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IZZARD HAMLET NEW YORK

Eddie Izzard plays nearly two dozen characters in one-woman Hamlet (photo by Carol Rosegg)

IZZARD HAMLET NEW YORK
The Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Tuesday – Sunday through March 16, $81-$125
Orpheum Theatre
126 Second Ave. between Seventh & Eighth Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday, March 19 – April 14
www.eddieizzardhamlet.com

Eddie Izzard doesn’t make things easy for herself.

In winter 2022–23, she presented a one-woman version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations at the Greenwich House Theater. The wonderful two-hour, two-act show was adapted by Izzard’s brother Mark and directed by Selina Cadell. Now the trio is taking on William Shakespeare’s classic revenge tragedy, Hamlet, with the full crew from the previous play. The production more than lives up to its great expectations.

Izzard once again is dressed in a goth steampunk outfit, designed by Tom Piper and Libby DaCosta, this time consisting of black boots, tight black leather pants, and a silvery black-and-green long peplum blazer over a neckline-revealing top. Piper’s set is a long, rectangular space with three narrow, vertical windows, recalling a room in a tower where damsels in distress are imprisoned as well as a room in a psychiatric facility where someone having difficulty with reality is treated. Tyler Elich’s lighting shifts among several emotional colors that shine through the windows and a panel running along the underside of the set’s ceiling.

Izzard casts an impressive figure onstage, appearing much bigger than her five-foot-seven frame. In a mesmerizing tour de force, she portrays twenty-three characters, including Prince Hamlet; the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the recently murdered king; Claudius, the king’s brother and Hamlet’s uncle, who now wears the crown; Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother who married her former brother-in-law before her husband’s body was cold; Hamlet’s best friend, Horatio; Hamlet’s true love, Ophelia; Ophelia’s father, Polonius, Claudius’s most trusted councilor; Laertes, Ophelia’s brother; and Fortinbras, the prince of Norway; in addition to the leader of a traveling theater company, two gravediggers, various Danish soldiers and courtiers, and others.

Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet has been extended at Greenwich House Theater and will then move to the Orpheum (photo by Carol Rosegg)

There are no costume changes; when shifting between characters, Izzard slightly alters her voice and position onstage, running back and forth, twisting her body, or adjusting her posture. But she brings down the house with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for whom she uses her hands when they speak, the effect enhanced by the deep red polish on her fingernails. (Just wait till you see how she deals with a fencing duel; the movement direction is by Didi Hopkins.)

Izzard delivers all the famous monologues (“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,” “To be, or not to be,” “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” et al.) beautifully, lending each line its own nuance; it is never mere recitation. The few times Izzard, who is dyslexic, stumbled over a word or two, she quickly corrected it, displaying that she is in complete command of not only the text but what it means. The lack of props enhanced the power of the language and the intricacies of the plot. At one point, when a loud, distracting crinkling noise could be heard in the mezzanine, Izzard, in stride, directed a laserlike gaze at the perpetrator without missing a beat. She also occasionally ambles determinedly offstage, wandering through the aisles, making eye contact with the crowd as Hamlet shares his foibles.

The Aden-born Izzard is best known as a comedian, which might explain some of the inappropriate laughter intermittently coming from a handful of audience members the night I went. There are some very funny moments, but overall it’s a pretty serious drama.

In the last nine years, I’ve seen ten productions of and/or involving Hamlet, ranging from a German avant-garde version at BAM and an intense intellectual staging at Park Avenue Armory to a modern-day BIPOC update at the Public and on Broadway and a wildly unpredictable and flatulent interpretation at Japan Society.

Izzard Hamlet New York is another memorable adaptation to add to the ever-growing list.

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

THE FOLLOWING EVENING

Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet explore their relationship on- and offstage in The Following Evening (photo by Maria Baranova)

THE FOLLOWING EVENING
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 18, $69
pacnyc.org

The Following Evening is a touching love letter to independent theater creators and New York City. It also goes much deeper than a proverbial passing of the torch.

