Brendan Hunt returns to SoHo Playhouse for encore run of one-man show The Movement You Need
THE INTERNATIONAL FRINGE ENCORE SERIES: THE MOVEMENT YOU NEED
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St. between Sixth Ave. & Varick St.
February 7-10, $40
212-691-1555 sohoplayhouse.com fringeencoreseries.com
Chicago native Brendan Hunt might be best known for his portrayal of Coach Willis Beard on Ted Lasso — in addition to writing several episodes and serving as producer, executive producer, and codeveloper — but he also has a deep affection for theater. The Emmy winner and Jeopardy! contestant has written and performed the solo works Five Years in Amsterdam: The True Story of How a Regular Guy from Chicago Became Absolute Eurotrash and Still Got It as well as the plays The Poe Show (where he was Edgar Allan Poe alongside Dracula, Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Gen. Custer, Charlotte Brontë, Dr. Frankenstein, and the Raven) and Absolutely Filthy (An Unauthorized Peanuts Parody) (in which he appears as the mess). And he won a 2010 LA Ovation Award for Lead Actor in a Musical for Sacred Fools’ Savin’ Up for Saturday Night.
Last November, he brought his autobiographical one-man show The Movement You Need to SoHo Playhouse as part of the International Fringe Encore Series: Comedy Festival, and it’s now back for a bonus encore run, February 7-10. For seventy-five minutes, Hunt explores his complex relationship with his late mother and the only thing they could both agree on: their shared love of the Beatles. When Hunt has the opportunity to talk about that with Sir Paul McCartney himself, it doesn’t go quite as planned. The show is named after a line in “Hey Jude” — “And don’t you know that it’s just you? / Hey Jude, you’ll do, / the movement you need is on your shoulder” — a song the very young Hunt thought was about him because his mother called him Na Na (“Na, na, na, na, na na, na”).
In his high school yearbook photo, Hunt, who is now fifty-one, wore a pin that featured the Fab Four’s infamous butcher cover for the Yesterday and Today album; I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes a detour this weekend to “The Fest for Beatles Fans,” taking place February 9-11 at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport.
In “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” the Beatles promise, “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.” For The Movement You Need, Hunt will only say, “A decent time is guaranteed for all.” He shouldn’t be so self-deprecating. As Sir Paul sings, “And anytime you feel the pain, / Hey Jude, refrain, / Don’t carry the world upon your shoulder.”
Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising) is part of QNYIAF (photo by Silvija Dogan)
QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
February 7 – 17, $25
212-945-2600 nyuskirball.org
After a six-year break, the Queer New York International Arts Festival returns to the city, taking place February 7-17 at NYU Skirball. Started by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović in 2012 at Abrons Arts Center, the fest consists of works that address queerness in today’s society, this year with presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany, including live performances, installations, and public talks.
The 2024 QNYIAF kicks off February 7 with Croatian artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih’s From5to95, a hybrid video installation and online project in which Croatian women from the ages of five to ninety-five share their personal stories about gender inequality. On February 7 and 8, Croatian artists Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising), which premiered in Argentina in 2019, is performed by sex workers Juan Ejemplo, Leandra Atenea Levine Hidalgo, Pichón Reyna, and Sofía Tramazaygues, exploring the relationship between client and sex worker.
Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar’s Kill B. reimagines the Bride from Quentin Tarantino films (photo by Hrvoje Zalukar)
Isaković collaborates with fellow choreographer and dancer Mia Zalukar on Kill B., inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Playing February 9 and 10, the piece focuses on the character of the Bride as well as artistic hierarchical structures and their own professional partnership. On February 13, Toronto-based performance artist Clayton Lee goes through his sexual history in The Goldberg Variations, which mashes up Johann Sebastian Bach with WCW and WWE wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg, host of the 2018-19 competition series Forged in Fire: Knife or Death and a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice. Some iterations have included smells and live snakes, so be ready.
On February 15, Argentinian interdisciplinary artist Tiziano Cruz will deliver the autobiographical performance lecture Conference, followed by a discussion. His piece Soliloquy — I woke up and hit my head against the wall was about his mother; in Conference he turns his attention to his ancestors and his late sister. On February 16, Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz’s performance lecture La Bête is an interactive solo in which he activates a plastic replica of one of Lygia Clark’s rearrangeable hinged metal sculptures known as bichos, or “beasts,” and then the audience does the same, except with Schwartz’s naked body.
