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    ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ Review: Sutton Foster as a Perfectly Goofy Princess

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    The Encores! series returns with a concert staging of the 1959 musical, which also stars the very funny Harriet Harris and Michael Urie.Some casting choices are blindingly obvious. That does not make them lazy; it makes them right.Such is the case with Sutton Foster as the eccentric Princess Winnifred in the Encores! revival of “Once Upon a Mattress,” which opened Wednesday at City Center. The central role in this broadly goofy musical was exuberantly, indelibly originated by Carol Burnett in 1959.While Foster has displayed range over the course of her musical-theater career — she’s stepping into Mrs. Lovett’s kitchen in “Sweeney Todd” on Feb. 9, five days after completing this show’s two-week run — many of Foster’s best roles, like Janet Van De Graaff in “The Drowsy Chaperone” and Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” are imprinted with an ebullient, joyful relish in the very act of performance. And Winnifred, described by another character as “a strangely energetic swamp girl,” is an ideal outlet for that sensibility.“Once Upon a Mattress” is nobody’s idea of a great musical, but it is many people’s idea of a fun one. Based on the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea,” this vaudevillian lark — which The New York Times described, possibly not in a good way, as “a child’s introduction to Broadway” in a review of a 1964 CBS telecast — is celebrated for helping to kick-start Burnett’s career and for being the composer Mary Rodgers’s sole Broadway hit.That last clearly represents a loss: Rodgers, paired with the lyricist Marshall Barer, demonstrates startling ease with musical-theater idioms and the late-1950s vernacular. (Winnifred’s “The Swamps of Home” works as both an earnest ballad and a sly spoof of the goopy nostalgic yearnings of some numbers by Richard Rodgers, Mary’s father, and Oscar Hammerstein II.)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?  More

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      ‘Spamalot’ Review: You’ll Laugh in Its General Direction

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      In the first Broadway revival of the Monty Python musical, the old bits are verbatim but the clowns are running the circus.Even the coconuts get entrance applause.If you’ve seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the 1975 movie spoof of all things Arthurian and many things not, you know the coconuts I mean. And if you’re enough of a Python fan to have also seen “Spamalot,” the 2005 Broadway musical “lovingly ripped off” from the film, you’ve probably memorized the whole bit. That’s the one in which Arthur’s trusted patsy, Patsy, slaps coconut halves together so the deluded king can pretend he has a horse. Call it a filly à deux.But the coconuts, whether or not they came to medieval England strung between two migratory African swallows, have stiff competition for beloved silliness in the blissful Broadway revival of “Spamalot” that opened on Thursday at the St. James Theater. They are by no means the only old favorites greeted with entrance applause. Among many others, so are a troupe of self-flagellating monks, a cart of corpses, a vulgar French taunter and a Trojan rabbit.This is the problem, and I suppose the glory, of a property (or should I say a shrubbery) like “Spamalot,” by Eric Idle of the original troupe and the composer John Du Prez. Drilled deep into the culture through thousands of collegiate viewings, many of those viewings enhanced by once-illegal substances, the loosely assembled collection of skits has become holy writ, not to be messed with. If a production dared to change anything, it would surely face an audience of originalists screaming “ni!” — though to be fair, it faces them anyway, as “Spamalot” has become a kind of Python karaoke.So what’s a revival to do?This one, directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, gives the “ni”-sayers what they want. As far as I can tell, the best original bits are all preserved verbatim.Also preserved, obviously, is what passes for the plot, in which Arthur (James Monroe Iglehart) mucks about England with Patsy (Christopher Fitzgerald) in search of knights to sit at the “very round” table. Yet before the assembled half-wits can fully enjoy the Las Vegas floor show that is Camelot, God (Steve Martin in an uncredited voice-over) commands them to stop their tap dancing and shove off in search of the holy grail. Not everyone is impressed. “If God is all-knowing,” says the not-so-brave Sir Robin, who may be looking to avoid personal bloodshed, “surely He must know where it is.”Though uttering the same lines as Idle did in the movie, and as David Hyde Pierce did in the 2005 production, Michael Urie as Robin puts a differently delightful comic spin on them. Throughout, Rhodes has encouraged the cast to personalize the material and, in many cases, enhance it. Taran Killam, expert as Lancelot and several of the quirkiest supporting characters, gives the French taunter not only the requisite outrageous accent but also a raspberry aria worthy of Mozart. In turn, when he sneers “I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and all your silly English knnnniggets,” Arthur and Sir Galahad (Nik Walker) do a brilliant triple take — they are Black.In some hilarious head space between Liza Minnelli and Celine Dion, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, as the Lady of the Lake, essentially steals the show as she scats, belts and mutters private thoughts.