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OPPOSITES ATTRACT: BALLETCOLLECTIVE AT ST. JOHN THE DIVINE

BalletCollective returns to St. John the Divine for fifteenth anniversary season (photo courtesy BalletCollective)

OPPOSITES ATTRACT
Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St.
November 3-5, $68.45-$137.75
Livestream November 4-22
balletcollective.com
stjohndivine.org

New York City–based BalletCollective is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary with “Opposites Attract,” a trio of new works, developed through the company’s 2026 Commission for Developing Choreographers, that will be performed three nights only, November 3–5, in the Crossing at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. The troupe was founded by Troy Schumacher in 2011 “to create and perform forward-thinking works of art that reflect the world we live in; BalletCollective commissions emerging and established art makers and thought leaders to collaborate closely using an original process that inspires ballet-based works.”

“Opposites Attract” consists of the world premieres of Noelle Kayser’s Brigid, Shane Urton’s The Wet Heat of Living, and Schumacher’s What If, for a Day, We Could Be Friends. Kayser’s site-specific piece features live music by composer Julia Kent and costumes by Amanda Gladu, using as their source art a scent created by perfumer Heather Sielaff; together they explore the elements of water and mist, fire and ash in a spiritual context, channeling Saint Brigid of Kildare and Brigid the pagan goddess, “one woman, one archetype, told through two different lenses,” according to Kayser.

The Wet Heat of Living has music by Paul Novak and costumes by Gladu, using as their source art original poetry by M. Soledad Caballero, while What If, for a Day, We Could Be Friends has music by Phong Tran, performed live by NOIS, with an original illustration by Matt Rota as its source art.

The works will be performed by Georgia Greene, Thomas Hogan, Mizuho Kappa, Keenan Kiefer, Brooke Lutz, Arayah Lyte, Maya Milić, Alexander Perone, Davide Riccardo, Alexsander Swader, and Ella Titus, a roster that includes several dancers from New York City Ballet and Juilliard. The gala on November 5 honors Claire and Chris Mann and begins with a piece created with immersive theater director Hope Youngblood Heck. The November 4 performance will be livestreamed and available through November 22.

Be sure to get there early to check out such art installations as Nisha Bansil’s Unseen and Sebastián Gámez’s Ofrenda and take in the grand splendor of the cathedral.

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

LOVE LANGUAGE: THE KICK INSIDE AT HERE ARTS CENTER

Nicolás Noreña’s The Kick Inside was inspired by Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album (photo by Jose Miranda)

THE KICK INSIDE
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 7, $10.50-$126
here.org

“I’ve seen some weird things recently. I don’t know what to make of it,” Alenka (Tatyana Kot) says in Nicolás Noreña’s The Kick Inside.

I love weird; often, the weirder the better. But not always. And in this case, I certainly don’t know what to make of it.

The Kick Inside is an exquisite corpse play — a surrealist concept in which collaborators add pieces to a work of art in sequence — written by Penny Arcade, Jess Barbagallo, Ethan Fishbane, Richard Foreman, Hillary Gao, Nazareth Hassan, John Jesurun, Marvin Just, Dhari Noel, Normandy Sherwood, Hayley Stahl, and Fiona Templeton. It’s named after and inspired by Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album, which features such songs as “Strange Phenomena,” “Wuthering Heights” (about Cathy and Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s novel), and “The Kick Inside” (about an incestuous relationship between siblings that ends with the sister’s pregnancy and the brother’s suicide). Although the play is not about the album, it does touch on many of the record’s themes, including the heart, the soul, and the strange.

It opens promisingly with Just’s “The Cinema,” in which a group of people are sitting in theater seats onstage, watching the closing credits of a movie — or the audience, as if we are performing for them. As Bush’s “Moving” plays, the viewers start leaving until a weeping Alenka is alone. “Moving stranger, does it really matter?” Bush asks.

Over the next few scenes, we meet Baba (Benjamin Forster), Jeannie the Tech Witch (Yuki Kawahisa), the voice of Alenka’s room (Alenka Kraigher), Alenka’s cousin Frankie (Frankie Placidi), Angel (Essence Lotus), Felix the Dog Who Is Also a Man (Felix Teich), and SN (Timothy Scott). We travel to a locksmith, a library, a bar, a diner, and various apartments as the actors rearrange Sherwood’s sets, makeshift pieces of cardboard, curtains, and other materials.

