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      Royal Shakespeare Company Names Two Directors for Top Job

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      In an unusual move for a major British theater, Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey will jointly helm the major British theater troupe.Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey will start work as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new artistic directors in June.Seamus RyanLONDON — Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey were named early Wednesday morning here as joint artistic directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the major theater ensemble based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace.The pair is replacing Gregory Doran, who stepped down from the company in April after leading it for almost a decade. He will remain with the company as artistic director emeritus until the end of 2023.Shriti Vadera, the chairwoman of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s board, said in a news release that a selection panel — including the theater director Nicholas Hytner and Mark Thompson, deputy chairman of the company’s board and a former chief executive of The New York Times — chose Evans and Harvey from “an exceptionally strong field of candidates.” Vadera added that Evans and Harvey “bring a brilliant track record of artistic achievement with a strong commitment to education, communities and championing diverse talent and voices.”The decision to split the top job between two individuals is unusual for a British theater so steeped in tradition. It has happened only once before at the company, when Trevor Nunn and Terry Hands shared the role from 1978 to 1986. It is a more common practice in Germany where it is seen as allowing each office holder to focus on contrasting areas of expertise.Evans, 49, the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theater in southern England, is the better known of the two, having had a high-profile career here as both an actor and director.In a 2011 interview with The Guardian, Evans said visits to the Royal Shakespeare Company as a teenager had sparked his interest in theater. He began his acting career there, too, and later went on to appear in numerous classical and experimental plays in London, including the debut of Sarah Kane’s “4:48 Psychosis” at the Royal Court. He also became known as a star of Stephen Sondheim musicals. In 2008, he was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in the lead role of Sam Buntrock’s Broadway revival of Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park With George.”At Chichester, he has been praised for directing new plays, including “Quiz” by the playwright James Graham as well as hit musicals such as a revamped “South Pacific.”Harvey, 44, is the artistic director of Theatr Clwyd, in Mold, a town in Wales. She also has a long history with Shakespeare — in 2004, she directed an all-female “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Globe in London — but her recent work has been varied, including last year’s online production of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” updated for the Instagram generation.On Friday, Harvey is premiering “The Famous Five” at Theater Clwyd, a new musical based on a series of children’s books by the English author Enid Blyton that features a puppet dog. It is scheduled to transfer to Evans’s Chichester Festival Theater, in October. The pair have worked together before, on a 2015 production of “Pride and Prejudice” and a 2017 production of “Uncle Vanya.”A spokeswoman for the Royal Shakespeare Company said no one was available for an interview about how the pairing will work. In a news release, Harvey said that she and Evans both believed the company could be “a home for radical, relevant theater made by artists from across the U.K. and the wider world.”Evans and Harvey will take up the post in June 2023. Erica Whyman will continue as the company’s acting artistic director until then, and is scheduled to announce details of the company’s 2023 season next week. More

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      Shakespeare or Bieber? This Canadian City Draws Devotees of Both

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      For nearly 70 years, Stratford, Ontario, has attracted legions of theater fanatics to its Shakespeare festival. About a dozen years ago, a very different type of pilgrim began arriving: Beliebers.STRATFORD, Ontario — It’s a small city that practically shouts “Shakespeare!”Majestic white swans float in the Avon River, not far from Falstaff Street and Anne Hathaway Park, named for the playwright’s wife. Some residents live in Romeo Ward, while young students attend Hamlet elementary. And the school’s namesake play is often performed as part of a renowned theater festival that draws legions of Shakespeare fans from around the world, every April to October.Stratford, Ontario, steeped in references to and reverence for the Bard, has counted on its association with Shakespeare for decades to dependably bring in millions of tourist dollars to a city that would otherwise have little appeal to travelers.“My dad always said we have a world-class theater stuck in a farm community,” said Frank Herr, the second-generation owner of a boat tour and rental business along the Avon River.Then, about a dozen years ago, a new and typically much younger type of cultural enthusiast began showing up in Stratford’s streets: Beliebers, or fans of the pop star Justin Bieber, a homegrown talent.William Shakespeare Street in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesA star dedicated to Justin Bieber outside the Avon Theater where he would busk as a child.