Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Review: ‘Thoughts of a Colored Man’ Preaches to the Choir

      by

      Keenan Scott II’s play, incorporating slam poetry, prose and songs, aspires to be a lyrical reckoning with Black life in America.Seven Black men step onto the stage in the opening of Keenan Scott II’s “Thoughts of a Colored Man.” Over the course of the play, each will reveal a personality and history, but not a name, though later they will introduce themselves as Love, Happiness, Wisdom, Lust, Passion, Depression and Anger. Wearing different combinations of black, gray and red, they stand staring at a hulking billboard that reads “COLORED” in declarative black caps.One of them then asks the question that begins the play: “Who is the Colored Man?”It’s a question that Scott’s Broadway debut, which opened on Wednesday night at the John Golden Theater, doesn’t quite know how to answer. Incorporating slam poetry, prose and songs performed by its cast of seven, “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” which first premiered in 2019 at Syracuse Stage in a co-production with Baltimore Center Stage, aspires to be a lyrical reckoning with Black life in America but only delivers a gussied-up string of straw-man lessons.Set in present-day Brooklyn, amid the many symbols of gentrification (Citi Bike stations, Whole Foods and a Paris Baguette), “Thoughts” employs vignettes to check in with various characters, who are often grouped together. Though the show, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, only runs for about 100 minutes, it takes us to a bus stop, a basketball court, a barbershop, a hospital and other locations, in a series of 18 snappy scenes.The characters, ranging in age from late teens to mid-60s, have specific themes to illustrate: the elder Wisdom (Esau Pritchett) speaks about respect, history and ancestry; Anger (Tristan Mack Wilds) vents about the trappings of consumerism and the objectification of Black athletes; and Happiness (Bryan Terrell Clark) challenges notions about Black struggle and class.But the question remains: “Who is the Colored Man?”The framing of these characters as concepts seems to imply a larger metaphor about Blackness that never comes to fruition. Perhaps we’re meant to deduce that these men taken together make up an entire Black man, with all of his dimensions. Yet Scott’s script teeters between presenting fully drawn characters and firm personifications, ultimately failing at either.From left, Luke James (seated), Esau Pritchett, Da’Vinchi, Dyllón Burnside, Tristan Mack Wilds and Forrest McClendon in Keenan Scott II’s play.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Thoughts” may be inspired by Ntozake Shange’s renowned choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” in which seven unnamed women alternate among songs, dances, monologues and choral poems. It has a narrative continuity that Shange’s doesn’t, though to what end is unclear. So Passion (Luke James) talks Lust (Da’Vinchi) down after a barbershop argument, and Happiness has an awkward confrontation with Depression (Forrest McClendon) in a grocery store. The minute insights are clear, about class and masculinity. More broadly, though, what does “Thoughts” ultimately contribute to this long conversation about Blackness in America?The play sits at the intersection of different avenues of Black life, from the bright retail worker who had to forgo a full scholarship to M.I.T. to the gay gentrifier who was raised in the upper middle class. Despite being set in the present, the play feels removed from time; Scott doesn’t touch the Black Lives Matter protests or the institutional systems that hold Black men back. There are barely any mentions of how whiteness shapes the Black experience in America.And Black women are almost entirely forgotten (except as victims, in one grossly sensationalized monologue by Lust, or objects of desire). The characters’ poems, which are awkwardly incorporated into scenes of regular dialogue about how to pick up women or which Jordans are the best, allow the men to describe and emote but not to advance any message. It all remains at surface level.How does one design a stage for a show that wants to claim representations of Blackness without knowing what to say about it? Robert Brill’s stage design, low black scaffolding and that “COLORED” billboard, recalls Glenn Ligon’s 1990 “Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background),” which was in turn inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s famous quote. It doesn’t help with the show’s overdone approach. Even Ryan O’Gara’s lighting, which at one point dresses the whole theater in a stunning constellation of speckled lights, cannot elevate the language.Dyllón Burnside has the toughest job. As Love, his spoken-word poetry is almost nonsensical. At one point, he says: “She was like the perfect use of assonance in just the right amount of lines. Her pupils looked lost, and I wanted to be the teacher that teaches them to love what they see.”Broadnax’s direction exacerbates these performances of the poems, which abruptly occur as other characters are frozen. They move with the stilted stage cadence of a slam poem, with awkward breaks, including some after verbs and prepositions, just to hammer home the wordplay and rhyme.Burnside as Love in the play, which has lighting design by Ryan O’Gara.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNot everyone in the cast jives with this rhythm; Pritchett’s full-toned bass stumbles through the tempo. Though James’s Passion gets shortchanged with the character’s back story, he at least gets his own music; he shows off his stellar voice, even if for only a few bars scattered throughout the production.Clark is funny as Happiness, tossing side glances, raised eyebrows and witty asides to the audience, providing some much-needed representation of a queer Black character, despite dipping from the well of gay clichés. Da’Vinchi, likewise, has his comic moments as a believably blunt and horny young man. When addressing Black toxic masculinity, primarily through Da’Vinchi’s Lust, the play is mostly inoffensive, if unremarkable.I wish I could tell you that one character isn’t killed by the end. And yet, this is another way that “Thoughts” so obviously tries to convey the reality that so many of us already know to be true. In fact, some of us have lived it. We don’t need a random act of violence onstage to tell us that every day Black men are endangered in our society. We need nuanced characters, action and complex poetry and prose to tell our stories.Thoughts of a Colored ManThrough March 20 at the John Golden Theater, Manhattan; thoughtsofacoloredman.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Former ‘Hamilton’ Cast Member Files Discrimination Complaint Against Show

