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      ‘Night Sings Its Songs’ Review: Rare Staging of Nobel Winner Jon Fosse’s Play

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      A play by the Nobel winner Jon Fosse gets a rare staging, but New Yorkers will have to wait a little longer to see a production that captures the Norwegian writer’s haunting universe.When the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023, he joined the small circle of dramatists to have received that honor, including two men he is often compared to: Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.Unlike Beckett and Pinter, however, Fosse is largely unknown in the United States — outside of shows like “A Summer Day” in 2012 and “I Am the Wind” in 2014, productions in supposedly cosmopolitan New York are few and far between. This makes New Light Theater Project’s middling new take on Fosse’s “Night Sings Its Songs” at least noteworthy.Like much of his stage work, “Night Sings Its Songs” — which premiered in Norway in 1997 and was staged in New York in 2004 by Sarah Cameron Sunde, a translator and Fosse evangelist — is simultaneously elliptical and brutally precise. The main characters in these scenes from a miserable marriage are the Young Man (Kyle Cameron) and the Young Woman (Susan Lynskey). They have been together since high school, and their new baby seems to have brought buried issues to the surface.He spends his days and, apparently, nights reading on the couch, and fruitlessly submits manuscripts to publishers. She’s going stir crazy and eventually decides to head out on the town. At one point, she desultorily says of her husband: “He is nice. But he understands little about nothing.” For most of the play, the couple’s conversations revolve around variations on “you never want to go out” (she) and “who were you out with?” (he). They both suffer from a mutually soul-destroying postpartum funk, and it is grueling.In his Nobel acceptance speech, Fosse said that “in my drama the word pause is without a doubt the most important and the most used word — long pause, short pause, or just pause.” The script for “Night Sings Its Songs” includes stage directions and, yes, many, many requests for pauses, but no punctuation. Concretely, this means that a Fosse staging must hit an almost musical rhythm, inducing a kind of entranced fascination — the repeated motifs are like ostinatos in minimalist music.And that is where Jerry Heymann’s production falls short. It struggles to settle into the particular groove the play requires, and leans into a fairly naturalistic approach that not only fails to sync up with the text, but often also tussles against 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

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      With ‘Mindplay,’ Vinny DePonto Wants to Bring More Awe Into Your Life

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      In this mentalist show, the magician asks his audience: “What is most meaningful to you?”When Vinny DePonto was a student at Manhattanville University, he really wanted to major in magic. But that wasn’t an option, so he created his own course of study, combining theater and psychology into a major he called psychology of performance art.“I used a little trickery to major in magic,” DePonto, 38, recalled during a recent interview at a West Village coffee shop.The intersection of stage and psyche is where DePonto takes audiences in his mentalist show “Mindplay,” directed by Andrew Neisler and running through April 20 at the Greenwich House Theater. In it, DePonto alternates between tender remembrances of growing up in a close-knit Italian American family in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and seemingly supernatural feats that involve him calling audience members onto the stage to talk about their most personal memories.“Mindplay” is scheduled to run through April 20 at the Greenwich House Theater in Manhattan.Chris RuggieroDuring the performance I attended, sniffles and gasps could be heard around the theater as DePonto, who wrote the show with Josh Koenigsberg, sat across from a man and discerned details about the man’s dead father and his beloved harmonica.DePonto has been reading minds for roughly 20 years, and he has cited as inspiration Ricky Jay, the renowned magician and mentalist who died in 2018. He said he caught the magic bug as a boy when his father gave him a shoe box of disappearing handkerchief-style tricks.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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      ‘Dutchman’: An Electrifying Dance of Death

