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      Review: ‘The Far Country’ Brings a Neglected History Closer

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      Early 20th-century San Francisco and Guangdong, China, overlap in Lloyd Suh’s artful examination of the emotional price of immigration.A young man in a fine suit outlines the terms of the deal: The ocean crossing will be maddening, the detention that follows worse. Even assuming release, a person of Chinese descent will feel no welcome in America. The “Gold Mountain” that has been promised? It’s a mirage. And yet, if one wishes to pay for passage, the young man will offer — for a very high price — his American name and scant protection.This is the devil’s bargain at the center of Lloyd Suh’s fluid, artful “The Far Country,” at the Atlantic Theater Company. Set in the early decades of the 20th century, in both China’s Guangdong Province and San Francisco, it examines the cost — literal and emotional — of immigration. Those who have suffered in their pursuit of a larger, more prosperous life might, the play suggests, inflict that same suffering on others. Then again, they might also find redemption.The drama, directed with sensitivity and spirit by Eric Ting, begins in 1909. Han Sang Gee (Jinn S. Kim) sits at a table in an interrogation room. A more recent iteration of the Chinese Exclusion Act has made his citizenship tenuous, and Gee must substantiate his American birth. He has difficulty proving his status to a skeptical white interrogator (Christopher Liam Moore), as his papers have been destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. But a sympathetic interpreter (Whit K. Lee) gives him subtle aid. (Translation is another interest of Suh’s.)Most spectators’ sympathies will incline immediately toward Gee, owing both to Kim’s sturdy affability and to our innate compassion for anyone demeaned or distrusted by officialdom. But Suh and Ting aren’t interested in easy answers; there’s a more sophisticated moral calculus at play here.Citizenship is, among other things, a moneymaking tool. Its possession will lead Gee to China, where he can offer others the chance at an American life, however constricted that life may be. In Guangdong, Gee encounters a widow (Amy Kim Waschke) and her teenage son, Moon Gyet (Eric Yang, in an impressive Off Broadway debut). Moon Gyet, in his turn, will make a vexed proposal to a young woman (Shannon Tyo, a Suh regular, always dynamic).Clint Ramos’s set, with shadowed illumination by Jiyoun Chang, appears simple at first: a square platform backed by a dark mirror. But no element — walls, floor, mirror — is exactly what it seems. Like our sympathies, the set shifts and shifts again. Fan Zhang’s rumbling sound design suggests layers below the surface.As with Clint Ramos’s shifting set, no element of Ting’s production is exactly as it seems.Richard Termine for The New York TimesAt the center of the play’s overlapping worlds is Angel Island, a detention center that opened in 1910 as a curb to immigration. The majority of its detainees were Chinese men, men like Moon Gyet, who undergoes his own interrogation there. Some eventually gained entry; others were deported. In 1970, nearly three decades after the center had closed, a park ranger discovered poems etched into its walls, lyrics of despair and love that had re-emerged from beneath putty and paint. Here is one: “Nights are long and the pillow cold; who can pity my loneliness?/After experiencing such loneliness and sorrow,/Why not just return home and learn to plow the fields?”Like Suh’s other plays (“The Chinese Lady,” “Charlie Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery”), “The Far Country” meditates on ethnicity and identity. It is also an act, loving and sorrowful, of reclamation, salvaging the history of early generations of Chinese Americans. These men left their fields for the same reason almost any immigrant does: the promise of a better life. Suh is specific in his imagining of the particulars of the Chinese American, but as America is a nation of immigrants, there is space here for others (including others like me, whose great-great-grandparents came from Eastern Europe) to trace vestiges of their own histories.“The Far Country” ends in 1930. That ending isn’t necessarily abrupt. But it does feel somewhat arbitrary. Why not 1950? Or 1970? There is so much more history to recover. More love. More promise. More pain. Moon Gyet claims that the strenuous physical labor required of an immigrant is nothing compared with the work of being Chinese in America. This takes patience and focus, he says. A serious mind and a necessary grace. Suh possesses these qualities in full. He has more work to do, more stories to tell.The Far CountryThrough Jan. 1 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours. More

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      Review: ‘A Beautiful Noise’ Spotlights a Morose Neil Diamond

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      In the new Broadway show, Will Swenson plays the superstar, who seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a quest — but for what?For decades, Neil Diamond was on top of the world. He toured arenas packed with shrieking fans. He wrote “Sweet Caroline,” an irresistible anthem that continues to trigger Pavlovian singalongs — a feat that would delight most performers, but Diamond didn’t leave it at that and was a prolific hit machine.A 1986 profile in The New York Times described him in these words: “Olympian aspiration, raw aggression and agonizing self-doubt.”As unlikely as this might sound, it is that last trait that forms the narrative engine of “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical,” the ambitious, often rousing, occasionally heavy-handed biographical show that opened on Broadway on Sunday at the Broadhurst Theater. We meet a superstar with no confidence, despite being known to engage the beast mode in concert and prowling stages in tight pants and a wide-open satin shirt. He seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a fruitless quest — but for what? What gnaws at him?To answer those questions, the book writer, Anthony McCarten, put Diamond on the couch, or more exactly in an armchair: “A Beautiful Noise,” directed by Michael Mayer, is framed as an extensive therapy session between the aging singer (Mark Jacoby) and a psychologist (Linda Powell).Diamond is there because his wife Katie — spoiler alert: she’s the third one — and kids forced his hand. Apparently Diamond is “a little hard to