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      Rufus Norris, Creator of Broadway Hits, to Leave the National Theater

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      As Rufus Norris prepares to leave the London playhouse he has led since 2015, he reflects on his quest to make the theater represent the audience it serves.When Rufus Norris became the director of the National Theater in 2015, he said he had one main aim: to make the playhouse representative of Britain.Almost a decade later and as Norris prepares to leave the role, he said he had made progress toward that goal, especially by prioritizing new works. Many of the theater’s most acclaimed recent productions have centered people of color, including an adaptation of Andrea Levy’s “Small Island,” directed by Norris, about Caribbean immigrants to Britain.On Tuesday, Norris, 59, unveiled a typically diverse final season, including “Inter Alia,” Suzie Miller’s follow-up to her hit legal play “Prima Facie”; Shaan Sahota’s “The Estate,” about a British Asian politician’s downfall; and a revival of Michael Abbensetts’s “Alterations,” about immigrants struggling to establish a tailoring business in 1970s London.Norris will be hoping some of those shows transfer to Broadway, following National Theater hits like “The Lehman Trilogy” and “War Horse.”From left: Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in “The Lehman Trilogy.” Mark DouetIn a recent interview, Norris said the demands of the job had meant he hadn’t found time to reflect on his leadership. But an hourlong exchange gave Norris the opportunity to discuss his work at the National, the playhouse’s changing relationship with New York and his plans to step away from the theater world — at least for a while. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.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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      On City Strolls, ‘Fat Ham’ Writer Was Inspired by ‘Ghosts of Absence’

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      The Tower Records on Broad Street, the Borders bookstore on Chestnut, and the Kitchen Kapers boutique at the corner of Walnut and 17th Streets in Philadelphia: The playwright James Ijames shopped at all of them in the early 2000s while pursuing his M.F.A. at Temple University.I frequented them as well, in the late 1990s, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania. During a walk around downtown Philadelphia on a sweltering August afternoon, we noticed that those businesses were long gone. Passing by the buildings that once housed them, we reflected on how those old haunts endure, in some way, because they stay in our memories, paralleling many of the ideas of that lingering generational history Ijames gets at in his work.Our small talk — about our fondness for the city, receiving Pulitzer Prizes the same year (in 2022) and being college professors — gave way to weightier issues: gentrification, ghosts and intergenerational trauma. Those subjects are all explored in “Good Bones,” his much-anticipated follow-up to his Tony-nominated “Fat Ham,” a Pulitzer winner about a Hamlet-inspired character’s struggles to overcome his family’s cycles of trauma and violence.The cast of “Fat Ham” during its Tony-nominated Broadway run in 2023.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIjames (pronounced “imes”) still lives in Philadelphia, with his husband, and teaches at Villanova University. (He is also a former co-artistic director of that city’s Wilma Theater, which produced a film version of “Fat Ham” in 2021, before the Public Theater in Manhattan staged the play’s in-person premiere in 2022.) As we stood on the corner of 15th and Locust Streets, he pointed out that his favorite video store is now a plastic surgery center.“I loved TLA Video because they carried queer independent films, like ‘The Watermelon Woman.’ It was the only place I could find that stuff,” Ijames said. “I’m sad that there isn’t a place for a little queer boy to go.”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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      Kate Mulgrew Walks the Creative and Emotional Plank in ‘The Beacon’

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      Holding tightly to the Dublin accent of her character, the actress talks about starring in Nancy Harris’s feminist thriller at Irish Rep.Sitting in her dressing room on Tuesday at Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan, talking to me about her latest role, the actress Kate Mulgrew initially sounded like herself: an American from Iowa who happens to share a voice with Kathryn Janeway, the Starfleet captain she played on “Star Trek: Voyager.”A minute or two into the interview, though, a Dublin accent started shading some of her phrases, and soon it was coloring all of them. That’s the first thing you need to know, because when you read her words here it helps to imagine their cadence as they hit the air.The second thing to know is why she would slip into that lilt and sustain it for nearly an hour. She was simply holding tight to Beiv Scanlon, the character she is playing in Nancy Harris’s thriller “The Beacon,” on the Irish Rep main stage.Not that Mulgrew, 69, has been speaking with that accent constantly, but she has been doing it “a lot,” she said. “Yesterday I didn’t. I had to go off and do some things, and I didn’t want to disconcert people who’ve known me for years. Right? That would be odd.”But if, offstage, the accent can be discombobulating even for those of us who don’t know her personally, it’s all in service of Beiv (rhymes with wave).Kate Mulgrew and Zach Appelman in “The Beacon,” at Irish Rep in Manhattan. The play opens Sunday, and is scheduled to run through Nov. 3.Carol RoseggWe 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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      Courting Dark Emotions in ‘See What I Wanna See’ and a Celine Song Play

