Theater

The prince is, on first impression, a small person. The title character in the Gate Theater of Dublin’s thrilling production of “Hamlet,” which opened on Monday night at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn under the inspired direction of Yaël Farber, initially registers as a fine figurine of a man, delicate of frame and feature.Do not underestimate him. There is great stature in his sorrow and his rage. He can think circles around any hulking politician, and he moves as fast he thinks. You just know that he is always the smartest person in any room he occupies. And that this is both his blessing and his curse.Hamlet is portrayed by the Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga, and the double-sidedness of this most complex of Shakespeare’s heroes has rarely been better served. Negga, best known to American audiences for her Oscar-nominated role in the 2016 film “Loving,” has created a portrait of the theater’s most endlessly analyzed prince that is drawn in lines of lightning.Though the text places his age around 30, this Hamlet seems both younger and wiser than such a number would indicate. He has the outraged, childlike astonishment of someone surprised by hard grief for the first time in his life — and a concomitant disgust for the corrupt adult world that has shaped his existence.Yet there is a part of him that sees beyond his immediate feelings and sneers at them. Hamlet can’t help reveling in the sheer, artful nimbleness of his mind, nor can anyone who sees Negga’s remarkable performance in this fast, fluid production. At the same time, he aches with an awareness of how small such displays of intellect are in terms of the really big picture, the one dominated by the shadow of death.I started to write that the fact that this man is played by a woman is irrelevant. But there is one sense in which the basic disparity between this actress and this role feeds the quickening sensibility that infuses every aspect of Farber’s interpretation, which cannily condenses and rearranges the text for speed and focus.For what is conveyed here with glittering incisiveness is the work’s sense of life as theater, in which playing roles expands and constricts the possibilities in being human. In this world, Negga’s Hamlet rules as the Player Prince.That worldview is achieved without the winking, meta-theatrical touches that have become so familiar in contemporary Shakespeare. Farber — the South African-born creator of viscerally stirring reimaginings of classics like “Miss Julie” and “The Crucible” — understands that there is no need to add layers of directorial self-consciousness when your main character is the ultimate self-conscious auteur.Hamlet, you may recall, is the guy who — after he discovers his dad has been murdered by his uncle (and new stepfather) — decides to put on “an antic disposition,” the better to enact revenge under the cloak of assumed madness. He stages a whole play to “catch the conscience of the king.”He is never more relaxed than in the company of a traveling troupe of actors. More than with his girlfriend, Ophelia (Aoife Duffin) or best friend, Horatio (Mark Huberman); certainly more than with any member of his family, Hamlet feels close spiritual kinship with these journeyman thespians. They, at least, know they’re playing parts.Accordingly — as impeccably realized by Susan Hilferty (set and costumes) John Torres (lighting) and Tom Lane (music and sound) — the palace of Elsinore is not presented as the futuristic surveillance state so common to recent productions. Instead, its look is part fairy-tale playhouse (cascading curtains play a spectacularly evocative role), part Magritte-tinged surrealism (death assumes the implicit form of three vacant-eyed men in bowler hats, pulling corpses on gurneys).An awareness of an audience is also essential to this mise-en-scène. Hamlet’s first soliloquy is spoken to a confidante, Ophelia, whom at that point he feels he can trust. The wicked Claudius (Owen Roe, fabulous as a manipulative Fascist for the ages) delivers his aborted prayer of repentance not to an unseen God but to a very visible priest, whom the King winds up manhandling.When Hamlet stages his “mousetrap” play — in which performers replicate the murder of his father — the members of the court take their seats in an empty aisle in the audience. That means that all of us, not just Hamlet, are craning our necks to clock the reactions of Claudius and his queen, Gertrude (Fiona Bell).Negga’s Hamlet is never happier than when he’s masterminding such snares of illusions. That is, until he remembers why he’s doing what he’s doing to begin with. And beneath it