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AXIS’S SPECIMEN: RELAUNCH

Mayhem ensues when a surprise being appears on board a corporate research vessel in Axis Theatre’s Specimen (photo by Regina Betancourt)

SPECIMEN
Axis Theatre Company
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Wednesday – Saturday, October 28 – November 21, $10-$40, 7:00
www.axiscompany.org

[This past spring, Axis Theatre’s Specimen ran at the company’s downstairs space on Sheridan Square; it is now back for an encore engagement from October 28 through November 21. Below is my original review.]

Randall Sharp’s Specimen is not a cautionary tale of where America is heading; instead, it’s a frenetic sci-fi satire warning us that it’s already too late to save the ship and its crew.

“We are dead in the water. We’re just floating. Communication is out,” Overholser (Britt Genelin), an engineer aboard the US VitaNavis Nomad, says early on in the seventy-five-minute play. “All we need is a little push to get to the earth-pull zone for home. I hope we don’t just smash into it! Plus I could use a decent med clinic. And a haircut. I feel sick. I feel tired.”

The corporate research vessel Nomad, named after people who move around from place to place — for example, undocumented immigrants and refugees — is on a mission to collect valuable living specimens more for their potential financial value rather than their scientific worth. The crew is a ragtag “bunch of morons,” as Lt. Commander Gordon (Julian Rozzell Jr.) refers to them. Gordon has annoyed his team because he has fudged critical reports. The ambitious and energetic Overholser has been beaten up by the severely ill King (Spencer Aste, only seen on video). Dr. Gardener (Andrew Dawson), the chief medical officer, says, “I know what I’m doing” without any evidence to support that. Medical assistant Longshore (Jon McCormick) asks a lot of questions but provides no answers. Louden’s (Jim Sterling) primary responsibility is to greet newcomers, but he can’t get anything to work. And Capt. Gonickeau (Lynn Mancinelli) is hiding in sick bay, not wanting to confront any kind of problem at all.

An endless stream of glitches plagues the Nomad: Ironic, familiar pop songs come and go on the speaker system. The monitors flash on and off with reckless abandon, broadcasting a bright, sunny commercial with the VitaNavis president (Robert Ierardi) that quickly goes bad, as well as private video diaries that are not meant to be seen by others, a melding of the captain’s log and social media posts. The food supply, from saltines to what they call “SUP,” is running dangerously low. And various odd smells are wafting about. Patience is wearing thin even with Earth so close.

The Nomad’s archnemesis, the stellar Jericho, is nearby, rumored to have a pair of prize specimens that are likely to make them win the battle once again. (In the lobby case is a previous trophy the Jericho won, along with a roster of its crew, featuring one member who becomes central to the plot.) It seems like the Jericho, whose name in Arabic means “fragrant” and the Bible calls “the City of Palms,” can do no wrong, the polar opposite of the Nomad, as if one is the dream of America, the other the current reality, one an oasis, the other a boiling inferno.

But when a mysterious being (Brian Barnhart) suddenly arrives in a pod, all hell breaks loose as the crew fights over whether the creature is a fabulous Andro-Primatus specimen worth millions or jokester Jay Marlin, a doctor from the Jericho who is in need of medical help. The doctor’s last name could be a sly reference to the large fish Santiago catches and struggles to bring back in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, believing it will turn his luck around. “It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers,” Santiago says to himself.

The ramshackle set, by Sharp, McCormick, and Mancinelli, is like a bizarro-world merging of the starship Enterprise, the Discovery from 2001, and the Nostromo from Alien, with a nod to Tom Sachs’s DIY NASA installations. The white uniforms, designed by Karl Ruckdeschel, have fun touches, such as the character’s job stenciled on the back in big letters. David Zeffren’s lighting and Paul Carbonara’s sound and original music, along with Nicholas Guldner’s video design, maintain the low-tech atmosphere of impending doom.

The exemplary ensemble, consisting of Axis company members and returnees, somehow manages to keep straight faces despite all the absurdist mayhem taking place, led by Rozzell Jr. (Our Planet, Father Comes Home from the Wars) as the determined lieutenant and Genelin (Twelfth Night, Washington Square) as a kind of bruised and battered ingénue in an ill-fitting spacesuit. Each actor also sports fantabulous hair, riffing on the obvious wigs worn by the cast of the original Star Trek movies.

