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HARLEM PRESENTS: OPERA EBONY IN MARCUS GARVEY PARK

Who: Opera Ebony
What: The Harlem Opera Festival
Where: Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Marcus Garvey Park, Fifth Ave. at 124th St.
When: Saturday, July 26, free (advance RSVP recommended), 7:00
Why: Now in its fifty-first season, the nonprofit Opera Ebony is the longest continually operated Black opera company in the world. Founded in 1973 by bass baritone Benjamin Matthews with mezzo-soprano Sis. Elise Sisson (SBS), music director Wayne Sanders, and conductor Margaret Harris, the troupe has staged works around the globe, from Carmen, Aida, and La Traviata to Porgy & Bess, Faust, and Cosi Fan Tutte in addition to such original pieces as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, The Meetin’, and O’Freedom.

As part of Harlem Presents, Opera Ebony is holding a pair of concerts prior to the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s production of Will Power and Carl Cofield’s Memnon at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park. The forty-five-minute concerts start at 7:00, the play at 8:30; arriving early to see the music has the added benefit of garnering you an excellent seat for Memnon, as the amphitheater fills up pretty quickly.

On July 19, baritone Shavon Lloyd sang “Silvio’s Aria” from Pagliacci, the spiritual “Ride on King Jesus,” H. Leslie Adams’s “Prayer,” and “Make Them Hear You” from Ragtime, while mezzo soprano Daveda Browne performed “Seguidilla” from Carmen, “Mon Coeur” from Samson and Delilah, “When I Am Laid” from Dido and Æneas, and the spiritual “Wade in the Water.” They were both accompanied by pianist Kyle P. Walker; the program for July 26 will feature soprano Linnesha Crump and tenor David Morgans performing pieces by Wagner, Bizet, Puccini, Cilea, and Gershwin and duetting on William Still’s “Calm as the Bayou Waters.” Be sure to check out the pop-up market with community outreach booths, fashion and beauty boutiques, and food and drink from Creole Soul, Lizzy’s Treats, Kiki’s Cookies, Greensicle, Campbell & Carr, and Bee Favored. (The preshow music and market will be different on July 25 and July 27.) The concert and play are free; advance RSVP is recommended.

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

LEGACY, MEMORY, AND IMPERMANENCE: CELEBRATING MEREDITH MONK AT IFC

Meredith Monk looks at her past, present, and future in Billy Shebar’s celebratory and deeply affecting documentary

MONK IN PIECES: A CONCEPT ALBUM (Billy Shebar, 2025)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
July 24–31
www.ifccenter.com
monkinpieces.com

Near the beginning of Billy Shebar’s revelatory documentary, Monk in Pieces, composer Philip Glass explains that Meredith Monk “was a self-contained theater company. She, amongst all of us, I think, was the uniquely gifted one — is the uniquely gifted one.” It’s an important correction because Monk, at eighty-three, is still hard at work, creating live performances and films that defy categorization.

While several of her earliest projects were met with derision in critical circles, today she is revered for her remarkable output, although it is still impossible to put her into any kind of box. At one point in the documentary, a chorus of Monk scholars sings her praises; one says, “She’s achieved so much, has received so many accolades, and yet she’s this unknown,” a second notes, “She kind of falls through the cracks of music history,” and a third admits, “We don’t know how to talk about her.”

Written, directed, and produced by Shebar — whose wife, coproducer Katie Geissinger, has been performing with Monk since 1990 — and David Roberts, Monk in Pieces does a wonderful job of righting those wrongs, celebrating her artistic legacy while she shares private elements of her personal and professional life. Born and raised in Manhattan, Monk details her vision problem, known as strabismus, in which she is unable to see out of both eyes simultaneously in three dimensions, which led her to concentrate on vocals and the movement of her physical self. She studied Dalcroze Eurhythmics: “All musical ideas come from the body; I think that’s where I’m coming from,” she says. All these decades later, her distinctive choreography and wordless tunes are still like nothing anyone else does.

