Theater (Off Broadway)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      Coming to City Center: ‘Pal Joey,’ ‘Titanic’ and the 20th Fall for Dance

      by

      Also among next season’s highlights: Encores! revivals of “Once Upon a Mattress” and “Jelly’s Last Jam,” and dance works from Pam Tanowitz and Lyon Opera Ballet.Concert re-stagings of “Titanic,” “Once Upon a Mattress” and “Jelly’s Last Jam”; the unveiling of a previously announced rewrite of the Rodgers and Hart musical “Pal Joey”; and dance works by Lyon Opera Ballet and Pam Tanowitz: New York City Center has announced plans for an ambitious 2023-24 season, one in which it will celebrate its 30th Encores! series and the 20th Fall for Dance festival.“It’s a season that’s equal parts hilarity, innovation and operatic scale,” Lear deBessonet, the artistic director of Encores!, a concert series that revives classic and rare musicals, said on Wednesday in a news release.A highlight will be City Center’s gala presentation: an adaptation of the 1940 musical “Pal Joey” (Nov. 1-5), now set in a Black community — the South Side of Chicago in the 1940s — starring Ephraim Sykes as Joey Evans, a jazz singer who refuses to compromise his craft in the face of racism, and Jennifer Holliday (a Tony winner for “Dreamgirls”) as a nightclub owner. The production, directed by Tony Goldwyn and Savion Glover with a new book by Richard LaGravenese and Daniel Beaty, will also feature Aisha Jackson (“Once Upon a One More Time”) and Elizabeth Stanley (“Jagged Little Pill”).Frank Sinatra with Rita Hayworth, left, and Kim Novak in the 1957 film adaptation of “Pal Joey.”Columbia Pictures, via AlamyThis is a new direction for “Pal Joey,” which originally featured white characters; in 2021, the producer Jeffrey Richards said he would bring this re-conceived version to Broadway during the 2022-23 season, which just ended without the show. Now the delayed production will have a City Center run instead — and after that, who knows? Two of this season’s Tony-nominated musical revivals, “Into the Woods” and “Parade,” started at City Center.City Center’s season will kick off with its 20th Fall for Dance festival (Sept. 27-Oct. 8), which will include a collaboration between Sara Mearns of City Ballet, the choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith and the bass-baritone Davóne Tines, co‐presented with Vail Dance Festival; as well as the premiere of an original work by the street dance artist Ephrat Asherie and the tap dancer Michelle Dorrance. The two-week festival will also include performances by Birmingham Royal Ballet, led by the director Carlos Acosta, and by Bijayini Satpathy, an interpreter of the classical Indian dance form Odissi.In January, the main Encores! series begins with “Once Upon a Mattress,” the 1959 musical comedy adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” with music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer, and a book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller and Barer. Sutton Foster (“Anything Goes,” “The Music Man”) stars as the brassy, lovable Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, the part that made Carol Burnett a star in 1959. DeBessonet will direct a new concert adaptation (Jan. 24-28) by Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of the television series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”It will be followed by “Jelly’s Last Jam,” the 1992 Broadway musical about the life of the jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton, with a book by George C. Wolfe, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead and music by Morton and Luther Henderson (Feb. 21-25). The original production won three Tony Awards, including best lead actor for Gregory Hines and best featured actress for Tonya Pinkins. It will be directed by Robert O’Hara, with casting to be announced.The series will conclude with a revival of Peter Stone and Maury Yeston’s 1997 musical “Titanic,” which recounts the 20th century’s most famous maritime disaster (June 12-16). The original production (no connection to James Cameron’s epic film) won five Tony Awards, including best musical, but has never received a Broadway revival. It will be directed by Anne Kauffman, with casting to be announced.City Center’s 2023-24 lineup also includes over a dozen dance offerings, among them Lyon Opera Ballet in “Dance,” the choreographer Lucinda Childs’s 1979 collaboration with the composer Philip Glass and the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (Oct. 19-21); as well as the choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s “Song of Songs,” which fuses David Lang’s choral settings of the biblical poem with movement inspired by Jewish folk dance (Nov. 9-11).To close out the year, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the center’s resident dance company, will celebrate its 65th anniversary with a season (Nov. 29-Dec. 31) that includes Ronald K. Brown’s “Dancing Spirit,” a 2009 work that mixes African diaspora and American modern dance styles. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Primary Trust’ Review: Sipping Mai Tais, Until Bitter Reality Knocks

