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THE MELT GOES ON FOREVER: THE ART AND TIMES OF DAVID HAMMONS

David Hammons works on a piece for Documenta IX (photo by Hessischer Rundfunk)

THE MELT GOES ON FOREVER: THE ART AND TIMES OF DAVID HAMMONS (Judd Tully & Harold Crooks, 2022)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, May 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
themeltfilm.com

“David believes that the less said about him, the better off he is,” the late poet and Gathering of the Tribes founder Steve Cannon says about his friend, artist David Hammons, in The Melt Goes on Forever: The Art and Times of David Hammons, opening May 5 at Film Forum.

In 2020, Hammons, who was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1943 and has been based in New York City for nearly fifty years, installed Day’s End, an homage to Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 similarly named intervention in an abandoned industrial building on Pier 52, outside where the Whitney is today. The 325-foot-long brushed-steel outline of the warehouse has no interior, a ghostly memorial to those lost in the AIDS crisis.

With The Melt, directors Judd Tully and Harold Crooks have constructed a stirring documentary that is missing one key figure: Hammons, who doesn’t do interviews or talk about his personal life, preferring to have his work stand on its own. There’s a reason why the subtitle is “the Art and Times,” not the more common phrase “the Life and Times.”

More than two dozen art historians (Kellie Jones, Bridget R. Cooks, Richard Powell, Gylbert Coker, Robert Farris Thompson), dealers and gallerists (Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Dominique Lévy, Jack Tilton, Adam Sheffer, Robert Mnuchin), artists (Suzanne Jackson, Fred Wilson, Tschabalala Self, Betye Saar, Joe Lewis, Lorna Simpson), collectors (Dimitris Daskalopoulos), and curators (Robert Storr, Ilene Susan Fort, Mary Jane Jacob) share stories about Hammons, forming a picture of a fabulously talented eclectic iconoclast who does what he wants, when he wants, the way he wants.

Among his revolutionary works discussed in the film are Bliz-aard Ball Sale, in which he sold snowballs, arranged in rows of descending size, on the streets of New York; African American Flag, a reimagining of the US flag but in the Pan-African colors of red, black, and green; How You Like Me Now?, a billboard of Jesse Jackson as a blond-haired, blue-eyed white man; Flight Fantasy, painted on the wall of Cannon’s apartment; Untitled (Night Train), two circular rows of clear and green bottles of Night Train and Thunderbird planted in a pile of coal; and Blues for Smoke, a blue model train rolling across tracks that wind around grand pianos on their side, inspired by John Coltrane’s song “Blue Train.”

“I just thought he was nuts,” artist Paul H-O says about watching Hammons go through garbage to find potential materials.

“It’s not the art object itself,” Hammons explains in a 1991 NPR radio interview. “It’s the daring of the act.”

Archival footage of Hammons includes a visit by filmmaker Michael Auder to a Rome studio in 1989 where Hammons pontificates on what success means to him while constructing an untitled sculpture using real Black hair; Hammons adding cotton to wooden sticks in his Harlem studio in Michael Blackwood’s 1992 After Modernism: The Dilemma of Influence; Hammons introducing students to his outdoor sculpture Rock Fan, consisting of electric fans on a large rock on the campus of Williams College in 1993; and clips by Alex Harsley of Hammons making “Basketball Drawings” by bouncing a basketball against paper on a wall and Hammons kicking a can in his 2004 Phat Free performance.

Delving into a 1990 group show at Museum Overholland, curator Jan Christiaan Braun notes, “‘Black USA’ was more than David Hammons. It was an effort to find a podium for Black American artists. He was one of them. The meaning of ‘Black USA’ was bigger than David Hammons, and he himself thought so too. He was very, very much supporting the idea of bringing out Black art. That’s why he immediately said to me, ‘I’m your man.’”

Extensive attention is given to the 2016 career retrospective “Five Decades” at Mnuchin Gallery, which lends insight to Hammons’s wide oeuvre and process when it comes to hanging his work. “Two weeks prior to the opening, David expressed an interest in coming in to see the show,” dealer Sukanya Rajarantnam recalls, not so fondly. “Um, his reaction was not exactly exuberant. He didn’t like what we’d done and, in fact, hated it. So he decided to change things. . . . The show itself became an installation and an artwork by David.” I remember being blown away by the final exhibition, which featured many of the pieces mentioned in the documentary.

