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      ‘Topdog/Underdog’ to Star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins

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      The 20th anniversary Broadway revival will be directed by Kenny Leon. Previews begin in September at the John Golden Theater.Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will star this fall in a Broadway revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Pulitzer-winning comic drama “Topdog/Underdog.”The play, first staged on Broadway in 2002 after an Off Broadway run at the Public Theater, is a portrait of two brothers: One, named Lincoln (Hawkins), is an Abraham Lincoln impersonator and the other, named Booth (Abdul-Mateen), aspires to play three-card monte the way his brother once had.In 2018, The New York Times declared “Topdog/Underdog” the best American play of the previous 25 years. Explaining that choice, the critic Ben Brantley wrote that the play “plies the fine theatrical art of deception to convey the dangers of role-playing in a society in which race is a performance and prison.”Hawkins, 33, has been featured in a string of films, including “In the Heights,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and “Straight Outta Compton.” He has two previous Broadway credits, and picked up a Tony nomination in 2017 for his starring role in a revival of “Six Degrees of Separation.”Abdul-Mateen, 35, is best known for his work in the HBO series “Watchmen,” and he recently was featured in the films “Ambulance,” “The Matrix Resurrections” and “Candyman.” “Topdog/Underdog” will be his Broadway debut.The original Broadway production starred Jeffrey Wright and Yasiin Bey, who was known at the time as Mos Def.This 20th anniversary revival, scheduled to run for 16 weeks, is to begin previews Sept. 27 and to open Oct. 20 at the John Golden Theater. It will be directed by Kenny Leon, who in 2014 won a Tony Award for directing a revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.” The producers are David Stone, a lead producer of “Wicked,” as well as LaChanze, Rashad V. Chambers, Marc Platt, Debra Martin Chase and the Shubert Organization.This season is shaping up to be a big one for Parks. In addition to the Broadway revival of “Topdog/Underdog,” the Public Theater on Tuesday said it would stage productions of two new works she has written: “Plays for the Plague Year,” a series of playlets Parks wrote during the early pandemic, and “The Harder They Come,” a musical adaptation of the 1972 film, with a book by Parks and a score that includes songs by Jimmy Cliff. More

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      ‘Raisin in the Sun’ and ‘The Harder They Come’ Part of Public Theater Season

