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      ‘The Vagrant Trilogy’ Review: Palestinians in Exile, Yearning for Home

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      Mona Mansour’s rich trilogy, now at the Public Theater, follows a displaced Palestinian family.The matinee audience was filing out of the Public Theater’s LuEsther Hall the other afternoon when stagehands started dismantling the set — a rickety home in a refugee camp in Lebanon, where Mona Mansour’s border-crossing, alternate-realities epic “The Vagrant Trilogy” winds up.The scenery coming down before we’d left the room was a jolt: I’d wanted to stay in the show’s world for just a little longer. Which is saying something when a production stretches to three and a half hours, including two intermissions. And when, courtesy of the Covid pandemic, both lead roles are being performed by understudies.But Mansour’s rich trilogy about a displaced Palestinian family is captivating, and for all the protean theatricality of Mark Wing-Davey’s gorgeous production, watching it feels somehow like being engrossed in a novel, with that same luxuriant sense of immersion and transport. Woven of poetry and politics, threaded with comedy, it’s Stoppardian in its intellectualism and doesn’t shy from poignancy.Is it poor form to invoke a British dramatist when discussing a play that’s in no small part about the ravages of British colonialism? Quite possibly. But Mansour’s Palestinian characters are smitten in their own ways with touchstones of British culture. And Stoppard is, after all, a Czech-born immigrant.Nadine Malouf, left, and Rudy Roushdi, who play multiple roles in the trilogy of plays.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“The Hour of Feeling,” the trilogy’s first play, starts with a meet-cute on a hilltop near Ramallah in April 1967. Adham, a young scholar just back from Cairo and cultivating an expertise in the poetry of Wordsworth, is busy avoiding a party. Abir, a rebellious young woman raised on a nearby farm and modeling her personal style on the film star Julie Christie, has come up for a smoke. (There is much atmospheric smoking in these plays, which are spoken mainly in English and occasionally in Arabic, with English supertitles.)Abir and Adham’s attraction is instant. By June, when they fly to London for a lecture that he is giving, they are newlyweds. And when the Six-Day War breaks out during their trip, they face a choice: to remain abroad, in cosseted academia, or return home to upheaval.The rest of the trilogy explores each of those possibilities, proffering two different, incompatible realities that stem from 1967. The second play, “The Vagrant,” finds Abir and Adham in London in 1982, having decided to stay in a country that will always view them as other. In the third play, “Urge for Going,” set in the Lebanese refugee camp in 2003, home and family lured them back all those years ago, only to mire them in a different exile.“Palestine?” Abir’s brother says dryly to his niece, in the camp. “Your father’s homeland, thirty minutes away, depending on traffic.”Mansour has calibrated the narrative tension so expertly that in each reality we are deeply invested in the fates of her characters, among them Adham’s mother, Beder, embodied by Nadine Malouf as a funny, formidable, thoroughly unsentimental woman who has fought to give her brilliant boy the best possible chance in a hostile world. Her other son, Hamzi (Osh Ashruf), is a gentle, kindly man whom she left behind as a child, with his father, in that refugee camp, where he spends decades of his life.Caitlin Nasema Cassidy, as Abir, and Bassam Abdelfattah, as Adham, acquit themselves honorably. Yet maybe because they are understudies, they draw their characters in broader strokes than they might if they had more time to settle into such large roles. (Tala Ashe and Hadi Tabbal, both wonderful Off Broadway in “English” this spring, ordinarily play Abir and Adham.) They are surrounded by a solid company, even if some accents get slippery in the London scenes.Those scenes are often fun, though, especially the visuals; Allen Moyer’s sets, Dina El-Aziz’s costumes and Tom Watson’s wigs evoke the ’60s and ’80s to delightful effect. (Lighting by Reza Behjat; sound by Tye Hunt Fitzgerald and Sinan Refik Zafar; and video by Greg Emetaz are also excellent.) Malouf has comic magnetism as a flirtatious ’60s Londoner in fabulous orange slingbacks who can’t keep her hand off Adham’s thigh, while Ramsey Faragallah is eccentrically funny as a floppy-haired — and, it turns out, bigoted — ’80s professor who stirs his tea with the eraser end of his pencil.With Wordsworth’s poetry a motif throughout the trilogy, Mansour examines the sustaining psychic power of a beloved landscape — a home that one may leave but must be able to revisit. And through the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali’s “Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower,” a chunk of which makes an affecting monologue by Hamzi in the third play, Mansour suggests the quiet tragedy of the geopolitical bystander: “His God-given rights are a grain of salt tossed into the sea.”It’s in this final part of the trilogy that we meet the two tightly bonded characters most likely to smash our hearts: Abir and Adham’s teenage daughter, the ebulliently ambitious Jamila (Malouf, at her most splendid), and her vulnerable brother, Jul (Rudy Roushdi, tenderly lovely). As bookish as Adham, Jamila is studying to get into college and join the wider world.For now, though, she still sometimes pretends with Jul that he is a talk-show host and she a marvelously successful guest with a string of doctorates.“How did you get out of the refugee camp?” he asks.“Well, it’s a long story,” she says.The Vagrant TrilogyThrough May 15 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 3 hours 30 minutes. More

