‘Twelfth Night’
After a much-needed renovation, the Delacorte Theater, in Manhattan’s Central Park, reopened this summer with Saheem Ali’s staging of one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies starring Lupita Nyong’o. In her review for The New York Times, Laura Collins-Hughes described the production as “a romp, a tonic, an escape from the clamorous world into a fantasy.” Now you can experience this giddy state from the comfort of your home thanks to a new capture on PBS as part of the Great Performances series.
Nyong’o plays the shipwrecked Viola, who disguises herself as a fetching young lad and accidentally seduces the noblewoman Olivia, portrayed by Sandra Oh. Happy casting decisions abound: Viola’s twin brother is played by Nyong’o’s actual brother, Junior Nyong’o; and Peter Dinklage deploys surprisingly effective clowning chops as Malvolio, holding his own against the carousing fools John Ellison Conlee and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
‘Creditors’
The playwright Jen Silverman (“The Roommate”) warns the audience that her script for “Creditors” is “after Strindberg,” so don’t expect literal faithfulness to the Swedish great here. A stage production starring Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff and Justice Smith was presented at New York’s Minetta Lane Theater in May in a joint effort by Audible and Together (Sonia Friedman and Hugh Jackman’s production company). Now the audio version is out, and this story of a kind of diabolical emotional triangle remains remarkably effective. Among other tweaks, Silverman took greater care than Strindberg did of the character played by Siff, but her zippy spin does respect the original’s perverse mind games and manipulations.
‘Hamlet’
Rent, buy or stream for free on various platforms.
A satisfying revisiting of a classic text comes courtesy of Sean Mathias. The director’s staging of “Hamlet” at Theater Royal Windsor in 2021, was a modern-dress one, but what really made the production stand out was Mathias’s seemingly counterintuitive decision to cast Ian McKellen, then 82, in the title role. The star — who had already taken on Hamlet half a century earlier — made “age irrelevant, so that we seem to be peering into the soul of a character this actor understands from the inside out,” Matt Wolf wrote in a review for The Times. Mathias’s filmed version of his own show turns the nooks and crannies of the lived-in theater into Elsinore, a self-contained setting outside of time and place, and haunted by ghosts — and possibly actors.
‘Retrograde’
Stream it at the National Theater at Home.
A recent addition to the National Theater’s remarkable library is “Retrograde,” a three-hander that centers on the choices an up-and-coming Sidney Poitier (Ivanno Jeremiah) must make in the mid-1950s. The actor faces Hollywood prejudices and must also prove his adherence to American values of a certain kind in a climate poisoned by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade. An NBC lawyer (Stanley Townsend) dangles a contract in front of Poitier but informs him that he needs to sign an oath stating he’s not associating with the wrong people and causes, especially of the red kind. The price to pay for a career, and dignity, can be high. The show, directed by Amit Sharma, premiered in 2023 at the Kiln Theater in London, then had a West End run this year.
Cabaret tonight
The Manhattan boîte 54 Below often livestreams shows, so you can make yourself a martini, get nibbles ready and enjoy a cabaret evening in sweatpants and slippers. This month includes a sterling trifecta that happens to be on consecutive days. First off on Nov. 22 is the superb interpreter Melissa Errico with an evening titled “The Streisand Effect” — yes, Errico is among the few singers out there who can tackle Streisand without embarrassing herself. The following evening belongs to “Sondheim Unplugged,” a series that started in 2010 and is celebrating its final season; guests that night include Ramona Mallory, Liz McCartney and Lucia Spina. Finally, on Nov. 24, the irresistible, chameleonic Christine Pedi returns as host and performer in “The Wicked Stage: Songs About Show Business”; guests include Gerard Alessandrini, the mastermind of “Forbidden Broadway” (in which Pedi has often appeared), as well as Anika Larsen and Julia Murney.
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