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      A newly restored film adaptation of Amiri Baraka’s provocative 1964 play evoking racial and sexual anxiety is showing at the Museum of Modern Art.A subway car encounter between a button-down Black man, Clay, and a provocative white woman, Lula, ends in violence: The enigmatically named “Dutchman,” a half-hour play-cum-exorcism by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) was the Off Broadway sensation of 1964. Two years later, it was filmed by a neophyte director, Anthony Harvey. The response was mixed in the United States, and the film disappeared.Now newly restored, “Dutchman” is showing through Feb. 19 at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.A one-act two-hander modeled on Edward Albee’s menacing “Zoo Story,” “Dutchman” shared a bill with plays by two reigning “absurdists,” Samuel Beckett and Fernando Arrabal Terán; it reaped all the attention, received an Obie and was retained for a second run, billed with Albee’s “American Dream.” Generally faithful to the play, Harvey’s film expanded it to just under an hour with contextualizing shots of deserted subway platforms and trains barreling through dark tunnels. Lula (Shirley Knight) has ample time to slink around an otherwise empty car and, munching on an apple, writhe into the seat next to the uptight Clay (Al Freeman Jr.). Toward the end of the film, Harvey adds a half-dozen passengers, silent witnesses to their mortal combat.The dialogue is often terrific (Baraka was, after all, a poet) and until the climax “Dutchman” is essentially a verbal sparring match. Knight and Freeman, both members of the Actors Studio, were matched in the play’s Los Angeles production and, both electrifying in their own ways, returned to the fray with relish.In addition to evoking racial and sexual anxiety, “Dutchman” channels the urban nightmare of subway harassment or entrapment. Recalling “No Exit,” it might have been named after a 1930s race film, “Hellbound Train.” Harvey incorporates a current ad poster in which Bert Lahr’s devil proffers a bag of Lay’s potato chips, but nothing may be more allegorical than snaky Lula’s endless supply of apples. There are autobiographical aspects as well. Lula’s taunting lines are sprinkled with coded digs at Baraka’s white patrons (Allen Ginsberg and Albee), his Jewish wife at the time (Hettie Jones) and the author himself, calling Clay by Baraka’s original first name, “Everett.”Shock value notwithstanding, the play was respectfully received in the United States. Not so the film. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called it “a drawn-out, rancorous gabfest” lacking “consistency or conviction.” The movie fared better in Europe. It opened the Venice Film Festival (where Knight won an acting award) and received enthusiastic notices in Britain, earning Harvey a gig directing Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole as the jousting royal couple in “The Lion in Winter.”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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      ‘Doomers’ Review: Hunkered Down, Debating the Peril and Promise of A.I.

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      Matthew Gasda directs his new play, which was inspired by Sam Altman’s 2023 ouster from OpenAI.Conventional wisdom says the theater is slow to react to current events, but dramatists like Ayad Akhtar (“McNeal”) have clamored lately to tell stories about artificial intelligence, sometimes using it to help with the writing.Matthew Gasda’s new play “Doomers” is an addition to that pack. Inspired by the 2023 ouster of Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, it was written with the help of ChatGPT and Claude. The two chatbots share a dramaturgy credit in the program.Alas, the hype around that technology does not correlate here with narrative cogency. Despite having a loathsome fictional ex-C.E.O. at its center, and numerous characters who joust over the peril and promise of A.I., “Doomers” possesses a peculiarly self-indulgent quality, as if it takes for granted that its audience is invested from the get-go.This is a crisis-driven tale set on a single night in San Francisco, just after a tech company, MindMesh, has dismissed its leader, Seth (Sam Hyrkin). Holed up at home, he is plotting to get his job back, while the company’s panicked board tries to figure out how to move forward without him.A sociopath who lacks the requisite charm, Seth tells his confidants: “I will not compromise; I will not admit fault. I was fired for creating miracles.”That isn’t how the board would put it, but we don’t meet them until Act II. The first act, by far the stronger half of this meandering play, is all about Seth’s predicament.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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      The Next Hot Playwright? They Prefer the Ones Who Cooled Off.

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      In the decades when he was running the widely influential Off Broadway nonprofit Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford would not have been the one driving to New Jersey to see a man about a tree.But his new theater company, a scrappy, idealistic outfit dedicated to established older playwrights, is a more hands-on operation. So one day last month, he hopped into his S.U.V. and headed across the Hudson River to bring back a freshly felled tree — he couldn’t tell you what kind — to be used in the set of a Len Jenkin play he is producing, “How Is It That We Live or Shakey Jake + Alice.”Such is the job that Sanford, 71, made for himself when he and his wife, Aimée Hayes, the former producing artistic director of Southern Rep Theater in New Orleans, founded the Tent Theater Company. Advocacy is intrinsic to its mission. Having exited Playwrights Horizons in 2021, after 25 years as its artistic director, Sanford has taken up the banner of a group of artists he sees as sidelined by an industry that thrives on discovering the latest hot playwrights, yet isn’t exactly diligent about sustaining them over their lifetimes of creativity.Kate Arrington and Fred Weller during a rehearsal for Len Jenkin’s new play, “How Is It That We Live or Shakey Jake + Alice.”James Estrin/The New York TimesThere is, Sanford said, a feeling afoot that older playwrights should simply make way: “That kind of, you know, ‘The baby boomers had their time. Let them all go into the ash pits.’”To him, though, age is an overlooked element of diversity — one that comes with accumulated knowledge of the human experience, and for which there is, and must be, room. It is a matter, too, of respecting these artists, whom the Tent calls elders.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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      As Off Broadway Crews Unionize, Workers See Hope, Producers Peril

