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      Review: Even With Hugh Jackman, ‘The Music Man’ Goes Flat

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      Sutton Foster also stars in this neat, perky, overly cautious Broadway revival of a musical that needs to be more of a con.There comes a moment in the latest Broadway production of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” when high spirits, terrific dancing and big stars align in an extended marvel of showbiz salesmanship.Unfortunately, that moment is the curtain call.Until then, the musical, which opened on Thursday night at the Winter Garden Theater, only intermittently offers the joys we expect from a classic revival starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster — especially one so obviously patterned on the success of another classic revival, “Hello, Dolly!,” a few seasons back.The frenzy of love unleashed in that show by Bette Midler, supported by substantially the same creative team — including the director Jerry Zaks, the choreographer Warren Carlyle and the set and costume designer Santo Loquasto — has gone missing here, despite all the deluxe trimmings and 42 people onstage. Instead we get an extremely neat, generally perky, overly cautious take on a musical that, being about the con game of love and music, needs more danger in the telling.That’s something I’d have thought Jackman would deliver. His previous New York outings, especially in musicals like “The Boy From Oz” in 2003 and a “Back on Broadway” concert in 2011, were unbuttoned affairs, sometimes literally, threatening at any moment to spill over the lip of the stage. As such, Harold Hill, the traveling salesman who dupes Iowans into buying instruments for an imaginary band, would seem to be a perfect fit for him — or at any rate an impossible fit for anyone else.But Jackman mostly suppresses his sharky charisma here; this is not a star turn like Dolly Levi or, for that matter, Peter Allen in “The Boy From Oz.” Instead, he seems to see Hill as a character role: a cool manipulator and traveling horndog who in being unprincipled must also be unlovable.The result is a smart but strangely inward performance. By turning away from the audience, he not only undersells big numbers like “Ya Got Trouble” — in which Hill spellbinds the citizens of River City into believing that the recent arrival of a pool table will cause juvenile delinquency and that a boys’ band is the solution — but also undersells us.Sutton Foster with Kayla Teruel, seated, and Jackman in the show, which is directed by Jerry Zaks.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs the town librarian who sees through him immediately, Foster does not have that problem; her take on Marian is witty and front-facing throughout. She fully commits to the seriousness but also to the size of the comedy, letting it arise from the big internal conflicts of a woman with standards too high for her own happiness. You believe it when her mother (Marie Mullen, lovely) complains in semi-spoken song that “not a man alive could hope to measure up to that blend a’ Paul Bunyan, Saint Pat and Noah Webster you’ve concocted for yourself outa your Irish imagination, your Iowa stubbornness and your liberry fulla’ books.”But the casting of Foster introduces a problem even she cannot solve. With its outpouring of musical styles and counterpoint numbers, Willson’s score is brilliantly designed to push different worldviews into proximity and sometimes into harmony. Soaring above the more pedestrian sounds of the townspeople with their lowdown dances, thickly harmonized barbershop quartets and crisp civic anthems, Marian’s soprano literalizes the idealism at the heart of her character and conflict. Her lilting “Goodnight, My Someone” and Hill’s raucous “Seventy-Six Trombones” could not be more oppositional — until it turns out they are in fact the same melody, in different octaves and at different tempos.Jackman with Benjamin Pajak as Marian’s brother, Winthrop, and Marie Mullen as her mother, Mrs. Paroo.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThough Foster can sing the required notes, she is really a belter, with a mezzo quality to her voice regardless of the pitch. In her high-flung songs she works too hard to force the bloom when what’s needed is ease and exuberance. “My White Knight,” an aria that is usually a rangy highlight of the role, is performed here in a lower key and as fast as possible; it comes off less as a stratospheric dream than a street-level race, making Marian sound, and thus feel, pretty much like everyone else.Unfortunately, that flatness is endemic to the production. The central element of Loquasto’s set is a full-width barn wall whose doors occasionally slide open to reveal vignettes played out against drops painted in the style of Grant Wood (another Iowan). But even when the barn disappears completely, the staging feels two-dimensional — and so old-fashioned (except for the astonishingly good dancers performing Carlyle’s athletic choreography) that it might have come straight from 1957, when “The Music Man” premiered on Broadway. Or even 1912, when it’s set.I suppose you could argue that an old-fashioned show deserves an old-fashioned staging like the kind that worked for “Dolly” — and it’s certainly true that “The Music Man,” as written, includes some antique elements that give us pause today. This production rightly omits, for instance, the “Wa Tan We” girls of the “local wigwam of Heeawatha” and their “Indian war dance.” Even though such ludicrous appropriations are authentic to the setting, a musical comedy need not be a documentary.But omit too much and what’s left lacks texture. Running shorter than its advertised length, this revival cuts a lot, eliminating even minor details that might cause offense. The boy who is secretly dating the mayor’s daughter is no longer the son of “one a’them day laborers south a’town,” presumably because the suggestion of class prejudice is too hot for a comedy to handle in 2022.Same with the show’s treatment of men’s casual harassment of women. You can’t really remove it from the main story; Hill’s modus operandi involves seducing piano teachers and leaving them flat. (At one point he refers to Marian as his “commission.”) In light of that, it seems foolish merely to change a lyric here or there; in the dopey dance tune “Shipoopi,” the couplet “the girl who’s hard to get … but you can win her yet” has become suddenly enlightened as “the boy who’s seen the light … to treat a woman right.”What world are we in?Jefferson Mays, center, as the River City mayor, with, from left: Eddie Korbich, Daniel Torres, Nicholas Ward and Phillip Boykin.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“The Music Man” can work today. I’ve seen it be thrilling as recently as 2018, in a Stratford Festival production that didn’t shy away from the chance it offers to explore class differences and, with a Black Harold Hill, even racial ones. In this production, too — a colorblind one — some performers manage the trick of making their characters, as Willson requested, valentines to small town folk, not caricatures. Jefferson Mays as the blustery mayor and Jayne Houdyshell as his imperious wife get all the humor out of their roles without diluting the way their ideal of civic culture is just another kind of con.As, no doubt, is ours; one of the points Willson makes in “Rock Island,” the spoken-word number that opens the show, is that old products remain sellable even when old packages become “obsolete.” It’s just that if you’re a traveling salesman, you “gotta know the territory.”No doubt that’s as true for musicals as it was for Uneeda Biscuits. If we’re going to keep selling classic shows, we have to find meaningful new ways to package them. Even for the best salesmen among us, and Jackman is surely that, the territory is changing fast.The Music ManAt the Winter Garden Theater, Manhattan; musicmanonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. More

