live performance

TAMBO & BONES

Tambo (W. Tré Davis) and Bones (Tyler Fauntleroy) channel Didi and Gogo from Waiting for Godot in new David Harris play (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

TAMBO & BONES
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 27, $30-$54
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In the past few years, several shows by Black playwrights have shattered the fourth wall in unique ways, challenging their majority white audiences by separating the line between fact and fiction, audience and performer. Two such examples are Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’ and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Fairview, both of which included participatory elements that placed systemic racism front and center while understanding precisely where their bread was buttered, balancing humor with recrimination.

David Harris’s new show, Tambo & Bones, which opened tonight at Playwrights Horizons, turns the tables on Black trauma porn in similar ways, incorporating Afrofuturism in its self-referential exploration of the past, present, and future of Black performers entertaining white audiences. Aggressively directed by Taylor Reynolds with a razor-sharp sense of wit and whimsy, the show, divided into three sections, expands on the concepts of minstrelsy — what Harris, who was a popular spoken word poet, refers to as “Black performative capitalism” — and freedom in different, not-always-obvious forms while scrutinizing what is real (life), what is fake (theater), and how they intertwine.

As Harris contends in his Playwright’s Perspective program note, “The most fun part about writing is that every writer I know is a fucking liar. Some think this is radical political work. Some think writing is to channel the ancestors and the woo-woos to put voice to page. But all of this is just tactic. This was the realization that made me stop doing poetry slams and start to focus on theater. I wasn’t growing as an artist; I was growing as someone who could perform identity. Spoken word capitalizes on an idea of the authentic identity. The real person. But here, in this theater, all of us know that every second of this experience is fake. And there is infinite possibility in that reality. And the pleasure is in the possibility.”

The play begins in a garden that looks like it was made for an elementary school musical. In his stage directions, Harris refers to it as “a fake ass pasture. Some fake ass trees and a fake ass bush. A fake ass sky with a fake ass sun. A lil bit of fake ass grass. Yo it’s fake ass pastoral out here.” Tambo (W. Tré Davis) is trying to grab a nap, moving a cardboard tree so he can relax in the shade. “It ain’t fake if I believe in it,” he says, getting to the heart of what theater is about, at least for a few hours.

But then Bones (Tyler Fauntleroy) arrives and ruins his friend’s rest by asking the audience for quarters so he can visit his son in the hospital for his birthday, all of which turn out to be lies. He also performs a lame trick with a knife to get more quarters. Tambo insists he is going about it all wrong.

“You gotta make em think. Stimulation, know what I mean?” Tambo explains. “And how do you do that?” Bones asks. Tambo replies, “You gotta deliver a treatise on race in America.” Bones: “Whaaaaaat?” Tambo: “Yup. Trendy intellectual shit.”

The scene is Harris’s reimagining of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot; both men wear old-fashioned hats and raise existential questions while waiting for something to happen. Bones is dressed in a raggedy costume that resembles Lin-Manuel Miranda’s military uniform in Hamilton, a show that used a Black and brown cast to entertain a predominantly white audience that patted themselves on the back for enjoying such a racially diverse musical about the Founding Fathers. But Tambo and Bones are not as passive as Vladimir and Estragon; instead of waiting for a mystery man to arrive, they go after the person responsible for their situation: the playwright.

“Why did this n—a write us into a minstrel show?” Tambo proclaims. “He could’ve written anything he wanted, and he chose to write this. You couldn’t give us no quarters in your show? You had to make us struggle n shit?” Bones replies, “Maybe he wanted all the quarters for himself.”

David Harris world premiere includes a hip-hop concert at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

In the second part, Tambo and Bones have become hip-hop superstars, covered in bling and rapping on a smoky stage with their names in lights. They blast such songs as “Started from the Cotton,” “Bootstrappin,” “Racism Is Bad,” and “Crack Rocks Crackin” as the audience, most of whom have probably never been to a live rap concert, dance in their seats, sing along, and wave their hands in the air like they just don’t care. But while Bones is reveling in their newfound wealth and success, Tambo still feels a responsibility to speak truth to power. “We here to have a mothafuckin party,” Bones shouts to the adoring crowd. Tambo adds more quietly, “And also provide commentary on some shit.”

