live performance

A SINKING SHIP: SHOW BOAT / A RIVER AT NYU SKIRBALL

Target Margin Theater’s adaptation of Show Boat continues at NYU Skirball through January 26 (photo by Greg Kessler)

SHOW/BOAT: A RIVER
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
Through January 26, $60
nyuskirball.org

In 1927, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat revolutionized musical theater, taking on such tough topics as racism and addiction while making the narrative central to the production. Hammerstein called it a “musical play,” and Richard Rodgers announced that it was “trailblazing.”

You wouldn’t know any of that from Target Margin Theater’s head-scratching adaptation, renamed Show/Boat: A River, that is confusing audiences at NYU Skirball through January 26 as part of the Under the Radar festival.

There’s something off from the very first moments. The lights are on throughout the theater as several actors take the spare stage, the only design a large white cloth in the back with two doorways cut out, one marked “White,” the other “Black,” seen backward, meaning we are inside, not outside, but of what there is no telling. They begin singing “Cotton Blossom,” explaining, “Listen / N-word — work on de Mississippi / Black people work while de white folks play — / Loadin’ up boats wid the bales of cotton, / Gittin’ no rest till the Judgment day.”

The use of “N-word” is like nails on a chalkboard, and the first act doesn’t get any better. Each cast member wears a beauty-pageant-like sash that identifies their character as either white or black, and since some actors play multiple roles without costume changes, it’s impossible to know who’s who; one character is even portrayed by two people at the same time. I tried to make sense of it all by reading Target Margin Theater founding artistic director David Herskovits’s script after seeing the show, but it refers to the speakers and singers by their real first names, not the characters’. I initially was trying to figure out who Ruby is, as she’s not listed in the program as a performer and is not the name of any character, major or minor, but realized that it refers to the woman playing Magnolia; my first guess was they changed actors but didn’t update the script, although it now looks like Ruby is the nickname for the actor.

The plot, or what I could make of it, does follow the original story line, based on Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel. It’s the late 1880s, and Capt. Andy Hawks (Steven Rattazzi) owns and operates the Cotton Blossom, a riverboat docked in Natchez, Mississippi, whose star entertainer is Julie LaVerne (Stephanie Weeks), who is married to leading man Steve Baker (Edwin Joseph). Julie is half Black but passing as white. Capt. Andy and his unpleasant wife, Parthy (J Molière), have a daughter, Magnolia (Rebbekah “Ruby Reb” Vega-Romero), who is a burgeoning star. Known as Nola, she hooks up with smarmy gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Philip Themio Stoddard). Villain Frank Schultz (Tẹmídayọ Amay) and his wife, Ellie May Chipley (Caitlin Nasema Cassidy), the toast of Cairo, Illinois, are supporting actors in the troupe. Joe (Alvin Crawford) is a dockworker whose wife, Queenie (Suzanne Darrell), is the ship’s cook.

Pete (Stoddard), an engineer, has the hots for Julie and had given her a brooch that she then gifted to Queenie. The jewelry becomes a key symbol, bringing up issues of race, infidelity, and ownership — of things and people.

“That’s hell of a thing to do — givin’ my presents to a n—,” Pete tells her. She responds, “Pete — if Steve ever knew about you sending me that brooch, I declare he’d just about beat you to death.” Pete then threatens, “Well, he better not try, and you better be pretty nice to me — or you’ll be mighty sorry.”

A few moments later, Frank asks Queenie, “Where you get that brooch you got on?” She answers simply, “It was given to me.” Gaylord demands, “Who give it to you?” and she says, “Ax me no questions ‘n’ ah’ll tell y’no lies!”

It’s often difficult to tell who’s who and what’s what in Show/Boat: A River (photo by Greg Kessler)

Show Boat debuted on Broadway in 1927, with revivals in 1932, 1948, 1983, and, most recently, 1994, with Rebecca Luker, Lonette McKee, Robert Morse, Elaine Stritch, John McMartin, and Cloris Leachman. The musical was made into a film in 1936 by James Whale, with Irene Dunne as Magnolia, Hattie McDaniel as Queenie, Helen Morgan as Julie, and Robeson, who was not in the original Broadway cast, as Joe; George Sidney’s 1951 movie, starring Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Joe E. Brown, Marge and Gower Champion, and Agnes Moorehead, earned Oscar nods for Best Color Cinematography and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.

