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      ‘Inspired by True Events’ Review: True Crime Thriller Riddled With Clichés

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      The actor Ryan Spahn makes his Off Broadway playwriting debut with an immersive, psychologically shallow dark comedy.In May 2010, Daniel Wozniak, an actor performing in a production of the musical “Nine” at the Liberty Theater in Los Alamitos, Calif., killed two people. He dismembered the body of one of his victims, and kept a portion of it at another local theater. News of the heinous acts sent shock waves through the performing arts community, and more recently led the actor Ryan Spahn to write “Inspired by True Events,” an Out of the Box Theatrics production now running at Theater 154 in the West Village.This immersive show wisely plays off our modern-day fascination with true crime, but, frustratingly, it’s missing the elements that keep the genre compelling: a clear mapping of intimate relationships, a psychological analysis of motive and a captivating villain.“Inspired by True Events” begins with the stage manager, Mary (Dana Scurlock), of Uptown Theater — the kind of scrappy local company that programs “A Christmas Carol” every winter to offset the cost of more adventurous work during other seasons — entering a green room littered with grease-stained pizza boxes and empty bottles of vodka (the scenic design is by Lindsay G. Fuori), evidence of the previous night’s opening festivities.We’re all backstage with Mary, inside the real green room of Theater 154. (The building’s traditional theater is cleverly used too.) The backstage environment, made even more intimate by the production’s 35-seat audience cap, adds multisensory layers to the show. When Mary puts on a fresh pot of coffee in anticipation of her haggard cast — Colin (Jack DiFalco), Eileen (Mallory Portnoy) and Robert (Lou Liberatore) — we not only smell the pungent brew but also the gurgling of the coffee maker cuts into the dialogue. The sound of the water roiling effectively hints at something more sinister to come.Spahn and the director, Knud Adams, have a couple of these adrenaline-inducing tricks up their sleeves, including offstage thuds and the rustling of mice gnawing on something in the vents (sound design by Peter Mills Weiss). But the show is at its best when it lets the green room serve as a microcosm for these characters’ anxieties: Colin’s breakup with his girlfriend, Claire; Eileen’s stress over her mother being in the audience; and Robert’s laments about his horrible day. These interesting bits of character development have a meta impact, influencing how the Uptown players are preparing for their performance, and how we, the audience, come to view the Uptown players. These moments prove Spahn’s ability to weave personality into the high-concept narrative fabric, so it’s mind-boggling that he doesn’t do it more frequently.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Pre-Existing Condition,’ a Character Isn’t Defined by Abuse, or One Actress

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      Stars like Edie Falco and Deirdre O’Connell bring a communal quality to Marin Ireland’s play about the aftermath of domestic violence.Most actors will tell you that when they take on a role, they want to own it. If it’s a classic or a play based on a movie, they like to say that they avoid watching earlier performances so they can go in free of preconceptions.The women taking turns playing A, the central character in Marin Ireland’s new play “Pre-Existing Condition,” went for a communal quality. “When you’re seeing a person perform, it has the DNA of all the other people because we’ve watched each other,” the director and actress Maria Dizzia said.Tavi Gevinson, who starts her stint as A on July 23, said, “I think it definitely helps eliminate this illusion that there is some ideal performance that you’re trying to unlock and do an imitation of — it’s something that you’re co-creating with the piece every night.”The show, whose run at the Connelly Theater Upstairs was just extended through Aug. 17, is structured as a series of brief vignettes involving A, who has endured domestic violence. In addition to Dizzia and Gevinson, the past, present and upcoming actresses playing A include Tatiana Maslany, Julia Chan, Deirdre O’Connell and Edie Falco, who recently joined the cast.In the aftermath of the breakup with the man who hit her, A is seen interacting with different people in her life: her mother, the leaders of a support group, a lawyer, prospective dates, friends — all played by Greg Keller, Sarah Steele and Dael Orlandersmith, who appear at every show.Greg Keller and Julia Chan in the play, which has been in development for about 12 years. Emilio MadridWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How a Ballroom ‘Cats,’ a Gay Kiss and a Black Marine Reclaimed Old Musicals

