Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a poignant, poetic farewell to the cinema
GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003)
Metrograph (in-person and digital)
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, December 31
212-660-0312 metrograph.com
Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a heart-stirring elegy to going to the movies, opening at Metrograph on December 31 after streaming in a gorgeous 4K restoration at Metrograph Digital last year. (The stream is available again as well, through January 31.) The accidentally prescient 2003 film takes place in central Taipei in and around the Fu-Ho Grand Theater, which is about to be torn down. For its finale, the Fu-Ho is screening King Hu’s 1967 wuxia classic Dragon Inn, Hu’s first work after moving from Hong Kong to Taiwan; the film is set in the Ming dynasty and involves assassins and eunuchs.
In 2021, Tsai’s film seems set in a long-ago time as well. It opens during a crowded showing of Dragon Inn in which Tsai’s longtime cinematographer, Liao Pen-jung, places the viewer in a seat in the theater, watching the film over and around two heads in front of their seat, one partially blocking the screen, which doesn’t happen when viewing a film on a smaller screen at home — especially during a pandemic, when no one was seeing any films in movie theaters. So Goodbye, Dragon Inn takes on a much bigger meaning, since the lockdown has changed how we experience movies forever.
Most of the film focuses on the last screening at the Fu-Ho, with only a handful of people in the audience: a jittery Japanese tourist (Mitamura Kiyonobu), a woman eating peanuts or seeds (Yang Kuei-mei), a young man in a leather jacket (Tsai regular Chen Chao-jung), a child, and two older men, played by Jun Shih and Miao Tien, who are actually the stars of the film being shown. (They portray Xiao Shao-zi and Pi Shao-tang, respectively, in Dragon Inn.) In one of the only scenes with dialogue, Miao says, “I haven’t seen a movie in a long time,” to which Chun responds, “No one goes to the movies anymore, and no one remembers us anymore.”
The tourist, a reminder of Japan’s occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, spends much of the movie trying to find a light for his cigarette — a homoerotic gesture — as well as a better seat, as he is constantly beset by people sitting right next to him or right behind him and putting their bare feet practically in his face or noisily crunching food, even though the large theater is nearly empty. In one of the film’s most darkly comic moments, two men line up on either side of him at a row of urinals, and then a third man comes in to reach over and grab the cigarettes he left on the shelf above where the tourist is urinating. Nobody says a word as Tsai lingers on the scene, the camera not moving. In fact, there is very little camera movement throughout the film; instead, long scenes play out in real time as in an Ozu film, in stark contrast to the action happening onscreen.
Meanwhile, the ticket woman (Chen Shiang-chyi), who has a disabled foot and a severe limp, cleans the bathroom, slowly steams and eats part of a bun, walks down a long hallway, and brings food to the projectionist (Tsai mainstay Lee Kang-sheng). She is steeped in an almost unbearable loneliness; she peeks in from behind a curtain to peer at the few patrons in the theater, and at one point she emerges from a door next to the screen, looking up as if she wishes to be part of the movie instead of the laborious life she’s living.
A woman (Chen Shiang-chyi) works during the final screening at the Fu-Ho Grand Theater in Goodbye, Dragon Inn
In his Metrograph Journal essay “Chasing the Film Spirit,” Tsai, whose other works include Rebels of the Neon God,The River,The Hole,Days, and What Time Is It There? — which has a scene set in the Fu-Ho, where he also held the premiere — writes, “My grandmother and grandfather were the biggest cinephiles I knew, and we started going to movies together when I was three years old. We would go to the cinema twice a day, every day. Sometimes we would watch the same film over and over again, and sometimes we would find different cinemas to watch something new. That was a golden age for cinema, and I’m proud my childhood coincided with that time.”
He continues, “Nowadays everyone watches movies on planes. On any given flight, no matter the airline, you can choose from hundreds of films: Hollywood, Bollywood, all different types of movies. However, you can count on one thing: You’ll never find a Tsai Ming-liang picture on a plane, as I make films that have to be seen on the big screen.” Unfortunately, in 2020-21, we had no choice but to watch Goodbye, Dragon Inn on small monitors, but now you can catch this must-see film on the big screen; it’s a stunningly paced elegiac love letter, and even more essential as we emerge from the pandemic, when we were all forced to watch movies from the safety of our homes, our only seatmates those we were sheltering in place with.
Already we were watching more films than ever on our private screens and monitors — as well as on airplanes — and it will still be quite a while before most of us again participate in the communal pleasure of sitting in a dark theater with dozens or hundreds of strangers, staring up at light being projected onto a screen at twenty-four frames per second, telling us a story as only a movie can, with a head partially blocking our view, bare feet in our face, and someone crunching too loudly right behind us.
Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) is tired of being isolated in Tsai Ming-liang’s Days
CURATORS’ CHOICE 2021
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Through January 16, $15
718-777-6800 movingimage.us
After canceling its 2020 iteration because of the pandemic lockdown, the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual Curators’ Choice series is back with eighteen of the best films of 2021, plus one streaming series, screening in the Redstone Theater through January 16. The works run the gamut from musicals, animation, Westerns, and thrillers to existential dramas, romances, and tragedies, from well-known hits to less-familiar international fare. While some of the films are available online, most can be seen only in theaters, so this is a great chance to catch such films as The Power of the Dog,The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and Summer of Soul with an audience on the big screen, the way they were meant to be seen. And if you don’t have Amazon Prime, get ready to be blown away by Barry Jenkins’s ten-part The Underground Railroad, a harrowing adaptation of the award-winning book by Colson Whitehead. Keep watching this space for more reviews of many of the below films.
Monday, December 27
WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY (Alexandre Koberidze, 2021), 4:00
Tuesday, December 28
THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES (Mike Rianda & Jeff Rowe, 2021), 1:00
PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME (FELKÉSZÜLÉS MEGHATÁROZATLAN IDEIG TARTÓ EGYÜTTLÉTRE) (Lili Horvát, 2020)
Tuesday, December 28, 4:00 greenwichentertainment.com
Hungary’s official submission for the 2020 Academy Awards, Lili Horvát’s sophomore film, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, is a kind of neo-noir psychological thriller in which a neurosurgeon sacrifices just about everything in order to pursue a romance that might not even be real. Dr. Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork) has arranged a rendezvous with Dr. János Drexler (Viktor Bodó), who she met at a medical conference in New Jersey a month before, but when he doesn’t show up, she tracks him down and he acts like he doesn’t know her.
Sure that he is her true love, Márta, a single woman about to turn forty who has made a successful life for herself in New Jersey, decides to leave her job and move back to Budapest, accepting a position that is well beneath her, at a hospital where she has to supply herself with her own toilet paper, in order to be close to János and convince him that they should be together. As János continues to claim they’ve never met, Márta starts doubting her sanity. When her therapist asks her, “What do you think about this?” she answers, “That I’ve lost my mind. That I wanted this so badly that I made the whole thing up. And that I’ve filled in every detail so even I believed it happened.” Meanwhile, Alex (Benett Vilmányi), a medical student whose father Márta is treating, is pursuing her, sure that she is the one for him.
Dr. Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork) is obsessed with Dr. János Drexler (Viktor Bodó) in Hungarian neo-noir thriller
Preparations is a gripping tale of obsession and love as Horvát (The Wednesday Child) delves into what humans tell themselves when they want to believe something, how far they will go to persuade themselves what they need. Márta is a brilliant neurosurgeon with a magic touch, able to go into patients’ brains to restore sight, hearing, speech, and balance, but she is unable to diagnose her own situation. (Or is she?)
Stork is exceptional as Márta; Horvát regularly zooms in on her face and eyes as she searches within herself for the truth. Márta is unsteady the way many of us can be unsteady; she doubts herself the way we can doubt ourselves even when refusing to believe that we might be wrong. Preparations is a tense, slow-paced mystery that also features one of the most charming scenes of the year, involving a surprising and unique walk on the way to an unexpected ending.
Wednesday, December 29
BERGMAN ISLAND (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2021), 4:00
An average family take off on an unexpectedly adventurous road trip in The Mitchells vs the Machines
THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES (Mike Rianda & Jeff Rowe, 2021)
Wednesday, December 29, and Thursday, December 30, 1:00 www.netflix.com
“It’s almost like stealing people’s data and giving it to a hyperintelligent AI as part of an unregulated tech monopoly was a bad thing,” computer genius Mark Bowman (voiced by Eric André) says incredulously in Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe’s animated film, The Mitchells vs the Machines, about how one average family tries to save the world from a robot apocalypse. Originally titled Connected prior to the pandemic, the movie is set in modern times, as burgeoning filmmaker Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) gets ready for her freshman year at college. To make up for a fight they had, her father, technology luddite Rick (Danny McBride), decides to drive Katie cross-country to school as a bonding trip, joined by her mother, Linda (Maya Rudolph), her younger brother, the dinosaur-obsessed Aaron (Rianda), and their hapless dog, Monchi (Doug the Pug).
While they’re out on the road, Dr. Bowman, the ruthless dude behind PAL Labs, has released its latest product, robots that will replace its virtual AI assistant, PAL (Olivia Colman), a takeoff on Alexa/Siri. But PAL is not happy about being tossed in the trash, so she has reprogrammed the robots to capture every human being and launch them into space forever. With the help of two damaged robots, Deborahbot 5000 (Fred Armisen) and his buddy, Eric (Beck Bennett), the Mitchells must find a way to trigger the robots’ kill code before it’s too late.