Meredith Monk shares a special moment with her beloved turtle, Neutron

Unfolding at a Monk-like unhurried pace, the ninety-five-minute documentary is divided into thematic chapters based on her songs, including “Dolmen Music,” “Double Fiesta,” “Memory Song,” “Turtle Dreams,” and “Teeth Song,” while exploring such presentations as Juice (1969), the first theatrical event to be held at the Guggenheim; Education of the Girlchild (1973), in which a woman ages in reverse; Quarry (1976), a three-part opera about an American child sick in bed during WWII; Impermanence (2006), inspired by the sudden death of her partner, Mieke von Hook; and her masterwork, Atlas (1991), in which the Houston Grand Opera worries about her numerous requests and production costs, whether the piece will be ready in time, and if it even can be considered opera. There are also clips from Ellis Island, Book of Days, Facing North, and Indra’s Net, her latest show, which was staged at Park Ave. Armory last fall. In addition, Monk reads from her journals in scenes with playful animation by Paul Barritt.

Monk opened up her archives for the filmmakers, so Shebar, Roberts, and editor Sabine Krayenbühl incorporate marvelous photos and video from throughout Monk’s career, along with old and new interviews. “It was her voice that was so extraordinary, not only the different kind of sounds she could make, but the imagination she was using in producing the sound . . . totally individual,” Merce Cunningham says. WNYC New Sounds host John Schaefer gushes, “I don’t know when words like multimedia and interdisciplinary began to become in vogue, but Meredith was all of those things.” Her longtime friend and collaborator Ping Chong offers, “She had to fight to be acknowledged in the performing arts world because critics were saying that what she was doing was nonsensical, was crazy, was not serious; in a way, it’s a fight to survive. Pain is where art comes from. . . . Art has to come out of need. And now she’s an old master.”

And Björk, who recorded Monk’s “Gotham Lullaby,” touts, “Meredith’s melody making is like a timeless door that’s opened, like a gateway to the ancient is found. It definitely affected my DNA. . . . Her loft that she has lived in for half a century is an oasis in a toxic environment.” Among the other collaborators who chime in are longtime company member Lanny Harrison; composer Julia Wolfe; and David Byrne, for whom she created the opening scene of his 1986 film, True Stories, and who says he learned from Monk that “you can do things without words and it still has meaning, it still has an emotional connection.”

Some of the most beautiful moments of the film transpire in Monk’s loft, where she tends to her beloved forty-two-year-old turtle named Neutron, puts stuffed animals on her bed, meditates while staring at windows lined with Tibetan prayer flags, composes a new song, looks into a mirror as she braids her trademark pigtails, and sits at her small kitchen table, eating by herself. Surrounded by plants and personal photographs, she moves about slowly, profoundly alone, comfortable in who she is and what she has accomplished, contemplating what comes next.

“What happens when I’m not here anymore?” Monk, who received the 2014 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, asks while working with director Yuval Sharon, conductor Francisco J. Núñez, and performer Joanna Lynn Jacobs on a remounting of Atlas for the LA Philharmonic in 2019. “It’s very rare that anybody gets it.”

Monk in Pieces goes a long way toward rectifying that, filling in the cracks, helping define her place in music history.

Monk in Pieces runs July 24-31 at IFC Center; there will be Q&As following the 6:45 screenings on July 24 with Monk, Shebar, and producer Susan Margolin, moderated by Schaefer; on July 25 with Monk, Shebar, and Margolin, moderated by violist Nadia Sirota; and on July 26 with Shebar.

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

MEMNON: THE MISSING BATTLE OF THE TROJAN WAR

Eric Berryman resurrects a Greek hero in Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Memnon (photo by Richard Termine)

UPTOWN SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: MEMNON
Classical Theatre of Harlem
Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Marcus Garvey Park
18 Mt. Morris Park W.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 27, free (advance RSVP recommended), 8:30
www.cthnyc.org

Writer Will Power and director Carl Cofield follow up their 2021 Richard III reimagination, Seize the King, with Memnon, a bold antiwar missive about a key battle in the legendary fight between the Achaeans and the Trojans about eight hundred years ago.

Presented by the Classical Theatre of Harlem at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park through July 27 at part of its Uptown Shakespeare in the Park series, Memnon zeroes in on the little-known title character, an Ethiopian king, in the mold of Black Panther, who appears in some ancient texts (Virgil’s Aeneid, the extant Aethiopis) and on cups, vases, and mirrors. Priam (Jesse J. Perez), the king of Troy, is mourning the death of his son Hector, a warrior who was killed by Achilles (Jesse Corbin). Priam believes that Hector was “Troy’s last hope,” while Polydamas (David Darrow), Priam’s trusted adviser, declares, “So now without him, our hero gone, our men / Soon slaves to Hades or other men / Our wives violated / And children’s bones crushed by boots.”

