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    ‘Shirley’ Review: A Woman Who Contained Multitudes

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    This staid biopic of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress, is less interested in what she did than what she represented.Shirley Chisholm was an American heroine who challenged simplistic political narratives of victory and defeat. Though her most famous effort — her bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972 — wasn’t successful, it was one chapter in a life’s worth of grit and innumerable wins, only a few of which can be measured by votes or contests.She was the working-class daughter of Caribbean immigrants who achieved academic excellence despite financial struggles; an educator who advocated powerfully the rights of children, particularly those from immigrant backgrounds; a self-made politician who, at the local and state levels, fought successfully for better representation for women and minorities; and, in 1968, the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress.It is a pity, then, that “Shirley,” John Ridley’s new biopic starring Regina King, focuses rather narrowly on Chisholm’s failed presidential campaign. The film reaches for the urgency of a political thriller, jumping between campaign meetings, backroom negotiations and rousing speeches. But the staid visuals — bright period colors softened by a nostalgic glow — and a script made up of a string of losses convey a dull sense of a fait accompli.Complex, meaningful events from Chisholm’s life and career become reductive paving stones in a despairing story of ill-timed ambition. An early scene, set soon after her election to Congress, shows her railing against her appointment to the Agriculture Committee and convincing the speaker of the House to reassign her. No mention is made of the fact that she served for two years on the committee, and found a way to use her position to expand the food stamp program.The problem is that “Shirley” is interested less in what Chisholm actually did than in what she represented, as a Black woman daring to see herself as the leader of the nation. At home, Chisholm struggles to maintain her relationships with her husband and her sister, who resent the self-absorption her career requires. Her advisers (played suavely by Terrence Howard and Lance Reddick) clash with her over her unwillingness to take partisan stances; younger, more radical supporters dislike her liberalism; and in public, she receives both support and racist, sexist barbs.King is magnetic onscreen, nailing Chisholm’s accent and her steely persona. But there is little for her to do other than trade quips with the other characters, in a drama that is too content with telling rather than showing.ShirleyRated PG-13 for discomfiting depictions of misogynoir. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      in Television

      ‘Five Days at Memorial’ Tells the Harrowing Story of a Deadly Choice

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      A new scripted series on Apple TV+ dramatizes the crisis faced by a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina, as the waters and the death toll rose.It was tense and sweaty on the set of “Five Days at Memorial,” the new Apple TV+ limited series about systemic and personal failure at a New Orleans hospital in the days after Hurricane Katrina. The cast, emotionally invested and physically drained, was wiped out.It was time to play some Mafia.The freewheeling, ice-breaking role-playing game, which also goes by the name Werewolf, is a favorite of Cornelius Smith Jr., who plays the distraught Dr. Bryant King in “Memorial.” He brings it out whenever bonding is in order, and to hear the “Memorial” cast tell it, they would have wilted if they hadn’t come together when the cameras stopped rolling.“It was really extraordinary because here we were telling this story that is not all smiles — it’s a very deep story, a very troubling story, a very heavy story,” Smith said in a video interview from Washington, D.C., where he was playing Frederick Douglass in the musical “American Prophet.” “So it was nice to be able to counter that with a very joyous relationship and spending quality time with castmates and really developing a bond off-camera.”The eight-episode “Five Days at Memorial,” premiering Friday, can indeed be tough sledding. Based on the 2013 book by Sheri Fink, which was adapted from her Pulitzer-winning investigative article for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, it tells the story of Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, where 45 bodies were found in Katrina’s aftermath, in September 2005. (Sold in 2006, the hospital is now Ochsner Baptist Medical Center).“We didn’t want to dictate how people should feel about this story,” said Carlton Cuse (left, with Jessica B. Hill and Cornelius Smith Jr.), a creator of the series. “We didn’t want to take a side.”Sophie Giraud/Apple TV+The hospital had been flooded, its power and generators knocked out. Chaos reigned. Several health providers on the scene raised concerns that patients had been given lethal injections during the evacuation process.Both book and series depict the Memorial crisis as a series of impossible decisions, made by flawed individuals under unimaginable pressure, and complete systemic breakdown. In this sense, it’s a microcosm of Katrina, which had a death toll of more than 1,800 people.In a video interview, Fink, who was also a producer on the series, pointed out that the hospital had a 101-page bioterrorism plan. This was, after all, the post-9/11 era. But there was no emergency plan in place for evacuating over water.