live with these days,” we’re told. Maybe his family is frustrated by his grouchiness and poor interpersonal communication skills, at least based on his laconic sullenness with the doctor. When she presses him for insights, he curtly says, “I put everything I have into my songs.” Fine, then let’s see what they have to tell us about the man who wrote them.Mark Jacoby, seated left, as Neil Diamond and Linda Powell, seated right, as his therapist in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd so Diamond makes a second entrance, but now he is in his prime and portrayed by Will Swenson (“Les Misérables,” “Assassins”) in a gravity-defying statement pompadour. This is a swaggering coif that means business, but it is contradicted by the 1965 Diamond’s passive posture and apologetic stammering.As the doctor and the older singer revisit his catalog — often commenting on the action from their chairs, like a double vision of the narrator in “The Drowsy Chaperone” — we retrace Diamond’s journey, starting with his early days at the Brill Building. One of the influential American hit factories, the location also played a key role in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” and it’s where the mighty Ellie Greenwich (an amusingly perky Bri Sudia) starts mentoring the shy young man from Brooklyn in the mid-1960s.Diamond, after writing hits for others, like “I’m a Believer” for the Monkees, sets out to perform his own material, with smashing results. In one of the most entertaining episodes, he signs with Bang Records, a mob-associated label run by Bert Berns (Tom Alan Robbins), himself a songwriter good enough to earn his own tribute musical, “Piece of My Heart.”By the end of the ’60s, Diamond was a serial chart-topper; by the early ’70s, he had mutated into the Lord Byron of soft rock, all strutting gloom and troubled romanticism. That turning point is when Swenson, a stage veteran and Tony nominee for the 2009 Broadway revival of “Hair,” really takes ownership of the role. While he doesn’t entirely let go during the concert scenes — a common issue with Broadway performers playing rockers — Swenson gets close to Diamond’s swaggering sexuality and delivers hit after hit with a relaxed confidence: “Sweet Caroline,” of course, and especially “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.” But there is no “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” the epitome of Diamond in his louche Lee Hazlewood mode, which could have really spiced up a musical that can feel timid; likewise, the show’s title echoes Diamond’s 1976 album and one can’t help but wonder what would have happened if his 1968 LP “Velvet Gloves and Spit” had inspired McCarten instead.In any case, the superstar continues seeking, especially love. While still married to his first wife, Jaye (Jessie Fisher), he falls for Marcia (Robyn Hurder, channeling Ann-Margret). The latter gets some of the numbers directly connecting a character’s motivation or emotion with a song — she sings “Forever in Blue Jeans,” for example, when feeling neglected by her constantly touring husband.Robyn Hurder as Marcia and Will Swenson as the younger Diamond.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut much of the time McCarten — who wrote the screenplays for the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” and whose play “The Collaboration” opens on Broadway later this month — refrains from shoehorning new meaning into existing lyrics by manipulating the context in which the songs are used, à la “Mamma Mia!” Many of this show’s most effective moments simply use the songs as surface signposts, an approach that defeats the purported point of the book but reflects the way many listeners experience pop music: We associate it with events and moods, recall what was happening when a hit came on the radio or when we attended a concert.One such scene is Diamond’s debut at the Bitter End. He performs “Solitary Man” and the audience members, sitting at nightclub tables, slowly lean forward, like flowers drawn to the sun. This is the most striking example of Steven Hoggett’s subtle choreography, which to its credit looks like nothing else on Broadway right now: The movement is fluidly, organically incorporated into the scenes, rather than awkwardly grafted onto them.As Diamond sharpens his live persona in Act II, David Rockwell’s set, until then dominated by hanging lamps, morphs into a “Hollywood Squares”-like concert stage that incorporates the orchestra. (Considering how energized Diamond was when performing, having to retire from touring in 2018 because of Parkinson’s disease must have been especially painful.) It all looks and sounds great, but the clock is ticking — therapy! — and we are no closer to understanding the real Neil.Until, at long last, the older singer cracks and stops obfuscating. Naturally, the source of his discontent can be found in his childhood, and the show finally makes the essential connection between Diamond’s artistry and his roots, including his Jewishness. By that point it feels rushed and not quite earned, not to mention a little too nakedly sentimental.And yet, the beating heart of “A Beautiful Noise” is that sequence, featuring “Brooklyn Roads” and “America” leading into “Shilo,” which becomes Diamond’s Rosebud and is performed with almost unbearable grace by the ensemble member Jordan Dobson. Never mind: naked sentimentality is just fine.A Beautiful NoiseAt the Broadhurst Theater, Manhattan; abeautifulnoisethemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      ‘Fat Ham,’ a Pulitzer-Winning Riff on ‘Hamlet,’ Is Broadway-Bound

