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THE TASTE OF CAPITALISM: MOTHER RUSSIA AT THE SIGNATURE

David Turner stars as the title character in Lauren Yee’s Mother Russia (photo by HanJie Chow)

MOTHER RUSSIA
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 22, $74-$162
signaturetheatre.org

Asian American playwright Lauren Yee continues her geographic theatrical journey with the New York premiere of Mother Russia at the Signature, the third of what she calls her “cycle of communism plays in Asia in the twentieth century and its intersection with Western pop culture.” Cambodian Rock Band was a play with music about the second-generation immigrant experience and the Cambodian genocide of 1975–79, while The Great Leap was a culturopolitical fantasy about a basketball “friendship game” between American and China in 1981 that delved into the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square uprising.

In Mother Russia, Yee explores that nation’s conversion to capitalism in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev’s introduction of Glasnost and Perestroika in the mid-1980s, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s 1992, and the character Mother Russia, hilariously portrayed by David Turner in an all-red nun’s habit / opera clown costume, prepares the audience for what’s to come.

“Do not bother to check. I am not in program. So you will not find me. Don’t worry, I am no one,” she says by way of introduction. “They think I will die before long. But! What do they know? . . . I have been let down by so many shitty men. Have you ever loved a shitty man? My life — if you can call this a life — has been one shitty man after another. So now I am here. With you sluts. You have kids? Never have kids. You are only as happy as your unhappiest child, and me? I have so many. And no matter what you do, they will never be happy.”

The only son of a lowly widow, twenty-five-year-old Dmitri Petrovich (Steven Boyer) thinks he is happy and successful; he runs a little metal-shack kiosk in St. Petersburg, selling condoms, bullets, candy bars, Nestlé’s Quik, Heinz Ketchup, Marlboro cigarettes, Coca-Cola, and other American goods, and he is in love with his girlfriend, Masha, the name of characters in Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters and The Seagull. The shack has an ad for Folger’s coffee on its facade, in Russian except for the company logo, an example of the intrusion of capitalism. Meanwhile, Dmitri still dreams of being a spy for the KGB. One day a man enters the shop and Dmitri instinctively pulls a (Chekhovian) gun on him until he recognizes it is his old pal Evgeny Evgenievich (Adam Chanler-Berat), who had moved to Moscow three years earlier with his father, a powerful party leader who has now become “a burgeoning capitalist.”

“Oh, seems like just yesterday my mom was scrubbing the horseshit out of the floor of your dad’s government dacha!” Dmitri proclaims.

However, it turns out that Evgeny is not there to say hello to Dmitri but to shake him down, which is the job his father has forced him to do even though he is no good at it. Nonetheless, the naive Dmitri trusts Evgeny enough to let him in on a secret: that he is being paid handsomely in vouchers to secretly record the comings and goings of Yekaterina Mikhailovna Shevchenko (Rebecca Naomi Jones), a former famous activist and singer known as Katya M who defected to the West but has now returned as a quiet teacher whose past has been forgotten — except for the man who is paying Dmitri to track her.

Evgeny declares that he is a big fan of Katya M’s and wants to participate in the surveillance, begging Dmitri to hire him. “You want to be my servant?” Dmitri asks. Evgeny responds, “More like an employee,” having a hard time forming that last word.

Soon Evgeny is not only listening in on Katya at home and school but also following her on the bus, where they strike up a conversation. His obsession grows as he seeks relationship advice from Dmitri while hiding his identity from Katya. Both he and Katya are plagued by unseen fathers: Evegeny seeks approval from his ever-silent father, closed off from him behind a door, while Katya wants the truth about what happened to her father, a poet who was disappeared many years before.

In one of the funniest moment of the play, Dmitri and Evgeny devour a McDonald’s “filettofish” sandwich together. “Is this what capitalism tastes like?” Dmitri says with a rush of excitement.

It isn’t long before everyone is getting a taste of capitalism and Western society, filtered through Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand.

Dmitri (Steven Boyer) and Evgeny (Adam Chanler-Berat) spy on Katya (Rebecca Naomi Jones) in New York City premiere at the Signature (photo by HanJie Chow)

“There is not enough of me in this play,” Mother Russia says at one point. “Have you noticed this? Right?”

We noticed; there’s not enough of Mother Russia, and David Turner, in the play. She shows up in various places in interstitial scenes — sitting in the audience or on the ledge of Dmitri’s shack — to share her wisdom about the nation, embodying it with humor and angst while delving into history. “Back in the day, we would all have same couch. This is true!” she recalls. “Now you go to store, and all you see are choices.” After Evgeny claims that these are “unprecedented times,” Mother Russia goes into a riotous monologue about the history of Russia, arguing, “What bullshit. You know what was a hard year? Seven. Seven was a hard year.”

Turner (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Arcadia) is enchanting as the acerbic Mother Russia; he also portrays Katya’s mother in one critical scene. Boyer (Hand to God, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow) is sweetly appealing as the not-too-smart Dmitri, Chanler-Berat (Next to Normal, Nantucket Sleigh Ride) is steady as the deeply conflicted Evgeny, and Jones (Big Love, Oklahoma!) is alluring as Katya, although her story has a few key plot holes. As funny as the play is, there are several overly goofy and silly scenes and awkward moments, but it all works out in the end.

Western pop culture is central to the play, more than in just Katya’s former life as a pop star. Outside the theater, in the lobby, is a poster for “The Mother Russia Mixtape,” which notes, “The musical genre heightened the appeal of anti-Soviet countries, causing dissent and the rise of counterculture among Russian youth.” It includes sixteen influential tracks, from the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR” and Prince’s “Ronnie, Talk to Russia” to Sting’s “Russians” and Billy Joel’s “Leningrad” along with Sergey Kuyokhin’s “Intro Pop-Mechanics” and Kino’s “I Want Changes.”