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      Revivals of a Michael John LaChiusa musical and an early work by the “Past Lives” filmmaker toy with and challenge audience expectations.The title of Michael John LaChiusa’s “See What I Wanna See” suggests a single perspective, but the show actually offers a kaleidoscopic approach to the truth. It ravels out one story about a murder and a rape only to follow it up, in Rashomon-like fashion, with variations on the same tale that features a businessman, his wife and a sociopath.In this Out of the Box Theatrics revival of LaChiusa’s 2005 musical, loosely adapted from short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the doomed husband is first represented by a puppet and is later played by Kelvin Moon Loh. In one version, he is knifed by the sociopath (Sam Simahk), and his wife (Marina Kondo) is raped; in another, his wife cheats on her “patronizing” husband, who kills himself out of grief.Indeterminacy — of the truth, of storytelling writ large — is the driving theme and it requires a precise balance. Happily, this production, directed by Emilio Ramos and featuring an Asian American and Pacific Islander cast, never lets us determine which multiverse is the “real” one. And having a puppet portray the husband before substituting a real actor (to play his spirit) is another clever way of shifting our certainties — or alliances.The second act centers on a priest (Zachary Noah Piser), whose faith is waning after 9/11. His life is like “a sentence in which every word seems to be missing a letter.” Tired of providing absolution, he posts a message about an imminent miracle. News spreads like wildfire — or a conspiracy theory — in the song “Gloryday.”As original as these stories are, “See What I Wanna See” is strewed with clichés: The thief sings about being the “devil in disguise,” and the husband, resuscitated as a ghost by a medium (a delightful Ann Sanders), needs “some sort of release.” If the lyrics are not on par with, say, the great, similarly macabre “Sweeney Todd,” the actors (especially the compelling Kondo) keep us on our toes through quicksilver changes in mood.Though tonally different, the two acts feel like different shows rather than two halves of the same musical. What binds them are sequences about two lovers in medieval Japan that precede each act. They are told first from the perspective of the woman, Kesa (Kondo), and then her lover, Morito (Simahk). Both end as Kesa is about to plunge a knife into Morito’s throat. Whose is the truer tale? It’s impossible to say.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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      ‘Forbidden Broadway’ Review: Let Them Somewhat Entertain You

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      From its perch way Off Broadway, the long-running satire slings its affectionate arrows at Patti, Audra and the rest.At its best, topical satire, which is what the “Forbidden Broadway” franchise has been slinging for 42 years, is both timely and well targeted. The timeliness means that audience members know the material being ribbed; the targeting makes sure they know why.Admittedly, timeliness is a vague concept when your subject is Broadway, where the targets recur at regular intervals. It’s thus not a big problem that many of the songs in the show’s latest edition — which opened on Thursday at Theater 555 in the far west reaches of Hell’s Kitchen — send up musicals and performers that Gerard Alessandrini, who created, writes and directs the series, has sent up before.But the targeting in this outing, subtitled “Merrily We Stole a Song” in a nod to the flood of Sondheim revivals, including “Merrily We Roll Along,” is too often hazy. The opening number, repurposing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from “Guys and Dolls” as “Sit Down, You’re Blocking the Aisle,” feels like a title that went looking for a topic. (It’s about rude patrons.) A segment about the upcoming “Gypsy” revival posits the unlikely idea that Audra McDonald is haunted by the ghosts of previous Roses. (“Merman’s gotta let go!”) Having to admit that Lincoln Center’s revival of “South Pacific” was terrific (even if its “Camelot” was “horrific”) turns a Tchaikovsky-themed takedown of that institution into a shrug.To be sure, those numbers, and most of the others, are performed well by the four-person company, if rarely as well as they would be if performed by the people they are parodying. That’s a built-in problem when satire has little to satirize; if the worst snipe you can take at McDonald is that she’s a glorious soprano and Merman wasn’t, you’re not going to be able to throw much shade.Punching wild is also a problem here. Instead of using relevant songs to make his points, Alessandrini sometimes conscripts baffling outliers into service. A takeoff called “Great Gatsby for Dummies,” featuring a wicked Jeremy Jordan impersonation by Danny Hayward, is paired with the irrelevant song “Good Morning” from a 1939 movie. And a running gag in which Doc Brown and Marty McFly visit Broadway past and future, with a young Sondheim strangely in tow, is so in the weeds it has ticks. (It does, however, offer a glimpse of the 23rd century’s Ozempic Theater.)Punches perfectly thrown at the ripest subjects provide the evening’s better moments, even if some of the low blows are mere sideswipes. Of Ariana DeBose’s recent award show hosting, Alessandrini writes: “A girl like that/Could kill the Tonys.” Chris Collins-Pisano does a deadly Ben Platt channeling Liza at the Palace in his recent run there: “Everybody loves charisma/So nobody loves me.” And a rewrite of “The Ladies Who Lunch” provides Jenny Lee Stern, a longtime “Forbidden Broadway” standout, with the opportunity for a pithy comment on Patti LuPone’s extreme mannerisms in the 2021 “Company” revival: “I’ll sink to that.”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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      With ‘Drag Race France Live,’ France’s Drag Queens Answer Hatred With Glitter

