6 THENEWYORKER,MARCH2, 2020
ILLUSTRATION BY LIBBY VANDERPLOEG
“Company” is, I think, the first irrefutably postmodern musical, one that’s
geared not toward marriage as a resolution so much as toward a shaky
self-realization that we are all alone, no matter how much we think we
should dress it up by playing wife or husband or loving godfather. First
produced on Broadway in 1970, the show contains some of the composer
and lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s legendary early songs—“Being Alive,”
“The Ladies Who Lunch”—which shimmer with a knowingness about
what humans don’t know about themselves. Originally, the musical centered
on Bobby, a thirty-five-year-old bachelor wrestling with what he observes
in his friends’ marriages, but, in the director Marianne Elliott’s interpre-
tation, which starts previews on March 2, at the Jacobs, Bobby is Bobbie
(Katrina Lenk), a single woman living in downtown Manhattan. Though
the gender switch will no doubt cast the text in a different light, the loneli-
ness and the humor at the heart of Sondheim’s triumph will surely remain,
just shown through a new lens at this ever-changing time.—Hilton AlsONBROADWAY
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THETHEATRE
Anatomy of a Suicide
Atlantic Theatre Company
The young British playwright Alice Birch
(“Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.”) has ac-
knowledged Caryl Churchill as an influence
on her work; this is evident in Birch’s new
play, a rare case in which form and content
are inextricably linked, where a cerebral ex-
ercise doesn’t hinder feeling. The stories of
three generations of women unfurl simulta-
neously onstage, as if on a split screen. Carol
(Carla Gugino) wants to end her life, but tries
to keep going for the sake of her daughter,
several clever show-within-a-show songs); and
Aury Krebs and Matt Dallal, excellent as every-
one else—plus the trumpet player Mike Nappi,
who conjures Harry’s dog (also named Paul)
with his horn’s squeaks and whimpers. Edward T.
Morris’s mostly hand-drawn animated backdrops
are a perfect complement to Zaitchik’s fresh and
soulful tunes. It’s a rare treat to catch a play like
this in such an intimate room before it moves to
bigger stages.—Rollo Romig (Through March 15.)Hamlet
St. Ann’s Warehouse
When a guard declares, with grave alarm,
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,”
in Gate Theatre Dublin’s alluring production
of “Hamlet,” there’s no doubt about the serious
tragedy that’s to come. This “Hamlet” is, after
all, serious—or at least seriously stylish, with
dapper suits and stage smoke. Figures posture
on Susan Hilferty’s exquisitely designed set as
though they’re in an editorial fashion shoot.
Yaël Farber’s direction is meticulously artful,
with an eye for affect, but the production occa-
sionally falls for its own romance. Ruth Negga’s
Danish prince is a case in point—her youthful,
androgynous Hamlet is captivating, but her
performance, rife with head cocks, slouches, and
sharp spasms of movement, overstates itself in
gesture. (Gavin Drea’s raging, woeful Laertes,
however, is a treat.) The casting—a female,
mixed-race Hamlet, a black murdered king—
queers and racializes “Hamlet” and calls into
question the original text’s relationships with
gender and sexuality, but the production stops
short of saying something definitive.—Maya
Phillips (Through March 8.)A Peregrine Falls
Wild Project
If there is a silver lining to real-world tragedy,
it is that the memory of it might one day serve
as grist for art. In writing this richly dark and
rending drama, Leegrid Stevens drew on a pain-
ful chapter of his own family story, terminating
in an older relative’s imprisonment for an un-
speakable crime committed years before. The
play starts off placidly enough, with a woman
visiting her parents with the happy news of a
pregnancy. Each revelation that follows has
the punishing force of a knife twisting in flesh.
The scenic design, by Zoë Hurwitz, is cold and
ominous, and the precisely calibrated shifts in
lighting, by Simon Cleveland, reinforce the
fitful shifts in mood. But the committed per-
formances—notably by Sidney Williams, in his
sympathetic rendering of a lapsed Mormon—
and Padraic Lillis’s controlled and sensitive
direction are what carry this Loading Dock
production’s emotional weight.—David Kortava
(Through Feb. 29.)A Photograph: Lovers in Motion
Theatre 80
Ntozake Shange’s follow-up to her best-known
work, “for colored girls who have considered
suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” and her only
dialogue-driven play, centers on creative in-
spirations and complicated relationships in a
photographer’s San Francisco apartment in the
late nineteen-seventies. As directed and adapted
by Shange’s sister and collaborator, Ifa Bayeza,poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. Jennie
C. Jones’s collage “Slowly in a Silent Way,
Caged,” from 2010, combines pieces by Miles
Davis and John Cage, similarly breathing
new life into past experiments.—J.F. (Through
March 14.)
Anna (Celeste Arias), who ends up just as
tormented as her mother. This tragic legacy
weighs heavily on Anna’s daughter, Bonnie
(Gabby Beans), who denies herself emotional
commitments in an attempt to break the cycle.
The director Lileana Blain-Cruz and her cast
skillfully navigate the challenging setup, sug-
gesting desperately interlocked narratives that,
miraculously, never feel morbid.—Elisabeth
Vincentelli (Through March 15.)Darling Grenadine
Black Box, Harold and Miriam
Steinberg Center for Theatre
Staged in the round in the Roundabout’s smallest
space, Daniel Zaitchik’s gorgeous new musical,
directed and choreographed by Michael Ber-
resse, begins in the guise of a sweet, charming
rom-com before shifting, painfully and irrevo-
cably, into a darker show about alcoholism. The
cast is superb: Adam Kantor as Harry, a com-
poser of jingles; Jay Armstrong Johnson as his
barkeep brother, Paul; Emily Walton as Louise, a
Broadway understudy (a situation that occasions