featured

CLOSE TO VERMEER

Curator Gregor J. M. Weber studies Vermeer’s The Milkmaid in stunning new documentary

CLOSE TO VERMEER (Suzanne Raes, 2023)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through August 3
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com

The first painting I ever fell in love with was Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid. At the time, I knew nothing about it, other than it was this beguiling framed picture in my maternal grandparents’ Brooklyn apartment and, later, one-story home on a canal in a retirement community in Fort Lauderdale. I was still in single digits, so I didn’t understand the concept of a print or a poster; I thought it was the actual painting itself, a fascinating depiction of a woman casually dripping milk from a pitcher into a two-handled bowl on a table with a basket of bread, behind her a bare, somewhat dirty wall.

When I saw the real deal at the Met in 2009, on loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, it was joined by all five of the Met’s Vermeers. Seeing The Milkmaid in person left me breathless, sending me back to those days driving down to Florida with my family for our annual February visit; my grandparents and parents are no longer with us, but The Milkmaid is, most recently on view in the internationally hailed Rijksmuseum exhibition simply titled “Vermeer,” consisting of the most Vermeers ever gathered at one venue, twenty-eight of the Dutch artist’s thirty-seven extant works.

Suzanne Raes’s thrilling documentary, Close to Vermeer, goes behind the scenes of the exhibition, following curators, researchers, gallerists, collectors, and conservators as the show comes together, complete with exciting controversies and several big bumps in the road.

“The moment I saw the Vermeers I actually fainted,” exhibition curator Dr. Gregor J. M. Weber says about the first time he experienced Vermeer’s Lady Standing at a Virginal and Lady Seated at a Virginal as a schoolboy on a trip to the National Gallery in London. “The best exhibitions I’ve ever seen didn’t just determine my life during the two hours I was there . . .” He trails off, having to compose himself as he is nearly brought to tears. “A good exhibition should sweep you away. It should change the way you look. Your view of the world changes. As you’re drawn into this other world, and you’re almost floating. Vermeer can really do that.” So can an outstanding documentary.

“What is this mysterious object that I’ve just seen? It looks like it came from Mars and landed down and wanted to say something to me,” painter and Vermeer expert Jonathan Janson remembers upon seeing a photograph of his first Vermeer. He later cannot hold back tears when he sees what he thinks will be the last Vermeer he’ll encounter for the first time: Never again will he have that moment of discovery.

Conservator and researcher Anna Krekeler takes a close look at Vermeer’s The Little Street in Close to Vermeer

The documentary is structured around curators Weber and Pieter Roelofs’s travels to institutions to try to convince them to lend their Vermeers to the exhibit. The Rijksmuseum has four Vermeers; the determined men, individually or as a dynamic duo, head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to ask curator Adam Eaker about its five holdings; encounter resistance from curator Silke Gatenbröcker about the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig’s one Vermeer, The Girl with a Wineglass; check out the Mauritshuis at The Hague’s three Vermeers, including The Girl with a Pearl Earring, with conservator and researcher Abbie Vandivere, who is so obsessed with the painting that she dyes her dreadlocks Vermeer blue; glory in the three Vermeers at Frick Madison with Frick Collection chief curator Xavier F. Salomon; and battle with curators Betsy Wieseman and Alexandra Libby of the National Gallery in DC over one of its four Vermeers, Girl with a Flute, debating whether it is indeed a legitimate Vermeer or was painted by someone else.

We also hear from research scientist Annelies van Loon, Rijksmuseum general director Taco Dibbits, research conservator Melanie Gifford, and others as they seek to find out more about Vermeer’s process and delve into how the exhibition will be laid out to provide maximum engagement for the expected huge crowds.

The joy these people feel when seeing and studying the paintings is like that of children receiving Christmas presents. “I want to understand how he was able to paint these wonderful pictures,” conservator and researcher Anna Krekeler says, examining The Little Street through a microscope. “Take this red shutter, possibly the most beautiful shutter in the history of art. If you imagine this painting without the red shutter, it’s much less . . . captivating. The red shutter stops you from leaving the painting here, so you keep looking.”

When curator of drawings Maud van Suylen provides evidence that supports Weber’s theory that Vermeer used a camera obscura, which Weber has explored with his partner, Lisanne Wepler, it is like he has uncovered the Holy Grail. One Holy Grail that is not uncovered is any significant new biographical information about Vermeer, who died in December 1675 at the age of forty-three. He had fourteen children but left behind no letters or diaries, and never painted a self-portrait. It is believed that it is his back we see in The Allegory of Painting. “All we have are his paintings,” Weber says.

In her director’s statement, Raes (Two Men, Ganz: How I Lost My Beetle) explains, “Even more than to Rembrandt’s characters or Jan Steen’s debauched scenes, I am drawn to Vermeer’s paintings. The stilled movements and characters he portrayed make you, the viewer, a witness to what was once everyday life. You are close to these people, the room with the large window to the left, the filtered light, the carefully arranged scene. Sometimes the person portrayed is deeply absorbed in reading a letter, pouring milk, looking through a telescope. In the few instances she looks straight at you, she sees straight into your soul.” Raes captures those feelings in her film, which is beautifully photographed by Victor Horstink and edited by Noud Holtman, with lovely music by Alex Simu.

After watching the film, I went to the Met to see A Maid Asleep, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Woman with a Lute, Allegory of the Catholic Faith, and Study of a Young Woman, the five works the museum is not allowed to ever lend out. The documentary helped “change the way I look” at paintings, to echo Weber’s words about what a good exhibition should do.

“It’s about the story we want to tell, not the number of paintings,” Weber says as he realizes that the show will go on without every work he hoped would be in the show. He also reveals that this will be the final exhibition he will curate. “This will be my crowning achievement.”

It’s quite an achievement, splendidly illuminated in this engrossing and involving film that, at its heart, is a celebration of the power of great art and how it portrays the human condition.

