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      The Carnage of War, in Punchdrunk’s New London Show

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      The immersive theater company’s production invites up to 600 spectators to roam freely around a loose re-creation of the siege of Troy’s aftermath.LONDON — It’s unusual in a live performance to construct your own narrative, shaping the event as you see fit. But that has long been part of the appeal of Punchdrunk, the ambitious immersive theater company whose latest show, “The Burnt City,” opened here last week.There are no assigned seats, or even spoken words, in the company’s first London project in nine years. Instead, the co-directors, Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle, encourage up to 600 spectators to roam two onetime munitions factories (and a new structure conjoining them) and make of the occasion what they will. In my case, that meant being enthralled more often than I was baffled; others may well have the opposite response.Taking as its topic the fall of the ancient city of Troy, the show includes in its cast of characters Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Cassandra, and it dramatizes the cycle of vengeance that follows Paris’s abduction of the famed beauty Helen.The characters, played by a hard-working company of 28 who perform their scenes in a loop, aren’t identified, so you’re left to work out who might be the Trojan queen, Hecuba, or her ill-fated son Polydorus, whose murder is one of several in a narrative full of grief. If you happen recently to have read “The Iliad” or the tragedies by Euripides and Aeschylus that underpin this venture, so much the better.Wearing masquerade masks, as is the Punchdrunk norm, we begin in a hall of display cases filled with artifacts from a 19th-century excavation of supposed Trojan ruins by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann — pottery, libation bowls, headgear and other items. They form what Barrett has described as a “decompression zone” to help us shake off the outside world and plunge us into a bygone civilization. (To that end, cellphones are placed in sealed bags during the performance.)Leaving the dimly lit gallery, we embark on our chosen journey: Turn one way for Troy, the other for Mycenae, the Greek military stronghold that vanquished the smaller city around 1250 B.C.“The Burnt City” is the first London project in nine years from Punchdrunk, which also created “Sleep No More.”Julian AbramsMost of the action plays out in the capacious, high-ceilinged rooms of the warehouse representing Mycenae, including Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia and his eventual murder — here graphically depicted in a shower. (Nudity is presumably one of several reasons that playgoers ages 16 and 17 are allowed entry only with “a responsible guardian.”) Stephen Dobbie’s mood-setting sound design thrums ominously throughout, and at several points we encounter some frenzied, furious dancing in which Doyle, a noted choreographer, lets her performers cut loose.Troy, by contrast, is a deliberate mash-up of eras and references, and the exemplary design team of Barrett, Livi Vaughan and Beatrice Minns get to have some macabre fun. This neon-lit labyrinth features a department store called Alighieri’s that evokes the underworld of Dante, and piles of bones to remind us of the siege of Troy’s carnage. An illuminated sign advertises “finest fake flowers,” for anyone who might want to pay respects.In contrast to previous Punchdrunk shows — like the company’s signature New York success, “Sleep No More” — there is little buttonholing of individual playgoers for one-on-one encounters (perhaps not so desirable in the age of social distancing), and the proceedings don’t build to the usual galvanic finale. You depart impressed by a concerted appeal to the imagination, though maybe another go-round is needed to fill in the gaps.Punchdrunk asks audiences to expect the unexpected, and so, in its way, does “Daddy: A Melodrama,” the Jeremy O. Harris play running through Saturday in its London premiere at the Almeida Theater. Directed, as in New York in 2019, by Danya Taymor, the production places an infinity swimming pool downstage — not the first thing you expect to see upon entering an auditorium.Terique Jarrett and Sharlene Whyte in Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy: A Melodrama,” directed by Danya Taymor at the Almeida Theater.Marc BrennerSpectators in the first few rows shield themselves as the actors splash about, with frontal nudity, as in “The Burnt City,” presented unselfconsciously. The frolics serve a story that grips across nearly three hours, even as it tilts after the intermission toward the melodrama of the title. Telling of a Black American male artist and the older white “daddy” who acts as the younger man’s patron and lover, Harris’s play is a parable of possession, in which people can be owned, just as art can.The charismatic Danish actor Claes Bang (now onscreen in “The Northman”) plays Andre, a European art collector based in Los Angeles, and the hugely gifted Terique Jarrett, handed the driving part, plays Franklin, the mid-20s boytoy who makes dolls of varying sizes — and who may represent a doll of sorts to Andre.Complications arise when Franklin’s deeply religious mother, Zora (Sharlene Whyte, commendably fierce), arrives for a visit only to voice displeasure with the lifestyle her boy has chosen. “What happened?” she demands to know of the Bible-quoting son who once sat on her lap in church. Franklin’s chums take their own poolside view of events: “So I guess since Mom’s a no-go,” says Max (the musical theater actor John McCrea, in waspish form), “Daddy has to suffice.”Whyte’s Zora faces down her son with an outsize grandeur worthy of Punchdrunk at its most heightened. The male leads, meanwhile, expertly chart the changing dynamics of a liaison at risk of burning itself out. Franklin, for all the fuss made over him, looks poignantly set on a path toward loneliness, left with not so much a burnt city as a scorched soul.The Burnt City. Directed by Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle. One Cartridge Place, through Dec. 4.Daddy: A Melodrama. Directed by Danya Taymor. Almeida Theater, through April 30. More

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      Review: ‘A Song of Songs’ Makes a Sacrament of Remembrance