The third section takes place four hundred years in the future — not a random number — as a seminar looks back at the legacy of Tambo and Bones and the history of race relations in America. It’s not an easy pill to swallow, reminding me of such other recent plays as Thomas Bradshaw’s 2019 revival of Southern Promises and Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play in how they relate to the audience.

Davis (Seared, Zooman and the Sign) and Fauntleroy (Tempest, Looking for Leroy) portray their carefully constructed stereotyped characters with a savvy appreciation of what they stand for in today’s world, paradigms of the Black experience in America, in theater and the rest of society, which tends to be not as forgiving as well-heeled off-Broadway audiences. “I’m just pondering my purpose n shit,” Bones says in the pasture. “You ain’t happy wit ya life as it is?” Tambo asks. “I read somewhere that happiness is just an illusion like sunlight,” Bones answers.

The first two sections feature stellar sets by Stephanie Osin Cohen, costumes by Dominique Fawn Hill, lighting by Amith Chandrashaker and Mextly Couzin, sound by Mikhail Fiksel, and music by Justin Ellington. The final scene is more ramshackle; it feels like Harris knew exactly what he wanted to say but is still working on how to accomplish it, resulting in a messy conclusion that still provides plenty of food for thought.

“It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater,” Bertolt Brecht wrote, describing what he called the alienation effect. “Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.”

Tambo & Bones is a prime example of the alienation effect, but it comes with a fierce smackdown. By the end, you may simultaneously want to cheer wildly and cower in your seat. Harris (White History, Incendiary) and Reynolds (The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, Plano) use form and genre to overturn expectations and confront an audience that is likely to revel in that challenge, then further contemplate what happened when they get home and think more about the show.

“Throughout my life, I’ve found myself continually in white spaces, and continually rebelling against white spaces, and continually finding that that rebellion has also led to me gaining in some way,” Harris admits in a Playwrights conversation with Reynolds. “I literally ask myself: what am I doing here besides trying to gain the currency of laughter, or the currency of someone thinking that I’m cool for writing this? Am I putting this up for an audience just because I want an audience?” Reynolds replies, “It’s awesome to hear you dig a little deeper into the play’s relationships with and to whiteness. And it’s not just that we are being held down by specific white people who have enslaved us — it’s also capitalism. The play puts capitalism on blast and I am so intrigued to see what the response will be from Playwrights Horizons audiences.”

Having now witnessed that response, I can say that it is, at the very least, intriguing. Harris’s next play, Exception to the Rule, will have its world premiere at Roundabout Underground in April. I already have my tickets.

FOUR QUARTETS

Pam Tanowitz Dance’s Four Quartets makes its New York City debut February 10–12 at BAM (photo by Maria Baranova)

FOUR QUARTETS
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
February 10–12, $25-$95, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
pamtanowitzdance.org

T. S. Eliot’s 1936–42 epic Four Quartets poem begins with a two-part epigraph from Greek philosopher Heraclitus that warns, “Although logos is common to all, most people live as if they had a wisdom of their own. . . . The way upward and the way downward are the same.” Those words sound particularly relevant today as America battles through a pandemic and socioeconomic and racial inequality and injustice that are threatening the stability of our democracy. Heraclitus also wrote, “It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it.” Meanwhile, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed, “Heraclitus was an opponent of all democratic parties.”

In 2018, Bronx-born, Westchester-raised choreographer Pam Tanowitz debuted her take on Eliot’s poem, as Four Quartets made its world premiere at Bard SummerScape; it is now coming to the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House for three performances, February 10–12. The seventy-five-minute piece features all-star collaborators, with music by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho played by NYC orchestral collective the Knights, images by American abstract minimalist Brice Marden, costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, sets and lighting by Clifton Taylor, sound by Jean-Baptiste Barriére, and text performed live by Tony nominee and multiple Obie winner Kathleen Chalfant. (Bard’s recording of the audio was the first authorized version by a woman and an American.) The dancers are Kara Chan, Jason Collins, Dylan Crossman, Christine Flores, Zachary Gonder, Lindsey Jones, Victor Lozano, Maile Okamura, and Melissa Toogood.

“Making Four Quartets has changed me as an artist forever,” Tanowitz says in the above behind-the-scenes Bard documentary, There the Dance Is, which was filmed during the pandemic. “I’m not scared of failure. I’m not scared to imagine. And I’m not scared to take risks. I was before.”

