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THE HUNTING GUN

Josuke Misugi (Mikhail Baryshnikov) watches Shoko (Miki Nakatani) from above in The Hunting Gun (photo by Pasha Antono)

THE HUNTING GUN
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 15, $35-$150
646-731-3200
thehuntinggun.org
bacnyc.org

Miki Nakatani is so mesmerizing in the US premiere of The Hunting Gun that even her costar, in a building named after him, can barely take his eyes off her.

Running in the Jerome Robbins Theater at Baryshnikov Arts Center through April 15, the haunting, heart-wrenchingly poetic play was adapted by Serge Lamothe from Yasushi Inoue’s 1949 novel centered around an illicit love affair that deeply affects four people. In a devastating, award-winning performance, Nakatani plays three roles: a girl named Shoko whose mother, Saiko, has just died; Midori, Saiko’s cousin and best friend; and Saiko herself, essentially communicating from the grave.

BAC founding artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov is Josuke Misugi, a hunter who is married to Midori and had a long tryst with Saiko. The story unfolds as the three female characters read letters they’ve written to Misugi, who witnesses everything from an elevated platform at the back of the stage, behind three black translucent vertical screens with excerpts from the letters in Japanese on them. Each of the female characters wears a different outfit — the gorgeous clothing is by Renée April, with costume changes taking place onstage — while the floor of François Séguin’s eerie, mystical set magically changes for the three women, incorporating the elements of water, earth, and wood. David Finn’s lighting has a supernatural feel, as does Alexander MacSween’s music.

The premise is that Misugi has been moved by a poem he read in The Hunter’s Companion, a magazine not known for its literary prowess. “What made him cold, armed with white, bright steel, / To take the lives of creatures? / Attracted by the tall hunter’s back, / I looked and looked,” it says in part. “As the glittering of a hunting gun, / Stamping its weight on the lonely body, / Lonely mind of a middle-aged man, / Radiates a queer, austere beauty, / Never shown when aimed at life.”

Midori (Miki Nakatani) shares her deep pain in darkly poetic show at BAC (photo by Pasha Antono)

Misugi writes to the poet, believing that he, Misugi, is the lonely hunter the man describes in the poem. He tells him he is going to send him three letters he has received, which he was going to burn. “I would be happy if you would read them at your leisure,” he explains to the author. “It seems to me that a man is foolish enough to want another person to understand him. After you have read them, I hope you’ll burn the three of them for me.” The trio of women then perform the poems while Misugi watches closely from above and carefully cleans his Churchill shotgun.

At first Shoko thanks Misugi for his help after her mother’s death, writing, “I’ve thought and thought about how to say all this, and I have finished, so to speak, the preparation for this letter. But when I pick up my pen, all sorts of sorrows come rushing upon me from every direction, like the white waves at Ashiya on windy days, and these sorrows confuse me.” Her world has been turned inside out since she read her mother’s diaries and found out about the affair. “That love which can’t be kept without being sinful must be a sorrowful thing,” she opines.

Demonstrating her inner strength, Midori begins her letter, “When I write your name in this formal way, I feel my heart throbbing with emotion as though I were writing a love letter. I have written scores of such letters during the last thirteen years, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, but among all of them not one has been addressed to you. Why? That realization makes me feel an oddness I can’t explain logically. Don’t you also think this is funny?”

Saiko’s letter retraces some of the adventures she and Misugi had together while also explaining, “Many hours or many days after I’m gone and have turned into nothing, you will read this letter. And living after me, it will tell you the many thoughts I had when I was alive. As though I were speaking to you, this letter will tell you what I thought and felt — things you don’t yet know. And it will be as though you were talking to me and hearing my voice.”

Josuke Misugi (Mikhail Baryshnikov) cleans his rifle throughout The Hunting Gun (photo by Pasha Antono)

Nakatani (When the Last Sword Is Drawn, Memories of Matsuko, Zero Focus) cautiously roams across the stage as if a butoh dancer, moving almost exasperatingly slowly, delivering the words from the letters like they’re the lily pads or stones beneath her feet. At times it’s like she’s floating, a ghost reliving her characters’ past tinged with a wide range of conflicting emotions.