David Hammons unveils Rock Fan to students at Williams College (photo courtesy Williams College Museum of Art)

Throughout the film, arts journalist Tully and documentarian Crooks (The Price We Pay, Surviving Progress) regularly cut to Umar bin Hassan of the Last Poets performing Cannon’s catalog essay-poem “Rousing the Rubble,” recorded during Covid and originally written for Hammons’s 1990 PS1 museum show of the same name, accompanied by a barrage of grainy videos of New York City in the twentieth century and animation by Tynesha Foreman that brings some of his works to life against a pulsating Afro-jazz score:

“On the Streets of Manhattan, East Side West Side All Around the Town the Sidewalks of New York — after the bars and the clubs empty out the sordid the homeless! The misbegotten under the cover of darkness Blue Moon No moon, under the cover of darkness in the wee small hours up in Harlem — Midtown — on the Lower Eastside — Performing Artist — this is when you see the empty bottles and empty people makin’ their rounds, into makin’ their own sounds — into smiles into frowns! Digging in garbage in search of more empties — bottles and cans! Those who do be hungry doing something about their condition — with David on the scene in those lonely wee small hours after hours state of New York! Raw Energy! Making his rounds, dreams turned into nightmares heavy into art — that New York art scene outdoor art — dreams turned into realities — all night diners — back in his studio on 125th Street — making art out of that which he has heard and seen on the scene out of funk! Out of central Illinois — out of Los Angeles out of his world travels! Creating a space for the spirits! That flash of the spirit!”

The spectacular original music features composer Ramachandra Borcar on percussion, piano, found objects, and other instruments; saxophonists Idris Ackamoor, Marshall Allen, Shabaka Hutchings, and Frank Lozani; Tommy Babin and Dave Watts on bass; Aaron Doyle on trumpet and flugelhorn; Jeff Johnston on piano; and Kullak Viger Rojas on surdo. It pays tribute to the jazz influences Hammons has cited over the years, such legends as Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, and Coltrane. Foreman’s animation unfolds to those same vibrant rhythms, echoed in the artworks. (Hammons’s art influences range from his mentor, Charles White, to Marcel Duchamp.)

Even without their subject’s participation, Tully and Crooks are able to fill in much of the mystery surrounding Hammons, with the help of members of the arts community who adore him and his work, like partially furnishing the emptiness inherent in Day’s End. (Hammons did sit down for an interview with Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg to celebrate the opening of the Pier 52 project in June 2021, which you can watch here.)

The Melt Goes on Forever reveals Hammons to be a true nonconformist, a genius who doesn’t need to be center stage, letting his art do the talking for him.

Tully and Crooks will be at Film Forum for Q&As on May 5 at 7:15 presented by A Gathering of the Tribes, on May 6 at 7:15 with Suzanne Jackson, and on May 7 at 4:40.

PETER PAN GOES WRONG

The Jolly Roger poses problems for the cast in Peter Pan Goes Wrong (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

PETER PAN GOES WRONG
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 23, $74 – $165.50
pangoeswrongbway.com
www.mischiefcomedy.com

In 2017 at the Lyceum on Broadway, Mischief Theatre Company’s The Play That Goes Wrong documented the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’s floundering presentation of the fictional Susan H. K. Bridewell’s British mystery The Murder at Haversham Manor, in which just about everything that could misfire did — except its ability to please audiences so much that the show is currently on an extended run at New World Stages. Cornley is now back on Broadway with its uniquely pathetic and hilarious production of J. M. Barrie’s children’s classic about (not) growing up, Peter and Wendy, in Mischief’s Peter Pan Goes Wrong at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Penned by the same trio who wrote The Play That Goes Wrong — Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields — and directed by Adam Meggido, this follow-up, which debuted in London in December 2013, is another laugh-out-loud comic romp filled with pratfalls, electronic failures, missed cues, dangerous props, and questionable costumes. Back for more disastrous fun are Henry Shields as society president Chris Bean, Lewis as the bearlike Robert Grove (hapless head of the Cornley Youth Theatre), Sayer as Dennis Tyde, Charlie Russell as Sandra Wilkinson, Greg Tannahill as Jonathan Harris, Nancy Zamit as Annie Twilloil, and Chris Leask as Trevor Watson, the ever-busy stage manager. New to the cast are Matthew Cavendish as Max Bennett, Bianca Horn as Gill Jones, Harry Kershaw as Francis Beaumont, and Ellie Morris as Lucy Grove, Robert’s niece.