The abstract dialogue and plot are less surreal than confounding; while cool scenes occasionally pop up, including at a bus stop and a dry cleaners, everything else is too random, like atoms dancing around but never connecting. Amid aliens and oozing innards, there are discussions of words and rules.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for books that speak of language as magic,” Alenka says in a library. Jeannie replies, “Careful, in such a world it is necessary to learn the trick of remaining with one’s mind full of trembling expectation, poised to seize on the first and smallest indication of something happening — just outside the realm of habitual consciousness.”

Alenka (Tatyana Kot) and Baba (Benjamin Forster) try to connect at a dry cleaners (photo by Jose Miranda)

Later, in a diner, Jeannie tells a waitress who looks just like Alenka but claims not to be her, “For a long long time humans have been contained by their inability to communicate with the world around them. Languages were invented for this very purpose.”

Unfortunately, such dialogue does not communicate well to the audience, which, the night I went, was struggling to figure out what was going on. In addition, too much of the action occurs on the floor, so most of the audience is unable to always see it. Sitting in the last row, I used that time to watch foley artist Marija Kovačević to my right, where she was creating sound effects like on old radio shows, although occasionally too loudly.

The Kick Inside feels completely random; it has aliens, a talking canine, milkshakes, and innards. It also has a convoluted continuity and a confusing raison d’être. I’m all for breaking theatrical conventions and experimentation, but not when it is so forced, not organic.

“I’ve broken the rules!” Alenka declares. “The allegorical undeniable. In the allegorical undeniable, I have a name. Alenka. And everything in my path-encounter is fleeting-unnamed. But at some point a phrase a description a condition became a name and so now you know you have a name — you have a name to me!”

Even Denis Diderot, Noam Chomsky, and Steven Pinker would be confused. And Samuel Beckett too, especially at two scenes that borrow his stagecraft.

The first act concludes with Alenka reciting Bush’s “Feel It” from her first record, warbling, “Oh, feel it, oh-oh, feel it, feel it, my love . . . See what you’re doing to me.”

In his 1997 bestseller, True Love, Robert Fulghum wrote, “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.”

There might be others who feel it for The Kick Inside, but it was not true love for me.

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

SICK OF THE PROPER ATTITUDE: THE MINT’S PHYL AT THEATRE ROW

Jack (Anthony Michael Martinez) and Phyl (Lily Ganser) consider Edwardian morality in Cicely Hamilton’s Phyl (photo by Todd Cerveris)

PHYL
The Mint Theater at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 7, $79-$95
minttheater.org
theatrerow.org

Phyl is a shining example of what the Mint Theater does best: find a long-lost play and exquisitely bring it back to life on a gorgeous set with lovely period costumes and a fine acting ensemble.

In 1913, London-born playwright, activist, journalist, actress, suffragist, and feminist Cicely Hamilton was scheduled to premiere her latest play, Phyl, at Oxford. Despite having been approved by the Lord Chamberlain, it was banned by the vice chancellor because of its scandalous content. “It really does not matter. All those Oxford small boys can run up to London any time they like and see something much worse,” Hamilton said. “The vice chancellor is merely expressing his own opinion of the play. He does not like it, and he is supposed to be entitled to exercise his mediaeval privileges in keeping it out of his preserve. At Oxford as soon as you cease to be an Oxonian and show a sense of humor you are barred.”

The play was briefly staged in Brighton, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Chicago before disappearing for more than a century.

The Mint, which presented Hamilton’s Diana of Dobson’s in 2001, searched for Phyl, which had not been published; the company eventually found the Lord Chamberlain’s copy in the British Library.

Hamilton shows a sense of humor and more in the fancifully written play, which begins in a posh country house and moves to a luxury hotel in the second act. In her off-Broadway debut, Lily Ganser is enchanting as Phyllis “Phyl” Chester, an unhappy governess serving as a teacher to two spoiled brats, Betty (Tessa Blimes) and Olive (Charlotte Van Ledtje), who thrive on being mean to her. Their mother, Mrs. Ponsonby (Katie Firth), is a snooty, wealthy woman who treats Phyl with disdain. Mrs. Ponsonby is trying to make a match between rich, handsome bachelor Jack Folliott (Anthony Michael Martinez) and her daughter Mabel (Livvy Marcus), but Mabel has eyes for Captain Maloney.

