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PRIMARY TRUST

Kenneth (William Jackson Harper) has difficulty facing reality in Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust (photo by Joan Marcus)

PRIMARY TRUST
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $56-$147
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Eboni Booth’s sensational Primary Trust is an Our Town — or, more accurately, a My Town — for this very moment in time, in the twenty-first century. It beautifully captures the feelings of longing and loneliness so many of us experience in this digital age, especially coming out of a global pandemic permeated by isolation. Instantly a Best Play of the Year favorite, the ninety-five-minute show is anchored by a gorgeous performance by William Jackson Harper as Kenneth, our thirty-eight-year-old unreliable narrator and protagonist.

Primary Trust unfolds in the fictional community of Cranberry, New York, forty miles east of Rochester. Marsha Ginsberg’s lovely set is a miniature version of the town, with a bank, a tiki bar, a vacant shoe store, and a church; it is essentially Anywhere, USA. As the audience enters the theater, Chicago-born singer-songwriter and actor Luke Wygodny, is onstage, playing guitar. He later moves to keyboards off stage left, where he serves as the piano player at Wally’s and adds incidental music throughout.

The play begins with Kenneth addressing the audience. “This is what happened,” he says tentatively but with immense charm. “This is the story of how if you had asked me six months ago if I was lonely, I would have said . . . This is the story of a friendship. Of how I got a new job. A story of love and balance and time. And the smallest of chances.”

It’s clear from the start that Kenneth has social issues and is not well educated. He is haunted by the death of his mother, who died when he was only ten years old; he was raised in an orphanage and several foster homes. But instead of being angry or looking for excuses for his relative lack of success — he doesn’t see himself as a failure, seemingly enjoying his simple life — he is a gentle soul with a tender view of the world, or at least Cranberry, which is his entire world.

He’s been working as a clerk at a bookshop on Main St. for twenty years; his boss, Sam (Jay O. Sanders), treats him well. Every night, Kenneth goes to Wally’s, a tiki hut where he drinks mai tai after mai tai until the bar closes. He orders for two; he is always there with Bert (Eric Berryman), a married man with two daughters. Kenneth is not religious, but he explains, “I don’t really believe in God or heaven or hell, but I do believe in friends, and Bert is the best friend around.” They do just about everything together, but there’s one problem.

Kenneth (William Jackson Harper) spends most of his nights in a tiki bar with his best friend, Bert (Eric Berryman) (photo by Joan Marcus)

Bert is imaginary, and Kenneth knows it.

“He exists only in my head,” Kenneth reveals. “But that doesn’t make him any less real. He has arms and legs. A face, a heart — a good heart.”

Kenneth is generally an easygoing guy, but he becomes distressed when Sam tells him that he and his wife have sold the bookstore and are moving to Arizona. Desperate to find a job, he learns from Corinna (April Matthis), a waitress at Wally’s, that there’s an open position at the Primary Trust bank; Kenneth is interested because his mother used to work at Mutual Loan. Kenneth has trouble making important decisions without Bert, so he brings him along on the interview with Clay (Sanders), a good-natured bear of a man who takes a shine to Kenneth, as we all do, wanting him to succeed. “I have a brother,” Clay tells him. “Got into a car accident in high school, hit his head pretty bad. You remind me of him.”

Kenneth gets the job, but when he has one awful day, he’s not sure he’ll ever get over it as the careful life he’s created in his head is suddenly thrown off-kilter.

Kenneth’s (William Jackson Harper) life takes a new turn when he meets Corinna (April Matthis) (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Bronx-born Booth, who worked in bars and restaurants and has spoken about having a drinking problem, appeared in the terrific Dance Nation and Fulfillment Center, and her previous play, Paris, was set in a superstore in the fictional Paris, Vermont; she writes in a clear, familiar style that sucks you right in, offering a sweet affection for small-town living. In Primary Trust, she takes great care in every detail; even the names of the banks offer insight into Kenneth’s situation: His mother worked at Mutual Loan, evoking his need to be with her and not be alone, while he gets a job at Primary Trust, where he has to build confidence that he can handle life on his own and trust others.

