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      ‘The Daughter-in-Law’ Review: Sons and Wives

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      In this D.H. Lawrence play, a production by the Mint Theater, men are trouble, “pure and simple.”In the darkness before dawn, a sleepless woman and her daughter-in-law keep each other company.There is no love lost between these two — Mrs. Gascoyne, a miner’s widow who keeps her miner sons close in their small English town; and Minnie, a former governess who, just weeks earlier, had the gall to marry one of them. But late in D.H. Lawrence’s play “The Daughter-in-Law,” the women are gentle enough with each other to have a heart-to-heart.“A child is a troublesome pleasure to a woman,” Mrs. Gascoyne tells Minnie, “but a man’s a trouble, pure and simple.”If that’s unfair as a generalization, it certainly applies to Mrs. Gascoyne’s Luther, who has passed 30 without exhibiting the slightest twinge of ambition.An enduring mystery of the play is why Minnie, a go-getter with some money of her own, elected to marry him. As a spousal choice, he seems a distant second even to his aimless brother Joe, who still lives with their mother and, in the play’s opening minutes, sits down to a supper that she cuts up for him.In Martin Platt’s diverting revival for the Mint Theater Company, at New York City Center Stage II, the men are not what’s captivating about this play. Rather, it’s Lawrence’s women, drawn with a capacious, conflicted sympathy that recognizes how frustrating it is for a keen-minded person to try to carve satisfaction from a stifling domestic world.Portrayed with a fine ferocity by Sandra Shipley, Mrs. Gascoyne nurtures a bitterness about Luther’s “hoity-toity” new wife — a resentment that’s about class and clannishness, but also about loss of control, because what if her boy doesn’t need her anymore? When an acquaintance, Mrs. Purdy (Polly McKie), breaks the news that her daughter is four months pregnant with Luther’s child, Mrs. Gascoyne’s desiccated heart swells in anticipation of the humiliation this will bring to Minnie.The gentle-mannered Minnie, in a beautifully nuanced performance by Amy Blackman, has trouble enough already. Her new marriage has descended into bickering, and Luther (Tom Coiner) is a self-pitying grump. Still, when she says in the heat of anger that she would have preferred “a drunken husband that knocked me about” to a mama’s boy, it seems a stretch.Written in a thick, distinctive dialect of the East Midlands, where Lawrence grew up, the text leaves room for Luther to have some appealing qualities, but here he is all roughness and no complexity. There’s not even a sexual spark that would make sense of Minnie’s choice to be with him — which is a problem, because we are meant to have a stake in their relationship’s success.His brother Joe (Ciaran Bowling) is at least kind to her, mostly; when he isn’t, the change of tenor is more confusing than anything.As with many Mint productions, the play’s back story is part of the allure. Lawrence’s father was a miner; his mother, to whom he was exceptionally close, came from a slightly higher class. He wrote the script in the years after her death in 1910, around the time he wrote his novel “Sons and Lovers,” which has similar themes.Not staged in Lawrence’s lifetime (and previously directed by Platt for the Mint in 2003), “The Daughter-in-Law” feels at times like a purgation — a 20-something playwright rebelling at last against the beloved mother who demanded too much of him emotionally. When Minnie blames Mrs. Gascoyne for hobbling Luther, as if he had no agency, she can sound like she is channeling the playwright’s own wounded outrage. Rebellion, though, is not the same as revenge.“The world is made of men for me, lass,” Mrs. Gascoyne tells Minnie.But in the world of Lawrence’s play, the women are the stars.The Daughter-in-LawThrough March 20 at New York City Center Stage II, Manhattan; minttheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. More

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      Review: Conversation and Conflict, as Warhol Meets Basquiat

