Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Pre-Existing Condition’ Review: Recovering From a Traumatic Relationship

      by

      Marin Ireland’s play opens with Tatiana Maslany in a rotating cast of stars, and “What Became of Us” continues its own experiment with changing casts.Marin Ireland’s new play, “Pre-Existing Condition,” doesn’t come with trigger warnings; it barely even comes with a marketing description. The show’s website says that it’s about the aftermath of “a life-altering, harmful relationship,” but doesn’t explicitly mention domestic violence.Let’s state right up front, then, that physical abuse is this play’s catalyst. And that the Connelly Theater Upstairs in the East Village is a tiny space, where if the performance became overwhelming it would be difficult for an audience member to leave unobtrusively.Does it seem overly delicate to foreground that? For a less potent playwriting debut, in a less shattering production, it might not be necessary. But in Maria Dizzia’s quietly unadorned staging, and with a superb four-person cast that at the moment stars an emotionally translucent Tatiana Maslany, watching this play is like seeing its author open up her rib cage and show us everything.The central character, whom the script calls A, is struggling to put herself back together after a breakup with a man who hit her. The trauma has been consuming her, against her will and for longer than she would have thought.“I feel like I’m becoming the villain,” A tells her therapist. “I’m becoming this obsessive vengeful figure, because he said he’s sorry, so I’m the problem now.”The therapist (a sublimely comforting Dael Orlandersmith) points out, “His voice is still in your head.”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

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      Elinor Fuchs, Leading Scholar of Experimental Theater, Dies at 91

      by

      First as a journalist and later as a professor at Yale, she provided the intellectual tools to help actors, directors and audiences understand challenging work.Elinor Fuchs, whose impassioned insights into contemporary theater — first as a critic prowling the avant-garde scene in New York, and later as a professor at Yale — made her one of the leading scholars of the modern American stage, died on May 28 at her home in the West Village of Manhattan. She was 91.Her daughter Katherine Eban said the cause was complications of Lewy body dementia.Professor Fuchs specialized in dramaturgy, or the construction of a play, including its dramatic structure, its characters’ motivations and technical issues about set design and lighting.In conventional times, dramaturgy can seem to be an arcane, even slightly stuffy field. But in Professor Fuchs’s hands, it became a vital tool for examining the revolutionary new forms of theater emerging in the 1960s and ’70s, forms that complicated — or dismissed entirely — conventional notions about character, dramatic arc and authorial intention.Unlike many other theater scholars, Professor Fuchs first came at these questions from a journalistic point of view. After attempting a career as an actor and writing a play, she turned to freelance theater criticism for what was then a bountiful crop of alternative weeklies around Manhattan, including The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News.She found herself drawn to challenging works like “Leave It to Beaver Is Dead,” a 1979 play at the Public Theater that included a full-length rock concert as a third act. The New York Times panned it, and it soon closed.But Professor Fuchs loved it, recognizing the play and other experimental fare as not just a new take on theater but also a whole new, postmodern cultural sensibility — even though at first she struggled to explain 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

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      Ian McKellen Is in ‘Good Spirits’ After Falling Off the Stage During a Play

      by

      The English actor was injured during a performance of “Player Kings,” and the show was abruptly canceled. He is expected to perform again on Wednesday.The actor Ian McKellen was hospitalized but expected to recover quickly after falling off the stage during a performance of “Player Kings” at a theater in the West End in London on Monday night, the producers of the play said.After a scan, doctors at Britain’s National Health Service said that McKellen would “make a speedy and full recovery, and Ian is in good spirits,” according to a statement by the producers.In a statement provided by his publicist on Tuesday, McKellen thanked the N.H.S. professionals who treated him. “To them, of course, I am hugely indebted. They have assured me that my recovery will be complete and speedy and I am looking forward to returning to work,” he said.McKellen, 85, who has been nominated for two Academy Awards and has won a Tony, a Golden Globe and multiple Olivier Awards, is starring in the play, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s two “Henry IV” plays, directed by Robert Icke. McKellen plays John Falstaff, a fictional character who appears in three Shakespeare plays. The fall took place during a battle scene, according to Aleks Phillips, a BBC journalist who was in the audience on Monday night and described what he saw in an article. “It happened so quickly that at first it appeared to be part of the performance,” Phillips wrote. “But the actor cried out and staff rushed to help.”After the fall, the performance was canceled and the audience left the theater. Tuesday night’s show was also canceled, the producers said, but McKellen was expected to return to the stage for a matinee performance on Wednesday. McKellen has often returned to the stage for Shakespeare plays throughout his six-decade career, including in recent years as King Lear and as an octogenarian Hamlet. He is also a fixture of the silver screen, including his roles as Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies, as well as Magneto in the “X-Men” series.“Player Kings” is in its final week and runs at the Noël Coward Theater through Sunday. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Meet The Sisters Who Turned “Merrily We Roll Along” Into a Tony Winner

