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      ‘All Nighter’ Review: No Sleep but Plenty of Gripes

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      A new play about a group of college students putting in one last study session evokes recent stories about young women, but without the well-rounded characters.The all-nighter is a time-honored tradition of higher education (and also — let’s be honest, as I write this review in the late evening hours — of journalism). The best kind of all-nighter isn’t the solo cram session but a social event, a time of bonding through exhaustion and desperation, with the aid of caffeine and junk food.So if you take a group of five college seniors, some stimulants and a few secrets, then throw them together into a pressure cooker in the form of a nightlong work session, there should be plenty of extracurricular drama to go around. But by the time the sun comes up in “All Nighter,” which opened Sunday at the MCC Theater, this underwhelming play feels as if it has left a lot of unfinished work on the table.The play, written by Natalie Margolin, takes place in a college in rural Pennsylvania in 2014. It’s finals week at the Johnson Ballroom, a 24-hour student lounge, and this loyal cohort of study-buddies-slash-roomies includes the anxious and often flustered Liz (Havana Rose Liu); the organized and put-together Darcie (Kristine Froseth), who’s aiming for law school; the well-off Tessa (Alyah Chanelle Scott), who has a love for athleisure clothes; and the sentimental Jacqueline (Kathryn Gallagher), who is latching onto the last moments of college before departing for “the real world.” And then fashionably — or, depending on who asks, unfashionably — late to the party is the wild and eccentric Wilma (Julia Lester, the priceless Little Red Riding Hood in the 2022 “Into the Woods” revival on Broadway), dressed in floral cowboy boots, pink and black knee-highs and pink marble leggings, and fully accessorized.The students get down to some work but not without a few interpersonal revelations — lingering tiffs, secrets and suspicions from the partying they had done the night before. And then there are the mysterious disappearances in their house, like Liz’s missing Adderall pills and Tessa’s lost credit card. Margolin’s script playfully replicates the mannerisms and tropes of college friendships, especially among women, like the chorus of affirmations girlfriends will automatically offer another in need, or the defensive positions they deploy when someone’s enemy walks into the room.But with one or two identifying characteristics each, these young women lack dimension for them to read as much more than generic college-girl types. And because “All Nighter” fails as it tries to establish a sense of the bonds that have developed over their four years together, it then isn’t able to fully show the tenuousness of these friendships.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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      Jean Smart Will Star in a One-Woman Broadway Show

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      The new play, “Call Me Izzy,” will begin previews in May and open in June at Studio 54.Jean Smart, a veteran stage and screen actress whose oft-praised comedic chops reached new audiences via the Max series “Hacks,” plans to return to Broadway this spring and summer in a one-woman show.Smart will star in “Call Me Izzy,” a dark comedy about a rural Louisiana woman. The play, which has not been previously staged, is written by Jamie Wax, a CBS News contributor, and is directed by Sarna Lapine, who also directed the last Broadway revival of “Sunday in the Park With George.”Smart, 73, is best known for her prolific work on television; she has won six Emmy Awards, for “Frasier,” “Samantha Who?” and “Hacks,” and has been featured in shows including “Designing Women” and “Mare of Easttown.”She made her Broadway debut in 1981 in the play “Piaf.” She has returned just once since, in a 2000 revival of “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” and was nominated for a Tony Award for that performance.“Call Me Izzy” is scheduled to begin previews on May 24 and to open June 12 for a 12-week run at Studio 54. The play is being produced by Robert Ahrens and P3 Productions (Ben Holtzman, Sammy Lopez and Fiona Howe Rudin), and is being capitalized for up to $5.4 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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      ‘Operation Mincemeat,’ a Very British Hit, Lands on Broadway