But then Polydamas suggests that Priam turn to his nephew, Memnon (Eric Berryman), who self-exiled to Ethiopia many years before under mysterious circumstances. “Never will I call this man of which you speak. Never, I say! / He is us only in lineage, not in spirit / No, his treacherous soul belongs to others / And he has proven that,” Priam argues vociferously. “He is nothing to me!”

Helen (Andrea Patterson), the queen of Troy, entreaties Priam to reconsider; she left her husband in Sparta, abducted or of her free will, as various tales have it, with Paris, Hector’s brother, and the Greek cuckold’s furor led to the Trojan War. “In Troy Helen is Helen at home Helen is hell / In Troy Helen has choice at home no free will / So the place that is home may be truly foreign / And the new place foreign may be true indigen,” Helen says, adding, “Caught up you are in who is foreign / And who is citizen. / Why not who is true and what false?”

Priam eventually relents, and, though hesitant at first, Memnon arrives with his army, although he first speaks of a peaceful resolution to the war. “In Ethiopia, able we are / To speak through disagreements and sidestep bloodshed,” Memnon explains. Priam wants to know how many enemies he has killed, and by what methods, but Memnon tells him, “We didn’t kill we captured to calm them. . . . Once I slaughtered two hundred men myself, in one single battle / Not proud of that.”

Soon Memnon is facing off with Antilochus (David Darrow), son of Nestor (Jesse J. Perez), the king of Pylos. “Your father Nestor, an old man in a young man’s game / He should not be here at war, and neither should you / I see through your brave mirage, men should not slay boys,” Memnon, holding a shield made by the god Hephaestus, warns Antilochus. “Vacate now as I will not attack but, if you should be so bold / To use sword, javelin, and shield against me / Young man, no choice will I have but to end you / Think on this, Antilochus, and think well.”

He doesn’t think well enough.

Next, Nestor appeals to Achilles to fight Memnon, not only to defend the Achaeans, but to seek revenge for his childhood friend Patroclus, who was killed by Hector. Achilles initially does not want to get involved. “To kill again I could easily do, summon the dark and blanket battle fields / With slumbering, lifeless men. But to what end, Nestor?” Achilles asks. “I despise not the Trojans, but gods that play chess with souls of men / These devilish immortals are set on us as their light amusements.” However, Nestor convinces Achilles to take up arms against Memnon, so the two heroic figures, neither of whom wants to shed more blood, are face-to-face in heated battle.

Memnon (Eric Berryman) and Helen (Andrea Patterson) consider their fate as battle awaits (photo by Richard Termine)

Told in iambic hexameter, Memnon is laced with references to immigrants that ring true with what is happening in America today. In response to Helen’s statement about who is foreign and who is citizen, Priam answers, “Is this a man true who loves Troy? That makes the citizen.” Polydamas notes, “Helen became not foreigner but blood to us.” And Memnon, when deciding whether to return to Troy and join his uncle’s cause, considers, “Now times there were when reminded I was / That Troy and I were not the same, that I / Was Troy but not fully Trojan, kin and / Not kin, still would I tuck feelings away. . . . I am of the east and yet / This Troy still calls. I cannot abandon her fully / Though I have tried. / It makes no sense, to fight for that which has proven / Time and time again that you will forever be other.”

Riw Rakkulchon’s set is a multilevel crumbling castle with stairs leading to platforms within scaffolding. Yee Eun Nam’s projections are primarily atmospheric abstractions that morph from black and white into color. Frederick Kennedy’s sound and music has to contend with loud noises in the park but ultimately prevails. Celeste Jennings’s costumes range from regal to battle armor to Memnon’s African-influenced garb, accompanied by white sneakers. The lighting, by Alan C. Edwards, adjusts to the setting sun and the shifts in narrative style, from extended dialogues to rousing dance interludes choreographed by Tiffany Rea-Fisher and performed by Jenna Kulacz, Madelyn LaLonde, Alyssa Manginaro, Caitlyn Morgan, Erik Penrod Osterkil, Tiffany “2Ts” Terry, and Travon M. Williams.

