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      ‘Six Characters’ Review: Making the Case Against a White-Centric Theater

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      At Lincoln Center Theater, Phillip Howze’s daring new play offers a hefty critique but takes aim at more targets than it can accommodate. Nothing makes some theatergoers as skittish as the specter of audience participation. Toying with that apprehension, Phillip Howze has designed a pre-performance interaction for people coming to see his confrontational new play, “Six Characters,” at Lincoln Center Theater.As part of what his script calls the overture, each person entering the Claire Tow Theater is meant to be asked, “Would you like to participate?,” yet given no details on which to base their answer. The query turns out to provide a frame for “Six Characters.”A metatheatrical nod to Luigi Pirandello’s canonical 1921 drama, “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” Howze’s play is an indictment of the white-centric American theater and a warning about passivity in the face of looming fascism. Are you willing to participate in reshaping the theater and the country? “Six Characters” would like to know.Taking aim at more targets than it can accommodate, the play is scattershot but genuinely experimental and, as such, daring programming by Evan Cabnet, LCT3’s departing artistic director, who was recently named to the same role at Second Stage Theater. A principal theme — Black artists navigating overwhelmingly white traditions — is clear from the preshow and interstitial music: Italian opera sung by Black stars, including Leontyne Price and Pretty Yende.Dustin Wills’s production opens with a Director (Julian Robertson) alone on the bare stage, fumbling comically with lighting and ladders. He is the first of the play’s six Black characters: a Europhile whose elegant coat is from Italy, and who has a habit of bursting into Italian. (The set is by Wills, costumes by Montana Levi Blanco.)Scott plays a cleaner and Julian Robertson is the Director in Phillip Howze’s play, a metatheatrical nod to Luigi Pirandello’s canonical 1921 work.Jeenah Moon for 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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      Two More New York Theaters to Share Space

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      The prestigious downtown nonprofit Soho Rep will share space with Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan while figuring out a longer-term plan.In another indication of how postpandemic economics are rattling the nonprofit theater world, the prestigious Soho Rep is giving up its longtime home in TriBeCa and will instead share space with Playwrights Horizons, a Midtown theater company, while trying to figure out a longer-term plan.The move, prompted by real estate constraints as well as fiscal concerns, comes at the same time that another important New York nonprofit, Second Stage Theater, is leaving its Off Broadway home. That company is now planning to reside, at least temporarily, with Signature Theater, which in recent years has had more space than it can afford to program.The two decampments follow a 2022 decision by the Long Wharf Theater, in New Haven, Conn., to let go of its waterfront home and become itinerant.Taken together, the transitions are a reminder of the enormous stresses facing nonprofits, and suggest that revisiting real estate choices will become part of the solution for some.“If you look at the field-wide vulnerability, partnerships are a result of that,” said Eric Ting, one of Soho Rep’s three directors. “We look to each other for support and for strength.”Soho Rep, established in 1975, is small: Its current annual budget is about $2.8 million, it has just five full-time employees and since 1991 it has been presenting most of its work in a 65-seat TriBeCa space, making it an Off Off Broadway theater. But the company, committed to what it calls “radical theater makers,” punches way above its weight. It was the first to stage Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “Fairview,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 2019, as well as Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s “Public Obscenities,” which was a Pulitzer finalist this year. The theater has regularly introduced New York audiences to work by important, and often provocative, playwrights, including Sarah Kane, Aleshea Harris, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Lucas Hnath.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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      When the Paris Olympics Begin, the Seine Is His Stage

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      To open the Games, the theater director Thomas Jolly has masterminded a spectacular waterborne ceremony depicting 12 scenes from French history.In French, the word for stage, “scène,” sounds exactly like the name of the river that runs through Paris.The Seine.That’s one of the first things the director Thomas Jolly liked about the idea of creating an opening ceremony that would float through the heart of Paris.For the past two years, the river has become his workroom, offering challenges unknown to most theater directors: currents and wind tunnels, a vulnerable fish hatchery, a plan for thousands of athletes to float through in boats, 45,000 police officers scattered around for security. Also required: regular check-ins with the French president and Paris mayor.As artistic director of all four Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, he also has perks most directors could only dream of: a budget of nearly $150 million and more than 15,000 workers, including dancers and musicians. He can also expect a live audience of half a million and 1.5 billion spectators on television.If Jolly pulls it off, this will be the first time an opening ceremony is unfurled outside the secure confines of a stadium. The Seine has not seen such a celebration in 285 years, since King Louis XV celebrated the marriage of his daughter to the prince of Spain.A time-lapse video of a boat rehearsal for the opening Olympic ceremony on the Seine.By Dmitry KostyukovWe 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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      ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Review: Imelda Staunton Has the Wow, Wow, Wow Factor

