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THE MEETING: THE INTERPRETER

Frank Wood and Kelley Curran appear onstage and onscreen in The Meeting: The Interpreter (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE MEETING: THE INTERPRETER
Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West 46th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through August 25, $39-$135
meetinginterpreterplay.com
www.stclementsnyc.org

Frank Wood and Kelley Curran are terrific in the world premiere of The Meeting: The Interpreter. However, I’m completely flummoxed by the play, which explores the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting from multiple angles, literally and figuratively.

On that day, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, publicist Rob Goldstone, and Russian-American businessman Ike Kaveladze met at the Fifth Ave. building to discuss the Magnitsky Act, gathering dirt on Hillary Clinton, and/or the adoption of Russian children by Americans; the meeting figured prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on possible Russian interference and collusion in the 2016 presidential election.

Also present was a Russian-born interpreter (Wood) who had worked for the UN, the US government, and private individuals for more than twenty years and had what is known as public trust clearance. The name of the interpreter is never revealed in the play and critics have been asked not to use it in any articles about the show, even though it is listed in the Wikipedia entry about the meeting and the interpreter has his own LinkedIn page.

In the program, it points out, “This is a work of dramatic interpretation, and any resemblance to actual people and events is strictly coincidental”; however, nearly every other character is mentioned by name, including Congressman Mike Quigley, Congressman Eric Swalwell, Congressman Mike Conaway, Sen. Charles Grassley aide Samantha Brennan, Sen. Dianne Feinstein general counsel Heather Sawyer, and the interpreter’s lawyer, Larry H. Krantz, who take part in a Senate Judiciary Committee interview of the interpreter on November 8, 2017, with dialogue taken directly from the transcripts. In a tour de force with numerous comic moments, Curran plays every role other than the interpreter.

Writer Catherine Gropper, who met the interpreter by chance in the winter of 2020, and director Brian Mertes seem to go out of their way to make every scene unnecessarily complicated; although some work, most are head-scratchingly bizarre. The play begins with the credits rolling on a screen at the front of the stage, as if we are watching a movie, followed by a shot of Wood and Curran sitting at a long desk like newscasters. Brennan begins the November 8 hearing, but after a few minutes, the screen shifts over to stage left — where it remains the entire time — and the two actors, seated with their backs to us, look behind them, acknowledging the audience as the cluttered desk they are sitting at is turned around.

Throughout the ninety-minute show, a camera operated by three people slowly circles the stage. Live projections from that camera appear on the screen, giving the audience different perspectives on the actors, each wearing a white shirt, dark pants, and a blazer. One of the camera operators wears an Awolnation T-shirt, for the LA band that has released such albums as Back from Earth, Megalithic Symphony, and The Phantom Five and whose name refers to a country that has gone “absent without leave.” There’s confusion about where to look as the actors move from the main table, to small seats, to a recording booth, and to a makeup cabinet. Wood sifts through a bucket of sand. Curran staples a tie to a box. The actors break out into a dance. They snap their fingers and drum on the table. The video feed turns to abstract animation. Wood peels a plastic sheet off the studio glass. Part of the meeting is re-created with creepy dolls. (The cramped set is by Jim Findlay, with costumes by Olivera Gajic, lighting by Barbara Samuels, sound and music by Dan Baker & Co., projections by Yana Biryukova, puppets and animation by Julian Crouch, and camera by Tatiana Stolporskaya.)

World premiere production uses unique ways to tell its story (photo by Carol Rosegg)

It’s as if Gropper (Embers, Miss Crandall’s Classes) and Mertes (The Myopia, Massacre) approached each scene with the question: What can we do to complicate the action and confuse the audience this time? If that were their intention, they have succeeded marvelously.

The Meeting: The Interpreter might have worked much better at a small, experimental theater like La MaMa, the Wooster Group’s Performing Garage, or BAM’s Fishman Space. It gets lost at Theatre at St. Clement’s, where it is playing to a more traditional crowd. For me, it’s a cursed venue; of the dozen or so shows I’ve seen there, I’ve only been able to recommend two.

