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    15 Summer Theaters for That Nearby, Out-of-Town Experience

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    Easygoing days of drama and comedy are just a few hours away (or even closer) in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.Summer used to be when playgoing in the city came to a full stop. With no air-conditioning, most shows closed, at least until fall.But now that urban theater is a year-round sport, Memorial Day is more like a comma than a period. Notable productions play straight through the hot months — some even opening in August, even on Broadway.So what has happened to the regional festivals, straw-hat theaters and avant-garde outposts that once flourished as the city languished? Many are struggling. Yet others are surging.Regardless, they’re worth visiting.There’s something different about summer theater outside the city. Subways are rarely involved, though a train ride or overnight stay at a lovely inn might be. Dress is casual — by which I mean “more casual than usual” because I’ve seen people at Shakespeare in the Park in pajamas. And the fare is more varied, including not just the prestige and tourist-bait extremes of the spectrum but also the hokey, offbeat and silly stuff in between.Another plus: what you spend on that inn, you’ll save on the tickets.So here’s a selection of theater that will help you get out of the city — or at least make you feel like you did.The Big MagnetsFormerly the jewel of the summer theater circuit, famous for classics and knotty new works, the Williamstown Theater Festival, in Williamstown, Mass., is regrouping after its production model, dependent on unpaid labor, collapsed. This season includes just one fully staged production: David Ives’s detective drama, “Pamela Palmer” (starting July 23). But much more is going on, including a multigenre, multistage event called “WTF Is Next” (Aug. 1-4). Think of it not as crisis management but as a tasting platter of ideas for the future.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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      Theater to See in September 2023: ‘Ulysses,’ ‘The Pianist’ and More

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      Six shows and a fringe festival are among this month’s highlights in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and a bit beyond.Headlines about the theater industry’s troubles have been easy to find lately: layoffs, closures, shrinking audiences and seasons. The good news? There’s still a lot of theater out there.Philadelphia Fringe FestivalFringe theatergoing is a crapshoot; that’s pretty much a rule. But there is adventure to be had in plotting your way through hundreds of events, almost all of them uncurated. Circus, dance, comedy, cabaret, kids’ fare and more are part of the 27th year of this festival. Ticket prices are low, and offerings include a handful of digital shows. Sept. 7-24 at various locations in Philadelphia; phillyfringe.org‘The 12’The playwright Robert Schenkkan, a Pulitzer Prize winner for “The Kentucky Cycle,” dips into musical theater as the book writer of this show, with music by Neil Berg and lyrics by both of them. The Tony Award winner John Doyle directs this tale, which unfolds among the terrified disciples of Jesus, who have gone into hiding in the chaotic aftermath of his and Judas’s deaths. Sept. 8-Oct. 29 at the Goodspeed, East Haddam, Conn.; goodspeed.org‘Bulrusher’Jordan Tyson, left, and Robert Kellogg in rehearsals for a new production of Eisa Davis’s “Bulrusher,” a 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist.Dave TavaniDuring the pandemic shutdown of in-person theater, when the playwright Paula Vogel championed underproduced plays by staging them virtually, this linguistically inventive drama by Eisa Davis got her full-throated support, and a high-profile digital production. Here is a chance to see it live, in a McCarter Theater Center-Berkeley Repertory Theater co-production. Set in a mostly white California town in 1955, it tells the story of a clairvoyant multiracial teenager who grew up there, and whose world finds new dimensions with the arrival of a Black girl from the South. The play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007, when Vogel was on the jury. Sept. 13-Oct. 7 at the McCarter Theater Center, Princeton, N.J.; mccarter.org‘Lunar Eclipse’A deftly nuanced, easily knowing depiction of marriage won the playwright Donald Margulies the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his domestic comedy “Dinner With Friends.” Now he returns to that territory with this new play, starring Karen Allen and Reed Birney as a long-wed couple having drinks on their Midwestern farm, watching a lunar eclipse on a summer night. James Warwick directs the world-premiere production. Sept. 15-Oct. 22 at Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, Mass.; shakespeare.org‘Ulysses’Not even Elevator Repair Service, the venerable experimental troupe best known for “Gatz,” a marathon-length enactment of the full text of “The Great Gatsby,” is heedless enough to stage the whole of James Joyce’s run-on, epic masterwork about Leopold Bloom’s daylong odyssey through