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    What to See on London Stages This Summer

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    British theater recommendations for visitors and residents of all ages — and inclinations.London’s theaters offer something for everyone. Whether in big West End venues or on stages tucked away above a pub, the city’s shows include the classics, new plays and some productions that defy classification. Open air playhouses attract audiences willing to brave the unpredictable summer weather, and venues spread throughout the city make for an accessible theater landscape that extends far beyond the heavily trafficked tourist hot spots.Whether you’re looking for frothy musicals or fiercely charged political writing, chances are your wishes can be answered somewhere around town. Below, in seven categories, are some of the shows vying for the attention of visitors and residents seeking out London theater this summer.Give Me Serious DramaDenise Gough as Emma and Malachi Kirby as Mark in “People, Places & Things.”Marc BrennerAlma MaterFew London playhouses generate as much buzz as the Almeida, and expectations are high for its run of this new play from the Australian playwright Kendall Feaver, whose theatrical debut, “The Almighty Sometimes,” impressed British critics when it played in Manchester, England, in 2018. Feaver’s latest is set on a university campus rocked by sexual assault allegations, and Polly Findlay directs a cast led by Phoebe Campbell and Justine Mitchell. Through July 20 at the Almeida Theater.The Boys from the BlackstuffThe regional accents may prove a challenge — especially if English isn’t your first language — but there’s no denying the passion and power that course through James Graham’s stage adaptation of this era-defining 1982 British TV show. Through a community of Liverpool road builders’ struggles, Kate Wasserberg’s empathic production reminds us that employment is crucial to self-esteem. Through Aug. 3 at the Garrick Theater. More

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      The Belarus Free Theater Is Also a Support Network for Exiles

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      The leaders of the Belarus Free Theater, who fled the country more than a decade ago, are helping more recent refugees to rebuild their lives while putting on a new show.When the two founders of the renowned Belarus Free Theater claimed political asylum in Britain in 2011, they found themselves homeless, with few possessions and facing a bureaucratic labyrinth before they could work.It was only with help from British theater makers that the pair found places to stay and were able to restart their company from exile, using Skype to conduct rehearsals with actors in Minsk, Belarus’s capital.Twelve years later, the company’s founders, Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, are using that experience to help other artists fleeing political repression.Belarus — an East European country of about nine million people that borders both Russia and Ukraine — has been ruled since 1994 by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a dictator and ally to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The Belarus Free Theater’s political productions have often criticized Lukashenko’s authoritarian leadership and its troupe was long at risk of arrest. But as repression increased, the company decided it was no longer feasible for its other members to remain in Minsk. In 2021, they also fled to avoid long jail terms. Since then, Kaliada said, she and Khalezin had been helping the actors to find housing, therapy and visas.The company was also running acting classes for other Belarusian and Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw, Kaliada said, that had led to full-scale shows, and was providing help to some Ukrainians singers, too, who could no longer perform full time in their homeland because of the war.“The only thing we wanted was for people to not go through our experiences,” Kaliada said.Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada run the Belarus Free Theater. After their country’s 2020 election, they moved their entire troupe out of the country. Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn Warsaw this summer, Kaliada and Khalezin started rehearsals for their latest project, “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” a piece of experimental theater including opera singers and video projections that will premiere at the Barbican Center, in London, on Thursday, running through Sep. 16.In interviews with eight actors, musicians and production staff at those rehearsals, four said they were struggling to adjust to life in Warsaw. The composer Olga Podgaiskaya said it was only with a therapist’s help that she’d come to accept that she wouldn’t be returning to Minsk anytime soon. In Belarus, she said, she had been a fixture on the classical music scene: “Here, I’m a nobody. I need to prove from scratch who I am.”Raman Shytsko, an actor, said he still felt like a guest in Poland — and sometimes an unwelcome one. Once in the city of Wroclaw, he said, he was sworn at in the street for speaking Russian. “A lot of people here hate Belarusians now,” he added, because of the regime’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The conductor Vitali Alekseenok and the composer Olga Podgaiskaya rehearsing with musicians from the Five-Storey Ensemble, in preparation for “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt.”Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesMany of the exiled artists said that simply working on “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” had given them a much-needed sense of purpose.In the rehearsals, which took place at Warsaw’s main opera house, the cast helped each other learn lines and dance moves, and larked about between scenes. Yuliya Shauchuk, an actor, said that the studio was the one place where she always felt joyful.This show’s plot, which is drawn from a popular Belarusian novel and involves a group of ghostly huntsmen who terrorize a rural community, also felt analogous to what was happening now in Belarus, Shauchuk said, where every day the police track down and arrest people who have protested the president’s rule.Several Ukrainian opera singers involved in the production said the rehearsals were benefiting them, too. Mykola Hubchuk had driven overnight from Kolomyya, Ukraine, to take part. “This project is very important for me,” he said. “I need emotion and singing in my life.”Sveta Sugako, the Belarus Free Theater’s production manager, said that the company had renewed its sense of purpose in exile. Its members used to mainly “shout about Belarus,” she said. Now, the company was trying to raise awareness about the war in Ukraine, too, and about the political situation in Russia. It had become, she said, “about the whole region.”The troupe’s journey to exile began in 2020 with an election. That year, Belarus looked set for change, after Lukashenko’s landslide victory was widely dismissed as fraudulent. Members of the company took part in the subsequent mass street protests, hoping Lukashenko would be forced to step aside.Instead, he violently cracked down on opposition and in October 2021, Kaliada and Khalezin pulled the remaining members out. They first headed to Ukraine, with some members wading through swamps to cross the border, before some continued to Poland, and others to Britain.Ever since, Kaliada said, the situation in Belarus had gotten worse. Last year, Putin used the country as a staging ground for his invasion of Ukraine, then said he would move Russian nuclear weapons across the border into Belarus.Helping the troupe members who reached London had proved easier than those in Warsaw, Kaliada said, because of the company’s established connections in London’s theater world. Cate Blanchett and Juliet Stevenson had both provided accommodation for some members in London, Kaliada said.Shauchuk, left, and Kaliada outside the Polish National Opera. The entire company is now in exile, split between Warsaw and London.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn Poland, the company had few relationships with similarly generous individuals, Kaliada said, but it had secured cheap rates for some actors at a hotel on the outskirts of Warsaw. The Polish government also helped, letting the troupe rehearse for free at the state-run opera house.The company has been trying to deepen its ties in Warsaw. Whenever it stages a show in the city, including recent productions featuring refugee teenagers, it invites local dignitaries, and adds Polish subtitles.With the company approaching the end of its second year in exile, Kaliada said its members would soon have to do more to support themselves. Around 100 people were working on “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” she said, and the Belarus Free Thater didn’t have the resources to support them all.Many of the actors in Warsaw said they were already making efforts to find their own work. One said he’d taken on dubbing. Another said they were teaching and another was working as a coder.Shauchuk said she knew she needed “to build a life” in Warsaw and was looking to improve her Polish. But, she said, she would not give up hope of returning home. “Even if I build up a family outside Belarus,” she said, “I want the right to go back.”The company will perform “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” a piece of experimental theater including opera and video projections, at the Barbican Center in London.Anna Liminowicz for The New York Times More