THE SAVIOUR

Máire Sullivan (Marie Mullen) glows in the bask of postcoital sex in The Saviour (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE SAVIOUR
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 13, $50-$90
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The first half of the world stage premiere of Deirdre Kinahan’s The Saviour at the Irish Rep is gorgeous. On the morning of her sixty-seventh birthday, Máire (Marie Mullen) is basking in the glow of having had sex with a much younger man the night before. Lying in bed with a cigarette, the widowed mother and grandmother, during a long monologue to Jesus, says, “Get a grip on yourself, Máire Sullivan! I can hear you say that, Jesus. And you’re right. Do you know you’re right . . . I’m acting ridiculous. At my age! I hope you’re not getting all jealous now or anything? Are you, Jesus?”

But when a man (Jamie O’Neill) arrives, the play takes a decidedly different tack, one that raises several important issues but also turns its back on what had come before.

A devout Irish Catholic, Máire is in her glory after “heaving and shunting” with Martin. She is explaining herself to Jesus, hoping her lord and savior understands her new feelings. “Sex has always been a means to an end. Foisted on me when I didn’t want it or offered for a bit of peace,” she says. Barefoot and in a long white nightgown (the costumes are by Joan O’Clery), Máire gets up and walks over to her night table, putting on makeup and fixing her hair; there is actually no glass in the mirrors she is using, so we can see her in a frame as she gussies herself up. “I mean, I didn’t even know that sex was possible at my age,” she tells Jesus.

Waiting for Martin to come upstairs with breakfast and coffee, she shares scenes from her hardscrabble life. Her mother died when she was young, so her father, who found work in England, sent her off to the Magdalene Laundries, Irish sweatshops operated by nuns that were primarily a place to hide and punish pregnant teenagers.

“In the convent in Stanhope Street you gave your name away at the door,” she sadly recalls. “And I don’t think Daddy knew that when he put me in there. . . . Stanhope Street wasn’t really a school. A reformatory for whores and hussies! But I wasn’t one of them. Was I? No. I was good,” she says unsurely, as if having to convince herself.

She is haunted by the experience, remembering, “You didn’t ask any questions of the silence. Because we worked in silence. Lived in silence. Silence was our penance . . . for being orphaned girls. Forgotten girls. Bad girls. Or just . . . girls.”

But mostly, she is anticipating Martin coming upstairs and showering her with yet more attention — and sex. But that’s not quite what she has in store for her birthday.

Máire (Marie Mullen) and an unexpected figure (Jamie O’Neill) face some hard truths in The Saviour (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Ciarán Bagnall’s set is a slightly elevated turntable that revolves between the creaky bedroom, highlighted by a cross high on one wall, and the kitchen, with an open space stage right. Bagnall’s lighting and Aoife Kavanagh’s sound turn eerie whenever Máire drifts back into her memories of Stanhope Street, when the show briefly becomes a ghost story.

I cannot begin to tell you how uplifting it was to watch an actress of a certain age portray a woman who is euphoric about having had sex. Tony winner Mullen (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Gifts You Gave to the Dark) radiates as Máire details some of the events of the previous night, and the audience celebrates along with her as she carefully brushes her hair and shuffles around the bedroom, animated by this new lease on life, suddenly filled with hope and promise.

But Kinahan (Embargo, Halcyon Days) and director Louise Lowe (The Book of Names, The Party to End All Parties) then pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet when the visitor, ably played by O’Neill (Staging the Treaty, Luck Just Kissed You Hello), starts sharing some difficult truths about Máire, going all the way back to when she was raising her children. The Saviour abruptly becomes an issue play bringing up controversial topics instead of being about an older woman experiencing a positive life change. In addition, it grows repetitive, covering the same angles multiple times.

I felt like it was a kind of theatrical bait-and-switch; it might be my own fault for wanting the play to go in another direction, but, a week later, I still feel let down and betrayed. Perhaps I was so invested in Máire’s exhilaration that I didn’t want anything to get in the way of my enjoyment of that reaction. I can’t help but wonder whether it would have been so bad to have an older, decidedly unglamorous character simply enjoy sex in a show for a full seventy minutes.

But if anything, The Saviour, originally produced online during the pandemic in June 2021, is a distinctly Irish tale, one that delves into family, religion, and societal ills in which happy endings are far from guaranteed.

EBONY G. PATTERSON: . . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . .

A vulture spies human feet under a wall of plants in bloodred pond in Ebony G. Patterson installation at NYBG (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

. . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . .
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Tuesday – Sunday through October 22, $15 children two to twelve, $31 students and seniors, $35 adults, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org
ebonygpatterson.com
online slide show

“I’m going to give you a show that you’ve not had before,” artist Ebony G. Patterson promised New York Botanical Garden curator Joanna L. Groarke upon preparing for the exhibition “. . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . . ,” which has just been extended at NYBG through October 22, 2023.

The Jamaica native has done just that, presenting a wide-ranging display that incorporates sculpture, installation, video, collage, and an interactive element, “Things to Be Remembered,” which asks visitors to answer the question “What have you . . . missed . . . felt . . . loved . . . learned . . . witnessed . . . needed . . . heard . . . that you never want to forget?”

“Ebony is the first visual artist to create art at the garden through an immersive residency,” NYBG CEO Jennifer Bernstein said at the preview in May. “This exhibition celebrates the allure of the beautiful while contemplating what lies beneath the enticing surface, the complex tensions of the natural world, and how they reflect the entanglements of race, gender, and colonialism.”

The exhibition features nearly five hundred black foam turkey vultures congregating around the lawn outside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and inside the massive greenhouse, as if they’re anticipating a kind of destruction, along with hand-cast glass sculptures of body parts and extinct plants, out in the open and hidden within the confines. You can also hear Patterson’s voice in the soundscape. In the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Building, there are works from Patterson’s “studies from a vocabulary of loss” series, consisting of framed collages with cut-paper flowers and reaching hands, plastic insects, feathered butterflies, and such words as liability, should, wreckage, and goodbye kiss.

