live performance

FIAF TALKS: DREAMING OF DIOR

Special FIAF program looks at new book and exhibition about Christian Dior

Who: Marie-France Pochna, Matthew Yokobosky
What: Discussion about new book and art exhibition on Christian Dior
Where: FIAF Skyroom and online, 22 East 60th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
When: Thursday, January 13, online or in person, $25, 7:00
Why: “Women have instinctively understood that I dream of making them not only more beautiful but also happier,” fashion revolutionary Christian Dior once said. If you didn’t get tickets for the special scent tour the Brooklyn Museum is hosting on January 19 in conjunction with its exhibition “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams,” you can still get a behind-the-scenes taste of the popular show with the January 13 FIAF Talk between Marie-France Pochna and Matthew Yokobosky, “Dreaming of Dior,” taking place in person at the French Institute Alliance Française’s Skyroom and online. Pochna is the author of the new book Christian Dior: Destiny: The Authorized Biography (Rizzoli, October 2021, $35), which includes the above quote, while Yokobosky, the senior curator of Fashion and Material Culture at the museum, collaborated with Denver Art Museum curator Florence Müller on the exhibit, which continues in Brooklyn through February 20. Depending on the nature of the omicron variant, the discussion will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.

A NEW YORK SEASON: POWER

Reggie Wilson’s Power explores Black Shakers and spirituality (photo by Christopher Duggan / courtesy Jacob’s Pillow)

POWER
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Harvey Theater at BAM Strong
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
January 13-15, $25-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/power

Reggie Wilson and his Fist & Heel Performance Group — “Not Just Your Mama’s Post-Modern Dance Company” — return to their home borough of Brooklyn for the New York City premiere of Power, running January 13-15 at the Harvey Theater at BAM Strong. Held in conjunction with BAM’s annual celebration of MLK Day, Power is an exhilarating seventy-minute piece about freedom and spirituality set in the world of the Shakers, asking the questions “What would the worship of Black Shakers actually have looked like?” and “How were the general, core Shaker tenets of ‘heaven on earth’ realized (social activism, pacifism, gender equality, celibacy, and the confession of sin)?”

Choreographed by Wilson and inspired by Black Shaker Eldress Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson, Shaker foundress Mother Ann Lee, the First Great Awakening (the Evangelical Revival), and American Utopianism and Binary Opposition (as well as Wilson’s 1995 The Littlest Baptist), the work is performed by eight dancers and three vocalists, with costumes by Naoko Nagata and Enver Chakartash and lighting by Jonathan Belcher, featuring songs by the Staple Singers, Bessie Jones & St. Simon’s Island Singers, Meredith Monk, Craig Loftis, Omar Thiam with Jam Begum & Khady Saar, and others. Power was developed at Danspace Project, then Jacob’s Pillow and the nearby Hancock Shaker Village.

“The idea of spirituality, religiosity, being able to be manifested with the body in relationship with other bodies is something really kind of exciting, so when I heard specifically about Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson in Philadelphia having a Black Shaker community, it seemed like there were two worlds that I had never actually put together in my imagination,” Wilson says in the above BAM behind-the-scenes video. “It also seemed parallel to my eternal and ongoing obsession with thinking about Black and Africanist traditions in relationship to white or postmodern performance or religions.”

Power is part of BAM’s program “A New York Season,” which continues with Pam Tanowitz Dance’s Four Quarters and Kyle Abraham’s An Untitled Love in February and SITI Company’s The Medium and Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato in March.

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS

The set for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is designed by John Farrell

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS
New York City Opera / National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene
Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Hall, 36 Battery Pl.
January 27 – February 6, $50-$125
855-449-4658
nycopera.com/shows/finzi
nytf.org/finzi-continis

Giorgio Bassani’s semiautobiographical 1962 novel, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, opens ominously enough with a description of the elaborate Finzi-Contini crypt, followed by an evaluation of their home. Bassani writes, “If the tomb of the Finzi-Contini family could be called a ‘horror,’ and smiled at, their house, isolated down there among the mosquitoes and frogs of the Panfilio Canal and the outlets of the sewers, and nicknamed enviously the magna domus, at that, no, not even after fifty years could anyone manage to smile.” The story, about a wealthy Jewish family that is more concerned with playing tennis than noticing the Fascism and anti-Semitism swirling around them in 1930s Italy, was turned into an Oscar-winning film by Italian director Vittorio De Sica starring Dominique Sanda and Helmut Berger.

