live performance

THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT: PHANTOM REEMERGES AS IMMERSIVE MASQUERADE

Phantom has been resurrected in Midtown in dazzling production (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

MASQUERADE
218 West Fifty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 31, $1795-$395
masqueradenyc.com

You can’t keep Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber down.

Cats, the British composer’s beloved but much-maligned adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000, followed by a 2006–17 revival and a disastrous 2019 all-star-laden film. It was then reinvented in 2024 as Cats: The Jellicle Ball at PAC NYC, brilliantly setting it in the world of queer ballroom culture, breathing new life into the old kitty. The Broadway transfer lacked some of the key elements but closed early, on August 8, despite winning three Tonys.

Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical, Sunset Blvd., was revived on Broadway in 2016 and 2024–25, while 1976’s Evita is returning next spring.

Which brings us to The Phantom of the Opera. Based on the 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux, the show features music by Lloyd Webber, a book by Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe, and lyrics by Charles Hart (with additional lyrics by Stilgoe.) The original production, which earned seven Tonys, ran at the Majestic from 1988 to 2023 for an astonishing 13,981 performances. But just as Cats was resurrected and reinvented, so has Phantom, as the shrewdly clever, thoroughly entertaining, and fully immersive Masquerade.

Tony-winning director Diane Paulus (Pippin, Porgy and Bess) has transformed Phantom into a thrilling interactive production that moves audiences up, down, and across six floors of the old Lee’s Art Shop on West Fifty-Seventh St., by Carnegie Hall, performed by six casts. The audience is asked to dress in black, white, or silver and wear a mask; a black one will be provided if you don’t have one. Heels are verboten, all bags must be checked, and stickers reading “Let the spectacle astound you” will be placed over your phone’s camera.

For those unfamiliar with the Gothic horror romance, Phantom is about a strange figure (Kyle Scatliffe) living under the Paris Opera House who is determined to have little-known soprano Christine Daaé (Eryn LeCroy) sing the role of Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s Faust instead of the company’s star, Carlotta Guidicelli (Stephanie Jae Park). The Phantom is jealous of Christine’s childhood friend and suitor, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Gregory Lee Rodriguez), and is critical of the opera house’s new owners, Firmin (Alex Ross) and André (Schyler Vargas). Meanwhile, the Phantom attempts to get opera employees Madame Giry (Marce Johnson) and her daughter, Meg (Haile Ferrier), on his side, although stagehand Buquet (Jacob Lacopo) has other ideas. Caught in the middle is egotistical tenor Piangi (Sean Seamus Thompson).

Audience and cast become one in fully immersive Masquerade (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Aside from a violinist who pops up occasionally (Nikita Yermak), the music for Masquerade is prerecorded and loud, but all the singing is live. While the songs and basic melodies are from the Broadway version, they have more oomph in these surroundings, in part because the actors are right there with you every step of the way. At one moment, I was tapped on the shoulder and turned around to see the Phantom seeking to get past me as he was singing in his resonant baritone. At another, I was handed a rose to toss at Christine, the Phantom’s object of desire. And later I was nearly hanged by the Ropes of Judgement.

Each room is spectacularly decorated, with lovely and frightening detail, from candles and mirrors to luxurious draping and hidden clues. There is limited seating in each space, so be prepared to do a lot of standing. Don’t worry; the classic Phantom elements have been accounted for, with new takes on the boat and chandelier, and the sideshow scene boasts a real blockhead (Anna Monoxide) and master of pyromancy (Joseph Kerr) in addition to a barker (Matthew Curiano), carny (Judah Frank), boy in a cage (Joshua Ike).

The creative team deserves a bevy of accolades, from production designer James Fluhr, art director Jessie Flynn, props designer Kathy Fabian, and hair, wig, and makeup designer J. J. Janas to costume designer Emilio Sosa, lighting designer Ben Stanton, sound designer Brett Jarvis, and magic and visual effects designer Skylar Fox. The intricate choreography, making sure the performers don’t get cornered by the audience, is by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Shai Baitel is in charge of the fine art, which is highlighted by specially commissioned ironwork gates by Bob Dylan. Among the other art collaborators are Marina Abramović, Barry X Ball, Z Behl, Paul Cummins MBE, Yigal Ozeri, and Kenny Scharf.

The narrative has been tinkered with, so some songs are out and others have been moved around, and there is more back story, delving into the mind of the Phantom as a child, who is told by his mother in a letter, “From now on, the carnival will be your home. You are a child of the devil. Among freaks and monsters you will find your kind. Forget you ever had a mother.” There are elements from various stage productions as well as the 2004 Joel Schumacher film, which starred Gerard Butler as the Phantom, Emmy Rossum as Christine, Patrick Wilson as Raoul, Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry, and Minnie Driver as Carlotta.