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      Workers say the move is overdue, but theater companies fear it will drive up costs in a wounded sector that has yet to recover from the pandemic.A unionization wave sweeping across Off Broadway is poised to reshape the economics of theater-making in New York — for workers as well as producers.Striking stage crews have idled the nonprofit Atlantic Theater Company — the birthplace of the musicals “Spring Awakening,” “The Band’s Visit” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” which all transferred to Broadway and won Tonys. The strike, which began last month, comes amid a drive to unionize stage hands and crews at Off Broadway theaters.Nonprofit companies and producers fear that the unionization push could drive up costs at a moment when many are running deficits and staging fewer, and smaller, shows. Second Stage Theater and Soho Rep both recently moved out of their longtime venues and opted to share space with other companies. Another measure of the sector’s shrinkage: In 2019 there were 113 shows eligible for the Lucille Lortel Awards, which honor Off Broadway work; there are just 59 eligible shows so far this season, which, for the Lortels, closes at the end of March.Many workers see the unionization of stage crews as long overdue, noting that the sector has come a long way from its scrappy origins. Now that many Off Broadway theaters have become mature institutions with elevated production values, workers say, it is time for them to pay better wages and offer benefits to their crew members.“The stakes are incredibly high,” said Casey York, the president of the Off-Broadway League, which represents theater owners, managers and producers, “not just for those directly involved, but for the future of this vibrant sector, which has always been a cornerstone of New York’s cultural identity.”“Grief Camp,” a new play by Eliya Smith, had begun previews at Atlantic when it was shut down by the strike. It has since been canceled, along with Mona Pirnot’s “I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan.”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

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      How ‘The Lion King’s Resident Dance Supervisor Keeps the Musical in Motion

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      If there were a want ad for resident dance supervisor to “The Lion King,” it might read something like this: Must be able to work 10-hour days, seven days a week; to manipulate 200 puppets and walk on stilts; to wrangle 52 performers and remember every move in the two-and-a-half-hour show. Candidate must also have the heart of a social worker, the discipline of a Marine and the boundless enthusiasm of a camp counselor to keep the musical as fresh as when it opened 28 years ago.While plenty of Broadway shows have dance captains — they’re in charge of keeping choreography in good order — only “The Lion King” has a resident dance supervisor. The show is like a giant, kinetic jigsaw puzzle: It needs someone to ensure that all the pieces fit together, so that the narrative moves forward — and no one gets hurt.This has been Ruthlyn Salomons’s job for 25 years.There are crowds backstage and onstage at “The Lion King,” which has 52 performers; ensemble members perform multiple roles.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesMovement is the show’s motor, Salomons said. “It’s what binds it. It’s not just the performing bodies that move. Everything in the show moves. Everything dances.” That goes for a 5-inch mouse as much as for the 13-foot-long mama elephant, Bertha, who has four puppeteers tucked into her body.“The show’s demands are so unusual,” said Michele Steckler, a former associate producer of “The Lion King,” “that taking care of it requires a different kind of maintenance.” In the show’s early days, Steckler petitioned her colleagues to create a new position for someone to oversee all the movement. “It was just too much for one person,” she said. (The show also has two dance captains, but they double as performers and can’t see the show from outside.)Salomons with Ntsepa Pitjeng-Molebatsi, who plays Rafiki.Graham Dickie/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

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      ‘The Interview’: Denzel Washington Has Finally Found His Purpose

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      So many of Denzel Washington’s greatest performances — from the majestic title role in “Malcolm X” to the unrepentantly corrupt cop Alonzo Harris in “Training Day” — have been defined by a riveting sense of authority, an absolute absence of pandering or the need to be liked. There’s an inner reserve deep down inside his characters that is unassailable, a little enigmatic, and that belongs to them alone.The commanding qualities that have helped Washington become a cinematic legend are also, as I learned firsthand, the same ones that make him an unusual — and unusually complicated — conversationalist. The first of our two discussions was done remotely. He was at a photo studio in Los Angeles as the fires were still burning there, and I was at home in New Jersey. Even putting our physical distance aside, the discussion felt, well, distant. Or let me put it this way: We never quite figured out how to connect.The second time we talked, it was different. I met Washington in person, at a spare, drafty room in a Midtown Manhattan building where he was rehearsing for an upcoming Broadway appearance. He’s playing the lead in a new production of “Othello” that goes into previews on Feb. 24; it co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago and is directed by the Tony Award winner Kenny Leon. I can’t with any certainty really say why, but things just felt easier on the second go-round. What I do know, though, is that the entire interview experience was, for me, as indelible as one of his performances.Listen to the Conversation With Denzel WashingtonThe legendary actor discusses the prophecy that changed his life, his Oscar snub and his upcoming role starring alongside a “complicated” Jake Gyllenhaal in “Othello” on Broadway.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppI saw that at the end of last year you were baptized and earned your minister’s license. I got baptized, and I have to now take courses to obtain a license. I’m not an ordained minister.Can you tell me about the decision to go through that process at this point in your life? I went for a ride one day. I decided to get in my car and drive up to Harlem. I stopped in front of the church that my mother grew up in. The door was cracked, so I went in. They were celebrating young students, members of the church, that were going to college. And I got involved in that, and one thing led to another, and weeks later, months later I got baptized. More