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    ‘Ghosts’ Review: The Sins of the Father, Visited on Everyone

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    Ibsen’s scathing drama about medical and moral contagion gets a high-sheen Off Broadway staging starring a riveting Lily Rabe.As if under the weather, Jack O’Brien’s production of “Ghosts,” the 1881 Ibsen drama about medical and moral contagion, coughs three times to get started.First, as work lights illuminate a handsome study representing the home of Helena Alving, the cast arrives in rehearsal mode: Lily Rabe carrying a slouchy bucket bag and Billy Crudup a copy of The New York Times. Levon Hawke grabs a mint-green script from the library table as Hamish Linklater and Ella Beatty run the opening lines of the play — tonelessly, as if feeling all of its 144 years.Then comes a restart. Now the scene between Linklater (playing Engstrand, an alcoholic carpenter) and Beatty (playing Regina, Mrs. Alving’s maid) seems less perfunctory. They look at each other a little, instead of just their lines.Finally, as the work lights disappear into the flies, the scene is repeated and we are given the real, often remarkable, thing. The play’s opening argument — for Regina is not just Mrs. Alving’s maid but Engstrand’s estranged daughter — is now fully polished: lit, costumed and performed, in the Lincoln Center Theater manner, to a high upper-middlebrow sheen.I don’t know why O’Brien chose to place such a stock contemporary frame around the timelessly alarming 19th-century action. (The device returns briefly at the end of the show.) Perhaps he means his version of “Ghosts,” which opened Monday at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in an adaptation by the Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, to honor the process of repetition and refinement by which old ideas become new again as they are brought to life by succeeding generations.Certainly his casting suggests that. Rabe is the daughter of the playwright David Rabe, whose work has frequently been produced in this building. Linklater, her partner, is the son of the theatrical vocal coach Kristin Linklater. Hawke’s father, Ethan, played Macbeth and Hotspur here; his mother, Uma Thurman, played Mrs. Alving at Williamstown. Crudup has been a house star since “Arcadia” in 1995. And if Beatty’s connection to the company is less clear, well, she’s a daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. Enough 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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      Tribeca Festival Unveils 2023 Lineup With Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and More

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      Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and Randall Park, among others, are making their directorial debuts at the annual New York event, set for June.Films directed by performers like Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and Randall Park will be a focus of the 2023 Tribeca Festival, organizers said Tuesday as they announced the event lineup. Also on the schedule will be the premiere of a Marvel documentary about the iconic comic book writer Stan Lee.This year’s festival, which will run in Lower Manhattan from June 7 to 18, will include 109 feature films from 127 filmmakers across 36 countries. Among those filmmakers will be 43 first-timers.“The Tribeca Festival is a celebratory event that honors artists and uplifts attendees, and this year is no exception,” the festival’s co-founder, Jane Rosenthal, said in a statement, adding that the event will offer “storytelling as a powerful tool of democracy, activism and social awareness.”Peretti, an actor perhaps best known for her work on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” will bring to Tribeca the world premiere of “First Time Female Director,” a comedy she also wrote about a woman filmmaker struggling to fill the shoes of her male predecessor.Shannon went behind the camera for “Eric LaRue,” a world-premiere drama in which parents grappling with the fallout of their son’s shocking crime seek solace in rival religious congregations.And Park, whose acting career took off after he landed a starring role in the television sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” will take “Shortcomings” to Tribeca after it screened earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.Also in the lineup will be the world premieres of “Maggie Moore(s)” by John Slattery; “Fresh Kills” by Jennifer Esposito; and the North American premiere of “The Listener” by Steve Buscemi.The Marvel documentary “Stan Lee,” from the director David Gelb, will be among the 53 nonfiction features at the festival.The festival is known for its live events and several are scheduled for the 2023 edition. Sara Bareilles will perform after the world premiere of “Waitress, the Musical — Live on Broadway!,” which features her music and lyrics. Gloria Gaynor will perform following the world premiere of the documentary “Gloria Gaynor: “I Will Survive.” And a conversation with Dan Rather and the director Frank Marshall will take place after the world premiere of the film “Rather.” More

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      ‘The Tender Bar’ Review: Where Everybody Knows His Name

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      Ben Affleck serves up whiskey and wisdom in George Clooney’s adaptation of the best-selling memoir by J.R. Moehringer.Every kid should have an Uncle Charlie. That’s the sentiment voiced by J.R. Maguire early in “The Tender Bar,” and it’s hard to disagree. By the end of the movie, directed by George Clooney and adapted from J.R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir, it’s clear that what J.R. means, most simply, is that every child should have an adult who loves them unconditionally: someone who listens, gives good advice and answers hard questions as truthfully as possible.In movie terms, it doesn’t hurt if that person is also Ben Affleck. Uncle Charlie, a Long Island bartender who is loyal to his friends and family and devoted to his car (a beautiful blue-green Cadillac convertible), is like an older, 1980s-vintage version of Chuckie Sullivan, Affleck’s character in “Good Will Hunting.” He likes to drink, smoke, crack wise and philosophize, but his calling in life is to be there for a vulnerable, promising young man when no one else will.Affleck is very good at this. He doesn’t oversell either Charlie’s cool or his warmth, and doesn’t let the audience or J.R. in on all of Charlie’s secrets. We see him mostly through the boy’s eyes, as a heroic, benevolent, somewhat mysterious figure, but Affleck’s weary, stoical demeanor suggests dimensions beyond what a child might comprehend. (The young J.R. is played by Daniel Ranieri; grown-up, retrospective narration is provided by the voice of Ron Livingston.) The nuances of Affleck’s performance help ground the movie in small, specific emotions. Its understatement, though, can be a limitation as well as a virtue.The obvious thing to say about Charlie is that he’s a surrogate father. J.R.’s real dad (Max Martini) is an unreliable, largely absent, self-absorbed disc jockey. He sometimes calls, rarely shows up and lives mainly as a voice on the radio. (“The Voice” is his professional alias.) “The Tender Bar” begins when J.R. and his mother, Dorothy (Lily Rabe), move into her parents’ rambling house in Manhasset. Dorothy’s brother Charlie lives there too, as do a bunch of other cousins and siblings.We don’t learn too much about them. The focus is on J.R.’s relationships with Dorothy and Charlie, and on his search for The Voice. Grandpa, in the splendidly cranky person of Christopher Lloyd, shows up now and again to swear or break wind, and once in a while to show a little tenderness.J.R.’s second home is the bar, called the Dickens, where Charlie pours drinks for the regulars and dispenses what he calls “male science” to his nephew. In keeping with the joint’s literary name (there’s a fading likeness of Charles Dickens painted on the side of the building), Charlie keeps books as well as bottles on the shelves. He encourages J.R. to read, and then to write.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More