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      Review: Without Bloodshed, the Ingénue Takes the Lead

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      Sophie McIntosh’s new play gathers five women in a college production for an exercise in youthful ambition and the corrupting clashing of egos.Hailey loves acting. Sweet and guileless, she doesn’t know Broadway is home to plays, as well as musicals. She is also as earnest in her love for her craft as she is genuinely talented — a combination that earns the freshman the coveted role of Lady Macbeth in her Minnesota college’s production. So, of course, all of the older girls resent her.Sophie McIntosh’s “Macbitches,” having its premiere at the Chain Theater, throws Hailey (Marie Dinolan) and four upperclasswomen together for a tight 85-minute exercise in youthful ambition and the corrupting clashing of egos. It’s (thankfully) not a direct takeoff on Shakespeare’s tale of royal bloodlust, but rather a very funny, well-observed and finely acted dramedy about what it means to be a young woman in a B.F.A. program in a post-#MeToo world.And it counts a revelatory star turn from Dinolan as its brightest point. As Hailey, she exhibits impeccable comedic timing that demands attention even when she’s in the background, staring at the bottom of her Cosmo with inebriated innocence. Not only can Dinolan play drunk well (tougher than you’d think), but she superbly inhabits her character’s inchoate ability to command a stage.Or, in this case, a fraught celebration. The gathering, organized after casting notices have gone up, is held at Rachel’s (Caroline Orlando), the program’s now-former de facto lead. Hailey is invited over by Piper (Laura Clare Brown), an introverted sophomore who’s coming up against the limitation of her talent and is perhaps unaware of what the ingénue’s presence at this intimate get-together might do to her friends. The agitated Lexi (Natasja Naarendorp) and the dispirited Cam (Morgan Lui) certainly do not need her there.McIntosh, the director Ella Jane New and their cast ably navigate these social hierarchies. Rachel is not a tyrannical, or even obvious, queen bee, but her lead turn in “Hedda Gabler” the year before ensures an unspoken air of achievement her friends can only admire. The way these students interact and move through Brandon Scott Hughes’s set — complete with “Hamilton” merch and posters from past college productions — feels real, seemingly informed by the cast’s own experiences among other actors rather than writerly necessity.Yet it’s the interactions happening outside the room that provide the play with a relevant, weighty backbone it would be well without, but is leagues better for including. These young women, though confident and well-prepared, are still working in a world ruled by men.Are their professors, who appraise their looks to determine their fitness for a role, supposed to mold them for the “real world,” or help them overcome its obstacles? How can you imbue a romantic scene with the power of instinct when the new norm of intimacy training necessitates planning? And is there any room for agency and ambition if your plan is sleeping up in an industry newly focused on power imbalances?McIntosh evokes these questions astutely, never putting too fine a point on any of them, or turning her characters into mouthpieces. With a fantastic understanding of tone and genre, “Macbitches” juggles headier themes while remaining a lively college drama, a riff on both Shakespeare and “All About Eve,” and a showcase for Dinolan’s blazing charisma.MacbitchesThrough Sept. 10 at the Chain Theater, Manhattan; chaintheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. More

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      In Two London Plays, Being Black Means Looking From the Outside In

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      Black characters in “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child” endure microaggressions and aspersions. The familiar scenarios hit home for our critic.LONDON — It was my second time here, and I kept trying to remember if I had felt as conspicuous during my first visit. I could count the number of other Black women I spotted during my five days here: the hotel receptionist with the French braid, whom I spoke with when I stopped in to ask to use the bathroom, the long-haired woman at my own hotel’s front desk, the woman talking rapidly into her cellphone outside a Starbucks, the two women (clearly tourists) with matching backpacks near the British Museum, and the young woman with the short, relaxed hair, who was clutching a shopping bag as she walked briskly down the street. That list isn’t comprehensive. But it’s not far off.So when the eyes of a white person linger on me, as they did numerous times during this trip, my imagination tricks me into thinking every glance is a rebuke — whether because of my obvious Americanness; or because of my race, my tattoos or my pink hair. I don’t know how to sit with my discomfort in these moments, and I inevitably ask myself: How much of an outsider am I?Such thoughts often cross my mind when I go to the theater — whether in New York, London or elsewhere — and sit among the predominantly white audience, watching the mostly white actors onstage. In choosing which London shows to squeeze into my short work trip, I gravitated to two brand-new family dramas, “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child,” with big-name stars and stories about white families.As these weren’t the domains of Tina Turner or Sister Deloris Van Cartier or Noma Dumezweni’s Nora Helmer, I didn’t expect to see any Black women on either stage. But I was wrong; in both “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child,” a Black woman — the lone Black person in each show — is not only a part of the play, but she also serves as an outsider who witnesses and comments on the chaos, enduring microaggressions and outright aspersions before making her escape.In “Mad House,” written by Theresa Rebeck (“Bernhardt/Hamlet”) and directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, David Harbour (“Stranger Things”) plays a man named Michael who is watching over his dying father, Daniel (played