Tag Archives: Kenny Leon

OHIO STATE MURDERS

Audra McDonald stars in Adrienne Kennedy’s long-in-coming Broadway debut, Ohio State Murders (photo by Richard Termine)

OHIO STATE MURDERS
James Earl Jones Theatre
138 West Forty-Eighth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $114-$244
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

One of my favorite virtual presentations during the pandemic lockdown was “The Work of Adrienne Kennedy: Inspiration & Influence,” a collaboration between DC’s Round House Theatre and Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center, a deep dive into the career of playwright Adrienne Kennedy, who was born in Pittsburgh in 1931 and has only recently become more well known for her outstanding oeuvre. The Round House and McCarter hosted panel discussions and staged excellent recorded productions of He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, which made its world premiere at TFANA in 2018; Kennedy’s very personal 1996 play, the Obie-winning Sleep Deprivation Chamber, which she wrote with her son, Adam P. Kennedy; the world premiere of Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side, adapted from a 1999 story; and 1992’s Ohio State Murders, one of Kennedy’s Alexander Plays, featuring her alter ego, writer Suzanne Alexander. (Chicago’s Goodman Theatre also put on an exemplary livestreamed version of Ohio State Murders.)

I was excited when I heard that Ohio State Murders would mark Kennedy’s Broadway debut, at the age of ninety-one, in a new production starring six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald and inaugurating the James Earl Jones Theatre (previously the Cort), named after the ninety-one-year-old award-winning actor. And then I was devastated to find out that the show would be closing about a month early, shutting down January 15 instead of February 12 (following a December 8 opening), despite mostly rave reviews, the latest in a series of notable Black plays posting early closing notices since the end of the lockdown, including Ain’t No Mo’, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Chicken & Biscuits, and Thoughts of a Colored Man. I was even more shocked after seeing Tony winner Kenny Leon’s splendid production.

As the audience enters the theater, a recording of a 2015 interview with Kennedy, conducted by her grandson, Canaan Kennedy, plays on a loop, with the playwright talking about her life and career, focusing on having a family and studying and teaching at universities. Beowulf Boritt’s intellectual set consists of more than a dozen bookshelves at multiple angles, on the floor and hanging from the ceiling, as if Alexander is surrounded by an education that will not be available to her or other Black people. A metaphoric chill is in the air from a tear on the back wall through which appears a video projection of falling snow.

Ohio State Murders takes place at Ohio State University in Columbus, where Kennedy earned her BA. The frame story is that Suzanne has returned to Ohio State to give a lecture. She begins: “I was asked to talk about the violent imagery in my work; bloodied heads, severed limbs, dead father, dead Nazis, dying Jesus. The chairman said, we do want to hear about your brief years here at Ohio State but we also want you to talk about violent imagery in your stories and plays. When I visited Ohio State last year it struck me as a series of disparate dark landscapes just as it had in 1949, the autumn of my freshman year.”

Audra McDonald shifts between past and present in Ohio State Murders at James Earl Jones Theatre (photo by Richard Termine)

Suzanne goes on to share a heartbreaking tale of what happened to her at the school, involving a white English professor, Robert Hampshire (Bryce Pinkham), her violin-playing roommate, Iris Ann (Abigail Stephenson), her landlady, Mrs. Tyler (Lizan Mitchell), dorm head Miss Dawson (Mitchell), Aunt Louise (Mitchell), close friend Val (Mister Fitzgerald), and law student David Alexander (Fitzgerald), who will become her husband. Hampshire has a particular fondness for Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which deals with a rape/seduction and a strong-willed woman, and King Arthur, about whom Hampshire reads, “‘Till the blood bespattered his stately beard. / As if he had been battering beasts to death. / Had not Sir Ewain and other great lords come up, / His brave heart would have burst then in bitter woe: / ‘Stop!’ these stern men said, ‘You are bloodying yourself!’ ” Meanwhile, Suzanne is deeply affected after seeing Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent classic, Battleship Potemkin, about the 1905 Russian Revolution. Tess, Arthur, and the film all relate to Suzanne’s personal experience at college and illuminate the sources of her violent imagery.