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      Grief for a lost love is the unhealed wound at the core of this play by Agnes Borinsky, which takes a disquieting turn into the underworld.A few sheets of colored tissue paper, weighted down by a trinket to keep them from fluttering off. This is what audience members find on their seats upon arrival at “A Song of Songs,” Agnes Borinsky’s new theater piece inspired by the biblical Song of Songs, and it’s something of a puzzle. What to do with them?The answer comes at the top of the show, when Borinsky — one of a cast of three in this production, staged in a former Roman Catholic church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — mimes instructions to us for a quick craft project. Following along, we form our sheaves into simple offerings for the altar in front of us. Then row by row, we walk up and place them there, in a shrine to the dead.It feels awkward and uncertain, stumbling through these prescribed motions of lamentation. But grief for a lost beloved turns out to be the unhealed wound at the aching core of “A Song of Songs.” We are, it appears, merely re-enacting it.Directed by Machel Ross and presented by the Bushwick Starr and the playwright Jeremy O. Harris, this play-as-ritual is meant as a kind of remix of the Song of Songs, which my Oxford World’s Classics edition of the King James Bible calls “notoriously, the one piece of erotic literature in the Bible.” But its carnality is drenched in joy, and in the comfort of lavished affection. Its verses revel in love and cherishing.So does “A Song of Songs,” at least at first. Though it’s too stylized to be sexy, its lovers, Nadine (Borinsky) and Sarah (Sekai Abeni), fall for each other in an all-consuming way, besotted to the point of unreason.“I took a pair of your gym shorts so I could smell them at work,” Sarah confesses, hiding her face. “This is completely terrifying.”Their fragmented story, and the loss of their transformative love, constitute the main narrative of “A Song of Songs.” Performed in brief scenes of monologue and dialogue, with occasional voice-overs and snatches of song, it makes a sacrament of remembrance. The set (by Frank Oliva, who also designed the lushly atmospheric lighting) takes full advantage of the architecture of a once-sacred space, and the actors’ flowing robes hint at religious garb. (Ross also designed the costumes.)Agnes Borinsky, Ching Valdes-Aran and Abeni. The set, by Frank Oliva, takes full advantage of the architecture of a once-sacred space.Luke OhlsonIn Sarah’s steady love for her only child, and Nadine’s abundant love for her many friends, Borinsky’s script considers more than just romantic attachment. Nadine’s godmother, Trudy (Ching Valdes-Aran), a revolutionary who loves with abandon, represents a fourth and more diffuse kind of passion: for society as a whole.Onstage at El Puente’s Williamsburg Leadership Center, Trudy’s is the most tentative thread of a production that does not entirely cohere. Patches of it can be hard to follow, and the acoustics sometimes swallow lines before they can land. Yet “A Song of Songs” possesses a surprising ritual power.As the play takes a disquieting turn into the underworld of Greek mythology, it stealthily leads each person in the audience toward a meditative consideration of their own mourning for those they have lost, to death or otherwise.The evening’s first participatory moment, when we placed our offerings on the altar, was preparing us for this: a second interlude when we are all asked to join in — wordlessly, each adding a token of love and sorrow to the set. (I’m not telling you what.) Delicately done, it is far more personal this time, and because of that, deeply affecting.“A Song of Songs” is a communal rite about the void left by the absence of people we love, and the universality of the pain that brings. More consolingly, it’s also about the beauty that can grow because of love, even if that love comes to grief.A Song of SongsThrough March 27 at El Puente’s Williamsburg Leadership Center, Brooklyn; thebushwickstarr.org. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

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      'Slave Play' Is Returning to Broadway

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      The play, which had been nominated for 12 Tony Awards, will return to Broadway in November.“Slave Play,” the buzzy and provocative drama that was nominated for 12 Tony Awards but won none, will return to Broadway this fall.The playwright, Jeremy O. Harris, announced the plan just after midnight Monday morning, about an hour after the award ceremony shutout, at an after-party held to celebrate “Slave Play” and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, an antiracism group.Harris had been planning the return engagement, win or lose. And he said on Twitter that he never expected to win.“Slave Play has never won one of the major awards of any of the great voting bodies but changed a culture and has inspired thousands of ppl who didn’t care about theatre before,” he wrote on Twitter. “I saw someone randomly reading the play in Slovenia. We already won.”The play’s 12 nominations made it the most nominated play in history, and had it won as best play, it would have become the first play by a Black writer to claim the Tony since 1987. It lost to “The Inheritance,” a sweeping drama by Matthew López that explores 21st century gay life in the aftermath of AIDS; López was the first Latino to win the prize.“Slave Play” imagines a radical form of role-playing for sexually frustrated interracial couples as a way of exploring the lingering effects of slavery in America.“Slave Play” becomes the eighth play by a Black writer slated to run on Broadway this season, so far, a record number. It’s also one of several return engagements by shows whose runs had ended before the pandemic, including “American Utopia,” “Freestyle Love Supreme,” “Springsteen on Broadway” and “Waitress.”“Slave Play,” which had an Off Broadway run at New York Theater Workshop, ran on Broadway from Sept. 10, 2019 through Jan. 19, 2020. It did not recoup its capitalization costs, but that is not unusual for plays.The producers said the return engagement would be at the August Wilson Theater, and would run from Nov. 23 to Jan. 23. They then plan to transfer the production to Los Angeles for a run at the Center Theater Group.The Broadway run will again be directed by Robert O’Hara, and will feature much of the original cast, including Ato Blankson-Wood, Chalia La Tour, Irene Sofia Lucio, Annie McNamara and Paul Alexander Nolan. However, Joaquina Kalukango will not rejoin the cast in the role of Kaneisha; she is starring in a new musical, “Paradise Square,” scheduled to start previews in February, and will be replaced by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, who previously played the role in a developmental production at Yale.The lead producers are Greg Nobile and Jana Shea; among the other producers is the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. The producers pledged to make 10,000 tickets available for $39 each and to hold invitation-only “Black Out” performances, as they did during the initial run, for Black audiences. More

