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THE GARDEN

Caroline Stefanie Clay and Charlayne Woodard play a mother and daughter reconnecting in The Garden (photo by J Fannon)

THE GARDEN
Baltimore Center Stage
Through July 18, $15-$40
www.centerstage.org

This past April, Manhattan Theatre Club presented a virtual version of Charlayne Woodard’s solo play Neat as part of its Curtain Call series; the autobiographical work, written and performed by Woodard, had debuted on MTC’s stage in 1997. Recorded from her home for the online version, Neat tells the story of Woodard’s coming-of-age in Albany in the 1970s, when she was a teenager and her disabled aunt, Neat, came to live with her family. Woodard has also delved into her past and present in Flight, In Real Life, and Pretty Fire, while The Night Watcher was based on actual slave narratives.

Woodard returns to the stage in The Garden, a La Jolla Playhouse commission filmed live at Baltimore Center Stage and streaming through July 18. Woodard stars as Cassandra, a middle-aged woman who is visiting her mother, Claire Rose (Caroline Stefanie Clay), for the first time in three years. They are so estranged that Cassandra uses her mother’s given name, refusing to call her “mother” or any other similar appellation. Sneaking up on her as the play starts, Cassandra says, “Claire Rose, Claire Rose, Claire Rose, Claire Rose! I’m sorry! Oh my God! I didn’t mean to frighten you! I’m sorry! Please? It’s just me. Claire Rose, Claire Rose, please!!!” Her mother replies, “I was beginning to think I might never see you again.”

Over the course of seventy-five minutes, mother and daughter bring up past wrongs, explore what tore them apart, and reveal deeply emotional secrets that might bring them back together. The show takes place in a large garden created by Tony-winning set designer Rachel Hauck, featuring pinkeye purple hull peas, crookneck squash, Swiss chard, mustard greens, and turnip greens in numerous floor boxes and a small greenhouse. Claire Rose might live by herself, but she does not consider herself lonely. Answering her phone, Claire Rose says to the person on the other end of the line, “I am not at all alone. I’m in my garden.” Later, she tells Cassandra, “All I can say is this particular morning, I need the peace my garden brings me.”

The garden is an apt metaphor for the lives Claire Rose and Cassandra are living and the concepts of “home” and being “uprooted,” representing elements they personally chose to grow as well as those that were forced upon them, out of their control, especially when it comes to race. “This day . . . I believe this day is different from all the rest,” Cassandra says. Claire Rose responds, “Different from all the rest. . . . I don’t know. But I turned on CNN, the BBC. I turned on Fox News, only to find out things are far worse today than they were yesterday! My big question is why are we going backwards in this country. Pretty soon Black folk will be back at the voting booth, guessing how many jelly beans are in the jar —” Cassandra cuts her off, declaring, “— Very true. These are frightening times. But I didn’t come three thousand miles to discuss . . . voter suppression. I suggest you stay away from the twenty-four-hour news cycle, anyway—” This time Claire Rose cuts her daughter off, proclaiming, “—Oh, no. We can’t afford to live in a bubble. They are coming for us, Cassandra! It’s time to be vigilant. You don’t want to find yourself living like Negroes had to live back in the ’40s and ’50s. This country was a misery back then. . . . Oh, yes. Good ole’ racism. It is and always has been alive and kicking.”

Charlayne Woodard wrote and stars in Baltimore Center Stage streaming production of The Garden (photo by J Fannon)

Claire Rose and Cassandra each share horrifying, tragic stories from their past, which get to the heart of their fractured relationship, in need of serious tending. Cassandra is defiant in explaining that she felt her mother cared more for the garden than for her children, imploring, “Claire Rose . . . you are so generous, so nurturing every step of the way with this garden. April to October. Whether there’s too much rain or freezing temperatures. This garden never gets on your nerves. Me, Rachel, Isaiah, even Pop-Pop — we’ve all been competing with this garden. I have always done the best I could to be a good daughter. But you left me out of it. My shrink says —” An adamant Claire Rose defends herself: “This garden is between me and my God. Competing with my garden? That’s as silly as me competing with your career. Who does that? If you choose to be jealous of some beets and some eggplant and my heirloom tomatoes, maybe that’s a topic to bring up with your shrink.” It all leads to a haunting, unforgettable finale.