Sharp, who has previously adapted such classics as High Noon and Dead End and written and directed such new works as Worlds Fair Inn and Last Man Club, orchestrates a clever balance between farce and fright as the proceedings continue and the crew has to figure out who or what the specimen is and what to do with it.

It’s a subtle but ripe parody of a bumbling administration that prefers money over science, with little interest in aiding immigrants, giving their employees proper training or affordable health care, or fixing a spacecraft that is falling apart.

When the pod first pulls into the port, there is no sign of anyone there. “Hello!! Maybe . . . maybe it’s not American?” Dr. Gardener asks. Gordon replies, “Of course it’s American. What else would it be.”

Oh, this is America all right.

Over and out.

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

INCELS AND IRL: DEGENERATES AT PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS

Miller (Zachary W. Desmond) and Target (Christopher Dylan White) are silo’d incels who consider meeting in real life in Degenerates (photo by Jackie Abbott)

DEGENERATES
Playwrights Horizons, Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 1, $125.50-$164.50
playwrightshorizons.org

Playwright Else Went and her partner, director Emma Rosa Went, follow up their groundbreaking five-plus-hour Initiative with the nearly three-hour, three-act Degenerates, another potent investigation into the lives of young people searching for love and meaning in a world growing ever-more dependent on technology. It zeroes in specifically on silo’d incels talking about their dissatisfaction with how women and society in general have turned their back on men.

Sharing their stories are twenty-eight-year-old Miller (Zachary W. Desmond), a white man who lives in his parents’ basement and is the ersatz intellectual ringleader of the virtual group; Kemp (Tyler Nowell Felix), twenty-one and Black, who starts the play by calling a suicide hotline and speaking with a woman while he fiddles with his gun; Serge (Juan Arturo), a brown thirty-three-year-old who is the elder statesman; and Target (Christopher Dylan White), nineteen and white, who is obsessed with Japanese anime. The script describes all four as “terribly alone,” and that at-least-partly self-imposed solitude is palpable.

Serge and Kemp are primarily only heard over the phone; for most of the play, Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s vivid set is divided in half: Stage right is Miller’s sad, sparsely decorated room, consisting of a plain desk and chair, a mini refrigerator and microwave, and a poster of the Smiths album The Queen Is Dead, which features such dark and dismal tunes as “I Know It’s Over” and “Never Had No One Ever.” Next to it is Target’s kawaii studio apartment, every inch of which is filled with plushies, posters of female anime characters, and colorful rugs and sheets; even his computer has cool stickers on it.

Issues of race and misogyny, as they try to find someone else to blame for their lack of success in any arena, are raised early in this telling exchange that also establishes the characters:

Miller: It is a well documented fact that if you’re brown in America, you’re fucked. Or unfucked, as the case may be. Do the research: google “tinder racial bias.” I mean, white roasties are still dtf Tyrone cause they got fantasies of the “Violent Negroid” but that’s a whole other thing.
Kemp: Black guys aren’t all violent.
Miller: I’m not saying they are; I’m saying the woke lefty shit wraps all the way around: deep down they want to be punished for being white, y’know? For being “privileged.” They fetishize this oppressed, exotic ~ it’s not even that the dick is dark, it’s that they think dark dick is dangerous. Oh shit say that five times fast. Dangerous dark / dick, dangerous dark dick, dangerous dirk dink ~ fuck!
Serge: Okay no but that is real though. The only females showed me any attention in school — I went to a white school on scholarship and all the Ralph Lauren motherfuckers always tried to hit me up for weed and coke, but the white bitches? The ugg boot barbie-dolls? Wanted to piss off daddy; I could tell that’s what it was: act a fool with the poor brown boy then run home to fuckin, Brayden, / Tanner whatever.
Target: Isn’t that basically like, reparations though?
Serge: Fuck no, that’s being a bitch’s colorway; I’m not letting a bitch wear me like that.
Kemp: I’d let a bitch wear me.
Miller: Genuinely! Genuinely that’s the real thing with race in fucking clown-world leftist America. Oppression is status and status is morality; ergo, fucking the Oppressed makes you a Good Person. It’s all optics it’s all performance. I don’t hate black people; I don’t have a problem with miscegenation but fuck, shouldn’t be a trend. Used to be chihuahua in the Gucci bag, remember that? Now it’s a whole-ass fucking, rapper on the arm, and we see what that does to a man: look what happened to Kanye.