The preshow music features such late-1980s, early 1990s Russian rock songs as Mumiy Troll’s “Медведица” (“A Bear”) and Kombinatsiya’s “Бухгалтер” (“Accountant”); Yee and director Teddy Bergman (KPOP, Empire Travel Agency) shape the play like a pop song, with Mother Russia serving as a kind of chorus and bridge to the stanzas by Dmitri, Evgeny, and Katya, with a bonus dance number set to a pumped-up version of the theme from Swan Lake. The play also references Vanilla Ice, Die Hard, Rambo, Robert De Niro, American baseball teams, and Meryl Streep as well as Anton Chekhov and his wife, Olga Knipper.

“I miss communism!” Dmitri shouts near the grand finale.

In today’s world, maybe that’s what capitalism tastes like.

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

GETTING PAST THE DAM: THE RESERVOIR AT THE ATLANTIC

Noah Galvin displays an infectious charm as Josh in The Reservoir at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

THE RESERVOIR
Atlantic Theater Company, Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 22, $56.50-$131.50
atlantictheater.org

As the audience enters the Atlantic’s Linda Gross Theater to see Jake Brasch’s off-Broadway debut, The Reservoir, they are met by an unusual sight: An actor is flat on his back on the floor, as if dead. Next to him is wheeled luggage. There are two empty chairs on either side of the stage, in front of curtains, more of which hang high in the back, above a curving piece of scenery that represents water, as if the young man has washed onshore, perhaps having drowned. The night I went, most of the crowd paid little attention to the actor, instead checking their phones and engaging in conversation, as life goes on without him. It’s an apt metaphor for the play itself, which is an engaging and clever foray into family and addiction until it starts drowning in melodrama in the second half.

The young man is Josh (Noah Galvin), an alcoholic college student on leave because of his blackout benders and subsequent disappearances. After Josh awakes, appreciating the sunrise, a park ranger (Matthew Saldívar) tells him he can’t sleep there. Josh turns to the audience and says, “Focus on the cop, speak to the cop. But how did I get here? Did I get on a plane? A greyhound? Wouldn’t be the first time. One time I went to a club in Brooklyn and woke up three days later at a Chick-fil-a in West Virginia.”

A moment later he adds, “Okay. Focus. Morning. Bleeding. Suitcase. Denver. What’s the last thing I remember? The hot rehab worker breathalyzed me and drove me into Miami and then . . . Here we go. Here comes the sober. I hate this part, when the dam breaks and the questions come pouring in.”

He has mysteriously returned home, where his mother, Patricia (Heidi Armbruster), wants him back in rehab. He begs her for one last chance and she agrees to let him stay in his room if he promises to remain sober, take a job at the independent bookstore she owns, and go back to school in the fall.

For most of the play, the four chairs are occupied by Josh’s grandparents, the easygoing Catholic Irene (Mary Beth Peil) and Hank (Peter Maloney) on Patricia’s side, the talkative Jewish Beverly (Caroline Aaron) and Shrimpy (Chip Zien) on his father’s. Despite being surrounded by family and working for a mellow boss, Hugo (Saldívar), Josh can’t get his life in order, especially when Irene’s dementia gets worse. When she suddenly breaks into a lovely version of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” he starts understanding that she is seriously ill, telling Beverly about it. Grandma Beverly is very different from Grandma Irene:

Beverly: So this was truly, completely out of nowhere?
Josh: Unprompted. It felt channeled. Like a spirit was moving through her or something.
Beverly: Christ.
Josh: Yeah, maybe, could have been him. I mean really though, it was actually kinda beautiful.
Beverly: Well, if I ever get like that, if I start randomly singing at lunch, you have to shoot me, understand?
Josh: What?
Beverly: I’m serious. It’s not hard. This is Colorado. Use my credit card, go to Walmart, buy a rifle.
Josh: Dark.
Beverly: I’ll tell you what’s dark: old age. That’s why you’ll help your granny when the time is right.
Josh: I won’t.
Beverly: If I’m all but three words into “O Come, All Ye Faithful” —
Josh: I doubt that would be your song of choice.
Beverly: “Mi Chamocha” whatever. Push me off a cliff.

Meanwhile, Shrimpy, long divorced from Beverly, is planning on having his second bar mitzvah, at the age of eighty-three, and wants Josh to help him prepare, but he has a tendency to speak a little too openly, particularly when it comes to sex. Acknowledging that Josh is gay, Shrimpy asks him whether he has ever had a threesome, then explains, “I’m straight. Mostly. But, you know, sometimes I look at dicks on my computer. What can I say? I do. I look at the dicks. Hey, what do you say you help me with my bar mitzvah prayers?”

Josh, who has no friends his own age and is not dating, joins Beverly at her senior aerobics class at the JCC taught by Lenni (Armbruster), who says things like “Okay, my beautiful Jewish women, let’s start with a step touch. . . . And five six seven eight . . . Goyim style!” He spends nearly all his free time with his grandparents, but when Irene takes a turn for the worse, Josh’s life once again spirals out of control.

Josh (Noah Galvin) is surrounded by his grandparents in Jake Brasch’s The Reservoir (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

In my recent review of Jacob Perkins’s The Dinosaurs, which just ended its run at Playwrights Horizons, I wrote, “If I never see another play set entirely at an AA or grief counseling meeting consisting of a group of people sitting on folding chairs near some coffee and donuts, it will be too soon.”

A coproduction with Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Reservoir is not set entirely at an AA or grief counseling meeting, but much of the second half feels like it does as Josh battles to remain sober while all of his grandparents experience health declines. The first act had a sharp, very funny, and relatable tone and mood, but after intermission it all falls apart as Brasch heaps on the soapy melodrama, sucking the life out of the story and hamstringing each of the actors and characters, which also include Josh’s imaginary doctor, Yaakov Stern (Saldívar), a real neuroscientist who discusses the concept of cognitive reserve and offers such advice as “Listen, Joshua. Alcoholism and Alzheimer’s? Not the same thing. You can rebuild, they cannot,” as well as Rabbi Silver (Armbruster), who leads Josh and Shrimpy in a wholly improbable scene in a temple.