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      Harper Lee Estate Told to Pay $2.5 Million in Dispute Over ‘Mockingbird’ Plays

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      The estate is contesting an arbitrator’s ruling that it had been too aggressive in limiting productions of a 1970 adaptation of the novel as Aaron Sorkin’s new staged version came to Broadway.An arbitrator has ordered the estate of the writer Harper Lee to pay more than $2.5 million in damages and fees to Dramatic Publishing, a theatrical publishing company that has licensed a stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for decades.The ruling found that under pressure from Scott Rudin, then lead producer of a different adaptation of the book, which was intended for Broadway, the estate interfered with Dramatic’s contracts, and tried to prevent some productions of the work.The ruling, made in January, comes nearly three years after Dramatic invoked an arbitration clause in its contract to prevent limits on productions of its adaptation. Dramatic’s adaptation, by the playwright Christopher Sergel, has long been a staple at schools and community theaters around the country. It’s the version of that has been staged every year in Lee’s hometown, Monroeville, Ala. And for decades, Dramatic was the only publisher Lee had authorized to license a theatrical adaptation of her beloved 1960 novel about a crusading lawyer named Atticus Finch who represents a Black man who is unjustly accused of rape in a small town in Alabama.Then, in 2018, Rudin brought the new Aaron Sorkin adaptation to Broadway, where it became a box office hit.Christopher Sergel III, president of Dramatic Publishing Company and the grandson of the author of the first adaptation, claimed that the Lee estate acted in concert with Rudin to prevent some local productions of the play from going forward. In cease-and-desist letters to local theaters, Rudin’s lawyers claimed that those productions were no longer permissible because of the Sorkin adaptation. As a result, at least eight theaters canceled productions of Dramatic’s version of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”The Broadway production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” opened in 2018 with Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch and Celia Keenan-Bolger as Scout.  Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“This has been a long and difficult struggle for Dramatic Publishing, exacerbated by the ravages of Covid on the theater industry and educational system,” Sergel said in a statement posted on the company’s website. “Unfortunately, the Lee Estate left us no choice but to fight.”Sergel said his company has been “fully vindicated” by the ruling, which was earlier reported by Broadway World.The arbitrator ruled that the estate had “tortiously interfered with contracts between Dramatic and several of its licensees” and that “most, but not all, violations resulted from the estate’s interactions with Rudin.” It also stated that Dramatic retains “worldwide exclusive rights to all non-first-class theater or stage rights for its version of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”“For Dramatic Publishing to have been dragged through the mud for licensing the play in the very market it had licensed it in for years was really very troubling,” said Kevin Tottis, a lawyer representing Dramatic.The Lee Estate has filed a motion to overturn the arbitration award in federal court in Chicago, according to Matthew H. Lembke, a lawyer representing the estate. Some portion of the arbitrator’s ruling covered damages, but the bulk, more than $2 million, is to reimburse for Dramatic’s legal fees and other costs to pursue the arbitration.Lee, who died in 2016, sometimes expressed ambivalence about the Sergel adaptation, which was published in 1970. In a 1987 letter, Lee said Sergel’s adaptation “admirably fulfills the purpose for which it was written, for amateur, high school and little theater groups, and stock productions.” But she declined Dramatic’s request to stage a Broadway adaptation of Sergel’s play, and held onto those rights until 2015, when she entered a contract for a Broadway production with Rudin.The friction between Harper Lee’s representatives and Dramatic Publishing began to escalate in 2015, after Lee authorized Rudin’s Broadway production. Rudin asked a lawyer for the Lee estate to enforce an agreement with Dramatic publishing that Rudin argued limited them to amateur productions. The estate’s lawyer initially replied that Dramatic held “everything but first-class production rights,” meaning that they could stage their version in regional, noncommercial theaters as well as in schools and amateur theaters. He later reversed his position and maintained that Dramatic had no right to license productions with any professional actors, a shift that the arbitrator traced to the pressure the estate faced from Rudin. A lawyer for the estate also told Dramatic that several productions, which the estate had previously approved, violated the 1969 contract and could not be staged.The Kavinoky Theatre at D’Youville College in Buffalo was one of those that scrapped a production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in 2019 after receiving a cease and desist letter from the Broadway production. Libby March for The New York TimesThe fight burst into public view not long after the Broadway opening of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which starred Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch. The estate sent several letters to the publisher disputing its granting of rights to a number of theaters and noted that the 1969 contract with Harper Lee stated that while a “first-class dramatic play” based on the novel is playing in New York or on tour, Dramatic’s version cannot be staged within 25 miles of cities with a population of 150,000 or more in 1960. It also argued that Dramatic did not have the rights to license any productions with professional actors, a claim that the arbitrator dismissed.Lawyers for Rudin sent cease and desist letters to small theaters around the country — including the Kavinoky Theater in Buffalo, the Oklahoma Children’s Theater and the Mugford Street Players in Marblehead, Mass. — threatening them with legal action unless they halted their productions. Many canceled their shows, and Rudin faced criticism for interfering with local theaters.In a surprising about face, Rudin later apologized to the theaters, and said that theater companies that had canceled the play could instead stage Aaron Sorkin’s version of the script.Before the estate and Rudin challenged the local theaters together, they had gone through a dispute of their own over the play. The estate sued him, asserting Sorkin’s adaptation deviated too much from the novel, in violation of their contract; Rudin countersued and offered to stage his play in front of the judge to prove his case.The dispute was settled, and the show went on to become a commercial and critical hit. Rudin stepped back from active producing last May after he was accused of bullying and workplace misconduct; Orin Wolf became executive producer and Barry Diller lead producer to oversee the production.In January, its producers announced that they would shut down the show and reopen in a smaller theater. A North American tour and a London production are both scheduled to begin in March. More

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      The Creators of ‘On Sugarland’ Build a Site of Mourning and Repair

