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      ‘Your Own Personal Exegesis’ Review: Blessed Be the Young and Lustful

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      Julia May Jonas’s play-as-church service for LCT3 is imaginative, but falters as it nears the finish line.Heathens! Faithful! Come join a house of worship. Or, in the case of Julia May Jonas’s new play “Your Own Personal Exegesis,” the Claire Tow Theater will do just fine.Upon entering the theater, audience members are greeted with a selection of joyous carols and handed a program and church bulletin. A lectern stands at center stage, and a stiff-looking pew sits off to the side. But there aren’t any solemn sermons or routine parables in this play-as-church service by Jonas, who’s also the author of the fiery debut novel “Vladimir.” An imaginative though lopsided LCT3 production, which opened Monday, the show finds many instances of humor and insight in a story about a small-town youth group in 1996 New Jersey.Rev. Kat (Hannah Cabell) is this parish’s requisite fun, progressive pastor: She’s blunt and well-educated, and runs the youth group, whose members include a high school senior named Chris (Cole Doman) with an alcoholic father. He’s bright and, between his teenage dialect of sputters, mumbles and interjections, has downright poetic moments of wisdom.That’s what sparks a connection between him and Kat, who enthusiastically serves as both a theology teacher and his emotional sounding board. He’s not the only one struggling: Addie (Mia Pak), who likes Chris, has an eating disorder. As does Beatrice (Annie Fang), a new member of the group who often retreats to the background. And Brian (Savidu Geevaratne), whose parents are deacons, has been practically raised in the church but is overshadowed by the more popular Chris.The cast has excellent chemistry. And as directed by Annie Tippe, they capture the familiar posturing and insecurity of adolescence, the awkward exchanges and playfulness. This all plays out in short scenes at the church, which, courtesy of Brett J. Banakis’s set design, elicits the feel of a local church that doubles as a community center (retractable walls, portable stage).Though the use of the bulletin and structure of the play, meant to recall a church service, even with call-and-response, is more appealing in concept than in execution. The youth group’s big events mark the passage of time: a charity dance-a-thon, a liturgical play and a cross-carrying ceremony. Each interaction conveys the characters’ guilty rush of desire — whether for sex, food, connection or attention — or a type of abstinence, with Chris and Kat’s mutual attraction at the center.Doman, foreground left, and Cabell acting out a scene of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet. In the background are, from left: Annie Fang, Savidu Geevaratne and Mia Pak.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJonas’s “Your Own Personal Exegesis,” like Bess Wohl’s recent play “Camp Siegfried,” juxtaposes faith and sex as sibling hungers and balms. In “Camp Siegfried,” about two teens who fall in love at a Nazi youth camp in Long Island, that faith is in the cancerous myth of Aryan superiority. “Personal Exegesis,” however, embarks on a more philosophical examination of the topic, as when the skeptical Beatrice questions her peers about their beliefs. If Jesus is the place where divinity and humanity overlap, what’s in the spaces in between, Beatrice asks Addie?And yet, a fundamental “why” is left unanswered: Why are we seeing this? The script offers part of the answer: It’s a memory play. Whose memory? Beatrice’s, though it’s unclear if she’s the architect of what we’re seeing and why she’s brought us here.There are some signs that we may not be in an objective present: Rev. Kat introducing herself as a “youth minister at Redacted Church in Redacted, New Jersey,” and dreamlike sequences in which the characters act out tableaus of Renaissance artworks like the Pietà, or sing a song about lusting for “puffy nipples.” Some scenes and story lines are more blatantly allegorical than others, and initially it’s hard to tell whether these whimsical movements are from a single character’s perspective or just a characteristic of the work.Even when she seems like another background character, Annie Fang’s Beatrice is incisive, a little offbeat, always trying to play it cool — the kind of relatable teen heroine who seems adopted from a ’90s film.The whole ensemble is stellar: Doman’s Chris reads as a typical teenage boy but with such softness and grace that he’s elevated to a kind of messiah himself, a charismatic prophet who speaks the word and forgives sins. Cabell walks a fine line with Kat, whose authority figure is a welcome change from the go-to archetype of the predatory male pastor. As Kat she oscillates among the roles of devout mentor, shrewd academic and petty woman with a crush. Pak’s delicate performance as Addie is at turns adorable (“I had a rock in my shoe so I could feel Jesus’s pain,” she earnestly says of her participation in the Cross Carry) and wrenching, as when she tells the story of Jesus fasting in the desert, emphasizing his pious starvation. But ultimately Addie, who undergoes a fantastical transformation, is part of a story that feels like its own self-contained allegory that’s an awkward fit with the rest. Geevaratne’s