live performance

AXIS COMPANY ENCORE ENGAGEMENT: TWELFTH NIGHT

Axis puts a dark spin on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (photo by Pavel Antonov)

TWELFTH NIGHT
Axis Theatre Company
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Wednesday – Saturday, September 25 – October 26, $11-$44, 8:00
866-811-4111
www.axiscompany.org

Following its initial run earlier this year, Axis’s dark and involving theatrical adaptation of Twelfth Night is back at the company’s Sheridan Square home for an encore engagement running September 25 to October 26. Below is twi-ny’s original review from May.

I described the last two productions I saw of William Shakespeare’s 1601–02 Twelfth Night as “light and lively,” “ecstatic,” “a joy to behold,” and “a pure delight.” I would not use any of those words to describe Axis Theatre Company’s streamlined new production, but that won’t stop me from heartily recommending it.

Shakespeare professor Marc Palmieri’s adaptation focuses on the darker side of this mistaken-identity romantic comedy about unrequited love, which has been trimmed to a fast-paced ninety minutes. David Zeffren’s lighting remains dim throughout on director Randall Sharp’s haunting stage, where actors are surrounded by large rectangular blocks and shadowy entrances; in one corner, guitarist and sound designer Paul Carbonara and pianist Yonatan Gutfeld (the keyboards are embedded in one of the blocks) perform Carbonara’s subtle Baroque-like score. Karl Ruckdeschel’s costumes — men’s suits and long coats, women’s gowns — are muted grays, lavenders, and earth tones; even Malvolio’s socks are a subdued yellow, not as garishly ridiculous as usual.

“If music be the food of love, play on / Give me excess of it,” Duke Orsino (Jon McCormick) declares as the show begins. The story is familiar to Shakespeare aficionados: In faraway Illyria, the wealthy countess Olivia (Katy Frame) rejects all suitors, including Orsino, who is in love with her. Her loyal steward, Malvolio (Axis producing director Brian Barnhart), also harbors a secret passion for the noblewoman. Twins Viola (Britt Genelin) and Sebastian (Eli Bridges) survive a shipwreck and wash up onshore, each ignorant that the other is still alive. One of the duke’s gentlemen, Curio (Robert Ierardi), explains to Viola, who has now disguised herself as a man named Cesario, that Olivia keeps repulsing Orsino’s advances. Viola quickly decides that she will convince Olivia to see Orsino in order to secure a place for herself in the duke’s employ.

Sebastian was rescued by Antonio (Jim Sterling), a sea captain who requests to be his servant. Believing his sister to be dead, Sebastian disguises himself as Roderigo and heads to the court of Orsino, where Antonio is not welcome.

Meanwhile, a group of conniving drunks hover around Olivia: her uncle, the raunchy Sir Toby Belch (George Demas); Sir Toby’s friend, the faux-elegant squire Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Andrew Dawson), who Sir Toby presents to Olivia as a potential suitor; Olivia’s chambermaid, Maria (Dee Pelletier); Olivia’s fool, Feste (Spencer Aste); and her servant Fabian (Brian Parks). “You must confine yourself within the modest limits of order,” Maria warns Sir Toby, who replies, “Confine! I’ll confine myself no finer than I am: these clothes are good enough to drink in; and so be these boots too.”

Axis Theatre Company’s Bard adaptation is back for an encore engagement (photo by Pavel Antonov)

After Malvolio chastises them for their ill behavior, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Feste, and Fabian, under Maria’s lead, concoct a plan to embarrass Malvolio in front of everyone. Maria explains, “Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind and affectioned ass / the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks / with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith / that all that look on him love him / and on that vice in him will my revenge find / notable cause to work.”

It all comes to a head in a grand finale that, while not as boisterous as in other iterations, is as satisfying in its exactitude.

Axis refers to Twelfth Night as “Shakespeare’s most painful comedy,” and that’s just what Sharp, Palmieri, and the superb cast deliver. The company’s dungeonlike space on Sheridan Square is tailor-made for eerie, chimeric stories bathed in gloom, doom, and gothic and apocalyptic humor. In such previous works as High Noon, Dead End, Last Man Club, and Worlds Fair Inn, Axis founding artistic director Sharp has presented stark, compelling productions heavy in dark atmosphere but not without comic moments.

In this Twelfth Night, Olivia is fretful, often edgy with anxiety. She has no friends, only those who want her wealth or favor. Many of the characters, from Malvolio and Olivia to Feste and Sir Toby Belch, have a slightly pathetic bent to them. When Sir Andrew proclaims, “Shall we set about some revels?” and Sir Toby replies, “What shall we do else?,” the revelries that follow are not exactly a fanciful, fun frolic. Feste sings “O Mistress mine where are you roaming?” and “When that I was and a little tiny boy (With hey, ho, the wind and the rain)” and Carbonara and Yonatan Gutfeld’s music ramps up, accompanied by Lynn Mancinelli’s period choreography, but it’s not quite a royal ball. A subtle cloud of desperation hangs over the festivities. In fact, sometimes it feels like a night on the Bowery. Even the revelation scenes are kept relatively low key.

