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    Eboni Booth on Winning the Drama Pulitzer for ‘Primary Trust’

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    This play about a lonely, emotionally damaged man resonated with audiences returning to the theater after the pandemic.Eboni Booth dreamed up the story that became “Primary Trust” for a school assignment. She was a playwriting fellow at Juilliard, and she decided to write about a guy who works at a bank. At the time, she drank mai tais, and soon, so did her protagonist.That play, which she drafted in 2019 and which was first staged last year, won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama on Monday. The judges praised it as “a simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.”The play, set in a fictional small town outside Rochester, N.Y., and starring William Jackson Harper (“The Good Place”), was staged Off Broadway by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company. The first West Coast production is scheduled for this fall at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.“I wrote about being hungry for connection, and then I got so much connection through the production, and that was very meaningful,” Eboni Booth said of the response to her work.Booth, 43, grew up in the Bronx and now lives in Queens; she had a previous play, “Paris,” staged in New York in 2020, and she has also worked as an actress. She talked about “Primary Trust” on Monday afternoon, shortly after learning that she had won the prestigious award.These are edited excerpts from the interview.For those of our readers who didn’t get to see it, what is “Primary Trust” about?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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      A Starry Cast Navigates ‘Uncle Vanya’ and ‘Every Emotion Under the Sun’

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      Steve Carell, William Jackson Harper, Alison Pill and Anika Noni Rose discuss the new translation of Chekhov that brought them to the farm.Broadway shows usually come with a back story about the yearslong slog it took to get them there. Not so with Heidi Schreck’s new translation of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” which arrived at Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont Theater not even 12 months after its inception.Directed by Lila Neugebauer, it is Schreck’s first Broadway show since “What the Constitution Means to Me,” in 2019, and the ensemble is a starry one. Steve Carell is making his Broadway debut as Vanya, who believes he has wasted his life running a provincial estate and its farm alongside his niece, Sonia, played by Alison Pill, to support Sonia’s largely absentee father, portrayed by Alfred Molina.William Jackson Harper, best known for “The Good Place,” plays Astrov, the eco-nerd doctor whom Sonia loves. Anika Noni Rose, a Tony Award winner for “Caroline, or Change,” is the glamorous Elena, Sonia’s stepmother, for whom both Vanya and Astrov yearn.In mid-April, a week before the show’s opening on April 24, Schreck, Neugebauer, Carell, Harper, Pill and Rose gathered to talk over their dinner break in a room off the Beaumont lobby. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Along with Harper and Carell, both at left, the play also features Alfred Molina, Jayne Houdyshell and Mia Katigbak in supporting roles.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhat was your relationship to “Uncle Vanya” and Chekhov before this show?HEIDI SCHRECK I lived in Russia right out of college for two years. When I moved back to Seattle, I started this theater company with my husband, and there was this Russian company who would come and perform Russian plays. They invited me to be the translator. Basically I would do live interpretation.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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      Review: Steve Carell as the 50-Year-Old Loser in a Comic ‘Uncle Vanya’

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      Sleek, lucid, amusing, often beautiful, it’s Chekhov with everything, except the main thing.Why is it called “Uncle Vanya”? All the man does is mope, mope harder, try to do something other than moping, fail miserably and mope some more.You can’t blame him. Vanya has spent most of his nearly 50 years scraping thin profit from a provincial estate, and not even for himself. The money he makes, running the farm with his unmarried niece, goes to support life in the city for his fatuous, gouty sort-of-ex-brother-in-law, an art professor who “knows nothing about art.” Also, Vanya is hopelessly in love with the old man’s exquisitely languorous young wife, who, reasonably enough, finds the moper pathetic.In short, he is the opposite of the bold, laudable characters most writers of the late 1890s would name a play for. That’s probably just why Chekhov did it, announcing a new kind of protagonist for a new kind of drama. Life in his experience having turned squalid and absurd, he could no longer paint it for audiences as heroic. So how could his protagonist be a hero?The “Uncle Vanya” that opened on Wednesday at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, its 10th Broadway revival in 100 years, sees Chekhov’s epochal bet and raises it. If Vanya is properly no hero in this amusing but rarely deeply affecting production, it’s because he’s no one at all. He despairs and disappears.That would seem to be quite a trick, given that he’s played by Steve Carell, the star of “The Office” and, perhaps more relevantly, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Carell’s Vanya imports from those appearances the weaselly overeagerness that makes you roll your eyes at him while also worrying about his mental health. He makes jokes that aren’t. He gets excited over all the wrong things. Rain coming? He called it.Without a camera trained on such a man, you quickly learn to ignore him, as you would in real life. Indeed, in Lila Neugebauer’s sleek, lucid staging, you barely notice Vanya even as he makes his first entrance, hidden behind a bench. When he speaks you don’t pay much more attention; in Heidi Schreck’s smooth, faithful yet colloquial new version, his first words, naturally, are complaints. “Ever since the professor showed up with his spouse,” he says, with a bitterly sarcastic spin on the last word, “my life has been total chaos.”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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      in Television

