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      ‘Last Ward’ Review: Ashes to Ashes, Dirt to Dirt

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      Yaa Samar! Dance Theater’s production at Gibney is an uncommonly deft combination of dance and verbal theater.Picture a standard, sterile hospital room. From behind a cabinet, an arm snakes out, followed by the rest of the body — a man with serpentine moves who slinks around and creeps under the bed. Immediately, the death implicit in the setting has become visible, corporeal, though still metaphorical, in a particular way. The man suggesting death is a dancer.“Last Ward,” which Yaa Samar! Dance Theater premiered on Thursday at the Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, is a dance work, with choreography by the company’s artistic director, Samar Haddad King. But it’s a play, too, with poetic text by Amir Nizar Zuabi, who also directs the 65-minute production. The uncommonly deft combination of dance and verbal theater heightens the impact of what might sound like a cliché: a profound meditation on life and death.At the center is a patient, played by the accomplished Palestinian actor Khalifa Natour. He and a woman who appears to be his wife (Yukari Osaka) look bewildered as they enter the hubbub of the hospital. Dancers in scrubs skip around and gesture officiously, doing a stylized version of the inscrutable activity that any patient might recognize.The stylization brings out the absurdity, and as Natour receives plant-bearing guests, the physical comedy continues. Two visitors who might be his grown children squabble over proximity to his bed. Later, the medicine he’s given seems to induce hallucinations. A friend (the lithe Mohammed Smahneh, who also plays the serpentine figure at the start) appears to come undone, his body parts all going in different directions.But the stakes remain high, as is confirmed when Natour — who does almost all of the talking, in Arabic, with English supertitles clearly projected onto the back wall — recounts the moment when his doctor gave him his diagnosis.His condition is incurable. Unnamed, it sounds like cancer: “the same power that created life” now “gone wild.” Zuabi’s text and Natour’s understated performance give the disease a terrible beauty: “My cells divide and divide and divide.”This mix of beauty and the awful truth is the text’s power, made more affecting by quotidian details, as when Natour lists “Things You Will Do After I’m Gone.” Earlier, he tells the boyhood story of buying a fish in a plastic bag. On his way home, bullies snatch the bag and toss it to one another. “I could see my fish swimming calmly in midair,” he says, before the bag is dropped and he watches as the fish’s gills open and close and go still — his first understanding of death.Death is all around him in the hospital, of course. The production reminds us of this when dancers wielding IV bags emerge during his fish story. His room opens to a hallway at the rear, and periodically an orderly wheels by with a body on a gurney.And then there is the dirt. It first appears as the food he’s given, an oddity you might not initially notice. But soon dirt is spilling everywhere, despite the desperate efforts of his wife to tidy it up or the semi-comic cleaning routines of staff members (to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” mixed into an effective electronic score by King). As a theatrical metaphor, the dirt is not subtle. It’s strong.The proliferation of dirt summons a memory of Natour’s character helping to bury his grandmother when he was 15. He remembers thinking of her not as the old woman she had become but as the desirable girl she once was, a thought he acts out by shoveling dirt onto a dancer embodying feminine allure. After burying his grandmother, he says, he went behind the house with his girlfriend, undressed and fell to the ground with her “again and again and again.”The repetition of those words echoes the cells that “divide and divide and divide,” the force that will kill him. It’s the “swirl of life” that will fill the void he leaves, a force that King’s choreography gives form to in a swirl of dancers. The inextricable connection between life and death is what “Last Ward” understands. The connection between words and dance, too.Last WardThrough May 12 at Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, Manhattan; gibneydance.org More

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      Equity Drops ‘Waitress’ Unionization Effort and Files Grievance

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      The union said it was withdrawing the petition because the producers of the nonunion tour now plan to end its run in June.Actors’ Equity, the union representing performers and stage managers, has withdrawn its attempt to organize a touring production of “Waitress,” and instead has filed a grievance against the musical’s producers.The union last month filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board, seeking an election to represent the nonunion touring cast and stage managers, saying they were doing the same work as those working for a touring production of the same show, but being paid far less.But on Thursday the union said it was withdrawing the petition because the producers of the nonunion tour said they were ending its run in June, which is too soon for the election process to take place. The union said the tour had previously planned performances into next year.The union said that it had filed a grievance against the musical’s licensors, Barry and Fran Weissler and the National Artists Management Company (NAMCO), for “double-breasting” — simultaneously running union and non-union operations.A “Waitress” spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      Interview: Giggles and Sex, What More Is There?