As with all immersive shows, you more you put into it, the more you will get out of it; to heighten that involvement, there are lots of mirrors where you can see yourself amid the action. In addition, after the grand finale, the audience is invited into a dark bar where you can sip cocktails and pose with some of the major props.

It’s a great deal of fun in which the score is only part of the enchantment, making it a must for Phantom fans, Phantom detractors, and everyone in between.

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

OPPRESSED BY OUR SURROUNDINGS: THE REAL IVANOV ASKS, “WHY”

Sam Underwood wonders what he has gotten himself into in The Real Ivanov (photo by Russ Rowland)

THE REAL IVANOV
Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East Thirteenth St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Monday – Saturday through September 19, $49-$99
www.realivanov.com

In 2014, Laura Strausfeld presented The Real Vanya, her mockumentary of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, as a staged reading at Classic Stage, featuring Josh Hamilton, Marylouise Burke, Sam Underwood, and others; it was filmed by director Andrew Wonder for Columbia’s Harriman Institute.

After extensive Googling, I couldn’t find anything more about it; it seems to have disappeared, at least from public view (although a friend of mine remembers having seen it).

Perhaps the same will happen with Strausfeld’s follow-up, The Real Ivanov, which opened tonight at Classic Stage’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater, starring Underwood in the title role. One can only hope.

The works of Chekhov, and William Shakespeare, invite reinterpretation and reimagination like no one else’s in the canon. Part of their brilliance comes from how timeless they are, how they can be adapted to relate to the modern era.

The Real Ivanov, based on Chekhov’s first produced play, Ivanov, from 1887, is a four-act melodrama with dark humor and deeply psychological elements. Although it is rarely performed, I have seen two commendable adaptations, one by the Russian State Theatre of Nations at City Center in 2018, with Evgeny Mironov as its moody, depressed, seemingly apathetic protagonist, and this year’s stirring New American Ensemble version at the West End Theatre, with Zachary Desmond portraying the weak, pathetic antihero. Each clocked in at approximately 165 minutes but were fast-paced and involving.

The Real Ivanov is a mere 100 minutes but felt like three hours.

Strausfeld is a respected Chekhov scholar who has curated the annual Chekhov celebrations at Symphony Space and City Winery for fifteen years, is working on the book How to Be Less Miserable: Insights from Anton Chekhov, was a visiting scholar at the Harriman, and is a lawyer who cofounded Period Law, which focuses on the tampon tax and women’s menstruation. In 1997, she saw Lincoln Center’s Ivanov, starring Kevin Kline, noting in a statement, it “punked me. It also changed my life. Chekhov revealed to me my own despair — and, for the first time, gave me hope that I could be living better. Despite my years of therapy, it was Chekhov who had the answers I was looking for. Chekhov is scripture to me. It’s not overblown to say I owe him my life.”

Alas, The Real Ivanov provides no answers, instead asking questions that do it no favors, many beginning with “Why?”

The actors in The Real Ivanov seem to all be in a different play (photo by Russ Rowland)

Adapter and director Strausfeld has streamlined the narrative to its basics. Nikolai Ivanov (Underwood) is a landowner married to Anna (Ivory Aquino), whose Jewish family disowned her when she decided to wed Nikolai and convert to Christianity. Nikolai is in debt to Zinaida (Sarah Long) and her husband, Lebedev (Spencer Aste), but Nikolai can’t even afford to pay the interest. He has also fallen out of love with Anna, who has tuberculosis and is being treated by Dr. Lvov (Hagan Oliveras), who chastises Nikolai, complaining, “Please recognize that the best cure for tuberculosis is absolute peace of mind, and your wife has none whatsoever. She’s chronically anxious about your feelings toward her. Forgive me, I’m agitated and compelled to be forthright: Your behavior is killing her. I’d like to think better of you.” Nikolai responds, “What you say is true. I’m terribly guilty but also confused. I feel paralyzed by a kind of stupor; I’ve stopped understanding myself or anyone else.”

Indeed, Nikolai, suffering from textbook depression and melancholia, is lost in a stupor, sleepwalking through life; while the others, nearly all foolish, eat and drink and laugh, he mopes around, staring off into emptiness. Zinaida and Lebedev throw a twentieth birthday party for their daughter, Sasha (Amelia Mason), at which she, inexplicably, declares her love for Nikolai. Also attending the festivities are the widow Marfusha Babakina (Kimberlee Walker), who is flirting with Ivanov’s cousin, Count Shabyelsky (Jordan Lage), who proudly declares, “Everyone’s a scoundrel and hypocrite, myself especially”; the wealthy and single Avdotya (Soph Metcalf), who plays bridge with Lebedev and excise officer Kosyk (William DeMeritt), who is generally ignored by others; and the ever-scheming Borkin (Sam Adegoke), who manages Nikolai’s estate and brings real and metaphorical fireworks to the shindig.