Baryshnikov (Brodsky/Baryshnikov, The Orchard) sits in a chair, rises, and turns his attention from the Churchill to Nakatani with a master’s touch, his eyes and body understanding precisely how Misugi’s actions impacted Shoko, Midori, and Saiko. He might not speak a word, but his minimal gestures depict anguish and contrition with the skill of an exquisite dancer as Misugi, disengaged from reality, finally sees the pain he has caused others and raises the now pristine rifle.

François Girard, who has made such films as The Red Violin, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, and Silk (costarring Nakatani) in addition to helming numerous operas and theater productions, directs The Hunting Gun with the discipline of a Zen master, allowing the details of the story, which has previously been made into a 1961 melodrama by Heinosuke Gosho and a 2018 opera by Thomas Larcher, to unfold like a butterfly or a bee flitting across a blossoming garden. It is a profoundly sad tale, filled with regret, revenge, and remorse, told with an otherworldly elegance and grace.

It is also a fitting prelude to “Mikhail Baryshnikov at 75: A Day of Music and Celebration,” in which Misha will be honored by Laurie Anderson, Diana Krall, Regina Spektor, Kaoru Watanabe, Mark Morris, and Anna Baryshnikov (his daughter) at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park on June 25; tickets ($75-$500) are available here.

ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM

Arden (Thomas Jay Ryan) has no idea his wife, Alice (Cara Ricketts), is planning to have him murdered in true-crime thriller (photo by Carol Rosegg)

ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM
Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Monday – Saturday through April 1, $77-$112
212-352-3101
www.redbulltheater.com

Red Bull Theater turns to true crime in its devilishly delightful adaptation of the Jacobean-Elizabethan comic noir Arden of Faversham, continuing through April 1 at the Lucille Lortel. Company founding artistic director Jesse Berger and Jeffrey Hatcher previously collaborated on 2017’s hilarious The Government Inspector and 2021’s overwrought The Alchemist. Joined by Kathryn Walat, they now bring back Arden of Faversham — the authorship of which is unknown, with historians debating whether it was written by some combination of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Watson, and William Shakespeare — a rousing romp of love, lust, and class warfare.

The late-sixteenth-century play was inspired by the real-life story of an unfaithful wife’s attempts to murder her wealthy husband with the help of her lover and others. Alice (Cara Ricketts) is tired of her plain, boring spouse, Arden (Thomas Jay Ryan), and has fallen into the arms of a dashing local tailor, Mosby (Tony Roach). Although Arden and his best friend, Franklin (Thom Sesma), suspect something illicit is going on right under their nose, Alice denies it when Arden confronts her. Meanwhile, Susan (Emma Geer), Alice’s maid and Mosby’s sister, is trying to decide between two suitors, the ostentatious painter Clarke (Joshua David Robinson) and the awkward Michael (Zachary Fine), Arden’s timid and clumsy servant.

“It is not love that loves to anger love,” Mosby tells Alice, who answers, “It is not love that loves to murder love.”

Alice and Mosby concoct several plots to take care of their wicked business, enlisting the widow Greene (Veronica Falcón), who believes Arden has stolen her property following her husband’s death; notorious thieves Big Will (David Ryan Smith) and Shakebag (Haynes Thigpen); and Susan, Clarke, and Michael. Mayhem ensues as an unaware Arden keeps avoiding his fate in very funny ways.

A motley crew has been put together for nefarious purposes in Arden of Faversham (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The domestic tragedy takes place on Christopher and Justin Swader’s dark, ominous set, a lush dining room with a fireplace in Arden’s estate that transforms into the front of Franklin’s house and a foggy dock with the clever use of a few props and Reza Behjat’s moody lighting. Mika Eubanks’s period costumes range from Alice’s lovely gowns and Clarke’s absurd finery to the thieves’ sloppiness and Arden’s fur-lined cloak; several characters have modern-day clothing underneath, as well as contemporary shoes, furthering the farce.