wrings out the comedy from Brian’s tireless — and sometimes cringeworthy — efforts to be liked, but his character is noticeably less developed, written to serve just a limited function in the plot.The lighting design, by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, gives intimate scenes a seductive candlelight feel and makes a bright overhead spotlight shine down like the eye of God. And Wendy Yang’s costume design, from baggy cargo pants with a chained wallet to a patchwork skirt and Doc Maartens, is an instant rewind to the time when millennials reigned.Jonas’s script begins with a definition of “exegesis”: “The critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of Scripture.” Her play succeeds at using biblical stories and religious traditions to illuminate its characters’ internal thoughts and feelings, but in blurring the line between a translation of dogma and a concrete truth, it leaves us to wonder: the Gospel according to — whom?Your Own Personal ExegesisThrough Dec. 31 at the Claire Tow Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      ‘Events’ Review: There’s Kool-Aid in the Water Cooler

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      Bailey Williams’s comedy is a sharp-toothed, sometimes bewildering satire of all-consuming workplace culture.“No one is being murdered before the gala.”It’s the kind of directive that wouldn’t be necessary at most companies — even, perhaps, most high-strung, high-design event-planning firms, even at the height of gala season. But nerves have been extra frayed lately at Todd David Design. People’s imaginations might be running away with them.Or maybe, when Todd — the company’s pseudo-visionary leader — was patched in on speakerphone from a beach in Miami, his team back in New York really did hear him start to get murdered. Hard to say. In any case, his second in command, the imperious Christine, is not having it. So: “No one is being murdered before the gala,” she tells them all. They have a deadline to meet. Back to the task, everyone.All-consuming workplace culture is the satirical target of “Events,” Bailey Williams’s sharp-fanged new comedy at the Brick in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Directed by Sarah Blush, this co-production with the Hearth is off the rails — and that’s both a compliment and a critique.The show is as vibrantly nuts as Todd’s own pretentious ridiculousness (“I am thinking already of florals,” he says airily, musing on the gala) but also tangled, occasionally bewildering and larded with too much corporate-speak. A little of that goes a long way; even when it’s being skewered, simply hearing it can have a deadening effect.On a set by the design collective dots that includes an absurd foam-encased chair with a tiny tag on one leg, ordering people not to sit in it because it is art, “Events” takes place in two divergent realities. There is the brightly lit, well populated world of the office, and then there is the skulking realm of a woman called Itchy, dimly lit with just a single hanging lamp. (Lighting design is by Masha Tsimring.)Itchy is part of Todd David Design, too, or at least she used to be. Played with soft, confiding intensity by Zuzanna Szadkowski, she speaks her series of monologues directly to the audience, and is a riveting storyteller. Itchy, we learn, has not been doing so well at the company. She is convinced that someone there has been poisoning her, which is what’s causing her terrible itch. And that’s why she’s gone to the empty office on a Friday night, dressed in a dollar-store version of hazmat gear — plastic rain poncho, goggles, multiple shower caps — to decontaminate the place.Itchy is disaffected and quite possibly delusional. She may also be dangerous. But in her raw and wounded certainty, she is human and entirely fascinating.The others — Todd (Brian Bock), Christine (Claire Siebers) and their beleaguered team (Dee Beasnael, Julia Greer, Derek Smith and Haley Wong) — have signed on to the office’s culture of surface-shininess, reflexive obeisance and total commitment, even when their guru-boss is objectively detached from reason. But what if, in their devotion to creating events for their clients, they’re missing the main event — their own finite lives? And what if they’re losing themselves in the process?“Girl,” one colleague says to another, cutting through the nonsense at last. “You shouldn’t have brought your soul here. That’s your well-being. That’s your meaning-making.”EventsThrough Dec. 18 at the Brick, Brooklyn; bricktheater.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Broadway’s ‘KPOP’ Will Close on Sunday