It’s opening night for Bridewell’s adaptation of Peter and Wendy, and the merriment is already underway as the audience enters the theater. Various characters greet guests, taking selfies and completing technical work. Chris, who channels John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, took pictures with a couple, then looked over at me and snidely said, “Oh, what do you want?! A photo? A cuddle?” I answered, “A cuddle would be nice,” but he gave me an imperious “No!” as he looked down his aquiline nose and squeezed past me first to help Gill fix the “death chair” in the row in front of me, then to playfully frighten the young girl a few seats to my right, who knew it was all a joke.

Annie Twilloil (Nancy Zamit) plays four roles in Cornley production of J. M. Barrie classic (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The show within the show begins in London, in the home of the Darlings: father George (Chris), mother Mary (Annie), daughter Wendy (Sandra), and her younger brothers, John (Dennis) and Michael (Max). Also present are Lisa (Annie) the housekeeper and Nana (Robert) the shaggy nursemaid dog. The story is narrated by Francis (Harry Kershaw), who slides on- and offstage in a regal chair, often tossing glitter over himself upon exiting.

After the kids go to bed one night, Peter Pan (Jonathan) and Tinker Bell (Annie) arrive and fly them off to Neverland, where they meet a Lost Boy known as Tootles (Lucy) and attempt to rescue another Lost Boy, Curly (Annie), from a gang of pirates led by Captain Hook (Chris), who rules with a plastic fist over Smee (Dennis), Cecco (Francis), and Starkey (Robert). Hook is also on the prowl to find and kill the ticking crocodile (Max) that maimed him.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong is a rousing good time, almost to a fault. Some jokes are repetitive, within the show itself (Francis’s battle with the chair, Robert’s troubles with a doggie door, Dennis needing his lines fed to him through headphones) and for people who have seen The Play That Goes Wrong, while others go too far over the top (Annie being plugged in via an extension cord as Tink, the sound board operator accidentally broadcasting snippets from actors’ auditions and backstage chatter instead of sound effects).

Meggido, who has previously directed the Olivier-winning Showstopper! The Improvised Musical and Magic Goes Wrong (Mischief has also done A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong), keeps up a relentless pace that could use more than a few breathers (for the audience) and would benefit from being a 90-minute one-act instead of a 125-minute two-act with an intermission during which, alas, there is no tomfoolery. However, as with The Play That Goes Wrong, the split-second timing is masterful, particularly evident in numerous precarious stunts, from a wired Jonathan to a collapsing bunk bed, and at times you can hurt yourself from laughing so hard.

The cast of Peter Pan Goes Wrong rehearses in the studio (photo by Danny Kaan)

Simon Scullion’s revolving set is a marvel, especially when it starts spinning out of control like a runaway zoetrope. Roberto Surace’s costumes are amusingly silly, as is Richard Baker and Rob Falconer’s original music, while Matt Haskins’s lighting and Ella Wahlström’s sound expertly balance the incompetence of Cornley with the excellence of Mischief.

The courageous cast is a blast, with memorable turns by Zamit doing impossible quick changes between Mary and Lisa, Leask coming to the rescue time and time again as the beleaguered Trevor, and Cavendish smiling impishly as Max, who can’t hold back his excitement at being in the show. Russell’s calmness as Sandra nicely offsets the unpredictability of Shields’s Bean, who, as Hook, gets into booing fights with the audience.

Be sure to check out Cornley’s four pages in the Playbill, in which Annie seeks a date, the company touts its upcoming production of Wind in the Pillows, and Robert apologizes for leaving two students behind in a forest.

