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      Ralph Fiennes to Star in Play About Robert Moses at the Shed

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      The production of “Straight Line Crazy,” by David Hare, will begin preview performances Oct. 18 and have a nine-week run.“Straight Line Crazy,” the play by David Hare about the contentious urban planner Robert Moses, directed by Nicholas Hytner and Jamie Armitage, is coming to New York this fall.Following a buzzy spring run at the Bridge Theater in London, the play about Moses’s legacy of power and divisive creations of highways, parks and bridges will premiere at the Shed’s Griffin Theater for a nine-week run with preview performances starting Oct. 18 and an opening night slated for Oct. 26.“Straight Line Crazy” follows Moses’s rise to influence in the late 1920s as one of New York’s most powerful men, and then his devolution in the late 1950s, when grass-roots organizers and public transportation advocates decried his public works for displacing residents and disenfranchising communities who stood (or lived) in the way of his vision.“I think what this play evokes for us, and evokes here in New York, is who gets to shape our city spaces, who gets to shape our public spaces? What voices are engaged in these processes that affect so many?” Madani Younis, chief executive producer at the Shed, said in an interview.Moses will be played by the Tony Award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes (also known for playing Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies), returning to New York theater for the first time since 2006, when he starred as the gaunt miracle worker (and possible charlatan) in Brian Friel’s “Faith Healer.”The theater critic Matt Wolf wrote in The New York Times that in the London run of “Straight Line Crazy,” Fiennes had “enough barrel-chested authority to sustain interest in what might otherwise seem arcane,” adding that he almost wished the play were longer.Younis, of the Shed, said, “This is the rise and fall story of a very divisive figure and it stirs up questions for our present about civic responsibility, about values and who shapes cities.”“This is what great art should always do,” he said.The production will run through Dec. 18. More

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      ‘Bodies They Ritual’ Review: Plush Robes and Cults

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      Angela Hanks’s new comedy is set in Santa Fe, N.M., where five women of color have traveled for some fancy R&R laced with New Age spirituality.The tapas party had not gone over well: “The food was so tiny,” the guest of honor, Faye, recalled. “And I was so hungry.”So for Faye’s 65th birthday, her daughter, Marie, has invited her mother and three friends for a relaxing stay at a fancy sweat lodge. The cantankerous Faye is not crazy about that, either. And that’s even before the cult members turn up.Angela Hanks’s bittersweet new comedy, “Bodies They Ritual,” is set in Santa Fe, N.M., where the five women (four are African American and one is Bengali American) have traveled from Dallas for some fancy R&R laced with New Age spirituality. There are hot stones and plush white robes, chats by the fire pit and periods of zoning out. There are also the uncomfortable revelations and colorful encounters that pop up whenever Americans’ fictional characters go on retreats (see: Bess Wohl’s play “Small Mouth Sounds,” which takes place at a silent retreat, or the book and series “Nine Perfect Strangers”).“Bodies They Ritual” — the third and final play in this year’s edition of the Clubbed Thumb company’s Summerworks series — revolves around a series of meetings between the visitors and assorted locals. Naturally, the locals help excavate a few truths, but somehow there don’t seem to be any earth-shattering changes for anybody. Whatever metaphorical splinter was lodged under a character’s skin at the start is pretty much still there at the end, a constant reminder of past choices and roads taken, or not.Marie (Ebony Marshall-Oliver), for example, prefers to keep her relationships free from romantic entanglements. Faye (Lizan Mitchell), a retired hairdresser, picks at what she sees as her daughter’s idiosyncrasies, like her taste in music as a kid, or Marie’s decision to focus on her career as the manager for a professional sports team and forgo children. While the relationship between the two women feels commonplace, Hanks adorns it with offbeat details that often materialize almost out of the blue, like Faye’s spur-of-the-moment rendition of the Sublime song “Santeria.”Similarly, when Faye’s friend Toni (Denise Burse) fantasizes about seeing her late husband again just so she can tell him how much she still loathes him, Hanks seeds her angry monologue with surreal specificity — “I want to hit him in the head with a candelabra.”Turquoise Sunshine (Keilly McQuail) and Dawn (Kai Heath) are acolytes in “Bodies They Ritual.”Marcus MiddletonThis technique applies to the locals, like a teenage barista (Bianca Norwood) who tells Toni that she was named for her mother’s “third favorite thrash metal band,” Sepultura. “I consider myself lucky my name isn’t Anthrax,” she tells Toni.Best, or at least strangest of all are Queen Harvest (Emily Cass McDonnell), the Galadriel of New Mexico, and her acolytes Dawn (Kai Heath) and Turquoise Sunshine (Keilly McQuail, coming up with some strikingly kooky line readings).Hanks, whose “Wilder Gone” was in the 2018 edition of Summerworks, has a dry, tart tone that is well served by the director Knud Adams. He wrings finely tuned performances from the excellent cast and never oversells the comedy, letting a raised eyebrow, a side glance or a throwaway line do a lot of work. This is especially effective since Hanks, to her credit, refrains from open conflicts and cathartic resolutions — Santa Fe may peddle enlightenment, but this playwright does not take the bait. Admittedly, “Bodies They Ritual” does not quite cohere into a whole, but its parts are wonderful. They may be tiny, but they add up to a full meal.Bodies They RitualThrough July 2 at the Wild Project, Manhattan; clubbedthumb.org. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. More

