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      Interview: Andrew Lancel on his (not literal) Swan Song

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      Actor Andrew Lancel talks about his latest role in Swan Song at Turbine Theatre.

      One of the shows that’s really piqued our interest this November is a new revival of Swan Song at the Turbine Theatre, Battersea Power Station. The star of this one-man play, Andrew Lancel, has appeared in so many TV and stage shows it would be hard to have missed him! Famously he played DI Neil Manson in The Bill and the creepy Frank Foster in Coronation Street, but he’s also highly regarded for his phenomenal portrayal of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein in Epstein – the Man who Made the Beatles and in Cilla; as Brian Clough in The Damned United; and more recently as Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.

      We caught up with Andrew to ask him about bringing the show from sold out performances in Liverpool to one of London’s newest, most passionate theatre spaces.

      Swan Song feels like a great show to get people back going back to live theatre right now. Can you tell us a bit about it?

      It’s ideal – it’s intimate  and I think people really feel a part of it.

      Whilst it’s set in the 90’s it feels topical. We all know a Dave and will be able to relate  to him in life and our school memories. He is always left behind because he can be a bit of an idiot but he’s also very funny.

      It’s billed as a bittersweet comedy – is there more bitter or sweet, or maybe a balance of both?

      Bang in the middle. (playwright) Jonathan Harvey is the master at this. 

      Are you and your character Dave Titswell alike in any ways? Do you wear a lot of beige? Is Dave a character that you recognise in real life?

      I’ve just got some beige boot socks but that’s about it! We look alike but that’s about it too – I think ..though I admit to liking the same music and soaps as him! It’s a cliche but we all know a Dave. Whilst he winds people up and can be a total dick, we do care for him. 

      You have an incredible, award-winning creative team on this show. How has it been working with Jonathan Harvey and Noreen Kershaw, and are you an honorary Scouser now?  You know she supports Bury, right?

      Yup – and I’ve watched bury a few times. Also we shot Hillsborough there. I’ve known them both for years and Jonathan and I only had one name written down for who we wanted to direct it. Noreen. Working with them both is a joy – their talent is endless.

      What is it about the Lake District and Liverpool dramas?? From Willy Russell to Jimmy McGovern, things always happen out of town, so you seem to be in good company!

      Hadn’t thought of that. In the original it was Swanage! It’s firmly rooted in Liverpool and takes us to the lakes – but this could be anywhere and anytime. 

      You have a fabulous background in musicals, starring in productions like The Sound of Music and Cilla. Will we get to hear you sing in this show? What have you enjoyed about the part of Dave?

      He’s hard work to play but great fun. I’m on my own up there but JH surrounds us with images and characters. A lot happens in the hour.. no singing but seriously bad dance moves!

      The original 1997 play was scripted for a woman. What do you think it brings to the narrative in changing it to a gay man?

      Well it was so I could do it for one! The original was wonderful – I wish I’d  seen it but I was far too young! It’s changed massively – obviously – but the heart is still the same. Need. Oh the need. 

      Do you think the story reflects on the teaching profession differently after what they’ve been through during the Covid pandemic?

      I remember when I did cardiac arrest a doctor telling me ‘we are hard done by’ and it feels very much like that now. They are and have been scapegoated and put under enormous pressure. So not much has changed .. which makes this play topical and accessible. It’s taken off with a life of its own – teachers love it- I’m thrilled about that. 

      The Turbine seems a lovely new addition to London’s theatre scene.  Have you been to check it out yet and if so, what do you feel the venue and its audiences will be like for the show?

      I love it. It’s perfect do this and I’ve seen wonderful things there. The area is beginning to bounce and now with the Tube.. wow, what a buzz. I think and hope they will be eclectic fun and up for a laugh.. and maybe a tear.. aren’t we all!?

      Our thanks to Andrew for giving up his time to chat to us. Swan Song comes to Turbine Theatre between 29 November and 4 December. Further information and tickets via the below link.

      The show also performs pre-London dates at The Coro in Ulverston on 19 and 20 November. More

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      Interview: Maia Kirkman-Richards tells us There’s a Rang-Tan in my Bedroom

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      There’s a Rang-Tan in my Bedroom at The Little Angel Theatre recently got a whopping five stars from us.  It’s a puppet show for children from ages 5-11 that challenges human environmental damage by showing how it affects some of the animals impacted by businesses such as dirty palm oil production, and by plastic waste in the ocean.  Heavy stuff for our little ones to handle, perhaps?  But they all seemed to have great fun in the process and came out buzzing! We asked director and puppet maker Maia Kirkman-Richards to tell us a bit more about the show.

      So Maia, this might seem quite a challenging topic for children, but you’ve approached it very directly, simplifying rather than dumbing down. What’s been the response?

      It’s been incredibly exciting for me to work on this project, especially as it’s a show that genuinely encourages conversation from its audiences – something that I’ve really missed over the last couple of years.

