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LISTEN TO WHAT THE QUEEN SAID: ISABELLE HUPPERT AS MARY AT NYU SKIRBALL

Isabelle Huppert portrays Mary, Queen of Scots in third collaboration with Robert Wilson (photo by Lucie Jansch)

ROBERT WILSON & ISABELLE HUPPERT: MARY SAID WHAT SHE SAID
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
February 27 – March 2, $125
nyuskirball.org

In October 2005, French superstar Isabelle Huppert performed Sarah Kane’s blistering solo piece, 4.48 Psychose, at BAM’s Harvey Theater. For ninety-five minutes, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA, César, and Cannes–winning actress stood stock-still — except for occasionally scanning the audience or extending a finger — portraying a woman who had just suffered a mental breakdown.

In New York, Huppert has also appeared in Florian Zeller’s The Mother at the Atlantic in 2019 and, at BAM, in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Phaedra(s) in 2016 and Robert Wilson’s Quartett in 2009.

Always ready to take on artistic challenges, Huppert has teamed up with Wilson for the third time with Mary Said What She Said, in which Huppert, who has made more than 135 films, including The Lacemaker, Heaven’s Gate, The Piano Teacher, and Elle, gets inside the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, the sixteenth-century Scottish monarch. The show is divided into three parts consisting of eighty-six paragraphs, beginning with “Memory, open my heart.”

Wilson, who has dazzled the world with such wildly unpredictable and visually stunning productions as Einstein on the Beach, The Black Rider, and The Old Woman, is the director of the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris commission as well as the set and lighting designer. The text, which is performed in French with English surtitles, is by longtime Wilson collaborator, novelist, and essayist Darryl Pinckney, using Mary’s own letters and Stefan Zweig’s 1935 biography of the queen in his research. The music is by Ludovico Einaudi, who has worked with such experimental composers as Luciano Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The US premiere at NYU Skirball runs February 27 to March 2; all tickets are $125 to see one of the greatest actors of our era in a show by one of the most inventive creators of our time, promising to be something special. As a bonus, Huppert will participate in a talkback following the 7:30 show on March 1.

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

WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND? VINNY DePONTO WILL TELL YOU AT GREENWICH HOUSE

Mentalist Vinny DePonto delves into people’s memories in Mindplay (photo by Chris Ruggiero)

MINDPLAY
Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Thursday – Tuesday through April 20, $49-$159
mindplaynyc.com

“What’s on your mind?” Vinny DePonto asks at the beginning of his latest show, Mindplay, quoting the prompt that appears when people open Facebook. There’s a lot on DePonto’s mind, clearly, including family history, grief, and the nature of memory. Although the New York City–based mentalist and magician performs dazzling tricks during the ninety-minute production, it doesn’t quite cohere into a solid, thoroughly composed play — but you may not care if you’re a fan of onstage magic.

When DePonto was six years old, his father discovered a dusty box of magic tricks belonging to his own father, and DePonto was hooked. Ever since, in such presentations as the Drama Desk–nominated Charlatan, Mysterious Delights, and the virtual Mental Amusements, DePonto has mesmerized audiences with his remarkable abilities, all fully evident in Mindplay, which continues at the Greenwich House Theater through April 20.

On the way in, everyone is invited to write a thought on a slip of paper, put it in an envelope, and drop it in a fishbowl. DePonto occasionally reaches in and pulls one out to begin a new segment, each of which brings the writer of the thought onstage to participate in multiple ways, including having their mind read. He also incorporates balloons, a Shakespeare compendium, a rotary phone, and other props to carry out tricks that will leave you scratching your head in wonder.

Vinny DePonto wants to know what’s on your mind at the Greenwich House Theater (photo by Chris Ruggiero)

But as a theater piece, Mindplay, written by DePonto and Josh Koenigsberg and directed by Andrew Neisler (The Elementary Spacetime Show, The Gray Man), fails to find a narrative flow; it feels more like a nightclub act, albeit an entertaining one. In the second half, when DePonto reveals what’s behind the curtain — the set is by Sibyl Wickersheimer — too many conceptual threads get in the way and the prestidigitation gets lost as DePonto talks about the possibilities of the brain, rummages through metal drawers, and uses a cassette tape deck to look into his past.