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      ‘Prima Facie’ and ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ Win Big at the Olivier Awards

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      The Jodie Comer-starring legal drama won best new play at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys and an adaptation of ‘Totoro’ won six gongs — the most of any production.“Prima Facie,” a Broadway-bound play about a lawyer who represents men accused of assault, then is herself sexually assaulted, was the big winner on Sunday at the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The one-woman show, starring Jodie Comer and written by Suzie Miller, was named best new play during a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Comer was also named best actress for her performance at the West End’s Harold Pinter Theater.The awards come just days before “Prima Facie,” and Comer, transfer to New York. The show is scheduled to begin previews at the Golden Theater on Apr. 11.Its success at the Olivier Awards was perhaps unsurprising given that “Prima Facie” was a critical and commercial hit in London during its run last year. Matt Wolf, reviewing the play for The New York Times, said that Comer took a big risk making her West End debut in an “emotionally fraught solo play.” But, he added, “there’s no denying the visceral power of an evening that owes its sellout status to a theatrical neophyte who possesses the know-how of a seasoned pro.”“Prima Facie” beat stiff competition to the best new play title, including Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of “To Kill A Mockingbird” at the Gielgud Theater; “Patriots” at the Almeida — a timely look at President Vladimir V. Putin’s rise in Russia; and “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy” at the Royal Court, a tale of six young Black men in group therapy.Comer accepted her award, thanking “the sisterhood” who worked on the show, then giving a message to viewers online. “To any kids who haven’t been to drama school, who can’t afford to go to drama school, who’ve been rejected from drama school — don’t let anybody tell you that it is impossible,” she said.Although it won one of the night’s most coveted awards, “Prima Facie” was not the only big winner. “My Neighbour Totoro,” an adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animated film, at the Barbican Theater in London, won six gongs — the most of any production — including best entertainment or comedy play, and the best director award for Phelim McDermott.The show, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, was a crowd-pleaser in London partly thanks to featuring several giant, fantastical puppets — including a furry Catbus that is part motor vehicle, part feline. Dominic Cavendish, reviewing the play in The Daily Telegraph, said those puppets were “worth the price of admission alone.”Other major winners included Paul Mescal, the Irish star, who was named best actor for his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Almeida Theater.Matt Wolf, in a review for The New York Times, wrote that “Mescal brings both swagger and sensitivity to the role, in the process stepping out of the long shadow cast over this part by its stage and screen originator, Marlon Brando.”The best new musical award went to “Standing at the Sky’s Edge,” a show at the National Theater in London about the intertwined lives of the residents of a housing complex. It triumphed over several higher-profile titles including “Tammy Faye,” about the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, featuring music by Elton John. More

