Richard Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman), Robert Shaw (Ian Shaw), and Roy Scheider (Colin Donnell) find plenty of downtime in The Shark Is Broken (photo by Matthew Murphy)
THE SHARK IS BROKEN
Golden Theatre
252 West Forty-Fifth St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 19, $58-$215.50 thesharkisbroken.com
The first two adult books I read were Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, when I was in fourth grade. (I discovered only when I was in college that the latter was actually the Reader’s Digest Condensed version; I should have realized that by the opening sentence, which was “Call me Ish.”) A few years later, I devoured Peter Benchley’s Jaws, at least in part because the novel took place on Long Island, where I had spent most of my childhood. Not yet a teenager, I then saw the movie, which was actually filmed on Martha’s Vineyard, when it was released in the summer of 1975. It scared the hell out of me, and I loved every second of it.
I might not have loved every second of The Shark Is Broken, the Broadway play that goes behind the scenes of the making of the film, but I enjoyed enough of it to make it more than seaworthy.
English actor Ian Shaw was four years old when his father, Oscar-nominated actor, novelist, and playwright Robert Shaw (From Russia with Love,A Man for All Seasons) was on set alongside eventual two-time Oscar nominee Roy Scheider (The French Connection,All That Jazz) and soon-to-be Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss (American Graffiti,The Goodbye Girl). Robert died in 1978 at the age of fifty-one, when Ian was only eight. In 2017, Ian read his father’s drinking diary, which, he explains in an online letter, he found “painful and very brave.” That was the impetus for The Shark Is Broken, which he cowrote with Joseph Nixon and premiered at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe.
There is no curtain at the Golden Theatre, where the play opened August 21. Onstage is a cross-section of the Orca, the ramshackle lobster boat owned by salty shark hunter and WWII veteran Quint, Shaw’s character. Scheider (Colin Donnell) is playing new police chief Martin Brody, a former New York City cop who has moved to the supposedly much quieter beach community with his family. And Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) is portraying oceanographer Matt Hooper, who has been brought in for his expert advice.
The three men sling testosterone around for ninety-five minutes as they wait for Bruce, the mechanical shark, to be repaired yet again; it keeps breaking down, giving the actors time to talk about their careers and for Shaw and Dreyfuss to lace into each other, with the cool and calm Scheider as referee.
The Shark Is Broken goes behind the scenes of the making of Jaws, storms and all (photo by Matthew Murphy)
The neurotic, Jewish Dreyfuss, who is from Queens, declares, “What a god-almighty fucking waste of time! This whole thing is a disaster.” New Jersey native Scheider, who spends most of the downtime reading the newspaper and catching rays, closely following the Nixon-Watergate story, says, “Well . . . it’s not the time it takes to take the take that takes the time. . . . It’s the time it takes between the takes that takes the time to take the take.” Dreyfuss responds, “How much time did that take you?”
Complaining about the way Steven Spielberg is directing the film, shooting on the ocean and constantly making changes to the script, Dreyfuss argues, “Jews should stay away from water. Nothing good ever happened to any Jew on the water.” Scheider asks, “Didn’t Jesus walk on water?” Dreyfuss concludes, “Yeah! Look what happened to him!”
Meanwhile, Shaw preys on Dreyfuss’s lack of worldly knowledge. “You’re a philistine, boy!” he declares. When Dreyfuss admits he has never heard of Damon Runyon, saying “You can’t expect me to know everything,” Shaw barks back, “I think our mistake is expecting you to know anything.” A few minutes later, Dreyfuss asks, “What, you think I’m an idiot?” to which Shaw replies, “I presume that’s a rhetorical question.”
The interplay among the three is like the scar scene in the film, when the three men show off their scars and share other intimacies, including discussing their relationships with their fathers, ultimately bonding if not exactly becoming best buds. Shaw has hidden bottles all over the boat, Scheider can’t get enough of the blazing sun, and Dreyfuss is a young, highly ambitious nervous wreck. Certain that he was a failure in American Graffiti and that his lead role in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz will not get him the respect he craves, Dreyfuss yearns to do Shakespeare and Pinter, just like the grizzled Shaw has done, all the while both seeking Shaw’s approval and desperately wanting to best him.
The structure of the play, directed with a loose hand by Guy Masterson (Morecambe,One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), is as rickety as the Orca; the narrative centers around the most poignant moment in the film, Quint’s speech about having survived the July 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the ship that delivered components for Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. But the scene doesn’t involve Bruce at all, so it is never quite clear why they are waiting around for the mechanical shark to be fixed before proceeding with the shooting. Jaws is essentially a character study constructed around greed, from the Amity mayor’s refusal to close the beaches as the great white attacks continue during the profitable July 4 weekend to humans’ belief that they have any power at all over the natural world. The Shark Is Broken is a vastly entertaining character study as well, but there’s not a whole lot more meat on its bones. In the play, Dreyfuss asks, “What do you think it’s about?”; he’s referring to the movie, but the same can be said of the show.
Ian Shaw cowrote and stars as his father, Robert Shaw, in The Shark Is Broken (photo by Matthew Murphy)
In addition, the dialogue is filled with bons mots that wink at what happened after the film; some of them are funny, but others are too obvious. “One thing’s for certain — if there is a sequel, I will not be in it,” Scheider says; he was back for Jaws 2. Reading the paper, Scheider remarks, “Christ! There will never be a more immoral president than Tricky Dicky,” a cheap laugh no matter what you think of 45. And when the three men talk about their families, Scheider asks Shaw about his children (the English actor had ten with three wives), “Do any of yours want to be actors?” Shaw replies, “Christ, I hope not! It’s a shrivelling profession, isn’t it?,” a sly reference to Ian.
Duncan Henderson’s set and costumes put the audience right on board the cutaway Orca, surrounded by Nina Dunn’s effective projections of the sea and storms, enhanced by Jon Clark’s lighting and Adam Cork’s sound and interstitial music.