Geography is also on his mind, and it was difficult to figure out the night I went whether a few coincidences were accidental or planted, forcing us to think too much about the result instead of gasping at how the trick got there. (DePonto explains early on that there are absolutely no plants.) For comparison, in the spring of 2023 magician and corporate mentalist Asi Wind’s Inner Circle at Judson Theatre was able to create a compelling investigation into identity, individuality, and the human condition by letting the cards tell the story. In Mindplay, DePonto tries to share something bigger than just entertaining magic but just misses the mark.

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

ENGLISH FIRST: A TICKING TIME BOMB

Omid (Hadi Tabbal) and Marjan (Marjan Neshat) form an intimate bond in Sanaz Toossi’s English (photo by Joan Marcus)

ENGLISH
Todd Haimes Theatre
227 West Forty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 2, $72-$313
www.roundabouttheatre.org

It might be difficult for non-English speakers to learn the world’s most spoken language, but Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, English, has made a smooth transition from the Linda Gross Theater to Broadway. In fact, the Atlantic-Roundabout coproduction is even more powerful now given the current US administration’s war on illegal (and legal) immigration and America First policies.

According to the Oxford Digital Institute, English “is the language of international communication,” spoken in more than one hundred countries even though it “is a hard language to learn due to its complex grammar rules, pronunciation variations, and vast vocabulary . . . riddled with exceptions and irregularities, making it difficult to master. Additionally, English has a diverse range of accents and dialects, making it challenging for nonnative speakers to understand and communicate effectively.”

Everything I wrote in my review of the off-Broadway premiere in February 2022 still holds true: Concepts of home and personal identity lie at the heart of Toossi’s poignant and involving work, which continues at the Todd Haimes Theatre through March 2. The play is set in a small classroom in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, where Marjan (Marjan Neshat) is teaching basic English to four students who are planning on taking the TOEFL, the Test of English as a Foreign Language, for different reasons. Marjan insists that they speak only English in the class rather than Farsi, their native tongue.

Roya (Pooya Mohseni) wants to be able to speak with her new granddaughter, who lives in Canada with Roya’s son and his wife, who are not teaching the child Farsi. “I hope you not forget. Nate is not your name,” she tells her son, who used to be known as Nader.

Elham (Tala Ashe) has passed her MCATs but needs to learn English so she can study gastroenterology in Australia. “My accent is a war crime,” she angrily admits.

Omid (Hadi Tabbal) has an upcoming green card interview in Dubai, but his English is already excellent, nearly accentless. When asked why people learn language, he says, “To bring the inside to the outside.”

Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh) is an eighteen-year-old girl who believes Ricky Martin is a poet. “People like accent,” she says, not ashamed of who she is.

After a presentation by Goli doesn’t go particularly well, Marjan, a married woman who spent nine years in Manchester before moving back to Iran with her family, says, “Don’t be sorry! We were speaking English with each other. I think it’s one of the greatest things two people can do together.”

As Elham’s frustration with English builds — she repeatedly uses Farsi in class, accumulating negative points — she gets into disagreements with everyone else, speaking frankly, without apology. “Goli, people hear your accent and they go oh my god it is so funny you are so stupid. . . . Okay if I have accent, bad TOEFL score. Omid has accent, no green card. Roya’s accent? Disaster.” Some of them equate the attempted erasure of their Iranian accent when speaking English with the loss of their identity, as if they are surrendering their unique culture. “Don’t you think people can do us the courtesy of learning our names?” Elham says to Marjan, who went by “Mary” when she lived in England.

“English isn’t your enemy,” Marjan insists. “English is not to be conquered. Embrace it. You can be all the things you are in Farsi in English, too. I always liked myself better in English.” But Marjan won’t acknowledge to herself that that is exactly the problem. “I feel like I’m disappearing,” she says later to Omid.

Four students and a teacher learn about life and language in English (photo by Joan Marcus)

English is beautifully written by Toossi (Wish You Were Here) and gracefully directed by Knud Adams (I’m Revolting, Pulitzer Prize winner Primary Trust), giving each character room to develop. Although they go back and forth between English and Farsi, whenever they speak English, the actors use Iranian accents, but when they talk in Farsi, they lose the accent, sounding like plain old longtime Americans, a device that serves as a metaphor for colonialism, nation-building, and ethnocentrism.

