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    When Nate Berkus Decorates Your Home, It’s Best Not to Change a Thing

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    Just ask the actors Patrick Page and Paige Davis, whose Upper West Side apartment has remained virtually untouched for two decades.Patrick Page and Paige Davis met in the mid 1990s, during New York rehearsals for the first national tour of the musical “Beauty and the Beast.” But with Mr. Page working on his scenes in one studio (he played Lumière), and Ms. Davis, an ensemble member, singing and dancing in another, they didn’t really get acquainted until performances began in Minneapolis.“We started hanging out as friends, and we’ve been hanging out ever since,” said Mr. Page, 61. The couple’s 2001 alfresco nuptials were chronicled on the TLC series “A Wedding Story.”For several years, the vivacious Ms. Davis, now 54, was the host of TLC’s “Trading Spaces,” a home improvement show (wherein neighbors, backed by a design team, would redo a room in each other’s homes on a $1,000 budget), and later returned to her theater roots, starring in “Chicago” on Broadway. Recently, she completed an indie short film that’s due out this year.Husband-and-wife actors Patrick Page and Paige Davis live in a two-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side that Nate Berkus decorated 20 years ago, for an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesWe 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?  More

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      ‘All the Devils’ Review: Patrick Page Investigates Evil

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      In this Off Broadway production, the actor is most fascinated by human fallibility and Shakespeare’s nuanced understanding of it.The events of the world trail us into the theater always. There is no separating a live performance from the moment in which we experience it, not even if the words an actor speaks were written hundreds of years ago.What a powerful time, then, to encounter Shakespeare’s Shylock in Patrick Page’s solo-show investigation of evil, “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain.”Because Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who infamously demands a pound of flesh in “The Merchant of Venice,” is, if a villain, a complicated one: persecuted, spit upon and scorned by Christians for being a Jew. But even in his bitterness, he recognizes that he and they are similar in almost every respect, because they are all human.“And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” he says. “If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”It is impossible, or it was for me, not to think of the horrors in Israel and Gaza with Page embodying Shylock there before us. In that context, Shylock’s words hit hard — yet his argument, like his “ancient grudge” born of humiliations, might have belonged to an ordinary person on either side of that conflict. Such is the prismatic nature of theater, that great instrument of empathy, and such is the capaciousness of Page’s performance.Rest assured, though, that most of “All the Devils” is much less fraught, and a lot of it is fun. Page, whose resonant bass helped make him such an entrancingly sinister Hades in “Hadestown,” practically twinkles here between scenes of malevolence.Directed by Simon Godwin at the DR2 Theater in Manhattan, Page begins the show by channeling a bloodthirsty Lady Macbeth. But when the monologue ends and the lights go up, Page snaps back to himself, looking absolutely delighted.“Do those words frighten you?” he asks, his inviting warmth immediately banishing my fear that “All the Devils” might be a tough-guy exercise like the British actor Steven Berkoff’s “Shakespeare’s Villains,” a solo show that once traversed some of the same terrain.Page is a friendlier guide, charmingly unintimidating and even a little dishy about Shakespeare, tracing the playwright’s game-changing development as a writer of psychologically complex evildoers. Referring to a leg injury he suffered while taking a bow early in the run — Page has been temporarily using a cane — he jocularly blamed the curse of “Macbeth,” a superstition much cherished in the theater.On a set by Arnulfo Maldonado that blends the lush and the austere, “All the Devils” doesn’t always have the precision that it might. As Page slips into role after role, depth sometimes goes missing.But the show, an earlier version of which was presented online in 2021, is smartly structured and frequently fascinating, as in a scene between Othello — honorable, deep-voiced — and Iago, feigning guilelessness, whom Page gives a lighter tone. His Malvolio, more narcissist than villain, is comic, then moving; his Ariel, not villainous at all, is ethereal and excellent.Hamlet’s murderous uncle, Claudius, appears in his most conscience-stricken moment; Angelo, from “Measure for Measure,” in a confrontation that, to my mind at least, is utterly conscience-free.