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      ‘Walden’ Review: Getting Away From It All

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      Amy Berryman’s three-character drama, set in a one-room cabin as crises rage outside, asks how much we owe to ourselves and our world.We don’t know exactly how many years into the future Amy Berryman sets “Walden,” her incisive three-character drama. But the climate emergency has already worsened, along with a refugee crisis. Synthetic foods are now widespread. Cloning, too. War rages somewhere. (Everywhere?)“The bombs on Christmas? We could see them through one of our telescopes on the moon,” Cassie (Jeena Yi), a NASA astronaut, says by way of casual conversation.Cassie, recently returned from a lunar mission, has arrived at a secluded cabin in an undisclosed location to visit her twin sister, Stella (Diana Oh), and Stella’s partner, Bryan (Gabriel Brown). Stella had also trained as an astronaut, but she failed NASA’s physical fitness test. Bryan is an avowed Earth Advocate. He holds that the government should put money toward problems on Earth rather than investing elsewhere in the solar system. So the visit, though lubricated by bartered wine and home brew, isn’t an entirely cozy one.TheaterWorks Hartford and the director Mei Ann Teo have given the play, which runs through Aug. 29, an environmental staging, locating it in a functional one-room cabin, ringed with chicken coops and a vegetable garden, in a meadow alongside the Connecticut River. (The set, rough-hewed and ingenious, is by You-Shin Chen; Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew provides the inspired lighting.) If you can’t travel to Connecticut, TheaterWorks has made the play available for streaming, also through Aug. 29.That’s how I saw it. And if it felt wrong to watch a drama so concerned with environmentalism from a laptop, on my sofa, with a window unit whirring quietly in the background, tensions like this interest Berryman. She doesn’t situate herself as smarter than her characters, and distributes her sympathies equally among them. Still, go to Connecticut if you can, especially if you can get there by emissions-friendly means. Because that meadow looks beautiful. And birdsong and crepuscular rays are best experienced in person. Then again, there are no mosquitoes in digital theater. The filming is deft enough, and the performances — layered, unshowy — land even through the screen.“Walden” borrows its name from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden; or, Life in the Woods,” a memoir, harangue, self-help manual and work of autofiction rolled into one clothbound volume. “Walden,” which extols solitude and self-reliance, was a favorite text of Cassie and Stella’s father, also an astronaut. And Walden is the name that Stella gives to the habitat she has designed for Mars. “I sort of think it reads like a whiny hipster’s blog from 19whatever,” Cassie says dismissively of the book. She isn’t exactly wrong.Thoreau went into the woods, he wrote, “because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” While Berryman loads her play with vivid details and plenty of plot mechanics, it’s Thoreau’s question of how to live and what constitutes a good life that animates her. Should we live for ourselves or for others? Engaged with the present or focused on the future? What do we have to sacrifice to live in community and what do we have to forfeit if we live without it?It’s probably that last question, which became a lot less rhetorical during the pandemic, that lends the play its poignancy. The humans of “Walden,” thrust together for this visit, are responding to various disasters — natural, unnatural, interpersonal — and trying their best to treat one another decently.The play never fully resolves its philosophical dilemmas, except to suggest that no philosophy will fit everyone comfortably. Even Thoreau, who preached self-reliance while famously bringing his laundry home to his mother, might have agreed. “Heaven,” he wrote, “is under our feet as well as over our heads.” So why not have both?WaldenThrough Aug. 29 at 100 Meadow Road, Windsor, Conn. and online; twhartford.org/events/walden. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Beanie Feldstein to Star in ‘Funny Girl’ on Broadway

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      With the “Booksmart” actress taking on the role originated by Barbra Streisand in 1964, the show is getting its first Broadway revival in 58 years.Beanie Feldstein will star as Fanny Brice, the role that helped make Barbra Streisand a star, in a production of “Funny Girl,” which is returning to Broadway for the first time in 58 years.The revival of the 1964 musical will be directed by Michael Mayer, who oversaw a 2015 revival of the show in London. Producers said performances would begin in the spring, but did not specify a date — though a recent Equity casting call gave April 2 as the first performance. The theater where the musical will be housed will be announced later.“The first time I played Fanny Brice was at my third birthday party, in a head-to-toe leopard print outfit my mom made for me,” Feldstein said in a statement. “So, it’s safe to say that stepping into this iconic role, on Broadway and not in my family’s backyard, is truly my lifelong dream come true.“I am immensely grateful to be able to do so alongside such a remarkable creative team,” she added, “and cannot wait for audiences to get back in theaters again!”Feldstein made her Broadway debut in 2017 as Minnie Fay in “Hello, Dolly!,” which starred Bette Midler, and had memorable roles in the films “Booksmart” and “Lady Bird.” She’ll play Monica Lewinsky next month in the new FX series “Impeachment: American Crime Story.”