QNYIAF concludes February 17 with Raimund Hoghe Company members Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte’s An Evening with Raimund, a tribute to German choreographer, dancer, and journalist Raimund Hoghe, who died in 2021 at the age of seventy-two; excerpts from his works will be performed by seven dancers. “To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important — not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects,” Hoghe said. “On the question of success: It is important to be able to work and to go your own way — with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
There is an internet meme that you can get on a T-shirt, mug, poster, or notebook: “Theater is therapy for the soul.” In the past few years, I’ve seen a handful of plays that take the quote extremely seriously: The entire show is set within the confines of a therapy session (or sessions).
In Dave Malloy’s Octet, eight people gather to face their obsessions with technology. In Emma Sheanshang’s The Fears, seven Buddhists share their traumas. In Those Guilty Creatures’ The Voices in Your Head, the audience sits in a large oval among actors portraying characters dealing with grief. And in Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job, a therapist has the responsibility of determining whether an employee who suffered a public meltdown is ready to return to work.
In each of those cases, we do not see anything outside the session(s). The same is true of Ruby Thomas’s gripping but mystifying The Animal Kingdom, which continues through February 10 at the Connelly Theater Upstairs; downstairs is an encore run of Job.
An audience of no more than fifty sits on three sides of Wilson Chin’s tiny stage at a recovery center, consisting of five equally spaced plastic chairs in a circle on a green rug along with a small table with water, cups, and tissues. The far wall is a two-way mirror where experts can watch the proceedings — and we can see reflections of ourselves or other audience members, as if we’re part of the group. Above is a large rectangular light box that changes colors during scene changes to try to maintain a calming mood, accompanied by transitional music. (The lighting is by Stacey Derosier, with sound by Christopher Darbassie and contemporary costumes by Ricky Reynoso.) Otherwise, it is threateningly quiet; it never goes dark, so you can see and hear people scratch their leg, shift in their seat, or reach into their bag for a cough drop.
Sofia (Lily McInerny) doesn’t hold back in New York premiere of British play (photo by Emilio Madrid)
The patient is Sam (Uly Schlesinger), a college student who has recently tried to kill himself. His parents are divorced and not on friendly terms; Rita (Tasha Lawrence) is an overbearing yapper, and Tim (David Cromer) is a reticent businessman who would rather be anywhere else but there, nervously shaking one leg, speaking only when practically forced to. Tim’s younger sister, eighteen-year-old Sofia (Lily McInerny), has been essentially ignored by her parents for years while they deal with Tim. Facilitating the sessions is Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith), who is almost impossibly gentle and serene, especially when things heat up among the family members.
The details of the family’s dysfunction emerge from confessions, admissions, and accusations as we learn more about each person, some of which is almost too metaphorical. Tim runs a turnaround fund where he buys failing businesses and makes them profitable but has no idea how to turn around the pain his wife and kids are feeling. Rita is a doula who helps pregnant mothers but doesn’t understand her own children. Sam is obsessed with swifts, aerial birds that are unable to stand properly because of their small legs and whose migratory patterns are in chaos because of climate change, much like Sam’s life path has been disrupted by his mental health issues. And when Rita complains, “It’s a bit lonely in the house. Empty nest,” Sofia scoffs, “I still live there.”
Over the course of six sessions, they argue about abandonment, medication, education, sex drives, and the difference between gay and queer. Daniel offers such obvious guidance as “I know this might not always be easy. We might have to say difficult things, hear difficult things. But in my experience the family system, as we call it, is such an important one.”
During the first scene, I dreaded being stuck in this room for eighty minutes of therapeutic healing, but director Jack Serio, who previously helmed an intimate adaptation of Uncle Vanya in a Flatiron loft and This Beautiful Future at the Cherry Lane, keeps us engaged as characters change chairs for each meeting, giving the audience a different perspective on the family members and the therapist as they go through major, or minor, transformations of some kind.
Therapist Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith) tries to get to the root of Sam’s (Uly Schlesinger) issues in The Animal Kingdom (photo by Emilio Madrid)
The cast is excellent, beginning with Schlesinger, who made his New York stage debut in This Beautiful Future in 2022. The tortured Sam is wound up tight at the start, a ticking time bomb, but it’s McInerny who explodes as Sofia, who has had enough. Cromer, who played the title character in Serio’s Uncle Vanya and directed McInerny in Bess Wohl’s Camp Siegfried, portrays Tim with a calm control, while Lawrence regales with Rita’s inability to just shut up.