      by

      In Eboni Booth’s new play, William Jackson Harper performs with astonishing vulnerability as a man alone and adrift.Maybe you’ve seen him tucked into the corner of a dive bar, muttering to himself now and then, empty glasses multiplying on his table. And perhaps you’ve thought — though, it’s just as likely you haven’t — What’s up with that guy?In “Primary Trust,” the playwright Eboni Booth zooms in on one such man: He lives in a fictional suburb of Rochester, N.Y., where mai tais are his drink of choice at an unlikely tiki bar named Wally’s. He is alone and adrift in this tender, delicately detailed portrait, though surely he has not always been. Listen, and he’ll tell you about the moment he almost drowned and how he learned to keep his head above water.“Primary Trust,” which opened at the Laura Pels Theater in Manhattan on Thursday, finds Kenneth (William Jackson Harper, of “The Good Place”) approaching 40 when the bookstore where he’s worked for 20 years closes shop. (The owner, played by Jay O. Sanders, needs cash for surgery.) But Kenneth has never found a job on his own; social workers helped him get his current one some years after he was orphaned.Much of this back story Kenneth relays himself, addressing the audience, in the director Knud Adams’s graceful production for Roundabout Theater Company, from what resembles a miniaturized model of a provincial square. (The scaled-down set is by Marsha Ginsberg, and the elegant lighting is by Isabella Byrd.) In 15 years, Kenneth explains, all this will be leveled and replaced by condominiums. The municipal motto — “Welcome Friend, You’re Right on Time!” — feels laden with uncertain melancholy: It could be a salutation from the threshold of death.Harper, right, with Jay O. Sanders and April Matthis, who, our critic writes, turn small roles into four-course meals.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMordant subtext and typically empty sentiments are among the ways Booth demonstrates that language can convey deep pain one minute and ring utterly hollow the next, usually in the service of capitalism. In contrast to Kenneth’s confessional narration are the rote greetings of a carousel of servers at Wally’s (all played by April Matthis, including one who becomes a fast and flirtatious friend) and the sales pitches Kenneth later lobs at customers (also played by Matthis) after he lands a teller position at a local bank. (“Primary Trust” doubles as the name of Kenneth’s new employer, and an abbreviated metaphor for what was lost when his mother died.)As in her superstore dark comedy “Paris,” presented by Atlantic Theater Company in 2020, Booth again probes the half-dread of working-class Black characters in a one-freeway-exit corner of the Northeast. And though Kenneth’s Blackness is an underlying aspect of his experience, it is not the acute source of his alienation. His foundational trauma, and his longtime coping mechanisms, are gradually revealed (early on it becomes clear that Bert, his near-constant companion played by Eric Berryman, is imaginary), and he begins to reach through the cracks of his isolation to discover good, decent people.Harper, who is onstage for nearly all of the production’s 95 minutes, performs with astonishing ease and vulnerability, particularly given the depths he is asked to plumb in monologues directly to the audience; he lends the currents flowing through Kenneth’s interior life extraordinary subtlety and immediacy. Booth’s one-man study is wonderfully vivid, but there’s only so much emotional engagement that the unburdening of feelings, rather than their enactment or discovery, can inspire. Her other characters are far more loosely sketched: Sanders and Matthis turn small roles, rich with concise, sideways detail, into four-course meals, paradoxically making them feel underused.The production’s play on perspective and proportion, with people as tall as buildings, enhance the undertones in Booth’s work that question who, and what, we pay attention to and why. Do New Yorkers, for example, who Kenneth remarks “step over human beings sleeping in the street,” think about places like this, or about why someone might be drinking for two at happy hour and talking to no one?Throughout the production a bell, like the ones that summon unseen workers from behind service counters, dings repeatedly, sometimes seemingly incessantly, variously marking the reset or passage of time. It feels like a disruption — an unexplained and overused device that interrupts the flow of life. Maybe it’s actually a wake up call, and not just for the man who’s been living in a daze.Primary TrustThrough July 2 at the Laura Pels Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Monsoon Wedding’ Review: Marriage of Musical Styles, With Mixed Results