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      Ritual and healing are at the center of Whitney White and Aleshea Harris’s new play about a Black community that loses its members to a perpetual war.In the mobile home-lined cul-de-sac at the center of the new play “On Sugarland,” grief is pervasive. A memorial of dog tags, boots and other personal items of fallen soldiers sits center stage, a reminder of a community’s losses. Daily rituals, from services with singing, dancing and shouting to a boy shaving his father’s chin, move mourning from expressions of sorrow to utterances and activities that keep the dead in communion with the residents.“We got a frequency other folk can’t pick up on,” one character says.“On Sugarland,” about a community that is constantly losing its members to a perpetual war, gives new meaning to what Ralph Ellison called the lower frequencies. A register, in this case, that situates life and death on a continuum. The play itself is the latest collaboration between the playwright Aleshea Harris and the playwright and director Whitney White, who previously worked together on the acclaimed “What to Send Up When It Goes Down.” That work, combining an interactive ritual performance with an absurdist parody, bore witness to the many deaths of Black people to police and vigilante violence. Bearing witness is a responsibility that expands justice, James Baldwin wrote.“On Sugarland,” in previews at New York Theater Workshop, follows a preadolescent Sadie as she comes to terms with her mother’s death in combat. The weight of the loss, however, does not prevent her from tapping into her superpower — invisibility. Sadie uses it to her advantage. She can make the dead walk. She can also make the dead talk. And she can act as a conduit to help ease the sting of death. The naming of gods, references to super powers and the repetition of language heighten the play’s sense of reality.Kiki Layne, left, as Sadie and Adeola Role as Odella in “On Sugarland” at the New York Theater Workshop. The play draws elements from Greek tragedy, Southern gothic, Afro-surrealism and hip-hop.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHarris, 40, who is also a spoken word poet, uses her text to reshape words. Her characters whisper, shout, elongate a vowel or express rhythmic cadence, allowing language to escape the familiar. “I’m not really a singer, but I can hold a tune,” Harris said. “I think a lot about the sonic experience of the things that I’m writing. I feel like they need to hit the right note in order to resonate the way that I want them to.”She showcased her ability to mix genres — spaghetti western, tragedy and hip-hop — in “Is God Is,” a tale of twins enacting a revenge fantasy. Just as multifaceted, “On Sugarland” features a Greek chorus called the Rowdy and draws elements from Southern gothic, Afro-surrealism and hip-hop, producing sounds that prepare the audience for the otherworldly occurrences that eventually unfold.White, 36, also an actor and musician who grew up in Chicago, often incorporates aural traditions into her work as well. Music was always there. Reflecting on her time at Catholic school, she said: “We had liturgical music, which is where you sit and learn the songs, old school, and you look at the hymnals, and you learn to read music and sing. Religious music was how I started loving the arts and loving music. Then I got involved with theater.”Of Harris’s work, White said: “It has a rhythm and a feeling. It feels like you’re hearing notes, and tones and movements.”Echoing Ntozake Shange’s choreopoetic drama “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf,” which is set to return to Broadway in April, and the works of other Black arts movement playwrights, including Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins and Sonia Sanchez, “On Sugarland” mines the wealth of characteristic Black expression without reproducing stereotypes. It presents a vengeful young girl, her aunt who is suffering from addiction and a sensuous elderly neighbor who finds frumpiness offensive.In a recent interview, Harris and White talked about their new work and how their collaborations have helped them evolve as artists. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“Black work can be as experimental and aesthetically excellent as anything else, and we shouldn’t settle,” said White, right, about the lessons she’s learned from working with Harris. Jasmine Clarke for The New York TimesHow does the play create new ways to see Black women?WHITNEY WHITE None of them are stereotypes. None of them are tropes I’ve seen before. While they do dip into things that are familiar to me, they’re not flat, they’re quite complex, they’re just delicious. If you look at all of the roles [in Harris’s work], from “Is God Is” to “What to Send Up” to “On Sugarland,” these three plays create work that people can sink their teeth into for their whole lifetime and what a gift is that.ALESHEA HARRIS It was with great delight that I presented the elder women. I was very excited to create a role for two elder Black women who had a lot of meat inside of their stories and got to be very engaged and activated inside of the tale. I hope it feels like a boon to other Black women who are bearing witness to the work.What types of cultural and theatrical rituals does your work draw from?HARRIS I remember when I started writing “What to Send Up When It Goes Down” that my grad school mentor, Douglas Kearney, reminded me that a ritual is meant to bring something into being, and that just felt like a provocation. For the residents of the cul-de-sac in “On Sugarland,” I was really interested in exploring what their ritual of grieving could be. That wasn’t quite a funeral; that was another spiritual expression of care.WHITE There’s a great range of emotion, and ritual is complex. You’ll go to a family service, one person’s laughing, one person’s crying, one person’s being inappropriate. It is like this multifaceted emotive color wheel of Black life that I feel like it is my job to make sure it’s onstage. Because so often the way Black ritual is depicted onstage and onscreen is this very grim, one-noted thing. Actually, like the life cycle, communities and individuals within those communities possess so much. I want to make sure that my people are as alive, and specific, and colorful, and human as possible.What inspired the chorus, or as they are named, the Rowdy?HARRIS The chorus is embodying the innocence of the community and the Black community at large, an innocence that’s criminalized. There’s this language from Evelyn [a character in the play] about the chicks being snatched up from beneath their mothers, and they’re conscripted, they’re being sent off to fight in the war, so their numbers are dwindling.My psychic proposition is to remind us that we are complex, that there’s nothing inherently bad. That there’s great joy in what we do. Just in Black expression, Black mundane expression around the block is gorgeous. It isn’t always held up as such. The proposition is to see ourselves with great complexity and love.WHITE Aleshea sent me a video early on in the process, and she said, “This is the video that inspired the Rowdy.” It’s this beautiful group of young Black people with this speaker, just radically taking up space in a celebratory way that moves through their bodies.When I watch that video, it reminds me of being young in Chicago, growing up, spending time on the South Side with all these other young Black people my age. We would just take over the community, and that wasn’t a negative thing — it was a beautiful thing. It’s so sad that our communities so often are criminalized and viewed in these negative ways. What does it mean to see a group of young people in the prime of their lives die off one by one? What does that say about what these characters are experiencing in the world?How have you, as artists, changed through your collaboration?WHITE Aleshea is making work that is giving voice to the deepest parts of the Black experience. I feel that the way she has changed my work is that I realize I don’t have to settle on stereotypes. I don’t have to settle with naturalism. I don’t have to do things the safe way.The work can be as aesthetically challenging as it is culturally significant. I don’t have to settle until I have work that is as strong and rigorous as possible. Working with her has changed my understandings of what I know to be possible and what I’ve always believed was possible. Black work can be as experimental and aesthetically excellent as anything else, and we shouldn’t settle for anything less.HARRIS Working with Whitney has emboldened me and reminded me that what I want to do is possible. The weird things that I’m doing with language on the page can ring, can scream in a body. Let’s be disruptive of respectability politics. Whitney also understands my desire to present Black women with great muscularity onstage. We understand the rules. We understand how we should conduct ourselves. We were taught how to present ourselves in the world so that we could stay safe. I think she agrees with me that those things aren’t keeping us safe. So, we might as well be fearless. More

