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POOL PARTY: SWIMMING POOL / A BIGGER SPLASH

POOL PARTY
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
August 5-14
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.focusfeatures.com

With New York City sweltering in a muggy, sweat-drenching summer with temps that have stayed in the nineties, Metrograph offers two things to cool you off that usually don’t go together: air-conditioning and swimming. But that’s just what their new series, “Pool Party,” does, consisting of seven films in which characters go for a dip, for good and for bad.

The series kicks off with François Ozon’s beguiling mystery Swimming Pool, in which Charlotte Rampling shows Ludivine Sagnier that she still has it, followed by Jacques Deray’s 1969 erotic thriller La Piscine, in which Jane Birkin shakes things up between Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. Burt Lancaster swims home through suburban backyard pools in Frank Perry’s 1968 adaptation of John Cheever’s 1964 short story “The Swimmer.” Selena Gomez and friends take a wild road trip in Harmony Korine’s 2012 Spring Breakers, meeting up with a metallic-smiling James Franco. Elsie Fisher finds more trouble than she bargained for as a middle school vlogger in Bo Burnham’s bittersweet debut, Eighth Grade. British artist David Hockney makes a big splash in Jack Hazan’s 1974 hybrid docudrama, A Bigger Splash. And Lucretia Martel traces the fall of a bourgeois family in her 2001 debut, La Ciénaga. Below is a deeper dive into two of the films; get those bathing suits on and jump in to beat the heat!

Jealousy and envy are at the heart of François Ozon’s sexy thriller

SWIMMING POOL (François Ozon, 2003)
Friday, August 5, 2:45
Sunday, August 7, 12:20
metrograph.com
www.focusfeatures.com

Charlotte Rampling is divine in Swimming Pool, François Ozon’s playfully creepy mystery about a popular British crime novelist taking a break from the big city (London) to recapture her muse at her publisher’s French villa, only to be interrupted by the publisher’s hot-to-trot teenage daughter. Rampling stars as Sarah Morton, a fiftysomething novelist who is jealous of the attention being poured on young writer Terry Long (Sebastian Harcombe) by her longtime publisher, John Bosload (Game of Thrones’s Charles Dance). John sends Sarah off to his elegant country house, where she sets out to complete her next Inspector Dorwell novel in peace and quiet. But the prim and proper — and rather bitter and cynical — Sarah quickly has her working vacation intruded upon by Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), John’s teenage daughter, who likes walking around topless and living life to the fullest, clearly enjoying how Sarah looks at her and judges her. “You’re just a frustrated English writer who writes about dirty things but never does them,” Julie says, and soon Sarah is reevaluating the choices she’s made in her own life. Rampling, who mixes sexuality with a heart-wrenching vulnerability like no other actress (see The Night Porter, The Verdict, and Heading South), more than holds her own as the primpy old maid in the shadow of a young beauty, even tossing in some of nudity to show that she still has it. (Rampling also posed nude in her sixties in a series of photographs by Juergen Teller alongside twentysomething model Raquel Zimmerman, so such “competition” is nothing to her.)

Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Sarah (Charlotte Rampling) come to a kind of understanding in François Ozon’s Swimming Pool

Rampling has really found her groove working with Ozon, having appeared in five of his films, highlighted by a devastating performance in Under the Sand as a wife dealing with the sudden disappearance of her husband. Sagnier, who has also starred in Ozon’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 8 Women, is a delight to watch, especially as things turn dark. Swimming Pool is very much about duality; the film opens with a shot of the shimmering Thames river while the title comes onscreen and Philippe Rombi’s score of mystery and danger plays, and later Sarah says, “I absolutely loathe swimming pools,” to which Julie responds, “Pools are boring; there’s no excitement, no feeling of infinity. It’s just a big bathtub.” (“It’s more like a cesspool of living bacteria,” Sarah adds.) Ozon (Time to Leave, Criminal Lovers) explores most of the seven deadly sins as Sarah and Julie get to know each other all too well.

David Hockney works on his masterpiece in Jack Hazan’s A Bigger Splash

A BIGGER SPLASH (Jack Hazan, 1974)
Saturday, August 6, 2:30
Sunday, August 7, 5:00
Saturday, August 13, 7:15
metrograph.com

Coinciding with Pride celebrations throughout New York City in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in June 2019, Metrograph premiered a 4K restoration of Jack Hazan’s pivotal 1974 A Bigger Splash, a fiction-nonfiction hybrid that was a breakthrough work for its depiction of gay culture as well as its inside look at the fashionable and chic Los Angeles art scene of the early 1970s. In November 2018, David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction for $90.3 million, the most ever paid for a work by a living artist. A Bigger Splash, named after another of Hockney’s paintings — both are part of a series of canvases set around pools in ritzy Los Angeles — takes place over three years, as the British artist, based in California at the time, hangs out with friends, checks out a fashion show, prepares for a gallery exhibition, and works on Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) in the wake of a painful breakup with his boyfriend, model, and muse, Peter Schlesinger, who is a key figure in the painting.