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      Review: ‘Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’ in London

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      The British experimental theater company Complicité turns the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s novel “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” into a thought-provoking, entertaining spectacle.Some books lend themselves to stage adaptation more than others, and the experimental theater company Complicité has a strong track record of turning awkward novels into plays. The British troupe, led by the director Simon McBurney, has already created acclaimed productions from Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and Max Porter’s “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers.”Complicité’s latest show is a suitably idiosyncratic treatment of “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” the surreal eco-thriller by the Polish author and Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk. It runs at the Barbican Theater in London through April 1, then tours Britain before playing at some major European venues and festivals, including the Ruhrtriennale in Germany, and the Odéon — Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris.Tokarczuk’s novel revolves around a series of grisly murders in a remote village in southern Poland. The narrator-protagonist, Janina, a semiretired teacher and passionate animal lover in her 60s, takes a keen interest in the case, pestering the local police force with her unsolicited insights and pushing a bizarre theory that, since all the victims were avid hunters or poachers, the murders must have been carried out by animals as an act of revenge. Along the way she holds forth on animal cruelty, astrology and her love of the English poet William Blake.Complicité’s decision to foreground these freewheeling digressions is to be commended: This is not a conventional whodunit but, rather, a kind of fable. The production’s blend of philosophical purpose and irreverent humor rings true to the book’s spirit, and makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking spectacle.The spine of the play is a spotlit monologue by Janina, who dips in and out of the action as it unfolds around her. Amanda Hadingue — standing in for Kathryn Hunter, who has been unwell — brings a disarmingly self-effacing grace to the lead role, ensuring Janina retains the audience’s sympathy, even as she rails abrasively against the industrial slaughter of animals, the hypocrisy of organized religion and the unquestioning passivity of her fellow townspeople.Indeed, the entire production is delivered with a playful esprit that borders on the pantomimic: Self-important cops are played for laughs, as is the supercilious local priest; there are charming cameos from animals played by humans — a dog here, a fox there; and César Sarachu almost steals the show in a wonderfully droll performance as Janina’s endearingly hapless neighbor, Oddball.Interiority is the perennial challenge when adapting literary novels for stage or screen. A slick 2017 movie adaptation of “Drive Your Plow” called “Spoor,” by the Polish director Agnieszka Holland, rendered it as a straight-up nor thriller. It was well wrought but inevitably one-dimensional: Janina’s distinctive narrative voice, which treads a fine line between eccentric and downright cranky, is integral to the novel’s charm; the story feels flat without it. Complicité’s adaptation neatly sidesteps this problem by juxtaposing the inner and outer worlds in a way that feels lively and dynamic.From left: Maria, Uzoka, Sophie Steer, Kathryn Hunter, Amanda Hadingue and Tim McMullan. The company’s director is known for his exuberant use of audiovisual effects.Marc BrennerMcBurney, the director, is known for his exuberant use of audiovisual effects, and his team have conjured an impressive sensory texture here. A big screen at the rear of the stage displays eye-catching images that complement the action. Some are scene-setting, such as snowy landscapes evoking the bitterly cold Polish winter; others, such as a series of detailed drawings of horoscope charts, are thematic.Richard Skelton’s atmospheric score alternates between brooding suspense and doleful solemnity, though the sound designer Christopher Shutt is maybe a little too trigger-happy with the sudden loud noises: I feared for some of the older theatregoers, but it certainly kept the audience alert.Rae Smith’s costume design is understatedly on point: Janina pads around in a jarringly mismatched sports-casual ensemble that is precisely the kind of thing an unabashed eccentric might wear, and the local huntsmen look appropriately forbidding in their uniformly dark puffer jackets.Clocking in at 2 hours and 45 minutes, “Drive Your Plow” is a bit too long. A subplot about Janina’s unspecified chronic illness (“my ailments”) could perhaps have been significantly abridged, or even cut, to give the play a zippier feel. But its shortcomings are essentially those of the novel: its single-track didacticism; its neat pitting of romantic idealists against macho, insentient normies; and the fact that a decisive plot twist can be spotted a mile off.Complicité is no stranger to politics: “The Encounter,” adapted in 2016 from a novel by the Romanian-American author Petru Popescu, addressed environmental destruction in the Amazon; the company’s 2015 children’s play “Lionboy” touched on the ethically dubious machinations of Big Pharma. Crucially, the company’s dissident ethos extends to form as well as subject matter. “Drive Your Plow’s” parable of hubris offers considerable food for thought as we continue to hurtle toward climate disaster: Janina is a Cassandra figure for the 21st century, a voice of reason doomed to be met with indifference, condescension or ridicule. The political message is deadly earnest. Thankfully, Complicité serves it up with a dose of fun.Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the DeadThrough April 1 at the Barbican Theater in London, then touring in Europe through June 17; complicite.org. More

