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      Martyna Majok on Hoping for Magic, and Wishing for Ghosts

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      The playwright, whose Pulitzer-winning “Cost of Living” is now on Broadway, talks about “the precarity of life” and our inherent need to be taken care of.The playwright Martyna Majok has never met her father, so it was her grandfather who played the paternal role in her life. When he died, in Poland in August 2012, she didn’t have the money to travel to his funeral.“Also, I was afraid to go,” she said on a recent afternoon, “because I just didn’t want it to be true.” Not being there, though, gave his death a sense of unreality for her: “Sometimes I just think that we haven’t spoken for a long time.”Majok (pronounced MY-oak) was missing him on the snowy January night in 2014 when she lost her job at a bar in downtown Manhattan. (“They thought I had stolen $100, and they fired me because I was mouthy.”) Back home at the latest in a string of sublets, she started to write the poignant comic monologue that opens her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Cost of Living.” It’s spoken by a hapless former trucker named Eddie, whose unmooring grief for his dead wife has him wanting to believe she’s texting him from the Great Beyond.“He’s hoping for some kind of magic, some miracle, something that communicates to him that we don’t just disappear,” Majok said in an upstairs lounge at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, where “Cost of Living” — which she dedicated to her grandfather, Pawel Majok — is having a limited Broadway run through Nov. 6. “That was definitely where I was at when I was writing it. I kept hoping that I would see my grandfather’s ghost. I was seeking it out. I was looking for signs.”Katy Sullivan and David Zayas in the Broadway production of “Cost of Living.” Majok insists that her disabled characters be played by disabled actors, a decision that Sullivan calls “bold as hell.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs tinged with longing as “Cost of Living” is, it’s also laugh-out-loud funny. Yet Majok considers it a romance, twining the stories of two New Jersey couples: Eddie and his estranged wife, Ani, who is adjusting to paraplegia following an accident; and Jess, a working-class graduate of a prestigious university who takes a job as a personal care aide to John, a wealthy doctoral student with cerebral palsy.Class figures prominently, as does disability. But to Majok it is a play about “the precarity of life” — the way that one bad break, financial or physical or emotional, can tumble a person into desperation — and the need we all have to be taken care of.Majok, who once juggled late-night bartending jobs with work as a personal care aide to two disabled men, insists that her disabled characters must be played by disabled actors. That stipulation, she said, has gained “Cost of Living” a reputation for being difficult to produce, and led some rights seekers to ask her to make an exception. Short answer: No.“Which I think is brave and bold as hell,” said the actor Katy Sullivan, an amputee who has played Ani in five productions — the world premiere at Williamstown Theater Festival in 2016, Off Broadway in 2017, Los Angeles in 2018, London in 2019 and now Broadway. “I am certain that she has lost out on income because she has drawn that line in the sand.”Majok is just as fierce in her dramaturgy, unafraid of lulling “Cost of Living” audiences into a pleasurable sense of comfort only to spring on them a plot twist that makes the whole room gasp, uncertain whether the emergency onstage is real or part of the play. During the Off Broadway run at Manhattan Theater Club, she recalled, a woman got out of her seat at that moment in the performance and started moving toward the stage to help.“I found that so beautiful,” Majok said, “because to me it was like, look at how instantly we care for people.”This is the tender-tough yin and yang of Majok, who pivots to humor if she tears up, as she did in speaking about her grandfather, the same way her characters joke if they go anywhere near self-pity.Lesson in betrayal: Sharlene Cruz, left, and Jasai Chase-Owens in last year’s New York Theater Workshop production of Majok’s “Sanctuary City,” at the Lucille Lortel Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJo Bonney, the director of the Williamstown, Off Broadway and Broadway productions of “Cost of Living,” said that Majok as a playwright “is never sentimental, even when people are in dire circumstances. She has faith, I think, in human resiliency. And that’s just very powerful.”Majok, whose other plays include “Sanctuary City” (2021), about a pair of undocumented teenagers, and “Queens” (2018), set among immigrant women sharing a basement apartment, was 5 when she came to the United States from Poland. She grew up mainly in New Jersey, where her mother cleaned houses and still sometimes does on the side.