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      Billy Crystal to Return to Broadway in ‘Mr. Saturday Night’

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      The musical, about a comedian’s rise and fall, plans to open at the Nederlander Theater in the spring.Billy Crystal plans to return to Broadway in the spring as the star of a new musical, “Mr. Saturday Night,” adapted from his 1992 film.The project has been in development for years — he said Mel Brooks first suggested in 2005 that he think about adapting the film for the stage — and last month Crystal led a nine-performance presentation of the show at Barrington Stage Company, in the Berkshires region of Western Massachusetts.“Mr. Saturday Night” is a comedy about the rise and fall of a stand-up comedian named Buddy Young Jr. Crystal not only starred in the film but he also directed, produced and co-authored it. He is writing the musical’s book with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who also collaborated with him on the film’s screenplay. The stage adaptation features music by Jason Robert Brown (a Tony winner for “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Parade”) and lyrics by Amanda Green (“Hands on a Hardbody”). The director is John Rando (a Tony winner for “Urinetown”), and the choreographer is Ellenore Scott (who is also choreographing next spring’s revival of “Funny Girl”).Joining Crystal in the eight-person cast will be David Paymer, playing Young’s brother, Stan. Paymer played the same role in the film, and was nominated for an Academy Award. Randy Graff (a Tony winner for “City of Angels”) will play Young’s wife, and Chasten Harmon (“The Good Fight”) will play his agent.In an interview, Crystal said he has found himself repeatedly drawn to the character for decades — he said he first performed as Young on an HBO special in 1984, and then brought him to “Saturday Night Live” and then did him on another HBO special before creating the film. “I love that guy,” he said. “And there was more to say with this character; there was more to do.”He noted that, 30 years ago, when he started shooting the film, he was 43 playing 73; now he is 73 playing 73, and “it just feels better.”Crystal said he performed in college musicals and sang as an Oscars host, but that he has been working with a vocal coach to prepare for the musical. “I’m going to be the best I can be,” he said. And will he dance? “I’m going to move,” he said.Crystal has done one previous Broadway show, “700 Sundays,” an autobiographical one-man play which he performed for eight months, from 2004 to 2005, and which he then brought back for two months from 2013 to 2014. The original production was given a 2005 Tony Award as best special theatrical event.He said he is ready to return.“I’ve always tried to challenge myself and keep growing, keep stretching,” he said.“Mr. Saturday Night” is scheduled to begin previews March 1 and to open March 31 at the Nederlander Theater. The producers are James L. Nederlander and Nederlander Presentations, Inc.; the show is being capitalized for $11 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The show will be staged seven performances a week (one fewer than the traditional Broadway eight) and Crystal said the run is open-ended.This is the eighth new musical scheduled as part of this Broadway this season, as the industry seeks to rebuild after the lengthy pandemic shutdown. The others are “Girl From the North Country,” which opened just before the shutdown but is being counted as part of the current season, as well as “Six,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Diana,” “Flying Over Sunset,” “MJ” and “Paradise Square.”Crystal said “Mr. Saturday Night” had been delayed by the pandemic, but that he felt good about the new timing based on audience response in the Berkshires.“I’ve spent so much of my life in front of an audience,” he said. “The great feeling to hear laughs, live, in a theater, even through masks, was intoxicating to all of us, and it gave us so much joy and so much hope.” More

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      Julianne Boyd to Retire After 27 Years at Barrington Stage

