Public Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Review: Alicia Keys’s Musical Is Ambitious

      by

      A promising Off Broadway jukebox musical features hits by the R&B star (including “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You” and “No One”) and a story much like her own.Even in the Golden Age of musical theater, shows so commonly died after intermission that critics came up with a name for the disease. “Second act trouble” presented in many ways: unmoored songs, desperate cutting, illogical crises, hasty workarounds. Yet all those second act symptoms arose from the same underlying condition: first act ambitions.So it’s not really surprising that an enormously ambitious new musical like “Hell’s Kitchen,” the semi-autobiographical jukebox built on the life and catalog of Alicia Keys, disappoints after the mid-show break, tumbling directly into the potholes it spent its first half so smartly avoiding. What’s surprising in this promising show, which opened at the Public Theater on Sunday with the obvious intention of moving to Broadway, is how thrilling it is until then.Surprising to me, anyway. I find that jukeboxes — especially biographical ones, like “Motown” and “MJ” — almost inevitably add to the ordinary difficulties of musical construction with difficulties unique to their provenance. The involvement of the original artists (or their estates) leads to historical sugarcoating. A rush to hit all the high points results in a cherry-picked résumé. The catalog retreads, written for a different reason, fail to move the action forward. And since those songs are the show’s selling point, they wind up wagging the story.But Keys, working with the playwright Kristoffer Diaz and the director Michael Greif, steps around most of those pitfalls in the show’s first hour, setting up the story with notable verve and efficiency. In neat succession it introduces the main characters (17-year-old Ali and her single mother, Jersey), the primary setting (the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen in the late 1990s), the parameters of the plot (Ali’s thirst for love and art) and an imminent source of conflict (Mom).At the same time, it floods us with music to establish the worlds it’s taking us into, well beyond the R&B and pop that Keys is best known for. In a marvelous elevator sequence, Ali encounters opera, jazz, merengue and classical piano as she descends from the one-bedroom 42nd-floor apartment she shares with Jersey, a sometime actor juggling two jobs. (The building, Manhattan Plaza, offers affordable housing for artists.) Then, when Ali reaches the street, a giant rush of sound enfolds her; all of New York, it seems, is singing, playing and, in Camille A. Brown’s excitingly contextual choreography, dancing.Shoshana Bean, left, and Brandon Victor Dixon as the young protagonist’s parents.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are only a few minutes into the show and its armature is fully in place. We know that this is going to be a mother-daughter love-and-letting-go story, as Jersey (Shoshana Bean, warm and pyrotechnic) tries to keep Ali fed and safe. Though race isn’t explicitly an issue between them, Jersey is white and Ali is biracial, and Ali (Maleah Joi Moon in a sensational debut) will gradually be drawn away from her mother’s smothering by the wider group of people she encounters.One is the classical pianist, Miss Liza Jane (the magisterial Kecia Lewis), who will demand that Ali take lessons from her — though in truth Keys started studying at 7, not 17. And out on the street, to the strains of the 2003 hit “You Don’t Know My Name,” Ali will flirt with a bucket drummer named Knuck (Chris Lee, sweet as pie) even though he’s in his mid-20s. He’ll resist — at first.And so, over the course of 11 songs, the first act does the work of ambitious first acts everywhere: expanding the show’s horizon to the larger world in which the action takes place (not a fair world for young Black New Yorkers) and deepening our knowledge of the main characters through conflict. Also humor: Diaz — whose hilarious professional wrestling play, “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist — saves the story from too much earnestness. Credit Greif, too, whose steady management of tone and tension coaxes drama from a tale that could easily have been too interior.Together with Keys they also solve, or at least delay, many of the jukebox problems. By keeping a very narrow focus on just a few weeks in Ali’s life, “Hell’s Kitchen” chooses the possibility of dramatic depth over career highlights. Nor is there much sugarcoating: Keys seems quite willing to present her ambitious stand-in as a hormonal teenager immune to common sense — and Moon, 21, is precociously clever and fearless in delivering that complex portrait.Most important, Keys’s songs, even hits like “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You” and “No One,” fit into the story (and into the mouths of a variety of characters) without too much jimmying. If they don’t, the situation is acknowledged effectively. When Ali finally does spend the night with Knuck — right on time, just before the various story lines merge in a dreadful event at the end of the first act — Ali’s friend Tiny (Vanessa Ferguson) is miffed, for this is supposed to be an unapologetically woman-centered story. “The world is hers ’cause she got a man now?” she complains, interrupting the 2012 banger “Girl on Fire,” here repurposed as a joyful “I’m on top of the world” song. “That’s what we’re doing?”Moon’s dreamy Ali tries to woo Chris Lee, who plays a bucket drummer named Knuck.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlas, “that’s what we’re doing?” is how I felt the moment the second act started. As if the creators had run out of time for finesse — though Keys and Diaz have been working on “Hell’s Kitchen” for more than a decade — its wit curdles into lectures as the story, especially Jersey’s, goes blurry. Her strained relationship with Ali’s father, here a jazz pianist though in reality a flight attendant, bears the characteristic signs of dramaturgical whiplash. (On the other hand, he’s played by Brandon Victor Dixon, a human aphrodisiac, vocally and otherwise.) An argument between Jersey and Miss Liza Jane feels similarly trumped up, until it is resolved in an obvious twist of pathos. And despite Bean’s skill, Jersey’s love for her daughter, the core of the show, gets lost in the attempt to complicate it.The second act songs follow suit; it is no coincidence that the three new ones Keys wrote for the production, all good, are at the top of the show. And though well-structured musicals typically have far fewer songs in the second half than the first to make way for the complexities of plot resolution, here there are a whopping 14, ending indulgently if unavoidably with the 2009 New York anthem “Empire State of Mind.” As a result, “Hell’s Kitchen” nearly becomes what it tried to avoid at the start: a hit dump.But because those hits are hits for a reason, there is still pleasure in hearing them. The singing, arrangements and orchestrations (by various hands including Adam Blackstone, Tom Kitt, Dominic Follacaro and Keys herself) are thrilling, if strangely unbalanced in Gareth Owen’s sound design. The fire-escape sets (by Robert Brill), expressive projections (by Peter Nigrini), saturated lighting (by Natasha Katz) and often hilarious costumes (by Dede Ayite) are all Broadway-ready.I hope “Hell’s Kitchen” will be too. Of course, many musicals make the transfer without ever solving their first act problems, let alone their second. That would be a shame here. Though not perfectly told, Ali’s discovery that art is love, with or without the guy, is too rich not to reach a bigger audience, and a million more girls on fire.Hell’s KitchenThrough Jan. 14 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Alicia Keys Steps Into a New Spotlight

