one of Australia’s leading Indigenous actors, who has been called the “grandfather of Aboriginal theater” but whose heroin addiction and penchant for burglary landed him in and out of jail throughout his life, died on Sept. 13 in Melbourne. He was 79.He died in a hospital after having a stroke, according to his publicist, Patrice Capogreco.Mr. Charles had a voice that made people stop and listen.Gravelly and majestic, with rounded vowels honed by elocution lessons in a rough-and-tumble boys’ home, it assured him an audience even over the scrum of the Australian prisons where he spent much of his life.“It’s very unusual for a crim or a screw to listen to a prisoner talk for very long,” he wrote in a memoir, using slang for fellow inmates and prison officers. “But for whatever reason, they’d let me run with whatever I was talking about and actually listen.”That voice catapulted Mr. Charles onto the stage, where he captivated Melbourne theatergoers, and helped make him one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal screen actors.He ascribed his talents to his Indigenous heritage. “We’re great orators,” he wrote in his memoir. “That is merely one element of our culture that white people never saw in our development.”Mr. Charles co-founded Australia’s first Indigenous theater company, Nindethana Theater, with the actor Bob Maza in 1971. He was known in Australia as Uncle Jack, an Aboriginal honorific denoting his status as an elder.His life was chronicled in an unsparing 2008 documentary, “Bastardy”; his memoir, “Born-again Blakfella”; and the 2010 one-man play “Jack Charles vs. the Crown,” which he co-wrote and performed around the world, despite multiple convictions that would ordinarily have limited his ability to travel.“Mr. Trump gave me a waiver to go to New York and perform ‘Jack Charles vs. the Crown,’” he said of the former president in an interview last year with the Australian news outlet The Saturday Paper. “That’s the ultimate for an old thief like me. I’m still thieving, stealing things. I’m stealing hearts and minds nowadays.”His road to stardom was a rocky one. Mr. Charles wrestled with heroin addiction, homelessness and an almost lifelong flirtation with burglary, for which he was incarcerated numerous times. He spent his 20th, 30th, 40th and 50th birthdays behind bars.It was also a journey of self-discovery: of who he really was, where he had come from, his homosexuality and what it meant to be an Aboriginal Australian and a member of the so-called Stolen Generation, Aboriginal people who for decades as children were removed from their families by the government and forcibly assimilated into white society.Raised in an almost entirely white home for boys, Mr. Charles had no knowledge of Aboriginal culture and did not even know he was Indigenous until other children bullied him for it.He would later use that self-knowledge to educate others about Australia’s history and race relations, whether from the back of a taxi cab or on the set of the 2015 Warner Bros. movie “Pan,” where he draped the Aboriginal flag over the back of his trailer. (He played a tribal chief in the film, alongside his fellow Australian Hugh Jackman.)“It became a talking point to discuss the social and political hopes for Aboriginal Australians,” Mr. Charles wrote, “as well as teaching people about the Dreaming,” an Aboriginal concept for the beginning of time.In his final years, after he had kicked his heroin addiction, he was a familiar and striking figure plying the streets of Melbourne atop a mobility scooter, an Aboriginal flag fluttering on the back.“He was someone that embraced everything, even the bad things,” said Wesley Enoch, an Australian theater director who had worked with Mr. Charles. “He embraced them so that he could understand them and incorporate them in who he was.”He added that to be embraced by Mr. Charles himself, who stood less than five feet tall and whose luxuriant white Afro and beard were perfumed with patchouli oil, was a memorable experience.Mr. Charles starred in the Australian superhero TV series “Cleverman.”Lisa Tomasetti/SundanceTVJack Charles was born in Melbourne on Sept. 5, 1943. He was one of 13 children born to Blanchie Muriel Charles, two of whom died at birth. The 11 survivors were seized from their mother in infancy. Mr. Charles was the only one of his siblings to meet her again.He was placed in his first children’s home at four months old. At his second, the Box Hill Boys’ Home in suburban Melbourne, he endured physical and sexual abuse, he said. The few Indigenous children there were forbidden to speak to one another.“I was whitewashed, if you will, by the system,” Mr. Charles told a state commission.At 14, he moved into a foster home and began a glass-beveling apprenticeship. But after a disagreement with his foster mother over a night out — when he met with other Indigenous Australians and learned his birth mother’s identity — he was removed from the home at 17 and taken into police custody.So began a troubled relationship with the law. Mr. Charles spent 22 years in prison, often on burglary charges. He favored homes in the wealthy Melbourne suburb of Kew, where his forebears had originated.Raised as a Christian, he had been taught that stealing was wrong, he told The Saturday Paper. But committing “burgs,” as he called them, on his ancestral homeland “felt great,” he said. “Very, very satisfying.”Incarceration was, for him, as productive as it was frequent: On behalf of fellow inmates, he wrote love letters to their wives in exchange for chocolate and tobacco. He read extensively, completed his high school education and learned and taught pottery.“You only lose your freedom in the nick,” he said in the documentary “Bastardy,” using a slang term for a jail. “You can’t go anywhere, but your mind can go wandering all over the place when you’re incarcerated. I might be locked up, but I’m free, still. Free inside.”Mr. Charles found his way onto the stage almost by accident. In 1964, representatives of Melbourne’s New Theater came to the Aboriginal youth hostel where he was living to cast an all-Indigenous production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.” He was given a role as an understudy.It was a revelation. In the theater, Mr. Charles had found his people. “They threw great parties, and they didn’t seem to care about my sexuality or my Aboriginality,” he wrote in his memoir.For the next seven years he beveled glass in a factory by day and acted with the New Theater by night.But he slid deeper into addiction and ended up on the street. Stints in prison, he wrote, were a relief, as they offered stable housing and regular meals.From 1971 to 1974, he ran the Aboriginal theater group Nindenthana, whose first hit show, “Jack Charles Is Up and Fighting,” explored whether Indigenous Australians should assimilate or stand apart from the country’s white majority.He starred in plays across Australia, including “Cradle of Hercules,” “No Sugar” and, in 2020, “Black Ties,” at Melbourne’s largest theater, the Arts Center. He appeared in several Australian television series, including “Cleverman,” “Women of the Sun” and “Preppers,” and movies, including “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,” “Blackfellas” and “Wolf Creek.”He was eventually reunited with four of his siblings: his brother Archie, and his sisters Esme, Eva-Jo and Christine. He did not learn the identity of his father, Hilton Hamilton Walsh, until last year, when he appeared on the reality genealogy television show “Who Do You Think You Are.”He is survived by Christine Zenip Charles, the only one of his 11 siblings he knew to be still alive.In his last years, Mr. Charles was able to look back at his life with magnanimity, moving from a place of deep anger to one of conciliation.“It’s important to keep in mind my story is also about healing,” he wrote in his memoir. “That’s how I’ve been able to keep going.” More