The first act of Herskovits’s two-and-a-half-hour Show/Boat: A River feels like an open rehearsal that still needs a lot of work. Early on, the “Show Boat parade” celebrates the upcoming performances on board the Cotton Blossom; during intermission, a very different kind of parade occurred, as dozens of audience members abandoned ship and left the theater. They did not return.

The second act is significantly better, although not necessarily anything to sing about. The sashes have been replaced by circular buttons, Kaye Voyce’s set adds numerous elements, Dina El-Aziz’s costumes get to shine, and Cha See’s lighting is not always annoyingly on, all combining to finally achieve important character and plot development. Perhaps more important, the score by musical directors Dionne McClain-Freeney (also vocal arranger) and Dan Schlosberg (also orchestrator) settles into a groove, performed by Nan-Cheng Chen on cello, Nicole DeMaio and Kristina Teuschler on reeds, Thomas Flippin on guitar, and Sam Zagnit on bass, the band visible in the pit where the actors occasionally take rests.

Among the highlights of Kern’s music and Hammerstein’s lyrics (he also wrote the book) are such songs as “Make Believe,” a duet between Stoddard and Vega-Romero; “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” which becomes Nola’s dazzling audition number; “In Dahomey,” a racist tune at the World’s Fair; the moving “Bill,” achingly delivered by Weeks; and the show’s standard-bearer and underlying theme, “Ol’ Man River,” made famous by Paul Robeson as Joe and here boldly performed by Crawford: “Dere’s an ol’ man called de Mississippi; / Dat’s de ol’ man dat I’d like to be! / What does he care if de world’s got troubles? / What does he care if de land ain’t free?” he asks, bellowing, “Ol’ Man River / Dat Ol’ Man River, / He mus’ know sumpin’ / But don’t say nuthin’, / He jes’ keeps rollin’, /
He keeps on rollin’ along. . . . Ah gits weary / An’ sick of tryin’, / Ah’m tired of livin’ / An’ scared of dyin’, / But ol’ Man River, / He jes’ keeps rollin’ along.”

Oh, and don’t wait for “After the Ball,” because it’s been left on the cutting-room floor.

It all adds up to too little, too late by a beloved Brooklyn-based company that has been staging unique versions of classic and new works for four decades. Sometimes, as in this case, the ship just sinks.

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

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS: DEAD AS A DODO AT BARUCH PAC

A dodo and a young boy are best friends fighting to survive in Dead as a Dodo (photo by Richard Termine)

DEAD AS A DODO
Baruch PAC
55 Lexington Ave. between Twenty-Fourth & Twenty-Fifth Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 9, $55
utrfest.org
bpac.baruch.cuny.edu

“The race is over!” the Dodo suddenly calls out in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Its animal friends crowd around, pant, and ask, “But who has won?”

You might be surprised by who wins in Wakka Wakka’s Dead as a Dodo, an awe-inspiring, visually stunning parable about the potential end of the human race and the tenuous future of the planet, sensationally staged with puppets. Running through February 9 at Baruch PAC as part of the Under the Radar festival, the eighty-minute extravaganza plays off the old adage “as dead as a dodo,” which refers to a person, place, or thing that is either no longer alive or decidedly out of date. The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) itself was a flightless bird of Mauritius that was last spotted in 1662.

In the Bone Realm, a pair of skeletons, a female dodo and a young boy, are besties. The boy is searching for bones to replace his arm and leg, digging into the basalt for anything that will fit. “So I’m missing an arm / And my ribs are all broken / I’ve lost half my teeth / And my skull is cracked open,” he sings. “Yes, I’m falling apart / And I’m close to the end / Still I’ve gotta take heart / Because I’ve got a friend / And my friend is a dodo.”

The two are always on the lookout for the Bone King and his daughter, the conniving princess, who are determined to own every bone in the land and are prepared to rip them right off the boy if necessary. “After life is stripped away / All the flesh has decayed / What remains? / Nothing but the bones / Nothing but the bones,” the king chants with dastardly glee. “All the bones in the fields are mine / You can try to take ’em if you got the spine.”

The greedy Bone King wants to own it all in sensationally eerie Dead as a Dodo (photo by Erato Tzavara)

As the boy fears he is disappearing, he notices that the dodo has grown a new feather or two — indications of life. When the Bone King discovers the feathers as well, the Bone Doctor, a kind of Grim Reaper, commands, “It is a plague upon our kingdom. There is only one thing to do. . . . You, sire! — Must chop it up and throw it into the fiery waters of the River Styx!”