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      Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope give memorable performances as the odd couple artists in Anthony McCarten’s new play, “The Collaboration.”Jeremy Pope, left, and Paul Bettany will also star in the forthcoming film version of “The Collaboration.”Marc BrennerLONDON — Opposite art world titans attract in “The Collaboration,” a new play that opened Thursday at the Young Vic Theater here. Chronicling the creative partnership between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat during the 1980s, Anthony McCarten’s play offers bravura performances from Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope as the two cultural icons.And if the writing isn’t fully the equal of its star turns, well, a film version of this play is already planned. A movie should give McCarten the opportunity to sharpen a script that, as of now, only begins to deliver on its promise in the second act.This writer’s track record with biopics certainly bodes well for Bettany and Pope when they transfer to the screen: The movies McCarten wrote about Stephen Hawking (“The Theory of Everything”), Winston Churchill (“The Darkest Hour”) and Freddie Mercury (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) brought Oscar wins for each of their leading men. His 2019 film, “The Two Popes,” earned nominations for the co-stars Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins and is the closest of those movies in structure to “The Collaboration.”Like that film, with his new play McCarten imagines a duo’s conversations and conflicts. At the beginning, Bettany’s lean, languid Warhol isn’t sure about the commingling of talent that the Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger (an excitable Alec Newman) has in mind for him and Basquiat: a joint exhibition to decide which of the two is the world’s greatest artist. Bischofberger has an eye on publicity and regards painters, he says, as boxers.Bettany’s Warhol reveals an insecurity and disgust that take the part well beyond caricature.Marc Brenner“Gee,” Warhol objects to the gallerist, “you make it sound so macho, like a contest.” Pope’s initially indrawn, pouty Basquiat, 30 years Warhol’s junior, isn’t any more certain that he wants to be part of a double act: “He’s old hat. Does anyone really care about Warhol now?” One man traffics in brands and pop culture iconography (we see Warhol’s signature Marilyn Monroes on the walls of Anna Fleischle’s flexible, white-walled set), the other sees logos as the enemy. Art, Basquiat maintains, “has to have a purpose.”The material follows a dramatically predictable course from mutual wariness to admiration, leading eventually to love. In fact, that very word is voiced in the penultimate line. Dismissive of Warhol’s attraction to surfaces at the expense of substance, Basquiat comes to adore him as a protective rival turned father figure, of sorts.“I hope you don’t die, Jean,” Warhol cautions, insisting that the addiction-prone Basquiat clean up his act. The younger artist’s reply is to insist on his own immortality, unaware, of course, that both men would die not long after, within 18 months of each other. When they do actually collaborate — on a sequence of paintings — it’s given surprisingly little stage time; you miss the specific attention to the artistic process that fueled a play like John Logan’s Tony-winning “Red,” about Mark Rothko.The director Kwame Kwei-Armah gets up close and personal with Warhol and Basquiat as the duo move beyond some fairly labored exposition (like when Basquiat, on cue, details his Haitian-Puerto Rican parentage) to achieve real power. The two actors manage to find something primal beyond the boilerplate writing.As Basquait, Jeremy Pope is a springy, restless stage presence.Marc BrennerPope, an Emmy and two-time Tony Award nominee, fills with fury as we see Basquiat at work on “Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart),” a painting created in response to the police brutality that resulted in the death of a young graffiti artist in 1983. The canvas inevitably chimes with the Black Lives Matter movement Basquiat never got to see, and lends “The Collaboration” a wrenching topicality.A springy, restless stage presence, that sweet-faced actor communicates the heightened edginess of a man hurtling toward disaster. It’s a shame, therefore, that the belated arrival into the play of Basquiat’s girlfriend Maya (Sofia Barclay) seems perfunctory, as if McCarten weren’t sure quite how to broaden the story beyond the artist duo.Bettany, in turn, is a marvel in his first stage role in several decades. The Englishman, a longtime U.S. resident, has starred in Marvel movies and recently impressed as a forbidding Duke of Argyll in the BBC TV show “A Very British Scandal,” which will come to the United States in April.A figure of white-wigged insouciance still reeling from having been shot by Valerie Solanas some years before the play starts, this Warhol reveals an insecurity and disgust that take the part well beyond caricature. Survival, you sense, is no less precarious for him than it is for Basquiat. The two legends are hellbent on self-laceration, reminding us that, no matter how great our cultural legacy, we’re all mortal.The Collaboration.Through April 2 at the Young Vic in London; youngvic.org. More

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      Musical Comedy ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ to Open on Broadway Next Fall

