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HOW IRISH DOES AN IRISH PLAY HAVE TO BE? IRISHTOWN AT THE IRISH REP

The Dublin-based Irishtown theater company prepares to stage a play in New York in Irish Rep world premiere (photo by Carol Rosegg)

IRISHTOWN
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 25, $60-$125
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s Irishtown, making its world premiere at the Irish Rep through May 25, tackles an issue that the theater company probably faces regularly: How Irish must a play be to be staged at the Irish Rep? How far does its cultural responsibility extend, and, perhaps most important, can it be a comedy?

As one of the characters asks the writer during rehearsals of the play within the play, a contemporary legal drama about sexual assault in Hertfordshire, England, “Where’s the lyricism? Where’s the backward syntax? And I’m sorry, I know I’ve said it before, but a happy ending? Do you know one happy Irish person?”

The ninety-minute show is set at the offices of the Dublin theater company Irishtown. Actors Constance (Kate Burton), Síofra (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), and Quin (Kevin Oliver Lynch) are completing a table read with director Poppy (Angela Reed) and playwright Aisling (Brenda Meaney) of Aisling’s latest work, Who Are We if We Are Not Ourselves at All, which is scheduled to open in New York City in four weeks.

The actors’ initial fawning displays of support soon give way to underhanded comments, sideways digs, and outright suggestions for changes, which infuriates Aisling, who insists the script will be locked and that the story is based on her own real-life experiences. Constance, an Irish legend who is struggling to pay for care for her ailing mother, is worried that “the script isn’t displaying as ‘authentically’ Irish” and that Poppy is English. Quin, who is bad at accents and has just been dumped by his girlfriend, complains about the script, “I think everything is wrong with it.”

Even Síofra, who is Aisling’s girlfriend and has been named Newcomer of the Year twice — ten years apart — and Poppy, who was kicked out of the Royal Shakespeare Company for having sex with numerous cast members, get in on the attacks.

Quin: We have one card in America, the Irish card, and you didn’t even play it? Even the English are playing the Irish card.
Poppy: Are they?
Constance and Síofra: Yes.
Aisling: Hang on now, not everything I write needs to be about being Irish.
Quin: But we are Irish.
Aisling: But if Irish drama needs to define Irish identity and its claims of independence from Britain, what further declaration of independence can there be than an Irish play not desperately seeking to be Irish?
Síofra: It’s a balance though, isn’t it? You want to represent Ireland as a home of ancient idealism with a rich cultural heritage but not tip it over into depicting us as buffoons of easy sentiment or drunken fucking monkies.

As the trip to New York inches closer and Aisling battles the producer, McCabe (voiced by Roger Clark), she decides to walk off with her script, leaving Constance, Quin, Síofra, and Poppy to come up with their own Irish play in a week.

Constance (Kate Burton) watches carefully as playwright Aisling (Brenda Meaney) and her girlfriend, Síofra (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), share a moment (photo by Carol Rosegg)

As always with the Irish Rep, the production is stellar. Colm McNally’s dingy, basement-like office set, featuring posters of such Irish classics as Waiting for Godot, Dancing at Lughnasa, and The Beauty Queen of Leenane — in addition to Aisling’s The Happy Leper of Larne — has a claustrophobic feel as time is running out; McNally also designed the lighting, with sound by Caroline Eng and casual costumes by Caroline Eng, highlighted by Aisling’s sweaters.

The cast is led by Burton (Hedda Gabler, The Elephant Man) as the careful Constance, Reed (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Power of Darkness) as the tough but vulnerable Poppy, and the ever-dependable Meaney (Little Gem, The New Morality) as the defensive Aisling.

Even at only ninety minutes, the play, directed by Nicola Murphy Dubey (Belfast Girls, Pumpgirl), gets bogged down in slapstick while a few subplots get short shrift and the ending is rushed. But Smyth (Lie Low, We Can’t Have Monkeys in the House) has a lot to say about celebrating, and being honest about, personal and cultural identity, as exemplified by the title of the play within the play, Who Are We if We Are Not Ourselves at All. When Poppy talks about having “inherited” the cast, an English director in charge of an Irish crew, it brings up centuries of conflict.

But Quin sums it up best when he asks, “We could just devise an Irish play . . . How hard could it be?”

The Irish Rep knows the answer.

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

NORTH TEXAS EPIC: THE TROJANS AT THE CELL

The Trojans re-creates the glory days of a group of warehouse workers in North Texas (photo by Vivian Hoffman)

THE TROJANS
The Cell Theatre
338 Twenty-Third St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through April 26
www.thecelltheatre.org

Friday Night Lights meets Homer’s The Iliad with a touch of The Outsiders in Leegrid Stevens’s outrageously entertaining synthwave musical The Trojans, which has been extended through April 26 at the Cell.

Stevens and director Eric Paul Vitale have moved the epic Greek poem to a shipping facility in Carlton, North Texas, where a group of overworked, bored employees decide to suddenly reenact their glory days revolving around a crucial homecoming high school football game between the Trojans and their archrivals, the Highland Kings.

