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      ‘Oh, Mary!’ Star Cole Escola Is a Campy Actor With Serious Fashion

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      Cole Escola, the actor and playwright, stood before a mirror at a pastel-colored studio in Manhattan’s garment district, holding a spray of white satin flowers in one hand.“The calla lilies are in bloom again,” Escola said, quoting a Katharine Hepburn line from the film “Stage Door.” The actor delivered it in Ms. Hepburn’s signature mid-Atlantic accent.It was the last day of June — the day of the New York City Pride March — and Escola was at the studio of Jackson Wiederhoeft, the designer of the brand Wiederhoeft, for a fitting before a red-carpet appearance: the Broadway premiere of “Oh, Mary!,” a comedic play written by and starring Escola, on Thursday.In the show, Escola plays a fictionalized version of the former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, portraying her as an alcoholic and an aspiring cabaret performer desperate to flee the White House and her husband. After it premiered Off Broadway in February, “Oh, Mary!” received a groundswell of raves from critics, generating buzz loud enough for it to twice extend its Off Broadway run before being brought to Broadway this summer.The play’s glowing reception has made Escola an overnight sensation, 17 years after taking up acting. Previously, the actor had been known for YouTube skits and supporting roles on TV shows like “Search Party” and “At Home With Amy Sedaris.”Escola’s newfound stardom has meant adjusting to certain trappings of fame, like being invited to late-night talk shows, awards shows and red-carpet events — and receiving the wardrobe scrutiny that comes with such public appearances.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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      Russian Playwright and Theater Director Are Convicted of ‘Justifying Terrorism’

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      A theater director and playwright were sentenced to prison, a stark indication of the increasing suppression of free speech since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, their lawyers and critics say.A Russian military court found a playwright and a theater director guilty of “justifying terrorism” on Monday, sentencing them to six years in prison each in a case that critics say is the latest chilling example of the crackdown on free speech since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.The playwright, Svetlana Petriychuk, 44, and the director, Yevgenia Berkovich, 39, are both acclaimed members of the Russian theater world and have been in custody since May 2023. In addition to the six-year sentences, exactly the time frame requested by prosecutors, both women will be banned from “administering websites” for three years following their release.The play Ms. Petriychuk wrote and Ms. Berkovich staged, “Finist the Brave Falcon,” is an adaptation of a classic fairy tale of the same name, interwoven with the stories of women baited online by men into joining the Islamic State. It is loosely based on the true stories of thousands of women from across Russia and the former Soviet Union who were recruited by ISIS terrorists. The main character of the play returns to Russia feeling betrayed and disappointed by the man who lured her there, only to be sentenced to prison as a terrorist herself.The prosecutor, Ekaterina Denisova, insisted that Ms. Petriychuk holds “extremely aggressive Islamic ideologies” and formed a “positive opinion” of ISIS, according to the Russian outlet RBK, and that Ms. Berkovich holds “ideological convictions related to the justification and propaganda of terrorism.”Both women and their lawyers said they were innocent, repeatedly insisting during the trial that the play had an explicitly antiterror message.“I absolutely do not understand what this set of words has to do with me,” said Ms. Berkovich, when she pleaded not guilty. “I have never partaken in any forms of Islam: neither radical nor any other. I have respect for the religion of Islam, and I feel nothing but condemnation and disgust toward terrorists.”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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      At Avignon Festival, Theater’s World Gets Wider

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      Under its new director, the event is shining a spotlight on countries and performers rarely represented on the biggest European stages.Who belongs onstage at an international theater festival? It’s a thorny question for programmers with limited spots to fill. Already-famous artists bring predictable box-office returns, yet the picture of “the world” they offer rarely extends beyond a small group of countries.The Avignon Festival, in France, is lucky to be able to go off the beaten track. Every summer, it pulls a large audience that comes to experience a city filled to the brim with theater, rather than individual productions. Artists in the official lineup typically play to sold-out crowds regardless of their reputation, and many Avignon directors have taken this as their cue to experiment.And this year’s edition, with the Portuguese theater-maker Tiago Rodrigues at the helm, seemed to go even further. Of the 38 artists in the lineup, over half were new to Avignon, and many were unknown in France. As the first week of the festival unfolded, the spotlight shone repeatedly on amateurs and artists from countries rarely represented on the biggest European stages.Some, like the former prison inmates from South America who star in Lola Arias’s “The Days Outside” (“Los Días Afuera”), performed at the Opéra Grand Avignon, directly expressed their disbelief at being there from the stage. One performer showed a tattoo of the Eiffel Tower on her body, explaining that it had been her dream to see France — and now, she said after a quiet pause during the show, she had.“The Days Outside” is part of this edition’s tribute to Spanish-language theater. Rodrigues is highlighting a different language each year, and after a timid emphasis on English in 2023, he is going much further this time, with 12 productions — roughly a third of the festival’s offering — performed in Spanish, from countries including Spain, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru.“The Days Outside” considers the lives of five women and one trans man as they prepare to leave prison.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Festival d’AvignonWe 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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      The Five Women Who Started a Secret Theater Society

