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      ‘I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan’ Review: What Are You Waiting For?

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      Mona Pirnot’s comic ode to the downtown artist doubles as a meditation on the precariousness of playwriting as a creative life.Nothing has made me regret Atlantic Theater Company going dark for more than two months this year like “I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan,” the absolute tonic of a show that reopens the company’s second stage.Written for and performed by the downtown wonder David Greenspan, who has collected a half-dozen Obie Awards over his singular career, it was originally scheduled to open the day after Inauguration Day. But when previews were about to start, the stagehands went on strike, Atlantic Theater indefinitely postponed the production and we, the public, temporarily lost out on a source of comfort and delight in a time of chaos.With a union contract ratified, we have it now, and frankly the abrupt suspension of this comedy by Mona Pirnot (tonally a complete departure from her play “I Love You So Much I Could Die”) has only enhanced its effect, adding a stratum to what was already a multilayered affair. Because this clever, funny play is both an attentive ode to Greenspan’s extraordinary artistry as a playwright-performer and an unsparing meditation on the psychic and financial precariousness of playwriting as a creative life.It is, then, very much insider theater — yet it generously serves, too, as an initiation for the unfamiliar: into Greenspan’s exquisitely expressive whirlwind solo performance style as he plays a small gaggle of millennial women, and into the costs and payoffs of pursuing artistic ambition at full tilt.Theatergoers can witness Greenspan’s expressive whirlwind solo performance style as he plays a group of millennial women onstage.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSet in Brooklyn in the summer of 2022, the action takes place in the apartment of Emmy, a playwright freshly cognizant of the danger of being too broke to afford health insurance. She has invited a few writer friends over to do a reading of her new work in progress — a litmus test that, no pressure, will tell her whether to give up theater forever. Mona, a fellow playwright obsessed with Greenspan ever since she saw him perform “The Patsy,” is the first to arrive, followed by Sierra, who writes for television and consequently has gobs of cash to throw around.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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      How the Stars of ‘All Nighter’ Get That College Vibe

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      The actresses talk about bonding over their nightly cram session, and have also compiled a playlist of some of the songs that get them going.If the bottom-feeding salesmen of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” sound as if they’re powered by cocaine and cold coffee, the college women of Natalie Margolin’s “All Nighter” lean toward Adderall and Arizona Iced Tea.Set in 2014, this new comedy takes place during the cram session of the title, when five friends bond, write papers and argue. The show, which is running at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space through May 18, explores the ties that bind — in every sense of that last word.“I think in those relationships that feel that big and that are so intertwined with your own sense of self, it can be a process to fully disentangle,” Margolin (“The Party Hop”) said in a video interview.Natalie Margolin’s comedy follows a group of college seniors over the course of one last study session.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTo suggest those intricate friendships, the cast members forged a real-life bond. “I think they were all so committed to the play that there was this unifying force where they were all obsessed with getting it right,” the director Jaki Bradley said via video. “It feels like that just kind of fused them together.”The cast is a who’s who of up-and-comers from stage and screen. Sharing one dressing room are Alyah Chanelle Scott (HBO Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls”) and Havana Rose Liu (“No Exit,” “Bottoms,” that Chanel ad with Timothée Chalamet).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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      13 Off Broadway Shows to Tempt You in April

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      New short plays by Caryl Churchill, a comedy with one erstwhile Derry Girl and a musical starring Anika Noni Rose — here’s what’s on New York stages this month.Theater in New York is nearing its seasonal crescendo, with stages Off Broadway and beyond teeming with activity. Of the many notable productions happening in April, here is a baker’s dozen to tantalize you.‘All the World’s a Stage’The composer-lyricist Adam Gwon, best known for the chamber musical “Ordinary Days” and more recently for the charming “Macbeth” riff “Scotland, PA,” sets his new musical in the 1990s in a conservative small town, where a gay high school teacher is helping a student to prepare for a statewide theater competition. With a cast of four that includes Elizabeth Stanley (“Jagged Little Pill”), Jonathan Silverstein directs for Keen Company — his swan-song production as artistic director of the theater, which commissioned this musical. (Through May 10, Theater Row)‘Danger and Opportunity’The Obie Award-winning director Jack Serio loves intimate, nontraditional venues — like the lofts where he staged his breakthrough production of “Uncle Vanya” — and he has one for this new play by Ken Urban (“Nibbler”). With the audience at close range, arrayed around a living-room-like space, Ryan Spahn and Juan Castano play a married couple enduring a sexual dry spell, and Julia Chan plays the long-lost high school girlfriend whose reappearance rattles their relationship. (Through April 20, East Village Basement)‘Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.’A major production of any Caryl Churchill play becomes a reason for pilgrimage by the faithful. Now here is a program of four brief works by the 86-year-old playwright, a master of shape-shifting and the short form; three are from 2019, one from 2021. Her longtime interpreter James Macdonald, who staged Churchill’s “Top Girls” on Broadway, directs a large cast that includes the Tony Award winner Deirdre O’Connell and John Ellison Conlee. (Through May 11, Public Theater)Bailey Williams, left, and Emma Horwitz in their production of “Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods.”Lee Rayment‘Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods’The cleverly inventive, very funny playwrights Emma Horwitz (“Mary Gets Hers”) and Bailey Williams (“Events,” “Coach Coach”) are also the performers of this comedy, which appeared in an earlier form at last year’s Exponential Festival of experimental work. A co-production of New Georges, which incubated the show, and Rattlestick Theater, it is directed by Tara Elliott. (Through April 26, Here Arts Center)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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      From Hasidic Brooklyn to Off Broadway: The Life of a Trans Rabbi

