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s to huntto take on the role of editor-in-chief of Mur-
doch’s new purchase, the Sun, which they want
to trounce the Daily Mail and become the voice
of the British workingman. “Ink” premièred in
2017, in London’s West End, and it’s filled with
allusions and references to the British character
and news culture that don’t translate to the U.S.
As played by the forty-one-year-old Carvel,
Murdoch wields his narcissism like a shield.
Graham and Rupert Goold, the director, aren’t
comfortable with intimacy, and this is just one
of the ways in which their show is modern. What
Graham jettisons in his writing is precisely what
Murdoch and Lamb dumped from the Sun alto-
gether: history. (5/6/19)—H.A. (Through July 7.)Lockdown
Rattlestick
Wise (Keith Randolph Smith) was convicted of
murder at the age of sixteen; during his decades
in prison, he’s evolved into a thoughtful sixty-
two-year-old. Ernie (Zenzi Williams), a novelist
who’s been unable to write since the death of her
husband, has volunteered to help him draft an
impact statement for his fourteenth appearance
before the parole board. Directed with nuance
and empathy by Kent Gash for the Rattlestick
Playwrights Theatre, Cori Thomas’s beautifully
structured play is a resonant demonstration of
the inseparability of the personal from the polit-ical. Thomas has a great ear for prison folkways
without ever seeming sociological about it. If
the leads are magnetic, so are the supporting
actors: Eric Berryman, as an officious newbie
corrections officer, and Curt Morlaye, as a young
inmate trapped between “hood rules” and prison
regulations.—R.R. (Through May 19.)Paul Swan Is Dead and Gone
Torn Page
In her charmingly eccentric but frustratingly
slack play, Claire Kiechel summons her real-life
great-granduncle, Paul Swan. Once, he hob-
nobbed with Isadora Duncan and Andy Warhol;
nowadays, this dancer, poet, painter, and actor
is largely forgotten, even by connoisseurs of
early-twentieth-century queer art. Hosting a
salon that feels like a séance, Swan (Tony Torn,
in whose home the show takes place) regales
about thirty theatregoers at a time with flights of
fancy and nostalgic reminiscences. His musings
and reveries are backed by his devoted pianist,
Bellamy (Robert M. Johanson)—or is it Bol-
lany? Reality and memory are slippery for the
aging diva. Likewise, the play, directed by Steve
Cosson for the Civilians, never gets a sure grip
on what it’s trying to do—although Johanson
and Avi A. Amon’s music for various pieces of
Swan’s writings results in some lovely Michael
Friedman-esque songs.—E.V. (Through May 19.)mushrooms, and where he seems to be imagining
conversations with his estranged son, Eddie
(Jeffrey Omura). Is the forest enchanted, or is
the phantom son a manifestation of Ben’s de-
clining mental faculties? It’s never really clear:
the narrative of Sam Chanse’s play, directed by
Shelley Butler for Ma-Yi Theatre Company, is
needlessly convoluted, yet its message about
homophobia is all too obvious. The script is
packed with genuinely fascinating information
about mushrooms—but if the mushrooms are
meant to function as a metaphor, as seems to be
the intention, it doesn’t click. Reid Thompson’s
imaginative forest set is the most convincing
thing onstage.—Rollo Romig (Through May 19.)Gary: A Sequel to
Titus Andronicus
Booth
Taylor Mac has taken three minor characters,
servants, from Shakespeare’s early tragedy
“Titus Andronicus” and named them Carol (Julie
White), Gary (Nathan Lane), and Janice (the
brilliant Kristine Nielsen). They are in Titus’s
banquet room, where, at the end of Shakespeare’s
play, the bodies have piled up—the carnage of
war and betrayal. It is up to the practical Janice
to teach the newly recruited Gary how to dispose
of all that flesh, in order to prepare the room
for the next inauguration. The problem is that
Gary traffics not in bodies but in souls. Mac’s
words illuminate Lane and White, because the
ninety-minute intermissionless piece, directed by
the savvy George C. Wolfe, showcases the risks
they’re willing to take for good material. Mac
illustrates how, if we let alone the powers that
be—well, they’ll never fail to leave their shit for
somebody else to clean up, and the next some-
body might just be you. (Reviewed in our issue
of May 6, 2019.)—Hilton Als (Through Aug. 4.)Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
St. Ann’s Warehouse
It’s rare to see a production deploy so many as-
sets—the design and acting are never less than
stellar—to such relatively little effect. In Enda
Walsh’s adaptation of Max Porter’s novel, Cillian
Murphy plays both Dad, a new widower in a tail-
spin, and, with his voice electronically altered to
a basso profundo’s rumble, a vaguely monstrous
manifestation of grief that goes by Crow (a Ted
Hughes reference). Pulling all the theatrical
stops, Walsh has Dad wander a sprawling home,
and overwhelms him—and the audience—with
sensory overload, thanks to Will Duke’s animated
projections and Helen Atkinson’s elaborate sound
design. It’s dazzling to watch, but emotionally
distancing. The show does find some footing
toward the end, when there’s a more organic con-
nection with Dad’s late wife (a prerecorded Hattie
Morahan) and his two boys (four rotating young
actors).—Elisabeth Vincentelli (Through May 12.)Ink
Samuel J. Friedman
In this nearly three-hour slice-of-life drama by
James Graham, set in London in 1969-70, a young
publisher from Australia named Rupert Mur-
doch (Bertie Carvel) and Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee
Miller), the Northern editor of the Daily Mail,
England’s best-selling tabloid, are both outsid-
ers in a class-conscious society. Lamb agreesSue Monk Kidd’s début novel, “The Secret Life of Bees,” came out in 2002
and spent more than a hundred weeks on the Times best-seller list. Set in
South Carolina in 1964, it follows Lily, a white fourteen-year-old, who
strains against her abusive peach-farmer father as she sorts through jumbled
memories of her mother’s death. Rosaleen, her black caretaker, is beaten by
cops when she tries to exercise her right to vote. Together, Lily and Rosaleen
flee to the fictional town of Tiburon, where three sisters—named August,
June, and May—give them refuge at their honey farm. A new musical ad-
aptation of the book (starting previews on May 12, at the Atlantic Theatre
Company) is directed by Sam Gold and written by an intriguing trio of
collaborators: Duncan Sheik (the composer of “Spring Awakening”), Susan
Birkenhead (who wrote the lyrics for “Jelly’s Last Jam”), and Lynn Nottage
(the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “Sweat”).—Michael SchulmanOFFBROADWAY
Goings On 05_13_19.L [Print]_9515435.indd 9 5/2/19 5:21 PM