      The show itself is based on two really beautiful adverts that Greenpeace created a few years ago, so to try and shy away from any of the discussion that they held just felt wrong, regardless of the age of our audience.  Having said that, ultimately our aim has always been to leave audiences feeling empowered and excited about the prospect of change and all the new opportunities that may bring – and I really feel like that excitement and eagerness for change has been largely reflected in the response to the show from the audience and reviewers.

      It felt really important that we placed our audience at the heart of this story and allowed their voices to be heard.  A beautiful result of that is that we are constantly engaging and hearing responses about the show, it’s subject matter and what we can do to make a difference.  I love hearing about the things that our young audience members passionately shout out – at this moment in time it feels like it’s the most authentic and heart-warming response that a director could hope for.

      The Rang-Tan story is probably well known to many people from the Iceland Christmas ad a few years ago, and is also a picture book by James Sellick.  How do you think puppetry works differently to other media in telling this story?

      Puppets are brilliant for allowing an audience to really invest a part of themselves within the characters and the story.  As a puppet designer, you are never looking to create 100% of the puppet, it’s really important to allow that neutral space for the audience to see and add an element of themselves in, that way they become invested and so when something happens to the puppet, the audience feel it too.  That emotional connection that an audience develops with a puppet is incredibly useful and important to our storytelling and kept every audience member as one of the show’s key protagonists.

      However, it was quite daunting when approaching this project to figure out how to transfer such an iconic series of adverts into something that would work physically on stage. The main question we needed to answer was how do we recreate so many different locations without it feeling like a slightly wasteful amount of set and props that would only get used once.  That would be pretty hypocritical of us right?! It was a joy to problem solve this with the creative team though and ultimately I’m proud of our choices.

      The puppets in the play are absolutely beautiful, and so creatively used.  Can you tell us about how you devised them?

      This was actually a really tricky one, and I definitely spent a lot of days and nights exploring different options!

      As a production we wanted to push to create a show that was more environmentally aware in its creation and this was a real challenge for me. In the process of creating these puppets, I discovered some incredible recycling centres across South London and really enjoyed having to think outside the box and wherever possible, use what was available to me.

      As for the visuals of the puppets, I wanted to create characters that although inspired from the animals in the adverts, they felt like they had their own identity and language.  It has been such a privilege to have the time to learn more about these animal’s habitats and the serious threats that they are up against, and I wanted to pay homage to that.  Each of the animal puppets in the show are covered in a bespoke fabric, made up of images of either their habitats, or the objects that threaten them.  Our Jaguar is entirely covered in ariel photos of the Amazon Rainforest burning, our turtle is covered in photos of plastic floating in the ocean and piling up on beaches, and our orangutan is covered in photos of palm fruits.  My aim with these puppets is always to ensure that you see the puppet and the animal first – the visual stories behind their fabrics is something that you have to search for as an active audience – I think that’s really exciting.

      I loved how the audience and the animals become part of an actively shared world through the staging. Was this a conscious choice, or did it just evolve in the production process?

      Yes!  I have always been a big fan of creating work that feels genuinely accessible to lots of different types of audience.  For me, that means ensuring that people have different options of how to ‘watch’ a show – giving them plenty to look at as well as listen to, interact with and be a part of.  So it was definitely a conscious choice to involve the audience in as much as we could and place them right in the heart of the story, experiencing it alongside our puppet characters as it all unfolds. 

      Our Set Designer, Kate Bunce, created a really special set for this show and I loved all our early conversations about how to create something on a small scale that somehow still felt vast and all consuming.  Kate was so responsive to the show that we were creating (things were still changing in the final days of rehearsal!) but that meant that we could constantly push ourselves towards the most exciting visual options without limitations of what it had to look like.  Being truely responsive and adapting as you go is a real gift and not something that everyone can do, so I really lucked out with my creative team in that sense.

      There are so many details in the show that signal problem items in the home, and the urgency of the situation. It’s almost like a ‘Where’s Wally?’ once you start to spot them.  Did this help in constructing multiple layers of engagement for different age groups?

      Yes absolutely, I think that a lot of the time the layers built up quite naturally as myself and the team learnt more and more throughout the rehearsal process!

      As with a lot of work for children, you end up with such a wide age range of people in your audience (from babies to grandparents and everyone in between) so I was mindful to make sure that there was something for everyone.  So the ‘signals’ that you mentioned could be spotted not only in the puppets and props, but also in the set, the projection, the lighting colours, the speech and of the course the soundtrack. 

      Another thing I loved about the show was that the children were handed an opportunity to voice their opinions and get creative with solutions.  Have you had any follow-up responses from your audiences?

      I love that about the show too – it’s such a joy to hear the ideas that the audience passionately shout out in each performance.  I had an email come through just today to say that one young audience member had shouted out “Go in a boat and collect all the plastic bags from the sea!”.  It’s so important that our audiences feel like their voices are heard and that without them, change cannot actually happen. 

