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      ‘Intelligent Life’ Review: Cecily Strong’s ‘Awerobics’ Workout

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      Taking Lily Tomlin’s roles in a revival of Jane Wagner’s metaphysical comedy, the “Saturday Night Live” star is put through her paces.Of the many lines that have stuck with me since I saw the original Broadway production of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” in 1985, perhaps the sharpest was the one that seemed aimed directly at my generation of disappointed go-getters.“All my life, I’ve wanted to be somebody,” a character named Chrissy says, “but I see now I should have been more specific.”Chrissy attends self-awareness seminars and considers suicide. She is angry at a world that offers “false hopes” but angrier at herself for failing to have it all. “I feel I am somewhat creative,” she explains to a friend after aerobics class. “But somehow I lack the talent to go with it.”That was never the problem with Jane Wagner’s play; it bristles with barbed insights that have kept me nursing the beautiful bruises for 35 years. And the good news is that in the revival that opened at the Shed on Tuesday night, starring Cecily Strong and directed by Leigh Silverman, many of those barbs are as piercing as ever, breaking the skin of American optimism. Wagner’s existential one-liners amount to a Rosetta Stone of sardonic comedy, an overlooked source of stylings typically attributed to men like Steve Martin, Steven Wright and Will Eno.Yet because those writers are part of a tradition that has rarely had much of interest to say about women, “Intelligent Life” has always seemed like a necessary corrective. Among the 14 characters Wagner wrote for Lily Tomlin — her partner then, and her wife since 2013 — just two were male; only one, a health nut by day and a cokehead by night, remains in the revised edition presented here.Though a few other characters have also been cut — including Judith Beasley, the hilarious Tupperware saleslady who shifted to sex toys — the 10 women Strong must play in split-second succession are sufficient to make the show an aerobics class of its own. That puts the focus more squarely on its mixed platter of female frustration. Kate, a socialite, thinks she may actually be dying of boredom. Agnus Angst, a throwaway teenager, screeches her punk poetry at an unloving world. Brandy and Tina, two cheerful prostitutes, get picked up by yet another john who turns out to be just a journalist.Strong stars as 10 women in the revival of Jane Wagner’s play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWagner works hard to particularize these women, but the play, which has over the years lost an intermission and been streamlined into one 95-minute act, has trouble getting started. In part that’s because the characters seem to have been reverse engineered from their aperçus. In her spoken-word act, Agnus intones, “The last really deep conversation I had with my dad was between our T-shirts.” Kate, who once dreamed of being a concert violinist but more recently lost the tip of a finger in a cooking class accident, muses, “What a tragedy if my dream had come true.”But the problem also derives from the network of random connections that tries to pass as architecture. Chrissy is linked to Kate by a discarded piece of paper; Kate to Brandy and Tina by a hairdresser; and everyone, we gradually understand, to a homeless woman named Trudy who wears pantyhose as a “theater cape” and a coat tasseled with Post-it notes. The play’s characters turn out to be figments of her imagination or emanations caused by her faulty neural wiring.That was always a bit twee, but today it’s also troublesome. The self-consciously cute Trudy, who claims to be chaperoning a bunch of aliens as they explore the byways of human society, may no longer be such a laughable figure, despite the umbrella hat she wears as a kind of interstellar satellite dish. Homelessness, which in Reagan-era New York City seemed to be a temporary aberration, has since curdled into something more like a structural disaster, making a permanent underclass of economic and mental health victims.Tomlin got around the problem, if it was one then, by taking a breezy approach, preserving the rhythms of the punch lines at all costs. She had, after all, become famous on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” a loosey-goosey, mile-a-minute variety show.But Strong’s ability to create and sustain outré characters who nevertheless remain fundamentally believable — a skill developed over 10 seasons on “Saturday Night Live” — works against our comfort in her New York stage debut. It’s harder to laugh at her Trudy, a figure of pathos with a squinty tic and a hunched gait that never lets you forget she is shadowed by danger.That commitment to at least a nub of naturalism keeps stepping on the jokes; the night I saw the play, a majority of the laughter seemed to come in response to the uncannily timed sounds of zippers zipping, bottle tops popping and water beds sloshing. (The sound design is by Elisheba Ittoop.) Otherwise Silverman’s staging seems to suggest we are in a liminal, performative space, with no set to speak of and with Strong (like Tomlin in the original play, but not the awkward 1991 movie) changing costumes only minimally. And though the lighting (by Stacey Derosier) helps separate the emotions, Strong’s voices are not yet ideally distinct.But just as I began to wonder whether I had misremembered what Trudy calls “the goosebump experience” — the feeling you get when moved by art — “Intelligent Life” pulled itself together. Dispensing with the variety format, and giving Trudy a 30-minute rest, the second half is mostly devoted to the story of three friends living through second-wave feminism, from the founding of the National Organization for Women to the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment. Edie is the militant one, with “Spanish moss” under her arms. Marge is the cynic: “Honey, you couldn’t be more antiwar,” she tells Edie. “But if it weren’t for Army surplus, you’d have nothing to wear.”And Lyn is the one caught in between, trying to be both Edie and Marge while also being a wife, a mother of boys, a rape hotline operator and a power-dressing P.R. executive. As the quick-take grievances of the earlier characters, however funny, give way to the ordinary wear-and-tear on women trying to function honorably in a sexist society, the play achieves, and Strong fulfills, the promise of the premise.That promise is paradoxical: In offering a pull-no-punches satire of self-involved humans, it is nevertheless filled with pity for their disappointments. But instead of seeing that as a fault, perhaps it’s better to say that by finally realizing the need to be “more specific,” “Intelligent Life” eventually replaces the cheap kind of uplift with the real deal. Trudy calls the emotional workout of human life “awerobics.” By the time you get to the play’s killer last line, you may call it a true goosebump experience.The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the UniverseThrough Feb. 6 at the Shed, Manhattan; theshed.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      After Its Odds-Defying Run, John Cariani Says Bye to ‘Caroline, or Change’