After Phyl’s older sister, Cathy (Jennifer Blood), an ultraserious and dour office worker, pays a quick surprise visit, urging her to keep her job and put away some money, Jack comes down to say hello and make peace between Phyl and the young girls. The kids go to bed, and just as Phyl declares to Jack about her sister, “I want more! And I can’t have it. I’ve got to live as she does, and grow to what she is. I’ve got to —,” Mrs. Ponsonby enters, upset that Jack and Phyl are spending private time together. Jack leaves, and Mrs. Ponsonby coldly dismisses Phyl, but not before Phyl gets her say, scandalizing the older woman with her outspoken response.

Jack returns, apologizes for causing a problem, and sensually feeds Phyl some pudding as they come up with a plan to rid themselves of the Ponsonbys, which gets complicated almost immediately.

Phyl (Lily Ganser) and Jack (Anthony Michael Martinez) think about their future in recently rediscovered feminist play (photo by Todd Cerveris)

Phyl is a delightful romantic comedy that deals with class, manners, and gender stereotypes. “I am sick of the proper attitude,” Phyl proclaims near the end of the first act. The play evokes Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Downton Abbey while feeling fresh and alive in 2026. It follows in the footsteps of such other excellent female-centric Mint productions written by women as Elizabeth Baker’s Partnership, Hazel Ellis’s Women without Men, and Betty Smith’s Becomes a Woman, the last also splendidly directed by Britt Berke. In Phyl, Berke expertly guides the characters around Brittany Vasta’s elegant sets, from a dark and cramped downstairs room where a window blocks out the sun to a wide-open hotel suite with a balcony where life goes on in the street below, teasing and tantalizing Phyl.

Alicia J. Austin’s costumes are basically black and white in the first half, then bursting with color in the second as Phyl’s relationship with the outside world fills with potential. The mostly female crack crew also includes lighting by Mary Louise Geiger, sound by Jane Shaw, dramaturgy by Amy Stoller, and casting by Stephanie Klapper.

Throughout the show, Jack calls Phyl “little woman,” not realizing that it can be construed as being demeaning. But Phyl does not feel like a little woman as she slowly gains agency while learning how to assert herself and say what she wants, fully understanding the situation she is in. The plot threatens to approach Pretty Woman territory but cleverly sidesteps it.

Ganser (Stereophonic) commands the stage as Phyl, whether dressed in mournful black or colorful haute couture. She represents a kind of everywoman, both in Edwardian times and today. Martinez (Titus Andronicus) stirs things up as Jack, a gentleman of privilege who is more than just intrigued by Phyl.

Hamilton, a former teacher who never married, died in 1952 at the age of eighty, having penned more than thirty plays, novels, and travelogues, including the influential 1909 How the Vote Was Won, which ran on Broadway in 1910, as well as the lyrics to the 1910 protest song “The March of the Women.” She focused on women’s economic freedom (for example, in her 1909 book Marriage as a Trade), an issue at the heart of Phyl, which kicks off the Mint’s “Let’s Talk About Sex” season; next up is Miles Malleson’s The Fanatics in February.

I’m ready for more pudding; how about you?

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

SHAKESPEARE, CONSPIRACY THEORIES, GAY PRIDE, AND GUNS: ANON AT MCC

Michael (Andrew Garman), Delia (Isabel Mar), and Jeanie (Crystal Finn) try to enjoy a family dinner together in Anon (photo by Monique Carboni)

ANON
Newman Mills Theater
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space
511 West Fifty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 1, $49-$112
mcctheater.org

As you enter the Newman Mills Theater at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space to see Anne Washburn’s Anon, the preshow playlist prepares you for what is to follow. First is Neil Young’s 2016 “Monsanto Years,” an eight-minute anticorporate screed in which the Canadian rocker and earth activist ominously declares, “You never know what the future holds.” Next is Lee Greenwood’s 1984 right-wing anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.,” in which the California-born Republican proclaims, “If tomorrow all the things were gone / I worked for all my life / And I had to start again / With just my children and my wife / I’d thank my lucky stars / To be living here today / ’Cause the flag still stands for freedom / And they can’t take that away.” Rounding out the opening trio is Kacey Musgraves’s 2018 psychedelic country hit “Slow Burn,” in which the Texas native, whose progressive views are often controversial in the traditional country music establishment, sings, “I’m alright with a slow burn / Takin’ my time, let the world turn / I’m gonna do it my way, it’ll be alright / If we burn it down and it takes all night / It’s a slow burn.”