One of the only changes from the Atlantic version is that the song Goli plays for show-and-tell has switched from Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever” to Martin’s “She Bangs,” in which the Puerto Rican heartthrob sings, “Talk to me. Tell me your name. / You blow me off like it is all the same. / You lit a fuse and now I’m ticking away like a bomb. / Yeah baby.”

Marsha Ginsberg’s revolving cube set is open on two sides, revealing the inside and the outside; the movement feels even stronger this time, more precarious. When the rotation stops so a scene can begin, a stanchion might block part of your view of a character, as if they are disappearing.

Enver Chakartash’s costumes meld traditional Iranian clothing, like head scarves, with American accents. The cast is exceptional, quickly forming a cohesive unit; it probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume they have each had to deal with the issue of making sacrifices to learn a new language and culture in some way, as all of them, in addition to the bilingual Toossi, were either born in Iran or Lebanon or their parents were. English was actually Toossi’s NYU thesis, written in response to Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and anti-immigration policies.

About halfway through the play, Marjan tells the class, “If you are here to learn English, I am going to ask you to agree that here in this room we are not Iranian. We are not even on this continent. Today I will ask you to feel any pull you have to your Iranian-ness and let it go. Keep it outside the wall of this classroom. In this room, we are native speakers. We think in English. We laugh in English. Our inhales, our exhales — we fill our lungs in English. No more Farsi. Can we agree to that?” Toossi understands the kind of sacrifices it takes to make a new life in a new country.

In the original production, Farsi was never actually spoken, but on Broadway, the final words are now in the Iranian tongue, a sharp parting shot at what’s happening in America and around the world.

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

NORDIC UTOPIA: BLACK ARTISTS FINDING FREEDOM IN SCANDINAVIA

William Henry Johnson paintings are a highlight of “Nordic Utopia?” show at Scandinavia House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

NORDIC UTOPIA? AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE 20th CENTURY
Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Tuesday – Saturday through March 8, free
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org

One of the best gallery shows right now in New York City is the small but revelatory “Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century” at Scandinavia House, which explores the surprising connection between African American jazz musicians and Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Continuing through March 8, “Nordic Utopia?” comprises painting, drawing, photography, ceramics, sculpture, music, and video by and about Black artists who left the United States for calmer pastures in Scandinavia.

“It was the first time in my life that I felt a real, free man,” visual artist and collector Howard Smith said in a 1976 interview about moving to Finland in 1984 after teaching at Scripps College in California. “So much so that one day I was walking down the street, I panicked because I suddenly realized that I had no further need for armor. I felt absolutely naked. In the United States you could not possibly walk down the street feeling free, spiritually unclothed, because you always felt that you are subject to attack. Well, here I am walking and I suddenly realize I have no armor whatsoever. I felt light as a feather — and it was frightening.” Smith, who died in 2021, has ten works on view, including several depictions of flowers, the small stoneware sculpture Female, the white porcelain Frida, and the 1986 Calligraphy Plate.

Sweet jazz floats in the air as visitors make their way through the three sections: “Creative Exploration & Cross Pollination,” “Lifelong Residency & Lasting Careers,” and “Travels & Sojourns,” encountering photos of Josephine Baker (including one by Helmer Lund-Hansen of the Black Venus in a white fur, cradling black and white baby dolls), Babs Gonzales, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins, and Dexter Gordon, who settled in Scandinavia from 1962 to 1976; “Since I’ve been over here, I felt that I could breathe, you know, and just be more or less a human being, without being white or black, green or yellow,” the LA-born saxophonist told DownBeat magazine.

Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmarte, silver gelatin print, 1964 (photo by / courtesy of Kirsten Malone)

In Hans Engberg’s 1970 two-part documentary Anden mands land, an ex-pat writer explains, “I’m in a new man’s land. Here, I’ve found friends, buddies, and allies.” Eight surrealist paintings by New York City native Ronald Burns take viewers on a fantastical journey involving floating women, complex grids, a carousel, “Mental Costumes,” and a pair of dizzying renderings of “The Triumph of Nature.” The highlight of the show are six oil paintings by William Henry Johnson, three portraits, two gorgeous landscapes (Sunset, Denmark and A View Down Akersgate, Oslo), and the captivating Boats in the Harbor, Kerte-minde.