“I really hope that people watch the series and engage in thinking hard about the consequences of a failure to invest in preparedness for rare, but potentially catastrophic and very foreseeable circumstances,” Fink said in a video call. “A hurricane and a flood in New Orleans were very foreseeable.”Indeed, the levels of failure involved in the Memorial disaster, and Katrina in general, were staggering.“When you have this kind of systemic failure, it’s also a mechanical failure,” said John Ridley, who created the series with Carlton Cuse (“Lost,” “Bates Motel”). “It’s an electronic failure. And it’s a human failure. You’ve got to look at how humans interact in the systems we build.”In the hurricane’s immediate aftermath, hospital administrators did the equivalent of a victory lap and heaved a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the levees, which had begun failing almost immediately, got progressively worse. Then the severe floods came. (Readers unfamiliar with what happened next may want to stop reading now.)The show depicts several Memorial staff members, including Dr. Anna Pou (played by Vera Farmiga), making plans to provide “comfort” for patients who they have determined would be difficult to evacuate, in the form of injections. Someone, you keep thinking, has to pay for this. But nobody does. (Pou, along with the nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo, played by Sharron Matthews and Sarah Allen, were later arrested on multiple counts of principal to second-degree murder but were never indicted by a grand jury.)“There was incompetence on every level of leadership,” Farmiga said of the failures at Memorial Medical Center. But she also defended her character’s commitment to help.Russ Martin/Apple TV+Viewers are likely to feel outrage at some of the events depicted. The series creators, however, argue that thirsting for revenge is pointless. To them, it was an impossible situation, with no clear-cut villains.“We didn’t want to dictate how people should feel about this story — we didn’t want to take a side,” Cuse said in a video interview. “I’m curious to see where people come out about all of this and what kinds of different opinions people have about how things went down.”One character who definitely has an opinion is King. He takes a look around and determines that something is rotten at Memorial. He seethes at the idea of lethal injections.He is also among a handful of Black doctors at the hospital — and the only one on duty during the crisis. He can see that most of the people affected by the breakdown are Black, as are most of the people seeking help who are turned away. King is acutely aware of this, even as it unfolds.“I like to say race is another character in the series,” Smith said. “It’s there whether you want to acknowledge it or not. It plays a role in how we all perceive things in life.”“They’re in New Orleans,” he added. “It’s a predominantly African American community. And what he experiences is clearly, to him, outlined by race. That’s what he’s seeing.”Farmiga acknowledged that human failure was rampant. “There was incompetence on every level of leadership,” she said in a video call. But she also defended Pou’s commitment to help. The surgeon reported for hurricane duty despite being told that other doctors could look after her patients.“She was motivated by humanitarian aid,” Farmiga said. “She chose to face those intolerable conditions. That takes an extraordinary amount of courage.”Much of the series was shot in an enormous, custom-made water tank, just outside Toronto, as a way to recreate the flooding at the hospital. Sophie Giraud/Apple TV+“Five Days at Memorial” was initially optioned to be a movie by the producer Scott Rudin, and then by the producer Ryan Murphy, who planned to use it for his “American Crime Story” anthology series. When Murphy scrapped those plans, Cuse came calling, won Fink over and approached Ridley to be his partner.Fink liked the idea of making “Memorial” into a limited series, with the time and commitment to present a detailed and balanced adaptation.“It just seemed like a great way to tell this story, because if it were done in a movie, there wouldn’t be enough time to bring out all of the nuance,” she said. “It is a long and detailed book, a work of journalism that took many years.” (Fink, who was a staff reporter at ProPublica when her article was published, is now a domestic correspondent for The New York Times.)Cuse is well aware of the parallels to a more recent health crisis. He remembers his partner, Ridley, reminding him of the adage that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And so “Five Days of Memorial” went into production amid the global health crisis of Covid-19, a crisis for which many argue the United States was ill prepared.“Instead of the question of who’s going to get on a helicopter to evacuate, we’re dealing with who gets a respirator or who gets a vaccine or who gets a monoclonal antibody,” Cuse said.Some of “Memorial” was shot in New Orleans, but much of it was shot in a custom-made, four-million-gallon water tank just outside Toronto. Cast and crew had to quarantine upon entering Canada from the United States because of the pandemic. It was a stressful process, and a prelude to a stressful shoot.They knew, however, that unlike the characters they portrayed, they would return to their ordered lives when their work was done — that they were ultimately playing make believe. And they knew they needed to get it right.“I felt an enormous sense of responsibility to the people of New Orleans, to the survivors,” Farmiga said. “It’s their heartache. It’s their trauma. It’s their story.” More