Target (Christopher Dylan White) tries to find his place in a complex world in new play by writer Else Went and director Emma Rosa Went (photo by Jackie Abbott)

While Miller rages against everything, Target, who refers to himself as a mentalcel, has a private gig as a sexy internet cow clown performing for anyone willing to pay. But when Miller, who is attracted to Target’s online persona, suggests they meet in person, the dynamics shift and the plot takes a complex turn.

In the lobby at Playwrights Horizons, where the show has been extended through November 1, is a glossary of more than fifty words and phrases that are unique to this online culture, including “80/20,” “hikikomori,” “LDAR,” “redpill,” and “uwu.” The term “degenerates” itself is defined as “1. a hedonistic person or member of the political left. 2. the offspring of ‘sub-par’ mating, implying a hereditary cause of inceldom.” The Wents are not isolating the characters’ situations, not seeking sympathy for them, celebrating them, depicting them as hateful freaks, or pitying them; instead, they are asking the audience to consider the loneliness these disaffected men and boys are experiencing, since loneliness is something everyone feels at one time or another.

Degenerates is a marvelously unpredictable, moving, and surprising story that gives voice to those in need even as they reject, or are rejected by, so-called societal norms. The first two acts fly by, among the fastest 100+ minutes I can remember in recent theater. It’s as if we all went down the same internet rabbit hole and then were shaken out of it together at intermission, not realizing the time, ready to go back to real life. As in the Wents’ previous work, the story takes a late turn that feels forced, but otherwise the play hits hard and deep.

The Wents employ much of the same team as in Initiative, who again create a potent, involving experience: set by Suzuki MacAdams, costumes by Kindall Houston Almond, sound by Angela Baughman, and projections by S. Katy Tucker, along with actors Barresi and White. Lighting designer Jiyoun Chang fits right in with the electric atmosphere.

Miller (Zachary W. Desmond) spends most of his life online in his parents’ basement (photo by Jackie Abbott)

Desmond (Ivanov, Hooded, or, Being Black for Dummies) is a whirlwind as Miller, often in motion on his wireless microphone, unable to relax; he even burns his mouth when eating a Hot Pocket because he can’t ever just stop. White, who portrayed an unsure loner addicted to video games in Initiative, is gentle and heartbreaking as Target, whose name is, of course, not accidental. Felix (Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern) is touching as Kemp, Arturo (The Taming of the Shrew) adds perspective as Serge and Chad, while Olivia Rose Barresi (Initiative, Unresolved Rage Game) does a good job as all the women in the play as well as reading the stage directions, something that we cannot access IRL.

Perhaps the most important line in the play is expressed by Kemp when he is on the phone with the suicide hotline counselor: “Nobody cares about me.” When it comes down to it, all of us want to be seen, liked, and, more importantly, loved.

As Target tells his sister, “I feel like I don’t really exist. And I never have. Never, and that’s probably why it was so much easier to stay inside and live online, right? Where it doesn’t matter?”

As in Initiative, the Wents make us care, and they show us what matters.

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

HAUNTED THEATER ON MacDOUGAL: spit&vigor’s ECTOPLASM

Sara Béraud Conlan (Sara Fellini) and her husband, Kal (Steve Gamble), conjure mystery and mayhem in spit&vigor’s Ectoplasm (photo by Giancarlo Osaben)

ECTOPLASM
spit&vigor tiny baby blackbox theatre
115 MacDougal St.
Thursday – Saturday through October 31, $20-$50
spitnvigor.com

Do you believe in ghosts? That is the question at the heart of Sara Fellini’s spooky Ectoplasm, being remounted by spit&vigor in its upstairs tiny baby blackbox theatre on MacDougal St., above its 2022 venue, the more standard and conventional Players Theatre.

The setup is a classic of the horror genre, evoking such films as Robert Wise’s 1959 The Haunting (based on the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House), William Castle’s 1959 chiller House on Haunted Hill, and John Hough’s 1973 thriller The Legend of Hell House. It’s 1914, and the Byronesque Madame Francine Montfort (Laurel Creighton) has invited into her elegant home the medium Sara Béraud Conlan (Fellini) and her ultraserious husband, Kal Conlan (Steve Gamble); parapsychologist George Crookes (Jesse Metz) and his blood-ritualist wife, Mizka Itō Crookes (Yurika Ohno); Mizka’s suffragist sister, Annette Itō (Azumi Tsutsui); and magician Ira Orinthall (Fedrico Mosttert), who is looking forward to debunking a séance Sara will be conducting (when not trying to fondle the women). Also present is Madame Montfort’s butler, Callum Holes (George Walsh), who has his own secrets.