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      Interview: There’s Always Room on Our Broom

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      Tall Stories’ Olivia Jacobs on producing Room On The Broom

      Fans of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s fabulous children’s books will be delighted that acclaimed theatre company Tall Stories are bringing their adaptation of Room on the Broom to the West End this summer. We asked company co-founder Olivia Jacobs to land the broom for a minute and magic up a bit of information about the show.

      Olivia, Room on the Broom is an absolute favourite picture book for children worldwide; you must feel such a responsibility to adapt it well? How do you go about bringing it to life, from page to stage?

      When Room on the Broom was first published, we were hooked immediately, and asked the authors and publishers for the rights. It’s such a brilliant adventure story – with just enough danger, a whole heap of fabulous characters and a hugely positive message about working together. Thankfully both Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler had enjoyed our previous stage production of The Gruffalo and felt that there was room on the broom for us!

      I was definitely nervous to start work on the show and I still feel that same sense of nervousness and responsibility every time I go into the rehearsal room with a new company. I want to ensure it’s always full of life on stage and that audiences leave the theatre happy and grinning.

      It was hard to know where to start developing this beautiful but complex story. We needed to create seven characters: a witch, a cat, a dog, a bird, a frog, a dragon and a mud monster, with a cast of four… We also had the tricky task of flying all of our characters, as well as creating magic spells and appearing a magnificent broom from thin air. No small challenge! We tested ideas in a rehearsal room with some very talented performers and a highly imaginative creative team – which is how we devise all our shows – trying to find the best and most entertaining way to tell the story.

      We finally settled on beginning with a camping trip; four campers setting off for a night under the stars. But nothing goes to plan when they see a witch on a broomstick flying down towards them at full pelt…This opening defines the way in which we tell the rest of the story. If audiences watch carefully, there are lots of things in the campsite scene which later find their way into the tale of the witch, the cat and their adventure.

      Tell us a bit about the music and puppetry involved.

      Puppets have a huge role in this production, and it was so important that we got them right. We had lots of questions to resolve. Which characters would be puppets? What type of puppets should we create? How big should they be? What do they need to be able to do? How many people would operate each puppet? And, of course, what happens when all seven characters are on stage with only four actors – would it be possible to operate more than one puppet at a time? Our puppet designer Yvonne Stone created prototypes for us and we played with these in a rehearsal room to discover exactly what looked best.

      Eventually we decided that Dog, Bird and Frog – all the creatures that Witch picks up on her journey – would become puppets in the show, but we determined that the design of Cat’s costume would link her to the puppet animals too.

      As the characters emerged in the devising room, the design of the puppets developed too. Bird developed long eyelashes, Frog’s leg length increased, and we finally found a way of operating Dog’s tail so he could wag it as enthusiastically as he wanted to. Whilst the puppeteers make it look easy, the puppetry in the show is really difficult. The actors develop very big muscles!

      The music followed logically as the characters became more defined. We wanted a song for everyone who joined Witch and Cat on the broom, so played with ideas of what they might sing about, and why they might want to travel by broom – especially Bird, who has her own wings!

      The show is aimed at ages 3+, but do you find older children enjoy it too?

      We’ve always tried to make shows that work for all ages. Over 60% of our attendees are grown-ups, so it seems absurd not to try to ensure that all of your audience have fun: the show needs to appeal to everyone. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and we often have older children watching alongside younger siblings. My favourite thing is actually when I hear parents talking afterwards: they often seem surprised to have laughed and had a good time, the expectation being that if it’s for their children it couldn’t possibly also be for them! We hope our shows work on different levels and remain a place where three or even four generations can enjoy being entertained together.

      Which is your favourite character in this story?

      This is an impossible question to answer. I love Dog’s enthusiasm for life, Bird’s desire to be loved, Frog’s endless charm, Witch’s scattiness and Cat’s ability to succinctly sum up and deal with any situation. And I’m pretty fond of Dragon too, for all his posturing and pretending to be brave – he’s a big softie really. I can’t pick one character – I have a soft spot for them all!

      It’s twenty-five years since Tall Stories was founded. Have things changed much since you started, and how did you get through the Covid pandemic in the last couple of years?

