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    Theater Heads North, and in Every Direction at Once

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    A psychological drama from Japan and a classic English comedy are among the high-contrast offerings in the Berkshires and Hudson Valley.Theater is confusing this summer. As the return to live, in-person performance accelerates, many productions conceived under earlier limitations are emerging in a world that looks different than expected.Last week I saw two shows that exemplify the extremes of this mixy moment. One, “The Dark Master,” a psychological drama from Japan, was supposed to be part of a live North American tour but emerged as something remarkably different, remote yet in person, with virtual-reality goggles. The other, a revival of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” was supposed to take place in a socially distanced, open-sided tent but wound up tightly packed into an indoor theater, with everyone breathing the same air, albeit through masks.That the two productions moved in opposite directions — one toward stricter precautions, one toward laxer — may be more than an accident of timing; it seems to be an example of content calling out to form. “The Dark Master” is as dour and antisocial as “Earnest” is giddy and garrulous, but both productions are intense experiences in part because the shifting terrain of coronavirus precautions has made them more themselves.I have trouble imagining how “The Dark Master,” which I saw at PS21, in Chatham, N.Y., and which continues this week at Japan Society in Manhattan, could ever have been performed live. Adapted and directed by Kuro Tanino from an indie manga, it stars Kiyobumi Kaneko as the owner and chef of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Tokyo. Over the course of the play, he forcibly turns the business over to a customer, demonstrating his best recipes and worst scowls.Kiyofumi Kaneko in “The Dark Master,” an adaptation of a manga. A live audience views the production through virtual-reality goggles.Japan Society.I say that Kaneko stars, but that’s not quite accurate. As rendered through the virtual-reality goggles, “The Dark Master” now stars you. Each audience member — there’s room for 10 pods of one or two people — in effect plays the customer dragooned into service; without actually moving at all, you become implicated in the action: cooking, eating, sleeping. Kaneko (who, like the other actors, dubbed his lines in English) doesn’t exist in real space in the show, yet he leans into you so closely that you may feel the urge, as I did, to push your chair away. At the same time the smells of the sizzling garlic and steak are urging you closer.Virtual reality is as yet a plaything in the theater, not really mature as an expressive device, and yet its use in “The Dark Master” emphasizes the isolation and interiority of the story and also of life during the pandemic. Kaneko may get in your face — and later, you may be troubled to find a prostitute you hire doing even more — but I found myself just as fascinated by my own weird hands, which of course were not really mine, as I could tell by their manicure. Food aiming for my mouth seemed to hit my sternum instead; I won’t even speak of the bathroom.Though I was not always sure who I was or what was happening, that seemed to be part of the point. Alienation and paranoia, exhausted themes of avant-garde theater, came roaring back to relevance in “The Dark Master,” in part because of Kaneko’s engagement in the material but in part because of mine. (Or yours.) The removal of all external sensation — you wear not only goggles but also headphones — has the effect of unmooring you from the pilings of your own personality.That effect is enhanced by the theater, a beautiful, reconfigurable indoor-outdoor space that appears to have landed like an exotic bird in the midst of a 100-acre former apple orchard in this tiny Hudson Valley town. It’s not the first place you would expect to encounter cutting-edge performance, yet PS21 offers little else. In “The Dark Master,” the contrast between the fragrant fields of astilbe and the pungent prison of your own perceptions makes both feel a bit more precious.The Unicorn Theater, where I saw a preview of the Berkshire Theater Group’s production of “Earnest,” could not be more different: a traditional auditorium with 122 seats near the tony Main Street gift shops and galleries of Stockbridge, Mass. If the play’s characters, Londoners with grand country homes, were contemporary Americans instead of Victorians, this is where they might summer. Wilde’s comedy, directed by the playwright David Auburn, thus seems like an evening’s entertainment in a local home, if its owners were people of exceptional wit.As Lady Bracknell, Harriet Harris makes a convincing dragon in the Oscar Wilde play.Emma K. Rothenberg-Ware.Wilde’s wit is tricky, though; it sits on bedrock of great moral heft, yet if played with any weightiness, it droops. The four lovers are enmeshed in webs of superfluousness — Gwendolyn and Cicely mostly concerned with marrying a man named Earnest; Algernon and Jack obsessed with muffins and cucumber sandwiches — but they must believe these things to be of utmost importance. And Lady Bracknell, whose faith in her own values is absolute, must dispense justice as if it were meringue.At the early