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      ‘The Ally’ Review: Social Justice as a Maddening Hall of Mirrors

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      Itamar Moses’s play offers eloquent arguments on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it doesn’t offer much drama.As this is a trial, let’s start with the facts. Asaf Sternheim, who teaches writing at a university a lot like Penn, is asked by a former student, Baron Prince, to endorse a manifesto. The manifesto seeks justice for Baron’s cousin, Deronte, who was killed by police officers while being stopped for a theft he had nothing to do with.Also pertinent: Asaf (Josh Radnor) is a Jew, albeit the kind that subscribes, as he says, to the “acoustic-guitar-based variety” of Judaism. Baron (Elijah Jones) is Black, as was Deronte.And one more thing: The 20-page manifesto, tying violence against Black Americans to violence against all subjugated populations, calls for “sanctions on the apartheid state of Israel,” adding that “failure to do so will leave the United States complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”You could feel the “uh-oh” in the audience the night I saw “The Ally,” an important, maddening play by Itamar Moses that opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater.Words like “apartheid” and “genocide,” when applied to Israel and Palestinians, are sure to rile lots of people. But challenging the use of those words will equally rile others. Smack in the middle is Asaf, whom the play proceeds to put through a tribal-political wringer that leaves him — and left me — a limp dishrag.Whether you think that’s a good thing for a play to do may depend on your tolerance for endless, furious, yet familiar debate. There’s no question that Moses, whose biography as the Berkeley-raised son of Israeli immigrants is a close match for Asaf’s, knows the territory and its every skirmish intimately. It often seems that the arguments, on all sides, have been transcribed from personal experience or the news.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Fiasco Theater’s ‘Pericles,’ the Cruise of a Lifetime

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      If Fiasco Theater has mixed results in its production of this Shakespearean tragicomedy, it celebrates actors supporting and delighting in one another’s work.“Pericles” is a bit of a mess. Spanning decades and traversing the ancient Mediterranean like some deeply misbegotten Carnival Cruise, this Shakespeare play mingles comedy, tragedy and Christian allegory. There are two assassination plots, two shipwrecks, a brothel, a riddle, a tournament and some very convenient pirates. Deliberately anachronistic, it was described by Ben Jonson, a rival playwright, as a “mouldy tale” and “stale.”So, who better to face down this confusion than a company called Fiasco? A devised theater ensemble founded by half a dozen Brown MFA graduates, Fiasco has a soft spot for Shakespeare’s less loved works. The company broke out in 2011 with a production of “Cymbeline” and later staged “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” (Fiasco’s 2017 production of a crowd-pleaser like “Twelfth Night”? An outlier.)Rather than relying on the published text of “Pericles,” Fiasco has set much of the poetry to music — sometimes supplying original words — and interpolated passages from a prose version by George Wilkins, a pamphleteer and publican. (Wilkins is often cited as the play’s co-author, mostly because scholars disbelieve that Shakespeare could have written anything as patchy as the first two acts.)Ben Steinfeld, a company member and the director, stages this revised text at Classic Stage Company using Fiasco’s poor-theater playbook — a mostly bare stage furnished with charisma, invention, spirit and song. “A miracle may come your way,” an early number promises.Through the hectic first half, this approach falters. Pericles (Paco Tolson at first, then Tatiana Wechsler, Noah Brody and finally Devin E. Haqq) goes to so many places in such a short time that characters and climes blur, especially without the help of scenery to differentiate each country. As Steinfeld’s narrator admits, “Now this is just an empty space/It’s hard to give a sense of place.” (No set designer is credited, though Ashley Rose Horton designed the vaguely Grecian costumes and Mextly Couzin the golden lighting.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Cynthia Nixon Is Nowhere and Everywhere in ‘Seven Year Disappear’