Twelfth Night demonstrates precisely what Sharp and Axis do best, whether offering an original play or a fresh take on an old chestnut. As always, they also include a related window display at the bottom of the theater entry stairs, this time providing added ambience and some shipwreck Easter eggs but no cakes and ale.

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

ADAM DRESSNER: HELLO STRANGER

Mickey re-creates original pose at Adam Dressner opening in Grand Central Terminal (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

HELLO STRANGER
Grand Central Terminal, Vanderbilt Hall
89 East 42nd St. between Lexington and Vanderbilt
September 24-26, free, 9:00 am – 9:00 pm
www.adamdressner.com
grandcentralterminal.com

One can see a lot of fascinating faces and figures racing through Grand Central Terminal every day, but they seldom stop for close inspection, nor do commuters get to see a full-size portrait gallery of their fellow everyday New Yorkers. Yet that’s exactly what Adam Dressner’s new pop-up show, “Hello Stranger,” running September 24–26 on the east side of Vanderbilt Hall in GCT, provides.

After graduating from Yale Law School, New York City native Dressner briefly practiced as an attorney before turning to painting. He uses his studies of criminology, civil liberties, and facial recognition technology to create colorful, large-scale portraits of individuals he places in whimsical settings. For his latest show, he depicts people he met in Washington Square Park, relatives, and friends of friends; nearly all of them are not models and have never posed before.

Among the more than thirty works are paintings of his father, Robert, sitting cross-legged at a table, reading; the elegant Mr. Love, in hat and bowtie, dangling major bling; ABT dancer Georgia Duisenberg in the middle of a pose; Hannah, in fencing gear; a triptych of three people enjoying themselves in Averill Park in upstate New York; his favorite subject, his grandmother Sonia Segoda Dressner, who died in 2020 at the age of ninety-nine; and collaborations with artists De La Vega and Keion Kopper.

At the opening, I asked Dressner, who was dressed casually and wearing one of his many blue baseball caps, about how he chooses who to paint.

“Well, a lot of them were chance encounters,” he said. “That’s where I met [jeweler] Greg Yüna, who introduced me to many of the people who are in the paintings. It’s random chance. I have this umbrella that’s over here where I paint people from life; it’s self-selecting in the sense that people come over and ask to be painted, and if I think they’re a particularly interesting subject, I’ll ask them if they’d be interested. In some cases people ask me if I’d paint them; in many cases I ask them. I place people in imaginary environments where I think that they might want to be placed.”

He noted that Shar told him that she liked sharks, so he added a hammerhead hovering in the background. At the opening, Shar was sitting behind a table with another subject, Betty, handing out information about the show as well as postcards. Also on the table was a mixed-media cash register with the word Sales on top, although the postcards are free.

Jessie poses in front of one of two portraits of her in “Hello Stranger” show in Vanderbilt Hall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Several subjects were at the event, posing in front of their paintings, including Mickey, who mimicked his exuberant pose; Wendy, sitting next to her small cart with a stuffed red monkey attached to it; and Jessie, who is in two paintings, one of her reading on the beach, the other standing in a blue dress in front of a pink window.

Jessie said that she found the experience of posing for Dressner in his East Village studio “unnerving,” adding, “I love his work so much that I wanted to see what he would do with me, even though I was a little afraid. It’s a strange thing to see yourself captured on canvas, then against this strange background.”

In the center of the space is a Steinway piano, where live performances will take place during the three-day run of the show. I took a peek at the playlist on the piano and noticed several Christmas songs, “Amazing Grace,” “Ave Maria,” and two Johann Strauss pieces.

Dressner is inspired by classic works he’s seen at the Met and MoMA while also exploring his personal feelings and memory. Talking about his portrait of Shar, Dressner admitted, “It’s a little bit of an absurd painting, but that’s what I do. I draw with paint; I will paint the person on a white canvas, then I’ll figure out some shapes that make sense to me, and then after that I will figure out a story.”

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

ASKING FOR MORE: THE ASK at the wild project

Greta (Betsy Aidem) and Tanner (Colleen Litchfield) face off in Matthew Freeman’s The Ask (photo by Kent Mesiter)

THE ASK
the wild project
195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B
Wednesday – Sunday through September 28, $58.59
thewildproject.com

In a two-minute television commercial for the American Civil Liberties Union that has been running since the fall of 2022, comedian, author, and actor W. Kamau Bell explains, “As Americans, there’s one thing we can all agree on: the promise of our Constitution — and the hope that liberty and justice is for all people.” In the ad, Bell, an ACLU ambassador, asks viewers to become members of the civil rights organization for $19 a month, a fee also requested to join No Kid Hungry, the World Wildlife Fund, St. Jude’s, the ASPCA, and other charitable institutions. (The amount is both for tax purposes and perception, keeping it under $20.)