It’s often hard to know which scenes are pure documentary and which are staged for the camera as Hazan and his then-parter, David Mingay, who served as director of photography, tag along with Hockney, who rides around in his small, dirty BMW, meeting up with textile designer Celia Birtwell, fashion designer Ossie Clark, curator Henry Geldzahler, gallerist John Kasmin, artist Patrick Procktor, and others, who are identified only at the beginning, in black-and-white sketches during the opening credits. The film features copious amounts of male nudity, including a long sex scene between two men, a group of beautiful boys diving into a pool in a fantasy sequence, and Hockney disrobing and taking a shower. Hockney’s assistant, Mo McDermott, contributes occasional voice-overs; he also poses as the man standing on the deck in Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), only to be replaced by Schlesinger later. There are several surreal moments involving Hockney’s work: He cuts up one painting; Geldzahler gazes long and hard at himself in the double portrait of him and Christopher Scott; and Hockney tries to light the cigarette Procktor is holding in a painting as Procktor watches, cigarette in hand, mimicking his pose on canvas. At one point Hockney is photographing Schlesinger in Kensington Gardens, reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, which questions the very nature of capturing reality on film.

Hockney was so upset when he first saw A Bigger Splash, which Hazan made for about twenty thousand dollars, that he offered to buy it back from Hazan in order to destroy it; Hazan refused, and Hockney went into a deep depression. His friends ultimately convinced him that it was a worthwhile movie and he eventually accepted it. It’s a one-of-a-kind film, a wild journey that goes far beyond the creative process as an artist makes his masterpiece. Hockney, who turned eighty-five last month, has been on quite a roll of late. He was the subject of a 2016 documentary by Randall Wright, was widely hailed for his 2018 Met retrospective, and had a major drawing show at the Morgan Library in 2020-21. In addition, Catherine Cusset’s novel, Life of David Hockney, was published in English in 2019, a fictionalized tale that conceptually recalls A Bigger Splash.

THE KITE RUNNER

Amir (Amir Arison) reads a story to Hassan (Eric Sirakian) in The Kite Runner (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE KITE RUNNER
Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 30, $69-$199
thekiterunnerbroadway.com

The third time is not a charm for The Kite Runner.

Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling 2003 debut novel sold more than seven million copies in the United States. Director Marc Foster and screenwriter David Benioff’s 2007 film version was nominated for two Golden Globes, including Best Foreign Language Film, and for a Best Original Score Oscar. But Matthew Spangler’s 2009 theatrical adaptation, which opened July 21 at the Hayes Theater on Broadway, fails to live up to the promise of its forebears, rarely taking flight.

The play begins in San Francisco in 2001, with Amir (Amir Arison) explaining to the audience, “I became what I am today at the age of twelve. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a mud wall on a frigid winter day in 1975 . . . peeking into a deserted alley. It’s wrong what they say about the past, about how you can bury it, because the past claws its way out.” For more than two and a half hours (plus intermission), Amir serves as both narrator and character, portraying himself from an Afghan child in 1973 to an adult in California. The story is told in scenes that are treated like individual set pieces that often merely depict what Amir has already described instead of offering more; when he is not in the scene itself, he is an observer, not taking action, which becomes the core of the plot.

The young Amir lives in Kabul with his father, Baba (Faran Tahir), a proud, moralistic, successful merchant; Amir’s mother died in childbirth, and he hasn’t remarried. Baba’s longtime devoted servant, Ali (Evan Zes), stays in a shack on the estate with his young son, Hassan (Eric Sirakian), who spends most of his time playing with Amir; Ali’s wife ran off with a troupe of actors and musicians years before. Amir and Hassan can’t necessarily be called friends because as Sunni Muslims and members of the Pashtun ethnic group, Amir and Baba are of higher status than Ali and Hassan, who are ethnic Hazaras and Shi’a.

