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CHESTER BAILEY

Real-life father and son Reed Birney and Ephraim Birney star in Chester Bailey at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

CHESTER BAILEY
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 20, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

Chester Bailey is one of the best plays of the year, a pristine example of the beauty and power of live drama.

In January 2015, the Irish Rep presented a free staged reading of Emmy-nominated writer and producer Joseph Dougherty’s Chester Bailey at the DR2 Theatre, directed by Emmy and Tony nominee Ron Lagomarsino and featuring Tony nominee Reed Birney as a doctor caring for a young man (Noah Robbins) who has suffered extreme, unspeakable trauma.

The show has been transformed into a touching, gorgeous, must-see production, running at the Irish Rep through November 20. Birney stars as Dr. Philip Cotton, a specialist working with soldiers, including amputees, suffering from battle fatigue and “other injuries that might keep a man from getting back to the life he had as a civilian.” It’s 1945, near the end of WWII, and Dr. Cotton has accepted a position at a Long Island hospital named after Walt Whitman, the poet who served as a nurse during the Civil War.

“The families of the men I was treating wanted their sons and husbands to be the way they were before the Solomons and the Philippines,” Dr. Cotton tells us. “I tried. Tried to take that look out of their eyes. That look acquired in the jungle. My successes were ‘limited.’”

Dr. Cotton’s newest case is Chester Bailey — played by Birney’s son, Ephraim Birney — a man in his midtwenties who refuses to acknowledge that he has lost both eyes and hands in a horrific incident at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he worked along the keel of a mine sweeper. Dr. Cotton might technically be unable to take that look out of Chester’s eyes, but the character is played with eyes and hands that are filled with emotion. Chester is overwhelmed with guilt because his parents got him the job in order to keep him out of the war; he had wanted to enlist, like most of the men he knew were doing, but his mother was determined to protect him.

Chester Bailey (Ephraim Birney) creates his own reality out of trauma in superb New York premiere (photo by Carol Rosegg)

“One night, I was reading the paper in the kitchen with the radio on, listening to the war news, and my folks came in and my mother was smiling,” he explains directly to the audience. “She said, ‘We’ve got a late Christmas present for you, Chester. Your father got you a job at the Navy Yards. Isn’t that wonderful?’ When she said job, she meant reserved occupation. She meant I wouldn’t be drafted because I’d be doing war work. Doing my patriotic part, but coming home to Vinegar Hill at the end of my shift. . . . My father looked up at me and I could see in his eyes this was just how it was going to be and there was nothing either one of us could do about it.” The horrible irony was that Chester ended up with the type of injuries men get on the field of battle anyway.

Chester has created a fantasy world in which he can still see and touch things. He describes in detail a copy of van Gogh’s Langlois Bridge at Arles that he thinks is hanging in his room. The 1888 painting relates to Chester’s state of mind: It depicts a woman in black standing on a small drawbridge under blue skies, holding a black umbrella as if in a dark storm. In the actual historical war, the bridge was blown up by the Germans in 1944, so it wouldn’t have existed in 1945 when Chester was supposedly seeing the print of it, made by an artist who would shortly thereafter cut off his own ear and live in an asylum. In fact, Chester believes that the only lasting effect the incident had on him was that he lost one ear. Meanwhile, we learn that Dr. Cotton is color blind, so he cannot process critical aspects of the painting that Chester believes is on the wall.

The first part of the play primarily goes back and forth between Chester and Dr. Cotton talking to the audience, delivering monologues about themselves. Chester discusses his parents and recalls going dancing with a former girlfriend at Luna Park, heading into Manhattan by himself for what he hoped would be a night of revelry, and falling instantly in love with a young red-haired woman selling papers at a newsstand in Penn Station.

Dr. Cotton carefully watches Chester sharing these memories, as if he’s not in the room with him, then adds elements from his own personal and professional life that intersect with similar themes that Chester’s deals with, just from a different angle; the doctor discusses his daughter, Ruthie; his wife’s infidelity and their eventual divorce; his career choices; going to the country club; his flirtation with his boss’s wife; and waiting at Penn Station to get home to Turtle Bay after work.

