live performance

JUST ONE PUNCH: HARROWING PLAY EXITS BROADWAY RING

Will Harrison leads an excellent cast in harrowing true story (photo by Matthew Murphy)

PUNCH
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through November 2, $94-$235.50
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Will Harrison makes an electrifying Broadway debut as a young Nottingham man whose life changes forever on a wild night in James Graham’s Punch, continuing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 2 though deserving of a longer run. However, the final shows can be livestreamed with a twenty-four-hour replay for $75.

Harrison stars as Jacob in the true story, based on the memoir Right from Wrong by Jacob Dunne, which explores bullying, drugs, class, and restorative justice. One night, Jacob and his large gang of friends are out drinking and snorting as they barhop through Nottingham, Jacob in search of some action.

“This is the problem, no one likes to admit . . . Doing bad things . . . creates good feelings. It just does,” Jacob tells the audience. “Because there is no other high in the world, forget your fuckin’ skunk or spice or smack or scratch, none of it can beat the buzz that comes with beatin’ up a slippin’ bastard in defence of a mate. The look in their eyes when they’re impressed, grateful, respectful . . . and even a bit fuckin’ scared of you now too . . . Barrelling back to someone’s house, covered in blood and validation. . . . Being chased and chasing highs, rushing round, scoring drugs and doing deals, seeking out parties and pulling girls. People dancing, trance like, getting high, snogging. Problem for someone like me is that cause I’d lived on the outskirts, coz mum had kept our heads down . . . not a lot of people knew us. And thriving and surviving in this world is all about your reputation, who you are . . . Which means I . . . have to always go farther, drink faster, walk taller. And most importantly . . . fight. Fight harder. Harder than anyone else.”

Chasing those highs, nineteen-year-old Jacob unleashes a massive punch on a random stranger just for kicks, but when the young man, twenty-eight-year-old James Hodgkinson, dies as a result of the altercation, Jacob is sent to prison while James’s parents, David Hodgkinson (Sam Robards) and Joan Scourfield (Victoria Clark), deal with the tragic loss of their son and contemplate whether they should forgive Jacob.

The energetic, fast-paced first act shifts between the punch and its immediate aftermath and a group therapy session led by Sandra (Lucy Taylor, who also plays Jacob’s mother and a probation officer), where Jacob shares his story with others. Sandra describes it as a place for “talking and listening. Difficult conversations.” Those conversations center on restorative justice, as Jacob, Joan, and David decide if they are going to meet face-to-face.

Victoria Clark and Sam Robards star as parents facing a horrific tragedy in Punch (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The first half of Punch unfolds like a thrilling boxing match, with aggressive, breathtaking movement by Leanne Pinder as Jacob and his friends make their way across and under set and costume designer Anna Fleischle’s reimagining of Trent Bridge in Nottingham, propelled by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s scorching original music and sound design. Robbie Butler’s lighting is like a character unto itself, a large, nearly complete circle hovering above the stage, consisting of rows of chasing lights that change color; it made me think of a boxing ring even though it isn’t square.

Graham (Ink, Dear England) and first-time Broadway director Adam Penford slow things down after intermission, as if the fighters have tired out, their tanks running out. Yes, it’s based on what actually happened, but it involves a whole lot of sitting around and talking, falling short of the knockout blow. Two-time Tony winner Clark (Kimberly Akimbo, The Light in the Piazza) and Robards (The 39 Steps, Absurd Person Singular) are powerful as James’s parents, tenderly dealing with a situation that is every mother and father’s nightmare.

But the play belongs to Harrison, who was born in Ithaca and raised in Massachusetts. He fully inhabits the British Jacob, physically and psychologically; you can’t take your eyes off him. Harrison made an impressive off-Broadway debut in 2023 as a young navy medic in Keith Bunin’s The Coast Starlight at Lincoln Center and has followed that up with this Tony-worthy performance; he is a rising star with a bright future.