Donnell (Anything Goes,Love’s Labour’s Lost) is steadfast and hunky as Scheider, who is a calming influence among the three actors. Brightman (Beetlejuice,School of Rock) is uncanny as Dreyfuss, looking and sounding so much like him that you will sometimes forget it isn’t Dreyfuss himself. And in his Broadway debut, Ian Shaw (War Horse,Common) pays wonderful tribute to his father, capturing his essence in every word and move while depicting his virtues and his flaws.
“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men,” Ishmael says in Moby-Dick. It’s a line that also relates to a trio of actors portraying three very different men, each with his own unique form of madness, hunting a mechanical shark in a make-believe Hollywood movie.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Lou Reed, Run-D.M.C., Salt-N-Pepa, the Ramones, Count Basie, Beverly Sills, Pat Benatar, Louis Armstrong, Kurtis Blow, Blue Oyster Cult, Joan Jett, John Coltrane, Aaron Copland, Neil Diamond, George Gershwin, Stray Cats, Barbara Streisand, Billy Joel, Taylor Dane, Simon & Garfunkel.
Those are only some of the artists who have been inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHOF). The next to join that prestigious roster is Robin Wilson, lead singer of the Gin Blossoms, who will be inducted on August 25. Wilson was born in Detroit and raised in Arizona, but he moved to Valley Stream on Long Island more than twenty years ago to spend more time with his son, Grey Wilson, and his ex-wife, Gena Rositano, a longtime stage manager at Saturday Night Live. On Valentine’s Day, 2021, Wilson had a serious fire in his home, forcing him to temporarily relocate to Hicksville, but he returned to Valley Stream, where he played a series of free house shows during the pandemic.
Robin Wilson and Gena Rositano with their son Grey at SNL (photo courtesy Gena Rositano)
I grew up in Malverne but went to high school in Valley Stream with Rositano and have closely followed Grey’s development as a musician in his own right; he is now part of several bands, including the Mercurys, the Afternoon Grifters, and Theo & the London Outfit.
Wilson, fifty-eight, became a Gin Blossom in 1988, one year after the group formed. The band’s major label debut, 1992’s New Miserable Experience, was packed with hits, including “Hey Jealousy,” “Until I Fall Away,” “Found Out About You,” and “Allison Road,” and has sold over five million copies. The follow-up, 1996’s Congratulations I’m Sorry, featured “Follow You Down” and “Til I Hear It from You,” the latter recorded for the 1995 film Empire Records. In addition to performing with the Gin Blossoms, Wilson joined the Smithereens after the 2017 death of Pat DiNizio; he writes songs with the band and alternates on lead vocals with Marshall Crenshaw.
Heavily tattooed and wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, a black T-shirt, and black shorts, Wilson zoomed in from a hotel gym in Indianapolis, where the Gin Blossoms were scheduled to play the penultimate show of their summer tour at the Indiana State Fair that night. After a short break, they’re going back out on the road, stopping at the Paramount in Huntington on September 12.
At the LIMEHOF induction ceremony on August 25 in Stony Brook, Wilson will play a set with a pair of fellow Smithereens, guitarist Jim Babjak and drummer Dennis Diken, along with Joe Jackson bassist Graham Maby and special guest Grey Wilson.
During our talk, Wilson was generous with his answers, giving them careful consideration while being open and direct. Below he discusses fathers and sons, the modern concert experience, cover songs, living in Valley Stream, and more.
twi-ny: We met briefly when your son Grey’s band the Mercurys played the Klub 45 Room in Times Square and you joined them onstage. You played the Gas Giants’ “Quitter,” which was a blast.
robin wilson: It was such a blast.
twi-ny: Grey has also played with the Gin Blossoms. What are those experiences like to have either you jump onstage with him or him jump onstage with you?
rw: Well, it’s a thrill for me because music is the predominant force in my life. And for it to become equally so in my son’s means a lot. It fills me with pride to see him take my lead and to try to follow in my footsteps.
My father was a stuffy Republican accounting professor who wanted nothing to do with me, and we had nothing in common. I never had a moment like that with my dad. There’s no parallel experience that I’ve had with my father. So it means a great deal to me to be able to perform with Grey from time to time.
twi-ny: You went to school where your father taught.
rw: We lived in Tempe. He was a professor at Mesa Community College. Which was nearby. He started teaching there in 1971 when we moved from Detroit to Arizona. And so I grew up on that campus and that was one of my first jobs, working in the cafeteria there. When I got out of high school, I was a student at Mesa. For a long time.
Since my dad was a professor, tuition was free. I went to school there for five years. I never quite got an associate’s degree. For the first few years, I changed my major a bunch of times and kind of floundered around. But by the time I finally found direction, I was studying physics and other of the physical sciences, like chemistry and calculus and geology. And then the band took off, and so I never got to finish my degree. I was very proud to walk into my physics professor’s office one day and say, I can’t finish this semester. Our band is going on tour.
twi-ny: That’s a great excuse.
rw: You know it; it was great. And I remember when I dropped out of college for that first tour, my dad told me, “Robin, you’re a fucking idiot.” [ed. note: After New Miserable Experience went gold, Wilson’s father conceded, admitting, “Robin, I feel like a fucking idiot.”] So I know what it means to my son to pursue music and what it means to dream of a life creating and performing music. I want him to succeed, and I want to give him the tools that he’ll need to accomplish his goal.
twi-ny: I’ve seen Grey play live and on YouTube and Instagram. He’s quite accomplished. He’s got a great stage presence, and he can play that guitar.
rw: Yeah, he can really play. And so I’m always really proud to have him join us onstage with the band. It’s gonna be great to have him performing at the Hall of Fame induction, too.
