Marks & Vincentelli: A Theatre Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

For this episode we had the pleasure of talking to Kimberly Belflower, a young playwright who’s making quite a splash with her Broadway debut, “John Proctor Is the Villain” — yes, that John Proctor, from “The Crucible.” It just got seven Tony nominations, including for best play and for best leading actress in a play (for Sadie Sink — yes, that Sadie Sink, from the Netflix series “Stranger Things”).

Despite what the title may suggest, the new show isn’t a spoof of Arthur Miller’s play, which is usually interpreted as an allegory about the McCarthy era. Belflower’s story is set in a Georgia high school where students read the text through the prism of what’s been happening, darkly, to some of them. Their charismatic English teacher, played by Gabriel Ebert, has a key role.

We had a bracing conversation with Belflower about the early years of the MeToo movement, how she developed the play and worked with director Danya Taymor — and her surprising connection to our last guest, Jeffrey Seller!

Thanks to Christian Huygen for our theme music.

Jeffrey Seller has produced quite a few of musicals, including two mega-hits that were both hugely influential and hugely successful at the box office: “Rent” and “Hamilton.”

Naturally, we had to ask him: What makes a good producer?

Seller dropped by the podcast to talk about his new memoir, “Theater Kid,” in which he takes us from his childhood near Detroit to his early years in New York, when he worked in the office of the producers Barry and Fran Weissler, and on to his fateful meetings with Jonathan Larson and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

He had quite a few thoughts about the state of Broadway, and in particular what’s happening with musicals. Even if you haven’t seen his shows — but if you listen to his podcast, chances are that you have — Seller will make you ponder where the industry’s at these days.

Thanks to Christian Huygen for our theme music.

Elisabeth put her foot in her mouth again: she said that Melissa Errico was “lovely” — as it turns out, that’s an adjective that has often been used to describe our latest guest. But Melissa is lovely, dammit!

For (we think) our first holiday episode, we were delighted to welcome one of New York’s finest songbirds. She talked to us about her new show with Billy Stritch at 54 Below, “’Twas the Night After Christmas” (naturally, it starts Dec. 26 and runs through Dec. 30), and many other things.

Peter and Elisabeth both have a long history with Melissa, having converted to fandom with her revelatory performance in the Encores! production of “One Touch of Venus,” back in 1996. In the intervening years, she has emerged as a top-shelf interpreter of two songwriters we are especially fond of: Stephen Sondheim and Michel Legrand. She talks about her relationship with them, and how they differed from each other, about working on and off Broadway, and her career as a traveling concert performer.

Oh yes, she also talks about meeting her husband, Patrick McEnroe — and singing the National Anthem at the U.S. Open. Why does tennis come up so often in this podcast?!?

The author-director of such works as “The Apple Family Plays,” “The Gabriels” and even the book for the musical adaptation of James Joyce’s “The Dead,” Richard Nelson is one of America’s finest theatermakers.

He is also the modern American playwright whose work travels best, and he has been produced all over the world. No place has been as fraught as Kyiv, however, where Nelson went this past spring to direct a production of his play “Conversations in Tusculum”

He recounts that experience in the new book “A Diary of War & Theatre — Making Theatre in Kyiv, Spring 2024,” published by Wordville. As you might well imagine, working on a show in a country at war is no simple task.

He expanded on that subject and a lot more — like working at the famed Théâtre du Soleil in Paris, and why his style is not “realistic” — on the podcast, making for a pretty great conversation.

For this episode, we landed a real power player in our virtual studio: Lear deBessonet, the incoming artistic director at Lincoln Center Theater — one of the powerhouse nonprofits in New York City, with a budget of $40 million and a staff of 55.

DeBessonet made her mark as one of the defining spirits behind the Public Theater’s Public Works initiative — her emphasis on theater’s communal aspects is a defining element of her approach, and one that could inspire companies around the country.

In 2020 she took over New York City Center’s beloved series Encores!, and under her tenure most of the productions hit the sweet spot of critical and popular approval. Two of them, “Into the Woods” and “Once Upon a Mattress,” even transferred to Broadway.

DeBessonet talked to us about what matters to her as a director but also as an audience member, including one particularly formative experience that sent Elisabeth into a fangirl tizzy.

After hearing that the 50-year-old institution California Shakespeare Theater, aka Cal Shakes, was closing down, we thought we’d ask a specialist in troubled institutions for his take on what the heck is going on in the industry. Enter Michael M. Kaiser, who ran the Kennedy Arts Center from 2001 to 2014 and currently heads the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. Michael has performed interventions at Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and the Royal Ballet and Opera in London. With the DeVos Institute, Michael continues to advise nonprofit companies around the country.

Among the issues we talked about: Is theater doing that badly around the U.S.? Did Covid reveal structural problems that had been invisibly festering for years if not decades? What happened with all that government money that flew to the arts during Covid?

It is our great pleasure to welcome the indomitable Elizabeth Marvel to the podcast. She has been a formidable presence on New York stages since the late 1990s and shows no sign of slowing down. She came on to talk about “The Ford/Hill Project,” which she was instrumental in initiating — Peter wrote about it for The Washington Post back in September (gift link).

Naturally, we talked about a lot of other things, including how she got to Juilliard (definitely not your typical theater-kid journey) and what theater means to her.

Warning: occasional spicy language!

Elisabeth was otherwise engaged for this episode, so Peter talked to Jay Wegman, the executive editor of New York University’s Skirball Performing Arts Center, on his own.

Wegman took over at Skirball in 2016, after almost 11 years at the Abrons Ars Center. Skirball has emerged as a major presenter of cutting-edge fare from the U.S. and abroad: This season includes works by Milo Rau, the Civilians, Mies Warlop, the Builders Association, and Marlène Saldana and Jonathan Drillet. And there has been a bona fide hit with the Australian import “Counting and Cracking,” a co-production with the Public Theater that Elisabeth raved about in the New York Times.

Tune to hear what Jay has to say about the state of presenting edgy work in New York.

When Kara Young won a Tony for “Purlie Victorious” a few months ago, it wasn’t a surprise to us. We’ve long known she’s one of the best stage actors you can dream of seeing in New York — Elisabeth first noticed Kara in “Syncing Ink” at the Flea Theater back in 2017 and since then she’s kept the actress on her radar, with a profile for the New York Times in 2020.

Now she has three Broadway shows under her belt (“Purlie Victorious,” “Cost of Living” and “Clyde’s”) — and a Tony nomination for each. Not too shabby! The latest entry in a rapidly filling résumé is Douglas Lyons’s rom-com “Table 17” at MCC.

We talked with Kara about growing up in Harlem, where she still lives, the joys of comedy acting, finding a role in her body and much, much more.

Thanks to Christian Huygen for our theme music.

Our guest on this podcast is the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. A few months ago his play “Appropriate” won the Tony for best revival (star Sarah Paulson won for best actress), and it’s only the latest in a growing exemplary body of work that also includes “An Octoroon” and the Pulitzer finalists “Gloria” and “Everybody.”

Woolly Mammoth’s production of “The Comeuppance” is running until Oct. 6 so there’s still time to catch it. Branden’s next project in NYC is his collaboration with Alina Troyano “Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,” which starts at Soho Rep on Oct. 23.

In this action-packed episode, Branden talks about his formative time in Berlin, the revivals he’d like to see (bring on “The Bald Soprano”!), the adaptation of “An Enemy of the People” that almost was, star casting, the crucial role played by James Houghton at Signature Theater (where “Appropriate” had its NYC premiere in 2014), and so much more.

Welcome to what Peter called “the most salacious podcast” around!

Thanks to Christian Huygen for our theme music.