      by

      In the E.E.O.C. filing, the actor, who is nonbinary, describes being retaliated against after requesting a gender-neutral dressing room, among other claims. The show denies the allegations.A former “Hamilton” cast member filed a federal workplace complaint against the show on Wednesday, alleging that the show had retaliated and refused to renew a contract after the actor had requested a gender-neutral dressing room.In the complaint, filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, lawyers for the former cast member, Suni Reid (who prefers the pronouns they/them), said they were sidelined and eventually let go in September after requesting a gender-neutral space at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles where “Hamilton” was playing.In the 28-page complaint, Reid, a Black, nonbinary performer who has performed with the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles productions of “Hamilton” since 2017, outlined several other instances of discrimination and harassment by cast members and management over the years, including episodes in which Reid said they were physically threatened or intentionally and repeatedly misgendered.The complaint said Reid eventually intends to pursue legal claims in federal court. Filing a charge of discrimination and retaliation with the E.E.O.C. is a precursor to filing such a lawsuit.“Publicly, ‘Hamilton’ is a beacon of diversity and appears committed to causes seeking social justice and harmony,” Reid’s lawyers, Lawrence M. Pearson and Lindsay M. Goldbrum, said in a statement. “Behind the curtain, however, the Company’s management will force out a Black, transgender cast member simply because they stood up for themselves and advocated for a more equitable workplace, and therefore called that public image into question.”“We look forward to upholding Reid’s rights and hope this is a wake-up call for the theater industry about the systemic inequities that persist even at its greatest heights,” the statement continued.In its own statement, “Hamilton” said Wednesday that Reid had been “a valued cast member” for years and said the show had “offered them a contract to return to ‘Hamilton’ with terms responsive to their requests.”“We deny the allegations in the Charge,” the show said. “We have not discriminated or retaliated against Suni.” During the shutdown, it added, “we have given Suni direct financial support, paid for their health insurance, and paid for their housing. We wish Suni well in their future endeavors.”Reid has performed in the ensemble as well as in roles such as Aaron Burr, George Washington, Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, and Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, according to the complaint.It comes as Broadway and touring shows are working to find their footing following a lengthy pandemic-related shutdown. Earlier this summer, as several shows like “Hamilton” were preparing to restart, some of the most powerful players on Broadway signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices.But Reid’s complaint paints a picture of a toxic workplace environment at “Hamilton” that stretched from coast to coast.Reid was cast in the Broadway production of the show in 2017 and met hostility from the start, according to the complaint. Reid eventually requested a transfer from the Broadway production and started with the Chicago company of “Hamilton” in March 2019, according to the complaint, and came out publicly as transgender and gender-nonconforming. They were constantly misgendered by co-workers, “at times in a pointedly hostile or callous manner,” according to the complaint.By 2020, Reid had begun rehearsals for the Los Angeles company, but never was able to to join the Los Angeles cast in performance because of the shutdown, the complaint said.In May, Reid was presented with a contract renewal for “Hamilton.” Around that time, they asked their agent, Michele Largé, to request a gender-neutral dressing room at Pantages that Reid and others could use. “Hamilton” officials then raised concerns about posts Reid had published on social media describing racial equity issues on the show, according to the complaint.The show would eventually agree to set up gender-neutral dressing spaces in every “Hamilton” theater. But in the fall, after Reid’s lawyers informed the show that they had legal claims of discrimination, the show told Reid’s lawyers that it was “no longer open” to having Reid perform in “Hamilton,” and that “renewal of their contract was no longer an option,” the complaint said. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Letters of Suresh’ Review: Returning to the Fold