      Steve Carell to Make Broadway Debut as Uncle Vanya Next Spring

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      The production, a new translation by Heidi Schreck, will also star Alison Pill, William Jackson Harper, Alfred Molina and Anika Noni Rose.Steve Carell, the screen actor best known for his breakout role as a blundering boss in the NBC comedy “The Office,” will make his Broadway debut in a revival of the Chekhov classic “Uncle Vanya.”Carell will lead a cast of television, film and stage veterans in the production, which is to begin performances April 2 and to open April 24 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a Broadway house at the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater.“Uncle Vanya” is a dark Russian drama, first performed in 1899, about a rural family whose dreary but stable routine is disrupted when the property’s long-absent owner, a retired professor, comes to visit with his new, and much younger, wife. The play has been staged and adapted many times — this will be the 11th production on Broadway — and this iteration will be based on a new translation by Heidi Schreck, whose previous Broadway venture, an autobiographical show called “What the Constitution Means to Me,” is expected to be the most-staged play at U.S. theaters this season (not counting those by Shakespeare and Dickens).Carell, who played a regional manager in “The Office,” will also play a manager in “Uncle Vanya.” His character is the country estate’s long-suffering administrator (and the brother of the professor’s first wife); he oversees the property with a niece, Sonya, who will be played by Alison Pill, who last appeared on Broadway in a revival of “Three Tall Women” and was a Tony Award nominee for “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” They will be joined by William Jackson Harper, an alumnus of the NBC comedy “The Good Place” who this year wowed Off Broadway audiences with his starring role in “Primary Trust”; he will play Astrov, the local doctor.Alfred Molina (a three-time Tony nominee, for “Red,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Art”) will play the professor, while Anika Noni Rose (a Tony winner for “Caroline, or Change”) will play the professor’s wife. Jayne Houdyshell (a Tony winner for “The Humans”) will play Vanya’s mother, and Mia Katigbak (an Obie winner for “Awake and Sing!”) will portray a household nurse.“Uncle Vanya” is being directed by Lila Neugebauer, who is also directing a Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play “Appropriate,” which is scheduled to open next month. More

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      William Jackson Harper Needed to Do ‘Primary Trust’

