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WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS: THE BATHROOM ATTENDANT AT 124 BANK STREET

Tina (Kate Miller), Connor (Evan Klein), and Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady) concoct a blackmail scheme in The Bathroom Attendant (photo by Scott Fetterman)

THE BATHROOM ATTENDANT
124 Bank Street Theater
124 Bank St.
Through August 30, $38.10
sparkplugproductions.com

I’ve previously written about my anxieties around public bathrooms and theatrical productions several times, from a show at SoHo Rep in which they waited for me to finish my business to being walked in on prior to a play in a hotel room in which one of the actors made actual use of the facilities, with the door open.

So I absolutely had to see a new play called The Bathroom Attendant, at 124 Bank Street Theater through August 30.

On line to check in, I decided to go to the bathroom; there was a sign saying “Private” on the door, so I asked other people if they knew if we could use this, and one woman said yes, she had just seen someone exit it. I slowly reached for the handle and, feeling that it was unlocked, opened the door — to find a young man sitting on the bowl, not exactly happy that everyone on line could see him.

I closed the door and apologized profusely, completely commiserating with him, and used a second bathroom instead, making sure to lock the door.

I was somewhat disappointed to learn that the play does not take place in a can, and the protagonist’s job is mentioned only a few times: He works part-time as an attendant in the Mob Museum rest room. (There really is such an institution in downtown Vegas.)

Written by Tom Kelly (Bleached Blonde Betty, The Gangster and the Busboy) and directed by Andrew Block (Small Engine Repair, Fat Cat Killers), The Bathroom Attendant is set in a ramshackle apartment in the Dean Martin Houses, not exactly the luxury condo tower known as the Martin on Dean Martin Dr. It’s a sad-sack room with a torn-up icky yellow couch, a microwave, a sorry excuse for a stove, a ridiculously old television playing an episode of the late 1970s series Vegas starring Robert Urich as a PI catching the bad guys in glittering Sin City, and a view of the Strip through dirty windows. Designed by Scott Fetterman, it’s a claustrophobic nightmare, about as lousy as it gets. On the back wall is a poster of Johnny “the Street Fighter” Knight from the 1984 Golden Gloves finals at Madison Square Garden, a constant reminder to the apartment’s resident of his long-ago glory days, of what might have been.

Bambi (Mari Blake) is not quite a femme fatale in gritty crime thriller (photo by Scott Fetterman)

It’s August 2018, but Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady) is still stuck in the past, unable to gain any kind of foothold; he’s three months behind on his rent, is in debt to a local mob, and swills Mike’s Hard Lemonade that he stole from another apartment. His only friend is Tina (Kate Miller), a former porno star who is now part of the evangelical community, focused on helping young women in trouble; she is currently trying to save a teenager named Jade who is being abused by her drunk junkie father. Johnny is shocked when a sixteen-year-old boy named Connor Donahue (Evan Klein) knocks on his door; Connor is the nephew of one of Johnny’s best friends from his Brooklyn days.

Decked out in Mets gear, Connor is in Vegas with his father but has brought along memorabilia for Johnny to sign; he has heard all the old stories from his father about Johnny’s prowess in the 1980s.

He also has an ulterior motive; the previous night, he videotaped Mets superstar Mickey Logan, potentially the first-ever $500 million player, viciously beating up a teenage girl, Bambi (Mari Blake). (The incident recalls Super Bowl winner Ray Rice, who was caught on video attacking his fiancée in 2014, and Sean “Puffy” Combs assaulting his girlfriend in 2016.) Connor, who learned about the underworld by bingeing The Sopranos, has already pitched the video to the National Enquirer and TMZ but believes he could make a much better score by blackmailing Logan, with Johnny’s assistance. Tina asks in as well and they set out to pull off the big haul, although Logan’s right-hand man, Marcus (Jon Krupp), has other ideas, ready to do whatever is necessary to protect Logan.

At more than two hours (including intermission), The Bathroom Attendant is too long and feels far out of time; it starts slowly, has a more gripping middle section, but then devolves into convoluted plot devices and huge plot holes. The acting is hit or miss, the staging gets confusing, and the sound effects (cellphones, barking dogs) are not only way too loud but seem to come from all over the theater, which makes no sense. I did care about a few of the characters, but others have inexplicable motives and are in need of heavy tweaking.

