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    Why ‘Uncle Vanya’ Is the Play for Our Anxious Era

    IN WATCHING MIXED-BREED dogs play, I’ve often thought that mutts are more dog than the purest purebred. They’re the essence of caninity, all mud, turf and wet fur. So, too, with dramatic works: Some are purebred — think of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” (1611) or Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1962) — while others are mad rambles, off leash and messy. This brings me to Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (1897), a singularly psychologically destabilizing piece of theater that’s now being seen anew as a study of post-Covid paralysis, not to mention the existential dread of watching your life slip away by the spoonful. Although first produced in Moscow in 1899, it feels just like our present American age, when nobody hears anybody else because listening hurts too much; when the most comforting activity imaginable is a long, solitary walk followed by an even longer interlude of silence. This is a drama about being driven insane by the sound of other people’s desires, complaints and aspirations when you’re already being tortured by your own. The pandemic and the boorish political and public discourse that followed drove us inward, unable to fight back, going nuts like poor Vanya.Plotwise, it’s deceptive in its simplicity. A family’s marooned at its rural estate, where culture is only a rumor. A visiting popinjay academic from the city arrives accompanied by his second wife, both sowing chaos. They remain blind to their banal savagery and are even self-righteous about it, as when the narcissistic Professor Serebryakov says, “You live a purposeful life, you think, you study, you lecture, your colleagues respect you, it all seems to have meaning — and then suddenly you’re thrown into a darkened cellar, with stupid people, listening to their horrible conversation.” In fact, his academic life has long been irrelevant, and the stupid people he’s referring to are family members he relies on for money. Now he’s set up camp here, where the mother of his late wife, his only daughter and his put-upon brother-in-law (the titular uncle) all reside — the relatives he’s sponged off for years.For Uncle Vanya, this situation becomes intolerable, especially after Serebryakov insists that the property be sold and the profits set aside for his comfort. Equally unbearable: the professor’s new wife, Yelena, a detached beauty years his junior who’s driving Vanya and the alcoholic Dr. Astrov, another visitor, batty with lust. Humiliation is everywhere. You could watch the play and mistake it for a genteel, comic trip down a quaint country road of the past … and you’d be missing the entire point, which is that most of us are too civilized to survive the struggle with those to whom we’re inextricably tied.Katherine Parkinson (left) as Sonya and Rupert Everett as Vanya in a 2019 production of “Uncle Vanya,” adapted by David Hare and directed by Everett, at the Theatre Royal in Bath, England.Nobby Clark/Popperfoto via Getty ImagesPERHAPS THAT’S WHY many theater artists have returned to “Uncle Vanya” recently. In April, the latest revival will open at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater, a new version by Heidi Schreck directed by Lila Neugebauer, featuring Alison Pill, Alfred Molina, William Jackson Harper and Steve Carell, all of whom possess the intelligence and suppressed anger of an entire army of riven Chekhov characters. Also on the American horizon is Andrew Scott’s one-man “Vanya” from London, in which he — exhaustingly — does all of the parts. Adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Sam Yates, that choice amplifies how important actual clumps of actors are to Chekhov, and how much is lost by their absence: Scott creates a mood of almost farcelike mania, which is a magic trick, yes, but the threads of sorrow that permeate the text are blunted. Although you don’t need a lot of space: Last summer, there was an intimate, candlelit Manhattan production with the director-actor David Cromer as a depressive Vanya padding about a real apartment borrowed for the purpose (before the show moved to a larger event space).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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    Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan, and Paul Mescal Spark a Thirst for the Irish

    Barry Keoghan, Paul Mescal and Cillian Murphy are among a crop of Irish hunks who have infused popular culture with big Irish energy.Sabrina Carpenter may already be dating an Irish hunk: The actress and singer attended the Vanity Fair Oscars party with the Irish actor Barry Keoghan last Sunday, adding fuel to rumors of their romantic involvement.But any feelings Ms. Carpenter may have for Mr. Keoghan did not stop her from saying she had eyes for Cillian Murphy, another Irishman, in an interview with Vanity Fair filmed before the party. Ms. Carpenter joked that if she saw Mr. Murphy at the event, she would leave with him.After a video of the interview was shared on Instagram, Mr. Keoghan left a comment. It had no words, only two emojis: a person with a hand raised and a shamrock. Another user commented, “She has a thing for the Irish just like me.”Mr. Keoghan, 31, and Mr. Murphy, 47, along with Paul Mescal, 28, and Andrew Scott, 47, have recently infused popular culture with big Irish energy by starring in the films “Saltburn,” “Oppenheimer” and “All of Us Strangers.” As a result, those actors have ushered in a moment for Irish crushes.The film “All of Us Strangers” featured a double dose of Irish hunks: specifically, Paul Mescal, left, and Andrew Scott.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesSome of them seem to have leaned into their reputation. Mr. Keoghan appeared on a version of the cover of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue butt naked. His body was only slightly more clothed in a Valentine’s Day campaign by the dating app Bumble; those images, when shared on social media, had some people drooling in the comments.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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    A Broadway-Bound ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Leads Olivier Award Nominations