      by

      Rajiv Joseph’s new drama revisits the protagonist, and the metaphoric possibilities of origami, of his earlier play “Animals Out of Paper.”We live in the age of the reboot: an era of reimaginings, spinoffs and sequels upon sequels upon sequels. Theater, with its dependence on adaptation and revival, got there first. But this impulse now extends to new plays, too — “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” Zoom installments of the Apple Family Plays, the way that “Pass Over” riffs on “Waiting for Godot.”So it’s surprising, yet not surprising at all, to sit down at Rajiv Joseph’s “Letters of Suresh,” which opened Tuesday night at Second Stage Theater, and discover a follow-up to “Animals Out of Paper,” his petite and practically perfect dramedy from 2008.A three-character play originally produced as part of Second Stage’s uptown series, “Animals Out of Paper” traced the relationships among Suresh, a teenage origami prodigy who is mentored by Andy, his calculus teacher, and Ilana, the professional origamist that both men fall for. It ended in an unresolved fashion. Joseph (“Guards at the Taj,” “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”), a playwright who specializes in putting big ideas into small and sparsely populated spaces, isn’t big on resolution. Yet “Animals” had seemed complete enough. I have rarely wondered how Suresh’s life — forgive me, I can’t resist — unfolded. Joseph must have felt differently.Directed by May Adrales, “Letters of Suresh” is, as the title suggests, an epistolary play, with a script composed entirely of letters. Well, letters and one FaceTime conversation. It opens with a letter from Melody (Ali Ahn, frenetic and endearing), a 40-year-old writing teacher. Melody has inherited the worldly effects of her great-uncle, Father Hashimoto: a Bible, an origami bird, a box of letters from Suresh. She writes to him, asking if he wants them returned, narrating the text as she scribbles. Despite receiving no response, she keeps writing and narrating, marveling at the way she can reveal herself to a blank page.If narrating letters to nowhere seems like a writerly conceit, that’s because it is, though Ahn’s messy charisma puts it over. She soon disappears, replaced — within the set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s false prosceniums — by Ramiz Monsef’s Suresh. He narrates the letters in the box, which take him from a confused boy of 18 to an equally confused man of about 30. Utkarsh Ambudkar created the role of Suresh in the earlier play, which means Monsef has some big high-tops to fill. Cocky, appealing and forlorn, he fits them just fine.Ramiz Monsef, left, as Suresh, and Kellie Overbey, as Amelia.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere are two other roles, Father Hashimoto (Thom Sesma), and Amelia, a onetime colleague of Suresh’s, played by Kellie Overbey — who originated the role of Ilana, which makes her appearance in this different guise a little confusing. “Letters of Suresh,” sweet and even soppy, finds its characters in various stages of heartbreak, with no fracture fully healed. Mixing originality and cliché, the play surveys the near impossibility of connection, a theme reflected in its structure, in which everyone, more or less alone onstage, speaks their truths into a void. It offers up its metaphors — that paper bird, the heart of a whale — with a hand as heavy as an anvil. “Letters and origami,” Amelia muses. “These ancient, archaic art forms of folding paper into something else.”Adrales keeps the pacing sprightly, and the actors mostly resist the pull of sentiment. (Shawn Duan’s projections, which have the screen saver quality of most projections, don’t exactly help.) A play, though, is also a way of making paper (a script) into something else (a show), and “Letters of Suresh,” despite its adroit, layered performances, never executes that transformation fully, persisting as a literary work rather than an entirely theatrical one.Joseph wrote the play before the pandemic, which seems prescient. With everyone homebound and exhausted by Zoom, letter writing experienced a brief vogue. But we can see each other in person now. And as of late summer, we can see live theater, too. “Letters of Suresh,” though, mostly withholds the pleasures of dialogue and interaction. It gives us paragraphs, signed sincerely and very truly, instead.Letters of SureshThrough Oct. 24 at the Tony Kiser Theater, Second Stage Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Cecily Strong to Make New York Theater Debut at the Shed

      by

      The “S.N.L.” star steps into a role originated by Lily Tomlin, and Claudia Rankine’s “Help” gets its pandemic-delayed world premiere in the new Shed season.Cecily Strong has twice been nominated for an Emmy Award for her standout “Saturday Night Live” impressions that have included Melania Trump, Ariana Grande and Lin-Manuel Miranda.Now she will be playing 12 characters, with no costume changes or props, in her New York theatrical debut — in a role made famous by Lily Tomlin.Strong, who recently won acclaim for her portrayal of a musical-loving backpacker in the Apple TV+ comedy “Schmigadoon!,” will star in a new production at the Shed of Jane Wagner’s one-woman comedy “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” The production, starting Dec. 21, will be the show’s first New York staging in two decades. It will run through Feb. 6, 2022; Leigh Silverman (“The Lifespan of a Fact,” “Violet”) will direct.In a review of the original 1985 Broadway production, The New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote that the second act — a compressed history of the feminist movement — was “the most genuinely subversive comedy to be produced on Broadway in years,” and praised Tomlin’s “chameleon-like ability to inhabit a wide range of personalities.” The show was adapted into a film, also starring Tomlin, in 1991.The Shed’s 2021-22 season also includes several postponed commissions from 2020, including the world premiere of the author and poet Claudia Rankine’s “Help,” an examination of white male privilege partly based on questions Rankine, who is Black, asked her white male seatmates on airplanes for a New York Times Magazine article. Taibi Magar will direct the production (Mar. 15-Apr. 10, 2022), which follows a middle-aged Black female air traveler on a plane alongside a dozen or so white male characters. Roslyn Ruff (“Fairview”), who starred in two preview performances of the show, is no longer available, so the role will be recast in the coming weeks, said Alex Poots, the artistic director and chief executive of the Shed, at Hudson Yards.“It’s a terrific and shattering piece that I think could not be more relevant now,” he said of the show, which had just two performances before theaters shut down on March 12, 2020.Other highlights of the season include the Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno’s exhibition “Particular Matter(s),” a large-scale sensory experience that explores climate change and climate inequity (Feb. 9-April 17, 2022); and a new work by the visual artist, filmmaker and MacArthur fellow Wu Tsang (Apr. 15-17, 2022). Anonymous Club, the creative studio led by the fashion designer Shayne Oliver, will also host three nights of events, titled “Headless: The Glass Ceiling,” with a theme of over-the-top extravagance, or “headlessness,” during New York Fashion Week (Feb. 10-12, 2022).Proof of vaccination will be required for everyone 12 and older for all performances, and everyone age 2 and older must wear a mask.A full season lineup is available at TheShed.org. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Gavin Creel Lets His Imagination Run Wild With Gay Stories and House Music