JULIANA F. MAY: FAMILY HAPPINESS

Juliana F. May explores intergenerational trauma and more in new show at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Maria Baranova)

JULIANA F. MAY: FAMILY HAPPINESS
Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
May 3-13, $25 (benefit May 10)
www.abronsartscenter.org
chocolatefactorytheater.org

“This work examines Jewish violence, victimhood, and intergenerational trauma,” New York–based choreographer Juliana F. May says about her latest piece, Family Happiness, making its world premiere May 3–13 at the Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center. A co-commission with the Chocolate Factory, Family Happiness is part of the twentieth anniversary celebration of May’s company, MAYDANCE, and follows such powerful works as Folk Incest, Commentary=not thing, and Gutter Gate.

The new piece is written, directed, and choreographed by May and features a familiar roster of MAYDANCE favorites: Leslie Cuyjet, Tess Dworman, Lucy Kaminsky, Molly Poerstel, and Kayvon Pourazar, who all collaborated with May on the original songs. The music is by Tatyana Tenenbaum, with lighting by Chloe Z. Brown and costumes by Mariana Valencia. The narrative explores Zionism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Holocaust, individual and group communication, grief, and trauma through text, dance, and music.

Performer Tess Dworman created a pecial poster for new work by Juliana F. May

“I worked on the beginning ideas of the piece during the pandemic in Tel Aviv, where my partner has family,” Guggenheim Fellow May explained in a statement. “I am a choreographer, but there is a lot of text in my work. I wrote this project ‘treatment’ on the tails of a dream I had about my father committing suicide and Trump losing the election. There’s a figure of a boy who looks like a scarecrow next to a pitchfork, a bird, and a half moon. He passes by the dog beach, the separate beach, the smoking beach, and eventually arrives at the sex beach. There are hundreds of naked people sitting on top of each other with legs intertwined in a series of eights. The dogs migrate over to the sex beach. Peripheral backward strokes follow a lunging and spreading and in an instant, the animals start to bite and peel skin away from bone, prying the upper extremities down towards the sand while the genitals remain connected like a roundabout on a playground. There is a rising smoke from the skinning like Christ being prepped with a soldering iron. The bodies smell like cocaine, synthetic cotton, or some kind of polyblend as they thrash around in the sand trying to free themselves from each locked jaw. They get close to the water and almost break free but realize they don’t know how to surf.”

May promises that Family Happiness “will be a big dance performance.” With that kind of description, how could it be anything else?

SHUCKED

Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson serve as our narrators and guides in Shucked (photo by Mathew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman)

SHUCKED
Nederlander Theatre
208 West Forty-First St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 14, $69-$247
shuckedmusical.com

When I was a kid, I watched a syndicated television show called Hee Haw, which originally ran on CBS from 1969 to 1971 and was hosted by celebrated American musicians Roy Clark and Buck Owens, both of whom are in the Country Music Hall of Fame. The variety series took place in the fictional community of Kornfield Kounty, combining great music with satirical sketches and purposely silly jokes poking fun at themselves and rural living. In the opening credits, a cartoon donkey emerged from a row of corn and barked out the title several times.

The new musical Shucked honors its forebear in the second act when, during the song “The Best Man Wins,” a group of guys repeatedly declares, “Yee haw hee haw.” Like Hee Haw, Shucked never passes up a chance at a corny joke; it seems to be why it exists in the first place. And there’s definitely still an appetite for corn: Shucked has quickly become a cult favorite at the Nederlander Theatre, where some attendees have taken to showing up in costume, attending performance after performance.

Featuring a book by Tony winner Robert Horn (Tootsie, 13) and music and lyrics by eight-time Grammy nominee Brandy Clark (no relation to Roy) and three-time Grammy winner Shane McAnally, Shucked takes place in Cob County, an insulated hamlet surrounded by a wall of corn, where puns grow nearly as fast as the international dietary staple that the USDA says is both a vegetable and a grain.

The self-described “farm to fable” is narrated by two nameless storytellers, played by Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson, who watch (or participate in) the proceedings with a wink and a nod.

“Now, I know when some of you think ‘small town,’ you think gun totin’, rusted truck hayseeds who think ‘liberal’ is how you pour your whiskey and ‘fluid’ belongs in your gas tank. But I want you to open your minds and think — even smaller,” Kelley says near the beginning.

Cob County is preparing for the wedding of Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler), a play on “maize,” what Native Americans call corn, and prominent farmer Beau (Andrew Durand). It’s not just a celebration of true love but of corn, which brought the two of them together.

