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CONFLICT

A surprise guest (Jeremy Beck) in the middle of the night shocks Lord Bellingdon (Graeme Malcolm) and Major Sir Ronald Clive (Henry Clarke) in Conflict (photo by Todd Cerveris)

The Mint Theater
The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 21, $65
minttheater.org
www.theatrerow.org

Ah, thank goodness for the Mint Theater Company. Amid all the world’s problems, the Mint has been a breath of a fresh air for more than two decades, offering exquisitely rendered productions of long-forgotten works by little-known playwrights under the leadership of producing artistic director Jonathan Bank. The troupe has now followed up its Drama Desk-nominated Hindle Wakes with the impeccably staged Conflict, an exceptional 1925 romantic political tale by British character actor, dramatist, and social reformer Miles Malleson, whose Yours Unfaithfully was given the superb Mint treatment last year. The play is set in 1920s London, where the upstart Labour Party is trying to make inroads against the Conservatives in the upcoming elections. Jessie Shelton stars as Lady Dare Bellingdon, a highly privileged young woman on the verge of becoming independent, a carefree spirit who abhors boredom and is determined to make her own choices instead of following convention and doing what is expected of her class and gender. Her stern father, the very wealthy Lord Bellingdon (Graeme Malcolm), approves of her relationship with Major Sir Ronald Clive, DSO (Henry Clarke), a straightforward, overly formal military hero who is running for Parliament and wants to marry Dare, who is not exactly ready to settle down yet.

Major Sir Ronald Clive (Jeremy Beck) has his heart set on Lady Dare Bellingdon (Jessie Shelton), but she is about to become woke in Mint production (photo by Todd Cerveris)

One evening they are interrupted by the appearance of Tom Smith (Jeremy Beck), a beggar with a rather pathetic tale to tell, one that Lord Bellingdon isn’t buying. “I don’t want to mock or sneer. It was wrong of me if I seemed to. I hope I’m not hard-hearted; but I’m hard-headed,” the rich man says. “I don’t believe a man falls through society — to the bottom, as you’ve done — without something in himself to drag him down.” Smith responds, “That’s a fine thing for a man to say who’s at the top. By God, it shows a complacency, a self-satisfaction, that’s almost splendid. You must be damn pleased with yourself.” Lord Bellingdon and Clive offer him food, whiskey, and cash and send him on his way, but they and Dare are surprised by what they see when he returns eighteen months later, with quite another tale to tell.

Lady Dare Bellingdon (Jessie Shelton) looks on as her father (Graeme Malcolm) can’t believe what he hears in Miles Malleson’s Conflict (photo by Todd Cerveris)

Directed with wit and verve by Jenn Thompson (Women without Men, Abundance), Conflict never descends into preachy pablum as it explores the socioeconomic and cultural differences among rich and poor, conservative and liberal, male and female in post-WWI England. Though written nearly a century ago — it was also adapted into the 1931 film The Woman Between — the play is very much of today as the personal gets very political, and the political gets very personal, especially as so many twenty-first-century Americans use party affiliation and faith (or lack thereof) in the current government to help determine their friends and lovers, on social media and in real life. As is Mint tradition, the set, by John McDermott, is utterly lovely, a fancy drawing room with a garden; a later scene in Smith’s hovel of a bedroom further differentiates the haves from the have-nots, as does Martha Hally’s costume finery. Beck (Hindle Wakes, The Cocktail Party) and Henry Clarke (Private Lives, Baskerville) excel as rivals in more ways than one, Malcolm (Equus, Mary Broome) plays Lord Bellingdon with delicious relish, his mustache and eyebrows practically a character unto themselves, while Jasmin Walker (Avenue Q, Only Children) makes the most of her small role as Mrs. Tremayne, a merry widow who encourages Dare to live her life the way she wants to, unbound by tradition. (The cast also features James Prendergast as Daniells, the Bellingdons’ much-put-upon butler, and Amelia White as Mrs. Robinson, Smith’s nosy landlady.)

“It’s not loving him I’m bothering about — it’s marrying him,” Dare tells Mrs. Tremayne about Clive. “I don’t want my marriage to be a sort of brown-paper parcel in which I wrap up my romance, and seal it and say ‘That’s that.’ . . . I want my marriage to be . . . something more.” A high-minded socialite and good-time girl slowly becoming woke, Lady Dare is portrayed magnificently by Shelton (Hadestown, The Skin of Our Teeth) with an intoxicating hope that life can get better, for everyone. Delivered by a company that needs to be on your radar if it isn’t already, Conflict is an elegant and precise work that demands, and is more than worthy of, close attention, filled with myriad small touches that almost pass you by as you get caught up in its all-too-relevant story of strange bedfellows indeed.

IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK: CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE BOTTOM LINE

if these walls could talk

Who: David Bromberg, Jimmy Vivino, Darlene Love, David Johansen, Sean Altman, Marshall Chapman, Clint de Ganon, the GrooveBarbers, Ula Hedwig, Garland Jeffreys, Christine Lavin, Curtis King, Terre Roche, Feifei Yang, Garry Dial, the Uptown Horns, Will Lee, Paul Shaffer, Gregg Bendian
What: Music and memories about the Bottom Line
Where: Schimmel Center at Pace University, 3 Spruce St. between Park Row and Gold St., 212-346-1715
When: Friday, October 13, and Saturday, October 14, $29-$55, 7:30
Why: From February 11, 1974, to January 22, 2004, the Bottom Line was one of the great music clubs in the country, a four-hundred-seat venue that featured acts from a multitude of genres, good food and drink, and large pillars that could block part of your view depending where you were sitting, but there was no place else like it. Among the myriad performers who played there from a multitude of genres were Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, Charles Mingus, Patti Smith, Donovan, Warren Zevon, Prince, Little Feat, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Meat Loaf, Janis Ian, Santana, Melissa Etheridge, Steve Earle, the Indigo Girls, the New York Dolls, Mose Allison, Joan Armatrading, the Uncle Floyd Show, Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, Barry Manilow, Cheech & Chong, Television, Jimmy Buffett, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Nona Hendryx, Gil Scott-Heron, the Roches, the Cars, Miles Davis, the Hollies, Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, Dolly Parton, 10,000 Maniacs, Jorma Kaukonen, Carly Simon with James Taylor, Richard Belzer, and regulars Flo & Eddie from the Turtles and Buster Poindexter, the alter ego of David Johansen. Owners Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky had a knack for finding new talent; in some ways, the Bottom Line was the folk version of CBGB, a key step on an artist’s rise to national, and international, success.

On October 13 and 14, tribute will be paid to the legendary club with the special program “If These Walls Could Talk: Celebrating the Life and Times of the Bottom Line,” two evenings of live music and personal stories about the venerable venue, which closed its doors over back-rent and lease issues with NYU. Hosted by Paul Shaffer and with Gregg Bendian serving as music director, the shows will feature Sean Altman, David Bromberg (Friday), Clint de Ganon, the GrooveBarbers, Nona Hendryx, Garland Jeffreys (Saturday), David Johansen, Christine Lavin (Saturday), Will Lee, Darlene Love with Ula Hedwig and Curtis King, Terre Roche with Feifei Yang and Garry Dial (Friday), the Uptown Horns, and Jimmy Vivino. It’s like the ultimate version of “In Their Own Words,” the Bottom Line’s long-running series of “a Bunch of Songwriters Sittin’ Around Singing,” which was started on May 24, 1990, by the great Vin Scelsa. The Bottom Line had a personality all its own, and it is dearly missed by those of us who frequented its hallowed halls on the corner of Mercer and West Fourth Sts., so this should bring back some grand memories, along with some great music.

BUILDING THE WALL

Rick (James Badge Dale) tells his harrowing story to Gloria (Tamara Tunie) in Robert Schenkkan’s Building the Wall (photo by Carol Rosegg)

New World Stages
340 West 59th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through July 9, $32-$97
newworldstages.com