“It was difficult for Chester’s father to visit him on Long Island,” Dr. Cotton says. “He’d come on weekends, get off the train at the same station I used before I moved, walk the mile and a half around Holy Rood Cemetery to the hospital on Old Country Road. I think of him standing on the platform I used. Each of us waiting for the light of the westbound. Waiting. Not thinking. Trying not to think.”

In the second half, doctor and patient interact, as Dr. Cotton is determined to make Chester face what has happened to him and Chester keeps insisting he has eyes that can see and hands that can touch. Revisiting the incident, Chester tells his incorrect version. “Remember anything else?” Dr. Cotton says. “Nothing real,” Chester responds. “Do you remember anything that isn’t real?” the doctor asks before exploring Chester’s dreams and hallucinations.

The Irish Rep is justly celebrated for its sets, and Chester Bailey is no exception. Two-time Tony winner John Lee Beatty’s (Sweat, Junk) stage design combines a hospital room with bed, wheelchair, and table with the grandeur of old Penn Station, with stanchions in concrete blocks and a curved metal ceiling seemingly made out of railroad tracks. Brian MacDevitt’s lighting includes dangling lightbulbs that glow like stars in the night sky, going on forever in the mirrored walls. “The concourse of Penn Station is like the hull of a ship turned upside down, like you were looking up at the keel,” Chester says. “But instead of being all dark like where I work, it’s light. The light is just in the air. And there are no shadows. You want to know what the light looks like in heaven? You go to the main concourse of the Pennsylvania Station.” Beatty and MacDevitt have captured that image beautifully.

One of New York’s finest, most consistent actors, Reed Birney (The Humans, Man from Nebraska) inhabits the role from the very start, portraying Cotton not as a heroic wartime doctor but as a man with his own shortcomings. Whether he wants to or not, he becomes a kind of father figure to Chester, made all the more palpable since Ephraim (Exploits of Daddy B, Leon’s Fantasy Cut), who was cast first, is his son. While Reed moves slowly and carefully, Ephraim is much more active, jumping around with an eagerness that counters his character’s inability to come to terms with what has happened to him.

Two-time Drama Desk–nominated director Ron Lagomarsino (Digby, Driving Miss Daisy) guides the ninety-minute show with a graceful elegance; there’s nary a stray note in the play, which is not just about the travails of a single man but about family and everyday existence, about the big and small moments. The relationship between parents and their children are echoed here by a doctor and patient who happen to be father and son. At one point, Chester asks Dr. Cotton why he didn’t go into his father’s printing and binding company. “How come it wasn’t Cotton and Son?” he wonders. Dr. Cotton answers, “He wanted me to go to college. I wanted to be a doctor.” It takes on extra meaning in that Ephraim has followed his father and mother, actress Constance Shulman, into the family business. (All three appeared in the offbeat 2022 film Strawberry Mansion.)

Early on, Dr. Cotton states, “If there’s one thing reality can’t tolerate, it’s competition.” It’s a great line in a great play that brilliantly explores the human condition and the realities that each of us creates to help us deal with whatever life throws our way.

GOOD ENEMY

Howard (Francis Jue) pays a surprise visit to his daughter (Geena Quintos) and her unexpected roommate (Ryan Spahn) in Good Enemy (photo by Joan Marcus)

GOOD ENEMY
Audible Theater’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 26, $69.95
www.audible.com
goodenemyplay.com

In 2018, Audible, which produces audiobooks, audio plays, and podcasts, began staging solo shows at the Minetta Lane Theatre that would also be available as Audible Originals. They got off to a terrific start with Billy Crudup in David Cale’s Harry Clarke, Carey Mulligan in Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys, and Lili Taylor in Wallace Shawn’s The Fever as well as Jade Anouka’s Heart, Faith Salie’s Approval Junkie, and Aasif Mandvi’s Sakina’s Restaurant.