Ricketts (Time and the Conways, Measure for Measure) is both alluring and goofy as the conniving Alice; early on, she tells Mosby, “Base peasant, get thee gone, / And boast not of thy conquest over me, / Gotten by witchcraft and mere sorcery.” She also believes, “Love is a god, and marriage is but words.”

Ryan (Dance Nation, Eureka Day), one of New York’s finest character actors, is a riot as her much-put-upon spouse, Arden, a cuckold who exists in a bubble; Sesma (A Man of No Importance, Letters of Suresh) is stalwart as Arden’s dedicated defender, who has a crush on his bestie; Geer (Hindle Wakes, Mary Page Marlow) brings a sweet innocence to Susan; and Fine (Vanity Fair, Coriolanus) once again displays his comic chops as the quirky, uncomfortable Michael.

The plot thickens as Mosby (Tony Roach), Arden (Thomas Jay Ryan), and Alice (Cara Ricketts) share a toast (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Berger (Volpone, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore), Hatcher (A Picasso, Tuesdays with Morrie), and Walat (Creation, Bleeding Kansas) take plenty of liberties with the original story — for example, farmer Greene becomes widow Greene in this adaptation, and Susan is fleshed out significantly, both of which are excellent changes, giving women more agency — and it mostly works, save for a few grisly over-the-top scenes that push things a bit too far.

Did Shakespeare write any of Arden of Faversham? I have no idea, although the names of the thieves, Will and Shakebag, are curious. “It’s daunting to revise a play that Shakespeare may have cowritten. It seems presumptuous,” Hatcher and Walat explain in a program note. Presumptuous as that might be, it’s certainly more than worthwhile in this case.

MINDFULNESS MEDITATION WITH PHAKCHOK RINPOCHE: UNITY / THE FOUR TRANSFORMATIVE THOUGHTS

Who: Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche
What: Talk, meditation, discussion, book signing
Where: Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave. / Dharma House NYC, 60-06 39th Ave., Woodside
When: Thursday, March 23, $19 ($38.92 with lunch), 1:00 / Friday, March 24, free (donations accepted), 7:30
Why: Tibetan Buddhist teacher Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche returns to the Rubin Museum and Dharma House NYC for a pair of special events on March 23–24 in conjunction with the release of his latest book, Awakening Dignity: A Guide to Living a Life of Deep Fulfillment (Shambhala Publications, December 2022, $21.95). “Why is the joy inside us so hard to maintain? Why are we so easily lured by self-doubt, inadequacy, fear? Why do we feel so incomplete? What is the cause of this kind of suffering and what, if anything, can we do about it?” Phakchok Rinpoche asks in the first chapter, pointing out: “You are not alone.” The follow-up to Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon’s Radically Happy, the new book was written with associate history professor Sophie Wu and features a foreword by Daniel Goleman and Tara Bennett-Goleman. Awakening Dignity is divided into three parts, “Your Nature Is Pure,” “You Can Change,” and “Gaining Certainty and Trust,” and includes such chapters as “The Mirror of the Heart,” “Making Friends with ‘Sticky Mind,’” “Carefree Ease,” and “‘Who Am I?’”

Born in Kathmandu in 1981, Phakchok Rinpoche is a wonderful teacher with a unique sense of humor; I have sat in on numerous classes he’s led and lectures he’s given in Cooperstown, Westchester, SoHo, Nepal, and online, and they are always enlightening, whether you’re a practitioner or not. Last month I watched the livestream of the remarkable cremation ceremony for his father, Kyabje Tsikey Chokling Rinpoche, which provided stunning insights into death, ritual, and reincarnation and fits right in with the Rubin exhibition “Death Is Not the End.” On March 23 at 1:00, Phakchok Rinpoche will be at the Rubin to lead a session of the institution’s “Mindfulness Meditation” series, consisting of an opening talk dealing with the theme of “Unity,” a twenty-minute seated meditation, and a discussion, followed by a book signing. Admission is $19 or, if you want lunch, $38.92 with food from the Indian restaurant TAGMO. The book tour continues on March 24 at 7:30 when Phakchok Rinpoche will be at Dharma House New York City to deliver the public teaching “The Four Transformative Thoughts,” also known as “The Four Mind Changings”; admission is free (donations welcome), but get there a bit early for a seat.

CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY

Sisters Ermina (Malika Samuel) and Ernestine (Shanel Bailey) face an uncertain future following the death of their mother in Crumbs from the Table of Joy (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 1, $60-$85
www.keencompany.org

After watching Keen Company’s absolutely lovely revival of Lynn Nottage’s first play, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, which has not been seen in New York City since its 1995 world premiere at Second Stage, you’re likely to wonder, “What took so long?” Running at Theatre Row through April 1, it’s an intimate, relatable tale that smartly deals with loss, faith, and hope with a sweet-natured sense of humor.

No mere artifact from a playwright who has gone on to win two Pulitzer Prizes, Crumbs, despite its messy title, beautifully tells the story of the African American Crumb family, who have moved from Florida to Brooklyn following the death of Sandra, wife of thirty-five-year-old Godfrey Crumb (Jason Bowen) and mother to seventeen-year-old Ernestine (Shanel Bailey) and fifteen-year-old Ermina (Malika Samuel). Godfrey, who has a steady job in a bakery, has fallen under the spell of Father Divine, the real-life religious and civil rights leader who founded the International Peace Mission Movement and preached that he was God incarnate. His followers abstained from sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, and foul language; in the Crumb apartment, there’s a small photo of Sandra on top of the radio console but a much larger picture of Father Divine hanging above that on the wall.

Godfrey moved the family to Brooklyn to be closer to Father Divine; as Ernestine, who serves as the narrator, often speaking directly to the audience, explains, “Daddy thought Divine’s Peace Mission was in Brooklyn ’cause of a return address on a miracle elixir boasting to induce ‘peace of mind.’ Divine was not in Brooklyn or New York City. But that didn’t diminish Daddy’s love. No, he let Divine strip away his desire and demand of him a monk’s devotion. This a man who never went to church and never tipped his hat to a woman, until we got to . . . Brooklyn.”

Father Divine hovers over the Crumb family in Keen revival of Lynn Nottage’s first play (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Ernestine is a good student who is making her own white dress for her upcoming high school graduation; Ermina is more of a party girl, with a growing fondness for boys. Neither sibling is very happy with Godfrey’s devotion to Father Divine’s commands, which include new names for them all and “Virginity” symbols on their clothes. (The sharp costumes are by Johanna Pan, with lighting by Anshuman Bhatia and sound by Broken Chord.)

The unexpected arrival of Sandra’s sister, Lily Ann Green (Sharina Martin), shakes things up; Aunt Lily, who they haven’t seen in years, is a fun-loving Communist who wears flashy, sexy outfits and enjoy drinking, dancing, and staying out late with men. “Ya like my suit?” she asks Ernestine. “I bought it on Fifth Avenue, sure did, to spite those white gals. You know how they hate to see a Negro woman look better than they do. It’s my own little subversive mission to outdress them whenever possible. Envy is my secret weapon, babies. If ya learn anything from your Auntie let it be that.”

Godfrey is especially appalled that Lily has shown up with suitcases, ready to move in to fulfill a promise she had made to look after the girls. Lily stands for everything Godfrey is now against — although she is quick to remind him that that was not always the case. After a personal crisis, Godfrey heads out in search of Father Divine, but he creates chaos when he comes back home with Gerte Schulte (Natalia Payne), a white German woman.