James Badge Dale is electrifying as a prisoner in 2019 telling his story to a historian in Robert Schenkkan’s gripping, of-the-moment Building the Wall, which opened last night at New World Stages. Dale is Rick, a white convict relegated to solitary confinement and facing possible execution. His lawyer advised him not to take the stand at trial, so he has now decided to share the details of his frightening tale with Gloria (Tamara Tunie), who is considering writing a book about him. Both in their forties, Rick and Gloria are in a small prison room, a table at the center separating them. (The claustrophobic set is by Antje Ellermann.) “Why are you here?” Rick asks. Gloria responds by remembering a racist incident from her childhood, on the Fourth of July when she was six and a white police officer said something deeply offensive to her. “Was he just a, a ‘man of his time,’ like the nose on his face, his racism so much a part of him that he wasn’t even aware of it anymore? Or did he know exactly what he was doing and there was a special thrill in taking this little black child’s racial innocence?” she says. It’s a microcosm of the questions surrounding Rick’s incarceration, as well as much of what is going on in America and around the world, particularly since WWII. Rick, a native Texan whose family moved around a lot because his abusive father was in the air force, wanted to be an architect, but he quit school early and eventually joined the army because of 9/11. As he describes the next events in his life, leading up to the horrific crimes he committed, he makes it clear that every step of the way he worked hard to avoid problems, never intending for things to go so wrong. “You had a situation that got out of control, obviously. Why?” he asks rhetorically in his defense. “Chaotic conditions resulted from a lack of infrastructure, absurd overcrowding, inadequate training, poor discipline, and confusion over mission goals. . . . [The brass] tossed a lotta little people into the trash and then congratulated themselves.” But Gloria refuses to let him get off so easy, making him confront the harsh realities of what he became involved in. “I’m just trying to understand, Rick, given what happened,” Gloria says, making him go over every detail. “I’m just a guy, all right, a regular guy in extraordinary circumstances trying to do the best he can with very limited resources,” Rick responds. But there’s no defense for what ultimately occurred.

Rick (James Badge Dale) and Gloria (Tamara Tunie) explore horrific events in searing political play at New World Stages (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Pulitzer and Tony winner Schenkkan (Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates, The Kentucky Cycle), who has also been nominated for two Emmys (The Pacific) and an Oscar (Hacksaw Ridge), wrote Building the Wall in a weeklong “white hot fury” shortly before the 2016 presidential election. The play touches upon numerous hot-button issues, from race, religion, and education to the privatization of prisons, false flags, and illegal immigration, from NAFTA, NATO, and attorney general Jeff Sessions to Benghazi, Muslim terrorists, and border security. Schenkkan, whose previous play, All the Way, was about President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s efforts to pass civil rights legislation — much of which was recently gutted by a Republican Congress — does not hide that his tale is a warning of what could happen under the Trump administration if people don’t push back, but he and director Ari Edelson slowly unfurl the narrative to make it all wholly believable rather than the ranting of a liberal sore loser. “What does a writer who has often turned to history to illuminate present political crises do when he finds himself living through a turning point in history?” Schenkkan explains in the introduction to the published edition of the play. “To those who say that it could never happen here in this country, I reply, maybe not, but that of course will depend entirely on what you do.” (With that in mind, Schenkkan is widely licensing Building the Wall, realizing it has a limited shelf life and hoping it will be frequently performed all over America.) Dale (The Walk, The Pacific) is intense and affecting as Rick, a bundle of nervous energy who moves around the room like a lost soul; from the very beginning, Dale is able to elicit a critical amount of sympathy for a skinhead in an orange jumpsuit whose next stop appears to be death row. Obie winner Tunie (Familiar, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) cannot quite keep up with Dale, her delivery too static, unable to get past the expository nature of some of her dialogue, something that Dale pulls off in the meatier role. The play is reminiscent of Nicholas Wright’s similarly staged two-person A Human Being Died That Night, in which black psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela interviews convicted white torturer and assassin Eugene de Kock, who committed his crimes for South Africa’s apartheid government. The main difference, of course, is that Wright’s play is based on facts, involving real people and actual events; Schenkkan’s main goal in his latest political play is to ensure that his shocking story remains completely fictional.

TAKE CARE

Brittane Rowe, Ashton Muñiz, Rachel Lin, and the rest of the Bats perform with the audience in TAKE CARE at the Flea Theater (photo by Bjorn Bolinder)

The Flea Theater
41 White St. between Broadway & Church St.
Thursday – Sunday through January 25, $15-$35
866-811-4111
www.theflea.org

If edgy participatory theater is your thing, especially with a distinctly controversial political bent, then Take Care is the show for you. The world premiere by the Bats, the Flea Theater’s resident company of young actors, is an immersive production that essentially begins the moment you enter the building on White St. in TriBeCa. You will be led downstairs to the basement one at a time by a Bat to a folding chair, where you decide how much you want to participate – featured participants will be given solo responsibilities, group participants will always be accompanied by at least one other participant, and voyeurs will mostly stay in the background. For nearly fifty minutes, the Bats use the central motif of hurricane destruction to explore climate change and racism in contemporary America, interacting with audience members who might shout a racist slur, get doused by a hose, or share a personal story. Each participant receives a unique series of precisely timed instructions, and everyone has enough time to prepare for their involvement. (Several monitors around the room display a running clock, in addition to various related videos.) “Everything you do tonight is perfect and absolutely right,” Rebeca Rad assures the crowd near the start. “If you mess up, it’s right. If you’re late, it’s right. If you laugh or cry or sit down early, it’s the absolutely right thing to do.”