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      The play, by James Ijames, will be at the American Airlines Theater starting March 21.“Fat Ham,” a comedic and contemporary riff on “Hamlet” set in a backyard in the American South, will transfer to Broadway next spring, one year after winning the Pulitzer Prize in drama.The play, by James Ijames, is about a family that, like the royal family in Shakespeare’s story, centers on a lonely young college student unsettled by his mother’s decision to marry her dead husband’s brother. But in this version, Ijames seeks to use comedy and his own plot twists to challenge the cycle of violence. (Also, in this version, the family is Black, and the young man is gay.)The Pulitzer board described “Fat Ham” as “a funny, poignant play that deftly transposes ‘Hamlet’ to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility and honesty.”The play had an initial production online, at the height of the pandemic, filmed by the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, where Ijames is one of three artistic directors. Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, called the show “hilarious yet profound” and said “it is the rare takeoff that actually takes off — and then flies in its own smart direction.”The play then had a run earlier this year at the Public Theater in New York, co-produced by the National Black Theater. Maya Phillips, a critic-at-large for The Times, also praised the work, writing, “For all that Ijames dismantles in Shakespeare’s original text, he builds it back up into something that’s more — more tragic but also more joyous, more comedic, more political, more contemporary.”The Broadway production will feature the same cast as at the Public, directed by Saheem Ali, who is an associate artistic director at the Public, and starring Marcel Spears as the Hamlet figure, Juicy. The production is scheduled to begin previews March 21 and to open April 12 at the American Airlines Theater.“I feel really proud, and excited that it’s going to reach a larger audience,” Ijames said in an interview. “This play is for people who are looking for a new path, people who are trying to figure out how to talk to their family about difficult things, queer people who want to see their reflection, Black people who want to see their reflection, people who love Shakespeare and folks who have never seen a Shakespeare play. It’s for everyone.”Ijames said he has made some minor changes to the script for Broadway, but the more significant changes will be to the staging, as it shifts from an amphitheater-like setup at the Public to the more traditional proscenium theater at the American Airlines. Ali said he would seek to preserve the show’s sense of a communal gathering, as well as its elements of supernatural magic, as it moves to the larger venue.The show will be the first National Black Theater production to transfer to Broadway, and only the third play to transfer to Broadway from any Black theater, according to a news release.The show will also be the first produced by Public Theater Productions, which is a for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit Public Theater. Under that structure, the Public could make money if “Fat Ham” turns a profit, but the nonprofit has no liability if the show loses money, and no donor funds are involved. A similar financing structure has in the past been used by the Manhattan Theater Club, another prominent New York nonprofit.Also producing the show are Rashad V. Chambers, a talent manager who has previous producing credits on a number of Broadway shows, including “Topdog/Underdog,” and No Guarantees, which is the production company led by Christine Schwarzman, an intellectual-property lawyer who has also been actively investing in Broadway for several years. Although the American Airlines Theater is operated by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, “Fat Ham” is a commercial production; Roundabout will offer the show to its subscribers, but is not among the show’s producers.One unusual bit of trivia: “Fat Ham” will be the sixth Pulitzer Prize-winning play to open on Broadway this season, following “Cost of Living,” “Death of a Salesman,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Topdog/Underdog” and “Between Riverside and Crazy.” (Additionally, two Pulitzer-winning musicals that opened during previous seasons are currently running on Broadway: “Hamilton” and “A Strange Loop.”) More

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      Review: ‘Becky Nurse of Salem’ Brings the Witches but Forgets the Magic

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      Deirdre O’Connell shines as a modern-day descendant of an accused witch in Sarah Ruhl’s unfocused new play at Lincoln Center Theater.A wax statue of a 17th-century Salem woman stands at the center of the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater’s spare stage. We’re in the Salem Museum of Witchcraft, and this woman, wearing a fearsome scowl and a black frock, was one of the victims of the town’s infamous witch trials.If that brings to mind your English class lesson on Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” or what Becky, a Salem museum tour guide, dismissively refers to as her town’s “goddamn Christmas pageant,” that’s part of the intention of this new Sarah Ruhl play, “Becky Nurse of Salem.” The Lincoln Center Theater production, which was directed by Rebecca Taichman and opened on Sunday, brings in the witches but forgets the magic.Becky (Deirdre O’Connell), who introduces herself to the audience as descendant of the wax woman, Rebecca Nurse, goes off script delivering a colorful, expletive-ridden summary of Miller’s work to a tour group. On another tour, she sets the record straight on “The Crucible”: Abigail, the young woman who supposedly seduced the older, married John Proctor, wasn’t 17 as rendered in the play, but 11. And that one of Miller’s personal inspirations for the work was his lust for the younger Marilyn Monroe.After Becky is fired for her improvisations, she turns to a local witch (Candy Buckley) for help. One spell leads to another, and soon Becky is magically manipulating her interpersonal relationships, including those with her longtime friend (and crush) Bob (Bernard White) and her granddaughter, Gail (Alicia Crowder), who has been hospitalized for depression.When Becky isn’t dealing with the repercussions of using hocus-pocus to fix her life, she’s conversing with her dead daughter or stepping into Rebecca’s memories. And the play is strongest in these scenes, when it bridges Rebecca Nurse’s witch trial with Becky Nurse’s contemporary witchcraft.O’Connell, left, and Alicia Crowder as Gail. Riccardo Hernández’s spare set design leaves a lot to the imagination.