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SUMMER AT SEA

Be prepared to get swept away by summer film festival at Metrograph

SUMMER AT SEA
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
July 5 – September 2
212-660-0312
metrograph.com/film

It’s easy to get swept away by Metrograph’s “Summer at Sea,” a two-month festival of nineteen films set at the beach, on the ocean, and poolside. Among the wide-ranging works being shown are Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte, Christian Petzold’s Afire, Federico Fellini’s And the Ship Sails On, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois’s Lilo & Stitch, Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, Jacques Deray’s La Piscine, and Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away . . . by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August. Below is a closer look at several of the movies.

In addition, on July 20, Metrograph will be hosting its annual Summer Book Fair, this year honoring the late dance critic, literary editor, and publisher Robert Gottlieb, who passed away in June 2023 at the age of ninety-two. Gottlieb worked with such authors and celebrities as John Cheever, Doris Lessing, Chaim Potok, Salman Rushdie, John le Carré, Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, Toni Morrison, Bill Clinton, Nora Ephron, Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Liv Ullmann, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and, most famously, Robert Caro; his longtime collaboration with Caro was documented in the terrific 2022 film Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb. The fair will feature more than five hundred film books owned by Gottlieb, which will be availabie for sale, each one stamped with a seal certifying “From the Library of Robert Gottlieb.”

Father (David Niven) and daughter (Jean Seberg) have a little talk in lush Otto Preminger melodrama

BONJOUR TRISTESSE (Otto Preminger, 1958)
Metrograph
Friday July 5, 4:45
Sunday July 7, 12:20
Sunday July 14, 7:30
metrograph.com/film

Douglas Sirk would surely be proud of Otto Preminger’s wickedly obsessive 1958 melodrama, Bonjour Tristesse. Based on the 1954 novel by eighteen-year-old author Françoise Sagan, the film, whose titles translates as “Hello, Sadness,” stars Jean Seberg as Cécile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the cusp of womanhood, a child-adult living the good life while beginning to enjoy the pleasures of drinking, smoking, and sexual desire. She and her wealthy father, Raymond (a dapper David Niven), have moved into a posh villa on the French Riviera for the summer, where the widowed Raymond attempts to balance his time with serious fashion queen Anne Larsen (Deborah Kerr) and flighty young blonde Elsa (Mylène Demongeot). A selfish cad who considers only himself, Raymond is soon in deep water when the two women find out about each other. Meanwhile, Cécile tosses aside her studies in order to flirt with twenty-five-year-old neighbor Philippe (Geoffrey Horne) and other older men who quickly fall in love with her relatively carefree lifestyle, one that seemingly can only end in trouble.

Written by Arthur Laurents (Anastasia, The Way We Were), beautifully photographed in color (in Saint-Tropez) and black-and-white (in Paris) by Georges Périnal (Rembrandt, The Fallen Idol), and featuring costumes by Givenchy and jewelry by Cartier, Bonjour Tristesse examines love, lust, power, style, and jealousy, directed with an iron fist by Preminger, who often yelled at and embarrassed Seberg on-set in order to influence her performance. But at the heart of the film is the risqué relationship between Raymond and Cécile, one that more than hints at incest.

Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) are on the run in Wes Anderson’s delightful Moonrise Kingdom

MOONRISE KINGDOM (Wes Anderson, 2012)
Friday July 5, 5:00
Saturday July 6, 2:45
Wednesday July 10, 3:30
metrograph.com/film

In such unique films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited, black-comedy master Wes Anderson has created a bizarre collection of characters who seem to live in their own alternate realities. In Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson has once again assembled an oddball assortment of men, women, and children in a terrifically clever and entertaining fairy tale all its own. Tired of being abused by his fellow Khaki Scouts and dismissed by his foster parents, twelve-year-old orphan Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) runs away from Camp Ivanhoe on the island of New Penzance, much to the chagrin of dedicated scout master Randy Ward (Edward Norton). Meanwhile, twelve-year-old loner Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is fed up with her life as well, which she mostly spends listening to Benjamin Britten, reading fairy tales (fictitious stories made up by Anderson), watching the world through a pair of ever-present binoculars, and despising her parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). Afraid of what might have happened to the children, the local police officer, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), gets involved, as does a stern woman from social services (Tilda Swinton) and, eventually, a very different kind of scout, Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman).

The proceedings are overseen by a narrator (Bob Balaban) who ends up being more than just an omniscient presence. Moonrise Kingdom is an absolute gem of a film, an exciting, original tale about growing up told in a fabulously funny deadpan manner that combines slapstick humor with wildly ironic elements, filled with the endless wonders of childhood, although it is most definitely not for children. Newcomers Gilman and Hayward appear wise beyond their years in the lead roles, with outstanding support from an all-star cast, most prominently Norton as the by-the-book scout master on a mission. Written by Anderson with Roman Coppola, the film also features a lovely score by Alexandre Desplat.

Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (Harriet Andersson) run away to start a new life in Summer with Monika

SUMMER WITH MONIKA (SOMMAREN MED MONIKA) (Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Metrograph
Friday July 5, 7:10
Saturday July 6, 5:00
Thursday July 11, 4:15
metrograph.com/film

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman shocked the film world in 1953 with the controversial Summer with Monika, the tale of two young lovers who run away from their families and go on a brief but intense sexual adventure. The film featured full-frontal nudity by Harriet Andersson, with whom Bergman had a short relationship; the movie was actually edited down by distributor Kroger Babb to focus on the sex and nudity, renaming it Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl! and marketing it to US audiences as an exploitation picture. But Film Forum is screening the superb original version as part of its five-week centennial celebration of Bergman’s birth. Based on the 1951 novel by Per Anders Fogelström, Summer with Monika takes place in a working-class area of Stockholm, where Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (Harriet Andersson) toil away in a glassware factory. Harry lives with his ailing father (Georg Skarstedt), while Monika sleeps in her family’s kitchen. Both teens are bored with their already dull and unfulfilling lives. So when they meet in a café, the bold, forward Monika lures the shy, fragile Harry into what begins as a summer of fun, as they steal Harry’s father’s boat and head out to their own private hideaway, but ends up as something very different. Bergman boils down an entire relationship — courtship, romance, children, breakup, in a way a precursor to his later epic, Scenes from a Marriage — into ninety-seven sharp, intuitive moments, turning clichéd plot twists into subtle statements on life and family. Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer shoots the film in a dark, gloomy black-and-white, with stark close-ups — Monika stares directly into the camera at one point, challenging the audience — and long shots of water and nature, while Erik Nordgren’s score is kept spare, with Bergman favoring natural sound and light.

Harriet Andersson stars as a fierce, independent spirit in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika

Andersson, who would go on to make many more films with Bergman, including Sawdust and Tinsel, Smiles of a Summer Night, Cries and Whispers, and Fanny and Alexander, is enticing as Monika, who doesn’t mind stepping on people’s souls while asserting herself as an independent woman, while Ekborg, who had a small part in Bergman’s The Magician, shows plenty of vulnerability as Harry, who wants to do the right thing and is ready to at least try to be a grown-up when things get complicated. The film is still shocking after all these years, and still rings true. “I want summer to go on just like this,” Monika says. But there are always other seasons, and more summers, to come.

David Hockney works on his masterpiece in Jack Hazan’s A Bigger Splash

A BIGGER SPLASH (Jack Hazan, 1974)
Metrograph
Monday, July 8, 4:00pm
metrograph.com

In June 2019, Metrograph premiered a 4K restoration of Jack Hazan’s pivotal 1974 A Bigger Splash, a fiction-nonfiction hybrid that was a breakthrough work for its depiction of gay culture as well as its inside look at the fashionable and chic Los Angeles art scene of the early 1970s. In November 2018, David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction for $90.3 million, the most ever paid for a work by a living artist. A Bigger Splash, named after another of Hockney’s paintings — both are part of a series of canvases set around pools in ritzy Los Angeles — takes place over three years, as the British artist, based in California at the time, hangs out with friends, checks out a fashion show, prepares for a gallery exhibition, and works on Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) in the wake of a painful breakup with his boyfriend, model, and muse, Peter Schlesinger, who is a key figure in the painting.

It’s often hard to know which scenes are pure documentary and which are staged for the camera as Hazan and his then-parter, David Mingay, who served as director of photography, tag along with Hockney, who rides around in his small, dirty BMW, meeting up with textile designer Celia Birtwell, fashion designer Ossie Clark, curator Henry Geldzahler, gallerist John Kasmin, artist Patrick Procktor, and others, who are identified only at the beginning, in black-and-white sketches during the opening credits. The film features copious amounts of male nudity, including a long sex scene between two men, a group of beautiful boys diving into a pool in a fantasy sequence, and Hockney disrobing and taking a shower. Hockney’s assistant, Mo McDermott, contributes occasional voice-overs; he also poses as the man standing on the deck in Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), only to be replaced by Schlesinger later. There are several surreal moments involving Hockney’s work: He cuts up one painting; Geldzahler gazes long and hard at himself in the double portrait of him and Christopher Scott; and Hockney tries to light the cigarette Procktor is holding in a painting as Procktor watches, cigarette in hand, mimicking his pose on canvas. At one point Hockney is photographing Schlesinger in Kensington Gardens, reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, which questions the very nature of capturing reality on film.