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesResidents don’t have much trouble telling the two types of visitors apart. One clue: Look at what they are carrying.“They’ve got the Shakespeare books in their hands,” Mr. Herr said of those who are here for the love of theater. “They’re just serious people.”Beliebers, on the other hand, always have their smartphones at the ready to excitedly document the otherwise humdrum landmarks connected to the pop star: the site of his first date, the local radio station that first played his music, the diner where he was rumored to eat.Unlike Shakespeare — who never set foot in this city, named after his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England — Mr. Bieber has genuine and deep connections: He grew up here and is familiar to many.“I know Justin,” Mr. Herr said. “He was always skateboarding on the cenotaph, and I was always kicking him off the cenotaph,” he added, referring to a World War I memorial in the gardens next to Lake Victoria.A cutout of Justin Bieber in the Stratford Perth Museum. The setting is meant to replicate the steps of the city’s Avon Theater. Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesDiane Dale, Mr. Bieber’s maternal grandmother, and her husband, Bruce, lived a 10-minute drive away from downtown Stratford, where the fledgling singer, now 28, could often be found busking on the steps of Avon Theater under their supervision, collecting as much as $200 per day, she said in a recent interview.Those steps became something of a pilgrimage site for Mr. Bieber’s fans, especially those vying to become “One Less Lonely Girl” during his teen-pop dreamboat era.Another popular stop on the pilgrim’s tour was Ms. Dale’s doorstep. After fans rang her doorbell, she would assure them that her grandson was not home, though that didn’t stop them from taking selfies outside the red brick bungalow.“Justin said, if you don’t move, we’re not coming to visit you anymore,” Ms. Dale, a retired sewer at a now shuttered automotive factory in town, recalled. She has since relocated.Businesses in Stratford that benefited from this second set of tourists began speaking of “the Bieber Effect,” a play on the “Bilbao Effect” in reference to the Spanish city revitalized by a museum.Justin Bieber’s grandparents’ former home in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesBut one of the problems with pop fame is that it can be fickle. As fans have aged out of their teen infatuation with the musician, “Bieber fever” has cooled and the number of pilgrims has dropped.The issues that have long afflicted other Canadian cities, like increased housing prices and drug addiction, are more often peeking through the quaint veneer of Stratford, a city of about 33,000 people bordered by sprawling fields of corn in the farmland region of southwestern Ontario.But more than 400 years after his death, Shakespeare’s magnetic force remains fully intact.The theater festival, which draws over 500,000 guests in a typical year and employs about 1,000 people, features Shakespeare classics, Broadway-style musicals and modern plays in its repertoire.Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the festival returned to its roots, staging a limited run of shows outside under canopies, as it did during its first four seasons, starting in 1953. In 1957, the Festival Theater building opened with a summer performance of “Hamlet,” with the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer in the titular role.The Tom Patterson Theater, a new addition to the Stratford Festival.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThis year’s production stars a woman, Amaka Umeh, the first Black actor to play Hamlet at the festival.While it’s unknown how popular Mr. Bieber will be four centuries from now, the appeal of someone who has sold over 100 million digital singles in the United States alone doesn’t dissipate overnight.And Stratford has taken steps to permanently memorialize his youth here.Mr. Bieber’s grandparents had hung on to boxes of his belongings, including talent show score sheets and a drum set paid for the by the community in a crowdfunding effort — until a local museum presented them with an opportunity to display the items.“It’s changed the museum forever, in a myriad of ways,” said John Kastner, the general manager of the Stratford Perth Museum.After informing the local newspaper that the museum was opening an exhibition, “Justin Bieber: Steps to Stardom,” in February 2018, Mr. Kastner said, he was flooded with calls from international media.“We were going to do one room, like one 10-by-10 room,” Mr. Kastner said. He called his curator. “I said, ‘We have a problem.’”Angelyka Byrne walking through the Bieber exhibit at the Stratford Perth Museum.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThey cut the agricultural exhibition that had been planned for the adjoining space, which proved helpful in accommodating the 18,000 visitors in the first year of the Bieber show, a huge jump in attendance from the 850 who visited the museum in 2013.The Bieber show, on view through at least next year, has brought in thousands of dollars in merchandise purchases, Mr. Kastner said, giving the modest museum some welcome financial cushion.Mr. Bieber has also made a handful of visits, marking his name in chalk on the guest blackboard and donating some more recent memorabilia, including his wedding invitation and reception menu, featuring a dish called “Grandma Diane’s Bolognese.”But even before the Beliebers descended on the town, young people had been coming to Stratford by the busload thanks to organized school visits, with 50,000 to 100,000 students arriving from the United States and around Canada each year.With the exception of the pandemic border closures, James Pakala, and his wife, Denise, both retired seminary librarians in St. Louis, have been coming to Stratford for about a week every year since the early 1990s. Thirty years before that, Ms. Pakala traveled to Stratford with her high school English literature class from Ithaca, N.Y., and the trip has since become a tradition.The Shakespearean Gardens in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“I love Shakespeare and also Molière,” said Mr. Pakala, 78, who was studying his program outside the Festival Theater before a recent production of Molière’s comedy “The Miser.”Other guests enjoy the simplicity of getting around Stratford. The traffic is fairly light, there is ample parking and most major attractions are a short walk from one other, with pleasant views of the rippling river and picturesque gardens.