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      ‘Which Way to the Stage’ Review: Theater Buddies, With Claws Out

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      In her new comedy, Ana Nogueira spins zippy fun out of a fairly conventional story about a friendship strained by resentment.If you have ever fantasized about casting your favorite musical or ranked the actresses who have played Mrs. Lovett, chances are you will be familiar with Jeff and Judy. You might even be them.We first meet the two besties by the stage door of the Richard Rodgers Theater. They are waiting, Playbills at the ready, for Idina Menzel — this is 2015, when Menzel was still headlining “If/Then” and stars occasionally met with fans after a performance (an activity now curtailed by the Covid-19 pandemic).Judy (Sas Goldberg) and Jeff (Max Jenkins) are arguing over the respective merits of Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone in “Gypsy,” and Ana Nogueira’s “Which Way to the Stage,” at MCC Theater, is off, its needle already close to the red zone. At least Jeff and Judy agree on one thing: either of those two stars is better than the one they refer to simply as “Imelda” (Staunton, unless Marcos also appeared in “Gypsy”). “Like a caricature of a caricature of a performance by my mother in the Temple Beth Israel talent show,” Judy says.You might have sussed out by now that Judy is straight and Jeff is gay, and both have a way with quips.Admittedly this is a fairly conventional setup, but Nogueira spins zippy fun out of it, the theater references are on point, and the director, Mike Donahue, imparts a nice screwball-comedy pace. Then come the variations on the theme.Michelle Veintimilla, from far left, Evan Todd and Sas Goldberg at a drag performance by Max Jenkins’s character, Jeff.Richard Termine for The New York TimesThe first is that, somewhat predictably, Judy and Jeff are actors themselves — though she makes a living as a real estate agent while he is a Crunch instructor with a drag gig on the side.We also gradually realize that their friendship is heavy with barely contained resentment. Jeff lectures Judy when she uses a slur for gay men, only to casually drop demeaning words for women. After she takes off during his drag tribute to Menzel, a wounded Jeff demands to know what she thought of his act. It is obvious the last thing he wants is an honest opinion, but he pressures Judy anyway.“Which Way to the Stage” is about the performances people put on for themselves, their friends, family and potential loved ones, as well as the identities they hide behind. (Nogueira has experience both as a writer and an actor, with acting credits on such shows as “The Vampire Diaries” and the Starz series “Hightown.”)This tension between who we are, who we think we are and the personas we project is especially fraught for actors, and it weighs heavily on Jeff and Judy. (Goldberg, a standout in “Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow” and “Significant Other,” excels at suggesting hurt underneath sarcasm.) The veiled animosity between the two is brought to a head when they meet the handsome Mark (Evan Todd), who has the easygoing, insouciant charm of a born star — or at least someone who can live off his acting.Under its avalanche of knowing jokes, “Which Way to the Stage” has serious matters on its mind, including the undercurrent of homophobia and misogyny that can suffuse the relationship between straight women and gay men. Nogueira’s writing is at its best when she lets anger bubble to the surface, but like Jeff and Judy with theater, it seems as if she can’t quite decide whether her play is, at heart, about love or cynicism.“Which Way to the Stage” builds up to a conflagration that is the equivalent of an 11 o’clock number. But like many musicals, the show doesn’t know what to do with itself afterward, so it ends big with a move that feels like a Hail Mary pass. The attempt is fun to watch, but it also comes up short.Which Way to the StageThrough May 22 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. More

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      James Ijames on Winning a Pulitzer and Making ‘Hamlet’ a Comedy