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

TRAGIC AND COMIC HAPPENINGS: MARTHA@BAM — THE 1963 INTERVIEW AT BAM

Martha@BAM — The 1963 Interview re-creates classic conversation with Martha Graham (photo by By Peter Baiamonte)

MARTHA@BAM — THE 1963 INTERVIEW
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
October 28 – November 1, $55, 7:30
www.bam.org

On March 31, 1963, dance writer and educator Walter Terry interviewed legendary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham at the 92nd St. Y. Early in the seventy-seven-minute conversation, Terry asked Graham about her attraction to Greek history and mythology.

“There seems to be a way of going through in Greek literature and Greek history all of the anguish, all of the terror, all of the evil and arriving someplace. In other words, it is the instant that we all look for, or the catharsis, through the tragic happenings,” she responded. “Everyone in life has tragic happenings, everyone has been a Medea at some time. That doesn’t mean that you’ve killed your husband or that you’ve killed your children. But in some deep way, the impulse has been there to cast a spell — to use every ounce of your power, and that’s true of a man as well as a woman, for what one wants.”

It’s classic Graham; you can now catch a staged re-creation of the discussion in Martha@BAM — The 1963 Interview, running October 20 through November 1 at BAM’s intimate Fishman Space as part of the Next Wave Festival.

In 1996, dancer and choreographer Richard Move began the “Martha@” series, in which they portray Graham, combining text and movement. In 2003, they starred as Graham in the film portrait Ghostlight. In 2011, in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of Graham’s passing in 1991 at the age of ninety-six, Move presented Martha@ — The 1963 Interview at New York Live Arts, with Move as Graham, and Tony-winning actress and playwright Lisa Kron (Well, Fun Home) as Terry, accompanied by dancers Catherine Cabeen and Katherine Crockett. For the 2025 revival, Move, Kron, and Cabeen are reprising their roles, joined by Taiwanese dance maker PeiJu Chien-Pott, who, like Cabeen, is a former Martha Graham Dance Company member.

Move, who has collaborated with MGDC as a choreographer and performer, conceived and directed the sixty-minute production, which takes place on Gabriel Barcia-Colombo and Roberto Montenegro’s relatively spare set, centered by two chairs, a small table, and two microphones where Graham and Terry talk. Barcia-Colombo and Montenegro also designed the props the dancers use in their performance, as well as the lush, elegant costumes, immediately recognizable as part of Graham’s oeuvre. Among the other works that are brought to life are Clytemnestra, Errand into the Maze, and Appalachian Spring.

There is no video of the original interview, only audio, which you can stream here.

At the end of the interview, after bringing up comedy, Terry says, “The great characteristic of movement with Martha Graham is not only her fabulous gallery of heroines of the theater but also characteristic is the movement of one of the great dancers of all time, and I’m so glad she could be with us today. Thank you, Martha.”

To which I add, thank you, Richard Move, Lisa Kron, Catherine Cabeen, PeiJu Chien-Pott, and BAM.

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

WHAT’S GOING ON? GINGER TWINSIES AND HEATHERS THE MUSICAL

Ginger Twinsies is a parody of the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap (photo by Matthew Murphy)

GINGER TWINSIES
Orpheum Theatre
126 Second Ave. between Seventh & Eighth Sts.
Monday – Saturday through October 25, $49-$149
gingertwinsies.com

In Barry Levinson’s classic 1982 film Diner, Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) says to Boogie (Mickey Rourke), “Do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about?”

I get that feeling at times in theater, especially at shows based on books or movies. While you don’t need to have read E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime, or seen Miloš Forman’s 1981 film adaptation in order to enjoy the current Broadway revival at Lincoln Center, it doesn’t hurt. However, my knowledge of such films as Some Like It Hot and Sunset Blvd. did negatively impact my enjoyment of the stage musicals; while artistic license must be granted, certain changes from the original just seemed plain awful, altering motivations and important points.