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      New Playwrights’ Voices, in the Land Where Directors Rule

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      Bold takes on classic works defined theater in Germany for decades. But many playhouses are turning to new works by international dramatists.BERLIN — Germany has a rich tradition of dramatists, from Goethe to Brecht, but ask people here to name a contemporary German playwright and you’ll probably draw a blank. Over the past few decades, the creative space once occupied by playwrights in Germany has largely been filled by directors, whose takes on the dramatic repertory — and notably the classics — are often so refreshingly different that their productions can be considered new works in their own right.This season, however, some of the country’s leading playhouses are putting a renewed emphasis on cultivating new literary voices, stories and approaches to drama. And because this is happening in globalized 21st-century Europe — or perhaps because of a paucity of A-list homegrown playwrights — a surprising amount of new work on German stages comes from the pens of international dramatists.One of the most prominent places where that’s happening is the Berlin Volksbühne, a rare German theater run by a playwright. After debuting three of his own works earlier this season, the Volksbühne’s new leader, René Pollesch, ushered in 2022 with the world premiere of Kata Weber’s “MiniMe.” Like many of this Hungarian writer’s works (she’s best known for the play and film “Pieces of a Woman”), the production was directed by Kornel Mundruczo, her artistic and romantic partner. Sadly, the couple, who also recently worked on the premiere of an opera at the nearby Staatsoper, failed to hit the mark with their latest collaboration — which, for better or worse, has nothing to do with the diminutive character played by Verne Troyer in the “Austin Powers” movies.With “MiniMe,” Weber and Mundruczo have fashioned a nasty 90-minute domestic horror sitcom about a preteen girl (the exceptional 10-year-old newcomer Maia Rae Domagala, whose performance is one of the evening’s few saving graces) and her mother, an ex-model who is grooming her as a JonBenét Ramsey-type child beauty queen. But Weber never entirely makes us buy the disturbing premise of a mother so intent on fashioning her daughter in her own image that — spoiler alert — she gives the child Botox injections.“Doughnuts,” by Toshiki Okada, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. Fabian HammerlMini’s ineffectual father is a dead weight at the center of the play, which expends far too much time on the parents’ boring marital issues rather than exploring the perverse mother-daughter relationship.Things aren’t much enlivened by Mundruczo’s elegant production, featuring fluid video work and a live soundtrack as well as an underutilized onstage pool with a flamingo float. The handsome set of a slick yet sterile suburban house lends the production a degree of naturalistic detail uncommon on German stages, which generally favor abstract or stylized approaches; it underscores the materialism and superficiality that destroy the play’s characters.Realism is the last thing you would associate with Toshiki Okada, the prolific Japanese theater artist, whose newest work, “Doughnuts,” recently premiered at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. (“Doughnuts” will also play in Berlin in May, as part of Theatertreffen, an annual celebration of the best theater from around the German-speaking world.) Over 75 minutes, six actors inhabit a stranger and more claustrophobic world than that of “MiniMe,” and yet, paradoxically, it seems somehow truer and more in touch with now.The play’s absurd premise, in which a group of notables are trapped in the lobby of a fashionable hotel — perhaps they are academics, perhaps businesspeople — brings to mind the work of Beckett and Buñuel. As they converse with one another and a comically ineffectual receptionist, the actors perform precise movements that update traditional Japanese Noh theater techniques and seem to illustrate, interpret or even contradict their dialogue. The actors are pitch perfect as they accompany their precisely declaimed monologues, on subjects ranging from the hotel’s amenities to a bear terrorizing a nearby supermarket, with cryptic and often hilarious gestures.“Our Time,” by the Australian writer-director Simon Stone, at the Residenztheater in Munich.Birgit HupfeldIn Germany, Okada is one of several prominent playwrights who frequently stage their own works in aesthetically distinctive productions, allowing them to exert a rare measure of control. Another is the Australian writer-director Simon Stone.Stone’s latest play, “Our Time,” at the Residenztheater in Munich, is a sprawling five-and-a-half-hour contemporary saga loosely inspired by the works of Odon von Horvath. That Austrian writer vividly chronicled life in Europe shortly before World War II, but Stone’s drama plays out in our own troubled age.Over three acts, we follow 15 characters over the course of six years, from 2015, when Germany began welcoming over a million refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, up to the coronavirus pandemic. This makes for absorbing theater, despite a few soap-operatic touches, wild coincidences and some speechifying toward the end. Performed entirely in and around a hyper-realistic mock-up of a gas station convenience store, “Our Time” works best when the dialogue settles into a natural, unforced register. The impressive cast is drawn from the Residenztheater’s vast ensemble, which has been getting quite a workout in a series of marathon productions this season.“Our Time” currently shares the program at the Residenztheater with work by Shakespeare and Molière. A different Munich theater, however, has shown a more extensive commitment to new dramatists: The Münchner Kammerspiele, like the Volksbühne, is betting on new plays to form the backbone of its repertory under a new artistic director, Barbara Mundel.From left, Vincent Redetzki, Stefan Merki and Gro Swantje Kohlhof in “Jeeps,” written and directed by Nora Abdel-Maksoud, at the Kammerspiele in Munich.Armin SmailovicThe pandemic has complicated these efforts. Luring audiences into theaters has been difficult everywhere, but it’s a particular challenge when the playwrights are unfamiliar. Many recent Kammerspiele shows I’ve caught were poorly attended. So I was glad to see that Munich theater lovers turned up in droves for a recent performance of “Jeeps,” a new comedy from the young German writer and director Nora Abdel-Maksoud, which has one of the best premises of any play I’ve seen in a long while: In the not-too-distant future, inheritance has been abolished. Instead, estates are distributed by a lottery administered by the Job Center, a dreary office where both the unemployed and the recently disinherited gather in hopes of scoring a winning ticket.“Jeeps” is a smart, loopy and fast-paced farce, but the actual satire seems slight and, judging from the all the belly laughs, mostly harmless. Who or what exactly is being skewered here, I wondered. The audience was having too good a time to be provoked, let alone discomfited. Still, there is no doubt about the talents and charisma of the four actors who embellish Abdel-Maksoud’s firecracker dialogue and simple, unadorned staging — a far cry from Stone’s and Okada’s more stylish productions — with verbal and physical high jinks. The Kammerspiele clearly has a hit on its hands. That’s an encouraging sign for the direction that Mundel is charting for her house as an incubator of new dramatic voices.MiniMe. Directed by Kornel Mundruczo. Through March 28 at the Volksbühne.Doughnuts. Directed by Toshiki Okada. Through March 28 at the Thalia Theater.Unsere Zeit. Directed by Simon Stone. Through March 13 at the Residenztheater.Jeeps. Directed by Nora Abdel-Maksoud. Through March 29 at the Münchner Kammerspiele. More