      by

      Maria and Sonia Friedman discussed their long history with “Merrily We Roll Along,” after a bittersweet Tony Awards.The Friedman sisters have been making art together since they were little girls. Their London childhood was chaotic — they were often left to their own devices — but the family’s four children found solace in storytelling.Now Sonia, 59, is one of the most successful theater producers in the English-speaking world. Maria, 64, is a celebrated actress and singer. Their sister is a scientist, and their brother, who died last year, was a violinist.Sonia and Maria have occasionally worked together over the years, but rarely with as much emotional investment as on the current Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” which Maria is directing and Sonia is producing. The revival has been transformative for the show, which, despite much-loved songs by Stephen Sondheim, was a famous flop when it first ran in 1981, and is now one of the hottest tickets in town.On Sunday night the Friedman sisters’ production won a Tony Award for best musical revival, as well as acting prizes for two of its stars, Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff, and another for its orchestrations. It did not, however, win for Maria’s direction, which made their evening bittersweet.“My heart went into 2,000 pieces,” said Sonia Friedman, who has a shelf full of Tony Awards, but just wanted recognition for her sister. She said she had to step out of the theater to collect herself. “The little sister in me was in agony for an older sister who’s only ever held me and supported me.”“Winning the Tony was fantastic, for Steve and for the legacy,” Maria Friedman said, but added that losing out on the best director award “was painful.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Huey Lewis Musical to Close on Broadway as New Shows Struggle

      by

      “The Heart of Rock and Roll” is the first new Broadway musical to announce a closing plan following Sunday’s Tony Awards.“The Heart of Rock and Roll,” a new jukebox musical powered by the songs of Huey Lewis and the News, will close on Broadway on Sunday.The show is the second to announce plans to close in the wake of this year’s Tony nominations, joining “Lempicka” on the list of productions that could not find an audience during this jam-packed spring. “The Heart of Rock and Roll” opened on April 22 to better-than-expected reviews, but picked up zero Tony nominations. The show will have played 24 previews and 72 performances.During a very crowded period on Broadway, the show was unable to break through: It grossed $272,051 in the week ending June 9, which is not nearly enough to cover the running costs of a full-size Broadway musical.“The Heart of Rock and Roll” is a freewheeling romantic comedy about a young man (played by Corey Cott) working at a Milwaukee cardboard factory but feeling the tug of his old band and developing a crush on the boss’s daughter (McKenzie Kurtz). The show, directed by Gordon Greenberg, features a witty book by Jonathan A. Abrams and even wittier choreography by Lorin Latarro; there was a pre-Broadway production at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2018.The musical, playing at the James Earl Jones Theater, features multiple Huey Lewis and the News hits, including “The Power of Love” and “Do You Believe in Love” as well as the title song. Huey Lewis, now 73, remains a nostalgic favorite for fans of 1980s culture, and he threw himself into promoting the show.The lead producers are Hunter Arnold, Tyler Mitchell and Kayla Greenspan; it was capitalized for up to $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, and that money has not been recouped.The closing comes at a challenging time for Broadway, where production costs have risen and attendance has fallen since the coronavirus pandemic. There are now 32 shows running on Broadway, and many of them are losing money each week. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      How to Make Thrilling Theater About Climate Change Negotiations

      by

      A new play from the writers of “The Jungle” dramatizes the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a landmark climate agreement preceded by years of arguments over its wording.When the playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson were looking for ideas for a new production, they stumbled upon a radio show about the negotiations that led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.Some parts of the show, Robertson recalled in a recent interview, made the culmination of those discussions about lowering global carbon emissions sound “like a thriller,” with politicians holding talks in locked rooms and exhausted negotiators falling asleep beneath their desks.The pair thought that the landmark climate agreement could be the basis for another impactful stage production, similar to “The Jungle,” their hit about a refugee encampment in northern France. The problem was that the negotiations had dragged on for years before the agreement was reached in Kyoto in December 1997 — and that process was at times far from exciting. Most of the action involved representatives from different countries arguing over the language, and even punctuation, they wanted in the protocol.Climate negotiations “are so bloody boring in one sense,” Robertson said. “The challenge,” he added, “was, ‘How do we do take them, put it onstage and make it dramatic?’”Raul Estrada-Oyuela, left, the negotiations’ chairman, and Hiroshi Oki of Japan’s Environmental Agency shook hands as the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997.The Asahi Shimbun, via Getty ImagesThe playwrights’ answer to that question is “Kyoto,” directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, and running at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, from Tuesday through July 13.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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Review: In ‘Dark Noon,’ American History Is a Shoot-’Em-Up Western