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      Under her leadership, the nonprofit produced “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and other shows that made it to Broadway.Julianne Boyd, who has served as artistic director of Barrington Stage Company since cofounding the Western Massachusetts nonprofit in 1995, will retire next fall.The company started by renting space at a high school in Sheffield, Mass., and now operates five buildings in Pittsfield, Mass. It has had a number of notable successes, the best known of which is “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” a musical by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin, which Barrington first staged in that high school’s cafeteria in 2004. The next year, the musical transferred, first to Off Broadway’s Second Stage Theater, and then to Broadway, and it has repeatedly been staged around the world.Barrington Stage, one of the many arts institutions that have made the Berkshires a destination for culture lovers, also developed a revival of “On the Town” that transferred to Broadway in 2014, and a new play, “American Son,” that opened on Broadway (starring Kerry Washington and Steven Pasquale) in 2018.Boyd, 76, said that after one last summer season she will be ready for a new chapter. She said she plans to continue to split her time between Pittsfield and New York, to direct, and to spend time with her seven grandchildren. “Nana hasn’t been there,” she said.The last two summers have been particularly challenging because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, after stages had shuttered nationwide, Boyd directed the country’s first play featuring an Equity actor during the pandemic — an outdoor production of “Harry Clarke.”“I’ve been thinking about retiring for a few years, but I couldn’t do it during Covid,” she said. “I want some free time, and I don’t want the day-to-day responsibilities to be on me.”The theater company has produced a lot of new work — 41 premieres — including two small plays, “Freud’s Last Session” and “Becoming Dr. Ruth,” both by Mark St. Germain, that have gone on to be staged by many other regional theaters.And last weekend, the theater wrapped up another noteworthy endeavor: a nine-performance presentation of a musical in development, “Mr. Saturday Night,” adapted from the 1992 film and starring Billy Crystal, who is also one of the show’s three writers.The theater, which has an annual budget of $5.2 million and a year-round staff of 22, will conduct a search for Boyd’s replacement.Boyd’s retirement, announced Wednesday, creates the second opening at a major Berkshire theater company this week. On Monday, the Williamstown Theater Festival said that its artistic director, Mandy Greenfield, had stepped down. More

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      New Work by Suzan-Lori Parks to Be Part of Public Theater Season

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      “The Visitor” and “cullud wattah,” two shows postponed by the pandemic, will get their premieres alongside works by James Ijames, Shaina Taub and Lloyd Suh.The Public Theater’s 2021-22 season will feature a mix of projects postponed because of the pandemic and new works, including “Plays for the Plague Year” by Suzan-Lori Parks.Behind the scenes, the Off Broadway nonprofit — responding to renewed calls for racial equity in the theater industry — said it will include over 50 percent representation by people of color in artistic leadership roles, from the directors and writers to the choreographers and the designers.“This last year and a half, in addition to Covid, has been about a call for racial justice and equity that we take profoundly seriously,” Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, said in an interview. “The Public obviously has always been, we felt, progressive on racial issues. And what became clear to us is we weren’t progressive enough.”The season begins with a musical that was about to have its world premiere in March 2020, before theaters were shuttered because of the pandemic: “The Visitor,” by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah. Directed by Daniel Sullivan and based on the film about a college professor and two undocumented immigrants, it will feature David Hyde Pierce and Ari’el Stachel, both Tony Award winners. Performances will begin Oct. 7.The pandemic also led to the postponement of the debut of Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s play, “cullud wattah.” In the interim, she received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, which honors work by women and nonbinary playwrights. The play is about the effects of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., on three generations of women. Candis C. Jones will direct the play, which begins performances in November.Another delayed work, Mona Mansour’s “The Vagrant Trilogy,” about Palestinians’ displacement, will be directed by Mark Wing-Davey and will now open in April 2022.And Shaina Taub’s anticipated musical about the American women’s suffrage movement will take the stage in March 2022. “Suffs,” described as an epic show about some of the unsung heroines of the