Ain’t No Mo’ (Play)

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    As Broadway Rebounds, ‘Some Like It Hot’ Gets 13 Tony Nominations

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    As Broadway’s rebound from the pandemic shutdown picks up pace, Tony nominators showered much-sought attention on a wide variety of shows, from razzle-dazzle spectacles to quirky adventurous fare.“Some Like It Hot,” a musical based on the classic Billy Wilder film about two musicians who witness a gangland slaying and dress as women to escape the mob, scored the most nominations: 13. But it faces stiff competition in the race for best new musical — ticket buyers have not made any of the contenders a slam-dunk hit, and there does not appear to be a consensus among the industry insiders who make up the Tony voting pool.Three other musicals picked up nine nominations apiece: “& Juliet,” which combines pop songs with an alternative narrative arc for Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers; “New York, New York,” a dance-driven show about a pair of young musicians seeking success and love in a postwar city; and “Shucked,” a pun-laden country comedy about a rural community facing a corn crisis. “Kimberly Akimbo,” a critical favorite about a high school student with a life-altering genetic condition and a criminally dysfunctional family, picked up eight nominations.The Tony nominations also feature plenty of boldfaced names. Among the stars from the worlds of pop music, film and television who earned nods are Sara Bareilles, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer, Josh Groban, Sean Hayes, Samuel L. Jackson, Wendell Pierce and Ben Platt. Another went to one of Broadway’s most-admired stars: Audra McDonald, who, with nine previous nominations and six wins, has won the most competitive Tony Awards of any performer in history.The musical “Shucked,” the rare Broadway show about corn, got nine nominations. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis year’s Tony Awards come at the end of the first full-length season since the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close for about a year and a half. Given that tourism remains below prepandemic levels, many workers have not returned to Midtown offices, and inflation has made producing far more expensive, the season has been surprisingly robust, with a wide range of offerings.“Entertainment is like food — sometimes you’re in the mood for an organic small plate, and sometimes for a burger and fries, and the best thing about New York is we’ve got the variety,” said Victoria Clark, the Tony-nominated star of “Kimberly Akimbo.”Broadway shows this season had grossed $1.48 billion as of April 30, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. That’s nearly double the grosses at the same point last season — $751 million — but lower than the $1.72 billion at the same point in 2019, during the last full prepandemic season.Other key metrics are better, too: 11.5 million seats have been filled on Broadway this season, compared with 6 million at the same point last season, but still down from the 13.8 million that had been filled by this point in 2019.The Tony nominations, which were chosen by a panel of 40 theater industry experts who saw all 38 eligible shows and have no financial interest in any of them, are particularly important to shows that are still running, which try to use the vote of confidence to woo potential ticket buyers.“It’s all about what’s going to make a show run longer and create more jobs for more people,” said Casey Nicholaw, the director and choreographer of “Some Like It Hot.” “Hopefully we’ll sell more tickets, and the show will be more of a success.”The Tony nominations can also boost the employment prospects, and the compensation, of artists. And, of course, they are a tribute to excellence. “It means something when your peers and your colleagues see beauty in something you make,” said James Ijames, whose play “Fat Ham” was among the nominated productions.“Between Riverside and Crazy” was among the nominees for best new play. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a complicated place, dominated by commercial producers but also with six theaters run by nonprofits, and the work this season, as is often the case, featured everything from experimental plays tackling challenging subjects to more mainstream fare that aims primarily to entertain.Among the five nominees for best new play, three have already won the Pulitzer Prize in drama, including “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s story of a retired police officer trying to hang onto his apartment; “Cost of Living,” Martyna Majok’s exploration of caregiving and disability; and “Fat Ham,” Ijames’s riff on “Hamlet,” set in the North Carolina backyard of a family that runs a barbecue restaurant.The two other Tony-nominated plays are each significant in their own ways: “Leopoldstadt” is Tom Stoppard’s autobiographically inspired drama about a European Jewish family before, during and after World War II, while “Ain’t No Mo’” is Jordan E. Cooper’s outlandish comedy imagining that the United States offers its Black residents one-way tickets to Africa.The nominations for “Ain’t No Mo’” were especially striking given that the show struggled to find an audience and closed early. “I’m just so elated, I can barely find the words,” said Cooper, who was nominated both as writer and actor. “There was a lot of turbulence, but we landed the plane.”Stoppard is already the winningest playwright in Broadway history, having won Tony Awards for four previous plays (“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia”). He is now 85 years old, and “Leopoldstadt” is his 19th production on Broadway. Stoppard said he was proud of the nomination, but sorry the play had come to seem so timely at a moment of rising concern about antisemitism.“Nobody wants society to be divided,” he said in an interview, “and I like to think ‘Leopoldstadt’ works against a sense of human beings dividing up and confronting each other.”Jordan E. Cooper in his comedy “Ain’t No Mo’,” which was nominated for best play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOf the 38 Tony-eligible plays and musicals this season, 27 scored at least one nomination, leaving 11 with no nods. Among the musicals snubbed by the nominators were “Bad Cinderella,” the critically drubbed new musical from one of the most successful musical theater composers of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as a progressive rethink of “1776,” about the debate over the Declaration of Independence, which was revived with a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers.One of the musicals that did not score any nominations, a revival of “Dancin’,” quickly declared plans to close: A little more than nine hours after the Tony nominations were announced, the revue’s producers said its last performance would be May 14. Among the seven plays shut out was “The Thanksgiving Play,” which is thought to be the first work on Broadway by a female Native American playwright, Larissa FastHorse.The season featured shows examining a wide variety of diverse stories, and the nominations reflect that.At a time when gender identity issues have become increasingly politicized in the nation, nominations were earned by two gender nonconforming actors: J. Harrison Ghee, a star of “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell, a supporting actor in “Shucked.”Helen Park, who is the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the musical “KPOP.” “The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories,” she said, “the richer the Broadway soundscape and Broadway landscape will be.”Five plays by Black writers were nominated in either the best play or best play revival category, and four of the five nominees for leading actor in a play are Black.“I broke down in tears,” Pierce said about learning that he was among those nominees, for playing Willy Loman in a revival of “Death of a Salesman” in which the traditionally white Loman family is now African American. “I did not know how profoundly moving it would be. It was the culmination of years of hard work and a reflection on how much effort and toil went into the challenge of playing the role.”This was a strong season for musical revivals, and the nominated shows include two with scores by Stephen Sondheim — “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd” — as well as the Golden Age classic “Camelot” and “Parade,” which is a show about the early 20th-century lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia.“Into the Woods” was one of two Stephen Sondheim revivals to earn nominations.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re so happy audiences are taking to it, and we hope that Sondheim would be happy this morning as well,” said Groban, starring as the title character in “Sweeney Todd.”The nominated play revivals are also a compelling bunch: a hypnotically minimalist version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” adapted by Amy Herzog and starring Chastain as a Norwegian debtor trapped in a sexist marriage; a bracing production of Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog,” about two brothers ominously named Lincoln and Booth; a rare staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” featuring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan; and a ghostly performance of “The Piano Lesson,” August Wilson’s classic drama about a family wrestling with the meaning, and monetary value, of an heirloom.The 769 Tony voters now have until early June to catch up on shows they have not yet seen before they cast their electronic ballots. The awards ceremony itself will be held on June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in a ceremony hosted by Ariana DeBose.Julia Jacobs More

