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    All in the Details: Tony-Nominated Set Designers on Getting It Right

    What are all those buttons for?That’s one of the many questions David Zinn is frequently asked about the sound console that spans nearly the length of the set he designed for “Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s backstage drama about a band’s discordant recording sessions in the 1970s.“I think that,” he said, laughing. “What are all those buttons?”A music studio, a Harlem hair salon, a church sanctuary: These were a few of the worlds that Broadway audiences were whisked away to this season courtesy of the Tony Award nominees for best scenic design of a play. Zinn received two nominations, for “Stereophonic” and “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.” Derek McLane was nominated for the revival of “Purlie Victorious.”In its second year working on Broadway, the design collective dots (Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk and Kimie Nishikawa) was nominated twice, for “Appropriate” and “An Enemy of the People.”Ahead of the Tony Awards on Sunday, the nominees talked about the inspirations and challenges of playmaking with make believe.‘Appropriate’The design collective dots aimed to create a “realistic feeling” of a plantation house in “Appropriate.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s a cliché to say a house is a character in a play. But that is eerily the case in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s dark comedy about the racist legacies of a white family and a grand plantation home that feels alive and haunted. Lived in too, but by a dark spirit with the power to make sure a photo album of lynching victims finds its way into the family’s hands.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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    Best Theater of 2023

    Many of the plays and musicals that resonated this year deftly married elements of drama and comedy.Jesse Green’s Best Theater | Unforgettable ExperiencesJESSE GREENYear of the DramedyIf 2023 was a tragedy in the world, on New York stages it was a dramedy year, highlighted not only by serious plays with great jokes, but also by flat-out comedies with dark underpinnings. And though not all 10 shows (and various bonuses) on my mostly chronological list below fit that mongrel category, even the gravest of them seem to have gotten the memo that theater should not be a bore or a drag. It should thrill you into thought or, as the case may be, solace.‘Love’ by Alexander ZeldinOn the cold February night I saw “Love,” New York City was teeming with people in need of warm places to be. That was also the case inside the Park Avenue Armory, which had been reconfigured to represent a temporary facility for people without homes. Its residents included an unemployed man in his 50s, his barely-holding-on mother, a pregnant woman, two refugees — and us. Seated adjacent to the facility’s dingy common room, we became, in the playwright’s own staging, fellow residents. But if the others eyed us like we might steal a precious sandwich, we could blithely leave when the play was over. Or not so blithely: Even heading home, with my heart retuned to tiny heartbreaks instead of huge ones, I had to wonder why it was easier to engage the subject of homelessness inside the Armory than on Park Avenue. (Read our review of “Love” and our interview with Zeldin.)‘A Doll’s House’ by Henrik IbsenA chair and a door — and a riveting star — were all it took to make a nearly 150-year-old drama set in Norway come fully alive in New York City today. True, the chair rotated mysteriously for 20 minutes before the dialogue began. Nor did it hurt that the star sitting on it, like an angry bird in a giant cuckoo clock, was Jessica Chastain. And yes, the famous door through which her Nora walked out of her marriage and into a new life was a staging marvel in Jamie Lloyd’s surgically precise Broadway production. But finer than all that was the chilling fact that Ibsen’s text, as adapted by Amy Herzog, sounded as if it had been written yesterday — and could still be transpiring in real life tomorrow. (Read our review of “A Doll’s House” and our interview with Chastain.)‘How to Defend Yourself’ by Liliana PadillaAfter a classmate is raped by fraternity bros, two sorority sisters organize a self-defense club. And though they aren’t great teachers, a great deal is learned by the other young women (and two would-be male allies) who attend intermittently over the course of several weeks. The New York Theater Workshop audience, too, learned a great deal, as the questions bedeviling so many relationships — the complexity of consent and the meaning of control — played out before us in this perfectly timed hot-button play. But what gave the production its poetic gravitas was a gasp-inducing coda, gorgeously staged by the playwright along with Rachel Chavkin and Steph Paul, in which the culture of sexual violence was traced to a source you could never again regard as innocent. (Read our review of “How to Defend Yourself.”)‘Primary Trust’ by Eboni BoothIt’s sometimes true that an actor is great in a not-great play. But it seemed to me that William Jackson Harper, giving one of the year’s best performances, both dignified and deep, achieved it because of — not despite — the material, quiet and apparently whimsical though it was. In this Roundabout Theater Company production, directed by Knud Adams, he played a lonely clerk in a ragged suburb whose best friend turns out to be imaginary but whose sadness is all too real. Twee as that sounds, the glory of both the writing and acting was in letting us experience the character’s sadness and, even more, the hard work behind his efforts to stay afloat in a painful world. (Read our review of “Primary Trust” and our interview with Harper.)‘The Comeuppance’ by Branden Jacobs-JenkinsBranden Jacobs-Jenkins updated the reunion genre with his haunting Off Broadway play “The Comeuppance.” The cast included, from left, Bobby Moreno, Brittany Bradford, Shannon Tyo and Susannah Flood.