The set, by the dots collective, is a plain, ordinary, bland room with a table and chairs at the center, bare walls, and a front door. There’s no evidence of the type of people who live there: rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, native-born American or immigrant, white, brown, or Black, Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. It’s a tabula rasa, ready for action. And action it finds.

It actually represents two houses in a San Antonio suburb, across the street from each other, one occupied by Jeanie (Crystal Finn), her husband, Michael (Andrew Garman), and their children, Delia (Izabel Mar) and the unseen Leo, the other by the newly moved-in gay couple Adam (Jeff Biehl) and Will (Jeremy Shamos). Scouring social media, Adam discovers that Jeanie spends a whole lot of time in her parked car posting right-wing conspiracy theories on TikTok. She rants, “I’ve been seeing a lot of comments and posts from folks who are really starting to freak out about the timeline: Why is Fauci still free, when will Hillary Clinton face judgement, where are the arrests, are there medbeds, and the Storm, the Storm, when is the Storm already?? And I just want to say, folks: Trust the Plan means: Trust the Plan.”

When Adam and Will put up a gay pride flag, Jeanie becomes incensed, and Will buys a gun. Welcome to America in the 2020s.

Will (Jeremy Shamos) and Adam (Jeff Biehl) go down another rabbit hole in Anon (photo by Monique Carboni)

Feverishly directed by Obie winner and Tony nominee Anne Kauffman, Anon, which the script calls “a kitchen table play,” takes its title from multiple sources, including QAnon and the anonymity that the internet can provide. The cast, led by a frenetic Finn, is fantastic, spreading throughout the political spectrum. Washburn delves not only into tolerance, freedom, and diversity but into the responsibility of parents, the needs of their children, and whether JFK Jr. is destined to become our next president. It’s a swirl of RINOs, libtards, MAGAts, online rabbit holes, and hating your neighbor, as Washburn and Kauffman create an almost too-real atmosphere in which people on opposing sides don’t actually speak to each other face-to-face. In later scenes, the two families’ lives intersect when they are in the house at the same time, although they don’t see one another.

The use of projections for texting and posting are overdone and the plot goes off on a few tangents, but Anon is a whipsmart, funny, and frightening foray into our immediate future, and it isn’t pretty. There’s also a significant amount of Shakespeare, as Delia is given a school assignment to write a soliloquy for a Bard character who doesn’t have one, a metaphor for how so many of us go on social media and deliver our own monologues, some in anonymity, some seeking to go viral.

As the third witch says in the first scene in Macbeth, “Anon!”

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

OPTIC NERVES: CELEBRATING GLASS EYE PIX AT IFC

IFC Center pays tribute to Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix in celebratory series

OPTIC NERVE: A TRIBUTE TO GLASS EYE PIX
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
October 28 – November 3
ifccenter.com

“In my films quite often, paranoia usually leads to the truth so it is kind of a psychological state of mind to think that what you fear may come true, and those are the types of stories that I like to tell,” New York City native Larry Fessenden said about his career, which includes nine shorts and thirteen features as writer and/or director and producer going back to 1978. On the occasion of the November 4 release of his latest film, Trauma or, Monsters All, and the fortieth anniversary of his company, Glass Eye Pix, IFC Center is celebrating with a seven-film tribute running October 28 through November 3.

It kicks off with his breakthrough, the 1995 cult classic Habit, about which he says in a program note, “My main contribution to the horror genre was to tell a very personal story about addiction and obsession in New York City with an affectionate nod to vampire tropes and mood. . . . Steeped in ambiguity, it seems to resonate with anyone who has ever suffered a breakup or felt overwhelmed by existential loneliness, which is to say, most everyone and most every cinephile.” The 8:45 screening on October 28 will be followed by a Q&A with Fessenden and writer and curator Justin LaLiberty.

The series continues with 2010’s Stake Land (“An epic, heartfelt postapocalyptic film made over the course of four months to capture different seasons.”), 2011’s The Innkeepers (“I’ve been told it’s Scorsese’s favorite Ti West Film.”), 2008’s I Sell the Dead (“Glenn McQuaid’s movie started out as a low budget period romp but expanded as Glass Eye Pix producer Peter Phok ambitiously attached actors like Dom Monaghan.”), 2006’s The Last Winter (“This was conceived as a sequel of sorts to my family drama Wendigo, expanding the themes of cultural cannibalism to themes of Manifest Destiny and climate collapse.”), 2019’s Depraved (“A low budget retelling of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece steeped in the national PTSD of the Iraq war and pharmaceutical overreach.”), and 2023’s Blackout (“An apt time for the budget to shrink further, I tell the story of a town divided by racism and a corrupt patriarch to update the werewolf movie.”).

