featured

MEET MISS BAKER: PARTNERSHIP

Sara Haider (center) is mesmerizing in Mint production of Elizabeth Baker’s Partnership (Todd Cerveris Photography)

PARTNERSHIP
The Mint Theater at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 12, $39-$79
minttheater.org
www.theatrerow.org

The Mint completes its wonderful “Meet Miss Baker” trilogy with Partnership, another exquisite production of a work by early-twentieth-century playwright and office typist Elizabeth Baker, following 2019’s The Price of Thomas Scott and last year’s Chains. Born in 1876, Baker was a teetotaler raised in a strict, religious lower-middle-class family that was in the drapery business; she didn’t go to the theater until she was nearly thirty and didn’t marry until nearly forty. Her debut, Chains, is a 1909 working-class drama about capitalism and social convention, while Scott, from 1913, also deals with those issues, through a lens involving religion and a family’s clothing store.

A fancy women’s clothing store in Brighton is at the center of Partnership, which explores two types of alliances: business and personal. Kate Rolling (Sara Haider) is a young, single woman who owns a fashionable shop that is poised to make it big. Kate has impressed the fussy and ultrafashionable Lady Smith-Carr-Smith (Christiane Noll), who promises Kate she’ll recommend her shop to “the Duchess,” ensuring a steady, if demanding, stream of wealthy customers.

Kate’s staff gets excited by the possibility, including vivacious salesperson Maisie Glow (Olivia Gilliatt), cynical seamstress Miss Blagg (Gina Daniels), and mousey shop assistant Miss Gladys Tracey (Madeline Seidman), who is engaged to the hapless Jack Webber (Tom Patterson), who is jealous of another of Gladys’s suitors. Jack works for successful haberdasher George Pillatt (Gene Gillette), who has made a surprise appointment with Kate.

“I wonder what Pillatt wants. There’s one thing, I suppose, and that is, he won’t propose,” Kate says to Maisie, who replies, “And he’d be a catch if you like. It’d be better than fighting him, wouldn’t it?”

The space next to Kate’s store has become available, and Pillatt is interested in taking it over — joining forces with Kate, who has been considering leasing the space as well. Pillatt is a dry, grim, darkly serious man with no sense of humor; speaking to Kate privately, he offers, “I have a plan to put before you Miss Rolling, but I will say at the outset that if you don’t care about it, we can drop it and go on as before, without prejudice. It need make no difference, I hope, to our present friendly business relations. If it commends itself to you I shall be very much gratified. Has the idea of a partnership ever entered your head? . . . Your business and mine.”

Kate is flattered by his kind words about her store, but then Pillatt ups the ante in one of the least romantic proposals imaginable: “I want to suggest, to propose a partnership — in another sense, and that is — marriage. Being a plain businessman, I wish to be quite frank in the matter, and so I have not hesitated to put the business part of the plan foremost. I am sure you, as a business woman, thoroughly understand this. . . . I am not a sentimentalist, but then you, a woman of business, do not wish for any expression of sentiment.”

When Kate admits that marriage was not on her radar, Pillatt assures her, in his cold, dispassionate manner, “That part of it will make no more difference than the other.” He then presents her with a formal contract, relating to both the business and the marriage. He is not exactly bursting with love and affection when he tells her, “I have thought it out very carefully. If you can see your way to accept it, I am sure it would work out satisfactorily.”

It’s a phenomenal scene that beautifully develops the characters and sets the stage for what comes next, twisting societal gender conventions and the male-dominated power structure. It takes place in the back private room of Kate’s shop, which features fashion drawings, various materials, shelves of boxes and files, stairs to the upper apartment, and a sharply dressed, realistic-looking mannequin known as Sally that essentially represents how women should be seen and not heard, treated as objects and not free-thinking human beings.

Discussing with Kate and Maisie how all men are fools, Miss Blagg contends, “Dress anything up in a smart blouse and a coiffure and men will make love to it. I’d like to put Sally here just inside the door and see how many of the idiots would come in to have a look at her.”

