Andrew Borba and Lucy Davenport star as Robert and Anne Adams in Jake Broder’s UnRavelled (photo by Stan Evans)
UNRAVELLED
The Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Broadway at 116th St.
Friday, October 23, 7:30, and Saturday, October 24, 1:00, $12.50 – $49.75
millertheatre.com
www.gbhi.org/unravelled
unravelledplay.com
One of the most fascinating plays that I saw during the Zoom era came from an unlikely source: the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Jake Broder’s UnRavelled is a deeply affecting ninety-minute play that shares the true story of Canadian scientist Anne Adams, who, in 1994, at the age of fifty-three, became obsessed with Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” and made a remarkable painting based on the 1928 musical work, which Ravel composed for dancer Ida Rubenstein in 1928, when he was fifty-three. As it turns out, both Adams and Ravel had the same serious brain disease, Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), which affects memory while lighting a creative fuse.
The play has now been adapted into an in-person production that is on the road, arriving at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University On October 23 and 24.
“I always imagined UnRavelled onstage, but with the pandemic, we had to pivot and present it virtually. After the first Zoom reading, the audience really came out of the woodwork to tell us their stories, and we realized how powerful this piece could be,” Broder, whose other plays include Our American Hamlet and Sense of Decency, told twi-ny. “I truly had no idea when I first made it if UnRavelled was good or effective, but once we put it in front of people, we realized we had to keep presenting this story. The twi-ny Pandemic Award [for Best Scientific Play] helped drive traffic to that version, which allowed us to present it on the West Coast and get articles and reviews about the project in Ireland and England. This helped us realize UnRavelled’s extensive reach. Quite simply, the story is only relevant to two kinds of people: those with a brain or those who love someone who has one. Having a brain is a great human unifier.”
Directed by James Bonas, the ninety-five-minute UnRavelled stars Lucy Davenport as Anne, a mathematician, chemist, and biologist, and Andrew Borba as her husband, Robert, a traffic architectural engineer. They are trying to hold together following a serious accident involving their son, but when they continue to have trouble communicating and Anne starts spending more time by herself in her studio, listening to “Bolero” and painting, Robert begins to suspect something else is going on, and Dr. Bruce Miller (David Aaron Baker) ultimately confirms that.
Anne is not necessarily alone; she is having imaginary conversations with Ravel (Leo Marks) about art, love, and science. Ravel also speaks with Rubenstein (Tracey A. Leigh), who has commissioned “Bolero,” which Ravel detests and can’t believe he actually wrote. Davenport and Marks reprise their roles from the online version. Keyboardist Aron Kallay serves as music director, with Randy Gloss on percussion, Rachel Iba on violin, Michelle Elliott Rearick on cello, and Nathaniel Edison on flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, and dizi.
The real Dr. Miller is the founding director of GBHI and the director of the Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center at UCSF; you can watch the online Zoom presentation of UnRavelled here, followed by a panel discussion with Broder, Dr. Miller, behavioral neurologists Bill Seeley and Adit Friedberg, and virtual director Nike Doukas, as well as a related dance choreographed by Magda Kaczmarska.
Of course, first check it out at the Miller Theatre, in person, how it was always meant to be seen.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]