“I have offered to pay her to not clean,” Majok said. “‘I will give you $75 to not clean this house.’ And she’s like, ‘Why don’t you just give me $75 and I’ll still clean the house?’ I’m like, ‘No!’ Scarcity mind-set, scarcity mind-set.”In her childhood, there was some back and forth to Poland before she and her mother became firmly rooted here. Majok feels self-imposed guilt about having chosen as an adult to remain in this country, where her mother and younger sister are, rather than return to Poland, where their extended family is.That’s one reason the markers of success that she’s accumulated — among them an undergraduate degree in 2007 from the University of Chicago, an M.F.A. in 2012 from the Yale School of Drama, the Pulitzer in 2018, the Broadway debut this month — matter to her, as validation of her writing and her life.“I feel like I’m apologizing for leaving Poland,” she said in a second interview, which she’d requested in part to elucidate this. “If you leave your family, it better be [expletive] worth it.”What’s next for the playwright? She’s in the process of adapting a couple of books into films, and collaborating on a musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby.” Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesScrupulous in her thinking, meticulous in her writing, Majok is easy with profanity. That day, sitting on a bench overlooking the Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park, near her apartment in Upper Manhattan, she wore a gold necklace that she’d taken off before the photo shoot for this article, figuring it would never make it into a published picture.From a distance its lowercase cursive looks like maybe it’s spelling out a name. On closer inspection, though, it’s one brief expletive, three times in a row — a gift from Marin Ireland, who starred in the 2016 New York premiere of “Ironbound,” Majok’s breakthrough play about a Polish immigrant much like her mother, in which variations on that word appear 68 times.In the “Cost of Living” script, the number is 77, counting an author’s note explaining that in “the Jersey mouth” — and Majok does, after all, have a Jersey mouth — the expletive in question “is often used as a comma, or as a vocalized pause, akin to the word ‘like.’”Despite lingering worries about what she calls “the [expletive] hubris” of presuming she has the luxury to turn down work, Majok lets herself be picky these days about the projects she takes on. She has said yes to adapting a couple of books into films that she’s not yet allowed to discuss, but no to assorted screen projects about “lady murders.” On her wish list? Making a film of “Cost of Living.”And while she was never a collaborator on the musical adaptation of that play, which was announced in 2018, she is collaborating on a musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” — which sounds like an odd fit until she says that she sees Jay Gatsby as a working-class character.It’s a psychology that she understands.Far more stable than when she started out, Majok still has a vigilance within — a part of her that is forever anticipating the kind of fracture that could break her life.“I feel like I’m more prepared for catastrophe,” she said. “But you never [expletive] know.” More

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      ‘Cost of Living’ Review: Worth Its Weight in Gold

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      Subtle connections bridge the worlds of two caregivers in Martyna Majok’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, making its Broadway debut.How do we connect with people? How do we care for them? And what does it all cost, both fiscally and emotionally? These are just a few of the questions Martyna Majok poses in her wrenching 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Cost of Living,” which opened on Monday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater in Manhattan.After debuting at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 2016, “Cost of Living” ran Off Broadway in 2017 in a Manhattan Theater Club production at New York City Center. Now Majok is making her Broadway debut, arriving with an impressive inventory of awards and praise for her poignant, socially conscious work, which includes “Sanctuary City” (2021) and “Ironbound” (2016).In her Pulitzer Award citation, the committee wrote that Majok “invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection.” She does this whether exploring the worlds of undocumented immigrants or working-class New Jerseyans holding on by a thread.As “Cost of Living” begins, Eddie is certainly looking for connection — and redemption, and a way out from under the specter of loneliness