live performance

DEMONS, DOGS, AND DOSTOEVSKY: THE MUTT AT IATI THEATER

Kolya Krasotkin (Benjamin Nowak) and Zhutchka the dog (Alina Mihailevschi) fight for survival in The Mutt

THE MUTT
IATI Theater
64 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Through September 21, $54.65
themuttplay.com

As the audience enters the tiny, downstairs black box space of the IATI Theater on East Fourth St. to see Anoushka Nesterova’s The Mutt, there is already a character there, a woman on all fours, panting lightly but desperately. Ticket holders fill in two perpendicular rows on two sides, looking through the program, talking to their friends, or taking photos of the human-dog, behind whom is an unpainted wooden construction that is part of a barn loft. The play begins with a video, projected on a horizontal white cloth in the loft, of snow and train tracks. In voiceover, a man says, “Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God.” The parable, which also refers to Paradise, ends, “And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.”

The Mutt is an intimate retelling of “The Boys,” Book X of Fedor Dostoevsky’s 1880 Russian epic The Brothers Karamazov, a sprawling philosophical novel about faith, morality, and the human condition. It follows the exceedingly bright and cynical thirteen-year-old Kolya Krasotkin (Benjamin Nowak); his younger apostle, Smurov (Tommy Dougherty); the older, aristocratic Alyosha Karamazov (Fabio Bernardis), also known as Alexei, named after Dostoevsky’s son, who died at the age of three of epilepsy in 1878; and Zhutchka (Alina Mihailevschi or Nesterova), the dog, who is supposed to be dead, brutally killed by the ailing schoolboy Ilyusha Snegirev (Jaden Cavalleri) and renamed Perezvon. Ilyusha’s father, Captain Snegirev (Marcus Troy or Sasha Litovchenko), has been recently humiliated by one of Alyosha’s brothers and wants to leave town with his son, but they can’t afford to go.

An early exchange establishes some of the background, although many of the plot details are kept purposely vague and indeterminate:

Krasotkin: They won’t whip you for being with me?
Smurow: Lord, no, they never whip me! And you’ve got Perezvon with you?
Krasotkin: Yes, Perezvon.
Smurow: You’re taking her, too?
Krasotkin: Yes, him too.
Smurow: Ah! if it were only Zhutchka!
Krasotkin: Impossible. Zhutchka does not exist. Zhutchka has vanished in the darkness of the unknown.
Smurow: Ah! couldn’t we do this? You see, Ilusha says that Zhutchka was a shaggy, grayish, smoky-looking dog like Perezvon. Couldn’t you tell him this is Zhutchka, and he might believe you?
Krasotkin: Boy, shun a lie, that’s one thing; even for a good cause — that’s another. Above all, I hope you’ve not told them anything about my coming.
Smurow: Heaven forbid! I know what I am about. But you won’t comfort him with Perezvon. You know his father, the captain, told us that he was going to bring him a mastiff pup today. A real one, with a black nose. He thinks that would comfort Ilyusha, but I doubt it.
Krasotkin: And how is Ilyusha?
Smurow: Ah, he is bad, very bad! He is quite conscious, but his breathing! His breathing’s gone wrong. The other day he asked to be walked around the room, they put his boots on, he tried to walk, but he couldn’t stand. “Ah, I told you before, Papa,” he said, “that those boots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.” He fancied it was his boots that made him stagger. He won’t live another week. The doctor will come to them.
Krasotkin: Swindlers.
Smurow: Who are swindlers?
Krasotkin: Doctors, and all medical scum, generally speaking, and, naturally, in particular as well. I reject medicine. A useless institution. I mean to go into all that. But what’s that sentimentality you’ve got up there? The whole class seems to be there every day.
Smurow: Not the whole class. There’s nothing in that.
Krasotkin: What I don’t understand in all this is the part that Alexei Karamazov is taking in it. He has too much time to spend on sentimentality with boys.
Smurow: There’s no sentimentality about it. You are going yourself now to make it up with Ilyusha.
Krasotkin: Make it up with him? What an absurd expression! But I allow no one to analyze my actions.
Smurow: And how pleased Ilyusha will be to see you! He has no idea that you are coming. Why was it, why was it you wouldn’t come all this time?
Krasotkin: My dear boy, that’s my business, not yours. I am going of myself because I choose to, but you’ve all been hauled there by Karamazov — there’s a difference, you know. And how do you know? I may not be going to make it up at all. It’s a stupid expression.

Motives are questioned, the existence of a Supreme Being is debated, money is literally thrown around, socialism is defined, and a puppet show reaches to the heart of things as the characters get caught up in intellectual battles and physical altercations.

“What good is faith by force?” Zhutchka asks Krasotkin, who replies, “Never for one minute have I taken you for reality. You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom.”

Presented by Streetcar Productions and Art Against Humanity, The Mutt is a kind of mutt itself, a mixed-breed of dance, theater, performance art, and music, poetically integrated by directors Nesterova and Elena Che and choreographer Gisela Quinteros, incorporating experimental movement with white ropes that bind and release the guilty and the innocent on Alyona Sotnikova’s minimalist set as the Jazz Pilgrim’s ominous score drones in the background. The video projections of a cold, lonely Russian winter are by Anastasia Slepchenkova, a blast of light in the dark.

