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OZU 120 — A COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE

Film Forum is hosting a complete retrospective of the work of Yasujirō Ozu in honor of the 120th anniversary of his birth and 60th anniversary of his death

OZU 120: A COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
June 9-29
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

While it is never a bad time to celebrate the genius of Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu, now seems a particularly potent moment, with partisan politics and social media tearing friends and families apart, corporations gaining more and more power and wealth, and education under attack across America. From June 9 to 29, Film Forum is hosting “Ozu 120: A Complete Retrospective,” consisting of all three dozen of his extant works, in honor of the 120th anniversary of his birth, on December 12, 1903, and the 60th anniversary of his death on his birthday in 1963. It is no coincidence that six of the films have references to family members in their titles and another dozen involve youth and the passing of time over the course of a day and the seasons of the year.

The Tokyo-born writer, cameraman, and director made poignant “common people’s dramas,” known as shomin-geki, that penetrated deeply into the relationships among husbands and wives, children and parents, and bosses and employees, presenting honest portraits with care and intelligence. Interestingly, Ozu never married and never had kids of his own. His magnificent, meditative films feature long interior takes, little action, and few camera movements, letting the story unfold at its own pace, often photographed from low camera angles that came to be called tatami shots, from the point of view of someone kneeling on a tatami mat.

On June 19, the screenings of I Was Born, But . . . and a fragment of the short film A Straightforward Boy will be accompanied by live music by pianist and composer Makia Matsumura and a performance by master benshi Ichiro Kataoka. The June 20 showing of Tokyo Twilight will be introduced by Asian-American International Film Festival programming manager Kris Montello. Keep watching this space for more reviews of films from this must-see retrospective.

Father (Chishu Ryu) and daughter (Setsuko Hara) contemplate their future in Yasujirō Ozu masterpiece

LATE SPRING (BANSHUN) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)
Film Forum
June 9, 10, 11, 13, 28
filmforum.org

A masterpiece from start to finish, Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring marked a late spring of sorts in the Japanese auteur’s career as he moved into a new, post-WWII phase of his long exploration of Japanese family life and the middle class. Based on Kazuo Hirotsu’s novel Father and Daughter, the black-and-white film, written by Ozu with longtime collaborator Kogo Noda, tells the story of twenty-seven-year-old Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who lives at home with her widower father, Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu), a university professor who has carved out a very simple existence for himself. Her aunt, Masa (Haruko Sugimura), thinks Noriko should get married, but she prefers caring for her father, who she believes would be lost without her. But when Somiya starts dropping hints that he might remarry, like his friend and colleague Jo Onodera (Masao Mishima) did — a deed that Noriko finds unbecoming and “filthy” — Noriko has to take another look at her future.

Late Spring is a monument of simplicity and economy while also being a complex, multilayered tale whose every moment offers unlimited rewards. From the placement and minimal movement of the camera to the design of the set to the carefully choreographed acting, Ozu infuses the work with meaning, examining not only the on-screen relationship between father and daughter but the intimate relationship between the film and the viewer. Ozu has a firm grasp on the state of the Japanese family as some of the characters try to hold on to old-fashioned culture and tradition while recovering from the war’s devastation and facing the modernism that is taking over.

Late Spring is part of month-long festival at Film Forum celebrating the work of director Yasujirō Ozu

Hara, who also starred as a character named Noriko in Ozu’s Early Summer and Tokyo Story, is magnificent as a young woman averse to change, forced to reconsider her supposed happy existence. And Ryu, who appeared in more than fifty Ozu films, is once again a model of restraint as the father, who only wants what is best for his daughter. Working within the censorship code of the Allied occupation and playing with narrative cinematic conventions of time and space, Ozu examines such dichotomies as marriage and divorce, the town and the city, parents and children, the changing roles of men and women in Japanese society, and the old and the young as postwar capitalism enters the picture, themes that are evident through much of his remarkable and unique oeuvre.

Takeshi Sakamato makes the first of many appearances as Kihachi in Yasujirō Ozu’s Passing Fancy

PASSING FANCY (DEKIGOKORO) (出来ごころ) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1933)
Film Forum
Sunday, June 11, 4:40
filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu might not have been keen on the latest technology — he made silent films until 1936, and his first color film was in 1958, near the end of his career — but there’s nothing old-fashioned about his mastery of camera and storytelling, as evidenced by one of his lesser-known comedy-dramas, Passing Fancy. Takeshi Sakamato stars as Kihachi, a character that would go on to appear in such other Ozu works as A Story of Floating Weeds, An Inn in Tokyo, and Record of a Tenement Gentleman. The film opens at a rōkyoku performance, where the audience is sitting on the floor on a hot day, mopping their brows and fanning themselves; Kihachi has an ever-present cloth on his head, looking clownish, a small boy with an injured eye who turns out to be his son, Tomio (Tokkankozo), sleeping by him. Foreshadowing Bresson-ian precision, Ozu and cinematographers Hideo Shigehara and Shojiro Sugimoto follow a small, lost change purse as several men inspect it, hoping to find money in it, then toss it away when it comes up empty. The scene establishes the pace and tone of the film, identifies Kihachi as the protagonist, and shows that there will be limited translated text and dialogue; in fact, Ozu never reveals what happened to Tomio’s eye. After the performance, Kihachi and his friend and coworker at the local brewery, Jiro (Den Obinata), meet a destitute young woman named Harue (Nobuko Fushimi). An intertitle explains, “Everyone years for love. Love sets our thoughts in flight.” Kihachi, a poor, single father, helps Harue get a place to stay and a job with restaurant owner Otome (Chouko Iida), hoping that Harue will become interested in him, but she instead takes a liking to the younger Jiro, who wants nothing to do with the whole situation, believing that Harue is using them.

