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    ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Review: A Met Milestone Returns

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    After making history as the Metropolitan Opera’s first work by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire” is back — with its showstopping step dance.The Metropolitan Opera premiere of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” on Sept. 27, 2021, was a momentous event. Doubly so: “Fire” was the company’s first staged opera after an 18-month pandemic closure, and it was, after 138 years, its first work by a Black composer.The opera, with a score by Terence Blanchard and a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, took on some of the grandeur and excitement of that moment. The raucous fraternity step dance that opens the third act brought down the house.That step dance still stopped the show on Monday evening, when “Fire” returned to the Met. Two and a half years later, the work is a test case. The company has sharply increased its diet of contemporary operas — some of which, including “Fire,” sold very well as new productions. But how will these operas perform when they’re brought back, without the same promotional push?On Monday, at least, the audience seemed robust and, as it was during the initial run, notably diverse. And “Fire” remains a heartfelt piece, emanating a touching if vague sadness. But without the exhilarating sense of occasion it had at its Met premiere, the opera’s shortcomings were clearer.Based on the New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s memoir of his turbulent upbringing in Louisiana, “Fire” is a progression of episodes — some upbeat, some forlorn. It takes the form of a search: The lonely Charles, his psyche wounded as a child by his cousin’s sexual abuse and his mother’s real but distracted love, looks for belonging and healing.He tries church, fraternity membership, his siblings, a woman, another woman, but none offer what he’s seeking; all want him to be different than he is. Only after a hasty, therapy-speak conclusion in the final minutes, presided over by an ethereal choir and the voice of his younger self, can he finally accept himself and sing, “Now my life begins.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alicia Keys’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ to Open on Broadway This Spring

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      The musical, now midway through a sold-out Off Broadway run at the Public Theater, will transfer to the Shubert Theater in March.Alicia Keys’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” has been selling out night after night during its Off Broadway run at the Public Theater. Next up, to no one’s surprise: The show is transferring to Broadway.Keys, a singer-songwriter who has sold millions of albums and has won 15 Grammy Awards, announced at a Public Theater fund-raiser on Monday night that the musical, which ends its 12-week downtown run on Jan. 14, will transfer to the Shubert Theater — one of Broadway’s most desirable houses. The first preview is scheduled for March 28, and opening night is set for April 20.“I’m out of my mind with joy, excitement, thrill,” Keys said in a telephone interview. She noted that her mother, as a teenager, had moved to New York from Ohio to pursue an acting career, and said she saw in this moment the arrival at a long-sought destination for her family.“We get to announce the ultimate dream — the dream that my mother chased from a little girl, that brought her here, which is the reason why I’m here, which is the reason why this city raised me, and the reason why I can even tell this story,” she said. “Hell’s Kitchen,” a loosely fictionalized story inspired by Keys’s own childhood, depicts a short chapter in the life of a 17-year-old growing up surrounded by artists in a New York housing development where most of the units are subsidized for performers. The protagonist, a girl being raised by her single mother, discovers a love for piano, and an attraction to an adult man, while chafing at her mother’s efforts to keep her safe in a gritty neighborhood.The musical features new arrangements of Keys’s biggest hits, including “Fallin’,” “Girl on Fire,” “No One” and “Empire State of Mind,” as well as several new songs the pop star wrote for this show. Keys, who does not perform in “Hell’s Kitchen,” has been working on it for more than a decade with the playwright Kristoffer Diaz, who wrote the book.In an unusual move that demonstrates Keys’s long determination to retain control of her own intellectual property and career arc, the musical’s lead producer will be AKW Productions, which is a company Keys owns and describes as “focused on creating diverse, real, authentic and genuine stories in film, television, theater and music.” Asked whether the stage production, like most commercial Broadway musicals, would also have investors, Keys said, “Yes, there’s going to be some really special people that are coming along for the ride.”The musical is directed by Michael Greif, and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. The downtown cast is led by Maleah Joi Moon as the protagonist, joined by Shoshana Bean as the mother, Brandon Victor Dixon as the absentee father, and Kecia Lewis as the piano teacher. The Broadway cast has not yet been announced.Reviews were mixed, with many critics praising the performances and the production but saying they wanted more from the story. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called the first act “thrilling,” but said it “disappoints after the mid-show break.” In The Washington Post, the critic Peter Marks was underwhelmed, calling it “a perfectly nice musical,” but in The Los Angeles Times, the critic Charles McNulty was far more enthusiastic, writing, “I was surprised by how rapturously I fell under the musical’s spell.”Keys said she does not concern herself with reviews.“I’m not a huge, huge review reader — that’s been a practice of mine since I did my second album, because I’ve realized everybody’s going to have a thought, everybody’s going to have an opinion,” she said. “The true critics, to me, are the people in the seats, and when they come away feeling uplifted, inspired, ignited, transformed — they’re crying because they feel so connected to the stories in their lives — those are the critics that I really pay attention to.”Having said that, Keys also added that the creative team would continue to work on the show.“Of course, you always are able to refine, you’re always able to find places that you want to bring more, bring less, try this, do that, and that’s going to, of course, happen as we transfer to make it just better and better and better,” she said. “But I’m really proud that the spirit is there. It’s been there since the beginning of it, and now the goal is to keep that spirit and make it even better.” More

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      Tony Nominees for Choreography Put the Past in Motion