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs in many reunion dramas, the 20-years-later get-together of some Catholic school classmates in this compelling, sometimes terrifying new play included an uninvited guest. Well, really two, if you count the supernatural one: a psychopomp, or collector of souls of the recently dead. The struggle for maturity that’s the stuff of such stories, though hilariously enacted in Eric Ting’s staging for the Signature Theater, became something existential in this bigger, chillier “Big Chill,” as “the age of poor choices seeking their consequences” pointed toward the ultimate graduation. (Read our review of “The Comeuppance.”)‘Just for Us’ by Alex Edelman“A Jew walks into a Nazi bar” might have been the start of a standup routine for the comedian Alex Edelman. Instead, the story of his infiltrating a white supremacist meeting in Queens became an urgent one-man Broadway show, one of the most thoughtful (and troubling) explorations of antisemitism in a year that offered too much relevant material. Despite its three-jokes-per-minute, rabbi-on-Ritalin aesthetic — the show was directed by Adam Brace, with Alex Timbers as creative consultant — it eventually revealed itself as a consideration of the central Jewish value of empathy. Is it unconditional? Do even the hateful deserve it? Do we? (Read our review of “Just for Us” and our interview with Edelman.)‘Infinite Life’ by Annie BakerOne of the characters is reading George Eliot, another a self-help book, another a mystery. But the real mystery is how a story about women reading, sleeping, chatting and dealing with pain became one of the most compelling plays of the year, in James Macdonald’s production for Atlantic Theater Company. Of course, unlikely setups for powerful drama are an Annie Baker trademark, but in considering the uses of suffering (if any) and of desire (if any) she took her technique to what must surely be its logical and triumphant limit — until next time. (Read our review of “Infinite Life” and our conversation with the cast.)‘Purlie Victorious’ by Ossie DavisOssie Davis’s 1961 play, “Purlie Victorious,” has received a blazing and hilarious revival starring, from left, Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, Leslie Odom Jr., Jay O. Sanders and Noah Robbins.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOssie Davis’s 1961 comedy is about two thefts: one petty and one — the theft of the freedom of generations of Black Americans — definitely not. Welding the hilarious farce of the first to a sense of fierce outrage over the second was a risk Davis pulled off beautifully, as this season’s nigh-perfect revival, unaccountably its first on Broadway, demonstrated. Directed by Kenny Leon, it also gave its stars great, rangy roles to chew: Leslie Odom Jr. as the wolfish Purlie, a preacher who becomes, in essence, a prosecutor; and Kara Young, usually seen in dramas, as a daffy yokel finding the sweet spot where Lucille Ball meets Moms Mabley. (Read our review of “Purlie Victorious” and our interview with Odom and Young.)‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ by Jocelyn BiohOn a blistering day in the summer of 2019, at a salon in Harlem, five women style the braids, cornrows, twists and bobs of seven customers. Their workplace cross talk and byplay are both hilarious, making this Manhattan Theater Club production, directed by Whitney White, a kind of “Cheers” for today and a comic highlight of the season. But as in Jocelyn Bioh’s earlier plays, which cleverly weave African concerns into familiar American forms, this one built its welcome laughs on the back of a serious subject: the great opportunities and grave perils of immigration. (Read our review of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and our look at the wigs used in the production.)‘Stereophonic’ by David AdjmiFive musicians not unlike the members of Fleetwood Mac circa 1976 come together with two engineers to make what will turn out to be an epochal album. In the process, they unmake themselves. And though “Stereophonic,” in Daniel Aukin’s thrilling production for Playwrights Horizons, delivers enormous pleasure from that soap opera setup — and the spot-on songs by Will Butler — it’s a much deeper work than other behind-the-scenes, making-of dramedies. Under cover of jokes and the expert polyphony of the overlapping dialogue, David Adjmi leads us to a story about the disaster of maleness, and thus of mating, behind the pop-rock revolution of the period. Spoiler alert: The revolution is ongoing. (Read our review of “Stereophonic” and our interview with Adjmi.)Sondheim foreverMost of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals were marginal financial successes or outright flops in their original productions. But in this second post-Sondheim year, it’s been hit after hit. First, in the spring, came Thomas Kail’s ravishingly sung, deeply emotional and strangely hilarious Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd,” starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. (Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster take over in February.) This was no “Teeny Todd” but the huge, real thing. Then, in the fall, came the gleaming Broadway transfer of “Merrily We Roll Along” from New York Theater Workshop. After what seemed like zillions of attempts by many hands to fix that 1981 show, the director Maria Friedman figured it out, locating its long-lost core in Jonathan Groff’s mesmerizing, furious performance. (He’d make a great Sweeney.) Finally, and least expectedly, “Here We Are,” Sondheim’s final effort, left incomplete at his death in November 2021, showed up at the Shed with a clever book by David Ives and an impossibly chic production directed by Joe Mantello. Its wit, its openness to everything and its ageless invention (one song rhymes “Lamborghinis” with “vodkatinis”) made “Here We Are” a worthy send-off to Sondheim — and, like “Sweeney” and “Merrily,” a tough ticket despite jaw-dropping prices. It’s almost as if we don’t want him gone. (Read our reviews of “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Here We Are.”)Also notedShows you don’t love may yet feature indelible performances. Among them this year, for me, were Dianne Wiest as Meryl Kowalski, larcenous scene stealer and would-be star, in “Scene Partners”; Miriam Silverman as Mavis, a hipster in her own mind, in “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”; Jordan Donica as Lancelot, a lion ripping huge bites of dramatic flesh (and song) with his teeth, in “Camelot”; and Jodie Comer as Tessa Ensler, a ferocious barrister victimized by the law, in “Prima Facie.” … There are also shows you love so much you can hardly