Written by Elastic City’s Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith and directed by Smith, the Flea’s new artistic director, Take Care is a vibrant, thought-provoking, and fun show, even if the links between hurricanes, global warming, segregation, civil rights, and individual identity are often quite a stretch. The eager, energetic cast, which consists of Tommy “Tsunami” Bernardi, Maki Borden, Rachel Lin, Ashton Muñiz, Derek Christopher Murphy, Rad Pereira, Brittane Rowe, Isabella Sazak, Ryan Stinnett, and Catherine Woodard, does an excellent job of keeping things moving (along with choreographer and understudy Ethan Hardy) and making sure the participants are kept busy, even though audience members might at times find themselves outside their comfort zones, which of course is part of the point. I asked to be a featured participant, and I ended up with a scary responsibility that had me agonizing for forty minutes and fifty seconds (it was scheduled for 40:50), as it sets in motion events that result in a rather potent open discussion. No matter which participant level you choose, Take Care will have you looking deep inside, facing some harsh realities about yourself as well as where America is as a country today. Smith calls the show “a perfect storm to expose the ways we take care of and neglect one another,” and it is indeed very much about both the individual and the collective and how we consider our fellow human beings. Each performance is significantly different, as it changes depending on the audience. It also has a major effect on the Bats themselves; the night we went, one of the actors broke down in tears at the conclusion, moved by the power of what had just happened. It’s not for everyone, but adventurous theatergoers should not hesitate to become part of what is going on in the Flea’s basement Thursday through Sunday nights through January 25.

TRUE CRIME: M

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) takes a good look at himself in Fritz Lang classic

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, July 22, 10:00
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Fritz Lang’s first sound film, following such classic silent works as Metropolis and Die Nibelungen, is a masterpiece of precision, a crime thriller nonpareil in its examination of a serial killer, mob justice, and the psychological nature of good and evil. In M — Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, Peter Lorre stars as Hans Beckert, a creepy young man who befriends children before abducting and murdering them. Even with a reward out for his capture, he can’t stop himself from taking yet more little girls, in broad daylight, and writing letters to the police and a local newspaper, practically daring them to catch him. As his spree continues, the local community grows more and more frightened and suspicious, and men and women start looking suspiciously at anyone who even so much as nods to a child on the streets, mass hysteria beckoning. As the police try to figure out a plan of action, the criminals band together and hire beggars to try to track down Beckert, since the larger police presence is negatively impacting their business. Eventually, Beckert, who has a fondness for whistling Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” is spotted with a child, leading to a series of scenes that are simply spectacular in the flow of their movement as the riveting denouement approaches.

In making M, Lang was inspired by real events involving multiple serial killers. Although the film in no way preaches, Lang, who cowrote the script with his then-wife, Thea von Harbou, considered M very much a message picture. On May 20, 1931, he wrote in the German newspaper Die Filmwoche, “If this film based on factual reports helps to point an admonishing and warning finger at the unknown, lurking threat, the chronic danger emanating from the constant presence among us of compulsively and criminally inclined individuals, forming, so to speak, a latent potential that may devour our lives in flames—and especially the lives of the most helpless among us—and if the film also helps, perhaps, even to avert this danger, then it will have served its highest purpose and drawn the logical conclusion from the quintessential facts assembled in it.” M feels eerily prescient and especially relevant today, when parents’ fear for the safety of their children has perhaps never been greater. Seeing adults waiting outside schools, praying for their kids to be out of harm’s way, is something that can now be witnessed across America day after day.

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) doesn’t like what he sees in M

Lorre (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Maltese Falcon) is exceptional as Beckert, a baby-faced man who might not be quite as evil as everyone imagines. Lang and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner (Nosferatu, Diary of a Lost Girl) regularly show Beckert in shadow and in mirrors, as if there are two sides to this child killer. Lang uses no musical score, instead allowing natural sound, and very often pure silence, as Lang (Fury, Ministry of Fear) recognizes that he doesn’t need to overplay his hand. As depicted in the film, if there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, from cops and criminals to blind balloon sellers and mothers and fathers, it’s that there is nothing worse than a man who murders children. Yet Lang ultimately is able to extract some sympathy for Beckert, who makes a powerful plea near the end of the film. Watching M is a gripping, unforgettable experience, despite its terrifying subject matter.