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      How a Black lieutenant, a gay kiss and a catless ballroom are helping reclaim Broadway classics.Ten years ago, I cringed through an Encores! performance of one of the most odious musicals I’d ever seen. That’s not to throw shade on Encores!, the concert series that dredges up both diamonds and dirt from the musical theater dustbin. But “Irma La Douce,” a 1960 Broadway hit about jolly prostitutes and the men who keep them, was perhaps a dredge too far. Did I mention that it involved penguins?In a way, it was a relief that the show was so bad: There was nothing to regret in consigning it to my personal catalog of cancellation.Most of the most offensive musicals of the past are like that, providing their own incontrovertible arguments against revival, except as carefully labeled historical exhibits in some deep-future Encores! season.On the other hand, the best vintage musicals need no excuses. They should be performed as long as enough people want to see them, and perhaps even longer, until the time is right again.But between the disposables and the treasurables lies a range of works, middling to excellent, that can still be powerful despite certain problems. Often the problems arise from ways of looking at race and gender that, however progressive in their day, do not meet contemporary expectations. Who, if anyone, has the right perspective to address such works most authentically?A good answer might start with artists who represent the group that’s objectionably depicted (or gratuitously ignored) in the show itself. And though I’m not a proponent of narrow identity matching, which can shrink a capacious story to a hall of mirrors with just one person inside, I’ve seen several examples recently in which the story is instead expanded. This happens when directors and performers from the communities in question thoughtfully reappropriate material that was once appropriated from them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Review: Imelda Staunton Has the Wow, Wow, Wow Factor

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      The veteran British actress shines in a new revival that is the musical theater highlight of the West End summer.Love affairs in the theater take different forms — between characters onstage, of course, but also between a performer and the public.In a new London revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” the leading lady, Imelda Staunton, grips the audience from the beginning and holds them in a shared embrace throughout. Ths show is the musical theater event of the West End summer, running at the London Palladium, through Sept. 14.“Hello, Dolly!” has always been a star vehicle. Carol Channing first played the matchmaking Dolly Gallagher Levi on Broadway in 1964 and made it her signature part, returning to the role of the deliciously meddlesome widow throughout her storied career. The others to take it on have included Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler and, on film, Barbra Streisand. This production, indeed, owes quite a bit to the 1969 movie, the choice of opening song (“Just Leave Everything to Me”) included.But Staunton — who on Wednesday received an Emmy nomination for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown” — is probably the only English performer who can command as much respect in the role as those American ladies. She occupies a special place in British playgoers’ hearts, which this production, directed by Dominic Cooke’, taps into directly. Her acquaintance with the classics — Albee, Chekhov, Sondheim — lends a gravity to the performance, so that we understand Dolly as a fully realized person, pain and all, and not just a figure of fun.Staunton plays Dolly Gallagher Levi, a widow who has taken on the role of matchmaker in her community.Manuel HarlanWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At ‘Slave Play’ in London, a ‘Black Out’ Night Emerges From Controversy

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      Critics slammed the idea of “restricting audiences on the basis of race,” but at a recent performance, Black spectators praised producers for creating a safe space.Elaine Grant was pleased with the scene unfolding outside the Noël Coward Theater in London on Wednesday night.Unlike most nights at the theater in the West End, there was a sea of majority Black faces laughing and jovially chatting in a line that snaked around the block before a performance of Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play.”Grant, who works in the arts, had organized a group of more than 100 people, mostly Black women, to see the show. “A lot of the people that I work with don’t necessarily go to the theater a lot,” she said, and so it was important for them to be in a space where they could feel safe experiencing a range of emotion.This was a “Black Out” performance, an idea Harris first announced for his play’s Broadway 2019 run, in which he invites Black audience members to attend a specific performance, to experience and discuss art away from the white gaze. Joaquina Kalukango, an actress in the show’s New York run, told the Times in 2020 that she felt on those nights that she was performing to an audience “that fully understood the story and understood where these characters were coming from.”In London, the mood on the theater steps was upbeat and there seemed little concern that when this “Slave Play” transfer — including two Black Out performances — was announced in February, it drew the wrath of some British commentators, and got caught up in ongoing debates over race in British cultural institutions. Even the office of the prime minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, chimed in, saying, “restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive.”Harris responded to the widespread criticism on social media, addressing what he called a “moral panic” among parts of the British public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kennedy Center Honorees Include Francis Ford Coppola and the Apollo

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      The renowned Harlem theater will be the first institution to receive the honor. Artists being recognized are Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval and the Grateful Dead.When Bonnie Raitt heard she had been chosen as a Kennedy Center honoree, she kept asking her manager: Are they sure?Raitt, whose song “Just Like That …” beat out higher-charting pop acts last year to win the Grammy for song of the year, said the honor was a surprise because after years of recognition mostly confined to blues and Americana spaces, she did not consider herself a mainstream artist.“I don’t live by the validation of either commercial success or getting awards,” Raitt, 74, said. “But because this is such an esteemed weekend and event and process, I don’t think there will ever be anything that I receive that is as important.”“I don’t think there will ever be anything that I receive that is as important,” Bonnie Raitt said of the Kennedy Center Honors.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesRaitt will receive a lifetime artistic achievement award at the 47th Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 8 along with the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the beloved rock band the Grateful Dead, the Cuban American jazz trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval and the Harlem landmark the Apollo Theater.The Kennedy Center Honors will be broadcast on Dec. 23 by CBS and streamed on Paramount Plus.In the past, entities such as “Sesame Street” and “Hamilton,” have been honored, but the Apollo will be the first institution to be recognized. The theater is renowned for its history as a debut venue for many Black performers at its famed amateur nights, including Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Does a Dressing Room Get Into Character?