The library rotunda is home to . . . fester . . . , a stunning ten-foot horizontal piece laden with woven jacquard fabrics, vertebrae, hand-blown black and white glass plants, and more than a thousand red gloves spreading out onto the floor; yet more vultures hover on ledges above floral patterned wallpaper. Visitors can walk inside the three-channel video installation The Observation: The Bush Cockerel Project, a Fictitious Historical Narrative, in which costumed characters wander through a primordial garden, climate change surrounding the proceedings like, well, vultures.

In putting together the show, Patterson, who lives and works in Kingston and Chicago, was concerned with loss, healing, and regeneration; the intersection of art, horticulture, and science; living and dead plants as ghosts and skeletons; and the materiality of objects, recognizing that both Jamaica and America are postcolonial societies facing problematic issues of income inequality and social injustice.

“What does it mean to think about the word gardens associated with places that are working-class spaces in contrast to a place that is a wealthy neighborhood?” she said. “What does it mean to think about a garden as a site of survival, as a site of social survival? What does it then also mean to think about gardens as it relates to communities that are given particular kinds of care in terms of what is thought of as a space of investment of possibility, and what does it also then mean to think about those gardens that are not given consideration for possibility of care but thrive regardless because that is what happens in nature? Things live on, irrespective of what one puts in nature’s way.”

The centerpiece of the exhibit in the conservatory is an immersive structure topped by a white peacock, as if the rest of the installation bursts from its feathers, ending in a bloodred pond in another room where a wall of plants has seemingly fallen from the sky, a pair of white glass legs sticking out like the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy’s house crushes her in The Wizard of Us. Patterson, who had never before been to NYBG before beginning this project but is a regular at the Hope Botanical Gardens and the adjoining Hope Zoo Kingston in her hometown of Kingston, had only recently seen a rare white peacock there for the first time in her life.

“In seeing this peacock, the peacock was in molting, and it was in a dark enclosure, and the peacock just kind of hovered in the space, ebbing and flowing,” she explained at the preview. “It almost seemed like it was a haunt. And so thinking about what the peacock is — this incredibly beautiful bird with all of its pageantry — and to see it at its ugliest moment remained with me for a year. And so in thinking about that, I couldn’t help but think about the question of what does it mean to witness your ugliness. And so for me, unpacking the garden, in a moment of molting, in a moment of transformation, is about witnessing our collective ugliness, that even in the ugliness, beauty is possible, and in that possibility, we will always find new ways ahead.”

Ebony G. Patterson’s “studies from a vocabulary of loss” are framed collages containing words amid flowers, hands, insects, butterflies, and other elements (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Patterson was also inspired by her residency at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Arkansas, where she developed such works as . . . bugs, reptile, fruit, and bush . . . for those who bear/bare witness.

At the preview, I had a chance to speak with Patterson, whose other projects include “Gangstas for Life,” “Disciplez,” and “Invisible Presence: Bling Memories,” a performative piece with embellished coffins.

twi-ny: The first time you ever came to the New York Botanical Garden was in 2019. What were your first impressions walking the grounds?

egp: At the time, there was a show by Roberto Burle Marx [“Brazilian Modern: The Living Art of Roberto Burle Marx”], who is a Brazilian artist.

twi-ny: Oh, I loved that show.

egp: Yeah, I mean, the sense of sprawl, and there’s a particular kind of splendor that also exists here, as a place like this does because of its expanse. And then also too because part of its mandate is to create a space of beauty. But then I think the other thing that I was also struck by was the demographics. So I was also also very aware of, oh, who are the people that spend time here? Who are the people that spend a lot of time here? And then I had to say that in thinking about the project, I thought about those people a lot. I thought I would hear stories about women who would come during particular seasons, to see particular flowers, and fussing about the fact that a flower doesn’t grow the same way the next season.

But I think about those people. And also too in terms of how this is such a heightened visual experience. Not everybody goes to museums. For some people the garden is their ultimate visual experience. So what does it mean also to disrupt that for a person so that they also think about this place differently in the same way that one would think about an exhibition very differently when one goes to a museum? Each exhibition presents something different. And I sat with that a lot over the course of thinking through the ideas here.

twi-ny: And you were given pretty much carte blanche to go and do what you needed to do?

egp: Correct. Yes. And the gardens . . . I mean, there were some things that I had proposed that I wanted us to explore that were a little difficult to do, given the time. So there is carte blanche and there is carte blanche, right? But that being said, a lot of this is truly a collaboration because as much as I use plants and I think about using plants in relation to history, all of the knowledge about what it means to grow a plant at a particular time, what it is, how it lives with something else, is not something that I consider at all.

And I come from a place of thinking about things as a painter. So I rely very heavily then on the knowledge of the people who are here, in the same way that I would rely on the knowledge of somebody who works in glass. I love glass materially, but ask me, can I go and forge it, do what’s necessary to make it whole myself? No. Can I sew? It’s the same . . . We all rely on the knowledge base of other people to make things possible, and artists are no different in that history.

twi-ny: Mentioning museums, “Dead Treez” was at the Museum of Arts & Design in 2016. Do you see a direct link between the NYBG show and that one?

egp: Oh, absolutely. When MAD gave me that opportunity in the Tiffany Galleries to make a garden inside their galleries, that was such a huge shift in my own practice. But then also too for MAD, it was a new point of departure for them, for them to be inviting an artist to curate a selection of objects. But then I had the show that was also running concurrently [“. . . while the dew is still on the roses . . .” at Pérez Art Museum Miami], and I was like, “How do I make these two things speak to each other?”