Filmed by David Lee Roberts Jr. with camera operators Darius Moore and Taja Copeland, The Garden is directed with a compelling green thumb by Patricia McGregor (Hamlet, Hurt Village), who allows the actors, who occasionally break the fourth wall, time and room to grow as the narrative unfolds. Two-time Obie winner and Tony nominee Woodard (Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy,” Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine) and Clay (Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, Adrienne Kennedy’s Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side) cultivate a potent and powerful chemistry as a daughter and mother who have never quite understood each other but are more alike than they realize.

It’s a gripping story that blossoms at just the right moment in time, tackling issues of loss and isolation as we emerge from the pandemic lockdown and family and friends meet up in person for the first time in more than a year in a country dangerously polarized by social injustice, police brutality, and health and economic crises that disproportionately affect people of color. In her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker wrote, “Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength — in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” Those words ring as true as ever in 2021, embodied in Woodard’s moving, heartrending play.

OPEN AIR: LONI LANDON AND MARY LATTIMORE AT GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY

Mary Lattimore and Loni Landon team up for site-specific performance in Green-Wood Cemetery

OPEN AIR
Green-Wood Cemetery
Fifth Ave. and 25th St., Brooklyn
Wednesday, July 14, and Thursday, July 15, $25, 7:00
www.green-wood.com
www.fourfourpresents.com

Developed during the pandemic, the curatorial platform four/four presents continues its monthly site-specific “Open Air” performance series with a new piece about mourning, healing, rebirth, and renewal, taking place July 14-15 in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Founded by dancer and choreographer Loni Landon and producer Rachael Pazdan, four/four has brought us “Tethered,” a ten-part multidisciplinary video project featuring collaborations with Kassa Overall, slowdanger, Gus Solomons, Zoey Anderson, Rafiq Bhatia, Ian Chang, Jacqueline Green, Jon Batiste, Lloyd Knight, and many others, which can be watched here.

For Green-Wood, Landon has choreographed a work for seven dancers, with live music by experimental harpist Mary Lattimore, performed in Cedar Dell, the one-acre bowl-shaped natural amphitheater with graves dating back to the eighteenth century. The evening will conclude with a participatory meditative sound bath. “Open Air” began June 9 with Madison McFerrin, Samantha Figgins, and Jessica Pinkett teaming up at the Jackie Robinson Park Bandshell; up next are Melanie Charles and Kayla Farrish at the Bushwick Playground Basketball Court on August 8, followed by Moor Mother and Rena Butler at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 on September 21.

PTP/NYC: LUNCH / STANDING ON THE EDGE OF TIME / A SMALL HANDFUL

PTP/NYC’s tasty virtual free Lunch continues through July 13

Who: PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)
What: Virtual summer season
Where: PTP/NYC YouTube
When: July 9-13 (Lunch), July 23-27 (Standing on the Edge of Time), August 13-17 (A Small Handful), free with advance RSVP (donations accepted)
Why: Every summer, I look forward to seeing what unique plays Potomac Theatre Project, aka PTP/NYC, brings to the city. Founded in 1987 by co-artistic directors Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa at Middlebury College, the organization presents old and new works by such playwrights as Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter, Snoo Wilson, Tom Stoppard, C. P. Taylor, and, primarily, Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker. The company’s 2020 season ran online in the fall, with Churchill’s Far Away, Dan O’Brien’s The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, and Barker’s A Political Statement in the Form of Hysteria. The 2021 season is virtual as well, opening July 9-13 with a splendid production of Steven Berkoff’s Lunch.

“What do you want?” pushy salesman Tom (Bill Army) asks Mary (Jackie Sanders). “Nothing,” she replies. The two are sitting on the edge of a moving sea, their backs to the ocean as dark clouds emerge behind them. Refusing to give up, he later asks, “Don’t you ever want something else?” She responds again, “Nothing.” She tries to leave several times, but he insists she stay.

