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      ‘Life & Times of Michael K’ Review: An Arduous Trek That’s a Marvel to Watch

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      This captivating adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s novel, a collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, follows a man and his ailing mother during a civil war in South Africa.His chin is pitched forward, his ears protrude and his brow is furrowed over glinting black eyes. The protagonist of “Life & Times of Michael K,” which opened on Monday at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, has the countenance of a man in perpetual pursuit. A refugee trapped in his own country, he is a puppet manipulated by forces beyond his control.Even as his wood-carved features remain placid, he is an extraordinary embodiment of human reflex and interiority created by the Handspring Puppet Company. When he collapses into a crumpled heap of disjointed limbs, or gambols triumphantly to a playground refrain, his figure demonstrates operatic feeling with delicate precision. It is a marvel to behold.So is the entirety of this captivating and transportive production, adapted and directed by Lara Foot from the Booker Prize-winning 1983 novel of the same name by J.M. Coetzee. Set amid a fictional civil war in South Africa, the story charts a journey undertaken by Michael K and his ailing mother, Anna, from a besieged Cape Town to her rural birthplace, Prince Albert. What begins as a fulfillment of Michael’s filial duty evolves into a philosophical pilgrimage, away from civilization’s destructive conflicts toward direct communion with nature.But first Michael has to load his mother into a souped-up wheelbarrow and cart her out of the city. Stooped over with age and illness, Anna has a raspy, giddy laugh that lends an air of adventure to their escape from bombardment and destitution. Mother and son are each maneuvered, bunraku-style, by up to three puppeteers at once, animated by a combination of intricate movement and vocalizations that include not just dialogue, but grunts, sighs and heaves of effort.The puppetry, created and designed by Adrian Kohler, and directed here by Kohler and Basil Jones, both Handspring founders, achieves a manner of artistic transcendence. How is it possible to render the cascading traumas of displacement, loss and captivity into a legible aesthetic experience? There is a distancing mechanism inherent to the form that allows for these figurines — assemblies of wood, cane and carbon fiber — to illustrate feelings and circumstances otherwise too extreme and dire to visualize with actors onstage. Projection design by Yoav Dagan and Kirsti Cumming, in addition to depicting shifts in landscape, magnifies the characters’ etched faces in detail.The production smartly emphasizes the Odyssean incidents of Coetzee’s novel and adheres closely to Michael’s point of view, our critic writes. The cast includes, from left, Billy Langa (standing in the background), Craig Leo, Carlo Daniels, Faniswa Yisa and Roshina Ratnam.Richard TermineAnd each puppet, including a brave but ill-fated goat and three curious children, is the sum of magnificent, multipronged performances, led by the puppet master Craig Leo, who handles adult Michael alongside Markus Schabbing and Carlo Daniels. When a ravenous Michael is offered a chicken pie, each one of his puppeteers tears off a furious bite. And when a restless Anna keeps Michael awake at night, her fussing and fidgeting are a symphonic collaboration between Faniswa Yisa, Roshina Ratnam and Nolufefe Ntshuntshe.Foot’s adaptation, presented here by Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and Baxter Theater Centre, where Foot is the artistic director, smartly emphasizes the Odyssean episodes of Coetzee’s novel and adheres closely to Michael’s point of view. Third-person narration is delivered to the audience by multiple performers, including Andrew Buckland, Sandra Prinsloo and Billy Langa, a shuffle of voices that gives the production’s uninterrupted two hours a sustained sense of urgency and momentum. (The show was also presented this summer at the Edinburgh Fringe.)The inventive and atmospheric stagecraft captures the spartan, poetic quality of Coetzee’s prose. The sunrise ambers and midnight blues of Joshua Cutts’s lighting design illuminate Michael’s states of mind as much as they do time and place. Kyle Shepherd’s score is rich with both ominous and aching strings and piano, while David Classon’s sound transports Michael from the chaos of a war-torn metropolis to the swishy silence beneath a river’s surface. Patrick Curtis’s versatile soot-colored set and the earth-toned streetwear designed by Phyllis Midlane facilitate the production’s expansive canvas.The race of Coetzee’s itinerant hero, written during South Africa’s apartheid, is only lightly specified in the novel, where Michael is classified in official documents as “CM,” or colored male. Onstage, Michael and Anna’s features offer a similarly subtle indication of their background. It is a radical artistic gesture, given the narrative’s setting, that posits Michael K as a symbol of human existence. It’s a timely one, too, to consider the possibility of a connection with one’s homeland that surpasses earthly conflicts.Life & Times of Michael KThrough Dec. 23 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; stannswarehouse.org. Running time: 2 hours. More

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      ‘Walk on Through’ Review: Dispatches, in Song, From a Museum Novice

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      In his new show, Gavin Creel sings about the wonders of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but sticks too close to the surface.The Broadway star Gavin Creel had been a New Yorker for 20 years before he first visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 2019.He realizes this is embarrassing information. In “Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice,” his new show at MCC Theater, he gets that admission out of the way in the opening number.“I feel ashamed, like I should just go and hide,” he sings. “How have I never been here? Well, I think, it’s anyone’s guess, but it is on the Upper East Side.”It’s a cute joke, and ingratiating in a particularly Manhattanite way — because who among us hasn’t let the prospect of a simple crosstown trip keep us from some cultural treasure that people from all over the world flock here to experience? It’s glib, too, though: the flash of vulnerability swiftly obscured with charm.Superficiality is a bane of this uncertain show, for which Creel wrote the book, lyrics and soft-pop music. Commissioned by the Met’s Live Arts Department, and performed at the museum in 2021, it has the dispiriting feel of an advertisement for the Met’s collections — and despite the dozens of artworks projected upstage, not a persuasive one.Try though Creel does to convince us that he eventually succumbed to the museum’s magic, little of “Walk on Through” seems heartfelt. A lot of it seems forced, as if he is trying to deliver what he thinks is expected in response to the art: profundity, epiphany.