Tag Archives: Lincoln Center Theater

RIFF’S RANTS & RAVES: SIX SHOWS TO SKIP

Lily Rabe and Billy Crudup star in Lincoln Center revival of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

GHOSTS
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 26, $98-$182.50
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Lincoln Center Theater’s current revival of Ghosts, directed by three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien from a new translation by Mark O’Rowe, begins with two actor/characters reading from the script, repeating lines with slight changes, as if rehearsing in front of the audience, before putting the pages away and starting the play proper. It’s an awkward start.

The play concludes, about 110 minutes later, with a painful, seemingly endless, overly melodramatic scene between a mother and her son, followed by the full cast returning their scripts to the center table. No, we did not just witness a dress rehearsal but a final presentation — one that seems to still need significant work.

In between is a clunky adaptation that is unable to capture the essence of Henrik Ibsen’s original 1881–82 morality tale, which has been seldom performed in New York, save for a Broadway run in 1982 and two versions at BAM, by Ingmar Bergman in 2003 and Richard Eyre in 2015.

The story unfolds on John Lee Beatty’s elegant dining room set. Painter Oswald Alving (Levon Hawke), the prodigal son, has returned home from Paris to his widowed mother, the businesslike Helena (Lily Rabe), who is in the process of signing over an orphanage to the church, represented by Pastor Manders (Billy Crudup). This man of the cloth has convinced Helena not to insure it because to do so would be evidence that she and the pastor “lack faith in God . . . in his divine protection.”

Oswald is attracted to the young maid, Regina (Ella Beatty), whose father, Jacob (Hamish Linklater), is a carpenter working for Mrs. Alving. Jacob’s goal is to open a classy boardinghouse for sailors on the mainland and have Regina join him there. Manders, who enjoys playing both sides against the middle, as if he knows things the others don’t and always has a secret up his sleeve, does not consider Jacob a man of the strongest character.

At one moment the pastor can praise someone, then tear them down in the next, as when he tells Helena, “Your impulses and desires have governed you all your life, Mrs. Alving. You’ve always resented authority and discipline, and as a result, you often rejected or ran away from things that were unpleasant to you. When being a wife became so, you abandoned your husband. When being a mother became so, you sent your son away to live with strangers … and as a result, you’ve become a stranger to him.”

A tragic event shifts the relationships as devastating facts explode all over.

Ghosts feels like a ghost of itself; while it has its moments, in the end nothing solid remains. The show merely dissipates into the air; failing to resonate today, it seems to get lost in the ether. The performances are uneven, and the conclusion is the final nail in the coffin.

Two couples face a possible apocalypse in Eric Bogosian’s Humpty Dumpty (photo by Matt Wells)

HUMPTY DUMPTY
The Chain Theatre
312 West Thirty-Sixth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves., third floor
Wednesday – Sunday through May 3, $35
www.chaintheatre.org

Written in 2000 in the wake of the Y2K fears that life as we knew it on planet Earth would end, Eric Bogosian’s Humpty Dumpty is finally getting its New York City premiere, at the Chain Theatre; it’s easy to see what took so long.

Two couples have decided to take a break from their busy lives and head up to a vacation house in upstate New York, in the middle of nowhere. First to arrive are book editor Nicole (Christina Elise Perry) and her novelist husband, Max (Kirk Gostkowski); they are soon joined by Max’s best friend, successful screenwriter Troy (Gabriel Rysdahl), and his actress girlfriend, Spoon (Marie Dinolan). Occasionally stopping by is the property’s handyman, Nat (Brandon Hughes).

“No cable up here. And no fax machine anywhere. Cell phone barely works. And how do we do email?” Nicole complains. Max responds, “We don’t. That’s the point. For one week, we don’t do anything. No faxes. No email.”

They get a whole lot more than they bargained for when the power goes out for an extended period of time and the world outside threatens to turn into a battle zone they have no idea how to deal with, or with all the eggs that come their way.

Soon the five characters are at one another’s throats, but you’re not likely to care, as there’s nothing you’d rather do less than spend any time with these five annoying, self-absorbed nut cases. Because we have no affection for them in the first place, there’s no change in their development as the inexplicable and ever-more-confusing crisis worsens, just more of the same. And there’s not much director Ella Jane New can do on David Henderson’s cramped set.

When Max screams, “Troy, will you shut the fuck up!,” it’s too bad they all don’t listen.

Leonard Bernstein (Helen Schneider), waiter Michael (Victor Petersen), and Herbert von Karajan (Lucca Züchner) share an odd evening in Last Call (photo by Maria Baranova)

LAST CALL
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through May 4, $39-$159
lastcalltheplay.com
newworldstages.com

Peter Danish’s Last Call is a befuddling new play about an accidental meeting between a pair of giant maestros for the first time in decades. In 1988, American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (Helen Schneider) bumped into Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan (Lucca Züchner) at the Blaue Bar in the Sacher Hotel. The eighty-year-old Karajan was in Vienna to conduct Brahms’s Symphony Number One “for the millionth time,” while the seventy-year-old Bernstein was there to receive “some silly award” — and attend his longtime colleague/rival’s concert. Within two years, they would both be dead.

Their fictionalized conversation was inspired by the recollections of the waiter who served them that night, named Michael (Victor Petersen) in the play, who shared the tale with Danish. Over the course of ninety slow-moving minutes, Bernstein, a Jew who composed such scores as On the Town, Wonderful Town, and West Side Story and conducted extensively with the New York Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, and Karajan, a onetime member of the Nazi Party who had long associations with the Berlin Philharmonic and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, needle and praise each other relentlessly; Bernstein tells Michael that Karajan “is the second greatest conductor in the world,” while Karajan suggests that Bernstein, who has stopped conducting because of prostate issues, “could wear a diaper.”

Here’s a sample exchange regarding how Karajan has cut his intake to only one cigarette and one shot of whiskey a day:

Lenny: I find your restraint positively —
Herbert: Admirable? Impressive?
Lenny: Unbearable.
Herbert: It’s called discipline, Leonard! You should try it.
Lenny: Discipline? Oh, please! I speak six languages, play a dozen musical instruments, and have half the classical repertory committed to memory.
Herbert: Only half?
Lenny: Anyway, at this point in my life, I certainly don’t need a lecture about discipline! Look where all your discipline has gotten you! A half dozen strokes, crippling arthritis, bum kidneys!

That might very well be the best moment of the play, which otherwise grows laborious fast. Krajan and Michael occasionally speak in German, with the English translation projected onto a back wall, but it was very difficult to read from my seat. Turning the bar into a urinal — twice — made little sense, especially when the actors portraying the conductors stood way too close to the porcelain, which might be explained at least in part because those actors are both, inexplicably, women. Bernstein repeatedly refers to his fellow conductor as “von Karajan” when it should have been just “Karajan.” And director Gil Mehmert cannot get the actors and action in sync, failing to make the best use of Chris Barreca’s long, narrow set.

It should be last call for Last Call.

A cast of five tries to climb its way out of a deep hole in Redwood (photo by Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman)

REDWOOD
Nederlander Theatre
208 West Forty-First St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 18, $99.75-$397
www.redwoodmusical.com

Idina Menzel’s heavily anticipated return to Broadway after a ten-year absence is a major disappointment, a vanity project that looks great but never achieves the necessary narrative flow.