You don’t always know who to root for when you really start thinking about it, which is a good thing, and the show contains some excellent crime-thriller elements, but the finale goes off the deep end, throwing in too many new facts late in the game. It feels more like an episode from a 1970s television series, like Mannix, Cannon, Baretta, or, well, Vegas, where you can get away with various shortcomings, but that’s not the case with live theater.

In the meantime, please double check that you’ve locked the bathroom door.

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

NOT MAKING SENSE: DOUG AITKEN’S LIGHTSCAPE AT THE SHED

The audience can sit on a central wooden platform or move about the space to experience Doug Aitken’s Lightscape (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

DOUG AITKEN: LIGHTSCAPE
The Shed
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 13, pay-what-you-wish (suggested $10)
theshed.org
www.lightscapeart.org

“All of this will never make sense,” one of the characters says in Doug Aitken’s Lightscape, a seven-screen immersive installation at the Shed that is an audiovisual tone poem about the old and the new, nature and technology, and America itself — where we were, where we are, and where we’re heading. Gorgeously photographed by Chris Hadland and Aitken, it’s beautiful to watch and listen to; it makes you want to stop and look and treasure what you have, what’s around you right now.

A cowboy (Christopher Duke Blassman) hovers on the periphery before riding to a gas station in the desert. Two dancers (Daphne Fernberger and Konkrete) subtly move about in an Amazon factory. A couple (Natasha Lyonne and Bryn Mooser) contemplate their relationship in a high-rise hotel. A man (Nikki Haas) keeps running, more toward something than away. Potentially dangerous animals lurk.

The cast also features Ray Braungart as the diving man, Megan Renee as the city driver, Benjamin Earl as the truck stop drifter, Victoria Martinez as the sleeping young woman, and Beck as the man in the donut shop. The images swirl across the screens, with shots reminiscent of the work of Robert Smithson, Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, and David Hockney, occasionally offering different angles of the same scene. Music by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Beck, LA LOM, and Aitken with Grant Gershon echoes throughout the room, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the LA Master Chorale.

Doug Aitken’s Lightscape continues at the Shed through September 13 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Characters rarely speak but when they do, they offer up such bons mots as “One day I’ll slip away,” “It just keeps going and going,” and “You can get lost in the blink of an eye.”

The audience can sit on the platform, facing any direction, or walk around the room; I advise checking out some of the film from behind the screens. It’s on a sixty-five-minute loop, and the abstract narrative has no obvious beginning, middle, and end, so you can enter at any time. As a woman tells us, “It’s all connected.”

A Redondo Beach native based in California and New York City, Aitken has previously presented such shows as Sleepwalkers, a multichannel video starring Donald Sutherland and Tilda Swinton created for MoMA’s sculpture garden and facade, 100 Yrs, which concluded with the destruction of 303 Gallery, New Horizon, involving a gondola and a hot air balloon rising into the night sky, and Station to Station, which took place on a moving transcontinental train.

With Lightscape, previously seen in unique iterations at Disney Hall and the Marciano Art Foundation, Aitken continues his investigation of art’s role in a changing world. The work doesn’t condemn the future, but it questions how we’re getting there, emphasizing how everything is connected but all of it will never make sense, able to slip away in the blink of an eye as it keeps going and going.

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

THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT: PHANTOM REEMERGES AS IMMERSIVE MASQUERADE

Phantom has been resurrected in Midtown in dazzling production (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

MASQUERADE
218 West Fifty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 31, $1795-$395
masqueradenyc.com

You can’t keep Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber down.

Cats, the British composer’s beloved but much-maligned adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000, followed by a 2006–17 revival and a disastrous 2019 all-star-laden film. It was then reinvented in 2024 as Cats: The Jellicle Ball at PAC NYC, brilliantly setting it in the world of queer ballroom culture, breathing new life into the old kitty. The Broadway transfer lacked some of the key elements but closed early, on August 8, despite winning three Tonys.

Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical, Sunset Blvd., was revived on Broadway in 2016 and 2024–25, while 1976’s Evita is returning next spring.