Rachel Blaustein and Anthony Ciaramitaro star in world premiere of opera adaptation of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (photo © Sarah Shatz)

The Museum of Jewish Heritage will be hosting the world premiere of a new American opera based on the book, running January 27 to February 6 in Edmond J. Safra Hall. A coproduction of New York City Opera and National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, the show features a score by Ricky Ian Gordon (The Grapes of Wrath, the upcoming Intimate Apparel) and libretto by Michael Korie (The Grapes of Wrath, Harvey Milk), direction and choreography by Richard Stafford, and James Lowe conducting. “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis not only continues New York City Opera’s mission to produce new and important works by American composers, it will also continue NYCO’s tradition of showcasing outstanding talent,” NYCO general director Michael Capasso said in a statement. “I am very excited about our cast, which includes many young and emerging artists in leading roles alongside established NYCO stalwarts.” Rachel Blaustein and Brian James Myer star as Micól and Alberto Finzi-Contini, respectively, with Grammy winner Mary Phillips as Mama, Franco Pomponi as Papà, and Anthony Ciaramitaro as Giorgio; the sets are by John Farrell, with costumes by Ildiko Debreczeni and lighting by Susan Roth.

Ildiko Debreczeni designed the costumes for world premiere opera

“This important new work illuminates an important part of Italian Jewish history, and sadly, its themes of discrimination and anti-Semitism still resonate in our world today,” NYTF artistic director Zalmen Mlotek added. [Ed. note: The run has been pushed back a week because of the current omicron surge; the above dates have been adjusted.]

COMPANY

Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) is not exactly thrilled about turning thirty-five in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)

COMPANY
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 31, $59 – $299
companymusical.com

Originally slated to open on Broadway on March 22, 2020 — Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday — Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of composer and lyricist Sondheim and book writer George Furth’s beloved Company finally arrives at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, two weeks after Sondheim’s sad, sudden passing just as we all could use, er, a little company. Having never seen the iconic musical before — it debuted on Broadway in 1970 and was revived in 1995 and 2006 — I cannot compare it to any of those editions or focus on the well-publicized changes to this new version, primarily involving several gender switches, most importantly to the main character, who has gone from Bobby the man to Bobbie the woman. But what I can report is that Elliott’s inventive adaptation has a fine first act and an utterly spectacular second.

Bobbie, played with a nagging trepidation by Katrina Lenk, is turning thirty-five and none too happy about it. After receiving a flurry of birthday messages, she says, “How many times do you get to be thirty-five? Eleven? Okay, come on. Say it and get it over with. It’s embarrassing. Quick. I can’t stand it.”

Harry (Christopher Sieber) and Sarah (Jennifer Simard) battle as Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) and Joanne (Patti LuPone) look on in Sondheim-Furth revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Bobbie is tired of being the third wheel. She puts a mylar “35” balloon on her wall and it ticks like a biological clock. Her married and engaged friends, some with kids, attempt to entertain her but they have their own lives away from her. She is spending more and more time with bottles of Maker’s Mark to try to make her forget her loneliness. She’s attracted to a dimwitted flight attendant, Andy (Claybourne Elder), who doesn’t exactly fulfill her needs.

She visits with Sarah (Jennifer Simard) and Harry (Christopher Sieber), who get into a riotous jiu-jitsu battle; Susan (Rashidra Scott) and Peter (Greg Hildreth), who, on their terrace, announce they’re getting divorced; Jenny (Nikki Renée Daniels) and David (Christopher Fitzgerald), who get high and discuss Bobbie’s possible fear of being hitched (“It’s not like I’m avoiding marriage. It’s avoiding me, if anything. I’m ready,” she insists); Jamie (Matt Doyle) and Paul (Etai Benson), who are getting married but Jamie is suddenly having doubts; her former lover Theo (Manu Narayan), who has made the kind of important decision Bobbie is unable to; her friend P.J. (Bobby Conte Thornton), who is in love with New York itself; and the older Joanne (Patti LuPone) and her third husband, Larry (Terence Archie), who party at a nightclub. “The phone is a phenomenon. Really. The best way for two people to be connected and detached at the same time,” Bobbie says. Joanne responds, “Second only to marriage.”

