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      ‘The Antelope Party’ Review: Friendship Is Magic, With Exceptions

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      Paranoia takes root among five friends who fear their “My Little Pony” role playing game is being targeted in this new play at the Wild Project.Eric John Meyer’s “The Antelope Party,” a presentation of the Dutch Kills Theater Company that had its New York premiere recently at the Wild Project, uses a classic movie thriller structure to explore the potential real-world dangers of wish-fulfillment fantasy groups.But is the kind of harm that befalls the Rust Belt Bronies Meet Up Group for Adult Fans of “My Little Pony” unique, or can it happen to any collective?These bronies and pegasisters — as adult fans of the franchise are known — gather regularly with the hushed secrecy of political subversives at the Western Pennsylvania home of their genial host, Ben (Edward Mawere), some time in the 2010s. Those who have answered Ben’s online call for a role-playing game include Maggie (Lindsley Howard), a young woman who lives with her protective father; the aloof 20-or-30-somethings Doug (Quinn Franzen) and Rachel (Caitlin Morris); and Shawn (Will Dagger), who joined after his revelatory AMFE (After My First Episode) moment.One night, Maggie makes a misstep. Dressed in full-on Pony attire, something the group’s members usually avoid to dodge harassment, she is picked up by members of a neighborhood watch on her way to Ben’s apartment. That same night Jean (Anna Ishida, appropriately baffled) shows up at Ben’s place, but soon realizes she has mistaken the group for another — 9/11 truthers like herself — and is promptly shown out. These incidents set the Rust Belt Bronies on a paranoid spiral, which is made worse when they discover that the neighborhood watch is actually a group called the Antelope Party, whose mission is to rid the country of homeless people, street kids and other “wild dogs.”The shift is a bit of bait-and-switch: Instead of examining the intricacies of “My Little Pony” fandom, “The Antelope Party” has more in common with sociopolitical films like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which suspicions about the mysterious “outsider” stoke fears among a particular group of people. Meyer explores these dynamics, and how people gain power in social groups: Is it granted, won by force or is it more unpredictable?From left, Dagger, Quinn Franzen, Anna Ishida, Mawere and Morris in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe ensemble members are convincing in their portrayal of vulnerability. Dagger’s wimpy Shawn is a believable beta male whose desperation for social standing leads him to dark places, and Howard’s Maggie is perfect as the peppy type whose “daddy’s girl” veil hides a sinister reality. The charismatic Mawere is intensely watchable as Ben, a host who is eager to please.In her direction of the cast, Jess Chayes leans into the characters’ cautiousness in social settings by smartly avoiding to stage action when none is called for, though the play never feels sluggish. And Yu-Hsuan Chen’s clever one-room set — the walls fold in and out to create spaces outside of the group’s meeting spot — emphasizes their precarious hold on this made-up world.As in her work on WP Theater’s “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord,” another pessimistic tale of a group’s descent into chaos, Chen shows an innate understanding of the intimacy of small spaces, and of how the clutter strewn about amounts to an intensely personal ecosystem. Here, Ben’s fuzzy neon pillows and “My Little Pony” throw blankets are paraphernalia that can be quickly hidden, should a judgmental outsider arrive.By taking various precautions — part childish desire to protect their cool little club, part survival response to actual danger — the group believes itself impervious to outside forces. But “The Antelope Party” crafts a clever little awakening for them, and anyone who shares their belief that there is safety in numbers.The Antelope PartyThrough Nov. 21 at Wild Project, Manhattan; theantelope.party, Running time: 2 hours. More

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      Park Avenue Armory Announces Futuristic New Season

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      Highlights include the North American premieres of Michel van der Aa’s opera “Upload” and Robert Icke’s production of “Hamlet.”The Park Avenue Armory is taking a forward-looking approach in its 2022 season.“The current that runs through this season is technology and futuristic outlooks on the world,” Rebecca Robertson, the Armory’s president and executive producer, said in an interview on Tuesday.A highlight of the season, announced on Wednesday, is the North American premiere of the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa’s 80-minute opera “Upload,” about a man who uploads a digital version of his consciousness to achieve virtual immortality (March 22-30, 2022). In a review of the production at the Dutch National Opera, The New York Times’s Joshua Barone called the piece, which combines film, motion capture and live performance and stars the soprano Julia Bullock and the baritone Roderick Williams, “a sci-fi spin on a fundamentally human tale.”Next up, the British director Robert Icke presents a surveillance-focused staging of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” which will make its North American premiere after sold-out runs at London’s Almeida Theater and the West End in 2017 (May 31-Aug. 13, 2022). Alex Lawther (“The Imitation Game”) will take on the titular role, which Andrew Scott played to critical acclaim in London.“Hamlet” will play in repertory with Icke’s adaptation of Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” (June 9-Aug. 13, 2022) — for which he won the Olivier Award for best director in 2016. Originally a trilogy of Greek tragedies, the three plays have been condensed into a single family drama that follows a succession of brutal family murders and runs just over three and a half hours. Lia Williams, who was nominated for an Olivier for best actress in the 2015 production, is set to return in the role of Klytemnestra.Other highlights of the new season include “Assembly,” an exhibition featuring the second generation of Rashaad Newsome’s artificial-intelligence-powered creation “Being,” whose voice acts as the installation’s soundscape (Feb. 16-March 6, 2022); “Rothko Chapel,” a new commission by the composer and MacArthur fellow Tyshawn Sorey, based on Morton Feldman’s composition for the dedication of the chapel in 1971 and directed by Peter Sellars (Sept. 27-Oct. 8, 2022); and “Euphoria,” an immersive film installation by the German video and film artist Julian Rosefeldt that is a commentary on money, greed and consumption (Nov. 30, 2022-Jan. 1, 2023).A full season lineup is available at armoryonpark.org. More

