live performance

TICKET ALERT: KRAMER/FAUCI AT ST. ANN’S WAREHOUSE

Thomas Jay Ryan, Jennifer Seastone, Will Brill, and Greig Sargeant bring a C-Span discussion to vivid life in Kramer/Fauci (photo by Maria Baranova)

KRAMER/FAUCI
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 24, $49-$89
stannswarehouse.org

[Below is my review of Kramer/Fauci when it ran at NYU Skirball this past February. It is now playing at St. Ann’s Warehouse from September 27 through October 24, with an official opening night of October 4. The cast and crew are the same for this engagement, but there might be some tweaks and changes that slightly differ from what I saw. For example, at Skirball, the columns at the sides of the stage were used as props. I am reposting this review in advance to give everyone a chance to get tickets now, as some performances are already sold out or have very few seats remaining.]

Daniel Fish again proves his genuine creative genius with the wildly entertaining and unpredictable Kramer/Fauci.

On November 30, 1993, C-Span host Steve Scully spoke about the AIDS crisis with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, and playwright and activist Larry Kramer, author of the novel Faggots and the play The Normal Heart and cofounder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). For sixty minutes, while Fauci was in the studio with Scully and Kramer was beamed in onscreen from New York City, they discussed government funding, drug research, bigotry, public awareness, and more, in addition to taking phone calls from viewers.

Fish has transformed that visually dry program into an exciting, rich theatrical experience with such unusual elements as a woman on roller skates, a hilarious colorful costume, and a whole lot of bubbles.

As audience members enter the auditorium, six rows of nine lights apiece are blazing from the back of the stage, reminding me of a flag too bright to bear looking at — except for a colleague of mine who had (knowingly?) brought sunglasses. The show starts slowly in the empty space: Scully (Greig Sargeant) sits in the middle in a chair, Dr. Fauci (Will Brill), in a crisp suit, stands closer to the front to Scully’s right, and Kramer (Thomas Jay Ryan), in a turtleneck, hovers against the back wall to Scully’s left. The three begin reciting the exact transcript from the interview, as Scully raises a question about President Clinton’s formation of a new task force. Fauci provides a relatively straightforward bureaucratic response, but Kramer gives a hint of what’s to come when he criticizes the technology C-Span is using — he is unable to see Scully or Fauci but can only hear them, although he complains about the earpiece as well — and says, “This is a task force to identify what the stumbling blocks are, we know what they are: a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of red tape, a lot of stupid laws by Congress, and a lot of idiots, uhhhhhhh, putting their two cents worth, uh uhhh, how are you gonna get rid of all of these things is what I want to know and I have yet to hear a task force form to tell me that.”

After several minutes of physical stasis, Fauci and especially Kramer start moving around the stage as they argue over how recent administrations dealt with AIDS, what the real number of people afflicted with the disease are (and will be), how much money is needed for research, and why more is not being done. When Scully brings up the topic of the AIDS epidemic being normalized, Fauci begins, “Larry and I have had conversations about this many, many times over the years, and I a-appreciate it and in many respects, remire . . . admire the, the rage that he has about a very, very difficult problem. But I think you have to . . .” Kramer cuts him off, proclaiming, “Tony, if you start that business about science isn’t done that way, I’m gonna come on there and slap your face.” Fauci peacefully responds, “Nah . . . nah . . . All right, Larry, hang on for a sec. I love you, Larry . . . Uh . . . The fact is that the real solutions will in fact, come from the science.”

Scully occasionally cuts away to play audio footage of news conferences and to take calls, each of which is delivered by Jennifer Seastone in a few different voices, first riding in circles on roller skates and later donning an oddball costume. (The costumes are by Terese Wadden, with set by Jim Findlay, lighting by Scott Zielinski, and sound by Tei Blow.) Movement director Beth Gill soon has Kramer making his way over to Fauci and the roving callers, hugging one of Skirball’s golden pillars, and approaching the audience. It ranges from absurdly comical to substantially confrontational, all of it fascinating and compelling.

And then, the bubbles.

Expect the unexpected in Daniel Fish’s inventive re-creation of a C-Span program on AIDS (photo by Maria Baranova)

In A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, the New Jersey–born, New York City–based Fish used tennis balls and existing text in a play about the work of Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace. Fish earned a Tony for his unique staging of Oklahoma!, in which the audience was served chili at intermission. In White Noise, he used bold, giant projections and an actor sitting in a large, dark circle in the middle of a screen to tell part of Don DeLillo’s treatise on consumerism gone mad. And in Elektra, Sophocles’s title character, played by Brie Larson, was a kind of punk goddess spitting out some of Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” while an unexplained blimp floated nearby.

For Kramer/Fauci, the actors wear earpieces that feed them the lines in order to maintain the precise pace and tone of the original program. Tony winner Brill (Stereophonic, Oklahoma!) is cool, calm, and collected as the cool, calm, and collected Fauci, who might not have gained as much fame for his work on AIDS but became a divisive and highly public figure during the Covid-19 pandemic. Two-time Drama Desk Award winner Ryan (Eureka Day, Dance Nation) is sensational as Kramer, a deeply concerned, knowledgeable, and emotional activist who is fed up with the government’s response to what he insists is a plague, not merely an epidemic or crisis.

