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      Their Fascination With ‘Real Housewives’ Is Anything but Fake

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      A cadre of Yale drama graduates have followed up a first streaming hit with “This American Wife,” a reality-blurring look at the long-running reality TV franchise.Last fall, the theater company known as Fake Friends had one of the most attention-getting shows of the season, and not just because of its title. The troupe’s livestreamed production “Circle Jerk” was a viral hit, amassing Twitter love from Sarah Paulson, Roxane Gay and Hari Nef, and extending its run before briefly returning on demand in January.Its dynamic use of a real theater space mapped a live experience against a landscape of (literally) inside-the-box Zoom plays, while also tackling those restrictions head-on, thanks to self-aware, meme-ready campiness and sharp commentary on lives lived increasingly online.With a production co-sign from the playwright Jeremy O. Harris and his very digital following, the show propelled two of its members, Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley, into internet fame. They were tapped to adapt “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical” for the virtual stage, and secured funding to turn their first-ever collaboration into another work of live internet theater.Along with the company’s dramaturges, Catherine María Rodríguez and Ariel Sibert, the two have reworked “This American Wife,” a half-confessional, half-delusional treatise on gay men’s worship of TV’s “Real Housewives” franchise, which they first staged at Yale Cabaret in 2017.Though the company is a four-person operation, they have enlisted a group of “friends of Fake Friends” (as Rodríguez put it) for this production, which begins streaming May 20: the director Rory Pelsue, the performer Jakeem Dante Powell, and Harris as a co-producer — all graduates of the Yale School of Drama.Foley, left, and Breslin say the show will examine the tensions that come with living one’s life significantly on camera.Michael George for The New York Times“We’re all huge theater nerds who can break out deep conversations about ‘Fefu and Her Friends’ in the same breath that we’re talking about Lady Gaga’s last tweet,” Harris, Breslin’s former New Haven roommate, said on a recent FaceTime call. “It’s a real love of high and low, and a rigorous relationship to both.”Breslin and Foley met backstage at a Yale production of Harris’s “water sports; or insignificant white boys” in 2017, where they discovered a mutual love of both experimental theater and the popular Bravo franchise.“Spoiler alert: They’re the same form,” Foley quipped on a recent Zoom call.“We’re really fascinated with what a camera does to a performer,” Breslin added. “What does the presence of a camera change about your behavior, about how you present yourself?”Unlike “Circle Jerk,” a satirical takedown of white gay culture laden with musical theater references, this project takes formal cues from lensed images. It’s styled as an episode of “Real Housewives” run amok, and the team cites French surrealist film, the photography of Man Ray, and the melodramas of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Douglas Sirk as major inspirations.Foley and Powell being filmed for segments that will be part of the livestream.Michael George for The New York Times“This American Wife” follows autofictional versions of Breslin, Foley and Powell as they arrive at a glamorous McMansion and recount their relationships to reality television and the impulse to humiliate oneself for attention.Fused with a litany of the Housewives’ actual phrases, the three performers detail personal, often traumatic, facts about themselves, echoing the franchise’s televised oversharing.And as their competing narratives become increasingly revealing and damaging, the show becomes a semi-improvised, high-concept dialectic on identity and “realness.”“The show directly confronts this visual internet world of the Housewives and how they’re endlessly used as GIFs, decontextualized from possible tragedies in their lives,” Breslin said.The addition of Powell to the cast allows the creators to surface prickly questions about race that have dogged the “Real Housewives” franchise.Michael George for The New York TimesWhile the “Housewives” shows draw steady social-media chatter, the intensity of attention seemed to reach a fever pitch during lockdown. “Because we’ve had this year off, a lot of people were watching the ‘Real Housewives’ on both a surface and an intellectual level,” Powell said.Queer viewers have a particular interest in debates over how real reality TV really is. “I think queer people have a real stake in this division of reality and fakery — what gets deemed real and what gets deemed fake,” Breslin said.“Within the gay community there’s a big tendency to look at the pre-coming-out period as a dark age — to foster this narrative of being a fake self, or playing a character and telling narratives that weren’t true, while still living a life,” said Foley.“That experience of a lie that is lived-in is integral to me,” he added.Early rehearsals at a West Village townhouse previously owned by Sarah Jessica Parker saw the team spend hours reviewing “Real Housewives” footage, determining which eye-rolls and gestures would best evoke the essence of the conspicuous rich, and which could be included as pre-existing GIFs.There and at the Long Island mansion where the company completed tech rehearsals — and from which it will livestream — flowed a heady combination of after-hours grad school discourse and pure farce. Wigged performers yelled Kandi Burruss quotes at refrigerators and other domestic essentials, which would later be fitted with livestreaming GoPro cameras.The character played by Powell, a Black actor, is new to this iteration — the fourth, following two at Yale and one for Next Door at New York Theater Workshop. It brings race into the former two-man show, responding to a crucial element Breslin and Foley felt missing from their original script.Breslin and Foley said that incorporating Powell — an understudy in Harris’s Tony Award-nominated “Slave Play” on Broadway — was an obvious choice, given his “encyclopedic knowledge” of the franchise, and what his addition would do for the piece’s dramaturgy.Ariel Sibert, left, a dramaturg and Rory Pelsue, to her left, is the director of “This American Wife.” Michael George for The New York Times“I remember talking to them about the Housewives that they gave voice to in the show,” Powell said. “For obvious reasons, there were voices that were not there, but who were alluded to in the text.”“There is something easily identifiable for me with how femininity lives within the body of a Black woman that didn’t resonate with me in the white women,” he added, describing that exploration as “really enticing.”The show, which to him now “feels like a brand-new piece,” aims to critique the role of race, not just within queer fandoms, but within the franchise itself, whose lack of diversity has been called out in major publications, from The New York Times to a Hollywood Reporter essay by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.“We have the first Black woman on ‘The Real Housewives of New York’ in 2021,” Breslin pointed out. “What does that say about what these shows are instructing people on what New York is?”In 2020, the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star NeNe Leakes called its creator Andy Cohen racist on Twitter, shortly after exiting the show.“The conversation around what’s going on behind the scenes with NeNe and Bravo is fascinating to me,” Powell said. “It’s the same conversation that’s happening around the country — how the tenets of white supremacist culture exist everywhere.”Harris, who has used his recent financial success to fund several, mostly Black-led, theater initiatives, said he finds Fake Friends’ mission “really exciting.”“If you are a person of color, you are generally demanded to write something that puts your entire identity on the line,” he added. “I get very annoyed that it’s very easy for a white person to write something mundane that risks nothing, to get acclaim. Having friends who are so willing to ask hard questions about what their personhood in this country means is exhilarating.”FourthWall Theatrical, a two-woman production company composed of Jana Bezdek and Jen Hoguet, is producing the work with Harris. “This American Wife” will be their inaugural production.According to Breslin, Bezdek introduced herself as a lover of “three things: feminist theater, Brecht, and musicals.”“I used to work in reality TV so I can’t watch it for relaxation,” she said. “But this is such a complex, intelligent piece, that is not just reflecting our obsession with ‘The Real Housewives’ back on us, but reflecting ourselves back on us.”This American WifeThrough June 6; thisamericanwife.live More