Exciting and fun, The Mitchells vs the Machines is kind of an alternate take on the 2004 Pixar hit The Incredibles, although the Mitchells are not exactly superheroes; they’re just your basic family, with plenty of their own problems. In fact, they’re jealous of their neighbors, the Poseys (Chrissy Teigen, John Legend, and Charlyne Yi), who appear to be everything they’re not. Traveling in their filthy burnt orange 1993 Sensible station wagon, the Mitchells spend more time arguing than coming together, until they have no choice if they want to survive as they face not only PAL and the evil robots but also their own fears and worries — as well as an army of Furbies. “Most action heroes have a lot of strengths,” Katie narrates. “My family only has weaknesses.” But even weaknesses can be turned into strengths in the right situations.
Thursday, December 30
BENEDETTA (Paul Verhoeven, 2021), 4:00
Friday, December 31
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD: THE COMPLETE SERIES (Chapters 1–5) (Barry Jenkins, 2021), 12:30
Saturday, January 1
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD: THE COMPLETE SERIES (Chapters 6–10) (Barry Jenkins, 2021), 12:30
THE SOUVENIR PART II (Joanna Hogg, 2021), 6:30
Paula Beer stars as the mysterious title character in Christian Petzold’s award-winning Undine (photo by Christian Schulz)
Master German writer-director Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Barbara) gives a unique contemporary twist to a classic European fairy tale in Undine. The less you know about the original myth the better, but let’s just say it involves a water nymph, romance, betrayal, and death.
Paula Beer was named Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival and at the European Film Awards for her powerful performance as Undine Wibeau, a historian who gives architectural tours of expansive, heavily detailed models of the past, present, and future of Berlin for the Senate Administration for Urban Development. Early on, when her boyfriend, Johannes (Jacob Matschenz), tells her that he is in love with another woman, Nora (Julia Franz Richter), Undine sternly says, “If you leave me, I’ll have to kill you.” There is no reason to doubt her.
Distressed by the situation, she is standing uneasily in a café, looking at an aquarium filled with colorful fish and a small statue of a diver when Christoph (Franz Rogowski), who just attended one of her talks, hesitantly approaches her and offers praise for the lecture. An accident shatters the glass of the aquarium and Undine and Christoph are knocked to the ground, drenched in water. As the fish squirm for life on the floor, Undine and Christoph instantly fall in love. “I’m usually under water,” Christoph, an industrial diver, says to her. German romanticism and French Impressionism mix with magical realism and a revenge thriller as Christoph and Undine run around together, reveling in their love until another accident results in serious trouble.
Undine (Paula Beer) is an architectural historian who is drawn to water in myth-based drama
Among the distinguished writers and composers who have told their own versions of the story of Undine are Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Oscar Wilde, E. T. A. Hoffman, Edgar Allan Poe, Sergei Prokofiev, Hans Christian Andersen, Seamus Heaney, Claude Debussy, and DC Comics. Audrey Hepburn won a Tony for her performance as the title character in Jean Giraudoux’s Ondine on Broadway in 1954. In 2010, Neil Jordan’s Ondine, coincidentally also released on June 4, starred Colin Farrell as a fisherman who catches a woman known as Ondine (Alicja Bachleda) who has a special connection with water.
Water is central to Petzold’s film, from the aquarium to Christoph’s job to Johannes’s pool. Berlin itself was built on a swamp, adding relevance to Undine’s architectural lectures, in which she explains that the name of the city means “dry place in the marsh.” When she is searching for Johannes, she goes into the men’s bathroom and one of the faucets is dripping, the noise echoing down an empty hallway. When Johannes wants to go away with Undine, he tries to lure her by mentioning he’s booked the room they like “overlooking the pond.” Much of the film takes place underwater, with the actors in and out of their scuba gear, beautifully filmed by cameraman Sascha Mieke. (Unfortunately, the giant catfish is animated.) Hans Fromm is the aboveground cinematographer, lushly capturing the streets of Berlin as well as the forest surrounding the lake where Christoph works with Monika (Maryam Zaree) and Jochen (Rafael Stachowiak).
Beer and Rogowski have an intense chemistry that drives the film; they starred together in Petzold’s previous film, Transit, which deals with political refugees, stolen identity, and forbidden love, and are both magnetic here again, whether aboveground or below. The soundtrack’s theme features pianist Vikingur Ólafsson’s gorgeous, haunting rendition of Bach’s Concerto in D Minor, BWV 974 – 2. Adagio. “Everything is there in Johann Sebastian’s music: architectural perfection and profound emotion,” Ólafsson has said, which relates directly to Petzold’s film itself.