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      Review: ‘Marie It’s Time’ Pieces Together a Woman in Fragments

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      This three-actor play initiates a dialogue with Georg Büchner’s “Woyzeck,” examining men’s violence against women.Girlish, perilous, sexy and bleak, Minor Theater’s “Marie It’s Time,” at HERE, resurrects a marginal character from an influential work of modern drama. Then it kills her again. In this three-actor play, the playwright Julia Jarcho and the director Ásta Bennie Hostetter initiate a dialogue with Georg Büchner’s “Woyzeck,” an expressionist take on true crime left unfinished at the time of Büchner’s early death.“Woyzeck,” inspired by an early 19th-century scandal, centers on a sometime soldier who murders Marie, his common-law wife and the mother of his child, after she sleeps with a drum major. Woyzeck’s Marie isn’t granted much interiority in Büchner’s text, which makes “Marie It’s Time” a kind of reclamation, homage and clapback, even if Marie doesn’t survive for long here either.Jarcho splits Marie’s identity between two actors. Jarcho is one of them. Jennifer Seastone, a Minor Theater regular, is the other. Seastone plays a character named Marie — a breathy, lipsticked femme who knows the fatality is coming. Jarcho is Mag, a harassed mom in jeans and a sloppy sweater, introduced while cradling a screaming baby. (Each also takes turns playing Frank, the baby’s volatile father.) The women’s eyes are caught by Major (Kedian Keohan), a traveling musician in skinny jeans with a louche repertory of songs that describe and promise violence. Violence may be what Marie and Mag want. Certainly, it is what they expect. (Jarcho is also an academic, and her new book project explores theater and masochism. These ideas clearly absorb her.)As a playwright, Jarcho (“Pathetic,” “Grimly Handsome”) specializes in the weirdness and danger throbbing just below the surface of ordinary life, like a forehead vein that won’t stop pulsing. This creates an odd tangle of heightened emotions and ultranormal textures. Here, the style is broadly presentational, with some dialogue spoken into stand microphones and other lines rendered without amplification. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s a mind game. Or maybe it’s all mind games?Mag and Marie’s home, represented by an alphabet rug and a pile of laundry baskets, doubles, without adjustments, as a nightspot, a barbershop, a field. (The set is by Meredith Ries.) Hostetter doesn’t make the most of the confined downstairs space at Here. Despite the collection of doors and apertures in the set, the actors’ bodies inhabit it in limited ways. Still Ebony Burton’s lighting, which suggests a club in the weary, early morning moments before the work lights come on, and Ben Williams and Elliot Yokum’s ominous sound design provide greater ambience.Running just over an hour, “Marie It’s Time” is an intentionally narrow work and a recursive one, an echo chamber in which love and harm reverberate. It explores men’s violence against women, but as there aren’t any cisgender men onstage (Keohan is a trans actor), it does so in a way that feels both dangerous and appropriately safe, provocative without being exploitative. It returns agency to Marie, particularly when Seastone, an actress of great and strange charisma, steps up to the microphone. Then again, agency only goes so far. Marie still dies. She always dies.Jarcho and Hostetter create a world in which violence against women exerts a constant pressure — a grim attitude, but not one that invites a lot of argument. In a bitter coincidence, one of Major’s songs, “Keys in My Hand,” somehow reframed a joke I made to a friend a couple of weeks ago: that I never feel more feminine than when I’m walking home at night, keys laced through my fingers. Which is to say that “Marie It’s Time” — small and finely wrought — is a jewel box of a play. And that you may not want to reach your hand inside.Marie It’s TimeThrough Oct. 1 at HERE, Manhattan; here.org. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

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      Es Devlin’s Next Stage

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      The British designer, whose new installation will be unveiled at Tate Modern this week, made her name in theater. These days, you’re as likely to find her work in art galleries, stadium gigs and fashion shows.LONDON — Es Devlin was sitting in her garden communing with nature. Or rather, she was waving her phone, trying to get a bird song identification app to pick up chirrups from the surrounding trees. “Definitely two birds talking to each other, isn’t it?” she said. “I always want to know what they are. I’ve got a bit obsessed.”Obsessed is one way of putting it. For the past few years, Devlin, one of the world’s most in-demand stage designers, has been moonlighting as a conservationist. Most recently, she has been getting to know the birds, bats, moths and fungi that are most at risk in London from threats including the climate crisis and habitat loss.Those creatures will be celebrated in “Come Home Again,” a “choral sculpture” created by Devlin and her studio that will be unveiled on Wednesday. Installed outside Tate Modern until Oct. 1, it will be filled with the sounds of birds, bats and insects and decorated with Devlin’s black-and-white drawings of 243 species on an endangered list prepared by the London authorities. Devlin had been sketching for almost four months, she said, sometimes for 18 hours a day.Her work ethic is relentless. She reckoned that, since beginning as a theater designer in the mid-1990s, she had worked on “about 380” projects — but also that she’d done “a few since I last counted.” And while plenty of visual artists have made cameo appearances as stage designers (Chagall, Dalí, Picasso, Indiana, Hockney), Devlin is rare in having traveled in the opposite direction. These days, you’re as likely to encounter her work in art galleries, stadium gigs, fashion shows or architecture expos as in theaters or opera houses.The animals in “Come Home Again” are all featured on an endangered list prepared by the London authorities.