this week in literature

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH MAN

Four imprisoned Yiddishists contemplate their fate in gripping new play by Nathan Englander (photo by Joan Marcus)

Anspacher Theater at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. below Astor Pl.
Extended through December 16, $75-$85 ($35 if you use the promotion code “friend”)
212-967-7555
www.publictheater.org

Inspired by actual events, Nathan Englander’s The Twenty-Seventh Man is a powerful, Kafka-esque drama about totalitarianism, freedom of speech, and the impending death of Yiddish literature. Expanded from his short story in the 1999 collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, the gripping one-act play is set in 1952 in a dank Soviet cell where Moishe Bretzky (Daniel Oreskes), Yevgeny Zunser (Ron Rifkin), and Vasily Korinsky (Chip Zien) have been imprisoned. Three of the seminal Yiddish writers of their time, Bretzky the poet is a big bear of a man, Zunser the novelist is a quiet, humble thinker, and Korinsky is a brash shill for the state who is certain an error has been made and that Joseph Stalin himself will free him. The three men are soon joined by a mysterious boy named Pinchas Pelovits (Noah Robbins), the twenty-seventh man arrested. Pelovits seems to know a lot about the other writers, but they have no idea who he is or why he is part of this elite, endangered group of Yiddishists. As the four men explore literature, politics, and Jewish identity under Stalin’s brutal regime, Korinsky demands to see the agent in charge (Byron Jennings) despite the guard’s (Happy Anderson) physical threats and own fears. Directed by Public Theater Shakespeare veteran Barry Edelstein, The Twenty-Seventh Man is superbly acted, each man bringing unique qualities to their very different roles. Michael McGarty’s set of hardened steel is claustrophobic despite being open on three sides, as if the possibility of freedom is within the victims’ grasp. Englander’s (The Ministry of Special Cases) skillful, incisive dialogue is a wonder of economy, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats while avoiding becoming pedantic or overly sentimental, proving him to be as adept a playwright as he is a novelist and short story writer.

THE 2012 NEW YORK CHOCOLATE SHOW

Håkan Mårtensson admires his deluxe chocolate creations for Fika from last year but unfortunately is unable to attend 2012 show because of Hurricane Sandy (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 9-11, $35-$40
www.chocolateshow.com
2012 chocolate show photo album

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and other health-related organizations, the consumption of dark chocolate is good for you. It improves coronary circulation, provides antioxidants that might help battle cancer, and is even beneficial for the teeth. Not that we needed that information to continue out steady intake of dark chocolate, but it’s great to know as we prepare for the fifteenth annual Chocolate Show, being held November 9-11 at the Metropolitan Pavilion. A bevy of chocolatiers, pastry chefs, cookbook authors, and other gourmands will fill four thousand square feet with all kinds of chocolate, which has been a beloved part of the human diet dating back four thousand years to the Amazon. One of our favorite things to do every year is to sample the dark chocolate as companies strive to make a nonbitter delight reaching toward the 99% mark. Among the standouts from past shows that we’ll be looking forward to again are the Grenada Chocolate Company, 5th Avenue Chocolatiere, Rogue Confections, Co Co. Sala, Salt of the Earth Bakery, and Guittard. (Several exhibitors had to pull out because of Hurricane Sandy; keep watching this post for further changes.) Founded by Sylvie Douce and François Jeantet, the Chocolate Show is an international affair, now being held in cities in France, Russia, Korea, England, and Japan as well as the United States. This year’s fête features a Kids Zone, cooking demonstrations, book signings, culinary discussions, and more, featuring appearances by such chocolate specialists as Fritz Knipschildt, Donald Wressell, Chocolatina, Steve Klc, Johnny Iuzzini, Debbie Prinz, Francine Segan, Martin Howard, and a slew of chefs from the Institute of Culinary Education. This year the Chocolate Show has also teamed up with New York Cares for a coat drive to help those people in the tristate area affected by Hurricane Sandy, so bring a jacket along with the admission price, which is $35 on Friday and Sunday and $40 on Saturday, with two children (between the ages of five and twelve) admitted free with each adult.

Mott Green’s Grenada Chocolate Company is once again one of the standouts at the annual New York Chocolate Show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: The 2012 New York Chocolate Show did not disappoint, despite some late cancellations because of Hurricane Sandy and the concurrent running of the second show in Lyon. Among our new and returning favorites this year are the Grenada Chocolate Company’s Salty-Licious bar, Prestat’s Dark Chocolate with Raspberry bar, 5th Avenue Chocolatiere’s cold signature truffle, H.S. Chocolate’s maple bacon chocomel, Pacari’s Cuzco Pink Salt & Nibs bar, Salt of the Earth’s oatmeal chocolate-chip cookie, François Payard’s Parisian macarons, Gnosis’s health-conscious healing raw chocolate peach Goddess Bar, Maria Luisa Rodriguez’s orange zest Jazz Brownies, and Fleur Jerusalemy’s elegantly designed, hand-painted, New York-centric Fleur de Xocoatl collection. As usual, we came home with more chocolate than we could possibly imagine — in addition to gorging ourselves at the show with all the free samples — but is that really so bad? As we noted above, chocolate is good for you, so why not indulge?