by Bill Pullman) in rural Pennsylvania. But the father’s illness isn’t enough to stop the man’s unending stream of vitriol and abuse.It’s just the two of them now, since Michael’s beloved mother died, because of — according to his father — Michael’s yearlong stay at a mental hospital, which broke her heart. Rounding out the living members of this broken nuclear family are Michael’s brother, Nedward, a Manhattan stockbroker who pops up after a prolonged absence to take charge of Daniel’s assets, and his sister, Pam, a vicious manipulator who shows up halfway through the play to exacerbate the situation.Into all this mess enters Lillian, a Caribbean hospice nurse hired to help make Daniel comfortable during his final days. She maintains her professionalism despite Daniel’s crass come-ons, objectifying of her body, offensive comments about trans people (she’s so muscular she might be a man, he declares) and racist attitude (he repeatedly insists that he paid for her, like a slave). She’s spoken down to and bossed around by Ned and especially by Pam, who insists Lillian is unqualified. After Lillian shares a letter with Michael that she’s discovered among Daniel’s papers, the extent of his family’s lies come to light.Because I’ve seen so many plays in which the entrance of a Black character signals the beginning of a string of awful clichés and tropes, I am now leery when I see a lone Black person appear among a cast of white characters. When Akiya Henry, the actress playing Lillian, initially appeared in the first act, walking into Daniel and Michael’s kitchen, I felt this same foreboding.Originally from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as the family members announce several times, Lillian is an outsider, and she’s a helper — quite literally, of course, since she’s a nurse. Armed with sharp retorts and a sassy, well-timed sucking of her teeth, Lillian punctuates the absurdity of the circumstances and brings the outside world into the confines of this unstable family home so the audience doesn’t get too claustrophobic. She is also the main inciting force that moves the story forward and cracks open the family dynamic. She’s not so transparent an archetype that her tale is left to the imagination, though: She gets a tragic, grief-filled back story, but only so the play can relate Michael’s emotional baggage through Lillian. She’s the mirror held up to Michael’s inner life.Racheal Ofori as the adopted daughter of a white family in Stephen Beresford’s “The Southbury Child” at the Bridge Theater.Manuel HarlanIn one of the other West End plays I saw, Stephen Beresford’s “The Southbury Child,” directed by Nicholas Hytner, the token Black woman is even more aware of her status as an interloper, and the script struggles to give the character dimension.Here, Alex Jennings (“The Crown”) plays a philandering vicar and alcoholic who becomes the town pariah after refusing to allow balloons at a young girl’s funeral. The Black actress Racheal Ofori plays his adult daughter Naomi, who materializes like the prodigal adopted daughter. Appearing in fitted tops and mini skirts after nightlong partying, Naomi is, well, the black sheep in more ways than the most obvious racial one. Unlike her religious father, she is what she calls a “militant atheist”; she lacks the same underlying bitterness of her mother and outshines her hardworking but overlooked elder sister.Naomi plays no role in the odd central drama about balloons but saunters onto the stage every once in a while, in her club clothes or pajamas, taking in the drama and mocking and jesting at her family and her status as the sole person of color. Like Lillian in “Mad House,” Naomi serves as the wise fool.Hers is one of several side stories in this intriguing yet overpacked play: Feeling alienated as a Black woman in a white family, she seeks out her birth mother in the hope that doing so will help her find her true self. In the meantime, her character is the snarky observer who then complains about being tokenized by her community. In one instance, she sneers as she describes the self-congratulatory white moms who proudly set up play dates between their daughters and the town’s Black girl.The similarities in the way the characters’ arcs end in each play are intriguing: For both Naomi and Lillian, the departures are abrupt. It’s as if neither stage has a place for these Black women beyond their roles as outside observers and truth-tellers. Once they’ve played their parts, they are seemingly given an out; finally spared from having to see the mess through to the end. But the exits of these Black women also seem like a validation that they don’t actually belong there. That they are exceptional.And, in a sense, they are — both Henry and Ofori make their characters compelling, so much so that sometimes they steal the spotlight. Not for long, though — never for long. Despite the strong Black female leads you can catch on some stages, too many productions still embrace a very narrow role for their Black women, who can nurture, drop snide remarks and reveal truths the other characters fail to see — so long as they know their place as visitors in the narrative. More

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      ‘Patience’ Review: At the Top of His Game, and Lonely

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      Johnny G. Lloyd’s new play about a solitaire champion examines talent, ambition and the rising stakes of success when you’re Black.The most powerful line in “Patience,” Johnny G. Lloyd’s new play about Black excellence, comes not from the world-champion solitaire player at its center but rather from a teenage opponent quietly eyeing the champ’s crown, skilled and ferocious and determined to dethrone him.