Which brings us to The Phantom of the Opera. Based on the 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux, the show features music by Lloyd Webber, a book by Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe, and lyrics by Charles Hart (with additional lyrics by Stilgoe.) The original production, which earned seven Tonys, ran at the Majestic from 1988 to 2023 for an astonishing 13,981 performances. But just as Cats was resurrected and reinvented, so has Phantom, as the shrewdly clever, thoroughly entertaining, and fully immersive Masquerade.

Tony-winning director Diane Paulus (Pippin, Porgy and Bess) has transformed Phantom into a thrilling interactive production that moves audiences up, down, and across six floors of the old Lee’s Art Shop on West Fifty-Seventh St., by Carnegie Hall, performed by six casts. The audience is asked to dress in black, white, or silver and wear a mask; a black one will be provided if you don’t have one. Heels are verboten, all bags must be checked, and stickers reading “Let the spectacle astound you” will be placed over your phone’s camera.

For those unfamiliar with the Gothic horror romance, Phantom is about a strange figure (Kyle Scatliffe) living under the Paris Opera House who is determined to have little-known soprano Christine Daaé (Eryn LeCroy) sing the role of Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s Faust instead of the company’s star, Carlotta Guidicelli (Stephanie Jae Park). The Phantom is jealous of Christine’s childhood friend and suitor, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Gregory Lee Rodriguez), and is critical of the opera house’s new owners, Firmin (Alex Ross) and André (Schyler Vargas). Meanwhile, the Phantom attempts to get opera employees Madame Giry (Marce Johnson) and her daughter, Meg (Haile Ferrier), on his side, although stagehand Buquet (Jacob Lacopo) has other ideas. Caught in the middle is egotistical tenor Piangi (Sean Seamus Thompson).

Audience and cast become one in fully immersive Masquerade (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Aside from a violinist who pops up occasionally (Nikita Yermak), the music for Masquerade is prerecorded and loud, but all the singing is live. While the songs and basic melodies are from the Broadway version, they have more oomph in these surroundings, in part because the actors are right there with you every step of the way. At one moment, I was tapped on the shoulder and turned around to see the Phantom seeking to get past me as he was singing in his resonant baritone. At another, I was handed a rose to toss at Christine, the Phantom’s object of desire. And later I was nearly hanged by the Ropes of Judgement.

Each room is spectacularly decorated, with lovely and frightening detail, from candles and mirrors to luxurious draping and hidden clues. There is limited seating in each space, so be prepared to do a lot of standing. Don’t worry; the classic Phantom elements have been accounted for, with new takes on the boat and chandelier, and the sideshow scene boasts a real blockhead (Anna Monoxide) and master of pyromancy (Joseph Kerr) in addition to a barker (Matthew Curiano), carny (Judah Frank), boy in a cage (Joshua Ike).

The creative team deserves a bevy of accolades, from production designer James Fluhr, art director Jessie Flynn, props designer Kathy Fabian, and hair, wig, and makeup designer J. J. Janas to costume designer Emilio Sosa, lighting designer Ben Stanton, sound designer Brett Jarvis, and magic and visual effects designer Skylar Fox. The intricate choreography, making sure the performers don’t get cornered by the audience, is by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Shai Baitel is in charge of the fine art, which is highlighted by specially commissioned ironwork gates by Bob Dylan. Among the other art collaborators are Marina Abramović, Barry X Ball, Z Behl, Paul Cummins MBE, Yigal Ozeri, and Kenny Scharf.

The narrative has been tinkered with, so some songs are out and others have been moved around, and there is more back story, delving into the mind of the Phantom as a child, who is told by his mother in a letter, “From now on, the carnival will be your home. You are a child of the devil. Among freaks and monsters you will find your kind. Forget you ever had a mother.” There are elements from various stage productions as well as the 2004 Joel Schumacher film, which starred Gerard Butler as the Phantom, Emmy Rossum as Christine, Patrick Wilson as Raoul, Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry, and Minnie Driver as Carlotta.

As with all immersive shows, you more you put into it, the more you will get out of it; to heighten that involvement, there are lots of mirrors where you can see yourself amid the action. In addition, after the grand finale, the audience is invited into a dark bar where you can sip cocktails and pose with some of the major props.

It’s a great deal of fun in which the score is only part of the enchantment, making it a must for Phantom fans, Phantom detractors, and everyone in between.

