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.
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.]
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.]
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.
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.
THE ALARM
Gramercy Theatre
127 East 23rd St. at Lexington Ave.
Friday, June 23, and Saturday, June 24, $53-$120
Free special events June 22 and June 25 www.livenation.com thealarm.com
During the pandemic and continuing to today, one of my favorite social media messages has been “The Alarm Is Live,” referring to the Welsh rock band that goes back to the early 1980s. Most recently, the pop-up came with a second meaning, as, for decades, group cofounder and lead vocalist Mike Peters has been battling cancer, including lymph cancer in 1996 and chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2005, which came back this past September.
As he explained on the band’s website, “I am writing today to let you all know that my leukemia (CLL) has relapsed and I have been admitted to the North Wales Cancer Centre for immediate treatment. I have already started on a brand new chemotherapy regime and so I wanted you to know, personally, that my life living with cancer is about to change for the foreseeable future. My immediate aim is to get fit and well for the Gathering. . . . This coming January will commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Gathering, an event that has come to represent all that we stand for — thirty years of Love Hope and Strength, thirty years of friendship and celebration and, through music, helping each other to live life and stay strong. I want you to know that I am going to beat this disease once more and be ready, willing, and able to hit the stage. . . . Since being diagnosed with pneumonia (after the last British tour), the post-recovery period provided far greater challenges for me than I could ever have envisaged (although somehow I managed to find the strength to record the backing tracks for a new Alarm album. I’ve even got my guitar with me on the ward just in case inspiration strikes!)”
Inspiration did strike, as Peters, joined by his wife, keyboardist Jules Jones Peters, kept going live on Facebook, sharing music and stories, even from his hospital bed, while continuing their series “The Big Night In.” Late last month, Peters took off on a solo acoustic tour of England, playing thirty-song sets of Alarm tunes, from the anthemic ’80s hits “Sixty Eight Guns” (“And now they are trying to take my life away / Forever young I cannot stay”), “Blaze of Glory” (“Going out in a blaze of glory / My heart is open wide / You can take anything that you want from me / There is nothing left to hide”), and “The Stand” (“Come on down and meet your maker / Come on down and make the stand / Come on down, come on down / Come on down and make the stand”) to tracks from their brand-new album, Forwards, written from the perspective of an older, wiser man who has looked death in the face — “Forwards” (“In the cities all deserted / In the streets of emptiness / In the church of nonbelievers / I’ve been searching for the way to find new faith . . . I’ve been trying to get myself back home to you / I’m living for today / Trying to find the way forwards”), “Next” (“All the clocks are set to zero, now’s the time to run / I hear the crack of the starting gun and I’m ready for what’s next / All is possible / All is understood / Whatever is trying to kill me makes me feel alive”), and “Transition” (“There’s a line I have to cross tonight / If I want to stay alive and live for a second time / Knowing time / The way it’s passing by / I can’t afford to wait / To see the light of day”).
Peters, who is sixty-four, and the Alarm return to New York City this week for the Gathering, a four-day celebration that begins June 22 at 6:00 with a solo acoustic set and record signing at Rough Trade in Rockefeller Plaza. On Friday and Saturday, Peters and his bandmates — James Stevenson on guitar and bass, Mark Taylor on keyboards and guitar, Steve “Smiley” Barnard on drums, and Jules on keyboards — will be performing at the Gramercy Theatre, with each night offering unique surprises, including acoustic sets, film screenings, and a Q&A for two-day-pass holders. The festivities conclude with a ninety-minute hike around the Central Park lake on Sunday at 11:30 am beginning at Bethesda Fountain in support of Peters’s charity, the Love Hope Strength Foundation, whose mission is “to save lives, one concert at a time”; you can register in advance here.
On the Alarm’s “Diary of a Rock & Roll Life” Facebook posts, Jules wrote on May 9, after Mike got good news from the North Wales Cancer Treatment Centre, “Just being healthy is the greatest gift of all.” Another great gift is Mike Peters and the Alarm back onstage in NYC for these special shows. “The Alarm Is Live,” and this time in person.
On August 12, 1978, the New England Patriots were playing a preseason game against the Oakland Raiders at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Late in the second quarter, the Pats have a third and eight at the Raiders twenty-four-yard line. QB Steve Grogan calls the 94 Slant, and wide receiver Darryl Stingley heads downfield. At the ten-yard line, Stingley reaches for the overthrown pass and is crushed in midair by two-time Raiders All-Pro safety Jack Tatum, known as the Assassin for his punishing style of play. Stingley immediately crumples to the ground. Four Oakland defenders look down at Stingley and walk away; Patriots wide receiver Russ Francis stands over his fallen teammate, knowing something is wrong. The twenty-six-year-old Stingley is wheeled off the field on a stretcher, a quadriplegic for the rest of his life; he died in 2007 at the age of fifty-five. Tatum wasn’t penalized on the play and never apologized to Stingley, claiming it was a legal hit and that he had done nothing wrong. Tatum, who died in 2010 at the age of sixty-one, was also involved in the Immaculate Reception on December 23, 1972, in a playoff game against the Steelers; with twenty-two seconds left and Pittsburgh down by one, future Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw was facing a fourth and ten from his own forty. He ran to his right and threw a pass down the middle. Tatum smashed into Steelers running back Frenchy Fuqua, the ball popped up into the air, and future Hall of Famer Franco Harris picked it up by his shoestrings and ran forty yards into the end zone for the winning score.
