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      15 Summer Theaters for That Nearby, Out-of-Town Experience

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

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      Shay Youngblood, Influential Black Author and Playwright, Dies at 64

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

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      ‘Starlight Express’ Review: The Gravy Train Rolls On

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

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      Angélica Liddell Brings Electricity to Avignon Festival

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      The Spanish director and performer Angélica Liddell elicited a standing ovation at the Avignon Festival in spite of her attacks on critics.Theater critics can be masochistic creatures. On Saturday, the Spanish provocateur Angélica Liddell opened the Avignon Festival in France, one of Europe’s most prestigious theater events, with a no-holds-barred diatribe against them. She quoted, and taunted, several writers who were in the audience.The response from the rows of journalists in attendance, and the nearly 2,000 attendees? A standing ovation.Bizarre and grating as it was, Liddell’s “Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman” (“Demons: Bergman’s Funeral”) brought a level of electricity to the Avignon Festival, which runs through July 21, that few have matched in recent years. Its most prized venue, the open-air Cour d’Honneur of Avignon’s Palais des Papes, or papal palace, tends to foil even the most experienced artists. Not so Liddell and her visceral monologues.She spent long stretches of “Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman” alone on the vast, blood-red stage. Pacing back and forth, she vociferated as if she were possessed. At regular intervals, she took her cue from the intense, misanthropic writings of the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, one of her idols. “I am Ingmar Bergman,” she declared at one point, before returning to her favorite themes: death, guilt, sex and excrement.Yet the first vocal shots Liddell fired were directed at critics, in a section called “Humiliations suffered.” With her back turned to the audience, she began reading excerpts from negative reviews of her work, starting with an article by Armelle Héliot, the former chief theater critic of the French newspaper Le Figaro. “Where are you, Armelle?,” Liddell yelled, before moving on to the next name.As those around me realized what was happening, mouths fell open. Many of us thought back frantically on our past reviews, wondering if we were next.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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      Brooke Shields Has Worn Many Hats. Now She’s a Labor Boss.

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      The model-turned-actress-turned-businesswoman is the new president of Actors’ Equity. In an interview, she explained what she’s doing there.Brooke Shields has a new office. It’s empty, and she hasn’t figured out how she wants to furnish it, or even how often she’ll be there, but it’s a sign of her new and unexpected status, as president of Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing theater actors and stage managers in the United States.Shields’s candidacy was a surprise, even to herself. But when Kate Shindle, who had led the union for nine years, announced in April that she was stepping down, Shields’s music director suggested she consider the opening, and soon enough, she had tossed her hat in the ring, and in May she won the vote by members, defeating two more-seasoned labor activists. She’s already led her first meeting of the union’s council, and came away realizing she has a lot to learn, starting with parliamentary procedure.Shields, of course, is one of those people who has been famous for so long, and in so many ways, that even she can’t remember a different time. She was a childhood model, a preteen movie star, a sex object and an icon of beauty, all before she went off to college (Princeton, thank you very much). In the years since, she has acted onscreen and onstage, has written books, has spoken widely, particularly about depression, and has become a symbol and a subject for an evolving discussion about how women and girls have been sexualized by the entertainment and fashion industries.Shields (center as Brent Barrett’s ventriloquist’s dummy at a 2006 anniversary party) has had five roles on Broadway, including playing Roxie Hart in “Chicago.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShe has had five roles on Broadway, each time replacing a principal in an already-running show (“Grease,” “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Wonderful Town” and “The Addams Family”). She has also performed occasionally at regional theaters (“The Exorcist” at the Geffen in Los Angeles, for example) and Off Broadway (in the star vehicles “Love Letters,” “The Vagina Monologues,” and “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” among others).Now, at 59, she is thinking a lot about middle age. She is recovering from a foot surgery that attracted attention when she wore Crocs (yellow, matching her dress) to the Tony Awards. She has just started a new beauty business, Commence, with hair-care products developed for women over 40; she is writing another book, also aging-focused; and she is seeking new ways to harness the celebrity she can never shed. That’s where Equity comes in — she says actors and stage managers were extraordinarily supportive of her when she needed to jump quickly into an unfamiliar show. Now she wants to give back.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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      Jonathan Tunick Unveils a Grand Orchestration of Sondheim’s ‘A Little Night Music’