In Matthew Freeman’s stimulating new play, The Ask, making its world premiere through September 28 at the wild project, an ACLU fundraiser is asking for a whole lot more from a longtime donor who is on the fence about her future support of the nonprofit that started in 1920 and “is committed to fight for freedom and the protection of constitutional rights for generations to come.”

Greta (Betsy Aidem) is a wealthy seventysomething widow and lifelong feminist, a successful photographer who lives in Florida and the Upper West Side (and just sold her home in Maine). Tanner (Colleen Litchfield) is an adopted nonbinary millennial who resides in Bushwick and is a gift planning officer for the ACLU.

It’s set in December 2022, five months before the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic no longer a public health emergency. The characters’ first discussion is about Tanner’s presence; they’ve replaced Greta’s longtime ACLU contact, Carol, under unclear circumstances. Greta is unhappy that she wasn’t notified of Carol’s departure, nor has she been told the reason, although she suspects Carol was part of recent layoffs, which the ACLU executive director referred to as “right-sizing.”

Tanner dances around the answer, which annoys Greta. It’s a theme that runs throughout the play: Greta feels free to share anything about herself and her views, while Tanner is stiff and reserved, careful what they say about the ACLU and, more critically, about themself as they delve into the First Amendment, hate speech, student debt, the Founding Fathers and slavery, the Supreme Court, hunger, high-speed internet for underserved communities, and reproductive rights. Greta is upset by the number of emails she gets from the ACLU and some members’ references to the Constitution as a white-supremacist document, while Tanner keeps trying to convince Greta that the ACLU’s purpose is as consequential and necessary as ever.

“You do plenty of good in the world,” Tanner says. Greta replies, “Thank you, you’re the one who does good. I just write proverbial checks.” Tanner encourages her, “Well, they matter.” To which Greta shoots back, “Yes yes, you have to say that.”

But the tide turns on Tanner’s inability to say one word, the very term that is most important to Greta.

Tanner (Colleen Litchfield) has an impossible mission on their hands in world premiere at the wild project (photo by Kent Mesiter)

At its core, The Ask is about personal and professional identity. Greta not only speaks her mind but makes her living as a photographer, taking pictures of other people and places that shape her view of the world. Her apartment is cluttered with books piled on and under tables, including art tomes on Vincent van Gogh, Alice Neel, Paul Gauguin, and Ninth Street Women in addition to such feminist and left-leaning literature as Gloria Steinem’s Revolution from Within; Diane di Prima’s Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years; Amy Goodman and David Goodman’s Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, about what one can do to fight for what they believe in; and Jodie Patterson’s The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation, about a mother whose toddler tells her that she is not a girl but a boy.

Greta’s cozy, intimate apartment is filled with photographs hung on black-and-white scallop-shell wallpaper, both her own and several taken by Pictures Generation artist Cindy Sherman, who reimagines herself as different personae in cinematic self-portraits that explore gender and identity. Tanner, who is clearly uncomfortable sharing certain personal information with Greta, expresses their admiration of Sherman. “I love her too; I think she’s a scream,” Greta says. Tanner responds, “I think she’s terrifying.”

Tanner is also enamored with a photograph of a dinosaur, which Greta refers to as her self-portrait, an ancient creature surrounded by real life. Tanner points out, “Except for Cindy Sherman. She’s not real life.” Greta, keeping their cat-and-mouse game going, counters, “She’s a little more real than a Brontosaurus.”

The play is intricately directed by Jessi D. Hill (Small, Ushuaia Blue), who makes the most of Craig Napoliello’s almost claustrophobic set, which has a small hallway in the back that leads to the unseen kitchen and bathroom, bringing some kind of respite to the tense proceedings occurring in the study, where Greta, in black pants, a loose-fitting purple blouse, and clogs, sits comfortably in a chair while Tanner, in brown pants, a V-neck sweater, a dark blazer, and sneakers, is rigid and uneasy in an opposite chair. (The costumes are by Nicole Wee, with sharp sound by Cody Hom and bright lighting by Daisy Long.)

Freeman (Silver Spring, Why We Left Brooklyn) writes with a refreshing assuredness, creating dialogue that could have become pedantic and self-serving but instead is through-provoking and, often, very funny even as it deals with serious situations. Tony nominee Aidem (Prayer for the French Republic, All the Way) is energetic and appealing as Greta, a wholly believable feminist who doesn’t want to see everything her generation accomplished just slip away, while Litchfield (The Summoning, The Heart of Robin Hood) stands firm as a much younger individual who has their own vision of the future but cannot say it out loud. (Both actors were in the original Broadway cast of Leopoldstadt, Aidem as Grandma Emilia, Litchfield as Hanna.)

Even at eighty minutes, the play is a bit too long, repeating several points and including one gratuitous monologue, but otherwise it expertly captures the changes that are evolving primarily on the left in today’s society. Greta and Tanner are battling each other instead of the other side, unwilling to compromise their values.