“Burnt Norton,” the first section of Four Quarters, is an eerie reminder of what is happening in the United States and around the world today as we look toward a fraught future: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past. / If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable. / What might have been is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation. / What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. / Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden. My words echo / Thus, in your mind. / But to what purpose / Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves / I do not know. / Other echoes / Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?”

Tickets are going fast for the show, which is part of BAM’s “New York Season,” consisting of works by local creators, so act now if you want to see this widely praised production. Up next at BAM are Kyle Abraham’s An Untitled Love at BAM Strong’s Harvey Theater, running February 23–26, and longtime favorite SITI Company’s final physical theater presentation, The Medium, at BAM Fisher March 15–20. You can also catch Tanowitz’s Bartók Ballet, her first commission for New York City Ballet, at Lincoln Center’s David H Koch Theater on February 22 and 23, a work for eleven dancers set to Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 5.

SKELETON CREW

Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew takes place in an auto stamping plant on the brink in 2008 (photo by Matthew Murphy)

SKELETON CREW
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 20, $59-$159 ($49-$99 with code FAFCREW)
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

When the audience enters MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre for the Broadway premiere of Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew, a sizzling tale of socioeconomic ills in 2008 Detroit, they see Michael Carnahan’s set, the dingy, dirty breakroom of an auto stamping plant, filled with handwritten and preprinted signs detailing various rules and regulations, advising employees that there is no smoking, when the next union meeting is, what their OSHA rights are, what they can and can’t do with the refrigerator, coffeemaker, and microwave. However, there are also multiple reminders, on paper and yellow caution floor signs, to wear a mask and turn off cellphones; those warnings are for the audience in 2022, of course, but the effect is an immediate feeling of equality between the performers and the characters they portray. We are them, and they are us, especially as we all continue to deal with a global pandemic.

The cast then heads onstage and removes all the contemporary signs with a resolute vigilance that, we soon find out, applies to the company admonitions that still remain. “I don’t abide by no rules but necessity. I do what I do til’ I figure out another thing and do that. And that’s all I got to say about it,” Faye (Phylicia Rashad) declares.

Rumors are swirling that the plant might be on the chopping block, which would wreak havoc in a city that we know is about to pay dearly during the coming subprime mortgage crisis. Faye, a divorced single mother, is the union leader with twenty-nine years on the job, intent on making it to thirty to receive more substantial retirement benefits. Despite having survived breast cancer, she smokes constantly; she also has a penchant for gambling with her much younger colleagues: Dez (Joshua Boone), a loose cannon hoping to start his own repair garage, and Shanita (Chanté Adams), a pregnant woman who is one of the line’s best workers. Both in their mid-to-late twenties, Dez ceaselessly flirts with Shanita, whose baby daddy is absent.

Their foreman, Reggie (Brandon J. Dirden), a close family friend of Faye’s since he was a child, used to be one of them before being promoted. He often finds himself in the middle, caught between the employees and his bosses upstairs, walking a tightrope that becomes even more tenuous when he admits to Faye that the plant will indeed be shutting down within a year.

Reggie (Brandon J. Dirden) and Faye (Phylicia Rashad) face a crisis in Broadway premiere of Skeleton Crew (photo by Matthew Murphy)

He tries to convince her to stay quiet about it, which she is hesitant to do. “It’s my job to protect these folks,” Faye says. Reggie responds, “Faye, I’m confiding in you. I’m putting myself on the line for you cuz I’m on your side. But I need you on mine. I need your guidance. Help me figure this out without sounding the alarm.” She agrees but feels guilty keeping the news from Dez and Shanita, who have their own issues with management.

“You youngins don’t have no respect for the blood been spilled so yo’ ass have some benefits,” Faye says to Dez, who she regularly calls “stupid.” Dez shoots back, “What benefits? I don’t hardly see no benefits.”

When materials start disappearing from the plant, Dez, who brings a gun to work and has been acting suspiciously, is a prime suspect. Meanwhile, Faye has hit some hard times and hides a secret from her colleagues. And Shanita shares her complex dreams with the others and plans on working as long as she can, piling on the overtime, before she gives birth. The tension is so thick that something has to eventually give, and when it does, everybody better stand back.