Director Shelley Butler (The Scarlet Letter, This Is Fiction) can’t rein in a narrative that gets lost at sea as various pieces of furniture and book carts are wheeled on- and offstage through the sheer curtains, which turn color based on Jiyoung Chang’s lighting shifts. (The set is by Takeshi Kata, with casual costumes by Sara Ryung Clement and sound and incidental music by Kate Marvin.)

Independent Spirit Award nominee Galvin (Waitress, Dear Evan Hansen) is a delight to watch, infusing Josh with a bittersweet complexity that makes you want to root for him in spite of his many serious mistakes. Helen Hayes Award nominee Aaron (A Kid Like Jake, Madwomen of the West) and three-time Drama Desk nominee Zien (Harmony, Caroline, or Change) nearly steal the show as the madcap Jewish relatives, while two-time Tony nominee and Obie winner Peil (Dying for It, Cornelia Street) and Drama Desk nominee Maloney (I’m Revolting, On the Shore of the Wide World) are touching as the gentle old goyim. Armbruster (Boy, Man from Nebraska) and Saldívar (Junk, The Wild Duck) do what they can with underwritten, overly clichéd roles.

Brasch, who describes themself as “a queer, sober, Jewish clown,” was inspired to write the play based on a year in his own recovery during which he reconnected with his grandparents. The Reservoir feels almost too personal, with too many plot holes and too many off-color jokes that start sounding repetitive as the protagonist faces ever-harder truths.

Talking about a metaphorical river, Josh says, “Nothing can get past the dam. And we’ll never know where the water was heading. We’ll never know what lurks beyond. Immense dryness. A great expanse. Terrifying. What do we remember? What have we forgotten? All of the things that we do not know that we do not know. That gnawing feeling that there’s something missing. Something small. Something minor. Or maybe something huge?”

The first half of The Reservoir is rich and free flowing, but there’s too much missing in the second half, preventing it from getting past that dam.

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

O ROMEO, O JULIET, WHEREFORE ART THOU?

Benjamin Millepied’s Romeo & Juliet Suite offers numerous views of the action at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

ROMEO & JULIET SUITE
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 2-21, $55-$245
www.dancereflections-vancleefarpels.com
www.armoryonpark.org

“Oh no,” the person sitting next to me said at the start of Benjamin Millepied’s Romeo & Juliet Suite at Park Ave. Armory.

I couldn’t help but agree as we watched two dancers move a couch on a platform stage, followed by a cameraman in black who was documenting the action, the live video projected on a large screen. The men got onto the couch, which was facing away from the audience, but we could see what they were doing onscreen, since the cameraman was now in front of them. It was an odd way to begin the ballet, a multimedia adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev’s 1930s classic Romeo and Juliet, but it also signaled what was to come: ninety minutes of not knowing where to look as mostly unidentified characters — current and former members of Millepied’s LA Dance Project — performed on the stage, on the sides, and in various hallways and period rooms throughout the armory.

The score is bold and majestic. The choreography is often moving and beautiful. Camille Assaf’s naturalistic costumes, primarily blacks, brown, and grays, are set off by the usually heart-red platform and glow when the performers grab fluorescent light tubes and incorporate them in both inventive and curious ways. We get an inside look at various locations in the historic building, some not open to the public. A dark, mysterious masked ball with mirrors is held in a tight space. Romeo and Juliet (portrayed by three different pairs at each show: a man and a woman, two men, or two women) pose in silhouette against a white screen. A chase scene takes place under the rafters.

The problem is that we’re at a live performance and we spend much of the show’s eighty minutes essentially watching a movie, although it’s happening live. Even when the dancing is occurring on the stage, it is often being projected simultaneously, with cameraman Sebastien Marcovici, the company’s associate artistic director and rehearsal director, running about to capture it; it’s particularly intrusive during several duets between Tybalt (Renan Cerdeiro) and Mercutio (Shu Kinouchi) and Romeo (Daphne Fernberger) and Juliet (Rachel Hutsell). Many of the story’s most critical scenes can be seen only onscreen; in addition, no plot is ever described, so it helps if you know at least the basics of the Shakespeare play. There’s also a camera above the platform that offers a bird’s-eye view that is awe inspiring the first time but quickly becomes more like a scene from a Busby Berkeley movie starring Esther Williams. When the screen isn’t being used, it’s cast in shapes and colors that resemble a blurry Mark Rothko painting, as if hinting at the suicides to come.

And then there’s the balcony scene, which for me summed up the entire experience. (Just as an fyi, there was no balcony scene in the original play, which merely called for Juliet to be at a window.) Romeo and Juliet celebrate their newfound love by dancing in the glorious Veterans Room, then run upstairs and suddenly emerge on the upper ledge behind the screen. It’s a breathtaking moment — until Marcovici joins them, getting close to them so he can zoom in on their first kiss.

Mercutio (Shu Kinouchi) and Tybalt (Renan Cerdeiro) are at odds in multidisciplinary Romeo & Juliet Suite (photo by Stephanie Berger)

I’m sorry if I sound snarky; overall, I enjoyed the production, and there are numerous memorable moments that will stay with me. Fernberger and Hutsell are terrific, their movement packed with emotion, and the rest of the cast has a powerful energy. But it could have been so much more without all the bells and whistles; Millepied may have fared better had he incorporated the cinematic elements without getting camera happy, instead focusing more on the dance happening on the platform, in the room where the audience is sitting.

“Of all the places I’ve shown Romeo & Juliet Suite, the armory is by far the most fitting, as it provides the massive scale, flexibility, and grandeur needed to present this work at its fullest potential,” Millepied said about this iteration; previous versions have been presented at the Sydney Opera House, La Seine Musicale in Paris, and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. He may have gotten a little carried away by the glorious armory, but there’s still a worthwhile dance to be found in his radically reimagined tale, if you know where to look.