Dublin. Directed by John Collins, the company’s artistic director, this world-premiere production instead samples chunks from each of the novel’s 18 episodes, letting them erupt in all their verbosity, vulgarity, vivacity and — it is Joyce, after all — opacity. Co-directed by Scott Shepherd, who is also part of the seven-actor ensemble, it has an entirely reasonable projected running time: two hours and 15 minutes. Sept. 21-Oct. 1 at the Fisher Center at Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; fishercenter.bard.edu‘The Pianist’This new play with music retells the story of the musician and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose 1946 memoir of surviving the Holocaust as a Polish Jew in Warsaw was the basis for the Roman Polanski movie “The Pianist.” The director Emily Mann has adapted Szpilman’s book for the stage, with an original score by Iris Hond. Sept. 26-Oct. 22 at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, New Brunswick, N.J.; georgestreetplayhouse.org‘Lizzie’When a murder case is so notorious that it’s commemorated with a children’s rhyme, enduring curiosity about it is almost guaranteed. Cross that with the trans-Atlantic success of “Six,” and you arrive at this production: a Lizzie Borden rock musical with an all-female cast. Written by Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt, and directed by Lainie Sakakura, this show promises “to explore the historical record.” Sept. 29-Oct. 22 at TheaterWorks Hartford, Hartford, Conn.; twhartford.org More

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      ‘On Cedar Street’ Meets ‘Here You Come Again’

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      “Here You Come Again” and “On Cedar Street” are very different new musicals about people who are unmoored and seek companionship to make it through.There is little to be gained from getting overly attached to source material. When a story told first in one form is adapted into another, it becomes a different creature — in the details and sometimes the broad outlines, too. So it goes with art; so has it ever gone.And yet I ask for a special dispensation in the case of the new musical, “On Cedar Street,” onstage through Sept. 2 at the Berkshire Theater Group’s Unicorn Theater in Stockbridge, Mass. The show is inspired by Kent Haruf’s slender final novel from 2015, “Our Souls at Night,” about how two widowed, small-town neighbors, Addie and Louis, gingerly find their way into each other’s lives after she proposes a remedy for their loneliness: that they start sleeping together platonically, for conversation and companionship.The book is a quiet, gentle thing, and it takes its time, layering in the details of Addie and Louis’s pasts and presents. Each has been lonely since long before their spouses died: his marriage marred by a scandalous affair, hers numbed by the death of a child. When Addie’s young grandson, Jamie, comes to stay with her, he’s lonely at first, too, and scared of the dark.But the novel’s forlorn heart is nowhere to be found in “On Cedar Street,” which has a book by Emily Mann; music by Lucy Simon (“The Secret Garden”), who died last October, and Carmel Dean; and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. Directed by Susan H. Schulman, who staged “The Secret Garden” on Broadway, the musical presents Addie (Lauren Ward, in excellent form) and Louis (Stephen Bogardus, not quite disappearing into the role) as essentially fine with being alone, despite Addie’s comic difficulty with sleeping solo, which we witness in her toss-and-turn opening number.“I prefer the single life,” Addie and Louis sing early on, and though they’re skittish about getting romantically involved, they recognize that that’s exactly what they’re doing. Addie didn’t pick her one hot widowed neighbor for nothing. Like the middling Netflix film adaptation of the novel, starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford, this production is definitely a beautiful-people incarnation of the tale.The ache of aloneness is gone, though, and with it the sense of two people cautiously choosing each other, trying not to unduly disturb their respective ghosts. And despite a physical design that’s all patchwork and wood, evoking a kind of sun-dappled Middle America, “On Cedar Street” has mostly discarded the straitening social pressure that Addie and Louis, in the novel, are rebelling against — taunting the local gossips by choosing happiness. (The set is by Reid Thompson, projections by Shawn Edward Boyle.)“On Cedar Street” skitters along, too busy for depth. At 105 minutes, it feels both scant and overcrowded, with narrative context pared away to make space for inorganic plot lines that seem like bids for timely social resonance: one involving a dangerous drought and another a left-winger-vs.