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

OPPRESSED BY OUR SURROUNDINGS: THE REAL IVANOV ASKS, “WHY”

Sam Underwood wonders what he has gotten himself into in The Real Ivanov (photo by Russ Rowland)

THE REAL IVANOV
Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East Thirteenth St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Monday – Saturday through September 19, $49-$99
www.realivanov.com

In 2014, Laura Strausfeld presented The Real Vanya, her mockumentary of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, as a staged reading at Classic Stage, featuring Josh Hamilton, Marylouise Burke, Sam Underwood, and others; it was filmed by director Andrew Wonder for Columbia’s Harriman Institute.

After extensive Googling, I couldn’t find anything more about it; it seems to have disappeared, at least from public view (although a friend of mine remembers having seen it).

Perhaps the same will happen with Strausfeld’s follow-up, The Real Ivanov, which opened tonight at Classic Stage’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater, starring Underwood in the title role. One can only hope.

The works of Chekhov, and William Shakespeare, invite reinterpretation and reimagination like no one else’s in the canon. Part of their brilliance comes from how timeless they are, how they can be adapted to relate to the modern era.

The Real Ivanov, based on Chekhov’s first produced play, Ivanov, from 1887, is a four-act melodrama with dark humor and deeply psychological elements. Although it is rarely performed, I have seen two commendable adaptations, one by the Russian State Theatre of Nations at City Center in 2018, with Evgeny Mironov as its moody, depressed, seemingly apathetic protagonist, and this year’s stirring New American Ensemble version at the West End Theatre, with Zachary Desmond portraying the weak, pathetic antihero. Each clocked in at approximately 165 minutes but were fast-paced and involving.

The Real Ivanov is a mere 100 minutes but felt like three hours.

Strausfeld is a respected Chekhov scholar who has curated the annual Chekhov celebrations at Symphony Space and City Winery for fifteen years, is working on the book How to Be Less Miserable: Insights from Anton Chekhov, was a visiting scholar at the Harriman, and is a lawyer who cofounded Period Law, which focuses on the tampon tax and women’s menstruation. In 1997, she saw Lincoln Center’s Ivanov, starring Kevin Kline, noting in a statement, it “punked me. It also changed my life. Chekhov revealed to me my own despair — and, for the first time, gave me hope that I could be living better. Despite my years of therapy, it was Chekhov who had the answers I was looking for. Chekhov is scripture to me. It’s not overblown to say I owe him my life.”

Alas, The Real Ivanov provides no answers, instead asking questions that do it no favors, many beginning with “Why?”

The actors in The Real Ivanov seem to all be in a different play (photo by Russ Rowland)

Adapter and director Strausfeld has streamlined the narrative to its basics. Nikolai Ivanov (Underwood) is a landowner married to Anna (Ivory Aquino), whose Jewish family disowned her when she decided to wed Nikolai and convert to Christianity. Nikolai is in debt to Zinaida (Sarah Long) and her husband, Lebedev (Spencer Aste), but Nikolai can’t even afford to pay the interest. He has also fallen out of love with Anna, who has tuberculosis and is being treated by Dr. Lvov (Hagan Oliveras), who chastises Nikolai, complaining, “Please recognize that the best cure for tuberculosis is absolute peace of mind, and your wife has none whatsoever. She’s chronically anxious about your feelings toward her. Forgive me, I’m agitated and compelled to be forthright: Your behavior is killing her. I’d like to think better of you.” Nikolai responds, “What you say is true. I’m terribly guilty but also confused. I feel paralyzed by a kind of stupor; I’ve stopped understanding myself or anyone else.”

Indeed, Nikolai, suffering from textbook depression and melancholia, is lost in a stupor, sleepwalking through life; while the others, nearly all foolish, eat and drink and laugh, he mopes around, staring off into emptiness. Zinaida and Lebedev throw a twentieth birthday party for their daughter, Sasha (Amelia Mason), at which she, inexplicably, declares her love for Nikolai. Also attending the festivities are the widow Marfusha Babakina (Kimberlee Walker), who is flirting with Ivanov’s cousin, Count Shabyelsky (Jordan Lage), who proudly declares, “Everyone’s a scoundrel and hypocrite, myself especially”; the wealthy and single Avdotya (Soph Metcalf), who plays bridge with Lebedev and excise officer Kosyk (William DeMeritt), who is generally ignored by others; and the ever-scheming Borkin (Sam Adegoke), who manages Nikolai’s estate and brings real and metaphorical fireworks to the shindig.