At the curtain call for Sunset Blvd., as most of the audience stood and cheered with wild applause, I turned to my friend and said, “Did they see the same show we did?” She shrugged in agreement.

I had similar experiences at two recent shows, each of which I liked, but not nearly as much as my fellow theatergoers, who were watching them at a different level.

Continuing at the Orpheum through October 25, Ginger Twinsies is a farcical love letter to Nancy Meyers’s 1998 film, The Parent Trap, in which Lindsay Lohan portrayed identical eleven-year-old twins Hallie Parker and Annie James, separated at birth and ignorant of each other’s existence until they meet at summer camp and decide to switch places. It’s a remake of David Swift’s 1961 original, which made a star of Hayley Mills and was based on Erich Kästner’s 1949 children’s book.

The play features a lot of satirical music, inside jokes, and Easter eggs for those in the know; for example, one of the actors portrays Jamie Lee Curtis, who played Lohan’s mother in the body-switching 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, which was based on Mary Rodgers’s 1972 novel. Also appearing as characters in Ginger Twinsies are Shirley Maclaine, who had some choice words about Lohan after the younger actress had to be pulled out of a film they were working on together; Julianne Moore, whose daughter looks like she could be Lohan’s twin; and Demi Moore, who spoke with Lohan at the 2025 Oscars. Whether you get the references or not, the connections are confusing.

Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds are hilarious as Annie and Hallie, respectively, from the get-go, as they don’t look anything alike. The show works best when it concentrates on the relationship between the two girls; numerous subplots with minor characters are overused as writer-director Kevin Zak attempts to squeeze too much into eighty minutes. I did eventually get into the flow once I realized there was no way I was going to get all of the jokes, but it’s still dispiriting to watch large portions of the audience laughing when you and others are scratching their heads.

Veronica joins the Heathers in musical adaptation of 1980s cult favorite (photo by Evan Zimmerman)

HEATHERS THE MUSICAL
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 6, $72-$195
heathersthemusical.com
newworldstages.com

A different kind of cult fandom can be found at Heathers the Musical, a revival of the 2014 show based on Michael Lehmann’s 1988 teen romance-thriller. The iconic film featured Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer, a student at Westerburg High who joins the mean girls clique of Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty), Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) while falling for dangerous new guy J. D. Dean (Christian Slater, in his best Jack Nicholson impersonation).

I had seen the film some years back and was looking forward to the musical, which continues at New World Stages through January 25. But what I wasn’t expecting were the shrieks that rattled the theater for two and a half hours (with intermission). Huge screams accompanied the first appearance of many of the characters, and nearly every song, from “Beautiful” and “Candy Store” to “Veronica’s Chandler Nightmare” and “My Dead Gay Son,” turned into a sing-along, as all the young women around me blared the lyrics out loud, wearing huge smiles as they did.

Director Andy Fickman and choreographer Stephanie Klemons capture the essence of the film, although the book, by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe (they also wrote the music and lyrics), takes too many liberties with the plot, making changes that didn’t improve on the original, from altering who did what and combining multiple characters into one to commercializing the generic candy store and modifying the ending. However, thank goodness they corrected the spelling of the high school, which is named after Paul Westerberg of the Replacements.

The cast, which includes a terrific Lorna Courtney as Veronica, Casey Likes as J.D., Olivia Hardy as Heather Duke, Elizabeth Teeter as Heather McNamara, McKenzie Kurtz as Heather Chandler, Xavier McKinnon as Ram Sweeney, Erin Morton as Martha Dunnstock, and Tony nominee Kerry Butler as Ms. Fleming and Ms. Sawyer, is first rate, and the music is fun.

The story takes on added meaning in the wake of so many school shootings the past twenty years while also tackling the subject of teen suicide, but it doesn’t dive deep enough and takes off in directions that can drain certain scenes of their potency. But like Ginger Twinsies, despite its flaws, Heathers the Musical is worth seeing, at least in part for watching everyone else in the audience have an absolute ball even when there’s something going on that you don’t know about — a status of exclusion the mean girls of Heathers and cult theater insiders might actually relish.