Tony winner Menzel (Rent, Wicked) conceived of the show with Tony-nominated director Tina Landau (SpongeBob SquarePants, Superior Donuts), inspired by the true story of Julia Butterfly, the American activist who lived in a giant California redwood tree for more than two years in the late 1990s. Menzel stars as Jesse, a middle-aged woman in need of healing who is escaping her hectic life in New York City and an undisclosed tragedy and fleeing across the country. “I have to find somewhere else to be / where I’m no longer me,” she sings. “So I will drive down these broken lines / past the endless signs — keep on going —” And keep on going she does, with Menzel showing off her truly spectacular pipes, although it seems that Jesse’s wife, Mel (De’Adre Aziza), was left with no explanation, much like the audience at this point.

When she finally makes it to the Redwood Forest, she can’t stop annoying a pair of canopy botanists, Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon), who are working there. Stilted explicative dialogue (Landau wrote the stultifying book, with lyrics by her and Kate Diaz) ensues, such as the following:

Jesse: Oh, well, um . . . wow, speaking of color . . . How did all these tree trunks become this . . . deep, deep black? Charcoal, onyx, jet, licorice —
Finn: Excuse me?
Jesse: Eigengraui! Bet you never heard of that color. Oh, it’s a game we play at work — who can think of the most synonyms for a particular descriptor. I always win. I’m better than a thesaurus.
Finn: The trees are black because they’ve been burned. Wildfires and prescribed fires. Did you know that redwoods are one of the most fire-resistant species in the world?
Becca: (To herself) And so it begins . . .
Finn: The bark on that tree is over a foot thick —
Becca: He’d lecture a rock if it listened.
Finn: (To Jesse) Yeah, it holds water, and protects the inner heartwood —
Jesse: Heartwood?
Finn: The wood at the center of the tree —
Jesse: The tree has a heart? Like a heart heart?
Finn: Except it’s dead.
Jesse: Dead?
Finn: The heartwood doesn’t carry water or nutrients anymore, but — it’s the strongest part of the tree.
Becca: This is part of the spiel he gives on his tours — you could sign up for one online in the spring — but right now, I’m so sorry, we really do have to get to work.

The plot goes back and forth between the past and the present, from Jesse and Mel’s first date to Jesse’s relationship with her son, Spencer (Zachary Noah Piser), attempting to explain how Jesse ended up in an off-limits tree in a California forest. References to Jewish sayings and prayers, such as Lo Tash’chit (“Do not destroy nature. You must feel for the trees as you do for humans.”) and Tikkun Olam (“repair the world”), bring the proceedings to a head-scratching halt. Plot holes grow so big that you can, well, fit a giant redwood through them.

However, the production can be spectacular, anchored by a huge tree in the center of Jason Ardizzone-West’s tilting set, surrounded by screens on which Hana S. Kim’s immersive projections transport the audience into the forest, all beautifully lit by Scott Zielinski. Mezzanine seating is suggested to take it all in, but even the visuals start to feel repetitive as the story becomes more and more stagnant. The fine cast, also hindered by Diaz’s overbearing score, can’t save the show, which is in need of big-time repairs.

BOOP! The Musical gets off to a great start before falling apart (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

BOOP! THE MUSICAL
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West Forty-Fourth St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 28, $58-$256
boopthemusical.com

BOOP! The Musical opens with a spectacular series of scenes in which Betty Boop (Jasmine Amy Rogers), the classic star of 1930s animated black-and-white shorts, is filming Betty Saves the Day, singing, “I may be one of Hollywood’s ‘It’ girls / But when there’s trouble afoot / This tiny tornado in spit and curls / Goes at it till the trouble’s kaput.” She works with her loyal director, Oscar Delacorte (Aubie Merrylees), and his assistant, Clarence (Ricky Schroeder), and enjoys spending time with her fellow cartoon characters Grampy (Stephen DeRosa), an eccentric Rube Goldberg–esque inventor, and his dog, Pudgy (a puppet operated by Phillip Huber).

When reporter Arnie Finkle (Colin Bradbury) asks her, “Who is the real Betty Boop?,” Betty suddenly begins examining her life. She tells Grampy, “It’s not something a girl like me has any right to complain about. I just . . . well, the attention is getting to be a little much. I’m not talking about men chasing me around a room with drool spilling out of their mouths. A good heavy frying pan takes care of them. I’m talking about being famous. People staring at me, taking my picture and wanting my autograph, or one of my shoes.” She adds, “I’ve played so many roles, I don’t know who I am anymore!”

Dreaming of spending one ordinary day as “Miss Nobody from Nowhere,” she sneaks into Grampy’s trans-dimensional tempus locus actuating electro-ambulator and finds herself at Comic Con 2025 in the Javits Center, where everything is in full color, including her. As she deals with the shock, she is helped by a kind man named Dwayne (Ainsley Melham) and superfan Trisha (Angelica Hale). Everyone breaks out into the roof-raising “In Color,” featuring dazzling costumes by Gregg Barnes, superb lighting by Philip S. Rosenberg and sound by Gareth Owen, fab projections by Finn Ross, and exciting choreography by two-time Tony winner Jerry Mitchell, who also directs. “It’s gonna lift you ten feet off the ground!” an attendee dressed as the Scarlet Witch proclaims, and that’s just how the audience feels as well, being lifted above David Rockwell’s terrific sets.

However, it all comes crashing down back to earth, and the rest of the show is a disappointing slog as the narrative falls apart and book writer Bob Martin, who cowrote Smash, decides the plot doesn’t have to make a bit of sense. Grampy propels himself and Pudgy into the color-future, where he reconnects with his lost love, Valentina (Faith Prince). Trisha brings Betty — now calling herself Betsy, not admitting she is the real Betty Boop — back to her house in Harlem, where she lives with her aunt Carol (Anastacia McCleskey) and her jazz-loving older brother, Dwayne. Carol is the campaign manager for the slimy Raymond Demarest (Erich Bergen), a mayoral candidate obsessed with sanitation. “When you think of solid waste, think Raymond Demarest” is one of his slogans.

Jokes repeat. Songs are unnecessary. Plot twists meander and confuse.

Yes, Max Fleischer’s original Betty Boop films might not have had the tightest scripts, but they had to fill seven minutes; the musical runs two and a half hours (with intermission) and, despite a lovely lead performance by Rogers in her Broadway debut, is unable to sustain itself, losing focus again and again, choosing style over substance, trying to stuff too much into a show that had tremendous potential.

Smash ends up being more of a dud on Broadway (photo by Matthew Murphy)

SMASH
Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 4, $69-$321
smashbroadway.com

Is Smash a smash?

After seeing Smash on Broadway, I did some research on the 2012–13 series it is based on, which I had never watched. Created by Theresa Rebeck, who has written such plays as Seminar, Bernhardt/Hamlet, and I Need That, the NBC show offered a backstage look at the making of a musical based on Marilyn Monroe, called Bombshell, and featured a wide-ranging cast of theater performers, including Debra Messing, Christian Borle, Megan Hilty, Brian d’Arcy James, Jeremy Jordan, Leslie Odom Jr., Krysta Rodriguez, Will Chase, and Katharine McPhee. Rebeck got fired after the first season, and the program was canceled after the low-rated, problematic second season.