“Oh,” he says, after gazing at the idealized lovers in Pierre-Auguste Cot’s oil painting “The Storm,” from 1880, “I am in it now — just swept up in the fantasy of this place.”That bit of dialogue follows one of the better songs, the wistful “What Is This?,” sung principally by the band members Madeline Benson (the show’s music director) and Chris Peters, but it rings hollow.The band, which also includes Scott Wasserman and Corey Rawls (a gorgeous soft touch on the drums), contributes fine work on generally anodyne songs. The two supporting actors are also strong: Ryan Vasquez, mainly as an almost spectral ex; and Sasha Allen with a solo — inspired by Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 16th-century “Judith With the Head of Holofernes” — that feels ripped from a musical-theater epic, and which Creel deflates with a flippant last line.On a set by I. Javier Ameijeiras that suggests the Met’s architecture, with projections by David Bengali and lighting by Jiyoun Chang, it is an odd duck of a show. Directed by Linda Goodrich, it avoids being a lecture, but also identifies little of the art we see. (A wall of images and text just outside the auditorium helps with that.) It casts exploring the collection as a search for self, yet never goes deep.During one number, “Hands on You,” Creel leaps into the aisles to lead the audience in clapping rhythmically along — though at the performance I attended, participation seemed more indulgent than enthusiastic. The song tries hard to be a cheeky celebration of gay male sexuality, but its topic is jejune: vigorous lust for a bevy of ancient marble nudes.Still, “Hands on You” is meant as a riposte to the bountiful Christian imagery in the Met’s galleries — or, rather, to the rejection it connotes for Creel as a gay man. Albrecht Dürer’s “Salvator Mundi” (circa 1505) is the icon of that tension, and the catalyst for the show’s final and best song, “Unfinished World.” Lovely and emotion-filled, it is a prayer of self-acceptance in the face of hostile tradition.Then the projections of artworks start up again, killing the moment, and the show ends as it began: as an advertisement.Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum NoviceThrough Jan. 7 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      Best Theater of 2023

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      Many of the plays and musicals that resonated this year deftly married elements of drama and comedy.Jesse Green’s Best Theater | Unforgettable ExperiencesJESSE GREENYear of the DramedyIf 2023 was a tragedy in the world, on New York stages it was a dramedy year, highlighted not only by serious plays with great jokes, but also by flat-out comedies with dark underpinnings. And though not all 10 shows (and various bonuses) on my mostly chronological list below fit that mongrel category, even the gravest of them seem to have gotten the memo that theater should not be a bore or a drag. It should thrill you into thought or, as the case may be, solace.‘Love’ by Alexander ZeldinOn the cold February night I saw “Love,” New York City was teeming with people in need of warm places to be. That was also the case inside the Park Avenue Armory, which had been reconfigured to represent a temporary facility for people without homes. Its residents included an unemployed man in his 50s, his barely-holding-on mother, a pregnant woman, two refugees — and us. Seated adjacent to the facility’s dingy common room, we became, in the playwright’s own staging, fellow residents. But if the others eyed us like we might steal a precious sandwich, we could blithely leave when the play was over. Or not so blithely: Even heading home, with my heart retuned to tiny heartbreaks instead of huge ones, I had to wonder why it was easier to engage the subject of homelessness inside the Armory than on Park Avenue. (Read our review of “Love” and our interview with Zeldin.)‘A Doll’s House’ by Henrik IbsenA chair and a door — and a riveting star — were all it took to make a nearly 150-year-old drama set in Norway come fully alive in New York City today. True, the chair rotated mysteriously for 20 minutes before the dialogue began. Nor did it hurt that the star sitting on it, like an angry bird in a giant cuckoo clock, was Jessica Chastain. And yes, the famous door through which her Nora walked out of her marriage and into a new life was a staging marvel in Jamie Lloyd’s surgically precise Broadway production. But finer than all that was the chilling fact that Ibsen’s text, as adapted by Amy Herzog, sounded as if it had been written yesterday — and could still be transpiring in real life tomorrow. (Read our review of “A Doll’s House” and our interview with Chastain.)‘How to Defend Yourself’ by Liliana PadillaAfter a classmate is raped by fraternity bros, two sorority sisters organize a self-defense club. And though they aren’t great teachers, a great deal is learned by the other young women (and two would-be male allies) who attend intermittently over the course of several weeks. The New York Theater Workshop audience, too, learned a great deal, as the questions bedeviling so many relationships — the complexity of consent and the meaning of control — played out before us in this perfectly timed hot-button play. But what gave the production its poetic gravitas was a gasp-inducing coda, gorgeously staged by the playwright along with Rachel Chavkin and Steph Paul, in which the culture of sexual violence was traced to a source you could never again regard as innocent. (Read our review of “How to Defend Yourself.”)‘Primary Trust’ by Eboni BoothIt’s sometimes true that an actor is great in a not-great play. But it seemed to me that William Jackson Harper, giving one of the year’s best performances, both dignified and deep, achieved it because of — not despite — the material, quiet and apparently whimsical though it was. In this Roundabout Theater Company production, directed by Knud Adams, he played a lonely clerk in a ragged suburb whose best friend turns out to be imaginary but whose sadness is all too real. Twee as that sounds, the glory of both the writing and acting was in letting us experience the character’s sadness and, even more, the hard work behind his efforts to stay afloat in a painful world. (Read our review of “Primary Trust” and our interview with Harper.)‘The Comeuppance’ by Branden Jacobs-JenkinsBranden Jacobs-Jenkins updated the reunion genre with his haunting Off Broadway play “The Comeuppance.” The cast included, from left, Bobby Moreno, Brittany Bradford, Shannon Tyo and Susannah Flood.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs in many reunion dramas, the 20-years-later get-together of some Catholic school classmates in this compelling, sometimes terrifying new play included an uninvited guest. Well, really two, if you count the supernatural one: a psychopomp, or collector of souls of the recently dead. The struggle for maturity that’s the stuff of such stories, though hilariously enacted in Eric Ting’s staging for the Signature Theater, became something existential in this bigger, chillier “Big Chill,” as “the age of poor choices seeking their consequences” pointed toward the ultimate graduation. (Read our review of “The Comeuppance.”)‘Just for Us’ by Alex Edelman“A Jew walks into a Nazi bar” might have been the start of a standup routine for the comedian Alex Edelman. Instead, the story of his infiltrating a white supremacist meeting in Queens became an urgent one-man Broadway show, one of the most thoughtful (and troubling) explorations of antisemitism in a year that offered too much relevant material. Despite its three-jokes-per-minute, rabbi-on-Ritalin aesthetic — the show was directed by Adam Brace, with Alex Timbers as creative consultant — it eventually revealed itself as a consideration of the central Jewish value of empathy. Is it unconditional? Do even the hateful deserve it? Do we? (Read our review of “Just for Us” and our interview with Edelman.)‘Infinite Life’ by Annie BakerOne of the characters is reading George Eliot, another a self-help book, another a mystery. But the real mystery is how a story about women reading, sleeping, chatting and dealing with pain became one of the most compelling plays of the year, in James Macdonald’s production for Atlantic Theater Company. Of course, unlikely setups for powerful drama are an Annie Baker trademark, but in considering the uses of suffering (if any) and of desire (if any) she took her technique to what must surely be its logical and triumphant limit — until next time. (Read our review of “Infinite Life” and our conversation with the cast.)‘Purlie Victorious’ by Ossie DavisOssie Davis’s 1961 play, “Purlie Victorious,” has received a blazing and hilarious revival starring, from left, Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, Leslie Odom Jr., Jay O. Sanders and Noah Robbins.