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      ‘Ain’t No Mo’’ to Close on Broadway

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      The play, a biting comedy by Jordan E. Cooper, will have its final performance on Dec. 18, just over two weeks after opening.“Ain’t No Mo’,” a raucously funny and provocative new Broadway play imagining that the United States tries to end racism by offering to send Black Americans to Africa, will close on Dec. 18, a little more than two weeks after opening.The play is the third show this fall to abruptly truncate its planned run based on poor ticket sales, following the musical “KPOP” and Gabriel Byrne’s one-man show, “Walking With Ghosts.”“Ain’t No Mo’,” written by and starring Jordan E. Cooper, had a well-received Off Broadway run at the Public Theater in 2019. The Broadway run at the Belasco Theater opened Dec. 1 to positive reviews, but sold poorly from the get-go.Just before the show began on Friday night, Cooper wrote in an Instagram post that the show is being forced to depart and urged fans to buy tickets to keep the show going. “Now they’ve posted an eviction notice,” he wrote. “But thank God Black people are immune to eviction notices.”In a speech at the curtain call, Cooper was rueful. “It’s a hard time for shows of color on Broadway right now,” he said, adding, “If we learned anything over that pandemic, it’s that the world has to change, whether we want it or not, and it’s Broadway’s turn to do the same.”Last week — the week that ended Dec. 4 — the show grossed a paltry $120,901, which is well below its weekly running costs, and had an average ticket price of $21.36, which was the lowest on Broadway. (The average ticket price for all shows that week was $128.34.)The show, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, was the first Broadway producing venture by Lee Daniels, the Hollywood screenwriter, director and producer, and the producing team ultimately included Black Entertainment Television, the drag queen RuPaul Charles, the playwright Jeremy O. Harris, the actors Lena Waithe and Gabrielle Union, the football player CJ Uzomah, the former basketball player Dwyane Wade and others. The show was capitalized for up to $5.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped.At the time of its closing it will have played 22 preview performances and 21 regular performances. More

