THE NEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 25, 2019 13
confessional-historical theatre have asserted
that a whole world of thought and feeling can
be made, through art, to live in just one per-
son’s mind and body. This revival of her 1992
play, which is about the previous year’s infa-
mous riots in Crown Heights and is drawn
from interviews with members of the black
and Jewish communities, feels like a test of
Smith’s method: Can these old words live
again in someone new? For the first time,
the show is performed by someone other
than Smith—the viscerally smart, endlessly
empathetic Michael Benjamin Washington,
under Saheem Ali’s direction. Washington
makes the work sing, and the voices of its
real people sound eerily vivid. On a recent
night, some audience members interacted
with him, finishing his sentences and goading
him forward, carrying on a conversation with
the past.—V.C. (Through Dec. 15.)
Fur
Fourth Street Theatre
Migdalia Cruz’s 1995 play, directed by Elena
Araoz, is the kind that leers at you over how
transgressive it is. Citrona (Monica Steuer),
whom Michael (Danny Bolero) bought from
a freak show—she’s covered in fur—and keeps
in a cage in his pet shop, hoping to marry her,
says, “My shit and urine is my company.” “You
pick up your lover’s vomit and treat it like a
jewel,” Michael tells Citrona. But Citrona
lusts for Michael’s servant, Nena (Ashley
Marie Ortiz), who washes Michael’s foot
with her own hair. It’s a love triangle! The
bright spot of this production is Steuer, who
brings unexpected sass and verve to even the
most nonsensical dialogue. A brief sequence
performed in the style of a telenovela hints
at the more enjoyable play that might have
been.—R.R. (Through Nov. 24.)
Macbeth
Classic Stage Company
The thane of Cawdor (Corey Stoll) is some-
thing of a goofball in John Doyle’s fast-paced
and ultimately underbaked rendition of the
Scottish play. Fresh from a battlefield victory
with his buddy Banquo (Erik Lochtefeld),
Macbeth is relaxed and confident, like the
captain of the winning homecoming team;
the Wyrd Sisters—they have multiplied from
their usual three into a kind of Greek cho-
rus—seem at first to him like a prank. If only
he hadn’t rushed to write to the ruthless Lady
Macbeth (Nadia Bowers) about their royal
prophecy: always think twice before pressing
send. Doyle keeps his stage spare—its center-
piece is a hulking throne that could have been
made from reclaimed Birnam wood—but his
production, which skips at breakneck speed
from monologue to monologue, feels rushed
and lacks tonal coherence. You may wonder
how this Macbeth, who seems to want nothing
more than a nice glass of mead and a roll in the
hay with his lady, is capable of wanton vicious-
ness.—Alexandra Schwartz (Through Dec. 15.)
Richard III
Gerald W. Lynch Theatre
Social maneuvering, political misdeeds,
a lying politician—one may imagine that
such tropes have outstayed their welcome of
late, in both reality and fiction. But Druid’s
“DruidShakespeare: Richard III” (part of
the White Light Festival), about the mach-
inations and downfall of Shakespeare’s vile
malefactor, delivers a refined, well-executed
take on the themes. The nefariously mag-
netic Aaron Monaghan serves Richard’s du-
plicity with cloying obsequiousness and coy
seduction; his Richard relishes in showing
us the thinness of his performance. Afflicted
with a lame leg, he hobbles around with two
canes, his physicality its own kind of theatre:
Richard cranes, leans, and contorts through
his scenes of deception. Marie Mullen, as
Queen Margaret, is also a standout, haunting
the stage. Under Garry Hynes’s direction,
the production glimmers with Richard’s
winking moments of humor and dims with
bloody brutality. The bold industrial set
design and the costuming, full of texture
and shimmery embellishments, crown the
drama with visual riches.—Maya Phillips
(Through Nov. 23.)Tina: The Tina Turner Musical
Lunt-Fontanne
This genuinely entertaining jukebox musical
with some trouble at its edges—directed by
Phyllida Lloyd, with a book by Katori Hall,
Frank Ketelaar, and Kees Prins, and with se-
riously impressive choreography by Anthony
Van Laast—is organized around Turner’s re-
ligious experience: her childhood in the rural
black church and her turn to Buddhism. The
show opens with the adult Tina (Adrienne
Warren) rasping out a mantra as her very
young counterpart (a charming Skye Dakota
Turner) sits through a jubilant musical num-
ber at church, unable to restrain her voice.
The trouble comes when, as a young woman,
she meets Ike Turner (Daniel J. Watts), who
comes off here more as a comic buffoon than
as a real menace. Everybody knows, even be-
fore he shows up, that Ike is the villain in the
Tina Turner story; on Broadway, this makes
him a chintzy Big Bad Wolf. For the most part,
the show is fun and the songs sound good—
Warren’s performance, which sometimes veers
happily into an outright concert, is a two-and-
a-half-hour hosanna.—V.C. (Reviewed in our
issue of 11/18/19.) (Open run.)1
A RTSomaya Critchlow
Fortnight Institute
DOWNTOWN In thirteen new canvases, all but
one smaller than a sheet of paper, this British
artist collapses centuries and genres, render-
ing black women in a loose, hybrid style that
recalls Renaissance portraiture, nineteen-
sixties boudoir kitsch, and something else
more elusive. Details drawn from contem-
porary pop culture, Disney films, and Victo-
riana punctuate Critchlow’s thinly painted
works, in which figures seem to fix their
dispassionate gazes beyond the sexualized
tropes that frame them. Mineral hues domi-
nate, but the scantily clad subjects’ clothing
and accessories—wigs in yellow-blond and
pink, or a turquoise tank dress—provideTURN YOUR
CONCERN
INTO IMPACT.
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