featured

THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT/ EISENHOWER: THIS PIECE OF GROUND

THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT
Federal Hall National Memorial
15 Pine St. at Nassau St.
Tuesday – Saturday through July 22, free
federalhall.org

I had a rather telling kickoff to the long Independence Day holiday weekend.

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was ratified by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. It wasn’t until 1870 that it was made an unpaid holiday for federal employees; it became a paid federal holiday in 1938, leading to barbecues, parades, fireworks, and retail sales specials.

The preamble to the document begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For 247 years, that’s been a nonstop roller coaster ride for many Americans.

After working half a day on Friday, I went to Federal Hall National Memorial on Pine St. to see The Democracy Project, a new site-specific play written by six award-winning writers. The forty-five-minute show was commissioned by the Federal Hall Conservancy, which brings “together the nation’s finest storytellers and scholars, writers and artists, poets, playwrights, and pundits to probe the ideas and ideals, flaws and contradictions of our democracy, a Constitutional experiment, which began at Federal Hall in 1789.”

Federal Hall was America’s first capitol building, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first president on April 30, 1789. The story starts just before that, as George (Tom Nelis) debates what he will say in his speech and what he will wear when he delivers it. Also sharing their thoughts are George’s wife, Martha (Erin Anderson); future president James Madison (Anderson); Henry Knox (Anderson), the first secretary of war; Muscogee leader Alexander McGillivray (Jake Hart); Billy Lee (Nathan Hinton), George’s enslaved valet; Ona Judge (Tatiana Williams), Martha’s enslaved maid who was born into slavery at Mount Vernon; and a southern senator (Hart) who talks turkey with George. The cast also portray themselves as a troupe putting on a show about democracy in historic Federal Hall; when it is announced that one actor has just called in sick, an IT employee named Alicia (Williams) is called into action, handed a script, and told to just do her best, which is the American way. Alicia, who is Black, adds sharp commentary throughout regarding the treatment of Blacks since 1619 through to today — literally that day, June 30, 2023.

Deb O’s set includes replicas of George’s, Martha’s, and Madison’s beds, Chief McGillivray’s regalia, a velvet wingback club chair, and the pedestal on which stands the statue of George Washington outside on the steps of Federal Hall; Deb O also designed the period costumes. Among the topics that are raised are ensuring that the new country is not a monarchy like England, that there should be a separation between church and state, how Blacks should count as only three-fifths of a person, the Bill of Rights, and the notion of freedom itself. Around the circular space are various artifacts that are always on display at the historic hall, which was built as a Greek Revival–style Custom House that opened in 1842 following the demolition of the original structure in 1812 when it was no longer needed.

About halfway through the show, shortly after Billy Lee learns that he won’t be freed until George’s death and that Ona won’t gain her freedom until Martha passes — Hinton was rolling a tea cart when a large glass object fell off and shattered in the middle of the floor, shards scattered across a significant portion of the set. The audience — eighty people sitting on five rafters of four wooden benches each — held its collective breath for a moment, wondering whether this was part of the plot. It wasn’t.

One of the stage managers quickly ran to a room in the back, emerging a few minutes later with a broom and dustpan. Meanwhile, the play continued, with each actor bending down to pick up a few pieces of broken glass without pausing the narrative. At one point, it looked like Williams, as Ona, was going to be given the job of sweeping up the breakage, but fortunately that didn’t happen; I couldn’t help but think how awful that would have been, making a Black actress playing an enslaved maid and a modern-day techie clean up the mess.

However, the accident worked within the context of the play, representing the shattering of so many dreams of freedom of Black, brown, and Indigenous people in America. Later, the song “Democracy Is Messy,” by Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop), took on an added meaning because of the incident. The show’s other writers, who collaborated on everything together, are WGA Award winner Tanya Barfield (Bright Half Life, Mrs. America), Pulitzer finalist Lisa D’Amour (Ocean Filibuster, Airline Highway), MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Larissa FastHorse (For the People, The Thanksgiving Play), Obie winner Melissa James Gibson (What Rhymes with America, House of Cards), and Tony and Pulitzer winner Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park, Downstate).

With all that talent, it’s a shame the play, directed by Tamilla Woodard (La Ruta, Men on Boats) and Tai Thompson (Dark Star from Harlem, Kleonostium) isn’t more provocative; instead, it caters too much to history aficionados and tourists, avoiding hard-hitting controversy. But it makes its points, and the cast, led by Williams (Confederates, The Legend of Georgia McBride) and Nelis (Girl from the North Country, Indecent) and also including Renata Eastlick and Joel Van Liew, is extremely friendly and likable.

Michael R. Jackson previews “Democracy Is Messy” at Works in Process at the Guggenheim in 2022 (photo by Titus Ogilvie Laing)

When I got home, I was overwhelmed by the news that the Supreme Court had voted 6–3 in favor of Lorie Smith in the case of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis et al., in which Smith sued in order to allow her to refuse to design wedding websites for same-sex couples — even though the situation had never arisen. In his opinion of the court, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “Like many States, Colorado has a law forbidding businesses from engaging in discrimination when they sell goods and services to the public. Laws along these lines have done much to secure the civil rights of all Americans. But in this particular case Colorado does not just seek to ensure the sale of goods or services on equal terms. It seeks to use its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not believe.”