Tony winner Wood (Toros, The Red Letter Plays: In the Blood, The Iceman Cometh) once again reveals himself to be New York City’s best deadpan actor; he commits to his underwritten character in a way that makes the interpreter endearing even when doing something utterly nonsensical. Curran (Mother of the Maid, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, BAD NEWS! I was there . . .) delivers another fine performance, fully investing herself in her responsibilities as a political shape shifter. It’s a shame there isn’t more cohesiveness to the narrative; the plot doesn’t have to be spelled out to the letter, but then it is, in a text-only finale that tells us what we already knew about the Trump Tower meeting, the Mueller Report, and the presidential election of 2016 before we entered the theater.

“I left part of myself there, at Trump Tower. Normally, I wouldn’t care. Unless something shakes me to my core,” the interpreter says in a rare moment of poignant insight. “I don’t open up so easily. Maybe it’s why I interpret for others. Actually, I’m a private man.”

The play itself could use an interpreter, but maybe that’s the point?

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

PHILIPPE PETIT: TOWERING!!

Philippe Petit will look back at his historic walk between the Twin Towers at special events at St. John the Divine (photo courtesy Man on Wire)

Who: Philippe Petit, Sting, Anat Cohen, Molly Lewis, Sophie Auster, Tim Guinee, Lorenzo Pisoni, Evelyne Crochet, Shawn Conley, James Marsh, Michael Miles, and students of Ballet Tech
What: Live performances celebrating fiftieth anniversary of Twin Towers high-wire walk
Where: The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St.
When: Wednesday, August 7, and Thursday, August 8, $50-$500 (VIP $1800), 8:30
Why: It was an unforgettable moment in my childhood. On August 7, 1974, French tightrope artist Philippe Petit, six days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, pulled off what he called “le coup”: After six years of secret planning, he snuck up to the top of the South Tower of the recently built World Trade Center and walked on a 131-foot-long wire he had strung to the other, 1,350 feet aboveground, traversing it eight times over forty-five minutes using a balancing pole. The crossing was completely unauthorized; spectators and security officers alike were stunned. It was a spectacular achievement that went viral well before there was anything like social media. It was all over the news, on television and in the papers, and it was all anyone was talking about.

“This is probably the end of my life to step on that wire,” Petit says in James Marsh’s 2008 documentary, Man on Wire. “Death is very close.”

The Twin Towers opened on April 4, 1973, and were destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Petit has also walked the high wire at the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Louisiana Superdome, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Paris Opera, the Museum of the City of New York, the Eiffel Tower, and locations in Jerusalem, Tokyo, Vienna, Frankfurt, Belgium, Switzerland, and numerous US cities. In 1982, 1992, and 1996, he performed the feat at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where he has been an artist in residence for more than four decades.

On August 7 and 8, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his World Trade Center walk, called the “artistic crime of the century,” Petit has conceived and directed “Towering!!,” a special two-night multidisciplinary happening consisting of nineteen scenes at the cathedral, where he will be joined by clarinetist Anat Cohen, musical whistler Molly Lewis, singer-songwriter Sophie Auster, actors Tim Guinee and Lorenzo Pisoni, classical pianist Evelyne Crochet, bassist and composer Shawn Conley, musician, author, and educator Michael Miles, and students from Ballet Tech dance school.

Petit, who turns seventy-five on August 13, will walk the high wire and share stories about his WTC adventure. In addition, his good friend Sting will play three songs, including “Let the Great World Spin,” which was written specifically for this event, and Marsh will debut a short film about Petit.

Limited tickets are still available for several sections as well as VIP seating, which comes with Champagne and dessert with Petit after the performance. Part of the proceeds support programs at the cathedral and the preservation of Petit’s archives.

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

CatVideoFest 2024

CatVideoFest 2024
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Nitehawk Cinema, 188 Prospect Park West
Saturday, August 3, and Sunday, August 4, 11:00 am
(Nitehawk bonus screenings August 10-11)
www.ifccenter.com
nitehawkcinema.com
www.catvideofest.com

“There have likely never been so many cats living on the streets of New York,” New York magazine declared in July. There have likely also never been so many cat videos living on the internet.

During times of strife, especially amid the tumult of social media, many of us seek solace in cat videos. There’s just something about the tricky little devils riding Roombas, squeezing into ridiculously tight spaces, sneaking up on us like ninjas, and jumping and climbing everywhere that soothes our souls. “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats,” polymath Albert Schweitzer said.