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      Jonathan Tunick, Stephen Sondheim’s longtime collaborator, unveiled a grand orchestration of “A Little Night Music” that deserves more than a concert.Near the end of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “A Little Night Music,” the orchestra swells to what he is said to have called his Max Steiner moment, something out of “Casablanca” or “Gone With the Wind.”Désirée and Fredrik, former lovers who reconnect but nearly miss out on happiness again, come together and kiss. The instruments respond with a grand, emotive reprise of the show’s 11 o’clock number, “Send in the Clowns.”At a concert performance of “A Little Night Music” at David Geffen Hall on Thursday, the premiere of a new orchestration by Sondheim’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick, the 53-piece Orchestra of St. Luke’s let out a fortissimo tutti. Strings and winds soared with the melody, but there was more: resonant, staggered chords to support it in the low voices, and florid counterpoint. It was a moment fit not only for the movies but for the opera house, which, perhaps, is where this new orchestration belongs.Not all musicals are fit for stages beyond Broadway, but some are. And there has been a resurgence, since Sondheim’s death in 2021, of large-scale revivals of his work. (This, after years of skillfully stripped-down productions by John Doyle.) “Sweeney Todd” returned to Broadway with Tunick’s original orchestration for nearly 30 players, crackling with detail and musical drama. Last week, “Follies” was presented at Carnegie Hall with a similarly sized ensemble and a starry cast in concert.The version of “A Little Night Music” on Thursday had nearly double those forces. If anyone can be trusted with that task, it’s Tunick. He and Sondheim first collaborated on “Company,” in 1970, and Tunick orchestrated the composer’s final, unfinished show, “Here We Are,” last year.Tunick, center, was Sondheim’s longtime collaborator, starting with the 1970 musical “Company.”Joan MarcusWe 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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      Jeremy O. Harris’s ‘Slave Play’ Documentary Is Fueled by Experimental Films

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      The playwright Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.” wears its intellectual references on its sleeve.Jeremy O. Harris’s new documentary — titled “Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play.” — is ostensibly focused on acting students rehearsing scenes from his provocative “Slave Play,” which was nominated in 2020 for 12 Tony Awards.That’s only the beginning.The documentary, which is streaming on Max, becomes an examination of Harris’s artistic influences and why he wants his play to be seen solely as a work of theater. Part of the strategy is calling back to hallmark experimental documentaries.The playwright Jeremy O. Harris, left, providing feedback to acting students who are rehearsing “Slave Play.”HBO“It’s really important to pay homage to these figures who are just now starting to really get the celebration they deserve, but also opened the door for me to do what I’m doing,” Harris said in an interview.Here are some of the references that informed “Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play.”:‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’“Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” is a movie about making a movie about directing a screen test.Janus FilmsUnderstanding the premise of this making-of-the-making-of documentary requires some investment.On its first layer, “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” (1968) is a screen test filmed in Central Park. On the next, it’s a movie about William Greaves directing the screen test. And then it’s a movie about making a movie about directing a screen test.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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      ‘N/A’ Review: For Nancy Pelosi and A.O.C., It’s a House Divided

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      Is moral leadership possible without parliamentary power? Two very familiar congresswomen battle it out onstage.The publicity for “N/A,” a two-hander that opened at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on Thursday, has been careful to point out that, despite all appearances, the N in the title is not Nancy Pelosi, and the A is not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Rather, the playwright, Mario Correa, argues in a program note that “N/A” is about a battle of “ideas and ideals,” which are “bigger than any one person (or even two).”I vote nay on that proposition.The play’s ideas and ideals are fine, and modestly if repetitively dramatized, but what makes this swift summer trifle so diverting is the embodiment of the women themselves. N and A are perfect incarnations of their congressional doppelgängers, down to Pelosi’s golden Mace of the United States House of Representatives brooch and A.O.C.’s signature “Beso” red lipstick. The gimmick also gives Holland Taylor (as N) and Ana Villafañe (as A) tasty roles and a meaty conflict to sink their teeth into.Correa frames that conflict as ideological, not personal. In five scenes starting with the 2018 midterms (when the Democrats win control of the House) and ending with the 2022 midterms (when they lose it), he broadly traces their seesawing power.At first the seesaw is profoundly unbalanced. We meet A just after her surprise primary victory against a machine Democrat and N’s handpicked successor. (In real life, that would be Joseph Crowley.) Though still a savvy street fighter, A is awed and a little cowed by the Washington she discovers. “So, yeah, we are not in Kansas anymore,” she tells her Instagram Live followers, invoking a surprising image of fragility.By then, N has been in Congress for 31 years. Having lost the House speakership when “that man” was elected, she intends to reclaim it. Her favorite number — the only one that counts for a parliamentarian — is 218, the number of votes needed to get work done. Anything shy of that is zero.So even though she and A find that they agree on many policy goals, especially ending the inhumane treatment of migrants at the southern border, they are irreconcilably opposed about how to achieve them. N wheedles, calls in chits, holds her nose and plays footsie with lobbyists, and if she doesn’t have the votes to pass a bill, she doesn’t waste her political capital trying. Naturally, A wants to blow that all up.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