Sara is prepared to use some of the tricks of the trade in order to convince everyone that her abilities are real, but Kal strongly disagrees. “They always need something tangible, Kal. They never believe it if they can’t touch it,” she explains. She dispenses of a few of them but insists on hiding ectoplasm — a piece of muslin dipped in mayonnaise — under her corset.

Prior to the séance, everyone has drinks and engages in social banter that inevitably turns to science, blood, mysticism, and death as such objects as a dagger and a skull are presented. Both Madame Montfort and the Itō sisters are hoping that Sara will be able to conjure specific souls in the afterlife, even though Sara tells Madame that that’s not necessarily how it works.

This part of the play is a slow build; the story meanders, with some curious decisions and digressions, and the acting is inconsistent in its over-theatricality, but once the characters gather around a table for the actual séance, spit&vigor gets down to what it does best: create creepy, involving productions that depict the darker side of humanity, as in such previous plays as The Wake of Dorcas Kelly, Luna Eclipse, and Nec Spe.

What happens at the séance — well, not even Sara and Kal are quite sure.

A séance goes better than expected in Ectoplasm (photo by Giancarlo Osaben)

In his article “The Charted Coast V: The Absolute Proof” in the November 1920 issue of The Strand magazine, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a noted defender of Spiritualism who believed that the living could contact the dead, wrote, “Apart from the frauds, however, discriminating observers were aware that there was a large residuum of cases which were undoubtedly genuine. In examining and reporting these cases, the witnesses averred that certain people, whom they called ‘materializing mediums,’ had the strange physical gift that they could put forth from their bodies a viscous, gelatinous substance which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes, and yet could be reabsorbed, leaving absolutely no trace even upon the clothes which it had traversed in leaving the body. This substance was actually touched by some enterprising investigators, who reported that it was elastic and appeared to be sensitive, as though it was really an organic extrusion from the medium’s body. These views were naturally much ridiculed by scientific men, who disposed of them easily upon anatomical and also on general physical grounds. Later investigation has, however, shown, as I hope to demonstrate in this article, that in this as in other matters the early Spiritualists were the pioneers of truth, and that they had come upon the most singular manifestation of matter with which we have any acquaintance.”

Fellini, who makes sure you know that she and her character do not spell her first name with an “h,” uses ectoplasm as a kind of bridge between what people believe and what they don’t, as if it’s the substance that helps bring together audiences and performers in small spaces to engage in these follies of fiction. When Callum welcomes us at the beginning, he refers to the audience — approximately eighteen people in chairs placed against the walls, as if part of the set — as “spirits.” He continues, “Some of you may be surprised that you are dead. I’m so sorry. Please keep your lamentations to a low volume so we can all enjoy the performance.”

Soon Sara walks across the room, her hands outstretched, approaching each audience member as if she can feel their ghostly presence. I was sucked in immediately.

Fellini, the artistic director and cofounder of spit&vigor, is magnetic as the medium; you can’t take your eyes off her in scene after scene. She had me believing she could conjure just about anything she wanted, real or imagined, except that dread final “h.”

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

SEARCHING FOR BELONGING: THE HAIRY APE AT IRISH REP

Seven stokers are trapped in a hellish existence in Irish Rep revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE HAIRY APE
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 15, $55-$125
irishrep.org

“It takes a man to work in hell,” Yank (Jon Beavers) declares early on in the Irish Rep’s new production of Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 drama, The Hairy Ape.

Previously presented there in 2006, the ninety-minute play, again helmed by company producing artistic director Ciarán O’Reilly, is a fierce examination of class warfare, with a scintillating first half that loses some of its steam as it descends into didacticism in the latter scenes, although its subtitle is as relevant as ever: A Comedy of Ancient and Modern Life in Eight Scenes.

The show opens in the firemen’s forecastle of a transatlantic liner, where seven men, their bodies covered in glistening sweat and black smears, sleep in bunk beds and shovel coal into furnaces to keep the ship running. They are led by Yank, the alpha male who is quick to berate the others, particularly when they fail to recognize the truth of their situation, animals trapped in cages. Several of the stokers ask Paddy (John Keating) to sing a drinking song, and the older man serenades them with “Whisky Johnny,” singing, “Whisky took away all my clothes / Whisky, Johnny! / Whisky gave me this big red nose! / Whisky for my Johnny O!”