“Funny Girl” charts the rise of the self-deprecating comedian and actress Fanny Brice, and her relationship with the professional gambler Nick Arnstein. The original production was nominated for eight Tony Awards, including best musical.Streisand won a best actress Oscar for the 1968 film and her performance has cast a long shadow over the title role — a multidimensional character who must sing, generate laughs and succeed against the odds all at once.An attempt to revive the show in 2012, with Bartlett Sher directing the television actress Lauren Ambrose in the lead role, fell apart. So for many theatergoers, the long-awaited return of “Funny Girl” makes it one the most highly anticipated revivals in years.Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s score includes such classic songs as “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” Isobel Lennart’s original book is being revised by Harvey Fierstein. And Mayer has a strong track record, though some of his biggest directing successes have been with rock-inflected material, including “Spring Awakening” in 2006 (for which he won a Tony) and the 2014 revival of“Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”The new production will also feature the choreography of Ellenore Scott and scenic design by David Zinn. Ayodele Casel, an artist in residence at Little Island, will oversee tap choreography for the show.Producers said that additional casting announcements would be released shortly. “Funny Girl” is the second previously unscheduled musical to announce its Broadway opening since the pandemic began. Preview performances for the new musical “Paradise Square” will begin on Feb. 22 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. More

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      Museum of Broadway in Times Square Sets New Opening Date

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      The first institution dedicated to the history of the Great White Way and the artistry of its shows and theaters plans to welcome visitors next summer.After multiple delays, the first museum dedicated to telling the storied history of Broadway shows is now expected to open its doors next summer in the heart of the theater district.The Museum of Broadway, described as an interactive and immersive experience, was originally scheduled to debut in 2020. But its founders, Julie Boardman, a four-time Tony nominated producer, and Diane Nicoletti, founder of Rubik Marketing, said the project was delayed by the pandemic.“We really thought it would be this great idea that was a hybrid of both an experiential museum that’s very interactive and colorful and fun,” Nicoletti said in an interview, “as well as making sure that we were really getting the integrity of the history of Broadway, by including costumes and artifacts and historic elements as well.”The museum, at 145 West 45th Street, next door to the Lyceum Theater, will have three sections: The first, a map room, will lay out the migration of the city’s theaters from the financial district to Union Square, Herald Square and then, eventually, Times Square.The second area will be a timeline, stretching from Broadway’s birth in the mid-18th century to classic book musicals and follies to shows currently running onstage. Opening-night telegrams, lyric sketches and handwritten pieces of sheet music have been obtained with the help of the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Along the timeline there will be installations created by visual artists and Broadway designers — think vibrant murals or interactive augmented reality experiences — that will explore some of the most important and influential shows. A room at the end of this section will highlight the shows playing on Broadway at that moment, and examine some of the 41 theaters that make up Broadway.A stage door will open into a backstage that deconstructs the making of a Broadway show. This last area is intended to honor the professionals — both onstage and off, actors and not — who ensure the shows go on.“It really paints the picture of how that all comes to be, and then honors all of the brilliant, talented creatives, and people who bring that to life,” said Boardman, one of the producer’s of a revival of “Company” this season.The Museum of Broadway was founded in collaboration with Playbill, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, Concord Theatricals and Goodspeed Musicals. Tickets are expected to go on sale next year.“With Covid, and the industry being completely shut down, we’re really excited to be able to open our doors to everyone” next summer, Boardman said. More

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      Review: ‘The Threepenny Opera’ Returns Home, Liberated