      When we first started Tall Stories, there were very few companies making work for a family audience, and fewer making cross-generational work. The advent of Harry Potter and Northern Lights (etc) made ‘crossover work’ a genre in itself, with new shows for family audiences springing up countrywide. I hope that we have been even a small part of improving the theatre landscape for family audiences and encouraging others to create great work for this brilliant, imaginative sector.

      Tall Stories itself has grown and developed as a company too. Twenty-five years ago it was just my co-founder Toby and I working from a spare room in a small flat in north London; now there’s a team of seven full-time staff based in the Tall Stories Studio in Highbury and Islington.

      Of course, the last few years have been hard for everyone in the entertainment industry. Our UK tour of Room on the Broom was cut short, and we rushed actors home from Hong Kong, Australia and America during the pandemic. But audiences have been very supportive and have returned to theatres to provide their children with the opportunity to see high quality performance. It feels very fitting that Room on the Broom, a story about pulling together in times of adversity, is back this year.

      Tell us a bit about your charity work, and the Tall Stories Studio.

      We’re hugely proud of the new Tall Stories Studio, which opened its doors last year after three years of searching and building. We now have our own beautiful, light, bright, ground floor accessible rehearsal space, with an office, meeting room and costume store all on site. I love that we are based within Islington’s Central Library, surrounded by stories.

      From our new home we work closely with the surrounding community, providing free accessible performances of our shows for local families who may not otherwise have access to touring work. As an example, we worked recently with local organisations The Hibiscus Centre, The Parent House and Homestart to welcome single parent families, families who have been victims of domestic abuse and refugees who are new to the community to free performances of The Gruffalo.

      Working alongside Islington council, we provide free productions for local school children, who also get to meet and greet the cast after the show and ask any burning questions that they might have.

      Within the Studio space we work with, support and nurture new and emerging storytelling artists and companies through our ‘Studio Share’ programme. We offer artists free rehearsal space to develop and share work, as well as opportunities for mentoring sessions with Tall Stories’ professional team.

      Outside of the Studio we collaborate with a variety of organisations and schemes, such as The Garden Classroom, with whom we’ve provided a unique drama and forest school experience for children aged 7-11, and Hackney Empire’s ‘Pay It Forward’ scheme which encouraged audiences when booking tickets to purchase extras for families who wouldn’t ordinarily visit the theatre. We continue to be amazed by our audience’s generosity: this year we were able to provide a free trip to Hackney Empire for over 100 under-privileged children and their families.

      As a charity, any income Tall Stories receive from our larger scale shows is routed straight back into the company. In this way, we can tour further afield, reach new audiences, offer free performances, accessible performances and develop creative work with young people, families, artists and those who don’t initially see theatre as a possible option for them.

      I may be a bit biased, but I think Tall Stories is an amazing company to be part of.

      You have a background of touring productions, so how does it feel to be settling in to a West End venue for a big long stretch?

      It’s wonderful that we’re flying into the West End for the summer with Room on the Broom and lovely to be working with Nimax and their fabulous team at the gorgeous Lyric Theatre, but we never rest on our laurels. The show will tour the length and breadth of the country between now and April 2023 – visit our website for details about the venues we’re touring to! www.roomonthebroomlive.com

      Room on the Broom runs from Thursday 21 July to Sunday 4 September at the Lyric Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, London. Further information and bookings can be found here. More

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      Guest Post: Quest for The Bed Sitting Room

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      John Hewer tells us about The Bed Sitting Room

      On Sunday 3 July, Hambledon Productions, my theatre company, is holding a Spike Milligan Gala Night. A brilliant cast, fantastic guest speaker Jane Milligan, a pop-up Milligan Exhibition, plus more. The headline event of the evening will be a rehearsed reading of an updated version of John Antrobus and Spike Milligan’s post-apocalyptic dark comedy The Bed Sitting Room. But what exactly is The Bed Sitting Room? And why is it overdue a fresh appraisal?   

      2017, and I was looking for a new, big project for 2018 when a friend flagged up that it would be the centenary of the Mighty Milligan… Bingo! The Bed Sitting Room! Rather than trot out episodes of The Goon Show, it was Spike’s irreverent playscript that most tantalised me…

      The Bed Sitting Room seemed just too good to be true. In the early days of the internet (in our house, at any rate, about 2000) an IMDB search threw up this title. Directed by Richard Lester, it was the cast list that made my eyes stand out on stalks! Michael Hordern, Sir Ralph Richardson, Harry Secombe, Marty Feldman, Cook and Moore, Jimmy Edwards, Rita Tushingham… the list just went on. It was practically mythical. No TV broadcast since the 1980s, no VHS release… it seemed fated to remain ‘legendary’ without even being witnessed.

      Then I discovered eBay!

