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      Lars Eidinger Might Be the Greatest German Actor You’ve Never Heard Of

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      He might be the greatest Shakespearean actor you’ve never heard of. At last, New Yorkers will get to see his no-holds-barred portrayal of Hamlet in Thomas Ostermeier’s production at BAM.The German actor Lars Eidinger could not have been more easygoing at the photo shoot for this article. After arriving sans entourage in front of the Plaza Hotel, he clambered up a couple of stacked N.Y.P.D. concrete barriers, precariously posing like a gigantic besuited stork. As the photographer eyed a gurgling fountain nearby, Eidinger casually asked: “I go in?”It was a chilly, drizzly October afternoon in New York, but he took off his socks and shoes, pulled up his pants and waded into the water. Afterward, he stripped down to his underwear and changed into the sweats he’d brought along (just in case), unfazed by gusts of wind and gawkers on the street.That go-with-the-flow spontaneity won’t come as a surprise to anybody who’s seen Eidinger onstage. His Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017, for example, was a chaotic-evil rock ’n’ roll goblin, the performance simultaneously illuminating and unhinged. This monarch was “a bogeyman guaranteed to haunt your nightmares for weeks to come,” Ben Brantley wrote in his New York Times review of Thomas Ostermeier’s production for the Berlin Schaubühne theater company.Now New York theatergoers will be able to take in another Eidinger tour de force when he and Ostermeier bring their “Hamlet,” also from the Schaubühne, to BAM on Oct. 27. (The short run concludes Nov. 5.) By the end of the gripping, delirious show — which includes a hip-hop interlude, cross-dressing and Eidinger stuffing dirt into his mouth — you might be tempted to call an exorcist on this prince of Denmark.Thomas Ostermeier’s production for the Berlin Schaubühne company debuted in 2008, and finally arrives in New York with its star ready to wear the upside-down crown.Arno DeclairYet the actor does not set out to get a rise out of audience members. Rather, he uses a good old technique to draw them into the world of the play by creating a highly physical, no-holds-barred performance.“This has much to do with my love for Bertolt Brecht,” the jovial 46-year-old actor said in between sips of a latte outside a Midtown cafe. “Brecht said, ‘Zeigt, dass Ihr zeigt’ — ‘Show that you are showing.’ I’m all the time showing that I’m an actor onstage in a play. It’s the opposite of the understanding of a Method actor: I never become somebody else.“The only thing I try to achieve is to become myself,” he continued. “Maybe I’m more myself when I’m onstage as Hamlet than I am right now talking to you.”Eidinger has toured the world with the Schaubühne, and his charisma and all-in approach have earned him far-flung fans. This may help to explain why in recent years he has become a familiar presence on international screens — chances are you’ve seen that really tall guy with the wide jaw line and narrowly set blue eyes without knowing who he was. He has played his share of extremists, including an industrialist plotting against the Weimar Republic in the Netflix series “Babylon Berlin” and an ice-cold Nazi officer in the BBC alt-historical show “SS-GB.” He has also effectively mined restraint in naturalistic dramas, most notably as a newly separated dad visiting his parents in the German film “Home for the Weekend,” and as an actor dying of cancer in the affecting Swiss film “My Little Sister.” (In that film, his character portrays “Hamlet” in a staging by a director played by … Ostermeier.)“Somehow he’s like the Who breaking their guitars onstage,” the writer-director Olivier Assayas said of the actor who starred in the HBO series “Irma Vep.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesTellingly, our conversation took place while Eidinger was in town for the New York Film Festival, where he helped introduce Noah Baumbach’s latest feature, “White Noise,” in which he stars alongside Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver. The in-demand actor then had to leave our interview in a mad rush because he was running late for a meeting with the director Shawn Levy, for whom he has been starring in a series adaptation of the Anthony Doerr best seller “All the Light We Cannot See.”One of Eidinger’s recent (and most memorable) screen turns was in the HBO series “Irma Vep,” in which he portrayed Gottfried, a flamboyant, crack-addicted German star who loves pushing people’s buttons. “I liked the idea that Lars carries the torch of the madness of 1970s German cinema,” the writer-director Olivier Assayas said this summer in a video chat about his show. “Somehow he’s like the Who breaking their guitars onstage. It’s stuff I grew up on and I think that’s something that’s missing in contemporary cinema.”It’s missing on contemporary stages, too, giving Eidinger’s self-aware hyper-theatrical performances a unique power. But if they resonate with theatergoers past the initial shock to the system, it’s because he never loses sight of his characters.EIDINGER GREW UP in Berlin, where he still lives with his wife and daughter, and studied theater there. He became a salaried member of the Schaubühne ensemble in 1999, though he admits that it took him a while to find his bearings as a professional actor. A production of “Troilus and Cressida” with the British director James Macdonald, in 2005, proved to be a turning point. “I was really lost as Troilus, and I asked James, ‘Can you please help me understand his situation?,’” Eidinger recalled. “He said, ‘Lars, just the words. Just the words.’”Eidinger with Alicia Vikander in “Irma Vep.” He portrayed Gottfried, a flamboyant, crack-addicted German star who loves pushing people’s buttons.Carole Bethuel/HBOEidinger confessed that at the time he didn’t quite get what Macdonald meant. It hit him a few years later, when he started to rehearse “Hamlet,” which premiered in 2008 and has been touring on and off ever since.