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    Review: ‘Becoming Eve’ Offers Testaments Old and New

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    A trans woman comes out to her Hasidic Jewish father in this Off Broadway play that tussles with faith and family bonds.A few minutes into “Becoming Eve,” an inventive, sympathetic Off Broadway play produced by New York Theater Workshop at Abrons Arts Center, Chava (Tommy Dorfman), a college student, executes an abrupt costume change. Though she bursts onto the set, the makeshift sanctuary of a synagogue on the Upper West Side, in a cropped pink sweatshirt and flowered minidress, she soon runs into a side room and emerges in loose jeans and a drab, body-camouflaging hoodie. From her original look, only a pair of pink sneakers remain.Even this outfit (Enver Chakartash designed the costumes) is daring in its way. Chava was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. So if these jeans are comparatively modest, they remain far more modern than the clothes that Chava grew up in, which were men’s clothes. Chava is trans, and she has arrived at this sanctuary to come out to her father, Tati (Richard Schiff), an ultraorthodox rabbi.“Becoming Eve,” written by Emil Weinstein and directed by Tyne Rafaeli, is based on Abby Chava Stein’s memoir of the same name. In her 20s, Stein left her community and her religion, then she came out as trans. (Stein has since returned to Judaism, and is a rabbi at a progressive congregation in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.) Though mostly set within that sanctuary (designed by Arnulfo Maldonado, with dramatic lighting by Ben Stanton), the play also includes flashbacks of Chava as a child and adolescent and as a young husband. In these sections, Chava is played by a series of puppets (expertly designed by Amanda Villalobos and deployed by two puppeteers). Dorfman, standing nearby, voices these scenes.Because Chava knows that her father lives untouched by the modern world (with heavy restrictions on the internet and most media) and that he is allergic to sentiment, Chava has found biblical commentary that seems to argue her case. To help her, she has enlisted Jonah (Brandon Uranowitz), the chatty, empathetic rabbi of this progressive synagogue. The play allows for heady scriptural dialogue, which speaks to Weinstein and Rafaeli’s faith in the audience’s intelligence. (One reasonable concession: These Yiddish conversations are rendered in English.)But the show is perhaps too intellectual and careful. Weinstein and Rafaeli, in a laudable effort to be fair to all, exercise perhaps too light a touch. (Regarding the women in Chava’s life, Judy Kuhn as her mother, Mami, and Tedra Millan as Fraidy, her wife, that touch is feather light; they are given little to do.) There are no villains here, no victims, which seems right and yet it results in a reticence that extends to Dorfman’s performance.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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      Review: A Vocally Splendid ‘Ragtime’ Raises the Roof

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      Joshua Henry stars in an exhilarating gala revival of the 1998 musical about nothing less than the harmony and discord of America.To say that a singer blows the roof off a theater, as Joshua Henry does in the revival of “Ragtime” that opened at New York City Center on Wednesday, is to understate what great musical performers do. It’s not a matter of so-called pyrotechnics, as if their vocal cords were dynamite sticks. Nor is it a matter of volume, so easily finessed these days. Also beside the point are ultrahigh notes and curlicue riffs, which are too often signs of not enough to sing.As it happens, Henry offers all those things almost incidentally in this exhilarating gala presentation directed by Lear deBessonet. But what makes his performance as the tragic Coalhouse Walker Jr. so heart-filling and eye-opening, even if you know the musical and have some issues with it, as I do, is the density of emotion he packs into each phrase. Well beyond absorbing the aspirations and travails of the character created by E.L. Doctorow for the 1975 novel on which the show is based, he seems to have become the novel itself. He’s a condensed classic; he blows the roof off your head.He is aided by songs that, though built from nuances of story, grow to the full scale of Broadway — not an easy act to pull off and not in fact pulled off consistently here. But especially in the first act, the music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, for whom “Ragtime” was a breakthrough hit in 1998, smartly express national themes in domestic contexts. Working with Terrence McNally, who shaped the unusually complex book from the highly eventful novel, they offer a boatload of songs in distinctive styles for the story’s three worlds, all intersecting in and around New York City during the first decade of the 20th century.From left: Matthew Lamb, Caissie Levy, Tabitha Lawing and Brandon Uranowitz in the revival, directed by Lear deBessonet. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf that’s programmatic, it’s also a useful tool and metaphor. An upper-middle-class white family in New Rochelle sings in a classical vein derived from Western European operetta. Immigrants arriving in Lower Manhattan by the thousands — and particularly a Jewish artist called Tateh — bring the sounds of the shtetl with them. Coalhouse, a pianist and composer, represents the aspirations of a Harlem-based Black population with a beguiling, sorrowful, assertive “new music”: ragtime.No wonder deBessonet begins the show with a spotlit piano: “Ragtime” is fundamentally about the shared dream of American harmony, even if reality delivers only discord. Fittingly then, this Encores!-adjacent production emphasizes the singing of the 33-person cast and 28-person orchestra, under the direction of James Moore, rather than the overblown hoopla of the 1998 production, which featured fireworks and a Model T Ford. The choral work — Flaherty wrote the vocal arrangements — is thrilling.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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      ‘Ragtime’ Crushed Brandon Uranowitz’s Dream. Now It’s Healing His Wounds.

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      Nearly 30 years after being let go from the Broadway-bound show, this Tony Award winner is taking a lead role in a new revival at City Center.In 1997, Brandon Uranowitz was a 10-year-old from West Orange, N.J., who dreamed of being on Broadway. He got one small foot in the door that year when he replaced Paul Dano as the wide-eyed little boy Edgar in the musical “Ragtime” during its premiere in Toronto.A year later, “Ragtime” opened on Broadway, and the musical — about three families navigating America at the turn of the 20th century, based on E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel — featured most of the Toronto cast, a powerhouse roster that included Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Peter Friedman, Marin Mazzie and Lea Michele. But Uranowitz wasn’t chosen to make the move. (Alex Strange was cast in the role instead.)That disappointment remains an “open wound,” Uranowitz, 38, said.“It was just, see ya, thanks for coming,” he added. “It felt unfinished.”Uranowitz, center, and other cast members during a rehearsal for the show, which begins performances on Wednesday.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesUranowitz eventually got to Broadway, making his debut in the short-lived musical “Baby It’s You!” and later appearing in “Falsettos,” “An American in Paris” and other shows. Last season, he won a Tony Award for his role in Tom Stoppard’s play “Leopoldstat.”Starting Wednesday, Uranowitz hopes to finally close that open wound when “Ragtime” is revived, not on Broadway but at City Center, where Lear DeBessonet’s new production is to begin performances. And Uranowitz, returning to the show for the first time since his Toronto run, will play the Jewish immigrant father-protector Tateh, the role for which Friedman received a Tony nomination.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