Sunday, January 2
BENEDETTA (Paul Verhoeven, 2021), 3:00
DAYS (Tsai Ming-liang, 2020), 6:00
Friday, January 7
THE FRENCH DISPATCH (Wes Anderson, 2021), 4:00 & 7:00
Saturday, January 8
ANNETTE (Leos Carax, 2021), 4:00
THE POWER OF THE DOG (Jane Campion, 2021), 7:00
Sunday, January 9
WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, 2021), 1:00
Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension is one of the most beautifully photographed documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Evoking the mesmerizing visual style of such photographers as Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, and Jeff Wall, director, editor, and producer Kingdon and producer and cinematographer Nathan Truesdell, who rarely moves his camera, explore Xi Jinping’s promise of the Chinese Dream, what the leader calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people,” in a three-part film about capitalism and consumption, poverty and wealth in China. The biracial Chinese American Kingdon first explores the job market, as men and women in outdoor booths shout out hourly wages, responsibilities, and housing opportunities to those in need of work, who are then shown toiling in factories, sewing, plucking fowl, and building sex dolls.
In the second section, workers are indoctrinated into the company lifestyle, learning how to climb the ladder through very specific and often demeaning business etiquette; the film concludes by showing the luxuries success and wealth can bring. One of the most memorable shots in a film filled with them is of a glamorous young woman being photographed at a seaside resort as a worker, unnoticed by the model and photographer, tends to a lush green lawn; the differences between her posh bag and chapeau and his garbage bag and straw hat, his face hidden as hers pouts for the camera, speak volumes. Featuring a pulsating score by Dan Deacon, Ascension might be specifically about China, but it also relates to what is happening in America today, particularly with the current supply chain issues as so many workers decided not to return to work as the pandemic lockdown lifted while income inequality continues to grow at obscene levels. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kingdon.
Tuesday, January 15
SUMMER OF SOUL (. . . OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) (Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, 2021), 7:00
Sunday, January 16
RED ROCKET (Sean Baker, 2021), 3:30
Julian Schnabel, Numbers 3, 2, 1 (Van Gogh Self-Portrait, Musee d’Orsay, Willem), oil, plates, and Bondo on wood, 2019 (photo courtesy the Brant Foundation)
JULIAN SCHNABEL: SELF-PORTRAITS OF OTHERS
The Brant Foundation
421 East Sixth St.
Through December 30, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 or 7:00 pm www.pacegallery.com www.brantfoundation.org
“I have always thought anything could be a model for a painting: someone else’s painting, your own painting, a smudge of dirt,” artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel explains about his current exhibition, “Self-Portraits of Others,” continuing at the Brant Foundation through December 30. The show was inspired by his discovery, while directing the 2018 Vincent van Gogh biopic At Eternity’s Gate, which starred Willem Dafoe as the Impressionist during the last years of his life in Arles, that van Gogh made different versions of his own works. “I thought I would be in concert with him if I turned the props I had made of Willem for the film into a real painting of mine. Once I embarked on that, I realized I needed to make not one painting of Willem as Vincent, but three, and then I needed in turn to make three of Vincent as Vincent. So, I made not only a painting of my painting but had to make a painting of Vincent’s painting too!” Schnabel adds.
The result is a collection of twenty-five works, made of oil paint, broken plates, and the adhesive Bondo, spread over several floors in which Schnabel depicts Dafoe as Vincent, Vincent as Vincent, Frida Kahlo as Frida Kahlo, his son Cy as Caravaggio as the head of Goliath (David with the Head of Goliath), actor Oscar Isaac as a self-portrait of Caravaggio, Cy as a self-portrait of Velazquez, and, finally, Cy as Titian’s portrait of Jesus.
While it is only possible to capture the overall impact of the painting from a distance, especially when viewed through a camera, up-close inspection reveals the remarkable lengths Schnabel went to in order to create the (self) portraits, meticulously and painstakingly painting over the broken plates, a process he has used since the late 1970s and includes a series of portraits of industrialist and magazine publisher Peter Brant and his children in 2011. The show combines art history with pop culture by a visual artist who has built a film career writing and directing works about other artists: painter and musician Jean-Michel Basquiat (Basquiat), author Reinaldo Arenas (Before Night Falls), French writer Jean-Dominique Bauby (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and musician Lou Reed (Lou Reed’s Berlin) in addition to van Gogh.
Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) is not exactly thrilled about turning thirty-five in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)
COMPANY
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 31, $59 – $299 companymusical.com
Originally slated to open on Broadway on March 22, 2020 — Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday — Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of composer and lyricist Sondheim and book writer George Furth’s beloved Company finally arrives at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, two weeks after Sondheim’s sad, sudden passing just as we all could use, er, a little company. Having never seen the iconic musical before — it debuted on Broadway in 1970 and was revived in 1995 and 2006 — I cannot compare it to any of those editions or focus on the well-publicized changes to this new version, primarily involving several gender switches, most importantly to the main character, who has gone from Bobby the man to Bobbie the woman. But what I can report is that Elliott’s inventive adaptation has a fine first act and an utterly spectacular second.
Bobbie, played with a nagging trepidation by Katrina Lenk, is turning thirty-five and none too happy about it. After receiving a flurry of birthday messages, she says, “How many times do you get to be thirty-five? Eleven? Okay, come on. Say it and get it over with. It’s embarrassing. Quick. I can’t stand it.”
Harry (Christopher Sieber) and Sarah (Jennifer Simard) battle as Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) and Joanne (Patti LuPone) look on in Sondheim-Furth revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Bobbie is tired of being the third wheel. She puts a mylar “35” balloon on her wall and it ticks like a biological clock. Her married and engaged friends, some with kids, attempt to entertain her but they have their own lives away from her. She is spending more and more time with bottles of Maker’s Mark to try to make her forget her loneliness. She’s attracted to a dimwitted flight attendant, Andy (Claybourne Elder), who doesn’t exactly fulfill her needs.
She visits with Sarah (Jennifer Simard) and Harry (Christopher Sieber), who get into a riotous jiu-jitsu battle; Susan (Rashidra Scott) and Peter (Greg Hildreth), who, on their terrace, announce they’re getting divorced; Jenny (Nikki Renée Daniels) and David (Christopher Fitzgerald), who get high and discuss Bobbie’s possible fear of being hitched (“It’s not like I’m avoiding marriage. It’s avoiding me, if anything. I’m ready,” she insists); Jamie (Matt Doyle) and Paul (Etai Benson), who are getting married but Jamie is suddenly having doubts; her former lover Theo (Manu Narayan), who has made the kind of important decision Bobbie is unable to; her friend P.J. (Bobby Conte Thornton), who is in love with New York itself; and the older Joanne (Patti LuPone) and her third husband, Larry (Terence Archie), who party at a nightclub. “The phone is a phenomenon. Really. The best way for two people to be connected and detached at the same time,” Bobbie says. Joanne responds, “Second only to marriage.”
The story goes back and forth in time — the script explains, “The narrative is conveyed in a stream of consciousness technique and time moves both backwards and forwards, encompassing the past, present and future” — as Bobbie contemplates the state of her existence as she turns thirty-five, alone in the big city. “One’s impossible, two is dreary, / Three is company, safe and cheery,” she tries to convince herself. “Here is the church, / Here is the steeple, / Open the doors and / See all the crazy, married people!”
Friends gather to celebrate Bobbie’s (Katrina Lenk) birthday in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Two-time Tony winner Elliott (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,Angels in America) has reconceptualized Company in ways that go beyond mere gender switching and diverse casting; this Company emphasizes individuality, confinement, isolation, and fear through magnificent staging constructed around Bunny Christie’s ingenious set; much of the action takes place in and around claustrophobic rectangular spaces framed by fluorescent lights. (The lighting is by Neil Austin.) Bobbie, wearing a sensational sexy red pantsuit (Christie also designed the costumes), is trapped physically and psychologically in each scenario, from a tiny room in her apartment to the club to a street where every door is numbered “35.” Turning thirty-five and still being single is a nightmare that follows her wherever she goes.
Bobbie’s friends represent parts of herself as well as a potential companion. “Someone is waiting, / Sweet as David, / Funny and charming as Peter. Larry . . . / Someone is waiting, / Cute as Jamie, / Sassy as Harry / And tender as Paul,” she sings in “Being Alive,” adding, “Did I know him? Have I waited too long? / Maybe so, but maybe so has he.”
As portrayed by Tony winner Lenk (The Band’s Visit,Indecent), Bobbie is not after our sympathy or even our compassionate understanding; no mere old maid, she serves as a reminder of the uncertainty and isolation we all experience, whether coupled or not, regardless of how happy we might be. The scene in which Bobbie, in bed with Andy, sees one possible outcome of her life unfold before her is horrifyingly funny, whether you live alone or are married with kids; it’s a tour de force for both Elliott and the ensemble.