“Suddenly I thought, “OK, he was absolutely right — it’s just about the words,’” Eidinger said. “Just try it at home: Say the line ‘To be or not to be’ and try to understand what it means for you. I guarantee that there will be an emotion coming up. I don’t have to go onstage with any kind of preparation for the way I go into a mood or to a certain kind of emotion. I go onstage and try to be as open and blank as possible, and then it’s just about the words.” (Eidinger is so attached to “Hamlet” that a forthcoming documentary about him is titled “To Be or Not to Be.”)While it takes some preparation to achieve that state of readiness, Eidinger claims that he doesn’t start from high concepts. “There’s a very nice quote from Helene Weigel: ‘If you have an idea, forget it,’” Eidinger said, quoting Brecht’s wife and the director of the renowned Berliner Ensemble. “I believe in the genius of creation out of the moment. You invent something out of an impulse because you are open-minded, but you are not aware how meaningful it is. For example, in ‘Hamlet’ I wear the crown upside down,” he continued. “We tried several crowns and then we had one that was a bit too big for my head and always fell off. So I put it on the other way around, and then it worked.”It probably helps that he and Ostermeier seem to have a complicated relationship that involves trust but also a degree of one-upmanship. Speaking about their rehearsals in a video conversation, the director said: “We were constantly competing on who has the more crazy idea, who is more funny, who is more inventive, who is more creative. Because we know each other so well, it’s often, ‘OK, but I know even better, it can be even more crazy.’”“I’m aware of everything,” Eidinger said of his acting onstage. “I see the person in the first row taking candy out of his pocket and eating it. It doesn’t distract me: It makes it more complex.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesAnd this does not stop once a show reaches the stage. Jenny König, who plays Gertrude and Ophelia in “Hamlet” and Lady Anne in “Richard III,” knows all too well that acting with Eidinger requires being constantly on alert. “I think he’s really good at creating an illusion that it’s happening the first time right now — he can’t just play the scenes like he did it a hundred times before,” she said in a video chat. “It’s always this special moment where something else could happen. Sometimes it doesn’t work, that’s the risk, but the aim is to be in the moment and to experience real reactions.”Onstage, Eidinger is in a heightened state of consciousness that allows him to experience a hyper-awareness of his environment. That, in turn, helps him modulate and adjust his performance on the spot. “Some actors describe acting like being a tunnel, but it’s the complete opposite for me: I’m aware of everything,” he said. “I’m standing onstage, maybe I’m emotional and crying real tears, but at the same time I see the person in the first row taking candy out of his pocket and eating it. I can think about bringing my daughter to school. It doesn’t distract me: It makes it more complex.”This openness to his surroundings is also expressed into an interest in exploring other mediums. Eidinger, who mentions music as a primary inspiration, released a trip-hoppy album, “I’ll Break Ya Legg,” in 1998; quotes the rapper Tyler, the Creator as freely as Brecht; and has been deejaying for decades, including regular gigs at the Schaubühne. (“I’d say his taste of music is much too commercial,” Ostermeier sniffed. Someone needs to write a play à clef about these two.) He also loves taking photographs and has directed a few shows — this fall he is reprising the adaptation of “Peer Gynt” that he hatched with the artist John Bock and starred in.“For me, there’s not a big difference in how I express myself, so I’m completely satisfied just doing photography, I’m completely satisfied just directing or doing music,” Eidinger said. “Acting is something I stick to because maybe I’m most talented. In all the other art forms, I feel limitations; when I act, I feel no limits. And that’s very attractive, of course.” More

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      Review: In This ‘Wuthering Heights,’ Music, Moors and Untamed Spirits

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      Emma Rice’s glorious stage adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel is a feat of storytelling, with a singing and dancing chorus embodying the moors.With a whip in one hand and a wind-bent tree in the other, the barefoot girl makes a taunting entrance, radiating caprice like some malicious sprite. This is Catherine Earnshaw, wild thing of Wuthering Heights, and if she is faintly ridiculous in her menace, it is menace nonetheless.Landing a first impression that distills the essence of a character is a rare art, and one of many things that the quick-witted, nimble-bodied company of Wise Children’s wondrous “Wuthering Heights” does exceptionally well. Adapted by the British director Emma Rice from Emily Brontë’s 19th-century novel, this music-filled version is an embrace, an envelopment: a feat of storytelling that wraps itself around the audience, pulling us into its silliness and sorrow.As besotted with the gale-tossed Yorkshire moors as Catherine and her tormented Heathcliff ever were, it makes that landscape a playground of the imagination, pausing every so often to ensure — in a friendly, tongue-in-cheek fashion — that we’re following along. Because as a baffled stranger says, when he bumbles into this multi-household, multigenerational saga, “Everyone’s related, all the names sound the same.”Well, yes, but this is a show so devoted to clarity that it helps us keep track of each fresh death (and goodness, these people die at an alarming rate) by chalking that character’s name on a blackboard the size of a small tombstone and walking it slowly across the stage. That’s also our clue that the next time we see the actor whose character has died, that cast member will most likely be playing someone else — possibly the dead person’s child.Also, the moors in this production at St. Ann’s Warehouse, performed last winter at the National Theater in London, are not just the locale, which Vicki Mortimer’s rough wooden set suggests mainly with the low gray clouds moving past on an upstage screen. (Video design is by Simon Baker.) The moors are embodied, too, by a chorus that sings, dances and possesses opinions — particularly the Leader of the Yorkshire Moors (a wonderful Nandi Bhebhe), who wears a headdress of brambly magnificence and takes on some of the vital background-providing function that the old family retainer Ellen has in the novel.Anyway, no need to brush up on your Brontë. You’ll be fine.Foreground from left: Liam Tamne, Tama Phethean and McCormick.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt the heart of it all are Catherine and Heathcliff, two halves of the same soul who are just scamps when her father finds little Heathcliff parentless on the Liverpool docks and brings him home to join the family at Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s older brother, Hindley, takes an instant loathing to the newcomer and treats him viciously, feeling his birthright threatened by the presence of this boy whose skin is darker than his.