Crumbs from the Table of Joy is exquisitely rendered from top to bottom. Brendan Gonzales Boston’s living room set features Godfrey’s chair at the right, where he fastidiously writes down questions to send to Father Divine, the kitchen table at the left, and, against the back wall, the radio, which Godfrey believes is a container of sin except when he listens to Father Divine on Sundays. “Ain’t no use in having a radio,” Ermina says. “Might as well be a log, ’least we could burn it to keep warm.” The dressmaker’s dummy on which Ernestine sews her graduation gown serves as a stand-in for the late Sandra, a constant reminder of her loss.

Lily (Sharina Martin) seeks to fulfill a promise in Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Theatre Row (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Directed by Colette Robert (Weathering, Egress), the two-hour play (with intermission) proceeds at a graceful, relaxed pace, with plenty of room for the characters to develop and the narrative to evolve. Bowen (Long Day’s Journey into Night, If Pretty Hurts . . .) gives Godfrey a subtle vulnerability as the conflicted widower trying to find his path in life, while Martin (Round Table, The Extinctionist) injects energy and excitement whenever she’s onstage. Payne (Fairview, Aliens with Extraordinary Skills) is splendid as the persnickety interloper. Samuel (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Bernarda’s Daughters) is charming as Ermina, a teenager ready to burst out from her confining existence.

The centerpiece of the show is Ernestine, who is gorgeously portrayed by Bailey (The Book of Mormon, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies), a 2019 Syracuse graduate making her off-Broadway starring debut. Bailey instills the older sibling, who dreams about raising her station, with a soft, engaging tenderness. Several times she switches from her character in the play to her narrator/future self, explaining after a scene that it actually hadn’t happened that way: “At least I wish he had said that” or “Well, at least I wish she had,” she corrects, but she refuses to be held back by what might have been.

In this coming-of-age memory play, Nottage (Sweat, Mlima’s Tale, Intimate Apparel) touches on themes that will show up in her later works, from institutional racism, workplace inequality, and sociocultural change to the act of sewing itself; her great-grandmother was a seamstress in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Ernestine’s almost desperate desire to finish her graduation dress is not only a metaphor for the challenges her family faces but for the glorious career Nottage began stitching together with Crumbs.

THE GOOD JOHN PROCTOR

Betty Parris (Sharlene Cruz), Abigail Williams (Susannah Perkins), and Mercy Lewis (Tavi Gevinson) get ready for another day of drudgery in The Good John Proctor (photo by Ashley Garrett)

THE GOOD JOHN PROCTOR
Connelly Theater
220 East Fourth St. between Aves. A & B
Tuesday – Saturday through April 1, $55-$85
bedlam.org

Arthur Miller’s 1953 The Crucible, the semifictionalized story of the 1692–93 Salem witch trials that was also an allegory about the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and the McCarthyism of the late 1940s and early 1950s, centers around what happened after a group of young girls are spied dancing naked in the woods of a Puritan town. Among those involved were John Proctor, a prominent landowner who was ultimately accused of witchcraft, along with his third wife. Court records referred to him as “Goodman Proctor,” while a local petition testified that “they lived [a] Christian life in their family and were ever ready to help such as stood in need of their help.”

Talene Monahon’s The Good John Proctor, which opened this afternoon at the Connelly Theater on the Lower East Side from the city-based Bedlam company, is a decidedly feminist exploration of what might have occurred leading up to that evening in the woods, ultimately resulting in the witch trials and the death of twenty-five people. It’s telling that despite the title, John Proctor never appears in the play, and that irony grows when it is revealed just what Proctor did.

The Good John Proctor begins with nine-year old Betty Parris (Sharlene Cruz) and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams (Susannah Perkins) in their shared makeshift wooden bed. Betty, whose father is a minister, tells her best friend and cousin about a dream she had in which she flew over the forbidden woods. Abby advises that she should keep that dream a secret for fear of what others might think. “I wasn’t on a pole or a stick or anything or a broom!” Betty argues. “Did you feel wicked?” Abby asks. “I felt amazing,” Betty responds.