      I know that The Little Angel has had some lovely feedback emails from families after the show, chatting about how the show has impacted life beyond the theatre walls.  I read one that simply said ‘My son now says he’ll eat less snacks in plastic bags!’ – I think her son is a legend.

      What’s next for Rang-Tan and her friends?

      Good question!  We’re really hopeful that this is the start of the theatre industry opening back up and thriving again so that we can continue to share this production with new audiences around the country – starting with a National tour in autumn 2022. 

      There’s A Rang-Tan in my Bedroom and Other Stories runs at Little Angel Theatre until 7 November. Further information on this and other shows can be found via the below link. More

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      Review: In ‘The Lehman Trilogy,’ a Vivid Tale of Profit and Pain

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      The play, tracing the rise and fall of the fabled financiers, finally opens on Broadway after successful runs in London and at the Park Avenue Armory.Much of what happens in “The Lehman Trilogy” is invisible to the eye, which is not the way prestige drama usually works onstage.Directed by Sam Mendes, this British import, which reaches across 164 years of American history to trace the family saga behind the fallen financial powerhouse Lehman Brothers, was a scalding-hot ticket during a brief prepandemic run at the Park Avenue Armory. Yet it offers almost nothing in the way of spectacle, and only the slightest of costume changes: a top hat here, a pair of glasses there.In the captivating production that opened on Thursday night at the Nederlander Theater, it relies largely on an unspoken agreement between actors and audience — to imagine together, and let fancy crowd out fact.Sort of the way that heedless investors looked right past all warning signs in the faith-based run-up to the stock market crash of 2008. Illusion is illusion, after all, and financial markets, like the theater, require a certain suspension of disbelief — though when the fantasy bursts in theater, the fallout is less ruinous. When investors halted their collective game of make-believe 13 years ago, mammoth financial firms like Lehman Brothers met their swift demise, and the world’s markets suffered the aftershocks.“The Lehman Trilogy,” though, is not actually a number-crunching play; reports that Jeff Bezos took in a recent performance should not cause you to infer otherwise.Written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Power, it is a vividly human tale, nimbly performed by three of the finest actors around: Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Adrian Lester, who, in making his Broadway debut, has replaced the original cast’s Ben Miles. (I did not catch Beale, Godley and Miles at the Armory; it was too scarce a ticket, and too pricey.)Slipping in and out of myriad roles, the actors spend the bulk of their time narrating, standing outside their characters. We, in turn, spend most of our time envisioning the fleet-footed story they conjure with words over three-plus hours (including two intermissions) that feel nowhere near that long.Our eyes track these witchy actors as they move through Es Devlin’s revolving glass-and-metal office set, while our minds persuade us that the story is unfolding in a succession of disparate spaces that resemble it not at all.A peculiarly gentle interrogation of the American dream’s descent into many-tentacled nightmare, “The Lehman Trilogy” begins as so many stories of this nation do: with an intrepid immigrant’s arrival. A young man from Bavaria stands before us, suitcase in hand, freshly landed in New York Harbor and certain he is worldly after 45 days at sea.From left, Godley, Beale and Lester in the play. Their feats of storytelling are the primary reason to see “The Lehman Trilogy,” our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe year is 1844, he is Heyum Lehmann, and in a moment we will see him reborn as Henry Lehman — his Ellis Island moniker bestowed by a port official too obtuse to comprehend the newcomer’s real name.On first impression, Henry (Beale) is darling, funny and utterly sympathetic. When his younger brothers, Emanuel (Lester) and Mayer (Godley), follow him across the ocean, we feel a similar warmth toward them.This is where the mechanics of the play, with these deft and lovely actors breathing such life into the brothers, coax us into an ease at odds with moral logic as we watch their genteelly brutal acquisition and stockpiling of wealth.The brothers settle in antebellum Alabama, where even the earliest iteration of the family firm, a shop selling fabrics and clothing, relies on a local economy built on slavery. As the Lehmans grow more ambitious, they start buying and selling cotton from the plantations, making their first fortune on it.Seldom do we hear a voice of conscience — like the local physician who tells a dispirited Mayer, in the aftermath of the Civil War, that the collapse of the South’s economy should not have come as a surprise.“Everything that was built here was built on a crime,” the doctor says. “The roots run so deep you cannot see them, but the ground beneath our feet is poisoned. It had to end this way.”That is, of course, a warning that the pattern of reckless profit and resulting pain will repeat: in the 1929 crash, which Lehman Brothers managed to survive by morphing yet again, and in the 2008 crash, which it didn’t. It is also a signal that the founders of the firm — whose deaths, when they come, are meant to move us, and do — were not the ethical betters of their more vulgar descendants.With a subdued, filmic score by Nick Powell, played live by Candida Caldicot on an upright piano, “The Lehman Trilogy” is structured in three parts. It follows Emanuel and Mayer to New York, and their family through successive generations, whose principals we first meet in childhood.So here is Emanuel’s son Philip (Beale), a future shark, as a gape-mouthed tot prodded to parade his smarts for guests. Here is Philip’s son Bobby (Godley) as a buoyant 10-year-old, whose father mercilessly dismantles the boy’s love for horses as creatures rather than commodities.And most enchantingly, here is Mayer’s son Herbert (Lester), a future governor and senator, as a thumb-sucking 3-year-old playing with his father’s beard, and later as a fair-minded 9-year-old at Hebrew school, objecting to the divine massacre of the innocent children of Egypt.No matter how horrid some of the Lehmans become (not Herbert, though; never Herbert), knowing them young cushions our feelings toward them later. That’s human nature. What’s unsettling is which people in this saga of capitalism we see portrayed, which people the play helps us to imagine clearly and which people we are asked to imagine vaguely or not at all. Proximity shapes our sympathies.“The Lehman Trilogy” exists because of the cascading financial disaster that extinguished Lehman Brothers in 2008, yet its perspective is very much from the top of that deluge. Any harm bucketing down below is at best an abstraction, just as it is in 1929, when the play shows us suicides of despairing stockbrokers but none of the pain radiating through lower social strata. And slavery, the founder of the family’s feast, is kept in soft focus, off to the side.The primary reason to see “The Lehman Trilogy,” then, is to witness the superb Beale, Godley and Lester in their feats of storytelling — and to conspire with them in imagining the play’s tarnished, if not truly vanished, world.When intermission comes and the auditorium lights turn on, gaze up at that glass set. You’ll see an awfully comfortable-looking audience reflected there.The Lehman TrilogyThrough Jan. 2 at the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan; thelehmantrilogy.com. Running time: 3 hours 15 minutes. More