“It’s easy to attend theater here,” said Michael Walker, a retired banker from Newport Beach, Calif., who visits each year with friends. “It’s not like New York, where it’s burdensome, and the quality of the theater here, I think, is better than what’s in Los Angeles or Chicago.”Here for Now Theater, an independent nonprofit that opened during the pandemic and plays to audiences of no more than 50, enjoys a “symbiotic relationship” with the festival, said its artistic director, Fiona Mongillo, who compared the scale of their operations as a Fiat to the festival’s freight train.Performing “Take Care” at the Here for Now Theater in August.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“It’s an interesting moment for Stratford because I think it’s growing and changing in a really lovely way,” said Ms. Mongillo, citing the increased diversity as Canadians from neighboring cities have relocated to a town that was formerly, she added, “very, very white.”Longtime residents of Stratford, like Madeleine McCormick, a retired correctional officer, said it can sometimes feel like the concerns of residents are sidelined in favor of tourists.Still, Ms. McCormick acknowledged the pluses of the vibrant community of artists and creative people, one that drew her musician husband into its orbit.“It’s a strange place,” she said. “There’s never going to be another place that’s like this, because of the theater.”And Mr. Bieber. 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      At the National Theater, Love Redeems, in Various Ways

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      Two productions at the London playhouse feature heroines who, reluctantly, allow transformative characters into their lives.LONDON — Love is a powerful, redemptive force at the National Theater here, where two very different shows convey the value of letting someone into your life. “All of Us,” the first play from the performer Francesca Martinez, opens our eyes to the hardships of disabled people in Britain. In a separate auditorium, the playhouse has revived Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.”These plays feature heroines who allow themselves — sometimes reluctantly — to experience love, and are changed by it. The world around them may be unforgiving and harsh, but love is there to offer solace and a way forward.Circumstances are especially challenging for Jess, the therapist at the center of “All of Us.” She is played by the author, already an established comedian. Martinez has cerebral palsy, so understands full well the similarly “wobbly” Jess — “wobbly” being the playwright’s preferred word to describe living with a condition she has had since birth and a term she has used to describe herself in interviews. (Jess jokes early in the play that she’s unlikely to ever be “de-wobblied.”)Jess has a thriving practice, and her routine is facilitated by state-provided home health aides who help her dress and eat; the government also provides a car that allows her to avoid public transportation and enjoy life without being shut up at home.So it’s a shock when Jess gets a visit from an ill-informed government assessor, Yvonne (Goldy Notay), and finds that the level of assistance she has taken for granted from childhood is now at risk. “Never get angry,” says the kindly Polish aide Nadia (Wanda Opalinska), but circumstances are pushing Jess toward the brink.She is demoted to a lower level of care, and as her car is taken away and a first appeal to reverse that decision is turned down, her hard-won composure starts to crack. This woman used to dispensing balm to others could also use shoring up. And Jess is cross with herself for being too candid with the assessor. Sometimes, she muses, honesty doesn’t pay.The prospects are scarcely less rosy for Jess’s feisty, wheelchair-using friend Poppy (a spirited Francesca Mills), a weed-smoking 21-year-old with an active sex life who isn’t thrilled about having to go to bed at 9 p.m. because of cuts to nighttime care services. “I just want to get on with life,” says Poppy, who must rely on friends to dress her in a diaper that she now needs to make it through the night. The play’s director, Ian Rickson, brings his characteristic compassion to a deeply intimate scene in which Poppy is put to bed.Bryan Dick in “All of Us.”Helen MurrayIt’s against these gathering hardships that Jess finds an unexpected soul mate in one of her patients, Aidan (Bryan Dick), a heavy drinker who arrives for his initial sessions in a wary, snarky mood. As a writer, Martinez charts with ease the changing dynamic of their relationship, which goes from professional in the first act to personal in the second: Cocky, defensive Aidan softens in the presence of Jess, who expresses toward Aidan a kindness you feel he’s rarely known.It might seem a contrivance too far when Aidan is revealed to be the son of the Conservative minister responsible