      by

      The actor, singer and songwriter, whose new show is inspired by the Met, talks about finding clarity with Yung Pueblo and the spiritual aspects of Grape-Nuts.Gavin Creel was about to come clean, despite his agent’s worry that it might make him sound like an idiot: Until January 2019, after living in New York for 20 years, he had never set foot inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.“But I’m not an idiot, and it is also the truth,” countered Creel, who won a Tony Award for “Hello, Dolly!” on Broadway and an Olivier for “The Book of Mormon” on London’s West End.That truth is the basis for “Walk on Through,” a program of 16 original songs inspired by hours of meandering through the museum on a quest for art that spoke to him, and the opener of the MetLiveArts season on Oct. 25.In only a few visits, Creel discovered that color, light, sex and story captivated him. “If it doesn’t have something or all of those things, I usually just kind of walk by,” he said. “I started finding myself having a dialogue of, ‘What do you have to say to me, Edward Hopper? What do you have to say to me, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux or Jules Breton or Jan Steen?’”“It’s basically letting myself have a relationship with them and remembering that I don’t have to react in a certain way,” he said of the preconceptions about class, wealth and education that had kept him away. “Maybe that sounds obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me.”Creel had just attended the opening of “Six” on Broadway and momentarily questioned where or even if he might fit into the post-Covid-19 landscape before suddenly changing tack. “If you want to know what I’m doing, I will be doing a summer workshop of this piece, and then I will be workshopping it off Broadway and then bringing it to Broadway spring of 2023,” he said with the conviction of someone who wills their aspirations into existence. “That’s literally what this is about. It’s like, ‘Have the courage to dream.’”In a video interview from his Upper West Side apartment, Creel spoke about a few of the things instrumental in turning those dreams into reality, including Yung Pueblo’s books, Jacob Collier’s music and the morning pages with which he begins each day. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Clarity & Connection” by Yung Pueblo Jo Lampert, who’s an amazing singer, exposed me to “Inward,” which was Yung Pueblo’s first book. It’s all about meditative thinking and affirmation and doing the healing. His big thing — it’s not a new thought, but the way he says it is so powerful — is to change the world, you have to change yourself. “Clarity & Connection” is his new book, and I found it even more helpful because it’s a lot about coming into, sustaining and going out of a relationship. He says: “I took fear by the hand. I acknowledged its existence. And then I thanked it for showing me that my happiness does not lie within its walls.” And I was like, “OK, Yung Pueblo, you better break it down.”2. The “Don’t Think. Just Eat.” menu at Sugarfish It is the greatest sushi I have ever had. It’s not cheap, but they bring the most tender, flavorful, beautifully made, artfully presented fresh fish and warm rice. It’s annoying because they don’t take reservations. One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that when they opened back up, there was never a line. And now I go and they have an hour and 45-minute wait, and I’m like, “All right, put me on the list.” It’s worth the wait.3. Grape-Nuts Every day. It’s almost spiritual for me. During the pandemic, they stopped making them. There was a manufacturing shortage. I panicked. So I got on Amazon, and I bought 12 boxes of Grape-Nuts. I spent a ridiculous amount of money. It’s simplicity. It’s substance.4. “Sex and the City” I’ve done this like three times before, but I recently watched “Sex and the City” from start to finish. Something about this time hit me in such a powerful way. I think it’s because I’m 45. I’m in the middle of a midlife crisis. I don’t call it a crisis — it’s like a midlife awakening — but I’m here. There’s some complicated stuff in there that’s dated, that they absolutely would not do now. But what they say about love and owning sex positivity and owning emotion — and frankly communicate it in a way that men can never do — I just found so empowering.5. Jacob Collier’s “Djesse Vol. 3” I offered a class to the graduating class of 2020 at the University of Michigan, which is my alma mater, and in the beginning, I asked them, “What are you listening to?” A bunch of them were listening to Jacob Collier, who I’d never heard of. The music he writes is not instantly palatable in a lot of ways. His mind has a million words, a million things. But hearing him really gave me permission to allow any instinct to exist.6. Morning Pages I did “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity” this year with my friends Benj Pasek, who wrote “Dear Evan Hansen” and “The Greatest Showman,” and Shoshana Bean, who is a brilliant songwriter and actress. The morning pages are what Julia Cameron says you must do. I do it every day, three pages, longhand, stream-of-consciousness. It’s like the brain dump in the morning.7. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s “Ugolino and His Sons” at The Met Sculptors to me are like ballet dancers are to dance. It’s like, “How do you do that? That’s magic.” One of the sons’ hands is resting, and it is completely relaxed yet it is solid marble. There’s sexuality and sensuality in the smoothness of their skin, their musculature, the veining in their arms, the panic as [another son] is pressing his father’s leg. There’s so much emotion in the stone.8. Thé Noir 29 by Le Labo Every time I write, I try to light a candle and have it sitting next to me, not just for the energy of an element but because the smell helps me get into a space of magic or wonder. I was in Nordstrom’s and I smelled this Thé Noir, and it was so specific and beautiful to me. It’s really expensive for a little water to spray on your skin. But this is more a statement to treat myself to something that I wouldn’t normally buy and to carry with me something that can set my brain free.9. “Beat Like This” by Bleu Clair and OOTORO I love listening to electronica and dance music in my free time because it makes my imagination go in a million directions. I was doing my workout in the morning, listening to the house channel on Apple Music, and this song came on. And it is the best beat drop I have ever heard. It accelerates up to where you think it’s going to drop in, which is an amazing thing for the dance floor, but it comes in four beats later. If you listen with headphones on to this track, it’s like the fattest, thickest — it almost sucks the sound out of your ears. It is so hot.10. Bob Smith’s “Selfish & Perverse” Bob Smith, I’m proud to say, was a friend of mine. He was the first out gay comic on “The Tonight Show.” He fought ALS for more than 10 years and was so courageous and kept his sense of humor and wrote books when he lost the ability to talk and use his hands. This was his first novel, about this gay guy who goes to Alaska after a breakup to study salmon fishing because he’s going to write a TV show. And while he’s there, the really hot guy who’s going to play the lead in the show comes up, and it’s so sexy. It was the first time I felt like I read a novel that was for me because I always have to code switch and imagine what love would look like based on the movies that I watch. It’s so rare that our stories are told, given time, given money. And I say it’s imperative that gay stories are told, and told well. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Neil LaBute Seeks ‘The Answer to Everything’ in Germany

