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    ‘Good Bones’ Review: A Gentrification Drama at Public Theater

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    A new play from James Ijames, who won a Pulitzer for his “Fat Ham,” has intriguing ideas about identity and community that never fully take shape.In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” In James Ijames’s “Good Bones,” which opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater in Manhattan, it’s not a parking lot that’s the issue but a sports complex. This project is being nudged along by Aisha (Susan Kelechi Watson), a former local who is promoting the arena and building a luxe new home in her old hood as a way to revitalize it.Still, “Joni Mitchell never lies,” at least according to Earl (Khris Davis), the contractor working on Aisha’s house. Earl has fond memories of the housing project (in an unspecified city) known to its residents as the Heat. Aisha doesn’t; she sees the Heat as a place of fear, crime and lost prospects, and doesn’t mourn its potential replacement. Now, with her husband, Travis (Mamoudou Athie), she has returned to help transform the Heat into the up-and-coming neighborhood of Fennbrook. Oh, but their fabulous home may be haunted.“Good Bones” has great foundations: It’s a play about property and community exclusively featuring Black characters, and Black characters from different ends of the economic spectrum. How often do we see stories featuring the gentrified and the gentrifiers, all of whom are the same skin color? But “Good Bones” is meager with its plot and noncommittal in its intrigue, so even when the play offers its wry charms and astute reflections, it feels largely stuck in place.This production, directed by Saheem Ali, opens with a Brontë vibe; Aisha wanders in a shift dress through her in-progress modern mansion, with plastic sheets draping down from the high ceilings so the characters move through a haze of construction material. (Don’t worry, the sheets are gradually ripped down throughout the play to expose an Ikea showcase-worthy kitchen and dining room, beautifully designed by Maruti Evans.) The follow-through is a little less impressive.There’s an argument about kitchen knobs (Travis wants the handcrafted $40 ones; Aisha wants to stick to their budget) and whether they should have kids. Earl brings his sister Carmen (Téa Guarino) over for dinner. Occasionally Aisha hears a ghoulish giggle or watches her French doors spookily open on their own. But even our protagonist comically shrugs off these humble hauntings. (“I ain’t got time for this,” she snaps, turning on her heel.)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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      On City Strolls, ‘Fat Ham’ Writer Was Inspired by ‘Ghosts of Absence’

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      The Tower Records on Broad Street, the Borders bookstore on Chestnut, and the Kitchen Kapers boutique at the corner of Walnut and 17th Streets in Philadelphia: The playwright James Ijames shopped at all of them in the early 2000s while pursuing his M.F.A. at Temple University.I frequented them as well, in the late 1990s, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania. During a walk around downtown Philadelphia on a sweltering August afternoon, we noticed that those businesses were long gone. Passing by the buildings that once housed them, we reflected on how those old haunts endure, in some way, because they stay in our memories, paralleling many of the ideas of that lingering generational history Ijames gets at in his work.Our small talk — about our fondness for the city, receiving Pulitzer Prizes the same year (in 2022) and being college professors — gave way to weightier issues: gentrification, ghosts and intergenerational trauma. Those subjects are all explored in “Good Bones,” his much-anticipated follow-up to his Tony-nominated “Fat Ham,” a Pulitzer winner about a Hamlet-inspired character’s struggles to overcome his family’s cycles of trauma and violence.The cast of “Fat Ham” during its Tony-nominated Broadway run in 2023.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIjames (pronounced “imes”) still lives in Philadelphia, with his husband, and teaches at Villanova University. (He is also a former co-artistic director of that city’s Wilma Theater, which produced a film version of “Fat Ham” in 2021, before the Public Theater in Manhattan staged the play’s in-person premiere in 2022.) As we stood on the corner of 15th and Locust Streets, he pointed out that his favorite video store is now a plastic surgery center.“I loved TLA Video because they carried queer independent films, like ‘The Watermelon Woman.’ It was the only place I could find that stuff,” Ijames said. “I’m sad that there isn’t a place for a little queer boy to go.”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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      ‘Counting and Cracking’ Review: One Family’s Tale Fit for an Epic