McDonald (Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune) is marvelous as Suzanne, a role usually performed by two actors, one in the present, one in the past. (The original had Ruby Dee and Bellary Darden, while Lisagay Hamilton and Cherise Boothe shared the part in the New York premiere from TFANA in 2007.) Despite the tragedies and disappointments that hover around Suzanne, McDonald portrays her as remarkably even-tempered, almost to the point of being detached from the horrific truth. She weaves between 1950 and today with a graceful ease and a mere adjustment to her costume (a button-down blouse and long skirt, designed by Dede Ayite). Tony nominee Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Love’s Labour’s Lost) is calm and steady as Hampshire, who hides a dark secret. It’s always a pleasure to see Mitchell (On Sugarland, Cullud Wattah), who switches between three roles.

Tony winner Leon (Topdog/Underdog, A Soldier’s Play) maintains a gentle, almost frustrating pace, giving room for Kennedy’s words to tell the story without melodramatic embellishment. Justin Ellington’s sound and Allen Lee Hughes’s lighting enhance the mysterious atmosphere that pervades the play, along with Jeff Sugg’s projections and Dwight Andrews’s original music.

Following the curtain call, which includes the cast honoring a large photograph of Kennedy, the interview starts again. As with the rediscovery of Alice Childress, the Charleston-born Black playwright who made her posthumous Broadway debut last season with 1955’s Trouble in Mind, followed shortly by TFANA’s production of her 1966 drama Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, Kennedy’s is a voice that deserves to be heard, must be heard; her plays, many of which are experimental and challenge traditional narrative techniques, shine a light on racial injustice in America over the last half century and more, up to today. See Ohio State Murders on Broadway while you still can and help celebrate Adrienne Kennedy while she is still with us.

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

Siblings Lincoln (Corey Hawkins) and Booth (Abdul-Mateen II) face hard times in Topdog/Underdog (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Golden Theatre
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $84-$248
topdogunderdog.com

“Theater will save the universe!” the writer, portrayed by Suzan-Lori Parks, declares in Parks’s theatrical concert Plays for the Plague Year, a sensational three-hour show that recently concluded a Covid-shortened run at Joe’s Pub. Later, she adds, “Yeah, maybe when I started I had this belief that theater would save us. But it won’t. Not in the way I thought it would. But it does preserve us, somehow.”

In honor of its twentieth anniversary, Parks’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Topdog/Underdog is being revived on Broadway at the Golden, just in time to preserve us.

Topdog/Underdog takes place in the here and now, as two brothers contemplate their fate in their cramped, tiny apartment in a rooming house. Older sibling Lincoln (Corey Hawkins), the topdog, was dumped by his wife, Cookie, and works at an arcade, where he dresses up as President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, slouching over and over again as patrons pay to shoot him with a fake pistol.

Booth (Abdul-Mateen II), the underdog, is a petty thief who is attempting to get back together with his ex-girlfriend, Grace, and learn how to master three-card monte, a con game in which people are duped into thinking they can pick a specific card as the dealer, aided by carefully placed accomplices, magically shuffles three cards. Lincoln was a three-card monte master, but he gave it up after one of his partners was shot and killed. Booth wants his brother to teach him, but Lincoln refuses, even though his job is in jeopardy. “They all get so into it. I do my best for them,” he says about the arcade patrons. “And now they talking bout replacing me with uh wax dummy. Itll cut costs.”

The brothers were abandoned first by their mother, who gave them each a small “inheritance,” then by their father, leaving them on their own when Lincoln was sixteen and Booth thirteen. Booth looks up to Lincoln’s three-card monte prowess and begs him to teach him to become a dealer; he doesn’t understand why Lincoln won’t help him out with the game.

They might live in squalor, but they both dream of a better life. There’s only one bed, so Lincoln sleeps in a recliner; the bathroom is down the hall, and their sink, which has no running water, is instead a storage space for Lincoln’s guitar; their phone has been turned off; and they have no table, so they use a large piece of cardboard atop milk crates to eat on. That arrangement doubles as Booth’s three-card monte table, except he angles the cardboard down for the game, as if everything is on the precipice of slipping away. (The claustrophobic set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, with costumes by Dede Ayite, lighting by Allen Lee Hughes, and sound by Justin Ellington.)