      by

      Mira Nair’s 2001 movie about a couple brought together by their families becomes a song-filled pageant, with mixed results.In musicals, the marriage of elements is everything. A story that’s too thin will dissolve when mixed with the songs. A story that’s too heavy won’t let the songs lift off. To get the right fizzy blend, the balance must be perfect.That is not yet the case with Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding,” which opened Monday in an always busy, sometimes touching, but strangely mild production at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. Its shambolic plot lines (drawn from Nair’s 2001 film of the same name) and Indian-pop-meets-marching-band songs, though full of interest individually, fail to build on themselves or one another, leaving the intertwined tale of love and obligation to unravel as fast as it spins.Not that the movie was a landmark of pith. The arranged marriage of the rich “South Delhi girl” Aditi Verma (played here by Salena Qureshi) and the U.S.-raised Hemant Rai (Deven Kolluri) was but one strand of a multifamily, multigenerational tale arranged in a riotous collage of small, colorful scenes. It didn’t matter how many went nowhere; the editing was all.The musical tries to maintain that quick-cut effect while also squeezing the material into a traditional musical theater format. Nair told The New York Times she’d been inspired by the example of “Fiddler on the Roof,” a classic that, like “Monsoon Wedding,” encompasses one family’s marital chaos as part of a community’s encounter with tradition and change.But “Fiddler” was adapted from a collection of short stories about a strong central character, not from a movie about many. The difference shows. The musical’s book, by Arpita Mukherjee and Sabrina Dhawan, is all over the place, and as staged by Nair on an abstract courtyard set by Jason Ardizzone-West, you rarely know where that is. The production seems to think in camera terms, as if a lens were still directing the audience’s attention when in fact nothing is.From left, Rhea Yadav, Sharvari Deshpande and Salena Qureshi in the production, directed by Mira Nair.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesI’m not sure anything could. Along with the frenzy of assembling the enormous celebration, the musical, like the film, encompasses a secondary comic romance between Dubey, the wedding planner, and Alice, the Vermas’s put-upon maid. The marriage of Aditi’s parents (Gagan Dev Riar and Palomi Ghosh) also gets a look, as do the romantic ideas of a tweenish cousin and a gayish brother, would-be in-laws, other relatives, local workers and (it sometimes seems) all of Delhi.Nair does create musical-like texture by pulling some of these stories forward while pushing others back. The problem that threatens Aditi’s marriage — she is not yet over her affair with a married man — is recessed so far it essentially disappears upstage, depriving the crisis of serious tension. In its place we get the milder problem of deracination, since she will have to move to Hemant’s home in the States: Can she learn to love New Jersey?The problem that threatens the marriage of Dubey (Namit Das) and Alice (Anisha Nagarajan) has on the other hand been upgraded from almost indecipherable in the movie to very serious indeed: In a country born in bitter partition, ethnic or religious divides of any sort — he’s Hindu and she’s Christian — can be harrowing. The resolution is facile (“the heart never tells a lie”) but at least it’s in a song.That song, sung by Dubey’s mother (Sargam Ipshita Bali) to her overwrought son, is lovely, one of the few with a clear personality among 22 in a score that too often feels like a collection of snippets. In one, the gorgeous “Madhaniyan,” Aditi’s father bids her farewell on the eve of the marriage, pulling the same strings as “Far From the Home I Love” in “Fiddler.” (Well, not quite the same strings; the excellent eight-person band is highlighted by a sitar.)But gorgeous or not, the score (music by Vishal Bhardwaj, lyrics by Masi Asare and Susan Birkenhead) is, like the script, all over the place. When the style, whether American or Indian, occasionally matches the characters and situation, the alignment makes the moment pop. An absurd production number called “Chuk Chuk” (for the sound a train makes as Dubey chases one to win Alice) sounds straight out of Bollywood, and with its cinematic projections (by David Bengali) and frenetic choreography (by Shampa Gopikrishna) it fits the dramatic moment in a way that excuses its utter lack of logic. A white horse is involved.Namit Das and Anisha Nagarajan as the lovers in a secondary romance in the show.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesOtherwise, the musicalization feels both too assertive and too inconclusive, like a parade passing by. (There are rarely buttons on the songs to tell you they’re done, leaving the audience wondering whether to applaud.) Only in one song is there a concerted approach to the dramatic experience. The song involves Aditi’s orphaned cousin Ria, raised with her as a sister. Serious and studious, Ria (Sharvari Deshpande) plans to attend New York University, mostly as a way of escaping the marital expectations that Aditi, a pampered princess — “even your panties are ironed” — is all too willing to meet.That Ria is also escaping a social atmosphere that tolerates the sexual abuse of girls is a theme that Nair emphasizes much more strongly here than in the film. But powerful as this is, especially in Deshpande’s performance, it is also destabilizing. It’s hard to make the leap from her late-Act II outcry, “Be a Good Girl,” to the happy ending, complete with exquisite saris (by Arjun Bhasin), a celebratory remix and the requisite double wedding.How Ria became the central figure here — hers is the only solo number in the show — is a bit of a mystery, as if “Fiddler” decided to put Chava, the disowned daughter, above the title. Longer scenes (some are just three lines) might have helped explain the change, or shift our expectations in a show called “Monsoon Wedding” to the character who specifically doesn’t want to get married.Still, you have to be grateful that Ria has elicited from the authors their most powerful writing. In “Leaving Means Returning,” sung to her by her stepfather, a lyric encapsulates in a beautiful phrase the tempting if ambivalent embrace of family: “We are your comfort and your courtyard.” Just so, genre is a place of safety but also a kind of prison. “Monsoon Wedding” does not quite escape either.Monsoon WeddingThrough June 25 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; stannswarehouse.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      ‘The Fears’ Review: Group Therapy Was Never More Triggering