imagine them recast — until they brilliantly are. Case in point this year was Ruthie Ann Miles as a crafty, heartbroken Margaret in the Encores! production of “The Light in the Piazza.” … A successful recasting of another type was David Korins’s transformation of the Broadway Theater into a Studio 54-era disco for “Here Lies Love,” which gave audiences a literally moving experience. Moving in more emotional terms was the score’s final song, “God Draws Straight,” which transformed the show into something with heart after 90 minutes of irony. … The book of the Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical “Harmony,” about a German singing group undone by antisemitism in the 1930s, felt discordant. But the vocal arrangements, by Manilow and John O’Neill, were sublime. … And though there’s not much competition for the best flying transportation on Broadway, if there were, the winner, totally retiring memories of the “Miss Saigon” helicopter and the title character of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” would be the DeLorean DMC in “Back to the Future.” It was a special effect that, for once, was special, in an otherwise Chevy Nova kind of show.Unforgettable ExperiencesSongs sung by Jennifer Simard, center, and Tess Soltau, left, and Amy Hillner Larsen in “Once Upon a One More Time” were among our favorite stage moments this year.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPower ballad No. 1“Independently Owned” is the “Shucked” showstopper that helped Alex Newell snag a Tony Award, but my favorite number in the show is the wronged-man solo, “Somebody Will,” which revealed the adorably doofy Andrew Durand as a full-throated, tears-in-your-beer balladeer. The musical’s composers, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, are already reliable country music hit makers; Nashville should give this one a spin, too. SCOTT HELLERPower ballad No. 2Jennifer Simard + high diva attitude + zombified dancers + a killer arrangement of “Toxic” = reason alone to have seen “Once Upon a One More Time” during its too-brief Broadway run. All praise to the show’s marketing team (and YouTube) for allowing us to watch it many more times. SCOTT HELLERExit Nora, into the worldNora Helmer walking out on her controlling husband and their little ones was shocking behavior — and jolting drama — in 1879, when Henrik Ibsen’s classic was new. Her famous door slam doesn’t carry the same charge now. Yet the director Jamie Lloyd found an equally jaw-dropping exit for Jessica Chastain’s Nora in his austerely chic Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House.” At the Hudson Theater, Soutra Gilmour’s set hid a surprise in plain sight. During the climactic moment, a giant load-in door in the upstage wall slowly rose like a curtain onto West 45th Street, which pulsated with color and life. Then Nora stepped through the opening, into the world, no slam required. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESA collective flinch at ‘Jaja’s’Michael Oloyede, center, as a scoundrelly husband who wheedles his wife, played by Nana Mensah, left, out of her money in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhether exchanging knowing looks or exploiting one another’s weaknesses, the stylists and salon-goers in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” shared the sort of synergy inherent to a single living organism. The most vivid example: when a trifling husband (played by Michael Oloyede) asked God to strike him down in an obvious lie to his wife (Nana Mensah). Like a startled squid in water, the women recoiled in unison expecting the lord to do as he was told. It was darkly comedic proof of a fierce, collective instinct. NAVEEN KUMARLittle Man, high-flying kicksHow vicariously cathartic to watch a boy nicknamed Little Man beat down bullies in “Poor Yella Rednecks,” at Manhattan Theater Club. But what really made the brawl memorable is that Little Man is portrayed by a puppet (mostly handled by Jon Norman Schneider), allowing for the kind of gravity-defying flying kicks and slow-motion strikes that gives the show a hilariously cartoonish vibe. But it somehow also imbues Little Man with humanity. Credit the playwright, Qui Nguyen, who also designed the fight choreography. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIApocalyptic clownerySome of this year’s best clowning took place in the scorched, postapocalyptic world of Samuel Beckett’s bleakly funny “Endgame,” in a first-rate staging by the Irish Repertory Theater. Its cramped, brick-laden set featured a troupe of four splendidly paired-off character actors whose commitment to the absurdity underlined the play’s futility: Bill Irwin and his wildly swinging limbs were the perfect foil to John Douglas Thompson’s straight man, whose petty commands bellowed through the narrow space with a tyrannical boom; and, popping out of trash cans to reminisce on better times, Joe Grifasi and Patrice Johnson Chevannes brought a sweet, humble nostalgia to the tragic folly. JUAN A. RAMÍREZAn unforced revelationAnne E. Thompson’s understated performance as Dani, a rookie cop patrolling the boonies, crept up slowly like a colt finding her hind legs. In one of several hairpin turns in Rebecca Gilman’s “Swing State” at the Minetta Lane Theater, a conversation that began as a distress call from Ryan, Dani’s former high school classmate (Bubba Weiler), softened into a sweet flirtation before she elicited a confession as easily as picking a flower. (I was not the only one who gasped.) Often the most unassuming character onstage is the one to watch. NAVEEN KUMARAn actress is going to actIn “The Seagull/Woodstock, NY,” Thomas Bradshaw’s Chekhov adaptation, Parker Posey’s portrayal of Irene deftly toed the line between satire, affection and melancholia. But what I remember most is the laugh, which Posey’s Irene used as a weapon to defuse someone’s plastic-surgery joke, deploying it with performative archness — as if Irene watched herself laugh. Yet it still felt natural. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIFool’s errandA seemingly innocuous remark — “Maybe I’ll take the dog for a walk” — grows into a terrifying incantation near the end of “The Best We Could (a family tragedy),” Emily Feldman’s stealth gut punch of a play, for Manhattan Theater Club. From the start we learn of the bond between Frank Wood, as an unemployed scientist and unhappy family man, and his late, loyal canine companion. A cross-country journey with his daughter (Aya Cash) to adopt a replacement certainly has its bumps. But only in the final minutes do we realize, under Daniel Aukin’s sure-handed direction and in Wood’s tremulous performance, where this road trip has been going. SCOTT HELLERA self-defense dream balletEvery element in New York Theater Workshop’s production of “How to Defend Yourself,” Liliana Padilla’s exploration of the fuzziness of consent, came together in its final sequence: a sort of dream ballet rewinding from a college kegger to a pool party to a young child’s playground birthday. The stunningly lit scene seemed to play in slow motion, peeling back years of learned social behaviors to evoke the both terrifying and exciting possibilities of tenderness, sex, danger, and passion. JUAN A. RAMÍREZMidnight snack, Take 1Will Brill and Marin Ireland in “Uncle Vanya,” staged by Jack Serio in a private loft in Manhattan.Emilio MadridIt sounds slightly deranged to credit Anton Chekhov with having written one of the best scenes of sexual and romantic tension in the canon, but he did: in “Uncle Vanya,” whose Sonya and Astrov have a middle-of-the-night tête-à-tête over cheese in the dining room, exchanging confidences, igniting hopes. Her hopes, mainly, because she’s the hardworking young farmer with the yearslong crush on him, and he’s the heavy-drinking doctor who doesn’t think of her that way. But in Jack Serio’s staging in a Manhattan loft, Marin Ireland’s Sonya and Will Brill’s Astrov touched off the audience’s hopes, too, even if we knew they’d come to nothing. Heads bent close in the candlelight, speaking sotto voce, they made an almost rom-com pair. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESMidnight snack, Take 2In Simon Stephens’s “Vanya,” a funny, sexy tragicomedy that ran in London’s West End this fall, Andrew Scott performed all the parts. He gave a beautifully calibrated, split-focus tension to the yearning chat between Sonia and the tree-planting doctor she adores, whom Stephens has renamed Michael. On the one hand, Scott as the nervous Sonia, for whom the conversation is a treasured memory in the making; on the other, Scott as the sozzled Michael, careless enough to call her “my love,” in Scott’s irresistible Irish lilt. “You have the gentlest voice,” Sonia tells him. And sure, hers is very similar. Still, it’s true. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESPinch-hitter no moreI can’t say I knew the name Joy Woods back in April, so when she was announced as a last minute-replacement on the roster of singers for the annual Miscast benefit concert, I felt a little let down. Not any more! Her quiet-storm medley of “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from “My Fair Lady” (arranged by Will Van Dyke) was the evening’s revelation, keeping her fully in step with a starry lineup that included Ben Platt, LaChanze and Josh Groban. Now her name seems to be on everyone’s lips, with roles in “Little Shop of Horrors,” “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” and, next spring, “The Notebook” on Broadway. SCOTT HELLERExpert scene chewingTwo actors really went to town in their utter rejection of verisimilitude this year, single-handedly spicing up their respective Broadway shows. In “The Cottage,” Alex Moffat delivered a gonzo Expressionist-by-way-of-Plastic Man performance in which merely lighting up a cigarette became a full-fledged event. In “Back to the Future: The Musical,” Hugh Coles was a standout as George McFly, taking what Crispin Glover did in the original movie and amping it up into an arch marvel of manic stylization. In “Put Your Mind to It,” he paradoxically suggested George’s stiff demeanor with loose limbs that defied the laws of biomechanics. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIPurring Rodgers & Hart renditionsElizabeth Stanley, so skilled at bringing out a pop song’s emotional core, exposed the giddy carnal drive behind “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” in a gala presentation of “Pal Joey” at New York City Center. In full bedroom afterglow, her devil-may-care performance peppered scatting and swinging jazz vocals through the song’s racier lyrics. (The ones thanking god she can be oversexed again.) Also voluptuous was Aisha Jackson’s aching “My Funny Valentine,” made into a torch anthem through Daryl Waters’s despairing orchestrations. Jackson richly moaned through love’s irresistible betrayal, revealing an erotic trembling in the Rodgers & Hart classic. JUAN A. RAMÍREZThe jukebox hits a wicked note“Once Upon a One More Time,” a fairy-tale mash-up powered by the hits of Britney Spears and skin-deep feminism, delivered the form’s most profane needle drop. Cinderella (Briga Heelan) was slumped over the hearth, with her haughty stepsisters (Amy Hillner Larsen and Tess Soltau) glowering down at her, when rapid-fire beats blared through the Marquis Theater. “You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti?” Their command was obvious: “You better work, bitch.” NAVEEN KUMAR More

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    10 Performances That Pushed Emotional Limits

    For our critic-at-large, the year was marked by the Black excellence of “Purlie Victorious,” the brutality of “Bottoms” and rage of “Beef.”For me, 2023 was a year of entertainment that captured people pushed to their emotional limits, whether that was the rage of two bitter enemies, the desperation of a widow who only sees a future of annihilation or the pent-up aggression of a bunch of high school girls. But it was also a year of colorful, funny and biting Black stories on stages. Throw in a dancing goth, a freshly single New York City fashionista and a chronicle of a dying band, and you’ve got my top picks for everything that tickled my fancy in the past year across theater, film and TV.‘Swing State’Call me a masochist, but what I most loved about Rebecca Gilman’s devastating play was that it tapped into multiple registers of despair: individual, communal, ecological. Peg, a widow living on a prairie in Wisconsin, is nursing concerns about endangered animals and environmental catastrophe, and how everything is leading us to an uninhabitable planet. But alongside Peg’s global anxieties are a host of much more intimate sorrows — grief for her husband, a sense of hopelessness, and isolation — that are driving her to consider suicide. Gilman’s script offers black humor, suspense and a crushing ending. And the empathetic direction, by Robert Falls, of a stellar cast led by Mary Beth Fisher and Bubba Weiler, provides a sense of existential urgency to every minute. (Read our review of “Swing State.”)