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FLYING FREE: SEAGULL: TRUE STORY AT LA MAMA

Alexander Molochnikov’s Seagull: True Story keeps flapping its wings at La MaMa through June 1 (photo by Frederick Charles)

SEAGULL: TRUE STORY
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
The Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Wednesday – Sunday through June 1, $40-$45
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org

In Anton Chekhov’s 1896 tragicomedy The Seagull, wannabe playwright and director Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev says, “It’s not about old or new forms, but about the fact that what a person writes, not thinking about forms at all, they write because it flies freely from their soul!” The line is at the center of the world premiere of Alexander “Sasha” Molochnikov’s Seagull: True Story, continuing at La MaMa through June 1.

In 2022, Molochnikov was a successful Russian director who had staged works at the Moscow Art Theater and won the prestigious Golden Mask award for his production of The Seagull at the Bolshoi. He was starting to make a film when Russia started bombing Ukraine; he soon spoke out against the attack. He then found himself a target of Vladimir Putin’s administration and departed for America with not much more than the clothes on his back.

“The pressure on artists, comedians, and especially directors has been ruthless in Russia. As a result, a dozen or so of the most celebrated theater directors working in Moscow before the war have left the country,” he wrote in Rolling Stone in November 2022. “Now any performance has to be careful so as not to offend the Kremlin’s feelings. Those who were not ready to cave in and play that game chose to give up their opportunities, resources, stages, and salaries and run. They escaped Russia to foreign countries, counting only on their own talents and starting over from scratch. My case was the latest in a chain of attacks on the arts and free speech in Russia. . . . There is only one reason so many artists have left: It’s unsafe and dangerous to express a negative opinion of what Russian authorities call ‘a special operation’ and what the world calls an invasion.”

In Seagull: True Story, Molochnikov and writer Eli Rarey adapt Sasha’s real tale into a kind of theatrical fantasy rooted in Chekhov’s play, complete with a play-within-a-play, a love triangle, a complicated mother-son relationship, a gun, and discussions of form and freedom. Andrey Burkovskiy serves as the emcee for the evening, addressing the crowd directly while also playing several other key roles.

It’s February 2022, and young director Kon (Eric Tabach) is leading the rehearsal for his wildly inventive adaptation of The Seagull at the prestigious Moscow Art Theater, which was founded by Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1898. The MC succinctly sums up Chekhov’s plot: “Basically nothing happens. Treplev is a director in love with Nina, an actress. His mom is an actress too. Nina is in love with someone else. She leaves, Treplev is sad, she comes back, Treplev is even more sad. His mom is a bitch. He shoots himself. That’s it.”

Kon’s mother, Olga (Zuzanna Szadkowski), is a famous Russian actress who is playing Arkadina. Ivan (Quentin Lee Moore) is Treplev, her hapless son who is in love with Nina, portrayed by Nico (Stella Baker). Poet and playwright Anton (Elan Zafir) is the dramaturg, while Yuri (Burkovskiy), the theater manager, keeps a close eye on everything. Alexander Shishkin’s set features two dressing tables on either side of the stage, in front of the red curtain, and a deep open space behind it where the rehearsals are held; many of the props involve creative uses of plastic, from flags to ocean waves to bedspreads.

In a rare compliment, Olga tells Kon, “If Chekhov were here today, he would be happy to see that his play lives on in your hands.”

However, once Russia starts bombing Ukraine, the actors start fighting — Ivan, defending the Kremlin, gets into it with Masha and Dmitri, who support Ukraine — and Yuri explains that the show can go on only if he agrees to make certain cuts, including the essential freedom dance, and signs a loyalty oath. But when Kon makes a private anti-Putin video that goes viral, he has to consider getting out of the country immediately, leaving his mother and his good friend Anton behind.

In the second act, Kon arrives virtually penniless in New York, with nowhere to live. He meets aspiring actress Nico (Stella Baker) on the subway and asks his mother’s old friend Barry (Burkovskiy), a producer, for help bringing his adaptation of The Seagull to the city.

“A love story! Just like in The Seagull. Incredible coincidence,” the MC declares. “Everything is going to be fantastic for Kon in America! . . . Right?”

Not necessarily.

Vladimir Putin (Andrey Burkovskiy) trots into Kon’s (Eric Tabach) nightmare in Seagull: True Story (photo by Frederick Charles)

A coproduction of Sofia Kapkov’s MART Foundation and Anne Hamburger’s En Garde Arts, Seagull: True Story is one of a number of recent shows from companies led by Russian or Ukrainian refugees, including Igor Golyak and Arlekin Players Theatre’s The Merchant of Venice and Our Class, Dmitry Krymov and Krimov Lab NYC’s Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” and Big Trip, and director Eduard Tolokonnikov and producer Polina Belkina’s encore engagement of Aleksandr Volodin’s Five Evenings.