During the forty-minute absurdist play, the two strangers wonder about a romantic rendezvous as they defend their lives and the choices they’ve made while attacking the other’s, at times hitting hard and deep, although not much seems to stick. She calls him a “salesman of nothing, a canine groper . . . a dirty little man,” while he tells her, “Crawling words creep out like spiders from your ancient gob.” Occasionally they speak directly to the viewer, considering their situation, not sure what they should do next. It might not be love at first sight for both of them, but neither can they simply get up and walk away, allowing us to eavesdrop on their unusual conversation, with unique language that the closed captioning often has no idea how to transcribe.

“You sound like high-pressure hissing from cracked pipes,” Mary says as he waxes poetic about his job. “I’m no pressure,” he replies. “I dissolve into fat and slide under the door, staining the concrete stairs on the way down — those thousands of white — dirty — grey concrete stairs that have gnawed my feet away — choked on the dust — white dust that concrete secretes — salesman’s disease — bang-bang, up the stairs and then slither down in a visceral pool of grease dragging nerve endings, plasma, and intestines . . . re-form on the pavement — plunge the eyes back in — the shirt has dissolved into my flesh — become an outer skin . . . recoup in the ABC — salesman’s filling station — pump in the hot brown bird vomit — and the others are just sludging in, their faces slapped puce with rejection, the waitress, sliding around the dead pool of grease, slithers her knotted varicosity towards me and for a treat smashes some aerated bread down my throat which dissolves into dust, white dust that concrete secretes, atrophying delicate nasal membranes . . .” She asks, “Don’t you like your work?” He answers, “Love it! Every moment, every earth-shattering cosmological moment of it.”

Directed by Romagnoli, the prerecorded play was filmed with the actors in different locations, but Courtney Smith’s production design, lighting, and cinematography attempt to make it appear like they are in the same space. Army (The Band’s Visit, Scenes from an Execution) and Sanders (The Taming of the Shrew, Cowgirls) are lovely together — er, well, apart — in a work that premiered at the King’s Head in London in 1983, with Linda Marlowe and Ian Hastings starring. Berkoff, who has played villains in such films as Beverly Hills Cop, Octopussy, and Rambo: First Blood Part II, has also written and directed such plays as East, West, Decadence, Kvetch, Actor, and Massage, many of which he appeared in as well. Lunch, which runs about as long as it takes to eat lunch, is a tasty treat, a delicious morsel about two very different people who come together by chance and reevaluate their lives as they reaffirm their identities.

PTP/NYC’s free 34.5 season continues July 23-27 with the ninety-minute Standing on the Edge of Time, consisting of short works by David Auburn, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, Mac Wellman, Steven Dykes and others, directed by Faraone and featuring such company vets as Alex Draper, Tara Giordano, Stephanie Janssen, Christopher Marshall, and Aubrey Dube, followed August 13-17 with A Small Handful, a filmed thirty-minute piece directed and conceived by Petosa that uses text by Anne Sexton and songs by composer Gilda Lyons, spoken by Paula Langton and sung by Kayleigh Riess.

LUCKY STAR (0.3)

Pioneers Go East Collective’s Lucky Star (0.3) takes place at Judson Memorial Church July 13-30

LUCKY STAR (0.3)
Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South between Thompson & Sullivan Sts.
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, July 13-30, free with RSVP, 8:00
www.judson.org
pioneersgoeast.org

Pioneers Go East Collective honors the history of DIY queer artmaking at such famed New York City venues as La MaMa, Judson Memorial Church, and the Pyramid Club in Lucky Star (0.3), a free multidisciplinary performance installation taking place Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 8:00 at Judson from July 13 to 30. Inspired by Club 57, which was recently highlighted in the documentary Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide, the in-person work consists of five episodes featuring dance/performance artists Shaina and Bryan Baira, Bree Breeden, Daniel Diaz, Beth Graczyk, and Joey Kipp and nightlife icon Agosto Machado. Lucky Star (0.3) was written by creative director Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte and production designer Philip Treviño, with choreography by Ori Flomin, film by Jon Burklund and video designer Kathleen Kelley, set design and fabrication by Mark Tambella, and sound by Marielle Iljazoski and Ryan William Downey.