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOssie Davis’s 1961 comedy is about two thefts: one petty and one — the theft of the freedom of generations of Black Americans — definitely not. Welding the hilarious farce of the first to a sense of fierce outrage over the second was a risk Davis pulled off beautifully, as this season’s nigh-perfect revival, unaccountably its first on Broadway, demonstrated. Directed by Kenny Leon, it also gave its stars great, rangy roles to chew: Leslie Odom Jr. as the wolfish Purlie, a preacher who becomes, in essence, a prosecutor; and Kara Young, usually seen in dramas, as a daffy yokel finding the sweet spot where Lucille Ball meets Moms Mabley. (Read our review of “Purlie Victorious” and our interview with Odom and Young.)‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ by Jocelyn BiohOn a blistering day in the summer of 2019, at a salon in Harlem, five women style the braids, cornrows, twists and bobs of seven customers. Their workplace cross talk and byplay are both hilarious, making this Manhattan Theater Club production, directed by Whitney White, a kind of “Cheers” for today and a comic highlight of the season. But as in Jocelyn Bioh’s earlier plays, which cleverly weave African concerns into familiar American forms, this one built its welcome laughs on the back of a serious subject: the great opportunities and grave perils of immigration. (Read our review of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and our look at the wigs used in the production.)‘Stereophonic’ by David AdjmiFive musicians not unlike the members of Fleetwood Mac circa 1976 come together with two engineers to make what will turn out to be an epochal album. In the process, they unmake themselves. And though “Stereophonic,” in Daniel Aukin’s thrilling production for Playwrights Horizons, delivers enormous pleasure from that soap opera setup — and the spot-on songs by Will Butler — it’s a much deeper work than other behind-the-scenes, making-of dramedies. Under cover of jokes and the expert polyphony of the overlapping dialogue, David Adjmi leads us to a story about the disaster of maleness, and thus of mating, behind the pop-rock revolution of the period. Spoiler alert: The revolution is ongoing. (Read our review of “Stereophonic” and our interview with Adjmi.)Sondheim foreverMost of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals were marginal financial successes or outright flops in their original productions. But in this second post-Sondheim year, it’s been hit after hit. First, in the spring, came Thomas Kail’s ravishingly sung, deeply emotional and strangely hilarious Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd,” starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. (Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster take over in February.) This was no “Teeny Todd” but the huge, real thing. Then, in the fall, came the gleaming Broadway transfer of “Merrily We Roll Along” from New York Theater Workshop. After what seemed like zillions of attempts by many hands to fix that 1981 show, the director Maria Friedman figured it out, locating its long-lost core in Jonathan Groff’s mesmerizing, furious performance. (He’d make a great Sweeney.) Finally, and least expectedly, “Here We Are,” Sondheim’s final effort, left incomplete at his death in November 2021, showed up at the Shed with a clever book by David Ives and an impossibly chic production directed by Joe Mantello. Its wit, its openness to everything and its ageless invention (one song rhymes “Lamborghinis” with “vodkatinis”) made “Here We Are” a worthy send-off to Sondheim — and, like “Sweeney” and “Merrily,” a tough ticket despite jaw-dropping prices. It’s almost as if we don’t want him gone. (Read our reviews of “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Here We Are.”)Also notedShows you don’t love may yet feature indelible performances. Among them this year, for me, were Dianne Wiest as Meryl Kowalski, larcenous scene stealer and would-be star, in “Scene Partners”; Miriam Silverman as Mavis, a hipster in her own mind, in “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”; Jordan Donica as Lancelot, a lion ripping huge bites of dramatic flesh (and song) with his teeth, in “Camelot”; and Jodie Comer as Tessa Ensler, a ferocious barrister victimized by the law, in “Prima Facie.” … There are also shows you love so much you can hardly imagine them recast — until they brilliantly are. Case in point this year was Ruthie Ann Miles as a crafty, heartbroken Margaret in the Encores! production of “The Light in the Piazza.” … A successful recasting of another type was David Korins’s transformation of the Broadway Theater into a Studio 54-era disco for “Here Lies Love,” which gave audiences a literally moving experience. Moving in more emotional terms was the score’s final song, “God Draws Straight,” which transformed the show into something with heart after 90 minutes of irony. … The book of the Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical “Harmony,” about a German singing group undone by antisemitism in the 1930s, felt discordant. But the vocal arrangements, by Manilow and John O’Neill, were sublime. … And though there’s not much competition for the best flying transportation on Broadway, if there were, the winner, totally retiring memories of the “Miss Saigon” helicopter and the title character of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” would be the DeLorean DMC in “Back to the Future.” It was a special effect that, for once, was special, in an otherwise Chevy Nova kind of show.Unforgettable ExperiencesSongs sung by Jennifer Simard, center, and Tess Soltau, left, and Amy Hillner Larsen in “Once Upon a One More Time” were among our favorite stage moments this year.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPower ballad No. 1“Independently Owned” is the “Shucked” showstopper that helped Alex Newell snag a Tony Award, but my favorite number in the show is the wronged-man solo, “Somebody Will,” which revealed the adorably doofy Andrew Durand as a full-throated, tears-in-your-beer balladeer. The musical’s composers, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, are already reliable country music hit makers; Nashville should give this one a spin, too. SCOTT HELLERPower ballad No. 2Jennifer Simard + high diva attitude + zombified dancers + a killer arrangement of “Toxic” = reason alone to have seen “Once Upon a One More Time” during its too-brief Broadway run. All praise to the show’s marketing team (and YouTube) for allowing us to watch it many more times. SCOTT HELLERExit Nora, into the worldNora Helmer walking out on her controlling husband and their little ones was shocking behavior — and jolting drama — in 1879, when Henrik Ibsen’s classic was new. Her famous door slam doesn’t carry the same charge now. Yet the director Jamie Lloyd found an equally jaw-dropping exit for Jessica Chastain’s Nora in his austerely chic Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House.” At the Hudson Theater, Soutra Gilmour’s set hid a surprise in plain sight. During the climactic moment, a giant load-in door in the upstage wall slowly rose like a curtain onto West 45th Street, which pulsated with color and life. Then Nora stepped through the opening, into the world, no slam required. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESA collective flinch at ‘Jaja’s’Michael Oloyede, center, as a scoundrelly husband who wheedles his wife, played by Nana Mensah, left, out of her money in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhether exchanging knowing looks or exploiting one another’s weaknesses, the stylists and salon-goers in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” shared the sort of synergy inherent to a single living organism. The most vivid example: when a trifling husband (played by Michael Oloyede) asked God to strike him down in an obvious lie to his wife (Nana Mensah). Like a startled squid in water, the women recoiled in unison expecting the lord to do as he was told. It was darkly comedic proof of a fierce, collective instinct. NAVEEN KUMARLittle Man, high-flying kicksHow vicariously cathartic to watch a boy nicknamed Little Man beat down bullies in “Poor Yella Rednecks,” at Manhattan Theater Club. But what really made the brawl memorable is that Little Man is portrayed by a puppet (mostly handled by Jon Norman Schneider), allowing for the kind of gravity-defying flying kicks and slow-motion strikes that gives the show a hilariously cartoonish vibe. But it somehow also imbues Little Man with humanity. Credit the playwright, Qui Nguyen, who also designed the fight choreography. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIApocalyptic clownerySome of this year’s best clowning took place in the scorched, postapocalyptic world of Samuel Beckett’s bleakly funny “Endgame,” in a first-rate staging by the Irish Repertory Theater. Its cramped, brick-laden set featured a troupe of four splendidly paired-off character actors whose commitment to the absurdity underlined the play’s futility: Bill Irwin and his wildly swinging limbs were the perfect foil to John Douglas Thompson’s straight man, whose petty commands bellowed through the narrow space with a tyrannical boom; and, popping out of trash cans to reminisce on better times, Joe Grifasi and Patrice Johnson Chevannes brought a sweet, humble nostalgia to the tragic folly. JUAN A. RAMÍREZAn unforced revelationAnne E. Thompson’s understated performance as Dani, a rookie cop patrolling the boonies, crept up slowly like a colt finding her hind legs. In one of several hairpin turns in Rebecca Gilman’s “Swing State” at the Minetta Lane Theater, a conversation that began as a distress call from Ryan, Dani’s former high school classmate (Bubba Weiler), softened into a sweet flirtation before she elicited a confession as easily as picking a flower. (I was not the only one who gasped.) Often the most unassuming character onstage is the one to watch. NAVEEN KUMARAn actress is going to actIn “The Seagull/Woodstock, NY,” Thomas Bradshaw’s Chekhov adaptation, Parker Posey’s portrayal of Irene deftly toed the line between satire, affection and melancholia. But what I remember most is the laugh, which Posey’s Irene used as a weapon to defuse someone’s plastic-surgery joke, deploying it with performative archness — as if Irene watched herself laugh. Yet it still felt natural. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIFool’s errandA seemingly innocuous remark — “Maybe I’ll take the dog for a walk” — grows into a terrifying incantation near the end of “The Best We Could (a family tragedy),” Emily Feldman’s stealth gut punch of a play, for Manhattan Theater Club. From the start we learn of the bond between Frank Wood, as an unemployed scientist and unhappy family man, and his late, loyal canine companion. A cross-country journey with his daughter (Aya Cash) to adopt a replacement certainly has its bumps. But only in the final minutes do we realize, under Daniel Aukin’s sure-handed direction and in Wood’s tremulous performance, where this road trip has been going. SCOTT HELLERA self-defense dream balletEvery element in New York Theater Workshop’s production of “How to Defend Yourself,” Liliana Padilla’s exploration of the fuzziness of consent, came together in its final sequence: a sort of dream ballet rewinding from a college kegger to a pool party to a young child’s playground birthday. The stunningly lit scene seemed to play in slow motion, peeling back years of learned social behaviors to evoke the both terrifying and exciting possibilities of tenderness, sex, danger, and passion. JUAN A. RAMÍREZMidnight snack, Take 1Will Brill and Marin Ireland in “Uncle Vanya,” staged by Jack Serio in a private loft in Manhattan.Emilio MadridIt sounds slightly deranged to credit Anton Chekhov with having written one of the best scenes of sexual and romantic tension in the canon, but he did: in “Uncle Vanya,” whose Sonya and Astrov have a middle-of-the-night tête-à-tête over cheese in the dining room, exchanging confidences, igniting hopes. Her hopes, mainly, because she’s the hardworking young farmer with the yearslong crush on him, and he’s the heavy-drinking doctor who doesn’t think of her that way. But in Jack Serio’s staging in a Manhattan loft, Marin Ireland’s Sonya and Will Brill’s Astrov touched off the audience’s hopes, too, even if we knew they’d come to nothing. Heads bent close in the candlelight, speaking sotto voce, they made an almost rom-com pair. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESMidnight snack, Take 2In Simon Stephens’s “Vanya,” a funny, sexy tragicomedy that ran in London’s West End this fall, Andrew Scott performed all the parts. He gave a beautifully calibrated, split-focus tension to the yearning chat between Sonia and the tree-planting doctor she adores, whom Stephens has renamed Michael. On the one hand, Scott as the nervous Sonia, for whom the conversation is a treasured memory in the making; on the other, Scott as the sozzled Michael, careless enough to call her “my love,” in Scott’s irresistible Irish lilt. “You have the gentlest voice,” Sonia tells him. And sure, hers is very similar. Still, it’s true. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESPinch-hitter no moreI can’t say I knew the name Joy Woods back in April, so when she was announced as a last minute-replacement on the roster of singers for the annual Miscast benefit concert, I felt a little let down. Not any more! Her quiet-storm medley of “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from “My Fair Lady” (arranged by Will Van Dyke) was the evening’s revelation, keeping her fully in step with a starry lineup that included Ben Platt, LaChanze and Josh Groban. Now her name seems to be on everyone’s lips, with roles in “Little Shop of Horrors,” “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” and, next spring, “The Notebook” on Broadway. SCOTT HELLERExpert scene chewingTwo actors really went to town in their utter rejection of verisimilitude this year, single-handedly spicing up their respective Broadway shows. In “The Cottage,” Alex Moffat delivered a gonzo Expressionist-by-way-of-Plastic Man performance in which merely lighting up a cigarette became a full-fledged event. In “Back to the Future: The Musical,” Hugh Coles was a standout as George McFly, taking what Crispin Glover did in the original movie and amping it up into an arch marvel of manic stylization. In “Put Your Mind to It,” he paradoxically suggested George’s stiff demeanor with loose limbs that defied the laws of biomechanics. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIPurring Rodgers & Hart renditionsElizabeth Stanley, so skilled at bringing out a pop song’s emotional core, exposed the giddy carnal drive behind “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” in a gala presentation of “Pal Joey” at New York City Center. In full bedroom afterglow, her devil-may-care performance peppered scatting and swinging jazz vocals through the song’s racier lyrics. (The ones thanking god she can be oversexed again.) Also voluptuous was Aisha Jackson’s aching “My Funny Valentine,” made into a torch anthem through Daryl Waters’s despairing orchestrations. Jackson richly moaned through love’s irresistible betrayal, revealing an erotic trembling in the Rodgers & Hart classic. JUAN A. RAMÍREZThe jukebox hits a wicked note“Once Upon a One More Time,” a fairy-tale mash-up powered by the hits of Britney Spears and skin-deep feminism, delivered the form’s most profane needle drop. Cinderella (Briga Heelan) was slumped over the hearth, with her haughty stepsisters (Amy Hillner Larsen and Tess Soltau) glowering down at her, when rapid-fire beats blared through the Marquis Theater. “You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti?” Their command was obvious: “You better work, bitch.” NAVEEN KUMAR More

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      No Snoozing Here: This ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Is Gearing Up for a Wild Ride