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesThe list features birds, bats and insects.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesDevlin said she had been sketching for almost four months, sometimes for 18 hours a day.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesEarly on, she developed a reputation for crafting stage visuals that became the talking point of a show. In 1996, for her first professional job at a regional English theater — Christopher Marlowe’s murderous “Edward II” — she studied plumbing to create a bathhouse-style set whose showers ran with blood. Two years later, at the National Theater, a ghostly set for Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” impressed the famously cantankerous playwright. According to newspaper reports, he asked during an opening night meet-and-greet, “Have you met Es Devlin? She wrote the play.”One reason Devlin drew so much attention was that she rejected the English theater orthodoxy that designs should be attractive décor that would blend into the background. “I wasn’t ever afraid for the objects I made to be the protagonists,” she said. “Not everyone thought like that.”When one of Kanye West’s assistants called, in 2005, and asked Devlin to help save his ailing “Touch the Sky” arena tour, she was on a plane to New York 24 hours later, with books about James Turrell and Wagner to inspire the rapper, with whom she collaborated on new designs. Her most recent large-scale triumph, a set for the Super Bowl halftime show, last February, involved a larger-than-life-size model of part of Dr. Dre’s hometown, Compton, Calif.“Whatever she’s working in, Es does it with absolute commitment,” said Alex Poots, the artistic director of The Shed, in a phone interview. He first spotted Devlin’s work at a fringe London theater in the early 2000s and convinced her to design a gig for the British art punk band Wire, her first foray into music. “There are so many different sides to what she can do. That was obvious even then.”Devlin’s set for Kanye West and Jay-Z’s 2011 “Watch the Throne” tour. via Es Devlin StudioThe work at Tate Modern is a case in point. Like many of Devlin’s projects, “Come Home Again” has many layers and teems with references: From outside, it resembles the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which it faces across the River Thames. Inside, the audience will be invited to sit down and enjoy performances by London-based choirs. When they aren’t performing, the space will be filled with recorded bird song and animal noises.Devlin explained that visitors would also be able to scan QR codes inside the installation that will bring up information about the endangered species. “If we give something a name, we give it a place in our imagination,” she said. “The piece is all about imagination.”When it was suggested that this sounded complicated, Devlin grinned. “I really like complexity,” she said.Devlin’s set for “The Lehman Trilogy,” which premiered at the National Theater in London, in 2018, before transferring to the West End and Broadway. via Es Devlin StudioThough more and more of her work is taken up by self-initiated projects, rather than commissions, Devlin said she still sees herself as a collaborative artist; well-funded gigs in fashion and music help her maintain a small studio of architects and designers. “I will often have an idea, but I really lean on my studio to help me evolve it,” she said, adding that concurrent projects often fed into each other, even if they’re wildly different.A “rain box” — a glass enclosure onto which images of rain were projected — cropped up in both a London production of Brian Friel’s play “Faith Healer,” in 2016, and a stadium tour by Adele that same year. Boxes, indeed, have become something of a Devlin signature: A spinning cube stood in for a Manhattan gallery and a Beijing police interrogation room in her design for Lucy Kirkwood’s 2013 play “Chimerica,” and the action of Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy,” which came to Broadway earlier this year, took place inside an airless, rotating glass tank.The curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, who has collaborated with Devlin several times, said that her determination to work in several fields had opened a path for younger artists. “You see that happening more and more,” he said. “People are working in poetry, but also visual art. They’re making music as well as tech. The thing that’s impressive about Es is that she’s been doing it a long time, and that her work is taken seriously in all these different places.”Devlin had broken ground, Poots agreed. “I’m not sure she’d have been able to have this kind of career 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s like the world is finally ready for her.”Devlin said that she had worked on “about 380 projects” since she started out as a theater designer in the mid-1990s.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesThe fall is turning into something of a Devlin retrospective in London. Last week, revivals of two operas she designed for the Royal Opera House, “Salome” and “Don Giovanni,” returned to the company’s stage. On Wednesday, a new production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” directed by another longtime collaborator, Lyndsey Turner, opens at the National Theater.Alongside the drama and opera work that still occupies much of her time, she is planning an art show in New York with Pace gallery, exhibiting her drawings. Oh, and there is a book for Thames and Hudson in the works — highlights from her vast back catalog. It was meant to come out a few years ago, but she hasn’t had time. “I should really finish it,” she said, grimacing.How does she describe herself these days? Designer? Artist? Something else? She laughed, and said she drew inspiration from Christopher Wren, the polymathic astronomer-turned-architect who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral: “Multi-hyphenate is fine.” More

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      How a 79-year-old Film Director Learned to “Fly” on a Trapeze