Hassan loves listening to Amir reading stories to him, primarily from Ferdowsi’s tenth-century Persian epic poem Shahnamah; Amir wants to become a poet himself, which angers his father, who wants a tough, athletic son who can defend himself against bullies. “Real men don’t read poetry, and they certainly don’t write it! Real men play soccer, just like I did when I was your age!” Baba bellows. Baba tells his business partner, Ramir Khan (Dariush Kashani), “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

Amir is determined to win the annual winter kite-fighting tournament, in which contestants try to cut the lines of everyone else’s kites, then have their runner track down the final fallen kite. Amir is one of the best kite cutters, but Hassan, who is devoted to Amir, is considered the greatest kite runner around. At the end of the competition, Hassan, in possession of the last kite, is confronted by neighborhood bully Assef (Amir Malaklou) and his cohorts, Wali (Danish Farooqui) and Kamal (Beejan Land). Ali demands that Hassan hand over the kite, but the young boy refuses, determined to bring it to Amir no matter the cost. As Assef commits a horrific act against Hassan, Amir watches, doing nothing, then runs away. “I ran as fast as I could. I ran all the way home,” the older Amir remembers sadly.

Baba (Faran Tahir) offers advice to his son (Amir Arison) in Broadway debut of The Kite Runner (photo by Joan Marcus)

The event, which the two boys never talk about, leads Amir to manufacture an estrangement; Ali and Hassan leave the estate, much to Baba’s displeasure. In 1978, Baba and Amir sacrifice everything following the Soviet invasion, first escaping to a refugee camp in Pakistan, then starting all over in San Francisco. In 1984, Amir and Baba are selling junk at a flea market in San Jose when Amir meets Soraya (Azita Ghanizada), the daughter of General Taheri (Houshang Touzie), who has also been reduced to selling random wares at the market. Amir and Soraya fall in love, but he is still haunted by how he treated Hassan. When Ramir discloses what has become of Ali and Hassan, Amir is determined to right the wrongs of his past, even if it means risking his life.

The Kite Runner is laden with the shame Amir is burdened with, and its heaviness weighs down the show. Too many of the scenes are extraneous or go on for too long; for example, a wedding might introduce us to certain aspects of Afghan culture, but it adds little to the narrative. The first act does a decent job of setting up what is to come, but the second act is an avalanche of incredulity and melodramatic coincidence that quickly grow tedious.

Spangler (Albatross, Operation Ajax), who has also adapted T. C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain, Mary Manning and Sinead O’Brien’s Striking Back: The Untold Story of an Anti-Apartheid Striker, and Hanan al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra, among other books, tries to include too much of the novel, so the plot meanders, getting stuck in the trees till it finally comes crashing to the ground. Director Giles Croft (Tony’s Last Tape, The Understudy) is unable to untangle the tale, which takes place on Barney George’s spare stage, anchored by an uneven wooden picket fence in the back on which William Simpson projects images.

Throughout most of the show, Salar Nader plays the tabla, sitting at the sides of the stage, adding to the Central Asian mood. Arison (The Blacklist, Aftermath) has difficulty navigating the time jumps as the unreliable narrator, delivering important facts at too slow a pace. Tahir, who recently played Othello and Richard III, brings a Shakespearean majesty to Baba, while Touzie (The Tibetan Book of the Dead, From Satellite with Love) is strong as the once-powerful general and Sirakian (The Jungle, Pericles) is more effective than Arison in portraying a child.

Spangler and Croft touch on key issues, from bigotry and immigration to bullying and the Taliban, but they feel less central to the plot than they did in the book, even in the wake of the controversial US pullout from Afghanistan in 2001; the name of the play refers to Hassan, but it is all about Amir, an unsympathetic character who is difficult to stick with in this disappointing adaptation.

ART TALK: CYNTHIA DAIGNAULT ON CRISTINA IGLESIAS

Cristina Iglesias’s Landscape and Memory consists of five bronze pools flowing along the Oval Lawn in Madison Square Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Cynthia Daignault
What: Free art talk in conjunction with Cristina Iglesias’s Landscape and Memory
Where: Oval Lawn, Madison Square Park
When: Wednesday, August 3, free, 6:00
Why: Mad. Sq. Art concludes its free summer talk series with American painter Cynthia Daignault discussing monuments, memory, and the natural world as it relates to her work and Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias’s Landscape and Memory, which is on view in the park through December 4. Daignault’s canvases feature lush mountain valleys, black-and-white trees, words barely visible on black backgrounds, objects such as skulls and food, and figures such as JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Barack Obama, Malcolm X, and Divine. Iglesias’s public interventions include water-based works in England, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, and Norway in addition to gates and passages, entwined murals, rooms and mazes, screens, suspended pavilions, and other conceptual and architectural projects. On August 3 at 6:00, Daignault will be on the oval lawn in Madison Square Park to share her thoughts on Iglesias’s captivating piece, a stream that winds through the grass in five bronze sculptural pools, referencing Cedar Creek and Minetta Brook, which once upon a time flowed across the park, heading for the East or Hudson River.