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      It was their own secret society. Five women who worked together at the Public Theater, bonding over drinks and aspirations, sharing frustrations and ideas, commiserating and brainstorming and laughing.They gave their alliance a nickname: Women and Ambition — cheeky because, as they saw it, “ambitious” remained such a loaded adjective for young women. Their convergence at the Public in the mid-2010s would resonate as far more than happy memories: Now each of them has become a Woman With Power, in a beleaguered field in vital need of new inspiration.“These women have helped change the trajectory of my life,” said one of the women, Maria Goyanes, who is now the artistic director of Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington.Lear deBessonet, who oversees the long-running Encores! series at New York City Center, recalled the prevailing spirit: “There was a sense of like, ‘I see you, girl. I see you. You’ve got to run things now.’”And now they do.Before deBessonet officially took over the Encores! series in 2021, she ran Public Works, the community-oriented program that stages a musical adaptation of a classic story each summer. Once at Encores!, which gives rarely revived shows short-running productions, she got off to a shaky start during the pandemic. But she’s since had a number of buzzy productions, including a starry “Into the Woods,” which went to Broadway. This summer, her acclaimed production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” with Sutton Foster, is Broadway-bound as well.Shanta Thake.Ye Fan for The New York TimesWe 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 Avignon Festival, Resisting the Far Right

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      Tiago Rodrigues said the Avignon Festival, which he leads, would become “a festival of resistance,” juggling activism with the premiere of a new play.There are two sides to Tiago Rodrigues, the Portuguese director who has led the Avignon Festival since last year. One — gentle, introspective, given to dissecting intimate human conflicts — has long been evident in his stage productions. That includes “Hecuba, Not Hecuba,” his latest premiere in Avignon, in which a mother fights for justice after her son is mistreated by a state institution.On the other side, Rodrigues has also turned out to be a combative, politically outspoken leader for the French festival, a marquee event on the international theater calendar. Tension is running high in France since the far-right National Rally party came out ahead in the first round of snap parliamentary elections last weekend, and Rodrigues’s response was forceful: Avignon, he told the broadcaster France Info, would become a “festival of resistance.”On Thursday, Rodrigues pulled together a last-minute night of programming aimed at “mobilizing against the far right” ahead of the second round of voting this Sunday. After a performance of Angélica Liddell’s “Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman,” the Cour d’Honneur, Avignon’s biggest stage, was given over to willing artists, politicians and union leaders from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.The choreographer Boris Charmatz opened the evening with 100 or so dancers who performed a group reinterpretation of “Revolutionary,” a defiant 1922 dance by Isadora Duncan. JoeyStarr, a French rapper, recited a poem by Léon-Gontran Damas.Despite the late hour, the nearly 2,000 seats were packed, and a roar filled the air when Rodrigues, whose father was an antifascist activist in Portugal, finally appeared onstage. “My name is Tiago Rodrigues, and I work for the Avignon Festival,” he said, modestly. “This is a night of democratic union, of strength and hope.”“This is a night of democratic union, of strength and hope,” Rodrigues said from Avignon’s largest stage, the Cour d’Honneur.Arnold Jerocki/Getty ImagesWe 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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      15 Summer Theaters for That Nearby, Out-of-Town Experience

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      Easygoing days of drama and comedy are just a few hours away (or even closer) in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.Summer used to be when playgoing in the city came to a full stop. With no air-conditioning, most shows closed, at least until fall.But now that urban theater is a year-round sport, Memorial Day is more like a comma than a period. Notable productions play straight through the hot months — some even opening in August, even on Broadway.So what has happened to the regional festivals, straw-hat theaters and avant-garde outposts that once flourished as the city languished? Many are struggling. Yet others are surging.Regardless, they’re worth visiting.There’s something different about summer theater outside the city. Subways are rarely involved, though a train ride or overnight stay at a lovely inn might be. Dress is casual — by which I mean “more casual than usual” because I’ve seen people at Shakespeare in the Park in pajamas. And the fare is more varied, including not just the prestige and tourist-bait extremes of the spectrum but also the hokey, offbeat and silly stuff in between.Another plus: what you spend on that inn, you’ll save on the tickets.So here’s a selection of theater that will help you get out of the city — or at least make you feel like you did.The Big MagnetsFormerly the jewel of the summer theater circuit, famous for classics and knotty new works, the Williamstown Theater Festival, in Williamstown, Mass., is regrouping after its production model, dependent on unpaid labor, collapsed. This season includes just one fully staged production: David Ives’s detective drama, “Pamela Palmer” (starting July 23). But much more is going on, including a multigenre, multistage event called “WTF Is Next” (Aug. 1-4). Think of it not as crisis management but as a tasting platter of ideas for the future.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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      Shay Youngblood, Influential Black Author and Playwright, Dies at 64