‘Purlie Victorious’From left: Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, Leslie Odom Jr. and Jay O. Sanders in “Purlie Victorious.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt the end of this Ossie Davis play, our hero, Purlie Victorious (a larger-than-life Leslie Odom Jr.), heartily declares, “I find, in being Black, a thing of beauty: a joy, a strength, a secret cup of gladness.” I nearly cried at this ecstatic celebration of Blackness, because this Broadway production, cleverly directed by Kenny Leon, was itself a prime example of Black excellence. As hilarious as it is biting, “Purlie Victorious” follows Purlie’s scheme to reclaim the inheritance owed to his family in the Jim Crow South. Kara Young, as Purlie’s love interest — the uniquely named Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins — proves she can carry off a fearless comedic performance on par with her dramatic roles. (Read our review of “Purlie Victorious.”)‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’Even if the hairstyles in this play weren’t as fabulous as they were, Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” about a day in the life of African immigrants working in a Harlem hair-braiding shop, would still be a sparkling Broadway delight. That’s thanks to Bioh’s colorful characters and brisk, playful dialogue. Whitney White’s direction provided extra spark, and the production’s re-creation of real braid hairstyles and salon culture felt novel; it’s not often that Black spaces are so lovingly portrayed, or portrayed at all, on Broadway. (Read our review of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”)‘Stereophonic’Earlier this year, after guiltily binging the soapy Amazon Prime series “Daisy Jones & the Six,” I wondered what a better version of this narrative — the band drama full of drugs, sex and music that’s kinda-but-not-really about Fleetwood Mac — would look like. I didn’t know until I saw David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic,” which kept me fully engaged through its full three-hour running time. The central band’s journey to celebrity then collapse, the addictions, the toxic relationships — the bones of the material are the same, but “Stereophonic” is unique in the way it uses music to do some of the storytelling. Entirely diegetic, the songs aren’t used for exposition or ornamentation; they exist as products in themselves, which we hear in different incarnations, in different parts, sometimes several times before we hear the final version. We learn about the characters through the parts they play in making and performing this music — which, by the way, is amazing, and written by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire. The cast is flawless, and the production is so meticulously composed, including David Zinn’s stunning set and Ryan Rumery’s explosive sound design, that it feels like you’re actually being ushered into this world of Billboard hits, giant bags of cocaine and ego-driven rock stars. I can’t wait to see it again. (Read our review of “Stereophonic.”)‘Flex’There are a lot of reasons I liked this Lincoln Center Theater production about a high school basketball team, but one of them was, to my surprise, more a feat of athleticism than of drama. Throughout the performance I went to, Starra, the team’s talented, headstrong captain played by Erica Matthews, never missed a shot to the basket set above the stage at the Mitzi E. Newhouse. A story about the clash of beliefs, personalities, priorities and ambitions among these girls in lower-class, rural Arkansas, “Flex” was a win in all respects, from Candrice Jones’s engaging script to Lileana Blain-Cruz’s dynamic direction to the strong cast. I’m no fan of team sports, and in any other context would find taking the role of basketball spectator tedious; but, even if for only two hours, “Flex” transformed me into a fan. (Read our review of “Flex.”)‘Bottoms’Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in “Bottoms.”Orion PicturesI loved the chaos of this weird, perversely satisfying film about two unpopular high school students who start a girls’ fight club with the ultimate goal of losing their virginity. Rachel Sennott, who delivered a panic-inducing performance in “Shiva Baby,” plays the similarly unstable and unpredictable PJ, opposite Ayo Edebiri’s adorably dweeby Josie. “Bottoms” has a brutal sense of humor that gleefully spirals into a violent finale I won’t forget anytime soon. (Read our review of “Bottoms.”)‘Beef’The only reason I didn’t ravenously consume this phenomenal Netflix series in one go was that “Beef” was so effective in its storytelling, performances and direction that every episode felt staggering, but in the best way. It would have been so easy for this series, about the way rage rips apart and connects the lives of two unhappy strangers (played by Ali Wong and Steven Yeun), to stay in one lane and offer us 10 straight-up comedic episodes of steadily escalating acts of sabotage and retribution. But “Beef” also offers up pathos and humanity, getting to the brokenness underneath its characters’ rage without forgiving or dismissing their most heinous actions. Wong and Yeun are stellar in every scene, and beautifully navigate the chaotic turns of the script. (Read our review of “Beef.”)‘Primary Trust’A story about a grown man named Kenneth (William Jackson Harper) with no family living a quaint, routine small-town life with his imaginary best friend, “Primary Trust” was one of those shows that left me practically clutching my chest with feeling by the end. Harper delivered one of the finest, most exacting performances I saw this year; his Kenneth was delicate but not fragile. A contemporary fable about alienation, loneliness and facing the wild unknowns of adult life, “Primary Trust” felt cathartic, especially given how quarantines and six-foot distances changed many people’s understanding of isolation. (Read our review of “Primary Trust.”)