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      ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ Dominates Olivier Award Nominations

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      Studio Ghibli’s fantastical movie was an unexpected choice for a stage adaptation. Now, it is up for 9 awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.A stage adaptation of “My Neighbour Totoro,” an animated Japanese children’s movie filled with fantastical creatures, emerged on Tuesday as the front-runner for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The show, which ran at the Barbican Theater in London and included numerous giant puppets, secured nine nominations for the awards — more than any other play. Those included nods for best comedy, best director for Phelim McDermott and best actress for Mei Mac as a girl who discovers a magical world near her home.The play’s high number of nominations was perhaps unsurprising given that “My Neighbour Totoro” received rave reviews when it opened last year.Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said the play’s puppets were “the most endearing sight on the London stage” at the time. Sarah Hemming in The Financial Times said the Royal Shakespeare Company production was “a tender, remarkably beautiful family show that extols kindness.”Although “My Neighbour” secured the most nominations, it did not get a nod for best new play. Instead, four more grown-up dramas will compete for that title. Those include “Prima Facie” at the Harold Pinter Theater, a Broadway-bound one-woman show about sexual assault that stars Jodie Comer; “Patriots” at the Almeida Theater, a retelling of President Vladimir V. Putin’s rise in Russia; and Aaron Sorkin’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” adaptation at the Gielgud Theater.Those shows will compete with “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy,” a play at the Royal Court in London about six young Black men who meet for group therapy.Jodie Comer’s performance in “Prima Facie” struck a chord with West End audiences and she was also nominated for best actress. She is up for that title against Mei Mac of “My Neighbour Totoro,” as well as Patsy Ferran for “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Almeida Theater, Janet McTeer for “Phaedra” at the National Theater, and Nicola Walker for “The Corn Is Green,” also at the National.Before Tuesday’s announcement, many British theater critics had expected Emma Corrin to receive a nomination for “Orlando,” a play based on Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid novel, at the Garrick Theater.That would have likely caused a media stir as Corrin, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, has over the past year repeatedly urged award show organizers to make their acting categories gender neutral. Last year, Corrin told the BBC that it was “difficult for me” to be nonbinary and nominated in female acting categories.Emma De Souza, a spokeswoman for the Society of London Theater, the award’s organizers, said that Corrin was considered in the best actress category, but did not make the cut. “It was an incredibly competitive year,” De Souza added.The best actor award is set to be equally hard fought. Among the nominees are the rising Irish star Paul Mescal for “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Rafe Spall for “To Kill a Mockingbird” and David Tennant for “Good.” They will compete against Tom Hollander for his role as an oligarch in “Patriots” and Giles Terera, who starred in “Blues for an Alabama Sky” at the National Theater.In the musical categories, the nominations are led by “Standing at the Sky’s Edge,” also at the National. The show, about the residents of a housing complex in the northern English city of Sheffield, secured eight nominations, including best new musical. It will compete for that title with the “The Band’s Visit” at the Donmar Warehouse and “Sylvia” — a hip-hop musical based on the life of the suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst — at the Old Vic.Those three titles will face stiff competition from “Tammy Faye,” a high-profile production at the Almeida Theater that told the story of the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker using new music by Elton John.The winners of this year’s Olivier Awards will be announced on April 2 in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. More