Cat fanciers can find refuge from the maelstrom at Oscilloscope Laboratories’ “CatVideoFest 2024,” screening August 3 and 4 at IFC Center and Nitehawk Cinema. The final selection of videos were chosen from more than fifteen thousand short films, divided into such sections as drama, music, animation, and action-adventure. “Everything that you’d possibly want to see a cat do you will see a cat do,” IFC general manager Harris Dew told WPIX earlier this week.

A portion of the proceeds from IFC ticket sales will go to Animal Haven, which has been rescuing cats and dogs and finding them forever homes since 1967; the Nitehawk screenings, which continue August 10 and 11, benefit Sean Casey Animal Shelter, which specializes in the most difficult medical cases.

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

THE LITTLE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL: CAMARADERIE AND COMMUNITY

The Lark and the Nightingale explores friendship between Juliet and Desdemona

THE LITTLE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
UNDER St. Marks
94 St. Marks Pl.
August 1-17, $20 streaming, $27.50 in person
www.frigid.nyc

One of the most important aspects of William Shakespeare’s canon is how open each play is to interpretation and adaptation. The Bard’s works are regularly retold with changes in time and location, race and gender, style and genre. It’s gotten so that it is rarer to see a traditional production than one involving significant alterations, incorporating such elements as contemporary pop music, modern-day political issues, the rise of a minor character, and zombies.

Presented by FRIGID New York, the 2024 Little Shakespeare Festival offers Willy fans the opportunity to see seven shows that take unique looks at different aspects of Shakespeare’s genius. Running August 1-17 at UNDER St. Marks in the East Village, the fourth annual fest, the theme of which is “Camaraderie and Community,” can be experienced in person or via livestreaming, with most shows clocking in at around sixty minutes.

As You Will is one of seven productions in 2024 Little Shakespeare Festival

Hamlet Isn’t Dead’s When My Cue Comes (August 1, 3, 11, 15, 17) is set in a waiting room filled with forgotten characters, including Reynaldo from Hamlet, Jaques de Boys from As You Like It, the boatswain from The Tempest, and a messenger, from multiple plays; the Bard himself works the front desk. Justin Hay’s solo My Own Private Shakespeare (August 1, 2, 3, 4) follows a Shakespearean actor on the edge. Conor D Mullen, David Brummer, and George Hider return with their unscripted, unpredictable As You Will (August 2, 4, 10, 17). In Ladies & Fools’ Fools in the Forest (August 3, 8, 16), writer Natalie Kane reimagines what happens at the end of As You Like It. Sean Gordon delivers a senior thesis in the one-person show Walter Schlinger’s Romeo and Juliet (August 4, 8, 16). Juliet and Desdemona search for happiness outside of their usual stories in Mindy Mawhirter and Alyssa Cokinis’s The Lark and the Nightingale (August 9, 10, 11, 15, 17). And Megan Lummus proffers a unique interpretation of Much Ado About Nothing (August 9, 10, 11), tinkering with character motivations over ninety minutes.

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

BROOKLYN MUSEUM FIRST SATURDAY: SOL/SOLEY/SOLO

Takashi Murakami adds unique characters to many of his Hiroshige re-creations in Brooklyn Museum exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SOL/SOLEY/SOLO
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, August 3, free, 5:00 – 10:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors Caribbean culture with its free August First Saturday program, “Sol/Soley/Solo,” featuring live performances by Metro Steel Orchestra, RAGGA NYC DJs Oscar Nñ and Byrell the Great, Dada Cozmic, and Lulada Club; storytelling with Janet Morrison and Deborah C. Mortimer; a pop-up Caribbean market; pop-up poetry with Roberto Carlos Garcia, Omotara James, Anesia Alfred, and Christina Olivares; a hands-on art workshop in which participants will make Caribbean-inspired fans; and screenings of Ben DiGiacomo and Dutty Vannier’s 2023 documentary Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall, followed by a talkback with Pat McKay, Screechy Dan, and Red Fox, moderated by Lauren Zelaya, and Eché Janga’s 2020 drama, Buladó. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Nico Williams: Aaniin, I See Your Light,” “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm,” “Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls,” “The Brooklyn Della Robbia,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” and more.

Paul McCartney, Self-portrait, London, 1963, large graphic reproduction (courtesy MPL Communications Ltd.)