So I think for me, the Museum of Arts & Design project that I did in those Tiffany cases is essentially the seed that’s continued to grow over these years. It’s the very thing that ended up also growing the Pérez show, which was centered on this notion of thinking about a night garden. And then what does it also then mean to pull that all out into the living space? But also, too, the garden isn’t an art institution, but then at the same time, doing this at an art institution just would not be possible, it just wouldn’t.

[For a more personal look at the arts in New York City, follow Mark Rifkin on Substack here.]

NAGISA ŌSHIMA: BOY

A child (Tetsuo Abe) seeks a better way of life in postwar Japan in Nagisa Oshima’s Boy

BOY (SHONEN) (Nagisa Oshima, 1969)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
July 8, 6:00; July 13, 9:15; July 20, 7:00
Festival runs July 7-23
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org

Controversial outlaw filmmaker Nagisa Oshima takes a unique, poignant look at the continuing problems in postwar Japan in the underseen 1969 drama Boy. After a major search for an actor to play the nameless title character, Oshima found Tetsuo Abe in an orphanage, and the young boy delivered one of the most memorable performances ever by a child. Inspired by actual events, the film follows wounded war veteran Takeo Omura (Fumio Watanabe), his second, common-law wife, Takeko Taniguchi (Akiko Koyama), their baby (Tsuyoshi Kinoshita), and Omura’s son from his previous marriage, played by Abe and referred to only as “kiddo.” The family travels across Japan, surviving by means of a classic con: First the stepmother, then the boy pretend to be hit by cars so they can extort money from the drivers. Meanwhile, the boy creates an alternate fantasy life that he shares with his baby brother, involving aliens and monsters, the only time he gets to be like a real kid. Otherwise, he is often by himself, never going to school, wandering lonely through the snow or walking down an empty path on one side of the screen as children play boisterously on the other side. As the authorities close in on the family, tragedy awaits.

Nameless brothers (Tsuyoshi Kinoshita and Tetsuo Abe) amid troublesome circumstances in BOY

Nameless brothers (Tsuyoshi Kinoshita and Tetsuo Abe) experience troublesome circumstances in Boy

Best known for radical, cutting-edge films filled with violence and sexuality, including Cruel Story of Youth, In the Realm of the Senses, and Taboo — as well as Max, Mon Amour, in which Charlotte Rampling plays a diplomat’s wife who falls in love with a chimpanzee — Oshima shows a warm, gentle touch in Boy, led by a tender lead performance by Abe, who is often shown standing firmly, dressed in a uniformlike outfit, like a little soldier. Oshima and cinematographers Yasuhiro Yoshioka and Seizo Sengen bathe the film in bursts of yellow, blue, and red, setting the bright colors against an essentially black-and-white palette that turns a haunting blue and then sepia near the end, accompanied by Hikaru Hayashi’s evocative, wide-ranging score. Hovering around the tale, which serves as a parable for the many troubles families experienced after World War II and is perhaps most reminiscent of François Truffaut’s nouvelle vague standard-bearer, The 400 Blows, is the Japanese flag; the father and the baby wave a small one in their hands, the family stops underneath one when figuring out their next move, and a large one taunts them on a back wall as the father berates the stepmother in a hotel room.

Through it all, the boy remains steadfast. “I’m a cosmic messenger of justice,” he declares to his baby brother. Boy turned out to be Abe’s only film, as he returned to the orphanage after it was finished. Boy is screening July 8, 13, and 20 in an eight-film Anthology Film Archives series that runs July 7-23 and also includes Pleasures of the Flesh, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, The Man Who Left His Will on Film, The Ceremony, Death by Hanging, and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, all shown in 35mm.

UNCLE VANYA

Jack Serio’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is set in a private Flatiron loft (photo by Emilio Madrid)

UNCLE VANYA
Private Flatiron loft
Wednesday – Monday through July 16, $58.54-$247.54
Extension: August 8 – September 3, $58.37-$275.29 ($39 lottery)
vanyanyc.com

Jack Serio’s superb production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is the theatrical event of the summer, and the one likely to be seen by the fewest people. It’s billed as being “hyper-intimate,” and it lives up to that description in just about every way.

Tickets were released without much fanfare on May 17 and sold out almost immediately; a mere forty seats were available for each of sixteen performances at an undisclosed private loft in the Flatiron District. The day before my show, I got an email advising me of the exact address and letting me know that “seating is general admission on a mix of chairs and comfortable high-back stools.” Because there is only one bathroom inside, we were told, “Please plan accordingly and use the restroom prior to your arrival if possible.” We were also warned not to come earlier than the designated time. “Please do not arrive prior to this time, as we will not be able to admit you into the building. We also cannot allow guests to congregate outside the building prior to or after the performance. Remember, this is a residential building and we’d like to be respectful to our neighbors.”

It made it all seem wonderfully secretive, as if we were part of some kind of clandestine club. There is no signage at the building; I was fully expecting there to be a hush-hush knock before I was led to a tiny elevator that can fit only a few people at a time. We got off at the second floor — stairs are not an option, up or down — where we were met with a large sign with information about the cast and creative team, so I knew I was in the right place. (Note that although the run is sold out, rush lottery tickets are available for each performance.)

The main space is a narrow, rectangular room with two farm tables pushed together at the center. The audience sits on either side, in the first row of chairs or the second row of taller high-back stools. The night I went, more than half the seats already had names on them, so there was a bit of confusion for those whose names were not taped to a seat; several groups of two or three ended up sitting apart from one another because of the scarcity of available, unmarked chairs. (The pricing structure ranges from general admission to reserved, so if you purchased the former, be sure to get there early.) Meanwhile, songs by Bob Dylan and Neil Young played in the background.

