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SHAKESPEARE, CONSPIRACY THEORIES, GAY PRIDE, AND GUNS: ANON AT MCC

Michael (Andrew Garman), Delia (Isabel Mar), and Jeanie (Crystal Finn) try to enjoy a family dinner together in Anon (photo by Monique Carboni)

ANON
Newman Mills Theater
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space
511 West Fifty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 1, $49-$112
mcctheater.org

As you enter the Newman Mills Theater at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space to see Anne Washburn’s Anon, the preshow playlist prepares you for what is to follow. First is Neil Young’s 2016 “Monsanto Years,” an eight-minute anticorporate screed in which the Canadian rocker and earth activist ominously declares, “You never know what the future holds.” Next is Lee Greenwood’s 1984 right-wing anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.,” in which the California-born Republican proclaims, “If tomorrow all the things were gone / I worked for all my life / And I had to start again / With just my children and my wife / I’d thank my lucky stars / To be living here today / ’Cause the flag still stands for freedom / And they can’t take that away.” Rounding out the opening trio is Kacey Musgraves’s 2018 psychedelic country hit “Slow Burn,” in which the Texas native, whose progressive views are often controversial in the traditional country music establishment, sings, “I’m alright with a slow burn / Takin’ my time, let the world turn / I’m gonna do it my way, it’ll be alright / If we burn it down and it takes all night / It’s a slow burn.”

The set, by the dots collective, is a plain, ordinary, bland room with a table and chairs at the center, bare walls, and a front door. There’s no evidence of the type of people who live there: rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, native-born American or immigrant, white, brown, or Black, Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. It’s a tabula rasa, ready for action. And action it finds.

It actually represents two houses in a San Antonio suburb, across the street from each other, one occupied by Jeanie (Crystal Finn), her husband, Michael (Andrew Garman), and their children, Delia (Izabel Mar) and the unseen Leo, the other by the newly moved-in gay couple Adam (Jeff Biehl) and Will (Jeremy Shamos). Scouring social media, Adam discovers that Jeanie spends a whole lot of time in her parked car posting right-wing conspiracy theories on TikTok. She rants, “I’ve been seeing a lot of comments and posts from folks who are really starting to freak out about the timeline: Why is Fauci still free, when will Hillary Clinton face judgement, where are the arrests, are there medbeds, and the Storm, the Storm, when is the Storm already?? And I just want to say, folks: Trust the Plan means: Trust the Plan.”

When Adam and Will put up a gay pride flag, Jeanie becomes incensed, and Will buys a gun. Welcome to America in the 2020s.

Will (Jeremy Shamos) and Adam (Jeff Biehl) go down another rabbit hole in Anon (photo by Monique Carboni)

Feverishly directed by Obie winner and Tony nominee Anne Kauffman, Anon, which the script calls “a kitchen table play,” takes its title from multiple sources, including QAnon and the anonymity that the internet can provide. The cast, led by a frenetic Finn, is fantastic, spreading throughout the political spectrum. Washburn delves not only into tolerance, freedom, and diversity but into the responsibility of parents, the needs of their children, and whether JFK Jr. is destined to become our next president. It’s a swirl of RINOs, libtards, MAGAts, online rabbit holes, and hating your neighbor, as Washburn and Kauffman create an almost too-real atmosphere in which people on opposing sides don’t actually speak to each other face-to-face. In later scenes, the two families’ lives intersect when they are in the house at the same time, although they don’t see one another.

The use of projections for texting and posting are overdone and the plot goes off on a few tangents, but Anon is a whipsmart, funny, and frightening foray into our immediate future, and it isn’t pretty. There’s also a significant amount of Shakespeare, as Delia is given a school assignment to write a soliloquy for a Bard character who doesn’t have one, a metaphor for how so many of us go on social media and deliver our own monologues, some in anonymity, some seeking to go viral.

As the third witch says in the first scene in Macbeth, “Anon!”

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

OPTIC NERVES: CELEBRATING GLASS EYE PIX AT IFC

IFC Center pays tribute to Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix in celebratory series

OPTIC NERVE: A TRIBUTE TO GLASS EYE PIX
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
October 28 – November 3
ifccenter.com

“In my films quite often, paranoia usually leads to the truth so it is kind of a psychological state of mind to think that what you fear may come true, and those are the types of stories that I like to tell,” New York City native Larry Fessenden said about his career, which includes nine shorts and thirteen features as writer and/or director and producer going back to 1978. On the occasion of the November 4 release of his latest film, Trauma or, Monsters All, and the fortieth anniversary of his company, Glass Eye Pix, IFC Center is celebrating with a seven-film tribute running October 28 through November 3.