      by

      The American playwright’s first new play since he parted ways with his theater in 2018 during the #MeToo movement finds a stage far from New York.AUGSBURG, Germany — If all you know about Neil LaBute’s new play “The Answer to Everything” is that it’s an artistic response to #MeToo and “cancel culture,” you might brace yourself for an upsetting evening at the theater.A tightly coiled chamber piece about three women who plot vengeance on the men who’ve wronged them, “The Answer to Everything” is the prolific and polarizing playwright’s first full-length stage work since “How to Fight Loneliness” in 2017. Since then, he’s fallen from grace in the rarefied world of New York theater.LaBute has long been a diagnostician of dark, uncomfortable aspects of human relationships. A number of his best-known plays (several of which he’s adapted and directed for the screen, including “In the Company of Men,”) are unsettling examinations of cruelty that can leave viewers wondering whether LaBute supports or condemns his unsavory characters. Cynicism, viciousness and mercilessness — especially toward his female characters — have been some of the tools of his trade.In recent years, these signature themes and attitudes have come under scrutiny. In 2018, one of New York leading nonprofit theaters, MCC Theater, abruptly ended its 15-year relationship with LaBute. No specific reason was given for the break, but the theater’s executive director told The New York Times, “We’re committed to creating and maintaining a respectful and professional work environment for everyone we work with.” The internet was abuzz with speculation that LaBute’s obsessive depictions of toxic gender dynamics had put him out of step with the contemporary cultural climate.This background helps explain why “The Answer to Everything,” in which female retribution looms large, isn’t premiering at any of the New York theaters where LaBute has worked over the past three decades, but instead in Augsburg, a southern German city that is famous for being the birthplace of Bertolt Brecht.It is unusual, to say the least, for a new play by a leading American playwright to debut abroad and in translation. In an email, LaBute explained why he chose a German theater to premiere his latest work.“There are so many brave artists outside the United States who are willing to table material that might be less politically correct or audience-friendly,” he wrote, “and those are the places that I want to be.”Any fears that LaBute’s new work would be a pity party after his exile from MCC, an evening validating misogyny or an anti-#MeToo manifesto evaporated once the curtain went up on Susanne Maier-Staufen’s sleek hotel set. Not only does the play take its female protagonists seriously, it also offers zero apology for entitled (and crude) male behavior.In the play, the nervous and often chatty banter between the three heroines circles a vengeful pact that binds them to one another.Jan-Pieter FuhrIt’s difficult to talk about “The Answer to Everything” without giving spoilers, but I’ll do my best. LaBute does a deft job of keeping us in the dark for the first half of the evening, as the nervous and often chatty banter between the three heroines circles a central issue — a vengeful pact that binds them to one another — without naming it. Maik Priebe, the director, knows how to sustain the suspense and tension, which are carefully rendered in Frank Heibert’s German version of the script, although the odd moments of comic relief are mostly lost in translation.LaBute has funneled a wealth of influences and rendered them in his own signature style, with rapid-fire and naturalistic overlapping dialogue. The plot’s themes are redolent of Patricia Highsmith and Hitchcock, two masters of suspense not exactly known for their positive portrayals of women. Look more closely, though, and you find traces of other works about implacable women that have rubbed off on LaBute, from ancient Greek tragedy to films like “Diabolique” and “Drowning by Numbers.”LaBute loves corkscrew-like plots and although “The Answer to Everything” can feel like a 100-minute ticking time bomb, it doesn’t detonate as one might expect. In lieu of wild twists, we get a gradual series of painful revelations. (LaBute is going for something entirely different from the explosive force of Emerald Fennell’s film “Promising Young Woman,” another recent drama of female retribution.)One of the most refreshing things about “The Answer to Everything” is how it avoids moralizing. LaBute does not manipulate his characters or audience, and the tone is far from judgmental. We are not explicitly invited to either applaud or condemn the “answer” that this group has settled on in order to remove predatory men from their lives. Instead, we’re asked to examine the spectrum of gray between justice and revenge.There is one critical plot twist that flies in the face of the call to “believe all women,” which I could see making American audiences squirm if the play makes it stateside (there are no concrete plans yet for a U.S. premiere).An unflinching approach to examining bad behavior is nothing new for LaBute, but here he goes to uncommon lengths to make us understand his protagonists’ motivations and weaknesses. The group portrait is sobering and also less dreadful than you might expect.Sieder plays Carmen, the gang’s no-nonsense ringleader. Jan-Pieter FuhrThe actresses play off one another skillfully, though not always with the nuance the script seems to require. With her mix of sang-froid and simmering rage, Katja Sieder is the most impressive of the bunch as Carmen, who is the gang’s no-nonsense ringleader. Ute Fiedler’s conscience-stricken Cindy equivocates and pleads with pathos-laden urgency. Paige, who is often stuck in the middle of the battle, feels the least fleshed out, both as a character and in Elif Esmen’s interpretation.There were moments when this production felt like something of an out-of-town tryout. Judging by the enthusiastic response from an audience full of teenagers and older adults at the weeknight performance I attended, local theatergoers in Augsburg were eager to embrace the play’s conundrums and ambivalences, even if it meant going home with more questions than answers.The Answer to Everything. Directed by Maik Priebe. Staatstheater Augsburg, through March 12, 2022 More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Why ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ the Album Has Always Rocked