Hockney was so upset when he first saw A Bigger Splash, which Hazan made for about twenty thousand dollars, that he offered to buy it back from Hazan in order to destroy it; Hazan refused, and Hockney went into a deep depression. His friends ultimately convinced him that it was a worthwhile movie and he eventually accepted it. It’s a one-of-a-kind film, a wild journey that goes far beyond the creative process as an artist makes his masterpiece. Hockney, who will turn eighty-six on July 9, has been on quite a roll of late. He was the subject of a 2016 documentary by Randall Wright, was widely hailed for his 2018 Met retrospective, saw one of his paintings set an auction record, and had a major show at the Morgan Library in 2020-21, “David Hockney: Drawing from Life.” In addition, Catherine Cusset’s novel, Life of David Hockney, was published in 2019 in English, a fictionalized tale that conceptionally recalls A Bigger Splash.

Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are back together again in Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Metrograph
Friday July 12, 4:15
Saturday July 13, noon
metrograph.com/film

Unable to resist revisiting the characters who first fell in love in 1995’s Before Sunrise and again in 2004’s Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their roles as Jesse and Celine, respectively, in Richard Linklater’s absolutely wonderful Before Midnight. The couple first met on a train to Vienna in 1994, talking at length about their hopes and desires and planning on getting together in six months’ time, but they don’t reconnect for another nine years, when Celine comes to one of Jesse’s book signings in Paris. In real time, they walk around the City of Light, catching up on what has happened in their lives as Jesse prepares to take a plane back home to his wife and son. And now another nine years have passed, and Jesse and Celine are living together, the parents of twins (Charlotte and Jennifer Prior). As the film opens, the divorced Jesse is putting his teenage son, Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), on a plane after having spent the summer together in Greece. What follows is a marvelous fourteen-minute scene of Jesse driving down a mountain road as he and Celine essentially let the audience know what has occurred over the last nine years: They have twin girls (sleeping in the back), Celine has been offered an important environmental job, and Jesse is considering moving to Chicago to be closer to Hank. They return to a country estate owned by Patrick (award-winning cinematographer Walter Lassally, making his acting debut at the age of eighty-six), who is hosting an outdoor lunch with a group of friends (including French actress Ariane Labed, coproducer and filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, and Xenia Kalogeropoulou, who came out of retirement to appear in her first picture since 1985). They all talk of life and love, with Celine being particularly charming. But when Jesse and Celine go off to a hotel room for what is supposed to be a romantic rendezvous, some things are said and truths revealed that complicate things.

Cowriters Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke explore life and love in Greece in third film about Celine and Jesse

As with the first two films, Before Midnight consists of long takes of Jesse and Celine discussing their past, present, and future as cowriters Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused), Delpy, and Hawke, who were nominated for an Oscar for their script for Before Sunset, continue to explore these engaging characters; both the dialogue and the acting have matured with an intelligent grace and elegance that are captivating. The couple wanders around Messinia examining their lives as only fortysomethings can, trying to figure out whether what they have is what they want. The central focus, though, once again is time, whether it is the years Jesse and Celine have spent together, the time they have left, time as a concept in Jesse’s semiautobiographical novels, or Jesse making a joke about being a time traveler. It’s been eighteen years since we first met Jesse and Celine, and we’ve grown eighteen years older too, lending fascinating perspectives that can’t help but force us to take a look at our own lives as well. The trilogy is America’s version of François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series, filled with humor, lyricism, and an inherent understanding of twenty-first-century realities. Will there be a fourth film? As of now, the principals aren’t saying because they just don’t know, but Before Midnight ends on just about the perfect ambiguous note.

Margot (Amanda Langlet) and Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) contemplate love and friendship in Éric Rohmer’s A Tale of Summer

A TALE OF SUMMER (CONTE D’ÉTÉ) (Éric Rohmer, 1996)
Friday, July 26, 2:00
Sunday, July 28, 11:30 am
metrograph.com

French New Wave auteur Éric Rohmer’s 1996 A Tale of Summer, the third of his seasonal 1990s stories following A Tale of Winter and A Tale of Springtime and preceding the finale, A Tale of Autumn, is a bittersweet romance about the follies of young love. In a seaside Breton resort town in the 1970s, musician and mathematician Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) awaits the arrival of his girlfriend, Lena (Aurélia Nolin), who has not been answering his phone calls or returning his letters. He strikes up a perhaps platonic relationship with waitress-ethnologist Margot (Amanda Langlet), whose boyfriend is off in the Peace Corps. When Gaspard makes a move on Margot, she instead encourages him to go out with the free-spirited Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon). Soon Gaspard finds himself lost among three beautiful women, forced to make choices that he’s clearly not ready for.