Skeleton Crew premiered at the Atlantic’s Stage 2 in January 2016, then moved to the bigger Linda Gross Theater in May of that year. It’s the first play of Morisseau’s to be produced on Broadway; she also wrote the book for Ain’t Too Proud to Beg: The Life and Times of the Temptations. The play completes her Detroit Projects trilogy, three works set in her hometown in the twentieth century, beginning with 2013’s Detroit ’67 and continuing with 2015’s Paradise Blue. Seen as a whole, the plays explore the Black experience in America in a way that evokes both August Wilson and Lynn Nottage; specific plays that immediately come to mind are Wilson’s Jitney and Nottage’s Sweat and Clyde’s as well as Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s recent Cullud Wattah, about the Flint water crisis.

Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson shows a firm confidence in Morisseau’s language and themes; he previously directed the world premiere of Paradise Blue at the Signature. He also was a close friend of Wilson’s and starred in and/or directed many of his plays, including Jitney and The Piano Lesson, both of which featured Dirden. In addition, Santiago-Hudson knows the Samuel J. Friedman well; his one-man show, Lackawanna Blues, was the previous production at the theater, completing its run in November.

Adesola Osakalumi dances between scenes in Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Morisseau (Pipeline, Blood Rot) masterfully avoids any specific discussion about race, instead letting the story play out with that subtext hovering over everything like an ominous cloud. The audience knows that Detroit has had a history of race riots — from 1833 and 1849 to 1943 and 1967 — and in 2007-8, nearly twenty thousand Black men and women lost their jobs in car factories. “African Americans earn much higher wages in auto industry jobs than in other parts of the economy, and the loss of these solid, middle-class jobs would be a devastating blow,” the Economic Policy Institute reported at the time.

Tony winner and six-time Emmy nominee Rashad (A Raisin in the Sun, August: Osage County), who has directed three Wilson plays, is a powerhouse as Faye, a tired but strong-willed woman who is determined to not let a system she’s been fighting against her entire life beat her down. Rashad delivers her quips with an uncanny assuredness, her eyes revealing the wear and tear of years of battle, both personal and professional. Boone (Actually, All the Natalie Portmans) is a fireball as Dez, ready to explode at any moment but with a soft side underneath. Adams (Roxanne, Roxanne, Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by Santiago-Hudson) is charming as Shanita, who is wise beyond her years. And Dirden, who played Sly in the original New York production of Detroit ’67, gives a rousing performance as Reggie, a kindhearted man who has to make hard decisions that rip him up inside.

In between scenes, choreographer Adesola Osakalumi (Cullud Wattah, Fela!) dances at the front of the stage or behind the breakroom windows, moving robotically to hip-hop music that mimics the motion of the machines in the plant, which are seen almost abstractly in projections by Nicholas Hussong lit by Rui Rita. (The sound and music is by Robert Klapowitz, with original songs by J. Keys.) It equates humans with automation, as if people are interchangeable with machines. It might not be a new idea, but it is beautifully laid bare in Morisseau’s searing, intimate drama.

(MTC is currently hosting Detroit Week on Broadway, beginning February 4 at 8:00 with “Detroit Comes to Broadway,” celebrating the people and culture of the Motor City. On February 6 at 5:00, Morisseau, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, and Michael Dinwiddie will take part in the free virtual discussion “Black Theatre: Radical Longevity.” And on February 7 at 6:00, “Morisseau Moment” fêtes the playwright with proclamations and presentations from her three latest shows, Skeleton Crew, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, and Confederates, livestreaming from the Harlem School of the Arts.)

SoloDuo DANCE FESTIVAL

In-person SoloDuo Dance Festival is set for February 6-7 at Dixon Place

SoloDuo DANCE FESTIVAL
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Pl. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Sunday, February 6, 6:00 & 8:00, and Monday, February 7, 7:30, $15-$25
212-219-0736
dixonplace.org
www.whitewavedance.org

In November 2020, Young Soon Kim’s Brooklyn-based White Wave troupe had to go virtual with its SoloDuo Dance Festival, presenting filmed excerpts of its long-running work-in-progress iyouuswe II. This year, White Wave will be holding its sixth annual SoloDuo Dance Festival at Dixon Place, with three in-person shows on February 6 and 7. The festival features solos and duets by more than two dozen emerging and midcareer choreographers, from companies and individuals from across the country. Below is the full lineup.