-right-winger battle between Addie’s friend Ruth (Lana Gordon) and her neighbor Lloyd (Lenny Wolpe).Ruth serves one laudable new purpose in the musical, though: urging Addie to stand up to her grown son, Gene (Ben Roseberry), who treats her abominably and gets away with it because he blames himself for the accidental death of his sister when they were children. With his pain approximately one cell beneath the surface of his skin, he is forever ready to burst into emotionally lucid song.But Jamie (Hayden Hoffman), Gene’s 8-year-old son, is missing the tender vulnerability that the story needs from the child. That isn’t the fault of the actor; a high school student, he is simply too old for the role. Jamie’s dog, Charley, is played by a sandy-furred stage veteran named Addison. (Animal direction and training are by William Berloni; Rochelle Scudder is the dog handler.)The score, which includes additional music by Deborah Abramson, is a mixed bag stylistically. Much of the music is lovely, but almost no songs get the affective underpinning from the show that would make them land with any impact. The closest it gets to poignant is “The Girl We Were,” with strings underneath Addie’s remembrance of the passionate soul she used to be. (Music direction is by Kristin Stowell.)It’s Charley, ultimately, who elicits a moment of genuine emotion toward the finish of “On Cedar Street” — an overly neat ending (albeit an improvement on the novel’s) orchestrated by way of the drought plot line. A forest fire is involved, which might seem terribly of the moment, but then again so is loneliness.This spring, the U.S. Surgeon General released a report titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, warning of the need for social connection and the dire harm that its absence can bring. Addie, Louis and Jamie are prime examples — first of the ailment, then of the cure — if only “On Cedar Street” would let them be.Kevin (Matthew Risch) and Dolly (Tricia Paoluccio) in “Here You Come Again” at Goodspeed Musicals’ Terris Theater in Chester, Conn.Diane SobolewskiLoneliness is far more top of mind in the hallucinatory new jukebox comedy “Here You Come Again,” running through Aug. 27 at Goodspeed Musicals’ Terris Theater in Chester, Conn. The mind in question is barely hanging on.Kevin (Matthew Risch), an aspiring comic, has left New York for Texas in the early, planet-on-pause days of the pandemic. In May 2020, he is isolating in the attic of his childhood home. (The set is by Anna Louizos.) Pictures of his idol, Dolly Parton, hang on the wooden walls; downstairs, his parents watch Fox News. On the verge of being officially dumped by his hedge-fund-guy boyfriend back in Manhattan, Kevin is feeling fragile.But when he wakes to find Dolly (Tricia Paoluccio) in the room with him, he is less comforted than confused.“Hey, little buddy,” she says, with the beneficence of a Tennessee guardian angel making a surprise appearance. “I’ve been keeping my eye on everyone during the pandemic, and I could feel your need for some extra help.”This phantasmic Dolly is a charmer, and in her sparkles and stilettos and butterfly sleeves, she makes sense as the hero of a pandemic musical. (Costumes are by Bobby Pearce.) The real Parton spent the spring of 2020 donating to coronavirus research and reading bedtime stories to children online. The Dolly here is similarly generous, singing more than a dozen numbers: “Love Is Like a Butterfly,” “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and other hits. (The music director is Eugene Gwozdz.)Paoluccio, who wrote the musical’s book with Bruce Vilanch and the show’s director-choreographer, Gabriel Barre, is a fun, fluid Dolly, bubbly and confiding. Because this Dolly exists in Kevin’s imagination, she doesn’t have to match the real one precisely, but she is close enough. One caveat: Paoluccio goes distractingly hard on Dolly’s sometime tendency to pronounce “s” like “sh.”It is Kevin’s story, though, and its telling needs more balancing and tightening. Unmoored from the life he’d been living and the home he’d made before the world abruptly got small, he is awash in self-pity — an unappealing quality when humor isn’t there to buoy it. The show also needs grounding in a reality outside the attic, to give it the emotional gravity it wants; the offstage voice of Kevin’s mother (Risch) could provide that if she were played straight rather than as a caricature.In its current state, “Here You Come Again” is unpolished, but Parton’s music makes it an easy good time. That, and Dolly’s company — even if we’re imagining her, too.Here You Come AgainThrough Aug. 27 at the Terris Theater, Chester, Conn.; goodspeed.org. Running time: 2 hours.On Cedar StreetThrough Sept. 2 at the Unicorn Theater, Stockbridge, Mass.; berkshiretheatregroup.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      Netflix’s “13” Brings Back Memories For Its Stage Cast

