10 THENEWYORKER,M AY16, 2022
At forty-four, the writer and performer
Danai Gurira has had an unusually broad
career. In 2005, she and Nikkole Salter
débuted their two-woman play, “In the
Continuum,” about the toll of the AIDS
crisis on Black women in Africa and the
U.S., and in 2016 Lupita Nyong’o starred
in a Broadway production of Gurira’s play
“Eclipsed,” set during the Second Libe-
rian Civil War. Meanwhile, Gurira broke
out as an actress in AMC’s zombie-apoc-
alypse series “The Walking Dead” and
joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
in “Black Panther,” as the Wakandan
warrior Okoye. This summer, she adds
to her unique résumé a turn as one of
Shakespeare’s most malevolent men. At
the Public Theatre’s free Shakespeare in
the Park, Gurira stars in “Richard III”
(starting previews on June 17, at the
Delacorte), directed by Robert O’Hara.
Shakespeare in the Park’s sixtieth-
anniversary season continues with the
return of Shaina Taub and Laurie Wool-
ery’s boisterous musical adaptation of
“As You Like It” (Aug. 10), part of the
community-embracing Public Works
initiative. At the Park Avenue Armory,
two other classics are revamped. Robert
Icke’s modern adaptations of Shake-speare’s “Hamlet” ( June 1) and Aeschy-
lus’ Oresteia ( June 9) are performed in
repertory by a British ensemble led by
Alex Lawther (as Hamlet) and Lia Wil-
liams (as Klytemnestra). On Broadway,
Giles Croft directs “The Kite Runner”
(Hayes, July 6), Matthew Spangler’s
adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s best-
selling novel, which follows the lives of
two childhood friends across decades of
upheaval in Afghanistan.
Off Broadway attractions include
“Between the Lines” (Tony Kiser The-
atre, June 14), a new musical by Elyssa
Samsel, Kate Anderson, and Timothy
Allen McDonald, based on the novel by
Jodi Picoult and her daughter, Samantha
van Leer, about a girl who finds refuge
from reality in her favorite book. Will
Arbery, who wrote the acclaimed “He-
roes of the Fourth Turning,” returns with
“Corsicana” (Playwrights Horizons,
June 2), directed by Sam Gold, in which
a woman with Down syndrome and her
half brother forge a connection with a
local artist after their mother’s death.
Anyone who saw all six hours of
“Gatz,” Elevator Repair Service’s mes-
merizing take on “The Great Gatsby,”
knows that a new E.R.S. spin on a
classic text is well worth noting. The
troupe premières “Seagull” (N.Y.U.’s
Skirball Center, July 7), a meta-the-
atrical adaptation of Chekhov’s “The
Seagull,” directed by John Collins. An-
other eye-catching experimental work
requires a trip upstate—the Hudson
Valley Shakespeare Festival’s production
of “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” (in
Garrison, N.Y., starting July 8). First
put on in 2012, this antic, epic com-
edy, written by Anne Washburn and
the late composer Michael Friedman,
imagines a post-apocalyptic world in
which an episode of “The Simpsons”
sparks an unlikely new oral tradition;
Davis McCallum directs. At the Wil-
liamstown Theatre Festival, Daniel
Fish—the director behind the recent
reinvention of “Oklahoma!”—sets his
sights on another mid-century musi-
cal, Frank Loesser’s “The Most Happy
Fella.” “Most Happy in Concert” (start-
ing July 13, on the Main Stage) features
a female-identifying and nonbinary cast.
—Michael SchulmanTHETHEATRE
SUMMERPREVIEW
Shakespeare, “The Kite Runner,” Meta “Seagull”