Director Knud Adams, who helmed Paris and such other ensemble pieces as Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize–winning English and Gracie Gardner’s hard-hitting I’m Revolting, guides the narrative with a touching and warmhearted hand that will have even the most cynical city dwellers feel sentimental about small town life, at least for an hour and a half. Qween Jean’s costumes, Isabella Byrd’s lighting, and Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound further immerse you into the bittersweet ups and downs of Cranberry.

Berryman (Toni Stone, The B-Side: Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons) plays the kind of imaginary friend anyone would be lucky to have, even as we learn about where he came from. The always stalwart Sanders (Uncle Vanya, King Lear) is superb as Sam and Clay, two understanding father figures to Kenneth, as well as a funny garçon. Matthis (Help, Toni Stone) is a whirlwind playing multiple Wally’s waitresses and bank customers. Wygodny gets bonus time by occasionally interacting with Kenneth.

Harper (After the Blast, All the Way) is unforgettable as Kenneth, instilling in him a childlike sense of wonder and innocence; in many ways Kenneth is still that ten-year-old boy even as he realizes that he needs to start becoming an adult and accept his own responsibilities. Harper was nominated for an Emmy for his role on The Good Place portraying Chidi Anagonye, a moral philosopher and bundle of neuroses unable to make a decision; Kenneth feels like a natural progression for him. Kenneth is such a nice, well-meaning guy that you’ll want to be by his side, go with him to Wally’s and gulp a few mai tais, then comfort him when his loneliness overtakes him. You don’t have to have lost a parent, a job, or a best friend in order to relate to the isolation that envelops him. You just have to have empathy and compassion for other human beings, as well as yourself. There’s a reason why this town’s motto is “Welcome, Friend, You’re Right on Time!”

GREY HOUSE

Max (Tatiana Maslany, second from right) meets a creepy family in Grey House (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

GREY HOUSE
Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45ht St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 30, $74-$278
greyhousebroadway.com

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with 1970s horror movies set in houses. I couldn’t get enough of Bad Ronald, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Burnt Offerings, The Legend of Hell House, and the scariest of them all, the “Amelia” section of Trilogy of Terror, in which Karen Black portrays a woman who is terrorized by a Zuni doll. I saw all of them on television, with commercials, but they still terrified me.

I got the same chills watching Levi Holloway’s thrilling Grey House, live and in person on Broadway.

It’s a classic setup: A young couple, Max (Tatiana Maslany, but I saw understudy Claire Karpen) and Henry (Paul Sparks), crash their car during a snowstorm and seek refuge in a strange house in the woods. The creepy, creaky, cluttered structure is run by Raleigh (Laurie Metcalf), “mama” to five children, each of whom has their own proclivities: Marlow (Sophia Anne Caruso), Bernie (Millicent Simmonds), A1656 (Alyssa Emily Marvin), Squirrel (Colby Kipnes), and the Boy (Eamon Patrick O’Connell). They wear gothic dressing gowns and pajamas, speak in mysteries, and occasionally break out into ritualistic songs.

“It’s a call coming from your house / She’s yelling from the window frame / You want to ignore it but there’s nothing else / No one, no one, no one, no one left to play,” A1656 sings early on. It’s a 2018 tune by Mountain Man, “Stella,” that references horror-movie tropes.

The kids scatter when they hear a knock at the door; Max enters the living room and picks up the phone, but the cord has been cut. Henry sits on a couch, worrying about his ankle, which might be broken. “I’ve seen this. All this. I’ve seen this movie,” he says. “What happens?” Max asks. “We don’t make it,” Henry replies. For added effect, there’s a ghoulish doll leaning against a small television on the floor.

Max (Tatiana Maslany) and Henry (Paul Sparks) find themselves trapped in a cabin in the woods in Grey House (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

When she meets the children, Max tells them, “You don’t need to be afraid.” Marlow responds, “Neither do you,” as she pulls a knife on Max.