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLetting the clowns run the flying circus, at least part-time, is integral to the history of Python’s success. (Idle told The Times that the material survives because “it was written by its actors and acted by its writers.”) It is also a smart move for a show that could otherwise feel calcified; a production I saw at the Stratford Festival over the summer seemed more like an animatronic museum exhibit, making me doubt it was really revivable.And even this mostly excellent production betrays a faint odor of mothballs, especially in the projection-heavy scenic design of Paul Tate dePoo III, so dependent on the feel of Terry Gilliam’s original animations. The key to the comedy is not after all replication but individuation. The Pythons were each their own kind of oddball, and the bits are only funny with fresh bite.Another humor helper is authenticity. When Lancelot (who likes to dance a lot) comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress, and that damsel turns out to be a dopey prince named Herbert (Ethan Slater), the comics calibrate the exact middle point between snark and sincerity. (“Just think, Herbert,” says Lance as they kiss, “in a thousand years’ time this will still be controversial.”) The drag bits are likewise laughable yet honorable, as when Galahad’s blowzy mother, Mrs. Galahad (Jimmy Smagula), the recent widow of Nobby the Cretin, stands up proudly to Arthur: “I didn’t vote for you.” Equal-opportunity offensiveness — to gays, Jews, French, Finns and every kind of Briton — makes the show inoffensive to all.Unless, that is, you are very sensitive about your addled divas in sparkly gowns. Among a cast of performers unafraid to chew scenery, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, as the Lady of the Lake, that “watery tart” who “lobbed a scimitar” at Arthur, is the top masticator. In some hilarious head space between Liza Minnelli and Celine Dion, scatting, belting and muttering private thoughts — including, on the night I saw it, ad-libs about Patti LuPone and Ozempic — she essentially steals the show despite her frequent absences from it. The first line of her big second-act number is “Whatever happened to my part?”The revival leans into such meta-moments, which lean away from the movie and into a wonderland of Broadway self-reference. (Another snake-eating-its-tail song is “The Song That Goes Like This.”) Rhodes knows how to build these beautifully; they take off like roman candles. (Shield your eyes from the brightness of Cory Pattak’s lights and the dazzle of Jen Caprio’s costumes.) And if too many of the big numbers hit the same notes of too-muchness, Rhodes also lands the quiet ones gently, including “I’m All Alone,” in which Arthur laments his solitude while poor Patsy, fulfilling his name, stands next to him singing backup.For all its nostalgia value, and its endless verbal invention, “Spamalot,” like “Holy Grail,” and like the television series that spawned them both, has a very vexed soul. Taunters are angry, the taunted suffer, royals trace their authority to “some moistened bint” and God sends horseless knights to locate misplaced cups. It’s not a nice world out there in the Middle Ages — or ours. Luckily, vexations are evergreen if given half a chance, and, at least on Broadway, are assuageable. Just remember to always look on the bright side of life. And that supposedly harmless bunnies aren’t.SpamalotAt the St. James Theater, Manhattan; spamalotthemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. More

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      Review: In ‘Jane Anger,’ Michael Urie Shines as Shakespeare

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      Talene Monahon aims to give Shakespeare his comeuppance in this comedy at the New Ohio Theater.In “Jane Anger,” a new comedy by Talene Monahon, everyone is fed up with the endless waves of sickness and quarantine. The year is 1606, and we are in England, which is enduring another outbreak of the plague. But for one man, a late-career William Shakespeare, there are graver concerns: writer’s block.Portrayed as a vain, out-of-touch celebrity by Michael Urie, Shakespeare struts and frets about the dozens of plays his rivals must be writing, angrily tossing the contents of his chamber pot out his window and onto the street below. In an effort to revitalize his career, he settles on adapting “King Leir,” claiming his version — with a slightly different spelling — will be “naturally superior because of the language and the dialogue and the general vibes.”Another (fictional) obstacle to his livelihood lurks outside, one that this uneven play, which opened on Monday night at the New Ohio Theater, clumsily tries to imagine could be his legacy’s true downfall: Jane Anger, a former lover seeking to strike a bargain with him in order to have her proto-feminist pamphlet published.This one-act work — whose full title is “The Lamentable Comedie of Jane Anger, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard” — creates a tidy blend of the past and present. Social and comedic sensibilities converge to highlight the pervasiveness of misogyny and the differing chances of survival across class lines in times of disease. Billed as a “feminist revenge comedy,” this workshop production, first developed online last October, succeeds at creating smart, lightly absurdist humor, but misses the mark in its attempt at a revisionist redemption.It doesn’t help that