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      Ed Bullins, Leading Playwright of the Black Arts Movement, Dies at 86

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      He wrote not for white or middle-class audiences, but for the strivers, hustlers and quiet sufferers whose struggles he sought to capture in searing works.Ed Bullins, who was among the most significant Black playwrights of the 20th century and a leading voice in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, died on Saturday at his home in Roxbury, Mass. He was 86.His wife, Marva Sparks, said the cause was complications of dementia.Over a 55-year career in which he produced nearly 100 plays, Mr. Bullins sought to reflect the Black urban experience unmitigated by the expectations of traditional theater. Most of his work appeared in Black theaters in Harlem and Oakland, Calif., and perhaps for that reason he never reached the heights of acclaim that greeted peers like August Wilson, whose plays appeared on Broadway and were adapted for the screen (and who often credited Mr. Bullins as an influence).That was fine with Mr. Bullins. He often said that he wrote not for white or middle-class audiences but for the strivers, hustlers and quiet sufferers whose struggles he sought to capture in searing works like “In the Wine Time” (1968) and “The Taking of Miss Janie” (1975).“He was able to get the grass roots to come to his plays,” the writer Ishmael Reed said in an interview. “He was a Black playwright who spoke to the values of the urban experience. Some of those people had probably never seen a play before.”Though Mr. Bullins was a careful student of white playwrights like Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, he rejected many of their conventions, pursuing a loose, rapid style that drew equally on avant-garde jazz and television — two forms that he felt put him closer to the register of his intended audiences.He won three Obie Awards and two Guggenheim grants, and in 1975 the New York Drama Critics’ Circle named “The Taking of Miss Janie” the best American play of the year.Not everyone was enamored of his work. Some critics, including some in the Black press, believed he focused too heavily on the violence and criminality he saw in working-class Black life, and reflected it too brutally — “The Taking of Miss Janie,” for instance, opens and closes with a rape scene.But most critics, especially in the establishment, came to respect Mr. Bullins as an artist who was both passionately true to his source material and nuanced enough in his vision to avoid becoming doctrinaire.“He tackled subjects that on the surface were very specific to the Black experience,” the playwright Richard Wesley said in an interview. “But Ed was also very much committed to showing the humanity of his characters, and in doing that he became accessible to audiences beyond the Black community.”Genia Morgan, left, and Alia Chapman in a 2006 production of Mr. Bullins’s “The Taking of Miss Janie,” which was named the best American play of the year by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle in 1975.Gerry GoodsteinEdward Artie Bullins was born on July 7, 1935, in Philadelphia and grew up on the city’s North Side. His father, Edward Bullins, left home when Ed was still a small child, and he was raised by his mother, Bertha Marie (Queen) Bullins, who worked for the city government.Though he did well in school, he gravitated toward the North Side’s rough street life. He joined a gang, lost two front teeth in one fight and was stabbed in the heart during another.Mr. Bullins dropped out of school in 1952 and joined the Navy. He served most of the next three years as an ensign aboard the aircraft carrier Midway, where he won a lightweight boxing championship.He returned to Philadelphia in 1955 and, three years later, moved to Los Angeles. He attended night school to earn a high school equivalency diploma, then attended Los Angeles City College, where he started a magazine, Citadel, and wrote short stories for it.In 1962 he married the poet Pat Cooks. She accused him of threatening her with violence, and they divorced in 1966. (She later remarried and took the surname Parker.)Mr. Bullins’s later marriage, to Trixie Bullins, ended in divorce. Along with his third wife, he is survived by his sons, Ronald and Sun Ra; his daughters, Diane Bullins, Patricia Oden and Catherine Room; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Four other children, Ameena, Darlene, Donald and Eddie Jr., died before him.Restless and unhappy with his work in Los Angeles, Mr. Bullins moved in 1964 to San Francisco, where he plugged into a growing community of Black writers. He also switched from writing prose to writing plays — in part, he said, because he was lazy, but also because he felt that the theater gave him more direct access to the everyday Black experience.His first play, “How Do You Do,” an absurdist one-act encounter between a middle-class Black couple and a working-class Black man, was produced in 1965 to favorable reviews. But he remained unsure of his decision to write plays until a few months later, when he saw a dual production of “The Dutchman” and “The Slave,” two plays by Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones, a leading figure of the Black Arts Movement.