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      Hannah Baker on Banter Jar

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      Here at ET we have all ages covered. And we admit, some of us older members are, occasionally, jealous of those youngsters in our midst who are just embarking on their journey into adulthood. So when we get invites to shows that tell us the show is “a one-woman play about growing up. About sex and giggles” our first thought is “damn these kids”. Then we read on and find “self-harm and busking… For falling in love. And for working out how to love that person when their demons keep telling you to f*** off. Why is it always the kindest people that’re the saddest?” and suddenly we remember being in your 20s isn’t always a bed of roses, it’s full of its own unique difficulties.

      So, having got over the fact Hannh Baker, is clearly one of those youngsters, it is also her show Banter Jar, promising all those things. It seemed like a good time to sit down with Hannah and find out about the play and remind ourselves that life can be tough whatever age you are. But that along the way, sex and giggles is what it is prehaps all about really.

      Your show is about growing up and all it entails; how much comes from personal experience then?

      When I began writing, it was all personal experience. But as the script developed names changed, characters merged, story lines developed and it morphed into the show I have now – a jumble of both experience and new writing.

      Clearly as well as containing plenty of the promised giggles, you tackle some serious topics as well in the play, what can you tell us about them?

      For me, Banter Jar is about a whole range of things mixed together. So there’s not one particular issue that it’s ‘about’. Having said that, I do touch on happiness and love, and finding a way through mental health issues. So if people are looking for a theme there’s certainly something they can latch on to! The mental health issues do bring a seriousness to the story, but they’re also normal, and that’s how they’re treated within the play. But the characters hopefully are not defined by their mental health.

      Are these themes ones you feel are common amongst 20-somethings? Or are you exploring the more serious elements of mental health?

      Again, it’s a mixture. Self-harm and depression are very common in my generation, and so it doesn’t feel such a big deal to talk about it. I also talk about psychosis (a rarer condition) and the responsibility and control (or lack thereof) of another person’s life  – not to say that’s totally uncommon amongst 20-somethings.

      The show includes music and you play the guitar, was music your entry into the theatre then? Have you done some busking as the show suggests?

      I have! Music has always been a huge part of my life. I grew up busking in Coventry town centre, outside Poundland, as I am doing in the play. I went to drama school to study an Actor Musicianship course, so yes music was in part my way into theatre.

      You’re playing at the Lion and Unicorn, what has the venue offer you in terms of support and guidance?

      David Brady, Artistic Director (and also from Coventry), has been a huge help! He expressed interest in my script when I was early days writing it, and has been incredibly encouraging and kind whilst bringing the show to the Lion and Unicorn.

      And after this run, is that the end of the road for Banter Jar, or is this just the beginning of its journey?

      These five days are the longest run I’ll have done of it. So I’m waiting to hear what people think! I certainly hope that this is just the beginning.

      Our thanks to Hannah for her time to chat to us. Banter Jar plays at Lion and Unicorn between 10 and 14 May. Further information and bookings can be found here. More

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      A Cheat Sheet for Moonbug Shows

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      Getting to know four Moonbug shows your kids may already know all too well.Here’s a cheat sheet for perplexed adults to some of the most popular children’s programs on earth, created and marketed by the London-based Moonbug Entertainment.CoComelonThe company’s monster ratings flagship features cartoon tykes singing and dancing while they take improbable joy in tasks not typically considered joyful, like brushing your teeth, eating vegetables or learning about colors. Plus nursery rhymes.Target audience 1 to 3 years oldSample lyric “We’ll find every color when we look around/This is red! This is orange! Look at what we found!” (from “Learning Colors Song.”)Little Baby BumLife lessons and musical adventures built around a cartoon girl named Mia and her friends, which include anthropomorphized farm animals. Plus nursery rhymes.Target audience Infancy to 2 years oldSample lyric “When you’re sick in bed and feeling oh so blue/I will help you get to feeling better soon,” Mia sings to the melody from “If You’re Happy and You Know It” as she brings food to a bedridden cow in “The “Kindness Song!”The title character in “Blippi,” one of Moonbug’s few live-action shows.Moonbug EntertainmentBlippiA rare live-action Moonbug offering, Blippi is a grinning, endlessly enthusiastic fellow played by two actors, one of whom is the character’s creator, Stevin John. Blippi has orange glasses, orange suspenders, an orange bow tie and a gleeful fascination with raspberries, dental hygiene, aquariums, the color blue and countless other subjects. Occasional nursery rhymes.Target audience 2 to 6 years oldSample lyric “Colorful balloons are all around/Don’t pop ‘em, they’ll make a loud sound.” (from “Colorful Balloons Song.”)A cast of characters help keep things growing on an “urban micro farm” in “Lellobee City Farm.” Moonbug EntertainmentLellobee City FarmSet on Grandma Mei’s “urban micro farm,” as it says on the Moonbug website, “Lellobee” stars a recurring cast of kids and animals. This time the singing and dancing celebrates slightly more grown up pleasures, like riding a bike, and slightly more evolved lessons, like the inevitability of accidents. And yes, there are nursery rhymes.Target audience 2 to 5 years oldSample lyric “Yeah, I love to ride my bike/I can ride whenever I like.” (from “You Can Ride a Bike!”) More