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      The new musical, by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori, will star Victoria Clark as a teen girl who ages too quickly.“Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical comedy about a young girl with a medical condition that causes rapid aging, will transfer to Broadway next fall.The show, based on a play by David Lindsay-Abaire, had an initial Off Broadway run that opened late last year at the Atlantic Theater Company, where it ran through the peak of the Omicron surge of the coronavirus and was greeted with strong reviews. Jesse Green, in The New York Times, called it “funny and moving.”The musical stars Victoria Clark, a 62-year-old actress playing a 15-year-old girl who is managing not only her affliction — a condition that limits her life expectancy — but also life with a ludicrous family.“It’s a coming-of-age story, but an unusual one because the clock is ticking from the get-go,” Clark said in an interview. “She has a limited amount of time left, and what draws me to her is her joie, and watching how someone can triumph who you least expect to succeed.”Clark, who stars alongside a company of much younger actors, said playing an adolescent had deeply affected her.“There is a boldness and a rawness to adolescence, and at the same time a balance between holding back and going for it that is so beautiful,” said Clark, who won a Tony Award in 2005 for “The Light in the Piazza.” “This character has taught me the beauty of impulse, and the beauty of being present, and not just accepting one’s fate. After the show I just wanted to run and find everyone I loved and tell them how much they meant to me.”The show features music by Jeanine Tesori, the Tony-winning composer of “Fun Home,” and a book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his play “Rabbit Hole.” It is directed by Jessica Stone, a longtime actress making her Broadway directing debut, and choreographed by Danny Mefford (“Dear Evan Hansen”).The Broadway cast will feature the same actors as the Off Broadway production, including Steven Boyer (“Hand to God”) and Alli Mauzey (“Cry-Baby”) as the protagonist’s parents, Bonnie Milligan (“Head Over Heels”) as her aunt, and Justin Cooley making his debut as one of her classmates.“Kimberly Akimbo” is scheduled to begin previews on Oct. 12 and to open on Nov. 10 at an unspecified Shubert theater. The lead producer is David Stone, who is also the lead producer of “Wicked”; other producers include the actress LaChanze and the theater owner James L. Nederlander, as well as Patrick Catullo, Aaron Glick and the Atlantic Theater Company. More

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      Interview: Harpy on with Noga Flaishon

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      Founded in 2011, Everything Theatre started life as a pokey blog run by two theatre enthusiasts and – thanks to the Entry Pass Scheme for 16-25 year olds – regular National Theatre goers. Today, we are run by part-time volunteers from a wide array of backgrounds. Among our various contributors are people who work in […] More

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      On London Stages, Maverick Responses to Mortality