The criticisms about the Broadway musical that kept popping up in the reddit threads coalesced around major changes in the central plot, altering character motivations, keeping songs that were now irrelevant, and the inability to decide whether it is camp, a farce, or a more serious look at backstage shenanigans. Many fans also said they’d rather have seen Bombshell itself as a fully fledged Broadway musical instead of the current adaptation which they found undercooked and overwrought, in need of more tinkering and workshopping.

It wasn’t so much the content of the complaints that grabbed my attention as the general chaos they all alluded to and confirmed my thoughts that the Broadway Smash is a dud, a complete mess that is not ready for prime time on the Great White Way.

Robyn Hurder stars as Ivy Lynn, a Broadway fave who has been tapped to play Marilyn in Bombshell, which is being written by the married team of Tracy Morales (Krysta Rodriguez) and Jerry Stevens (John Behlmann) and directed and choreographed by Nigel Davies (Brooks Ashmanskas). Ivy Lynn’s longtime, loyal understudy is the extremely talented Karen Cartwright (Caroline Bowman), whose husband, Charlie (Casey Garvin), is playing Joe DiMaggio and likes to bring homemade cupcakes to the set; Nigel’s assistant, Chloe Zervoulian (Bella Coppola), is charged with trying to hold it all together; and producer Anita Molina Kuperman (Jacqueline B. Arnold) keeps her eyes on the budget, followed along by her social media assistant, Scott (Nicholas Matos).

It’s all thrown into disarray when Tracy and Jerry give Ivy Lynn a book on method acting by Susan Proctor (Kristine Nielsen), who Ivy Lynn hires as her coach; Susan, looking like a witch from The Crucible, convinces Ivy Lynn to remain in character 24/7 and whispers advice in ther ear, often contrary to what the director, cast, and crew are doing. As Ivy Lynn, who is popping pills Susan gave her, becomes more and more nasty and demanding, Karen spends more and more time in the limelight, along with Chloe, as they prepare for a critical dress rehearsal for investors and influencers.

The songs, by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, are repurposed from the TV series but often feel out of place here, with uninspiring orchestrations by Doug Besterman. The book, by Bob Martin and Rick Elice, lacks any kind of cohesion, as characters repeat themselves, relationships grow stale, subplots come and go, jokes about drinking and drugging are offensive, and, basically, most of what happens is hard to swallow, as Tony-winning director Susan Stroman has no chance of making any of it work and choreographer Joshua Bergasse can’t kick it into high gear.

No, Smash is no smash.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER: QUILTING A FAMILY LEGACY

A family gathers to continue work on their quilts in Katori Hall play at Lincoln Center (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE BLOOD QUILT
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through December 29
www.lct.org

Pulitzer Prize winner Katori Hall explores the multiple meanings of “blood,” both literal and metaphorical, in the overstuffed, overlong yet poignant and moving The Blood Quilt at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

The 160-minute play (including intermission) takes place in a seafront cabin on the fictional Georgia island of Kwemera, inspired by Sapelo Island, home to such Gullah-Geechee communities as Hog Hammock, where descendants of enslaved West Africans made their homes and still reside. According to one character, the name Kwemera, in “that old old Geechee tongue, means ‘to last. To endure. To withstand.’ Like the Jernigan women. Like these quilts. Ever since we was brought here, we done made a
quilt every year. Some been lost to fire, hurricanes, war. Sometimes stolen by need, oftentimes stolen by want. It’s over one hundred quilts in this house that tell that Jernigan story.”

In addition, in the Kurundi language of the East African nation of Burundi, Kwemera is defined as “to agree to, to admit, to confess, to believe in.” Both the Geechee and Kurundi meanings come to the fore in the play.

It’s 2015, and the Jernigan matriarch, Mama Redell, has just passed away, buried in the traditional way in the sea. Her four daughters, each from a different father, gather at the cabin to continue the family quilting ritual, which goes back generations, to “great, great, great, great, great, great grandmama Yahaya, the first one, ‘the unruly one.’”

The house is run by Clementine (Crystal Dickinson, though I saw understudy Lynnette R. Freeman), the oldest daughter, who has sacrificed her personal life to take care of their mother. In the script she is referred to as the “piece keeper,” attempting to maintain peace among the sisters like a patchwork quilt that comes together in the end.

The bold and abrasive Gio (Adrienne C. Moore) is a police officer who is having difficulties with her husband, Red. Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson) is an army nurse whose husband, Chad, is out on yet another tour; she arrives with their fifteen-year-old daughter, Zambia (Mirirai), who is trying to find her own identity, referring to herself as an activist, wearing a hijab, and ready to affirm her sexuality, as her mother and aunts prepare to welcome her into their quilting circle. The youngest daughter, Amber (Lauren E. Banks), is a stylish, single entertainment lawyer who apparently was too busy to attend their mother’s funeral.

Each name is important. For example, clementine can be a seedless citrus fruit, a symbol of generosity, and, in Latin, “the gentle one”; Chad and Zambia are countries in Africa; cassan means “path” or “thoroughfare”; Gio can mean “origin,” “history,” or “G-d is gracious”; amber is a fossilized substance that traps the past and also is a symbol of protection and purification; and Red and Redell evoke the color of blood.

“The blood remember, don’t it,” Gio says. “It remember yo’ history for you even when they erase it from they books.” Meanwhile, Amber asks her sisters, “Do you really think a color will keep out evil? Or that ‘red is warning’?”

When Amber pulls Mama Redell’s unexpected will out of a cookie jar and she reads what was left to whom, the fighting between the siblings only intensifies as they debate the legacy of the quilts.

Sisters share a rare moment of delight in Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Adam Rigg’s lovely wood-based set features inviting projections of water and clouds by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew and numerous spectacular quilts, many loaned by the Brooklyn Quilters Guild. The tight-knit ensemble and Lileana Blain-Cruz’s (Anatomy of a Suicide, Fefu and Her Friends) expert direction make the audience feel like flies on the wall, listening in on private conversations. Moore (or colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, The Taming of the Shrew) and Banks (This Land Was Made, City on a Hill) stand out in the talented cast.

In such previous works as The Hot Wing King, Our Lady of Kibeho, and Hurt Village, Hall has shown her skill at developing strong characters in tense situations. However, in The Blood Quilt, she can’t quite stop stitching, adding too many subplots that unnecessarily complicate the already complex relationships among the sisters. She throws in just about everything — including the kitchen sink.

There’s also an odd moment when Zambia offers to perform some monologues for Amber, including one from Hurt Village. Not everyone might know that it is one of Hall’s earlier plays, but it took me out of the fictional world of the Jernigan clan, and that’s rarely a good thing in a hard-hitting drama.

At one point, Clementine explains to Amber, “Mama used to say, to get a bloodstain out you just rub it with your spit. It’ll take the stain right out. Take your saliva and rub the stain.”

If only it were that easy with a play.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

BIG & SMALL SCREEN STARS ON BROADWAY: YELLOW FACE / THE ROOMMATE / McNEAL

Francis Jue and Daniel Dae Kim play father and son in Yellow Face (photo by Joan Marcus)

YELLOW FACE
Todd Haimes Theatre
227 West Forty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 24, $70-$348
212-539-8500
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Three recently opened shows on Broadway feature television and movie stars either making their Great White Way debut or returning after a long absence, but, was we learn, success on the big and/or small screen does not always guarantee onstage triumph.