“Who will believe thee, Isabel?” Angelo says to the young woman whom he is trying to power play into having sex with him.Page is interested in the intersection between evil and sociopathy, which he began considering when he first played Iago. But human fallibility — and Shakespeare’s nuanced understanding of it — grips him even more.Quoting the line from “The Tempest” that gives the show its title, Page says: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”At that “here,” he places a hand softly on his heart. Where there is evil, it lies within.All The Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented The VillainThrough Jan. 7 at DR2 Theater, Manhattan; allthedevilsplay.com. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More

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      Solo Shows in Theater This Fall: Patrick Page, Isabelle Adjani and More

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      For theatergoers who love uncrowded stages, the coming months bring a range of works, from musical comedies to Shakespearean dramas.Solo shows have been around as long as there has been theater — longer, actually, if we count storytelling by a campfire. There is an elemental intimacy about the format and, let’s face it, an economic appeal at a time of belt-tightening.Despite their seemingly restrictive approach, one-person productions come in many shapes and forms: tales told by a single narrator and ones in which the performer embodies many characters, for example; dramatic yarns; and comic efforts that can flirt with stand-up. The last hybrid seems to be enjoying a kind of golden age, illustrated by the successes of Mike Birbiglia (“The Old Man and the Pool”) and Alex Edelman, whose recent Broadway hit, “Just for Us,” will be at the Curran Theater in San Francisco, Oct. 26-28.The coming months are a boon for theatergoers who love uncrowded stages, starting with the fall iteration of the cornucopia known as the United Solo Theater Festival (through Nov. 19 at Theater Row). Here is a selection of notable shows.Interrogating biographySometimes, it takes one icon to take measure of to another. The French actress Isabelle Adjani (“The Story of Adèle H.,” “Camille Claudel”) engages with Marilyn Monroe, myth and woman, in “Marilyn’s Vertigo.” The show, presented in French with supertitles as part of the Crossing the Line Festival, is framed as a dialogue with the Hollywood star, and was written by Adjani and Olivier Steiner. Oct. 12-13; FIAF Florence Gould Hall, Manhattan.John Rubinstein in Richard Hellesen’s “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” adapted from Eisenhower’s memoirs, speeches and letters.Maria BaranovaIn a different register, John Rubinstein returns for an encore of Richard Hellesen’s “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” a dive into the life of the military leader-turned-president that has proved quite popular. Through Oct. 27; Theater at St. Clement’s, Manhattan.One’s a crowdThe formidable Patrick Page is a versatile actor, but let’s face it: He is best known for portraying antagonists, including the Green Goblin in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and Hades in “Hadestown.” Maybe it’s his basso profundo voice? In “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” directed by Simon Godwin, Page — whose command of his craft our critic described as “stupefying, effortless” — scrutinizes those classic characters. This might be the only time we ever see his take on Lady Macbeth. Through Jan. 7; DR2 Theater, Manhattan.Following his acclaimed solos “The Man in the Woman’s Shoes” (2015) and “I Hear You and Rejoice” (2018), the Irish writer and actor Mikel Murfi is bringing to New York the trilogy’s conclusion, “The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey.” Murfi portrays a range of characters from County Sligo, and performs all three pieces in repertory. Audiences can see any of the shows, or all of them. Oct. 24-Nov. 18; Irish Arts Center, Manhattan.Lameece Issaq has written for ensembles in works like “Food and Fadwa,” but her new piece, “A Good Day to Me, Not to You,” is a solo. In the show, presented by the Waterwell company and directed by Lee Sunday Evans (“Oratorio for Living Things”), Issaq plays a 40-something former dental lab technician reconsidering her life as she moves into a rooming house run by nuns on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Nov. 8-Dec. 9; Connelly Theater, Manhattan.Stand-up or theater?The comedian Caitlin Cook returns to SoHo Playhouse with her show “The Writing on the Stall.”Mindy TuckerGabe Mollica and Caitlin Cook are usually called comedians, but their work blurs the line with theater. Both performers are returning to the stage with encore runs of pieces that have been building a buzz. In “Solo: A Show About Friendship,” Mollica explores his realization that he has buddies but no close friends, and tries to dig into the reasons for that. Our ideas and hangups about masculinity may well play a part. Oct. 10-28, Connelly Theater Upstairs, Manhattan.Cook’s “The Writing on the Stall” is inspired by the gold mine of comic material found on the walls of bar bathrooms. She has turned graffiti spotted over the years into a show integrating songs (a nice micro-trend among comedians; see also Catherine Cohen), bits of anthropology and autobiographical sharing. Oct. 16-17, SoHo Playhouse, Manhattan.Birth of a performerEdgar Oliver, a longtime fixture of the downtown New York theater scene, revisits his days at the Pyramid Club in his new work, “Rip Tide.