“Lucky Star was born by a desire to make art in a new time,” the collective said in a statement. “We pay homage to creators and legends whose trailblazing work has solidified ways for us to survive as artists reimagining our approach to sharing our work in the age of social media and instant gratification. We term the project a meta-creative journey inviting viewers to engage in an emergent process of collective liberation.” Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem “Pioneers, O Pioneers!” (“O you youths, Western youths, / So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, / Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, / Pioneers! O pioneers!”), Pioneers Go East Collective was founded in 2010 to “empower a collective of thought-provoking, adventurous, and proud LGBTQ artists . . . dedicated to Latinx, BIPOC, and immigrant artists and teaching artists and their communities in all five boroughs, [exploring] stories of vulnerability and courage for social change.” Admission to Lucky Star (0.3) is free with advance RSVP.

SOCIAL DISTANCE HALL: ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

Ann Dowd is mesmerizing in one-woman Enemy of the People at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
June 22 – July 9 (canceled)
www.armoryonpark.org

Water, water everywhere: It was an odd coincidence that on City of Water Day, July 10, when the Waterfront Alliance hosts special events to raise awareness about water and the environment, Park Avenue Armory announced the cancellation of its widely praised extended run of Robert Icke’s superb reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People — which deals with poisoned water. The ninety-minute one-woman show, scheduled to continue through August 8, was forced to halt because star Ann Dowd had to “address a pressing family matter.” In another odd coincidence, on City of Water Day, I was watching NYClassical’s adaptation of King Lear with Nahum Tate’s 1681 “happy ending” when a sudden, unexpected storm hit the shores of Manhattan and forced us to scurry home, missing the positive conclusion. (Dark clouds became visible on the horizon just as the storm scene began.)

Ibsen’s play about the conflict between public good and private conscience famously centers on water. Icke’s adaptation updates it to the modern-day fictional community of Weston Springs, which advertises, “Come for Mother Nature’s therapy; stay afterwards for some retail therapy. Weston Springs, renowned the world over as a wonder in a mountain paradise. Quench your thirst.” The action opens as Dr. Joan Stockman has discovered that there’s a dangerous amount of lead in the water, which people both bathe in and drink. She wants her brother, Peter, the mayor, to close the spa immediately and authorize an expensive, multiyear reconstruction, which Peter argues would devastate the town’s economic stability. Dr. Stockman takes her case to the people and the local newspaper, resulting in tense discussions and arguments about the role of government, free speech, and the value of human life itself.

Enemy of the People is beautifully staged by Icke on Hildegard Bechtler’s awe-inspiring set, consisting of long wooden walkways that Dowd traverses, stopping at certain points and delivering her monologues; the audience listens through headphones, although when the actress was closer to me, I took them off to hear her natural timbre. (The sound design is by Mikaal Sulaiman.) Dowd serves as omniscient narrator and voices such characters as Joan and Peter; Joan’s husband, Jeffrey Cooper; immigrant housekeeper Vidya; Artie Goldman, editor of the Weston Eagle; his deputy editor, Robin; Dr. Mona at the Weston Medical Centre; Lily, the mayor’s press secretary; and various other members of the community. In the middle of the set is a circular spinning table on which Dowd places miniature white buildings, calling to mind both a globe and the Wheel of Fortune. Cameras also follow Dowd, who can be seen on two large screens at opposite ends of the space; when she is portraying a conversation between two characters, two shots of her are visible, the camera cutting back and forth between them. (The projections and video are by Tal Yarden, with lighting by Natasha Chivers.)

Ann Dowd plays multiple characters in interactive Enemy of the People at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Enemy of the People could only happen at the armory, in its massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, which has recently been home to Steven Hoggett, Christine Jones, and David Byrne’s SOCIAL! the social distance dance club, Laurie Anderson and Jason Moran’s Party in the Bardo, and Bill T. Jones’s Afterwardsness as the pandemic lockdown lifts. The limited audience, all of whom must be vaccinated, is seated in pods of two to five at socially distanced rectangular tables that are equipped with a small desktop monitor that plays a commercial, mimics the internet, and presents questions for each group to answer by pressing one of two buttons; the results affect which direction the narrative follows, so each show is different. (It also accounts for why there are Teleprompters on the floor scrolling the dialogue for Dowd to scan, since there are several possible variations that would be nearly impossible to memorize.)