To help him heal, the kids offer Henry “the Nectar of Dead Men,” which Raleigh explains is one of the types of moonshine they make and sell.

Impressed by the children’s general efficiency, Max tells Raleigh, “Your daughters are very independent.” Raleigh answers, “They are willful creatures.” They soon show just how willful they can be.

Over the course of one hundred intermissionless minutes, the wind howls. Blood drips. The lights go off and then on again. A devilish glow and smoke seep out of the basement. Characters suddenly appear and disappear. A rocking chair rocks. A game called Show and Hell involves a demonic chalk circle. What’s in the refrigerator changes every time it’s opened. The entire house lets out ghastly groans as if it might collapse at any moment. An old woman (Cyndi Coyne) sings. Every move anyone makes is filled with possibility: trepidation, fear, dread, conjuring, and, perhaps, care and love. Even when you think something bad is coming, you’ll still jump in your seat when it happens.

Successful and original scary plays are extremely rare on Broadway; there have been plenty of frightful musicals — Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Young Frankenstein — but at their heart they are often romances filled with dark humor.

Grey House contains references to numerous horror classics (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

Grey House is pure, unadulterated horror. Two-time Tony-winning director Joe Mantello (The Humans, The Boys in the Band) masterfully maintains a constant state of foreboding as the plot unfolds. Like most 1970s horror movies, not everything makes sense; several loose knots are left untied, but more than enough answers are supplied. Holloway and Mantello also expertly sprinkle references to such other frightening classics as Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Beguiled, Misery (a great book and film but failed play, starring Metcalf), and Ju-On.

Scott Pask’s set is a character unto itself, stuffed to the gills with endless objects and secrets; the rafters seem to be closing in on everyone, ready to collapse at the next drop of blood. Rudy Mance’s costumes capture the feel of people trapped in a cabin in the woods, while Natasha Katz’s lighting and Tom Gibbons’s sound honor the genre well.

The cast is exceptional, their perfomances perfectly modulated to prey on the audience’s fears, led by two-time Tony winner Metcalf (Three Tall Women, A Doll’s House, Part 2), who plays Raleigh with just the right amount of perplexity. Karpen (Sylvia, Into the Woods) and Emmy nominee Sparks (At Home at the Zoo, The Killer) are terrific as the couple who have no idea what they have gotten themselves into, their lives changed forever by one harrowing event.

Caruso, who at twenty-one has already excelled in such shows as Lazarus, Beetlejuice, The Nether, and Blackbird, all of which contain some level of terror, is again outstanding as a girl who knows much more than she is letting on, playing Marlow with a cool and eerie self-confidence.

While I can imagine watching Grey House on television on a snowy Saturday night, the place to catch it now is on Broadway; it is scheduled to occupy the Lyceum Theatre through September 3.

THE IDIOTS

A group of nonconformers battle the status quo in Lars von Trier’s The Idiots

THE IDIOTS (IDIOTERNE) (Lars von Trier, 1998)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, June 16
metrograph.com
mubi.com

I remember being fairly disgusted the first time I saw Lars von Trier’s 1998 film, The Idiots, about a group of men and women who pretend to be mentally ill in order to subvert bourgeois society. They “spass about,” going to restaurants, bars, a factory, a pool, and people’s homes and act like “retards” (their word, not mine), dribbling from their mouths, talking with speech impediments, and moving as if they have cerebral palsy. They pull off pranks that range from just plain silly to downright offensive, with no regret or apology. The film was booed at Cannes, then nominated for the Palme d’Or, while reviews praised and reviled it. However, over time, its reputation has grown, with more and more critics raving about its ingenuity and inventiveness.

The Idiots is the second Dogme 95 film, and von Trier’s only such movie, following a set of ten principles involving sound, light, acting, camera use, genre, location, and other elements, aiming for naturalism and immediacy without technical virtuosity. In the “Vow of chastity,” each filmmaker “swears as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a ‘work,’ as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.”