Earlier, in Ivanov’s home, he tells Lebedev, “I’m boring you.” Lebedev replies, “I know what’s the matter; you’re oppressed by our surroundings.”

Precisely.

The audience is seated on all four sides of the stage, but that doesn’t immerse you in the tepid narrative, which does nothing to illuminate the profound affliction that haunts Nikolai and his unexamined psyche. Jiyoun Chang’s spare set occasionally features a small bench or table, a large rug, and a narrow red carpet for the odd finale. The actors seem to be speaking in their regular voices, so there are British, American, and other accents, amplifying the feeling that each of them is in a different play. Although Chekhov’s original contained elements of farce, satire, comedy, and tragedy, Strausfeld’s version meanders among them with little sense or reason; it’s dry and stiff, confusing and disconnected. Plot developments are forced, the characters cardboard — it’s hard to care about any of them. It may not be one of Chekhov’s better plays, but having seen other companies present compelling adaptations, I found this one to be even more disappointing.

The only thing I truly understood about the production is why Underwood (Candida, The Picture of Dorian Gray), as Ivanov, looks like he would rather be anywhere else than where he is.

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

AN MC ESCHER NIGHTMARE: THE VESSEL AT 59E59

Sofonyas, Will Ingram, and Anastasia Locke serve as parks ambassadors in The Vessel (photo by Jacob Ruth)

THE VESSEL
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 30, $42
www.59e59.org

As a frequent visitor to the Shed and the High Line, I’ve been obsessed with the Vessel since it first started construction as the centerpiece of Hudson Yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan. Initially, there was little publicly known about the structure, which I considered a bit of a monstrosity as it proceeded toward the heavens. Ultimately, we learned that it would be a 150-foot-tall tourist attraction with 8 levels, 154 flights of stairs, and 2,500 interconnected steps, offering photogenic 360-degree views of the city to up to as many as 1,000 visitors at a time.

“Vessel is one of the most complex pieces of steelwork ever made . . . assembled ahead of schedule and with astonishing geometric accuracy,” Thomas Heatherwick, head of the studio that built it at a cost of approximately $200 million, said at the topping-out in December 2017. Vessel — officially, “the” is not part of its name — opened on March 15, 2019.

It closed in January 2021 after a third person jumped off it, dying by suicide.

Brendan George’s finely tuned play, The Vessel, takes place around three critical days, December 22, 2020, and January 11 and July 29, 2021, in the Vessel’s history. Drake (Sofonyas) and Missy (Anastasia Locke) are two twentysomethings and good friends working as parks ambassadors on the installation; their nearly impossible job, Missy explains to new hire Vïggo (Will Ingram), is to “help anyone who needs it. We can’t go up to every person, so our task is to be a ‘supportive and accessible presence.’” Essentially, they have to look out for anyone who seems uncomfortable or appears to be in distress and might be thinking of killing themselves.

The suspicious Drake has a tendency to go down online rabbit holes that he insists are not conspiracy theories, spending a lot of time watching videos that depict real violence. Missy is a more fun-loving person whose spirit animal is a dolphin and who appreciates working outside. Giving background of the Vessel to Viggo, Drake shares a December 2016 quote from the Architect’s Newspaper in which journalist Audrey Wachs wrote, “When you build high, folks will jump.” Missy is not happy that Drake starts Viggo’s indoctrination that way, arguing, “We don’t need to talk about it! Unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. And now is not one of those times.”

Viggo, meanwhile, is curious why they stand around chatting with each other so much on the job, but Missy explains that it is necessary to keep them alert. Viggo tries to fit in but is often awkward, especially when enthusiastic, and he seems to be hiding something — but then he will come up with a fascinating statement.

At one point he compares the Vessel to a panopticon, which he describes as “a special prison where one person can see all the inmates. Because of the shape of the prison.” Drake replies, “But maybe we are the prisoners?” Viggo adds, “Actually, there wouldn’t even need to be a guard at all because each person would police themself thinking they’re being watched. That’s the irony, each person in a panopticon becomes both prison guard and prisoner unto themself.”

It’s an apt metaphor for any human being and the worlds each of us creates in our heads, our own unique vessels, as we contemplate the next steps.

Three twentysomething parks ambassadors are on the lookout for potential jumpers in The Vessel (photo by Jacob Ruth)

Over ninety minutes, Drake, Missy, and Viggo discuss life’s little and bigger issues, offer surprising personal details, and explore ideas about death; Viggo in particular spouts how people should be able to choose how they go, no matter how, where, or when.

Scenic designer Tony DiBernardo’s claustrophobic set is a small triangular central platform with lines and grooves that echo the shape of the Vessel, with the limited audience sitting on all four sides; occasionally the characters walk off the platform to speak with an unseen visitor they think may need help. It can be odd when they stand in the corner as the action continues on the platform, but there’s nowhere else for them to go in the tiny theater. It also feels strange when they talk so loudly that any visitors would be able to hear them — would these chatty ambassadors actually make anyone feel safe?