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      No theatrical wizardry is needed for this compelling drama about a woman’s journey to Australia from war-torn Sri Lanka and the generations that follow.Some shows use an extended running time to challenge the audience and its perceptions. Pulling viewers into a trance state and testing their endurance is the ultimate artistic gambit.Then there are the shows that are long simply because they have a lot to tell.Such is the case with “Counting and Cracking,” which fills its three and a half hours with an absorbing tale of family ties and national strife, from Sri Lanka to Australia, across almost five decades. When the first of two intermissions arrived, I had barely recovered from a head-spinning plot twist. And the production, which is at N.Y.U. Skirball in partnership with the Public Theater, had more in store. It’s that kind of good yarn.Written by S. Shakthidharan, who drew from his own family history and is also credited with associate direction, “Counting and Cracking” starts in 2004 Sydney. The show opens with Radha (Nadie Kammallaweera) briskly instructing her son, the 21-year-old Siddhartha (Shiv Palekar), to disperse his grandmother’s ashes in the Georges River, and then immerse himself in the water, as required by tradition.“In Tamil we don’t say goodbye,” Radha tells Siddhartha. “Only, I will go and come back.”As the show progresses, we gradually realize what these words really mean to her, and to her family and community. In 1983, when she was pregnant and living in her home country of Sri Lanka, Radha was told that her husband, Thirru (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), had been killed in the budding civil war between the minority Tamil and the majority Sinhala. She fled the violence and settled in Australia, where she gave birth to a child who would grow up largely unaware of his heritage.At a steady clip, Shakthidharan and the director Eamon Flack (also credited with associate writing) hopscotch between Sydney and Sri Lanka, from the 1950s — when the South Asian nation was still known as Ceylon — to the 1980s and 2000s and back again. Even the language is in constant movement as the 16 actors juggle English, Sinhala and Tamil, providing instant translation when necessary.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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      Working on a Sri Lankan-Australian Epic, He Learned His Family’s Past

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      As the acclaimed “Counting and Cracking” makes its North American debut, the playwright describes the work as “my soul on a plate.”The playwright S. Shakthidharan has lived in Australia since he was a toddler, but when he speaks of his homeland, he means Sri Lanka.That’s where he was born, where he spent his first birthday, where his ancestors were rooted. Then in 1983, the South Asian nation descended into what would become a 26-year civil war. His family, part of the country’s Tamil minority, had the means to flee to safety. So they did, going to India, Singapore and finally Australia, in 1984.“I do think of Sri Lanka as my homeland, but I think of Australia as my home,” he said the other day, his accent redolent of Sydney, where he grew up. “I think I carry the two simultaneously. Sri Lanka lives somewhere in my chest. Always. Wherever I am.”He was saying this in New York, after a rehearsal of his epic play, “Counting and Cracking,” in which the personal and political are inextricably entwined. Jet lag had a hold of him, but he was game to talk about the show, which has a largely South Asian cast of 19 and a running time of three and a half hours (intermissions included).Shiv Palekar, center, and other performers at N.Y.U. Skirball. Multiple trips to Sri Lanka and India were involved in assembling the cast.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAn autobiographically infused hit in Australia, where it had its premiere in 2019, it is now in previews at N.Y.U. Skirball in Greenwich Village. Produced by Belvoir St Theater and Kurinji, and presented by the Public Theater and N.Y.U. Skirball, it’s a multigenerational saga about a Sri Lankan-Australian family and the dangerous fragmenting of a society that can drive people to leave their beloved country and risk trying to forge a new life elsewhere.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Five Women Who Started a Secret Theater Society

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      It was their own secret society. Five women who worked together at the Public Theater, bonding over drinks and aspirations, sharing frustrations and ideas, commiserating and brainstorming and laughing.They gave their alliance a nickname: Women and Ambition — cheeky because, as they saw it, “ambitious” remained such a loaded adjective for young women. Their convergence at the Public in the mid-2010s would resonate as far more than happy memories: Now each of them has become a Woman With Power, in a beleaguered field in vital need of new inspiration.“These women have helped change the trajectory of my life,” said one of the women, Maria Goyanes, who is now the artistic director of Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington.Lear deBessonet, who oversees the long-running Encores! series at New York City Center, recalled the prevailing spirit: “There was a sense of like, ‘I see you, girl. I see you. You’ve got to run things now.’”And now they do.Before deBessonet officially took over the Encores! series in 2021, she ran Public Works, the community-oriented program that stages a musical adaptation of a classic story each summer. Once at Encores!, which gives rarely revived shows short-running productions, she got off to a shaky start during the pandemic. But she’s since had a number of buzzy productions, including a starry “Into the Woods,” which went to Broadway. This summer, her acclaimed production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” with Sutton Foster, is Broadway-bound as well.Shanta Thake.Ye Fan for 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? 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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      Public Theater Takes Shakespeare in the Park Out on the Town

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      The Delacorte Theater is being renovated, so a musical version of “The Comedy of Errors” is touring some of the city’s outdoor spaces.On a small stage, three actors practiced a sword fight — slowly, then faster. Behind them board operators ran a sound check and a wardrobe assistant shook out costumes.“This is the part of theater you never get to see,” Rebecca Martínez said.Martínez was speaking on Saturday in the southeast corner of Bryant Park. Behind her, the cast and crew of the Public Theater’s bilingual musical version of “The Comedy of Errors,” performed in Spanish and English, accomplished their preshow rituals. Martínez, who adapted the production with Julián Mesri, is also the show’s director and choreographer. Typically, routines like these are performed backstage, out of sight. But at Bryant Park, amid the birders, the tourists and the library patrons, a backstage was not available.With the Delacorte Theater closed for renovations, the Public is taking its summer production of “The Comedy of Errors” to parks and other outdoor sites in the city.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesFor over 60 years, the Public Theater has offered summer Shakespeare in one place: Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. This year, the Delacorte is closed for renovations (it plans to reopen next summer, with “Twelfth Night”), so the Public has taken this free show to the streets, parks and plazas of the city’s five boroughs.This “Comedy of Errors” was seen last year, as a production of the Public’s Mobile Unit, which brings high-energy, low-tech versions of Shakespeare to venues like libraries, correctional facilities and community centers. The Unit travels light, with a rug in place of a set, which allows a simple set up and strike.“Like, boom! Rug! Let’s go!” Martínez said.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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      ‘Sally & Tom’ Frees Sally Hemings From Being a Mere Footnote