As the exhibition approaches its final weeks, there are a handful of special programs happening. On February 22 at 3:00, cocurators Ethelene Whitmire and Leslie Anne Anderson and scholars Denise Murrell and Tamara J. Walker will gather for a free two-hour symposium. On February 25 at 2:00 ($5), Sámi author and journalist Elin Anna Labba will discuss her book The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow!, about the expulsion of the Sámi from northern Norway and Sweden, in a virtual talk with moderator Mathilde Magga. On February 26 at 6:30 ($13), Scandinavia House will screen Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 film about Dexter Gordon, ’Round Midnight, followed by a conversation with New Yorker film critic Richard Brody and Gordon’s widow, Maxine, author of Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon. And on March 5 at 5:30, ASF’s Emily Stoddart will lead a free guided tour of the show.

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

A BITCHIN’ MUSICAL JOURNEY AT THE WILD PROJECT

Karen Mould, aka Bitch, shares her intimate story in dazzling multimedia show (photo by Eric McNatt)

B*TCHCRAFT
the wild project
195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B
Through March 1, $36
thewildproject.com
bitchmusic.com

“I was a quiet child,” Karen Mould, aka Bitch, says numerous times in her not-quite-solo show, the scorching and endearing B*tchcraft: A Musical Play, continuing at the wild project through March 1. She whispers the phrase, sings it, and screams it, echoing her transition from a young girl resented by her parents to a fierce performer not afraid to stand up for what she believes in.

Born in 1973, Bitch was raised in suburban Michigan by an English father and mother who let her know that she kept them from living out their dreams. “My dad wanted to be a painter / But as an only child / Destined to take care of his parents / And then three daughters / He had to get a real job / So my job is to pour him the perfect beer,” she sings in the opening number. “My mom didn’t want to be a mom / She wanted to be a musical theater legend / But Michigan was as far off Broadway as you could get / Plus she had three girls to raise / And we all know whose job that is.”

“You’re bloody useless,” the voice of her father screams out.

“You’re a bull in a china shop,” the voice of her mother complains, referring to her daughter’s size and clumsiness.

“Up in my bedroom, I was NOT a quiet child,” Bitch tells the audience.

She imagines that the broom she uses to sweep the house can help her fly away. She writes heart-rending stories in her notebook that she reads to her bestie, a stuffed beaver named Beavy (Francesca) that comes to life. She falls in love with the violin. When she has her first period, dozens of tampons fall from the sky. She goes to college, takes theater and feminist courses, and meets Danny, with whom she forms a band, Bitch and Animal (Francesca). They build a following, but an incident at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival involving transphobia and TERFs alters her future dramatically.

B*tchcraft: A Musical Play continues at the wild project through March 1 (photo by Eric McNatt)

B*tchcraft was conceived by Bitch and director Margie Zohn, who wrote the impressive book together; the music and lyrics are by Bitch, with contributions from Faith Soloway, Melissa York, Jon Hyman, and Greg Prestopino. The intimate ninety-minute tale is accompanied by Bitch’s drawings, first black-and-white, then color, projected on the back and side walls (with framed works on paper in the lobby). The images change from her father’s angry eyes, swirling stairs, and a magical hillside to a tsunami of blood and such terms as “Male Gaze,” “Patriarchy,” “Misogyny,” and “Camp Twat: ‘Tenacious Women and Transfolk.’” The fun projection design is by Brian Pacelli, with lighting by Amina Alexander.

The immersive audio, by sound designer Sean Hagerty and engineer Gregory Kostroff, is virtually a character unto itself, from soft and tender to loud and aggressive, including a crackling fire, tinkling chimes, violin and guitar, a shower, a highway, crickets, and disembodied voices (by Seth Bodie, Ian Brownell, Amy Goldfarb, Ron Goldman, Jenna S. Hill, Mal Malme, Soloway, and Zohn). Samantha Tutasi’s set and props, which are brought on- and offstage and moved around by two crones (Cary Curran and Donovan Fowler), feature a wooden pentagonal covered box that morphs from a cauldron and bed to a sandbox and truck. Andrea Lauer’s costumes both contain and free Bitch as she goes from a little girl to a grown woman.

