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      Interview: Keeping our heads above water with Swell

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      Tom Foreman on new play Swell

      It doesn’t feel that long ago we sat down with Tom Foreman to chat about his play Big Boys. So we were rather surpsied to realise that he was now heading to Lion and Unicorn next week with new show show Swell. Set in the fictional town of Swell, the play takes its inspiration from the real town of Fairbourne which, in 2014, was announced would be depopulated by 2054 due to being unsustainable to defend from the effects of global warning and rising tides.

      So befor we all go under with the rising tides, it seemed a good time to catch up with Tom to find out how he has been since we last spoke.

      What was it that first attracted you to write a show around Fairbourne?

      I came across the story of Fairbourne during the first lockdown, and despite all the chaos of current affairs in that period, it still had this incredibly powerful reach on me. Like most people, combating climate change is a cause I’m deeply committed to, but living in the UK where we’re nowhere near the worst of the impacts, it’s all too easy sometimes to feel that it’s something abstract, in the future.

      And then Fairbourne: a town in Wales that has ‘decommissioned’ due to inadequate defences against rising sea levels, with the whole population set to be removed and infrastructure deconstructed by 2054. I don’t think I ever find it less shocking, really. It’s climate change being felt right here, right now on our shores, and those residents are unfortunately the nation’s first climate refugees. What I think cut through to me the most however was the human stories. These people who have found out overnight that the place they called home was just being abandoned. Hearing stories of how that’s affected the community and individuals within it… That’s where Swell was born. Swell is not a play about climate change: it’s a play about community and grief, about how we come together and fall apart in times of crisis.

      Did you visit the area for the play at all, or did you do what the rest of us do, and get onto Google Earth?

      I wrote the play during the first lockdown, so unfortunately I never did. I’ve always meant to visit, but it’s one of those things that always evaded me being so far away. On the other hand however because it was that first lockdown, I had so much time on my hands, and I spent it learning every little detail I could about Fairbourne. My paternal family are also from Whitstable in Kent, so I also really got my teeth into researching there, and suddenly I was an encyclopedia for small British coastal towns! That was invaluable in constructing the town of Swell when developing the show. I actually have a complete and detailed map of the town, which hasn’t made it into the show yet, but we’re hoping to transfer to Edinburgh for the Fringe after, so maybe people will get to see it one day!

      You focus on two siblings to tell your story, how much is Swell about family told against a backdrop of climate change?

      It’s absolutely that. In my press releases I use the phrase “backdrop of environmental crisis” because that’s really where the climate change comes in. The decommissioning of the town is what triggers the plot, but the plot is certainly not focused on the climate change itself. It’s absolutely a play about family and community, about grief and perseverance. I think that siblinghood is one of the most complex relationships in our lives. We all have such different experiences of it, but the one common theme for all of us with siblings is that they are never ever simple. I wanted to explore that dynamic and push it to its limits. 

      Did you always want to write a climate change story, or were you inspired from hearing about Fairbourne.

      The one thing I never try to do when writing is go looking for a story or issue to write about. I think that if you try to force it, you’ll end up in so many dead ends trying to make it work that the whole experience will just be unenjoyable, and if it’s unenjoyable writing you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be unenjoyable viewing.

      I also try to steer clear of ‘problem plays.’ That may sound weird given that my most recent two shows have focused on male mental health and climate change, but what I mean by that is a story should never come out of a problem: a problem should always come out of a story. So, in this case, the story of Swell is triggered by climate change, but it doesn’t come out of climate change – it comes out of two siblings finding themselves in a community being torn apart. I couldn’t stop thinking about Fairbourne after I came across it in the news, and it really was the draw of the story, rather than the fact it was related to climate change, that spurred me to write about it.

      You are playing at Lion and Unicorn; last year they had Lately, about youngsters growing up in a dead seaside resort. Did you see this and do you think that there is a lot of ground to be explored in this theme of “dying” seaside towns?

      I know! I actually was lucky enough to see this, what an excellent production. I didn’t know a lot about it going in and I remember when it started thinking “Oh! Coastal community!” Yeah, I’m not sure to be honest! It’s certainly a strange coincidence. I do think that as an island nation, we all have some innate connection to the coast, whether consciously or not. And particularly in the wake of things like Brexit and climate change, those communities on the coast do seem to be struggling the most, when really they should be some of our most valuable towns and cities.

      I mentioned that my paternal side were from Whitstable – we looked into it and found that for hundreds of years, the Foreman’s had been oyster fisherman, passing down the trade from father to son, right up until my grandfather, who broke the chain because he got seasick. It’s a story that makes me chuckle, but I also can’t tell it without considering how different my life would have been growing up there and not around London. It’s a connection with seaside towns that has developed in the making of Swell, and I do think others find their connections in similar ways.

      Your last show, Big Boys, was well received, what did you learn from making that show that you have brought to Swell?

      ‘Big Boys’ was such an amazing piece to be at the helm of. It was delayed for years due to Covid, and when it finally premiered after countless redrafts and rip-ups, it was such an incredible release. I think what it really taught me was my style of writing and how I translate it to the stage. I have come out of the spotlight and focused more on the directing alongside my very talented co-director Connor Rowlett for this one, and that’s helped me really refine the type of show I want to present and how I want it to be delivered. It’s also encouraged me to draw out certain aspects even more. I love Fringe theatre because it allows for such an intimacy with the audience, and we’ve pushed that even further in Swell (although not quite to audience interaction yet!) Looking ahead to the Fringe etc, there’s more lessons still that I’ve learnt from this production that I want to take and push Swell with even further, and I can’t wait to do that. But first, I’m absolutely ecstatic to be back at the Lion & Unicorn, and working with the wonderful team there.