“I imagine in your life. Your individuality is important to you. Asserting your identity, your uniqueness, that’s been important to you. It might have even been a struggle. I don’t want to assume anything, but I imagine that’s true for you?” Greta says, adding, “But you see, I also want to be treated as an individual. As a woman, I mean, as a woman I’ve had to fight against the perception that I am a certain way, that I am defined by all these stereotypes about women.”

Tanner wants to change the subject, understanding that Greta might not like what they have to say — and it’s about a lot more than a charitable donation, whether $19 a month or a much higher figure.

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

BUILDING BRIDGES: JOHN T. REDDICK AND THE BLACK HISTORY OF TIN PAN ALLEY

Curator and cultural historian John T. Reddick will give a talk on Tin Pan Alley on September 11 at the Society of Illustrators (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

ILLUSTRATING TIN PAN ALLEY: FROM RAGTIME TO JAZZ
Society of Illustrators
128 East Sixty-Third St. between Park & Lexington Aves.
Wednesday – Saturday through October 12, $10-$15
Tin Pan Alley Talk & Reception: Wednesday, September 11, $10-$15. 6:30
212-838-2560
societyillustrators.org

Longtime Harlem resident and Yale University School of Architecture graduate John T. Reddick is into bridge building — but in this case, the bridges aren’t physical structures but those that involve the lesser-known history of Tin Pan Alley. The birthplace of American popular music, Tin Pan Alley flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when dozens of music publishers and businesses lined the streets of what is now Chelsea, in the West Twenties.

Born and raised in the integrated Philadelphia neighborhood of Mount Airy, Reddick got involved in trying to save Tin Pan Alley when five buildings on West Twenty-Eighth St. were in danger of being demolished by their owner/developer. In 2019, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated them historic landmarks.

A founding member of Harlem Pride and the director of community engagement projects for the Central Park Conservancy, Reddick has been an avid collector of sheet music art, focusing on songs composed and/or performed by Black and Jewish entertainers. What began as a curiosity and hobby has blossomed into a dazzling exhibition at the Society of Illustrators, “Illustrating Tin Pan Alley: From Ragtime to Jazz,” on view through October 12.

“I felt like these artists were groundbreakers. I see in them many parallels to hip hop, in that ragtime’s innovation for its time was as jarring as hip hop’s,” he said of the composers and performers of the era during a tour of the show. “My journey began after I went to a talk on the Lower East Side given by Jeffery Gurock, who lectured on the period when Harlem was Jewish. That was a revelation to me, that Harlem had once been the second largest Jewish community in New York City. From that point I went to the library, did research, and started buying items on eBay. It was just shocking; as I bought sheet music or got to see the names, I realized they all lived in Harlem during the same time period.”

Arranged chronologically, the exhibit focuses on sheet music and its accompanying art, which reveals the developing connections between American Black and white music, beginning with the cakewalk, a Black dance that originated in America but became a craze when introduced in Europe, advancing its popularity as a hit in the United States. Several photographs and illustrations depict the cakewalk being performed, including two works by French artist Georges-Bertin Scott, sheet music covers for the songs “Darktown Is Out To-Night” and “Cake Walk Neath the Dixie Moon,” and a drawing in which Uncle Sam relaxes while watching dancers’ cakewalk around a tree.

On a nearby wall is the sheet music for “All Coons Look Alike to Me,” a popular 1898 song composed by Ernest Hogan that sold more than a million copies. Hogan, a prominent Black composer and performer, appeared in shows with the leading African American performers of the day. However, the song’s sheet music art, which featured unflattering caricatures of Black men and women, became such a crippling definer of Hogan as an artist that it led to his demise.

Reddick noted, “All of a sudden, this ragtime music is popular, and you want to show and sell us more. What do you use to image that music?” Reddick grouped together the sheet music covers for “Who Dat Say Chicken in Dis Crowd” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Will Marion [Cook], “Cotton: A Southern Breakdown” by Albert Von Tilzer, and “Watermelon Am Good Enough for Mine” by G. Barker Richardson and Von Tilzer. “I have three things in there: cotton, chicken, and watermelon. They’re in the lyrics; they’re in the titles,” Reddick said. “A lot of the signifying, I feel, is coming out of music publishers just trying to meet the commercial market where its mind is at. You don’t cartoon something unless its understanding is pervasive. For me it’s the beginning of bridge building to some identity that’s beyond that becomes an American music.”

Other excellent groupings juxtapose two different sheet music covers for Lew Pollack’s “Vamping Sal the Sheba of Georgia” and three for Shelton Brooks’s “Darktown Strutters’ Ball.”

Pointing out that a lot of sheet music was dedicated to songwriter and journalist Monroe Rosenfeld because the performers knew he could talk them up in the newspaper, Reddick zeroed in on the team of Bert Williams and George Walker.