The boy and the dodo then set off on a dangerous journey into other realms, where they meet a scavenging demon, a chatty gondolieri, a giant glowing fish, devil goats, a woolly mammoth, and a scientist named Phinneas who believes that the resurgent dodo is a sign that “the Age of Shimmering Darkness and Fog is coming to an end.”

But no one knows what will happen if the dodo actually returns to the Living Realm, rising like a phoenix. “Ha! That is not the order of things,” the gondolieri argues. “The river only flows in one direction.”

The staging of Dead as a Dodo is a marvel of technology and DIY ingenuity. There are three layers of opaque black string curtains onto which Erato Tzavara’s projections and Daphne Agosin’s lighting lend the proceedings a breathtaking 3D atmosphere. Lei-Lei Bavoil, Alexandra Bråss, Andy Manjuck, Hanna Margrete Muir, Sigurd Rosenberg, Marie Skogvang Stork, Anna Soland, and Kirjan Waage, dressed in black sequined costumes that meld into the background except for their glitter, operate the puppets with great skill and more than a touch of jaw-dropping magic.

The set and costumes are by Wakka Wakka cofounding artistic directors Gwendolyn Warnock and Waage, who also wrote and directed the production; in addition, Waage designed the puppets, based on actual skeletons. Thor Gunnar Thorvaldsson’s music and soundscape, harvested from geodes and crystals and featuring bells and gongs, keep the audience immersed in the riveting narrative, which evokes the climate change, war, and greed that threaten the earth today.

The look and feel of the show were inspired by Tales from the Crypt, Dante’s Inferno, old Silly Symphonies cartoons, and the art of Hieronymus Bosch, a mix that relates to the company’s Bioeccentrism Manifesto, which states, “Life like art is hyperbolically weird, stupendous, openly ridiculous, momentary, rapid, flashy fleshy and loud,” words that can also describe Dead as a Dodo and such previous Wakka Wakka works as The Immortal Jellyfish Girl, Animal R.I.O.T., and Saga.

The show is also about our own fear of death. “When you vanish, will you forget everyone you love?” the basalt asks at the beginning. Shortly after that, the dodo pulls an alarm clock out of the rubble and it rings. “That’s just junk,” the boy says, ignoring the literal and figurative wake-up call, a warning cry to all of us that humanity is on the brink of extinction.

“What do you think happens when you disappear completely? Are you going to forget about me? Will I forget you?” the boy says to the dodo, continuing, “I don’t want to disappear. I’m not ready.”

Then again, as Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all.”

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

TO THE MOON AND BEYOND: LUNA LUNA AT THE SHED

“Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy” features large-scale amusement-park installations by Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Arik Brauer, and many others (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LUNA LUNA: FORGOTTEN FANTASY
The McCourt at the Shed
The Bloomberg Building
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Through March 16, $25-$49
theshed.org
lunaluna.com
luna luna online slideshow

In the summer of 1987, a one-of-a-kind art-musement park delighted audiences in Hamburg, Germany. Curated by Viennese artist André Heller, it boasted contributions from more than thirty international artists, who Heller enticed with the following pitch: “‘Listen, you are constantly getting the greatest commissions, everyone wants your paintings or sculptures, but I am inviting you to take a trip back to your own childhood. You can design your very own amusement park, just as you think would be right today,’ and really without exception everyone answered by saying, sure, that’s a nice, pleasant challenge.”

The park opened for several months during a rainy European summer and was scheduled to travel to the Netherlands and San Diego, but the stock market crash of October 1987 and legal entanglements shelved that plan, and the works were eventually packed away in containers and stored in a Texas warehouse. In 2022, rapper Drake and his DreamCrew team bought the forty-four containers, sight unseen, put the surviving pieces back together, and opened “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy” in Los Angeles, consisting of about half of the original attractions.

Visitors can enter Roy Lichtenstein’s Luna Luna Pavilion glass labyrinth (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Luna Luna” is now open at the Shed’s McCourt space in Hudson Yards through February 23, and it is a barrel of fun, for art lovers, amusement park fans, and just about anyone else willing to take a joyful and thoroughly entertaining trip back to their childhood — and the 1980s.