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      Barrie Kosky’s new production for the Berliner Ensemble, at the theater where the famous work premiered, knows where to break the rules.BERLIN — “I’m not asking for an opera here,” the notorious criminal Macheath says at his wedding, early in a work that happens to be called “Die Dreigroschenoper” (“The Threepenny Opera”).And in Barrie Kosky’s hauntingly enjoyable new production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s famous “play with music” for the Berliner Ensemble — at the theater where it premiered in 1928 — Macheath then reaches into the orchestra pit in search of nuptial entertainment and steals the “Threepenny” score from the conductor’s stand. He flips through the pages while humming the show’s big hit, “Mack the Knife,” tears them up and throws the scraps into a metal bucket. Then he lights them on fire.The line “I’m not asking for an opera here” dates back to the ’20s, but Weill and Brecht never wrote what follows — nor did their essential collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann, who with this production is finally getting proper billing alongside them after decades of neglect. Yet this kind of ironic gesture toward the art form wouldn’t be out of character for them; coming from Kosky, it’s a subtle tribute, and a blazing declaration of independence.It’s a moment, along with many others in Kosky’s production that epitomizes the adage of knowing rules in order to break them.Kosky clearly understands the work: the social critiques that course through Brecht and Hauptmann’s crass text; the ways in which Weill’s earworm score lodges those ideas in your mind; and how, in its tension between words and music, “Threepenny” dares you to connect with it emotionally amid constant reminders of theatrical artifice.He also seems to know that “Threepenny” is ultimately a problem piece. It may be the defining artwork of Weimar-era Berlin, but more often than not it makes for a joyless night at the theater. Its dizzying layers of satire and style tend to overwhelm directors, who as if operating with a Wikipedia understanding easily succumb to visual clichés, vicious affect and didacticism. The worst productions aspire to the sexily somber Berlin of Sam Mendes’s take on the musical “Cabaret.”But “Threepenny” isn’t, as Kosky said in an interview with The New York Times, “‘Cabaret’ with a little bit of intellectualism.” Indeed, it was quintessentially 1920s Berlin — a timely tale, despite its setting of London’s criminal underworld in the 19th century, that became a pop culture phenomenon known as “Threepenny fever” — but its legacy is far richer and more widespread than that. Especially after the 1950s, once the show found belated success in the United States with a long-running adaptation by the composer Marc Blitzstein.Covers of “Mack the Knife” abounded, and made for one of Ella Fitzgerald’s greatest live recordings; Brecht’s poetic lyrics influenced Bob Dylan; the artist Nan Goldin named her photography collection “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” after one of the show’s songs. And the metatheatrical devices of “Threepenny” are alive and well: In Leos Carax’s new film, “Annette,” emotion and artifice fit snugly together in a deliberate tension you could trace back to Brecht and Weill.Even so, the vitality of “Threepenny” depends on intervention and adaptation; it can never be performed, as it too often has been, as a museum piece. And Kosky never treats it as one. Instead he adds and subtracts, breathing new life into a work that desperately needed it. He sheds the excesses of Act I and eliminates entire characters, for example, to reveal a recognizable but freshly presented story focused on that most fundamental of human dramas: love.Capitalism, and Brecht’s scathing indictment of it, still loom over the show — but more obliquely, as an insidious force behind relationships that renders them slippery and unreliable. In Kosky’s view, it also feeds and thwarts Macheath’s pathological need to be loved, whether by his fellow characters or the members of the audience.Nico Holonics portrayed Macheath with a weariness that betrays the darkness behind his carefree demeanor. Joerg Brueggemann/OstkreuzMacheath, a.k.a. Mack the Knife — performed by Nico Holonics with unflappable joy but a weariness that betrays the darkness behind his carefree demeanor — is not a man to give up his habits, as he is described in the show. He gives away wedding rings as if they were pennies, and smiles as he watches women fight over him. Like Don Giovanni, he never loses faith in his ability to manipulate them, even as they abandon him one by one.He is introduced, as ever, with “Mack the Knife” (following the overture, here lithe yet lyrical in chorale-like passages, conducted by Adam Benzwi). Through a curtain of black tinsel, a sparkling face appears — that of Josefin Platt as the Moon Over Soho, a role created for Kosky’s production — to sing the murder ballad with the rapid vibrato of Lotte Lenya, Weill’s wife and a legendary interpreter of his music.Kosky is a showman — just look at the invaluable work he has done to revive Weimar-era operettas at his company here in Berlin, the Komische Oper — and he knows the power of a hit song. So he reprises “Mack the Knife” throughout the evening, at one point having its tune played through one of the souvenir music boxes tourists can buy in his nearby hometown, Dessau.In general, Kosky seems to have more of an affinity for Weill’s music, which he expands with relish, than the text. Where he truly defers to Brecht — his production, after all, is for Brecht’s company — is in the staging, which shatters the fourth wall from the start and continually reminds its audience, in anti-Wagnerian fashion, that what they are seeing isn’t real.Polly Peachum, here a commanding Cynthia Micas, calls for her own spotlight and gestures for the curtain to be raised, revealing a jungle gym of a set (by Rebecca Ringst) that is more dynamic than it at first appears; Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (the darkly charming Tilo Nest), Polly’s father and Macheath’s underworld rival, cues the orchestra; stagehands make no effort to hide their work.The effect, in Brecht’s school of theater, is to temper the audience’s emotional response and trigger an intellectual one — which is crucial