“Rosenfeld has this bridge relationship, so you see a lot of people pandering to him, even Williams and Walker, who coined themselves ‘the two real coons.’ They claimed the tag and the stage to establish their own authenticity and artistry. I realized in many ways it’s just like hip hop. You could have been the greatest hip-hop singer in the world, but if you went to amateur night at the Apollo and started singing in a tuxedo, you would be booed. You wouldn’t even get your mouth open because there’s a certain kind of drag they expect you to be in to perform. Williams and Walker knew they were good, but they realized that more whites were blacking-up and playing Blacks onstage than actual Black performers. It was so much more sophisticated. They could show that there’s parody and all this irony in lot of stuff they did.”

Every element, even the way the show is hung, carries some kind of weight. Reddick explained that for most of the works, a black frame indicates the song was written by a Black composer, a white frame by a white composer.

Perhaps not accidentally, the cover sheet for Jean Schwartz’s 1908 “The Whitewash Man,” depicting a smiling Black man carrying a paint bucket and a broom, is placed over a water fountain, evoking the “Whites Only” signs of the Jim Crow era.

Among the other composers and performers Reddick discussed were James Reese Europe and Ford T. Dabney, Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, Irene and Vernon Castle, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Miss Aida Overton Walker, drummer Buddy Gilmore, Fats Waller, Sophie Tucker, Josephine Baker, and W. C. Handy as well as the Clef Club, the Ziegfeld Follies, the Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn, and Al Hirschfeld and Sydney Leff, two Jewish artists who attended the Vocational High School for the Arts on 138th Street in Harlem.

“Think of the names of Motown groups,” Reddick said. “The Supremes, the Marvelettes, the Temptations. Nobody’s a gangster. They’re claiming we deserve to be on the other side. Now we have a credential. . . . When the Central Park jogger case happened [in 1989], the term ‘wilding,’ it was just a term for young people being in nature and the park, not being there in the park to victimize people. But that was the first time it crossed over as a term from the Black community to the broader public. . . . So, I always think, what if bling had crossed over, associated with a jewelry store robbery as opposed to the fashions of hip-hop artists. Again, the word already had that meaning in my culture. Bling and jewelry. You got bling on, but at a certain point it crossed over, right? Maybe a hip-hop person, whatever. What was the bridge that made it happen?”

Tin Pan Alley exhibition winds down narrow hallway (photo courtesy of Society of Illustrators)

One of the most striking works is E. Simms Campbell’s gorgeously detailed 1932 “Night-Club-Map of Harlem,” which locates such hot spots as Smalls Paradise, Club Hot-Cha (“where nothing happens before 2 a.m.”), “the nice new police station,” Gladys’ Clam House, the Lafayette Theatre, the Radium Club, and the Savoy Ballroom, with cartoon vignettes of people dancing the lindy hop and the snakehips, men purchasing “marijuana cigarettes,” Bill “Bojangles” Robinson tapping away, and Tillie’s offering “specialties in fried chicken — and it’s really good.”

Reddick, who will give a lecture at the Society of Illustrators on September 11 at 6:30, followed by a reception with pianist/preservationist Adrian Untermyer, then told a story about American composer and violinist Will Marion Cook, who had studied with and influenced Antonín Dvořák’s take on America’s “Negro Music.”

“He performed and got a review that said he was one of the nation’s best colored violinists. And he took his violin to the critic and broke it and said, ‘I’m the best violinist.’ He wanted to start writing for Black shows and other Black players. He wrote with [poet and novelist] Paul Laurence Dunbar. But his family was so embarrassed for writing that ‘n—er’ music that in his first productions, he didn’t use his last name. However, Cook-associated shows such as 1898’s Clorindy and 1903’s In Dahomey served to bring a more diverse African American identity to the stage. What does that mean politically? If people are liking you, then they are seeing you in another light. What’s that going to mean on the political landscape?”

He added, “Now they could be voters. Picking cotton, you weren’t a voter. They’re playing at Madison Square Garden, so they’re at this elevated level. They’re having a life that was unimaginable for most Blacks.”

Above “All Coons Look Alike to Me” is a quote by W. E. B. Du Bois from his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others . . . one ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings.”

In “Illustrating Tin Pan Alley: From Ragtime to Jazz,” Reddick is reconciling those strivings and more, building bridges across race and class through a unique moment in New York City musical history.

[On September 19, the Society of Illustrators will host a happy hour from 5:00 to 9:00, with free admission, drink specials, and live music by Charlie Judkins, Miss Maybell, and Robert Lamont. Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

R.O.S.E.

Park Ave. Armory has been transformed into a rave club for R.O.S.E. (photo by Stephanie Berger)

R.O.S.E.
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
September 5-12, $65
www.armoryonpark.org

Sharon Eyal’s exhilarating R.O.S.E., which opened September 5 for a too-brief seven-show run in Wade Thompson Drill Hall in Park Ave. Armory, ebbs and flows as a participatory dance experience that pulses with a series of slow fuses that explode about half a dozen times over the course of three hot hours.

An armory commission that debuted last year at New Century Hall in Manchester, R.O.S.E. starts off calmer than one might expect. The hall is divided into front and back sections by a floor-to-ceiling side-to-side black fabric wall. As the audience arrived in the first section of the hall, about a half hour before showtime, a DJ spun droning tunes in the space, mostly empty save for a few couches and benches; a projection of a large white rose glowed on the wall behind the DJ.