“I’m not going to apologize for wanting to dominate,” she says. “I’m not going to apologize for making myself lethal.” And then comes the vital bit, landing like a punch: “I’m not going to apologize for losing, because one day I will be winning and winning and winning.”That’s the thing about the path to success, isn’t it — that talented people need to be allowed to stumble sometimes, then continue their quest. “Patience” itself is a case in point. Part of the Second Stage Theater Uptown series dedicated to emerging playwrights and early-career artists, the show isn’t a win for Lloyd and his director, Zhailon Levingston, but it’s hardly a wipeout either.Daniel Bryant (Justiin Davis), the play’s 25-year-old Black superstar, hasn’t stumbled in a very long time. Two decades ago, he exhibited a talent for solitaire, and his mother (Mary E. Hodges), who is also his manager, has been nurturing it ever since. Undefeated for four years running, he is focused, famous and alone at the top.Solitaire is an obscure choice of game to graft onto those glittery circumstances, but Lloyd is thinking figuratively — about a competition in which one’s true opponent is oneself, and about the pressure and isolation of being an only.Daniel is so adept at flying solo in his cosseted life that his adorable fiancé, Jordan (the immensely likable and funny Jonathan Burke), has a very specific, not-unreasonable-sounding fear: that one day the phone will ring and on the other end will be someone who works for Daniel, calling to dump him on Daniel’s behalf. Though he and Jordan have just bought a fancy new house, their relationship feels less than solid, and anyway, Daniel is a living-in-the-moment kind of guy.“The future is terrifying,” he says.On the fence about what should come next, he is tempted to retire — until the 18-year-old up-and-comer Ella (Zainab Barry) appears on the scene, threatening his dominance with her own Black excellence. Daniel’s mother, understandably frightened that her career will collapse if he stops playing, encourages a match between them without mentioning a crucial fact: She has taken on Ella as a client, too.Does that seem like an implausible conflict of interest and egregious betrayal of trust? Yes. Are we meant to give Daniel’s mother (the character’s name is simply Mother) a pass? Apparently. It’s a distracting complication that seems manufactured, and not for any clear reason — not even after the play’s Venus-and-Serena theme becomes overt.You will be primed for that motif early on, when Daniel tells a class of high schoolers that he has “been called the Venus Williams of solitaire,” and you think: Venus, really? Not Serena? Then Daniel’s friend, Nikita (Nemuna Ceesay), mentions that same fact about him, unnecessarily.When Ella happens to have the same surname as Daniel, though they’re not related, it seems tailored to the Williams sisters metaphor, in which of course she is Serena. On the plus side, the coincidence of their both being Bryants does allow Ella to make a pointed observation.“Very popular name,” she says. “Could go into why, if we really wanted to. Probably something depressing. Or — colonial.”Competition approaches: Zainab Barry as Ella in the background, and Davis with Mary E. Hodges, who plays his mother-manager. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt the McGinn/Cazale Theater on the Upper West Side, “Patience” has an across-the-board appealing cast, and the show is beautifully designed, except for an unpersuasive late scene involving the illusion of two Daniels. (Set by Lawrence E. Moten III, costumes by Avery Reed, lights by Adam Honoré, sound by Christopher Darbassie.)Ultimately, though, the play’s balance is off, as if it can’t decide whether Daniel anchors it, or if Daniel and Ella do, or if maybe the show wants to be an ensemble piece.Its heart, though, is invested in a future in which Black megatalents like Daniel and Ella — or Venus and Serena — don’t have to occupy the pinnacle of their field one at a time.“I will not be intimidated by the competition,” Ella vows. “I will welcome it, I will not try to crush it, I will encourage it, I will make room. I will make room and I will still win. Because I know there can be more than one.”PatienceThrough Aug. 28 at the McGinn/Cazale Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      ‘Take Me Out’ to Return to Broadway This Fall

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      Jesse Williams and Jesse Tyler Ferguson will reprise their roles in the play, which won a Tony for best revival in June.Second Stage Theater’s much-acclaimed, Tony Award-winning revival of Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play, “Take Me Out,” is returning to Broadway this fall with both Jesse Williams and Jesse Tyler Ferguson reprising their roles, producers announced on Thursday.“Take Me Out,” about how members of a baseball team react when a player comes out as gay, opened in April at the Helen Hayes Theater in a production directed by Scott Ellis. It went on to receive the Tony for best play revival in June — edging out “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” “How I Learned to Drive,” “Trouble in Mind” and “American Buffalo.”The play will begin performances at the Schoenfeld Theater on Oct. 27, and is scheduled to run for 14 weeks.While Ferguson, who won the Tony for best featured actor for playing a business manager who becomes a fan of the sport, and Williams, who was nominated for his role as a baseball player who comes out as gay in the mid-1990s, are returning to the production, the rest of the cast has yet to be announced.“At its best, ‘Take Me Out,’” Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, wrote in his review last April, “is a five-tool play. It’s (1) funny, with an unusually high density of laughs for a yarn that is (2) quite serious, and (3) cerebral without undermining its (4) emotion. I’m not sure whether (5) counts as one tool or many, but ‘Take Me Out’ gives meaty roles to a team of actors.”The production, which required audience members to put their phones in locked pouches before the show, also made headlines when a video of Williams’s nude scene was filmed by an audience member and shared online in May. The leak drew widespread condemnation, including from the show’s producers and some of its cast members, but Williams seemed to mostly take it in stride.“I come here to do work,” he said in an interview. “I’m going to tell the truth onstage, I’m going to be vulnerable.”The production, the first revival of the show in nearly 20 years, had intended to open in 2020, but Broadway went dark in March 2020 before previews began. More

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      In Paris, Comedy Clubs Draw Energy From Young, Diverse Crowds