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFour years ago, Ben Brantley described Edgar Oliver’s body of work as a “singular series of elegiac performance pieces,” which essentially amount to an oral history narrated by one person. Oliver’s new piece, “Rip Tide,” revisits his days performing at the Pyramid Club, the East Village boîte where renegade drag, rock, spoken word and performance art thrived in the 1980s and ’90s. Through Oct. 28; Axis Theater, Manhattan.In her review for The New York Times, Laura Collins-Hughes pointed out how Melissa Etheridge turns Circle in the Square into an intimate music club for her concert-cum-memoir show, “My Window,” now on Broadway. Some of the rocker’s most fun anecdotes cover her early years playing lesbian spaces from her native Kansas to California. Through Nov. 19, Circle in the Square, Manhattan.Table for how many?Geoff Sobelle most recently performed his dinner party as theater spectacle at the Edinburgh Festival.Iain MastertonTechnically speaking, Geoff Sobelle’s “Food,” which is part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, involves a lot of people. Sobelle (“The Object Lesson”) is the host of a dinner party at which audience members sit at a very large table for what is described as “a meditation on how and why we eat.” Since “Food” was created with the magician Steve Cuiffo (“A Simulacrum”), it is no spoiler to mention it involves entertaining trickery. Nov. 2-18, Brooklyn Academy of Music.Repertory of onesPlaywrights Horizons is making smart use of its space by presenting three solos in repertory. Drawing from years as a tutor, Milo Cramer wrote and performs in “School Pictures,” a play with music that looks at our education system via a range of New York students. The comedian Ikechukwu Ufomadu, who opened for Catherine Cohen at Joe’s Pub this summer, brings more of his surreal musings in “Amusements.” And Alexandra Tatarsky’s “Sad Boys in Harpy Land,” which involves clowning and nudity, looks to be the wild card of this bunch — emphasis on wild. Nov. 2-Dec. 3, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan. More

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      Love, Trust and Heartbreak on Two Stages

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      The musical “Hadestown” and the opera “Eurydice” aim to offer new twists on a Greek myth. But when it comes to their heroine, they only go so far.When Orpheus turned around to look at Eurydice during the closing performance of Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” at the Metropolitan Opera, the audience’s collective gasp seemed to shake the grand theater. I recalled another time I heard such a gasp: from the character of Eurydice near the end of “Doubt Comes In,” a song in the Broadway musical “Hadestown.” Then, too, the audience gasped along with her.A lifelong classics nerd, I was surprised both times by the reaction: Does the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice really require a spoiler alert?The myth has been kicking around for over two millenniums, after all. Orpheus, the greatest musician of all, marries Eurydice, who dies when she’s bitten by a snake on their wedding day. He descends to the underworld, where the god of the dead offers him another chance at love: He can leave with Eurydice, but only if he walks ahead and never turns around. Here’s that spoiler: Orpheus looks, and Eurydice is damned to Hades forever.For such an old — and short — story, the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is still frequently told and adapted, much like that of another famous ill-fated couple, Romeo and Juliet. Operatic renditions by Monteverdi and others date back to the early 1600s. Renowned filmmakers like Jean Cocteau created their own narratives in the 20th century.In 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke used the tragic story as a launchpad for his deeply ruminative 55-poem cycle “Sonnets to Orpheus.” Countless other poets have followed suit, many revising the myth to give its sad dead wife a voice — perhaps in a contemporary vernacular, as in Carol Ann Duffy’s “Eurydice,” or in the measured verse and elevated diction of A.E. Stallings’ “Eurydice’s Footnote.”And of course there’s Ruhl herself, who created a revisionist mythology in her 2003 play “Eurydice,” which she adopted into the opera’s libretto.Modern-day adaptations like “Hadestown” and “Eurydice” reveal more than just the imaginations of their creators; they reflect a gender politics that gets to the core of how men and women are mythologized, who has agency and whose stories are most valued.Morley, as Eurydice, surrounded by the dead.