Strikingly photographed by Rohmer favorite Diane Baratier in a subdued, ’70s-style palette, A Tale of Summer is a charmingly insightful and frustrating exploration of young love, desire, and commitment in which a group of attractive twentysomethings are caught between just wanting to have some fun and plotting out their future. It’s ironic that Gaspard is a mathematician, as he seems to have trouble as soon as he gets to the number three. Meanwhile, it’s appropriate that the ever-wise and knowing Margot (played with a captivating and alluring ease by Pauline at the Beach star Langlet) is an ethnologist, as she carefully studies Gaspard and others as she makes her way through life. Rohmer made A Summer’s Tale when he was seventy-five; the former editor of Cahiers du cinéma would go on to direct four more films before his death in 2010 at the age of eighty-nine. After eighteen years, A Tale of Summer, which premiered at Cannes in 1996, finally got its U.S. theatrical release in 2014 in a new HD restoration, and it is always a lovely way to continue the summer movie season.

NY CLASSICAL: HENRY IV

New York Classical Theatre’s Henry IV moves from Central Park to Carl Schurz Park and Castle Clinton this summer (photo © Sarah Antal)

HENRY IV
Through June 30: Central Park, Central Park West & 103rd St.
July 2-7: Carl Schurz Park, East 87th St. & East End Ave.
July 9-14, Castle Clinton, Battery Park
nyclassical.org

New York Classical Theatre is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary of presenting free Shakespeare in the parks and other public spaces throughout the city — along with works by Chekhov, Schiller, Shaw, Molière, and more — with another fun and fanciful frolic, a streamlined adaptation of the Bard’s Henry IV. The play, which falls between Richard II and Henry V in the Henriad, just finished its run in Central Park, where the action took place in seven locations around 103rd St. on the West Side, and next moves first to Carl Schurz Park, then to Castle Clinton in Battery Park.

Combining the two parts into one two-hour version, NYCT founding artistic director Stephen Burdman focuses on the relationship between Prince Hal (Ian Antal), who is the son of Henry IV (Nick Salamone), and the jovial bloviator Sir John Falstaff (John Michalski). The king’s reign is being threatened by a group of rebels led by Hotspur (Damian Jermaine Thompson), Northumberland (Juan Luis Acevedo), Countess Worcester (Carine Montbertrand), Countess Mortimer (Anique Clements), Lady Percy (Briana Gibson Reeves), and Welsh rebel Owen Glendower (Ian Gould). Supporting the king are Westmoreland (Gould), Sir Walter Blount (Nuah Ozryel), and, ostensibly, Prince Hal, aka Harry, who is spending all his time carousing with Falstaff and his merry band of drunken thieves: Poins (Anique Clements), Pistol (Ozryel), and Bardolph (Reeves), who hang around the Boar’s Head Tavern run by Mistress Quickly (Montbertrand).

Henry IV, formerly Henry Bolingbroke, usurped the throne from his cousin, Richard II, and now is in a face-off with Harry Percy, called Hotspur, who has defied the king’s orders by taking hostages following a war with the Scots and will only release them if the king pays a ransom to Glendower for Edmund Mortimer, Hotspur’s brother-in-law.

Meanwhile, the rotund braggart Falstaff conspires with Pistol and Bardolph to rob passing strangers, only to then be robbed themselves by the masked Hal and Poins, who have done so just to hear Falstaff regale them with a tale of how he had to fight off a hundred men with his skill and daring. Later, Falstaff embellishes his actions during the Battle of Shrewsbury, as Henry IV attempts to defend the realm against Hotspur and Glendower.

Sir John Falstaff (John Michalski) entertains the audience as well as Mistress Quickly (Montbertrand) and Prince Hal (Ian Antal) in NYCT’s Henry IV in Central Park (photo © Sarah Antal)

Burdman leads the audience through his trademark Panoramic Theatre, combining Environmental Theatre and Promenade Theatre as the crowd follows him and the actors to each new location, picking up passersby along the way as other parkgoers wonder what is going on. Part of the fun is watching this interaction between the actors, the grass and trees, the setting sun, and random strangers.

Production designer Kindall Almond keeps it simple; the period costumes are right on target, and there is no furniture and few props, primarily swords and Mistress Quickly’s utility belt of a bottle and cups. The performers are not mic’d, so the dialogue is front and center. The exchanges between the sly Prince Hal and the bawdy Falstaff lie at the heart of the play:

Prince Hal: Now, Harry, the complaints I hear of thee are grievous.
Falstaff: ’Sblood, my lord, they are false.
Prince Hal: Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth ne’er look on me. There is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that father ruffian?
Falstaff: Whom means your grace?
Prince Hal: That villainous abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff.
Falstaff: My lord, the man I know.
Prince Hal: I know thou dost.
Falstaff: But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old — the more the pity. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be fat be to be a sin, then many an old host is damned. No, my good lord, banish Pistol, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish plump Jack and banish all the world.
Prince Hal: I do, I will.