      by

      A play from Denmark, with a South African cast, turns the heroic tropes of horse operas into the tools of tragedy at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.The building boom in Dumbo, Brooklyn, may be waning, but onstage at St. Ann’s Warehouse it flourishes. There, the hard-working seven-person cast of “Dark Noon,” which opened on Monday, spends much of the production’s 105 minutes assembling the edifices of westward-creeping American civilization, from home to brothel to church to jail. By the end, the playing space, like the once pristine frontier, is so overbuilt you can see little else.The same holds for the play, written by Tue Biering for the Copenhagen-based company fit+foxy. Directed by Biering and Nhlanhla Mahlangu, “Dark Noon,” which has been touring Europe to great reviews since 2021, has a lot on its mind: the plight of migrants, the brutality of expansion, the slaughter of Native people, the culture of violence that shaped modern life. But in the end, it is too cluttered — stylistically, tonally, ideologically — to offer much insight.Thulani Zwane, right. “Dark Noon” has a lot on its mind: the plight of migrants, the brutality of expansion, the slaughter of Native people, the culture of violence that shaped modern life.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf it is also too familiar, perhaps the saga of the United States is still news to those not steeped in it. (Biering is Danish; Mahlangu, like the cast, is South African.) I can imagine that if you’d never heard of the Trail of Tears, or read Howard Zinn, or questioned the bucolic Johnny Appleseed vision painted by children’s primers, you might have something to learn from its potted horse-opera history. As the pun on “High Noon” in the title suggests, “Dark Noon” means to rewrite the America of classic westerns by turning its heroic tropes into the tools of tragedy.For most in the audience, that aim will prove entirely unobjectionable, for some even salutary. And as stagecraft, “Dark Noon” begins promisingly enough. Accompanied by distorted versions of Ennio Morricone’s theme for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” it cleverly evokes the haunted vastness of the West in the mid-1800s. (One actor rolls along the floor like a tumbleweed.) Blond wigs, whiteface and slow-motion gunfights draw nervous satirical laughs, as do live video segments that, among other things, frame the conflict between European settlers and Native Americans as a football game, complete with color commentary.Bongani Bennedict Masango, center, with actors and audience members.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Cats’ Returns, Ditching the Junkyard for Queer Ballroom

      by

      Things seemed to change when the video came out.At the end of May, the Perelman Arts Center posted a clip on social media of “Jellicle Cats,” the catchy, effervescent opening number from the musical “Cats.” It showed a group of queer performers catwalking in a rehearsal room before breaking apart to freely dance and vogue. One singer wore a cap winkingly topped with feline ears; another stared down the camera and twirled her ponytail with declarative swagger.This was the first real glimpse of a new, ballroom-inspired revival of “Cats,” running through July 28 at PAC NYC, as the Perelman Center in Manhattan is known. Since it was announced nearly a year earlier, the show had been a subject of skepticism and mocking humor: “Cats” was ridiculous enough, but ballroom? Hardly a mention of the production went by without a snicker.Then the “Jellicle Cats” clip went viral, and jaws dropped. Celebrities chimed in, with the comedian Ziwe saying, “Ok go off” and the filmmaker Justin Simien simply writing, “AYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.” On TikTok, one person commented, “do I……do I suddenly want to see Cats?”In this version, performers, including Baby (in white) and Primo (in jeans), vie for ballroom glory instead deciding which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer. Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesFor over four decades, “Cats” has been something of a cultural punching bag. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of poetry by T.S. Eliot, unfolding as a dance-heavy, revue-like show about cats gathering in a junkyard for their annual Jellicle Ball, has been seen as strange at best, and kitsch at worst. Its earworms have driven theater critics mad; its costumes of unitards and leg warmers are just as impossible to dislodge from your memory. Tom Hooper’s film adaptation, from late 2019, flopped disastrously, and was jokingly referred to as a dark turning point that ushered in the pandemic.But, in a moment of stage directors reconsidering, and often reimagining, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals, such as a stark “Sunset Boulevard” transferring to Broadway from London this fall, perhaps it is also the time for “Cats” to shake off its pop culture clichés and say something new.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