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      Suzan-Lori Parks’s play is the latest work by a Black writer seeking to prioritize Hemings’s life and perspective to make her fully dimensional.Sally Hemings might be a household name these days, but we still know so little about the relationship between Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Yet, Hemings endures as a figure of endless fascination: American writers aspire to tell her story, and there remains a yearning for a deeper understanding of the enslaved woman who left no firsthand accounts of her inner thoughts.In “Sally & Tom,” Suzan Lori-Parks is the latest writer trying to fill in the gaps in order to present Hemings as a multidimensional character — and, in the process, rescue her personhood onstage. “We don’t know what happened,” Sheria Irving, who portrays Hemings in the play, told me, adding that Parks is “building on this factual account.” (The play has been a hit for the Public Theater and runs there through June 2.)She continued: “We do not have to reimagine, we can really imagine what it is for a 14-year-old to be looked at by a 41-year-old, and not just looked at but to engage in sexual exploitation with this man.”Parks’s fidelity to the history means she doesn’t alter Hemings’s fate. Instead, she experiments with the storytelling by plotting “Sally & Tom” as a backstager, or a play within a play, in which the main character, Luce (also played by Irving), is an African American dramatist who is writing a play about the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson. Luce is playing Hemings in her own play, which is called “The Pursuit of Happiness.”In fact, each cast member plays two parts: Luce’s partner, Mike (Gabriel Ebert), is playing Tom in the production, and Alano Miller plays both Hemings’s older brother, James, and Kwame, a Hollywood actor who has returned to his old theater company. When the historical story and the present-day one collide, they often reveal the sometimes comical and often complicated reality that can arise when mounting a show dealing with race relations in the American theater today.Contemporary woes: Irving and Ebert as a modern couple struggling to produce a play (and overcome race relations in the American theater) in “Sally & Tom.”Jeenah Moon for 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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Tony Nominee Starring in Alicia Keys’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ on Broadway

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      Maleah Joi Moon almost gave up on theater. Now, in her first professional role, the “Hell’s Kitchen” star is a Tony nominee.Maleah Joi Moon has come a long way in a short time.Just a few years ago, she was a theater kid in suburban New Jersey, listening to her dad’s Alicia Keys records, starring in a high school production of “Rent,” waiting outside a Broadway stage door hoping to meet the cast of “Waitress.”Now, at 21, she’s a Tony nominee for her Broadway debut as the star of the new Alicia Keys musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” which opened last month. That means she is working alongside the people she had just been fangirling — getting vocal advice and the occasional breakfast with Keys; honing her acting instincts with the show’s director, Michael Greif, who directed “Rent” 28 years ago; and learning to manage an eight-show week from Shoshana Bean, the actress she stage-doored in “Waitress,” who has taken Moon under her wing while portraying her mother.Moon’s confident performance — smoky voice, headstrong attitude, gestural dance moves — has caught the attention of critics. “Sensational,” Elisabeth Vincentelli declared in The New York Times. For Vulture, Jackson McHenry called her both “a great discovery” and “a virtuoso.” And Adam Feldman of Time Out went for wordplay: “With apologies to astronomers: Moon is a star.”“It’s surreal and it’s ridiculous and crazy and insane and all the things,” Moon told me as we stood in Shubert Alley, just under a digital marquee featuring her atop a piano, not far from the stage door where she now signs autographs for her own fans. “But my inner child — the one that wanted to be Nala on Broadway — is like, this is aligned. It’s divine alignment. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t meant.”Moon is dancing a delicate dance in “Hell’s Kitchen,” sort of playing Alicia Keys and sort of not. The show is about a few formative months in the life of Ali, a 17-year-old girl chafing under her mother’s vigilance, hooking up with a street musician and discovering a gift for piano. It is a fictionalized remix of Keys’s own childhood chapters, but it is partly Moon too — she has been with the show through developmental workshops and an Off Broadway production, and her personality and physicality, as well as her very recent adolescence, inform those of her character.“Hell’s Kitchen,” a semi-autobiographical Alicia Keys musical, was nominated for 13 Tony Awards.Sara Krulwich/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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More