Each pool offers its own calming respite, with water gently babbling against rocks. “I started being interested in the use of water as an element of movement and change in this culture and also in the city, a way to show how nothing if we look carefully is always the same,” Iglesias explained in a 2021 virtual discussion for Whitechapel Gallery. “And I think water somehow makes that more visible.” It’s as if Iglesias, the daughter of a scientist, has uncovered a slice of the geographic history of Madison Square Park, now bubbling to the surface. (The park has also been home to a potter’s field, a parade ground / arsenal, and a reform school.) The title pays tribute to Simon Schama’s 1995 treatise Landscape and Memory, which explores the Western world’s interaction with nature. “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock,” Schama writes. “Once a certain idea of landscape, a myth, a vision, establishes itself in an actual place, it has a peculiar way of muddling categories, of making metaphors more real than their referents; of becoming, in fact, part of the scenery.” Following the informal talk, the public is invited to continue the dialogue directly with Daignault.

THE BUTCHER BOY

Nicholas Barasch sparkles as Francie Brady in world premiere musical at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE BUTCHER BOY
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through September 11, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

Five years ago, high school senior Asher Muldoon came to the Irish Rep with a musical adaptation of Patrick McCabe’s award-winning 1992 novel, The Butcher Boy, about thirteen-year-old Francie Brady (Nicholas Barasch), a red-haired lad on a destructive path to do some very bad things in the village of Clones in County Monaghan in the mid-1960s. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the novel was turned into a well-received 1997 dark comedy by Neil Jordan starring Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Brendan Gleeson, Milo O’Shea, and Sinéad O’Connor. Muldoon’s show opened last night at the Irish Rep, the first new musical developed by the company in eight years. Unfortunately, it could use some slicing and dicing; while the narrative parts work well, the musical numbers don’t bring home the bacon.

Nicholas Barasch is terrific as Francie Brady, a neighborhood bully from a dysfunctional family; he narrates the story in a series of flashbacks, disconcertingly oblivious to the full weight of his actions. “When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Missus Nugent,” he says at the beginning. “Now, it started with Joe and me out at the hide we had built. ‘Death to all dogs who enter here!’ we said. Except us of course.”

Francie’s mother, Annie (Andrea Lynn Green), suffers from severe depression, and his father, Ben (Scott Stangland), is a nasty alcoholic and failed trumpet player. Francie’s uncle, Alo (Joe Cassidy), his father’s brother, left his girlfriend, Mary (Kerry Conte), without saying goodbye, to try his luck in London. He comes to a party as a conquering hero until the two siblings have a bit of a contentious row.

Francie hangs around with his best friend, Joe Purcell (Christian Strange), fishing; seeking to create mayhem; doing whatever he can to obtain his favorite candy, Flash Bars; and bullying Phillip (Daniel Marconi), Mrs. Nugent’s (Michele Ragusa) nerdy son, stealing his treasured comic books. “Oh, if we lived like this forever we’d be fine / So why can’t we live like this forever?” Francie and Joe sing.

Upset at Francie’s treatment of Phillip, Mrs. Nugent visits Mrs. Brady and complains, “I’ll tell you something, Annie, it’s no wonder your boy is such a mean little runt. His father lying round in bars morning to midnight, a disgrace to the family, to the whole town, he’s no better than a pig. A PIG.” Francie, as narrator, tells the audience, “She didn’t know what she was doing then, Mrs. Nugent.” Mrs. Nugent then adds, “Pigs! Sure the whole town knows it. PIGS!!!”

Four pigs spur Francie Brady (Nicholas Barasch) to do bad things in The Butcher Boy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The “pigs” comments get to Francie, who does not want to be seen as inferior to anyone. He soon finds himself accompanied by four imaginary pigs (Teddy Trice, Carey Rebecca Brown, Polly McKie, and David Baida), a quartet of adults wearing pig masks and goading him on. “Well, I’ll be damned if I let all those piggies take what’s mine / This town ain’t big enough for both of us, you filthy swine / Let’s open up an abattoir and / Drain their blood for boudin noir / Save room for sausage,” one of the pigs sings. The four then chime in together, “Cause those big fat piggies have too much to say / Show em we’re not afraid to go to war / Unless those pigs grow piggy wings and fly away / Within a day or two you won’t know who is you and who is piggy.”