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      For a little while on Sunday evening, after the final performance of “Caroline, or Change” at Studio 54, the actor John Cariani disappeared from backstage to have his portrait taken upstairs. No one had told the boys, though, and when Cariani reappeared, his young castmates — some of whom had played his son — flocked around, teasing him and hugging him. They were palpably pleased he hadn’t given them the slip.Stuart Gellman, the lost-in-grief clarinetist in Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Broadway musical, is the first father Cariani has ever played. Stuart — a widower newly remarried to Rose, played by Caissie Levy — is also the first character to tap Cariani’s clarinet skills, dormant for more than 30 years. When the pandemic shutdown delayed the revival of “Caroline” by a year and a half, he used that time to polish them.Clockwise from left: Stuart Zagnit, John Cariani, Adam Makké and Joy Hermalyn in “Caroline or Change.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs the production’s director, Michael Longhurst, said: “He could play a bit, and now he can play astonishingly, which is just a dream.”In a precarious theater season pocked with cancellations, “Caroline” made it the full three months and one day from its first preview to the scheduled end of its limited run without missing a performance. So did Cariani, 52, last seen on Broadway in 2018 in “The Band’s Visit.” (Some actors in that musical played instruments, but he did not.)Cariani’s previous Broadway shows, including “Something Rotten!” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” all continued after his contract with them was up, so giving a closing performance as an original cast member was new to him. On Saturday night, it took him by surprise when sadness crept into his voice midshow. Usually, he said, his feelings wait until later.By Sunday evening, sitting down for an interview in his dressing room, he was only beginning to process his experience with the production. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.In an interview after the final performance on Sunday, Cariani said that his character, Stuart, lives through his clarinet.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTell me about your evolution as a clarinetist.I played from age 10 to probably 19. Seriously, too. In college, I played in the pit orchestra for “Sweeney Todd.” And I didn’t know what the play was. I kept getting in trouble because I was watching instead of playing. And that’s when I realized I don’t want to do this. Whatever that is, that’s what I want to do. And then over the pandemic, I played every day because it was the one thing I knew I could do every day.Did developing your facility as a musician on this show coexist with deepening the character of Stuart?Yeah, the clarinet helped me with the singing and the singing helped with the clarinet. Ann Yee, our choreographer, said, “Remember, it’s all of a whole. So don’t think of it as the clarinet and the part.” It was just continuing to realize how much he communicates through his clarinet and getting to keep learning to communicate through the clarinet.Remarkably, “Caroline, or Change” made it through its entire limited run without missing a performance.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWell, that’s the only part of him that’s not recessive.Exactly. It’s the part that explodes. What was interesting is that means going for broke and making mistakes in front of a thousand people sometimes. I made mistakes in front of people, and I survived. And it was just great.You had three different children playing your son. How did that affect your presence?When I do musicals, I become more of a technician than when I do plays. And then finding freedom within the form is hard. Because I had three different kids, I just felt like — and we all felt this — you have to show up with the kid who’s there. And they’re all very different. One was sweet as can be, and so you want to take care of him. One is funny and wry and probably smarter than me. And that’s fun. And then one is mean. And they all work, because the text supports all three of those interpretations.Tony Kushner, Sharon D Clarke and Jeanine Tesori embraced during the curtain call after the last performance.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesHow has doing this show during the pandemic compared with any other Broadway experience you’ve had?It hasn’t felt like Broadway. It hasn’t felt like “The Band’s Visit.” I’m going to say that. Because I feel like they were equally received, very warmly received, which is a blessing. I think the pandemic changed numbers. It’s that simple. The number of people who came. I remember when Omicron hit, I heard that the box office completely stopped, like no one was buying tickets. It was noticeable. Because you could see — and people will probably give me a hard time because I shouldn’t [say this] — but the lights come up sometimes, and I can see the audience. And you see pairs [of seats] all over the place, empty.Some of them are because they didn’t sell, and some of them are because people tested positive.They tested positive; they canceled. I had friends who were going to come this last week. Six couples, all tested positive, couldn’t come. I will say that the past five shows have felt like Broadway. Because it’s our last week, we’ve had really good houses, electric audiences.Audience aside, ticket sales aside, how has it been? You’re not going, I assume, to a closing night party, right? Was there an opening party?We didn’t do any of those things.The show was “so much fun,” Cariani said. “Because it’s a mountain to climb every night.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWhile audience numbers were affected by the pandemic, the show ended strong, Cariana said. “Our last week, we’ve had really good houses, electric audiences.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesHow careful have you had to be to make it all the way through?We don’t go out together as a company. You know, you don’t go visit. It’s just not smart right now. You don’t get to know people. That’s the other hard thing. We don’t get to know each other the way other casts have known each other. I had to ask one of the cleaning guys to take his mask off so I could know what he looks like. We wear our masks all the time backstage. We have to remind each other to take them off before we go on sometimes.Really?I wore my mask on for the J.F.K. sequence, when I don’t have to say anything, but I’m up there looking at the TV. Caissie didn’t even notice. You know who noticed? The boys were watching.“I made mistakes in front of people, and I survived,” Cariani said of playing the clarinet onstage. “And it was just great.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesHave you felt safe?The hardest part for me was the commute. I ride on the subway for about 40 minutes total. The first 15 minutes of that ride, most of the people, I would say a good portion of the people, are not masked. A lot of young people, you know? It changes as you go deeper into Manhattan. And then it’s the opposite as you leave.Has this production brought you joy?Caissie and I said this the other night: Right before we come on after “Salty Teardrops,” I was like, “Remember when this was impossible and we said we’re never going to have fun with this? Can you believe how much fun it is?” It’s so much fun. Because it’s a mountain to climb every night.“The Band’s Visit” wasn’t technically difficult for me at all. I had to sing a couple songs, say some words; I had to be there, be present, you know what I mean? But I do think that Sam Sadigursky, who was our clarinet player in “The Band’s Visit,” was a huge influence on me — getting to listen to him every night. And then, I’m not going to lie. It’s fun when Jeanine Tesori comes up to you and says, “I cannot believe you’re playing it all. This is so thrilling.” Because the character plays, and it’s thrilling for her to see the character play. And Tony said that, too. Hugest moment of my life.For any other actor in the part of Stuart, what’s your advice?Remember that half of your role is the clarinet. In rehearsals, I was so focused on getting my singing and my talking right that I was forgetting about living through that clarinet. Even if you don’t play it, figure out how to live through that clarinet. More

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      A Season to Savor a Cherished Musical Again and Again (and Again)