The seventy-five-minute work, making its world premiere through February 18 at PAC NYC, was written and directed by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone specifically for Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet. Browde, forty-two, and Silverstone, forty-three, started the experimental company 600 Highwaymen in 2009, the same year they got married. Maddow, seventy-five, and Zimet, eighty-one, cofounded the experimental company Talking Band, with Tina Shepard, in 1974 and got married in 1986. (Zimet and Shepard had been wed previously as well.)

Browde and Silverstone have a young child and are considering leaving New York. Maddow and Zimet have three grandchildren and can’t imagine living anywhere other than the city, especially with two more shows coming up, Existentialism at La MaMa later this month and Shimmer and Herringbone at Mabou Mines @122CC in May as part of their troupe’s fiftieth anniversary season.

In the play, the two couples portray somewhat fictionalized versions of themselves as they explore their lives and creative process. The line between fact and fantasy is further blurred by Jian Jung’s set, which features a piano on one side, a few chairs in the middle, and a pile of large canvases collected at the right, except for one painting of a window, taunting us about the world outside. In the back, large white sheetrock panels cover only some of the wall, a constant reminder that we are not in Ellen and Paul’s downtown loft but in a theater. In addition, Eric Southern’s lighting often keeps it bright, as if the characters are not actors but just people sharing their time with the audience.

The show opens with Paul delivering a long prologue, moving his hands and body in sharp, heavily mannered ways as he discusses being raised on the Upper West Side, riding his bike, dropping out of medical school, and performing around the globe. He talks about his family history going back to his great-grandmother, who was born in New York City in 1863, and continuing through Ellen and their children and grandchildren, setting up the multigenerational aspect of the narrative.

“Does this all sound romantic? I really hope it doesn’t,” he says. “Nothing is going to happen in this play.” He then turns to Ellen, asks if she is ready, and welcomes the audience to The Following Evening.

Ellen brings up disappointment, memory, and variation as the couple dances, then sings a song for their neighbor, an ill painter named Katherine. “I imagine a play that takes place over a thousand years,” Ellen says, never wanting their life in the theater to end. Paul, ever hopeful, later adds, “I imagine a play about the end of the world. Where the world is crumbling. Civilization on fire. But it is a love story.”

The Following Evening brings together two theater couples at different stages of life (photo by Maria Baranova)

In the second section, Abby and Michael enter, directing Ellen and Paul. When Ellen is having trouble with a scene, she says resignedly, “I had it yesterday. This is the thing about getting older.” Paul immediately counters, “You don’t have any harder of a time than any other actor.” When Abby suggests they improvise, Ellen quickly points out, “No, I like the way you wrote it,” praising the ideas of the next theatrical standard-bearers even though the older couple is more confident about the future than the younger pair.

“Hmm. I just had this, uh. I just got incredibly jealous. You guys have so much life ahead of you,” Paul says, to which Abby replies, “Oh. Isn’t that funny? I don’t feel any of that.” Michael later opines, “I can see the two of you so clearly. I can sort of see you. But I can’t see myself. . . . You were pioneers and we are just — jerks.”

The third and final part focuses more on Abby and Michael as they examine the state of their existence, sometimes speaking in the third person, describing their actions to each other. “I feel like I could run / Like I could run really fast if I wanted to / That you would keep pace with me,” Michael says. “It wouldn’t be that hard / We could go on forever. We could do it.” Abby explains, “Here, hold this, you tell me as if we are the last people on earth.”

They are eventually joined by Ellen and Paul, and the last moments grow even more abstract than what came before.

The Following Evening is like a visual tone poem, a brutally honest look at aging and artistic creation. Things occur slowly, in movement and speech; the dialogue is spoken plainly, unadorned, carefully modulated but not dispassionate. Ellen and Paul are marvelous together; watching them slowly take off their shoes, sit on the floor, or dance together is aspirational.

Abby and Michael are compelling as the younger couple who fear they will never be like Ellen and Paul, either as a married couple, parents, grandparents, or theater makers. All four of them have their fair share of doubt and questions, but the play puts a defining emphasis on experience in a country where the elderly are not given the respect they deserve, something 600 Highwaymen (A Thousand Ways, The Fever) is rectifying, without being overly congratulatory or sentimental about Talking Band (Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless, Painted Snake in a Painted Chair), which collectively has won fifteen Obie Awards.

