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      Review: For ‘Molly Sweeney,’ Not Seeing Was Never the Obstacle

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      The Irish Rep ends its season-long Brian Friel survey with the story of a blind woman who undergoes an operation to try to restore her sight.Molly Sweeney can identify dozens of plants by touch, catch a lie in a familiar voice and dance ecstatically through a crowd without disturbing a hair. Because she lost much of her eyesight when she was 10 months old — except, crucially, her ability to discern light from dark — Molly has developed keen powers of sensory perception.Sure-footed though she is, the title character in “Molly Sweeney,” now running at the Irish Repertory Theater, is treated like a pawn by two men who can’t see beyond their own self-interests. That’s one of several conspicuous paradoxes explored in Brian Friel’s 1994 confessional drama, the final installment of the theater’s season devoted to the playwright’s work.Like Friel’s more often revived “Faith Healer,” “Molly Sweeney” is told through a series of monologues addressed to the audience. All three characters, who remain onstage throughout, narrate their subjective recollections of a six-month span (the year is unspecified; the setting is Ballybeg, Friel’s fictional Irish hamlet). But only one of them can speak with unbiased clarity on the central occurrence: what happened when a doctor tried to restore Molly’s sight.Friel’s extraordinary hand with vivid prose is especially evident in Molly’s version of events. Played with a poised sense of wonder by Sarah Street, Molly recalls relishing in the beautiful details of a world she had no need of seeing. The idea for an eye operation came from her husband Frank, played by John Keating with the frazzled intensity of a mad scientist. A dilettante prone to colorful tangents, he sees Molly as an object of fascination and a personal cause. Molly’s egocentric ophthalmologist, Mr. Rice (Rufus Collins), considers her a potential miracle patient who might revive his career.Directed by Charlotte Moore, this production is faithful to the author’s stated preference for minimal staging (the program quotes Friel’s disinterest in “concept or interpretation”). That puts the focus squarely on the three actors, who do fine work illuminating Friel’s descriptive language, particularly Street and Keating as spouses who gravely misjudge each other. The performers are confined to their thirds of the stage, sparse but for a chair and window each (the set is by Charlie Corcoran), while mottled blue-and-violet lighting (by Michael Gottlieb) creates an impression of a developing field of vision.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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      Two More ‘Succession’ Actors Are Broadway Bound, in ‘Job’

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      Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon will star in the two-hander, a psychological thriller that previously found success downtown.“Job,” a two-character thriller about a psychological evaluation going awry, started small, with a run last year at SoHo Playhouse. Word-of-mouth was good, the New York Times review was positive and sales were strong, so early this year it transferred for another Off Broadway run at the Connelly Theater in the East Village.Now the play, written by Max Wolf Friedlich and directed by Michael Herwitz, is planning to make the leap to Broadway, with a two-month run beginning this summer at the Hayes Theater.The Broadway production, like the Off Broadway runs, will star Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon. Both of them appeared in the HBO series “Succession” — Friedman was a member of the principal cast, playing Frank Vernon, the chief operating officer of Waystar Royco, and Lemmon appeared in the show at one point as a love interest of Kendall Roy.Friedman is a mainstay of the New York stage who was nominated for a Tony Award for “Ragtime.” Lemmon has worked mostly onscreen, including in the Hulu streamer “Helstrom”; if her surname sounds familiar, that’s because she is also the granddaughter of the great actor Jack Lemmon.In “Job,” Friedman plays a therapist who has been hired to evaluate Lemmon’s character for her suitability to return to work. (She has been suspended after a videotaped workplace breakdown.) Their interaction is fraught, and frightening, from the get-go.“Job” is scheduled to begin previews July 15 and to open July 30 at the Hayes Theater, which, with about 600 seats, is the smallest house on Broadway. The run will be brief — it is scheduled to end on Sept. 29.The play is being produced by Hannah Getts, who has been with the show at each stage of its production history; Alex Levy, a speechwriter and media strategist whose work includes communications consulting for New York Times executives; Craig Balsam, who co-founded the music company Razor & Tie; and P3 Productions, the company that was the lead producer for last season’s musical “How to Dance in Ohio.”“Job” will be the latest sign of a surge to the stage by “Succession” alumni. Those include two of this year’s Tony nominees — Jeremy Strong, who played Kendall Roy on “Succession,” is nominated for “An Enemy of the People,” and Juliana Canfield, who played Kendall’s assistant, Jess, is nominated for “Stereophonic.”Also on Broadway, Natalie Gold, who played Kendall’s ex-wife, Rava, is featured in “Appropriate.”Meanwhile in London, Sarah Snook (Shiv Roy) won an Olivier Award last month for her performance in a one-woman version of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” that is expected to transfer to New York next year. Also in London, Brian Cox (Logan Roy) is starring in a revival of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and J. Smith-Cameron (Gerri Kellman) is planning to star in a revival of “Juno and the Paycock” this fall. More