Lawrence Fawcett (Joshua Echebiri), Elliman (Tom Patterson), Maisie Glow (Olivia Gilliatt), and Kate Rolling (Sara Haider) take a break in the South Downs in Partnership (Todd Cerveris Photography)

When Pillatt’s friend and former classmate, the shy and awkward Lawrence Fawcett (Joshua Echebiri), enters, he is startled by Sally. “Christopher! — I thought she was real,” he calls out. “She’s just ‘it’! I’ve met dozens like her in flesh and blood.” Pillatt, wearing a persnickety, upper-crust striped suit and wielding a cane, and Fawcett, in a plain, unimpressive brown suit and hat, are the same age, but Fawcett looks much younger and has more interest in the outside world. (The stylish costumes are by Kindall Almond, with lighting by M. L. Geiger and sound by Daniel Baker.)

Fawcett has given up his lucrative family corset business to get into dyes, specifically orange. Pillatt has no respect for his decision, telling him, “What fool’s talk is this? You mean, I hope — though I can’t say I follow you quite — that you’re investing money in a dyeing business?”

Kate, in a resplendent cutting-edge fashionable suit and vest with a lacy cravat, purple bowtie, and black buttons and trimmings, is intrigued by Fawcett. When Fawcett, who is on a monthlong vacation, mentions that he is on his way to the South Downs — a national park with diverse landscapes, rich wildlife, spectacular views, unspoiled areas, and small communities — Kate decides that she, Fawcett, Pillatt, and Maisie should have tea on the Downs, and Maisie promises to bring her friend Elliman (Tom Patterson), who has a motorcar.

Up on the Downs — Alexander Woodward’s simplified set for the second act consists of a few rocks in front of a re-creation of James Hart Dyke’s colorful, tranquil 2021 painting, Winter Evening Light on Windmill — Fawcett is in his element, while Pillatt is uncomfortable and perturbed. Kate is intrigued by the freedom Fawcett is experiencing; it’s like he’s a different man in these natural surroundings.

“You are one of the lucky ones who can do as they like,” Kate says, to which Fawcett responds, “Can’t you? I thought you were your own mistress?” The planting of that seed leads to Kate taking another look at her life in the third act.

Miss Gladys Tracey (Madeline Seidman) and Miss Blagg (Gina Daniels) gossip in Elizabeth Baker rediscovery (Todd Cerveris Photography)

Director Jackson Grace Gay (A Little Journey, Transfers) nimbly dances around a gaping plot hole surrounding the question of whether a woman can have it all, success in love and business. Daniels (Becomes a Woman, Network) and Gilliatt (Chains, Mother of the Maid) provide playful humor, Echebiri (Merry Wives) builds charm, Gillette (Pushkin, Orpheus Descending) could not be any more dour, and Tony nominee Noll (Ragtime, God of Carnage) has a ball chewing up the scenery.

But the show belongs to Pakistani singer-songwriter and actress Haider, who is mesmerizing in her off-Broadway debut; you can’t take your eyes off her as Kate, a strong, independent woman, weighs the different parts of her life and must choose which path to follow. We might not always like the choices she makes, but she has every right to follow her heart and mind, wherever they may lead her. Anyone who partners with Kate, or Haider, her has made a wise decision indeed.

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

NOSFERATU, A 3D SYMPHONY OF HORROR

Theater in Quarantine’s Nosferatu is livestreamed right to your phone in 3D

NOSFERATU, A 3D SYMPHONY OF HORROR
NYU Skirball online
October 27-31, 7:00 & 9:00, $20
nyuskirball.org
www.youtube.com

My 3D glasses didn’t arrive in time but I still got chills from Joshua William Gelb’s livestreamed Nosferatu, a 3D Symphony of Horror, which is being presented by NYU Skirball through Halloween night.

During the pandemic, Gelb converted a 2′ x 4′ x 8′ closet in his East Village apartment into Theater in Quarantine, where he staged virtual dance and drama in the claustrophobic white space. He has now returned with a thirty-five-minute Halloween special inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, and F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent masterpiece, Nosferatu.