      by

      “Hell’s Kitchen,” a musical inspired by the singer-songwriter’s teenage years in New York, is set to open Off Broadway.One night this summer, Alicia Keys fell asleep listening to show tunes.She was on vacation following a five-week concert tour, but her mind was still at work: For 12 years, she has been developing “Hell’s Kitchen,” a musical based on her adolescence in a then-gritty New York neighborhood, and at the top of her to-do list was writing a new song for the actress playing the main character’s mother.So she took a nap with her headphones on, listening to a playlist of theatrical mom songs (think “Rose’s Turn” from “Gypsy” and “Little Girls” from “Annie”). When she woke up, she could feel the rhythm. She could hear the chords. She could see the title.She ducked into a closet and began to sing into her phone. She hopped online, doing a little research to strengthen her lyrics. And then, when she returned to New York, she began to write, in the wee hours after the meetings and the calls and the rehearsals, noodling at an upright piano in her Chelsea recording studio.“This is occupying a lot of space in my mind,” Keys said about the musical, considered but candid as she was driven to a downtown rehearsal hall, tuning out the traffic and focusing on getting where she wants to go.Maleah Joi Moon is making her professional stage debut as the show’s protagonist, the 17-year-old Ali.Elias Williams for The New York TimesThat day, where she wanted to go was the Public Theater, the celebrated but pandemic-weakened nonprofit where “Hell’s Kitchen” is to begin an Off Broadway run on Oct. 24. Even though Keys is not in it, demand is high: Each time more tickets go on sale, they are snatched up.“I am thinking a lot about ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ and obviously the goal for it to be tremendously beloved and really something that comes into the world in a way that is just like a storm, an incredible storm,” Keys said. “And the goal, obviously, is to transfer to Broadway. So that’s heavy on my mind.”With 15 Grammys, five No. 1 albums and about 5 billion song streams, Keys is an unusual figure in the music world — a classically trained pianist turned R&B singer-songwriter who signed a recording contract as a teenager and remains, at 42, determined, driven and resolutely in control of her creative and commercial life.Her musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” is unusual too, in ways that seem promising. Unlike many biographical jukebox shows chronicling childhood to celebrity, this one is both focused and fictionalized, depicting a few months in the life of a 17-year-old named Ali.“This is not Tina Turner, this is not the Temptations, this is not MJ, this is not Carole King — although all of those are phenomenal,” Keys said, referring to shows about pop stars. “It’s really so much more about relationships and identity and trying to find who you are, which I think is a continuous theme in all of our lives: Who are we? Who do we want to be? Who are we becoming?”In “Hell’s Kitchen,” Ali, like Keys, is the daughter of a white mother and a Black father and is growing up in Manhattan Plaza, a subsidized housing development just outside Times Square where 70 percent of the units are for performing artists. The supporting characters — a hyper-protective single mother, a life-changing piano teacher, an older boyfriend and an unreliable father — are based on figures in Keys’s own upbringing.At its heart, “Hell’s Kitchen” is a mother-daughter love story, featuring the stage veteran Shoshana Bean, left, during a rehearsal with Moon.Elias Williams for The New York Times“We’ve highly fictionalized the specifics,” said Kristoffer Diaz, a playwright and librettist who has been working with Keys on the show for more than a decade. Along the way, Keys and Diaz have been joined by the Broadway veteran Michael Greif, who directed “Dear Evan Hansen,” and by the choreographer Camille A. Brown, an in-demand dance-maker.In some ways, the show’s narrative structure resembles that of Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans”: It is a coming-of-age story about a gifted teenager with a fractured family; it ends with the protagonist’s trajectory unclear, but audiences can fill in the blanks based on what they already know about the author’s accomplishments.Keys resisted suggestions that the musical give audiences a road map to Ali’s future — a future in which she might, like Keys, become a big star. “Sometimes they would push: ‘And how about we…?’ And I was like, ‘No.’ ‘No,’” she said. “You just need to know that she is going to find something. Everything else is irrelevant.”“Hell’s Kitchen” is, in the eyes of its creative team, a mother-daughter love story. And, in an era when many musicals market themselves as love letters either to Broadway or to New York, this one falls squarely into the latter camp: Keys’s identity, as a person and as a songwriter, was shaped by the city in the 1990s, and that informs the show’s sounds (like bucket drumming) and movement (with echoes of social dances like the Running Man).The score, played by a band that will include a pianist visible to the audience even when actors pretend to be tickling the ivories, features Keys’s best-known hits: “Fallin’,” “No One,” “Girl on Fire,” “If I Ain’t Got You,” and, of course, “Empire State of Mind,” her 2009 collaboration with Jay-Z that has become an inescapable New York City anthem. Keys said she has written four new songs for the show, but that even existing songs have a new sound because they have been rearranged.“I almost felt obligated to create that piece that would be something that people who absolutely can’t stand musical theater would love,” Keys said, reflecting on her initial aspirations for “Hell’s Kitchen.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“The songs that you think you know,” she said, “you never heard like this.”Making a musical might seem like a swerve for Keys, but the truth is the overlap between the recording industry and musical theater is substantial. There is an ever-growing inventory of jukebox musicals biographical (“MJ,” about Michael Jackson) and fictional (“& Juliet”), as well as shows with original scores written by pop stars (“Here Lies Love”).Keys is a lifelong theatergoer who has dabbled in acting — she played Dorothy in a preschool production of “The Wizard of Oz” and had a cameo on “The Cosby Show” at 4 — but her passion was always music. She studied piano from age 7, was performing in a girl group and wrote her first song at around 11, and signed that recording contract at 15. Childhood moved fast — she skipped two grades and moved out at 16.“She knew a lot before she should have,” said her mother, Terria Joseph. (Mother and daughter both use stage names.)When Keys was a child, Joseph was a struggling actor — that’s how she qualified to live at Manhattan Plaza — who took survival jobs, particularly as a paralegal, while trying to find work as a performer. (Keys’s father, a flight attendant, did not live with them and was mostly not around; though Keys was close to her paternal grandparents, she was often estranged from her father. Now, she says, they are good.)Keys would tag along to auditions and rehearsals when her mother couldn’t afford a babysitter; when there was enough money, they would stand in line at the TKTS booth and buy discount theater tickets. Her mother recalls an early trip to “Cats,” and Keys remembers “Miss Saigon,” but the show that stands out most is “Rent,” in part because it’s about AIDS, which hit Manhattan Plaza, with its high population of gay artists, quite hard. “Rent,” like “Hell’s Kitchen,” was directed by Greif.She was valedictorian of her graduating class at the city’s Professional Performing Arts School, and attended Columbia University for a month before dropping out to pursue music. In 2001, with the release of “Fallin’,” and boosted by an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” her career took off.Keys has continued to see theater when she can, and in 2011 she co-produced a Broadway play, “Stick Fly,” about an affluent Black family wrestling with race and class. According to her mother, who is always trying to take her to more theater, Keys has long been thinking about developing her own show. “It was on her bucket list for some time,” Joseph said.