FAIRYCAKES
Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 21, www.fairycakestheplay.com
I came specially armed to see Douglas Carter Beane’s Fairycakes at the Greenwich House Theater earlier this week. There wasn’t a lot of positive buzz surrounding the campy musical, and its initial closing date of January 2, 2022, was quickly revised to November 21, 2021, a fact unfortunately visible at the entrance. My companion for the evening was a good friend who swore by Xanadu, the Tony-nominated 2007 Broadway musical, about Greek muses in leg warmers on roller skates, for which Beane had written the book. If anyone was going to see the potential inherent joys in Fairycakes, it was her.
Alas, we both agreed in this case that Beane’s new show is a hot mess with a convoluted narrative that feels like a high school senior play, albeit with a handful of superb actors. The cast, highlighted by the wonderful Kristolyn Lloyd, is exuberant, probably because they truly love performing the material and not because they’re glad they have to do so for a much shorter period of time than originally contracted for.
Fairycakes is a chaotic mashup of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and classic fairy tales, written and directed by five-time Tony nominee Beane, whose previous shows include The Little Dog Laughed,The Nance,Lysistrata Jones, and Sister Act as well as the 1995 film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. The music is by Beane’s longtime collaborator Lewis Flinn, with corny, repetitive choreography by Ellenore Scott. The ornate, DIY costumes are by Gregory Gale. It all unfurls on Shoko Kambara and Adam Crinson’s goofy set, with a movable wooden doorway behind which characters sometimes hide (although depending on where you sit, their sudden appearance might not be a surprise), a tree stump, and a forest backdrop.
On a magical night, the bare-chested Puck (Chris Myers) waves an aphrodisiacal flower around the characters, creating unexpected romantic pairings involving Gepetto (Mo Rocca), Pinocchio (Sabatino Cruz), Cinderella (Kuhoo Verma), pirate Dirk Deadeye (Arnie Burton), Prince Viktor (Jason Tam), Sleeping Beauty (Z Infante), and Peter Pan (Jamen Nanthakumar). Meanwhile, Oberon (Burton) and Titania (Julie Halston) are in a fight that, if they don’t resolve, will lead to the death of their children, Peaseblossum (Lloyd), Moth (Jackie Hoffman), Cobweb (Infante), and Mustardseed (Ann Harada). Also flitting about are a tinkling fairy (Hoffman), a cricket (Nanthakumar), a mermaid (Harada), a changeling (Nanthakumar), Cupid (Tam), an evil stepmother (Nanthakumar) and her plotting stepdaughters (Rocca and Cruz), Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn (Verma), and Queen Elizabeth I.
Until a switch in the second act, everyone speaks in stilted, self-referentially cutesy verse with far too many forced rhymes, and the narrative veers off into confusing subplots exacerbated by the inability of Beane to use the actual names of the characters from Peter Pan, the legacy of which is carefully protected by the J. M. Barrie estate.
That said, there were people in the audience the night my friend and I went who were having a great deal of fun, especially one person sitting behind us who was snapping, calling out gleefully, hooting, and snorting in approval. I wish we were watching what he was watching.
Jimmy “Beau James” Walker (Martin Dockery) and Fiorello “the Little Flower” La Guardia (Christopher Romero Wilson) step into the ring in Tammany Hall (photo by Maria Baranova)
TAMMANY HALL
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St.
Wednesday – Sunday thorugh January 9, $93.75 www.sohoplayhouse.com
Tammany Hall is a rousing immersive production that puts audience members right in the middle of a fierce political battle — in 1929, between incumbent mayor Jimmy “Beau James” Walker (Martin Dockery) and Harlem congressman Fiorello “the Little Flower” La Guardia (Christopher Romero Wilson). The exciting and high-energy show takes place throughout SoHo Playhouse, renamed the Huron Club; numerous rooms have been repurposed by Dan Daly, from a central space with a boxing ring where a debate occurs to secret offices, a theater, the rooftop, and a bar — it might be the Prohibition Era, but the drinks are flowing.
It’s election night, November 5, 1929, a week after the Black Tuesday stock market crash. Gentleman Jimmy is running for his second term, backed by the powerful Tammany Hall machine, pitted against upstart reformer La Guardia, who wants to rid city government of corruption, patronage, and graft. The outcome appears to have already been decided — er, rigged — since Tammany Hall is Walker’s home turf and he is surrounded by sycophants and supporters. As the audience, which has been given ballots, finds seats around the ring, various characters come up and talk to them individually; how you relate to these brief chats could lead to what story you follow and how involved you get. There are at least three separate threads; I highly recommend that people in your group head off in different directions to compare notes later, as one participant will not be able to see everything by themselves.