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      A sleekly designed production, starring Cynthia Nixon and Taylor Trensch, aims to skewer the art world but falls flat.The problem with writing a play about absence: How to fill the void? When a performance artist known as Miriam (Cynthia Nixon) vanishes in “The Seven Year Disappear,” a two-hander by Jordan Seavey that opened Monday at the Signature Center, we know only that she is a narcissist who steals the air from any room she enters.“The Whitney is mine,” she exclaims in the opening scene, after her adult son and manager, Naphtali (Taylor Trensch), informs her that the museum has made some sort of offer to Marina Abramovic. After seven years off the map, when Miriam returns, she has the gall to ask Naphtali whether he will help turn his abandonment into her next piece.Scenes following Miriam’s reappearance, which occurs on the heels of the 2016 election, are intercut with a reverse chronology of Naphtali’s search for her, which is really a quest to find himself — in a change of careers, a series of sexual liaisons and a lot of hard drugs.“The Seven Year Disappear” has the ostensible trappings of an art-world satire, and this New Group production, directed by Scott Elliott, appears sleekly designed to deliver one. But satire calls for a more distinct point of view, discernible targets, and a greater measure of specificity and insight. The staging here, with an emphasis on style and high-tech mediation, appears keen to make up for their lack.The production includes a mix of live and recorded footage displayed on flat screens suspended above the set.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA mix of live and recorded footage of the actors is displayed on flat-screen TVs suspended above the slick, black set (by Derek McLane); at times, their faces appear in close-up stills (projections by John Narun) that could be digital ads for Jil Sander. Onstage, the actors are dressed in black-canvas coveralls and combat boots (costumes are by Qween Jean), and intermittently speak into standing mics (sound is by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen). The cumulative effect is one of performance-art cosplay, which could be funny if it didn’t seem so earnest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Hunt’ Review: The Hunter Becomes the Hunted

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      This modern-day fable, directed by Rupert Goold and starring Tobias Menzies, is styled with horror.“Each town has its witch/Each parish its troll,” a character sings ominously while sharpening hedge shears. “We will with pleasure/Take the life from their veins.”Let it be known that the British import “The Hunt” — about a man ostracized, and worse, for a crime he didn’t commit — does not really err toward subtlety.The simple premise can be summed up in a sentence: Lucas (Tobias Menzies, from “The Crown” and “Outlander”), a small-town kindergarten teacher, is falsely accused of molesting several of his students, and his life falls apart. The Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg told the story in an understated manner in his movie “The Hunt” (2013), which is simultaneously detached and veined with warm, if subtly expressed, empathy.Now a tragedy that feels ripped from the headlines is deployed with fable-like horror stylings in a stage adaptation by David Farr directed by Rupert Goold, which just opened at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Ritualistic dancing and chanting, sacrifices, jump scares, blinding white lights, quasi-supernatural apparitions: At times it feels as if we are watching a spinoff from the cult 1973 film “The Wicker Man,” in which an island community following pagan practices drenched in sex and violence turns against an outsider.When Vinterberg made “The Hunt” (which he wrote with Tobias Lindholm), he pulled back from the Dogme 95 precepts he followed at the beginning of his career, and which emphasize an almost Puritanical minimalism. “I wanted this film to be as naked and truthful as possible, because this was a film about truth and lies, but I had to find a new way of doing it,” he said a decade ago.From left: Jonathan Savage, Danny Kirrane, Menzies, MyAnna Buring, DeBoer and Alex Hassell in the play, in a structure that can protect secrets and reveal them, offer shelter and harbor violence.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘A Sign of the Times’ Review: A Confused 1960s New York