“People know her centrality to decision-making matters to her,” the Public Theater’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said of Keys (above, at a rehearsal). “There’s nothing of the absent star about her.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“Stick Fly,” Keys said, “ignited this desire in me, across all mediums in regards to storytelling, to be able to start to hear, feel and see stories that I know exist, but in so many ways the world doesn’t see.” And when she started cooking up “Hell’s Kitchen,” she had audacious goals.“Because I have all the experience with seeing theater since a kid, I just was really ready to reinvent theater, too,” she said. “I just felt like there was so much to bring, so many worlds to collide and cross. I almost felt obligated to create that piece that would be something that people who absolutely can’t stand musical theater would love.”Hang on! There are people who can’t stand musical theater? Apparently, yes, and one of them is Keys’s husband, Swizz Beatz, a renowned hip-hop producer.“He’s not a fan,” Keys said, laughing. “Do not bring him to the show where in the middle of the sentence they break out into the song. He falls asleep. He cringes. He can’t take it.”So one goal, Keys said, is simply to create a show her husband will like. (The two make up a power couple, with multiple homes and a significant contemporary art collection; they have two children together, and are also helping to raise his three children from previous relationships.)And what about reinventing theater? When I ask her about that word, she qualifies it — mindful of how it might sound and wary after two decades talking to journalists. Keys said she thinks about her project differently now, because she believes that over the last decade, Broadway has made strides.“I don’t want you to now quote me and say I’m reinventing Broadway,” she said. “I want to be clear that there’s so many pieces that exist now that really do challenge, I think, what we were seeing. There of course needs to be more diversity on Broadway. Is there more already? Hell yeah. And we still need more.”I write about the business of Broadway, so one thing that has struck me, as I’ve been working on this profile, is Keys’s ownership — economic as well as artistic — of “Hell’s Kitchen.” Rather than finding Broadway producers to finance and shepherd the show, thus far she is doing so herself, retaining the rights to its commercial future.“I want to own my story,” she told me. “And I deserve to.”She consults, and is heard, on every strategic and creative choice: writing, casting, staging, marketing.Keys has been shuttling between her recording studio in Chelsea and the rehearsal space, while fine-tuning the show’s sound.Elias Williams for The New York Times“People know her centrality to decision-making matters to her,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public. “She’s been as involved as any artist I’ve ever worked with — she gets involved on a level of granularity that’s just astonishing. It’s not just music, but every sentence, every relationship, every actor. There’s nothing of the absent star about her.”Maleah Joi Moon, who at 21 is making a professional stage debut playing Ali, was taken aback to realize that Keys, whose music was a staple in Moon’s childhood home, would actually be involved on a day-to-day basis.“When I saw the project, I was like, no way was she really attached to this,” Moon said. “And to find out, once I got into the rehearsal room, that she was going to be so heavily involved — it was insane.”Keys radiated warmth as well as intensity during a rehearsal, a novel (“The Vanishing Half”) at her elbow while she bounced in her chair to the beat and tapped out ideas on her phone. “She’s very specific with her notes,” said Shoshana Bean, the actress playing Ali’s mother.She teaches songs to the ensemble. (“You’ve never been to a more charged, lively and thrilling music rehearsal than when she’s running them,” Greif said.) She instructs the stars on vocal technique. (“She has expressed herself about what parts of my voice she wants me to use,” said Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Ali’s father.)She even attended auditions for understudies, and she told me she was relocating a piano in her studio to try to replicate the sonic environment of the theater, thinking she would record the songs in the show and give demos to the band “so they get the feel, they get the swing, they get the idea, they get the energy.”“I’m very, very anal,” she said, “and I know how I want everything to sound.”Control has been a central theme of Keys’s career. While still a teenager, she successfully extricated herself from the contract she had signed with Columbia Records, chafing at efforts to mold her image and sound.“It’s important for me to properly express how I feel at the moment and not have it filtered through other people,” she told Oprah at age 20. Now she preaches self-determination. “If you don’t know what you want for yourself, then you’ll never, never get there,” she told me. “You’ll always be deterred.”Several times, as we talked, she circled back to her concerns about the way the music industry treats artists, and she said one of her long-term goals is “redesigning the industry.”“I feel like as a young artist, we get very taken advantage of, and it’s unfortunate we find ourselves in these circumstances that do not benefit us to the level that it should,” she said. “And I’m lucky. I am in control of all of my music and all of the things that I’ve created. But let me tell you, that’s not the normal story. And I had to fight for it.”Maintaining creative and financial control has become “a mission,” she said, and with “Hell’s Kitchen,” she believes the lessons she has learned are paying off.“For the first time in my life,” she said. “I’m doing something exactly right.”That startled me, given her success. “Really?” I asked.The score is a mix of new songs and Keys’s best-known hits, including, of course, “Empire State of Mind,” her 2009 collaboration with Jay-Z.Elias Williams for The New York Times“I really do,” she said. She explained that with previous projects, “I didn’t start out right, but kind of ended up right.” But this time, she said, “I didn’t want to go out and get too diluted and get too many partners. We have all the right partners, all the right minds. It’s the right mixture of experience and also newness that I think is important to continue to create a new world.”One night in mid-July, I took the subway to Barclays Center to watch Keys do what she is best known for: perform. For 90 minutes she entertained a rapturous crowd of 11,894 — strikingly more diverse, and younger, than most theater audiences. Her sparkling Yamaha piano was in the center of the arena, on a rotating stage, with runways extending out so she could work the crowd.Just before the concert, as she often does, she presided over what she calls a Soulcare Session, promoting her skin care line (“I call them offerings, not products — products is too transactional”), talking up empowerment (“The theme today is reminding ourselves to own our own power”), and posing for pictures with superfans who had paid a steep premium for up-close access (“You can talk to me about anything you want,” she said). Her staff sprayed the patrons with a “reviving aura mist” and invited them to select keys (get it?) with words of affirmation; attendees sat on embroidered pillows, black beanbags and purple cushions and asked Keys about her wardrobe, her writing process, her childhood. Some spoke about how her songs had helped them endure disease or emotional hardship.Keys has long had an entrepreneurial streak — she started a babysitters club when she was 11 — and it is ever-expanding. “I’m really interested in business at this point,” she told me when I asked about what’s next.She’s all-in on “Hell’s Kitchen,” of course. She intends to further build up Key SoulCare. And she’ll make more music.“I feel like I’m in a place where I can express myself clearly,” she said. “I am clear about what I want, what I don’t want. Who I want to do it with, who I don’t want to. I’m unafraid to be very vocal and verbal about that, and I feel like I’m in a place where I can do anything, anything. And I haven’t even begun yet.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Stephen Sondheim’s Final Musical is Opening. How Complete Was It?