It kicks off with his breakthrough, the 1995 cult classic Habit, about which he says in a program note, “My main contribution to the horror genre was to tell a very personal story about addiction and obsession in New York City with an affectionate nod to vampire tropes and mood. . . . Steeped in ambiguity, it seems to resonate with anyone who has ever suffered a breakup or felt overwhelmed by existential loneliness, which is to say, most everyone and most every cinephile.” The 8:45 screening on October 28 will be followed by a Q&A with Fessenden and writer and curator Justin LaLiberty.

The series continues with 2010’s Stake Land (“An epic, heartfelt postapocalyptic film made over the course of four months to capture different seasons.”), 2011’s The Innkeepers (“I’ve been told it’s Scorsese’s favorite Ti West Film.”), 2008’s I Sell the Dead (“Glenn McQuaid’s movie started out as a low budget period romp but expanded as Glass Eye Pix producer Peter Phok ambitiously attached actors like Dom Monaghan.”), 2006’s The Last Winter (“This was conceived as a sequel of sorts to my family drama Wendigo, expanding the themes of cultural cannibalism to themes of Manifest Destiny and climate collapse.”), 2019’s Depraved (“A low budget retelling of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece steeped in the national PTSD of the Iraq war and pharmaceutical overreach.”), and 2023’s Blackout (“An apt time for the budget to shrink further, I tell the story of a town divided by racism and a corrupt patriarch to update the werewolf movie.”).

Below is a closer look at two of his haunting films.

Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) and Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) get involved in some dastardly doings in I SELL THE DEAD

Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) and Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) get involved in some dastardly doings in I Sell the Dead

I SELL THE DEAD (Glenn McQuaid, 2009)
IFC Center
Saturday, October 31, 1:00 & 9:30
ifccenter.com

Glenn McQuaid’s I Sell the Dead is an old-fashioned fun horror movie, paying homage to the Hammer films of yore. After his grave-robbing partner, Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden), is guillotined, Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) awaits his turn. With five hours to go before his execution, Blake is visited by Father Francis Duffy (Ron Perlman), who wants to know all the details of Grimes and Blake’s business, especially as it relates to harvesting the undead. So with a bottle of whiskey by his side, Blake recounts the pair’s eerie adventures through foggy eighteenth-century England and their battles with the House of Murphy, a rival outfit that also gathers corpses for a living.

Writer-director-editor McQuaid imbues the film with a graphic-novel feel, with many scenes ending in colorful freeze-frame panels; although I Sell the Dead is an original story (based on his own short), the director did adapt the script into a comic book before shooting in order to capture the mood and visual style he was after. And cinematographer Rick Lopez, production designer David Bell, and art director Beck Underwood nail that atmosphere, along with Jeff Grace’s ambitious score. The cast also includes Phantasm Tall Man Angus Scrimm as a creepy violin-playing doctor in desperate need of body parts, Brenda Cooney as Blake’s boisterous girlfriend, and Joel Garland as a burly tavern owner after his own piece of the action. The film was shot in Staten Island, Long Island, and Manhattan; if the Fortune of War bar looks familiar, that’s because it’s actually the Scratcher in the East Village.

THE LAST WINTER (Larry Fessenden, 2006)
IFC Center
Sunday, November 1, 1:00 & 7:30
ifccenter.com

In Alaska, a company called North is preparing to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the permission of the U.S. government. North has sent along environmentalist James Hoffman (James LeGros) and his assistant, Elliot Taylor (Jamie Harrold), to ensure that the team, led by the imposing Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman), follows all proper guidelines and agreements. But when strange things start happening — including weird visions, odd disappearances, and brutal deaths — Pollack is determined to move forward, no matter the cost. Written and directed by Larry Fessenden, who also makes a cameo in the film, The Last Winter is a scary look at an all-too-possible future, a global-warming horror story in the tradition of John Carpenter’s The Thing, where the small cast of characters never knows just what is waiting for them around every corner — and out on the treacherous, blindingly white landscape that surrounds and engulfs them.