The strong cast gives depth to the characters and add a modern feel to the proceedings, with Zhutchka nearly always front and center, stuck between fantasy and reality, life and death, being and nothingness.

“There was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who stated that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. And man has, indeed, invented God. And the strange thing, the wonder would not be that God really exists, the wonder is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man,” the narrator says over a second-act video. “As for me, I long ago decided not to think about whether man created God or God created man. And I won’t go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject, and not only with the boys but with their professors too, since Russian professors today are quite often the same Russian boys. Yet, what must be noted above all else in relation to God is this: Does He exist, or does He not?”

That question has been asked through the ages, but don’t expect to find the answer in The Mutt, or in the eight-hundred-page novel, the four-hour 1969 Russian film, the seven-hour 2009 miniseries, or the forty-two-hour audiobook.

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

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH: THE WILD DUCK FLAPS ITS WINGS IN BROOKLYN

A family faces some hard truths in stellar revival of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

THE WILD DUCK
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 28, $102-$132
www.tfana.org

“Men are the most peculiar creatures,” Gina (Melanie Field) says near the middle of Simon Godwin’s adaptation of David Eldridge’s 2005 translation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center.

That’s not the half of it.

Over the last fourteen years, Henrik Ibsen’s plays have been experiencing a renaissance, with productions of Ghosts at Lincoln Center, An Enemy of the People on Broadway and at Park Ave. Armory, The Master Builder and John Gabriel Borkman at BAM, and A Doll’s House and Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 on Broadway, along with Charles Busch’s Ibsen’s Ghost in midtown and Will Eno’s Peer Gynt reimagining, Gnit, at the Polonsky. It’s been a while since New York City has seen a major revival of Hedda Gabler and even longer of The Wild Duck, which is at last back in this exquisite rendering.

A dual presentation from Theatre for a New Audience and Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC), The Wild Duck is a complex tale of parents and children, money and power, truth-telling, and the ability to see what’s happening right in front of you. The story takes place in 1880s Norway, where wealthy mill owner Håkon Werle (Robert Stanton) is having a dinner party in honor of his son, Gregers (Alexander Hurt), who apparently would rather be anywhere else. Gregers has invited his old friend Hjalmar Ekdal (Nick Westrate), whom he has not seen in sixteen years; Hjalmar, who is not in the same class as the other guests, has reluctantly shown up and is embarrassed when his bedraggled father, Old Ekdal (David Patrick Kelly), a onetime war hero and partner of Håkon’s who spent several years in prison, walks through the party, muttering to himself, and accepts a bottle from Miss Pettersen (Katie Broad), the housekeeper.

Gregers and Hjalmar have a long conversation that leads to Gregers confronting his father, accusing Håkon of having had an affair and an ulterior motive in helping Hjalmar and his family. Håkon asks Gregers to become his partner, explaining, “I’m not as fit for work as I used to be. My eyes aren’t as good.” Gregers thinks his father, who is preparing to marry his current housekeeper, Mrs. Sørby (Mahira Kakkar), is up to something. “I know how you’re using me,” Gregers says. An angry Håkon replies, “I don’t think there’s a man in this world you could detest as much as you detest me.” A frightfully earnest Gregers retorts, “I’ve observed you too closely and for too long, Father.”

The narrative then switches to the Ekdals’ dusty, rustic studio, where Hjalmar and his wife, Gina, live with their bright, inquisitive fifteen-year-old daughter, Hedvig (Maaike Laanstra-Corn), and her grandfather, Old Ekdal, who was a well-regarded hunter. The old man now resigns himself to shooting animals in their loft, which is populated by birds, rabbits, chickens, and a wild duck that was winged by Håkon, was rescued in the sea by Håkon’s dog, and is now cared for by Hedvig, an avid reader who is losing her eyesight. (The impressive sets are by Andrew Boyce.) Hjalmar believes he will be able to lift up his family with an invention he is working on that will make them rich. For additional income, they have two boarders, Dr. Relling (Matthew Saldívar) and the unseen theologian Mr. Molvik. Gregers arrives to inquire if he can rent a vacant room; despite Gina’s misgivings, he moves in and almost immediately inserts himself into situations that drive wedges between just about everyone. Oh, and then there’s the Chekhovian gun. . . .

Hjalmar Ekdal (Nick Westrate) and his daughter, Hedvig (Maaike Laanstra-Corn), share a happy moment in The Wild Duck at TFANA’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

The Wild Duck centers on the relationships between fathers and children: Håkon and Gregers, Old Ekdal and Hjalmar, and Hjalmar and Hedvig. Håkon blames Gregers’s distaste for him on his late wife; Hjalmar tells Gregers that he wants to save his aging, ailing father. And Hjalmar reevaluates his love for Hedvig after a secret is revealed.