In an April 2021 interview in Vulture, actor and anti-Asian-hate activist Daniel Dae Kim said, “I take a great deal of pride in being Korean American. I know that not every representation is 100 percent something we can stand behind all the time, but I choose to look at things as whether they’re moving the needle of progress on a larger scale.” Talking about his and Grace Park’s departure from the successful Hawaii Five-O reboot in 2017 after the seventh season following a contract dispute — the two Asian Americans wanted equal pay with their Caucasian costars — Kim explained, “I had hopes that Hawaii Five-0 would be different because it was a show set in Hawaii, where the majority of people are not white. I thought it was going to be more of an ensemble show, and if you look at the early marketing and promotion for the show, where Grace Park and I were featured equally as prominently as anyone else, it led me to believe that it could be. I was proven to be wrong.”

In the article, he also discusses initially wanting to cast an Asian lead in the American version of the Korean television drama The Good Doctor, which his 3AD company produced, but eventually agreeing with showrunner David Shore and hiring white English actor Freddie Highmore.

Kim, who was born in South Korea, is now back on Broadway in the Great White Way debut of David Henry Hwang’s semiautobiographical 2007 Obie-winning Pulitzer finalist, Yellow Face, at the Todd Haimes Theatre through November 24. Kim plays a version of Hwang, known as DHH, a first-generation Chinese American playwright and activist who gets involved in a series of casting controversies. DHH makes a public stand against producer Cameron Mackintosh’s insistence on casting English actor Jonathan Pryce as a French-Vietnamese pimp known as the Engineer, altering his eyes and skin color to make him look more Asian; Pryce went on to win a Tony for his performance.

DHH, who won a Tony for his 1988 play, M. Butterfly, decides to write about “yellow face” in his next play, Face Value, choosing unknown actor Marcus G. Dahlman (Ryan Eggold) as the lead, believing he is at least part Asian. But when it turns out that the renamed Marcus Gee probably has no Asian blood in him at all, DHH convinces the actor that he must have had a Siberian Jewish ancestor, and things go haywire from there.

Yellow Face is told in flashback, with DHH often directly addressing the audience, guiding the tale while freely admitting the many mistakes he made. It starts with various public figures commenting on the Marcus Gee situation.

“Wow. That is one of the strangest stories I’ve ever heard,” Vice President Al Gore (Marinda Anderson) says.

“David Henry Hwang is a white racist asshole,” playwright Frank Chin (Kevin Del Aguila) declares.

“This is a tempest in an Oriental teapot,” Mackintosh (Shannon Tyo) insists.

DHH (Daniel Dae Kim) and Marcus Gee (Ryan Eggold) have different ideas of ethnic representation at Todd Haimes Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Among the other real-life famous and not-so-famous people chiming in at one point or another are casting director Vinnie Liff, author Gish Jen, theater critics Frank Rich and Michael Riedel, New York City mayor Ed Koch, columnist George F. Will, talk show host Dick Cavett, Taiwanese American computer scientist Wen Ho Lee, actors B. D. Wong, Mark Linn-Baker, Lily Tomlin, Gina Torres, Jane Krakowski, and Margaret Cho, politicians Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Tom Delay, and Richard Shelby, and theater luminaries Bernard Jacobs, Joe Papp, and Jerry Zaks, all played by Anderson, Del Aguila, Tyo, and Francis Jue; Jue also portrays DHH’s father, HYH, an immigrant immensely proud of his success in the financial sector but whose bank finds itself in a bit of hot water with a congressional committee as the opening of Face Value approaches.

Kim is most well known for playing Jin-Soo Kwon on the seven seasons of Lost and Chin Ho Kelly for seven years on the Hawaii Five-O reboot; he has also appeared onstage in New York City, Los Angeles, and London since 1991, including Romeo and Juliet, A Doll’s House, The Tempest, The King and I, and Hwang’s Golden Child. He is amiable and confident as DHH, instantly gaining the audience’s faith as he balances the sublime and the ridiculous with acute self-awareness and self-deprecation; he’s particularly strong as DHH digs himself into a deeper and deeper hole. His casting in and of itself is fascinating; there’s been a recent movement for people of Asian descent not to be called “Asian” but to be identified by the specific country they or their ancestors come from; in this case, the South Korean Kim is playing the Chinese American Hwang.

Eggold (Dead End, All My Sons) is hilarious as Marcus, a regional actor who can’t believe how his stature has changed once he agreed to pretend to be Asian, getting hooked on the hoopla. Keller (Dig, Shhhh) excels as the announcer and a reporter identified as “Name withheld on advice of counsel,” Jue, who originated the role of HYH at the Public and played an alternate version of DHH in Hwang’s autobiographical soft power, is gleeful as the father, and Tyo (The Comeuppance, The Chinese Lady), del Aguila (Some Like It Hot, Frozen), and Anderson (Merry Me, Sandblasted) shift seamlessly from role to role.

Arnulfo Maldonado’s changing sets and Yee Eun Nam’s projections keep the audience fully engaged under the smooth-flowing direction of Leigh Silverman, who helmed the original production of Yellow Face as well as Hwang’s Chinglish, Kung Fu, and Golden Child, her familiarity with the material delivering a fun experience while making its important points.

Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone return to Broadway in Jen Silverman’s The Roommate (photo by Matthew Murphy)

THE ROOMMATE
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 15, $48 – $321
theroommatebway.com

The Broadway premiere of Jen Silverman’s 2015 play, The Roommate, dooms itself from the very start. Longtime friends Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone take the stage together, their names projected across the top of the set, and they bask in the uproarious applause of the audience. They exit, then return seconds later in character. While the laudatory moment removes the need for applause at the beginning of the actual narrative, it also makes sure we never forget we are watching a pair of superstar performers, even though the success of the play — any play — depends on our believing in the fiction that is about to unfold before us.

Two years ago, LuPone, who has won two Grammys and three Tonys, announced she was retiring from the Great White Way because of Actors’ Equity’s lack of support of its union members, writing on Twitter, “Quite a week on Broadway, seeing my name being bandied about. Gave up my Equity card; no longer part of that circus. Figure it out.” She later told People magazine, “I just didn’t want to give them any more money. . . . And I don’t know when I’m going to be back on stage.”

Meanwhile, Farrow, who has never been nominated for an Oscar or Tony, last appeared on Broadway in 2014 in Love Letters, sitting at a table with Brian Dennehy and reading A. R. Gurney’s epistolary play. Here only other Broadway appearance was costarring with Anthony Perkins in Bernard Slade’s 1980 Romantic Comedy. (She made her off-Broadway debut as Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1963.)

So there was a lot of buzz surrounding LuPone and Farrow teaming up at the Booth Theatre for a play about an odd couple living together in rural Iowa. Unfortunately, they lack any kind of chemistry, and three-time Tony-winning director Jack O’Brien (Shucked, The Invention of Love) can’t get around Jen Silverman’s inconsequential, clichéd script.

Farrow is Sharon, a divorced mother from Illinois who has made a peaceful life for herself in a large home in Iowa City. She likes things as they are, simple, without complications, but she seeks out a roommate, both for financial reasons and, perhaps, friendship.

LuPone is Robyn, a divorced mother from the Bronx who is ready for a major change. She is not exactly what Sharon expected: a tough-talking vegan lesbian whose black leather provides a sharp contrast to Sharon’s loose-fitting sun dresses. (The costumes are by Bob Crowley, who also designed the set, a skeletal house with a kitchen and a small staircase leading up.)