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      The final performance, just two weeks after its opening, will include a panel discussion about Asian American and Pacific Islander representation.“KPOP,” a new Broadway musical both celebrating and exploring the wildly popular Korean music genre, will close on Sunday, just two weeks after opening.The producers had hoped that the large and youthful global fan base for K-pop music would lead to a strong audience for the show, but instead it faced anemic ticket sales that made it impossible to keep going.The show’s grosses were consistently well below what it costs to run a Broadway musical; during the week that ended Dec. 4, it grossed just $126,493, making it the lowest-grossing musical now running. Its average ticket price was $32.06, which is also unsustainably low; the industry average that week was $128.34.“KPOP,” rich with performance numbers in a mix of English and Korean, tells the story of a solo singer, as well as a boy band and a girl group, all preparing for a U.S. concert tour. They are contending not only with the rigors of the performance style, but also some tensions with their producer, a documentary filmmaker, and among themselves.The show received mixed reviews, including a largely negative one in The New York Times. (The producers complained that the Times review was racially insensitive; Times editors defended the review.)The show, produced by Tim Forbes and Joey Parnes, was capitalized for up to $14 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped. At the time of its closing, “KPOP” will have played 44 preview performances and 17 regular performances.“KPOP” features an original score, with songs by Helen Park and Max Vernon, and a book by Jason Kim. Directed by Teddy Bergman and choreographed by Jennifer Weber, “KPOP” was conceived by Kim and an immersive theater company called Woodshed Collective; its production life began with a fully immersive and more experimental nonprofit staging in 2017 at A.R.T./New York Theaters, produced by Ars Nova in association with Ma-Yi Theater Company and Woodshed Collective.The Broadway production, with a cast that included several alumni of K-pop groups, including the show’s star, Luna, began previews Oct. 13 and, after a string of absences, cancellations and postponements caused by Covid and other infections among the company, opened on Nov. 27 at Circle in the Square. That theater is among the smallest of the 41 Broadway houses; for KPOP, it is configured with 687 seats arranged on three sides of the stage.Overall sales on Broadway remain softer than they were before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and that has made survival even harder in an industry always characterized by more failures than successes. This fall, Gabriel Byrne’s solo show, “Walking With Ghosts,” also cut short its run because of weak box office sales; only a handful of this season’s shows appear to be on a path to possible profitability.“KPOP” was a milestone for Broadway in several ways: The first Korean-centered show written by Korean Americans, the first with an Asian female composer, and one of only a handful of shows with a cast that is predominantly Asian and Asian American. The production said that its final performance would include a panel discussion about Asian American and Pacific Islander representation on Broadway.The show, like many musicals on Broadway, is planning to produce a cast album. It is scheduled to be released in February by Sony Masterworks Broadway. More

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      ‘The Brightest Thing in the World’ Review: Falling in Love, While Loving Heroin

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      An addiction and recovery tale wrapped in a romantic comedy, Leah Nanako Winkler’s play insists on acknowledging the messy coexistence of joy and pain.NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Christmas whooshes in from the wings, making a festive sneak attack. One instant, a recovering addict is deep in a soliloquy about the seductions of heroin; the next, she is standing in her doting sister’s living room, surrounded by sparkle and warmth.“The Brightest Thing in the World,” Leah Nanako Winkler’s potent new play at Yale Repertory Theater, is itself a bit of an ambush, though a more gradual one. Beginning as a rom-com with all the trimmings, it intensifies into a pair of love stories — each golden in its way, each fraught with quiet fear. Directed by Margot Bordelon, this is ultimately a brokenhearted tale.But for a nice long while, it luxuriates in the fluttery pleasure of mutual crushes morphing into romance. At Revival, a cozy bakery cafe in Lexington, Ky., the charming Lane (a stellar Katherine Romans) has been subtly wooing Steph (Michele Selene Ang), one of her regular customers, with coffee and pastries on the house. Lane even bakes her the kind of cake that famously figures in the novel Steph totes around.“See my biceps?” Lane says, boasting of all the egg-beating she’s done. “They’re stronger now.”“Whoa,” Steph says, swooning adorably.Winkler knows her rom-com tropes, so Steph is not only a florist but also a journalist, albeit a fairly unobservant one. She has no idea that everyone who works at Revival is in recovery from addiction. By the time Lane becomes aware of Steph’s obliviousness and fills her in, they are already enmeshed; when they finally got together, fireworks boomed in the night sky. (The set is by Cat Raynor, lighting is by Graham Zellers, sound is by Emily Duncan Wilson.)Della (Megan Hill), Lane’s wacky older sister, actively nurtures the couple’s happiness. On the first of a few Christmases with Steph, when Lane worries that “it’s hard to be all in with someone like me,” Della reassures her.