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    ‘Dakar 2000’ Review: Which One Is the Liar?

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    In Rajiv Joseph’s two-hander, a couple of Americans in Senegal twist, deflect, massage, stretch and maybe even tell the truth.We can’t say we weren’t warned. Boubs, the narrator of Rajiv Joseph’s new play, kicks off the show by informing the audience that “all of it is true. Or most of it, anyway.”That “most of it” does a lot of work in “Dakar 2000,” which just opened at Manhattan Theater Club. But while ambiguity and uncertainty have long been great fertilizers for storytelling, Joseph’s two-hander about a couple of Americans in Senegal remains strangely uninvolving.Some of the things Boubs (Abubakr Ali), a Peace Corps volunteer, tells the State Department employee Dina (Mia Barron, from “The Coast Starlight” and “Hurricane Diane”) may well be fabrications. Over the course of her friendly but insistent interrogation of Boubs, who was involved in a truck accident, we begin to suspect that Dina is no slouch, either, at fudging the facts.“You’re a good liar!” she tells Boubs at one point. “I don’t begrudge that skill set.”It’s a useful one for playwrights, too. Mining his own history, Joseph (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” “King James”) did go on a Peace Corps mission in Senegal after college, an experience he credits as instrumental in his becoming a writer. It’s unclear whether, as happens to this play’s hero, Joseph was ever asked to possibly fingerprint an alleged terrorist who was passed out, or maybe dead, in his hotel room. Has Joseph been the Le Carré of the Rialto all these years?But while the possibility of exciting action always hovers on the periphery, May Adrales’s low-energy production is bereft of any tension. That is an achievement of some kind for a show dealing with covert operations, and one in which a character is traumatized (or claims to be) by the 1998 bombing of the United States embassy in Tanzania.“Dakar 2000” begins promisingly as Dina grills Boubs about his accident, then starts making demands. It’s fun to watch her run rings around him, and Joseph and the cast keep the action moving as we ponder what Dina really wants, and whether Boubs is a useful idiot, a cunning faux-naïf, an idealistic young man, or all of the above. That Dina appears to be haunted by apocalyptic feelings — the play takes place during the chaotic, unsettled final lead-up to Y2K, when the world felt as if it was built on shifting sands — should make the stakes even weightier.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Eureka Day,’ a Scene About Vaccines Devolves, Hilariously

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      In “Eureka Day,” changes were made to a scene because “the laughter was so robust backstage, they couldn’t hear the cues.”The third scene of the new Broadway production of “Eureka Day” could be titled The Way We Discourse Now. As written by the playwright Jonathan Spector, the scene reliably has audiences laughing so loudly that the actors are drowned out.The situation is this: It is 2018. The principal of the progressive private school Eureka Day in Berkeley, Calif., and the four members of its executive committee must inform the other parents that a student has mumps, and therefore by law any students who have not been vaccinated must stay home to avoid exposure. (Vaccine skepticism was not uncommon in this milieu, particularly pre-pandemic.)The school leaders, an optimistic bunch dedicated to diversity and inclusion, hold a town hall-style meeting “to see,” says the principal, Don, “how we can come together as a community and exchange ideas around a difficult issue.”At the meeting, which is being held remotely, Don speaks while sitting in front of a laptop in the school library, addressing parents on a Zoom-like video app. The executive committee members are behind him. The rest of the school’s parents weigh in on a chat-like function. Their messages — 144 of them — are projected above the actors for the audience to read.The online conversation quickly descends into vicious attacks. “Typical behavior from the Executive Committee of FASCISM.” “Sorry, chiropractors are not doctors.” “That’s child abuse!!!”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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      ‘Bad Kreyòl’ Review: Dueling Cultural Identities Make for a Weighty Comedy