movement, will be directed by Leigh Silverman and feature the choreography of Raja Feather Kelly.In addition to Parks’s “Plays for the Plague Year,” in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright wrote a play a day since the beginning of the pandemic, the season will also include “Out of Time,” a collection of monologues by five award-winning Asian American playwrights; “The Chinese Lady,” Lloyd Suh’s portrait of the first Chinese woman to step foot in America in 1834; and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’s “hilarious yet profound new ‘Hamlet’-inspired play” set at a Southern barbecue, Jesse Green wrote in his review of a streaming production. (Some of these are co-productions with Barrington Stage Company, Ma-Yi Theater Company, NAATCO and National Black Theater.)The theater artist Daniel Alexander Jones’ digital album, “Altar No. 1 — Aten,” will unfold through a series of weekly installments beginning Sept. 22. And Joe’s Pub will be back, too: The performance space tucked inside the Public will have live music starting Oct. 5.The lineup of shows reflects the current moment well, Eustis said, for a few reasons. There’s the representation of artists of color and the partnerships with theater companies hit harder by the past year than the Public. And then there’s what he called Parks’s “astonishing” new work, “Plays for the Plague Year.”“They give a sort of map,” Eustis said, “and a day by day examination of what this year has been, like no other work of art I’ve seen. I think it’s an incredibly important and powerful work.”Parks began writing “Plays for the Plague Year” on March 12, 2020, and it covers at least a year. Among the snapshots she captured were those “almost like a small domestic adjustment drama,” Eustis said, in April, and the murder of George Floyd in May, as well as the racial reckoning that followed.The past year has sparked dialogue and rocked foundations, and the theater is no exception. Much of the conversation at the Public has been in the gap between “we need to be more thoughtful” and “the show must go on,” Eustis said.“Because the show must go on; it really must,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure out a way to be more thoughtful about how we work, and more mindful about and contemplative about the ways we treat each other while the show goes on.” More

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      Theater to Stream: ‘The Wolves,’ and More Archival Treasures

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      Productions from the National Theater in Britain, a project from Billy Porter and a Yiddish musical celebration are among the highlights.Most Broadway productions disappear into that hazy province known as collective memory once they have closed. That’s the ephemeral beauty of theater, of course — yet wouldn’t it be great to be able to revisit some of your favorite stage moments, or share them with friends?Off Broadway shows are even more elusive, which is what makes Lincoln Center Theater’s initiative Private Reels so precious. For the past few months, newly edited archival recordings of productions have been made available to stream, and the latest is Sarah DeLappe’s “The Wolves,” which follows high school girls on a soccer team as they warm up before games. The play has been something of a success story: It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017; Lila Neugebauer’s production had three Off Broadway runs (including the one that will be online, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater); and it is done all over the United States and abroad. Thursday through Aug. 15; lct.orgNational Theater at HomeOn a much different scale is the National Theater in Britain, which pioneered live broadcasts of its shows in movie theaters before seamlessly moving into home streaming last year. Every time you think the well has run dry, the company pulls out more goodies from its vaults. If you are a fan of Michaela Coel’s acclaimed series “I May Destroy You,” you may want to check out her earlier, and often very funny, solo show “Chewing Gum Dreams” (adapted for TV as “Chewing Gum”). Also worth checking out are Chiwetel Ejiofor in Carol Ann Duffy’s adaptation of the medieval morality play “Everyman,” and Ivo van Hove’s stunning revival of the Arthur Miller drama “A View From the Bridge,” which came to Broadway in 2015. ntathome.comChiwetel Ejiofor, center, in Carol Ann Duffy’s “Everyman.”Richard Hubert Smith‘Sanctuary’Billy Porter wears many hats, all of them fabulously. He may be famous for his performances in “Kinky Boots” on Broadway and “Pose” on television — not to mention elsewhere — but he is also a director