MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020 C1
NNEWS CRITICISM
2 ART REVIEW
Pairing painterly expressions
of angst. BY ELEANOR NAIRNE
3 THEATER
The Flea ends programs for
emerging artists. BY GABE COHN
5 BOOKSYu Miri gives voice
to the unseen
homeless souls of
Japan. BY MOTOKO RICH
“Mank,” the new drama from David
Fincher, revives an old charge against Or-
son Welles. Was Welles, who with “Citizen
Kane” (1941) created what is often cited as
the greatest movie ever made on his first
try, actually standing on the shoulders of
another genius?
The movie, new on Netflix, dramatizes
the writing of “Citizen Kane” through the
eyes of Herman J. Mankiewicz, who re-
ceived top billing on the shared screenplay
credit with Welles. The film focuses on the
period when Mankiewicz wrote what be-
came a 300-page doorstop called “Ameri-
can,” partly drawing on his experiences as a
dinner guest of the newspaper tycoon
William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration
for the character of Charles Foster Kane.
Fincher’s movie, using a screenplay by
his father, Jack Fincher, implies that Man-
kiewicz was the principal author of the
script. When “Citizen Kane” won the Oscar
for best original screenplay, neither Welles
nor Mankiewicz attended the ceremony, butEVERETT COLLECTION
Orson Welles, left, and Herman J. Mankiewicz in the 1940s. They
both won the screenplay Academy Award for “Citizen Kane.”Giving ‘Citizen Kane’ a Byline
Who wrote the classic film’s
script? It’s really no mystery.
By BEN KENIGSBERGCONTINUED ON PAGE C4vised movement, the wonder of
Tchaikovsky’s music and the freedom of
swirling snow.
“You guys really captured the feel for
me,” Ms. Seham said when they had fin-
ished. “The important thing is that you’re
listening to the music.”
Listening is a fundamental skill for any-
one learning to dance, but especially so for
Ms. Seham’s students. As a longtime teach-
ing artist with National Dance Institute,On a November afternoon, seven young
students twirled, hopped and lifted their
chests to the sky, as Waltz of the Snowflakes
from “The Nutcracker” played through
their computer speakers. Gathered for a
weekly Zoom class, they had arrived at a
part of the lesson that one of their teachers,
Jenny Seham, called “freestyle snow danc-
ing”: a moment to channel, through impro-which brings dance education to New York
City children, Ms. Seham has worked for
over a decade with students who are blind
and visually impaired, in partnership with
the Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg
(F.M.D.G.) Music School.
This year, for the first time, the music
school — which serves students of all ages
with vision loss — is offering a five-week
“Nutcracker” appreciation course to bringMatthew Herrera, top; Iliana
Majia, center; and Daniel
Gillen, bottom, in virtual
“Nutcracker” class.PHOTOGRAPHS BY EMILY MASON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBeing, Not Seeing, ‘The Nutcracker’
By SIOBHAN BURKECONTINUED ON PAGE C5‘It’s a beautiful thing’ when those who are visually impaired
bring the holiday classic to life in an online class.
IT’S ALL WELL AND GOODthat some theaters
are making money during the pandemic by
producing what can only be called quasi-
theater: magic shows, murder mysteries, a
hundred variations on “A Christmas Carol.”
I won’t congratulate them here; let their in-
come be its own reward. With luck, they
may keep the spark of performance alive to
light another night.
The theaters I want to acknowledge now
are those that are producing plays of artistic
merit in an environment even more hostile
to them than usual. That’s a tougher job, but
it’s the one that will make the eventual re-
opening of our stages worth the effort.
These are companies that have doubled
down on meaty classics and serious new
work, reconfiguring whole seasons for so-
cially distanced delivery systems. Look at
the of-the-minute short films from the Step-
penwolf Theater Company, the updated
verse comedies from Molière in the Park
and the all-audio lineup of seven produc-tions from the Williamstown Theater Festi-
val and Audible.
Between new work and classics, though,
lies an especially endangered category: re-
cent plays that were emerging into the
wider culture after successful New York de-
buts when the pandemic curtailed their op-
tions for production. Lacking familiar titles,
and demanding the most thoughtful atten-
tion to language and ideas, these plays do
not immediately suggest themselves as
quick profit centers in an industry trying to
pivot on a dime.
So it was heartening, earlier this fall, to
see the Maryland-based Olney Theater
Center present such an inventive Zoom ver-
sion of “The Humans,” Stephen Karam’s
2015 play about a family’s economic and
spiritual upheaval. Also heartening: Early
next year, Dominique Morisseau’s “Para-
dise Blue,” a jazz noir drama seen at the Sig-
nature Theater in New York in 2018, will get
the Williamstown-Audible treatment for
which it seems, in its intense musicality,
even better suited.
Right now, though, I’m floating on theLifted Up by Two Plays
In a Scroogeless Genre
‘Wolves’ and ‘Heroes’ shine in
a ‘Christmas Carol’ world.
CONTINUED ON PAGE C6