Obie winner Smith could not be more easygoing as Daniel, although I hope they change a line, one of the only jokes in the show: Expressing hopefulness amid his nerves, he says, “And the Knicks are playing later and it hasn’t been the best season. Or the best decade,” as if hope might be unattainable. Right now the Knicks are having their best season in years, so it would be better if they changed it to the Jets or another perennial punching bag sports team, at least while the play is in New York City. The British Thomas (Either,Linck & Mülhahn) might not be up on her hoops, but Daniel should be.
Some have made the case that The Animal Kingdom is not in fact a play but merely an exercise in fictional group therapy, taking advantage of a currently popular theatrical device. However, I would argue that in its character development, narrative flow, and unique staging, it is a poignant drama about a complicated family finally having to look at itself in the mirror and admitting they might not like what they see.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Teens Ana (Gabby Beans) and Jonah (Hagan Oliveras) explore their burgeoning sexuality in Roundabout world premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)
JONAH
Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 10, $76-$138
212-719-1300 www.roundabouttheatre.org
“Why are you fixated on me?” Ana (Gabby Beans) asks two of three guys who are fixated on her in the world premiere of Rachel Bonds’s Jonah, continuing at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre through March 10. It’s easy to become fixated on Ana, and on Beans, in the meticulously rendered production, which follows a woman through approximately three decades as she faces tragedy and trauma and wrestles with her faith.
The hundred-minute play takes place in Ana’s bedroom at three distinct times in her life. Wilson Chin’s set features a bed to the left, a small table where Ana works to the right, and a door in the middle where the men come and go but Ana never goes through, as if she is trapped. All the characters are damaged, but the men find solace in their relationship with Ana, fiercely dedicated to survival and her own solace.
In the first scene, the sixteen-year-old Ana meets the seventeen-year-old Jonah (Hagan Oliveras), who has a major crush on her. They both go to the same boarding school, and they both are virgins, soon sharing their sexual fantasies with each other.
Like the biblical figure, Jonah is questioning the existence of a higher power. Jonah asks Ana if she still believes in God, but she’s not sure. They might not believe in God, but Ana, who is Catholic, and Jonah, who is not, pepper their speech with references to God and Jesus, in frustration, anger, and joy as they contend with different types of pain.
Step-siblings Ana (Gabby Beans) and Danny (Samuel Henry Levine) try to cope with an abusive father in Rachel Bonds’s Jonah (photo by Joan Marcus)
The next male who shows up in Ana’s room is her protective stepbrother, Danny (Samuel Henry Levine), who is being physically and psychologically abused by his father. Whereas Ana is studying hard and wants to become a writer, Danny is a gruff dude who has no interest in books or school. Ana tells him that her “American dream” is “getting into college and getting the fuck out of here,” but Danny is just trying to survive day to day and doesn’t want Ana to leave. “Don’t you want to stay together?” he says, then asks her to hold him to help calm him down, perhaps a little too close.
Years later, at a writer’s retreat, Ana meets Steven (John Zdrojeski), a former Mormon who brings her food and can’t stop talking about his various physical ailments. Like Jonah, he asks her, “Do you still believe in God?” Steven has a unique perspective on religion, as well as on sex. “Can you still fantasize?” she asks him, and he admits, “There’s definitely still shame lurking around some corners, but —.”
A twist at the end not only furthers the links between Jonah, Danny, and Steven but explains the name of the play.
Bonds (Five Mile Lake,Sundown, Yellow Moon) writes sharp, incisive dialogue that crackles, sparks, and surprises. Director Danya Taymor (Pass Over,“Daddy”) expertly guides the play through its multiple time periods despite the set and Kaye Voyce’s costumes never changing. Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting and Kate Marvin’s sound reverberate to announce narrative shifts.
Steven (John Zdrojeski) is one of three young men obsessed with Ana (Gabby Beans) in Jonah at the Laura Pels Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)
Zdrojeski (Heroes of the Fourth Turning,Before We’re Gone) channels Jimmy Stewart as the goofy Steven, Levine (The Inheritance,Kill Floor) gives just the right heft to Danny, and gamer and actor Oliveras is sweetly innocent as the tender-hearted Jonah.