“We got to get through the debate,” Tammany Hall operative Olvany (Isaac J Conner) says to guests. “We got to let La Guardia have his say, but we know Walker will have him down and out in the first round. It’s really a done deal and I know we can count on you, right? Of course we can.” Team Walker also includes the mayor’s mistress, Betty Compton (Marie Anello), who wants to become a popular entertainer; her fellow performer Marion “Kiki” Roberts (Chloe Kekovic); gangster Legs Diamond (Nathaniel J. Ryan); the wealthy, connected “Battery” Dan Finn (Andrew Broaddus); pianist and musical director Smarty (Sami Petrucci); choreographer Ritzi (Charley Wenzel), Judge Joseph Crater’s girlfriend; and Tammany Hall fixture Curry (Shahzeb Hussain).
Virtually on his own in enemy territory, La Guardia tells onlookers, “It feels like classic Tammany Hall, this. This overbearing architecture and antechambers and club exclusive access — I can’t stand it. Sure, that could just be a personal thing, but politics are made up of people and people building buildings and people choosing to build buildings like this — to make people feel privileged for being allowed to see inside them, inside the club. . . . We should all have access all the time. To the workings. To the truth. All these curtains and panels and smoke and mirrors, that’s hooey. Simple, open, transparency. It’s not a lot to ask for.”
Meanwhile, Isidor Jacob Kresel (Jesse Castellanos) and Valentine (Natasa Babic) appear to be recruiting people for undisclosed missions. It all comes together for a grand finale in an illegal downstairs speakeasy.
SoHo Playhouse is transformed into the Huron Club on election night, 1929, for immersive production (photo by Maria Baranova)
As with nearly all immersive productions, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. You don’t have to participate; the actors are trained to select those who show more interest in lending a hand and getting in on the act. I loved every scintillating second as Kresel’s right-hand man, helping him and the Little Flower in their attempt to take down Tammany.
The many rooms of the Huron Club, built on property John Jacob Astor bought from Aaron Burr on Van Dam St., are brought to wonderful life by Daly, with clever touches everywhere you look, many referencing gambling; the lighting is by Emily Clarkson, with songs by Gavin Whitworth, sound by Megan Culley, and fanciful period costumes by Grace Jeon, all of which makes it feel like you’ve stepped into 1929 New York. Created and directed by Darren Lee Cole (Fleabag,Killer Joe) and Alexander Flanagan-Wright (The Great Gatsby,Orpheus), Tammany Hall is a sordid tale of power, greed, and hubris that fits right in with our current political climate, perverted by the rampant questioning of the legitimacy of America’s electoral process and the prevalence of big money. The tall and wiry Dockery is appropriately dapper, smarmy, and self-satisfied as Walker, while Wilson portrays La Guardia with a fiery passion and determination.
Perhaps it’s all summed up best by Ritzi, who says near the end, “I need a drink. You need a drink? The bar’s reopened. Tammany Hall still stands.” But not for long.
Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave closes the 2021 DOC NYC festival
DOC NYC 2021
In-person: November 10-19, $19 per screening
Online: November 11-28, $12 per screening
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
SVA Theatre, 333 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves. www.docnyc.net
The twelfth annual DOC NYC festival emerges from the pandemic with a hybrid collection of more than two hundred films and events that offer an alternative to the continuing rash of fake news and truthiness found on cable and social media. Of course, documentarians have their own agendas as well, but they lean strongly in favor of highlighting important issues through facts and celebrating legitimate feats accomplished through individual determination, both public and private.
This year’s sections include “Coming of Age,” “Fight the Power,” “Luminaries,” “Personal Journeys,” “Sonic Cinema,” and “Focus: Journalists,” covering more than seventy themes, from Food & Wine, History, and Music to Activism, Outsiders, and War & Conflict. The 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award winners are cameraperson, cinematographer, and director Joan Churchill (Gimme Shelter,Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer,Shut Up & Sing) and Raoul Peck (Fatal Assistance,Moloch Tropical,I Am Not Your Negro).
Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe is the centerpiece selection of this year’s DOC NYC fest
Among the many portraits are explorations of such figures as entertainer and Rat Packer Dean Martin, singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, chef Julia Child, actress and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, singer Dionne Warwick, cartoonist Spain Rodriguez, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, restaurateur and TV host Anthony Bourdain, rapper DMX, actress Selma Blair, basketball star Kevin Garnett, and author Kurt Vonnegut, with works by such luminaries as Stanley Nelson, Liz Garbus, Eva Orner, Alison Klayman, Jon Alpert, Andrea Arnold, and Todd Haynes.
The festival opens with Penny Lane’s Listening to Kenny G, with director and subject participating in a postscreening discussion; the centerpiece is the New York City premiere of Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s Citizen Ashe, a look at tennis great and activist Arthur Ashe, with Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave, about the beginning of the pandemic in New York City’s hospitals, the closing-night selection. Keep watching this space for more recommendations and capsule reviews as the festival continues, both in person at the IFC Center, Cinépolis Chelsea, and the SVA Theatre and online.