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      It’s Never Too Late is a series about people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.There are people who dream of directing a play or a movie. The director Tom Moore has done both. But he has always dreamed of “flying.”“It was a childhood fantasy,” said Mr. Moore, 79, a film, TV and theater director whose credits include the original Broadway production of “Grease” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “’Night, Mother.”“I liked the circus, but loved the ultimate act, which was the trapeze,” he said. “I would wait for that.”But Mr. Moore never thought he had the athletic ability to swing, stretch out, then fly from a long horizontal bar, often 30 feet in the air. He wasn’t good at baseball, and, at 5 feet 7 inches and 150 pounds, he was too small for football at West Lafayette High School, in Indiana. “I just assumed I was not good at sports,” he said.Mr. Moore mapped out his tricks, moves that elicit surprise and applause, during a recent afternoon practice at the Santa Barbara Trapeze Co.Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesSo instead of running off to join the Barnum & Bailey Circus, Mr. Moore, who grew up in Meridian, Miss., before moving to Indiana, went to the Yale School of Drama. He did rather well, with “Grease” on Broadway back in 1972, which ran for more than 3,300 performances; the show “Over Here!” with the newcomers John Travolta, Marilu Henner and Treat Williams; and the play “’Night, Mother,” which he also directed for the 1986 film starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft.His TV credits include episodes of the 1980s drama “Thirtysomething,” “ER,” “Felicity” and “Ally McBeal.” Along the way he was nominated for two Tonys and three Emmys. (More recently, he coedited the book “Grease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More,” for the Broadway show’s 50th anniversary this year.)Around the age of 50, after the demise of a relationship, he was looking for new adventures. (He is single now and cheekily describes his longtime partners as “a series of valued novellas rather than the one great American novel.”) In 1996, while on vacation at the now-defunct resort Club Med in Playa Blanca, Mexico, he was drawn to a trapeze rig on the beach, and signed up.Mr. Moore wrapped his hands in tape to reduce blistering during trapeze practice.Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesMr. Moore prepared to “fly” during practice. Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesTrapeze was a perfect blend of theatricality and athleticism, and he loved it. He made a “catch” — that is, he managed to grasp the bar in midair — on his first try, and even took part in a show at the end of the week.This spoke to his nascent acting ambitions. “I was never a good actor,” he admitted. “Acting is all about revealing and opening oneself up, and I couldn’t do it.” But he was a performer.He “flew” a few more times at another Club Med in Huatulco, Mexico, over the next year, and decided he wanted to incorporate his holiday pastime into real life. By then he was living in the Hollywood Hills, still directing but feeling somewhat restless, and he asked around for names of trapeze teachers. One kept popping up: Richie Gaona, who came from a famous trapeze family, the Flying Gaonas. Mr. Moore wasn’t sure Mr. Gaona would work with an amateur, but Mr. Gaona agreed. And so, he began learning trapeze in earnest on a rig in Mr. Gaona’s backyard in the San Fernando Valley, about a 40-minute drive from Mr. Moore’s home.“I learned everything from Richie,” he said. “He was amazing. And then I was into it big time and would go three to four times a week.”Mr. Moore climbs to start a trapeze trick. Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesHe got so immersed in the art of trapeze that he ended up making a documentary about the Gaona family called “The Flight Fantastic.”“I think I did things a bit backward because I was so passionately involved in my work and building a career, I didn’t explore the athletic side of me until late,” said Mr. Moore, who considers himself an intermediate amateur. “Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, you’re a trapeze artist.’ I’m nothing of the kind. It’s a sport for me and fun, but I know the skill and talent required to practice the art of trapeze.” (The following interview has been condensed and edited.)What’s your favorite thing about the sport?You can’t think about anything else on the trapeze. If you think about anything else, you’ll fail. That’s a great escape in itself.Mr. Moore resting on the platform at the Santa Barbara Trapeze Co. Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesMr. Moore, left, in midflight with Mr. Weaver.Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesWhat’s the hardest thing about the trapeze?Swinging on the bar is the preparation for all tricks that one does on the trapeze. The stronger it is, the higher it is and the more precise it is, the better the trick. It takes a long time to learn to swing. Timing is everything. People think you need strength to do it. Men particularly try to muscle up, but that’s not really it. It’s all about timing and grace. Trapeze at its best is more of a dance in the air.Have you ever gotten hurt?I once had an accident. People think you have a net so you’re fine, but the net can be the most dangerous part. You have to land on your back. If you come in on your legs and feet or knees, you’ll bounce wildly out of the net. You can get severely hurt. The safety lines were holding me back from extra height, so I took them off for a trick, but I was so excited that as I was coming into the net, I was landing on my stomach. I was in the middle of flipping over to my back and I didn’t make it all the way. I bounced extraordinarily high into the air and I came down on the ridge rope, the edges of the net, face first. It sliced through my entire nose all the way to the cartilage underneath.A friend handed me a towel and said, “Put this over your face.” I thought she was trying to stop the bleeding, but everyone was so traumatized by my face. I had done some real damage. An amazing surgeon was able to do the work, a reconstruction of the nose. Mind you, I had done this without telling anyone I was going to do it, or I would never have been allowed. So, I deserved what I got.Mr. Moore in full flight practicing a trick at the Santa Barbara Trapeze Co.Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesHow often do you trapeze these days?Maybe once a month. Twenty-five years ago I was willing to sacrifice anything — even time in my career — to get to trapeze, but one matures, even in trapeze. I go when I feel like it rather than on a regular schedule. I’d like to be as good as I was at 60 when I was doing it all the time and when I had a big trapeze birthday party for 250. But I’m not, and that’s OK. But I don’t have any intention of giving it up because I still enjoy doing it.Do the physical demands of trapeze take a toll?Any time I’m away from it and go back, I hurt. As you get older, it’s the joints. They’re in more pain. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but I don’t want to ever stop because I know that once I stop I won’t go back. If you keep doing it, then your body gets used to it.I always practice my hardest trick first, because it requires everything I have to give. I’m telling my body, “This is what you have to do.” It’s like going into the water, whether you edge out inch by inch or plunge right in. It’s better for me to plunge in.Mr. Moore landing after a trick during trapeze practice.Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesMr. Moore’s dog, Finnegan, accompanies him to practice.Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesWhat has trapeze given you on an emotional level?My athletic pursuits have given me a great sense of self. Many people my age have long ago retired to observation. They’re no longer a participant. I don’t feel that way at all. Attitude, spirit for life, capacity for curiosity and joy are the most important things one can have.I just keep doing what I can do, and fortunately that seems to be quite a bit.I feel my whole life has been reinvention when needed, which I think is a fantastic way to keep staying young. There’s always something new if one stays open to it. More