Ványa (David Cromer) can’t hide his love for Yeléna (Julia Chan) in hyper-intimate Chekhov production (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Walt Spangler’s cozy set features a working kitchen at one end and a couch beneath a window looking out at the courtyard at the other, with double metal doors leading to the fire escape, which is used as an entrance and exit throughout the show. Stacey Derosier’s lighting consists of two rows of track lights and a handful of carefully placed small stage lights, with flashlights and candles that cast mysterious glows. Carrie Mossman’s props include mirrors and old family photos on exposed brick walls and on the piano in one corner. Christopher Darbassie opts for a naturalistic sound design, which, the night I went, was enhanced by real rain and thunder. Ricky Reynoso’s costumes are contemporary but not fancy, save for Yeléna’s chic dresses, and several characters walk around in socks, slippers, or bare feet.

Serio uses Paul Schmidt’s 1999 translation, which felt fresh and vibrant to me, perhaps because all the recent productions of the play I’ve seen have been radical reimaginings or mashups (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, New Saloon’s Minor Character: Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time, Aaron Posner’s Life Sucks.) in addition to Richard Nelson’s 2018 adaptation for the Hunter Theater Project.

At an undefined time and location — although there are no cell phones — a group of friends and relatives have gathered at a country farm run by Ványa (David Cromer) and his niece, Sónya (Marin Ireland). Sónya’s father, the elderly, ailing professor Alexánder Serebriakóv (Bill Irwin), has arrived from the city with his second wife, the much younger and elegant Yeléna (Julia Chan), with plans on what to do with the estate they are tiring of. Both Ványa and Ástrov (Will Brill), a local doctor, are in love with Yeléna and not afraid to show it. Sónya, whose mother, Ványa’s sister, died many years before, is obsessed with Ástrov but too embarrassed to tell him, as she is afraid that she is too plain for him. Mrs. Voinítsky (Ann McDonough), Sónya’s grandmother, spends most of her time reading, drinking tea, and pontificating on such subjects as principles and change. Telégin (Will Dagger), known as Waffles, lives on the farm and helps out, still faithful to his wife, who left him for another man the day after they were married. And the longtime family nurse, Marína (Virginia Wing), knits and ruminates on the past.

Over the course of a few days, relationships entangle, secret loves are revealed, and one of the most famous gunshots in theater history echoes through the room.

Ástrov (Will Brill) can’t hide his love for Yeléna (Julia Chan) in Uncle Vanya (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Serio (This Beautiful Future, On Set with Theda Bara) maintains a fine line between intimate and immersive or interactive in the two-and-a-half-hour show (with intermission). Although the actors are almost always only a few feet away from the audience, they don’t make eye contact; it’s almost like a fly-on-the-wall documentary of a family falling apart, with no idea how to save itself. Cromer (The Waverly Gallery, A Raisin in the Sun) portrays Ványa as a broken man who seems to have already given up on life, essentially sleepwalking through the days, resigned to never be content. “Oh, God, my mind’s a mess,” he wails.

Brill (A Case for the Existence of God, Oklahoma!) imbues Ástrov with an innate selfishness that is the yin to Ványa’s yang. In this space, Ástrov’s environmentalism is even more prophetic than usual. “We were born with the ability to reason and the power to create and be fruitful, but until now all we’ve done is destroy whatever we see,” he says, talking about more than just trees, an ever-present pencil tucked behind one ear. “The forests are disappearing one by one, the rivers are polluted, wildlife is becoming extinct, the climate is changing for the worse, every day the planet gets poorer and uglier. It’s a disaster!”

You can feel the professor’s pain as Irwin (Old Hats, On Beckett) shuffles across the space, failing to recognize how his decisions impact everyone else, especially Ványa, who says of him, “A retired professor, a has-been, a moldy mackerel with a college degree. He has gout, rheumatism, migraines, his liver’s swollen with jealousy and envy.” Chan (2:22 A Ghost Story, The Great Canadian Baking Show) is alluring as Yeléna, who is well aware of her power over men. Dagger (The Antelope Party, Corsicana) offers welcome interludes as Telégin plays his acoustic guitar.

Sónya (Marin Ireland) can’t hide her love for Ástrov (Will Brill) in Jack Serio’s Uncle Vanya (photo by Emilio Madrid)

But Ireland (On the Exhale, Marie Antoinette), a New York City treasure, steals the show as Sónya, an ingénue who thinks she is ugly and undeserving of happiness. Telling Yeléna of her feelings for Ástrov, she opines, “It hurts so much! And it’s all so hopeless. It’s completely hopeless!” Ireland makes full use of the set; she sits on top of the couch and looks out the window longingly. She jumps on the kitchen island and speaks to Ástrov by tender candlelight. Wearing a baseball cap backward, she contorts her face and body in mesmerizing ways that capture the heartache in her soul. Sónya just wants to love, and be loved; she is the most human character in the play, the one most of us can identify with the closest.

The intimacy — or hyper-intimacy, if you will — allows us to understand the people who populate this farm in a deeply profound way. They exist in a world that is passing them by, stirring our compassion and inspiring us to wish to avoid the same fate.

[Ed. note: The play is being brought back August 8 – September 3 for an encore run, with a few cast changes: Thomas Jay Ryan (Dance Nation, Eureka Day) is taking over as Serebriakóv, with Dario Ladani Sanchez (Juliet & Romeo, a wake for david’s fucked-up face) as Yefim.]

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

MIDNIGHT COWBOY / DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY

Oscar nominees Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman try to make it in the big city in John Schlesinger’s powerful Midnight Cowboy

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (John Schlesinger, 1969)
DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY (Nancy Biurski, 2022)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, July 7
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

The only X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar, John Schlesinger’s masterful Midnight Cowboy follows the exploits of Joe Buck (Jon Voight), a friendly sort of chap who leaves his small Texas town, determined to make it as a male prostitute in Manhattan. Wearing his cowboy gear and clutching his beloved transistor radio, he trolls the streets with little success. Things take a turn when he meets up with Enrico Salvatore “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), an ill, hobbled con man living in a condemned building. The two loners soon develop an unusual relationship as Buck is haunted by nightmares, shown in black-and-white, about his childhood and a tragic event that happened to him and his girlfriend, Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt), while Rizzo dreams of a beautiful life, depicted in bright color, without sickness or limps on the beach in Miami.