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      Musicals like “MJ” and “Paradise Square” take on dance of the past — with some missed opportunities. But the dance in “For Colored Girls” helps us to “remember what cannot be said.”A Black dancer and an Irish one face off in a dance contest in 19th-century New York. They take turns, each trying to top the other with steps and rhythms that are unique and unbeatable. It’s adversarial but also collegial, since the premise both assumes and encourages commonality, the kind of back-and-forth that breeds hybrids. This is a primal scene of American dance, and a version of it is on Broadway now.Whether in revivals, jukebox musicals or reimaginings of more distant history, a lot of the dance on Broadway these days is dance of the past. It’s theater, so the aim is less historical fidelity than persuasiveness. The choreography has to represent how people used to move in a way that makes sense to people today. But that constraint contains a possibility: In watching performers of the present embody the dance of the former times, we might feel, in our own bodies, how the present and the past are connected.That possibility was live for all five shows nominated for Tony Awards in choreography this year. The subject of each is, in some sense, historical. But the one that addresses dance history most directly is “Paradise Square.” It’s a musical about the Black and Irish denizens of the Five Points district in the 1860s. In the decades before, this neighborhood was a crucial site of interracial exchange and invention, a nursery not just for tap dance but for American theatrical dance in general — the kind that would long characterize Broadway musicals.“Paradise Square,” with choreography by Bill T. Jones and others, makes dance central and consequential.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMainly set in the kind of tavern where much cultural exchange occurred, the story seems to make dance central and consequential. No one knows exactly what the dancing in the Five Points looked or sounded like, so Bill T. Jones, leading a team of choreographers, is free to juxtapose some ideas of the Black and African side (Juba dance, shout) with some ideas of the Irish (the fast stepping familiar from “Riverdance”). But this choreography is subtle and inventive only compared to the absence of those qualities in the score and book. It doesn’t persuade.The Irish dance, credited to Jason Oremus and Garrett Coleman, is served somewhat better, partly because the Irish clichés in the music support it. Two of what the program calls “Irish Dancers” (Coleman and Colin Barkell), with little role in the plot, get to be briefly impressive in bursts of footwork. But even as the story builds to that Black vs. Irish dance-off, the dancing doesn’t make us feel how and why Black and Irish dance mixed, the similarities and differences that attracted the cultures to each other.It’s a missed opportunity. “Paradise Square” might have staged a shocking, thrilling return to sources, especially the Black ones. Instead, in a deeply flawed show, it offers the sort of choreography that inspires comments like “But wasn’t the dancing good?” Not good enough.Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man,” with choreography by Warren Carlyle.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA revival of “The Music Man,” a tried-and-true classic, is a much simpler choreographic assignment. Warren Carlyle does the job just fine. He has an adequate, nostalgic grasp of the period flavor, the “new steps” of the 1910s. The origins of these moves — in places like the Five Points before spreading to places like Iowa, the musical’s setting, and to the white stages of Broadway — isn’t part of the story. So Carlyle can focus on arranging a large cast of skilled dancers. If it’s all a little cautious and underwhelming, so is the rest of the production.Carlyle offers a professional, if uninspired, take on Broadway choreography as it used to be. “Six” is much more current, despite being about the wives of Henry VIII. The conceit of the show is to give them voice by casting them as contemporary pop divas, inspired by Beyoncé, Rihanna and the like. It’s a singing contest, and we expect to see certain kinds of dancing. These are dancing singers, and as each queen takes her turn, the others serve as the backup that every pop diva commands in concert.This is dance of the present, and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille, the choreographer, is up to speed in the genre and its variations — the ratios of sass and sex and empowerment moves, even the requisite absence of dance in Adele-style heartache. She keeps the action both tight and fluid, letting the performers save enough breath for all their belting. Like the clever, catchy pastiche songs, the choreography identifies its sources without quoting directly. It gives the pleasure of finding what we already know in a context where we might not expect it.Present tense: The cast of “Six” doing Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s moves.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA show about Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, and one of the great dancing singers, might seem to call for a similar approach. But “MJ,” as in so many other ways, is a different beast. It’s a jukebox musical, so the whole point is to hear the songs you know and love. But many of these songs already have choreography inextricably attached: that of Jackson’s hugely influential music videos of the 1980s. This isn’t just a period style that can be reproduced in general. Plenty of people who know the words and melodies also know all the steps.What is Christopher Wheeldon, the choreographer of “MJ,” to do? For the parts of the show covering Jackson’s early life, the Motown and Soul Train years, Wheeldon can work idiomatically, borrowing the styles to tell the story. When the timeline reaches the advent of MTV, though, he balks, having dancers tease some of the zombie boogie from “Thriller” at the back of the stage, facing away.It’s true that the second act begins with a close-to-verbatim reproduction of Jackson’s epochal “Motown 25” performance of “Billie Jean.” And Myles Frost, who plays the adult Jackson, is an astonishing mimic. (He dances that “Billie Jean” a little better than Jackson did.) But elsewhere, Wheeldon keeps replacing the original choreography with his own, and I kept feeling my heart sink, both as a lifelong Jackson fan and a dance critic.An effective replacement would have to be an improvement. And while Wheeldon is expert at crowd control and transitions (and an extremely accomplished choreographer of ballet), he has little feel for what Jackson in the show calls “smelly jelly” — funk, swing or whatever the dancers of the real Five Points called it. Despite help from Rich and Tone Talauega, who worked with Jackson, Wheeldon keeps swerving from that core, straightening away the rhythmic complexity of Jackson’s dancing along with its strangeness.Myles Frost as Michael Jackson in “MJ,” which was directed by Christopher Wheeldon, who was also the lead choreographer.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe most telling moment is the scene of the dancers who inspired Jackson. The representations of the Nicholas Brothers and Fred Astaire show no understanding of what Jackson saw in them (rhythm and attack that extend back to the Five Points), and thus the production can’t fully communicate how this great imitator forged a style that has been endlessly imitated. The only predecessor that “MJ” comprehends is Bob Fosse, whose own easy-to-imitate style defines the boundaries of Broadway dance inside which “MJ” keeps retreating.A good director might have pointed this out. But the director of “MJ” is Wheeldon (who, granted, had many other Jackson-related problems to deal with). There’s a strong Broadway precedent for combining those roles, one established by Jerome Robbins. But among this year’s Tony nominees, the best example of how that can benefit a show isn’t Wheeldon.It’s Camille A. Brown. “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” is what its dancing-poet author, Ntozake Shange, called a “choreopoem.” Although the show was a Broadway hit in 1976, the form didn’t become common, even as the text became canonical. Directing and choreographing this revival, Brown becomes one of exceedingly few Black women ever to take both roles for a Broadway show. (The last that comes to my mind is Katherine Dunham, in 1955.) That fact matters, but so does how she uses the combined power: She restores the work as an expression of a culture in which dance is central.The seven women of the cast recite poems, and they’re always dancing, in sadness and joy. They dance in girls’ games that become adult play, part of Shange’s original conception. But Brown adds American Sign Language, making the weaving of language and motion even more visible. Like the cast of “Six,” these women back each other up in dance. But in Brown’s vision, you can also sense their connections in the way that an exposing monologue by one, about abortion or abuse or self-discovery, reverberates in the silent bodies of the others.This isn’t what we know and expect of Broadway choreography. But unlike “Paradise Square,” it is a powerful return to a source. Dance, Shange once wrote, “is how we remember what cannot be said.” Brown reminds us. More