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      Creative adaptations of “Wuthering Heights” and Ionesco’s “The Chairs” grapple with death and feature inclusions of the coronavirus and performance artists.LONDON — The opportunity to see Kathryn Hunter in peak form is a rare treat, and one that is currently available by booking a seat for the Almeida Theater’s revival of “The Chairs.” This hugely gifted actress plays a character, billed as the Old Woman in Ionesco’s 1952 classic, with enough boundless wit and energy to make a mockery of age.Recently, Hunter has been acclaimed onscreen for playing all three witches in Joel Coen’s adaptation of “Macbeth,” starring Denzel Washington, for which she won a New York Film Critics Circle award. But this American-born mainstay of the London theater also gleams onstage with an unbridled delight in performance that is a pleasure to behold.The result lends a welcome immediacy to Ionesco’s potentially inaccessible exercise in absurdism, which hasn’t been staged here since 1997. That version, directed by Simon McBurney, Hunter’s longtime colleague at the Complicité theater company, transferred against expectation to Broadway, garnering six Tony nominations. This new iteration, adapted by its director, Omar Elerian, runs until March 5, leaving time for Hunter to limber up for her next stage assignment: playing Lear at Shakespeare’s Globe this summer.The Old Woman, in fact, is in her 90s, so older than Lear but blessed in Hunter’s interpretation with a wide-eyed sense of wonder. Having been coupled for 75 years with the Old Man (played by Hunter’s own husband, Marcello Magni, another Complicité veteran), she joins her elegantly dressed spouse in awaiting the arrival of any number of guests to attend some sort of conference that may save the world. Or, more likely, not.Among them is a Speaker (Toby Sedgwick), who is this play’s equivalent of Beckett’s elusive Godot. The difference is that the Speaker actually does show up, allowing the duo to bow out of lives that haven’t been easy: “We shall decompose in marine solitude,” announces the Old Man. “Let’s not complain too much though.”Premiered in French by the Romanian-born Ionesco, “The Chairs” preceded “Waiting for Godot” by one year and represents a landmark text more often than not confined to the classroom. Committed to dusting away the cobwebs, Elerian’s English-language version insists upon the contemporary whenever possible. Before he is even seen, the Old Man is heard fretting about the performance: “Tell [the audience] I have Covid,” he says to his wife in an offstage argument about whether or not to do the show. Afterward, we learn that the Old Woman has had 21 booster shots.Once they emerge before us, the pair call to mind two aging vaudevillians having one last hurrah. She totters about in a red wig and dark petticoat, curtsying with endearing politesse and suggesting in her singularly throaty voice that “we cut the next bit; it’s terribly long.” (The production runs nearly two hours, no intermission.) He proffers a handkerchief to a nearby audience member and readies himself for the chairs of the title, several of which Magni manages to catch in midair: no mean feat for someone of any age. Ionesco’s original text calls for 40 chairs minimum, but I lost count of the quantity at the Almeida.Those chairs, of course, sit empty as comic business gives way to the stuff of tragedy. We hear of the children the couple wanted but never had and the “pain, regrets, remorse” that have been their shared fate instead, the Old Man chastising himself for allowing his mother to die, untended, in a ditch. Abandonment, he says, is an inescapable fact of life.The emotional pull of the material remains sufficiently strong that I wish Elerian’s adaptation wasn’t quite so fussy. The opening shenanigans are awfully forced, as are the closing remarks from the Speaker, who usually utters scarcely a word in this play. A discourse on “alternate truths,” this orator’s rambling observations are attuned to the concerns of the world today but nonetheless feel like padding. Its farcical elements notwithstanding, the play is sufficiently powerful as is, Ionesco’s overriding bleakness as topical now as ever, which speaks volumes to how little has changed in 70 years.From left, Sam Archer, Ash Hunter and Lucy McCormick in “Wuthering Heights,” adapted and directed by Emma Rice at the National Theater.Steve TannerEven more so than Elerian, Emma Rice is a prominent director-adapter who doesn’t take familiar texts at face value. A former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Rice made her name running the touring company Kneehigh, which deconstructed such time-honored titles as “Brief Encounter” and “Tristan & Yseult.” Since then, Rice has started a theatrical entity called Wise Children, whose irreverent take on the Emily Brontë novel “Wuthering Heights” can be found on the Lyttelton stage of the National Theater through March 19.The eclectic impulses behind this production are evident from its cast, which brings together dancers, performance artists and a “Hamilton” alum to tell the corpse-strewn story of the foundling, Heathcliff (Ash Hunter, the veteran of the aforementioned musical), and the ill-starred Catherine (Lucy McCormick, a maverick talent who moves between self-devised work and plays such as this one). Juggling several roles is the charismatic Sam Archer, an actor-dancer whose nimble movement very explicitly keeps Rice’s take on this 1847 novel from seeming earthbound: It’s always helpful to have a performer on hand capable of soaring at any moment.Rice’s freewheeling approach to the material won’t suit the purists. It’s surprising to find the Yorkshire moors — a setting crucial to the novel — brought to three-dimensional life by an assemblage led by the arresting Nandi Bhebhe, who seems to be wearing a crown of sticks and twigs and has a retinue of similarly attired human plants. Elsewhere, the convolutions of the plot are confronted head-on. “How is anybody expected to follow this?” asks the resident narrator, Lockwood (one of Archer’s several roles), only for Bhebhe to chip in with an awareness that “no one said this is going to be easy.”Rice’s goal is to ease a path through a labyrinthine novel by bringing her total-theater aesthetic to a music-heavy production that announces the characters’ fates on a chalkboard, a choice that taps directly into the association many will have with this novel from their student days. A trim or two wouldn’t go amiss, and there are times when the reinvention seems reckless, not revelatory.But I won’t soon forget a fierce-eyed McCormick haunting the action from beyond the grave like an ongoing premonition of doom, and Katy Owen’s chirpy Isabella Linton all but steals the show: a figure of audience-friendly fun amid the landscape of mortality that, as with “The Chairs,” we come to realize is our shared lot.The Chairs. Directed by Omar Elerian. Almeida Theater, through March 5.Wuthering Heights. Directed by Emma Rice. National Theater, through March 19. More

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      New Haven's Long Wharf Theater to Become Itinerant