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLet’s face it: Orpheus has always been the star of the myth. Eurydice is simply the young bride. She has no background and no future; she only serves as the vehicle of tragedy for Orpheus.Both “Hadestown” and “Eurydice” interrogate that starring role. In both, Orpheus remains a genius musician who, though in love with Eurydice, is preoccupied with his art above all. Her death is a touch of bad luck — you never know when a venomous snake will slither underfoot on your wedding day. But both adaptations draw a line of causality from Orpheus’s behavior to Eurydice’s death.Perhaps, the productions suggest, Orpheus was the original slacker musician boyfriend, so concerned with his next big hit that he neglected the love who inspired his best work. But Eurydice doesn’t merely get dragged down into the underworld; in both versions she’s tempted by the offer of something she wants.In Aucoin and Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” the new bride wanders off from her own wedding party. She’s bored and missing her dead father, who has been secretly trying to write to his beloved daughter from the underworld. In comes Hades, the ruler of that realm, as sleazy as a back-alley hustler, to manipulate her grief; he baits her with one of her father’s letters.In Anais Mitchell’s “Hadestown,” the seduction is twofold: financial and sexual. Orpheus and Eurydice are trapped in some otherworldly version of the Depression era. In the lurid “Hey, Little Songbird,” Hades draws in Eurydice with promises of security and comfort, while undermining Orpheus, mocking him as a starving artist: “He’s some kind of poet and he’s penniless?/Give him your hand, he’ll give you his hand-to-mouth./He’ll write you a poem when the power’s out.”But the pressure goes further; in Patrick Page’s beguiling performance, Hades is explicitly predatory, exploiting Eurydice’s feelings of displacement and neglect in her relationship.That each of the two Eurydices actively makes a choice, as opposed to being passively buffeted by fate, is telling. But the result in both cases is still tragic.Whether it’s via a gradual transformation, as in “Hadestown,” or an abrupt change, as in “Eurydice,” our heroine loses her sense of self. In the underworld of “Hadestown,” Eurydice joins Hades’s army of souls, forgetting her identity like the deceased around her. Her counterpart in “Eurydice” also forgets Orpheus, her own name and even how to read; she meets her dead father but is unable to recognize him at first.Reeve Carney, foreground center, and Eva Noblezada, far right, as Orpheus and Eurydice in the Broadway musical “Hadestown.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesI’ve already told you the spoiler, that the myth ends in death. Opera has an easier time going there; it’s difficult for a musical to pull off a somber ending — the upbeat finale that practically demands a standing ovation feels so much more typical for the form.And yet “Hadestown” bravely, if self-consciously, resolves that way, announcing that the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is an “old song” and “a sad song, but we sing it anyway.”“Eurydice” commits more explosively to woe in its stellar third act, after two acts of tedious exposition. Orpheus, Eurydice and Eurydice’s father all end up in the underworld together, but they find no peace. Eurydice’s father, having lost all hope of reuniting with his daughter after her husband arrives to save her, takes another dip into the Styx, causing him to die a final death. Eurydice, having lost both her husband and father twice, follows her father into oblivion.So the grand tragedy of the piece isn’t contingent on Orpheus’s inconvenient rubbernecking and the implications about trust (though that’s in there too); it’s the ways death has riven these relationships. In trying to outmaneuver their mortality and reconnect with one another, Orpheus, Eurydice and Eurydice’s father each arrive at an oblivion more desolate and lonely than what they’d known before.For all I appreciate about the way both productions offer Eurydice more agency, I do think they give her short shrift.“Hadestown” sticks to the plot of the classic, with some twists and embellishments. But in performance, the musical positions her as the more interesting half of the couple. As played by Eva Noblezada, she is a plucky, streetwise heroine — “no stranger to the world,” as one lyric goes. She may love a juvenile dreamer lost in his own head (Reeve Carney, with a beardless falsetto). But she’s practical; she’ll do what it takes to survive in a world of gross inequality, where Hades is an industrial fat cat and artists and workers are largely servile. If her death becomes the focal point over her character, that may be more the myth’s fault than the musical’s.