Lincoln (Corey Hawkins) and Booth (Abdul-Mateen II) consider teaming up for three-card monte in Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Suzan-Lori Parks (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

At one point Lincoln picks up his guitar and plays an improvised blues song. “My dear mother left me, my fathers gone away / My dear mother left me and my fathers gone away / I dont got no money, I dont got no place to stay. / My best girl, she threw me out into the street / My favorite horse, they ground him into meat / Im feeling cold from my head down to my feet,” he sings. “My luck was bad but now it turned to worse / My luck was bad but now it turned to worse / Dont call me up a doctor, just call me up a hearse.” The luck of the draw is an underlying theme of the show; Lincoln is adamant that three-card monte has nothing to do with luck but only skill, and when he celebrates a little victory, he goes to a bar named Lucky’s.

It all leads to a shocking ending that will echo in your head long after the show is over.

Topdog/Underdog pulsates with an electrifying energy as a cloud of doom hovers over the proceedings. Parks’s (Fucking A, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of the Dead) dialogue is pure poetry as she explores the Black experience in America from slavery to the present day, every sentence loaded with significance as it challenges stereotypes and selective history. The play reestablishes itself as part of the pantheon of outstanding works about two siblings at odds, along with such plays as Sam Shepard’s True West, Lyle Kessler’s Orphans, and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.

Tony winner Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun, A Soldier’s Play) directs the play like a modern-dance choreographer, with nary a stray movement and gesture. Tony nominee Hawkins (In the Heights, Six Degrees of Separation) and Emmy winner Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen, Candyman) are a formidable duo in roles originated by Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle at the Public in July 2001 (and on Broadway in April 2002). In his Broadway debut, Abdul-Mateen II portrays Booth with an edginess and a false bravado, his relationship with the world off kilter, while Hawkins offers up a Lincoln who is exhausted but unwilling to give up as he tries desperately to go straight.

In Plays for the Plague Year, the writer points out that she celebrates January 6 as Topdog Day, when she began writing Topdog/Underdog, but now it will go down in history as the date that MAGA rioters stormed the Capitol. Shows like Topdog/Underdog might not save us from such horrific events, but they do extend life preservers that help us survive them. “‘Does thuh show stop when no ones watching or does thuh show go on?’” Lincoln recalls one of his customers asking. The show must always go on.

BOOK LAUNCH: TRANSFORMING SPACE OVER TIME

Who: Beowulf Boritt, James Lapine, Susan Stroman, Elliott Forrest
What: Book launch
Where: The Drama Book Shop, 266 West Thirty-Ninth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
When: Tuesday, October 11, $35 (includes copy of book), 7:00
Why: “My goal is to couple thematically evocative visuals with a considered transformation of the physical space as the story plays out. Set design is a kinetic sculpture that is constantly being manipulated to enhance the emotions and narrative of the story: transforming space over time. Thematic evocation and spatial transformation are my tools to create an intellectual concept to guide the scenery and support the story. Once that concept is clear in my mind, I can envision the style of the set: literally, what it will look like. When the process goes well, the frosting really does enhance the cake.”

So writes Tony- and Obie-winning set designer extraordinaire Beowulf Boritt in his new book, Transforming Space Over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway’s Legendary Directors (Globe Pequot / Applause, August 2022, $34.95). The tome features conversations between Boritt (Act One, The Scottsboro Boys, The Last Five Years) and six theater greats he has worked with either on Broadway or off: James Lapine, Kenny Leon, Hal Prince, Susan Stroman, Jerry Zaks, and Stephen Sondheim. The book is a celebration of the art of creation and collaboration; it will have its launch October 11 at 7:00 at the Drama Book Shop, where Boritt will be joined by Lapine, Stroman, and Peabody-winning moderator Elliott Forrest. Tickets are limited and include a copy of the book.

BROADWAY’S BEST SHOWS: SPOTLIGHT ON PLAYS

BROADWAY’S BEST SHOWS
Discounted tickets available through March 21, $49
Streaming begins March 25 (each show available on demand for four days)
www.broadwaysbestshows.com
www.stellartickets.com

Last fall, Broadway’s Best Shows hosted “Spotlight on Plays,” a series of all-star staged virtual readings, taking actors out of Zoom boxes and filming them in more theatrical settings. Among the offerings, for $5 each, were Gore Vidal’s the Best Man with John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Williams, Zachary Quinto, Phylicia Rashad, Reed Birney, and Elizabeth Ashley; Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth with Lucas Hedges, Paul Mescal, and Grace Van Patten; David Mamet’s Race, with David Alan Grier, Ed O’Neill, Alicia Stith, and Richard Thomas; Mamet’s Boston Marriage with Patti LuPone, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Sophia Macy; Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya with Alan Cumming, Constance Wu, Samira Wiley, K. Todd Freeman, and Ellen Burstyn; Donald Margulies’s Time Stands Still with original cast members Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bogosian, and Brian d’Arcy James; and Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue with Colman Domingo, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tamberla Perry, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Heather Simms, Laurie Metcalf, Carrie Coon, David Morse, Kristine Nielsen, and Annie McNamara. Sorry you missed that, yes?