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      ‘A Strange Loop’ Nominated for 11 Tonys as Broadway Lauds Comeback

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      “The Lehman Trilogy,” as well as revivals of “Company” and “For Colored Girls,” led in their respective categories as the industry tries to recover from the long pandemic shutdown.A musical about making art and a play about making money dominated the Tony Awards nominations Monday, as Broadway sought to celebrate its best work and revive its fortunes after the lengthy and damaging coronavirus shutdown.The race for best musical — traditionally the most financially beneficial prize — turned into an unexpectedly broad six-way contest because the nominators were so closely divided they had to expand the number of nominees.Out of the gate, the front-runner is “A Strange Loop,” a meta-musical in which a composer who is Black and gay battles demons and doubts while trying to write a show. Even before arriving on Broadway, the show, written by Michael R. Jackson, had won the Pulitzer Prize in drama after an Off Broadway production at Playwrights Horizons; it opened on Broadway late last month to some of the strongest reviews for any new musical this season, and on Monday it picked up 11 Tony nominations, the most for any show.“I feel really grateful, and I feel validated for putting in all the years and all the hours,” Jackson said after learning the news. “It feels amazing to know better things are possible.”“MJ,” a jukebox musical about Michael Jackson, was nominated for 10 Tonys. Myles Frost, center, was nominated for best actor in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesScoring the most nominations is not always predictive of winning the prize, and “A Strange Loop,” which is adventurous in form and content, will face tough competition from “MJ,” a biographical jukebox musical about Michael Jackson; “Six,” a fan favorite about the wives of Henry VIII; “Girl From the North Country,” which combines the songs of Bob Dylan with a fictional story about a boardinghouse in the Minnesota city where Dylan was born; “Mr. Saturday Night,” about a washed-up comedian hungering for a comeback; and “Paradise Square,” about a turning point in race relations in 19th-century New York.Both “Paradise Square,” which picked up 10 nominations, and “Girl From the North Country,” with seven, have struggled at the box office, and will now hope that their multiple Tony nominations will help reverse their financial fortunes. For “MJ,” its 10 nods are a form of vindication after several influential reviewers criticized the show for sidestepping sexual abuse allegations against the pop star.“The Lehman Trilogy,” which arrived on Broadway with an enormous — albeit pandemic-delayed — head of steam following rapturously reviewed productions in London and Off Broadway, picked up eight nominations to dominate the best play category. The play, which follows the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers, was written by Stefano Massini and Ben Power, and featured a dazzling production centered on a rotating glass box designed by Es Devlin. All three of its leads — Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Adrian Lester — were nominated for best actor.“The Lehman Trilogy” was nominated for 8 Tonys, including best play. All three of its leads — from left, Adam Godley, Simon Russell Beale and Adrian Lester — were nominated for best actor in a play.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“The Lehman Trilogy” vies with four other dramas for best play. Among them are two dark comedies — “Clyde’s,” by Lynn Nottage, a two-time Pulitzer winner who was also nominated for writing the book for “MJ,” and “Hangmen,” by Martin McDonagh, an acclaimed British-Irish playwright who has now been nominated five times but has yet to win. The other contenders are “Skeleton Crew,” Dominique Morisseau’s play about factory workers at an automotive plant facing shutdown, and “The Minutes,” Tracy Letts’s look at the unsettling secrets of a small-town governing body.The Tony Awards, which honor plays and musicals staged on Broadway, are an annual celebration for American theater, but they are particularly important now as a potential marketing tool for an industry that is still grossing less, and selling fewer tickets, than it was before the pandemic forced theaters to close for a year and a half. The awards are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing.“This Tony Awards will mean so much more than honoring the performances and the artistic work that’s been done this season — it’s also celebrating the resilience of the community, and that this much work is being done and being seen,” said Rob McClure, an actor who scored a Tony nomination (his second) for his comedic and chameleonic performance in the title role of “Mrs. Doubtfire.”Billy Crystal was nominated for best actor in a musical for his performance in “Mr. Saturday Night,” based on his 1992 film. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWell known performers scoring nominations included Uzo Aduba, Billy Crystal, Rachel Dratch, Hugh Jackman, Ruth Negga, Mary-Louise Parker, Patti LuPone, Phylicia Rashad and Sam Rockwell. But several other big stars now working on Broadway were overlooked by nominators, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Laurence Fishburne and Daniel Craig, as well as Beanie Feldstein, starring in “Funny Girl” but unable to escape the long shadow of Barbra Streisand.This season saw an unusually large number of works by Black writers, and that created more opportunity for Black performers, directors, and designers, some of whom were nominated for Tonys. Among them are two performers new to Broadway, Jaquel Spivey, the star of “A Strange Loop,” and Myles Frost, the star of “MJ,” now facing off against Crystal, Jackman and McClure in the leading actor in a musical category.“Black playwrights have had an amazing presence this season, and I hope that continues,” said Camille A. Brown, who scored two nominations Monday, for directing and choreographing the revival of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf.” Reflecting on her own show, she said, “Having seven Black women on a Broadway stage has a lot of meaning, and speaks to the importance of sisterhood and love and Black women holding space for one another.”“For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf” was nominated for seven Tonys, including for best revival of a play. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe seven Tony nominations for “For Colored Girls” are a bittersweet triumph for a production that has been languishing at the box office and had already announced an early closing date. The revival picked up more nominations than any other show in the race for best play revival, a strong category in which many eligible shows won positive reviews.It will now face off against four others: “American Buffalo,” David Mamet’s drama about a trio of scheming junk-shop denizens and “Take Me Out,” Richard Greenberg’s look at homophobia in baseball, as well as two plays that had never previously made it to Broadway despite being considered important parts of the playwriting canon, “Trouble in Mind,” Alice Childress’s look at racism in theater; and “How I Learned to Drive,” Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer-winning drama about child sexual abuse.The competition for best musical revival is small, but strong. There were four eligible shows, and only three scored nods: “Company,” “Caroline, or Change,” and “The Music Man.” Excluded was the revival of “Funny Girl” which fared poorly with critics, but has been doing fine at the box office.“Company,” the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, was nominated for 9 Tony awards, including best revival of a musical. Patti LuPone, a nominee at left, performed with Katrina Lenk. Matthew Murphy/O & M Co./DKC, via Associated PressThe nine nods for “Company” pack an especially emotional punch because its composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, died soon after attending the first post-shutdown preview. “The longer he’s not with us, the more I miss him,” said LuPone, who picked up her eighth Tony nomination — she’s won twice — for her work in the production.The nominations were chosen by a group of 29 people, most of whom work in the theater industry but are not financially connected to any of the eligible productions, who saw all eligible shows and voted last Friday. There were 34 eligible shows, 29 of which scored nominations; the five left out were all new plays.Up next: a group of 650 voters, including producers and performers and many others with an interest in the nominated productions, have until June 10 to vote for their favorites, and the winners will be announced at a ceremony on June 12. The ceremony, at Radio City Music Hall, is to be hosted by Ariana DeBose; the first hour will be streamed on Paramount+, followed by three hours broadcast by CBS.Broadway’s grosses are down in part because tourism remains down in New York City, and in part because of ongoing concerns about the coronavirus. Many of the nominees interviewed Monday said they hoped the spotlight of the Tony Awards would lure more patrons back to Broadway.“Anyone that’s doing theater right now has been hit really hard by the pandemic,” said Marianne Elliott, a two-time Tony-winning director who scored another nomination for “Company.” “It’s gratifying to see that Broadway is coming back. To have the Tony nominations for all of these shows is just a celebration of what we do, and it’s lovely to be here.” More