to the political success of “Threepenny,” yet is often difficult to reconcile with the seductive grip of Weill’s music. That can get messy, but Kosky’s production comfortably has it both ways; the result may not please purists of Brecht or Weill, but on balance it makes for persuasive, satisfying drama.And by homing in on Macheath, Kosky allows room for psychological richness, particularly with the women in his orbit: Polly; her mother, Celia Peachum (lent the authority of a power broker by Constanze Becker); Jenny (arguably the soul of the show, wistful and bitter as sung by Bettina Hoppe); and Lucy Brown (Laura Balzer, a master of physical and musical comedy). You could also count among them Lucy’s father, the police chief Tiger Brown, here performed by Kathrin Wehlisch in drag — not a gimmick, but a homoerotic treatment of Macheath’s oldest friendship as yet another fragile romance.From left, Cynthia Micas, Constanze Becker and Tilo Nest as the Peachum family.JR Berliner EnsembleAll these relationships fail — usually because of money, in some way. But Macheath is undeterred, by the end looking for his next connection as a brightly lit sign descends from the rafters: “LOVE ME.” That’s another Brechtian touch, a modern take on the projections used in Caspar Neher’s set for the original 1928 production.But what follows is all Kosky. After the winkingly jubilant finale, the Moon Over Soho shows its face again, bleakly sending off the audience with a “Mack the Knife” verse, written by Brecht in 1930, that says some people are in the dark, and some are in the light; and while you can see those in the light, you’ll never see the ones in the dark.Die DreigroschenoperThrough Sept. 4, then in repertory, at the Berliner Ensemble, Berlin; berliner-ensemble.de. More

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      Review: Making S’mores Around the Campfire at the Apocalypse

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      In “The Grown-Ups,” a play by Skylar Fox and Simon Henriques, audience members sit around a real fire in a backyard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.In the light of the campfire on a summer night, after the children have gone to bed, some of the grown-ups sit up and talk. Most of them have been coming here since they were small, and when they roast marshmallows for s’mores, the scent must take them right back — the charred-sugar sweetness that means, yep, someone’s marshmallow is suddenly aflame.They’re so comforting, aren’t they, these seasonal rituals from childhood? In “The Grown-Ups,” an apocalyptic play by Skylar Fox and Simon Henriques staged for a handful of audience members around a real fire in the backyard of a house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the freshly minted adults are senior camp counselors at Indigo Woods, and they earnestly want to pass those traditions on.Well, except the traditions that are racist, like the Indigenous name their extremely white camp had until this year, or otherwise exclusionary, structured to favor the boys or the older kids. Trouble is, there are a lot of those traditions.“I guess it’s just a question of what you care about more,” says Cassie (Chloe Joy Ivanson), the self-possessed newcomer to this tight-knit group of counselors, and the only one who isn’t white. “Taking the best care of these kids that you can? Or doing things the way you’ve always done them.”Cassie (Chloe Joy Ivanson) is the self-possessed newcomer to this tight-knit group of counselors.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesDirected by Fox for the experimental company Nightdrive, “The Grown-Ups” is part satire, part scary story. If it buckles under the weight of too many targets, that overstuffedness is very 2021: so many crises to frighten us, so much damage to fend off and fix, so much anxious-making news to navigate.At night, when these 20-something counselors retrieve their phones from Aidan (Justin Phillips), the endearingly dutiful assistant camp director, they scroll for the latest developments in what sounds like a new American civil war — sparked, absurdly, by an image of a pineapple in which some people see the face of Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. the Rock, and well-armed others furiously do not.The counselors wonder whether to tell the children, and if so, what to say; then, as the danger moves closer, how to protect and prepare them, preferably without shattering their illusion of safety.“The second we tell the kids,” Aidan says, “this isn’t camp anymore.”Under a dusting of stars in Greenpoint the other night, the air smelled of earth and foliage and somehow of fresh water, too, as if Indigo Woods’s lake really were just out of sight. The firelight was soft, the physical space just right. It was quirkily charming that, as we filed through the house, whose location you learn only after you book a ticket, the other seven audience members and I had to pass through a bathroom to reach the yard.Justin Phillips as Aidan, the dutiful assistant camp director, and Emily E. Garrison as Becca, a veteran counselor.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIvanson and Phillips managed nicely with performances very different in style. Yet I never did feel truly immersed in the play, or sense the bone-deep familiarity that the three veteran counselors — Becca (Emily E. Garrison), Lukas (Henriques) and Maeve (Abby Melick) — would have from their years of shared summertimes.Doing theater this intimate, though, with actors and spectators in the same circle of chairs around a fire, is like doing close-up magic. It’s harder for the illusion to work, and relies on delicate calibration. It is also probably easier to pull off without a critic right in your face.The Grown-UpsThrough Oct. 3 at a secret location in north Brooklyn; nightdrive.org/thegrownups. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      New Work by Suzan-Lori Parks to Be Part of Public Theater Season