It’s also focused on the concept of truth, particularly as it applies to Gregers, who believes in getting everything out into the open, no matter how much it might harm certain people. But he is not a master manipulator or self-righteous believer as much as he might be mad. “Damn it, can’t you see the man’s insane — He’s disturbed!” Dr. Relling shouts at one point. In addition, sight plays a major role, literally and figuratively, as some characters are losing their eyesight and others refuse to see the truth that’s staring them in the face.

Eldridge (Festen, Under the Blue Sky) and STC artistic director Godwin (Timon of Athens, Man and Superman) get right to the heart of Ibsen’s play with an exquisite rendering that grabs you and never lets go. It’s so on target, so alive and bursting with energy and intrigue, that you’ll wonder why you’ve never seen it before.

Westrate (Bernhardt/Hamlet, Casa Valentina) is a powder keg as Hjalmar, a tortured soul with pipe dreams who loves his family but seems powerless to take action; as a photographer, he takes pictures of others but never looks at himself. Field (The Phantom of the Opera, Uncle Vanya) is touching as Gina, a woman who is determined to move forward, intent on keeping the past behind her. Rising star Laanstra-Corn (Grief Camp, Homofermenters) steals every scene she’s in as Hedvig, an inelegant teenager who worships her father. Kelly (An Enemy of the People, Into the Woods) is affecting as Old Ekdal, a once proud man who has long lost his grip on reality. (He also wears a dazzling multi-patched coat; the fine period costumes are by Heather Freedman.) And Stanton (The Killer, Ink) is steely as the unyielding Håkon, who is unable to connect with his son.

Hurt (Continuity, Love, Love, Love) is an enigma as Gregers, a complex character whose motives are not always clear. The night I went, it was difficult to hear him; none of the actors use microphones, which is a special treat, but Hurt delivered his lines at a significantly lower decibel level. His body movement was also rather stiff and his eyes often distant, reminiscent of Jeremy Strong’s performance as Dr. Stockmann in Amy Herzog and Sam Gold’s recent adaptation of An Enemy of the People. Although the interpretation was generally successful, it called too much attention to itself in an otherwise stellar and memorable production.

And as far as the duck goes, it’s an extraordinarily salient metaphor not just for all the characters in the play but for the audience as well, a potent reminder of who we are, what we’ve done, and where we’re going.

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

BLOOD AND ORANGES: TEENAGE GRIEF AND TRAUMA FROM ET ALIA

Three teenage girls face threats of violence in Abigail Duclos’s Blood Orange (photo by Gabriela Amerth)

BLOOD ORANGE
The Jeffrey & Paula Gural Theatre, A.R.T./New York
502 West 53rd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Thursday – Monday through September 27, $33.85-$60.54
www.etaliatheater.com
www.art-newyork.org

Abigail Duclos’s Blood Orange is a creepy foray into grief and loneliness in a world devoid of caring adults, where teenage girls turn to roadkill for solace and escape as they face the trials and tribulations of adolescence.

Presented at the Jeffrey & Paula Gural Theatre at A.R.T./New York by the all-female Et Alia company, the show takes place in the mid-2000s in a small town outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Faye’s (Luísa Galatti or Maria Müller) father has just died a bloody death, and her stepmother, Mariah (Doreen Oliver), spends almost all her time in bed, leaving Faye to fend for herself.

Faye is regularly visited by her longtime bestie, Georgia (Müller or Giorgia Valenti), and her new friend, Eden (Ana Moioli); Faye and Georgia are sixteen, Eden fifteen. Sex and violence are on the girls’ minds as they navigate through trauma and tragedy and the normal fears and desires of high school. Faye asks Eden and Georgia to punch her over and over again in order to cause bruises and to make her throw up so maybe her stepmother will notice her and help her through the loss of her father; Eden reluctantly obliges, but Georgia refuses.

Faye has recently found a dead animal in the road and keeps it in a paper bag in the refrigerator; she names it Agnivis and starts to build a ritualistic religion around it. Eden feels that same power emanating from the creature, but Georgia is disgusted by it, seeing it only as a rotting corpse and wondering whether Faye is okay.

When Georgia is not there, Faye and Eden pray to Agnavis — the name appears to be made up, but there is a Pinterest page called “Agnavis Inspiration” that consists of about a dozen images of strange rabbits, deer, and lambs. Faye wants Agnavis to bring her father back from the dead, while Eden asks Agnavis to get rid of her dad so he can stop hurting her and her mother.

As Faye and Eden grow closer, Georgia becomes jealous, asserting that she is having sex with her older boyfriend while obsessing over whether Eden wants to sleep with Faye.

When Faye shows up unexpectedly at Eden’s house, she notices that Eden has a stuffed animal on her bed and grabs it; observing how limp it is, she asks Eden what happened to it. “My dad got. Angry. At me. He said I was being too childish. Um. And yeah,” she says. “I was always kinda worried that he’d do the same to me.”

As the three girls learn more about one another, things come to a head in a shocking finale.