      by

      Sondheim said days before his death in 2021 that he did not know when it would be finished, but the musical, now called “Here We Are,” begins performances Thursday.Stephen Sondheim, asked days before his death if he had any sense of when his final musical would be finished, offered a simple answer: “No.”The great composer and lyricist, who was 91 at the time, in late 2021, had been working on and off for years on the show, which was adapted from two Luis Buñuel films. He had written songs for the first act but was struggling with the second. “I’m a procrastinator,” he told me then. “I need a collaborator who pushes me, who gets impatient.”Now, two years after his death, the show, which Sondheim had been calling “Square One” but which was later renamed “Here We Are,” is being presented for the first time, in a 526-seat theater at the Shed, a nonprofit cultural center in Hudson Yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan. Performances of the show, which is based on Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel” and billed as “the final musical by composer Stephen Sondheim,” are set to begin Thursday and to run until January,So what changed? How did a show that Team Sondheim suggested was incomplete at the time of his death get to a point where it was ready for public consumption?The show’s creative and producing team say that two months before Sondheim’s death, he had agreed to let the show go forward, following a successful reading of the material that existed at that point. They had come up with a rationale for a second act that is light on songs. And they note that, following that reading, Sondheim had appeared on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show and had said, “We had a reading of it last week and we were encouraged. So we’re going to go ahead with it, and with any luck we’re going to get it on next season.”So is the show being staged a finished musical? “Who would consider a musical ‘finished’ until it has gone through a full preview process?” the show’s producing and creative team said in written responses to questions for this article. “What we are putting on stage now is as finished as any production about to play its first preview. It’s ready for audiences, and very much the musical Steve envisioned.”The creative team said that all of the show’s songs, and all of its lyrics, were written by Sondheim, and that “as is the case with every musical, the orchestrator and arranger take the composer’s melodies and motifs and use them to arrange and orchestrate the instrumental interstitial music.”The musical will be based in part on Luis Buñuel’s 1972 film “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” Rialto Pictures“There isn’t a note in this score that wasn’t born out of Steve’s compositions, as will be abundantly clear to audiences,” they said.The book, on the other hand, has been revised since Sondheim’s death by its writer, David Ives, and director, Joe Mantello. But the team said that “the three collaborators agreed after the informal reading that took place on Sept. 8, 2021, that Steve’s songwriting for both acts was complete.”There is a long history of work in various stages of completion being released after the death of an artist. Mozart’s Requiem, Puccini’s “Turandot” and Berg’s “Lulu” were all left unfinished when their composers died and are now considered classics.“The work that David and Stephen did should absolutely be seen,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, which was working with Sondheim to develop the show until a few years ago. “It’s a jewel, it’s small, it’s incomplete, but it’s absolutely delightful and smart and gorgeous, and it would be a crime for it not to be seen. So I’m entirely in favor of the work being shown in public.”James Lapine, who as a librettist collaborated with Sondheim on shows including “Into the Woods” and “Sunday in the Park With George,” agreed. “I really trust David and Joe, and don’t think they would be putting up something they didn’t feel was finished — not on this scale,” he said. “They’re smart cookies, and if they wanted to do a workshop because it wasn’t finished, they could. But they see it as finished, and Steve gave his blessing, so it’s going to be an addition to the canon.”The show, in Sondheim’s pithy description in that last interview, has a “so-called plot” in which “the first act is a group of people trying to find a place to have dinner, and they run into all kinds of strange and surreal things, and in the second act, they find a place to have dinner, but they can’t get out.”When Sondheim seemed stymied by the second act, Ives and Mantello suggested that perhaps, once the characters are trapped, they can no longer sing.“Hopefully it won’t feel unfinished,” said the actor Nathan Lane, who took part in the 2021 reading. “It makes sense that these characters, once they’re trapped, they can’t sing any more.”“Here We Are,” like many new musicals, has had a complicated developmental journey.Long before he appeared on Colbert’s show, Sondheim had made suggestions that a production could be imminent. In 2014, during an appearance at the New York Film Festival, Sondheim said that he and Ives had just finished a first draft. In 2016, the producer Scott Rudin, who had been consulting with Sondheim about the show, told the “Fresh Air” interviewer Terry Gross that he hoped it would be staged in 2017. Two months later Sondheim, speaking at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., said he also hoped the show would be staged in 2017, “if I can finish the score in time.”Sondheim had been working on the project off and on for years. Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesThere was a reading and three workshops before the pandemic — all led by the Public Theater — but no productions.“My impression was that Steve hadn’t finished it in his mind to where he wanted it to be exactly, but an unfinished Sondheim song still sounds like a pretty amazing song,” said Michael Cerveris, an actor who took part in two readings at the Public.At one point Sondheim set aside work on the musical; he and Ives returned to another project, called “All Together Now,” and the Public’s rights to the Buñuel films lapsed.Then Mantello and Ives pulled together the 2021 reading, with a starry cast led by Lane and Bernadette Peters. The reading was a one-afternoon event, with no singing — the assembled actors read the words of the script and the song.“It was two acts, and the lyrics were witty and clever, unsurprisingly,” Lane said. Sondheim, he said, “had written an act and the beginning of the second act, and there was some material in the script that was suggesting perhaps he might turn some long monologue into a song — I wasn’t privy to those conversations.”There is uncertainty among some Sondheim biographers about how to view this show.“I’m both eager and apprehensive,” said Daniel Okrent, who is writing a book about Sondheim. “I’m eager because I so admire his work, and I’m apprehensive because of his public statements that suggested he wasn’t very happy with what he had done, or that he didn’t think it was complete.”Several people who spoke with Sondheim in his final years said they were surprised by the turn of events. “He thought it was never going to happen,” said the director Ivo van Hove, who spent time with Sondheim while directing a 2020 Broadway revival of “West Side Story,” “but it’s happening now.”Others would like more transparency from the creative team about how they have pulled this show together, a process partly described by Frank Rich in New York magazine.“I think we’d all like to know more about how the sausage was made, especially the second act sausage,” said D.T. Max, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Finale: Late Conversations With Stephen Sondheim.”Sondheim was known for revising many of his shows throughout the preview process, which makes this one unusual. (He wrote “Comedy Tonight,” the opener of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and “Being Alive,” the 11 o’clock number in “Company,” after out-of-town pre-Broadway productions had begun.)“Steve going on Colbert and saying ‘we’re going to do a show’ and then being around for rehearsals and previews and developing and rewriting as always is one thing,” said David Benedict, a writer who is also at work on a Sondheim biography. “It’s a very different proposition when the composer-lyricist isn’t with you.”The show has a sizable budget for an Off Broadway production — the commercial producers who are financing the show (Tom Kirdahy, Sue Wagner, John Johnson and The Stephen Sondheim Trust) expect to raise between $7 million and $8 million, according to a spokesman for the production. The ticket prices are also steep for Off Broadway: Prime seats are being priced at $349.Alex Poots, the Shed’s artistic director, said he had been thrilled when the Sondheim estate approached him last year about staging the musical.“We’re here to support artists who advance their fields,” he said. “I was literally doing back somersaults — for the most important and groundbreaking theater composer and lyricist to have his final work at the Shed is wonderful for us.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Review: In Central Park, ‘The Tempest’ Sings Farewell to Magic

