featured

SHADOW KINGDOM: THE EARLY SONGS OF BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom is available online through July 20 at midnight

Who: Bob Dylan
What: Prerecorded streaming concert film
Where: veeps
When: Available on demand through July 25 at 11:59 pm
Why: “What was it you wanted / Tell me again so I’ll know / What’s happening in there / What’s going on in your show / What was it you wanted / Could you say it again / I’ll be back in a minute / You can tell me then,” Bob Dylan sings on “What Was It You Wanted,” one of thirteen tunes that make up his first-ever livestreamed performance, the fifty-minute prerecorded concert film Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan, available on the online veeps platform through July 25 at 11:59 pm. There was much speculation and little information in advance as to what the stream would be, although a brief trailer gave a hint of what to expect, a clip of Dylan playing a rollicking blues version of 1971’s “Watching the River Flow” in a smoky speakeasy, filmed in black-and-white.

For decades of the Never Ending Tour, fans have learned to have no expectations when seeing Bob live; he’ll play whatever he wants, continually reinventing tracks from his extensive catalog in fascinating ways, often almost to the point of unrecognizability, but that’s all part of the excitement. The veeps chat lit up with naysayers, complaining that the show was not actually live, with a handful arguing that Dylan wasn’t even really singing, that he and his band — who were wearing masks even though the crowd, which included a number of smokers in the small, claustrophobic space, was not — were lip syncing and miming with their instruments. Some of the grumblers demanded their money back, whereas other Dylanheads declared it was the best twenty-five bucks they’d spent since music venues were shuttered back in March 2020.

The closing credits say Bob was accompanied by Janie Cowen on upright bass, Joshua Crumbly on electric bass, Shahzad Ismaily on keyboards and accordion, and Buck Meek on guitar — many in the chat wondered where regular bassist Tony Garnier and guitarist Charlie Sexton were — but online hypotheses are making the case that not only are they not actually playing the music, but it was prerecorded by a different group of musicians. What’s the truth? We’re certainly not going to get it from Dylan, who filled his must-read memoir with falsehoods that we ate up despite knowing that.

Some chatters were mad that the show was not in color; others were furious about the cigarettes, as if the smoke were coming through their screens; while others were more interested in the wedding ring Dylan was suddenly wearing. Far, far more fans were overjoyed to see Bob with a guitar in his hands — arthritis has prevented him from picking up a six-string for a bunch of years, concentrating instead on piano — and sounding better than he has in a long time, his voice clearly rested from a year and a half off the road. (But was he really singing or playing the guitar and harmonica?) The best way to experience the show is to forget about all that and just sit back and watch the music flow, like you were hanging out in Greenwich Village in the 1960s. (Unfortunately, the chat was only available during the initial stream, so when you watch it, you’ll have “to be alone with” Bob, not interacting with a rabid online audience.)

Dylan reached relatively deep into his past, pulling out new versions of such favorites as “When I Paint My Masterpiece” (masterful!), “Queen Jane Approximately” (majestic!), and “Forever Young” (eternal!) alongside such less-familiar cuts as “To Be Alone with You” from Nashville Skyline, “The Wicked Messenger” from John Wesley Harding, and “Pledging My Time” from Blonde on Blonde. Some of the tunes hadn’t been performed live in more than ten years; “What Was It You Wanted” last made a setlist in 1995.

Dylan began toying with the lyrics right from the opening number, as if adapting them to the pandemic, changing “Gotta hurry on back to my hotel room / Where I got me a date with a pretty little girl from Greece [also sung as “Botticelli’s niece”] / She promised she’d be right there with me / When I paint my masterpiece” to “Gotta hurry on back to my hotel room / Gonna wash my clothes, scrape off all of the weeds / Gonna lock the doors and turn my back on the world for a while / I’ll stay right there till I paint my masterpiece.” A few songs later, he changed “To be alone with you / Just you and me / Now won’t you tell me true / Ain’t that the way it oughta be? / To hold each other tight / The whole night through / Ev’rything is always right / When I’m alone with you” to “To be alone with you / Just you and I / Under the moon / ’Neath the star-spangled sky / I know you’re alive / And I am too / My one desire / Is to be alone with you.”