Scenic designer Simon Cleveland has transformed the front room of the Cell into a warehouse stocked with packages ready to ship to Heodorokon Nitis in Corinth, Mississippi, Thelexis Boulos in Parthenon, Arkansas, Stylis Fotikos in Achille, Oklahoma, and Marbara Vasiloudou in Troy, Alabama. Christopher Annas-Lee’s lighting features LED strips that outline the performance area on the floor, where an audience of about fifty sits on three sides, surrounded by towering walls of boxes. Signs warn, “This department has worked

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days without a lost time injury: Be alert . . . Accidents hurt,” and “Notice: How to lift correctly — Bend knees to lift — Prevent back injury — Don’t bend over,” things that teenagers don’t need to worry about but older adults do.

The show begins with Heather (Deshja Driggs) and Doug (Sam Tilles) complaining about their jobs. “Oh man, one of those days,” Doug says, to which Heather responds, “Every day’s one of those now.” Heather asks Doug to tell one of his stories; Doug is worried that he will be caught by their manager, Daris (Arya Grace Gaston), and get fired, but soon the gang is re-creating “the Hit,” a controversial play during a long-ago high school football game by Keeley (Erin Treadway) that initiated the feud between the Trojans and the Kings. After Sondra (Jen Rondeau) questions how truthful their version is, Heather pulls out the actual cassette from the homecoming dance, puts it in an old red tape player, and everyone is transported back to the 1980s.

The Trojans consist of star quarterback Johnny/Agamemnon (Roger D. Casey); his girlfriend, Heather/Helen, the most popular girl in school; wide receiver Doug/Diomedes; the not-too-bright but sincere Jack/Ajax (E. James Ford), the running back who has to step in for Keeley/Achilles after Keeley quits the team; Lucas/Patroclus (Daphne Always), Keeley’s devoted boyfriend; and Sondra/Cassandra, who tells fortunes with a folded origami paper device known as a cootie catcher or chatterbox. The Kings are led by teen heartthrob Daris/Paris and his brother, imposing QB Tark/Hector (Alcorn Minor).

As they prepare for the big game, loyalties are tested, secrets are revealed, and hilarious songs are sung, from “OooAhhUs” and “Not Any More” to “Something Bad’s About to Happen” and “We’ll Never Become.”

A production of Brooklyn-based Loading Dock Theatre, The Trojans has a charming DIY feel, as the warehouse employees use their hard hats as football helmets, yellow-and-black vests as uniforms, and palettes, forklifts, and ladders as cars and other forms of movement. Will Watt’s sound includes appropriately muffled music when it’s supposedly coming out of the old tape deck, while Mindy Rebman’s boisterous choreography puts the audience right in the middle of a 1980s high school pep rally gone wrong. The ensemble, which also includes Bradley Cashman, Emma Imholz, Emma Kelly, Max Raymond, and Katherine Taylor in swing roles, is terrific, both as adults worrying about their job status and as teenagers making what might be one last grab at greatness.

Stevens references The Iliad over and over without the show being a one-to-one reimagining. A particularly sly moment occurs when Tark is reciting some football plays, saying, “Trips Left-60 Flip-Y Sticks. Go. Watch the backer if so, go hot, if not, post route. Touchdown. Let’s go. Heavy right 35 Pistol Zap. Go. Play action to a bootleg. If cover three, run. If not, deep left, Touchdown. Let’s go. Bunch right, green jet, Counter 2. Go.” Daris answers, “This is like the shittiest poem ever,” not unlike what a high school student might say about Homer’s works.

Deena Kaye’s music and vocal direction is thoroughly engaging; each actor sings and dances in accordance with their character. Thus, Casey and Driggs excel in that respect, whereas Ford has a more appropriately bumpy ride.

Early on, Heather asks Johnny, “Do you think in thirty years we’ll love music as much as we do now? . . . Do you think we’ll still love to dance? . . . Do you think we’ll still love to drive under the stars?” His concentration fully on the upcoming game, Johnny replies, “I think we’ll pretty much like all the same stuff we do now.”

Ah, the glorious dreams of youth.

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

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER: THREE PLAYS ABOUT DEAR OLD MOM

Five actors portray multiple characters in Neena Beber’s Brecht adaptation at BAC (photo by Maria Baranova)

A MOTHER
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
March 29 – April 13, $59-$79
www.bacnyc.org

There was already a palpable buzz at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on April 7, opening night of Neena Beber’s Brecht adaptation, A Mother, before several Jessicas arrived: Jessica Hecht, who co-conceived the show and was about to step onstage in her starring role as Pelagea Vlassova, and a resplendent Jessica Lange in the audience, who raised the event’s already high-glamour quotient. Lange, who has won three Emmys, two Oscars, and a Tony, has portrayed several memorable mothers onstage during her long career, including Phyllis in Paula Vogel’s Mother Play last year and Mary Tyrone in Jonathan Kent’s 2016 production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, was there not just as a fan of Brechtian epic theater but also because Shura Baryshnikov, her daughter with BAC founding artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, is the show’s choreographer.

Brecht’s 1932 play, the full title of which is The Mother: The Life of the Revolutionary Pelagea Vlassova from Tver, is based on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel known alternately as The Mother and, more simply, Mother. Beber and her co-creator, Emmy and Tony nominee Jessica Hecht, have changed the title to A Mother, which gives it more of a universal feel. They have also updated the setting; the action takes place in 1917 Russia, 1979 Miami, and the present.