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      The veteran British actress shines in a new revival that is the musical theater highlight of the West End summer.Love affairs in the theater take different forms — between characters onstage, of course, but also between a performer and the public.In a new London revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” the leading lady, Imelda Staunton, grips the audience from the beginning and holds them in a shared embrace throughout. Ths show is the musical theater event of the West End summer, running at the London Palladium, through Sept. 14.“Hello, Dolly!” has always been a star vehicle. Carol Channing first played the matchmaking Dolly Gallagher Levi on Broadway in 1964 and made it her signature part, returning to the role of the deliciously meddlesome widow throughout her storied career. The others to take it on have included Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler and, on film, Barbra Streisand. This production, indeed, owes quite a bit to the 1969 movie, the choice of opening song (“Just Leave Everything to Me”) included.But Staunton — who on Wednesday received an Emmy nomination for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown” — is probably the only English performer who can command as much respect in the role as those American ladies. She occupies a special place in British playgoers’ hearts, which this production, directed by Dominic Cooke’, taps into directly. Her acquaintance with the classics — Albee, Chekhov, Sondheim — lends a gravity to the performance, so that we understand Dolly as a fully realized person, pain and all, and not just a figure of fun.Staunton plays Dolly Gallagher Levi, a widow who has taken on the role of matchmaker in her community.Manuel HarlanWe 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 Queer Mountain Lion Leaps From the Page to the Little Island Stage

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      Henry Hoke’s 2023 novel, “Open Throat,” narrated by an animal in peril in the Hollywood Hills, is adapted for a staged reading.The concept behind Henry Hoke’s 2023 novel, “Open Throat,” is an eyebrow-raising one: It’s a story about overdevelopment and climate change narrated by a mountain lion who muses on the lives of hikers and loved ones.Hoke was loosely inspired by the mountain lion known as P-22 whose regular sightings in the hills surrounding Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, successful crossing of two freeways and eventual death captured the public’s attention in 2022. In “Open Throat,” according to the book’s publisher, the animal identifies as queer, and uses they and them pronouns.The book is “what fiction should be,” the novelist Marie-Helene Bertino wrote in her review for The New York Times, and it made several end-of-year best-of lists and awards shortlists.With an internal monologue that has poetically broken stanzas and a fluid sense of time and reality, “Open Throat” does not immediately call for theatrical adaptation. Yet a staged version of the work is premiering Wednesday as part of Little Island’s ambitious summer series of live performances at its outdoor amphitheater.The narration is divided among three performers, including Chris Perfetti, who is holding the book, and Calvin Leon Smith. “I think the beauty of it, and the reason we’re intentionally having three different voices, is making it universal,” Perfetti said.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“It reads beautifully,” Zack Winokur, Little Island’s producing artistic director, said of the book. “The way it’s placed on the page is visually interesting. The way the voice exists is not like anything else. I kept thinking that it being so voice-driven would make an amazing show, and I didn’t know how to do it, which is the greatest thing in the world.”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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      15 Summer Theaters for That Nearby, Out-of-Town Experience

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      Easygoing days of drama and comedy are just a few hours away (or even closer) in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.Summer used to be when playgoing in the city came to a full stop. With no air-conditioning, most shows closed, at least until fall.But now that urban theater is a year-round sport, Memorial Day is more like a comma than a period. Notable productions play straight through the hot months — some even opening in August, even on Broadway.So what has happened to the regional festivals, straw-hat theaters and avant-garde outposts that once flourished as the city languished? Many are struggling. Yet others are surging.Regardless, they’re worth visiting.There’s something different about summer theater outside the city. Subways are rarely involved, though a train ride or overnight stay at a lovely inn might be. Dress is casual — by which I mean “more casual than usual” because I’ve seen people at Shakespeare in the Park in pajamas. And the fare is more varied, including not just the prestige and tourist-bait extremes of the spectrum but also the hokey, offbeat and silly stuff in between.Another plus: what you spend on that inn, you’ll save on the tickets.So here’s a selection of theater that will help you get out of the city — or at least make you feel like you did.The Big MagnetsFormerly the jewel of the summer theater circuit, famous for classics and knotty new works, the Williamstown Theater Festival, in Williamstown, Mass., is regrouping after its production model, dependent on unpaid labor, collapsed. This season includes just one fully staged production: David Ives’s detective drama, “Pamela Palmer” (starting July 23). But much more is going on, including a multigenre, multistage event called “WTF Is Next” (Aug. 1-4). Think of it not as crisis management but as a tasting platter of ideas for the future.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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      Where Can Sondheim’s Operatic Musicals Find a Home?