Yank, who was born and raised on the Brooklyn waterfront, decries, “Aw hell! Nix on dat old sailing ship stuff! All dat bull’s dead, see? And you’re dead, too, yuh damned old Harp, on’y yuh don’t know it. Take it easy, see. Give us a rest. Nix on de loud noise. Can’t youse see I’m tryin’ to t’ink?”

When Long (Ariyan Kassam) starts quoting the Bible and arguing that the ship is their home, Yank delivers a brief speech that gets to the heart of the matter:

“Sit down before I knock yuh down! De Bible, huh? De Cap’tlist class, huh? Aw nix on dat Salvation Army–Socialist bull. Git a soapbox! Hire a hall! Come and be saved, huh? Jerk us to Jesus, huh? Aw g’wan! I’ve listened to lots of guys like you, see? You’re all wrong. Wanter know what I t’ink? Yuh ain’t no good for no one. Yuh’re de bunk. Yuh ain’t got no noive, get me? Yuh’re yellow, dat’s what. Yellow, dat’s you. Say! What’s dem slobs in de foist cabin got to do wit us? We’re better men dan dey are, ain’t we? Sure! One of us guys could clean up de whole mob wit one mit. Put one of ’em down here for one watch in de stokehole, what’d happen? Day’d carry him off on a stretcher. Dem boids don’t amount to nothin’. Dey’re just baggage. Who makes dis old tub run? Ain’t it us guys? Well den, we belong, don’t we? We belong and dey don’t. Dat’s all. As for dis bein’ hell — aw, nuts! Yuh lost your noive, dat’s what. Dis is a man’s job, get me? It belongs. It runs dis tub. No stiffs need apply. But yuh’re a stiff, see? Yuh’re yellow, dat’s you.”

The concept of belonging is central to the narrative; Yank utters some form of the word forty times as he tries to establish his place in a world that refuses to acknowledge his existence, that he matters.

As the first scene ends, the platform-ceiling above the forecastle starts moving downward, at first trapping the men, then nearly crushing them before they exit. On top of the platform, the well-dressed Mildred Douglas (Elizabeth Teeter) and her aunt (Joanna Glushak) are relaxing in deck chairs, enjoying the glorious day.

“How the black smoke swirls back against the sky! Is it not beautiful?” Mildred says dreamily. Mildred is a twenty-year-old college student studying sociology; her father is the president of Nazareth Steel, which his father founded, and chairman of the board of directors of the shipping line. When Mildred expresses her interest in seeing how the other half lives, her pompous, pretentious aunt is offended. Mildred want to help them but doesn’t know how, feeling as if she’s confined by her family’s immense wealth, a victim of their millions.

“Pardon me for my outburst. When a leopard complains of its spots, it must sound rather grotesque,” Mildred says. “Purr, little leopard. Purr, scratch, tear, kill, gorge yourself and be happy — only stay in the jungle where your spots are camouflage. In a cage they make you conspicuous.”

Mildred is soon led into the stokehole by the second engineer (Nayib Felix). Everything comes to a sudden halt when Mildred, a vision in glowing white, sees Yank, and he, not knowing what the other men are staring at, whirls around, ready to attack with his shovel, until he and Mildred lock eyes. It’s a potent moment when everything comes into focus: men vs. women, rich vs. poor, heaven vs. hell, cleanliness vs. filth, the cultured elite vs. the dirty animal.

“Take me away! Oh, the filthy beast!” she declares, then faints.

In the next scene, a furious Yank and the ever-calm Paddy are discussing the incident. Yank asks, “Say, is dat what she called me — a hairy ape?” Paddy answers, “She looked it at you if she didn’t say the word itself.” Yank replies, “Hairy ape, huh? Sure! Dat’s de way she looked at me, aw right. Hairy ape! So dat’s me, huh? Yuh skinny tart! Yuh white-faced bum, yuh! I’ll show yuh who’s a ape!”

Three weeks later, Yank and Long, on shore leave, are on Fifth Avenue in New York City, in front of Saks, as Yank explores how the other half lives. But Yank doesn’t belong in this world as he is arrested and put behind bars, visits the local headquarters of the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and goes to the monkey house at the zoo. There seems to be no escape for him from being treated like a caged beast, trapped by steel.