for the disability services cuts from which Jess and Poppy are reeling. But that coincidence allows a play rooted in individual circumstances to broaden into a politically charged cry for help.The start of the second act finds the houselights up for a voices-raised town meeting in which the cast members spread themselves around the auditorium to argue their case and hold the minister to account. He replies that the pandemic has put serious pressure on the public purse, and that the cutbacks are meant to encourage independence. It’s left to the live-wire Poppy to make the point that intentions are irrelevant. The reality, she says, is “that Jess used to work and now she can’t.” Without a car to get her to her consultation room, Jess doesn’t have a job.What she does now have is a serious romantic prospect in Aidan, who seeks out Jess no longer as a therapist but as a friend — and more. “Can you undo my buttons?” she asks him in a moment that stills the heart.Aidan certainly finds a flowery rhetoric you wouldn’t expect from the prickly figure we’ve met earlier. (Dick, the actor, navigates the shift in tone beautifully.) “My love for you fills the skies and drowns the moon,” he says in an expansive outburst to Jess that put me in mind of Shakespeare, in whose plays guarded characters often drop their defenses to make room for love. That, in fact, is the situation for Beatrice and Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing.”From left, Wendy Kweh, Katherine Parkinson and Ioanna Kimbook in “Much Ado About Nothing,” directed by Simon Godwin.Manuel HarlanLong described as a prototype for the rom-com, Shakespeare’s infinitely spry 1599 comedy can also show us a thing or two about pain. At its center are the emotionally cautious Beatrice (Katherine Parkinson, in her Shakespeare debut) and her cousin, Hero (Ioanna Kimbook), who is wrongly accused of adultery on her wedding day.The genius of the play lies in Shakespeare’s ability to balance the mournful undercurrents with the giddiness of Beatrice’s eventual romantic surrender to Benedick (John Heffernan), a soldier she regards warily at first.Simon Godwin’s production relocates the action to the Italian Riviera in the 1930s, which allows for an onstage band to ramp up the party mood as well as some audience-pleasing comic business involving a gelato trolley and a wayward hammock.But its core remains the slow-aborning affection between Beatrice and Benedick, whose shared gifts for wordplay mark them out as the wittiest and liveliest people in the room. And when the mood darkens late on, the once-frolicsome Benedick makes an eloquent bid to Beatrice. “Serve God, love me, and mend,” he implores her, a declaration that itself is deeply touching. Life can deliver blows of varying kinds, but in both these shows, love thankfully remains an option.All of Us. Directed by Ian Rickson. National Theater, through Sept. 24.Much Ado About Nothing. Directed by Simon Godwin. National Theater, through Sept. 10. More

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      Review: Finding Community in ‘As You Like It’

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      This shimmering Shakespeare adaptation at the Delacorte Theater retains the outline of the original, while making space for songs. You don’t have to sing along, though you may want to.The Forest of Arden is where you head when the city won’t hold you. When laws are unjust, when custom constricts, when institutions squeeze and shrink you, here, at last, is space to breathe and to be. Manhattan razed its woodlands long ago, of course. (A lone stand of trees, in Inwood Hill Park, remains.) But on a summer night, in Central Park, squint a little and you can imagine a forest here — the refuge, the bounty, the hush.You won’t have to squint hard at “As You Like It,” the shimmering Shakespeare adaptation at the Delacorte Theater, courtesy of Public Works. Adapted by Laurie Woolery, who directs, and the singer-songwriter Shaina Taub, who provides the music and lyrics, this easeful, intentional show bestows the pleasures typical of a Shakespeare comedy — adventure, disguise, multiple marriages, pentameter for days. And, in just 90 minutes, it unites its dozens of actors and its hundreds of audience members as citizens of the same joyful community.Taub and Woolery’s adaptation retains the outline of the original, while shortening and tightening the talkier bits, making space for songs. Rosalind (Rebecca Naomi Jones), the daughter of the exiled Duke Senior (Darius De Haas), falls instantly for Orlando (Ato Blankson-Wood), the younger son of a dead nobleman. Threatened by the current Duke (Eric Pierre), they flee, with friends and servants, to the Forest of Arden, where Duke Senior has formed an alternate, more egalitarian court.Taub has cast herself as Jaques, the emo philosopher, who opens the show with the limpid ballad, “All the World’s a Stage,” singing: “All the world’s a stage/And everybody’s in the show/Nobody’s a pro.”These lyrics do a lot of work, work that transcends paraphrase. “As You Like It” is a production of Public Works, a division of the Public Theater that partners with community groups. So the song serves as a kind of pre-emptive apology, an acknowledgment of amateurism. Yet the lines function as an invitation, too, an inducement to imagine yourself as part of the show, to join in its creation. A big ask? Maybe. On a breeze-soothed evening, with the city quieted and the lights aglow, it won’t feel that way. And for those who blench and tremble at the thought of audience participation, take a breath. You don’t even have to sing along, though you may want to.I first saw “As You Like It” during a short run at the Delacorte Theater in the summer of 2017, after the travel bans