Berryman (Primary Trust, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me) is captivating as Memnon, a thoughtful man, strong in mind and body, who favors peace but is thrust into war. His diction is initially heavy with broken English but becomes smoother as he spends more time with Priam and Helen. Perez (Party People, Informed Consent) moves smoothly between Priam and Nestor, both of whom speak loudly, fathers seeking revenge no matter the cost. Patterson (cullud wattah, Confederates) makes the most of her moments as Helen, while Darrow (All Is Calm, the Revival) excels as Polydamas and Antilochus, with several of his longer scenes receiving well-deserved exit applause, and artist, musician, and fitness trainer Corbin (The Lion . . . & the Wardrobe) shows off his muscles as Achilles.

The play unfurls almost too rapidly, with a few plot holes and a lot of exposition that at times makes it feel like something is missing, and some of the contemporary language sticks out like a sore thumb — for example, when Memnon says, “We will always be a nation sliced apart / Haves and have nots, belongs and kind of belongs.” But Power (Flow; Fetch Clay, Make Man) and Cofield (The Bacchae, King Lear) have done Greek tragedy a service by resurrecting a true hero with a unique understanding of glory.

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

HIDDEN GEMS: BED-STUY STooPS SUMMER FESTIVAL

STooPS 2025 SUMMER FESTIVAL
Stuyvesant Ave. & Decatur St., Brooklyn
Saturday, July 26, free (advance registration recommended), 1:00 – 7:00
www.stoopsbedstuy.org
www.eventbrite.com

The twelfth annual STooPS Arts Crawl and Block Party takes place on July 26 on Decatur St. between Lewis and Stuyvesant Aves. in Brooklyn, with live music and dance, workshops, and visual art on the stoops and shared spaces of Bedford–Stuyvesant. This year’s theme is “Echoes of Greatness: Celebrating Bed-Stuy’s Hidden Gems,” honoring the lesser-known treasures in the neighborhood. The festivities begin at 1:00 with a block party lasting until 7:00, hosted by Koku with ToniBNYC, a Kiddie Korner by Bridges: A Pan-Afrikan Arts Movement, collaborative visual art by Ovila Lemon/Mut’Sun, and healing workshops by Akika Flower Essences & Apothecary and Essence of Ase. There will be art crawls at 1:30 and 4:00, led by Shanna Sabio of GrowHouse NYC, with Carmen Carriker, Courtney Cook, Ariana Carthan/Wukkout!, Brooklyn Ballet, Qu33n Louise, Nia Blue, and Púyaloahí. Kendra J. Ross Works and Soul Science Lab headline the show. This year’s awardees are Ovila Lemon, Richard Cummings, Valerie Ferguson, Monique Scott, Larry Weekes, and Damon Bolden.

“The summer festival is more than a celebration — it’s a bridge between Bed-Stuy’s past and its future,” STooPS founding director Kendra J. Ross said in a statement. “By bringing art to the stoops, we make space for neighbors to connect across generations and experiences. In a time of change, this is how we honor what’s been while shaping what’s next — together.”

All events are free but advance registration is recommended.

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

THE JOY OF RESISTANCE: RACHAEL SAGE, KRISTEN FORD, AND HANNAH JUDSON AT MERCURY LOUNGE

Who: Rachael Sage and the Sequins, Kristen Ford, Hannah Judson
What: Joy = Resistance Tour
Where: Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston St.
When: Thursday, July 24, $15 in advance, $20 at door, 6:00
Why: The Joy = Resistance Tour pulls into Mercury Lounge on July 24, as Rachael Sage and Kristen Ford are joined by Hannah Judson for what should be a special night of music and inclusivity. MPress Records founder Sage will be performing with her longtime trio, the Sequins: Trina Hamlin on harmonica, Andy Mac on drums, and Kelly Halloran on violin; they will be celebrating the release of Sage’s latest single, “Live It Up,” while highlighting songs from her upcoming album, Canopy, along with old favorites. The L.A.-based Ford will be playing tunes from her debut full-length, Pinto, out August 22 from Righteous Babe; produced by Grammy winners Ani DiFranco and John Driskell Hopkins, it includes such tracks as “Wild Heart,” “Whiplash,” and “White Man’s Dream.” Judson, a Chicago-based French-American singer-songwriter, will be featuring tunes from her latest LP, Satellites Grace the Sky Like Tumbleweeds (Boneyard Records), which boasts such numbers as “Feather,” “Take the Angel Down,” and “Ocean Blue Eyes.”