The title promises that life goes on; I can’t wait to see what each couple has in store for us next evening.

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

EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION: SITES OF IMPERMANENCE

Sanford Biggers, The Cantor, pink Portuguese marble, 2022 (copyright Sanford Biggers / courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery)

SITES OF IMPERMANENCE
National Academy of Design
519 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., second floor
Thursday, February 8, free with recommended RSVP, 6:00-8:00
Exhibition continues through May 11
nationalacademy.org

“By beginning with the analysis of form’s impermanence, the Buddha appeals to the direct experience of our body,” the Dalai Lama and Ven. Thubten Chodron write in the January 2022 Tricycle article “An Unbroken Sequence.” “We know our body is constantly changing; we know it is aging and will eventually cease to exist. This is a comparatively gross form of impermanence, whereas the understanding of subtle impermanence frees us from the illusion of the body being permanent.”

Impermanence is a difficult concept to embrace, as we’ve just learned with the announcement that the Rubin Museum, the treasure trove of Himalayan art since 2004 in the former Barney’s space in Chelsea, is closing its doors in favor of a virtual presence.

In 2019, the National Academy of Design left its longtime home in the elegant Huntington mansion on Museum Mile, where it had resided since 1942. In August 2022, incoming executive director Gregory Wessner told the Art Newspaper, “Absolutely an exhibition space is in the future. Will it be a Beaux-Arts townhouse on Fifth Avenue? No. But it will be a New York space.” The organization’s new gallery is on West Twenty-Sixth St. in Chelsea.

On February 8, NAD will open its latest show, the appropriately titled “Sites of Impermanence,” consisting of art and architectural works addressing temporal and spatial concerns, by 2023 National Academicians Alice Adams, Sanford Biggers, Willie Cole, Torkwase Dyson, Richard Gluckman, Carlos Jiménez, Mel Kendrick, and Sarah Oppenheimer. Advance reservations are requested here. Cocurated by Sara Reisman and Natalia Viera Salgado, the exhibition continues Tuesday – Saturday through May 11.

In the article, the Dalai Lama and Ven. Thubten Chodron also note, “The experience of a pleasant feeling is dependent on an object, the sense faculty, consciousness, and contact, but once the feeling arises, could it be permanent during the time it endures?” You can find out at NAD.

THE FEST FOR BEATLES FANS

THE FEST FOR BEATLES FANS
TWA Hotel at JFK Airport
One Idlewild Dr., Queens
February 9-11, $49.50-$325 for various packages for children and adults, $24 virtual
www.thefest.com
www.twahotel.com

On February 7, 1964, a Pan Am plane carrying John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr landed at JFK Airport in Queens, and Beatlemania was unleashed on America. So it makes sense that the fiftieth anniversary edition of the Fest for Beatles Fans is taking place this weekend at the TWA Hotel at JFK. Even after all that time, the lads from Liverpool are as popular as ever, recently releasing the new song “Now and Then,” winning a Grammy for Best Music Video for the lushly animated “I’m Only Sleeping,” and being the subject of the eight-hour Peter Jackson documentary Get Back.

Running February 9-11, the fest features live performances by Liverpool, the Weeklings, Black Ties, Blac Rabbit, Cellophane Flowers, the Meetles, James Gray, Jeff Slate’s Weekend Wilburys, and others, signing sessions, panel discussions, and more, including the Giant Beatles Marketplace, the Annual Friday Night Dance Party (with ’60s Dress-Up Night and best outfits and lookalike contests), a You Sing the Beatles contest, the Beatles Museum (and art contest), the interactive FABoratory, an indoor pool, the Beatles Ashram, trivia games, participatory lobby jams, an auction, yoga, karaoke, and activities for kids.

Among the special guests are Micky Dolenz from the Monkees, Wings guitarist Laurence Juber, Wings drummer Steve Holley, Billy J. Kramer from the Dakotas, Chris O’Dell from Apple Records, original Beatles Fan Club president Freda Kelly, roadie Mal Evans’s son Gary Evans, former NEMS and Apple employee Tony Bramwell, Pattie Boyd’s sister Jenny Boyd, Paul’s stepmother and stepsister Angie and Ruth McCartney, and Gregg Bissonette and Mark Rivera from Ringo’s All-Starr Band. Deejay Ken Dashow serves as emcee, assisted by Tom Frangione.