Joanne (Patti LuPone) has a bit of important advice for Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) in Broadway revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Two-time Tony winner LuPone (Evita,Gypsy) brings the house down just by saying, “I’d like to propose a toast,” prior to singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” The signature role of Joanne has previously been performed by Elaine Stritch, Debra Monk, Sheila Gish, Lynn Redgrave, and Barbara Walsh, while the roll call of male Bobbys includes Dean Jones, George Chakiris, Larry Kert, Boyd Gaines, Adrian Lester, Raúl Esparza, and Neil Patrick Harris.) The rest of the cast is exemplary as well, with shout-outs to Simard’s brownie-desiring Sarah, two-time Tony nominee Fitzgerald’s puppy-dog-eyed David, and Doyle’s breathlessly fast-paced rendition of “Getting Married Today.”
Liam Steel’s choreography is fun, as are illusions by Chris Fisher. One oddity is that characters often enter and exit the stage through the aisles, which are also frequented by theater staffers holding signs telling the audience to keep their masks on, momentarily diverting our attention while also reminding us of the situation we’re still in.
David Cullen’s orchestrations honor Sondheim’s complex melodies, performed by a fourteen-piece band conducted by Joel Fram that hovers above the stage. The second act explodes with an electrifying “Side by Side by Side” and never lets up through Bobbie’s closing soliloquy, “Being Alive,” an able metaphor for what we all need right now. Winner of three Olivier Awards — for Set Design (Christie), Supporting Actress in a Musical (LuPone), and Musical Revival — Company is more than just grand company in these troubled times, when we can all benefit from being together once again.
Carrie Mae Weems’s “The Shape of Things” continues at the armory through December 31 (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography/Park Avenue Armory)
THE SHAPE OF THINGS
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 31, $18 www.armoryonpark.org carriemaeweems.net
“How do we measure a life?” Carrie Mae Weems asks in her multichannel installation Cyclorama — Conditions, a Video in 7 Parts, the centerpiece of her Park Ave. Armory presentation “The Shape of Things.” Over footage of several women and one man, she asks, “Do we measure it by the forgotten / or by the remembered / by all the near misses and the exhaustion / or by the ability to endure / how / do we measure it by race / by class / by gender / by beauty / and by your lover’s love or your hater’s hate / or by pushing against the wind / against the tide / against family / against tradition / how / or do we measure it by the suffering of our friends and our enemies alike / or by the beginning / or by the end / by the way we confront life / or by the way we confront death?”
“The Shape of Things” is a masterful multidisciplinary examination of where we are today as a nation as we face systemic racism, health and income inequality, police brutality, and the perpetuation of the Big Lie. Through the seven sections of Cyclorama, organized in a large circle of screens, Weems mixes archival footage with new material shot in Syracuse, the Flea Theater, and the Watermill Center of such performers as Nona Hendryx, okwui okpokwasili, Vinson Fraley, Francesca Harper, Carl Hancock Rux, Basil Twist, and dozens of others, depicting modern times as a dangerous circus where Black and brown bodies are in constant threat. The final text is adapted from a commencement address Weems, a MacArthur Fellow, gave to the graduating class of SVA in May 2016 at Radio City Music Hall.
In front of Cyclorama is Seat or Stand and Speak, where attendees can sit in a chair or stand on a box and shout into megaphones. All Blue — A Contemplative Site is a dark space with a few steps leading to a door that opens to the moon and stars, a place of reflection, meditation, and hope. Across the way is Lincoln, Lonnie and Me, a 2012-14 work about presence and absence that is like a “Pepper’s Ghost” carnival sideshow with minstrel elements. Visitors enter an enclosed area bathed in red and stand behind a velvet rope, watching holographic-like projections of ghostly characters as we hear Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”; Weems reads a revised version of the Gettysburg Address; visual artist and activist Lonnie Graham speaks on social change; excerpts from Weems’s 2008 video Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment play, including a reenactment of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; and Weems dresses up as a Playboy bunny to Urge Overkill’s cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.”
The long side gallery features a row of several dioramas paying tribute to victims of racism, from It’s Over — A Diorama, consisting of a swan, candles, balloons, a globe, a fallen column, and photographs, to framed portraits from Weems’s “Missing Links” series from The Louisiana Project, in which she dresses up as various animals in suits, with such titles as “Happiness” and “Despair,” to The Weight, a diorama with three pink helium globes rising out of sculptures of African women’s heads, balancing the tenuous world. Also be on the lookout for a painting of Minerva, shown as a Black goddess, hanging in the hall among the portraits of white military heroes.
From December 9 to 11, dozens of performers activated the space, with live music and dance, film screenings, and panel discussions. But you don’t need others to help you activate the space for yourself as Weems places us firmly in the past, present, and future of an America that is getting more and more difficult to measure every day.