      by

      A joyful, bumpy musical version of Shakespeare’s late romance closes the Delacorte Theater before an 18-month renovation.“The isle is full of noises,” sings Caliban, and on Tuesday night it certainly was. Helicopters, radios, sirens and birdsong were competing to be heard in the Manhattan air.Yet all of them melted away, as they usually do, at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where the Public Theater’s new musical version of “The Tempest” was giving its opening-night performance. (It runs only through Sunday.) The seventh in the Public’s series of Public Works productions, it will also be the last for the time being; this fall, the Delacorte begins much-needed renovations that will put it out of commission until 2025.“The Tempest” makes for a fitting farewell, having opened the series, in a different adaptation, in 2013. That “Tempest” introduced the innovative Public Works idea: civic theater made for everyone, with members of local community organizations performing alongside professional actors. This new “Tempest,” adapted by Benjamin Velez (whose songs are tuneful and sweet) and Laurie Woolery (whose staging is bumpy but joyous), continues the tradition but emphasizes a new note: the pang of goodbyes.The goodbyes are generally the same ones Shakespeare plotted around 1610. Prospero, a sorcerer living for 12 years in exile on an enchanted island, must forswear the magic that has helped him survive and, with it, his fury over the betrayal that landed him there. He must also release from servitude his chief sprite, Ariel, and his monstrous slave, Caliban. And when his daughter, Miranda, having little experience of men, falls for one who washes up on shore, Prospero, deferring to love, must give her up too.“Am I not the liar/If I deny her?” he sings in the oddly named “Log Man,” a highlight of the nine-song score.Actually, make that “she sings,” because in this production, Prospero, played by Renée Elise Goldsberry in gorgeous voice, is a woman, and not gratuitously so. Her interactions with Miranda are specific to her gender. “Innocence flies like the last gasp of summer/Childhood dies in the arms of a lover/And no one tries to hold on like a mother,” she notes in a later verse of “Log Man,” getting a big laugh on the inevitability of that last word.Renée Elise Goldsberry, as Prospero, knows how to shape a moment for maximum impact, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt least for the first half of the 100-minute show, the Shakespeare is effectively translated to musical theater — perhaps not so surprising given that musical theater is in many ways a translation of Shakespearean templates to begin with. (Songs and monologues often do similar structural work.) Here, Velez’s poppy melodies and gentle slant rhymes usually serve a second function, crystallizing the themes in quickly recognizable and memorable gestures, as the harsh economy of musicals requires.So Prospero’s opening number, “Cast a Spell,” sets up her conflict instantly: She must “finally be free of the tempest in me.” When Miranda (Naomi Pierre) meets Ferdinand (Jordan Best), the Disneyesque “Vibin’ on to You” characterizes their instinctual infatuation in its first funky measure. A merry operetta drinking song (“A Fool Can Be King”) gives Joel Perez, as the soused clown Stephano, a rousing production number, and the song that introduces Sebastian (Tristan André) and Antonio (Anthony Chatmon II) might as well have “comic villain specialty” stamped on it.Of course, those villains aren’t so comic in the Shakespeare, where their threats recall the culture of deceit and violence bred by greed and politics. But that’s one of the trade-offs of Public Works. You do get to see charming nonprofessionals like Pierre (from the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, Brooklyn) work side-by-side with Broadway talent like Jo Lampert (who makes an acid-queen Ariel) and Theo Stockman (a piteous Caliban). But you’re not likely to see any of them get the chance to dig terribly deep.The production’s rushed second half shows why, as the late-night subway schedule bears down and the plot gets ruthlessly trimmed to beat it. We don’t miss the cut scenes so much as the connective tissue that might hold up what’s left. Also missed: the rich language that creates emotional context for a story that, with its spirits and spells, can otherwise seem almost inhuman.And though there’s a lovely finale called “A Thousand Blessings” — with members of Oyu Oro, an Afro-Cuban experimental dance ensemble, flooding the stage — the songs now come too close together to represent peaks of feeling. A landscape with only peaks is flat.Woolery, who leads Public Works and directed its terrific “As You Like It” in 2017, too often exacerbates that problem. With as many as 88 people moving about, plus five musicians in a tipped-over house remaindered from this summer’s “Hamlet” (the sets are by Alexis Distler), the stage can sometimes look like a busy airport instead of a nearly deserted island. And the clown scenes, so dependent on imaginative physical comedy, exceptional timing and an understanding of pathos, are not reliably funny.But one of the nice things about watching nonprofessionals in the limelight, especially the children, is that they don’t cover their excitement, which is funny (and moving) in itself. And one of the nice things about watching professionals in the limelight is that they know how to shape a moment for maximum impact.This is something Goldsberry does over and over, no more so than near the end, when Prospero must act on her insight that “the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.” As she breaks her magic staff in two, several feelings — fear, wonder, resolve — seem to scud across her face. Has she done right in making that choice?Has Public Works done right in making a similar one? Producing work that by traditional measures lacks polish, it has prioritized the virtue of engagement with actual people, and lots of them, over the secret magic known only to a few.As a critic, I feel obliged to ponder the trade-off. But as a citizen I have no doubts. Even in its lesser outings, Public Works makes its own kind of magic: a communitarian charm sorely missed these furious days. We need the series back in the park as soon as possible — albeit with better seats, more accessible bathrooms and raccoonless backstage facilities — to keep making beautiful music for our beleaguered isle of noises.The TempestThrough Sept. 3 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Nonprofit Theaters Are in Crisis. A Times Reporter Spoke With 72 of Them