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn her afterword to the play, Ruhl (“In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play,” “The Clean House”) writes, “I thought that I would end up writing my own historical drama about the Salem witch trials, but every time I tried to dip my toe into the 17th century my pen came back and told me to stay in my own era.” That bit of authorial indeterminacy, unfortunately, is apparent in the script, whose disparate elements are like individual puzzle pieces rather than one cohesive portrait.The technical elements also feel incongruous. The folky original music, composed by the singer-songwriter Suzzy Roche, is too sentimental for the show’s tone. And the lighting, a range of flashy disco-magic hues and otherworldly flickering designed by Barbara Samuels, comes across as too enchanting for a staging that is short on whimsy. Riccardo Hernández’s set design leaves a lot to the imagination — a large black feathered wing is suspended from the ceiling, while an unadorned stage with a cedar clapboard back wall evokes the forest.Set during the Trump presidency, “Becky Nurse of Salem” obliquely comments on the ways women are portrayed and judged in society. The most exciting part of this work is halfway through, when the cast, all in Puritan garb, circle Becky, now Rebecca, chanting “lock her up.” Suddenly the play becomes frightening, the stakes more immediate. But soon the references are dropped and the play moves on.Then there are Becky’s more existential issues: She feels trapped in her hometown, facing limited job prospects, being in love with her married best friend, and trying to raise a granddaughter. Also in the mix is opioid addiction, which has rocked Becky’s family.The more realistic bits of Becky’s story feel like little more than loose sketches of characters and circumstances, and there’s a lack of chemistry among cast members. Her boss at the museum, Shelby (Tina Benko), is a sneering academic with little empathy. Bob is the sweet friend who’s always loved her. Gail is the grieving teenager who wants to both connect with and liberate herself from Becky. And Stan (Julian Sanchez), Gail’s new morose, goth boyfriend, seems to be there to provide another conflict in Gail and Becky’s relationship.O’Connell, who won a Tony this year for her performance in Lucas Hnath’s “Dana H.,” elevates the not quite three-dimensional Becky, giving her a rough-around-the-edges New England charm — along with the nasal, r-dropping accent to match.The production, under Taichman’s tepid direction, is full of short scenes whose transitions have the cast quickly and unceremoniously rolling furniture on and off the set. O’Connell carries much of the humor, but otherwise the show’s comic timing is oddly off, and flat attempts at laughs, like the witch’s unique pronunciations of words like “oil” (“ull”), are unrelenting.In its final minutes, “Becky Nurse of Salem” tries to wrest its themes together via a heartfelt monologue and a cloying ritual. But by that time it’s too late. The play spends two hours dancing around a vaguely defined feminist message. That’s the very problem in this production: It hasn’t figured out the spell that will bring real magic to the stage.Becky Nurse of SalemThrough Dec. 31 at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 2 hours. More

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      Review: ‘A Beautiful Noise’ Makes for a Morose Neil Diamond Musical

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      In the new Broadway show, Will Swenson plays the superstar, who seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a quest — but for what?For decades, Neil Diamond was on top of the world. He toured arenas packed with shrieking fans. He wrote “Sweet Caroline,” an irresistible anthem that continues to trigger Pavlovian singalongs — a feat that would delight most performers, but Diamond didn’t leave it at that and was a prolific hit machine.A 1986 profile in The New York Times described him in these words: “Olympian aspiration, raw aggression and agonizing self-doubt.”As unlikely as this might sound, it is that last trait that forms the narrative engine of “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical,” the ambitious, often rousing, occasionally heavy-handed biographical show that opened on Broadway on Sunday at the Broadhurst Theater. We meet a superstar with no confidence, despite being known to engage the beast mode in concert and prowling stages in tight pants and a wide-open satin shirt. He seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a fruitless quest — but for what? What gnaws at him?To answer those questions, the book writer, Anthony McCarten, put Diamond on the couch, or more exactly in an armchair: “A Beautiful Noise,” directed by Michael Mayer, is framed as an extensive therapy session between the aging singer (Mark Jacoby) and a psychologist (Linda Powell).Diamond is there because his wife Katie — spoiler alert: she’s the third one — and kids forced his hand. Apparently Diamond is “a little hard to live with these days,” we’re told. Maybe his family is frustrated by his grouchiness and poor interpersonal communication skills, at least based on his laconic sullenness with the doctor. When she presses him for insights, he curtly says, “I put everything I have into my songs.” Fine, then let’s see what they have to tell us about the man who wrote them.Mark Jacoby, seated left, as Neil Diamond and Linda Powell, seated right, as his therapist in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd so Diamond makes a second entrance, but now he is in his prime and portrayed by Will Swenson (“Les Misérables,” “Assassins”) in a gravity-defying statement pompadour. This is a swaggering coif that means business, but it is contradicted by the 1965 Diamond’s passive posture and apologetic stammering.As the doctor and the older singer revisit his catalog — often commenting on the action from their chairs, like a double vision of the narrator in “The Drowsy Chaperone” — we retrace Diamond’s journey, starting with his early days at the Brill Building. One of the influential American hit factories, the location also played a key role in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” and it’s where the mighty Ellie Greenwich (an amusingly perky Bri Sudia) starts mentoring the shy young man from Brooklyn in the mid-1960s.Diamond, after writing hits for others, like “I’m a Believer” for the Monkees, sets out to perform his own material, with smashing results. In one of the most entertaining episodes, he signs with Bang Records, a mob-associated label run by Bert Berns (Tom Alan Robbins), himself a songwriter good enough to earn his own tribute musical, “Piece of My Heart.”By the end of the ’60s, Diamond was a serial chart-topper; by the early ’70s, he had mutated into the Lord Byron of soft rock, all strutting gloom and troubled romanticism. That turning point is when Swenson, a stage veteran and Tony nominee for the 2009 Broadway revival of “Hair,” really takes ownership of the role. While he doesn’t entirely let go during the concert scenes — a common issue with Broadway performers playing rockers — Swenson gets close to Diamond’s swaggering sexuality and delivers hit after hit with a relaxed confidence: “Sweet Caroline,” of course, and especially “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.” But there is no “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” the epitome of Diamond in his louche Lee Hazlewood mode, which could have really spiced up a musical that can feel timid; likewise, the show’s title echoes Diamond’s 1976 album and one can’t help but wonder what would have happened if his 1968 LP “Velvet Gloves and Spit” had inspired McCarten instead.In any case, the superstar continues seeking, especially love. While still married to his first wife, Jaye (Jessie Fisher), he falls for Marcia (Robyn Hurder, channeling Ann-Margret). The latter gets some of the numbers directly connecting a character’s motivation or emotion with a song — she sings “Forever in Blue Jeans,” for example, when feeling neglected by her constantly touring husband.Robyn Hurder as Marcia and Will Swenson as the younger Diamond.