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      Billy Porter Reveals He Has Been H.I.V. Positive for 14 Years

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      The actor told The Hollywood Reporter that he had feared disclosing it would give “another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession.”The Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Billy Porter disclosed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday that he learned he had H.I.V. in 2007 and hid the information from colleagues for over a decade, fearing discrimination in the entertainment industry.“I was trying to have a life and a career, and I wasn’t certain I could if the wrong people knew,” Porter, 51, said in the interview. “It would just be another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession.”He also described the shame he felt, having grown up in a Pentecostal church and in a very religious family, and how he had been afraid to tell his mother for 14 years. “It’s time to grow up and move on because shame is destructive — and if not dealt with, it can destroy everything in its path,” he said of his decision to talk about the diagnosis now.Porter said that he was able to “work through the shame” through his role on the FX series “Pose,” which centers on the ballroom scene during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s in New York City. Porter’s character, a ballroom M.C. and elder of the community, received a diagnosis of H.I.V. in the first season and struggles to share the information with the group.“I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,” Porter said.Porter’s acting career took off after his star turn in the Broadway musical “Kinky Boots,” which earned him a 2013 Tony Award for best actor in a musical for his performance as the drag performer Lola.Porter’s acting career took off after he won a Tony Award for his performance in “Kinky Boots.” He is shown here on the red carpet of the Academy Awards in 2019.Josh Haner/The New York TimesFor years, Porter said, he had resolved to keep his health status a secret until his mother’s death. He changed his mind more recently, and made a plan to tell his mother about the diagnosis with his sister. But one day — which happened to be the last day filming the final season of “Pose” — on a phone call with his mother, she noticed that he sounded off, and he told her.“She said, ‘You’ve been carrying this around for 14 years?’” Porter said. “‘Don’t ever do this again. I’m your mother, I love you no matter what.’” More

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      Drama Book Shop, Backed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, to Open in June

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      The quirky bookstore, which sells scripts and other theater-related work, was acquired by a team of “Hamilton” alumni after years of struggle.The Drama Book Shop, a quirky 104-year-old Manhattan specialty store that has long been a haven for aspiring artists as well as a purveyor of scripts, will reopen next month with a new location, a new look, and a new team of starry owners.Those new owners — the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as the show’s director, Thomas Kail, lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, and the theater owner James L. Nederlander — said Wednesday that the store will have its long-delayed reopening on June 10.The opening, at 266 West 39th Street, is a sign of the team’s confidence in Times Square, which has been largely theater-free since March 12, 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic forced Broadway to close. Broadway shows are not planning to resume performances until September, but the new store owners say they are ready for business.The “Hamilton” team bought the Drama Book Shop, most recently located on West 40th Street, in early 2019 after years in which the store had struggled to survive the challenges of Manhattan real estate, e-commerce, and even a damaging flood. Kail had a particular passion for the bookstore, where he had run a small theater company in his early years as a professional; Miranda joined him there to work on “In the Heights,” a musical Kail directed. “In the Heights” has now been adapted into a film which is being released on June 11, the day after the bookstore opens.The new owners had initially hoped to reopen the store in late 2019, and then in early 2020, but the project was delayed, first by the vicissitudes of construction, and then by the pandemic. The new shop has been designed by David Korins, the “Hamilton” scenic designer, and includes a cafe.The store is encouraging visitors to make reservations online; capacity will be limited. More

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      For West End’s Return, Cleansing Spirits and an Aching for Change