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      On London Stages, Brevity Reigns Supreme

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      A new work by Caryl Churchill, the final installment in Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell saga and a Larry Kramer play deploy their running times with varied success.LONDON — Theatrical convention has never mattered to Caryl Churchill, the questing English playwright who at 83 continues to display a maverick intelligence. “What If If Only,” her new play for her longtime home, the Royal Court, runs only 20 minutes — which is six minutes longer than was widely reported when the three-performer drama was first announced.But Churchill manages to communicate so much about love and loss and the possibility — just maybe — of a brighter tomorrow that the play, on view through Oct. 23, seems utterly complete. Theatergoers could add value by combining this premiere with the British debut of the American writer Aleshea Harris’s blistering (and 90-minute) “Is God Is,” also playing on the Court’s main stage.The text of Churchill’s play gives its characters names like “Someone” and “Future,” but the director James Macdonald’s ever-spry production cuts through any potential opacity. You understand in an instant the inconsolable despondency of John Heffernan, playing (superbly) a man in a one-sided conversation with someone dear to him who has died; a reference at the outset to painting an apple calls to mind Magritte, whose surrealism Churchill echoes.Jasmine Nyenya, left, and John Heffernan in Caryl Churchill’s “What If If Only,” directed by James Macdonald, at the Royal Court Theater.Johan PerssonHeffernan is visited in his bereavement by a beaming Linda Bassett, a mainstay of Churchill’s work here playing one of several versions of the future in a hypothetical multiverse that evokes the recently revived “Constellations,” a play that was first seen at the Court. Bassett reappears later, this time known only as “Present” and promising a reality that, “of course,” contains war — what reality doesn’t, she asks — alongside “nice things” like “movies and trees and people who love each other.” Are those verities enough in themselves to provide comfort? “What If If Only” isn’t sure, preferring not to traffic in certainty but in the mystery of existence that Churchill has once again marked out as her magisterially realized terrain.Events, by contrast, couldn’t be more linear in “The Mirror and the Light,” the third and final installment in the saga of the Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell, as filtered through the beady eye of the novelist Hilary Mantel. The first two books in her trilogy were adapted into a pair of plays that ran in the U.K. and on Broadway, and this third play, at the Gielgud Theater through Jan. 23, presumably has Broadway in its sights as well. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.Whereas “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies” were adapted for the stage by a seasoned playwright, Mike Poulton, the completion of the triptych has been whittled down for theatrical consumption by Mantel herself, in collaboration with her leading man, Ben Miles, reprising the role of Cromwell. Both are first-time playwrights working with a skilled director, Jeremy Herrin, who has staged all three plays.The result is a lot of filleting for a book in excess of 700 pages, and you often feel as if you’ve boarded a speeding train that is racing through its narrative stops. Keen-eyed playgoers might want to supplement this show with a visit to the popular musical “Six,” which chronicles Henry VIII’s much-married life from the ladies’ perspectives: Equal time seems only fair.This non-singing account of the story begins at the end, which is to say with Cromwell not far from his beheading in 1540. We then rewind to allow for a speedy recap illustrating how Henry VIII’s once crucial aide-de-camp reached this baleful state. No doubt in an effort to avert musty history’s cramping the theatrical mood, characters’ relationships to one another are neatly laid out, leavened where possible with jokey repartee. Dream sequences bring in such ghostly personages as Cardinal Wolsey (a droll Tony Turner) and Cromwell’s father, Walter (Liam Smith).The aim is presumably a modern-day equivalent of the history play cycle of which Shakespeare was the master, as makes sense for a drama presented on the West End in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The problem is a narrative compression so extreme that the story barely has time to breathe, paired with an ensemble overly prone to shouting: Nicholas Boulton’s blustery Duke of Suffolk is on particular overdrive throughout.Things improve with Nathaniel Parker’s increasingly irascible Henry VIII, who is seen changing wives — scarcely has he married the ill-fated Jane Seymour (Olivia Marcus) before he’s on to Anna of Cleves (a cool-seeming Rosanna Adams) — while Miles’s Cromwell watches from the sidelines, too often this time a supporting player in his own story. Christopher Oram won a Tony in 2015 for his costumes for the two-part “Wolf Hall,” and his work here similarly suggests a Holbein portrait or two come to life.For sheer illumination, however, it’s left to Jessica Hung Han Yun’s elegant lighting to sear the stage, lending intrigue and import even when the hurtlingly superficial play has careered off course.Ben Daniels, left, and Dino Fetscher in Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart,” directed by Dominic Cooke at the National Theater.Helen MaybanksA grievous chapter from our own recent history is on view through Nov. 6 on the Olivier stage of the National Theater, where