In her dissent, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, argued, “Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women’s rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims.”

The day before, the court had struck down President Biden’s student debt relief plan and ruled in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College in favor of “race-neutral” college admissions, effectively getting rid of affirmative action in higher education. In 1983, future justice Clarence Thomas, who had benefited himself from affirmative action, told the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that “God only knows where I would be today” without laws that were “critical to minorities and women in this society.” In his Students for Fair Admissions concurring opinion, Thomas asserted, using the term race-neutral several times, “I write separately to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution; to clarify that all forms of discrimination based on race — including so-called affirmative action — are prohibited under the Constitution; and to emphasize the pernicious effects of all such discrimination.”

In her blistering dissent, Justice Jackson wrote, “No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.”

Admission is free to The Democracy Project, but it appears that reserving advance tickets through the website doesn’t matter; when I arrived with my QR code, there was no one checking it. Most of the attendees just walked in and sat down, many clearly without RSVPs. When I asked one of the stage managers what would have happened if I had shown up and there were no seats left, she replied, “You can reserve tickets online?”

EISENHOWER: THIS PIECE OF GROUND
Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West 46th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Thursday – Monday through August 20, $55-$125
www.eisenhowertheplay.com

That night I headed to the Theatre at St. Clement’s to see Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, Richard Hellesen’s new one-man bioplay in which Tony winner John Rubinstein portrays Dwight D. Eisenhower, the thirty-fourth president of the United States. The banner ads for Eisenhower and The Democracy Project are both prominently designed in red, white, and blue, with stars on them. It’s August 1962, and the seventy-one-year-old Eisenhower is at the family farm in Gettysburg working on his next memoir, about his time in the White House (1953–61). The show kickstarts with a prayer — it does take place in a church, after all — in which Eisenhower wishes, “May cooperation be the mutual aim of those who, under our Constitution, hold to differing political faiths, so that all may work for the good of our beloved country. The strength of free people lies in unity; their danger, in discord.”

Eisenhower is furious that the New York Times Magazine has just published the article “Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians. Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average, and Failure,” in which Ike finished twenty-second out of thirty-one. (Some presidents were not included because of length of tenure and other reasons.) For 110 minutes (with intermission), Eisenhower provides a stark rebuttal to the claims made in the article, defending his record and the choices he made in Washington, DC. He quickly points out that when he was asked to run for the office, he was not even a member of a party. “Now, I did everything I could to stay out of politics — didn’t even choose a party. I wasn’t going to be called a Republican or a Democrat ’til I knew that one of ’em, at least, stood for things I thought were important to this country. Whatever the party, if you don’t have your foundation in causes that are right, and moral, you’re not a political party at all — you’re just a conspiracy to seize power.”

Many of his pronouncements, which are adapted from speeches, literature, and letters, are eerily relevant to what is happening in today’s America. He talks about his role in helping the civil rights movement (“Under the law, there cannot be any second-class citizens in this country. Period.”); battling Sen. Joe McCarthy’s hunt for Communists (“It wasn’t about loyalty to the country — it was about using fear to set up loyalty to Joe McCarthy.”) and the America First movement; railing against McCarthy’s “weasel assistant” Roy Cohn, who was in charge of banning books, among other things; meeting with Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev at the farm, seeking to limit nuclear weapons; trying to protect the Little Rock Nine, Black students who had to wind through a violent white mob just to go to school; discussing visiting his first concentration camp and deciding then and there to have it filmed (“So if anyone ever dared to say, oh, those stories of Nazi brutality are just propaganda, we could show ’em the truth.”); surmising that his vice president, Richard Nixon, was probably done after losing the presidency to John F. Kennedy; and attempting to pass a voting rights act that Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson ultimately gutted.

Nearly every one of those points relates directly to twenty-first-century America, as politicians and lobbyists rip up the Civil Rights Act of 1964, US governors make it illegal for certain books and subjects to be taught in schools, anti-Semitism and white nationalism are on the rise, and former president Donald J. Trump, whose heroes include Cohn, calls his haters Communists (and nastier insults), supports Russian president Vladimir Putin, promotes an America First mentality, and has praised and promised to pardon a violent mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Directed by Peter Ellenstein (Assassins, Rocket to the Moon), the New Los Angeles Repertory Company production maintains a fairly even tone throughout but would benefit from a few more oomph moments; it occasionally gets confusing whenever Eisenhower, who is making an audiotape response to the Times Magazine article, looks out into the audience, as if he knows we are there even though he is actually speaking into the recording machine. In his first solo play, the seventy-six-year-old Rubinstein (Pippin, Children of a Lesser God) is confident and determined as the title character; he might not look and sound exactly like Ike, but he inhabits the role with grace and elegance.