The show is meant to be viewed on your cellphone, your own private, portable miniature closet, and listened to on headphones that make it seem like the characters are moving inside your head. An early title card, in a creepy, old-fashioned font, explains, “Nosferatu: Does this word not sound like the deathbird calling your name at midnight? Beware you never say it — for then the pictures of life will fade to shadows, haunting dreams will climb forth from your heart and feed on your blood.”

Gelb portrays the eerie Count Orlock, Nick Lehane is the real estate agent who has no idea what he’s in for, and Rosa Wolff is the agent’s true love, who knows something dastardly is afoot. The scenography is by Normandy Sherwood, with scary sound by Alex Hawthorn and video by Gelb. The closet turns from bright white to deep black as such props as a cross-laden door, bed, window, and miniature ship spur the action. Be sure to stick around for the time-lapse behind-the-scenes montage after the story concludes.

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

DIG

Roger (Jeffrey Bean) sees his easygoing life uprooted in Dig (photo by Justin Swader)

DIG
Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St, between Park & Madison Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 5, $65.50-$85.50
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

Theresa Rebeck fertilizes the soil with a nearly endless stream of plant-based metaphors in her emotional, hard-hitting Dig, which is blossoming at 59E59 through November 5. Rebeck fills the dialogue with continual references to growth and growing, water, soil, roots, and pots, as characters dig deep to take stock of their lives. It’s not a question of nature vs. nurture so much as an exploration of the nurturing of nature, both foliage and family.

Inspired by a plant business co-owned by her husband, Rebeck’s play is set in a local plant store run by Roger (Jeffrey Bean), a persnickety man in his mid-fifties who is not in the habit of being agreeable with anyone, including customers and personal acquaintances. Roger lives alone in an apartment upstairs, caring more about plants than people. At the start, he is furious that his close friend Lou (Triney Sandoval) has nearly killed a plant he gave him. Roger had given him clear instructions on what to do with it, but Lou didn’t follow them.

“Okay, there was a period where watering was not my central focus,” Lou admits. “‘Focus,’” Roger repeats with scorn. “Focus is the wrong word,” Lou answers. “Focus is no word, it doesn’t apply at all; there is no indication that focus had anything to do with the care of this plant,” Roger argues.

In the corner by the front door, a woman listens to the two men quarreling. “I brought it to you for help. I understand this is not ideal. I did not neglect this plant,” Lou asserts. “I don’t want, I don’t — never mind. It’s fine. I will save this plant,” Roger declares.

We soon learn that the woman in the corner is Megan (Andrea Syglowski), Lou’s thirty-four-year-old daughter who has returned to town after an attempted suicide, a nationally publicized crime, and ensuing imprisonment. Lou and Roger are not so much squabbling over a plant as they are about Megan; Lou is unable to accept the idea that his child-raising could have anything to do with her situation.

Everett (Greg Keller) shares his thoughts on certain types of plants with Roger (Jeffrey Bean) and Megan (Andrea Syglowski) in Dig (photo by James Leynse)

Megan asks for a job from Roger, who is hesitant at first — he prefers things exactly as he has them, viewing change as some kind of enemy — but when Megan insists she doesn’t need to get paid, that she’s just looking for something to do to get her out of her rut, Roger essentially has no choice. The first lesson Roger teaches Megan is repotting, moving a plant to a bigger pot because it has outgrown its space. “It’s too healthy; it just kept growing. It’s something that happens to plants. The roots eat up everything around them. They take in the light and the soil and the air and the leaves, through photosynthesis,” Roger explains, calling photosynthesis “the most important chemical reaction on the face of the planet earth.” Once again, Roger opts for science over relationships with humans.

Meanwhile, Roger’s current assistant, Everett (Greg Keller), is a pot-smoking, video-game-playing dude who drives the delivery truck. Everett wants more responsibilities, but Lou, who does Roger’s books, thinks Everett should be fired.