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      On May 17, after two failed tries, London’s theaters hope to reopen for good. Meet a director, a producer, an actor and a costumer, nervously raring to go.LONDON — At 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Maureen Lyon will be murdered at St. Martin’s Theater in London, her screams piercing the air.Her death is a moment many in London’s theater industry will welcome for one simple reason: It’s the opening of “The Mousetrap,” Agatha Christie’s long-running whodunit, and it will signal that the West End is finally back.For the last 427 days, the coronavirus pandemic has effectively shut London’s theaters. Some tried to reopen in the fall, only for England to plunge into a new lockdown before they even got to rehearsals.They tried again in December, and several musicals, including “Six,” about the wives of Henry VIII, reopened to ecstatic audiences. But just days later, the shows were forced closed once more.This time, the comeback is meant to be for good. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said theaters can reopen with social distancing on Monday and without it on June 21, provided coronavirus cases stay low, thanks to the country’s rapid vaccination drive. Vaccine passports might be required by then — a measure many major theater owners back.A host of shows are scheduled to reopen this month, with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new “Cinderella” musical coming June 25 and a deluge of others soon after. “Hamilton” reopens in August. What happens to these shows will likely be a bellwether for Broadway’s reopening in September.But what’s it actually like for the theatermakers who are starting work again after 15 months? Has the pandemic shaped the way they think about theater? We visited four to find out.Ian RicksonDirector, ‘Walden’“Work that engages with who we are now.”The director Ian Rickson, right, rehearsing the new play “Walden” with the actors Lydia Wilson, left, and Gemma Arterton.Johan PerssonWhen Ian Rickson walked into a London rehearsal room in April — to start rehearsals for the play “Walden” — he decided he had to perform a ritual to show just how grateful he was to be back in work.So he got some palo santo — a wood shamans use to cleanse evil spirits — and burned it in front of his cast. He’d only performed a ritual like that once before, he said, as he’d been afraid of “feeling like an idiot.”But the actors also wanted to mark the occasion. “Every day now they’re saying, ‘Can we burn some more?’” Rickson said.One of Britain’s most in-demand directors, Rickson’s Broadway triumphs include “Jerusalem” and the 2008 revival of “The Seagull.” (“The finest and most fully involving production of Chekhov that I have ever known,” wrote Ben Brantley in The New York Times.)The night the shutdown hit, he was in a dress rehearsal for the play “All of Us” at the National Theater, while his revival of “Uncle Vanya” was attracting sellout crowds in the West End. Suddenly, he was without work or a sense of purpose. During lockdown last spring, he walked round the West End and cried while looking at all the shut theaters.He kept himself busy by filming “Uncle Vanya,” but said he spent most of the time reflecting on what he wanted theater to be when it returned. His answer: “New work, work that engages with who we are now, courageous work.”“Walden,” by the largely unknown American playwright Amy Berryman, is the first example of that. He came across the play — about two sisters with contrasting views on how humanity should deal with climate change — last summer, while searching for scripts with the producer Sonia Friedman.“It’s kind of dazzling in its imaginative scope,” Rickson said. “It’s like a play by a writer who’s written 20 plays, not a debut.”In the rehearsal room one recent Thursday, the three actors — Gemma Arterton, Fehinti Balogun and Lydia Wilson — lounged and laughed on a sofa together. They all had regular coronavirus tests, so they didn’t have to distance from each other or wear masks. It was almost as if the pandemic never happened.Near them sat piles of props, while the walls were covered with inspirational quotes (“When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has,” read one).Rickson smiled happily as he took in the scene. He had an almost religious calm to him; the main difference between rehearsing now and before the pandemic, he said, was just how thankful everyone was to be there.At one point, Rickson recalled, he asked the actors to dance, to explore how their characters would behave at their most exuberant. Halfway through, Arterton stopped. “God, I’ve missed this, sweating and dancing with other people,” she said.Rickson said he appreciated that moment, but hoped to see bigger changes to London theater than grateful rehearsals.“The pause has allowed us all to think, ‘How do we want to work?’ ‘Who’s the work for?’ and ‘Who’s part of it?’” he said. “Perhaps even the West End, which can sometimes be the more traditional end of theater, can also be progressive and be pioneering.”“It hasn’t been like that for a while, has it?” he added.Nica BurnsChief executive, Nimax Theaters“We’re not going to make a profit but we’re better off than closed.”A leading British theater newspaper named Nica Burns “producer of the year” for her efforts to reopen West End theaters.Suzanne Plunkett for The New York Times“This time, we feel it’s for real,” Nica Burns said recently, leaning over a table in her West End office, widening her eyes as if to prove it.Britain’s vaccine rollout was “fast by any measure,” she said. “Of course, if we weren’t selling any tickets, I wouldn’t feel so jolly.”Burns, the chief executive of Nimax Theaters, is one of the unsung heroes of the West End’s comeback. Over the past year, many figures in Britain’s theaterland have grabbed headlines for trying to support workers during the pandemic.Lloyd Webber continually harangued the British government to let theaters reopen, even hosting a government-sanctioned experiment in July to prove it could happen safely. The “Fleabag” star Phoebe Waller-Bridge set up a fund to support freelance theatermakers, as did the director Sam Mendes.But Burns did something else: She tried, repeatedly, to open her six theaters with social distancing and mask mandates.In October, she managed to open the Apollo for 14 performances by Adam Kay, a comedian and former doctor, before England went into a second lockdown. In December, she opened several more for just over a weekend, before England went into lockdown again.Her moves were “a landmark moment of genuine hope for the industry,” The Stage, Britain’s theater newspaper, said when naming her its producer of the year. “In the face of overwhelming odds this year, she has consistently tried to make it happen, when some other established commercial producers didn’t.”Now, she’s planning to open them all once more. “Six,” the musical about the wives of Henry VIII, will play at the Lyric. “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” a musical about a boy dreaming of being a drag queen, will be right next door at the Apollo.