Francie runs away to Dublin (using the elegant pseudonym Algernon Carruthers), believing, “We can all just stay together / And I know that we’ll be fine / And the world will be back where the world is supposed to be,” but he winds up back in Clones with his family, gets a job working for Mr. Leddy (Baida) the butcher (“I’m used to seeing pigs,” Francie says), and has to redefine his place in a community where everyone seems to have grown up around him but he has stayed the same. It doesn’t go well.

Directed by Irish Rep cofounder Ciarán O’Reilly (Autumn Royal, The Emperor Jones), The Butcher Boy is an intense look into the mind of a troubled teen whose dark fantasies lure him away from reality. The show begins on Charlie Corcoran’s superb set, a kind of confined hideout with wooden slats at the right and left side covered in colorful comic-book regalia and a large, old-fashioned black-and-white television screen in the back, where Francie watches The Lone Ranger, Captain Z-Ro, and The Twilight Zone, including clips from the famous TZ episode “It’s a Good Life,” in which Bill Mumy portrays a young boy with special powers that allow him to control every part of life — and death — in a small town (“You’re a bad man! You’re a very bad man!”). During intermission, the classic “Eye of the Beholder” episode is shown, in which Rod Serling asks, “What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm?” The pig masks are reminiscent of two TZ episodes, but the musical overdoes the comparisons by having Phillip morph into Serling during an otherwise harrowing scene.

There are also references to John F. Kennedy, America’s first Irish-Catholic president, who was almost brought down by the Bay of Pigs invasion, and three iterations of women named Mary, all played by Conte, a clever melding of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, a trio of characters who intrigue Francie.

Francie’s descent into mental illness is both heartbreaking and frightening, particularly as the United States is involved in a wide-ranging discussion about mental health, especially as it relates to disturbed young white males who are prone to mass shootings. Barasch (Hadestown, She Loves Me) walks the fine line of Francie’s sanity with an infectious charm even though we know that things are going to get bloody at any moment; his smile, and bright red hair, lights up the room.

However, the musical numbers (“Big Fat Piggies!,” “My Lovelies,” “Francie Gets Mad,” “Don’t Forget About Me”), featuring limited, tongue-in-cheek choreography by Barry McNabb, actually detract from the story; they feel tacked on, like garnish, merely extending the show to a too-long two hours and twenty minutes (with intermission). I found myself rooting for them to end, like television commercials, so I could get back to the regularly scheduled program, which I was otherwise immersed in, enjoying thoroughly.

Muldoon, who is currently an undergrad at Princeton, wrote the book, music, and lyrics; the score is performed by the Slaughterhouse Five, consisting of conductor and musical director David Hancock Turner on keyboards, Danielle Giulini on violin, Joseph Wallace on bass, Martha Hyde on reeds, and Mike Rosengarten on guitar and banjo, playing behind the television screen, only occasionally visible.

The Butcher Boy could have used some more tenderizing and trimming before being served, as it has the promise of being one delicious meal where audiences wouldn’t mind making pigs of themselves.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Maggie (Sonoya Mizuno) and Brick (Matt de Rogatis) have different plans for the future in Tennessee Williams classic (photo by Miles Skalli)

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West Forty-Sixth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through August 14, $39-$125
www.ruthstage.org

When I was on the high school tennis team, the coach, Mr. Spector, taught me to avoid getting caught in “no man’s land,” the midcourt area in between the service box and the baseline where it is most difficult to return volleys because the ball can come right at your feet or at your head, which forces you to awkwardly play the ball. Mr. Spector was also my tenth-grade English teacher. Although I don’t recall any classes on Mississippi-born playwright Tennessee Williams that year, I thought of Mr. Spector after watching Ruth Stage’s adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, continuing at Theatre at St. Clement’s through August 14.

In October 2019, the troupe presented an alternate take on The Glass Menagerie at the Wild Project, directed by Austin Pendleton and Peter Bloch and starring Ginger Grace as Amanda Wingfield, company creative director Matt de Rogatis as Tom, Alexandra Rose as Laura, and Spencer Scott as the Gentleman Caller. Ruth Stage, with much of that same team, is now following that up with a unique version of Cat, the first-ever off-Broadway production approved by the Williams estate of the three-act 1955 Pulitzer Prize winner. Unfortunately, it spends too much of its 165 minutes (with an intermission and a pause) caught in a theatrical no man’s land.

