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iNEGRO, A RHAPSODY

Kareem M. Lucas confesses his sins and reveals those of others in new solo show iNegro, a Rhapsody, (photo by Russ Rowland)

iNEGRO, A RHAPSODY
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
Through May 14, $25-$75
newohiotheatre.org
www.kareemmlucas.com

There are only a few more chances to catch Kareem M. Lucas’s one-man Afro-surrealist show, iNegro, a Rhapsody, which continues through May 14 at New Ohio Theatre. In the fifty-minute production, part of New Ohio and IRT Theater’s Archive Residency, Lucas confesses his sins and shares his thoughts on the world. “I want to write something so Black that God can’t ignore me,” he explains. As he delves into Disney, religion, race, class, family, and other topics, he is tied to a cross. The concept is by Obie winner Stevie Walker-Webb (The Folks at Home, one in two), with direction by Zoey Martinson (Skype Duet, Gutting) and an original jazz score and sound design by multi-instrumentalist Mauricio Escamilla (aka MOWRI). The set, which evokes a three-dimensional Kehinde Wiley painting, is by David Goldstein, with lighting by Josh Martinez-Davis and costume design by Tyler Arnold. The name of the play recalls both Rubin Goldmark’s 1922 orchestral work for the New York Philharmonic, A Negro Rhapsody, and the title of the 2016 James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro.

Told in seven movements, iNegro, a Rhapsody is the first part of Lucas’s “3 Ages of a Negro” trilogy; his previous solo shows include Black Is Beautiful, But It Ain’t Always Pretty; Rated Black: An American Requiem; From Brooklyn with Love; A Boy & His Bow; and A Warm Winter. The Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based Lucas has dedicated the world premiere of iNegro to the memory of the late Craig muMs Grant, the well-respected poet and actor who appeared in such television series as Oz and Boston Legal and such films as No Sudden Move and The Price; muMs, who was Lucas’s mentor on the piece — then known as The Maturation of an Inconvenient Negro when they were working on it at Cherry Lane Theater’s Mentor Project — passed away in March 2021 at the age of fifty-two.

ALFREDO JAAR EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH: THE TEMPTATION TO EXIST

Alfredo Jaar, What Need Is There to Weep Over Parts of Life? The Whole of It Calls for Tears, neon, 2018 (photo courtesy Galerie Lelong)

Who: Alfredo Jaar, Carlos Basualdo
What: Exhibition walkthrough of “The Temptation to Exist”
Where: Galerie Lelong & Co., 528 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: Saturday, May 14, free with advance RSVP, 4:00
Why: Alfredo Jaar is one of the most provocative and innovative artists working today. Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1956 and based in New York City since 1982, the artist, architect, and filmmaker uses multimedia works to immerse viewers in the images and sounds of sociopolitical strife across the globe, exposing the lies associated with war, government control, rampant capitalism, and other issues. At the Whitney Biennial, people wait on line to experience his 06.01.2020 18.39, a video installation comprising footage from a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020, incorporating a bonus element that makes visitors feel like the helicopters are coming for them. His 2011 installation Three Women made a trio of female activists the focus of the media; it has since been expanded to thirty-three women. Neon projects declare, “I Can’t Go On / I’ll Go On,” “Be Afraid of the Enormity of Possibility,” and “This Is Not America.” Other potent projects include The Skoghall Konsthall, Culture = Capital, Shadows, and Lament of the Images.

His 2018 installation, What Need Is There to Weep Over Parts of Life? The Whole of It Calls for Tears, a quote from the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca, makes its New York debut on May 13 at Galerie Lelong as part of the exhibition “The Temptation to Exist.” The name of the show is inspired by Emil Cioran’s 1956 book of the same name; the Romanian philosopher wrote, “The universe is one big failure, and not even poetry can succeed in correcting it.” Dedicated to Italian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, who passed away in April at the age of eighty-seven, “The Temptation to Exist” features lightboxes, ink prints, and such neon phrases as “Gesamtkunstwerk” and “Other People Think.”

For the exhibit, Jaar has also curated works from more than sixty-five artists seeking change in the world, creating what he calls “a space of resistance, a space of hope.” Among those included are Dawoud Bey, Luis Camnitzer, Lygia Clark, Valie Export, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Félix González-Torres, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mona Hatoum, Jenny Holzer, Emily Jacir, Joan Jonas, On Kawara, Glenn Ligon, Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Yoko Ono, Adam Pendleton, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Spero, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Lawrence Weiner, and Francesca Woodman.