It’s been three quarters of a century since the Holocaust ended, so there are fewer and fewer survivors and witnesses alive to tell the true stories of what happened in the camps of Eastern Europe during WWII. Meanwhile, antisemitism continues to surge around the world amid Holocaust deniers and politicians who misuse and abuse the horror for soundbites and social media memes. Arlekin Players Theatre investigates these issues in its latest interactive online show, Witness. An immersive work that explores antisemitism and desperate migration, the play relates the fate of the MS St. Louis, the German ship that carried more than nine hundred Jewish refugees in May 1939, to the problems of today.
The luxury liner was transporting men, women, and children fleeing the approaching Holocaust, but the ship was turned away by Cuba, Canada, and the United States. Conceived and directed by Arlekin founder and Russian Jewish immigrant Igor Golyak and written by Moscow-based Nana Grinstein with Blair Cadden and Golyak, Witness puts the audience on board the St. Louis, where it begins with a talent show that is based on actual events.
The emcee (Gene Ravvin) believes he is in the present, in a green-screen studio, as he introduces the parade of performers: Liesl Joseph (Esther Golyak) and Gisela Klepl (Elizabeth Sarytchev), who perform “Skating on Glass!” as older versions of themselves (Rimma Gluzman and Polina Vikova) recall Kristallnacht in voice-over; Fritz Buff (Alex Petetsky), who constructs a house of cards and anticipates “joyful days” ahead; Fira (Julia Shikh), who boils a book banned in the USSR; a magician named Marik (Misha Tyutyunik) and his assistant (Jenya Brodskaia); and superheroes Anna (Anna Furman), Olga (Olga Aronova), and Vika (Vika Kovalenko), who call themselves the Elusive Avengers. The audience at home votes on each performance and gains points as they participate.
During each skit, the audience can click on pop-ups to learn more about the contestants, all of whom were real, as well as the actors portraying them. Short biographical sketches include their immigration status and, in the case of the passengers, their fate after the ship was refused entry to America. News crawls onscreen range from the 1930s to the 1990s, which initially confuse the emcee until he figures out what is going on. “The good news is that not only those Jews who left Hamburg in 1939 are sailing with us but also all the Jews that left anywhere are also here,” he explains. “First wave, second wave, third wave. A whole ocean of waves. From USSR, from Germany, from Spain, from Hungary. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, and always. We are all together, ladies and gentlemen. We’re all together. If there is a place to leave, the Jews will find a way.”
After the talent show, the emcee walks through a long, narrow hallway on the ship, encountering people discussing antisemitism, assimilation, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, dual loyalty, and Israel’s right to exist and defend itself as well as frightening vignettes occurring in some of the cabins. Every word of dialogue is based on interviews Golyak conducted with nearly a hundred people; the narrative is smartly organized to avoid clichés, stereotypical rhetoric, and didactic moralizing.
“So basically what they are is Jews who think if we just bend over a little more, if we just assimilate a little bit better than we did in Germany, that somehow miraculously everything will be different than it was in Germany,” Leah (Lauren Elias) says. “And it’s not going to be. I mean, come on. It feels like the only acceptable party line for Israeli people and Jewish people right now is like, ‘Oh my god. We’re sorry we didn’t all die in World War Two. We know that would have been so much easier for you. We are so sorry for the inconvenience.’”
Joseph (Nathan Malin), talking with Leah and Rachel (Anne Gottlieb) about the public reaction to the real-life stabbing of an Orthodox rabbi in Brighton, admits, “Unless you want to tar yourself as unwanted and as a bad person, you keep your mouth shut and you just duck your head, you know?”
Camera operator Austin de Besche films some of the cast during the making of Witness
Lady Liberty (Darya Denisova) occasionally appears to share her thoughts as the emcee repeats, “This can’t happen here. This can’t happen here!” Leah responds, “No, no, no, it can. And it does.”
Arlekin, which has previously dazzled viewers with the one-woman State vs. Natasha Banina and the daring hybrid chekhovOS /an experimental game/ (featuring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov), a pair of livestreamed interactive shows that pushed the boundaries of online productions, again breaks new ground through its Zero Gravity (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab with Witness. Set designer and costumer Anna Fedorova, virtual designer Daniel Cormino, sound designer Viktor Semenov, and director of photography and editor Anton Nikolaev make it feel like it’s all taking place on board the St. Louis, with rolling waves and flying birds outside as the ocean liner heads toward its supposed destination.
During the talent show, the audience on the ship looks like ghosts, which in essence is what they are today. At one point, the screen goes dark for several minutes as binaural recordings play through your headphones, as if you’re a passenger, not knowing what’s coming next, or from where. It sent chills through my bones.