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

TIME AND MEMORY: JEN TULLOCK DIGS DEEP IN SOLO SHOW

Jen Tullock cowrote and stars in one-person show at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Maria Baranova)

NOTHING CAN TAKE YOU FROM THE HAND OF GOD
Playwrights Horizons, the Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through November 16, $63.50 – $118.50
www.playwrightshorizons.org

“Do you remember the first time you saw her, or I mean, has writing about it changed your memory of her?” a voice asks author Kristin Frances Reinhardt in Jen Tullock and Frank Winters’s Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God. Frances doesn’t answer the question in this intense solo show about first love, childhood trauma, forgiveness, and what and how we remember our past, filtered through family and religious dynamics and time.

Tullock performs all eleven roles in the seventy-minute multimedia production, from Frances’s brother, Eli, and mother, Raelynn, to her animated literary agent, Aubrey, and Kenny Weaver, the pastor of the Northeast Missions Church in her hometown. The play begins at a literary event launching Frances’s latest memoir, Never the Twain Shall Meet: Losing God and Finding Myself, the follow-up to Sorry I’m Late, about queer dating in Los Angeles. The new book explores Frances’s battles with her parents and the church over her sexual orientation as they go to extremes to try to force the gay out of her.

The action starts when agent Aubrey informs Frances that an organization discussed in the book, the Northeast Christian Church, got hold of an advance copy and is threatening to sue unless the author removes sections the church deems libelous for “wrongful likeness.” Frances decides to return home, believing she can straighten things out with the people she wrote about, primarily one specific young Polish woman with whom she fell in love, now a single mother who does not want to speak to her.

The narrative weaves in and out of the past and the present as the plot moves to Eli’s Backyard Bible Study class, a talent show audition, a coffee shop, a popular creek, a barbecue at Raelynn’s house, and the church, all the while intercutting discussions between Frances and Aubrey and readings and questions at the book event. For example, at one point the play switches back and forth between the book launch, with the host and audience heard in voiceover, and Pastor Jeremy Young at the church, with Tullock seamlessly shifting from Frances to Jeremy, making it feel like it’s all one conversation:

Jeremy: You know what my dream is? With this place? I want to make it so nobody has to write a book like you did. Not ever again. That’s the work that we’re trying to do.
Host: Wow.
Jeremy: Would you agree with that?
Host: Oh, gosh. That’s beautiful.
Jeremy: Well, I am so glad to hear you say that; I’m relieved, frankly. That means the world to me. Now let me ask you a question. Do you ever worry if you made any of it up?
Frances: Sorry, excuse me?
Host: Do you ever think about who your work is reaching?
Jeremy: Now, I’m not a lawyer — this may come as a shock to you, but I do know that even by the standards of Kentucky Common Law there is something called — let me see if I can get this right — Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. I know, it’s wordy.

Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God is a technical whirlwind (photo by Maria Baranova)

Tullock gives a tour-de-force performance, quickly changing accents and body language while also adjusting several onstage looping stations and small cameras that record real-time visuals of her that are projected onto screens around her, as if each character contains their own multitudes, going beyond stereotypes. The claustrophobic set, featuring two chairs, a small table, and the tech equipment, is by Emmie Finckel, with almost dizzying projections by Stefania Bulbarella, sharp lighting by Amith Chandrashaker, and expertly rendered sound by Evdoxia Ragkou.

The play is furiously directed by Jared Mezzocchi (Russian Troll Farm, On the Beauty of Loss), who previously collaborated with Tullock (On the Head of a Pin, You Shall Inherit the Earth!) on the marvelous site-specific Red Hook show The Wind and the Rain; there is so much going on at any one time that it takes a while to pick up its unique structure, which can get overwhelming and confusing at certain moments.