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      ‘Moulin Rouge!’ and ‘The Inheritance’ Take Top Honors at Tony Awards

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      The ceremony, held for the first time in more than two years, honored shows that opened before the pandemic and tried to lure crowds back to Broadway.It was the first Tony Awards in 27 months. It followed the longest Broadway closing in history. It arrived during a pandemic that has already killed 687,000 Americans, and as the theater industry, like many other sectors of society, is wrestling with intensifying demands for racial equity.The Tony Awards ceremony Sunday night was unlike any that came before — still a mix of prizes and performances, but now with a mission to lure audiences back as the imperiled industry and the enduring art form seek to rebound.The ceremony’s biggest prize, for best musical, went to “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” a sumptuously eye-popping stage adaptation of the 2001 Baz Luhrmann film about a love triangle in fin-de-siècle Paris. The musical, jam-packed with present-day pop songs, swept the musical categories, picking up 10 prizes.“I feel that every show of last season deserves to be thought of as the best musical,” said the “Moulin Rouge!” lead producer, Carmen Pavlovic, “The shows that opened, the shows that closed — not to return — the shows that nearly opened, and of course the shows that paused and are fortunate enough to be reborn.”The best play award went to “The Inheritance,” a two-part drama, written by Matthew López and inspired by “Howards End,” about two generations of gay men in New York City. The win was an upset; “The Inheritance” had received, at best, mixed reviews in the U.S., and many observers had expected Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play” to pick up the prize. López, whose father is from Puerto Rico, described himself as the first Latino writer to win the best play Tony, which he said was a point of pride but also suggested the industry needs to do better.“We constitute 19 percent of the United States population, and we represent about two percent of the playwrights having plays on Broadway in the last decade,” López said. “This must change.”Right from the start, there were reminders of the extraordinary difficulties theater artists have faced. Danny Burstein, a much-loved Broadway veteran who had a life-threatening bout of Covid-19 and then lost his wife, the actress Rebecca Luker, to a neurodegenerative disease, won his first Tony. It was the seventh time he was nominated, for his performance as a cabaret impresario in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” a show in which at least 25 company members fell ill.In his speech Burstein thanked the Broadway community for its support. “You were there for us whether you just sent a note or sent your love, sent your prayers, sent bagels,” he said. “It meant the world to us, and it’s something I’ll never forget. I love being an actor on Broadway.”The ceremony was held at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater, which holds 1,500 people, far fewer than the 6,000 who can fit into Radio City Music Hall, where the event was often held in previous years. Attendees were subjected to the same restrictions as patrons at Broadway shows: they were required to demonstrate proof of vaccination, and they were asked to wear masks that cover their mouths and noses.With the majority of the awards given out earlier, most of the CBS telecast, which featured Leslie Odom Jr. as host, was devoted to musical numbers aimed at enticing potential ticket buyers as Broadway reopens after the longest shutdown in its history. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe bifurcated four-hour show relegated most of the awards to an all-business first half, which was viewable only on the Paramount+ streaming service. That freed up the second half, which was telecast on CBS and hosted by Leslie Odom Jr., to emphasize artistry over awards, as a parade of musical theater stars, including “Wicked” alumnae Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, as well as “Rent” alumni Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp and “Ragtime” original cast members Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell, sought to remind viewers and potential ticket buyers of the joys of theatergoing.Early in the streamed portion of the show, the appeal to nostalgia began: Marissa Jaret Winokur and Matthew Morrison opened by leading alumni of the original cast of “Hairspray” in a rendition of that 2002 musical’s ode to irrepressibility, “You Can’t Stop the Beat.” And, just in case anyone missed the message, the awards ceremony’s host, McDonald, a six-time Tony winner, spelled it out, saying, “You can’t stop the beat of Broadway, the heart of New York City.”“We’re a little late, but we are here,” McDonald added. Then she urged the industry to “commit to the change that will bring more awareness, action and accountability to make our theatrical industry more inclusive and equitable for all.”“Broadway is back,” she said, “and it must, and it will, be better.”An early emotional highlight came when Jennifer Holliday, whose performance of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from “Dreamgirls” at the 1982 Tony Awards has been described as the best Tonys performance of all time, returned to sing the song again. The audience leapt to its feet midway through the song, and stayed there through her final, wrenching, hand-thrust-in-the-air, wail.The road to this 74th Tony Awards — honoring a set of plays and musicals from the pandemic-truncated 2019-2020 season, which abruptly ended when Broadway was forced to shut down on March 12, 2020 — was long.Only 18 shows were deemed eligible to compete for awards, which is about half the normal number, and only 15 shows scored nominations.The nominees, chosen by 41 theater experts who saw every eligible show, were announced last October. Electronic voting, by 778 producers, performers and other industry insiders, took place in March.The long-delayed ceremony — originally scheduled to take place in June of 2020 — was ultimately scheduled by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, which