all, always, lurks the awareness of death. Negga’s quicksilver performance keeps recalibrating all these levels of reaction.Too often, when a Hamlet is this good, I’m impatient whenever he’s not onstage. Not so this time. Everyone else — and I mean everyone, including the thunderous ghost of Hamlet’s father (Steve Hartland); a Polonius who postures like a matinee idol manqué (Nick Dunning); and his fire-breathing son, Laertes (Gavin Drea) — is filled with surprises and insights. Their relationships are defined in startling physical details, especially in how they touch one another. (Note the repeated coercive wrist grip in different contexts.)As incarnated by Duffin (who similarly exposed all nerves in the ravishing monologue play “A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing”), Ophelia is a young woman whose nascent sexual awakening makes her dangerously vulnerable to shame. Her relationship with Hamlet is painfully credible here, rendered in the heartbreaking terms of young lovers who feel they have only each other to stand against the world — and then realize they don’t have even that.Bell’s Gertrude is a hard pragmatist when we first meet her, seemingly able to live comfortably with her Faustian bargain for power. (Is it a coincidence that her dress for Claudius’s triumphal inaugural scene brings to mind Melania Trump?) But in the famous encounter in Gertrude’s bedroom, when Hamlet visits her after the play-within-the-play, something remarkable happens.Gertrude and Hamlet, who have been playing defensive roles with each other since we first met them, suddenly find themselves alone face to face, and their masks fall. For just a few beautiful, lacerating moments, they are the blood-bound mother and son, nurturer and child, that on some level they have always been. And that kind of emotional honesty forces them to see clearly the damage they have done in choosing to play unnatural parts.Such occasions — and there is a generous multitude of them here — gloriously confirm Hamlet’s statement that the role of acting is to hold “the mirror up to Nature.” In this “Hamlet,” that mirror gleams and dazzles.HamletTickets Through March 8 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; 718-254-8779, stannswarehouse.org. Running time: 3 hours 15 minutes. More

A revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, directed by Robert O’Hara (who recently staged “Slave Play” on Broadway) and starring Audra McDonald, Carla Gugino and Bobby Cannavale, will open the Williamstown Theater Festival’s season this summer. The season, announced Monday, will also include four new plays and a new musical, along with a new production of the Anna Ziegler play “Photograph 51.” It will run from June 30 through Aug. 23 in Williamstown, Mass.“I think when you look at contemporary work by living playwrights, especially alongside some of the great canonical writers and their work, you’re really looking at the American experience in both directions,” Mandy Greenfield, the festival’s artistic director, said in a phone interview. “You’re looking at who we were at a moment in time, and you’re looking at who we will be, who we can be, who we are currently.”That should be especially pronounced during the summer of an election year.In addition to “Streetcar,” which will run through July 19 and cast McDonald as Blanche DuBois, the Main Stage will host “Cult of Love,” a dark comedy from Leslye Headland, a creator of the Netflix series “Russian Doll.” The play had a brief run staged by IAMA Theater Company in Los Angeles in 2018, but hasn’t been seen elsewhere. This production will be directed by Trip Cullman; its cast will include Kate Burton (“Grey’s Anatomy”) and Taylor Schilling (“Orange Is the New Black”). The story centers on a family grappling with differences in religious, political and sexual identity while at home for the holidays. (Ms. Greenfield called it a “family drama for our moment.”) It runs July 22 through Aug. 2.“Photograph 51,” the Ziegler play, will close out the Main Stage season. The Tony-winning director Susan Stroman will direct the new production, which comes five years after Nicole Kidman starred in the play in London’s West End. The story is based on the life of Rosalind Franklin, a British scientist who produced pivotal research on DNA in the early 1950s. It will run Aug. 6-23.The rest of the season’s performances, all world premieres, will take place in the festival’s smaller theater. They are: “Wish You Were Here,” a play by Sanaz Toossi about the effects that the Iranian Revolution has on a group of friends; “Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club,” a play by Shakina Nayfack about gender confirmation surgery that centers on a group of transgender women at a hotel in Thailand; “Row,” a musical with a book by Daniel Goldstein and music and lyrics by Dawn Landes that follows the first woman to row a boat across the Atlantic Ocean solo (it’s based on the autobiography of Tori Murden); and “Animals,” a play by Stacy Osei-Kuffour about a spontaneous marriage proposal.Works at the festival often go on to have a life in New York. Expect some of the above to carry on that tradition.More information can be found at wtfestival.org. More