preview I attended, Auburn’s well-cast company was approaching the right balance. As Bracknell, the great Harriet Harris was still applying the finishing coat of comedy to her detailed, nuanced performance, but already made a convincing dragon. Conversely, the lovers (Rebecca Brooksher, Claire Saunders, Shawn Fagan and Mitchell Winter) were as yet too focused on the comedy to achieve it fully, missing opportunities to let the repercussions of their actions sink in. When sweethearts of 1895 kissed for the first time, surely it was no joke; it was a revelation.My sense that this cast will soon completely inhabit Wilde’s wit is partly based on the way the show is already hitting its marks by Act III and partly on its completely successful design. The simple, elegant set by Bill Clarke, all black-and-white Art Nouveau swirls and sheer curtains, suggests the fineness of taste that the writing requires. Swinging far the other way, the outrageous costumes by Hunter Kaczorowski — Gwendolyn wears a three-foot hat to the country, and Algernon sports rhinestone-buckled pumps — give proper due to hilarity.The elation that comes from the intensity of such choices, whether in design or acting (or, as in “The Dark Master,” in conceptualization), is what we go to live theater for. To the extent the pandemic has denied us that elation, we can’t be rid of it too soon.But this intermediate period has its own elations. Returning to difficult material after a diet that has too often consisted of comfort food, and returning to theaters where people crowd together and feel — not just hear — one another laugh, is its own source of emotion. When the Berkshire Theater Group’s artistic director, Kate Maguire, appeared before “Earnest” to make the usual preshow announcements about emergency exits, she first broke into tears. She wasn’t the only one.The Dark MasterPerformances June 23-28 at Japan Society, Manhattan; japansociety.orgThe Importance of Being EarnestThrough July 10 at the Unicorn Theater in Stockbridge, Mass.; berkshiretheatregroup.org More

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      Where Oscar Wilde Once Slept (in Prison Garb)

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      Activists are trying to preserve the prison he was sent to after his conviction for “indecency,” saying his life is an important part of Britain’s history.READING, England —-The metal stairway creaks and groans underfoot on the way to cell C. 3.3, a bare oblong room of painted brick behind a large and forbidding prison door.It was here that Oscar Wilde was incarcerated for around 18 months in the late 19th century because of his homosexuality, and this was the inspiration for his grimly realistic portrayal of life behind bars, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”“You feel goose bumps going in there,” said Matt Rodda, a lawmaker representing part of this town, around 40 miles west of London, who compared the prison — closed on health and safety grounds in 2013 — to a time capsule.But few have seen the prison, which is rarely opened to the public, and moves to turn it into a public space have reached an impasse.Last month a 2.6 million pound bid — the equivalent of $3.7 million — from the municipality, Reading Council, to buy and convert the prison into a museum and arts center was rejected as too low by the government, which owns the property.Several movie stars, including the Reading-born actress Kate Winslet, support plans to open the site as — seemingly — does the street artist Banksy, one of whose murals is said to appear on one of the prison walls.“It’s got tremendous potential,” said Karen Rowland, a councilor in Reading with special responsibility for cultural issues, who is originally from New York and thinks the location is of importance not only as an artistic and cultural asset.Matt Rodda MP, the Labour Party member of parliament for Reading East (R), and Heritage consultant Karen Rowland (L), at the site of the Victorian jail and the ancient Reading Abbey.Mary Turner for The New York Times“Doubling that with LGBTQ+ interest, and having come from living right next to Stonewall in New York City, I know the value and the importance of a national heritage site for that community,” she said, referring to the Greenwich Village bar in New York credited as the starting place of the gay rights movement.The town of Reading proved to be an important place in the life of Oscar Wilde, a celebrated literary figure until 1895, when he was arrested at the Cadogan Hotel in London and subsequently convicted of “gross indecency.” When he was transferred from a prison in London to Reading Gaol, it was supposed to be an improvement in his conditions. But prison rules still forbade most social interaction, the food was appalling and the sanitation worse.For an aesthete and sybarite like Wilde, incarceration was a crushing change of fortune depicted vividly in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” which he wrote after his release. It recounts the fate of an inmate who was hanged in the prison grounds.“Each narrow cell in which we dwellIs a foul and dark latrine,And the fetid breath of living DeathChokes up each grated screen,And all, but Lust, is turned to dustIn Humanity’s machine”Gyles Brandreth, a writer, broadcaster, actor and former lawmaker who is honorary president of the Oscar Wilde Society, said the prison symbolized Wilde’s place in global literary, cultural and social history and needed to be saved.