      by

      When I discovered the record, it felt like the bizarre offspring of my deepest, dorkiest passions: theater and dad rock.I’m here to spread the good word of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the album.It’s a little odd that a record so rapturously received, at least in the United States in the early ’70s, is now mostly left off best album lists, and didn’t secure a lasting place in the rock music canon.Then again, perhaps it was inevitable that “Superstar” the album would end up eclipsed by “Superstar” the stage show, which followed a year later. It’s natural to think of the album as an artifact of the theatrical experience, rather than as a singular artistic vision in its own right, because that’s the way it usually works. It can be tough, for new listeners, to hear the music for the theater.Maybe it’s just that no serious rock connoisseur wants to admit to digging the guys who did “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”Excuse me, for a moment, if I come off as weirdly defensive about the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The night my parents met, my mother, a former singer, was performing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” onstage. She has still never seen “Evita.”Revisiting the 1970 album via the recent release of the 50th anniversary edition, I’m as excited by it as I was when I was 15 and listened to it for the first time. My high school classmates were wallowing in their teenage angst listening to Limp Bizkit and Korn — this was around the turn of the millennium — and here I was, immersed in the bizarre offspring of my deepest, dorkiest passions: theater and dad rock.But for me, tuning into a Judas-centered retelling of the Passion of the Christ felt like a kind of rebellion too. I was obsessed with the song “Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say),” which epitomized emo before that musical term existed, and the electric-shock scream of Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, in the role of Jesus, railing at an unresponsive God. (“Show me just a little of your omnipresent brain!”) While “Superstar” isn’t overtly anti-religious, the impertinence of it gave a young, questioning Catholic a lot to think about.Like a lot of music I loved, and still love from that era, it was kind of preposterous. The “Superstar” overture alone — surely one of the most unsettling rock record openers, let alone musical overtures — features harrowing electric guitar, synth, strings, boisterous brass, and a choir dropped in from a horror movie. The whole thing is more Roger Waters than Rodgers and Hammerstein. Indeed, those musical ingredients can be heard in Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother,” released in the United Kingdom the same month as “Superstar.”The musical tracks for “Superstar,” Rice explained during a podcast, were laid down in a haze of marijuana smoke — at the same London studios where the Rolling Stones recorded “Sympathy for the Devil” — with each day’s session beginning with a half-hour jam session. Most of the musicians had played Woodstock behind Joe Cocker. Gillan recorded his vocals in three hours and played a gig with Deep Purple that night.It’s no wonder “Superstar” rocks.From the get-go, there’s “Heaven on Their Minds,” whose guitar riff has an evocative directness right up there with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” It also has Murray Head as Judas screaming “Jesuuuus!” and sounding kind of blasphemous doing it. How often do you want to blast a showtune — the term seems inadequate here — as loudly as possible? How many classic musicals kick off with a sound and atmosphere worthy of heavy metal? (Not counting “Les Misérables,” whose opening number features the chain-gang clink of actual heavy metal.)On the other end of the spectrum is “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” a moment of tuneful introspection not miles away from Carole King’s “Tapestry,” which was the second-highest-selling album of 1971 behind “Superstar.”If one thinks of “Superstar” as a concept album, it’s that rare one that tells a compelling, coherent story, more narrative driven than Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” or The Who’s “Tommy,” with none of the vaporous verbiage of a lot of rock music at the time. The whole thing is built, as Lloyd Webber is fond of saying, “like a cast iron boat” — a rock radio play, or a stage show for the proscenium of the imagination. In music industry parlance, it’s all killer, no filler.Rice, the former aspiring pop star that he was, has always excelled in down-to-earth lyrics that make outsize characters thoroughly relatable. It’s partly why the lead vocal performances here hit you in the gut. When Yvonne Elliman’s Magdalene cries “He scares me so,” you believe her. When Murray Head’s Judas chokes out the same line, in his own anguished version of that song — Lloyd Webber, ever the skillful deployer of the poignant reprise — you believe him, too.When it comes to Lloyd Webber’s musical audacity, it can sometimes feel as if it’s not just rock snobs that underrate “Superstar,” but also self-professed musical theater lovers.Rice, left, and Lloyd Webber are now musical theater royalty. Yet some of their work remains underrated by musical fans.Again, it may seem strange to suggest that the composer of “The Phantom of the Opera,” sometimes considered to be one of the most successful pieces of entertainment, is underrated by musical fans. But it’s precisely because of that kind of commercial success that Lloyd Webber is taken for granted, dismissed as a populist composer of the kinds of hummable melodies that might, say, pacify a temperamental president.This is unfair to the composer who, on “Superstar,” was having his way with the kinds of time signatures that were dazzling fans of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Just listen to “The Temple,” its feverish 7/4 time signature is a nod to Prokofiev’s equally tumultuous seventh piano sonata, with nary a beat to take a breath. Even more impressive is “Everything’s Alright,” probably the catchiest tune ever written in 5/4. And I include Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” in that.That’s not to mention Lloyd Webber’s essential, monumental achievement here, of creating 90 minutes of music deftly combining orchestra, rock band and a small army of vocalists. Let’s just say that Stephen Sondheim, who happens to share a birthday with Lloyd Webber, doesn’t have a monopoly on musical complexity, psychological depth and conceptual ambition.Lloyd Webber and Rice became musical theater royalty. But before that, they were a couple of shaggy-haired youths who captured the disparate music of the era like few other musicals until “Hamilton.” There was nothing like it in 1970, and there’s not been a lot like it since. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at 50: What Was the Buzz?