the play is mostly dedicated to its two male characters: Shakespeare and his servant, Francis (a show-stealing Ryan Spahn). Described as having “the off-putting air of an aged eunuch,” Francis is an unkempt, overeager fan of the writer and his occasional sexual overtures read less as genuine pining and more like a fan’s willingness to ingratiate. Urie (at the top of his game) and Spahn are a longtime couple, and their chemistry lends their characters’ farcical setups an easy, endlessly watchable flow.Amelia Workman as the title character in the play.Valerie TerranovaThough their dynamic is appealing, it takes up most of the play’s run time, practically swallowing the production whole, and leaving little room for the play’s women to make much of an impact.In creating Jane, Monahon (“How to Load a Musket”) has some fun compounding fact and fiction. Jane Anger is the, most likely pseudonymous, name of the author of the first English-language essay to defend womanhood, released in 1589. Here, she is revealed to be the “Dark Lady” about whom Shakespeare wrote a couple dozen sonnets, now working as a cunning woman, a type of medieval folk healer who also developed spells to counter witchcraft.As Jane, Amelia Workman plays up the double meaning of this cunning woman by delivering an arched eyebrow that rivals Joan Crawford’s. But in trying to explode the Western canon through her own feminist intervention, suggested in the first of Jane’s many fourth-wall breaks, Monahon ultimately fails to give Workman much to chew on other than audience-pandering quips. (She’s aided by Joey Mendoza’s set, a medieval apartment with a central window through which she must hoist herself, and Nic Vincent’s lighting, which brightens to involve those present in Jane’s queries.)We know Shakespeare’s behavior is sexist, so why didn’t Monahon address her critiques directly to the men onstage, in true, anachronistic fashion?Not all is lost, however. Monahon is clearly a gifted comedy writer, and a sweet stage presence, too. She shows up, late in the play, as Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s neglected wife. Monahon giddily mines comparisons between her character’s earnestness and her modern namesake, and her sharp writing blends Shakespearean lowbrow humor with contemporary concerns. Under the direction of Jess Chayes, the production has a liveliness that the exceptional cast runs away with, delivering Monahon’s mile-a-minute gags with zest.Jane AngerThrough March 26 at the New Ohio Theater, Manhattan; newohiotheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      ‘Single All the Way’ Review: Cookie Cutter Christmas

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      This Netflix holiday rom-com rests its family-friendly shenanigans on a display of chemistry that never materializes.In the warmly intentioned, but unfortunately frosty romantic comedy “Single All the Way,” Peter (Michael Urie) is a perpetual bachelor who finally has a boyfriend to bring home to his family for the holidays.But when Peter’s beau turns out to be someone else’s husband, Peter convinces his best friend, Nick (Philemon Chambers), to visit over Christmas instead. Nick is well-loved by the family — so much so that they hatch a matchmaking scheme for the two singles. Peter’s holly-jolly mother, Carole (Kathy Najimy), cajoles, but his father, siblings and nieces push the pair to help with kooky Aunt Sandy (Jennifer Coolidge) and her Christmas play, in hopes that the two friends might realize they’re better off as lovers.The director Michael Mayer creates an appealing twinkly backdrop for holiday shenanigans. But the warm-and-fuzzies promised by this Christmas comedy (streaming on Netflix) depend on a display of suppressed passion from Peter and Nick that would propel family members to scheme for their romantic union. Unfortunately, the chemistry between the characters never materializes.Peter and Nick are exceedingly polite, and frequently kept at a respectful distance from each other within the frame. This otherwise cheery movie is stingy with the longing glances or lingering touches that might suggest subterranean longing. At times it’s difficult to believe the pair as best friends, let alone as secretly pining admirers. Even their names suggest their generic anonymity.This lack of chemistry makes for lonely viewing, as if the film exists within a universe where the entire concepts of flirting, sexual tension or even baseline human rapport have yet to be discovered. The supporting cast compensates with piquancy in the side dishes, but the main course is a flavorless misfire.Single All the WayNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Review: In ‘Chicken & Biscuits,’ a Sweet but Dated Comedic Recipe

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      Squabbling siblings, familiar stereotypes and a chorus of amens: A new play aims for the pleasures of Broadway’s traditional family sitcoms.“Why we gotta wear black, huh? We already Black!”So grouses Beverly, the kind of woman who features aquamarine hair and a peek-a-boo push-up bra at a funeral.To be specific: her father’s funeral. “We should be honoring my Daddy in style, color!” she proclaims. Certainly the deceased — the late pastor of a church in New Haven, Conn. — has complied; he’s heading to the Pearly Gates in a canary yellow tie.