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Time Out
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Jessica Hecht on acting, listening and working with Arthur Miller
Jessica Hecht has never won a Tony Award, which is a fact so surprising that it barely even makes sense as a sentence. Tonys are not, of course, the only of marker of artistic achievement in theater, or even a consistently reliable one at all. But Hecht is not just an extraordinary actor with a unique individual style that might be described as intensely grounded flightiness. She is also a pillar in the New York theater world, and especially its nonprofit division: In a career that spans more than 30 years, she has starred in six Broadway shows that were produced by either Manhattan Theatre Club or the Roundabout, plus Off Broadway offerings by the likes of the Public, Lincoln Center Theater and Playwrights Horizons. (She has starred in commercial productions, too, like 2010's A View from the Bridge, opposite Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson, and 2015's Fiddler on the Roof, opposite fellow stage treasure Danny Burstein; TV fans may know her from her recurring roles as Susan Bunch on Friends or Gretchen Schwartz on Breaking Bad.) In her spare time, she serves as the executive director of a nonprofit operation of her own: the Campfire Project, which provides arts-based therapy for displaced people in refugee camps around the world. Her third Tony nomination is in the category of Best Featured Actress in a Play, for her unforgettable performance in Eureka Day as a staunch antivaxxer at a progressive day school. We spoke with her in depth about her approach to acting, her favorite roles and what it was like to work with Arthur Miller. In advance of the Tony Awards on June 8, Time Out has conducted in-depth interviews with select nominees. We'll be rolling out those interviews every day this week; the full collection to date is here. I feel like you have an idiosyncratic, personal approach to naturalism. I don't want to bore you with praise, but one of the things that I love about your work is that you seem to have a set of performance priorities that you bring to it. That's such a wonderful way of putting it—'performance priorities' is such a thrilling thing to say. I do feel really strongly that people need to hear the language and hear the story. Sometimes you're doing straight-up naturalism—a great Coen Brothers film or something, or the way Annie Baker writes, which is awesome—but not every play is going to be that. I think the older I've gotten, the more I'm interested in creating something that allows you to carve out space for people to really hear what's going on. That touches on two qualities I associate with your acting. One is that your articulation is often careful; in Summer, 1976, for example, I started hearing the particular way that you hit certain words. And I also feel like you're unusually attentive on stage—I can feel you listening. Are those things that you think about when you're putting together a performance? I do. There's a quality of being on stage that is, of course, heightening what your responsibility would be in life in a conversation. But I was trained by the greatest writers of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, who wrote with an attention to the way people engage in real conversation: how they'll take a word from the other person's dialogue and repurpose it for their own use. Williams does that a lot—the language volleys, and when that happens it is usually a sign that the two people are listening to each other, or they couldn't share that language. I'm super interested in how playwrights do that, and I like to play around with that when I'm acting—and also it takes my attention off myself, because I have a lot of stage fright. When I say that, people are like, 'Oh my God, you seem so crazy and free!' But it takes me so much to get there. I feel very anxious. If I take my attention off myself and listen to the way the language is working, it's much more fun. If somebody hands me a word in a unique way that day, I can play around with it right back. It keeps my mind alert to new things I can pick up. That's the way I was trained, and it really is interesting to me. I've found that when you're playing characters that can look adversarial or testy on the page, you tend to come at them from surprising angles. In Eureka Day, for instance, your character Suzanne has very strong convictions, but she arrives at revealing them in…not a sneaky way, exactly, but— Sort of through the side doors. Through the side doors. Even when she's being intransigent, she seems very open and accommodating. Is that an intentional intentional strategy on your part—to soften things or go around them? These questions are really making me reflect on what's interesting to me. The things that are interesting to us relate to our own aesthetic and also just our own pleasure in life. I love little kids. Anyone in my family can attest—they're constantly saying, 'You are going to get arrested staring at these children.' [ Laughs.] And when my kids were little, I loved being in their school. So when I read the play, I immediately thought, Oh my gosh, she just loves little kids. If someone is going to devote that much time to a school that is that beautiful, and to idealize childhood in such a way, she must love children. So I created a character around my own desire to be around small children. It's not really woven in there linguistically, but the language fit beautifully into a framework where Suzanne was often explaining everything to a small child, thinking that a child would really be interested [ laughs ]—it's insane, but it's the way she navigates the world. And that was definitely