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      The longtime New York actor explains why his character in Eboni Booth’s play about a lonely bookstore worker is closer to him than any other he’s taken on.When Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust” begins, William Jackson Harper stands alone onstage. His weight shifts from foot to foot; his fingers knead the air. He is smiling, but that smile looks as though it comes from a place of pain.Harper (“The Good Place,” “Love Life”) plays Kenneth, a 38-year-old bookstore employee unmoored when the store closes. A play about loss, loneliness and the hope of connection, “Primary Trust,” which runs through July 2 at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater, is also a shrewd and gentle vehicle for Harper’s particular gifts — vulnerability, thoughtfulness, emotional lability. There are few actors who can better convey the awkwardness, the messiness and the unanticipated joy of being alive.On a recent Monday morning, at a colorful cafe near his home in Brooklyn, Harper, 43, provided an offstage illustration. His matcha had slopped onto one of his tan suede loafers. “I’ve ruined these shoes,” he said as he studied the green stain. And then, after a pause, “Or maybe I’ll just look like a painter.”Harper and April Matthis in the play “Primary Trust” at the Laura Pels Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHarper, who spent a dozen years Off and Off Off Broadway before making the move to television, tends to get nervous in interviews. And he was nervous here, too — the veins in his forehead were pulsing. But he persevered. He is an artist who wears his heart on his sleeve. And under it, too: On his left arm was a tattoo of the cottonwood tree that stood in his grandmother’s yard. (“It reminds me of a time when everybody was alive,” he said.) Over tea he discussed the appeal of returning to theater and the lessons that the play can offer. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.When did you know that you wanted to be an actor?My mom made me take these theater classes in middle school. Because I was pretty shy. My mom was like, “We’ve got to work on that.” So I started taking these theater classes. Acting was the only thing that I was actually pretty good at.Did it make you less shy?Maybe it made me better at pretending. And I felt there was finally some place to put my feelings. I didn’t really have an outlet. Being loud and being onstage expelled some of the stuff that was bugging me.You spent a decade working in New York theater. But I understand that before you booked “The Good Place,” you almost quit acting?I was doing OK. I had some really good roles in some really good projects. Stuff that I was proud of. Like getting to do “All the Way” on Broadway. Doing “Placebo” at Playwrights Horizons, the “Total Bent” at the Public. But God forbid my mom gets sick. God forbid I get really sick. Just the uncertainty of the day-to-day, month-to-month, paycheck to paycheck nature of it was a little too much. Like, I’m in my mid 30s. I’d like to be just a little more stable. So I was like, I don’t think I want to do this anymore.Harper and Kristen Bell in NBC’s “The Good Place.”Colleen Hayes/NBCHow did TV feel different?There’s no rehearsal, which is wild, you just memorize your lines and then you go. And it’s a hell of a lot harder to keep your concentration because people are in the room with you — people looking at the monitors five feet away. You can’t suspend your disbelief at all. And since there is no audience reaction, you’re just like, Am I doing OK? But they pay you way better. They also feed you, which is amazing. And the fact that you get to do stuff over and over and over again is kind of nice. Because eventually through that repetition, something unlocks.Why do you keep coming back to theater?I just love it. I also feel like it expands my tool kit when it comes to just being an actor, because when you want something to change and you want something to go differently, it means that you have to shift your thinking and open yourself up. And I like being in charge of the whole ride. Once I’m doing a run of a play and just getting to stay in it, rather than only doing a minute at a time and then resetting, it’s easier to feel like I’m fully inhabiting a character. Because there’s no start and stop, you just go.How did “Primary Trust” come to you?Eboni and I had done some shows together, hung out socially. She was doing a workshop at the Roundabout and was like, “Hey, would you want to do this?” She sent me the script, and I had an emotional reaction to it immediately. The character of Kenneth is closer to me as a person than anyone I’ve played. And there’s things that character says that I’ve said in my life. That’s never happened to me before. I needed to do this play. I just needed to, I was going to be upset if I didn’t. Because I really felt like I just understood this character really, really deeply.“The character of Kenneth is closer to me as a person than anyone I’ve played,” Harper said. “There’s things that character says that I’ve said in my life.”Olivia Galli for The New York TimesWho is Kenneth?Kenneth is a 38-year-old who’s led a very small, isolated life out of self-preservation. He loses his job and has to be open to people in a way that he isn’t ready for. It’s all brand-new to him. This is a guy who found a way to make things work and to not get hurt. Now he has to risk really getting hurt and really making a mess.How did you find your way into Kenneth?Him being a foster child feels like a significant piece of things. I didn’t want to go asking people, Hey, do you know anyone who was raised in foster care? That would have felt really terrible and callous. But I watched a lot of documentaries about people that had been in the foster system. Then there’s a big traumatic loss early on in his life that shapes how he moves through the world. I lost my dad when I was really young. And there’s a thing Kenneth says about this one babysitter who tries to tell him that everything is going to be OK. He hates that. And I hate it, too. I’m like, “No! You don’t know that, the worst can happen.” Leaning into those feelings that I’ve had for a long time, that helped. Then there is the discomfort that I have just moving through the world, just going ahead and letting it be out there.Well, I’m skeptical of artists who are comfortable.I was just thinking about that on my run: People who feel certain and comfortable all the time, I’m like, Oh, man, what knowledge are you unencumbered by? Like, wow, it must be so nice to just not know and not care.Is there a lesson in this play?One is that you don’t know what people are carrying around. So be nice, be kind. And it shows that even if everything’s not OK, it might be OK. I know that sounds goofy. But as much as there’s a chance that things could all go to [expletive], there’s just as much of a chance it could work out. More

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      ‘Primary Trust’ Review: Sipping Mai Tais, Until Bitter Reality Knocks