It’s also your last chance to catch the must-see exhibition “Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo (feat. Takashi Murakami),” which closes August 4. For the first time in more than two decades, the Brooklyn Museum is displaying its rare complete set of Utagawa Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo,” an 1856–58 collection of woodblock prints of Edo, later to become Tokyo. Hiroshige, who died in 1858 at the age of sixty-one, captured everyday life in the gorgeous works, from flora and fauna to stunning landscapes to fish, cats, people, and weather patterns, including Nihonbashi, Clearing After Snow; Ryogoku Ekoin and Moto-Yanagibashi Bridge; Cotton-Goods Lane, Odenma-cho; Yatsukoji, Inside Sujikai Gate; Shitaya Hirokoji; Night View of the Matsuchiyama and Sam’ya Canal; View of Nihonbashi Tori-itchome; Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake; and Bamboo Yards, Kyobashi Bridge.

The show is supplemented with related objects, contemporary photographs of the locations by Álex Falcón Bueno, and, most spectacularly, Takashi Murakami’s re-creations of each view of Edo, many with gold or platinum leafing. Dozens of smaller 14 1/2 × 9 7/16 inch acrylics on canvas are arranged in three rows on the walls, as well as 39 3/8 × 25 9/16 inch works in two rows, but it’s the large-scale 137 13/16 × 89 9/16 inch pieces that demand intense scrutiny, as Murakami has added classic miniature characters from his oeuvre, hiding them in trees, behind bushes, on rooftops, and in other hard-to-find locations, in the same gallery space where “© Murakami” dazzled visitors in 2008.

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

DOGTEAM THEATRE PROJECT: LA VIUDA

Dogteam Theatre Project is presenting La Viuda in repertory with A Hundred Circling Camps (photo by Clinton Brandhagen)

LA VIUDA
Dogteam Theatre Project
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West Sixteenth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 4, $23.18-$33.85
www.dogteam.org

For many recent summers, I looked forward to the Potomac Theatre Project’s (PTP/NYC) annual residency at Atlantic Stage 2, where it presented works by such playwrights as Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, Howard Barker, Robert Chesley, Vaclav Havel, and Steven Berkoff. Founded in 1987 by co-artistic directors Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa at Middlebury College, PTP/NYC has now morphed into the Dogteam Theatre Project (DTP), under the leadership of cofounders Olga Sanchez Saltveit, Courtney Smith, and PTP/NYC veterans Alex Draper and Mark Evancho.

Its inaugural season is under way at Atlantic Stage 2, with Sam Collier’s A Hundred Circling Camps, about a 1932 protest by veterans over a promised bonus, running in repertory with the English-language US debut of María Irene Fornés’s 1961 epistolary play, La Viuda (“The Widow”). Havana-born Fornés’s first work, La Viuda was adapted from letters that a cousin of hers wrote from Seville, Spain, to her great-grandfather in Cuba. (Fornés’s final play, 2000’s Letters from Cuba, was also based on family correspondence.)

La Viuda takes place from 1899 to 1902, after the Spanish-American War in which Cuba sought its independence from Spain, as Angela Martin (Jay Romero) dictates a series of letters to a clerk (Zeph Santiago) in her Spanish home. Although there is a lovely writing desk in the room, the clerk sits on an uncomfortable stool at a music stand as Angela essentially narrates her life story upon learning that her long-estranged husband, Francisco de Arenal (Jesse Muñoz), known as Paco, has had a serious stroke and “has lost all rational capacity.” She is particularly concerned that she might be erased from Paco’s official documents in favor of his supposed wife in Cuba, even though he and Angela, who lived in separate countries for decades, never divorced.

“I believe it is the illness of a remorseful conscience for having lived like a libertine in free love with that . . . thing,” she says to her cousin David. “My marriage has never been dissolved. However, my loyal friend, Casimiro Paz, has sent me a newspaper clipping that says: ‘Seen among the attendees was the illustrious writer Francisco de Arenal and his distinguished wife, Mrs. . . . F . . . F . . . David, the name written in that space is not mine!’”

Soon scenes from her past play out as she discusses them in the letters. She explains to Father Cravet (Fidel Vicioso) how Paco, a journalist, made enemies of such men as Don Modesto (Vicioso) and Angela’s father. Paco and Angela have a son, Salvador (Jacob Joseph Medina at five, Zack Maluccio at twenty-one), who believes he is “meant to save,” but that doesn’t prevent Paco from leaving them and beginning a second life in Cuba and then New York (following the Ten Years’ War between Cuba and Spain). Angela’s friend Moncita (Bri Beach), shares unsubstantiated gossip about Paco’s time in New York and his desperate attempts to gain respect, but he appears to have been a ne’er-do-well cad. In the middle of a hilarious monologue, Moncita explains, “Well, it’s none of my business and I don’t meddle in other people’s affairs,” before continuing with more news about other people’s affairs.

