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DISPELLING MISTRESSES: ENDING A LOVE TRIANGLE THROUGH DIGNITY AND RESPECT

Elizabeth Lo is given remarkable access to a love triangle in award-winning documentary Mistress Dispeller

MISTRESS DISPELLER (Elizabeth Lo, 2024)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, October 22
www.ifccenter.com

In her debut feature-length documentary, 2020’s Stray, Elizabeth Lo tracked a remarkable homeless canine named Keytin as the golden mutt lived a dog’s life on the streets of Istanbul, allowing Lo to capture his every move, telling the dog’s story from his perspective.

Lo has followed that up with Mistress Dispeller, in which the participants in a love triangle allow Lo to capture their every move, telling their story from each of their unique perspectives.

Taking inspiration from Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai due Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Lo’s film explores a relatively new “love industry” in China, mistress dispellers, who, for fees of tens of thousands of dollars and more, are hired by women who believe their husbands are having an affair; over the course of two or three months, the dispeller, using a false identity, ultimately convinces the mistress to end the illicit romance through a structured technique. They do so in a calm, unobtrusive way, treating all three parties with dignity and respect.

It took three years for Lo to find mistress dispeller Wang Zhenxi, then get permission to document one of her cases, in which Mrs. Li wants to end her husband’s affair with the younger Fei Fei. Wang poses as a cousin of Mr. Li’s who is interested in learning the married couple’s favorite pastime, badminton. Wang carefully orchestrates various meetings in which she spends time alone with the mistress, studies her motivations and emotions, and comes up with a plan. Lo’s mounted, still camera is in every room, every car — but not necessarily Lo, who sometimes leaves the camera recording as she exits the space, permitting her subjects to talk more openly without her watching. “I am just a vessel in their lives,” Wang says, and so is Lo. (Lo had previously interviewed Mrs. Li’s younger brother, who was a dispelled male mistress and recommends Wang in the film.)

Although it is made clear from the start that this is not some kind of game, there are winners and losers. “It’s just like a war. You either win or lose everything,” Wang explains. Fei Fei admits, “Winning or losing isn’t the question. Actually, neither is important to me anymore. Because there are many more important things than winning.” But later she states, “I can’t keep losing though, right? Everyone wants to win. Why can’t the winner be me?”

Lo directed, produced, and photographed the film in addition to writing and editing it with Charlotte Munch Bengtsen. She gives equal weight to Mr. Li, Mrs. Li, and Fei Fei while delving into Wang’s methods. Time and money is never discussed; instead, Lo focuses on the care Wang employs in her business, determined to achieve a satisfying result for all involved. The access Lo is supplied is astounding; of course, only Mrs. Li knows what’s happening at first, but soon Mr. Li understands as well, while Fei Fei discovers the deception only at the conclusion.

Lo does not seek to elicit any judgments, but she includes several scenes in which Mrs. Li and Fei Fei carefully tend to their personal style, taking care to dress well and get their hair done, while Mr. Li, the object of each woman’s affection, is not exactly a fashion plate or a great conversationalist. However, the film does not ask us to question the love — and we know from the start that Wang’s goal is to restore the marriage, with the mistress out of the picture.

In a program note, Fei Fei says, “I am willing to participate in filming because, considering the long river of life, this is a small part of it. But it’s also something that’s significant to me right now. I see this as a documentary of my life. It is also a portrait of love. From the beginning of our encounter, to the middle of the relationship, and the end, it’s all part of this process of love. . . . Love doesn’t disappear, it just diverts. It’s just a process of love moving around. It’s quite meaningful to make time to recall and witness the process for yourself — whether the path you take is right or not. . . . When others see this film, they might gain some insights from it.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Li explains, “Teacher Wang taught me a lot. About love, and other things. She said, ‘Look, you are going through this, this difficulty, and we should film it, so more women, more people, can face their families and learn how to handle a situation like this. . . .’ I want more people to know that love doesn’t come easy, especially for people at our age. Don’t give up so easily.”

The film also touches on aspects of contemporary Chinese dating, from matchmaking seminars and fairs to online channels. Lo occasionally cuts away for drone shots of cities and mountainous landscapes, incorporating all of China into the narrative, merging the inner and outer worlds of the people and the country.

Mistress Dispeller opens October 22 at IFC Center, with Lo on hand for Q&As at the 6:35 screenings on Wednesday with Penny Lane and Thursday with Constance Wu; Lo and Wu will also deliver an extended introduction before the 9:00 show on Saturday.