The story goes back and forth in time — the script explains, “The narrative is conveyed in a stream of consciousness technique and time moves both backwards and forwards, encompassing the past, present and future” — as Bobbie contemplates the state of her existence as she turns thirty-five, alone in the big city. “One’s impossible, two is dreary, / Three is company, safe and cheery,” she tries to convince herself. “Here is the church, / Here is the steeple, / Open the doors and / See all the crazy, married people!”

Friends gather to celebrate Bobbie’s (Katrina Lenk) birthday in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Two-time Tony winner Elliott (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Angels in America) has reconceptualized Company in ways that go beyond mere gender switching and diverse casting; this Company emphasizes individuality, confinement, isolation, and fear through magnificent staging constructed around Bunny Christie’s ingenious set; much of the action takes place in and around claustrophobic rectangular spaces framed by fluorescent lights. (The lighting is by Neil Austin.) Bobbie, wearing a sensational sexy red pantsuit (Christie also designed the costumes), is trapped physically and psychologically in each scenario, from a tiny room in her apartment to the club to a street where every door is numbered “35.” Turning thirty-five and still being single is a nightmare that follows her wherever she goes.

Bobbie’s friends represent parts of herself as well as a potential companion. “Someone is waiting, / Sweet as David, / Funny and charming as Peter. Larry . . . / Someone is waiting, / Cute as Jamie, / Sassy as Harry / And tender as Paul,” she sings in “Being Alive,” adding, “Did I know him? Have I waited too long? / Maybe so, but maybe so has he.”

As portrayed by Tony winner Lenk (The Band’s Visit, Indecent), Bobbie is not after our sympathy or even our compassionate understanding; no mere old maid, she serves as a reminder of the uncertainty and isolation we all experience, whether coupled or not, regardless of how happy we might be. The scene in which Bobbie, in bed with Andy, sees one possible outcome of her life unfold before her is horrifyingly funny, whether you live alone or are married with kids; it’s a tour de force for both Elliott and the ensemble.

Joanne (Patti LuPone) has a bit of important advice for Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) in Broadway revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Two-time Tony winner LuPone (Evita, Gypsy) brings the house down just by saying, “I’d like to propose a toast,” prior to singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” The signature role of Joanne has previously been performed by Elaine Stritch, Debra Monk, Sheila Gish, Lynn Redgrave, and Barbara Walsh, while the roll call of male Bobbys includes Dean Jones, George Chakiris, Larry Kert, Boyd Gaines, Adrian Lester, Raúl Esparza, and Neil Patrick Harris.) The rest of the cast is exemplary as well, with shout-outs to Simard’s brownie-desiring Sarah, two-time Tony nominee Fitzgerald’s puppy-dog-eyed David, and Doyle’s breathlessly fast-paced rendition of “Getting Married Today.”

Liam Steel’s choreography is fun, as are illusions by Chris Fisher. One oddity is that characters often enter and exit the stage through the aisles, which are also frequented by theater staffers holding signs telling the audience to keep their masks on, momentarily diverting our attention while also reminding us of the situation we’re still in.

David Cullen’s orchestrations honor Sondheim’s complex melodies, performed by a fourteen-piece band conducted by Joel Fram that hovers above the stage. The second act explodes with an electrifying “Side by Side by Side” and never lets up through Bobbie’s closing soliloquy, “Being Alive,” an able metaphor for what we all need right now. Winner of three Olivier Awards — for Set Design (Christie), Supporting Actress in a Musical (LuPone), and Musical Revival — Company is more than just grand company in these troubled times, when we can all benefit from being together once again.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS: THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Carrie Mae Weems’s “The Shape of Things” continues at the armory through December 31 (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography/Park Avenue Armory)

THE SHAPE OF THINGS
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 31, $18
www.armoryonpark.org
carriemaeweems.net

“How do we measure a life?” Carrie Mae Weems asks in her multichannel installation Cyclorama — Conditions, a Video in 7 Parts, the centerpiece of her Park Ave. Armory presentation “The Shape of Things.” Over footage of several women and one man, she asks, “Do we measure it by the forgotten / or by the remembered / by all the near misses and the exhaustion / or by the ability to endure / how / do we measure it by race / by class / by gender / by beauty / and by your lover’s love or your hater’s hate / or by pushing against the wind / against the tide / against family / against tradition / how / or do we measure it by the suffering of our friends and our enemies alike / or by the beginning / or by the end / by the way we confront life / or by the way we confront death?”