After learning these facts about Robyn, Sharon declares, “I mean. A roommate! I’ve never had a roommate. I’m sixty-five years old. A roommate!”

While there is no reason an actor can’t play well above or below their age, the line gets a curious stare from the audience, who know Farrow cannot be sixty-five. (In actuality, Farrow is seventy-nine and LuPone is seventy-five). In a script note, Silverman suggests, “In terms of age, you should feel free to adjust the character’s age to fit the actor.” Because the production made such a big deal of Farrow and LuPone’s star power when they first took the stage, the number sticks out as false.

Robyn (Patti LuPone) and Sharon (Mia Farrow) form an odd couple in The Roommate (photo by Matthew Murphy)

As the play continues, we learn more about both women, their prejudices, their pasts, and their futures. Each is dealing with not being on the closest of terms with their children. While Robyn knows about what’s going on around the world, Sharon seems to be happily stuck in an old-fashioned bubble straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, oblivious to what is happening right outside her door, although that changes as she grows more and more intrigued with what she at least initially considers Robyn’s vices.

The Roommate is in part a riff on The Odd Couple, with Sharon a fuddy-duddy like Felix Ungar, Robyn a more coarse figure like Oscar Madison. (At the 2017 Williamstown Theater Festival, S. Epatha Merkerson was Sharon, and Jane Kaczmarek was Robyn.)

But the effects they have on each other are difficult to believe, not fully formed. Silverman (Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, Spain) might have a lot to say about human vulnerability and morality and female friendship, but she goes too far off the rails in the play’s slow-moving ninety minutes.

Farrow is lovely as Sharon, every line delivered with a touch of wonder, going especially high and squeaky when something Robyn reveals surprises her. She handles Sharon’s absurd shifts in right and wrong with aplomb, just going with the flow, but LuPone (Company, Shows for Days) looks like she’d rather be just about anywhere else, as if she knows she made a mistake choosing this play as her return to the stage. Hopefully Farrow and LuPone will join forces again, only next time in a better piece of theater.

“There’s a great liberty in being bad,” Robyn tells Sharon, who repeats the line later on.

It’s a catchy phrase that never comes to fruition in The Roommate.

Jacob McNeal (Robert Downey Jr.) gets good and bad news from his doctor (Ruthie Ann Miles) in McNeal (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

McNEAL
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 24, $195.50-$371
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

The night before I saw Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, I watched Dario Argento’s 1982 giallo cult classic, Tenebrae, starring Tony and Oscar nominee and New York City native Anthony Franciosa as Peter Neal, a popular American novelist on a book tour in Italy, accompanied by his agent, Bullmer (John Saxon), and his assistant, Anne (Daria Nicolodi). One critical scene involves Neal sitting down for a television interview with superfan Christiano Berti (John Steiner). Fact and fiction start weaving in and out of the plot as violent scenes from his books come to life in a series of murders.

In McNeal, Tony and Emmy winner and New York City native Robert Downey Jr. is the title character, Jacob McNeal, a popular American novelist who, while being examined by his doctor, Sahra Grewal (Ruthie Ann Miles), gets notified that he has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, an award he feels he deserved many years ago. His agent, Stephie Banic (Andrea Martin), immediately contacts his publisher to negotiate a new contract, and the Times finally agrees to do a front-page magazine profile of him, sending over New York Times journalist Natasha Brathwaite (Brittany Bellizeare), who is not planning on doing a puff piece. “Were you a diversity hire?” he asks her, kicking off an awkward interview. McNeal flirts with using AI for his Nobel acceptance speech, but soon he is counting on AI for much more as fact and fiction intermingle.

I prefer Tenebrae.

Jacob McNeal (Robert Downey Jr.) says way too much in interview with journalist Natasha Brathwaite (Brittany Bellizeare) (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

In his Broadway debut, Downey, who first acted on the stage in Alms for the Middle Class in Rochester in 1983, delivers a solid performance as the self-destructive McNeal, who has a serious kidney issue but can’t stop going back to the bottle. (Downey himself has had problems with drugs and alcohol and has been drug-free for more than twenty years.) He looks completely comfortable in McNeal’s skin, playing a character who is adorable and unlikable at the same time, as it’s difficult to dismiss his misogyny as just exemplary of the way things used to be. The sets by Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton rise and lower from above and below as Barton’s projections beam out visual stimuli, from texts and close-ups to the spewing of words and letters.

In such previous works as Junk, The Invisible Hand, Corruption, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Disgraced, Akhtar has proved to be a master of complex plots, tackling such issues as politics, race, religion, the financial industry, capitalism, and personal ambition. In McNeal, however, he takes on too much, straying from the central focus on the future of AI and its impact on literature and humanity itself to include scenes that feel like they’re from another play; even director Bartlett Sher (The King and I, Oslo), who has been nominated for eight Tonys and won one, is unable to weave together subplots involving McNeal’s son, Harlan (Rafi Gavron), with its bizarre revelation; McNeal’s flirtations with Banic’s assistant, Dipti (Saisha Talwar), and fondness for Harvey Weinstein, as his agent’s actions confound believability; his liberal use of the lives of his friends and relatives in his plots; and his relationship with journalist Francine Blake (Melora Hardin).

The 105-minute show does have a magical finale, but it’s not enough to save it. Near the end, a typing prompt acknowledges that the audience is “confused by what is real and what isn’t.”

There was no such problem in Tenebrae.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

A TALE OF TWO ACTORS: STEVE CARELL AND MICHAEL STUHLBARG ON BROADWAY

Steve Carell did not receive a Tony nod for his Broadway debut in Uncle Vanya (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

UNCLE VANYA
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 16, $104-$348
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

PATRIOTS
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 23, $49–$294
patriotsbroadway.com

When the 2024 Tony nominations were announced on April 30, there were several notable names missing, particularly that of Steve Carell. The Massachusetts-born Carell, sixty-one, is currently finishing up his Broadway debut as the title character in Heidi Schreck’s muddled new translation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, running at the Vivian Beaumont through June 16. The show received a single nomination, for Carell’s costar William Jackson Harper as Best Actor in a Play, for his portrayal of Dr. Astrov; Schreck and director Lila Neugebauer focus so much on the doctor that the play ought to be renamed Dr. Astrov.

Carell, who cut his comic chops at Second City in Chicago and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, has been nominated for an Emmy eleven times for his role as Michael Scott on The Office, and he received a Best Actor Oscar nod for his portrayal of the real-life multimillionaire and murderer John Eleuthère du Pont in Foxcatcher. Carell has also appeared in such films and television series as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine, The Big Short, and The Morning Show as well as the very dark limited series The Patient.

One name that might have been a surprise was that of Michael Stuhlbarg. The California-born Stuhlbarg, fifty-five, is currently finishing up his role as the real-life Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky in Peter Morgan’s bumpy but ultimately satisfying Patriots, running at the Ethel Barrymore through June 23. The nomination was the only one for the play, which is directed by Rupert Goold.

All five of the nominees are known for their work on television; in addition to theater veteran Harper, who played Danny Rebus on the reboot of The Electric Company and Chidi Anagonye on The Good Place, the nominees include Emmy winner Jeremy Strong of Succession for An Enemy of the People, nine-time Emmy nominee and Tony winner Liev Schreiber of Ray Donovan for Doubt: A Parable, and Tony and Grammy winner and Emmy and Oscar nominee Leslie Odom Jr. of Smash for Purlie Victorious (A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch).