since his wife’s death. On this particular night, he says, he’s been stood up for a date with his dead wife, Ani. He sits on a stool center stage at a bar, a shelf of bottles adorned with multicolored string lights floating behind him.What Eddie (an affable David Zayas), a 40-something unemployed truck driver from Bayonne, N.J., leaves out in this impromptu bar eulogy to his wife are the tough times: his years of alcoholism and then a separation.From here the play, tenderly directed by Jo Bonney, jumps back in time, when Eddie and Ani are separated. It’s a few months after a devastating accident left Ani (Katy Sullivan) a quadriplegic and double amputee. Eddie wants to help with her home care; Ani, resentful and depressed, wants to be left alone.Not too far south of Bayonne, in Princeton, Jess (Kara Young) is struggling to stay above the poverty line. A recent alum of the Ivy League school, she’s nevertheless interviewing for a job as an aide to John (Gregg Mozgala), a grad student with cerebral palsy. Jess is direct but guarded when it comes to her life, and John is pretentious and calculating, though he gets Jess to open up with his knavish charm.Kara Young, left, as the caregiver to Gregg Mozgala who plays a grad student with cerebral palsy.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe play’s scenes alternate between the two stories of these caregivers, with a turntable set that rotates from Ani’s criminally beige living room and bathroom to John’s upscale, modern apartment with towering windows and a gray-tiled, sit-in shower stall. (The polished scenic design is by Wilson Chin.) Bonney’s deft negotiation of these separate settings and stories is just one of the ways “Cost of Living” impressively teeters between two main axes — the body, and the economy of its care — without toppling over.There’s a satisfying parallelism to the dynamics between the two pairs — the chemistry, the witty repartee, the heartbreak one character offers, intentionally or unintentionally, to another. Each twosome exists in their separate bubbles of Jersey life until they finally intersect. And yet Majok’s sharp writing is never predictable; even when she seems to be leading us down the path to a conventional love story, she pivots and offers an unexpected development — like a wife who sends texts from beyond the grave or a romantic invitation that turns out to be a slick power play.Bonney’s direction adds an extra layer of cohesion to the story: subtle connections that bridge the worlds, like Eddie and Jess each walking separately to the same gentle patter of rainfall on a stormy day (sound design by Rob Kaplowitz).Each of the four cast members performs with a three-dimensional pop of life. Eddie’s insistent affection and optimism is comically at odds with Ani’s dry deadpan. Sullivan’s fiery Ani speaks in a kind of poetry of insults and expletives. Young’s Jess is bright, brusque and uncompromising, even when her life is going sideways. And Mozgala portrays John as someone who is slippery, coy and clever, with a shadiness beneath.Majok’s script insists on the casting of diverse and disabled actors, helping to deepen an affecting work that readily breaks your heart, drags you through hurt and then kisses you on the forehead, sending you off with a laugh.This play left me breathless, and I’m not just using a manner of speech. As I made my way through the crowd of people exiting the theater, I took hard, shallow breaths, knowing that one deep inhale could set off a downpour of tears. This production either broke or mended something in me; I felt — brilliantly, painfully, cathartically — near the point of physical exhaustion.It seems as if the tears, the chuckles, the full body ache of feeling is the currency of an outstanding work of art. We give nearly two hours of attention, and great theater offers us empathy and humanity in return: riches of which even the world’s wealthiest can only dream.Cost of LivingThrough Oct. 30 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Manhattan; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      ‘The Collaboration,’ About Warhol and Basquiat, Plans Broadway Bow