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      American-style stand-up, a relatively young art form in France, is attracting a young, racially diverse crowd to a blossoming club scene.PARIS — It was supposed to be an international breakthrough for France’s young comedy scene. When “Standing Up,” an original series developed by Fanny Herrero, creator of the hit show “Call My Agent,” landed on Netflix in March, many critics fell for this love letter to Parisian stand-up.Yet less than two months later, Netflix canceled the partly written second season, citing low viewership. For Herrero and the talented, unknown cast she assembled, it must have felt like a hasty blow. On the ground, it also feels out of step with the exceptional rise of American-style comedy clubs in Paris — a type of venue that barely even existed in France before the 21st century.I visited a few of them in July, as the city’s traditional theater scene slowed down for the quiet summer months. While established French playhouses have complained in recent months that audiences haven’t returned in the same numbers as pandemic restrictions have eased, comedy seems impervious to this slump. At venues such as Madame Sarfati, Barbès Comedy Club and Le Fridge, all opened within the past three years, there wasn’t a free table in sight.And in most cases, the crowd was exactly the kind of “new audience” so many theaters desperately seek to attract. As a theater critic in France, I’m used to sitting in auditoriums full of all-white, older spectators. In the comedy world, the customers mirrored the young, racially diverse lineups onstage — to the point where, when an older comic at Barbès Comedy Club asked if anyone there was his age, and joked about realizing in his 40s that “women are people too,” he was met with deathly silence.The crowd at Barbès Comedy Club.Christine CoquilleauIf French stand-up skews fresh-faced, it’s in part because it’s a relatively new art form. While American comedy clubs have decades of history behind them, sketch and character-based comedy has long dominated in France, and comics typically performed solo shows in regular playhouses. That started to change in 2006, when the well-known comic Jamel Debbouze created a TV show called “Jamel Comedy Club.” Its success led Debbouze to open a venue in Paris that at first was advertised simply as Le Comedy Club, since there was no competition.The club became the crucible of French stand-up. Kader Aoun, a Debbouze collaborator, soon launched rival shows at Paname Art Café, a bustling venue where Herrero, the creator of “Standing Up,” first discovered the art form. Younger comics, many of whom cut their teeth as part of Jamel’s permanent troupe, also saw an opening. Of the newest clubs, Madame Sarfati is the brainchild of Fary, who has two Netflix specials behind him, while Barbès and Le Fridge were launched by Shirley Souagnon and Kev Adams, respectively.Yet even when the founders are household names, French comedy clubs almost uniformly bank on surprise lineups. Even for the more prestigious evening shows, there are no headliners; if you see someone famous, it’s a bonus. In addition to explaining how comedy clubs work (for the average French person, it’s still not a given), M.C.s take special care to note that performers are there to try out acts, and that some jokes will “die” right there in the room.Nordine Ganso performing at Paname Art Café.Jack Tribeca/BestimageThe results are bound to vary from night to night. But in my visits, the clubs offered a refreshing snapshot of French youth and culture, and one that was often at odds with the rest of the arts world here. Sneakers and athletic wear, a socioeconomic litmus test in Paris, were practically de rigueur. In all of the lineups I saw, over half the performers were Black or of Arab descent — a level of diversity that is the legacy of pioneering French comics like Debbouze and Gad Elmaleh.Perhaps unsurprisingly, everyday racism was a recurring topic. At Paname Art Café, the stand-up Ilyes Mela dexterously steered a complex story about a gender reveal party for a Black child to a thoughtful conclusion: “It’s not for the person who hits to say if it hurts.” Nordine Ganso, seen at both Paname and Madame Sarfati with slightly different sets, has honed a naïve persona that enhances both his tales of growing up in a part-Congolese, part-Algerian family, and his subtly homoerotic comparison between holding hands with women and with his “friend Karim.”While most performers, like Ganso, are regulars at multiple comedy clubs, there are now enough venues in Paris to offer a range of atmospheres. Le Fridge has a trendy cocktail bar, with drinks named after American comics like Amy Schumer and Dave Chappelle. Madame Sarfati, nestled in an upscale district by the Louvre, is clearly aiming for an exclusive feel, with a performance space designed by the street artist JR that patrons are not allowed to photograph. On the other end of the spectrum, the friendly, no-frills Barbès Comedy Club, where the cast of “Standing Up” honed their scripted sets incognito ahead of filming, brings stand-up to a far less privileged neighborhood, home to many Parisians of African descent. (Barbès also hosts a weekly English-language show, New York Comedy Night.)The bar at Madame Sarfati.Mathilde & GeoffreyThe clubs differ in their attitudes toward gender, too. While there are hugely successful female comics in France, from Florence Foresti to Blanche Gardin, women were outnumbered at most clubs. Some venues take a proactive approach to the issue: A Barbès spokeswoman said the club insists on parity, and its lineups were refreshing in that regard. At Madame Sarfati, on the other hand, not a single woman performed when I attended. When asked about it, a manager said the women who usually perform at the club were “on tour.” (The waitressing staff, on the other hand, was entirely female.)The effect of gender balance on the overall shows was real. Some experienced Madame Sarfati performers delivered outright sexist, as well as transphobic, material. As a woman, it was far more joyful to sit in audiences where I wasn’t merely the butt of the jokes, and to hear performers riff on having large breasts while exercising (Sofia Belabbes) or the appeal and cost of nose surgery (the effervescent Nash, an effective M.C. at Le Fridge).Compared to the larger Paris theater world, the stand-up scene seems a strongly heteronormative place, with opposite-sex dating by far the most popular topic. That has perhaps helped turn Paris’s clubs into date-night hot spots, judging by the comics’ interactions with the audience.Yet the Paris scene is so new that there is a heady sense on any given night that its artists are grappling with what stand-up can be, and achieve, within French culture. Netflix’s “Standing Up” may have been called off, but the comedy clubs that inspired it are only getting started. More