George and director Peter Charney, who previously collaborated on the Drama Desk–nominated A Eulogy for Roman, deal with some difficult subjects in the absorbing play, and they do so admirably, steering clear of clichés, although there is some repetition, and the narrative finds a few rabbit holes of its own. In their off-Broadway debuts, Sofonyas (Romeo and Juliet, The Pillowman), Ingram (World’s Greatest Lover, The Liar), and Locke (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; She Comes Home) form an appealing trio who will grow on you. At the heart of the show is how, in many ways, we are all guards and prisoners, unable to always recognize potential problems with friends, relatives, strangers, and ourselves who may be considering extreme actions.

“What a vulnerable vessel the human body makes for the human soul,” poet, novelist, and playwright Greer Macallister surmised in her 2020 novel, The Arctic Fury. After Drake defends his obsession with violent videos and online research of the government, Missy says, “I don’t think we need the footage. Personally. I really do not want to see it. None of us should. Because, look. Look at what it does to your eyes. And your soul.”

Following a fourth suicide, in the summer of 2021, this time a fourteen-year-old boy, the Vessel was closed for three years before reopening with additional safety measures, including steel-mesh nets and the top two levels off limits to visitors. Admission, which was initially free, is now ten to twenty dollars and is free for New York City residents on Thursdays; there is also a fifty-dollar Vessel Run training class. I am not planning on going anytime soon.

When I walk past it on my travels to the area, I can’t help but wonder if the people taking pictures of it know the full story as they smile and pose for the camera.

In Eric Levenson’s August 2021 CNN article “After latest suicide, the Vessel in New York City’s Hudson Yards ponders its future,” retired CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture lecturer Jacob Alspector posits, “The Vessel is like some MC Escher nightmare. It’s kind of relentless. It’s very gaudy, it’s very cold. It’s thrilling . . . It’s not the most friendly and life-affirming and inclusive kind of space or structure. It’s kind of empty. What’s the point of it? Just to walk up and walk down?”

You’re much better off seeing The Vessel at 59E59, which is far more friendly, life-affirming, and inclusive.

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

THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS: REMAKING WHOOPI AT LINCOLN CENTER

Five unique characters share their stories in The Whoopi Monologues at Lincoln Center (photo by Angela Marie Orellana)

THE WHOOPI MONOLOGUES
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 30, $102.50 – $202.50
212-362-7600
www.lct.org/shows

In 1983, a little-known actress and comedian with the unlikely name Whoopi Goldberg, born Caryn Elaine Johnson in a Chelsea housing project, caused a sensation with The Spook Show, a solo performance at Dance Theatre Workshop in which she portrayed a collection of Black characters commenting on everyday life in America. Mike Nichols saw it, retitled it Whoopi Goldberg, and brought it to the Lyceum on Broadway in 1984; in 1985, it was adapted into an HBO special. I still remember how the HBO show blew me away; like so many other people, I had never seen anything like it.

It has now been reimagined by director Whitney White as The Whoopi Monologues, continuing at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater through August 30. Instead of having one actor portray all five characters — four from the original Broadway production and one introduced in the twentieth-anniversary revival — the outstanding cast features five actors taking on one role apiece.

The play begins as the ensemble gets ready in individual dressing rooms at the back of the stage, referencing the HBO show, which started with Goldberg walking into the Lyceum and knocking on dressing-room doors, saying hello to Fontaine, Blonde Girl, Surfer Girl, Jamaican Lady, and the Cripple through cinematic magic. It was a clever way of immediately giving the characters their individuality; Goldberg portrayed them in the same black-and-white costume, with only minor changes to help define each person.

But at the Newhouse, the actors appear in different costumes, designed by Tony winner Qween Jean, and distinctive hairstyles, by Nikiya Mathis, that further emphasize their uniqueness. In between scenes, they intermingle and go in and out of the dressing rooms as if deciding whose turn is next, adding a fun element to the proceedings.

Theater superstar and two-time Tony winner Kara Young (Purlie Victorious, Gruesome Playground Injuries) kicks things off as Fontaine, a gender-neutral street philosopher and junkie with a PhD who quickly sets the tone by wanting to kiss the hand of an audience member. “No, the one with the diamonds on it,” Fontaine says, adding after the smooch, “I’m glad you was cool enough to play. I noticed you didn’t clutch your pocketbook.” Fontaine explains, “I’m a thief. It’s the old American traditional gig. People always got stuff, people always want stuff. I provide a service.” Fontaine travels on a plane for the first time — the trip is hilarious — and heads to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank House, finding a kindred spirit in the young girl who had to hide from the Nazis, understanding the Jewish plight and comparing it to the civil rights movement.