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      On European Stages, Myths and Memories Merge

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      New productions by the theater titans Krzysztof Warlikowski and Frank Castorf play games with ancient Greek folklore and modern history.STUTTGART, Germany — Perhaps no theater director working today is more haunted by memory than Krzysztof Warlikowski.To portray its tortuous mechanisms, the Polish Warlikowski favors enigmas and fragmented narratives over straightforward answers. During the past 20 years, this has helped make him one of Europe’s most acclaimed and distinctive directors. In addition to his productions for the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, which he founded in 2008, Warlikowski also stages works for many of Europe’s leading drama and opera festivals.In his latest production, “Odyssey. A Story for Hollywood,” he takes the viewer on a kaleidoscopic journey from Homer to the Holocaust to Tinseltown, telling the story of a Jewish woman who risks her life during World War II to search for her deported husband. She is portrayed both as a latter-day Odysseus and as Penelope: the wily and weary adventurer in search of his elusive homeland, and the faithful, patient wife tending the hearth.Loosely inspired by “Chasing the King of Hearts,” a 2006 novel by the Polish author Hanna Krall, the production is an epic web of associations brought to life on Malgorzata Szczesniak’s handsome and versatile set, whose darkly industrial components stand in for interrogation chambers and waiting rooms.History, mythology and philosophy, and pop and high culture, rub shoulders in a four-hour production that is consistently absorbing even if you’re not always sure what it means. (An international coproduction with Nowy Teatr, “Odyssey” was recently performed at the Schauspiel Stuttgart theater here and will tour to Paris later this month.)Izolda Regensberg, the protagonist of Krall’s short novel, is convinced that her life as a survival artist would make a great Hollywood film. The play’s opening scenes, set in war-torn Europe and shortly afterward, show Regensberg navigating a film-noir landscape of violence and menace. A giant cage wheeled repeatedly across the stage heightens the sense of claustrophobia.From there, we’re whisked to Los Angeles, where a much older Regensberg is meeting with the director Roman Polanski, the film producer Robert Evans and Elizabeth Taylor, who is set to play Regensberg in a film. The Polish actors perform the scene in English with exaggerated American accents that heighten the vulgarity and ignorance of their backroom talk.That sendup of Hollywood cluelessness is rebutted by the French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary, “Shoah,” a nine-hour oral history of the Holocaust that is a milestone in the history of cinema, to which Warlikowski turns later in the evening. A screen lowers and we watch a famous excerpt from the movie in which Lanzmann interviews Abraham Bomba, a barber living in Israel who once cut the hair of Jewish women destined for the gas chambers at Treblinka. Bomba’s wrenching testimony contrasts sharply with a showy test reel we see during Regensberg’s meeting with Polanski — a spot-on parody of Hollywood Holocaust schlock in which a handsome Gestapo officer tortures and arouses his interrogation victim by playing Wagner on the piano.Malgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik as Hannah Arendt and Roman Gancarczyk as Martin Heidegger in “Odyssey. A Story for Hollywood.”Magda HueckelIn “Odyssey,” Warlikowski sifts through many of the same tropes as Lanzmann’s film, rummaging around in trauma and memory while sifting through the ethical and aesthetic implications of representing the Holocaust. At times, Warlikowski’s associative and open-ended approach leads the production in unusual directions and to unexpected places.At one point, the scene abruptly shifts to the Black Forest in 1950, where Hannah Arendt is picnicking with Martin Heidegger. As the German philosophers (and former lovers) struggle to reconcile — Heidegger remains defiant about his support of the Nazi regime — a pushy, camera-toting tourist (possibly a visitor from the future) pesters them with questions. The grim trajectory of the play is often speckled with such surreal and humorous details.For the production’s finale, Warlikowski turns to the Coen brothers by faithfully re-creating the prologue to their 2009 film, “A Serious