this week in literature

JUST TAKING IT IN: GOING FULL MANTIS WITH MILFORD GRAVES AND ASHANTI ALSTON

Milford Graves enjoys a bite in his garden in new documentary about the unique percussionist and philosopher

Milford Graves enjoys a bite in his garden in documentary about the unique percussionist and philosopher

MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS (Jake Meginsky, 2018)
Maysles Documentary Center
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Sunday, September 27, $7-$15, 2:00, free Q&A 4:30
maysles.org
fullmantis.com

Jake Meginsky’s unconventional documentary of unconventional musician Milford Graves begins with the following epigraph from Graves: “Look at the room downstairs / Look at the garden outside / Don’t try to analyze it / Just take it in.” That is not only Graves’s life philosophy but also the best way to experience Milford Graves Full Mantis, which is screening September 27 at 2:00 at the Maysles Documentary Center. Born in 1941 in South Jamaica, Queens, where he resided until his death in February 2021, Graves was an avant-garde free jazz percussionist who played and lived to his own beat. In 2004, Meginsky knocked on Graves’s door, asked to study with him, and soon became the Professor’s assistant and documentarian; the film, codirected by drummer Neil Young, who also edited and photographed it with Meginsky, features compelling live footage along with peaceful moments in Graves’s basement and expansive garden. Early on, Meginsky shows a wild excerpt from a 1973 concert at the Jazz Middelheim Festival in Antwerp in which Graves performs with Joe Rigby and Hugh Glover on reeds and Arthur Williams on trumpet; the fierce, dissonant music might not be to everyone’s taste, but it serves as a terrific counterpoint to Graves’s calmer side, pontificating on, well, sometimes it’s hard to tell what, but it’s always fascinating.

There are also clips of Graves playing solo at the Brandeis Improv Festival in 2015 and in one of Park Ave. Armory’s historic rooms in 2016; in 2011 in his basement, where he’s surrounded by African sculpture, books, and computers that record his heartbeat and nervous system, which he incorporates into his work; and in Japan in 1981 with dancer Min Tanaka at a school for autistic children, where his unique performance inspired the kids to get up and move to the groove. In his backyard dojo he explains Yara, the discipline he invented based on martial arts, African ritual dance, the Lindy Hop, and the praying mantis and which he refers to as “the black way of self protection.” There are no talking-head experts or Graves acolytes singing his praises; the only voice heard in the film is Graves’s own, and for the first half of its ninety minutes Meginsky doesn’t show the film’s subject as he talks. Instead, while Graves speaks about his past and shares his kaleidoscopic philosophies, the camera slowly focuses on his lush garden or shows some of Graves’s animations.

But eventually Graves is seen sitting in his basement, telling a long, remarkable story of a turning point in his life. He’s an engaging character, bursting with enthusiasm and a unique view of the human body, the five senses, tear ducts, and the parasympathetic nervous system. And throughout, he keeps playing those drums, holding the sticks in his trademark way on a nonstandard kit he put together himself.

The screening at MDC will be followed at 4:30 by “An Afternoon with Ashanti Omowali Alston,” a free Q&A with the revolutionary, orator, writer, organizer, motivator, anarchist, and former Black Panther Party member, in conversation with political philosopher, academic, and author Joy James, focusing on the new book Anarchist Panther: The Selected Writings of Ashanti O. Alston (AK Press, August 2026, $21.99).

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

“EARLY THOUGH THE LAUREL GROWS”: THE INVENTION OF LOVE AT THEATERLAB

Yaron Lotan and David Greenspan both portray A. E. Housman in Tom Stoppard revival (photo by Paul Lutvak)

THE INVENTION OF LOVE
TheaterLab
357 West Thirty-Sixth St., between Eighth & Ninth Aves., third floor
Through October 3, $44.40-$88.80
theaterlabnyc.com
themaptheater.com

In the the fall of 2000, Tom Stoppard and Daniel Mendelsohn took part in an extraordinary exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books following the latter’s lengthy critical chastising of the former’s The Invention of Love at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. The back-and-forth could make for its own fascinating play, although audiences would have to be given extensive notes to catch even a handful of the endless literary and historical references (in the letters and the play). In fact, when the show reached Broadway in 2001, theatergoers were given a thirty-page booklet to help decipher various elements.