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      Two new works by Suzan-Lori Parks will be included in a season that delves into “relationships between Black and white America.”The Public Theater’s 2022-23 season will feature a mix of works rooted in history and new pieces that speak to current cultural shifts — toward racial justice, equity and disability rights. The season kicks off with a production of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” about a Black family’s bid to move into a house in a white neighborhood of Chicago, directed by Robert O’Hara (“Slave Play,” “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night”). Performances are scheduled to begin Sept. 27.This is not O’Hara’s first interpretation of the classic: He also directed a version in 2019, starring S. Epatha Merkerson, at the Williamstown Theater Festival. (The Public Theater said this will be a new production, not a remounting of the Williamstown staging.) He is also a playwright (“Barbecue,” “Bootycandy”), and in 2010 he wrote his own sequel to Hansberry’s play, “The Etiquette of Vigilance.”The season will also include the New York premiere of “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge” — conceived by Greig Sargeant, and developed it as member of Elevator Repair Service, and directed by John Collins — starting Sept. 24. The play re-enacts a 1965 debate between the writer and civil rights advocate James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review and an architect of the 20th-century conservative movement, for which they were asked if “the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” The show had its premiere last fall at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public, said he wants to help put Hansberry and Baldwin “back at the center of our dramatic tradition.” Baldwin, a towering literary figure, found less success as a dramatist, partly because of the mostly white cultural gatekeepers of the ’60s and ’70s. Hansberry became the first Black woman to be produced on Broadway when “A Raisin in the Sun,” premiered there in 1959, but died just a few years later in 1965.“It’s absolutely vital for our understanding of this current moment, particularly in terms of relationships between Black and white America,” Eustis said in an interview. “It’s also saying, ‘Hey, Shakespeare isn’t the only classic voice that matters.’”The upcoming slate of shows balances lessons from the past with insights into the future of theater. The New York premiere of “Where We Belong,” by Madeline Sayet, a member of the Mohegan tribe, grapples with the legacy of Shakespeare and colonization. Mei Ann Teo will direct the show, which is being produced with Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library. Performances are set to begin Oct. 28.For Eustis, Sayet’s solo piece fits well into the current cultural movement. “It’s a wave that has picked us up and thrown us forward, and said, ‘It is time to really deal with the legacy of slavery,’” Eustis said. “‘It is time to really turn and fundamentally alter race relations in this country.’”Artists who have previously had works staged at the Public — like Suzan-Lori Parks, the theater’s writer in residence; James Ijames; and Erika Dickerson-Despenza — will return this season with new plays.Parks’s “Plays for the Plague Year,” which will be staged in November, began as a collection of plays that the playwright wrote each day from March 2020 to April 2021. It will be followed by “The Harder They Come,” featuring Jimmy Cliff’s songs and a book by Parks, in the winter of 2023. The work is a new musical adaptation of the 1972 Perry Henzell film, about a young singer (played by Cliff) in Jamaica eager to become a star only to become an outlaw after being pushed to desperate circumstances. Tony Taccone will direct, with codirection by Sergio Trujillo, and choreography is by Edgar Godineaux.