King Henry IV (Nick Salamone) fights off his enemies in swordfight in Central Park (photo © Sarah Antal)

The cast, a mix of NYCT veterans and first-timers, is solid up and down; six actors play two roles apiece, while three actors remain in one role: Salamone is a worthy King Henry IV, Antal makes a fine Prince Hal, but Michalski steals the show, as he should, as Falstaff, a meaty, mighty character made famous by Orson Welles in the 1965 film Chimes at Midnight. In his thirteenth NYCT show, Michalski, who has previously played Lady Bracknell, Prospero, Scrooge, and Sir Toby Belch for the troupe, immediately connects with the audience, making sure we never leave his (portly) side. His bellowing voice and unyielding demeanor are intoxicating, both hilarious and sad, as Falstaff stumbles across the hilly grass and embellishes his endless tales with a bold effrontery. “There lives not three good men unhanged in England and one of them is fat and grows old,” he declares.

Later, marching through the middle of the crowd, Michalski/Falstaff murmurs, “Where did all these people come from?” Burdman expects upwards of 7500 people to experience his superb adaptation this summer; you should do your best to be one of them.

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

N/A

Ana Villafañe and Holland Taylor portray familiar but unnamed characters in Mario Correa’s N/A (photo by Daniel Rader)

N/A
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 1, $72-$200
www.lct.org
natheplay.com

Holland Taylor for president!

On June 27, I saw Mario Correa’s potent N/A, making its world premiere at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center through August 4. The eighty-minute play is a series of fictionalized conversations, based on actual text and dialogue, between two unnamed but obvious political figures: two-time Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, splendidly portrayed by Taylor, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fully embodied by Ana Villafañe.

When I got home, I watched the debacle of a debate between former president Donald J. Trump and the incumbent, Joseph R. Biden. Afterward, I decided to cast my vote for Taylor.

N/A begins with A, having just won the Democratic primary for a House seat representing parts of Queens and her home borough, the Bronx, livestreaming from the office of the minority leader, N. Referring to her opponent as “a total corporate shill,” she says, “So you look in the mirror and you say to yourself, be the change you wanna see in the world, right? Also, fuck those motherfuckers!”

N then enters the room and asks if she’s interrupting.

“Where did you come from?” a shocked A says. “Baltimore. Where did you come from?” N responds seriously. “Were you there the whole time?” A wants to know. N replies, “In my office, you mean?”

Thus, the generational battle lines are immediately drawn, the old guard against the new. Over several talks, N explains how things happen in the House, that it’s not so simple to get a bill passed there, then in the Senate, and finally signed into law by the president. A Baltimore native, she is a pragmatist with decades of experience — she was first elected to serve in the House in 1987, two years before A was born, and became the first woman Speaker in 2007.

The newly elected A wants to effect change instantly, ready to implement her Green New Deal, end the militarization of the border, provide affordable, universal health care and free college tuition, and other plans. When A says that N is “on record against most of this agenda,” N answers, “Agenda? That’s an Amazon wish list. Load it up!”

N also points out that her favorite number is 218 — the number of Democrats needed to have a majority in the House. She states that without that, they essentially cannot get anything done, no matter now necessary it appears. Many of their discussions follow this kind of trajectory:

N: I’m going to say something to you, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. This isn’t college. I’m not Plato, you’re not Aristotle, and we’re not here to contemplate the Republic. We have real work to do, urgent work — right now. You can be a part of it.
A: We should contemplate the state of the Republic. It’s dire.
N: And I’m happy to do that. After we win back the House.
A: Our country’s problems are systemic. Not by accident — by design. Foundational inequities built into the organizing principles of this nation. And until we reckon with them head-on, it doesn’t matter how many elections we win. We will never fill a leaky bucket.
N: And yet that is our work, for it’s the only bucket we’ve got.
A: Or . . . we get a new bucket.

What becomes clear as they continue to hold these mini-debates is that their goals are not very different; what separates them is the method of getting there.

N: We have much in common, you and I . . . Relentless, persistent, dissatisfied. That is our nature; we are outsiders —
A: You’re an “outsider”?
N: If the Framers walked through that door right now and saw me sitting here, how happy do you think they’d be?
A: A lot happier than if they saw me.
N: Nah. They’d see a woman and keel over. That’s it.
A: Well . . . A white woman of wealth. With a few smelling salts, I bet they’d come around.
N: And soon, they’d learn she didn’t come from wealth.
A: But then they’d remember that she came from whiteness.
N: And then someone would remind them of the concept of a wop. A dago.
A: And someone else would inform them that this lady’s father had been a Member of Congress.
N: To which one of them would undoubtedly ask, “What does that matter?”
A: To which another would answer, “The most common route to privilege in this country is generational transfer.”

Ultimately, N tells A that the key is, “Know your friends. Know your enemies. Know the difference,” whereas A’s motto is “Más que menos . . . Literally, ‘more than less.’ In essence . . . ‘Leave it better than you found it.’”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Ana Villafañe) and Nancy Pelosi (Holland Taylor) get down to business in world premiere play (photo by Daniel Rader)

In addition to “N/A” referring to Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it can mean “not applicable,” “not available,” “no account,” and “no answer,” all of which relate to Correa’s well-written play, astutely directed by Tony winner Diane Paulus (Little Jagged Pill, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess), who is a much better “moderator” than most debate hosts, allowing each side to speak their peace and support their claims.