The relationship between father (Takeshi Sakamato) and son (Tokkankozo) is at the heart of Passing Fancy

Ozu follows them all through their daily trials and tribulations — with hysterical comic bits, including how Tomio wakes up Kihachi and Jiro to make sure they’re not late for work — but things take a serious turn when the boy becomes seriously ill and Kihachi cannot afford to pay for the care he requires. Winner of the 1934 Japanese Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film — Ozu also won in 1933 for I Was Born, But . . . and 1935 for A Story of Floating Weeds — Passing Fancy is filled with gorgeous touches, as Ozu reveals the stark poverty in prewar Japan, focuses on class difference and illiteracy, and displays tender family relationships, all built around Kihachi’s impossible, very funny courtship of Harue and his bonding with Tomio, since love trumps all. And yes, that man on the boat is Chishū Ryū, who appeared in all but two of Ozu’s fifty-four films.

Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) is a conflicted father-matchmaker in Yasujirō Ozu’s first color film, Equinox Flower

EQUINOX FLOWER (HIGANBANA) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1958)
Film Forum
June 14, 17, 18
filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu’s first film in color, at the studio’s request, is another engagingly told exploration of the changing relationship between parents and children, the traditional and the modern, in postwar Japan. Both funny and elegiac, Equinox Flower opens with businessman Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) giving a surprisingly personal speech at a friend’s daughter’s wedding, explaining that he is envious that the newlyweds are truly in love, as opposed to his marriage, which was arranged for him and his wife, Kiyoko (Kinuyo Tanaka). Hirayama is later approached by an old middle school friend, Mikami (Ozu regular Chishu Ryu), who wants him to speak with his daughter, Fumiko (Yoshiko Kuga), who has left home to be with a man against her father’s will. Meanwhile, Yukiko (Fujiko Yamamoto), a friend of Hirayama’s elder daughter, Setsuko (Ineko Arima), is constantly being set up by her gossipy mother, Hatsu (Chieko Naniwa). Hirayama does not seem to be instantly against what Fumiko and Yukiko want for themselves, but when a young salaryman named Taniguchi (Keiji Sada) asks Hirayama for permission to marry his older daughter, Setsuko (Ineko Arima), Hirayama stands firmly against their wedding, claiming that he will decide Setsuko’s future. “Can’t I find my own happiness?” Setsuko cries out.

The widening gap between father and daughter represents the modernization Japan is experiencing, but the past is always close at hand; Ozu and longtime cowriter Kōgo Noda even have Taniguchi being transferred to Hiroshima, the scene of such tragedy and devastation. Yet there is still a lighthearted aspect to Equinox Flower, and Ozu and cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta embrace the use of color, including beautiful outdoor scenes of Hirayama and Kiyoko looking out across a river and mountain, a train station sign warning of dangerous winds, the flashing neon RCA Victor building, and laundry floating against a cloudy blue sky. The interiors are carefully designed as well, with objects of various colors arranged like still-life paintings, particularly a red teapot that shows up in numerous shots. And Kiyoko’s seemingly offhanded adjustment of a broom hanging on the wall is unforgettable. But at the center of it all is Saburi’s marvelously gentle performance as a proud man caught between the past, the present, and the future.

Ganjirō Nakamura is a sheer delight as the unpredictable patriarch of the Kohayagawa family in The End of Summer

THE END OF SUMMER (KOHAYAGAWA-KE NO AKI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1961)
Film Forum
June 23, 24, 27
www.filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu’s next-to-last film, 1961’s The End of Summer, is a poignant examination of growing old in a changing Japan; Ozu would make only one more film, 1962’s An Autumn Afternoon, before passing away on his sixtieth birthday in December 1963. Ganjirō Nakamura is absolutely endearing as Manbei Kohayagawa, the family patriarch who heads a small sake brewery. The aging grandfather has been mysteriously disappearing for periods of time, secretly visiting his old girlfriend, Sasaki (Chieko Naniwa), and her daughter, Yuriko (Reiko Dan), who might or might not be his. In the meantime, Manbei’s brother-in-law, Kitagawa (Daisuke Katō), is trying to set up Manbei’s widowed daughter-in-law, Akiko (Setsuko Hara), with businessman Isomura Eiichirou (Hisaya Morishige), while also attempting to find a proper suitor for Manbei’s youngest daughter, Noriko (Yoko Tsukasa), a typist with strong feelings for a coworker who has moved to Sapporo. Manbei’s other daughter, Fumiko (Michiyo Aratama), is married to Hisao (Keiju Kobayashi), who works at the brewery and is concerned about Manbei’s suddenly unpredictable behavior. When Manbei suffers a heart attack, everyone is forced to look at their own lives, both personal and professional, as the single women consider their suitors and the men contemplate the future of the business, which might involve selling out to a larger company. “The Kohayagawa family is complicated indeed,” Hisao’s colleague tells him when trying to figure out who’s who, an inside joke about the complex relationships developed by Ozu and longtime cowriter Kôgo Noda in the film as well as in the casting.