      Swell and Big Boys seem miles apart in their themes, was it deliberate to do something so far removed from your last one?

      As I mentioned, I never go looking for a script to write, so it definitely wasn’t a conscious choice. In fact, there are a lot of themes in Swell that resonate strongly with themes from Big Boys, although I don’t want to give too much away! They’re certainly two entirely different beasts however, and I’ve been conscious of treating them accordingly.

      And after Swell, what have you got lined up next then?

      Well the next step is hopefully taking Swell to the Edinburgh Fringe, where I’m hoping 2022 will be a triumphant return to near-normality. I did visit in 2021 and it was great to be back watching the shows that were on, but it was certainly at a hugely reduced scale. Other than Swell, I don’t actually have anything written at the moment, but I’ve always got projects on the go. I’m trying to write a musical currently with an old friend of mine who is a very talented composer, and longer term I really want to sink my teeth into TV writing. For now though, I’m firmly fixed on seeing how far we can take Swell, and share the desperately important story of Fairbourne to as many people as will listen.

      As always, our thanks to Tom for taking time out from getting the show ready for opening soon. You can catch Swell at Lion and Unicorn Theatre from 8 – 12 February. Further information and bookings via the below link. More

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      ‘Dr. Semmelweis’ and ‘The Glow’ Reviews: Tales From the Asylum

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      Two new plays offer very different experiences of the sanitarium, one starring Mark Rylance and the other spotlighting a fast-rising actress.LONDON — “Wash your hands! Wash your hands!” That plea has sounded the world over in recent years, and it lends a topical potency to “Dr. Semmelweis,” running through Feb. 19 at the Bristol Old Vic, a beautiful 18th-century playhouse in southwest England.Its urgent speaker is the titular medic, a Hungarian-born doctor in 19th-century Vienna who pioneered antisepsis only to die in 1865, at age 47. It was left to subsequent physicians like Joseph Lister to pick up his work.The play tells the time-honored tale of a man against the system, in this case a visionary whose desire to reverse a high mortality rate among young mothers comes up against a largely heedless establishment. Worthy of Ibsen and chronicled before in a Howard Sackler play that circled Broadway but never got there, Semmelweis’s story here emerges as a star vehicle for Mark Rylance. The much-laureled actor (three Tonys and an Oscar) co-wrote the play with Stephen Brown.The director, Tom Morris, runs the venerable Bristol venue and has given Semmelweis’s too-short life a busy, bustling production that includes actors spilling from Ti Green’s turntable set into the auditorium on occasion, with musicians and dancers on hand to amplify the discordant emotions of the piece. The dancers, choreographed by Antonia Franceschi, give swirling physical expression to Semmelweis’s increasingly disordered mind and to the mothers who lost their lives to hygienic neglect. The Salomé string quartet weaves among the events, playing snatches of Schubert and lending a high-art sheen to some grave subject matter.If all this sounds like a lot of embellishment, it’s fair to say that the first act in particular feels as if stage business is being used to disguise some fairly boilerplate writing. The play begins at the end, with Semmelweis in Hungary recalling, alongside his calm-seeming wife, Maria (Thalissa Teixeira), a climate of contamination in Vienna that did irreparable damage to the doctor’s psyche.How can a vaunted “city of new ideas” not be more responsive to the investigations of a young maverick who comes upon the disinfectant potential of chlorine? This grocer’s son has determined that death rates at the world’s largest hospital — as Vienna General then was — are three times higher at the doctors’ clinic than at that of the midwives. “Cadaveric particles” are posited as the culprit, passed on by unclean hands from the autopsy room to the delivery ward and turning the hospital into a de facto slaughterhouse.Rylance’s character in “Dr. Semmelweis” is, in time-honored fashion, a visionary whose desire to reverse a high mortality rate among young mothers comes up against a largely heedless establishment.Geraint LewisThe locals aren’t having it. “Nuts by name, nuts by nature,” one of Semmelweis’s colleagues remarks dismissively, referring to this upstart’s first name, Ignaz. Never mind that the insult doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that these people were probably not speaking English.After the intermission, the baldfaced, expository nature of the writing continues. If Semmelweis is right, we’re told, “the entire future of medicine will be changed.” There’s a line, too, about the possible efficacy of bleach that draws thumping parallels to one of the more, um, peculiar proposals to defeat the current pandemic.Through it all, Rylance is a springy physical presence. He brings a stammering restlessness to the role of a radical thinker whose thoughts at times outpace his words. You have to smile when this protean actor — acclaimed across TV and film, but devoted first and foremost to the stage — speaks in passing about “not wanting to waste time in the theater either,” and it’s nice to find among the supporting cast such fellow theater stalwarts as Alan Williams, in stern form as the obstetrician Johann Klein, Semmelweis’s nemesis.More than anything, “Dr. Semmelweis” whets the appetite for Rylance’s return to the London stage in April, reprising his seismic performance in the Jez Butterworth play “Jerusalem,” first seen at the Royal Court in 2009. That same London address, an important one for new writing, is currently hosting an Alistair McDowall play, “The Glow,” that really is nuts, albeit intriguingly so.The title character of “Dr. Semmelweiss” died unappreciated in an asylum, and McDowall’s time-traveling drama begins in one two years earlier, with a dimly lit figure fearfully inhabiting a windowless cell. That figure, a woman (Ria Zmitrowicz), is then glimpsed in any number of settings and centuries, ranging from the 1300s, in the company of a warriorlike personage (Tadhg Murphy) who might have wandered in from “Game of Thrones,” to 343 A.D. and forward to the 1970s and beyond.From left, Ria Zmitrowicz and Rakie Ayola in “The Glow” at the Royal Court Theater in London.Manuel HarlanWhat in heaven’s name is going on? You might ask McDowall the same of his 2016 play for the Royal Court, “X,” which was set on Pluto.Shouty and apocalyptic only to turn rapturously poetic in its closing monologue, “The Glow” is best viewed as a sensory experience in which lighting and sound conjoin with the writer’s freewheeling imagination to summon up a lonely and difficult world that nonetheless allows for the warmth of the title. The intermission, only 40 minutes or so in, gives audiences ample time to ponder what they have seen.The more literal theatergoer will be driven to distraction by the play’s apparently willful opacity, but that in itself tracks with the experimental bent of a theater defined in part by the playwright Caryl Churchill, whose own inquisitiveness and disregard for convention may have offered a beacon for McDowall.For myself, I have to commend the full-throttle production of Vicky Featherstone, the Court’s artistic director, in tandem with a design team in which Jessica Hung Han Yun’s mercurial lighting reigns supreme. Fisayo Akinade and Rakie Ayola offer sterling support as more recognizable participants in a world to which Zmitrowicz’s initially mute woman has a hesitant relationship. Seen first as a spiritualist medium — yes, you read that right — Ayola also gets to display a lovely singing voice.With the mysterious spectral figure at the play’s center, McDowall has offered a gift to Zmitrowicz, a fast-rising actress who has come to attention of late largely at the Almeida. Alternately sullen and feverish, indrawn yet eloquent, this performer rivets our attention throughout, even when the play she inhabits is ricocheting every which way around her.Dr. Semmelweis. Directed by Tom Morris. Bristol Old Vic, through Feb. 19.The Glow. Directed by Vicky Featherstone. Royal Court Theater, through March 5. More