Below are four fab highlights for each day:

Friday, February 9
Beatle World Biographies: Brian Epstein & Yoko Ono, with Vivek Tiwary and Madeline Bocaro, Paperback Writer Discussion Room, 7:15

Good Ol’ Freda, Q&A with Freda Kelly, Mop Top Room, 8:00

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: A Dreamhouse Party for Brian Epstein, with DJ sets by Justin Cudmore and Danny Clobber, runway show by PVR x Tillium, drag show by Thee Suburbia with live music by Plastic Tizzy Band, and a ’60s salon by Sean Bennett, 1964 Room, 10:00 pm – 2:00 am

The First Origin Story, with Beatles Fest founder Mark Lapidos, Main Stage, 11:15

Saturday, February 10
The Beatles on Film, with Steve Matteo and Darren DeVivo, Paperback Writer Discussion Room, 12:15

Micky Dolenz: Special Guest Interview with Ken Dashow, Main Stage, 4:00

Historians Panel — Free as a Bird, Real Love, and Now and Then: The End of Beatles History?, with Susan Ryan, Jim Ryan, Janet Davis, Kit O’Toole, Andy Nicholes, and Caitlin Larkin, Paperback Writer Discussion Room, 4:30

Live Beatles Concert by Liverpool, featuring Micky Dolenz, Billy J. Kramer, Mark Rivera, Gregg Bissonette, Gary Burr, Laurence Juber, and Steve Holley, with a Wings tribute to Denny Laine, Main Stage, 9:00

Sunday, February 11
Live Broadcast: Breakfast with the Beatles, with Ken Dashow and guests, 8:00

The Beatles Are Coming! Beatles Parade, meet in the Twister Room, 2:00

Super Peace Bowl: Bed-In for Peace, 1964 Room, 5:00

Live Beatles Concert by Liverpool, featuring Micky Dolenz, Billy J. Kramer, Laurence Juber, and Steve Holley, plus grand jam finale, Main Stage, 9:00

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

BRENDAN HUNT: THE MOVEMENT YOU NEED

Brendan Hunt returns to SoHo Playhouse for encore run of one-man show The Movement You Need

THE INTERNATIONAL FRINGE ENCORE SERIES: THE MOVEMENT YOU NEED
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St. between Sixth Ave. & Varick St.
February 7-10, $40
212-691-1555
sohoplayhouse.com
fringeencoreseries.com

Chicago native Brendan Hunt might be best known for his portrayal of Coach Willis Beard on Ted Lasso — in addition to writing several episodes and serving as producer, executive producer, and codeveloper — but he also has a deep affection for theater. The Emmy winner and Jeopardy! contestant has written and performed the solo works Five Years in Amsterdam: The True Story of How a Regular Guy from Chicago Became Absolute Eurotrash and Still Got It as well as the plays The Poe Show (where he was Edgar Allan Poe alongside Dracula, Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Gen. Custer, Charlotte Brontë, Dr. Frankenstein, and the Raven) and Absolutely Filthy (An Unauthorized Peanuts Parody) (in which he appears as the mess). And he won a 2010 LA Ovation Award for Lead Actor in a Musical for Sacred Fools’ Savin’ Up for Saturday Night.

Last November, he brought his autobiographical one-man show The Movement You Need to SoHo Playhouse as part of the International Fringe Encore Series: Comedy Festival, and it’s now back for a bonus encore run, February 7-10. For seventy-five minutes, Hunt explores his complex relationship with his late mother and the only thing they could both agree on: their shared love of the Beatles. When Hunt has the opportunity to talk about that with Sir Paul McCartney himself, it doesn’t go quite as planned. The show is named after a line in “Hey Jude” — “And don’t you know that it’s just you? / Hey Jude, you’ll do, / the movement you need is on your shoulder” — a song the very young Hunt thought was about him because his mother called him Na Na (“Na, na, na, na, na na, na”).