      by

      For the fragile souls in this new play, presented by Steven Soderbergh, a Buddhist group that once offered them solace loses its way.“This is the weather … and we’re just in it,” says Maia, the facilitator of a Buddhist trauma group at the center of Emma Sheanshang’s new play, “The Fears.” She’s talking about the mood in the room — a small, underwhelming one with mismatched office chairs set around a low wooden table — where she and six others regularly meet to talk through storms of rage, sorrow and panic. Or at least try to: interpersonal conflicts, clashing neuroses and a falling domino effect of triggers cause more breakdowns than breakthroughs, until even the group’s philosophical foundation starts to fall apart.From the first scene of this intriguing but lacking play, presented by the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh at the Pershing Square Signature Center, we get a clear window into the characters’ personalities. Dan Algrant’s direction is precise and telling, particularly in the entrances. Thea (Kerry Bishé), the newbie, drifts in skeptically. Rosa (Natalie Woolams-Torres), a stickler for rules, bustles in authoritatively. Fiz (Mehran Khaghani, comical even as a gay stereotype) bursts in with a declarative flourish, while the measured Suzanne (Robyn Peterson), always at odds with Fiz, strolls by demurely. Maia (Maddie Corman), overdressed in multiple layers, flutters in like a light breeze, and Mark (a stiff Carl Hendrick Louis) arrives late, flustered and eager. Katie (a painfully fragile Jess Gabor), a young goth, rushes in last, and withdraws into herself.Each person’s trauma is either explicitly spelled out, or hinted at through their individual triggers, which help explain, for example, why Fiz’s sister is a touchy subject, or why Thea has an encyclopedic knowledge of every traumatic event the world has endured.Sheanshang’s depiction of spiritualism has a satirical bite, with Maia’s performative shows of empathy — purrs and “mms” of affirmation — and the group members’ rigorous policing of one another’s responses, which is more about control than about support. But sometimes it seems as if “The Fears” is targeting Buddhism rather than the derivative school of thought — developed by a revered yet unseen male figure — practiced by the group. And the use of the characters’ quirks as punch lines verges on cruel (especially because several were victims of childhood sexual abuse) and undercuts the show’s emotional resonance.And so much of the story is about these characters trying to build a safe space within the room, within their practice, in order to find comfort in themselves. But the world keeps barging in (thanks to Jane Shaw’s stunning sound design): construction noise and shouting strangers seep in from outside the window, and there’s the sound of people chatting elsewhere in the Buddhist center.“The Fears” opts for a pat ending, and never makes a clear judgment on whether these broken souls can save one another or whether they are ultimately on their own. The questions at the center of its conceit remain unanswered: Are we all doomed to lives in which we barely manage our fears but instead let them rule us? Or is fear what draws out the most precious parts of ourselves?The FearsThrough July 9 at the Signature Theater, Manhattan; thefearsplay.com. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Review: Despite the Primping, ‘The Cotillion’ Is Far From Flawless