Inspired by events from her own life and her family’s involvement in the evangelical church, Tullock and cowriter Winters (On the Head of a Pin, Student Body) don’t sugarcoat the story by creating heroes and villains; each character in the play is complicated and well developed, flaws and all. In the book and the show itself, Frances is an unreliable narrator, one who is able to make the audience take a long, hard look at their own past and wonder how many of their memories might have wandered from the truth over the years.

“Do you still believe in anything?” an audience member asks Frances at the book event.

It’s a question many of us should be asking ourselves in these dark, troubled times.

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

BODIES WITHOUT OUTLINES: EIKO AND WEN AT BAM

Wen Hui and Eiko Otake share personal moments involving war in moving piece at BAM (photo by Maria Baranova)

WHAT IS WAR
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
October 21-25, $55, 7:30
www.bam.org/whatiswar

“Why, eighty years after the end of the Second World War, do we still have wars?” Eiko Otake and Wen Hui’s What Is War posits.

It’s a potent question, one that the two interdisciplinary artists explore in the powerful seventy-minute presentation, continuing at BAM’s Fishman Space through October 25. There’s purposely no question mark after the title because the show does not intend to provide any answers; instead, it’s more about personal experience.

Eiko, who was born and raised in postwar Japan and has lived in New York City since 1976, and Wen, who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and is based in Frankfurt, Germany, have been friends for thirty years. During the pandemic, they made the award-winning video diary No Rule Is Our Rule, after Eiko’s visit to China to collaborate with Wen was cut short.

They are now out on the road touring What Is War, which combines text, movement, and film to tell each of their stories and how they overlap. The show begins with a video clip of the two talking, projected on the large back wall. After a few minutes, Eiko humorously checks with Wen to make sure she is recording their conversation, admitting that she sometimes forgets to flip the switch and ends up having to do it all over again. It’s the last laugh of the evening.

The two women then appear at opposite sides of the black box theater, Eiko in a long, dark dress, Wen in a light blouse and long black skirt. Both barefoot, they walk agonizingly slowly toward each other across a narrow strip of dirt, a kind of graveyard where they meet in the middle, digging up the past. In front of archival footage, Wen explains how her grandmother died during the Japanese bombing of Kunming in December 1941; Wen’s mother was only five at the time. “I never had a chance to meet my grandmother,” she says. “I did not even know her name.”

Eiko Otake and Wen Hui come together and break apart in What Is War (photo by Maria Baranova)

Eiko shows a photo of her parents’ wedding, projected onto an angled hanging cloth at stage right. “They married on August 10th, 1945, one day after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and five days before Japan’s surrender,” she says, detailing how her father pretended to have tuberculosis to avoid military service. “Wen Hui, when I visited you in China and spent time with your mom, I felt really glad my father lied.”

Throughout the piece, which is dramatically lit by David A. Ferri, Eiko and Wen come together and drift apart, sometimes tenderly, sometimes with more force, as Eiko discusses the bombing of Tokyo by America, which killed one hundred thousand Japanese in six hours; Wen goes to a hospital to cheer up wounded soldiers during the Sino-Vietnamese War; Eiko points out the antiwar statements in Japan’s postwar constitution; and Eiko and Wen travel to the Lijixiang Comfort Station in Nanjing, where sex slaves were made available to the Japanese army. (Today the facade of one of the buildings is covered with contemporary photos of the women.)

At times, the performers push a horizontal mirror on wheels around the stage, which provides provocative reflections while also implicating the audience in the action.

In one of the most harrowing moments, Eiko recalls the late Japanese writer Kyoko Hayashi, who grew up in Shanghai, asking her, “Bodies I saw on August 9 had no outlines. Otake-san, when you perform, can you please think of such a body, a body without outlines?”

