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    Review: In ‘Hamnet,’ Shakespeare Becomes Soap Opera

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    The Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s hit 2020 novel is elegant and tasteful — but also formulaic and sentimental.Writers of historical fiction are allowed to take liberties — they are in the business of filling in blanks, after all. But how much is too much? At what point does something become so speculative, its connection to the factual record so tenuous, that it ceases to be historically credible?At the Royal Shakespeare Company, just a few hundred yards from the site of William Shakespeare’s family home, a new play is turning an imaginative spotlight on the Bard’s domestic life. “Hamnet,” an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel, portrays the vicissitudes of Shakespeare and his wife’s marriage, culminating in the death of the couple’s young son.Adapted for the stage by Lolita Chakrabarti — her recent adaptation of “The Life of Pi” is currently on Broadway — and directed by Erica Whyman, “Hamnet” runs at the Swan Theater, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, through June 17, before transferring to London’s West End in the fall. The production is essentially a high-end, 16th-century soap opera, a delicately wrought portrait of a couple — their coming together, their travails and their sorrow — that carries an uplifting message about the generative power of grief. It could be completely inaccurate, but no one can disprove it.Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway married in 1582; he was 18, she was 26 and pregnant with the first of their three children. Two years later, they had twins, Judith and Hamnet; at age 11, Hamnet died of unknown causes. Beyond these bare facts, almost everything is conjecture.In this telling, Shakespeare’s wife — called Agnes Hathaway, rather than Anne — is a healer and a clairvoyant, the subject of “rumors of witchery.” She takes a chance on Shakespeare when he is a lowly Latin tutor with few prospects, and encourages him in his endeavors. When Hamnet dies of bubonic plague, his father falls into a writing frenzy — “Work holds me straight … it’s the only thing that’s real” — that culminates in his most famous play, “Hamlet.” The pain of the couple’s bereavement is thus transmuted into a timeless work of art — the ultimate tribute.Madeleine Mantock plays Agnes with a serene and stoical grace, while Tom Varey’s young Shakespeare is a feckless dreamer with plucky charm. (Later, when Shakespeare moves to London and makes his name, he is an altogether different presence — mature, understatedly commanding.) Mantock and Varey have a playful, tender onstage chemistry, and Ajani Cabey performs the title role with such a wide-eyed, fey energy that you almost forget he is much older than 11.It is Peter Wright and Elizabeth Rider, as Shakespeare’s parents, John and Mary, who get the best lines. Wright is grimly compelling as a boorish and sometimes violent oaf, and Rider is very funny as a cynical, matronly naysayer, perpetually exasperated by Agnes’s oddness. Mary’s frantic interventions, along with the droll repartee among Shakespeare’s troupe during the London scenes — in which the excellent Wright features again, as the Shakespearean comic actor Will Kempe — provide much-needed light relief.Ajani Cabey performs the role of Hamnet with a wide-eyed, fey energy.Manuel HarlanThe Stratford scenes play out before a large, A-shaped wooden structure that represents Shakespeare’s childhood home. The impressive design, by Tom Piper, comprises two very tall ladders, and its stroke is an elevated platform high above the stage that the characters can scurry up to. It’s a deft use of space, and pleasing on the eye — and, of course, the “A” stands for Agnes. Prema Mehta, the lighting designer, deploys fine mist to generate a hazy ambience that is complemented by mournfully evocative melodies on viol and lute, played by Alice Brown and Phill Ward; these instruments, musical mainstays in Shakespeare’s time, lend some period realism to the proceedings.The pacing, however, is a little uneven. Whereas the first half, which recounts the story of the couple’s relationship up until the birth of their twins, is told at a leisurely pace, Hamnet’s death, its aftermath, and the gestation of “Hamlet” are all crammed into the second half. One wonders if those latter segments, with their hallucinations and flashbacks, might be better suited to film. We’ll soon find out, because a big-screen adaptation, directed by Chloé Zhao and with O’Farrell as a co-writer, is in the pipeline.In interviews, O’Farrell has said she wanted to rescue Agnes and Hamnet from obscurity and redress unkind assumptions about the Shakespeares’ marriage: that it was a loveless arrangement, thrust upon the playwright by circumstances and endured grudgingly; that he was indifferent to his son’s death. This elegant production does justice to those aims — albeit with considerable creative license — but whether it does much else is questionable. The literary-historical context is essentially window dressing for a story that leans heavily into a fairly formulaic, heartstring-tugging sentimentalism and the relatable banalities of everyday life: hostile in-laws; a father and son at loggerheads; the demands of work impinging on domestic life. It happens to be the Shakespeares, but it could be anyone, really. This is tastefully crafted melodrama — but melodrama, nonetheless. More