SOPHIE CALLE: THE ADDRESS BOOK

Sophie Calle’s ADDRESS BOOK is finally available in English

192 Books
192 Tenth Ave. at 21st St.
Wednesday, November 7, free with RSVP, 7:00
212-255-4022
www.192books.com
www.sigliopress.com

Nearly thirty years ago, French conceptual multimedia artist Sophie Calle found an address book in the street and decided to create a portrait of the owner (as well as herself) by contacting all of the people listed inside. “I will get to know this man through his friends and acquaintances. I will try to discover who he is without ever meeting him,” Calle wrote at the time. She documented the results, an investigation into truth, honesty, fiction, character, and the search for information itself, in a series of columns for the daily paper Libération that enraged the owner of the address book, Pierre D., who demanded she never show the work again during his lifetime. Alas, he is no longer with us, so now we have the first-ever English-language publication of The Address Book (Siglio, September 2012, $29.95), designed as an actual lightweight address book, complete with Calle’s notes and photographs. Calle will be at 192 Books in Chelsea on November 7 at 7:00, signing copies of the new book. Space is limited, so advance reservations are required by calling 212-255-4022.

FIRST SATURDAYS — JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL: MY WAY

Jean-Michel Othoniel, “The Secret Happy End,” Murano glass, Saint Just’s mirror glass, metal, vintage carriage, 2008 (© Jean-Michel Othoniel)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 3, free, 5:00 – 9:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum is hosting a somewhat abbreviated version of its monthly free First Saturdays program tonight because of the hurricane, but it’s still packed with cool events built around the exhibition “Jean-Michel Othoniel: My Way,” a career survey of the idiosyncratic French artist that continues through December 2. There won’t be a dance party, but there will be live music by Slowdance, Jarana Beat, and Savoir Adore, a performance of The Blue Belt by Andrew Benincasa and Shadow Organ Theater, the experimental dance Ghost Lines by Cori Olinghouse, an origami demonstration, a movement workshop with Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory, a sensory gallery tour incorporating touch, smell, sight, and sound, an artist talk with members of Urban Glass, a glass-painting workshop, a book-club talk with Ruth B. Bottigheimer (Fairy Tales: A New History), and the psychedelic light projection “Cosmic Morning” by Don Miller. Also on view at the museum now are “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe,” “Materializing ‘Six Years’: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art,” and “Aesthetic Ambitions: Edward Lycett and Brooklyn’s Faience Manufacturing Company” in addition to long-term installations and the permanent collection.

JOHN CAGE: THE SIGHT OF SILENCE

John Cage, “New River Watercolor, Series I (#3), watercolor on parchment paper, 1988 (courtesy National Academy Museum)

National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 13, $15, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

The National Academy continues its transformation with the cleverly curated multimedia exhibition “John Cage: The Sight of Silence,” held in conjunction with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the seminal avant-garde artist. A controversial minimalist composer, music theoretician, Zen practitioner, I Ching follower, and longtime partner of Merce Cunningham, Cage was also a watercolorist, and the National Academy show features more than four dozen of his paintings, drawings, and etchings made primarily during his residency at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Virginia in the 1980s and early ’90s. A short documentary reveals Cage’s fascinating process using local stones, feathers, and the same ideas of chance and complex numbering systems he employed in creating his musical compositions, resulting in gentle, spiritual works with colorful circles on paper sometimes prepared with smoke. A vitrine contains some of the elements Cage used for the pieces, which were hung by the National Academy on the walls of two galleries by chance as well, through a series of four rolls of the dice. The show also includes Cage’s 1969 Plexiglas homage to Duchamp, “Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel”; one of his unique scores; and a 1976 self-portrait. “The Sight of Silence” is supplemented by several video presentations, highlighted by a 1960 appearance Cage made on the TV game show I’ve Got a Secret, performing “Water Walk,” a composition for water pitcher, iron pipe, bathtub, goose call, bottle of wine, electric mixer, whistle, sprinkling can, ice cubes, two cymbals, mechanical fish, quail call, rubber duck, tape recorder, vase of roses, seltzer siphon, five radios, bathtub, and grand piano. In addition, another monitor plays the John Cage section of Peter Greenaway’s 1983 documentary Four American Composers, which captures unusual live performances, interviews, and Cage’s interstitial “Indeterminacy Stories.” It all makes for a charming show that is likely to surprise Cage devotees as well as those unfamiliar with his oeuvre.

