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    ‘Manhunt’ Is a Case Study in Fragile Masculinity

    A new play by Robert Icke about a real-life police chase takes the form of an imagined trial.One of the largest manhunts in British police history took place in northeastern England in summer 2010. The fugitive was Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old bodybuilder and former nightclub bouncer with a history of violence. He had just been released from prison when he shot Samantha Stobbart, his former girlfriend, and her new boyfriend, Chris Brown, in a jealous rage. Stobbart survived, Brown didn’t.The next day, Moat fired a sawed-off shotgun at a police officer, David Rathband, at point-blank range, blinding him. While he was on the run, Moat reportedly vowed to “keep killing police until I am dead.”The story was a rolling news sensation at the time. Moat was a clear and present danger, and the situation was fluid. But sheer scale of the police operation to track him down — involving more than 100 armed officers and a military aircraft — was unusual by British standards. The manhunt ended when, after a six-hour standoff with the police, Moat turned his gun on himself.In the weeks after his death, Moat was celebrated as a folk hero in some corners of the internet, and was lauded for what was seen as uncompromising machismo. A Facebook page in his honor amassed 35,000 members.The cast of “Manhunt.” Alongside Edward-Cook, center, a small ensemble plays multiple parts.Manuel HarlanA bracing new play, “Manhunt,” at Royal Court Theater in London presents Moat’s story as a case study in fragile masculinity. Written and directed by Robert Icke — whose recent West End “Oedipus” is heading to Broadway — it takes the form of an imagined trial in which Moat, speaking from beyond the grave, both re-enacts and reflects on the terrible events of the last week of his life.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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    The Snubs and Surprises of the 2025 Olivier Awards

    Times critics discuss the big winners — a new play about Roald Dahl, a “Fiddler on the Roof” revival and a folk-rock “Benjamin Button”— at London’s theater awards.When the nominees for the Olivier Awards — Britain’s equivalent to the Tonys — were announced last month, a revival of the 1964 musical “Fiddler on the Roof” dominated, with 13 nominations. At the awards ceremony on Sunday night, though, the list of winners was more balanced: “Fiddler” took home three trophies; as did “Giant,” which starred John Lithgow as Roald Dahl; and a folk music adaptation of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”Matt Wolf and Houman Barekat, The New York Times’s London theater critics, discussed the winners and the productions that missed out with Eleanor Stanford, a Times contributor.New productions like “Giant” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” were among the big winners on Sunday night. What does that say about the state of British theater?BAREKAT It’s heartening, especially when you consider that neither of these plays sound particularly promising on paper: Benjamin Button reimagined as an English fisherman, set to Cornish folk music; Roald Dahl squabbling with his publisher about blowback from an inflammatory article. And yet both were staged successfully. It tells us that, when the industry is prepared to take risks, theatergoers can be receptive. And the same goes for “The Years” — I wasn’t quite as enthused by it as some other critics, but turning a sociological memoir into watchable theater is no mean feat. Eline Arbo imbued it with a sense of movement and vitality, so I can understand why she won best director.WOLF Both shows were expected to win their key categories — best new musical for “Benjamin Button” and best new play for “Giant” — and did. Both are decidedly British, as well as strikingly original, which is interesting given the Oliviers’ history of often crowning American work, especially when it comes to best new musical: “Hamilton” and “Dear Evan Hansen” both won that category.Remarkably, this year Romola Garai was nominated twice for best supporting actress, for her performances in “The Years” and “Giant.” She won for “The Years.” What makes Garai stand out onstage?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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    Olivier Awards Winners 2025: ‘Giant,’ ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and More

    The play, about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism, took home three awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys. So did a “Fiddler on the Roof” revival and a folk rock “Benjamin Button.”“Giant,” a play about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism starring John Lithgow as the truculent children’s author, was one of the big winners at this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The play, which was staged at the Royal Court last year and is transferring to the West End on April 26, took home three awards at Sunday’s ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London: best actor, for Lithgow; best supporting actor for Elliot Levey as a publisher trying to get Dahl to apologize for his statements about Jews; and the coveted best new play award.For that final prize, “Giant” bested four other titles, including “The Years,” an acclaimed staging of a Frenchwoman’s life (featuring a back-street abortion and late-in-life affair) that is running at the Harold Pinter Theater until April 19.The success for “Giant” was perhaps unsurprising given how much critics praised its opening run. Clive Davis, in The Times of London, said the “subtle, intelligent and stylishly crafted” drama, written by Mark Rosenblatt and directed by Nicholas Hytner, “deserves to transfer to a bigger stage.” (Lithgow has said in interviews that he wants to take the play to Broadway.)Houman Barekat in a review for The New York Times said that Lithgow was “superb as the beleaguered but unrepentant writer, blending affable, avuncular esprit with scowling, cranky prickliness and nonchalant cruelty.Lara Pulver and Adam Dannheisser in “Fiddler on the Roof.”Johan PerssonWe 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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    Oliver Awards 2025 Nominations: ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Earns 13 Nods