“Six” and “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” are reopening in Nimax theaters in May.Suzanne Plunkett for The New York Times“We’re not going to make a profit, but we’re better off than closed,” Burns said. “And on the human side, we’re a million times better.”She is bringing back 150 staff members to run the front of house operations. “I can’t wait for the first payday,” she said. “They’ve had to wait a long time for it.”Burns said a key moment in her decision to reopen came in August when she saw a concert version of Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” in a park. The night was such a joyful, communal experience, she said; it rammed home what makes theater special. “I sat watching and went, ‘I’ve got to get my theaters open. If he can do it, I bloody can,’” she added.Burns is looking for other ways to help this city’s theater industry. In April, she announced a Rising Stars festival, letting 23 young producers host shows in her venues this summer. The shows include “Cruise,” a one-man tale of gay life in London, as well as an evening of magic acts.She’s also setting up a coronavirus-testing hub for actors and crew at the Palace Theater, normally home to “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which has not yet announced its reopening date.In an hourlong interview, she didn’t dwell on fears that anything, like a new variant of the virus, could jeopardize these plans and plunge Britain into a fourth lockdown. That might partly be because she’s in the West End for the long haul.Stuck to the walls of her office are architectural plans for a new theater — the seventh with Max Weitzenhoffer, her business partner — that’s meant to be built down the road from the Palace.It doesn’t have a name yet, she said. How about the Burns Theater? “No, no, no, no, no,” she replied. She’s naming a bar inside after herself. “That’s enough,” she said.Noah ThomasLead Actor, ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’“I’ve learned that I don’t need to change to please anyone”Thomas, right, had only two months in the title role of “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” before London locked down.Matt CrockettLast year was meant be Noah Thomas’s big break.In January, he made his West End debut as the lead in “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” a hit musical about a gay teenager who dreams of becoming a drag queen.His dressing room was adorned with art from fans, and months after dropping out of drama school to take the role, he had become used to seeing his face plastered on London’s buses. Then the pandemic forced his theater shut, and he found himself at home with his mum, dad and sister.“I went through every stage of emotion,” Thomas said in a video interview. “Frustration, boredom, appreciation for having a rest because I legit haven’t had one since I was five. Then frustration again, then boredom again.”Last June was a particularly low point. He tweeted a picture of a full airplane, alongside one of an empty theater. “It just made me think, ‘Why’s that one OK, and the other isn’t?’” he said. “Every other industry was talking about getting back to work, and we were all sitting at home.”During lockdown, he read a host of scripts and learned to cook pasta dishes and curries (“I’m going to be the meal-prep queen when we go back”). And he spent a lot of time reflecting on who he wanted to be as an actor.“I see the world through a different gaze now,” he said. “I’ve learned that I don’t need to change to please anyone.”Thomas said he thought that attitude would help when the musical returns May 20. Jamie “is so unapologetically himself, and he’s calling for the world to adapt to him and his fabulousness and his queerness,” Thomas said. “He’s not changing.”The show, which has a cast of 26 and a nine-person band, is the largest to reopen next month, thanks to a government grant. Thomas said he knows what to expect in terms of coronavirus precautions, as his show was one of the few to briefly reopen in December.“It was weird,” he said, “but the rules and the mitigations and masks are such a small sacrifice in order to be able to do our jobs.”He had one more task before rehearsals started: to dye his hair blonde. “A lot of people flirt with you when you’re blonde,” he reported. That doesn’t stop even with social distancing.Janet Hudson-HoltHead of wardrobe, “The Mousetrap”“We’ve been going so long. If we can survive this, others can.”Janet Hudson-Holt, the head of wardrobe for “The Mousetrap,” at the St. Martins Theater. She has worked on the long-running show for 20 years.Suzanne Plunkett for The New York TimesJanet Hudson-Holt, the long-serving head of wardrobe at “The Mousetrap,” was trying to do a costume fitting for the actor Sarah Moss — without touching her.It started well. Inside a cramped room at the St. Martin’s Theater, Hudson-Holt handed Moss a heavy black wool coat, then stood back to admire the fit. But within seconds, she had leapt forward, grabbed the rumpled collar and adjusted it.“Sorry!” she said, realizing she’d broken the rules. “It’s just instinct.”“The Mousetrap,” which has been running in the West End since 1952, is scheduled to reopen on May 17, the first play here to do so.“We’ve been going so long,” Hudson-Holt said. “If we can survive this, others can,” she added.Hudson-Holt, who’s been with the show for almost 20 years, had spent most of the past year at home. “We were lucky, as the very good management kept us furloughed,” she said, meaning the government paid a chunk of her salary. “But for a lot of freelancers — costume makers, propmakers, actors — it’s been just devastating.”To lessen coronavirus risks, two casts will now alternate in the eight roles. The show’s website makes that move sound like a canny piece of marketing, encouraging audiences to see both sets of actors. In reality, it’s in case illness strikes; if one cast has to isolate, the other can step in.The extra cast members means Hudson-Holt had spent her first days back sourcing hats, coats and cardigans for them all. Shop closures had impacted that effort, she said. One of her favorite sources for old-fashioned men’s wear is Debenham’s — all its stores have closed.Her daily routine changed in other ways. Rather than taking measurements in person, she called the actors, politely inquiring if they’d gained weight or muscle in lockdown and would be needing a bigger size.“I was having to ask people, ‘Oh, have you been doing any sport lately? Or maybe some baking?’” she said.Despite the no-touching rule, the fittings went according to plan. Hudson-Holt had found a hat for Moss, new to the role of Miss Casewell, one of many potential murderers stuck in an English guesthouse after a snowstorm.Only a lime green silk scarf caused problems. Hudson-Holt tried showing Moss how to fold, then tie it, but Moss was flummoxed. “Can you slow down a bit and show me again?” she said.“Today’s a fun test for everyone,” Hudson-Holt said.Once the fitting was over, Hudson-Holt put Moss’s outfit aside. It would be steamed later to kill any potential viruses. “I know it seems hyper vigilant,” she said, “but who wants to be the one that mucks this up?” More