A two-time Emmy and Tony nominee and Obie and Drama Desk winner, Stuhlbarg has appeared in such films as A Serious Man, Call Me by Your Name, and The Shape of Water; has portrayed such villains on TV as Arnold Rothstein in Boardwalk Empire, Jimmy Baxter in Your Honor, and Richard Sackler in Dopesick; and has seven Shakespeare plays on his resume in addition to Cabaret, The Pillowman, and The Invention of Love on Broadway.

Michael Stuhlbarg received his second Tony nomination for his role as Boris Berezovsky in Patriots (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Uncle Vanya and Patriots are both set in Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, around the time of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika program, although the exact time of Schreck’s narrative is never specifically stated. Vanya has sacrificed happiness in order to manage the family estate with Sonia (Alison Pill), his niece. When professor Alexander (Alfred Molina) — who was married to Vanya’s late sister, Sonia’s mother — and his younger, sexy wife Elena (Anika Noni Rose), arrive at the estate with plans to sell it, Vanya, who is in love with Elena and is not a terrific businessman, is forced to take stock of his life, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

Boris of Patriots is a stark contrast: He seeks out the many pleasures the world has to offer, determined, since childhood, to be a success with power and influence, unconcerned with the bodies he leaves in his wake. Cutting a deal with Alexander Stalyevich Voloshin (Jeff Biehl), Boris assures the politician that he is going to be a rich man. “No good being rich if I’m dead,” Voloshin says, to which Boris responds, “It’s always good being rich.” Boris believes he is in control of Russia when he chooses to groom a minor functionary as president, intending to make him his puppet, but the man, Vladimir Putin (Will Keen), ultimately has other ideas and soon becomes Boris’s hated enemy.

Carell hovers in the background of Uncle Vanya, giving the stage over to the other characters, similar to how Vanya has surrendered taking action in his life. He often sits and mopes on a couch in the back, fading into the shadows; even when he pulls out a gun, he is too meek and mild. For the play to work, the audience needs to connect emotionally with Vanya, but Carell can’t quite carry off the key moments.

Stuhlbarg leaps across Miriam Buether’s multilevel stage with boundless energy in Patriots as Boris battles Putin over the heart and soul of Russia. Boris has no fear, until he realizes that Putin is a lot more than he ever bargained for. “I will make sure the Russian people learn to love our little puppet,” Boris says, but it’s too late. “The fact is I am president,” Putin declares. Boris responds, “And I put you there!!!!!” To which Putin replies, “That’s opinion. Not fact.”

Carell may be more of a household name than Stuhlbarg, but the latter gained notoriety when, on March 31, a homeless man struck him with a rock near Central Park, and Stuhlbarg, much like Boris most likely would have done, chased after him until the police caught up with the attacker outside of the Russian consulate on East Ninety-First. The consulate was a fitting location for the two-time Tony nominee.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CORRUPTION

Toby Stephens stars as “Hatchet Man Watson” in J. T. Rogers’s Corruption (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

CORRUPTION
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 14, $108
www.lct.org

In the last ten years, a handful of plays have successfully taken on the financial industry, the media, and politics in intriguing and involving productions often based on real-life events. In such works as Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand and Junk, Sarah Burgess’s Dry Powder, and James Graham’s Ink, capitalism trumps basic humanity in pursuit of money and power.

Brooklyn-based playwright J. T. Rogers follows the money and power in the provocative thriller Corruption, making its world premiere at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

Rogers delved into the Rwandan genocide in The Overwhelming, the Soviet war in Afghanistan in Blood and Gifts, and the Middle East peace process in the Tony-winning Oslo. Inspired by Tom Watson and Martin Hickman’s 2012 book, Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain, he now turns his attention to the ripped-from-the-headlines true story behind the News International phone hacking scandal, in which the British tabloid News of the World was accused of breaking into thousands of people’s phones, from average citizens to politicians, celebrities, law enforcement, competitors, and the royal family, in order to get dirt and, essentially, blackmail them in order to sell more papers and gain further influence.

At the center of it all is Rebekah Brooks (usually portrayed by Saffron Burrows but I saw her understudy, Eleanor Handley), the ruthless editor of the paper and the company’s CEO. The show begins at her gala wedding, where she marries socialite and former horse trainer Charlie Brooks (John Behlmann); among the guests at the Sarsden Estate in Oxfordshire are Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Anthony Cochrane), Tory leader David Cameron, and freshly promoted News Corp head James Murdoch (Seth Numrich), the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who remains unseen in the play but is a key figure throughout.

“Newspapers are a relic, Rebekah,” James says. Rebekah argues, “Now, James, the News of the World and the Sun are the backbone of this company. They are the engine that powers everything else.” James responds, “Save that speech for my father. You two can continue your newsprint romance when I’m not around. I’m here to grow this company. Going forward, change is the order of the day. From now on, our focus is television and new media. Everything else is expendable.”

Rebekah Brooks (Saffron Burrows) in under the microscope in ripped-from-the-headlines play (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Meanwhile, after being excoriated in the Sun as a “hatchet man” for Prime Minister Brown, Watson (Toby Stephens), a member of Parliament, tells the PM that he needs a less visible role because the newspaper’s vitriol is affecting his wife, Siobhan (Robyn Kerr), and their young son. He instead accepts what is supposed to be a lackluster position on the Culture, Media, and Sport Select Committee. But when it is revealed that Gordon Taylor, president of the Professional Footballers’ Association, accepted a seven-figure payoff from News International to keep quiet about phone hacking, the committee starts investigating the case, which leads them to Brooks, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson (Numrich), and assistant police commissioner John Yates (T. Ryder Smith).

Despite pleas from his wife to let it go, Watson is driven to expose the corruption at nearly any cost, working with Guardian journalist Nick Davies (Smith), political foe Chris Bryant (K. Todd Freeman), New York Times reporter Jo Becker (usually Eleanor Handley but I saw a fine Doireann Mac Mahon), tainted multimillionaire Max Mosley (Michael Siberry), Independent journalist Martin Hickman (Sanjit De Silva), lawyer Charlotte Harris (Sepideh Moafi), and Paul (Behlmann) and Karie (Mac Mahon) from Watson’s staff. Leading the charge against them is News International chief counsel Tom Crone (Dylan Baker), who has Uncle Rupert’s ear, which enrages James, who thinks he is now running his father’s business.

Many of the key players risk their careers — and the lives of themselves and their families — as Watson can’t stop digging for the truth.

Paul (John Behlmann), Jo Becker (Eleanor Handley), and Tom Watson (Toby Stephens) uncover damning evidence in Corruption (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Corruption is a taut cloak-and-dagger-style drama that makes a bold statement about where we are as a society as technology offers opportunities for abuse in the name of leverage, control, and domination. Cover-ups abound as strong-willed and determined men and women maneuver themselves, unable, or unwilling, to see the damage they are causing, personally and/or professionally. It’s the kind of story you wish couldn’t be true, but it’s all too real.

Michael Yeargan’s set consists of distressed walls evoking long-faded newsprint; movable, rearrangeable curved tables; and, above the stage, a circle of television monitors delivering a barrage of actual reports from multiple channels. Projections on the walls by 59 Productions reveal breaking news, social media posts, and important evidence. Jennifer Moeller’s costumes capture the essence of the characters, while Justin Ellington’s sound immerses the audience in the gripping narrative. Donald Holder’s lighting features three pairs of dazzling crisscrossing horizontal lines on the floor that change color, particularly as scenes shift, accentuating the fast pace as startling details emerge.