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      Now in previews, the musical comedy about an outrageous World War II spy mission is working to adjust to the particular sensibilities of its New York audience.Last year, the hit West End musical “Operation Mincemeat” embarked on a mischievous publicity campaign. “Are we too British for Broadway?” it asked, inviting Americans on its email list and via social media to fill out an online questionnaire about whether, for instance, they had trouble understanding British accents. (“No,” 90.2 percent of the respondents said.)After making its way across the ocean armed with high expectations and an Olivier Award for best new musical, the show, a screwball comedy about an unlikely World War II spy operation, will open March 20 at the Golden Theater on Broadway. Its lengthy preview period is giving it ample time to adjust to the particular sensibilities of a New York audience, unaccented or otherwise.Some of what the cast and crew have found has been surprising, said the director, Robert Hastie, who was so eager for early on-the-ground feedback that he strode onstage before the curtain rose at the first preview and boldly (or maybe recklessly) gave out his email address to the packed house.“This show has always grown and developed from what the audience has been kind enough to give back,” he told the crowd. “If you have any thoughts when you come away from tonight, we’d be really, really grateful.”The real Operation Mincemeat was a sleight-of-hand spy mission in 1943, in which the British dressed a dead body as a Royal Marines officer, outfitted it with fake invasion plans designed to hide the Allies’ real intentions and then dumped it into the sea to be discovered by the Nazis. Its musical version has had a charmed trajectory in London, opening in 2019 at the tiny New Diorama Theater before settling in at the Fortune Theater in the West End, where it’s still playing.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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      Athol Fugard, South African Playwright Who Dissected Apartheid, Dies at 92

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      In works that included “Blood Knot,” “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” and “The Island,” he exposed the realities of racial separatism in his homeland.Athol Fugard, the South African playwright whose portrayals of intimate relationships burdened by oppressive racial separatism exposed the cruel psychological torment of apartheid to an international audience, died on Saturday night at his home in Stellenbosch, a town near Cape Town. He was 92.His wife, Paula Fourie, confirmed his death after a cardiac event. Over a long and productive career, Mr. Fugard (pronounced FEW-guard) was both repelled and fueled by the bond he felt with his homeland.For decades he was considered subversive by the government; at times productions of his work, with their integrated casts, were considered illegal, and his co-workers in the theater were jailed. In 1967, after his early play “The Blood Knot” appeared on British television, his passport was revoked, so that for several years he could not leave the country.He eventually spent many years abroad, including in the United States — he worked on many productions of his plays at Yale and taught at the University of California, San Diego — yet he could never let himself leave South Africa for good. Even before apartheid was officially revoked in 1994, he maintained a home near Port Elizabeth, the city on the country’s southeastern coast, where he grew up.“I think I actually need the sustaining provocation of being in South Africa when I’m telling a South Africa story,” he said in an interview with The New Yorker in 1982.Viscerally powerful for audiences, their roles written with the muscle and idiosyncrasy that are candy to actors, Mr. Fugard’s more than 30 plays were presented widely in the United States and around the world. Six have appeared on Broadway, and in 2011, Mr. Fugard received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Play About Segregation Tries to ‘Ride a Fine Line’ in Florida

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      A production partly aimed at students that highlights Tampa’s history in the civil rights movement lands at a time when the state is changing what schools teach about race and history.Given the chance, Arthenia Joyner would have ordered a bacon and egg sandwich with a glass of orange juice. Instead, workers inside an F.W. Woolworth store in Tampa, Fla., declared their lunch counter closed to her and other high school students 65 years ago.The students refused to leave without being served. The protests did not carry the national prominence of the Greensboro sit-ins, Montgomery boycotts or Selma marches. “What I found out is damn near nobody knows what happened,” Joyner, 82, said recently. But the acts of resistance produced results. Within months, Tampa’s counters were desegregated. Other public areas like beaches and movie theaters followed.Joyner hopes more people will learn of Florida’s contributions to the civil rights movement through “When the Righteous Triumph,” a play that dramatizes the 1960 protests. After a small debut in 2023, the play will be performed at the Jaeb Theater inside Tampa’s David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts over the next two weekends, with its audiences including students from around 40 local schools.The play arrives at a moment when arts and educational offerings are frequently in dispute nationally, and regional arts venues are left navigating shifting terrain.Several arts organizations sued the National Endowment for the Arts this week over a new mandate that says grant applicants must comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders barring the promotion of “gender ideology.” President Trump recently signed an executive order withholding funding from schools that teach that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.”Clay Christopher and Von Shay in the production, which depicts an oft-overlooked moment in the civil rights era.Octavio Jones for The New York TimesWe 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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      In ‘The Seagull,’ Cate Blanchett Outshines a Director’s Tired Tropes

