Theater

In the weeks leading up to the opening of the Broadway revival of “West Side Story,” a small contingent of protesters and an online petition have called for the removal of a prominent cast member, Amar Ramasar, who was at one point fired from New York City Ballet after he shared sexually explicit photos of another dancer.On Friday, the woman depicted in those photos, who is Mr. Ramasar’s girlfriend, spoke out. And she made clear that she thought Mr. Ramasar was being unfairly targeted.“I am not a victim in this,” the dancer, Alexa Maxwell, said in a news release. She explained that Mr. Ramasar had expressed his regret over the situation and that she had forgiven him.Ms. Maxwell, 25, has previously tried to keep her name out of the public discussion, but said that the recent protests — one of them held Friday night outside the theater where “West Side Story” is now in previews — prompted her to release the statement.The objections have put a cloud over the production, and over Mr. Ramasar, 38, who has regained his job at City Ballet and resumed his acting career. In “West Side Story” he plays Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks, a neighborhood gang.The allegations against him surfaced in 2018 when Alexandra Waterbury, a former student of the School of American Ballet, which is affiliated with City Ballet, sued the ballet and several men, including Chase Finlay, a dancer who had been her boyfriend, as well as Mr. Ramasar.In the lawsuit, Ms. Waterbury accused Mr. Finlay of sharing explicit photographs of her with Mr. Ramasar and others, without Ms. Waterbury’s consent. Mr. Ramasar was accused of sending Mr. Finlay photos of a different dancer, who was not named in the lawsuit but who Ms. Maxwell now says was she. Mr. Finlay resigned from the ballet; Mr. Ramasar and another dancer were fired, but an arbitrator later ruled that their dismissals were too harsh a punishment.In an interview on Friday, Ms. Maxwell said she was exasperated by comments online calling Mr. Ramasar a “rapist” and by private messages chiding her for staying in the relationship despite his behavior.Ms. Maxwell said that while she considered Mr. Ramasar’s decision to share her photos a “misstep in judgment,” she had forgiven him. She said she had told the arbitrator the same.The couple have been together for nearly five years, she said. “He apologized time and time again, and I think that it’s my choice as a woman to forgive him,” she said.During an hourlong phone conversation with Ms. Waterbury after her lawsuit was filed in 2018, Ms. Maxwell said, Ms. Waterbury tried to persuade her to join the lawsuit by saying that City Ballet “is worth half a billion dollars,” and that she would win “a lot” and could have “an entirely new life.”Ms. Waterbury’s lawyer, Jordan K. Merson, said in a statement that Ms. Maxwell’s description of her conversation with Ms. Waterbury was inaccurate, but he did not go into specifics. Mr. Merson said that the timing of Ms. Maxwell’s statement, more than a year after the lawsuit was filed, was “suspect,” but that it helped to demonstrate the “problematic culture” at City Ballet.“It is unfortunate that Ms. Maxwell would try to taint Ms. Waterbury with all that she has done for the #MeToo movement,” he said.Ms. Maxwell’s public statement came as Mr. Ramasar and City Ballet have been seeking to dismiss Ms. Waterbury’s lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The lawsuit accuses the ballet of condoning the dancers’ bad behavior; the ballet has denied that, and noted that it took steps to discipline the dancers as soon as it learned of the allegations and investigated them. Ms. Waterbury’s suit also accused Mr. Ramasar of encouraging Mr. Finlay to send him the explicit photos of her; in court papers, Mr. Ramasar’s attorney noted that Mr. Finlay had already shared explicit images of Ms. Waterbury with others several times before his text exchange with Mr. Ramasar.Ms. Waterbury, 22, joined about two dozen protesters at the demonstration outside the Broadway Theater on Friday night. As ticketholders filed into the building, the demonstrators quietly held signs with statements including “boo Bernardo” and “sexual harassment shouldn’t get a standing ovation.”In an interview outside the theater, Ms. Waterbury, now a student at Columbia University, said that despite Ms. Maxwell’s statement that she was no victim, she still saw Mr. Ramasar’s Broadway role as something to protest.“He still asked for photos of me,” she said. “He still wronged me.”Scott Rudin, who is the Broadway show’s lead producer, said in a statement that Mr. Ramasar is an “exemplary company member,” noting that the behavior in question did not involve the production.