Earlier, in Ivanov’s home, he tells Lebedev, “I’m boring you.” Lebedev replies, “I know what’s the matter; you’re oppressed by our surroundings.”

Precisely.

The audience is seated on all four sides of the stage, but that doesn’t immerse you in the tepid narrative, which does nothing to illuminate the profound affliction that haunts Nikolai and his unexamined psyche. Jiyoun Chang’s spare set occasionally features a small bench or table, a large rug, and a narrow red carpet for the odd finale. The actors seem to be speaking in their regular voices, so there are British, American, and other accents, amplifying the feeling that each of them is in a different play. Although Chekhov’s original contained elements of farce, satire, comedy, and tragedy, Strausfeld’s version meanders among them with little sense or reason; it’s dry and stiff, confusing and disconnected. Plot developments are forced, the characters cardboard — it’s hard to care about any of them. It may not be one of Chekhov’s better plays, but having seen other companies present compelling adaptations, I found this one to be even more disappointing.

The only thing I truly understood about the production is why Underwood (Candida, The Picture of Dorian Gray), as Ivanov, looks like he would rather be anywhere else than where he is.

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

AN MC ESCHER NIGHTMARE: THE VESSEL AT 59E59

Sofonyas, Will Ingram, and Anastasia Locke serve as parks ambassadors in The Vessel (photo by Jacob Ruth)

THE VESSEL
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 30, $42
www.59e59.org

As a frequent visitor to the Shed and the High Line, I’ve been obsessed with the Vessel since it first started construction as the centerpiece of Hudson Yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan. Initially, there was little publicly known about the structure, which I considered a bit of a monstrosity as it proceeded toward the heavens. Ultimately, we learned that it would be a 150-foot-tall tourist attraction with 8 levels, 154 flights of stairs, and 2,500 interconnected steps, offering photogenic 360-degree views of the city to up to as many as 1,000 visitors at a time.

“Vessel is one of the most complex pieces of steelwork ever made . . . assembled ahead of schedule and with astonishing geometric accuracy,” Thomas Heatherwick, head of the studio that built it at a cost of approximately $200 million, said at the topping-out in December 2017. Vessel — officially, “the” is not part of its name — opened on March 15, 2019.

It closed in January 2021 after a third person jumped off it, dying by suicide.

Brendan George’s finely tuned play, The Vessel, takes place around three critical days, December 22, 2020, and January 11 and July 29, 2021, in the Vessel’s history. Drake (Sofonyas) and Missy (Anastasia Locke) are two twentysomethings and good friends working as parks ambassadors on the installation; their nearly impossible job, Missy explains to new hire Vïggo (Will Ingram), is to “help anyone who needs it. We can’t go up to every person, so our task is to be a ‘supportive and accessible presence.’” Essentially, they have to look out for anyone who seems uncomfortable or appears to be in distress and might be thinking of killing themselves.

The suspicious Drake has a tendency to go down online rabbit holes that he insists are not conspiracy theories, spending a lot of time watching videos that depict real violence. Missy is a more fun-loving person whose spirit animal is a dolphin and who appreciates working outside. Giving background of the Vessel to Viggo, Drake shares a December 2016 quote from the Architect’s Newspaper in which journalist Audrey Wachs wrote, “When you build high, folks will jump.” Missy is not happy that Drake starts Viggo’s indoctrination that way, arguing, “We don’t need to talk about it! Unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. And now is not one of those times.”

Viggo, meanwhile, is curious why they stand around chatting with each other so much on the job, but Missy explains that it is necessary to keep them alert. Viggo tries to fit in but is often awkward, especially when enthusiastic, and he seems to be hiding something — but then he will come up with a fascinating statement.

At one point he compares the Vessel to a panopticon, which he describes as “a special prison where one person can see all the inmates. Because of the shape of the prison.” Drake replies, “But maybe we are the prisoners?” Viggo adds, “Actually, there wouldn’t even need to be a guard at all because each person would police themself thinking they’re being watched. That’s the irony, each person in a panopticon becomes both prison guard and prisoner unto themself.”