Bob Dylan is in great form in first online concert film, performing in a dark, smoky room

As at his live shows, the Bobster — who turned eighty this past May, when the film was shot in a fictional Santa Monica nightclub over a seven-day period (not, as mentioned in the credits, at the nonexistent Bon Bon Club in Marseille) — does not talk to the audience; he doesn’t introduce songs or include any concert patter. When I saw him at the Prospect Park Bandshell in 2008, the crowd nearly flipped out when he said he was glad to be back in Brooklyn, surprising us that he knew where he was. My only quibble with the stream is that the name of each song appears onscreen in big, bold letters before it is played; much of the fun at Dylan shows is trying to figure out what the next song is as it starts. I’ll never forget my best friend asking me at a 1978 concert on the Street Legal tour, “When is he going to play ‘Tangled Up in Blue’?” I had to tell him that Bob had just played it.

Each song in Shadow Kingdom is its own set piece, with Dylan in a different position on the stage, wearing one of several outfits. Regardless of where he is sitting or standing, the old-fashioned microphone blocks most of his mouth, furthering the chat conspiracy theory that he is lip syncing. It also prevents us from getting a better view of his extraordinary vocal phrasing, a technique that for him only improves with age, whether on his originals or standards; Dylan can shape a word like nobody else. He never moves around much during songs, but he does show off a few teeny gestures in “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Most Likely You Go Your Way,” (barely) swaying his shoulders and legs (his feet appear to be nearly glued to the floor) while making fists, pointing, and raising his arms a bit. (That’s probably not part of Dom McDougal’s choreography.) The close-knit, intimate production design is by Hannah Hurley-Espinoza and Ariel Vida, with cinematography by Lol Crawley, whose camera remains still when it is on Dylan but does occasionally pan through the band and the crowd. (By the way, just who are those people who got into the show?)

Bob Dylan is as much of a mystery as ever in streaming, limited-run concert film

The name of the show might have come from Robert E. Howard’s 1929 short story, “The Shadow Kingdom,” in which the Texas-born pulp fiction writer and Conan the Barbarian creator explains, “As he sat upon his throne in the Hall of Society and gazed upon the courtiers, the ladies, the lords, the statesmen, he seemed to see their faces as things of illusion, things unreal, existent only as shadows and mockeries of substance. Always he had seen their faces as masks, but before he had looked on them with contemptuous tolerance, thinking to see beneath the masks shallow, puny souls, avaricious, lustful, deceitful; now there was a grim undertone, a sinister meaning, a vague horror that lurked beneath the smooth masks. While he exchanged courtesies with some nobleman or councilor he seemed to see the smiling face fade like smoke and the frightful jaws of a serpent gaping there. How many of those he looked upon were horrid, inhuman monsters, plotting his death, beneath the smooth mesmeric illusion of a human face? Valusia — land of dreams and nightmares — a kingdom of the shadows, ruled by phantoms who glided back and forth behind the painted curtains, mocking the futile king who sat upon the throne — himself a shadow.” More clues from Dylan, perhaps, or yet another red herring? Does it matter?

Directed, produced, and edited by Alma Har’el, an Israeli American music video and film director who has worked with such bands as Beirut, Sigur Rós, and Balkan Beat Box and has made such films as Honey Boy, Bombay Beach, and LoveTrue, the presentation, too short at less than an hour, marvelously captures the mysterious enigma that is Robert Allen Zimmerman, the Minnesota-born folk-rock troubadour who has changed the planet with his music, reinventing himself umpteen times over his more than six-decade-long career. During the coronavirus crisis, he released the outstanding album Rough and Ready Ways, and he has now entered the streaming realm. What’s next? I certainly am not going to hold my breath waiting for a live Zoom concert or interactive Instagram talkback, but will there be a Shadow Kingdom: The Later Songs of Bob Dylan? Will the show ever be available again, on CD, LP, DVD, Spotify, etc.? Will the Never Ending Tour reemerge, after having not been seen since December 8, 2019? It’s Dylan, so it’s best not to expect anything — except something strange, something unusual, something wonderful. Whichever way he is likely to go, we worshippers are sure to follow.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: CROSSOVERS LIVE! WITH BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL