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      The 41-year-old playwright’s show “Fat Ham,” set at a Southern barbecue, hasn’t even had an in-person production yet because of the pandemic.The play “Fat Ham,” a comedic riff on “Hamlet” set at a Southern barbecue, hasn’t even had an in-person production yet because of the coronavirus pandemic.But on Monday, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, based on its script and following a streaming production mounted last year by the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. And on Thursday, performances of the first production before live audiences are scheduled to begin Off Broadway at the Public Theater, in a coproduction with the National Black Theater.“Fat Ham” was written by James Ijames, 41, who grew up in Bessemer City, N.C., and was educated at Morehouse College and Temple University (he studied acting). He now lives in Philadelphia, where he is one of several co-artistic directors experimenting with a shared leadership model at the Wilma Theater; his other notable works include “Kill Move Paradise,” “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever” and “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington.”About an hour after the Pulitzers were announced, I spoke to Ijames (his surname is pronounced “imes”) about the play and the award. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.From left, Kimberly S. Fairbanks, Brennen S. Malone and Lindsay Smiling in the Wilma Theater’s streaming production of “Fat Ham.”via The Wilma TheaterSo for those of our readers who have never heard of “Fat Ham,” what’s it about?“Fat Ham” is a very loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that has been transported to the American South, and it takes place in the backyard of a family that owns a barbecue restaurant. At its core, the play is about how this Hamlet character, whose name is Juicy, is meeting and undermining his family’s cycles of trauma and violence. It’s really about how he brings the rest of his family with him to that realization that they don’t have to continue these cycles of abuse and violence, and that they can do something completely different with their lives. It’s a comedy in the end, so I take “Hamlet” and I essentially make it not tragic anymore.Where did the idea come from?I just have always loved “Hamlet.” When I was in college, I did a truncated production of it. And the scene when we first meet Hamlet, in the court, I did that scene, and it was just like, “This is such a great scene. I think the whole play could exist inside of this moment. All of the players are in the same room together, and what if everything just erupted in this court in this moment, so the whole sweep of Hamlet was in one scene?” And I wanted to take that and bring it a little closer to my experience by putting it in the mouths of people that look like me and sound like me, that have my rhythms and eat the kind of food that I grew up eating. And I think it illuminates something about the original.Obviously, we’ve been living through a pretty unusual period, and you have won this prize after a virtual production. Tell me about that.We basically got Airbnbs and put all of the cast and the crew in a bubble, and they filmed it over the course of a month. It turned out really beautifully, and we were all really proud of it. And I’m really thrilled for people to see an in-person performance of it.How do you think the in-person experience will be different from the streaming experience?The actors can feed off of the reactions from the audience that they hear. So I’m really excited about having that experience. I also did a few tweaks on the play because it’s moved from the digital format to the live format. So I’m curious to see how that meets audiences.Why are you a playwright?When I was about 13, my parents split up and I had a lot of anger and frustration, and one of the ways that my family tried to encourage me to work through that was to write. And so I started writing little skits and plays, and I just have been writing in dramatic form ever since. I think it’s a way for me to metabolize all the things that I’m thinking about or curious about.The 2022 Pulitzer PrizesCard 1 of 12The awards. More

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      ‘A Strange Loop’ Star L Morgan Lee on Her Trailblazing Tony Nomination

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      L Morgan Lee made theater history on Monday, becoming what production officials described as the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for a Tony Award for her performance as a featured actress in “A Strange Loop.”Lee’s Tony nod was one of 11 for the musical, which opened April 26 and is a meta-work about a Black gay writer trying to make art while being distracted by his intrusive thoughts. Lee plays one of those thoughts — “Thought 1.”In a telephone interview on Monday hours after learning of her nomination, Lee, who made her Broadway debut in the musical, said she found her nomination “overwhelming.”“I know of many trans and nonbinary and gender-expansive people who are out here trying to be seen and trying to put stories out into the world,” she said. “Having this happen today helps more people know that it’s possible.”Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.This was your Broadway debut. Tell me about what it was like to see your name on the screen this morning with a Tony nomination.I’m still trying to wrap my head around the importance of a Black trans woman in a principal role on a Broadway stage, period. And the importance of that, especially in a time when so many of us are simply fighting for our basic well being. So to be able to be part of a story that is challenging the form in so many ways — challenging what people have known Broadway to be — it’s a gift.It is all bigger than me. I’m really excited about what will happen after these steps. I’m very excited about who is in the audience that will see this show or my performance or now this nomination and know that it is possible for them to pursue theater.What does it say to you that a show that describes itself as a “big, Black, and queer-ass Great American Musical” can be the big winner of this morning’s nominations?I would like to say that it means that there is hope. I’m careful with the word change, because in order for us to be in the type of world and space we want to be in, it’s not as much about change as much as it is about growth. You’re not going to suddenly get rid of all the people who don’t agree with you. But we do need to figure out how to make space so that all of our stories can actually be told.To that point, for anyone out there who says “Hey, this got 11 nominations — I’m interested — but I’m not sure this musical is for me,” what would you tell them?Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      Paula Vogel on ‘How I Learned to Drive’ Tony Nominations: ‘I’m Just Thrilled’