In Russia, the widow Pelagea Vlassova (Hecht) is worried that her son, Pavel (Fergie Philippe), has fallen in with dangerous revolutionaries Ivan (Portia) and Anton (Zane Pais), who are protesting the treatment of factory workers and are threatening to strike. In Miami, fifteen-year-old Jess (Hecht) is having a blast at JD’s Disco on the beach, where she dances with seventeen-year-old Daryl (Philippe), who she hopes will be her first true love. In the present, she looks back at her life, including the summer she spent at Camp Shalom Aleichem in Barkhamstead, Connecticut, where she learned about Brecht from counselor Michelle (Delilah Napier), who was determined to inject plenty of Brecht into the campers’ production of Lerner and Loewe’s 1951 musical, Paint Your Wagon.

Michelle is wrapped up in her own Brechtian world view. “Who cares what you see yourself as? Identification is the lowest form of appreciation!” she tells one camper. She advises another, “Play the opposite. Think the opposite. Do the opposite.” And she declares, “Everything artificial is less artificial if you acknowledge that it’s artificial. The best way to be real when you are doing a play is to be fake.”

That’s precisely how Beber, director Maria Mileaf, set designer Neil Patel, costumer Katherine Roth, choreographer Shura Baryshnikov, lighting designer Matthew Richards, and the cast of five approach A Mother. Their production regularly reminds us that we are in a theater watching a fictional show in 2025, from their use of Brecht curtains to Jess’s interactions with the audience and clever dialogue.

“I don’t care what they say, disco is never gonna die,” Daryl insists. One of the other clubgoers (Napier) explains, “Born in the clubs frequented primarily by gay and African-American and Latino fans in opposition to the dominant social structures!” Social structures involving race and injustice come to the fore when the narrative shifts to the real-life murder of Black insurance salesman and Marine Arthur Lee McDuffie at the hands of police officers, leading to the 1980 Miami riots. In one of the most poignant moments of the play, Arthur’s mother, Eula Bell McDuffie (Portia), sings the elegiac African American spiritual “Wade in the Water” (the tune of which Jess transforms into the Mourner’s Kaddish).

As per Brecht’s instructions for this “learning play,” music is a key contributor, with songs ranging from Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown” and “Wade in the Water” to compositions by Mustapha Khan, William Kenneth Vaughan, and Norman (Skip) Burns. Among the new tunes are “Time to Fight” (“Take it to the street”), “Our Spot Is Desperate” (“Things can’t go on this way”), and “Let’s Make It Strange” (“You can melt gold to re-form / into shapes not quite born / with the fire of dialectical materiality”). As Michelle points out, “Think about that Brecht said: ‘Will there be singing in dark times? Yes, there will be singing, about the dark times.’”

Slyly referencing the Brecht-Gorky connection, the facade of the house at the back of the set features the number 775, a reference to Brecht’s 775th poem, “Stormbird,” which was inspired by Gorky’s “The Song of the Stormy Petrel.”

A Mother is a fun, thoroughly entertaining hundred-minute romp that maybe would have had even Brecht disco dancing at the end. “The aim was to teach certain forms of political struggle to the audience,” Brecht wrote in 1933 about the show. At the end of this production, Jess relates how copies of Brecht’s play were burned by the Nazis, then strolls through pieces of history on her way to today.

“I thought things would be different by now but dark times, dark times keep coming,” she says before reminding everyone about the hope — and revolutionary struggle — that is at the heart of epic theater.

Matt Doyle and Caroline Aaron star as son and mother in semiautobiographical play (photo by Carol Rosegg)

CONVERSATIONS WITH MOTHER
Theatre 555
555 West Forty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through April 21, $67-$169
conversationsplay.com

Matthew Lombardo’s Conversations with Mother began life about a decade ago as a series of Facebook posts detailing verbatim phone calls the playwright had with his mother. He eventually decided to turn the daily talks into the semiautobiographical show, which closes April 21 at Theatre 555. (It had been scheduled to run through May 11.)

The play traces the relationship between Maria Collavechio (Caroline Aaron) and her son, Bobby (Matt Doyle), starting in Connecticut in 1966, when she is thirty-seven and he is eight. Bobby desperately wants to come home from sleepaway camp, and Maria says absolutely not — until he writes to her, “Dear Mom: One of the camp counselors asked me to stay with him in his van overnight. He has strawberry Charleston Chews, clicker clackers, and eyeglasses that have real X-ray vision. Can I stay with him some night? Love, Bobby.”

For the next forty years, Bobby keeps getting into trouble, refusing to follow his mother’s sage advice, as he moves to New York and falls in love with an abusive man. Often when admitting his bad choices to her, he asks if she’s mad, and when she says no, he adds, “Good. Cause there’s more.” The strong-willed Maria is not angry as much as disappointed that the tender and insecure Bobby cannot find himself a better life; she believes he is wasting his youth and his chances; he deserves more but won’t believe that. The problem never was that Bobby is gay — Maria embraces that from when he first comes out to her — but that Bobby keeps screwing up, both personally and professionally. And it gets tiring, for her and, unfortunately, the audience.

The play is told in such chapters as “Tell Me The Truth and I Won’t Get Mad,” “Why Can’t You Ever Meet a Nice Boy?,” and “If Your Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me,” as Maria and Bobby go through good times and bad. Even as Bobby starts his career as a playwright, he is unable to enjoy it. He explains, “I’m just so tired. I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to be happy. I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want to be sorry. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to know. I just want to be numb.” Maria responds, “I don’t know what to do with you, Bobby. I really don’t know what else to do. I gave you everything. More than all the other kids combined. I gave you things in me I didn’t even know I had. And for what? So you can bitch about your shitty life? No one has a better life than you!”