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      Brooke Shields Elected President of Stage Actors’ Union

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      She takes office immediately. The previous leader of Actors’ Equity, Kate Shindle, had been president since 2015, and did not run again.Brooke Shields, the model-turned-actor who has starred in films, on television and onstage, has been elected as the next president of Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing stage actors and stage managers.Shields, 58, will take office immediately. She succeeds Kate Shindle, who had been the union’s president since 2015, and announced last month that she would not seek re-election.The position of Equity president is a volunteer job, and Shields was elected to a four-year term. There have been a number of other well-known performers who have served in the post previously, including Burgess Meredith, Ellen Burstyn, Colleen Dewhurst and Ron Silver.Shields won the election with about half the vote; the balance was split between two Equity vice presidents, Erin Maureen Koster and Wydetta Carter. Her victory was reported by the newsletter Broadway Journal and announced by the union on Friday; a union spokesman said she was not available for an interview.In a campaign video posted on YouTube, Shields said that among her priorities would be lobbying for greater government funding for the arts. “I understand the real need to support live theater, and I have a history of being able to open doors and of being able to help,” she said.Equity has about 51,000 members, and represents them in contract negotiations around the country. Just last week, the union won the right to represent a variety of performers at Disneyland, so the union will now need to try to bargain for a contract for those workers.The union is negotiating for a new contract for Off Broadway workers, and it is at odds with the Broadway League over a new contract governing developmental work — how performers are compensated when participating in workshops for shows in development. Equity has threatened that its members would stop working on those developmental projects if a deal is not reached by mid-June.Shields became famous through films like “Pretty Baby” and “The Blue Lagoon” and by modeling, notably for Calvin Klein. She has appeared in five Broadway musicals, always as a replacement: “Grease,” “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Wonderful Town” and “The Addams Family,” as well as a handful of Off Broadway shows.Her early career, and the problematic ways in which she was sexualized as a child and adolescent, was the subject of a documentary last year. More

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      Review: In ‘The Fires,’ a Triptych of Stories About Gay Men and Love

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      Raja Feather Kelly makes his playwriting debut with a spellbinding story of three generations of Black men at Soho Rep.The choreographer Raja Feather Kelly’s dance-theater works have made him a mainstay on the downtown arts scene. With his latest piece, “The Fires,” Kelly is making his debut as a playwright. Rarely does a show live up so honestly to its title — wrecking and illuminating in equal measure.In his lustrous, emotionally textured play, which opened on Tuesday at Soho Rep, three gay Black men are stuck in a railroad apartment. But those men — Jay, Sam and Eli — are not roommates; they live in the same space across separate time periods: 1974, 1998 and 2021. Since the actors rarely leave the elongated stage, the characters’ stories play out in tandem.In the ’70s, Jay (Phillip James Brannon) lives with his lover, George (Ronald Peet), and becomes depressed while journaling about the Greek goddess Aphrodite, whom, he claims, is gravely underestimated: More than a mere mirthful goddess of love, Aphrodite was vengeful, war-driven and unsettled because, like Jay, she never knew her real father. Sam (Sheldon Best) in the ’90s is George’s son. He feels deeply misunderstood but finds a kinship with his recently deceased father while reading the journals he and Jay left in the apartment. Eli (Beau Badu) in the 2020s has the most sexual freedom but is stuck playing a tug-of-rope game with Maurice, (Jon-Michael Reese), a tender young man who has the potential to be Eli’s great love.Kelly does not have these characters speak directly to one another across time, but there are parallels in each scene that evoke a ghostly connection between the men. And the idea is supported by the scenic designer Raphael Mishler’s set: Most of the 1974 scenes occur on our left in a bedroom with a fireplace, typewriter and a retro two-knob radio; for the majority of the 2021 scenes, our attention is directed to the right, to a living room with an electric fireplace, Eli’s laptop and a smart speaker. Time and technology leap forward, but human desire for heat, expression and a groove remain the same.Jumbling timelines on a railroad apartment of a set does present some direction challenges, as when characters in one period trek right in front of (but aren’t acknowledged by) characters in another. You can find yourself ping-ponging between these freewheeling vignettes, desperate to catch all of the action.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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      Review: In ‘Usus,’ Pig Latin Gets Lost in Translation