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      in Theater

      The Past Pushes Back in 2 Shows With Contemporary Blackness in Mind

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      New productions of “The Merchant of Venice” and “Black No More” aim to reflect our current racial politics. The results are uneven.On a recent weekend, I eagerly set out to see two new productions that prominently center Blackness: the director Arin Arbus’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and “Black No More,” a new musical with a starry creative team that was inspired by a satirical 1931 novel about race in America.“The Merchant of Venice,” a Theater for a New Audience production at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, came first. Here, Arbus strong-arms contemporary politics into the work, which she places in a modern-day setting. The tension between Arbus’s direction and the text is most apparent in a scene in which Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, in arguing he should be repaid after a merchant defaults on a loan, cites laws about the enslaved:You have among you many a purchased slaveWhich, like your asses and your dogs and mules,You use in abject and in slavish partsBecause you bought them. Shall I say to you‘Let them be free, marry them to your heirs.Why sweat they under burdens?’In this race-conscious production, the speech takes on a different meaning. Since the actor playing Shylock is John Douglas Thompson, Shylock’s Jewish identity is subordinated to another one: a Black identity.While “Merchant” reflects our current racial politics and sensibilities through the director’s vision, “Black No More,” the New Group’s musical, relies on the major ways in which its script deviates from the original novel. Both shows function almost as reactionary works of criticism, “Merchant” critiquing Shakespeare’s text and “Black No More” critiquing the bleak satire of the novel. And though each production brings art from the past to the present, sometimes in brilliant ways, the antiquated plots, themes and characters aren’t always easy to recontextualize. The past pushes back.In this “Merchant,” Antonio, the title character, and Bassanio, the best friend to whom he offers his fortune and very nearly his life, are lovers. The women — the heiress Portia, her maid Nerissa and Shylock’s daughter, Jessica — are married in the end, as is typically the rule in Shakespeare’s comedies, but are unhappy and wise to their husbands’ misogyny and other faults. And then Shylock and his daughter (and Shylock’s Jewish friend Tubal) are all Black, which brings in the history of racial discrimination, slavery and prejudice.Arbus shifts the focus of the text so Shylock — performed by Thompson with devastating pathos — isn’t the antagonist who stands in the way of the central characters’ happiness, but the tragic heart of the play. Though there’s still the matter of the dual Black and Jewish identities; of course Black Jews exist, but the conflation addles the themes of the production and bends the original text in directions it can’t actually go.While the text specifically speaks of anti-Semitism, the pivot to include anti-Black racism overwhelms it. Arbus does try to balance the two identities, especially in the final scene, in which Shylock and his daughter (beautifully portrayed by Danaya Esperanza) recite a Hebrew prayer; the exceptional performances almost make up for the fact that the scene feels out of place, like a last-ditch effort to assert that this is still also a play about anti-Semitism.Blackness is already in the play, in the form of racist throwaway comments about “Moors” that Arbus’s direction highlights to the degree she can. So Portia’s matter-of-fact dismissal of any dark-skinned suitors as she speaks to Nerissa (played by the Black actress Shirine Babb) is challenged by Nerissa’s disapproving glare. And when Jessica’s suitor, Lorenzo, disdainfully jokes about Shylock’s servant impregnating a Moor, Jessica silently steps away in disgust.Racism against Black people was assumed in Shakespeare’s time, so in a contemporary race-aware production that stays loyal to the text, the characters’ reactions to it must be limited to pauses and glances.Perhaps a contemporized version of this problematic play must be edited beginning with the language, mixing in modern-day parlance, as James Ijames did in his “Fat Ham,” or revised by artful omission, as in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Because there’s a limit to Arbus’s approach even within