But it’s Tony nominee Beans’s (I’m Revolting,Anatomy of a Suicide) show all the way. She’s extraordinary as Ana, onstage the entire show; you won’t be able to take your eyes off her as Ana deals with the lousy hand she’s been dealt.
Early on, she tells Jonah, “I don’t have to do anything. I do what I want,” and that’s the mantra she lives by. She’s not looking for sympathy, nor is she blaming anyone else for what has happened in her life. She keeps on fighting, even as she starts to realize that opening up and depending on someone else is not necessarily a bad thing. Beans captures these emotions with a powerful determination while also displaying the softer side that Ana hides.
Whether you believe in a supreme being or not, you’ll come away from Jonah believing in Ana, and in Beans.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Joan Crawford stars in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, part of sapphic Film Forum series
SAPPH-O-RAMA
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
February 2-13
212-727-8110 filmforum.org
Film Forum is celebrating lesbian cinema with the twelve-day, thirty-flick series “Sapph-O-Rama,” consisting of famous and obscure works by, about, and/or featuring women in love and fighting for freedom. Programmed by Andrea Torres and Emily Greenberg, the entries range from Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader, David Butler’s Calamity Jane, and Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts to Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform, Pedro Almodóvar’s Dark Habits (Entre Tinieblas), and Chantal Akerman’s Je Tu Il Elle. Among the stars of the movies, which go back more than a hundred years, are Clara Bow, Fredric March, Agnes Moorehead, Alla Nazimova, Doris Day, Howard Keel, Natasha Lyonne, RuPaul Charles, Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Bogosian, Delphine Seyrig, Mink Stole, Sterling Hayden, and Joan Crawford.
In addition to select reviews below, here are the special events that Film Forum will be hosting:
Sunday, February 4, 1:10 She Must Be Seeing Things (Sheila McLaughlin, 1987), prerecorded introduction by filmmaker Sheila McLaughlin
Sunday, February 4, 4:50 Murder and Murder (Yvonne Rainer, 1996), Q&A with filmmaker Yvonne Rainer and Amy Taubin
Tuesday, February 6, 8:15 Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (Madeleine Olnek, 2011), introduced by Río Sofia of Queer | Art, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Madeleine Olnek and stars Lisa Haas and Rae C. Wright, moderated by Jude Dry
Friday, February 9, 5:20 The Wild Party (Dorothy Arzner, 1929), introduced by David Stenn, author of Clara Bow: Running Wild
Saturday, February 10, 4:15 The Killing of Sister Georgie (Robert Aldrich, 1968), introduced by editor and critic Melissa Anderson
Saturday, February 10, 7:10 Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kümel, 1971), introduced by vampire expert Laura Westengard
Tuesday, February 13, 6:00 The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (Maria Maggenti, 1995), introduced by filmmaker Maria Maggenti
Tuesday, February 13, 8:05 She Must Be Seeing Things (Sheila McLaughlin, 1987), prerecorded introduction by filmmaker Sheila McLaughlin
Cheryl Dunye wrote, directed, edited, and stars in The Watermelon Woman
THE WATERMELON WOMAN (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
Friday, February 2, 4:00
Tuesday, February 6, 6:10
Monday, February 12, 9:20 filmforum.org
“The idea came from the real lack of information about the lesbian and film history of African American women. Since it wasn’t happening, I invented it,” Cheryl Dunye says about her 1996 debut, The Watermelon Woman. In the film, the first feature by a black lesbian, Dunye plays herself, a twenty-five-year-old black lesbian working at a video store with her goofy best friend, Tamara (Valerie Walker). Searching for a topic to make a movie on, Cheryl becomes obsessed with an actress who played a mammy in Plantation Memories and other 1930s films. The actress was listed in the credits as the Watermelon Woman; Cheryl decides to find out more about her, going on a journey in and around her hometown of Philadelphia, discovering more and more about the actress, also known as Fae Richards, and the battle black lesbians had to fight in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. In the meantime, Cheryl begins a relationship with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a privileged white woman who has just moved into the area, mimicking what Cheryl has found out about Richards, who had an affair with white director Martha Page.