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

A DEBT TO THE CINEMA: MABOU MINES CELEBRATED AT ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES

MABOU MINES CINEMA
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
March 13 – March 19
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

“Do I owe a debt to the cinema?” a character asks in Lee Breuer’s 1974 forty-minute video The Red Horse Animation, part of the weeklong Anthology Film Archives series “Mabou Mines Cinema.”

Actually, lovers and creators of experimental avant-garde film and theater owe a huge debt to Mabou Mines.

Founded in 1970 by Breuer, JoAnne Akalaitis, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow, Mabou Mines has been presenting unique, wholly original live works onstage for more than half a century, but the collective, currently under the artistic leadership of Mallory Catlett, Karen Kandel, and Carl Hancock Rux, also has a long history of low-budget DIY films that pushed the boundaries of what cinema can be.

From March 13 to 19, Anthology will be screening nine films across seven programs, with numerous shows followed by Q&As with special guests. Perhaps the most unusual work in the series is the theatrical premiere of Jill Godmilow’s 2001 Mabou Mines’ Lear ’87 Archive (Condensed), a nearly six-hour documentary of the making of the troupe’s 1990 adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, which won multiple Obies and starred Maleczech as Lear, Greg Mehrten as the Fool, Ellen McElduff as Elva, Bill Raymond as Goneril, Ron Vawter as Regan, and Lute Ramblin’ as Cordelion. It will be shown in two parts; the March 14 show will be followed by a Q&A with Mehrten and journalist Alisa Solomon.

In Godmilow’s 1984 hybrid Far from Poland, the director, who passed away last September at the age of eighty-two, is determined to make a documentary about the Polish Solidarity movement despite being denied a visa, so she takes viewers behind the scenes into her process as she discusses the possibilities with Mark Magill, incorporates archival news footage, and re-creates interviews with Anna Walentynowicz (played by Ruth Maleczech), Elzbieta Komorowska (Hanna Krall), reporter Barbara Lopienska (Honora Fergusson), government censor K-62 (Bill Raymond), Polish dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski (David Warrilow), journalist Richard Fraser (John Fitzgerald), and shipyard worker Adam Jarewski (Mark Margolis). The March 17 screening will be followed by a Q&A with film historian Susan Delson and film scholar Ricky Herbst.

In 2009, I saw Mabou Mines Dollhouse at St. Ann’s Warehouse; in my review, I wrote, “Winner of two Obies — for director (and company cofounder) Lee Breuer and star Maude Mitchell — this unique reimagination of Henrik Ibsen’s controversial 1879 feminist classic features three leading men who are all under four and a half feet tall, with the three main women approaching six feet, immediately calling into question issues of strength, power, and social status.” The previous year, Breuer directed a film of the stage work, which Anthology will be screening on March 15 at 7:45, followed by a Q&A with professor Olga Taxidou and co-adaptor Mitchell.

The series was programmed by Breuer’s son Mojo Lorwin; below is a look at other highlights.

Mojo Lorwin finishes his father’s film, Moi-même, after more than half a century

MOI-MÊME (Mojo Lorwin & Lee Breuer, 1968/2024)
Friday, March 13, 6:30
Wednesday, March 18, 6:30
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

In 1968, experimental theater director, playwright, and poet Lee Breuer began making a black-and-white improvised film during the May 1968 Paris riots, where he was living at the time. He and cinematographer John Rounds shot the footage but never added sound, edited it, or wrote a script. In 1970, Breuer cofounded the seminal New York City company Mabou Mines with Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, David Warrilow, and Frederick Neumann, winning numerous Obies among other accolades over the next half century, but he never finished the movie, which itself is about making a movie.

Breuer died in January 2021 at the age of eighty-three; one of his children, Mojo Lorwin, decided to complete the project, hiring voice actors and musicians and serving as writer, director, editor, and producer. The result is the hilarious Nouvelle Vague satire Moi-même (“Myself”), a sixty-five-minute foray into the world of François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Pierre Melville, Agnès Varda, William Klein, and Jean-Luc Godard, who makes a cameo, walking backward as Kevin shares a series of statements ending with “Everything is a movie.”

Kevin Mathewson stars as Kevin (voiced in 2024 by Declan Kenneally), an adolescent who is making a film with his alter ego (Patrick Martin). As he proceeds around town, he meets up with a strange driver (executive producer Russ Moro / 2024 composer Olivier Conan), a movie producer (Frederick Neumann / David Neumann, Frederick’s son), a starlet (Ginger Hall / Clove Galilee, Breuer and Maleczech’s daughter), the son of a baron (Warrilow / David Neumann), an Italian heiress (Renata / Tessie Herrasti), a revolutionary actress (Anna Backer / Tiera Lopper), her replacement (Judy Mathewson, Kevin’s younger sister / Ruma Breuer, Lee’s granddaughter), a sleazy agent (Mark Smith / Alon Andrews), a couple of goons (Pippo and Mike Trane / Frier McCollister), and the owner of a film shop (Lee Pampf / Thomas Cabus). He is often accompanied by his conscience (Maleczech / Alexandra Zelman-Doring) as he faces financial and creative crises.

Lorwin has fun with cinematic and societal tropes while maintaining the underground, DIY feel; for example, he doesn’t match the dialogue exactly to the movement of the characters’ mouths as they make such proclamations as “The movies aren’t fair,” “The movies are a game and everyone who plays is a cheater,” and “All I want is to be seen and heard.” The soundtrack consists of unexpected sound effects and songs and music by Frank LoCastro, Alex Klimovitsky, Eliot Krimsky, Conan, and others.

There’s lots of drinking and smoking, violent shootings, political ranting, discussions of art and love, vapid gatherings, a heist, a touch of psychedelia, and superfluous nudity, nearly everything you could possibly want in a French film.