The film is now back in a twenty-fifth anniversary 4K remaster that on the surface would appear to violate at least the spirit of those rules. Opening at Metrograph on June 16 before streaming on MUBI, The Idiots still challenges good taste, but it’s more difficult to merely dismiss it as some kind of goof gone wrong as the political correctness of the 1990s evolves into the wokeism of the 2020s. However, it’s hard to imagine that it’s not profoundly offensive to the disabled community. Are we allowed to think that some of the inanity is funny in this blackest of black comedies? I let out one belly laugh that shook my body, but I grimaced a lot more than I smiled.

Stoffer (Jens Albinus) is the ersatz leader of this group of misfits, which includes Susanne (Anne Louise Hassing), Henrik (Troels Lyby), Jeppe (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), Josephine (Louise Mieritz), Ped (Henrik Prip), Miguel (Luis Mesonero), Axel (Knud Romer Jørgensen), Nana (Trine Michelsen), and Katrine (Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis), who have left their boring, materialistic, conventional lives as doctors, advertising executives, and parents in order to challenge the status quo. After pulling a stunt at a fancy restaurant in part to skip out on the bill, they are joined by Karen (Bodil Jørgensen), a quiet woman who seems lost in the world; she is essentially the cinematic representative of the audience, wondering if what they’re doing is disgraceful, exciting, or important.

A key exchange takes place in the woods, about twenty minutes into the film:

Karen: Why do they do it?
Nana: That’s a bloody good question.
Stoffer: They’re searching for their inner idiot, Karen. What’s the idea of a society that gets richer and richer when it doesn’t make anyone happier? In the stone age, all the idiots died. It doesn’t have to be like that nowadays. Being an idiot is a luxury, but it is also a step forward. Idiots are the people of the future. If one can find the one idiot that happens to be one’s own idiot. . . .
Karen: But there are people who really are ill. It’s sad for the people who are not able like us. How can you justify acting the idiot?
Stoffer: You can’t.
Karen: I would just like to . . . understand.
Stoffer: Understand what?
Karen: Why I’m here. Why I am here.
Stoffer: Perhaps because there is a little idiot in there — that wants to come out and have some company. Don’t you think?

The Idiots have taken up residence in a large house owned by Stoffer’s uncle, Svend (Erik Wedersøe), who is trying to sell it and is thus pretty unenthusiastic about how his home is being ransacked. Even a local councilman (Michael Moritzen) stops by to see just what the hell is going on. But that doesn’t stop them from continuing their exploits, although the plot heats up when Stoffer insists that some of them go back to their actual lives and still “spass” out. “Either you’re an idiot or you aren’t,” Stoffer proclaims. Editor Molly Malene Stensgaard occasionally cuts to several of the Idiots on a couch as if they are on a reality show, discussing something that went wrong but skirting around the details.

Perhaps the most important statement is made by Axel, who announces with disdain at a turning point, “Here comes reality.”

The 110-minute film features plenty of nudity (including an orgy scene with close-ups of penetration by unidentified porn actors), multiple scenes where the boom mic is visible, and even a shot in which we can see von Trier in a window reflection, holding the camera. There’s also incidental music, which Dogme 95 generally disallows, but von Trier has Kim Kristensen play Camille Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan” on the melodica live, just out of visible range, so it was deemed acceptable.

Twenty-five years later, I’ve come to terms with the film. While I can endorse such other controversial von Trier projects as Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Zentropa, Dogville, The Element of Crime, Nymphomaniac, Melancholia, and Antichrist — many of which are now available on MUBI — I can’t unequivocally recommend The Idiots, but there is much more to it than I initially wanted to realize. It is still offensive; the disabled and young people brought up to be aware of the rights of the disabled especially might not appreciate the use of some of the language, highlighted by a word that recently popped up in songs by Beyoncé and Lizzo that they both had to apologize for and replace with an alternate lyric.

But in a world of vast income inequality, critical issues with mental health, viciousness on social media, and cancel culture, The Idiots now feels more radical than ever, with a deeply emotional, unforgettable finale.