these textual constraints; Nerissa and Jessica can silently respond to a comment about Moors, but no one speaks about or refers to Shylock’s Black identity, just his Jewish one. It’s odd to showcase Blackness without having a Shylock who can explicitly speak about his Blackness. It then feels as if his two identities are at war. To which should we direct our attention, because the text can’t hold both?These thoughts lingered as I headed to the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan to see “Black No More,” whose short run ended this weekend.Unlike “Merchant,” “Black No More” isn’t loyal to the original text, George S. Schuyler’s novel of the same name. But it does take the book’s basic plot and characters. (“Schuyler’s ‘Black No More’ is an essay,” Tariq Trotter, who wrote the show’s lyrics, said in a recent interview. “Ours is an essay on that essay. A critique of a critique.”)In Schuyler’s novel, a Harlem man named Max Disher undergoes a scientific procedure that turns Black people white. The process, invented by a Black scientist named Dr. Crookman, becomes so popular that it affects Black businesses and institutions, labor politics and more. The newly Caucasian Max changes his name and moves down South to find and marry the racist white woman named Helen who had previously rejected him. He eventually becomes the leader of a white supremacist group and profits off racist rhetoric.Brandon Victor Dixon as Max Fisher in the musical “Black No More.” Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Black No More” the musical, directed by Scott Elliott and with a book by John Ridley (“12 Years a Slave”), softens — and in some cases eliminates — Schuyler’s biting critique. The novelist didn’t just target racist whites but also Black identity, and Black leaders and institutions that claim to support the Black community while actually damaging and profiting off it.In the novel, characters mostly act in their self-interest, especially when it comes to money; in many ways the villain is capitalism. (Schuyler was a vocal socialist at the time he published the book.) In the musical, things are simplified: Dr. Crookman (played by Trotter) is a devil figure offering a Faustian bargain.There aren’t many sympathetic characters in the text, which the musical changes. Helen, now a liberal at heart, falls in love with Max when he’s still Black and reveals she’s only pretending to be racist around her conservative family.In the book, Max’s best friend, Bunny, follows his lead, also turning white and serving white supremacists for profit. In the musical, Bunny (now Buni) is a Black woman who acts as Max’s moral compass; she defends Blackness and calls out Max for betraying his race. Schuyler’s book disregards women, and the intersection of race and gender, altogether. In the musical, Buni gets a song about the burdens Black women bear for their families and communities, but her character is thinly written, just bolstering Max’s story.The influential Black artists who worked on the show appeared eager to transform the original work into a piece that celebrates Blackness. Trotter’s lyrics, Bill T. Jones’s choreography and the music by Trotter, Anthony Tidd, James Poyser and Daryl Waters were lovingly appreciative of Black movement and sound, with R&B, soul, hip-hop, spoken word, step and lindy hop forming an extravagant collage. And some numbers — like the oddly triumphant final song of Black solidarity — and a new Black activist character named Agamemnon, seem incorporated to counter the cynicism of Schuyler’s work.It’s understandable, especially given the way Black Lives Matter has shaped the cultural conversation about inequality faced by Black people; it would be outré to produce a true adaptation of a work like Schuyler’s, which has no redeemable Black characters and berates pillars of the Black community as vehemently as it does white institutions.And so Max, our Black-turned-white protagonist, is given a guilty conscience; he’s made sympathetic just long enough so he can be the martyr, shot down in the middle of a fourth-wall-breaking monologue that’s meant to be a bridge between the 1931 story and 2022 audiences.In art, context is key. But depending on the work and what new context the director or playwright wants to bring to it, some changes can feel too forced, too transparent. “Expectation from you all is … what? For me to give a moving soliloquy on race in America?” Max says in his final monologue. He’s no longer speaking from the world of the musical but from today. “Still we can’t put all our nonsense behind us,” he says. And the bullet that takes him down? It doesn’t come from Schuyler’s time; it’s shot from 2022. It just goes to show that when past and present collide, it may not be pretty. More

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      in Music

      Review: In ‘Black No More,’ Race Is Skin Deep, but Racism Isn’t