      by

      Michael Paulson spoke with producers and artistic directors at nonprofit theaters across the country about the crisis their industry is facing.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Michael Paulson, who has covered theater for The New York Times for eight years, knew the situation was bad at the country’s nonprofit regional theaters, which had yet to regain their prepandemic audiences.But in recent months, the shock waves have gotten bigger: One of the nation’s largest companies, Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, said it would pause production on one of its three stages and lay off 10 percent of its staff. The Lookingglass, an anchor of Chicago’s theater scene, halted production for the rest of the year. Then this month, New York’s prestigious Public Theater cut nearly one in five of its jobs.“We’ve seen an increase in the number of closings, and it felt like this is real and serious and important for readers to know about,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview.That observation formed the basis for an article by Mr. Paulson that appeared on the front page of Monday’s newspaper. To document the crisis at America’s regional theaters, he spoke with the leaders of 72 top-tier companies across the country.Here, Mr. Paulson reflects on the reasons for the upheaval, on the most promising solutions being proposed and on the balancing act he juggles between the demands of daily news reporting and investigative projects. This conversation has been edited.How many of the issues that challenge nonprofit theaters stem from the pandemic?The pandemic was an accelerant. But the issues at the heart of this crisis — the aging of the audience, the growing role of streaming media in people’s entertainment diets, the decline in subscriptions as the way consumers plan their theatergoing — were underway before it. The economic situation combined with this inflationary moment proved unsurvivable for a number of theaters and damaging for many more.Are these challenges unique to theaters, or are they true of the nonprofit arts sector in general?Theater has some particular vulnerabilities — it’s a niche art form, and a lot of nonprofits pride themselves on developing new work, which means a show sometimes has a title or is by an artist that audiences don’t yet know. A bunch of people told me audiences want to be sure they’re going to have a good time before they set aside the time and the money, and that often means going to something that’s already established, versus something that is just being introduced to the world.Seventy-two interviews is a lot for one article. Do you envision this piece being the first in a series?I do have a tendency to be an overreporter, but I wanted to be confident that what we were reporting reflected a national pattern and wasn’t just an extrapolation from a handful of worst-case scenarios. I expect that a lot of my time this year is going to be spent thinking and writing about the economic challenges facing theaters in America.How do you balance the demands of daily news reporting with bigger-picture projects?I’m probably going to be doing fewer features about individual shows, while I focus on more of these stories about the health of the field, but I still want to write occasional pieces about artists and works of art. I think a mix of stories is what keeps a reporter sane.Do you anticipate doing a lot of that reporting in person?I hope so. A couple of days ago, I went to see “Evita” at American Repertory Theater outside of Boston, and over the weekend I went to see a play called “tiny father” at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. On Thursday, I saw a production of “Fun Home” at the Studio Theater in Washington, D.C. I’m trying, to the extent I can, to see things outside New York. We need to pay more attention to nonprofit theaters and theaters outside New York — because there are real challenges in those places we need to be telling our readers about.What was the most surprising thing you learned while reporting this article?I was struck by how many theaters are now doing coproductions. It’s pretty dramatic: The Shakespeare Theater Company in D.C. had one coproduction out of six shows before the pandemic, and now at least five out of six will be coproductions this coming season. There’s also a lot of experimentation with collaboration, which is heartening. Theaters that once saw themselves either as competitors or just strangers are much more interested in finding ways to help one another.Your article touches on a number of potential solutions. Which seem most promising?There’s a coalition forming of theaters in Connecticut that is talking about whether the theaters might be able to share set-building functions. Those kinds of approaches might have promise. A lot of theaters are talking about the possibility of either more government assistance or for more foundations to take seriously the challenges facing this field. There’s a shared sense that box-office revenue, which has never been enough to sustain these organizations, is not going to be a primary part of the solution.How will we see an effect on Broadway, which depends on nonprofit theaters to develop material and support artists?The situation means less work for artists, actors, writers, directors and designers. Fewer shows are being staged, and those shows are often smaller and have shorter runs, which is a challenge both for the people who are already established in the field and the people who are seeking to enter it. There’s just less work to go around. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Ato Blankson-Wood on Playing a Hamlet Who ‘Leads With Love’