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      Our critic didn’t set out to see “Caroline, or Change” seven times, but amid so much uncertainty the show turned out to be just what she needed.Settling into my seat at Studio 54, I let the sound design begin to transport me like a musical overture — the chittering of creatures and the bubbling of water, echoing from tall grasses and low haze on the edge of a Southern swamp.At each performance of “Caroline, or Change,” I look forward to this calming bit of preshow acclimation, even as a Confederate statue stands imposingly at center stage. And I keep my eyes peeled for the theater’s Covid safety enforcer patrolling the orchestra, arms crossed, scanning the audience for any unmasked faces. Spotting him calms me, too.When the lights dim, the statue is wheeled off, and in its place when they come up again is Caroline Thibodeaux, in the person of the astonishing British actor Sharon D Clarke, doing laundry in a Louisiana basement in 1963.I didn’t set out to see this musical masterpiece by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori seven times this season, but I have. For the record, I’d been scared to see it even once — scared the way you get when you cherish a work of art so fiercely that you don’t want to risk finding it diminished.It didn’t matter to my brain that theater’s habit of reinvention is one of the things I love about the form, or that this Broadway revival got rave reviews in London. “Caroline” is my favorite musical, and I was protective of my memory of it. I’d been mad since 2004 that George C. Wolfe’s original Broadway production ran only a few months. (Hold a grudge much? Yeah, I know.)Yet Michael Longhurst’s gorgeous iteration, for Roundabout Theater Company, turned out to be just what I’ve needed: a work of intricate beauty to savor again and again in this strange, uncertain season. After catching the first preview in October, I started telling people that I would see it three times a week if I could.Sounded like I was exaggerating. I was not.Inspired by Kushner’s own Louisiana childhood, “Caroline” is the fictional story of a divorced Black maid working for a Jewish family mired in grief and paying her what they know is too little to get by on. Comedy and fantasy leaven the ugliness and pain, but the music, the lyrics, the characters are complex. It’s not a show to be absorbed in one swoop.If this production had opened as planned in what was to have been the busy spring of 2020, there’s no way I would have seen it as many times as I have. Repeated viewing at any scale is a rare luxury for me, and the chance to do it to such an extent with “Caroline” is a direct effect of the pandemic. In an unsettled season with a cascade of postponements and cancellations, lower ticket demand and fewer productions mean bargain prices and, if you’re a theater journalist like I am, a lot more free evenings.So I have been taking advantage — which I feel guilty admitting, because of course I could have spent that same time seeing deserving new work that I missed completely. Instead I’ve been giving one show a closer, longer look than usual, watching extraordinary cast members deepen their performances so far beyond that thrilling first preview that I can’t honestly regret it.Domhnall Gleeson, with Aoife Duffin in the background, in Enda Walsh’s “Medicine” at St. Ann’s Warehouse.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesCritics tend to see multiple productions of the same play — especially in seasons when there seem to be 47 stagings of “King Lear” or 18 of “The Tempest” — but not multiple performances of a single production, unless it transfers somewhere, usually to Broadway from Off Broadway or an out-of-town tryout. Even then, we only see the beginning of each run, while the production keeps changing after that.In theater — unlike films and TV shows, which stay frozen no matter how many times you watch them — the ritual of repetition coexists with change. As in other kinds of live performance, exact duplication is impossible, and also not the point. Evolution is the hope, which I’ve seen realized in “Caroline.”It has been quite frankly exhilarating to watch the company get tighter and tighter, especially at a time when public perception is that Broadway in particular and theater in general are a pandemic shambles. At the matinee just this Wednesday — the matinee! — Clarke gave a shattering performance, as alive to the text and the moment as any other I’d seen, but with elements new to me: an inflection, a movement, a vocal fillip at the end of a song. Such are the many layers of her character.“I love dissecting it. I love it,” Clarke exulted to me in an interview in October, the day after the first preview.Three months on, with the musical’s limited run set to close this weekend, it feels like she is still investigating.The other show I revisited this fall was Enda Walsh’s “Medicine,” but that wasn’t because I’d been wild about it initially. Walsh’s plays sometimes land with me and sometimes don’t. This one — chaotic, often funny, with Domhnall Gleeson’s understated performance at its heart — did not.I first saw it in November at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Six days later, in an interview, Gleeson told me that he had only just figured out how the show, which the company had performed elsewhere, worked in the St. Ann’s space. I gave it another shot because of that — and because his passion for another Walsh play, “The Walworth Farce,” prompted me to read it, an experience that left me wide awake when I finished it after 1 a.m., my every nerve ending taut.The second time I saw “Medicine,” in December, I watched it more deliberately, and it absolutely landed. Outside afterward, I walked through a patch of park and stood staring out at the East River, shaken. If the play had stayed in town longer, I’d have gone again.But when I see a show repeatedly in the same run — as I did with two of the plays in Phyllida Lloyd’s Donmar Warehouse Shakespeare trilogy, also at St. Ann’s — I tend to top out at three viewings.Zawe Ashton, from left, Charlie Cox and Tom Hiddleston in the 2019 Broadway production of “Betrayal” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat’s what happened with the Broadway productions of “The Cher Show” (where seeing Stephanie J. Block’s understudy at one performance made me realize Block’s particular power) and “Sea Wall/A Life” (where I listened ferociously to figure out what was sound design and what was sound bleed from outside). My curiosity about both was professional, though; going more than once was about reporting.Jamie Lloyd’s 2019 revival of “Betrayal,” starring Tom Hiddleston, was different. Its first preview blindsided me: a Pinter play that could make me cry? I became fascinated with the geometry of emotion in the production — with where Lloyd placed the characters on the set, and how their isolation signified. Determined to watch the staging from different angles in the house, I went five times in all.When I told Lloyd about that, during an interview toward the end of the show’s run, he inquired about the actors: “And have you noticed variations in their performances?” I still wonder which answer he might have been looking for: reassurance that the show had stayed lively or that it hadn’t flown off the rails.I would be a little heartbroken if “Caroline” had gone off the rails — always my worry when a production runs for a while. As it is, when it gives its final performance on Sunday, I plan to be there, seeing it for the eighth time.After that, I expect I’ll be in the market for a new obsession. I’m thinking maybe “Company.” More

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      LaChanze on Alice Childress’s “Trouble in Mind”