The narrative takes a turn when Maria becomes ill, leading to a head-scratchingly melodramatic ending that seems to come out of nowhere.

Directed by Noah Himmelstein (The Lucky Star, Los Otros), Conversations with Mother takes place on Wilson Chin’s framed set, where various chairs, bars, and tables are wheeled on and off and props are hidden in the walls. Ryan Park outfits Aaron in fanciful dresses while Doyle wears camp T-shirts with a silly hat, a revealing apron with a silly hat, a hoodie, and eventually more grown-up clothing.

Aaron (Madwomen of the West, A Kid Like Jake) and Tony winner Doyle (Company, A Clockwork Orange) never quite connect; the characters feel like caricatures trapped in a repetitive circle that is hard for the audience to become engaged in. Lombardo, whose previous plays include Tea at Five about Katharine Hepburn and Looped about Tallulah Bankhead, doesn’t develop enough depth; perhaps he’s too close to the material.

At the conclusion of the eighty-five-minute play, you’re likely to think, thank goodness there’s not more.

Jeanine Serralles, Andrew Barth Feldman, and Joanna Gleason star as three generations of a Jewish family in New York in We Had a World (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

WE HAD A WORLD
New York City Center Stage II
131 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 11, 4160
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

New York City native Joshua Harmon is a master at writing about families, specifically Jewish ones, as evidenced by such works as Bad Jews, Skintight, and the epic Prayer for the French Republic. He turns his focus on his own clan in the beautifully told We Had a World, exploring his relationship with his mother and grandmother — and their complicated relationship with each other.

The hundred-minute play begins with Joshua (Andrew Barth Feldman) receiving a phone call from his grandmother, Renee (Joanna Gleason), whom he calls Nana, telling him that his next play should be about the estrangement between his mother, Ellen (Jeanine Serralles), and his aunt, the unseen Susan, focusing on a problematic Passover Seder — and that it should be called Battle of the Titans.

“I have — always wanted to write about our family; I didn’t know if — I had your permission?” he says. She gives him her blessing while making him promise that it will be “as bitter and vitriolic as possible. . . . You can even make your grandmother a real Medea. It ought to be a real humdinger.”

We Had a World is indeed bitter and vitriolic, and a real humdinger, but not in the way the fictionalized Joshua imagined; it is also sweetly innocent, tender-hearted, and almost too honest.

The story ranges from 1988, when Joshua is five, to 2018, when ninety-four-year-old Renee is sick. During his early years, Renee introduces Joshua to the arts, taking him to the R-rated Dances with Wolves, a Robert Mapplethorpe show, an exhibit featuring Tom Friedman’s Soap (which has a pubic hair on it), and the 1994 Broadway production of Medea starring Diana Rigg, an adaptation of the Greek tragedy in which a mother brutally murders her children.

“I don’t think my Mom would ever kill me,” Josh wonders.

“No, I don’t suppose she would,” Renee answers.

“Would you ever kill your children?” he asks.

“It would depend on the situation,” she responds.

Among the other cultural references are E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, and Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country.

Over time, however, Joshua learns some hard truths about his grandmother while coming to understand his mother in a much more profound way.

Tony-nominated director Trip Cullman (Cult of Love, Significant Other) artfully guides the action on John Lee Beatty’s open set, the audience on three sides, practically in the characters’ laps; you’ll want to try out Renee’s two Parisian high-backed love seats covered in pale green silk, an important plot point, but don’t.

In her return to the stage after a self-imposed twelve-year absence, Tony winner Gleason (Into the Woods, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) is luminous as Renee, who is not quite the heroic figure Joshua initially thought she was, while two-time Drama Desk nominee Serralles (Dying for It, Gloria) vividly captures the complexities of the more heroic Ellen.

The immensely likable Feldman (Dear Evan Hansen, Little Shop of Horrors) ably navigates between eras as he also serves as the narrator, sharing information directly with the audience. “Before I can take you to Nana’s apartment, you probably want to know a few things. Like why my aunt and mother don’t want to be in the same room. But giving you the sixty-five-year blow by blow of that relationship would . . . we only have one play, so . . . just take my word,” he says near the beginning. “But first — a small family drama? There’s going to be enough ugly stuff.”

Given Harmon’s track record, it’s easy to take his word, especially if there are more wonderfully intricate family dramas in his and our future. (Meanwhile, Passover is right around the corner.)

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

HELEN AND THE BEAR: ONE OF THE GREAT LOVE STORIES

Helen V. Hooper examines her complex, unexpected life in moving documentary (photo by Alix Blair)

HELEN AND THE BEAR (Alix Blair, 2024)
Cleveland International Film Festival
Streaming April 6–13, $15.74
helenandthebear.us
www.clevelandfilm.org

“They’re really one of the great love stories. Maybe it doesn’t make sense all the time, but I think Helen taught him how to love,” Kathleen McCloskey says about the more-than-forty-year relationship between her father, Paul “Pete” McCloskey Jr., and his second wife, Helen V. Hooper, in the deeply touching and intimate documentary Helen and the Bear.