Although you can’t go on any of the rides because of their fragility and for safety reasons, you can marvel at the dazzling installations: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s white Ferris wheel, which rotates to Miles Davis’s “Tutu,” is decorated with familiar Basquiat visual tropes and such words and phrases as “Pornography,” “Jim Crow,” and “Skeezix.” Kenny Scharf’s chair swing ride has panels of his trademark cosmic characters, some of whom also hang out around the piece. Keith Haring’s carousel is populated by his unique stencil caricatures and silhouettes. Birds, fish, animals, and hands (the grune welt, pferdehand, nixe, wolfin) spin on Arik Brauer’s carousel.

You can wander into David Hockney’s Enchanted Tree, a shadowy silo with music by the Berlin Philharmonic; carefully navigate Roy Lichtenstein’s dark glass labyrinth to the sounds of Philip Glass; walk through Sonia Delaunay’s painted entrance archway and under Monika Gil’Sing’s twenty-eight flags; saunter along several large-scale horizontal tarp murals by Keith Haring; stop by Manfred Deix’s Palace of the Winds, an orchestra of butt blasts; and linger in Salvador Dalí’s geodesic Dalídom, a mirrored infinity room with ever-changing hues.

Unfortunately, you cannot test your romantic future (damage, madness, tenderness, magic, embrace, touch) with Rebecca Horn’s Love Thermometer, but you can renew your vows — or marry anyone, or anything, you’d like — in Heller’s Wedding Chapel, where you’ll receive a certificate and Polaroid of the ceremony. You can also dance and interact with Poncili Creación’s costumed performers and giant puppet people who pop up from time to time, ranging from an elephant trainer and her pachyderm to strange, tall creatures, as music by André 3000, Floating Points, Jamie xx, Daniel Wohl, and others waft over the space. (You can listen to a “Luna Luna” playlist here, with songs by Eric B. & Rakim, Kraftwerk, Madonna, Art of Noise, Talking Heads, Neneh Cherry, and others.)

Among the original installations that are not part of this revival are Erté’s Mystère Cagliostro, Gertie Fröhlich’s gingerbread booth, Jörg Immendorff’s and Wolfgang Herzig’s shooting galleries, Susanne Schmögner’s spiral-shaped labyrinth, Patrick Raynaud’s Playground, August Walla’s circus wagon, Günter Brus’s Universe of Crayons, Christian Ludwig Attersee’s boat swing ride, Jim Whiting’s Mechanical Theater, Heller’s Dream Station, and pavilions by Roland Topor, Hubert Aratym, and Georg Baselitz. You can find elements of Daniel Spoerri’s Crap Chancellery in a side room that documents some of the history of “Luna Luna,” with a wall of twenty of the moon paintings Heller asked the artists to make. A timeline details the complicated history of “Luna Luna,” with video of the restoration.

Be sure to visit the upstairs Butterfly Bar, where an overlook offers a sensational view of Scharf’s, Basquiat’s, and Brauer’s rides, which turn on one by one while the Philip Glass Ensemble’s “In the Upper Room: Dance II” booms through the hall and lights flash, unveiling an audiovisual sensation.

Moon paintings can be found in history room (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Art should come in unconventional guises and be brought to those who might not ordinarily seek it out in more predictable settings,” Heller, who is not affiliated with this reboot, said of the project.

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“Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy” is a must-see adventure, filled with exciting art in unconventional guises for all ages, although it’s an especially poignant bit of time travel for Gen Xers who remember the glee and whimsy of a time before AIDS and addiction had ravaged the creators of New York’s downtown scene, before digital photography, cell phones, and email became always available in your pocket, when discovering new art wasn’t quite so easy and perhaps a lot more thrilling. Yet “Luna Luna” is much more than a journey into the past; it’s a vibrant presentation of art that can inspire today — and in the future.

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

SILENCE IS GOLDEN: PICO IYER AT ASIA SOCIETY

Who: Pico Iyer, William Green
What: Book launch and conversation
Where: Asia Society, 725 Park Ave. at Seventieth St.
When: Wednesday, January 22, $15, 6:30
Why: Pico Iyer dedicates his new book, Aflame: Learning from Silence (Riverhead, January 14, 2025, $30), to “the monks and nuns, in every tradition, who have sustained so many of us, visibly and invisibly, through so many lifetimes.” The Oxford-born Iyer, who has written such books as The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, and The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto, will be at Asia Society on January 22 to launch Aflame, in conversation with William Green, author of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life. In the book, Iyer traces three decades of silent retreats at a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur as he faces the ups and downs of life, from glorious successes to personal tragedy. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has praised the work, offering, “Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.” Tickets for the event, which is copresented with the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), are only $15. Below is an excerpt from chapter two.