      by

      The actor is starring in a modern-dress production of the play through Aug. 6 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.As a veteran of the Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park productions, Ato Blankson-Wood is used to contending with the elements. “The bugs, the helicopters flying overhead: There’s an intense focus that is necessary,” he said.But for this summer’s production of “Hamlet,” he has had to dig deeper: Not only is he feeling the weight of the title role, but, as he put it, “the world is on fire” and air-quality issues have forced the cancellation of four “Hamlet” performances so far.Still, Blankson-Wood is undeterred.“I remember that there’s a person in that audience who is maybe seeing a play for the first time, or who was very excited to come see a show,” he said during a recent interview at a cafe in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. “That’s what I’m focused on. This is not about my experience, it’s for them, and for my scene partners.”This alfresco staging of “Hamlet,” directed by Kenny Leon, is Blankson-Wood’s fifth production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. His first, “Hair,” in 2008, was also his New York professional stage debut. Then he played the narcissistic Orsino in “Twelfth Night” in 2018, and Orlando in “As You Like It,” in 2017 and 2022. He’s also had notable turns in more hospitable environments on Broadway and off, including his Tony-nominated run in “Slave Play.”The actor as Hamlet this summer at the Delacorte Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd as Gary, a man questioning his interracial relationship (with Dustin, played by James Cusati-Moyer, left) in “Slave Play” at Broadway’s Golden Theater in 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn Leon’s modern-dress production of “Hamlet,” Blankson-Wood opted for a contemporary take on the tragic prince: a sad boy dressed in military fatigues, flowy white shirts and a dark hoodie that he said the show’s costume designer, Jessica Jahn, created after learning of his inspiration.“I had this thought that our most Hamletian modern figure is Kanye West,” he said. “We witnessed him losing a parent in the public eye, he’s been called a genius, and he has behaved in ways where people are like, ‘Is he OK?’ I think it’s exciting to imagine his moments of uncertainty, what his soliloquies might be.”The actor, 38, said West’s recent controversies, are less interesting to him. Which is not surprising. In speaking with Blankson-Wood, the sense emerges of an artist with little time for psychic clutter. Each morning, he recites daily affirmations (one he goes back to, borrowed from his “Slave Play” character, is, in part, “I am the prize”) and makes sure to engage his body (workouts at the gym), mind (post-workout podcasts, like “Spark & Fire” or Oprah Winfrey’s “Super Soul Sunday”), and spirit (“morning meditation, in a section of my room where I have a little cushion, altar, and a remembrance of my grandmother”).“I like to engage with the spiritual world,” he said. “It’s a part of my understanding of life on this planet, so I have to touch that every day to center myself.” Since “Hamlet,” he’s added a nightly bubble bath.He came to the production after participating in a collaborative online reading of the play’s “To be or not to be” speech, which was performed by Black actors, and released in 2020 by the Public to coincide with the Juneteenth holiday that year. Leon, a consultant on the piece, said he was struck by the strength and softness of Blankson-Wood’s performance.“I get to purge emotionally every night,” Blankson-Wood said of playing a Hamlet who is begging to be understood. “I can take bits of my day and pour it in there to release, if I need to.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“When it came time to cast Hamlet, I wanted to tell it through the eyes of the young people who felt hurt, betrayed, and unloved in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder,” Leon said in a phone call. “Like Ato, this Hamlet leads with love, and is begging to be understood. We talked a lot about the mental health issues that young people are dealing with, because I wanted this production to have some hope, small as it is, by the end.”Leon made a deal with the cast: Once the Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro completed his edits, the actors would be allowed to add lines back in — though they would need to give up some of their own in exchange. The approach helped trim the five-hour play to two hours and 45 minutes, excising the military and royal aspects to focus on the family dynamics.“We’ve been talking a lot about how Shakespeare is often cut by academics, and sometimes I wonder if there would be a benefit to it being cut by artists; seeing what’s really necessary from an actor’s standpoint,” Blankson-Wood said. “I have my issues with this cut. A lot of the meta-theatricality is gone, and that’s one of the things I love about the character, like his line about holding a mirror up to nature. I did fight to get some things back.”The actor added that Leon’s “fiery” technique, on and off the page, took some getting used to, but credited Leon with pushing him further than he thought he could go. (In his review for The Times, the theater critic Jesse Green credited his performance with bringing “a vivid anger to the role.”)“I get to purge emotionally every night,” he continued. “I can take bits of my day and pour it in there to release, if I need to, and I knew this production would be good for that.”His love of theater, and his drive to define his relationship to it, extends to his childhood.Born the middle of five siblings in Silver Spring, Md., to two Ghanaian immigrants, Blankson-Wood grew up watching movie musicals with his mother. While his home was “culturally, very traditionally Ghanaian,” he said musicals created a cultural bridge to his American interests, which led to acting.He studied acting at New York University and was soon cast as a member of the tribe in a production of “Hair” at the Delacorte — which, coincidentally, shared the 2008 summer season with another “Hamlet,” starring Michael Stuhlbarg. He remained with “Hair” when it transferred to Broadway and then London’s West End but, following a run in the 2011 musical “Lysistrata Jones,” the actor said he felt a gap, “between the work I was doing and what I felt I was capable of.”“The ethos and energy behind commercial musical theater feels like it is really about the product,” he explained. “I don’t think that’s good or bad, but I do think my interests are always in process and craft, which I feel are more valued in plays. That’s where the impulse to go to grad school came from.”“I now really understand what it means to take ownership of my process,” the actor said, “and have found my voice in that way.”Elias Williams for The New York TimesHe enrolled in the Yale School of Drama, where he became friends with James Cusati-Moyer (who would later be his “Slave Play” scene partner). The two became “like a traveling act: this duo that everyone knew of,” Cusati-Moyer said. “And then we started doing drag together.”In 2013, they performed in Yale Cabaret’s inaugural “Yale School of Drag” show as well as a drag play written by their classmates — titled “We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun” — which later had a 2016 presentation in Brooklyn. Blankson-Wood couldn’t reprise his role; he was giving what Charles Isherwood described as a breakout performance in “The Total Bent” at the Public. His replacement? An incoming Yalie named Jeremy O. Harris.The three became friends, and Harris took inspiration from the friendship of the other two as he developed the characters of Gary and Dustin, one of three interracial couples undergoing dubious sex therapy in “Slave Play.”“We had to navigate very difficult territory, as these characters were inspired by us, but were specifically not Ato and I,” Cusati-Moyer said. “But there’s no one else I can imagine doing that role with. He brings every corner of his heart, and that comes with an innate care and appreciation for his own work, as well as the work of those around him.”The show opened on Broadway in 2019 and garnered 12 Tony nominations, including nods for both actors; Harris; and the director Robert O’Hara, who later directed Blankson-Wood in a 2022 Covid-era adaptation of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” at the Minetta Lane Theater.“I’m not necessarily drawn to these internal, isolating roles, but something happened when I went to grad school where it felt like a faucet turned on, and emotional availability became my go-to,” Blankson-Wood said.After “Slave Play,” he continued, “I was very aware of my inherent value, because that’s the journey my character was on. I now really understand what it means to take ownership of my process, and have found my voice in that way.“After that, and ‘Long Day’s,’ and this, I’m ready for something that has levity and is heart-forward.” More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      New York’s Public Theater Lays Off 19 Percent of Its Staff

      by

      The institution, a titan among nonprofit theaters, is suffering from the combined effects of falling revenue and rising costs plaguing the arts world.The Public Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious and successful nonprofit theaters, laid off 19 percent of its staff on Thursday as a financial crisis sweeps across the field.The move, which cost about 50 people their jobs, followed a 13 percent layoff at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a 10 percent layoff at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles.The Public, headquartered in Lower Manhattan and presenting work primarily Off Broadway, is by almost any measure a titan among nonprofit theaters — the birthplace of “A Chorus Line” and “Hamilton,” the originator and presenter of Free Shakespeare in the Park, and a creative anchor for some of the nation’s most influential dramatists.But the theater, like many others, is suffering from the combined effects of falling revenue and rising costs.“The economic headwinds that are attacking the American theater are attacking us, too,” Oskar Eustis, the theater’s artistic director, said in an interview. “Our audience is down by about 30 percent, we have expenses up anywhere from 30 to 45 percent, and we have kept our donor base, but it’s static. Put that all together, and you get budget shortfalls — big budget shortfalls.”Eustis said the Public would not shutter any programs beyond its previous decision to put its Under the Radar Festival, an annual program of experimental work, on indefinite hiatus.But Eustis said the Public would need to reduce the amount of theater it is staging in the short term — its next season, he said, will feature five shows at its Astor Place building, down from 11 in the last full season before the coronavirus pandemic. The traditional Shakespeare in the Park program will also not take place next year because its home, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, will be undergoing a long-planned renovation, but Eustis said the company is seeking a way to present some Shakespeare at an alternate location (or locations) next summer.The theater’s executive director, Patrick Willingham, said the cuts would be spread across the company’s operations. “It’s a pullback in every department at every level,” he said.The Public currently has about 246 full-time positions, Willingham said. The company had a previous round of layoffs in 2021 as it tried to rebound following the pandemic closure of theaters, and it also had staff furloughs at the height of the pandemic. Willingham said this week’s layoffs were not a surprise to the staff because the need for spending cuts had been discussed internally for some time. “We’ve been really transparent with the employees over the course of this year,” he said. “We’ve been really clear that we were going to have to make reductions.”Willingham said the Public’s annual budget during the next fiscal year will be around $50 million, down from about $60 million before the coronavirus pandemic. He added that, thanks to federal pandemic relief funds and royalties from “Hamilton,” the theater is hoping it will not have a budget deficit during its current fiscal year, which ends next month, or the following fiscal year. “We’re making decisions that are actually trying to get ahead of what we’re seeing as this nationwide trend,” Willingham said, “so that we can get to a sustainable model we can rely on year after year.”Eustis, who is among the best-compensated artistic directors in the field, said he will cut his own pay by an unspecified amount — “I will be taking a significant reduction in salary,” he said — but that “nobody else would or should” have a salary reduction.He added that the Public remains committed to its Public Works program, in which amateur performers join professionals to put on musical pageants adapted from classic works, and its mobile unit, which presents Shakespeare in a variety of locations in and around the city, including at prisons and community centers.Eustis called the cuts “absolutely necessary to secure the Public’s security and future,” but also “tremendously sad and difficult.” However, at a time when some theaters are closing as a result of financial problems, Eustis said the Public is in no such danger.“This is not an existential crisis,” he said. “We are taking moves that mean that the Public’s existence and future will not be threatened. The Public will be here, and performing its mission, long past the time you and I are here.” More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Review: This ‘Hamlet’ Under the Stars Is No Walk in the Park