The cast of Shucked has never a met a pun it would turn its back on (photo by Mathew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman)

As the storytellers proclaim, “Sweet corn, street corn / It’s really hard to beat corn / Hands or feet no wrong way to eat corn / It’s a resource that’s always renewable / Bring it to a briss / Or a wedding / Or a funeral / Cook it on the cob / Or in a tortilla / You can even make it an onomatopoeia / Candy corn, kettle corn, put it in your mouth / It’s the same goin’ in comin’ out.” Yes, when it comes to corn pone, they leave no quip or double entendre to dry out in a drought.

The wedding is stopped when rows of corn suddenly start dying on the spot. The town’s future is now in jeopardy, from Beau’s farm to Maizy’s cousin Lulu’s (Alex Newell) whiskey.

Despite knowing that no one has ever left Cob County — and returned — Maizy asks Peanut (Kevin Cahoon), Beau’s not-too-bright brother, “Don’t you think someone should leave to get help?” Peanut, who has never been asked a question he couldn’t answer with ridiculous non-sequiturs (or, later, suggestive references involving sexual organs and bodily functions), responds, “I think . . . if your lawyer has a ponytail on his chin, you’re probably goin’ to prison. I think if you can pick up your dog with one hand, you own a cat. I think people in China must wonder what to call their good plates. And I think we need answers. I just don’t think leaving is one of them.”

Even worse than leaving the county is allowing a stranger in, but Maizy heads to the big, scary city — Tampa, Florida — seeking help, which she finds in Gordy (John Behlmann), a desperate con artist in debt to gangsters and who’s been posing as a strip mall podiatrist who treats such foot ailments as bunions and . . . corns. Maizy doesn’t quite get it so convinces Gordy to come back with her to save the town crop.

Sniffing an opportunity to make a fortune by stealing Cob County’s heretofore undiscovered mineral wealth, Gordy goes with Maizy, even pretending to fall in love with her to gain better access to the rocks and abscond, leaving the hapless hamlet to its fate.

Shucked is like a scrumptious piece of salty, hot buttered corn at a summer barbecue, but there’s only so much you can eat at one sitting: Bits get stuck in your teeth, and the rest can be tough to digest. The show is a nonstop barrage of puns that can be hysterical but also overwhelming. And as playfully absurd as the plot is, it sometimes goes haywire, pushing the bounds of credulity, but always with a smile.

Scott Pask’s multilevel wooden set is a ramshackle barn, with raggedy furniture and scene-setting props like small cornrows and neon signs that wheel on and off. Japhy Weideman’s lighting glows magnificently through the gaps in the wood, offering blue and purplish skies and red and yellow sunlight. Tilly Grimes’s costumes would make Roy Clark and Buck Owens proud, with plenty of overalls, baseball caps, boots, dungarees, and patches.

Three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien’s (The Invention of Love, The Full Monty) direction goes from a sweet simmer to a full-tilt boil, allowing just the right amount of space for Sarah O’Gleby’s merry choreography. Jason Howland’s music supervision, music direction, orchestrations, and arrangements won’t frighten off audience members who think they won’t appreciate country music.

In her Broadway debut, Innerbichler (Frozen, Little House on the Prairie) is charming as the naive and innocent Maizy, while Durand (Ink, Head Over Heels) goes through a tumultuous series of emotions as the determined but heartbroken Beau. Kelley (Eve’s Song, Bella: An American Tall Tale) and Tony nominee Henson (Mean Girls, The Book of Mormon) are a hoot leading us through this hilarious hootenanny, particularly the latter, who offers such prime kernels of truth as “Like the guy with the lifejacket said: ‘It’s foreboding’” and “Like the personal trainer said to the lazy client: ‘This is not working out.’”

Behlmann (The 39 Steps, Significant Other) is deliciously evil as the mustache-twirling villain, but Newell (Glee, Once on This Island) steals the show as the philosophical Lulu, who shakes the rickety rafters belting out the feminist anthem “Independently Owned,” in which she declares, “I’m independently owned and liberated / And I think sleeping alone is underrated / Don’t need a man for flatteries / I got a corn cob and some batteries.”