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      Netflix’s “13” Brings Back Memories For Its Stage Cast

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      For the creators and cast of the 2008 musical “13,” a new Netflix adaptation brings back memories — theatrical and hormonal.It’s one thing to wrangle a few Von Trapp kids. Some Matildas. A Gavroche or two.But a baker’s dozen of newly minted teenagers, raging hormones and all, packed into a handful of dressing rooms backstage in a Broadway theater? And aside from the crew, the musical director — and, yes, three child wranglers — no adults in sight?This was the great experiment of “13,” the 2008 coming-of-age musical both about and performed by a group of kids going through one of the more chaotically vulnerable stages of life. The show, about a 13-year-old named Evan juggling his parents’ divorce, his upcoming bar mitzvah and a seemingly life-shattering move from New York to the middle of Indiana, was not just a test in managing this particular company — an all-teen cast and band — but in finding exactly what the audience appetite was for a work that sat squarely in the limbo between Disney and “Spring Awakening.”Adult reviewers were lukewarm — though, to be fair, the 14-year-old companion of the New York Times critic Ben Brantley found it to be “pretty good” — and “13” closed three months after opening night, one of numerous Broadway casualties during the recession.But in the years since, the show, with music by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, has found renewed life in schools — and now on Netflix, where a new generation of tweens have picked up the mantle with a film adaptation that began streaming on Friday.Most of the original cast members are now in their late 20s. They’ve graduated from having adolescent showmances to planning their weddings. Some are still acting or directing or choreographing, on TV and Broadway and elsewhere; others have left the business entirely.And one actress — Ariana Grande, making her Broadway debut as the gossip-prone, flip-phone-wielding Charlotte — has become a bona fide pop supernova.Ahead of the film’s release, members of that cast, band, creative team and production crew looked back on their memories of the show — in conversation with a reporter who, years earlier, at age 11, happened to be sitting in the audience of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater to see “13,” her first Broadway musical. Here are edited excerpts from our discussions.A book editor at Scholastic reached out to Jason Robert Brown to see if he would be interested in brainstorming a new project: an original musical that would also tie into a new book series. The collaboration eventually fell through, but not before Brown thought up a pitch: a story about young teenagers that would become the framework for “13.”JASON ROBERT BROWN (music and lyrics) Dan Elish had seen me do an interview where I said I really wanted to do a show with a bunch of dancing teenagers. We were doing “Parade” in the same season as “Footloose,” and people didn’t respond to “Parade” very well when it came out — it’s very heavy. I got the sense that we were spending the whole season competing against dancing teenagers.DAN ELISH (book) He was kidding, you know? But I had just had this young adult novel come out, about two eighth grade boys in New York. Maybe I was the guy to write the Great Dancing Teenager Musical.BROWN Dan sent me a copy of his novel. And I liked it, but I didn’t think it was a musical. But I said, “If you’re into working on something with me, I do have this idea that I came up with once about a show with nothing but 13-year-olds in it.” And Dan said, “Sure, that sounds fun.”The musical premiered in 2007 at Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. As the show’s producers set their sights on Broadway, the writer Robert Horn and the director Jeremy Sams joined the creative team and started searching for their New York cast.JEREMY SAMS (director) We saw hundreds of kids in New York and L.A. from all over the place. It was absolutely obvious, the more kids we saw, who we should have in our show. When Ariana Grande turns up, and Liz Gillies and Allie Trimm and Graham [Phillips], it’s quite clear. I’ll never forget when Ariana sang to me and Jason. BROWN At the end of the opening number, there are four scat solos. And I remember a day [in rehearsal] with everyone going around the piano and just improvising, and some of them clearly were like, I have no idea how to improvise a solo. And some of them were Ariana Grande.Ariana Grande, left, with Williams, Phillips and Chris Raymond during the opening night curtain call. Walter McBride/Corbis, via Getty ImagesARIANA GRANDE (Charlotte) Working with Jason is the ultimate master class — not only in musicianship, but his storytelling and creativity, his problem solving. I remember him leaving the room whenever they felt something was missing and coming back 30 minutes later with a brand-new brilliant song.AARON SIMON GROSS (Archie) I was simultaneously working and star-struck at virtually all times.ELIZABETH GILLIES (Lucy) Ariana and I joke about it a lot, because she was so social and making friends with everyone. And I was so hard core back then when I first started auditioning that I just kind of tucked away into a corner. I was so determined to book this role that I didn’t want to talk to anyone until we started the reading process.BRYNN WILLIAMS (Cassie) All of our pressure was self-inflicted. We wanted to do well because we