“Idiocy is like hypnosis or ejaculation: If you want it, you can’t have it — and if you don’t want it, you can,” von Trier, whose parents both worked for the social ministry, told journalist Peter Øvig Knudsen about the film, which is meant to provoke. And provoke it still does, a quarter century after its debut.

DAVID BOWIE WORLD FAN CONVENTION: DERYCK TODD’S BOWIEBALL

DAVID BOWIE WORLD FAN CONVENTION: DERYCK TODD’S BOWIEBALL
Racket
431 West Sixteenth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Saturday, June 17, 8:00, $96.83
Sold-out convention runs June 16-18
bowieconvention.com
www.bowerypresents.com

In the introduction to his revised and updated 2016 book The Complete David Bowie, Nicholas Pegg writes, “If you want to enjoy David Bowie’s work to the full, keep an open mind. What makes Bowie such a supremely fascinating artist is that his career presents an implicit challenge to conventional notions of creative continuity. He has repeatedly confounded attempts to pigeonhole him as this or that kind of artist, and the result has been one of rock music’s longest and most successful careers.”

While his career came to an end in January 2016 when the man born David Jones in Brixton died at the age of sixty-nine, the fascination with the Thin White Duke continues unabated, with museum exhibitions such as the spectacular “David Bowie Is” at the Brooklyn Museum, the pandemic livestream benefits “A Bowie Celebration” featuring a multitude of music stars, and the release of a series of posthumous live albums and box sets.

Pegg will serve as compère for the 2023 David Bowie World Fan Convention, taking place June 17 and 18 at Racket, the Chelsea club formerly known as the High Line Ballroom, where Bowie curated the inaugural High Line Festival in 2007, putting together a lineup that included Ricky Gervais, Arcade Fire, Air, Laurie Anderson, Deerhoof, the Polyphonic Spree, Daniel Johnston, Bang on a Can All Stars, and others. The convention, which has a bonus VIP day on June 16, features panel discussions, live performances, and a trivia evening; tickets are still available for Deryck Todd’s “BowieBall” Saturday night, with a “Best Dressed Bowie” costume contest, drag and burlesque, dancing, and live performances by vocalist Ava Cherry, musician and writer Jeff Slate, and Bowie DJs TheMenWhoFell2Earth. This year’s convention honors the fortieth anniversary of Let’s Dance and the fiftieth anniversary of Aladdin Sane, two of Bowie’s most popular records.

Below is the full schedule. In addition, Modern Rocks Gallery is hosting a photography exhibit at the Maker’s Studio in Chelsea Market, with pictures by Sukita, Terry O’Neill, Dennis O’Regan, Kevin Cummins, Brian Aris, and Duffy and an exclusive limited edition print of John Rowlands’s “The Archer.” And you can’t go wrong by starting the weekend with Raquel Cion’s one-woman show, Me & Mr. Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie, at the Cutting Room on Friday night; held in association with the convention, it is a personal and poignant exploration of fandom and the impact Bowie has had on people’s lives.

BowieBall features a costume contest, live performances, lots of dancing, and more (photo by Sam McMahon)

Saturday, June 17
Heroes, Zeroes, and Absolute Beginners, with bassist Carmine Rojas and guitarist Kevin Armstrong, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 10:00 am

Planet Earth Is Blue, with singer and multi-instrumentalist Emm Gryner and producer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Plati, on “Space Oddity” performance aboard the International Space Station, Toy, the Hours Tour, and more, 11:00

Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion, with fashion designer Keanan Duffty and musicians Ava Cherry and Joey Arias, 12:15

Fantastic Voyage, with producer, arranger, bassist, and vocalist Tony Visconti and studio engineer and backing vocalist Erin Tonkon, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 2:00

Golden Years, with guitarist Carlos Alomar, singer Robin Clark, and bassist George Murray, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 3:00