“Gypsy,” Hindley calls Heathcliff, and pummels him whenever he gets the chance.For Catherine, Heathcliff is a best friend and partner in mischief. Their youngest selves are played initially by puppets, then seamlessly succeeded by the adult actors Lucy McCormick and Liam Tamne, who bring a roiling chemistry to what will become Catherine and Heathcliff’s desperate mutual obsession. But as they gambol about the moors in those early years, it’s the joy they take in each other, and the freedom they feel together, that forms a bond so unbreakable it transcends death.Like the other inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and the neighboring estate Thrushcross Grange — home of the laughably effete Linton siblings, Edgar (Sam Archer) and Isabella (Katy Owen, the show’s brilliant comic powerhouse) — Catherine and Heathcliff are formed and deformed by their environment, a place where it’s easy to be solitary, to nurse a grudge, to wreak revenge.As beastly as Catherine generally is, and as enormous as her eventual betrayal of Heathcliff is, it’s the men who, beginning as boys, do great violence to one another, both physical and psychic, and spend their lives perpetuating it. Heathcliff, of course, is the prime example, growing from an ingenuous child into a glowering adult who spins all the considerable evil ever done to him — much of it based on race and class — into justification for his long game of retribution.From left: McCormick, Tamne, Phethean and Katy Owen, a font of mirth in a variety of characters.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYet Rice — a longtime St. Ann’s favorite for productions including “Brief Encounter” and “Tristan & Yseult” — makes certain that this beguiling “Wuthering Heights” is no carnival of gloom. Owen, especially, is a font of mirth, not only as Isabella but also as her extravagantly spoiled son, Little Linton, a creature so enfeebled by his cosseted upbringing that he’s practically boneless. Frances (Eleanor Sutton), the fragile nitwit who has the poor taste to marry Catherine’s brother, Hindley (Tama Phethean), is also a delicious source of comedy — as are assorted bitey dogs: puppets made of skulls on scythes.Hindley has kindness solely for Frances, and when she dies he crumbles squalidly. Yet as cruel and falling-down drunk as Phethean is as Hindley, he is equally gentle — which is not to say saintly — as Hindley’s son, Hareton, who has been beaten down by both his father and Heathcliff, but chooses not to emulate them by targeting victims of his own. It is a gorgeous performance, its agility and tenderness of a piece with this production’s.Stalked by Catherine’s perambulating ghost, and infused with live music by Ian Ross that feels somehow like earth and air, this is a show with a gloriously untamed spirit. On this first stop on its American tour, it is better — deeper and sexier — than the excellent version I saw in London early this year.At nearly three hours, including the intermission, it asks an investment of time that’s absolutely worth it. I, for one, want to go again.Wuthering HeightsThrough Nov. 6 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; stannswarehouse.org. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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      Jeff Weiss, an Unconventional Theatrical Force, Dies at 82

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      Downtown, he was known for sprawling works and vivid performances, but later in his career he drew praise as an actor in mainstream productions, too.Jeff Weiss, a playwright and actor known for innovative, offbeat shows in out-of-the-way New York theaters as well as for roles in mainstream productions, including more than a dozen on Broadway, died on Sept. 18 in Macungie, Pa., near Allentown. He was 82.His brother, Steve, said the cause was metastasized prostate cancer.Mr. Weiss was an important figure in the experimental theater scene in New York, beginning in the 1960s. His plays were seen at Caffe Cino in the West Village, La MaMa on the Lower East Side and other Manhattan spots known for the provocative and the outlandish. Those include his own Good Medicine and Company, a Lower East Side storefront theater that he ran with his partner in theater and in life, Carlos Ricardo Martinez. His plays were also sometimes staged in Allentown, where he grew up.The works he wrote were impossible to classify and did not lend themselves to conventional plot description. In “F.O.B.” (1972), Mr. Weiss spent much of his onstage time immersed in a bathtub full of cold water. “Hot Keys” (1992), Mr. Weiss’s response to the AIDS crisis, was a late-night serial about a serial killer.Some of his performances lasted four hours, five hours, even eight hours. His best-known and most ambitious work could be said to have lasted decades. It was called “… And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid.” Part I was first staged in 1966. Part IV appeared in 1984.In some of his works, including “… And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid, Part III,” Mr. Weiss played all the characters — and there could be a lot. In others, he made roles for other actors and could place extraordinary demands on them. “… And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid, Part IV,” for instance, consisted of dozens of scenes, with more added as the run went along, and they could be presented in any order.“Jeff would post the order for a particular evening an hour before the show,” Nicky Paraiso, an actor and musician who worked with him for decades, said by phone.The actress Kate Valk was part of the grueling adventure that was “Part IV,” which was subtitled “The Confessions of Conrad Gehrhardt,” with Mr. Weiss playing the title character.“Was Conrad a maniac?,” Ms. Valk said by email. “Or an actor who played a maniac? That was the edge Jeff walked in his work. It always felt a little dangerous.”“To perform onstage with him,” she added, “was to be right there inside his glorious mania, virile and vibrant.”A 1966 poster for “…And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid,” Mr. Weiss’s best-known and most ambitious work.La Mama ArchivesMr. Weiss performing in “…And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid” at La MaMa on the Lower East Side in 1966.La MaMa ArchivesThe goings-on could be tough sledding for anyone expecting a conventional play. In 1982, when Charles Richter, then the chairman of the theater department at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, brought to the school a Weiss play called “Last Gasps,” he was blunt in describing its appeal to The Morning Call, the Allentown newspaper.“I wouldn’t consider the play avant-garde,” he said. “I think it defies categorization. It’s part vaudeville, part intellectual, part blatant sensationalism. I think a large part of the audience won’t get it.”Yet enough people got Mr. Weiss that he developed a following, one that stretched beyond the experimental theater world. Part IV of his “Rent” opus drew a favorable notice from Mel Gussow in The New York Times during a production with members of the Wooster Group in SoHo in the summer of 1984.