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      ‘Lilies’ Review: A Queer Romantic Drama That Wilts Quickly

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      Michel Marc Bouchard’s melodrama, about an illicit gay love affair in 1912, displays a lot of kookiness and little self-awareness.“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.”So says Genesis 19. And so goes a recitation by a devout young man traumatized by his repressed homosexuality in “Lilies, or the Revival of a Romantic Drama.” Staged at the Theater Center with a limited audience, this aimless production by the Drama Company NYC depicts a confrontation between two men that reveals how an illicit gay love affair of decades past brought hellfire — and literal fire — to a small Canadian town.It’s the spring of 1952, and an ex-inmate named Simon Doucet (J.J. Miller) has requested a meeting with Bishop Jean Bilodeau (Marc Verzatt). They’re former schoolmates, but this is no cordial reunion; threatening Bilodeau with a knife, Doucet forces him to sit through a staging of the past, watching younger versions of themselves act out something that happened when they were teenagers in the fall of 1912.Bilodeau scoffs and occasionally interjects with protests of the performance, which shows the ill-fated love between young Doucet (a well-cast Hartley Parker) and his best friend, Count Vallier De Tilly (a sensationally anguished Florimond Le Goupil-Maier). Bilodeau uneasily witnesses the sins committed by his younger self (Grant Hale, sanctimonious and perfectly weaselly), a closeted God-fearing boy whose obsession with and jealousy of the couple ultimately destroys them.Under Andrew Benvenuti’s unsteady direction, the majority of the play, written by Michel Marc Bouchard in French and translated by Linda Gaboriau, takes place as a flashback. First performed in 1987, “Lilies” quickly sloughs off realism to present the play not as a true performance but as a kind of living memory. (The simple set, dressed with nine chairs and occasionally tables, leaves it all to our imagination, though Benvenuti’s ungraceful blocking obscures even that view.)It’s a different approach from the director John Greyson’s in the pulpy 1996 Canadian film adaptation, in which Bilodeau visits Doucet in prison and all the actors in Doucet’s play are gay fellow inmates. There, we had a clear perspective and consistent stakes: Though the film’s cinematography blurs the line between the performance in the jail and a fluid recollection of the past, the action is anchored in the present, with the camera alternatively following and mimicking Bilodeau’s gaze.This “Lilies” lacks a clear perspective. It’s less interested in the present-day confrontation between Doucet and Bilodeau and even loses its focus on Bilodeau altogether. The adult Bilodeau spends 90 percent of the play silently sitting in the audience watching his younger self — a waste of an actor and character who is at the center of the tale.It’s a shame, too, that Bilodeau remains so removed because moralistic characters are often candy for performers, who can play with the contradictions that often come with the holier-than-thou archetypes hoping to pray away the skeletons in their own closets. The script doesn’t allow for much introspection. In fact, the writing feels gleaned from a mix of gay fan fiction and daytime soaps. At one point, a Parisian baroness magically appears via hot-air balloon; there are also two murders, a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style escape and a whole lot of arson.Then there’s the all-male cast of 11. Like the film, the men perform the female roles in drag. The move is intentionally subversive, as a way to normalize queer relationships within a story setting where such relationships are taboo. The effect is campy, à la Edna Turnblad, but how much of that is overtly drawing from the performative tradition of camp and how much the production is stumbling headfirst into hyperaffected melodrama is unclear.Bill Morton, left, as the delightfully odd Countess Marie-Laure de Tilly, with Le Goupil-Maier. The roles of women are performed by men in drag. Andrew Daniel DickThere is a parade of queer tropes that seems to escape critique or interrogation: the Christian boys’ school with the obviously closeted priests; the self-hating gay boy; a homophobic father; a fiancée who is actually a beard; a tragic queer death.Bill Morton as Vallier’s mother, the Countess Marie-Laure de Tilly, is a delightful wise fool, floating across the stage with a performance as flowery and bonkers — and occasionally knowing — as a Canadian Blanche DuBois. But this performance is an uncomfortable contrast with Miller’s stiff and unconvincingly threatening Doucet, as though they’re characters taken from two totally different plays. At what point does a crazy countess play too closely to the tired role of the histrionic gay diva? And when does J.P. Ross’s snooty Baroness Lydie-Anne de Rozier, with her arch purrs and snide remarks, become a performance of the catty gay man stereotype?In this way and others, “Lilies” seems to be attempting a balancing act without consciously knowing it. In one scene, a character is given a pearly white clawfoot tub for his birthday, and two boys end up in the bathtub kissing and embracing. The scene feels objectifying, and a cheesy piano accompaniment exacerbates that impression; it isn’t as much about the love between the boys as it is about the novelty of their sex, which would be fine if the scene — and the rest of the play — were more clearly filtered through the shame and desire of Bilodeau’s gaze, but as it is, there’s just a clumsy bit of fully naked splash time.How seriously does “Lilies” take its melodrama, how earnestly does it wear its clichés? The baroque turns and flourishes of the script indicate some level of self-awareness (as when one character theatrically crashes an engagement party dressed as Julius Caesar), yet the deadpan declarations and rebuttals of love suggest austere intentions.Once “Lilies” reaches its conclusion — which is so predictable and pat, and in this production so abrupt that there was an unsure beat before the audience’s applause — the impression it leaves is of an old theme with a few flamboyant variations. Doucet’s play within the play ultimately persuades Bilodeau to confess his misdeeds — but the play I saw? Much less persuasive.Lilies or The Revival of a Romantic DramaThrough June 14 at the Theater Center, Manhattan; tdcnyc.org More