wanted to prove that we were capable. But there wasn’t any outside pressure at all; they did a fantastic job of treating us like professionals while also being aware that we were teenagers.BROWN A lot of them had done more Broadway shows than I had. And my feeling was, look, I’ve written some hard music, but I know it’s possible. I wasn’t going to simplify it for them unless they couldn’t do it. But let’s find out first. And they all rose to it.ROBERT HORN (book) It was so interesting to see that divide between the incredible work ethic that they had at such a young age, and the talent and commitment they bring to it — and the next moment they’re running off and getting into trouble. And you realize that they’re kids.Case in point: an out-of-town tryout in the summer of 2008 at Goodspeed Musicals in Chester, Conn.BROWN In the middle of July or August or whatever it was, we just let loose 20 kids on this little town in Connecticut, all living in the same house. They were 13 years old; they were a bunch of punks.GILLIES The closest thing we had to entertainment was the pizzeria, a graveyard and the woods.EAMON FOLEY (Richie) It was summer camp with the most talented kids in the world. Like wildly creative children who, one half of the day, had this really sick show being built on their talents, and then the other half of the day were running through the woods and smoking weed out of Gatorade bottles.HORN Someone got caught with a joint. I’m not going to mention names.Through the Goodspeed run, and even as performances began on Broadway in September 2008, the show was constantly changing.HORN We were writing it with those kids. They were giving us the authenticity. I can bring my humor and storytelling, but I was never a 14-year-old girl.DELANEY MORO (Kendra) They were so good at giving us agency to share our ideas, and they would pick up on things that we said or did and try to write it in.GRAHAM PHILLIPS (Evan) New jokes were being put in and taken out. Depending on how the audience reacted, I’d put up one of five fingers [onstage, directed at Horn in the audience]. If it was really bad, I’d put up a crooked index finger. That was like the equivalent of a trombone womp, womp.From left: the composer Jason Robert Brown, the book co-writer Robert Horn and Phillips, the musical’s leading (young) man.via Robert HornBROWN I put in a big finale of the first act at Goodspeed — my idea was a James Brown soul revue kind of thing. That lasted one performance. But on Broadway, we had a whole Dance Dance Revolution number that replaced it.HORN At one point, the girls came out in these background-singer sparkly dresses, and then all these Dance Dance Revolution machines came out — and poor Graham Phillips, who was phenomenal, was not a dancer.ALLIE TRIMM (Patrice) We spent hours teching it so that we had the Dance Dance Revolution arrows lighting up to match with our choreography.The actors weren’t the only teenagers onstage.BROWN We also had a band that was entirely kids. So that was a whole other level of crazy — of course, that’s the kind of crazy that I most enjoyed, the kid musicians.TOM KITT (musical director) They were just a joy. They were game for anything. The band was onstage and I, of course — the one adult — was hidden by scenery.CHARLIE ROSEN (swing bass, guitar and percussion) We were kids — we had shortcomings, you know? We weren’t the greatest sight readers. But Jason didn’t dumb down any of his writing. We really had to step up and become professional musicians way earlier than even kids in college might really understand — things that they don’t teach in music school, like showing up on time and rehearsal etiquette and how to follow your music director.GRANDE I think it is safe to say that all of us quickly developed the discipline and stamina that we’d have for the rest of our careers doing eight shows a week as young teenagers, even just vocally alone.For the cast, backstage was often more dramatic than the show itself.PHILLIPS I was sharing a dressing room with Eric Nelsen [playing Brett], who was dating Liz at the time, who was sharing a dressing room with Ariana, who I was dating at the time.BROWN Robert really got into the gossip.HORN Somebody would be going out with somebody, and then a few days later, they’d be going out with somebody else.PHILLIPS I remember a lot of sneaking around. I became more acquainted with the nooks and crannies of the Jacobs Theater than probably anybody else. One of the wranglers was really good at finding me.TRIMM Everyone was figuring out their sexuality and finding themselves. And I think everybody was kind of going through such a massive awakening of who we are as people, which is kind of a funny, beautiful parallel to the show.Eli Golden, center, is Evan in the Netflix movie, which includes adult actors and some new songs.Alan Markfield/NetflixBut in some ways, when “13” closed in January 2009, it still wasn’t finished. Brown and Horn spent six months tearing the show apart and revising the version that would be licensed in schools for community theater productions.BROWN I always loved “Brand New You,” at the end of the show. And I remember watching it one night, maybe somewhere toward the end of the run, and thinking this is what the whole show was supposed to have been, as far as this audience is concerned. A lot of exactly what I started saying: It should have been teenagers dancing. It should have been this sort of kinetic rock-concert sort of thing. And instead, over the course of developing it, it had become very personal and very intimate.GILLIES The audiences [at Goodspeed] were so receptive, and our theater was very quaint. By the time we got to Broadway, it was a whole other animal. It’s a very large stage for a very intimate, small show.BROWN We had invited a whole bunch of kids to the dress rehearsal, and it was a very young and a very rowdy audience. I just remember the shrieks that the show got that night. I called my wife and I said, “I think we have a hit.” And I was so wrong. But I wish I could have just frozen the show that night, because that feeling was exactly what I wanted. More

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      You Are Getting Sleepy. When You Wake Up, You Will Be an Improv Star.