Myung Hee Cho’s set features Lucite furniture, including a case with a Speaker’s gavel in it, echoing A’s declaration that public officials must be transparent; meanwhile, Cho’s costumes capture the characters to a T, N in a white blouse, buttoned pink jacket and knee-length skirt, and high heels, A in a white shirt, unbuttoned black jacket, black pants, and black flats that later become heels. Possible and Lisa Renkel’s red, white, and blue projections focus on the evolving makeup of the House as it shifts between Democratic and Republican control. Mextly Couzin’s lighting effectively indicates the passage of time between scenes, although the interstitial music is cloying. (The sound design is by Sun Hee Kil and Germán Martínez.)

Villafañe (On Your Feet, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties), who is the same age as AOC, more than holds her own with Taylor, capturing her character’s determination, aggressiveness, and refusal to compromise. Villafañe stands tall as AOC is not afraid to hit back and say what’s on her mind.

But Taylor shines as Pelosi; it’s as if she has a glow as she tries to educate the younger congresswoman in the ways of politics, and the world itself. She exhibits Pelosi’s confidence, intelligence, and understanding of the tactics of negotiation in her every movement.

Pelosi might have stepped down from her position as minority leader in January 2023, but, at the age of eighty-four, she is still ably representing her California district. Philly native Taylor (The Morning Show, Two and a Half Men), at eighty-one — born two months after President Biden — is still at the top of her game, regularly appearing onstage, on film, and on television. I have no doubt that she could stand behind a podium and lay any political opponent to waste; she certainly has my vote.

In 2013, Taylor starred as Texas governor Ann Richards in her one-woman show Ann at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. When Taylor-as-Richards stood at the podium, discussing her battle with cancer and her hope for the future of America, it was easy to see why Richards was considered a possible vice presidential running mate for John Kerry — or a presidential candidate herself.

In 2015, Taylor put on the boxing gloves in Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire’s Ripcord at City Center, a hilarious battle of wits between two elderly roommates in a suburban New Jersey nursing home. Abby Binder (Taylor) is a nasty, mean-spirited, and spiteful woman filled with vitriol that she pours on everyone and everything, while Marilyn Dunne (Marylouise Burke) is a kind, sweet-natured soul who loves life and wants only happiness for all.

Sound familiar?

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

CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT

Argentine writer-director Tomás Gómez Bustillo’s Chronicles of a Wandering Saint is a glowing debut

CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT (Tomás Gómez Bustillo, 2023)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, June 28
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.chroniclesofawanderingsaint.com

About thirty-five minutes into Tomás Gómez Bustillo’s gorgeous, elegiac debut feature, Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, a meditative dark comedy on love, faith, and the afterlife, a deeply sad tragedy occurs and the credits begin to roll. But just as the protagonist is reborn at that moment, so is the film itself.

In a small, religious Argentina town, Rita (Mónica Villa) spends much of her time at Saint Rita church, either praying with her three friends, Viviana (Noemí Ron), Beba (Silvia Porro), and Alicia (Ana Silvia Mackenzie), or cleaning, mopping the floors until they glisten. She and her husband, Norberto (Horacio Marassi), live a simple life; they have no children and don’t travel. While Norberto still has a lust for life, Rita looks tired. When Norberto suggests that they go back to the waterfalls they visited on their honeymoon forty years earlier, Rita doesn’t understand why.

“Well, the waterfalls are still the exact same,” she says. He responds, “But we’re not.”

Rummaging through the church basement, Rita comes upon an object she believes to be a statue of Saint Rita, missing for thirty years. Before even seeing it, Father Eduardo (Pablo Moseinco) declares it must be a miracle. However, when, after further research, Rita realizes it’s not Saint Rita, she and Norberto decide to fake it, proceeding with her claim nonetheless. It all goes well, until it doesn’t. But that’s only part of this tender and touching magical realism tale.

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint is built around the concept of a spiritual glow, as stated in Proverbs 13.9: “The light of the righteous shines brightly, but the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out.”

Early on, Rita is cleaning the floor of the church, and Beba tells her, “Quit mopping so much or those shiny floors will end up blinding us.” Several parishioners gather in the back and sing, “The light from your shining face will illuminate all the paths that lead to eternity.” And when people die, they eventually transform into a blinding white light; one person is actually reincarnated as a lightbulb. In one of the most surreal moments, Luchito (Iair Said), now a moth, can’t keep away from Quique (Mauricio Minetti), a bulb over a woman’s front door.