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      ‘Ain’t No Mo’’ Review: After Great Tribulation, an Exodus of Black Citizens

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      In Jordan E. Cooper’s biting satire, Black Americans descended from slaves are offered one-way airfare to Africa.Jordan E. Cooper’s new Broadway play starts with the kind of roof-raising scene most writers would have stashed away for a big bang of a finale. Pastor Freeman (Marchánt Davis) is standing by a coffin, about to give the eulogy for Brother Righttocomplain, a stalwart member of the African American community who embodied protest and grievances. Righttocomplain’s purpose has just ended, though, hence the funeral: It is Nov. 4, 2008, and Barack Obama has been elected president, ushering in a promising new era for Black Americans.“Ain’t no mo’ shot down dreams with its blood soaking the concrete outside room 306,” Pastor Freeman declares. “Ain’t no mo’ riots.” The list goes on as he revs up, whipping his congregation and the audience into a frenzy. By the time he asks, “Can I get a Chaka Khan?” it’s impossible not to answer back. Were the show a traditional musical, the scene would have been the 11 o’clock number.Instead it is the first exclamation point in an evening of many.Starting on such an expansive note is a bold move for Cooper, a 27-year-old writer making his Broadway debut, but “Ain’t No Mo’,” which opened on Thursday at the Belasco Theater, bursts with confidence. It is confident in its voice, in its beliefs, in its artistry, in its wicked humor and angry pain — or pain-laden anger. It is also confident that Stevie Walker-Webb’s production and the cast, both of which are largely unchanged from the play’s premiere at the Public Theater, in 2019, can handle it all.As the funeral concludes, we are abruptly transported to an airport, where a gate agent named Peaches (Cooper in high drag, a feather stuck in a hat jauntily pointing up) is on a Bluetooth call, trying to get stragglers to hurry up to Gate 1619: Just as that number refers to the arrival year of the first enslaved Africans in America, the U.S. government is now offering a one-way flight to Africa to those slaves’ descendants — and it’s about to depart.Peaches, with whom we check back at regular intervals, acts as a link between the vignettes that make up “Ain’t No Mo’,” a structure borrowed from George C. Wolfe’s epochal 1986 satire “The Colored Museum.” (Cooper is also the showrunner of the BET+ sitcom “The Ms. Pat Show,” which he created with Patricia Williams; coincidently, a flight attendant in “The Colored Museum” is called Miss Pat.)From left: Fedna Jacquet, Ebony Marshall-Oliver, Marchánt Davis, Crystal Lucas-Perry and Shannon Matesky in a scene titled “Real Baby Mamas of the South Side.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhile the segments are self-contained, that flight looms over them all, a statement of simultaneous hope and despair. Cooper deftly shuffles moods and emotions throughout the brisk one-act show, often within the same scene. He is playing with the idea of discomfort, and tries to not let the audience become too settled in either laughter or pathos, but the balance is not always as precise as it needs to be. “Ain’t No Mo’” has an immediate impact, but its biting commentary on race doesn’t leave a bruise: Though I loved it at the Public, I haven’t found myself thinking about it since, whereas I frequently flash back to, for example, “An Octoroon,” another sharp comedy about race.The most unabashedly parodic of the sections is “Real Baby Mamas of the South Side,” which takes place during the taping of a reality-TV show and features a quartet of guests hosted by the unctuous Tony (Davis, who handles all of the male-presenting characters). The most provocative panelist is the “transracial” Rachonda (played by the new cast member Shannon Matesky), whose real name is Rachel and who is actually white; she, too, is in drag, in this case Black drag, to establish the identity she craves.All of the women in this scene are pretending — watch them toggle out of exaggerated Black vernacular when the cameras aren’t rolling — but Rachel/Rachonda is usurping. Finally Tracy (Ebony Marshall-Oliver, last seen on Broadway giving a comedy master class in last season’s “Chicken & Biscuits”) just can’t take the posturing anymore and says that Blackness is not something you can just decide to put on, while Rachonda replies that she’s living her truth.The argument eventually ends with fisticuffs because Cooper doesn’t seem sure how to exit out of the premise any other way. This happens with a couple of other scenes — including the key final one — which start off strong and peter out.The dramatic counterweight to “Baby Mamas” is “Circle of Life,” which takes place in a waiting room — Scott Pask’s versatile set quickly adapts to a variety of locations. Trisha (Fedna Jacquet) is waiting for her number to be called for an abortion, though it may take a while because the electronic counter is currently at 73,543, which sounds bad enough until you learn it’s out of millions. Trisha is at a community center rather than a clinic, and one of the tweaks made to the script for the Broadway production explains that it’s because women can’t get abortions anymore. (Other updates include a mention in a news montage of the racist attack in a Buffalo supermarket, and Vice President Kamala Harris now being the co-pilot on the flight to Africa: “Be nice y’all, she has already made a promise that if you got weed on board, she will look the other way,” Peaches says, “so keep it cute.”)While Trisha is set on terminating her pregnancy, the father, Damien, is begging her to change her mind. It’s not long before we realize why he is so adamant, a wrenching revelation that Cooper can’t quite steer to port.Lucas-Perry, center, shines in a segment called “Green,” our critic writes. She plays Black, who has spent 40 years locked in the basement of the home of a wealthy family. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe scene is a formidable opportunity for the actors, led by Cooper himself, and the play as a whole is a terrific showcase for them. They make a strong case for a Tony rewarding ensembles as they switch roles with striking ease — with help from Emilio Sosa’s costumes and Mia M. Neal’s wigs — and take charge when the script comes up a little short.Crystal Lucas-Perry, for instance, shines in two segments with tricky tonal shifts. In “Green,” she plays Black, who has spent 40 years locked in the basement of the home of a wealthy family who snicker at the Africa exodus. (“We’ve worked way too hard to end up sitting on a flight with the same destination as a Latoya.”) Black is the embodiment of something they have worked hard to purge, the portrait of Dorian Gray kept hidden away. And now it’s out, and it’s very angry — you might wonder what Jordan Peele would have made of this.Lucas-Perry also nails the evening’s single most poignant moment as an inmate being released, and realizing that some items are missing from her belongings. In a few seconds, we understand the cost of incarceration, the realization of what was lost. The protective armor of wisecracks has been pulled, and only the ache remains.Ain’t No Mo’Through Feb. 26 at the Belasco Theater, Manhattan; aintnomobway.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      ‘Ain’t No Mo’’ to Take Flight on Broadway