    The musical, starring Nicole Scherzinger, secured 11 nominations at Britain’s equivalent of the Tony Awards.A revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as a former screen idol descending into madness, received the most nominations on Tuesday for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The show, which ran at the Savoy Theater in London and will transfer to Broadway this year, is in the running for 11 awards — two more than any other play or musical — including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger and best director for Jamie Lloyd.When the production opened last fall, it impressed London’s often demanding theater critics. Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said the production was, like its lead character, “a bit mad: reckless and daring, stretching its source material to the limit and beyond.”“I can’t imagine another London show generating comparable buzz this season,” Wolf added.Lloyd’s maverick production features hand-held cameras that are used to spotlight characters’ emotions at pivotal moments. Although critics appreciated the technique, Lloyd faces stiff competition in the best director category. The other nominees include Sam Mendes for “The Motive and the Cue,” which debuted last spring at the National Theater. The play, by Jack Thorne, dramatizes a fraught backstage relationship between Richard Burton and John Gielgud as they rehearse a Broadway production.Justin Martin, who directed “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” also received an Olivier nomination.Manuel HarlanRupert Goold is also nominated for best director, for “Dear England,” a play about the English national soccer team that also ran at the National Theater and transferred to the West End. That show secured nine nominations.Despite receiving mixed reviews, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a theatrical prequel to the Netflix show that is running at the Phoenix Theater, secured five nominations, including best new entertainment or comedy play. Houman Barekat, reviewing the production in The New York Times, said it was “exactly what you’d expect from a show co-produced by Netflix: Cheap thrills, expensively made.”This year’s nominations include a hint of TV glamour in many categories. Among the nominees for best actress in a play are Sarah Jessica Parker for “Plaza Suite,” which runs through April 13 at the Savoy Theater, and Sarah Snook (of “Succession”) for a one-woman “The Picture of Dorian Gray” at the Theater Royal Haymarket, through May 11.They will compete for that title against Laura Donnelly for “The Hills of California” at the Harold Pinter Theater, Sheridan Smith for “Shirley Valentine” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and Sophie Okonedo for “Medea” at @sohoplace.The best actor nominees include Andrew Scott for a one-man “Vanya” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and James Norton for his performance in “A Little Life” at the Harold Pinter Theater. The other nominees are Joseph Fiennes for “Dear England,” Mark Gatiss for “The Motive and the Cue,” and David Tennant for “Macbeth” at the Donmar Warehouse.The winners of this year’s awards are scheduled to be announced April 14 in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. More

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    Paul Giamatti, Bradley Cooper, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and More Celebrities at the National Board of Review gala

    The stars were among the 17 honorees at the annual National Board of Review gala, as awards season ramps up.On a not-at-all red carpet inside Cipriani 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday night, Da’Vine Joy Randolph was glowing.“The fact that these people actually even seen my work is just mind-blowing,” said the actress, a star of “The Holdovers,” who was being honored with the National Board of Review’s best supporting actress prize at its annual film awards gala, just days after she had won her first Golden Globe on Sunday for her role in the film.A few feet away on the gray carpet was Celine Song, who came to accept the prize for best directorial debut for “Past Lives.” She was sporting a tuxedo jacket, a long skirt and a bow tie.“Because the movie is so personal, any time somebody connects to the film, I always feel less lonely; I feel very seen and understood and embraced,” said Ms. Song, who based the romantic film partly on her own experience with a childhood friend.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?  More

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    Watch an Unusual Family Reunion in ‘All of Us Strangers’