Beautifully directed and photographed by Alix Blair, Hooper’s niece, and edited with a sweetly poetic grace by Katrina Taylor, the film follows the daily life of Pete, aka Bear, a Korean War veteran, lawyer, and longtime Republican California Congressman who became a Democratic activist in 2007, and Helen, whom he calls Eaglet, an artist who has grappled with her sexuality, depression, and independence since she was very young.

Primarily told in a cinéma vérité style, the eighty-one-minute doc goes back and forth between Helen’s and Pete’s pasts and the present, where Pete, who is about a quarter century older than Helen, is showing signs of physical and mental aging. “I can remember when I was six years old, but I can’t remember yesterday,” he tells her. While Pete makes phone call after phone call and meets with Democratic political operatives — he was the first Republican to call for the resignation of Richard Nixon, came out against the Vietnam War before the public protests, and was a leader on such bills as the Endangered Species Act and the Wilderness Protection Act — Helen, feeling despair and depressed, toils on the farm by herself, taking care of their bird, roosters, pigs, horses, cats, goats, chickens, and turkeys. “Is this what I want to spend my day doing?” she asks.

“Originally, I wanted to make a film about Pete’s history as a renegade Republican and activist. But soon, my focus shifted to Helen: my wild, loving, enigmatic aunt,” Blair explains in her director’s statement. “As I came to see Helen and Pete as two people who were madly in love, and yet, also hurt each other, the film became an investigation into how one negotiates love-of-self and love-of-partner when those forces are at odds with each other. What had their love, heartache, betrayal, and forgiveness cost them and what did it give them in return? And particularly for Helen, as a woman, what does it mean to be selfish?”

The film is supplemented with terrific archival political footage — a verbal battle between William F. Buckley Jr. and Pete on Firing Line is a highlight, as is Pete telling reporter Gabe Pressman, “That’s what this country needs: Politicians willing to lose” — but it is the home movies, personal photos, and revealing drawings and quotes from Helen’s journals that serve as its anchor: “Pete’s on the road again. I feel restless and unfree.” “I can’t deny all that I am. I guess I want everything.” “I feel loved by many people, but I still don’t really feel known.” “I just so love life; everything awes me.” And “I am realizing how lonely everyone often is — so many kinds of loneliness, of needs unmet.”

Pete and Helen take a road trip in their small camper, read a Tintin comic book, play with their dogs Jake, Mickey, and Tita, cuddle, stop to pluck the quills off a dead porcupine, and get high. One of the most poignant moments comes when Helen, who has never been a fan of the institution of marriage, wonders about life after Pete. “What will it feel like being in this bed without him,” she asks while petting one of the dogs.

The original score and sound design, by Troy Herion and J. R. Narrows, add to the overall visceral, involving experience as Blair (Farmer/Veteran, Documentary Happy Hour) invites us inside the world of a unique couple who enjoyed a special life together. “I will fucking kill you if you don’t take this seriously,” Helen tells Pete at one point, encapsulating their relationship.

Helen and the Bear premiered in April 2024 at the Hot Docs Festival; Pete passed away that May at the age of ninety-six. If you missed the film’s recent screening at IFC, you can stream it April 6–13 as part of the Cleveland International Film Festival.

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

FASHION TALKS AT SHINE BY RANDI RAHM: BROADWAY NIGHT WITH SIERRA BOGGESS AND LAURA BELL BUNDY

Who: Sierra Boggess, Laura Bell Bundy, Nicole Ryan
What: Live, unscripted conversation with drinks, snacks, shopping, and cocktail gathering
Where: Shine by Randi Rahm pop-up boutique, 501 Madison Ave. between Fifty-Second & Fifty-Third Sts.
When: Wednesday, April 2, free with RSVP, 5:30
Why: Randi Rahm’s Fashion Talks at Shine kicked off March 5 with Bachelor Night, featuring Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos, Bachelorette Charity Lawson, and moderator Nicole Ryan from SiriusXM, followed by Music Night with Jillian Hervey of Lion Babe on March 19. The third edition of the live podcast takes place April 2 with Broadway Night, when Ryan will be joined by actor, singer, and figure skater Sierra Boggess, who has starred in such shows as The Little Mermaid, The Phantom of the Opera, School of Rock, and Harmony, and actor, singer, and Tony nominee Laura Bell Bundy, whose Great White Way career includes Hairspray, Legally Blonde, and The Cottage.

“I always say, I’m in the art of fashion. To me, that means creating something that tells a story — something that moves people,” Rahm said in a statement. “These talks are an extension of that. They’re about connection, creativity, and the courage it takes to share who you really are. Laura Bell and Sierra embody all of that. They’re not only incredible artists but women who lead with heart, humor, and authenticity — and I’m so honored to have them join me in this space.”

Randi Rahm is hosting a series of fashion talks at Shine pop-up boutique

The intimate, candid conversation will be preceded by a chance to explore Rahm’s new ready-to-wear Shine collection and followed by a cocktail reception and more shopping; tickets are free with advance RSVP.

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

BEAUTIFUL UNCERTAINTY: TOM SANTOPIETRO, AUDREY HEPBURN, AND DORIS DAY

TOM SANTOPIETRO AT B&N
Barnes & Noble
2289 Broadway at Eighty-Second St.
Monday, March 31, free, 6:30
212-362-8835
barnesandnoble.com
tomsantopietro.com

“When Audrey Hepburn died at 8 P.M. on January 20, 1993, at the age of sixty-three, she left behind one Academy Award, two Tony Awards, dozens of lifetime achievement awards, her beloved sons Sean and Luca, companion Robert Wolders, millions of fans, universal acclaim as an indefatigable activist on behalf of the world’s children, and one final surprise — a nearly empty closet.