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

SEEING TRIPLE: TALKING BAND’S LATEST IS ANOTHER AVANT-GARDE MASTERWORK

Steven Rattazzi, Amara Granderson, and Lizzie Olesker star as three accidentally interconnected New Yorkers in Triplicity (photo by Maria Baranova)

TRIPLICITY
Mabou Mines@122CC
150 1st Ave. at Ninth St.
Wednesday – Monday through October 26, $30-$40
talkingband.org

I got so mad watching Triplicity, Talking Band’s latest fantastic foray into the experimental and the avant-garde. The legendary downtown troupe was founded in 1974 by Paul Zimet, Ellen Maddow, and Tina Shepard and has presented approximately sixty shows over the years. Embarrassingly, I discovered them only a few years ago and have been blown away by their last five productions but, oh, what I have missed over the decades.

In a program note, director Zimet writes, “I feel Triplicity is a quintessential Talking Band work: It uses music, the music of speech, and choreography to heighten the ordinary and allow us to appreciate it in a new way.” If you’ve never experienced a Talking Band work, then Triplicity is a great place to start. And if you have been to previous TB shows, well, what are you waiting for? Triplicity runs at Mabou Mines@122CC only through October 26.

Triplicity is a truly New York City tale, following the interconnected, overlapping lives of four strangers as they go about their regular, mostly mundane existence in the big metropolis.

Frankie Shuffleton (Lizzie Olesker) is a seventy-something widowed bookkeeper who walks around her Christopher Street block every day at noon, sits on a park bench, and picks up a salad in a plastic container on her way home, where she listens to the news on the radio at seven, catches a police procedural at ten, then goes to bed. In true Beckett fashion, her first words are “There’s nothing to say,” which sharply contrasts with her accidental acquisition of a “talk to me” phone in which people call seeking advice.

Danny Dardoni (Steven Rattazzi) is a fifty-something exterminator who lives in a large Italian household in Bay Ridge, reads the poems of Virgil, and is shocked to learn that there is an enormous beehive in the attic. Danny, who has an innate sense for details, specializes in killing mice and rats and, not necessarily happily, tells us that he “is responsible for the safety and well-being of my family, to provide a home, this house, that is a safe place in a dangerous world.”

Norma Linda Box (Amara Granderson) is a twentysomething wannabe writer with five roommates, four jobs, and a hatred of people saying her name. When she sees a snake on the sidewalk, she takes him home because his blue stripes match a tattoo on her left ankle. “No one has witnessed the event,” she says. “I own it. I can define it. It’s mine to define.”

And Calliope (El Beh) is a street singer who is kind of a Greek chorus in funky, wild clothing, singing songs related to the words and actions of Frankie, Danny, and Norma, picking up on their sound and movement. “Whatever the weather / Calliope sings to whoever will listen / That’s it / That’s it,” she warbles.

As they share their stories, they break out into formalistic dances and roll around on their chairs; the playful choreography by Sean Donovan and Brandon Washington evokes the independence, and loneliness, of so many New Yorkers.

Talking Band’s Triplicity features unique choreography by Sean Donovan and Brandon Washington (photo by Maria Baranova)

In astrology, triplicity is an essential dignity involving a group of three Zodiac signs belonging to one element. That definition fits the show well, as the worlds of three people intersect and become one through the participation of a fourth.

The play begins with Frankie telling her story three different ways, moving her chair and adding more detail each time, a dazzling introduction to how we talk about our lives and share them with others. The concept of numbers is key throughout the seventy minutes, a poetic leitmotif. “Suddenly everything is in two’s!” Frankie declares. Three girls ride scooters. At four, Frankie goes out for coffee. Norma has five roommates and writes six essays. There are seven shards of glass on a blue tile floor. They get ten inches of rain over three days. The barrage of numbers suggests the passage of time, in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years on the journey from birth to death.

Anna Kiraly’s set consists of rolling chairs, doorways with windows on which she projects different color schemes, a mazelike path on the floor, and a corner with special props for Calliope. Olivera Gajic’s costumes feature Frankie in a quaint sweater and skirt, Danny in a white T-shirt and sneakers, Norma in blue-jean overalls and wearing a red bandanna, and Calliope in a series of wildly adorned outfits.

Triplicity is written and composed by Ellen Maddow and directed by Paul Zimet, the incomparable married team who have been collaborating as writer, director, composer, and/or actors for half a century, including on Talking Band’s recent surge of endlessly compelling and engaging works, which have made me nearly weep with joy as the company continues to push the limits of what theater can be: Shimmer and Herringbone at Mabou Mines, Existentialism and Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless at La MaMa, and The Following Evening at PAC NYC.

In Triplicity, they capture the essence of New York City, the heart and soul of everyday people, the music and energy, divided into such chapters as “Adagio,” “Allegretto,” and “Scherzo,” resulting in a beautiful mini-symphony performed by a magical quartet.