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      “The Visitor” and “cullud wattah,” two shows postponed by the pandemic, will get their premieres alongside works by James Ijames, Shaina Taub and Lloyd Suh.The Public Theater’s 2021-22 season will feature a mix of projects postponed because of the pandemic and new works, including “Plays for the Plague Year” by Suzan-Lori Parks.Behind the scenes, the Off Broadway nonprofit — responding to renewed calls for racial equity in the theater industry — said it will include over 50 percent representation by people of color in artistic leadership roles, from the directors and writers to the choreographers and the designers.“This last year and a half, in addition to Covid, has been about a call for racial justice and equity that we take profoundly seriously,” Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, said in an interview. “The Public obviously has always been, we felt, progressive on racial issues. And what became clear to us is we weren’t progressive enough.”The season begins with a musical that was about to have its world premiere in March 2020, before theaters were shuttered because of the pandemic: “The Visitor,” by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah. Directed by Daniel Sullivan and based on the film about a college professor and two undocumented immigrants, it will feature David Hyde Pierce and Ari’el Stachel, both Tony Award winners. Performances will begin Oct. 7.The pandemic also led to the postponement of the debut of Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s play, “cullud wattah.” In the interim, she received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, which honors work by women and nonbinary playwrights. The play is about the effects of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., on three generations of women. Candis C. Jones will direct the play, which begins performances in November.Another delayed work, Mona Mansour’s “The Vagrant Trilogy,” about Palestinians’ displacement, will be directed by Mark Wing-Davey and will now open in April 2022.And Shaina Taub’s anticipated musical about the American women’s suffrage movement will take the stage in March 2022. “Suffs,” described as an epic show about some of the unsung heroines of the movement, will be directed by Leigh Silverman and feature the choreography of Raja Feather Kelly.In addition to Parks’s “Plays for the Plague Year,” in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright wrote a play a day since the beginning of the pandemic, the season will also include “Out of Time,” a collection of monologues by five award-winning Asian American playwrights; “The Chinese Lady,” Lloyd Suh’s portrait of the first Chinese woman to step foot in America in 1834; and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’s “hilarious yet profound new ‘Hamlet’-inspired play” set at a Southern barbecue, Jesse Green wrote in his review of a streaming production. (Some of these are co-productions with Barrington Stage Company, Ma-Yi Theater Company, NAATCO and National Black Theater.)The theater artist Daniel Alexander Jones’ digital album, “Altar No. 1 — Aten,” will unfold through a series of weekly installments beginning Sept. 22. And Joe’s Pub will be back, too: The performance space tucked inside the Public will have live music starting Oct. 5.The lineup of shows reflects the current moment well, Eustis said, for a few reasons. There’s the representation of artists of color and the partnerships with theater companies hit harder by the past year than the Public. And then there’s what he called Parks’s “astonishing” new work, “Plays for the Plague Year.”“They give a sort of map,” Eustis said, “and a day by day examination of what this year has been, like no other work of art I’ve seen. I think it’s an incredibly important and powerful work.”Parks began writing “Plays for the Plague Year” on March 12, 2020, and it covers at least a year. Among the snapshots she captured were those “almost like a small domestic adjustment drama,” Eustis said, in April, and the murder of George Floyd in May, as well as the racial reckoning that followed.The past year has sparked dialogue and rocked foundations, and the theater is no exception. Much of the conversation at the Public has been in the gap between “we need to be more thoughtful” and “the show must go on,” Eustis said.“Because the show must go on; it really must,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure out a way to be more thoughtful about how we work, and more mindful about and contemplative about the ways we treat each other while the show goes on.” More

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      Velvet, Organza and Vipers: Stage Costumes Dazzle