No longer a mother or a wife, Angela seeks to reestablish her dignity and identity, but it seems that the world has already passed judgment on her.

Scenes from Angela’s (Jay Romero, back right) past play out before her eyes (photo by Clinton Brandhagen)

Directed and translated by Saltveit, La Viuda is a bumpy ride, feeling long even at a mere seventy-five minutes, but it has many poignant moments. Furthering the idea of Angela searching for her identity, she is sternly portrayed by a man, Romero, in a black dress, as if mourning a life lost. Romero acts out punctuation while flitting around Evancho’s set, which also features a couch, an end table, a period chair, doors at the back right and left, curtained windows, a Hans Memling–like portrait of the young Salvador, an empty birdcage, and an old gramophone. Angela is not the most generous of people; not only will she not allow the clerk to sit at her desk, she is extremely careful when considering offering him a piece of candy.

The cast includes several Middlebury students and recent grads as well as nine-year-old Medina, who studies acting at the Triple Promise Academy for the Performing Arts in Bay Ridge. Santiago, class of 2026, has the most unusual perspective; he is onstage the entire time, taking Angela’s dictation while barely speaking as the action plays out behind him. Every so often he shakes a ratchet noisemaker, which gets annoying quickly.

Summer Lee Jack’s costumes range from persnickety to playful; both the younger and older Salvadors wear the same sailor outfit, and near the end several characters are identified by hand-drawn boards around their neck. One of the best bits involves widow’s wigs arriving in a most unexpected way.

Nine-time Obie winner Fornés, who died in 2018 at the age of eighty-eight, went on to become a well-known experimental playwright, with such credits as Tango Palace, Mud, Fefu and Her Friends, Drowning, and Evelyn Brown (A Diary). She wrote La Viuda while in a relationship with Susan Sontag, who was suffering from writer’s block at the time. At an early rehearsal of a scene from La Viuda at the Actors Studio, where Fornés was a member, she jumped up and tried to direct one of the actors but was told by the actual director that she should not do that; the experience led her to direct the inaugural production of more than fifty of her works.

Fornés, an important influence on such playwrights as Nilo Cruz, Paula Vogel, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, Eduardo Machado, and others, deserves to be more well known; DTP has done us all a noteworthy service by presenting this first-ever English version of the show that started it all.

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

OPEN CALL 2024: NEW ART FOR NEW YORK

Asia Stewart, work-in-progress showing of Fabric Softener, presented by Amanda + James, Coffey Street Studio, Red Hook, Brooklyn, June 11, 2022 (photo by Elyse Mertz / courtesy the artist)

OPEN CALL
The Shed
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Thursday – Saturday through August 17, free with advance RSVP
646-455-3494
theshed.org

The Shed’s free summer performance series, Open Call, kicked off in June with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre’s Gathering: New York City and has included such other presentations as Cain Coleman’s New Information, Kyle Dacuyan’s Dad Rock, and Garrett Zuercher’s Inside/Look. It continues July 25–27 with Asia Stewart’s Fabric Softener, a ritualistic response to Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, that introduces the audience to the Laundress (Stewart), the Celebrant (Dominica Greene), and the Witness (Candice Hoyes), joined by the Narrator (Shala Miller) and violinist and composer Yaz Lancaster.

The next weekend, NIC Kay’s must have character features a mascot and a drag performer (Kay and Gabriele Christian) wandering through the Shed and the surrounding area from noon to 8:00 on August 1 and 1:00 to 3:00 on August 2, followed by the public program “Building Characters Through Theater and Photography” on August 3 at 1:00. On August 9 and 10 at 7:30 in the Griffin Theater, Nile Harris investigates jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden, mental illness, containment, and black box theaters in a workshop production of minor b, starring Harris, Jim Fletcher, Tony Jenkins, Ley(sis), and Jonah Rollins. Open Call concludes August 15–17 with Kayla Hamilton’s immersive dance performance How to Bend Down/How to Pick It Up, which honors lineages of Black disabled imagination.

Although many of the performances are sold out, these are free events, so there are always no-shows; in-person waitlists will be available fifteen minutes before curtain.

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