Intimate moments add to the dark mystery behind Et Alia Theater world premiere (photo by Gabriela Amerth)

The threat of violence underlies much of Blood Orange. At various times, Faye tells Eden that she will kill her with a kitchen knife or strangle her, then says Eden should shoot her abusive father. Georgia asks Faye if she has “murder-suicided” her stepmother yet. When Eden is late one day, Georgia surmises that “maybe she got hit by a car. Or kidnapped by some weirdo and stored in his apocalypse bunker.”

The number twenty-one, associated with the age of adulthood in many countries, is prevalent throughout the play. The opening scene takes place on the twenty-first day after Faye found Agnavis, it’s been twenty-one days since Mariah has come downstairs, and Georgia’s boyfriend is twenty-one.

Blood is central to the narrative, from specks of her father’s blood that Faye thinks she can still see on the floor and Faye going to third base with Devin Davis while she was on her period to the “sticky sweet” blood that was on Agavnis when Faye first found her and the tomato soup Faye heats up for Mariah.

In addition, orange is a leitmotif, from the fruit that Agnavis magically delivers out of thin air to the flavor of soda Devin prefers to a reference to Wendy Cope’s poem “The Orange,” which concludes with the line “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Oranges are also associated with queer culture; for example, many Jewish households now add an orange on their seder plate during Passover in recognition of gays and lesbians.

The audience sits on opposite sides of Ningning Yang’s narrow, horizontal set, which has a futon and ottoman at one end and a door and tiny kitchen at the other, with a small refrigerator and a hotplate. The casual costumes are by Whitney Fabre; the characters are often barefoot, which make for intimate moments like when Faye and Georgia intermingle their feet on the ottoman. Laura Pereira’s sound is highlighted by offstage creaking signaling that Mariah — or someone/something else — might be moving around, and Hayley Garcia Parnell’s lighting features a ceiling light that flickers whenever the girls take out Agnavis.

Director Vernice Miller maintains an eerie pace — aside from one awkward scene involving Mariah and the overuse of the word “beautiful,” which is said more than a dozen times — where just about anything can happen, while associate director Amelia Estrada adds ghostly choreography. At the matinee I saw, Galatti was a superb Faye, a teenager searching for answers but getting lost in obsession; Müller was dangerously sexy as Georgia, while Moioli mixed a wide-eyed innocence with more than a tinge of mystery as Eden — whose name, of course, evokes the biblical garden where Eve took a bite of an apple, which altered the fate of humankind, and particularly women.

The mission of Et Alia, which has previously staged such works as Hasnain Shaikh’s Running in Place at Dixon Place, Müller’s On How to Be a Monster at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò and the Tank, None of the Above at Rattlestick’s Global Forms Theater Festival, and This Is Me Eating___ at the Alchemical Studios, is to “create art for the other, by the other, and about the other.” The dark, supernatural Blood Orange fits that bill.

In a program note, Duclos writes, “Tonight, I hope that you can think about loved ones you’ve lost. Maybe the next time they appear in the corner of your eye, you can give them a small smile or do a little dance.”

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

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

“I AM MUSIC”: ANTHONY ROTH COSTANZO CHANNELS MARIA CALLAS IN GALAS

Anthony Roth Costanzo is sensational as a fictionalized version of Maria Callas in Galas at Little Island

GALAS: A MODERN TRAGEDY
The Amph at Little Island
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
September 6-28, $10 standing room, $25 seats, 8:30
littleisland.org

The first half of Eric Ting’s exciting version of Charles Ludlam’s rarely revived 1983 downtown hit, Galas: A Modern Tragedy, is everything you want it to be: hilariously campy, with fabulous singing, outrageous staging, and delicious costumes. The second half veers far off course until righting itself for a thrilling finale.

Ludlam, who founded the highly influential Ridiculous Theater Company in 1967, wrote, directed, and starred in the original, portraying the title character, Maria Magdalena Galas, an opera diva based on American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas. Today, the use of the word “tragedy” in the subtitle is twofold: the revered Callas died in 1977 at the age of fifty-three, while the beloved Ludlam passed away in 1987 when he was just forty-four, of AIDS.

Despite the inspired lunacy of the acting and plot, Galas is surprisingly faithful to Callas’s life and career. The show begins at the Verona train station, where successful brick industrialist Giovanni Baptista Mercanteggini (Carmelita Tropicana) is waiting to pick up Galas (Anthony Roth Costanzo), who is scheduled to perform the lead role in Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at the Arena di Verona. They meet at a café, where they have a delightful and meaningful exchange.

Galas: You are an opera lover?
Mercanteggini: Yes, I’m a real aficionado. Now there’s something we have in common, eh?
Galas: What’s that?
Mercanteggini: We are both music lovers.
Galas: I am not a music lover. I am a musician.
Mercanteggini: But surely you love music.
Galas: I am a musician. And because I am a singer I am a musical instrument. A music lover, no. I am music.
Mercanteggini: But you don’t love it? Not even a little bit?
Galas: I wouldn’t dare. Art is so great it frightens me sometimes.