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      Jonathan Tunick, Stephen Sondheim’s longtime collaborator, unveiled a grand orchestration of “A Little Night Music” that deserves more than a concert.Near the end of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “A Little Night Music,” the orchestra swells to what he is said to have called his Max Steiner moment, something out of “Casablanca” or “Gone With the Wind.”Désirée and Fredrik, former lovers who reconnect but nearly miss out on happiness again, come together and kiss. The instruments respond with a grand, emotive reprise of the show’s 11 o’clock number, “Send in the Clowns.”At a concert performance of “A Little Night Music” at David Geffen Hall on Thursday, the premiere of a new orchestration by Sondheim’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick, the 53-piece Orchestra of St. Luke’s let out a fortissimo tutti. Strings and winds soared with the melody, but there was more: resonant, staggered chords to support it in the low voices, and florid counterpoint. It was a moment fit not only for the movies but for the opera house, which, perhaps, is where this new orchestration belongs.Not all musicals are fit for stages beyond Broadway, but some are. And there has been a resurgence, since Sondheim’s death in 2021, of large-scale revivals of his work. (This, after years of skillfully stripped-down productions by John Doyle.) “Sweeney Todd” returned to Broadway with Tunick’s original orchestration for nearly 30 players, crackling with detail and musical drama. Last week, “Follies” was presented at Carnegie Hall with a similarly sized ensemble and a starry cast in concert.The version of “A Little Night Music” on Thursday had nearly double those forces. If anyone can be trusted with that task, it’s Tunick. He and Sondheim first collaborated on “Company,” in 1970, and Tunick orchestrated the composer’s final, unfinished show, “Here We Are,” last year.Tunick, center, was Sondheim’s longtime collaborator, starting with the 1970 musical “Company.”Joan MarcusWe 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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      Leslye Headland’s ‘Cult of Love’ to Open on Broadway in the Fall

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      The play will be produced by Second Stage, which is also planning an Off Broadway production of a two-character drama by Donald Margulies.“Cult of Love,” a play about a fractious holiday gathering of a Christian family, will come to Broadway this fall via Second Stage Theater, one of the four nonprofits with Broadway houses.The announcement on Tuesday is a further sign that the current season is shaping up to be a robust one for plays, which had been considered an endangered species on Broadway, but which seem to be proliferating as the economic climate for musicals worsens.“Cult of Love” is written by Leslye Headland, a creator of the Netflix series “Russian Doll” and the Disney+ series “The Acolyte.” She has also written and directed films including “Sleeping With Other People.”The play is scheduled to begin previews Nov. 20 and to open Dec. 12 at the Hayes Theater.“Cult of Love” is Headland’s final work in a series, called “Seven Deadly Plays,” that is inspired by the seven deadly sins; this one is about pride. The play was staged in 2018 at IAMA Theater Company in Los Angeles and there was a run early this year at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California. (A planned 2020 production at Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts was canceled because of the pandemic.)The Broadway production, like the Berkeley production, will be directed by Trip Cullman. The play has 10 characters and casting has not been announced.Second Stage also said on Tuesday that it would stage an Off Broadway production of “Lunar Eclipse,” a two-character play by Donald Margulies (a Pulitzer winner for “Dinner With Friends”) that had a run last year at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass.The new production, directed by Kate Whoriskey, is to star Reed Birney (a Tony winner for “The Humans”) and Lisa Emery as a long-married couple. It is to begin previews Oct. 9 and to open Oct. 30 at the Tony Kiser Theater.“Lunar Eclipse” is expected to be Second Stage’s final production in that space, which the company is exiting at the end of the year, citing financial considerations. Second Stage expects to present its spring season at the Pershing Square Signature Center while it explores options for an Off Broadway home. More