Adapted by Waldo Salt (Serpico, The Day of the Locust) from the novel by James Leo Herlihy, Midnight Cowboy is essentially a string of fascinating and revealing set pieces in which Buck encounters unusual characters as he tries desperately to succeed in the big city; along the way he beds an older, wealthy Park Ave. matron (Sylvia Miles), is asked to get down on his knees by a Bible thumper (John McGiver), gets propositioned in a movie theater by a nerdy college student (Bob Balaban), has a disagreement with a confused older man (Barnard Hughes), and attends a Warholian party (thrown by Viva and Gastone Rosilli and featuring Ultra Violet, Paul Jabara, International Velvet, Taylor Mead, and Paul Morrissey) where he hooks up with an adventurous socialite (Brenda Vaccaro).

Photographed by first-time cinematographer Adam Holender (The Panic in Needle Park, Blue in the Face), the film captures the seedy, lurid environment that was Times Square in the late 1960s; when Buck looks out his hotel window, he sees the flashing neon, with a sign for Mutual of New York front and center, the letters “MONY” bouncing across his face with promise. The film is anchored by Harry Nilsson’s Grammy-winning version of “Everybody’s Talkin’,” along with John Barry’s memorable theme. Iconic shots are littered throughout, along with such classic lines as “I’m walkin’ here!”

Midnight Cowboy, which was nominated for seven Oscars and won three (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director), is screening at Film Forum in conjunction with the theatrical release of Nancy Buirski’s Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, which is not a typical making-of documentary; inspired by Glenn Frankel’s 2021 book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic, Buirski explores the social context in which Midnight Cowboy was created and brought to the public. The film opens with Voight telling a great story about the day shooting wrapped:

“That’s the last shot. . . . John [Schlesinger], he was like this, shaking. I said, ‘John, what’s the matter?’ He said, ‘What have we done? What have we done? We’ve made a movie about a dishwasher who goes and fucks a lot of women in New York. What’ll they say? What’ll they say about this picture?’ I said, and I knew he’s having a complete meltdown, right? I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I was his friend, I want to help him. I grabbed him by the shoulders and I said, ‘John,’ — I looked him in the eye — ‘we will live the rest of our artistic lives in the shadow of this great masterpiece.’ He looks up, ‘You think so?’ [Voight laughs] I said, ‘I’m absolutely certain of it.’ It was the only thing that could get him out of it. I said the most ridiculous thing I could think of but . . . turned out to be true.”

Buirski (The Loving Story, Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq) speaks with Jennifer Salt, the daughter of Waldo Salt, who played Crazy Annie; Bob Balaban, who portrayed the college student in the movie theater; Brenda Vaccaro, who plays the socialite; cultural critic Lucy Sante; Schlesinger’s nephew, author Ian Buruma; film critic James Hoberman; Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis; photographer Michael Childers, Schlesinger’s longtime partner; and cinematographer Adam Holender, who contributes modern-day photos of New York City. Writer, director, and producer Buirski and editor Anthony Ripoli include a barrage of archival color and black-and-white footage of the Vietnam War, Times Square, the Chicago Seven, and the moon landing; clips from dozens and dozens of movies, from The Graduate, Easy Rider, The Sound of Music, Flaming Creatures, The Boys in the Band, Taxi Driver, and numerous Westerns and Andy Warhol works to such other Schlesinger films as A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar, Darling, and Sunday Bloody Sunday. There are also snippets of older interviews with Waldo Salt, James Leo Herlihy, and Dustin Hoffman; Voight’s original screen test with Salt; and home movies of Schlesinger, who died in 2003 at the age of seventy-seven.

Desperate Souls focuses on the changing postwar class system; homoeroticism, particularly as it relates to the macho image of cowboys, from John Wayne to the Marlboro Man; and the transformation of pop culture in the 1970s, with a soundtrack that includes songs by Don McLean, the Guess Who, Gerry & the Pacemakers, and Janis Ian. There’s a significant amount of information overload about the era and Midnight Cowboy’s legacy instead of more behind-the-scenes details, but you can find out more when Buirski and Holender take part in a Q&A following the 6:00 screening on July 7 at Film Forum.

JUKEBOX HEROES, TAKE TWO: ONCE UPON A ONE MORE TIME / ROCK AND ROLL MAN

Six fairy-tale characters reimagine their future in Once Upon a One More Time (photo by Matthew Murphy)

ONCE UPON A ONE MORE TIME
Marquis Theatre
210 West Forty-Sixth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through September 3, $59.75-$319.50
onemoretimemusical.com

In May, I wrote about a pair of jukebox musicals, the extremely disappointing A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, which unsurprisingly received no Tony nominations, and the absolutely delightful & Juliet, which earned nine nods but unfortunately took home none. The former was a disjointed look at the life and career of the Brooklyn-born megastar, while the latter was a clever follow-up to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in which his wife, Anne Hathaway, decides to pen a sequel in which Juliet survives and, leaving behind the dead Romeo, heads to Paris to start a new life, set to existing tunes written or cowritten by Swedish producer Max Martin for the Backstreet Boys, Robyn, Demi Lovato, Bon Jovi, Katy Perry, *NSYNC, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and others.

Last week I encountered a similar situation when I saw two new musicals, one an unsatisfying biographical chronicle, the other a surprisingly clever reimagining of a fairy-tale world using nothing but songs by Spears, the Princess of Pop, who has sold nearly 150 million records but has won more Golden Raspberries (3) than Grammys (1).