There will be an opening reception on May 13 at 6:00; on May 14 at 4:00, Jaar will hold a public walkthrough of the exhibition, joined by Philadelphia Museum of Art senior curator Carlos Basualdo. Admission is free with advance registration. Don’t miss this rare chance to witness art history in the making.

CARRIE AHERN DANCE: CARNAL SPILL

Carrie Ahern Dance’s “Sex Status 2.0” series takes place in private homes (photo by Julie Lemberger)

Who: Carrie Ahern Dance
What: Latest work in “Sex Status” series
Where: Private homes in Manhattan and Brooklyn
When: May 12-14, 18-21, sliding scale $25-$100, 8:00
Why: For more than two years, we watched dance online from the comfort of our our homes or wherever we were sheltering in place during the pandemic lockdown. Now, with venues back open, you can watch Carrie Ahern Dance’s (CAD) latest presentation in its ongoing “Sex Status” series from the comfort of someone else’s home. Since 2018, CAD’s “Sex Status 2.0” has reinterpreted Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 The Second Sex through performances that ask such questions as “What is authentic femininity?,” “Where does our power lie?,” and “What are our deepest desires?,” taking place in private homes.

“Sex Status” continues with Carnal Spill, an investigation into the language women use and receive during sex. The work features text by Ahern, who previously explored modern death (2011-16), and Vanessa DeWolf, with storytelling, word games, and original music by Anne Hege. Jay Ryan will design the sets and lighting specifically for each of the two homes, one on West Forty-Third St. in Manhattan (May 12-14), the other in Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn (May 18-21). Carnal Spill — which asks, “How does our relationship to words evoke erotic connection or disconnection; turn-on or shame?” and “What is it about our fantasy life that can expand our reality?” — will be performed by Jennifer Chin, Donna Costello, Carolyn Hall, Elke Rindfleisch, and Bennalldra Williams; tickets are available on a sliding scale from $25 to $100.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is facing an early closing notice at the Booth Theatre (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 5, $49 – $225
forcoloredgirlsbway.com

As I write this, there is a movement afoot to prevent the first Broadway revival of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf from closing early; the show opened April 20 to good reviews and was scheduled to run through August 14, but it was announced a few days ago that it would be leaving the Booth after the May 22 matinee. To help fill seats and keep the choreopoem, in which seven women share intimate stories of misogyny, abuse, and their retaking of power, from shutting its doors, journalists, artists, and theater bigs (Ayanna Prescod, Bebe Neuwirth, Mickalene Thomas, Chita Rivera, Lorin Latarro) have been sponsoring free ticket giveaways to lift the current average attendance, which is barely half capacity. The night I saw it, the audience seemed much larger than that and loved every second of the play, built around a series of monologues with music and dance in between. [ed. note: The show has now been extended through June 5.]

Director Leah C. Gardiner and choreographer Camille A. Brown collaborated on a sensational 2019 revival at the Public, where the original production moved in 1976 after earlier iterations at smaller venues in Berkeley and downtown New York (and shortly before moving to Broadway). Toni-Leslie James’s ravishing costumes featured multiple images of the face of each actor’s most beloved female relative, honoring the ancestors; Myung Hee Cho’s inclusive set was highlighted by three rows of chairs for audience members along the back arch of the circular stage, in front of a large mirror, which reflected the rest of the audience so they appeared right behind the cast; and Jiyoun Chang’s bright lighting often illuminated everyone in the theater. The show has been reimagined and reinvented for the Booth, unfortunately not for the better, but Shange’s striking words are as sharp as ever.

It all begins with a voice-over from Obie-winning, Oscar-nominated poet, novelist, playwright, kids’ book author, activist, and essayist Shange herself — who portrayed Lady in Orange back in 1976 and updated the script in 2010 — offering, “Aunt mamie was a lil colored girl, Auntie Effie was a lil colored girl, Mama was a lil colored girl, you’re a lil colored girl . . . / Imagine . . . if we could get all of them to talk, what would they say? / Imagine all the stories we could tell about the funny looking lil colored girls, and the sophisticated lil colored girls, and the pretty lil colored girls . . . the ones just like you!”