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      T. Adamson’s new comedy, which opens Clubbed Thumb’s popular Summerworks series at the Wild Project, is about a group of worked-up Franciscan friars.As befits a play set among an order of 14th-century friars, “Usus” occasionally uses Latin words. Sort of. It’s likely that most audience members will understand “vile rat astard-bay” without resorting to a dictionary because pig Latin is still a living language.That the monks in T. Adamson’s play slip into ig-pay Atin-lay is par for the course since their speech mixes eruditely cryptic references (to those who haven’t spent time in a seminary) and a vernacular that at times feels ripped from TikTok.The show, which opens the 2024 edition of Clubbed Thumb’s popular Summerworks series at the Wild Project in the East Village of Manhattan, is about a small group of Franciscan friars worked up by Pope John XXII (pronounced X-X-I-I) declaring their vow of poverty heretical. After all, the brothers (pronounced bros) are merely following the precepts of their patron saint, Francis of Assisi, and that shouldn’t make them dissidents.In between preparing a letter of complaint to their boss, the men go about their brotherly business. Bernard (Ugo Chukwu), for example, is accumulating scientific knowledge about the mole rats rooting in the garden. JP (Annie Fang) is a young goofball who often finds himself awed by the brusque, brainy Paul (Crystal Finn, whose own play “Find Me Here” closes out Summerworks). “It’s so cool how you know all this lore and expanded universe stuff,” JP says after Paul brings up the First Council of Nicaea.JP (Annie Fang), right, is a young goofball; Paul (Crystal Finn), is brusque and brainy. Maria BaranovaPaul is a bit of an alpha bro, more articulate than the others, more learned — or at least more willing to wield his knowledge — and he directs the writing of the letter to the Pope, instructing Bernard to include the accusation that “John X-X-I-I is the earthly materialization of Antichrist.”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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      ‘Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha’ Review: Julia Masli Is a Problem-Solving Clown

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      A hit at Edinburgh Fringe last year, Julia Masli’s show arrives at SoHo Playhouse for its New York debut.For a show that has its audience in stitches, “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha” is not without solemnity. On a recent evening, its sole performer, Julia Masli, called a spectator “the symbol of evil.” Another was “a symbol of the futility of mankind.” No matter: The crowd was doubled over from beginning to end. Was it the Estonia-born Masli’s strongly accented English? Her tone, which ranged from deceptively blank to deceptively sweet?To be fair, these remarks landed in the general context of Masli trying to help people. In her breakthrough show, a hit last year at Edinburgh Fringe and now running at SoHo Playhouse in Manhattan, she goes up to audience members and simply asks, “Problem?” Then she proceeds to offer a solution.Early in the evening, someone just as simply answered, “Sleep.” So Masli took him onstage, gave him an eye mask and had him lie down on a chaise longue, where he stayed for the remainder of the show. Another man revealed dating frustrations: “Gay men are insufferable,” he said. Masli appeared confounded, or at least acted that way, and replied, “I don’t know what to say.” Twice she made us hug our neighbors.Moving up and down a single aisle with a discernible deliberateness, Masli projected a persona that was halfway between curious child and ingenuous alien just landed on Earth — that she is among us but not like us is reinforced by her having a golden mannequin leg for a left arm, with a mic attached at the end. Her otherworldliness is underlined by the work of the sound designer Alessio Festuccia and the sound tech Jonny Woolley, which creates an eerie mood that can turn discordant unexpectedly, and peaks in a fantastic coup de remix that shouldn’t be spoiled.Masli wants to be of assistance, but her facade of naïveté leaves plenty of room for impishness. She is clown, comedian and trickster, revealing people to themselves and others, but also making them do her bidding. That last feat is quite impressive: The theatergoers may think of themselves as game for anything, but a more cynical observer might also marvel at the degree of obedience, and muse, “So that’s how cults are born.”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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      ‘The Lonely Few’ Review: Rocking Out and Falling in Love