Sunday, February 6, 6:00
CoreDance Contemporary (NY)
Corian Ellisor Dance (GA)
Scott Autry (NY)
Yu.S.Artistry (NY)
THE MARK dance company (NC)
sk|dancers (IN)
Santiago Rivera (CA)
Kevin Toyo (NY)
Li Chiao-Ping Dance (WI)
Obremski/Works (NY)

Sunday, February 6, 8:00
Elizabeth Shea Dance (IN)
New York Theatre Ballet (NY)
FUSE Dance Company (CA)
East by North Dance Theatre (NY)
John Beasant III (TX)
University of Arizona School of Dance (AZ)
Metanoia Dance (NY)
Constance Nicolas Vellozzi (NY)
Koin & Co (NY)
Charlotte Adams & Dancers (AZ)
WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company (NY)

Monday, February 7, 7:30
ZINC Movement Co. (NH)
Quianna Simpson (OH)
Smutek Dance (MI)
Amos Pinhasi (NY)
DiMauro Dance (NY)
HR Dance (NY)
Alison Cook Beatty Dance (NY)
Lindsey Bramham Howie (NC)
Elise Knudson (NY)
WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company (NY)

PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

A Jewish family in Paris faces anti-Semitism in Joshua Harmon epic (photo by Matthew Murphy)

PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 27, $99
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

“Why do they hate us?” a Jewish character asks near the end of Joshua Harmon’s extraordinary Prayer for the French Republic, which opened tonight at MTC at New York City Center – Stage I for a limited run (now extended through March 27). The playwright’s characters answer the question without being preachy or, perhaps even more important, preaching to the choir. In this three-hour multigenerational time-traveling epic, Harmon explores the centuries-old scourge of anti-Semitism with exquisite skill through the experiences of one family.

The play goes back and forth between 1944–46 and 2016–17, narrated by Patrick Salomon (Richard Topol), part of a long line of Salomons who have been in France for more than a thousand years. In his fifties, Patrick is part stage manager from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, part Woody Allen from Annie Hall, watching and interacting with characters from the past and present.

In 2016, Molly (Molly Ranson), a twenty-year-old college student from America, has come to visit her distant cousins in Paris while studying abroad in Nantes. She arrives on a day when Daniel Benhamou (Yair Ben-Dor), the twenty-six-year-old son, comes home beaten and bloodied after an anti-Semitic attack. His mother, Marcelle Salomon Benhamou (Betsy Aidem), wants to call the police and take Daniel to the hospital, but he refuses. His father, Charles Benhamou (Jeff Seymour) — both parents are successful doctors — is calmer, carefully checking his son’s injuries.

Elodie (Francis Benhamou), Daniel’s brilliant manic-depressive older sister, is incensed that Marcelle blames Daniel’s thrashing on his unwillingness to cover his yarmulke. Elodie doesn’t think Jews should have to hide who they are, while Marcelle is more fearful of the consequences. “You put a huge target on your back!” Marcelle shouts. “Oh, so Daniel’s asking for it now? Is that seriously your argument? He’s asking for it?” Elodie asserts.

The play uses that as a jumping-off point, with scenes marked by full-throated disagreements, quiet allusions, and an astonishing amount of smoothly integrated analysis of Israel, religious and secular Jews, and Judaism in France through the ages, encompassing such events as the People’s Crusade in 1096, the Valentine’s Day massacre of 1349 in Strasbourg, and the 1960s postcolonial exodus of Algerian Jews to France. Set pieces incorporate discussions of Israeli and American Jews and the mass shootings at Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan theater, and a kosher supermarket in Paris. The characters are troubled by the rise of Marine Le Pen and the National Front in France while considering the fate of the family’s last piano store, a legacy that goes back to 1855.

Irma (Nancy Robinette) and Adolphe Salomon (Kenneth Tigar) wonder where their children and grandchildren are in 1944 Paris (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The play is deeply rooted in history, presented in both monologues and flashbacks, particularly to the mid-1940s, when Marcelle’s great-grandparents, the elderly Irma Salomon (Nancy Robinette) and her husband, Adolphe (Kenneth Tigar), are living in Paris despite the occupation, not about to evacuate their home or give up the life they’ve built together. They worry every minute about the fate of their children, Jacqueline, Robert, and Lucien (Ari Brand), and their grandchildren, including Lucien’s son, Pierre Salomon (Peyton Lusk); Jacqueline escaped to Cuba, but Robert and Lucien are missing.