      The film instantly became a perennial favourite of mine. It’s a 60’s smorgasbord, not so much psychedelic, but bleak, garish, topsy-turvy and visually stunning. Yet incredibly, growing up through this nightmarish landscape, cutting through the grim and the absurd, were jokes. Good jokes. Bad jokes. So bad, they’re good jokes. Some jokes which haven’t aged well, true, but also some jokes which are still yet to come of age.

      The playscript and the film adaptation are very similar (John Antrobus, who co-wrote the play and adapted the screenplay, did a remarkable job at translating it to a different medium). However, by the sheer nature of live theatre, it is more stark (more Graham Stark!) while also being more ribald and surreal. The playscript, published to tie-in with the film in 1969, tries its best to ‘keep up’ with Milligan’s frequent liberal attitude towards the original script. However, Antrobus, the brainchild, had the ability to harness Spike’s creativity, while also maintaining his own distinctive style. Putting it simply, when working on The Bed Sitting Room, they were interchangeable and worked as one. Imagine my delight, then, to discover, that not only was Mr. Antrobus happy, and keen, to discuss a revival, but also he wanted to work on a fresh revision of his text alongside me.

      Spike’s rare but always tantalising dalliances with theatre are legendary; likewise, Antrobus’ theatre work is astounding. Arguably, however, their crowning achievement, for stage at least, is the co-creation of The Bedsitting Room. It’s a timeless text. The overall message I take from it is that, if civilisation as we know it were to end, we’d probably begin, in earnest, to restore it to what we already had; without seriously questioning what we were going back to. And there are elements of that as we continue to emerge from the pandemic, and there are certainly tensions revolving around that with the outbreak of war in Europe. And on this blank canvas of a new, theatrical world, Antrobus’ and Milligan’s writing, their surreal characters and their anti-establishment messages flourish.

      This was an amazing time. John, an extremely gracious, and also extremely busy chap, and I spent three months working on The Bed Sitting Room for a 21st century audience (the play had not been performed on stage since the 1980s). John’s enthusiasm matched mine, and Jane Milligan, who took time out from her own busy schedule appearing in the West End in a production of the musical Kinky Boots, put me in touch with Norma Farnes, Spike’s former secretary and now custodian, manager and promoter for Spike Milligan Productions for nearly forty years. Norma was now settled in Spike’s former office at No. 9 Orme Court (known colloquially as The Fun Factory); a roomy, ornate, bay-windowed Georgian terrace. Accolades and personal keepsakes were everywhere. I struggled to focus on our meeting, I was so in awe of my surroundings and the ongoing situation. It felt as otherworldly as Spike’s own Goon Shows.

      Norma ultimately had to decline the project; she was already co-producing another centenary tour; a bold and excellently executed recreation of The Goon Show as a live radio recording, co-produced by Spike Milligan Productions and Apollo Theatre Company (who, incidentally, we’ve teamed up with to co-produce a UK tour of Steptoe and Son Radio Show. Shameless plug!) This meant that, not only could she not afford the time to ensure that the show would be a fair recreation of Spike’s seminal work, but she was also concerned that there would be a conflict of interest when it came to tour booking. Like so many projects, the idea was postponed until parties were free… Never an easy task. For Norma, it sadly proved to be an impossible task; she passed away at the age of 82 in 2019.

      As we began to emerge from the pandemic, in early 2022, with the fifteenth anniversary of Hambledon Productions looming ahead, my thoughts were ‘go for gold’; ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ And so I approached Jane Milligan, now a director of Spike Milligan Productions, and John Antrobus. They were both happy for us to revisit the possibility of staging The Bed Sitting Room. Result! Coincidentally, 2022 marks sixty years since the play premiered, and also twenty years since Spike’s passing.

      The evening will star Jeremy Stockwell giving his quite dazzling interpretation of Milligan. I first saw him become Spike in his stage show A Sockful of Custard at the Edinburgh Fringe with Chris Larner, and, together with all the critics, I was amazed by his mimicry and sheer Milligan energy. Jane Milligan, having performed recently in the West End in Magic Goes Wrong, will also be joining us, in a live Q&A session as we salute the Might Milligan.

      Spike Milligan Gala Night will take place at Riverhead Theatre in Louth on Sunday 3 July. Further information and tickets can be found here. More

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      On Broadway, One Show Decides to Keep Masks. No, It’s Not ‘Phantom.’