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      Review: In ‘Prayer for the French Republic,’ Echoes of the Past

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      Joshua Harmon’s ambitious new play toggles between a contemporary Jewish family facing growing antisemitism and their relatives during World War II.The well of naïve young Americans being schooled in life, love, politics and croissants by effortlessly worldly French people is in no danger of running dry. The latest addition to this cohort is 20-year-old Molly, a New Yorker who has just met her distant cousins in Paris.Thankfully it is they, not sweet, passive Molly, who are the subjects of “Prayer for the French Republic,” Joshua Harmon’s ambitious and maddening, thought-provoking and schematic new play, directed by David Cromer at Manhattan Theater Club.At the very beginning, the matriarch, Marcelle Salomon Benhamou (an excellent Betsy Aidem), painstakingly explains her family’s genealogical ties to Molly (Molly Ranson). They are so complicated that Marcelle has to repeat them for the young woman’s benefit, and of course the audience’s as well. Even then, it takes much of the play’s three-hour running time and some toggling between 2016-17 and 1944-46 for the connections and their consequences to sink in.Harmon (“Significant Other,” “Admissions”) has set himself quite a challenge because Molly has arrived at a critical juncture for Marcelle; her husband, Charles (Jeff Seymour); and their 20-something children, Daniel (Yair Ben-Dor) and Elodie (Francis Benhamou). Daniel, who wears a kipa, has come home with a bloodied face after an antisemitic aggression. It is just another example of what Charles feels is an increasingly scary climate for Jews in France, a last straw that makes him want to move to Israel.Betsy Aidem, left, and Richard Topol as siblings in Joshua Harmon’s play, a Manhattan Theater Club production.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“It’s the suitcase, or the coffin,” he says, referring to his ancestors’ forced wandering as he may be about to emulate it. (One of the play’s most fascinating aspects, though an underexplored one, is how these characters represent two strands of French Judaism: Marcelle’s Ashkenazi ancestors have been rooted in France for centuries, while Charles’s are Sephardic Jews who lived in North Africa for generations before relocating from Algeria in the 1960s.)The Benhamous have spirited arguments that have the urgency of life-or-death decisions: Should they stay or should they go? What does it mean to be Jewish in France? (The play’s title refers to a prayer that has been said in French synagogues since the early 19th century.)Some of the show’s concerns, including the temptation of appeasement via assimilation — a position embodied by Marcelle’s brother, Patrick (Richard Topol) — echo those Harmon explored, in a much more comic vein, in his blistering debut, “Bad Jews,” from 2012. That show was dominated by a hurricane-like character named Daphna, and she now has a marginally milder-mannered relative in Elodie, who injects volatile energy every time she opens her mouth.Incidentally, Ranson was also in “Bad Jews” and once again finds herself on the receiving end of impassioned, and often wickedly funny, tirades and put-downs that have the biting rhythm of New York Jewish humor rather than a French sensibility. (A faux pas: The Benhamous buy croissants in an American-type cardboard box rather than the paper bags used in French boulangeries.)From left: Nancy Robinette, Kenneth Tigar, Peyton Lusk and Ari Brand in one of the scenes from the end of World War II.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAll of this would be enough to pack any story, but Harmon also transports us to the end of World War II for several scenes with Marcelle and Patrick’s older relatives — their grandparents, Irma and Adolphe Salomon (Nancy Robinette and Kenneth Tigar, both heart-wrenching), have somehow managed to survive in occupied Paris and held on to their piano store.The two narratives progressively start bleeding into each other, with Marcelle and Patrick’s father, Pierre (Peyton Lusk in the 1940s, Pierre Epstein in the 2010s), embodying the link, both literal and metaphorical, between past and present.Cromer, a technically astute and emotionally sensitive director, handles the back and forth as well as you might expect — he puts a stage turntable to evocative, if perhaps a little clichéd, use, for example. Still, it’s not hard to feel the show’s tension slacken when we leave the Benhamous. The play’s finale aims for the lofty and falls terribly short, but it does represent the family’s tragedy: they want to be part of a country that may never fully accept them.Prayer for the French RepublicThrough Feb. 27 at New York City Center, Manhattan; nycitycenter.org. Running time: 3 hours. More