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      Long Wharf Theater, a regional nonprofit on New Haven’s waterfront, is ending a long, bumpy chapter there, hoping to expand access and reduce costs.New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater will move out of its longtime headquarters and embrace itinerancy as the company seeks a fresh start after a period of extraordinary upheaval.The leadership of the nonprofit theater is framing the move as an opportunity to reach new audiences and reimagine its operations, and the city is supporting the change, which it says will help the organization better serve the community.The move is the latest chapter in a time of extensive change at the theater, which in 2018 fired its executive director, Gordon Edelstein, a day after The New York Times reported sexual misconduct allegations against him. As the company remade itself, it faced a real estate quandary: whether to renew its expiring lease at the New Haven Food Terminal, just off Interstate 95, where it has been performing for 57 years.The theater, which has been among the nation’s leading regional nonprofits, also faces the same challenges as its peers: demonstrating to patrons, artists and donors that it can move forward following the lengthy pandemic shutdown, and that it is committed to shifting priorities in response to industrywide calls for more diversity, equity and inclusion.“Long Wharf Theater has an incredible legacy, and it’s had some complicated challenges,” said Jacob G. Padrón, the theater’s artistic director. “The next several years will be about discovery.”The theater’s leaders said they could have chosen to renew its lease when it expires in June, but that they opted not to, both because the theater was spending too much money on rent and upkeep, and because its location, once treasured for free parking and easy highway access that appealed to suburbanites, was inconvenient for some New Haven residents and difficult to access via public transit.The theater, which had thought of the industrial waterfront location as temporary when it opened there in 1965, has contemplated relocating before. In 2004, it announced plans to move to downtown New Haven, but in 2011, citing a worsening economy, it abandoned those plans, opting to renovate the Food Terminal location instead.Padrón said he views the decision to relocate to a variety of yet-to-be-determined spaces around New Haven as a way of rethinking “how a regional theater makes its art,” and a way to “expand our imagination of how a theater can show up for its community.”“It’s exciting to think about what’s the project, and what’s then the right container for that project,” he said.Jacob G. Padrón, the theater’s artistic director, said that “the next several years will be about discovery.”Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe theater’s leadership, including not only Padrón but also the managing director, Kit Ingui, and the board chairwoman, Nancy Alexander, all said that they believe the institution is financially stable, and that it would benefit from the flexibility of its next phase. They said that the new arrangement should not only reduce its costs but also expand its reach to audiences who, because of geography, transportation or economics, have not found their way to the waterfront district from which the theater takes its name.“There’s no sense that we’re hanging on by a thread or that we have to live on a shoestring,” Alexander said. “We have been blessed with some longtime givers who have created a strong endowment for us, and we are projecting budgets that will work.”Long Wharf plans to stage at least two more shows at its current location — a new play called “Dream Hou$e,” by Eliana Pipes, which the theater describes as being about “the cultural cost of progress in America,” and “Queen,” by Madhuri Shekar, about “brilliant women confronting inconvenient truths.” The theater is still talking with its landlord about whether it might continue producing in the building later this year, but by the fall of 2023 the leadership expects to present full productions at other locations in and around New Haven — possibly in rented theaters, and possibly in spaces not traditionally used for theater.“We believe you can produce theater anywhere,” Ingui said.Long Wharf, which in 1978 won the Tony Award for regional theater, survived the pandemic with significant support from the federal and state governments. Its staff is less than half the size it was — about 30, down from 65 before the pandemic; the annual budget, which had been about $6.5 million before the pandemic, is now a little over $5 million.The theater’s leaders said they have not yet decided whether they will remain itinerant long-term, or whether this will be a short-term phase. But they all said the crises faced by the theater were catalysts, not causes, for the move.“We’re going into this with excitement,” Alexander said. She said that the theater’s pandemic performances in city parks demonstrated that new locations could attract new audiences, and that by moving around New Haven, Long Wharf is seeking to become “a theater that is much more widely in our community, and, we hope, valued by our community.”“We really are being mindful that this is a period of exploration and experimentation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we ultimately decided to have something like an anchor space and then continue producing in some other creative spaces as well, in some kind of hybrid model,” she said.Adriane Jefferson, New Haven’s director of cultural affairs, said Long Wharf was one of the most important nonprofits in the city, and that its move would strengthen both the organization and the city. She said she believed the shift would help Long Wharf become more anti-racist, in keeping with the city’s new cultural equity plan, which called attention to “inequities that prevent people from participating in arts and culture in every corner of our city.”“Long Wharf’s idea of being more mobile, moving throughout the city and coming to communities who are not making it down to where Long Wharf is now, is very responsive to our plan,” Jefferson said. “I would have concerns if they weren’t thinking along these lines.” More