On opening night, one man moved slowly back and forth to the music as a handful of others relaxed, talked, and checked their phones. Little was going on; excitement was nonexistent. At 7:30, the crowd began entering the main space; staff wearing glow sticks placed a sticker over each person’s phone camera lens, as absolutely no photo or video is allowed inside.

The truncated area lacks the breathtaking awe of the hall’s usual vastness, with walls and curtains on all sides and lights and speakers hanging down, blocking the view of the impressive ceiling. There are four step-platforms, with bars in two corners, the tech crew in a third, and DJ Ben UFO in the fourth. (The set design is by Daphnée Lanternier, who is also credited with creative direction.)

Dancers weave in, through, and around the crowd in Sharon Eyal’s immersive R.O.S.E. (photo by Stephanie Berger)

It was not clear what to do at first as attendees considered where to stand. (I recommend hanging around wherever you see white tape on the floor.) The crowd consisted of people from all age groups (except children), in all types of dress and hairstyles, including small groups that appeared to come straight out of SNL’s old “Sprockets” skits; some swayed to the music, others chattered away, and a few scanned their phones. After about fifteen curious minutes, one gentleman stepped into a spotlight in the middle of the room and clapped his hands over his head several times; that was all it took to get more people to start dancing.

Shortly after eight o’clock, as the packed dance floor was heating up, nine performers (Darren Devaney, Guido Dutilh, Juan Gil, Alice Godfrey, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Johnny McMillan, Keren Lurie Pardes, and Nitzan Ressler) entered the space, making their way through the audience, which parted to let them pass. Wearing postapocalyptic beige costumes by Maria Grazia Chiuri of Christian Dior Couture (that occasionally included cowls and cinch sacks), metal jewelry and makeup by Noa Eyal Behar (that featured streaked black eyeliner, teardrops, and piercings), they moved through the crowd with insectlike precision, their arms and legs forming awkward angles.

Eyal cut her teeth as a member and choreographer of Batsheva Dance Company, and her exciting movement language contains elements of former Batsheva artistic director Ohad Naharin’s Gaga system. The work is codirected by Eyal’s longtime collaborator Gai Behar, whom Eyal met in a club in the late 1990s, and Caius Pawsom of the Young art collective.

While some audience members hung back on the platform risers, others followed the nine dancers around the room as the music thumped, haze wafted over everyone, and Alon Cohen’s propulsive lighting shifted between darkness and light. And then the dancers disappeared.

A team of twelve dancers in black join the fray at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

This pattern happened five or six times during the evening. The dancers would sneak into the area, starting from different corners, and groove for between five and fifteen minutes, sometimes breaking off into stunning solos. If you decide to remain close to them, you have to stay vigilant, as they unpredictably turn, twist, and reach out; you might be touched — one woman stood her ground, so a dancer made contact with her, while another dancer gently put a hand on a man’s shoulder — and you might even be given a black rose.

For one exquisitely choreographed scene, the nine dancers faced off against twelve dancers in black lace (New York–based Julia Ciesielka, Blu Furutate, Antonia Gillette, Michaella Ho, Destinee Jimenez, Nick LaMaina, Natalie Wong, Nina Longid, Julian Sanchez, Luc Simpson, Kailei Sin, and Jeremy Villas) in an epic battle that evoked both West Side Story and The Warriors (as well as a smidgen of Beneath the Planet of the Apes).

It’s a long night, so if you need a break, you can wander back to the first section or even out into the armory’s various period rooms with chairs and couches, and you can get a breath of fresh air outside, but the time between dances gets shorter and shorter as the evening continues, and you don’t want to miss any of them. Part of the fun is anticipating where the dancers will next emerge from and when and where they will exit. Near the end, there are longer solos and, ultimately, a stirring finale where everyone comes together in a rousing celebration bursting with electricity.

The more you put into R.O.S.E., the more you will get out of it. Don’t take off the phone sticker and try to steal a picture or video, which I saw at least two people doing, and don’t obsessively scroll through your cell in between dances. Get into the groove. Bask in the freedom. Join the party and rave on!

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

RICHARD TOPOL ON ABRAM, SHYLOCK, AND ANTISEMITISM: OUR CLASS / THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Rich Topol first played Abram Baker in Our Class at BAM this past January (photo by Pavel Antonov)

OUR CLASS / THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East Thirteenth St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Our Class: Tuesday – Sunday, September 12 – November 3, $89-$139
The Merchant of Venice: Tuesday – Sunday, November 22 – December 22, $59-$129
www.classicstage.org
www.arlekinplayers.com

Earlier this year, Arlekin Players Theatre and MART Foundation’s timely new adaptation of Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s 2008 drama, Our Class, sold out a three-week run at the BAM Fisher as part of the Under the Radar festival. Inspired by actual events that occurred in the small village of Jedwabne, Poland, the three-hour play, directed by the endlessly inventive Igor Golyak, focuses on antisemitism among a group of ten Polish students, five Jewish, five Catholic, all born in 1919–20, from childhood to young adulthood to old age, although several don’t make it through a horrific 1941 pogrom.