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      in Music

      Jack Terricloth, Punk Rocker With a Cabaret Air, Dies at 50

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      As the devilishly smarmy vocalist and ringleader of the World/Inferno Friendship Society, he melded punk defiance with decadent theatricality.To old friends who met him backstage, he was Pete Ventantonio, a punk rocker from Bridgewater, N.J. On his records, he sometimes preferred whimsical credits like Marcello DiTerriclothia or Favorite Singer Who Goes With Everything.But to the fans who swarmed his concerts, he was Jack Terricloth: the crooning, bellowing, devilishly smarmy vocalist and ringleader of the World/Inferno Friendship Society, a band with an ever-changing lineup that melded punk defiance with the decadent theatricality of Weimar-era cabaret.Over more than 20 years, the group built a cultlike following with a rock sound embellished by piano, violin and a brass section. Its live shows — featuring Jack Terricloth in a dark suit and slicked-back hair, like a 1930s dandy — were key to the rise of the so-called punk cabaret movement in the mid-2000s, which also included Gogol Bordello and the Dresden Dolls.Although largely ignored by the mainstream music industry, World/Inferno, which was based in Brooklyn, made inroads with major arts institutions like the Public Theater in New York and the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, S.C., for one of Jack Terricloth’s signature projects: an exploration of the life of Peter Lorre, the goggle-eyed character actor known for movies like “Casablanca” and “M.”“I find Peter Lorre a strangely charismatic, extremely creepy person, which I think most punk rockers can identify with,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2009. “It’s the lure of the other. He’s the underdog, the outsider.”To fans and fellow musicians, Jack Terricloth was an inspirational if remote figure who preached what he considered the central philosophical lesson of rock ’n’ roll: the freedom to reject society’s programming and reinvent oneself anew.He was found dead on Wednesday at his apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. He was 50. His sister, Lisa Castano, said the cause was hypertensive cardiovascular disease.He born Peter James Ventantonio on June 11, 1970, and grew up in Bridgewater. His father, James Ventantonio, was a lawyer and municipal judge; his mother, Anita (Winkler) Ventantonio, was an elementary-school teacher.As a teenager, he was inspired by punk rock and by stars like David Bowie who created their own personas, said Mike Cavallaro, a childhood friend who played with him in the band Sticks and Stones in the 1980s and ’90s.By the mid-90s, as punk went mainstream, Peter began to conceptualize a genre offshoot that would incorporate theatrical presentation and a charismatic, world-weary frontman character. The World/Inferno Friendship Society’s first album, “The True Story of the Bridgewater Astral League,” in the style of a musical, was released in 1997.“We are a punk-rock band, and we play punk-rock shows, but our music couldn’t be more different,” he told The Times. “Kids see us and think: ‘Guys in suits and makeup at a hard-core show? Come on.’ But we always have them by the third song, and then we’re something they have to accept about the punk rock scene and about the world. We’ve now entered into the great dialogue that is our culture.”The album “Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre’s Twentieth Century” (2007) became the band’s biggest moment. It was adapted into a self-described “punk songspiel” of the same title, performed at rock clubs and in high-profile arts series like Peak Performances at Montclair State University in New Jersey.After its concerts, the group often mingled with its fans — who called themselves Infernites. Performances, like its elaborately staged annual Halloween shows, were embraced by both the audience and fellow musicians as communal rituals.“He made you feel that you were part of a secret society,” Franz Nicolay, who played keyboards in the band in the 2000s, said in an interview.In addition to his sister, Jack Terricloth is survived by his partner, Gina Rodriguez.The group’s self-mythologizing sometimes made its history murky. Even the name Jack Terricloth has various apocryphal origin stories. Mr. Cavallaro recalled his friend acquiring it from an old girlfriend. Others said he took the name to distinguish himself from another Pete during his early days in the New Jersey punk demimonde.The ultimate reason seemed to matter less than the act of self-reinvention, and his audience’s being in on the act.Early last year, the World/Inferno Friendship Society released an album, “All Borders Are Porous to Cats,” and, like artists everywhere, was grounded by the pandemic. Yet Jack Terricloth was determined to find a way to preserve its Halloween tradition for its biggest fans, said Bill Cashman, his friend and the group’s manager.So the band devised a scavenger hunt in which clues to the location of an outdoor performance were scattered throughout Brooklyn. About 50 to 60 fans made it to the show, on the roof of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.“It meant a lot to us to do that, even if we did it for a small amount of people,” Mr. Cashman said. “Just for the sake of doing our thing.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘Woman’s Party’ Review: At War With Inequality, and Each Other