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      For the creators and cast of the 2008 musical “13,” a new Netflix adaptation brings back memories — theatrical and hormonal.It’s one thing to wrangle a few Von Trapp kids. Some Matildas. A Gavroche or two.But a baker’s dozen of newly minted teenagers, raging hormones and all, packed into a handful of dressing rooms backstage in a Broadway theater? And aside from the crew, the musical director — and, yes, three child wranglers — no adults in sight?This was the great experiment of “13,” the 2008 coming-of-age musical both about and performed by a group of kids going through one of the more chaotically vulnerable stages of life. The show, about a 13-year-old named Evan juggling his parents’ divorce, his upcoming bar mitzvah and a seemingly life-shattering move from New York to the middle of Indiana, was not just a test in managing this particular company — an all-teen cast and band — but in finding exactly what the audience appetite was for a work that sat squarely in the limbo between Disney and “Spring Awakening.”Adult reviewers were lukewarm — though, to be fair, the 14-year-old companion of the New York Times critic Ben Brantley found it to be “pretty good” — and “13” closed three months after opening night, one of numerous Broadway casualties during the recession.But in the years since, the show, with music by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, has found renewed life in schools — and now on Netflix, where a new generation of tweens have picked up the mantle with a film adaptation that began streaming on Friday.Most of the original cast members are now in their late 20s. They’ve graduated from having adolescent showmances to planning their weddings. Some are still acting or directing or choreographing, on TV and Broadway and elsewhere; others have left the business entirely.And one actress — Ariana Grande, making her Broadway debut as the gossip-prone, flip-phone-wielding Charlotte — has become a bona fide pop supernova.Ahead of the film’s release, members of that cast, band, creative team and production crew looked back on their memories of the show — in conversation with a reporter who, years earlier, at age 11, happened to be sitting in the audience of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater to see “13,” her first Broadway musical. Here are edited excerpts from our discussions.A book editor at Scholastic reached out to Jason Robert Brown to see if he would be interested in brainstorming a new project: an original musical that would also tie into a new book series. The collaboration eventually fell through, but not before Brown thought up a pitch: a story about young teenagers that would become the framework for “13.”JASON ROBERT BROWN (music and lyrics) Dan Elish had seen me do an interview where I said I really wanted to do a show with a bunch of dancing teenagers. We were doing “Parade” in the same season as “Footloose,” and people didn’t respond to “Parade” very well when it came out — it’s very heavy. I got the sense that we were spending the whole season competing against dancing teenagers.DAN ELISH (book) He was kidding, you know? But I had just had this young adult novel come out, about two eighth grade boys in New York. Maybe I was the guy to write the Great Dancing Teenager Musical.BROWN Dan sent me a copy of his novel. And I liked it, but I didn’t think it was a musical. But I said, “If you’re into working on something with me, I do have this idea that I came up with once about a show with nothing but 13-year-olds in it.” And Dan said, “Sure, that sounds fun.”The musical premiered in 2007 at Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. As the show’s producers set their sights on Broadway, the writer Robert Horn and the director Jeremy Sams joined the creative team and started searching for their New York cast.JEREMY SAMS (director) We saw hundreds of kids in New York and L.A. from all over the place. It was absolutely obvious, the more kids we saw, who we should have in our show. When Ariana Grande turns up, and Liz Gillies and Allie Trimm and Graham [Phillips], it’s quite clear. I’ll never forget when Ariana sang to me and Jason. BROWN At the end of the opening number, there are four scat solos. And I remember a day [in rehearsal] with everyone going around the piano and just improvising, and some of them clearly were like, I have no idea how to improvise a solo. And some of them were Ariana Grande.Ariana Grande, left, with Williams, Phillips and Chris Raymond during the opening night curtain call. Walter McBride/Corbis, via Getty ImagesARIANA GRANDE (Charlotte) Working with Jason is the ultimate master class — not only in musicianship, but his storytelling and creativity, his problem solving. I remember him leaving the room whenever they felt something was missing and coming back 30 minutes later with a brand-new brilliant song.AARON SIMON GROSS (Archie) I was simultaneously working and star-struck at virtually all times.ELIZABETH GILLIES (Lucy) Ariana and I joke about it a lot, because she was so social and making friends with everyone. And I was so hard core back then when I first started auditioning that I just kind of tucked away into a corner. I was so determined to book this role that I didn’t want to talk to anyone until we started the reading process.BRYNN WILLIAMS (Cassie) All of our pressure was self-inflicted. We wanted to do well because we wanted to prove that we were capable. But there wasn’t any outside pressure at all; they did a fantastic job of treating us like professionals while also being aware that we were teenagers.BROWN A lot of them had done more Broadway shows than I had. And my feeling was, look, I’ve written some hard music, but I know it’s possible. I wasn’t going to simplify it for them unless they couldn’t do it. But let’s find out first. And they all rose to it.ROBERT HORN (book) It was so interesting to see that divide between the incredible work ethic that they had at such