“You’re fantastic,” she says. “And a catch.”This is the play’s other love story: the devotion between Lane, who is four years sober, and Della, a one-woman cheerleading squad who holds on tight to the memories of all the beautiful things that her sister has done and been. It’s Della who recalls Lane, radiant in the audience at a concert one night, as “the brightest thing in the world.”Romans and Megan Hill as sisters who are the second of the play’s two love stories.Joan MarcusWinkler’s script is dappled with fancy and poetry, but some dialogue sounds more schematic than dramatic, as when Lane and Steph talk politics. The play also sabotages two scenes by courting laughs in life-or-death moments — first during a pivotal emergency, and later in a traumatic recollection of loss. Humans can be ridiculous even in the most somber circumstances, but the attempts at comedy undermine the emotion.Those are puzzling miscalculations for a work that is otherwise insistent on acknowledging the messy, scary coexistence of joy and pain, strength and fragility, self-preservation and self-destruction — not only in Lane but in Steph and Della, who love her tenaciously, and whom she loves back hard. It’s just that, as Lane tells Steph, she also loves heroin.Which is why a constant worry long ago insinuated itself into Della’s everyday thoughts: “What do I have to do today … is Lane dead. I need gas … is Lane dead. Do I want coffee … is Lane dead.”It is bold to stage “The Brightest Thing in the World” in the season when jolly-holiday pressures can heighten tensions for addicts and those who love them. That timing could easily make it too much for people to watch.But I’ve been dogged for years by the same dread as Della, with a different name attached. And I’ll tell you, there can be real solace in a play that speaks your own fears back to you.The Brightest Thing in the WorldThrough Dec. 17 at the Yale Repertory Theater, New Haven, Conn.; yalerep.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      Review: In ‘Orlando,’ Emma Corrin Straddles Genders and Centuries

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      In a freewheeling London adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, Corrin plays a character whose emotions are as fluid as their identity.LONDON — The play comes perfectly matched with its leading player in “Orlando,” a freewheeling take on Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel that opened Monday at the Garrick Theater here.Neil Bartlett’s breezy adaptation of its 1928 source is playful, and ultimately moving, but the director Michael Grandage owes much of the production’s success to its galvanizing star, Emma Corrin, who made an acclaimed West End debut last year in the short-lived “Anna X.” Thankfully, this time, Corrin can be seen onstage for considerably longer; “Orlando” runs through Feb. 25.The fast-rising Corrin, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, has made headlines recently as much for their gender identity as for increasingly prominent screen roles. After winning a Golden Globe for playing Princess Diana in “The Crown,” Corrin starred in two films this season, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” and “My Policeman,” which was also directed by Grandage.Yet none of those roles has connected as directly to Corrin’s ongoing self-inquiry as the restless, century-straddling Orlando. “Being nonbinary is an embrace of many different parts of myself, the masculine and the feminine and everything in between,” Corrin said in a recent interview with The New York Times.Corrin has obviously spent some time with a question that Orlando asks rhetorically throughout the play: “Who am I?” We first meet the character as a young nobleman, born into Elizabethan-era luxury and a home containing 365 rooms. (The real-life inspiration for this vast property was Knole House, the countryside home of Vita Sackville-West, the author and socialite for whom an adoring Woolf wrote the novel.)But as time hurtles forward, Orlando barely ages and awakens one day from an extended slumber, age 30, as a woman. “Well, knock me down with a flipping feather,” says Orlando’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Grimsditch, in response. On the other hand, this loyal sidekick has seemed comfortable with gender fluidity from the start: “Ladies and gentlemen — no, sorry, everyone” she says in an early speech to the audience. The invaluable Deborah Findlay, hair disheveled but her sense of fun unimpaired, is a delight in the role.Corrin is more than game for whatever the play requires. This includes putting on and taking off Peter McKintosh’s ravishing costumes, to keep pace with the passing centuries.The youthful male we glimpse at the play’s start has an impishly androgynous allure, along with a gift for rewriting Shakespeare: “Shall I compare me to a summer’s day?” a glinting Orlando asks early on. But with age comes experience and exposure, not just to royalty (Lucy Briers makes a memorably stern Elizabeth I) but also to lovers and intimates of various genders and circumstances, including a bawdy Nell Gwyn (Millicent Wong) who tells Orlando, “For a lady, you’re really quite the gentleman.”Corrin is in full-throated voice throughout the vicissitudes of Orlando’s fraught love life — when Orlando’s heart is broken, you know it — and in moments when Orlando is taken over by fear. It’s not just that gender is fluid, we feel, but emotions are, too, and the play comes blessed with an actor who can project confidence one minute, and surrender to uncertainty the next. “Orlando” features a cast of Virginia Woolfs, who the titular character turns to to amend or amplify the story. Marc BrennerThe production features a bustling