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      Danai Gurira Will Star as Richard III at Shakespeare in the Park

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      The actress, known for “The Walking Dead” and “Black Panther,” will headline a return to semi-normal for the annual festival, which will also present “As You Like It.”The Public Theater, anticipating a semi-normal summer this year, is planning two full-scale productions for Free Shakespeare in the Park, including a run of “Richard III” starring Danai Gurira in the title role.The annual festival, ordinarily a highlight of summer in New York, took place via radio in 2020 (the play was “Richard II”), and then last year featured a single, small-cast show before a reduced-capacity audience (it was called “Merry Wives” — even the title was abbreviated) as the theater tried to adapt to shifting safety protocols necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic.Both pivots won praise, but this summer the Public is ready to go big again, with a two-show season and full-capacity audiences. “Richard III” will feature a cast of about two dozen, and it will be followed by a reprise of the Public’s 2017 production of “As You Like It,” which, by featuring New Yorkers from all five boroughs alongside professional actors, will have a cast of several hundred.“Last summer was a lifesaver, and this summer is going to be a huge shot of energy,” Oskar Eustis, the Public’s ebullient artistic director, pledged in an interview. “We are planning to have a full summer and to produce in as large and vibrant a scale as we ever have.”Of course, the pandemic’s not over, and there will be rules. At the moment, the Public is still planning to require patrons to show proof of vaccination, including a booster shot for those who are eligible, and to require mask wearing by patrons. Also, Eustis said the goal will be to keep both productions short enough that they can be performed without an intermission, which means some serious trimming for “Richard III,” originally one of Shakespeare’s longest plays.The production of “Richard III” will be directed by Robert O’Hara (“Slave Play”), who is no stranger to trimming — his halved production of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” is now running at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater downtown.Eustis said that he and O’Hara chose “Richard III” because it has not been seen at Shakespeare in the Park for many years, and because it felt relevant.“Let’s just say that ‘Richard III’ is the artistic work that for the first time really examined a political figure who utterly committed to the big lie — whose entire career is based on telling blatant falsehoods and somehow getting away with it,” Eustis said. “The idea that showmanship, devoid of content, has become a powerful political force makes it very germane for this moment.”Gurira, Eustis said, was an obvious choice to star: Best known for “The Walking Dead” and “Black Panther,” she is also an accomplished playwright (“Eclipsed”), a member of the Public’s board and a Shakespeare in the Park alumna (“Measure for Measure”).“She is a great actress who has become super-famous without people necessarily seeing the work she’s greatest at,” Eustis said. “Richard III is a spectacularly theatrical and rich character to play, and somebody with her ferocity and intelligence is going to make a spectacular Richard.”Darius de Haas, center, as a banished duke with a welcoming message in the 2017 Public Works production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd what will it mean to have a woman play Richard? “We are not going to re-gender the role, but what that means exactly we won’t know until we’re doing run-throughs,” Eustis said. “I know where we’re starting, but that doesn’t mean we know where we’re ending.”“Richard III” has been staged at Shakespeare in the Park four times previously, most recently in 1990, starring Denzel Washington.This summer’s production of “As You Like It” is a remounting of a production that had a short run in 2017, staged as part of the theater’s Public Works program, which integrates amateur performers from throughout New York City into musical adaptations of Shakespeare plays. In the years since it was created at the Public, this adaptation has been staged 35 times in school, community and professional theaters, including at the Dallas Theater Center, Seattle Repertory Theater, and the National Theater in London. The Public had hoped to give it a full run in 2020, but the pandemic prevented that.This “As You Like It” was adapted by Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery; Taub wrote the music and lyrics, and Woolery is the director, with choreography by Sonya Tayeh (“Moulin Rouge!”). As with the earlier version, this summer’s production will feature Darius de Haas, Joel Perez and Taub.The dates for the two productions, as well as the full casts, will be announced later.Shakespeare in the Park has since 1962 been staged at the 1,830-seat Delacorte Theater in Central Park, and last week the city Landmarks Preservation Commission approved plans for a $77 million renovation of the theater. Construction is expected to begin this fall, after the summer season ends; Eustis said that he is hopeful that construction can be phased and contained to off-season periods, so that Shakespeare in the Park can continue without further interruptions. More