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      ‘For Colored Girls’ to Close on Broadway, Reflecting Tough Season

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      The revival, directed by Camille A. Brown, received strong reviews but struggled to attract audiences and overcome challenges posed by Covid.A much-praised revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” Ntozake Shange’s classic choreopoem, will close later this month after struggling to find an audience during a tumultuous Broadway season.The show’s producers said Tuesday that the final performance would be May 22, just a month after opening and three months earlier than planned.The closing reflects the challenges of this unusual Broadway season — the first since the pandemic shutdown — when tourism remains down, coronavirus cases are a constant complication, and a large number of shows opened at the same time, making it difficult for any one of them to break out.“For Colored Girls” won strong reviews — in The New York Times, the critic Laura Collins-Hughes deemed it “thrilling and exuberant” — but it has struggled from the get-go; last week, which was its best yet, it grossed $250,000. The show’s audiences, at the Booth Theater, were just 51 percent full, and the average ticket price was $79.“Our numbers were much lower than those rave reviews would justify,” said Nelle Nugent, one of the play’s lead producers. “There are so many choices this season, which is very exciting, but there’s a lot of inventory, and the shows with major stars are doing better. I think there’s also a confusion in the public’s mind about safety.”“For Colored Girls,” a series of monologues about the experiences of Black women set to dance and song, first arrived on Broadway in 1976, and was a hit, running for 22 months. It has been adapted for film and television, and influenced many theater makers.In 2019, the year after Shange’s death, an Off Broadway revival was staged at the Public Theater, directed by Leah C. Gardiner and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. The success of that project led to the Broadway revival, which Brown directed and choreographed.This production, like many others, has been challenged by the coronavirus pandemic — three of the cast members have been out in recent days. And the pandemic took a toll in other ways, as well. “It affected us an extraordinary amount, including the delay of almost two years coming out of the Public, so the momentum we had had dissipated,” Nugent said.In a joint interview, Nugent and Ron Simons, also a lead producer, attributed the closing to a number of factors, including not only the high volume of shows opening on Broadway this spring and the lingering effects of the pandemic, but also a delay in the announcement of Tony nominations, the presence of scaffolding around their theater, and misunderstandings about what their show is.“There is a slight dampening effect for us because of the title — when you read ‘suicide,’ people think it’s going to be a somber play, and not enjoyable,” Simons said. “But it’s not just a play that deals with dark subjects. The show ends on a high note of celebration.”Nugent and Simons said they were hopeful that, by announcing a closing date, audiences would now flock to the show, and said they were open to extending it if there were a sudden surge of interest. Absent that, they said, it would remain necessary to close the show, which was capitalized for $4.85 million. “The decision ultimately is based on economics,” Simons said.“For Colored Girls” is the second Broadway show to announce an unplanned closing this spring because of weak sales. A stage adaptation of “The Little Prince,” which began previews March 29 and opened April 11, announced last week that it would close May 8. More