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      Lauren Patten and Taylor Iman Jones star in an achingly romantic, softly sexy new musical by Rachel Bonds and Zoe Sarnak.Of all the juke joints in all the towns in all the South, Amy had to walk into Paul’s.OK, yes, he invited her. A musician with a touch of fame, whom he’s known since she was a child, she’s stopping in for a visit on a break from her solo tour.For Lila, the front woman of the local band that’s playing the bar that night, the world shifts permanently when Amy glides in, trailing all the glamour and cool of a life so much bolder than anything Lila has ever lived.“Great set,” Amy tells her afterward. And when Lila bashfully shrugs off the compliment, Amy repeats it. “No, really — great set,” she says, her words unambiguously flirtatious. The chemistry between these two is instant, and profound. As soon as they sing together, so is the harmony.“The Lonely Few,” the achingly romantic, softly sexy, genuinely rocking new musical by Rachel Bonds (“Jonah”) and Zoe Sarnak at MCC Theater, is Lila and Amy’s love story. The telling of it gives us more of Lila’s world than of Amy’s, though — the same way that the 1999 rom-com “Notting Hill” is grounded more in the world of the ordinary bookseller than of the movie star who wanders in and claims his heart.Meticulously directed by Trip Cullman and Ellenore Scott, “The Lonely Few” is beautifully cast, and it has an absolute ace in its Lila: Lauren Patten, bringing the full-voiced ferocity that she unleashed in “Jagged Little Pill” — and won a Tony Award for — and the endearing awkwardness that she lent to “The Wolves,” alongside a vulnerability that could just about break you.In Lila’s tiny Kentucky hometown, music-making is the passion she gets up to when she isn’t working her grocery store job with her bassist and best friend, Dylan (Damon Daunno), or keeping an anxious eye on her brother, Adam (Peter Mark Kendall), whose drinking is out of control.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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      Review: In ‘Three Houses,’ a Dark Karaoke Night of the Soul

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      It’s open mic at the post-pandemic cocktail bar where Dave Malloy’s hypnotic triptych of monodramas takes place.It’s only fitting that a bar, replete with liquor and raised like an altar, presides over Dave Malloy’s “Three Houses,” which opened on Monday at the Signature Theater. Malloy’s music is, after all, intoxicating. Alcohol is the accelerant for the show’s linked monodramas. And hung over is how it leaves its pandemic-sozzled characters at the end of a dark karaoke night of the soul.You may feel that way too: lost in a morning-after fog like Malloy’s three protagonists, each having radically relocated during lockdown. Susan (Margo Seibert) found herself in her dead grandmother’s ranch home in Latvia, pointlessly alphabetizing the library. Sadie (Mia Pak) moved into her auntie’s New Mexico adobe, where a life-simulation game akin to Animal Crossing was her only companion. Having holed up in a “red brick basement in Brooklyn,” Beckett (J.D. Mollison) soon turned into an Amazon shopaholic.As each now takes the open mic at the metaphysical bar to sing about going “a little bit crazy living alone in the pandemic,” it becomes clear, though, that more was at play. Encouraged by a bartender not incidentally called Wolf (Scott Stangland) — “don’t be afraid to go deep,” he says — they reveal to us, and perhaps to themselves, that Covid wasn’t the only threat to their well-being. Love, too, was a lockdown.A recent seismic breakup is part of all their stories. Susan’s ex, Julian, moved to another state for work. Sadie’s Jasmine kept “messing up” household routines with her spontaneity. Beckett did not feel safe letting his wife, Jackie, see fully “the darkness within” him. That these accusations are so transparently thin does not weaken their effectiveness as defenses — or, because we recognize the behavior, as storytelling.But Malloy’s attempt to cross-reference the stand-alone 30-minute stories with psychological and literal echoes palls. It’s easy enough to write off the twee alliteration of the three J-named exes as a kind of light rhyme or fairy-tale resonance. Same with the eight jugs of red currant wine in Susan’s tale that become eight cases of mezcal in Sadie’s and eight bottles of plum brandy in Beckett’s. Why eight? Why not? The point is that people drink heavily in isolation.The meaning of the more ornate linkages is less clear. Each segment includes an obligatory puppet — a Latvian house dragon, a video game badger, a creepy spider, all designed by James Ortiz — that feels more like a stab at theatrical variety than an expression of a relevant human need. (Even so, Annie Tippe’s staging grows monotonous.) The bar’s orange-vested waiters (Ching Valdes-Aran and Henry Stram) reappear as various loving grandparents, indistinguishable despite their accents. But all the characters seem to have been reverse engineered from templates, suggesting structural desperation.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