a young age, and the talent and commitment they bring to it — and the next moment they’re running off and getting into trouble. And you realize that they’re kids.Case in point: an out-of-town tryout in the summer of 2008 at Goodspeed Musicals in Chester, Conn.BROWN In the middle of July or August or whatever it was, we just let loose 20 kids on this little town in Connecticut, all living in the same house. They were 13 years old; they were a bunch of punks.GILLIES The closest thing we had to entertainment was the pizzeria, a graveyard and the woods.EAMON FOLEY (Richie) It was summer camp with the most talented kids in the world. Like wildly creative children who, one half of the day, had this really sick show being built on their talents, and then the other half of the day were running through the woods and smoking weed out of Gatorade bottles.HORN Someone got caught with a joint. I’m not going to mention names.Through the Goodspeed run, and even as performances began on Broadway in September 2008, the show was constantly changing.HORN We were writing it with those kids. They were giving us the authenticity. I can bring my humor and storytelling, but I was never a 14-year-old girl.DELANEY MORO (Kendra) They were so good at giving us agency to share our ideas, and they would pick up on things that we said or did and try to write it in.GRAHAM PHILLIPS (Evan) New jokes were being put in and taken out. Depending on how the audience reacted, I’d put up one of five fingers [onstage, directed at Horn in the audience]. If it was really bad, I’d put up a crooked index finger. That was like the equivalent of a trombone womp, womp.From left: the composer Jason Robert Brown, the book co-writer Robert Horn and Phillips, the musical’s leading (young) man.via Robert HornBROWN I put in a big finale of the first act at Goodspeed — my idea was a James Brown soul revue kind of thing. That lasted one performance. But on Broadway, we had a whole Dance Dance Revolution number that replaced it.HORN At one point, the girls came out in these background-singer sparkly dresses, and then all these Dance Dance Revolution machines came out — and poor Graham Phillips, who was phenomenal, was not a dancer.ALLIE TRIMM (Patrice) We spent hours teching it so that we had the Dance Dance Revolution arrows lighting up to match with our choreography.The actors weren’t the only teenagers onstage.BROWN We also had a band that was entirely kids. So that was a whole other level of crazy — of course, that’s the kind of crazy that I most enjoyed, the kid musicians.TOM KITT (musical director) They were just a joy. They were game for anything. The band was onstage and I, of course — the one adult — was hidden by scenery.CHARLIE ROSEN (swing bass, guitar and percussion) We were kids — we had shortcomings, you know? We weren’t the greatest sight readers. But Jason didn’t dumb down any of his writing. We really had to step up and become professional musicians way earlier than even kids in college might really understand — things that they don’t teach in music school, like showing up on time and rehearsal etiquette and how to follow your music director.GRANDE I think it is safe to say that all of us quickly developed the discipline and stamina that we’d have for the rest of our careers doing eight shows a week as young teenagers, even just vocally alone.For the cast, backstage was often more dramatic than the show itself.PHILLIPS I was sharing a dressing room with Eric Nelsen [playing Brett], who was dating Liz at the time, who was sharing a dressing room with Ariana, who I was dating at the time.BROWN Robert really got into the gossip.HORN Somebody would be going out with somebody, and then a few days later, they’d be going out with somebody else.PHILLIPS I remember a lot of sneaking around. I became more acquainted with the nooks and crannies of the Jacobs Theater than probably anybody else. One of the wranglers was really good at finding me.TRIMM Everyone was figuring out their sexuality and finding themselves. And I think everybody was kind of going through such a massive awakening of who we are as people, which is kind of a funny, beautiful parallel to the show.Eli Golden, center, is Evan in the Netflix movie, which includes adult actors and some new songs.Alan Markfield/NetflixBut in some ways, when “13” closed in January 2009, it still wasn’t finished. Brown and Horn spent six months tearing the show apart and revising the version that would be licensed in schools for community theater productions.BROWN I always loved “Brand New You,” at the end of the show. And I remember watching it one night, maybe somewhere toward the end of the run, and thinking this is what the whole show was supposed to have been, as far as this audience is concerned. A lot of exactly what I started saying: It should have been teenagers dancing. It should have been this sort of kinetic rock-concert sort of thing. And instead, over the course of developing it, it had become very personal and very intimate.GILLIES The audiences [at Goodspeed] were so receptive, and our theater was very quaint. By the time we got to Broadway, it was a whole other animal. It’s a very large stage for a very intimate, small show.BROWN We had invited a whole bunch of kids to the dress rehearsal, and it was a very young and a very rowdy audience. I just remember the shrieks that the show got that night. I called my wife and I said, “I think we have a hit.” And I was so wrong. But I wish I could have just frozen the show that night, because that feeling was exactly what I wanted. More