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      In Rinne B. Groff’s historical comedy, the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1947 looks awfully familiar today.Clubbed Thumb is a small New York theater company committed to “funny, strange and provocative” new plays, no more than 90 minutes long, by living American writers whose “questioning, formally inventive, theatrical” work features “substantial and challenging roles for all genders” as well as — here’s the killer — “a sense of humor.”A tall order, yet Clubbed Thumb has hit that sweet spot astonishingly often, in works like “Men in Boats,” “Of Government,” “Wilder Gone,” “Lunch Bunch” and “Tumacho,” to name just one in each of the past five years. Alas, “Tumacho,” a horse opera featuring a chorus of cactuses, was the last we heard from the company. The show opened on March 2, 2020, and closed, with the rest of the theater world, 10 days later.Now, like some kind of belated dramaturgical groundhog, Clubbed Thumb returns with “The Woman’s Party,” by Rinne B. Groff, to predict more funny-strange theater ahead. Directed by Tara Ahmadinejad and available online through Aug. 31, it checks off every item on the company’s wish list, and then one more: It’s historical.I don’t just mean that it’s momentous, though in some ways it is, if something so nearly silly can also be nearly profound. I mean that it is based closely — and yet imaginatively — on the true story of an important turning point in the American struggle for equal rights. In 1947, the National Woman’s Party, which almost three decades earlier had secured passage of women’s suffrage in the United States, stood on the brink of an even bigger victory: the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.In 1947?Yes, and as Groff unpacks the reasons such a victory did not pan out, we quickly come to recognize the internal conflicts that have painfully delayed, and in some cases undone, so many breakthroughs ever since.Clockwise from top left: Rosalyn Coleman, Connie Winston, Emily Kuroda and Marceline Hugot in the Clubbed Thumb production.via Clubbed ThumbIn the case of the National Woman’s Party, founded in 1916 by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, part of the conflict was generational. By 1947, with Paul long ensconced as the organization’s center of power — even if her power was nominally delegated to others — a struggle had broken out between her supporters and those who felt that new strategies and new blood were required to win the E.R.A. battle. How a progressive like Paul (who actually wrote the amendment) came to be perceived as a reactionary is one of the many paradoxes Groff neatly sets up.That setup is engineered into the play’s three-part structure. In Part One, we meet most of the relevant characters — all women over 50 — who are either planning a “coup” at the organization’s headquarters in Washington or looking for ways to foil it. The plotters want the party to embrace a broader agenda than just equal rights and a broader population than just wealthy white women; Paul’s cadre wants to limit their efforts to winning, at whatever cost to coalition building and diversity.Though the casting is mostly colorblind, it remains notable that Doris Stevens, Paul’s protégée and the leader of the uprising, is played by Rosalyn Colman, a Black actor. Groff introduces her as a noir antiheroine blowing smoke rings while jazz plays, suggesting a challenge to the establishment both of its time and beyond it. In Colman’s canny performance, Stevens is also complicated enough to undermine the authenticity of her stated motives; though a fan of Freudian analysis, she fails to notice that she has scheduled the takeover on her mentor’s birthday, Jan. 11.In Part Two, the coup occurs, to some degree based on the actual events of that night, including the singing of hymns, an emergency call to the Pinkertons and the repurposing of ironing boards as battering rams. Groff, juggling 10 characters, sometimes creates a blur, but the fine cast (including Alma Cuervo, Laura Esterman and Lizan Mitchell) corrects for that problem with stylish semi-caricatures.In any case, as seen in Zoom-like boxes representing various rooms in the headquarters — the ingenious virtual dollhouse set is by the design collective called dots — the women are perfectly clear in their allegiances, even if they are hopelessly divided within them.Groff’s dialogue, tying and untying ideological knots as she sketches their positions, keeps what could be leaden exposition bubbling. (So does Ahmadinejad’s sprightly pacing.) Gradually the knots coalesce into one giant tangle as the story builds to Part Three and the final confrontation between Stevens and Paul, played by the fantastically dry Rebecca Schull in a bathrobe.Here the play expands in several useful directions. One leads to a Shavian orgasm of argumentation, with its Jenga-like pileup of rhetoric that dares you to agree, and then deconstruct that agreement, at every turn.“Shouldn’t the organization we create recapitulate the principles we stand for?” Stevens asks.“No,” Paul answers. “The organization we create should achieve the principles we stand for.”Another direction, speaking to the “strange” and “formally inventive” parts of Clubbed Thumb’s agenda, extends the play’s metatheatrics and anachronisms into haunting new territory. Earlier in the story, when characters slyly acknowledged that they were actors in a play, the excuse for it seemed to be humor — a good enough excuse in my book.But now, as Stevens and Paul divulge to one another what will happen deep in the future, the effect is more biting. Paul, who as she lay dying in 1977 assumed the E.R.A. would soon be law, is crushed to be given a premonition of the truth in 1947. And Stevens, learning of her own subsequent dabblings in red-baiting and nativism, must look at her attempted overthrow of the party in a new, less flattering context.To the extent “The Woman’s Party” asks us, too, to re-examine our activist strategies in light of our societal goals — and vice versa — this is bracing political theater. But it is also theatrical politics, in the sense that it asks us to consider the role of drama in a time of upheaval.That’s why Groff, who in plays like “The Ruby Sunrise” often uses historical change to examine current conflict, is such a good fit for Clubbed Thumb. Over the last decade, and particularly over the last year, playmakers have been struggling to balance the traditional values of dramatic beauty and entertainment with the need to address, in radical terms, a radical moment.“The Woman’s Party” not only tells a story about that struggle but also, with its wit and light hand, and even its occasional raggedness, is a fine new example of it.The Woman’s PartyThrough Aug. 31; clubbedthumb.org More