M is screening July 22 at 10:00 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines favorites as Sidney Lumet’s Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, Tadashi Imai’s Darkness at Noon, John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and double features of Richard Fleischer’s The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing and Compulsion and William Friedkin’s The French Connection and The Brink’s Job.

ALEC DUFFY: OUR PLANET

OUR PLANET (photo by Julie Lemberger / www.julielemberger.com)

Luna (Jenny Seastone Stern) and Terri (Julian Rozzell Jr.) take audience on multimedia journey through Japan Society and the universe in OUR PLANET (photo by Julie Lemberger / www.julielemberger.com)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
November 20-24, December 5-8, $28, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

In the past few years, several site-specific shows have led audiences through historic, landmarked, and/or unusual buildings, going into rooms not otherwise open to the public. An adaptation of Joseph Roth’s Hotel Savoy took place throughout the Goethe-Institut, Sleep No More is still packing them in all over the McKittrick Hotel, and Manna-Hatta served as a guided tour not only of the history of Manhattan but of much of the James A. Farley Post Office as well. Now Our Planet, inspired by Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, uses the lobby, pond, offices, basement, exhibition rooms, stage, and more of Japan Society to tell its audiovisual story of the birth — and eventual death — of the world. “I think everyone should see this building . . . in a really peculiar, interesting way and have this text be the vehicle for that exploration,” director Alec Duffy, who fell in love with the building while working there for a year, explains in a promotional video for the site-specific show. And Our Planet, a Japan Society commission in celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of its performing arts program, is certainly peculiar and interesting.

Julian Rozzell Jr. stars as Terri, who leads thirty visitors through the beginning of the play; he is soon met by Jenny Seastone Stern as Luna, the moon. The two play house and discuss the state of the world in a fun scene that takes place inside Mariko Mori’s appropriately titled “Rebirth” exhibition. Speaking both metaphorically and metaphysically, Terri and Luna explore life on the micro level, involving Luna’s family, and on the macro level, involving the entire universe. In several of the locations, Nobuyuki Hanabusa’s motion graphics, consisting of geometric shapes and patterns, lines, stars, and more, are projected onto unique spaces, from elevator doors to a specially designed platform on the floor that reflects onto a ceiling mirror, taking the audience on a cosmic trip through the galaxy. The text, translated by Katsunori Obata and Miharu Obata and adapted by Aya Ogawa from Yukio Shiba’s award-winning Japanese production, Wagahoshi, is often mysterious and sometimes way out there, but just go with it, putting your faith in Rozzell J. and Seastone Stern, who are both beguiling and enchanting as they each deliver long monologues and take the audience on a multimedia journey through space, time, and the historic Japan Society building. Our Planet continues with six performances December 5-8, with each show limited to thirty people, so get your tickets now if you want to see this very peculiar, interesting work.

RUDE MECHS: DIONYSUS IN 69

Rude Mechs will faithfully restage Performance Group environmental theater classic DIONYSUS in 69 at New York Live Arts

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 6-10, $30
212-924-0077
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.rudemechs.com

In 1968, the Performance Group, an experimental SoHo theater company founded by artistic director Richard Schechner the year before, staged Dionysus in 69, an avant-garde version of Euripides’ Greek tragedy The Bacchae, which involves the beautiful young partying god Dionysus; Pentheus, the king of Thebes, who took over for his grandfather Cadmus; the blind prophet Teiresias; and Pentheus’s mother, Agauë. The production was filmed by Brian De Palma, who had been impressed by the participatory environmental show that melds audience and performer. Now the Austin-based Rude Mechs, who specialize in organic theatrical performances, are faithfully restaging Dionysus in 69 at New York Live Arts, using the original production and film as sources for the evening-length piece, which features, among other things, full-frontal male and female nudity. Once again the audience gets in on the action, as all seats are general admission on wooden platforms on the floor or accessed via ladders. The show runs November 6-10; on November 8, there will be a preperformance conversation, “The (Re)performance of Discussing Dionysus in 69,” with Schechner and Rude Mechs co-artistic producing directors Madge Darlington and Shawn Sides, while on November 9 there will be a special talk following the 7:30 performance, “Discussing Dionysus in 69, NOW,” with Schechner, Darlington, and Sides speaking with writer and dance critic Elizabeth Zimmer.