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      ‘Told It Like It Was’: Ntozake Shange’s Tales of Black Womanhood

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      As ‘For Colored Girls’ returns to the New York stage, we look at how the show found its way from a Bay Area bar to Broadway in 1976.Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf” defied Broadway conventions when it opened at the Booth Theater on Sept. 15, 1976. An experimental “choreopoem” focusing on the lives of seven women of color, who are each named after colors of the rainbow, was revelatory and not something you might expect to find on a mainstream Broadway stage.“At the time, Black actresses were still coming out of the stereotype framework of people looking at us and judging us,” Trezana Beverley, who won a Tony for her portrayal of Lady in Red, said during a recent Zoom interview. “Zake broke all those rules and we broke them with her. We were indeed the colors of the rainbow — that was what was so exciting about it.”Monologues detailing loss, betrayal, violence and love are told poetically and combined with movement and music. Through a gentle touch, a soft embrace or an impromptu dance, the women comfort one another as a supportive collective.“Ntozake had an extraordinary way of blending prose with poetry — the rhythms of her words and, of course, the incredible imagination, that she had in her storytelling,” Beverley said.The show ran on Broadway for nearly two years, closing in July 1978 after a total of 742 performances (“Godspell,” which had opened in June 1976, only made it to 527). It became an instant classic and continues to inspire new generations of playwrights, including Aleshea Harris and Dominique Morisseau.To fully appreciate Shange’s work, and what it means to have it return to Broadway this spring (in a production directed by the dancer and choreographer Camille A. Brown), it helps to explore the historical and cultural contexts that led to its original Broadway production in 1976.From Poems to a PlayShange began developing “For Colored Girls” in 1974 while living in the Bay Area, and performed it with the dancer Paula Moss at a bar called the Bacchanal.“Whenever she read her poems, like at the Nuyorican Cafe years ago, she always had musical accompaniment,” Beverley recalled. “She always had a saxophonist, a flutist or a cellist, and she moved with her poems. She has a line in her poem, she says ‘music was like smack to me,’ and you knew it.”She had found inspiration in the Black Women Writers’ Renaissance, which began to unfold around the time she graduated from Barnard College. In works like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Alice Walker’s “The Third Life of Grange Copeland,” both published in 1970, the writers explored the specific ways Black women contend with racial and gendered violence.And Shange had her own inner struggles. Her college journals reveal that she “tried to commit suicide,” said Kim F. Hall, the Lucyle Hook professor of English and a professor of Africana Studies at Barnard. “Go back to some of the early interviews. She talks about it very forthrightly,” she said, adding that the title of the play is not “an abstraction.”All of this fed her poetry, and after spending several years on the West Coast for graduate school, she returned to New York and began to turn her poems into a play. And that’s when Ifa Bayeza, Shange’s sister, introduced her to the director Oz Scott.“I directed right from the beginning,” Scott, 72, said. “We did it at DeMonte’s, the bar on the Lower East Side where we started it, and then we went to Henry Street [home of the New Federal Theater], then we went to the Public, and then we went to Broadway.”Opening at the New Federal TheaterBefore the show could move to Midtown from downtown, producers had to invest in an experimental new work. It’s not like there were many plays by Black women, with an all-Black female ensemble, having sustained runs on Broadway.Ntozake Shange in 1977 in a production of “Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon,” a play that she wrote with Jessica Hagedorn and Thulani Nkabinde.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York TimesThat’s when Woodie King Jr., founder of the New Federal Theater, came to see “For Colored Girls” at a bar. He was immediately drawn to the work. And he was especially drawn to the poem “Sorry,” Scott recalled. (“Sorry” details myriad excuses that women have heard from lovers to justify mistreatment.)“I gave it to Laurie Carlos [one of the show’s original cast members] the night before,” Scott explained. “I said, ‘I need this poem in this place. Here’s the poem, memorize it for tomorrow.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Oz, are you crazy? I can’t.’”“I said, ‘Laurie, don’t worry. Just memorize it,’” Scott recalled. “And so, we got to that spot, and she just went into it, and Woodie King was sitting there, and she just looked at Woodie, and she gave the whole poem to Woodie, and she was letter perfect.”It was as if King were the “sorry” lover, sitting there and absorbing the women’s stories. “What propelled me to bring it to the New Federal Theater,” King, now 84, recalled, was that the “women in it were very beautiful and very Afrocentric.”The cast continued to rehearse and eventually performed for Joseph Papp, director of the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater.“I’d been working for Joe Papp,” Scott said. “I was stage managing ‘The Sun Always Shines for the Cool,’ Miguel Piñero’s play, and around seven o’clock when we’d finished rehearsal, I just scooted everybody out and would sneak the colored girls into the Public Theater and we would rehearse there. Somebody told me that Joe knew. And I said, ‘Joe doesn’t know.’ Joe knew.”They showed Papp the work in a little space that Papp had turned into a movie theater, Scott said. Gail, Papp’s wife, was there and she cried. “She said, ‘You got to do this, Joe,’” Scott said. “And so, Joe said, ‘OK, we’ll just do it in this little 40 to 50 seat theater.’”“I said, ‘You give me a theater, I’ll fill the space.’ So, Joe teamed up with Woodie, and we did it at Henry Street,” Scott said.In the introduction to the 2010 published version of “For Colored Girls,” Shange described opening night at Henry Street as being “divine” with “supplicants flocking from everywhere.”Beverley noted that “At the New Federal Theater, it was like we were at church. Sisters were falling out in the aisle, they were so energized and charged.”After the shows, Beverley said: “We would see a sister in the shadows, and she would follow us down the street, and then she would say, ‘Can I say, can I say something to you?’ And they would say thank you. Thank you for telling my story.”“You see,” she continued, “that’s one of the great impacts that the show had because it told the Black woman’s story. She told it like it was.”Opening Night at the PublicWith the move from Henry Street to the Public, the audience shifted from predominately Black to predominately white, and that continued to be the case when the production moved to the Booth Theater. Even with the growing size of the theaters, the work maintained its intimacy through its poetry, dance and music.On June 2, 1976, opening night at the Public’s Anspacher Theater, the show was sold out. “Joe Papp said, ‘I want you to invite all your friends,’” Scott recalled. “And I said, ‘Joe, the play is sold out.’”“He said, ‘Oz, tell your cast to invite all their friends,’” Scott said. “So, all our friends were out in the lobby of the Anspacher. And when the place was full. Joe said, ‘OK, bring all your friends, have them sit on the stairs.’” King was one of many to fill the stairs.“They sat in the front on the stage. There was no room. And I said, ‘Joe, what about the fire marshal.’ He said, ‘Oz, the play is an hour and 15 minutes. By the time the fire marshal gets here, the play will be over.’”“It was an absolute brilliant move,” Scott added, “because the energy in that room — you had the critics, they were all locked into that room, everybody was locked into that room. It was a magnetic night.”In its move to Broadway, the cast was expanded to include understudies. “I was brought in to audition to replace Zake,” Seret Scott, 72, an original member of the Broadway cast, said in a telephone interview. (Shange also performed in the play, as the Lady in Orange.)From the opening night on Broadway, the cast knew they had a hit. “You could hear ‘Oh!’ or ‘Mmm’ or somebody who would suddenly weep because it was too close,” Seret Scott said. “You could hear the comments. So that is how we knew we were embraced.”The Show’s LegacyPhysical movement drives “the choreopoem.” Instead of completing the play, Shange’s work is meant to unfold through dance and changes to the poems. Donald Sutton, the Shange estate’s literary trustee, said, “Ntozake saw herself as a dancer who supported herself as a professional writer.”He continued, “The chorepoem is driven by the poetry, but the poetry is danced and the poetry is accompanied in sound and the music. Putting all three of those elements together is very difficult.”For the Broadway revival, he added, “Camille’s background as a choreographer and her experience in stage directing gives her the opportunity to realize the choreopoem.”For the 2022 production, which begins previews April 1 and opens April 20, Brown will make her Broadway directorial debut; she is also choreographing the show. (Brown previously choreographed the Public’s 2019 revival of “For Colored Girls,” which was directed by Leah C. Gardiner.)The show “provides me the space to really dive into what I do which is choreography, but also storytelling of the body,” Brown said in a telephone interview. In executing her dual role, Brown will be drawing from her own work, specifically “Black Girl: Linguistic Play” and “Ink,” to find a physical language for Black girls and women to express their stories. “One of the lines in the work says, ‘sing a Black girl’s song,’ and that’s what it’s about,” Brown said. “What is the song for each of us — that anthem, that macro anthem that we all respond to but individually that speaks to us personally?”Although Brown said she is committed to providing a healing space for women of color, she said she plans to build on that legacy as well. “I think it is easy for you to get trapped into a certain way that this show needs to be done,” Brown said. “We need to hit these markers. They need to say it this way, we need to make sure this happens. I had to get out of that. I was talking to a friend and she said, ‘This is an offering.’ It’s going to be my offering.” More