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      Answering hatred with glitter is a time-honored drag tradition that France’s answer to “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is keeping alive in a new stage spectacle.The Paris Olympics may be over, but the event is still on the minds of many in the city — and not just sports aficionados. On Tuesday, the audience at “Drag Race France Live,” a stage version of France’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” equivalent, erupted in cheers at the mere mention of the Games’ opening ceremony.The host of both shows, the drag queen Nicky Doll, made jokes about her own appearance in the outsize display on the Seine river, which was directed by Thomas Jolly. Then she hinted at the international backlash to the tableau she took part in, which some people read as a mockery of the biblical Last Supper — or even a display of Satanism.“If I’m a Satanist, I sold my soul for waterproof products,” Nicky Doll told the crowd, referring to the downpour of rain that marred the show in July.For French drag, the Olympics’ opening ceremony came at a pivotal moment.France was relatively late to embracing American-style drag: While the country has a long cabaret tradition, it used to favor “transformiste” drag performers, who impersonate real-life artists instead of creating a character of their own. “Drag Race France,” the TV show, didn’t premiere until 2022. (“RuPaul’s Drag Race” first aired in 2009.) Yet the French show’s winners, and Nicky Doll, quickly became mainstream figures. The inclusion of drag queens in the opening ceremony pointed to their newfound prominence within French culture.Yet what could have been a moment of cultural consecration soon turned sour. Shortly after the broadcast in July, a number of conservative figures in France and abroad took aim at the scene featuring drag queens. In it, the queens gathered around a table surrounding the DJ and activist Barbara Butch, who wore a halo-like headdress. While Jolly denied that the tableau was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” describing it instead as “a grand pagan festival,” he was nonetheless accused of insulting Christianity and received death threats.Nicky Doll performing in Cannes, France, in May. The Olympics opening ceremony, which she took part in, drew ire from right-wing activists and some Christians.Jerome Dominé/Abaca/Sipa USA, via Associated PressWe 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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      Atri Banerjee, a Nice Young Man, Stages an Angry Old Play

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      Atri Banerjee has channeled his own experiences into a new production of John Osborne’s groundbreaking 1956 work “Look Back in Anger.”The night before the theater director Atri Banerjee was due to leave London for Manchester to start rehearsals for a new show, burglars broke into his house. First he was assailed with racist abuse, then physically assaulted.It was May 2019, and the Manchester job, directing an adaptation of “Hobson’s Choice,” at the prestigious Royal Exchange Theater, was a big break for Banerjee, who was stepping up after another director withdrew.“It was a landmark moment for me,” said Banerjee, 30, whose parents are Indian and who grew up in Italy and the Britain. “I had never felt victimized or oppressed because of my brownness,” he said. “Suddenly you realize it’s very easy to be put into a box. It sharpened my political awareness about why theater, so good at celebrating the multiplicity of identity, is important.”Banerjee was speaking in an interview at the Almeida Theater, in London, where he was rehearsing John Osborne’s groundbreaking 1956 play, “Look Back in Anger,” which opens at the playhouse on Friday. Part of a repertory season called “Angry and Young,” it will run in tandem with Arnold Wesker’s 1958 “Roots,” directed by Diyan Zora.“Look Back in Anger,” teeming with fury and frustration at the hidebound British class system, sparked the Angry Young Men movement in literature and theater in the 1950s. (The writers Kingsley Amis, John Wain and Alan Sillitoe were also associated with it.) “A watershed in the history of modern drama,” Martin Esslin wrote in The New York Times on the tenth anniversary of the play’s West End premiere, which was followed the next year by a Broadway run.From left: Morfydd Clark, Ellora Torchia and Billy Howle rehearsing a scene from “Look Back in Anger.”Marc BrennerWe 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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      ‘You’re Basically on a Broadway Stage, With New Friends’

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      At the touring dance party Broadway Rave, the playlist is all show tunes. But don’t worry, no house remixes of “I Dreamed a Dream” here.Julia Cochrane drove for four hours, to New York from Boston, so she could spend last Saturday night immersed in all things Broadway. But not in Manhattan.Instead, she headed to Huntington, Long Island. There, over 100 people packed into Spotlight at the Paramount, a small bar attached to a concert hall, for a touring dance party called Broadway Rave, at which theater kids turned theater adults dance and sing onstage in between shots of tequila.“People who love this, they just want to come together,” said Cochrane, 22, who attended with her friend Hannah Opisso, 23, a Long Island resident who learned about the dance party via Instagram. “It’s like you’re basically on a Broadway stage, with new friends.”“You see these folks get onstage and have the courage to be up there,” said Ethan Maccoby, whose company presents Broadway Rave.Ye Fan for The New York TimesCochrane and Opisso met as students at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, where Broadway cast albums were their pregame music of choice. Last weekend, Broadway musicals brought them together again, and at one point they took the stage to sing “Meet the Plastics” from the “Mean Girls” musical.Attendees don’t have microphones — this isn’t karaoke — but they are encouraged to rush the stage to sing and dance when their favorite songs come on. And the term “rave” is a misnomer: The playlist is mostly uncut cast album material — though last weekend those theater fans may have caught the remix flair at the beginning of “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” Other songs that night included “Out Tonight” (“Rent”), “Popular” (“Wicked”), “Sincerely Me” (“Dear Evan Hansen”) and a few tracks from “Hamilton,” including “The Schuyler Sisters” and “Wait for It.”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