The world of the play is exclusively the world of the girls, described in their language (complete with some purposeful anachronisms). Neither adults nor men appear, yet the narrative is utterly convincing. References to both class and gender are subtle, clear, or sly, never heavy-handed. The cousins like to play-act as king and peasant, emphasizing the hierarchical division in the town. Foul-mouthed fourteen-year-old Mercy Lewis (Tavi Gevinson) stops by to gossip, drink cider, and rail against sin and Satan; her words are the window into the social and religious constructs of Salem. “There is wickedness everywhere,” Mercy, who is a servant for George Borroughs, another minister, proclaims. “I actually can’t believe how wicked this town has become.”

Betty Parris (Sharlene Cruz) is frightened by Mary Warren (Brittany K. Allen) in Bedlam production at the Connelly (photo by Ashley Garrett)

Soon Abby is at work serving John Proctor, while Betty plays with her rag doll, an alter ego that she has named Bangwell Put. Betty is surprised when a stranger, eighteen-year-old Mary Warren (Brittany K. Allen), shows up, listening to the birds sing, talking about looking for “something beautiful,” and wanting to fly through the woods.

The girls seem almost feral; mothers are dead or too depressed to care. Shortly after menstruating for the first time — she has no idea why she has bled, having never been taught about what a period is — Abby gets promoted, spending more time with John Proctor, much to the dismay of his jealous wife, Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Mercy continues to spread rumors and Mary gets closer to Betty as the girls consider taking their chances and heading into the woods.

Miller wrote in his notebook, “It has got to be basically Proctor’s story.” While Monahon (Jane Anger, or . . . , How to Load a Musket) fills the play with references to such other historically documented figures as the Putnams, Giles Corey, and the Goodwin sisters, we only meet the four “afflicted” girls. But The Good John Proctor is not just about this quartet; while Miller’s play was a parable about McCarthy’s obsession with the Red Scare, Monahon’s is about the plight of women from biblical times to the present day.

Betty, Abby, Mercy, and Mary are uneducated children whose feminine desires are considered sinful and blasphemous. Blood flows throughout the play, almost exclusively related to childbirth, from Betty’s horrific memories of her mother’s miscarriage (she has no idea what it actually was) to Abby’s menstruation, from Mary miming cutting the umbilical cord when they pretend Betty has given birth to Bangwell Put to Betty getting whipped for saying a bad word. “You might wake up one day and everything is red,” Mercy tells Abby, which recalls the game Abby played with Betty when Abby showed off her nonexistent royal robe. “It’s so big and red!” Betty shouted with glee. “Yes, yes it is red. The reddest robe in all the land,” Abby proudly declared.

The name Bangwell Put itself is a reference to a real rag doll a relative made for five-year-old blind girl Clarissa Field in 1770 in Northampton, Massachusetts. Clarissa kept the doll until her death in her eighties; it is believed to be the oldest extant rag doll in America, so it represents the struggle and survival of women over the centuries.

Betty (Sharlene Cruz) holds Bangwell Put aloft in The Good John Proctor (photo by Ashley Garrett)

In a sly comment on the dominance of men in the Bible, the name of Betty’s goat is Abraham, the father of Judaism; Betty wants to use the goat as a donkey she rides into town on, evoking how Jesus entered Jerusalem.

The cast is exceptional, with Perkins (The Low Road, The Wolves) portraying Abby with a delightful sense of wonder; Cruz (Sanctuary City, Mac Beth) appealing as the serious Betty; Gevinson (This Is Our Youth, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow), who played Mary in Ivo van Hove’s 2016 Broadway adaptation of The Crucible, appropriately dour as the ever-suspicious Mercy, and Allen (Human Resources, Redwood) infusing Mary with a captivating mystery. As a unit, they conjure various stages of a young girl on her way through adolescence to womanhood.