Of course, since Stoppard died last November at the age of eighty-eight, I don’t have to worry that he will come after me for this review, at least not in this life. In addition, it is far easier for me to research the language and setting of the play using the internet in a way that was not available a quarter-century ago.

Director Zachary Elkind and his MAP Theater are staging a rare US revival of The Invention of Love, running through October 3 at the nearly blindingly white space at Theaterlab. Stoppard would most likely take no issue with my thoughts on the first act, although he might not go easy on me when it comes to what follows after intermission.

The memory play opens with AEH, exquisitely portrayed by off-Broadway legend David Greenspan in a tight-fitting three-piece academic suit, pristine facial hair, and a slow, careful gait, entering the small room, where an audience of about a hundred sit in two rows on opposite sides. In the middle is a makeshift rowing boat on which Charon (Annabel Capper) will take the late poet and scholar across the River Styx and to the underworld of Hades.

“I’m dead, then. Good,” he says, recognizing the situation he is in, adding matter-of-factly, “And this is the Stygian gloom one has heard so much about.” It’s a brilliant opening that sets the stage for what we’re in for.

As AEH sits on one of the benches on the boat, his years as a student at Oxford start unfolding before his eyes. Sometimes he closes them, deep in thought, and other times he watches closely, as his younger self, identified in the script as Housman (Yaron Lotan), filled with a lust for literature and camaraderie, frolics with his new friends and classmates, A. W. Pollard (Daniel Liu) and Moses John Jackson (José Espinosa), arguing over the merits of Plato, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and, primarily, the significantly lesser-known Sextus Propertius.

Housman also takes a fancy for Jackson, who is a champion runner, an unrequited love that would haunt him throughout his life and, here, into his death.

Stoppard revels in highfalutin intellectual conversations the three students have, as exemplified by this early exchange, as they are rowing on the Thames:

Housman: False quantities in all around I see, yea we have been forsaken in the wilderness to gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles.
Pollard: That’s possibly why the College is named for John the Baptist.
Jackson: John the Baptist was locusts and wild honey, actually, Pollard.
Pollard: It’s the Baptist School of Hard Knocks. First the Wilderness, then the head on the platter.
Housman: It was clear something was amiss from the day we matriculated. The statutes warned us against drinking, gambling and hoop-trundling but not a word about Jowett’s translation of Plato. The Regius Professor can’t even pronounce the Greek language and there is no one at Oxford to tell him.
Pollard: Except you, Housman.
Housman: I will take his secret to the grave, telling people I meet on the way. Betrayal is no sin if it’s whimsical.
Jackson: We did the new pronunciation, you know. As an Englishman I never took to the speaking of it. Veni, vidi, vici . . . It was never natural to my mind.
Pollard: That was Latin, actually, Jackson.
Jackson: And “Wennus” the Goddess of Love. I mean to say!
Pollard: Perhaps I don’t make myself plain. Latin and Greek are two entirely separate languages spoken by distinct peoples living in different parts of the ancient world. Some inkling of this must have got through to you, Jackson, at the Vale Academy, Ramsgate, surely.
Housman: But “‘Wennus’ the Goddess of Love,” for a man of Jackson’s venereal pursuits, is a strong objection to the new pronunciation — where is the chemistry in Wennus?
Jackson: I know you and Pollard look down on science.
Pollard: Is it a science? Ovid said it was an art.
Jackson: Oh — love!

Charon (Annabel Capper) guides A. E. Housman (David Greespan) across the River Styx in The Invention of Love (photo by Paul Lutvak)

It’s not the details that matter so much as the flow of the dialogue, which unfurls in pure poetry.