“That longevity of a relationship with a major artist is hugely important, not only to Suzan-Lori, but to making a statement to the field that it’s possible to spend a life in the theater,” Eustis said. “You can actually keep your feet in the theater and ground your whole career.”“Good Bones,” written by Ijames (who won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Fat Ham,” which is currently onstage at the Public in its New York premiere), will have its world premiere in the spring of 2023. The play, directed by Saheem Ali, explores gentrification and the growing price of the American dream. “Shadow/Land,” by Dickerson-Despenza (who won the Blackburn Prize for her play “Cullud Wattah”) and directed by Candis C. Jones, is the first installment of a 10-play cycle about the Hurricane Katrina diaspora. The Public produced it as an audio play during the pandemic. Performances also begin in spring 2023.Ryan J. Haddad will make his Off Broadway playwriting debut with “Dark Disabled Stories,” about strangers he encounters while navigating a city not built for cerebral palsy, in the winter of 2023. Jordan Fein is directing the play, produced by the Bushwick Starr and presented by the Public. It probes discrimination in favor of able-bodied people. More

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      City Center’s Season to Feature an International Fall for Dance

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      The festival welcomes foreign troupes for the first time since 2019; other City Center highlights include Twyla Tharp and “The Light in the Piazza” at Encores!“Oliver!,” the return of the National Ballet of Canada and a Twyla Tharp program are among the offerings for New York City Center’s 2022-23 season, the theater announced on Tuesday.“Coming off the pandemic we had a really strong season,” said Arlene Shuler, City Center’s president and chief executive, adding, “I want audiences to take away that City Center is as strong as ever.”The 2022-23 season, Shuler’s last, opens with the Fall for Dance Festival, which for the first time since 2019 will have an international lineup, including the Kyiv City Ballet from Ukraine, as well as companies and artists from France, Germany, India and the Netherlands.Fall for Dance, which Shuler initiated in 2004, remains central to her legacy at the theater. The festival’s eclectic mix of dance companies and low-cost tickets has expanded accessibility to the public and solidified relationships with artists.Also in fall, Twyla Tharp returns to the theater, Oct. 19-23, with two works: “In the Upper Room” (1986) and “Nine Sinatra Songs” (1982), which Shuler called “masterworks — not just for Twyla but for the 20th century.” The program follows last year’s “Twyla Now.”The National Ballet of Canada will take the City Center stage for the first time in 15 years. The program, with live music by the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, features three performances, including Crystal Pite’s “Angels’ Atlas.” It is set to run from March 30-April 1, 2023.City Center’s Encores! will present “The Light in the Piazza” (Feb. 1-5), Jerry Herman’s “Dear World” (March 15-19) and Lionel Bart’s “Oliver!” (May 3-14). And “Parade,” starring Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt in Alfred Uhry’s Tony Award-winning musical about the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish American in Georgia, will be City Center’s annual gala production, on Nov. 1-6.Dance programming at City Center will also include Sara Baras and her company at the annual Flamenco Festival (March 23-26), and Ballet Hispánico, which will perform “Club Havana 18+1” (June 1-3).This year’s City Center Dance Festival, titled “From the Street,” will celebrate the diversity of forms in contemporary hip-hop. The year will close with “Sugar Hill: The Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker” (Nov. 15-27), a jazz-infused retelling of the holiday classic, and the annual season of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Nov. 30-Dec. 24), with new works by Kyle Abraham and Jamar Roberts. More