Akiko (Setsuko Hara) and Noriko (Yoko Tsukasa) represent old and new Japan in Ozu’s penultimate film

The End of Summer tells a far more serious story than Late Spring and many other Ozu films that deal with matchmaking and middle-class Japanese life, both pre- and postwar. The perpetually smiling Hara, who played unrelated women named Noriko in three previous Ozu films, once again plays a young widow named Akiko here, as she did in Late Autumn, while Tsukasa, who played Hara’s daughter in Late Autumn, now takes over the name of Noriko as Akiko’s sister. Late Autumn also featured a character named Yuriko Sasaki, played by Mariko Okada, who went on to play a woman named Akiko in Ozu’s final film, An Autumn Afternoon. Got that? Ozu’s fifth film in color, The End of Summer uses several beautiful establishing shots that incorporate flashing light and bold hues — including a neon sign that declares “New Japan” — photographed by Asakazu Nakai (Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Ran), as well as numerous carefully designed set pieces that place the old and the new in direct contrast, primarily when Akiko and Noriko are alone, the former in a kimono, the latter in more modern dress. But at the center of it all is Nakamura, who plays Manbei with a childlike glee, as if Ozu is equating birth and death, the beginning and the end.

Nobuo Nakamura, Ryuji Kita, and Shin Saburi play a trio of matchmaking yentas in Ozu’s Late Autumn

LATE AUTUMN (AKIBIYORI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1960)
Film Forum
June 23, 24, 28
filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu revisits one of his greatest triumphs, 1949’s Late Spring, in the 1960 drama Late Autumn, the Japanese auteur’s fourth color film and his third-to-last work. Whereas the black-and-white Late Spring is about a widowed father (Chishu Ryu) and his unmarried adult daughter (Setsuko Hara) contemplating their futures, Late Autumn deals with young widow Akiko Miwa (Hara again) and her daughter, Ayako (Yoku Tsukasa). At a ceremony honoring the seventh anniversary of Mr. Miwa’s death, several of his old friends gather together and are soon plotting to marry off both the younger Akiko, whom they all had crushes on, and twenty-four-year-old Ayako. The three businessmen — Soichi Mamiya (Shin Saburi), Shuzo Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura), and Seiichiro Hirayama (Ryuji Kita) — serve as a kind of comedic Greek chorus, matchmaking and arguing like a trio of yentas, while Akiko and Ayako maintain creepy smiles as the men lay out their misguided, unwelcome plans.

Mamiya makes numerous attempts to fix Ayako up with one of his employees, Shotaru Goto (Keiji Sada), but Ayako wants none of it, preferring the freedom and independence displayed by her best friend, Yoko (Yuriko Tashiro), who represents the new generation in Japan. At the same time, their matchmaking for Akiko borders on the slapstick. Based on a story by Ton Satomi, Late Autumn, written by Ozu with longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda, is a relatively lighthearted film from the master, with sly jokes and playful references while examining a Japan that is in the midst of significant societal change in the postwar era. Kojun Saitô’s Hollywood-esque score is often bombastically melodramatic, but Yuuharu Atsuta’s cinematography keeps things well grounded with Ozu’s trademark low-angle, unmoving shots amid carefully designed interior sets.

EXTINCTION RITUALS

Akane Little is one of the performers in LEIMAY’s Extinction Rituals at Japan Society (photo by Takaaki Ando)

EXTINCTION RITUALS
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, June 9, and Saturday, June 10, $20, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.leimay.org

Since 2001, Colombian dancer, director, and choreographer Ximena Garnica and Japanese video and installation artist Shige Moriya have been presenting mesmerizing, meditative multimedia productions that incorporate movement, light, music, and song. In such works as Becoming – Corpus, Floating Point Waves, and Furnace, they explore the relationship between humanity and the natural environment. During the pandemic, Garnica and Moriya, cofounders of the Brooklyn-based LEIMAY Ensemble, staged Correspondences in Astor Plaza, a sculptural performance art installation in which dancers wearing only gas masks were trapped in vertical transparent chambers partly filled with sand.