On the gorgeously poetic “Just Enough” from Canopy, the New York City–based Sage sings, “I feel love in the morning when you wake me up / Love in the middle of the day don’t stop / I feel love in the evening, fills my cup just enough . . . shalalala. . . .” Discussing the tune, she says, “At first listen, [it] seems like a romantic love song and to some degree it started out that way when I was first writing it. But the longer I’ve played it live out on tour the more now it feels like it’s equally a mantra to oneself about being enough as you are: lovable enough, accomplished enough, attractive enough, smart enough . . . all the things that, for instance, a best friend or any loved one might acknowledge in you are truly, unconditionally, and authentically enough.”

There should be plenty of enough at Mercury on July 24 when Sage, Ford, and Judson take the stage on the Lower East Side.

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

WAVING THE FLAG: ARTIST’S CHOICE AT CHELSEA FOUNDATION

Mark Hogancamp tries to rebuild his life in a carefully constructed alternate reality (photo by Tom Putnam)

ARTIST’S CHOICE: MOVIE NIGHTS
The FLAG Art Foundation
545 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday, July 23, July 30, August 6, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
www.flagartfoundation.org

For the next three Wednesdays, the FLAG Art Foundation is hosting free screenings of works handpicked by three artists, films that have been meaningful to them in their life and artistic practice. The series begins July 23 with Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol, selected by New York City–born, Jersey City–based Ana Benaroya, who explores the human body and aspects of herself in colorful characters in manic situations. For July 30, LA-based Ethiopian-American multidisciplinary artist Awol Erizku has chosen three of the most important and influential indie films ever made, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s Meshes of the Afternoon, Chris Marker’s La Jetée, and Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl. The program concludes August 6 with short films picked by Baltimore-born painter, writer, and musician Cynthia Daignault.

MARWENCOL (Jeff Malmberg, 2010)
Wednesday, July 23, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
www.flagartfoundation.org
www.marwencol.com

Named Best Documentary at numerous film festivals across the country, Marwencol offers a surprising look inside the creative process and the fine line that exists between art and reality. On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was nearly beaten to death outside a bar in his hometown of Kingston, New York. He spent nine days in a coma and more than a month in the hospital before being released, suffering severe brain damage that has left his memory a blur. To help put his life back together, he began using toys and dolls — Barbies, celebrity replicas, army men — to re-create his personal journey. He makes dolls of his friends and relatives, the people he works with, and others, constructing an alternate WWII-era universe he calls Marwencol, complete with numerous buildings and plenty of Nazis. He captures the detailed story in photographs that are not only fascinating to look at but that also help him figure out who he was and who he can be.

This miniature three-dimensional world is reminiscent of the two-dimensional one carefully fashioned by outsider artist Henry Darger in his fifteen-thousand-page manuscript, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, which also features an alternate reality involving military battles set amid stunning artwork. Director, producer, and editor Jeff Malmberg makes no judgments about Hogancamp, and asks the same of the audience. In his first full-length film, Malmberg shares the compelling story of a deeply troubled, flawed man suddenly forced to begin again, using art and creativity to bring himself back to life. He speaks with Hogancamp’s mother, his old roommate, the prosecutor who handled his case, and others who are first seen proudly holding the doll Hogancamp made of them. And Malmberg doesn’t turn away from the more frightening aspects of Hogancamp’s daily existence. Marwencol is an unforgettable portrait of lost identity and the long road to redemption.