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      Dominique Morisseau’s new play explores the tensions between a Haitian American woman and her Haitian-born cousin.Concluding a four-show run as one of Signature Theater’s writers-in-residence, Dominique Morisseau looks beyond her usual American petri dish in the comic and contemplative “Bad Kreyòl.” It’s the second world premiere of her seven-year tenure (stretched from five because of the Covid pandemic) with the company, which has staged her explorations of 1940s jazz (“Paradise Blue”), campus race relations and slavery (“Confederates”) and the aftershocks of revolutionary movements (“Sunset Baby”).In “Bad Kreyòl,” Morisseau follows a Haitian American woman’s trip to the island, where she intends to work with nongovernmental organizations and reconnect with her cousin following their grandmother’s death. Directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, this co-production with Manhattan Theater Club deftly tackles diasporic identity, as well as personal, familial and national duty.If that sounds like a serious undertaking, it never feels that way here. Morisseau is incredibly skilled at weaving her ideas into compelling human dramas, and “Bad Kreyòl” finds the writer at her funniest, operating in the digestible vacation comedy genre.When Simone (Kelly McCreary) arrives at the upscale Port-au-Prince boutique her cousin Gigi owns, her appearance is instantly assessed. Gigi (Pascale Armand) is a tough-love type, and their odd couple dynamic represents most of the play’s humor and duel of national mentalities. As opposed to Simone’s relaxed athleisure, Gigi is impeccably dressed in colorful fabrics (costumes by Haydee Zelideth). She is the picture of the hard-working Haitian who can’t understand why her American cousin lets things like personal happiness get in the way of a lucrative career in finance.Another point of contention: whether Pita (Jude Tibeau), their family’s longtime housekeeper, is more like their slave. Born into poverty, he was essentially sold to Gigi’s family in exchange for room and board through an underground Haitian practice called restavèk. Simone says it violates international labor laws, Gigi compares it to American foster care.In this case, Gigi says, it’s worked out for the best: In their homophobic country, the flamboyant Pita, who is gay, also finds protection in their home. Simone, of course, lives out a liberal fantasy by nudging him to join a queer activism group, an idea the fiercely protective Gigi knows could bring harm. But, again, Morisseau balances this gravity by making Pita the play’s beating heart, and often the source of its funniest lines.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Vladimir,’ a Russian Reporter’s Fight Is an Apt Election Season Tale

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      The writer Erika Sheffer takes a big swing in a Manhattan Theater Club production examining “the point at which a society finds itself on the brink.”For Raya Bobrinskaya, a hard-nosed newspaper journalist in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, being poisoned is a hazard of the job. She almost expects it to happen to her at some point.When at last it does, along with the gushing blood and wrenching pain comes instant regret — not over her reporting, but over her 20-something daughter having to witness the attempt on her life.“I’m so sorry,” Raya says. “I didn’t want you to be here for this, I really didn’t, I promise.”Until this whoosh of oxygen to the plot, Erika Sheffer’s new play, “Vladimir,” is a very slow burn. From the end of the first act on, though, the drama crackles, full of tension, intrigue and poignancy.Directed by Daniel Sullivan for Manhattan Theater Club, it is an apt play for this election season: a palimpsest meditation on hijacked democracy. In a program note, Sheffer mentions her distress at the “most recent rise of extremism and violence in American politics.” She began reading about Putin’s ascension, she adds, “and became interested in the point at which a society finds itself on the brink.”“Who chooses to fight and who stays silent?” she asks.In “Vladimir,” at New York City Center Stage I, the choice between courage and complacency tends to be an easy one for the restless, witty Raya (Francesca Faridany). Infuriated by Putin, driven by a love of her country, Raya cannot will herself to avert her gaze from abuse of power, however much safer that would be.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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      5 Ways This Year’s Tony Awards Reveal That Theater Is Changing