Diana (Guinevere Turner) and Cheryl Dunye (as herself) stars a relationship in The Watermelon Woman
The Watermelon Woman suffers from amateurish filmmaking techniques (Michelle Crenshaw was the cinematographer, while Dunye served as editor in addition to writer, director, and star), but its central issue is a compelling one, and Dunye is engaging as her onscreen alter ego. Richards (Lisa Marie Bronson) and Page (producer Alexandra Juhasz) are seen only in photographs and archival footage shot by white lesbian artist Zoe Leonard (her photography assistant was Kimberly Peirce, who went on to make Boys Don’t Cry), while Doug McKeown (The Deadly Spawn) directed the scenes from fake movies Plantation Memories and Soul of Deceit. (The photographs became an art project of its own, touring museums around the world.) The film features numerous cameos by writers, musicians, and activists, including Camille Paglia as herself, V. S. Brodie as a karaoke singer, Sarah Schulman as the CLIT archivist, David Rakoff as a librarian, and Toshi Reagon as a street singer.
The Watermelon Woman is a heartfelt tribute to black lesbians by a black lesbian who is restoring one woman’s true identity as a microcosm for all black women who have had theirs taken away. The film also became part of an attempt by certain congressmen to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, which supplied a $31,500 grant to Dunye; Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra, head of the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, singled the film out as offensive. The Watermelon Woman is also a reminder of what research was like pre-Google, a mere twenty years ago. Dunye has gone on to make such films as Stranger Inside, Black Is Blue, Mommy Is Coming, and My Baby’s Daddy, continuing her exploration of multiracial, gay, and trans culture.
Alice Wu’s Saving Face breaks the chains of conventions in LGBTQ love story
SAVING FACE (Alice Wu, 2004)
Monday, February 5, 12:30
Wednesday, February 7, 4:10
Sunday, February 11, 1:00 filmforum.org
While much of writer-director Alice Wu’s independent first feature, Saving Face, is entertaining enough, the last scenes are so much fun, so heartbreaking, and so charming that the film leaps to the next level, so stay with it. The captivating Michelle Krusiec (One World, Knife Fight) stars as Wilhelmina, a twenty-eight-year-old doctor trying to balance her career with her family in Flushing. Every Friday night she goes to the community dance, where her mother (Joan Chen) and the other Chinese yentas try to fix her up with a guy. Little do they know that she’s gay and strongly attracted to the boss’s daughter, Vivian (Lynn Chen), a ballerina dabbling in modern dance. Things get a little wacky when it turns out that Wil’s mother is pregnant and won’t tell anyone who the father is, leading to her banishment from her parents’ home and her friends’ inner circle. Suddenly Wil finds herself struggling to take care of her mother while also exploring a blossoming relationship that she hides from nearly everyone except her best friend, Jay (Ato Essandoh). Tradition battles modern life, generation battles generation, sexual preference battles gossip and scandal, and conventional roles get turned upside down and inside out in this film-festival favorite that will leave you smiling.
Peggy Gravel’s quaint suburban life is about to go to hell in John Waters’s Desperate Living
DESPERATE LIVING (John Waters, 1977)
Thursday, February 8, 8:30 filmforum.org
A turning point in his career, John Waters’s Desperate Living is an off-the-charts bizarre, fetishistic fairy tale, the ultimate suburban nightmare. Mink Stole stars as Peggy Gravel, a wealthy housewife suffering yet another of her mental breakdowns. In the heat of the moment, she and the family maid, four-hundred-pound Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill), kill Peggy’s mild-mannered husband, Bosley (George Stover), and the two women end up finding refuge in one of the weirdest towns ever put on celluloid, Mortville, where MGM’s The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Toyland meet Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (with some Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Douglas Sirk thrown into the mix as well). “I ain’t your maid anymore, bitch! I’m your sister in crime!” Grizelda declares. Peggy and Grizelda move into the “guest house” of manly Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe) and her blonde bombshell lover, Muffy St. Jacques (Liz Renay). Mortville is run as a kind of fascist state by the cruel and unusual despot Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey), an evil shrew who enjoys being serviced by her men-in-leather attendants, issues psychotic proclamations, and is determined that her daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce), stop dating her garbage-man boyfriend, Herbert (George Figgs). (Wait, Mortville has a sanitation department?) Camp and trash combine like nuclear fission as things get only crazier from there, devolving into gorgeous low-budget madness and completely over-the-top ridiculousness, a mélange of sex, violence, and impossible-to-describe lunacy that Waters himself claimed was a movie “for fucked-up children.”