The play centers on the complex friendship between Fauci and Kramer, who strongly disagree on how to deal with AIDS. It is summed up best in this exchange, which, like everything else, is taken verbatim from the transcript, with every pause and repetition:

Kramer: It’s all of this rhetoric of yours and everybody else in the bureaucracy. You know, I want to say something about, about Tony Fauci because I think the world must think I ha—, I hate him or something the way I’m going on tonight. I love Tony, actually I d—, I think I probably have a more complicated relationship with Tony than anybody in my entire life. He is a man, an ordinary man who was being asked to play God and he is being punished because he cannot be God. And that is a terrible situation to be in to be the lightning rod for all of us. Uhhhh . . . he has had to deal with Reagan and Bush and defend those monsters, for all we know he probably kept the labs open when John Sununu and Gary Bauer, and other awful bigots, probably wanted them closed, and he had to do it at a price, probably uh at a price for his own soul that we’ll never know that that he had to say things that in his heart he never believed. But he is there and he has been the, this this this incredible fighter for us and for AIDS. I just get angry when he puts on this bureaucratic suit and out comes this boilerplate, uhhhhh, that like Donna Shalala said the same, they, all his rhetoric that doesn’t mean anything. Tony, more than anyone in this world, knows how awful everything is, knows what has to be done, knows that he should have been given a lot more money to do it, knows who all these terrible people are, and yet he can never say it in public like I can say it in public.
Scully: Dr. Fauci, let me go back to an earlier question . . .
Kramer: Why don’t you respond to that, Anthony?
Scully: Oh, go ahead, Doctor.
Fauci: I love you, Larry. [Laughs.]

The play is eerily prescient of so much of the ensuing debate about public health. Most of us well remember what happened during Covid-19, when Fauci was at odds with the Trump administration, and today the battle over vaccines rages on with new updates every day, while the LGBTQ community has a growing fight on its hands, about a lot more than just the taking down of a Pride flag. However, Fish doesn’t reference any of that, instead keeping his focus on communicating the drama of this extraordinary debate between two dedicated, extremely intelligent men trying to do what’s best for an ailing population. How he chooses to punctuate and illustrate the power of their conflict with stunning, dumbfounding, and yet somehow near-perfect staging is where his genius lies.

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

ENCORE ENGAGEMENT: MRS. STERN WANDERS THE PRUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY RETURNS TO 59E59

Hannah Stern (Ella Kaille) is watched by Gestapo officer Karl Frick (Brett Temple) in gripping play at 59E59 (photo by Valerie Terranova)

MRS. STERN WANDERS THE PRUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 25, $76-$96
www.59e59.org
www.mrssternwanders.com

[Below is my review of Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library when it ran at the WP Theater in 2024; I have made small changes to account for the current production at 59E59, where it continues through October 25, with the same cast, set, and director. There will be talkbacks following the performances on September 25 at 7:00, September 27 at 2:00, October 3 at 2:00, and October 10 at 7:00.]

Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is one of the best dramas of the year, a taut, gripping tale inspired by the little-known 1933 arrest of Hannah Arendt by the Gestapo. The ninety-minute Luna Stage production opened in October 2024 at 59E59, where I saw an early preview, and moved to the WP Theater in an even better version, and now has returned for an encore engagement at 59E59. Bader is intimately familiar with Arendt’s life and career; her husband, Roger Berkowitz, founded the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, where she has served on the board of advisers.

As the audience enters the space, they are instantly immersed in Arendt’s world in 1933 Berlin, through period music and Lauren Helpern’s stark set, a prison cell with two empty chairs, the white walls reaching out toward us. It feels like a warning that any of us could end up being interrogated under the dangling light fixture, then or now, especially given the rise of antisemitism across the globe. Barred, opaque windows do not promise hope.

A twenty-six-year-old burgeoning historian, philosopher, and author, Arendt (Ella Kaille) — whose married name at the time was Stern; she and her first husband, Günther Anders Stern, would divorce in 1937 — has been brought in by the Gestapo, along with her mother, who is in a separate cell. What Hannah thought would be just a brief questioning turns into several days of interrogation by Karl Frick (Brett Temple), an inquisitive Aryan guard who appears to be just as interested in her philosophy as in the identities of her dissident, Zionist friends.

After Hannah grimaces upon taking a sip of the coffee Karl has given her, he asks, “Do you not like the coffee?” She responds, “If I may speak freely? It’s terrible.” Karl: “Sorry to hear it. But at least I know you answer questions truthfully.” Hannah: “It wouldn’t occur to me to answer them any other way.” Karl: “That will make our time together easier.” It’s an intimate, critical moment that establishes the two characters and how they will relate to each other, Karl displaying genuine concern — it’s his first day on this new job, having been promoted from the criminal police to the political police — while Hannah plays a clever game of cat and mouse.

Karl grows suspicious when Hannah is visited by Erich Landau (usually played by Drew Hirshfield, although I saw his understudy this time, Jay DeYonker), a lawyer purportedly sent by the Zionists. “They are changing laws they made yesterday, then changing them again, by arbitrary police decree,” Hannah explains. Erich replies, “‘Arbitrary’? How can you say that? Laws create order!” Hannah answers, “In a classic dictatorship, yes. But the Nazis want chaos.”

Over the course of several days, Karl and Hannah discuss forced immigration, false idols, the arts, assimilation, love, the Bible, vegetarianism, German writer Rahel Varnhagen, and the Jewish Question as he tries to get information out of her while she cagily parries, brilliantly careful about everything she offers him.