“The Shape of Things” is a masterful multidisciplinary examination of where we are today as a nation as we face systemic racism, health and income inequality, police brutality, and the perpetuation of the Big Lie. Through the seven sections of Cyclorama, organized in a large circle of screens, Weems mixes archival footage with new material shot in Syracuse, the Flea Theater, and the Watermill Center of such performers as Nona Hendryx, okwui okpokwasili, Vinson Fraley, Francesca Harper, Carl Hancock Rux, Basil Twist, and dozens of others, depicting modern times as a dangerous circus where Black and brown bodies are in constant threat. The final text is adapted from a commencement address Weems, a MacArthur Fellow, gave to the graduating class of SVA in May 2016 at Radio City Music Hall.

In front of Cyclorama is Seat or Stand and Speak, where attendees can sit in a chair or stand on a box and shout into megaphones. All Blue — A Contemplative Site is a dark space with a few steps leading to a door that opens to the moon and stars, a place of reflection, meditation, and hope. Across the way is Lincoln, Lonnie and Me, a 2012-14 work about presence and absence that is like a “Pepper’s Ghost” carnival sideshow with minstrel elements. Visitors enter an enclosed area bathed in red and stand behind a velvet rope, watching holographic-like projections of ghostly characters as we hear Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”; Weems reads a revised version of the Gettysburg Address; visual artist and activist Lonnie Graham speaks on social change; excerpts from Weems’s 2008 video Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment play, including a reenactment of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; and Weems dresses up as a Playboy bunny to Urge Overkill’s cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.”

The long side gallery features a row of several dioramas paying tribute to victims of racism, from It’s Over — A Diorama, consisting of a swan, candles, balloons, a globe, a fallen column, and photographs, to framed portraits from Weems’s “Missing Links” series from The Louisiana Project, in which she dresses up as various animals in suits, with such titles as “Happiness” and “Despair,” to The Weight, a diorama with three pink helium globes rising out of sculptures of African women’s heads, balancing the tenuous world. Also be on the lookout for a painting of Minerva, shown as a Black goddess, hanging in the hall among the portraits of white military heroes.

From December 9 to 11, dozens of performers activated the space, with live music and dance, film screenings, and panel discussions. But you don’t need others to help you activate the space for yourself as Weems places us firmly in the past, present, and future of an America that is getting more and more difficult to measure every day.

CANDACE BUSHNELL: IS THERE STILL SEX IN THE CITY?

Candace Bushnell holds nothing back in charming journey through her life and career (photo by Joan Marcus)

IS THERE STILL SEX IN THE CITY?
Daryl Roth Theatre
101 East Fifteenth St. at Union Square
Tuesday – Sunday through February 6, $69 [ed. note: show closed December 19 due to Covid]
istherestillsexinthecity.com
www.darylroththeatre.com

“Good news only” is how Candace Bushnell always answers the phone in her one-woman show, Is There Still Sex in the City? Good news only it will be.

The ninety-minute play is an endearing, self-aware production in which Bushnell, now sixty-three, shares intimate details of her life and career, centering around the gargantuan success she has had with the creation of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), the fictional characters on the HBO smash Sex and the City, based on her series of columns and 1996 book of the same name. The play might be timed to capitalize on the return of Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda in the brand-new follow-up, And Just Like That . . . ,” but Is There Still Sex in the City? stands on its own as an entertaining, appropriately gossipy public confessional from a writer who changed the way the country looked at the lifestyles of women of all ages, sexual and otherwise.

Bushnell, who prefers to be known as Candi (“with a little circle where the dot goes”), leads us from her childhood in Connecticut, where her father pitied her because she was flat-chested — “I’m afraid no man is ever going to love you,” he warns — to her freshman-year flight to New York City when she was nineteen, determined to abandon college and become a writer and win the Pulitzer Prize.

At first she relates, “This New York is not my boyfriend. Pimps stalk Penn Station looking for runaways. Heroin addicts are nodding out on the streets. There’s three card monte, pickpockets, boomboxes, and Hare Krishna parades. It’s dirty. There’s no pooper scooper law, and there’s dog poop everywhere.” But it isn’t long before she is hanging out with the rich and famous, partying at Studio 54, jetting off to Europe, reveling in the abundant sex and drugs — and eventually telling everybody about it, first as Stripe Savage, writing such pieces as “How to Act in a Disco,” then under her real name in a must-read column for the New York Observer.