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      At Abrons Arts Center, a hilarious family show in the British holiday tradition that runs “like a steam train when it goes well.”It was the first time the cast members of “Sleeping Beauty” were rehearsing in their costumes, and they were amped up. “The energy is palpable!” the director Julie Atlas Muz said late last month as the actors gathered onstage at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side.They would need that energy, too. “We run like a steam train when it goes well,” said the writer Mat Fraser, who is also Muz’s husband. “And that’s how it has to be.”This “Sleeping Beauty,” after all, is a pantomime, a British theatrical holiday tradition that, at its best, is fast and furious and hilarious.Muz’s first time at a panto, as they are called, was a revelation. “I was like, ‘What is this?’” she said. “I thought it was like a punk-rock concert for kids.”In this telling of the fairy tale, Belle (played by Jordanna James) gets to do a lot more than lie comatose.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesFrom left, Stefanie Gil, Yan Diaz and Jonathan Rodriguez during rehearsal.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesFraser, who is British, introduced Muz, a Detroit native, to the daffy world of pantos — broadly comic versions of classic fairy tales that incorporate such staples as cheeky topical references, groan-inducing puns, an eye-popping color palette, raucous audience interaction, popular songs boasting rewritten lyrics, and liberal amounts of cross-dressing.“I grew up watching my mum be principal boy and my dad often be the baddie,” said Fraser, 61. “Panto is ingrained in my childhood. It was what inspired me to want to do theater.”The couple have had active careers in the theatrical, burlesque and nightlife scenes, but since 2017 they have carved out a niche as the rare people who have been able to crack the panto code in the United States. “Sleeping Beauty” is their third original production at Abrons Arts Center (where it’s running Dec. 2-24) as part of the Panto Project, following “Jack and the Beanstalk” in 2017 and “Dick Rivington & the Cat” in 2021.Mat Fraser adapted the story and Julie Atlas Muz directed the production.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesUnlike many seasonal offerings, the pantos are not just dropped into the schedule but completely integrated into Abrons’s organization and mission. The institution actually plays a role in the life of Muz and Fraser, who live nearby and got married in 2012 on the playhouse’s stage. Muz, 50, also performed in the Basil Twist show “Sisters’ Follies: Between Two Worlds,” a commission to celebrate Abrons’s 100th anniversary in 2015. “I played the ghost of one of the founding sisters and I still really identify with Irene Lewisohn,” she said. “I talk to her and thank her every night.” (Twist handles the Panto Project’s puppet design.)Many of the panto actors — including the children who make up the “babes chorus” — have taken acting classes at Abrons, and 100 free tickets for each panto performance are distributed to people who participate in the various programs run by Abrons’s parent organization, Henry Street Settlement. (The theater’s seating capacity is 240.) “There’s a commitment to making sure that the folks utilizing our services are also able to engage in what’s happening at the Arts Center,” Ali Rosa-Salas, vice president of visual and performing arts, said on the phone. (It’s worth noting that tickets otherwise cost a relatively affordable $41.)Amy Lombard for The New York TimesRoyston Scott as King Crimson.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesThe show’s costumes were designed by David Quinn.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesWhile the previous Abrons pantos made hay of subjects like gentrification, rising prices and, on a more positive note, welcoming immigrants, “Sleeping Beauty” sticks more closely to the fairy-tale fantasy. “You can sense the cultural shifts,” Muz said, “and I think people need a little bit of escapism right now.”The regular tale has been brushed up, with a Belle (Jordanna James) who gets to do a lot more than lie comatose for most of the story. And of course there are still sly nods to the here and now: A baddie goes by Evil Queen Karen (Muffy Styler) and the saucy traditional dame is called Jenny Lopez (Jonathan Rodriguez).Family affair: The children in the cast make up the “babes chorus,” and many of the panto actors have taken acting classes at Abrons Arts Center.Amy Lombard for The New York TimesAmy Lombard for The New York TimesFraser, who also plays the drums in the show’s band, keeps the repertoire of musical spoofs sharp, too. “I’m frustrated in British pantos when they go ‘Here’s one for the parents’ and it’s a Queen song,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Guys, Queen is for the grandparents! Parents were raving on ecstasy in the ’90s.’ So I like to modernize it and add stuff that would at first seem inappropriate, like ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica.”While Fraser and Muz’s usual work tends to be for adult audiences, their pantos are family shows that manage to merge their cool-cat sensibility into the parameters of a genre so highly codified that it has pre-established call-and-response patterns involving the audience members. “They’re talking to you and screaming at you while you’re trying to deliver your lines,” said Jenni Gil, who plays Belle’s friend Lucky, and is in her third Abrons panto.Gil’s experience as a teaching artist in public schools has trained her well to work with young people, but she admits that the pantos can be wild. “I had a moment in last year’s production of ‘Dick Rivington’ where we all had to be super-sad and all the kids were yelling ‘he didn’t do it!’” she said. “It took so much from all of us to not laugh. When we get offstage after those moments, we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, there is so much joy in theater.’” More

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      Broadway Babies, Singing Show Tunes for Seniors

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      What happened when four young theater actors performed for an older generation? “I was expecting to have the best show ever and that happened.”“Oh, baby, give me one more chance,” sang Corey J, a former Little Michael in the Broadway musical “MJ.” Dressed in a black rimmed hat and a black turtleneck, jacket and pants, he slipped through the explosion of joy that is the chord progression of the Jackson 5 song “I Want You Back.”He had performed the song hundreds of times in the Broadway show, a biographical Michael Jackson jukebox musical, at the Neil Simon Theater. But on this particular afternoon, he was on a much smaller stage: an Upper East Side senior center, where about 50 residents seated in floral chairs clapped along to the beat.The performance was part of a monthly series at the senior living community, Inspir Carnegie Hill, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIt was the latest in a monthly series of Broadway-related events staged in the dining room of the senior living community, Inspir Carnegie Hill, by Evan Rossi, its senior director of resident experience, in partnership with the events company Broadway Plus. Though Inspir has hosted numerous events with Broadway actors — including Julie Benko (“Harmony,” “Funny Girl”), Charl Brown (“Motown: The Musical”) and the comedian Alex Edelman (“Just for Us”) — this was the first to feature children actors.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?  More

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      10 Performances That Pushed Emotional Limits