Ella Kaille excels as a young Hannah Arendt in Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (photo by Valerie Terranova)

In Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library Bader (The Whole Megillah: A Purim Spiel for Grown-Ups, None of the Above, Manhattan Casanova) captures the fear that many Jews live with, whether in 1933 Germany or 2024 America as the rule of law grows ever more arbitrary — and purposefully vindictive. The show is expertly directed by Ari Laura Kreith (Heartland, 167 Tongues); even though we know what’s ultimately going to happen, in general if not in the specific details, we are kept on the edge of our seats like a tense thriller, each scene offering new surprises and philosophical insight about what happened then — and can happen again.

A dead ringer for Natalie Portman, Kaille (Connected, Can You Forgive Her?) — whose father, controversial lawyer Alan Dershowitz, once debated Arendt and has written extensively about her (unfavorably) and whose husband’s last name is Stern — portrays Arendt with an astute elegance, from the way she smokes a cigarette and holds a cup of coffee to how she climbs on a table to look out the window, freedom just out of her grasp. Temple (The Valley of the Shadow, Henry IV, Part One) imbues Karl with a gentle vulnerability and curiosity not usually associated with Gestapo officers, while DeYonker, a five-year member of the Prague Shakespeare Company, is effective in his small but key role as the lawyer.

“Personally I think that’s the first big mistake in the history of thought — that truth comes at the end. I think truth comes at the beginning of a thought,” Hannah tells Karl at one point. In her February 1967 New Yorker article “Truth and Politics,” Arendt wrote, “We must now turn our attention to the relatively recent phenomenon of mass manipulation of fact and opinion as it has become evident in the rewriting of history, in image-making, and in actual government policy. The traditional political lie, so prominent in the history of diplomacy and statecraft, used to concern either true secrets — data that had never been made public — or intentions, which anyhow do not possess the same degree of reliability as accomplished facts; like everything that goes on merely inside ourselves, intentions are only potentialities, and what was intended to be a lie can always turn out to be true in the end. In contrast, the modern political lies deal efficiently with things that are not secrets at all but are known to practically everybody. This is obvious in the case of rewriting contemporary history under the eyes of those who witnessed it, but it is equally true in image-making of all sorts, in which, again, every known and established fact can be denied or neglected if it is likely to hurt the image; for an image, unlike an old-fashioned portrait, is supposed not to flatter reality but to offer a full-fledged substitute for it. And this substitute, because of modern techniques and the mass media, is, of course, much more in the public eye than the original ever was.”

Watching Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library in the context of current international politics is a chilling warning of what might lie ahead, especially if we cannot hear the voices from history, like Hannah Arendt’s.

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

“EARLY THOUGH THE LAUREL GROWS”: THE INVENTION OF LOVE AT THEATERLAB

Yaron Lotan and David Greenspan both portray A. E. Housman in Tom Stoppard revival (photo by Paul Lutvak)

THE INVENTION OF LOVE
TheaterLab
357 West Thirty-Sixth St., between Eighth & Ninth Aves., third floor
Through October 3, $44.40-$88.80
theaterlabnyc.com
themaptheater.com

In the the fall of 2000, Tom Stoppard and Daniel Mendelsohn took part in an extraordinary exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books following the latter’s lengthy critical chastising of the former’s The Invention of Love at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. The back-and-forth could make for its own fascinating play, although audiences would have to be given extensive notes to catch even a handful of the endless literary and historical references (in the letters and the play). In fact, when the show reached Broadway in 2001, theatergoers were given a thirty-page booklet to help decipher various elements.

Of course, since Stoppard died last November at the age of eighty-eight, I don’t have to worry that he will come after me for this review, at least not in this life. In addition, it is far easier for me to research the language and setting of the play using the internet in a way that was not available a quarter-century ago.

Director Zachary Elkind and his MAP Theater are staging a rare US revival of The Invention of Love, running through October 3 at the nearly blindingly white space at Theaterlab. Stoppard would most likely take no issue with my thoughts on the first act, although he might not go easy on me when it comes to what follows after intermission.

The memory play opens with AEH, exquisitely portrayed by off-Broadway legend David Greenspan in a tight-fitting three-piece academic suit, pristine facial hair, and a slow, careful gait, entering the small room, where an audience of about a hundred sit in two rows on opposite sides. In the middle is a makeshift rowing boat on which Charon (Annabel Capper) will take the late poet and scholar across the River Styx and to the underworld of Hades.

“I’m dead, then. Good,” he says, recognizing the situation he is in, adding matter-of-factly, “And this is the Stygian gloom one has heard so much about.” It’s a brilliant opening that sets the stage for what we’re in for.

As AEH sits on one of the benches on the boat, his years as a student at Oxford start unfolding before his eyes. Sometimes he closes them, deep in thought, and other times he watches closely, as his younger self, identified in the script as Housman (Yaron Lotan), filled with a lust for literature and camaraderie, frolics with his new friends and classmates, A. W. Pollard (Daniel Liu) and Moses John Jackson (José Espinosa), arguing over the merits of Plato, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and, primarily, the significantly lesser-known Sextus Propertius.

Housman also takes a fancy for Jackson, who is a champion runner, an unrequited love that would haunt him throughout his life and, here, into his death.