The Amazon company has now turned to works with full casts, and the results have not been as successful. Earlier this year Robert O’Hara reimagined Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night as a streamlined Covid story clocking in at a mere 110 mostly disappointing minutes, and now comes the world premiere of Yilong Liu’s hackneyed Good Enemy, which opened tonight and runs through November 26. The play, originally scheduled as two hours with intermission, has been trimmed to 105 minutes without a break but could use more cutting.

In the spring of 2021, Chinese-born Howard (Francis Jue) has enlisted the scraggly Dave (Alec Silver), who sells drugs to school kids, to drive him cross-country so he can pay a surprise visit to his daughter, Momo (Geena Quintos), who is going to college in New York City. Along the way, Dave tries to get Howard to tell him the story of how he escaped Mainland China, hoping that it will be an exciting tale he can turn into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. But Howard refuses to say anything about his past to Dave, or to Momo, who is none too happy about her father’s unannounced arrival at her doorstep. While she had not told him that she was living with Jeff, her white maybe-boyfriend (Ryan Spahn), she lets Howard know that she’s upset that he never talks to her about her mother, who has recently passed. Howard gets riled up whenever anyone brings up his life in China, and it eventually becomes apparent why.

Jiahua (Jeena Yi) tempts Hao (Tim Liu) with the prospect of freedom in Audible Original play (photo by Joan Marcus)

The narrative goes back and forth between 2021 New York and the summer of 1984 in Southern China, where Hao (Tim Liu) — Howard’s Chinese name — a rookie officer for the PRC, is assigned by his superior, Xiong (Ron Domingo), to infiltrate a group of youths experimenting with Western-style freedoms. Hao wants to do his duty, but it becomes complicated when he falls for Jiahua (Jeena Yi), a would-be revolutionary who titillates him and begins teaching him how to swim, perhaps so they can make their way together across the sea to Hong Kong. But Xiong holds something over Hao and Hao knows a secret about Xiong, both of which could ruin the other. Howard watches his earlier self, remembering everything but unwilling to face it all four decades later.

Directed by Obie winner Chay Yew (Cambodian Rock Band, Mojada) Good Enemy is a frustrating play that dangles a carrot that remains confoundingly out of reach. Junghyun Georgia Lee’s set consists of three large, rectangular sections in the back, lit in different colors by Reza Behjat, and with several large white blocks that serve as couches, car seats, desks, and other furniture. Part of the floor occasionally opens up to reveal a river below, where Hao finds peace as he washes his clothes, until Jiahua discovers him there. While touching, the scenes that take place in the river are hard to see for most audience members, since the characters’ heads are so low. Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design often features the ripple of water, particularly at the beginning and the end, but it can get overly loud, applying a metaphor — water as freedom or death, river as an ever-changing living body and a place to wash away one’s sins — with too much force.

Xiong (Ron Domingo) places Hao (Tim Liu) in a difficult position in Good Enemy (photo by Joan Marcus)

The language barrier also gets confusing; everyone speaks in English, but Howard/Hao, Momo, Jiahua, and Dave are actually communicating in Chinese, while Jeff has to use Google Translate to understand the others. In addition, far too many line readings were out of rhythm, with the actors stopping at the wrong moment in sentences, furthering the disorientation of the choppy narrative.

The heart of the play has an important story to tell about the continuing ramifications of Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966 that tore families apart, but Chinese native Liu (The Book of Mountains and Seas, Joker) tries to stuff too much in, eventually making us not care enough about the carrot, no matter how hungry we might be.

MY BROKEN LANGUAGE

A cast of five extraordinary women share roles in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s My Broken Language (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

MY BROKEN LANGUAGE
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 27, $49-$159
212-244-7529
www.mybrokenlanguage.net

Quiara Alegría Hudes’s My Broken Language is an exhilarating ninety minutes of love and loss among a close Puerto Rican family in North Philly over the course of sixteen years.