The works bring an exhilarating aesthetic to independent New York City theater; Golyak and Krymov have brilliantly wild and unpredictable methods of storytelling where almost anything can happen, incorporating lunatic props and unique interactive elements. There’s a palpable sense of excitement to these productions in New York these days: Among the opening-night audience members ready for anything were Golyak, Krymov, American actor Gus Birney, Belgian actor and producer Ronald Guttman, and the Latvian-born Mikhail Baryshnikov, who defected from Russia to Canada in 1974 and became a US citizen in 1986.

The exuberant cast of Seagull: True Story sing, dance, and march while switching between the play and the play-within-the-play. Certain lines of dialogue are accompanied by winks and nods as they relate just as much to what is happening in the United States under the current administration as to the events occurring in Russia and Ukraine. The first act is sensational, a fast and furious celebration of the power of theater even under the most stressful and dangerous situations. The second act is decidedly slower and more didactic, with repetitive subplots as the focus narrows; it could use a bit more shaping.

(As a side note, I was also hoping to find out how to properly pronounce Moscow — is it Mos-cow like the animal or Mos-koh? I’ve always gone with the latter, since I once read that Walter Cronkite declared, “There is no cow in Moscow” — but different actors say it different ways, without any rhyme or reason that I could make out.)

At the beginning of the show, the MC says the word “fantastic” ten times, praising himself, the audience, and the play. He announces, “Don’t panic, you will be arrested only at the end of the show. No, no, I’m joking. Am I? Of course not. Everything is fantastic. Everyone is safe here.” Burkovskiy is fantastic in his multiple roles, his tongue firmly in his cheek as he offers his own spin on the MC from Cabaret. Zafir poignantly portrays the friendly and likable Anton, Baker excels as the ambitious and sexy Nico, and Tabach ably stands in for Molochnikov as he faces a frightening reality and has to start all over again.

“The world loves Russian theater. It has survived under Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev. It will outlive Putin, too,” Molochnikov concludes in his Rolling Stone essay. “But the life we had before the war is over. Russian theater is universal. The pain in the works of Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy are understood and appreciated all over the world. I will work on my dramas, operas, and ballets abroad. ‘We will work,’ as Sonya says in Uncle Vanya. We will ‘look for new forms,’ as Treplev says in The Seagull. The theater will live on.”

Russia’s loss is New York City’s gain.

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

PAYING OFF DEBTS: JEN SILVERMAN REINVENTS STRINDBERG’S CREDITORS

Gustav (Liev Schreiber) is a master manipulator in Jen Silverman’s adaptation of August Strindberg’s Creditors(photo by Emilio Madrid)

CREDITORS
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Through June 18, $35-$298.50
www.audible.com

“Would you rather be the parasite or the host?” Gustav (Liev Schreiber) asks Adi (Justice Smith) in Jen Silverman’s superb modernization of August Strindberg’s 1889 drama, Creditors. It’s a question that lies at the heart of the seldom-performed play, currently running in repertory through June 18 with Hannah Moscovitch’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, kicking off Together, a new company founded by Hugh Jackman and Sonia Friedman to “offer audiences a chance to experience theater in a fresh and engaging way.”

The ninety-minute play takes place at a seaside resort at an unidentified time, though before cell phones. Adi is there with his wife, Tekla (Maggie Siff), who is riding high on the success of her debut novel, a roman à clef about her first marriage. While she is off at readings, signings, and parties, the younger Adi is examining his career as an artist.

Brett J. Banakis and Christine Jones’s set features a small bar stage left, a comfortable chair and night table, a two-person couch, a fancy chaise longue, an old floor mirror against the bare brick back wall, and a glass door with a large white curtain stage right. When the show begins, Adi is in the parlor with an older, serious gentleman, Gustav (Liev Schreiber), who sips Scotch as they talk about art, love, and loyalty. Gustav looks and acts like a psychiatrist, asking penetrating questions that intrigue Adi — until Gustav, acting concerned about Tekla’s flirtatious behavior when she’s not with her husband, pounces.