“She had walked away from the church of fame that rules Hollywood and ever-increasing swaths of the general public yet held onto that fame without even trying. Her elusiveness only increased public interest in her films and clothes as well as her life and loves, but Audrey Hepburn had grown uninterested in rehashing old tales of Hollywood glamour and legendary friends. In an industry which based its self-image on endless awards shows, she was, it was safe to say, the only screen idol about whom a son could convincingly state: ‘Being away from home to win an award was really a lost opportunity. Walking the dogs with her sons was a personal victory.’”

So begins Tom Santopietro’s latest book, Audrey Hepburn: A Life of Beautiful Uncertainty (Rowman & Littlefield, March 2025, $45). Born and raised in Waterbury, Connecticut, Santopietro attended Trinity College in Hartford, then went to the University of Connecticut Law School, also in Hartford.

“I always joke that law school was the three misbegotten years of my life,” Santopietro tells me in a phone interview. “I stayed, I graduated, and as soon as I graduated, I said, I’m never doing this ever. And I never have. You know why? Because I was uninterested. And when it comes to work, we’re all good at what we’re interested in.”

A few weeks before, I had met Santopietro at the Coffee House Club for an Oscars straw vote event he hosted with his friend Simon Jones, who has appeared in such series as Brideshead Revisited, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and The Gilded Age (as Bannister) and in New York in such shows as The Real Thing, Privates on Parade, and, most recently, Trouble in Mind.

Santopietro is a lovely storyteller, in person and in print. Among his previous books are The Sound of Music Story: How a Beguiling Young Novice, a Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time; Considering Doris Day; The Way We Were: The Making of a Romantic Classic; The Importance of Being Barbra: The Brilliant, Tumultuous Career of Barbra Streisand; Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters: What Harper Lee’s Book and the Iconic American Film Mean to Us Today; Sinatra in Hollywood; and The Godfather Effect: Changing Hollywood, America, and Me.

In A Life of Beautiful Uncertainty, Santopietro details Hepburn’s fascinating life and career in five acts comprising sixty-two chapters, including “What Price Hollywood,” “The Last Golden Age Star,” “A Star Is (Not Quite Yet) Born,” “Paris When It Fizzles — 1962–1964,” and “Everything Old Is New Again.” He explores Hepburn’s diverse filmography, from the many hits (Roman Holiday, Love in the Afternoon, The Nun’s Story, Charade, My Fair Lady, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Funny Face) to a trio of what he calls “mistakes” (Green Mansions, The Unforgiven, Bloodline).

On March 13 at 6:30, Santopietro, who lives on the Upper West Side, will be at the Barnes & Noble on Broadway and Eighty-Second St. to discuss and sign copies of A Life of Beautiful Uncertainty. Below he talks about speaking with Doris Day and Alan Arkin, the decline of theater etiquette, celebrities’ charitable work, and his favorite Audrey Hepburn film.

Tom Santopietro will be at Upper West B&N March 31 for NYC launch of his latest book (photo by Joan Marcus)

twi-ny: Where did your love of movies come from?

tom santopietro: When I was a little kid, I always liked movies. But what really accelerated it was when I was at Trinity, I took film courses at Wesleyan, which is in Middletown, and their film department was headed by an incredible woman named Jeanine Basinger. Have you ever met Jeanine?

twi-ny: I haven’t, but I know of her.

ts: She was on the board of the AFI. She was an extraordinary teacher who ignited my love of old films and Hollywood. And that’s where it really took off. Jeanine showed me possibility, and that’s what’s so great. That’s what great teachers do. So anyway, that’s where it really took off. And then I came to New York and worked on several Broadway shows, which I still do, but about twenty years ago, I thought, I want to do something more creative. And that’s how I started to write.

twi-ny: That was your first book, The Importance of Being Barbra, which was published in 2006.

ts: I’ve been fortunate and lucky, and I always joke, I didn’t tell anybody I was writing a book because I thought, What if I don’t finish it? And what if it’s really bad? And then when it was done, I sent it to my oldest friend, and a couple of days later, he called me back. And in a voice of total surprise, he said, It’s good. So I still laugh about that. And that led to Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, and then the Godfather movies.

twi-ny: I’m looking at the books you have written and their subjects. This is something we talked about at the Coffee House, that they’re all beloved icons, beloved films, beloved characters; there’s a lot of love in the room. And one of the things you told me was that that’s one thing you do when choosing a subject.

ts: Yeah, I really do. Because I think, well, you know this, you are a writer. I always say I don’t want to write a book about Stalin because I don’t want that monster in my head for three years. So these are people whose talent I admire so much. And also what I realized, Mark, and this just came to me when the Audrey book was completed, I thought, Oh, I’ve completed a trilogy of books about enormous stars, all of whom are incredibly nice, which is so rare in Hollywood. And that’s Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn, and Julie Andrews, these women who are beloved by their costars. And in the same way, I also realized after it was completed, Oh, I wrote a trilogy of books about family, and those were The Godfather, The Sound of Music, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

So I didn’t even realize it until the trilogy had been completed, but whatever was inside of me clearly needed to be expressed.

twi-ny: In the case of Doris Day, you had a conversation with her.

ts: Yes, after the book came out. The phone rang very late one night. It was after eleven, and I answered the phone grumpily.