Bill Leen, Scott Hessel, Robin Wilson, Jesse Valenzuela, and Scott Johnson of the Gin Blossoms (photo courtesy the Gin Blossoms)
twi-ny: The Gin Blossoms have been together for about thirty-five years now, including four core members who have been together since 1992. What is the secret to the longevity of the group?
rw: Well, it’s a combination of factors, the most important of which is compromise. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut and just do your job. That goes a long, long way in the rock band environment. That combined with the fact that we have really good songs and we can go to any city in America and sell a thousand tickets and people can sing along with our music. It’s just such a gift to have been able to accomplish that sort of commercial success that it would be stupid just to turn your back on it. You’d have to be really, really unhappy and miserable to want to just blow the whole thing up just because you don’t want to go do rock shows.
It’s not easy. Most of what we do is the traveling. There’s at least ten or twelve hours of travel for every hour we spend onstage. But that ninety minutes a day onstage makes up for all the other bullshit. And my bandmates and I have been able to put our grievances behind us for the most part and accept that everyone in the band is allowed to have their own experience. So we just try to do our jobs and stay out of each other’s way, not create trouble. And we’re grateful that we could still do it at this level,
twi-ny: Touring has obviously changed since the band started. What are one or two things that stick out to you that are either better or worse than they were in the late eighties, early nineties? Fans are throwing objects at lead singers for TikTok. Have you encountered anything or like that?
rw: Well, that kind of thing has happened randomly throughout our career, but it’s just a random occurrence. It’s not a part of any sort of trend. The main force that makes it different now than what it used to be is this device that I’m talking to you on, the smartphone. When we first started touring, we didn’t have GPS. We had a road atlas that was about this thick.
twi-ny: I remember those.
rw: And that would go underneath the driver’s seat. When we would pull into a new town, we would have to pull that out and look through a map. You had to be able to read a map and find your way through a new city to get to the gig. There wasn’t a way to just pull up Yelp and find someplace to eat. You had to ask if there was a restaurant nearby or physically drive around looking for somewhere you could eat.
And then, of course, the worst thing about the phone, this new media, is social media. It’s just a fucking cancer. It makes everyone think that they’re the star of their own reality show and that everything is about them. I don’t mind people taking pictures of the band while we’re performing. I don’t mind video of the band while we’re performing. But what I cannot stand is when someone will stand right in front of me and take a selfie of themselves. That’s just so incredibly rude and so self-absorbed, and it takes you out of the moment, you know? Here’s a picture of me not listening to my favorite Gin Blossoms song.
I just don’t get it. And again, it’s just so rude. The way I think about it is, imagine if your child was onstage in the school play and someone stood up in front of your child while they were delivering their lines and started taking selfies of themselves and started distracting your child. How outraged would you be? Because this person is doing that. It would make you sick to see someone do that.
We didn’t enjoy concerts any less in the eighties and nineties before everybody had a camera with them. We enjoyed concerts just as much when we were forced to use our brains to remember them. And these people who say, Well, I’m entitled to capture the moment. Well, capture it with your brain, you lazy asshole. It’s so stupid. So that’s maybe the main thing. Like I said, I have no problem with people taking pictures or video of the band, but it absolutely disgusts me to see people taking pictures of themselves while standing in front of the band.
The Gin Blossoms’ most recent album is 2018’s Mixed Reality
twi-ny: As someone who goes to a lot of shows and often is up front, I can tell you it’s also distracting for the audience. If I’m standing behind someone and they suddenly turn around and their face is in my face so they can take a picture of you behind them onstage, it takes me out of the concert for that split second. And so it’s also annoying on that end.
rw: Yeah. But virtually everything else about the concertgoing experience is the same. I mean, how people react to the music and the performers, what the music means to them, the way it inspires genuine emotion. All of that is the same. The thrill of the light show and the sense of community and all of those things. None of that has changed. The only difference is that everybody’s got the phone, and the phone is a way to take you out of the moment.
twi-ny: Over the years, the Gin Blossoms have developed that real sense of community you just mentioned. Your songs really touch people. And I think that reaching them on an emotional level is really part of what’s kept you guys going so strong. I’ve also noticed on the current tour, you’re playing some great covers: Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” and then one of my favorite old songs, the Plimsouls’ “A Million Miles Away”; I saw them play that at the Whiskey a Go Go back in the early eighties.
rw: It’s just great music. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed those songs. And those are all certainly songs that I love to play. I like to play cover songs; I wish that we actually played more covers. I don’t necessarily want to do more covers per show, but I wish we had a larger repertoire of covers we could dip into. But not everybody in the band really loves playing cover songs. They prefer to play original music. And I can appreciate that.
And so, again, what I was saying earlier, the most important thing is to compromise and not make it so any one person in the band is absolutely miserable about the way the shows are done. Everybody’s entitled to have some fun during the show. So if one guy doesn’t want to play a lot of cover songs, well, his feelings are very important to me. So we try to keep it to a minimum. We find the place where we can compromise on these types of issues.
twi-ny: Which doesn’t always happen in a band.
rw: Yeah, it’s very, very difficult to find that. And it’s especially hard when you’re a young band and you’re just coming up and you’re on the charts for the first time. But part of keeping a band together for thirty-five years is learning how to communicate with each other and learning how to find those compromises and the middle ground.
twi-ny: Speaking of original songs, your last album came out in 2018. Anything you guys are working on?
rw: Yeah, at some point. We haven’t got a firm date set to record a new record. But I would suspect that we are going to be in the studio sometime in 2024, have something done by the end of the year. You know, we’re not super anxious, but some of us already have songs that we want to record, and we know we can’t really go much longer before we start to feel bad about it. We don’t owe anybody anything.
It’s not like we sell a lot of records anymore. But as musicians of a part of a certain generation, we feel like we owe it to ourselves to create new music from time to time to challenge ourselves, to create something that we feel holds up with the rest of our catalog. So we know we’ll do it for our own reasons on our own schedule. There’s no record company hounding us to get it done or anything. We’ll just do it when we feel like it. I suspect that it won’t be too long from now before we get another record done. [ed. note: The Gin Blossoms sold a majority stake in their music publishing rights and artist master royalties in 2021 to Primary Wave.]