    The director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh narrates a sequence from his film, starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.In this scene from “All of Us Strangers,” a man goes back to his childhood home and meets with his parents. The only wrinkle is that the two have been dead for 30 years.The sequence features Andrew Scott as Adam, as well as Jamie Bell and Claire Foy playing the long lost parents.In his narration of the moment, the film’s screenwriter and director, Andrew Haigh, noted that he filmed it in his childhood home and that it was a magical experience to get to shoot there. “It felt like a haunted house,” he said.While Haigh said he wanted to play the scene with tenderness, he also “wanted the audience to be unsure of what we were seeing. Are they ghosts? Are they manifestations of his subconscious? Is it a fantasy? And I wanted to play with those different elements, so it felt like it could be all of those things, and sort of keep making you ask questions about what is real and what is not real.”Read the “All of Us Strangers” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott on ‘All of Us Strangers’

    “Have you seen the sausage ad?” Andrew Scott asked me.“No, no, we’re not going to talk about that,” Paul Mescal said.It was a mid-November morning in Los Angeles, and I was having breakfast with two actors who have created some of the most indelible romantic leads of recent vintage: Scott, 47, played the “Hot Priest” on the second season of “Fleabag,” while the 27-year-old Mescal broke through — and broke hearts — as the conflicted jock Connell in Hulu’s “Normal People.”Now, instead of aiming those love beams at women, they’ll point them at each other in the drama “All of Us Strangers,” due Dec. 22 in theaters. It’s like an Avengers-level team-up, if the Avengers recruited exclusively from the ranks of sad-eyed Irish heartthrobs who caused a sensation over the 2019-20 television season.But before we could talk about their sexy, shattering new movie, Scott gently ribbed his co-star about an ad for an Irish sausage brand, Denny, that Mescal had starred in just out of drama school. (Though the rest of the world was introduced to Mescal in “Normal People,” Ireland already knew him from the ubiquitous sausage commercial.)“Look, I needed that job in a massive way,” Mescal said. “That paid my rent for the rest of the year. But if I could take it back …”“Ah, no, it’s lovely you have that!” Scott said. “I actually thought the character you created in the sausage ad was …”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?  More

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    Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and Its Insight Into Grief, Family and Gender