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      After disavowing her strict religious upbringing, Abby Stein came out as transgender. She is now the subject of a new play by New York Theater Workshop.One morning in 2015, a few years after she had begun to separate herself from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish world in which she was raised, Abby Stein met with her father to come out as a woman.Raised in a Hasidic enclave in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Stein was all but certain that her family was unfamiliar with the notion of being transgender. In their isolated community, gender roles were rigid, and the internet was blocked entirely or made “kosher” with software that restricted sites like Wikipedia.“Any modern gender theory wouldn’t speak to him,” Stein, 33, said of approaching her father. “I needed to find something that would work.”That high-stakes conversation is at the center of a new Off Broadway play, “Becoming Eve,” opening next week. In the lightly fictionalized play, the protagonist is called Chava, which is Stein’s middle name. She is portrayed by Tommy Dorfman, opposite Richard Schiff, the “West Wing” star who, playing her father, is transformed by the traditional garb of a Hasidic man, complete with a long beard and a black silken coat.The play ends shortly before the real events that turned Stein into a public figure.Dorfman, in the background, with a puppet version of the young Chava and Richard Schiff as her father in the New York Theater Workshop production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe same day that she had the conversation with her father, Stein, who was ordained as a Hasidic rabbi in 2011, came out to the larger world in a blog post. She woke up the next morning to find that the post on her typically lightly read blog had around 20,000 views.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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      Andrew Scott on ‘Vanya’: ‘Who Isn’t Sad?’

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      “I really believe that we all do contain multitudes,” Andrew Scott said on a Friday morning in March. Scott may contain more than most. An actor of unusual sensitivity and verve, he is starring, solo, in an Off Broadway production of Chekhov’s melancholy comedy “Uncle Vanya.” The title, like the cast list, has also been condensed, to just “Vanya.”The New York transfer of this London production had opened a few nights before. In this version, the playwright Simon Stephens has relocated the action from 19th-century Russia to rural Ireland in more or less the present day. Scott plays the central character, a man who has sacrificed his own ambition to support his feckless brother-in-law. He also plays the brother-in-law, the put-upon niece, the neglected young wife, and several others. Scott is alone onstage throughout. That stage can feel very crowded.The New York Times critic Jesse Green described Scott, in performance, as a “human Swiss Army knife.” Mindful of Scott’s work in “Fleabag,” “Ripley” and the recent film “All of Us Strangers,” Green also referred to Scott as a “sadness machine.” This is a popular opinion. Variety has called him “Hollywood’s new prince of heartache.”On this morning, Scott, 48, did not appear unusually sad, though he was somewhat rumpled. The plan had been to walk over to Little Island and then along the Hudson River, toward the theater, but severe weather had changed that.“Oh my God, it’s windy,” he said, out on the street. (“You can’t get sick,” his publicist fretted.) So Scott had retreated, with a breakfast burrito and a Day-Glo orange juice, to the shelter of a nearby pier. Its windows looked out onto the river. The water — choppy, gray-green — reflected in his eyes.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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      Othello and Iago, a Marriage Made in Both Heaven and Hell