      by

      It was the spring of 1970, and Yvonne Elliman, an 18-year-old singer and guitarist from Hawaii, had just finished performing at a London nightclub when a breathless young man rushed the stage.“You’re my Mary Magdalene!” a wide-eyed, 22-year-old Andrew Lloyd Webber announced.“I thought he meant the mother of God,” Elliman, now 69, said in a recent phone conversation, explaining that she had been unfamiliar with the biblical story. “He was like, ‘No, no, no, no, it’s not the mother, it’s the whore.’”They had a laugh, and she went on to sing the part in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the seminal rock opera by Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, for the concept album, the first arena tour, the original Broadway production and the feature film.The musical, which opened 50 years ago on Oct. 12, 1971, turned the story of one of history’s most notorious executions into a splashy spectacle. In doing so, it married rock and musical theater, ushering in Broadway’s British invasion of the 1970s and 1980s and paving the way for shows like “Les Misérables” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”But the nearly 90-minute concept album came first in 1970, because, as Lloyd Webber recalled recently to The Telegraph, no producer wanted to put “the worst idea in history” onstage.“We never knew how it was ever going to get staged,” Lloyd Webber, 73, said in a recent phone conversation. “So it wasn’t a collection of rock tracks or something put together. It had to be read to you and you could understand — the dramatic context of the whole thing had to be the recording.”Jeff Fenholt in the Broadway production. The rock opera portrays Jesus as simply a man, who loses his temper, doubts God and gets caught up in his own celebrity.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesThough the album fizzled in England, the rock opera with a full orchestra and gospel choir took off in America, climbing to No. 1 on the Billboard charts by February 1971. A year after its release, the initial album had sold 2.5 million copies in the United States.“We were staggered by the success,” Rice, 76, the show’s lyricist, said in a video call from his home in Buckinghamshire, England. “MCA let us make a single — two unknown guys — with a huge orchestra and a rock section. And with rather a controversial title. And it worked.”A national concert tour followed in 1971, and audiences packed stadiums to hear Elliman (Mary Magdalene), Carl Anderson (Judas) and Jeff Fenholt (Jesus) belt out hits like “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” “Heaven on Their Minds” and “Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say).”“It was crazy,” Elliman said. “I was asked to go to a hospital and put my hands on a girl who’d been in a car accident. I didn’t know what to say — I held her hand and sat with her. But a few weeks later, her parents wrote to me that she got better immediately after me seeing her.”Broadway OpeningAndrew Lloyd Webber was 23 and Tim Rice was 26 when their show opened on Broadway on Oct. 12, 1971, at the Mark Hellinger Theater on 51st Street.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesAt last, they got the green light: Broadway.Tom O’Horgan (“Hair”) was tapped to direct after Lloyd Webber missed a telegram from the director Hal Prince, who had expressed interest. “The one person I’d have loved to have seen do it would have been Hal Prince,” Lloyd Webber said in the interview. “Would it have turned out differently? Would it have been good? I don’t know.”The show, which narrates the last seven days of Jesus’s life through the eyes of one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater on 51st Street to an audience that included Lloyd Webber, 23, and Rice, 26. But in a joint interview with The New York Times later that month, both men practically disowned their director.“Let’s just say that we don’t think this production is the definitive one,” said Lloyd Webber, who in later years would call O’Horgan’s $700,000 staging a “brash and vulgar interpretation” and opening night “probably the worst night of my life.”Reviews were mixed. Dick Brukenfield of The Village Voice praised Lloyd Webber’s “energetic music” but noted that the ocular dazzle — the sets included a large special-effects “chrysalis,” a bridge of bones, and a giant set of dentures — distracted from the story. “It looks like a record that’s been reproduced onstage with visual filler by Tom O’Horgan,” he wrote.The New York Times critic Clive Barnes panned the production, writing that it “rather resembled one’s first sight of the Empire State Building. Not at all uninteresting, but somewhat unsurprising and of minimal artistic value.”Cries of “Blasphemy!”Opening night attracted crowds of leaflet-bearing Christian and Jewish protesters, who regarded what The New York Times writer Guy Flatley called “the strutting, mincing, twitching, grinding, souped‐up ‘Superstar’” as theatrical sacrilege.“Going into the theater it’d be ‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’” said Ben Vereen, now 75, who played Judas.Lloyd Webber added: “I’m not convinced that Robert Stigwood, our producer, might not have actually orchestrated one or two of them. I think it might have had a much rougher ride today than it did then.”Rice and Lloyd Webber were accused of denying the divinity of Christ and making a hero of Judas, who is the unambiguous villain in the New Testament. Jewish leaders were alarmed that the musical made it appear as if Jews were responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion, which they feared would fan antisemitism.“We were criticized for leaving out the Resurrection,” Rice said. “But that was not part of our story because, by then, Judas was dead. And his story was over.”Conservative Christians were also startled by the sexual overtones between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who finds herself falling in love with him.