had been instituted, but before the widespread adoption of the Trump administration’s family separation policy. All scrolling felt like doom scrolling then; to open the morning paper was to start the day with some fresh horror. Things could — and did — get worse. I remember experiencing the show, profoundly and with some tears, as a temporary respite.From left, Idania Quezada, Christopher M. Ramirez and Rebecca Naomi Jones in the Public Works adaptation of “As You Like It” at the Delacorte Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTo revisit it now, when disaster seems less immediate, is to relax into the brisk pleasure of the work. Jones, an actress with a voice of steel and sweetness, like a knife baked into a birthday cake, is a dynamic Rosalind. And if you admired Blankson-Wood in “Slave Play,” you will enjoy his playful turn here, as in the exuberant R&B number, “Will U Be My Bride.” But the show’s success owes less to any individual performer than to the generous and sociable whole. Taub’s lyrics are simple, but it takes effort to write lines that feel effortless. The same goes for Sonya Tayeh’s fluid choreography, restaged by Billy Griffin and achievable for all kinds of bodies, and Woolery’s insouciant use of stage space.The stage itself has an oddly flimsy set, by Myung Hee Cho, a turntable dotted with trees that don’t look a lot like trees. But Emilio Sosa’s costumes and Isabella Byrd’s lights provide happy splashes of color. James Ortiz designed the deer puppets; if they lack the emotional heft of the cow he designed for the current revival of “Into the Woods,” well, you can’t have everything. That “Into the Woods” revival is directed by Lear deBessonet, who inaugurated Public Works, which Woolery now leads. Small wonder then, but wonder all the same, that the two most joyous shows in New York right now, the two most engaged with questions of community and duty and care, have this shared maternity.If “As You Like It” succeeds as entertainment — and it does, fluently, enough to make you wonder if Shakespeare in the Park should stick to comedies and musicals and maybe the occasional romance — it articulates and answers graver concerns. There is a persistent fear in American politics that to grant freedom is to invite anarchy. “As You Like It” offers another possibility. There is no rule of law in the Forest of Arden. But rather than descend into riot, its inhabitants practice mutual aid. They live in harmony, figuratively and — when De Haas swoops over and around the melody — literally.This confirms Woolery and Taub’s adaptation as a kind of thought experiment: What might happen if a community were free to determine its own best principles and practices? Because “As You Like It” swells its cast with the members of partner organizations — Domestic Workers United, Military Resilience Foundation and Children’s Aid, among them — the show is also proof of concept. There is hierarchy here, of course. The direction is by Woolery alone and the folks with Equity cards occupy the prime roles. (To put the lie to Taub’s lyrics, somebody’s a pro.)But if the theater were really made welcoming and accessible to all, this is what it might manifest — a stage bursting with performers diverse in age, race, size, habit and circumstance, an audience distributed across a similar spectrum. “As You Like It” offers that rare thing — a New York theater that looks like the city itself and feels like a promise of what the city, at its best, could be.What a feat that is. And what a gift. So go ahead. Wait in line and then walk to the theater through the canopy of trees. Shelter here awhile.As You Like ItThrough Sept. 11 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Review: Without Bloodshed, the Ingénue Takes the Lead

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      Sophie McIntosh’s new play gathers five women in a college production for an exercise in youthful ambition and the corrupting clashing of egos.Hailey loves acting. Sweet and guileless, she doesn’t know Broadway is home to plays, as well as musicals. She is also as earnest in her love for her craft as she is genuinely talented — a combination that earns the freshman the coveted role of Lady Macbeth in her Minnesota college’s production. So, of course, all of the older girls resent her.Sophie McIntosh’s “Macbitches,” having its premiere at the Chain Theater, throws Hailey (Marie Dinolan) and four upperclasswomen together for a tight 85-minute exercise in youthful ambition and the corrupting clashing of egos. It’s (thankfully) not a direct takeoff on Shakespeare’s tale of royal bloodlust, but rather a very funny, well-observed and finely acted dramedy about what it means to be a young woman in a B.F.A. program in a post-#MeToo world.And it counts a revelatory star turn from Dinolan as its brightest point. As Hailey, she exhibits impeccable comedic timing that demands attention even when she’s in the background, staring at the bottom of her Cosmo with inebriated innocence. Not only can Dinolan play drunk well (tougher than you’d think), but she superbly inhabits her character’s inchoate ability to command a stage.Or, in this case, a fraught celebration. The gathering, organized after casting notices have gone up, is held at Rachel’s (Caroline Orlando), the program’s now-former de facto lead. Hailey is invited over by Piper (Laura Clare Brown), an introverted sophomore who’s coming up against the limitation of her talent and is perhaps unaware of what the ingénue’s presence at this intimate get-together might do to her friends. The agitated Lexi (Natasja Naarendorp) and the dispirited Cam (Morgan Lui) certainly do not need her there.McIntosh, the director Ella Jane New and their cast ably navigate these social hierarchies. Rachel