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      Here is what you can’t see from the rear mezzanine of a theater: the flocked velvet, the ruby-like rhinestones, the layered fabrics that shape a lush rosette atop each dance pump. This is the Red Death costume from the “Masquerade” number in “The Phantom of the Opera.” A carnival of flocked velvet and gold braid, it integrates art and craft, glamour and kitsch, fantasy and hand-sewn reality.Red Death awaits you on the lower level of “Showstoppers! Spectacular Costumes From Stage and Screen,” a pop-up exhibition to benefit the recently formed Costume Industry Coalition, an alliance of over 50 New York City-based small businesses and independent artisans.A costume from “Wicked” that involves hundreds of yards of ombré-dyed organza ribbon.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesOn Broadway, even in the best seats, an orchestra pit separates you from the finery. At “Showstoppers!,” which runs through Sept. 26 in a former Modell’s branch in Times Square, you can stand close enough to make out individual threads.When theaters went dark last year because of the pandemic, costume fabricators had to close up shop, too. Designers are the visible faces of this industry — they’re the ones who collect the Tony Awards, though not during the broadcast portions of the ceremony. But while they dream up the costumes, it is the fabricators — the tailors and seamstresses and embroiderers and weavers and beaders and pleaters and painters and milliners and glovers and cobblers — who actually build them.This gown from Heartbeat Opera’s “Dragus Maximus” features 3-D printed vipers.An Rong Xu for The New York Times“We create the three-dimensional moving piece of art,” Brian Blythe, one of the exhibition’s organizers, said. Many of the pieces are couture items, built on the bodies of individual performers and retired when those actors leave a show.“Showstoppers!” displays 100-odd costumes, as well as a handful of the tools used to make them, like millinery blocks and a 19th-century crewel machine from the embroiderers Penn & Fletcher.Even the boots in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” were designed to sparkle.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe exhibition was put together in three and a half months, and its lighting, sound and design (from Thinc Design) were provided at cost or gratis. So it feels inevitably ad hoc. The Broadway and opera displays put their custom-shod feet forward; the film, television, theme park and dance portions hang back. The selection reflects less a dedication vision, and more what could be begged, borrowed or briskly replicated.But what’s more theatrical than a let’s-put-on-a-show ethos?Replica costumes from the musical “Six,” which was set to open on the day Broadway shut down last year.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe Red Death costume, center, from “The Phantom of the Opera.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesNot every garment benefits from close study. Some need the alchemy of star power and stage lighting to shine. Still, each testifies to the men and women (mostly women), who have patiently attached every ribbon and rhinestone. A handful of these craftspeople will be on site, plying their spangled trades during opening hours. Here are 10 highlights from the show.‘The Cher Show’“The Cher Show” apportioned its heroine’s life among three actresses, referred to in the biomusical as Babe, Star and Lady. The exhibition includes the costumes for all three of them in the number “If I Could Turn Back Time,” a slinky triptych of velvet, rhinestones and boots. When Cher came to see the Broadway show, she reminded the designer Bob Mackie that she hadn’t actually worn the glamorous bat wings that crown the display. “You would have if I’d drawn them,” he told her.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Six’A few steps away huddle replicas of the outfits for “Six,” a pop musical about the six wives of Henry VIII that was originally set to open the day Broadway shut down. The Tudor-inspired minidresses are built from plastics, vinyl and the occasional Swarovski crystal. They gesture to the 16th-century — the lattice patterning, the corsetry — but also the likes of contemporary stars such as Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande. Thousands of metal studs, some so sharp they could cut you, adorn the outfits. Each boasts a personalized mic holster.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Aladdin’One of the exhibition’s displays pays tribute to Disney’s Broadway dominance. (“Frozen” announced its closure during the pandemic, but “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” will soon reopen.) Up close, the “Aladdin” costumes offer astonishing intricacies, like the beaded birds and flowering vines that meander up and down Aladdin’s turquoise robe. The delicate embroidery on Jasmine’s pink skirts may be difficult to discern without a close-up look, but see how it contrasts with the unapologetic opulence of her top.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘The Lion King’Perhaps the most memorable element of “The Lion King” is its life-size animal heads, designed by the director Julie Taymor and the mask and puppet designer Michael Curry. (The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has acquired two of them for its theater and performance collection.) But “Showstopper!” shows the complexity of subtler costumes. Take the grasslands corset: Strands of rope form a skirt below. Above, cloth blades are loomed, by hand, into more rope to create a bodice at once enduring and delicate.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’Diamonds are forever. Ostrich feather boas are not. In the Sparkling Diamond look from “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” the courtesan Satine perches in a swing in a strapless gown, a top hat, high-heeled boots and a necklace that could strain the cervical vertebrae. There are diamanté rhinestones in a firework pattern on the heart-shaped bodice, individual gems sewn to the stockings. Even the boots’ heels sparkle. In a nod to Satine’s vulnerability, the skirt — made of ostrich feathers and mylar tinsel — softens her look’s diamond hardness.