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      A jukebox musical about a Midwesterner’s big dreams is heavy on the Petula Clark.For a jukebox musical set in 1965 New York City — that tackles feminism, civil rights activism and the Vietnam War — “A Sign of the Times” sure includes a lot of songs by the British singer Petula Clark. When the lead characters turn up at a party hosted by Randy Forthwall, an artsy type in a silver-white fright wig (would Andy Schmarhol have been too on the nose?), he even complains that Clark is a no-show.She may not have made it to Randy’s shindig, but her hits are all over this show, including “Downtown,” “Color My World,” “I Know a Place,” “Don’t Sleep in the Subway,” “Round Every Corner” and the title track.This is a head-scratching choice because the story — which revolves around a nice Midwesterner, Cindy (Chilina Kennedy), who dreams of being a photographer in the big city — is physically, tonally and culturally remote from Clark’s light-pop universe.It all starts making sense as you realize that when “A Sign of the Times” premiered at Goodspeed Opera House in 2016, with a book by Bruce Vilanch, Clark’s name was put forward in all the descriptions. The current iteration, which is at New World Stages with a book credited to Lindsey Hope Pearlman, wisely realized a Petula Clark show might not draw huge crowds. It advertises itself more generically, and there are plenty of non-Clark songs, mostly of the very, very familiar kind: “Rescue Me,” “Gimme Some Lovin’,” “Last Train to Clarksville” and so on. (The show is based on an idea by Richard J. Robin, who is also presenting this production in partnership with the York Theater Company.)Sadly, the graft did not take. “A Sign of the Times” pulls every which way, clumsily trumpeting inclusivity and empowerment while shoehorning in hits that can feel chosen randomly, and with little regard for the action’s date stamp since several songs came out after 1965. Keeping us awake are some comically distracting details — by all means, look up what a yellow bandanna in the right back pocket of a man’s jeans meant in gay cruising circles — and choreography, by JoAnn M. Hunter, that essentially recycles a handful of the most basic moves from the “Hullabaloo” variety show.Chilina Kennedy, center, with the rest of the cast. Set in 1965 New York City, the show tries to tackle issues around feminism, civil rights activism and the Vietnam War.Jeremy DanielWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: In ‘The Apiary,’ the Bees Have a Troubling Tale to Tell

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      Worldwide colony collapse is the subject of a bright, strange, upbeat thought experiment about insect hives, and our own.Here’s a pitch you haven’t heard before. It’s 2046. Bees in the wild have succumbed to a planet-wide die-off, taking almonds, avocados and honey down with them. But in a subterranean lab, three women doing “palliative care” with four remaining broods make a hopeful if gruesome discovery.Also, it’s a comedy. Call it “Little Hive of Horrors.”That’s the setup, if nowhere near the payoff, of the “The Apiary,” a bright, strange and mesmerizing marvel by Kate Douglas, making her professional playwriting debut with this Off Off Broadway production. Unlike most such debuts, though, “The Apiary,” which opened on Tuesday at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, is receiving a nearly perfect, first-class staging under the almost too good direction of Kate Whoriskey.I say “almost too good” because a staging so sensitive yet confident could disguise whatever flaws may lurk in the text. So be it: “The Apiary” flies by with so much good humor and novel eye candy (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bee lab represented onstage before) that you barely register the way the playwright’s thematic focus comes dangerously close to obsession.The insects are everywhere. To begin with, Walt Spangler’s set is dominated by four hive boxes and a gigantic gauze-walled chamber filled with little prop bugs I could swear were swarming. The backdrop features a honeycomb pattern. The floor, the railings and even the paper in the beekeepers’ desktop inboxes are bumblebee yellow.It’s not just the visuals, though. The characters talk bees, live bees, dream bees. Gwen (Taylor Schilling) is perhaps the least emotionally attached: As the lab’s manically insecure manager, she’s freaked out by the decline of the broods under her care less because it might mean ecological collapse than because it might mean funding cutbacks from “upstairs.” Countering her, the relentlessly optimistic Pilar (Carmen M. Herlihy) fully stans the critters: They are “very sensitive and so so smart,” she explains merrily to a newcomer. “They dance! They tell jokes.”We don’t hear those jokes, but between scenes we do see Stephanie Crousillat, in yoga wear and a gas mask — the costumes are by Jennifer Moeller — performing Warren Adams’s creepy bee choreography.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Russian Troll Farm’ Review: A Stream of Memes, Eroding Trust in Democracy