It’s an apt metaphor for any human being and the worlds each of us creates in our heads, our own unique vessels, as we contemplate the next steps.

Three twentysomething parks ambassadors are on the lookout for potential jumpers in The Vessel (photo by Jacob Ruth)

Over ninety minutes, Drake, Missy, and Viggo discuss life’s little and bigger issues, offer surprising personal details, and explore ideas about death; Viggo in particular spouts how people should be able to choose how they go, no matter how, where, or when.

Scenic designer Tony DiBernardo’s claustrophobic set is a small triangular central platform with lines and grooves that echo the shape of the Vessel, with the limited audience sitting on all four sides; occasionally the characters walk off the platform to speak with an unseen visitor they think may need help. It can be odd when they stand in the corner as the action continues on the platform, but there’s nowhere else for them to go in the tiny theater. It also feels strange when they talk so loudly that any visitors would be able to hear them — would these chatty ambassadors actually make anyone feel safe?

George and director Peter Charney, who previously collaborated on the Drama Desk–nominated A Eulogy for Roman, deal with some difficult subjects in the absorbing play, and they do so admirably, steering clear of clichés, although there is some repetition, and the narrative finds a few rabbit holes of its own. In their off-Broadway debuts, Sofonyas (Romeo and Juliet, The Pillowman), Ingram (World’s Greatest Lover, The Liar), and Locke (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; She Comes Home) form an appealing trio who will grow on you. At the heart of the show is how, in many ways, we are all guards and prisoners, unable to always recognize potential problems with friends, relatives, strangers, and ourselves who may be considering extreme actions.

“What a vulnerable vessel the human body makes for the human soul,” poet, novelist, and playwright Greer Macallister surmised in her 2020 novel, The Arctic Fury. After Drake defends his obsession with violent videos and online research of the government, Missy says, “I don’t think we need the footage. Personally. I really do not want to see it. None of us should. Because, look. Look at what it does to your eyes. And your soul.”

Following a fourth suicide, in the summer of 2021, this time a fourteen-year-old boy, the Vessel was closed for three years before reopening with additional safety measures, including steel-mesh nets and the top two levels off limits to visitors. Admission, which was initially free, is now ten to twenty dollars and is free for New York City residents on Thursdays; there is also a fifty-dollar Vessel Run training class. I am not planning on going anytime soon.

When I walk past it on my travels to the area, I can’t help but wonder if the people taking pictures of it know the full story as they smile and pose for the camera.

In Eric Levenson’s August 2021 CNN article “After latest suicide, the Vessel in New York City’s Hudson Yards ponders its future,” retired CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture lecturer Jacob Alspector posits, “The Vessel is like some MC Escher nightmare. It’s kind of relentless. It’s very gaudy, it’s very cold. It’s thrilling . . . It’s not the most friendly and life-affirming and inclusive kind of space or structure. It’s kind of empty. What’s the point of it? Just to walk up and walk down?”

You’re much better off seeing The Vessel at 59E59, which is far more friendly, life-affirming, and inclusive.

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

THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS: REMAKING WHOOPI AT LINCOLN CENTER

Five unique characters share their stories in The Whoopi Monologues at Lincoln Center (photo by Angela Marie Orellana)

THE WHOOPI MONOLOGUES
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 30, $102.50 – $202.50
212-362-7600
www.lct.org/shows

In 1983, a little-known actress and comedian with the unlikely name Whoopi Goldberg, born Caryn Elaine Johnson in a Chelsea housing project, caused a sensation with The Spook Show, a solo performance at Dance Theatre Workshop in which she portrayed a collection of Black characters commenting on everyday life in America. Mike Nichols saw it, retitled it Whoopi Goldberg, and brought it to the Lyceum on Broadway in 1984; in 1985, it was adapted into an HBO special. I still remember how the HBO show blew me away; like so many other people, I had never seen anything like it.

It has now been reimagined by director Whitney White as The Whoopi Monologues, continuing at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater through August 30. Instead of having one actor portray all five characters — four from the original Broadway production and one introduced in the twentieth-anniversary revival — the outstanding cast features five actors taking on one role apiece.