chorus of Woolfs, nine in all, bespectacled and drably attired; each of them adroitly handles at least one additional role, and sometimes more. (That supporting cast includes another nonbinary actor in Oliver Wickham, who plays Clorinda, an early crush for Orlando.)The sobriety of the author on view in this version contrasts with the vivacity of her creation. We see an anxious Orlando interacting with the lineup of women: “Come on, you wrote me,” she says, almost pleadingly, as if Woolf could posthumously amend the story. And yet the play sustains a spryness of tone.Bartlett’s adaptation is more of a sparky, affectionate pastiche, whether invoking another Woolf title, “A Room of One’s Own,” or handing a song lyric from the musical “Cabaret” — another show about shifting identity — to an especially ardent suitor, the Archduchess Harriet. (Richard Cant has particular fun with that role.)We get a synoptic survey of changes in women’s circumstances over time — I loved the sight of the Virginias producing teacups from their bags to signal the arrival of the Victorian era — and there’s a verbal lob in the direction of Britain’s governing Conservative Party that surely owes more to Bartlett than Woolf. But Corrin’s gorgeous performance lifts the 90 minutes, no intermission, well beyond anything resembling a history lesson or a night out requiring preparatory homework.“I once did love,” Orlando says wistfully, and the play leaves us hopeful that this mutable, mesmerizing character will find his, or her, or their, own way to do that again.OrlandoThrough Feb. 25 at the Garrick Theater, London; thegarricktheatre.co.uk. More

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      ‘Stomp’ to Close in New York in January

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      The long-running stage show has been a part of the city’s theatrical landscape for nearly 29 years.“Stomp,” the long-running show that repurposed mundane items like brooms and metal garbage can lids to create a gritty percussive stage spectacle, will close in New York on Jan. 8, the show announced on Tuesday. Its North American and European tours will continue to run.Created and directed by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, “Stomp” made an immediate splash when it opened at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village on Feb. 27, 1994.The wordless show “is banged, tapped, swished, clicked and clomped by eight choreographed percussionists,” Stephen Holden wrote in his 1994 review for The New York Times. “A modern vaudeville revue with a rock-and-roll heart, it is part tap-dance display (using some of the heaviest taps ever attached to shoes), part military drill, part swinging street festival.”The New York production is ending its run because of declining ticket sales, the show said.The news comes on the heels of the closings of long-running Broadway shows like “Come From Away” and “Dear Evan Hansen,” and the news that Broadway’s longest-running show, “The Phantom of the Opera,” will play its final performance in April. All of those shows cited the damage done by the lengthy pandemic lockdown, and the fact that audiences have not fully returned.When “Stomp” closes, it will have played 13 previews and 11,472 regular performances.“While we’re sad to see it close at the Orpheum Theater, we couldn’t be prouder of the impact that ‘Stomp’ has had — and will continue to have — as the tours run both here and in Europe,” the producers said in a statement announcing the closure.Few shows have had such staying power, let alone widespread popularity around the globe — with performances reaching the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Japan and Norway, among dozens of other locales. There was a time when it was difficult to escape the troupe of performers, who showed up at the Academy Awards, on TV in a “‘Stomp’ Out Litter” public service announcement filmed across New York City and at President Bill Clinton’s millennium New Year celebration on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.In 2019, the show celebrated its 25th anniversary. It shut down just over a year later, in March 2020, in response to the coronavirus and later became one of the first Off Broadway productions to resume performances when it returned to the stage in July 2021. More

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      10 Stages and Screens Where I Saw Connection

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      For our critic-at-large, “Fat Ham,” “Severance,” “A Strange Loop” and “Sandman” were some of the places she found truth and transcendence.I never venture too far from a theater, but when I did have some time away from New York stages, I was watching TV and movies. In so many of my favorites of 2022, there’s a sense of humanity to the work, whether that means it featured people connecting or simply being honest with themselves and others. Here are the plays, musicals, shows and films that stuck with me this year.