“He has more than earned our trust,” he said, “and the ‘West Side Story’ company stands with him.”Ms. Maxwell said that the decision to speak publicly about Mr. Ramasar was her own but that she made sure the musical production was aware before she did so.Michael Cooper and Michael Paulson contributed reporting. 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‘ALL THE NATALIE PORTMANS’ at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space (previews start on Feb. 6; opens on Feb. 24). May the Padmé Amidala be with you. In C.A. Johnson’s magical realist play, a young queer woman, Keyonna, leads an active fantasy life with her muse, Natalie Portman. Then reality impinges. Kate Whoriskey directs; Kara Young stars as Keyonna, with Joshua Boone as her brother Samuel and Elise Kibler as Natalie. 212-727-7722, mcctheater.org‘ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE’ at the Atlantic Theater Company at the Linda Gross Theater (previews start on Feb. 1; opens on Feb. 18). Alice Birch (“Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.”) wants to know if trauma can be inherited. In this triptych, which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, she organizes a grandmother, a mother and a daughter in conjoined stories across seven decades or so. Lileana Blain-Cruz directs a cast that includes Carla Gugino, Celeste Arias and Gabby Beans. 866-811-4111, atlantictheater.org‘BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY’ at Theater Row (previews start on Feb. 4; opens on Feb. 18). The Keen Company presents the long-delayed New York premiere of Pearl Cleage’s ensemble drama, set among a group of artists in the waning days of the Harlem Renaissance. Alfie Fuller stars, as the lounge singer Angel, alongside Jasminn Johnson, John-Andrew Morrison, Khiry Walker and Sheldon Woodley. LA Williams directs. 212-239-6200, keencompany.org‘BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE’ at the Pershing Square Signature Center (in previews; opens on Feb. 4). What the world needs now is love, sweet love, and also a musical adaptation of the 1969 Paul Mazursky film. For the New Group, Scott Elliott directs Jonathan Marc Sherman’s book about the sexual revolution and its noncombatants. The cast includes Jennifer Damiano, Ana Nogueira, Joél Pérez, Michael Zegen and Suzanne Vega, with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik. 917-935-4242, thenewgroup.org[embedded content]‘CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND’ at the Pershing Square Signature Center (previews start on Feb. 4; opens on Feb. 24). A rock show, a family tragedy and a historical mystery, Lauren Yee’s prizewinning play finds a California father and daughter meeting again in Cambodia, reinvestigating the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Chay Yew directs a cast that includes Francis Jue, Joe Ngo and Courtney Reed. With music by the real-life Cambodian-American rock band Dengue Fever. 212-244-7529, signaturetheatre.org‘GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY’ at the Belasco Theater (previews start on Feb. 7; opens on March 5). This Bob Dylan jukebox musical, written and directed by Conor McPherson, now knocks on Broadway’s door. Set in a boardinghouse in Duluth, Minn., in 1934, it centers on various down-at-heart, down-at-heel residents. Ben Brantley wrote, “What’s created, through songs written by Mr. Dylan over half a century, is a climate of feeling, as pervasive and evasive as fog.” 212-239-6200, northcountryonbroadway.com‘HAMLET’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse (previews start on Feb. 1; 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‘STEW’ at Walkerspace (in previews; opens on Feb. 1). Page 73 cooks up another debut. In this tragedy from Zora Howard, a Harlem-based playwright, three generations of African-American women meet for a home-cooked meal and a painful revelation. Colette Robert directs a cast that includes Portia, Kristin Dodson, Toni Lachelle Pollitt and Nikkole Salter. page73.org‘WE’RE GONNA DIE’ at the Tony Kiser Theater at Second Stage Theater (previews start on Feb. 4; opens on Feb. 25). Young Jean Lee’s autobiographical rock almost-musical, written as part of her work with the playwrights’ collective 13P, has a new lease on life. Backed by a five-piece band, Janelle McDermoth discourses on life, death and the arguable usefulness of art. Raja Feather Kelly directs. 212-246-4422, 2st.comLast ChanceTHE BIG APPLE CIRCUS at Damrosch Park (closes on Feb. 2). This popular local circus folds its big tent. The current iteration is sometimes racier than usual, but who can’t help enjoying the Lopez Troupe riding bicycles on a high wire or Jayson Dominguez surviving the Wheel of Death? The real stars: the magnificent Savitsky Cats, balls of fluff with acrobatic chops. 212-257-2330, bigapplecircus.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