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

NOTHING TO SAY OR DO? A SAMUEL BECKETT HAT TRICK IN NEW YORK

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter star in Broadway smash version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (photo by Andy Henderson)

WAITING FOR GODOT
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 4, $98.56-$558.88
godotbroadway.com
www.thehudsonbroadway.com

“There’s nothing to do,” Vladimir tells Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s 1953 masterpiece Waiting for Godot.

There’s plenty to do for Beckett fans in New York City right now, much but not all of it a most excellent adventure.

The talk of the town is Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reprising — well, channeling? — their roles from 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the 1991 and 2020 sequels in Godot at the Hudson Theatre. Action star Reeves is making his Broadway debut as Estragon (Gogo) in Jamie Lloyd’s bumpy adaptation, while Winter returns to the Great White Way for the first time in forty-four years as Vladimir (Didi).

Reeves and Winter follow in the formidable footsteps of such duos as Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, and Robin Williams and Steve Martin and, for the most part, hold the audience’s attention. Gogo and Didi usually find themselves in a strange, dark wasteland, with only a single bare tree, a country road, and a solitary stone as they contemplate life and death, heaven and hell, and existence and humanity, but Lloyd and set designer Soutra Gilmour locate them inside a giant tube that is part tunnel, part circular skateboard ramp, part existential void in space. Resembling abandoned vaudevillians in all black, sporting impressive bowlers (the costumes are also by Gilmour), they sit at the edge of the tube, feet dangling, waiting for the mysterious Godot to arrive and, perhaps, bring meaning to their sad, pathetic lives.

They are visited instead by the loud, blustery Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden) and his menial, an apparent servant named Lucky (Michael Patrick Thornton). Pozzo usually leads Lucky around by a rope around his neck — evoking master and slave, circus ringleader and animal performer while referencing the rope Gogo had mentioned earlier when he and Didi considered hanging themselves — but here Lloyd has the verbally abusive Pozzo pushing Lucky, who is in a wheelchair, altering their dynamic. Curiously, Lucky breaks the fourth wall several times, acknowledging the audience and encouraging them to clap after he does his dance (with his head and hands). In addition, a young boy (Eric Williams or Zaynn Arora) shares important information with Gogo and Didi.

Lloyd (A Doll’s House, Sunset Blvd.) has slimmed down the show to just over two hours including intermission, so the pacing works well. Lloyd’s decision to get rid of nearly all the usual props, including a key carrot that Gogo chews in an annoying manner, seems like overkill. There’s a perpetual droning hum of doom hovering over the proceedings (the sound is by Ben and Max Ringham), contrasting Jon Clark’s subtle lighting shifts, highlighted by dazzling surprises at the end of each act.

Reeves and Winter may not display a wide range of emotions, but they avail themselves well enough to keep the audience engaged. At one point Didi says, “This is not boring you I hope,” looking out at us, and we essentially answer no.

Bill and Ted enthusiasts may whoop when Gogo says, “Back to back like in the good old days,” and the two actors stand back to back and play air guitar, echoing what they do in the film series, but the reference feels out of place in a show that exists in a barren emptiness and is about nothing (and everything).

“The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing,” Bill says in the first movie, quoting Socrates. Ted responds, “That’s us, dude.”

Party on, dudes!

Stephen Rea is mesmerizing as a man listening to his past in Krapp’s Last Tape (photo courtesy Patricio Cassinoni)

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
Through October 19, $83-$130
nyuskirball.org

“Nothing to say,” an old man declares in Samuel Beckett’s 1958 autobiographical classic, Krapp’s Last Tape, a fascinating kind of companion piece to Waiting for Godot.

In 2012, Irish actor Stephen Rea decided to go into a studio and perform the prerecorded sections of Krapp’s Last Tape, in case he was ever asked to do the one-man show, in which a dissatisfied man listens to tapes his younger self made thirty years before. Rea is now touring the play, which continues at the NYU Skirball Center through October 19.

Jamie Vartan’s spare set features a desk in the center, an overhead hanging light, and a door at the back, stage right. Paul Keogan’s shadowy lighting maintains an old-fashioned vaudeville black-and-white feel. The past is present in both Vicky Featherstone’s taut staging and the theme of the play.

The show begins with Krapp slowly opening a hilariously long drawer and removing a banana. He eats the fruit — the yellow of the banana stands out from the otherwise colorless gloom — and tosses the peel onto the floor, where, of course, he soon slips on it. He does not make the same mistake twice.