John Keating excels yet again as Paddy in The Hairy Ape (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The Hairy Ape was inspired by O’Neill’s experience as a merchant seaman and a stoker he met named Driscoll. “He was a giant of a man, and absurdly strong,” O’Neill explained. “He thought a whole lot of himself, was a determined individualist. He was very proud of his strength, his capacity for grueling work. It seemed to give him mental poise to be able to dominate the stokehole, do more work than any of his mates.” O’Neill was shocked when he heard that Driscoll had committed suicide by jumping off a ship.

O’Reilly’s (Ulster American, Philadelphia, Here I Come!) staging is powerful, with master set designer Charlie Corcoran literally reaching new levels with the moving platform, which is like a character unto itself; the jail scene is also clever with its use of two rows of cells with red bars. Michael Gottlieb’s lighting and Florian Staab’s sound, accompanied by Ryan Rumery’s original period music, emphasize the differences between the dark dense stokehole and the society above, which is furthered by Orla Long’s costumes, which range from the grimy work clothes of the stokers to the bright and fanciful suits and dresses worn by strolling New Yorkers.

Despite his lack of chest hair, Beavers is ferocious as Yank, a role previously performed onstage by Paul Robeson, Willem Dafoe, and Booby Cannavale and on film by William Bendix. Yank is a man out of time, unwilling to make compromises in a world that ignores him. He is constantly trying to think (or, as he says, “t’ink”), considering his options, occasionally evoking Auguste Rodin’s famous sculpture The Thinker. It may be 1922, but it could just as well be 2026, as the wealth gap in America continues to increase while issues of gender and religion are still front and center.

Keating (Autumn Royal, The Naturalists), one of our finest character actors, is superb as Paddy, an old timer who adds welcome doses of charm and comedy as he hold on to a past that is quickly disappearing, much like the men themselves. Yank might be extra hard on Paddy, but, in his final monologue, it’s Paddy’s words that come to him.

O’Neill overplays his hand in the later scenes; Yank’s encounter with the IWW and the repetition of the concept of belonging feel stale today. But the first half of the show, with its testosterone seeping throughout every crevice of the theater, is one that I’ll remember for a long time.

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

A LOVE LETTER TO THE THEATER: GOOD TIME CHARLIE AT THE PUBLIC

Ryan J. Haddad pays tribute to his beloved uncle in Good Time Charlie at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

GOOD TIME CHARLIE
The Public Theater, Martinson Hall
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 25, $99
www.publictheater.org

Ryan J. Haddad has made his mark as the solo performer of such evocative, graphic, and compelling autobiographical shows as Dark Disabled Stories, Hold Me in the Water, and Hi, Are You Single? He reaches the next level with the evocative, graphic, and compelling Good Time Charlie, his first multicharacter, multigenerational play, one that offers audiences a damn good time.

Haddad is still at the center of it all, even though it’s about his real-life relation, Uncle Charlie (Jonathan Raviv), who actually is his father’s first cousin. At the beginning, Haddad says to us, “Hello, all you beautiful people out there in the dark. My name is Ryan J. Haddad. Thank you for coming out to the Public Theater and our production of Good Time Charlie. If you know my work, you probably know me as an autobiographical performer, usually a solo performer. But I’ve been putting my family in plays for decades. From the ages of five to thirteen, I was the artistic director of the Haddad Theater, and together with my family, we put on plays of my favorite movies and musicals. We started in the living room, then moved to the backyard.”

It’s a smart way to start the show; not only does it introduce Haddad to audience members who might not know much about him, but it also lets everyone see that he uses a metallic reverse posture-control walker; he later explains that he has cerebral palsy. The premise of Good Time Charlie is that Ryan is now putting on a play about and starring his family in an expensive re-creation of the Japanese-inspired garden at the home of Charlie and his longtime partner, Lou (Timothy Bagley). In addition, it sets up an ongoing subplot in which writer-actor Haddad battles for control with Charlie, who is not always fond of where Haddad takes the narrative.

Charlie: Remember, doll, it’s my play.
Ryan: Our play.
Charlie: They’re here to see me. My name is in the title.
Ryan: They don’t know who you are.
Charlie: They’re about to find out!

Throughout the 135-minute production (including intermission), there are constant interruptions in which the characters ask Ryan questions about their parts and suggest changes to the script, none of which makes Ryan happy. It’s a wonderfully multilayered meta as the actors portray characters portraying their younger selves, who remember certain things differently or don’t want to relive painful memories.