Stoppard revels in highfalutin intellectual conversations the three students have, as exemplified by this early exchange, as they are rowing on the Thames:

Housman: False quantities in all around I see, yea we have been forsaken in the wilderness to gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles.
Pollard: That’s possibly why the College is named for John the Baptist.
Jackson: John the Baptist was locusts and wild honey, actually, Pollard.
Pollard: It’s the Baptist School of Hard Knocks. First the Wilderness, then the head on the platter.
Housman: It was clear something was amiss from the day we matriculated. The statutes warned us against drinking, gambling and hoop-trundling but not a word about Jowett’s translation of Plato. The Regius Professor can’t even pronounce the Greek language and there is no one at Oxford to tell him.
Pollard: Except you, Housman.
Housman: I will take his secret to the grave, telling people I meet on the way. Betrayal is no sin if it’s whimsical.
Jackson: We did the new pronunciation, you know. As an Englishman I never took to the speaking of it. Veni, vidi, vici . . . It was never natural to my mind.
Pollard: That was Latin, actually, Jackson.
Jackson: And “Wennus” the Goddess of Love. I mean to say!
Pollard: Perhaps I don’t make myself plain. Latin and Greek are two entirely separate languages spoken by distinct peoples living in different parts of the ancient world. Some inkling of this must have got through to you, Jackson, at the Vale Academy, Ramsgate, surely.
Housman: But “‘Wennus’ the Goddess of Love,” for a man of Jackson’s venereal pursuits, is a strong objection to the new pronunciation — where is the chemistry in Wennus?
Jackson: I know you and Pollard look down on science.
Pollard: Is it a science? Ovid said it was an art.
Jackson: Oh — love!

Charon (Annabel Capper) guides A. E. Housman (David Greespan) across the River Styx in The Invention of Love (photo by Paul Lutvak)

It’s not the details that matter so much as the flow of the dialogue, which unfurls in pure poetry.

Later in the first act, AEH gets the opportunity to walk into his earlier life, meeting the young man he was more than half a century ago. While AEH recognizes the strapping lad, Housman does not know he is speaking with his future self. It’s a profoundly touching and evocative scene, distinguishing the hope, and folly, of youth against the reality of a long-lived life of learning. Referring to his Oxford days, AEH says, “I felt as if I had come up from the plains of Moab to the top of Mount Pisgah like Moses when the Lord showed him all the land of Judah unto the utmost sea.” Housman replies, “There’s a hill near our house where I live in Worcestershire which I and my brothers and sisters call Mount Pisgah. I used to climb it often, and look out towards Wales, to what I thought was a kind of Promised Land, though it was only the Clee Hills really — Shropshire was our western horizon.” A. E. Housman would eventually gain international fame for his 1896 poetry collection, A Shropshire Lad.

Stoppard also introduces us to Lincoln College rector Mark Pattison (Sam Bolen), art critics Walter Pater (Abrar Haque) and John Ruskin (Spencer Lutvak), Latin scholar Robinson Ellis (Lutvak), and master of Balliol College Benjamin Jowett (Leland Fowler), who share their views on education, class, and, as Jowett states, “the ideal of morality, art and social order.”

AEH disappears for much of the second act, as the narrative focuses on Housman’s growing fondness for Jackson and what is happening outside the Oxford environs. Journalists Henry Labouchere (Fowler), Frank Harris (Lutvak), and W. T. Stead (Bolen) talk about the power of the press, professor John Percival Postgate recommends Housman for a position despite their disagreement over Propertius, and editor Jerome K. Jerome (Capper), Harris, and Housman’s new friend Chamberlain (Haque) discuss the merits of the imprisoned writer Oscar Wilde (Bolen).

When AEH returns, he exhibits his disdain for the term homosexual to Chamberlain, declaring, “It’s half Greek and half Latin!” He also doesn’t care for the word because he never publicly admitted that he himself was gay, which is brought to the forefront when he meets Wilde, whose lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, coined the phrase “the love that dare not speak its name.” Wilde is everything that AEH was not, but their interaction, which is a complete fiction, as the two men never met, goes on too long, extending an already too long second act.

You don’t have to be a Classics major to fall under the magical spell of The Invention of Love. Five-time Tony winner Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Coast of Utopia) is in complete control, glorying in the poetry of language and the science of literature, even as he gets carried away in the later moments. Six-time Obie winner Greenspan (Strange Interlude, Four Saints in Three Acts) is mesmerizing as AEH, a proud and resolute man who, sadly, was unable to live life to the fullest. It doesn’t matter that the words he speaks and thoughts he shares are ultracomplicated and often impossible to truly understand, because they roll off his tongue with such grace and beauty that you never want him to stop.

A. E. Housman (Yaron Lotan) is haunted by his love for Moses John Jackson (José Espinosa) in Stoppard play at Theaterlab (photo by Paul Lutvak)

Lotan (You Don’t Have to Do Anything, Dead Poets Society) is charming as the young Housman, holding his own in his scenes with Greenspan and leading the energetic ensemble. Espinosa (Our Class, The Merchant of Venice) exudes sexiness as Jackson, who is in love with life in a way AEH and Housman never will be. (In the 2001 Broadway premiere, Richard Easton won a Best Actor Tony for portraying the elder Housman and Robert Sean Leonard captures a Best Supporting Actor Tony as the young Housman.)

Elkind (James Joyce’s Exiles, If We Kiss) makes excellent use of the intimate space as the plot shifts from rivers and a track meet to a club and the halls of Oxford. Bridget Lindsay’s set, which also features several white benches and cleverly incorporates the pole that stands in the middle of the room, is lit by Paige Seber with soft touches of blue, purple, and yellow. Alyssa Korol’s costumes are appropriately Victorian era, although it is curious that all the men except for AEH are barefoot.