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      Waving Goodbye to ‘Dear Evan Hansen’

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      Sam Primack almost made it.“All I see is sky …” he sang. Then the actor, who was playing Evan Hansen on Broadway, paused, looked out at the 1,025 faces in the sold-out Music Box Theater. He shifted. Choked up. Looked down.“… for forever,” he finished, wiping back a tear as he let out the final two words of the show. It was the closing night of “Dear Evan Hansen,” the musical about a socially awkward teenager who tells a terrible lie.The audience — including superfans in striped blue polos; a handful of first-timers with suitcases who’d arrived straight from the airport; the musical’s creators, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Steven Levenson; and its director, Michael Greif — broke into a thunderous round of applause. (Five Evans — Andrew Barth Feldman, Stephen Christopher Anthony, Jordan Fisher, Michael Lee Brown and Zachary Noah Piser — arrived onstage later for a final bow.) Since its Broadway debut on Nov. 14, 2016, and with Sunday’s performance, “Dear Evan Hansen” had been seen by more than 1.5 million theatergoers and played 1,699 total performances.“I feel very loved,” a smiling Primack, 21, said in his dressing room after the show. Looking dapper in a maroon suit, he was clutching one of the bouquets of white hydrangeas given to cast members onstage after the performance.“It’s been unexpectedly short, but also, I’m happy that this is the way that it’s ending,” said Primack, who took over the titular role earlier this month.Calla Kessler for The New York Times“Dear Evan Hansen,” which won the Tony Award for best new musical in 2017, had its world premiere at Arena Stage in Washington in 2015, followed by an Off Broadway run at Second Stage Theater before a Broadway transfer. It went on to win six Tonys, as well as a Grammy Award for its cast album, and the Olivier Award for best new musical for the London production.But, like other long-running shows that restarted after the pandemic, it faced a new challenge: Tourists and international audiences that had not yet fully returned. In June, its producers announced that the curtain would soon come down for the final time; the West End production in London will also close in October, but the North American tour will continue. (Most recently, “The Phantom of the Opera” announced on Friday that it would close next year after 35 years.)“I’d like to blame it on Covid, I really would,” Stacey Mindich, the musical’s lead producer, wrote in an essay for American Theater magazine earlier this week. “But perhaps our story was too emotional for these already difficult times. Perhaps the poorly reviewed film of the same name diminished our audience. Perhaps it was just our time.”It was a bit of a cruel twist for Primack, whose casting was announced in February — before the show had set a closing date — and who took over the role less than two weeks ago, on Sept. 6. Though he began his career, when he was 17, as an understudy in the Broadway production for all three of the male leads — Evan, Connor Murphy and Jared Kleinman — and then joined the national tour as the Evan alternate, he got to play Evan just 12 times on the Broadway stage this month before clearing the rack of polo shirts out of his dressing room.Five actors who had previously played the socially awkward teenager in “Dear Evan Hansen” appeared onstage with the cast for a final bow on the show’s closing night. Calla Kessler for The New York Times“It’s been unexpectedly short, but also, I’m happy that this is the way that it’s ending,” Primack said before the show, seated in his dressing room surrounded by a red Upstate & Chill sticker, the book “Creativity, Inc.,” by the Pixar Animation co-founder Ed Catmull, and a closet cracked open to reveal a rack of striped blue polos.In an interview before that performance, and then in a brief conversation afterward — he had an after-party to get to, after all! — Primack, who grew up in Scottsdale, Ariz., reflected on being the final actor to play Evan on Broadway, how his own experiences with bullies informed his performance and whether Evan is a good person. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.You clearly had a lot of supporters in the house tonight. Who all did you invite?My whole family — my grandparents, my whole team, some of whom had never seen me perform before. And my teachers from high school are here.Were you a fan of the show before you were cast?I remember staying up until midnight knowing that the cast recording was going to come out, not even knowing what the show was about. I had heard “Waving Through a Window” and I was intrigued. I begged my mom to come to New York to see it, and I saw it with the original cast and got to meet Ben [Platt] afterward. I remember saying to all my friends, “I would love to be in this show more than anything,” so closing it feels like coming full circle.What’s the most challenging part of the show?The last 30 minutes, Evan gets to a real desperate and ugly and scary place that every night is a challenge. He is at a point where he will really do anything.What’s the best advice a former Evan has given you?Just breathe. Because you’re out there by yourself a lot of the time in these really dark scenarios, your mind can wander into really dark places.The musical was one of several long-running shows that restarted after the pandemic. “Perhaps our story was too emotional for these already difficult times,” wrote Stacey Mindich, the musical’s lead producer.