present the awards, to coincide with the reopening of Broadway. Those reopening plans were complicated by the spread of the Delta variant, which drove caseloads up over the summer and added new uncertainty to the question of when tourism, which typically accounts for roughly two-thirds of the Broadway audience, will return to prepandemic levels.But there are already 15 shows running on Broadway — which is home to 41 theaters — and each week more arrive. Adrienne Warren won for her performance as the title character in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” She urged the industry to transform. “The world has been screaming for us to change,” she said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAmong the shows returning are all three nominees for best musical. “Moulin Rouge!” began performances on Friday; “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” a biographical musical about the life and career of Tina Turner, returns Oct. 8; and “Jagged Little Pill,” a contemporary family drama inspired by the Alanis Morissette album, returns Oct. 21.All three musicals scored some wins.The star of “Tina,” Adrienne Warren, won for her jaw-dropping performance as the title character. Warren, who is one of the founders of the antiracism Broadway Advocacy Coalition, is leaving the role at the end of October; she too urged the industry to transform. “The world has been screaming for us to change,” she said.“Jagged” won for best book, by Diablo Cody, and for best featured actress, Lauren Patten, who electrifies audiences with her showstopping rendition of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” Patten’s performance is the subject of some controversy, because some fans had perceived the character as nonbinary in a pre-Broadway production and were unhappy with how the role evolved; the show’s producers said that the character was “on a gender expansive journey without a known outcome.” In her acceptance speech, Patten thanked “my trans and nonbinary friends and colleagues who have engaged with me in difficult conversations and joined me in dialogue about my character.”Among the multiple awards won by “Moulin Rouge” were a first Tony for the director, Alex Timbers, and a record-breaking eighth for the costume designer, Catherine Zuber. The show’s leading man, Aaron Tveit, won for the first time, in an unusual way — he was the only nominee in his category, but needed support from 60 percent of those who cast ballots in the category to win, which he got. He teared up as he thanked the nominators and the voters.“Let’s continue to strive to tell the stories that represent the many and not the few, by the many and not the few, for the many and not the few,” he said. “Because what we do changes people’s lives.”None of the nominees for best musical had an original score, so for the first time that award went to a play — Jack Thorne’s new adaptation of “A Christmas Carol,” which featured music composed by Christopher Nightingale. That sparkly production, from the Old Vic in London, also won for scenic design, costume design, lighting design and sound design.There was no best musical revival category this year, because the only one that opened before the pandemic, “West Side Story,” also was not seen by enough voters. It also wasn’t seen by many theatergoers: Its producers have decided not to reopen it.A production of “A Soldier’s Play,” directed by Kenny Leon and produced by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, won the Tony for best play revival. The play, a 1981 drama by Charles Fuller, is about the murder of a Black sergeant in the U.S. Army; it won the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published and was later adapted into a Hollywood film, but it didn’t make it to Broadway until 2020.The production starred Blair Underwood and David Alan Grier. Grier picked up the first award of the night, for best featured actor in a play.Leon gave a fiery acceptance speech, repeating the names Breonna Taylor and George Floyd — both of whom were killed by police last year — as he began, saying “We will never ever forget you.” And then, he exhorted the audience, “Let’s do better.”Kenny Leon, the director of “A Soldier’s Play,” gave an impassioned acceptance speech, repeating the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and saying, “We will never ever forget you.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“No diss to Shakespeare, no diss to Ibsen, to Chekhov, to Shaw; they’re all at the table,” he said. “But the table’s got to be bigger.”The outcome in the best play category was startling enough that gasps could be heard in the theater when the winner was announced. “Slave Play,” with 12 nominations, had been the most nominated play in history, and a win would have made it the first play by a Black writer to claim the Tony since 1987, but the play won no prizes. “The Inheritance,” which had been hailed in London but then greeted tepidly in New York, won four, including for Stephen Daldry as director, Andrew Burnap as an actor, and for 90-year-old Lois Smith as a featured actress. Smith is now the oldest person ever to win a Tony Award for acting, a record previously held by Cicely Tyson, who won at 88.The best leading actress in a play award went to Mary-Louise Parker for her spellbinding performance as a writing professor with cancer in Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside.”The Tonys also bestowed a number of noncompetitive awards. Special Tony Awards were given to “American Utopia,” David Byrne’s concert show; “Freestyle Love Supreme,” an improv troupe co-founded by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, a group pushing for racial justice.“I want to acknowledge that I’m only standing here because George Floyd and a global pandemic stopped all of us, brought us to our knees and reminded us that beyond costume, beyond glamour, beyond design was pain that we weren’t yet seeing,” said the coalition’s president, Britton Smith. “It created this beautiful opening that allowed us to say ‘Enough.’”Sarah Bahr, Nancy Coleman, Julia Jacobs and Matt Stevens contributed reporting. More

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      Is Jeremy O. Harris’s Play for ‘Gossip Girl’ Real? Now It Is.