Seven women share their heartbreaking and celebratory stories in Ntozake Shange’s powerful choreopoem (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Over the course of the next ninety minutes, Lady in Orange (Amara Granderson), Lady in Brown (Tendayi Kuumba), Lady in Red (Kenita R. Miller), Lady in Green (Okwui Okpokwasili), Lady in Blue (Stacey Sargeant), Lady in Purple (Alexandria Wailes), and Lady in Yellow (D. Woods) poignantly relate key moments from their lives, with such titles as “dark phrases,” “no assistance,” “latent rapist,” “abortion cycle #1,” and “i usedta live in the world.” (Okpokwasili and Wailes return from the Public; I saw three understudies: Treshelle Edmond as Lady in Purple, McKenzie Frye as Lady in Orange, and Alexis Sims as Lady in Green.)

Hee Cho’s set is now dominated by a half dozen screens on the left and right, on which Aaron Rhyne’s mostly abstract (and distracting) visuals are projected. Sarafina Bush’s costumes are contemporary street clothing, the colors not as boldly obvious. Chang’s lighting is more standard, and Justin Ellington’s sound is built for the music, which is by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby and tends toward light jazz and R&B. Brown is the director and the choreographer, the first Black woman to do both on Broadway since Katherine Dunham for her three-act revue in November 1955.

The Obie, Tony, and Bessie-winning Brown has choreographed for her own company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, as well as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and such Broadway shows as Choir Boy and Once on This Island; she also choreographed and codirected (with James Robinson) the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Her style is rarely subtle, and that can work well in a dance presentation, but in for colored girls it quickly becomes overwhelming; instead of giving agency to the characters, it takes away from the narrative. Perhaps Gardiner was a calming influence; her deft touch is missing from this version.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is the first Broadway show to be directed and choreographed by a Black woman since 1955 (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

The cast is terrific, with an especially superb turn by the pregnant Miller, who thrillingly delivers “no assistance,” ending an affair with a lover (“this note is attached to a plant / i’ve been waterin since the day i met you / you may water it / yr damn self”), and “no more love poems #1” (“this is a requium for myself/ cuz I have died in a real way/ not wid aqua coffins & du-wop cadillacs/ i used to joke abt when i waz messin round / but a real dead lovin is here for you now/ cuz i dont know anymore/ how to avoid my own face wet wit my tears/ cuz i had convinced myself colored girls had no right to sorrow”).

The centerpiece is Lady in Green’s “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff,” in which she fights for her own being, for who she is and what is hers. She declares, “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff / not my poems or a dance I gave up in the street / but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff / like a kleptomanic working hard & forgettin while stealing / this is mines / this aint yr stuff / now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self.”

Despite the shortcomings of this production, for colored girls deserves a longer life on Broadway, telling an important story that particularly needs to be heard as Roe v. Wade is under fire and a woman’s right to her own body is threatened by a white patriarchy trying desperately to hold on to its fading power. It’s a truly American story; the characters hail from outside Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, L.A., and Newark, cities that have faced racial violence. It seems clear they’ve had enough and that the lives of women, and specifically women of color, would be different if they were in charge.

WEDDING BAND: A LOVE/HATE STORY IN BLACK AND WHITE

Brittany Bradford is sensational as a Black woman in love with a white man in Alice Childress’s Wedding Band (photo by Henry Grossman)

WEDDING BAND: A LOVE/HATE STORY IN BLACK AND WHITE
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 15, $90-$125
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org

Alice Childress is finally having her moment. Born in South Carolina in 1916 and raised in Harlem, the playwright, actress, columnist, and novelist made her posthumous Broadway debut last fall with Trouble in Mind, which was heading for the Great White Way in 1957 until producers pulled it after Childress would not make any changes. A rare revival of her 1966 play, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, opens tonight at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. While it’s exciting to see Childress at last receive acclaim, both productions turned out to be disappointing.

The back story as to why these plays had nearly disappeared is primarily that Childress ultimately stood by her scripts, refusing to touch a single word. However, after having now seen both of them, I’m of the belief that each could have used at least a little revision in certain places to avoid repetition and overwrought melodrama; Childress is a master at building characters, but too many of her scenes languish. You can read my take on Trouble in Mind here; my thoughts on Wedding Band continue below.