Candace Bushnell answers the question Is There Still Sex in the City? in one-woman show (photo by Joan Marcus)

“This New York is my boyfriend,” she says later. “Who needs a man when Manhattan itself is abuzz? Maybe it’s the cosmos. Maybe it’s the cocaine.” Her bestselling book, Sex and the City, becomes a hot HBO show, but that doesn’t necessarily result in personal fulfillment as her relationships with Melrose Place creator Darren Star, a much older famous writer, the unnamed actual Mr. Big, and others ultimately fizzle. But she learns to take matters into her own hands as she shares what she is doing today, which is a long jump from where she thought she would be — while still working toward that Pulitzer.

Directed by choreographer Lorin Lotarro (A Taste of Things to Come) with a spicy sweet sense of humor, Is There Still Sex in the City? answers many of the questions people have about Bushnell and her life. It features popular period songs by Sheryl Crow, Cyndi Lauper, Donna Summer, MC Hammer, and Right Said Fred, a parade of fantastic outfits courtesy of costume designer Lisa Zinni, an adorable set by Anna Louizos with an elegant royal couch, a monitor with projections (old photos, TV clips, animation) by Caite Hevner, and stacks of cubes with books, knickknacks, and shoes — lots and lots of shoes, all of which, Bushnell admits, are from her own closet — colorfully lit by Travis McHale.

Bushnell occasionally plays “Real or Not Real,” asking the audience to call out their responses to such questions as “Did I sleep with the hot Calvin Klein underwear model from episode 2?” She doesn’t mind receiving random hoots and hollers and shouts of support, particularly as she reveals her ten life lessons, the first of which is: “I’m a feminist. A mini Gloria Steinem. Have been ever since kindergarten, where I discovered women could only have four jobs: nurse, teacher, secretary, or librarian.”

Bushnell is so warm and gracious that you will forgive a missed line reading here and there, and the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square is far too big for such an intimate production. But Is There Still Sex in the City? is a fab treat, a funny and candid New York story that everyone can relate to in one way or another, whether you are a fan of Sex and the City or have never watched or read it. And before or after the show, you can enjoy a cosmo in the downstairs Candi Bar. Like Bushnell says, “Good news only!”

[ed. note: The good news only went so far, as the show had to close on December 19 after Bushnell contracted Covid-19. The plan is for it to eventually return to New York City when the tour gets up and running again.]

THE FIFTH SEASON

Fifth Ave. celebrates the season with holiday sculptures on midtown sidewalks (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Men Singing Carols
What: Free performance for National Caroling Day
Where: The Pulitzer Fountain, 764 Central Park South, across from the Plaza Hotel at Fifth Ave.
When: Monday, December 20, free, 4:00
Why: As part of the Fifth Avenue Association’s “Fifth Season” celebration, Men Singing Carols will perform for free in front of the Pulitzer Fountain by the Plaza Hotel at 4:00 on National Caroling Day, Monday, December 20.

Fifth Ave. sculptures accept donations for City Harvest (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Queens-based a cappella group, founded in 2013 by husband and wife Greg Kefalas and Jen Arvay Kefalas along with Doug Cordes, features bass Kefalas, tenor II Jeffrey Funaro, tenor II Nick Prior, bass Patrick Martini, and bass Seth Bleecker, singing jazz-inflected holiday favorites, nonstandards, and mashups.

A little girl prepares to go for a ride on Fifth Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The fountain, designed by Thomas Hastings in 1916 and topped by Karl Bitter’s Pomona, has been transformed into a winter oasis, featuring five thousand feet of lighting, thirty-two animal sculptures handcrafted in Brooklyn from Harlequin Designs, two dozen icebergs, and more, with polar bears, penguins, a snow monkey, a snow leopard, and other animals moving around to music by Paul Brill.

A dreidel spins along Fifth Ave. as part of holiday display (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Fifth Season” continues on Fifth Ave. with lit-up sculptures of toys, a Santa mailbox, a dreidel, a hot-air balloon, and a truck shuttling presents through which visitors are encourage to make donations to City Harvest.