—————————————————————————

The silence of a monastery is not like that of a deep forest or mountaintop; it’s active and thrumming, almost palpable. And part of its beauty—what deepens and extends it—is that it belongs to all of us. Every now and then I hear a car door slam, or movement in the communal kitchen, and I’m reminded, thrillingly, that this place isn’t outside the world, but hidden at its very heart.

In the solitude of my cell, I often feel closer to the people I care for than when they’re in the same room, reminded in the sharpest way of why I love them; in silence, all the unmet strangers across the property come to feel like friends, joined at the root. When we pass one another on the road, we say very little, but it’s all we don’t say that we share.

***

Coming out one afternoon into the singing stillness, I pass a woman, tall and blond, looking like she might be from the twenty‑fifth‑floor office in Midtown where my bosses await my essays. She smiles. “You’re Pico?”

“I am.”

“I’m Paula. I wrote you a letter last year to see if you could come speak to my class.”

She’s a novelist, I gather—complete with agent, good New York publisher, grant from the National Endowment for the Arts—and she teaches down the road, two hours to the south. She fled Christianity as a girl, growing up in Lutheran Minnesota, but now—well, now she’s been brought back into silence and a sense of warm community.

“Do you write while you’re here?” she asks.

“All I seem to do is write! But only for myself. This is the one place in life where I’m happy not to write in any public way.”

She smiles in recognition. The point of being here is not to get anything done; only to see what might be worth doing.

***

The others I pass along the way, or see in the shared kitchen, are not at all the solemn, stiff ones I might have expected. One greets me with a Buddhist bow, another with a Hindu namaste. On the cars outside the retreat‑house I read i brake for mushrooms, notice a fish that announces, darwin. We’re not joined by any doctrine, I realize, or mortal being or holy book; only by a silence that speaks for some universal intimation.

“What do you think of this?” an older man asks as we pass one another near a bench.

“Nothing,” I say, and he looks puzzled until he sees what I’m about.

“That’s the liberation, don’t you find?” I go on. “There’s nothing to think about other than oak tree and ocean. Nothing to smudge the wonder of . . .” and then I say no more.

We look out together at the tremble of light across the water.

THE HARRIET ZONE: LIFE ON AND OFF MARS

Who: Harriet Stubbs
What: City Vineyard Sessions
Where: City Vineyard at City Winery, 223 West St. at Pier 26
When: Tuesday, January 21, $22 in advance, $28 day of show, 7:30
Why: “There’s nothing like playing to my adopted hometown of New York; it’s electrifying,” Harriet Stubbs told twi-ny in a May 2024 interview. The British classical pianist, William Blake scholar, and Bowie aficionado was preparing for a show at Joe’s Pub, where she played her latest album, Living on Mars; the record includes Stubbs’s unique adaptations of such songs as David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Life on Mars,” Nick Cave’s “Push the Sky Away,” Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird,” and Beethoven’s “Pathétique” in addition to homages to the duos of J. S. Bach/Glenn Gould and Frédéric Chopin/Leopold Godowsky. It all makes for an eclectic and unpredictable setlist.

Stubbs is an intoxicating pianist, performing in spectacular glittery outfits and exuding warmth and charm; Paul Cavalconte, the renowned DJ at New York’s classical radio station, WQXR (as well as WFUV and WNYC), calls it the Harriet Zone. On January 21, she’ll be at City Vineyard at City Winery, promising to play “a mix of Living on Mars and some core classical, with maybe a few surprises!” General admission tickets are $22 in advance and $28 at the door. Be prepared for a special, unusual evening of fabulous music, with a touch of magic.