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      Since October, the actress has been performing the lead role of Wiletta Mayer in the Broadway debut of Childress’s 1955 play.“I started to scream but no sound come out … just a screamin’ but no sound …”Alice Childress wrote those words in her 1955 play “Trouble in Mind,” which the Roundabout Theater Company produced on Broadway this fall, in a limited run that will end on Sunday. The backstage comedy-drama, about the rehearsal process for an anti-lynching play, tackles racism in the theater industry, and that quote sums up what Black Americans have historically experienced — a consistent outcry to be heard by the dominant society that refuses to listen.In “Trouble in Mind,” I play Wiletta Mayer, a middle-aged actress who dreams of doing something “real grand … in the theater.” This is Wiletta’s first time as the lead in a play, not a musical. Surprisingly, this role in a play is a first for me as well, even though I have been performing in Broadway musicals for over 30 years. And it’s the perfect role, because of many of my career experiences: as an actress onstage, my length of time in this business, not having the opportunity to be considered a serious dramatic actress. I draw on all of them to step into Wiletta’s shoes.Now I go to the American Airlines Theater six times a week to portray a character I first came to know in college. I get to feel her life experiences as my own. I get to convey the things so many Black actors have expressed, but, as Wiletta says, “You don’t want to hear.”I first read “Trouble in Mind” — along with a wide range of works by Black American playwrights — as a student at Morgan State University in Maryland, one of our nation’s historically Black colleges and universities. Writers who used their plays as art and activism — Childress, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks and so many others — inspired me to become a performing artist. Studying their works ignited my ambition to delve as deep as a person can into the values that make an artist and activist. I wanted to feel their kind of power, their eloquence, and their courage. This courage, this fire that led Childress to produce such timeless words. In fact her play is being performed word-for-word in its original form.Childress was born in Charleston, S.C., in 1916, and died in Queens in 1994. She wrote and produced plays for four decades. She put up “Trouble” Off Broadway in 1955, four years before Lorraine Hansberry made history by debuting “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway, and was the first playwright I ever read to show authentic conversations between Black Americans, things that are said about whites when whites aren’t around. She exposed a Black cultural way of speaking that we call code switching, which the Urban dictionary defines as customizing “style of speech to the audience or group being addressed.” Childress cleverly demonstrates this in “Trouble in Mind.” She gives the audience a peek into what we, as Black actors, must do to accommodate white audiences.In the beginning of the play, Wiletta tells John, a young actor, how to act around white people, explaining there are certain things you must do:WILETTA But don’t get too cocky. They don’t like that either. You have to cater to these fools too …JOHN I’m afraid I don’t know how to do that.WILETTA Laugh! Laugh at everything they say, makes ’em feel superior.JOHN Why do they have to feel superior?WILETTA You gonna sit there and pretend you don’t know why?JOHN I … I’d feel silly laughing at everything.WILETTA You don’t. Sometimes they laugh, you’re supposed to look serious, other times they serious, you supposed to laugh.The stereotypes have changed over the years — now there’s the hyper-masculinity of Black men; the strong Black woman who doesn’t seem to have a need for vulnerability or tenderness; Black children whose innocence has been removed — but the same rules still apply.LaChanze with Brandon Micheal Hall (who plays the young actor John), Chuck Cooper and Danielle Campbell in the play.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Trouble” was optioned for Broadway, but never opened there because Childress would not tone down the dialogue for the show’s white producers. The white director in the play, Al Manners, tells Wiletta, “The American public is not ready to see you the way you want to be seen because, one, they don’t believe it, two, they don’t want to believe it, and three, they’re convinced they’re superior.” I have also had white male directors debate with me about what a Black woman would say, feel, even how she would dress.Childress was unapologetic about her intentions, even if it meant her work wouldn’t make it to Broadway in her lifetime. I have debated this with other artists, wondering whether she was even more brave than brilliant. But we agree that she was a truth teller, a soothsayer.As a student and young actor, I was astonished that the canon of Black American writers and artists that so richly shaped my artistic life were mostly unknown and so poorly understood. The play’s director, Charles Randolph-Wright, the first Black director with whom I have worked as a leading actor on Broadway, shepherded this project for 15 years. He also read the play in college and fell in love with Childress’s unapologetic writing.He is the champion of “Trouble in Mind.” Charles, who studied at Duke University and with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, and danced with Alvin Ailey in New York, was told many times that he could not make this happen. It is as if, with her words in the play, Childress wrote directly to Charles six decades ago, “I’m sick of people signifyin’ we got no sense.” Charles wants to give her the voice she should have had before he and I were born.In our many conversations, I am invigorated in speaking to him about Black representation in the entertainment industry. Working with a director who I feel lives in my head is thrilling. My private thoughts that I’m sometimes too shy to share, Charles boldly speaks them before I can even get them out. Much like Childress, Charles is committed to telling the truth in his work and in having multidimensional portrayals of Black people, not just the broad strokes we see. And quite frankly, we’re both tired of seeing these examples. In my own career, I’ve taken jobs I didn’t want to do, but I had to play these parts because I needed a job.I get to work with a dedicated, resilient Black director, and a fearless, committed cast. Childress wanted to speak for the have-nots, the invisibles, and to share her eloquence with the Broadway community and universities across the world. She used her play about Black actors to explore the values of America. But some people weren’t ready, and so many people never got to hear her words. Now I proudly stand on her shoulders, opening my soul to her and teaching my daughters and other lovers of truth about her brilliance.“Some live by what they call great truths,” Wiletta says in the play. “I’ve always wanted to do somethin’ real grand … in the theater … to stand forth at my best … to stand up here and do anything I want …”And that’s exactly what Alice Childress did.LaChanze won the Tony Award for best actress in a leading role in a musical in 2006 for “The Color Purple.” In 2019, LaChanze and her eldest daughter, Celia Rose Gooding, became one of the few pairs of mothers and daughters to perform on Broadway as leading actors in the same season. More

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      ‘Emily in Paris’ Isn’t the Only Clichéd Show in This Town