      by

      Colette Robert’s play takes aim at antiquated rites of passage, and how they can promote classism, colorism and retrograde gender politics.The enterprising president of the Harriet Holland Social Club just wants the cotillion to be successful. The floral centerpieces are in place, a band is onstage, and the draperies are neatly tucked in and tied. The debutantes are primped and primed. By night’s end, she hopes, these young women will set off into their bright futures.Presented by New Georges and the Movement Theater Company at A.R.T./New York Theaters, “The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents the 84th Annual Star-Burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel,” written and directed by Colette Robert, mimics the proceedings of debutante balls. There’s the introduction of the debutantes, the father-daughter dance and a multicourse dinner, but this cotillion — and the production — is far from flawless.Madam President (Akyiaa Wilson), a 2-D villain, encourages the debutantes (Claire Fort, Caturah Brown, Starr Kirkland, Aigner Mizzelle, Monique St. Cyr, Portland Thomas) to prioritize appearances and wealth, hurling critiques with no regard for them as individuals. The more enlightened vice president (a hilarious Jehan O. Young, with priceless passive-aggressive expressions and line reads) pushes for more substance, like community outreach, and less of the superficial focus on style and status.The script clearly has something to say about these antiquated rites of passage. But Robert doesn’t go beyond the obvious: Instead of being a source of uplift and empowerment, the script says, Black debutante balls often promote classism, colorism and retrograde gender politics, like the objectification of Black women’s bodies. And yet, cotillions aren’t the source of the problem; they’re a symptom of a more nuanced social and cultural infrastructure. The play’s lack of deeper inquiry and character-building leaves us feeling unsated — even as the debutantes begin to question the whole affair.Structurally, the play never finds its footing. It mostly takes place in real time, but sometimes it veers off into a kind of choreopoem, with the girls speaking from the future, posing as if on an auction block or tearing off their dresses. And the uneven direction results in scenes in which the actors’ delivery is stilted — full of anticipatory pauses, not the naturalistic flow of conversation.More graceful is Teresa L. Williams’s set design, transforming the theater into a ballroom, and Stacey Derosier’s snazzy lighting, which creates a party atmosphere. And the fabulous Harriet Holland Social Club singers (Kayla Coleman, Cherrye J. Davis, Cristina Pitter, Montria Walker) give Marvelettes and Ronettes vibes, with their shimmery dresses (fantastic all-around costume design by Mika Eubanks) and choreography (nicHi douglas). The music (Dionne McClain-Freeney) expounds on the show’s themes via clever lyrics and a catchy score, played by the band on piano, upright bass and drums.It seems as if “The Cotillion” is trying to replicate what the writer Jocelyn Bioh did so well in “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play,” which didn’t critique beauty pageants as much as the culture that created them.Robert’s show did inspire me to ask my mother about her cotillion. I was expecting embarrassment. “I enjoyed it,” she said. Her experience didn’t change her life for better or for worse. “The Cotillion” forgets: This is also just a party.The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents the 84th Annual Star-Burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance HotelThrough May 27 at A.R.T./New York Theaters, Manhattan; newgeorges.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      New York Theater Workshop Announces New Artistic Director’s First Season