Man.” In that atmospheric short, a Yiddish horror-comedy sketch seemingly disconnected from the rest of the film, a pious couple in a 19th-century shtetl are visited by a dybbuk (an evil spirit in Jewish folklore) who possesses the body of dead rabbi.This final scene is a jarring contrast to the “Shoah” material that directly precedes it and concludes this sprawling production on a curiously muted note. Yet the subject of existential homelessness is the connective tissue that unites “Odyssey’s” various strands.The intersection of personal and communal trauma told through one woman’s eyes is also the theme of Irina Kastrinidis’s dramatic monologue, “Schwarzes Meer” (“Black Sea”), whose world premiere at the Landestheater Niederösterreich, in St. Pölten, Austria, was directed by the German theater legend Frank Castorf. It’s a surprising production, not least because Castorf, whose fame rests on his deconstructive approach to literary classics, is not exactly known for his sensitive portrayals of female protagonists.Julia Kreusch, left, and Mikis Kastrinidis in Irina Kastrinidis’s “Schwarzes Meer,” directed by Frank Castorf.Alexi PelekanosIn “Schwarzes Meer,” Kastrinidis, a former actress in Castorf’s troupe when he led the Berlin Volksbühne (she is also the director’s ex-girlfriend), has fused Greek myths with the history of her more recent ancestors: Pontic Greeks, living in what is now Turkey, who were forcibly expelled in the 1920s. Her monologue — a stilted and nonlinear oration in heightened and, at times, archaic language — is delivered by the German actress Julia Kreusch, whose physically impassioned immersion in the text seems to elevate it. Kastrinidis’s text mixes quotidian, even banal, observations with paeans to the Argonauts and passages in which Penelope seems to fuse with pop icons like Jane Birkin. The expulsion and murder of Kastrinidis’s forebears hovers in the background. And as the first-person narration shuttles among Paris, Athens, Berlin and Zurich, Kastrinidis suggests a continuity of exile and inherited trauma and memory that explains her own hallucinogenic sense of homesickness.Perhaps to safeguard against monotony, Castorf adds two characters who don’t appear in Kastrinidis’s text, including one played by his 12-year-old son, Mikis Kastrinidis, whose spirited performance alternates between adorable and irritating. Sharing the stage with Kreusch (and occasionally a real goat), he repeatedly reminds the audience that he’s acting in his parents’ play by talking to his mom on the telephone and cracking jokes about how old his dad is.This chamber staging of a brand-new work is a change of pace for Castorf, who is now 70. His classic productions, tour de force theatrical marathons, took extreme liberties with their source materials and were frequently exhausting for actors and audiences. Kreusch certainly gets a workout in “Schwarzes Meer,” but, aside from that, there are surprisingly few hallmarks of Castorf’s style.Most surprising, it is, by and large, faithful to Kastrinidis’s text, as if the onetime enfant terrible decided it would be inappropriate to impose his ego onto his former lover’s personal and poetic cri de coeur.Like “Odyssey,” “Schwarzes Meer” is ultimately an artistic excavation of the theater of memory. In the associative games they play with Greek mythology and modern European history, both of these striking new productions suggest that dislocation and exile are fundamental to the modern human condition.Odyssey. A Story for Hollywood. Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. On tour at the Théâtre National La Colline, in Paris, May 12-21; Nowy Tear, in Warsaw, June 2-5.Schwarzes Meer. Directed by Frank Castorf. Landestheater Niederösterreich. May 5 and Sept. 24. More

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      Interview: How To Fill A Space Like The Space

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      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews, Podcasts, Runn Radio interview

      4 May 2022

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      Adam Hemming on running The Space Arts Centre

      This week‘s guest on our Runn Radio show was Adam Hemming, the Artistic Director of The Space Arts Centre. Adam has worked at the Space for 18 years, so has a strong record of supporting London’s fringe theatre scene. It’s a venue we love reviewing at, due to its range of shows and risk taking that can result in some amazing surprises in their shows.