To celebrate his birthday, he is going to listen to one of his old reel-to-reel tapes, the one he made when he turned thirty-nine, discussing his life. He brings in the machine and a stack of tapes, carefully searching for box three, spool five, taking great delight in saying the word “spool” over and over again. “Thirty-nine today, sound as a bell, apart from my old weakness, and intellectually I have now every reason to suspect at the . . . crest of the wave — or thereabouts,” he listens to his old self explain. “Good to be back in my den, in my old rags. Have just eaten I regret to say three bananas and only with difficulty refrained from a fourth. Fatal things for a man with my condition. Cut ’em out! The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness round me I feel less alone. In a way. I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to . . . me. Krapp.”

Not much has changed in those thirty years; his loneliness in the darkness is palpable. He looks up the meaning of “viduity,” sings, and recalls a romantic evening on a lake. But the tape does not provide him with happiness; he barks out, “Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that. Thank God that’s all done with anyway.”

What’s next? Well, the play’s French title is La Dernière Bande, or “The Last Tape.”

Krapp’s Last Tape has previously been performed by such actors as Patrick Magee, Harold Pinter, Brian Dennehy, and Michael Gambon; I’ve seen it with John Hurt at BAM and, earlier this year, F. Murray Abraham at the Irish Rep. The play, a haunting examination of time, memory, and the futility of language, works best in more intimate quarters; it gets a bit lost at the Skirball, even at only about fifty minutes.

Rea (A Particle of Dread, Cyprus Avenue) inhabits the character with a graceful elegance despite Krapp’s pathetic, sad-sack circumstances, at times recalling Buster Keaton, one of Beckett’s favorites. It’s a bravura performance that I would have loved to see in a significantly smaller venue.

Druid production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame comes to Irish Arts Center for monthlong run (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

ENDGAME
Irish Arts Center, JL Greene Theatre
726 Eleventh Ave. between Fifty-First & Fifty-Second Sts.
October 22 – November 23, $25-$86
irishartscenter.org

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,” Nell tells Nagg in Samuel Beckett’s 1957 chess-inspired Endgame, which takes place during some kind of apocalypse as four characters contemplate their fate in a dingy basement dungeon, two of them living in garbage cans.

In a conversation in the Skirball program for Krapp’s Last Tape, Stephen Rea tells director Vicky Featherstone and Dr. Tanya Dean, “Endgame is a tough thing. I remember Beckett saying he loved Endgame, and he didn’t like Waiting for Godot. And I said, ‘Well, it’s been absorbed.’”

Rea played Clov in the 1976 Royal Court production of Endgame; I’ve seen the show twice, in 2008 at BAM with Max Casella, Alvin Epstein, Elaine Stritch, and John Turturro, and in 2023 at the Irish Rep with John Douglas Thompson, Bill Irwin, Joe Grifasi, and Patrice Johnson Chevannes. From October 22 through November 23, Galway’s Druid theater company will be presenting Endgame at the Irish Arts Center, with Tony winner Marie Mullen, Bosco Hogan, Aaron Monaghan, and Rory Nolan, directed by Tony winner Garry Hynes. As with Soutra Gilmour’s set for Waiting for Godot on Broadway, Francis O’Connor’s scenic design for Endgame also emphasizes the circularity of life.

Monaghan, who plays Clov, previously starred as Estragon opposite Marty Rea (no relation to Stephen) in Druid and Hynes’s Waiting for Godot at Lincoln Center’s 2018 White Light Festival. Hynes also helmed a stunning Richard III starring Monaghan in 2019 as well as The Beauty Queen of Leenane at BAM in 2017, with Marty Rea and Mullen.

Endgame is part of Druid’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. In the play, Clov shouts, “The end is terrific!” But luckily for theatregoers, the end appears to be nowhere in sight for Druid, or for seeing Beckett in New York.

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

LIFE AS IMPROV: VERA BRANDES, KEITH JARRETT, AND KÖLN 75

Mala Emde is hypnotic as teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes in Ido Fluk’s Köln 75

KÖLN 75 (Ido Fluk, 2025)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, October 17
www.ifccenter.com

In Ido Fluk’s exciting, propulsive Köln 75, if teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes (Mala Emde) is going to make the impossible happen and first book master pianist Keith Jarrett (John Magaro) for the first-ever jazz show at the Cologne Opera House in Germany, sell tickets, and then convince Jarrett to actually take the stage and perform, she’ll need to improvise like, well, a jazz legend.

Inspired by a true story, the film begins at Vera’s (Susanne Wolff) fiftieth birthday party, where her father (Ulrich Tukur) makes a surprise, unwelcome appearance. “When she was young, she had a lot of potential,” he says in what is supposed to be a celebratory toast. “She is, without a doubt, my greatest disappointment.”