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      Three days after the Broadway League announced that all 41 theaters would make masks optional starting July 1, one of those theaters has decided to stick with mandatory face coverings.The producers of a starry revival of “American Buffalo,” which is a 1975 drama by David Mamet about three schemers in a junk shop, announced Friday that they would continue to require masks through the scheduled end of the show’s run at Circle in the Square Theater on July 10.That’s only 10 days beyond when Broadway plans to drop its industrywide masking requirement, and it’s just one show, but it suggests that the unanimity among producers and theater owners may not be rock solid.There are several factors that make the “American Buffalo” situation unusual.The play, starring Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne and Darren Criss, is being staged at Broadway’s only theater-in-the-round (it’s actually almost-in-the-round, because the seating doesn’t entirely encircle the stage), which means there are more patrons seated within spitting distance of actors than at other theaters.Also, Circle in the Square, with 751 seats as it is currently configured, is the only remaining Broadway theater that is not operated by a large company or a nonprofit organization, so its decisions are not tied to those of a bigger entity.Rockwell expressed concerns about the end of the masking policy in an interview this week with the New York Times columnist Ginia Bellafante.The show announced the change in policy in a news release, saying that it was “due to the close proximity of the audience to the actors as a result of the intimate size of the theater and the staging in the round.” The production and theater owner did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said of the “American Buffalo” decision, “As the optional mask policy takes effect in July, there may be unique situations which would require the audience, or some of the audience, to be masked.”It is not clear whether the decision will affect other Broadway shows. The vast majority take place in theaters operated by a handful of big landlords who endorsed the mask-optional decision. Broadway’s four nonprofit theater operators, who have been more Covid-cautious, do not have any shows this summer. And summer fare on Broadway is dominated by big musicals, where the audience tends to skew toward tourists, many of whom come from places where masks are long gone; older New York playgoers are scarcer at this time of year (and the volume of shows is lower, too: there are only 27 shows now running on Broadway).After “American Buffalo” closes next month, Circle in the Square is scheduled to be vacant until October, when a new musical called “KPOP” begins previews.Actors’ Equity, the union representing performers and stage managers, has declined to comment on the audience safety protocols, but this week sent an email to its members, previously reported by Deadline, saying, “This decision was made unilaterally, without input from your union or any other, and the unions were only given advance notice a couple of hours before the announcement.”Although the decision was announced by the Broadway League, it was made by theater owners and operators, and they plan to reconsider the protocols monthly. More

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      3 Theaters, 3 Plays, One Cast, All at Once