Who: Brian Stokes Mitchell, Vanessa Williams, Daniel J. Watts, Marc Shaiman, Bernadette Peters, Kristin Chenoweth, David Hyde Pierce, more
What: Ticket giveaway for Crossovers Live! with Brian Stokes Mitchell
Where: Stellar
When: Premiering monthly July 26 – December 20, $15-$100 per show, six-show bundle $49-$500; use code BBS10 to save $10 on any six-show bundle through July 21 (benefiting the Actors Fund)
Why: Brian Stokes Mitchell was already a Broadway and television star when he reached a new stratosphere of fame for his nightly renditions of “The Impossible Dream” early in the 2020 pandemic lockdown in New York City. Delivered from the window of his Upper West Side apartment after the 7:00 pm clap for health-care workers, Stokes’s performances were part of his vocal retraining after a serious bout with Covid-19. He sang one of the hit songs from Man of La Mancha, a show that earned him a 2003 Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical, an award he had won in 2000 for Kiss Me Kate. The Seattle-born Mitchell, who has appeared in such other Broadway musicals as Jelly’s Last Jam, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Ragtime and such TV series as Mr. Robot, Glee, and Trapper John, M.D. (in addition to a ton of voiceovers on animated programs), is now hosting his own online talk show, Crossovers Live!, which will stream live monthly July through December and be available on demand for a limited time.

In a promotional video, Mitchell — who has also been nominated for a Grammy, formed Black Theatre United in June 2020 with Audra McDonald, LaChanze, Billy Porter, Anna Deavere Smith, and others, and received the key to the city for his extensive work during the coronavirus crisis as chairman of the board of the Actors Fund — asks, “Do you like movies? TV shows? Miniseries? How about theater? Do you like theater? Like, really like theater? Do you like any medium that actors, composers, singers, writers, dancers could be on? We asked Vanessa Williams, Marc Shaiman, Bernadette Peters, Kristin Chenoweth, David Hyde Pierce, and more to talk about crossing over from stage to screen. And they all accepted because they love audiences, and audiences love them, and we all just love each other. You get it.” The show premieres July 26 with Williams (Soul Food, Kiss of the Spider Woman) and Daniel J. Watts (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, The Last O.G.), followed August 30 with composer Shaiman (Hairspray, Mary Poppins Returns), September 27 with Peters (Annie Get Your Gun, The Jerk), October 25 with Chenoweth (Wicked, Glee), November 22 with Hyde Pierce (Spamalot, Fraser), and December 20 with a Holiday Finale. A minimum of ten percent of the net proceeds will benefit the Actors Fund.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets for Crossovers Live! with Brian Stokes Mitchell are $15 each, $25 for the show and access to the VIP chat room, and $100 for the Super VIP Livestream, which adds in signed merchandise. The six-show bundle is $49/$99/$500.

However, twi-ny is giving away two standard six-show bundles ($49) and one VIP bundle ($99) for free. In order to be eligible, you must like Crossovers Live! on Facebook and Instagram and, in addition, send your name, phone number, and favorite play, television show, or movie with Brian Stokes Mitchell in it to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, July 22, at 3:00 pm. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random. As Mitchell sings, “And the world will be better for this / Oh, that one man, scorned and covered with scars / Still strong with his last ounce of courage / To reach the unreachable, the unreachable / The unreachable star.”

RIDE SHARE

Marcus (Kamal Angelo Bolden) is on a dangerous road in Writers Theatre’s Ride Share

RIDE SHARE
Writers Theatre
Through July 25, $40-$100
Live Zoom talkback July 25 at 4:00
www.writerstheatre.org
www.blacklivesblackwords.org

“I hate my life,” Marcus (Kamal Angelo Bolden) says early on in the virtual one-man show Ride Share, a psychological thriller streaming from Chicago’s Writers Theatre through July 25.