First staged at the New York Shakespeare Public Theater in 1972 (and not seen again in the city till now), codirected by Joseph Papp and Childress (Papp initially insisted that the author direct but he stepped in, giving them both credit) and starring Ruby Dee and James Broderick (with Albert Hall, Polly Holliday, and Clarice Taylor), Wedding Band centers on the controversial relationship between a Black seamstress, Julia Augustine (Brittany Bradford), and her partner of ten years, a white baker named Herman (Thomas Sadoski). Julia has to move around a lot to avoid the racism the two of them encounter when their situation becomes known, no matter how careful they try to hide it.

It’s the summer of 1918, just a few months till the end of WWI and a year before Red Summer, during which white mobs of civilians and veterans attacked Blacks in twenty-six cities, at least in part because of the Great Migration. Julia has rented a small house in a tiny community for Blacks on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina, run by Fanny Johnson (Elizabeth Van Dyke), a faux-elegant landlord who keeps a close watch on her handful of down-on-their-luck tenants.

TFANA’s Wedding Band features a gorgeous open set (photo by Hollis King)

Jason Ardizzone-West’s gorgeous set is a long, open rectangular space with a bed and night table at one end leading to a dirt path flanked by rows of tallgrass; the audience sits on opposite sides behind the knee-high grass. There are no actual doors, so all the characters can see one another whenever they are onstage, entering through the aisles, or wandering across the upper levels of the theater. Stacey Derosier’s lighting keeps most of the audience at least partially illuminated at all times, and Rena Anakwe’s sound design immerses the small crowd in the goings-on. It’s a powerful effect, particularly since the audience members are predominantly white and wearing masks, while onstage the 1918 influenza pandemic is raging across the country.

Among those at Mrs. Johnson’s establishment are Mattie (Brittany-Laurelle), a candy maker who is waiting for her husband, October, to come back from the Merchant Marine with much-needed funds, and their delightful eight-year-old daughter, Teeta (Phoenix Noelle), who plays with the white girl, aptly named Princess (Sofie Nesanelis), whom Mattie cares for; and the widowed Lula Green (Rosalyn Coleman), whose adopted son, Nelson (Renrick Palmer), is home from the war to march in a parade and chase down some women.

When Julia first arrives, she begs for peace and quiet, but Mrs. Johnson and the other residents want to find out everything about her, thumping the Bible as they seek out her sins. Childress points out their poverty from the very beginning; Teeta has lost something, and Mattie is desperate to find it. “Gawd, what’ve I done to be treated this way! You gon’ get a whippin’ too,” Mattie tells her. She explains to Mrs. Johnson, “Dammit, this gal done lost the only quarter I got to my name.”

Julia introduces herself to her new, nosy neighbors, who are taken aback when she quickly reaches into her purse and gives Teeta twenty-five cents. A few moments later the Bell Man (Max Woertendyke) shows up with his traveling salesman’s suitcase of random items; Lula owes him three dollars and ten cents but can’t pay anything now. Julia asks if he has any sheets, and soon the Bell Man, who recognizes her and knows that she is with a white man, is sitting on her bed, implying that she should fulfill his needs if she wants him to remain silent.

She throws him out, saying to the others, “I hate those kind-a people.” Lula responds, “You mustn’t hate white folks. Don’tcha believe in Jesus? He’s white.” Julia replies, “I wonder if he believes in me.”

When her lover, Herman, shows up, Julia is excited to see him. He’s upset because his mother (Veanne Cox) and sister, Annabelle (Rebecca Haden), are being harassed because they’re German, even though they’re American citizens. “It’s the war. Makes people mean,” Julia, who is always understanding of everyone, says. But Herman knows the truth about his family. “A poor ignorant woman who is mad because she was born a sharecropper . . . outta her mind ’cause she ain’t high class society. We’re red-neck crackers, I told her, that’s what.”

When Herman falls ill, it’s not as easy as simply calling a doctor, for their interracial relationship, in an era of anti-miscegenation laws, complicates everyone’s situation.

Bradford (Fefu and Her Friends, Bernhardt/Hamlet, Mac Beth) is spellbinding as Julia, her every move filled with the constant heavy weight on her heart. She portrays her with a gentle compassion until she explodes during Julia’s unforgettable confrontation with Herman’s racist mother.

Herman (Thomas Sadoski) battles illness as his sister (Rebecca Haden), mother (Veanne Cox), and longtime partner (Brittany Bradford) look on (photo by Hollis King)

The stage setup allows every audience member to follow Bradford’s riveting eyes, depicting the pain of being an independent-thinking Black woman in love with a white man, a relationship that nearly everyone looks down on. It takes on additional meaning as privacy rights are under attack again in the United States in 2022.