The play begins as the ensemble gets ready in individual dressing rooms at the back of the stage, referencing the HBO show, which started with Goldberg walking into the Lyceum and knocking on dressing-room doors, saying hello to Fontaine, Blonde Girl, Surfer Girl, Jamaican Lady, and the Cripple through cinematic magic. It was a clever way of immediately giving the characters their individuality; Goldberg portrayed them in the same black-and-white costume, with only minor changes to help define each person.

But at the Newhouse, the actors appear in different costumes, designed by Tony winner Qween Jean, and distinctive hairstyles, by Nikiya Mathis, that further emphasize their uniqueness. In between scenes, they intermingle and go in and out of the dressing rooms as if deciding whose turn is next, adding a fun element to the proceedings.

Theater superstar and two-time Tony winner Kara Young (Purlie Victorious, Gruesome Playground Injuries) kicks things off as Fontaine, a gender-neutral street philosopher and junkie with a PhD who quickly sets the tone by wanting to kiss the hand of an audience member. “No, the one with the diamonds on it,” Fontaine says, adding after the smooch, “I’m glad you was cool enough to play. I noticed you didn’t clutch your pocketbook.” Fontaine explains, “I’m a thief. It’s the old American traditional gig. People always got stuff, people always want stuff. I provide a service.” Fontaine travels on a plane for the first time — the trip is hilarious — and heads to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank House, finding a kindred spirit in the young girl who had to hide from the Nazis, understanding the Jewish plight and comparing it to the civil rights movement.

Dominique Fishback nearly steals the show as Blonde Girl in The Whoopi Monologues (photo by Angela Marie Orellana)

Emmy nominee Dominique Fishback (Swarm, The Deuce) is sensational as Blonde Girl, a seven-year-old who dreams of being white. She wears a white shirt over her head, dangling like blonde locks, and tells us she’s going to get blue eyes. “And then I’m gonna have a dream house and a dream car and dream candy and a dream horse and me and Barbie gonna live together with Ken and Skipper and Malibu Barbie. We are!” she declares. Like Fontaine, she interacts with the audience, asking a man or woman if she can touch their hair. It’s a particularly tense moment for the white people in the audience, who have been told again and again to respect and celebrate Black people’s hair without touching it.

The night I went, I saw Denise Manning (What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Amani), the understudy for Danielle Pinnock (Ghosts), as Jamaican Lady, who is hired by a wealthy elderly white man to leave her home in Kingston and come take care of him in America. A jaunty storyteller, she says, “I don’t know if you can tell that I’m Jamaican because I lost my accent,” which elicits laughter because she could not sound much more Jamaican. She refers to her new employer as the Old Raisin, a shriveled man. She asks the audience to join her in singing the well-known song from a Jamaica travel commercial, she talks about dentistry, but things take a turn when he wants her to do more than just cook and do the laundry.

Emmy winner Kerry Washington (Race, American Son) is next as Surfer Girl, a young teen who, despite her accent and subject matter, claims not to be a Valley girl, pointing out, “No, I’m a surfer because before there was the mall, there was the ocean, okay.” After a dalliance with a “total hunk” on the beach, she is pregnant, trying to figure out what to do. At confession, she tells the priest, “I’m totally with child, like Mary was with Jesus, except like I do know who the father was.” The adults around her are unhelpful, and she doesn’t understand the severity of her situation; she soon contemplates getting rid of the baby herself. [Note: Emmy nominee Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country) has since taken over the role.]

The hundred-minute play concludes with Tony winner Kecia Lewis (Hell’s Kitchen, Dreamgirls) as Lurleen, who was added to the repertoire in 2004, replacing the Cripple. Lurleen is a delightfully open and honest woman freely sharing the details of going through menopause and what her life used to be like, delving into the future of her pudenda, the horror of hot flashes, sanitary napkins, girdles, the pill, erectile dysfunction, Sex and the City, waxing, and plastic surgery. Amid all the comedy are some serious explorations of race, misogyny, discrimination, and fear, especially when her son asks her, “Am I going to die on the way to school?” She also gets the audience to join in on the Hustle (humorously crediting it to jazz legend McCoy Tyner instead of Van McCoy).