What Is War is a hard show to watch; Eiko and Wen pull no punches as they bare their souls and their bodies, using the past as a way to try to build a better, safer, more caring future, probably in vain if current events are any evidence. Any metaphors are in the movement itself; everything else unfolds as a bold, direct accusation of man’s seemingly never-ending thirst for battle, power, and domination.

Fortunately, each performance concludes with a catered gathering in the downstairs lounge, where Eiko and Wen are eager to speak with attendees and hear their thoughts on the work and on war, with plenty of smiles and hugs.

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

COOL ART CARS: STAYING FROSTY IN HARLEM

STAY FROSTY
BravinLee programs
458 West 128th St. between Amsterdam & Convent Aves.
October 24-26, free
www.bravinlee.com

For thirty years, the Drilling Company has presented Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, staging Bard plays in a Lower East Side municipal parking lot. Troupe founder Hamilton Clancy has referred to it as “an urban wrinkle” compared to traditional productions in theaters.

Now Karin Bravin and John Post Lee of BravinLee programs are providing an urban wrinkle alternative to art fairs with “Stay Frosty,” what they call “part tailgate, part trunk show, part festival, and part site-specific exhibition.”

Taking place October 24-26, “Stay Frosty” will feature approximately sixteen galleries displaying their wares in cars within marked parking spaces; among the participants are Willie Cole (H20, Harlem Coupe, made from recycled water bottles), Traci Johnson (a van repurposed into an intimate sanctuary), Field Projects (Kate Corroon Skakel’s sports-related Baller [For Ray]), Debra Simon Consulting (Amy Rose Khoshbin’s Allan Kaprow–inspired Altars to Agency), and Amy Ritter (Mobile Home Archive). Another ten artists will have freestanding works along fences around the perimeter, including Ellie Murphy (Door Arch Gate. Colonnade for a parking lot.), Kate Dodd (Shared Air), and Kumasi J. Barnett (The Question).

“Visitors can anticipate a combination of interactive works, monumental car installations, and a trove of artworks installed in glove compartments, trunks, and dashboards,” Bravin told twi-ny about the show, which will travel to other locations in 2026.

BALONEY (Z Behl and Kim Moloney), Piggies Undo the World (courtesy of the artist and BravinLee programs)

Three early renderings point to how unique and cool “Stay Frosty” can be: Guy Richards Smit depicts a large boulder on a green auto, Laurie De Chiara’s ArtPort Kingston promises a stuffed yellow station wagon from Jeila Gueramian, and Z Behl & Kim Moloney of BALONEY have transformed a pickup into Piggies Undo the World.

Admission is free — for the public and the galleries and artists — and all the art is for sale. There will be several special events on Friday, with Gracie Mansion’s Buster Would Have Loved This offering visitors candy from a limo from 3:00 to 6:00, followed by a performance by Khoshbin, who will also be leading a participatory release ritual each day at noon.

“Let’s spit-the-bit and restore our mental health,” BravinLee advises.

Everyone is invited to come along for the ride for what should be a bevy of very cool cars.

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

SEEING TRIPLE: TALKING BAND’S LATEST IS ANOTHER AVANT-GARDE MASTERWORK

Steven Rattazzi, Amara Granderson, and Lizzie Olesker star as three accidentally interconnected New Yorkers in Triplicity (photo by Maria Baranova)

TRIPLICITY
Mabou Mines@122CC
150 1st Ave. at Ninth St.
Wednesday – Monday through October 26, $30-$40
talkingband.org

I got so mad watching Triplicity, Talking Band’s latest fantastic foray into the experimental and the avant-garde. The legendary downtown troupe was founded in 1974 by Paul Zimet, Ellen Maddow, and Tina Shepard and has presented approximately sixty shows over the years. Embarrassingly, I discovered them only a few years ago and have been blown away by their last five productions but, oh, what I have missed over the decades.