“I love plants. And I love the truck, I love driving that truck,” Everett pleads with Roger. “You’re driving that truck stoned!” Roger proclaims. “Oh, now listen. The truck — that truck is a holy thing to me,” Everett argues, adding, “I’m good at selling plants, at talking to people about plants.” Roger responds, “You’re good at smoking plants,” to which Everett shoots back, “I don’t apologize for that. The organic world makes sense to me.”

Holiness also comes to the fore through Molly (Mary Bacon), a churchgoing woman looking for bulbs who gets into a tiff with Megan when she recognizes her. Molly returns later to offer forgiveness to Megan and invite her to join their prayer group. Although not religious, Megan checks out the group and finds some comfort there, which doesn’t make her father happy. Each character — including a late-arriving surprise figure (David Mason) — faces their own battle of being “pot bound,” in need of their own form of photosynthesis as they seek happiness in a world in need of cultivation.

Lou (Triney Sandoval) and Megan (Andrea Syglowski) have a tense father-daughter relationship in Dig (photo by James Leynse)

Over her thirty-year career as a playwright, the Ohio-born Rebeck has tended quite a garden; in the past dozen years alone, she has had five plays on Broadway (Dead Accounts with Katie Holmes, Bernhardt/Hamlet with Janet McTeer, Seminar with Alan Rickman, Mauritius with F. Murray Abraham and Bobby Cannavale, and the new I Need That with Danny DeVito) along with several gems off Broadway (Seared with Raúl Esparza, Downstairs with Tim and Tyne Daly). Dig, the New York City debut of which was delayed by the pandemic, is a splendid addition to her hothouse, a tense exploration of rebirth that Rebeck has admirably directed herself.

Christopher and Justin Swader’s cramped set teems with life, primarily green plants with occasional bursts of color. Fabian Fidel Aguilar’s costumes, Mary Ellen Stebbins’s sharp lighting, and Fitz Patton’s incidental music and sound design contribute to the overall realistic feel of the drama. The cast is exceptional, led by a revelatory performance by Syglowski (Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, queens), who is a whirling dervish of rollercoaster emotions. Sandoval (The Thin Place, 72 Miles to Go . . .), Bacon (Harrison, TX; Women without Men), Bean (About Alice, The Thanksgiving Play), Keller (Shhhh, The Thanksgiving Play), and Mason (Seared, Trick or Treat) provide expert supportive landscaping as the roots of the shop start spreading at a potentially uncontrollable rate.

They all combine to avoid neglect, focusing on properly watering this germinating story of tragedy, responsibility, hope, and redemption.

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

NEXT WAVE 2023: CORPS EXTRÊMES

Rachid Ouramdane makes his BAM debut with the high-flying Corps extrêmes (photo © Pascale Cholette)

CORPS EXTRÊMES
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
October 27-29, $44.50-$84.50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Choreographer Rachid Ouramdane and Chaillot — Théâtre national de la Danse make their high-flying BAM debut with the soaring Corps extrêmes, having its US premiere October 27-29 at the Howard Gilman Opera House. The sixty-minute multimedia piece is centered around a large climbing wall where eight acrobats from Compagnie XY (Joël Azou, Airelle Caen, Tamila de Naeyer, Löric Fouchereau, Peter Freeman, Maxime Seghers, Seppe Van Looveren, and Owen Winship) are joined on film and/or onstage by French tightrope walker Nathan Paulin, French rock climber Camille Doumas, and Swiss rock climber Nina Caprez. The work explores the relationship of the human body to the natural world, filled with possibility, danger, and fun. The original score is by Jean-Baptiste Julien, with costumes by Camille Panin, lighting by Stéphane Graillot, and video by Jean-Camille Goimard.

Corps extrêmes is part of BAM’s 2023-24 Next Wave Festival, which includes Geoff Sobelle’s Food, Lynette Wallworth’s How to Live (after you die), and composer Huang Ruo, director Matthew Ozawa, and filmmaker Bill Morrison’s Angel Island, as well as the citywide Dance Reflections Festival, which continues through December 14 with Boris Charmatz’s Somnole and Dimitri Chamblas and Kim Gordon’s takemehome at NYU Skirball, Ola Maciejewska’s Bombyx Mori at FIAF, and Dancing with Glass — The Piano Etudes at the Joyce.