Todd Haynes will discuss his latest film at DOC NYC
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes, 2021)
IFC Center
Wednesday, November 10, 9:30 www.docnyc.net
The Velvet Underground was more than just a music group; they electrified a generation, and continue to do so today, half a century later. Todd Haynes, whose 1998 Velvet Goldmine was set in the world of glam rock and whose 2007 I’m Not There explored the career of Bob Dylan through six characters and a nonlinear narrative, now turns his attention to the true story behind the Velvets. Haynes details the history of the band by delving into leaders John Cale and Lou Reed’s initial meeting, the formation of the Primitives with conceptual artists Tony Conrad and Walter DeMaria, and the transformation into the seminal VU lineup at the Factory under Pop icon Andy Warhol’s guidance: singer-songwriter-guitarist Reed, Welsh experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and German vocalist Nico. Much of Haynes’s documentary focuses on Warhol’s position in helping develop and promote the Velvets. “Andy was extraordinary, and I honestly don’t think these things could have occurred without Andy,” Reed, who died in 2013, says. Haynes will be at the IFC Center to introduce the November 10 screening.
The life and career of Anthony Bourdain is explored in Roadrunner
ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (Morgan Neville, 2021)
IFC Center
Thursday, November 11, 9:45 www.docnyc.net
Director Morgan Neville goes behind the scenes to share the story of beloved restaurateur and TV show host Anthony Bourdain in Roadrunner. Neville, whose previous films include The Cool School,20 Feet from Stardom, and Won’t You Be Neighbor?, will be at IFC to introduce the November 11 screening.
Two Minnesota high school teams battle it out in Tommy Haines’s Hockeyland
There’s the Stanley Cup playoffs for the NHL pros and the Frozen Four for the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Championship, but Tommy Haines focuses on a pair of rival Minnesota high school teams, the underdog Eveleth-Gilbert Golden Bears and the far more successful Hermantown Hawks, as they prepare to perhaps meet in the playoffs. Haines follows the very different approach of the two coaches, delves into the lives of the teams’ best players, talks to the parents, and goes inside the locker rooms as the teenagers balance education with the game and their future. The film contains lots of good hockey action, along with intimate moments as injuries occur and pro scouts come to watch. The November 13 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Haines, producers JT Haines and Andrew Sherburne, cinematographer Benjamin Handler, and film subjects Elliot Van Orsdel, Indio Dowd, and members of their families.
Fatima Shaik searches for a critical piece of family history in The Bengali
“Why would anybody come from the other side of the world to find somebody who doesn’t even exist anymore?” author Fatima Shaik says at the beginning of The Bengali. “Why not?” asks director Kavery Kaul. Armed with a partial ship’s registry and a photograph of her grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, who left his small village in India in 1893 to make a new life in the United States, in New Orleans, where he married a Black woman, Fatima travels to her ancestral country, wanting to know more about where she came from and to see a patch of land that he owned. Joined by Kaul, who is Bengali, and cinematographer John Russell Foster, who is white, they have very little information and face roadblock after roadblock until success is in reach, but everywhere she goes, Fatima is met with resistance, as Indians view her with suspicion, thinking that she, a Christian in a Muslim community, might be there to reclaim her grandfather’s land. The Bengali is an emotional, deeply personal search for identity, almost to the point of obsession, of seeking out one’s family history in a land where you don’t speak the language and are not immediately welcome. The November 13 New York City premiere at IFC will be followed by a Q&A with Kaul and producer Lucas Groth.
UNITED STATES vs. REALITY WINNER (Sonia Kennebeck, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 9:50
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 4:15 www.docnyc.net www.codebreakerfilms.com
The Broadway play Is This a Room is a verbatim re-creation of the FBI’s interrogation of Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran who was suspected of leaking classified documents. Award-winning documentarian Sonia Kennebeck, whose previous films include Enemies of the State, about a family under siege when their hacker son gets into serious trouble with the government, and National Bird, which revealed the devastating story of the military personnel pushing the buttons in America’s drone war, now goes behind the scenes to tell what really happened with Winner, the Intercept, and other parties involved in the complex situation. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kennebeck, the latter moderated by Jo Livingstone of the New Republic.
An amateur British theater group consisting of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers adapt a Ridley Scott classic in Alien on Stage
In 2015, a group of bus drivers, engineers, and dispatchers in Dorset, England, banded together to put on an amateur theatrical adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien a benefit for the Allendale Community Centre and the Guillain-Barré Syndrome Charity. Calling themselves Paranoid Dramatics, the men and women took a DIY approach, creating the costumes and special effects from scratch and learning their lines to the best of their abilities. After seeing the show, Danielle Kummer and Lucy Harvey became obsessed with it and decided to document the play’s surprising move to London’s West End. The result is an extremely fun film about human ingenuity against all odds; just as Ripley had to face the monster, will this group survive as opening night approaches? And will Scott be there to cheer them on? The November 14 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Kummer.