The musical numbers feature such powerful and engaging songs as “Pussy Manifesto,” “Hateful Thoughts,” and “Fallen Witch,” guiding us from her childhood to road trips to facing cancellation, with playful tap choreography by Michelle Dorrance. Through it all, Bitch stands tall; in “Be Bitch,” she declares, “I could be bitch / It rhymes with witch / I’ll wear the badass drag of it / Reclaim that word it sounds absurd / I’m gonna be bitch I’m gonna let it rip / You can call me bitch / This whole world can suck my tit.”

Bitch has released such solo albums as Make This Break This, In Us We Trust, and Blasted! and, with Animal, What’s That Smell and Eternally Hard, establishing herself as a queer music icon, including opening for Indigo Girls and Ani Difranco. In B*tchcraft, she stirs it all together in an exciting multimedia cauldron that should lift her career to a new level — although the specter of the Trump administration’s attack on the arts hovers over the production.

“At some point I had actually believed that coming out, we would be embraced into this big happy gay world utopia. But patriarchy was alive and well in most gay spaces because they were mostly run by men. If I had a nickel for every drag show we sat through at prides that ripped on women, or said hateful things about lesbians or our genitalia, I’d be richer than Oprah right now!” she says in the show, holding nothing back.

But more than anything else, B*tchcraft is a clarion call for everyone to keep writing, to keep singing, to keep sharing, and, hopefully, to keep making shows like this.

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

FROM NASHVILLE TO NEW ORLEANS: TWO JUKEBOX MUSICALS HEADING IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS

Louis Armstrong (James Monroe Iglehart) waves goodbye to Broadway in A Wonderful World (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

A WONDERFUL WORLD: THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG MUSICAL
Studio 54
254 West 54th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 23, $69-$278
louisarmstrongmusical.com

Jukebox musicals generally come in two basic kinds of flavors: somewhat-fact-based accounts of superstars (Tina Turner, Cher, the Temptations, Michael Jackson, Neil Diamond, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Carole King) and original narratives based on the work of one composer, performer, or era (Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill; Britney Spears, Once Upon a One More Time; Max Martin, & Juliet; the Go-Go’s, Head Over Heels; the 1970s, Rock of Ages).

A pair of current shows use contrasting approaches, but while one has been extended several times, the other has posted an early closing notice.

At Studio 54, A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical tells the fact-based story of the American trumpeter and singer known as Satchmo (James Monroe Iglehart), concentrating on the songs he performed throughout his career, while at the West End Theatre, Music City relates a fictional contemporary tale of the search for fame and love, consisting of tunes by country songwriter J. T. Harding, who has penned hits for Uncle Kracker, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Darius Rucker, and others.

A Wonderful World features nearly thirty jazz and jazz-adjacent tunes as the narrative divides Armstrong’s story into four sections, each with a different woman by his side: tough-talking prostitute Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins) in New Orleans, jazz pianist Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney-Fleming) in Chicago, dancer Alpha Smith (Kim Exum) in Hollywood, and Cotton Club performer Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy) in New York. Although the song list is impressive, with such numbers as “Basin Street Blues/Bourbon Street Parade,” “Up a Lazy River,” “Black and Blue,” “Heebie Jeebies,” “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans,” and “After You’re Gone,” many of them are given short shrift rather than full renditions, matching the lack of insight into what made Armstrong the larger-than-life figure he was.

Aside from finding out about his four wives, there is little new audiences will learn about Louis; even when it deals with racism, the focus gets lost, outshone by Armstrong’s huge showmanship and popular success and all his preening. Adam Koch and Steven Royal’s heavily blue sets are glitzy and Toni-Leslie James’s costumes are flashy, but the book, by Aurin Squire, conceived by Andrew Delaplaine and Christopher Renshaw, merely brushes the surface, and the direction, by Iglehart and Christina Sajous, is worshipful where it should be articulate.

Figgins (Memphis, Motown), Harney-Fleming (Hamilton, The Color Purple), Exum (The Book of Mormon), and Cearcy (The Color Purple, Ragtime) steal the show from Tony winner Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton), who seems to be playing a caricature of Armstrong, never reaching the necessary depth. Dewitt Fleming Jr. (The Tap Dance Kid, Pearl) gives nuance to Lincoln Perry, better known as Stepin Fetchit, while Gavin Gregory (The Gershwins’ Porgy & Bess, The Color Purple) plays hard-luck bandleader “King” Oliver.