“I said to myself, I must be on the right track,” Mr. Bullins told The New Yorker in 1973. “I could see that an experienced playwright like Jones was dealing with these same qualities and conditions of Black life that moved me.”In 1967, Mr. Bullins became artist in residence at the New Lafayette Theater in Harlem. The work he produced, mostly there, over the six years represented the peak of his career.The Black Arts Movement, then still primarily an East Coast phenomenon, was a loose affiliation of novelists, playwrights and poets whose work sought to reflect the modern Black experience on its own terms — written and produced by Black people in Black spaces for Black audiences.Mr. Bullins had found his community and, through it, his voice. He fell in with a circle of Bay Area writers, actors and activists, who began performing his work in bars and coffeehouses.Among them was Eldridge Cleaver, who, after his release from prison in 1966, used some of the proceeds from his memoir “Soul on Ice” to found Black House, an arts and community center in San Francisco, with Mr. Bullins as its chief artist in residence.Black House also became the city’s headquarters for the Black Panther Party, founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. Mr. Bullins became the party’s minister of culture.But his role in the Black Panthers was short-lived. The party, from his perspective at least, saw art solely as a weapon, and he chafed at Mr. Seale’s insistence that he create didactic, often explicitly Marxist plays. He also grew frustrated over the party’s interest in building a coalition with radical white allies, when what he sought was a movement wholly independent of white culture.“I have no Messianic urge,” he told The New York Times in 1975. “Every other street corner has somebody telling you Christ or Mao is the answer. You can take any Ism you want and be saved by it. If you’re part of some movement and it fulfills you, that’s cool, but I like to look at it all.”He left the party in late 1966, just before Black House shut down.Mr. Bullins considered moving to Europe or South America, but he changed his mind when Robert Macbeth, the founder of the New Lafayette Theater in Harlem, invited him to be the artist in residence there.He arrived in New York in 1967, and the next six years of work, mostly at the New Lafayette Theater, represented the peak of his career. The theater was a complete package: a 14-member acting troupe, 14 musicians, several playwrights and directors, and an affiliated art gallery, the Weusi Artist Collective, that produced sets.Mr. Bullins also led workshops for aspiring playwrights, many of whom, like Mr. Wesley, went on to become significant voices among the next generation of Black theater artists.Kim Sullivan and Shirleen Quigley in the New Federal Theater’s 2013 production of “In the Wine Time.”Gerry GoodsteinA year after arriving, he completed “In the Wine Time,” his first full-length play and the first of a series he called his “Twentieth Century Cycle” — 20 plays that told the story of postwar urban life through a set of friends. In 1971 he won his first Obie, for “The Fabulous Miss Marie” and “In New England Winter.”He left the New Lafayette Theater in 1973, shortly before it closed for lack of funding. His work in the 1970s appeared in the New Federal Theater, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, the Public Theater and elsewhere.In 1972 he got into a war of words with the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, which was putting on his play “The Duplex.” Though he had initially endorsed the production, he later said in an interview that “the original Black intentions” of the play had been “thwarted” and “its artistic integrity stomped on,” turning it into a “minstrel show.”He traded attacks with the producer, Jules Irving, and the director, Gilbert Moses, in The Times and elsewhere, but in the end the play went on. It received mixed reviews.That episode, fairly or not, gave Mr. Bullins a reputation for being hard to work with, one of the reasons he cited for returning to the West Coast in the 1980s. He continued to write plays, but he also produced work by others, including Mr. Reed, at his Bullins Memorial Theater in Oakland, named for his son Eddie Jr., who died in a car crash in 1978.Mr. Bullins returned to school, receiving a bachelor’s degree in English from the San Francisco campus of Antioch University in 1989 and a master’s in fine arts in playwriting from San Francisco State University in 1994.Mr. Bullins in 1999, when he was a professor in the theater department at Northeastern University in Boston.Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesThe next year he moved to Boston, where he became a professor in the theater department at Northeastern University. He retired in 2012.By then he had long since changed his mind about his audience, in large part because he and others in the Black Arts Movement had succeeded in their mission to build a Black cultural canon.“Of course Black writers can write for all audiences,” he told The Times in 1982. “My feeling is that the question of whether Black theater should appeal to whites was more valid a decade ago. Since then, Black theater has taken off in all directions.” More