Robin Wilson and Willie Nile join Theo & the London Outfit for a Valley Stream house concert under the Arizona state flag (photo courtesy Theo & the London Outfit)
twi-ny: So getting back to August 25, you’re being inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. What was it like getting that notification?
rw: Well, it was really amusing. I mean, of course I’m filled with pride and it’s very gratifying. But I’ve had such a contentious relationship with Long Island; my being there, my living there is just such a strange, unlikely circumstance. And it took me so long to get used to it. If you knew what my bandmates have heard me say about Long Island over the years, we’d be laughing as hard as we were when we found out about this, because it was just very difficult for me to get used to being and living on Long Island.
But eventually, it did take, and I’m proud of my home there in Valley Stream, and I’m proud to be the only guy on Long Island who flies an Arizona flag on the front porch. I think it’s really funny when my neighbors come by while they’re walking their dogs and they say, “What is that flag?”
twi-ny: What country is that?
rw: What’s funny to me is, that’s Arizona, that’s the forty-eighth state, you know? So I’m there on Long Island representing my home state of Arizona, which I miss terribly. And now I’ve become a big part of this community.
The company that I’m in with this honor is incredible. It’s humbling and very gratifying. And I’m especially proud for my New York family, the Rositanos, all of my nieces and nephews, my ex-wife and my son, my sister-in-law, my brothers-in-law, and their families. I’m really proud for them, of all the Christmases and holidays we’ve spent together, and now they get to take pride in this, and their pride in this means more to me than anything else about this honor. So I’m very excited for my family, the Rositanos, and I hope they can all be there for for the ceremony.
twi-ny: Is that what brought you to Valley Stream in the first place, family?
rw: Yeah. My ex-wife, Gena, is from Valley Stream. She and I met at MTV. She used to work at MTV.
twi-ny: Yes, I remember.
rw: That’s right. You know Gena. And so she and I met doing The Jon Stewart Show on MTV. [ed. note: You can watch that full episode, also featuring Long Islander Howard Stern, here; Gena was one of the stage managers on the program.]
twi-ny: They just had a reunion, with Jon and everyone.
rw: Yes, that’s right, for the cast and crew. In 1996, Jenna and I had Jon Stewart ordained as a minister, and he performed our wedding ceremony in Valley Stream. It was my connection to Gena and specifically my son, Grey, that kept me there in in Long Island. I could have moved home to Arizona. I always thought I would, but when it came time to actually pull the trigger, I couldn’t leave and I wanted to be there for my son.
And so I’m a Long Island guy now, go figure. And my son, he is in a couple of bands that play around Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and whatnot. And then he’s also a DJ on the radio station at Nassau Community College, WHPC 90.3; his show is called “Alternative to What?” It’s Tuesday nights at 7:00, so everybody tune in and hear my son on the radio spinning the alternative hits. That’s 7:00 on Tuesdays, WHPC 90.3.
twi-ny: Excellent. I do want to ask you one other thing, and it has to do with Valley Stream. I was born in Brooklyn and went to school in Valley Stream. And so my wife has listened for decades to all the things I’ve said about Long Island, probably some of the same things that you would tell your bandmates about Valley Stream before you moved there. As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get out of there to come to New York City. But a lot of my friends still live in Valley Stream and the surrounding area and love it. You’ve really settled in, huh?
rw: Yeah, I really have. You know, It’s a great little town. It’s got tons of great pizza; Ancona’s would be my favorite. There’s really great Pakistani food everywhere. It seems like we have a really large community of really good immigrant cooks everywhere. It’s a very diverse community.
twi-ny: That was not the case when I went to school there.
rw: On my block alone in Valley Stream, there are three families from Guam. You know, I went my entire life in Arizona without ever meeting anyone from Guam. And there on my street in Valley Stream, there are three families from Guam. So there’s something about it. My theory is that these families are moving to America, and they land at JFK with all their bags, and they get out to the curb and they look around and they go, Well, let’s buy a house. And they end up there in Valley Stream.
And I think that’s part of the strength of our community, the diversity and the variety of food and of viewpoints and such. I know that it wasn’t always like that; when I first moved to Valley Stream it was a very different place, in terms of the racial makeup. I very much enjoy how diverse and cool it is now, and how many different cultures are represented just on my block alone.
It’s great to be part of the community. I love my neighborhood. I love all my neighbors. I got to know everybody during the pandemic. I was doing shows for my neighbors during the pandemic; I would be out in my front yard and I would put on concerts. I am really happy. I’m really proud to live there. And so I hope that they can take pride in this honor too.
twi-ny: You recently played a show with Willie Nile and Grey at your house.
rw: Yes, indeed. That was the first one I had done in a while. And so if anyone’s interested in seeing the livestream performances that I’ve done from my home studio or in my front yard, you can go to the Gin Blossoms official YouTube page and see the shows I was doing for my neighbors during the pandemic.
It was the best part of the pandemic for me, performing for my neighbors; it really meant a lot to me that I was able to bring the neighborhood together in a time of isolation. I really enjoyed the pandemic. I mean, obviously it’s not something you would choose to happen, but I managed to make the most of it.
I enjoyed being home for the first time in my adult life. I enjoyed being home for more than a few weeks at a time. I really enjoyed getting to know my neighbors and performing for them, and spending time with my son. I made a lot of carnitas and I played a lot of video games, and I created a lot of content for the Gin Blossoms YouTube page. That’s really kind of when I truly became a citizen of Long Island, during the pandemic.
So, hi to Gena and Grey and all the Rositanos. I’m looking forward to seeing you guys soon. I’m gonna be home for a couple of weeks, for the first time since last winter. I actually have more than five days off starting next week. So I’m looking forward to spending some time in the studio with my son and riding my bike in Valley Stream State Park, just relaxing and enjoying my home.
twi-ny: Well deserved. And congratulations again on the Hall of Fame. I don’t know who’s going to have more fun, you or Grey, but it’s great for both of you.
rw: Definitely Grey; everything’s more fun for Grey than it is for me.
twi-ny: Thanks, man. This was great.
rw: No, thank you. Peace and love for everybody on Long Island. Rock away!