Below is a closer look at two of his haunting films.

Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) and Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) get involved in some dastardly doings in I SELL THE DEAD

Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) and Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) get involved in some dastardly doings in I Sell the Dead

I SELL THE DEAD (Glenn McQuaid, 2009)
IFC Center
Saturday, October 31, 1:00 & 9:30
ifccenter.com

Glenn McQuaid’s I Sell the Dead is an old-fashioned fun horror movie, paying homage to the Hammer films of yore. After his grave-robbing partner, Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden), is guillotined, Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) awaits his turn. With five hours to go before his execution, Blake is visited by Father Francis Duffy (Ron Perlman), who wants to know all the details of Grimes and Blake’s business, especially as it relates to harvesting the undead. So with a bottle of whiskey by his side, Blake recounts the pair’s eerie adventures through foggy eighteenth-century England and their battles with the House of Murphy, a rival outfit that also gathers corpses for a living.

Writer-director-editor McQuaid imbues the film with a graphic-novel feel, with many scenes ending in colorful freeze-frame panels; although I Sell the Dead is an original story (based on his own short), the director did adapt the script into a comic book before shooting in order to capture the mood and visual style he was after. And cinematographer Rick Lopez, production designer David Bell, and art director Beck Underwood nail that atmosphere, along with Jeff Grace’s ambitious score. The cast also includes Phantasm Tall Man Angus Scrimm as a creepy violin-playing doctor in desperate need of body parts, Brenda Cooney as Blake’s boisterous girlfriend, and Joel Garland as a burly tavern owner after his own piece of the action. The film was shot in Staten Island, Long Island, and Manhattan; if the Fortune of War bar looks familiar, that’s because it’s actually the Scratcher in the East Village.

THE LAST WINTER (Larry Fessenden, 2006)
IFC Center
Sunday, November 1, 1:00 & 7:30
ifccenter.com

In Alaska, a company called North is preparing to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the permission of the U.S. government. North has sent along environmentalist James Hoffman (James LeGros) and his assistant, Elliot Taylor (Jamie Harrold), to ensure that the team, led by the imposing Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman), follows all proper guidelines and agreements. But when strange things start happening — including weird visions, odd disappearances, and brutal deaths — Pollack is determined to move forward, no matter the cost. Written and directed by Larry Fessenden, who also makes a cameo in the film, The Last Winter is a scary look at an all-too-possible future, a global-warming horror story in the tradition of John Carpenter’s The Thing, where the small cast of characters never knows just what is waiting for them around every corner — and out on the treacherous, blindingly white landscape that surrounds and engulfs them.

The film also stars Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) as Abby Sellers, a strong-minded woman who has left Pollack for Hoffman; indie stalwart Kevin Corrigan (Walking and Talking) as vehicle expert Motor; Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights) as young and innocent Maxwell McKinder; Grammy-winning composer and musician Joanne Shenandoah (Skywoman) as Dawn Russell, who prepares the meals and cleans up after everyone; and Pato Hoffmann (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) as Lee Means, a Native American who has a deep understanding of the land and the spirits.

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

BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: PERICLES IN A BED-STUY CHURCH

PERICLES: IN CONCERT
Concord Baptist Church of Christ
833 Marcy Ave.
Monday, October 26, $33.85-$55.20
eventbrite.com
fireensemble.com

Last year I saw a rousing concert production of William Shakespeare’s Pericles inside the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, part of the Public Theater’s Public Works initiative. I wrote that it “features music and lyrics by Troy Anthony, a first for someone nurtured through Public Works; the score is an intoxicating mix of gospel, blues, ballads, R&B, and spirituals, at times turning St. John the Divine into a revival meeting. . . . The choreography is by Tiffany Rea-Fisher, who transforms a jousting tournament into a hip-hop dance battle. . . . There’s so much passion and energy on the stage that you just might forget that Pericles is not a very good play; a case has been made that the first two acts were actually written by pamphleteer and innkeeper George Wilkins. The story involves incest, pirates, child prostitution, resurrection, and betrayal as Pericles, the prince of Tyre, escapes the wrath of Antiochus and ventures to Tarsus, Pentapolis, and Ephesus, leaving behind his dead wife, Thaisa, and infant daughter, Marina. . . . Tony nominee Crystal Lucas-Perry brings the house down over and over again as Gower, the narrator, lustrous in a glorious white gown.”