“Eurydice” allows its heroine the power to decide: head back with her husband, or remain in the underworld with her father. She chooses to call to Orpheus — in effect separating from him and reuniting with her father.But even with this often intriguing revision, the opera still defines Eurydice solely by her relationship to men. Take the scene of their marriage proposal: Orpheus slyly ties a red string around Eurydice’s ring finger, and suggests using her to create his art — quite literally, making an instrument from the strands of her hair. She laments her father’s absence at the wedding itself, because, she claims, she was married to her father first. She doesn’t seem to exist outside of these men.When Eurydice dies the second time, vanishing without a trace, it’s as though she’s a figment of Orpheus’s imagination, more an archetype than anything else — the ill-fated lover, the tragic dead wife, another muse.Still gone at the turn of a head. More

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      Review: Shakespeare’s Baddies Convene in ‘All the Devils Are Here’

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickReview: Shakespeare’s Baddies Convene in ‘All the Devils Are Here’Patrick Page writes and stars in a meditation on the Bard’s villains, moving swiftly through a catalog of characters as if he were a chameleon.Patrick Page in “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” filmed at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington.Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyFeb. 11, 2021Updated 1:00 p.m. ETAll the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the VillainNYT Critic’s PickProspero steps out onto the stage, a sturdy white staff and book in hand. He kneels, opens the book and strikes the stage three times. As the last heavy thud echoes throughout the empty theater, the lights dim to an icy, concentrated glow. This is the magician, and this is his art.But it isn’t actually Shakespeare’s vengeful sorcerer we’re seeing; this is Patrick Page, and when he opens his mouth, it’s not Prospero but Lady Macbeth who speaks, in a jagged whisper. It’s a summoning: “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts.”It’s enough to make you shiver, and fitting for a play called “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” an enchanting one-man show full of Shakespeare’s vilest, silliest and most misunderstood characters: the baddies. Produced by the Shakespeare Theater Company at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, and directed by Alan Paul, “All the Devils Are Here” is a chronological catalog of Shakespeare’s villains — including the lady with stains on her hands that no amount of Purell can get out, and the cuckolding, crown-stealing sibling. Page, who also wrote the script (and is lately known for his performance as another grand villain, Hades, in the musical “Hadestown”), begins with some general context, bringing us back in time to the flimsy villains that showed up in 16th century morality plays and how a young Shakespeare, influenced by such shows and those of his contemporary Christopher Marlowe, first broached the role of the villain in his early works.In the roughly 80-minute production, Page peppers in tidbits about his personal relationship to the texts, like how he remained haunted by “Macbeth” even when he stepped off the stage, along with a few nods to Shakespeare in pop culture — like the imprint of “Hamlet” in “The Lion King” and the echoes of “Richard III” and “Macbeth” in “House of Cards.” Addressing some of the nuances behind the characterizations of these rapscallions and miscreants, Page asks worthwhile questions: Is Iago a sociopath? Does Shylock reflect Shakespeare’s early prejudices, and does Othello later subvert them? Is the jolly old rascal Falstaff not just a fool, but another villain to contend with?In the production, Page blends casual analysis with personal reflections on Shakespeare’s plays.Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyThe production reminded me of another I’d enjoyed recently: the Irish Repertory Theater’s “On Beckett/In Screen,” written by and starring Bill Irwin (and available to stream this month as part of the theater’s Home Winter Festival). Both work in a form that speaks to the audience as not just vessels of the actor’s performance, but also as fellow scholars examining the text with him. I’m a student at heart, one of literature especially, so I count any piece that melds the virtuosity of stage performance with the intellectual rigor of a classroom, minus any didacticism, as a precious night of theater.And yet for Shakespeare stans like myself, the contextual analysis is a touch light, no more than the connective thread between villains. But when we do arrive at those villains — alas! — Page, with his bottomless bass (soon to be set to audio in a Shakespeare@Home production of “Julius Caesar”), seems possessed by such a mastery of his craft, moving teary-eyed through the pain of Shylock and the comic pomposity of Malvolio with such swiftness that it’s like watching a chameleon change hues before your eyes: stupefying, effortless.Does Page have the Weird Sisters casting spells by his side? I don’t think so, but just as well, he has Elizabeth A. Coco’s revelatory lighting, heralding and punctuating his tonal and oratorical shifts. Then there’s Gordon Nimmo-Smith’s exacting sound design, to create an air of mischief and terror, or usher in a scene in a verdant garden or rowdy pub.But it’s Page — looking exceptionally svelte in an all-black ensemble, standing or sitting at a lonely desk and chair onstage while the cameras follow him with a pristine eye and perfect attention — who is the devil, the mage, the usurper.In the final scene, he arrives at Prospero, who ends “The Tempest” rehabilitated and delivers one last monologue to the audience — here, the camera moves to show Page facing the empty theater — denouncing his magical games and bidding us farewell. Page does the same, snaps the staff in half and closes his book onstage.But has the spell really ended, just like that? Hours later, I’m still utterly beguiled.All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the VillainThrough July 28; shakespearetheatre.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Theater to Stream: Shakespeare Villains and Hot-Tub Dreams

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Shakespeare Villains and Hot-Tub DreamsPatrick Page looks at bad guys, Steven Carl McCasland gives us literary women, and Jill Sobule mines her own history, including the dreaded seventh grade.A still from “The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral,” from The Neo-Futurists, a Chicago performing-arts group. Credit…via The Neo-FuturistsFeb. 3, 2021Updated 2:17 p.m. ETDark and wintry days, cold nights: February is the perfect time to cuddle up with some so-called chiller theater.Toxic squares: Travis Schweiger and Chelsea J. Smith, top, and Neal Davidson in Stephen Belber’s “Tape.”Credit…via The Shared ScreenLet’s start with Stephen Belber’s “Tape,” which begins with a character shoveling coke up his nose and goes on from there. In this 2000 play (adapted into a Richard Linklater movie), the friends Vince and Jon have a relationship so toxic, it could qualify as a government cleanup project. Their reunion starts with the needle in the red, then really skids off the rails. The Shared Screen company has devised its production as a live video call. Feb. 5-20; thesharedscreen.com.Stay on the line for the Keen’s company benefit reading of Lucille Fletcher’s radio thriller “Sorry, Wrong Number,” from 1943, about a bedridden woman who is being targeted by killers — her phone is her only connection to the outside world. Marsha Mason leads the cast and Nick Abeel handles the live Foley effects. (Feb. 15 at 7 p.m.; keencompany.org.)Patrick Page in “All the Devils Are Here.”Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyFinally, Patrick Page, Broadway’s favorite basso profundo, wrote and performs a solo look at theatrical bad guys in Shakespeare Theater Company’s “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain.” Page knows a thing or three about the subject: He has played Iago in “Othello,” Hades in “Hadestown,” the Comte de Guiche in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the Grinch in “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and the Green Goblin in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” Feb. 4-July 28; shakespearetheatre.org‘The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral’The Neo-Futurists, based in Chicago, have turned their showcase of very short plays — or thought experiments, or whatever you want to call these bite-size works — into a successful weekly virtual show. Some are animated; others are performed by live actors. One was 14 seconds long; most are around two or three minutes. The only rule seems to be that you never know what’s next. A Patreon subscription buys a 30-play show delivered on Sunday nights, with an average of 10 new plays a week. neofuturists.orgJill Sobule’s hot-tub time machine“F*ck7thGrade,” from the singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, may be a concert shot in an improvised drive-in, but this autobiographical show has impressive theatrical bones: Liza Birkenmeier (“Dr. Ride’s American Beach House”) wrote the book, Rachel Hauck (“Hadestown”) designed the set and Lisa Peterson (“An Iliad”) directed for City Theater, in Pittsburgh. Now the question is: Will Sobule and Robin Eaton’s musical adaptation of the movie “Times