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      A new musical imagines the invention of a decolorizing process. Will it save Black Americans from hatred or destroy them?The 1931 Afrofuturist novel from which the new musical “Black No More” takes its name is hardly subtle, starting with its subtitle: “Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933-1940.” George S. Schuyler’s satire is basically a thought experiment in which a procedure that decolorizes Black people solves America’s race problem but creates a new one when there’s no one left for haters to hate.The New Group’s musical version, which opened on Tuesday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, makes the smart decision to borrow only the novel’s rudiments. It dumps most of the silly names (Ezekiel Whooper, Rufus Kretin), thin caricatures (of W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, among others) and weirdly jovial tone in favor of a more serious look at internalized racism and the conundrums of assimilation.The result, directed by Scott Elliott, is a gorgeous mess. Though it forefronts Schuyler’s central question — Is the goal of racial progress the ennoblement of Blackness or its disappearance into a “chromatic democracy”? — its tone is jumpy and its storytelling lumpy. The book by John Ridley, who wrote “12 Years a Slave,” makes only halfway repairs to the original, while introducing new problems that music and dance can’t solve.But oh, what music and dance! That the score is the work of many hands — lyrics by Tariq Trotter of the Roots; music by Trotter, Anthony Tidd, James Poyser and Daryl Waters — seems to have been an advantage here, helping to establish the show’s various moods and personalities.With nods to Kurt Weill, “Hamilton,” hip-hop, gospel, jazz, spoken word and Tin Pan Alley, among other aptly diverse inspirations and traditions, the songs reveal the characters’ yearnings and aversions, which often amount to the same thing. As well, under Waters’s musical supervision, they offer plenty of opportunities for phenomenal singing from the cast of 26, accompanied by a terrific band of seven.Lillias White, center, as a beauty impresario modeled on Madam C.J. Walker.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe choreography, by Bill T. Jones, is likewise thrilling, sometimes illustrating specific ideas (like the differences between Black and white social dancing) and other times expressing the overall conflict between racial pride and frustration. Because that conflict remains unresolved in the story, Jones often declines to resolve it in movement; numbers build from tension to frenzy without the overfamiliar Broadway-style climax.But the sung and danced elements of “Black No More” prove too exciting for its wobbly book to support. Making the inventor of the decolorizing process the narrator — his name, alas, is Dr. Junius Crookman — immediately sets the story on a strange footing; a neutral figure in the novel, he is here an amoral villain, and in Trotter’s uneven performance (excellent with the rapping, stiff with the acting) a bit too Dr. Evil. This immediately sidelines the actual central character, Max Disher, creating a blurry focus from which the show never fully recovers.Still, by the time Disher (Brandon Victor Dixon) becomes Crookman’s first patient, submitting to what looks like a dental procedure, “Black No More” has efficiently set up his reasons for choosing whiteness. Though he enjoys the “sporting life” he leads in Harlem, his safety there from the stings of overt racism comes at a cost. In “I Want It All,” his introductory song, he explains that he is never a whole man within his community’s confines, but merely “three-fifths” of one.For others, though, Harlem is “heaven’s gate” and “the Mecca of the Black race.” Disher’s best friend — a man named Bunny in the novel but here a woman named Buni — can’t understand why anyone would leave a place “where a person knows what they’re in for.” (Buni is played by Tamika Lawrence, a stunning singer.) For Agamemnon (Ephraim Sykes), a character new to the story, Disher is simply a traitor, selling out the dream of Black excellence.From left: Dixon, Tamika Lawrence and Tariq Trotter in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBoth are especially unimpressed by Disher’s baser motivations: to make more money in a more exciting career (he’s an insurance salesman) and to hook up with the white woman from Atlanta he falls in love with one night in a club.That woman, Helen Givens — played by Jennifer Damiano in a Veronica Lake wig — is the musical’s most radically revamped character; she is much more complicated than the unreconstructed racist of the novel. Unfortunately, in their attempt to give her greater agency, the musical’s authors make her motives and choices almost incoherent.As the story begins to pile on plot — it feels too hasty even at a long two hours and 30 minutes — the problem spreads to everyone else. Especially after Disher and Givens marry in Georgia, and a baby of likely mixed race impends, the musical pushes too hard toward tragedy, winding up well short at melodrama.Jennifer Damiano, center left, with Dixon and other ensemble members.