and a writer. He has a memoir coming out this fall, and he was also the author of the autobiographical “Ghetto Superstar” and “While I Yet Live.” His latest project is the book for this new gospel musical, with a score by Kurt Carr. The show is getting a virtual outing as part of the New York Stage and Film season, with a cast featuring Deborah Cox, Bryan Terrell Clark, Ledisi, Virginia Woodruff and the choir Broadway Inspirational Voices. July 29-Aug. 2; newyorkstageandfilm.orgPTP/NYCIn normal times, PTP/NYC is a regular on New York’s summer stages, presenting some of the city’s beloved hot-weather entertainment: thorny, often experimental plays by the likes of Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker. As the company remains virtual this summer, its so-called Season 34 ½ continues with “Standing on the Edge of Time,” a collage of texts by such writers as Churchill, David Auburn, Tony Kushner and Mac Wellman (Saturday through July 27), followed by “A Small Handful,” an exploration of Anne Sexton’s poetry with music by Gilda Lyons. (Aug. 13-17). ptpnyc.org‘Judgment Day’In the Berkshires this summer, Barrington Stage Company is welcoming audiences both indoors and outdoors. But it also continues to offer online programming with the return of last year’s popular reading of this Rob Ulin comedy, boosted by an ace cast including Jason Alexander, as a lawyer who may or may not be dead, and Patti LuPone as an angel, along with Santino Fontana and Michael McKean. July 26-Aug. 1; barringtonstageco.org‘An Almost Holy Picture’Heather McDonald’s play explores faith and parenting via the character of Samuel Gentle. A former minister turned church groundskeeper, he ponders his life, most notably a terrible tragedy, and his relationship with his daughter. It’s an ambitious solo show — Kevin Bacon performed it on Broadway in 2002 — and Everyman Theater in Baltimore is presenting it with its company member Bruce Randolph Nelson. Through Aug. 22; everymantheatre.orgBruce Randolph Nelson in the solo show “An Almost Holy Picture.”DJ Corey‘A Yiddish Renaissance: A Virtual Concert Celebration’Once upon a time, Yiddish-language theater thrived in the East Village and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene keeps this history alive — often with surprising results, like when the company scored a hit with a Yiddish production of “Fiddler on the Roof” that set off waterworks among many audience members. That show will be featured in this virtual concert from the company, along with nods to the likes of “Di Goldene Kale” (“The Golden Bride”), “On Second Avenue” and “Di Yam Gazlonim!” (that would be the Yiddish “Pirates of Penzance,” of course). If you tapped your foot at any of those shows, it’s largely thanks to the longtime arranger, conductor ​​and artistic director Zalmen Mlotek, whom the event is honoring. July 26-30; nytf.org‘We Live On’The journalist Studs Terkel’s interview collections were filled with “provocative insights and colorful, detailed personal histories from a broad mix of people,” as The New York Times put it in his obituary, in 2008. No wonder his vivid books are such rich sources for documentary theater. “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” from 1974, became the musical “Working.” And now, the Actors’ Gang Theater in Los Angeles is premiering a three-part show based on Terkel’s “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression” — a 1970 anthology that also inspired Arthur Miller’s play “The American Clock.” Like “Working,” which keeps being updated, this project adds accounts by the cast, under Tim Robbins’s direction, to those collected by Terkel (some of which feature familiar names like Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez). Thursday through Sept. 4; theactorsgang.com More

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      A Guide to Theater Festivals in New York and the Berkshires

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      From the Williamstown Theater Festival to New York Stage and Film, theatergoers can experience world premieres, concerts and more.Most summers, as tourists pour into New York City to see theater, New Yorkers pour out to see theater elsewhere. This summer, though, they may do so with extra ardor. As the pandemic lifts, the pent-up demand for live, in-person theater is first being met in the Berkshires and in the mid-Hudson region, where companies are putting up tents, arranging outdoor immersive experiences and welcoming audiences to buildings that have been empty for too long.Some of those companies are old and some new: The Williamstown Theater Festival has been at it since 1955, but Great Barrington Public