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      For our critic-at-large, the year was marked by the Black excellence of “Purlie Victorious,” the brutality of “Bottoms” and rage of “Beef.”For me, 2023 was a year of entertainment that captured people pushed to their emotional limits, whether that was the rage of two bitter enemies, the desperation of a widow who only sees a future of annihilation or the pent-up aggression of a bunch of high school girls. But it was also a year of colorful, funny and biting Black stories on stages. Throw in a dancing goth, a freshly single New York City fashionista and a chronicle of a dying band, and you’ve got my top picks for everything that tickled my fancy in the past year across theater, film and TV.‘Swing State’Call me a masochist, but what I most loved about Rebecca Gilman’s devastating play was that it tapped into multiple registers of despair: individual, communal, ecological. Peg, a widow living on a prairie in Wisconsin, is nursing concerns about endangered animals and environmental catastrophe, and how everything is leading us to an uninhabitable planet. But alongside Peg’s global anxieties are a host of much more intimate sorrows — grief for her husband, a sense of hopelessness, and isolation — that are driving her to consider suicide. Gilman’s script offers black humor, suspense and a crushing ending. And the empathetic direction, by Robert Falls, of a stellar cast led by Mary Beth Fisher and Bubba Weiler, provides a sense of existential urgency to every minute. (Read our review of “Swing State.”)‘Purlie Victorious’From left: Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, Leslie Odom Jr. and Jay O. Sanders in “Purlie Victorious.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt the end of this Ossie Davis play, our hero, Purlie Victorious (a larger-than-life Leslie Odom Jr.), heartily declares, “I find, in being Black, a thing of beauty: a joy, a strength, a secret cup of gladness.” I nearly cried at this ecstatic celebration of Blackness, because this Broadway production, cleverly directed by Kenny Leon, was itself a prime example of Black excellence. As hilarious as it is biting, “Purlie Victorious” follows Purlie’s scheme to reclaim the inheritance owed to his family in the Jim Crow South. Kara Young, as Purlie’s love interest — the uniquely named Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins — proves she can carry off a fearless comedic performance on par with her dramatic roles. (Read our review of “Purlie Victorious.”)‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’Even if the hairstyles in this play weren’t as fabulous as they were, Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” about a day in the life of African immigrants working in a Harlem hair-braiding shop, would still be a sparkling Broadway delight. That’s thanks to Bioh’s colorful characters and brisk, playful dialogue. Whitney White’s direction provided extra spark, and the production’s re-creation of real braid hairstyles and salon culture felt novel; it’s not often that Black spaces are so lovingly portrayed, or portrayed at all, on Broadway. (Read our review of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”)‘Stereophonic’Earlier this year, after guiltily binging the soapy Amazon Prime series “Daisy Jones & the Six,” I wondered what a better version of this narrative — the band drama full of drugs, sex and music that’s kinda-but-not-really about Fleetwood Mac — would look like. I didn’t know until I saw David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic,” which kept me fully engaged through its full three-hour running time. The central band’s journey to celebrity then collapse, the addictions, the toxic relationships — the bones of the material are the same, but “Stereophonic” is unique in the way it uses music to do some of the storytelling. Entirely diegetic, the songs aren’t used for exposition or ornamentation; they exist as products in themselves, which we hear in different incarnations, in different parts, sometimes several times before we hear the final version. We learn about the characters through the parts they play in making and performing this music — which, by the way, is amazing, and written by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire. The cast is flawless, and the production is so meticulously composed, including David Zinn’s stunning set and Ryan Rumery’s explosive sound design, that it feels like you’re actually being ushered into this world of Billboard hits, giant bags of cocaine and ego-driven rock stars. I can’t wait to see it again. (Read our review of “Stereophonic.”)‘Flex’There are a lot of reasons I liked this Lincoln Center Theater production about a high school basketball team, but one of them was, to my surprise, more a feat of athleticism than of drama. Throughout the performance I went to, Starra, the team’s talented, headstrong captain played by Erica Matthews, never missed a shot to the basket set above the stage at the Mitzi E. Newhouse. A story about the clash of beliefs, personalities, priorities and ambitions among these girls in lower-class, rural Arkansas, “Flex” was a win in all respects, from Candrice Jones’s engaging script to Lileana Blain-Cruz’s dynamic direction to the strong cast. I’m no fan of team sports, and in any other context would find taking the role of basketball spectator tedious; but, even if for only two hours, “Flex” transformed me into a fan. (Read our review of “Flex.”)‘Bottoms’Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in “Bottoms.”Orion PicturesI loved the chaos of this weird, perversely satisfying film about two unpopular high school students who start a girls’ fight club with the ultimate goal of losing their virginity. Rachel Sennott, who delivered a panic-inducing performance in “Shiva Baby,” plays the similarly unstable and unpredictable PJ, opposite Ayo Edebiri’s adorably dweeby Josie. “Bottoms” has a brutal sense of humor that gleefully spirals into a violent finale I won’t forget anytime soon. (Read our review of “Bottoms.”)‘Beef’The only reason I didn’t ravenously consume this phenomenal Netflix series in one go was that “Beef” was so effective in its storytelling, performances and direction that every episode felt staggering, but in the best way. It would have been so easy for this series, about the way rage rips apart and connects the lives of two unhappy strangers (played by Ali Wong and Steven Yeun), to stay in one lane and offer us 10 straight-up comedic episodes of steadily escalating acts of sabotage and retribution. But “Beef” also offers up pathos and humanity, getting to the brokenness underneath its characters’ rage without forgiving or dismissing their most heinous actions. Wong and Yeun are stellar in every scene, and beautifully navigate the chaotic turns of the script. (Read our review of “Beef.”)‘Primary Trust’A story about a grown man named Kenneth (William Jackson Harper) with no family living a quaint, routine small-town life with his imaginary best friend, “Primary Trust” was one of those shows that left me practically clutching my chest with feeling by the end. Harper delivered one of the finest, most exacting performances I saw this year; his Kenneth was delicate but not fragile. A contemporary fable about alienation, loneliness and facing the wild unknowns of adult life, “Primary Trust” felt cathartic, especially given how quarantines and six-foot distances changed many people’s understanding of isolation. (Read our review of “Primary Trust.”)‘Survival of the Thickest’The actress-comedian Michelle Buteau has so much charm that it seems to radiate from the TV. She exudes a playful energy and has a deep pocket of grand, larger-than-life facial reactions that serve punchlines without her even saying a word. So watching “Survival of the Thickest,” her bright, stylish confection of a sitcom on Netflix, feels like a soul-affirming treat. Buteau stars as Mavis Beaumont, a personal stylist forced to re-evaluate her relationship, home and career when she catches her longtime boyfriend cheating. Mavis starts at square one, moving into a tiny apartment with an eccentric New York City roommate and building her brand from the ground up. A little awkward, a bit misguided but full of heart, brains, talent and personality — and also, let’s not forget, style — Mavis is infinitely relatable, and, importantly, a Black full-figured heroine with supportive and snarky Black friends. In other words, she feels real.‘Wednesday’Jenna Ortega in “Wednesday.”NetflixWhen it comes to gothic, sexy teen revamps of old franchises, like “Riverdale” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” I’m often turned off by the baroque plots, aesthetic preening and self-conscious … well, adolescence of it all. “Wednesday” is a delightful exception, in part because the Addams daughter did goth before it was cool. (And it doesn’t hurt that the director, Tim Burton, has been the goth king of filmmaking for decades.) The show strikes the perfect balance between juicy teen dramedy and ghoulish supernatural thriller, with Jenna Ortega starring as the ever-dour and ever-surprising young mistress of darkness. Her performance delivers flashes of color behind Wednesday’s signature dead eyes and deadpan mannerisms; she manages to carry off a character with a sociopathic disconnect from the world around her and yet still make her the charming antiheroine. And I’m still waiting for anything to come along that I enjoyed as much as Wednesday’s dance in Episode 4. (Read our review of “Wednesday.”) More