The play also brings added meaning to one of Housman’s most famous poems, “To an Athlete Dying Young.” When Chamberlain quotes from it, Housman gets upset, saying, “This is a revolting habit, Chamberlain — I forbid you.” Despite potentially upsetting both Stoppard and Housman, I will leave you here with the full quatrain that Chamberlain referred to:

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

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

K-DRAMA MEETS SUCCESSION: SIMON STONE’S THE CHERRY ORCHARD AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

The Song family parties while their company struggles in The Cherry Orchard at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

THE CHERRY ORCHARD
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Monday – Saturday through September 26, $95-$295
www.armoryonpark.org

Since 2009, I have seen a handful of major productions of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, in English and Russian, adapted by award-winning directors (Sam Mendes, Simon Godwin, Igor Golyak, Lev Dodin) and playwrights (Stephen Karam, Tom Stoppard), featuring superstars on and off Broadway (Ethan Hawke, Diane Lane, Joel Grey, Mikhail Baryshnikov). But I’ve never truly understood what would be Chekhov’s final play until experiencing Swiss-born Australian Simon Stone’s brilliant reimagination, which is in Korean with often difficult-to-follow supertitles. Running at Park Ave. Armory through September 26, it is a wholly original and utterly dazzling work of art.

Stone, who has thrilled New York with such unique works as Yerma at the Armory in 2018, Medea at BAM in 2020, and Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at the Metropolitan Opera this past spring, has transported the story to modern-day Seoul, where family matriarch Song Do-young (Jeon Do-yeon) has returned after having spent five years in New York City, a widow recuperating from the tragic loss of her son, Hae-jun, with the help of her younger daughter, Kang Hae-na (Lee Ji-hye), and personal secretary, Lee Joo-dong (Lee Ju-won). Waiting for her back at the compound are her older daughter, the adopted Kang Hyun-sook (Moon Choi); Do-young’s older brother, Song Jae-young (Son Sang-kyu), and cousin, Kim Young-ho (Yoo Byung-hoon); her chauffeur, Shin Ye-bin (Lee Se-jun); and the housemaid, Jung Doo-na (Park Hee-jung). Regular visitors include Byun Dong-lim (Nam Yun-ho), Hae-jun’s tutor, and Hwang Doo-sik (Park Hae-soo), an extremely successful businessman whose alcoholic father had been the family’s chauffeur many years before.

The narrative is an intoxicating mix of K-drama and Succession, as the characters squabble over love and sex, power and money, responsibility and culpability. The family business is a mega-tech conglomerate that has hit hard times, primarily because no one is paying attention, living off a legacy that is in serious danger of collapse. Jae-young spends most of his time with his old record player, trapped in the past, believing everything will end up fine. Young-ho is a broke wastrel who has never worked at a real job and is overly fond of drink. Hae-na is at graduate school at NYU, making experimental films that no one will ever see. And Hyun-sook has never gotten over her inferiority complex at how she was essentially forgotten once her sister was born.

Saul Kim’s set is a marvel in Korean adaptation of Chekhov classic (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Hyun-sook is dating Doo-sik, who keeps warning everyone, especially Do-young, that if they don’t act soon, their company will have to be sold off for for a tiny amount of won, but they refuse to listen to him. Instead, they drink, party, and complain, ignoring their dire circumstances. Meanwhile, Doo-na professes her love for Joo-dong, who prefers to be called Benjamin, after Benjamin Franklin, while stringing along Ye-bin, who loves her; Dong-lim blames himself for not saving Hae-jun and has some issues when Hae-na invites him up to her room; and Do-young is haunted by her actions during her husband’s illness and Hae-jun’s death but develops a fondness for the realist Doo-sik and the idealist Dong-lim, who have a bitter argument over capitalism.

As bankruptcy nears, the family can’t, or won’t, face facts, even as the possibility looms that they will lose everything.

The nearly three-hour play takes place in and around a spectacular glass-fronted two-story sparkling white house designed by architect Saul Kim that is like a character unto itself, beautifully lit by James Farncombe to show off its many assets; it is highlighted by white steps that start on the ground and make their way up one side of the structure, onto the roof, and over the other side, at times hinting at potential danger. In the background, behind and above the set, the armory’s old Tiffany clock, which has no second or minute hands, occasionally glows, reminding us that time is running out on the Songs.

The fabulous cast, dressed in Mel Page’s contemporary costumes, is led by Emmy nominee Park (Squid Game, Hero), who is bold and strong as the conflicted Doo-sik, who does not want the family and corporation to fall apart, and Jeon (The Housemaid, Secret Sunshine), who melds elegance with vulnerability in a part that brought her back to the stage for the first time in twenty-seven years when the play premiered in South Korea in 2024. Jang Young-gyu’s music and sound keep the audience immersed in the proceedings as characters roam in and out of the house, sing, and talk over one another.

The English supertitles can be problematic, as they don’t identify who is speaking, often flash by too quickly, and divert your attention from the wild things that are happening, but you’ll get used to them. A cool transformation occurs during intermission, as snow that looks more like ashes covers the stage, an apt harbinger.

Simon Stone’s reimagination of The Cherry Orchard sheds new light on the oft-performed play (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Chekhov purists should be more than satisfied in how Stone and dramaturg Yi Dan-bi reinterpret and update the tale, remaining true to Chekhov’s intent while making it relevant to today’s society; I’ve never before related to so many of the characters, feeling like I know them.

“This is how Chekhov wrote his plays. While one person is in pain and suffering, another character is feeling joy. This allows the audience to choose whether to follow the journey of the character who is suffering or the joyful journey of the other,” Stone says in an interview in the program. “But if you switch perspectives and watch it again, it will feel like seeing an entirely different performance. People will empathize with different characters depending on their age or personal situation. And when they gather in the lobby afterwards, they will have different opinions on who was right and wrong, and I think that’s where the fun is. I do not want the entire audience to think the same way. I want questions to be raised, and I want the first step towards finding the answers to those questions to start with the audience. However, there are no right answers about who is right and wrong, or who is good and evil.”