“I’d get evil letters from people who said they wanted to kill Mary so Yvonne could come out again,” Elliman said.But Rice is clear: There was never an affair in the “Superstar” story line.“I would imagine he would have been a very attractive man and yet not somebody who was out looking for a girlfriend,” he said. “He was somebody who was charismatic and powerful. And, and this woman is slightly afraid of that, maybe afraid of what her own feelings are.”Jesus and JudasBen Vereen, center, played Judas. The character was inspired by the Bob Dylan lyric “Did Judas Iscariot have God on his side?” from the song “With God on Our Side.”Bettmann, via Getty ImagesJesus Christ, played by Jeff Fenholt, loses his temper, doubts God and gets a bit caught up in his own celebrity. He’s simply Jesus, the man, with all the attendant problems and failings.“He could feel pain,” Rice said. “If he was only a god, then things like a crucifixion, which is a horrible, horrible torture and death, wouldn’t really be a problem. If he’s a man, whether or not he’s a god, he has to suffer. He has to have doubts.”Those doubts are most on display in the “Gethsemane” rock scream, in which Jesus pleads — with a wailing G above high C — for God to let this cup pass from him.“We wanted to have a rock tenor who contrasted with the voice of Judas,” Lloyd Webber said.Vereen, who was cast as Judas, was nominated for a Tony Award for the role. He said the biblical account of the relationship between Jesus and Judas left him room for interpretation.“Jesus never wrote the book, and Judas never wrote the book,” he said. “All we hear is the hearsay of these men from the disciples in the Gospels.”Inspired by the Bob Dylan lyric “Did Judas Iscariot have God on his side?” from the 1964 song “With God on Our Side,” Rice set out to humanize the New Testament’s unambiguous villain.“I thought, well, ‘This is a very good character, which I can expand from what’s in the Bible, because there isn’t very much in the Bible,’” Rice said. “He was a human being. He had good points and bad points. He had strengths and weaknesses.”At first, Vereen said, he struggled to understand his character’s motivation. Then, after combing through the Bible, he came up with a theory.“Hypothetically speaking, maybe Judas really loved Jesus more than any of the other disciples and wanted him to be the hero that ruled the country,” Vereen said. “And he felt that if he betrayed him, the Israelites would rebel and put Jesus in the role.”A Musical Radio PlayYvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene. She was one of the few actors to not only perform on the concept album, but also to appear in the Broadway show and the movie.Rolls Press/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesBecause the show began as what Lloyd Webber calls a musical radio play, meant to be listened to straight through for 90 minutes without any visuals “on a turntable, in those days,” he said, he had to come up with strategies to keep the listener’s attention.“A lot of that has to do with how you plant themes and how you deal with them,” he said. “My idea for the overture was to introduce every ingredient that I could think of within the musical palette we were going to hear through the rest of the recording.”And then those themes recur, one by one, as when the whole of the overture is mirrored in the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate, or when a song reappears with a twist, like “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” To Mary Magdalene it’s a love song about Jesus; when it returns as a motif sung by Judas as a lament, the lyrics change: “He’s not a king, he’s just the same/As anyone I know/He scares me so.”“Judas understood Jesus, and he obviously was clearly obsessed and loved him,” Lloyd Webber said. “And then at the same time, you’ve got this woman, who was also, if you follow the Bible, clearly very, very much in love with him.”And then, of course, there’s the musical’s oddball track.Herod, Paul Ainsley’s glitter-flecked, platform-sandaled drag queen, commands the son of God to “Prove to me that you’re no fool/walk across my swimming pool” in “King Herod’s Song (Try It and See).” The bouncy ragtime number serves as comic relief after Jesus’s gut-wrenching “Gethsemane” aria.“It’s taking a conventional showbiz number and making it something really very, very nasty,” Lloyd Webber said. “When Herod turns around and says, ‘Get out of my life!,’ that’s a number that’s gone wrong.”Rice said: “Musically, I think it’s a brilliant stroke on Andrew’s part. Just as everything’s getting heavier and heavier and heavier, and suddenly you have a very catchy melody. We wanted people to almost be misled into thinking, ‘Oh, well, you know, maybe it’s going to be a happy ending.’”The Show’s LegacyWith $1.2 million in advance sales, the Broadway show sold out almost every performance for the first six weeks. But the hype quickly dimmed. It ran for 711 performances in all and failed to win a Tony Award despite five nominations, including one for best score.But the musical’s legacy has endured, spawning three Broadway revivals (in 1977, 2000 and 2012), a 2012 Lloyd Webber-produced televised competition series to cast the titular role for a British arena tour, a 2018 televised NBC production that starred John Legend as Jesus and resulted in Emmy wins for Rice and Lloyd Webber — and now the 50th anniversary American tour, interrupted by the pandemic, that resumed performances in Seattle late last month.“51 years since the album came out … blimey!” Rice said.Lloyd Webber, looking back, said, “Everything I was doing was all instinct.” He added, “Yes, I’d had some amateur productions, but we’d never had anything in the professional theater — and I don’t know whether that would have influenced us for good or bad.”He thought for a second.“Without sounding immodest” — he chuckled — “it’s actually rather good.” More