Michael Deegan and Sarah Conly’s set is a re-creation of Eisenhower’s study at the farm, complete with five chairs, a main desk, an easel where Ike painted, and a backdrop that serves as a window to the vast expanse of the family’s land. The projections are by Joe Huppert, who adds archival footage of Eisenhower’s family, from his parents to his siblings to his own children and grandchildren, as well as other historical figures and episodes mentioned in the play.

It was impossible for me not to think about the Supreme Court, racism, anti-Semitism, ethnocentricity, classism, education, and the dismantling of the separation between church and state when Eisenhower, who died in 1969 at the age of seventy-eight, says about the segregated army, “You’d’ve had to be blind not to see how the country was going to have to change after the war, if those words ‘liberty and justice for all’ that we’d just fought for meant anything. We had to work toward a time when there would be no discrimination, of any kind. And I tried to do that, as far as I felt I could.”

Those issues go back to the start of this supposedly “more perfect Union,” when Gen. George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States of America, declaring from a balcony at Federal Hall in New York City, “I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good; for I assure myself that whilst you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen and a regard for the public harmony will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question how far the former can be impregnably fortified or the latter be safely and advantageously promoted.”

John Rubinstein portrays Dwight D. Eisenhower in new play (photo by Maria Baranova)

Meanwhile, this Fourth of July, the New York government is already circulating an alert regarding the air quality on Independence Day as smoke from the Canadian wildfires descends on the state again. “It is impossible for us to predict what will happen for the holiday celebrations on Monday and Tuesday the Fourth, but, again, we’re asking people to be very, very vigilant before you plan your outdoor activities: Know what the numbers are, know the precautions you can take, because otherwise it may seriously have an effect on you.” The air quality — which many contend has nothing to do with climate change despite mounting evidence to the contrary — also might impact the fireworks themselves. Even though I live only a few blocks from where the barges will be on the East River, I might not be able to see the display at all, only smoke.

As they sing in The Democracy Project, “Democracy is messy / And everybody’s dream is not the same / So we push up the hill / And we do our best to play an unfair game.”

Democracy might be inherently messy and a Sisyphean task, but it’s in serious danger right now as we, the citizens of this republic, having been handed down the responsibilities to keep this Great American Experiment on track, keep insisting instead on ripping it apart, refusing to pick up the pieces and put it back together again. The Democracy Project was commissioned for the New Day at Federal Hall initiative celebrating America’s 250th birthday in 2026, but there’s no guarantee what the country will be like by then, who will be president and what they will stand for, and against.

Happy Fourth, everyone!

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

60th ANNIVERSARY 4K RESTORATION: CONTEMPT

Brigitte Bardot shows off both her acting talent and beautiful body in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt

CONTEMPT (LE MEPRIS) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
June 30 – July 13
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

French auteur Jean-Luc Godard, who died last September at the age of ninety-one, didn’t hold back any of his contempt for Hollywood cinema in his multilayered masterpiece Contempt, which is being shown June 30 – July 13 in a sixtieth-anniversary 4K restoration at Film Forum. Loosely based on Alberto Moravia’s Il Disprezzo, Contempt stars Michel Piccoli as Paul Javal, a French screenwriter called to Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios by American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance ) to perform rewrites on Austrian director Fritz Lang’s (played by Lang himself) adaptation of The Odyssey by ancient Greek writer Homer. Paul brings along his young wife, the beautiful Camille (Brigitte Bardot), whom Prokosch takes an immediate liking to. With so many languages being spoken, Prokosch’s assistant, Francesca Vanini (Giorgia Moll), serves as translator, but getting the various characters to communicate with one another and say precisely what is on their mind grows more and more difficult as the story continues and Camille and Paul’s love starts to crumble. Contempt is a spectacularly made film, bathed in deep red, white, and blue, as Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard poke fun at the American way of life. (Both Godard and Coutard appear in the film, the former as Lang’s assistant director, the latter as Lang’s cameraman — as well as the cameraman who aims the lens right at the viewer at the start of the film.)

Producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) doesn’t always have the kindest of words for director Fritz Lang in Contempt

Bardot is sensational in one of her best roles, whether teasing Paul at a marvelously filmed sequence in their Rome apartment (watch for him opening and stepping through a door without any glass), lying naked on the bed, asking Paul what he thinks of various parts of her body (while Coutard changes the filter from a lurid red to a lush blue), or pouting when it appears that Paul is willing to pimp her out in order to get the writing job. Palance is a hoot as the big-time producer, regularly reading fortune-cookie-like quotes from an extremely little red book he carries around that couldn’t possibly hold so many words. And Lang, who left Germany in the mid-1930s for a career in Hollywood, has a ball playing a version of himself, an experienced veteran willing to put up with Prokosch’s crazy demands. Vastly entertaining from start to finish, Contempt is filled with a slew of inside jokes about the filmmaking industry and even Godard’s personal and professional life, along with some of the French director’s expected assortment of political statements and a string of small flourishes that are easy to miss but add to the immense fun, all set to a gorgeous romantic score by Georges Delerue.