As always with Arlekin’s works, each presentation is followed by a talkback in which members of the cast and crew delve into the making of the work, although Golyak is careful not to give away too many secrets. Some of the discussions include experts on antisemitism and the Holocaust, and the audience is encouraged to share experiences in the lively chat. The night I saw Witness, numerous people (including me) described instances of antisemitism they have encountered. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, it is noted, “Bearing witness, so they will know, until the last generation.” A compelling and necessary piece of sociopolitical documentary theater, Witness reminds us all just how important that is.
Candace Bushnell holds nothing back in charming journey through her life and career (photo by Joan Marcus)
IS THERE STILL SEX IN THE CITY?
Daryl Roth Theatre
101 East Fifteenth St. at Union Square
Tuesday – Sunday through February 6, $69 [ed. note: show closed December 19 due to Covid] istherestillsexinthecity.com www.darylroththeatre.com
“Good news only” is how Candace Bushnell always answers the phone in her one-woman show, Is There Still Sex in the City? Good news only it will be.
The ninety-minute play is an endearing, self-aware production in which Bushnell, now sixty-three, shares intimate details of her life and career, centering around the gargantuan success she has had with the creation of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), the fictional characters on the HBO smash Sex and the City, based on her series of columns and 1996 book of the same name. The play might be timed to capitalize on the return of Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda in the brand-new follow-up, And Just Like That . . . ,” but Is There Still Sex in the City? stands on its own as an entertaining, appropriately gossipy public confessional from a writer who changed the way the country looked at the lifestyles of women of all ages, sexual and otherwise.
Bushnell, who prefers to be known as Candi (“with a little circle where the dot goes”), leads us from her childhood in Connecticut, where her father pitied her because she was flat-chested — “I’m afraid no man is ever going to love you,” he warns — to her freshman-year flight to New York City when she was nineteen, determined to abandon college and become a writer and win the Pulitzer Prize.
At first she relates, “This New York is not my boyfriend. Pimps stalk Penn Station looking for runaways. Heroin addicts are nodding out on the streets. There’s three card monte, pickpockets, boomboxes, and Hare Krishna parades. It’s dirty. There’s no pooper scooper law, and there’s dog poop everywhere.” But it isn’t long before she is hanging out with the rich and famous, partying at Studio 54, jetting off to Europe, reveling in the abundant sex and drugs — and eventually telling everybody about it, first as Stripe Savage, writing such pieces as “How to Act in a Disco,” then under her real name in a must-read column for the New York Observer.
Candace Bushnell answers the question Is There Still Sex in the City? in one-woman show (photo by Joan Marcus)
“This New York is my boyfriend,” she says later. “Who needs a man when Manhattan itself is abuzz? Maybe it’s the cosmos. Maybe it’s the cocaine.” Her bestselling book, Sex and the City, becomes a hot HBO show, but that doesn’t necessarily result in personal fulfillment as her relationships with Melrose Place creator Darren Star, a much older famous writer, the unnamed actual Mr. Big, and others ultimately fizzle. But she learns to take matters into her own hands as she shares what she is doing today, which is a long jump from where she thought she would be — while still working toward that Pulitzer.
Directed by choreographer Lorin Lotarro (A Taste of Things to Come) with a spicy sweet sense of humor, Is There Still Sex in the City? answers many of the questions people have about Bushnell and her life. It features popular period songs by Sheryl Crow, Cyndi Lauper, Donna Summer, MC Hammer, and Right Said Fred, a parade of fantastic outfits courtesy of costume designer Lisa Zinni, an adorable set by Anna Louizos with an elegant royal couch, a monitor with projections (old photos, TV clips, animation) by Caite Hevner, and stacks of cubes with books, knickknacks, and shoes — lots and lots of shoes, all of which, Bushnell admits, are from her own closet — colorfully lit by Travis McHale.
Bushnell occasionally plays “Real or Not Real,” asking the audience to call out their responses to such questions as “Did I sleep with the hot Calvin Klein underwear model from episode 2?” She doesn’t mind receiving random hoots and hollers and shouts of support, particularly as she reveals her ten life lessons, the first of which is: “I’m a feminist. A mini Gloria Steinem. Have been ever since kindergarten, where I discovered women could only have four jobs: nurse, teacher, secretary, or librarian.”
Bushnell is so warm and gracious that you will forgive a missed line reading here and there, and the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square is far too big for such an intimate production. But Is There Still Sex in the City? is a fab treat, a funny and candid New York story that everyone can relate to in one way or another, whether you are a fan of Sex and the City or have never watched or read it. And before or after the show, you can enjoy a cosmo in the downstairs Candi Bar. Like Bushnell says, “Good news only!”
[ed. note: The good news only went so far, as the show had to close on December 19 after Bushnell contracted Covid-19. The plan is for it to eventually return to New York City when the tour gets up and running again.]