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      Netflix doesn’t qualify as a solo offender when it comes to Gallic stereotypes, as three musical theater works on the city’s stages show.PARIS — There’s been no shortage of complaints from Parisians about the Netflix series “Emily in Paris.” Yet an endless stream of clichés about the city — from cafes by the Louvre to chain smoking and ménages à trois — isn’t merely the province of Americans. French artists indulge, too; at home, however, rose-tinted nostalgia hits differently.Musical theater has been a frequent offender, and recently, mythical visions of Paris have been on offer at two rival playhouses. At the Théâtre du Châtelet, the city often felt like the protagonist of “Cole Porter in Paris,” a musical set in the 1920s; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées roped the designer Christian Lacroix into lending period glamour to Jacques Offenbach’s operetta “La Vie Parisienne” (“Parisian Life”).And the stereotypes woven into their fabrics, by and large, are the same. Luxury fashion? Check. Casual philandering? Check. Entitled members of the bourgeoisie? Check.“Cole Porter in Paris,” especially, is an odd offering. Created and directed by Christophe Mirambeau, it is a jukebox musical of Porter hits. The songs are uneasily stitched into a plot about the years the composer spent in the French capital, from 1917 to 1928. His love for the city ran deep: Porter’s first Broadway hit was called simply “Paris,” and he often turned to this formative period for inspiration after his return to the United States.Mirambeau draws from Porter’s large oeuvre — inserting only George and Ira Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” as a bonus — to conjure nostalgic visions from les années folles (“the crazy years,” as the 1920s are known in French). The result is a breathless tour of a decade of French culture, filtered through an American sensibility and repackaged.The World of ‘Emily in Paris’The Netflix show, starring Lily Collins in the role of an American social media wiz in the French capital, is back for a second season. Emily, C’est Moi: As an American in Paris, our critic used to look down on Emily. He then realized they have more in common than he thought. Emily’s Closet: The show was derided for its unrealistic approach to French dressing.  These looks define the upcoming season.The French Reaction: The response of actual Parisians to the first season was “ridicule” — French for ridiculous and absurd, as well as amusing.The Man Behind the Show: Darren Star, who also created “Sex and the City,” has specialized in escapist visions of the urban female experience.“I love Paris every moment,” three singers inform us in the opening number, drawn from Porter’s 1953 musical, “Can-Can.” The backdrop then rises to reveal the Eiffel Tower. When Linda Lee Thomas, Porter’s future wife, appears, she immediately launches into “You Don’t Know Paree,” first heard in “Fifty Million Frenchmen,” in 1929. (“Paree” appears in the title of three more of the evening’s songs.)With 29 numbers, the production is a musical marathon, which explains why the role of Porter is shared by three performers (Richard Delestre, Yoni Amar and Matthieu Michard). The orchestra Les Frivolités Parisiennes, which specializes in French comic opera from the 19th and 20th centuries, provided rousing backing onstage throughout.But who is the target audience? More often than not, Porter’s life serves as a flimsy excuse to flit from number to number and to drop the names of cultural figures like the impresario Serge Diaghilev and the dancer and club owner Ada “Bricktop” Smith. And for Parisians, there is something alienating about uncritical re-enactments of a perceived Golden Age.Rodolphe Briand, left, as Gardefeu and Laurent Deleuil as Bobinet in “La Vie Parisienne,” directed by Christian Lacroix at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.Marie PétryParisian mythmaking is typically centered around a handful of eras, and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, “La Vie Parisienne” harks back to an earlier one: the Second Empire, which lasted from 1852 to 1870. At the time, Napoleon III gave Georges-Eugène Haussmann free rein to rebuild the capital, driving rapid growth. In that context, Offenbach’s 1866 operetta aimed to portray the real lives of (some) Parisians — namely, two dandies, Gardefeu and Bobinet, who can’t decide whether to focus their attentions on promiscuous demimondaines or respectable society ladies.Offenbach both celebrates and satirizes their lifestyle. Their entanglements with two Danish characters, the Baron and Baroness Gondremarck, show aspects of the city’s growing international appeal. The Baroness seeks cultural thrills; the Baron is more interested in becoming acquainted with the aforementioned demimondaines.“La Vie Parisienne” is the directing debut of Lacroix, the designer, whom the playbill describes as a “born nostalgic.” Over the past four decades, he has created costumes for a long list of operas, ballets and plays, often drawing on original sources. A keen historian, he looked to period fashion as well as to some of the 1866 designs for “La Vie Parisienne’s” premiere, and the result is luxurious.For lovers of Offenbach, there is an additional thrill. With the help of researchers from the Palazzetto Bru Zane, a Venice-based music center, the production restores portions of the score that were cut because the original cast protested their difficulty. The five acts (rather than the usual four), conducted with joyful vigor by Romain Dumas, fly by, and an ensemble of dancers and acrobats make a welcome contemporary addition to the proceedings.Yet “La Vie Parisienne” and “Cole Porter in Paris” both feel like extensions of a similar script. Paris, we are told, is synonymous with sexual freedom. Porter’s homosexuality and his relationship with the Russian poet Boris Kochno are strong features of “Cole Porter in Paris,” while the newly revived fifth act of “La Vie Parisienne” waxes lyrical about its setting, a cafe known for providing very discreet salons for its clients.It’s an appealing myth, which has left many in France unwilling to examine to whom, and how, that freedom actually applied. It was largely limited to a small, well-to-do subset of the population. And if Paris is the city of hedonistic romance, the argument goes, why regulate office affairs or tamp down on harassment today? “Trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner” — isn’t it part of French culture, as Catherine Deneuve and others implied in an open letter in the wake of the #MeToo movement?The ensemble in “Chance!,” written and directed by Hervé Devolder, at the Théâtre La Bruyère.LOTThe allure of a bourgeois office affair is also irresistible in homegrown French musicals in which Paris is just an incidental backdrop, like the witty and unassuming “Chance!” Written and directed by Hervé Devolder, and currently installed at the small Théâtre La Bruyère, this romantic comedy featuring three heterosexual couples and set in a Paris law firm has proved a long-running success, with over 1,300 performances at venues around the city since its premiere in 2001.“Chance!” contains multiple references to American musicals, but its attitude to workplace romances is decidedly French. Not only are these encouraged, but when the boss says he may have committed sexual harassment by propositioning one of his employees, the idea is swiftly dismissed: That’s impossible, the characters decide, since she loves him back.In “Emily in Paris,” the situation would be treated as a French quirk, providing viewers with an exotic frisson. But what are real-life Parisians to do with this idealized Paris? Take a hard look at it, for starters.Cole Porter in Paris. Directed by Christophe Mirambeau. Théâtre du Châtelet.La Vie Parisienne. Directed by Christian Lacroix. Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, through Jan. 9.Chance! Directed by Hervé Devolder. Théâtre La Bruyère, through Jan. 15. More

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      Welcoming Back Live Theater Doesn’t Mean Agreeing About All of It