I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. I had just come in from work. And I said, Well, who is this? And she said, Well, I’ve been trying to reach you from Carmel, California, for a long time. And then I realized it was Doris. Everybody wants to know what it was like. We spoke for an hour; as nice as she was on the screen, she was even nicer on the phone. It’s extraordinary. She was so unbelievably honest and open; she talked about her failed marriages, her love of animals, and Hollywood. So yeah, she was pretty terrific. I wrote that book because I felt she was a huge star who never received her due.

twi-ny: She retired from movies so early in her career.

ts: Another thing in writing about Audrey Hepburn is Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day had a lot of similarities, which was they worked from when they were teenagers nonstop. And then they both walked away from their fame; Doris said, “It means much more to me to work for animal welfare.” And Audrey said, “I want to work for UNICEF.” So that interests me a lot, that in our fame-obsessed society, world-famous women would walk away from it.

twi-ny: Right. And someone like Doris Day — I bet a lot of people don’t realize that she died only in 2019. So there was a long time, even with social media and the internet and everything, that she still wasn’t around. People didn’t know her, except for her charity work, but she wasn’t flooding Facebook with it. So, she was a very private person.

ts: Yes, a very private person. And so was Audrey. And so what interests me, Mark, is we’re a fame-obsessed society today, right?

twi-ny: Oh, yes.

ts: That’s reality television, everybody demanding to be famous.

twi-ny: Even the president.

ts: That’s a really interesting dichotomy. One thing I discovered while researching the Audrey book is that who knew that Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor were good friends? They were so opposite as people, but separately, toward the end of their lives, they used the exact same phrase: “At last, my fame makes sense to me.” And that’s because Elizabeth Taylor, with her AIDS activism, and Audrey, with UNICEF, that’s how they defined themselves. And I thought that was worth exploring.

twi-ny: That’s something that also happened and is still happening with Brigitte Bardot. She retired early to spend her life with animals and become an antifur activist. And I bet she would say the same thing as Audrey, Doris, and Elizabeth.

ts: I think that’s true. And because at a certain point, fame and money are nice, but how much does the acclaim of strangers really mean when you want to make a difference? And the difference comes through for these women through their social activism. Audrey was a kind of saint. She was such a good person.

twi-ny: All the people you spoke with, you probably never got a bad quote from anyone. Everybody just loved her. Is that right?

ts: That’s fair to say, and it’s not hyperbole. People who worked on the sets, everyone in the village in Switzerland where she lived, said she was unfailingly good to people. And I think after her war-torn, very disrupted childhood, I think she realized the value of family and the value of treating people with kindness. Because she said toward the end of her life, “The most important thing in life is being kind.” She really lived that.

Tom Santopietro signs copies of The Sound of Music Story at B&N in 2015 (photo courtesy Tom Santopietro)

twi-ny: In doing your research and interviews, was there one moment that really struck you or surprised you?

ts: I think the biggest surprise for me is how she really — how do I want to answer this — the reason why I titled the book A Life of Beautiful Uncertainty is that her entire life, she was uncertain of herself. And that was surprising. She genuinely did not think she was pretty. She just saw flaws everywhere. She genuinely did not think she was a good actress. And that shocked me because she was beautiful. And she was a terrific actress. And I think it stems from when, in the span of two months, she won the Tony Award and the Academy Award, and her mother said to her, “It’s amazing how far you’ve gotten considering how little talent you have.” [ed. note: In 1954, Hepburn won the Tony for Ondine and the Oscar for Roman Holiday.]

twi-ny: That haunts people, that kind of stuff.

ts: Yeah. So I think it all comes back to childhood, right?

twi-ny: It so often does.

ts: Barbra Streisand grew those incredibly long fingernails because her mother said, “Well, you should be a typist.” She grew her fingernails so she couldn’t type.

I think the other thing is that because I love films, and this is circling back to what we said earlier, I felt Audrey had never received her due as to how good an actress she was. Everybody says she’s charming and beautiful, but you look at a movie like The Nun’s Story, directed by Fred Zinnemann — that is a spectacularly good performance; the whole performance is with her eyes. And I wanted people to realize how skilled she was, even if she didn’t think she was skilled.

twi-ny: One of my favorite movies, and I don’t know that it would always be at the top of her list, but I adore Charade, which you write about in the book. Even with Cary Grant, Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, James Coburn, all these popular men in the movie, it is all built around her face.

ts: That’s exactly right.

twi-ny: And it’s the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock didn’t make.

ts: That sums up that movie perfectly.

twi-ny: Do you have a favorite film of hers?

ts: That’s a great question. I know this is a cop-out answer, but I have three favorite films: The Nun’s Story, because her performance is spectacular. And also it’s really interesting the way it grapples with issues of faith and higher powers. My second favorite movie is My Fair Lady, because it’s so beautiful to look at and listen to. And the third one is, believe it or not, Wait Until Dark, because it still scares the living daylights out of me.

twi-ny: Yes. And it’s still scaring us. People who love Alan Arkin don’t realize that he could be pretty threatening.

ts: Toward the end of his life, I was able to interview him over the phone for the book. The funny thing is, when I finally got him, he started the conversation by saying, “Well, I hear you’ve been looking for me.” What he said was that Audrey was so lovely and such a good person that twenty years later, when she received the Chaplin Award from Lincoln Center, he was one of the speakers. And when he saw her, he actually apologized to her and said, I’m so sorry I was so mean to you in that movie, which is sort of amazing.