    For one critic, every encounter with this Shakespeare play deepens her understanding of its insights into grief, family and gender.A few weeks ago two friends and I were talking about our obsessions. One had been sleepless all week, playing the new Zelda video game with few breaks. The other revealed that she was deep into Taylor Swift. I said I had so many fandoms that I didn’t know if I could name a favorite.My Swiftie friend quickly set me straight. “We already know your main fandom,” she said. “Hamlet.”It’s true. If you look at my bookshelves, the art on my walls, even the art on my skin, you’ll find anime references and mythological figures, lines from Eliot and Chekhov and illustrations from Borges and Gorey stories. But none of these interests enjoys a prominence as great as the one afforded “Hamlet” in my home — and on my body, where the majority of my tattoos, by far, are inspired by the play.My friends know well that I’ve seen numerous productions of the work, recite Hamlet’s monologues to myself, even put Kenneth Branagh or Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” on in the background as I clean my apartment. For me, the text’s themes — about death, duality, gender, family — deepen each time I read, see or hear “Hamlet,” and as I grow older, new insights are revealed about the characters and the language.I first read “Hamlet” in high school, as an artsy poetry-writing teenager who found death a fascinating, albeit abstract, concept. I imagined the young prince — witty, privileged yet tortured, and forever trapped in his own head — as kin. He was less a lofty figure of English literature than the emo kid I crushed on, abandoning his math homework to read Dante’s “Inferno” as angsty pop punk played in the background.When I watched Michael Almereyda’s 2000 “Hamlet” film soon after, it did little to disabuse me of this notion. Taking place in New York City, with Ethan Hawke playing a hipster film student who’s heir to the “Denmark Corporation,” this “Hamlet” was contemporary, rife with irony. Watching Hamlet offer the great existential query of “to be or not to be” while strolling the “action movie” aisles of a Blockbuster store, I learned that even tragedy can contain a hearty dose of comedy.When I reread the play for a class on Shakespeare’s tragedies a few years later, I became fixated on one line in particular: “The rest is silence.” With these four words, Hamlet’s last ones in the play, the prince is acknowledging his final breath, but also perhaps breaking the fourth wall, announcing the end of the play like Prospero at the end of “The Tempest.” Or maybe Hamlet is offering us the line in consolation: After five acts of musing on death, he can assure us that death is simple, and it’s quiet. This line is now tattooed on my right arm.In Branagh’s 1996 “Hamlet” film, an unabridged adaptation that paired inspired direction with refined performances and respect for the text, Branagh wheezes out the words, his eyes glassy and staring into the distance. “Silence” lands after a pause, as though he’s listening to the deafening silence of all of humanity that’s preceded him.Clockwise from top left: Laurence Olivier as Hamlet in the 1948 film, Ethan Hawke in the 2000 film, Kenneth Branagh in his 1996 film, Ato Blankson-Wood (with Solea Pfeiffer as Ophelia) in the 2023 Shakespeare in the Park production, Ruth Negga in the 2020 production at St. Ann’s Workshop, and Billy Eugene Jones, left, and Marcel Spears in 2022 Public Theater production of “Fat Ham.”From Olivier’s fervent philosophizing Dane in the 1948 film to David Tennant’s lithe, boyish interpretation in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2008 production, there’s a reason that Prince Hamlet remains one of the most coveted roles an actor, especially a young man of a certain age and celebrity, can take on. “Hamlet” is, after all, a man’s play.In Hawke’s “Hamlet” and Mel Gibson’s visceral, sensually charged 1990 “Hamlet” I first realized how often directors use the female characters as stand-ins for fatalistic, taboo love. (Which is why I also savor gender-crossed Hamlets, whether in the form of the theater pioneer Sarah Bernhardt in 1899 or Ruth Negga in 2020.) Queen Gertrude is either stupid, selfish or promiscuous, blinded by her untamed lust. Many productions opt for a physical staging of Act III, Scene 4, when Hamlet accosts his mother in her bedchamber. Hawke’s Hamlet grabs his mother in a black robe, then presses her against a set of closet doors. Gibson’s deranged Hamlet also fights and clutches at Gertrude, as did Andrew Scott’s in the 2017 London production by Robert Icke. Thomas Ostermeier’s wild “Hamlet” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last year emphasized Gertrude’s sexuality to an extreme, having her slink and shimmy as though overwhelmed with sexual energy. The text implies that a woman too free with her affections digs her own grave.That includes, of course, Hamlet’s eternally damned love interest, Ophelia (memorialized on my right forearm with a skull and pansy). I used to dismiss her as a frail female stereotype, and have craved a production or adaptation that could give this character agency — any kind of agency — within the space of her grieving, her madness and her death.Kenny Leon’s otherwise underwhelming “Hamlet” at the Delacorte this summer did just that. Solea Pfeiffer played an Ophelia who matched Hamlet in wit and sass, who spoke with a knowingness and rage that lifted the character from her 17th-century home into the present.This duality in Ophelia — between sincerity and performance, raving madness and clear, articulated rage — is welcome. It’s a duality that many directors literalize in their productions overall, some using mirrors as nods to Hamlet’s constant reflections at the expense of action, others turning to hint at the divide between presentation and truth.But as much as “Hamlet” can serve as a character study, for me the story extends far beyond a production’s conceptualization of a lost prince with a splintered ego. This is a story that begins and ends with grief.I have a tattoo for Hamlet and his dear, departed father — a jeweled sword piercing a cracked skull in a crown. Having lost my dad almost a decade ago, I’m familiar with the feeling of being haunted by a father who may not be a literal king but perhaps just a patriarch taking the same cheap shots from the afterlife, like Pap in James Ijames’s “Fat Ham.” In the play, a Black, queer take on “Hamlet” in conversation with Shakespeare’s original text, Hamlet is not just tied to his father through a sense of filial obligation but also through guilt, regret, shame. In Pap I saw my own father’s flaws — the spite, the prejudice, the toxic masculinity. It made me wonder how much of Hamlet’s grief is for his father, and how much for the stability his father symbolized.Lately I’ve been listening with more regularity to Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” monologue, that great conference with death that feels as germane to the English language — our rhetoric, our poetry, our elocution, our linguistic imagination — as soil to the Earth. In the span of about a week this summer, I lost a grandmother, and a dear friend shared that his cancer had returned. Having buried both her parents in the past two years, my mother has been talking more about funeral arrangements and where our family would like to spend our post-mortem days. I, on the other hand, take less stock in the expensive ceremonies and planning around death. I don’t plan to make a show of my finale; like Hamlet, I wonder what it will even mean — in that everlasting sleep, who knows what dreams will come?I didn’t fall in love with “Hamlet” because of its action and intrigue; I love the play because it lets me reconnect with the spaces where death has brushed my life. “Hamlet” helps me sit with my own existential fears, all packaged in words of wit and elegance. Because I’m convinced now that if you let Shakespeare in, his voice becomes the one bellowing from the backstage of your life. More