supported in the script: She goes about her business until she just can't anymore, and then she becomes very coarse. She can't handle life. And also it seemed to work that since her child had had such a tragic destiny, she was stuck at that moment in time. I think most people are arrested at a certain point in their life. Once I was talking to my therapist about a family member, like, 'Oh my God, I don't know that we'll ever get to this evolved place that I would hope we would get to.' And my therapist said, 'Don't you realize that most people aren't interested in taking a journey with you? They just wanna get through the day. They just wanna just feel basically okay.' So when I look at characters, I often think about how evolved they are. Where is their evolution headed, and where did it maybe stop? I was interested to see that you went from Eureka Day into something completely different just six weeks later: A Mother, at Baryshnikov Arts Center, which you also co-conceived with the playwright, Neena Beber. I feel very lucky in terms of the work I get to do. But there are things I've wanted to do for a long time that I have felt able to muscle into reality, and it feels like a now-or-never moment for me. You create enough theater that you finally think, I should trust my instinct and know what I'm interested in and just make a few things like that. [ Laughs. ] The play is an updated version of Bertolt Brecht's The Mother, which is a fairly obscure play. What drew you to this project? I run this organization that does work in refugee camps around the world, and we were consistently struck by the mothers in these refugee camps who feel completely overwhelmed with their kids' lack of a future. When I returned from our first trip, I was at the Strand, and The Mother jumped out at me. It was one of those plays—I don't know if you studied theater as a kid—but when I was in high school, I had this teacher who would introduce us to plays far beyond our emotional or intellectual understanding. We did Brecht's St. Joan of the Stockyards at my high school! Kudos to our drama teacher, Mr. Meyer. So you know exactly. And you think, What are they up to? But in reality, they're planting this little seed. When I saw that play, it suddenly overwhelmed me with a sense of the meaning of what Brecht was doing—that these stories are appropriate for multiple times in one's own life and multiple historical and social contexts. War and strife will continue to plague us, and every time you look at these plays, you can adapt the story to what's going on for you. I was coming back from a very despairing refugee camp in Greece during the height of the Syrian civil war, and at first I wanted to adapt the play to speak to that crisis, but then I sort of adapted it to speak to who I was and my sense of theater as a vehicle for telling stories. I was gifted in that experience to have Misha Baryshnikov running an institution that is all about allowing artists to have a laboratory—rather than what we're used to, which is the pressures of commercial theater. It's useful to have a foot in the commercial world, though. Even after decades on stage, you surely encounter people who know you only from Friends and Breaking Bad. Yeah. And I don't watch TV that much! I feel very embarrassed that I didn't watch Friends very often. Early in my career, I was even more uncomfortable watching myself, so I don't really know the episodes at all. But I thought the actors were amazing. Lisa Kudrow is one of the most talented women I've ever encountered. And Matthew Perry was the kindest. I mean, they all had remarkable gifts. But when people talk to me about stuff, I'm so ashamed—I don't even know the storylines. And Breaking Bad was a whole 'nother moment. I'm very lucky to have done shows that were enormously successful. And I was there at the very beginning and the very end of both of those. It's this bizarre gift I was given. I also enjoyed seeing you pop up on The Boys as the Deep's psychotherapist. That kind of part is great for an actor who's the right kind of listener. If you're the right kind of listener, and also if you don't put too much weight on things. Particularly if you get onto a show early. I think of going onto these TV shows or films that are unknown entities as being a helpful player in their process. [ Laughs. ] On The Boys, I kept thinking, 'I just wanna do a nice job for them, because they have to have something to balance all this depraved superhero stuff out.' You just walk in like you're going to do a reading of something that might be lovely. And then you never know what'll happen and you don't have to put too much pressure on it. Also, I come from a whole family of mental health workers. My dad was a psychiatrist. My sister's a psychiatrist. My mom and my sisters are therapists. Same! My dad's a psychiatrist, and my mom's a therapist and social worker. You and I have got to meet and talk about that at another juncture. Where did they work? In Montreal. In Montreal! Oh my God. I love Montreal. My grandmother and all her siblings were at the Baron de Hirsch orphanage there, which helped so many destitute Jewish kids who came to Montreal. Baron de Hirsch was a big name in the Jewish community—this incredible philanthropic man. Montreal has a history of helping. And also, my husband says the best bagels are from there. Speaking of Jews, I saw you in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, opposite Laurie Metcalf, and I thought it was wonderful. I was sad that it closed so quickly. That was awesome. My mother grew up in the same neck of the Bronx as [producer] Manny Eisenberg and Manny's dear sister who just passed away, Cookie Eisenberg—my mother went to school with her. And Neil really had a lot of roots in that