      by

      The Off Broadway nonprofit will embrace risk, said Patricia McGregor, its leader, favoring fresh over established works.For New York Theater Workshop’s first season programmed after the departure of its longtime artistic director, the Off Broadway fixture plans to produce an intergenerational saga centered on a Black family in Illinois, a lesbian farce set on a naval base, a story about a mysterious album of Nazi-era photographs, and a play with an unusual star: a Microsoft text-to-speech tool.The slate of shows, announced on Friday, has been curated by Patricia McGregor, who replaced James C. Nicola as artistic director last year. The organization has a track record of producing influential work, including its biggest hit, “Rent,” as well as celebrated productions such as “Hadestown,” “Once,” “Slave Play” and “What the Constitution Means to Me.”The 2023-24 season includes three world premieres and one work that debuted last year, favoring fresh over recognizable work. (The most recent season featured the Broadway-bound “Merrily We Roll Along,” starring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez.) McGregor said that while there is certainly a place for those kinds of entrenched works at New York Theater Workshop, her inaugural season is focused on embracing risk and supporting artists whose work could be lost if the theater world becomes overly focused on name recognition, trusted forms and trying to ensure commercial success.“We’re more of a laboratory than a factory,” McGregor said. “Part of what the workshop wants to be is a testing ground.”This fall, McGregor will direct “The Refuge Plays” by Nathan Alan Davis, whose play “Nat Turner in Jerusalem” was staged at New York Theater Workshop in 2016. Produced with and staged at Roundabout Theater Company, the work is about four generations of a Black family who live in a home that they built themselves in a forest. An earlier version of the production was scheduled to start rehearsing in 2020 and was delayed by the pandemic.Later in the year, the nonprofit will stage “Merry Me,” a new work by the South Korean playwright and director Hansol Jung (“Wolf Play”). In “Merry Me,” which will be directed by Leigh Silverman (who directed last year’s voting-rights musical “Suffs”), a restless lieutenant seeks to pleasure other women on the base — including the general’s wife — during a blackout.“I love you so much I could die,” slated for winter 2024 and directed by Lucas Hnath, employs a Microsoft text-to-speech product for the monologues, in between songs performed by the playwright, Mona Pirnot. (The Microsoft-fueled actor is funny and strange, McGregor said, but it also comes off as surprisingly human.)Next spring, the company will produce Tectonic Theater Project’s “Here There Are Blueberries,” a play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich about a collection of Nazi-era photographs that is delivered to the desk of an archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, making the news and setting a German businessman out on a journey of discovery about his family. Kaufman, who was behind “The Laramie Project,” will also direct the play, which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in California and is currently onstage at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C. More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Onstage in Brooklyn, ‘Monsoon Wedding’ Tries to Capture the Film’s Spirit