is not a tyrannical, or even obvious, queen bee, but her lead turn in “Hedda Gabler” the year before ensures an unspoken air of achievement her friends can only admire. The way these students interact and move through Brandon Scott Hughes’s set — complete with “Hamilton” merch and posters from past college productions — feels real, seemingly informed by the cast’s own experiences among other actors rather than writerly necessity.Yet it’s the interactions happening outside the room that provide the play with a relevant, weighty backbone it would be well without, but is leagues better for including. These young women, though confident and well-prepared, are still working in a world ruled by men.Are their professors, who appraise their looks to determine their fitness for a role, supposed to mold them for the “real world,” or help them overcome its obstacles? How can you imbue a romantic scene with the power of instinct when the new norm of intimacy training necessitates planning? And is there any room for agency and ambition if your plan is sleeping up in an industry newly focused on power imbalances?McIntosh evokes these questions astutely, never putting too fine a point on any of them, or turning her characters into mouthpieces. With a fantastic understanding of tone and genre, “Macbitches” juggles headier themes while remaining a lively college drama, a riff on both Shakespeare and “All About Eve,” and a showcase for Dinolan’s blazing charisma.MacbitchesThrough Sept. 10 at the Chain Theater, Manhattan; chaintheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. More

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      National Endowment for the Humanities Announces $31.5 Million in Grants

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      The third round of funding for the year will support 226 projects across the country.A PBS documentary on the 400-year history of Shakespeare’s plays, a New York Public Library summer program for educators on efforts to secure equitable access to education in Harlem in the 20th century, and research for a book on the history of red hair are among 226 beneficiaries of new grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on Tuesday.The grants, which total $31.5 million and are the third round awarded this year, will support projects at museums, libraries, universities and historic sites in 45 states and Washington, D.C., as well as in Canada, England and the Netherlands.Such projects include a documentary, to be co-produced by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, about the Colfax Massacre — named after the town and parish where dozens of former slaves were killed during Reconstruction. Another, at Penn State, uses computational methods to analyze the clouds in landscapes by John Constable and to trace the adoption of his Realist techniques by other 19th-century European artists. Funding will also go toward research for a book examining how different cultures have envisioned Jesus, both in his own time and throughout history, by Elaine Pagels, a historian of religion at Princeton University.Shelly C. Lowe, the endowment’s chairwoman, said in a statement that the projects, which include educational programming for high school and college students, “will foster the exchange of ideas and increase access to humanities knowledge, resources and experiences.”In New York, 31 projects at the state’s cultural organizations will receive $4.6 million in grants. Funding will support the creation of a new permanent exhibition exploring 400 years of Brooklyn history at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, as well as books about St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York during the height of the AIDS crisis and the Hospital of the Innocents, a 600-year-old children’s care institution in Florence, Italy.Funding will also go toward the development of a podcast about the Federal Writers’ Project, a U.S. government initiative that provided jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression, by the Washington-based Stone Soup Productions. Another grant will benefit a history of the Cherokee Nation being co-authored by Julie Reed, a historian at Penn State, and Rose Stremlau, a historian at Davidson College in North Carolina.The grants will also benefit the Peabody Collections, one of the oldest African American library collections in the country, at Hampton University, and a book by John Lisle on a 1980s lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency over its Cold War-era MK-Ultra program, which involved experiments in mind control. More

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      ‘Twelfth Night’ Review: A Shot of Joy Under a Darkening Sky

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      At an uptown amphitheater, the Classical Theater of Harlem stages Shakespeare’s comedy with fizzy delight.For so many of us, stress roared in and put down roots. The stress of living at perpetual high alert in a world that has seemed, for the past several years, to be in an ever-shifting state of emergency. Amid all that, in the post-shutdown theater, has come a tsunami of shows dedicated to elucidating social ills and processing cultural pain. Such work is vital now and always; don’t get me wrong.But we desperately require its counterweight, too — shows that usher us into alternate worlds where we can give ourselves over to pure delight. The Classical Theater of Harlem gets that, deeply, and proves it with a delectable “Twelfth Night” so fizzy and fun that you may be surprised afterward at how relaxed your body is, and how much lighter your spirit feels.That’s what communal joy can do. Maybe it’s been a while?Hie thee, then, to the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, where