‘Cost of Living’That Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 play is written with such gut-busting empathy and humanity shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who’s read the script or seen the previous productions. And yet, “Cost of Living” was still surprising — stunning, even — thanks to the four actors (Gregg Mozgala, Katy Sullivan, Kara Young and David Zayas) and their portrayal of caregivers and patients in a story about the ways we look after one another and what that care costs us. Plays about connections can so easily turn into sentimental weep-fests that manipulate you into tears, but the script, cast and Jo Bonney’s compassionate direction made this Broadway gem feel not just tender but true. (Read our review of “Cost of Living.”)Gregg Mozgala and Kara Young in “Cost of Living.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘300 el x 50 el x 30 el’When I try to describe this epic work by the Belgian theater collective FC Bergman, I get bogged down in contradictions: Grotesque yet radiant. Chaotic but woven into coherence by theme and feeling. Depressing, yet steeped with something even more forceful than joy — utter transcendence. Transforming the Harvey Theater into a village, with live animals and a pond, “300 el” drew inspiration from the biblical story of Noah’s ark. A film crew circled the stage, providing interior views to a pigeon homicide, a deadly game of William Tell and a feast where even the furniture is devoured. When the production ends in song and dance — a tameless exaltation of noise and movement — it seemed to leave even the air in the theater tremulous with excitement. (Read our feature on “300 el x 50 el x 30 el.”)‘Fat Ham’More than anything — including James Ijames’s whip-smart writing, Saheem Ali’s vivacious direction and the cast’s delightful performances — what most stood out to me in the Public’s staging of “Fat Ham” was the joy that seemed to emanate from every person in the room. Who knew “Hamlet,” a tragedy rife with revenge and murder, could be expanded to become a work about queerness and Black masculinity — and a funny, smart work at that? Ijames, apparently, and Ali, whose gleaming production ended in what felt like a party where everyone, audience included, was welcome to attend. (Read our review of “Fat Ham.”)‘A Strange Loop’It’s been quite a year for Black queer theater, due in large part to the Broadway debut of Michael R. Jackson’s mind-bending, genre-busting musical “A Strange Loop.” The production, starring an unforgettable Jaquel Spivey, succeeds on multiple levels: It provides trenchant commentary on Black art, the Black body, religion, masculinity and queerness, while also being laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking. As for the technical elements, its structure, choreography and score coalesce into a prime example of what Broadway can do at its best. (Read our review of “A Strange Loop.”)Jaquel Spivey stars in the Broadway musical “A Strange Loop.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Oratorio for Living Things’I knew I was seeing something special when I went to Ars Nova’s production of Heather Christian’s “Oratorio,” because I was infected with a desperate urge to see it again — even before I was through seeing it the first time. Having grown up with a Catholic education and Sunday masses, I’ve never felt connected to religious institutions, but Christian’s profound work, directed by Lee Sunday Evans, created a kind of secular mass for nonbelievers and believers alike. The exquisite vocals of the cast were magnified by the miniature amphitheater-style setup of the space, which created an aural experience that — like the text itself — felt both grand and intimate. (Read our review of “Oratorio for Living Things.”)‘English’I’m a sucker for works that examine language — the politics of it, the limitations and freedoms that can be found in words. So I was already onboard for Sanaz Toossi’s play, about a class in Iran where the students are preparing to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl. Under Knud Adams’s direction, the cast draws the audience into its word games, linguistic stumbles and individual struggles to learn and assimilate, whether for work or family or dreams of a life in America. (Read our review of “English.”)‘The Sandman’As a fierce fan of the author Neil Gaiman and owner of his complete “Sandman” graphic novel collection, I was so nervous about Netflix’s adaptation that I asked a friend — a fellow fan — to watch the first episode with me for emotional support. The series does justice to its characters with perfectly cast actors, including a mesmerizing Tom Sturridge, who embodies the brooding, awe-inspiring king of dreams with such finesse and gravitas that it’s as though Morpheus himself has escaped from the comics. It’s not just the characters who are well-matched; the world of “Sandman” is portrayed with sweep, imagination and such respect for the original illustrations that much of the dialogue and panels are replicated. I can’t wait for Season 2. (Read our critic’s notebook on “The Sandman.”)Gwendoline Christie and Tom Sturridge in the Netflix series “Sandman.”Netflix‘Severance’“Severance” may be my new favorite TV series. Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic, still buzzed with enthusiasm even months after my second time binge-watching it. Adam Scott gives a stellar performance as an employee of a shady corporation who elects to have his consciousness split between his work and outside selves. The show has an exquisite eye and ear for terror, wit and mundane interactions, so that it manages to be both otherworldly and eerily familiar. As for the script — the dialogue’s so fantastic that it makes me want to be a better writer. (Read our review of “Severance.”)‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’I’ve often wondered, in our age of multiversal franchises, what a multiverse narrative would look like if the story were driven by the characters’ emotional development and interpersonal relationships rather than just battle scenes, Easter eggs, and routes to spinoffs and sequels. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” was my answer. It contained the unpredictability and boundary-expanding possibilities of the multiverse while staying grounded in the story of a family. Every moment of the film held a new delight. (Read our review of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”)‘Oresteia’When I think back to Robert Icke’s production of “Oresteia,” Aeschylus’ trilogy of Greek tragedies about a family that eats itself from the inside out, I think of one moment. Klytemnestra is grieving after her husband Agamemnon has killed their daughter Iphigenia because of a prophecy that the act would grant his army “fair winds” in war. After the deed, the winds sweep in, the doors to the house are flung open, ethereal white light streams in, and Klytemnestra is caught in a frenzy of flying papers. But what made the production so memorable wasn’t just the special effects but Anastasia Hille’s electrifying performance as Klytemnestra, a woman who folds in to grief and lets it fuel her revenge. (Read our review of “Oresteia.”) More

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      11 Ways I Escaped Reality This Year

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      Our critic was haunted, in a good way, by the performances she saw in movies, theater and TV that offered glimpses into other worlds.In a year when so much, including our democracy, felt topsy-turvy, I was drawn to entertainment that took me out of our real world to another realm. Be it the supernatural, the surreal, the spirit world, or just a superb performance: Here’s my list of 11 otherworldly movies, TV series, actors and plays that brought me joy and centeredness amid the chaos.‘Macbeth’In Sam Gold’s take on “Macbeth,” I loved the lustful love story between Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, but is it weird to say that I also really dug the stew? When we entered the theater, the three witches, dressed in sweaters and jeans, were already onstage stirring their pot, and later they utter the lines that seal Macbeth’s fate. But at the end of the play, when everyone in the cast sits together and shares a bowl, this update, along with one of the witches (Bobbi MacKenzie) singing Gaelynn Lea’s ballad “Perfect,” enacted healing. It reminded me that despite the setbacks that befell the cast and our country, being alive and in the community of theater was something to celebrate. (Read our review of “Macbeth.”)‘The Woman King’With “The Old Guard,” the filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood proved she had the chops for a feminist superhero flick. But with the Viola Davis-led “Woman King,” she went epic in scale and story. She wove in the history of the Agojie, the all-female army in the West African kingdom of Dahomey; produced brilliant fight scenes with actors who performed their own stunts; and explored war, sexual assault and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Here, prophecy is protection, and though it is never named as such, the Dahomey religious practice of Vodun is a guide for Davis’s character, General Nanisca, as she prepares to take on enemies, foreign and domestic, and confront her own demons. (Read our review of “The Woman King.”)Viola Davis, center, stars in “The Woman King.”Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures‘P-Valley’Set at a strip club in Mississippi, the Starz series “P-Valley” is a “love letter to all women who are scrapping it out, but particularly for the Black women that I think a lot of people thumb their noses at, even Black folks,” according to its creator, Katori Hall. It is a sentiment channeled through the veteran dancer and aspiring gym owner Mercedes (Brandee Evans) and the up-and-coming Keyshawn (Shannon Thornton), who is trapped in her career and abusive marriage. But it is Hoodoo, the spiritual practice introduced to them by the club’s security guard Diamond (Tyler Lepley), that might save them. Based on the Season 2 cliffhanger, I’m hoping Diamond’s efforts worked or that he will be there to ward off evil spirits and people in the future. (Streaming on Starz.)‘Reservation Dogs’A coming-of-age tale told through four Indigenous teenagers — Elora, Bear, Cheese and Willie Jack — in the fictional town of Okern, Okla., “Reservation Dogs” masterfully pokes fun at Hollywood stereotypes and acknowledges the nuances of Native culture. While William “Spirit” Knifeman (Dallas Goldtooth) is a bumbling spirit guide who gives Bear unsound advice, he is also the counterpoint to ancestral “spirits” such as Elora’s grandmother or Daniel, a friend of the four teens whose suicide prompts them to leave their reservation (or at least attempt to). In the wonderfully rich ninth episode, Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) seeks advice from her aunt and Daniel’s mother, Hokti, who is incarcerated. After Willie Jack makes an offering of Cheez-Its, Flaming Flamers chips and a Skux energy drink, Hokti (Lily Gladstone) reveals that the many spirits surrounding Willie Jack will help her in time. (Streaming on Hulu.)