Terry Hands, a British director who led the Royal Shakespeare Company in England and in the 1980s took several productions to Broadway, including a well-regarded “Much Ado About Nothing” and the notorious musical flop “Carrie,” died on Tuesday. He was 79.Theatr Clwyd in Wales, where he was artistic director for 18 years, retiring after directing a final “Hamlet” in 2015, posted news of his death. The location and cause were not given.Mr. Hands was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for almost a quarter-century, joining it in 1966 to run Theatregoround, an outreach program. In 1978 he became joint artistic director with Trevor Nunn, and from 1986 until his departure in 1990 he was the company’s chief executive.One highlight of his tenure there was his work with the actor Alan Howard, whom he directed in an ambitious staging of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1,” “Henry IV, Part 2” and “Henry V” at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1975, with Mr. Howard starting out as Prince Hal in the first play in the cycle and growing into the title character in “Henry V.”Another noteworthy pairing came in the 1980s, when Mr. Hands directed Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” and Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack starred in both, as Cyrano and Roxane in the first and as Benedick and Beatrice in the second. Mr. Hands moved both productions to Broadway in 1984, running them in repertory.“A few wrong notes and ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ could become this year’s Mel Brooks parody,” Frank Rich wrote in his review in The New York Times. “But Mr. Hands has perfect pitch. This director’s virtuosity is as impressive as his star’s.”As for “Much Ado,” Mr. Rich called it “an iridescent reverie, as delicate as the wind chimes that shimmer in Nigel Hess’s exceptionally beautiful score.”“Cyrano” earned three Tony Award nominations and “Much Ado” seven, with Mr. Jacobi’s Benedick winning him the best-actor prize. Mr. Hands was nominated for best director for that production, and his lighting design for each production — he often did his own — was also nominated.“Doing this in America is obviously a gamble,” he told The Times in 1984 when the two plays were about to open. “Pleasing people in New York is not easy, and Broadway is a sudden-death street.”He received confirmation of that in the most brutal of ways in 1988, when his production of “Carrie,” a musical based on Stephen King’s horror novel about a high school girl with telekinetic power, traveled to Broadway.With music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford and a book by Lawrence D. Cohen, the show had had a rocky start at Stratford-upon-Avon, but Mr. Hands, who directed, took it to New York anyway. Critics were unkind, to say the least. Mr. Rich, singling out a scene involving the slaughter of a pig, invoked another famous Broadway flop.“Only the absence of antlers separates the pig murders of ‘Carrie’ from the ‘Moose Murders’ of Broadway lore,” he wrote in his review.“Carrie” closed three days after it opened and has been something of a theatrical reference point — and not in a good way — ever since. Mr. Hands, though, who during his Royal Shakespeare tenure had pushed to expand that company beyond its comfort zone, had known that failure was a possibility and had embraced the challenge.“You can’t deny that any show that begins with menstruation in the high school shower and ends with a double murder is obviously taking a risk,” he told The Times a few months earlier. “But that’s the attraction, too.”Terence David Hands was born on Jan. 9, 1941, in Aldershot, England, southwest of London, to Joseph and Luise (Kohler) Hands. He attended the University of Birmingham and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1964 and becoming a founder of the Everyman Theater in Liverpool.His time at the Royal Shakespeare Company was punctuated by battles over public financing that ultimately wore him down.