NIGHTMARE DOLLHOUSE / TERRORVISION

Clybourne (Theo Frorer-Pinis) has an ax to grind in Nightmare Dollhouse (photo by Vanessa Lopera — JOCO Med)

NIGHTMARE DOLLHOUSE
Teatro SEA @ the Clemente
107 Suffolk St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Daily through October 31, $45 GA, $60 VIP
nightmarenyc.com

As I recently wrote on Substack, I love being scared. And the best scares can leave me in stitches even as they make my skin crawl.

Every October, haunted houses and other frightening attractions come to New York City. Two of the most fun are Nightmare Dollhouse and TerrorVision, both of which had me roaring with laughter — solo, alas, as I couldn’t persuade anyone to join me. My only complaint: At about only twenty minutes each, they are way too short; I was ready for more chills and thrills.

Intended for groups of no more than six people at a time, Nightmare Dollhouse is the latest frightfest from Psycho Clan, purveyors of such fine fare as Full Bunny Contact, Santastical, and last year’s Nightmare: Gothic, all held at Teatro SEA @ the Clemente on the Lower East Side. Presented with ETR Ventures (Escape the Room), Nightmare Dollhouse is a haunted doll museum where dolls come to life — or, perhaps more truthfully, rise from the dead, jumping out at you from nearly every direction. Pediophobes, beware.

You can do that voodoo that you do so well to a frightened captive in Nightmare Dollhouse (photo by Vanessa Lopera — JOCO Med)

Before you enter, you will be asked what is okay with you and what is not — for example, light touch — and how to get out if it’s all too much for you. I was ready for anything and everything as long as they could assure me my head would still be attached to my body at the end.

You first meet a sweetly deranged Raggedy Ann, who leads you into a room filled with cases of classic dolls, including Chuckie, Slappy the Dummy from Goosebumps, and Talky Tina from the classic Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll” with Telly Savalas. (I did have to explain to the ill-fated attendant that it’s “Talky Tina,” not “Talking Tina,” as the signage said.)

There’s a different scenario in each room with unique surprises, ably embodied by Kirsten Freimann, Lily Natal, Theo Frorer-Pinis, Ozzy Angulo, Asia Valentine, Gwendolyn Torrence, Red Reine, Scott McPherson, and others in a rotating cast. The cool troupe was willing and able to improvise as I interacted with them and nearly laughed my head off several times, especially at the fabulous finale.

Beware of a young woman (Gwendolyn Torrence) offering you tea in Nightmare Dollhouse (photo by Vanessa Lopera – JOCO Med)

A clown and ballerina (yes, there is a clown) reminded me of another TZ episode, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” in which Rod Serling introduces, “Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness, and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. In a moment, we’ll start collecting clues as to the whys, the whats, and the wheres. We will not end the nightmare; we’ll only explain it — because this is the Twilight Zone.”

The same can be said for Nightmare Dollhouse, which was written and directed by the one and only Timothy Haskell (The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of . . . Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier), with creepy production design by Paul Smithyman, sound by Zoe Stanton-Savitz, lighting by Yang Yu, costumes by Brynne Oster-Bainnson, and video by Charnelle Crick, all of whom deserve kudos for making me laugh so satisfyingly from start to finish.

All aboard for a dark journey into TerrorVision (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

TerrorVision
Horrorwood Studios
300 West Forty-Third St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through November 5, $41.70-$69.50
facetheterror.com

Co–artistic directors Will Munro and Katie McGeoch and executive producer Dalton M. Dale follow up last year’s Terror Haunted House, set at the Bedlam Institute, with TerrorVision, another haunted house in Times Square, this one promising you will “live screaming your nightmares.” Munro and McGeoch cut their teeth with Six Flags Fright Fest, so they know their way around chills and thrills.