She also shares this gem: “Men lie all the time. Hell, one tried to convince me you could suck out a kidney stone.”

You never would have heard that joke on Hee Haw.

PRISMATIC GROUND: ONLOOKERS

Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers, screening at BAM on May 4, looks at tourists and locals in Laos

ONLOOKERS (Kimi Takesue, 2023)
BAM Cinematheque
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, May 4, 7:00
Festival runs May 3–7 at multiple venues
www.bam.org
www.onlookersfilm.com

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak,” John Berger writes in the seminal text Ways of Seeing. “But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

In documentary filmmaker Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers, which is screening at BAM on May 4 at 7:00 as part of “Prismatic Ground 2023” (and will be followed by a Q&A with Takesue), there are no words, no dialogue — just seventy-two minutes of stunning visuals exploring what we see and what we know, what we are present for and what we are absent for.

The film takes place in various parts of Laos as director, producer, cinematographer, sound recordist, and editor Takesue sets up her camera and leaves it there as scenes unfold in real time and with natural sound, from a breathtaking fourteen-second sunset to five and a half minutes of six women sitting by the side of the road, preparing to fill begging bowls for a long line of Buddhist monks. Animals graze in a temple courtyard as bells chime. Women sell goods at an open-air market. Rivers flow, wind rustles trees, roosters crow, birds chirp, a cat rests on a step, a man relaxes in a hammock, all taking their time, no one in a hurry.

Then the tourists arrive; a few run up to take pictures of a monk beating a drum, then walk away, not actually stopping to watch and listen. A woman snaps a photo of three fellow sightseers standing atop a small, raging waterfall as a man fishes below. A local worker waits as a woman checks her cell phone, as if he isn’t there, standing next to her. A group of backpackers gets a prime view at a boat racing festival while locals observe from the shore. On a mountain, six tourists search for the best angle to take selfies. Visitors at a guest house sit in an outdoor lounge and watch Friends.

Born in Colorado and raised in Hawai’i and Massachusetts, Takesue has previously made Where Are You Taking Me? in Uganda, Heaven’s Crossroad in Vietnam, and 95 and 6 to Go in Hawai’i, about reconnecting with her grandfather. In Onlookers, she is not necessarily criticizing the tourists or celebrating the Laotian locals; she’s merely showing how people witness and experience the world, particularly when it comes to travelers and residents.

She beautifully captures this relationship in a short but captivating scene that begins with a static shot of an old religious shrine that looks like it hasn’t been in operation for years. A young woman enters the frame, sits down, poses for a selfie, stands up, snaps a photo of the shrine, then saunters off, never once stopping to just look at the shrine itself. The camera lingers on the building for several seconds, with nobody around, just the decaying structure set against a blue sky and between lush greenery.

We see what we want to see, when we want to see it, not always recognizing what is right in front of us, whether we’re at home or on vacation. It reminded me of people who go to a museum and take pictures of classic artworks but only see them through the lens of their phone rather than experiencing them with their own eyes. In fact, each frame of Onlookers is composed like a painting that slowly comes to life.

“The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe,” Berger writes in his book. “Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye’s retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach — though not necessarily within arm’s reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. . . . We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen.”

In all films, the audience might not have a choice of what they’re looking at, but they can decide for themselves what they’re seeing. And in the case of Onlookers, what they’re seeing is a gorgeous portrait of ourselves that no selfie can catch.

An annual round-up of experimental and avant-garde documentaries, the third edition of “Prismatic Ground” runs May 3–7, consisting of more than five dozen features and shorts at the Museum of the Moving Image, Maysles Documentary Center, BAM Cinematheque, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry, and Anthology Film Archives. The opening-night film is Soda Jerk’s Hello Dankness, while Alexandre Larose’s scènes de ménage trilogy closes the festival. Other highlights include Ayanna Dozier’s Close, but no Cigar trilogy, Naomi Uman’s Three Sparks, and Tsai Ming-Liang’s Where and Where do you stand, Tsai Ming-Liang?