Chris Marker’s La Jetée is a postapocalyptic thriller about movies and memory, told almost exclusively through still images

LA JETÉE (Chris Marker, 1962) / MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943) / BLACK GIRL (LA NOIRE DE . . .) (Ousmane Sembène, 1966)
Wednesday, July 30, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
www.flagartfoundation.org

The Flag series continues with an inspired trio of wildly different low-budget, black-and-white works that experiment with the language of cinema. Chris Marker’s La Jetée is a nearly half-hour postapocalyptic dystopian thriller set in a world that calls “past and future to the rescue of the present.” Told almost completely in dark, eerie black-and-white photographs — the camera moves only once, pulling back on the opening establishing shot of the titular pier at Paris’s Orly airport, and at another point a woman opens her eyes in bed — La Jetée explores time and memory as a WWIII survivor (Davos Hanich) in the underground Palais de Chaillot galleries revisits an event that occurred with a woman (Hélène Chatelain) on the jetty. The film, referred to in the credits as “un photo-roman,” is narrated by Jean Négroni, with the only dialogue occasional unintelligible whispering by the German scientists in charge of the mysterious operation; the soundtrack also includes lush music from Trevor Duncan and a repeated thumping that mimics heartbeats. The film explores both art as memory and memory as art as well as the cinema itself; for example, Marker (Sans Soleil, Le joli mai) references Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo when the man and woman look at the rings of a Sequoia tree, and it has gone on to influence such films as Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, the Matrix trilogy, and countless other movies and videos. It’s a mesmerizing work that brings fresh insight upon each viewing.

In 1943, the husband-and-wife team of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid made the fourteen-minute masterpiece, Meshes of the Afternoon, at their home in Hollywood. The silent work — soundtracks were added by others later — is a celebration of the surreal, filled with shots of shadowy figures and such objects as a flower, a key, a knife in a loaf of bread, and a telephone receiver off its cradle. Stairs and slow motion figure prominently as a black-draped figure with a mirror for a face haunts the proceedings and the protagonist is joined by her doppelgänger. The film stands with such works as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou and Ballet Mécanique, René Clair’s Entr’acte, and Jean Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet as masterpieces of the avant-garde.

Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) seeks so much more out of life in Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl

Ousmane Sembène’s debut, 1966’s Black Girl, launched an award-winning career that established the Senegalese author and filmmaker as a leading international storyteller for five decades. In Black Girl, also known as Le noire de . . . , Mbissine Thérèse Diop stars as Diouana, a Senegalese woman who leaves Dakar to work for a wealthy French family in Antibes. Colonialism rules the day as she tries to assert her identity but is treated with dismissive condescension. Early on, a dinner-party guest announces, “I’ve never kissed a black woman,” and pecks her on each cheek as she stares away blankly and the others laugh. “I’ve got a feeling she’s angry,” another guest says, while one of the men adds, “Their independence has made them less natural.” Diouana dreams of a better life as she remembers what it was like in Senegal, but she is thwarted by racism and bigotry every step of the way. Sembène, who would go on to make such films as Mandabi, Faat Kiné, and Moolaadé, incorporates a unique editing style with an often playful silent-film-like score to share Diouana’s longing for something else.

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

OEDIPUS REIMAGINED: THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS ON LITTLE ISLAND

Revival of The Gospel at Colonus on Little Island tells story of redemption and retribution (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS
The Amph at Little Island
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
July 8-26, $10 standing room, $25 seats sold out, 8:30
littleisland.org

One of the grandest theatrical events of the summer is taking place on Little Island, Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s rousing, impassioned adaptation of Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s The Gospel at Colonus, a spirited, spiritual retelling of the Oedipus and Antigone myths.

In 1983, Obie winner and Mabou Mines founding co-artistic director Breuer (Mabou Mines DollHouse, Peter and Wendy) teamed up with composer Telson (Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Bantú) to reimagine Robert Fitzgerald’s version of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus as a Pentecostal revival meeting. The show debuted at BAM’s Next Wave Festival and was mounted on Broadway five years later, with Morgan Freeman as the Messenger; Oedipus was portrayed by Clarence Fountain and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama.

A tale of witness and testimony, of redemption and retribution, The Gospel at Colonus is a revelation at the Amph, where it begins each night amid the glow of sunset over the Hudson. David Zinn’s set is bathed in red; much of the action occurs in a broken circle in the center surrounding a four-step platform, in front of a yellow foot bridge running between high grass. Stacey Derosier’s lighting, switching from red to green to blue, illuminates Montana Levi Blanco’s loose-fitting purple and sackcloth gray costumes, a combination of Greek togas and Sunday finest. Garth MacAleavey’s sound design allows nature to mingle with the crisp, clear music and dialogue.