“I’m haunted by the specter of endless revivals of ‘Peter Pan’ to pay for endless revivals of ‘Peter Pan,’” he told The Associated Press in 1990 shortly before he left, referring to the J.M. Barrie play that has been a Christmas perennial.He expressed the hope that his successor would escape the burden of “having to spend three-quarters of the day raising, saving or making money.”After leaving the Royal Shakespeare he worked as a freelance director until 1997, when he responded to a call from Theatr Clwyd, in northeastern Wales, which was on the verge of closing. He became its artistic director, bringing some stability to the finances and building a supportive audience.“He saved the theater from closure — this is actual truth, not hyperbole — and protected it from ongoing public funding cuts,” Tamara Harvey, the theater’s current artistic director, said in a statement.Mr. Hands’s marriages to Josephine Barstow in the 1960s and Ludmila Mikaël in the 1970s ended in divorce. In 2002 he married Emma Lucia, a director, who survives him, along with a daughter from his second marriage, the actress Marina Hands; and two sons, Sebastian and Rupert, from a relationship with Julia Lintott.In 2015, as he was directing his final production for Theatr Clwyd, The Daily Post of North Wales asked him to name the highlights of his tenure there.“Maybe one highlight is last year we played to over 200,000 people,” he said, “which, for a small theater up a hill surrounded by sheep, is an achievement.” More

As an all-terrain vehicle rumbles through a serene desert valley, its driver unwittingly starts a devastating fire by flicking cigar embers out the window. In another landscape, volcanoes are erupting, acidifying the ocean and threatening the life within it.These scenes unfold on different theatrical stages and in periods 500 million years apart. But both come from productions intended for children, an audience usually left out of the conversation on climate change.“PackRat,” presented by Dixon Place, and “Riddle of the Trilobites,” at the New Victory Theater, convey their messages through protagonists who aren’t human but who gain vivid life as puppets. Carlo Adinolfi, who designed the set, projections and larger-than-life puppetry for “PackRat,” has created amazingly expressive rodents, reptiles, birds of prey, a jack rabbit — and even Cowgirl, the cigar-smoking driver — from wood, papier-mâché, cardboard, wire and, fittingly, recycled trash.Some of the same materials help form the goofier-looking but no less compelling creatures of “Riddle of the Trilobites.” Designed by Amanda Villalobos, the prehistoric arthropods in this show gambol about with googly eyes and flicking antennas and tails. Each production has talented puppeteers who seem not to manipulate these marvelous inventions so much as merge with them.“PackRat,” written and directed by Renee Philippi, who collaborated with Adinolfi in creating it, draws inspiration from “Watership Down,” Richard Adams’s 1972 best seller about rabbits in exile. But this Concrete Temple Theater production offers an allegory more ecological than political. It stars the lowly animal of the title, a hoarder named Bud. After the blaze ignited by the cigar, his fellow creatures banish him, convinced that the human set the fire deliberately to punish Bud for collecting people’s “treasures,” including a spoon and a bag of marshmallows.Accompanied by the jackrabbit Firestone and eventually Happy, another rat, Bud goes on a journey of rescue and redemption, trying to find Artemisia, a land said to be free of human intervention. But despite the stage craft, which is thoroughly mesmerizing, the animals’ odyssey can be hard to follow.Not even adults will immediately grasp that a second, more skeletal set of bamboo puppets is supposed to be enacting dream sequences. And the prerecorded narration and dialogue, both delivered by Vera Beren, have the solemn austerity of an ancient fable. “PackRat,” which includes a wrenching onstage death, will appeal most to theatergoers over 10, who are less likely to be troubled that the wildlife’s arduous story has no clear resolution.But what resolution can climate activists hope for? Prehistoric species saw their environments deteriorate, and we all know what happened to them. Still, “Riddle of the Trilobites,” geared toward a younger audience than “PackRat,” manages to be something unusual: a cheerful, peppy musical about extinction.With a book and lyrics by Geo Decas O’Donnell and Jordan Seavey, and score and lyrics by Nicholas Williams, “Riddle” focuses on the trials of Aphra (Sifiso Mabena), a rebellious adolescent trilobite who learns on her first Molting Day that she’s destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy. She alone can