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      The playwright Paula Vogel was first nominated for a Tony in 2017, for “Indecent.” Now she has a second Tony nomination for “How I Learned to Drive,” which she wrote in two weeks, 25 years ago. A play about abuse, love and survival, it interrogates the relationship between Uncle Peck and his underage niece, Li’l Bit.The actors who created the roles Off Broadway, Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse, have returned for the play’s Broadway debut, as has its director, Mark Brokaw. Both actors have been nominated, too. Speaking from her home in Wellfleet, Mass., Vogel said she planned to spend the day “doing all of my chores, so I can get on a train and come down to New York tomorrow, which will be exciting.” Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.So how does it feel?It’s more fun and lovely the second time around. This one feels like just a joint celebration with Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse and Mark Brokaw. I mean, we all came back 25 years later. So this is a real phenomenon to me. And I’m thrilled. I’m just thrilled.Why do you think it took this long for the show to come to Broadway?I mean, it’s interesting. Mary-Louise Parker was talking about The Village Voice. The cover was a photograph of that original production. And the headline said, “Too Tough for Uptown.” I remember seeing that and thinking, “That can’t be true.” We do tough things all the time on Broadway. I have to say that this season has made me so happy, with “Pass Over,” with “For Colored Girls.” It’s odd. I actually feel as if I’m home this season in a way that I never have before. I’m starting to accept that it took that much time for the play.And then of course the pandemic meant a further delay.I’m obstinate and stubborn. I held on. These actors have held on, Mark held on, we’ve all held on. We didn’t stop working even during the two years of Covid. We thought about it every day. We communicated our desire to each other every week. So it’s a miracle: that the entire community got through the two years and we’re back, that after 25 years this has transferred to Broadway.You wrote this play as a younger woman and at a time in which our culture was having fewer conversations about abuse. Would you write it the same way now?The difference between now and then is that I’ve grown comfortable with being a survivor. The play has been a gift to me in that it gets lighter every year. It gets farther away, that shore of adolescence and pain. It retreats in a certain way. Would I write it differently? I don’t think I would. There are certain plays in my life that have come out in two weeks. This is one of them. I sat down and didn’t stop. It was just straight from my heart. I don’t think those plays you rewrite.What is it like to watch the same extraordinary actors do the same roles 25 years later?The layers are incredible. You feel these actors processing every moment of their experience. And it makes it deeper and richer. I don’t have words to express how grateful I am to Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse. More

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      Tony Nomination Snubs and Surprises: Daniel Craig, ‘Funny Girl’ and ‘Paradise Square’