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      She wrote memorably about her upbringing by a circle of maternal elders and the life lessons they imparted, and of her yearning for the mother she lost.Shay Youngblood, a novelist and playwright whose works about her upbringing by a churchgoing cohort of “Big Mamas” and her adventures in Paris as a young aspiring writer inspired a generation of young Black women, died on June 11 at the home of a friend, Kelley Alexander, in Peachtree City, Ga. She was 64.Ms. Alexander said the cause was ovarian cancer.Ms. Youngblood, whose mother died when she was 2 years old and whose father was not in her life, grew up in a housing project in Columbus, Ga., where she raised by her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, along with a close circle of eccentric and adoring maternal stand-ins.The Big Mamas — stoic, arthritic and wise — had much to impart to the young Shay: their dim view of most men; their love of music, dancing and church; their often bawdy humor; their dignified, powerful resistance to the indignities and horrors visited upon them by the racist white employers for whom they worked as maids.Ms. Youngblood said that she prayed often for her mother to return, but that as she grew older, she appreciated the richness of her upbringing and turned the experience into her first book, “The Big Mama Stories” (1989), which before being published was adapted into her first play, “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery.” First produced by the Horizon Theater Company in Atlanta in 1988, it has since been staged all over the world, in schools and local theaters.“The simple act of centering on the stories of Black women, with barely any references to the men (white or Black) in their lives, is itself an act of resistance,” Kerry Reid wrote in a review for The Chicago Tribune when “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery” was produced in Chicago in 2017, 20 years after its first staging there. “And the women we meet in Youngblood’s unapologetically fierce, funny and ultimately hopeful memory-play-with-music might make you want to jump up at the curtain call and ask all of them to run for office.”Lisa Adler, Horizon’s longtime co-artistic director, recalled that when Ms. Youngblood gave her the play in its original raw form in the early 1980s, when they were both in their early 20s, she thought: “This isn’t quite a play, but it’s something. I’ve got to do something!” She convened the director Glenda Dickerson and the dramaturgs Gayle Austin and Isabelle Bagshaw, and together they shaped the work.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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      ‘Starlight Express’ Review: The Gravy Train Rolls On

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      Nostalgia will undoubtedly lure many to a London revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It has more in common with a theme park than with theater, our critic writes.Andrew Lloyd Webber’s baffling musical, “Starlight Express” — in which trains, represented by performers on roller skates, compete in a championship at the behest of a little boy who is dreaming the whole thing — was a big West End hit in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Forty years after its 1984 premiere, it returns with a new production, this time in a purpose-built auditorium about 10 miles west of the theater district.This “Starlight Express,” directed by Luke Sheppard and running through Feb. 16, 2025, channels heady nostalgia for the recent past. The set design and sound effects are redolent of ‘90s video games and British TV game shows like “Gladiators”; the glittery, sci-fi costumes are reminiscent of “Power Rangers.” The show is a dazzlingly produced family entertainment with impressive special effects, but its appeal consists almost entirely in sensory overload rather than plot, music or drama.Our unlikely hero, the steam engine Rusty (Jeevan Braich), is initially intimidated by his competitors, the electric and diesel trains Electra (Tom Pigram) and Greaseball (Al Knott). Rusty’s got hots for a railroad car called Pearl (Kayna Montecillo), but she’s not sure if she likes him in that way. After several setbacks and some soul-searching, he teams up with a hydrogen engine, Hydra (Jaydon Vijn), to win both the race and the girl. Essentially it’s “The Karate Kid,” with trains.A talented cast do their best to breathe life into this somewhat unoriginal tale. Branch plays Rusty with just the right blend of halting self-doubt and plucky determination, and the baddies are rendered with cartoonish bravado. But the real star of the show is Tim Hatley’s spectacular set, with its racing track that snakes out from the stage into the audience seating, so that the performers occasionally zoom right through, complemented by an array of incredibly slick visuals: steam jets, flame effects, laser beams.Rusty with Hydra, played by Jaydon Vijn.Pamela RaithWe 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