BowieBall, live performances by vocalist Ava Cherry, musician and writer Jeff Slate, and Bowie DJs TheMenWhoFell2Earth, a “Best Dressed Bowie” costume contest, drag and burlesque, and more, hosted by Michael T, 8:00

Sunday, June 18
Red Shoes, Blue Jeans, and Glass Spiders, with guitarist Carlos Alomar, singer Robin Clark, and bassist Carmine Rojas, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 11:00

I’ve Got to Write It Down, with Nacho; Chris O’Leary, author of Pushing Ahead of the Dame; Stephen Pitalo, author of Bohemian Rhapsodies, Thrillers & November Rains; and Nicholas Pegg, author of The Complete David Bowie, moderated by Nacho, 12:15

You Belong in Rock’n’Roll, with guitarist Kevin Armstrong and producer Tim Palmer, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 2:00

Brilliant Adventure, with producer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Plati, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 3:00

Everyone Says “Hi”: Tony Visconti and Friends, with guitarist Carlos Alomar, singer Robin Clark, studio engineer and backing vocalist Erin Tonkon, bassist George Murray, and producer Tony Visconti, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 4:00

Nacho’s Videos Presents, with Nacho, Ava Cherry, Michael T, TheMenWhoFell2Earth, and more 5:45

Nicholas Pegg’s David Bowie Quiz, the Cutting Room, 7:30

Closing Party, with TheMenWhoFell2Earth DJs, Bowery Electric, 8:00 pm – 2:00 am

FRESH TRACKS 2022/23 COHORT

FRESH TRACKS
New York Live Arts
219 West Nineteenth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Friday, June 16, and Saturday, June 17, $16-$30, 7:30
newyorklivearts.org

The fifty-eighth iteration of New York Live Arts’ Fresh Tracks takes place this weekend, with five emerging creators debuting pieces developed over the last year in the Residency & Performance program, working with artistic advisor, choreographer, dancer, activist, mother, grandmother, warrior, and educator nia love. Each artist received a fifty-hour studio residency and $3000 fee to develop a new piece through development workshops and access to staff from multiple NYLA departments.

Inspired by Anne Anlin Cheng’s idea of ornamentalism, California-born Filipina American artist Kristel Baldoz will be using dance, ceramics, and indictment to explore female Asian identity, objecthood, and personhood in Yellow Fever. “I mix materials and movement to reframe the way we view colonial relations and how the laborious body, the dancing body, creates tension to release objects from their colonial meaning,” she explains in her artist statement. Black visual and performance artist Malcolm-x Betts is premiering Niggas at Sundown, collaborating with performer Nile Harris and performer and sound designer Admanda Kobilka. The piece is the third in the “Kinfolk” series, which began with Midnight Glow and Butch Queen, and explores white supremacy and sundown towns, with Betts’s jumpsuits serving as performance scores encouraging improvisation.

In Loud and Clear, Venezuelan interdisciplinary choreographer, director, installation artist, educator, and performer Miguel Alejandro Castillo, who was one of the ten dancers in Faye Driscoll’s remarkable Weathering at NYLA in April, looks at folklore and the Venezuelan diaspora, joined by musician Daniella Barbarito and visual artist Lexy Ho-Tai. Milwaukee-born, Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, filmmaker, and dance educator Jade Charon teams up with visual designer and technician Ker Chen and musician and composer Farai Malianga for Gold Pylon, the latest in her “Gold” series, which has included a children’s book and a superhero dance film. In this solo, Charon uses a grandmother’s prayer to reach the gateway of the higher self. And New Jersey–born, New York City–based performer, choreographer, theater maker, and musician Orlando Hernández delves into colonialism and the Caribbean diaspora in Too soon to discover planets, too late to discover islands, incorporating tap dance, masks, and sacred music.

KAGAMI

Ryuichi Sakamoto extends his legacy with jaw-dropping Kagami at the Shed (photo courtesy Tin Drum)

KAGAMI
The Griffin Theater at the Shed
The Bloomberg Building at Hudson Yards
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 9, $33-$38
646-455-3494
theshed.org

“I honestly don’t know how many years I have left,” composer, musician, producer, and environmental activist Ryuichi Sakamoto says in the 2017 documentary Coda. “But I know that I want to make more music. Music that I won’t be ashamed to leave behind. Meaningful work.”