Tony-winning director Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone) builds the tension with skill and precision; even if you’re familiar with the story, there are many surprises in Rogers’s razor-sharp script, which feels economical even with a running time of more than two and a half hours (with intermission). The ensemble is excellent, led by Stephens (The Forest, Oslo), who refuses to quit regardless of the consequences; Handley (The Hard Problem, Jericho), who is superb as Brooks, a woman obsessed with expanding her influence; Kerr (The Great Society, Dark Vanilla Jungle) as Siobhan, who doesn’t understand why Tom cannot choose his family over his job; and Baker (La Běte, Not About Horses) as both the smarmy, egotistical lawyer Crone and the mysterious investigator Glen Mulcaire. Siberry seems right at home as Mosley, following his appearances in such other hard-hitting financial works as Ink and Junk.

The one-word title is not as simple as it may at first seem; the play is specifically about the News International phone hacking scandal, but it also alludes to rampant business and political crime that is growing throughout so many sectors of society, with no end in sight, particularly because the media itself is among the guilty.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HOOP DREAMS: FLEX / THE HALF-GOD OF RAINFALL

Starra Jones (Erica Matthews) and Sidney Brown (Tamera Tomakili) face off against each other in Candrice Jones’s Flex (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

FLEX
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through August 20
www.lct.org/shows/flex

“Being a fan is like having a religion,” Matt says in Rajiv Joseph’s King James, a play that ran this spring at MTC at New York City Center about two Cleveland men who bond over their mutual love of hoops star LeBron James, perhaps the greatest player of all time.

Here in New York, basketball itself is a religion. Fans continue to worship the Knicks and pack Madison Square Garden even though the team has won only one playoff series in ten years and has not taken home a championship in half a century; the city went into mourning when former All-Star MVP center Willis Reed died this past March at the age of eighty. Across the East River, the Nets have been in turmoil since they moved to Brooklyn in 2012, going through superstars at the Barclays Center like Halloween candy, with nothing to show for it.

Meanwhile, for those paying attention, the other team at Barclays, the New York Liberty, is having its best season since the Women’s National Basketball Association started in 1997, in serious contention for its first league title.

Basketball lies at the heart of two current dramas in Manhattan, one worthy of a championship, the other, well, in need of significant rebuilding; both conclude their seasons on August 20.

At Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse, Candrice Jones’s Flex is a fast-paced and exciting play set in rural Arkansas in 1998, where five seventeen-year-old Black women on the team known as the Lady Train are preparing for their next big game. Shooting guard Sidney Brown (Tamera Tomakili) is being scouted by major colleges. Point guard Starra Jones (Erica Matthews) is a ball hog jealous of the attention Sidney is getting. Power forward Cherise Howard (Ciara Monique) believes they all need to be cleansed and offers to baptize everyone. Center Donna Cunningham (Renita Lewis) is the most grounded and caring of the tight-knit group. And shooting guard April Jenkins (Brittany Bellizeare) is pregnant but wants to keep playing, despite the strong objections of coach Francine Pace (Christiana Clark).

Matt Saunders’s primary set consists of half a court, with the rim affixed on the top of a barn garage. The floor is actually parquet but we’re told it’s dirt. At the beginning, all five players appear to be with child, but following practice, four of them take out fake pregnant belly prosthetics. It’s a funny moment that instantly shows their camaraderie and support for one another.

The narrative is divided into four quarters, just like a basketball game. The cast displays its skills right from the opening tip-off, getting into a rhythm. “My first buzzer beater ever! / I finally know I’m just as good as you! / No more Plainnole, Arkansas, dirt courts for me, Mama! / No more dust in my eyes, my ankles, my fingernails. / I’m gonna win regionals, then state,” Starra says to her late mother, who gave up bball for the army. “Ain’t no way you gonna believe this. / But, scouts are coming here, to Plainnole. / You said by the time I got older. / There’d be a girls’ NBA. / You were right. / I’m going to the WNBA.”

Starra’s selfishness leads to major problems when the teammates hang out one night at Sidney’s house, discussing Michael Jordan, sexual abuse, abortion, condoms, and boxers vs. briefs. Soon they’re in an ingeniously designed car, singing Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” each of them highlighting individual lines that are particularly meaningful, which include “I’ve been holdin’ back this secret from you / I probably shouldn’t tell it, but / But if I, if I let you know / You can’t tell nobody, I’m talkin’ ’bout nobody.” Secrets keep coming out — or teeter around the rim — as the state tournament approaches and the game plan might involve benching several starting players.

Tony-nominated director Lileana Blain-Cruz (Fefu and Her Friends, Anatomy of a Suicide) guides the action like a masterful basketball coach, smoothly transitioning between offense and defense, knowing exactly who should have the ball at any given moment. The play is in constant motion, leaving no time for slacking. In a brilliant move, the stage crew dress like referees, adding humor and referencing how the players are too often being judged.

While it’s about a lot more than just basketball, Jones doesn’t overplay the metaphors, keeping her eyes on the rock as the action heats up. Mika Eubanks’s costumes range from sweats, shorts, and T-shirts to snazzy uniforms, with Adam Honoré’s lighting and Palmer Hefferan’s sound contributing to the overall tension.

The title refers specifically to a play run by the five players on the court, but it also evokes the Brooklyn street dance known as flexing, a word used for boasting or expressing oneself, and the standard dictionary meaning, to bend, intimating that the teammates have to be flexible if they want to succeed.

The cast, which also features Eboni Edwards as the sixth member of the Lady Train, comes together like a successful team with a legitimate shot at the crown. They face serious issues at school and at home, with boyfriends, girlfriends, and relatives, and with race and religion, but the more they work together, the more their goals are within reach, but it’s going to take more than a buzzer-beating three-pointer for them to win in the game of life.

Demi (Mister Fitzgerald) leads his team on the Battle Field in Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE HALF-GOD OF RAINFALL
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Through August 20
www.nytw.org

Over at New York Theatre Workshop, Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall features seven characters on a floor of dirt and mulch, constructed around the game of basketball while being about much more, although precisely what gets garbled like a stalled offense and a defense with too many holes.

The ninety-minute play, a melding of Greek and Yoruba mythology told as an epic poem in chapters, opens with the fine cast introducing themselves, a dose of reality that immediately blurs the fantasy that follows. At the center is Demi (Mister Fitzgerald), a demigod born to Zeus (Michael Laurence) and the mortal Modúpé (Jennifer Mogbock). Observing the proceedings are the River Goddess Osún (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), Sàngó, an Orisha God of Thunder (Jason Bowen), Hera, the Goddess of Marriage, Women, and Family (Kelley Curran), the Orisha Gods Òrúnmilà and Elégba (Lizan Mitchell), and other mythical figures. Because his father is Zeus, the young Demi, called the Town Crier because of his propensity to rain down tears, is banned from playing basketball, which in this world represents war.

Mortals play on a makeshift court known as the Battle Field — “where generals were honored and mere soldiers crushed” — built with telephone poles, tires, fishing nets, and charcoal. “Basketball was more than sport; the boys were obsessed,” Elégba says. “They played with a righteous thirst,” Hera adds. Sàngó: “There were parries, thrusts . . .” Elégba: “shields and shots . . .” Zeus: “strategies and tactics . . .” Osún: “land won and lost . . .” Modúpé: “duels fought . . .” Hera: “ball like a missile . . .” Zeus: “targets locked.”