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      David Morse Steadies Himself With Daily Devotions and His Own Cooking

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      The actor, who was just in “How I Learned to Drive” on Broadway, also has an affection for bluegrass, reading out loud and his Mercedes Sprinter van.In 1997 David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker racked up raves and Off Broadway awards in Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “How I Learned to Drive.”Twenty-five years later, Morse and Parker reprised their roles on Broadway — he as Uncle Peck, a charming pedophile; she as Li’l Bit, the niece he preys on — and captured Tony nominations.The new production was first explored a decade after the initial run, but Morse had yet to return to the stage and didn’t want his last play to be his next one. And while the timing seemed right when he committed to this show two years ago — he’d since appeared on Broadway in “The Seafarer” and “The Iceman Cometh” — he was nonetheless intimidated by the impact, at once stunning and gut-wrenching, of the original on both audiences and the cast.He was especially concerned for Uncle Peck.“I thought he doesn’t stand a chance in this new world,” Morse said. “Paula tried to make him a compelling and understandable human being despite what he does, and I was afraid of the judgments about him. It would just be too hard to make that leap that Paula wanted people to make.”He needn’t have worried, Morse admitted during a Zoom interview from his Midtown apartment — he lives in Philadelphia when he’s not working — to discuss why daily devotions, cooking his own food and his new R.V. are imperatives in his life.“The play has the power it always had, and our ages have actually helped in some ways,” he said. “There are layers that weren’t there before, and I think that really just comes with having lived some life.”Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Reading Out Loud Whenever I read a book, I read it out loud from beginning to end. I get to act all of the characters and be in their world. I discovered this joy when I was about 9 or 10. I finished reading “Old Yeller” in my bedroom on a Saturday morning. I lay in my bed aching in my heart and crying. I had to share the book with my family. So we sat around the dining room table and I read to them, crying my way through the end of “Old Yeller” all over again.2. His Faith I was confirmed in the Episcopal church in my teens. But when I first came to New York, in 1977, I was very much at odds with faith and the church. My consciousness was changing and I had a fury at institutions. It was at that point that I read C.S. Lewis’s “Surprised by Joy.” His story about his own struggles with faith helped me through a particularly turbulent time. Sometime in those years I memorized the daily devotions for morning and close of day from the Book of Common Prayer. Since then, I have pretty much not missed a day saying both services in private.3. Bluegrass and Country I did a terrific movie called “The Slaughter Rule,” and my character was a lover of old-time bluegrass and country. I had to play and sing, and every time I opened my mouth I felt like such a phony. It was not a shining moment for me, but I have loved it ever since.At the time we were listening to the Louvin Brothers. Their story is fascinating. Now there are women I like to listen to and people that kind of cross over like Brandi Carlile. And Sturgill Simpson is another one I love because he’s sort of anti-country and country at the same time. He really, really loves the roots of bluegrass but does his own thing with it.4. “Cocaine & Rhinestones” Podcast People who really know music, talking to other people who really know music, are fascinating to me. One of my favorites is “Cocaine & Rhinestones” by Tyler Mahan Coe. It is a one-man epic production about the history of country music. I think I would have approached the music in “The Slaughter Rule” with a little more courage if I had had his work to listen to before I did it.5. Cooking for Health I have had significant food sensitivities most of my life. Forget the craft table on sets. Most restaurants, when they try to be helpful, offer food that is so plain and boring it is hard to swallow. So I prepare pretty much every meal I eat every day of my life. I developed my own recipe for wheat-free pancakes and made weekly batches, which I would carry with me everywhere so I could get enough calories when I was working or traveling. I did that for 25 years at least.6. Road Trips for Work I love to drive on my own to faraway locations when I get a new job. It’s a great way to transition my mind. When it came time to do “How I Learned to Drive” two years ago, I took a trip down to South Carolina because it’s where the character is from. I went to the rivers where he would go fishing, went to the courthouse and listened to trials, just tried to absorb as much of that world as I could. And it started feeling new. Then they shut down during rehearsals. But once it was starting again, I took another trip just to be open, open, open to whatever comes.7. His Mercedes Sprinter R.V. I have always wanted to share the places I have seen with my wife, Susan [Wheeler Duff], and our three kids, but food and hotels have been too much of a challenge for us to do it together — until this past year. Susan ingeniously suggested we get an R.V. to travel in. So during the pandemic we bought an extended Mercedes Sprinter van and got in a long line of like-minded people to have it customized into a camper out near Boulder, Colo. In September, we picked up our new best friend, and we set off across the country with a king-size bed, a full kitchen and a toilet we still haven’t used. It was glorious.8. Audiobooks It’s amazing how much of this country you can cover listening to “Moby-Dick.” Right now, while I work out, I am listening to Frank McCourt read “Angela’s Ashes.” His writing seems so pure and effortless, as does his brilliant reading of it. I have been asked to record a number of very good books. Two of my favorites have been Stephen King’s “Revival” and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Leadership: In Turbulent Times.” I love doing it. It fits me.9. Accents When I have to work on a new character with an accent, I will choose a book to read out loud. I don’t really like to practice the accent with the lines. The first time we did “How I Learned to Drive” I chose [Michael Shaara’s] “The Killer Angels.” I haven’t told Mary-Louise Parker this, but this time I chose the wonderful book she wrote called “Dear Mr. You.” Please don’t tell her I told you.10. His Wife, Susan Wheeler Duff My wife is many things, including an excellent writer of two books and many articles, a voracious and keen reader, the fierce and devoted mother of our children, an excellent actress, a rising and prominent presence in the world of bridge, and my love and companion for the past 41 years. In fact, we were married on June 19, 1982, 40 years ago this very day. Any day with Susan is a cultural essential. More