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      Barrow Group Announces New $4 Million Performing Arts Center

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      The 35-year-old Off Broadway company and training center will open a new space, which will include a 60-seat theater and five studios, in April.At the outset of the pandemic, prospects looked bleak for the Barrow Group, the 35-year-old Off Broadway theater company known for its actor training programs. It pivoted its existing classes online, and then, in July 2020, vacated the space on West 36th Street that it had leased for 18 years.But now — as a result of Paycheck Protection Program funding, a Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, and a robust appetite for online training and artist development programs that generated over $1.9 million in earned revenue since the beginning of the pandemic — it’s preparing to open a $4 million performing arts center at 520 Eighth Avenue, just around the corner from its old space, in April.“Our brokers were able to negotiate a way-below market deal,” Robert Yu Serrell, the company’s executive director, said of the new space; the company entered into a 15-year lease in November, with two five-year options to renew. “It’s actually less than what we were paying at our former space, and we’ve got more space and more security,” he said, referring to the building’s security system.The Barrow Group, which has grown from offering 70 classes a year in 2010 to 661 online and in-person workshops since April 2020, was searching for a bigger space even before the pandemic, said Lee Brock, who founded the theater in 1986 with her co-artistic director and now husband, Seth Barrish.The new 13,155-square-foot-space — just over 3,000 square feet larger than the previous building — will feature a 60-seat theater, five sound-attenuated studios, offices and a community gathering space. Phased renovations are expected to begin this month.The company, which counts Anne Hathaway, Tony Hale and Noah Schnapp (“Stranger Things”) among the actors who have completed its training programs, has an annual budget of approximately $1.6 million. It has served more than 5,200 actors, writers and directors since the start of the pandemic, Serrell said.In the near future, its focus will remain on developmental programming and training, Barrish said, with a plan to eventually produce shows commercially as well. Some of the theater’s recent productions have included “Awake” by K. Lorrel Manning, a series of nine short plays that tackled topics like homophobia, police violence and immigration; and a revival of Martin Moran’s “The Tricky Part,” a memoir of sexual abuse that the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called “beautiful and harrowing.”“That will be Phase Two,” Barrish said. “When we get work that we feel wants to be shared commercially, we’ll do so. As to when we’ll have that project and when we’ll rent a theater, I’m not sure yet.” (The 60-seat theater, he said, is meant as a space for developmental work, not commercial productions.)The Barrow Group has raised about $2.5 million for the two-phase, $4 million renovation project, the first phase of which will cost about $800,000, Serrell said. More

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      ‘It Was a Crusade’: Karen Brooks Hopkins Revisits Her BAM Tenure