In my January 30 review, I wrote, “The cast and crew, who hail from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US, are superb. . . . Perhaps the best thing about Our Class is that it doesn’t preach at the audience; it has a message and a point of view but is not teaching us about good and evil.”

The show, which was nominated for Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama Desk Awards, is back for a return engagement September 12 – November 3 at Classic Stage, with the same cast and crew. One thing that will be at least somewhat different is the staging, as Classic Stage is smaller and more intimate than the Fisher (199 seats vs. 250), and the audience sits on three sides of the action. Arlekin’s residency continues there November 22 – December 22 with the New York debut of its unique and unusual production of Shakespeare’s The most excellent historie of the Merchant of Venice with the exxtreame cruelitie of Shylocke the Jewe, featuring much of the same team as Our Class, including director Golyak and actors Richard Topol, Gus Birney, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Stephen Ochsner, and Alexandra Silber.

Topol, who has starred as Jewish characters on and off Broadway in such works as Indecent, The Chosen, Awake & Sing, Prayer for the French Republic, and King of the Jews, plays Abram Baker in Our Class, a student who leaves Poland and becomes a rabbi in America. In The Merchant of Venice, he will play Shylock, the Jewish moneylender previously portrayed by Edmund Kean, Edwin Booth, Jacob Adler, Orson Welles, Al Pacino, Laurence Olivier, John Douglas Thompson, Andrew Scott, and many others.

In my January 8 Substack post “‘class consciousness’: we are not safe. again.,” exploring Our Class and antisemitism in relation to Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7 and the aftermath, Topol explained, “Certainly the violence that is occurring in both Ukraine and Israel/Gaza is impacting my relationship and understanding of the play. And it’s making Our Class a story that feels even more important to tell. Because it’s based on true events that occurred not far from Ukraine. And because it’s about cycles of hate. And the violence that can come from that hate.”

As the company began rehearsals for the Classic Stage transfer, I asked Topol several questions about the two plays and his characters.

twi-ny: What similarities do you see between Abram and Shylock?

rt: Well, for starters, they are both Jews living through perilous times filled with antisemitism. They are both fathers who love their children deeply. They are both connected to their religion fully. And they both face moments where they struggle with how to respond to people who treat them with indignity.

twi-ny: What are their main differences?

rt: I think their main difference is how they respond to being treated with indignity. Shylock seeks revenge. He can’t see straight once he’s been broken. Abram is treated less harshly but he also is a kinder man who tries to come to terms with the world as it is in a way that allows for forgiveness or redemption or understanding. And I think that is because Abram is a rabbi who feels the blessings of his G-d around him, even as he suffers harm. Shylock is a businessman, a moneylender, and though he is connected to his Jewish faith, he isn’t as grounded in its teachings as Abram is. Abram creates this gigantic family, these generations of descendants whom he loves and cherishes. Shylock feels like he’s alone in the world, with only his one daughter as his ally. And once she’s gone he has nobody he can lean on, live for, or help him see straight.

Also, because of Abram’s inherent kindness, he sees the best in people, the hope for the world, the possibilities for the future. Maybe Shylock had some kindness in him somewhere but we certainly don’t see much if any of it during the course of the play. Maybe it was snuffed out when his wife died. But bottom line there is a hardness in Shylock’s soul as opposed to a kind of softness in Abram’s.

twi-ny: How might Abram have fared as the Venetian moneylender in Merchant, and how might Shylock have done as the rabbi in Our Class?

rt: That’s a great question and a fun thing to try to imagine. Abram seems like a pretty smart guy, so maybe he would have figured out how to make a successful go of it as a Venetian moneylender. He’s good with languages, he’s a hard worker, and he has a kind of can-do attitude that would have stood him in good stead. I like his chances.

Shylock as a rabbi . . . hmm . . . I’m thinking no way. At least not the kind of rabbi I’d like to hear at synagogue! He definitely feels strongly about his tribe, his people, his religion. But I don’t see him as having the right temperament to be a leader to his fellow Jews.

twi-ny: What would they think about the state of the world if they were alive today, with the same jobs?

rt: Shylock as a modern-day moneylender — a banker in this world of global capitalism — he might be just fine. I think most of the Jews of this time live with greater freedoms, respect, and opportunity than during Shylock’s time in Venice. He’d certainly recognize the antisemitism of our time, but if he were a banker in Venice now I think he might be thriving and might feel like a true equal to his Christian counterparts.

Abram, well, he was alive not that long ago. But I think he’d be heartbroken to see the rise of antisemitism in this country. My sense of him is of someone who loved and seized on the promise and opportunity of America, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. An immigrant who was always thankful for the chance to make a new and full life here. And he would be as disturbed by the hate and divisiveness of our time right now as many of us are.