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      The Crucible Theater in Sheffield, England, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a mind-boggling logistical challenge that also honors a declining industry in the city.SHEFFIELD, England — Visitors to Tudor Square in the center of this northern English city might spot some unusual figures there this week: a woman sprinting through in a neon boilersuit, or a tutu, or a man running with a box of scissors. And if they look like they’re in a hurry to get somewhere, that’s because they are. These are actors, and they have an entrance to make — on a different stage from the one they just left.“Rock/Paper/Scissors,” running through July 2, is a triptych of plays designed to be performed by one cast, at the same time, in three different theaters. Programmed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sheffield’s Crucible Theater, the trilogy unfolds on that playhouse’s 980-seater main stage, a smaller studio below and across the square at the Victorian-era Lyceum.The project’s logistics are mind-boggling. The 14 cast members appear as the same characters across all three shows, and most of them are on one of the stages, most of time — hence those hurried journeys between theaters. Each play has its own director and technical team, while nine stage managers ensure smooth running backstage.The three plays, which offer varying perspectives on a family saga, are designed to work as stand-alone stories, but watching all three in succession reveals densely interwoven plotlines and character arcs. “Rock,” “Paper” and “Scissors” are all set at the same time, on the same day, in almost the same place: across three different spaces in a run-down Sheffield scissor factory. The crumbling location has resonance in a city that once had a rich industrial tradition of producing steel and manufacturing world-class cutlery, including scissors.From left, Guy Rhys, Lucie Shorthouse and Samatha Power rehearsing “Rock/Paper/Scissors” at the Lyceum theater in Sheffield, England.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe plays open after the death of the factory owner, whose will is missing. Each narrative centers on characters with competing claims on the building, and conflicting visions for its future.Chris Bush, who wrote the three plays to celebrate the Crucible Theater’s anniversary, said they were about offering a “perspective shift” across the three generations. “The same world is shared by three different stories, where heroes become villains and villains become heroes,” she said.To make sure the scripts worked for simultaneous performance, Bush planned them out with a series of spreadsheets, timing the entrances and exits by the word count of each scene, she said.Robert Hastie, Sheffield Theaters’ artistic leader and the director for “Paper,” said, “The precision tuning is more complicated than anything I’ve ever done.” Even scheduling rehearsals proved a headache, he added, requiring careful planning with his fellow directors Anthony Lau and Elin Schofield to divide the 14 actors’ time.Backstage during a recent preview performance, an atmosphere of quiet concentration prevailed. If any play were to start running fast, or slow, or to stop for any reason, it would throw all three out of sync. The team of stage managers were all focused on marked-up scripts and color-coded spreadsheets detailing the more than 80 entrances and exits.A large screen in each of the theater’s backstage areas shows all three stages as well as a giant synchronized clock, so any deviations from the plan can be quickly spotted. The stage managers communicate via radios and WhatsApp, and are ready, in the worst-case scenario, to stop all three shows if they have to. (So far, this only happened once in previews, because of a technical fault rather than a timing issue.)The stage manager Andrew Wilcox, center, conferring with colleagues backstage.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNonetheless, the swift entrances and exits — and the knowledge that the cast are having to run across a busy public square to get between the theaters — adds a frisson for both audiences and the actors.One of the cast members, Samantha Power, said she had some entrances “where I am absolutely sprinting across Tudor Square.” She added that this was more of a challenge on a Saturday night, “negotiating all the inebriated people.”Andrew Macbean, another actor in the show, said that during the same journey, “Somebody asked me if I had any spare change.” But mostly, he added, the cast was unfazed. “For us, it’s just one play,” he said. “Three different venues is no different, really, to doing it on three different sets.”Responses to “Rock/Paper/Scissors” have been positive so far, with the shows earning standing ovations and strong reviews. Watching all three plays back-to-back on press day on Wednesday, the performances became a cumulative experience: each new part deepened the audience’s understanding of the characters.The triptych also offers three different answers to a question that is freshly topical after two years of the coronavirus pandemic: What do we do with our empty city center spaces?In “Rock,” presented on the Crucible’s thrust stage, the character of Susie — an aging rocker and the sister of the scissor factory’s deceased owner — puts forward idealistic plans to turn the gritty space into a vibrant new music venue. In “Paper,” at the Lyceum, the owner’s daughter Faye and her wife argue for the most financially lucrative option: selling the building to a developer to turn it into apartments. “Scissors,” in the Studio, is set in a workshop where four young apprentices put the case for maintaining the building as a workshop for hand-making scissors, preserving a local tradition.These arguments will sound familiar to Sheffield residents. Like many British town centers, Sheffield contains many shuttered buildings, including a prominent former department store that city authorities are currently debating how to repurpose. (Options include a soccer museum, bars and restaurants, and housing). The decline of Sheffield’s steel industry since the 1970s has meant that many buildings once used in manufacturing also fell into disuse, although several have been repurposed as street food markets, nightclubs, vintage stores and housing developments.Fifty years ago there were dozens of scissor factories in Sheffield; now, there are just two. One of those that remains, Ernest Wright, lent working machinery to the production, so actors could sharpen real blades during “Scissors.”Hastie said it was “impossible to overestimate how central cutlery is to Sheffield’s sense of self and its sense of pride.” Examining this legacy, as well as considering the future of former industrial spaces, seemed an appropriate subject for a 50th anniversary show at a theater at the city’s heart, he said.“We were very much looking for an idea for our 50th anniversary that had a spirit of adventure and daring,” he said, adding that using the three theater spaces simultaneously fit that bill. “We wanted to see if we’d bitten off more than we could chew.”And have they? “We’re still chewing very hard,” Hastie said.Rock/Paper/ScissorsThrough July 2 at the Crucible, Studio and Lyceum theaters in Sheffield, England; sheffieldtheatres.co.uk.Jabez Sykes and Maia Tamrakar, actors in the production, embracing backstage after an exhausting performance.Mary Turner for The New York Times More

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      The ‘Most Real Richard III There’s Ever Been’