As Irma and Adolphe, who runs the piano business, sit at the dinner table, Patrick wonders about his great-grandparents. “What were they like, as people?” he asks. “What did they talk about? I have to imagine it was hard not to talk about their children, their grandchildren. . . .” Irma responds as if Patrick is right there with them: “We don’t talk about our children that much.” Adolphe then regales his wife with a beautiful fairy tale in which every member of their family is happy, healthy, and safe, an unlikely fantasy.

Over the course of three hours (with two intermissions), Patrick, the son of a Catholic mother and nonreligious Jewish father, wanders between eras, sharing what details he knows, singing at the Salomon piano that his sister Marcelle inherited, and occasionally participating in the modern-day moments, highlighted by a Passover Seder that turns ugly fast.

Molly (Molly Ranson), Charles (Jeff Seymour), and Daniel (Yair Ben-Dor) make sufganiyot together in world premiere play from MTC (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Terrorism and fear are perpetually on their minds. In an early exchange, Molly, who represents the current battle over BDS and other Israel-related issues on American college campuses, and Marcelle, who represents, well, one of my mother’s best friends, get into it.

Molly: My parents didn’t want me to come to France at all, but . . .
Marcelle: Why not?
Molly: Just cause of all the, you know. The terrorism.
Marcelle: There’s terrorism everywhere.
Molly: That’s what I said, but they were scared.
Marcelle: Aren’t you from New York? What’s to be scared?
Molly: I agree.
Marcelle: The whole world has terrorism now. There’s nowhere to hide. Either you live in the world, or you live in a cave. Personally, I don’t want to be a caveman.

Charles, whose family escaped Algeria when it became too dangerous, admits, “I’m scared, Marcelle. You lay everything out, you lay it out so rationally, and I hear every word you’re saying, but, I’m scared. We are Jews. We are Jews. The only reason we’re still on this planet is because we learned to get out of dangerous situations before they got the better of us. Something is happening in the world, and it’s happening in our country too — I can feel it.” When he says “our country too,” it’s impossible not to think about how it’s happening in America today, with brutal assaults on Jews from Pittsburgh, Boise, and New York City to Colleyville, St. Petersburg, and Poway.

Francis Benhamou brings down the house in a dazzling monologue when Elodie, in a bar with Molly, rants and rages about American Judaism and misperceptions about Israel. “American Jews . . . feel pretty free,” she explains in a verbal barrage. “So when it comes to Israel, they either despise it, or they’re slavishly devoted to it because they have a deep-seated understanding in their bones that there has never been a country on Earth that hasn’t eventually at some point turned on its Jews, and even in America, that fate awaits them too. Then you have the American Jew who hates Israel or is highly critical of Israel and I would argue part of why they feel able to be so critical of Israel is because they feel so safe in America, because they’ve convinced themselves that they can stay in America forever and maybe that’s true now but if history is our guide and history must always be our guide then you have to ask, so you feel safe today but will that be the case a hundred years from now? Or ten?” It’s a discussion I know I’ve had many times with friends and relatives, and Harmon nails it.

Narrator Patrick Salomon (Richard Topol) goes back and forth in time in Prayer for the French Republic (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Takeshi Kata’s elegant set rotates between the Benhamous’ lovely home and the Salomons’ less-fashionable wartime apartment. Tony, Drama Desk, and Obie–winning director David Cromer, who mounted a groundbreaking adaptation of Our Town on Broadway in 2009 (as well as helming The Band’s Visit, The Sound Inside, Tribes, and many other well-regarded shows), seamlessly integrates the two eras, which are often onstage together, one in the background of the other like a ghost, with superb lighting by Amith Chandrashaker and sound by Lee Kinney and Daniel Kluger.

The cast is uniformly outstanding, with Topol’s (Anatomy of a Suicide, The Normal Heart) naturally calm, likable demeanor alleviating some of the palpable tension until there’s no stopping it; Topol previously starred as Lemml, the immigrant stage manager and narrator, in Paula Vogel’s Tony-nominated Indecent, about the making of Sholem Asch’s controversial 1907 Yiddish play, God of Vengeance. Ranson imbues Molly with an inner strength and confidence that has her going toe-to-toe with her cousins, who have a tendency to be loud and forceful; Ranson similarly portrayed Melody, Liam’s (Michael Zegen) shiksa goddess, in Harmon’s Bad Jews, which also dealt with the Holocaust and family legacy. Ranson and Ben-Dor have an immediate chemistry as they balance fighting and flirtation.