At the Marquis Theatre, Once Upon a One More Time is a load of fun despite a fairly ludicrous setup: After generations of following the rules enforced by the Narrator (Adam Godley), who makes sure to keep every female character in her place from story to story, Cinderella (Briga Heelan), Snow White (Aisha Jackson), Rapunzel (Gabrielle Beckford), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), Princess Pea (Morgan Whitley), and Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin) start to realize there might be something else out there for them after the O.F.G. — the Original Fairy Godmother (Brooke Dillman) — gives Cin a copy of Betty Friedan’s 1963 game-changer, The Feminine Mystique, which helped usher in second-wave feminism. And they explore their situations through such Spears hits as “Lucky,” “Toxic,” “Womanizer,” “Oops! . . . I Did It Again,” and “. . . Baby One More Time.”

Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) turns out to be quite the dog in Britney Spears musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Cinderella is the first to consider that she might have a choice in her future, which upsets the Narrator. “Yes. Listen, I’ve been doing this a long time. And believe me, if I change so much as an intonation, the children go full Rumpelstiltskin,” he tells her. “They want things the same, every time. The narrative is very clear. We’re not here to make fairy tales, we’re here to follow them. Don’t overthink it. Oh, and don’t furrow your brow! We want you delivering lines, not wearing them. There. Better. Happy ever after.”

When Snow notices that Cin appears to be a bit off, she says, “Hey, you seem ‘stuck.’ Doc gives me pills for when I get like that.” Cinderella turns her down, then points out that Snow White’s latest needlepoint, “Happy ever after,” is filled with typos. Snow replies, “Huh. I guess neither of us knows what happy ever after’s supposed to look like. . . . All right, I gotta go get chased through the woods by a terrifying man in pitch blackness.”

When Cin discovers that her Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) is also Snow’s Faithful, the misogyny that is baked into traditional fairy tales rises to the surface and begins to turn things upside down and inside out. Not only do the young women — including Belle (Liv Battista), Goldilocks (Amy Hillner Larsen), and Red (Justice Moore) — start reevaluating the state of their being, but Prince Erudite (Ryan Steele) and Clumsy (Nathan Levy) wonder if they can explore their potential relationship as well. Meanwhile, Cinderella’s Stepmother (Jennifer Simard) and her two stepsisters, Belinda (Ryann Redmond) and Betany (Tess Soltau), lie in wait, willing to play by the rules in order to land Prince Charming or even Prince Brawny (Joshua Daniel Johnson), Mischievous (Kevin Trinio Perdido), Gregarious (Mikey Ruiz), Suave (Josh Tolle), or Affable (Stephen Scott Wormley).

Cinderella (Briga Heelan) discovers a whole new world in a book by Betty Friedan (photo by Matthew Murphy)

If you took Six, & Juliet, Into the Woods, Head Over Heels, Wicked, and Bad Cinderella and put them into a blender, you would come up with something like Once Upon a One More Time. Not all of it works; at two and a half hours with intermission, it is repetitive, and the last fifteen minutes or so should be chopped off, as it basically explains to us what we’ve already seen. The whole Betty Friedan element is still puzzling to me — I understand why they chose that book, but the whole idea of making it a key part of the plot and (sort of) getting away with it is mind-boggling to me — as are the Narrator’s threats to send rule breakers to a place called Story’s End.

Jon Hartmere’s (bare, The Upside) book is otherwise witty and clever, no doubt helped by five-time Tony nominee David Leveaux serving as creative consultant. The crack ten-piece band keeps Spears’s songs down to earth, avoiding haughty orchestrations, although several ballads threaten to go over the top. In their first Broadway show, directors and choreographers Keone and Mari Madrid (Beyond Babel, The Karate Kid) cut loose with ecstatic Spears-inspired dance numbers performed by an exuberant cast.

Anna Fleischle’s appealing set features trees and the facades of houses raised and lowered, an elegant staircase, a multilevel platform laden with stage lighting, a balcony, windowlike screens in the back, and a giant quill in a bubble hanging from the ceiling, daring anyone to grab it and rewrite the fairy tales. Sven Ortel’s projections range from the night sky to scary woods to magic castles, with fanciful lighting and plenty of glowing spots by Kenneth Posner and raucous sound by Andrew Keister.

Many of Loren Elstein’s costumes are based on outfits Spears wore in videos and concerts, with wigs by Nikiya Mathis that further our immersion into all things Britney, as if each fairy-tale character represents a separate part of her history. In her Broadway debut, Heelan is absolutely delightful as Cinderella, a stand-in for anyone ready to burst out with their own story. Jackson (Paradise Square, Waitress) is lovely as Cin’s best friend, Guarini (American Idiot, Wicked) has a field day as the self-absorbed, selfish prince who gets to belt out “Oops! . . . I Did It Again,” and two-time Tony nominee Godley (The Lehman Trilogy, Anything Goes) is just right as the Narrator, who is terrified of change. But two-time Tony nominee Simard (Company, Mean Girls), as she so often does, steals the show as the evil stepmother who always has a plan up her corset.

Once Upon a One More Time bites off more than it can chew, but it’s no poison apple it’s nibbling on but is instead shiny, fresh, and crisp, even if it’s occasionally sour.

While the show is not about Spears’s controversial life — it arrives on Broadway less than two years after Spears was freed from her father’s conservatorship — there are fairy-tale aspects to her early career, followed by bittersweet personal and professional entanglements that titillated the public and impacted her reputation. Once Upon a One More Time helps reestablish that original image.

Leo Mintz (Joe Pantoliano) and Alan Freed (Constantine Maroulis) come up with a plan to spread the gospel of rock and roll in musical (photo © Joan Marcus 2023)

ROCK & ROLL MAN
New World Stages
340 West 50th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through September 1, $90-$164
rockandrollmanthemusical.com
www.newworldstages.com

When my mother was a teenager in the mid-1950s, she would sneak out of her apartment and catch rock and roll shows at the Brooklyn Paramount, seeing all the greats, the originators of the art form. I grew up with that music, treasuring two small boxes of 45s that contained many of the best singles ever recorded, by Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Moonglows, the Coasters, the Platters, the Drifters, and others.