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      The play, by Jordan E. Cooper, is a biting comedy set in an America that offers to relocate Black citizens to Africa.“Ain’t No Mo’,” an uproarious and piercing comedy that imagines a moment in which the United States offers to relocate Black people to Africa, will be staged on Broadway this fall.Lee Daniels, the Hollywood director, producer and screenwriter, is shepherding the production as a lead producer; this will be Daniels’s first Broadway venture.The play, written by and starring Jordan E. Cooper, was previously staged Off Broadway at the Public Theater in 2019, where Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, called it “thrilling, bewildering, campy, shrewd, mortifying, scary, devastating and deep.”The new production is scheduled to begin previews Nov. 3 and to open Dec. 1 at the Belasco Theater. The Broadway production, like the Off Broadway one, will be directed by Stevie Walker-Webb; several members of the design team are new to the show.The play is structured as a series of comedic vignettes held together by scenes at an airport, where a lone flight attendant, played by Cooper, is helping passengers board a so-called “reparations flight” at Gate 1619 (the year enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia). The vignettes explore race in America; Green described it as “nothing less than a spiritual portrait of Black American life right now, with all its terrors, hopes and contradictions.”Daniels, whose projects have included the TV series “Empire” and the film “Precious,” said he went to see the show at the Public while scouting for writers, and was blown away. “I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing or what I was seeing — it was the boldest thing that I’d ever seen onstage, and it worked,” he said. “It examines the value of Black lives in our culture in a way that we have yet to see, ever.”Daniels, describing Cooper, who is now 27, as “Norman Lear meets James Baldwin,” worked with the playwright on the BET sitcom “The Ms. Pat Show” (Cooper was credited as showrunner, creator and executive producer). Daniels said he was determined to bring “Ain’t No Mo’” to Broadway, in part because when he was starting out he didn’t think it was possible for a Black writer to get to Broadway, and in part because “white people have been anointing certain plays, and this is not that.”Daniels is lead producing the play with Brian Moreland (“Thoughts of a Colored Man”), who said, “Jordan E. Cooper has found a way to unlock a very difficult conversation with laughter and joy. The season that’s coming is a heavy season, and it’s going to be fun to have a comedy on Broadway.” More