Even Daniel’s fondness for Bob Dylan is no mere affectation, as the Nobel- and Pulitzer-winning troubadour famously went from being Jewish to a born-again Christian and back to Jewish during his fabled career; his 1983 album, Infidels, features several songs about Israel.

But it’s Harmon’s (Significant Other, Admissions) impeccable dialogue and razor-sharp characterizations that take center stage. Every word, every action rings true and hits home; he gets the Jewish American experience just right, even if this is a Parisian family (that speaks English without the hint of a French accent). I’ve been involved in these arguments and know these people well; I’m planning on memorizing a bunch of lines in time for this year’s Seders.

SHHHH

Shareen (Clare Barron) and Kyle (Greg Keller) have an unusual relationship in Shhhh (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

SHHHH
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 13 (extended through February 20), $61.50-$81.50
atlantictheater.org

ASMR meets S&M in Clare Barron’s latest dark comedy, Shhhh, which opened tonight at Atlantic Stage 2 for a woefully limited run through February 13 (now extended to February 20). The semiautobiographical play touches on all five senses, beginning with a physical and metaphorical cleansing that concludes with ASMR podcaster Sally, aka Witchy Witch (Constance Shulman), whispering to her listeners, “Indulge yourself. . . . You deserve it.” And for the next ninety minutes, that’s exactly what the six characters do, indulging themselves amid sex, spit, sperm, snot, STDs, and shit as Barron, who wrote and directed the work and stars as Shareen, explores pain, power, penetration, and privilege along with consent, condoms, communication, and control. It’s a feminist reversal of stories by such authors as Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, and Ernest Hemingway, putting women in charge of an unexpected narrative that goes places where primarily only men have gone before, diving headfirst (or, in one case, toe first) into sex, sadism, and blood and guts.

Shareen is a thirtysomething writer who is sick with an undiagnosed illness. “It’s like the inside of my mouth is one of those fast-forward flowers from the movie Planet Earth?” she tells Kyle (Greg Keller), a neighbor and former lover as she brushes her teeth and he sits on the toilet. “Except instead of flowers. I’m blossoming snot. And then I just swallow.” Kyle isn’t the only one in the theater who lets out an “ew.” It’s a terrific scene that lets the audience know that they are in store for something more than a little bit different.

All the characters speak frankly about bodily functions, about things entering and leaving their various orifices, incorporating pain and pleasure, often at the same time. Sally, a postal worker who is considering transferring to the forensics department — just the word “forensics” makes one think of cop shows in which the forensics unit is usually tasked with investigating the brutal murders of women — takes her date, a gender-fluid dog walker named Penny (Janice Amaya), to the Morbid Anatomy Museum, which includes an encased, full-size anatomical Venus, complete with death mask and innards sticking out. Sally offers Penny the chance to try out an electric device with her that can either “tickle or hurt.”

Francis (Nina Grollman) and Sandra (Annie Fang) talk about sex in graphic detail in Atlantic world premiere (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Greg uses a graphic description of a horrific accident as foreplay to a perhaps unwanted intrusion. Shareen discusses the hairs on her chin and her inability to orgasm. Two young women in gloriously kinky glittering finery, Francis (Nina Grollman) and Sandra (Annie Fang), eat pizza while delving into their numerous sexual partners and the men’s insistence on not using protection.

Francis admits, “Sometimes I think if someone were to give me a button and say: If you push this button you could kill all the heterosexual men in the world, I would be ethically obligated to push that button. . . . But then here I am, a very privileged white woman. So maybe someone would be obligated to push the button for me as well.” Meanwhile, Sandra says about herself, “Wow. You are so happy You have never been so alone,” considering that she doesn’t necessarily need to be with a man to be satisfied.

Arnulfo Maldonado’s set is a kind of gothic museum, from mattresses strewn on the floor (one of which audience members can sit on) and glass jars of creepy items to a dingy bathroom and a barely visible kitchen in the entryway. The eerie lighting is by Jen Schriever, with sound by Sinan Zafar; Unkle Dave’s Fight House provides intimacy and fight direction.