On June 9 and 10 at 7:30, LEIMAY, which is the Japanese term for a moment of change or transition, brings the work-in-progress dance-opera Extinction Rituals to Japan Society. In the below promotional video, Garnica describes it as “a multiyear, multidimensional project that will result in a series of performances and visual artworks.” They recently asked an AI, “What does ‘extinction’ mean to you?” and “What does ‘ritual’ mean to you?” The AI defined extinction as the “silent demise of vibrant stories, echoes silenced forever” and ritual as “sacred dance, rhythmic harmony, timeless connection, soul’s embrace.”

Garnica and Moriya directed, choreographed, and designed the piece, which deals with life and loss, celebration and remembrance, focusing on Japan, Colombia, and New York; it will be performed by dancers Masanori Asahara, Akane Little, Damontae Hack, Peggy Gould, and Yusuke Mori, with live music by composer and instrumentalist Kaoru Watanabe and Colombian composer and singer Carolina Oliveros. Each show will be followed by a Q&A with Garnica and Moriya; Shinnecock and Montauk elder and recovery coach Jennifer E. Cuffee-Wilson will moderate the opening-night discussion, “Extinction: Beyond Flora and Fauna.”

YYDC: NOWHERE

YYDC presents world premiere of Nowhere at Chelsea Factory this week (photo by Michael Waldrop)

NOWHERE
Chelsea Factory
547 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
June 8-10, $35
www.chelseafactory.org
yydc.org

Chinese American choreographer Yue Yin and her YYDC troupe brings her original movement vocabulary, the FOCO Technique, to Chelsea Factory June 8-10 in the world premiere of Nowhere. The seventy-five-minute work unfolds in an unknown time and place, exploring uncertainty and disconnectedness. It will be performed by Liane Aung, Joan Dwiartanto, Alexsander Swader, Kristalyn Gill, Grace Whitworth, Nat Wilson, Corinne Lohner, and DaMond LeMonte Garner, with live music by composer and percussionist Alexandre Dai Castaing featuring Julia Kent on cello and prerecorded vocals by Brussels-based mezzo-soprano Emilie Tack. The set is by Andrew Boyce, with lighting by Solomon Weisbard and costumes by Christine Darch. YYDC’s previous work includes The Disappearing Element of Existing, Through the Fracture of Light, Vanishing Point, Stones and Kisses, and Ripple, a gorgeous piece created during the pandemic and presented at the 92nd St. Y and online.

TRIBECA FESTIVAL: RULE OF TWO WALLS

David Gutnik’s Rule of Two Walls celebrates the resilience of brave Ukrainian artists during a brutal war

RULE OF TWO WALLS (David Gutnik, 2023)
Thursday, June 8, SVA 2, 6:30
Saturday, June 10, Village East, Cinema 3, 2:45
Friday, June 16, AMC 19th St. East 6, Cinema 1, 5:15
Sunday, June 18, Village East by Angelika, 8:30
tribecafilm.com

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2023, the ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine converted its black box space into a shelter for members of the theatrical profession and neighbors, began collecting food and medicine for the elderly, and continued to make art. On March 27, 2023, the Kyiv-based company teamed with Boston’s Arlekin Players Theatre to livestream a production of Harold Pinter’s The New World Order, a ten-minute play that deals with imperialism, totalitarianism, and hegemony, as a fundraiser as well as a bold statement about the resilience of the Ukrainian people and the power of art.

In April, Ukrainian American filmmaker David Gutnik went to Warsaw with his camera to interview Ukrainians who had been displaced by the war. Instead, he spent the next seven months in Ukraine, following artists who had chosen to stay. The result is the terrifying but life-affirming Rule of Two Walls, making its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, where Gutnik screened his feature film debut, Materna, in 2020.

The film, which mixes narrative with documentary, begins with the sounds of war — guns, bombs, sirens — and a couple in bed in Lviv, just waking up, seen in shadows and silhouettes. “My gallbladder hurts,” the man, Stepan Burban, says, as if oblivious to what is happening in his country. They both laugh, and the woman, Lyana Mytsko, says, “Why would it do that? Little Stepanko, ninety-five years old.” As an air raid alarm wails outside, Lyana gets up and opens the shades, revealing windows taped with large Xs, centered by Jewish stars, to protect it from explosions. “Set some tea,” Stepan suggests. On the window, they have written in black marker, “Sad Stupid World or No?” with a drawing of the sun peeking out from behind clouds. As news reports detail attacks and deaths, Stepan walks out onto his balcony and watches men playing soccer below.

Lyana is the director of the Lviv Municipal Art Center, where artists depict the war through painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, photography, video, and installation; the exhibition they are working on is called “Shelter,” which includes the work of Diana Berg, who explains that she made her pictures of a destroyed theater “to regain some control over all this crazy shit.”

Writer, director, editor, and cinematographer (with Volodymyr Ivanov) Gutnik takes viewers through a dangerous, still-burning recently bombed area with downed electrical wires and charred bodies; a recording session where Stepan is making a new song in which he defiantly declares, “Didn’t get to love enough, to live long enough, and I’m not sorry”; a basement where men and women prepare Molotov cocktails; the studios of radical artist and “convinced materialist” Bob Basset, who poses in postapocalyptic hardcore masks, and Kinder Album, whose stylistic watercolor visions of the fighting have such titles as Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine could be a war crime and Dozens of civilians were killed by metal darts from Russian artillery; a group of locals working to safeguard a tall historical monument; and artist Bohdana Davydiuk pasting political posters out on the street and explaining, “There is a war, and there is a war for truth.”