the protean director Dominic Cooke (“Follies,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) has revived the AIDS-era drama “The Normal Heart.” This is the first major production of Larry Kramer’s momentous 1985 play since its pioneering author died last year.Kramer’s crusading spirit lives on in the impassioned Ned Weeks (the English actor Ben Daniels, in fiery, wiry form), the author’s obvious alter ego, who is seen galvanizing a reluctant New York community (The New York Times included) about the peril posed by AIDS in the early years of that pandemic. The production employs a peculiar Brechtian device that has each scene introduced by the actors in their own accents before they morph into their characters: All that does is illustrate the difficulty some of the cast has with the American sounds required.Still, there’s no denying the roiling fury of a wordy play running close to three hours that now as then works as both a call to arms and a requiem: a testament to the durability of people under siege as well as to their fragility. “There’s so much death around,” says Ned, a remark that Churchill’s “Someone” would himself surely recognize, even as both characters find themselves in plays that pulsate with life.Liz Carr in “The Normal Heart.” The production is the first major presentation of the momentous 1985 play since Kramer died last year.Helen MaybanksWhat If If Only. Directed by James Macdonald. Royal Court Theater, through Oct. 23.The Mirror and the Light. Directed by Jeremy Herrin. Gielgud Theater, through Jan. 23.The Normal Heart. Directed by Dominic Cooke. National Theater, through Nov. 6. More

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      Review: ‘By Heart’ Commits Community to Memory

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      In Tiago Rodrigues’s show, audience members learn a Shakespeare sonnet together — line by line, over and over.Literature is the great love of my life. And yet I’ve never liked memorization or recitation: Shel Silverstein and Maya Angelou in grade school, Yeats and my own slam poems in college. It was laborious, and the words always seemed to slip away back to the page when I wasn’t looking.But the playwright and actor Tiago Rodrigues has changed my mind. In “By Heart,” his trenchant Brooklyn Academy of Music debut, he invites 10 audience members to memorize Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30. As he coaches them through the lines, he breaks to talk about memorization as a personal and sometimes even revolutionary act, annotating his exercise with historical anecdotes, quoted excerpts from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ray Bradbury, and his own life. He talks, for example, about his grandmother Candida, a voracious reader who learns she’s going blind and asks Rodrigues to help her pick a book to learn by heart before her vision completely fails.Rodrigues uses his memorization exercise to create an intimate performance that connects people through text. Though perhaps “performance” isn’t quite the right word; Rodrigues, who was recently appointed as director of the Avignon Festival in France, chafes at any claims of theatricality in his production. Dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, he sits on a stool among a semicircle of chairs and a few stacks of books on wooden crates. “Everything will be calm and normal,” he reassured the audience at the show I attended. “I’m also allergic to interactive theater.”Rodrigues then asks for volunteers, and breaks down a poem line by line with the 10 of them, leading like a conductor. He gestures with certain phrases — large swoops and waves of the forearms, and flicks of the wrists, punctuated by sharp breaths, to indicate “repeat, repeat, repeat.”That repetition gets tiresome, especially because the show ends only when the 10 volunteers can recite the poem in full. (The running time is estimated between 90 minutes and two hours; on my night, it was closer to 90.) In these moments, the show lags, but Rodrigues doesn’t waver from his leisurely pace. Because isn’t that part of the whole process — that slow, seemingly endless, line-by-line, word-by-word breakdown until the day of the show or assignment?The difference here is what Rodrigues leads us to in the end: a statement about how the texts we hold in our memory become the “decoration for the house of our interior,” according to the literary critic George Steiner, whom Rodrigues quotes at length.At one point, Rodrigues — who has presented “By Heart” in France, Spain, Canada and his native Portugal — reflects on how miraculous it is to be in a space with other (masked, vaccinated) people after months of isolation and fear. True, but more miraculous still was the communal act of translation that allowed each of us to inhabit the text.The sonnet is now changed. I don’t just think of how it might sound in my own voice, but also recall the woman at one end of the semicircle who stumbled through the fifth line of the poem. I hear the charged delivery of the woman in the third chair, and the speedy, confident recitation of the man in Seat 7. And I think of Rodrigues’s grandmother, trying her best to transform herself into a book in which great words — large, heady words and sleek, shiny words and words of love and death — may reside.After the show, as I waited for the subway, I read the poem aloud — once, then twice and again. The train pulled up, and I was so engrossed in the text, I nearly missed it. So give me some lines to memorize. I’m now a believer.By HeartThrough Oct. 17 at the BAM Fisher, Brooklyn; bam.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Review: ‘Thoughts of a Colored Man’ Preaches to the Choir