QUEENS ON SCREEN: CHOP SHOP

Ale (Alejandro Polanco) does what he needs to do to get by in Queens-set Chop Shop

CHOP SHOP (Ramin Bahrani, 2007)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, June 30, at 7:30
Sunday, July 2, 2:00
718-777-6800
movingimage.us

Set amid the junkyards and auto-body shops in the shadow of Shea Stadium, Ramin Bahrani’s follow-up to his indie hit Man Push Cart is a gritty, realistic drama of family and community. Filmed in thirty days in the Iron Triangle neighborhood of Willets Point, Queens, Chop Shop stars Alejandro Polanco as Ale, a street-smart twelve-year-old boy who works for Rob (Rob Sowulski), calling cars into the repair shop, stealing spare parts, and learning virtually every aspect of the trade, legal and not. Ale lives in a small upstairs room in the garage with his sister, sixteen-year-old Isamar (Isamar Gonzalez), who by day works in a food van and at night makes extra cash by getting into cars and trucks with strange men. Neither Ale nor Izzy goes to school; instead, they’re working hard, saving up money to buy a food van and start their own business, but their life is fraught with danger and difficulty nearly every step of the way. Written by Bahrani (Goodbye Solo, At Any PriceChop Shop is an honest, frightening, yet sweet slice of life that takes place not far from a sign at Shea that announces, “Where Dreams Happen.”

Director Ramin Bahrani frames a shot on the Willets Point set of Chop Shop

Polanco gives a remarkable performance as Ale, a rough yet vulnerable kid who has been dealt a tough hand but just forges ahead, attempting to make the most out of his meager life, trying to find his own piece of the American dream. Whether hanging out with his best friend, Carlos (Carlos Zapata), looking after his sister, doing a special job for Ahmad (Man Push Cart’s Ahmad Razvi), or counting his pay in front of his boss – Sowulski really does own the garage where most of the movie is filmed – Ale is an extraordinary character, played by an extraordinary young boy in his very first film. A subtle, unforgettable experience, Chop Shop is screening June 30 and July 2 in the ongoing Museum of the Moving Image series “Queens on Screen,” which previously presented such films as The Wiz, The Untouchables, and Kiss of Death.

THE DOCTOR

Juliet Stevenson delivers a ferocious performance of intense precision in The Doctor (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)

THE DOCTOR
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Saturday through August 19, $54-$208
www.armoryonpark.org

“I’m a doctor,” neurosurgeon Ruth Wolff declares throughout Robert Icke’s The Doctor, while others keep categorizing her by her race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Identity politics and cancel culture collide in complicated ways with faith and medicine in the riveting play, which also takes on conscious and unconscious bias and the battle between science and religion, in a freely adapted update of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 Professor Bernhardi.

Wolff, portrayed by a fierce, unstoppable Juliet Stevenson with boundless energy, is the founding director of the Elizabeth Institute, a well-funded private facility that specializes in treating Alzheimer’s patients. Wolff is currently caring for Emily, a fourteen-year-old girl dying of sepsis after an unregulated abortion; when a priest, Father Jacob (John Mackay), arrives unannounced to deliver last rites, Wolff refuses him entry, stating that whether to receive his visit is Emily’s decision, not that of the priest or the girl’s parents, who are not immediately available.

“Let me make it clearer. Emily is gravely ill. Emily’s parents asked me to be here and to attend to her. Is that not obvious?” Father Jacob demands.

Wolff responds, “It’s obvious when the patient has requested religious assistance, because it’s written on her medical notes. In this instance, there’s nothing of the sort. . . . I have no way of knowing whether she last attended church in a Christening gown. The only thing of relevance is what she herself believes — and I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ve ever met her.”

As Father Jacob attempts to force his way into Emily’s room, Wolff blocks his way — there is some kind of physical confrontation, so cleverly staged that it is impossible to tell who might have struck whom. Emily then dies an awful death, and the characters choose sides based on their personal and professional beliefs, seeing what they want to see, as public pressure builds against Wolff.

The board of the Elizabeth Institute meet to decide the fate of their chair and director in Robert Icke’s The Doctor (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)

Senior consultant and deputy director Robert Hardiman (Naomi Wirthner) views the complex situation as a chance to seize power. Dr. Michael Copley (Chris Osikanlu Colquhoun) displays full confidence in Wolff, but Dr. Paul Murphy (Daniel Rabin), putting faith before medicine, is insulted by what Wolff has done, declaring, “This is a Christian country.” Roberts (Mariah Louca), the press liaison who is Jewish, is having trouble dealing with the media, particularly as the religious angle grows more volatile.

Minister for Health Jemima Flint (Preeya Kalidas) expresses support for Wolff and dangles critical government financing if she apologizes. The new junior staff member (Jaime Schwarz) is generally bewildered by the controversy, suddenly learning that being a doctor is more than just treating patients. Professor Cyprian (Doña Croll) endorses everything Wolff did regarding Emily. Meanwhile, the search for a new head of pharmacology becomes an object lesson in decisions based on identity instead of merit.