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      10 Works and Performances That Helped Me Make Sense of 2023

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      Global conflict and personal loss encouraged our critic to seek out art that gave her a better understanding of grief and healing.“I hope you don’t mind if we carry on,” Juicy says at the end of “Fat Ham.” The other characters in the play then begin cleaning and clearing the stage, an act that affirms Juicy’s proposition and, in this work inspired by Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, suggests that there might be a way for them to work through their shared trauma together.Those words hit me hard when I heard them last spring. I was staving off my own mourning as my family prepared for the 10th anniversary of my brother Shaka’s death from cancer. That, coupled with political crises and global despair, pushed me to find film, television and performances that helped me make sense of my grief and, hopefully, find a release for it.‘Fat Ham’I almost didn’t see what ended up as one of my favorite plays of the year. I could not wrap my head around the story line of a Black, queer, “Hamlet”-like play, even after it had won over my fellow critics and earned the Pulitzer Prize for best drama. Then I saw it on Broadway. I was startled by its clever transformation of an Elizabethan-era depressive into Gen Z ennui through its main character Juicy (Marcel Spears), a 20-something mourning his father’s death as well as the hyper-masculinity that his family and society impose on him. Though Juicy sneaks glances and shares asides with the audience, “Fat Ham” truly breaks theater’s fourth wall when the cast stages a surreal group cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” and then again with its unexpectedly liberatory final scene that invites us to join them in a party filled with glitter, gender fluidity and Black joy. (Read our review of “Fat Ham.”)The Last Season of ‘Succession’Who knew that if you killed off Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the show’s most dynamic character, his children would easily make up for his lost charisma? The “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, that’s who knew. I can’t think of three more heart-wrenching performances of parental loss than Shiv (Sarah Snook), her voice breaking as she pleads, “Daddy? I love you. Don’t go, please. Not now,” on the phone; Roman (Kieran Culkin), breaking down during his eulogy; and Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the most tragic, as he loses his bid to replace his father as chief executive. In the end, Kendall simply stares out at the water rather than being buoyed up or submerged in it as he has been in the past. A man without a company, it is a fate that, for him, is far worse than death. (Read our review of the “Succession” finale.)‘A Thousand and One’In “A Thousand and One,” Teyana Taylor plays Inez, a mother scarred by her childhood in foster care. Aaron Kingsley Adetola plays Terry.Focus FeaturesWinner of a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature, “A Thousand and One,” sensitively explores the failure of society’s safety nets to protect Black families and the lengths Black mothers will go to ensure their children’s future. But underneath that story is another: one about the personal voids we try to fill. Appearing in her first leading role, Teyana Taylor plays Inez, a mother scarred by her childhood in foster care. She infused this character with such electricity and vitality that I found myself championing her every move, even, or especially, her most morally ambiguous decisions. (Read our interview with the director.)‘Past Lives’What if someone you pined for turns out to be your soul mate, not in this life, but another? This tension drives Celine Song’s debut film “Past Lives,” a tender portrait of two adults, Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who forged a special bond as classmates in Seoul but lost touch over the years. Their poignant performances and Song’s intimate directing style make the chemistry between these two characters believable. But, we, and they, are left with the sense that the chasm caused by immigration (and the self-invention it requires) is insurmountable, making longing the most consistent emotion available to them. (Read our review of “Past Lives.”)‘Purlie Victorious’When he first conceived of writing a play based on his childhood in rural, segregated Georgia, Ossie Davis tried to write it straight. Once he realized that satire was better suited to capture the absurdity and tragedy of American racism, he premiered his first play, “Purlie Victorious.” Back on Broadway 62 years later, the play, directed by Kenny Leon, stars Leslie Odom Jr. as the ambitious preacher Purlie and Kara Young as Lutibelle, a naïve young woman he brings home to impersonate a dead cousin whose inheritance Purlie wants. The resulting ruckus undercuts an enduring racial stereotype — that all Black people look alike — while sharing a radical vision of Black pride and interracial solidarity. Odom is a mesmerizing triumph and Young a hilarious tour de force, while this is Leon (“Fences,” “Topdog/Underdog”) at his very best. (Read our interview with the cast and director.)Jeffrey Wright in ‘American Fiction’Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in “American Fiction.” Ellison is torn between staying true to his highbrow literary vision and caricaturing Black life to make money and take care of his mother. via TIFFJeffrey Wright is a consummate screen stealer — this year alone, I wanted more speeches from his General Gibson in “Asteroid City” and more shade from his Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in “Rustin.” But not since “Basquiat” in 1996 have I seen Wright as a lead in a feature-length film, and his performance in Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” reminds us what an actual loss this is for those of us who love watching movies. He wholly embodies Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a novelist who, in the process of mourning the death of his father and sister, is torn between staying true to his highbrow literary vision and caricaturing Black life to make money and take care of his mother. Wright gives a nuanced, captivating performance, punctuated with humor, anger, desire and vulnerability, while his character conveys the frustrations of Black artists who refuse to conform to the white gaze.