      by

      The Public Theater’s alfresco production has plenty to offer audiences who know the play already. But it may not be so easy for newcomers.For those who remember the 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of “Much Ado About Nothing” — as I do, fondly — the sight that awaits them at this summer’s “Hamlet” in the same location is disturbing.Entering the Delacorte Theater, you are immediately faced with what looks like a copy of the earlier show’s set, which depicted the handsome grounds of a grand home in a Black suburb of Atlanta. But now it is utterly ruined. The facade is atilt, the S.U.V. tipped nose-first in a puddle, the Stacey Abrams for President banner torn down and in tatters. The flagpole bearing the Stars and Stripes sticks out of the ground at a precipitous angle, like a javelin that made a bad landing.For the director Kenny Leon and the scenic designer Beowulf Boritt, both returning for this “Hamlet” — the Public Theater’s fifth in the park since 1964 and 13th overall — it’s a coup de théâtre, if an odd one. However smartly the setting provokes a shiver of dread in those who recognize it, and dread is certainly apt for a play in which nine of the main characters die, it can only produce a shrug from anyone else. An approach that had been designed to welcome audiences to a new way of looking at Shakespeare in 2019 now seems destined to exclude them.I’m afraid the same holds for the production overall: It is full of insight and echoes for those already in the know, and features lovely songs (by Jason Michael Webb) and a few fine performances that anyone can enjoy. (Ato Blankson-Wood brings a vivid anger to the title role.) But this “Hamlet” has been placed in a frame that doesn’t match what the production actually delivers, leaving me glad to have seen it but wishing for something more congruent.Part of the problem is that the frame — both Black and military as in Leon’s “Much Ado” — is so prominent at the start and irrelevant thereafter. Instead of beginning the play as written, with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Leon stages his funeral as a prologue, with Marine Corps pallbearers, a praise team singing settings of Bible verses and Ophelia (Solea Pfeiffer) channeling Beyoncé.Only after this welcoming opening do we get the awful scenes in which the dead king, appearing to Hamlet, urges revenge on the brother who murdered him and then married his wife. As his giant funeral portrait comes to life through psychedelic special effects, Hamlet confusingly lip-syncs his beyond-the-grave voice, provided by Samuel L. Jackson in Darth Vader mode.But don’t be misled by that martial tone, any more than by the set, the Marines and the military cut of Jessica Jahn’s costumes for the men. (For the women they are colorful and gorgeous.) The war story they seem to promise is not in fact told in this production, as almost all the material concerning Denmark’s beef with Norway, and the consequent need to assure the royal succession, has been cut.Well, something had to be. Uncut, “Hamlet,” the longest of Shakespeare’s plays, would likely run more than four hours without an intermission; here it’s two hours and 45 minutes with one. How different directors make the trims is, in effect, their interpretation. Is the play a dysfunctional family melodrama? A moral inquiry into suicide and murder? A satire of royal courts and courtiers? All are in there.Leon focuses on the interior drama of Hamlet himself, inevitable when you cherry-pick the famous soliloquies. Blankson-Wood delivers them well, if not yet with the easeful expression that turns them into free-flowing thoughts-as-actions instead of words, words, words to be worked on.Still, because the soliloquies follow each other so closely, giving the staging the herky-jerky feeling of a musical without enough book, we get a clear sense of his Hamlet as someone whose interiority and sullenness precede the excuse of his father’s murder. You are not surprised when he turns Bad Boyfriend on Ophelia after (accidentally) killing her father. Ophelia herself is hoist with the same petard. Her descent into insanity, never clearly delineated in the text, is even more sudden with the cuts taken.Something similar happens to many of the other characters, like the interchangeably bro-y Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who make a first impression then all but disappear. The Players are similarly reduced, their version of “The Mousetrap,” with which Hamlet intends to “catch the conscience of the king” now a mime show. And Horatio barely seems to show up in the first place, even though he’s the character Shakespeare leaves standing at the end: enjoined, as Hamlet says dying, to “tell my story.”The show recreates the set from the 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” which depicted the grounds of a home in a Black suburb of Atlanta, but now utterly ruined.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf that story is a bit foggy in this production, others are absolutely clear. As Claudius, John Douglas Thompson brings his usual grave authority to bear but also a fascinating note of insecurity that helps explain the character’s ruthlessness. Daniel Pearce makes of Polonius a hilariously pedantic desk jockey and bad idea bear. (The downside: You don’t mind when he gets knifed.) In Nick Rehberger’s rendering of Laertes, the character’s grief, fury and forgiveness all ring true, even though, as cut, they are nearly simultaneous.And Lorraine Toussaint is an exceptionally subtle, emotionally intelligent Gertrude, grieving her husband’s death but alert to the necessity of loving his killer. For me, she is the center of this production’s tragedy, giving fullest expression to Claudius’s observation that “When sorrows come, they come not single spies,/But in battalions.”That’s an unusual path to cut through the play, but having seen it so many times, I’m happy to go for a ride on its less-traveled roads. Throughout this production I heard arresting poetry I’d somehow missed before (“a pair of reechy kisses”) and saw old ideas revivified by bright new details. (When Polonius sends Laertes off with his tired advice, he also slips him an N95 mask, as other fathers might slip their child condoms.)Yet I worried that those less familiar with “Hamlet,” let alone those more invested in a traditional rendition, would be left unanchored on its heaving sea of meaning. Though performed, and often well, under the open sky of Central Park, its thoughts (as Claudius says) “never to heaven go.” They’re atilt like the house, and, like that javelin, too strangely angled.HamletThrough Aug. 6 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. More