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      As Broadway prepares to celebrate the best of the season, our theater reporter explores what the nominations tell us about the industry and the art form.Tonight’s Tony Awards ceremony will celebrate the best work on Broadway. For those of us who spend a lot of time in and around theater, the event is also a prompt, encouraging us to reflect on what the current crop of shows tells us about how the industry and the art form are doing.Here are some things I’ve been thinking about as this awards season unfolded:Nonprofit theaters are struggling. They’re also developing the most-praised work.Short of money, nonprofit theaters around the country are staging fewer shows, shedding jobs, and in a few cases, closing. Some observers worry that the model that has sustained regional theater for the last half-century is broken.But, at the same time, this year’s Tony Awards tell an amazing success story: 100 percent of the nominees for best new musical, and 100 percent of the nominees for best new play, were developed at nonprofit theaters.Among plays, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” and “Prayer for the French Republic” were all staged on Broadway by the nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club. (“Mary Jane” had an earlier Off Broadway run at another nonprofit, New York Theater Workshop.) “Stereophonic” was transferred to Broadway by commercial producers after an enthusiastically received Off Broadway run at the nonprofit Playwrights Horizons, while “Mother Play” opened directly on Broadway, presented by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater.Among musicals, “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Suffs” were first staged at the nonprofit Public Theater before being transferred to Broadway by commercial producers. “Water for Elephants” had a pre-Broadway run at the nonprofit Alliance Theater in Atlanta, and “The Outsiders” did the same at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. “Illinoise,” a dance musical, had a particularly nonprofit nurturing: it was staged at Bard’s Fisher Center, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and the Park Avenue Armory before commercial producers took it to Broadway.The season was also a big one for American artists.Broadway often frets about the perceived advantages of British productions, which have historically received more government support, cost less to develop, and can benefit from the Anglophilia of some American theater fans. The last five winners of the best play Tony Award all transferred from London (though one of those, “The Inheritance,” was written by an American).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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      ‘Mary Jane’ Review: When Parenting Means Intensive Care

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      Amy Herzog’s heartbreaker arrives on Broadway with Rachel McAdams as the alarmingly upbeat mother of a fearfully sick child.Soon after Alex was born at 25 weeks, with multiple catastrophic disorders, Mary Jane’s husband, unable to cope, fled their marriage. Still, she hopes he “finds some peace, I really do.”She also thinks kindly of her boss, who means to accommodate her but pretty much fails to. “It’s daily moral agony for her,” Mary Jane marvels. “It’s really something to behold.”Mary Jane’s own moral agony is likewise something to behold. She feels guilty about putting the super of her Queens building, where she shares a junior one-bedroom with Alex, in a difficult position by removing the window guards. “It’s just that he loves looking out the windows, especially when he’s sick and I can’t take him outside?” she explains in upspeak.“It’s the law,” the not-unkind super replies — though Alex, now 2, can barely sit up, let alone reach the sill.“You’re an excellent superintendent,” Mary Jane says. She is the embodiment of apologizing for living.That, at its heart, is the condition that Amy Herzog’s steel-trap play “Mary Jane” explores: The death of the self in the love for one’s child. As with Alex, so for his mother: There is no cure.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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      ‘Eureka Day’ and Sondheim Revue Join Broadway’s Next Season

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      Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga will star in Sondheim’s “Old Friends” in Manhattan Theater Club’s Broadway season, which also includes “Eureka Day.”Manhattan Theater Club, one of the four nonprofit organizations that operate houses on Broadway, is planning to stage a vaccination comedy called “Eureka Day” and the Sondheim revue “Old Friends” at its Samuel J. Friedman Theater next season.“Eureka Day” predates the pandemic — it was first staged in 2018 in Berkeley, Calif., where it takes place, and the disease at issue is mumps, not Covid. The play, by Jonathan Spector, is set at an exuberantly left-leaning private day school; the characters are school board members who find their tolerance tested by the anti-vaxxers among them.The initial production was at the Aurora Theater Company; in 2019, there was an Off Off Broadway production presented by Colt Coeur that the New York Times critic Ben Brantley praised, saying it “is not only one of the funniest plays to open this year, it is one of the saddest.” There have been several other productions since; most prominently, in 2022, the show was staged at the Old Vic in London, with Helen Hunt starring.The M.T.C. run, which is to begin performances on Nov. 25, will be a new production, directed by Anna D. Shapiro. (She won a Tony for directing “August: Osage County.”) Casting has not yet been announced.“Old Friends” is a posthumous tribute to the acclaimed composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021. (“Old Friends” is the title of a song in the Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”) The revue, a passion project for the megaproducer Cameron Mackintosh, was first performed for one night in 2022, and then had a 16-week West End run that ended earlier this year.The New York production, like the London production, will star the Tony winners Bernadette Peters (“Song and Dance”; “Annie Get Your Gun”) and Lea Salonga (“Miss Saigon”) and will be directed by Matthew Bourne (who won two Tonys for “Swan Lake”) in collaboration with Julia McKenzie, an English actress and frequent Sondheim performer. The New York production is to begin March 25, 2025, following a run at Center Theater Group’s Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: In ‘Brooklyn Laundry,’ There’s No Ordering Off the Menu