Carmelita Tropicana and Anthony Roth Costanzo make a fine comic duo in Galas

Mercanteggini offers her a deal: He will serve as her manager and benefactor for one year; she agrees, moving into his home, where she encounters his brusque housekeeper, Bruna Lina Rasta (Mary Testa), a former soprano based on Lina Bruna Rasa, who had a meltdown onstage and, because of mental illness, stopped singing.

Soon Galas and Mercanteggini are married, and she experiences success on tour but it’s not enough; she desperately wants to become a company member of La Scala. Fritalini (Samora la Perdida) and Ghingheri (Austin Durant) of La Scala offer her a onetime slot as a guest-artist replacement for the ill Baldini to sing La Gioconda, which she reluctantly does after some fabulous prima donna fits of pique. Later, after a tough negotiation, Galas does become a company member, agreeing to appear in I Vespri Siciliani, Norma, and Don Carlo on the condition that she sing La Traviata as well, an occasion for even more entertaining diva displays.

While the feverish Italian press offers ever-more outré explanations for her significant weight loss, which made her a svelte femme fatale, Galas has a contentious audience with Pope Sixtus VII (la Perdida), with whom she argues about the value of Wagner’s operas, and later has to cut short her performance of Norma at La Scala because she has lost control of her voice.

Giving up singing, she heads out with Mercanteggini and Bruna on a yacht owned by wealthy womanizer Aristotle Plato Socrates Odysseus (Caleb Eberhardt), who is traveling with his wife, Athina (Erin Markey); his former mistress, Hüre von Hoyden (Patricia Black); and gossip columnist Ilka Winterhalter (la Perdida); and takes an instant liking to Galas, not hiding his desire. (After ten years of marriage, Callas left Mercanteggini for Aristotle Onassis.) A final conversation between Galas and Bruna reveals a desperate Maria trying to hold on to something, anything.

Tony and Obie winner Mimi Lien’s set features a long, movable catwalk, some furniture, and a tall Greek column with the word Galas at the top in neon lights that change color. Jackson Wiederhoeft’s costumes for Galas are spectacular, from an elegant red gown to a tight-fitting business dress. The other costumes, by Hahnji Jang, are fun and frolicsome, especially the getups for the pope. Jiyoun Chang’s lighting and Tei Blow’s sound work well in the outdoor setting. Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography is way too over the top during the yacht scene.

Rare revival of Charles Ludlam’s Galas continues through September 28

Countertenor Costanzo, who has appeared in lead roles for the Metropolitan Opera, the English National Opera, the Teatro Real Madrid, and other international companies and is the general director and president of the innovative Opera Philadelphia, has become Little Island’s breakout star; last year he performed all the live singing parts in an almost-solo version of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and he is outstanding here as Galas, wearing fanciful outfits, dishing dirt, and luxuriating in the high life but understanding that it could all go away in the blink of an eye. The role was originally played by Ludlam, then by the late Ludlam’s longtime partner, Everett Quinton, in the first-ever revival in 2019. (Quinton designed the costumes and played Bruna in the 1983 staging.)

Obie winner Testa (On the Town, Oklahoma!) serves as the anchor for the show, balancing pathos with physical comedy and her lovely singing voice. Tropicana (With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit?/Con Que Culo Se Sienta la Cucaracha, Memorias de la Revolucion) is a hoot as the short and stout Mercanteggini, and la Perdida sparkles as the nonbinary pontiff.

Obie-winning director Ting (The Comeuppance, Between Two Knees), who helmed Alina Troyano and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!, guides numerous delightful moments in the first half, particularly with his interpretation of a train arriving at a station and his later use of chandeliers, but the yacht scenes drag on, feeling like a Fellini movie that was never released. And the way the characters say “La Scala” with their tongues sticking out is humorous at first but eventually dries up.

Galas is at its best when Costanzo is singing, whether an aria from Carmen, “Casta Diva” from Norma, or additional selections he made. But even with its troubled center section, it’s a triumphant tribute to a downtown theater legend, an eternal opera diva, and the cost of living for art.

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

THE TIES THAT BIND: THE BROTHERS SIZE AT THE SHED

Oshoosi (Alani iLongwe) shares his dreams with his brother, Ogun (André Holland), in sizzling drama at the Shed (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

THE BROTHERS SIZE
The Shed’s Griffin Theater
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 28, $25-$129
646-455-3494
theshed.org

Halfway through the scintillating revival of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size at the Shed, Ogun Size (André Holland) says to his younger brother, Oshoosi (Alani iLongwe), “He call me Size,” referring to the local sheriff. Oshoosi replies, “Call me Size, too.” Ogun adds, “Like we twins.” Oshoosi responds, “Or the same person.”

Based on Yoruba myth, the play is set in San Pere, Louisiana, near the Bayou, in the distant present, about a pair of very different siblings who deeply care for each other but are on decidedly separate paths: Ogun, named after the god of metal and fire, is a practical, hardworking man who owns an auto repair shop, specializing in bringing damaged cars back to life. Oshoosi, the divine spirit of hunting and contemplation, is a dreamer who just finished a two-year prison stint and is hanging around with his fellow parolee, Elegba (Malcolm Mays), the divine messenger and guardian. “We was like brothers,” Elegba says to Oshoosi, referring to how close they grew while behind bars, adding, “Brothers in need.”