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      Keenan Scott II’s play, incorporating slam poetry, prose and songs, aspires to be a lyrical reckoning with Black life in America.Seven Black men step onto the stage in the opening of Keenan Scott II’s “Thoughts of a Colored Man.” Over the course of the play, each will reveal a personality and history, but not a name, though later they will introduce themselves as Love, Happiness, Wisdom, Lust, Passion, Depression and Anger. Wearing different combinations of black, gray and red, they stand staring at a hulking billboard that reads “COLORED” in declarative black caps.One of them then asks the question that begins the play: “Who is the Colored Man?”It’s a question that Scott’s Broadway debut, which opened on Wednesday night at the John Golden Theater, doesn’t quite know how to answer. Incorporating slam poetry, prose and songs performed by its cast of seven, “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” which first premiered in 2019 at Syracuse Stage in a co-production with Baltimore Center Stage, aspires to be a lyrical reckoning with Black life in America but only delivers a gussied-up string of straw-man lessons.Set in present-day Brooklyn, amid the many symbols of gentrification (Citi Bike stations, Whole Foods and a Paris Baguette), “Thoughts” employs vignettes to check in with various characters, who are often grouped together. Though the show, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, only runs for about 100 minutes, it takes us to a bus stop, a basketball court, a barbershop, a hospital and other locations, in a series of 18 snappy scenes.The characters, ranging in age from late teens to mid-60s, have specific themes to illustrate: the elder Wisdom (Esau Pritchett) speaks about respect, history and ancestry; Anger (Tristan Mack Wilds) vents about the trappings of consumerism and the objectification of Black athletes; and Happiness (Bryan Terrell Clark) challenges notions about Black struggle and class.But the question remains: “Who is the Colored Man?”The framing of these characters as concepts seems to imply a larger metaphor about Blackness that never comes to fruition. Perhaps we’re meant to deduce that these men taken together make up an entire Black man, with all of his dimensions. Yet Scott’s script teeters between presenting fully drawn characters and firm personifications, ultimately failing at either.From left, Luke James (seated), Esau Pritchett, Da’Vinchi, Dyllón Burnside, Tristan Mack Wilds and Forrest McClendon in Keenan Scott II’s play.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Thoughts” may be inspired by Ntozake Shange’s renowned choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” in which seven unnamed women alternate among songs, dances, monologues and choral poems. It has a narrative continuity that Shange’s doesn’t, though to what end is unclear. So Passion (Luke James) talks Lust (Da’Vinchi) down after a barbershop argument, and Happiness has an awkward confrontation with Depression (Forrest McClendon) in a grocery store. The minute insights are clear, about class and masculinity. More broadly, though, what does “Thoughts” ultimately contribute to this long conversation about Blackness in America?The play sits at the intersection of different avenues of Black life, from the bright retail worker who had to forgo a full scholarship to M.I.T. to the gay gentrifier who was raised in the upper middle class. Despite being set in the present, the play feels removed from time; Scott doesn’t touch the Black Lives Matter protests or the institutional systems that hold Black men back. There are barely any mentions of how whiteness shapes the Black experience in America.And Black women are almost entirely forgotten (except as victims, in one grossly sensationalized monologue by Lust, or objects of desire). The characters’ poems, which are awkwardly incorporated into scenes of regular dialogue about how to pick up women or which Jordans are the best, allow the men to describe and emote but not to advance any message. It all remains at surface level.How does one design a stage for a show that wants to claim representations of Blackness without knowing what to say about it? Robert Brill’s stage design, low black scaffolding and that “COLORED” billboard, recalls Glenn Ligon’s 1990 “Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background),” which was in turn inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s famous quote. It doesn’t help with the show’s overdone approach. Even Ryan O’Gara’s lighting, which at one point dresses the whole theater in a stunning constellation of speckled lights, cannot elevate the language.Dyllón Burnside has the toughest job. As Love, his spoken-word poetry is almost nonsensical. At one point, he says: “She was like the perfect use of assonance in just the right amount of lines. Her pupils looked lost, and I wanted to be the teacher that teaches them to love what they see.”Broadnax’s direction exacerbates these performances of the poems, which abruptly occur as other characters are frozen. They move with the stilted stage cadence of a slam poem, with awkward breaks, including some after verbs and prepositions, just to hammer home the wordplay and rhyme.Burnside as Love in the play, which has lighting design by Ryan O’Gara.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNot everyone in the cast jives with this rhythm; Pritchett’s full-toned bass stumbles through the tempo. Though James’s Passion gets shortchanged with the character’s back story, he at least gets his own music; he shows off his stellar voice, even if for only a few bars scattered throughout the production.Clark is funny as Happiness, tossing side glances, raised eyebrows and witty asides to the audience, providing some much-needed representation of a queer Black character, despite dipping from the well of gay clichés. Da’Vinchi, likewise, has his comic moments as a believably blunt and horny young man. When addressing Black toxic masculinity, primarily through Da’Vinchi’s Lust, the play is mostly inoffensive, if unremarkable.I wish I could tell you that one character isn’t killed by the end. And yet, this is another way that “Thoughts” so obviously tries to convey the reality that so many of us already know to be true. In fact, some of us have lived it. We don’t need a random act of violence onstage to tell us that every day Black men are endangered in our society. We need nuanced characters, action and complex poetry and prose to tell our stories.Thoughts of a Colored ManThrough March 20 at the John Golden Theater, Manhattan; thoughtsofacoloredman.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Former ‘Hamilton’ Cast Member Files Discrimination Complaint Against Show