An eleven-year-old blind boy seeks to become a board game champ in Go through the Dark
GO THROUGH THE DARK (Yunhong Pu, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
Saturday, November 13, 7:10
Tuesday, November 16, 9:30 www.docnyc.net www.instagram.com
First-time filmmaker Yunhong Pu serves as director, producer (with Jean Tsien), cinematographer, editor, and publicist for the subtly captivating Go through the Dark. Yunhong travels with eleven-year-old Guanglin Xu, a blind Chinese boy who has a remarkable affinity for Go, which might be the world’s oldest board game, as he participates in competitions and seeks special coaching far away. He is being raised by a single father who adores him but might not always understand what is best for his son. As father and child meet more people, new options arise for Guanglin, who does not know how to ask for what he truly wants and needs. The game Go involves turning over small, circular black and white stones, but there’s nothing black-and-white about this unique and moving story. Yunhong will participate in Q&As at the November 13 and 16 screenings.
Gary Oldman has a lot to say about Eadweard Muybridge’s photos and personal life in stirring documentary
EXPOSING MUYBRIDGE (Marc Shaffer, 2021)
Saturday, November 13, IFC Center, 7:05
Monday, November 15, Cinépolis Chelsea, 2:00 www.docnyc.net www.muybridgethemovie.com
English photographer Eadweard Muybridge is most well known for taking some of the earliest, most influential pictures in the history of the art form (and sometimes animating them), including The Horse in Motion, his shots of redwoods in Yosemite, and his plates of nude men and women walking, running, and stepping over plates. But writer, director, and producer Marc Shaffer focuses on Muybridge’s bizarre life as well as his photography in the documentary Exposing Muybridge, highlighting an existence filled with murder, betrayal, naked ambition, legal and political wheeling and dealing, alchemy, and immense talent and ingenuity. Among those sharing their thoughts about Muybridge are actor and collector Gary Oldman, who must play the photographer in the eventual film, and author Rebecca Gowers, who is related to the man Muybridge killed. The sordid doings grow more and more intriguing as Shaffer cuts between the speakers, archival photographs and letters, and dozens of Muybridge’s pictures. My only quibble with the film is that I was hoping to learn the proper way to pronounce the photographer’s chosen surname (he was born Edward James Muggeridge), but not everyone in the film says “Muybridge” the same way. The November 13 and 15 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Shaffer.
ASCENSION (Jessica Kingdon, 2021)
Cinépolis Chelsea
260 West Twenty-Third St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday, November 16, 4:15
Thursday, November 18, 4:45 www.docnyc.net/film/ascension ascensiondocumentary.com
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 November 16 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kingdon.
DRIFT: FRAGILE FUTURE
The Shed, the McCourt
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday through December 19, exhibition $25, Drifters and exhibition $35
Includes admission to Ian Cheng: Life After BOB
646-455-3494 theshed.org online slideshow
Since 2007, the Amsterdam-based duo DRIFT, a partnership between Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, have been exploring the intersection and interdependence of humans, nature, and technology. Their environmentally conscious, multidimensional works are like individual ecosystems that present hope for a future potentially doomed by climate change. Continuing through December 19 at the Shed at Hudson Yards, Fragile Future is a wonderland of experiential installations, presented by Superblue, which specializes in immersive art.
The exhibition begins with Fragile Future, a light sculpture with a modular system based on the growth of dandelions, constructed from LED lights, phosphor bronze, printed circuit board, and the hairs and seeds of dandelions themselves. Coded Coincidence consists of dozens and dozens of beaded lights that move about a long, rectangular, netted space, sudden gusts of air making them mimic the flight of elm seeds in the spring. There’s an emotional aspect to the movement as they travel in groups and gather in a corner, or, with a kind of sadness, one gets trapped in the netting, alone until it can be freed and join the rest of the herd.
Ego might be composed of nylon fiber, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber monofilaments, polyester, and polyvinyl fluoride and run by motors set to specific algorithms, but it seems to have an organic life of its own. Created for Nederlandse Reisopera’s production of Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, about the love between Orpheus and Eurydice and his descent into the underworld, Ego is a monumental handmade woven block that rises, falls, spreads out, collapses, and twists and turns as if magically floating through space, evoking human emotions amid a gentle soundscape. Describing its construction, Gordijn explains in a Drift video, “It depends on how that ego is shaped, how flexible it is, or how rigid it is. Because if it is rigid, there is only one truth, and if it’s flexible, you can move along with what is needed in order for it to accept certain truths or accept how life is or how the world is being built. And I think it’s a big difficulty in everybody’s life to be flexible in your vision and to be flexible in your perspective. But we have to be flexible, and I like that about Ego, that it can be a very rigid block but it can also completely change. It can be a solution.”
The next room is filled with “Materialism,” a collection of reverse-engineered sculptures that reduce such consumer products as a Big Mac menu, a coffee cup, an iPhone, a pencil, and a bicycle into colored blocks based on the size of their raw materials, resulting in miniature architectural models meant to reveal how we exploit the earth and its labor force.
