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      ‘Cold War Choir Practice’ Review: When the President Made a Deal

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      Ro Reddick’s music-infused comedy, set during the Cold War, finishes this year’s edition of Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival on a high.For Christmas 1987, Meek knows exactly what she wants from Santa Claus. All three items should fit easily on the sleigh: a stuffed animal, a Speak & Spell for language-learning and a nuclear radiation detector. You know, to keep inside the fallout shelter she’s building in the basement.At 10 years old, alert to the world, Meek is anxious about the Cold War and hoping to help stop it — or at least protect herself and her family, should Soviet missiles ever be aimed at Syracuse, N.Y. But she is also just a little kid, inquisitive and dreamy, with an “E.T.” sweatshirt and a taste for Atomic Fireballs from the neighborhood candy shop.Played by Alana Raquel Bowers, an adult deftly channeling tweendom, Meek is the winsome protagonist of “Cold War Choir Practice,” a brainy new comedy by Ro Reddick that’s infused with choral music and spiked with espionage. Directed by Knud Adams, and featuring a jewel-studded cast, the play finishes this year’s edition of Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival on a high.That’s true even with the whole extra set of reverberations that the show abruptly acquired after the U.S. strike on Iran on Saturday — world peace being one of Meek’s consuming priorities. In a children’s choir, she sings of de-escalation (sample lyric: “No one has to die”) and gets matched with a pen pal from the U.S.S.R.“Dear Soviet Pen Pal,” Meek writes, brightly. “War is imminent. How are you today? Did you know the voice of a child has the power to stop a nuclear attack?”Meek (Bowers) and her father, Smooch (Will Cobbs).Maria BaranovaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Curious Proposal to Fund New Hampshire’s Arts Council With $1

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      New Hampshire residents pushed back, but lawmakers still plan to decimate the group, which gives grants to theaters and museums.The notice that landed in the inbox of Elliott Cunningham, the managing director of New Hampshire’s oldest playhouse, provided little explanation. But it made clear that the federal grant it had been awarded for a traveling production about a 12-year-old boy exploring backyard trails was no longer available.He expects a similar message from state funding sources to come next.Support for New Hampshire’s arts council is at risk as legislators finalize a two-year state budget this week. After one lawmaker suggested eliminating the organization, another countered with a proposal that the council should instead receive $1.The proposed cuts looked similar to President Trump’s move to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. In her inaugural address in January, Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, announced the formation of the Commission on Government Efficiency, a state version of the Department of Government Efficiency.The message has been clear: Reduce the size of government and trim budgets.To many state legislators, shrinking revenue means tough decisions. To arts administrators, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts is essential to sustaining the theaters, museums and festivals that help give the “Live free or die” state its character.Last fiscal year the arts council gave the New London Barn Playhouse, where Mr. Cunningham works, a $21,250 grant to upgrade its sound system. The council also helped pay for a wheelchair-accessible lift backstage at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, for broadband upgrades at the New England Ski Museum in Franconia and for new floors at a dance studio in Lebanon.“There are a million places in this country that have a million strip malls that all look exactly the same,” said Sal Prizio, the executive director of the Capitol Center for the Arts, which is blocks away from the State House. “You’re killing the things that make New Hampshire, New Hampshire.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On Broadway, A.I. and High-Tech Storytelling Is Having a Moment

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      Sarah Snook screen-sharing selfies from a face-filtering phone app. Nicole Scherzinger getting her close-up via movie cameras. George Clooney making onstage television. Robert Downey Jr. superseded by a digital puppet.High-tech storytelling is surging on Broadway. Over the last year, stages have been brimming with large-scale and high-resolution videos, deployed not simply for scenery but also as an integrated narrative tool. It is all made possible by the growing availability, affordability and stability of the cameras, computers, projectors and surfaces that are utilized as part of today’s stage sets.The phenomenon, which is presumably here to stay, also reflects the ubiquity of digital devices in contemporary life. In an era when we are rarely separated from our smartphones or smartwatches, and video greets us in our cars and supermarkets, the latest technology is transforming stagecraft and storytelling.Robert Downey Jr. in “McNeal.”“The majority of Americans’ waking, conscious moments are looking at screens,” said the designer Jake Barton, who last fall worked on “McNeal,” a play that starred Downey as a novelist whose entanglement with generative artificial intelligence is woven into the scenic design. “On one level,” Barton said, “this is just theater naturally evolving.”Just two weeks ago, the Tony Awards gave the coveted best musical prize to “Maybe Happy Ending,” in which actors playing robots share a stage at times with massive videos depicting their digital memories. The best musical revival Tony went to “Sunset Boulevard,” where performers holding camera rigs film part of the action for transmission to a giant screen that swivels into the audience’s view. And the best play revival honor went to “Eureka Day,” which featured a reliably gut-busting scene in which chat comments posted during a school board meeting were projected above the cast.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats to Protest Trump’s Takeover of Kennedy Center With Pride Event