‘Survival of the Thickest’The actress-comedian Michelle Buteau has so much charm that it seems to radiate from the TV. She exudes a playful energy and has a deep pocket of grand, larger-than-life facial reactions that serve punchlines without her even saying a word. So watching “Survival of the Thickest,” her bright, stylish confection of a sitcom on Netflix, feels like a soul-affirming treat. Buteau stars as Mavis Beaumont, a personal stylist forced to re-evaluate her relationship, home and career when she catches her longtime boyfriend cheating. Mavis starts at square one, moving into a tiny apartment with an eccentric New York City roommate and building her brand from the ground up. A little awkward, a bit misguided but full of heart, brains, talent and personality — and also, let’s not forget, style — Mavis is infinitely relatable, and, importantly, a Black full-figured heroine with supportive and snarky Black friends. In other words, she feels real.‘Wednesday’Jenna Ortega in “Wednesday.”NetflixWhen it comes to gothic, sexy teen revamps of old franchises, like “Riverdale” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” I’m often turned off by the baroque plots, aesthetic preening and self-conscious … well, adolescence of it all. “Wednesday” is a delightful exception, in part because the Addams daughter did goth before it was cool. (And it doesn’t hurt that the director, Tim Burton, has been the goth king of filmmaking for decades.) The show strikes the perfect balance between juicy teen dramedy and ghoulish supernatural thriller, with Jenna Ortega starring as the ever-dour and ever-surprising young mistress of darkness. Her performance delivers flashes of color behind Wednesday’s signature dead eyes and deadpan mannerisms; she manages to carry off a character with a sociopathic disconnect from the world around her and yet still make her the charming antiheroine. And I’m still waiting for anything to come along that I enjoyed as much as Wednesday’s dance in Episode 4. (Read our review of “Wednesday.”) More

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    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” Makes Black Women Feel at Home

    “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is a play where the Black women in the audience are the ones who feel most at home.In a scene in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” a man rolls in a cart of items to sell to the clients and stylists at the titular salon. I recognized the character immediately and sat up, anticipating the joke. I wasn’t the only one: A small contingency of the audience at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater started snickering and laughing before he had even fully stepped onstage.Those of us who have spent hours in salon chairs, amid the scent of coconut oil and the acrid aroma of bleach, moving in a circuit between stylist’s chair, sink and sweltering-hot dryer, know this vendor. In Bioh’s play he sells socks, and later another shows up selling jewelry. In the salons I went to as a child, I remember men peddling bootlegged movies and fashions to the clients with their hair wrapped or freshly sheened as they dug for cash in their purses. “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” draws its comedy from this world — a world familiar to many Black women audience members like me.Bioh’s salon isn’t an abstraction or callback; it’s a Black business set in modern-day Harlem. In other words, this new Broadway production, directed by Whitney White, proves the value of a work by Black artists that recreates the appearance, tone and feel of a contemporary Black space. It feels great, for once, to be in on the joke.Bioh’s writing captures the quirks of a Black hair salon, and the characters who populate it: the unfortunate early-bird client who’s first to arrive when the shop’s late to open, the internal salon politics of stylists competing for clients, the inappropriate gossip, the sense of community. And always the one person — at Jaja’s, it’s a stylist sharply insulted by her colleague for her fish stew — who is only just now getting a chance to eat a late lunch of the most pungent food you can imagine.But then I wondered: How many people in this Broadway audience share my familiarity? And if that number is small, then is it the production’s responsibility to educate those who don’t?The production offered a talkback series called “A Part of Our Culture,” including discussions on the CROWN Act and salon life. At the talkback I attended, a former New York State assemblywoman, Tremaine S. Wright, recounted using her tenure to champion the CROWN (Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act, and the celebrity stylist Susan Oludele (Hair by Susy), wearing a regal curtain of golden beaded braids, told the story of a client who spent $700 for a braided style but came back the next day distraught because her employer had demanded she take them out. Jamia Wilson, a writer-speaker and Random House executive editor whose locs curled into light brown tips, shared a story about a professor’s insistence that her hair would get in the way of her career.Though there were occasional gasps of disbelief in the audience, I wasn’t surprised by these stories; I know firsthand how draining it can be to answer ignorant questions about my hair from non-Black people or swallow microaggressions and rude remarks.Kalyne Coleman in “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesI wore my hair braided all through elementary school. I remember a white student in a younger grade regularly greeting me by pointing to my head and calling out “spiders.” In middle school, when I switched to cornrows with extensions, a frenemy repeatedly asked about my fake “horse hair.” I got questions about the different hairstyle lengths and about how “clean” my braids were.In high school, by which time I’d switched to relaxers, I found out that a boy I’d briefly had a crush on years earlier had been roasted for admitting to his buddy that he liked me. “But she looks like Whoopi Goldberg!” the buddy apparently said, though I neither had locs nor looked anything like Whoopi. But I was Black and had braids, and somehow, I understood, that meant I was less appealing.In the talkback, Wilson said Bioh’s play is accessible to everyone. I don’t disagree with her, but I suspect there’s plenty the typical Broadway theatergoer may not know or might overlook.I also don’t think it matters.In recreating a Black Harlem salon with all of its faults and charms, “Jaja’s” is, like our own salons, giving a specific demographic a welcome, familiar space where we call the shots and drive the conversations.When the clients of Jaja’s salon rose up from their chairs, one woman’s blonde Beyoncé braids cascading down her back, another woman’s Afro tidily plaited in playful zigzag cornrows, and a microbraids client’s TWA (teeny-weeny Afro) suddenly a veil of teeny-tiny jet-black braids, my audience cheered. I’ve never had a theater full of people cheer for me after hours of getting my braids done, but I’ve definitely felt like cheering, my stomach growling, my butt numb, my scalp tender and throbbing as I shakily stood up from the chair.“I feel like I moved in for the day,” the microbraids client said just before leaving Jaja’s shop.I know exactly how she feels. More