Marcus believed he was on the right road, doing everything correctly. The thirty-three-year-old Black man had just married a lovely woman, Joselyn, at an $85,000 wedding and returned from their honeymoon in Aruba imagining only brightness in his future. He gets called in to work, expecting to be made partner after having put in twelve dedicated, difficult years. Instead, Craig, a white Yale grad who married the boss’s niece, informs Marcus that he is being laid off. “He tells me that I should . . . count this as a blessing, this leaves your path wide open for a great adventure ahead of you. Oh, and by the way, there’s a box waiting for [you] at the front desk.”

Devastated and desperate for money, Marcus becomes a driver for every ride-share company he can find. He shuttles passengers around Chicago in his white Kia from four to ten every morning and again from seven at night till past midnight, jeopardizing his relationship not only with his new wife but with his sanity. Standing atop his car, he details his preoccupation with his rating, like a day trader or a compulsive gambler:

“From the start, ratings have been the bane of my existence. In three months, I’ve earned the ranking of a platinum-level driver. I’ve driven 647 trips with a rating of 4.9, with 629 five-star reviews, 10 four-stars, 4 three-stars, 3 two-stars, and 1 one-star review. I watch these ratings like a hawk. It’s gotten so bad that now I tell people I’m gonna give them five stars in hopes that they do the same. I check these ratings after every ride. I check them again before I go to bed; my wife thinks that I’m obsessed with these ratings. She says, ‘You pay more attention to your ratings than you do to me.” I say, ‘Well, you’re not gonna downgrade me from platinum to blue. She laughed and then she said, ‘You better be careful because your ratings aren’t the only things that could turn blue.’ I love her so much. She’s my everything.”

He spends his down time trying to create better opportunities, learning Spanish by listening to Latin music and hanging out with the other drivers at the airport. “All of us waiting. Waiting for just one ride. Waiting to control our own destinies, waiting on the America dream, waiting.” As his disdain for his passengers grows, particularly for snarky businesspeople and young white women, so does information about a new disease, Covid-19. Then fate steps in when Craig enters his vehicle and Marcus admits to himself that he always has an additional passenger sitting next to him, which he calls his dark rider. “No one can see him but me, our eyes lock, ten generations of rage staring back at me, his mouth gaping wide, uttering nothing but yet I hear his whispers,” he says. Suddenly the road ahead is filled with sin and temptation.

Written by Reginald Edmund and directed by Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway, the cofounders of the activist Black Lives, Black Words International Project, Ride Share, part of BLBW’s Plays for the People series, is a tense and uneasy journey into the mind of a man who has been rejected by a society that refuses to see him for who he is as an individual, as a unique human being. When seen at all, he is judged by the color of his skin and the type of car he drives, representations of systemic racism and income inequality. Bolden (Jitney, Detroit ’67) effectively captures the angst and fear that so many Black men and other people of color have felt so acutely over the last sixteen months (not to mention the decades before), during a pandemic that has led to isolation and economic hardship, as well as a reckoning for racial injustice.

At times, cinematographer Tannie Xin Tang brings the camera right up to Marcus’s mouth, making palpable the years of anguish and torment, ready to emerge and explode at any moment. Edited by Lesley Kubistal, with music and sound by CHXLL Sounds and scenic design by Alexandra Regazzoni, the eighty-minute hybrid work is informed by an ever-threatening claustrophobia that envelops the viewer, sitting at home, where not everyone is always as safe as they think they are. Marcus often is shown looking into his rearview mirror, watching out for what is chasing him, while the road ahead becomes continually darker. The ride can get bumpy, but the ultimate destination is as startling as it is, unfortunately, all too believable.