twi-ny: Can you share publicly who or what your next subject might be?

ts: I actually haven’t really figured out who I’m writing about next because, well, this has taken a long time, but also I wrote a play and it was produced this past summer in Connecticut. So I want to spend time putting the play out in the world for other productions, and it sort of fits in with what I write about because it’s a one-woman play called JBKO, about Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. So that’s really what I’m going to work on next.

twi-ny: Well, this is a good transition, because my last question was going to turn back to theater. You work as a house manager part-time on Broadway.

ts: Yes. I’ve been a general manager, and these days I’m working as a house manager most of the time. I don’t know if you’ve found this too, but because writing is so solitary, it’s really good for me to be around people at night at the theater. So that socialization is great, as long as the audiences are behaving themselves, of course.

twi-ny: That’s where I was going with this. At the Coffee House, we discussed how, since the pandemic, the audience’s relationship with the theater experience, interacting with other people, isn’t the same as when they were going out for a night of theater years ago.

ts: Well, I think it’s a funny thing, but since the pandemic, when people go to the theater, on some level they still think they’re in their living room streaming a show. That’s the only way I can try to make sense of it. When you’re home, you talk, you eat. And it’s different in a Broadway theater. So that’s sort of my best explanation for it.

twi-ny: Right. As someone who goes to a lot of theater, I’ve seen some things that I never had before. It’s like, I paid for my ticket, I can do whatever I want. But no, you can’t. It’s sort of representative to me of how we deal with our fellow human beings in everyday life. Now we’re much more quickly agitated, and people don’t want anyone telling them what to do.

ts: Exactly. Yeah, that has all changed. What hasn’t changed, the positive thing for me, is that theater offers people the sense of being part of a family. Everybody’s there backstage to put on the best possible show. I always say you belong when you walk through the stage door. And that’s a great feeling. That’s the joy of theater for me.

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

GRAHAM100: PSYCHODRAMAS AND MYTHOLOGY AT THE JOYCE

Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Baye & Asa’s Cortege and more in Joyce season (photo by Steven Pisano)

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY: DANCES OF THE MIND
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
April 1-13, $62-$82
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
marthagraham.org

What’s old is new again.

The Martha Graham Dance Company brings its ninety-ninth season to the Joyce for two weeks of classics, world premieres, and reimaginings of familiar pieces, in one case using — gasp! — AI.

From April 1 to 13, MGDC will present “Dances of the Mind,” three programs as part of its continuing GRAHAM100 celebration, preparing for its official centennial next year. Program A consists of Graham’s 1958 Clytemnestra Act II, with an original score by Halim El-Dabh and set by Isamu Noguchi; Baye & Asa’s Cortege, a world premiere about Charon the ferryman, inspired by Graham’s 1967 Cortege of Eagles, with music by Jack Grabow and costumes by Caleb Krieg; Xin Ying’s Letter to Nobody, based on Graham’s 1940 Letter to the World, this time honoring Graham and her legacy, incorporating generative media and AI technology, along with an Emily Dickinson poem (“I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you – Nobody – too? / Then there’s a pair of us!”), to craft a duet with Graham, Erick Hawkins, and Merce Cunningham; and Hofesh Shechter’s kinetic 2022 CAVE, with music by Âme and Shechter and costumes by Krieg.

Program B comprises Graham’s 1935 solo Frontier: American Perspective of the Plains, honoring the spirit of the pioneer woman, with a score by Louis Horst and set by Isamu Noguchi; two lost 1920s solos, Revolt and Immigrant, reimagined by Graham 2 director Virginie Mécène through extensive research; a new production of Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, with Gabe Witcher’s bluegrass arrangement of Aaron Copland’s famous score, costumes by Oana Botez, and set by two-time Tony winner Beowulf Boritt; and Jamar Roberts’s 2024 We the People, which Roberts explains “is equal parts protest and lament, speculating on the ways in which America does not always live up to its promise,” with music by Rhiannon Giddens (arranged by Witcher) and costumes by Karen Young.

The third program brings together Graham’s 1943 Deaths and Entrances, made while Graham was contemplating faith and despair and inspired by the lives of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, with music by Hunter Johnson, set by Arch Lauterer, and costumes by Oscar de la Renta; Graham’s 1947 Errand into the Maze, a duet based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, with a score by Gian Carlo Menotti and set by Noguchi; and CAVE.

In addition, the April 1 gala features Clytemnestra Act II and Cortege, the April 5 University Partners Showcase highlights university and high school dancers performing works by Graham, Hawkins, José Limón, and others, the April 12 family matinee presents Graham’s 1935 call-to-action Panorama, Rodeo, and We the People, and there will be a Curtain Chat following the April 9 show.

Founded in 1926 in a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan, MGDC has an illustrious history involving a wide range of remarkable collaborators; the current troupe includes So Young An, Ane Arieta, Laurel Dalley Smith, Zachary Jeppsen-Toy, Meagan King, Lloyd Knight, Rayan Lecurieux-Durival, Antonio Leone, Devin Loh, Amanda Moreira, Ethan Palma, Jai Perez, Anne Souder, Matthew Spangler, Richard Villaverde, Leslie Andrea Williams, and Xin Ying.

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