Directed by Caitlin Sullivan (Ohio, Panopticon) with a sure hand, the play does get a bit repetitive, even at only ninety-five minutes, but the staging, with dark, atmospheric lighting by Isabella Byrd, eerie sound by Lee Kinney, and effective period costumes by Phuong Nguyen, puts you right in the middle of 1691 Salem, especially when the girls finally enter the woods. Bedlam has previously put its mark on plays based on Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility in addition to George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan and Pygmalion, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and the Chekhov-Shakespeare mashup Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet; in 2019 the troupe presented its version of The Crucible. With The Good John Proctor, they have successfully silenced the men, taking back the story from Miller and McCarthy, letting us hear the female voices that have so long been muted, to better understand what witchery is really about.

ÁGUA

Performers enjoy a drink of water in Pina Bausch’s Água at BAM (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

ÁGUA
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave. between St. Felix St. & Ashland Pl.
March 3-19
www.bam.org
www.pina-bausch.de/en

Dance-theater pioneer Pina Bausch would probably agree with Nobel Prize–winning Hungarian biochemist Dr. Albert Szent-Györgyi, who said “Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.”

In such dazzling pieces as Vollmond (Full Moon), Nefés, and “…como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…” (Like moss on a stone), Bausch repeatedly explored the role of this element, the elixir of life.

Water again takes center stage in the US premiere of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s Brazil-inspired Água, which debuted in 2001 in Rio de Janeiro and has at last come to BAM, the company’s exclusive New York home since 1984. Água, which means “water,” is a nearly three-hour masterpiece (with a far too long intermission), combining music, comedy, storytelling, video, props, and, of course, sensational dance. Peter Pabst’s stark white stage features three large curved screens on which he projects footage of palm trees blowing in the wind, a team of drummers playing in the street, and adventures through the rainforest.

Men in everyday clothing and suits and women in gorgeous, colorful gowns — Marion Cito’s costumes are stunning — perform a series of vignettes to songs by a wide range of artists, including Mickey Hart, Tom Waits, the Tiger Lillies, PJ Harvey, Amon Tobin, Susana Baca, Caetano Veloso, David Byrne, Gilberto Gil, Bebel Gilberto, Nana Vasconcelos, and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Tsai-Wei Tien is lifted off the ground and passed hand to hand by Dean Biosca, Oleg Stepanov, and Denis Klimuk, clad only in bathing suits and platform shoes, Christopher Tandy rows across the stage in a palm leaf, Tsai-Chin Yu asks several people in the first row where they are from and then uses a boot to predict the weather there, and a dancer in a lush red dress falls to the ground and reveals her long legs as men pass by, ignoring her. Performers break out into sudden solos that meld with the projected images that envelop them. The screens rise to reveal a surprise behind them. The women all have long hair that they use inventively as an object of sex and power.

Fire plays a continuing function, as dancers light cigarettes and candles and original Água cast member Julie Shanahan tries to set the place ablaze, explaining, “I wanted to do something really beautiful for you, but I don’t know how. . . . I wanted to go crazy. But it’s not possible.” The cast, which also features Emma Barrowman, Naomi Brito, Maria Giovanna Delle Donne, Taylor Drury, Letizia Galloni, Nayoung Kim, Reginald Lefebvre, Alexander López Guerra, Nicholas Losada, Jan Möllmer, Milan Nowoitnick Kampfer, Franko Schmidt, Ekaterina Shushakova, Julian Stierle, and Sara Valenti, attends a cocktail party, pulls out white couches to take a break, and uses hilariously patterned towels at a beach resort. They bounce off walls. They spray water at each other. They use microphones as if they’re comedians.

A handful of scenes feel extraneous, and Bausch’s highly gendered choreography can be perceived as out of date in 2023, though the company has its first trans dancer (Brito). But Água is still hugely entertaining.

Bausch, who died in June 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, displayed a passion for life and all that it offers in her work, from light to dark, creating a mélange that ranged from Café Müller and The Rite of Spring to Kontakthof and Bamboo Blues. Artistic director Boris Charmatz continues her legacy with this international tour of Água, which is, contrary to what Shanahan said, “something really beautiful.”