Theater just started in 2019. Shakespeare & Company, as its name implies, goes heavy on classics — starting July 2, Christopher Lloyd plays King Lear — while Barrington Stage Company focuses on musicals and new plays. For mainstream fare (if “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opening next week, counts as mainstream), look to the Berkshire Theater Group. For something more experimental, try Bard SummerScape or New York Stage and Film.Wherever you go — below, our critics highlight five possibilities — you will still find pandemic precautions in place. (Check each theater’s website for specific safety policies.) Even so, after a dark time, these summer shows and festivals truly offer something to celebrate. JESSE GREENWilliamstown Theater FestivalAudiences have always been drawn to the Williamstown Theater Festival for its artistry, which is strong, and its geography, which is sublime. Tucked amid the Berkshires on the campus of Williams College, in a corner of western Massachusetts that’s just a meander away from Vermont, it seems like the kind of spot that would have an open-air stage or two.In an ordinary summer, no such luck. But this year, Williamstown is taking its slate of world premieres outside.The first stop is the front lawn, where the season starts with “Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination: Nine Solo Plays.” Curated by Robert O’Hara, a current Tony Award nominee for his direction of “Slave Play,” the production offers three separate programs, each made up of three 30-minute plays: by Guadalís Del Carmen, France‑Luce Benson and NSangou Njikam (July 6 to 10); J. Nicole Brooks, Terry Guest and Ike Holter (July 13 to 18); and Charly Evon Simpson, Ngozi Anyanwu and Zora Howard (July 20 to 25).“Row,” a production of the Williamstown Theater Festival, will take place on the grounds of the Clark Art Institute, which a reflecting pool.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesDown the road at the Clark Art Institute, from July 13 to Aug. 8, the museum’s vast reflecting pool will become the stage for “Row,” Daniel Goldstein and Dawn Landes’s musical, starring the singer-songwriter Grace McLean, part of the original Broadway cast of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, “Row” is inspired by Tori Murden McClure’s memoir, “A Pearl in the Storm,” about rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean.And from July 20 to Aug. 8 around the town of Williamstown, audiences can experience the immersive performance “Alien/Nation” on foot or by car. The director Michael Arden and his company, the Forest of Arden, who made last summer’s immersive “American Dream Study” in the Hudson Valley, teamed up with the playwrights Jen Silverman and Eric Berryman for this one, which uses local history from 1969 as a starting point. (wtfestival.org) LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESBard SummerScapeThe Frank Loesser musical “The Most Happy Fella” boasts one of the most wondrous scores of the 1950s — a decade filled with stiff competition. The show is packed with songs whose styles are mixed and matched with formidable agility, going from operatic arias to dance romps to jazzy croons and back again.Yet “The Most Happy Fella” is less famous than, say, Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls,” and that might have something to do with what some might generously call its baggage. The middle-aged, homely title character, Tony, an Italian immigrant prone to mangling English, falls for, deceives and eventually wins over a younger waitress. This plot has not aged well.This makes the prospect of the director Daniel Fish’s “Most Happy in Concert” (Aug. 5-7) even more intriguing — especially since his ensemble is made up of seven female and nonbinary performers. (While SummerScape events usually take place on the Bard campus, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., this year’s productions will be performed at the Stage at Montgomery Place, an outdoor venue in nearby Red Hook.)Daniel Fish’s upcoming “Most Happy in Concert” at Bard SummerScape will feature Mallory Portnoy, third from left above, and Mary Testa, above right. They both appeared in Fish’s “Oklahoma!” production, above, at Bard in 2015, with, from left: Mitch Tebo, James Patrick Davis, John Carlin and Benj Mirman.