The tables are situated on a giant map of Weston Springs, as if each pod is a house on a particular street. The audience is given sixty seconds to discuss each question among themselves and arrive at one answer; the queries range from the relatively innocuous choice between coffee or tea to the more serious decision whether to go public with Joan’s findings or proceed carefully to minimize panic.

Emmy winner Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale, Night Is a Room) is hypnotic, evoking a kind of easygoing Our Town demeanor with occasional blasts of emotion as characters get angry. I got mad at myself whenever I started watching her onscreen, preferring to experience her in reality. Icke, who has previously put his imprimatur on Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and A Doll’s House, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Ivanov, Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Orwell’s 1984 on Broadway, has done a sublime job of translating a nineteenth-century story into the present, evoking not only the water crisis in Flint but how Americans talk to one another today, with partisan politics leading to fights over nearly every aspect of contemporary life and the very act of voting itself. It’s a sad tale, one that doesn’t appear to have any easy answers. It’s also sad that the show had to be canceled; whatever Dowd’s personal situation is, we wish her the best.

TICKET ALERT: YOU ARE HERE

You Are Here takes place across the Lincoln Center campus July 14-30 (photo by Justin Chao)

YOU ARE HERE
The Isabel and Peter Malkin Stage, Josie Robertson Plaza, Hearst Plaza, Paul Milstein Pool and Terrace, Lincoln Center campus
Installation: July 14-23, free
Live performances: July 24-30, free two weeks in advance through TodayTix lottery, 7:00
www.lincolncenter.org

Lincoln Center continues its free Restart Stages program with You Are Here, a multidisciplinary audio and performance installation on Josie Robertson Plaza and Hearst Plaza. From July 13 to 23, the work, conceived by Andrea Miller, the founder and artistic director of the Brooklyn-based Gallim dance company, will be open to the public, who can make their way through a series of sculptures featuring audio portraits of twenty-five New Yorkers affiliated with Lincoln Center and its arts and education community partners. Sharing their experiences over the last sixteen months is a diverse group of individuals, including Bruce Adolphe of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Kiri Avelar of Ballet Hispánico, Anthony Roth Costanzo of the Metropolitan Opera, Alphonso Horne of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Egyptt LaBeija of BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Cassie Mey of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Muriel Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater, Hahn Dae Soo of Korean Cultural Center New York, Taylor Stanley of the New York City Ballet, Gabriela Torres of Juilliard, and Valarie Wong of NewYork-Presbyterian. Other participants are Dietrice Bolden, Jessica Chen, Ryan Dobrin, Jermaine Greaves, Milosz Grzywacz, Lila Lomax, Ryan Opalanietet, Elijah Schreiner, Alexandra Siladi, Paul Smithyman, Jen Suragiat, KJ Takahashi, Fatou Thiam, and Susan Thomasson of Lincoln Center Security, Film at Lincoln Center, the Asian American Arts Alliance, the School of American Ballet, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, and other institutions and organizations. The sound sculptures are by Tony-winning scenic designer Mimi Lien, spread across an aural garden created by composer Justin Hicks; costumes are by Oana Botezan, with choreography by Miller and direction by Miller and Lynsey Peisinger.

From July 24 to 30 at 7:00, the audio portraits will be replaced by live performances in and around the Paul Milstein Pool and Terrace that are free through a TodayTix lottery available two weeks in advance; activating the space will be Gallim dancers Lauryn Hayes, Christopher Kinsey, Nouhoum Koita, Misa Lucyshyn, Gary Reagan, Connor Speetjens, Taylor Stanley, Haley Sung, Georgia Usborne, and Amadi Washington. (The audio sculptures will be open to ticket holders at 6:00.) In addition, on July 22 at 6:00, Miller will host the latest edition of the virtual Gallim Happy Hour, a livestreamed discussion with Stanley and Mey about You Are Here, taking place over Zoom and Facebook Live.