Performed in the round, the story begins with Elegba slowly walking the staging area, pouring out white sand in a large, sacred circle that serves as a kind of spiritual and physical boundary; in Yoruba lore, a magic circle could represent healing, communication with the deities, or ritual sacrifice. The three characters sing a Gospel song, “This road is rough . . . / This road is rough and hard —” Accompanying them is percussionist Munir Zakee, who contributes rhythms that date back to the thirteenth-century diaspora.

Ogun, Oshoosi, and Elegba often stand outside the circle when they’re not part of the action, watching the others, then announcing their entrance; in fact, much of the text is told in the third person, switching from dialogue to stage directions without a blink.

Ogun: Ogun Size Enters / Osi! / Calling for his brother / Osi . . . / Oshoosi!
Oshoosi: Waking from his dream! / What man, what?
Ogun: Get up.
Oshoosi: Comin’ in here turning on lights!
Ogun: That’s the sun.
Oshoosi: Kissing his teeth
Ogun: Oshoosi!
Oshoosi: Don’t you get tired of going through this? / Every morning we go through this.
Ogun: Get yo ass up!
Oshoosi: This hard? / Early in the morning you gotta be this hard?
Ogun: Man don’t bring me that!

After two years in prison, Oshoosi resents being told what to do by his brother. Although Ogun has provided him with a job and a place to live, Oshoosi seems ungrateful, more interested in spending his time with Elegba, finding a woman, and getting a car so he can experience more freedom. Ogun doesn’t trust Elegba, who works at a funeral parlor and who has again attracted the attention of the racist sheriff, who is just waiting for Elegba and Oshoosi to make a mistake.

Ogun has good reason to worry.

Elegba (Malcolm Mays), Oshoosi (Alani iLongwe), and Ogun (André Holland) explore family and responsibility in The Brothers Size (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

The Brothers Size debuted in 2005, when McCraney was still in graduate school. The first of his “Brother/Sister Plays,” which continued with 2008’s In the Red and Brown Water and 2015’s Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, this revival, a coproduction between the Shed and the Geffen Playhouse, is a searing exploration of male friendship and family responsibility viewed through the lens of racial injustice and rehabilitation. Without becoming preachy, it unfolds at a beautifully rhythmic and poetic pace, with nary a word out of place, highlighted by several stunning dream/nightmare monologues.

There are no props, no furniture on Suzu Sakai’s bold set; the actors never change out of their gray shirts, dark pants, and white sneakers, evoking prison uniforms; Ogun also wears a black knit hat and Elegba a durag-like bandanna. The stark costumes are by Tony winner Dede Ayite, with sharp sound and interstitial music by Stan Mathabane, softly dramatic lighting by Spencer Doughtie, and occasional choreography by Juel D. Lane inspired by Alvin Ailey.

For the first time, McCraney, who shared an Oscar with director Barry Jenkins for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2016 film Moonlight, is codirecting the play, with Bijan Sheibani (Barber Shop Chronicles, Till the Stars Come Down), and the minimalist production sizzles through all ninety minutes. There’s an excitement each time one of the performers steps over the circle and the plot progresses with a fierce yet touching intimacy.

Mays, a musician, filmmaker, and actor best known for the television series Power Book III: Raising Kanan and Snowfall, imbues Elegba with just the right hint of potential trouble as he inserts himself between the two brothers. iLongwe (Paradise Blue, Antebellum) is gentle and touching as Oshoosi, a young man who wants to turn around his life but has difficulty seeing things through and understanding potential consequences. And Holland (Jitney, Othello), who portrayed Elegba twenty years ago and played the adult Kevin in Moonlight, is electric as Ogun, a proud man who has sacrificed his personal life to help his brother, but while he can fix any car, he’s running out of options with Oshoosi.

The Brothers Size is worthy of an esteemed place in the pantheon of such classic plays about siblings as Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog, Sam Shepard’s True West, and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, a powerful, gripping, timeless tale of freedom and brotherhood.

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

A CIVIL WAR LOVE BOAT REUNION: LADY PATRIOT AT THEATRE ROW

Count Stovall and Chrystee Pharris star as slaves during the Civil War in Lady Patriot (photo by Maria Baranova)

LADY PATRIOT
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 20, $70-$90
www.theatrerow.org

There was an infectious buzz in the air on opening night of the New York premiere of Lady Patriot at Theatre Row. Based on a true story, the play is written and directed by Ted Lange, who portrayed Isaac the bartender on The Love Boat, and features two other actors from that hit show, Fred “Gopher” Grandy and Jill “Vicki Stubing” Whelan. Among those in the close-knit audience of ninety-nine were Tony nominee John Douglas Thompson, The Wire star Frankie Faison, Classical Theatre of Harlem producing artistic director Ty Jones, and Bernie Kopell, best known as Dr. Adam Bricker on The Love Boat, which “promises something for everyone.” And for a while, Lady Patriot keeps that promise as well.