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      “This is our way of reoccupying the Kennedy Center,” said Jeffrey Seller of “Hamilton,” who was asked to stage the invite-only concert hosted by five senators.Five Democratic senators have rented a small theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and invited the producer of “Hamilton” to stage a gay pride concert there as a form of symbolic protest against President Trump’s takeover of the institution.The event, scheduled to take place on Monday night before an invited audience, will feature Broadway artists performing songs and readings. The concert, hosted by Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado, is being called “Love Is Love,” a slogan used by the gay rights movement and quoted by the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda when his show won at the Tony Awards in 2016.“What’s happening in the world is deeply concerning, but even in our darkest hours, we must continue to seek out the light,” Mr. Hickenlooper said in a statement. “The L.G.B.T.Q. community has long embodied this resilience, maintaining joy and creativity in the face of adversity.”Mr. Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February after purging its previously bipartisan board of Democratic appointees and replacing them with his allies. He denounced its programming as too “wokey” and promised to usher in a “Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”The senators, who exercised a prerogative extended to members of Congress to rent space in the center, chose this week for the event because June has long been when supporters of the gay community have celebrated Pride Month.Mr. Trump, in a departure from previous presidents, has not acknowledged Pride Month, and some of his actions in recent months have prompted concern in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Since his takeover of the center, several groups have canceled events there, saying they no longer feel welcome.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Retelling of the Mahabharata, Set to Modern-Day Struggles

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      At Lincoln Center, the Toronto-based theater company Why Not strives to balance the old and new in its production of the Sanskrit epic.The Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata has been adapted many times over in oral retellings, plays, movies, comic books and more. Consisting of over 100,000 verses, the poem has so many stories that picking which ones to tell is a statement in itself.And making that decision can pose its own challenges as Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic directors of the Toronto-based theater company Why Not, learned when they went about adapting it. Now they are bringing their expansive two-part contemporary staging, which premiered in 2023 at the Shaw Festival in Ontario, Canada, to Lincoln Center, where it will run from Tuesday through June 29.Their adaptation is based on the poet Carole Satyamurti’s retelling of the epic, which, at its core, is the story of two warring sets of cousins — the Kauravas and the Pandavas — trying to control a kingdom. The poem is part myth, part guide to upholding moral values and duty — or dharma. Some of the epic incorporates the Bhagavad Gita, a philosophical text on Hindu morality, which is framed as a discussion between Prince Arjuna, a Pandava and a skilled archer, and Lord Krishna, a Hindu God who acts as Arjuna’s teacher.Jain, 45, began developing the piece in 2016 after receiving a $375,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, the country’s public arts funder. Fernandes, 36, joined him on the project two years later after finishing graduate school in France. Jain described an early version of the script in an interview as “feminist” and “self-referential.” But the pandemic made them rethink which stories could best drive home the point of dharma — a central tenet of the text.Meher Pavri as an opera singer in the section drawn from the Bhagavad Gita. In the background, Neil D’Souza as the Hindu god Krishna and Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu as Prince Arjuna, Krishna’s pupil. David Cooper“To build a civilization, those with the most power must take care of those with the least,” Jain said, referring to the epic’s message. “In the animal kingdom, the strong eat the weak. There’s no problem with that. But humans have empathy, and we can build a civilization where we’re not just those who eat and those who are eaten, but rather those who feed and those who are fed.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay Ellis Considers Colson Whitehead His Literary GOAT