unravel the riddle of her kind: “When the ocean changes, the trilobites cannot live but will not die.”With Judomiah (Richard Saudek), her initially fearful best friend, Aphra embarks on an adventure that is just as dangerous as Bud’s, but leavened with hefty doses of humor — sometimes corny, but still welcome — and rollicking song. (I kept writing “good score” in my notes.) These trilobites’ travels bring them into contact with other creatures, including Hai (Phillip Taratula), an early species of fish. The actors, who talk, sing and frolic while operating the puppets, multitask brilliantly.Directed by Lee Sunday Evans and produced by CollaborationTown and Flint Repertory Theater, “Riddle” dances around — sometimes literally — the ultimate fate of Aphra and her fellow trilobites. But even though the destructive powers of Homo sapiens are millions of years away, the show demonstrates that the ocean is a source of life and its pollution a harbinger of doom. It also cautions against any species’ assumed superiority: When the trilobite elders first see Hai, they lock him in a cage.These productions emphasize that the young must take charge, and that environmental action is desperately needed. As Bud, the beleaguered pack rat, says: “I don’t want to just sit around! That’s what humans do.”PackRatThrough Feb. 15 at Dixon Place, Manhattan; 212-219-0736, dixonplace.org. Running time: 55 minutes.Riddle of the TrilobitesThrough Feb. 23 at the New Victory Theater, Manhattan; 646-223-3010, newvictory.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More

Ben Brantley’s review of “The Inheritance” drew more than 100 comments, signaling the strong reactions engendered by the show. (One reader called the play “pompous, elitist, superficial” and “magnetically entertaining” all at once.) Did the show’s impact vary by generation? We put that question to readers of our theater newsletter. An edited selection of their responses follows. (You can subscribe to the free newsletter here).I’ve never felt so personally connected to a play as I did watching this, particularly Part One. I saw myself and many friends in the characters, and as a 57-year-old who tested positive for H.I.V. at 27, I found the focus on the epidemic cathartic and evocative. It was also nice to feel so “seen,” since gay men, particularly white gay men, are sometimes vilified within the L.G.B.T.Q. community these days, accused of not being woke enough fast enough. DENNIS EDWARDS, MiamiWhile beautifully staged and acted, there is not enough there for six hours of theater, at least for an American audience. So much of the material has been done before — “Torch Song Trilogy,” “The Normal Heart,” “The Boys in the Band”— that the first play almost appears to be a revival. Part Two brings us to the present day, but does not and cannot bring us to conclusion. MARY LOU WINNICK, Longboat Key, Fla.As a gay millennial, I’ve never felt a piece of theater heal something in me and break me at the same time the way “The Inheritance” did. The storytelling reaffirms that less is more in an age when more is monotony. RYAN HAMMAN, ChicagoI’m a 31-year-old gay man, and I was interested in seeing the production based on word of mouth and the reviews from the West End. In the end, I had mixed feelings. I enjoyed the play when it was telling the story of Eric and Toby’s crumbling relationship, and was less interested in didactic scenes where the play felt to be in conversation with itself about (to me) well-known history and complaints about “young gays these days.” The end of Part One gave me hope, but Part Two felt to be more of the same: a mostly white, mostly handsome, 30-something perspective. While it was moving to be in a theater with many gay men a bit older than myself who seemed incredibly touched by the play, it didn’t work on me in the same way. KARL HINZE, New YorkI am a 47-year-old woman from Texas. I was captivated from start to finish, even given the length. As someone who was young and not part of the community impacted by AIDS, I didn’t fully grasp the breadth of the suffering. As a mother, I was especially moved by Margaret’s telling of how she came to work at Walter’s home. Most parents can relate to saying things that they later regret and worry about the damage done by their words and actions. AMY HUFFORD, Austin, Tex.Seeing “The Inheritance,” I felt a renewed imperative to open myself to love and to give my love to others, as tricky and scary and messy as that can be. It was no abstract, hypothetical power that the play exercised, either. It has had a direct effect on actions that I’ve taken since I saw it. I can’t say that for the vast majority of theater