“Film costs money, more than you’ve got,” the driver barks at Kevin. “Producers are perverts,” Kevin tells the actress while preparing a baby bottle of milk. Unable to afford film reels, Kevin says, “Film is more expensive than love and revolution.”

Describing the film to the agent, Kevin explains, “Here it is: It’s me, but it’s not me. You dig? I mean, it’s the film adaptation of me. I just need a little bread to turn boring old me into moi-même. Feels like doors are finally opening for me.” He delivers the last line as a door opens in front of him.

Perhaps the most important line of dialogue is given to Kevin from a man on the street, who tells him, “There are no rules.” I would add, “Viva la revolución!”

Moi-même is being shown March 13 and 18 at 6:30 at Anthology Film Archives and will be followed by Q&As with professor emeritus Arthur Sabatini, Kevin Mathewson, and Lorwin.

The Red Horse Animation captures a live Mabou Mines performance with cinematic additions

THE RED HORSE ANIMATION (Lee Breuer, 1974) / B. BEAVER ANIMATION (Lee Breuer, Chris Coughlan, and Craig Jones, 1979) / SISTER SUZIE CINEMA (Lee Breuer, 1982)
Friday, March 13, 8:45
Wednesday, March 18, 8:30
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

The second program in the “Mabou Mines Cinema” series brings together a trio of cutting-edge shorts that embody the Mabou Mines approach to art while challenging the audience to adjust their expectations. The thirty-eight-minute Horse Animation captures Mabou Mines’ inaugural production, a piece that melds together movement, music, and text by Breuer that is a kind of manifesto as JoAnne Akalaitis, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow crawl over one another across the floor, recite words in robotlike fashion (“I’m not myself. How in my illness I see something, my life, somewhere. And now it comes to me that I am a representation”), laugh, and turn into ghostlike digital projections by DeeDee Halleck, whose camera shoots the rest of the film in grainy black-and-white from a multitude of angles; the live music is by Philip Glass. In a 1970 Guggenheim program note, Breuer wrote about the piece, “The red horse, in its representational form, materializes and falls apart in the course of the performance. It lives in real time. ‘Lives’ in this sense means conveys meaning to its creators and observers. It tries to create its life outside the real performance time. It tries to live in dramatic time.”

In B. Beaver Animation, Breuer, Chris Coughlan, and Craig Jones zoom close in on Fred Neumann as he delivers a thirty-minute monologue about floods, snow, beavers, and dams; when he says early on, “To be specific, a force of nature,” he could be speaking about himself as he tears through the words like he’s in a race against time, with stutters and occasional breaks so he — and the audience — can catch a breath until he slows down for the dramatic finale.

And in Sister Suzie Cinema, the a capella quintet 14 Karat Soul performs gospel-tinged doo-wop songs while in a movie theater, the flickering light illuminating them in the darkness until they take flight in a nineteen-minute cinematic fantasia directed by Breuer in muted colors and written by Breuer and composer Bob Telson. The March 18 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Carl Hancock Rux, Telson, and singer Glenny T of 14 Karat Soul.

Dead End Kids is an unusual, haunting look at nuclear war from JoAnne Akalaitis

OTHER CHILDREN (JoAnne Akalaitis, 1979) / DEAD END KIDS: A HISTORY OF NUCLEAR POWER (JoAnne Akalaitis, 1986)
Monday, March 16, 7:00
Thursday, March 19, 7:00
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Other Children, JoAnne Akalaitis’s first film and not a Mabou Mines production, is a visually rich, poetic adaptation of Jane Bowles’s last work of fiction, the coming-of-age short story “A Stick of Green Candy.” The nineteen-minute film was shot in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in a small house, on the streets, and at a rocky clay pit. Juliet Glass stars as Mary, Erik Moskowitz as Franklin, George Rosenblatt as her father, and Joan Jonas as his mother; the verbatim dialogue is overdubbed by Glass, Moskowitz, Bill Raymond as the man, and Ellen McElduff as the woman and features such gems as this from Franklin’s mother: “I’d rather have a girl than a boy. There’s nothing much I can discuss with a boy. A grown woman isn’t interested in the same things a boy is interested in. My preference is discussing furnishings. Always has been. I like that better than I like discussing styles. I’ll discuss styles if the company wants to, but I don’t enjoy it nearly so well. The only thing about furnishings that leaves me cold is curtains. I never was interested in curtains, even when I was young. I like lamps about the best. Do you?” Jacki Ochs’s camera lovingly follows Mary, bringing her imaginary adventures to life as she leads an army of mountain-goat fighters, with gentle editing by David Hardy. In a rare title card with narration from the original story, we are told, “All at once she had had the fear that by looking into her eyes the soldiers might divine her father’s existence. To each one of them she was like himself — a man without a family.” The 16mm film, which was restored in 2022, concludes with the Hackberry Ramblers’ jaunty Cajun country instrumental “Just Once More.”

Other Children is screening on March 16 and 19 with Akalaitis’s 1986 feature Dead End Kids: A History of Nuclear Power, which captures Akalaitis’s Obie-winning 1980 play that incorporates numerous elements as it assesses the future of the world, with a cast that includes McElduff, Ruth Maleczech, Terry O’Reilly, Greg Mehrten, Fred Neumann, Glass, and Lee Breuer and Maleczech’s children Clove Galilee and Lute Ramblin’ in addition to David Byrne, who composed the synth soundtrack. The March 19 screening will be followed by a Q&A with journalist Don Shewey and McElduff.

Meanwhile, Mabou Mines is still going strong, having recently staged Samuel Beckett’s All That Fall, directed by Akalaitis, with such promising upcoming shows as the opera Barcelona, Map of Shadows and Rux’s Etudes.