During the pandemic, Hudes, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for her play Water by the Spoonful, about an Iraq War veteran returning to his home in Philadelphia, published a memoir, My Broken Language, detailing her childhood from 1988, when she was ten, to 2004, when she went to the Brown University Grad School for Playwriting. The book is divided into four parts: “I Am the Gulf between English and Spanish,” “All the Languages of My Perez Women, and Yet All This Silence . . . . ,” “How Qui Qui Be?,” and “Break Break Break My Mother Tongue.” At a public reading, Hudes, also known as Qui Qui, invited a group of actors to read different chapters, which sparked the development of the book into a play with multiple women sharing the lead role. The stirring result is at the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Signature, where it opened tonight for a limited run through November 27. Get your tickets now.

The audience sits on three sides of Arnulfo Maldonado’s beautifully bright, intimate set, a tiled courtyard with three porcelain bathtubs filled with plants, a shower, and steps leading to the door of a house with a facade of two long rows of windows, behind which is greenery, as if life is growing inside. Tucked next to the steps is a piano where Ariacne Trujillo Duran occasionally plays Chopin and original music by Alex Lacamoire.

The play, which Hudes calls “a theater jawn,” begins with Zabryna Guevara, Yani Marin, Samora la Perdida, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Marilyn Torres declaring in unison, “My Broken Language. North Philly. 1988. I’m ten years old.” Each “movement” of the jawn kicks off with similar declarations as time passes, with a different actor taking over the lead role of Qui Qui, complete with singing, dancing, and poignant and prescient monologues; the rest of the cast play other roles as well.

Daphne Rubin-Vega plays the ten-year-old author in Signature world premiere (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

“Cousinhood in my big-ass family was a swim-with-the-sharks wonderland,” ten-year-old Qui Qui says on the way to an amusement park in New Jersey. “When Cuca invited me to Six Flags with the big cousins, I was Cinderella being invited to the ball. These weren’t the rug rats of the family, my usual crew. Five to ten years my elder, my big cousins were gods on Mount Olympus, meriting study, mythology, even fear.” A moment later, she adds, “Cuca, Tico, Flor, and Nuchi. Saying their names filled me with awe. They had babies and tats. I had blackheads and wedgies. They had curves and moves. I had puberty boobs called nipple-itis. They had acrylic tips in neon colors. I had piano lessons and nubby nails. They spoke Spanish like Greg Louganis dove — twisting, flipping, explosive — and laughed with the magnitude of a mushroom cloud.”

As 1988 becomes 1991 in West Philly, 1993 in North Philly, 1994 in Center City, 1995 back in West Philly, and 2004 in Providence, Qui Qui, identified as “Author” in the script, has her period, is fascinated by her mother’s mysterious Yoruba religious rituals, discovers great literature (Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sandra Cisneros, Esmeralda Santiago) and art (Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, Fountain), and learns too much too quickly about death.

“One day I would dream of a museum, a library I might fit into. One with space to hold my cousins, my tías, my sister, mi madre. An archive made of us, that held our concepts and reality so that future Perez girls would have no question of our existence or validity,” sixteen-year-old Qui Qui fantasizes. “Our innovations and conundrums, our Rashomon narratives could fill volumes, take up half a city block. Future Perez girls would do book reports amid its labyrinthine stacks, tracing our lineages through time and across hemispheres. A place where we’d be more than one ethnic studies shelf, but every shelf, the record itself. And future Perez girls would step into the library of us and take its magnificence for granted. It would seem inevitable, a given, to be surrounded by one’s history.”