area, although he's known for being from Brooklyn. My mother was originally from Brooklyn, so that whole world of immigrant Jews trying to find their way was super familiar. Historically, Neil didn't usually cast Jewish women in those parts, but somehow I slid in. And I felt like I had to very delicately play my Bronx 1937 card or whatever it was. But I knew it in my gut. That was a fascinating thing—not to make a caricature of the people you knew, not to blow it up too much, which is always very difficult if you know someone. And Neil was there in the room, and Manny, who I think is one of the greatest minds of the American theater. But also acting with Laurie Metcalf is utterly thrilling. It's like a sporting event in the best way. You have to get it right—you come right back and try to meet her incredible depth and energy. I loved trying to do that with a character who was slightly blind. And that was my first experience with [director] David Cromer. He had just arrived from Chicago, and he has a magnificent storytelling technique, which also inspired me deeply. Later I did Streetcar with Cromer at Williamstown, with the truly great Sam Rockwell. I'm always struck by how allergic to sentimentality Cromer seems to be. I love that you said allergic. He is. He has a horror of it. Horror! 'Why are you crying? Why are you crying? He died. Come on, move forward.' He has that great phrase: 'Just do what a person would do.' Which is true. And he does have an extraordinary mind for storytelling. That's sort of like what we were talking about at the beginning, about how you think I manage the language. I just want people to hear what the words are so they can have a relationship to the language, to the story, and not just to me. Cromer has an impeccable way of looking at the information the audience needs, rather than letting the behavior of the character override that. It can be hard when you're navigating that kind of linguistic precision and delivery on stage to not have it be empty. The trick is to find something happening— —even though you're managing stuff. I think that is a big trick, but you know, I think we are affected by our own storytelling more than we ever trust. You don't have to fabricate—I shouldn't say fabricate, but you don't have to generate as much emotion around storytelling. If you are really listening, as we were just talking about, and really trying to find the way in which you as a person are experiencing the story in the moment, you just automatically generate emotion. We do as actors, but also—think about how much emotion you go through in the course of a day, hearing something that happened in the world. If you are really organized toward your emotional response to that, you realize how much that can happen on stage if you are able to empty yourself to the simplicity of the story. The more we kind of fabricate stuff, the more distant we get from the story. I had a really great conversation on something related to this a few years ago with Didi O'Connell, whom I absolutely adore— [ Gasps. ] Goddess. Just, goddess. —and she was doing Dana H., which was incredibly physically disciplined. [The entire performance was lip-synched to audio of a real woman's description of a harrowing sequence of events] so there was no room for her to add any big emotional theatrics. But what was also striking is that there was no such emotional moment in the audio itself. The woman's tone was very straightforward. And that made me think about how artificial a lot of storytelling approaches are—those moments when people are telling stories on stage or onscreen and they kind of act out the story instead of telling it. I was just thinking about that piece literally yesterday—how she talks about that guy putting the gun up her ass, the shock that that had happened. She did have an emotion, but it was more about the… absurdity of the situation. So the audience was terrified for her. If you don't fill in all the emotion, the audience can have the emotion of sheer terror and despair. But she's still not even able to process it. Right. If you're talking about someone having a gun in your face— Let alone in your ass! —let alone in your ass!—you're not behaving the way you would if someone were actually doing that to you. You're telling the story of someone having a gun in your face, you're navigating what it is to tell that story. Whom are you telling it to? What are their reactions going to be? How do you feel about bringing it up again? When was the last time you told this story? Right, a story with detail. The detail of the story is what you want someone to hear, and that's what great writing does. Not just that you were really upset; you forget that after a while. It's so interesting. I was thinking about these stories—I don't mean to go back to the refugee stuff I work on, but most of these kids have been tortured, and when they write their asylum statements they are desperate to tell all the details, because the accumulation of those details is why someone had to flee. It's not that they're sitting there crying that someone tried to kill them multiple times, it's the detail. What Didi does, and what I aspire to do, is create enough details that you completely believe the person. That's all! And there's really no amount of emotional gymnastics that you could do every night the same way that would be as trustworthy as the description. [ Laughs.] Does that make sense? You can't trust that you'll get there emotionally every night. You'd make your scene partner crazy, because it would require that they give you the same prompts every night in the same exact way. That's so punitive. You never know what the person opposite you is going to be capable of! We're human! We don't know! We're going to be doing a hundred