The rest of the cast is solid, but director Awoye Timpo (In Old Age, The Loophole, Carnaval), who so smoothly guided the show through the first half, gets too caught up in the mawkishness of the later plot developments, leading to a head-scratching magic-realist finale that feels as tacked on as it is.

Wedding Band is part of TFANA’s CLASSIX residency, which was founded by Timpo with Bradford, A. J. Muhammad, Dominique Rider, and Arminda Thomas to focus on Black performance and works by Black writers across the African diaspora. On May 14 at 4:30, TFANA will host the panel discussion “CLASSIX: In Search of Alice Childress,” with the CLASSIC collective, moderated by Jonathan Kalb. And on May 15 at 4:30, the TFANA Talk “Reflections, with Bianca Vivion Brooks” pairs Bradford with Juliana Canfield, who starred in Adrienne Kennedy’s He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box at TFANA in 2018, a show that also deals with interracial relationships.

I hope to see more plays by Childress, who died in New York City in 1994 at the age of eighty-one and also wrote such novels as A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich, Like One of the Family, and A Short Walk. Even in productions that fall short, there are compelling, prescient moments and important, beautifully drawn characters.

As she wrote in a letter to Dee, “Wedding Band is about yesterday and today . . . far away and right at hand . . . old and ever present. It is the past, present, and future . . . recollection, attention, and anticipation . . . It is about the humiliation of an entire nation . . . not a tale of star-crossed lovers. My play is about manless women. Women in need of love, name, protection. It concerns itself with love and the seeking of love in a racist society . . . the love of country, the love of material things, and spiritual love.” Childress is clearly a playwright for these troubled times.

RemarkaBULL PODVERSATION: EXPLORING LADY MACBETH WITH ISMENIA MENDES

Lady Macbeth (Ismenia Mendes) reaches out to her royal husband (Isabelle Fuhrman) in inventive reimagining of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Richard Termine)

Who: Ismenia Mendes, Nathan Winkelstein
What: Livestreamed conversation about Lady Macbeth
Where: Red Bull Theater online
When: Monday, May 9, free with advance RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30
Why: Macbeth is all the rage now, with a much-derided version starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga currently playing at the Longacre on Broadway and Joel Coen’s film version with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand having garnered three Oscar nominations. One of the best and most innovative adaptations in decades was staged by Red Bull Theater at the Lucille Lortel in 2019, directed by Erica Schmidt and set at a girls school. The fierce and furious, sexy and sinister ninety minutes starred Isabelle Fuhrman as Macbeth and Ismenia Mendes as Lady Macbeth.

In conjunction with the streaming release of the 2019 production, available on demand May 16-29, Red Bull is hosting its latest RemarkaBULL Podversation, “Exploring Lady Macbeth,” with Mendes (Troilus and Cressida, Henry V) and associate artistic director and host Nathan Winkelstein performing the “How now! what news?” scene, followed by a discussion and an audience Q&A. In the dastardly dialogue, Lady Macbeth tells her husband, “What beast was’t, then, / That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And, to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place / Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: / They have made themselves, and that their fitness now / Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this.” Previous RemarkaBULL Podversations, which are always a treat, have featured Kate Burton, André De Shields, Elizabeth Marvel, Chukwudi Iwuji, Patrick Page, Lily Rabe, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Urie, and others and can be viewed for free here.

MAI ZETTERLING: TORMENT

Tobacco-shop clerk Bertha Olsson (Mai Zetterling) is terrified of life in Alf Sjöberg’s Torment

TORMENT (FRENZY) (HETS) (Alf Sjöberg, 1944)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Saturday, May 7, Monday, May 9, Friday, May 13, Tuesday, May 17
Series runs May 6-19
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Film Forum pays tribute to Swedish actress, director, and novelist Mai Zetterling with a two-week, twenty-one-film retrospective featuring works directed by Basil Dearden, Nicolas Roeg, Ingmar Bergman, Alf Sjöberg, Christina Olofson, Ken Loach, and Zetterling, among others, ranging from 1944 to 1990. A passionate feminist, Zetterling studied at the National Theater in Sweden, became a star in England, had affairs with Herbert Lom and Tyrone Power, left Hollywood (avoiding the blacklist), and passed away in 1994 at the age of sixty-eight. “It feels like I’m a long way away from pretty much every norm there is,” she said.