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Starra Jones (Erica Matthews) and Sidney Brown (Tamera Tomakili) face off against each other in Candrice Jones’s Flex (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
FLEX
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through August 20 www.lct.org/shows/flex
“Being a fan is like having a religion,” Matt says in Rajiv Joseph’s King James, a play that ran this spring at MTC at New York City Center about two Cleveland men who bond over their mutual love of hoops star LeBron James, perhaps the greatest player of all time.
Here in New York, basketball itself is a religion. Fans continue to worship the Knicks and pack Madison Square Garden even though the team has won only one playoff series in ten years and has not taken home a championship in half a century; the city went into mourning when former All-Star MVP center Willis Reed died this past March at the age of eighty. Across the East River, the Nets have been in turmoil since they moved to Brooklyn in 2012, going through superstars at the Barclays Center like Halloween candy, with nothing to show for it.
Meanwhile, for those paying attention, the other team at Barclays, the New York Liberty, is having its best season since the Women’s National Basketball Association started in 1997, in serious contention for its first league title.
Basketball lies at the heart of two current dramas in Manhattan, one worthy of a championship, the other, well, in need of significant rebuilding; both conclude their seasons on August 20.
At Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse, Candrice Jones’s Flex is a fast-paced and exciting play set in rural Arkansas in 1998, where five seventeen-year-old Black women on the team known as the Lady Train are preparing for their next big game. Shooting guard Sidney Brown (Tamera Tomakili) is being scouted by major colleges. Point guard Starra Jones (Erica Matthews) is a ball hog jealous of the attention Sidney is getting. Power forward Cherise Howard (Ciara Monique) believes they all need to be cleansed and offers to baptize everyone. Center Donna Cunningham (Renita Lewis) is the most grounded and caring of the tight-knit group. And shooting guard April Jenkins (Brittany Bellizeare) is pregnant but wants to keep playing, despite the strong objections of coach Francine Pace (Christiana Clark).
Matt Saunders’s primary set consists of half a court, with the rim affixed on the top of a barn garage. The floor is actually parquet but we’re told it’s dirt. At the beginning, all five players appear to be with child, but following practice, four of them take out fake pregnant belly prosthetics. It’s a funny moment that instantly shows their camaraderie and support for one another.
The narrative is divided into four quarters, just like a basketball game. The cast displays its skills right from the opening tip-off, getting into a rhythm. “My first buzzer beater ever! / I finally know I’m just as good as you! / No more Plainnole, Arkansas, dirt courts for me, Mama! / No more dust in my eyes, my ankles, my fingernails. / I’m gonna win regionals, then state,” Starra says to her late mother, who gave up bball for the army. “Ain’t no way you gonna believe this. / But, scouts are coming here, to Plainnole. / You said by the time I got older. / There’d be a girls’ NBA. / You were right. / I’m going to the WNBA.”
Starra’s selfishness leads to major problems when the teammates hang out one night at Sidney’s house, discussing Michael Jordan, sexual abuse, abortion, condoms, and boxers vs. briefs. Soon they’re in an ingeniously designed car, singing Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” each of them highlighting individual lines that are particularly meaningful, which include “I’ve been holdin’ back this secret from you / I probably shouldn’t tell it, but / But if I, if I let you know / You can’t tell nobody, I’m talkin’ ’bout nobody.” Secrets keep coming out — or teeter around the rim — as the state tournament approaches and the game plan might involve benching several starting players.
Tony-nominated director Lileana Blain-Cruz (Fefu and Her Friends,Anatomy of a Suicide) guides the action like a masterful basketball coach, smoothly transitioning between offense and defense, knowing exactly who should have the ball at any given moment. The play is in constant motion, leaving no time for slacking. In a brilliant move, the stage crew dress like referees, adding humor and referencing how the players are too often being judged.
While it’s about a lot more than just basketball, Jones doesn’t overplay the metaphors, keeping her eyes on the rock as the action heats up. Mika Eubanks’s costumes range from sweats, shorts, and T-shirts to snazzy uniforms, with Adam Honoré’s lighting and Palmer Hefferan’s sound contributing to the overall tension.
The title refers specifically to a play run by the five players on the court, but it also evokes the Brooklyn street dance known as flexing, a word used for boasting or expressing oneself, and the standard dictionary meaning, to bend, intimating that the teammates have to be flexible if they want to succeed.
The cast, which also features Eboni Edwards as the sixth member of the Lady Train, comes together like a successful team with a legitimate shot at the crown. They face serious issues at school and at home, with boyfriends, girlfriends, and relatives, and with race and religion, but the more they work together, the more their goals are within reach, but it’s going to take more than a buzzer-beating three-pointer for them to win in the game of life.
Demi (Mister Fitzgerald) leads his team on the Battle Field in Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall (photo by Joan Marcus)
THE HALF-GOD OF RAINFALL
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Through August 20 www.nytw.org
Over at New York Theatre Workshop, Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall features seven characters on a floor of dirt and mulch, constructed around the game of basketball while being about much more, although precisely what gets garbled like a stalled offense and a defense with too many holes.
The ninety-minute play, a melding of Greek and Yoruba mythology told as an epic poem in chapters, opens with the fine cast introducing themselves, a dose of reality that immediately blurs the fantasy that follows. At the center is Demi (Mister Fitzgerald), a demigod born to Zeus (Michael Laurence) and the mortal Modúpé (Jennifer Mogbock). Observing the proceedings are the River Goddess Osún (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), Sàngó, an Orisha God of Thunder (Jason Bowen), Hera, the Goddess of Marriage, Women, and Family (Kelley Curran), the Orisha Gods Òrúnmilà and Elégba (Lizan Mitchell), and other mythical figures. Because his father is Zeus, the young Demi, called the Town Crier because of his propensity to rain down tears, is banned from playing basketball, which in this world represents war.