Whenever she’s at home, Wolff is visited by Sami (Matilda Tucker), a high school student who lives upstairs. The two talk about sex, witches, and death. “We’re all going to die, though,” Sami posits. “Like — a sell-by date for your soul. It’s a ‘when’ not an ‘if.’ Could be tomorrow. Or tonight. In here. Now.”

Meanwhile, Wolff’s partner, Charlie (Juliet Garricks), mysteriously shows up at the institute, introducing each scene. “It might be the moment to bring me up,” Charlie offers. “At work? They don’t get my life. They don’t get to be involved,” Ruth responds. Charlie: “They don’t get to know about me.” Wolff: “What?” Charlie: “You know.” Wolff: “And why would I not talk about you?” Charlie: “Because you are ashamed of the way it makes you seem.” Wolff: “I go in tomorrow and start talking about you, now it’s going to seem like — like I’m asking for my ‘I’m a human too’ badge — some get me off the hook scheme. No. Not doing it.”

In the shorter second act, Wolff must defend herself on television, facing a panel of presumed experts spouting off about religion, abortion and medical ethics, Jewish history and culture, race and privilege, and bias. Wolff sits in a chair with her back to the audience as she is grilled, her face projected on two large screens, looming behind the pontificating blowhards in front of her. “My identity isn’t the issue,” she argues again and again, but no one is listening. Wolff refuses to see herself as a hero or a villain, but there are certain truths that she’s not listening to either.

Hildegard Bechtler’s set is a semicircular wooden wall that serves as a kind of protective barrier, keeping the characters trapped in rooms the way they are trapped by their minds, locked in judging others, with a turntable that rotates agonizingly slowly, unlike the wheels of justice in the court of public opinion; tables and chairs are moved around and Natasha Chivers’s lighting shifts intensity to signify changing from the institute’s bright conference room to Wolff’s much darker apartment. Bechtler also designed the costumes, primarily doctors’ white coats over everyday wear that tends toward black. Tom Gibbons’s sound design flows from board arguments to television show debate to intimate personal discussions, with Hannah Ledwidge adding drums and percussion from an open cube perched over the stage in the back.

Icke (Judas, Animal Farm) knows the Wade Thompson Drill Hall well, having previously presented Hamlet/Oresteia and Enemy of the People there in just the last two years, making fine use of the grand space. The show is extremely talky, with lots of explication and more than enough didacticism, particularly in the second act, and a late scene between Wolff and Father Jacob is sentimental overkill. In addition, during the TV segment, Wolff uses a racist word that ignites further altercation, but it feels forced to add unnecessary verbal fisticuffs.

The excellent cast challenges stereotypes and categorization by portraying characters that don’t look like them (except for Ruth and Flint); for example, whites play Blacks and women play men, although it is not immediately apparent. (Tucker is a standout as the unpredictable Sami.) In the script, Ickes notes, “Actors should be cast with and against the identity of the characters . . . other than in the debate section, where ideally the actors play with their identity. The design is that the audience have to reconsider characters once an aspect of their identity is revealed by the play.” It can get confusing, but that is part of the point, as Ickes lays the groundwork for people to stop classifying, and demonizing, people by race, gender, religion, et al.

But the show belongs to Emmy nominee and Olivier winner Stevenson (Truly, Madly, Deeply; Death and the Maiden), a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court Theatre, and the National Theatre whose only previous North American stage appearance was as Desiree in a 2003 New York City Opera production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music with Jeremy Irons, Claire Bloom, and Anna Kendrick. (Her extraordinary voice narrated Blindness through special headphones at the Daryl Roth two years ago.) Stevenson — Icke wrote the play with her in mind to be the star — is electrifying as Wolff, whether staring someone down, stating her case to doubters, or running around the room in a whirlwind of furious, uncontrollable energy. She stomps across the stage, firmly entrenched in Wolff’s repeated assertions that she is a doctor, justifying her decisions over and over again by adding, “I’m crystal clear.”

The Viennese Schnitzler (Liebelei, Reigen, Das weite Land) wrote dozens of plays, short stories, and novels that were ahead of their time, exploring sexual awareness, social convention, and anti-Semitism in ways that were controversial in his era but relate to what is happening in the twenty-first century. About midway through the first act, when Wolff explains to Copley and Murphy that she is not a practicing Jew, Murphy says, “But you would have been thought of as Jewish — in the 1940s.” She responds by getting to the heart of the story: “Maybe there might be more sensitive ways to reflect on the Jewish identity than the ones pioneered by the Nazis. Thank you, Michael, yes, you and I lost family in that war, and they had stars sewn onto their lapels, but their legacy is this: We now get to choose what defines us — so can we please get on with our lives.”

As we learn in The Doctor, that prescription is not so easy to fill.