Along the way, several members of the crew share their painful personal experiences of how the war has directly impacted their families.

Named after the advice that Ukrainians should seek shelter between two walls during attacks — one to stop projectiles, the other to block shell splinters — Rule of Two Walls is a harrowing look at the bravery of Ukrainians who refuse to give up to the Russians, instead defending their home and their culture against seemingly impossible odds. With death all around them — Gutnik includes several frightening scenes of mutilated, bloody, burning bodies — a group of brave creators forges ahead, fighting the only way they know how, through their art. It’s a devastating film with a gorgeously symbolic ending.

Rule of Two Walls is screening June 8, 10, 16, and 18 in the Tribeca Festival’s Documentary Competition; the first three shows will be followed by a Q&A with Gutnik, joined on June 8 and 10 by film participants and, on June 8, by executive producer Liev Schreiber, who cofounded BlueCheck Ukraine, a nonprofit that “identifies, vets, and fast-tracks urgent financial support to Ukrainian NGOs and aid initiatives providing life-saving and other critical humanitarian work on the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine.” In a statement, Tony winner and Emmy nominee Schreiber said, “In David’s film, I saw the embodiment of the resilience I observed during my time in Ukraine: the profound spirit, sense of nation and history emboldened by an existential war. As an artist in my own right trying to do all that I can to help Ukraine, I responded to the film’s focus on Ukrainian artists processing the brutality of the war while using their art to fight back. This honest and intimate portrait of the first months of the war resonates deeply with me.”

Meanwhile, Arlekin Players Theatre is livestreaming The Gaaga from a converted Boston restaurant June 8-18, a site-specific phantasmagoria written and directed by Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova, who has been living in Poland as a refugee. “In the first days of the war, I fled from Moscow, where the police came for me. Russia bombed Kyiv and my mother, Olga Denisova, who was born under the bombing of Kyiv on July 7, 1941. She refuses to leave and awaits victory in her home. During these months, I thought about what would give hope to me and those who fled the war. A trial of Putin and his government was the biggest expectation,” Denisova said in a statement.

As Album proclaims in the film, “No war can deprive us of our cultural heritage and traditions.”

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

Kirsten (Kelli O’Hara) and Joe (Brian d’Arcy James) hold on for dear life in Days of Wine and Roses (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 16, $112-$252
atlantictheater.org

There’s no sign of Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini’s lush, overdramatic Oscar- and Grammy-winning title song from Blake Edwards’s 1962 film, Days of Wine and Roses, in the world premiere musical adaptation that opened tonight at the Atlantic. While its inclusion might not have helped, it certainly couldn’t have hurt.

Written by JP Miller, Days of Wine and Roses was initially performed live on Playhouse 90 in 1958, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Cliff Robertson as Joe Clay and Piper Laurie as Kirsten Arnesen, eager young corporate colleagues whose burgeoning love is fueled by the bottle. Miller adapted the play for the screen, with Jack Lemmon as Joe and Lee Remick as Kirsten.

Composer and lyricist Adam Guettel and book writer Craig Lucas, who previously collaborated on the smash hit The Light in the Piazza, which won six Tonys, have now turned Days of Wine and Roses into an all-wet, thorny musical, supremely disappointing especially given its star power, with Brian d’Arcy James as Joe and Kelli O’Hara as Kirsten. It starts off promising, on board a yacht where Joe, a fast-talking New York City PR man, is entertaining male clients by hustling them into a back room and plying them with booze and babes. He assumes that Kirsten is one of his procured good-time girls, but she’s actually the secretary to his boss. A narrow pool of water at the front of the stage casts shimmering reflections across the characters, and a series of movable doors change colors like a mood ring (the set is by Lizzie Clachan, with lighting by Ben Stanton), but a life preserver ring in the corner is a harbinger of their fate.

Despite recognizing him as a player, Kristen agrees to have dinner with him, where he talks her into having her first alcoholic drink ever, a Brandy Alexander. That single indulgence leads them down a dark path of lies and deception as they get married, have a daughter, Lila (Ella Dane Morgan), and struggle personally and professionally because of their alcoholism. While Joe attempts sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous with his sponsor, Jim Hungerford (David Jennings), Kirsten seeks refuge with her strict Norwegian father (Byron Jennings), who never liked Joe. The set opens up to reveal a seemingly impossible greenhouse, where Mr. Arnesen grows plants for sale, but it only spells more trouble for Joe and Kirsten, whose own growth is stunted by the bottle.