Mortals play on a makeshift court known as the Battle Field — “where generals were honored and mere soldiers crushed” — built with telephone poles, tires, fishing nets, and charcoal. “Basketball was more than sport; the boys were obsessed,” Elégba says. “They played with a righteous thirst,” Hera adds. Sàngó: “There were parries, thrusts . . .” Elégba: “shields and shots . . .” Zeus: “strategies and tactics . . .” Osún: “land won and lost . . .” Modúpé: “duels fought . . .” Hera: “ball like a missile . . .” Zeus: “targets locked.”
When Demi surprisingly reveals a remarkable shooting acumen, everyone begins to view him differently. But Demi’s prowess leads to both an NBA contract as well as disagreements among the Gods and a war that takes place with weapons, not a round ball.
Similarly to the young women in Flex, the young men in Rainfall engage in trash-talking and worship Michael Jordan; among the same issues that are brought up are sexual assault, prayer, and competition that extends beyond the court. Whereas the women see basketball as a way to improve their lot in life and form a close group, in Rainfall “Hera rolled her eyes at how mortal Gods could be, how like men to reduce disputes down to sporting feats, but it was done: the stakes, awful, the route to run.”
Characters in Rainfall shift between dialogue and narration, often in the same speech, so it can become confusing whether they’re talking to the audience or the other Gods and mortals. Too much of the action is described instead of playing out on the court, turning the show into a kind of staged reading. Riccardo Hernández’s set contains scrims on three sides where Tal Yarden projects abstract and concrete images that only add to the perplexity. Linda Cho’s costumes and the props at times feel more like cosplay than serious theater.
The thirty-eight-year-old Ellams, who was born in Nigeria and raised there and in England and Ireland, has been playing basketball since he was twelve; he is also a Marvel Comics enthusiast and has written books and performed solo shows. He stuffs too much into The Half-God of Rainfall, which also has problems with its timeline as it ventures between the ancient and the present, particularly when Sàngó mentions which other real-life all-stars are demigods. (How many people in the audience are likely to know who Clyde Drexler is?)
From start to finish, Flex shows that it’s got game, effectively executing its strategy with an expert balance of humor and sincerity as it sets its sights on its championship goals. The Half-God of Rainfall is all over the place, in desperate need of a tactical blueprint if it wants to have a shot at possibly making the playoffs.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who: Kat Georges, Peter Carlaftes, Jennifer Blowdryer, Puma Perl, Michael Puzzo, Danny Shot, Richard Vetere, George Wallace, more What: Annual tribute to Charles Bukowski Where:The Bitter End, 147 Bleecker St. between Thompson & La Guardia When: Wednesday, August 16, $10, 6:00 Why: “What sort of cultural hangover keeps Charles Bukowski in print and popular more than twenty years after his death?” S. A. Griffin asks in his Three Rooms Press essay “Charles Bukowski: Dean of Another Academy.” “In light of the fact that a good portion of what has been published since his passing in 1994 may not be the man’s best work, along with some heavy editing at times, why does Charles Bukowski remain relevant well into the 21st century?” The sixteenth annual Charles Bukowski Memorial Reading takes place August 16 at 6:00 at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village in honor of what would have been the 103rd birthday of the author of such books as Pulp,Factotum,Post Office,On Cats, and Love Is a Dog from Hell, with tribute readings by musician and storyteller Jennifer Blowdryer, poets S. A. Griffin, Puma Perl, Danny Shot, and George Wallace, and playwrights Richard Vetere and Michael Puzzo, hosted by Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes of Three Rooms Press. Bukowski, who died in 1994 at the age of seventy-three, will be celebrated through poetry, oral history, rare videos, and live performances, with a special look at what he might have thought about ChatGPT, dating apps, legalized marijuana, and other contemporary issues. As a bonus, books, CDs, DVDs, and other prizes will be given away.
Alexa Meade paints Hailee Kaleem Wright, Eden Espinosa, and Brian Stokes Mitchell at Wonderland Dreams (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
WONDERLAND DREAMS
529 Fifth Ave. between Forty-Third & Forty-Fourth Sts.
Wednesday – Monday through September 10, $33.50-$44.50 www.wonderlanddreams.com online slideshow
If you’re looking for that elusive rabbit hole to bring respite to your harried life — and we’re not talking about the proverbial rabbit hole but something more akin to the real deal — then you can’t go wrong with Wonderland Dreams.
Washington, DC–born installation artist Alexa Meade has transformed a 26,000-square-foot midtown space into an immersive version of Lewis Carroll’s classic nineteenth-century novels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Thankfully, it’s nothing like the overhyped shows in which works by such artists as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Gustav Klimt “come to life,” morphing in projections on the floor, walls, ceilings, and mirrored sculptures.
Everyone is invited to paint their own acrylic flowers at Wonderland Dreams (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
For Wonderland Dreams, Meade and her team hand-painted every inch of the space; as you walk, crawl, or glide through the many rooms, you’ll encounter fanciful chairs and couches, giant mushrooms and flowers, tiny houses, an inviting keyhole, a large chess set and playing cards, a hedge maze, a carousel horse, a swirling tea party, out-of-sync clocks, empty picture frames, and photographs and portraits of celebrities whose bodies Meade has painted on. Everything can be touched, handled, and ridden on; essentially, it’s a gigantic playhouse for kids and adults. Be sure to pick up 3D glasses to enhance your experience in several cool rooms, and stop by the café and the gift shop for bonus surprises, even if you’re not seeking to eat, drink, or buy anything.