shows, two hundred shows! You've been in three Arthur Miller plays on Broadway: After the Fall, A View from the Bridge and The Price. Miller's language is generally less poetical than that of other playwrights whose work you've done in revivals, such as Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams. How do you make that language sing? That's a great question. He wrote many of his plays to approximate authentic human speech. He was super interested, particularly in A View from the Bridge —he would go to those places and really try to write out what he thought people were doing, with a kind of literal justice to the way language worked that he was hearing. Your responsibility to that is enormous. He was still around when you were doing After the Fall, right? Yes. He was there for After the Fall, and he didn't like that we had books about Marilyn on the table. Carla Gugino played Maggie [the Marilyn-like part] and she was stunning. She's a magnificent actress, and she's a deeply thoughtful actress and person. Even though she's stunning and often cast in parts that create this goddess-like impression, her whole thing as a person is about connection. But yes, Arthur was with us, and that was life-changing. I auditioned for Arthur several times before I got that job, for different things. And he was always so kind. He would say, 'We're going to work together at some point.' As I said, I get nervous a lot, and many times I've literally had to talk to myself—when I'm in a situation where somebody much less brilliant than Arthur Miller is telling me how a scene works, or telling me I'm coming up short, I think: Just calm down. I figured out something with Arthur Miller. I will figure it out. It just breaks my heart thinking about him. He suffered from such a feeling of—I love that documentary his brilliant daughter Rebecca made, about how much he focused at the end on critics and what he didn't succeed at doing, and how they didn't really always get him. Isn't that funny? Authors' relationships to their own work can be so fraught. I have a weird relationship to that, obviously, as someone who writes about people's work. Sometimes I'll hit on something that is exactly what they were trying for, and sometimes they'll think I got it wrong. And sometimes maybe I did get it wrong! But also maybe sometimes I'm seeing what they did in a way they aren't seeing, because they're too close to it—where someone doesn't realize that what they've written reveals something about them, or that it operates in a way they didn't intend. And Miller was always cagy about the autobiographical elements of After the Fall even though it's obviously autobiographical. But maybe a public denial can be necessary for the thing to happen at all, because otherwise it's too lurid. It's like what I said about becoming a caricature of yourself if you're playing your mother or your sister or your cousin—someone you really know. I think he was cognizant of his own life being seen in a two-dimensional way, because people think they can read a book about him and then play him, and then they often play him with less complexity than he had. That was probably his biggest fear: that we'd do research by reading Timebends rather than just looking at the language of the play. He wanted very badly to put things into simple terms for the actors doing his work. In After the Fall I played Louise, his first wife and the mother of two of his kids. When we were working on that play—and he knew we had all read Timebends and this and that—he said: 'Look: You're such a nice wife, and you made a beautiful dinner, and every night you do the same, and you get everyone organized, and your husband is never on time. And you have this beautiful dinner, and this night was particularly special.' And you're like, Oh, okay! [ Laughs. ] I don't need to think about your wife. I'm a mom with two kids and a husband! I understand what it means to feel, like, 'Where the fuck are you? I made this dinner.' You've had the chance to work with a lot of great living playwrights—not just Miller at that time but also people like Richard Greenberg and Sarah Ruhl. Is it better or worse to work with a living writer? It depends on the living writer. It depends on how difficult it is to simplify what you think will work with that writer. If it's someone as clear-thinking as Miller, at a certain juncture in his life where he knows how things work for him and how to talk to actors, then you reorganize yourself and say, 'I can fulfill this mission of simplifying things.' If you're dealing with someone who has a more elusive sense of what they want, and you can't figure out how to get that from them, that's really challenging. Someone like Sarah, who is an exquisite writer—if you just follow the poetry of what she's doing, very simply, and try not to manipulate it into a different frame, then you're fine. It's all about trying to codify—for yourself—how to do different writers' work. It's not going to be the same. Each writer is different, and that's the puzzle of working with a living writer who has an aesthetic you appreciate but you don't know how to do it yet. Another Broadway performance of yours that I really treasured was in Greenberg's The Assembled Parties. A friend of mine who knows her work well said he felt like you were channeling Jill Clayburgh in that one. Was that something you had in mind? It actually was. Because she died right around that time. Rich is just peerless in his work, and I am so fond of his writing. And we were doing a reading of My Mother's Brief Affair, and he had written it for Jill, which before Linda [Lavin]—bless both of them—before Linda took that part. And Jill had a quality with his writing that was unlike anybody I'd seen. She didn't know the charms she