I have seen. JOSEPH MEDEIROS, New YorkI’m part of the generation of gay men who survived the worst of the AIDS crisis, and frankly I was unprepared for the depth of feeling the play would generate in me. The end of Part One took my breath away, and, as the lights came up, a gentleman two rows ahead of mine turned back to the young men behind him and introduced himself, saying he just felt like he should “say hello, because of the play.” I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that in a Broadway, or any, theater. I won’t forget that moment. HARRY ALTHAUS, New YorkI found it especially poignant to watch while living through our present-day predicament, a society that continues to carve us up based on identity, age, race, preference. Instead, “The Inheritance” shows us how connected we all truly are — and urges us never to lose sight of that connectedness, because in the end we are all just humans looking for a purpose, something to fight for, someone to love. RACHEL DiSALVO, New York More

Theatergoers of different generations have had passionate responses to “The Inheritance,” Matthew Lopez’s two-part play about gay culture and the legacy of AIDS. The show was celebrated in its original runs in London, but the reception has been more divided on Broadway, both among professional critics and regular attendees. While many have found the show inordinately moving, others have criticized a lack of diversity in the central cast and narrow representation of contemporary gay life. We asked Lopez to write about what inspired the play and to reflect on why some audience members don’t like what they see.In March 2018, my play “The Inheritance” began performances in London. Until its first preview, it was anyone’s guess how it would be received. A reimagining of E.M. Forster’s “Howards End” — using three generations of gay New Yorkers to explore class, community and the legacy of H.I.V. — hardly bears the makings of an obvious hit. And yet audiences, then critics, embraced the play.Since then, over 200,000 ticket-buyers have seen the play in its three productions, two in London and now on Broadway. Almost every one of those people, whether belonging to or allied with the L.G.B.T.Q. community, has a story to share relating to its themes. I have heard from many of them — people who, after seeing the play, have healed broken relationships with their queer children, have decided to save their lives by seeking help for addiction, have finally put away their grief over those they lost during the epidemic.My journey to writing it began when I was 15 years old, watching the Merchant Ivory film adaptation of “Howards End.” Somehow a gay Puerto Rican kid from the Florida panhandle was able to see some part of his experience reflected back in the story of the Schlegel sisters. He could identify with scenes of Londoners making sense of life at the turn of the last century, and even find a version of his abuela in the character of Ruth Wilcox.I fell madly in love with Forster that day. We are an unlikely couple. But, besides my marriage, it has been the happiest union of my life. At least Forster doesn’t make me go buy eggs at 7 in the morning.In writing “The Inheritance,” I wanted to take my favorite novel and retell it in a way that its closeted author never felt free to do in his lifetime. I wanted to write a play that was true to my experience, my philosophy, my heart as a gay man who has enjoyed opportunities that were denied Forster. It was my attempt to explain myself to the world as a gay man of my particular generation.I wasn’t attempting to create a generationally defining work of theater that spoke for the entire queer experience. I think that if I had started with that intention, I never would have finished. There are some who feel the play should have done just that, and who fault me for not painting on a broader canvas.Those responses led me to wonder: What do we expect from art, particularly when it is made by members of our own community? And, conversely, what are the responsibilities of artists to the communities to which they belong?Art can be expected to hold a mirror up to society, but it cannot be expected to hold a mirror up to every individual who is engaging with it. Even with its long running time, there is a lot “The Inheritance” does not and cannot cover.No one piece of writing about our complex, sprawling community will ever tell the entire story, and I believe that is a good thing: It creates an unquenchable thirst for more and more narratives — a thirst that has been evident in audiences for “The Inheritance” and a thirst that the theater, television and film industries have been too slow to satisfy.