In July, I attended Broadway Night, during which stars Eden Espinosa (Wicked,Rent), two-time Tony winner Brian Stokes Mitchell (Man of La Mancha,Kiss Me, Kate), and Hailee Kaleem Wright (Six,Paradise Square) donned black-and-white jumpsuits and then, standing in a full-length empty frame, were painted all over by Meade, who is currently the artist-in-residence at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario; the actors held the palette as Meade covered every bit of their skin, including their faces, necks, hands, and wrists. They then posed in the frame, individually and together, as if the paintings were, well, coming to life. The next Broadway Night is August 21, with guests to be announced; the Grand Finale closing party is set for September 9.
Every room holds a different surprise in Wonderland Dreams (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
There are various places where visitors are encouraged to put on masks, hats, coats, and other props for further immersion into the world of Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen, the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. In the back is a studio where you can paint an acrylic flower and add it to the wall. There’s also the family-friendly Mad Hatter’s Adventure on Saturday and Sunday mornings at ten.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,” Alice says in the first book.
As Meade reveals in Wonderland Dreams, there’s nothing wrong with that.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Frank Wood plays an ailing golden retriever in Danny Tejera’s Toros (photo by Joan Marcus)
TOROS
Second Stage Theater Uptown, McGinn/Cazale Theater
2162 Broadway at Seventy-Sixth St.
Through August 13, $60-$75 2st.com/shows/toros
Three twentysomething friends who attended the same international grade school in Madrid reconnect in Danny Tejera’s beguilingly quirky and unpredictable Toros. Juan (Juan Castano) is a wannabe DJ who works on his music in the garage. Toro (Abubakr Ali) has just returned from an unhappy stint in New York City. And the free-spirited Andrea (b) teaches kindergarten when she’s not rolling joints. All three live at home as they try to figure out what they want to do with their lives, spending their evenings drinking, smoking, going to clubs, and hoping there is something better out there.
All the while, Juan’s ailing, elderly golden retriever, Tica (Frank Wood), is curled up in her bed at the front corner of the stage. Throughout the show, she adjusts her positions, lets out small snores, howls, and barks, and moves awkwardly across the floor, her ancient bones wasting away. The dog soldiers on but is a constant reminder that everyone is eventually going to die, and it might be ugly and painful.
The bullheaded Juan — “toro” means bull in Spanish — is a nasty guy who is mean to Toro, unable to say anything kind. Toro is a lost soul who can’t decide whether he wants to be with his friends or be alone. Andrea is the only one of the trio who has a firm grasp of who she is, although the recent tragic death of her sister has her reevaluating her future. Another death impacts the way they interact with themselves and the world.
Tejera (Scary Faces Happy Faces) and director Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Wish You Were Here,Animal) don’t make it easy for the audience at Second Stage’s McGinn/Cazale Theater, but only in the best ways. Each of the characters has serious flaws and does things that they can’t take back even if they wanted to. The dialogue, which is mostly in English with occasional Spanish, crackles with unexpected lines.
Toro (Abubakr Ali) scratches Tica (Frank Wood) while Juan (Juan Castano) tends to his music in Toros (photo by Joan Marcus)
Set designer Arnulfo Maldonado has crafted an intricate and realistic garage, complete with a fancy car under a white sheet, gardening equipment, and a bathroom that continually overflows. Curiously, there is a wall of plants and trees right outside the garage, which would prevent the car from pulling out into the driveway; perhaps it’s meant to imply that the characters are trapped. (Juan and Toro work for Juan’s father’s real estate company, finding houses for others as they are still stuck living with their parents.)
On the subway home, we heard a few people who had been at the show questioning that scenic choice as well — the designer achieved a thought-provoking response, as do the unique writing, acting, and direction. I’ve seldom been on a train coming home from the theater with as many lively discussions going on.
Castano (A Parallelogram,Transfers), b (American (Tele)Visions,Unprincess Non-Bride), and Ali (We Live in Cairo,Kiss) are terrific as childhood friends who don’t necessarily have much in common anymore, but Wood steals the show as Tica, who is onstage nearly the entire smoothly paced ninety minutes. “Tica” can be translated as ethics, which is something that Juan can learn a lot about.
“All the things people usually want: money, or fame, or — raising a family or doing social work — I was just like, none of that seems that great or useful anyway, you know?” Toro says. “And — I just sort of like, stopped believing in reality. . . . Like, it just seemed like, no matter what I saw in front of me, it was all so obviously performed.”
There’s nothing obvious about the wonderfully performed Toros.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Imelda (Arielle Jacobs) and Ferdinand Marcos (Jose Llana) dance their way to power in Here Lies Love (photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy, and Evan Zimmerman)
HERE LIES LOVE
Broadway Theatre
1681 Broadway at 53rd St.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 3, $49 – $299 herelieslovebroadway.com
“Why don’t you love me?” Imelda Marcos (Arielle Jacobs) asks in Here Lies Love, the fast-paced extravaganza thrilling audiences at the reconfigured Broadway Theatre. Obviously, she hasn’t been paying attention, too obsessed with greed, corruption, and power.
Here Lies Love started out as a 2010 concept album about Marcos by former Talking Heads leader David Byrne and musician and DJ Fatboy Slim, featuring Tori Amos, Steve Earle, Martha Wainwright, Natalie Merchant, Florence Welch, Cyndi Lauper, Nellie McKay, and others. The full-on show opened at the Public’s LuEsther Hall in 2013, when I called it “a spectacular, must-see event, an immersive, endlessly creative theatrical experience.” It’s still all that and more.
Set designer David Korins has ripped out most of the seats in the theater, so hundreds of people gather on the floor, where large rectangular platforms (nearly four feet high) are pushed around by stagehands while other crew members guide the audience like airplane safety ground handlers so revelers don’t get smushed. There are a few mezzanine rows on two sides of the theater; at one end there are two dozen rows of more traditional balcony seating, while at the other is the main stage. In the center of the room is a giant disco ball, evoking Marcos’s New York City penthouse, where she had one installed over a dance floor, and Studio 54, where she liked to party with celebrities.