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

TICKET ALERT: THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD ENCORE ENGAGEMENT

The Voices in Your Head is back for an encore run in a storefront Brooklyn church (photo by HanJie Chow)

THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD
St. Lydia’s Dinner Church
304 Bond St., Brooklyn
September 9 – October 11, $39.72-$55.20
stlydias.org/events
www.eggandspoontheatre.org

In January, The Voices in Your Head offered a unique view of grief counseling, taking place at St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in Brooklyn. The sixty-minute play sold out quickly, extending its run and adding seats. It’s now back for a return engagement September 9 – October 11, and some nights are already fully booked. For other nights, there are either $39.72 or $55.20 Pay It Forward tickets available, but not both. Christian Caro, Marcia DeBonis, Tom Mezger, Daphne Overbeck, Erin Treadway, and Jehan O. Young reprise their roles in this Egg & Spoon remount, with Alex Gibson, Jamila Sabares–Klemm, and Molly Samson joining the cast.

Below is my original review of the January 2024 edition of this thoroughly involving and entertaining experience.

————————————

Lately I’ve been thinking more than ever about grief and death. I’m not a support group kinda guy, but when I heard about The Voices in Your Head, I knew I had to go.

I found solace — and nearly nonstop laughter — in Those Guilty Creatures’ immersive, site-specific group therapy black comedy, which continues at St. Lydia’s storefront dinner church in Brooklyn through January 29.

The space has been renamed St. Lidwina’s, after the Dutch patron saint of chronic pain and ice skating. The church has a large front window and door, looking more like a cozy shop than a place of worship. When you arrive, you are asked to check off your name on a sign-in sheet; to protect your anonymity, there are no last names, although people passing by outside can peek in and see you.

In the center of the room are more than two dozen unmatched chairs arranged in a large oval. In the back is a working kitchen where the facilitator, Gwen (Vanessa Kai), greets everyone while making tea and cookies. Several attendees engage in friendly conversation and chitchat. Shortly after Gwen calls the meeting to order, it becomes apparent that a handful of the participants are in the cast.

“It’s funny, when I was at my lowest, I was going to all these different meetings; it felt like dating, trying to find the right match, and they were all so . . . maudlin? I thought, there has to be another way. So, I started this group,” Gwen says. “Evidently, there was a need. So, we’re all here, we’ve met the criteria, but, broadly, I like to think of this as a place to share a sensibility. Laughter comes easier for me in here than out there. Everyone has their own relationship to grief; I’ve been considering mine, but what about anti-grief? We seek that through shared stories, activities, and discussions. . . . We aim to hear three stories each week, which, hopefully, helps us exchange some weird-ass joy.”

The audience becomes immersed in the grief of others in The Voices in Your Head (photo by HanJie Chow)

Sharing their sensibilities are the vivacious and outgoing Regina (Daphne Overbeck); Vivian (Marcia DeBonis), who believes in “Death, Embarrassment, Trauma”; Caleb (Christian Caro), who doesn’t want to be sad in college and can’t stop texting; the ultraserious Sandra (Erin Treadway); and the practical Hadiya (Jehan O. Young), who loves “the morbid stuff.”

They are eventually joined by first-timer Blake (Patrick Foley), who is determined to turn his story of loss into a Netflix special, and Ted (Tom Mezger), who actually attends the church and saw a flier.

Over the course of sixty fun, lively minutes, the group discusses Kelly Clarkson, hot cater waiters, self-care, vacuuming, exfoliating, sand, and other items and issues as they explore their personal misfortunes. A role-playing session that puts some of the group members in specific social situations doesn’t go quite as expected. During a break, the characters gossip, revealing more about who they are.

At the center of it all is the arbitrariness of death and Gwen’s assertion that we should “just approach the nature of the loss with a sense of humor. It helps us hold a certain space.”

The Voices in Your Head takes place in the storefront of a Brooklyn dinner church (photo by HanJie Chow)

The cast is uniformly excellent, led by Kai (The Pain of My Belligerence, KPOP) as the not-necessarily-so-stable Gwen, the always terrific DeBonis (Mary Page Marlowe, Small Mouth Sounds) as the chatty but caring Vivian, Treadway (Spaceman, War Dreamer) as the dour Sandra, Young (Speech, The Johnsons) as the purposeful Hadiya, Overbeck (Typed Out: A Princess Cabaret, Nightgowns) as the wonderfully over-the-top Regina, and Caro making his off-Broadway debut as the inattentive Caleb, but Foley (Circle Jerk, The Seagull/Woodstock, NY) nearly steals the show with his unforgettable Christmas story.

Created by Grier Mathiot and Billy McEntee and gleefully directed by Ryan Dobrin, The Voices in Your Head is as smart as it is hilarious. It’s not so much about how we deal with death than how we deal with life. Everyone reacts differently to tragedy and loss, but, as Gwen points out, “We need to hear each other’s laughter.”

The Voices in Your Head is not interactive — the audience should leave the talking to the actors — but feel free to mingle afterward and share your own thoughts about this engaging and involving experience.

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