Dominique Fishback nearly steals the show as Blonde Girl in The Whoopi Monologues (photo by Angela Marie Orellana)

Emmy nominee Dominique Fishback (Swarm, The Deuce) is sensational as Blonde Girl, a seven-year-old who dreams of being white. She wears a white shirt over her head, dangling like blonde locks, and tells us she’s going to get blue eyes. “And then I’m gonna have a dream house and a dream car and dream candy and a dream horse and me and Barbie gonna live together with Ken and Skipper and Malibu Barbie. We are!” she declares. Like Fontaine, she interacts with the audience, asking a man or woman if she can touch their hair. It’s a particularly tense moment for the white people in the audience, who have been told again and again to respect and celebrate Black people’s hair without touching it.

The night I went, I saw Denise Manning (What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Amani), the understudy for Danielle Pinnock (Ghosts), as Jamaican Lady, who is hired by a wealthy elderly white man to leave her home in Kingston and come take care of him in America. A jaunty storyteller, she says, “I don’t know if you can tell that I’m Jamaican because I lost my accent,” which elicits laughter because she could not sound much more Jamaican. She refers to her new employer as the Old Raisin, a shriveled man. She asks the audience to join her in singing the well-known song from a Jamaica travel commercial, she talks about dentistry, but things take a turn when he wants her to do more than just cook and do the laundry.

Emmy winner Kerry Washington (Race, American Son) is next as Surfer Girl, a young teen who, despite her accent and subject matter, claims not to be a Valley girl, pointing out, “No, I’m a surfer because before there was the mall, there was the ocean, okay.” After a dalliance with a “total hunk” on the beach, she is pregnant, trying to figure out what to do. At confession, she tells the priest, “I’m totally with child, like Mary was with Jesus, except like I do know who the father was.” The adults around her are unhelpful, and she doesn’t understand the severity of her situation; she soon contemplates getting rid of the baby herself. [Note: Emmy nominee Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country) has since taken over the role.]

The hundred-minute play concludes with Tony winner Kecia Lewis (Hell’s Kitchen, Dreamgirls) as Lurleen, who was added to the repertoire in 2004, replacing the Cripple. Lurleen is a delightfully open and honest woman freely sharing the details of going through menopause and what her life used to be like, delving into the future of her pudenda, the horror of hot flashes, sanitary napkins, girdles, the pill, erectile dysfunction, Sex and the City, waxing, and plastic surgery. Amid all the comedy are some serious explorations of race, misogyny, discrimination, and fear, especially when her son asks her, “Am I going to die on the way to school?” She also gets the audience to join in on the Hustle (humorously crediting it to jazz legend McCoy Tyner instead of Van McCoy).

Fontaine (Kara Young) takes a life-changing trip to Amsterdam in Whoopi Goldberg revival (photo by Angela Marie Orellana)

In the fall of 2021, director Taibi Magar reimagined Anna Deavere Smith’s solo show, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, for five actors taking on some forty roles, which breathed new life into the play, ensuring it felt as vital as ever despite covering a tragic event that happened nearly thirty years before.

White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, On Sugarland) directs The Whoopi Monologues with a swift, infectious enthusiasm, giving plenty of room for the five extraordinary actors to embody their characters in their own way, rather than attempting to mimic Goldberg, although it’s difficult not to think of the originator of the material as the show progresses. Having them all together onstage, at the beginning, in between scenes, and at the end, makes it feel like they’re representing all women, everywhere.

However, some of the material is dated, as various references and other parts are old, the Jamaican Lady’s story is funny but obvious, Lurleen’s tale is too long, and the characters no longer shock like they did in the 1980s. But more than enough hits home in 2026, especially the elements relating to control of (Black) women’s bodies, inherent racism, and class conflict, to make this a necessary and vibrant reboot. Who would have thought in 1984 that the Civil Rights Act and Roe v. Wade would be gutted two generations later?

Speaking of her younger years, Lureen says, “We were being told that we could talk to anybody, anywhere, something new. We were told that we had peace in our hands. That we had the ability to change the world.”

Although a lot of progress has been made, it’s frightening to think that these struggles continue. Who knows how The Whoopi Monologues will be experienced in ten, twenty, or forty years.

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

SIN, SOILED SHIFTS, SODOM BY THE SEA, AND SISYPHUS: benevolent AT THE IATI

Margaret (Chani Reese), Sarah (Rachel Ravel), Abby (Livvy Marcus), and Emma (Mia Fowler) toil away day after day in 1917 reformatory (photo by Nina Goodheart)

benevolent
IATI Theater
64 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through September 5, $27.81 – $63.85
goodapplescollective.com

Sophie McIntosh’s benevolent is one of the most exhilarating, thoroughly satisfying productions I have ever seen. It’s not only one of the best shows of the year but of the decade.