Stephanie Berry (On Sugarland, Déjà Vu) is sensational as the Preacher, serving as a kind of narrator and oracle. “Think no longer that you are in command here, / But rather think how, when you were, / You served your own destruction / Welcome, brothers and sisters, / I take as my text this evening the Book of Oedipus,” she announces at the start. “Oedipus! Damned in his birth, in his marriage damned, / Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand! / Oedipus! So pitifully ensnared in the net of his own destiny.”

Stephanie Berry, Davóne Tines, and Frank Senior portray different aspects of Oedipus (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Oedipus — portrayed as a group by blind jazz vocalist Frank Senior, opera bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and Berry — has already blinded himself for having unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, Jocasta, who then hanged herself, and fathered four children with her, two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, and two daughters, Antigone (Samantha Howard) and Ismene (Ayana George Jackson). Eteocles is a traitor and Polyneices (Jon-Michael Reese) a usurper, taking opposite sides in an upcoming battle, while Antigone and Ismene seek peace.

“Let every man in mankind’s frailty / Consider his last day; and let none / Presume on his good fortune until he find / Life, at his death, a memory without pain. / Amen,” Evangelist Antigone says.

On his journey, Oedipus encounters Jocasta’s brother, Deacon Creon (Dr. Kevin Bond), the former king, who has been tasked with returning Oedipus to Thebes; a friend (falsetto Serpentwithfeet), who welcomes him to Colonus; Pastor Theseus (Kim Burrell), who vows never to drive him away; and the Balladeer (Brandon Michael Nase), who initially refuses Oedipus and Antigone entry into his church and later questions Testifier Polyneices’s attempt to get back in his father’s good graces.

Kim Burrell rips the roof off the joint several times at Little Island (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Pulitzer finalist Chowdhury (Public Obscenities, Rheology) beautifully flows Breuer’s poetic dialogue (his book earned him a Tony nomination) into Telson’s gospel, blues, and R&B score, featuring Breuer’s potent, emotional lyrics. (Breuer, who died in January 2021 at the age of eighty-three, and Telson, who at seventy-six is still making music, also collaborated on such other projects as Sister Suzie Cinema, The Warrior Ant, and Bagdad Cafe — The Musical.) “Who is this man? What is his name? Where does he come from?” a choragos (Brandon Michael Nase) demands, as if he could be addressing any of us. “Child, I’m so glad you’re here / There’s hope for me / There’s a prophecy . . . I’ve been waiting for a sign / to ease my troubled mind,” Oedipus (Senior and Tines) sings in “Through My Tears.” Oedipus (Tines) later tells Polyneices, “Once you held the power / And when you did you drove me out / Made me a homeless man / You are no son of mine.” But soon Serpentwithfeet is praying, “Let not our friend go down / In grief and weariness / Let some just God spare him / Any more distress” in “Eternal Sleep.”

Burrell tears the roof off the joint — or she would have if the Amph had a roof — in a pair of rip-roaring numbers, “Jubilee (Never Drive You Away)” and “Lift Him Up,” that gets the crowd moving and grooving, hooting and hollering. Among the other notable songs are “Live Where You Can,” “You’d Take Him Away,” and “Evil,” although the finale, “Let the Weeping Cease,” feels unnecessary. Music directors Dionne McClain-Freeney and James Hall lead a terrific band, consisting of McClain-Freeney on piano, Butch Heyward on organ, Bobby Bryan on guitar, Booker King on bass, Jackie Coleman on trumpet, Taja Graves-Parker on trombone, Jason Marshall and Isaiah Johnson on baritone sax, Kevin Walters on alto sax, and Clayton Craddock on drums; the horns perform on high scaffolds at the corners of the stage nearest the river; the superb James Hall Worship & Praise choir includes Pastor Charles, Schanel Crawford, Jaqwanna Crawford, Jacquetta Fayton, Angie Goshea, Robyn McLeod, TJ Reddick, Teddy Reid, Vischon Robinson, Lenny Vancooten, Eugene Marcus Walker, and Darlene Nikki Washington.

In the closing hymn, Serpentwithfeet declares, “There is no end.” That statement is certainly true of the Greek myth of Oedipus; there is no end to the myriad ways this twisted, heart-wrenching can be told, and The Gospel at Colonus on Little Island is among the most inventive, nourishing the soul for ninety glorious minutes.

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