TRAGEDIES OF YOUTH — NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI’S WAR TRILOGY

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s beautifully told tale, Seven Weeks, is part of Japan Society online tribute

TRAGEDIES OF YOUTH — NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI’S WAR TRILOGY: SEVEN WEEKS (NO NO NANANANOKA) (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 2014)
Japan Society virtual cinema
Available on demand through August 6, seven-day rental $10 per film, $24 for all three
japansociety.org

In December 2015, Japan Society presented the two-weekend, ten-film series “Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Retrospective,” which revealed that the Japanese auteur was so much more than just the director of the 1977 cult classic House. In commemoration of the recent death of the iconoclastic, eclectic writer-director, who passed away in April 2020 from lung cancer at the age of eighty-two, Japan Society is hosting a special monthlong online screening of his War Trilogy, consisting of 2012’s Casting Blossoms to the Sky, set in the aftermath of the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, 2017’s Hanagatami, an adaptation of Kazuo Dan’s 1937 novella about a group of students falling in and out of love in prewar Japan, and the 2014 epic family drama Seven Weeks.

A tribute to Obayashi’s late friend and colleague Hyoji Suzuki, who started an independent film workshop in Ashibetsu in 1993 and died of pancreatic cancer four years later at the age of thirty-six, Seven Weeks was shot in and around that Hokkaido village over the course of five weeks. Ninety-two-year-old patriarch Mitsuo Suzuki (Toru Shinagawa), a local retired doctor who now runs the Starry Cultural Center gift shop (a nod to Suzuki’s Hoshi no Furusato Ashibetsu Eiga Gakko, or Starry Beautiful Home Ashibetsu Film School), is on his deathbed, and various relatives are arriving to say goodbye and participate in the nanana no ka Buddhist ritual, in which they will hold memorials once a week for seven weeks following his death. The mourners include Mitsuo’s sister, Eiko (Tokie Hidari), grandchildren Fuyuki (Takehiro Murata), Haruhiko (Yutaka Matsuhige), Akito (Shunsuke Kubozuka), and Kanna (Saki Terashima), and great-granddaughter Kasane (Hirona Yamazaki), in addition to his nurse, Nobuko Shimizu (Takako Tokiwa). During the seven weeks, family members relive the past, uncovering surprising secrets about the young Mitsuo (Shusaku Uchida), his harmonica-playing friend Ono (Takao Ito), and the woman they both admire, Ayano (Yumi Adachi), as Obayashi weaves together past and present through flashbacks, the appearance of dead characters, and painting and poetry (several of the characters share a love of the poems of Nakahara Chuya).

But the film, shot in lush, fairy-tale-like colors by cinematographer Hisaki Mikimoto and featuring a sweeping score by Kôsuke Yamashita and a kind of Greek chorus embodied by the unusual Japanese band the Pascals, is not merely about the travails of one extended family; it is also very much about the rebuilding of Japanese society in the wake of WWII, the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, and the ensuing Fukushima nuclear disaster. In fact, all of the clocks and watches in Seven Weeks are perpetually stopped at 2:45 pm, the exact time the horrific 3/11 events began. Obayashi also investigates the Soviet invasion of Sakhalin Island in August 1945 and the abuse of Korean migrant workers in Japanese mines as he explores the complex issue of the meaning of home. Seven Weeks is a beautifully told tale of memory and loss, of art and war, a summing up not only of Obayashi’s career but of twentieth-century Japan, with plenty of the director’s unique trademark style. “How do I paint the world?” Mitsuo asks at one point, something Obayashi has achieved in this deeply involving and wonderfully mysterious film. Fortunately for all of us, Obayashi was not quite done painting the world, continuing a legacy that is at last being celebrated here in the West.