Fontaine (Kara Young) takes a life-changing trip to Amsterdam in Whoopi Goldberg revival (photo by Angela Marie Orellana)

In the fall of 2021, director Taibi Magar reimagined Anna Deavere Smith’s solo show, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, for five actors taking on some forty roles, which breathed new life into the play, ensuring it felt as vital as ever despite covering a tragic event that happened nearly thirty years before.

White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, On Sugarland) directs The Whoopi Monologues with a swift, infectious enthusiasm, giving plenty of room for the five extraordinary actors to embody their characters in their own way, rather than attempting to mimic Goldberg, although it’s difficult not to think of the originator of the material as the show progresses. Having them all together onstage, at the beginning, in between scenes, and at the end, makes it feel like they’re representing all women, everywhere.

However, some of the material is dated, as various references and other parts are old, the Jamaican Lady’s story is funny but obvious, Lurleen’s tale is too long, and the characters no longer shock like they did in the 1980s. But more than enough hits home in 2026, especially the elements relating to control of (Black) women’s bodies, inherent racism, and class conflict, to make this a necessary and vibrant reboot. Who would have thought in 1984 that the Civil Rights Act and Roe v. Wade would be gutted two generations later?

Speaking of her younger years, Lureen says, “We were being told that we could talk to anybody, anywhere, something new. We were told that we had peace in our hands. That we had the ability to change the world.”

Although a lot of progress has been made, it’s frightening to think that these struggles continue. Who knows how The Whoopi Monologues will be experienced in ten, twenty, or forty years.

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

SERVING AND PERFORMING ARCHETYPES: DEREK FORDJOUR ON THE HIGH LINE

Derek Fordjour will discuss his High Line commissions in an artist talk on August 22 (photos by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Derek Fordjour, Cecilia Alemani
What: Artist talk
Where: The High Line at Twenty-Second St.
When: Saturday, August 22, free with advance RSVP (walkups as available), 3:00
Why: When I was on the High Line looking at Derek Fordjour’s Archetypes I, II, and III, a trio of painted bronze Black figures on plinths shaped like plantation columns, one of a woman in a burlesque costume performing (Seduction), one of a male waiter in a black vest and white apron (Servility), and a third of a boxer with white gloves, shorts, and lace-up boots (Resilience), I couldn’t help but notice that a series of people were taking pictures of their friends smiling and posing with the works; they clearly did not carefully look at the sculptures or read the accompanying labels. The three sculptures deal with how Black bodies are used in entertainment and service economies, dealing with such issues as power, labor, and control. “Who do these performers serve?” Fordjour asks in an Instagram video.

It made me immediately think of Kara Walker’s 2014 A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby: an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, sculptures of melting slave children carrying baskets amid an enormous white sphinx, made of foam and refined white sugar, sitting proudly, a highly sexualized mammy figure. At the time, I wrote, “Central to the work are viewers’ reactions. Some are in awe of its beauty and scope, while others pose in front of it for touristy photographs. Some consider the history and mystery that literally surround it, while others smile and pretend to put their arms around one of the slave babies as if they are friends or perform silly acts with the sphinx’s backside and genitalia. Many are so obsessed with taking pictures and video that they never pause, process, and contemplate what they are looking at. Yes, it’s spectacle, but it’s spectacle on a grand order, an unforgettable experience that places a powerful mirror on America’s four-hundred-year history, revealing telling elements that many still refuse to accept.” Walker responded to the public reaction with the Chelsea exhibition Afterword, writing, “Conversation around A Subtlety wound its way across different social media platforms to become an object of contention as well as reverence, and a talking point about historic injustice, artistic hubris, the public gaze, responsible viewership, black audiences vs. white ones, black female representation, aggressive male behavior, self recognition, and ‘selfies.’ . . . It was certainly a curiosity.”

I don’t mean to imply that Fordjour feels the same way about how his installation is being received — it also includes the nearby mural Backbreaker Double, depicting a pair of Black marching band drum majors in the middle of an acrobatic stunt — but most likely he is thrilled that people are engaging with it. You can find out more on August 22 at 3:00 when he sits down with High Line Art director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani for a High Line Wordmark artist talk on the High Line at Twenty-Second St. The advance RSVP line is full but walkups are encouraged.

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