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      Thanks to Blanchett’s charismatic turn as a fading actress, this new Chekhov adaptation in London hangs together in spite of Thomas Ostermeier’s antics.It is all too easy to be cynical when movie stars turn to theater — not least because, of late, they haven’t always been very good at it. In recent weeks, London’s stages have played host to several slightly iffy productions of classic plays featuring big-name screen actors: Sigourney Weaver in “The Tempest,” Rami Malek in “Oedipus,” and Brie Larson in “Elektra.” So when Cate Blanchett rolled into town for a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” at the Barbican Theater, a little trepidation could be forgiven.But Blanchett is different. Though she is best known for her film work, the Australian actress has graced the stage to acclaim throughout her career, playing lead roles in “Hedda Gabler” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” And she is no stranger to Chekhov, having starred in the Sydney Theater Company’s “Uncle Vanya,” and the same company’s 2017 adaptation of “Platonov,” called “The Present.” She met her husband, the playwright Andrew Upton, while performing in a 1997 production of “The Seagull.”In this modern dress production of “The Seagull,” adapted by Duncan Macmillan and Thomas Ostermeier (“Who Killed My Father,” “Returning to Reims”), Blanchett plays Irina Arkadina, a famous older actress whose pathological self-obsession alienates her son, Konstantin Treplev (Kodi Smit-McPhee), to the point of despair. He’s a young writer struggling to find his voice, and disaffected with the risk-averse banality of the artistic mainstream. (“We need new voices, new perspectives, new forms!”)Arkadina’s lover, Alexander Trigorin (Tom Burke), is a successful author of middlebrow fiction who represents everything Konstantin wants to tear down. So when the older man effortlessly seduces Konstantin’s sweetheart, the aspiring actress Nina Zarechnaya (Emma Corrin), the blow is doubly crushing.Chekhov conceived Arkadina as a “foolish, mendacious, self-admiring egoist,” and Blanchett realizes this vision with exuberant brio from the moment she first appears onstage. Her Arkadina, wearing a purple jumpsuit and large sunglasses, channels the vapid can-do spirit of an online wellness influencer; inordinately proud of her well-preserved appearance, she tap dances and does splits to show off her litheness. She’s the life of the party — her diva-level prancing recalls Joanna Lumley’s Patsy in “Absolutely Fabulous” — but emotionally she’s withholding. When Konstantin puts on an avant-garde play, she dismisses it as “indulgent, adolescent crap.” Even in rare moments of tenderness her language is glib, cooingly manipulative. (“Poor little crumpet!”)Tom Burke, left, as Trigorin and Emma Corrin as Nina in this new adaptation of “The Seagull” at the Barbican in London.Marc BrennerWe 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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      Off Broadway Shows to See in March: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and More