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    ‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ Review: A Shop Where Everybody Knows Your Mane

    Jocelyn Bioh’s Broadway playwriting debut, set in a Harlem hair braiding shop, is a hot and hilarious workplace sitcom.Nothing says comedy to me like hot pink, and pink doesn’t get much hotter than the pink of the house curtain that greets you at the beginning of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” by Jocelyn Bioh. In the pale and staid Samuel J. Friedman Theater, a fuchsia drop depicting dozens of elaborately woven hairstyles — micro braids, cornrows, “kinky twists” and more — tells you, along with the bouncy Afro-pop music, to prepare for laughter.That will come in abundance, but don’t in the meantime ignore Jaja’s storefront: gray and grimy and contradicting the pink. With its roll-up grille fully locked down, it’s telling you something too.What that is, Bioh does not reveal until quite late — almost too late for the good of this otherwise riotously funny workplace comedy set in prepandemic, mid-Trump Harlem. A kind of “Cheers” or “Steel Magnolias” for today, “Jaja’s” is so successful at selling the upbeat pluck and sharp-tongued sisterhood of its West African immigrants that the hasty dramatization of their collateral sacrifice feels a bit like a spinach dessert.No matter: The first 80 minutes of the 90-minute play, which opened on Tuesday in a Manhattan Theater Club production, are a buffet of delights. Even David Zinn’s set for the beauty shop’s interior, once the grate is unlocked and lifted, receives entrance applause. From that moment on, the director, Whitney White, keeps the stage activated and the stories simmering at a happy bubble.David Zinn’s beauty shop set receives applause as do the wigs designed by Nikiya Mathis.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesUnlike the Ghanaian private school students in Bioh’s “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play” and the star-struck Nigerians in her “Nollywood Dreams,” the stylists at Jaja’s are independent contractors. I don’t just mean financially, though they negotiate their prices privately and pay Jaja a cut. They also operate independently as dramatic figures, their plots popping up for a while, momentarily intersecting with the others’, then piping down to make room for the next.That’s fine when the plots and intersections are so enjoyable. Five women work at the salon in the hot summer of 2019, not counting Jaja’s 18-year-old daughter, Marie (Dominique Thorne), who runs the shop’s day-to-day operations. It’s she who lifts the grate and seems to shoulder the heaviest burdens. Her hopes for college, and a career as a writer, hang by a thread of false papers.Romance and dominance are the main concerns of the others. As her name suggests, Bea (Zenzi Williams) is the queen, at least when Jaja is not around, and stirs up drama from an overdeveloped sense of personal entitlement. “When I get my shop, there won’t be any eating of smelly foods like this,” she snarks at her friend Aminata, innocently enjoying fish stew.Today Bea is especially infuriated because she believes that Ndidi (Maechi Aharanwa), a younger, faster braider, is stealing her clients. Meanwhile — and the adverb is apt because the subplots often echo the West African soap operas the women watch on the salon’s television — Aminata (Nana Mensah) is fuming over her scoundrelly husband, who wheedles her out of her hard-earned money and spends it on other women. Sweeter and quieter and more self-contained, Miriam (Brittany Adebumola) gradually reveals another side as she tells a client what she gladly escaped, and yet regrets leaving, in Sierra Leone.The problem of men is a common theme: Even Jaja (Somi Kakoma), who eventually makes a spectacular appearance, is caught up in what may or may not be a green-card marriage scam with a local white landlord. But except for Aminata’s husband, the men we actually meet — all played by Michael Oloyede in nicely distinguished cameos — are kind and cheerful, hawking socks, jewelry, DVDs and affection.Kind and cheerful is not the case with all the clients. (There are seven, played by three actors.) One is so rude just entering the shop that the braiders, usually hungry for business, pretend to be booked. Another client demands to look exactly like Beyoncé for her birthday; another is a loud talker. One mostly eats while Bea refreshes her elaborate do, a Strawberry Knotless Afro-Pop Bob. And Jennifer (Rachel Christopher) sits patiently in Miriam’s chair throughout, receiving long micro braids that take 12 hours and fingers of steel.It’s her birthday: Kalyne Coleman as a customer who asks for Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” braids at the salon.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNever really forging these bits into a single narrative, Bioh makes comic music of them, sometimes with the set-it-up-now, pay-it-off-later approach and sometimes with a scrapper’s punch-feint-return. Without White’s orchestration of the rhythm — and the perfect timing of the cast, most of them making Broadway debuts — I can’t imagine this working. Nor would it be as enjoyable without Dede Ayite’s sociologically meticulous costumes or the brilliance of the title characters. And by “title characters” I of course mean the hairstyles, rendered in before, during and after incarnations by Nikiya Mathis’s wigs, which seem to be holding a conversation of their own.If the entire play had been nothing but byplay — the women in one another’s hair both figuratively and literally — I would not complain. Translating a popular genre to a new milieu and stocking it with characters unfamiliar to most American theatergoers, as Bioh did in “School Girls” as well, is refreshing enough when crafted so smartly.But instead she has seen fit, again as in “School Girls,” to deepen and darken the story while providing a bang of activity at the end. Though abrupt and insufficiently resolved, it doesn’t come from nowhere. By the last of the play’s six scenes, all the women, but especially Jaja and her daughter, have something to fear from a president who has recently referred to some African countries with a disparaging vulgarism and complained that Nigerians allowed to enter the United States would never go back.