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesCan you personally relate to Evan?I was in high school when the show came out, so I know what it was like, and what it’s still like, to go through this age of social media where everyone feels disconnected and people are putting on a front online. And I also have family members — and myself — who go through anxiety.How did you put your own stamp on the role?In middle school, I used to wear these really big shirts and I would pull on them a lot to hide myself from the bullies at school. And I fidget with my hands a lot, both of which are things I tried to bring in.Would you be friends with Evan?I would hope so — I was a theater kid in high school, so I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.Is he a good person?I don’t think people are good or bad. I think all people are flawed, and so is Evan.Why do you think the show resonates with people?People see themselves in the characters, and not just Evan. This is the first time a piece of theater has really touched on suicide and mental health and the stigmas around them. After the show, I have gotten a copious amount of “Thank you for seeing me, thank you for understanding me” messages. Or “This show has made me open up conversations with my own family.” That’s what kept me going for the last three and a half years.What’s next for you?I don’t know! I have to, for the first time since I got this, go back to auditioning, go back to all the hardships of being a working actor. But I’m really excited for the future and am just really happy that this show has propelled me to be able to get in some doors.Asked what’s next, Primack said that he was “just really happy that this show has propelled me to be able to get in some doors.”Calla Kessler for The New York TimesIf we looked in on Evan on his 27th birthday, what would he be doing?I hope that he’s still writing; I hope that he’s at a place in life where he knows that he can keep going forward. I think he ends the show in a place where he starts to learn that, but I hope that, 10 years down the line, he does really understand that things can get better.Let’s do a quick round of confirm or deny.OK!Evan is a Hufflepuff.Confirm.You have a striped polo in your closet.I do own a polo, but I don’t know if it’s striped.You use a saw to get the cast off your arm at intermission.Yes, thank goodness the dressers are also good at their jobs because we haven’t had an injury yet.The best song in the show is “You Will Be Found.”Oh, no, I think the best song is “For Forever.” It’s the first time we get to see Evan let go and be happy.When you saw the trailer for the film, you thought Ben Platt was wearing a wig.No comment!Given a choice, you would see “Hamilton” over “Dear Evan Hansen.”You can’t do that! But, I mean, I’d love to see “Hamilton” again — I’ve seen this show a thousand times. [Laughs] More

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      ‘Remember This’ Review: Finding Strength Amid Moral Failure

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      David Strathairn is remarkable in a solo show about Jan Karski, who was profoundly changed by what he witnessed during World War II.There are catastrophes so terrible that the mind struggles to comprehend them. Here is Jan Karski’s description of his visit in 1942 to a Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, during which he saw dead bodies lining the streets and starving women nursing their babies from sunken breasts: “This is not a world,” he observed. “It is not humanity.” But this was humanity. And Karski, an agent of the Polish government in exile during World War II, was tasked with reporting it.Theater for a New Audience’s “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski,” originally produced by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University, is a dignified and affecting solo show. Starring a masterly David Strathairn, and adapted from Karski’s own words by Clark Young and Derek Goldman, it brings Karski’s recollections to anguished life. With limited instruments — lights, sound, a table, two chairs, a single suit —the play evokes not only the contours of Karski’s own eventful biography, but also the horrors and privations of the war, with a particular emphasis on the failure of Allied governments to acknowledge and intervene in the murder of Europe’s Jews.A Catholic diplomat recruited by the Polish underground, Karski reported on the changes the Nazis had wrought, entering first the ghetto, and then a transport camp. “I become a tape recorder. A camera,” Strathairn’s Karski says. Later, he elaborates: “I understand my mission. I am not supposed to have any feelings. I am a camera.”The forerunners to “Remember This” are not necessarily or essentially theatrical. (Though Victor Klemperer’s “I Will Bear Witness,” which played Classic Stage Company two decades ago, is a kind of antecedent.) The more significant influence seems to be documentary film. Karski was featured in two documentaries by Claude Lanzmann, “Shoah” (1985) and “The Karski Report” (2010), though Goldman, the laboratory’s artistic director and the director here, also drew on other documents, including Karski’s 1944 memoir and a 1994 biography. Here there is frequent underscoring — the sound design and original compositions are by Roc Lee — which gives the show a cinematic feel, emphasized by Zach Blane’s evocative lighting.Strathairn delivers an expert and unshowy performance as Jan Karski, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhatever its form, “Remember This” serves as a remarkable showcase for Strathairn, who moves fluidly among characters and time periods. He leaps onto a table at one point and off it at others. Throughout, he manages to communicate both Karski’s extraordinary moral strength and his passionate reactions to what he sees. Because Karski has feelings. He is, as Strathairn depicts him, much more than a camera or a stylus — he is a man profoundly changed by what he witnesses.Strathairn delivers an expert performance, but it is also an unshowy one, never calling attention to itself at the expense of the content. This restraint renders “Remember This” perhaps most affecting and effective in the tension between the coolness and expertise of its form and the hot horror of its subject. It is in the space between these poles that the particular evil of the Holocaust is conveyed and understood, that unimaginable suffering is imagined. Allied leaders — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anthony Eden — wouldn’t be convinced of the truth, despite Karski’s efforts. But we in the audience are, which grants us a squirmy moral superiority, even as the show asks us, gently, to examine what we are doing in our own lives to oppose hate.This is most likely the lesson the title refers to. And Strathairn’s Karski articulates it this way: “There is no such thing as good nations, bad nations. Each individual has infinite capacity to do good, and infinite capacity to do evil. We have a choice.”Karski, who became a celebrated professor at Georgetown and received, posthumously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died in 2000, which means that he lived long enough to see Holocaust minimization and outright denial come back into vogue. But this doesn’t seem to have worried him. “These voices are weak,” he says in the play. “They have no future. As I tell my students, we have a future because we are speaking the truth.”But truth seems to have become an increasingly fungible concept. Faced with our current culture of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda, I wonder what particular advice Karski might have for us now. How would he have recorded this?Remember This: The Lesson of Jan KarskiThrough Oct. 9 at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, Brooklyn; tfana.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      After ‘Phantom,’ Which Shows Will Be the Longest-Running on Broadway?