The 150-minute play (with intermission) begins in Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s (Gordon Goodman) White House garden in Richmond, Virginia, in July 1861. The Davises’ neighbor Elizabeth “Lizzie” Van Lew (Jill Whelan) is visiting the president’s pregnant wife, Varina (Josie DiVincenzo), who has a taste for absinthe and a shortage of household help; most of the Davis’s enslaved staff is still journeying to meet them. While Elizabeth tends to the herbs, Varina complains — using the N-word over and over — so Elizabeth offers to lend her Mary Bowser (Chrystee Pharris), an experienced midwife. Mary will work hand in hand with the Davises’ longtime slave, Old Robert Brown (Count Stovall), so trusted by Jefferson that the two share some Kentucky bourbon and cigars every day.

Jefferson also trusts Judah P. Benjamin (Derek Powell), a Jewish lawyer from St. Croix who was previously a US senator and is soon promoted from Confederate attorney general to secretary of war. Varina initially doesn’t hide her distaste:

Judah: Mrs. Davis, you are not fond of me, are you?
Varina: Mr. Benjamin, I don’t think about you one way or another. You are a colleague of my husband. He thinks you are valuable to the war effort. I’m a lady. I don’t mix into the affairs of state.
Judah: You are not just any lady. You are the first lady of the Confederate states. Does my being a Jew bother you?
Varina: No.
Judah: Not at all?
Varina: Not in the least . . . however, the fact that you killed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ . . . does give me pause.

Yet eventually, Judah proves his worth, as does Mary, in a different way. When Old Robert catches Mary reading Jefferson’s private papers — she’s actually a Union spy — she at first denies it as he explains how he remains out of trouble, delivering one of the play’s most potent moments:

“I look a person in dere eyes. A white man’s eyes can’t hold no secret without him telling you . . . it’s a secret. Oh, I’ve seen ’em try to hide a secret, but I been around long enough to recognize a lie or see de truth . . . sitting right dere in dey eye. Know when a white man is scared and know when he’s working himself up to beating a ni–er’s ass. It’s all in dey eyes. If’n I take my shirt off, you ain’t gonna find no scars on my back. Dat ain’t no accident. I know de truth of what I see. I’m gonna ask you a question, little Mary . . . if’n you value Old Robert as a friend, you gonna look me in my eyes and you gonna spread truth all over your words.”

Mary admits that she can read and write, explaining, as she does numerous times, that she is “special.” Instead of reporting her, Old Robert asks her to teach him how to read and write, hiding it from his masters.

The action moves from the White House garden and state room, which are center stage, to Lizzie’s cramped pantry to the left and Jefferson’s home office to the right as the war turns against the Confederacy, and Varina and Jefferson realize that there is a leak, believing it must be from a member of his cabinet. The tension builds as the war drives on to its inevitable conclusion while the characters struggle to maintain their ideals, relationships, and dignity amid the mounting tragedies of slavery and loss around them.

Love Boat veterans Jill Whelan and Fred Grandy reunite onstage in fellow castmate Ted Lange’s Lady Patriot (photo by Maria Baranova)

Lady Patriot concludes Lange’s historical trilogy, which began with George Washington’s Boy, set during the Revolutionary War, and continued with The Journals of Osborne P. Anderson, which dealt with John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859. He cites more than two dozen sources in a bibliography in the program; he learned about Bowser from a friend and then started extensive research, deciding to focus his story on Lizzie, Mary, and Varina, each of whom he considers a patriot.

Paul Jonathan Davis’s set and lighting and Alex Rockey’s period costumes do a good job of re-creating the look and feel of the 1860s; hovering above the stage are both a Union and Confederate flag, not only a constant reminder that the play takes place during the Civil War but also evoking the divisiveness in contemporary America. Will Mahood’s sound is unobtrusive in the first act but becomes inexplicably overwhelming after intermission, with loud music nearly drowning out the actors’ voices and rifle shots and explosions seemingly right outside that don’t initially alarm any of the characters.

The introduction of a journalist, Mr. Slydell (Fred Grandy), is confusing, particularly when he conceals himself just offstage while listening to a conversation between Lizzie and Mary and later interviews Varina. Scenes go on too long and contain too much speechifying, references to using a strong glue to catch the informant are awkward, and quotes such as “[I’ll] skin him like a cornered badger in a skunk’s holler” feel forced (as does Lizzie’s first-act sentiment, “I’m just a cracker looking for a barrel” and Old Robert saying, “Black don’t crack.).

Among a solid cast, award-winning actor, writer, director, and poet Stovall steals the show as Old Robert, a house slave with a strong sense of decorum and responsibility, a man who knows and understands more than he lets on and dreams of being reunited with his wife and children, who were sold many years before. It’s heart-wrenching when he tells Mary, “Wish I could have seen them grow up. Ernestine, Olive, Sylvester, and Amos . . . dose were mine. Lorraine sure knew how to make beautiful babies. . . . Hell, a gal as pretty as Lorraine . . . you think de master wasn’t gonna give her some children? She had twelve.”