When Demi surprisingly reveals a remarkable shooting acumen, everyone begins to view him differently. But Demi’s prowess leads to both an NBA contract as well as disagreements among the Gods and a war that takes place with weapons, not a round ball.

Similarly to the young women in Flex, the young men in Rainfall engage in trash-talking and worship Michael Jordan; among the same issues that are brought up are sexual assault, prayer, and competition that extends beyond the court. Whereas the women see basketball as a way to improve their lot in life and form a close group, in Rainfall “Hera rolled her eyes at how mortal Gods could be, how like men to reduce disputes down to sporting feats, but it was done: the stakes, awful, the route to run.”

Characters in Rainfall shift between dialogue and narration, often in the same speech, so it can become confusing whether they’re talking to the audience or the other Gods and mortals. Too much of the action is described instead of playing out on the court, turning the show into a kind of staged reading. Riccardo Hernández’s set contains scrims on three sides where Tal Yarden projects abstract and concrete images that only add to the perplexity. Linda Cho’s costumes and the props at times feel more like cosplay than serious theater.

The thirty-eight-year-old Ellams, who was born in Nigeria and raised there and in England and Ireland, has been playing basketball since he was twelve; he is also a Marvel Comics enthusiast and has written books and performed solo shows. He stuffs too much into The Half-God of Rainfall, which also has problems with its timeline as it ventures between the ancient and the present, particularly when Sàngó mentions which other real-life all-stars are demigods. (How many people in the audience are likely to know who Clyde Drexler is?)

From start to finish, Flex shows that it’s got game, effectively executing its strategy with an expert balance of humor and sincerity as it sets its sights on its championship goals. The Half-God of Rainfall is all over the place, in desperate need of a tactical blueprint if it wants to have a shot at possibly making the playoffs.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CAMELOT

Guenevere (Phillipa Soo) and Arthur (Andrew Burnap) contemplate their future in Camelot (photo by Joan Marcus)

CAMELOT
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through July 23, $58-$298
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

You know there’s a problem when you cringe every time the conductor at a musical signals to the orchestra that the next song is going to begin. That was my experience at the current revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Camelot, running at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater through July 23.

To make matters worse, director Bartlett Sher, who has given us delightful stagings of South Pacific, The King and I, and My Fair Lady in recent years, and book adapter Aaron Sorkin, the author of A Few Good Men and a contemporary rereading of To Kill a Mockingbird, have drained all of the magic out of the show, literally and figuratively, leaving us with the ghost of a beloved musical journey.

Based on T. H. White’s 1958 best-selling novel The Once and Future King, Camelot is the story of young King Arthur (Andrew Burnap), his promised bride, French princess Guenevere (Phillipa Soo), and the brave knight Lancelot Du Lac (Jordan Donica), who swears to defend Arthur while coveting Guenevere. In the opening scene, the king’s three closest knights, Sir Dinadan (Anthony Michael Lopez), Sir Sagramore (Fergie Philippe), and Sir Lionel (Danny Wolohan), are furious when the carriage carrying Guenevere breaks protocol and stops at the bottom of a hill, the princess escaping into the woods.

Guenevere (Phillipa Soo), Arthur (Andrew Burnap), and Lancelot (Jordan Donica) are involved in a dangerous love triangle in Lincoln Center revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

“A thousand-year-old tradition, Merlyn — royal brides are greeted at the top of the hill,” Lionel says. Merlyn (Dakin Matthews), Arthur’s mentor, answers, “Alright, well, in the name of Arthur, King of all England, it is decreed that royal brides will henceforth be met at the bottom of the hill. A new tradition. Does that do it?” It is as if Sher and Sorkin are announcing that they are creating a new tradition with this updated interpretation of the old-fashioned musical, but they are unable to inject life into this venerable warhorse.

Songs such as “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood,” “The Lusty Month of May,” “If Ever I Would Leave You,” and “Fie on Goodness” are flat and lifeless, corpses dug up from the past. Merlyn is not a mage but a wise adviser; as in the 1993 Broadway revival, the same actor also portrays Pellinore, a ratty, doddering old man who takes Merlyn’s place in Arthur’s life.

Arthur’s former lover, Morgan Le Fey (Marilee Talkington), is not a witch or an enchantress but a brilliant scientist. “In the new century, science is going to crack the world wide open. And I wouldn’t want to see your face when you realize it didn’t make a difference,” Morgan tells Arthur, as if trying to convince him to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci and not Fox News and get vaccinated. “There’ll be greed and injustice and hate and horror,” she adds.

The words justice and injustice appear about a dozen times throughout this Camelot: “If we’re to care about justice, we have to care more about injustice,” Arthur tells Lancelot and Pellinore. The Sorkinization extends to equality as well: “Equality is a myth made by the less-than-equal,” Sir Lionel says to Dinadan and Sagramore. It’s safe to say that this Camelot is not stuck in the Middle Ages.

Talking to Guenevere about human nature, Arthur espouses, “It has an impulse to be generous and it has a fierce desire for fairness.” But when it comes to a final decision Arthur must make, he instead hews inflexibly to his ethics: No one is above the law, not even a king and his queen.

Sher and Sorkin are so focused on contemporary standards of correct behavior that no electricity ever develops among Tony winner Burnap (The Inheritance, This Day Forward), who is a nice, kind Arthur; Tony nominee Soo (Into the Woods, Hamilton), who is a strong, charming Guenevere; and Donica (My Fair Lady, The Phantom of the Opera), who is a brash, overbearing Lancelot.

Sorkin goes out of his way to make Arthur a regular man of the people; instead of celebrating how he miraculously became king, he invents the following exchange: “You’re talking to a man who pulled a sword out of a stone. I was the ten thousandth person to try. How do you explain that?” Arthur asks Guenevere, who responds, “Nine-thousand, nine-hundred, and ninety-nine people loosened it.” Guenevere then adds, for good measure, “We have greatness in our grasp, humanity does. But for some reason, every time we see it, we assign the responsibility to some supernatural force. Or to God,” as if Sorkin is railing against modern-day belief systems.

Taylor Trensch (Bare the Musical, Matilda the Musical) is miscast as Mordred, Arthur’s miserable son, but Talkington (A Nervous Smile, The Middle Ages) stands out as his mother, even if she’s way ahead of her time. Camden McKinnon (A Raisin in the Sun, Renfield) never has a chance as twelve-year-old Tom of Warwick, who gets caught up in the didactic conclusion as Arthur — or, if you will, Sher and Sorkin — promise a better, more equitable future.

Michael Yeargan’s sets are spare but attractive, with doors, tables, desks, and royal chairs rolled on and off by the cast, although an iron gate used for Arthur’s privacy gets confusing and the “round table” is actually rectangular; the shadowy lighting is by Lap Chi Chu, with effective sound by Marc Salzberg and Beth Lake, uncomplicated choreography by Byron Easley, colorful costumes by Jennifer Moeller, and projections by 59 Productions that identify location and the weather, from the castle to a forest.

At one point, Arthur insists, “This is Camelot. People don’t run from here, they run to here.”

I cannot in good faith recommend that anyone run to Lincoln Center to see this Camelot.