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

DUKE BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE IS “SO THRILLING!!!” AT JAPAN SOCIETY

Sujin Kim reimagines Shūji Terayama’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle as macabre Harajuku burlesque at Japan Society (photo © Ayumi Sakamoto)

DUKE BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 15-18, $36-$48
www.japansociety.org
utrfest.org

Korean-Japanese director Sujin Kim’s macabre Harajuku burlesque adaptation of Shūji Terayama’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is an exhilarating two hours of nonstop fun, a wildly imaginative celebration of all that angura, or Japanese underground, unconventional theater, has to offer. For the show, which runs January 15–18 at Japan Society as part of the Under the Radar festival, Kim has brought together an inspiring multidisciplinary cast of more than thirty, including the tantalizing cabaret duo Kokusyoku Sumire, consisting of soprano vocalist and accordionist Yuka and violinist Sachi, who wear adorable outfits with light-up rabbit ears; magician Syun Shibuya, who, in a sharp-fitting tux, does card tricks, pulls doves out of a hat, and dazzles with mind-boggling costume changes; the delightful aerialist Miho Wakabayashi, who has been detailing her New York City trip here; and the experimental Japanese company Project Nyx, which was founded in 2006 by Kim’s wife, Kanna Mizushima, and specializes in “entertainment Bijo-geki, all-female cross-dressing theater.”

We get a taste of what’s to come when, early on, the stage manager (Misa Homma) tells Judith (Rei Fujita), who is portraying Bluebeard’s prospective seventh wife and closely checking the script, “You know what? — Things don’t always follow the script, y’know? Let’s see your improv muscles!”

The narrative regularly pops in and out of the Bluebeard fairy tale, which was written in 1697 by French author Charles Perrault; the self-referential story of the staging of the show; and the acknowledgment that it is being held at Japan Society, maintaining an improvisatory feel throughout.

“Wait, you’re saying the stage manager is doubling as the costume designer’s assistant in this production?” Bluebeard’s first wife (Miki Yamazaki) says to the stage manager while Carrot the Prompter (Ran Moroji) rubs her feet. Carrot had just amateurishly spoken a stage direction out loud: “Whistles dramatically and pretends to be a bird flying away.”

The play unfolds at a furious pace, so fast that it’s sometimes difficult to read the English surtitles, which are projected on small, raised monitors at the left and right sides; it can get a little frustrating, as you don’t want to miss a second of what’s happening onstage.

Asuka Sasaki’s kawai costumes and the far-out, colorful wigs are spectacular, like the best cosplay comic-con contest ever, with circuslike lighting by Tsuguo Izumi + RISE and enveloping sound by Takashi Onuki. Choreographer Taeko Okawa takes advantage of every piece of Satoshi Otsuka’s set, highlighted by seven white doors that flip to seven mirrors held by the seven wives in slinky black. As they dance with the mirrors, reflections shimmer throughout the space.

Kokusyoku Sumire’s songs are charming and engaging, including “[Doppelgänger],” in which they explain, “Even if I hide perfectly / There are times when misfortune finds me. / If I were to suppress this tormenting pain, / Would I be allowed to wish for your happiness?,” and poetic, as when they sing, “Walking in shadows, careful not to stumble, counting to nine, who are you? / The moonlight is full, playing the song of joy. If I close my eyes, I should be able to see everything.”

The scene titles in the script are not projected on the monitors but give a good idea of what audiences are in store for, including “The Bride in the Bathtub,” “A Goblin Peeks from Behind the Curtain,” “Don’t ruin my script with your life,” and “The Maestro of the Puppet Killers.” In “A Pig and a Rose,” which features some of the most hilarious dialogue in the play, Copula the Attendant (Chisato Someya) complains to the second wife (Yoshika Kotani) that the seventh wife has been miscast: “Her expressions are our hand-me-down, her heart is like a plastic trash can, and oh, her face — is the stuff that splashes out from an overflowing pit latrine. . . . She is Madam’s used tampon! Madam’s vomit — her face is fit for a manhole cover in a sewer!” The second wife is overjoyed, proclaiming, “So thrilling!!! Insults are divine, don’t you agree, Judith?”

Fujita and Homma stand out in the fantastic cast, which also features Ruri Nanzoin as Coppélius the puppeteer, You Yamagami as the costume designer, Haruka Yoshida as the debt collector, Nozomi Yamada as the actor, Yume Tsukioka as Aris, Hinako Tezuka as Teles, Kaho Asai as the magician’s assistant, Wakabayashi as the fourth wife, Mizushima as the fifth wife, Sayaka Ito as the third wife, and Mayu Kasai as wife number six. Don’t worry if you can’t keep it all straight; just let the extravaganza dazzle you time and time again.