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      ‘Medicine’ Review: One Dose Reality, Two Doses Absurdity

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      Domhnall Gleeson is surrounded by an eccentric cast of characters in Enda Walsh’s surreal play at St. Ann’s Warehouse.Mary, a woman dressed as an old man. Another Mary, a woman in a lobster suit. John Kane, a nervous mental patient in blue pajamas. And a nameless drummer who never speaks. These eccentric characters come together in Enda Walsh’s often baffling yet always arresting new play, “Medicine,” a presentation of Landmark Productions and the Galway International Arts Festival that opened at St. Ann’s Warehouse on Tuesday.John (Domhnall Gleeson) wanders onto the set, a drab room with the look of a community center hall (design by Jamie Vartan). It’s a mess — the aftermath of a staff party, with streamers and balloons — and John is concerned about it. He putters around, fidgeting and picking things up haphazardly.He’s preparing for the arrival of the two Marys (Aoife Duffin and Clare Barrett) and the drummer (Sean Carpio). They’re there at the institution to run through a script of John’s life, presumably as a kind of drama therapy.Once they arrive and their routine gets underway, the Marys don different costumes and lip sync a recording of dialogue from the people in John’s life, beginning with his parents on the day he was born. As John narrates, the Marys interrupt, to share notes and perform random dances while the drummer scores the scenes. But as John’s story unfolds, he becomes increasingly frazzled.Walsh, a celebrated playwright and director whose enigmatic works include “Grief Is the Thing with Feathers,” “Arlington” and “Rooms,” also writes and directs this play, which feels like a psychosexual absurdist fantasy. How long has John been here? What parts of this are real? Walsh is less concerned with providing answers than he is with making us sit with John’s mounting sense of desolation and shame. In this way, the work resembles a poem or an interpretive dance, resonating with symbols and gestures and feelings, and the rest is for the audience to puzzle through.Aoife Duffin as one of the Marys.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJohn recounts abuse by his parents and peers when he was a child, and maltreatment at the hands of a worker at the institution. He scrutinizes his mother’s negligence and overt sexuality, and conflates his budding erotic desires as a teen with his yearning for maternal love and attention. All the while the narcissistic Lobster Mary (or Mary 2, as the script calls her) controls the performance: She harasses Mary 1 and bullies John.If that weren’t Freudian enough, Walsh plants recurring images and themes throughout, implying connections between John’s version of his past and the present moment with the actors.What the two Marys are doing here is its own theater — a production that Mary 1 starts to suspect is cruel. As they step into and out of the personalities in John’s life, the lights shift with Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” playing. (Adam Silverman handles the mercurial lighting.)Barrett gives a menacing performance as Mary 2, who embodies some of the more brutal characters in John’s tale and aims her own shots of hostility at Mary 1 (Duffin, who appeared as Ophelia opposite Ruth Negga in “Hamlet” at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2020). Duffin’s Mary is empathetic, so much so that she inhabits John’s story, and at some point the voice-over of a character she’s playing overlaps with her voice as she speaks the same lines. The language here — which Walsh writes with aureate poeticism, full of vivid imagery and pointed symbolism — is what gives the show its melancholic beauty.Clare Barrett as the other Mary.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThen there’s Gleeson himself, with his impressive performance. He is a chameleonic TV and film star (“Harry Potter,” “Star Wars,” “Run”) who can convey anything from a villainous sneer to a sensitive whimper with his entire physical bearing. Despite his height, Gleeson seems to wilt like a flower in want of sun. He nervously shuffles around the stage or gets worked into a frenzy — huffing and flailing with explosive bravado, seamlessly accompanied by Carpio’s percussion. (Helen Atkinson handily controls the layered sound design.)There could easily be more Gleeson — and by that I mean more of John’s perspective, because we get only snapshots of his life. By the end, John reasserts that he’s “not like other people” and belongs in the institution. It seems John is a victim of a kind of manipulation; the drama therapy isn’t to help him but to gaslight him into believing he mustn’t ever try to seek freedom. Beneath all the oddities of Walsh’s script is a criticism of the ways in which society fails the mentally ill.It’s unclear whether Walsh is also indicting theater — this is, after all, a play in which a play is used toward devious ends. So perhaps “Medicine” is simply a work of fanciful mysteries. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter. The emotional core of the show is always prevalent.By the end, John’s dejection feels as familiar as a phantom pain. He may still be within the same sad four walls where he began, but Walsh’s production transforms the space from one of isolation into one of empathy that even the audience can share. Because ultimately, a couple of doses of human connection is the best medicine anyone can ask for.MedicineThrough Dec. 5 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; stannswarehouse.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      On the Scene: ‘Spring Awakening’ Returns 🎭