TRAGEDIES OF YOUTH — NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI’S WAR TRILOGY: CASTING BLOSSOMS TO THE SKY (KONO SORA NO HANA: NAGAOKA HANABI MONOGATARI) (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 2014)
japansociety.org

“If people made pretty fireworks instead of bombs, there wouldn’t have been any wars,” says journalist Reiko Endō (Yasuko Matsuyuki), quoting wandering artist Kiyoshi Yamashita at the start of Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s Casting Blossoms to the Sky. The first of the eclectic Japanese auteur’s War Trilogy, the film, based on actual experiences, is essentially an audiovisual essay, “Reiko Endō’s Wonderland: A Journey of Emotions to Nagaoka,” detailing Endō’s trip to Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture, as the local citizenry share true tales of WWII and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. (Nagaoka took in more than a thousand evacuees from Fukushima.) Ōbayashi goes back and forth between the past and the present, from the summer in 1945 when Nagaoka was bombed by the United States to the latest edition of the city’s annual fireworks display, which honor the victims of Pearl Harbor, the bombings of Nagaoka, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and the 2011 disaster.

With the day of the fireworks show approaching, Endō rides with wise cabdriver Akiyoshi Muraoka (Takashi Sasano), as she, and we, discover the city’s history of war and remembrance. Endō meets with her ex-boyfriend, Kenichi Katayama (Masahiro Takashima), who is in charge of the school play at Chuetsu High and chooses There’s Still Time Until a War by a mysterious girl named Jana Motoki (Minami Inomata) who rides a unicycle through the halls and down the streets of the neighborhood. Endō learns from the inhabitants themselves, including military history researcher Takashi Mishima (Akiyoshi Muraoka) and triathlete and potato farmer Goro Matsushita (Toshio Kakei), who built a memorial using a fragment from one of the incendiary bombs dropped on Nagaoka; war veteran and local fireworks legend Seijiro Nose (Akira Emoto); reporter Wakako Inoue (Natsuka Harada), who walks Endō through important parts of the city; Yoshie Yamafuji, who lost much of her family in the bombings; artist Yasunari Honmura, who uses his paintings as reminders of the horrors of war; and numerous other survivors and relatives of the dead.

Journalist Reiko Endō (Yasuko Matsuyuki) goes on quite a ride with cabdriver Akiyoshi Muraoka (Takashi Sasano) in Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s Casting Blossoms to the Sky

Casting Blossoms to the Sky is made in Obayashi’s unique style, with visually stunning backdrops (real and green-screened), bright, brash color schemes, professional and nonprofessional actors, and computer-generated imagery that can feel rather goofy. The film was imaginatively shot by Yûdai Katô and Hisaki Sanbongi, with lovely, often garishly beautiful production design by Kôichi Takeuchi and playful editing by Obayashi and Hisaki Sanbongi, using cute cinematic techniques. The characters sometimes turn and speak directly into the camera, further establishing the film as a cautionary tale.

“I don’t know anything about war and it’s never crossed my mind,” a young student named Ryo says to Katayama, who replies, “It’s the citizens’ duty to tell the story. There are adults who think war is necessary but not the children. That’s why it’s up to the children to make peace.”

In one of the most moving scenes, a black-and-white flashback to 2009 during a fierce storm, Endō’s mother (Shiho Fujimura) says to her, “Life is connected,” a statement that is at the heart of Obayashi’s message. But no matter how didactic some of the dialogue is and how silly the visuals can get, accompanied by Joe Hisaishi’s emotional score, Casting Blossoms to the Sky has an innate charm that is so endearing you will forgive its flaws. At one point Katayama explains, “The fireworks are a prayer.” So is Casting Blossoms to the Sky, which, like fireworks, is quite a sight to behold.

THE MURDER ON THE LINKS

Who: L.A. Theatre Works
What: All-star audio play based on Agatha Christie novel
Where: LATW online
When: Available starting July 1, $20 (nine-play season $150)
Why: In the 1990s, L.A. Theatre Works focused its attention on audio plays, “producing world classics, modern masterpieces, contemporary, and original works that speak to the issues of our times.” Audio plays have flourished during the pandemic lockdown, with excellent productions from the Public Theater, Keen Company, and Gideon Media, among many others. So the time is right for LATW’s digital 2020-21 nine-play season, which has included audio versions of The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse, Life on Paper by Kenneth Lin, Extinction by Hannie Rayson, Bump by Chiara Atik, A Weekend with Pablo Picasso by Herbert Sigüenza, For Us All by Jeanne Sakata, No-No Boy by Ken Narasaki, and A Good Day at Auschwitz by Stephen Tobolowsky.