this free, outdoor production directed by Carl Cofield boasts dance as lissome as ever, design that raises the bar on this company’s customary visual wow and a cast whose ease brings a lovely clarity. In Kara Young as Viola, this “Twelfth Night” also has a star as fascinatingly natural in Shakespeare as she has been in any of the contemporary stage roles that have established her as one of New York’s most exciting actors.Washed up on the shore of Illyria, her Viola is immediately surprising — shivery and traumatized, which makes the unseen shipwreck that tore her from her brother, Sebastian, more than a mere plot device to set in motion a rom-com with a mistaken-identity twist. Not that she lingers in her distress; this show gets playful fast. But the emotional stakes are laid, and they will pay off.Needing to survive in this strange country, Viola disguises herself as a young man named Cesario and gets a job working for Orsino (William DeMeritt), a love-struck duke who sends her to plead his amorous case with the countess Olivia (Christina Sajous). The elegant lady spurns Orsino’s messages but is much taken with the messenger, who, in turn, is so smitten with the oblivious duke that she can barely stand to be near him. It’s a triangle of sexual tension, one of romantic comedy’s most deliciously tormented shapes.An intersecting plot involves Shakespeare’s possibly most stellar team of ridiculous idiots: the ever-reveling Sir Toby Belch (Chivas Michael) and his tag-along friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek (an excellently goofy Carson Elrod), who with their raucous compadres stir up trouble for trouble’s sake at Olivia’s house. Their principal target is Olivia’s prim steward, Malvolio (Allen Gilmore), who, despite his name, is not a bad guy, really; he’d just like to get some sleep instead of being kept awake by these cases of arrested development.This beautiful show, at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, works its magic beneath the summer sky as dusk turns to dark.Richard TermineCofield and his creative team are gorgeously in sync as they fully embrace all comic opportunities — not least a memorably silly sword fight between Viola and Andrew, both of them terrified and armed with quasi-light sabers. (Fight direction is by the father-and-son team Rick Sordelet and Christian Kelly-Sordelet.) There is also the laugh-out-loud tableau of Toby, Andrew and the servant Fabian (Donathan Walters) popping their hatted heads up from their hiding place to watch Malvolio fall into their trap. (Set design is by Riw Rakkulchon, costumes by Mika Eubanks and lighting by Alan C. Edwards.)What befalls Malvolio is the one indelible blot on Shakespeare’s play: recreational cruelty that can’t be jollied away. In this production, though, the rest is lively, witty, fresh — and peppered with crowd-pleasing songs performed by Olivia’s scooter-riding jester, Feste (Israel Erron Ford) — in one instance, with Toby and Andrew as backup dancers. (The original music is by Frederick Kennedy, who also did the sound design; choreography is by company regular Tiffany Rea-Fisher.)As with any oft-told tale, the enjoyment of “Twelfth Night” lies not so much in the destination as in the journey. We know that Sebastian (J’Laney Allen) will turn up, that people will confuse him and Viola — the show’s hair designer, Earon Nealey, is instrumental in this illusion — and that it will all end happily with the romantic triangle squared.This is one of those productions that make you feel lucky to be in New York. You have not seen a Viola like Young’s fierce, funny, fully inhabited Viola. And if your nerves are as frayed as so many of ours are, you could do with the beautiful balm that is this show, working its magic beneath the summer sky as dusk turns to dark.Twelfth NightThrough July 29 at the Richard Rodgers Ampitheater at Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Review: Danai Gurira Makes a Sleek Supervillain of Richard III

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      At Shakespeare in the Park, athletic stamina and action-hero charisma muddy the meaning of a play about disability.Richard of Gloucester may be the killingest character in Shakespeare, personally knocking off or precipitating the deaths of more than a dozen people who get in his way. To be fair, he does so over the course of three plays, while top competitors like Macbeth and Titus Andronicus have just one.Still, lacking a prophecy, a particular vengeance or a bloody-minded wife to flesh out his motives, Richard remains the most mysterious in his evil; to make a success of the fabulous mess that is “Richard III,” you must decide what to do about that.The tonally wobbly and workmanlike revival that opened on Sunday at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park doesn’t decide. Whether Richard chooses his evil in reaction to the world’s revulsion — a “lump of foul deformity” is one of the nicer descriptions of him — or whether he was merely born to be bad is a question the Public Theater production, starring the tireless Danai Gurira as Richard, does not reach. We never learn what Richard means by the word “determined” when, in his first speech, he says that “since I cannot prove a lover/I am determined to prove a villain.” Is he bent on villainy, or was he pre-bent?Actually, in Robert O’Hara’s staging, that speech no longer comes first. In a sign that he will focus on action and not psychology, O’Hara instead opens with the gruesome final scene of “Henry VI, Part III,” the immediately preceding play in Shakespeare’s chronicle of 15th-century royal intrigue. In O’Hara’s characteristically droll take on awfulness, Richard coolly stabs King Henry to death, for good