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      Who exactly is in charge here?Is it the strutting general or his self-effacing ensign? The man celebrated for his “free and open nature” or the sociopath who keeps stockpiling secrets?That question has been occupying the minds of theatergoers and readers since Shakespeare’s “Othello” was first performed in London in the early 17th century. And it is doubtless being puzzled over by audiences at the star-charged Broadway revival of this tragedy of homicidal jealousy, with Denzel Washington in the title role of the noble Moorish warrior and Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago, his eminently credible, equally duplicitous aide-de-camp.On the most basic level, the answer is obvious. (For those unfamiliar with “Othello,” serious spoilers follow.) It’s the resentment-riddled Iago, the ultimate disgruntled employee, who takes command of his commander, and pretty much everyone in his orbit, in coldblooded pursuit of revenge. It’s Iago who gives the orders to his boss, while making his boss believe otherwise. And it’s Iago who’s still alive at the end.Jake Gyllenhaal and Denzel Washington in the play’s latest revival, on Broadway through June 8.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut in another sense, the contest has never been that easy to call. Put it this way: After you’ve seen it, who is it who dominates your thoughts? Which character’s point of view wound up ruling the night? In other words, who owned the production?Othello may have the glamour, the grand poetic speeches and a death scene for the ages. But there is a reason that Laurence Olivier, who would play the part blackface to divisive effect in the early 1960s, would worry about having “the stage stolen from me by some young and brilliant Iago.”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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      Scott Rudin, Producer Exiled for Bad Behavior, Plans Return to Broadway

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      Rudin stepped away from show business four years ago amid reports that he had bullied assistants. He says he has “a lot more self-control” now.Scott Rudin, the powerful producer who was exiled from Broadway and Hollywood four years ago after allegations of bullying led to widespread denunciations and even protesters in the streets, has been quietly preparing to return to show business.After what he called “a decent amount of therapy,” apologies to many people and a period of reading and reflection holed up on Long Island, Rudin said that he had decided he wanted to make theater again. He is at peace, he said, with the reality that not everyone is likely to welcome him back.He called his previous behavior, particularly toward subordinates, “bone-headed” and “narcissistic.” He acknowledged that he had long yelled at his assistants (“Yes, of course”) and that he had on occasion thrown things at people (“Very, very rarely”).“I was just too rough on people,” he said.But Rudin — who produced films including “No Country for Old Men” and “The Social Network” and Broadway shows including “The Book of Mormon” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” — said he was confident that from now on he would be able to maintain his exacting standards without terrorizing others.“I have a lot more self-control than I had four years ago,” he said. “I learned I don’t matter that much, and I think that’s very healthy.” Also, he added, “I don’t want to let anybody down. Not just myself. My husband, my family and collaborators.”Rudin, 66, agreed to discuss his ambitious plans in response to requests to talk about indications that he was planning to return to producing. The result was his first detailed interview about his downfall, his time away from Broadway and his hopes to mount a comeback. His return is likely to be controversial, given that reports of the ways in which he berated and mistreated assistants helped lead to a reconsideration of workplace culture in theater.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: Long-Lost ‘Love Life’ Still Has a Lot to Say About America

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      Brian Stokes Mitchell, Kate Baldwin and other top-shelf singers star in an overly sentimental production of the long-lost Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner show.In recent years, Encores! has presented productions of musicals with good name recognition, including “Into the Woods,” “Titanic” and “Urinetown.” With its latest offering, “Love Life,” the series returns to its original mission statement by presenting an obscure show, one devoid of standards at that — nothing in it would start a singalong at even the most hard-core piano bar.Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s musical opened on Broadway in 1948, ran for 252 performances and over the years has developed a cult following largely thanks to its daring storytelling. It touched on what constitutes the fabric of American life and integrated vaudevillian interludes, thus paving the way for the likes of “Cabaret” and “Chicago.”Yet the show has been absent from New York stages in the intervening decades. There wasn’t even an original cast recording to help popularize the score. There is grainy footage of one of its original stars, Nanette Fabray, performing “Green-Up Time” on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and some numbers have popped up on various albums, like Bryn Terfel’s cover of “Here I’ll Stay.” But for the most part, “Love Life” is fairly unknown these days.Naturally, this made it a desirable target for Encores!, which is presenting a semi-staged production through Sunday at New York City Center.As directed by Victoria Clark, this “Love Life” gives us only glimpses of the musical’s potential. The vocals are top-shelf, with particularly thrilling ensemble singing and harmonies, especially on “Susan’s Dream,” which almost gets within reach of the Encores! high-water mark of “Sing for Your Supper” in its 1997 production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” (Rob Berman conducts the onstage orchestra.)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