“As the play entered its fourth hour in the un-air-conditioned Performing Garage,” Mr. Gussow wrote, “one had long ago accepted discomfort as a way of Weiss life. Though the evening had its excesses, it also had a visceral investiture of theatrical imagination.”One whose attention Mr. Weiss caught was the actor Kevin Kline, who became a fan and friend and in 1986 was preparing to play Hamlet for Joseph Papp’s Public Theater.“During the casting process I was trying to think what actor could play the Player King,” Mr. Kline said by email, “one who could both inspire and confound Hamlet, someone as humane as he was unabashedly histrionic. To me Jeff was the man.”He left a note at Mr. Weiss’s theater asking if he’d consider auditioning, though that prospect seemed unlikely; some years earlier, Mr. Weiss had been cast in a Public show but had withdrawn, unable to handle the demands of conventional theater.“To my surprise, he responded favorably,” Mr. Kline said. “He came in and auditioned for the director, Liviu Ciulei, who was so knocked out that he asked him to play not only the Player King but also the ghost of Hamlet’s father, as well as Osric. He couldn’t get enough of him.”Mr. Weiss acknowledged that casting him was a risk.“They took bets at the theater on whether I would show up for rehearsal, and how long I would last,” he told The Times in 1986. “I do have a reputation for fleeing in the face of possible success.”Succeed he did.“Next to Mr. Kline, the most intriguing acting comes from Jeff Weiss, an idiosyncratic actor and playwright in the experimental theater,” Mr. Gussow wrote in his review. Mr. Weiss, he wrote, “reveals a hitherto concealed talent for the classics.”That performance started a run of more conventional acting jobs for Mr. Weiss. Those included Broadway appearances in “Macbeth” in 1988 with Glenda Jackson and Christopher Plummer, an “Our Town” revival later that year, “Present Laughter” in 1996, “The Invention of Love” in 2001 and “Henry IV” in 2003, with a cast that included Mr. Kline.Mr. Weiss worked in high-profile Off Broadway productions as well, including as a drag queen in “Flesh and Blood,” Peter Gaitens’s stage adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel, at New York Theater Workshop in 2003. “Mr. Weiss is terrific,” Ben Brantley wrote in The Times, “trilling the expected, crowd-pleasing notes while providing a darker, more intricate bass line.”Mr. Weiss found himself in demand elsewhere. He turned up as a judge in multiple episodes of the television series “Law & Order.” In 1990, at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J., he took on the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the seasonal production of “A Christmas Carol,” to much acclaim. Francis X. Kuhn directed that production.“A professional actor with no headshot, Jeff was described to me as a downtown theater ‘outlaw,’” Mr. Kuhn said by email. “But he proved to be a generous and exhilarating collaborator.”“He was deeply and absolutely committed to exploring and sharing Scrooge’s spiritual journey,” Mr. Kuhn added. “That’s what he cared about, and what he made the audience care about.”Mr. Weiss and Cherry Jones in an Off Broadway production of “Flesh and Blood” in 2003. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJeffrey George Weiss was born on April 30, 1940, in Reading, Pa., and grew up in Allentown. His father, Benjamin, was an executive at a cement company, and his mother, Helen (Eagle) Weiss, was a homemaker.Mr. Weiss wrote his first plays before he was a teenager. Formal education, though, was not for him.“I was kicked out of school pretty regularly, because I was a cutup and kind of neurotic,” he told The Times in 1986, “so I left when I was 16.”Soon he was in New York and had met Mr. Martinez. Their Good Medicine and Company theater had 10 seats and, in the early years, no electricity.“People would learn to bring flashlights to a Jeff Weiss show,” using them to help illuminate the stage, said Mr. Paraiso, Mr. Weiss’s longtime collaborator.Ticket revenue was put to quick use — to buy the makings of dinner, to be served to the playgoers.“While I was performing,” Mr. Weiss told The Pittsburgh Press in 1988, “Carlos was upstairs cooking, so when the show was over, the food would be ready.”Mr. Weiss moved back to Allentown in 1997, though he continued to appear in New York productions. His brother said that Mr. Weiss had wanted to be near their aging mother. Mr. Martinez joined him, and when Mr. Martinez developed Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Weiss cared for him, Mr. Paraiso said.Mr. Martinez died in 2017. Mr. Weiss’s brother is his only survivor.Mr. Kline recalled a vibrant personality offstage as well as on.“Jeff loved to laugh,” he said. “Being with him, just like watching his plays, could make you giddy. There was no one like him.” More

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      ‘Hedda Gabler’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’: 2 Takes That Shout Subtext

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      Irreverence can be illuminating. But Bedlam’s energetic productions of classics by Ibsen and Shakespeare lose insight in the process.Forgoing subtlety onstage has its advantages. Exaggeration leaves little room for doubt, obvious feelings burn hot, and in-your-face humor doesn’t‌ risk flying over your head. At least, that’s the idea. But in the Bedlam theater company’s productions of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” and Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” now playing in repertory at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn, subtlety isn’t just dead, it’s the devil in need of exorcis‌ing.Take the newlywed Hedda Tessman, sunk low in a chair, coolly lighted at center stage as the 1891 play that bears her maiden name begins. Portrayed with viscous, palpable disaffection by Susannah Millonzi, she is a woman so unsuited to domesticity that her chair is leopard print. And when Hedda greets her doting, unrefined aunt (“Visiting us so early — that’s so very… kind of you”) her expression of good manners, which Ibsen soaked with subtext, becomes overtly sarcastic, subverting the play’s careful attention to the ways people use language to hide or reveal themselves.Bedlam, now in its 10th anniversary season, has built a reputation for reinterpreting classic texts, like “Sense & Sensibility” and “The Crucible,” with stripped-down, energetic stagings and a modern touch. Under the direction of the artistic director Eric Tucker, many of these revivals have sought to expose the essential bones of familiar works. Here, Tucker, who directs and acts in both productions, seems to be reacting against received ideas about the texts, resisting what’s expected of these