The Public Theater announced on Thursday that it will bring a new production of “Richard II” and a version of its 2017 musical adaptation of “As You Like It” to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park this summer for its free Shakespeare in the Park series.“There is no issue in the world that can’t be helped by a little Shakespeare,” the theater’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said in a statement. “This summer, ‘Richard II’ explores the extraordinary danger and possibility of regime change and ‘As You Like It’ celebrates a Forest of Arden where all refugees are welcome.”Saheem Ali, who helmed the recent Signature Theater revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s “Fires in the Mirror,” will direct “Richard II.” The play was last staged at the Delacorte in 1987, when the founder of the theater program, Joseph Papp, directed Peter MacNicol in the title role. Having it return during an election year that began with an impeachment trial is a pointed choice: “Richard II” tells a story about political rebellion and abdication. The play will run May 19 through June 21. Casting has not yet been announced.In the second half of the season, the Public will present the reimagined 2017 adaptation of “As You Like It,” which was a product of the theater’s Public Works program. Directed by Laurie Woolery with original music by the composer Shaina Taub and choreography by Sonya Tayeh, the adaptation placed more than 200 amateur performers alongside professional actors. (Alexis Soloski called the result “thrilling” in her review for The New York Times.) The adaptation ran for only a handful of days that year. This summer, it returns with Taub, Darius de Haas and Joel Perez reprising lead roles — and it will have a new set, among other changes. “As You Like It” will run July 14 through Aug. 8.The shows will be free, and tickets will be available in person and by digital lottery. More information is available at publictheater.org. More

The National Asian American Theater Company is starting a partnership with regional theaters across the country, aiming to foster inclusion of more Asian-American theater artists, technicians, administrators and community members through productions, outreach and other programming.The first partner theaters will be New York Theater Workshop, Soho Rep, Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn., and Two River Theater in Red Bank, N.J. The hope is to expand the partnership to theaters across the country.“I have a habit of getting on a subway train to see the demographics of the train, and I don’t see this reflected on our stages, where we’re supposed to be so imaginative,” Mia Katigbak, the co-founder and artistic producing director of the National Asian American Theater Company, said in a phone interview. “We work very hard to support our fellow Asian-American theater practitioners. But I thought it might be a good thing to look at partnerships with other non-Asian-American theater companies.”The company was founded in 1989, with a mission to grow Asian-American theater in the United States. As part of the partnership, regional theaters will collaborate with the National Asian American Theater Company to put on a production in one of four categories: a European or American classic with an all Asian-American cast; the adaptation of a classic by an Asian-American playwright; a new work by a non-Asian-American realized by an all Asian-American cast; or a new work by an Asian-American playwright that incorporates other performance arts or media.The partner theaters will also commit to one or more such productions in future seasons, to planning events to supplement performances that feature Asian-American speakers and to instituting a plan for outreach to Asian-Americans in their communities.“These organizations that we are partnering with have larger support systems and resources for the kind of outreach that we’ve always wanted to do,” Katigbak said, adding, “There’s a great opportunity in Asian-American communities among people who probably have never thought that theater might be part of their lives.” More