‘The Piano Lesson’ and ‘Death of a Salesman’Ghosts came in different forms this Broadway season. In her revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Piano Lesson,” LaTanya Richardson Jackson decided to literalize the ghost of the white slave owner, Sutter. Though we never see him, his haunting of the Charles family becomes all too real, making the family’s battles over a piano a deeper allegory of race, property and American history. Equally compelling is Miranda Cromwell’s revival of “Death of a Salesman,” whose all-Black family includes Wendell Pierce as Willy Loman and Sharon D Clarke as his wife, Linda. Willy’s older brother, Ben (André De Shields), is not just a ghost but a griot, too. Sporting a white cane, a white suit and bedazzled shoes, Ben plagues Willy with his success while his spirit beckons his younger brother to the other side. This infuses the play with a new sense of ambiguity, never justifying Willy’s final decision but adding a layer of empathy and compassion. (Read our reviews of “The Piano Lesson” and “Death of a Salesman.”)Wendell Pierce, left, as Willy Loman and Andre De Shields as Ben Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRegina HallRegina Hall showed her versatility this year with two wildly different performances. In Mariama Diallo’s horror movie “Master,” she plays Gail Bishop, who, as the first Black dean of a residence hall at the elite Ancaster College, must constantly contend with racism and its impact on her and on Black students. In Adamma Ebo’s comedy “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul,” she is Trinitie Childs, the wife of a disgraced Southern Baptist pastor (Sterling K. Brown) and a woman obsessed with climbing back to her former state of church glory. The way she evokes Trinitie’s pity, pettiness, petulance and pride gives this film its most memorable and haunting moments. (Read our reviews of “Master” and “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.”)‘Nope’The cinephile in me was pleasantly surprised that Jordan Peele’s “Nope” was a movie about movies. Peele not only pays homage to early film and photography technologies, and the suspense and terror brought on by Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Jaws,” but he also does so while remembering those African Americans whose early contributions to the motion picture industry have been forgotten or ignored. Thanks to Peele’s clever writing, creative directing and smart casting of his frequent collaborator Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out”) as well as the magnanimous Keke Palmer, this movie about gentrification, U.F.O.s and racial discrimination ended up being just an old-fashioned, feel-good movie, the kind we still desperately need. (Read our review of “Nope.”)‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’It was a bold move to follow up on a sci-fi classic starring David Bowie as an extraterrestrial. Rather than compete with such memorable casting, Showtime’s 10-episode series “The Man Who Fell to Earth” humanized its protagonist, Faraday (Chiwetel Ejiofor), by doubling his outsiderness: He arrives in the United States as both an alien and a Black man. In an electrifying sixth episode on jazz music, Faraday and other characters discover a sound of their shared humanity and a possible key to salvaging both of their planets. (Streaming on Showtime.)Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in the TV series “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”Showtime‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’I can’t stop raving about this movie — the costumes, the makeup, the editing (oh, the editing!). The fight scenes, the I.R.S. scenes. The marvelous Michelle Yeoh, playing the laundromat owner and cosmic warrior Evelyn Wang, and Stephanie Hsu, playing her disenchanted daughter, Joy. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who work under the name Daniels, have said that this is mostly a film about the confusion that arises when its characters believe they are in different movie genres from one another. I also admire how this genre diversity (thriller, sci-fi, martial arts, domestic drama) perfectly captured expansive cultural identities (immigrant narratives, Asian American families, queer children) and the depth of our earliest love story (between mother and daughter) — all of which still seem to be unmined in Hollywood. (Read our review of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”)Brian Tyree HenryThe surreal TV series “Atlanta” started off focused on the Princeton dropout (Donald Glover) who became his rapper cousin’s manager, but in its final season it was mainly about the rapper, Alfred a.k.a. Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), and his journey to define himself beyond the trappings of fame, wealth or the music industry. His textured performance gave Alfred more emotional depth as his character confronted feral hogs, white privilege in hip-hop and his own mortality. Henry’s onscreen brilliance led Lila Neugebauer to rewrite and reshoot key scenes in her debut film, “Causeway,” now on Apple+, devoting more time to the friendship between his character and Jennifer Lawrence’s. The result is a moving portrait of grief and hope, in which Henry lights up the film. (Read our review of “Causeway.”) More