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      In the E.E.O.C. filing, the actor, who is nonbinary, describes being retaliated against after requesting a gender-neutral dressing room, among other claims. The show denies the allegations.A former “Hamilton” cast member filed a federal workplace complaint against the show on Wednesday, alleging that the show had retaliated and refused to renew a contract after the actor had requested a gender-neutral dressing room.In the complaint, filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, lawyers for the former cast member, Suni Reid (who prefers the pronouns they/them), said they were sidelined and eventually let go in September after requesting a gender-neutral space at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles where “Hamilton” was playing.In the 28-page complaint, Reid, a Black, nonbinary performer who has performed with the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles productions of “Hamilton” since 2017, outlined several other instances of discrimination and harassment by cast members and management over the years, including episodes in which Reid said they were physically threatened or intentionally and repeatedly misgendered.The complaint said Reid eventually intends to pursue legal claims in federal court. Filing a charge of discrimination and retaliation with the E.E.O.C. is a precursor to filing such a lawsuit.“Publicly, ‘Hamilton’ is a beacon of diversity and appears committed to causes seeking social justice and harmony,” Reid’s lawyers, Lawrence M. Pearson and Lindsay M. Goldbrum, said in a statement. “Behind the curtain, however, the Company’s management will force out a Black, transgender cast member simply because they stood up for themselves and advocated for a more equitable workplace, and therefore called that public image into question.”“We look forward to upholding Reid’s rights and hope this is a wake-up call for the theater industry about the systemic inequities that persist even at its greatest heights,” the statement continued.In its own statement, “Hamilton” said Wednesday that Reid had been “a valued cast member” for years and said the show had “offered them a contract to return to ‘Hamilton’ with terms responsive to their requests.”“We deny the allegations in the Charge,” the show said. “We have not discriminated or retaliated against Suni.” During the shutdown, it added, “we have given Suni direct financial support, paid for their health insurance, and paid for their housing. We wish Suni well in their future endeavors.”Reid has performed in the ensemble as well as in roles such as Aaron Burr, George Washington, Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, and Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, according to the complaint.It comes as Broadway and touring shows are working to find their footing following a lengthy pandemic-related shutdown. Earlier this summer, as several shows like “Hamilton” were preparing to restart, some of the most powerful players on Broadway signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices.But Reid’s complaint paints a picture of a toxic workplace environment at “Hamilton” that stretched from coast to coast.Reid was cast in the Broadway production of the show in 2017 and met hostility from the start, according to the complaint. Reid eventually requested a transfer from the Broadway production and started with the Chicago company of “Hamilton” in March 2019, according to the complaint, and came out publicly as transgender and gender-nonconforming. They were constantly misgendered by co-workers, “at times in a pointedly hostile or callous manner,” according to the complaint.By 2020, Reid had begun rehearsals for the Los Angeles company, but never was able to to join the Los Angeles cast in performance because of the shutdown, the complaint said.In May, Reid was presented with a contract renewal for “Hamilton.” Around that time, they asked their agent, Michele Largé, to request a gender-neutral dressing room at Pantages that Reid and others could use. “Hamilton” officials then raised concerns about posts Reid had published on social media describing racial equity issues on the show, according to the complaint.The show would eventually agree to set up gender-neutral dressing spaces in every “Hamilton” theater. But in the fall, after Reid’s lawyers informed the show that they had legal claims of discrimination, the show told Reid’s lawyers that it was “no longer open” to having Reid perform in “Hamilton,” and that “renewal of their contract was no longer an option,” the complaint said. More