Tekla (Maggie Siff) is caught between the past and the present in Together/Audible revival at Minetta Lane (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Gustav: You don’t get bored?
Adi: Oh, it’s impossible to get bored when you’re with her. You’ll see! I’m excited for you two to meet — she’s one of a kind.
Gustav: She must be. [lifts his glass] To young love!
Adi: I’ve loved your company this week. I mean what you were saying yesterday — about sculpture instead of painting, how sculpture is the only real way to grasp — I could feel my whole soul wake up.
Gustav: You don’t wonder who she’s with?
Adi: I’m sorry?
Gustav: When she’s out all night.
Adi: She’s giving a reading.
Gustav: Sure, but maybe there was a dinner before, or drinks after . . .
Adi: I’m not a jealous man.
Gustav: Maybe you should work on that.

Adi is like wet clay in Gustav’s formidable hands; as he manipulates Adi into questioning Tekla’s faithfulness and the control she has over him, it becomes apparent just who Gustav is: Tekla’s ex, the man she has written so vividly and openly about in her novel. However, Adi does not catch on, making him easy prey.

In the second scene, Adi confronts Tekla, who is shocked by his sudden change. She had been worried that she would end up losing Adi to a younger woman as his stature in the art world grew, but this is not the Adi she married. She wants to know who Adi has been talking to, sure that someone has put these ideas into his head. “You’re desperately loyal, Adi,” she tells him. “But where you are not loyal is to your own convictions. Your thoughts are so easily taken and shaped and handed back to you, and you accept them as if they’re still yours.”

In the third scene, Gustav reveals his devious scheme to Tekla and exposes himself like never before.

Adi (Justice Smith) is like a lump of clay in Creditors (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Creditors is seldom produced, and you’re likely to wonder why after seeing this excellent version. In 1977, the Public staged it with Rip Torn directing and playing Gustav to Geraldine Page’s Tekla and John Heard’s Adolf; Classic Stage presented it in 1992, with Caroline Lagerfelt, Nestor Serrano, and Zach Grenier, and Alan Rickman directed an adaptation in 2010 at BAM with Anna Chancellor, Owen Teale, and Tom Burke.

Creditors is not about money or finance; there is no talk of business deals. Instead, it’s about the physical, emotional, and psychological burdens that come with romantic relationships, male friendship, and artistic endeavors, particularly trust and jealousy.

In describing to Adi how Tekla might be unfaithful, Gustav says, “So then there’s the husband. The husband must be told — eventually, but not yet, after all he’s so far away! And yet . . . he’s right here. He takes on form and substance, the idea of him I mean, he enters every room you’re both in. He sits between you in a third empty chair, he eats the breakfast out of your bowl, he lies in the same bed the two of you now share. Oh, he doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t stop you. But he spreads poison. You owe him your happiness after all. Sooner or later, he’ll show up to collect the debt. And even if he never does, he’s still always there in the back of both of your minds.”

Later, Gustav explains to Tekla, “There is no out. Even if I weren’t here, Adi would live his life wondering if we still have an old debt between us, wondering if he can live with the uncertainty, wondering — is that my shadow, between you two? And these questions, Tekla. They will eat him like acid.”

The Swedish Strindberg, who was also a novelist and a painter, named the two male characters after Gustav II Adolf, the king who led Sweden during the Thirty Years’ War, a reference to the ongoing battle between men, in this case over a woman; Strindberg would shortly write the history play Gustaf Adolf. Meanwhile the female character is named for Saint Tekla, the virgin martyr and role model who fought off male aggression and preached chastity, honored by the church as “the glory of women and guide for the suffering, opening up the way through every torment.”

As he does with Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, director Ian Rickson makes full use of the stage, the pace a kind of cat-and-mouse game among three complex characters. Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound design is highlighted by an undercurrent of drone music at key points, upping the suspense. Ásta Bennie Hostetter’s costumes firmly establish the trio, from the paint splatters on Adi’s pants to Gustav’s professorial demeanor and Tekla’s free spirit.

Silverman (Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, Spain) has made several important cuts and changes to Strindberg’s original. There are no epileptic fits, Tekla drops a few F-bombs, and the ending is completely different, but Silverman’s dialogue is clear and concise for this moment in time. Smith (Yen, The Mother) portrays Adi with a tender sensitivity, suddenly unsure of the world that he is now a part of. Siff (Breaking the Story, Curse of the Starving Class) ably balances Tekla’s lust for life with an unexpected vulnerability. And Tony winner and nine-time Emmy nominee Schreiber (Doubt, Glengarry Glen Ross) is mesmerizing as Gustav, an intense operator who knows just what to say to get under everyone’s skin; I would be terrified to sit opposite him, afraid I would fall for his machinations. Schreiber is so good in the part that even when, in the second scene, he had to call out for the next line — quickly supplied by a stage manager — he handled it without breaking character or interrupting the flow, a sign of just how professional and talented he is.