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd yet, melodrama can be effective, especially when sung; the “melo” part of the word, after all, means music. Except for Sykes, who gets a great gospel number (“Lord Willing if the Creek Don’t Rise”), the women are more successful than the men at pushing past the confusions of the plot. (Dixon, usually a riveting performer, seems strangely recessive here.) And do not ask why Madame Sisseretta Blandish, the beauty impresario modeled on Madam C.J. Walker, sings not only in her salon but also in a nightclub; when it’s Lillias White doing the singing, who cares? She makes even the gibberish of scat syllables piercingly specific.Though Disher is the one who undergoes the most dramatic change — he eventually becomes the “Grand Exalted Giraw” of a Klanlike organization — I found myself more interested in Madame Sisseretta. In part that’s because she’s not allegorical; she’s a practical businesswoman who understands that her vanishing trade in hair straighteners and skin lighteners is different only by degree from Crookman’s. In the song “Right Amount of White” — “Just a little pinch of French/Just a slight touch of Dutch/Just a little bit of Brit” — she establishes the show’s themes and relevance with humor and theatrical specificity that’s mostly absent elsewhere.As “Black No More” continues its development process, it will surely need to find more breathing space like that between the whimsy of the novel and its current chaotic gloom. (Except for Qween Jean’s sexy costumes, the design is almost punitively cold.) I hope the authors can do so without losing what’s already beautiful about this promising work — keeping in mind that beauty, if not (according to “Black No More”) Blackness, is only skin deep.Black No MoreThrough Feb. 27 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan; thenewgroup.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      in Music

      In 'Black No More,' the Evolution of Black Music, and a Man’s Soul

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      The new show “Black No More,” inspired by a 1931 satirical novel about race relations, has “the point of view of people who are very much products of now.”A Black man in New York City, during the Harlem Renaissance, is hoping for a life without bigotry. This is Harlem after all, a Black enclave, the epicenter of culture and creativity. Here, he’d have an easier time in getting along.Or so he thought. He soon learns that utopia is an illusion, that racism prevails no matter the location. In the North, he discovers, the racism is subtle: He’s somehow not the right fit for his job, though his supervisor, a white man, says he’s doing well. Others think he’s too uppity, so he is let go.Distraught, he undergoes a procedure to turn himself white and retreats to Atlanta. There he sees how prejudiced whites speak of Black people when they aren’t in the room: The “n” word is tossed around with the hard “-er.” He soon realizes that his new skin tone can’t save him, either. The life he wants means nothing if he loses his soul along the way.This is the plot of “Black No More,” a new musical presented by the New Group and inspired by George S. Schuyler’s 1931 novel of the same name. The show, an expansive, Afrofuturistic take on race relations in America now in previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan, is set against an equally vast arrangement of jazz, gospel, R&B, hip-hop and reggae meant to connect the past and present. By using older and newer styles of music, coupled with the protagonist’s struggles to rise above the same discrimination endured today, the show explores how little race relations have progressed.Jones, far right, working on the show’s choreography with cast members, including Lillias White, center.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesAnd it almost didn’t see the light of day.The screenwriter John Ridley, who wrote the show’s book, was inspired to adapt the story after reading Schuyler’s novel over a decade ago, before he’d written his Oscar-winning adaptation of “12 Years a Slave.” “I read it and was really taken with the wit and unbridled satire,” he said. “So much of the writing was timely and timeless and painful and painless.”He initially wrote it as a screenplay in 2013, but couldn’t get financing for a sci-fi-inspired film about Black existence. Someone suggested trying to have it produced as a play, but that also proved to be a tough road. Of the stage directors he reached out to, Ridley said that Scott Elliott, the artistic director of the New Group, was the only one who expressed interest. He read the novel and thought it would work best as a musical. “It had the possibility to be an amazing theatrical satire, but with humanity in it, with real people, not like ‘wink-wink satire,’” Elliott said.There was just one problem: Ridley didn’t like musicals. “I was like, ‘Well, yeah, but that’s OK,” Elliott said. “Let’s go on this journey together and see what happens.” Ridley’s view on musicals changed after meeting with Tariq Trotter, better known as Black Thought of the Roots, and seeing “Hamilton.” He said that show convinced him that musicals can be vehicles for sending a strong message.They enlisted Trotter, who wrote the lyrics and developed the music with Anthony Tidd, James Poyser and Daryl Waters, and the Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones. Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton,” owns the commercial rights. And with all the star power (Broadway veterans, including Brandon Victor Dixon, Lillias White and Ephraim Sykes), it seems “Black No More” could very well be destined for Broadway.John Ridley with the show’s associate director Monet during a recent rehearsal. Marc. J. FranklinAmong other themes, the show holds up a mirror to those in the Black community who aspire to whiteness. The protagonist, Max Disher (played by Dixon), decides to lighten his skin after meeting a white woman, Helen Givens (Jennifer Damiano), in the Savoy Ballroom during a night out. That he’d be willing to sacrifice his identity after a chance encounter with the woman is a longstanding critique of some Black men: No matter how much they’re supported by Black women, they still see dating white women as the ultimate societal prize.The musical also delves into the internal baggage that comes with Blackness, the weight of external pressure applied by those who look like you but don’t know your circumstances. How do you stay true to yourself without disappointing your peers? And what does it mean to be real Black anyway?“For me, the lesson to be learned is that there is a cost,” Dixon said. “There is a cost to the choices we force each other to make to become happy, accepted members of society. It’s time for us to re-examine those costs. Is this the construct in which we can really rise and grow and evolve as a human population?”“Black No More” begins amicably, with a flurry of Black and white ensemble dancers gliding in unison across the stage, surrounding a barber’s chair used for the skin-altering experiment. Out walks Trotter, who plays Junius Crookman, the doctor performing the procedure. He paints Harlem as a deceptive place where dreams don’t always come true. “You’ll find all things … both high and low,” he says in his opening monologue. “Here where every Black baby must try to grow.”The music of “Black No More” largely fits this era, smoothly transitioning from swing jazz to big band to soul. Some of the verses have a rap lilt to them — Trotter, after all, is the lead vocalist of the Roots — but his writing here explores a broad range of musical textures, conjuring old Harlem while conveying music’s full spectrum. After Max becomes white, the music becomes softer and more delicate, sounding almost like bluegrass or folkish in a way. Near the end of the show, two white women sing over what sounds like an R&B track, a genre typically associated with Black women. “Black No More” is full of this sort of cross-pollination.“I’ve always been very big on allowing the universe to sort of write the songs, allowing the material to work itself out,” Trotter said. “These songs represent the different elements of Black music. What we arrived at is something that feels like an education in the evolution of Black music, which, at its core, would be the evolution of American music.”Tamika Lawrence and Brandon Victor Dixon during a dress rehearsal.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesThe Harlem Renaissance is widely seen as an artistic movement in which Black creators like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Duke Ellington made landmark work. Indeed, the Renaissance helped change how Black people were viewed culturally; from it came a new, fearless creative generation. Yet the Renaissance had its detractors. Some said the literature only catered to whites and the Black middle-class. Even one of Harlem’s most famous establishments — the Cotton Club — was only for whites. “Black No More” demystifies Harlem as a mecca by wrapping its arms around it, wiping off the glitter while celebrating its charm.“The show, in my mind, is a critique of a critique,” said Jones, who is also choreographing the new Broadway musical “Paradise Square.” “We’re trying to make a musical about a historical novel, but with the point of view of people who are very much products of now. For God’s sake, we are post-George Floyd.”“Black No More” was originally slated to premiere in October 2020. But then the pandemic shut down theaters, forcing shows to postpone or cancel their runs. And in May 2020, Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by the police officer Derek Chauvin. Protests ensued. Coupled with outcries over the deaths of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, these rebellions felt different. The precinct in which Chauvin worked was burned. In New York City, protesters and law enforcement regularly clashed, intensifying the already-strained relationship between certain residents and the police.Near the end of “Black No More,” over an aggressive rap beat, a white antagonist asserts that Black lives don’t matter, a perceived reference to the modern-day Black Lives Matter movement. Within the context of the musical, he’s upset that his sister got involved with a Black man. Yet the subtle nod acknowledges the cloud of George Floyd hanging over this musical.“We just happen to be in a space where certain audiences are ready to receive what we’re trying to say, as opposed to pre-2020,” said Tamika Lawrence, who plays Buni Brown, Max Disher’s best friend. “There are certain cultures in America — white cultures, specifically — that I think are now ready to have tough conversations and ready to see this kind of art.”Trotter concurred. “I think some people may take offense,” he said. “Some people may be appalled, some may take it as a challenge to widen their scope, to tear some of the bandages off these bullet wounds that we deal with as a society.”“Black No More” is presented with the hope that Black and white people can find common ground somewhere. That we can at least see one another’s differences and be respectful of them.Just don’t do something drastic like change your skin color. As the musical teaches us, the grass isn’t greener.“What it says is, ‘Look at yourself, take a look at where we are, take a look at where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go,” Trotter said of the show. “It speaks to a commonality that we all share as humans, as people, as inhabitants of this planet. I don’t think we’re ever going to exist in perfect harmony, but I think there’s a possibility for us to coexist in peace.” More