The film also stars Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) as Abby Sellers, a strong-minded woman who has left Pollack for Hoffman; indie stalwart Kevin Corrigan (Walking and Talking) as vehicle expert Motor; Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights) as young and innocent Maxwell McKinder; Grammy-winning composer and musician Joanne Shenandoah (Skywoman) as Dawn Russell, who prepares the meals and cleans up after everyone; and Pato Hoffmann (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) as Lee Means, a Native American who has a deep understanding of the land and the spirits.

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

BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: PERICLES IN A BED-STUY CHURCH

PERICLES: IN CONCERT
Concord Baptist Church of Christ
833 Marcy Ave.
Monday, October 26, $33.85-$55.20
eventbrite.com
fireensemble.com

Last year I saw a rousing concert production of William Shakespeare’s Pericles inside the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, part of the Public Theater’s Public Works initiative. I wrote that it “features music and lyrics by Troy Anthony, a first for someone nurtured through Public Works; the score is an intoxicating mix of gospel, blues, ballads, R&B, and spirituals, at times turning St. John the Divine into a revival meeting. . . . The choreography is by Tiffany Rea-Fisher, who transforms a jousting tournament into a hip-hop dance battle. . . . There’s so much passion and energy on the stage that you just might forget that Pericles is not a very good play; a case has been made that the first two acts were actually written by pamphleteer and innkeeper George Wilkins. The story involves incest, pirates, child prostitution, resurrection, and betrayal as Pericles, the prince of Tyre, escapes the wrath of Antiochus and ventures to Tarsus, Pentapolis, and Ephesus, leaving behind his dead wife, Thaisa, and infant daughter, Marina. . . . Tony nominee Crystal Lucas-Perry brings the house down over and over again as Gower, the narrator, lustrous in a glorious white gown.”

A slightly different version of the show is being presented October 26 at the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Bed-Stuy, codirected by Anthony and Rea-Fisher and performed by the ninety-person Fire Ensemble, “an intergenerational pop-up choir community that centers BIPOC and queer folx.” Lucas-Perry is reprising her role as Gower; the cast also includes Aisha Jackson, John-Michael Lyles, Jason Veasey, Jaime Cepero, Genesis Adelia Collado, Amina Faye, Treston Henderson, Ava Jones, Cal Mitchell, Dominique Smith, STONES, Cartreze Tucker, Matthew Elijah Webb, Samantha Williams, and Stephen Scott Wormley. Ticket prices range from pay-what-you-can in the balcony to $55.20 for front orchestra seats to see this special show.

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

ASKING FOR TOO MUCH: THE ASK AT THEATER 555

Greta (Marilu Henner) and Tanner (Shannon Purser) discuss the ACLU and more in Matthew Freeman’s The Ask (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE ASK
Theater 555
555 West Forty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 22, $49-$149
theaskplay.com
theater555.com

When I saw the world premiere of Matthew Freeman’s The Ask at the wild project two years ago, I called it “stimulating . . . Freeman writes with a refreshing assuredness. . . . It expertly captures the changes that are evolving primarily on the left in today’s society. Greta and Tanner are battling each other instead of the other side, unwilling to compromise their values.”

The play is now running at Theater 555 in essentially the same production: Returning are director Jessi D. Hill, Craig Napoliello’s detailed set, costume designer Nicole Wee, lighting designer Venus Gulbranson, and sound
designer Ben Scheff. The script has been tweaked but has not been significantly altered, and Betsy Aidem (Greta) and Colleen Litchfield (Tanner) have been replaced by the talented duo of Marilu Henner and Shannon Purser, respectively. So what went wrong this time around?

It’s December 2022, and twentysomething American Civil Liberties Union gift planning officer Tanner arrives at the well-decorated Upper West Side apartment of Greta, a wealthy seventysomething photographer who has been a longtime donor to the ACLU. Tanner wants to know why Greta failed to donate this year and whether she can give more than usual now; they also discuss how Greta can leave the ACLU money in her will. Before making any decisions, Greta is concerned about the direction the ACLU is going in.

“I am upset. I’m disappointed. I did not give because I did not want to give,” Greta explains. “Yes, you send too many emails, but I do read them. And all I’m reading is how you want money for things that have nothing to do with your mission, nothing. I even read a story about how members of your staff were calling the Constitution a white supremacist document. So, of course, I think to myself: What the heck is going on over there? And then Dobbs, we lose Roe, and you’re over here playing around with trying to cancel student debt while fucking Alito is burning witches.”

Tanner is careful with her responses, trying to avoid offending Greta without commenting negatively on the organization.