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      An adaptation of “My Neighbour Totoro” enchants audiences at the Barbican. Across town at the Harold Pinter Theater, a revival of “Good” takes viewers to darker territory.LONDON — Who’d have thought an enormous mound of fur would be the most endearing sight on the London stage? I’m referring to the outsize woodland creature of the title in “My Neighbour Totoro,” who is eliciting gasps of surprise and delight at the Barbican Theater through Jan. 21.Making an entrance well into the first act, this piece of larger-than-life fluff — a puppet controlled from within by people we don’t see — brings an immediate sense of excitement to this adaptation of the beloved 1988 animated film of the same name, a banner work from Studio Ghibli of Japan. Reworked for the stage by Tom Morton-Smith, it has arrived as a Royal Shakespeare Company production; the play’s composer, Joe Hisaishi, gets an executive producer credit.The movie, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, overcame some sniffy early reviews and is now regarded as a classic for the studio, whose subsequent “Spirited Away” won the Oscar for animation in 2003. (A theatrical “Spirited Away” opened earlier this year in Japan.)The challenge with “My Neighbour Totoro” was to amplify a sweet but slender movie running less than 90 minutes whose enchanting visuals could seem a stretch for the stage. In fact, as directed by Phelim McDermott, who divides his career between theater and opera, this tale of two sisters displaced to rural Japan in the 1950s exerts its own distinct magic.You share the characters’ sense of expectation as 10-year-old Satsuki and her 4-year-old sister, Mei, adjust to their new home in the countryside. Their father has moved the family from Tokyo to be nearer to the girls’ mother, who is hospitalized with an unspecified but serious illness.Nino Furuhata in “My Neighbour Totoro.”Manuel HarlanThe siblings’ imaginations soon run riot as they discover any number of creatures — including “soot sprites” resembling dancing particles of dust — that the adults around them can’t see. The show’s visual invention honors the animal kingdom, and the puppeteer Basil Twist and his hardworking team spring one enchantment after another on the audience. (The puppets are the glorious handiwork of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.) The emphasis throughout is on the characters’ surroundings befitting Miyazaki, a lifelong environmentalist: The woods are sites of enchantment and discovery, not places marked out by dread or fear, and Tom Pye’s flexible set shifts locations with ease.Any potential cutesiness is kept at bay. Ami Okumura Jones and Mei Mac, both adults, play the girls with a zestful appetite for experience that never turns cloying, and Dai Tabuchi is infinitely touching as their kindly father.You could argue that the ending feels rushed and unconvincing, as if the creators were overeager to deny the threat of mortality that takes center stage as the health of the girls’ mother (Haruka Abe) worsens. The darkening of the narrative then does an abrupt about-face in time for a pat feel-good finish that is the play’s only misstep. But by that point, the audience has long since given itself over to the giddy parade of puppets, from some sweetly entrancing butterflies that seem to dance in the air to the gleaming Catbus, an automotive creature that, after Totoro, is probably the best-remembered character of the film.The Royal Shakespeare Company hasn’t produced a show of such commercial potential since the musical “Matilda” over a decade ago — coming to Netflix in a film adaptation this holiday season. Like “Matilda,” “My Neighbour Totoro” is family entertainment that adults might like even more than children.The kindness, empathy and generosity of spirit that “My Neighbour Totoro” evokes are infectious. But it’s the capacity for evil that drives a West End revival of “Good,” a 1982 play by C.P. Taylor. (That Scottish playwright died the year before the play’s premiere by, yes, the Royal Shakespeare Company.) The current production, from the director Dominic Cooke, runs at the Harold Pinter Theater through Dec. 24.From left, Elliot Levey, David Tennant and Sharon Small in “Good” at the Harold Pinter Theater.Johan PerssonThe protagonist is a mild-seeming German academic, John Halder (David Tennant), whom we first encounter in Frankfurt, in 1933. Antisemitism is rising in Germany, but Halder seems more preoccupied with domestic issues. Early on, he reassures his close friend Maurice (Elliot Levey), a Jewish psychiatrist, that any worries about the gathering climate of fear can be put to one side: Targeting Jews, he says, “is not practical,” given their importance to Germany’s economy and society, so there’s little cause for alarm. In any case, Halder is too busy navigating an extramarital affair and a mother with dementia to pay much heed to history’s horrific onward march.The author’s cunning across two brisk hours is to chart an apparently decent man’s decline into moral depravity: What begins as casual indifference ends up as active participation. The sight of Halder, in full SS uniform, standing at the ready at Auschwitz is followed by a climactic visual coup de théâtre that comes as a genuine shock.The production is forbiddingly spare and unfolds on a minimal monochrome set, from Vicki Mortimer, that eerily evokes a mausoleum. Tom Gibbons’s invaluable sound design brings out the full horror of Kristallnacht, with shattering windows, heard but not seen, contrasting with the clinking glasses we heard earlier in the show, at a time when civility seemed possible.Cooke, the director, has pared the cast back to three actors, with Levey and the female lead, Sharon Small, deftly playing multiple roles. The decision to conjoin some parts heightens an awareness of Halder’s tenuous purchase on reality, as if his wayward thoughts were tumbling from his mother to his wife to his lover, with Small taking all those parts and a further, altogether different one as well.This “Good” wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as it is without Tennant, a TV name (“Doctor Who”) and stage regular whose likability puts you in Halder’s corner at the start. Speaking in his natural Scottish accent, Tennant initially gives off the air of a genial bookworm with whom you might discuss Goethe over a drink. But by the time he is staring the audience down in full Nazi regalia, you’re reeling from a portrait of psychosis whose shivery power is hard to shake.My Neighbour Totoro. Directed by Phelim McDermott. Barbican Theater, through Jan. 21.Good. Directed by Dominic Cooke. Harold Pinter Theater, through Dec. 24. More