Later in the first act, AEH gets the opportunity to walk into his earlier life, meeting the young man he was more than half a century ago. While AEH recognizes the strapping lad, Housman does not know he is speaking with his future self. It’s a profoundly touching and evocative scene, distinguishing the hope, and folly, of youth against the reality of a long-lived life of learning. Referring to his Oxford days, AEH says, “I felt as if I had come up from the plains of Moab to the top of Mount Pisgah like Moses when the Lord showed him all the land of Judah unto the utmost sea.” Housman replies, “There’s a hill near our house where I live in Worcestershire which I and my brothers and sisters call Mount Pisgah. I used to climb it often, and look out towards Wales, to what I thought was a kind of Promised Land, though it was only the Clee Hills really — Shropshire was our western horizon.” A. E. Housman would eventually gain international fame for his 1896 poetry collection, A Shropshire Lad.

Stoppard also introduces us to Lincoln College rector Mark Pattison (Sam Bolen), art critics Walter Pater (Abrar Haque) and John Ruskin (Spencer Lutvak), Latin scholar Robinson Ellis (Lutvak), and master of Balliol College Benjamin Jowett (Leland Fowler), who share their views on education, class, and, as Jowett states, “the ideal of morality, art and social order.”

AEH disappears for much of the second act, as the narrative focuses on Housman’s growing fondness for Jackson and what is happening outside the Oxford environs. Journalists Henry Labouchere (Fowler), Frank Harris (Lutvak), and W. T. Stead (Bolen) talk about the power of the press, professor John Percival Postgate recommends Housman for a position despite their disagreement over Propertius, and editor Jerome K. Jerome (Capper), Harris, and Housman’s new friend Chamberlain (Haque) discuss the merits of the imprisoned writer Oscar Wilde (Bolen).

When AEH returns, he exhibits his disdain for the term homosexual to Chamberlain, declaring, “It’s half Greek and half Latin!” He also doesn’t care for the word because he never publicly admitted that he himself was gay, which is brought to the forefront when he meets Wilde, whose lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, coined the phrase “the love that dare not speak its name.” Wilde is everything that AEH was not, but their interaction, which is a complete fiction, as the two men never met, goes on too long, extending an already too long second act.

You don’t have to be a Classics major to fall under the magical spell of The Invention of Love. Five-time Tony winner Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Coast of Utopia) is in complete control, glorying in the poetry of language and the science of literature, even as he gets carried away in the later moments. Six-time Obie winner Greenspan (Strange Interlude, Four Saints in Three Acts) is mesmerizing as AEH, a proud and resolute man who, sadly, was unable to live life to the fullest. It doesn’t matter that the words he speaks and thoughts he shares are ultracomplicated and often impossible to truly understand, because they roll off his tongue with such grace and beauty that you never want him to stop.

A. E. Housman (Yaron Lotan) is haunted by his love for Moses John Jackson (José Espinosa) in Stoppard play at Theaterlab (photo by Paul Lutvak)

Lotan (You Don’t Have to Do Anything, Dead Poets Society) is charming as the young Housman, holding his own in his scenes with Greenspan and leading the energetic ensemble. Espinosa (Our Class, The Merchant of Venice) exudes sexiness as Jackson, who is in love with life in a way AEH and Housman never will be. (In the 2001 Broadway premiere, Richard Easton won a Best Actor Tony for portraying the elder Housman and Robert Sean Leonard captures a Best Supporting Actor Tony as the young Housman.)

Elkind (James Joyce’s Exiles, If We Kiss) makes excellent use of the intimate space as the plot shifts from rivers and a track meet to a club and the halls of Oxford. Bridget Lindsay’s set, which also features several white benches and cleverly incorporates the pole that stands in the middle of the room, is lit by Paige Seber with soft touches of blue, purple, and yellow. Alyssa Korol’s costumes are appropriately Victorian era, although it is curious that all the men except for AEH are barefoot.