Lange doesn’t hold back racist and antisemitic tropes; the N-word is used a disturbing amount of times, but, in a program note, he asserts, “The authenticity of the language is vital to the historical context of slavery. It should offend us and educate us in the atrocities that it encompassed so that we can learn from the evils of this degrading aspect of American history and demand a more equal society for all Americans.” While that is certainly true, it doesn’t have to feel like we’re in a Quentin Tarantino film.

Grandy, Whelan, and Lange appeared two years ago in Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport at the Encore in Michigan, but this is the first such Love Boat stage reunion in New York City. It was great to see them together again on opening night, joined by their medical cohort, Kopell. With a few tweaks here and there, Lady Patriot could indeed make another run, setting a course for adventure.

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

RESTORING CHAOS: JAPAN SOCIETY CELEBRATES YUKIO MISHIMA CENTENNIAL

YUKIO MISHIMA CENTENNIAL SERIES: EMERGENCES
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
September 11 – December 6
japansociety.org

“Only art makes human beauty endure,” Yukio Mishima wrote in his 1959 novel Kyoko’s House.

In his short life — Mishima died by suicide in 1970 at the age of forty-five — the Japanese author and political activist penned approximately three dozen novels, four dozen plays, five dozen story and essay collections, ten literary adaptations, and a libretto, a ballet, and a film.

Japan Society is celebrating the hundredth year of his birth — he was born Kimitake Hiraoka in Tokyo in January 1925 — with “Yukio Mishima Centennial Series: Emergences,” comprising six events through December 6. The festival begins September 11–20 with Kinkakuji, SITI company cofounder Leon Ingulsrud and Korean American actor Major Curda’s theatrical adaptation of Mishima’s intense 1956 psychological novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, based on the true story of extreme postwar actions taken by a young Buddhist monk. Creator and director Ingulsrud cowrote the script with Curda, who stars in the play. The stage design is by Japanese visual artist Chiharu Shiota, whose international installations, featuring red and black yarn structures, include “In the Light,” “My House Is Your House,” and “Memory of Lines.” Her latest, “Two Home Countries,” runs September 12 through January 11 in the Japan Society gallery, consisting of immersive, site-specific works created in commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the end of WWII.

There are unlikely to be many empty seats at Japan Society for Kinkakuji and other Mishima events (photo © Ayako Moriyama)

There will be eleven performances of Kinkakuji, with a gallery-opening reception following the September 11 show, a separate gallery talk on September 12, a lecture preceding the September 16 show, and an artist Q&A on September 17. Each ticket comes with free same-day admission to “Two Home Countries.”

On September 27, Japan Society, as part of the John and Miyoko Davey Classics series, will screen Kon Ichikawa’s 1958 film, Conflagration, based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and starring Raizo Ichikawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, and Ganjiro Nakamura.

In conjunction with L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival, Japan Society will present Le Tambour de Soie (The Silk Drum) on October 24 and 25, Yoshi Oida and Kaori Ito’s adaptation of Mishima’s 1957 Noh play Aya no Tsuzumi, a dance-theater piece about love and aging featuring downtown legend Paul Lazar and choreographer Ito, with music by Makoto Yabuki. The second show will be followed by an artist Q&A. On November 6, Japanese novelist and cultural ambassador Keiichiro Hirano (Nisshoku, Dawn) and Tufts University Mishima scholar Dr. Susan J. Napier will sit down for a conversation discussing Mishima’s life and legacy.

Le Tambour de Soie (The Silk Drum) will be performed October 24 and 25 at Japan Society (photo © courtesy of the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens)

On November 15 and 16, the Tokyo-based company CHAiroiPLIN brings The Seven Bridges (Hashi-zukushi) to Japan Society, a visually arresting adaptation for all ages of Mishima’s short story about four women seeking wishes during a full moon. The series concludes December 4–6 with the US debut of Hosho Noh School and Mishima’s Muse – Noh Theater, three unique programs of noh and kyogen theater comprising performances of works that inspired Mishima: Shishi (Lion Dance), Busu (Poison), Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi), Kantan, and Yoroboshi. The December 4 performance will be followed by a ticketed soirée, and there will be an artist Q&A after the December 5 show with Kazufusa Hosho, the twentieth grand master of Hosho Noh School, which dates back to the early fifteenth century. In addition, members of Hosho Noh School lead a workshop on December 6.

“This series revitalizes Mishima’s contributions to the world of the arts through a slate of brand new commissions and premieres adapting his writings, as well as a historic US debut for a revered noh company,” Japan Society artistic director Yoko Shioya said in a statement. “This series recognizes not only Mishima’s critical legacy but the ongoing current influence of this essential postwar author on artists today.”

That legacy can be summed up in this line from his 1963 novel Gogo no Eikō (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea): “Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it’s a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored.”