“There are not many literary figures whose life as well as their work plays a part in the national story, and indeed in the international story,” he said. “We are fascinated by his rise and by his fall and, because of the extraordinary change in attitudes to homosexuality over the century, he also has a place in social history. What we get in Reading Gaol is that transition from triumph to tragedy.”The Oscar Wilde gate outside the perimeter wall of the Victorian jail in Reading, England.Mary Turner for The New York TimesWilde’s situation in jail eventually improved when a new prison governor granted him access to more books and to writing paper. With that he was able to complete “De Profundis,” a lengthy letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, that included some more optimistic messages.“I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” he wrote, citing his plank bed, loathsome food, hard labor, the “dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame.”He added, “There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualizing of the soul.”In that spirit, those seeking to convert the jail believe that Reading, too, can turn the suffering of its former prisoners to something beneficial to the public. Local campaigners include Toby Davies, artistic director of the RABBLE Theatre, which in 2016 performed a play about the trial of Oscar Wilde in the chapel of the prison.“It was extraordinary, it will live with me for ever,” he said. “It’s a cliché, but it really does get in your blood, it is so dark and miserable — it feels like The Shawshank Redemption when you are in there. But as a result, there is something massively positive that comes out of that, that you think this is an opportunity for good.”Toby Davies, the artistic director of the RABBLE Theatre, which performed a play about Wilde’s trial at the prison in 2016.Mary Turner for The New York TimesReading Council’s bid for the site also aims to show off other aspects of the history of a town that was the burial place of King Henry I in 1136 but is arguably better known to most Britons for its big rail station.Tony Page, the deputy leader of Reading Council, said its plan would focus on arts and culture, accentuate the history of the jail — where Irish Republican prisoners were also held in the early 20th century — but also draw visitors to a neighboring site where King Henry I is buried.The precise location of the tomb has not been identified; it might be under a parking lot, as happened with Richard III in Leicester. Reading Abbey was largely destroyed in the 16th century and parts of it have been built over, though many ruins remain.Mr. Page, of Reading Council, said the Ministry of Justice, which owns Reading Prison, appeared to want around double the council’s bid for the site. That, he said, was unrealistic because it was based on prepandemic valuations and incorrect assumptions, made in an unsuccessful private sector bid, that planning laws would permit significant housing to be constructed on the site.Reading Council’s current proposal includes a much smaller amount of home-building and a boutique hotel, to help finance the conversion of the prison into a museum and arts center.Given that the site is costing the government around £250,000 a year to mothball, Mr. Page is frustrated that the ministry plans to put the site back on sale rather than enter into talks with him.Tony Page, the deputy leader of Reading Council, at Reading Civic Center.Mary Turner for The New York TimesIn a statement, the ministry said that “following discussions with the Council, the prison will be put back on the property market. Any sale will seek the best value for taxpayers and be reinvested into the justice system, while ensuring planning requirements for the historic site are met.”Campaigners have not given up yet, however. Mr. Rodda, the local lawmaker, wants a meeting with the government and said he hoped that other finance, perhaps from crowd funding, could top up the council’s bid.Like some others he is unenthusiastic about the council’s plans to build a boutique hotel on the site of a prison where many suffered and some died. Mr. Davies, the theater director, feels the same, though he thinks that it might be a price worth paying to transform a symbol of brutal penal servitude into one of culture and opportunity.That, he added, would be “an extraordinarily positive message from a town that has been associated with a train station, and shopping, and not much more.” More

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      Review: A Selfie’s in the Picture for This ‘Dorian Gray’