That’s about as potent a description of the audience’s relationship to characters as I’ve read, and it’s precisely how I followed Stone’s stirring production.

Stone also helmed a very different, minimalist English-language version of the play in 2013, using Australian idioms; there was a controversy because the play was billed “by Simon Stone after Anton Chekhov.” For this version at the armory, the credits list “Text and Direction” by Stone above “Original Playwrighting” by Chekhov; I, for one, do not have a problem with that.

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

DEEP, RICH, AND BLOODY: THE BODY OF MARY: A PLAY IN THREE ACTS (OF GOD) AT THE GYM AT JUDSON

The Virgin Mary (Annalisa D’Aguilar) is not exactly thrilled when she is told she is carrying the baby Jesus (photo by Alley Babcock)

THE BODY OF MARY: A PLAY IN THREE ACTS (OF GOD)
The Gym at Judson
243 Thompson St. at Washington Square South
Thursday – Monday through October 8, $40-$129
thebodyofmary.com
www.judson.org

Katie Cappiello’s The Body of Mary: A Play in Three Acts (of God) is as funny as it is frightening.

The world premiere pulls no punches as it delves into how women’s bodies and choices have been controlled by the church, the government, and, essentially, men throughout millennia, with no end in sight. Writer-director Cappiello cleverly balances the serious heart of the show with hilarious moments that serve to the highlight the basic issues she is exploring.

In the first act, titled “The Virgin,” thirteen-year-old Mary (Annalisa D’Aguilar) can’t seem to stop throwing up into a wooden bucket while her mother, Anne (Mary Jo Mecca), offers her help. It’s not the Roman soldiers going door to door that is making her crave pickles and lose her lunch; when her father, Joachim (David Hull), arrives with the angel Gabriel (Ben Cook), she is told that God is asking if she would carry his child. She immediately declines, clearly stating, “No, thank you. My answer is no. I don’t want to do it. . . . I’m sorry, but I don’t think this whole thing works for me.”

But when Joachim blurts out that it’s too late, that she’s already pregnant and they’ve picked out a husband for her, she’s having none of it, which surprises the others, who thought she would have been thrilled at the opportunity and honor. Well, she’s not.

“God gave me this child without asking me first. That seems to be what has happened. I mean, why would He do that? Is this a trick? Father?” she asks. “Gabriel, please tell God that I’d — I’d rather not. I appreciate Him thinking of me so much and thinking me worthy of being the mother of His kid and stuff but I think instead I’m going to keep doing my regular life, if that’s OK.”

Of course, it’s not OK with the two men or her mother.

Cardinal Patrick O’Malley (David Hull) has a bizarre plan for Mother Mary Joseph (Tracy Sallows) in world premiere at the Gym at Judson (photo by Alley Babcock)

The second act, “The Mother,” takes place five years in the future in New York City, where Cardinal Patrick O’Malley (Hull) is waiting for a special delivery and has teamed up with his brother, a Massachusetts senator, on an important mission for their lord and savior. The youngest cardinal in the College of Cardinals, he is not exactly priestly; the scheming zealot quotes from Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’,” curses, is impatient, doesn’t listen to others, and is prepared to go to extremes to get what he and his brother want.

Cardinal O’Malley’s ever-faithful and obedient servant, Sister Genoveva (Mecca), brings in the pious, dedicated Mother Mary Joseph (Tracy Sallows), from the Immaculate Little Sisters of Self-Sacrifice and Martyrdom, which cares for migrant women escaping torture in their home countries. He insists she have a latte despite her protestation — he’s not about to listen to any woman, about anything — and complains about the current state of religion. “The world has been moving at a wild clip, I’m afraid, away from Jesus and his teachings,” he tells her. “Modernization, all this they/them stuff, anti-Christian rhetoric is everywhere, women don’t wants kids anymore, everyone’s a lesbian — yadda yadda. His Holiness will get us back on track. He’s a visionary. And somewhat of a mentor — to me.”

A concerned and curious Mother Mary Joseph responds, “I am grateful the keys of St. Peter have been placed in the hands of such a devout scholar and, and, um, bold leader. I shall pray for him — and for you, Your Eminence.”

When the cardinal advises Mother Mary Joseph of his plan — something so mind-bogglingly crazy yet terrifyingly all too believable — she reacts in a way that brings down the house. But there’s a lot more in store for her, particularly when Father Donato (Cook) joins them.

In the third act, “The Dumpster,” nineteen-year-old Mary (Gracie Conn) works in a Dairy Queen in the small town of Nazareth, Texas. She tosses two large bags of garbage into the dumpster in the parking lot as she is talking to her best friend, Nevaeh (voiced by D’Aguilar), about her period. “I worked ten hours today and I’m gushing blood at like horror movie levels,” Mary says. “Spilling my blood for the people. I’ve had to change my tampon three times in like an hour and a half. Is that bad? And the blood is chunky. Am I’m dying?”

A few minutes later, she hears a cry from the dumpster; she initially thinks it may be a rabid animal, but she eventually jumps in and finds an infant wrapped in a fleece blanket, apparently thrown away by the mother. She and Nevaeh run through the options of what they should do next, wanting to help the baby while not getting into trouble themselves. “This is low-key Handmaid’s Tale,” Mary says. Nevaeh adds, “And the baby’s mother is like Of-Whomever and she’s probably bleeding out in the woods somewhere.”