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      Tony nominations morning is always filled with joy for lots of performers, theater artists and producers who find themselves in contention for Broadway’s biggest recognition. But there are also always some who are overlooked, and others who are just gobsmacked.Here are some of the snubs, surprises and observations about Monday’s list:The nominators spread out their admiration quite widely: Of the 34 eligible shows, 29 got at least one nod, including the critically scorned “Diana.” But five new plays were completely overlooked. Most surprising: “Pass Over,” the well-reviewed and bracing drama by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, and also the first play to open after the pandemic lockdown. Also scoring no nominations: “Birthday Candles,” by Noah Haidle; “Chicken & Biscuits,” by Douglas Lyons; “Is This a Room,” by Tina Satter; and “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” by Keenan Scott II.The Civil War-era musical “Paradise Square” has had an especially tortuous road to Broadway, and so far ticket sales have been quite weak. But the show’s fortunes on Monday had to offer comfort and hope: It snagged an impressive 10 nominations, tying for the second most of any show. Joaquina Kalukango was always a sure thing in the lead actress in a musical category, but nominators also singled out two of her supporting co-stars, Sidney DuPont and A.J. Shively. The show drew attention in most of the major technical categories as well, including for Bill T. Jones’s choreography, but one key member of the creative team was left out: the director, Moisés Kaufman.Several major stars who are drawing big crowds to their shows failed to impress. Among them: the married couple Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, who are starring in a smash revival of “Plaza Suite” that scored just one nomination, for costume design, and Daniel Craig, who is playing the title role in a revival of “Macbeth.” (His co-star, Ruth Negga, did get nominated, and the production was also nominated for lighting and sound design.)Tony nominators followed the critics, raining on the parade for the highly anticipated revival of “Funny Girl.” While it was the beloved musical’s first time back on Broadway in nearly 60 years, it scored only one nomination, for the tap-dancing supporting actor Jared Grimes. And Beanie Feldstein, who drew tepid notices filling Barbra Streisand’s shoes as Fanny Brice, did not receive a best actress nomination.How to handle the many ensemble-driven shows was always going to be a challenge for the nominators. In the case of “The Lehman Trilogy,” they bestowed riches on everyone, nominating all three lead actors — Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Adrian Lester — and expanding the category to make room for them all. For the musical “Six,” on the other hand, a cast twice the size proved hard to rank, and none of the actresses playing the six wives of Henry VIII were crowned.That Jesse Tyler Ferguson would be nominated for his role in “Take Me Out” seemed a sure bet. And the suave star power of Jesse Williams, as the baseball demigod Darren Lemming, vaulted him to a nomination as well. But the big surprise was a third nod in the supporting actor category for the far less well-known Michael Oberholtzer, whose wounded ferocity as a racist teammate put him in (friendly?) competition with his co-stars.Another show also struggling at the box office — a revival of the choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf” — also did quite well on Monday. The production had announced an early closing date of May 22, and must now decide whether its seven nominations, plus a social-media-fueled pay-it-forward campaign to get tickets into the hands of those who might not otherwise be able to afford them, are enough to extend the run. More

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      The coronavirus posed a special challenge to the Tony nominators.

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      The pandemic has made this comeback theater season an unusually rocky one. After a joyous reopening following the long, painful shutdown, the Omicron surge led to a ton of holiday closings, and another spike in positive cases this spring led to a rolling wave of performer absences and occasional show cancellations.That disruption was upsetting for artists and fans, and damaging for producers and investors.It also posed an unprecedented complication for Tony nominators, who are not only required to see every eligible production, but also to see the performances of all Tony-eligible actors.That’s always hard — most of the nominators have day jobs, and some of them live outside New York, and many shows have limited runs. But this season, two factors made it even harder: a higher-than-normal number of shows opened in April, just before the deadline to be eligible for a Tony, and the spike in spring cases meant that key actors often missed performances. (Among the possible nominees who tested positive for the coronavirus near the season’s end: Daniel Craig, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Laurence Fishburne and Ramin Karimloo. Plus: Billy Crystal canceled two performances of “Mr. Saturday Night,” citing the flu.)For nominators, that made the ordinary complexity of end-of-season scheduling far trickier — so difficult, in fact, that the Tony administrators wound up delaying the nominations by six days to give the nominators more time to see shows.Even so, the number of nominators who managed to get to the finish line is low. There are usually about 50 nominators per season, some of whom wind up recusing themselves when a conflict of interest develops; this season there were just 29 who were able to participate in the voting. More

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      The Tony nominations are being announced right now.

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      As the theater industry continues its attempt to rebound after its lengthy pandemic shutdown, the industry this morning began its effort to celebrate the best work on Broadway by announcing a new set of Tony nominees.The first nods, to designers, are being followed by nominations for performers and shows.The nominations are being announced, on YouTube, by the actors Adrienne Warren and Joshua Henry.We have an updating list of all the nominees here.There are 34 eligible shows, all but one of which opened after theaters reopened. (The exception: “Girl From the North Country,” a musical that opened just before the shutdown.)The shows were all hoping to win nods in some of this year’s 26 competitive categories. Producers hope that nominations will lead not only to awards, but also to a bump in the box office, which has not recovered to prepandemic levels. And for artists, a nomination or a win can lead to more job opportunities and higher salaries.The nominees were chosen by a group of 29 nominators who saw all eligible shows and voted last Friday. Next, the 650 Tony voters have until June 10 to cast their ballots, and the Tony Awards will be announced on June 12. More