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      Underwater drama, a daunting solo undertaking, a gaggle of students and a version of “The Cherry Orchard” that aims to recapture Chekhov’s winking tone.‘A Streetcar Named Desire’Many times we have asked, “Dear God, ‘Streetcar’ again?” And many times we have been reminded that Tennessee Williams’s haunting tale of desire and violence is presented often because it is a masterpiece. This latest production, a London import directed by Rebecca Frecknall (“Cabaret”), stars Paul Mescal (“Gladiator II”) as Stanley, Patsy Ferran (“Miss Austen”) as Blanche and Anjana Vasan as Stella. In a New York Times review of this production’s original run, Matt Wolf described it as being “deeply empathic” and served by an “electrifying” ensemble cast. (Through April 6, Brooklyn Academy of Music)‘Wine in the Wilderness’The necessary and illuminating rediscovery of Alice Childress’s work continues with this piece, directed by the Tony Award winner LaChanze — who, in 2021, starred in the belated Broadway premiere of Childress’s brilliant satire “Trouble in Mind.” Set in Harlem in 1964, as a riot turns the city red, “Wine in the Wilderness” actually premiered on Boston public television in 1969, as part of a series titled “On Being Black.” The story centers on the fraught relationship between a painter (Grantham Coleman, a terrific Benedick in Shakespeare in the Park’s “Much Ado About Nothing”) and his would-be model and muse (Olivia Washington). (Through April 13, Classic Stage Company)‘Deep Blue Sound’Set in a tight-knit community in the Pacific Northwest, Abe Koogler’s deceptively simple play about the mysterious disappearance of an orca pod requires a strong cast to evoke the group’s ties and bring the show fully alive. Such was the case in the premiere production a couple of years ago, as part of the Clubbed Thumb company’s Summerworks series. Luckily, some of the actors, led by the wondrous Maryann Plunkett, return for this encore run, along with worthy additions including Mia Katigbak and Miriam Silverman (a Tony winner for “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”). (Through March 29, Public Theater)‘Have You Met Jane Goodall and Her Mother?”In 1960, Jane Goodall set off to study chimpanzees in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) at the age of 26, yet that country’s government still required a chaperone. So Goodall took her mother, Vanne. Researching that story, the playwright Michael Walek discovered that the two women liked each other and got along, so at least his comedy shouldn’t rely on overused tropes of pent-up mother-daughter acrimony. Bonus: There is puppetry. (Through March 30, Ensemble Studio Theater)From left: Alyah Chanelle Scott, Kathryn Gallagher, Julia Lester, Havana Rose Liu and Kristine Froseth in the play “All Nighter.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘All Nighter’One of the spring’s most intriguing ensembles gathers Julia Lester (“Into the Woods”), Kathryn Gallagher (“Jagged Little Pill”), Kristine Froseth, Alyah Chanelle Scott and the rising star Havana Rose Liu (“Bottoms” and a staggering number of upcoming high-profile screen projects). They portray the friends and roommates assembled by the gifted comic playwright Natalie Margolin (whose star-studded pandemic Zoom play “The Party Hop” is available on YouTube) for a nightlong studying marathon fueled by Adderall, hummus and kibitzing. (Through May 18, Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Just Before It Was a Cult Film, ‘Rocky Horror Show’ Was a Broadway Flop

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      Fifty years have passed, but the actor Tim Curry isn’t sure he has ever forgiven the reception that “The Rocky Horror Show” received in its original Broadway production, which was also his Broadway debut.“I try not to think about it,” he said the other day by phone from Los Angeles. “There’s not much point in paddling through old failures.”Curry was back on Broadway the fall after “Rocky Horror,” in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties.” But, wanting not to be reminded, he has never returned to the Belasco Theater on West 44th Street, where the musical spoof that would soon become a cult-film phenomenon started previews on March 7, 1975, opened on March 10 and lasted just a month.On the heels of the show’s successes in London, where it began in 1973 in the tiny upstairs theater at the Royal Court, and then in Los Angeles, at the Roxy nightclub, it was the kind of Broadway fizzle that seems baffling in retrospect — not least because some of its cast overlapped with the movie’s.Arriving on Broadway after “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was shot but several months before it was released, the musical starred Curry in the role he had originated in London, as the sexually omnivorous, corset-clad, extraterrestrial mad scientist Frank-N-Furter. Richard O’Brien, who wrote the musical, played the disquieting butler Riff-Raff, and Meat Loaf doubled as the doomed delivery boy, Eddie, and the scientist Dr. Scott.Jim Sharman, who directed the film, restaged his Los Angeles production for Broadway. Lou Adler — the record executive, an owner of the Roxy and producer of the “Rocky Horror” film — produced.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