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      On the Scene: ‘Spring Awakening’ Returns �� Matt Stevens��Reporting from BroadwayMatt Stevens for The New York TimesTickets for the benefit, ranging from $50 to $5,000, sold out quickly. The line to enter the theater, on 45th Street near Eighth Avenue, would eventually stretch down the block.Because of delays seating attendees, the show started over an hour late. More

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      in Movies

      Jeanna de Waal Has Already Forgotten About That ‘Diana’ Film

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      The British actor Jeanna de Waal is obviously not the first person to play the part of Diana, Princess of Wales, or even the first person to do it this year. “When we started, it was a lot less populated, the pool of people who played her,” said de Waal, who stars as the title character in “Diana, the Musical,” which opens on Wednesday after a long pandemic delay.She is not disconcerted by the Diana-Industrial Complex. “I watch them all, and I can see what they’re doing,” she continued, speaking of the other Dianas in circulation — currently, Emma Corrin in “The Crown” and Kristen Stewart in “Spencer” (there’s also Diana herself, who appears in the CNN documentary series “Diana”). “What I mean is, we all got the same homework, and we all have the same sources, but we all do it differently,” de Waal said. “There are two million ways you could tell her story.”“Diana, the Musical” tells it in song. The tale of Diana’s ill-fated marriage to Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, the production is a frothy, peppy, archly exuberant trip through the familiar byways of this tragic royal relationship, from the couple’s blundering courtship to the recrimination-filled conclusion of their marriage. (There’s a sad coda at the end, foreshadowing Diana’s doomed future.)Roe Hartrampf, center left, as Prince Charles and Jeanna de Waal as Diana in the musical, which is in previews at the Longacre Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s been a long road to Broadway, and de Waal has been there for all of it, since the production’s first workshop, at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., back in 2017. The musical opened at La Jolla Playhouse in 2019, moved to Broadway the following year, and shut down after nine previews in March 2020. The set was locked up at the Longacre Theater; the cast and crew scattered.In person, de Waal, 33, doesn’t immediately evoke Diana. For one thing, she dyed her dirty-blond hair dark during lockdown, and has kept it that way since. (She wears a series of increasingly dramatic Diana wigs for the show.) She is also forthright and un-self-conscious in a way that Diana, who always seemed brittle beneath the glitter, never was.De Waal is onstage for almost the whole musical, portraying a sheltered, unworldly young woman whose hidden gifts — charisma, sex appeal, a knack for publicity, an extraordinary common touch — turn her into a global celebrity and a stealth influencer. “Sometimes, though, it’s best,” she sings, “to be underestimated.”“What we have now is a much more juicy and titillating story of what this marriage was,” de Waal said.Josefina Santos for The New York TimesIn taking on the part, de Waal has had to contend not just with all the other dramatic Dianas, but also with legions of opinionated Diana fans who bring their own preconceptions to new depictions of her. Then there is the problem of lowered expectations. In October, a version of the musical, filmed in an empty theater late last year, was released on Netflix. The response, to put it mildly, was very bad.The New York Post called it “the flop of the year.” The Guardian gave it one star and said it was “a Rocky Horror Picture Show of cluelessness and misjudged Judy Garlandification.”On Twitter, mesmerized viewers seemed to be hate-watching the show as they would a terrible camp classic. “I’m so sorry but the Diana musical might be the best worst musical ever written,” one viewer tweeted.The good-natured de Waal responds to questions about this awkward situation with what appears to be constitutional equanimity. (“She’s so centered,” is how the musical’s director, Christopher Ashley, put it.) Even as the mean tweets came in, her direct messages were filled with enthusiastic responses from people who loved the musical, she said. In addition, the broadcast got people talking, she said, and put the production on lists of shows to watch on Broadway.“Look, we didn’t film this for Netflix because we thought it was bad,” she said. “We thought it was fantastic.”Ashley said in an interview that the production had made numerous changes since filming the Netflix special. The theater’s emptiness — the lack of laughter, of applause, of an audience’s ineffable energy — drained the production of its high-octane metabolism, he said. “Having an audience changes what it feels like.” From left, de Waal, Hartrampf and Erin Davie (as Camilla Parker Bowles) in what de Waal calls, “the story of a woman’s revenge.