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      Hints: They both reached for the gun. I’m working on my roar! Everyone deserves the chance to fly. Have fun in hell!“The Phantom of the Opera” has been running on Broadway longer than many of the industry’s hoofers have been alive. But on Friday, the show announced that it will close Feb. 18, a few weeks after celebrating its 35th anniversary.The musical holds a distinction unlikely to be overtaken any time soon: It is the longest-running show in Broadway history, by a long stretch. By the time it closes, if all goes well, it will have played for 13,925 performances.Many of Broadway’s longest-running shows closed years ago, including the original productions of “Cats,” which ran for 7,500 performances; “Les Misérables,” which had 6,691 performances; and “A Chorus Line,” which had 6,137.“Phantom” has been enormously profitable and has reached a huge audience: As of Sept. 11, the Broadway production had been seen by 19.8 million people, and had grossed $1.3 billion. Globally, “Phantom” is even bigger, thanks to productions in London and on tour, and those will continue after the Broadway show closes.And what will be the most-enduring-and-still-running shows on Broadway once “Phantom” closes? “Chicago” celebrated its 25th anniversary last fall; “The Lion King” is preparing to celebrate that same milestone this fall. Here’s a look at the four remaining productions that have been playing for more than a decade:Once “Phantom” closes, “Chicago” will be the longest-running show still open on Broadway. The current production opened in 1996.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times‘Chicago,’ Opened 1996It turns out that the combination of sex and murder is a potent one. This show, with a plot about a group of women jailed for killing their husbands or lovers, is beloved for its jazz score, its Bob Fosse-inspired choreography, and its dark satire of the justice system.The musical, with songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Fosse, first opened on Broadway in 1975 and ran for just two years. But then in 1996, the Encores! program at New York City Center staged a bare-bones revival and it was so successful that it transferred to Broadway. That revival, with Walter Bobbie as director and Ann Reinking as choreographer, is now the second-longest running show in Broadway history, and once “Phantom” closes, it will be the longest-running show still open.The show has a huge sustainability advantage over all of the other long runners — its weekly running costs are much, much, much lower, thanks to the simplicity of the production (one set, no costume changes, minimal automation and 14 onstage musicians, which is about half the size of the “Phantom” orchestra) plus aggressive cost management. And the show benefited enormously — and somewhat unexpectedly — from the success of a 2002 film adaptation, which won the Academy Award for best picture.But still, the musical, which has been enormously dependent on tourists, and has relied heavily on news-making casting to goose grosses (Pamela Anderson cycled in to play Roxie Hart earlier this year), seemed soft before the pandemic and its grosses are volatile again now. Its continued longevity is unknown; it has proved doubters wrong many times in the past, but what happens next depends on whether international and business travelers return in greater numbers.A Final Curtain Call for ‘The Phantom of the Opera’The longest-running show in Broadway history will close on Feb. 18, 2023.A Damaging Lockdown: “The Phantom of the Opera,” a symbol of musical theater for many, is the latest Broadway show to fall victim to the drop-off in audiences since the pandemic hit.Producer Q&A: In an interview with The Times, the storied British producer Cameron Mackintosh explained the decision to end the show.After ‘Phantom’: What will be the most-enduring-and-still-running shows on Broadway once “Phantom” closes? Here are the four productions that have been playing for more than a decade.From the Archives: “It may be possible to have a terrible time at ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ but you’ll have to work at it,” our critic wrote after the show’s Broadway opening in 1988.As of Sept. 11, the Broadway production of “Chicago” had run for 10,114 performances; it had been seen by 9.8 million people and had grossed $711 million.“The Lion King” is still among the top-grossing shows on Broadway each week, even as it prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary this fall.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘The Lion King,’ Opened 1997This show really is the king of the jungle, and the pride of Disney, which claims that “The Lion King” has grossed more than any other title in entertainment history.The Broadway musical, adapted from the animated film, this fall will celebrate its 25th anniversary. And it is the strongest of the long-running shows, thanks in part to its innovative use of eye-popping puppetry and masks to tell a mythic story, but also because of the strength of the Disney brand, and the show’s enduring appeal for families.Directed by Julie Taymor, the show is about a lion cub who must overcome the circumstances of his father’s death in order to succeed him; it features pop-style songs by Elton John and Tim Rice as well as South African music by a team of writers including Lebo M.As of Sept. 11, the Broadway production of “The Lion King” had run for 9,740 performances; it had been seen by 16.4 million people and had grossed $1.8 billion.Kristin Chenoweth, left, and Idina Menzel starred in “Wicked” when it opened in 2003. Last year they reunited to perform at the Tony Awards. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Wicked,’ Opened 2003Rejoicify indeed! This musical, which imagines a sympathetic back story for the villainous Wicked Witch of “The Wizard of Oz,” overcame skeptical critics to become an enormous hit that is playing in Broadway’s biggest theater (the Gershwin), and shows no signs of slowing down.Adapted from a novel by Gregory Maguire, the show has appealed to audiences who love the clever riff on a beloved story, and it has also cultivated a devoted fan base that includes many repeat attendees thanks to its focus on female friendship.The musical, which opened in 2003, features songs by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman; it is directed by Joe Mantello. A long-delayed film adaptation starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, directed by John M. Chu, is now in the works; it is scheduled to be released in two parts, starting in late 2024.As of Sept. 11, the Broadway production of “Wicked” had run for 7,268 performances; it had been seen by 12.9 million people and had grossed $1.5 billion.“The Book of Mormon” has been running on Broadway since 2011.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘The Book of Mormon,’ Opened 2011It’s hard for comedies to stand the test of time, but “The Book of Mormon” is still going strong, more than a decade after it opened to raised eyebrows and rave reviews.The musical, developed in part by the team behind “South Park,” is a biting satire, not only about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but also about religion more generally, and its “can-they-really-say-that” humor, combined with its masterly deployment of old-fashioned song and dance, has made it a main stem mainstay.The show, which opened in 2011, faced more challenges than its competitors during the pandemic, as one of the lead producers, Scott Rudin, stepped back over allegations of bullying behavior, and after some critics questioned whether the musical’s depiction of African villagers was offensive. But the show’s three writers, Robert Lopez, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, retooled elements of the script and staging, and its grosses have held up.As of Sept. 11, the Broadway production of “The Book of Mormon,” directed by Parker and Casey Nicholaw, had run for 4,131 performances; it had been seen by 4.5 million people and had grossed $704 million. More