had, when she was reading or being. Maybe it was because she was sick, too, and was just trying to get through the reading without causing any waves that might make her feel unwell. But I thought she was so graceful. I didn't know, but her grace was definitely something that influenced me. And Rich was very fond of her. So, yeah. She was magnificent. Okay, I have one more question for you, but it's a two-part question. When you look back on your stage career, what part would you want to go back and do again because you had such a great time doing it, and which part would you want to go back and do again because you think you would do something differently? Oh, beautiful. The one I would wanna go back and do again, because I feel new things might be new things to be revealed, is this play called Stop Kiss [by Diana Son]. That was my first big success. This was at the Public in the late 1990s? At the Public, yeah. I relied a lot on my own, for lack of a better word, 'quirkiness' at that time to figure out how the language worked in a way that was seamless—so that when there were all of these different things going on there was still a seamlessness to it. It was the first time I felt like, 'Oh, now I can do multiple things at once, and go from a serious scene to a funny scene. I know how to do this thing, and I didn't know I knew how to do this thing before!' But I would like to do it again with my head screwed on a little bit better, with more precision and less abandon. I was also pregnant when I did that play, so it was a little bit overwhelming. Is that the one where the Times critic compared you to Sandy Dennis? Maybe? Or that might've been—because it's funny, I genuinely stay away from reading reviews, but my mother still gives me a sense of things—and that might've been Rich's great play The House in Town, because she said, 'Well, they didn't really like what you did, but they said it was because you were too much like someone I think is very talented, Sandy Dennis.' No, this one was a compliment! I guess you were compared to her in two Times reviews. So not just a fail! And I like Sandy Dennis. I remember Joe Mantello once saying that one of his favorite actors was Sandy Dennis, and I was like, Oh, good! [ Laughs. ] She was great in the right part! I just saw Another Woman again, the Woody Allen movie, and she has only two scenes but she runs away with that movie. That scene in the restaurant booth is just amazing. Because she found this little portal. She was more of a Method actor, but she would find a little portal, and then you were like, Oh my God, nobody would figure that out besides you. And what about the part that you would like to do again just for the pleasure? I would want to do Blanche again [in A Streetcar Named Desire ], although I'm obviously far too old. I would want to do Blanche again because the specificity of that language—to be able to speak that again… I teach that play, and I sometimes think of the language of Blanche as just a Bible for one's existence, in terms of why I act, and why people get lost in life. David Cromer explained a lot about that play when he said, 'Blanche and Stanley are two very, very capable human beings, real survivors. Stanley has had very good luck, and Blanche has had terrible luck. She's not just crazy. She's had horrible luck.' I think about how people survive with terrible luck. And I think it's such an interesting task as an actor to figure that out.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Blue Man Group's Longtime Home Will Stage Off Broadway Dramas
For 34 years, Astor Place Theater, a humble venue in a historic building in Lower Manhattan, was occupied by a single show, Blue Man Group, which spun profits out of performance art. But Blue Man Group closed its New York production in February, and now another company will take a turn making art in the space: No Guarantees Productions, a venture established in 2017 that has put money into multiple Broadway and West End shows. 'We love the location, and the theater is in fabulous condition,' said Megan O'Keefe, executive vice president of No Guarantees. She said the company hopes to present three to four Off Broadway shows a year at Astor Place, some of which it will produce, and some of which will be projects developed by other producers who would rent the space. No Guarantees is the latest for-profit company taking over an Off Broadway theater at a time when the commercial Off Broadway sector has been enjoying an unexpected rebound. Another example: Seaview Productions is now operating a Midtown Manhattan venue previously run by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater; the first show at what is now called Studio Seaview is 'Angry Alan,' a play starring John Krasinski and currently in previews. 'What we're seeing more and more is that there are a lot of really beautiful shows that just are never going to attract the audience, and/or support the budget, that you increasingly need to put on a flashy Broadway show,' O'Keefe said. 'And that's why I think we've seen a real resurgence of interest and popularity in the commercial Off Broadway space.' No Guarantees has deep pockets. It was founded and is led by Christine Schwarzman, an intellectual property lawyer who is married to Stephen A. Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of Blackstone, a huge investment firm. Christine Schwarzman, either as an individual or through No Guarantees, has producing credits on 30 Broadway shows over the last seven years. The company says it was involved with one-third of the commercial productions that opened on Broadway this season, and it was among the lead producers of 'The Hills of California,' which is nominated for a Tony Award as best play. The company's track record, as for every producer, is mixed — in 2023 No Guarantees was a lead producer of 'Fat Ham,' a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, as well as the musical 'Bad Cinderella,' which was a significant flop. No Guarantees has also been supporting the development of musicals at nonprofit theaters, including 'Goddess,' which is now at the Public Theater in New York, and 'Huzzah!' which is scheduled to begin performances in September at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. No Guarantees has signed a long-term lease to operate Astor Place Theater, which has 298 seats and is still owned by founders of Blue Man Group. O'Keefe said that No Guarantees wants to begin presenting shows at Astor Place as soon as this fall. She said the theater does not require renovations, but that No Guarantees expects over time to convert an adjoining space that Blue Man Group had used for carpentry and laundry into a restaurant and bar. 'We're really interested in building out a model for plays, for small musicals, and trying to figure out how can we give them enough runway if they're successful that they can extend,' she said.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Tom Hanks Wrote a Play, and Will Star in It Off Broadway This Fall
Tom Hanks, the acclaimed film actor, has written a new play about love, longing and time-travel, and is planning to star in an Off Broadway production of it this fall. The play, 'This World of Tomorrow,' will be staged in a 550-seat theater at the Shed, a performing arts venue on Manhattan's Far West Side that has been helping Hanks develop the work over the last year. The play is scheduled to run for just eight weeks, from Oct. 30 to Dec. 21. 'This World of Tomorrow' is about a scientist from the future who travels back in time — to the 1939 World's Fair in Queens — searching for love. It is based on elements of Hanks's 'Uncommon Type,' a collection of short stories published in 2017. Hanks, who will play the scientist, will lead a cast of 10 to 12 performers, some of whom will take on multiple roles. A two-time Oscar winner (for 'Philadelphia' and 'Forrest Gump'), Hanks has one Broadway credit, 'Lucky Guy,' a 2013 newsroom drama for which he received Tony Award nomination. Hanks wrote the new play with James Glossman, a playwright and director with whom he has collaborated on other projects, including 'Safe Home,' which had a production in 2022 at Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, N.Y. (It was also based on 'Uncommon Type' stories.) The director of the new play will be Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in 2014 for 'A Raisin in the Sun.' Alex Poots, the artistic director of the Shed, said Hanks's team approached him last year when they were looking for a place to develop the show. Poots leapt at the opportunity, he said, thinking 'he's one of the most beloved and trusted storytellers of our time.' Poots called the play 'a classic love story,' but also noted that, because parts of it take place in 1939, 'there is reference to the rise in authoritarianism.' 'This World of Tomorrow' is one of three upcoming theater pieces to be staged at the Shed. It will present, in collaboration with Los Angeles's Geffen Playhouse, a revival of Tarell Alvin McCraney's play 'The Brothers Size,' starring André Holland, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 28. And from June 17 to Oct. 19 it will present 'Viola's Room,' an immersive audio production narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. It was created by Punchdrunk, the company behind 'Sleep No More.'
Forbes
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Off-Broadway's Bold Voices Take Center Stage At The Lucille Lortel Awards
Andrew Scott. His show, Vanya, won a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show Since 1986, the Lucille Lortel Awards have been celebrating excellence in Off-Broadway theater. Named for visionary producer Lucille Lortel, who was called 'Queen of Off Broadway,' the awards honor her legacy. In her seven-decade career, Lortel was known for nurturing new playwrights, actors, directors and designers. She bolstered talents like Adrienne Kennedy, Terrence McNally, David Mamet and Wendy Wasserstein. She presented productions of lesser-known plays by Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and Ionesco. She took risks and championed daring new works that others would not champion. Producing over 500 productions, she gave artists a creative home. Lortel's legacy was front and center at the 40th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards, where the Off-Broadway community gathered to honor this year's productions. Off-Broadway casts and creatives filled the theater at NYU Skirball Center to celebrate awards in 16 categories. 'Off Broadway has always been a home for bold voices, new ideas and fearless creativity,' said George Forbes, executive director of the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Before the packed crowd, Casey York, president of the Off-Broadway League, offered her reflections on the state of Off-Broadway and the power it holds. 'By gathering here tonight, we are not just witnessing history,' said York, who is also managing director of Playwrights Horizons. 'We are hoping to shape it.' While York reflected on challenges, she shared how vital it is to keep going—that performing, producing and supporting Off-Broadway requires courage. Especially now, when people and organizations are being threatened. 'I hope you continue to lean on each other, to step forward instead of retreating and to stand firm in your convictions. We need your vision, your persistence, your voice,' added York. 