In his high school yearbook photo, Hunt, who is now fifty-one, wore a pin that featured the Fab Four’s infamous butcher cover for the Yesterday and Today album; I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes a detour this weekend to “The Fest for Beatles Fans,” taking place February 9-11 at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport.

In “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” the Beatles promise, “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.” For The Movement You Need, Hunt will only say, “A decent time is guaranteed for all.” He shouldn’t be so self-deprecating. As Sir Paul sings, “And anytime you feel the pain, / Hey Jude, refrain, / Don’t carry the world upon your shoulder.”

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising) is part of QNYIAF (photo by Silvija Dogan)

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
February 7 – 17, $25
212-945-2600
nyuskirball.org

After a six-year break, the Queer New York International Arts Festival returns to the city, taking place February 7-17 at NYU Skirball. Started by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović in 2012 at Abrons Arts Center, the fest consists of works that address queerness in today’s society, this year with presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany, including live performances, installations, and public talks.

The 2024 QNYIAF kicks off February 7 with Croatian artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih’s From5to95, a hybrid video installation and online project in which Croatian women from the ages of five to ninety-five share their personal stories about gender inequality. On February 7 and 8, Croatian artists Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising), which premiered in Argentina in 2019, is performed by sex workers Juan Ejemplo, Leandra Atenea Levine Hidalgo, Pichón Reyna, and Sofía Tramazaygues, exploring the relationship between client and sex worker.

Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar’s Kill B. reimagines the Bride from Quentin Tarantino films (photo by Hrvoje Zalukar)

Isaković collaborates with fellow choreographer and dancer Mia Zalukar on Kill B., inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Playing February 9 and 10, the piece focuses on the character of the Bride as well as artistic hierarchical structures and their own professional partnership. On February 13, Toronto-based performance artist Clayton Lee goes through his sexual history in The Goldberg Variations, which mashes up Johann Sebastian Bach with WCW and WWE wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg, host of the 2018-19 competition series Forged in Fire: Knife or Death and a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice. Some iterations have included smells and live snakes, so be ready.

On February 15, Argentinian interdisciplinary artist Tiziano Cruz will deliver the autobiographical performance lecture Conference, followed by a discussion. His piece Soliloquy — I woke up and hit my head against the wall was about his mother; in Conference he turns his attention to his ancestors and his late sister. On February 16, Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz’s performance lecture La Bête is an interactive solo in which he activates a plastic replica of one of Lygia Clark’s rearrangeable hinged metal sculptures known as bichos, or “beasts,” and then the audience does the same, except with Schwartz’s naked body.

QNYIAF concludes February 17 with Raimund Hoghe Company members Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte’s An Evening with Raimund, a tribute to German choreographer, dancer, and journalist Raimund Hoghe, who died in 2021 at the age of seventy-two; excerpts from his works will be performed by seven dancers. “To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important — not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects,” Hoghe said. “On the question of success: It is important to be able to work and to go your own way — with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.”

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

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

A family deals with a suicidal prodigal son in The Animal Kingdom (photo by Emilio Madrid)

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
Connelly Theater Upstairs
220 East Fourth St. between Aves. A & B
Tuesday – Sunday through February 17, $52.24-$83.74
www.animalkingdomplay.com
www.connellytheater.org

There is an internet meme that you can get on a T-shirt, mug, poster, or notebook: “Theater is therapy for the soul.” In the past few years, I’ve seen a handful of plays that take the quote extremely seriously: The entire show is set within the confines of a therapy session (or sessions).

In Dave Malloy’s Octet, eight people gather to face their obsessions with technology. In Emma Sheanshang’s The Fears, seven Buddhists share their traumas. In Those Guilty Creatures’ The Voices in Your Head, the audience sits in a large oval among actors portraying characters dealing with grief. And in Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job, a therapist has the responsibility of determining whether an employee who suffered a public meltdown is ready to return to work.

In each of those cases, we do not see anything outside the session(s). The same is true of Ruby Thomas’s gripping but mystifying The Animal Kingdom, which continues through February 10 at the Connelly Theater Upstairs; downstairs is an encore run of Job.