John Waters’s Desperate Living is a celebration of camp and trash, an extremely adult and bizarre fairy tale
The opening scenes of Peggy’s meltdown are utterly hysterical. When a neighbor hits a baseball through her bedroom window and offers to pay for it with his allowance, she screams, “How about my life? Do you get enough allowance to pay for that? I know you were trying to kill me! What’s the matter with the courts? Do they allow this lawlessness and malicious destruction of property to run rampant? I hate the Supreme Court! Oh, God. God. God. Go home to your mother! Doesn’t she ever watch you? Tell her this isn’t some communist day-care center! Tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother I hate you!” The sets and costumes are deranged — and perhaps influenced Pee-wee’s Playhouse — the relatively spare score is fun, and the acting is, well, appropriate. The first half of the film is better than the second half, but it’s still a delight to watch Waters, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, which was shot in a kind of lurid Technicolor by Charles Ruggero, take on authority figures (beware of Sheriff Shitface), gender identity, class structure, hero worship, beauty, race, crime, nudity, and, of course, at its very heart, love and romance.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Our Class recounts a 1941 Polish pogrom and its aftermath (photo by Pavel Antonov)
UNDER THE RADAR: OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 11, $68-$139 www.bam.org ourclassplay.com
“I’m going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us — more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh flight. See what I mean?” the stage manager says in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize–winning drama Our Town. “So — people a thousand years from now — this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. — This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.”
In Igor Golyak‘s potent new revival of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s 2008 play, Our Class, at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space through February 11 as part of the Under the Radar festival, the first and second acts start with the cast sitting in a semicircle, holding and reading from scripts, as if copies of the play have been recently unearthed from a cornerstone, revealing a terrifying story that is not as widely known as it should be, and all too relevant to what is happening in the world today.
Inspired by actual events that occurred in the small village of Jedwabne, Poland, Our Class follows a group of ten Polish students, five Jewish, five Catholic, all born in 1919–20, from childhood to young adulthood to old age, although several don’t make it through a 1941 pogrom.
The audience is shown immediately when each character dies; their birth and death dates are written in chalk on a large, multipurpose blackboard. I preferred not to look too closely, instead learning their fate over the course of the narrative, but Golyak and Słobodzianek clearly want you to know who is going to live and who is going to die in their early twenties, in awful ways.
Richard Topol plays Abram Piekarz, the only Polish Jew who got out in time (photo by Pavel Antonov)
Richard Topol portrays Abram Piekarz, who serves as a kind of stage manager. Topol has played similar roles in such important plays about antisemitism as Indecent and Prayer for the French Republic; here he introduces each scene, which are called “lessons,” shuffling props, directly addressing the audience, blowing harp, appearing all over the theater (including in the aisles and on top of the blackboard), and remaining in touch with his fellow classmates after he moves to America and studies to become a rabbi.
At the start of the show, the characters share their hopes and dreams: Dora (Gus Birney) wants to be a movie star, Rysiek (José Espinosa) a pilot, Zocha (Tess Goldwyn) a seamstress, Zygmunt (Elan Zafir) a soldier, Rachelka (Alexandra Silber) a doctor, Jakub Katz (Stephen Ochsner) a teacher. Very few get to achieve their goals.
The first crack in the friendship between the Jews and the Christians occurs in the wake of the death in 1935 of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who had encouraged minority cultures in the nation. While Jakub is honoring the marshal’s accomplishments, Heniek (Will Manning) mockingly declares, “The marshal’s a prick with a circumcised dick. / His power he loved to abuse. / He married three times and committed his crimes / And sold all us Poles to the Jews!”
Later, the Christian students hold a prayer service in school, which upsets Menachem (Andrey Burkovskiy), Jakub, and Rachelka, who chastises Władek (Ilia Volok) for throwing rocks at Jakub’s sister.
And then, during a party for the opening of a local cinema — made possible by the Soviet occupation of Poland — Rysiek shouts, “Death to the Commie-Jew Conspiracy. Long live Poland!” He leaves, but when a few of the Christians insist on dancing with Jews, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable.
It’s not long before blood is spilled and people are being brutally murdered.
“Classmates are like family. Better than family,” Zygmunt proclaims.
What happened was no way to treat family.