      Adam hosts two of his own podcasts, which we can highly recommend. They are:

      Space Chats features interviews with shows that are performing at The Space. You can find the series on Spotify here.

      TV DNA is a podcast, as the title suggests, that talks about TV. You can find that on Spotify here. More

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      ‘Wish You Were Here’ Review: The Saga of Female Friendship

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      Sanaz Toossi’s new play follows a group of five women in Iran as they and their friendships change against the backdrop of marriages and revolution.The five Iranian women of “Wish You Were Here,” which opened on Tuesday night at Playwrights Horizons, joke about sex and their bodies. They file one another’s toenails and lick their cheeks with a disarming degree of comfort. And they show off their psychic connections by playing rounds of “What am I thinking?”Yet these friends can also be vicious, mocking one another with the targeted hits of a loved one who knows where to stick the knife.The playwright Sanaz Toossi drops in on this group in 10 scenes — one for almost every year from 1978 to 1991, a period encompassing the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the country’s steps toward economic stability. Pushing that upheaval somewhat awkwardly to the background, Toossi focuses instead on the women and how their relationships to one another — and to themselves — change with marriages, deaths and sudden departures. Their friendship is its own saga of constantly fluctuating degrees of intimacy and friction.We meet the women at around 20 years old, all preparing for a wedding in a living room in Karaj, Iran: Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) is the bride, wearing a snowy-white dune of lace and tulle, “big in a way that sort of feels humiliating,” according to the neurotic Shideh (Artemis Pebdani). Rana (Nazanin Nour), a rambunctious firecracker still dressed in her red silk pajamas, promises never to get married or have kids. Same goes for the churlish, eye-rolling Nazanin (Marjan Neshat), who’s aiming for an engineering degree. Zari (Nikki Massoud), carelessly reposed over a very 1970s floral couch, gives the impression of a naïve youth. These women taunt and prod one another, their insecurities and fears often colliding like bumper cars at a carnival.Though the pure Salme, who faithfully prays for what she believes is the best for her friends — a husband and children for Nazanin, admission into an American medical school for Shideh — seems like she’ll be our main protagonist in the beginning, that’s quickly shown to not be the case. Nazanin becomes the anchor of every scene, even as the other women enter and exit, though, structurally, the play hadn’t previously indicated that would be the case.Gaye Taylor Upchurch’s direction tries to bring out the color of these women’s personalities but collides with the limits of the script, which, squeezing 13 years into a 100-minute run, struggles to focus its lens and communicate the subtle dynamics among the friends. The characters lack context, beyond the very occasional mention of a fiancé or child, and so their actions — which they always make outside of the isolation of this one living room — lack stakes. The sequence of marriages and the not-so-distant sirens of war turn up as transparent markers of progress, but they never believably penetrate the tiny bubble of time and space where these characters live.Arnulfo Maldonado opts for a kitschy set of a living room with patterned rugs, pink and beige walls and ornate Iranian furniture, though the stage remains oddly static even as the production moves through different living rooms across 13 years of different fashions, as beautifully captured in Sarah Laux’s costume design, from the pastry-pouf wedding dress and flirty bridesmaids dresses of the ’70s to a denim maxi skirt in the ’80s. Reza Behjat’s lighting design gracefully captures the sunrises and sunsets of the passing years.Still, each of the actresses gives an expert performance. Pebdani, who has played one of my favorite recurring characters on the comedy series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” is just as funny here as Shideh, though she has minimal scenes and little to work with. Nour and Radja bring appropriate exuberance and softness, respectively, to their characters, and in Zari, Massoud presents an arc from guilelessness to self-awareness and maturity.Reuniting for Nazanin’s wedding, from left: Shideh (Pebdani), Salme (Radja) and Neshat (Nazanin). Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNeshat, who provided profoundly expansive performances in another recent Playwrights production, “Selling Kabul,” and as the complexly drawn Toefl teacher in “English,” continues her streak of rich, marrow-deep character portrayals. With each of her characters, Nazarin included, Neshat gradually sheds their armors of self-possession and strength, their reserve and resolve, to reveal how fragile, scared and insecure they truly are. In other words, Neshat transforms empathy into a dramatic act we witness, in real time, on the stage.With her last produced work, the Atlantic and Roundabout theater companies’ scintillating production of “English” from February, Toossi accomplished wonders with her language; she offered an examination of national identity, othering and the construction of a private and public self all within the subtle discussions of phonetics, pronunciation and syntax in an English language class in Iran. There are glimmers of that work here, too, as in the exquisite poetry of the final scene. (“She will never know how fast this earth can spin underneath you,” one character, now an American expat, swears in a monologue about her future daughter. “How one day you can have a home, and the next, as you are hurtling through the air, you will have to vanquish home.”)Even as “Wish You Were Here” circles around themes of the female body and national politics, aiming to land somewhere with a statement, it constantly backs away. In a playwright note, Toossi asks: “Doesn’t every play exist within a set of politics? Must a play be political if the events of the play are affected by the politics of the play’s setting? Isn’t every play political? I can’t decide.” Unfortunately, despite the successes of the production, the playwright’s indecision creeps through.It’s exciting to see a portrayal of the complexity of female friendships, including both the niceties and the petty rivalries alike. It’s something I’ve been considering a lot lately in conversations with my female friends — how we have shaped and been shaped by one another, how we’ve grown into or outgrown the roles we’ve been assigned in each other’s lives. There’s so much to appreciate and even more to explore here, within the confidences of rowdy, supportive, spiteful women; I just wish we’d have witnessed it onstage.Wish You Were HereThrough May 29 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      ‘For Colored Girls’ to Close on Broadway, Reflecting Tough Season