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesOf course, the experimentally minded director has been there and successfully done that already: In 2015, also at Bard, he took “Oklahoma!,” long associated with a certain aw-shucks all-Americanness, and pulled off a “vibrant, essential excavation,” as Ben Brantley put it in his review of the premiere production. The show went on to win the Tony Award for best revival four years later.Now Fish is teaming up again with his “Oklahoma!” musical collaborators, Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci, and the actresses Mary Testa (Aunt Eller) and Mallory Portnoy (Gertie Cummings), who will sing alongside the likes of the “Toni Stone” star April Matthis and the protean performer Erin Markey. Whether a full production ever happens remains a mystery for now, but the prospect of this director with this cast and this score is enough to light up August. (fishercenter.bard.edu) ELISABETH VINCENTELLIBarrington Stage CompanyLast year, this regional theater in the Berkshires, a proving ground for new musicals, announced a truncated summer season. But state directives meant that its artistic director, Julianne Boyd, had to constrict it even further, moving an indoor show, “Harry Clarke,” outdoors. But summer 2021 promises more shows in more venues, inside and out.Mark H. Dold in last year’s production of “Harry Clarke,” at Barrington Stage Company.Daniel RaderThis season begins, in a tent on the Barrington Stage Campus, with a celebration of the songs of George Gershwin (June 10-July 3). Directed by Boyd, it stars Allison Blackwell, Alan H. Green, Britney Coleman, Jacob Tischler and Alysha Umphress. The tent will also host “Boca” (July 30-Aug. 22), an evening of Jessica Provenz’s short comedies about Florida seniors; as well as concert evenings featuring the Broadway stars Elizabeth Stanley (June 28), Jeff McCarthy (July 24) Joshua Henry (Aug. 16), and the husband-and-wife pair Orfeh and Andy Karl (Aug. 23). The couple, who met in the Broadway adaptation of “Saturday Night Fever” and later appeared together in “Legally Blonde,” call the show “Legally Bound.” Aaron Tveit, a current Tony nominee for “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” will perform at the theater’s gala.Indoors, the father-and-son Reed and Ephraim Birney star in the lachrymose two-hander “Chester Bailey,” starting on Friday. Harriet Harris then appears in “Eleanor” (July 16-Aug. 1), Mark St. Germain’s one-woman play about Eleanor Roosevelt. And the New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson adapts his article about the conceptual art project, the Apology Line, into a new play, “Sister Sorry” (Aug. 13-29), directed by Richard Hamburger. (barringtonstageco.org) ALEXIS SOLOSKINew York Stage and FilmTheater is not just what you see when it’s finished, it’s what goes on beforehand. New York Stage and Film, an incubator of works in development, provides that “beforehand”; something called “The Hamilton Mixtape” showed up there in 2013, two years before it opened as “Hamilton” on Broadway.Usually held on the campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, the festival looks a little different this year. The pandemic has pushed its events into various venues around town, and the Black Lives Matter movement has pushed it, like all arts organizations, to rethink programming. The new artistic director, Chris Burney, has responded with a promising slate of work from Black, Latinx and Asian American artists.The big draw, on July 31 and Aug. 1, is Michael R. Jackson’s “White Girl in Danger,” a follow-up to his 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner, “A Strange Loop.” Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, “White Girl” is a satire of Lifetime Original-style movies as seen from a Black woman’s perspective, but Jackson’s radically sympathetic worldview suggests more than a little love in the critique.Daveed Diggs, left, and Lin-Manuel Miranda working on “The Hamilton Mixtape” at New York Stage and Film in 2013.Buck Lewis, via New York Stage and FilmJackson is not the only theater artist exploring race and danger in Poughkeepsie this summer. “Mexodus,” a “concept album” created and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, is about the thousands of enslaved people who instead of heading north on the Underground Railroad went south to Mexico (July 17 and 24). “South,” by Florencia Iriondo and Luis D’Elias, is a one-woman musical inspired by Iriondo’s experiences as a Latina in the United States (July 23 and 24). And “Interstate,” by Melissa Li and Kit Yan, follows a transgender slam poet and a lesbian singer-songwriter on an eventful cross-country journey (July 25).New York Stage and Film is for artists, yes, but since artists need feedback, it’s for audiences as well. (Most events are “pay what you can.”) Who isn’t it for? Critics. We can go, but can’t review, which makes it a real vacation for everyone. (newyorkstageandfilm.org) JESSE GREENHudson Valley Shakespeare FestivalThe serenity that descends on visitors upon arrival at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival has everything to do with the landscape as seen from the bluff — breathtaking river, low mountains and sky. Never mind the saber-rattling name of the town, Garrison, or the fact that West Point is across the water, barely downstream. These grounds, at the historic Boscobel House and Gardens, are a soothing setting for pre-performance picnics and a gorgeous backdrop to the stage in the open-air tent as sunset turns to night.