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

PMA: JESSE MALIN’S SILVER MANHATTAN AT BOWERY PALACE

Jesse Malin makes a triumphant return to the Bowery in Silver Manhattan (photo by Ehud Lazin)

SILVER MANHATTAN
The Bowery Palace
327 Bowery
Wednesday – Sunday through March 29, $52-$187
www.silvermanhattan.com
www.jessemalin.com

Upon entering the downstairs theater at the new Bowery Palace, audience members are greeted by an unusual sight: At the front and center of the small, crowded stage, surrounded by various chairs, tables with lamps, a drum kit, and vertical white fluorescent lights on a shimmering curtain, is an empty wheelchair.

It’s a haunting image, made all the more palpable when singer-songwriter Jesse Malin makes his grand entrance, carried down the aisle on a stretcher, his hands folded across his chest as if dead. But the Queens native, along with the crowd, is about to be resurrected by the power and glory of rock and roll in the heart-wrenching yet exhilarating Silver Manhattan.

“I love walking in New York,” Malin says after being placed in the wheelchair. “You hit the street, no plan, no agenda — then you bump into someone, talk to a stranger, make a new friend. You see a poster, you run into a show, a movie — you hear music from a bar, it draws you in. Next thing you know, you’ve danced all night, fallen in love, learned a good joke from a homeless person, fed a stray cat, and jumped back into bed as the sun comes up and the last garbage truck rolls by. Anything’s possible here.”

Some of those things might never be possible for Malin again, but that’s not preventing him from living his life to the fullest he can.

“The last time I walked down a New York street was May 4, 2023,” he says shortly before launching into his 2015 song “Turn Up the Mains” while sharing the story of the day he suffered a spinal stroke on his way to a one-year memorial party he was hosting and DJing for his late friend and former bandmate Howie Pyro, who he calls an “occasional Satanist.” Malin describes the event in graphic detail as the pain shot through his legs, he got down on the ground, and then was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he received the awful diagnosis and was told that he’s “effectively paraplegic,” that he might never walk again without assistance.

The band — keyboardist Rob Clores, bassist James Cruz, drummer Paul Garisto, and musician and vocalist Bree Sharp — then kicks into the Rolling Stones’ 1971 track “Sway” and Malin picks up a guitar.

Doctor: Did you ever wake up to find / A day that broke up your mind? / Destroyed your notion of circular time.
Band: It’s just that demon life / Got you in its sway / It’s just that demon life / Got you in its sway.
Malin: Ain’t flinging tears out on the dusty ground / For all my friends out in the burial ground / Can’t stand this feeling, getting so brought down.

Malin, who was born in 1967, then returns to his childhood in Whitestone, where his single mother raises him and his sister. He recounts jumping on his bed to songs by Elton John and Paul Simon, being bullied because he has to wear an eye patch, and discovering such bands as KISS, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Boys, and the Ramones.

He sings, “Waiting on a midnight bus / To get me to the 7 train / Running from the chicken hawks / And I never went back . . . never went back . . .” in “Whitestone City Limits.”

As a teenager, he first forms the band Heart Attack (“Trendies”), then downtown punk legend D Generation (“No Way Out”). He goes solo in 2000, releasing such albums as Glitter in the Gutter, Love It to Life, and New York Before the War. He collaborates with Bruce Springsteen, Billie Joe Armstrong, Ryan Adams, and Lucinda Williams. He opens a club in the city.

And then, at the age of fifty-six, he learns that he might lose everything.

Jesse Malin is joined by his bandmates while telling his poignant story (photo by Ehud Lazin)

The preshow setlist blasting through the speakers sets the stage for the music that follows, from the Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer” and the Ramones’ “She’s the One” to Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “My Little Town,” letting the audience know that this is not going to be just a punk concert. Over the course of ninety pulsating minutes, Malin reaches deep into his back catalog, performing songs not in chronological order but how they relate to the narrative, which switches between his history and his efforts to not give in to his diagnosis, including seeking out special treatment in Argentina. He is joined several times by Satish Indofunk and Danny Rey on horns, adding another dimension to the songs. The often warm lighting is by Brian Scott, with propulsive sound by Angela Baughman.

Just as Marsha Ginsberg’s scenic design is cramped, so is the audience, seated in folding chairs on the floor or balcony and on narrow benches or standing in the back; it’s not the most comfortable way to enjoy music, but it works here, especially as Malin makes eye contact with as many audience members as he can as he chronicles his wild adventures, baring his heart and soul. And he never becomes treacly, even when adopting a mantra from his friend HR of Bad Brains: PMA, or Positive Mental Attitude. “Before him, I never thought how my outlook might effect where I end up,” Malin acknowledges.

He doesn’t wallow in self-pity or ask for sympathy but instead forges ahead, determined to beat the odds and, primarily, keep making music. His band doubles as characters from his life: DJ Jonathan Toubin, his doctor, his mother, Jack Flanagan, his physical therapist. As the evening progresses, he gets more and more pumped, waving his arms in the air and shaking his body in the chair. He has an infectious enthusiasm that dances over the room like a swirling disco ball. You don’t have to know anything about Malin or his music to fall for him and the presentation, which is reminiscent of Springsteen on Broadway and Bono’s Stories of Surrender, both of which were tied to memoirs; Malin’s Almost Grown (Akashic Books, $28.95) will be published on April 7.

Passionately directed by Ellie Heyman (Space Dogs, The Tattooed Lady), Silver Manhattan — named for Malin’s 2004 song that does not appear in the show; nor does his 2002 track “Almost Grown” — is an intimate journey into one man’s refusal to take no for an answer, through his entire life. It’s a thrilling, no-holds-barred celebration, tinged with loss and sadness, but ultimately it’s a triumphant homecoming for a man who has been part of the New York City music scene for five decades and is not about to stop now.

He saves some special surprises for the very end, then, as an encore, brings out a different friend each night; I saw Tony-winning actor and musician John Gallagher Jr. (American Idiot, Spring Awakening) playing the Replacements’ hit “Alex Chilton,” which features the line “I’m in love / with that song.”