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      Calling All Tap Dance Kids (It’s Not the Acting Kid or the Singing Kid)

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      The challenge of casting the Encores! revival of “The Tap Dance Kid” exposes some of the complications of tap, show business and Black history.If you’re going to stage a revival of the seldom performed but dearly remembered 1983 Broadway musical “The Tap Dance Kid” — as Encores! at New York City Center is doing, Wednesday through Sunday — one of the main challenges is to find someone to play the title role.That character is Willie Sheridan, a 10-year-old boy whose dream is to become a Broadway tap dancer and who has the talent to do it. The performer who plays him has to be like Willie: a young Black boy who can act and sing and tap dance at the center of an old-fashioned musical. And in recent decades that particular combination hasn’t been very common.Some reasons are right there in the show’s story. It’s about a family — an upper-middle-class Black one, groundbreaking for a Broadway musical in 1983 — and the main conflicts are generational. The principal obstacle to Willie’s dream is his father.Hinton Battle in a scene from “The Tap Dance Kid” in 1984.Martha Swope/New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsTo the father, a lawyer, tap is not just antiquated but also shameful, tied to slavery and the racial humiliations from which he has worked to insulate those he loves. To the boy and his dancing uncle and the ghost of his dancing grandfather, tap is beautiful, something to be proud of.This is an argument about the past and progress, and it reflects some of the real-life attitudes that continue to affect the popularity of tap, especially among Black people, and the potential pool of tap dance kids.“I knew that it was going to be tough to find a Willie,” Jared Grimes, the choreographer of the Encores! revival, said in an interview.“I knew that it was going to be tough to find a Willie”: Bello and Grimes, rehearsing at City Center. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesDuring auditions, Alexander Bello stood out — for his acting and singing. His tap skills weren’t quite up to the level that Grimes was expecting. “I was not going to settle,” Grimes said. “This show isn’t called Acting Kid or Singing Kid.”But Bello — who once put “Broadway audition” on his Christmas list and is already a Broadway veteran at 13 — was determined to get the part. “I was amazed that almost all the creatives were Black,” he said. “I had never seen a room so melanated and I wanted to be in that room.” And so, while attending school and doing eight shows a week of “Caroline or Change” on Broadway, he squeezed in a month of tap boot camp with DeWitt Fleming Jr. (who plays Willie’s grandfather).“Alex earned that role,” said Kenny Leon, the director of the Encores! production.Bello, here with Trevor Jackson, squeezed in a month of tap boot camp. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesIn certain ways, this was an echo of the 1980s. Danny Daniels — who won a Tony Award for choreographing the original production and who, like most of the original creative team, was white — once told me about the trouble that team had finding a Willie.“I asked the producers, ‘Where are you going to find the Black kids? Black kids don’t tap anymore,’” said Daniels, who died in 2017. “So we put out a call for Black kid tap dancers. Nobody showed up.’”More precisely, nobody showed up who didn’t need tap training. Daniels started a tap boot camp. The first Willie it produced was Alfonso Ribeiro, who soon left for a successful TV career (and later showed off his tap skills as Carlton on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”). Among the many to follow during the show’s two-year run and national tour was Dulé Hill, whose own successful TV career, most recently in “The Wonder Years” reboot, is keeping him too busy to appear in the Encores! revival.Savion Glover in the 1980s Broadway production of “The Tap Dance Kid.” PhotofestAnother Willie was Savion Glover, the tap dance kid who most changed what it meant to be one. Under the guidance of Gregory Hines and older Black tap dancers, Glover became the heir apparent to their tradition in the Broadway shows “Black and Blue” and “Jelly’s Last Jam.”The 1996 show “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk,” which Glover choreographed and starred in, reclaimed tap as Black history, both polemically and rhythmically, and brought it into a hip-hop present that people his age could see as their own. In a monologue, when Glover rejected Broadway styles as “not even tap dancing” but “arms and legs and a big ol’ smile,” he could have been describing Daniels’s choreography for “Tap Dance Kid”: the sequins and high kicks, more razzle-dazzle than rhythm.After “Bring in ‘da Noise” closed, tap on Broadway mostly reverted to its old ways. But Glover, with his unsurpassed virtuosity and more streetwise image, had inspired a generation of young hoofers. While deeply connected to tap’s roots in jazz, they made the form contemporary and pushed it to new technical heights — and largely away from the singing and acting of “Tap Dance Kid.” Among this cohort was Grimes, now 36.Bello, rehearsing with the actor Adrienne Walker.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAs Grimes demonstrated in the 2013 Broadway production “After Midnight,” he is a tap dancer of astonishing head-to-toe ability. But, unlike many Glover inspired hoofers, he also sees himself in the all-around entertainer line of Hines. Alongside his flourishing performing career — he’s in the upcoming Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” — he’s found acclaim as a choreographer of regional productions, including an updated “42nd Street.”Grimes said that he jumped at the chance to revisit “Tap Dance Kid,” which he called “the musical that every tap dancer dreams of getting a hold of.”The context has changed from the early ’80s, and from the late ’90s, too: “When I was coming up,” Grimes said, “if I looked to my side, there were other Black kids that were already tap kings and queens, but now almost none of my students are Black.”Kenny Leon lifting Bello after a rehearsal.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesSpeaking for kids today, Bello said tap is the dance style they “are most likely to overlook.”“Because you either think of it as Shirley Temple or as something guys did in the ’70s,” he said. “To other kids, it seems like tap never really modernized, but that’s not true.”Ayodele Casel, a tap dancer of the post-Glover generation whose career has been soaring lately, said that pockets of young Black tap dancers exist but that they don’t necessarily see themselves on Broadway because opportunities have been scarce. Yet, speaking more broadly, she noted the significance of someone like her, steeped in tap culture, being specially hired to handle the tap choreography for “Funny Girl.”“There is still a gap,” she said, “between the actors and singers, who have long been able to get by with tap basics, and the serious tap dancers, who haven’t had much incentive to train in acting and singing. But I think people, artists and producers, are starting to think about tap differently now.”Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAlong these lines, the background of the creative team, more than of the cast, might be the most significant change in the Encores! revival. The music remains the same, by Henry Krieger in a mode similar to his “Dreamgirls.” But Lydia Diamond, who has adapted the book for the Encores! production, has shifted the story from the 1980s to the 1950s — when the lines of racial struggle were more legible and tap was losing its place at the center of American popular culture.“We’re trying to show how something as precious as the history of tap is affecting this family who’s fighting to find a place in the ’50s,” Grimes said. He said that he’s been helping to get more accurate (and Black) tap history into the script and a sense of tap in transition into the choreography.“I want to show tap as storytelling and crazy rhythms,” he said, “but also tip our hat to vaudeville and comedy and what might be seen as what we had to do to get into the door. We can do that with integrity.”Grimes said this after a long day of rehearsal, eager to rehearse some more. “The security guards have to kick me out,” he said. “That’s love, man. I hope that ‘Tap Dance Kid’ will get a whole new crop of people to feel like that about tap.” More