The Tokyo-born Oscar and Grammy winner died this past March 28 at the age of seventy-one, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to see him perform live — sort of — ever again. Over the last nine years of his life, Sakamoto battled various types of cancer. Knowing his time on Earth was limited, he continued working, releasing the album async in 2017 and 12 just before his death, composing the scores for such films as The Revenant, Rage, The Fortress, and Love After Love, and preparing the cutting-edge project Kagami, which opens today at the Shed in Hudson Yards.

On the wall outside the theater, Sakamoto writes:

There is, in reality, a virtual me.
This virtual me will not age, and will continue to play the piano for years, decades, centuries.
Will there be humans then?
Will the squids that will conquer the earth after humanity listen to me?
What will pianos be to them?
What about music?
Will there be empathy there?

Empathy that spans hundreds of thousands of years.
Ah, but the batteries won’t last that long.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, director Todd Eckert, and Rhizomatiks work behind the scenes on Kagami (photo courtesy Tin Drum)

Kagami is a spectacular, breathtaking mixed-reality concert experienced with specially designed optically transparent devices, making it appear that Sakamoto is playing live piano, enveloped in augmented reality art. Visitors are first led into a room in the repurposed Griffin Theater with large-scale posters of Sakamoto and a screening of clips from Coda, in which he wanders through a lush forest and the Arctic, searching for the harmonies and melodies of nature. Sitting by a hole in the ice, he dips a microphone into the water and says, “I’m fishing with sound.”

The group of no more than eighty next enter another space, where chairs are set up in one row around a central area with cubic markings on the floor. Each person receives tight-fitting goggle-like glasses and, suddenly, a hologram of Sakamoto appears in the middle of the room, seated at his Yamaha grand piano; he was volumetrically captured in December 2020, during the height of Covid, by director Todd Eckert and his Tin Drum collective, which previously made the mixed-reality installation The Life with Marina Abramović.

The audience is warned before the show starts that the technology is not perfect — it turns out that the hologram is not very sharp, and it’s difficult to understand what Sakamoto says in brief introductions to two of the songs — but it’s jaw-droppingly gorgeous nonetheless. The fifty-minute concert begins with the jazzy “Before Long” from the 1987 album New Geo; as the white-haired Sakamoto tickles the ivories, smoky clouds rise from the floor and float in the air. Near the end of the number, one audience member got up and walked over to the image of Sakamoto at the piano. A few others, including me, soon joined him, and more followed. As Sakamoto played the ethereal, New Agey “Aoneko no Torso” from 1995’s Smoochy, I approached Sakamoto and slowly sauntered around the piano, seeing the maestro from all different angles, close enough to determine the length of his fingernails and follow his eye movement. Even though he’s slightly out of focus, it’s hard to believe he’s not really right there, questioning reality itself as a construct. Although you could walk through him, no one did, as if out of respect.

Over the next several songs, ranging from “The Seed and the Sower” and the title track from the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, “Andata” from async, “Energy Flow” and “Aqua” from 1999’s BTTB, and “MUJI2020” from the “Pleasant, somehow” campaign about humanity’s responsibility to the environment, raindrops created ripples in a pond at our feet; diagonal neon lights hovered ominously over our heads; snowflakes fluttered by; multiple screens projected archival black-and-white footage of old cities and a snowstorm; and a tree grew out of the piano, its roots then digging far into the ground, mimicking the circulatory system. The highlight was when the Griffin became like the Hayden Planetarium, with stars and constellations everywhere and the spinning earth underneath, making me feel like I was floating in the air, a wee bit dizzy until I let the music bring me back.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the technology is its ability to essentially allow you to see right through anyone standing in front of you. At a concert with a real pianist, if a tall person gets in your way, you can’t see the performer. But here, they are like ghosts; you can make out their outlines but still have a clear path to Sakamoto. Of course, the other people are actually there, so you have to avoid bumping into them by using your peripheral vision.