Displaying empathy and compassion, they don’t want the mother to be arrested as they try to understand what may have made her do such a thing.

“She could be us,” Mary says.

Mary (Gracie Conn) is not sure what she should do after finding a baby in a dumpster in The Body of Mary: A Play in Three Acts (of God) (photo by Alley Babcock)

The Body of Mary is intricately woven together by Cappiello (SLUT, Now That We’re Men), who was raised Catholic in Brockton, Massachusetts, and attended church regularly; she leaves no detail to chance. The venue, the Gym at Judson, is in Judson Church, which holds services on Sunday mornings and “seeks to be a just, diverse, vibrant, and worshipping spiritual community through the pursuit of social justice, creative expression, and sacred exploration of its own Protestant church roots and the wisdom of other traditions.” The narrative focuses specifically on the failings of the church when it comes to the rights of women to control their own body. It is no accident that the Texas Mary works at a Dairy Queen, which could be seen as a metaphor for women weaning their children, although it is not always so sweet, whether in biblical times or 2031. Even the image on the program is provocative, either an extreme close-up of a woman’s breast and nipple or belly button, sources of life. The script makes numerous references to blood and bleeding, abortion, sacrifice, and murder; at one point, Father Donato, praising a pearl neckline on Cardinal O’Malley’s vestment, declares, “I love the choice of this red. It’s so deep. And rich. And bloody.”

Forest Entsminger’s set features a gray stone wall throughout all three acts, reminding me of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where women were formerly forbidden to pray, although they are allowed now, albeit in a section separate from the men and with different restrictions. Changes are made for each scene, from various chairs and tables to bags of garbage and a manger. Dina El-Aziz’s costumes, ranging from the BCE era to the modern day, are bathed in sharp reds and blues that contrast earthly gray and brown palettes. Lauren Bremen’s lighting and Florian Staab’s sound fit the intimate space well.

The three Marys are outstanding, bringing tender depth to characters who are facing difficult situations that have no easy way out. Stage and television veteran Sallows (The Audience, Angels in America) portrays Mother Mary Joseph with just the right solemnity, making her outburst all the more unexpected and effective, while D’Aguilar and Conn, in their off-Broadway debuts, capture the energy, innocence, and sense of wonder that is pulled out from under them as their circumstances become more dire. Cook (Illinoise, West Side Story), Mecca (Bridgeboy, Body Language), and Hull (The Book of Mormon, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying) excel in multiple roles, melding slapstick with a pervading sense of impending darkness. Opera singer Lu Yi Peng “Lluvia” offers a brief, poignant respite.

The ninety-minute show never sermonizes, never preaches, never veers into holier-than-thou territory; instead, it incorporates farce and physical comedy into hard-hitting dialogue that depicts how we have not come nearly as far as we might think as a society in regard to the treatment of women; The Body of Mary is likely to leave you praying that things get better fast, but it’s already been thousands of years for us to get where we are now, and, if anything, we seem to be going backward every day.

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

NO DEAL: PRE-EXISTING CONDITION RETURNS

Sarah Steele, Lupita Nyong’o, and Dael Orlandersmith star in Pre-Existing Condition remount (photo by Jessica Kourkounis)

PRE-EXISTING CONDITION
Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Monday – Saturday through January 8, $49-$179
preexistingconditionplay.com

In 2014, the National Women’s Law Center, in response to the passage of Obamacare, announced, “The days of women being treated like pre-existing conditions are numbered. Currently, insurance companies can deny coverage to survivors of domestic violence or mothers who have had a Cesarean section simply by calling these ‘pre-existing conditions.’ But thanks to the new health care law, also known as the Affordable Care Act, this unfair practice is on the way OUT.” That didn’t stop House Republicans in 2017 from trying to price survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault out of the market in its American Health Care Act (AHCA), which was ultimately rejected by the Senate.

Marin Ireland’s debut play, Pre-Existing Condition, being remounted at the Greenwich House Theater after a highly acclaimed 2024 run at the Connelly Theater Upstairs, takes its title from that frightening fact; it is also partly inspired by something that happened to her in 2012. In my review of the previous production, some of which is repurposed below, I called the show “a brutally honest and provocative look at the psychological and bodily wounds that humans inflict and receive.” That still holds true, although the play has lost some of its power and intensity with several tweaks and changes.

It’s been seven months since “A” (Lupita Nyong’o) was brutally struck by her partner. No longer with the man, she speaks with an attorney, a psychiatrist, a few close friends, an old acquaintance, her parents, and others, but no one is able to help, instead only adding to her torment and confusion by subtly blaming her for perhaps provoking the attack and then refusing to take her lover back. She tries to date, but she’s clearly not ready, especially when the men she meets cannot, or will not, understand her situation. (The men and “A”’s mother are played by Greg Keller, while the rest of the women are portrayed by Sarah Steele and Dael Orlandersmith, all three from the original cast.)

“A” finds some respite in group therapy run by two caring women who have developed a support program; during those sessions, the two facilitators talk directly to the audience, as if we are all part of this community, because when it comes down to it, we are; domestic violence can occur at any moment, in any family. Attempting to move forward, “A” continues to question her own responsibility in what happened. It’s harrowing to see the proverbial walls that have been built around her, and that she builds herself, in a system that keeps letting her and other survivors down.

“So what happens now? What do I do?” she says to her best friend, who has grown close with the abuser and expresses sympathy for how hard it has been for him. The shocked “A” shoots back, “Isn’t there supposed to be — there’s supposed to be a system in place, right? I can’t . . . find it. I want to do the right thing and I can’t fucking find it.”