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      In “Hyprov,” audience members are hypnotized into performing sketches. The show’s creators argue that the novices make stronger choices than pros would.“The deeper you go, the better you feel. The deeper you go, the better you feel.”Last month, an hour before midnight at the Improv Asylum’s basement theater in Chelsea, a hypnotist made a surprise drop-in at a comedy show and growlingly repeated this phrase over and over, casting a spell on 20 strangers.Asad Mecci, a broad-shouldered charmer in black jeans, trained his unblinking stare on two rows of seated volunteers — heads slumped, bodies relaxed, eyes closed — and told them they had lost their belly buttons. Then he snapped his fingers and his limp subjects snapped upright, looking around, peeking underneath chairs, searching. The audience erupted in laughter. Then Mecci, 47, asked one frantic man what he was doing. “I know I had my belly button when I got here,” the man said, flabbergasted. It killed.In the popular consciousness, hypnotism is the stuff of vampires, side shows and watch-waving therapists. But can it be the building block of a new comedic art?That is the ambition of the makers of “Hyprov,” a marriage of improv comedy and hypnotism that was workshopped here this summer in advance of its New York premiere at the Daryl Roth Theater on Aug. 12. “We’re trying to heighten hypnosis from a vaudevillian show into the theatrical level,” Mecci said in the Times Square office of his producer, a day after the performance I attended. Sitting next to him was his co-star and co-creator, Colin Mochrie, a star of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” the television show that introduced many to improv comedy.Mochrie, left, and Mecci, right, and their cast of hypnotized audience members. Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“In both of our careers, we have gotten ‘Those people are plants,’” Mochrie, 64, said, explaining the skepticism these performers face. “No one wants to believe the thing we’re doing, the thing we trained our lives to do, is something we’re actually doing.”Mochrie conceded that he had at first been skeptical of hypnosis, but after bringing “Hyprov” on tour to more than 50 cities in North America along with London and the Edinburgh Fringe, he now speaks with the zeal of a convert. He pointed to an improvised sketch from the previous night’s show, built from audience suggestions: Hypnotized novices were encouraged to play a scene at a wake for a half-penguin, half-beaver creature, and they responded with performances full of wailing and even real tears. When Mochrie mentioned that this animal was the product of two different ones, one woman didn’t pause before adopting a morally outraged posture. “It’s unnatural!” she shouted.Mochrie wondered if a professional comic would have made such a strong choice. It isn’t just the quality of the line, but the speed and intensity of the delivery that matters. “Improvisers don’t always have emotional content, but when she said, ‘It’s unnatural,’ it felt like something against the core of her being,” he said. He added that while new improvisers take a second to think about what to do, hypnotized performers just react, because they have “the part of their brain that deals with self-criticism wiped clean.”It’s true that the show I saw featured performers as committed as any improv comic I had seen. At no point did anyone appear close to breaking. To be sure, though, there was something uncanny — even a little creepy — about these performers who moved a little sluggishly, their eyes drooped.Mecci with a newly minted improv performer. The show is rooted in Second City classes Mecci took.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIf this sounds like comedy from a zombified future, Mecci was quick to point out that the biggest misconception about hypnosis is that people have lost control. “I can make you do things onstage that you normally wouldn’t do, but I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” he said, drawing a distinction that can seem blurry. He said that no one had ever expressed regrets about participating in one of his shows — but, of course, they are told that the deeper they go, the better they will feel.Asked what was going on inside the heads of those looking for their belly buttons, Mecci said some would later say they were hallucinating, and others that they were just compelled to look. One woman I interviewed after the show said that while hypnotized, she heard everything and knew what she was doing.There is disagreement among hypnotists over whether they are putting subjects in a hypnotic state, or if the subjects are acting as a result of suggestibility. Mecci, who has studied stage hypnosis and is a member of the National Guild of Hypnotists, a professional organization that certifies practitioners, is careful not to choose a side. But his tendency is to demystify, likening hypnosis to mundane moments of extreme focus, like watching a horror movie or daydreaming.When he fixes his probing gaze on you, it can be disorienting. Mecci speaks in a steady pace and with authority, but if you listen closely to him while he is working, you might notice that he prefers statements that don’t entirely cohere. “As you wonder about what you are wondering about, you can begin to understand many things, can’t you?” he says so quickly that you can barely register it.“Vague and ambiguous language causes hypnotic trance states,” he said, a point that might help explain some political slogans and mission statements.The genesis of “Hyprov” goes back to a 2015 class Mecci took at the Second City in Toronto to help with his stage act. He had been doing hypnosis shows on cruises, in addition to working with people on reducing stress, losing weight and other kinds of therapy. (Rufus Wainwright composed music for “Hyprov” after Mecci helped his husband quit smoking through hypnosis, Mecci said.)The show’s creators found that complex scenes don’t work as well as simple, direct concepts.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIn Second City’s introductory courses, “a lot of their exercises engage and confuse the conscious mind,” he said. “They’re getting to a point where the improviser doesn’t get a chance to think, where it becomes automatic and unconscious.” A common note was “get out of your head,” but Mecci thought he could achieve similar results through hypnosis.So he asked Mochrie for help. Mochrie was eager for a challenge, even if he worried that the laughs would come from making audiences cluck like chickens. And while he conceded that the crowd might at first laugh at the hypnotized improvisers, they soon lose themselves in the scene and laugh with them.