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      Joshua Safran’s “Gossip Girl” reboot filmed a scene from an imaginary work by the “Slave Play” playwright. Then the Public Theater commissioned it.We hear him before we see him come across the screen: Aaron howls and barks then gallops, on all fours, onto a white, wooden thrust stage, ringed on three sides by the audience. This enraged man — the son of Aaron the Moor from “Titus Andronicus” — is stark naked and covered in blood.“What? What? Have I not arrived as you assumed I would? Like a black dog, as the saying is,” he demands, panting and sniffing, shouting into the faces of the seated theatergoers.He backs away slowly. “You do know who I am, riiight?” Aaron drawls. “The inhuman dog. Unhallowed slave.”This intense scene from a play-within-a-TV-show commands viewers’ attention in Episode 3 of HBO Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot. And it’s all courtesy of Jeremy O. Harris, the Tony-nominated playwright of “Slave Play.” Shortly after the episode dropped, though, people began to speculate on social media if the play was real or not.With a tweet, Harris recently confirmed that “The Bloody and Lamentable Tale of Aaron” is, in fact, a real play. He began writing his dream Public Theater play for “Gossip Girl” after chatting with the show’s creator, Joshua Safran (“Smash,” “Soundtrack”).The series’ showrunner, Joshua Safran, left, and Jeremy O. Harris during the taping.Karolina Wojtasik, via HBO MaxUpon seeing the play’s opening scene during the taping, Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater — who makes a cameo as an audience member in the episode — turned to Harris and asked, “Can we commission this?” Harris said he had a contract the next day.“I was dreaming this play into existence,” Harris said in an interview. It’s a play he’s been thinking about for seven years, since he started studying “Titus Andronicus” — his favorite Shakespeare play.“Titus Andronicus,” thought to be Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy, tells the bloody tale of the downfall of Titus, a Roman general. Titus returns home from war with Tamora, Queen of the Goths, as a prisoner to the Roman emperor; her lover, Aaron the Moor, is in tow.Tamora gives birth to a child, fathered by Aaron, who then kills the nurse to keep the child’s race a secret and flees with the baby to save it from the emperor. But Lucius, Titus’s son, captures Aaron and threatens to kill the child. To save his son, Aaron confesses to a plot for revenge. Lucius, who is later proclaimed emperor, orders Aaron be buried up to his chest and left to die. The baby, however, survives.Harris’s play, then, picks up where Shakespeare left off. We meet Aaron (portrayed by Paul James in the “Gossip Girl” episode), named after his father, in his 20s. He has been raised, ironically, by Lucius Andronicus, now in his 60s. And he’s thirsty for revenge.“The thing that I think makes Aaron a complex character in literature is because he’s like, ‘I’m evil because I’m Black,’” Harris said of Shakespeare’s play. “And this time, he’s like, ‘No, I’m evil because you guys have socialized me. You have socialized rules around what Black means and what maleness means.’”When the opportunity to shoot at the Public arose, Harris knew two things: He wanted to do “Aaron.” And he wanted the director to be Machel Ross, who also directed his play “Black Exhibition” at Bushwick Starr in 2019. Lila Feinberg wrote and Jennifer Lynch directed the “Gossip Girl” episode, in which several characters grapple with what to make of the challenging work.“I loved it. But it’d be committing theatrical seppuku to transfer it,” a theater critic mutters to another at the show’s after party.The other responds: “It would close in a week, especially without a star. I just wish it wasn’t so confrontational.”In an interview, Ross said she “knew that the text was evoking a very specific sort of confrontation between audience and performer.”How could they thrust the “Gossip Girl” cast and universe into this play from the moment it begins, she wondered? Enter: a naked Paul James.“I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to have to be comfortable. I’m going to have to make other people uncomfortable, and own the stage, and be very physical,’” James said in an interview.Harris described the play to Safran, the show’s creator and showrunner, as the audience’s worst nightmare: A naked Black man covered in blood, coming up to them and asking them to touch him. It’s a confrontational idea, and one that the “Gossip Girl” character Zoya Lott — a newcomer to the world of glitz and glamour depicted in the series — can identify with.“Are you kidding me? A provocative play like ‘Aaron’ is exactly what Broadway needs after a year on pause,” Zoya (played by Whitney Peak) fires back at the naysayers. “What it doesn’t is another ‘revisal’ of — of anything. Especially one devised by white people, about white people, starring white people.“That’s why the theater was invented, right? To challenge audience members to — to think beyond their own narratives. I mean, come on, have you never read Shange? Albee? Fornés?”About that exchange, Safran said in an interview: “That’s what Zoya is wrestling with in this world with these people. Can I actually speak my mind, or do I have to fit myself into a box and just observe?”In the show, Harris sweeps into the room, playing himself. “Hey. Who are you?” he asks Zoya. “You seem very much like someone to me. Let’s find a less confrontational space and have a little talk,” he says.“Zoya is one of the only people that can look at their world and process it and call out things as they are,” Harris said. “And make a little mess along the way as she does that.”In fact, Harris will be returning as himself to the show in the second half of its first season, in Episode 10, as a fairy godfather of sorts to Zoya. As for the status of the play itself? “I think it’ll be done when it’s done,” Harris said. More

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      Review: A Darkly Satirical Glimpse Into Life ‘Off Broadway’