Director Joe Rosario (Flowers for Algernon, The Exhibition) moves the time to the present, on a summer day when a family on a twenty-eight-thousand-acre cotton plantation is getting ready to celebrate patriarch Big Daddy Pollitt’s (Christian Jules Le Blanc) sixty-fifth birthday. The action takes place in the bedroom of Big Daddy’s ne’er-do-well son, Brick (de Rogatis), and his wife, Margaret (Sonoya Mizuno), aka Maggie the Cat. Following the death of his very close friend Skipper, Brick has become a drunk, refusing to sleep with Maggie, who wants to have a baby. The night before, trying to relive his high school glory days, Brick, heavily intoxicated, busted his ankle jumping hurdles and so he’s moving around in pain using a metal crutch and wearing a boot.

In the next room are Brick’s brother, Gooper (Scott), a lawyer who has been helping manage the estate, and his catty wife, Mae (Tiffan Borelli), who is pregnant with their sixth child. Two of their kids, Trixie and Dixie (Rose and Carly Gold), wander around the mansion in their own world; Maggie refers to them as the no-neck monsters. A report from Doc Baugh (Pendleton) reveals that Big Daddy is dying of cancer, setting in motion a battle for his money and control of the plantation. They have all chosen not to tell Big Daddy or Big Mama (Alison Fraser) about the terminal illness; instead, they are told that he has a spastic colon. As the evening goes on, the family dysfunction ratchets up with pointed hostilities emanating from just about everyone except Rev. Tooker (Milton Elliott), who is in over his head with the Pollitts.

Big Daddy’s (Christian Jules Le Blanc) birthday party goes awry in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (photo by Miles Skalli)

Despite admirable qualities, this Cat is stuck in no man’s land from the very start. The play opens with the heavily tattooed Brick taking a shower behind the bar while Maggie applies makeup at her vanity. They are both superhot, eye candy no matter your orientation, but they lack the fiery chemistry demanded for their failing relationship. While de Rogatis does a lot of grunting — alcohol does not seem to lessen Brick’s constant pain, at least part of which is psychological — Mizuno speaks softly, sometimes in a whisper that is hard to hear. When Maggie says about Gooper and Mae, “Of course it’s comical but it’s also disgusting since it’s so obvious what they’re up to!” Brick responds, “What are they up to, Maggie?,” which is the audience’s response as well, because not everything Mizuno just said was clear.

In fact, all of the actors speak at different levels throughout; combined with their seemingly random costumes and shifting accents, it’s like they’re all in separate versions of the play, each in their own no man’s land. Even the set itself is hard to figure out; while there is a door to the bedroom that Big Mama never wants to be locked, there are also two empty white doorframes that lead to a back veranda that anyone can use to enter the room whenever they want.

The nods to the present day are confusing and seemingly random as well. There’s a loud cordless phone in the room that rings a few times, which at first sounds like an audience member’s phone going off. During the party, Gooper pulls out a cell phone to take a family photo, but that’s the only appearance of such a device.

One of the no-neck monsters wears bulky headphones instead of earbuds, listening to contemporary pop tunes. Brick might believe he is deserving of his hurting ankle, but there is no talk of any kind of painkillers that could help him. Even though Big Daddy is worth more than one hundred million dollars, there is no discussion of second opinions or getting the best doctors in the world to treat him. Along similar lines, no one mentions to Brick and Maggie that they could try alternative methods of getting pregnant, including IVF.

One of the toughest problems facing many twenty-first-century productions of Williams is how to make the homophobia that drives so much of the action and so many of his characters understandable to a modern audience. The fear and shame that hover over the Pollitts because of what occurred between Brick and Skipper feels out of date, especially because the family does not seem to be bigoted. While homosexuality was certainly a controversial issue in the 1950s (and remains so today, though not nearly as hidden), it would not be handled with the same language or emphasis in 2022. And for a bonus contemporizing effect, there are a bunch of F-bombs dropped like the fireworks that later explode in the night sky over a projection beyond the veranda.

Le Blanc, who has won three Daytime Emmys for his portrayal of Michael Baldwin on The Young and the Restless, a role he has played for more than thirty years, stands out among the cast as a trimmed-down, bushy-haired Big Daddy. He speaks with bold authority, his accent consistent, his words artistically enunciated; when he’s onstage, you can’t take your eyes off him. He’s the only one Mr. Spector wouldn’t have to shout at to get out of that treacherous no man’s land.