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      'For Colored Girls' Broadway Revival Opening March 2022

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      Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem begins performances in March at the Booth Theater, home to the original 1976 production.The previously announced Broadway production of Ntozake Shange’s 1976 “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” directed by Camille A. Brown, now has an opening date. After beginning previews on March 4, 2022, the show will open on March 24 at the Booth Theater, producers announced Monday.Brown, who will be making her Broadway directorial debut, choreographed the director Leah C. Gardiner’s well-received 2019 revival of Shange’s choreopoem for the Public Theater. But this Broadway production, which Brown will also choreograph, will be fully reimagined.“Of all the shows to be given as an opportunity to debut as a first-time Broadway director and choreographer, “for colored girls …” feels like a gift,” Brown said in a news release Monday. “I’m thrilled that I’ve been entrusted to combine all the parts of myself — dance, music and theater arts — to shape and share this timeless story again with the world.”Shange’s landmark work incorporates poetry, song and dance to tell the stories of seven women who are identified only by the hues of the dresses they wear. In his review of the recent Off Broadway revival, Ben Brantley detailed some of the show’s history as it made its way from bars and clubs to become “one of the most unexpected theater hits to emerge from the chaotic 1970s.” He added: “Shange’s free-form text was neither linear nor literal in its depiction of Black women struggling to claim their own voices from a society that had either ignored or actively silenced them.”Shange has inspired many, and her death in 2018 prompted a renewed interest in her work. The playwright Keenan Scott II has credited Shange’s “for colored girls” as an initial inspiration for his debut Broadway production, “Thoughts of a Colored Man.” He recently said that in college, a class screening of the Shange work was his first — and essentially his only — exposure to theater by Black playwrights at the time.Brown is a Tony Award nominee for her choreography in “Choir Boy.” She most recently choreographed and co-directed the Terence Blanchard opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in September. The Times’s dance critic Gia Kourlas said Brown’s step number for the opera “stops the show in its tracks.”Casting will be announced at a later date. More