“The Inheritance” was not my attempt at a grand summation of the past quarter century of queer history. What I was attempting was an examination of class, economic inequality, and poverty within the gay community — issues I have rarely seen depicted in theater. I have painted on a broad canvas. It is simply not the canvas others might have chosen.I wanted to write about addiction and alcoholism — a disease I have struggled with, and an epidemic that plagues our community just as perniciously as H.I.V./AIDS did 30 years ago. I also wanted to write about sex: how it can be used as a vehicle for pleasure and intimacy, but how it is also used as a tool to cauterize pain.Such examinations run counter to our current desire for affirmative representation. But avoidance of uncomfortable truths is not the role of the artist. Healing is impossible if you don’t understand the cause of the injury.And while I examine race in “The Inheritance,” it is not one of its central themes. This is a decision for which I have been criticized, but it is a decision that I made consciously as a person of color. It is a consideration that is not asked of white writers, but it is one that writers of color must face with every project we begin.Responsibility to community is the first question we must answer for ourselves. I believe that in writing honestly about my experience as a gay man, I have also contributed one more example of what it means to be a Puerto Rican man.I have been asked by some why I didn’t write “The Inheritance” from a Latinx perspective. It is a question that reveals to me just how far we have to go in understanding the true nature of diversity of expression. I answer: Can you not see how, by virtue of the fact that I have written it, “The Inheritance” is a reflection of a Latinx perspective?It reminds me of Sonia Sotomayor’s formulation that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion” than her white colleagues. Justice Sotomayor is not given only the Puerto Rican cases to decide; she helps decide all the cases. And her decisions are based just as much on her knowledge of the law as it is by her experiences as a Puerto Rican woman.The same is true for “The Inheritance” and me. It is because I am Puerto Rican that “The Inheritance” is the play it is, not in spite of it. Eric Glass, my central character, may be a white man, but he is a white man who was created by a Puerto Rican one. That has fundamentally informed his journey through the play.Others have questioned why there isn’t more representation of the younger generation in the play. It is true that most of the characters are near or close to my age. That is partly due to the function of adaptation — the Schlegel sisters (who became the mid-30s boyfriends Eric Glass and Toby Darling) are, after all, the central characters in “Howards End.” It is also a function of my own perspective. I wrote mostly about people in their 30s because that’s the experience I was living as I wrote the play.There is a reason, however, that I chose to end the play in the future, focusing on the creative output of the youngest and most marginalized character in the play. I end “The Inheritance” with the acknowledgment that the future has yet to be written — and when it is, it will be written by the youngest among us.My hope is that, while not presuming to speak for the younger generation, I have spoken to it, and that its members might come to the play in an attempt to understand the life of someone who came before them, and who, for better or worse, through his words and actions helped shape the world that they will inherit. More

Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last-chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater.Previews & Openings‘CHEKHOV/TOLSTOY: LOVE STORIES’ at Theater Row (in previews; opens on Feb. 10). Will two great Russians’ tales taste great together? The Mint Theater continues its relationship with the English playwright Miles Malleson, staging two of his adaptations: Chekhov’s story of an artist and Tolstoy’s tale of a peasant couple. Jonathan Bank and Jane Shaw direct a cast that includes Vinie Burrows. 212-239-6200, minttheater.org‘DANA H.’ at the Vineyard Theater (previews start on Feb. 11; opens on Feb. 25). Lucas Hnath often writes about famous figures — Isaac Newton, Walt Disney, Hillary Clinton. His subject this time: his own mother, Dana Higginbotham. Hnath adapted the play from interviews that were conducted with her about the time she was held captive by a psychiatric patient she ministered to as a chaplain at a mental institution. The Obie winner Diedre O’Connell brings the harrowing true story to life.212-353-0303, vineyardtheatre.org‘DARLING GRENADINE’ at the Roundabout Underground (in previews; opens on Feb. 10). A cocktail of a musical, Daniel Zaitchik’s romantic comedy is about a guy, a girl, a friend, a dog and the ravages of addiction. Adam Kantor plays Harry, a composer, with Emily Walton as the chorus girl he loves and Jay Armstrong Johnson as a loyal friend. Michael Berresse directs. 