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      Torrey Townsend’s backstage fiction is an indictment of the real world’s overwhelmingly white, disproportionately male theatrical establishment.It is the fall of 2020, and the American National Theater is desperate to survive the pandemic.In Torrey Townsend’s blistering and hilarious satire “Off Broadway,” presented by Jeremy O. Harris and streaming free on Broadstream, this tenaciously middling nonprofit is millions of dollars in the red, and operating with only a skeleton crew.But it sees one route out of financial calamity. When it finally reopens, it will do so with a surefire smash: Al Pacino in “Othello,” playing the title role. In blackface.Andy, the company’s staggeringly underqualified artistic director, doesn’t recognize this as regressing to a shameful and banished tradition. Rather, he frames it as a brilliant provocation, a metatheatrical challenge to quaintly limited thinking.“Y’all are gonna get eaten alive,” Marla, his horrified associate producer, warns during a Zoom meeting, but no one pays the slightest heed. She is Black; the others are white. They are happy to rationalize the idea.And that, like most of what happens in “Off Broadway,” doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.Directed by Robert O’Hara, who also directed Harris’s “Slave Play” and is an accomplished satirist in his own playwriting (“Bootycandy”), this backstage fiction is both raucously funny and devastatingly on point. It is an indictment of the real world’s overwhelmingly white, disproportionately male theatrical establishment — not just in New York, but nationwide.This spiky critique arrives with perfect timing: as the industry begins to emerge from well over a year of shutdown, with many companies having publicly pledged their allegiance to the goals of the initiative We See You, White American Theater. Will this indeed be a reset to a more vital, inclusive theater, or merely a blip? “Off Broadway” wants to know.Structured as a series of Zoom calls, it’s powered by a top-notch ensemble. The company’s ailing founder, Daryl, is deliciously played by Richard Kind as a shambling, pretentious gasbag, untethered from reality. He is on the verge of retirement when a ticked-off letter writer mocks him as a “morally insensitive, artistically incompetent fraud.” His rage kills him before his cancer can.Andy, played by Dylan Baker, is his chosen successor. That casting is our first clue that Andy will turn out to be a deeply unnerving guy. (This is a compliment; no one does creepy like Baker.) At least as thin-skinned as Daryl, and just as aggressively certain of his own laudable intentions, Andy shuts down any internal criticism of the company’s racism — in hiring, in programming and in what Marla calls its “fusty, elitist, Anglo Saxon neoclassical fetish.”He sees himself as a hero for retaining two people of color, Marla (Jessica Frances Dukes) and Steph (Kara Wang), on his ravaged staff. He is thrilled at “the optics” of promoting Marla from literary manager, and when he promotes Steph to replace her, he promises a raise — eventually. “Fingers crossed,” he says.The surprising beauty of Zoom here is that the format doesn’t prioritize one character over another. Even when Andy monopolizes a meeting, steamrolling Marla and Steph, the eye of the camera in their little rectangles is unblinking. We see in their faces how strenuous it is to endure him silently.And when he is alone online with Steph, we also see that working from home is no barrier to sexual harassment. With that plot twist comes a new layer of grievance. The company’s managing director, Betty (Becky Ann Baker), reflexively defends Andy. And when Steph takes graphic evidence to The New York Times, no #MeToo article comes of it.Well paced at nearly two hours, but segmented to allow watching in shorter chunks, “Off Broadway” entreats us to notice whose voices, perspectives and experiences are dismissed, talked over, ignored. It asks who in the theatrical establishment is willing to listen, and who is willing to act — and act differently — based on what they hear.That is the question of the moment. Whether we get a healthier, more urgent and empathetic American theater depends on the answer.Off BroadwayThrough Sunday; broad.stream/off-broadway More

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      ‘A Level of Abuse’: Laying Bare Theater’s Dirty Secrets