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      As a child, the actor Krysta Rodriguez would mentally rearrange unfamiliar rooms as a way of soothing herself. The fixation followed her everywhere, from friends’ houses to historical sites. She remembers visiting a clothing store in Paris with her family when she was 11 and obsessing over where she would put a bed if she lived there. “As I’m thinking about it, it was probably a control issue,” she says. “I immediately try to figure out what a space wants to be. Is it a midcentury house that got renovated in the ’90s with all this incorrect architecture? I clear it away.”Over the past two decades or so, Rodriguez, 39, has mostly channeled this aesthetic intensity into her character work, for roles on both the stage and screen (including a memorable turn as Liza Minnelli in the 2021 Netflix series “Halston”). In 2022, while appearing as Jean-Michel Basquiat’s fictional girlfriend in the Broadway play “The Collaboration,” she arranged her dressing room to look like a messy artist’s loft, filled with the kind of ratty ’70s furniture that her character would have grabbed from the streets of the East Village in the ’80s. She says the actor Nathan Lane, with whom she co-starred in “The Addams Family” musical in 2010, helped her realize dressing rooms could be taken seriously when he turned his into an extravagant lounge, complete with a full bar. She also credits the actor Michael Cerveris, who painted his walls blood red and brought in a vintage barber’s chair while starring in a 2006 revival of “Sweeney Todd.” “I try to use these spaces as a gateway,” Rodriguez says of her own dressing rooms. “I want to have some sense of the character, even if it’s not my personal style.”Nestled among framed photos of Jordan’s friends and family are mementos from previous performances, including a bobblehead doll of his character on the TV series “Supergirl.”Blaine DavisIn 2020, when acting work slowed during the pandemic, she turned her interest in interior design into a full-fledged business, renovating the homes of clients in her native Orange County, Calif., and beyond. But it wasn’t until this spring that Rodriguez decorated a dressing room for another actor. When her friend Jeremy Jordan was preparing for his leading role in the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” he asked Rodriguez to lend her design expertise. She took inspiration from the subtle details of the character’s Jazz Age world rather than creating what she calls a “Party City Art Deco theme.” Jordan’s only request was that she make the windowless room, deep within the Broadway Theater, feel cozy. Rodriguez decided to reimagine the space as a sunroom in Jay Gatsby’s Long Island mansion, with a soothing watercolor wallpaper of a Japanese maple tree, to reflect the era’s affinity for Japonisme, and a marine blue love seat whose tropical plant print pillows match a nearby bird of paradise.Jordan’s Jazz Age costumes. Linda Cho won the Tony Award for best costume design for her work on the production.Blaine DavisRodriguez sourced period photographs online to help Jordan get into character. Next to a bottle of Buchanan’s whisky — a reference to Gatsby’s love interest in the story, Daisy Buchanan — is a framed image of a champagne tower similar to one featured in the production.Blaine DavisWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ford and Mellon Foundations Name 2024 Disability Futures Fellows

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      The 20 recipients, including a Broadway composer, a Marvel video game voice actress and a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, are the initiative’s final cohort.The Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations on Wednesday named the 2024 Disability Futures Fellows — the latest class of disabled writers, filmmakers, musicians and other creative artists who will receive unrestricted $50,000 awards.This year’s recipients include Gaelynn Lea, a folk artist and disability rights activist; Natasha Ofili, an actress and writer who in 2020 became one of the first Black deaf actors to portray a video game character — Hailey Cooper — in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales; Warren Snipe, a.k.a. Wawa, a deaf rapper and actor who performed in sign language at the 2022 Super Bowl; and Kay Ulanday Barrett, a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist whose work focuses on queer, transgender people of color.Lea said she almost missed an email telling her she got the award. “Because the email said, ‘We’re excited to offer you $50,000,’ it went to my spam,” Lea, 40, said in an interview. (She later received a follow-up email.)“It’s very validating that I’m doing this stuff I really care about, and now it’s being recognized,” added Lea, who won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, and composed and performed original music for a Broadway production of “Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga. Lea plans to use the award to fund the writing of a memoir to be published next year.The initiative, which is administered by United States Artists, named its inaugural class of fellows in 2020, with the goal of increasing the visibility of disabled artists and elevating their voices. (About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) The second class was announced in 2022, and this is the last cohort in the program. The fellowship supports people at all stages of their careers.Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement that the program reflected the foundation’s support of the “work, experiences and visions of disabled artists — both in their individual practices and in the collective power they wield in the arts at large.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More