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      With ‘Waiting for the Sibyl,’ Kentridge Looks Into the Future

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      The South African artist developed a piece about how difficult it is to see around the next corner. Ironically, the work anticipated the uncertainties of pandemic life.LONDON — Billions of us have spent the past two or so years trying to divine the future. Will I get Covid-19? How bad will it be? When will the coronavirus pandemic end? Will it ever end? Reliable answers have been scant; even if we’ve been cushioned from the worst effects, many people have been camping in a sort of existential waiting room, living in near-permanent uncertainty.Appropriate timing, then, that the Barbican arts center in London is about to stage a chamber opera, by the South African artist William Kentridge, about how difficult it is to see around the next corner. Titled “Waiting for the Sibyl,” it retells the myth of a Greek prophetess whom mortals once pestered with exactly these sort of exasperating questions.A scene from “Waiting for the Sibyl,” which premiered at the Teatro Dell’Opera di Roma, in Italy, in 2019.Stella OlivierThat prophetess, the Cumaean Sibyl, was said to have spit out her written answers on oak leaves, but there was a catch: If the wind scattered the leaves, she would not help put them in the correct order, leaving her clients none the wiser. The opera is a reminder that humans have been trying to get a jump on what’s coming next for perhaps as long as we’ve existed — and that maybe we’d be better served by living in the present instead.In a recent interview in London, Kentridge said that, ironically, he hadn’t seen the piece’s relevance coming: He had begun work on “Waiting for the Sibyl” more than two years before the pandemic.“Those questions of mortality, fate, who are we in this world, have been the bread and butter of artists for millennia,” he said. “But that’s been brought right to the forefront now.”Commissioned by the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in Italy and debuted there in September 2019, the roughly 40-minute piece consists of short, fragmentary scenes without dialogue. At first, it seems as cryptic as anything produced by a Greek oracle. A cast of nine singers and dancers enact moments from the legend. In one, a performer writhes in stuttering flashes of light in front of a screen displaying messages like, “I have brought NEWS” and “THE MOMENT HAS GONE.” Later, the cast dances while surrounded by scraps of prophecies on leaves of paper.The prophecies themselves are wry: “Resist the THIRD MARTINI,” “DISCARD LAST YEAR’S SOCKS.” But the parallels with our pandemic experience are often eerie. “FRESH GRAVES are everywhere,” reads one. Another is even more plangent: “My turn is when?”Making the opera had been an intricate process, Kentridge explained. The work was compiled from odd phrases he’d seen in books of English, Russian and Hebrew poetry and from a 1916 book of proverbs compiled by the South African writer Solomon Plaatje, which he made into a libretto of sorts.“A libretto is a straitjacket: You put it on willingly, but nonetheless it is a restriction,” Kentridge said. This opera “is a totally different experience.”Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThese scraps of text were then workshopped with the singers alongside the composers Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd. Together, they translated the phrases into African languages including Zulu, Setswana and Sesotho and Xhosa, and developed an improvised musical score.Sometimes, the music refers to traditions such as call-and-response isicathamiya choral singing; elsewhere it is deliberately jumbled. To draw all of this together, Kentridge created art work — drawings, ink washes, sculptures, palimpsests of old letters and reference books — which he turned into animated projections and stage designs.Like so many of his works, the result is a “collage,” Kentridge said. While he has designed and directed operas before — notably a madcap spin on Shostakovich’s “The Nose” (2010) and a brutally monochrome version of Berg’s “Wozzeck” (2017) — being able to create his own universe was liberating, he added.“A libretto is a straitjacket: You put it on willingly, but nonetheless it is a restriction,” he said. “This is a totally different experience.”Mahlangu said that, for himself and the singers, the Greek source material seemed remote at first. Yet as they developed the piece, it began to resonate with African mythologies and storytelling traditions. “Many people in South Africa believe that when people die, they don’t actually die,” he said. “They continue to look after the living. There is a sibyl in each and every one.”He added that this story of prediction and counter-prediction also resonated with the volatile politics of contemporary South Africa, which became even more turbulent amid the pandemic, as the country’s unemployment rate climbed to a dizzying 35 percent. “Here we are constantly in the state of wonder and worry,” Mahlangu said: “‘What is the next step? Where will we be?’”Now 66, Kentridge is unusual — almost unique — among contemporary artists in having achieved as much acceptance in theaters and opera houses as in museums and contemporary art spaces. He began his career in the mid-1970s as a Johannesburg-based illustrator and printmaker, but his practice has expanded to include whimsical short films, elaborate installations and majestic pieces of public art.A still from “City Deep,” an animated film by Kentridge about South Africa.William KentridgeOften his subjects reference classical literature or art history; almost always they reflect on South Africa’s bitter legacy, as in his new animated film “City Deep” (2020), a response to Johannesburg’s contentious history. A documentary on the making of the movie will be screened at the Barbican alongside “Waiting for the Sibyl.”In an era of conceptual and digital art, Kentridge has remained defiantly figurative and analog: His hulking charcoal drawings, loose sketches in Indian ink and flickering projections are immediately recognizable. Even when working on collaborative projects, the bulk of his time is spent laboring alone with ink, or charcoal, and paper, the artist said. “The physicality is essential. It’s the medium through which the thinking happens.”Much as he enjoys making gallery-based shows, he loves the challenge of theatrical commissions, he added. “The opera house says, ‘We’ll give you a canvas, 17 meters wide, 11 meters high. And we’ll give you another 18 meters of depth,’” he said. “And I get to make an hour-and-a-half drawing in the space.”With opera houses and concert halls closed, he hunkered down in Johannesburg and made a series of nine films about his studio practice, which are now being edited. He has also been preparing a career retrospective at the Royal Academy in London (set to open in September after pandemic-related delays), and making an animated film response to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, which will be performed live at the Lucerne festival, in Switzerland, in June.“There are always a few too many projects,” he said with a laugh. “But I can’t blame anyone but myself.”In an era of conceptual and digital art, Kentridge has remained defiantly figurative and analog: His hulking charcoal drawings, loose sketches in Indian ink and flickering projections are immediately recognizable.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesRe-encountering “Waiting for the Sibyl” in light of the coronavirus had been salutary, he added: Though the opera was partly about the limits of human knowledge, partly about mortality itself, it also contained seeds of hope.“In the long run, none of us are going to get out of this alive, but while we are here, we can acknowledge that,” he said. “We can still work wisely and optimistically. Comfort must be taken where it can be found.” More