The film is reminiscent of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2010 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which is another fascinating integration of the human, animal, and spirit worlds. Bustillo maintains a similar slow pace but adds hilarious scenes beautifully photographed by Pablo Lozano, with spectacular production design by Doriane Desfaugeres, wonderful costumes by Margarita Franco, and a gentle, melancholic score by Felipe Delsart. The film is composed of still shots; the camera moves only once, zooming in on a piano, an instrument we later learn that Rita’s mother played.

When Norberto and Rita are in their kitchen talking about the waterfalls, they are both wearing yellow raincoats, the color echoed in the scrambled eggs and lemon wedge on their plates and the spray bottle on the table. Through the door is an old television set, furthering the idea that the couple, and the other parishioners, are living in an uncluttered, old-fashioned past despite Rita’s use of Facebook and a smartphone. Their old car has a cassette player; when she’s driving, Rita puts on a homemade mix tape that includes a dance-pop cover of Bryan Adams’s “Heaven.”

A shot of Rita sitting alone in a tiny bus shelter, looking downtrodden, surrounded by green grass and trees, a light pole rising behind her, is stunning; next to the shelter is a sign pointing out three nearby locations, but right then Rita has nowhere to go, unsure of which path to take. Not even the book she was reading about el Camino de Santiago, detailing the popular Christian pilgrimage itinerary, can help her now.

Villa (Wild Tales, The Holy Girl) is mesmerizing as Rita, a pious, devoted woman who wants to live up to her namesake. Her performance, especially her eyes, recalls Fellini wife and muse Giuletta Masina, who lit up such films as Nights of Cabiria and La Strada. Rita is not seeking much out of life, only a miracle. But as Norberto tells her, “If you want it to be a miracle, then it is.”

The multi-award-winning Chronicles of a Wandering Saint runs June 28 – July 11 at IFC Center; the LA-based Bustillo will be on hand for Q&As on Friday and Saturday at 7:05, joined by executive producer Samir Oliveros, producers Gewan Brown and Amanda Freedman, and moderators Taylor A. Purdee and Isabel Custodio.

Oh, one last note: Beware those unexpected sneezes. . . .

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

GLASS CLOUDS ENSEMBLE: LIKE THE FEATHER TIP OF A GIANT BIRD

Glass Clouds Ensemble rehearse for special site-specific performance at Earth Matter farm on Governors Island (photo courtesy Glass Clouds Ensemble)

Who: Glass Clouds Ensemble
What: Live performance and farm tour
Where: Urban Farm, Governors Island
When: Saturday, June 29, free with advance RSVP, 2:00
Why: On June 29 at 2:00, New York–based contemporary chamber music collective the Glass Clouds Ensemble will be on Governors Island performing “Like the Feather Tip of a Giant Bird,” a program featuring a piece inspired by Earth Matter NY’s Compost Learning Center and Soil State Farm, next to the Oval and Hammock Grove; the concert will be followed by a tour of the farm, which “seeks to reduce the organic waste misdirected into the garbage stream by encouraging neighbor participation and leadership in composting.” The trio, consisting of violinists Raina Arnett and Lauren Conroy and soprano Marisa Karchin, recently performed at Green-Wood Cemetery in Jody Oberfelder’s moving And Then, Now; the Governors Island program will include a new commission by guest composer Hannah Selin inspired by the farm as well as works by John Downland and Barbara Strozzi, Conroy, and Arnett, joined by special guest Alex Vourtsanis on theorbo.

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

EIKO AND MARGARET LENG TAN: STONE I

Eiko Otake and Margaret Leng Tan will perform Stone I at Green-Wood Cemetery June 26-29 (photo by Maria Baranova)

Who: Eiko, Margaret Leng Tan
What: Site-specific performance
Where: Green-Wood Cemetery, Fifth Ave. and 25th St., Brooklyn
When: June 26-29, $30 (use code 10off to save $10), 8:30
Why: “Deep deep below I saw the machine-scarred surfaces of stones that I was not supposed to be seeing,” interdisciplinary artist Eiko Otake said about her exploration of the Gylsboda Quarry during her residency in Sweden last June. For Stone I, taking place June 26-29, Eiko will be joined by Margaret Leng Tan, Queen of the Toy Piano, for a site-specific performance at Green-Wood Cemetery that incorporates video taken by Thomas Zamolo at the quarry and Green-Wood with live movement and sound at the Historic Chapel, investigating time, tension, and density in relation to the stone, the planet’s natural resources, and the environment. Tickets are $30 (use code 10off to save $10) to experience what promises to be a unique and memorable event at a spectacular location.

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

CATS: “THE JELLICLE BALL”

André De Shields makes the grandest of grand entrances as Old Deuteronomy in Cats: The Jellicle Ball (photo by Matthew Murphy)

CATS: “THE JELLICLE BALL”
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 8, $68-$309
pacnyc.org

The Pride celebration of the summer and, hopefully, beyond is happening seven times a week at PAC NYC, where Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch’s electrifying reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats — yes, that Cats — is running now through September 8, not quite forever, but not bad.