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      In ‘Hamnet,’ Shakespeare’s Wife Takes the Stage, at Last

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      A Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s hit novel gives voice and agency to a historical character we know little about.Of the numerous puzzles about William Shakespeare, those concerning his love life are the most tantalizing. Why did he marry a local woman, Anne Hathaway, have three children with her, then decamp to London for a life in the theater? What was their relationship really like? And why do we know so little about Anne herself, whom one scholar has called a “wife-shaped void” in the playwright’s story?This year, the 400th anniversary’s of Anne death, might be the year we finally hear about this other Shakespeare. A volume of celebratory poems, “Anne-thology,” is being published later this month. A small bust of her has been unveiled at Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where her body has lain next to her husband’s since 1623. And, most strikingly, a Royal Shakespeare Company production devoted to her story opens next Wednesday at the company’s Swan Theater in the town.Tom Varey and Madeleine Mantock as William and Agnes, the characters based on Shakespeare and Hathaway.Manuel Harlan“It’s about time,” said Erica Whyman, the show’s director, in an interview after a recent rehearsal. “This is her town; she was born just outside Stratford and lived here all her life, as far as we know. She deserves to be back here.”The play, an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel “Hamnet,” is named for the Shakespeares’ only son, who died at age 11 in 1596, for reasons unknown. His father apparently began work on the death-haunted “Hamlet” not long afterward, something that has driven biographers into frenzies of Freudian speculation.But in the script, which has been adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti, there is little doubt who is the star: Shakespeare’s wife, the mother of his children and the head of his household, who brims with spirit and practical intelligence, and runs rings around her partner and everyone else. In the play’s first scene, we see the 17-year-old William gawkily trying to woo her while she flies a pet hawk. (She, too, will never be tamed, we surmise.) Later, we see her industriously baking bread and mixing folk remedies while he dreams of poetry and the theater.Erica Whyman, who is directing “Hamnet,” is the acting artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times“She’s so alive,” said Madeleine Mantock, who plays the role based on Anne for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “She has all this knowledge, all this capability.”O’Farrell explained in a phone interview that she first encountered Shakespeare’s wife at college, after becoming curious about the playwright’s family — something historians have often neglected. “Shakespeare’s domestic life, if you want to call it that, just never came into the picture,” Anne least of all, she said. “And the more I read, the more derailed I was about her and the way she’s been treated. She’s been sidelined, in fact worse than sidelined — vilified.”Shakespeare was just 18 when he married Anne in 1582; she was 26 and pregnant. Historians have speculated that theirs was a shotgun wedding which Shakespeare entered into with gritted teeth. That he left Stratford-upon-Avon to begin his theatrical career after the birth of Hamnet and his twin sister, Judith, a few years later has added fuel to speculation that the Shakespeares had a loveless marriage. The playwright made only occasional treks back to his hometown until his last years. Signing his will with a shaking hand before his death in 1616, he left Anne his “second-best” bed — something that’s been interpreted as an insult. “Even among quite respected biographers, she’s cast as an illiterate, cradle-snatching peasant who lured this boy genius into marriage,” O’Farrell said. “But I couldn’t find a single shred of evidence for that.”Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, a former farmhouse in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare’s wife grew up.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesThe town is on the river Avon, about 90 miles northwest of London.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesDepictions of Shakespeare characters on a wall in Stratford-upon-Avon. Each year, millions of tourists come to see the town where the playwright was born and died.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesThe fact that she’s most often referred to by her maiden name, “Hathaway,” speaks volumes, O’Farrell added. “It’s like we don’t want to let her near him.”And speaking of names, “Anne” might not even be the right one, O’Farrell said. In one surviving document, she referred to as “Agnes,” the form adopted in the novel and the play. “The fact that we’ve possibly been calling her by the wrong name for nearly 500 years seems completely symptomatic,” O’Farrell added.Paul Edmondson, the head of research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said that the story of Shakespeare’s wife was likely complex and compelling. While little evidence of her personality survives — we don’t even have a portrait — the facts we know point to a shrewd, capable woman who managed a large house, was responsible for significant amounts of money and land, and possibly ran a brewing business on the side. In addition, of course, she raised a family for a husband who was mostly away working, as many men in England were at the time.“She’s running the household, she’s a co-earner, and she’s also keeping an eye on his investments in the town. She was his equal in many ways,” Edmondson said.And that “second-best” bed? Edmondson said that it could have been the marriage bed, filled with intimate memories; its mention in the will “might also have been a legal understanding,” guaranteeing her residential rights after his death.In the novel, Anne/Agnes might not be able to write — women rarely received formal education at the time — but her husband does encourage her to read. And, crucially, William’s departure for London isn’t framed as abandonment, but his wife’s idea. “She realizes he needs more,” said Mantock, the actress. “She wants to encourage him to be who he needs to be.”Mantock and Ajani Cabey, as Hamnet. Background from left: Hannah McPake, Frankie Hastings and Elizabeth Rider.Manuel HarlanIn fact, it is only Hamnet’s untimely death that threatens to tear the couple apart; in the play, Agnes is left to pick up the pieces and hold the family together, while William escapes back to London and buries himself in work. It is only when Agnes attends an early performance of “Hamlet” that she realizes that he has transmuted his grief into drama.The novel’s success has had some real-life impacts in Stratford-upon-Avon, too. At Holy Trinity church, volunteers who tend to the Shakespeare family graves said that many more visitors now ask after her, as well as him. Last summer, O’Farrell presided over a ceremony for the planting of a pair of trees in the churchyard — one commemorating Hamnet, the other Judith.“I find that incredibly moving, actually,” O’Farrell said. “And the fact that she and the children are being brought to life onstage in the town.”For Mantock, simply being in Stratford, walking its streets and seeing the places that Anne knew was both poetic and potent, she said. “I know that what I’m doing is not real,” she added. “Of course I know that. But I feel there’s this real person there everywhere I go.”Mantock said playing her role in Anne Hathaway’s hometown was both poetic and potent.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesHamnetAt the Swan Theater, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, through June 17, then at the Garrick Theater, in London, from Sept. 30 through Jan. 6; rsc.org. More