Vera turns to look into the camera and confidently declares, “Let’s do this again!” The action then shifts to the 1970s, with Jazzworld magazine critic-at-large Michael “Mick” Watts (Michael Chernus) discussing some of the most famous recorded false starts in music history. We then meet Vera when she’s sixteen, a freewheeling, free-loving jazz fan into John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Dexter Gordon. One night she goes to a club to see British saxophonist Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts), who, after hanging out with Vera, asks her to book a German tour for him even though she has zero experience. (She tells him she’s twenty-five.) When she asks why her, he answers, “Because I can’t imagine anyone turning you down.”

Soon Vera, her older boyfriend, Jan (Enno Trebs), her best friend, Isa (Shirin Eissa), and a young man she’s just met, Oliver (Leon Blohm), are putting together shows and living life in the fast lane, much to the chagrin of Vera’s stodgy and humorless conservative dentist father and mother (Jördis Triebel).

After watching Jarrett perform a solo concert, Vera decides that she must book the pianist into the Cologne Opera House, staking her entire music future on it even as she faces roadblock upon roadblock, from the opera house’s total lack of support to Jarrett’s unpredictability, neuroses, and nearly debilitating back pain. As Jarrett and his producer, Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer), set out on an eight-hour drive with Watts to get to Germany, Vera is determined to not let multiple problems stop her from staging the show and forging her career.

Emde (And Tomorrow the Whole World, 303) is hypnotic as Vera, who is always thinking, always planning, never sitting still; like Scott said, you can’t imagine anyone turning her down. Emde imbues Vera with endless bursts of energy, emotion, and an infectious joie de vivre even when everything is falling apart. Magaro (Past Lives, September 5) offers a terrific counterpoint as Jarrett, who is overwhelmed by a bundle of nerves and a lack of confidence despite his success. As Watts, Chernus (Severance, Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy) serves as a calming force somewhere in between them, speaking directly to the audience as a concerned observer, a journalist who keeps being told that he cannot use anything he witnesses in his story. (Although there was a real jazz writer with the same name, the character is a composite of several people.)

In making the film, writer-director Fluk (The Ticket, Never Too Late) ran into numerous problems of his own, so he and his crew had to improvise as well; for example, the Cologne Opera was not available, so they had to find an alternate space in Poland, and Jarrett and his record company chose not to cooperate, so Fluk could not use Jarrett’s actual music. However, Fluk did have an eight-hour conversation with the real Vera Brandes, who had been waiting fifty years to tell her story to someone. Köln 75 works because it’s not primarily about music, or the 1970s, or Keith Jarrett; instead, it’s told from the perspective of an unsung hero, an intoxicating young woman who refuses to let her dreams die.

Köln 75 opens October 17 at IFC Center, with Brandes, Emde, Chernus, and Fluk on hand for Q&As at the 6:45 screenings on Friday and Saturday night.

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

ONSTAGE PARTY: TILER PECK AND FRIENDS AT CITY CENTER

Tiler Peck (left) will team up with Michelle Dorrance and others for “Turn It Out” at City Center (photo by Christopher Duggan)

TURN IT OUT WITH TILER PECK & FRIENDS
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
October 16-19, $45-$125
www.nycitycenter.org

“I initially didn’t want to be a ballerina,” New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck tells Emma Memma in a recent Instagram post about her new children’s book, XO Ballerina Big Sis: Wisdom and Advice from the Heart (DK, October 21, $16.99). “I wanted to dance. I will say I love to dance. It’s just that I grew up in a studio where I tried all styles, and ballet was my least favorite.”

Thankfully, the Bakersfield-born Peck, who began her training at the age of two, followed her mother’s guidance and took the ballet route, entering the School of American Ballet when she was twelve and becoming an NYCB apprentice, a member of the corps de ballet, a soloist, and, in October 2009, at the age of twenty, a principal dancer. Peck has originated featured roles in such works as Kyle Abraham’s Love Letter (on shuffle), Benjamin Millepied’s Quasi una Fantasia, Angelin Preljocaj’s Spectral Evidence, and Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

During the pandemic lockdown, Peck expanded her horizons on Instagram, dancing with her father and her dog, giving lessons from her mother’s kitchen, and providing sunshine on dark days with her infectious enthusiasm.

Peck is now curating a special program running October 16-19 at New York City Center, “Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends,” where she will be joined by such dancers as India Bradley, Christopher Grant, Chun Wai Chan, Byron Tittle, Lex Ishimoto, Quinn Starner, Roman Mejia, and Mira Nadon, performing William Forsythe’s The Barre Project, Blake Works II, set to music by James Blake; Peck’s Thousandth Orange, with live music by Caroline Shaw; Alonzo King’s pas de deux Swift Arrow, with music by Jason Moran; and the new commission Time Spell, a collaboration with Michelle Dorrance and Jillian Meyers, set to music by Aaron Marcellus and Penelope Wendtlandt. There will be a community talkback after the October 17 show with Peck and her friends, most likely including her new husband, Mejia.