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      In a new memoir, the former president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music reflects on some of the organization’s most memorable stagings and artists.“Fund-raising is like a military operation,” Karen Brooks Hopkins writes in her new memoir, “BAM … and Then It Hit Me,” an account of the 36 years she spent at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “The odds are always against you. It’s going to be 90 percent rejection with many ‘casualties’ along the way, and you must constantly shift your strategy to find new ways forward.”Hopkins, 70, who joined the organization as a 29-year-old development officer in 1979, became its president in 1999, and discovered early on she had “the fund-raising gene.” During a long tenure (she retired in 2015), her tenacity and ability to raise money for ambitious experimental projects was a vital element in establishing the academy as a cultural force and a hub for must-see work by artists like Peter Brook, Laurie Anderson, Ivo van Hove and Pina Bausch.Her memoir, which will be published by powerHouse Books on March 1, combines personal history, fund-raising strategies and an informal account of some of the academy’s most memorable stagings and artists. It will have its official book launch on Feb. 17 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Hopkins will discuss her career with Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater’s artistic director.Hopkins, second from right, with, from left, Bruce Ratner, Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson around 1984. BAM Hamm ArchivesHopkins recounts her early years spent working with the visionary arts programmer Harvey Lichtenstein and — after he retired — her extensive tenure as president alongside Joseph V. Melillo, the academy’s executive producer.“Karen was the person standing right behind Harvey, who took up a lot of space, quietly doing a lot of very crucial things,” Anderson said in a phone interview. “Not just with presenting work, but in the initiatives with the neighborhood and the audience.”Together, Melillo and Hopkins extended Lichtenstein’s uncompromising legacy.“We had a shared vision for BAM,” Melillo wrote in an email. “I had the confidence as I curated the artists and their works for the three stages that she would identify the financial resources.”During their tenure (Melillo retired from the position in 2018), the academy’s artistic budget grew from $21 million to $52 million; Hopkins established an endowment that now stands at $100 million; and the BAM campus expanded to include a new theater, the Richard B. Fisher Building, and a new building project, BAM Strong, to link three of its spaces.Hopkins, who has an MFA in directing, said her theater background meant that she had always remained profoundly connected to the work onstage and to the priority of an artistic vision.“I have been so lucky to have these great artistic partners, Harvey and Joe,” she said in a recent video interview. “We were all in it together. For us, BAM wasn’t a job, it was a crusade.”Over a two-hour anecdote-filled conversation, Hopkins — now a senior adviser to the Onassis Foundation — picked out some highlights of her time at the academy. “I love talking about BAM,” she said.‘The Mahabharata’Lichtenstein “would do anything,” Hopkins said, for the British born, France-based director Peter Brook. So when Brook, in 1986, suggested a nine-hour adaptation of an ancient Hindu epic, which he had developed with Jean-Claude Carrière, the answer, naturally, was an immediate yes. “The Mahabharata” was produced by the academy the following year.Peter Brook’s nine-hour production of “The Mahabharata” in 1987.Gilles Abegg“We created a new theater just for that show,” she recounted, describing the renovation of the dilapidated Majestic Theater into what is now called the BAM Harvey, a block away from the main theater, which Brook felt was too formal a space for the work.“It was like moving a small country to New York and having them live here for a month,” Hopkins said. “And we had no money to do it.” But after she heard Brook describe the genesis of the work she decided “this was the greatest fund-raising story of all time.” She took the director and a group of donors to see the play in Paris, where it had been staged at Brook’s home theater, the Bouffes du Nord, raising the money in a relatively short time.“In the world of Brook, there is no real separation between spectator and performer, between the past and the present; they exist side by side in the theater and in life,” Hopkins said. “What you saw was the most profound combination of theatricality and the human condition finding an expression that was mind-blowing.”‘United States Parts I-IV’The pioneering, avant-garde work of the composer Laurie Anderson came to the academy soon after Lichtenstein started the Next Wave Series (which became the Next Wave Festival in 1983). “In 1982, we did ‘United States,’ Hopkins recounted. “It was risky to put an artist who wasn’t that well-known in a 2,000-seat opera house, but the work was a masterpiece. She held the stage for hours as a musician, a storyteller and a visual artist, and the entire show, a remarkable comment on America, was her conception. You felt you were watching an artist really come into her own.”A poster advertising what Hopkins called Laurie Anderson’s “masterpiece.”BAM Hamm ArchivesAnderson’s work was everything Lichtenstein wanted: “genre-bending, breaking forms, offering new ways of bringing shows to the stage,” Hopkins said.‘The Island’Many South African plays were presented at the academy over the years, but one that resonated most forcefully for Hopkins was “The Island,” in 2003, starring John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who wrote the play with Athol Fugard.“‘The Island’ was a piece that was like an arrow to your heart,” Hopkins said, “like the most intense short story you ever read.” She added: “It was simple, dark and profound. You were on the island with them, and in an hour you understood what they had been through for so long. Of course, it was really about Mandela, and you understood that when people are confined in an utterly inhospitable place, yet find each other and are committed to the same cause, there is a beauty and purity to the friendship that is a life bond.”Winston Ntshona, left, and John Kani in “The Island” in 2003.Richard TermineKani and Ntshona were “a partnership, a chemistry made in heaven,” she said.Watching a post-apartheid play by Nicholas Wright, “A Human Being Died That Night,” at BAM in 2015, offered “a remarkable historical trajectory told by theater,” she added. “When you stay in a place for 36 years, you realize it’s not about one season, even 10 seasons. It’s about generations of artists, and about history.”The Work of Pina BauschWhen Lichtenstein, who was a dancer before becoming an arts administrator, saw the work of the German choreographer Pina Bausch, “he absolutely went berserk,” Hopkins said.“Café Müller,” one of the first shows Bausch and her Tanztheater Wuppertal ensemble presented at the academy in 1984, was a revelation, Hopkins said. “Each artist had a distinctive personality and role, and you knew them like you knew actors.”The works were often “crazily difficult” to stage, she added. “For ‘Arien,’ we needed tons of water to rain on the stage, and by mistake toxic waste was delivered and had to be removed from our parking lot by guys in hazmat suits.” In “Palermo Palermo,” a wall stretching across the stage had to fall; in “Nelken” thousands of carnations had to be installed over the whole stage.Pina Bausch’s “Palermo Palermo” in 1991.Martha Swope/The New York Public Library“One year we did ‘Bluebeard,’ which had a million dead leaves onstage,” Hopkins added. “It was June, 90 degrees and we had no air conditioning. One critic said it smelled like a compost heap.”The Tanztheater Wuppertal was a huge audience draw for the academy. “Pina was a discovery who became a blockbuster,” Hopkins said.‘Happy Days’ and ‘Endgame’Samuel Beckett’s experimental, difficult and poetic work was a natural fit for the academy, Hopkins said, and Melillo was particularly keen on finding new productions of his work. Two in particular, stand out for her.In “Happy Days,” directed by Deborah Warner, “the great Fiona Shaw found the yin and yang of that role in a way I had never seen,” Hopkins said. “It’s not every actress who can be buried up to her neck, and communicate both the desperation of her circumstances and an optimism despite them. You were laughing and crying at the same time.”Fiona Shaw in Deborah Warner’s 2008 production of Beckett’s “Happy Days.”Brooklyn Academy of Music The other enduring memory, she said, was of John Turturro playing Hamm in a wheelchair, with Max Casella as Clov, in the “unrelenting and unforgiving” play “Endgame.”One night, she recalled, the wheelchair collapsed, sending Turturro flying through the air. “He never broke character, even when the stagehands came on to pick him and the wheelchair off the floor,” Hopkins said. “The audience went nuts that night.”‘Einstein on the Beach’Lichtenstein discovered the work of the American director Robert Wilson, who was making a name for himself in Europe, around the time he took over at the Academy in 1967. “Harvey, in his most avant-garde heart, loved Robert Wilson, and felt he was on a divine mission to make sure that Bob’s large-scale work was seen in the U.S.,” Hopkins said. “There was almost no one in the audience for early pieces like ‘Deafman Glance,’” she said. “Or they would go home, do some laundry, come back; the pieces went on for hours!”In 1984, Lichtenstein told his team that they needed to raise $300,000 to present a Wilson collaboration with the composer Philip Glass, called “Einstein on the Beach.” Hopkins agreed. “I don’t know how, but we’ll do it,” she said.“Einstein” was a success. “After that the legend just grew and grew,” she said; the show returned to the Academy in 1992 and in 2012. “Bob works in a very inside-out way, not traditionally theatrical and very stylized,” Hopkins said. “But it comes from the gut and although the pieces can look cold, they are not. The heat comes from the ice around it; it’s an artistic trip.”She added that she particularly loved his 2014 adaptation of the Soviet writer Daniil Kharms’s “The Old Woman” with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe. “It was devastating, about someone starving to death, and you felt it,” she said. More