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      Martin McDonagh’s ‘Hangmen’ Will Open on Broadway This Spring

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      The production, which was canceled at the start of the pandemic, will try again, this time starring Alfie Allen of “Game of Thrones” fame.“Hangmen” has been saved from the executioner.The dark comedy, by the British playwright Martin McDonagh, will open on Broadway this spring, two years after the production was canceled by its producer as the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close.The resurrected production, about an English hangman at the moment Britain banned capital punishment, will now star Alfie Allen, who played Theon Greyjoy on “Game of Thrones,” as a mysterious visitor to a bar run by the hangman. The hangman will be played by David Threlfall, a Tony nominee for “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.”The play is now scheduled to begin previews on April 8 and to open on April 21 at the Golden Theater.In 2020, “Hangmen,” with a slightly different cast, had completed its 13th preview performance, also at the Golden, and was a week away from opening when Broadway theaters closed.Eight days into the shutdown, producers announced that they were canceling the production, saying, “We do not have the economic resources to be able to continue to pay the theater owners, cast and crew through this still undefined closure period.” The show was the first, and one of the few, to make such a move.“I’m not saying I had any wisdom, but when people were saying we’d be back open in four weeks, I never believed that,” the lead producer, Robert Fox, said this week. “We were still being charged rent, and all sorts of expenses we didn’t have the money to cover. I assumed that was the end of ‘Hangmen’ on Broadway.”But the play was given new life by the U.S. government: It was awarded a $5.2 million Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, and was then granted an extension for its use of that money until June 30, 2022. Fox said that a combination of the federal aid, and investors returning money they had received from an insurance claim, “meant we had enough to put the show on, and hopefully to be able to support it in its early days, if it needs support.”Much had to be rethought: During the last two years, one of the play’s producers, Elizabeth I. McCann, died; several of the play’s lead actors became unavailable for personal or professional reasons; and the set was dismantled. But Fox said he wanted to try again, in large part because of his fondness for the work of McDonagh, a four-time Tony nominee whose other plays include “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and whose films include “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”From left: Jeremy Crutchley, Tracie Bennett, Mark Addy, Richard Hollis, John Horton and Ryan Pope in the production of “Hangmen” that was slated to open in 2020. The play will reopen with several new cast members.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m a huge Martin fan — I think he’s a true original, and a brilliant writer, and this is the third play of Martin’s I will have produced on Broadway,” Fox said. “I don’t think anybody’s putting it back on because they think they’re going to make a lot of money, but they believe it’s a wonderful play of Martin’s, and hopefully people want to see a dark mystery comedy and enjoy themselves.”“Hangmen” began its life in London, at the Royal Court Theater, and then, following a West End run, had an Off Broadway production at the Atlantic Theater Company, where The New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “criminally enjoyable.” Matthew Dunster has directed each production, and will do so again on Broadway; the Broadway production will feature Tracie Bennett (“End of the Rainbow”) as the hangman’s wife. More

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      Review: In Clare Barron’s ‘Shhhh,’ Staging a Memoir of the Body