      by

      The director Mira Nair was standing inside St. Ann’s Warehouse last week, pointing at a marigold-covered archway that was being assembled near the entrance. Conscious of the wedding photo shoots that often happen just outside the space, she was talking about the musical adaptation of her 2001 film, “Monsoon Wedding,” at the theater, which, situated along the Dumbo waterfront and a stone’s throw from where the East and Hudson Rivers merge. “That’s what our show is about,” she said. “Confluence.”Like the film, the show centers on an arranged marriage that brings together two vastly different Indian families, wedding planners and domestic workers. In the musical, the joyfully chaotic nuptials form a mosaic of questions of genuine attraction (the bride must deal with a scorned secret lover), diaspora (the party, notably the New Jersey-born groom, assembles from all over the world) and relationships across castes and religions.First staged in 2017 at Berkeley Repertory Theater, where it received mixed reviews, the show has made a “beautiful odyssey” to New York, as Nair put it. (It’s actually a return of sorts: Rehearsals for that first staging took place in Manhattan — Anisha Nagarajan reprises her principal role as the bride’s maid, along with Palomi Ghosh as an auntie.) Since then, “Monsoon Wedding” has been retooled, with new choreography, movement direction and scenic design. An additional writer was brought in to help work on the book, and the show was workshopped for friends and family in New Delhi in 2019, where Gagan Dev Riar joined as the bride’s father. Although plans for performances in Britain in 2020 were canceled because of the pandemic, it was staged in Doha last year as part of the cultural programming for the World Cup in Qatar.“It’s about our families, but so deeply universal; it’s an essential story of understanding a whole society,” the director Mira Nair said.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesAt St. Ann’s last Thursday, just two days before the musical was to begin previews, Susan Feldman, the theater’s artistic director, walked by at one point. Minding her step amid sections of a yet-assembled wedding tent, she chimed in that the production “has pushed the Warehouse farther than it’s ever been.”A visual validation of that claim might be Jason Ardizzone-West’s imposing Brutalist set, which runs the length of the large performance space. “It’s a holistic design in the way that the audience relates to the scenery,” Ardizzone-West said during a video call earlier that day. Inspired by the domestic courtyards found in India, he added, the set is a mix of “ancient stepwell structures and modernist architecture, specifically inspired by Le Corbusier, who has a lot of buildings in India.”Nair explained that she always wanted audience members to feel like guests at the wedding, calling the new scenic design “the fruition of many a dream.”From left, Sargam Ipshita Bali, Gagan Dev Riar and Palomi Ghosh in the production. “In India, when you have a wedding in a home, it spills out into courtyards,” Nair said, adding that Jason Ardizzone-West’s imposing Brutalist set conveys that sentiment.Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times“In India, when you have a wedding in a home, it spills out into courtyards, in canopies, under tents,” she said. “It’s an open door for the community to come celebrate this wedding, and that was the feeling I wanted.”The concrete stateliness of the set, which audience members must cross to get to their seats, is balanced by Arjun Bhasin’s colorful, culturally specific costumes. (“India is like Japan,” Nair quipped, “everything is coded.”) The men’s turbans are a particular shade of lilac, for example and, following tradition, the bride is never seen alone the night before the wedding. Bhasin, who worked on the film and thus considers himself “one of the oldest members of the production,” said the key to preserving its DNA was preserving its focus on character.Nair, left, with one of the show’s book writers, Arpita Mukherjee, center, and its costume designer, Arjun Bhasin, during rehearsals.Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times“When you eliminate the close-up and get to these tableaus, it becomes about people,” Bhasin explained. “The show is about the interactions of these people together; the upstairs versus the downstairs, the bride’s family versus the groom’s family, all these different love stories.”Work on the adaptation began in 2006, with Nair and the film’s screenwriter, Sabrina Dhawan, collaborating with the composer Vishal Bhardwaj and the lyricist Susan Birkenhead. Nair said she’d been inspired by the 2004 Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” a show built around cultural traditions adapting to survive. The film, like the musical, touches upon the fallout of India’s 1947 partition, brought to life in the characters’ religious, social and economic differences.“We’d made a movie that was our version, in a sense,” Nair said. “It’s about our families, but so deeply universal — this essential story of understanding a whole society and movement through a very personal story.”Marigold tapestry: The flowers are popular decorations at Hindu weddings.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesMarigolds, umbrellas and suitcases backstage at the theater.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesThat specificity meant weaving into the adaptation the concept of jugalbandi performance, a type of Indian duet. This is felt, not only in the score, which now also features lyrics by Masi Asare (a Tony nominee last year for “Paradise Square,” which similarly dealt with cultural cross-pollination), but in the placement of the band on the sides of the stage.“I think of it as a call-and-response between the music and the actors, and that has shaped it very deeply,” Nair said. “That is why the musicians are on par with the actors, and you see the sitar player and the trombone. It’s a real combination of a brass band and the big full heft of an Indian wedding sound, distilled and very exquisite.”Arpita Mukherjee, the book’s co-writer, was Nair’s assistant before being promoted to associate director and dramaturg during the Berkeley run. She moved to the United States from Delhi when she was 12 and brings an understanding of the emigrant experience to Dhawan’s updated book, which reconfigures the groom’s family as second-generation Indian American.The sitar player Soumitra Thakur at a rehearsal. Nair said she wanted “a real combination of a brass band and the big full heft of an Indian wedding sound.”Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times“At the time the film came out, there were still some really antiquated notions about what India was, and no understanding of what a globalized India looked like,” Mukherjee said on a video call. “There’s a great story here about what home, and belonging, means.” She continued: “The really exciting thing is all these different types of brown people who have very different experiences of brownness because of class, or upbringing.”Nair’s work has never shied away from examining cultural distinctions, as in “Mississippi Masala,” an interracial romance between an Black man and Indian American woman, or exploring her native India’s underexposed aspects, like “Salaam Bombay!,” a drama about children living in the slums.For the musical, this quest to reflect the times meant revising one of the film’s subplots about a relative’s grooming and sexual abuse of two younger family members. Where the film’s family grants the wealthy patriarch some degree of amnesty, the musical condemns.The show has new choreography by Shampa Gopikrishna, and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille is the movement director.Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times“We’ve made a concerted effort to have the women question the patriarchy and speak up,” Nair said. “Other characters who are afflicted by this don’t shove it under the rug; they make decisions in their own lives that reflect that they will not accept this behavior, which we didn’t have before.”Mukherjee echoed that sentiment, calling the women “the stewards of a new way of thinking and being.”“They all have a voice in the show, which is looking at what the musical form can do to capture the spirit of the film, but go deeper,” she added. “Music is at the core of that; who gets to sing, who gets to have a voice? There’s a great theme of wanting things to be different from generations before, and it’s all led by women.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      ‘The Habit of Art’ Review: Theater of the Creative Drive