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      Review: ‘Porgy and Bess’ Returns to a New Opera Landscape

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      The Metropolitan Opera’s revival boasts strong performances but raises difficult questions about race and American music.George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” is both easy and impossible to love.Its contradictions may have been captured best in Truman Capote’s “The Muses Are Heard,” his 1956 dispatch from a touring company’s historic stop in the Soviet Union. “Porgy,” he wrote, was like an allergen to Russian officials — its characters erotic, God-fearing and superstitious.But its reflection of America was a different story. “An exploited race at the mercy of Southern whites, poverty-pinched and segregated in the ghetto of Catfish Row,” Capote said, “could not be more agreeably imagined if the Ministry of Culture had assigned one of their own writers to the job.”“Porgy” — which returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Sunday after two years, its performances still exhilarating but its staging still blandly naturalistic — keeps raising questions over its three hours. And after a long pandemic closure, during which the Met, like the rest of the country, took a fresh look at racial inequities, those questions are increasingly difficult to sit with.Just a couple: Does “Porgy,” a leading contender for the Great American Opera, fulfill Antonin Dvorak’s prophecy that this country’s homegrown music would be founded on Black melodies? If so, did the work’s all-white creative team achieve that by exploiting stereotypes?Opera is rife with troubled histories and receptions. Of two works now playing at the Met, Puccini’s “Turandot” is set in a fairy-tale China out of late Romantic Orientalism; Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” ends with a startling paean to German nationalism. Classics like those tend to be defended with a logic that some have applied to “Porgy”: This is an art form that deals in broad strokes and the mythic. Who, then, are Porgy and Bess if not just another pair of star-crossed lovers?The soprano Angel Blue, left, as Bess and the bass-baritone Alfred Walker as a mighty and menacing Crown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut that argument is on shakier ground with “Porgy” than “Turandot”; Gershwin’s work inevitably carries the baggage of American history. And its characters, mythic or not, can feel like cartoons of Black pain, violence and poverty. Black artists have had vastly divergent responses to the piece, but what James Baldwin called “a white man’s vision of Negro life” has remained ensconced in the repertory, held up by the same institutions that have long overlooked the work of Black composers.There’s no clear resolution to any of the problems that have dogged “Porgy” since its premiere, in 1935. But it is here to stay — a discomfort to be experienced, pondered and managed, not removed. It’s no coincidence that the Met accompanied this production’s debut two years ago with face-saving initiatives like talks, an album celebrating Black artists of its past and an exhibition to match, and the announcement that it would present its first opera by a Black composer. (That work, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” opened the season in September.)If “Porgy” is the Great American Opera, it is more for its score — an innovative and seamless blend of grand opera, Broadway, and invented spirituals and folk melodies — than for its subject matter. (For that, we have the melting pot milieu of Kurt Weill’s “Street Scene,” the original sin of American greed in Marc Blitzstein’s “Regina” or stateside verismo in William Grant Still’s “Highway 1, U.S.A.,” to name just a few.)And at the Met, James Robinson’s production — a mostly timid, literal presentation of the libretto, by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin — undercuts the defense of “Porgy” as timelessly mythic with its realistic direction and designs (by Michael Yeargan and Catherine Zuber). Even the preshow curtain, a towering photograph of Catfish Row, suggests something documentary. At odds with all this is the stylized and thoroughly modern choreography of Camille A. Brown.Much of the 2019 cast remains intact, including, from left: Latonia Moore as Serena, Eric Owens as Porgy and Denyce Graves as Maria.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut in the pit, the conductor David Robertson made an argument for the triumphs of Gershwin’s score, with stylistic shifts fluid and distinctly articulated. “Porgy” is also one of the great operatic portraits of a community; as such, its true stars are the chorus singers, matching the instrumentalists with vigor and richly textured delivery.As Porgy, the bass-baritone Eric Owens sang with limited power, but imbued each line with dramatic consideration. The soprano Angel Blue’s Bess was one of tragic juxtapositions: luminous in “Oh, the train is at the station” and shattering in the conflicted Act III reprise of “Summertime.” (That standard was first heard, lush and stylishly ornamented, at the start of the opera, sung by Janai Brugger as Clara).Much of the cast remains intact from 2019: Denyce Graves’s caring and comical Maria; Ryan Speedo Green’s mighty Jake; Alfred Walker’s similarly mighty but menacing Crown; Frederick Ballentine’s flamboyant Sportin’ Life; and Latonia Moore’s Serena, this production’s finest pairing of artist and aria in the showstopping “My man’s gone now,” and a commanding comfort in the later “Oh, Doctor Jesus.”Moore, Green and Blue — all Met regulars — come to this revival fresh from “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” As recently as last year, the idea of two operas with exclusively Black ensembles running at the company in the same month would have been fantastical. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.Porgy and BessThrough Dec. 12 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

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      How ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Brought Step to the Met