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      Amber Gray on Leaving 'Hadestown' for 'Macbeth'

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      The actress, who has played Persephone in “Hadestown” in three countries and four productions, is leaving to join a new “Macbeth” on Broadway.Amber Gray spent eight years as a Greek goddess.She joined “Hadestown” in 2014, back when the songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and the director Rachel Chavkin were still trying to figure out how to turn Mitchell’s Orpheus-and-Eurydice concept album into a stage show.Gray had read lots of mythology as a classics-obsessed kid, and felt an immediate connection to Persephone, the split-level queen who spends half of each year in the underworld as Hades’s wife and half on earth as a harbinger of spring.“I kind of knew, ‘Oh, this is my job,’ which is not a feeling I have often,” she said. “I felt possessive of it — that it belongs to me, and it was my baby to help raise.”Her Persephone, clad in green aboveground and black below, is an ageless merrymaker with a taste for drink, toughened by time but still soft of heart. She created the role Off Broadway in 2016, refined it through a Canadian production in 2017 and a London production in 2018, and then was nominated for a Tony Award after originating the role on Broadway, where the show opened in 2019 (winning the Tony for best musical). Along with the rest of the principals, she stuck with the show through an 18-month pandemic shutdown; “Hadestown” returned in September to the Walter Kerr Theater.Her performance won praise from Jesse Green, The New York Times’s theater critic, who wrote, “Ms. Gray, never better, makes something quite brilliant out of Persephone: a free spirit, a loose cannon, a first lady co-opted by wealth yet emotionally subversive.” He declared of her closing number, “you at last wish the show would slow down so you could live in the glowy moment forever.”But on Saturday night, Gray, 40, sang that song for the final time. She is leaving the show to join Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga in a production of “Macbeth” that begins performances in March at the Longacre Theater, directly across 48th Street from the Walter Kerr. She will play Macbeth’s friend Banquo; her “Hadestown” alternate, Lana Gordon, will assume the role of Persephone full time.For the last several months, Gray has been sharing the role of Persephone with another actress, so she could spend more time with her two children.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOn her single day off between finishing “Hadestown” and beginning rehearsals for “Macbeth,” she talked about her long run; an ovation-filled final night that included special attention from her co-star André De Shields; and her next chapter. These are edited excerpts from the interview.How are you doing?I don’t know how I’m doing. You have to help me process.At your final performance there were tears on your face at the start, at the end, in the middle. What was going through your head?I’m having great waves of grief, and I’m heartbroken, but I also feel very excited about a new chapter. It feels like commencement.What happened after the audience went home?My partner was there, and we went across the street to Hurley’s, where we go often, the cast and the band, and we just chatted for another hour. I sort of stood around and loved on everyone, and let them love on me. Lots of crying, and there was some sneaky footage of André kissing me, which we watched and laughed and laughed and laughed. It felt very celebratory.What’s it like to spend so long with a single character?It’s kind of like a deep, meditative trance state while I’m doing it. Every 50 shows or so, you go deeper, which is so rad. And in those last few weeks of performing, my peripheral vision opened up. I saw things I’d never seen before that have been happening for years.How has your approach to Persephone changed over time?A huge shift came after two full productions, when the alcohol was introduced. In London, Chavkin came up to me and was like, “I think you’re trashed for a while, and it’s like ‘Ab Fab’ — you’ve got to be like ‘Ab Fab’ trashed.” I was like, “Really, are you sure?” I didn’t get it. And then it became great fun.What does Persephone think of Hades?She loves him. You know, they’ve been married for hundreds of years. They’re like an old couple that knows how to fight well and make up well. That’s important in a long-running relationship.Gray, flanked by Patrick Page, left, and André De Shields, right, toasts the audience in the musical’s final song.