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      John Patrick Shanley’s new play, starring Cecily Strong and David Zayas, is a romantic comedy with a penchant for the resolutely dismal.Fran and Owen have been chatting for only a few minutes, not all that companionably, when he asks her out. It’s a risky thing to do, since she’s a customer at the drop-off laundry he owns. To Owen, though, Fran resembles his ex-fiancée: “Smart, one inch from terrific, but gloomy,” he says.So bone-tired of being single that a casual insult from a guy she’s just met isn’t a deal breaker, Fran warily agrees to dinner.“But I don’t get why you want to, really,” she adds. “I’m not your old gloomy girlfriend. I’m somebody else.”Owen counters: “Well, whoever you think I am, I’m somebody else, too.”This is truer than he comprehends. Starring Cecily Strong as Fran and David Zayas as Owen, John Patrick Shanley’s enticingly cast, rather lumpy new play, “Brooklyn Laundry,” can get you thinking about warning labels — those heads-ups that we all ought to come with, so people know what they’re in for when they encounter us.Fran’s warning label would be long and convoluted, Owen’s even more so. Each of them would be surprised if they read their own. They realize that they’re a little bit broken, in need of repair. They just don’t understand quite how.Side note to Fran: While Owen seems potentially quite sweet (gruff adorability is Zayas’s bailiwick), he is way more hidebound and a whole lot more self-pitying than he lets on. Run, maybe?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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      John Patrick Shanley on ‘Doubt’ Revival and ‘Brooklyn Laundry’

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      The playwright discusses the Broadway revival of “Doubt” and his latest, “Brooklyn Laundry.” “People are disagreeing violently with themselves,” he says.In a life of feeling things incredibly deeply, John Patrick Shanley has experienced some thrilling highs: the rapturous audience response in 1984 to “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” his first success as a playwright; accepting an Academy Award in 1988 for best screenplay for “Moonstruck.”Add to that list the thrill of discovering the luxury of drop-off laundry. “I was like 35 years old, and I was in Poughkeepsie,” Shanley said in a phone interview during a rehearsal break last month. “I went in to do my laundry, and after a couple of questions, I realized that they would do it for me, fold it and give it back to me. And I was like, ‘This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life.’”Shanley’s latest play, “Brooklyn Laundry,” is about sacrifice and everyday heroism that begins with a character placing her “bag of rags” on the scale at a laundromat. Opening on Wednesday at New York City Center, it is the 13th play the playwright has premiered with the Manhattan Theater Club. “There’s an incredible flair, intelligence, grace and humor to his work,” said Lynne Meadow, the theater company’s artistic director. Most of all, she added, “he writes with such humanity, and so personally.”“Brooklyn Laundry,” whose cast includes Cecily Strong and David Zayas, is also part of an unofficial triptych of Shanley plays this season. In January, an Off Broadway revival of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” starring Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott, concluded a successful run at the Lucille Lortel Theater. On March 7, the first Broadway revival of his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 play, “Doubt,” about a priest who may or may not have molested a child, opens in a Roundabout Theater Company production led by Liev Schreiber and Amy Ryan.David Zayas and Cecily Strong in “Brooklyn Laundry,” Shanley’s latest play. It opens Wednesday in a Manhattan Theater Club production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn a conversation that touched on all three plays, Shanley revealed that the accidental retrospective isn’t the only reason his life has been flashing before his eyes recently. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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