'Let's also reaffirm our commitment to building a community where differences are celebrated, empathy triumphs over division and creativity drives change.' That sense of community was echoed by this year's nominees and presenters, who reflected on how Off-Broadway shaped their lives. 'Off-Broadway is where A Chorus Line started over 50 years ago with Michael Bennett and Joe Papp,' said Donna McKechnie, who was instrumental in the show's creation and originated the role of Cassie, inspired by her own life. 'Michael found a safe place to create under his vision with the luxury of time and Joe Papp as our champion.' Lauren Patten, a nominee for the Lonely Few, shared her first Off-Broadway memory performing in Sarah DeLappe's exhilarating play, the Wolves. 'It was a very insular experience, learning how to be a soccer team together and electric,' said Patten. 'I remember buying Samuel French plays when I was a teenager and this was the first time I saw one with my name in it.' Nominee Whitney White, who directed Bess Wohl's play Liberation, spoke about Off-Broadway's intimacy. 'Off-Broadway is so raw. It's easier to feel closer to the audience. It's about the performers and the people you touch and you can't get that anywhere else,' said White. Liberation actor Susannah Flood shared how Off-Broadway inspires connection and community. 'There is a lot of fear out there,' said the Lortel-nominated performer. 'People want a place to go to think about these topics and issues.' The evening was also a moving tribute to the pioneers who paved the way. Throughout the night, special honors were presented to groundbreaking playwright Alice Childress, beloved producer and managing director, Carol Fishman, and New Federal Theatre, which was founded by Woodie King Jr. in 1970 to be a creative incubator for Black artists, amplifying stories of marginalized communities. Since then, New Federal Theatre has produced hundreds of plays and helped launch the careers of countless artists, including Ruby Dee, Denzel Washington and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who presented the lifetime achievement award to Woodie King Jr. and the theater's producing artistic director, Elizabeth Van Dyke. 'Woody provided a place where we could walk around and know that we belonged,' said Santiago-Hudson. Childress, who passed away in 1994, was posthumously inducted into the Playwrights Sidewalk. Located in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the walk of fame immortalizes Off Broadway's great playwrights by embossing their names into the sidewalk pavement. Writing, performing and producing plays for four decades, Childress was the first African American woman to receive an Obie Award and devoted her life to the theater. (In fact, the latest production of her play, Wine in the Wilderness, presented by Classic Stage Company, was nominated for two Lortel awards this year, including Outstanding Revival.) LaChanze, who performed in Childress' play Trouble In Mind and directed Wine in the Wilderness, presented the honor to the late playwright's niece, Dedrienne McKenzie and grandniece, Nicara McKenzie, who accepted on her behalf. 'Please continue to live in your power,' said Nicara McKenzie. 'Walk in your light. And speak to your originality—just like my great aunt Alice did.' From left: Dedrienne McKenzie, Nicara McKenzie and LaChanze at the 40th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards Helen J. Shen, a nominee for the Lonely Few The cast and creatives from Here There Are Blueberries. The show won two awards, including ... More Outstanding Play and Outstanding Director From left: Ruben Santiago-Hudson with New Federal Theatre's producing artistic director Elizabeth ... More Van Dyke and founder Woodie King, Jr. The cast and creatives from Our Class, which won four awards, including Outstanding Revival. Nominee Qween Jean, the costume designer for Liberation Lea DeLaria with Alaska Thunderfuck, who starred in Drag: The Musical, which received six Lortel ... More nominations. The duo co-hosted with Kandi Burruss, Jay Ellis, Stephanie Nur, J. Harrison Ghee, Ilana Glazer and Maya Hawke Co-host Ilana Glazer The cast and director of Three Houses, which won Outstanding Musical From left: Drew Elhamalawy, Rotana Tarabzouni, Nadina Hassan and Ali Louis Bourzgui. Some of the ... More cast members from We Live in Cairo nominated for Outstanding Ensemble, along with John El-Jor and Michael Khalid Karadsheh Co-hosts Jay Ellis and Stephanie Nur. This summer they will star in Duke & Roya at the Lucille ... More Lortel Theatre Michael Rishawn, who won Outstanding Featured Performer in a Play for Table 17
New York Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Hugh Jackman in a Twisty Tale of ‘Sexual Misconduct'
We first see the willowy Ella Beatty, half of the cast of 'Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,' lugging furniture onto the stage of the Minetta Lane Theater. If you've heard that the play, by Hannah Moscovitch, is part of an Off Broadway experiment called Audible x Together — featuring big names, spare décor, short runs and rock-bottom prices — you may find yourself wondering whether the backers had penny-pinched on a crew. If so, they might have let the other half of the cast do the lugging: Hugh Jackman has the guns. But the backers — Audible is a division of Amazon and Together is Jackman's venture with the hugely successful producer Sonia Friedman — are not exactly impoverished. Art, not parsimony, is the source of Beatty's labors. Setting the stage for the terrific, tightly plaited knot of a play, the curious opening will pay off later. So will every seemingly casual moment of Ian Rickson's long-game staging, from lighting (by Isabella Byrd) that often, weirdly, illuminates the audience, to Jackman's manhandling of an actual lawn mower. Jackman plays Jon Macklem, a critically acclaimed yet best-selling author who teaches literature at a 'world class college.' He has not had as much success in his domestic career, being the kind of Kerouac cliché who spends years, as he puts it, 'racking up ex-wives like a maniac.' Currently he is separated from his third. Soon another cliché enters: the 'grossly underwritten' sex-object character that lust-addled novelists (a description Macklem cops to) write about to 'expose their mediocrity.' That's Beatty's Annie. Though she is a 19-year-old student in one of his classes, and he is starting to grizzle at the edges, their affair begins. 