Throughout the ninety-minute show, Peter Nigrini projects archival news footage, sociopolitical information, images of Johanna Poethig, Vicente Clemente, and Presco Tabios’s 1986 Lakas Samabayanan (“People’s Power”) mural, and live action, documenting Imelda’s determined rise from a poor childhood by winning a local beauty contest and moving to Manila, meeting and falling in love with the ambitious Ferdinand Marcos (Jose Llana), a military veteran and lawyer with major political aspirations.
Soon she’s swept into a life of position and wealth, although her public statements seem touchingly ingenuous. “The most important things are love and beauty. / It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. / To prosper and to fly — / a basic human right. / The feeling in your heart that you’re secure,” she sings in the opening title number. “Is it a sin to love too much? Is it a sin to care? / I do it all for you. / How can it be unfair?” Most of the lyrics are taken directly from interviews, films, and public statements made by the characters; “here lies love,” for example, is the phrase Imelda wants engraved on her tombstone.
The Marcoses’ rise to power is being challenged by reformer Ninoy Aquino (Conrad Ricamora), a provincial mayor and governor who briefly dated Imelda before becoming a senator who correctly predicted what she and Ferdinand would do to the Philippines. “Out ev’ry night in New York and Paris / Champagne and dancing — while back here at home / People barely surviving — they’re living in shanties! / Our country’s in trouble — but the party goes on!” he declares, earning himself the top spot on their long list of enemies.
Here Lies Love follows the story of Imelda Marcos (Arielle Jacobs) through music and dance (photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy, and Evan Zimmerman)
Another sad observer of Imelda’s transformation into an egotistical despot is her childhood friend Estrella Cumpas (Melody Butiu), who in some ways represents both the audience and the people of the Philippines. Once wealth and power come her way, Imelda quickly dumps Estrella. In one of the most touching scenes in the show, Estrella watches Imelda on her wedding day, but she is kept on the other side of a gate. Estrella is intent on standing by her friend as long as she can, explaining, “I know that you are in there somewhere / Letters get misplaced in the mail / Guess that there was some confusion / Amidst those throngs and swells / Did you see me outside? / Did you see me wave? / When you passed in your car / Ah, well, that’s okay — / How she looked when she passed by / How she looked when she passed by.” But Imelda has moved on, trying to erase her poverty-stricken past from her official story.
In 1965, Ferdinand became the tenth president of the Philippines, and for more than twenty years he ruled with an iron fist, having his rivals jailed and murdered, cheating on Imelda, silencing the media, establishing martial law, and lying to the populace as he grew ridiculously rich.
Shortly after the wedding, a press attaché (Jeigh Madjus) announces, “And the whole world can see / They’re our Jackie and John . . . What a picture they make / I’m so proud for us all.” But that’s not at all the way things turned out.
Tony-winning director Alex Timbers (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,Moulin Rouge!) infuses Here Lies Love with nonstop energy spreading across the theater; while the central action follows Ferdinand, Imelda, and Ninoy, the ensemble moves and grooves to Olivier nominee Annie-B Parson’s electric choreography on podiums in the balcony, as if featured dancers in a nightclub. A ladder is occasionally wheeled to the balcony so the main characters can interact with the audience there.
The staging works on multiple levels, but, most important, it helps attendees experience some of what the Filipino people felt during the Marcoses’ ascent. At first, the crowd on the floor is sucked into Ferdinand’s populist campaign, cheering, shaking hands with him and Imelda, and eagerly posing with them for photos and videos. But soon after, they are at an Aquino rally, joining in the rage against the Marcoses’ rampant corruption.
Justin Townsend’s lighting is flashy and bold, splashing flickering colors everywhere. Clint Ramos’s colorful costumes are inspired by such traditional Filipino styles as the terno and the barong. M. L. Dogg and Cody Spencer’s pumping sound shakes the house, led by a fast-talking DJ (Moses Villarama) who keeps the party going even after the show is over. Music director J. Oconer Navarro guides the band across tender ballads and splashy disco and pop, with Joe Cruz on guitar, Derek Nievergelt on bass, and Jacqueline Acevedo, Gustavo Di Dalva, Brandon Ilaw, Paula Winter, and Yuri Yamashita on percussion.
Broadway’s first all-Filipino cast has Llana (The King and I,The 25th Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee), Ricamora (The King and I,Soft Power), and Butiu (Doctor Zhivago,South Pacific) reprising their roles from the Public Theater production, and all three embody their characters with skill and confidence; Butiu is particularly touching as the friend left behind, essentially representing all the people the Marcoses steamrolled. Jacobs (In the Heights,Between the Lines) is almost too likable as Imelda, although you run out of sympathy for the woman known as the Iron Butterfly by the end. Jasmine Forsberg (Broadway Bounty Hunter,A Grand Night for Singing) is Maria Luisa and Imelda’s inner voice.
Through August 13, Tony winner Lea Salonga (Miss Saigon,Once on This Island) brings down the house as Aurora Aquino, Ninoy’s mother, singing the heartfelt “Just Ask the Flowers” dressed in all black, surrounded by black umbrellas. Kristina Doucette plays Ninoy’s wife, Cory; Timothy Matthew Flores is their son.
Oscar, Grammy, and Tony winner Byrne (Joan of Arc: Into the Fire,American Utopia) and Grammy winner Fatboy Slim (“Praise You,” “The Rockafeller Skank”) have ingeniously transformed the story of despicable despots into a cautionary tale and all-out dance celebration — and with only one mention of shoes.
Ferdinand died in 1986 at the age of seventy-two; Imelda, who concluded a nine-year run in the Philippine House of Representatives in 2019, is still alive, now ninety-four, and their son Bongbong, aka Ferdinand Marcos Jr., was elected president of the country in a landslide in 2022.
“Don’t let them look down on us,” Imelda calls out in “Please Don’t.” It seems she has little to worry about.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