classics with an exceptionally playful hand. But it’s a tricky gesture that, in each case, tends to obscure more than it illuminates.Using a colloquial adaptation of “Hedda Gabler” by Jon Robin Baitz, the production recasts the drama of betrayal in captivity as a daffy but dour comedy that happens to end in death. If Ibsen is known for his design of psychological interiors and subconscious intentions, here every room is turned inside-out, with feelings and attitudes sprung in the open. Rag-tag vintage furniture is pressed against the periphery of the stage (set design is by John McDermott), suggesting the drawing-room realism that Ibsen fathered has been deliberately cast aside.With a Hedda this sour and cunning from the start, her union with Tucker’s chipper, oblivious Tessman can only come off as a farce, its absurdity radiating outward. Line readings defy logic; one moment Tessman is shouting to Hedda as if she’s on the roof, the next he’s surprised to find her right beside him. Innuendo turns literal, as when Judge Brack (Ryan Quinn) all but humps the legs of Hedda’s chair. Dialogue and action are mismatched, as when Hedda claws meat off a roast chicken in the fridge, though she purports to be reading a letter. (She’s a woman of appetite, remember?) ‌‌The consequence of so much funny business is that there’s not much to ponder about the characters’ inner lives, which makes Ibsen far less interesting to watch. And the lighting (by Carolina Ortiz) and sound (by Jane Shaw) are heavy handed, indicating when the mood turns serious and sincere. With Hedda’s misery so loud and clear upfront, modulation also becomes a problem. By the time her foul deeds come to a head, she is throwing up, slapping the walls and hollering in a way that seems unsuited to a woman averse to public scandal.Lisa Birnbaum as Hermione and Eric Tucker as Leontes in “The Winter’s Tale,” the most unwieldy of Shakespeare’s plays, with a bear attack and a statue that comes to life.Ashley GarrettThe transgression of social bonds — between husbands and wives, fathers and sons, leaders and citizens — links the repertory pairing and seems to make Bedlam’s case for its resonance in the present.Suspicion of infidelity kicks off “The Winter’s Tale,” in which Tucker’s volatile, and obtuse, patriarch Leontes rules over a frat party-style royal court. With its swing from apparent tragedy to roving rom-com, and its grab bag of devices (a bear attack, a 16-year time jump, a statue that comes to life), Shakespeare’s play is an unwieldy beast to wrangle onstage, and one of the most amenable to bold and wacky interpretations. ‌‌Leontes and the neighboring king Polixenes (Elan Zafir) start out demonstrating their brotherly affection by slapping each other across the face with flour tortillas between shots of cheap liquor. But when Leontes suspects the queen Hermione (Lisa Birnbaum) is pregnant by Polixenes instead of him, the jig is up in a flurry of banishments and deaths that leaves him without his wife, child and friend.A cast of seven (some of whom appear in both productions) double and triple up roles in “The Winter’s Tale,” with only slight changes in the ’80s thrift-store costumes by Daniele Tyler Mathews to help viewers distinguish between them. The most impressive juggling act comes from Zafir, who plays both father and son in a confrontation at the altar of young love. Karen Alvarado, as faithful servant Camillo (and the ardent, naïve Thea in “Hedda Gabler”) is a standout in both, a rare anchor of earnestness and ease. But not everyone is as comfortable, especially with Shakespeare’s verse; under Tucker’s direction, some of the actors fall into the trap of gesturing at rather than conveying the meaning of words.There is something to be said for a company clearly having a blast — several, including Tucker, broke character cracking up at Mike Labbadia’s Clown (modeled after his pop culture moniker Chad, or loathsome alpha male), a laugh that might have been more fun were everyone in on the joke.Improvised bits of modern dialogue and a variety of acting styles give the productions a sense of a particularly collaborative rehearsal process. Challenging the form and style of revered material is what keeps them alive. But neither revival makes easy work of identifying cohesive or incisive arguments about the texts while also allowing the audience to follow along.If less can be more, as previous Bedlam productions have shown, “Hedda Gabler” and “The Winter’s Tale” suggest that more can also be too much. So much exuberance can demonstrate a breach of trust in the material, and the audience’s ability to understand it. As Ibsen and Shakespeare both point out, underestimating people comes at a cost.Hedda GablerThrough Nov. 19 at the Irondale Center, Brooklyn; bedlam.org. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.The Winter’s TaleThrough Nov. 20 at the Irondale Center, Brooklyn; bedlam.org. Running time: 3 hours. More

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      Patti LuPone Says She Resigned From Stage Actors’ Union

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      The actress left months ago, and revealed her exit on Monday after her name arose during discussion of the errant reprimanding of a “Hadestown” patron who was using a captioning device.The much-honored stage actress Patti LuPone said on Monday that she resigned from the labor union Actors’ Equity months ago, revealing the news after her history of reprimanding cellphone-using audience members was invoked in a new controversy about the policing of electronic devices.The drama that consumed the corner of social media obsessed with theater began to unfold last week when a “Hadestown” audience member with hearing loss said she had been reprimanded by one of that show’s current stars, Lillias White, while using a theater-approved captioning device mistaken for a cellphone.“On a daily basis, actors are confronted with digital devices illegally capturing their work,” the musical’s producers said in a statement on Monday. “In this case, following a terrible miscommunication, in the middle of a live performance, Lillias mistook the closed-captioning device for a cellphone.”The “Hadestown” incident, for which the show apologized, prompted significant criticism of White. Then, on social media, LuPone’s name was cited in the discussion because she had in the past been celebrated for seizing a cellphone from a texting theater patron.Some of the criticism directed toward White was ugly. “The discourse on social media around the incident has devolved into racist, ageist and other abhorrently discriminatory language we unequivocally condemn,” the production said.The tenor of the criticism of White, who is African American, prompted some on social media to recall that LuPone, who is white, has been lauded on occasions when she has chastised misbehaving theatergoers.Because the patron White reprimanded was using a device for legitimate purposes, it is an imperfect comparison. But LuPone turned to Twitter on Monday in an apparent effort to distance herself from the situation, writing: “Quite a week on Broadway, seeing my name being bandied about. Gave up my Equity card; no longer part of that circus. Figure it out.”LuPone left the union over the summer, long before the “Hadestown” incident, upon finishing her Tony-winning run in a revival of “Company.”