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      How Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster and ‘The Music Man’ Withstood Covid

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      Nearly 60 cast and crew members have tested positive since rehearsals began. Now, following a 10-day shutdown during previews, opening night is near.As soon as Hugh Jackman learned that the leading lady of “The Music Man,” Sutton Foster — whom he spent a substantial portion of every night breathing on, sweating on and locking lips with onstage — had tested positive for the coronavirus, he knew it was just a matter of time.“I’m pretty sure on every C.D.C. guideline, making out with someone with Covid is not recommended,” Jackman, 53, said in a phone conversation in late January. He is starring opposite Foster as the scam artist Harold Hill in the high-profile revival of Meredith Willson’s 1957 musical, which is scheduled to open Feb. 10 at the Winter Garden Theater.And, sure enough, five days later, came the positive proof on his at-home Covid test. Already down about a third of the show’s 46-person cast, and with both leads out, the producers canceled the next 11 performances. (The cast and crew were still paid during the shutdown, Kate Horton, one of the musical’s producers, said.)Though performances resumed a little over a week later, it was just the latest setback for a starry, star-crossed revival of the feel-good comedy, which won the Tony Award for best new musical in 1958. Originally scheduled to begin previews in September 2020, the show had already pushed back its opening night twice and weathered the departure of its lead producer, Scott Rudin, amid renewed scrutiny of his bullying behavior.The production, which is capitalized for up to $24 million, reunites much of the creative team behind the Tony-winning 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” including the director, Jerry Zaks. Its cast includes six Tony winners: Jackman; Foster, who plays the librarian Marian Paroo; Shuler Hensley; Jefferson Mays; Jayne Houdyshell; and Marie Mullen.In phone interviews last month, six members of the show’s cast and creative team outlined the measures they took to keep the show going amid a coronavirus outbreak; the vital role of actors known as swings, who have no regular role in a show and cover up to a dozen ensemble parts; and how they kept their spirits up amid a challenging preview period. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.When the “Music Man” revival was announced in March 2019, it looked as if it would be the marquee event of the fall 2020 Broadway season. Amid the industrywide shutdown, opening night was pushed to May 2021, and then again to Feb. 10, 2022. Finally, this past October, the show started rehearsals.The show’s director, Jerry Zaks, left, and its choreographer, Warren Carlyle, overseeing rehearsals.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesJERRY ZAKS (director) We felt we had gotten past Covid, and we were just happy to be there. We dived in and went nonstop.HUGH JACKMAN (Professor Harold Hill) It was so great to be back in the room.KATHY VOYTKO (swing/Marian understudy) It was a thrill to test negative every day.On Dec. 20, amid the Omicron surge, “The Music Man” had its first preview. Four covers — an actor who goes on for another actor who calls out of a show — were onstage.KATE HORTON (producer) I would look at the situation we were facing each day, and I would have conversations with stage management and the creative team and we would decide what to do.SUTTON FOSTER (Marian Paroo) At one point, there were 14 people out of the show. We had swings covering seven roles and trying to hold up that show. And they did. It was remarkable. One of our swings, Emily Hoder, is 10 years old, and she was covering three tracks.ZAKS I couldn’t do the critical work of addressing the material, making changes in the lighting, fixing the sound, because we had so may people out. There was a moment when we asked ourselves if we’d have to push opening night.Then it happened: On Thursday, Dec. 23, the morning of the fourth preview, Foster tested positive.FOSTER We’ve been vigilant, but I have a 4 ½-year-old daughter who goes to preschool. On December 20, the night of our first preview, she hadn’t been feeling good, and my husband took her to the doctor and she tested positive. But every day I was testing negative, negative, negative. Then on Thursday morning, I did a rapid test at home, and it immediately was just this rude red line. And I was like, “OK, here we go.”But the show still went on that night, thanks to Voytko, a swing and an understudy for Marian, who mainlined the role in eight hours.VOYTKO I had an 11 o’clock costume fitting, and, just before noon, our costume designer, Santo [Loquasto], said “Kathy, call Thomas [Recktenwald],” who’s our production stage manager. And I sort of had that sinking feeling. And sure enough, he said, “You’re on.” I voice-texted my husband because my hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t possibly have used my phone. Then I put my phone on silent, and I grabbed my emergency cheat sheet I had made.“I want people to understand that these are unprecedented times in theater,” said Jackman, who plays the scam artist Harold Hill opposite Foster’s Marian Paroo.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesJACKMAN She had her first rehearsal as Marian at 1; we had until 5. We got through every scene once. I think maybe she got to redo something twice.WARREN CARLYLE (choreographer) There are three really tricky sequences that could take an actress down: the finale; “Shipoopi” at the top of Act II because there’s a lot of dance for her there; and the library sequence, which is very prop heavy. There are something like 75 library books and a million different things that have to go in a million different places.VOYTKO A big goal post was getting through “My White Knight” because the lyrics have a patter section, which is a bit of a tongue twister. And I only had two shots at the dance for “Shipoopi” with Hugh and the tap finale before we had to do them in front of an audience.And she did. She got a standing ovation, and Jackman delivered a curtain speech praising understudies and swings that went viral.JACKMAN I want people to understand that these are unprecedented times in theater. I was so moved by what Kathy had gone through. I’ve never seen anything like that.After other breakthrough cases, the production canceled its Saturday evening and Sunday matinee performances on Dec. 25 and 26. On Tuesday, Dec. 28, Jackman tested positive.JACKMAN I was already feeling a bit funky when I was doing the show the night before, even though I was testing negative at the time, so it wasn’t a surprise. I was pretty nauseated, with a scratchy throat and a runny nose. My wife was amazing — we’d been sleeping in the same bed together, obviously, so I think she expected to get it too, which she did. But I’m vaccinated and boosted, so I was fine after a few days.The show eventually canceled its next 11 performances, through Wednesday, Jan. 5.HORTON Every time somebody is out when you’re so early in the life of the show, you need to do a technical rehearsal with the stand-in. But when you get to a certain number of people being out, there isn’t enough time to do that and make sure everyone onstage is safe. We got to a point where there were over 10 people off, so it was a very straightforward decision, actually.But the production never considered postponing its opening or following in the footsteps of “Mrs. Doubtfire,” whose producer, Kevin McCollum, decided in January to pause performances for nine weeks, with plans to resume in March (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” like “The Music Man” co-produced by Barry Diller, announced a hiatus later that month).And there was music: The show is scheduled to open on Feb. 10 at the Winter Garden Theater.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesHORTON We knew mathematically we would get through it. Once a certain number of people are out and you know they’re coming back, it was just a revolving-door situation, like who was going to be back when. And the demand for the show is so huge that we knew we had audiences waiting for us.Previews resumed on Thursday, Jan. 6. Finally, the full company was onstage together for the first time, with no covers or swings.ZAKS It wasn’t until the end of January that I was able to make the changes and cuts that I wanted to make.FOSTER We had an extraordinarily long preview process — over six weeks. In shows I’ve done in the past, the preview period has been about four weeks. So even though we lost 10 days, we’re still in good shape.HORTON Things have stabilized hugely. Advance sales have been fantastic. We’ve gone a couple of weeks now with no positive tests.VOYTKO I did three shows in a row with Hugh — smooching, panting under dance numbers in each other’s faces — but I never tested positive! We were joking that an epidemiologist should do some sort of study.Now, with opening night in less than a week, the cast, crew and creative team are ready to celebrate.JACKMAN It’s amazing to be on a stage with a cast that’s near 50 people and a 25-piece orchestra. It’s a story about faith, belief and community that’s so timely. It’s one of those perfect musicals.VOYTKO Nothing will ever be as stressful as going on in a fourth preview as Marian. My greatest hope is that everyone is healthy on opening night, and I can cheer them on from the audience! More