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      The Royal Shakespeare Company has cast a disabled actor to play the “deformed, unfinish’d” king for the first time. The choice has been hailed as a landmark moment.STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, England — A raucous party was underway in one of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s rehearsal rooms this month as the cast of “Richard III” ran through the play’s opening, dancing in a conga line while music blared and balloons bounced off the floor.Off to one side, the future Richard III sneered at the scene. Shakespeare depicted the king as a scheming hunchback who murdered his way to the British throne, and in this imagining of the play, he is personified by the 30-year-old actor Arthur Hughes. In role, Hughes stepped into the middle of the party, veering through the revelers to deliver the play’s famed opening speech: “Now is the winter of our discontent,” he began.As the speech continues, Richard lists the insults he has faced. He is “curtail’d of this fair proportion”; he is “cheated of feature”; he is “deformed, unfinish’d.” As Hughes declaimed each barb, he angrily squeezed a white balloon. Eventually the pressure became too much. The balloon popped.The moment of tension was made even more powerful by Hughes’s own appearance. He has radial dysplasia, meaning he was born with a shorter right arm, his wrist bending into the body and his hand missing a thumb.The first casting by the Royal Shakespeare Company of a disabled actor to play Richard III has been hailed as an advance in British theater. The play opened in Stratford-upon-Avon on Thursday and runs through Oct. 8.“You can see a despot and tyrant,” Hughes said of Richard III, “but also a little boy who hasn’t been loved and someone who’s shunned.”Ellie Kurttz, via Royal Shakespeare CompanyShakespeare used and amplified Richard III’s real-life condition — the king is thought to have had scoliosis or curvature of the spine — to highlight the character’s unsavory nature. (He is described at one point as a “pois’nous bunch-back’d toad.”) According to Gregory Doran, the director of the current adaptation, the casting of Hughes in the role “sends out a big message, just as not casting a disabled actor would have sent out a different message.”Hughes’s casting comes as the frequency of disabled actors earning major roles appears to be growing in British theater. In July, the National Theater will present “All of Us” by Francesca Martinez, an actor and playwright who has cerebral palsy (Martinez said in a telephone interview that the play would feature three disabled actors, including herself). And Liz Carr, who uses a wheelchair, this year won an Olivier Award, Britain’s equivalent of a Tony, for her performance in Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” at the National.In her Olivier acceptance speech, Carr highlighted some persistent problems. “There’s so many fears of risk of employing disabled actors,” she said, but added the award “proves we can do it, we can project, we can fill a stage.”Jack Thorne, the playwright behind “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and an activist for disabled people, said in a telephone interview that there was “definitely a willingness” to expand disabled casting in Britain. The National Theater was a leader, he said, as were six regional theaters behind an initiative called Ramps on the Moon that stages productions led by deaf and disabled actors.Yet there was still a dearth of lead roles in London’s commercial heartland, he said. “There aren’t West End shows with disabled leads,” he added. In discussions about diversity, the issue was routinely forgotten, he said. Theaters should bring in targets to increase participation, he said.The National Theater, for instance, has experimented with aspirational quotas for women and people of color, but not for disabled people. Alastair Coomer, the theater’s head of casting, said in a telephone interview that new targets were being discussed and that he “would not be surprised” if that discrepancy was addressed.Hughes in a Royal Shakespeare Company costume storeroom. “Richard III” plays in the company’s repertoire through Oct. 8.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesHughes, eating potato chips in a break from rehearsal, said he hoped his casting as Richard III “sets the mold for how the industry can change.”Growing up in Aylesbury, a town about 40 miles northwest of London, Hughes said that he had experienced few barriers to pursuing acting. As a child, he said, he was so enthusiastic in drama classes that he was given prime roles, such as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Hughes said that he had read “Richard III” for the first time while looking for speeches to use when auditioning for drama schools. He instantly identified with the role, he added, since the play’s characters view the future king as “not cut out for big parts” because of his looks. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s me,’” Hughes said.After drama school, Hughes did not immediately secure an agent — unlike many of his colleagues. “Voices in my head were going, ‘Are you a risk?’” he said, but those doubts lifted after he secured a role in a production by Graeae, a British theater company that casts deaf and disabled actors. Before then, Hughes said, he felt his appearance “was going to hold me back,” but after being surrounded by other disabled actors, he felt empowered. He even started wearing short sleeves to highlight his limb difference, he added.The Royal Shakespeare Company show is Hughes’s most high-profile casting to date. In May, Doran gave an interview to The Times of London that was headlined: “Able-Bodied Actors Cannot Be Richard III.” In a letter of complaint to that newspaper, Doran said that the headline was misleading. His point, he wrote, was that, although anybody could play the role, a disabled actor could “enhance the performance and impact of the production.”Richard III is often portrayed as an almost comedic bad guy, Hughes said, often with a fake “hump and limp.” While not trying to hide the character’s villainy, he hoped to draw attention to his motivations: “You can see a despot and tyrant,” he said, “but also a little boy who hasn’t been loved and someone who’s shunned and outcast and is underestimated.”Mat Fraser, another disabled actor, who played Richard III in a production in Hull in northern England in 2017, said that the king was often played by older performers who could make the king seem a “withered little twig.” But Hughes is young and muscular — better suited to portraying a monarch who died at age 32 on a battlefield, Fraser said. “We’re going to see the most real Richard III there’s ever been,” he added.Hughes said he was already looking beyond his turn as Richard to other Shakespeare roles, and would love to play Hamlet, and Iago from “Othello.”“I’d like to play a role that’s not specified as disabled,” he said. “Obviously, whichever role I play will be disabled by the very nature of me playing it,” he added. “But that’s not the point.”Richard IIIThrough Oct. 8 at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England; rsc.org.uk. 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      ‘Epiphany’ Review: A Holiday Party, but What Are We Celebrating?