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Wicked’During the “One Short Day” number from “Wicked,” the school-age witches Glinda and Elphaba arrive in the Emerald City, off to see the wizard. The verdant costume for just one townswoman involves 900 yards of ombré-dyed organza ribbon. (It gives the effect of an ordinary day dress overrun with lettuce.) The dress’s skirt has a kick pleat, and if you glance beneath it, you’ll find five layers of underskirt, three of them meticulously embroidered, just in case the performer lifts her dancing shoe.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Hamilton’When Paul Tazewell was designing the costumes for “Hamilton,” the musical’s creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, told him that Hamilton’s suit ought to be green. Not just any green, but the color of money. (Pity the costume assistant who had to visit the city’s fabric stores, clutching a 10-dollar bill.) The final outfit is ultimately more lush than cash, and it yields other surprises, too: like the feminine lace at each cuff, and the waterfall ruff that encircles the neck.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWing + Weft GlovesSome of the gloves from Wing + Weft, the last glove-maker in the garment district, have built-in claws. Others are sequined, feathered, fringed, beaded, buttoned, ruched and pearled. The studio designs for theater, film and television, and (along with its immediate predecessor, Lacrasia Gloves) have also gloved a dozen first ladies. But many of the most splendid creations seen here are for drag and burlesque — gloves designed to be worn and then, finger by finger, flirtatiously removed.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Phantom of the Opera’The Phantom’s Red Death outfit is so top-heavy, it’s surprising that it hasn’t caused actors to fall down the stairs in “Masquerade.” There’s the feather-bedecked cavalier hat, the skull mask, the beads, rubies, buttons, trim and sofa’s worth of tassels that pull together the stomacher, a Renaissance-era decorated panel. Turn your back on that outfits, and you will find designs from another archetypical scene — Christine’s white nightgown and the Phantom’s black cape from “The Music of the Night.”‘Dragus Maximus’An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTake one look at Medusa, and you’ll turn to stone. That won’t happen at “Showstoppers!,” but when you see this mannequin dressed in the Medusa costume from Heartbeat Opera’s “Dragus Maximus,” a queer take on the Homeric myths, you might stop cold. The gown is wreathed in vipers, each of them 3-D printed at the behest of the designer Miodrag Guberinic. Compared with the other looks on view, it’s has a less artisanal approach, but it’s no less intricate or exciting. And it hints at fabrication’s future.Showstoppers! Spectacular Costumes From Stage and ScreenThrough Sept. 26 at 234 West 42nd Street; showstoppersnyc.com. More

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      Finding a New Theater Audience, Far From France’s Cities

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      In rural gardens, forests and public squares, young stage artists fed up with the country’s rigid scene are striving for diversity and spontaneity.MAURENS, France — The village of Maurens, 300 miles south of Paris, has a population of around 1,000. It has a church; a single bakery; and, since 2013, a summer theater festival, the Théâtre du Roi de Coeur.One recent evening, the scale of the event’s ambition was obvious. On an open-air wooden stage, a cast of 12 put impressive energy into “Fanny, Me and the Others,” a four-hour adaptation of a Marcel Pagnol trilogy. Even when a drizzle started, the members of audience, sitting on chairs and haystacks, opened their umbrellas and stayed put.The Roi de Coeur isn’t alone in bringing large-scale theater to rural backyards. It is one of 17 founding members of France’s Federation of Local Festivals and Theaters, which got underway last month at the Avignon Festival. Its members, dotted around the country in areas with few playhouses, have come together to show that rural theater can compete with bigger city stages, and to push for greater recognition of their contribution to France’s cultural ecosystem.Behind the initiative is a group of millennials, who graduated from top drama schools and found themselves frustrated with the rigid structure of France’s theater world. While the performing arts in the country receive generous public funding, a significant portion goes to state-backed playhouses in large cities. Competition to get independent projects off the ground is fierce; young artists have complained for years about the cost of attending the crowded Avignon Fringe, for instance.Pélagie Papillon, left, and Martin Jaspar in “Fanny, Me and the Others.” Sébastien AngladaChloé de Broca, who started the Roi de Coeur with Félix Beaupérin, said they were warned as students about the profession’s harsh reality. “We knew very quickly that big productions with a large cast were reserved to an elite of sorts,” she said.Unaware of one another at first, the federation’s members carved an alternative path, turning to “spaces not originally meant for theater,” as their official charter puts it. These include gardens, forests, private residences and public squares. The Roi de Coeur’s two stages are installed every year on the property of de Broca’s sister-in-law. Other festivals tour small cities and villages. La Luzège, which is based just east of