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut much of the time McCarten — who wrote the screenplays for the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” and whose play “The Collaboration” opens on Broadway later this month — refrains from shoehorning new meaning into existing lyrics by manipulating the context in which the songs are used, à la “Mamma Mia!” Many of this show’s most effective moments simply use the songs as surface signposts, an approach that defeats the purported point of the book but reflects the way many listeners experience pop music: We associate it with events and moods, recall what was happening when a hit came on the radio or when we attended a concert.One such scene is Diamond’s debut at the Bitter End. He performs “Solitary Man” and the audience members, sitting at nightclub tables, slowly lean forward, like flowers drawn to the sun. This is the most striking example of Steven Hoggett’s subtle choreography, which to its credit looks like nothing else on Broadway right now: The movement is fluidly, organically incorporated into the scenes, rather than awkwardly grafted onto them.As Diamond sharpens his live persona in Act II, David Rockwell’s set, until then dominated by hanging lamps, morphs into a “Hollywood Squares”-like concert stage that incorporates the orchestra. (Considering how energized Diamond was when performing, having to retire from touring in 2018 because of Parkinson’s disease must have been especially painful.) It all looks and sounds great, but the clock is ticking — therapy! — and we are no closer to understanding the real Neil.Until, at long last, the older singer cracks and stops obfuscating. Naturally, the source of his discontent can be found in his childhood, and the show finally makes the essential connection between Diamond’s artistry and his roots, including his Jewishness. By that point it feels rushed and not quite earned, not to mention a little too nakedly sentimental.And yet, the beating heart of “A Beautiful Noise” is that sequence, featuring “Brooklyn Roads” and “America” leading into “Shilo,” which becomes Diamond’s Rosebud and is performed with almost unbearable grace by the ensemble member Jordan Dobson. Never mind: naked sentimentality is just fine.A Beautiful NoiseAt the Broadhurst Theater, Manhattan; abeautifulnoisethemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      Gabriel Byrne Reflects on the End of His Broadway Show, and Tells T a Joke

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      ‘Walking With Ghosts,’ which closed Nov. 20, allowed the Irish actor to showcase his passion for the humor of everyday life.Gabriel Byrne is well aware he is not a Disney franchise. “I’m just one person, writing about myself,” said Byrne, 72, in a video interview on a recent morning before one of the final performances of his autobiographical one-man Broadway show, “Walking With Ghosts,” which closed more than a month early on Nov. 20. “I understand the reality of the marketplace and at the same time feel profoundly grateful I got here at all.”Originally slated to run through the end of December at the Music Box Theater, the show closed after just 25 performances and eight previews amid — to put it kindly — ticket sales that were a few zeros away from “Hamilton” or “Lion King” territory. But Byrne, who with his tousled gray hair, serious face and bright blue eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses, cuts a grandfatherly figure — if the grandfather in question were a famous Irish actor with a Golden Globe and a tendency to quote James Joyce — is a good sport about his early eviction notice. “How long a thing lasts isn’t a reflection of its essential worth,” he said. “A relationship that lasts 18 months can contain more within it than relationships that last 10 or 15 years.”The show, which is based on Byrne’s 2020 memoir of the same name, certainly had its fans, particularly when he performed it to sold-out crowds in Ireland, where he was born and spent the first 11 years of his life, and then in London’s West End earlier this year. While the Broadway run received mixed reviews, the New York Times critic Alexis Soloski praised Byrne’s charisma and stage presence, calling him “compulsively watchable.” “Who wouldn’t want to spend a clinical hour with this man?” she wrote. “Or two, plus intermission.”Gabriel Byrne in his one-man show, “Walking With Ghosts,” at the Music Box Theater in New York.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesByrne, who last appeared on Broadway in 2016 in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s 1956 play “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” is best known for his roles in the HBO show “In Treatment” and the 1995 film “The Usual Suspects.” Even after the latter became a sleeper hit, opening a new chapter in his career as a leading man — during which he starred in “Stigmata” (1999) and “End of Days” (1999) — he maintained the workmanlike ethos of his journeyman days, gaining a reputation as a fiercely private person reluctant to claim the spotlight.So it was perhaps surprising that he chose to publish a second memoir. (His first, “Pictures in my Head,” was published in 1994 and covered his childhood in Ireland and the start of his acting career.) The second book, which a Washington Post reviewer wrote “dazzles with unflinching honesty,” similarly focuses on Byrne’s upbringing in a working-class family on the rural outskirts of Dublin and his subsequent journey to Hollywood. But it also travels to darker places, like the period in the early 1960s when the 11-year-old Byrne was sexually abused by a priest at the Catholic seminary