“When the run of ‘Company’ ended this past July, I knew I wouldn’t be onstage for a very long time,” LuPone said in a statement emailed in response to a question about her tweet. “And at that point I made the decision to resign from Equity.”Her departure came after a change in union rules that eliminated a cap on dues collected from high-earning performers. She had expressed concern about the change and the way it was communicated, according to people familiar with the thought process behind her resignation.Her spokesman, Philip Rinaldi, when asked about the issue, said only: “It was a number of issues that led to her decision. Patti was an Equity member for 50 years.”It is not clear what the statement means about her professional future. But this is not the first time LuPone, 73, who also won Tonys for her work in “Evita” and a revival of “Gypsy,” has said she was going to step back. In 2017 she said she expected “War Paint” to be her final musical; a year later she was back onstage in “Company” in London.In some instances, it is possible for performers who are not members of Equity to perform on Broadway. It is also possible to rejoin a union.The “Hadestown” controversy has also renewed discussion about monitoring audience behavior. The playwright Jeremy O. Harris urged reconsideration of such policies, saying, “Having a more realistic relationship to technology as well as more generous read of the actions of others would stop things like this from happening.” More

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      ‘My Window’ Review: An Out-and-Proud Trailblazer Finds Her Way

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      Melissa Etheridge’s limited run at New World Stages is a celebration of its smoky-voiced 61-year-old star, and contains some confessions, along with her hits.Not long into the second act of Melissa Etheridge’s new Off Broadway show, she tells a funny, sexy, completely charming tale of falling in love with a married woman in the late 1980s, and pairs it, playfully, with a gorgeous version of her 1995 song “I Want to Come Over.”Discreetly — no names — she recalls what a blast she and that partner and their showbiz friends used to have together in 1990s Los Angeles, in the heady early days of Etheridge’s rock fame. Then she mentions cannabis, which she didn’t enjoy at the time.“It always made me feel like everyone knew I was hiding something, you know?” she said on Friday, the second night of a 12-performance run at New World Stages. “Like they could all see this sadness that I was hiding.”In an almost solo show that wants very much to be a good time for the audience, and a kind of celebration of its smoky-voiced 61-year-old star, suddenly here is a confession of personal vulnerability — spoken, not sung. It turns out to be valuable foreshadowing, because there is some deep, dark sadness in “Melissa Etheridge Off Broadway: My Window — A Journey Through Life.” And mostly, amid some staggeringly beautiful renditions of songs, that sadness is well camouflaged.Written by Etheridge with her wife, Linda Wallem Etheridge, and directed by Amy Tinkham, the show recounts the story of Etheridge’s life in strict chronological order, from the day she was born in 1961 in Leavenworth, Kan. It’s a journey from midcentury, Midwestern conformity to a career as a Grammy Award-winning, out-and-proud trailblazer.Starting with darling black-and-white baby pictures shown huge on the upstage wall, the smart projections (by Olivia Sebesky) become increasingly intricate and eye-popping throughout the evening, particularly when Etheridge’s memories turn psychedelic. (The minimal set is by Bruce Rodgers, the luscious lighting by Abigail Rosen Holmes.)Some Etheridge hits are, of course, among the two dozen or so songs and song fragments strung through the performance, including a fiery version of “Bring Me Some Water,” from her 1988 debut album, and a buoying, sing-along “Come to My Window,” the 1993 hit that gives the show its name. She also plays endearing obscurities, like the first songs she wrote as a child.For all its musical polish, though, the show is verbally shaggy; Etheridge isn’t reciting memorized text but rather improvising, storyteller-style, from an outline of the piece’s main points, which scroll by on her monitor. (You will notice the monitor only if it’s behind you and you cheat like I did and turn around and look for it.) The upside to that looseness is a sense of thoughts articulated in the moment. The downside is a certain lack of eloquence.The instant Etheridge gets a guitar to strap across her chest, her whole body relaxes.Richard Termine for The New York TimesClocking in at three hours, including an intermission, the performance is surprisingly light on songs for about the first 30 minutes, and pushes a little too hard with the comedy of a roadie character (Kate Owens), who comes on to swap out Etheridge’s many jackets and guitars. (Costumes are by Andrea Lauer.)Initially, Etheridge doesn’t even have the armor of an instrument as she roams the stage. The instant she gets a guitar to strap across her chest, her whole body relaxes. Similarly, she is most expressive when she has the rhythm and structure of music to hold onto. So the show’s chatter works best when it’s threaded around and through a song, as happens gracefully with “Juliet,” the companion to Etheridge’s reminiscence of her brief time at Berklee College of Music, and of finding lesbian community in Boston.A life is a delicate thing to parade onstage, even or maybe especially in front of an adoring audience — lots of women, many apparent baby boomers and more straight couples than you might expect. A theatrical autobiography that’s honest can’t be neat, because some roughnesses refuse to be smoothed. So it goes here with the discussion of family, both the one Etheridge was born into and the ones she formed with the two women who are the other mothers of her four children.Personal details are skated around, presumably for the usual reasons — privacy, or to spare someone’s feelings, or because humans are complex and there simply isn’t time. Her father, who chaperoned her at the gigs she played when she was underage and responded with love when she came out to him as a young adult, emerges as a sympathetic figure. Others, in some ways including Etheridge, come off less than well. It’s here that you sense the sadness, hidden until it’s not.There comes a point, near the end of the show, when the stage plunges into inky blackness and Etheridge tells the story of the death of her 21-year-old son, Beckett, in 2020. It is spare and searing, the words uttered from a pit of grief.And as she speaks of the healing power that performance has for her, you realize that this is part of what she’s doing here — that music and memories and the embrace of an ardent crowd might help, just maybe, to assuage the pain.Melissa Etheridge Off Broadway: My Window — A Journey Through LifeThrough Oct. 29 at New World Stages, Manhattan; melissaetheridge.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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      A Pioneering Black Ballerina’s Life Story Comes to the Stage