    The acclaimed revival, which is about to transfer to London’s Barbican, scored 13 nominations at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.A revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” the much-loved 1964 musical, received the most nominations on Tuesday for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The show got 13 nods — seven more than any other musical or play — including best musical revival, where it is up against a production of “Hello, Dolly!” starring Imelda Staunton, which ran at the London Palladium, as well as ongoing revivals of “Oliver!” at the Gielgud Theater and “Starlight Express” at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theater.Directed by Jordan Fein, “Fiddler on the Roof” is a stripped-back version of the tale of a Jewish milkman in Czarist Russia who is marrying off his daughters against a backdrop of antisemitic pogroms. It received rave reviews when it opened last August at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theater. (It transfers to the Barbican Center on May 24).Marianka Swain, writing in The Daily Telegraph, called the production “a masterclass in balancing innovation with tradition.” Fein resisted the temptation to draw out the musical’s parallels to contemporary events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or surging antisemitism, Swain wrote. “No need when they come through so powerfully anyway,” the reviewer added.Fein is nominated in the best director category, where he will face tight competition from the directors of three of the past year’s most critically acclaimed plays: Nicholas Hytner for “Giant,” about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism, staged last year at the Royal Court and opening in April on the West End; Robert Icke for a version of “Oedipus” that ran at Wyndham’s Theater; and Eline Arbo for “The Years,” running at the Harold Pinter Theater.From left, Anjli Mohindra, Deborah Findlay, Gina McKee, Romola Garai and Harmony Rose-Bremner in “The Years.”Helen MurrayWe 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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    Rami Malek and Brie Larson Try Sophocles in London

    Sophocles is suddenly everywhere on the city’s stages. In concurrent shows, Rami Malek is playing Oedipus and Brie Larson is taking on Elektra.At the Old Vic theater in London, a tenebrous stage is lit now and again with deep, yellowy-orange hues; at its center is a stark solar orb. The effect is soothing, like being gently woken by an enormous sunrise alarm. The setting is a drought-stricken Thebes and the play is a reimagining of Sophocles’ tragedy, “Oedipus Rex,” first performed around 429 B.C. and relevant as ever in our era of vainglorious leaders.King Oedipus, played by the movie star Rami Malek — best known for his Oscar-winning performance in “Bohemian Rhapsody” — wants to figure out who killed his predecessor, Laius, in hopes that solving the mystery will bring an end to the drought. In the process, he stumbles upon a series of revelations that bear out the truth of the Oracle’s infamous prediction: that he is destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother.In this production, running through March 29, the story is set in a featureless, vaguely postapocalyptic landscape and told through a blend of drama and dance. (The Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter shares the directorial credit with the Old Vic’s artistic director, Matthew Warchus.) Between scenes, a chorus throws beautifully unsettling shapes to a soundtrack of moody electronic beats and pounding drums.Remi Malek, left, as Oedipus and Indira Varma as Jocasta in “Oedipus” at the Young Vic.Manuel HarlanThe dancers’ twitchy, convulsive movements and supplicatory body language evoke the plight of a suffering populace, but once the truth is out and the gods appeased, the rain comes and the chorus moves with unburdened grace under a glorious drizzle. (Set design is by Rae Smith, lighting by Tom Visser.)Malek’s assertive drawl and blithe, can-do rhetoric carry hints of President Trump. (“Whatever the Oracle gives us. … I can work with that!”) And Indira Varma brings a suitably regal poise to the role of Jocasta, who was long ago forced by Laius to abandon her baby. That child was Oedipus himself; he was rescued, adopted and went on to marry Jocasta.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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    The Highs and Lows on London Stages in 2024