The premise is that visitors are auditioning for a role in the new horror film by Bobby Castle, who is seeking his next muse. There are three levels of fear: General admission offers “the standard level of scary, heart-pounding fun,” the Chicken ticket comes with “a special amulet to become ‘invisible’ to the monsters,” and Ultimate Terror “ensures you’re targeted throughout the experience.” I chose Ultimate Terror and went through it alone.

One of the main props is an old television showing nothing but static, a throwback to the sets on which I first saw The Twilight Zone (in reruns) and such horror flicks as the 1935 Werewolf of London and, later, Bad Ronald, Burnt Offerings, and Trilogy of Terror, back when we had only channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and sometimes 21, all of which shut down shortly after midnight, leaving us with scary test patterns, the National Anthem, or eerie static.

Upon meeting Mr. Castle, I asked him how his cousin, William Castle, was. He said, “Ah, you know Billy? How is he?” I responded, “Feeling a little tingly these days.” (William Castle was the legendary director and producer behind such low-budget marvels as House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, and The Tingler, which featured a vibrating Percepto! electronic buzzer under some seats; he also produced Rosemary’s Baby.)

As I made my way through some twenty thousand square feet of rooms, each with different scenarios and props, dozens of ghoulish characters (there are 140 actors total) jumped out of windows and doors and approached me threateningly from around dark passages. One decrepit woman was trying to find her baby. A zombie was looking for a lost loved one. A sexy creature attempted to entice me into a small space. A woman munched out on some fresh innards.

I loved every second of it. And I couldn’t stop laughing.

I wasn’t laughing at the production; I was hysterical because, like Nightmare Dollhouse, it was so much fun.

And funny as hell.

HELEN.

Helen (Lanxing Fu) sits with her sisters, Klaitemestra (Grace Bernardo) and Timandra (Melissa Coleman-Reed), in new retelling at La MaMa (photo by Maria Baranova)

HELEN.
La MaMa Downstairs
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Wednesday – Sunday through October 29, $25-$30
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org

A period is part of the title of Caitlin George’s Helen., emphasizing the role of menstruation and reproductive capability in women’s lives. In fact, in the script, Helen is identified as “Period,” as if that’s what defines her, and all women. In the show, a feminist reimagining of the story of Helen of Troy — which has been told by Homer, Virgil, Aristophanes, Euripides, and others — the title character (Lanxing Fu) spends ninety minutes literally and figuratively running away from her responsibilities as a wife and mother, tossing aside her white classical gown in favor of a tight-fitting white sports bra and shorts. The war she is fighting is not against the Achaeans but against the patriarchy.

The feminist reimagining, which opened Monday night at La MaMa Downstairs, begins with Eris (Constance Strickland), the Goddess of Discord, explaining, “Khaos is not a gentle endeavour. I wear her like silk.” The show itself is chaotic, unable to find its center, caught in a whirlpool of its own making. Sitting in a white lifeguard chair and wearing a tight-fitting glittering gold lame outfit, Eris keeps a close watch on the proceedings, occasionally speaking into a microphone and descending to the floor, part narrator, part emcee.

The narrative focuses on motherhood and gender expectations, as well as concepts of beauty and love, in the oft-told story of Helen (Lanxing Fu), her sisters Klaitemestra (Grace Bernardo) and Timandra (Melissa Coleman-Reed), her husband Menelaus (Jackie Rivera), her lover-abductors Paris (Jonathan Taikina Taylor) and Hektor (Rivera), her brother-in-law Agamemnon (Taylor), and her daughter, Hermione (Jessica Frey). Helen is distraught when she loses a button, a symbol that her life as she knew it is about to become undone. The siblings are in mourning for their mother; while Helen feels that something has changed, the pregnant Klaitemestra and Timandra are prepared for what comes next: laundry, shopping, cleaning the kitchen.