An audience of no more than fifty sits on three sides of Wilson Chin’s tiny stage at a recovery center, consisting of five equally spaced plastic chairs in a circle on a green rug along with a small table with water, cups, and tissues. The far wall is a two-way mirror where experts can watch the proceedings — and we can see reflections of ourselves or other audience members, as if we’re part of the group. Above is a large rectangular light box that changes colors during scene changes to try to maintain a calming mood, accompanied by transitional music. (The lighting is by Stacey Derosier, with sound by Christopher Darbassie and contemporary costumes by Ricky Reynoso.) Otherwise, it is threateningly quiet; it never goes dark, so you can see and hear people scratch their leg, shift in their seat, or reach into their bag for a cough drop.

Sofia (Lily McInerny) doesn’t hold back in New York premiere of British play (photo by Emilio Madrid)

The patient is Sam (Uly Schlesinger), a college student who has recently tried to kill himself. His parents are divorced and not on friendly terms; Rita (Tasha Lawrence) is an overbearing yapper, and Tim (David Cromer) is a reticent businessman who would rather be anywhere else but there, nervously shaking one leg, speaking only when practically forced to. Tim’s younger sister, eighteen-year-old Sofia (Lily McInerny), has been essentially ignored by her parents for years while they deal with Tim. Facilitating the sessions is Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith), who is almost impossibly gentle and serene, especially when things heat up among the family members.

The details of the family’s dysfunction emerge from confessions, admissions, and accusations as we learn more about each person, some of which is almost too metaphorical. Tim runs a turnaround fund where he buys failing businesses and makes them profitable but has no idea how to turn around the pain his wife and kids are feeling. Rita is a doula who helps pregnant mothers but doesn’t understand her own children. Sam is obsessed with swifts, aerial birds that are unable to stand properly because of their small legs and whose migratory patterns are in chaos because of climate change, much like Sam’s life path has been disrupted by his mental health issues. And when Rita complains, “It’s a bit lonely in the house. Empty nest,” Sofia scoffs, “I still live there.”

Over the course of six sessions, they argue about abandonment, medication, education, sex drives, and the difference between gay and queer. Daniel offers such obvious guidance as “I know this might not always be easy. We might have to say difficult things, hear difficult things. But in my experience the family system, as we call it, is such an important one.”

During the first scene, I dreaded being stuck in this room for eighty minutes of therapeutic healing, but director Jack Serio, who previously helmed an intimate adaptation of Uncle Vanya in a Flatiron loft and This Beautiful Future at the Cherry Lane, keeps us engaged as characters change chairs for each meeting, giving the audience a different perspective on the family members and the therapist as they go through major, or minor, transformations of some kind.

Therapist Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith) tries to get to the root of Sam’s (Uly Schlesinger) issues in The Animal Kingdom (photo by Emilio Madrid)

The cast is excellent, beginning with Schlesinger, who made his New York stage debut in This Beautiful Future in 2022. The tortured Sam is wound up tight at the start, a ticking time bomb, but it’s McInerny who explodes as Sofia, who has had enough. Cromer, who played the title character in Serio’s Uncle Vanya and directed McInerny in Bess Wohl’s Camp Siegfried, portrays Tim with a calm control, while Lawrence regales with Rita’s inability to just shut up.

Obie winner Smith could not be more easygoing as Daniel, although I hope they change a line, one of the only jokes in the show: Expressing hopefulness amid his nerves, he says, “And the Knicks are playing later and it hasn’t been the best season. Or the best decade,” as if hope might be unattainable. Right now the Knicks are having their best season in years, so it would be better if they changed it to the Jets or another perennial punching bag sports team, at least while the play is in New York City. The British Thomas (Either, Linck & Mülhahn) might not be up on her hoops, but Daniel should be.

Some have made the case that The Animal Kingdom is not in fact a play but merely an exercise in fictional group therapy, taking advantage of a currently popular theatrical device. However, I would argue that in its character development, narrative flow, and unique staging, it is a poignant drama about a complicated family finally having to look at itself in the mirror and admitting they might not like what they see.

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