IN SCENA! ITALIAN THEATER FESTIVAL NY 2023

Bruna Braidotti’s Luisa is part of Italian Theater Festival across five boroughs, May 1-16

IN SCENA!
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo at NYU (and other locations)
24 West Twelfth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
May 1-16, free – $23.41
www.inscenany.com

The tenth edition of the “In Scena!” Italian Theater Festival takes place May 1-16, at NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò and other locations in all five boroughs. This year’s iteration features eight timely plays; admission is free with advance RSVP, but donations of $23.41 will be accepted. The opening-night celebration on May 1 at 7:00 includes an awards ceremony with artists present, along with a special video and more.

The works include four solo shows: Italian star Paola Minaccioni’s I am so much better live, with music by DJ Coco; Valentina Diana’s Mubarak’s Niece, performed by Marco Vergani, about a friendship that develops amid the Tahrir Square Revolution; Bruna Braidotti’s Luisa, which follows a woman haunted by the men in her past; Antonio Grosso’s Only Mozart Is Missing, performed by Marco Simeoli and based on the true story of Simeoli’s grandfather; and Marco De Simone’s We Puppets: Story of a life shattered by racism, set during the racial laws of 1938.

Marco Vergani stars in Valentina Diana’s Mubarak’s Niece at “In Scena!” festival

Also on the bill are The Gummy Bears’ Great War, about a fictional battle that echoes current events, written and directed by Angelo Trofa and performed by Valentina Fadda and Leonardo Tomasi; Maurizio Rippa’s Little Funerals, in which vocalist Rippa and guitarist Amedeo Monda play songs about a series of funerals; and Tiziana Troja’s DDD! Donne, Donnette, Donnacce, about a female comic duo, performed by Troja, Fadda, Trofa, Michela Sale Musio, and Michele Sarti, with original music and arrangements by Davide Sardo.

Presented by Kairos Italy Theater in association with KIT Italia and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, the festival, which moves to BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island, the Vino Theater in Brooklyn, and Theaterlab in Queens (as well as Los Angeles, Detroit, and San Diego), concludes May 16 at the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Ave. with Andrea Scramali’s L’Attesa, about an estranged father and son who meet in an emergency room, and the presentation of the 2023 Mario Fratti Award to Scramali.

THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE

Red Bull and Fiasco join forces for delightful revival of The Knight of the Burning Pestle (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE
Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Monday – Saturday through May 13, $77-$112
212-352-3101
www.redbulltheater.com
www.fiascotheater.com

After seeing the wonderful revival of Francis Beaumont’s 1607 comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a collaboration between Red Bull and Fiasco that opened last week at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, I rushed home to read up on the Elizabethan pastiche. Surely these two inventive and consistently reliable New York–based companies had made significant changes to the plot, which centers on what I imagined was a twenty-first-century twist when it came to breaking the fourth wall. But to my delightful surprise, directors Noah Brody and Emily Young have remained faithful to the original story, though adding plenty of playful touches along the way.

The festivities kick off as an ensemble announces that it is about to present a show called The London Merchant when a grocer named George (Darius Pierce) jumps out of the audience and onto the stage, demanding that the troupe perform a different play. “Down with your title!” he proclaims. Believing they are elitists who “sneer at citizens,” George would prefer a play about the common man — say, a grocer — with a title like The Legend of Lord Wittington and His Exemplary Cat or The Story of Queen Elenor with the Rearing of London Bridge from a Tax on Woolsacks.

He is soon joined by his wife, Nell (Jessie Austrian), and they convince the actors to add George’s apprentice, Rafe (Paco Tolson), to the cast, as a stately, heroic grocer they christen the Knight of the Burning Pestle. After initial hesitation, the ensemble decides to proceed with the show, with Rafe’s presence providing the opportunity for everyone to improvise. George and Nell, meanwhile, sit in chairs at stage left, critiquing everything and interrupting whenever they don’t like what’s happening — usually involving Rafe’s not getting enough to do.

In the central narrative, apprentice Jasper Merrythought (Devin E. Haqq), who serves the wealthy Venturewell (Tina Chilip), is in love with his master’s daughter, Luce (Teresa Avia Lim). But Venturewell has decided to marry her off to fashionable gentleman and dullard Humphrey (Paul L. Coffey). “You know my rival?” Jasper asks Luce, who replies, “Yes, and love him dearly, even as I love an ague or foul weather; I prithee, Jasper, fear him not.”