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      Robert O’Hara and Torrey Townsend discuss their collaboration on “Off Broadway,” a biting satire about a company whose leaders are willfully oblivious of their racial and gender biases.One day in 2016, Torrey Townsend unexpectedly received a message from Robert O’Hara, a writer and director then on the rise thanks to his raucous, exuberantly provocative satires “Bootycandy” and “Barbecue.”The email was actually sent to Townsend’s boss, the artistic director of a respected New York theater, but he had access to the account as part of his administrative duties. O’Hara was not writing about some exciting new project, though.He was calling out the company, which both men declined to identify, for its failure to employ artists of color.“He really struck me as somebody who I felt aligned with politically,” Townsend said. He reached out and eventually invited O’Hara to his show “The Workshop,” in which an aging almost-was leads students in a playwriting class.Benja Kay Thomas, Jesse Pennington and Jessica Frances Dukes in Robert O’Hara’s 2014 play “Bootycandy” at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I was enthralled and amazed,” O’Hara said. “It challenged sacred cows of our industry, and I think we all need to be held accountable for the work we do.” He agreed to direct Townsend’s new play, “Off Broadway,” a lacerating, wickedly funny portrait of a struggling New York company whose leaders are willfully oblivious of their racial and gender biases, which include stunt casting so preposterously offensive, you can only laugh at it. Enablers of the status quo, meanwhile, include a wealthy patron and, yes, The New York Times.O’Hara’s star rose further after he directed Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play,” and an industry reading of “Off Broadway,” starring Dylan Baker as the white heir apparent to a white artistic director, took place in 2019. “If Robert wanted me to work on something, I was totally going to do it,” Baker said. “And as soon as I read the script I said ‘Who is this guy Torrey Townsend? He knows how to write.’ ”Yet the play wasn’t getting picked up, with only the Brooklyn incubator the Bushwick Starr expressing interest, according to Townsend.Eventually, he and O’Hara worked out a deal for a streaming iteration with Harris, who has been helping produce theatrical projects (including the recent Pulitzer Prize finalist and digital native “Circle Jerk”) with HBO seed money, and producers from “Slave Play.” The production — with Baker again, alongside his wife, Becky Ann Baker, Jessica Frances Dukes, Richard Kind and Kara Wang — has already been recorded, and will be free to stream on the new platform Broadstream Media from June 24-27. (Advance sign-up is required.)O’Hara and Townsend recently sat down for a joint video chat about the nonprofit theater world’s dysfunctions and the play’s comedic sneak attacks. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Austin Pendleton, center right, as a washed-up playwright who teaches a course in dramatic writing in Torrey Townsend’s “The Workshop.”Knud AdamsDo you think American theater is wary of scrutinizing itself too closely because it feels so beleaguered that it closes ranks?ROBERT O’HARA Yes, and we also take things much more personally: We think that if you talk about a play, you’re actually talking about the personal worth of the people who created it. And so if you criticize, it’s almost like you’re criticizing that person, as opposed to criticizing the institution and the systemic racism inside those choices.I am obliged to point out the obvious, which is that Torrey is a white man.O’HARA Well, racism was invented by white people [chortles] so I would love to know what white people think of their invention. It was exciting to see how a white guy would deal with their invention of racism in the American theater, and own it.Do you think theater has gotten away with so much for so long because it assumes artists can be judged by different rules?TORREY TOWNSEND I think there’s a quasi-religious component to this whole culture. There’s no other way to explain the level of exploitation that goes on unless it’s being sustained by an illusion of that kind. In 2018, Michael Paulson published a story [in The New York Times] about Gordon Edelstein and the Long Wharf Theater. [Edelstein, at the time the artistic director of the theater, had been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment.] About six months later, a firm in New Haven hired an attorney, Penny Mason, to write an independent review. In her concluding remarks she says that Edelstein’s mantra at the theater was “we are a family” — not a workplace, a family.O’HARA We’re always using words like “home” or “artistic home.” But there’s a level of abuse that happens in homes that we sort of allowed to happen: “Well, that’s just the way I was brought up.” We accept a level of trauma, I think, in our childhood and upbringing.Why tweak “Off Broadway” so it now also deals with theater during Covid-19, instead of simply transposing the 2019 version on Zoom?TOWNSEND The script lent itself to an update because it was already about the catastrophization of the theater. A lot of behavior that we witnessed in theaters during the pandemic has been totally absurd and deranged, and we wanted to honor that [laughs].O’HARA I feel that it would be ridiculous to create a new piece about Off Broadway that doesn’t acknowledge that it was gone for a year. That, to me, led to an even deeper sense of satire: you’re still holding on to these beliefs, but you don’t have a theater.The married couple Becky Ann Baker and Dylan Baker in a scene from Torrey Townsend’s new play, “Off Broadway.”via Torrey Townsend“Off Broadway” has dark undertones, but it also is, unabashedly, a comedy. Was it hard to refine what gets a laugh, considering some of the subject matter?TOWNSEND It requires constant effort, constant trial and error. It is very important to me that the work be funny.O’HARA There’s a comfort level where people can laugh, and then you can get behind them and show them some truths. Sometimes funny is painful; sometimes pain is funny. Sometimes the way I can deal with the institutionalized racism and homophobia and sexism and assault and harassment is to simply laugh. Because if I don’t, I will go out and harm something, or harm an individual, or say things that are harmful.Why focus on a small Off Broadway company?O’HARA When you think of the shows that address the theater, they’re usually about Broadway. But on Broadway you have to create your whole team every time, whereas Off Broadway and regional theater are set inside institutions. And what an institution does with creativity is never really examined.TOWNSEND It was important to me to weave the language about money into this play. The corporate world is more a part of the nonprofit theater world than we’re really aware of. There is a connection between this corporatization of American theater and the underlying abuse that ensues because we are conducting business as if we’re inside Trump Tower. I don’t think there’s a difference between the way Michael Cohen and Donald Trump are doing business and the way people are doing business inside an administrative office. It’s the dirty secret of the American theater: These theaters are run by bank managers, by accountants, and their donors are rich people working on Wall Street.O’HARA I have been head-hunted to see if I was interested in running an institution, and one of the most important skills they are looking for is an ability to fund-raise. For an institution to work, you have to know the lay of the land. And the lay of the land is that, although it says nonprofit, we are not trying to lose any more money — we’re trying to get as much money as possible.What is the solution: more public funding, more division of labor between artistic and fund-raising duties?O’HARA One of the things I think is necessary is diversity. Diversity will breed different people with different skill sets to show you different ways to run this institution. You need to disrupt the person in charge, you need to disrupt what power means and how power is distributed. That in itself will generate a new relationship to fund-raising. I don’t know very many happy artistic directors. There’s also a level of division that needs to be had: Am I going to be the artistic head and can that actually allow other people to deal with the educational and the finances and all this other stuff?The show points out how the system has long reproduced itself.O’HARA You have people who feel it’s OK to run an institution for 30 [expletive] years. “I’m against white supremacy but I want to run this [expletive] for 30 [expletive] years.” And I’m like, “No, get out! Go run something else!” They know who they are. And it’s unacceptable. They’re fossils.Off BroadwayJune 24-27; broad.stream/off-broadway More

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      ‘This American Wife’ Review: Wives Out, Knives Out