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      The play, by Anthony McCarten, will be presented this fall by the Manhattan Theater Club, following a run earlier this year at the Young Vic in London.“The Collaboration,” a new play exploring the relationship between the painters Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, will transfer to Broadway this fall.Manhattan Theater Club, a nonprofit that operates the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway, said it would partner with the Young Vic Theater in London to present the play at the Friedman, with previews beginning Nov. 29 and an opening night scheduled for Dec. 20.The play was written by Anthony McCarten, from New Zealand, who is best known for his biographical screenplays, including the Oscar-nominated “The Theory of Everything” and “The Two Popes,” as well as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Darkest Hour.” If all goes according to plan, “The Collaboration” will be the second work by McCarten to make it to Broadway, but just barely; he has also written the book for “A Beautiful Noise,” a biographical musical about Neil Diamond that is running in Boston and is scheduled to start previews on Broadway on Nov. 2.“The Collaboration” is to star Paul Bettany (best known for playing Vision in several Marvel projects) as Warhol and Jeremy Pope (who scored two Tony nominations in a single season, for “Ain’t Too Proud” and “Choir Boy”) as Basquiat. The two are expected to reprise their roles in a film adaptation.The play (as well as the forthcoming movie) is directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of the Young Vic, where it had its premiere production this year. It opened to mixed reviews, but both actors won praise for their performances, which Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, deemed “bravura.”The play is set in 1984, when Warhol and Basquiat were working together. They both died later that decade.“The Collaboration” is the second play slated to be presented on Broadway by Manhattan Theater Club this season; it is scheduled to follow closely after “Cost of Living,” by Martyna Majok, which is expected to open at the Friedman in early October. More

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      ‘Cost of Living’ Will Come to Broadway This Fall

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      Manhattan Theater Club will stage the Martyna Majok play, which explores disability and caregiving, at its Samuel J. Friedman Theater.Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living,” a play that explores disability and caregiving and which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2018, will be staged on Broadway this fall.Manhattan Theater Club, one of the four nonprofits that operate Broadway houses, said it would stage a production of the play at its Samuel J. Friedman Theater this fall.The play has two parallel plots, one about a man with cerebral palsy and his hired caregiver, and the other about a double amputee and her estranged husband. The Pulitzer board described the play as “An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection.”Manhattan Theater Club previously staged the play, in 2017, at its Off Broadway space at New York City Center, where it won praise from the New York Times critic Jesse Green, who wrote, “If you don’t find yourself in someone onstage in ‘Cost of Living,’ you’re not looking.”The Broadway production, like the Off Broadway production, will be directed by Jo Bonney, and it will feature two of the same performers, Gregg Mozgala and Katy Sullivan.In 2018, the Williamstown Theater Festival, which staged the first production of the play, said it had commissioned a musical adaptation from Michael John LaChiusa; a Williamstown spokesman said those plans are now “on hold.” More

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      ‘Lackawanna Blues’ Review: A Soulful Master Class in Storytelling

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      Ruben Santiago-Hudson brings his tender and vibrant autobiographical show to Broadway, honoring the woman who not only raised him but also kept a cast of misfits in line.It takes a village, the saying goes. But if you’re one member of a motley crew of characters in 1950s Lackawanna, N.Y., well, then, you might say it takes a boardinghouse, and a generous woman, to keep everyone in line.That woman is Nanny, the beating heart of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s tender and vibrant autobiographical one-man show, “Lackawanna Blues,” which opened on Thursday night in a Manhattan Theater Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. It proves to be a winsome performer’s master class in storytelling, despite a few flat notes.Santiago-Hudson, who also wrote and directed the production, brings us to Lackawanna, where he grew up under the tutelage of a Ms. Rachel Crosby, the landlord and proprietor of two boardinghouses, whom everyone around town knows as “Nanny.” Don’t let the affectionate moniker fool you, though; she will calmly challenge an abusive husband and threaten to kill an unscrupulous lover for mistreating a child, all while serving up her famous Everything Soup and cornbread. In other words, she’s a tough cookie.Her party of misfits includes Numb Finger Pete, Sweet Tooth Sam, a pampered pet raccoon, and a man who was sentenced to 25 years in jail for a double homicide. In “Lackawanna Blues,” Santiago-Hudson introduces us to each of these figures, some with specific anecdotes; some in