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEarly Broadway audiences appear not to have heard, or not to care, about the unfortunate publicity. At a preview the other night, the theater was filled with Diana-philes eager to bask once more in a story they know so well. They wore “Diana” face masks; they applauded the cunningly staged, lightning-quick royal costume changes; they queued to buy mugs, hoodies and other merchandise. There was applause for iconic outfits; gasps at the appearance of the princess’s love rival, Camilla Parker Bowles; and a standing ovation at the end. In the line for the bathroom, women debated the relative evilness of Charles and Camilla.The producers always promised that the show would make it to Broadway after the pandemic. But they had no idea what that would entail. “I remember the phrase ‘flattening the curve,’” Ashley said, referring to the city’s coronavirus lockdown. “We thought it would be for a few weeks. The possibility that it would be 600 days before we were back in production on Broadway — that was something we didn’t plan for.”As the days without pay stretched on, the cast and crew had to find other sources of income. For de Waal, that came from running Broadway Weekends at Home, a remote version of the musical theater camp that she founded with her sister, Dani, a former actor who works for Google. Hundreds of people signed up during the pandemic, paying a subscription fee to be taught by Broadway and West End performers.Born in Germany and raised in England, De Waal was always obsessed with musical theater. “I became a fanatic,” she said. “For birthdays and Christmases, I would ask for CDs of original cast recordings.” After earning a degree at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, she got a job in the ensemble of, and as an understudy in, “We Will Rock You” on the West End. “It was a baptism of fire,” she said. “I had never done any mic technique work. You know that old thing where singers just sang really loud? You don’t need to do that with a mic. I bought a microphone, and I practiced at home.”In the late aughts, she moved to New York. “I had no agent, no job, and I started doing Times Square open calls,” she said. “I knew no one, and I felt very grown-up and free.” But soon the work was rolling in: parts in “American Idiot,” “Carrie,” the “Wicked” national tour, “Finding Neverland,” “Waitress” and “Kinky Boots,” to name a few.She had a steady string of gigs until her late 20s, when the parts began to dry up. She worked as a caterer and kept going to auditions. She was one of the first people to read for the part of Diana in the workshop; she was hired virtually on the spot.De Waal was one of the first people to read for the part of Diana, and she was hired virtually on the spot.Josefina Santos for The New York Times“Jeanna has been an extraordinary partner in the process,” Ashley said. “She’s really used these couple of years to deepen her feelings about Diana, to make individual moments more and more specific in terms of the emotion of the scene. Even how she holds herself and her mannerisms have gotten more layered.”Back in New York, mid-pandemic, the long, strange delay gave the production the incidental gift of time.“New musicals can make use of the wealth of response you get from that preview period,” Ashley said. “How are the audiences responding? Where do they get quiet? Where do they get restless?” Two new songs were added; changes were made to dozens of pages of the script and lyrics.The story also shifted. Originally it focused on Diana’s disillusionment at the shattering of her happily-ever-after childhood dream. Now it is a sharper, spicier tale about a love triangle that sabotages a marriage. As Diana once said, referring to Camilla: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”“What we have now is a much more juicy and titillating story of what this marriage was, with Charles and Camilla orchestrating the whole thing and continuing to see each other,” de Waal said. “It’s also the story of a woman’s revenge.”De Waal was just a child when her father came into her room one morning in late August 1997 and told her that Diana had been in a serious (and ultimately fatal) car accident. But in studying her for the part, de Waal has come to love and admire the princess — the way she tried to make something of her life, the way she made a difference.“Every single aspect of this show has come from a place of wanting to celebrate this person,” de Waal said. “She did a hell of a lot more than most people. Who knows where her life would have gone?” More

