C6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020two marquee names — Theresa
Rebeck and Jeremy O. Harris —
do not in general suggest much
compatibility with Coward. And
only a few of the other offerings,
selected in a contest from more
than 500 entries, make any mean-
ingful allusion to the plot and
themes (and comic punch) that
power “Private Lives.”
Rebeck’s play, “Something in
the Ground,” is if anything less
amusing than her usual fare, per-
haps because its plot, in which
family and neighbors squabble
over the opportunity to monetize
ecological disaster, appears to
predate the commission. Aptly
dense with buried poisons, it de-
serves full-length exploration;
still, if 10 minutes isn’t enough to
dramatize the viciousness of capi-
talism, it’s enough to give the cast,
Charlayne Woodard in particular,
several wonderful moments to
shine.
Harris’s play, “Fear and Misery
of the Master Race (of the
Brecht),” has only the tenuous
connection of a pun to tie it to Cow-
ard. (It is partly inspired by a
Brecht play whose alternative ti-
tle is “The Private Life of the Mas-
ter Race.”) Otherwise it is recog-
nizably and entirely Harris, a field
guide to the many species of rac-
ism, seen through the distorting
lenses of satire. Choosing four
events from 2015 as his spring-
board — the death of Sandra
Bland, the rampage of Dylann
Roof, the blackpropriation of
Dolezal and the candidacy of
Trump — Harris forefronts the
other half of the Black Lives Mat-
ter story: the one that happens in
white people’s homes when they
think history can’t hear them. As
the Dolezal figure, a white woman
streaming a tutorial to Black
women on how to “love your hair
right,” Louisa Jacobson brilliantly
embodies the toxic endpoint of mi-
croaggression.
I suppose you could argue that
anything set behind closed doors,
or in isolation from the world,
counts as a response to “Private
Lives.” But two of the contest win-
ners go further, borrowing Cow-
ard’s format — or at least the fa-
mous adjacent balconies on which
his Elyot and Amanda rediscover
each other — to tell their stories.
Leah Maddrie makes it plain in
her title: “Love Adjacent, or Bal-
cony Plays.” But her Elyot and
Amanda are a Black couple
named Troy (Peter Francis
James) and Cressie (Woodard),
more formally known as Troilus
and Cressida. Their new (white)
spouses, in the original Sibyl and
Victor, are likewise grafted onto
Shakespearean characters; to say
which ones would be to spoil the
surprise. A happy ending — and
the unexpected overlay of rhymed
pentameter couplets — makes
this the easiest of the eight to ab-
sorb.
Probably the tightest is “Old
Beggar Women,” by Avery
Deutsch. This one, too, takes place
on adjoining balconies, but in a
nursing home instead of a
Deauville hotel. There, by amaz-ing playwriting coincidence — or
perhaps not — Sibyl, in her 70s,
encounters Amanda, in her 80s.
Deliciously, neither can remem-
ber Elyot’s name, though both
were married to him; along with
men, the male gaze has disap-
peared from the story. If not very
credible, the plot at least is engag-
ing and unexpected, and as a se-
quel to Coward succeeds more
than its contrivances might sug-
gest.
Part of that, again, is Woodard,
who handily swaps personalities
and styles in five of the eight
plays. Here she plays Sibyl to the
Amanda of Kathleen Chalfant,
likewise dependably precise and
piquant. That the evening’s wom-
en (who also include Jacobson, Ali
Ahn and the terrific Lilli Cooper)
are generally more compelling
than the men (James, Frankie J.
Alvarez, Edmund Donovan and
William Jackson Harper) may be
the natural result of plays that are
less interested in the Elyots of this
world than the Sibyls and Aman-
das. (Two of the festival’s direc-
tors, Vivienne Benesch andMêlisa Annis, are women and the
third, Em Weinstein, identifies as
nonbinary.)
That dynamic continues in the
remaining plays, two of which,
without sampling Coward, at least
nod to him in passing. Both
“Plague Year” by Matthew Park
and “In the Attic” by Jessica Moss
pick up his battle-of-the-sexes
theme, with women winning the
battle decisively. In Park’s play, a
resourceful woman in plague-time
England (Cooper) must save her-
self, and her baby girl, from both a
domineering husband (Donovan)
and a thoughtless lover (Alvarez).
Moss takes the theme of novel ro-
mantic arrangements even fur-
ther, mashing “Private Lives”
with “Rebecca” and “Jane Eyre”
(and its stepdaughter, “Wide Sar-
gasso Sea”) into a deliciously silly
Pythonesque squib.
The virtues of the remaining
two plays are not Cowardy ones.