Fortunately, Broadway’s Best Shows is now back for another round of online productions, seven plays that can be purchased for $49 total through March 21, after which tickets can be bought individually, at a higher per-show cost. The presentations begin March 25, with each play available for four days. It’s another impressive lineup: Meryl Streep, Bobby Cannavale, Carla Gugino, Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Kline, Debbie Allen, Ellen Burstyn, Keanu Reeves, Kathryn Hahn, Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad, Heidi Schreck, Alia Shawkat, Heather Alicia Simms, Stith, and others will be appearing in Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, directed by Leigh Silverman (March 25), Pearl Cleage’s Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous, directed by Camille A. Brown (April 9), Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine, directed by Sarna Lapine, Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders, directed by Kenny Leon, Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth, directed by Kate Whoriskey, Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, directed by Anna D. Shapiro. All proceeds go to the Actors Fund, which provides “emergency financial assistance, affordable housing, health care and insurance counseling, senior care, secondary career development, and more . . . to meet the needs of our entertainment community with a unique understanding of the challenges involved in a life in the arts.”

FORWARD. TOGETHER.

Who: Jelani Alladin, Jacqueline Antaramian, Antonio Banderas, Laura Benanti, Kim Blanck, Ally Bonino, Danielle Brooks, Jenn Colella, Elvis Costello, Daniel Craig, Alysha Deslorieux, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Holly Gould, Danai Gurira, Stephanie Hsu, David Henry Hwang, Oscar Isaac, Nikki M. James, Alicia Keys, John Leguizamo, John Lithgow, Audra McDonald, Grace McLean, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kelli O’Hara, Mia Pak, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Hyde Pierce, Phylicia Rashad, Liev Schreiber, Martin Sheen, Phillipa Soo, Meryl Streep, Trudie Styler, Sting, Will Swenson, Shaina Taub, Kuhoo Verma, Ada Westfall, Kate Wetherhead
What: Virtual celebration and fundraiser
Where: Public Theater, Facebook, YouTube
When: Tuesday, October 20, free (donations accepted), 8:00
Why: Originally planned for June 1 but delayed because of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Public Theater is now holding its gala fundraiser online on October 20. “Forward. Together.” features appearances and performances by a wide range of actors, musicians, playwrights, and other creators, sharing songs and stories, from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Antonio Banderas, Elvis Costello, Daniel Craig, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and John Leguizamo to Danielle Brooks, Jenn Colella, Audra McDonald, Phillipa Soo, Meryl Streep, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. One of the highlights will be Jelani Alladin performing a brand-new song from the Public Works production of Hercules. The cochairs are Kwame Anthony Appiah, Candia Fisher, Joanna Fisher, Laure Sudreau, and Lynne Wheat, honoring Audrey and Zygi Wilf and Sam Waterston; the evening is directed by Kenny Leon, with music direction by Ted Sperling.

Admission is free but donations will be accepted; twenty-five percent of the proceeds will go to eight Public Works partner organizations and Hunts Point Alliance for Children. You can also participate in the online auction, where you can bid on such items as a virtual conversation with Queen Latifah and Lee Daniels, a coffee chat with Liev Schreiber, ten years of premium reserved tickets to the Delacorte for Shakespeare in the Park, a private Zoom cooking class with Andrew Carmellini, and lunch (on Zoom or in person) with Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis. The Public has presented several outstanding productions during the pandemic, including The Line, What Do We Need to Talk About?, and the current audio play Shipwreck, so give if you can to help support this ongoing dream from Joe Papp.