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      Museum of Broadway in Times Square Sets New Opening Date

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      The first institution dedicated to the history of the Great White Way and the artistry of its shows and theaters plans to welcome visitors next summer.After multiple delays, the first museum dedicated to telling the storied history of Broadway shows is now expected to open its doors next summer in the heart of the theater district.The Museum of Broadway, described as an interactive and immersive experience, was originally scheduled to debut in 2020. But its founders, Julie Boardman, a four-time Tony nominated producer, and Diane Nicoletti, founder of Rubik Marketing, said the project was delayed by the pandemic.“We really thought it would be this great idea that was a hybrid of both an experiential museum that’s very interactive and colorful and fun,” Nicoletti said in an interview, “as well as making sure that we were really getting the integrity of the history of Broadway, by including costumes and artifacts and historic elements as well.”The museum, at 145 West 45th Street, next door to the Lyceum Theater, will have three sections: The first, a map room, will lay out the migration of the city’s theaters from the financial district to Union Square, Herald Square and then, eventually, Times Square.The second area will be a timeline, stretching from Broadway’s birth in the mid-18th century to classic book musicals and follies to shows currently running onstage. Opening-night telegrams, lyric sketches and handwritten pieces of sheet music have been obtained with the help of the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Along the timeline there will be installations created by visual artists and Broadway designers — think vibrant murals or interactive augmented reality experiences — that will explore some of the most important and influential shows. A room at the end of this section will highlight the shows playing on Broadway at that moment, and examine some of the 41 theaters that make up Broadway.A stage door will open into a backstage that deconstructs the making of a Broadway show. This last area is intended to honor the professionals — both onstage and off, actors and not — who ensure the shows go on.“It really paints the picture of how that all comes to be, and then honors all of the brilliant, talented creatives, and people who bring that to life,” said Boardman, one of the producer’s of a revival of “Company” this season.The Museum of Broadway was founded in collaboration with Playbill, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, Concord Theatricals and Goodspeed Musicals. Tickets are expected to go on sale next year.“With Covid, and the industry being completely shut down, we’re really excited to be able to open our doors to everyone” next summer, Boardman said. More

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      Theater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape Rooms

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape RoomsThe past year has made us rethink the boundaries between theater and film. Many of these shows are a little bit of both.From left, Vicki Lee Taylor, Tom Bales, Marc Pickering, Ryan Pidgen and Kayleigh Thadani in a musical adaptation of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” at the Southwark Playhouse in London.Credit…Geraint LewisMarch 3, 2021It used to be easy to tell theater from film from streaming. The first was live, physical and by appointment; the others were not. But this past year has made us rethink definitions: Theater is not necessarily live or physical anymore, and film might be a little bit of both.Qui Nguyen, who is taking part in the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival. Credit…Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesIf anybody knows how to straddle the physical and virtual, it’s the playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen. On March 10, Nguyen, the author of the hit show “She Kills Monsters,” will participate in a Q. and A. for the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival — which will present over 30 pieces by theatermakers exploring new mediums. March 10-14; newohiotheatre.orgThe Young Vic in London inadvertently anticipated this change a few years ago by beginning to make digital companions to some of its shows, with crackerjack casts. Happily, they’re online for free. Directed by and starring Gillian Anderson, “The Departure” imagines Blanche DuBois in the few days before her fateful visit to Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Juliet Stevenson appears in “Mayday,” a postscript to Beckett’s “Happy Days”; while Hattie Morahan gives us a contemporary “Nora” in Carrie Cracknell and Nick Payne’s update of “A Doll’s House.” If you like Peter Brook jokes — and you well might if