MEDUSA

A masked gang of religious zealots seek out sinners in Anita Rocha da Silveira’s Medusa

MEDUSA (Anita Rocha da Silveira, 2021)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, July 29
www.angelikafilmcenter.com
www.musicboxfilms.com/film/medusa

Brazilian writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira follows up her 2015 success, Kill Me Please, about murder, sin, and misogyny among adolescents, with Medusa, which takes similar themes and more to another level.

According to ancient myth, Medusa was a beautiful mortal Gorgon virgin who was cursed after being seduced by Poseidon; she turned into an ugly snake-haired demon, and men who looked directly at her were turned into stone. In Medusa, a group of God-fearing young women prowl the streets at night, wearing white masks, hunting down sinful women and beating them until they agree to renounce their sins and worship Jesus; their confessions are recorded and posted on social media, where they go viral. The vicious group is inspired by an unknown woman who, years before, put on a mask and set on fire the face of an actress and dancer named Melissa (Bruna Linzmeyer) because of her lascivious promiscuity. Neither woman has been seen since.

By day, the mask-wearing gang is a bright and cheery religious singing troupe known as the Treasures of the Lord, dressed all in white, proudly chirping, “The Lord shall make my dream come true,” declaring themselves to be “witnesses of faith.” They are members of a cultlike church run by the charismatic Pastor Guilherme (Thiago Fragoso), who tells his flock, “My brothers, for a long time, the church has been estranged from the nation’s decisions. How much time have we wasted believing that the church shouldn’t decide the country’s future?”

The young men in the church are part of the Watchmen of Sion, self-appointed “guardians of the family, the morals, and the Lord,” a well-trained vigilante mob whose goal is to “crush the sinners.” The objective is that the Watchmen and the Treasures chastely fall in love and marry, creating a next generation of religious zealots to continue their mission to transform the world into faithful legions.

One night, the masked Treasures’ target fights back, scarring Mari’s (Mari Oliveria) face. The disfigurement is embarrassing to Mari, Treasures leader Michele (Lara Tremouroux), and the plastic surgery clinic where Mari works; she is soon fired because of her appearance.

While indoctrinating newbie Clarissa (Bruna G), Mari sets out to get a photo of the original victim, Melissa, and expose her sins on social media. She gets a job at a mysterious hospital that cares for people in long-term comas who are not expected to regain consciousness. There Mari is befriended by coworker Lucas (Felipe Frazão), who is attracted to her. It isn’t long before Mari begins questioning where her carefully regimented life is leading her.

Medusa is a creepy thriller, the eerie spawn of John Carpenter, David Lynch, Claire Denis, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma as well as Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face and Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s Jesus Camp. Not afraid to let her influences show, Rocha da Silveira imbues the film with a 1970s giallo / 1980s horror aesthetic even though it is set in the present day. It’s a cleverly disguised condemnation of the far-right evangelical movement that seeks to control women’s bodies, legislate their restrictive morality, and convert their country — be it Brazil, the United States, or elsewhere — into a Christian nation.

Mari (Mari Oliveria) and Michele (Lara Tremouroux) attempt to hide their own scars while inflicting pain on others in Brazilian thriller

Cinematographer João Atala often zooms in for close-ups of characters’ faces, exploring ideas of beauty as well as physical and emotional scars; Mari isn’t the only one attempting to cover something up. The women occasionally stare directly into the camera, implicating the viewer for making judgments and hiding their own sins, symbolically threatening to turn them to stone.

Despite numerous plot holes, digressions left hanging, and bumpy transitions between scenes, Medusa is a dark, compelling chiller with a killer soundtrack by Bernardo Uzeda, including classic tunes (for example, “House of the Rising Sun”) with rewritten religious lyrics that provide a false sense of security to their performers. The film, now playing at the Angelika, is a dark cautionary tale about forcing one’s morals onto others in a world where we all debate who the real monsters are.

HIT THE WALL

Adam Files and Alexandra Guerrero star in Jake Shore’s Hit the Wall (photo by Neil Ryan)

HIT THE WALL
The Kraine Theater
85 East Fourth Street between Second Ave. & Bowery
Thursday – Saturday through August 11, $25
www.frigid.nyc

During the pandemic lockdown, Rhode Island native Jake Shore wrote and directed (Adjust the Procedure, one of the best Zoom plays built around Zoom itself, consisting of a series of online meetings at a university attempting to deal with — or not deal with — a terrible tragedy. Presented by Spin Cycle and Shore’s JCS Theater Company, the prerecorded play enjoyed several extensions and was picked up by various festivals.