school he attended in England.The biggest challenge in adapting his latest memoir for the stage, he said, was trimming some of its reflective aspects to make space for moments that would be more compelling for a live audience. “If it doesn’t work dramatically — if it’s not propulsive, emotional — you get rid of it,” he said. “You can’t put big lumps of prose onstage.” He opted to perform the play on a nearly bare stage, wearing the same blue shirt, blue vest, blue blazer, gray slacks and black boots throughout and striding from one end to the other between scenes as the house went dark to indicate changes in time and location. “The anti-razzle dazzle allows you to concentrate on what’s being said,” he said.The cover of Byrne’s 2020 memoir, “Walking With Ghosts.”Courtesy of Grove PressGrowing up, Byrne wanted to be a priest. But after he was sexually abused, he renounced his faith, cycling through jobs as a dishwasher, a plumber and a toilet attendant before joining an amateur acting troupe in Dublin, where he rediscovered his boyhood love of theater.That led to his TV debut in 1978 in the soap opera “The Riordans,” then to his film debut in the 1981 retelling of the King Arthur legend “Excalibur,” and finally to Hollywood stardom, which brought him into the same circles as luminaries like Richard Burton and Vanessa Redgrave. But that’s not the part of his life he chose to highlight in either of his memoirs or his stage play, which essentially ignores the latter part of his life and acting career. “What you do is only a very small part of who you are,” he said. “Finding your identity through your work is a limited way of knowing yourself.”Instead, he said, he wanted to emphasize experiences people could relate to, themes that felt universal — for instance, that of searching for a sense of rootedness as an immigrant living away from his homeland (he moved to New York in the mid-1980s to be with his then partner, the actor Ellen Barkin; they divorced in 1999 but he remained in the States). “Every immigrant has a yearning to be at home,” he said. “But you can never be at home anywhere once you leave. You trade one place for another, but you don’t really belong in either.”Of course, he said, dredging up his memories of abuse or recounting the death of a boyhood friend every night is hardly enjoyable. But it is a willingness to explore those uncomfortable places, he said, that gives the show its power. “By going there, you’re opening the door for somebody else in the audience to maybe go there, too,” he explained.That is not to say there weren’t lighthearted moments. Among the dozens of characters from his past that Byrne embodies are friends, teachers, religious figures, family members and even the various actors in the amateur theater troupe he joined (Soloski wrote that the show “allows him to show a playful side and a gift, neglected in Hollywood, for physical comedy”). “You can’t just get up there and start telling serious stories,” Byrne said. “You have to leaven it with a spoonful of sugar.”Though he is finished with “Walking With Ghosts” — for now — he suggested that a return to the blue blazer and black boots may not be far off. He’s had offers to do the show in other cities — he has his eye on Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, he said — and international plans are in the works. “The producers want it to go to Australia and Canada,” said Byrne, who lives in Rockport, Maine, with his wife, Hannah Beth King, a documentary filmmaker, and their young daughter. (He has two adult children with Barkin.) “We’ll see. I don’t think Sunday night is the end of it.”In the meantime, he’s working on a new book, his first novel, which will explore themes of immigration and exile. He’s also looking forward to catching up on the movies he hasn’t had time to see and popping in and out of Broadway theaters — now as an audience member. (On his list: The recent revival of “Death of a Salesman.”) “I’ve been living in the world of books and the streets of New York, which is a continuous novel,” he said. “You never stop turning the pages.” More

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      ‘Ain’t No Mo’’ Review: After Great Tribulation, an Exodus of Black Citizens

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      In Jordan E. Cooper’s biting satire, Black Americans descended from slaves are offered one-way airfare to Africa.Jordan E. Cooper’s new Broadway play starts with the kind of roof-raising scene most writers would have stashed away for a big bang of a finale. Pastor Freeman (Marchánt Davis) is standing by a coffin, about to give the eulogy for Brother Righttocomplain, a stalwart member of the African American community who embodied protest and grievances. Righttocomplain’s purpose has just ended, though, hence the funeral: It is Nov. 4, 2008, and Barack Obama has been elected president, ushering in a promising new era for Black Americans.“Ain’t no mo’ shot down dreams with its blood soaking the concrete outside room 306,” Pastor Freeman declares. “Ain’t no mo’ riots.” The list goes on as he revs up, whipping his congregation and the audience into a frenzy. By the time he asks, “Can I get a Chaka Khan?” it’s impossible not to answer back. Were the show a traditional musical, the scene would have been the 11 o’clock number.Instead it is the first exclamation point in an evening of many.Starting on such an expansive note is a bold move for Cooper, a 27-year-old writer making his Broadway debut, but “Ain’t No Mo’,” which opened on Thursday at the Belasco Theater, bursts with confidence. It is confident in its voice, in its beliefs, in its artistry, in its wicked humor and angry pain — or pain-laden anger. It is also confident that Stevie Walker-Webb’s production and the cast, both of which are largely unchanged from the play’s premiere at the Public Theater, in 2019, can handle it all.As the funeral concludes, we are abruptly transported to an airport, where a gate agent named Peaches (Cooper in high drag, a feather stuck in a hat jauntily pointing up) is on a Bluetooth call, trying to get stragglers to hurry up to Gate 1619: Just as that number refers to the arrival year of the first enslaved Africans in America, the U.S. government is now offering a one-way flight to Africa to those slaves’ descendants — and it’s about to depart.Peaches, with whom we check back at regular intervals, acts as a link between the vignettes that make up “Ain’t No Mo’,” a structure borrowed from George C. Wolfe’s epochal 1986 satire “The Colored Museum.” (Cooper is also the showrunner of the BET+ sitcom “The Ms. Pat Show,” which he created with Patricia Williams; coincidently, a flight attendant in “The Colored Museum” is called Miss Pat.)From left: Fedna Jacquet, Ebony Marshall-Oliver, Marchánt Davis, Crystal Lucas-Perry and Shannon Matesky in a scene titled “Real Baby Mamas of the South Side.