SLOPPY BONNIE: A ROADKILL MUSICAL (FOR THE MODERN CHICK!)

Jesus (James Rudolph II) and Bonnie (Amanda Disney) go for a drive in Sloppy Bonnie

SLOPPY BONNIE
No Puppet Co
Through July 15, $10
www.sloppybonnie.com

John Waters’s Serial Mom meets The Dukes of Hazzard in No Puppet Co.’s campy, devilishly sly Sloppy Bonnie: A Roadkill Musical (for the Modern Chick!), streaming through July 15. Yes, it can get overly silly and repetitive and feels stretched out at ninety minutes, but it’s also tons of fun. Filmed in front of a live audience on an outdoor stage at OZ Arts in Nashville in June, Sloppy Bonnie has been enhanced for online viewing with all-out-goofy cartoonish animation, from abstract shapes and handwritten text to such scenic elements as trees, chairs, doors, buildings, signs, animals, and car parts, as if someone was having a blast playing around with various Instagram stickers. (The illumination and design is by Phillip Frank.)

Amanda Disney stars as the title character, a southern gal in a denim skirt and checkered gingham shirt who is on the road in her 1972 pink Chevy Nova to see her fiancé, Jedidiah, a youth pastor in training at Camp New Life Bay on Shotgun Mountain. Her story is being told by Chauncy (Curtis Reed) and Dr. Rob (James Rudolph II), the hosts of Cosmic Country Radio. “Your Morning Moral this morning is the moral of the American Woman,” Dr. Rob announces. This American woman, a special ed teacher in Sulfur Springs, is hell-bent on getting what she wants, willing to use her feminine wiles as she travels through the south, meeting up with numerous dudes, some of whom, for one reason or another, end up dead. (All the minor characters are played by either Reed or Rudolph II.)

Among those Bonnie encounters are Chris and Bryan, who want to do more than just help fix her car when it breaks down; Trucker Joe, from whom she wrangles a ride; her friend Sissy; her estranged momma; high school choir leader Sondra and her bestie, Missy; Dandy the Lonesome Rodeo Clown; and Jesus. Each set piece features a song, with such titles as “You Might Call Me Basic,” “My Way or Bust,” “McNugget of Your Love,” and, perhaps most important, “Let’s Address the Nativity Chicken,” with the score paying tribute to Hank Williams, Kid Rock, Johnny Cash, and Charlie Daniels along the way.

Virtual edition of Sloppy Bonnie features fun visual tricks

“We set out on our journey / While the dew’s still on the grass,” Jesus and Bonnie sing in the duet “Jesus Riding Shotgun.” Jesus: “Bonnie tells her whole life story / Over half a tank of gas.” Bonnie: “Jesus reads aloud the names of all the little towns we pass / With his hand hung out his window / Lettin’ air blow through his nail hole.” As she gets closer to Jedidiah, leaving behind a trail of blood, she doesn’t necessarily come to some hard realizations about faith, family, and free will. She’s also searching to find out why she was cast as a chicken in the Nativity Manger Parade. “What exactly did a chicken have to do with sweet baby Jesus?” she asks. “I suppose there could always have been one in the barn where they had to sleep. But then why would the chicken be parading in with the wise men? Does chicken travel well? Why was there a nativity chicken? Why am I here, Mamma?” (The choreography and chicken movement is by Gabrielle Saliba.)

Directed by Leah Lowe and written by playwright Krista Knight and composer Barry Brinegar of No Puppet Co., who last summer presented the six-part virtual puppet play Crush, made in Knight and Brinegar’s home studio in the East Village, Sloppy Bonnie can, um, get a bit sloppy and the dialogue and lyrics are not exactly razor-sharp, but its DIY sensibility, the carnivalesque music, and the joy expressed every second by Disney, Reed, and Rudolph II are infectious. The show does comment on misogyny, sexism, marriage, motherhood, and feminine toxicity — 3D oval eggs appear often onscreen — so don’t let the message get lost in all the mayhem. And you get it all for a mere ten bucks.