RIMINI

Richie Bravo (Michael Thomas) tries to hang on to his long-lost past in Ulrich Seidl’s Rimini

RIMINI (Ulrich Seidl, 2022)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, March 17
212-255-224
quadcinema.com

Michael Thomas is unforgettable as washed-up Schlager singer Richie Bravo, an alcoholic haunted by his past, in Ulrich Seidl’s Rimini, opening March 17 at the Quad. In an early scene, he visits his brother, Ewald (Georg Friedrich), at their family home after the death of their mother and walks wistfully around the house, looking at old photos, gently brushing his hand over a piano, and playing Bata Illic’s “Schwarze Madonna” on the jukebox in the basement, dancing by himself and eventually singing along: “Every life has its woes / Happiness comes and goes / Black Madonna / Every day, every night / We will always be this happy / It’s not too late / Your future will be great / Black Madonna.”

Richie is a big, broad-shouldered man who moves with a swagger, slightly leaning to his right, his dirty blond hair in a ponytail, a wisp often falling over his face. After the funeral, he returns to his house in Rimini, Italy, a popular resort in the summer but it’s now winter, sparsely populated and covered in snow and mist. A large cutout of his younger self, when he was a star, hovers over his music room like a curse.

He is now relegated to performing in front of embarrassingly small groups of German-speaking tourists for peanuts, singing standards as well as new songs composed by Fritz Ostermayer and Herwig Zamernik. He can’t afford to hire a band, so he is accompanied by prerecorded music that is only one step removed from barroom karaoke. The dozen or two elderly fans who attend his shows adore him; he wanders through the audience, flirting with the women; following the shows, he sometimes sleeps with them for money, making more as a gigolo than as a musician. Seidl graphically depicts Richie having sex with them, particularly his ersatz girlfriend, Annie (Claudia Martini), whose dying mother (Rosa Schmidl) is in the next room. Richie is surrounded by approaching death; his father, Ekkehart (Hans-Michael Rehberg, who passed away shortly after filming), lives in a nursing home, barely able to move or speak.

Richie’s pathetic life is sent into turmoil when his daughter, Tessa (Tessa Göttlicher), suddenly shows up with her boyfriend, Moumen (Abd El Rahman), demanding the money Richie promised her and her mother when he left them eighteen years earlier, when Tessa was six. She is not asking for him to finally be a father to her; she just wants the cash and then to never see him again. But Richie is broke, and he doesn’t know how to show love and care anymore, so he is wracked with guilt, trying to find a way out of the miserable excuse of a life he has constructed for himself.

In addition to making fiction films, Seidl (the Paradise Trilogy, Dog Days) is an award-winning documentarian, and he, cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, and art directors Andreas Donhauser and Renate Martin bring a realistic feel to the sad story, which Seidl wrote with longtime collaborator Veronika Franz. Rimini was written specifically for Thomas (Across the Mile, Randgänger), inspired by an event when, preparing to make the 2007 Import Export, Seidl watched as Thomas spontaneously sang “My Way” in a Ukraine restaurant. Resembling a bizarro, older Brad Pitt, Thomas gives a career performance as Richie, a train wreck of a human being who barely survives in the fragile bubble he has created for himself, buried in booze, cigarettes, and cheap sex to take away the pain of knowing what might have been, his ghostly eyes always somewhere else. He’s a bear of a man, wearing a faded fur coat as he stumbles past empty playgrounds and cabanas, passing by anonymous people dressed in black.

Göttlicher is terrific in her screen debut, channeling a young Claire Danes as Tessa tries to put together her own shattered life. And Rimini is a character to itself, its streets filled with emptiness and occasional random, unidentified figures. Seidl chose to film there not because it is Federico Fellini’s hometown but because his parents took the family to the seaside resort in the 1950s, although certain scenes have a Fellini-esque quality.

Seidl explores a different side of the story in his follow-up, Sparta, which was filmed at the same time as Rimini and focuses on Ewald, a work that has been mired in controversy surrounding allegations of on-set child exploitation that the director has denied. The two films have also been presented as the 205-minute Wicked Games: Rimini Sparta at festivals.