Written by McIntosh and directed by Nina Goodheart, cofounders of Good Apples Collective, benevolent is the fourth collaboration between them, following the highly regarded Road Kills, cunnicularii, and cityscrape. Here’s hoping there are many more to come.

The show was inspired by the real-life Inwood Benevolent Home, which was incorporated as the New York Magdalen Benevolent Society in 1851. In March 1930, the Times called it “a modern refuge for girls from sixteen to twenty-one years of age, striving to remedy defects in character that would handicap them in their future adjustments to society.”

The play envelops you in its beguiling charm as you first enter the IATI Theater in the East Village. Charlotte Shi’s set is a small basement space surrounded by dirty white sheets; in the center-back is a laundry chute. The feeling of being trapped is palpable.

It’s September 1917, and four young women have been assigned to “soiled shift” at the Benevolent Home, a charitable institution in Upper Manhattan. Emma (Mia Fowler), twenty-six, is a fifty-cent prostitute who has been in and out of the home, keeping to herself, not seeking to make friends. Sarah (Rachel Ravel), nineteen and the most outgoing of the group, is there for singing for money on the boardwalk at Coney Island, which her father calls Sodom by the Sea. Margaret (Chani Reese), already cynical at twenty-four, works at a ten-dollar brothel. And Abby (Livvy Marcus), seventeen, was born into privilege and has been sent to the home by her father for having allowed her suitor, William of the Astor family, to come calling without a chaperone. Her mother was a former chairwoman of the Benevolent Society, and her godmother, Miss Antonia, is the matron currently in charge.

“What do you think? Blood or shit?” Sarah asks Abby at the beginning of the play, showing her a pair of dirty drawers. It’s a superb opening line, setting the tone, as there will be a lot more blood and shit to come.

Wearing white aprons over their pink uniforms, the women grab linen after linen, scrubbing hard at their washboards in tubs of water. The drudgery and monotony are evident; any time they make the slightest bit of progress, another pile of soiled sheets and clothes, always white with one notable exception, fall down the chute. The Sisyphean tasks extend both to their daily workload as well as their attempts to serve their six-month term and be released into a better life, though only Abby displays any kind of legitimate hope.

“My mother always said it was important to teach the poor fallen girls to work! And support themselves! So they don’t slip back into sin,” Abby tells Sarah, who replies, “I’m not sure your mother’s the best authority considering where her own girl ended up.” Abby answers, “One mistake is hardly a life of vice,” to which Sarah responds, “We’ve all got to start somewhere.”

When Margaret thinks she is pregnant following a dalliance with Stephen the carriage boy, the women are initially not sure what to do — Margaret does not want to have the baby — but they are soon bonding together, pooling their individual strengths to help her even if it breaks the rules. Their decision seems especially fraught after what happened to Ruthie, another pregnant woman whose terrifying, monstrous screams during childbirth rattle through the basement.

Amid betrayal, lies, various aspects of female friendship, and an aching camaraderie, the four women press on in this prisonlike atmosphere, each one trying to believe that there is something more waiting for them on the outside.

Four young women question their futures in Sophie McIntosh’s brilliant benevolent (photo by Nina Goodheart)

The play is beautifully written by McIntosh and intimately directed by Goodheart; there’s nary a word or movement out of place, resulting in an embracing, intoxicating poetry. It’s a tour de force of theatermaking; McIntosh’s script is exquisite, as scenes in the hands of other writers that might seem superfluous here always come back around to make subtle points and tie up loose ends brilliantly. Max Van’s sound design, from the screams to a pageant to the clunking of the laundry dropping down the chute, immerses the audience in the story, while Paige Seber’s lighting includes dangling bare bulbs that offer a sense of impending danger.

The cast is so exceptional that I was sorry the show was only ninety-five minutes; I wanted to spend more time with them. Fowler (cityscrape, Search Engine), Marcus (Suffs, Ride), Ravel (The Panic of ’29, Fiddler on the Roof), and Reese (Measure for Measure, The Cherry Orchard) bring depth and soul to their characters; they are not portraying stereotypes delivering messages but playing believable women faced with situations that are still relevant today as the government and the courts take away reproductive freedom, enforcing control over women’s bodies and manipulating voting rights. More than a century later, there are far too many women in the same circumstances as Abby, Sarah, Emma, and Margaret; they might not be in a benevolent home, but they are trapped nonetheless.

Despite all that seriousness, benevolent is also very funny, and a lot of fun; there is just the right amount of humor to make it feel fresh and alive and of the moment. I left the theater with a bounce in my step, filled with joy on many levels by what I’d just experienced.

benevolent is not just one of the best plays of the year; it’s one of my favorite shows of the decade. Stop what you’re doing and get tickets now. Please. Please. Please.