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhile the segments are self-contained, that flight looms over them all, a statement of simultaneous hope and despair. Cooper deftly shuffles moods and emotions throughout the brisk one-act show, often within the same scene. He is playing with the idea of discomfort, and tries to not let the audience become too settled in either laughter or pathos, but the balance is not always as precise as it needs to be. “Ain’t No Mo’” has an immediate impact, but its biting commentary on race doesn’t leave a bruise: Though I loved it at the Public, I haven’t found myself thinking about it since, whereas I frequently flash back to, for example, “An Octoroon,” another sharp comedy about race.The most unabashedly parodic of the sections is “Real Baby Mamas of the South Side,” which takes place during the taping of a reality-TV show and features a quartet of guests hosted by the unctuous Tony (Davis, who handles all of the male-presenting characters). The most provocative panelist is the “transracial” Rachonda (played by the new cast member Shannon Matesky), whose real name is Rachel and who is actually white; she, too, is in drag, in this case Black drag, to establish the identity she craves.All of the women in this scene are pretending — watch them toggle out of exaggerated Black vernacular when the cameras aren’t rolling — but Rachel/Rachonda is usurping. Finally Tracy (Ebony Marshall-Oliver, last seen on Broadway giving a comedy master class in last season’s “Chicken & Biscuits”) just can’t take the posturing anymore and says that Blackness is not something you can just decide to put on, while Rachonda replies that she’s living her truth.The argument eventually ends with fisticuffs because Cooper doesn’t seem sure how to exit out of the premise any other way. This happens with a couple of other scenes — including the key final one — which start off strong and peter out.The dramatic counterweight to “Baby Mamas” is “Circle of Life,” which takes place in a waiting room — Scott Pask’s versatile set quickly adapts to a variety of locations. Trisha (Fedna Jacquet) is waiting for her number to be called for an abortion, though it may take a while because the electronic counter is currently at 73,543, which sounds bad enough until you learn it’s out of millions. Trisha is at a community center rather than a clinic, and one of the tweaks made to the script for the Broadway production explains that it’s because women can’t get abortions anymore. (Other updates include a mention in a news montage of the racist attack in a Buffalo supermarket, and Vice President Kamala Harris now being the co-pilot on the flight to Africa: “Be nice y’all, she has already made a promise that if you got weed on board, she will look the other way,” Peaches says, “so keep it cute.”)While Trisha is set on terminating her pregnancy, the father, Damien, is begging her to change her mind. It’s not long before we realize why he is so adamant, a wrenching revelation that Cooper can’t quite steer to port.Lucas-Perry, center, shines in a segment called “Green,” our critic writes. She plays Black, who has spent 40 years locked in the basement of the home of a wealthy family. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe scene is a formidable opportunity for the actors, led by Cooper himself, and the play as a whole is a terrific showcase for them. They make a strong case for a Tony rewarding ensembles as they switch roles with striking ease — with help from Emilio Sosa’s costumes and Mia M. Neal’s wigs — and take charge when the script comes up a little short.Crystal Lucas-Perry, for instance, shines in two segments with tricky tonal shifts. In “Green,” she plays Black, who has spent 40 years locked in the basement of the home of a wealthy family who snicker at the Africa exodus. (“We’ve worked way too hard to end up sitting on a flight with the same destination as a Latoya.”) Black is the embodiment of something they have worked hard to purge, the portrait of Dorian Gray kept hidden away. And now it’s out, and it’s very angry — you might wonder what Jordan Peele would have made of this.Lucas-Perry also nails the evening’s single most poignant moment as an inmate being released, and realizing that some items are missing from her belongings. In a few seconds, we understand the cost of incarceration, the realization of what was lost. The protective armor of wisecracks has been pulled, and only the ache remains.Ain’t No Mo’Through Feb. 26 at the Belasco Theater, Manhattan; aintnomobway.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      Kornel Mundruczo Brings Powerful Imagery to Wagner and Film

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      Kornel Mundruczo’s varied career has included the Oscar-nominated movie “Pieces of a Woman,” stage productions across Europe and now, “Lohengrin.”MUNICH — On a recent morning, the atmosphere on the rehearsal stage of the Bayerische Staatsoper, the main opera house here, was charged with anticipation.The director Kornel Mundruczo was supervising Act I of “Lohengrin,” Richard Wagner’s romantic opera about a mysterious knight sent by the Holy Grail to save a damsel in distress, and as they waited for the title character to appear, the vocal soloists and extras milled about in street clothes among rocks and grass scattered on the stage.Mundruczo made adjustments to the performers’ positions and gestures, ensuring that they conveyed nervous excitement. When Lohengrin, played by Klaus Florian Vogt, casually appeared midway through the act, Mundruczo surveyed the scene.