At the opening performance of “Les Misérables” at the Kennedy Center, during the same week that pro-democracy protestors rallied throughout the country, as Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Marines to L.A and held a military parade in D.C. on his birthday, a reporter asked the president which character he identifies with: Jean Valjean, the character who serves a 19-year-long prison sentence after stealing bread to feed his family, or Javert, the police inspector who mercilessly hounds him
“Oh, that’s tough, I think. You better answer that one, honey,” Trump said, turning to first lady Melania Trump, who smiled.
“Some critics have drawn another…comparison, to one of the musical’s supporting characters, the innkeeper Thénardier, who provides comedic relief as he recounts the many ways he scams tenants.” (A Song of Revolution: Trump’s Night Out at ‘Les Misérables’ in the Wall Street Journal)
Why does Trump like Les Miz? The many meanings of the megamusical (Washington Post)
Protests and curfew cancel L.A. Phil and ‘Hamlet’ as arts groups’ losses mount (L.A. Times)
The war on culture continues: “The National Endowment for the Humanities laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce this week….Meanwhile, it has launched a new grant program — offering up to $600,000 per artist — to commission statues for Trump’s proposed “Garden of Heroes” monument..”. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Theater and politics intertwined this week in unavoidable ways, in New York (where early voting began on Saturday for the June 24th Primary) and throughout the nation, but there were other theater, and theater-adjacent, diversions here, including a new Broadway opening, and a new closing — fallout from last week’s Tony Awards.
The Week in Reviews
Call Me Izzy
We first see Izzy Scutley, the character Jean Smart is portraying in her first Broadway role in 25 years, in a bathrobe cleaning the toilet in her home in a trailer park in rural Mansfield, Louisiana. It is easy to assume she has nothing in common with Deborah Vance, the wealthy, worldly and well-dressed comedian in the HBO Max series “Hacks,” that has won Smart three Emmys in the last four years.
But Izzy and Deborah do share a gift for words. Early on in this solo show written by Jamie Wax, Izzy tells us she has been writing poetry since the fourth grade…She’s at it now, decades later. But she does it in secret, writing with an eyebrow pencil on a roll of toilet paper, and then hiding her poems in a box of tampons. Izzy’s husband Ferd, whom she married when she was 17, would not approve.
Stage Left: La Dureza. Delivering Politics Theatrically
“This is one of the most dangerous jobs in the city, “ Hiram Delgado as Barabbás said on stage this weekend in “La Dureza,” which chronicles a day in the life of a Deliverista – one of the New Yorkers who make a living delivering food.
The play by Ed Cardona Jr. launched Stage Left, a new, plainly political festival of six staged readings, organized by Working Theater and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition…what was most intriguing about “La Dureza” was how much it avoided anything explicitly political – even as, off-stage, politics positively swirls around Deliveristas; they are even at the center of an issue that the candidates for New York City mayor argued about at both recent debates.
Tribeca Festival: Seasoned, starring Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody
“Seasoned” is one of the four “indie episodics” presented together at the Tribeca Festival’s NOW Showcase… “Indie episodics” is film festival lingo, more or less, for TV pilot. “Seasoned” is the one I’d most like to see turned into a series. I’ll concede the possibility of a theater lover’s bias. Mandy Patinkin is a 14-time Broadway veteran and Tony winner for portraying Che in Evita. His wife Kathryn Grody is also a Broadway veteran, including for her solo show “A Mom’s Life.” Those of us who saw them serve together as hosts to the 2023 Drama Desk Awards should have realized then and there that a Mandy and Kathryn Show for a wider public was inevitable.
Immersive Storytelling at Tribeca Festival: “In Search of Us”
I’m being strapped into what looks like a homemade electric chair, thick black wires gathered in a pile around my feet and sprouting above my head. A man in a white lab coat puts a fancy pair of goggles over my eyes and headphones over my ears, and I am thrust into “In The Current of Being,” which tells the story of Carolyn Mercer, a trans woman who underwent electroshock conversion therapy.
“In the Current of Being” is one of the eleven works presented in the “Immersive” program at this year’s Tribeca Festival, “In Search of Us,” which might have been better entitled In Search of A Definition of Immersive Storytelling.
Few of the works are easy to categorize. Some come closest to conceptual art, others are a type of video game or 3-D cinema or interactive museum exhibition; several are best described as AI/high-tech toys. Only one involves actual human beings in person (as lecturers, rather than performers), and none of these installations seem on the surface to have much to do with traditional immersive theater. It’s surely a reflection on the disorienting pace of modern culture that I can refer to a genre of theater that began in 2011 as “traditional.” Still, it’s the only ongoing tradition I know of in which “immersive” has something approaching an agreed-upon meaning — and thus perhaps a useful measure by which to gauge these experiments claiming the label. As it turns out, the approaches by several of these installations do seem to have applications for live theater. Some theater companies have already started incorporating them.
The Week in New York Theater News
“Smash” is closing on Broadway on June 22 after 32 previews and 84 performances, a first casualty after the Tonys
Already scheduled to close on June 22: Floyd Collins and The Last Five Years.
The 9 Tony Winners You Can Still See. (4 of them: Hurry)
According to Nielsen’s time-zone adjusted data, the awards show drew 5.1 million viewers for CBS. That is up from 3.53 million in 2024, an increase of approximately 44%. That is also the largest audience for the Tonys since 2019, when the telecast that year nabbed 5.4 million viewers. (Variety)
There is a complicated battle going on on the Upper West Side. A church on the Upper West Side with just twelve members, the West Park Church, cannot afford to repair its landmarked 135-year-old building and wants to sell it to real estate developers. But its tenant, the arts group, the Center at West Park, is fighting to keep the building and remain in it. . (NY Times)
From Blacklisted: An American Story, which opened Friday at New York Historical
Clockwise from top right:
“… theater became an indispensable source of employment for those barred from movies and television… Actors Equity passed a resolution condemning the blacklist in 1951 arguing that it “by its very nature is based on secrecy and prejudiced judgment, and results in conviction by accusation”
Emma Goldman wrote this pamphlet “Deportation: Its meaning and Menace” right before she was deported in 1919.
“..if the rights of any one citizen can be invaded, then the constitutional guarantees oe every other American have been subverted an no one is any longer protected from official tyranny”
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise there of; Or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble; And to petition the government for a redress of grievances”