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      The year that just ended was a difficult one for people who make theater, as they faced economic, aesthetic and medical challenges. In a smaller way it was therefore a strange year for those of us who write about and review their work. Not until late summer 2020 — and then more fully in the fall — did we see live plays and musicals, and enjoy the pleasures that come with doing so: not just the communal experience in the theater but also the shared reflection afterward.For us — Jesse Green, the chief theater critic, and Maya Phillips, a critic at large — that shared reflection often included the gift of disagreement. And so, on the last day of 2021, we met, in cyberspace, to talk about what each of us liked most over the last several months, what we disliked most — and how a bit of (respectful!) head-butting can expand our understanding of both. Below, edited excerpts from the conversation.JESSE GREEN The return of live theater, however precarious, was a great thing for both of us — as critics, of course, but also as lovers of plays and musicals. There was a lot to see, and a lot we liked.MAYA PHILLIPS It was strange, though, to return to crowded theaters after being holed up in our apartments for so long. And it felt overwhelming — in a good way, but still overwhelming — to dive right back into a full fall season. But, yes, it was great to be back. What stood out to you?GREEN I found myself gravitating, somewhat unexpectedly, to the extremes of experience, rather than the subtle middle ground I often find so amenable. I went for big comedy and sensation, as in the first live show I saw, “Merry Wives,” Jocelyn Bioh’s Shakespeare revamp for the Public Theater in Central Park. To share belly laughs with hundreds of people again was a joy. I felt that way again, indoors, with “Six.”A grand Broadway spectacle: The cast of “Six,” the new musical about the wives of Henry VIII. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPHILLIPS I agree. I loved the color of “Merry Wives” in every respect — the bright costumes, the flashy ending, the vibrant performances and, of course, that cast of people of color. “Six” was the epitome of the grand spectacle that Broadway can be — in all the best ways. And don’t forget “Trouble in Mind.” That was one of my favorites, and I thought the comedy worked so well in that production.This should come as no surprise to you, but I’m more of a tragedy girl myself. What appealed to you on the more somber side of things?GREEN Funny you should mention “Trouble in Mind,” which I responded to both as a comedy (which it is, formally) and as a tragedy (which it is, sociologically). That’s part of what made Alice Childress’s play, which was supposed to have its Broadway premiere in 1957, so smashing in 2021: It finds a way to tell a story about the waste of Black talent within the warm, familiar confines of a backstage setting. But I suspect your penchant for tragedy is more in the classic vein — and there, I think we would want to talk about “Pass Over.”PHILLIPS I’m an equal opportunity lover of all forms of tragedy, but yes, my preferred brand of comedy is laced with the kind of biting sociological satire and subtly tragic moments that Childress offers in “Trouble in Mind.”When I think about “Pass Over,” the explicit moments of tragedy aren’t what stand out. In fact, those moments of physical and emotional and verbal violence — the ending in particular — didn’t always work for me. The most fascinating aspects, and the most tragic, were the ways the two Black characters related to each other, within this framework that the playwright, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, adopted from Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” It’s the same kind of nihilistic view that Beckett had, with similar linguistic play, but it’s so much more meaningful because it’s used to reveal how race is its own trap, a purgatory, in America. But then it also contains humor, like “Trouble in Mind.”From left: Brandon Micheal Hall, LaChanze, Chuck Cooper and Danielle Campbell in Alice Childress’s 1955 play “Trouble in Mind.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGREEN Inadvertently but appropriately, purgatory was a frequent theme as live theater ventured out this fall. Another show that dramatized it — and sang about it, too — was the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of “Caroline, or Change,” in which the title character, a Black woman in Louisiana, spends most of her working life in the subterranean laundry room of a Jewish family. And in Martyna Majok’s “Sanctuary City,” the limbo of being Dreamers — the children of undocumented immigrants in the United States — becomes not just a political problem but an emotional one, as two teenagers, denied a place in the country, try to find a place for themselves in each other. With a few reservations, I loved both those shows, and I think you did too.PHILLIPS Yes, both were fantastic, and I’d also add Sylvia Khoury’s brutal “Selling Kabul,” at Playwrights Horizons, to that category of shows featuring characters trapped in a kind of political limbo. Though, in that case, it’s also literal, because the whole play takes place in one small apartment, and one of the characters is unable to leave. But I want to get to some of the things we disagree on, because I feel as if — despite our different preferences — we’re often on the same page when it comes to the criticism. The fall had a lot of shows we didn’t see eye to eye on!Francis Benhamou, left, and Marjan Neshat in Sylvia Khoury’s tense drama “Selling Kabul,” at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGREEN I guess that brings us to “Clyde’s” by Lynn Nottage — another purgatory play. This time the purgatory is a truck stop sandwich shop run by a diabolical character (played by Uzo Aduba) and staffed by former prisoners who have almost no way back into society. And yet, somehow, it’s a comedy.PHILLIPS A comedy that I didn’t find funny! I love Lynn Nottage, but I’ve noticed I’ve had problems with her comedies. And this one in particular I found flimsy. To use the already heavy-handed sandwich metaphor, I’d say there wasn’t enough meat to it, despite the performances, which I liked. But I also wished that Aduba had more to do; it was great watching a Black woman be this ridiculously arch villain, but that character, and the whole theme of redemption and connection through the creative art of sandwich-making, felt one-note to me.GREEN Comedy is more personal than tragedy. I laughed and laughed — no doubt in part because of the performances but also for the very reason you were disappointed: It didn’t try to explain itself. Also, it gave us characters, most of them Black and Latino, without a white filter, which for me was a pleasure and a relief. Also a pleasure and a relief: The characters (spoiler alert) escaped their purgatory. Which is not to say I don’t understand your criticisms; I find them useful because one person can only absorb one idea of a play at a time. I wonder if you feel the same way, or whether it’s just annoying when we disagree?Uzo Aduba and Ron Cephas Jones in Lynn Nottage’s “Clyde’s,” one of the shows our critics had differing opinions about.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPHILLIPS What you say about comedy being more personal is exactly right. I had issues with the allegory to begin with, and because it’s so prevalent, I was looking for other dimensions or nuances to latch onto but was just left with the element of the play — the main element — that I found unappealing.But I never find our disagreements annoying! At first I found them unsettling. I’m not sure if you still get the anxiety I do — that you’ve missed something that your fellow critics haven’t, and that must be the root of the disagreement, that you’re just wrong. Now I find our disagreements informative. Like with your review of “Clyde’s,” you pointed out the same problems I had with it, but while those issues couldn’t redeem the show for me, for you there was more to it. What’s most important to me there was that we saw the same things and just had different responses.GREEN I like that formulation, and wish it were more commonly held. But it’s understandable that people want critics to love what they love; critics feel the same way! I do feel scarily out on a limb when I dislike something so many people, including my colleagues, like. That was most painfully the case with the new gender-switched revival of “Company,” because I spent a lot of the running time trying to convince myself that I was enjoying it when in fact, as I had to accept when I got home, I wasn’t.Katrina Lenk in the director Marianne Elliott’s gender-flipped revival of “Company.