passing, as one would mention an acquaintance in a conversation; and some with little framing at all, just whatever monologue that person sees fit to deliver through him. Yet everything comes back to Nanny, easily and patiently tying everyone together.In Santiago-Hudson’s depictions of Lackawanna residents, he treats them with tenderness and empathy, even the brutal ones who did wrong, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou might think it would also take a village to animate these characters — at least 25 — for the stage, but Santiago-Hudson manages just fine on his own. Michael Carnahan’s intimate set design — a few stools and chairs and a brick backdrop meant to look like the outside of one of Nanny’s apartment buildings, all framed by a proscenium of faded wooden panels — brings the timeworn homeyness of Lackawanna to the Friedman Theater. When Santiago-Hudson first steps onto the stage, in front of the door of that Lackawanna boardinghouse, an overhead light cloaks his face in shadow; he’s just a silhouette, his rounded shoulders and slouch or straight-backed posture illustrating a rapid-fire series of transformations.This isn’t Santiago-Hudson’s first rodeo. “Lackawanna Blues” premiered Off Broadway at the Public Theater in 2001, and, four years later, was adapted for a star-studded HBO film with S. Epatha Merkerson, Hill Harper, Terrence Howard, Rosie Perez and many others. Still, seeing Santiago-Hudson take command of the Broadway stage is delightful to watch — and listen to. He slips into a slow, self-consciously genteel purr for Small Paul, a piping soprano for Mr. Lucious, and a warble and growl for Freddie Cobbs.The very first instrument we learn to use is the human voice. In “Lackawanna Blues,” Santiago-Hudson shows his expert prowess with his, which he uses to deliver music with his portrayal of the various personalities. He strings together a cadence, tone and rhythm into a piece of work that is equal parts narrative and song.Which isn’t to disregard the actual music in the production, which not only bridges the anecdotes but also maintains the brisk tempo of the show. (A beat too brisk, at times, but at 90 minutes “Lackawanna Blues,” like most of Nanny’s tenants, knows not to overstay its welcome.)The alternatively soulful and upbeat jazz music also serves as a kind of dialogue; sure, the guitarist Junior Mack expertly accompanies the text from his seat on the side of the stage, but he also converses with Santiago-Hudson — and his harmonica — without saying one word. So when Santiago-Hudson pauses to take a sip of water, Mack summons him back with a few low strums. And Santiago-Hudson returns that steady hum with the vigorous trills and whines of his harmonica, which he seems to summon out of thin air, each time creating jouncing rhythms that would make blues greats of the past shimmy in their graves.Santiago-Hudson animates at least 25 characters set against the backdrop of Michael Carnahan’s spare set design.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd after the dark times of the past year and a half, we’re overdue for some laughter. Santiago-Hudson, a merciless charmer, gamely supplies many funny moments: whether he’s recounting a prime-time-worthy brawl between Numb Finger Pete and Mr. Lemuel Taylor or speaking in the mangled vocabulary of Ol’ Po’ Carl, who praises the sights of New York, including “da Statue Delivery” and “the Entire State Building.”Though even in those moments when he emulates these Lackawanna folks — many of whom, he notes, are poor and uneducated — he doesn’t do so cruelly; he treats them with tenderness and empathy, even the brutal ones who did wrong.There are also instances of sorrow, which Santiago-Hudson fails to attack as nimbly. He pushes too hard on the emotional notes, like a scene in which a woman comes to Nanny’s in the middle of the night with her kids and bloody wounds. And by the end, he awkwardly circles around an ending that must inevitably tackle dear Nanny’s death.It always comes back to Nanny, with her stiff back and neatly folded arms; Santiago-Hudson’s rendering evokes a Cicely Tyson type, a strong Black matriarch not to be trifled with. His narrative performance is impressive for many reasons, but one of the most nuanced is the way Santiago-Hudson sees it all, as a child eavesdropping and peeking through doorways, with curious and affectionate eyes.He grounds us in the details, which brings not just these characters, but also a whole town to life: the way a woman pops her hips, the way a man coughs, even the particular tint of the Lackawanna snow. After all, people may think the blues are about heartbreak, but to get to heartbreak, you first have to pass through love.Lackawanna BluesThrough Oct. 31 at Manhattan Theater Club; 212-239-6200, manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More