Creditors and Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes get the Together/Audible collaboration to a flying start, led by a pair of marvel-ous superheroes (Jackman/Wolverine, Schreiber/Sabretooth) reveling in playing contemporary men, flaws and all.

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

THE TALES WE TELL: JODY OBERFELDER’S STORY TIME AT WEST PARK

Jody Oberfelder makes use of nearly every nook and crannie of the Center at West Park for Story Time (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

STORY TIME
The Center at West Park
165 West Eighty-Sixth St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, May 16, and Saturday, May 17, $24–$30, 7:30
www.centeratwestpark.org
www.jodyoberfelder.com

New York–based director, dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Jody Oberfelder activates the endangered Center at West Park in the landmarked West Park Presbyterian Church with the inspiring, exhilarating Story Time, one of the best site-specific works of her long, distinguished career.

As the audience enters the soaring space, activity begins subtly, then with increasing urgency. Mariah Anton Arters, Caleb Patterson, and Andi Farley Shimota are at rest in niches on a windowsill but soon hop down and proceed amid the pews and columns with unbounded energy. Michael Greenberg walks slowly up and down the aisles perusing a red book, stopping to point out a line for audience members to read. A smiling Oberfelder approaches people, holding out an hourglass for them to ponder. Nyah Malone is spread across a piano, eventually sitting on the bench and playing a few notes. Shimota is in a back room, balancing apples and oranges until Caleb Patterson knocks over one of her cairns and runs away. Grace Bergere moves ever-so-carefully around the pews, magically spinning a red ball representing the globe.

The audience is encouraged to immerse themselves in the action, not just find a seat but wander around and engage with the performers (without obstructing them); for example, I tried to build a few fruit cairns myself but failed miserably. Be sure to check out Nick Cassway’s two wallpaper collages of the performers and Tine Kindermann’s stunning dioramas of fairy tale classics.

What follows are eighteen vignettes on a proscenium stage where the church altar would have been, in front of a large pipe organ. Gargoyles come to life as Bergere, who Oberfelder met when the singer was busking in Tompkins Square Park, sings her original composition “A Little Blood” on the lip of the stage. Greenberg and Arters become Merlin and Morgana, respectively, dancing to isomonstrosity’s “I Hope She Is Sleeping Well.” Shimota is a Hungarian princess and Patterson a potential suitor, interacting to Villa Delirium’s medieval-style folk ballad “Hungarian Countess” and the Parisian Marie Antoinette sex parable “Marie.”

Patterson and Shimota are tempted by Kindermann’s gingerbread cookies in a retelling of Hansel and Gretel while Kindermann sings live. Oberfelder dances with a broom, Greenberg mimics using a knife, Malone dangles a birdcage, and an apple entraps Patterson and Shimota. Bluebeard meets an ogre as Arters and Patterson perform a duet to Bergere’s “Billy,” with Bergere on harmonium and Kindermann on saw. Everyone comes together for a thrilling grand finale.

The ninety-minute Story Time boasts some of Oberfelder’s finest choreography, highlighted by breathtaking lifts and carries infused with an innate playfulness, incorporating a bevy of surprising objects and a charming scene involving small chairs and a table, with a few lovely nods to Pina Bausch. The vastly talented performers switch quickly between Katrin Schnabl’s costumes, which range from elegant dresses to a ratty hair shirt; Connor Sale’s lighting is soft and gentle.

Story Time is itself a fairy tale, an enchanting production that is part of the movement to protect and save the landmark church building while also investigating the stories we are told, and that we tell ourselves and each other, in this deeply divided time in America and around the world.

Near the conclusion, a musical interlude features Bergere on guitar as she and Kindermann sing lyrics by Oberfelder: “From the womb where they bled / In this place purple dread / But open your eyes, see / A pleasure awaits / Through myriad gates / The tail meets its head.”

Pleasures galore await all through the gates of the Center at West Park, which itself will hopefully have a happy ending.

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

COLLECTING AND CONNECTING MEMORIES: ED SCHMIDT’S EDWARD

Ed Schmidt’s Edward is an intimate and poetic tale of an ordinary man’s life (photo courtesy Ed Schmidt)

EDWARD
All Street Gallery
119 Hester St. between Forsyth & Eldridge Sts.
Through May 18
edschmidttheater.com
allstnyc.com

Ed Schmidt knows about endings. His 2010 solo show, My Last Play, was ostensibly his swan song, written two years after the death of his father and a transformative rereading of Our Town, concluding a twenty-year career that had also featured Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, The Last Supper, held in his Brooklyn kitchen, and the monthly variety show Dumbolio. Nevertheless, in 2015, Schmidt, at the time a professor and basketball coach at Trinity on the Upper West Side, wrote and performed the high school basketball drama Our Last Game, staged in an actual high school locker room.