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

A SIMULACRUM

Actor, magician, and illusion designer Steve Cuiffo teams up with an unseen Lucas Hnath in A Simulacrum (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

A SIMULACRUM
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 9, $77-$97
atlantictheater.org

Obie-winning playwright Lucas Hnath has a penchant for incorporating elements of stage magic into his works, many of which “take place in the thin place between fiction and reality, between the living and the dead, between performer and attendee,” as I wrote about his 2019 play The Thin Place, which involved ghost stories and a psychic medium. A Doll’s House Part 2 was set in a bright, heavenly room that jutted into the audience. Hillary and Clinton imagines an alternate universe where Hillary Clinton is still running for president. Red Speedo transformed New York Theatre Workshop into an active swimming pool. Dana H. is a true story told via Deirdre O’Connell sitting in a chair and lip-syncing to a recording of Hnath’s mother describing a kidnapping. A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney is narrated by Walt Disney after his death. And in The Christians, Hnath questions faith in God, its own kind of magic.

Hnath tackles real prestidigitation in A Simulacrum, collaborating with actor, magician, and illusion designer Steve Cuiffo, who previously teamed with Hnath on The Thin Place and A Public Reading and has also worked on such visually dazzling shows as Old Hats, Geoff Sobelle’s The Object Lesson, and Anne Juren and Annie Dorsen’s Magical.

Beginning in August 2021, Cuiffo and Hnath spent more than fifty hours workshopping the play in four sessions, as Hnath interviewed Cuiffo about his life and his career and had him perform tricks, ultimately assigning him the task of creating an original illusion that his magic-hating wife, Eleanor, would love. The workshops were recorded, and Hnath edited them down to ninety minutes, cutting out Cuiffo’s voice. Onstage, Cuiffo performs his part of the conversation live, aided by an in-ear device that feeds him his words, which he speaks verbatim.

Cuiffo walks onto the set, based on their rehearsal room on East Fifteenth St., goes over to a table, pops a cassette into a tape recorder, and presses play. Hnath is heard saying, “Um, the image I have in my mind is there might be a table and a chair onstage, and maybe at the beginning of the show, Steve comes out and, uh, there might be a tape player or a tape deck onstage, and he might put a tape in the tape deck, press play, and you’ll hear my voice, all of the questions and things I say during this workshop, and Steve will be re-creating his half of it live, something like that.” Hnath has essentially told us what has just happened, like magic; we also now understand that Cuiffo’s timing must be perfect so as not to mess up the precise dialogue, which he must deliver to the second.

Louisa Thompson’s set also includes a table off to the side with Cuiffo’s tools of the trade and a life-size photograph of one of the walls in the actual rehearsal space. Tyler Micoleau keeps it bright, mimicking the lighting from the workshops. Cuiffo looks past the audience at an imaginary Hnath, speaking directly to him as he discusses his influences and performs tricks that don’t necessarily impress Hnath even when they do impress the audience. Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design maintains the feeling that Cuiffo and Hnath are actually interacting live, although Hnath’s words are scratchy and sometimes hard to make out, as the tape recorder is an old one.

Steve Cuiffo performs a newspaper magic trick in A Simulacrum at Atlantic Stage 2 (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Cuiffo works with a deck of cards, a newspaper, rubber bands, a coin, cups and balls, and Huggums the doll and talks about his wife and son, magic tropes, his childhood, and Harry Houdini. All the while, Hnath asks questions like a dramaturg ensuring that all the dramatic bases are covered. “I don’t know that I’m really parsing any of it,” Hnath says. “We’re losing Steve, we’re losing Steve’s voice. . . .” He adds, “I just want to see stuff I’ve never seen before.”

Hnath is also imagining himself as a member of the audience, as if he’s one of us, watching the show and determining what’s working and what’s not; several times he echoes what we are thinking. For example, the coin trick might be fun, but it’s not what we came to see at the Atlantic Stage 2. “Um, I wrote I’m interested in a trick — you creating a trick, that will always involve some kind of real failure,” Hnath says, getting to the heart of what live theater can be. Not everything clicks; some of the tricks lack a certain oomph in this setting even when they are not failures.

Later, Cuiffo admits, “So the assignments caused me . . . tremendous stress for weeks and weeks.” That kicks off an exciting race to the finish that doesn’t quite end with a flashy Vegas-y flourish.

Cuiffo is a thoroughly charming and engaging character; you keep your eyes fixed on him not just because you want to try to figure out how he does his sleight of hand but because it’s fun being in his company. Hnath, who is a participant and the director, can be a stern taskmaster and judge, but it comes across that they enjoy working together. At one point, Hnath shares a memory about how he used a magic trick as a kid to help him through a terrible fight between his mother and biological father, which hearkens to how writers reach into their own lives to create theater.

A simulacrum is a representation or semblance of something; thus, in the title alone, Hnath and Cuiffo are telling us that what we’re witnessing is not an exact science but a portrayal of something else, much like theater and magic. There’s a “Now you see it, now you don’t” aspect to A Simulacrum; you may never figure out exactly what is going on, but you’ll be glad you were there to experience it.