Well, I’m in love / with this show.

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

EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN: THE MINT RESURRECTS ZACK

Zack (Jordan Matthew Brown) finds himself caught between two women (Cassia Thompson and Grace Guichard) in Mint revival at Theatre Row (photo by Todd Cerveris)

ZACK
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through Mach 28, $39-$95
www.theatrerow.org
minttheater.org

Jordan Matthew Brown and Cassia Thompson are terrific in the Mint’s adaptation of Harold Brighouse’s 1916 Edwardian parlor comedy of manners, Zack; unfortunately, it’s not enough to lift the play out of the doldrums.

Last year, the Mint, which has been staging lost or forgotten plays for more than thirty years, presented Brighouse’s savvy 1914 political satire Garside’s Career, which earned a well-deserved Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival. Brighouse is most well known for Hobson’s Choice, the 1915 play that was adapted into an Oscar-winning 1954 film, the 1966 Broadway musical Walking Happy, and a 1989 ballet. While Zack has seen several British productions over the last fifty years, it is virtually unknown in America. Perhaps it should have stayed that way.

The 105-minute play is set in the Munning home in the quaint, close-knit village of Little Hulton, a suburb of Lancashire. Mrs. Munning (Melissa Maxwell) and her older son, Paul (David T. Patterson), run the late Mr. Munning’s joinery company but have had to add a catering business to try to make ends meet. They try to keep Paul’s younger brother, Zack (Jordan Matthew Brown), hidden, considering him a hapless fool who only hurts their reputation, which is so critical in their small community. When their young cousin Virginia Cavender (Cassia Thompson) needs a place to convalesce, Mrs. Munning agrees to take care of her for about a month, devising a plan to cash in on her wealth.

“There’s money in that family, and when my cousin writes to me and says Virginia’s not been well and needs the country air, I say it’s folly not to have her here, cost what it may,” Mrs. Munning tells the penny-pinching Paul, who is aghast. “She’s not an invalid. She’s just run down,” Mrs. Munning says. Paul responds, “And Lord knows what it’ll cost in fancy goods to wind her up.”

Mrs. Munning hires Sally Teale (Caroline Festa) to serve as a maid during Virginia’s stay in an attempt to convince Virginia that all is well with them, that they are not facing dire straits and still have a fine reputation, even as they are losing business to rival caterers the Wilsons. Not used to being a maid, Sally may not have been the best choice, full of cheeky responses and disinclined to work.

When the resplendently dressed Virginia arrives, she explains that she prefers being called Jenny, immediately giving her a more casual, less finicky presence. Much to Mrs. Munning and Paul’s chagrin, Zack joins them for tea; he’s a nebbishy sort, with unkempt hair and a full beard and mustache, wearing old, ill-fitting clothes and not displaying the best manners. When Jenny puts out her hand to greet him, Mrs. Munning chastises him, declaring, “You’ll wash your hand before you touch Jenny’s.” Zack says, “Maybe I ought, I’m not so frequent at the soap as I might be.” To which Jenny replies, “I think we’ll shake hands as you are.”

Soon Mrs. Munning and Paul are scheming to convince Jenny that Paul loves her and that they should wed, a plan they kick into high gear as Zack grows closer to Jenny.

Soon Martha Wrigley (Grace Guichard) arrives and finds Zack, to whom she delivers the news that her father, Joe (Sean Runnette), who works for Paul, has broken his arm and will not be available for the next day’s wedding — but asks if her father can be paid nonetheless. Zack, a big Teddy bear of a man, is sympathetic; he gives her a shilling that he had just earned as well as some food from his pocket, where he absentmindedly stuffs leftovers and half-eaten snacks. He consoles her as she cries, and, just as Mrs. Munning enters the room, Martha kisses Zack. “Oh? When’s the wedding, Zack?” Mrs. Munning says, to which Zack playfully answers, “Oh, I dunno. In about a month, eh, Martha?” It isn’t long before Joe, who was fired by Paul because of the injury, is demanding that they go through with the nuptials unless the Munnings want to be embroiled in scandal, their catering business ruined.

Paul is furious, but Zack, kind and likable schlemiel that he is, offers to fill Joe’s duties, an offer that his brother at first rejects but eventually agrees to, even though he expects it to be a disaster, already envisioning Zack breaking cups and dishes and disrupting the party. Unable to stand up for himself and fearful of any type of conflict or confrontation, Zack agrees to marry Martha although he loves Jenny but is afraid to tell anyone, believing that he is a worthless person who is an embarrassment to his mother and brother, who even forget his birthday.

Paul and Mrs. Munning get a taste of their own medicine when they grab some roses for Jenny and are pricked by the thorns, but it looks like nothing will get in the way of their nefarious doings.

Harold Brighouse’s 1916 Zack is an Edwardian parlor comedy of manners (photo by Todd Cerveris)

Brown (Book of Mormon, All Shook Up) is delightful in the title role, channeling a little Zach Galifianakis here, a bit of Richard Dreyfuss there, as he inhabits the gentle angst that makes Zack uncomfortable in his own skin; you want to just wrap him up in a big hug and tell him everything will be all right. Thompson (Murder on the Orient Express, The Wolves) is charming in her off-Broadway debut as Jenny, a perceptive young woman who does not put on airs, tries to find the good in people, and has a mind and will of her own.

However, Festa (1999, Peter Pan), Guichard (Straight Icons, The Woman in Black), Patterson (Picnic, Les Liaisons Dangereuse), Runnette (Animal Magnetism, The Changeling), and Maxwell (The Trial of Donna Caine, The House of Bernarda Alba), along with Đavid Lee Huỳnh (Bus Stop, The Merchant of Venice) and Mint regular Douglas Rees (The New Morality, Mary Broome) in minor parts, all come off as cardboard cutouts, clichéd characters who range from mustache-twirling villains and not-so-innocent maidens to sarcastic, inefficient servants and greedy, conniving relatives; each lacks the necessary nuance, instead trending too far into cartoon territory. In addition, no one even attempts a British accent.