LONDON — Don’t be fooled by the billing. Toby Jones and Richard Armitage may have pride of place on the poster for Ian Rickson’s West End revival of “Uncle Vanya.” But it’s no surprise to see all the actors bowing as one at the end, with no one stepping forward for applause.Those wanting to see solo bows can look elsewhere, to any of the many celebrity-heavy productions that often find their way from London to Broadway. But Chekhov, possibly more than any dramatist, benefits from ensemble playing that gives every participant his or her due.Rickson’s “Vanya,” at the Harold Pinter Theater through May 2, grants equal time to the variously wounded and disappointed inhabitants of a fractious Russian household. In a feisty new adaptation by Conor McPherson, this is an unusually spiky, unsentimental reading of a frequently performed play — but one that could benefit from deepening the emotional stakes. The production is never quite as moving as you want it to be, though it is always ravishing to look at.Some characters come into bolder relief than usual. Ciaran Hinds is in fine, fighting form as Vanya’s gruffly spoken brother-in-law, an aging professor whose younger second wife awakens a longing in both Jones’s angsty Vanya and Armitage’s self-lacerating Astrov, a doctor who has stared death in the face once too often.The unwitting temptress, Yelena, is played by Rosalind Eleazar, a commendably robust, earthy presence; it’s a shame that Aimee Lou Wood, as Vanya’s self-deflating niece, Sonya, seems so awkward opposite her at the crucial end of the first half. Wood, known for her TV work on the British series “Sex Education,” gives a whiny, gestural performance at odds with a company that otherwise finds renewed power in Chekhov’s acridly funny howl of pain.A larger cast — 17 (children included, and only two men) — also share the deserved applause across town at the National Theater premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Welkin,” a stirring if overstuffed play set in 18th-century rural England. (Running through May 23, it will be broadcast via NT Live on May 21.)The company includes such notable theater and TV names as Maxine Peake and Haydn Gwynne, but pretty much everyone in James Macdonald’s three-hour production gets a defining moment in what is an intriguing amalgam of “The Crucible” and “Twelve Angry Men” — the main difference being that it features women deciding the fate of the accused. Sally Poppy (Ria Zmitrowicz) is on trial for murder but will avoid hanging if, in accordance with the law at the time, she is pregnant.The characters’ hardscrabble lives are made plain by the opening tableau, in which the women of the jury are shown doing housework in the partitioned boxes of Bunny Christie’s set. (The scene has a painterly beauty worthy of permanent display.) Macdonald brings the same rigor he has applied to comparably challenging plays by, say, Caryl Churchill, whose works he has directed at many London playhouses. Kirkwood may not have Churchill’s gift for compression, but when it comes to theatrical daring, she’s not far behind.Unlike most actors, who have to create a sense of ensemble from scratch for each production, the members of Mischief Theater have been working together for over a decade. Since meeting at drama school in London, they have been building their reputation — including a stint on Broadway — and their latest, “Magic Goes Wrong,” is now at the Vaudeville Theater. In fact, they have three studies in chaos running on the West End and a prime-time TV comedy series on the BBC.Their latest venture has been devised with the American magicians and comedians Penn & Teller, who don’t appear onstage but are credited as co-writers of this magic show gone manically awry. (Ben Hart is the magic consultant.) As per the established “Something Goes Wrong” formula, a self-described Mind Mangler (the priceless Henry Lewis) is at perpetual odds with his teleprompter, the birds in a dove act turn out to be dead, and a devil-may-care magician known as The Blade (Dave Hearn, hilariously intense) sustains more than a few serious-seeming injuries along the way.Directed by Adam Meggido, “Magic Goes Wrong” is the second offering of a three-show residency at this playhouse by Mischief Theater, and in a sign of the company’s commercial appeal, the run has been extended through the summer, until Aug. 30. Though none of the exceedingly likable performers has yet found individual renown, they are celebrated in the collective they founded: At a recent performance, the audience greeted several of them with familiar whoops, like a rock band.The result may not push Mischief in the new direction promised by last fall’s far more ambitious “Groan Ups,” a proper play that told of an unrequited, almost Chekhovian longing. But the actors’ reappearance so soon after makes you wonder where this true ensemble’s wide-ranging anarchy will alight next. Proper ensemble companies have all but vanished in the English-speaking theater, but Mischief, whether by magic or otherwise, looks here to stay.Uncle Vanya. Directed by Ian Rickson. Harold Pinter Theater, through May 2.The Welkin. Directed by James Macdonald. National Theater, through May 23. NT Live broadcast May 21.Magic Goes Wrong. Directed by Adam Meggido. Vaudeville Theater, through Aug. 30. More