In the two-channel, twelve-minute film Drifters, Drift’s iconic concrete blocks float through New York City at one end of a long room and across mountains, rivers, and forests at the other end, searching for where they came from and what awaits them.
The pièce de resistance takes place in the McCourt, the Shed’s 17,000-square-foot McCourt performance venue, only at certain times and with an extra charge, so plan your visit carefully. Four levitating Drifters, real versions of the blocks from the film in the previous room, move slowly throughout the space for more than an hour, set to a droning soundtrack by Anohni, the English singer-songwriter who used to lead the band Antony and the Johnsons. The blocks are floating without wires, engaged in a butoh-like dance as they very (very) slowly flip, lower, and rise, sometimes dangling just overhead. Occasionally they gently bump into each other in a kind of soft kiss. The audience can walk around the area, sit in folding chairs, or lie down on their backs on the floor as these monoliths put on a mesmerizing show that could be an outtake from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. During the performance, I asked Gordijn how they did it. After offering two guesses that she quickly said no to, I suggested a third, which she simply smiled at. It’s extraordinarily peaceful and relaxing while also instilling hope for a future where humans, nature, and technology can exist together in harmony.
[On December 10 and 11, Ego will be activated by special dance performances, featuring Company Wo. (Daniel Kersh, Marcella Ann Lewis, Erika Choe, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, and Myssi Robinson) from 11:30 to 5:00 and Project-TAG (Mizuho Kappa) from 5:30 to 8:00 on Friday and Limón Dance Company (Jessica Sgambelluri) from 11:30 to 2:00 and Battery Dance (Durgesh Gangani, Jillian Linkowski, Razvan Stoian, Randall Riley, Sarah Housepian, and Vivake Khamsingsavath) from 2:30 to 8:00 on Saturday.]
Drift exhibit at Pace features self-portraits of founders Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
DRIFT MATERIALISM: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
Pace Gallery
540 West Twenty-Fifth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
November 5 – December 18, free www.pacegallery.com
In an April 2020 online Pace discussion with musician Lee Ranaldo — he was supposed to play live with Ego when it was previously at Pace but it was canceled because of the pandemic — Gordijn said about the lockdown, “One of the beautiful things I found in the last days or weeks, actually, was that I realized that every night at a certain time, a group of crows is flying the same circles as if they’re all waiting for each other. Every day it is around 8:00, before sunset. This sort of connection with a place, where you start to get to know the animals, the plants, and the particularities, that is what I would love to explore more and the relationship that you can have with that.”
It is that kind of worldview that makes Drift’s work so compelling. In conjunction with Drift: Fragile Future, Pace is presenting “Drift Materialism: Past, Present, Future,” which expands on the “Materialism” room at the Shed. Continuing through December 18, the small show features sculptures that resemble Russian Constructivism filtered through children’s blocks. For the large-scale wall hanging 1980 Beetle, Gordijn and Nauta took apart a Volkswagen and put it back together. The resulting blocks represent forty-two materials, reduced to their accumulated mass.
Drift usually deconstructs inanimate objects, but two new works explore the molecular elements of the human body, side-by-side self-portraits of Gordijn and Nauta that are exactly equal. In the back room, the augmented reality Block Universe consists of a plexiglass sun surrounded by planets; the gallery supplies iPads that depict orbiting Drifters and other elements. The title comes from the theory that everything is happening at once, that past, present, and future exist in unison.
“We’re not having relationships with the materials and objects around us anymore,” Nauta explains in a Drift video. “And if you start losing the connection with this, you’re going to be very unhappy, because you lose the wonder in life.”
Next up is Drift’s kinetic sculpture Amplitude, a permanent commission slated to go on view at 45 Rockefeller Plaza, providing yet more wonder.
GNIT
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 21, $20-$125
866-811-4111 www.tfana.org
In Will Eno’s 2014 Broadway play, The Realistic Joneses, Jennifer tells John, “I think you have a nice way with words.” Eno has demonstrated his own “nice way with words” throughout his career; probing language and communication is ingrained in his MO. Such is the case with the New York premiere of his 2013 play, Gnit (pronounced “Guh-nit”), which opened today at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center, in a sparkling version directed by longtime Eno collaborator Oliver Butler.
Gnit is an imaginative, clever adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 five-act verse play, Peer Gynt, which was inspired by a Norwegian fairy tale. The title character, Peter Gnit (Joe Curnutte), is on a search for his “true self,” encountering a series of unusual people who speak with him in offbeat patterns; they converse in non sequiturs, repetition, and abstraction with a deadpan glibness. “Do you know who I am?” he asks a stranger, who answers, “Yes, I do. Actually, let me be more honest, here — no, I don’t. I’m sure you’re someone.” When an outdoorswoman (Christy Escobar) tells him, “You’re just like everyone else,” Peter responds, “Me? No. That’s probably the problem. I’m not enough like everyone else.” A woman in green (Escobar) says to him, “You look like a person.” Peter replies, “Well, I try to be myself. Because, really, that’s just a large part of who I am.”