Filmmaker and installation artist Matthew Barney was eleven years old when Tatum pummeled Stingley. Seeing the collision over and over again on replay did not prevent Barney from becoming a star quarterback in high school in Idaho. But at Yale, he switched from sports to art, beginning his “Drawing Restraint” series in 1987 and making his Jim Otto Suite in 1991–92, about orifices, bodily fluids, energy, Harry Houdini, and Raiders Hall of Fame center Jim Otto, who wore the number double zero, mimicking the letters at the beginning and end of his palindromic last name.
Barney is now saying farewell to his longtime Long Island City studio with Secondary, a five-channel video installation that uses the Tatum-Stingley play to explore violence in athletic competition. Barney has transformed the studio, which is right on the East River, into a football stadium, with a long, artificial turf surface divided into geometric patterns of different colors, centered by his “Field Emblem,” his Cremaster logo, an ellipse with a line going through it, evoking –0-. There are monitors in all four corners of the field, along with a three-sided mini-jumbotron hanging from the ceiling. Visitors can sit on the field or a bench; there is also a painting on the wall, an owners booth filled with football paraphernalia, and a ditch with broken piping and mud dug into the concrete. Outside, on the facade facing the water, there is a digital countdown clock next to graffiti that says, “Saboroso,” which means “delicious.”
Written and directed by Barney, photographed by Soren Nielsen, and edited by Kate Williams, the film lasts sixty minutes, the length of a football game. It kicks off with indigenous rights activist Jacquelyn Deshchidn, a Two-Spirit Chiricahua Apache and Isleta Pueblo soprano, composer, poet, and public speaker, performing an alternate national anthem, a none-too-subtle jab at a league that still has teams using offensive Native American names and imagery. The cast, primarily consisting of dancers and choreographers, features movement director David Thomson as Stingley; Raphael Xavier as Tatum; Shamar Watt as Raiders safety Lester “the Molester” Hayes; Wally Cardona as Grogan; Ted Johnson as Francis; Isabel Crespo Pardo, Kyoko Kitamura, and Jeffrey Gavett as the line judges and referees; Barney as Raiders Hall of Fame QB Ken “the Snake” Stabler, who died of colon cancer but who was discovered to have had high Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the disease that affects so many football players, brought on by getting hit so much in the head; and Thomas Kopache as Raiders owner Al Davis, whose motto was “Just win, baby,” no matter the cost. (Football fans will also notice cameos by actors portraying such Raiders favorites as wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff and defensive end John “the Tooz” Matuszak, who became an actor and died in 1989 at the age of thirty-eight from an opioid overdose.) The actors are generally much older than the people they represent, several of whom never made it to the age the performers are today.
Matthew Barney has turned his LIC studio into a multimedia installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The experimental film does not have a traditional chronological narrative; instead, Barney focuses on Tatum, Hayes, and Stingley training in slow motion in equipment rooms as if preparing for a ballet, Grogan making a football out of a gooey substance and then practicing with it, members of Raiders Nation shouting and cheering in fierce black-and-silver Halloween-like costumes, and players venturing into the muddy ditch, the broken pipe echoing Stingley’s shattered body. The music, by sound designer Jonathan Bepler, envelops the audience in a parade of noises, from hums and breathing to clangs and screams. Shots of the Manhattan skyline and the East River beckon to another life outside. The screens sometimes display the same footage, while other times they are different; it is like the viewer is at a football game, with the choice whether to watch the quarterback, the defensive alignment, or other fans in the stands. There is no actual pigskin in the film.
The game of football has always been lionized for its violence. Even as the league changes rules to try to protect the quarterback, kick returners, and receivers, the sports networks repeatedly show brutal hits like the one on Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa against the Cincinnati Bengals that resulted in severe head and neck injuries. When we think of Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann, the first thing we remember is the career-ending injury he suffered on Monday Night Football in 1985 at the hands of New York Giants linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson, brutally shattering his leg, and not his 1982–83 MVP season when he led his team to a Super Bowl victory over the Dolphins.
But Barney (River of Fundament,“Subliming Vessel”) is not merely commenting on football. Secondary is about America itself, its rituals and celebrations, its embracing of violence on and off the field. It’s about our lack of respect for the human body and one another, about a country torn apart into blue and red states like opposing teams, ready to do whatever is necessary to just win, baby.