The deeply personal tale travels between 1976 and the present, with stops in 1976 Ohio, where Charlie is attending Heidelberg College, to 1983, when he meets Lou in a gay bar in Cleveland, to 1998, when Ryan is six and is staging his third show, an adaptation of the TV movie Cinderella starring Brandy. Ryan is the prince, of course; his cool lesbian aunt, Janice (Beth Malone), is Cinderella; his great-aunt Joan (Artemis Pebdani), Charlie’s mother, is the evil stepmother; and Charlie Sr. (Nael Nacer) is the king. Their repartee helps establish the characters’ relationship with one another as well as the pacing of Good Time Charlie itself.

Haddad introduces his own parents, Bob (Nacer) and Judy (Pebdani), when they all start arguing over who got Ryan interested in theater in the first place. Bob and Judy let their son know that they’re not thrilled that the play is not about them.

Bob: We’re the ones who clothed you, fed you, wiped your ass.
Janice: Hey, I did that, too.
Judy: It really is better to write about your parents before we die.
Bob: He can’t. He’s always writing about gay people.

Ryan furthers his love of theater and especially old movies under the tutelage of Sheldon (Michael Cristofer), the artistic director of a local repertory movie house and a close friend of Lou’s; they talk about Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Tennessee Williams, and other gay icons.

There are also critical and insightful discussions about coming out, loneliness, and aging as several of the older characters fall ill.

A terrific cast becomes a second family for Ryan J. Haddad in autobiographical play (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Lebanese American Haddad is a fierce storyteller, driven by a brutal honesty that is central to his shows. In Hold Me in the Water, his descriptions of his first sexual encounters with men are the most graphically specific I’ve heard in theater, whether gay or straight. In Hi, Are You Single?, he is so in need of companionship and closeness that he brings up a volunteer from the audience to dance with, despite a disability that requires him to keep his walker within arm’s reach at all times. And in Dark Disabled Stories, which focuses on his fraught relationship with public transportation, he tells the audience early on, “I try to make disability funny so that nondisabled people can understand it and open themselves to it and realize that it’s not so scary, so dark. And make it more accessible for them. Not tonight. I don’t feel like it. I’m not saying I won’t make you laugh at all. I’ll probably make you laugh a lot. I’m a naturally comedic person, but . . . not everything is accessible to us, so why should we try to make our experiences accessible to you?”

In Good Time Charlie, Haddad is not afraid to share his intense theatrical ambition. In one of the play’s most powerful scenes, Haddad gets angry when Charlie, who became a dentist instead of pursuing his artistic dreams, starts tearing pages out of the script. “Like it or not, this is the material we have. Either you want to play it or you don’t,” Ryan tells his beloved uncle, who replies, “Honey, I know what a good script looks like. I’ve been seeing theater my entire life.” Ryan shoots back, “And I’m the one who’s actually doing it.”

When one of the characters suffers a major health problem and needs a walker, the effect on Haddad is palpable. Yes, the person is more than twice Haddad’s age, but while the character moves painfully slowly, Haddad often puts his walker aside as he sits in chairs, dances with his aunt, and — well, I don’t want to give away the surprise, even though Haddad lets us know what’s coming. When he is without his walker, Haddad needs help standing, and the other actors/characters assist him, but Haddad is not seeking sympathy. He is just revealing what his everyday life is like.

Affectionately directed by Danny Sharron (Hold Me in the Water, Okay) on Afsoon Pajoufar’s lovely garden set (beautifully lit by Barbara Samuels, with expert sound and music by Ryan Gamblin), the play does veer toward sentiment and melodrama in the second act, but otherwise it is a triumph. The cast, in Enver Chakartash’s warm, occasionally flashy contemporary costumes, is so involved that they feel like members of your own extended family: Malone (Fun Home) is delightful as a gay woman who is completely comfortable with the choices she’s made, Cristofer (The Shadow Box) is endearing as the fair but firm friend, Nacer (Meet the Cartozians) and Pebdami (Wish You Were Here) find the right balance in portraying two very different sets of parents, Bagley (No Actors Allowed) is gentle as the man who often serves as mediator, and Raviv (The Bands Visit) is so believable as the title character that it’s hard to believe he’s not really Ryan’s uncle.

Nearly ten years in the making, Good Time Charlie is a love letter to the arts, to the people who are important to us, and to the Public Theater itself (through several funny inside jokes), where Haddad has found a second home.