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      “‘Harlem Shuffle,’ ‘Crook Manifesto,’ ‘Underground Railroad,’ ‘Nickel Boys’: I feel like I did not understand or see myself in fiction until I read him.”So far this year, Jay Ellis has played a basketball coach in the Netflix comedy “Running Point” and a record-setting M.V.P. in the action movie “Freaky Tales.”This summer, he’s swapping free throws for freestyles as he steps into the role of a hip-hop star in the Off Broadway play “Duke & Roya,” at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The drama finds him stumbling into a cross-cultural romance with life-threatening consequences.“At first glance,” he said, “there’s no reason why you think these two people would ever hit it off.”He added: “We’re in a world where everyone yells, no one listens. Everybody really just wants connection, to be seen, to be understood, and I just loved the idea that these two characters do.”Ellis, 43, temporarily relocated his family of four to New York from their home in Los Angeles. One particular aspect of the local culture suits him well.“I absolutely love pizza,” he said, name-dropping his latest find, Fini. “My daughter took a bite and was like, ‘Why don’t we have pizza like this in L.A., Daddy?’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Dead Outlaw’ Musical to Close After Disappointing Run on Broadway

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      The show was shut out at the Tonys after being nominated for seven awards, including best musical.“Dead Outlaw,” a hard-driving musical about a bandit whose mummified body became a curiosity, announced Friday evening that it would close June 29 after a disappointingly brief run on Broadway.The show announced the closing just 12 days after the Tony Awards. It was nominated for seven prizes, including best musical, but won none. It is the third new musical to post a closing notice since the awards ceremony, following “Smash” and “Real Women Have Curves.”The show began previews April 12 and opened April 27 at the Longacre Theater in Manhattan. The show’s running costs are modest, but so are its box office revenues; it grossed $449,666 during the week that ended June 15. At the time of its closing, it will have played 14 preview and 73 regular performances.The musical is based on the true story of Elmer McCurdy, a turn-of-the-century figure who robbed trains and banks — often ineptly — and died in a shootout with law enforcement. His unclaimed body was preserved and then exhibited for years before being stashed in a California amusement park, where it was rediscovered in the 1970s.The show was first staged Off Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theater, which is operated by Audible; it is the first Audible show to transfer to Broadway. The reviews were quite strong, both downtown and uptown; in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called it “the feel-good musical of the season, if death and deadpan feel good to you.”The musical was capitalized for up to $10 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money — the amount it cost to finance the show’s development — has not been recouped.“Dead Outlaw” features a score by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna and a book by Itamar Moses; it is directed by David Cromer. The lead producers are Lia Vollack and Sonia Friedman. In a statement they said, “Despite glowing reviews and a loyal following, the commercial momentum just wasn’t fast enough in a crowded season. As the show reminds us, sometimes the most incredible lives are cut short.” More

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      6 Months After the Pelicot Trial, a Staging Brings Insight and Despair

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      The stripped-back performance, based on the rape trial that shocked France and the world, ran all night at a church in Vienna.It was a case that shook France. Last December, the husband of Gisèle Pelicot was convicted of drugging and assaulting her for over a decade, and for inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious.Now, just six months later, the trial has already inspired a work of theater — in Vienna, as part of the city’s prestigious Festwochen festival. On Wednesday, the Swiss director Milo Rau, who has led the event since 2023, and the French dramaturg Servane Dècle presented “The Pelicot Trial,” a seven-hour reading of excerpts from the French legal proceedings and of interviews and commentary related to the case.It was a long night at the Church of St. Elisabeth, a red brick Roman Catholic church in a southern district of Vienna. The sun was setting when the audience went in at 9 p.m., filling the pews to capacity. When the final words were spoken, at around 4:15 a.m., sunrise was near, and only around 30 people remained.In a joint interview before the performance, Rau and Dècle said the wide range of material involved, with sections delving into history, philosophy and biology, was intended to dispel any notion that Pelicot’s story was an isolated event. “It’s an example of patriarchal violence,” Rau said. “The more we dive into it, the more we see that it’s the tip of the iceberg.”Rau has a long history of bringing trials to the stage. In “The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” Rau reenacted the 1989 legal proceedings against the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. In “The Congo Tribunal” and “The Moscow Trials,” he created mock criminal courts to analyze real political events.Gisèle Pelicot at the courthouse in Avignon, France, last December, when her husband was convicted of drugging and assaulting her for over a decade.Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More