All of those artists and more are featured in Rock & Roll Man, a new musical about legendary DJ Alan Freed (Constantine Maroulis) that is making its New York premiere at New World Stages. It opens at the Paramount with Freed’s 1958 Holiday Rock and Roll Extravaganza, kicking off with my favorite song from that era, “Sh-Boom” by the Bronx-based Chords: “Life could be a dream / If I could take you up in paradise up above / If you would tell me I’m the only one that you love / Life could be a dream, sweetheart.” Unfortunately, after a promising beginning, the rest of the show proves not to be a dream of paradise.

The goofy premise is that on the last night of his life, January 20, 1965, amid Beatlemania and the Vietnam War, the Pennsylvania-born Freed is dreaming that he is being tried in an imaginary Court of Public Opinion by Judge Mental (Eric B. Turner) in the trial of The World versus Alan Freed; with the help of his lawyer, Little Richard (Rodrick Covington), Freed must defend his legacy against relentless prosecutor J. Edgar Hoover (Bob Ari), who has charged him with “the destruction of the American way of life by inventing the genre of music which you named rock and roll,” claiming that Freed is a “fraud . . . a modern day snake oil salesman who concocted this foul form of music solely for the purpose of self-promotion and illicit profit . . . then foisted it on our unsuspecting youth, manipulating them into a world of juvenile delinquency, alcohol, narcotics, and . . . SEX!!!!!”

Through flashbacks, Freed returns to Cleveland, where he got his start in radio, teaming up with Record Rendezvous owner and station advertiser Leo Mintz (Joe Pantoliano) to bring rock and roll to the younger generation. Freed immediately draws an integrated audience, with Black and white teenagers listening to his Moondog Show, hanging out at the record store, and going to concerts hosted by Freed and featuring such acts as LaVern Baker (Valisia LeKae).

Freed hits the big time when he moves to New York City and WINS, teaming up with Roulette Records owner and Birdland cofounder Morris Levy (Pantoliano), who allegedly associated with the Mafia. When a district attorney asks him, “Is it true you associate with known mobsters like Vinnie the Chin Gigante and other members of the Gambino crime family?,” he replies, “Look, I grew up in New York City. I know a lot of different people, including a few of the gentlemen you just mentioned. I also know Cardinal Spellman. That don’t make me a Catholic. And by the way, the cardinal loves me. He’s a real mensch.”

Freed and Levy present Little Richard, Frankie Lymon (Jamonté) and the Teenagers, Buddy Holly (Andy Christopher), Chuck Berry (Matthew S. Morgan), Jerry Lee Lewis (Dominique Scott), Bo Diddley (Eric B. Turner), and other breakthrough favorites, fighting off the trend of Caucasian crooners like Pat Boone (Christopher) “sucking the soul [right out of Little Richard’s] songs . . . bleaching ’em lily white,” with the original artists not seeing a penny in royalties when they’re played on the radio or on TV. Introducing Boone’s hot new song “Ain’t That a Shame” — first recorded by Fats Domino, who wrote it with Dave Bartholomew — on American Bandstand, host Dick Clark (Scott) calls himself “one of the good guys playing good clean American rock and roll for all you good clean American teenagers.”

But white performers and producers weren’t the only ones on the take; as Freed keeps growing more successful, FBI chief Hoover comes after him, accusing him of not only corrupting children but of accepting payola, setting up a final showdown.

By including new songs alongside classic oldies, Rock & Roll Man sets itself up with a major problem: Gary Kupper’s (Freckleface Strawberry, Consumer Behavior) original music and lyrics are vastly overshadowed by “Sixty Minute Man,” “Rocket 88,” “Lucille,” “See See Rider,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Covington and LeKae rip it up as Little Richard and LaVern Baker, respectively, with strong support from Turner as a singer in multiple groups, far outshining Morgan as Berry and Scott as Jerry Lee. The show might have benefited from a more wide-ranging book from Kupper, Larry Marshak, and Rose Caiola, adding much-needed attention to Freed’s family life; there are perfunctory appearances by his daughter Alana (Anna Hertel) and his wife Jackie (Autumn Guzzardi) — which was not the name of any of his three wives. Notably, one of the producers is Colleen Freed, who is married to Alan’s son Lance from his first marriage.

Director Randal Myler (It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, Hank Williams: Lost Highway), music supervisor and arranger Dave Keyes (with Kupper), and choreographer Stephanie Klemons only lift the show out of first gear when the classic songs are performed, with Keyes on synth, George Naha on guitar, Lee Nadel on bass, Mark Ivan Gross Sr. on reeds, and Rocky Bryant on drums and percussion.

Tim Mackabee’s two-level set morphs from record store to nightclub to radio station to concert stage. Leon Dobkowski’s costumes capture the feel of the era, enhanced by Kelley Jordan’s fab wigs. The projections are by Christopher Ash, with lighting by Matthew Richards and Aja M. Jackson and sound by Ed Chapman.

Tony nominee Maroulis (Rock of Ages, Jekyll & Hyde) has a charm to him but is not given enough character depth, falling short of Tim McIntire’s more energetic portrayal of Freed in Floyd Mutrux’s 1978 film, American Hot Wax. Emmy winner Pantoliano (Great Kills, Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune) seems more at home as Levy than Mintz, and he sings, too. Ari (Bells Are Ringing, Picasso at the Lapin Agile) is like a grizzly bear onstage as several villainous figures.

There’s no need to sneak out of your apartment to see Rock & Roll Man. If you need to hear “Tutti Frutti,” “Maybellene,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Yakety Yak,” and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” — and you do — you can always come over to my place and listen to the original pressings on my Victrola.