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

BEARING WITNESS: ZIV KOREN & OCTOBER 7

ZIV KOREN’S OCTOBER 7 WAR
Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center
1 East Sixty-Fifth St. at Fifth Ave.
Wednesday, October 7, free with advance RSVP, 4:00-8:00
Exhibition continues through November 4
streicker.nyc
zivkoren.com

On October 7, 2023, Israeli photojournalist Ziv Koren headed to the south of the country immediately after hearing about Hamas’s attack during the festive Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. The photos he took captured the horrific brutality of the day and the war that followed.

On the third anniversary of that terrible day, the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is opening the exhibition “Ziv Koren’s October 7 War,” displaying photos from Koren’s 2024 book, The October 7 War (Gefen, $70), which he published “to pay respect to some of those thousands of fateful moments that went undocumented and to the heroes of those moments.”

At 6:30, a yahrzeit candle will be lit and kaddish will be said for the victims. The exhibition, another example of the Jewish legacy of bearing witness, continues through November 4. In addition, an auction is being held for one of Koren’s original framed photographs, with the proceeds benefiting the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

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

AN ECOSEXUAL EMERGENCY: BETH STEPHENS AND ANNIE SPRINKLE PLAY WITH FIRE AT ANTHOLOGY

Partners Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens explore the many aspects of fire in latest documentary

PLAYING WITH FIRE: AN ECOSEXUAL EMERGENCY (Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, 2025)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, October 10, 7:30
Sunday, October 11, 4:00
anthologyfilmarchives.org
sprinklestephens.ucsc.edu

There’s an important warning at the start of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’s Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency: “This film contains environmental destruction, explicit ecosexuality, and performance art.”

It sure does.

In the film, longtime life and professional partners Sprinkle, a former sex worker turned feminist performance artist and sex educator, and Stephens, an artist, filmmaker, and art professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explore both the beneficial and detrimental aspects of fire. The topic became forefront in their minds after they survived the devastating CZU Lightning Complex Fire of 2020; not everyone in their tight-knit community of Boulder Creek, California, was so fortunate.

In such chapters as “The Inferno,” “The Return,” and “Some Like It Hot,” they meet with a wide range of people who work with fire, from ceramicists Laurie and Dan Hennig, musicians Kate Freeman and Hillary Kay, and permaculturalist Aaron Allen to Forestry & Fire Recruitment Program cofounder Brandon Smith, artistic directors and curators Melonie and Melorra Green, and burlesque queen Lady Monster. Fire is seen as a necessary part of the Earth as it is used in rituals, art, weddings, and healing.

Therapist and witch Deborah Oak shares her “10 Top Tips for Staying Sane in Insane Times.” Indigenous sustainability professor Melissa Nelson explains, “Fire is a destroyer, it’s a great destroyer, but it’s a great regenerator.” Artists and game designers Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou and Huntrezz Janos display one of their projects as the latter says, “We want to showcase pleasure in a world of pain, and we want to help people dealing with catastrophe and survival.”

After her house is completely destroyed, Agz Rags owner Agnes De Lucchi says, “More than my own home, I worried about the trees.”

Sprinkle and Stephens, whose previous films include Water Makes Us Wet, Goodbye Gauley Mountain, and Playing in the Garden, also introduce us to their dog, Butch, and their remarkable white peacock, Albert, who became a symbol of Boulder Creek’s resilience. Their positive outlook on life is infectious, and more than a little woo-woo, as they delve into the connection between environmental fires and social fires through a trans rights march, playful animation (including animals talking and texting), discussions of consumption, and, ultimately, cremation.

“Not only do we believe that art can help our society evolve, we also believe in the power of love and pleasure,” Beth says, getting to the heart of ecosexuality.

Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency is screening October 10 at 7:30 and October 11 at 4:30 at Anthology Film Archives as part of the series “The Cinema of Gender Transgression”; Sprinkle and Stephens will perform the ten-minute “Ecosex 101” before each show. In addition, they will participate in a Q&A with Urban Tantra and The Book of Ecstasy author Barbara Carrellas on October 10 and A Body to Live In director Angelo Madsen on October 11; there will also be a reception and book signing on Sunday, celebrating the milestone birthdays of adult entertainment legends Veronica Vera and Veronica Hart, cofounders of the pornstar support group Club 90. Attendees are strongly encouraged to dress up in fire or ecosex costumes for both screenings.

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