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      The revival, directed by Camille A. Brown, received strong reviews but struggled to attract audiences and overcome challenges posed by Covid.A much-praised revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” Ntozake Shange’s classic choreopoem, will close later this month after struggling to find an audience during a tumultuous Broadway season.The show’s producers said Tuesday that the final performance would be May 22, just a month after opening and three months earlier than planned.The closing reflects the challenges of this unusual Broadway season — the first since the pandemic shutdown — when tourism remains down, coronavirus cases are a constant complication, and a large number of shows opened at the same time, making it difficult for any one of them to break out.“For Colored Girls” won strong reviews — in The New York Times, the critic Laura Collins-Hughes deemed it “thrilling and exuberant” — but it has struggled from the get-go; last week, which was its best yet, it grossed $250,000. The show’s audiences, at the Booth Theater, were just 51 percent full, and the average ticket price was $79.“Our numbers were much lower than those rave reviews would justify,” said Nelle Nugent, one of the play’s lead producers. “There are so many choices this season, which is very exciting, but there’s a lot of inventory, and the shows with major stars are doing better. I think there’s also a confusion in the public’s mind about safety.”“For Colored Girls,” a series of monologues about the experiences of Black women set to dance and song, first arrived on Broadway in 1976, and was a hit, running for 22 months. It has been adapted for film and television, and influenced many theater makers.In 2019, the year after Shange’s death, an Off Broadway revival was staged at the Public Theater, directed by Leah C. Gardiner and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. The success of that project led to the Broadway revival, which Brown directed and choreographed.This production, like many others, has been challenged by the coronavirus pandemic — three of the cast members have been out in recent days. And the pandemic took a toll in other ways, as well. “It affected us an extraordinary amount, including the delay of almost two years coming out of the Public, so the momentum we had had dissipated,” Nugent said.In a joint interview, Nugent and Ron Simons, also a lead producer, attributed the closing to a number of factors, including not only the high volume of shows opening on Broadway this spring and the lingering effects of the pandemic, but also a delay in the announcement of Tony nominations, the presence of scaffolding around their theater, and misunderstandings about what their show is.“There is a slight dampening effect for us because of the title — when you read ‘suicide,’ people think it’s going to be a somber play, and not enjoyable,” Simons said. “But it’s not just a play that deals with dark subjects. The show ends on a high note of celebration.”Nugent and Simons said they were hopeful that, by announcing a closing date, audiences would now flock to the show, and said they were open to extending it if there were a sudden surge of interest. Absent that, they said, it would remain necessary to close the show, which was capitalized for $4.85 million. “The decision ultimately is based on economics,” Simons said.“For Colored Girls” is the second Broadway show to announce an unplanned closing this spring because of weak sales. A stage adaptation of “The Little Prince,” which began previews March 29 and opened April 11, announced last week that it would close May 8. More