A Wonderful World recently announced that it will be closing early, on February 23; overall, it was a missed opportunity.

Music City brings Nashville to the Upper West Side (photo by Ashley Garrett)

MUSIC CITY
West End Theatre
Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew
263 West Eighty-Sixth St. at West End Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 2, $68 – $130.50
bedlam.org

Despite an exciting, promising first act, Bedlam’s Music City: A New Musical, which opened on November 17 and has been extended three times, the latest until March 2, also ends up being a missed opportunity.

Last year, I visited Nashville with friends and fell in love with the live music pouring out of every bar, club, and honky tonk and into the crowded streets, where people were partying well into the night. Director Eric Tucker and book writer Peter Zinn capture that energy on Clifton Chadick’s lifelike set, which transforms the theater at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on the Upper West Side into the Wicked Tickle, a seedy watering hole in East Nashville. The audience sits at small tables as if they are guests at the club, where they can get drinks, check out the (fake) memorabilia on the walls, and whoop it up as the narrative unfolds around them.

About a half hour before curtain, an open mic begins, introducing some of the characters, so get there early and soak in the realistic atmosphere. The show proper begins with brothers TJ (Stephen Michael Spencer) and Drew (Jonathan Judge-Russo) performing their rousing “Y’allsome,” in which they declare, “Y’all ain’t scared to have a little fun. / Whiskey shots from a water gun. / Ain’t slowing down — / And here comes the sun! / Y‘allsome party people. / Y’allsome crazy mothers. / Y’allsome freakin’ good lookin’ country music lovers! / Hankin’ and drankin’ all wrecking ball shaking the walls.”

When they’re done, Drew, who comes up with the titles and ideas for the songs, and TJ, who writes the music and lyrics, are approached by Leeanne (Leenya Rideout), a slick record executive who wants to hear their demo, as she’s scouting tunes for country superstar Stucky Stiles’s (Andrew Rothenberg) next tour and album.

They don’t have a demo, so Drew decides to ask local drug dealer and open-mic regular Benjamin Bakerman (Rothenberg) to invest two grand in their band so they can afford studio time. Bakerman instead offers them the opportunity to earn the cash by delivering “cookies” for him. TJ is initially against the plan, but Drew talks him into it.

Soon TJ is handing off bags of meth to such junkies as Tammy (Rideout), a former wannabe country star. “Bet you think you’re gonna be a big ol’ star one day just like everyone else in this shithole town,” she says, lighting up her pipe. “I remember when I used to walk around Nashville with a guitar on my back. I wish somebody woulda told me back then how ridiculous I looked.”

At the next open mic, TJ instantly falls for a young woman named 23 (Casey Shuler) as she plays a deeply personal ballad, singing, “Like soldiers coming home from war / Who am I to want something more?”

With money in their pockets, TJ and Drew start working on their demo in drummer Newt’s (Drew Bastian) studio. Meanwhile, Stucky wants to be recording his own songs instead of party tunes written by others, but Leeanne tells him that ship has sailed.

TJ and 23 connect and start writing together, Stucky comes to the Wicked Tickle, and relationships get twisted and complicated as Bakerman keeps putting pressure on TJ to sell his product.

Drew (Jonathan Judge-Russo) and TJ (Stephen Michael Spencer) contemplate a shot at the big time in Music City (photo by Ashley Garrett)

Unfortunately, Tucker (Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet, Sense and Sensibility) and Zinn (Rumspringa, Somewhere with You) throw in the kitchen sink in the second act, heaping on trauma after trauma, leading to a mind-boggling finale that comes out of nowhere and pulls everything that happened before down with it. In addition, John Heginbotham’s choreography, performed by Corry J Ethridge and Holly Wilder, seems to have come from a completely different show.