Kim has a dream of presenting Terayama’s work in a tent along the New York City waterfront. Here’s hoping that’s next for this immensely talented creator.

[There will be a preshow lecture on Terayama by UCLA professor emerita Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei at 6:30 on January 17. Ticket holders on January 17 and 18 are invited to see the current exhibit, “Bunraku Backstage,” in the Japan Society Gallery; there is also a display of rare Terayama artifacts on view, including scripts, letters, photos, and more from the La MaMa Archive.]

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

TALKING RICE COOKERS EXPLORE TWENTY YEARS OF KOREAN HISTORY

Jaha Koo teams up with Hana, Duri, and Seri in Cuckoo (photo by Radovan Dranga)

CUCKOO
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
January 16-18, $78-$82
pacnyc.org
utrfest.org

On its website, the Korean appliance and electronics company known as Cuckoo explains that it “hopes to continue to reach diverse audiences and captivate them with products that make life simpler.”

For nearly eight years, South Korean artist Jaha Koo has been reaching diverse audiences and captivating them with his inventive play Cuckoo, in which he traces the last twenty years of Korean history with the help of three talkative Cuckoo rice cookers, Hana, Duri, and Seri, who speak to him in the isolation, or golibmuwon, that he is experiencing.

Cuckoo, which debuted in 2017, is the middle section of Koo’s Hamartia Trilogy, which began with Lolling and Rolling in 2015 and concluded with The History of Korean Western Theatre in 2020.

“Conceptually, it focuses on how the inescapable past tragically affects our lives today,” the forty-year-old Koo says about the three works in total.

Koo is now bringing the fifty-five-minute Cuckoo to PAC NYC for four shows January 16–18 as part of the Under the Radar festival; the 7:00 performance on January 17 will be followed by a discussion moderated by South Korean playwright Hansol Jung, whose daring works include Wolf Play and Merry Me.

Koo is responsible for the concept, direction, music, text, and video and performs with the cookers; the Cuckoo hacking is by Idella Craddock, with scenography and media operation by Eunkyung Jeong.

In case Cuckoo makes you hungry, Cuckoo the company promises, “Whether you enjoy sticky rice, soft grains, or the ability to whip up an array of dishes with minimal effort — we’ve got a rice cooker to meet any need!”

Update: Jaha Koo’s Cuckoo is an intimate, deeply personal investigation of grief and loss, as seen through the lens of colonialist capitalism. Divided into four sections, “Cuckoo,” “Jerry,” “Robert Rubin,” and “Screen,” the fifty-five-minute multimedia performance focuses on the $55 billion bailout of South Korea by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1997, orchestrated in part by Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. In a press release at the time, Rubin wrote, “South Korea and the IMF reached an agreement today on an economic reform program that commits Korea to important policy adjustments aimed at restoring stability.”

It didn’t turn out quite as planned.

Jaha Koo links rice cookers, the financial crisis, isolation, and suicide in Cuckoo (photo by Radovan Dranga)

One of the results of the bailout was the success of the Cuckoo brand rice cooker, as well as a rising suicide rate. After video of social and political unrest is projected on a large screen, Koo sits down at a table with three Cuckoo rice cookers: Hana, Duri, and Seri, which have been hacked so they can play music and, in the cases of Duri and Seri, talk to Koo and each other, including hilarious insults, complete with four-letter words.

Switching between English and Korean, Koo discusses the tragic death of his best friend, Jerry; “The Happiness Project” espoused by Robert Rubin’s daughter-in-law, Gretchen Rubin; a solitary worker responsible for fixing broken protective screens in the Seoul Metropolitan Subway; his relationship with his father, who asks, “Hello, my son, did you have a good meal?”; and the vast number of suicides in South Korea, with graphic footage of actual attempts.

He also shares the term “golibmuwon,” which essentially means helpless isolation.

It’s a bittersweet tale that blends in a strong dose of humor until a haunting darkness prevails, sadly as relevant today as it was when Koo first performed it in 2017, with South Korea currently experiencing economic and political distress, its highest suicide rates ever, and even, for a moment, martial law.

The best rice cooker in the world might be able to provide a consistent, dependable base for a good meal, but it can’t build a strong-enough foundation to guarantee a solid future for a nation in turmoil.

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