Days of Wine and Roses explores love and alcoholism at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

In the show’s first song, “Magic Time,” Joe charmingly sings his dialogue to various people on the boat, including his assistant, Rad (Ted Koch), a client, Delaney (Byron Jennings), and Kirsten. “I’m not here for the fun,” she tells Joe, who replies in song, “Might be why you aren’t having any.” She answers, “Or . . . it might be you.” Their repartee is fast and witty, with sweet music by Guettel, but it quickly devolves after that as the score becomes laborious and the lyrics mundane. “Now I have / all I need / now that I’m your mama,” Kirsten sings to Lila. “There is a man who loves you / as the water loves the stone / and the stone adores the hillside / where the wind has always blown,” Joe sings to Kirsten. “Look, Daddy / Do you see the sun / the circle getting smaller / going to bed now / tucked in safe for the night,” Lila sings to Joe.

Tony nominee d’Arcy James (Into the Woods, Something Rotten!) is excellent channeling Lemmon as the outgoing Joe, but the small theater can’t contain O’Hara’s powerful, operatic voice. Tony nominee Lucas (Amélie, An American in Paris) stuffs too much plot into ninety minutes; the story jumps around, not allowing relationships to be properly nurtured. Tony-nominated director Michael Greif (The Low Road, Dear Evan Hansen) is unable to find enough balance in the characters or the bumpy narrative, which feels like a series of barely related vignettes and repetitive scenes. In addition, the only ones who sing are Joe, Kirsten, and Lila, adding to the arbitrariness.

Miller named the play after a line in the 1896 poem “Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam,“ in which Ernest Dowson writes, “They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, / Love and desire and hate; / I think they have no portion in us after / We pass the gate. / They are not long, the days of wine and roses: / Out of a misty dream / Our path emerges for a while, then closes / Within a dream.” The title of the poem comes from an ode by Horace: “The brief sum of life denies us the hope of enduring long.” Guettel and Lucas’s adaptation lacks the poetry of its inspirations. In order for the story to work, you have to believe in the love between Joe and Kirsten, beyond their dependence on drink, but in this case it’s hard to make that connection.

Kirsten (Kelli O’Hara) and Joe (Brian d’Arcy James) get lost in the darkness of alcoholism in Days of Wine and Roses (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

In the show, Kirsten is reading Draper’s Self Culture, a 1907 educational series that her father started her off on when she was a child. She’s up to the fourth volume, Exploration, Travel, and Invention; in the introduction, Tufts president Frederick William Hamilton writes, “Exploration, Travel, and Invention are three phases of man’s unceasing search for the unknown. One of the most remarkable of human instincts, one of those also which most sharply differentiate man from other animals, is this constant desire to penetrate the unknown, to solve the mysteries which lie all about us. Humanity has never learned to be quiescent in the face of mystery.”

Theater is all about exploration, travel, and invention, taking audiences on journeys of the heart, mind, body, and soul, penetrating the unknown and confronting life’s endless mysteries. Unfortunately, Days of Wine and Roses turns out to be a haphazard trip, with the main mystery being why it needs to be a musical at all.

THE COMEUPPANCE

Old friends gather for a pre-reunion reunion in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s The Comeuppance (photo by Monique Carboni)

THE COMEUPPANCE
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
The Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West Forty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 9, $49-$159
thecomeuppance.net/info

At the end of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s The Comeuppance, making its world premiere at the Signature, there were tears in my eyes. I wasn’t sobbing because of something that had happened in the plot or to any specific character but because of how brilliant the play is; its sheer beauty, from the writing and staging to the acting and directing, simply overwhelmed me, and I needed time to gather myself before heading home.

The Comeuppance is a fiercely intelligent, diverse revision of the Breakfast Club for the twenty-first century, an alternate version of the Athlete, the Brain, the Criminal, the Princess, and the Basket Case looking back at their lives two decades later and not necessarily liking what they see. A small band of high school friends have gathered for a pre-reunion twentieth reunion — Emilio (Caleb Eberhardt), an ex-pat artist living in Berlin returning to the US with a piece in the Whitney Biennial; Caitlin (Susannah Flood), the smartest student in school, who married an older man with two kids; Kristina (Shannon Tyo), a military doctor with five children; and Ursula (Brittany Bradford), the host of the party who spent years taking care of her elderly grandmother and now lives alone in her grandmother’s house. As the characters slowly congregate on Ursula’s porch, they reveal hints about their past and foreshadowings of the future. The simmering conflicts are ignited when Kristina surprises everyone by bringing along Paco (Bobby Moreno), whose traumatic five tours of duty in the Marines have left him heavily medicated, which does not stop his boisterousness.

The acerbic and direct Emilio makes his displeasure known, arguing that Paco was not in the same class with them and was not a member of their outsider “gang,” M.E.R.G.E., which stands for Multi-Ethnic Reject Group. “Does that spell ‘Merge’ or ‘Merg?’” Paco asks. “It’s a soft G,” Emilio, Ursula, and Kristina quickly bark out in unison. Kristina claims that Paco was an associate member because he was dating Caitlin, but that explanation doesn’t satisfy Emilio, who starts alluding to an incident that occurred between the couple. Meanwhile, Ursula, who has recently lost an eye so has difficulty with depth perception, is adamant that she will not be going to the reunion, and they are all upset that Simon has just canceled via text message. They also debate whether it is a good idea to arrive in a limo, which Kristina ordered, further establishing that the reunion has a different meaning for each of them.