In a program note, director Zimet writes, “I feel Triplicity is a quintessential Talking Band work: It uses music, the music of speech, and choreography to heighten the ordinary and allow us to appreciate it in a new way.” If you’ve never experienced a Talking Band work, then Triplicity is a great place to start. And if you have been to previous TB shows, well, what are you waiting for? Triplicity runs at Mabou Mines@122CC only through October 26.

Triplicity is a truly New York City tale, following the interconnected, overlapping lives of four strangers as they go about their regular, mostly mundane existence in the big metropolis.

Frankie Shuffleton (Lizzie Olesker) is a seventy-something widowed bookkeeper who walks around her Christopher Street block every day at noon, sits on a park bench, and picks up a salad in a plastic container on her way home, where she listens to the news on the radio at seven, catches a police procedural at ten, then goes to bed. In true Beckett fashion, her first words are “There’s nothing to say,” which sharply contrasts with her accidental acquisition of a “talk to me” phone in which people call seeking advice.

Danny Dardoni (Steven Rattazzi) is a fifty-something exterminator who lives in a large Italian household in Bay Ridge, reads the poems of Virgil, and is shocked to learn that there is an enormous beehive in the attic. Danny, who has an innate sense for details, specializes in killing mice and rats and, not necessarily happily, tells us that he “is responsible for the safety and well-being of my family, to provide a home, this house, that is a safe place in a dangerous world.”

Norma Linda Box (Amara Granderson) is a twentysomething wannabe writer with five roommates, four jobs, and a hatred of people saying her name. When she sees a snake on the sidewalk, she takes him home because his blue stripes match a tattoo on her left ankle. “No one has witnessed the event,” she says. “I own it. I can define it. It’s mine to define.”

And Calliope (El Beh) is a street singer who is kind of a Greek chorus in funky, wild clothing, singing songs related to the words and actions of Frankie, Danny, and Norma, picking up on their sound and movement. “Whatever the weather / Calliope sings to whoever will listen / That’s it / That’s it,” she warbles.

As they share their stories, they break out into formalistic dances and roll around on their chairs; the playful choreography by Sean Donovan and Brandon Washington evokes the independence, and loneliness, of so many New Yorkers.

Talking Band’s Triplicity features unique choreography by Sean Donovan and Brandon Washington (photo by Maria Baranova)

In astrology, triplicity is an essential dignity involving a group of three Zodiac signs belonging to one element. That definition fits the show well, as the worlds of three people intersect and become one through the participation of a fourth.

The play begins with Frankie telling her story three different ways, moving her chair and adding more detail each time, a dazzling introduction to how we talk about our lives and share them with others. The concept of numbers is key throughout the seventy minutes, a poetic leitmotif. “Suddenly everything is in two’s!” Frankie declares. Three girls ride scooters. At four, Frankie goes out for coffee. Norma has five roommates and writes six essays. There are seven shards of glass on a blue tile floor. They get ten inches of rain over three days. The barrage of numbers suggests the passage of time, in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years on the journey from birth to death.

Anna Kiraly’s set consists of rolling chairs, doorways with windows on which she projects different color schemes, a mazelike path on the floor, and a corner with special props for Calliope. Olivera Gajic’s costumes feature Frankie in a quaint sweater and skirt, Danny in a white T-shirt and sneakers, Norma in blue-jean overalls and wearing a red bandanna, and Calliope in a series of wildly adorned outfits.

Triplicity is written and composed by Ellen Maddow and directed by Paul Zimet, the incomparable married team who have been collaborating as writer, director, composer, and/or actors for half a century, including on Talking Band’s recent surge of endlessly compelling and engaging works, which have made me nearly weep with joy as the company continues to push the limits of what theater can be: Shimmer and Herringbone at Mabou Mines, Existentialism and Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless at La MaMa, and The Following Evening at PAC NYC.

In Triplicity, they capture the essence of New York City, the heart and soul of everyday people, the music and energy, divided into such chapters as “Adagio,” “Allegretto,” and “Scherzo,” resulting in a beautiful mini-symphony performed by a magical quartet.

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