you are reading a column about theater — click on the dryly funny “The Roof,” whose cast includes Natalie Dormer, Noma Dumezweni, Jude Law and Ian McKellen as fans of the illustrious director. youngvic.org‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’During the past year, the Southwark Playhouse in London has emerged as a dynamic force in British theater, not letting lockdowns get in the way of new shows. After its well-received production of Philip Ridley’s “The Poltergeist,” Southwark is presenting the premiere of Richard Hough and Ben Morales Frost’s gender-flipped — and very, very loose — musical adaptation of the Goethe poem about a young inventor (now a girl, played by Mary Moore) who gets lost in magic. Through March 14; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk‘To the Moon’It’s unfortunate that Kathryn Grody has a lower professional profile than her husband, Mandy Patinkin, because she is a very fine actress in her own right. Here is a chance to watch her in action through the Creede Repertory Theater, a Colorado-based company with which Grody and Patinkin have a long history. She is slated to appear in Beth Kander’s docu-play about survivors of domestic violence. Live on March 5 and 6, then on demand March 15 through April 11; creederep.orgKathleen Chalfant, the star of “The Year of Magical Thinking.”Credit…Marc Deliz‘The Year of Magical Thinking’The pandemic has seen a surge in solo shows, for obvious reasons. Joan Didion’s adaptation of her memoir was a Broadway hit in 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Now, Kathleen Chalfant tackles this haunting evocation of grief in a fund-raiser for the Keen Company. March 13-17; keencompany.orgFrom left, Saffron Coomber, Clare Perkins and Adelle Leonce in “Emilia.”Credit…Helen Murray‘Emilia’A recording of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s “chiaroscuro fantasy of a bio-play,” as The New York Times put it last year, is available again. The Olivier Award-winning comedy is set in the Elizabethan theater scene, where men played women — except here women play the men playing the women, opening up a whole bunch of new opportunities. Through March 31; emilialive.comMax Chernin, center, in “Passing Through.”Credit…Diane Sobolewski‘Passing Through’Goodspeed, a company in Connecticut, is among the greatest champions of American musicals old and new, and it has finally set up an on-demand arm to offer archival recordings of its past productions. The first is this capture of the 2019 developmental production of Brett Ryback and Eric Ulloa’s show about a young man (Max Chernin) who walks from Pennsylvania to California. March 15 through April 4; goodspeed.orgTwo Playwrights Go CampingFood for Thought Productions continues its run at Theater 80 St. Marks with a double bill that should be catnip to connoisseurs of theatrical camp. The program includes the Tennessee Williams one-act comedy “Lifeboat Drill,” set on the Queen Elizabeth II, and Christopher Durang’s “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,” a wicked parody of “The Glass Menagerie” in which Laura becomes Lawrence, who collects glass swizzle sticks. Durang and the actress Carroll Baker are expected to turn up for a post-show Q. and A. March 8 and 13-14; foodforthoughtproductions.comPhoebe Hyder in “Dream.”Credit…Stuart Martin, via RSCInteractive ExperiencesAfter its concert of the 1930s Broadway flop “Swingin’ the Dream,” the Royal Shakespeare Company is involved in another experiment inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” A multimedia, choose-your-own-narrative, high-concept show — in other words, it’s unclear how this will look — “Dream” is led by Puck and the Sprites and involves motion-capture technology, as well as a score including the Gestrument, an app that allows for composition through movement. March 12-20; dream.onlineThe New York-based playwright Aya Ogawa’s 2015 play “Ludic Proxy” dealt with virtual reality and incorporated polling. And now Ogawa has adapted part of it for the new “Ludic Proxy: Fukushima,” presented by the Japan Society and PlayCo, with the audience polling conducted online. Live on March 6, 7 and 11, then on-demand March 12-26; japansociety.orgBathsheba Piepe in “Plymouth Point.”Credit…Matt HassThe London Stone TrilogySwamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones (of Punchdrunk, the immersive-theater company behind “Sleep No More”) have created a tripartite project that is not so much theater as theatrical experience — think virtual escape room, but with actor Dominic Monaghan. In “Plymouth Point,” you and your friends must unravel a sprawling, maleficent conspiracy by summoning all your combined wits and the internet’s resources to crack passwords, solve riddles and search social media. (Full disclosure: My bumbling team put on a display of pitiful detective skills. Who would have thought watching hundreds of hours of cop shows could be so useless?) The next installments, “The Mermaid’s Tongue” and “The Kindling Hour,” will be available in the United States soon. You can already do the British versions; but they are live, so just keep the time difference in mind. plymouthpoint.co.ukAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More