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPHILLIPS That is difficult! I admire that you stuck to your guns there, especially because I think a lot of people went in expecting to enjoy it because of the cast, because of the reputation of the show, and of course because Stephen Sondheim died this fall. With “Company,” you had context I didn’t have going in. I’d heard the songs and knew the story, but this was my first time seeing the show. And yet again, I agreed with your points, especially about the elaborate set overwhelming the content, but found the gender swap, with some small exceptions, more interesting and relevant. There were definitely some awkward lyric changes, but I thought the way the dialogue was changed and how the characters’ relationships with a now-female Bobbie changed created fresh tension that worked. And I found it refreshing to see a female lead who might be passive and aloof, yes, but is able to own that — and the fact that she’s single — in a way that a man can in society. It’s much more rare to see that kind of female character, and I loved Katrina Lenk’s performance.GREEN Did you feel that way about Victoria Clark in “Kimberly Akimbo,” the new musical by Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire about a teenager (played by Clark) who, because of a rare disease, looks like she’s in her 60s? I gave it (and her) a rave review but you told me you weren’t convinced.PHILLIPS Yes, I enjoyed Clark’s performance but had a similar experience to the one you had at “Company” during this show — I sat there wanting to enjoy it but had to admit to myself that it just wasn’t clicking for me. I admired what it was trying to do, and I welcome bonkers new musicals like this one, but I thought the book just needed a lot more work. The funny but random scheming aunt, who takes up so much room in the show; the awkwardly incorporated student chorus; Kimberly’s relationship with her parents; her relationship with her own disease — there were so many places where I felt the show could have cut or expanded and refocused itself while still maintaining its quirkiness. And to be honest, the songs weren’t very memorable to me.Victoria Clark as Kimberly, with Justin Cooley, center, and Steven Boyer in “Kimberly Akimbo” at the Atlantic Theater Company.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGREEN Oh, that stabs me in the heart! But that’s what it means to accept that theater, like all experience, is subjective, and therefore so is criticism. You’re going to hurt sometimes. People have told me — most recently at a funeral! — that they dislike my reviews because they’re “so mean.” When I engage those people further, it often turns out that it’s not the supposed meanness but the disagreement itself that makes them angry. Some people just can’t be happy unless everyone loves “Diana, the Musical” and “Flying Over Sunset,” to name two shows I didn’t — and you didn’t, either. Do you get that?PHILLIPS I do get that! But more so on Twitter, with random internet trolls, and more so with fandoms other than theater. I often am seen as a curmudgeon or contrarian by my family and friends, but then when they read my reviews they always tell me I’m fair. Sometimes it is fun to be the one with the controversial opinion. But I’m interested in discourse; disagreement is just part of the job, and we need it. We’re not the same people with the same experiences. Our differences of opinion reveal the differences in our experiences, which in turn highlight different dimensions of what we’re critiquing. As long as that criticism is thoughtfully considered and argued, it’s all useful.GREEN I grew up arguing with my family about everything we saw. In a way, that’s how you learn that other people exist as much as you do, and how you come to understand what you experience more fully. In that sense, unexpected or outré or at least strongly worded positions are necessary. Even when they are quite negative they can be seen, I hope, as joyful contributions to the mutual project — as “Company” has it — of being alive. More

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      Coronavirus Is Surging. Avant-Garde Arts Festivals Are Closing.

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      Under the Radar, Prototype and the Exponential Festival, annual January beacons of experimental work, have canceled their in-person offerings.Last Wednesday, the staff of the Under the Radar festival agreed on a path forward.They would limit the number of performances in the festival. They would not offer food or drink. The Public Theater, the host of this annual celebration of experimental performance, had already mandated that audience members provide the results of a negative PCR or rapid antigen test, in addition to confirming full vaccination status.Everyone concurred that these measures would keep audiences, artists and staff safe amid the current coronavirus surge. The festival would be able to open on Jan. 12, as planned.But Mark Russell, Under the Radar’s artistic director, woke up on Thursday morning and realized he and his colleagues were wrong.“I was sort of in denial, riding down the river of denial for a while,” he said on a video call Friday afternoon. “We tried all the adjustments until the last minute, and put a lot of work into rejiggering again, and then rejiggering again.”With case numbers rising, jiggering only went so far. When he spoke on Friday, the Public had just announced the festival’s cancellation, citing “multiple disruptions related to the rapid community spread of the Omicron variant.” This was just after the Exponential Festival, a multi-venue, multi-arts program based in Brooklyn, had made the decision to go entirely online. And on Monday, Prototype, a festival of avant-garde opera and musical theater, largely spiked its 10th anniversary celebration that was meant to open on Jan. 7. (One Prototype show, “The Hang,” will still open, a bit later in the month than scheduled.)Developed to complement the annual Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference, these three January festivals have grown to fill an essential niche, introducing presenters and civilians to innovative theater and performance — local, national and international. It was announced on Dec. 23 that the conference would go digital, which made the subsequent cancellations less surprising, if no less sad.Kristin Marting and Beth Morrison, two of the founding directors of Prototype, spent Friday morning telling artists that, while the festival would pay out their contracts, they wouldn’t be able to perform.