“That’s super good,” he said with satisfaction.When the opera opens here on Saturday, it will close an uncommonly busy — and varied — year for the prolific Hungarian director.Over the past 12 months, Mundruczo, 47, has overseen a world premiere opera in Berlin and Geneva; a new play in Berlin; Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” in Hamburg, Germany; and has directed four of 10 episodes in the first season of the Apple TV+ series “The Crowded Room.”Serge Dorny, the Bayerische Staatsoper’s general manager, said he saw “Lohengrin” as “an extremely contemporary story,” adding that Mundruczo’s interest in topical themes, and how he has handled them over a range of artistic genres, was in part what led him to enlist the director for “Lohengrin.”Mundruczo’s production of “Lohengrin” at Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. Over the past two decades, he has produced a multifaceted body of work across numerous countries, languages and genres.W. HoeslEqually important, however, was Mundruczo’s ability to create “powerful images that stay in our memories,” Dorny said.Mundruczo’s style is direct and emotional, but it is often tinged with fantastical elements that veer into magical realism: In one particularly vivid example, a recent Mundruczo production was set almost entirely inside a gigantic salmon.While Vogt said that Mundruczo’s background in film was clear from his ability to create “intense images” in “Lohengrin,” the singer called Mundruczo a “deeply musical person,” who had enormous respect for the score.This artistic versatility makes Mundruczo a rarity among today’s directors. Over the past two decades, he has produced a multifaceted body of work across numerous countries, languages and genres.In the English-speaking world, Mundruczo is best known for his 2020 film “Pieces of a Woman,” which garnered acclaim for the director, its writer, Kata Weber, and its lead actress, Vanessa Kirby, who earned an Oscar nomination for her turn as a mother processing the death of her newborn. Martin Scorsese signed on as an executive producer after seeing an early cut of the film.“With Kornel, you feel and see a real drive to express something in images and sounds,” Scorsese wrote in an emailed statement. “It’s real cinematic storytelling. No matter what Kornel makes, I’m interested.”Vanessa Kirby earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Mundruczo’s “Pieces of a Woman.”Benjamin Loeb/NetflixMundruczo’s production of the opera “Sleepless” was dominated by a giant salmon.Nina Hansch/picture alliance, via Getty ImagesBorn in 1975 in Godollo, a small city outside Budapest, Mundruczo dreamed of becoming a painter as a teenager, but when he first picked up a camera at 21, he knew filmmaking was what he was meant to do.“I wasn’t planning for it to happen, but for me there was no longer any question,” Mundruczo said in an earlier interview in Berlin. “That hasn’t changed.”The director characterized his early shorts and first three features as “bohemian friendship movies, like early Almodóvar,” he created with “whoever was around,” he said, referring to the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. Mundruczo made his first feature film in 2000 while still a student. Of the eight that have come since, six have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, including “White God” (2014), which features a canine takeover of Budapest, and “Jupiter’s Moon” (2017), in which a Syrian refugee learns to fly.While building up his film career, Mundruczo also started directing plays for an independent theater group. In 2009, he co-founded Proton Theater in Budapest, where he serves as artistic director. Before long, his stage productions were getting attention on the international theater festival circuit.Mundruczo suggested that his outsider status as a filmmaker had helped him bring a new perspective to his stage productions, which tour throughout Europe. “I’m not a theater person,” he said, “and the theater festival system always needs new voices.”The director also welcomes a certain degree of cross-pollination between his stage and screen work. Before it was a film, “Pieces of a Woman” was a play written by Weber and first performed in 2018 at the TR Warszawa theater in Warsaw. “Evolution,” another collaboration between Weber and Mundruczo (who are both romantic and artistic partners), started life as part of a staged performance before they developed it into a film.When it comes to switching between genres, “I enjoy that it’s other parts of your soul working,” Mundruczo said. Gordon Welters for The New York Times“Evolution,” which premiered at the 2019 Ruhrtriennale festival in Bochum, Germany, was one of a string of productions in that country that inspired Mundruczo and Weber to move to Berlin from Budapest with their daughter several years ago. They were also guided by concerns about the political situation in Hungary, which continues its rightward slide under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.“I’m sure every New Yorker felt the same during the Trump era,” he said. “It can be tough. You feel a certain pressure.”Although he has never faced direct censorship in Hungary, the Hungarian National Film Board rejected funding for “Pieces of a Woman,” Mundruczo said. “They sent a beautiful letter — I still have it — they wrote that there is no audience for this movie,” he said.When it became a play in Warsaw, its Jewish themes, which were inspired by Weber’s family history, fell by the wayside. “Not that many Jewish people live in Poland, and we all know why,” Mundruczo said. Weber was able to restore some of the Jewish content in the film version, which moved the action to Boston, a city with a large Jewish population.Several of those themes, including a miraculous tale of survival at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust, are elaborated in the film “Evolution,” a multigenerational tale that begins in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and ends in modern-day Berlin.Since “Evolution” premiered at Cannes in summer 2021, Mundruczo has taken a hiatus from the silver screen. This year he made his debut at Berlin’s Staatsoper, directing the world premiere of Peter Eotvos’s “Sleepless,” the production dominated by a giant salmon.Matthias Schulz, the general manager of the Berlin State Opera, said that “first of all,” Mundruczo was a filmmaker. “He’s very precise and gives a lot of hints, just like he has to do when making a movie,” he said, describing “Sleepless” as having the atmosphere of “an opera and a movie at the same time.”Both the Berlin State Opera and Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper have invited Mundruczo back to direct in future seasons. In addition to making “The Crowded Room” for the small screen, Mundruczo hopes to return to filmmaking soon, although he said that it was too early to share project details.When it comes to switching between opera, dramatic theater, television and film, “I enjoy that it’s other parts of your soul working,” Mundruczo said. “It’s very healthy when you’re not a one genre maniac,” he added.Perhaps someday he’ll be able to devote himself exclusively to one art form. “But I’m not there yet,” he said with a laugh. More