Square” ever get a full production? Through June 30; citytheatrecompany.orgIn “Little Wars,” clockwise from left: Catherine Russell, Linda Bassett, Juliet Stevenson, Debbie Chazen, Sophie Thompson, Natasha Karp and Sarah Solemani. Credit…John BrannochDinner with Gertrude and LillianCaryl Churchill’s “Top Girls” engineered a meeting between female historical figures. “Little Wars,” Steven Carl McCasland’s new play, also sticks with literary heroines. When a dinner party includes Lillian Hellman (Juliet Stevenson) and Gertrude Stein (Linda Bassett, wondrous in “Escaped Alone” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), the conversation could get interesting. Through Feb. 14; broadwayondemand.comFor your ears onlyL.A. Theater Works specializes in audio theater with startlingly good casts, and its impressive catalog keeps growing. The latest offering is Hannie Rayson’s eco-minded “Extinction,” with a cast that includes Sarah Drew and Joanne Whalley. Hankering for the days of before? Check out the last two productions Theater Works recorded in front of a live audience, early last year: a commissioned adaptation of “Frankenstein” by Kate McAll, starring Stacy Keach as the creature; and Qui Nguyen’s semi-autobiographical “Vietgone,” inspired by his Vietnamese refugee parents, and directed by Tim Dang. latw.orgSigned, sealed and, eventually, deliveredTheater — or something companies are calling theater — by mail is alive and well. Ars Nova’s “P.S.” project has been going on since November; the second season of the Artistic Stamp company’s epistolary project is underway, with a third beginning soon; and next month, Arena Stage is starting “Ken Ludwig’s Dear Jack, Dear Louise: Love Letter Experience.”The most ambitious initiative yet may well be Post Theatrical, which encompasses 13 “mail-based theatrical experiences” from companies in the United States, Lebanon and Hong Kong. Through June 30; posttheatrical.org‘Yorick, la Historia de Hamlet’/‘Yorick, the Story of Hamlet’Remember Yorick, the jester whose skull plays a big part in “Hamlet”? He takes center stage in Francisco Reyes’s solo with puppets “Yorick, la Historia de Hamlet”/“Yorick, the Story of Hamlet,” presented by the Los Angeles contempory-arts center Redcat. American audiences may know Reyes from his role as Orlando in the Chilean movie “A Fantastic Woman.” In English with Spanish subtitles. Feb. 12-14; redcat.orgWith songs in their heartIf you’re wondering about the back story to the French song in that Allstate commercial, it’s “Non, je ne regrette rien,” made famous by Edith Piaf. And if you missed the biopic “La Vie en Rose,” head over to Raquel Britton’s docu-concert “Piaf … Her Story … Her Songs,” brought to us by Broadway’s Best Shows and the Actors Fund. Feb. 15-18; actorsfund.orgFor tunes in English, turn to Theater Forward, an organization that supports regional theater, which will offer performances by Jason Robert Brown, Kate Baldwin, George Salazar, Anika Noni Rose, Shaina Taub, Branden Noel Thomas, Taylor Iman Jones and the Bengsons for its annual benefit. Feb. 8; theatreforward.orgDavid Glover in “Kyk Hoe Skin die Son.” Credit…Dion Lamar MillsClubbed Thumb’s Winterworks festivalThis enterprising New York company is best known for Summerworks, a festival of new plays that has provided a launchpad for favorites like “What the Constitution Means to Me” and “Tumacho.” Now, Clubbed Thumb is opening up its developmental showcase, Winterworks, to a wider audience on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Twitch. The shows open at regular intervals throughout February, with several livestreaming before going on-demand for a limited time. The programming is director-driven, so there should be some interesting innovations. In “Kyk hoe Skyn die Son [Look at How the Sun Shines],” for example, Keenan Tyler Oliphant writes a letter live and on-screen, while artists reimagine his memories. Other participants include Leonie Bell and Michaela Escarcega. clubbedthumb.orgTechnology and its discontentsThe Studios of Key West has wrangled quite the cast for Drew Larimore’s new play, “Smithtown,” which deals with the impact of technology on our lives and is made up of four interconnected monologues, read by Michael Urie, Ann Harada, Colby Lewis and Constance Shulman. Feb. 13-27; tskw.orgA scene from “Today Is My Birthday,” with, from left, Emily Kuroda, Eric Sharp and Katie Bradley.Credit…via Theater MuTech is integrated into the very fabric of Theater Mu’s multicamera capture of “Today Is My Birthday,” by Susan Soon He Stanton, a staff writer on the HBO hit “Succession.” This Twin Cities company focuses on the Asian-American experience. And Stanton’s narratively inventive play, about a young journalist (Katie Bradley) who has fled New York to return home to Hawaii, is told through phone calls, voice mail messages and even intercom. Feb. 6-21; theatermu.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More