Among the free cultural events happening across all five boroughs this summer, there are many over the next week celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride, leading to the NYC Pride March on June 30, marking the 55th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. A sample: “Pride Plays” at Rattlestick this afternoon (staged readings of three new plays); the eighth annual Queer Butoh , June 26 -29 at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn; a Carnegie Hall concert at Wave Hill in the Bronx by Jasmine Rice Labeija, a drag artist and Juilliard trained tenor on June 27; an all-teenage company called Nxt Generation Theatrics‘ revival of “Fun Home.” June 28-30 at Tada Theater.
In the past week, I profiled the LGBTQ characters in current Broadway shows, and reviewed “Cats The Jellicle Ball ” (see below) as well as, in the same theater building (PAC NYC), the sixth annual Criminal Queerness Festival, which features work by playwrights from countries where they are treated like criminals.
I asked Adam Odsess-Rubin , the artistic director of National Queer Theater, which produces that festival, how queer theater has changed since the launch of their festival
“I’d say that queer theater has become much more mainstream since 2018. Back then, we were performing in the basements of bars in the Lower East Side. Now, we’re being invited by Lincoln Center and PAC NYC to bring our work to their gilded halls, especially during Pride Month. I’ve definitely seen many more trans and non-binary artists find mainstream success on and Off-Broadway, although of course there is still a lot of work to do. I’ve also seen more openness and dare I say even eagerness amongst large institutional funders to fund queer work, including government funders like the NEA….
“While it’s wonderful to have a smash-hit queer Cats play alongside us at PAC NYC, the performance of underground queerness is not the same thing as actual underground queerness. It’s still an emerging form, and I think we’ll continue to see massive evolutions in the next ten to twenty years.”
Clockwise from top left: “The Survival” from Criminal Queerness Festival, “Cats,” “Illinoise,” Jasmine Rice Labeija
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
To say that I found this clever, fun-filled queering of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s idiosyncratic 1982 musical at times confusing and even annoying is only to say that it’s still “Cats” — much-loved by some, much-loathed by others, an all-but-plotless, cloying, clobbering adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s whimsical doggerel.
But audiences seem entranced by “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” judging from the loud cheering that greeted each of the characters on the night I attended this final production in the inaugural season of the Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center site. And in their novel conception, co-directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch (artistic director of PAC NYC) also give us something new to think about. Full review
Criminal Queerness Festival: The Survival
“The Survival” is not set in some dystopian homophobic future. It’s set in Uganda, in the present day, written by an Uganda playwright Ahciro P. Olwoch, who was in effect forced out of her country.
“If you’re a landlord, and you have somebody that’s living in your house, and they’re homosexual and you don’t report it, you could be sentence from four to eight years.” Olwoch was explaining this in the talk back after the first performance of “The Survival,” part of the sixth annual Criminal Queerness Festival. Full review
“Titanic” turns out to be the ideal musical for an Encores! concert….Director Anne Kauffman dispenses with all expectations of impressive stagecraft. The story of a ship that flooded after hitting an iceberg, drowning more than 1,500 passengers, features an abstract, minimal set with no discernible ship, nor a drop even of simulated water – this after a Broadway season with one stage after another drenched in the real stuff: a downpour in both “The Notebook” and “The Outsiders,” a hostile bombardment of ice cubes in “An Enemy of the People.”
What’s most visible is the thirty-piece orchestra, elevated on a platform some ten feet above the stage, above the starry thirty-two member cast. The visual set-up is a preview to the overall message: Pay attention to the music.
The Week in New York Theater News
Preliminary TV ratings for the Tony Awards broadcast are in: 3.5 million, down 15 percent from last year’s 4.1 million. Part of the problem: It fell on Father’s Day, when fewer people were watching TV in general. Also: it competed with the House of the Dragons premiere.
The only lower ratings for the Tonys was under three million in 2021 during the pandemic. There was a momentary spike from the downward trend of the last two decades in 2016, when eight million watched “Hamilton” win everything.
The Nine Tony Winners You Can Still See (3 of them are closing soon)
The Heart of Rock and Roll closed on Sunday, June 23rd, having played 24 previews and 72 performances. It was a fun show, starring Corey Cott singing Huey Lewis and the News, that received no Tony nominations.
“Swept Away,” a musical by the Avett Brothers about an 19th century shipwreck, has an opening date and a venue– November 19th at the Longacre.
It’s the 22nd show fully scheduled in the 2024-2025 Broadway season.
Next Wave Festival 2024
The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s annual avant-garde festival, will take place from September 17, 2024 to January 19, 2025 and feature some fifteen events and installations, among them several labeled theater, including “Safety Not Guaranteed,” musical based on the “cult classic” film of the same name, Reconstructing (Still Working but the Devil Might Be Inside), work-in-progress showings of a new play created by The TEAM, directed by Rachel Chavkin and Zhailon Levingston, and Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, Written and directed by Tiago Rodrigues and Gaviota, an adaptation of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov,
Also: “Still/Here,” a vital AIDS-era work by the choreographer and director Bill T. Jones that premiered at BAM in 1994; an election week poetry program from the writer Hanif Abdurraqib; the Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens performing “American Railroad” and Alarm Will Sound performing “Sun Dogs,” which pairs new compositions with films.
Manhattan Theatre Club’s 2024-2025 Off Broadway season features new plays by Dominique Morisseau (Bad Kreyol), Rajiv Joseph (Dakar 2000) and Joshua Harmon (We Had A World) – precise dates and other details yet to be announced.
Broadway Celebrates Juneteenth 2024
“The Gilded Age,” HBO’s high costume drama/Broadway employment agency, has added 4 more Broadway regulars to Season 3 – Tony winners Phylicia Rashad, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Victoria Clark,Tony nominee Jordan Donica. The season is expected to be ready in a year.
Naveen Kumar has been named theater critic for the Washington Post.
In Memoriam
Donald Sutherland, 88, was the most versatile of screen actors. He also performed on Broadway — once, in 1981, as Humbert Humbert opposite Blanche Baker, in “Lolita,” (above), Nabokov’s novel adapted by Edward Albee, which ran or 12 performances.
The Week’s Theater Video
The Jimmy Awards will be presented live on its YouTube channel tonight at 7:30 p.m. with host Josh Groban