“It’s literally like a party onstage,” Peck says in the above video, a party you won’t want to miss.

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

STRAPPING IT ON: (UN)CONDITIONAL AT SOHO PLAYHOUSE

Valerie (Kate Abbruzzese) and Kyle (Brooks Brantly) face marital difficulties as Mia (Georgia Waehler) watches in (un)conditional (photo by Russ Rowland)

(UN)CONDITIONAL
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St. between Varick St. & Sixth Ave.
Wednesday – Monday through October 26, $41-$72
www.sohoplayhouse.com

Ali Keller’s (un)conditional is an awkward, uncomfortable theatrical experience that will have you squirming in your seat, but not in a good way.

The ninety-minute play, continuing at SoHo Playhouse through October 26, is a decidedly adult look at sexual fantasy involving two couples. For their tenth anniversary, Valerie (Kate Abbruzzese) has convinced Kyle (Brooks Brantly) to participate in a robber-rapist role-play scenario in order to reinvigorate their love life, but when she reveals herself wearing a purple strap-on dildo and tells him what she wants to do with it, he freaks out. It gets even more complicated when they discover that their seven-year-old daughter, Mia (Georgia Waehler), has been listening at the door.

Valerie and Kyle have a brutal fight about each other’s needs, Valerie explaining that she has been feeling neglected for a long time. “You could’ve just told me you felt like that. You didn’t need to do all this. You are more than a bunch of holes, Val,” Kyle explains, holding her hand. Valerie replies, “I know.” Kyle clarifies, “I mean to me. You are more than a bunch of holes to me.” Valerie rips her hand away and declares, “This is not about you. It’s about me and something I want.”

In another part of town, Lenox (Annalisa Chamberlin) is making steak and potatoes for her husband, the somewhat older Hank (Nathan Darrow), in order to reinvigorate their love life and have children. “Even though I don’t like steak and potatoes as much as you like steak and potatoes, I know that you’ll get that look on your face where you’re all excited, and I know you’ll enjoy yourself and it makes me like steak and potatoes more than I normally would,” she says demurely, slyly letting him know that she will do everything she can to get him back in the sack, which he has been avoiding like the plague.

Valerie decamps to her parents’ house for a while; when Kyle takes Mia to the store to buy Halloween costumes, they bump into Lenox, Kyle’s coworker, and Hank, who quickly bonds with Mia. Behaving like a whiny brat, Mia insists that her father get her a pretzel — a metaphor for the twisted relationships becoming apparent among the five characters — but when she acts out, Hank puts on a magician outfit and magically makes the obnoxious girl happy.

He also makes himself happy; after Kyle and Mia leave, Lenox says to Hank, “Maybe we don’t need miracles. I told you role play would work. Let’s get the magician costume.”

Eventually everyone comes together at one of the most absurd New Year’s Eve parties ever, featuring a plot twist that elicited an enormous groan from the audience the night I went.

Lenox (Annalisa Chamberlin) and Hank (Nathan Darrow) face marital difficulties in (un)conditional (photo by Russ Rowland)

The ninety-minute (un)conditional is about as icky a show as I’ve seen for quite some time. There are a few good moments — the early dildo scene is poignant and hilarious — but director Ivey Lowe is unable to smooth out the bumps, both in the narrative, which ranges from ridiculously silly to darkly serious as it jumps from holiday to holiday, and the constant set changes, as white furniture is transformed between beds and couches while interstitial music shifts from cool rocking guitar and bass to more maudlin instrumentals. Given the uneven dialogue, the cast does what it can, although Waehler, who is twenty, portrays Mia in a ceaselessly annoying manner.

Winner of SoHo Playhouse’s 2024 Lighthouse Series for emerging talent in New York City, (un)conditional gets off to a rousing start but goes limp too soon and never recovers its mojo.

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

MATURING ON FILM: A DIFFERENT COMING OF AGE AT METROGRAPH

THE COMING OF AGE
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
October 12 – November 2
metrograph.com

The Metrograph series “‘The Coming of Age” is not a collection of works about young people discovering themselves as they advance from puberty to adolescence to adulthood. Instead, it explores films about people growing old.