That soliloquy gets to the heart of My Broken Language, which is an inclusive celebration of who the Perez family is and what they can be. Despite the constant adversity, Hudes focuses on the individuality of the characters and the author herself, portrayed by five distinct women who represent the vast range of Puerto Rican women, in mind and body, washing away ethnic and gender stereotypes. Even as “asterisks” point out future tragedy, the play is life-affirming as the actors stand firm and bold, singing Lacamoire’s “La Fiesta Perez” and “Every Book, a Horizon,” Ernesto Grenet’s “Drume Negrita,” and Joni Mitchell’s “Hejira” and moving to Ebony Williams’s engaging choreography in Dede Ayite’s colorful, dramatic costumes that trace the development of young women. (Yes, that’s Daphne Rubin-Vega in pigtails!)

Tiled bathtubs figure prominently in My Broken Language (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

In her directorial debut, Hudes allows each actor the freedom to incorporate their own realities into their characters, including a wonderful moment in which all five line up on the steps and, one by one, grab the person next to them in their own way. Although a scene about Qui Qui’s favorite books feels didactic — the listing in the digital program, which also includes a glossary of terms and pop-culture references, would have sufficed — everything else flows together organically, immersing the audience in the story of the Perez family. Jen Schriever’s lighting never goes completely dark, allowing the audience to see the actors, the actors to see the audience, and audience members to see themselves, all part of an intimate, caring community.

The cast, led by the fabulous Rubin-Vega, who has also appeared in Hudes’s Daphne’s Dive at the Signature and Miss You Like Hell at the Public, and Guevara, who starred in the playwright’s Water by the Spoonful at Second Stage and Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue at 45 Below, revels in the flexibility Hudes gives them; in the script, she notes, “No need for them to act, speak, or move like one cohesive character. The point is a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and vibez.” That advice works for the audience as well, during the play and as they exit back into real life.

[On November 13 at 5:00, the Bushwick Book Club will hold a special free event at the Signature, hosted by Guevara and featuring readings from Hudes’s memoir along with original music and movement by spiritchild, Patricia Santos, Anni Rossi, Susan Hwang and Troy Ogilvie.]

BAM NEXT WAVE: TRANSVERSE ORIENTATION

Dimitris Papaioannou returns to BAM with another extravaganza, Transverse Orientation (photo by Julian Mommert)

Who: Dimitris Papaioannou
What: US premiere of dance-theater work
Where: Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
When: November 7-11, $44.50 – $144, 7:30
Why: In 2019, Greek painter, comics artist, director, choreographer, performer, and set, costume, makeup, and lighting designer Dimitris Papaioannou made his BAM debut with The Great Tamer, which was heavily influenced by the legacy of Pina Bausch; in fact, Papaioannou was the first person invited to create a piece for Tanztheater Wuppertal following Bausch’s passing in 2009. Papaioannou is back at BAM, in the Howard Gilman Opera House, for the US premiere of Transverse Orientation, running November 7-11.

The 105-minute work, which delves into concepts of myth and religion in unusual ways, is performed by Damiano Ottavio Bigi, Šuka Horn, Jan Möllmer, Breanna O’Mara, Tina Papanikolaou, Łukasz Przytarski, Christos Strinopoulos, and Michalis Theophanous, with music by Antonio Vivaldi, sets by Tina Tzoka and Loukas Bakas, sound by Coti K., costumes by Aggelos Mendis, lighting by Stephanos Droussiotis, sculptures and special constructions by Props Nectarios Dionysatos, and mechanical inventions by Dimitris Korres. Bausch fans, and other lovers of experimental dance theater, are sure to delight in what looks to be a mind-blowing experience.