But he has no idea who he is and no understanding of how to relate to others. Even his name is a question. “‘Gnit?’ I’ve heard about you. I’ve always wondered about that name — where’s it from?” Solvay (Jasmine Batchelor) asks. “It’s a typo,” Peter admits. And his beloved, sickly mother (Deborah Hedwall) explains, “When you begin sentences with the word ‘I,’ I’m not even sure you know who you’re talking about. Because maybe I didn’t hold you enough when you were little.”
The play opens with Peter returning home to discover his childhood sweetheart, Sarah (Escobar), is getting married to a man named Moynihan (Jordan Bellow) that very day. He sneaks into the wedding to try to stop it, where he encounters Town, ingeniously portrayed by David Shih in hysterical monologues in which he plays numerous people gossiping about this and that, drinking, and complaining, switching between characters like a machine gun. Peter also meets Solvay, who he instantly falls in love with even though he is there to run away with the bride. He is soon off on an adventure that will take him around the world, chancing upon a sexy woman on a mountainside (Escobar), a witchy lady (Escobar) and her father (Shih), an international businessman (Shih), an unsympathetic bartender (Batchelor), a cigarette girl selling maps (Escobar), a beggar (Hedwall), a shackled man (Bellow) in a psychiatric clinic, and a disembodied voice that calls itself the Middle.
No matter where he is or what happens to him, he proceeds at an even keel, as if he’s walking through his life without actually fully engaging in it, unconcerned about how he treats anyone and shunning all responsibilities. “Can you tell me what you were born for? Honestly? Because I can’t,” his mother says to him. He responds, “I’m on a journey to discover, to uncover, the authentic self,” but it’s a narcissistic, egotistical solo trip, one on which he chooses to ignore anyone and anything beyond his own immediate needs and desires, never thinking about tomorrow or how his actions might impact others. “It does take a certain temerity to see yourself at the center of it all,” a stranger (Bellow) acknowledges.
Gnit made its world premiere at the Humana Festival in Louisville in March 2013 and has been slightly revised for its New York debut, which was supposed to happen in March 2020 but was put on hold because of the pandemic. Curnutte is superb as Peter, melding the wackiness of Zach Braff with the hotness of David Boreanaz; the audience wants to hate Peter but we just can’t help but root for him no matter how awful he gets. The rest of the cast dazzles, playing more than thirty characters among them, swirling around Curnutte, pulling off seemingly impossible quick changes as they appear, disappear, and reappear in the blink of an eye. (Ásta Bennie Hostetter and Avery Reed designed the costumes, with lighting by Amith Chandrashaker, sound by Lee Kinney, and original music by Tony and Grammy nominee Daniel Kluger.)
Kimie Nishikawa’s lush set recalls Beckett’s Happy Days and Waiting for Godot, a clearly fake landscape with a projection of a lake and mountains in the back, signifying the great world beyond Peter’s home. For the former, Beckett called for an “expanse of scorched grass rising centre to low mound. Gentle slopes down to front and either side of stage . . . Very pompier trompe-l’oeil backcloth to represent unbroken plain and sky receding to meet in far distance.” Also, just as Winnie, in Happy Days, is buried at the top of the mound, Gnit opens with Peter’s mother in bed vertically, the lower half of her body hidden. And in a specific nod to Godot, a solitary tree in Nishikawa’s set changes after intermission. Eno has counted Beckett as one of his inspirations; his dialogue is nothing if not Beckett-esque. In addition, the facades of small houses occasionally lower from the ceiling (don’t miss how a framed image in Peter’s house matches the projection).
The search for identity, how we communicate, and the concept of home, explored with a wry sense of humor and, at times, outright slapstick, have been fundamental in many of Eno’s works, from Wakey, Wakey and The Realistic Joneses to Pulitzer finalist Thom Pain (based on nothing) and Title and Deed. They are even more central in Gnit, in which the telling is just as important as the story.
Obie winner Butler (What The Constitution Means to Me,The Amateurs) knows just where Eno is coming from, guiding the 110-minute show with an unending, endearing charm. At one point, Peter says, “There is a limit to the magic powers of language.” In the skillful hands of Eno and Butler, I would have to disagree.
Naima Mora portrays different versions of herself in The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need (photos by Harris Davey)
Who:Naima Mora What: On-demand livestreamed solo show The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need Where:Vimeo When: Through November 11, $10 Why: In the prologue to her debut solo show, The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need, Naima Mora, wearing jeans and a tight white tank top, holding a pink rose, describes the day in Harlem in 2002 when she realized she needed to turn her unhappy, unsatisfying life around. “I sit alone in my room, on my bed, wondering how I got here, wondering why I’m in this hell of a city, wondering why I’m killing myself to be here, wondering why my hair is falling out, wondering why I partied all night shoveling drugs up my nose, wondering why I’m sabotaging myself,” she says. “And then, I have to cradle myself, be gentle with myself, fall in love with myself, breathe and try to forget the last eight hours, and then forgive myself: forgive myself for being a drunk, for wanting insatiable fun to fill a void and forget the disappointment that I have with myself. And to myself, in my room, on my bed, guilt having settled in, and a little bit of a panic attack, just a little bit, I think to myself, I forgive you. I forgive you for being a fucking mess.”