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      Oscar Wilde meets Instagram in a slick, shrewd and screen-filled update, the filmed collaboration by five British theaters.Of the Olympus-style pantheon of dead writers toasting with whiskey and Benzedrine in the heavens, Oscar Wilde, I’m willing to bet, would have the most Insta followers. C’mon, the guy had style.That’s why a dark new social media-themed adaptation of Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” feels like a raffish sibling to the 1890 novel. That is, when it doesn’t get too absorbed in its slick production techniques and moralism, a sticking point for those familiar with Wilde’s satirical eye, which was more about poking fun than proselytizing.In the original, the beautiful, innocent young title character is the subject of a painting by his friend Basil. Wishing that his youth could be preserved as it is in the portrait, Dorian is corrupted by a charismatic hedonist named Lord Henry Wotton. As he grows more cruel, his portrait changes to reflect the ugliness of his thoughts and actions. Dorian remains beautiful but tortured by guilt and self-disgust.Joanna Lumley as Lady Narborough, one of Dorian’s many admirers.via Barn TheaterThe modern-day adaptation, a five-theater coproduction written by Henry Filloux-Bennett and directed by Tamara Harvey, makes Dorian (a winsome — and, yes, effortlessly handsome — Fionn Whitehead) a meek university English major who quickly erupts into a social media star.The piece is framed as a documentary, set in a world online and isolated by the pandemic, about the character’s rise and fall. Stephen Fry, underused as the film’s interviewer, asks Dorian’s friend and admirer, Lady Narborough (Joanna Lumley), for her account of what happened.But they aren’t in the same room. She speaks to Fry via a laptop screen, one of the myriad technologies — FaceTime, security cameras, YouTube videos and text messages — through which we view the action. It gives the story an unsettling sense of voyeurism.Her account begins with Dorian’s 21st birthday, when his friend Basil (Russell Tovey, present only as a face and a voice) gifts him not a painting but software that captures his image — via pictures and videos — at his youngest and most beautiful. Our Narcissus becomes enamored with the software, and also falls for a young actress, Sibyl Vane (Emma McDonald), whom he eventually rejects when she can’t match the ideal of perfection he holds in his head.All the while Basil and his libertine friend Harry Wotton (a dandified Alfred Enoch, positively sluiced with seductive charm) helicopter around Dorian — enamored, protective and possessive of him all at once.Alfred Enoch as Harry Wotton, who is unusually possessive of Dorian’s attentions.via Barn TheaterWilde’s figures translate seamlessly to the world of bitmojis and social media chatter. But the language shimmers most when it pivots between “lol” textspeak and the grandiloquent pronouncements that recall the Romantics. This Dorian quickly goes from firing off a quick expletive to relaxing into the ornate poetry of a desperate request: “Sear me with all the lines of suffering and thought you want. Sallow my skin. Dull my eyes. … let me keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of youth that this magic gives me.”This is all accentuated by the polished quality of the production itself, which mesmerizes like a Twitter scroll, thanks to Ben Evans’ digital imaging and Holly Pigott’s set and costume designs, a combination of modern and Victorian clever enough to intrigue the most fashion-forward Insta user.Most of the film happens on screens, as characters like Dorian share messages and videos.via Barn TheaterBut also like a Twitter timeline, the glut of information can be overwhelming: the nested viewing experience of watching videos within videos and screens within screens effectively enacts our digitally driven pandemic lives, but before too long the production feels overwrought.It also presents the question: Does this show, though co-produced by the Barn, Lawrence Batley Theater, the New Wolsey Theater, the Oxford Playhouse and Theatr Clwyd, still count as theater? (It’s a question my colleague Alexis Soloski also asked of the last team-up of many of these theaters, “What a Carve Up!”) The reliance on these slick production techniques with prerecorded, thoroughly edited performances would suggest no, not so much.I won’t quibble over the medium, especially when the pandemic has smudged the line between theater and film, but I will dispute this adaptation’s moral shift. In Wilde’s novel characters die as direct or indirect victims of pride, or ego; here social media, and cyberbullying in particular, is the culprit.That’s fair, but “Dorian Gray” — with its awkward coronavirus references and warnings of the prevalence of fake news, Dorian’s spiral into conspiracy theories and Basil’s YouTube video on mental health — too often tiptoes into didacticism.It’s the central relationships — everyone attracted to Dorian, his toying with their affections — that build up the most alluring drama, of how beauty and innocence can be perverted by the world and even wielded as weapons. I would have liked, for example, to see more of Harry’s complicated bond with Dorian and Dorian’s messy codependency with Basil, who, in this version, is older, predatory and closeted. The fascinating nuances of that sexual, emotional and power dynamic get short shrift.“Beauty is a form of genius,” Wilde memorably wrote in the novel. He wasn’t talking about theater, but he could have been. The beauty we encounter in nature is exquisite in part because it is incidental, oblivious to the looker, oblivious to any language we may try to use to describe it. The beauty of performance is the beauty of contrivance: tailored specifically to the looker, meant to elicit their words and feeling.There’s plenty of beauty, and even a little genius, in “Dorian Gray,” but most of all when it doesn’t get trapped by its own gaze.The Picture of Dorian GrayThrough March 31; barntheatre.org.uk More