Alfred Molina and Simon Helberg star in LATW audio adaptation of The Murder on the Links (photos by Matt Petit and Derek Hutchison)

The final work is Kate McAll’s audio theater adaptation of The Murder on the Links, based on Agatha Christie’s 1923 novel, which featured John Moffat as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in a 1990 BBC Radio 4 version and David Suchet as the intrepid detective in a 1996 episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot for British television. Here Alfred Molina stars as Poirot, with Simon Helberg as Poirot’s bestie, Capt. Arthur Hastings. The two men travel to France to meet with Paul Renauld, only to find out he has been murdered — and their quest soon leads to another body. The cast also features Adhir Kalyan as Jack Renaud, Joanne Whalley as Madame Daubreuil, Kevin Daniels as Detective Giraud, Edita Brychta as Madame Renauld and Françoise, Anna Lyse Erikson as Leonie, Darren Richardson as a sergeant, a doctor, and others, Jocelyn Towne as Cinderella and Marthe Daubreuil, and Matthew Wolf as Monsieur Hautet; the download includes access to a digital video of a table read. Recorded in West Hollywood in April 2021, The Murder on the Links is directed and produced by Erikson, with original music by John Biddle, editing by Charles Carroll, and foley sound by Jeff Gardner. Each LATW play can be downloaded for $20; all nine are available for $150 and come with such bonuses as a video conversation with LATW founding members Ed Asner, Richard Dreyfuss, Hector Elizondo, Stacy Keach, Marsha Mason, and JoBeth Williams.

TWO BY WALLACE SHAWN: GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS / THE DESIGNATED MOURNER

Who: Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Jennifer Tilly, Emily Cass McDonnell, Deborah Eisenberg, Larry Pine
What: Audio versions of Wallace Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors and The Designated Mourner
Where: Gideon Media
When: Available July 9
Why: Beloved New York City icon Wallace Shawn has kept himself very busy during the pandemic lockdown. He wonderfully reprised his role as the villainous Vizzini (“Inconceivable!”) in a Zoom benefit reunion reading of Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride to help support the Wisconsin Democratic party in the 2020 elections. The New GroupOffstage: Two by Wallace Shawn consisted of all-star Zoom reunion readings of his plays Aunt Dan and Lemon and Evening at the Talk House, the latter featuring his stellar turn as a bedraggled actor. And through July 25, you can catch him as Lucky in the New Group’s online adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with Ethan Hawke as Didi, John Leguizamo as Gogo, and Tarik Trotter as Pozzo.

The curmudgeonly Shawn continues visiting his past with audio versions of his two of his most intense shows, presented for free by Gideon Media and reuniting the casts from previous productions. In Grasses of a Thousand Colors, an erotic futuristic nightmare that had its world premiere in 2009 at the Royal Court Theatre in London and debuted in New York four years later at the Public, Shawn expands on Madame d’Aulnoy’s 1698 fairy tale The White Cat in a wild and unpredictable story about sex, humans, animals, sex, the food chain, and sex. “Oh, hello there!” Shawn begins as a doctor named Ben. “You know, I’m just so thrilled that you’ve made the rather wild decision to listen to the meaning of all people right at this very moment. I mean, I know you’re probably just as mixed up about everything as I am because since yesterday, well, things have obviously changed since yesterday, that’s totally clear. Things are definitely different in one way or another. I mean, it’s been quite a journey, my God. And the last part of it was so crazy.” The play brings back Julie Hagerty as Cerise, Ben’s wife; Jennifer Tilly as Robin, his mistress; and Emily Cass McDonnell as Rose, his girlfriend, along with director André Gregory, who starred with Shawn in Louis Malle’s brilliant 1981 film, My Dinner with André.