The play also brings added meaning to one of Housman’s most famous poems, “To an Athlete Dying Young.” When Chamberlain quotes from it, Housman gets upset, saying, “This is a revolting habit, Chamberlain — I forbid you.” Despite potentially upsetting both Stoppard and Housman, I will leave you here with the full quatrain that Chamberlain referred to:

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SAVING BOOKS AND PENGUINS FROM EXTINCTION: GARRY STARR GOES NUTS OVER LITERARY CLASSICS

Damien Warren-Smith lets it all hang out as alter ego Garry Starr in Classic Penguins (photo by Austin Ruffer)

GARRY STARR: CLASSIC PENGUINS
Studio Seaview
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 11, $45-$155
studioseaview.com
www.garrystarr.com

Jackass meets the literati in the utterly insane, completely brilliant, and exhilaratingly entertaining Garry Starr: Classic Penguins. Starr is the clown alter ego of Australian writer, producer, and performer Damien Warren-Smith, who previously appeared as Starr in Greece Lightning, about Greek mythology, Garry Starr Performs Everything, exploring different styles of theater, and the family-friendly Monkeys Everywhere, in which he interacts with simian sidekicks.

Classic Penguins is most definitely not for children or the faint of heart. The official website warns, “This event is strictly 18+. Please be aware that this production includes full nudity, strobes, haze, recorded gunshots, and sudden loud noises. Audience participation will be invited at the discretion of the performer and is voluntary. By purchasing a ticket, you acknowledge the inherent risks of voluntarily participating in a live performance, including physical activity and close contact with the performer, and release all producers and venue operator from claims based on negligence, except for gross negligence or willful misconduct.”

As ticket holders enter the theater, Starr is already onstage, seated in a leather chair, its back to the audience; only his top hat and orange flippers are visible. He is watching a monitor on which, at first, burning logs in a fireplace are projected while Mozart’s Laudate Dominum (Vesperae Solennes De Confessore, K.339) is playing, by the London Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Cassovia, Kosice Teacher’s Choir, and others. To his left is a treasure chest; to his right is a small bookcase with a globe, a skull, a plant, and more than three dozen orange-and-white Penguin Classics paperbacks. Soon the video of the logs are replaced by photos of famous paintings in which a cartoon penguin has been inserted in key places, a quick turn from the civilized to what will become more and more uncivilized by the minute. The penguin finds itself in such masterpieces as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, and John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott.

When the show proper begins, Starr spins around in the chair to reveal that he is dressed as a penguin, with a white ruff collar, an open black tailcoat — and nothing else. He is naked from the waist down, his willy hanging free. He explains that he is attempting to save literature and penguins from extinction, so for the next hour, he performs, in one way or another, each of the novels on the shelf, either riffing on the title, the author, and/or the plot. Before, during, or after each vignette, he places the paperback on the top of the bookcase so a camera can project it onto the monitor for everyone to see; afterward, he slides it onto the floor.

For example, early on, he dons a bald cap, shakes his hips so his schlong twirls, and then reveals Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The bald cap references the singer and animal-rights activist Moby, whose real name is Richard Melville Hall; many of Warren-Smith’s gimmicks are layered with such neat twists, although you don’t have to get them all to still laugh yourself silly.

Starr also incorporates meta info about many of the books; for example, he brings up Oscar Isaac and Jabob Elordi when doing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (they starred in Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 Oscar-nominated adaptation), and Kate Bush’s 1978 song “Wuthering Heights” is heard while he takes on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, with another nod to Elordi.

Garry Starr (Damien Warren-Smith) performs dozens of Penguin Classics with the help of many audience members (photo by Austin Ruffer)

Eventually, he loses the coat and flippers and is essentially fully naked the rest of the way, never failing to grab a chance to dangle his Johnson at or expose his butt cheeks to the audience, some of whom volunteer to come onstage and assist him with his crazier and crazier antics and impressive acrobatics. The night I went, the crowd was particularly spry and fearless, getting involved in shenanigans I never thought I would see in such a venue.

Most of the participants are chosen from the first row, although Starr does his best to not select people he thinks may be actors or improv comics themselves. (Interestingly, the first row is less expensive than the next four rows, perhaps as a thank-you to those ready to strut their stuff.) But that doesn’t mean that others won’t have the chance to high-five Starr, hug him, share some food, and — well, it’s probably best if you don’t know some of the, er, nuttier elements, which involve a whole lot of (consensual) touching, though nothing pornographic (depending on, I guess, what you consider pornographic). If you don’t get picked to participate, you can get your photo taken with a “moist” Warren-Smith in the bar after the show.