BITTERSWEET: THE DARK SIDE OF THE CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY

Terry Collingsworth will discuss the evils of the chocolate industry in special MOFAD event

Who: Terrence Collingsworth, Clay Gordon
What: MOFAD discussion of the history of the chocolate industry and tasting
Where: Chelsea Market Maker’s Studio, 75 Ninth Ave. between Fifteenth & Sixteenth Sts.
When: Tuesday, November 8, $45 (including chocolate three bars and beverage), 6:00
Why: Every night before we go to bed, my wife and I have several pieces of dark chocolate. We’re hoping an upcoming discussion sponsored by the Museum of Food and Drink doesn’t change our ritual. On November 8 at 6:00, International Rights Advocates founder and executive director Terry Collingsworth and Discover Chocolate author and TheChocolateLife.com and chocophile.com founder Clay Gordon will be at the Chelsea Market Maker’s Studio for “Bittersweet: The Dark Side of the Chocolate Industry,” which examines labor issues and child trafficking in the production and distribution of chocolate. The event was originally scheduled to include journalist Simran Sethi, who wrote in a June 2021 article for The Counter, “Chocolate brought Americans sweet respite in 2020 — more than usual, according to recent research into pandemic purchasing. But the great irony in our chocolate indulgence is that it’s also a product borne out of great suffering.”

Collingsworth and Gordon will examine specific human rights cases and screen a clip from Miki Mistrati’s 2022 documentary The Chocolate War, which follows Collingsworth over a five-year court battle. The evening will conclude with a tasting of three bars from Missouri-based small-batch purveyors Askinosie Chocolate.

GrahamDeconstructed — MARTHA GRAHAM: WHEN DANCE BECAME MODERN

Who: Martha Graham Dance Company, Neil Baldwin, Janet Eilber
What: GrahamDeconstructed
Where: Martha Graham Studio Theater, 55 Bethune St., eleventh floor
When: November 8-9, in person $20-$30 (livestream $25), 7:00
Why: “For me, growing up in the Manhattan neighborhood where Lincoln Center would someday be built, the name ‘Martha Graham’ conjured a distant image: A goddess-like, athletic personage in a tight, shirred bodice extended at the hips into a flowing gown, her bare right foot weighted and planted as if holding to the floor, left leg poised aloft at an impossible angle revealing a long, muscular thigh emerging from the play of fabric in the eloquent garment. Her right arm is bent, her hand half-crooked at the wrist, fingers contracted and crowning a smooth brow while she gazes, angular-featured, luminous half-closed eyes fixed downward and focused inward, seeking an undefined, urgent answer.” That’s how Neil Baldwin describes his subject at the beginning of his new biography, Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern (Knopf, October 2022, $40).

On November 8 and 9 at 7:00, the Martha Graham Dance Company will present a special program as part of its continuing “GrahamDeconstructed” series. Baldwin, who has also written such books as The American Revelation, Man Ray: American Artist, Edison: Inventing the Century, and Henry Ford and the Jews, will be at the Martha Graham Studio Theater on Bethune St. to launch the book, reading sections — joined by MGDC company members who will perform excerpts from dances he mentions — signing copies, and participating in a discussion with MGDC artistic director Janet Eilber, followed by a wine reception. The event will be livestreamed as well.

MODERN MONDAYS: AN EVENING WITH ALFREDO JAAR

Alfredo Jaar explores healing, meditation, and death in Between the Heavens and Me

Who: Alfredo Jaar, Luis Pérez-Oramas
What: Film premiere and discussion
Where: MoMA, the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2, 11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Monday, November 7, $8-$12, 7:00
Why: During the pandemic, Chilean artist, architect, activist, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar made the thirteen-minute video Between the Heavens and Me, which he calls “an exercise in healing, a meditation on the immense curing power of music, a philosophical essay on death, and a futile response to a moment of infinite sadness.” In the film, Jaar, whose Black Lives Matter installation 06.01.2020 18.39 had its own gallery at the Whitney Biennial, explores news footage of a mass grave on Hart Island for victims of Covid-19. “My brain cannot comprehend what my eyes are seeing,” he says in voice-over while watching the scene on his laptop. The haunting score features music by Iranian composer Kayhan Kalhor and Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou. The New York theatrical premiere takes place on November 7 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s “Modern Mondays” series and will be followed by a discussion with Jaar and curator and art historian Luis Pérez-Oramas, who will examine the 2020 film as well as other projects by Jaar, including the recent Red Pavilion and The Power of an Idea.