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      An Exiled Theater With a Warning for Europe

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      The Belarus Free Theater’s members fled repression at home. The company’s latest show imagines a nightmare future of authoritarian Russian rule.LONDON — When the players of the Belarus Free Theater began working on “Dogs of Europe” three years ago, they thought it was a play about a dystopia.Set in 2049, it imagines the continent cut in half by a wall. On one side sits a Russian superstate, where a dictator has eliminated almost all opposition, and where people cannot speak their native languages or even perform folk dances. On the other side sits a Europe that failed to realize the Russian threat, or stop it from absorbing Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic States and beyond.Yet at a rehearsal in London last month, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, the play’s nightmare world didn’t feel so far-fetched.Maryna Yakubovich, an actor in the production, which opens Thursday at the Barbican theater in London, said that rehearsing the play had sometimes felt like a premonition. “It’s, like, ‘Oh my God, it’s started to happen,” she said.Nicolai Khalezin, left, and Natalia Kaliada, founders of the Belarus Free Theater.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesNatalia Kaliada, one of the Belarus Free Theater’s founders, said that when she and her husband, Nicolai Khalezin, decided to stage the play, they thought it would be a “warning shot” about the dangers of undemocratic leaders left unchecked. But planned performances in London and New York in 2020 were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now that warning shot appears to be too late.As the war in Ukraine enters its third week, the Belarus Free Theater’s performance may seem accidentally timely. But it is only the company’s latest attempt in its 17-year existence to warn about rising authoritarianism in Eastern Europe.The company knows those dangers all too well. Since forming in 2005, it has faced repression in Belarus, which is ruled by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who is known as “Europe’s last dictator” in part for his government’s clampdown on opposition and its stifling of free expression. The troupe has long been effectively banned from performing in Belarus, but it continued to do so in secret venues in Minsk, the capital, even after Kaliada and Khalezin were forced into exile more than a decade ago. The couple settled in London — where they developed close ties to theaters including the Young Vic and the Almeida — but continued rehearsing with actors in Belarus via Skype.Those clandestine shows, in venues including a converted car garage that once belonged to the American Embassy, also won the troupe high-profile supporters in the United States. In 2015, The New York Times’s chief theater critic, Ben Brantley, visited the company in Minsk, and praised its “spirit of defiant, exultant fraternity” adding that this was something “you rarely find among the young these days in money-driven, shockproof Manhattan.”A rehearsal of “Dogs of Europe” in London this month.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesNow, even that window to perform in Minsk has closed. The theater’s entire 16-member acting troupe fled Belarus last year to avoid potential jail time for opposing Lukashenko’s regime.The Belarus Free Theater was now homeless, Kaliada said. “We are refugees.”She added that she had hoped its members would be granted asylum in Britain, so they could set up a refugee-led theater there, but the process can take years and asylum applicants are almost always banned from working. After its four-performance run at the Barbican, the company would most likely set up base in Warsaw, a city with numerous refugees from both Belarus and Ukraine, Kaliada said, but added that a final decision had not yet been made.The company’s finances are precarious, Kaliada said, though she had a clear vision for the future. As well as finding a performance space, the company would establish a school where its members could give acting classes to refugee children, she said. All of its future plays would be live-streamed back to Belarus, so the company would keep reaching people there.“It’s a pretty tough time,” Kaliada said. “We’re trying to solve many issues at once.”The company’s experiences over the past two years show how quickly fortunes can change in Eastern Europe. In August 2020, Belarus — a country of some nine million people — looked on the verge of a turning point after Lukashenko declared victory in a vote widely dismissed as fraudulent, leading to mass street protests. It was a “beautiful, powerful,” moment, Kaliada said: It felt like her country was waking from a bad dream, she said.Then a brutal police crackdown against the protesters brought those hopes to an end.Sveta Sugako, left, the Belarus Free Theater’s production manager, and Nadia Brodskaya, its general manager.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesSeveral of the company’s actors were arrested during the period of repression around the election. Sveta Sugako, the company’s production manager, said she spent five days in prison in a tiny cell with 35 other women. None of them were given any food or drinking water for three days, she added. After Sugako refused to sign a confession saying she had taken part in the demonstrations, a police officer grabbed her and choked her, she said.Sugako said she had not wanted to leave Belarus, even after that experience. “I was ready to sit and wait in jail,” she said, but other Belarus Free Theater members persuaded her to go, pointing out that the company had no future if all of its actors were behind bars.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      ‘Cabaret,’ Starring Eddie Redmayne, Leads Olivier Award Nominees