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      Cameron Mackintosh on Closing of ‘Phantom of the Opera’

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      In an interview, the storied British producer said that weakening box office and rising production costs led to the decision to end the longest run in Broadway history.Cameron Mackintosh is one of the most successful producers in musical theater history. His list of credits includes several of the defining hits of the late 20th century: Big budget, lavishly staged spectacles including “Cats,” “Les Misérables” and “Miss Saigon.” But looming over all of them has been the longest-running Broadway show of all time: “The Phantom of the Opera.”On Friday, Mackintosh announced that “Phantom,” a surprisingly enduring gothic melodrama about a masked musician obsessed with a beautiful soprano, plans to end its Broadway run Feb. 18, four weeks after it celebrates its 35th anniversary.The show, directed by Hal Prince and with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, has been an enormous success. On Broadway, it has been seen by 19.8 million people and has grossed $1.3 billion; globally, it has played to 145 million people in 41 countries.But it has been buffeted by a decline in international tourism — “Phantom” was particularly tourist-dependent, given its status as a symbol of Broadway and the fact that the local audience has already had so many years to see it — and by inflation, which has contributed to rising production costs.A Final Curtain Call for ‘The Phantom of the Opera’The longest-running show in Broadway history will close on Feb. 18, 2023.A Damaging Lockdown: “The Phantom of the Opera,” a symbol of musical theater for many, is the latest Broadway show to fall victim to the drop-off in audiences since the pandemic hit.Producer Q&A: In an interview with The Times, the storied British producer Cameron Mackintosh explained the decision to end the show.After ‘Phantom’: What will be the most-enduring-and-still-running shows on Broadway once “Phantom” closes? Here are the four productions that have been playing for more than a decade.From the Archives: “It may be possible to have a terrible time at ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ but you’ll have to work at it,” our critic wrote after the show’s Broadway opening in 1988.The show will continue to run in London, and in productions elsewhere around the world, and it could return to Broadway at some point, but the closing of the current production is nonetheless the end of an era, and the news brought an outpouring of shock and sadness from fans of many ages. (It also prompted a rush of ticket sales — nearly $2 million worth in the first 24 hours.)In a telephone interview Saturday, Mackintosh, who is 75 years old and is based in London, explained the decision. “You don’t want to run a great show into the ground,” he said. “It’s always been one of my mantras throughout my long career: There’s an art to closing a show, as well as opening one.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Tell me how this decision came about.Once we got through the first few months (after the reopening), we were getting to a situation where we were having regular running losses. We watched it through the spring and summer, and it became obvious that a show of this expense — because you know “Phantom” is more expensive than virtually any other show around, particularly the long-running shows — we were going to continue losing. And, as a veteran of long-running shows, I’ve found there comes a point with the greatest show where the only thing you can do is to tell people it isn’t going to be there indefinitely, which people always assume, with a long-runner, it is.What are the weekly running costs?Just under about $950,000 net now, which is about $100,000 more than it was pre-Covid. Costs on both sides of the Atlantic have gone up, whereas the box office hasn’t. And generally, I would say, across my group of theaters, there’s much less international tourism. Box office is down 10 to 15 percent on average. The truth is that “Phantom” was having a number of losing weeks pre-Covid, but the good weeks were much, much higher. And there comes a point, with any show, where there is a tipping point, where the number of good weeks has declined sufficiently that actually it’s outweighed by the number of losing weeks, and at that point there’s only one sensible decision to make.How do you know whether what’s happening on Broadway is a temporary dip or is going to last?Don’t be silly — how could anybody in this day and age make that kind of prediction? One can only see so far ahead. But we’re all going into uncharted waters, all over the world, with interest rates going up, the problems being caused internationally with Russia and Ukraine, and the cost of living shooting up in ways that no one’s even had to think about for 30 or 40 years.Do you think that “Phantom” would have closed if there had been no pandemic?I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s just the pandemic — I think it would be wrong to say that. The world has changed. The pandemic was a catalyst, but now suddenly the West is realizing that the whole situation which everyone let drift with Russia, and to a point with China, has changed the whole order, and we’re in the middle of discovering where it’s going to go. And the theater isn’t immune from that.In October, Senator Chuck Schumer, left, joined Mackintosh, center, and Andrew Lloyd Webber to celebrate the post-shutdown return of “Phantom.”OK McCausland for The New York TimesHow did you decide to reopen after the shutdown?In America, we would not have come back from the pandemic with “Phantom” if we had not had the gigantic amount of money from the federal fund, plus extremely healthy insurance. Having that allowed us to make a plan and bring the show back in the best possible way that we could.Why is “Phantom” so expensive to run?Many of the long-runners — “Cats,” “Chicago,” “Chorus Line,” even “Hamilton,” which will be a long-runner — they’re all single-set shows with mostly limited costumes. We’ve got 27 musicians. It’s a different world that Andrew and I created the show in. Most of my great shows were created during the ’80s, and that world has disappeared. We are in different times.How are you feeling about this? It’s not just a business decision.I’m both sad and celebrating. It’s an extraordinary achievement, one of the greatest successes of all time. What is there not to celebrate about that? When I started, a year to two years was considered a good run.What is your theory about why ‘Phantom’ has run so long?It is simply an amazing, beautiful musical. It is a wonderful, mythic story. We were by no means sure, when we were rehearsing it, that the thing was going to work at all, but miraculously it came together and there’s something quite extraordinary about it.Will you do another show on Broadway?I hope so. I’m not dead yet. Whether it will be a new show is another matter. But I’ve had a show on in New York since 1981, when I did “Tomfoolery” at the Village Gate. For me it’s been extraordinary run. More