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      ‘Letters of Suresh’ Review: Returning to the Fold

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      Rajiv Joseph’s new drama revisits the protagonist, and the metaphoric possibilities of origami, of his earlier play “Animals Out of Paper.”We live in the age of the reboot: an era of reimaginings, spinoffs and sequels upon sequels upon sequels. Theater, with its dependence on adaptation and revival, got there first. But this impulse now extends to new plays, too — “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” Zoom installments of the Apple Family Plays, the way that “Pass Over” riffs on “Waiting for Godot.”So it’s surprising, yet not surprising at all, to sit down at Rajiv Joseph’s “Letters of Suresh,” which opened Tuesday night at Second Stage Theater, and discover a follow-up to “Animals Out of Paper,” his petite and practically perfect dramedy from 2008.A three-character play originally produced as part of Second Stage’s uptown series, “Animals Out of Paper” traced the relationships among Suresh, a teenage origami prodigy who is mentored by Andy, his calculus teacher, and Ilana, the professional origamist that both men fall for. It ended in an unresolved fashion. Joseph (“Guards at the Taj,” “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”), a playwright who specializes in putting big ideas into small and sparsely populated spaces, isn’t big on resolution. Yet “Animals” had seemed complete enough. I have rarely wondered how Suresh’s life — forgive me, I can’t resist — unfolded. Joseph must have felt differently.Directed by May Adrales, “Letters of Suresh” is, as the title suggests, an epistolary play, with a script composed entirely of letters. Well, letters and one FaceTime conversation. It opens with a letter from Melody (Ali Ahn, frenetic and endearing), a 40-year-old writing teacher. Melody has inherited the worldly effects of her great-uncle, Father Hashimoto: a Bible, an origami bird, a box of letters from Suresh. She writes to him, asking if he wants them returned, narrating the text as she scribbles. Despite receiving no response, she keeps writing and narrating, marveling at the way she can reveal herself to a blank page.If narrating letters to nowhere seems like a writerly conceit, that’s because it is, though Ahn’s messy charisma puts it over. She soon disappears, replaced — within the set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s false prosceniums — by Ramiz Monsef’s Suresh. He narrates the letters in the box, which take him from a confused boy of 18 to an equally confused man of about 30. Utkarsh Ambudkar created the role of Suresh in the earlier play, which means Monsef has some big high-tops to fill. Cocky, appealing and forlorn, he fits them just fine.Ramiz Monsef, left, as Suresh, and Kellie Overbey, as Amelia.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere are two other roles, Father Hashimoto (Thom Sesma), and Amelia, a onetime colleague of Suresh’s, played by Kellie Overbey — who originated the role of Ilana, which makes her appearance in this different guise a little confusing. “Letters of Suresh,” sweet and even soppy, finds its characters in various stages of heartbreak, with no fracture fully healed. Mixing originality and cliché, the play surveys the near impossibility of connection, a theme reflected in its structure, in which everyone, more or less alone onstage, speaks their truths into a void. It offers up its metaphors — that paper bird, the heart of a whale — with a hand as heavy as an anvil. “Letters and origami,” Amelia muses. “These ancient, archaic art forms of folding paper into something else.”Adrales keeps the pacing sprightly, and the actors mostly resist the pull of sentiment. (Shawn Duan’s projections, which have the screen saver quality of most projections, don’t exactly help.) A play, though, is also a way of making paper (a script) into something else (a show), and “Letters of Suresh,” despite its adroit, layered performances, never executes that transformation fully, persisting as a literary work rather than an entirely theatrical one.Joseph wrote the play before the pandemic, which seems prescient. With everyone homebound and exhausted by Zoom, letter writing experienced a brief vogue. But we can see each other in person now. And as of late summer, we can see live theater, too. “Letters of Suresh,” though, mostly withholds the pleasures of dialogue and interaction. It gives us paragraphs, signed sincerely and very truly, instead.Letters of SureshThrough Oct. 24 at the Tony Kiser Theater, Second Stage Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More