      by

      A play within a play about W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten structures this sex-spiked comedy for the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan.The poet W.H. Auden is expecting a rent boy, not a journalist. So when he opens the door to his home in Oxford, England, to let the much younger man in, it takes a while to clear up the confusion. Once the visitor has explained that he is not there to take off his pants, he commences an interview.“Are you writing?” he asks the poet.“Am I dead?” Auden ripostes. “I work. I have the habit of art.”Such a smooth, substantial-sounding phrase — a bulwark against others’ intrusive questions and Auden’s own self-doubt. Still, he is telling the truth.In Alan Bennett’s delectably smart, gently moving, sex-spiked comedy “The Habit of Art,” the year is 1972 and Auden is nearing the end of his life. Suspecting that God has rescinded his genius, he keeps writing anyway.“I have to work, or else who am I?” he says.All this, by the way, is part of the play within the play in the excellent production that the Brits Off Broadway festival has brought to 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan. “The Habit of Art” is partially about an imagined meeting between Auden and his old friend, the composer Benjamin Britten. But Bennett frames it with a band of theater people finding their way through a script that tells this story — or, as he wrote in his diary in 2009, the year “The Habit of Art” made its premiere: “a group of differently fractured people coming together to present something whole.”Directed by Philip Franks for the Original Theater Company, “The Habit of Art” takes place in a dingy rehearsal hall (the set is by Adrian Linford) where a company is rehearsing a new play. The absent director has left in charge the savvy, ego-soothing stage manager (a wonderfully brisk Veronica Roberts), while the playwright (Robert Mountford) fends for himself, trying to shield his script from tinkerers who would make cuts or additions.The actor Fitz (Matthew Kelly) is a terrible snob, his dignity affronted by playing Auden — a role that requires him to be stained, stinky, squalid: a great man in unglamorous decline. Henry (Stephen Boxer), as the self-contained Britten, at least gets to look civilized.In the play within the play, the composer pays Auden a visit, seeking his help, though they haven’t seen each other in decades. Britten is writing “Death in Venice” — an opera about an older man obsessed with a beautiful boy, a theme that echoes in “The Habit of Art” — and it’s not going well.“I came because I feel so lonely,” Britten says.“Of course it’s lonely,” Auden reassures him. “It’s new. What do you expect?”That’s the voice of long experience speaking — Auden in his twilight, yes, and also Bennett, who this week turned 89. The playwright knows too that, in his chosen medium, a creator’s isolation eventually gives way to collaboration: maybe maddening, bickersome and chaotic, but at least not solitary.Such is the nature of theater. Such are the habits of that particular art.The Habit of ArtThrough May 28 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More