Thankfully, Schmidt is back again with the superb Edward, the poetic, graceful, intimate tale of one Edward O’Connell, an unspectacular but respectable and enigmatic divorced father and educator. The hundred-minute play takes place at All Street Gallery on Hester St., with the audience of between twelve and eighteen people sitting around a long white table covered with twenty-seven objects and an empty box. Fortunate ticket holders are encouraged to arrive early and examine each piece, to pick them up and scrutinize them closely: A Brooks Robinson baseball glove. Four neckties. Mr. Potato Head. A copy of The Catcher in the Rye. A “Goose Girl” Hummel. An ashtray. A jazz CD. A postcard of a boy on a lake. A business card.

“Edward O’Connell died twelve years ago, at the age of seventy-three, and left behind this box, and all that it contained,” Schmidt, resembling a mild-mannered Kevin Costner and sounding like a toned-down Albert Brooks, begins. “With these twenty-seven objects, there are over ten octillion ways to tell Edward’s story. Ten octillion. That’s a one followed by twenty-eight zeroes. That’s the number of grains of sand on the Earth. Multiplied by the number of stars in the Milky Way. In other words, an unfathomable number. Tonight, we will tell one of those ten octillion versions.”

Wearing a dark suit and white shirt, Schmidt then serves as an Our Town–style Stage Manager, going through the objects in random order, each one a way into Edward’s life, directly or indirectly. He speaks in the third person although it feels like he’s channeling O’Connell, delving deep into his being. We learn about Edward’s wife, Angela, and their children and grandchildren; his love of the Celtics and Red Sox; his battles with department head Nona and headmaster Renée Marsh at his school, Enright Academy; his first car; his favorite word; the vacation when he thought his son had drowned; where he was at seminal moments in US history; his multiple regrets.

Many passages unfurl with a quiet majesty. “He likened her transformation to watching a sunset: you can sense a change coming — the air cools, the light fades, the sky pinkens, and then, all of a sudden, you realize, ‘It’s dark. When did that happen?’ Or perhaps the proper metaphor was a sunrise, and darkness slowly, suddenly turning to day,” he muses.

Others are experiences that everyone can relate to. “You know how, on every To Do List, there’s that one task that never gets done? It’s the one item that, for whatever mysterious reason, you can’t cross off, and it ends up getting transferred to the next list and the next and the next, and, in the end, you either complete the task or you just let it slip away and forget, but, in either case, your inability to follow through feels like a moral failure. Why did it take me so long to clean out the gutters? Or send that thank-you note? Or throw away that box of stuff in the attic? What is wrong with me?”

But each helps us learn who Edward O’Connell was and, in turn, who Ed Schmidt is — and who we are. As you walk around the table, examining the objects, several almost certainly will stand out to you personally, bringing up your own memories; for me, the baseball glove, The Catcher in the Rye, the small rock, and the Hummel figurine sent me back. The friend I attended with had actually completed the very jigsaw puzzle that was on the table. Schmidt’s writing is so evocative that the stories will also remind you of similar situations you got tangled up in as a child and an adult.

In Francesco Bonami’s newly updated semifictional Stuck: Maurizio Cattelan — The Unauthorized Autobiography, about the Italian artist and prankster, Bonami writes, “Here is my story of his story. You can believe it or not — it doesn’t matter, just as long as you enjoy it, that’s enough. If cultivating ‘doubt’ is essential to life . . . well, Maurizio Cattelan harvests doubts like nobody else.” Schmidt has accomplished a similar feat with Edward.

Spoiler alert: The next two paragraphs give information about the show that you might not want to know before seeing it but was a critical part of my connecting with the work. The objects are chosen one at a time by the audience, going around in a clockwise circle. I thought long and hard about the two that I selected, wanting to impress Schmidt, hoping they would lead to great anecdotes that I would feel partly responsible for, and imagining that I could have shared my own reminiscence about them.