“Purell Piece” was among the shows presented online last year by the Exponential Festival.Cory Fraiman-Lott“It’s been a terrible day,” Morrison said on a conference call that afternoon. “Tears and, of course, understanding. But incredible disappointment.”The cancellations speak to the difficulties of producing live performance in New York during a pandemic, even assuming the most responsible health and safety practices. On Monday the Joyce Theater said it would not be able to go ahead with Ayodele Casel’s tap-dance work “Chasing Magic,” which had been scheduled to open on Tuesday. Broadway is reeling from closures — most recently, Manhattan Theatre Club halted “Skeleton Crew” through Jan. 9 — and the unconventional, small-scale work championed by the trio of January festivals has been even slower to resume in the city.Now audiences will have to wait another year, at least, before this bounty properly returns. And the individuals and ensembles who create experimental work — and are often dependent on the income from touring it — will have to wait that much longer for showcases.When asked about the decision to cancel their live shows, the directors of all three events listed risks to performers and audiences, as well as visa problems and supply chain delays. Theresa Buchheister, the artistic director of the Exponential Festival, cited the cost — in both time and money — of testing performers every day.Russell mentioned the high positivity rate among the Public’s staff. “I might have been in a place of telling someone they can’t go on, because we don’t have a technician to run the lights,” he said.Ironically, the festivals all managed to open last year, albeit digitally. Prototype programmed six shows, three of them world premieres and three new to the United States. Under the Radar offered seven shows, as well as an online symposium and access to works in progress. The Exponential Festival presented a staggering 31 events, “Corona Cam Show” and “Purell Piece” among them. But all of the artistic directors had bet on a return to live performance — a decision made this summer, after vaccines were widely available but before the Delta and Omicron surges.“Maybe we shouldn’t have planned to do so many things in person, but we really thought that it was a choice that could happen,” Buchheister said.Until very recently that risk felt small, especially compared to the potential rewards. “We’re live producers,” Morrison explained on Wednesday, when Prototype was still planning to go ahead. “We’re interested in live theater and live opera and singing in the room and bringing people together and feeling everybody’s heartbeat synced in the audience. That’s why we do what we do and why we love what we do.”Silvana Estrada was to have performed her “Marchita” as part of Prototype.Mariscal/EPA, via ShutterstockSilvana Estrada, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Mexico who had been booked to perform her “Marchita” at Prototype, described the frustrations of working digitally. “That’s something that I talk about a lot with my colleagues,” she said in a phone interview on Thursday. “Singing to a computer makes you feel so miserable. For me, having an opportunity to actually perform live again, it’s a fulfillment that I spent a long time without.”Prototype and Under the Radar had planned entirely live slates, feeling that a hybrid model would divert too many resources — artistic and financial. Only the Exponential Festival had preset an online option, with 15 shows to be presented live and four to be made available on YouTube. But in late December, after Buchheister tested positive, the decision was made to move Exponential online entirely. Seven of the live shows chose to adopt a digital format; eight opted to postpone.Dmitri Barcomi, the creator of “Case Studies: A New Kinsey Report,” didn’t seem too upset. “I think an even greater level of intimacy can be achieved through the added privacy of an at-home viewing,” he wrote in an email. Besides, he added, “so much of our generation discovered their queerness online, so it feels like a welcome back party!”But the online format didn’t work for everyone. “This play is meant to be experienced in person,” Marissa Joyce Stamps, the writer and director of “Blue Fire Burns the Hottest,” which had been booked for Exponential, wrote in an email. And Under the Radar and Prototype didn’t feel that their scheduled works could or should pivot at the last minute. Instead they both hope to return next year, perhaps in hybrid form, perhaps going all-in again on live.“This is what we do,” said Marting, the Prototype director. “Because art is meaningful in people’s lives. It’s not for special occasions. It’s for the fabric of our lives.” More

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      Review: ‘The Streets of New York’ Is a Good Old Melodrama

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      At the Irish Repertory Theater, this musical confection is a luridly entertaining tale, set mostly in 1857, about a villainous banker and his wily clerk.The 19th-century playwright Dion Boucicault cut an uncommonly colorful figure — prodigal, voracious, cavalier. As an author of theatrical hits on both sides of the Atlantic, he made assorted fortunes and lost them reliably, while his romantic life was the stuff of drama, and occasionally farce.One of the earliest headlines about him in The New York Times, in 1863, was the simple “Dion Boucicault in Trouble.” A lawsuit said that the married playwright had locked himself in the London bedroom of an unwitting colonel during a midnight visit to an actress whose estranged husband was in hot pursuit.Scandal, riches, penury — the Dublin-born Boucicault knew each of those states from the inside, and was brilliant at weaving them into luridly entertaining melodramas. Two decades ago, Charlotte Moore, the artistic director of Irish Repertory Theater, adapted one of those plays, “The Poor of New York,” into a sweetly funny confection of a musical, “The Streets of New York,” now enjoying a charmer of a revival on the company’s main stage.Directed by Moore on an agile, stylized set by Hugh Landwehr, it’s a pleasurable escape, for a tuneful two-plus hours, into a quasi-cartoon version of old New York, where the virtuous struggle and the villainous thrive. You know in your bones, because this is melodrama, that a comeuppance for the bad guys is inevitable — just as soon as a slip of paper, long missing from its rightful owners, reappears.“The Streets of New York” begins in 1837, on the eve of a financial panic, as the scoundrel banker Gideon Bloodgood (David Hess) prepares to abscond from New York with a fortune and let his depositors suffer the consequences. Enter Patrick Fairweather (Daniel J. Maldonado), a sea captain eager to entrust his $100,000 to Bloodgood. The receipt for that transaction, stolen by Bloodgood’s wily clerk, Brendan Badger (Justin Keyes), is the slip of paper in question.The plot soon leaps forward 20 years to find the captain’s widow, Susan (Amy Bodnar), and grown children, Lucy (DeLaney Westfall) and Paul (Ryan Vona), in desperate straits in a tightfisted economy. But the merciless Bloodgood and his spoiled-from-the-cradle daughter, Alida (Amanda Jane Cooper, delightfully comic in the show’s best role), are flourishing.So is romantic longing. Will the handsome, down-on-his-luck scion Mark Livingston (Ben Jacoby) end up with Lucy, his true love, or will the scheming Alida ensnare him? Will Paul and the sharpshooter Dixie Puffy (a terrific Jordan Tyson) — who sings of wanting to “hold his hand, touch his skin, kiss his lips, rip his shirt off” — ever figure out that their ferocious crush is mutual?Moore injects plenty of playful effervescence into the show’s tension — particularly in Alida’s exuberant numbers, “Oh How I Love Being Rich” and “Bad Boys,” and her dripping-with-decadence dresses. (The choreography is by Barry McNabb; the costumes are by Linda Fisher.)For the most part, the show deftly balances dark and light even as it retains Boucicault’s social critique of the rich nonchalantly crushing the poor. But the ending teeters into treacle with would-be uplift aimed at the audience, which feels out of joint with the rest.That is a minor point, though, in a production that is otherwise wonderfully done. With a lovely aural depth provided by an orchestra of cello, woodwinds, harp, bass and violin (directed, at the performance I saw, by Ed Goldschneider), this is an old-fashioned, get-your-mind-off-things kind of show.Grab your vaccine card, put on a good mask and go.The Streets of New YorkThrough Jan. 30 at the Irish Repertory Theater, Manhattan; irishrep.org. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. More