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      The playwright directs and stars in her new play for Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2. It’s less a traditional narrative and more of a series of flirtations with discomfort.To get to your seat, you walk past someone’s toilet, stationed next to their sink, above which their pill bottles sit on a shelf.It’s hard to get more intimate than that.And yet that’s exactly what “Shhhh” manages to do. The new play, written by, directed by and starring Clare Barron, is explicit and occasionally uncomfortable, but all for the right reasons.Arnulfo Maldonado’s exquisite set design for the show, which opened on Monday at Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2, truly makes the space feel as if it were an apartment transformed into a theater rather than the reverse. There’s that bathroom stage left. And in a corner, partially obscured by a wall, a mattress lies on the floor, the sheets tousled on top. Candles and hanging string lights create a seductive atmosphere, but the industrial-looking metal rolling carts add a cool edge. And the audience members in the first few rows sit on cushions on the floor, extending the cozy vibe.“Shhhh” begins with Sally (named Witchy Witch in the program, and performed by Constance Shulman) recording an ASMR meditation. The sound of it is unsettling. Shulman’s signature rasp seems to envelop the space as she narrates what she’s doing — she talks about the Lysol wipe she’s using as we hear the sound of the cloth moving, amplified by a mic, and she taps her nails against a ceramic cup, telling us it’s full of lavender tea. She speaks slowly, stretching the syllables of each word so far they could reach from the theater, in Chelsea, to the East River. (The sharp sound design is by Sinan Refik Zafar.)Sally, a postal worker, says her job makes her feel close to people, even though that intimacy isn’t real. She goes on a so-so date with Penny (Janice Amaya), a nonbinary person who shares that they feel most comfortable and in control of their body during sex parties.Sally’s sister is Shareen (Barron), a playwright with a lot of “health stuff” who has a codependent and often consensually iffy sexual relationship with a male friend, Kyle (Greg Keller).And Francis (Nina Grollman) and Sandra (Annie Fang) are, well, two random young women who talk about body agency and consent in a pizza shop as Shareen, sitting at another table, silently listens.Barron and Greg Keller in the play. Arnulfo Maldonado did the set design.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Shhhh!” doesn’t have a traditional narrative; there’s no antagonist, and there’s not much of a sense of causality across scenes. The work itself has the feel of a series of flirtations: discomfort, assaults, insecurities and sorrows are spoken about and alluded to, but not detailed. We don’t get back stories or explainers. We just get the way these people speak and move and touch in relationship to one another. It’s telling that most of the sex acts mentioned are ones of penetration and discharge but much less often about the simple delicacies of a caress, or a kiss.The conversations these characters have are visceral: They talk of gushing wounds, feces-covered sheets, body fluids of all flavors. Though this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with Barron’s works, which include “I’ll Never Love Again” and the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Dance Nation.” She’s made a specialty of writing what are essentially staged memoirs of the body. Barron rarely opts for the romantic idea of pleasure, instead examining pleasure tied to physical violence and emotional manipulation, shame, self-esteem and trauma. The whole production aches with an unspoken loneliness.That ache comes through in Barron’s direction, but also in the performances, led by Barron herself, who sheaths Shareen in a delicate melancholy. Her gaze seems to drift off into the distance serenely but without satisfaction. She seems unsteady. And yet her somberness also belies a ferocious hunger; throughout the show Shareen plays with her food, pressing her fingertips into the scraps, crumbs and flakes on her plate or table and bringing them to her mouth, almost compulsively. The characters move self-consciously — in the way they recline or cross their legs — and seem to traverse the distances that separate them cautiously, as if wading through a river to the other shore.Keller is believable as the guy friend who soon realizes he may have to hold himself accountable for some questionable bedroom behaviors, and Grollman, Fang and Amaya, who get to wear the show’s most eclectic fashions (the satisfyingly offbeat costume design is by Kaye Voyce), give top-tier performances in small roles. Shulman is less convincing as Shareen’s older sister, supposedly by only two years, despite the nearly 30-year age gap between the two actresses. Shulman’s monotone drawl is a comic novelty at first, helping many of the jokes land, but this delivery, dry as a dust storm in the desert, becomes tiresome.Nina Grollman, left, and Annie Fang in a powerful scene at a pizza shop.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe other issue is the show’s erratic pacing. A Looney Tunes-esque chase scene and a mystical ritual both feel interminable. While other scenes are too short, and characters lack depth. Amaya has a sparky energy, but their character is less developed in relation to the others. And the characters of Francis and Sandra speak in only one scene, in the pizza shop, though the dialogue is incredibly compelling: candid exchanges about what it’s like to be a woman in a world of modern dating, and romantic metaphors about isolation and desire. I could’ve watched an entire show of this conversation.I went into this show expecting the grotesque and perhaps even the gratuitous, especially once I passed a sign in the theater warning the audience about the nudity and the play’s content. Nothing triggered me or offended me, not even Shareen’s description of her diarrhea or the sight of a used DivaCup. (I can’t say the same for everyone else, particularly the three audience members who shuffled out early in the show, never to return.)But then there was one moment that got to me, when Francis and Sandra are talking about the ways the men they’ve dated have manipulated their way to getting what they want, like unprotected sex. As Francis recounted a drunken negotiation she had with a guy, my body stiffened. The exchange was so familiar; it made me recall my own sticky encounter with a date.While that moment in the show may have made me feel uncomfortable, I was also grateful for the scene, and even the thorny feeling it inspired — theater should sometimes cause us discomfort. After all, the greatest intimacies we can hope for, as audience members, are those we build between our seats and the stage.ShhhhThrough Feb. 20 at Atlantic Stage 2, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Private Data Shows Broadway’s Hits and Misses After Reopening