“As You Like It,” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in 2016.T Charles Erickson, via Hudson Valley Shakespeare FestivalStill, it is an area with a particular reverence for the Revolutionary War, which makes the festival’s season opener an enticingly provocative match. “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington” — directed by Taylor Reynolds and running June 24 to July 30 — is by James Ijames, one of the most exhilarating playwrights the American theater has right now. Set at Mount Vernon as the widowed Martha lies ill, tended to by enslaved people whose freedom is promised as soon as she dies, it is described as a fever dream — and if it’s anywhere near as brilliant as Ijames’s Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson satire “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever,” it could be unmissable.So it’s helpful that both of the festival’s live productions this summer will be filmed for streaming. But if you can, do yourself a favor and go in person. “The Tempest,” directed by Ryan Quinn and running Aug. 5 to Sept. 4, will be the company’s goodbye to Boscobel, its home of 34 years. The theater isn’t going far — just upriver to Philipstown — but if you want to catch that stellar view from the tent, this is last call. (hvshakespeare.org)LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES More

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      Father and Son Return to the Stage, Together. Again. No Regrets.

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      Reed and Ephraim Birney are in the Berkshires, reprising their roles in “Chester Bailey.” They discuss what it’s like to play off — and fight — each other.In his Instagram profile, Ephraim Birney describes himself as “the black sheep out of work actor in a family of black sheep working actors.” Born and raised in New York, the 24-year-old actor is the elder child of Reed Birney (a Tony winner in 2016 for his performance in “The Humans”) and Constance Shulman (“Doug,” “Orange Is the New Black”). His little sister, Gus Birney, has appeared in the TV series “The Mist” and “Dickinson.” Ephraim Birney has booked jobs, too — “Gotham,” “The Americans” — but not quite as many.“The weird thing isn’t that I’m an actor,” he said during a recent video call. “The weird thing is that I’m not working as an actor.”But Ephraim Birney, who was seated next to his father in the kitchen of their summer home in the Catskills, is working now. On Friday, the father-son actors begin performances indoors (indoors!) of “Chester Bailey,” Joseph Dougherty’s heart-raking two-hander at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass. (The show, running through July 3, is being advertised as this summer’s first indoor theater event in the Berkshires approved by the Actors’ Equity Association.) Ephraim Birney stars as the title character, a Navy Yard worker who suffers a devastating injury in 1940s Brooklyn, and his father plays the doctor assigned to his care. The drama explores illusion, reality and the comfort imagination can provide.“As sad as this play is, and it is deeply sad,” Reed Birney, 66, said, “there’s something so beautiful about how these two men have affected each other.”The Birneys first took on these roles two years ago, for the Contemporary American Theater Festival in West Virginia. After a long pandemic-prompted break, spent mostly swimming and gardening at their upstate house, they have returned to them, with the same director, Ron Lagomarsino. During our hourlong call, the Birneys spoke about the vagaries of the business, learning to treat each other as colleagues and getting back to theater, together. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.For “Chester Bailey,” were you recruited as father and son?EPHRAIM BIRNEY No, it was a thing that I had auditioned for, on my own.REED BIRNEY I knew Ron Lagomarsino, the director, because I’d done “Hay Fever” with him in 1982 at the Kenyon Festival Theater. We’d stayed friends. So I wrote Ron, and I said, “My boy’s coming in for your show.” Suddenly I got an offer. I was not really interested in doing a play again for a while. But then I thought, if I say no to working with Ephraim, I will regret it for the rest of my life.EPHRAIM And you’ve regretted it ever since.When you started rehearsing the play in 2019, what was it like to encounter each other as co-stars?REED We were both nervous about that. But we both were really impressed at how very quickly we became colleagues.EPHRAIM It’s like your second home, a rehearsal room. It’s what you’ve always said. And it feels very, very cool that I get to play in that same room.REED One of the last days we were in West Virginia, we were driving back from the theater. And he said to me, “Thank you for treating me as an equal.” He’s so beautiful in the play. It’s really something to see. It’s a beautiful, beautiful performance, really simple and heartbreaking.Reed, when did you know you wanted to be an actor?REED I was about 5. I remember saying to a group of grown-ups that I wanted to be an actor. They all laughed nervously and exchanged looks like, oh dear, oh dear. There might have been a week where I wanted to be a fireman. But the rest of the time, it was an actor.EPHRAIM I’m still looking forward to being a fireman.When you knew that Ephraim wanted to be an actor, did you ever try to talk him out of it?REED Not ever. Because everybody had tried to do that to me. Anybody who wants to do it should try it. They’ll figure it out on their own. If there comes a point where they say, “Oh, this isn’t for me,” I don’t think there’s any shame in leaving. But I also know it’s one of the greatest professions in the world. Ephraim and Gus, they were always aware of the times when you don’t work or you lose a part or you get a bad review. Certainly, they saw that stuff. But I think they also saw how fantastic the community is.EPHRAIM When I started expressing interest in acting, you said, “Well, don’t you see how miserable I am?” And I said, “But I see that you’re still doing it, despite being so miserable.”The father-son duo first performed “Chester Bailey” in West Virginia in 2019. For their return engagement, they will perform at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass., starting Friday.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesDid you try to give Ephraim any advice?REED Even now, I haven’t gotten that television series that suddenly takes me over the brink. So it’s an ongoing thing. If my career is an example, it’s a long ride. You have to keep your eye on the prize.EPHRAIM I remember getting [an audition] for that Hugh Jackman movie with the robots, “Real Steel.” I remember coming to you, and I was like, “I don’t think there’s a world where I get this. How do I even attempt to try?” And I remember you saying, “Because that’s the job, and one of those times, it’ll be your turn.Were there parts your dad played that really stood out for you?REED Most of the plays I did when they were little, they couldn’t come see. They never saw “Blasted” [a famously upsetting play by the English playwright Sarah Kane that involves nudity, rape and cannibalism]. Connie saw it and told them all about it. When I came home from the theater, our daughter said, “Do we see your heinie in that play?”EPHRAIM I was like, “I want to eat a baby in a play!”What is it like going back to “Chester Bailey”?REED Once we were finally back, I was like, “Oh, this feels incredibly familiar.” But I also am very aware that because the world has changed so much, the resonance of the play has changed, too, and the need for imagination and the need for the arts and the need for human contact, those things are much more profound in the production than they were before.“Chester Bailey” involves a physical altercation. What’s that like to perform?EPHRAIM That’s just a regular Tuesday for us!REED I don’t think Ephraim and I have ever had a fight. So it’s really interesting to suddenly be in the middle of one. That’s one of the things that acting does — it takes you places you don’t usually go. He’s pretty good at it, too. I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with him.What do Connie and Gus think of the play?EPHRAIM They love it. They really do. Mom is not someone who will pretend to like something.REED Yeah, Mom is a tough critic. And Gus couldn’t stop crying. There were a lot of tears.Is there a play the whole family could do together?REED People weirdly say, “You guys should do ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’” That would be incredibly weird. That’s kind of gross.EPHRAIM People forget what that play’s about. We could do a fun version of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” But I don’t think anyone wants to see us to do that.REED I don’t think the play has been written, honestly. More