It’s a shame, because nearly all the other elements are in place: The backup band, featuring Ann Klein on guitars, Tony Tino on bass, Bastian on drums, and emcee and music director Julianne B. Merrill on keyboards, is excellent, keeping things hopping throughout, and the cast is charming and engaging, especially Spencer (Clyde’s, Julius Caesar) and Shuler (Titanic, Robin Hood), who make an adorable couple. The twenty songs, which include “Smile” (a hit for Uncle Kracker), “Somewhere with You” (Chesney), and “Alone with You” (Jake Owen), range across the country spectrum like a live jukebox, although “Sangria” (Shelton), which gets the spotlight, doesn’t carry enough weight here.

Then again, the PBRs are cheap, the staging is fun, and, hey, it’s Nashville in New York, which is some kind of wonderful.

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

ROMEO + JULIET ON BROADWAY CONQUERS KING LEAR AT THE SHED

Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet is made for Gen Z but can be enjoyed by all (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

ROMEO + JULIET
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 16, $159-$1002
romeoandjulietnyc.com

Last fall, when I saw Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet at Circle in the Square and Kenneth Branagh’s King Lear at the Shed, I was not anticipating being charmed by the former and disappointed in the latter.

Tony and Obie winner Gold has had decidedly mixed results with controversial and often confusing star-driven adaptations of such Shakespeare plays as Macbeth and King Lear on Broadway, Othello at New York Theatre Workshop, and Hamlet at the Public.

Meanwhile, Branagh is widely considered the finest interpreter of the Bard since Laurence Olivier, both onstage, such as his immersive version of Macbeth at Park Ave. Armory and his 1987 and 2016 takes on Romeo and Juliet, and his well-received cinematic adaptations of Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing.

Lear is a personal favorite of mine; Branagh’s is the eighth major production I’ve seen in the last twenty years. I have not had as much luck with R&J, from David Leveaux’s flat 2013 Broadway revival to Hansol Jung’s profoundly perplexing 2023 effort at the Lynn Angelson, although I adored Michael Mayer’s & Juliet, a musical imagining of what might have happened if Juliet had survived.

Closing February 16, Gold’s Romeo + Juliet is a plush and lively, radical AMSR presentation tailored for Gen Z, complete with an Insta-friendly plethora of stuffed teddy bears onstage and in the lobby. When the audience enters the theater in the round, the actors are already hanging out, talking, dancing, and dissing with each other, pushing around a shopping cart of stuffed animals, skateboarding, and lounging on plastic furniture. They wear sneakers, hoodies, and a Hello Kitty backpack. On one side, a giant pink teddy bear watches in silence while across the space a DJ spins Jack Antonoff’s thumping music.

The youthful cast features the hot Rachel Zegler as Juliet and the even hotter Kit Connor as Romeo, with Tony nominee Gabby Beans as Mercutio and the friar, Sola Fadiran as both Capulet and Lady Capulet, Taheen Modak as Benvolio, Tommy Dorfman as the nurse and Tybalt, and Gían Pérez as Samson, Paris, and Peter. The doubling and tripling often makes it hard to know who is who, and some actors do better with the tweaked dialogue than others. Two songs are completely unnecessary, and the use of a handheld microphone is baffling, as is the handling of a poison jug.

But much of the staging is dazzling, from Juliet’s bed, which drops slowly from the rafters, to a colorful expanse of flowers that emerges from the floor. Yes, the F-bomb appears twice, but surprises await those who fully invest themselves in this contemporary tale made for this moment in time.

Kenneth Branagh’s ritualistic King Lear goes astray early (photo by Marc J. Franklin / courtesy the Shed)

Unfortunately, Branagh, codirecting with Rob Ashford and Lucy Skilbeck, struggles with his streamlined adaptation, which, at a rushed two hours without intermission, has cut several key scenes and famous lines, and without the proper character development it’s often hard to differentiate among the minor characters, who are played by recent graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and look like survivors from Game of Thrones. Branagh, who is sixty-four, does not portray Lear as an aged, failing man but as a younger warrior, which alters the plot’s narrative center.

Like Gold’s R+J, Branagh’s staging involves a large sphere, in this case an imposing UFO-like disc that hovers over the action, occasionally moving and tilting, onto which ominous weather patterns are projected. (The script identifies the setting as “outer space.”) It also leaves in one of the songs, which feels extraneous given the show’s shortened length.

Thus, my initial thoughts that Gold would pale in comparison to Branagh were misbegotten.

“O teach me how I should forget to think!” Romeo tells Benvolio.

Who woulda thunk it?

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