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      ‘Quince’ Review: A Mexican American Tale That Explains Too Much

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      The new play, about a 15-year-old girl and her impending quinceañera, creates a fitting party vibe. If only the script didn’t clarify every cultural reference.In the backyard of a modest house with a thriving garden, a woman in a brimmed hat festooned with streamers bends over the flowers, tending to them silently. Her face a mask, she pays no attention to the pair of teenage sweethearts in the midst of a private talk.“That’s my grandma,” says Cindy, whose yard this is.“I thought your grandma was dead,” Kaitlyn says.She is, Cindy confirms: buried in Mexico and everything. But after her grandmother had a fight with her cousin, who was interred in a neighboring grave, “she left there, came here.” Now she hangs out in the garden, looking after the greenery.“This is why I don’t invite you over,” Cindy says, unsurprised by her girlfriend’s confusion; Kaitlyn is white, after all. “I can’t explain all this stuff all the time.”The creators of “Quince,” the shimmery immersive production that inaugurates the Bushwick Starr’s new theater in a former dairy plant in Brooklyn, have the opposite impulse. Written by Camilo Quiroz-Vázquez and directed by Ellpetha Tsivicos, this too-educative play — presented with their company, One Whale’s Tale — wants to invite all of us into its story of Cindy and her impending quinceañera, a coming-of-age celebration to mark her 15th birthday. To achieve that, it is more than willing to explicate Mexican and Mexican American culture for its audience every step of the way.To be fair, white American theatergoers have come to expect that kind of coddling, and no one wants to parade the complexity of their heritage in front of people who don’t understand it. But I’m with Cindy on this. Constant footnoting is exhausting — a drag on the festivities and also on the drama. Of which, in her life, she has plenty.Raised by her strict single mother, Maria (Brenda Flores), in a family so devoutly Roman Catholic that the parish priest is a regular presence in their home, Cindy (Sara Gutierrez) is squeamish about more than just explaining her grandmother’s ghost. She’s also embarrassed by her family’s lack of money, uncomfortable with her queerness and terrified of how Maria would react if she found out about it.Performed mostly in English, partly in Spanish, “Quince” traces Cindy’s journey toward self-acceptance — and Maria’s, too. Overworked and short on patience, Maria is carrying her own unwarranted shame that needs exorcising: the spiritual damage of having been branded sinful when she was 15 and pregnant with Cindy, half a lifetime ago.Salomon (José Pérez), Maria’s anxious brother, gives Cindy the gift of gentle allyship when she comes out to him, while the affable Father Joaquin (a charming Quiroz-Vázquez) tries to facilitate reconciliation all around. (When, over a beer in the kitchen with Salomon, this seemingly decent priest nearly violates the sanctity of the confessional by divulging what Cindy said to him there, his recklessness goes mystifyingly unremarked.)Gutierrez, center, with Saige Larmer, who plays her girlfriend. Drinks are for sale, and the audience sits at tables in a tinsel-curtained space. Maria BaranovaDuring the pandemic-stricken, pre-vaccine summer of 2020, when there was almost no live theater in New York, an earlier, much shorter version of “Quince” had a handful of open-air performances at the People’s Garden in Brooklyn. In the current incarnation, a Mexican food cart sits outside the theater preshow, and ticket holders are welcome to buy meals that they can eat during the performance. Drinks are for sale inside, where the audience sits at tables in a tinsel-curtained space decorated for Cindy’s celebration. (Scenic design is by Tanya Orellana; Tsivicos is credited as the creative director.)With a stage at one end of the long room for the terrific band (Marilyn Castillo, Andrés Fonseca, Juan Ospina and Sebastian Angel), an aisle down the center that lets the actors move among the audience and three mini-sets scattered throughout, it is a good-looking production, beguilingly lit by Mextly Couzin, with costumes by Scarlet Moreno.But the show feels inorganic and at odds with itself, straining toward mystical expression and physical abandon yet tethered to an earthbound script that meanders for too long before arriving at Cindy’s party. Occasionally it has the tone of an after-school special — albeit one that breaks into cumbia music and includes, toward the end, a Selena impersonator (Tsivicos). This play doesn’t dance nearly as much as it wants to, and its ghosts and apparitions (in beautiful masks by Quiroz-Vázquez, Zoë Batson and Courtney Escoto) fit awkwardly alongside the sometimes groan-worthy comedy.The romance between Cindy and Kaitlyn (Saige Larmer) is sweet; the healing that Maria eventually finds is a benevolence. But the show feels dumbed down, its magic dulled and focus diluted by a determination to be understood at an elementary level by people from the broader culture — even the ones who gravitate toward new work in industrial spaces in Bushwick.Trusting the audience is a risky undertaking. But we’re more curious, and more comfortable with artful ambiguity, than “Quince” gives us credit for.QuinceThrough June 26 at the Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn; thebushwickstarr.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Original ‘Spring Awakening’ Cast Reunites for 2022 Tonys Performance