“Canary yellow was his favorite,” Beverly explains. “And he wore it like a pimp!”As I sat alternately laughing and cringing in the audience of “Chicken & Biscuits,” a play by Douglas Lyons that opened on Sunday at Circle in the Square Theater, I couldn’t help thinking that Beverly was voicing more than a personal, sartorial truth. In her impatience with tragedy, her gaudy antics and her beeline for fun, she was also delivering what may be the play’s mission statement. This family comedy, with its cheek and secrets and eulogies and amens, wants to offer audiences living in bad times an old-fashioned good one.Whether it succeeds for you will depend largely on your taste for Broadway comedies of a type that otherwise went out of style a few decades ago. These were supposedly heartwarming domestic stories in which “ethnic” families like the Italian American Geminianis in “Gemini” and the Jewish Chamberses in “Norman, Is That You?” aired dirty laundry (typically involving a gay son) while reaffirming the notion that love conquers all, among kin no less than country.Sidestepping the traffic of somber, formally inventive new plays about Black life, “Chicken & Biscuits” eagerly boards that rickety old bus. To start, there are the requisite squabbling siblings: Beverly (Ebony Marshall-Oliver) and her sister, Baneatta (Cleo King), representing opposite ends of the bawdy-to-churchy continuum. Beverly resents Baneatta’s attitude of superiority; Baneatta, whose tenured professorship seems to be in Disapproval Studies, scorns Beverly’s down-market outfits and outlook.Lewis plays a pastor hoping to prove himself, while also trying to help his wife, played by King, navigate her family’s complicated dynamics at a funeral.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTheirs is but one of the thin and mild conflicts that the production, directed by Zhailon Levingston, stirs mightily to bring to a boil. On the day of the funeral, Baneatta’s husband, Reginald, will be delivering the eulogy, hoping to prove himself a suitable successor to his father-in-law in the pulpit. (With Norm Lewis in the role, could there ever be any doubt?) Reginald is also hoping that family hysteria will not overtake family healing in the process.Apparently, he has not met his family, or even his own children: the tightly wound, high-achieving, 30-something Simone (Alana Raquel Bowers) and her younger brother, Kenny (Devere Rogers), a struggling actor and the de rigueur gay son. Each comes factory supplied with a pressing problem. Simone has recently been dumped by her fiancé, who took up with a white woman instead. Kenny’s problem is also white: Logan Leibowitz, the Jewish boyfriend (and fellow struggling actor) he has brought to the funeral unannounced.Though Simone repeatedly refers to the couple, with a smirk, as “thespians,” and Baneatta simply ignores the interloper, no one disapproves of Kenny’s gayness deeply enough to prevent a happy hug of an ending. All of the characters’ characteristics are red herrings, and usually stale ones at that. Beverly’s outrageousness recalls that of innumerable stock characters from Tyler Perry’s plays, Black sitcoms of the 1970s and Chitlin’ Circuit farces. Logan (Michael Urie) is a gay stereotype so flittery he cannot follow the service; as he flips madly through the Bible, he asks, “Where’s Corinthians? Is this in alphabetical order?”You will detect in Logan and Beverly — and in Beverly’s sarcastic Gen Z daughter, La’Trice (Aigner Mizzelle) — a kind of equal opportunity minstrelsy. In some ways, trotting out laughable stereotypes of a modern Black family and its white appendages seems almost daring on Broadway today. One of the highlights of Levingston’s production, which can otherwise feel bloated at two hours, comes when Simone, apologizing for her kneejerk hostility toward Logan, says, “Since the breakup, it’s been real hard for me not to see red when I see white people.” Levingston lets this moment sit a good long time, waiting for the (mostly white) audience to get the joke.In their performances, Marshall-Oliver, from left, Urie and Aigner Mizzelle evoke outrageous stock characters of the deep — and recent — past.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSuch insight and provocation is otherwise rare in “Chicken & Biscuits.” So is any real tension. Whether the family will accept Logan, whether the sisters will reconcile, whether the mystery guest at the funeral (NaTasha Yvette Williams) will be explained are barely even questions; they’re more like a packing list. In that sense, the play feels dramatically complacent and underdeveloped, suggesting that its trip to Broadway after a pandemic-foreshortened run at the Queens Theater in 2020 might have benefited from a stop along the way.Yet it’s at least a little unfair to look at a family comedy that way. Lyons, an actor himself before turning to playwriting — this is his Broadway debut as an author, and Levingston’s as a director — is operating here in a different tradition from most contemporary fare, which is built on ideas and argumentation.