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      ‘Life of Pi’ Review: A Boy and a Tiger, Burning Brightly

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      Human ingenuity and animal grace course through this rich, inventive play about difficult choices and the stories we tell to make sense of them.The butterflies enter first, quivering gaily atop their sticks. Then a giraffe pokes her head in. A goat gambols. A hyena cackles. One zebra runs on. Then another. An orangutan swings through while her baby reposes on a branch nearby. Above, monkeys and meerkats chitter. In the first act of “Life of Pi,” a menagerie — menacing, delightful — entrenches itself on the stage of Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.With dazzling imagination and sublime control, the show’s cast and crew conjure a delirious, dynamic, highly pettable world. And oh, is it a wonder. Though the play is ostensibly about one boy’s fraught survival after a disaster, that story is somewhat thin. “Life of Pi” instead succeeds as a broader tribute to human ingenuity and animal grace.Directed by Max Webster and adapted by the playwright Lolita Chakrabarti from Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, “Life of Pi” begins more somberly, in Mexico, in 1978. A grayed-out hospital room houses a sole patient, Pi Patel (Hiran Abeysekera). A Japanese cargo ship en route to Canada has sunk. Among its passengers were Pi and his family, who had set out from Pondicherry, India. And among its freight were the animals Pi’s zookeeper father tended. All aboard have drowned, except Pi, a traumatized 17-year-old who washed up in this fishing village after 227 days lost at sea.Visiting him this morning are Mr. Okamoto (Daisuke Tsuji), a representative from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, and Lulu Chen (Kirstin Louie), from the Canadian Embassy. These guests have been charged with learning what happened to Pi. For their benefit, he spins a fantastic tale — incredible in every sense — about sharing a lifeboat with animals, initially several then finally just one, Richard Parker, an enormous, sinuous, very hungry Bengal tiger.Between Richard Parker and Pi, adamant carnivore and lifelong vegetarian, there is a desperate struggle for dominance. Richard Parker needs to eat. Pi would prefer not to be eaten. But these two passengers eventually achieve a détente, even a kind of friendship, a hallucinatory acknowledgment of what is human within the animal and animal within the human. It is the example of Richard Parker — and his companionship, however imagined — that allows Pi to survive.“You’re the only reason I’m alive,” a despairing Pi says to his friend, midjourney. “It’s just you and me.”But “Life of Pi” is a much larger affair than this small-man-big-cat duo. The cast runs to 24 actors, many of them also puppeteers, with a small fleet of crew members to make the whole show seaworthy. (The play originated in Sheffield, England, before moving to the West End and then to the American Repertory Theater in Boston, so yes, it floats.) Martel’s novel — absorbing, florid — is a work of magical realism. Webster, the director, makes sure to deliver the magic and the realism both.The menagerie of puppet animals, designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, prowl and canter and leap with astonishing character and style, our critic writes.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNodding to techniques pioneered by Robert Lepage and Improbable Theater, Webster encourages a beautiful synchrony of lighting (Tim Lutkin), video (Andrzej Goulding), sound (Carolyn Downing) and set (Tim Hatley, who also designed the costumes). Aided by the other production elements, the mise-en-scène constantly moves and shifts. The room becomes the boat. The boat recedes into the room. Sometimes both room and boat are there at once and a person might have to clap her hands across her mouth to stop herself from oohing, especially when the schools of fish surface or the stars begin to flicker. We are in the realm of fantasy here, of symbolism, but squint just a little and waves appear. Even from the mezzanine, I could feel — almost — a salt spray.And the puppetry! Between Milky White of “Into the Woods” and the dinosaur and mammoth of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” New York has not been starved of extraordinary stick and cloth creations. But the animals here, designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, with movement direction by Caldwell, prowl and canter and leap with astonishing character and style. And Richard Parker, animated by three puppeteers at any given time, is the show’s striped jewel. Chuffing, growling and panting as he stalks the boat’s perimeter, he is at once beguiling, gentlemanly and quite dangerous. Abeysekera — a petite hurricane of an actor with reeling limbs and a clarion voice — is excellent in an exhausting role.But Richard Parker (very briefly voiced by Brian Thomas Abraham) makes the more indelible impression. When he finally slunk onto dry land, I worried for him as I did not worry for Pi. He seemed so thin.The cast runs to 24 actors, many of them also puppeteers.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesToward the start of his tale, Pi promises his listeners that his story will make them believe in God. But while Martel’s novel has a deep and sometimes tendentious concern with religion and philosophy, Chakrabarti’s adaptation engages with these questions only glancingly.At its most abstract, this a play about how we come to terms with our own choices, even with our own survival, and the stories we might tell to make those choices and that survival make sense. Trauma requires language, Pi insists. If you don’t find words to compass it, he says, “it becomes a wordless darkness, and you will never defeat it.” Yet language tends to recede whenever the animals are onstage. Want wonder? Want divinity? Look to the tiger burning bright. And then look to the human hands that tend the flame.Eventually Pi offers an alternative version of what happened on that lifeboat, which Webster also stages. Stripped of animals, allegory and visual pleasure, this account is more plausible, though much darker. “Which is the better story?” Pi asks.Depends what he means by “better.” But of course it’s the one with the animals. Because faced with such horror, or even with the ordinary hardships of daily life, anyone would prefer the fantasy, especially when it is rendered with such richness and invention. (A different show might have questioned the morality of extracting such pleasure, such delight, from a tale of privation. Not this one.) Significantly, neither story redeems what Pi has suffered. But only one has a tiger in it.That roaring that you will hear at the show’s end? It’s the sound of a standing ovation.Life of PiAt the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, Manhattan; lifeofpibway.com. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More

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      ‘Life of Pi’ Will Come to Broadway