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

THE WHITNEY ALBUM

Ben Jalosa Williams, Jillian Walker, and Stephanie Weeks star in The Whitney Album at Soho Rep (photo by Lanna Apisukh)

THE WHITNEY ALBUM
Soho Rep
46 Walker St. between Broadway & Church St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $45 ($.99 Sundays)
sohorep.org

Whitney Elizabeth Houston died on February 11, 2012, at the age of forty-eight; the cause of death was “drowning” and “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.” The Newark-born singer and actress, who has sold more than two hundred million records, serves as inspiration for a celebration of Black woman creators in Jillian Walker’s The Whitney Album, a ritual performance continuing at Soho Rep through July 2.

In the lobby is a table where everyone is invited to say a prayer, set an intention, use essential oils, pour wanter into a vessel, or add the names of Black femme ancestors, honoring “the legacy of the Black Divine Feminine and the souls that have crossed over.”

As the audience enters the theater proper, Stevie Wonder’s seminal 1976 double album, Songs in the Key of Life, a favorite of Houston’s, is playing on a small turntable on the floor. (There are several other records in a pile, so they might alternate music on any given night.) Peiyi Wong’s set is a welcoming space with two cushions between a pair of floor lamps, a bench with ritual objects and sound equipment on it, and a round gold bowl in the center, all surrounded by a circle of purplish blue fabric. There’s a rolling chair stage left; in the far corner is a keyboard and more audio equipment, where sound designer Ben Jalosa Williams sits; a dark room looms in the back as a place for devotion; and an oval cutout above the dark room features sparkly silver mylar. Oona Curley’s lighting changes colors to set different moods. Large wood rectangles on the walls offer surprises when opened by Walker and her cohort, Stephanie Weeks.

The audience is encouraged to wear white clothing and take their shoes and socks off as a way to participate in the experience. Divided into three sections — “A Lecture in Love,” “The exhale scenes,” and “The Alice Prophecy” — the show begins with Gogo (Walker) walking up the first few steps into the audience and, while making gentle, intimate eye contact with everyone, explains that she recently did not get a full-time professorship at Harvard and studied to become an Afro-indigenous priest. “One of the main things I’ve been trained to be, to do, in my practice is to find things that are hidden, to bring hidden things into the light,” she says. “I do this by calling on my Ancestors and listening to them to guide me to what is seemingly lost.”

Jillian Walker’s The Whitney Album is a ritual performance honoring Black femme creators (photo by Lanna Apisukh)

For ninety minutes, Gogo directly and indirectly references Nikki Giovanni, bell hooks, Phillis Wheatley, Lauryn Hill, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lucille Clifton, Alice Coltrane, and Alice Childress, cotton fields, slavery, and chains, while exploring the fame that built up and then beat down Whitney Houston. Walker seeks to show that Whitney was more than just “the Voice,” that she was a person with a body, a soul, a heart, a wife and a mother, battling against “colonial temporalities.” Gogo asks, “How do I/we honor Whitney Houston by way of Sally Hemings? How do I/we create a just historical space for her legacy?”

Gogo and Stephanie sing an alternate national anthem. Whitney gets into a bathtub and has a conversation with her longtime assistant and partner, Robyn Crawford. Clips of Whitney sharing her thoughts and dreams with the media occasionally are heard or projected. An interview with a white journalist (Williams), arranged by Whitney’s mother, Cissy, to restore her daughter’s reputation, is re-created. Gogo and Stephanie put on costumes (by Jojo Siu) and wigs (by Earon Nealey) that match Whitney’s. Whitney admits to Robyn, “All I wanted was to hold on to myself, you know?, while I gave myself away, my whole self. And that included the parts other people didn’t like, because they weren’t shiny, they didn’t fit to reflect the light.” Gogo and Stephanie add more water to the golden vessel.

The show concludes with Gogo asking for members of the audience to join her, Stephanie, and Ben on the floor for two final songs with singalong parts.

Directed by Jenny Koons (Regretfully, So the Birds Are; Theatre for One: I’m Not the Stranger You Think I Am), The Whitney Album can be haphazard, like a record that doesn’t always gel from song to song but has many special moments. It might not be Songs in the Key of Life, but it doesn’t have to be; it’s enchanting and confusing, mystical and metaphysical, spiritual and capricious. But it’s also uniquely beautiful as it takes on how Black woman creators become trapped by a consumptive history that treats them unfairly.

“Come to my ashram, too,” Gogo says after praising Alice Coltrane. “My temple is open.” And all are welcome.

MONSOON WEDDING: THE MUSICAL

Mira Nair’s hit film is now a musical playing at St. Ann’s Warehouse (photo by Matthew Murphy)

MONSOON WEDDING
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
Through June 25, $59-$159
718-254-8779
stannswarehouse.org

St. Ann’s Warehouse is hosting a celebration to remember with award-winning filmmaker Mira Nair’s return to theater, Monsoon Wedding: The Musical. Fifteen years in the making, the two-and-a-half-hour show might be overstuffed and underdeveloped, but it is also a whole lot of fun.