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

THE CATSKILLS MYSTIQUE: A WALK ON THE MOON AT THE LAURA PELS

The married Pearl Kantrowitz (Talia Suskauer) considers a summer dalliance or more with blouse man Walker Jerome (Sam Gravitte) in A Walk on the Moon (photo by Joan Marcus)

A WALK ON THE MOON
Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 22, $56-$121
awalkonthemoonmusical.com

The summer of 1969 was one of the most provocative, contentious, and exhilarating times in American history. US troops were fighting Communism in Vietnam. The Stonewall Riots took place in Greenwich Village. The Cuyahoga River caught fire. Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The Miracle Mets unexpectedly surged into first place on their way to a world championship. The Manson family murdered actress Sharon Tate and seven others in Los Angeles. Some 400,000 people attended an era-redefining counterculture music festival on a farm in Bethel, New York. The original cast album of Hair topped the charts, while Sly and the Family Stone, Johnny Cash, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Doors, Miles Davis, CCR, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Isley Brothers released new records. And the ATM made its debut, at a Chemical Bank on Long Island.

That sense of constant excitement is precisely what’s missing from A Walk on the Moon, a pleasant if not thrilling New York premiere continuing at the Laura Pels through August 22.

The 2018 musical is adapted from Tony Goldwyn’s 1999 film, written by Pamela Gray, that starred Diane Lane as Pearl Kantrowitz, a mother of two who is feeling underappreciated by her TV-repairman husband, Marty (Liev Schreiber), and falls for the hot young blouse man, Walker Jerome (Viggo Mortensen), during her family’s annual summer weekend retreats to their bungalow in the Catskills. “Take a deep breath / Fresh air in the mountains / You can’t get this on Flatbush Avenue,” Pearl (Talia Suskauer) sings in the opening number, “Summer of All Summers,” joined by Marty (Max Chernin), their nine-year-old son, Danny (Leo Caravano or Reid Gardner Clarke), Marty’s mother, Lillian (Andréa Burns), and their couples friends, Neil and Rhoda Tanklow (David R. Gordon and Becca Suskauer), Irv and Bunny Gelfand (Andrew Faria and Megan Kane), and Stan and Eleanor Applebaum (Michael Tacconi and Caroline Pernick).

The number is fairly standard, and it doesn’t feel in any way like it’s the summer of 1969, lacking the promise of what’s to come. Perhaps that was on purpose, to display the mundanity of their lives, but it’s not the smartest way to begin a musical. In the second song, “When Did You Know the Moon Was Possible?,” Pearl worries that life is passing her by, addressing astronaut Neil Armstrong, one of the crew members of Apollo 11. “Mr. Armstrong / How did I not know a decade has gone by / And was I even in it / Mr. Armstrong / How did the years run right past / As fast as my teenager is growing / When did you learn / When was that moment of knowing / That there was no limit to how high you could fly?” she wonders. “Mr. Armstrong / In this beginning of a new age / Where am I? / When I never began.”

That all changes when the new blouse man, Walker (Sam Gravitte), arrives, giving Pearl a tie-dye shirt she was eyeing. “My husband would hate it,” she says. Walker replies, “But what’s your opinion, Pearl Kantrowitz?”

A Catskills bungalow colony is the setting for musical based on 1999 film (photo by Joan Marcus)

Meanwhile, Pearl and Marty’s sixteen-year-old contrarian daughter, Alison (Sophie Pollono), a radical activist, is furious that her father forgot to pack her record player. “I can’t survive without music,” she argues. But she’s soon smitten with seventeen-year-old Ross (Oscar Williams), who goes everywhere with his acoustic guitar and is working on a song in which he declares himself “the Big Jewish Hendrix.” When Ross tells Alison that he is thinking about going to a concert called Woodstock — “It’s supposed be be gigantic, like five hundred people!” — they decide they have to go, especially since her favorite, Joni Mitchell, is scheduled to perform.

With two historic events in the offing, the moon landing and the music festival, Pearl has some difficult decisions to make involving her family and, primarily, herself, whom she has never put first before.

Featuring music and lyrics by Tony and Grammy nominee AnnMarie Milazzo and a book and additional lyrics by Gray, A Walk on the Moon never quite blasts off but is a pleasurable slow glide through the summer of 1969. The orchestrations at the beginning and end are overly traditional; several of the songs in between get closer to capturing the Flower Power feel of the era. The music director is Jillian Zack, with arrangements by Andy Einhorn. Ricky Lurie’s costumes fit the period and Josh Prince’s choreography never gets out of hand, maintaining a playful edge. Tal Yarden’s scenic design tends to be too cardboardy, but his projections, particularly of a giant moon and television, help set the mood.