It seems impossible for Schmidt to know O’Connell as well as he does, especially since Edward did not leave behind a memoir or journal. But as real as O’Connell’s life appears to be, did he even exist? Did Schmidt make it all up, or perhaps use elements from his own life in crafting the play? Going on an intense Google search, I found that there is very little on the internet about Schmidt, and there seems to be no Edward O’Connell who died in 2012 at the age of seventy-three. However, I did find facts about other Edward O’Connells and various Schmidts that pop up in Edward, from names to professions to family relationships. For example, Schmidt talks about a skiing accident that Edward’s brother, Steven, had. I discovered a Substack post by political pundit Steve Schmidt about a skiing accident as well as a news story about a man named Steve Schmit who survived a life-threatening skiing mishap. Coincidence? Maybe — but maybe not.

Spoilers over, it’s also clear that Schmidt has some prankster in him too, as well as a wicked sense of humor, which emerges in his official bio, where he calls himself a “Playwright, Performer, Director, Producer, Genius,” lists the many rejections his plays have received from “some of the most and least venerable theater companies in America,” and explains that “none of Mr. Schmidt’s work has been made possible, in part or in whole, by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, or the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, or of any corporate foundation or charitable institution, though it’s not for lack of trying.”

As Bonami posits about Cattelan, “It doesn’t matter, just as long as you enjoy it, that’s enough.” For one thoroughly enjoyable evening in a Lower East Side gallery, it was enough to believe in Edward O’Connell, to believe in Ed Schmidt, and just maybe to believe in oneself.

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

WRECKING BALL: FACING THAT FINAL ALL NIGHTER

Five college seniors have quite a night ahead of them in world premiere play (photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)

ALL NIGHTER
Newman Mills Theater
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space
511 West Fifty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through May 18, $55-$99
allnighterplay.com

Much like the characters in Natalie Margolin’s All Nighter, in which five seniors are in the home stretch of college, pulling their last all-night session studying and writing papers before graduation in a few days, the play itself is entering its final weekend, graduating with honors, high on the dean’s list.

At a small liberal arts college in rural Pennsylvania in 2014, a group of close friends gather in a glassed-in social ballroom; their usual table is taken by an archrival, making them immediately uneasy. Things will only get worse.

Darcie (AnnaSophia Robb) seems to have it all under control, an attractive blond with good grades, a serious boyfriend, and a clear direction. Lizzy (Isa Briones) is somewhat scattershot and upset that two of her Adderall pills are missing. Jacqueline (Tony nominee and Grammy winner Kathryn Gallagher) is concerned what will happen to her and her girlfriend once school is over and believes that their house is haunted by a ghost who is acting out. Tessa (Alyah Chanelle Scott) is stressed out by how much she has to do while recovering from a hangover. And Wilma (Tony nominee Julia Lester) is a force of nature, a loud fairy punk who gets on everyone’s nerves as she speaks without a filter and keeps interrupting their studying.

Margolin captures the essence of what they’re experiencing in sharp scenes filled with realistic dialogue.

Lizzy: If I think about how much work I have to do in the next twelve hours I might actually vomit.
Jacqueline: It will get done. We’ve done this so many times.
Darcie: It’s the home stretch.
Tessa: I really do love you guys.
Darcie: I’m already crying.
Jacqueline: I love you guys so much. I just wish we were at a different table.
Tessa: Stop.
Lizzy: I can’t believe we graduate in five days.
Darcie: Let’s all hold hands.
Tessa: Let’s pray for everyone’s love and happiness and success.
Darcie: I’m seriously so proud of all of you.
Jacqueline: It has to stay like this. Even after graduation.
Darcie: When our real lives begin!
Tessa: How daunting.

Tessa (Alyah Chanelle Scott), Jacqueline (Kathryn Gallagher), and Wilma (Julia Lester) face an uncertain future in Natalie Margolin’s All Nighter (photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)

When Tessa finds out that someone has stolen her credit card and is using it, she is determined to find the thief, who appears to be on campus. Wilma is devastated that Darcie tells her she doesn’t look good in orange. They share Lizzy’s Adderall and Wilma’s Focalin. They gossip about themselves and others. They agree how important hummus has been to their college experience. Darcie’s laptop keeps dinging suspiciously. They sing Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball,” belting out, “I guess I should’ve let you in / I never meant to start a war / I just wanted you to let me in.”

As morning approaches and deadlines near, powerful secrets emerge that threaten their friendship and their futures.

All the elements come together beautifully, from Wilson Chin’s relatable set and Michelle J. Li’s appropriate costumes (wait till you see what Wilma wears) to Ben Stanton’s lighting (which narrows focus to spotlight characters’ poignant side chats) and M. L. Dogg’s sound, complete with immersive chatter. Jaki Bradley’s crystal-clear direction makes us feel like we’re in the room with the young women while also making us recall the all nighters that we pulled in college. The cast, which includes a few changes since the play opened, is sensational; the actors’ depiction of the fears and desires that come at such an important time of life hit the mark.