Later, “A” explores another aspect of her feelings that no one seems to get. “I’m so fucking exhausted by all of this. All of this. All of the taking it seriously and the. All of it,” she tells a therapist. “I don’t — okay. I don’t want the big task of my life now to be ‘dealing with this.’ It’s fucking eating up everything.”

When her best friend mentions the possibility of her offering forgiveness, “A” states, “I don’t want to. Forgive. I don’t want to forget it. . . . I don’t also want to be guilty of forgetting it.”

An unnamed survivor of domestic violence (Lupita Nyong’o) speaks with a friend (Greg Keller) in tense play at Greenwich House (photo by Jessica Kourkounis)

In the 2024 production, as the healing process continued, I empathized more and more with “A,” realizing that her pain and trauma could be anyone’s pain and trauma, that any one of us could be sitting in that chair in the middle of the room, being consumed by some type of tragedy. In the current iteration, again directed by Tony nominee and director Maria Dizzia — who, along with Tatiana Maslany (who I saw), Tavi Gevinson, Deirdre O’Connell, and Julia Chan, portrayed “A” two years ago — I identified more with the characters who are trying to do the right thing, who want to help but are not sure how, who keep saying the wrong things.

In the original version, the limited audience sat on three sides of a small, central space, in tightly arranged rising rafters; at Greenwich House, the audience sits in more traditional horizontal rows at the same floor level, looking up at the proscenium stage, making it feel one step removed. At the Connelly, “A” held what appeared to be a spiral-bound copy of the script throughout the play’s seventy-five minutes, sometimes glancing at the words, other times clutching it to her chest like Linus’s blanket in Peanuts. The character essentially never let go of the script, not because the actor had not yet learned the lines but because it was a constant reminder of a horrific, life-altering event in her recent past. That powerful connection is also not present at Greenwich House, where the ending is less dramatic.

Cate McCrea’s set is an empty room with a few movable chairs, an exposed radiator, white walls, and a framed poster offering, “Consider the Alternatives.” Enver Chakartash’s costumes are casual, highlighted by Steele wearing a Blondie T-shirt; Blondie vocalist Debbie Harry wrote in her 2019 memoir about having been viciously sexually assaulted in the 1970s. Lighting designer Isabella Byrd avoids it getting too dark, keeping the audience visible, as if we are all complicit.

Solo specialist Orlandersmith (Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance, Forever) is again wonderfully gentle as various therapists. Keller (Dig, Shhhh) is down-to-earth as several men in “A”’s life, the good and the bad, in addition to her mother. Drama Desk winner Steele (The Humans, I Can Get It for You Wholesale) is charming in multiple roles as she engages with “A” from multiple points of view; Steele is pregnant in real life, with a significantly protruding belly, which references how pregnancy used to be a pre-exisiting condition as well. (She will be replaced by the always terrific Susannah Perkins after October 5.)

Oscar winner and Tony nominee Nyong’o (Ruined, Eclipsed) is mesmerizing as the unnamed woman, maintaining a formidable balance as she tries to go on with her life with this trauma hanging over her head. At one point, she shakes nervously, almost uncontrollably, in a chair; later, she hovers in a corner as if trapped, eyeing people with fear and suspicion. But Nyong’o does not treat “A” like some kind of helpless victim, instead humanizing her with difficult truths about life, love, and the legal system, things that need to be addressed from top to bottom.

The role will later be played by Phillipa Soo, Susannah Flood, Hari Nef, Edie Falco, and Whitney White, who will bring their unique talents to a complex part that also reminds us that domestic violence can happen to anyone, at any time.

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

A SURGING LEGACY: PAYING TRIBUTE TO SINÉAD O’CONNOR AT THE JOYCE

The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor celebrates the life and legacy of controversial singer-songwriter (photo by Kate Garner)

THE SURGE: AN ODE TO SINÉAD O’CONNOR
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
September 16-27, $97-$112
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org

Tickets are going fast for the North American premiere of Tony-winning, Emmy-nominated Sonya Tayeh’s The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor, running at the Joyce from September 16 to 27. A coproduction with Factory International in Manchester, England, the show pays tribute to the Dublin-born singer-songwriter who rose to stardom in the last 1980s and early 1990s with such albums as The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got before getting mired in a series of political and religious controversies, experiencing health problems, and disappearing from public view for extended periods of time before dying by suicide in July 2023 at the age of fifty-six.

The seventy-minute show features Betsy Cooper, Alison Clancy, Gabrielle Malone, Mor Mendel, Amy Miller, Jennifer Nugent, Karine Plantadit, Lisa Race, Monique Smith, and Jin Ju Song-Begin dancing to more than a dozen O’Connor songs, from “Troy” and “Mandinka” to “Never Get Old” and “Feels So Different,” as well as audio excerpts from her 2021 memoir, Rememberings.

“Her death was generating these feelings and I was dancing in my loft, surrounded by this grief and joy,” director and choreographer Tayeh says in a program note. “The Joyce and I had been thinking about what we could make together, and not finding the right thing yet, and two things began boiling in my mind. One was about how ahead of her time she was, the volume of her voice, not just as a singer but with a belief system about people, those denied, closed off and mocked. The other was about curiosity, about where all the dance artists were that were my age and older. Where are the women over forty, and why did they disappear?”

Ever since her death, O’Connor and her legacy have been going through a metamorphosis and reevaluation; The Surge should add to that grief and joy.

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