The play is divided into six sections, “Invitation,” “The Quest to Be Known,” “Affair,” “Revenge,” “Illness,” and “Party,” that are definitely not safe for work, for those who are back in the office. “So anyway,” Dr. Ben says, “You see, I’d always loved nudity, including nude performances, because what other pleasures can we get in life except from what is naked, or in other words from getting closer and closer to what we call nature.”

Also available is an audio version of Shawn’s The Designated Mourner, which premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 1996; this reading reunites Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg (Shawn’s real-life wife), and Larry Pine from the 2000 New York City production directed by Gregory in several small rooms in a building on William St. in the Financial District. Divided into “Resentment,” “Accommodation,” “Danger,” “Flight,” “Arrest,” and “Death,” the play delves into violence, authoritarianism, and injustice amid Shawn’s unrelenting trademark dark humor.

“It’s just remarkable that your father is allowed to exist!” Judy (Eisenberg) recalls being told about her father, Howard (Pine), a famous and well-respected poet. “And meanwhile your attention is entirely turned away from the human suffering that is going on all around you,” Howard tells Jack (Shawn), her husband. “You can sum me up in about ten words: a former student of English literature who — who went downhill from there!” Jack explains.

In Woody Allen’s 1987 comedy Radio Days, Shawn played the Masked Avenger, the hero of a popular radio serial, who says, “I wonder if future generations will ever even hear about us. It’s not likely. After enough time, everything passes. I don’t care how big we are or how important are our lives.” Through podcasts such as these of Shawn’s plays, future generations around the world will indeed get to hear about these seminal works.

MAMA WEED (LA DARONNE)

Isabelle Huppert stars as an unlikely drug kingpin in Mama Weed

MAMA WEED (LA DARONNE) (Jean-Paul Salomé, 2020)
Village East Cinema by Angelika
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, July 16
www.musicboxfilms.com
www.angelikafilmcenter.com

Isabelle Huppert is luminous once again, even in the hokey comic thriller Mama Weed (La Daronne), opening July 16 at the Village East. The French grand dame stars as Patience Portefeux, a widow with two grown daughters who is out of money, threatened with eviction by her tough landlord, Mrs. Fo (Jade Nadja Nguyen). Patience works as a French-Arabic translator for the police, currently enmeshed in stopping a major drug deal that secretly involves Khadidja (Farida Ouchani), the nurse who cares for Patience’s elderly mother (Liliane Rovère).

In order to protect Khadidja and her son, Choca (Mourad Boudaoud), who is in on the deal with his friend Scotch (Rachid Guellaz), Patience warns her in advance. The deal goes bad, the drugs disappear, but Patience decides to track them down herself, and when she finds them she concocts a plan to become a local drug lord so she can once again live life in the high style to which she was accustomed. While Choca and Scotch are minor leaguers who are easily manipulated, Patience has to be more careful with the extremely dangerous Cherkaoui brothers (Youssef Sahraoui and Kamel Guenfoud), who want their hash stash back. She does all this under the nose of the determined police chief, Philippe (Hippolyte Girardot), who is in charge of the case and whom she just happens to be dating.

Liberally adapted by director Jean-Paul Salomé (Les Braqueuses, Playing Dead) and Hannelore Cayre from Cayre’s novel The Godmother with the participation of Huppert, Mama Weed can’t quite figure out what it wants to be, treading the line between comedy, police procedural, romance, thriller, and widow in a man’s world trying to rise above adversity. Looking better than ever in her late sixties, Huppert is mesmerizing to watch, especially as Marité Coutard’s costumes get more and more colorful and complex, but you’ll run out of, er, patience as the plot grows more and more absurd. Patience is neither Walter White (Bryan Cranston) from Breaking Bad nor Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) from Weeds; her success relies on too much plain luck that stretches the bounds of credulity.

Winner of the Jacques Deray Prize for best detective film and nominated for a César for Best Adapted Screenplay, Mama Weed has its moments, especially in Patience’s evolving relationship with Mrs. Fo, but the hole-ridden story feels like smoking weed of questionable quality — you’re never sure it’s truly getting you where you want to be.