John Cage performs “Water Walk” on I’VE GOT A SECRET

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time,” Cage once explained. “There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” The National Academy is making sure there is always something to see and hear with “Chance Encounters,” a series of public programs ranging from book readings and panel discussions to live dance and concerts. Among the special events: On October 28 at 3:00, William Anastasi, who played chess with Cage every day for nearly fifteen years, will read from The Cage Dialogues: A Memoir; on November 10, Joan Retallack, who wrote Musicage: Cage Muses on Words Art Music with Cage, will present “Conversation with Cage”; on December 1, exhibition cocurator Ray Kass will direct a performance of Cage’s “STEPS” by Stephen Addis; and on January 5, Du Yun will perform “Water Walk.”

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812

The cast of NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 toasts creator Dave Malloy, who also plays Pierre (photo by Ben Arons)

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 17, $30, 8:00
212-352-3101
www.arsnovanyc.com

Inspired by a section of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 epic, War and Peace, Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is a rousing and rollicking immersive rock opera filled with treachery, deceit, romance, humor, and food and drink. Scenic designer Mimi Lien has transformed Ars Nova into an 1812 Moscow club, where patrons are seated together at small tables, banquettes, and a long, curved bar and greeted by a complimentary bottle of vodka and a plate of potato pierogis and pumpernickel bread. The action takes place everywhere, as the actors pop up on the bar, sit at a table, and wander through the audience, Bradley King’s expert lighting and Matt Hubbs’s sound design helping people locate the actors. Russian epics can get rather complicated, so the show opens with a prologue in which the characters introduce themselves one by one and set up the story, which involves a beautiful young woman, Natasha (Phillipa Soo), who is engaged to Andrey, who is off fighting the war against Napoleon, but Natasha soon falls for engaging cad Anatole (Lucas Steele), who is the brother of town tart Hélène (Amber Gray), who is married to the hapless cuckold Pierre (Malloy, who also plays piano in the live band, which is scattered throughout the space). “Everyone’s got nine different names,” the cast sings, “but look it up in your program / We’d appreciate it / Thanks a lot.” Indeed, the program includes a plot synopsis as well as a map of who’s who and how they are connected.

Natasha (Phillipa Soo) is caught in a dangerous love triangle in rollicking new rock opera (photo by Ben Arons)

The talented cast also features Brittain Ashford as Natasha’s well-meaning cousin Sonya; a scene-stealing Blake DeLong as Andrey’s crotchety father, Prince Bolkonsky; Amelia Workman as Natasha’s overprotective godmother, Marya D; Gelsey Bell as Andrey’s very serious sister, Mary; Nick Choksi as Anatole’s best friend, Dolokhov; and associate musical director Paul Pinto as troika driver Balaga. The bawdier first act is followed by a mellower second act highlighted by a show-stopping performance by Bell as Sonya laments what has befallen Natasha. The rock-solid music is played by cellists Brent Arnold and Raymond Sicam III, clarinetist Mark Dover, bassist John Murchison, oboist Sally Wall, and violist Pinky Weitzman, giving a Russian twist to the Jesus Christ Superstar-like score. Directed with flair and verve by Rachel Chavkin, who previously worked with Malloy (Beowulf — A Thousand Years of Baggage, Clown Bible) on the Obie-winning Three Pianos, the world premiere of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 offers adventurous theatergoers a fabulously good time, a unique experience that is fun for all in a wide variety of ways.

ROD STEWART

Barnes & Noble
555 Fifth Ave. at 46th St.
Tuesday, October 23, free, 5:30
212-697-3048
www.randomhouse.com
www.rodstewart.com

“Obviously I was a mistake,” rock legend Rod Stewart writes in the beginning of his brand-new tome, Rod: The Autobiography (Crown, October 23, 2012, $27). But it’s no mistake that Stewart is one of the greatest performers in rock-and-roll history, having released such hit albums as Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story, Blondes Have More Fun, Tonight I’m Yours, It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, and others over the course of a career that has spanned more than fifty years. In his book — which joins such other recent rock-star tell-alls as Keith Richards’s Life, Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace, and Pete Townshend’s Who I Am, Stewart shares tales of his youth, his friendships with the likes of Elton John and Ronnie Wood, his numerous sexual relationships, and the true story behind an ugly rumor that has followed him around for decades. “No one ever forgets their first view of Manhattan, rising into the sky ahead of them, nor their first drive up its concrete canyons,” he writes about his first trip to New York City, with Ron Wood. “Woody and I were in ecstasy – possibly even silenced momentarily, gawping at the scale of it all.” Rod the Mod has returned to New York City many times since then, selling out Madison Square Garden and other venues, and he will be back in town on October 23, making his only NYC literary appearance at 5:30 at the Fifth Ave. Barnes & Noble at 46th St., signing copies of Rod; there is a three-book maximum, and he will not be signing any other memorabilia. In addition, photography is not allowed once patrons approach the table, so you will not be able to take a posed picture with him. But how often do you get to be thisclose to the man behind “Maggie May,” “Hot Leg,” “Mandolin Wind,” “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” “Young Turks,” and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”