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      in Theater

      As Broadway Plans Its Return, ‘Hamilton’ Will Require Vaccines Backstage

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      With 23 shows setting Broadway reopening dates, audiences can expect full crowds, masks and flexible ticketing policies. But not lower prices.As Broadway prepares for a fall reopening, the “Hamilton” producer Jeffrey Seller said he will mandate that all of his show’s employees, including the cast and the backstage crew, be vaccinated against the coronavirus.Seller is the first producer to make such a declaration publicly, and it is not clear whether any of Broadway’s many labor unions could or would challenge such an effort. Brandon Lorenz, a spokesman for the Actors’ Equity Association, said of a vaccination requirement, “That would be something we would find acceptable, as long as the employer complies with the law.”Broadway’s cast and crew work in very close quarters in tight backstage spaces, and actors onstage are extensively exposed to one another’s exhalations because they are unmasked, speak and sing loudly in proximity, dance in partnered and group configurations, and in some shows kiss or fight.Seller’s plan comes as many American colleges and universities say they will require students to be vaccinated, and employers are wrestling with whether to do the same.Broadway producers, many of whom announced resumption plans over the last week, are still figuring out details, including what safety measures will be necessary come fall. But social distancing is not expected, and ticket prices, from early reports, are not going down.Seller, who said he does not plan to require vaccination for patrons, disclosed his intentions in a joint interview with Thomas Schumacher, who as president of Disney Theatrical Productions is the producer of “The Lion King,” and David Stone, the lead producer of “Wicked,” in which the three discussed their decision to reopen their productions — all popular juggernauts — on the same night, Sept. 14.Neither Schumacher nor Stone said whether they would require vaccinations for cast or crew.The trio said they and others started talking a week or two after Broadway shut down, trading tips and comparing coping strategies. Those periodic check-ins continued for more than a year, slowly pivoting to reopening plans. Then Stone made a suggestion in a call with Seller and Schumacher: What if, instead of jockeying for position, their shows all opened on the same night?A fan photographing the display outside “Hamilton,” which is one of four Broadway shows that will raise the curtain on Sept. 14. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“The three of us recognized that by joining together, the sheer announcement would get more play, and that’s good for everybody,” Schumacher said. Seller took the idea to his creative team, which, he said, “were so strongly in support of us holding hands and going together.”So on Tuesday, “Hamilton,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked,” which are regularly among Broadway’s biggest box office draws, jointly announced that they would open on a single night — a date they chose in consultation with industry leaders and government officials and based on an assessment of when vaccination rates will be high enough, and infection rates low enough, to do so safely.They are planning staggered curtains — 7 p.m. for “Wicked” (Glinda’s opening line: “It’s good to see me, isn’t it?”); 7:30 p.m. for “The Lion King” and 8 p.m. for “Hamilton” — to allow dignitaries and journalists to stop by them all.“It made sense, and it frankly was a very effective way to communicate,” Schumacher said. “It said Broadway is coming back.”Their plan became the focal point for Broadway’s reopening, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared Sept. 14 the date on which Broadway shows would start to return at 100 percent seating capacity.But not everyone was ready to defer to the troika.“The Phantom of the Opera,” with bragging rights as Broadway’s longest-running show, barged out of the gate with the first post-Cuomo reopening announcement, slated for October. “Chicago,” which touts itself as the longest-running American musical (“Phantom” originated in Britain), crashed the Big Three party, declaring it would open on the same night, but announcing it four days earlier.“Come From Away” opted to seize some of the attention, buying a TV ad spot during the “Good Morning America” segment in which the bigger shows announced their plan. And at least one musical is still hoping to get a jump on “Hamilton,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” by opening even earlier.But there’s no question that the trio’s collective action drew national attention to Broadway’s planned return. As the delayed 2021-22 theater season starts to take shape, 23 shows have already announced performance plans, and more are expected soon.The nine shows that have chosen to start performing in September are well-established brands confident that they can find an audience even at a time when tourism is expected to be soft. They include “Six,” which has a strong tailwind coming out of London; “American Utopia,” a return engagement for David Byrne’s sold-out dance concert; as well as “Come From Away,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and another Disney production, “Aladdin.”The long-running revival of “Chicago” announced its Sept. 14 reopening ahead of three other major shows whose producers had agreed together to return on that date.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesRiskier shows and those with more niche audiences are holding off a little longer. The nonprofits that present on Broadway are waiting at least until October to get started, as are many of the new commercial productions.Even some big draws are opting to give consumers more time to get comfortable with the idea of gathering in indoor crowds: “Dear Evan Hansen,” for example, is waiting until to December to resume, and two big-budget new productions, a Michael Jackson biomusical called “MJ” and a starry revival of “The Music Man,” are aiming to open in February, although both are planning to start performances in December.What do the first round of announcements tell us about post-pandemic Broadway?Ticket-buyers are being told they will be required to wear face masks (although it’s not clear how changing advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might affect that expectation). Theaters will have upgraded HVAC systems with virus-trapping filters. Most ticketing will be digital. And theaters are reserving the right to impose a variety of safety protocols — in an explanatory note similar to that posted by other shows, “Ain’t Too Proud” says “protocols may include mask enforcement, increased cleaning and ventilation/filtration enhancements, vaccination or negative test verification, and more.”Prices, at least so far, are similar to what they were prepandemic, although premium prices are somewhat lower. The priciest seat at “Hamilton,” for example, is now $549, down from $847 before the pandemic.But it will be far easier to cancel or exchange tickets.Disney, in particular, has taken steps to make ticket-buying less onerous: The company said it would pay all Ticketmaster fees for performances through Aug. 7, 2022. (High service fees often irk consumers; a $99 ticket to “Tina,” for example, costs another $14.70 in fees.) Disney said it would also allow free ticket exchanges and refunds, and would offer package deals for those who buy seats at both “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.”How often will shows perform? The Broadway League and labor unions, concerned about the possibility of soft demand for some productions, have been discussing whether to allow shows to come back with fewer than eight performances a week, and prorated salaries.The issue remains unresolved, but a few shows are now marketing a reduced schedule. “Chicago” and “Dear Evan Hansen,” for example, are offering tickets to just five shows many weeks; “Six” is listing mostly, um, six.For the big shows, early sales have been strong, producers said. “Yesterday, we had hope,” Seller said. “Today we have confirmation.”Among the early purchasers: Claire Grimble, 51, of Belmont, Mass., who bought tickets to “Jagged Little Pill” as soon as that show, featuring the songs of Alanis Morissette, went back on sale. She said the cast album had helped her teenage daughter, who had seen the show in 2019, get through the pandemic.“We booked tickets for the first weekend it is open,” she said. “We can’t wait.” More