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      The opera’s choreographer and co-director, Camille A. Brown, talks about the legacy of the African diaspora and influence of “School Daze” in her dances.Camille A. Brown had a lot of catching up to do. She wasn’t part of the original creative team behind Terence Blanchard’s opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” when it was presented in 2019 in St. Louis. But at the Metropolitan Opera, where the production runs through Saturday — the first time a work by a Black composer has been presented there in its 138-year history — her touch is palpable.Clearly, she caught up. And she’s making history, too: Brown, who shares directorial duties with James Robinson, is the first Black artist to direct a Met production. She is also the opera’s choreographer, and as such has brought social dance — step, the percussive form popular at historically Black colleges and universities (H.B.C.U.) — to the Met stage.Opening Act III is a step number that stops the show in its tracks. On opening night, the dancers held their final pose, one foot crossed over the other as sweat poured down their faces. Frozen in a line facing the audience, they tried to control their breathing as the audience clapped and roared. And clapped and roared some more. It lasted for more than a minute, and it was spectacular.When was the last time a dance stopped an opera in its tracks? Brown, a Tony-nominated dance-maker who choreographed “Porgy and Bess” under Robinson’s direction at the Met, has never experienced anything like it.Brown at opening night last month.Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“I was just thrilled,” she said. “I was thrilled for the moment. I was thrilled for social dance. I was thrilled for the dancers onstage that had been working for six weeks to put this show together.”She added: “I feel like the audience — to me — was clapping for several reasons. It was about the dance, but it was about what it meant to see that on the stage. And legacy.”Step and its use of the body as a percussive instrument speaks to the Black experience: When their drums were taken away, enslaved people created rhythm with their bodies. In the opera, step enters the picture when the protagonist, Charles (Will Liverman), is a college student and pledges at the fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi. He also continues to grapple with the experience of having been molested by his older cousin when he was a young boy, seen in flashbacks. (The opera is based on the 2014 memoir by The New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow.)While Act I contains no actual dance, the characters roam the stage with vibrant texture — their everyday, pedestrian movement, both rich and real, is recognizably Brown. Along with the step number, Brown choreographed another major dance, which opens Act II and shows Charles surrounded by dancers slipping in and out of erotic moments. Full of tension and longing, it reveals the character’s state of mind: confused and anguished, yet also intrigued.The baritone Will Liverman surrounded opens surrounded by dancers slipping in and out of erotic moments. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBrown is adept at baring emotion through the body. The dancers, their arms reaching imploringly, move vividly and broadly as if washing the stage with brushstrokes. Later, they transform into trees as Charles sings: “We draw our strength from underneath. We bend, we don’t break. We sway!”As he sings, Charles rounds his body forward in a powerful contraction and opens his arms as he stands straight and ultimately rises above his suffering.In “Fire,” which will be broadcast theatrically on Oct. 23 as part of the Met Live in HD series, Brown displays her choreographic range. “There was the more contemporary dance side, and then there’s the more rhythmical side,” she said. “You don’t get to feel those extremes in one place very often.”And her directorial prowess is only growing. Up next? She directs the Broadway revivalof Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” Recently Brown spoke about her work on “Fire” and honoring her ancestors. What follows are edited excerpts from that conversation.Brown with her co-director, James Robinson, during a rehearsal in August.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesHow did you, as a choreographer and director, envision the opera?When I’m working on a show, and as a director of my company, I always try to find, what is my entry point to the story? I thought about some of my dear friends that had very similar stories, so I entered it in that way.When I first heard about the opera and I found out that there was a fraternity section, I was so excited. There’s an opportunity to do a step dance inside of an opera?Why is it so important to put social dance on the Met stage?We talk about Terence being the first Black composer on the Met stage. And so along with that comes the Black lens and along with that comes Black culture spoken through or danced through the Black lens. And knowing that, at one point in the Met’s history, Black people weren’t allowed to perform on that stage.So you go from that to now: We are doing something that is so rooted in African tradition on the Met stage. That is so powerful. You see the fraternity-sorority, you see the H.B.C.U., but you also see the Juba dance [the African-American percussive form that uses the feet and the hands]. And you see the African diaspora onstage.“We are doing something that is so rooted in African tradition on the Met stage,” Brown said of the fraternity scenes.Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesHow did you put the number together?I was inspired by two movies: “Drumline” and “School Daze.” I’ve always loved “School Daze,” and when this opportunity came about to create the fraternity scene, I thought this needs to be a moment. Yes, Charles is pledging, and he’s going through that experience, but it’s also important, especially being on the Met stage, to show as much as we can of what that whole entire experience is. I want to talk about the dream ballet. Is it OK if I call it that?[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, that’s totally fine.What were you thinking?In any show that I’ve done, there’s always one piece that is really, really hard for me. And that was what you call the dream ballet. The first two weeks of working on it, I was freaking out a little bit because I wasn’t liking what I was doing.What happened?I was talking to my co-director, James Robinson, about the movie “Moonlight” and about how Charles was wrestling with what we are calling phantoms in his dreams — and how they haunted him, but they also enticed him. And so I gave myself a break and eased back on criticizing myself and said, You know what? Just play. Give yourself the space to figure it out.How did “Moonlight” influence you?Just by the beautiful imagery. Just wanting to talk about relationships and the sensitivity, and how does it feel to touch someone for the first time? Feeling like it’s wrong, but wanting to trust that it’s OK.“We talk about Terence being the first Black composer on the Met stage. And so along with that comes the Black lens.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow involved were you in the first act?It may be easy for someone to come in and go, Oh, well, she just did the choreography. But that really wasn’t the case. James and I were both thinking about the molestation scene and how the chorus interacts.Most of the chorus members were also in “Porgy,” so I’d already worked with them. We were talking about how they move because even though they’re technically not dancing, they still are moving. And it’s the 1970s. We looked at some videos and talked: What were the small ways that people walked to indicate the time period?Was Katherine Dunham in your mind throughout this experience?Oh! Why do you ask?Because of your use of social dance and the fact that she choreographed at the Met. And because so much of this opera, at its root, is about the body as a force. It’s urgent. It made me think of your lineage.I always carry her and Pearl Primus and Dianne McIntyre and Marlies Yearby in the space with me. This is a historical moment, but this is also about people who have paved the way for you. It is coming from a deep place — it is coming from the social dance. How can I contribute to that legacy of Black choreographers delving into the African diasporic space? It’s about contributing to the space. When we do what we know, and we show how honest we are with our decisions, that is honoring our ancestors. More