    Our critics discuss which A-lister performances on the West End were worth the ticket price, and why so many new musicals struggled this year.This year saw London host buzzy productions like Jamie Lloyd’s “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, and Robert Icke’s take on “Oedipus,” with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. Other productions struggled, including more star vehicles — and some musicals, particularly.Matt Wolf and Houman Barekat, The New York Times’s London theater critics, discuss the triumphs and the disappointments of the last year in British theater, and also look ahead to 2025.Which productions impressed you most?HOUMAN BAREKAT James Macdonald’s “Waiting for Godot” at the Theater Royal Haymarket was superb. The Beckett estate is famously proscriptive about what can be done with his plays, so the performers have to make their mark in small, subtle ways. Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati delivered a master class in timing as the leads.I was hugely impressed by Rachel O’Riordan’s take on “Faith Healer” at the Lyric Hammersmith, featuring Declan Conlon as an insidiously charismatic Svengali. On a lighter note, I also loved the National Theater’s arch, camped-up version of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” with its gorgeous staging and costumes.The cast of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” including Hugh Skinner, center, as Jack Worthing.Marc BrennerMATT WOLF I second Houman’s choices, and would extend further kudos to the writer-director Robert Icke’s scorching take on “Oedipus,” whose sold-out run proved that there is still an appreciative audience in London for serious theater. Special shout-out to Icke’s Jocasta, Lesley Manville, who is well on the way to becoming a giant of British theater.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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    ‘Player Kings’ Review: Ian McKellen’s Juicy Assignment as Falstaff

    In Robert Icke’s adaptation of Parts 1 and 2 of “Henry IV,” the veteran stage actor’s performance belies his age.There are two shows for the price of one at “Player Kings,” in which the director Robert Icke has combined both of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” history plays into a self-contained whole.The production offers a compressed version of the royal accession story that, in this version, runs nearly four hours. It is an opportunity to experience Ian McKellen’s unbridled love of performance. At 84, the production’s leading man possesses an energy and vigor that belie his years.“Player Kings” — which runs at the Noël Coward Theater through June 22, before touring England — is the latest in a wave of recent high-profile Shakespeare productions in London. Uniquely among the other great British theater actors of his generation, McKellen still returns year after year to the stage, recently tackling Lear for a second time and playing an octogenarian Hamlet.Perhaps inevitably, there’s a feeling of the star vehicle to this production. In the “sweet creature of bombast” that is this play’s John Falstaff, McKellen has an especially juicy assignment — an outsized character whose appetite for life matches the actor’s own gusto. We’re told that the ample Falstaff hasn’t seen his own knees in years, and when he sits, it looks as if he may never stand up. His mouth, however, seems always in motion, as if chewing food for constant fuel.He’s also a necessary soul mate to the carousing, drug-using Prince Hal (the excellent Toheeb Jimoh, an Emmy nominee for “Ted Lasso”), whose coming-of-age story — becoming, as he puts it, “more myself” — connects these two “Henry IV” plays. But the roustabout Hal’s dawning maturity costs him the companion he once held dear.Clare Perkins as Mistress Quickly and Toheeb Jimoh as Prince Hal.Manuel HarlanWe 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: In ‘The Doctor,’ a Rare Case of Physician, Harm Thyself