Venturewell (Tina Chilip) tries to force Luce (Teresa Avia Lim) to marry Humphrey (Paul L. Coffey) in 1607 comedy by Francis Beaumont (photo by Carol Rosegg)

When Venturewell tells Humphrey, “Come, I know you have language good enough to win a wench,” Nell cries out, “A whoreson mother! She’s been a panderer in ’er days, I warrant her.” George holds his wife back, saying, “Chicken, I pray thee heartily, contain thyself.” He then turns to the actors and says, “You may proceed.” Such interruptions continue throughout the play, becoming more and more disruptive.

Meanwhile, Jasper’s parents, Charles (Ben Steinfeld) and Mistress Merrythought (Tatiana Wechsler), have apparently fallen out of love. She is a determined woman who will not give her blessing to her eldest son, whom she considers a “waste-thrift,” instead promising her inheritance to her other child, Michael (Royer Bockus). The unemployed Charles has spent nearly all his money on fine food and drink but still finds joy in life, particularly when it comes to singing, much to his wife’s chagrin. She commands that he is responsible for Jasper’s future, expecting them both to fail miserably.

Among the other characters are Rafe’s apprentice, Tim (Steinfeld), who accompanies the knight on his journey of protecting fair ladies and distressed damsels; the squire Tapster (Paul L. Coffey), who runs the Bell End Inn with a threatening host (Chilip); the evil giant Barbaroso (Haqq); the lusty princess of Cracovia (Austrian); and Little George (Bockus), Rafe’s faithful horse.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a great choice for Red Bull and Fiasco to team up on. The latter specializes in Jacobean dramas and farces (Ben Jonson’s Volpone, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal) as well as modern takes on Shakespeare (Coriolanus, Erica Schmidt’s Mac Beth), while Fiasco alternates among Stephen Sondheim (Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along), the Bard (Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, Cymbeline), and Molière (The Imaginary Invalid).

Royer Bockus, Ben Steinfeld, Paco Tolson, and Tatiana Wechsler are part of terrific ensemble in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Their sensibilities mesh in organic ways in this splendid interpretation of Beaumont’s rarely performed play. Christopher Swader and Justin Swader’s set features a wooden floor and back wall, the latter with surprise openings. Two painted backdrops move the action to an inn and the forest, and a rolling door serves as the entrance to the Merrythought home. There are chairs scattered on each side, where the actors sit when they’re not part of the scene, some occasionally playing instruments, a hallmark of Fiasco productions. Some musical interludes work better than others; a group singalong on the old-time ballad “De Derry Down” is engaging, and a jolly version of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave” is delightfully frisky, but a rewritten take on Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” and a too-long solo by Steinfeld in which he makes sounds with his mouth and by striking parts of his body feel out of place.

Yvonne Miranda’s costumes range from the relatively contemporary to seventeenth-century traditional to theatrical makeshift, as when Rafe dons a metal colander for a helmet and uses a metal trashcan top as a shield. (The funny props are by Samantha Shoffner.) Reza Bahjat’s lighting includes nearly two dozen chandeliers and fixtures that extend over the audience, as if we’re part of the production — and we are, represented by George and Nell onstage.

The couple’s interventions are a mixture of purposely awkward and fresh, given the recent spate of shows having to stop or be delayed because of audience members yelling at actors, singing along too loud (contrary to theater instructions), or crawling onto the set to plug their phone into a fake outlet. When George gives the troupe two shillings in order to have specific music, it evokes a producer making an unreasonable demand, then watching closely to ensure it is done.

Brody and Young (you can watch an online RemarkaBULL Podversation with them here) have also performed in many of Fiasco’s productions; as directors, they get the best out of their talented cast, giving them a freedom that they gleefully embrace. Pierce chews up the scenery as the annoying George, Tolson excels as the stalwart Rafe, and Bockus brings the house down as Rafe’s horse.

Beaumont, who died in 1616 around the age of thirty-two, wrote only one other play by himself, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, while collaborating with John Fletcher on thirteen works, including The Woman Hater, A King and No King, and Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding. I imagine he would be quite satisfied with Red Bull and Fiasco’s collaboration on The Knight of the Burning Pestle.