Shhhh is extremely satisfying, alternating myriad laughs with an abundance of winces and cringes. Its inherent feminism comes equipped with a whip ready to do battle and draw blood, but it also has an innate charm that makes you welcome the thrashing. Every scene takes the complex narrative to another level where the audience better be ready for anything, because the play is wholly unpredictable from start to finish. Every time you think, no, it’s not gonna go there, it does, and then goes even further. Kudos to the brave actors who aren’t afraid of the journey.

Constance Shulman and playwright-director Clare Barron star as sisters in Shhhh (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Shareen, wearing a tiny, shiny summer slip dress — the superb costumes are by Kaye Voyce — is tired of having to make decisions for herself. “I just want somebody to tell me when and where I can go to the bathroom,” she says. It’s a strong moment, especially when taken in the context of Barron’s personal and professional life. In “Not Writing,” a revealing piece she posted in August 2020 in the inaugural issue of Playwrights Horizons’ online “Almanac: Pasts, Nows, Futures,” she discussed her early success, mental breakdown, and struggle with bipolar disorder.

Alongside pictures of her cats and messy apartment, she explained, “The American Theater gets a real hard-on for a twenty-seven-year-old debut, and it’s impossible to separate the art from this world-premiere fanfare. I’ve played with this whole sexualized image of youth my whole career. It is authentically who I am, but I’m also using it because I know that as a young, white woman in America, this is one reliable way in which I can have power. My youth, my whiteness, my thinness, my Yale degree have all given me permission and protection to talk about whatever the fuck I want and still be taken seriously. These aspects of my identity have gotten me attention, gotten me jobs . . . They’ve made me palatable to people in power.”

More than merely palatable, Barron has been duly praised for her previous work, winning an Obie for 2015’s You Got Older and the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Dance Nation, which was also a Pulitzer finalist. Shhhh was written in 2016 but is only now having its world premiere at the Atlantic.

Barron indeed talks about whatever the fuck she wants in this world-premiere production. One of the most critical lines in the play is when Francis, talking about how men judge women’s bodies, says, “I don’t fucking dissect his body into fucking pieces like a fucking dead animal.” It’s made even more effective with the anatomical Venus hovering just behind her.

In “Not Writing,” Barron also opines, “I haven’t written a play in four years. I don’t know if I’ll write a play ever again. Who cares.” A whole lot of people do.

HENRIK LUNDQVIST’S RETIREMENT NIGHT

Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden
31st – 33rd Sts. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Friday, January 28, $30-$60, 6:30
www.nhl.com

Ed Giacomin (1), Brian Leetch (2), Harry Howell (3), Rod Gilbert (7), Adam Graves (9), Andy Bathgate (9), Mark Messier (11), Vic Hadfield (11), Jean Ratelle (19), Mike Richter (35). Since their inception in 1926, the New York Rangers, founded by Tex Rickard, have retired the jerseys of ten star players. They turn it up to eleven on Friday night when the number 30 worn by goaltender extraordinaire Henrik Lundqvist from 2005 to 2020 gets raised to the rafters.

Over the course of fifteen seasons, King Henrik amassed a regular season record of 459-310-96, with a 2.43 GA average and a save percentage of .918. The five-time all-star and five-time Vezina finalist — he won the coveted trophy in 2012 — took home a gold medal manning the pipes for Sweden at the 2006 Turin Olympics and led the Broadway Blueshirts to the Stanley Cup finals in 2014. The Rangers let Lundqvist go after the 2019-20 season, but before he could play a game with the Washington Capitals, who signed him to a one-year deal, he had to hang up the skates because of pericarditis that required open-heart surgery, forcing him to retire at the age of thirty-nine.

Henrik Lundqvist will be cheered yet again when his jersey is raised to the Garden rafters on January 28

Tickets are still available for the Rangers’ battle against the Minnesota Wild on January 28, but they currently start at a mere $350. So a better option might be spending thirty bucks and joining in the fun at a retirement watch party with Rangers alums at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden. Tex’s Rangers are on a roll this year, with 60 points in 43 games, while the Wild is enjoying a hot first half as well, with 53 points in 38 games, so it should be quite a game. It all gets going around 6:30, when a parade of Rangers greats will pay homage to the King, a fashion plate who is likely to look hotter than ever on the Garden ice. In conjunction with the special event, you can post your own Lundqvist story here and check out a month of Henrik highlights here. Net proceeds from the watch party will be split between the Garden of Dreams Foundation and the Henrik Lundqvist Foundation.