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesHow did you stay in shape physically and vocally for this role?Physically, I don’t do anything but the show — that’s plenty of exercise. Vocally, I learned in school to stay away from certain foods, like dairy. I rolled my eyes, but I have really found if you stay away from stuff like that it’s so much easier to sing and scream and growl night after night. I see an ENT [an ear, nose and throat doctor] once a week, and get an IV of a bunch of shots to make sure you never get sick. And I haven’t had alcohol in a couple of years — that’s another way that my physical, spiritual, vocal self is just healthier.Did you have Covid?I got Covid in December with the rest of the cast — I got Omicron after being vaxxed and boosted. It was like a really bad cold for about 36 hours. That was it.How did playing for a masked audience affect your performance?I thought the masks were going to feel weird, but it doesn’t. You can still feel the audience. They did start serving alcohol, though, a couple of weeks ago, and that difference I very much noticed. I was like, “Oh, they love me these last couple of weeks,” and then I was like, “Oh, they’re serving alcohol again.”Why are you an actor?Well, I’m an Army brat that had to move every two or three years, and I was deeply shy. And actors are really nice — they accept the freaks and geeks, no questions asked. I also grew up skiing, but the jocks were not nice. So if I were to make friends in the new town every two or three years, I had to do the play. By the time college rolled around, it was the only thing I loved.During your time in “Hadestown,” you had two children, and when the show reopened you started sharing the role with an alternate. Tell me about that.Before the pandemic hit, I asked for an alternate to do the Sunday matinee and Tuesday night, so that I could have three days off, away from that building, one of those days being Sunday, when my children are not in school. I wasn’t seeing my kids, and that was deeply painful. I didn’t have kids to not raise them. All I wanted was a little family time, and they gave it to me.There were job-sharing experiments both at “Hadestown” and “Jagged Little Pill” that turned out to be short-lived, for different reasons.I’m a big believer in job-sharing. Several productions have done it in London, and that’s what gave me the idea. And in Korea they job share. It’s a wild puzzle to put together, but they’ve figured it out.What’s it like watching other actresses play Persephone?It’s wild. I always offer survival tips. And any Persephone I have watched I always steal one thing from, as a gesture of honor.“It’s time to try new things,” said Gray, sitting on the stage before her final performance at the Walter Kerr Theater. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThis is your first commercial hit. How does that feel?I’m not always aware of what a hit it is, because I don’t use social media and I don’t go through the stage door. But you know, I was totally that kid in high school — I would go to the library and get a CD of “Jesus Christ Superstar” or “The Who’s Tommy” and listen over and over again. So I know what it is to be a teenager who really latches on to a story and an album. Lots of people wrote me over the pandemic about how much “Hadestown” helped them, and it’s beautiful to know that the art is functioning in that way.Why did you decide to leave?I was too comfortable. It’s just time to grow. It’s time to try new things. I come from a short-run world. It’s what I love about theater: it’s ephemeral, it goes away, it evaporates, right? I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I don’t keep any fan mail or fan art or show paraphernalia. I very neurotically photograph it all. I write back to anybody. But then anything that’s paper I burn in the backyard. And then it’s on to the next one.Why “Macbeth?”Because it was the job I got. I was banging out all these auditions, and that one came through. I auditioned for Lady Macduff and Witch One, and then the next day they were like, “Actually, do you want to play Banquo?”Banquo was written as a man. Any thoughts on what you’re going to do?I am a woman and I will play it as a woman. I’m also excited to play a parent onstage, to a sweet 10-year-old that I haven’t met yet. It’s my first time playing a parent in a play after being a parent, and I really look forward to that.A lot of actors have superstitions about “Macbeth.” Do you?It’s been a joke in the cast for a while. Patrick [Page, who plays Hades] has a copy of the folio in his pocket onstage, and every now and then he’ll throw it down on top of our dominoes game to try to scare me.So much of your career has been downtown. I wonder how you viewed Broadway before you worked there, and how your assessment of it has changed.I’ve been on Broadway only twice, but both times were pieces that I helped nurture from little Off Broadway gems. Then you get there, and the realities of producing a show on Broadway are very different, and, to be totally honest, I find the maintenance of the machine quite heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking to see things become moneymaking machines, and the money doesn’t necessarily always go to the artists. But I will say “Hadestown” is doing a ton of work to try to have these conversations about how things could and can change.You have one day off between “Hadestown” and “Macbeth.” Are you planning to rest?No, I’m going to go see Taylor Mac’s “The Hang” for some artistic healing, and then my partner and I are going to go do a shamanic ceremony with a medicine from a frog for spiritual and emotional and energetic cleansing. I’m like, “Bring it on! Let’s clean the slate!” More

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      ‘The Same’ Review: Do You See What I See?