“OK, so you want me to go? Fine, I will go,” Jaja exclaims witheringly, in what seems like a direct response. “But when do you want me to leave? Before or after I raise your children? Or clean your house? Or cook your food? Or braid your hair so you look nice-nice before you go on your beach vacation? ‘Oh please miss. Can you give me the Bo Derek hair please?’”“Jaja’s” is full of such treasurable moments, when the drama feels tightly woven with the comedy. And if the weave frays a bit at the end, what doesn’t? Like the Strawberry Knotless Afro-Pop Bob, it’s still a great look.Jaja’s African Hair BraidingThrough Nov. 5 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Manhattan; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    When the Wig Is a Character: Backstage at Jocelyn Bioh’s New Play

    The styles in “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” in previews on Broadway, require a wig designer, several braiders, some synthetic hair and lots of patience.Known for her amusing scripts and plaited hairstyles, Jocelyn Bioh can count only three times when she was without braids. “There’s a real freedom in getting your braids done,” she said. “Then you don’t have to worry about your hair for the next few weeks.”The playwright’s lifelong commitment to interwoven hairdos inspired “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” a Broadway comedy about a day in the life of a hair braiding salon. It’s most likely the first Broadway play to shine a spotlight on Black women’s hair, and what it takes to style it.Set in Central Harlem, around 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue (where many of these salons are clustered), “Jaja’s” presents a spirited group of West African hair stylists as their designs take shape and they juggle the uncertainties and perplexities of their new lives here. Because these women are rarely part of conversations about immigration, Bioh felt it was important for audiences to hear their stories.In writing the play, Bioh (“Nollywood Dreams,” “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play”) sought to put a face to something that was likely to be unfamiliar to many theatergoers. “I want to take them into this really unique, funny, crazy, exciting, in some ways mundane space that holds women who all have incredible stories,” said Bioh, a native New Yorker whose parents emigrated from Ghana. “That’s what I’m trying to unpack in my play. What’s the other? What’s in the other?”A mock-up of the wig, one of the play’s more colorful hair designs.Alongside the comedy and drama, “Jaja’s” features a multitude of strand mastery, as Bioh and the director Whitney White (“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord”) were determined to show a range of hairdos coming to life onstage. To pull this off, most of these styles are executed in real time with a little stage magic courtesy of wigs constructed by the hair and wig designer Nikiya Mathis. Cast members, who braid hair onstage, practiced during rehearsals on wigs she designed for the performance.“There are so many moving pieces to the show that involve hair, and it’s not just me backstage,” Mathis said. “It’s also the actors onstage, it’s what Jocelyn has written, and it’s what Whitney will be helping us to reveal.”“Part of that,” she continued, “is going to be the magic of figuring out how we’re going to construct the wigs and how to potentially take them apart.”The show is running about 90 minutes, without an intermission, yet these hairstyles can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a whole day to complete. There’s also the art of the craft. Creating a single braid starts with a cluster of hair: fingertips planted against the scalp, grasped at the roots of three sectioned tufts, deftly and repeatedly crocheted until a pattern emerges. The options are endless. The humble braid can stand alone, of course, but when woven loosely, it becomes the box braid. Woven against the scalp, it becomes the cornrow. Woven infinitesimally, it becomes the micro.Building wigs that mimic these looks is labor intensive, and audiences are just beginning to see how the production, in previews at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, pulls it off. This summer we followed along on the assembly and design of one of the flashier styles, a wig known as Jaja’s Strawberry-Swirl Knotless Afro-Pop Bob, worn by the actress Kalyne Coleman in the show.Sew, Braid, Dye: One Wig, Many HandsThe wig-making process begins when a gallon-size poly bag is fitted on the actor’s head to make a mold. Once the measurements are taken and the hairline is drawn, the bag is removed, and the mold is filled with polyester fiber and placed on a canvas wig block. Lace is secured to the frame, which serves as the wig’s foundation, and finally strands of hair are sewn in one by one.The show’s hair and wig designer, Nikiya Mathis, dyes the wigs in a solution of water and semi-permanent color. The more saturated the water is with dye, the deeper the pigment. She then agitates the hair to ensure all the strands attain the desired hue.The hair design team builds the look together, with each stylist completing one braid at a time. Human hair is woven into the lace infrastructure, then small pieces of synthetic hair are added to give each braid length and fullness. More synthetic hair is bunched and teased at the ends of each braid to create volume for the puff.Before the fitting, Kalyne Coleman’s real hair was braided into cornrows, which sit close to her head, so that the wig would fit over it easily. Then a stocking cap is placed over her head and secured with pins. The wig is then applied, and baby hair is pulled out. The edges are curled with gel to complete the look. More