“Chicken & Biscuits” is built on sensation, more like a musical or even an opera. In the long scene of the funeral itself, the eulogies by several family members function as arias, delivered in the old-school park-and-bark style. They are not concerned with forwarding the action so much as bringing aural pleasure, and indeed Lewis’s satire of a preacherly stemwinder, with drawn out vowels and pounced-on syncopations, is more than halfway to song.In any case, Lyons is more interested in the family’s moment-by-moment byplay — its laugh track and tear track — than in drawing realistic character portraits or scoring sociological points. The cast, including five actors also making their Broadway debuts, for the most part fills in the characters’ outlines confidently. As for sociological points, you could hardly say more in a treatise than Dede Ayite does with the costumes and Nikiya Mathis with the wigs.So if “Chicken & Biscuits” isn’t a profound work, that doesn’t mean it’s pointless. Its gravy is just another name for schmaltz. Thinking back, as a Jew, on the Jewish families that Broadway audiences learned to love in not-very-sophisticated, high-cholesterol comedies, I have to admit that even as I alternately laughed and cringed at their caricatures, I felt relieved of the more pernicious problem of otherness.Representation matters. I see many great and necessary new works about the problem of Blackness in a racist society — or rather, the problem of whiteness. They are filled with anguish and unfunny funerals. What I rarely get to see are works about Black American life that are defiantly not problem plays. Their sunniness is just as necessary, however garish the aquamarine and pimped-out the corpse.Chicken & BiscuitsThrough Jan. 2 at Circle in the Square Theater, Manhattan; 212-239-6200, chickenandbiscuitsbway.com. Running time: 2 hours. More

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      With New Show, a Broadway Rarity: Season Has 7 Plays by Black Writers

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      “Chicken & Biscuits,” a new comedy by Douglas Lyons, will star Norm Lewis and Michael Urie. Performances will begin on Sept. 23.Plays by Black writers have been few and far between on Broadway over the years. The coming season will feature at least seven.The latest entrant is “Chicken & Biscuits,” a new comedy that last year ran for two weeks at Queens Theater before the pandemic forced it to close.Much of the creative and producing team will be in leadership roles for the first time on Broadway — the playwright, Douglas Lyons, was previously in the ensemble of “Beautiful” and “The Book of Mormon,” while the director, Zhailon Levingston, is an assistant director of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.”Onstage, there will be some familiar faces: Norm Lewis and Michael Urie, both well-known and well-liked by theater audiences. Lewis, a Tony nominee for “Porgy and Bess,” is best known as a singer, and this will be his first Broadway play; Urie is on more familiar ground as a comedic actor, and he was featured in a virtual reading of the play during the pandemic.Three of the show’s lead producers, Pamela Ross, E. Clayton Cornelious and Leah Michalos, are in that role for the first time. A fourth, Hunter Arnold, has producing credits on 29 shows, and is one of the lead producers of “Hadestown.”These plays arrive at a time of intensified attention on racial inequity in many corners of society, including the theater industry. Lyons founded the Next Wave Initiative, a scholarship program for Black theater artists; Lewis is a founding member of Black Theater United; and Levingston is the director of industry initiatives for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition. The coalition will be recognized with a special Tony Award this fall.“Chicken & Biscuits,” which is about a family that gathers for a funeral and is forced to reckon with a secret, is scheduled to start performances Sept. 23 and to open Oct. 10 at the Circle in the Square Theater. The play will be the first to move to Broadway from Queens Theater, a nonprofit performing arts center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.“This show was the one that Covid-19 interrupted for us,” said the theater’s executive director, Taryn Sacramone. “To go from that moment — abrupt shutdown — to now seeing ‘Chicken & Biscuits’ move to Broadway in this moment of reopening for the city — this feels incredibly meaningful.”The other plays by Black writers scheduled to run next season are “Pass Over,” by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu; “Lackawanna Blues,” by Ruben Santiago-Hudson; “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” by Keenan Scott II; “Trouble in Mind,” by Alice Childress; “Clyde’s,” by Lynn Nottage; and “Skeleton Crew,” by Dominique Morisseau. More

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      To Love, Honor and Co-Star: Making Room for Two on Zoom

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTo Love, Honor and Co-Star: Making Room for Two on ZoomHiring couples to act together allows us to see two people in one virtual space. For the couples themselves, though, it can feel like “there’s no escape.”Michael Urie, left, and Ryan Spahn have acted together in one short play during the pandemic. Spahn also handled the camera for Urie’s performance of “Buyer & Cellar” from their apartment.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Last fall, the actor Jason O’Connell agreed to star in a new production of “Talley’s Folly,” Lanford Wilson’s wistful two-hander, for Syracuse Stage. The other hand? His wife, Kate Hamill. While they would film the piece in an empty auditorium, they would spend much of their rehearsal time at home, on Zoom. So much for leaving your role at the stage door.