    Robert Icke’s surgery on a 1912 play about the disease of antisemitism turns it into a riveting debate about identity. But at what cost to the patient?After attempting an abortion at home, a 14-year-old girl lies dying of sepsis at the Elizabeth Institute. No one questions her treatment there; by the time she was admitted, it was too late to save her. But when Ruth Wolff, the Institute’s head doctor, refuses to let a priest perform last rites because it would cause “an unpeaceful death,” ignorance amplified by social media turns a medical decision into a maelstrom. Soon the web is saying Wolff assaulted the priest and killed the girl.Yet it is not simply a question of tweets and misinformation. Wolff is a Jew.So far, the plot of “The Doctor,” Robert Icke’s adaptation of the 1912 play “Professor Bernhardi” by Arthur Schnitzler, aligns closely with the original, except that Bernhardi is a Viennese man in 1900 and Wolff a British woman today. Yet ultimately the two works could not be more different. The production that opened on Wednesday at the Park Avenue Armory, directed by Icke and starring Juliet Stevenson, is less the exercise in Shavian moral argument that Schnitzler rather airily called a comedy than a tragic thought experiment about the failure of identity politics.The thought experiment runs like this: If everyone represents only the group they belong to, instead of an overarching humanity, and if those groups get sliced finer and finer, what hope can there be for a common language, let alone a common achievement? Wolff’s medical ethics are gibberish to a person of faith, as a politician’s equivocation is nonsense to her. When an online petition states that “Christian patients need Christian doctors” it comes close to suggesting a system in which no one can be a doctor at all — and indeed, soon enough, Wolff is forced to resign.That conundrum, honed to a sharp edge in the plotty first act, gets a satirical round table treatment in the second, when Icke puts Wolff before a panel of extreme antagonists on a portentous television program called “Take the Debate.” Faced with an anti-abortion lawyer, a “CreationVoice” activist, a post-colonial academic and a researcher of unconscious bias, Wolff, despite her excellence, gets eaten alive.Attacking identity from every direction, Icke moves bravely into the danger zone of heightened sensitivity and calls for cancellation, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut I have left out a fifth panelist: “a specialist in the study of Jewish culture.” He seems to feel that Wolff, a “cultural” Jew, is somehow not Jewish enough.I felt that way about “The Doctor.” Not because of Icke’s and Stevenson’s faith, whatever it may or may not be; as I don’t believe in matching Christian patients to Christian doctors (nor in a similar matching of critics to plays), I likewise don’t want to limit portrayals of a culture or religion only to its adherents. But it soon became clear to me that, unlike “Professor Bernhardi,” written by a Jew, “The Doctor” is not very serious about antisemitism. How could it be, when the sentimental attachment to identity of any sort is precisely its boogeyman?Icke develops the idea very cleverly. His casting across race and gender ensures that you will be forced to re-evaluate your reactions when you discover, quite belatedly in some cases, that the characters are not as they may look. Is the interaction between a Jewish doctor and a priest with a Scottish accent different when you assume the priest to be white (because the actor is) than when you later learn he is Black? Does it matter whether Wolff’s partner, named Charlie and dressed indeterminately, is a man or woman?Attacking identity from every direction, Icke moves bravely into the danger zone of heightened sensitivity and calls for cancellation. Perhaps he goes too far in stacking the deck: Though some of Wolff’s antagonists, especially the girl’s yahoo of a father, make clearly antisemitic remarks, Wolff herself is almost worse. Not merely complacently sure of herself, like Bernhardi, she is, in Stevenson’s unflinching performance, a completely unsympathetic blowhard. However well done, the success of that interpretation backfires: As she howls, insults and snaps her fingers at underlings so relentlessly you begin to wonder whether her enemies are right, even if for the wrong reason.That’s in line with Icke’s generally over-caffeinated production, which includes a needlessly rotating turntable set (by Hildegard Bechtler), a scrape-your-nerves sound design (by Tom Gibbons) and a drum kit accompaniment from an aerie above the action (performed by Hannah Ledwidge) as if the breakneck story needed additional propulsion.Stevenson and Juliet Garricks, whose drama mainly unfolds offstage.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt probably needs less. Its themes, constantly broadening, also thin out. Wolff’s transgender friend, Sami (Matilda Tucker), seems to exist only to be betrayed; the drama of Charlie (Juliet Garricks) occurs mostly offstage.And in the end, antisemitism gets dropped completely. A long final scene, lovely in itself, allows the priest who was at the center of the problem in the first place (John Mackay) to confess and be absolved. Not Wolff. She is asked to re-evaluate her hubris, examine her hidden bias and accept her fallen state with humility. The Jew-baiting of everyone else is, if not excused, forgotten, which is much the same thing.This has been a season of Jews blamed or blaming themselves for the emotional, physical and indeed genocidal violence against them. Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” seems to argue that the assimilated Jewry of Vienna (among whom Schnitzler was a star) should have seen the Holocaust coming and bought a ticket out. In the musical “Parade,” it is not enough that Leo Frank is lynched; to make him fully human he must be transfigured by love. (He’s dead either way.) And now “The Doctor” subjects its main character to antisemitic dog whistles but, in the end, sees her downfall as her own fault and an opportunity for growth.Well, that’s drama, and all three shows are riveting. No question they are also timely; Icke may even be warning us with that alarming drum kit that time is short. That might explain why his version of the Elizabeth Institute is not a general teaching hospital, as in the original, but a facility dedicated to the study of Alzheimer’s disease. Though it doesn’t make much medical sense for a girl with sepsis to be treated there, it does make sense for the play. Wolff describes Alzheimer’s as “a fire burning hot on the top” — scorching a path down through the brain from the newest to the earliest memories.You need only glance at the news to know what Icke means. As the memory of the unity and selflessness that once saved the world is all but burned through, how will we remember to never forget?The DoctorThrough Aug. 19 at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.org. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. More