“In high school, every stupid prom, every homecoming, we were always randomly showing up in a limo like somehow it was a thing that people did in real life,” Emilio says. “But we’re not teenagers anymore. Now we’re just adults showing up in a limo,” Caitlin contends. “But isn’t the point of this dumb event reliving high school for the night? I think people will think it’s funny. Maybe it is a little conceptual,” Emilio replies. Caitlin: “‘Conceptual?’ What does that mean?” Emilio: “Don’t worry about it. Listen: It’s just a little nostalgia.” Caitlin: “Well, you don’t still live around these people. I do.” Emilio: “So?” Caitlin: “So, for some of us, it may not be in our best interest to show up looking like shitheads.”

An ensemble cast excels in gorgeous world premiere at the Signature (photo by Monique Carboni)

They gossip about other students, talk about Zoom happy hours, defend the life choices they’ve made, and down glass after glass of spiked jungle juice as the late limo gives them time to explore who they were and who they are, while Emilio stirs the pot with his willingness to brutally criticize the others, loudly pointing out what he believes to be their flaws and their bad decisions. Early on, he shares three German words with Ursula: schadenfreude, torschlusspanik, and kuddelmuddel, which all come home to roost.

They also bring back an old method they used to cut off someone when they were rambling: pretend to snap their neck with a “KRK.” Little do they know how relevant that is, as throughout the 130-minute intermissionless play, every character delivers a monologue from Death, who lurks inside each of them. Their regular voices are joined by an otherworldly echo as Death, lit as if it is glowing from inside the body, directly addresses the audience, offering tidbits about its responsibilities and personal preferences.

The show begins with Death announcing from inside Emilio, “Hello there. You and I, we have met before, though you may not recognize me. People have a tendency to see me once and try hard to forget it ever happened — though that never works — not for very long.”

Later, inside Ursula, Death admits, “You’ll have to pardon me. I come and go. I get shy. Historically, I’ve been rarely met with anything other than fear or anger or regret and, as I’m sure you can imagine, that sort of energy gets . . . taxing. So I chose long ago to abandon any material form of my own and err on the side of the covert. I prefer now to move in and out of whatever vessel inspires me because, when I’m not working, I, like you, am a watcher. I like to watch. . . . I inhabit a body like this if my desire is to speak and, if I have one weakness, it’s for gossip. I suspect you share it. I don’t know what it is, but I find all creatures so interesting, their idiosyncrasies, their interiorities, their secrets. Their stories. These machines of will. And, like any good gossip, I’m always wanting to talk but, you know, finding the right listeners can be a challenge. So you should know you are very special.”

Death serves not only as a character in the play but as a vessel for Jacobs-Jenkins to espouse on the art of theater itself, the playwright as psychopomp. Jacobs-Jenkins, a two-time Pulitzer finalist and Obie winner whose previous works include Girls, Everybody, War, Gloria, Appropriate, Neighbors, and An Octoroon, tells stories that examine humanity’s idiosyncrasies, interiorities, and secrets, in search of an audience of watchers and listeners who are critical to the success of his craft. When Death says, “You should know you are very special,” it is Jacobs-Jenkins telling that to us.

In fact, the playwright continued to make changes throughout the rehearsal and preview process based on audience response; while that is not unusual, it was extensive in this case, and it shows. It’s a masterful production, radiantly directed by Obie winner Eric Ting (The Far Country, Six Apples), who maintains a steady, absorbing pace; you won’t even remember that there’s no intermission, not wanting to leave these characters even for a minute.

Ursula (Brittany Bradford) and Emilio (Caleb Eberhardt) wonder what could have been in The Comeuppance (photo by Monique Carboni)

Arnulfo Maldonado’s intimate set is practically in your lap, a cozy front porch with a few steps, a swing, a big chair, and wooden railings; a screen door leads into the house. Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting and Palmer Hefferan’s sound keep it all real, as do Jennifer Moeller and Miriam Kelleher’s naturalistic costumes.

Bradford (Fefu and Her Friends, Wedding Band) has a subtle power as Ursula, Flood (Make Believe, Plano) has a sensitive edge as Caitlin, Moreno (72 Miles to Go . . . , Lazarus) carries an impending sense of doom as Paco, Tyo (Regretfully, So the Birds Are, The Far Country) has a firm determination as Kristina, and Eberhardt (Choir Boy, On Sugarland) is a force as the sardonic, insensitive Emilio, who doesn’t know when enough is enough, especially when he’s right. Ursula might have studied mixology, but this group is like a toxic cocktail.

The Brooklyn-based Jacobs-Jenkins was born in DC in 1984, the year before John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club came out. He is the same age as the characters in The Comeuppance, who were rocked by Columbine and whose adulthood essentially began with 9/11, continued with the Iraq and Afghan wars, and then hit a peak with the Covid pandemic, death surrounding them every step of the way. Their youthful innocence is gone, even though a few of them are still trying to hold on to it.