Penguin Classics was cofounded in 1946 by E. V. Rieu, whose translation of Homer’s The Odyssey was the first book to be part of the program, which now consists of approximately two thousand novels and nonfiction titles. While it would seem that The Odyssey would be excellent fodder for the play, given all the discussion about Christopher Nolan’s new film and Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation, which is published by a Penguin rival — I can clearly envision Starr in Matt Damon’s Odysseus headgear, replete with tantalizing plume — but it didn’t make the cut. Works by Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott are among the dozens that did.

Classic Penguins may not be as radical or revolutionary as the oeuvre of such downtown legends as Karen Finley, Penny Arcade, Annie Sprinkle, or John Fleck, but it is more accessible and a whale of a good time. Warren-Smith is an engaging performer who knows how to titillate an audience and adapt to whatever happens; the evening I attended, during a fierce fruit fight, an audience member nailed Starr with an orange right in the one-eyed trouser snake, which both surprised and delighted Starr, who needed a moment to recover, not unlike baseball players who get plunked in the crown jewels by a fastball.

Jackass leader Johnny Knoxville — whose desire for adventure was stoked when, at the age of fourteen, he read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, a Penguin Classic not in Starr’s show — would be proud.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

“IT BEGAN AS A MISTAKE”: ANNUAL CHARLES BUKOWSKI MEMORIAL READING AT THE BITTER END

Who: Penny Arcade, Kat Georges, Peter Carlaftes, Jennifer Blowdryer, Puma Perl, Frank Messina, Michael Puzzo, Danny Shot, Richard Vetere, George Wallace, more
What: Annual tribute to Charles Bukowski
Where: The Bitter End, 147 Bleecker St. between Thompson & La Guardia
When: Friday, August 14, $10, 6:00
Why: “What sort of cultural hangover keeps Charles Bukowski in print and popular more than twenty years after his death?” S. A. Griffin asks in his Three Rooms Press essay “Charles Bukowski: Dean of Another Academy.” “In light of the fact that a good portion of what has been published since his passing in 1994 may not be the man’s best work, along with some heavy editing at times, why does Charles Bukowski remain relevant well into the 21st century?”

The nineteenth annual Charles Bukowski Memorial Reading takes place August 14 at 6:00 at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village in honor of what would have been the 106th birthday of the author of such books as Pulp, Factotum, Post Office, On Cats, and Love Is a Dog from Hell, with tribute readings by performance artist Penny Arcade, musician and storyteller Jennifer Blowdryer, poets Frank Messina, Puma Perl, Danny Shot, and George Wallace, and playwrights Richard Vetere and Michael Puzzo, hosted by Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes of Three Rooms Press. Bukowski, who died in 1994 at the age of seventy-three, will be celebrated through poetry, oral history, rare videos, and live performances, with a special look at what he might have thought about the world’s first trillionaire, the decline of alcohol consumption, AI, the demise of the US Post Office, and other contemporary issues.

“It began as a mistake,” Bukowski writes at the beginning of his 1971 novel, Post Office. Where it goes from there will have you thinking twice about your mailman.

As a bonus, various prizes, including books and recordings, will be given away at this always welcome literary event.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MOOMIN AND GROOVIN AT THE NYBG

“Summer of Moomin” continues at New York Botanical Garden through September 13 (photo by Marlon Co. / courtesy the New York Botanical Garden)

SUMMER OF MOOMIN
The New York Botanical Garden
Everett Children’s Adventure Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
August 8-9, noon – 5:30, $17 children two to twelve, $35 students and seniors, $39 adults
Exhibit on view through September 13
www.nybg.org

The New York Botanical Garden’s “Summer of Moomin” has a special Moomin’s Day Weekend planned for August 8 and 9, two days of culinary adventures, cooking demonstrations, planting, maker stations, and more in the Edible Academy.