the Roi de Coeur, stages productions in different venues every night from mid-July to mid-August. Theater doesn’t get much more adaptable than that. Last week, because of the rain, La Luzège moved “Bon Appétit, Messieurs!,” a show inspired by Victor Hugo’s writings, from a garden to a nearby community center with five minutes’ notice.With its focus on underserved rural communities, the federation is finding new audiences. The first wave of cultural decentralization in France, initiated by postwar governments, aimed to break Paris’s stranglehold on artistic life and redirected funding to midsize cities — but often stopped there. “This is a new decentralization. We’re reaching people where they are,” said Romane Ponty-Bésanger, one of La Luzège’s co-directors.Fabrice Henry, left, and Ambroise Daulhac in “Bon Appétit, Messieurs!,” directed by Victor Calcine and Romane Ponty-Bésanger at La Luzège en Corrèze.Victor CalcineSome locals are delighted. Séverine Bonnier, who co-owns a bed-and-breakfast, Ô Vents d’Anges, in Maurens, saw all four of the Roi de Coeur’s productions this year; they were the first performances she’d seen since moving to the area a few years ago, she said. “It’s a matter of time, between work and two children at home,” she added. Some festivals in the federation focus on classic, family-friendly titles, while others stage contemporary plays. One common feature, however, is the absence of a single artistic director: Most operate as collectives. There are four co-directors at La Luzège, and de Broca and Beaupérin make decisions with six others at the Roi de Coeur. Roles are fluid, too. Actors might direct, or help with sets, costumes and other tasks, like tending bar. Nicolas Grosrichard (César in “Fanny, Me and the Others”) wrote a witty short play for children this year, “Anne the Pirate.” They also work fast. While the traditional funding model for independent French theatermakers allows for one creation every other year, most of the federation’s members put together between three and six productions every 12 months. Rehearsal time is limited, and finesse sometimes sacrificed. In the case of “Fanny, Marius and the Others,” conflicts between characters turned into shouting matches, without the nuance more preparation might have afforded.“We’re looking for diversity and spontaneity,” de Broca said. “It’s almost unfinished theater, but it makes it even more alive. The artists are sharing their research with the audience, and people really respond to that.”The Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, founded in the Loire village of Fontaine-Guérin in 2009 and run by an 18-member collective, has become the blueprint for this new generation of local festivals. (The Roi de Coeur was modeled on it, de Broca said.) Matthieu Kassimo, left, and Dorothée Le Troadec in “Anne the Pirate,” directed by Nicolas Grosrichard at the Théâtre du Roi de Coeur.Sébastien MazetIt began when the grandmother of an actor, Lazare Herson-Macarel, allowed the organizers to take over her backyard. After her death in 2012, a crowdfunding campaign raised 70,000 euros, about $82,000, to keep the festival going on her property, and the local authorities opted to buy it and lease it without charge to the collective.The festival’s audience has kept growing, and in 2019, before the pandemic, it attracted around 10,000 visitors. Last month, it achieved a different milestone when the Avignon Festival, the most prestigious event in French theater, featured one of its productions, “The Sky, the Night and the Party,” a six-hour trilogy of Molière plays. The three plays will alternate this month in Fontaine-Guérin.The theater establishment may be waking up to the vitality of rural festivals, but there is still a long way to go, the federation’s members say. Economically, festivals remain fragile, especially during the pandemic, and they often fall outside the criteria for local and regional funding. “Performances in rural settings aren’t recognized as ‘real’ performances, because they don’t take place in identified venues,” Pauline Bolcatto, a member of the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire and one of the federation’s architects, said in a phone interview.This summer, the federation’s members exchanged tips and information, Bolcatto said, and discussed how best to implement France’s new health pass, a government policy that requires businesses and event organizers to check proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test before admitting patrons.The noise generated by daily outdoor performances hasn’t been to everyone’s taste in quiet countryside spots. In 2019, the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire had to fight a lawsuit initiated by a neighbor; rulings so far have been in the troupe’s favor. The Roi du Coeur also faced complaints, and found a compromise: The festival will continue in its current form until the tenth edition, in 2023, and will then move to a yet-to-be-decided location.“The Sky, the Night and the Party — Psyché,” directed by Julien Romelard at Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, part of the Avignon Festival.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Avignon FestivalStill, a chance visit may open unexpected doors. Étienne Fraday, who played the leading role of Césario in “Fanny, Me and the Others,” was working as a boilermaker when he fell in love with the Roi de Coeur in 2016. After being a volunteer for two years, he decided to retrain as an actor, and is currently studying at the prestigious Court Florent in Paris. “This adventure has changed some lives,” de Broca said. More