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      HOUSTON — When Lauren Anderson was promoted to principal dancer at Houston Ballet in 1990, she made history as one of the first Black women to be a principal at a major American ballet company.“My goal was just to get in the company,” Anderson, 57, said in a recent interview. “My dream was to be a soloist. I didn’t expect to go past soloist.”But she did, dancing the lead in ballets like “Cleopatra” and collecting accolades. Reviewing “Cleopatra” in 2000, the critic Clive Barnes called her “the superb, stunning Lauren Anderson” and “an authentic star.” (The snake headband she wore is in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.) Now Anderson has another kind of starring role: as the subject of a new show, “Plumshuga: The Rise of Lauren Anderson,” which opened last night at the Stages theater here and runs through Nov. 13.Written by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, the first Black poet laureate of Houston, “Plumshuga” — the title riffs on one of her signature roles, the Sugarplum Fairy in “The Nutcracker” — features performers from the Ensemble Theater, Houston Ballet and Houston Ballet Academy. The show, which charts Anderson’s rise and career in ballet, also examines her personal life, including experiences of abuse and her struggles with alcoholism.Anderson as Cleopatra and Dominic Walsh as Marc Antony in Houston Ballet’s “Cleopatra” in 2000. Geoff Winningham/Houston Ballet
      “In approaching this work, I considered three paths,” Mouton said in an interview. “Who is she as an artist, who is she as a woman and who is she as an addict? And how do those things give us a more whole and complete understanding of Lauren Anderson — the person?”Anderson, whose repertory included works by George Balanchine and Kenneth MacMillan, was a pioneer in a field that still struggles with diversity. One of the few Black women to follow her as a principal dancer in a major company, Misty Copeland of American Ballet Theater has credited her as an inspiration. Copeland’s stardom is a welcome sign, Anderson believes, of needed change in the industry.“I think when it comes to changing things that need to be changed, the young people got it,” she said.After Anderson, a Houston native, retired from dancing in 2006 (and after revelations about her addiction became public, in 2009, when she was pulled over in Houston for speeding), she set out on a new professional path, though one in which dance remains central: She works as the associate director of the Houston Ballet’s education and community engagement program, a role that allows her to cultivate the next generations of dancers.In a recent conversation at Houston Ballet, Anderson spoke about “Plumshuga,” being a ballet pioneer and being frank about addiction. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.from “Plumshuga,” on opening night.Take me back to 1990. What was your initial reaction to your promotion?So let’s get this right. In 1990, I didn’t know my promotion was historic. I thought my promotion was that the miracle happened. I didn’t think I’d be at the top of the company. I was thinking that’s probably impossible. And lo and behold, it happened. I knew I was the first Black person to be a principal dancer. But I wasn’t thinking history making; I was just thinking, “I got to the mountaintop.” Now I know. And throughout my career, I’ve understood the gravity of it.You said in an interview, “My blackness never bothered me, it bothered other people.” How did Houston react?I’ve been here my whole life, for 57 years. The city of Houston has seen my face on the stage since 1972, because I was in Houston Ballet’s first Nutcracker. However, in 1983, when I did my first Sugarplum Fairy, when I turned to face the audience, they let out this huge gasp, because they just hadn’t seen this. And then, at the end of the show, we got a standing ovation. From that moment on, the city of Houston has had their arms open, and they have given me a giant hug.The staff had to deal with some things, though. Whenever there’s hate mail or anything of that kind, the F.B.I. opens a file, so I know Houston Ballet’s F.B.I. file on me has to be a mile high. Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesDeborah D.E.E.P Mouton, the first Black poet laureate of Houston, wrote “Plumshuga” after talking with Anderson over three years.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesYou’ve been recognized as a groundbreaking dancer with regard to race, but also challenging norms of visibility for dark-skinned Black women in the arts. How did you grapple with racism and colorism in the industry?It wasn’t an issue here at the Houston Ballet; it was an issue in other places. Because we’ve had every color brown here. But there has definitely been a longstanding issue. Beige ballerinas are allowed to be more things than dark-skinned ballerinas. There’s definitely more beige ballerinas that are at the top of their company than there are those who are dark-skinned.I see the way little girls look at me, and I’ll never forget the way the little brown girls look at me. It’s with that look of “I could be her.”How did you arrive at the decision to allow someone else to tell your life story onstage?Deborah Mouton is someone that I absolutely respect, so when she came to me and said that she’d like to write a piece about my life, I was like, “Are you sure?”What was the process?You could just really piece the pieces together, but she said, “No, I want it in your words.” So we did three years of interviews.She took my words and made them sound like cursive. She makes me sound so good. So much so that when I read it, and I hear it, some of it hurts. I get to relive and reflect and have all the feels. That’s how in my words it is.Deborah wrote it, and I changed things like the floor wasn’t wood, it was linoleum; or the wall wasn’t green, it was purple. We did a drive-through of some of the places we talked about around Houston.A scene from “Plumshuga.”Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesWhat were some of those places?We went to where Houston Ballet was when I first walked through the doors in 1972; it’s now a drive-through Starbucks. We drove by Lamar High School. We went to the house I was born in. We went by my dad’s house.You’ve been candid about your struggles with addiction. Did you feel any hesitation about that period of your life being on display in this manner?If I was going to tell my story, how could I leave that out? It was awesome in the sense that I was full, and I got to empty myself to Deborah after a certain amount of trust. One day I emptied so well, I stopped seeing my therapist. And I was scared. But when I talked to my therapist about that decision, she said, “We’re supposed to get divorced honey, it’s OK.”Are there any aspects of the performance that might surprise the audience?Everything. Some people will know these sides, but nobody knows what I was thinking or what I was feeling. I didn’t let people know what I really thought and really felt when I walked into my first dance studio. It’s the feels all the way through.Destiny McGlothen, 7, and her mother, Danielle, as the Lauren Anderson character is awarded prestigious roles early in her career.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesYou’ve been cited as an inspiration by Misty Copeland, your fellow Houstonian Solange Knowles and other Black artists. Do you feel a sense of surprise or pride for inspiring so many Black women?I’m absolutely full anytime anyone says that Lauren Anderson inspired them. But I’m just me, I’m just Lauren Anderson from the Third Ward in Houston.I remember speaking with Tina Knowles years ago at an event and she told me that she brought her daughters to see me perform. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the Solange post [crediting Anderson as an inspiration]. The last time I saw Solange, who went to school with my stepdaughter, she was a kid!How has ballet changed since you retired, and will those changes improve conditions for dancers from marginalized communities?Young people are louder than we were. Oh, this generation feels their feels, honey, and they let you know how they feel! And I love that.What keeps you in Houston?My roots are deep. The Houston Ballet, my family’s here. My parents are here and are getting older, and I want to be with them as much as possible.After the performance wraps, how do you intend to continue sharing your own story?The thing about being in recovery is that you recover by giving it away. You keep your sobriety by giving it back, just like dance. How do I keep performing? How do I keep ballet? By sharing it with the next generation. More

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      Review: In ‘Everything’s Fine,’ the Discomfort of Adolescence

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      In Douglas McGrath’s one-man show, his account of an experience as a teenager unfurls with the can’t-look-away quality of a slow-motion crash.What’s unnerving about “Everything’s Fine” is how breezy the tone is: The story at the center of Douglas McGrath’s solo autobiographical show, set during his youth in Texas, is one of emotional and psychological distress, after all. McGrath is not exactly making fun of what happened, but he’s not not making fun of it, either. It is hard to tell whether this is a deliberate choice abetted by John Lithgow’s direction or if McGrath is not a crafty enough performer to shake off a naturally avuncular demeanor.But the droll tone is effective, if sometimes startling. And while McGrath may not be a superlative actor, he is a good storyteller — he is best known as the screenwriter and director of “Emma” (1996), and he wrote the Tony-nominated book for “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” His account of something that happened to him as a teenager unfurls with the can’t-look-away quality of a slow-motion crash. You might be appalled but laughing, eager to hear what happened next while also dreading it.McGrath, 64, grew up in Midland, a wind-ridden town in West Texas where many people moved to work in the oil and gas industry. Such was the case for his father, a Connecticut-raised Princetonian with “the deluxe name Raynsford Searle McGrath,” whose family included a witty wife and their three children, of which Doug, as he was known, was the eldest.McGrath sets up the scene evocatively, and for a little while, it looks as if the show will be a cozy family tale. His father had worn a glass eye since a terrible accident when he was 10, and his mother, Beatrice, had worked at Harper’s Bazaar magazine alongside Diana Vreeland and an upstart Andy Warhol. McGrath could have easily milked an entire evening out of his urbane parents living in the wilds of Texas.The focus, however, eventually tightens on eighth grade. Doug was 14, and a new history teacher, whom he calls Mrs. Malenkov, entered the picture. This married 47-year-old mother took a liking to him, to put it mildly, and started leaving notes written on blue onionskin paper in his locker. (John Lee Beatty’s set evokes a schoolroom looking half-abandoned and a little desperate.)Those were different times, and a 14-year-old boy from the early 1970s was not like our modern teenagers constantly plugged into the illuminating world of the internet. But even by the standards of his time, McGrath paints a portrait of himself as being a little slow on the uptake. “I was not precocious,” he says. “I was barely coscious.”Yet even the innocent, happy-go-lucky Doug realized that Mrs. Malenkov was not well and that the situation was untenable. When he finally came up with a way to extricate himself from his predicament, the scheme was equally laughable and cringe inducing.As our narrator, McGrath is, of course, aware he is navigating a minefield, and he does so adroitly and without judgment — if anything, he makes fun of himself the most and looks at Mrs. Malenkov in a perplexed, sensitive manner. He acknowledges the impropriety of what he is dealing with, recreating his feelings as he experienced them in the heat of the moment and as an adult looking back. But this also means that McGrath picks whatever point of view suits the story’s suspenseful unfolding, and it’s not always coherent. Sometimes he editorializes with the wisdom he has now, and sometimes he is content to remain locked in his adolescent perspective, which means ignoring glaring blind spots. What was Mrs. Malenkov’s husband up to, for example?Songs like “Teacher’s Pet” and “Come On-a My House” play between some scenes — a little on the nose, too, setting up easy chuckles. Which does not mean they are entirely comfortable.Everything’s FineThrough Jan. 22 at the DR2 Theater, Manhattan; everythingsfineplay.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More