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      An unlikely dark comedy imagines the people pushing #PizzaGate, Donald Trump and who knows what next.No one misses the early days and dark theaters of the Covid pandemic, but the emergency workaround of streaming content was good for a few things anyway. People who formerly could not afford admission suddenly could, since much of it was free, and artists from anywhere could now be seen everywhere, with just a Wi-Fi connection.That’s how I first encountered “Russian Troll Farm,” a play by Sarah Gancher intended for the stage but that had its debut, in 2020, as an online co-production of three far-flung institutions: TheaterWorks Hartford, TheaterSquared in Fayetteville, Ark., and the Brooklyn-based Civilians. At the time, I found its subject and form beautifully realized and ideally matched — the subject being online interference in the 2016 presidential election by a Russian internet agency.“This is digitally native theater,” I wrote, “not just a play plopped into a Zoom box.”Now the box has been ripped open, and a fully staged live work coaxed out of it. But the production of “Russian Troll Farm” that opened on Thursday at the Vineyard Theater is an entirely different, and in some ways disappointing, experience. Though still informative and trenchant, and given a swifter staging by the director Darko Tresnjak, it has lost the thrill of the original’s accommodation to the extreme constraints of its time.Not that it is any less relevant in ours; fake news will surely be as prominent in the 2024 election cycle (is Taylor Swift a pro-Biden psy-op?) as it was in 2016. That’s when, as Gancher recounts using many real texts, posts and tweets of the time, trolls at the Internet Research Agency — a real place in St. Petersburg, Russia — devised sticky memes and other content meant to undermine confidence in the electoral process, sow general discord, legitimize Trumpism and vaporize Hillary Clinton.But the play is less interested in classics of the conspiracy genre like #PizzaGate and Frazzledrip than in the kinds of people who would dream them up. In the manner of sitcoms like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Office,” “Russian Troll Farm” focuses on four such (fictional) trolls, neatly differentiated from one another and from their dragonish supervisor, Ljuba (Christine Lahti).King, left, and Lavelle as two of the trolls whose various schemes for advancement and connection end disastrously.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: In ‘Jonah,’ Starring Gabby Beans, Trust Nothing, and No One

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      Gabby Beans shines as a time-hopping protagonist tracing her trauma in Rachel Bonds’s slip-slidey new Off Broadway play.Roundabout Theater Company’s website tells you right up front that the title character of “Jonah,” Rachel Bonds’s slip-slidey, stunning new play, “is not all he seems.” And if you click on the link to the production’s content advisory, self-harm, suicide and physical abuse are among the topics it flags.All of that can leave a theatergoer in a state of wariness — which, it turns out, is a great way to watch this play: trusting nothing, unsure where reality lies, guard firmly raised against any kind of charm. Mind you, “Jonah” will charm you anyway, and make you laugh. So will Jonah, the adorable day student (or is he?) whom Ana, our teenage heroine, meets at her boarding school (or does she?). Who and what is illusory here?The notes I took during the show are filled with skepticism like that about my own perceptions, even as Danya Taymor’s all-around excellent production, which opened Thursday at the Laura Pels Theater, lured me right in.The flirty, funny banter between the self-assured Ana (Gabby Beans, in a top-of-her-game performance) and the more broken-winged Jonah (a disarming Hagan Oliveras) is utterly adolescent, as is the way they occupy their bodies. They still have the flop-on-the-floor looseness of little kids, but it’s mixed with cheeky daring (mostly hers) and mortified caution (mostly his), because hormones and desire have entered the picture.“I don’t want to be weird,” Jonah says in Ana’s dorm room, when things between them edge toward intimacy, “and I just want you to feel OK and safe and my whole body is basically an alien colony, I have been colonized by sex aliens and I’m sorry.”With a flash of white light and a zapping sound, the comforting comedy of that milieu vanishes, as does Jonah. Ana is now in her bedroom at home, where a guy named Danny (Samuel H. Levine), who appears to be her brother, gives off a profoundly creepy vibe. (The set is by Wilson Chin, lighting by Amith Chandrashaker and sound by Kate Marvin.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More