‘The Last of Us’There are so many painful separations and sentimental reunions on “The Last of Us,” the dystopian HBO series based on the video game of the same name, that it is hard for me to pick the most affecting one. I am choosing the story in which Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a 14-year-old orphan who is immune to the brain infection that has decimated most of the world, reconnects with her former roommate Riley (Storm Reid), who left to join the resistance. When Riley takes Ellie on an overnight trip to an abandoned mall, we see how liberating their adolescent female desire for each other is, making this night of last memories even more apocalyptic. (Read our review of “The Last of Us.”)Jodie Comer in ‘Prima Facie’When Jodie Comer, best known as an assassin on “Killing Eve,” decided to do her first major stage role, she went big with “Prima Facie.” Alone on a Broadway stage for 100 minutes, Comer commands our attention as Tessa Ensler, a barrister who has moved up in the British class system only to be pulled back down as a victim of a sexual assault. Tessa finds herself in a paradox: In the past, she has defended male clients from assault accusations. Comer moves through the emotions of grief, shame, self-doubt, rage and hope with such intensity that it still seems impossible to me that this was her professional stage debut. (Read our review of “Prima Facie.”)‘Reservation Dogs’Graham Greene as Maximus, left, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Bear in “Reservation Dogs,” a show that redefined American television.Shane Brown/FXDespite its notable lack of Emmy nods, “Reservation Dogs,” the first television show where every writer, director and main character was Indigenous, redefined American television over three seasons. While it is primarily a coming-of-age story, this final season’s episodes veered thrillingly into family drama, horror, science fiction and comedy. I am sad to say goodbye to these characters, but I am grateful for its brilliant ensemble and its affirmation of community, and how a people who lived and grieved together can, through ritual and remembrance, find their way back to each other and teach themselves, and those watching them, how to heal. (Read our interview with the “Reservation Dogs” showrunner.)Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour“Uncle Jonny made my dress,” Beyoncé rhymes on “Heated,” a single from her 2022 album “Renaissance.” “That cheap spandex, she looks a mess.” That playful line reminds us that she dedicated this album to her maternal uncle Jonny, a Black gay man who helped raise her and died of H.I.V./AIDS-related causes. (She released her concert film on Friday, which was World AIDS Day.) The lyric also declares the political aesthetics of “Renaissance” and the house music and Black queer ballroom cultures that inspired its sound and her style on this year’s behemoth world tour. She encouraged us to wear our most fabulous silver fashions and become human disco balls that mirrored “each other’s joy.” And so we came, witnessed and participated in what was more like a Black church revival than just a stadium concert, in which we left feeling as beautiful in our skin (and our clothing) as she appeared to us onstage. (Read our review of Beyoncé’s tour.) More

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      Review: A Shady Documentary Becomes a Weapon of War in ‘Spain’

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      Jen Silverman’s noir play considers the role of artists in the making of propaganda.“Financing is complicated when it comes to the arts,” says a low-budget filmmaker in Jen Silverman’s “Spain.” That’s hardly news, but the clever if murky play, which had its world premiere on Thursday at Second Stage Theater, offers a solution: Let the Soviets foot the bill.In Silverman’s telling, the filmmaker, Joris Ivens, a Dutchman working in the United States, is already an undercover infiltrator for Soviet interests when the Spanish Civil War breaks out in 1936. Over bloody steak in a dim restaurant, his handler “offers” him the chance to make a big-budget pro-Republican documentary whose theme would be “The Noble Peasant Crushed by the Rich Fascist.” The goal: to end American neutrality, overthrow Franco and change the world. The part about communizing the emergent republic by any means necessary is left unsaid.Ivens was a real filmmaker, and his movie “The Spanish Earth,” released in 1937, was a real cause célèbre among leftists and artists. The frenemies Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos did write the screenplay, as Silverman relates. The financial role of Soviet intelligence is debatable, but then so is the intelligence of those who failed to perceive the threat of Stalinist terror in what was obviously propaganda.Despite the actual names, “Spain” behaves like a work of fiction. Much honored as an artist in his lifetime, Ivens (Andrew Burnap) could not have been as dim, especially about film, as Silverman makes him. (He imagines shooting part of the documentary from an ant’s point-of-view, or a raindrop’s.) Nor, for all his faults, was Hemingway (Danny Wolohan) so complete a buffoon, given to shouting such hollow nonsense. (“We are all Spain! But how?”) And though turning Dos Passos (Erik Lochtefeld) into a whiny milquetoast is a questionable liberty, it’s less problematic than the way he’s set up as the play’s firm moral center. His later support for right-wing causes suggests that his own moral center was movable.To correct for such blurriness, Silverman throws a largely invented (yet somehow truer) character into the mix. Helen (Marin Ireland) is another infiltrator, given the assignment of assisting Ivens under cover of being his girlfriend. In Ireland’s typically incisive performance, here colored with a touch of period archness, she is fascinating to watch even when seemingly stuck with Burnap in a Möbius strip of suspicion and self-doubt. The scenes in which they wrangle over their goals as artists and as citizens — wondering whether making the movie might be morally acceptable despite the compromises and risks involved — are the best in the play.“Can a false story be so good,” Helen asks, “that it does something true?”Danny Wolohan, left, as Hemingway and Andrew Burnap as the Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens in the play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRegarding “Spain,” a synthetic yarn with too many twists to follow in 90 minutes, the answer to that same question is no. I soon stopped trying to make sense of it, realizing that the story didn’t matter; ultimately Silverman is less concerned with Russian influence in the Spanish Civil War than with the permanent problem of art in the world. A final underwhelming gesture takes us even further from the facts to consider whether Soviet-style propaganda really died with the Soviet Union or merely moved elsewhere, co-opting more artists in the process.Dramatizing that airy premise by marrying it to a familiar entertainment template does neither spouse any favors. Silverman’s dialogue has the clipped rhythm of screwball comedy but not the wit — strange, because several earlier works, including “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties,” “The Roommate” and “The Moors,” are so pointedly funny. Here, despite the quite palpable efforts of the actors, even the best lines seem unable to escape the dark gravity of Tyne Rafaeli’s staging.To be fair, that staging is faithful to Silverman’s instructions in the script, which emphasize the conventions of noir thrillers. Certainly, the clichés of the genre are reproduced too numerously and obviously not to be purposeful: Brutalist black boxes with sliding panels; shadowy figures in evening dress; slanting shards of chiaroscuro; reverberant amplification and portentous music cues. (Sets by Dane Laffrey, costumes by Alejo Vietti, lighting by Jen Schriever, sound and original music by Daniel Kluger.)The overall effect is heavy, and less clarifying than perplexing. When we finally see a bit of Ivens’s film — not projected on a screen but enacted live onstage — it is for some reason an opera, featuring an aria (“We Pray for Rain”) sung by the big-voiced bass Zachary James, who otherwise plays a Soviet agent.It may be that we are not meant to parse the scene’s meaning, or anything else in this overloaded effort. “Spain” is, after all, a play about propaganda, which is most effective when swallowed whole, if only that were possible.SpainThrough Dec. 17 at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More