Kagami means “mirror” in Japanese, and the show certainly makes you look at who you are both as an individual and as part of the greater environment. The special effects cause sensations reminiscent of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s thrilling Infinity Rooms, which use lights and mirrors to extend visions of our universe. The presentation is no mere money grab by an estate trying to resurrect their dead cash cow with posthumous holographic tours. Kagami is an intricately designed multimedia installation that the artist was deeply involved in; Sakamoto fashioned his own unique legacy, pushing the boundaries yet again, playing one last concert that can last forever, or at least as long as the planet he so loved and protected is still here and the batteries last.

PRIDE REVISED — LINES AND CURVES, DRAWN AND MOVING: THE WATERMELON WOMAN

THE WATERMELON WOMAN

Cheryl Dunye wrote, directed, edited, and stars in The Watermelon Woman

THE WATERMELON WOMAN (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, June 14, 5:30 & 7:30
Series continues through
212-255-224
quadcinema.com

“The idea came from the real lack of information about the lesbian and film history of African American women. Since it wasn’t happening, I invented it,” Cheryl Dunye says about her 1996 debut, The Watermelon Woman, which underwent a twentieth-anniversary 2K HD restoration in 2016. In the film, the first feature by a black lesbian, Dunye plays herself, a twenty-five-year-old black lesbian working at a video store with her goofy best friend, Tamara (Valerie Walker). Searching for a topic to make a movie on, Cheryl becomes obsessed with an actress who played a mammy in Plantation Memories and other 1930s films. The actress was listed in the credits as the Watermelon Woman; Cheryl decides to find out more about her, going on a journey in and around her hometown of Philadelphia, discovering more and more about the actress, also known as Fae Richards, and the battle black lesbians had to fight in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. In the meantime, Cheryl begins a relationship with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a privileged white woman who has just moved into the area, mimicking what Cheryl has found out about Richards, who had an affair with white director Martha Page.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN

Diana (Guinevere Turner) and Cheryl Dunye (as herself) stars a relationship in The Watermelon Woman

The Watermelon Woman suffers from amateurish filmmaking techniques (Michelle Crenshaw was the cinematographer, while Dunye served as editor as well as writer, director, and star), but its central issue is a compelling one, and Dunye is engaging as her onscreen alter ego. Richards (Lisa Marie Bronson) and Page (producer Alexandra Juhasz) are seen only in photographs and archival footage shot by white lesbian artist Zoe Leonard (her photography assistant was Kimberly Peirce, who went on to make Boys Don’t Cry), while Doug McKeown (The Deadly Spawn) directed the scenes from fake movies Plantation Memories and Soul of Deceit. (The photographs became an art project of its own, touring museums around the world.) The film features numerous cameos by writers, musicians, and activists, including Camille Paglia as herself, V. S. Brodie as a karaoke singer, Sarah Schulman as the CLIT archivist, David Rakoff as a librarian, and Toshi Reagon as a street singer. The Watermelon Woman is a heartfelt tribute to black lesbians by a black lesbian who is restoring one woman’s true identity as a microcosm for all black women who have had theirs taken away. In addition, the film became part of an attempt by certain congressmen to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, which supplied a $31,500 grant to Dunye; Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra, head of the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, singled the film out as offensive. The Watermelon Woman is also a reminder of what research was like pre-Google, less than thirty years ago. Dunye has gone on to make such films as Stranger Inside, Black Is Blue, Mommy Is Coming, and My Baby’s Daddy, continuing her exploration of multiracial, gay, and trans culture. The Watermelon Woman is screening June 14 at the Quad as part of the series “Pride Revived: Lines and Curves, Drawn and Moving”; the 7:30 show will be introduced by film critic, comedian, and podcaster Jourdain Searles. Also on the schedule are Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason on June 12, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema on June 13, and Jack Sholder’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge on June 14.