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      More than 15 years after they stormed Broadway as an angsty set of adolescents, the original cast of the musical “Spring Awakening” reunited Sunday night at the Tonys and offered a special rendition of one of the musical’s most enduring songs.One of the show’s stars, Lea Michele, introduced the cast alongside Zach Braff who, not coincidently, introduced the show to Tony audiences in 2007 when it won the award for best musical. Led by Skylar Astin, the cast sang a soulful edition of “Touch Me.”The 2006 Steven Sater musical, an adaptation of the Frank Wedekind play from the turn of the 20th century, is about German teenagers grappling with sexual desires, secret pain and parental pressure. It vaulted several of its stars — such as Michele, Jonathan Groff, John Gallagher Jr. — to wider fame, won eight Tony Awards, and played more than 850 performances.A scene from “Spring Awakening” in 2006.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Tony performance on Sunday appeared to book end a reunion that has played out over the last several months. In November, the original cast reunited for one night at the Imperial Theater for a 15th anniversary concert benefiting the Entertainment Community Fund (previously The Actors Fund). The performance was recorded by HBO and released earlier this year as a film: ‘Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known.’ More

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      Ratings for the Tony Awards Rebounded, but Remained Low

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      The Tonys drew an audience of 3.9 million viewers on CBS on Sunday, about a million viewers more than last year. It was the second-lowest viewership on record. The Tonys bounced back.The 75th Tony Awards drew an audience of 3.9 million viewers on CBS on Sunday night, about a million viewers more than last year’s ceremony, according to Nielsen.The ratings comeback follows a monthslong trend where award shows, at least for now, have been rebounding from record lows. This year’s Oscars drew 16 million viewers, up from last year’s low of 10 million viewers. And the Grammys had a small ratings bump to over 9 million viewers this year.Even with the rebound, Sunday’s ratings performance was still significantly lower than the 5.4 million viewers that tuned in for the 2019 Tonys. This year marks the second-lowest viewership total since records have been kept.The Tonys likely benefited from a return to its traditional June time slot, when viewers are accustomed to watching the show. There was also significantly less competition on Sunday night, with most of the broadcast networks airing repeats. Last year, the delayed Tonys ceremony aired in September and had to go head-to-head against a prime-time Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers nail biter.Sunday’s Tonys broadcast, which was hosted by Ariana DeBose, was a chance for Broadway to put on a show for millions at a moment when ticket sales are still significantly down from before the pandemic.New York was the highest rated market in the country, with San Francisco and West Palm Beach right behind it, according to Nielsen. More

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      Kevin Spacey Charged With Sexual Assault in London

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      The actor will appear in a London court on Thursday to start what could be a lengthy trial process over multiple allegations of sexual assault.LONDON — The actor Kevin Spacey was charged with four counts of sexual assault on Monday in London, the city’s police force said in a news release.Mr. Spacey, 62, who was also charged with one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without their consent, is scheduled to appear in court in London on Thursday where he will confirm his identity and that he understands the charges. A date for a full trial has not yet been announced.The offenses, which involve three men, are alleged to have occurred between March 2005 and April 2013, the police said in the news release. Mr. Spacey’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The British authorities last month authorized the indictments against Mr. Spacey, which only took effect when Mr. Spacey traveled to England to be formally charged.Mr. Spacey told ABC News’s “Good Morning America” that he denied the charges and would travel to Britain to defend himself. “While I am disappointed with their decision to move forward, I will voluntarily appear in the U.K. as soon as can be arranged and defend myself against these charges, which I am confident will prove my innocence,” he said in a statement to the show.The charges detailed in the news release relate to incidents alleged to have taken place in London and in Gloucestershire, England. They date from the time when Mr. Spacey was the artistic director of the Old Vic theater in London, the playhouse he led from 2003 to 2015.The first person to publicly accuse Mr. Spacey, a two-time Academy Award winner, of sexual misconduct was the actor Anthony Rapp, who said in 2017 that Mr. Spacey made unwanted sexual advances toward him at a New York party in 1986, when he was 14 years old.Soon after Mr. Rapp’s allegations appeared in an article published by BuzzFeed, multiple men who worked with Mr. Spacey at the Old Vic also accused him of inappropriate behavior. An independent investigation, commissioned by the theater, said that Mr. Spacey’s “stardom and status” might have stopped people from raising accusations when they occurred. The investigators’ report added that they could not independently verify the allegations, and Mr. Spacey did not participate. More