“We’re aging: Older adults are the fastest growing age demographic globally and expected to double in size in the US by 2060. And yet our film culture clings to youth,” series curator Sarah Friedland said in a statement. “‘The Coming of Age’ liberates the genre from the strictures of youth to present an anti-ageist portrait of growing older in global cinema, drawing on my film-viewing research to prepare for the making of my feature debut, Familiar Touch. Presenting films from the silent era up through our current moment of seismic demographic shift, ‘The Coming of Age’ bears the name of Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal 1970 feminist book on aging and borrows the genre as a frame for seeing and celebrating older adults in the fullness and complexity of themselves. What links each film in this series is not aging as a subject but the aging subject’s perspective, showing old age in the diversity of its experience: as a time for pleasure, poetry, resistance, and even revenge.”

Running October 12 through November 2, the series includes a wide range of international selections, from Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection and Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story to F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh and “Choreographies of Aging,” consisting of shorts by such directors as Kevin Jerome Everson, Barbara Hammer, and Friedland, who will take part in a postscreening discussion with director Wen Hu after the October 18 presentation. She will also be on hand October 12 to introduce Familiar Touch with star Kathleen Chalfant and critic Amy Taubin at 5:00 and then introduce Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. at 7:30.

Below is a closer look at four of the films.

De Sica Neorealist classic is the heartbreaking story of a man and his dog

De Sica neorealist classic is the heartbreaking story of an elderly man and his faithful dog

UMBERTO D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952)
Sunday, October 12, 7:30
Monday, October 20, 4:45
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You might never stop crying. Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece Umberto D. stars Carlo Battisti (a professor whom De Sica saw one day and thought would be perfect for the lead role; it would be Battisti’s only film) as Umberto Domenico Ferrari, an elderly former bureaucrat who is too proud to sacrifice his dignity in order to pay his mean-spirited landlady (Lina Gennari), who rents out his room by the hour while he’s out walking his beloved dog, Flag, and trying to find some way to get money and food. Umberto D. is befriended by the boardinghouse maid (Maria Pia Casilio), who is pregnant with the child of one of two servicemen, neither of whom wants to have anything to do with her. As Umberto D.’s options start running out, he considers desperate measures to free himself from his loneliness and poverty. His relationship with Flag is one of the most moving in cinema history. Don’t miss this remarkable achievement, which was lovingly restored in 2002 for its fiftieth anniversary by eighty-six-year-old lighting specialist Vincenzo Verzini, who was known as Little Giotto.

Yun Jung-hee returned to the screen for the first time in sixteen years in moving Poetry

POETRY (SHI) (Lee Chang-dong, 2010)
Friday, October 17, 3:30
Saturday, October 18, noon
www.kino.com/poetry
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Returning to the screen for the first time in sixteen years, legendary Korean actress Yun Jung-hee is mesmerizing in Lee Chang-dong’s beautiful, bittersweet, and poetic Poetry. Yun stars as Mija, a lovely but simple woman raising her teenage grandson, Wook (Lee David), and working as a maid for Mr. Kang (Kim Hi-ra), a Viagra-taking old man debilitated from a stroke. When she is told that Wook is involved in the tragic suicide of a classmate (Han Su-young), Mija essentially goes about her business as usual, not outwardly reacting while clearly deeply troubled inside. As the complications in her life grow, she turns to a community poetry class for solace, determined to finish a poem before the memory loss that is causing her to forget certain basic words overwhelms her. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Poetry is a gorgeously understated work, a visual, emotional poem that never drifts from its slow, steady pace. Writer-director Lee (Peppermint Candy, Secret Sunshine) occasionally treads a little too close to clichéd melodrama, but he always gets back on track, sharing the moving story of an unforgettable character. Throughout the film he offers no easy answers, leaving lots of room for interpretation, like poems themselves.

Ian Fiscuteanu brings to life the slow death of a unique character in Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
Wednesday, October 22, 6:20
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Poor Mr. Lazarescu. He lives in a shoddy hovel of an apartment in Bucharest, where he drinks too much and gets out too little. He moves around very slowly and has trouble saying what’s on his mind, even to his three cats. His family is sick and tired of telling him to lay off the booze, so they ignore his complaints. Suffering from headaches and stomach pain, he phones for an ambulance several times, but it arrives only after a neighbor calls as well. Mr. Lazarescu then spends the rest of this very long night fading away as he is taken to hospital after hospital by the ambulance nurse, who gets involved in a seemingly endless battle with doctors to try to save him. Ian Fiscuteanu is sensationally realistic as Mr. Lazarescu; you’ll quickly forget that he’s not really a drunk, disgusting, dying old man. Luminita Gheorghiu is excellent as Mioara, the nurse who gets caught up in Mr. Lazarescu’s case. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard Award, cowriter-director Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy is simply captivating; despite a slow start, it’ll pull you in with its well-choreographed scenes, documentary style, and careful camera movement. (Also look for the subtle and very specific naming of characters.) Using Éric Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales” as inspiration, Puiu has said that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is the first of his own “Six Stories from the Bucharest Suburbs,” this one dealing with “the love of humanity,” followed by 2010’s Aurora.