“There’s no escape,” O’Connell said, mostly joking. “There’s no time apart, there’s no breather. There’s no one to complain to about my co-star.”Since March, when theater began to pop up online, savvy producers have looked for Zoom box workarounds and ways of generating the intimacy that only actors sharing the same airspace can provide. A Covid-19 friendly solution: Hire cohabiting couples to perform opposite each another — on sofas, in bedrooms and on the occasional closed stage — with no grids or time lags intervening.That explains how viewers saw two Apple family siblings — Maryann Plunkett’s Barbara and Jay O. Sanders’s Richard — quarantining together in the latest Richard Nelson trilogy, with their West Village apartment subbing for Barbara’s Rhinebeck house. Cohabiting actors also enabled a surprising scene in Sarah Gancher’s “Russian Troll Farm.” Having spent the play on separate screens, the disinformation workers Greg Keller and Danielle Slavick suddenly leapt into the same box and then into bed.Some of these couples have acted together for decades; others have almost never shared a marquee. None of them could have predicted that they would be turning their homes into theaters and reassuring the neighbors that the bloodcurdling shrieks are just a work thing.The New York Times spoke to six theater couples about acting together while living together. These are excerpts from the conversations.Kate Hamill and Jason O’ConnellTogether eight yearsJason O’Connell, left, and Kate Hamill in the Syracuse Stage production of “Talley’s Folly.”Credit…via Syracuse StageHow they met At the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, through a mutual friend. They married in January 2020 and had planned to honeymoon last summer.Pandemic project “Talley’s Folly”Have you worked together much?O’CONNELL We worked together on Kate’s first play, “Sense and Sensibility.” We did “Pride and Prejudice.” Then I wrote an adaptation of “Cyrano” that I directed her in.HAMILL We know lots of people who have a professional/personal divide, but we really don’t.How has working from home been?HAMILL We’re both workaholics. We’ve had to adjust to a slightly different pace of life. Like, “Do we have any hobbies?” After we got done with our first Zoom rehearsal of “Talley’s Folly,” we turned off the camera and we both started crying because we had missed that part of our lives.O’CONNELL It was very, very special, but also bittersweet.HAMILL In the pandemic, as a couple, you either come out of it, like, “Wow, this is really strong and great,” or “Oh no. I’m glad we like each other.”Greg Keller and Danielle SlavickTogether 14 yearsDanielle Slavick, left, and Greg Keller in “Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy.”Credit…via TheaterWorks HartfordHow they met At the National Theater Conservatory in Denver, Colo. “We had a talk in the library once about death,” Keller said.Pandemic project “Russian Troll Farm”Have you worked together much?SLAVICK We’ve done a bunch of workshops and readings and stuff, but only one other production together, Sheila Callaghan’s “That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play.”KELLER Nobody’s wanted to bring the passion that is our relationship onto the stage.How has working from home been?SLAVICK Exciting. But also daunting. I was still breastfeeding during rehearsals and I was also pregnant, so I was very nauseous. Having people be part of your home life was just kind of vulnerable. But you’re, like, my favorite actor. So I just liked the opportunity to talk with you and listen to you in that medium.KELLER I’m blushing over here.SLAVICK There was so much equipment! It took over our apartment.KELLER A new couple with a kid moved in. They would hear us screaming at each other, her having fake orgasms.SLAVICK I actually stopped them in the hall and let them know that they don’t need to call the police.Crystal Dickinson and Brandon J. DirdenTogether 21 yearsBrandon J. Dirden, left, and Crystal Dickinson in “The New Math”Credit…via The 24 Hour PlaysHow they met In graduate school at the University of Illinois. “I will never forget seeing her for the first time,” Dirden said. “This gale force coming straight at me.”Pandemic projects “New Math,” as part of the 24 Hour Plays Viral Monologues; “Lessons in Survival”Have you worked together much?DICKINSON The first show we did was “Angels in America.” Brandon was Belize and I was the angel.DIRDEN We work together maybe every other year. It actually helps the relationship. We can’t be too mean to each other, because we’re probably going to have to work together pretty soon.How has working from home been?DICKINSON The 24 Hour Plays reached out to us. I told Brandon, “We’re doing it. You’re going to do one and I’m going to do one. Because we’ve got to do some art.” So we did and I told them, “That was great. Brandon and I should do one together.’” Two weeks later, they were like, “We want to take you up on that.” And I was like, “How are we going to home-school?” We told our playwright, “You have to incorporate our kid.” Which turned out to be fun. Though we did almost kill each other for about five seconds.DIRDEN Chase [their son] was the best part of the process. He took direction very well.Michael Urie and Ryan SpahnTogether 12 yearsUrie and Spahn in Talene Monahon’s short play “Frankie and Will.”Credit…via MCC TheaterHow they met Friends set them up. “We had plans to see ‘Doubt,’” Urie said. “Very romantic.”Pandemic projects “Nora Highland,” “Buyer & Cellar,” “Frankie and Will”Have you worked together much?URIE Most recently, “Hamlet,” which we did in Washington, D.C. We’ve also worked together on some movie projects. Ryan and Halley Feiffer wrote “He’s Way More Famous Than You,” which I directed.SPAHN That was when we learned how to collaborate. We turned our apartment into the production office.How has working from home been?SPAHN Jeremy Wein does Play-PerView. He reached out. I had never even heard of Zoom. I had this two-hander, “Nora Highland.” Michael and Tessa Thompson did it live online.URIE There was no audience, but it felt something like theater, because it was live.SPAHN