Begun in 1945 by Finnish painter, author, and illustrator Tove Jansson, the Moomin books, comic strips, stage productions, animated television series, and movies share the tales of such beloved characters as Moomintroll, Snufkin, Snorkmaiden, Hemulen, Moominpappa, Moominmamma, and Little My, all of whom you can find along a winding trail through Moominvalley in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden filled with quotes, toys, plants and flowers, a tent, book excerpts, crafts, a kitchen, interactive elements, a puppet theater, and other fun surprises. There is also a booklet with games and activities and details about the world of Moomin.

“The stories offer a very happy and peaceful way to deal with some very complex issues of life and living and being together in a way that we don’t even notice, but we’re learning,” Tove’s niece Sophia Jansson said at the opening of the exhibit. “But Tove had some very important core values that were all about tolerance, friendship, and respect for nature.”

While at the NYBG, don’t miss the colorful, wide-ranging “Flower Power” exhibition, celebrating peace and love in the 1960s with paintings, photographs, music, drum circles, craft workshops, ornately designed VW buses, psychedelic nature displays, archival news reports, sound baths, and film screenings.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CREATIVE RESET FOR THE MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT: NARRATIVE HEALING AT THE COFFEE HOUSE WITH LISA WEINERT

Lisa Weinert brings her Narrative Healing program to the Coffee House on August 5 (photo courtesy Lisa Weinert)

CREATIVE RESET: AN INTERACTIVE LITERARY & CREATIVE GATHERING
Coffee House Club at the Salmagundi CLub
47 Fifth Ave. between Eleventh & Twelfth Sts.
Wednesday, August 5, $75-$150 (includes signed book),6:00
www.thecoffeehouseclub.com
www.lisaweinert.com

“Most writing books, journaling courses, and creative writing programs begin by putting the pen to the page. At Narrative Healing, we begin with the body,” native New Yorker Lisa Weinert explains in the introduction to her 2023 book, Narrative Healing: Awaken the Power of Your Story. “We offer a new paradigm for healing from trauma, tapping into creativity, and sharing our stories in the world. The premise here is simple: as we are able to better know our own stories, we are better able to take in the humanity of those around us. My hope is that if we start to listen to the body when it whispers, we won’t have to wait for it to scream to hear what it has to say. And we will thus have the capacity to listen to others too.”

A licensed social worker, certified yoga teacher, book coach, and public speaker, Weinert founded Narrative Healing in 2016, guided by her belief in storytelling as a form of medicine for the body, mind, and spirit. She has since led writing retreats and workshops in the United States and abroad, welcoming writers from around the world. On August 5, she returns to her hometown for her first Narrative Healing event in New York City in several years: “Creative Reset: An Interactive Literary and Creative Gathering.”

“I’m so honored to bring Narrative Healing to the historic Salmagundi Club for a special evening presented by the Coffee House,” Weinert told twi-ny. “After spending the past few years completing my MSW and exploring the healing power of storytelling through a social work lens, I’m so happy to be returning to New York’s literary community. It feels like such a gift to come together in person and create a space where we can slow down, listen within, write, and connect through our stories. I’m so grateful to [Coffee House executive director] Julian Tepper for presenting the evening and to [Salmagundi interim executive director] Paul Morris for welcoming us into this extraordinary space.”

The event will feature guided writing and reflection prompts, mindfulness and embodied awareness practices, brief paired and group conversations, live piano and atmospheric music, and a quiet space for private writing, sketching, reflection, and listening. Attendees don’t need any prior experience with such disciplines in order to participate, and everyone is encouraged to proceed at their own pace.

“This partnership reflects the Coffee House Club’s commitment to creating spaces where creativity, thoughtful conversation, and artistic community can flourish,” Tepper told twi-ny. “We’re delighted to partner with Lisa Weinert because her vision of creativity as a practice of reflection, connection, and community beautifully aligns with the club’s own literary and artistic tradition.”

The Coffee House’s history dates back to 1915, when Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield helped form the Foes of Finance, a collective of New Yorkers from intellectual, artistic, literary, and theatrical circles whose constitution declared: “No Officers. No Charge Accounts. No Liveries. No Tips. No Set Speeches. NO RULES.” The Salmagundi Club was founded in 1871 by a group of artists and patrons.