Chantal Akerman creates a unique profile of her mother in deeply personal No Home Movie

NO HOME MOVIE (Chantal Akerman, 2015)
Friday, October 24, 4:45
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icarusfilms.com

Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie was meant to be a kind of public eulogy for her beloved mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, who died in 2014 at the age of eighty-six, shortly after Chantal had completed shooting forty hours of material with her. But it also ended up becoming, in its own way, a public eulogy for the highly influential Belgian auteur herself, as she died on October 5, 2015, at the age of sixty-five, only a few months after the film screened to widespread acclaim at several festivals (except at Locarno, where it was actually booed). Her death was reportedly a suicide, following a deep depression brought on by the loss of her mother. No Home Movie primarily consists of static shots inside Nelly’s Brussels apartment as she goes about her usual business, reading, eating, preparing to go for a walk, and taking naps. Akerman sets down either a handheld camera or a smartphone and lets her mother walk in and out of the frame; Akerman very rarely moves the camera or follows her mother around, instead keeping it near doorways and windows. She’s simply capturing the natural rhythms and pace of an old woman’s life. Occasionally the two sit down together in the kitchen and eat while discussing family history and gossip, Judaism, WWII, and the Nazis. (The elder Akerman was a Holocaust survivor who spent time in Auschwitz.) They also Skype each other as Chantal travels to film festivals and other places. “I want to show there is no distance in the world,” she tells her mother, who Skypes back, “You always have such ideas! Don’t you, sweetheart.” In another exchange, the daughter says, “You think I’m good for nothing!” to which the mother replies, “Not at all! You know all sorts of things others don’t know.”

Shots of a tree fluttering in the Israeli wind enhance the peaceful calm of No Home Movie

Later they are joined by Chantal’s sister, Sylviane, as well as Nelly’s home aide. The film features long sections with no dialogue and nobody in the frame; Akerman opens the movie with a four-minute shot of a lone tree with green leaves fluttering in the wind in the foreground, the vast, empty landscape of Israel in the background, where occasionally a barely visible car turns off a far-away road. Akerman returns to Israel several times during the film, sometimes shooting out of a moving car; these sections serve as interludes about the passage of time as well as referencing her family’s Jewish past. At one point, Akerman makes potatoes for her mother that they eat in the kitchen, a direct reference to a scene in Akerman’s feminist classic, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai due Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Knowing about what happened to both mother and daughter postfilming casts a shadow over the documentary, especially when Chantal tells her mother, “I’m in a very, very good mood. . . . Let’s enjoy it; it’s not that common.” As the film nears its conclusion, there is almost total darkness, echoing the end of life. Through it all, Akerman is proud of her mother; reminiscing about kindergarten, she remembers, “And to everybody, I would say, this is my mother.” No Home Movie achieves that very same declaration, now for all the world to see and hear.

Agnès Varda takes an unusual approach to autobiography in The Beaches of Agnès

THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS (LES PLAGES D’AGNÈS) (Agnès Varda, 2008)
Friday, October 24, 2:00
Sunday, October 26, 11:00 am
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“The whole idea of fragmentation appeals to me,” filmmaker, photographer, and installation artist Agnès Varda says in the middle of her unusual cinematic autobiography, the César-winning documentary The Beaches of Agnès. “It corresponds so naturally to questions of memory. Is it possible to reconstitute this personality, this person Jean Vilar, who was so exceptional?” She might have been referring to her friend, the French actor and theater director, but the exceptional Belgian-French Varda might as well have been referring to herself. Later she explains, “My memories swarm around me like confused flies. I hesitate to remember all that. I don’t want to.” Fortunately for viewers, Varda (Jacquot de Nantes, The Gleaners and I) does delve into her past in the film, sharing choice tidbits from throughout her life and career, in creative and offbeat ways that are charmingly self-effacing. Using cleverly arranged film clips, re-creations, photographs, and an array of frames and mirrors, the eighty-year-old Varda discusses such colleagues as Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais; shares personal details of her long relationship with Jacques Demy; visits her childhood home; rebuilds an old film set; speaks with her daughter, Rosalie Varda, and son, Mathieu Demy; talks about several of her classic films, including La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, and Vagabond; and, in her ever-present bangs, walks barefoot along beaches, fully aware that the camera is following her every move and reveling in it while also feigning occasional shyness. Filmmakers don’t generally write and direct documentaries about themselves, but unsurprisingly, the Nouvelle Vague legend and first woman to win an honorary Palme d’or makes The Beaches of Agnès about as artistic as it can get without becoming pretentious and laudatory.

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