We would talk about the hunt for that feeling of opening-night jitters.URIE “Buyer & Cellar,” which we did in our living room, had exactly that. It was a big old comedy put together right before you. Ryan was the director of photography.SPAHN After that one, we did a short play Talene Monahon wrote, “Frankie and Will.” Our dog was in it. And we have a cat, so we had to animal wrangle. It gave us something to put our manic, terrified, and laser-focused energy into.Jennifer Byrne and Timothy C. GoodwinTogether four yearsJennifer Byrne, left, and Timothy Goodwin at home with their dog, Awesome.Credit…Timothy C. GoodwinHow they met During a production of “Shear Madness” in Fort Myers, Fla. “We had a start-over first date in New York City,” Byrne said.Pandemic project “Singles in Agriculture”Have you worked together much?BYRNE We never work together. I’m in musical theater and Tim is into plays and film and TV. Our paths for auditions rarely cross.How has working from home been?BYRNE Ken Kaissar and Amy Kaissar, the artistic directors of Bristol Riverside Theater, were looking for acting couples quarantining together. They hit us up by email and Ken found “Singles in Agriculture.” We did a Zoom cold read and it was our rhythm, it was our energy. It felt right.GOODWIN Usually you can leave work at work. But the space that we sleep in is also our rehearsal space and our performance space. We have a nice lighting set up. But as soon as the rehearsal is over we tear it all down.BYRNE We literally open the blinds, we open the windows and we shut the door so that it gets super cold in the bedroom. Almost like starting over.Maryann Plunkett and Jay O. SandersTogether 32 yearsClockwise from lower left: Jay O. Sanders and Maryann Plunkett as two of the Apple siblings, along with Laila Robin, Stephen Kunken and Sally Murphy in “What Do We Need to Talk About? Conversations on Zoom.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow they met On the set of “A Man Called Hawk,” a spinoff of “Spenser: For Hire.” “Our first kiss was on film,” Sanders said.Pandemic project The Apple Family Plays’ pandemic trilogyHave you worked together much?SANDERS Countless reading and workshops. And some small film things.PLUNKETT Because of the Rhinebeck panorama [Richard Nelson’s sequence of Rhinebeck-set plays], it feels like we’re working together all the time. We like to work together.How has working from home been?PLUNKETT With the Zoom plays, we’re sitting side by side. It’s the utmost in trust, and playfulness, knowing that I’m looking into Jay’s eyes, but I’m also looking into the character’s eyes. Shoulder to shoulder, captured in a little tiny box, there’s no room for faking it.SANDERS I used to dream about this, when I was a young actor, finding someone who could be a partner, who could be at the same level. It’s a very rare relationship that we’re fortunate to have. We appreciate it every day.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Theater to Stream: Shakespeare Villains and Hot-Tub Dreams

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Shakespeare Villains and Hot-Tub DreamsPatrick Page looks at bad guys, Steven Carl McCasland gives us literary women, and Jill Sobule mines her own history, including the dreaded seventh grade.A still from “The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral,” from The Neo-Futurists, a Chicago performing-arts group. Credit…via The Neo-FuturistsFeb. 3, 2021Updated 2:17 p.m. ETDark and wintry days, cold nights: February is the perfect time to cuddle up with some so-called chiller theater.Toxic squares: Travis Schweiger and Chelsea J. Smith, top, and Neal Davidson in Stephen Belber’s “Tape.”Credit…via The Shared ScreenLet’s start with Stephen Belber’s “Tape,” which begins with a character shoveling coke up his nose and goes on from there. In this 2000 play (adapted into a Richard Linklater movie), the friends Vince and Jon have a relationship so toxic, it could qualify as a government cleanup project. Their reunion starts with the needle in the red, then really skids off the rails. The Shared Screen company has devised its production as a live video call. Feb. 5-20; thesharedscreen.com.Stay on the line for the Keen’s company benefit reading of Lucille Fletcher’s radio thriller “Sorry, Wrong Number,” from 1943, about a bedridden woman who is being targeted by killers — her phone is her only connection to the outside world. Marsha Mason leads the cast and Nick Abeel handles the live Foley effects. (Feb. 15 at 7 p.m.; keencompany.org.)Patrick Page in “All the Devils Are Here.”Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyFinally, Patrick Page, Broadway’s favorite basso profundo, wrote and performs a solo look at theatrical bad guys in Shakespeare Theater Company’s “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain.” Page knows a thing or three about the subject: He has played Iago in “Othello,” Hades in “Hadestown,” the Comte de Guiche in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the Grinch in “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and the Green Goblin in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” Feb. 4-July 28; shakespearetheatre.org‘The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral’The Neo-Futurists, based in Chicago, have turned their showcase of very short plays — or thought experiments, or whatever you want to call these bite-size works — into a successful weekly virtual show. Some are animated; others are performed by live actors. One was 14 seconds long; most are around two or three minutes. The only rule seems to be that