A slightly different version of the show is being presented October 26 at the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Bed-Stuy, codirected by Anthony and Rea-Fisher and performed by the ninety-person Fire Ensemble, “an intergenerational pop-up choir community that centers BIPOC and queer folx.” Lucas-Perry is reprising her role as Gower; the cast also includes Aisha Jackson, John-Michael Lyles, Jason Veasey, Jaime Cepero, Genesis Adelia Collado, Amina Faye, Treston Henderson, Ava Jones, Cal Mitchell, Dominique Smith, STONES, Cartreze Tucker, Matthew Elijah Webb, Samantha Williams, and Stephen Scott Wormley. Ticket prices range from pay-what-you-can in the balcony to $55.20 for front orchestra seats to see this special show.

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

ASKING FOR TOO MUCH: THE ASK AT THEATER 555

Greta (Marilu Henner) and Tanner (Shannon Purser) discuss the ACLU and more in Matthew Freeman’s The Ask (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE ASK
Theater 555
555 West Forty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 22, $49-$149
theaskplay.com
theater555.com

When I saw the world premiere of Matthew Freeman’s The Ask at the wild project two years ago, I called it “stimulating . . . Freeman writes with a refreshing assuredness. . . . It expertly captures the changes that are evolving primarily on the left in today’s society. Greta and Tanner are battling each other instead of the other side, unwilling to compromise their values.”

The play is now running at Theater 555 in essentially the same production: Returning are director Jessi D. Hill, Craig Napoliello’s detailed set, costume designer Nicole Wee, lighting designer Venus Gulbranson, and sound
designer Ben Scheff. The script has been tweaked but has not been significantly altered, and Betsy Aidem (Greta) and Colleen Litchfield (Tanner) have been replaced by the talented duo of Marilu Henner and Shannon Purser, respectively. So what went wrong this time around?

It’s December 2022, and twentysomething American Civil Liberties Union gift planning officer Tanner arrives at the well-decorated Upper West Side apartment of Greta, a wealthy seventysomething photographer who has been a longtime donor to the ACLU. Tanner wants to know why Greta failed to donate this year and whether she can give more than usual now; they also discuss how Greta can leave the ACLU money in her will. Before making any decisions, Greta is concerned about the direction the ACLU is going in.

“I am upset. I’m disappointed. I did not give because I did not want to give,” Greta explains. “Yes, you send too many emails, but I do read them. And all I’m reading is how you want money for things that have nothing to do with your mission, nothing. I even read a story about how members of your staff were calling the Constitution a white supremacist document. So, of course, I think to myself: What the heck is going on over there? And then Dobbs, we lose Roe, and you’re over here playing around with trying to cancel student debt while fucking Alito is burning witches.”

Tanner is careful with her responses, trying to avoid offending Greta without commenting negatively on the organization.

“If you agree with the ACLU most of the time, you should be a member. If you agree with the ACLU half the time, you should be a board member,” Tanner jokes. Greta replies, “I think I have heard that one. I feel like that’s less a joke and more of a saying.”

As they continue their cat-and-mouse game, they reach a wall when Tanner is unable to speak the one word that is most important to Greta.

The Ask may be only two years old, but it already feels stale and outdated. The extremism, particularly on the left, has grown so divisive, tearing at the seams of the Democratic Party, that the debate between Greta and Tanner seems less critical in 2026 as Democratic Socialists win primaries and general elections.

In addition, while Aidem and Litchfield had an immediate chemistry, five-time Golden Globe nominee Henner (Madwomen of the West, Gettin’ the Band Back Together) and Emmy nominee Purser (Stranger Things, Riverdale), in her off-Broadway debut, lack electricity, failing to make a connection. At times it’s like they’re in two different shows, Henner overdoing her sexy vivaciousness and Purser underplaying her sensitivity and restraint.

The finale is still powerful, shining a light on where we are as a society and where organizations such as the ACLU are heading, but even at a mere seventy-five minutes, The Ask is too slow, asking too much of the audience.

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