measure stuffing the corpse’s mouth with the royal pennant and wiping his knife on it too.As a means of showing us that Richard intends to replace the Lancasters on the throne with the Yorks — including, as soon as possible, himself — this is highly effective. And Gurira, the fierce General Okoye of the “Black Panther” films, certainly never disappoints as an action hero. Looking like a supervillain in black knee-high boots and stretch denim trousers, with her hair shaved into heraldic patterns, she is unflaggingly energetic, vocally thrilling and, as events become more hectic, more and more convincing.But for much of the play, the flash and fury of her performance, with its surface swagger and glary stares, too often feel like decoys. As Richard schemes his way from the sidelines to the throne, dispatching two young princes along the way, we get his gall but not his emotion, even as his words tell us that he understands the monstrousness of his methods. “Was ever woman in this humor wooed?” he asks after proposing marriage to Lady Anne, whose husband he has just murdered. As staged by O’Hara, the seduction is humorous in the comic sense too, involving a trick knife, a humongous ring, and a moment when Richard, sitting on the corner of the bier, brushes some part of the inconvenient body aside as if it were a crumb.From left, Richard’s aggrieved mother, the Duchess of York (Monique Holt), with Anne (Ali Stroker) and the ensemble member Thaddeus S. Fitzpatrick in “Richard III.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd bodies, not just body counts, are crucial in “Richard III.” It’s worth noting that Ali Stroker, this production’s Anne, uses a wheelchair. Richard’s aggrieved mother, the Duchess of York (Monique Holt), uses sign language. So does one of the assassins, played by Maleni Chaitoo. Gregg Mozgala, in two important roles — Edward IV, who succeeds the dead Henry, and Richmond, the play’s hero, who eventually kills Richard — has cerebral palsy.Though they all have excellent moments, the admirably diverse casting only underlines for me the problem of a Richard who is not disabled. For centuries, of course, that has been the norm; mostly the role has been played by actors sporting more-or-less absurd humps, lumps, prostheses and braces to simulate the “bunch-back’d toad” described in the text. When Arthur Hughes, an actor with radial dysplasia, took the role at the Royal Shakespeare Company this summer, he was thought to be the first disabled person ever to do so at that theater.It is nice to dream of a time when disabled actors are employed so frequently, and in so many kinds of roles, that we need not discourage others from playing this one. And it’s true that the historical Richard probably suffered from nothing more than scoliosis, as an analysis of his recently discovered skeleton suggests. Shakespeare, I’ve said before, was a poet, not an osteopath.But what was once the norm can now seem a kind of ableist mummery, which this production attempts to sidestep by offering a Richard with no physical impairments at all. When other characters, and even the man himself, scorn his disabilities and mock his ugliness, we are forced by the evidence of our senses to treat the derision metaphorically. (Richard, we tell ourselves, is morally toadlike, not physically so.) And though I usually enjoy being asked to see familiar characters in unfamiliar skins, in this case the sidestep blocks access to the deepest elements of the drama.Those elements are what keep the otherwise ragged “Richard III” in the repertory. The verse is extraordinarily pungent and the questions obviously eternal. When a production has us asking to what extent Richard’s evil is the product of people’s hatred of him, as opposed to his prior hatred of himself, it forces us to ask the same of our own leaders. In this season of our discontent, the scene in which Richard cynically holds up a Bible as a ginned-up crowd clamors to make him king is one you may find familiar.Though we don’t get to ask those profound questions in this production, there are nevertheless compensations. The staging itself is lovely, with Myung Hee Cho’s revolving circles of gothic arches speeding the action and suggesting the inexorability of Richard’s rise and fall. (The arches are lit in beautiful pinks and purples by Alex Jainchill.) Dede Ayite’s witty mixed-period costumes score sociological points at a glance, from Anne’s tacky trophy-wife regalia to the doomed young princes’ spangly gold sneakers.Glistening too are some of the performers in secondary roles, which, in this play, means all roles but Richard. Sanjit De Silva turns Buckingham, the king’s chief enabler, into a hopped-up hype man, high on the fumes of ambient amorality. Paul Niebanck makes a powerful impression as Richard’s brother George, who incorrectly believes he can talk his way out of anything. And as Queen Margaret, the widow of Henry, Sharon Washington demonstrates with brutal efficiency how specific hatred can soon become general, blistering everyone, even herself, in its path.But these coherently interpreted characters do not add up to a coherent interpretation of the play, which wobbles between shouty polemics and a kind of Tudor snark. It may be that “Richard III” is in that sense uninterpretable; written to flatter Shakespeare’s royal sponsors, who were descendants of the victorious Richmond, its brilliance has always borne the sour odor of propaganda. That sourness is not sweetened by the fact that, to modern noses, the good guys smell a lot like the bad ones. If history plays cannot untangle for us what history itself leaves a jumble, they should at least help us figure out why.Richard IIIThrough July 17 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More