HOW I MISS BROADWAY

Hillary Clinton will discuss how much she misses Broadway in livestreamed New York Times discussion

Who: Hillary Clinton, Audra McDonald, Danielle Brooks, Jessie Mueller, Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Paulson
What: New York Times Offstage event
Where: New York Times online
When: Thursday, October 1, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: In February 2017, I was at the Palace Theatre, waiting for Sunset Boulevard, the musical with Glenn Close, to start. We all soon realized why the curtain was being delayed: Hillary Clinton was just coming in, being ushered to her orchestra seat. The applause was enormous, lasting several minutes in an outpouring of love and respect for our near-president; in fact, it was the best part of the evening. Hillary, with and without Bill, is a Broadway regular; on October 1 at 7:00, she is the centerpiece of the livestreamed discussion “How I Miss Broadway.” The New York Times “Offstage” event will be moderated by theater reporter Michael Paulson; after the initial talk, they will be joined by six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald (Porgy and Bess, Master Class), Tony nominee Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple, Much Ado About Nothing), and Tony winners Jessie Mueller (Waitress, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) and Neil Patrick Harris (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Cabaret). Registration is free; Broadway may be dark because of the pandemic, but this should be a cathartic experience bringing part of the theater community together for an evening.

The Times’s “Offstage” series kicked off June 11 with “Opening Night: Explore Broadway as It Was, Is, and Will Be,” featuring critic at large Wesley Morris speaking with Adrienne Warren, Daniel J. Watts, Celia Rose Gooding, and Kenny Leon, followed by discussions with Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Sonya Tayeh, and Jeremy O. Harris and performances by Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Stanley, Mare Winningham, and the casts of Company and Six. You can watch that presentation here.

WE ARE ONE PUBLIC

Who: Todd Almond, Troy Anthony, Antonio Banderas, Laura Benanti, Kim Blanck, Ally Bonino, Danielle Brooks, Michael Cerveris, Glenn Close, Jenn Colella, Elvis Costello, Daniel Craig, Claire Danes, Danaya Esperanza, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Fonda, Nanya-Akuki Goodrich, Holly Gould, Danai Gurira, Anne Hathaway, Stephanie Hsu, David Henry Hwang, Oscar Isaac, Brian d’Arcy James, Nikki M. James, Alicia Keys, John Leguizamo, John Lithgow, Audra McDonald, Grace McLean, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Margaret Odette, Sandra Oh, Kelli O’Hara, Mia Pak, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Hyde Pierce, Jay O. Sanders, Liev Schreiber, Deandre Sevon, Martin Sheen, Philippa Soo, Meryl Streep, Trudie Styler, Sting, Will Swenson, Shaina Taub, Kuhoo Verma, Ada Westfall, Kate Wetherhead, more
What: Virtual gala celebrating the Public Theater and special honorees
Where: Public Theater website, Facebook, YouTube
When: Monday, June 1, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 8:00
Why: Among the cultural institutions I miss the most during the pandemic is the Public Theater. Founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 as the Shakespeare Workshop and located on Lafayette St. since 1967, the Public features six spaces for theatrical productions including Joe’s Pub, home to cabaret, comedy, and concerts as well. In addition, the Public has been offering us Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte for nearly sixty years; this summer’s scheduled shows were Richard II and As You Like It in addition to Cymbeline from the Mobile Unit.

The Public, which has been streaming previous performances from Joe’s Pub and presented the best new Zoom play about the pandemic, Richard Nelson’s What Do We Need to Talk About?, available on demand through June 28, will hold its annual fundraising gala online on June 1 at 8:00, a virtual ninety-minute, one-time-only cavalcade of stars honoring actor Sam Waterston and philanthropists Audrey Wilf and Zygi Wilf. Cochairs Kwame Anthony Appiah, Candia Fisher, Joanna Fisher, Laure Sudreau, and Lynne Wheat have amassed quite a lineup, with appearances by Glenn Close, Elvis Costello, Daniel Craig, Claire Danes, Jane Fonda, Anne Hathaway, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Keys, John Leguizamo, John Lithgow, Audra McDonald, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Sandra Oh, Kelli O’Hara, David Hyde Pierce, Liev Schreiber, Martin Sheen, Meryl Streep, Sting, and many more. (The full lineup is above.) The evening will be directed by Kenny Leon and hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, with music direction by Ted Sperling; the event is free, but donations are accepted to support the Public, one of New York City’s genuine treasures.