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      Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s award-winning novel will begin preview performances on March 9.The theatrical adaptation of “Life of Pi,” about the tales of a teenage boy stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger, is coming to New York this spring.Following an energetic run in London, where “Life of Pi” won five Olivier Awards, including best new play, the show will come to Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater with preview performances starting March 9 and an opening night slated for March 30. Casting has not yet been announced.The show, written by Lolita Chakrabarti and directed by Max Webster, is an adaptation of Yann Martel’s acclaimed 2001 novel, which won the Man Booker Prize and inspired a 2012 film. It uses intricate puppetry to bring the story’s animal characters to life, with the seven performers who play the tiger collectively awarded best actor in a supporting role at the Olivier Awards.In The New York Times, the critic Matt Wolf wrote that the appeal of the production in London’s West End “lies not so much in blunt pronouncements as in the visual wonder of a bare stage yielding to richly imagined life.”In a statement, Chakrabarti called the show “a story of survival which all of us can fundamentally relate to after the effects of the pandemic.” She added that “to be able to tell this story the way I imagined it, to create the world using my references and viewpoint, has been an extraordinary gift.”Before coming to Broadway, “Life of Pi” will make its North American premiere at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. More

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      ‘Cabaret,’ Starring Eddie Redmayne, Sweeps Olivier Awards

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      The musical won seven awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys. A puppet-filled adaptation of “Life of Pi” and a “Back to the Future” musical also won big.LONDON — A revival of “Cabaret” that has been the talk of London’s theater world since opening in December, on Sunday swept the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.Starring Eddie Redmayne in his first London role in a decade, “Cabaret” collected seven awards during a ceremony at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Its haul included best musical revival, best actor in a musical (Redmayne), best actress in a musical for Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles, and best director for Rebecca Frecknall.Britain’s newspaper reviewers sometimes struggled for superlatives to describe “Cabaret.” Nick Curtis, writing in The Evening Standard, summed it up with a simple: “Wow. Just wow.”Matt Wolf, reviewing the show for The New York Times, said that Frecknall had made a “remarkable entry into musical theater” after several lauded stage productions here, including of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” and Tennessee Williams’s “Summer and Smoke.” “Frecknall pulls us into a hedonistic milieu, only to send us out nearly three hours later reminded of life’s horrors,” he added.The musical has gained as much attention for its staging as its performances, with audiences made to enter the Playhouse Theater through a side door, only to discover the building has been transformed to look like a 1920s Berlin nightclub. Ticketholders — some of whom criticized sky-high ticket prices — have to work their way through a labyrinth of corridors filled with dancers and drinks to get to their seats.Redmayne, center, as Master of Ceremonies with the company of “Cabaret.”Marc BrennerOf the actors in its original cast, Redmayne won particular plaudits. Arifa Akbar, writing in The Guardian, said he was “electric,” adding: “He gives an immense, physicalized performance, both muscular and delicate, from his curled limbs to his tautly expressive fingertips.”The other big winner on Sunday was “Life of Pi” at Wyndham’s Theater, Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel about a zookeeper’s son who, after a shipping accident, is stuck on a lifeboat at sea with only animals for company. It took five awards including best new play and best actor for Hiran Abeysekera, as well as a crowd-pleasing best supporting actor award for the seven puppeteers who bring a 44-pound puppet tiger to life onstage. Hiran Abeysekera won best actor for “Life of Pi,” and a best supporting actor award went to the puppeteers who bring the tiger to life onstage.Jeff Spicer/Getty Images For SoltReviewers had often singled out those puppeteers for praise. Dominic Cavendish, writing in The Daily Telegraph, said they made the tiger exude “a watchful malevolence and innate magnificence,” as he “moves from brute prowling threat to personality in his own right.”Some other shows did manage to get prizes at the Oliviers. “Back to the Future: the Musical” at the Adelphi Theater, a show that has grabbed attention for its flying car as much as its songs, won best new musical, beating shows including “Get Up! Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical” and the London debut of “Frozen.”The best comedy play went to “Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)” at the Criterion Theater, a fast and loose retelling of Jane Austen’s novel, which closed in February citing a lack of audiences returning to the West End.The other notable winner was a revival of “Constellations” by the Donmar Warehouse at the Vaudeville Theater, which took awards for best revival and best actress in a play for Sheila Atim. That 70-minute, one-act play, about a couple falling in and out of love, was a hit last summer as British theater came back to life after multiple lockdowns. More

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

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

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      Making Black Lives, Not Just Black Deaths, Matter Onstage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookMaking Black Lives, Not Just Black Deaths, Matter OnstageThe tragedy of racism is only part of the story in two very different plays from London that carry a dimension of meaning not usually seen in this country.Richard Blackwood in “Typical,” about a man who died while in police custody after a night out.Credit…Franklyn RogersPublished More