Helen. offers a unique reimagining of the story of Helen of Troy (photo by Maria Baranova)

Helen declares that she’s bored. “I want to be doing something. . . . I want to go on an adventure. I can’t stay here. I can’t.” And off she goes, as her sisters wonder how she could abandon her child, and the men in her life act as if they themselves are goofy children playing a game. She races around the stage, behind the audience, and through the lobby, emerging on the other side, stopping to contemplate her past and future. Time becomes an anomaly, blurring the story, making it hard to follow when she meets up with people on her journey again and again, running in circles, amid references to Tupperware, a slow cooker, phone calls, and MILFs.

“Keep in mind that time is not a matter of straight lines,” Eris attempts to explain. “Time is loops, it’s globs and eternities that spiral into out of around what might have come after before. It builds behind, swirls around, we drag it with us as it accumulates; rising from ankles to throat till it bursts. Time moves but not in lines. Those are only written in afterwards to fence the monsters out.”

Presented in association with En Garde Arts and performed by the SuperGeographics, Helen. has a unique charm that it’s often unable to sustain. Repetition abounds, along with confusion. Director Violeta Picayo seems to revel in the mayhem on James Schuette’s odd set, in which chairs and other objects are moved about randomly, brought together and then taken apart. Schuette also designed the costumes, which would feel right at home in a Comic Con cosplay contest. The young cast is eager and likable, led by Fu and Coleman-Reed, but all the characters eventually stagnate.

George divides the play into five sections: “Death (Away),” “Marriage,” “Birth,” “The Forgotten,” and “Death (Toward).” Each one has its moments, but as a unit, they spiral too much out of control.

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

SALESMAN 之死

New play explores Arthur Miller’s 1983 experience in China directing Death of a Salesman (photo by Maria Baranova)

SALESMAN 之死
Connelly Theater
220 East Fourth St. between Aves. A & B
Through October 28, $45-$99
www.yzrep.org
www.connellytheater.org

In 1983, Harlem-born playwright Arthur Miller went to Beijing to direct the first-ever Chinese-language version of his 1949 Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, Death of a Salesman, at the prestigious Beijing Renyi Theater (the People’s Art Theater), even though he could not speak a word of Mandarin and most of the cast did not understand English. He was invited by artistic director Cao Yu and actor and future vice minister of culture Ying Ruocheng, who he had met when Miller and his third wife, Austrian photographer Inge Morath, visited China in 1978.

Manhattan-based Yangtze Repertory Theatre, in conjunction with Gung Ho Projects, tells the story of that seminal production in the funny and poignant Salesman之死, which opened tonight at the Connelly Theater.

In his 1984 diary, Salesman in Beijing, Miller wrote, “The truth was that I had no way of knowing if the Chinese authorities were merely interested in using the play for political purposes or if the absence of salesmen in China and the presence of exotic American elements in the play would make it little more than a misunderstood curiosity in Beijing. . . . There would be something impudent in speaking of Chinese isolation from the world rather than the world’s from China were it not that she herself now recognizes modernization as her first priority, and that means taking what she finds useful from the West. In the theater and other arts, however, the decade of the Cultural Revolution completed her total break with quite literally everything that was going on beyond her boundaries and indeed from her own past accomplishments.”

Jeremy Tiang’s hundred-minute Salesman之死 was inspired by Miller’s memoir and interviews with original company members as well as Shen Huihui, the Peking University professor who was hired by Ying to serve as interpreter despite her total lack of experience as a translator. He had chosen her because she could speak English and had written her dissertation on Death of a Salesman. Shen (Jo Mei) serves as the narrator of the play, occasionally directly addressing the audience, who are seated around three sides of the stage. Chika Shimizu’s initially spare set features a central platform with chairs; in the back right corner, Xingying Peng operates the surtitles and indicates scene changes by softly banging on her desk. The curtain in front of the main stage eventually opens to reveal the more crowded set for the presentation of excerpts from Renyi’s Death of a Salesman.