Had a super successful tech rehearsal today at the Triad Theater!!! Wow what an amazing feeling to be on stage again! This time calling myself an actor and a storyteller. pic.twitter.com/nchGsAvrOU
Mora then admits, “Now, I’ve lived many lives: a supermodel, a crazy woman, and a gold digger, but I still haven’t really lived. So why not tell my story. I need to tell my story. I need to get this shit out of my body and out of my head. I need to rid myself of this self-inflicted destruction.” For the next seventy-five minutes, Mora portrays each of those characters, Penelope the supermodel, who can’t get a runway job anymore; the quirky Joanne, who suffers miscarriages and spends time in a psychiatric hospital; and Marisol Yanette Arnelis Rodriguez Lopes, a ritualistic woman facing too much solitude, offering such life lessons as “Get Your Hands Off My Peach Fuzz” and “Checkmate the Seduction: Train the Eggplant.” The set features a chair, a table, and a couch, a few props, and a screen on which photographs are projected.
An America’s Next Top Model winner, actress, author, and inspirational speaker, Mora who was born in Detroit in 1984, is barely recognizable in the roles, immersing herself fully into them, each with very different costumes, accents, hair, and movement. Directed and cowritten by Brooklyn native Marishka S. Phillips, The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need is a deeply intimate tale that also provides a roadmap for personal introspection; watching Mora deal with her issues so openly is likely to encourage audiences to do the same.
The show was recorded live with an audience at the Triad Theater on October 16 and continues on demand through November 11. Mora bravely puts herself out there as she battles her demons in public; she also traced the development of the play on social media. In a Twitter post, she wrote, “My director is pushing me to my limits this week. Asking me to expand and literally stretch my artistic muscle for our show coming up in just 2 days!!! This has truly been a transformative experience.”
Mia Hansen-Løve is curating an inspirational series at Metrograph (photo by Judicaël Perrin)
MIA HANSEN-LØVE SELECTS
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
November 5-13
212-660-0312 nyc.metrograph.com
“Filmmaking is a perpetual questioning of existence. What is beauty? Why am I living? And I need that, I think, perhaps because of being the daughter of two philosophy teachers,” French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve told the Guardian in 2016. A critics darling and regular award winner for her intimate tales of family drama and romantic love (Goodbye First Love,The Father of My Children,Things to Come), often with semiautobiographical elements involving her DJ brother, her philosophy professor parents, and her long relationship with former husband Olivier Assayas, she is ready to make a big jump with her latest film and first in English, Bergman Island, in which a pair of filmmakers (Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth) seek inspiration on Fårö Island, where Ingmar Bergman lived and made some of his finest films.
In conjunction with the film’s release, she is curating a program at Metrograph, “Mia Hansen-Løve Selects,” running November 5-13, consisting of six films that had an impact on her, in addition to her debut. Earlier this year, for a similar series at BAMPFA in California, she chose Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumière, Gérard Blain’s The Pelican, Bo Widerberg’s Adalen 31, and Éric Rohmer’s Summer. Her Metrograph lineup is similarly diverse: Bergman actor Victor Sjöström’s 1928 silent classic, The Wind; indie favorite Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, in which Michelle Williams portrays a homeless woman on the move with her dog; Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter, about a single mother searching for companionship; Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur, a unique take on happiness; Edward Yang’s epic four-hour A Brighter Summer Day, about teen angst in Taiwan; and Hou’s dizzying, swirling Millennium Mambo, starring a resplendent performance by Shu Qi. The series is anchored by Hansen-Løve’s 2007 debut feature, All Is Forgiven, being shown November 5-18 (and available on demand), about a family in crisis because of drug addiction. Below are select reviews.
Letty Mason (Lillian Gish) is being driven crazy by internal and external sources in The Wind
THE WIND (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
Metrograph
Friday, November 5, and Sunday, November 7, noon nyc.metrograph.com
Victor Sjöström’s 1928 now-classic silent film The Wind stars Lillian Gish as Letty Mason, a young woman moving from Virginia to Texas to live with her cousin Beverly (Edward Earle). Traveling from the cultured, civilized East to what was still the wild West, the uncertain Letty must confront the fierceness of nature head-on — both human nature and the harsh natural environment. On the train, she is wooed by cattleman Wirt Roddy (Montagu Love), but her fears grow as she first sees the vicious wind howling outside the train window the closer she gets to her destination. Once in Sweetwater, she is picked up by her cousin’s neighbors, the handsome Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson) and his goofy sidekick, Sourdough (William Orlamond). Both men take a quick liking to Letty, who seems most attracted to Wirt. Soon Beverly’s wife, Cora (Dorothy Cumming, in her next-to-last film before retiring), becomes jealous of Letty’s closeness with her husband and kids and kicks her out, leaving a desperate Letty to make choices she might not be ready for as the wind outside becomes fiercer and ever-more dangerous.