Though “Evermore Unrest,” by
Mallory Jane Weiss, unpacks a re-
lationship between a woman
(Ahn) and her ex (Alvarez)
through fragments of letters, texts
and scrawls on foggy mirrors, its
main concern is not romantic, but
ecological. Likewise, Ben Beck-
ley’s “Outside Time Without Ex-
tension” gives us the measure of
two lovers (Ahn and Harper) but
is more of a formal experiment, al-
lotting one minute of its length to
each 10 years of their lives.
And yet perhaps Beckley’s play
— the evening’s opener — is more
like “Private Lives” than I at first
supposed. Its side-by-side Zoom
panes do, after all, simulate the ef-
fect of adjacent balconies. And
when Ahn and Harper later move
into a single frame (apparently,
they are quarantining together)
the shock of intimacy that made
Coward so modern is deftly recre-
ated. How long since we’ve seen a
stage kiss?JESSE GREEN THEATER REVIEWShort Plays Take
Cues From Coward
Lilli Cooper, left, and Louisa Jacobson in Jeremy O. Harris’s short play
“Fear and Misery of the Master Race (of the Brecht)” on Zoom.CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1Short New Play Festival 2020:
Private Lives
Through Friday, at 7 p.m., at
redbulltheater.com and YouTube.Follow Jesse Green on Twitter:
@JesseKGreen.THE ENGLISH SONGWRITER Lianne La
Havas has always been an outlier, working
a decidedly personal amalgam of rock, pop
and R&B. Her music revolves around the
lithe interplay of her syncopated guitar pat-
terns and her freewheeling voice, which
leaps and curls and wriggles with an insou-
ciant vibrato. Her guitar parts echo and ri-
val the ambiguous, unresolved chords and
supple rhythmic games of Joni Mitchell and
Radiohead, while her voice moves from low,
sultry insinuations to open-throated decla-
rations.
At a time when so much pop speaks of
constriction — with narrow singsong melo-
dies, metronomic beats and desiccated in-
strumental tones — La Havas is deter-
minedly expansive, and anything but me-
chanical. She makes her trickiest musical
stratagems sound effortless, even playful.
Her third album, “Lianne La Havas,”
traces the course of a romance, from blissful
beginnings to a bruised ending. Its se-
quencing suggests that the experience is
cyclical; the album both starts and ends
with the breakup. The opener, “Bitter-
sweet,” uses a plush, pinging Isaac Hayes
sample to ground the song in vintage R&B
seduction. But that’s deceptive; the song
announces a separation with sorrow and re-
lief. “Bittersweet summer rain/I’m born
again” La Havas sings, twice in each
chorus. The first time is low and disconso-
late, continuing with the words “all my bro-
ken pieces”; the second is higher, a cry of
pain turning to wordless release before she
exults, “No more hanging around.”The rest of the album plays as a flashback
of the affair: a dizzying initial obsession
that gives way to doubts, tears and es-
trangement. Desire and flirtation fill “Read
My Mind,” with La Havas singing airily
about “the pure joy when a girl meets a boy/
natural chemistry,” while the backup vocals
tease, “What you waiting for?” Next, in
“Green Papaya,” she finds herself in un-
known emotional territory, but more than
willing to venture further. “Take me home/
Let’s make real love,” she coos. “Take me
out of the blue.”
But second thoughts soon arise. She tries,
at first, to push them away in “Can’t Fight,”with restless rhythm-guitar chords and
multiple vocal lines detailing her conflicted
impulses, and “Paper Thin,” a stark ballad
that offers mournful compassion: “I know
your pain is real, but you won’t let it heal.”
She channels desperation into plush, slow-
motion R&B in “Please Don’t Make Me Cry,”
and lets it erupt in a volatile version of Ra-
diohead’s “Weird Fishes” — diffident at
first, then explosive.
La Havas doesn’t give herself an easy
narrative of romantic right and wrong.
There’s no clear rupture and barely a flicker
of anger as she makes her reluctant separa-
tion, only a growing realization that it’s im-
possible to hold on. In “Courage,” which
suggests bossa nova in both its melodic
turns and its sense of longing, she is “Lost
and overcome by the memory/Of every-
thing we were but will never be.” At the end
of the album, in “Sour Flower,” the singer is
alone but free: “No more looking out for
someone else/but me,” she vows; the meter
is an unconventional 5/4, subtly setting
aside expectations.
The songs illuminate passion, impulsive-
ness, ambivalence and uncertainty, yet the
structures La Havas created are lucid and
poised. While matters of the heart may be
out of control, her fingers and voice are im-
peccable.JON PARELES ALBUM REVIEWHOLLIE FERNANDOTracing the Arc of a Romance
Lianne La Havas sings from
the heart in a new album.