'The erotics of pedagogy,' Macklem, only half-mortified by the phrase, explains. It is here you may say to yourself: I've seen this before. The questionable relationship between male mentors and female students is almost its own genre in plays ('Oleanna') and novels ('Disgrace') — perhaps because it is almost its own genre in life. (I immediately thought of Joyce Maynard and J.D. Salinger.) But Moscovitch clearly wants to complicate that narrative by shaping it almost entirely from the man's point of view. Macklem speaks perhaps 80 percent of the words in the play, spinning long, disarming, verbally dexterous monologues. Annie's lines are more like this: 'I shouldn't / I don't know why I / Said that / Sorry I'm mm.' Beatty, recently seen in Ibsen's 'Ghosts,' is all but ghostly here; she delivers Annie's halting vagueness so precisely that she at first seems merely underpowered as an actor. In fact, she's fulfilling the play's plan perfectly: Even if overwhelmed by Macklem's force majeure, she cannot seem like a victim. All but demanding his sexual attention, she tells Macklem that his books, in their crudity, taught her 'what I like.' She devours him hungrily, comparing him favorably to boys she has slept with. She shows him her own fiction, and laps up his besotted praise. She understands from the start, she says later, exactly what the 'exchange' was. So you're left to wonder: Who's grooming whom? And for what? With Macklem especially, the play wants to keep the issue of culpability unsettled as long as possible. That's a tough job, given the way time has trained us to presume absolute guilt in such situations; the affair takes place in 2014, a few years before #MeToo acquired its hashtag. Nor does Macklem's temper, which flares when Annie behaves in ways he considers irrational, give us confidence in his ability to transcend his ego. In those moments he seems merely bullheaded and cutting, a lot like that lawn mower. Who but Jackman could keep us guessing despite that? His onstage seductiveness has always been frank yet cheerful, its sharkiness couched in charm. When he played Peter Allen in 'The Boy From Oz,' women (and men) in the audience begged for his sweaty T-shirt at the end of the show. (In exchange for a donation to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, he obliged them.) To take advantage of that appeal, Rickson has Jackman deliver a lot of his lines directly to the audience, at one point while seated at the lip of the stage with his legs dangling down as if he were Judy Garland. But Jackman goes well beyond the brief. On the night I attended, when a woman in Row B started coughing loudly, it was clear that the man who'd played the exuberant, audience-coddling Allen — Garland's son-in-law — was not about to leave her uncared-for. Ad libbing, he offered her a bottle of water — and was clearly ready to deliver it in person. She said no, but I was surprised that the 400 other theatergoers didn't start hacking immediately. He had them just where Macklem wanted Annie, and possibly vice versa. For an audience no less than an individual, the steep slope of powerful attraction is difficult to negotiate. Neither Macklem nor Annie (she's given no last name) is sure-footed. He's an overinflated balloon, blowing himself through life. She's, well, 19. Beyond any other consideration — attraction, power, psychology, class — her absolute age, not the gap in their ages, is what Moscovitch wants us to consider. Annie is not yet a fully grown human; she barely has the emotional wherewithal to handle her impulses, to know which ones she can safely indulge. Lest I spoil the ingenious working out of the story, I won't say more except that we meet Annie again when she does have that wherewithal. That both she and Macklem have aged we see at once by the simplest of means: posture, diction, a change of clothes for her, a change of glasses for him. (The costumes are by Ásta Bennie Hostetter.) Whether either character has grown is a different question, one you'll have to decide for yourself. Is revenge growth? Is growth itself revenge? That's the thrill of Rickson's production: It doesn't tell you what to think but, in its big payoff, gives you plenty to consider. Better yet, it achieves that payoff with minimal fuss. The set (by Brett J. Banakis and Christine Jones) needs only a few chairs, a desk and a lamp to place you anywhere you need to be. Mikaal Sulaiman's sound consists mostly of faint music, the kind you sometimes think you hear while falling into a dream. There are no microphones; the actors' actual voices are hitting your actual ears. If this is theater on a shoestring, let the theater never have shoes. And though I'll wait to proclaim the Audible x Together experiment a sustainable success — at least until its next production, 'Creditors,' with Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff and Justice Smith, opens later this month — 'Sexual Misconduct' is proof of concept even as a one-off. Those cheap tickets buy you not only a seat at the Minetta Lane but also a place in the living conversation of raw yet thoughtful theater. Plus maybe, if you cough enough, a bottle of water.