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      Enda Walsh’s play, which had its U.S. premiere at the Irish Arts Center, stars two sisters who play different versions of the same character.Imagine that on one otherwise normal day, while going about your normal activities, you encounter someone who looks uncannily familiar — it’s you. Does the discovery cause you discomfort or give you relief? Are you met with assurance or fear?It’s the situation a woman named Lisa — well, two women named Lisa — face in “The Same,” by Enda Walsh, that opened on Sunday for its U.S. premiere, at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan.The Corcadorca Theater Company production stars Catherine Walsh and Eileen Walsh, who are sisters in real life (with no relation to Enda Walsh), as two expressions of Lisa. The younger Lisa recounts her recent arrival to a new city and what is presumably a mental health facility. She occasionally leaves her “small blue room,” as she calls it, for errands or groceries or, on one particular day, to take a job helping prepare for a repast after a funeral. There she meets the woman who shares her face and her memories: her future self.The two Lisas sit, stand and pace, reminiscing about their childhood. They speak in a steady back-and-forth, trading lines and swapping roles in what feels less like a conversation than a team recitation of a story they both know by heart. Their dialogue reflects a constantly changing perspective; sometimes they speak in the first person, sometimes the second, sometimes the third, as though each Lisa is, even individually, too fragmented to maintain a consistent point of view.The production, directed by Pat Kiernan, runs a trim 50 minutes, less than the time it takes to get from some corners of Brooklyn to the Irish Arts Center’s swanky new Midtown location on 11th Avenue.The set design, by Owen Boss, is immersive. It feels like a waiting room; the audience sits in upholstered chairs and love seats arranged in a loose square on a patch of carpet, giving a sense of the contours of a room. There’s a bookcase, a potted plant, and around and alongside the seats are signs of interrupted progress: tables cluttered with half-empty mugs of coffee and half-eaten cookies and an unfinished game of solitaire. The seating faces the center of the space, where the two actors spend most of the play. It’s novel to sit among the action, with one Lisa or another shuffling past your seat, though ultimately the effect doesn’t support its execution.Kiernan’s direction, however, imbues the production with an unsettling feeling: The actresses mirror each other in ways that aren’t always exact replications but rather variations on themes. And so there’s an interplay among their postures, movements and energies — younger Lisa gets worked up and older Lisa is calm, until she, too, gets worked up and younger Lisa becomes subdued. Michael Hurley’s lighting design and Peter Power’s sound design also seem triggered by the volatility of the Lisas’ minds. Kiernan has some of the set’s effects suddenly spring to life — two TV sets suspended in the corners of the room awaken to show clips from a game show or an episode of “Judge Judy,” a bingo machine whirs to life and then chaotically spews its contents on the floor.The success of the play’s Gemini effect is in large part because of the actresses’ talents. Eileen’s performance is jittery, her version of Lisa so full of neuroses that she seems like a shaken can of soda, fizzing just beneath the surface. Catherine gives off a similar, though more muted, anxiety; her Lisa embodies a different type of pressure, one of a dam carefully constructed over the years, pushing back against the waves crashing against its walls.Walsh’s script, however, doesn’t leave as lasting an impression. The play, which was originally commissioned by Corcadorca in celebration of the company’s 25th anniversary, has the usual signatures of the playwright, whose most recent New York production was the arresting “Medicine,” starring Domhnall Gleeson, at St. Ann’s Warehouse. There’s an intentional obliqueness, the traces of a narrative that are blurred and contorted by the characters. It all comes back to the slippery nature of the playwright’s language, which is full of repetition and half-formed ideas; sentences have some unspoken antecedent or trail off, spiraling inward to form an ouroboros of thoughts.But Walsh typically uses those linguistic maneuvers to add more shades to his text; rarely is he interested in a singular theme or mode of storytelling. Here, the short run time prevents him from getting too complicated, but the result is a script that, though still unconventional, is limited.How does a person grow from trauma? What happens when she resolves to leave part of herself behind, only to re-encounter that part unexpectedly? “The Same” circles these questions but never reaches a sharp point. It’s almost as though the play gets trapped simply gazing in the mirror.The SameThrough March 6 at the Irish Arts Center, Manhattan; irishartscenter.org. Running time: 50 minutes. More