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      The play is a wild genre-bending parody of, and homage to, “The Real Housewives” franchise.I hate reality TV. It’s not the annoying personalities or the absurd playground-style fights or the drama that belies a fundamental lack of substance. Nope, it’s the assertion that it isn’t another fabricated product but action that’s “real.” It’s even in the name: “The Real World” or “The Real Housewives” — with the implicit assumption that life can be as curated as, say, a filmed brunch gathering of pampered celebrity wives.But maybe I’m being too hard on these women, who exist in something between an anthropological experiment and the theater. Yes, theater, the realm where we find ourselves in “This American Wife,” by FourthWall Theatrical. It’s a wild parody of, and homage to, “The Real Housewives” franchise.If you saw Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley’s “Circle Jerk,” a bonkers queer fable on privilege and cancel culture for the internet age, you already have a sense of the kind of satirical comedy and ambition that defines “This American Wife.” Jeremy O. Harris, of “Slave Play,” is also a producer.In the 90-minute production, Breslin, Foley and Jakeem Dante Powell, who are real-life “Housewives” superfans, appear as fictionalized versions of themselves. They each end up in a Long Island mansion while recounting their love for the franchise.Once there, the actors suddenly dip into the personas of the housewives as easily as one would slip into a royal blue satin dress with fringed sleeves — or, you know, whatever you have lying around.Breslin, Foley and Powell act out scenes taken directly from the series, which are sometimes intercut into the production. At certain points the actors take charge of the cameras themselves, interviewing one another in a style that mimics the confession-room reveals of reality TV but also the voyeuristic false intimacy of porn.The production, conceived and written by Breslin and Foley, eventually spins out into a playful music video and then an improvised reunion-style segment where the actors argue and respond, as “Housewives”-esque caricatures of themselves, to questions from fans on Twitter. Throughout, an anonymous woman with a claw-like manicure and long wavy bottle-blonde hair appears in white chunky heels through the mansion — she’s like an apparition summoned from the inherited wealth of Beverly Hills, the splashy opulence of runway fashion and Bravo TV’s bulging wallet.The performers’ lips are thoroughly glossed for their close-ups.Nina Goodheart“This American Wife,” directed by Rory Pelsue (“Circle Jerk”) with mad intensity and mindful allusions to gay stereotypes and internet culture, channels “Housewives” first and foremost with its setting. The production and props designer Stephanie Osin Cohen bedazzles an already palatial Long Island mansion in Lake Success, complete with a museum-worthy collection of framed Pomeranian portraits.Like Cohen, who interrupts the upscale creams and off-whites of the décor with eruptions of colors, the costume designer, Cole McCarty, also walks the fine line between subtle and bold hues. He clothes the actors in sheer blouses and textured blazers before pulling out the extravagant party gowns and statement hats. Tommy Kurzman, the hair, wig and makeup designer, has the performers’ eyelashes ecstatically curled and lips thoroughly glossed for their close-ups.The superficial glamour of “This American Wife” is alluring, the kind of eye candy a superfan might enjoy on the show. Above all that’s Breslin, Foley and Powell embodying — with an uncanny level of precision — the various housewives. The gestures and affectations aren’t just acts of glorified mimicry, however; they are a statement on the Venn diagram of gay male tropes and a particular brand of performance by women. And so there are snapped heads and sashays and the glorious theatrics of Powell as Kenya Moore (“The Real Housewives of Atlanta”), saucily declaring himself “‘Gone With the Wind’ fabulous.” (Powell, as a Black man, also brings attention to the racial element of the franchise, which features mostly white women, but the script doesn’t offer a deeper analysis.)That would have already been a comedic feat for the three, but much of the production is also improvised — and so well that it’s hard to differentiate. The last scene, a feisty interview segment, contains such a juicy rapid-fire argument between Foley’s character and Powell’s that it might have been an actual scrap between two catty acquaintances. (Shout out to Powell’s “I could make avocado toast out of you,” the Louis Vuitton of retorts.)Though I probably risk snappy retribution here, seeing how thoroughly Foley, brandishing my colleague Jesse Green’s book “The Velveteen Father,” roasted him (bitingly and perhaps cruelly), I, like Vicki, Brandi, Danielle, Tamra and Porsha, must not back down.Because despite its vicious charms, “This American Wife” quickly becomes exhausting. Since the production is split into separate movements, the two longest of which are primarily Breslin, Foley and Powell recreating scenes from the franchise, the novelty soon wears off. And though the production is so consciously playing with the artifice of the form, each performer has a moment of vulnerability when he — or at least his autofictional persona — reveals a tragic fact or experience. But when Breslin and Foley separately share the same tragic assault story — experienced by one and appropriated by the other — the gross fabrication casts a shadow of doubt over everything.In one scene, Powell asks Breslin (who can shed white woman tears at the blink of an eye), “What’s your reality?” I had a similar question.For most of “This American Wife” I was onboard but occasionally felt left out of the joke, especially in the improvised parts that could feasibly be sincere. The same is true of the music video segment: The show often feels so seduced by its own eccentric performances that it loses track of its point.What is missing here, which was well-established in “Circle Jerk,” is a more coherent commentary on queerness and reality show divas.Conceptually and technically, “This American Wife” has much to offer, especially in the way it uses humor to seriously consider lowbrow reality TV as an art form that could be on the same level as the highbrow artifice of theater. And for “Housewives” apologists, it’s definitely a must-see.For viewers like me, who prefer their fiction with less spray tans and Prada, these housewives can offer some laughs, but not enough. If I have to watch reality TV, I’d rather look elsewhere — anyone know if “Chopped” is on tonight?This American WifeThrough June 6; thisamericanwife.live. More