“If you agree with the ACLU most of the time, you should be a member. If you agree with the ACLU half the time, you should be a board member,” Tanner jokes. Greta replies, “I think I have heard that one. I feel like that’s less a joke and more of a saying.”

As they continue their cat-and-mouse game, they reach a wall when Tanner is unable to speak the one word that is most important to Greta.

The Ask may be only two years old, but it already feels stale and outdated. The extremism, particularly on the left, has grown so divisive, tearing at the seams of the Democratic Party, that the debate between Greta and Tanner seems less critical in 2026 as Democratic Socialists win primaries and general elections.

In addition, while Aidem and Litchfield had an immediate chemistry, five-time Golden Globe nominee Henner (Madwomen of the West, Gettin’ the Band Back Together) and Emmy nominee Purser (Stranger Things, Riverdale), in her off-Broadway debut, lack electricity, failing to make a connection. At times it’s like they’re in two different shows, Henner overdoing her sexy vivaciousness and Purser underplaying her sensitivity and restraint.

The finale is still powerful, shining a light on where we are as a society and where organizations such as the ACLU are heading, but even at a mere seventy-five minutes, The Ask is too slow, asking too much of the audience.

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

SHAKESPEARE AS SAVIOR: JACOB MING-TRENT AT THE PUBLIC

Jacob Ming-Trent testifies to his audience-congregation in How Shakespeare Saved My Life (photo by HanJie Chow)

HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE
The Shiva Theater at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 25, $84
publictheater.org
redbulltheater.com

Jacob Ming-Trent refers to his one-man show, How Shakespeare Saved My Life, not as an autobiographical tale but as “testimony,” calling the audience his “congregation.” There are heavenly moments as he transforms from a homeless teenager caught up in danger to a successful Shakespearian actor, a shift that took years following his initial inspiration.

When the Boston-born Jacob was twelve in 1992, living in a lower-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, he accidentally walked into a class on the Bard taught by the football coach, who insisted Jacob read a passage from Henry V. Jacob explains to us, “An angel descended into the classroom, touches me on the nose, and tells me, ‘You will be one of the greatest classical actors of your generation!’ I’m just messin’ with you; that shit didn’t happen. Congregation, I’ll never forget that day. ’Cause when I woke up that morning, I was a superpredator. After that class, I was a Shakespeare prodigy! I was reborn. Play on!”

A charming and engaging performer, Jacob shares his story as his father goes to jail, young Jacob gets in trouble for reading The Merchant of Venice instead of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (he argues with his teacher that the latter is racist), his mother gets remarried and kicks him out of the house, he loses his virginity after reciting a soliloquy from The Two Gentlemen from Verona to a young lady at a party, and he joins a small gang in a local park. He calls up G-d, seeking advice. He auditions for acting school in New York City and is accepted but is soon told that he can only portray certain characters because “fat Black people cannot play heroes. I’m sorry, Mr. Jacob. But there are no roles in Shakespeare for you. If you must do Shakespeare, sound like me! White. Shakespeare was written by a white man for white people.”

Jacob Ming-Trent pays tribute to his heroes as he relives scenes from his life in one-man show (photo by HanJie Chow)

His own heroes, besides Shakespeare, are Biggie, Tupac, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, three prominent and influential Black artists who tragically died before their time, in their twenties.

Jacob continually tells people he is a Shakespearian actor despite never taking the stage professionally, maintaining his dream no matter what life throws at him. And it throws a lot.

Interestingly, the play stops before Jacob begins his prodigious career, which includes being a regular on such series as White Famous and Watchmen and appearing in such Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park productions as Merry Wives, Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, and The Tempest, in addition to many other shows.

Presented by Red Bull Theater at the Public, How Shakespeare Saved My Life is enthusiastically directed by Tony Taccone on Takeshi Kata’s set, consisting of movable walls and stanchions onto which Alexander V. Nichols projects photos and such images as a large rose and Will himself. Sound designer Jake Rodriguez, who also composed the original music, turns up the volume when Ming-Trent is on the run or dancing, with exuberant lighting by Alan C. Edwards.

Ming-Trent reimagines the Bard as a kind of urban poet, a man with a quill who understands the streets. A warm and inviting host, he seamlessly takes on multiple roles, but at ninety minutes the show is too long, with some vignettes tighter than others. For example, a scene where he watches Othello gets confusing quickly and goes on for several awkward minutes. But through it all, he looks like he is having a great time onstage, and that energy is infectious.