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      Review: ‘Morning’s at Seven’ Awakens Again, Only to Hit Snooze

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      Paul Osborn’s 1930s play is revived, with its thin psychology, predictable structure and somewhat bitter slice of small town life intact.Paul Osborn’s “Morning’s at Seven” debuted on Broadway in 1939, and has clung to the fringes of the theatrical canon ever since. A dyspeptic example of American realism, like an apple pie lightly dusted with arsenic, it plunks its audience into the adjoining backyards of two modest Victorian houses that a few sisters in their 60s and 70s call home. During a late afternoon and the following morning, marriages crumble, siblings quarrel, a brief affair surfaces, an engagement breaks, a mother smothers. Just one big not especially happy family.Old fashioned even when it opened, “Morning’s at Seven” became a regional theater darling and yielded two Broadway revivals, likely because it provides hefty roles for aging actors. Now, it is being staged at the Theater at St. Clement’s, where a new production by Dan Wackerman for his Peccadillo Theater Company opened Monday evening. It has a typically imposing cast — including Lindsay Crouse, Alma Cuervo, John Rubinstein, Tony Roberts — that would have been a bit starrier, but Judith Ivey tore a tendon during previews. Luckily, Alley Mills sidled in, reuniting with Dan Lauria, her spouse on “The Wonder Years.”Peccadillo provided the last show I saw, “Sideways: The Experience,” in March 2020, before theaters closed for the pandemic. It was a work written and staged with such casual and thoroughgoing sexism, I started to think that maybe shutting down some theater wasn’t so bad after all. So to say that “Morning’s at Seven” is an altogether more pleasurable experience is maybe not saying very much. With its thin psychology, predictable structure and characters to laugh at, not with, the play serves a snoozy, somewhat bitter slice of small town life. Imagine Thornton Wilder without the radicalism, William Inge without the melancholy, Lillian Hellman without the flash.Those neighboring Gibbs sisters — living with their husbands, except for Arry (Mills), who remains unmarried — have enjoyed relative contentment for 40 or so years. But one afternoon, Homer (Jonathan Spivey), the 40-year-old, failed-to-launch son of Ida (Cuervo), has come for an overnight visit and brought Myrtle (Keri Safran), his girlfriend of a dozen years. Somehow, that triggers the temporary cave-in of at least two marriages and considerable unrest in the home that Cora (Crouse) shares with her husband, Thor (Lauria), and kid sister, Arry.As expected, these practiced actors perform with relish and finesse. Crouse is nicely sour as Cora, the villain of the piece until she isn’t. And Cuervo neatly represses some of Ida’s hysteria. Roberts, as David — the husband of Esty (Patty McCormack), the eldest Gibbs sister and the only one who doesn’t effectively live with them — earns outsize laughs for some of the play’s meanest speeches. As the younger couple, Spivey and Safran overplay their roles, but seemingly with Wackerman’s encouragement.Mild yet ungentle, “Morning’s at Seven” — which borrows its title, ironically, from a cheery Robert Browning lyric — lets its characters politely abrade each other for the first two acts before tying up the story in a tidy comedic bow. What’s most distinct about the play is the acidity that runs through it, and the suggestion that maturity doesn’t necessarily breed content.“I always thought of getting old sort of like going to bed when you’re nice and drowsy,” Arry says. “But it isn’t that way at all.” In its grimmer moments, the play hints at something wormy at the heart of this American pastoral. But instead of offering a wake up call, it repairs its broken family and just goes back to sleep.Morning’s at SevenThrough Jan. 9 at Theater at St. Clement’s, Manhattan; morningsat7.com. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More

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      If Remote Work Empties Downtowns, Can Theaters Fill Their Seats?