Talia Suskauer (Be More Chill, Wicked) portrays Pearl with an enticing depth, keeping her from becoming a deceitful villain; instead, she garners understanding from the audience, even those who aren’t rooting for her to schtup the blouse man. Gray and Tony-nominated director Sheryl Kaller (Next Fall, The White Chip) cast no judgments on Pearl or any of the other characters. Among the ensemble, Becca Suskauer, Talia’s sister, stands out, but I may be partial because she is playing a character named after two of my relatives; my last name makes it into the show as well in a brief mention. (My second cousin is a close friend of Gray’s, so it’s not a coincidence.)

I sat next to a pair of alta kockers from the Bronx who had been to the Borsch Belt bungalows, and we agreed that the show was not Jewish enough; I was hoping for something closer to the “We’re Going to the Catskills!” second-season episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which takes place at the fictional Steiner Mountain Resort. But maybe that’s just me.

However, I do think that the show missed an opportunity that it is well aware of. In “We’re Girls with Somethin’ to Do,” Rhoda sings, “‘Enjoy the unconventional’ / Well, Betty dear, my hands are full,” quoting from Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.

If only A Walk on the Moon were more unconventional, like the time period it covers.

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

BOB DYLAN STEPS INTO THE UNKNOWN

“Stepping into the Unknown” features rare and previously unreleased footage and special live performances

STEPPING INTO THE UNKNOWN: FILMS FROM THE BOB DYLAN CENTER
Paris Theater
4 West Fifty-Eighth St. at Fifth Ave.
Wednesday, September 2, $15-$17, 7:00
paristheaternyc.com
bobdylancenter.com

My first Bob Dylan show was in September 1978 at the Nassau Coliseum. At one point relatively early on, I could see that my best friend was looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know any of these songs,” he said. “When is he going to play ‘Tangled Up in Blue’?” I hesitated before telling him, “Um, he just played that.”

I’ve since seen Dylan — with whom I share a birthday — about twenty times, with the Grateful Dead and Tom Petty, at Forest Hills, the Beacon, and the Jones Beach Theater, with such opening acts as Mavis Staples, Patti Smith, and Lucinda Williams. I camped outside overnight to get tickets to the 1992 Bobfest at the Garden. I was at the 2012 Prospect Park concert where he shared a brief memory about having once lived nearby in Brooklyn. “He knows where he is!” I called out.

During the pandemic, I watched Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan, his mysterious concert film that had a wild live chat, questioning just about everything we were seeing and hearing. I devoured his 2005 memoir, Chronicles: Volume 1, glorying in the vastly entertaining fictionalization of stories from his life (while understanding that just because he called it Volume 1 didn’t mean there would be a Volume 2). I was impressed by Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown and tried not to let all the factual inaccuracies get in the way of a good movie. I can’t hear “A Hard Rain’s a‐Gonna Fall” without remembering the excitement I felt watching the 1976 Hard Rain film on NBC documenting the Rolling Thunder Revue. Heck, I once let the nails of my thumbs grow ridiculously long because Bob’s were like that on the cover of the 1978 tour book.

And then there are the shows on Dylan’s Never Ending Tour, in which he constantly reinvents songs, sometimes making them all but unrecognizable. He stands back from the stage, wearing a hat or a hoodie, in low lighting so his face is hard to see. He doesn’t allow any video or photography and he rarely speaks to the audience except for announcing his band, which lately has been changing without explanation. At every concert, a handful of the uninitiated leave when they realize he’s not going to play many of his most famous songs, and when he does they sound very different. But we faithful love every twist and turn, following the master’s superb vocal phrasings and precise enunciations emanating from his raspier and raspier voice.

Which brings us to the Bob Dylan Center (BDC), his archive that opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May 2022. Why Tulsa? One answer is because it’s Dylan, so why ask. But Dylan himself said, “There’s more vibrations on the coasts, for sure. But I’m from Minnesota and I like the casual hum of the heartland.”

On September 2, the Bob Dylan Archive comes to the Paris Theater for the special program “Stepping into the Unknown: Films from the Bob Dylan Center.” The event, presented by BDC director Steven Jenkins, will feature rare and previously unreleased material and will be followed by a Q&A and a live solo-electric performance by jazz guitarist extraordinaire Bill Frisell, who has recorded several Dylan songs and recently celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday by playing a show at BDC that included tunes by Dylan and Woody Guthrie.

“Stepping into the Unknown” is part of the Paris Theater’s annual “Big & Loud” series, consisting of 70mm screenings and 4K restorations of more than forty classics, from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Elevator to the Gallows to Fight Club and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with such special guests as Sofia Coppola and Isabella Rossellini.

You can also catch “Stepping into the Unknown” on September 1 at the Nitehawk in Williamsburg, followed by a Q&A with Jenkins and a performance by Steve Wynn from the Dream Syndicate and the Baseball Project, and on September 3 at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville with a Jenkins Q&A and a performance by Traveling Medicine Man with Luke Havranek.

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