One of the series highlights is Sjöberg’s intense 1944 expressionistic noir, Torment, which had its US premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962. Although directed by Sjöberg, Torment, also known as Frenzy, was written by Bergman, who also served as assistant director and made his directing debut in the final scene, which Bergman added at the insistence of the producers when Sjöberg was not available. A kind of inversion of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, the film is set in a boarding school where high school boys are preparing for their final exams and graduation. They are terrified of their sadistic Latin teacher, whom they call Caligula (Stig Järrel), a brutal man who wields a fascistic iron fist. He particularly has it out for Jan-Erik Widgren (Alf Kjellin), the son of wealthy parents (Olav Riégo and Märta Arbin) who think he should be doing better in school. One night Jan-Erik helps out a troubled woman in the street, tobacco-shop clerk Bertha Olsson (Zetterling), who is being mentally and physically tormented by an unnamed man who ends up being Caligula. The stakes get higher and the teacher becomes even harder on Jan-Erik when he finds out the young man is having an affair with the wayward woman. When tragedy strikes, Jan-Erik’s soul is in turmoil as lies, threats, and danger grow.

A sadistic teacher (Stig Järrel) torments a student (Alf Kjellin) in Ingmar Bergman–written Torment

The twenty-five-year-old Bergman was inspired to write his first produced film script by his experience in boarding school, which led to a public disagreement with the headmaster. In a public letter to the headmaster, Bergman explained, “I was a very lazy boy, and very scared because of my laziness, because I was involved with theater instead of school and because I hated having to be punctual, having to get up in the morning, do homework, sit still, having to carry maps, having break times, doing tests, taking oral examinations, or to put it plainly: I hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticize my own school, but all schools.” Throughout his career, Bergman would take on institutions, including religion and marriage, but his defiance began with this hellish representation of education, which oppresses all the boys in some way, including Jan-Erik’s best friend, self-described misogynist Sandman (Stig Olin), and the geeky Pettersson (Jan Molander). While the headmaster (Olof Winnerstrand) knows how frightened the boys are of Caligula, he is willing to go only so far to protect them. The opening credits are shown over a dreamlike sequence of Jan-Erik and Bertha desperately holding on to each other, but Torment is so much more than a treacly melodrama, as if Sjöberg (Miss Julie, Ön) is setting us up for one film before switching gears into an ominous, haunting thriller.

Järrel, who played an evil, jealous teacher in his previous film, Hasse Ekman’s Flames in the Dark, is indeed scary as the devious, malicious Caligula, while adding more than a touch of sadness. Zetterling, in her breakthrough role — she would go on to star in such films as Dearden’s Frieda and Roeg’s The Witches and direct such feminist works as Loving Couples and The Girls — brings a touching vulnerability to Bertha, a young woman who can’t find happiness. It’s all anchored by Kjellin’s (Madame Bovary, Ship of Fools) central performance, so rife with emotion it evokes German silent cinema. Torment suffers from Hilding Rosenberg’s overreaching score, although it is usually offset by Martin Bodin’s cinematography, filled with lurching shadows and deep mystery. The film was produced by Victor Sjöström, the legendary director of The Phantom Carriage, The Divine Woman, The Wind, and so many others in addition to his work as an actor, starring as Professor Isak Borg in another Bergman masterpiece, 1957’s Wild Strawberries, and as the conductor in 1950’s To Joy.

“Mai Zetterling” includes such other films as Sidney Gilliat’s Only Two Can Play, Bergman’s Music in the Dark, Sjöberg’s Iris and the Lieutenant, Loach’s Hidden Agenda, and Gustaf Edgren’s Sunshine Follows Rain in addition to Zetterling’s own Loving Couples (her debut as a director), Night Games (based on her unfinished novel), We Have Many Names, The Moon Is a Green Cheese, several shorts, and other features, many in new restorations courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute. Cinema historian Jane Sloan will be at Film Forum for a Q&A following the 1:00 screening of The Girls on May 7, while avant-garde filmmaker and curator Vivian Ostrovsky will introduce the 6:10 showing of the film on May 8; in addition, actress Harriet Andersson and Kajsa Hedström of the SFI will record intros for special screenings.