I’m glad that I never have to go through that period myself again, but I loved going through it with Darcie, Lizzy, Jacqueline, Tessa, and Wilma.

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

GOLDEN THREADS AT THE SOUTH STREET SEAPORT

Sammy Bennett, A Little Beyond, Acrylic, screen-print, dye-sublimation, found objects, embroidery, foam, wire, cardboard, canvas, silk, 2025 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE GOLDEN THREAD II: A FIBER ART EXHIBITION
BravinLee programs
207 Front St. between Fulton & Beekman Sts.
Through May 16, free, noon – 6:30
www.bravinlee.com
golden thread slideshow

BravinLee programs follows up last year’s “The Golden Thread” with a second iteration of the fabric installation, consisting of works by five dozen artists, highlighted by ten site-specific installations. Continuing through May 16, “The Golden Thread II” features colorful, often fragile pieces across five floors, a panoply of soft sculptures on the walls and floors and hanging from the ceiling.

Be sure to take each set of steps (including the spiral staircase) and go through every open door so you don’t miss a thing; be on the lookout especially for Felix Beaudry’s Put, an outstretched pink arm and hand; Sammy Bennett’s multipart camping-like installation (A little Beyond, Empty Lot, Mr. Grasshopper Meets a Shoe); Ruby Chishti’s An Intangible Sanctuary of Ocean and Stars II, a repurposed men’s wool overcoat; Ana Maria Hernando’s El intento del agua (“The Intent of Water”), a kind of endless blue wedding dress exuberantly pouring out of the bricks; Tomo Mori’s (we) keep going, a large loom using a metal pulley; Tura Oliveira’s Wheel of Fortune, an enormous red figure being tortured in a grain hoist evoking a Catherine wheel; Manju Shandler’s The Elephant in the Room, a big pachyderm huddling in a corner; Jacqueline Surdell’s Untitled [we can be stars], a cord, line, and steel construction resembling a giant fist coming toward the viewer; Halley Zien’s fabulously detailed fabric collages Morning Mourn and Family Sing; and Karen Margolis’s beautifully delicate Divagation, made from cotton-covered chicken wire, Acrylic, thread, rope, moss, paper, clay, eggshells, fishing line, nails, studio detritus wrapped in salvaged silk, organza, and grandmother’s unraveled bedspread. There are also contributions from Lesley Dill, Rashid Johnson, Valerie Hegarty, Sheila Pepe, Christopher Wool, Deborah Kass, Walter Robinson, and Jess Blaustein.

In her artist statement, Margolis explains, “I am drawn to discarded and damaged materials — remnants of past lives — which I collect, dismantle, and reconfigure into artificial nature sanctuaries. This process reflects my preoccupations with mending and regeneration. Rooted in wabi-sabi philosophy embracing imperfection and impermanence, my artmaking is directed at capturing the impact of destructive forces having worked their way through a material. These material transformations develop analogies between nature and psychological experience, blurring boundaries between solid form and the evanescence of emotions. Inspired by the micro-violence of spiders, my recent works explore themes of imprisonment and chrysalises.”

Bennett notes, “My work references quotidian settings pumped full of melodrama that give recognition to everyday life as a constant struggle. This large-scale installation transports you from the city to a damp forest in transition from winter to spring, where flowers are budding, insects are chirping, and an abandoned building serves as a reminder that everything we create will eventually be reclaimed by Mother Earth.”

And Oliveira points out, “A limp, humanoid figure is tangled in the spokes of an eighteenth-century grain hoist. Nerve endings crawl across the sculpture’s surface and the figure’s abdomen sags open in the shape of an unblinking eye, a wound from which sinewy tentacles spill, reaching outward like severed nerves or roots searching for ground. Titled after both the tarot card and the game show, in this work the grain hoist becomes the breaking wheel of public execution, history turns like a great wheel and catches us in its spokes.”

On May 16, Tiny Pricks Project author and activist Diana Weymar, whose American Sampler features hand-stitched vintage textiles and cotton floss with such sayings as “I ask you to have mercy,” “Nature gives us everything,” and “She said enough,” will be at the show from 3:00 to 6:00, signing copies of her new book, Crafting a Better World (Harvest, September 2024, $25). Weymar explains about her piece, “I work in the increasingly liminal space where textiles, text, and social media overlap. My work tracks current political discourse, pop culture, and cultural work from the past. Making text by hand is a sensory processing experience that provides a contrast to the speed with which we post language and communicate.”