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      ‘Needle in a Timestack’ Review: Put a Pin in It

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      The director John Ridley, who wrote “12 Years a Slave,” tries to combine time travel and romance, and comes up short twice.Who among us has never dreamed of turning back time and changing a decision or event, just like Cher and the Terminator? That possibility is a reality in John Ridley’s sluggish, blandly slick time-travel romance, “Needle in a Timestack.”Nick (Leslie Odom Jr.) is a fancy architect and his wife, Janine (Cynthia Erivo), is a fancy photographer. We know they are soul mates because they constantly talk about their great love, maybe to make up for the fact that they have no real personalities.One day, Nick realizes there has been a so-called time shift — a slight realignment of reality after someone traveled back in time to change the past — thus modifying the present. Further, more consequential alterations in the timeline keep happening, until we end up in a reality where Janine is married to Tommy (Orlando Bloom), their old friend. Nick realizes that Tommy has been fiddling with the past to finally land the woman he wanted.The most fascinating idea in “Needle in a Timestack” is that “time jaunting” is a mundane activity, up to a point: It is so expensive that only wealthy people like Tommy can afford it on a regular basis. But Ridley (the writer of “12 Years a Slave”) decides to stick to the shiny surfaces of aspirational lives, and keeps layering on banalities like “Love is drawn in the form of a circle” and “Have we really thought through the cause and effect of our choices?” That needle was clearly used to stitch slogans on pillows.Needle in a TimestackRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Black No More’ to Land Off Broadway This Winter

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      The musical will feature the theatrical debut of the Roots’ Black Thought, who will be writing the music and lyrics and be in a lead role.“Black No More,” a musical with a book by the “12 Years a Slave” screenwriter John Ridley and music and lyrics by the Roots’ Tariq Trotter, a.k.a. Black Thought, will finally get its turn in the spotlight.The musical, originally scheduled to premiere in October 2020, was delayed by the pandemic. The production, from the New Group, will now begin this winter.“Black No More,” based on George S. Schuyler’s 1931 novel of the same name, will play a limited engagement, Jan. 11 through Feb. 27, 2022, at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Opening night is scheduled for Feb. 8.“The music transcends genre,” Trotter said in a phone interview. “But most of it feels like Black music. I feel like this play, we might be able to break it down and use it as an education in the origins and history of Black music.”“I didn’t feel like I was confined; I didn’t feel like I had to stick to music of the day,” he continued. “I felt like we were able to tell the story, and make it in very many ways a period piece — without only writing jazz music.”Schuyler’s satirical story, a piece of the Harlem Renaissance canon, follows the development of Black-No-More, a scientific procedure for turning Black skin white, created by one Dr. Junius Crookman. (Trotter, in a theatrical debut, will also play Crookman in the show.)The protagonist, Max Disher (Brandon Victor Dixon), decides to undergo the procedure after being spurned by a white woman for being Black. In the meantime, Black-No-More gains popularity nationwide. The more Black people make the transition, the more obvious the economic importance of racial segregation becomes.“I thought it was mind blowing,” Trotter said of Schuyler’s book. “I couldn’t believe that something of this caliber of science fiction and wit and just dark humor and something with so many layers was written at the time that it was.”Apart from Trotter and Dixon (“Hamilton”), the cast also includes Jennifer Damiano (“Next to Normal”), Tamika Lawrence (“Rent”), Theo Stockman (“American Psycho”), Tracy Shayne (“Chicago”) and Walter Bobbie (“Chicago”). Rehearsals begin in November. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.The show will be coming from a Tony-winning team: It will be directed by the New Group’s founding artistic director, Scott Elliott; choreographed by Bill T. Jones; and have music supervision, orchestrations and vocal arrangements by Daryl Waters.“There’s a very serious look that we need to take at history and at the story of this nation and the ways in which it has been told and will be told, moving forward,” Trotter said. “It’s my hope that this work and work like this are going to compel people to continue that examination.” More