But going back is not the answer, no matter how tenuous the immediate future might be, and just because you were friends in high school doesn’t mean you have to be friends now, in real life or on social media. The twenty years that have passed since prom were good to some and not so good to others, but all five M.E.R.G.E.rs have soul searching to do in order to face the personal demons buried deep within them.

The show is also likely to make you do some soul searching as well. All I know is that, while I wipe away these tears, I’m rethinking going to my next high school reunion.

BEES & HONEY

Maribel Martinez and Xavier Pacheco star in world premiere of Guadalís Del Carmen’s Bees & Honey (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

BEES & HONEY
MCC Theater
Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater
511 West Fifty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through June 11, $54-$74
mcctheater.org

“Love me as I love you, good mommy / Give me your love without measure / Look for me like a bee to the honeycomb / Remove the sorrow / Drink the honey of my life,” Dominican musician and multiple Grammy winner Juan Luis Guerra sings in Spanish with his group 4.40 on his 1990 song “Como Abeja al Panal” (“Like a Bee to Its Honeycomb”).

The bachata hit serves as the inspiration for Guadalís Del Carmen’s bittersweet Bees & Honey, a coproduction of MCC and the Sol Project running through June 11. The 130-minute play (with intermission) is like a Latiné telenovela directed by Douglas Sirk, infused with the rhythms of the Dominican music genre known as bachata, exemplified by Guerra’s “Bachata Rosa,” which is playing when the show begins.

“Oh my god, I love this song. So romantic. I know, right?” Johaira (Maribel Martinez) tells the audience. Manuel (Xavier Pacheco) says, “Damn. This song takes me back. Man, I love me a good bachata. Bailao ahí, bien pegaíto like glue. Ain’t nothing like it.” A moment later, Johaira explains, “Bachata brought me and Manuel together almost eight years ago.” The opening is a prelude to what is to come: a flashback of those eight years.

Johaira is in a white bathrobe, sitting on a couch with her feet up. Manuel is in a chair off to her left. They talk to the audience individually, as if they are unaware the other is there as they share their origin story. Reza Behjat’s lighting switches spots on one and then the other. They interact directly with the audience; when Manuel sticks out his fist to bump with a gentleman in the first row, he waits for the man to reciprocate before continuing.

Johaira (Maribel Martinez) and Manuel (Xavier Pacheco) face tough times in Bees & Honey (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Alternating between Spanish and English, Johaira and Manuel talk about what was going through their minds the night they met at a club near Dyckman St. in Washington Heights; the action then cuts to that encounter and follows the rest of their relationship chronologically. While the actors no longer address the audience directly, the connection has already been made.

Manuel, who has long, tight dreads and sometimes wears a doo rag, is a former drug dealer who is now a mechanic with plans to open his own shops in all five boroughs (“maybe a location in Staten Island,” he says tentatively). Johaira is a prosecutor working a high-profile case that she hopes will lead her to become chief deputy in a new sexual-assault division. Manuel likes playing online video games with his friends while Johaira tries to get him more interested in the rest of the world, beginning with having him read bell hooks’s The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love and teaching him about power structures.

As Johaira’s case approaches its conclusion, Manuel seeks loans for his business, and they plan to start a family, they encounter more and more roadblocks, some societal, some self-imposed.

Martinez (Black Joy Project, Will You Come with Me?) and Pacheco (The Tempest, Richard III) are terrific as the seemingly mismatched lovers; you can’t help but root for them even as Del Carmen (Not for Sale) heaps on the melodrama, throwing tragedy after tragedy at them that can’t be eliminated with a video game controller or a legal objection.

Shoko Kambara’s comfortable set is a kitchen and living room with a bookshelf, tchotchkes, window air conditioner, working sink, and silver fridge; part of the floor and two doors in the back are painted by Washington Heights artist and muralist Danny Peguero in bright colors, featuring graffiti-like characters and architecture, adding to the Dominican feel. (More of Peguero’s art is on view in the lobby.)

Director Melissa Crespo (Espejos: Clean, Native Gardens) uses the set to its fullest, although there is a lot of entering and exiting that grows tedious. Germán Martínez’s sound design warmly incorporates Dilson’s original score with the dialogue to maintain a compelling atmosphere.

Devario D. Simmons’s costumes help define the characters, from Manuel’s work shirt with his name on it to Johaira’s wardrobe — which shifts from all white to all black to a colorful island dress — while celebrating their bodies; a significant part of the show is dedicated to the couple’s appreciation of their physical beings. “Love watching you squeeze that ghetto booty into them fancy power suits,” Manuel tells Johaira. When Manuel explains that he will not wear skinny jeans, Johaira says, “Yeah, ya butt and thighs are too juicy for ’em.”

The soap-opera elements threaten to overwhelm the play, but Bees & Honey is a tasty confection filled with plenty of sting.