Tickets for “Creative Reset” range from $75 (community) to $125 (standard) and $150 (supporter), each including a signed copy of Narrative Healing: Awaken the Power of Your Story.

As I noted in a September 2023 twi-ny talk, “Weinert exudes a natural warmth and charm, building communities of friends and colleagues who mingle and then form bonds and relationships of their own.”

You can expect the same thing to happen August 5 at the Coffee House Club.

[Lisa Weinert also writes the Substack “The Writing Body.” Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; visit his Substack here to find out how you can win a free copy of Narrative Healing.]

A LESS-THAN-GLEEFUL POSTMORTEM: CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY ON BROADWAY

Andrea Martin was one of many celebrity guests reading about other celebrities in Celebrity Autobiography (photo by Evan Zimmerman)

CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Shubert Theatre
225 West Forty-Fourth St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave
Closed June 21, $49-$329
celebrityautobiography.com

The trouble was obvious from the start. Eugene Pack’s Celebrity Autobiography made its Broadway debut at the Shubert on May 18; when I saw it on June 1, the audience was so sparse that they roped off the mezzanine and moved everyone down to the orchestra; still, there were plenty of empty seats. Scheduled to run through August 16, the show closed early, after the June 21 performance.

Which is a shame, because it was a lot of fun, with great rotating casts and a ton of laughs. But perhaps its eyes were bigger than its stomach.

Since 1998, Celebrity Autobiography has been a hit in cities around the world, packing them in at clubs from New York and Los Angeles to London and Sydney. For its Broadway run, it announced an enticing list of stars who would participate in the show’s novel structure, which is neither drama nor comedy and nearer to stand-up. A row of celebrities stand at mics, reading excerpts from the memoirs of other celebrities, with their tongues either firmly placed in their cheeks or attacking the often mind-boggling prose with virtuoso gusto.

Perhaps in our celebrity-obsessed, social-media-dependent culture, it was too much, too mean-spirited. Certainly, the top ticket price of $329 was exorbitant wishful thinking, but it was well worth the $49 for the cheap seats.

I caught a lovely group of actors having an infectiously fabulous time onstage, even when the histrionics did get excessive. Ralph Macchio kicked things off with David Hasselhoff’s Don’t Hassel the Hoff, allowing time for the audience to burst out in gleeful guffaws. Robert Sean Leonard cast sly glances about as he read from Ryan Seacrest and Geraldo Rivera. Mario Cantone couldn’t contain himself as he did wicked impressions while sharing passages from Carol Channing’s Just Lucky I Guess and Kathleen Turner’s Send Yourself Roses. Pamela Adlon took on Arnold Schwarzenegger and Oprah. Gina Gershon channeled Celine Dion and Cher. Nia Vardalos brought down the house with her interpretation of Khloe Kardashian.

The most hilarious mashup was the back and forth between Macchio/Justin Bieber and Andrea Martin/Kylie Jenner discussing Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The sports section was highlighted by Pack reading from Tiger Woods’s How I Play Golf, which sounded more like a sex manual. Dayle Reyfel, who developed the show with Pack in the late 1990s and directed the Broadway edition with him, brings us Dolly Parton’s thoughts.

Adding in the poetry of Matthew McConaughey and Suzanne Somers didn’t fit and in the latter case was particularly cruel. A segment dedicated to Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton was a dishy delight but couldn’t possibly appeal to younger audiences.

Was that enough to kill off the Broadway run? Not in my opinion, as most of the ninety minutes were filled with a plethora of humor, helping us forget about the horrors occurring outside in the real world, far beyond star culture.

Among the others who got to appear in the show before its shuttering were Brooke Adams, Lewis Black, Matthew Broderick, Danny Burstein, Katie Couric, Christopher Jackson, Eric McCormack, Ray Romano, Phil Rosenthal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Tony Shalhoub, Keenan Thompson, and Rita Wilson; those waiting in the wings included Jason Alexander, Christie Brinkley, Bob Costas, Griffin Dunne, Susan Lucci, Billy Porter, and Tiler Peck.

In 2009, Celebrity Autobiography won a Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience; it is still a unique theatrical experience, though maybe not unique enough for 2026 audiences.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]