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      A revival of the 1966 musical, with Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles, is up for 11 awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.LONDON — A revival of “Cabaret” that has been a topic of conversation here for its sky-high ticket prices as much as its stellar cast dominated the nominations for this year’s Olivier Awards — Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys — that were announced on Tuesday.The musical secured 11 nominations including a nod for best musical revival, as well as for best actor and actress in a musical for its stars Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley.Its prominence was perhaps unsurprising given the acclaim “Cabaret” has received since opening last December in a production that transforms the West End’s Playhouse Theater into a seedy nightclub straight out of 1920s Berlin.Audiences enter the show through the theater’s backstage corridors, and can even have a preshow meal once inside, partly explaining why tickets cost up to 325 British pounds (or about $420).Matt Wolf, reviewing the show for The New York Times, called it “nerve-shredding” for its portrayal of a world on the verge of Nazism. Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph called it “2021’s kill-for-a-ticket theatrical triumph,” suggesting readers “dig like your life depended on it into your pockets” to pay for a ticket.Even with such praise, “Cabaret” faces stiff competition in the musical categories, especially from a revival of Kathleen Marshall’s 2011 Broadway production of “Anything Goes” at the Barbican, which secured nine nominations including for best musical revival and a best actress nomination for Sutton Foster as Reno Sweeney. Foster won a Tony in 2011 for the same role.Sutton Foster has been nominated for an Olivier for her role in “Anything Goes.”Peter Nicholls/ReutersIn the nonmusical categories, the nominations are led by “Life of Pi,” Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel telling the story of a boy stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger. That play, at Wyndham’s Theater, has secured nine nods, including a best supporting actor nomination for the seven puppeteers who bring the tiger to life.“Life of Pi” was also nominated for best new play, where it is up against “2:22: A Ghost Story,” a haunted-house thriller that was at the Noël Coward Theater, “Cruise,” a tale set in London’s Soho in the ’80s (that was at the Duchess Theater), and “Best of Enemies,” James Graham’s play about the rancorous 1968 TV debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal that was at the Young Vic.One of the most highly contested categories is likely to be best actress in a play, where Cush Jumbo is nominated for her performance as Hamlet at the Young Vic Jumbo is up against Emma Corrin, nominated for her role in “ANNA X” at the Harold Pinter Theater, the singer Lily Allen for “2:22: A Ghost Story” and Sheila Atim for a revival of “Constellations,” at the Vaudeville Theater.The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Apr. 10. More