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

EVERYTHING IS A MOVIE: MOI-MÊME AT SEGAL FEST

Mojo Lorwin finishes his father’s film, Moi-même, after more than half a century

MOI-MÊME (Mojo Lorwin & Lee Breuer, 1968/2024)
Segal Center Film Festival on Theater and Performance
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, May 17, $10– $14, 3:00
Festival runs May 15– 28
www.thesegalcenter.org
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

In 1968, experimental theater director, playwright, and poet Lee Breuer began making a black-and-white improvised film during the May 1968 Paris riots, where he was living at the time. He and cinematographer John Rounds shot the footage but never added sound, edited it, or wrote a script. In 1970, Breuer cofounded the seminal New York City company Mabou Mines with Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, David Warrilow, and Frederick Neumann, winning numerous Obies among other accolades over the next half century, but he never finished the movie, which itself is about making a movie.

Breuer died in January 2021 at the age of eighty-three; one of his children, Mojo Lorwin, decided to complete the project, hiring voice actors and musicians and serving as writer, director, editor, and producer. The result is the hilarious Nouvelle Vague satire Moi-même (“Myself”), a sixty-five-minute foray into the world of François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Pierre Melville, Agnès Varda, William Klein, and Jean-Luc Godard, who makes a cameo, walking backward as Kevin shares a series of statements ending with “Everything is a movie.”

Kevin Mathewson stars as Kevin (voiced in 2024 by Declan Kenneally), an adolescent who is making a film with his alter ego (Patrick Martin). As he proceeds around town, he meets up with a strange driver (executive producer Russ Moro / 2024 composer Olivier Conan), a movie producer (Frederick Neumann / David Neumann, Frederick’s son), a starlet (Ginger Hall / Clove Galilee, Breuer and Maleczech’s daughter), the son of a baron (Warrilow / David Neumann), an Italian heiress (Renata / Tessie Herrasti), a revolutionary actress (Anna Backer / Tiera Lopper), her replacement (Judy Mathewson, Kevin’s younger sister / Ruma Breuer, Lee’s granddaughter), a sleazy agent (Mark Smith / Alon Andrews), a couple of goons (Pippo and Mike Trane / Frier McCollister), and the owner of a film shop (Lee Pampf / Thomas Cabus). He is often accompanied by his conscience (Maleczech / Alexandra Zelman-Doring) as he faces financial and creative crises.

Lorwin has fun with cinematic and societal tropes while maintaining the underground, DIY feel; for example, he doesn’t match the dialogue exactly to the movement of the characters’ mouths as they make such proclamations as “The movies aren’t fair,” “The movies are a game and everyone who plays is a cheater,” and “All I want is to be seen and heard.” The soundtrack consists of unexpected sound effects and songs and music by Frank LoCastro, Alex Klimovitsky, Eliot Krimsky, Conan, and others.

There’s lots of drinking and smoking, violent shootings, political ranting, discussions of art and love, vapid gatherings, a heist, a touch of psychedelia, and superfluous nudity, nearly everything you could possibly want in a French film.

“Film costs money, more than you’ve got,” the driver barks at Kevin. “Producers are perverts,” Kevin tells the actress while preparing a baby bottle of milk. Unable to afford film reels, Kevin says, “Film is more expensive than love and revolution.”

Describing the film to the agent, Kevin explains, “Here it is: It’s me, but it’s not me. You dig? I mean, it’s the film adaptation of me. I just need a little bread to turn boring old me into moi-même. Feels like doors are finally opening for me.” He delivers the last line as a door opens in front of him.

Perhaps the most important line of dialogue is given to Kevin from a man on the street, who tells him, “There are no rules.” I would add, “Viva la revolución!”

Moi-même is being shown May 17 at 3:00 at Anthology Film Archives as part of the Segal Center Film Festival on Theater and Performance, followed by a Q&A with Lorwin (Summer in the City, 2020 Brooklyn Film Festival) and Kevin Mathewson, moderated by Segal Center executive director Frank Hentschker. The festival runs May 15– 28 at Anthology and the CUNY Graduate Center and includes such other presentations as the North American premiere of Aniela Gabryel’s Radical Move, the US premiere of Sophie Fiennes’s Acting, Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s Grand Theft Hamlet, and a Richard Foreman retrospective.

Meanwhile, Mabou Mines (The Lost Ones, The Gospel at Colonus, Dollhouse) is still going strong; their latest piece, This Like a Dream Keeps Other Time, is playing May 15– 18 at their East Village home, @122CC.

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