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      In this heady Lincoln Center Theater production, Brian Watkins finds laughs and shivers in a pensive gathering of old friends.I could describe Brian Watkins’s “Epiphany,” which opened Thursday night at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, as an existential dinner-party play. Or a satire of academics, armchair psychologists and the general intelligentsia, always trying to find a common language for our ways of living in the world. It could be called a critique of our modern society of self-interest. A statement on grief. Or a ghost story.I could even call it a kind of poem, making music out of abstractions while traversing the past and the present, the real and the surreal. That this heady work, in a Lincoln Center Theater production directed by Tyne Rafaeli, evades any one definition is a testament to its grand ambitions. In one hour and 50 minutes, “Epiphany” astutely captures a wide swath of ideas without losing its grasp on the hilarious and heartbreaking experience of being a person in the world.On a January evening in a secluded old house in the middle of nowhere, Morkan (Marylouise Burke, perfect as a jittery sexagenarian) hastily prepares for the holiday known as Epiphany, her itinerary packed with drinks, speeches, poems, songs, dancing and a goose feast. Which would be fine if anyone had read the full dossier Morkan sent along beforehand — or if anyone, Morkan included, actually understood what this archaic, forgotten ritual is.Thankfully Gabriel — Morkan’s beloved nephew, a revered writer and public intellectual, and the guest of honor — will be arriving to lead the festivities, and also to explain them. When Gabriel fails to show, instead sending Aran (an ethereal Carmen Zilles) in his place, a night of awkward exchanges, misunderstandings and spirited debates evolves into a dreamlike meditation on mortality.Also attending this vaguely defined soiree are Loren (Colby Minifie, currently in the Amazon series “The Boys”), a sober, vegan 20-something, helping with the preparations; Freddy (C.J. Wilson), a middle-aged alcoholic teacher; Kelly (Heather Burns), a pretentious pianist; Charlie (Francois Battiste), a smartly dressed, self-important lawyer; Sam (Omar Metwally), a pedantic psychiatrist with many opinions; Taylor (David Ryan Smith), his comically snide and heavy-drinking husband; and Ames (the reliably dry-witted Jonathan Hadary), an old friend of Morkan’s and her conspicuously absent sister Julia’s.In a rapid series of processions and introductions, we hear the characters before we see them; they ascend from an unseen lower level and appear in the parlor room of an old house.John Lee Beatty’s antique set design, with the main flight of stairs leading up into an ominous darkness, establishes an unsettling mood, strangely removed from the present day. And Isabella Byrd’s ghostly lighting summons an eerie “Fall of the House of Usher” vibe before illuminating a stunning surprise backdrop: We are watching an evening gathering during a January flurry, snow fitfully descending past the gnarled fingers of tree branches outside the towering windows.Members of the company on the “Epiphany” set, designed by John Lee Beatty with lighting by Isabella Byrd.Jeremy DanielThere’s not much action in “Epiphany,” so the play’s dynamism is all in the controlled chaos of the dialogue: interruptions, overlapping voices, heavy pauses. Watkins (whose plays include “Wyoming” and who created the recent time-loop western series “Outer Range”) effortlessly extracts the humor from the partygoers’ pretensions and posturing, which are just a cover for the insecurities they feel in the modern world — and in their own lives.Absurd developments offer punctuation: One character makes inappropriate bathroom jokes, another performs a “purposefully untitled” piano composition, and after one of the guests suffers a dinnertime injury, the others debate which alcohol to use to sterilize the wound.While Watkins leans into scorn for the insufferable urbanites one-upping one another, he seems to treasure the more introspective figures of Morkan and Ames. And there is plenty of beauty in the play’s abstractions; at its heart “Epiphany” is a love letter to the indefinable and unnameable.“As soon as you try and define love as an empirical thing you’ve suddenly lost the essence of love itself,” Aran says at one point in the night. “It’s bigger than our connotations.” And in a rare moment of drunken insight, Freddy recalls how he heard a poet once explain how the creative process is an act of “creating time … that the space between seconds and minutes actually like widens and deepens … as if eternity was inhabiting you.”Empiricism, existentialism, solipsism — “Epiphany” sends a lot of -isms into space, just to laugh at the volley. (“Well now we’re just saying words,” Ames points out.) Occasionally the play seems to fall down the rabbit hole of its own philosophical musings, but “Epiphany” never remains there too long; the humor, which works at several different registers, from barbed irony to tragicomic lampoonery to wacky physical comedy, reins in the play’s haughtier inclinations.Speaking of haughty — audiences may or may not catch the specter of another work within “Epiphany,” James Joyce’s “The Dead,” from his collection “Dubliners.” “Epiphany,” which first premiered in Ireland in 2019, in a production from the renowned Druid Theater Company, replicates some of the characters’ relationships and exchanges in “The Dead,” uses many of the same character names and echoes the general existential theme.References and snippets of the original text may fly right past anyone unfamiliar with “The Dead,” or anyone who hasn’t picked up “Dubliners” since college. No matter. There’s more than enough in “Epiphany” for it to stand on its own. See it and ruminate; this is a play “bigger than our connotations.”EpiphanyThrough July 24 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. More