I have never before seen Cats, in any version — not the original 1982–2000 musical (which won seven Tonys and a Grammy), the 1998 film version, the 2016 Broadway revival, or the 2019 movie that not even Taylor Swift could save (and earned six Golden Raspberries). I haven’t read T. S. Eliot’s 1939 source book, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, either. When I told two friends of mine, longtime Cats haters, that I was going to The Jellicle Ball, they looked at me like they’d rather watch paint dry. Which is unfortunate for them, because Cats: “The Jellicle Ball” is an absolute blast.

Rachel Hauck has transformed the John E. Zuccotti Theater into a fashionable immersive ball, with a central catwalk, the audience sitting on three sides, and cabaret tables along the runway. A DJ (Capital Kaos) finds a dusty copy of the Cats soundtrack and puts it on, a clever nod to the original. Munkustrap (Dudney Joseph Jr.), the master of ceremonies, keeps things moving at a fast pace. The crowd is encouraged to be loud, and they hoot and holler as a cast of nearly two dozen parade up and down and all around the space, looking fabulous in Qween Jean’s spectacular costumes, which range from fluffy and colorful to raw and raunchy, from playful and funny to sexy and scary, topped off by Nikiya Mathis’s outrageous hair and wigs. Adam Honoré sprays colored spotlights across the room and incorporates a disco ball, while sound designer Kai Harada turns up the volume. Brittany Bland’s projections take us from day to night with cool visuals and pay tribute to early BIPOC LGBTQIA+ heroes.

Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles meld hip-hop and queer Ballroom culture into their vibrant choreography, with touches of traditional musical theater, since, of course, this is still Cats, following the same structure as the original and making very few tweaks to the story and lyrics; there are nods to Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, the television series Pose and RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Wiz, and a dash of Hair in its throwback counterculture vibe.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball is an intoxicating mélange of music and movement (photo by Matthew Murphy)

At the Jellicle Ball, dancers compete for trophies in such categories as Old Way vs. New Way, Voguing, Opulence, Hair Affair, and Butch Queen Realness. The preliminaries are judged by two people selected from the audience — and clearly chosen because of their wild outfits. (A few brought handheld fans, knowing just when to snap them open to match what was happening onstage.)

But it’s Old Deuteronomy (André De Shields) who will decide which furry feline will ascend to the Heaviside Layer. Among those making their case for top cat are Victoria (Baby), cat burglars Mungojerrie (Jonathan Burke) and Rumpleteazer (Dava Huesca), the curious Rum Tum Tugger (Sydney James Harcourt), virgin voguer Electra (Kendall Grayson Stroud), the mysterious Macavity (Antwayn Hopper), and housemother Jennyanydots (Xavier Reyes).

Emma Sofia stands out as Cassandra and Skimbleshanks, shaking the joint as an MTA conductor in “The Railway Cat.” Robert “Silk” Mason is in full glory mode as the conjurer Magical Mister Mistoffelees. Ballroom icon “Tempress” Chasity Moore brings heart and soul to Grizabella, the formerly glamorous gata who now lives off the street, delivering a powerful “Memory.” And Ballroom legend and Paris Is Burning emcee Junior LaBeija — the inspiration for Billy Porter’s Pose character, Pray Tell — gets duly honored as Gus the theater cat, carried out in a makeshift throne as he sings his eponymous song. LaBeija is one of numerous Trailblazers whose brief bios can be found on panels in the hall surrounding the theater, including Dorian Carey, Pepper LaBeija, Octavia St. Laurent, and Rauch.

But this is André De Shields’s world; we only live in it. The Tony, Obie, and Grammy winner (Hadestown, Ain’t Misbehavin’) makes the grandest of grand entrances, emerging from behind a glittering doorway and suddenly appearing before us in a plush purple suit and a lionlike cloud of silver, purple, and white hair, marking him as King of Pride. He floats slowly down the catwalk, basking in the tremendous adoration and adulation, then takes his royal seat at the end, a uniquely supreme being who is the ultimate judge of us all.

The music is performed by a crack eight-piece band: conductor Sujin Kim–Ramsey, Lindsay Noel Miller, and Eric Kang on keyboards, Justin Vance and Amy Griffiths on reeds, Andrew Zinsmeister on guitars, Calvin Jones on electric bass, and Clayton Craddock on drums, bringing funk and plenty of ’70s synth pop to the score, under William Waldrop’s direction.

Of course, this is still Cats, so not everything makes sense — what does “jellicle” even mean? — a few elements are repeated, and utter mayhem threatens at any second in this ferocious production, which is as unpredictable and entertaining as, well, cats.

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