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      Big shows did well when they returned in the fall after the long pandemic shutdown but new plays struggled, previously undisclosed industry data shows.During the long dark months when the coronavirus pandemic kept Broadway shuttered, a hypothesis took hold in parts of the industry: Once theaters reopened, the audience would include more New Yorkers and fewer tourists, and the result could be a more receptive marketplace for ambitious new plays.It did not turn out that way.Previously undisclosed data about the financial performance of individual Broadway shows reveal that the fundamental modern economics of the industry, in which big brands dominate and adventurous new works struggle to break through, were reinforced, rather than upended, as the industry reopened last fall.The good news: In the months between the reopening of Broadway and the upheaval caused by the arrival of Omicron, the biggest prepandemic hits were doing reasonably well. The disappointment: Many new and unfamiliar plays, including a much-heralded wave of work by Black writers and a pair of experimental plays by white writers, struggled to sell tickets, much as plays have often done in recent seasons.The information about the shows’ financial performance was collected by the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and theater owners, and distributed to the association’s membership in mid-January. The League, in a break with past practice, has decided not to make show-by-show box office data public this season, saying the circumstances are so unusual that the data cannot fairly be compared to that of other seasons, but The New York Times has obtained access to the numbers.The data, which begins in mid-September, when some of the biggest musicals reopened, runs only through Dec. 12, just before a spike in positive coronavirus tests among theater workers forced as many as half of all Broadway shows to cancel performances. In the weeks since, Broadway has taken a tumble — even though the wave of cancellations has stopped, attendance has been soft and multiple shows have closed.Before Omicron hit, Broadway’s return was going better than some had feared, especially for big-brand musicals. Plays had a harder time.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesBut before the Omicron variant, Broadway’s box office was doing far better than pessimists had feared, given the dearth of visitors and office workers, ongoing concerns about public health, and uncertainty about the effect of vaccine mandates and mask requirements. During the final week covered in the data — the week that ended Dec. 12 — about one-third of the shows running grossed more than $1 million, which has often been seen as a sign of strength. Among them: the musicals “Hamilton,” “Wicked,” “The Lion King,” “Moulin Rouge!,” “Tina,” “Six,” “Aladdin,” “The Book of Mormon,” “Hadestown” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” and the plays “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Lehman Trilogy.”Notably, the club of top grossers included two newcomers, “Six” and “The Lehman Trilogy,” both of which were well-reviewed, small-cast shows that were in previews in 2020 when the pandemic hit, and then finally opened last October. “Six” is still running on Broadway; “The Lehman Trilogy” ended its Broadway run as scheduled on Jan. 2 and on March 3 it plans to begin a monthlong run in Los Angeles.Also noteworthy: “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which during the pandemic shutdown was trimmed from a two-part play to a more traditional one-part show, appears, at least initially, to have benefited from the reconstructive surgery. The shorter version impressed critics and reduced running costs, and its weekly grosses in early December were about $1.7 million, which is significantly better than it was doing during that same period in 2019.During the industry’s best fall stretch — Thanksgiving week — “Hamilton” grossed over $3 million, and “The Lion King,” “Wicked” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” each grossed over $2 million.The effect of the Tony Awards, which were held Sept. 26 in an effort to showcase the reopening of Broadway, is difficult to discern. “Moulin Rouge!,” which won the best musical Tony, sold well through the fall, but less well than it had in the fall of 2019 (the week before Thanksgiving last year, the musical grossed $1.5 million; during that same week in 2019, it had grossed $2 million).The fall was especially tough for plays, which often struggle in an era when Broadway is dominated by big musicals. Critically acclaimed plays like “Pass Over,” “Is This a Room” and “Dana H.” played to houses that were at times between one half and two-thirds empty.The average ticket prices for all the new plays other than “The Lehman Trilogy” were well below the industry average, suggesting that the plays were resorting to steep discounts. During Thanksgiving week, the average ticket price at “Hamilton” was $297, while at “Chicken & Biscuits” it was $35.Other than “Lehman,” the strongest selling of the new plays was “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” which grossed over $400,000 in some weeks. It has since closed, as has every other play that was running on Broadway last fall other than “Cursed Child.”There were also, as there always are, musicals that struggled too. The new musical “Diana,” which opened to harsh reviews and closed a month later, played to 51 percent capacity houses and grossed $374,000 (for seven performances) during the week that ended Dec. 12. “Girl From the North Country,” which has closed but says it plans to reopen in the spring, played to 47 percent capacity audiences that week and grossed $310,000, and “Flying Over Sunset,” which ended its run early, played to 69 percent capacity audiences and grossed $323,000 that week.“Jagged Little Pill,” the musical featuring songs by Alanis Morissette, did better than those shows, but not well enough to sustain a long run. The show was playing to houses that were about four-fifths full in the late fall, and it grossed $768,000 the week of Dec. 12. It closed a week later.Broadway is now in the midst of a particularly grim winter, and there are currently only 19 shows in the 41 theaters, which is lower than it has been for years. But producers say their daily wraps (that’s their net ticket sales) are picking up and they are optimistic about spring; there are already 14 openings scheduled in April. More