Letty Mason (Lillian Gish) and Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson) have some tough decisions to make in Victor Sjöström’s silent classic
The Wind is a tour de force for Gish in her last silent movie, not only because of her emotionally gripping portrayal of Letty, but because she put the entire production together, obtaining the rights to the novel by Dorothy Scarborough, hiring the Swedish director and star Hanson, and arguing over the ending with the producers and Irving Thalberg. (Unfortunately, she lost on that account, just about the only thing that did not go the way she wanted.)
Sjöström (The Phantom Carriage, The Divine Woman), who played Professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and cinematographer John Arnold create some dazzling effects as a twister threatens and Letty battles both inside and outside; she is regularly shot from the side, at the door of the shack where she lives, not knowing if she’d be safer inside or outside as the wind and sand blast over her. The film, an early look at climate change, was shot in the Mojave Desert in difficult circumstances; to get the wind to swirl, the crew used propellers from eight airplanes. Dialogue is sparse, and the story is told primarily in taut visuals.
François (Jean-Claude Drouot) tries to convince Thérèse (Claire Drouot, his real-life wife), that he has plenty of happiness to spread around in Le Bonheur
LE BONHEUR (HAPPINESS) (Agnès Varda, 1965)
Metrograph
Friday, November 5, and Monday, November 8, 6:45 nyc.metrograph.com
In 1965, French Nouvelle Vague auteur Agnès Varda said about her third film, Le Bonheur, which translates as Happiness: “Happiness is mistaken sadness, and the film will be subversive in its great sweetness. It will be a beautiful summer fruit with a worm inside. Happiness adds up; torment does too.” That is all true more than fifty years later, as the film still invites divided reaction from critics. “Miss Varda’s dissection of amour, as French as any of Collette’s works, is strikingly adult and unembarrassed in its depiction of the variety of love, but it is as illogical as a child’s dream,” A. H. Weiler wrote in the New York Times in May 1966. “Her ‘Happiness,’ a seeming idyll sheathed in irony, is obvious and tender, irresponsible and shocking and continuously provocative.” All these decades later, the brief eighty-minute film is all that and more, save for the claim that it is illogical. In a patriarchal society, it actually makes perfect, though infuriating, sense.
François and Émilie (Marie-France Boyer) seek out their own happiness in Nouvelle Vague classic
French television star Jean-Claude Drouot (Thierry La Fronde) stars as the handsome François, who is leading an idyllic life with his beautiful wife, Thérèse (Claire Drouot), and their delightful kids, Pierrot (Olivier Drouot) and Gisou (Sandrine Drouot), in the small, tight-knit Parisian suburb of Fontenay. While away on a job, François meets the beautiful Émilie (Marie-France Boyer), a postal clerk who connects him to his wife via long-distance telephone, flirting with him although she knows he is happily married. And despite being happily married, François returns the flirtation, offering to help with her shelves when she moves into an apartment in Fontenay. Both François and Émilie believe that there is more than enough happiness to go around for everyone, without any complications. “Be happy too, don’t worry,” Émilie tells him. “I’m free, happy, and you’re not the first,” to which he soon adds, “Such happiness!” And it turns out that even tragedy won’t put a stop to the happiness, in a plot point that angered, disappointed, confused, and upset many critics as well as the audience but is key to Varda’s modern-day fairy tale.
The beauty of nature plays a key role in Le Bonheur
Le Bonheur is Varda’s first film in color, and she seems to have been heavily influenced by her husband, Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), bathing the film in stunning hues that mimic Impressionist paintings, particularly the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in a series of picnics and flower-filled vases. In a sly nod, at one point a black-and-white television is playing the 1959 film Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe (“Picnic on the Grass”), which was directed by Jean Renoir, one of Auguste’s sons, and also deals with sex, passion, procreation, and nature. Le Bonheur also features numerous scenes that dissolve out in singular blocks of color that take over the entire screen. Cinematographers Claude Beausoleil and Jean Rabier shoot the film as if it takes place in a candy-colored Garden of Eden, all set to the music of Mozart, performed by Jean-Michel Defaye. Varda doesn’t allow any detail to get away from her; even the protagonists’ jobs are critical to the story: François is a carpenter who helps builds new lives for people; Thérèse is a seamstress who is in the midst of making a wedding gown; and Émilie works in the post office, an intermediary for keeping people together. As a final touch, François, who represents aspects of France as a nation under Charles de Gaulle, and his family are played by the actual Drouot clan: Jean-Claude and Claire are married in real life (and still are husband and wife after more than fifty years), and Olivier and Sandrine are their actual children, so Le Bonheur ends up being a family affair in more ways than one.