212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org‘HAMLET’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse (in previews; opens on Feb. 10). Hamlet’s inky cloak? Ruth Negga is wearing it now. The Ethiopian-Irish actress plays the prince in Yaël Farber’s production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. “It nearly killed me,” she told The New York Times, describing an earlier run. Guess there’s nothing like a Dane. With Aoife Duffin as Ophelia. 718-254-8779, stannswarehouse.org‘THE HEADLANDS’ at the Claire Tow Theater (previews start on Feb. 8; opens on Feb. 24). A writer of puzzle-box plays, Christopher Chen (“Caught,” “Passage”) unspools a new mystery for LCT3. In this detective drama, directed by Knud Adams, a grown son, Henry (Aaron Yoo), pieces together memories to try to solve the murder of his father (Johnny Wu). Laura Kai Chen portrays Henry’s mother in the past; Mia Katigbak, his present one. 212-239-6200, lct3.org[embedded content]‘HOT WING KING’ at the Pershing Square Signature Center (previews start on Feb. 11; opens on March 1). A saucy comedy, Katori Hall’s new play, part of her Signature Theater residency, unfolds during the Hot Wang Festival in Memphis, with family and romantic conflict cooking alongside the chicken. Steve H. Broadnax III directs a cast that includes Toussaint Jeanlouis and Korey Jackson. 212-244-7529, signaturetheatre.org[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]‘THE PERPLEXED’ at New York City Center Stage I (previews start on Feb. 11; opens on March 3). Before Richard Greenberg goes to the ballgame with the Broadway revival of “Take Me Out,” he premieres this uptown comedy about two families, alike in indignity, and the wedding that unites them. For Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow directs a cast that includes Margaret Colin and Frank Wood. 212-581-1212, nycitycenter.org‘72 MILES TO GO …’ at the Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater (previews start on Feb. 13; opens on March 10). When Anita is deported — from Tucson, Ariz., to Nogales, Mexico — family life goes on with and without her. Hilary Bettis’s border-crossing, decade-spanning drama stars Maria Elena Ramirez as Anita, with Triney Sandoval, Tyler Alvarez, Jacqueline Guillén and Bobby Moreno. Jo Bonney directs. 212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org‘SIX’ at the Brooks Atkinson Theater (previews start on Feb. 13; opens on March 12). In a time before marriage counseling and no-fault divorce, the much-married Henry VIII racked up six wives. And in this rock musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, they come together to debate who had it worst. “‘Six’ delivers pure entertainment throughout its headlong 80 minutes,” Jesse Green wrote of the Chicago production last summer. 877-250-2929, sixonbroadway.com‘THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN’ at Abrons Arts Center (previews start on Feb. 8; opens on Feb. 26). Can the 1960 Meredith Willson musical about a Titanic survivor float? The book writer Dick Scanlan’s update for the Transport Group pushes the show toward the actual history of the lifeboat queen Margaret Tobin Brown, played here by Beth Malone. Kathleen Marshall directs and choreographs the show’s Off Broadway premiere. 866-811-4111, transportgroup.orgLast Chance‘AMERICAN UTOPIA’ at the Hudson Theater (closes on Feb. 16). A knockout concert and an occasional meditation on civics and community, David Byrne’s musical theater experience, choreographed by Annie-B Parson, drops its chain curtain for the final time. The erstwhile Talking Head frontman’s show, Ben Brantley wrote, “repositions a onetime rebel as a reflective elder statesman, offering cozy cosmic wisdom.” 855-801-5876, americanutopiabroadway.com‘TIMON OF ATHENS’ at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (closes on Feb. 9). Fashioned for this age of inequality, Simon Godwin’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s (and Thomas Middleton’s) vexed semitragedy ends its run. Starring Kathryn Hunter as a plutocrat who goes broke, the production adds in fragments from other Shakespeare plays, plus a sonnet. Jesse Green called it an “energetic and somewhat Frankensteined revival.” 866-811-4111, tfana.org More