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      Since the pandemic, San Francisco has embraced work-from-home policies. Now venues and concert halls are wondering if weeknight audiences are a thing of the past.SAN FRANCISCO — As live performance finally returns after the pandemic shutdown, cultural institutions are confronting a long list of unknowns.Will audiences feel safe returning to crowded theaters? Have people grown so accustomed to watching screens in their living rooms that they will not get back into the habit of attending live events? And how will the advent of work-from-home policies, which have emptied blocks of downtowns and business districts, affect weekday attendance at theaters and concert halls?Nowhere is that last question more urgent than here in San Francisco, where tech companies have led the way in embracing work-from-home policies and flexible schedules more than in almost any other city in the nation. Going to a weeknight show is no longer a matter of leaving the office and swinging by the War Memorial Opera House or the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall.“As people work from home, it is going to change our demographics,” said Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera. “It’s something that could be a threat. We’re all trying to wait and see whether there’s a surge of interest in live activity again or is there a continuation of just being at home, not coming into the city from the suburbs.”Arts groups are trying to gauge what the embrace of more flexible work-from-home policies will mean for their ability to draw audiences in a city whose housing crunch has already driven many people to settle far from downtown. Close to 70 percent of the audiences at the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Symphony — two nationally recognized symbols of this city’s vibrant network of performing arts institutions — live outside the city, according to data collected by the two organizations.“As people work from home, it is going to change our demographics,” said Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera, which presented a new production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” this fall.Cory Weaver/San Francisco OperaSome economists see the trend of remote work persisting. “It’s likely we are going to have more people working from home than other places,” said Ted Egan, the chief economist for the city and county of San Francisco. “The tech industry seems to be the most generous for work-from-home policy, and employees are expecting that.”Twitter announced in the early months of the pandemic that it would allow almost all of its 5,200 employees, most based at its San Francisco office, to work at home permanently. At Salesforce, which has 9,000 employees, employees will only have to come to work one to three days a week; many will be allowed to work at home full time. Dropbox, which has its headquarters in San Francisco, also has adopted a permanent work-from-home policy. Facebook and Google, both of which have a significant presence in San Francisco, have implemented work-from-home policies.Egan said that the trend might pose more of a problem for the city’s bars and restaurants than for its performing arts institutions. “My suspicion is that performing arts are going to be less sensitive to working from home than other sectors,” he said. “It’s not the kind of purchase you do after work on a whim, like going for happy hour.”Attendance has been spotty as this city’s art scene climbs back. Just 50 percent of the seats were filled the other night for a performance of “The Displaced,” a “gentrification horror play” by Isaac Gómez, at the Crowded Fire Theater. “We had sold-out houses on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and much lower participation on Wednesday and Thursday night,” said Mina Morita, the artistic director. “It’s hard to tell if this is the new normal.”There were some patches of empty seats across the Davies Symphony Hall the other night, as the San Francisco Symphony presented the United States premiere of a violin concerto by Bryce Dessner, even though it was the third week of the long-delayed (and long-anticipated) first season for Esa-Pekka Salonen, its new music director. The concerto, with an energetic performance by Pekka Kuusisto, the Finnish violinist, was greeted by repeated standing ovations and glowing reviews.Attendance in October was down 11 percent compared to before the pandemic, but the symphony said advance sales were strong, suggesting normal audiences might return in spring.Twitter announced in the early months of the pandemic that it would allow almost all of its 5,200 employees, most based at its San Francisco office, to work at home permanently.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images“The audience is back,” Salonen said in an interview before he took the stage. “Not what it was, but they are back. Some nights have been a little thinner than others. By and large, the energy is good. Our worst fears have been dispelled.”The San Francisco Opera also began its new season with a splashy new hire: a new music director, Eun Sun Kim, who in August became the first woman to hold the position at one of the nation’s largest opera companies. She conducted a new production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” this fall that incorporated chain-link fences and flickering video screens to update the story of the liberation of a political prisoner.Even so, the opera, which can seat 2,928 with Covid restrictions, sold an average of 1,912 tickets per show for “Fidelio,” its second production of this new season. That’s better than its second production in 2019, Britten’s “Billy Budd,” a searing work that does not always attract big crowds. But it drew fewer people than the opera’s second production in 2018, “Roberto Devereux,” which sold an average of 2,116 tickets a performance.“The urgency to be bold, to be innovative, to be compelling to get audiences to come back or give us a try for the first time has never been stronger,” Shilvock said. “There will be a hunger for things that have an energy, that have a vitality, that give a reason to come into the city.”Even before the pandemic, cultural organizations were dealing with challenges that threatened to discourage patrons, including a stressed public transportation system, traffic, parking constraints and the highly visible epidemic of homelessness. And many institutions were struggling to make inroads in attracting audiences and patrons from the tech industry, which now accounts for 19 percent of the private work force.Now, facing an uncertain future as they try to emerge from the pandemic shutdown, arts organizations are embracing a variety of tactics to fill seats..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Hope Mohr, the co-director of Hope Mohr Dance, said that her organization was spending $1,400 per night to livestream performances, so audiences could choose between coming into San Francisco or watching from their living rooms.“A hybrid experience — I have to do that from now on,” she said. “My company usually performs in San Francisco, and I have audience coming from all over the bay.”These calculations are taking place in an atmosphere of uncertainty and anxiety. It is not clear how much these early attendance figures represent a realignment, or are evidence of audiences temporarily trying to balance their hunger for live performances against concerns about the spread of the Delta variant — even in a city where 75 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated. Lower attendance figures have been reported by performing halls across the country.“The audience is back,” Esa-Pekka Salonen, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, said. “Not what it was, but they are back. Some nights have been a little thinner than others. By and large the energy is good. Our worst fears have been dispelled.”Christopher M. Howard Opening nights have found performers relieved to be playing to real crowds again and audiences delighted to be back. “The convenience of at-home entertainment has made it not as desirable for some folks, ” said Ralph Remington, the director of cultural affairs for the San Francisco Arts Commission. “But that being said, even though the density of the numbers isn’t as great as it was prepandemic, the audiences that are coming are really enthusiastic.”Advance sales for “The Nutcracker” at the San Francisco Ballet, with one-third of the tickets going for just $19 a seat to help bring in new patrons (the average ticket price is $136), have been moving briskly.Danielle St. Germain-Gordon, the ballet’s interim executive director, said she hoped that working from home had made people eager to break out of their increasing isolation. “I would do anything to get out,” she said. “I hope that’s a good sign for our season.”At the height of the pandemic, about 85 percent of San Francisco-based employees worked from home; that number is about 50 percent now, said Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.“I think it’s possible that people are not going to commute from Walnut Creek at night to go to downtown San Francisco for the opera to the same extent,” he said. “But I don’t expect those office buildings will sit empty. There will be other people moving into them.”The Magic Theater, a 145-seat-theater in Fort Mason, just beyond Fisherman’s Wharf, has been experimenting with different kinds of programming, such as a poetry reading, and pay-what-you-can seats to lure patrons who live — and now work — far from the theater.“This is going to be an interesting year for everyone,” said Sean San José, its artistic director. “Are people going to come back? The zeitgeist is telling us something. Maybe we should listen. This ain’t a pause. We have got to rethink it.” More