“As a Black man fighting injustice daily, my anger and need for revenge almost killed me. Shakespeare taught me how to forgive, and I’m thankful,” he writes in a program note. “I’m not here to share my story but to tell you parts of my tale in the hope that this might save a life as well!”

It’s a tale not told by an idiot, and it signifies a whole lot more than nothing.

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

BEDLAM’S OTHELLO: RETURN ENGAGEMENT

Susannah Millonzi, Susannah Hoffman, Ryan Quinn, and Eric Tucker play all the roles in Bedlam’s stripped-down Othello (photo by Ashley Garrett)

OTHELLO
West End Theatre at St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church
263 West Eighty-Sixth St. between Broadway & West End Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday, November 7-29, $22.50-$86.50
bedlam.org

[This past spring, Bedlam’s Othello ran at the West End Theatre; it is now back for an encore engagement from November 7 to 29. Below is my original review; it is staged in a small theater with limited tickets, so grab yours as soon as you can.]

In Bedlam’s Othello, William Shakespeare’s words take center stage, for nearly three captivating hours; no cuts have been made to the text, and the presentation feels fresh and new.

A cast of four performs more than a dozen parts in a bare white space, with only a handful of small props: Susannah Hoffman is Desdemona and Cassio, Susannah Millonzi is Roderigo and Emilia, Ryan Quinn is Othello and Bianca, and director Eric Tucker is Iago.

Angry that Othello named Cassio his first lieutenant instead of him, Iago is intent on bringing Othello down, through trickery and deceit. He conspires with the Venetian gentleman Roderigo to convince everyone that the Moorish general Othello used evil witchcraft to force Senator Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona, into a secret marriage. “Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs,” Iago tells the powerful politician, using race as a sword.

When Othello and Desdemona publicly declare their love for each other, Iago concocts a diabolical plan to persuade Othello that his beloved is having an affair with Cassio, thus ruining the general and his lieutenant, lifting Iago’s station, and allowing Roderigo to pursue his own lust for Desdemona.

“O beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on,” Iago says to Othello. “That cuckold lives in bliss / Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; / But O, what damnèd minutes tells he o’er, / Who dotes yet doubts, suspects yet soundly loves!”

To achieve his revenge, Iago must also pull the wool over the eyes of his wife, Emilia, who is Desdemona’s maidservant; Bianca, Cassio’s lover; the Duke of Venice; Gratiano, Brabantio’s brother; Lodovico, Desdemona’s cousin; and Montano, the governor of Cyprus.

“Reputation, reputation, reputation!” Cassio declares.

That’s precisely what Iago seeks to destroy in anyone who gets in his way.

Othello (Ryan Quinn) and Desdemona (Susannah Hoffman) face doom and dread in Bedlam production (photo by Ashley Garrett)

The first act of Othello takes place with the actors performing on a dirty white floor in front of an unsteady white wall; initially, the only props are a bell and a black rope/noose, but a string of Christmas lights and a microphone are added for a karaoke scene. For the second act, the three rafters of seating are rearranged to form a circle closing in on the middle, where most of the action occurs, although the actors also stomp around behind the audience and up and down the aisles. Cheyenne Sykes’s lighting gets much darker, the characters at times using flashlights. The actors usually but not always make tiny adjustments to Sam Debell’s contemporary costumes to indicate when they are a different character, which can get a little awkward. The karaoke scene is awkward as well, straying from the simpler beauty of the rest of the show.

Hoffman and Millonzi excel in their multiple roles, and Quinn is an admirable, heart-wrenching Othello, but the key to the narrative lies in the hands of Iago, and Tucker, who also designed the tense sound, is a slyly devious master manipulator, his tongue often in his cheek as his plot unfolds; possessed of a rapier wit, he thinks quick on his feet, like an improv comic who’s not about to lose control of the upcoming punch line.

Bedlam’s first two productions, back in 2013, were four-actor versions of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan and Hamlet, so this Othello is a return to its roots following such other successful shows as Sense & Sensibility, Arcadia, The Good John Proctor, and Are the Bennet Girls OK? Because of the minimal staging, the words flow beautifully; you have to listen closely, resulting in picking up small elements you may have missed in bigger adaptations with famous stars.

Through it all, the words stand tall, even conquering a few scenes that linger too long or go a bit off-kilter.

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

THE GREAT HUMAN UNIFIER: UNRAVELLED AT THE MILLER THEATRE

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.]