Lianne La Havas
“Lianne La Havas”
(Nonesuch)In her latest work, Lianne La Havas makes her trickiest musical stratagems sound effortless.
the wariest I’ve read: a friendly, often funny
account marked by a reluctance so deep
that it confers a curious integrity upon the
celebrity tell-all. For years, he resisted per-
sonal questions (“Get a life,” he’d say in in-
terviews) and resisted writing an autobiog-
raphy. Only after the outpouring of support
following his announcement last year that
he had pancreatic cancer did he feel he
owed something to the public.
But everything in proportion, please.
“I’m a second-tier celebrity,” he insists.
“The biggest reason the show has endured
is the comfort that it brings. Viewers have
gotten used to having me there, not so much
as a showbiz personality but as an uncle.
I’m part of the family more than an outside
celebrity who comes into your home to en-
tertain you. They find me comforting and
reassuring as opposed to being impressed
by me.”
On this point, Trebek is remarkably di-
rect: Even if he can’t quite understand the
public fascination with his life, he knows he
means something significant to the culture,
something soothing and in short supply. He
knows he fills a need. For the 36 years host-
ing “Jeopardy!” — an industry record — he
has been a nostalgic father figure of sorts,
showing up reliably at dinnertime and re-
maining tantalizingly aloof. In the autumn
of the media patriarchs, he stands practi-
cally alone, untinged by scandal. His au-
thority derives from his defense of facts, not
their distortion.
He takes pride in his work, and in the
achievements of the contestants — when
Jennings was finally ousted after winning
74 games in a row, Trebek teared up. But he
never takes himself seriously; his memoir
is a shameless dad-joke extravaganza,
largely at his own expense. He is eager to
talk about his hairpiece (“a damn good
one”). He shares silly photos of himself in
all-denim outfits (“wearing the Canadian
tuxedo is my birthright”) and posing in the
“Got Milk?” campaigns of the 1990s (“I re-
ally do love the stuff”). He recalls the early
years of “Jeopardy!” with relish, when the
prizes for runners-up included “Lee Nails,
‘delicious low-calorie meat’ from Mr. Tur-
key and Tinactin Antifungal Cream — use
only as directed!”
Alex Trebek loves the troops, he loves his
wife, he loves his Dodge Ram. He reallyloves his bromides. His kids? Champs. His
divorce? Amazing; he and his ex are still
good friends.
Around the margins, a darker story
blooms. Trebek was born in Sudbury, Ontar-
io, in 1940, to Ukrainian immigrants —
warm, loving people, if ill-suited for each
other. His father drank. Trebek’s early
years were full of poverty, instability and ill-
ness, but he presents them with his typical
cloudless beneficence: “I don’t have a lot of
ghosts. I don’t have any bad memories that
affect my life. It’s all good.” When he was 7,
he fell into a frozen lake and became af-
flicted with painful rheumatism. For 12
years he’d wake crying in the night until
suddenly the pain disappeared. “Go figure,”
he shrugs.
Young Trebek had a rebellious streak. He
clashed with the nuns at school and
bounced between jobs. He quit military col-
lege when he heard that buzz cuts were
mandatory. “I had a good head of hair — a
sort of pompadour with a ducktail in the
back,” he writes. (Photographic evidence is
provided.) “I’d be damned if I was going to
let them shave it off.”
Trebek might have inspired dread in his
teachers and early employers, but he dis-covered that his real talent was in project-
ing calm, in allowing others to shine. As a
host, it has been his proudest quality — his
ability to buoy an anxious contestant
through tone alone.
Facts themselves can confer steadiness.
A small aside: I took to “Jeopardy!” early,
and in high school had a weird, cursory ca-
reer competing in televised trivia contests.
My teammates and I — immigrants all, as it
happened — glutted ourselves on dates and
data with a hunger I couldn’t have possibly
explained at the time but that now seems
embarrassingly obvious. Facts could be
trusted. Facts consoled. Their patient,
dogged acquisition constituted a kind of shy
possession of the world.
Of course, any possession in this life is, at
best, temporary. Trebek cheerfully con-
cludes: “My life has been a quest for knowl-
edge and understanding, and I’m nowhere
near having achieved that. And it doesn’t
bother me in the least.” He ends the book at
home, like of all us, in quarantine. He is ex-
hausted by cancer treatments, exhausted
by uncertainty but still sublimely calm and
grateful. As he’s always advised his contest-
ants to do, he’s already looking ahead to the
next question.PARUL SEHGAL BOOKS OF THE TIMESAlways Aloof, He Still Fills a Deep Need
Follow Parul Sehgal on Twitter: @parul_sehgal.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1
The Answer Is... :
Reflections on My Life
By Alex Trebek
Illustrated. 290 pages.
Simon & Schuster. $26.