Shore’s first in-person play since theaters have reopened is Hit the Wall, a didactic seventy-minute, two-character drama about art and the audience continuing at the Kraine through August 11.

The show begins with famous forty-four-year-old graffiti artist Amir (Adam Files) and his protégé, twenty-five-year-old Rae (Alexandra “Allie” Guerrero), in his high-rise New York City apartment in 2010. For several minutes, they stand behind an empty picture frame hanging from the ceiling; it serves as a window to the outside world, an invisible canvas, and a reference to the Zoom boxes that were so prevalent during the height of the coronavirus crisis.

Rae tells Amir about a current project she’s failed to complete, a Madonna and Child on a wall in Crown Heights. She wants to go back and finish it, but Amir, who she compares to such graffiti legends as Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Lee Quiñones, and Claw Money, asserts that it would be a mistake, that she could be caught and sent to prison. “You’re succumbing to the rush and thrill of the chase, not the connection to your art,” he insists.

After some back and forth, Rae convinces Amir that she must finalize the work. He offers to help, but she refuses his support. The next morning she is excited, having executed the full piece in Brooklyn, and is now entertaining thoughts of hitting a wall in Times Square, despite the obvious danger. She tells him, “When I mention a wall, one of the first things you ask about is the visibility. The intention behind this being how many people can see it. How many sets of eyes. High visibility means a large audience, and then, in turn, more of a shot at influencing culture.” It’s as if Shore is comparing an off-off-Broadway play in Brooklyn — or a Zoom show — to a big-time production on the Great White Way.

While Rae desires the attention and wants to be a social media phenomenon, Amir is all about the art itself and its natural visibility to the right kind of people. He rails against capitalism and corporate greed, repeatedly claiming that sell-outs are rapists, thieves, and prostitutes. “Do you think that I would waste myself on the fuckers who visit and frequent Times Square?” he says. “That’s the point. Visibility is not just about the number of people you can reach, it’s about the quality of your audience.” A few moments later, Rae explains, “An empty theater has no audience,” another reference to the lockdown, when all theaters were empty and actors performing virtually had no idea who was out there watching them.

When Rae’s Madonna and Child suddenly and unexpectedly goes viral — perhaps not unlike what happened, to a lesser degree, with Adjust the Procedure — her relationship with Amir, and with her art, undergoes a rapid change.

Rae (Alexandra Guerrero) and Amir (Adam Files) discuss art and audiences in world premiere play at the Kraine (photo by Neil Ryan)

Directed by Timothy Haskell (Road House the Stage Play, Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of . . . Jean Claude Van Damme . . .), Hit the Wall feels like an unfinished work in need of significant touch-ups. Even at only seventy minutes, it is repetitive as the two characters argue incessantly about the value of art and the need for it to be seen. Guerrero (At Least He Didn’t Die with Antlers on His Head) has the better, more well-rounded part, and she does a good job with it, capturing our attention and gaining our sympathies, while Files (Adjust the Procedure, Fragments) is held back by dialogue that sometimes sounds like he’s defending a dissertation — but only when you can hear the two actors, who have to compete with an aggressively loud air-conditioning unit.

Shore (The Devil Is on the Loose with an Axe in Marshalltown, Down the Mountain and Across the Stream) makes some interesting comparisons about mentors and protégés, parents and children — Rae has a strained relationship with her mother and ill father, so it’s not surprising that her signature piece is the idealized Madonna and Child, but the subplot grows overbearing.

The most compelling theme in the play is the exploration of the exchange between artist and audience as it relates specifically to live theater. At certain points Amir and Rae wonder if they themselves are performing for people sitting in seats, watching them.

“There is an eternal audience, Rae,” Amir says. “Imaginary?” Rae asks. Amir: “An eternal audience more real and present than any single person or group. . . . An audience on another plane. Like we’re in a play.” Rae: “Some otherworldly judgment? You speak clearly of God.” Amir: “Not God or gods.” Rae: “Then what?” Amir: “A group of viewers beyond our comprehension. . . .” Rae: “They are down there in the city, or up here so many stories high, but not seated in a dark theater in the caverns of your subconscious.”

No, we are seated in a dark theater, physical presences who have returned from two years of experiencing plays online, if at all, ready to be entertained, and challenged, no longer beyond comprehension. In a program note, Shore explains, “One reason I wanted to write a play like this is because graffiti artists want walls so badly. That’s sort of where it started.” Unfortunately, in his attempt to hit this wall, he misses.