The festivities begin with a preshow march in the lobby with members of the Brooklyn band Red Baraat and others, holding signs and mini-chandeliers and playing brass instruments and percussion; a few times a week, Nair herself is at the head of the procession, encouraging everyone to dance. Ticket holders are then led to either the groom’s side or the bride’s side of the theater; the audience sits in rising rafters on three sides of the stage.

The story is essentially the same as the Golden Lion–winning movie; screenwriter Sabrina Dhawan cowrote the book with associate director Arpita Mukherjee, with lyrics by Tony nominees Masi Asare and Susan Birkenhead. Lalit (Gagan Dev Riar) and Pimmi Verma (Palomi Ghosh), who live in Delhi, have arranged for their daughter, Aditi (Salena Qureshi), to marry the Hoboken-based Hemant (Deven Kolluri), son of Indian Americans Mohan (Jonathan Raviv) and Saroj Rai (Meetu Chilana).

“Hello! Nice to meet you / No, you go first please / chodo the formalities / Oh, hello, hello, hello, hello / Ji, namaste, chalo,” the four parents sing. “We’re all in this together from now / We’re stuck in this together and how much fun, fun, fun! / How fun! / Your family together with us / Two families and lots to discuss.” They soon find out just how much they really do have to discuss, and not all of it is fun.

Hemant (Deven Kolluri) and Aditi (Salena Qureshi) prepare for their arranged marriage in Monsoon Wedding: The Musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The materialistic Aditi has been seeing Vikram (Manik Anand), a smarmy, and married, television host. Hemant is coming off a bad relationship. As they explore what their future might be like together, wedding planner PK Dubey (Namit Das) falls for the Vermas’ maid, Alice (Anisha Nagarajan), but is worried that his mother (Sargam Ipshita Bali) won’t approve of the union on religious grounds. Aditi’s cousin Ria (Sharvari Deshpande), who was raised by Lalit and Pimmi, is practically a spinster at thirty and considering going to school in New York. Ria is suspicious of her wealthy uncle Tej Puri (Alok Tewari), who is married to Lalit’s sister, Vijaya (Miriam A. Laube). Also on hand to help are Pimmi’s sister, Shashi (Sargam Ipshita Bali), and her husband, CL (Sevan); Ria’s young cousin, Aliya (Rhea Yadav), who Tej takes a liking to, and Aditi’s younger brother, Varun (Kinshuk Sen), who are preparing a special dance for the wedding; a chai shop owner who offers advice and tea to Hemant (and Diet Coke to Aditi); and Dubey’s comic relief employees, Bholuram (Bhaskar Jha), Lottery (Jamen Nanthakumar), and Mundu (Savidu Geevaratne).

There’s an endearing excitement to Vishal Bhardwaj’s score, as each song is presented in a different Indian style, a mix of raag, thumri, khayal, qawwali, and Pasoori, with playful choreography by Shampa Gopikrishna; the orchestrations are by Jamshied Sharifi, with additional orchestrations and arrangements by Rona Siddiqui. The score is performed by music director Emily Whitaker on keyboards, Soumitra Thakur on sitar, Alison Shearer on soprano sax and flute, Armando Vergara on trombone, Kenny Bentley on sousaphone and bass, Ruan Dugre on guitars, Greg Gonzalez on drums, and Mahavir Chandrawat on Indian percussion; the band sits at the back corners of the stage. As good as the music is — among the twenty songs are “Rain Is Coming (Tip Tip),” “Neither Here Nor There,” “The Heart Knows,” and “Could You Have Loved Me” — there is so much of it that some of the subplots are not fully formed and feel rushed, particularly regarding possible sexual abuse. In addition, Aditi’s transformation from materialistic South Delhi princess to a more caring soul happens too quickly, confusing the love story at the heart of the musical.

However, the show is worth seeing just for a Bollywood-like scene in which Dubey goes after Alice, on horseback, riding through a vast landscape, his hair blowing in the wind.

Jason Ardizzone-West’s set features Indian decorations, a couch that emerges from the back, and a balcony that evokes Romeo & Juliet. David Bengali’s projections range from archival photographs to abstract animation, with lush lighting by Bradley King. Arjun Bhasin, who designed the costumes for the film, contributes colorful, sparkling outfits as well as more customary, everyday Indian wear.

The cast, from India and the Indian diaspora, is lovely from top to bottom, anchored by Deshpande in her off-Broadway debut; her tender, complex performance as Ria represents the rift so many people experience, whether from India or elsewhere, trapped between the modern and the traditional, family life and individuality, and different religions, wanting to honor the past while seeking a brighter future, perhaps in America. “Is this my home, India? / Like a half-remembered song? / And when I meet by bride / will I feel like I belong?” Hemant sings. Whether we will belong or not is a question we’ve all asked ourselves, at one time or another.

Joyfully directed by Nair (Mississippi Masala, Salaam Bombay!), Monsoon Wedding: The Musical is a kind of Mumbai Fiddler on the Roof, with a soft heart, a mischievous sense of humor, and a touching honesty that is like a friend or relative’s wedding, balancing a series of emotions that can blow hot or cold at any given moment. And don’t forget to come ready to dance.