Brittany Vasta’s parlor room set is lovely, but the stacks of chairs piled in the corner in the second half, which come into and out of use as scenes change, belie the pseudo perfection Mrs. Munning is striving for; the stage business that felt organic in the Mint’s Garside’s Career feels forced here, running counter to an important plot point. Kindall Almond’s costumes are fashionable, Mary Louise Geiger’s lighting is efficient, but Jane Shaw’s sound, which includes outdoor bird chirps, found itself in at least one scene competing with music from one of the other theaters in the complex.

Directed by Britt Berke (Antigonick, I Don’t Trust Adults), who did such a wonderful job with the world premiere of Betty Smith’s Becomes a Woman in 2023, Zack is a missed opportunity, a tedious romcom that feels like it’s a hundred years old, a farce that is not nearly as funny as it needs to be while exploring social mores and norms of the past, hard to relate to in the modern day.

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

EVERY LITTLE THING THEY DO IS MAGIC: THE ILLUSION OF CINEMA AT BAM

TRIPLE CANOPY PRESENTS: MAGIC
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave.
March 6–12
www.bam.org
canopycanopycanopy.com

“I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians,” Francis Ford Coppola said. In its sixth annual collaboration with BAM, Triple Canopy celebrates that connection with “Magic,” a weeklong selection of programs, curated by Yasmina Price, that explores the illusion inherent in the medium.

Among the highlights are “Rituals for the Dead and Living,” consisting of short works by Noor Abed, Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Ulysses Jenkins; such all-time favorites as Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad, and Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger; such sleepers as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon, Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze’s The Legend of Suram Fortress, Raúl Ruiz’s Three Crowns of the Sailor, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh; and “Tricks, Spirits, and Flickering Lights,” featuring shorts by Walter R. Booth, Alice Guy-Blaché France, Gaston Vell, Christopher Harris, Ken Jacobs, Rea Tajiri, John Baldessari, and Cynthia Maughan.

On March 7 at 7:00, “A Night with Alex Tatarsky” will feature the American performance artist will explore “movement writing” in a special lecture-séance.

Below is a look at some of the films.

Orson Welles explores cinematic reality and artistic forgery in F for Fake

F FOR FAKE (Orson Welles, 1976)
Sunday, March 8, 4:30
www.bam.org

Orson Welles plays a masterful cinematic magician in the riotous F for Fake, a pseudo-documentary (or is it all true?) about art fakes and reality. Exploring slyly edited narratives involving art forger Elmyr de Hory, writer Clifford Irving, Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso, and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, the iconoclastic auteur is joined by longtime companion Oja Kodar and a cast of familiar faces in a fun ride that will leave viewers baffled — and thoroughly entertained. Welles manipulates the audience — and the process of filmmaking — with tongue firmly planted in cheek as he also references his own controversial legacy with nods to such classics as Citizen Kane and The Third Man. It’s both a love letter to the art of filmmaking as well as a warning to not always believe what you see, whether in books, on canvas, or, of course, at the movies.

A traveling troupe of illusionists is forced to defend itself in Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician

THE MAGICIAN (ANSIKTET) (Ingmar Bergman, 1958)
Monday, March 9, 8:30
Tuesday, March 10, 4:30
www.bam.org

Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, Ingmar Bergman’s darkly comic 1958 film The Magician is one of the Swedish auteur’s lesser-known, underrated masterpieces, an intense yet funny, and fun, work about art, science, faith, death, and the power of the movies themselves. When Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater comes to town, the local triumvirate of Dr. Vergérus (Gunnar Björnstrand), police commissioner Starbeck (Toivo Pawlo), and Consul Egerman (Erland Josephson) brings the traveling troupe in for questioning, forcing them to spend the night as guests in Egerman’s home. The three men seek to prove that mesmerist Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max von Sydow), his assistant, Mr. Aman (Ingrid Thulin), a witchy grandmother (Naima Wifstrand), and their promoter, Tubal (Åke Fridell), are a bunch of frauds. The interrogations delve into such Bergmanesque topics as science vs. reason, good vs. evil, life and death, and the existence of God. As various potions are dispensed to and tricks played on a staff that includes maid Sara (Bibi Andersson), cook Sofia Garp (Sif Ruud), and stableman Antonsson (Oscar Ljung) in addition to Starbeck’s wife (Ulla Sjöblom) and Egerman’s spouse (Gertrud Fridh), a series of romantic rendezvous take place, along with some genuine horror, leading to a thrillingly ambiguous ending.

Max von Sydow is mesmerizing as mesmerist and Ingmar Bergman alter ego Albert Emanuel Vogler in The Magician

Von Sydow is mesmerizing as the mesmerist, a silent, brooding man in a sharp beard and mustache, his penetrating eyes a character all their own. (The original title of the film is Ansiktet, which means “Face.”) His showdowns with Dr. Vergerus serve as Bergman’s defense of the art of film itself, an illusion of light and shadow and suspension of belief. Meanwhile, Tubal and wandering drunk Johan Spegel (Bengt Ekerot) add comic relief and a needed level of absurdity to the serious proceedings. The film is superbly shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Gunnar Fischer, maintaining an appropriately creepy and mysterious look throughout. It also introduces character names into Bergman’s canon, appellations such as Vogler, Vergérus, and Egerman, that will show up again in such future works as Persona (with Liv Ullmann as actress Elisabet Vogler, who has stopped speaking, and Björnstrand as Mr. Vogler), Hour of the Wolf (with Thulin as Veronica Vogler, a former lover haunting von Sydow’s painter Johan Borg), Fanny and Alexander (with Jan Malmsjö as Bishop Edvard Vergérus), and After the Rehearsal (with Josephson as theater director Henrik Vogler and Lena Olin as actress Anna Egerman).

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