you never know what’s next. A Patreon subscription buys a 30-play show delivered on Sunday nights, with an average of 10 new plays a week. neofuturists.orgJill Sobule’s hot-tub time machine“F*ck7thGrade,” from the singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, may be a concert shot in an improvised drive-in, but this autobiographical show has impressive theatrical bones: Liza Birkenmeier (“Dr. Ride’s American Beach House”) wrote the book, Rachel Hauck (“Hadestown”) designed the set and Lisa Peterson (“An Iliad”) directed for City Theater, in Pittsburgh. Now the question is: Will Sobule and Robin Eaton’s musical adaptation of the movie “Times Square” ever get a full production? Through June 30; citytheatrecompany.orgIn “Little Wars,” clockwise from left: Catherine Russell, Linda Bassett, Juliet Stevenson, Debbie Chazen, Sophie Thompson, Natasha Karp and Sarah Solemani. Credit…John BrannochDinner with Gertrude and LillianCaryl Churchill’s “Top Girls” engineered a meeting between female historical figures. “Little Wars,” Steven Carl McCasland’s new play, also sticks with literary heroines. When a dinner party includes Lillian Hellman (Juliet Stevenson) and Gertrude Stein (Linda Bassett, wondrous in “Escaped Alone” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), the conversation could get interesting. Through Feb. 14; broadwayondemand.comFor your ears onlyL.A. Theater Works specializes in audio theater with startlingly good casts, and its impressive catalog keeps growing. The latest offering is Hannie Rayson’s eco-minded “Extinction,” with a cast that includes Sarah Drew and Joanne Whalley. Hankering for the days of before? Check out the last two productions Theater Works recorded in front of a live audience, early last year: a commissioned adaptation of “Frankenstein” by Kate McAll, starring Stacy Keach as the creature; and Qui Nguyen’s semi-autobiographical “Vietgone,” inspired by his Vietnamese refugee parents, and directed by Tim Dang. latw.orgSigned, sealed and, eventually, deliveredTheater — or something companies are calling theater — by mail is alive and well. Ars Nova’s “P.S.” project has been going on since November; the second season of the Artistic Stamp company’s epistolary project is underway, with a third beginning soon; and next month, Arena Stage is starting “Ken Ludwig’s Dear Jack, Dear Louise: Love Letter Experience.”The most ambitious initiative yet may well be Post Theatrical, which encompasses 13 “mail-based theatrical experiences” from companies in the United States, Lebanon and Hong Kong. Through June 30; posttheatrical.org‘Yorick, la Historia de Hamlet’/‘Yorick, the Story of Hamlet’Remember Yorick, the jester whose skull plays a big part in “Hamlet”? He takes center stage in Francisco Reyes’s solo with puppets “Yorick, la Historia de Hamlet”/“Yorick, the Story of Hamlet,” presented by the Los Angeles contempory-arts center Redcat. American audiences may know Reyes from his role as Orlando in the Chilean movie “A Fantastic Woman.” In English with Spanish subtitles. Feb. 12-14; redcat.orgWith songs in their heartIf you’re wondering about the back story to the French song in that Allstate commercial, it’s “Non, je ne regrette rien,” made famous by Edith Piaf. And if you missed the biopic “La Vie en Rose,” head over to Raquel Britton’s docu-concert “Piaf … Her Story … Her Songs,” brought to us by Broadway’s Best Shows and the Actors Fund. Feb. 15-18; actorsfund.orgFor tunes in English, turn to Theater Forward, an organization that supports regional theater, which will offer performances by Jason Robert Brown, Kate Baldwin, George Salazar, Anika Noni Rose, Shaina Taub, Branden Noel Thomas, Taylor Iman Jones and the Bengsons for its annual benefit. Feb. 8; theatreforward.orgDavid Glover in “Kyk Hoe Skin die Son.” Credit…Dion Lamar MillsClubbed Thumb’s Winterworks festivalThis enterprising New York company is best known for Summerworks, a festival of new plays that has provided a launchpad for favorites like “What the Constitution Means to Me” and “Tumacho.” Now, Clubbed Thumb is opening up its developmental showcase, Winterworks, to a wider audience on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Twitch. The shows open at regular intervals throughout February, with several livestreaming before going on-demand for a limited time. The programming is director-driven, so there should be some interesting innovations. In “Kyk hoe Skyn die Son [Look at How the Sun Shines],” for example, Keenan Tyler Oliphant writes a letter live and on-screen, while artists reimagine his memories. Other participants include Leonie Bell and Michaela Escarcega. clubbedthumb.orgTechnology and its discontentsThe Studios of Key West has wrangled quite the cast for Drew Larimore’s new play, “Smithtown,” which deals with the impact of technology on our lives and is made up of four interconnected monologues, read by Michael Urie, Ann Harada, Colby Lewis and Constance Shulman. Feb. 13-27; tskw.orgA scene from “Today Is My Birthday,” with, from left, Emily Kuroda, Eric Sharp and Katie Bradley.Credit…via Theater MuTech is integrated into the very fabric of Theater Mu’s multicamera capture of “Today Is My Birthday,” by Susan Soon He Stanton, a staff writer on the HBO hit “Succession.” This Twin Cities company focuses on the Asian-American experience. And Stanton’s narratively inventive play, about a young journalist (Katie Bradley) who has fled New York to return home to Hawaii, is told through phone calls, voice mail messages and even intercom. Feb. 6-21; theatermu.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More