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      Review: In ‘Tambo & Bones,’ a Minstrel’s Guide to Making Money

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      Dave Harris’s hip-hop triptych exploring racism and capitalism is meant to be a biting satire, but it has little force behind it.The minstrel show — that racist brand of theater that perpetuated stereotypes about Black people — was all the rage in the 1800s and hung around until the rise of the civil rights movement put the genre in its grave. And yet, I bet that even today, most Black Americans have witnessed or participated in a minstrel show of some sort — a performance of Blackness that simplifies and debases it.If that performance makes a profit — well, that’s capitalism for you, right? Even a young playwright with a new Off Broadway production may fall into that trap — and he knows it.This scourge of capitalism — as the engine of slavery, as a shaper of Black art and identity — is what the two characters in “Tambo & Bones” must grapple with. The play, which opened at Playwrights Horizons on Monday in a coproduction with the Center Theater Group, aims to be a sharp satire about the intersection of race and performance, especially when money is in the picture — as it always is in our country of wealth and opportunity.Written by the poet and playwright Dave Harris, “Tambo & Bones” begins by introducing us to two minstrel characters, Tambo (W. Tré Davis) and Bones (Tyler Fauntleroy). Dressed in tattered period attire, they mill around in an artificial pastoral scene, alongside fake trees and grass designed like paper cutouts from a children’s storybook. Tambo just wants to nap under his cardboard tree, and Bones is doing all he can to hustle up some quarters. (After all, their pipeline to success is “quarters to dollars to dreams.”)The setup of two friends waiting around for something to happen, discussing what they most crave and value, recalls the story of two old goats who famously waited for some guy named Godot — or, more recently, the play “Pass Over.” Though here it lacks the lyrical dexterity and layered meanings of either.In the lengthy second part of the show, which is described as a “hip-hop triptych,” we hear the promised music in the form of a concert, though songs are limited to this middle section. Tambo and Bones, dripping in diamonds and gold chains, come out on a platform surrounded by the hard lights and scaffolding of a stadium; they’re now contemporary rappers who trade lyrics, Tambo more Nas or Chance the Rapper to Bones’s 50 Cent. Their different rap styles, however, aren’t the only ways the two are at odds: Bones wants to game the system to achieve the same amount of wealth as his white peers, while Tambo thinks the system is broken and must be brought down completely.I won’t spoil the third part, but it jumps to the future, in a changed society where the story of Tambo and Bones has become a vital part of history.In the play’s second part, Fauntleroy, left, and Davis assume the roles of rappers. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHarris’s concept is promising. It brings to mind plays like “Underground Railroad Game,” “3/Fifths” and “Black History Museum,” which used music, games and immersive art installations to deliver biting satire on subjects like minstrelsy and the effects of institutional racism. But “Tambo & Bones” drops its two characters — actually, more like archetypes (the Black activist, the Black businessman) — into the supposedly satirical world of the play and shuffles them around with little development of the central themes and progression of the main ideas.The director, Taylor Reynolds, doesn’t help clarify or illuminate Harris’s shallow script, defaulting to only one mode: loud and emphatic. And the transitions between sections do little to connect the parts in service of a grand thesis. A satire and a concert and an off-road turn into speculative fiction: “Tambo & Bones” is a lot of things, but nuanced is not one of them.Harris tries to have it both ways when it comes to his play’s stance, critiquing how some creators, producers and audiences capitalize on Black trauma, while self-consciously acknowledging that he, too, is part of that practice. (In an essay in the program, Harris writes about how performances of trauma are often rewarded in the world of poetry slams.) In one scene in particular, he has his characters explicitly call him out: As if by addressing the issue head on, he can absolve himself of it.At the very least, the costumes (by Dominique Fawn Hill) and lighting (by Amith Chandrashaker and Mextly Couzin) have a clear execution and purpose, as the show shifts from the affected sunniness of the minstrel setting to the aggressive reds and roving spotlights of the concert. The scenic design, by Stephanie Osin Cohen, however, feels more functional than finessed; the bucolic setting of the first part is quickly swapped for the Madison Square Garden-style arena, and unsightly orange panels are rolled out and lined up in a row to form a makeshift wall for the final part.And even though the 90-minute show may not always be entertaining for the audience, at least the actors have fun. Davis keeps up with the sudden turns of the production but is stuck with an unremarkable character. Fauntleroy, as the more interesting Bones, brings an infectious sense of play to the production; his blithe performance in fact feels unmatched by the material, which even Fauntleroy’s enthusiasm can’t elevate.“Tambo & Bones” ends abruptly, with no bows. It’s an attempted mic drop but with no force behind it, an ineffectual grab not for the quarters or dollars that Bones seeks but for the greatest currency of any stage, minstrel or otherwise: an audience’s attention.Tambo & BonesThrough Feb. 27 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More