Miller (Sonnie Brown) arrives carrying a suitcase, evoking his main character, Willy Loman, who will be portrayed by Ying (Lydia Li). Theater legend Zhu Lin (Sandia Ang) is Willy’s wife, Linda, with Li Shilong (Julia Gu) as Biff, Mi Tiezeng (Claire Hsu) as Happy, and Liu Jun (Hsu) as the woman from Boston. After the first reading, Miller is concerned that it took four hours, the actors spoke way too slowly, and no one is going to be able to make sense of any of it. The cast is more worried that the audience will miss their buses home, thinking that in New York, at least they had the subway, which runs all night long. That comparison is the first of many between East and West, from the use of makeup in theater to the differences between capitalism and communism and the concept of freedom. The cast has no idea what football is (Biff was a high school gridiron star), has trouble deciphering the scene in which Biff catches Willy with his Boston mistress, and doesn’t even know what a traveling salesman or insurance is.

Arthur Miller (Sonnie Brown) doesn’t like what he sees in Chinese version of Death of a Salesman (photo by Maria Baranova)

“In America, they have this thing called ‘insurance.’ People get money for dying,” Shen tells the actors. When Miller explains that Willy’s family might not get any money if it’s proved that he died by suicide, Mi says, “What, so he died for nothing?” Li responds, “Obviously. If you could earn a chunk of money so easily, you’d have people killing themselves all over the place.”

As Miller noted in his diary, “The cast did not seem any more tense than an American one on the first day, but it is still hard to judge the actors’ feelings. One has only their controlled expressions to go by. I am like a deaf man searching their eyes for emotions, which finally I cannot read.”

The most cynical one of all is longtime Renyi designer Huang (Gu), who is upset that Miller has rejected nearly all of his ideas, from costumes, the bedroom, and wigs to lighting, a refrigerator, and the empty space Miller insists must be in the front of the stage for Willy’s memories. “When Willy steps past this wall, he’ll be in his memory,” Shen says to a confused Huang, who steps forward and back several times, declaring, “Really! Reality! Memory! Reality! Memory! Reality! Amazing!” Miller asks, “Is he okay?” Shen replies, “He’s just excited. Renyi plays never have people walking through walls.”

As opening night approaches, more cultural differences arise and just about everyone worries that this undertaking was a big mistake.

Chinese company performs scene from Death of a Salesman in play-within-a-play (photo by Maria Baranova)

The world premiere of Salesman之死 comes at a challenging time, with relations between the United States and China teetering dangerously on the edge. It’s now more than fifty years since President Richard M. Nixon made his historic visit to China, shaking hands with Premier Zhou Enlai, and forty years since Renyi staged Death of a Salesman. Tiang’s Salesman之死 captures a moment in time when the two nations worked together culturally, resulting in a stirring success. Obie-winning director Michael Leibenluft (I’ll Never Love Again, The Subtle Body) ably guides the show through its multiple languages and doubling of parts, which sometimes requires fast costume changes. The costumes are by Karen Boyer, with lighting by Daisy Long, sound by Kai-Luen Liang and Da Xu, and projections by Cinthia Chen that include clips from Renyi’s production of Cao’s (Ang) 1979 Thunderstorm and the final version of Death of a Salesman. You can watch the full Chinese Death of a Salesman from 1983 here.

Mei (Lunch Bunch, Anatomy of a Suicide) leads a solid and engaging all-female Asian cast as Shen, who is more than just an interpreter; she is a bridge between the US and China, one that we could use today. Shen is a steadying influence amid all the disagreements and misunderstandings among the company and Miller as Tiang (A Dream of Red Pavilions, State of Emergency), who has translated more than two dozen Chinese plays and novels into English, reveals how universal the themes of Miller’s play are, as well as the creation of theater itself.

As Miller wrote in his diary, “The current, post-Mao political line seems to come down to ‘Enrich Yourselves!’ Has the moment arrived when capital must be accumulated in China, whatever the cost? Salesman is fundamentally related to this situation. Willy Loman fell off the horse reaching for the brass ring, but he was deep in the game everyone else was playing.”

Salesman之死 is an enriching experience, no matter one’s cultural heritage.

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