“This art form is about acceptance,” Mochrie said of the comedy that is famous for utilizing the concept of “Yes, and” to build scenes. “Our first thing as humans is to go, ‘No, I have a better idea.’ The beauty of hypnosis is: That’s gone. We now have pure improvisers.”The process of hypnosis takes several minutes, after Mecci first brings 20 people onstage, runs through exercises, then picks five of the most suggestible. He looks for “physiological tells” and expressionless faces. He tells his volunteers to breathe, relax and close their eyes as his voice shifts from a light baritone into the range of the narrator of movie trailers.In touring the show, Mecci and Mochrie discovered that hypnosis would not work as well for more complex scenes. The best moments result from simple and direct objectives that can be delivered concisely. And they make a point of reassuring audience members that they will not do anything they don’t want to do.Mecci has ambitions to create a Blue Man Group-like franchise, but he also said hypnosis could unlock other creative pursuits, like stand-up or theater. When I asked Mecci if hypnosis could help me finish this article, Mochrie whispered in his ear: “Do it! Do it!”Making direct eye contact, Mecci calmly explained how hypnosis could help me imagine hitting my deadline and writing the perfect piece. His voice was steady, his gaze fixed. And if he did hypnotize me, I asked, could he influence the story I was going to write? The deeper I went, the more awkward I felt.“I’m not sure,” he said, with a glance piercing enough that made me, for an instant, turn away. More

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      Denzel Washington Honors August Wilson’s Legacy at House Opening

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      After fund-raising and restoration efforts, the childhood home of the playwright will offer artist residencies and other programming.PITTSBURGH — On Saturday, crowds gathered outside August Wilson’s childhood home in the historic Hill District here to celebrate the grand opening of the August Wilson House. After a yearslong fund-raising and restoration effort, the house where the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright spent the first 13 years of his life will now be open to the public with the goal of extending Wilson’s legacy and advancing Black arts in culture.Wilson, who died in 2005, is perhaps best known for his series of 10 plays called the American Century Cycle, which detail the various experiences of Black Americans throughout the 20th century. Nine of these plays are set in this city’s Hill District — a bastion of Black history, arts and culture — and one, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” is set in Chicago.The restoration effort was a long time coming. Wilson’s nephew, Paul Ellis Jr., began the project after his uncle’s death. The abandoned house had been left to sit in a state of disrepair. Although it became a spot of cultural pilgrimage for Wilson’s fans after his death, those pilgrims saw only decay once they arrived.With the help of various Pittsburgh foundations and other benefactors — among them, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington — the house is now a home for those who will follow in Wilson’s footsteps.The August Wilson House is not a museum. Instead, the restored space is a community center that will offer artist residencies, gathering spaces, fellowships and other programming for up-and-coming artists and scholars. There is also an outdoor stage behind the home, which is currently showcasing the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company’s production of Wilson’s play “Jitney” through Sept. 18.The playwright spent the first 13 years of his life in the house in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood, the setting for many of his plays.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesAccording to Sam Reiman, a trustee of the Richard King Mellon Foundation here and a board member of the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, the space will be “the birthplace of August Wilson’s successors.”Along with Reiman, Saturday’s ceremony featured a star-studded lineup of speakers, including Washington, who helped raise millions toward the home’s restoration. Washington also starred in, produced and directed the 2016 film adaptation of “Fences,” one of Wilson’s Pittsburgh-based plays, that filmed throughout the Hill District. He also produced the 2020 film adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”Washington praised those in attendance for their support of Wilson and his legacy.“I want to thank the community,” Washington said, because Wilson “is yours, and you are his. You just share him with the rest of us.”Wilson’s widow, Constanza Romero Wilson, who designed the costumes for many of Wilson’s later plays, also spoke at the event.“This is sacred ground,” she said of the house, located at 1727 Bedford Avenue. It “commemorates our generation’s hero — August Wilson. August Wilson House belongs to the Hill, to Black Americans, and because his stories are American stories of triumph under oppression, it belongs to all of us Americans.”Washington thanked the community for its support. “You just share him with the rest of us,” he said.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesAlso in attendance were local leaders, including Ed Gainey, Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor, and Daniel Lavelle, a city councilman.The commencement speaker for Gainey’s college graduation in 1994 was none other than August Wilson, whose name the mayor admitted to never hearing before that day. He called his mother, he said, and she told him everything about the playwright.“There’s not a child in this city who should not know who August Wilson is. Not a child,” Gainey said. “And today speaks volumes to how far we’ve come in recognizing African American history in this city and celebrating the heroes that came before us.”He added, “Today is August Wilson’s Day.”It was a sentiment echoed by Lavelle, who had one note for Gainey’s speech.“Not only should every kid in our city know who August Wilson is,” he said, “but every person in this country should know who August Wilson is.”Lavelle also read a City of Pittsburgh proclamation declaring Aug. 13, 2022, Paul Ellis Jr. Day, honoring his work to preserve Wilson’s home.“People actually told me that my vision was too big,” Ellis explained, adding that when he spoke about what he wanted his uncle’s house to become, people looked at him as if he was a child proudly declaring he’d someday be president.“But as Nelson Mandela said, ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done.’” More