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      In Eboni Booth’s new play, William Jackson Harper performs with astonishing vulnerability as a man alone and adrift.Maybe you’ve seen him tucked into the corner of a dive bar, muttering to himself now and then, empty glasses multiplying on his table. And perhaps you’ve thought — though, it’s just as likely you haven’t — What’s up with that guy?In “Primary Trust,” the playwright Eboni Booth zooms in on one such man: He lives in a fictional suburb of Rochester, N.Y., where mai tais are his drink of choice at an unlikely tiki bar named Wally’s. He is alone and adrift in this tender, delicately detailed portrait, though surely he has not always been. Listen, and he’ll tell you about the moment he almost drowned and how he learned to keep his head above water.“Primary Trust,” which opened at the Laura Pels Theater in Manhattan on Thursday, finds Kenneth (William Jackson Harper, of “The Good Place”) approaching 40 when the bookstore where he’s worked for 20 years closes shop. (The owner, played by Jay O. Sanders, needs cash for surgery.) But Kenneth has never found a job on his own; social workers helped him get his current one some years after he was orphaned.Much of this back story Kenneth relays himself, addressing the audience, in the director Knud Adams’s graceful production for Roundabout Theater Company, from what resembles a miniaturized model of a provincial square. (The scaled-down set is by Marsha Ginsberg, and the elegant lighting is by Isabella Byrd.) In 15 years, Kenneth explains, all this will be leveled and replaced by condominiums. The municipal motto — “Welcome Friend, You’re Right on Time!” — feels laden with uncertain melancholy: It could be a salutation from the threshold of death.Harper, right, with Jay O. Sanders and April Matthis, who, our critic writes, turn small roles into four-course meals.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMordant subtext and typically empty sentiments are among the ways Booth demonstrates that language can convey deep pain one minute and ring utterly hollow the next, usually in the service of capitalism. In contrast to Kenneth’s confessional narration are the rote greetings of a carousel of servers at Wally’s (all played by April Matthis, including one who becomes a fast and flirtatious friend) and the sales pitches Kenneth later lobs at customers (also played by Matthis) after he lands a teller position at a local bank. (“Primary Trust” doubles as the name of Kenneth’s new employer, and an abbreviated metaphor for what was lost when his mother died.)As in her superstore dark comedy “Paris,” presented by Atlantic Theater Company in 2020, Booth again probes the half-dread of working-class Black characters in a one-freeway-exit corner of the Northeast. And though Kenneth’s Blackness is an underlying aspect of his experience, it is not the acute source of his alienation. His foundational trauma, and his longtime coping mechanisms, are gradually revealed (early on it becomes clear that Bert, his near-constant companion played by Eric Berryman, is imaginary), and he begins to reach through the cracks of his isolation to discover good, decent people.Harper, who is onstage for nearly all of the production’s 95 minutes, performs with astonishing ease and vulnerability, particularly given the depths he is asked to plumb in monologues directly to the audience; he lends the currents flowing through Kenneth’s interior life extraordinary subtlety and immediacy. Booth’s one-man study is wonderfully vivid, but there’s only so much emotional engagement that the unburdening of feelings, rather than their enactment or discovery, can inspire. Her other characters are far more loosely sketched: Sanders and Matthis turn small roles, rich with concise, sideways detail, into four-course meals, paradoxically making them feel underused.The production’s play on perspective and proportion, with people as tall as buildings, enhance the undertones in Booth’s work that question who, and what, we pay attention to and why. Do New Yorkers, for example, who Kenneth remarks “step over human beings sleeping in the street,” think about places like this, or about why someone might be drinking for two at happy hour and talking to no one?Throughout the production a bell, like the ones that summon unseen workers from behind service counters, dings repeatedly, sometimes seemingly incessantly, variously marking the reset or passage of time. It feels like a disruption — an unexplained and overused device that interrupts the flow of life. Maybe it’s actually a wake up call, and not just for the man who’s been living in a daze.Primary TrustThrough July 2 at the Laura Pels Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      in Movies

      ‘We Broke Up’ Review: Breaking Up Is Hard to Watch

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      A longtime couple tries to keep their fractured relationship a secret during a family wedding in this melancholic romantic comedy.When the melancholic romantic comedy “We Broke Up” opens, Lori (Aya Cash) and Doug (William Jackson Harper) have been a couple for 10 years. They live together, they still laugh at each other’s jokes. But when Doug asks Lori to marry him, she throws up on the spot. This is the beginning of their end as a couple.The problem for this pair — besides their suddenly strained communication, their differing expectations for a long-term future and the fact that their stable relationship has now reached its breaking point — is the timing of this heartbreak. Lori’s sister Bea is getting married in a few days, and both Lori and Doug are included in the wedding party. The pair agree to attend the wedding and keep their separation a secret from family and friends.The director Jeff Rosenberg tries to maintain a balance between the comedic shenanigans of bachelorette games and rehearsal dinners, and the pain of breaking up. But secondary characters, like Lori’s family members or the fellow wedding attendees, are sketched in a way that leaves them overly broad. Lori and Doug’s smiles through gritted teeth don’t exactly cue the audience to relax into a good time.The film is tense through scenes that might have been funny and maudlin when addressing the emotional stakes for the former couple. The overwhelming impression is that of shrillness. It’s a tone that might be familiar to those who have experienced a broken heart, but this shallow exercise offers meager opportunity for discomfort to transform into either entertainment or contemplation.We Broke UpNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More