During the pandemic, Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke out of the pack with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, followed by The Orchard, a hybrid reimagining of The Cherry Orchard with Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Golyak (chekhovOS /an experimental game/,Witness) directs with a frenetic energy that is intoxicating; your eyes are always searching for the unusual, the unexpected. In Our Class, adapted by Norman Allen from a literal translation by Catherine Grovesnor, you won’t find characters just sitting and talking; there is constant motion and action throughout the space. Text is added to the blackboard. Victims are represented by balloons on which the actors draw faces. Two figures watch from overhead. Ladders are dragged across the set, used for multiple purposes. A soccer ball that previously brought the classmates together on their team is turned into a weapon.
Cameras and monitors are pushed onstage, projecting live recordings on the screen and the blackboard, then rolled back to the wings, where actors wait and watch intently when they’re not in the scene. At times there is too much happening all at once, complicated by anachronistic video usage, although it also firmly reminds us that this could happen again, as evidenced by the current rise of antisemitism around the world, particularly following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.
At three hours (with one intermission), the play is long, but any shorter and its lessons might be lost, and in any case, Golyak never lets it slow down. (Prayer for the French Republic is also three hours but doesn’t feel like it.)
Ten classmates learn more than they ever bargained for in New York premiere of Tadeusz Słobodzianek play (photo by Pavel Antonov)
The cast and crew, who hail from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US, are superb. The set is by Jan Pappelbaum of the Schaubühne, with realistic сostumes by Sasha Ageeva, stark lighting by Adam Silverman, original music by Anna Drubich, immersive sound by Ben Williams, choreography by Or Schraiber, and projections by Eric Dunlap.
Topol (King of the Jews,The Normal Heart) is exceptional as Abram, the only one who got out of Poland before the 1941 pogrom; he imbues Abram — who in many ways is a stand-in for America, which entered WWII only when Pearl Harbor was attacked — with a soft, affectionate tenderness. Both Topol and Abram are genuine mensches.
Birney (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,The Rose Tattoo) will break your heart over and over again as Dora, Espinosa (Take Me Out,Fuente Ovejuna) will infuriate you as the bigoted Rysiek, Silber (Fiddler on the Roof,Hello Again) will shock and annoy you as Rachelka, Goldwyn, in her off-Broadway debut, will charm you as Zocha, and Volok (Gemini Man,The Gaaga) will utterly confound you as Władek. Burkovskiy (Solar Line,The Flight), Zafir (Arcadia,Everybody), Manning (Breitwisch Farm,Just Tell No One), and Ochsner (The Maxims of Panteley Karmanov,Everything’s Fine) round out the excellent ensemble.
Perhaps the best thing about Our Class is that it doesn’t preach at the audience; it has a message and a point of view but is not teaching us about good and evil.
In Our Town, Emily asks the stage manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”
“No,” the stage manager replies.
And that’s a shame, because no one should have to go through such horrors again.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can find his personal essay on Our Class here.]
SOHO’S GOT SEOUL
Park West Gallery
411 West Broadway between Prince & Spring Sts.
February 1 – March 4, free www.parkwestgallery.com
On February 1 at 6:00, Park West Gallery is opening its latest show, “SoHo’s Got Seoul,” highlighting five Korean artists hailing from different disciplines. The K-Pop auction and exhibition features paintings by contemporary conceptual sculptor Yongjae Choi, photographer and music video director Jun Shim (aka Negativ), singer and television personality Kwon Jian (aka SolBi), actor and director Jun Ko, and Lee Min-woo (aka M) from the South Korean boy band Shinhwa.
“These artists have devoted decades to perfecting their original art form, such as acting or performing,” exhibition curator Dr. Stephanie Seungmin Kim said in a statement. “These paintings allowed the artists to express something more intimate. The maturity and commitment to the art and brilliance deeply moved me to tell their stories.”
Several of the artists, known in Korea as artainers, have been painting since they were children, while others only picked it up a few years ago.
“I’m not a painter — just beginner!” Jun Ko declares in the above video. “I still can’t think of myself as an artist.”
Negativ adds, “Sometimes you get tired of working with a bunch of staff. When I paint, I can focus on myself.”
And SolBi explains, “Initially, I started drawing for the purpose of psychological therapy. Drawing not only brings healing but also allows me to convey the stories and messages I want to share through art.”
