live performance

THE COAST STARLIGHT

TJ (Will Harrison) and Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) consider what might be in The Coast Starlight (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

THE COAST STARLIGHT
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through April 16, $103
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Sliding Doors meets Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and the Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” in Keith Bunin’s The Coast Starlight, making its New York City debut through April 16 at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

The ninety-five-minute play takes place on board the Coast Starlight, a real Amtrak train that travels from Los Angeles to Seattle in thirty-six hours. The premise is wholly relatable: Various individuals get on the train and sit in the same car, where they wonder about the identity of their fellow travelers and consider what might happen if they engaged one another in conversation. Who hasn’t been on a train, bus, or plane and thought about who was sitting nearby, thinking about who they might be and maybe even saying hello.

“One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off,” Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) says in Citizen Kane. “A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.” There’s an inherent sadness in every fleeting glimpse we humans have of each other, that maybe life would have turned out differently if we had made a different choice in that instant.

For years, Missed Connections listings have appeared, first in newspapers and magazines, now online, from people who saw a stranger somewhere, regret not having introduced themselves, and are now trying to find that person. It was captured beautifully in Adrian Tomine’s November 8, 2004, New Yorker cover depicting a young man and a young woman in aligning subway trains, both reading the same book, looking at each other as if they understand they were meant to be together but might never get the chance.

Characters engage in imaginary conversations in moving play at Lincoln Center (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

In The Coast Starlight, the half dozen characters are all heading somewhere, but it’s not necessarily where they want to be going, and their inner and outer journeys could potentially be changed if only they had said something. “It’s an awful thing to feel like you don’t have a home,” Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) says about halfway through.

TJ (Will Harrison) is a navy medic about to go AWOL to avoid being sent back to Afghanistan. Jane is an aspiring animator visiting her boyfriend who she may not love anymore. Noah (Rhys Coiro) is a veteran and a drifter caring for his ailing mother. Liz (Mia Barron) is a loud, lively woman who has just ditched her lover at an Extraordinary Couples Workshop. Ed (Jon Norman Schneider) is a harried, drunk traveling salesman working for a questionable invention company. And Anna (Michelle Wilson) is a married mother who has just had to identify the body of her dead brother.

The play is primarily a series of imaginary conversations, as if the characters decided to speak to one another, sharing intimate details of who they are and what they want out of their daily existence.

“I wanted to lean across the aisle and say to her: I have no idea where I’m headed today — I just decided I’d get on a train and head north,” TJ says about Jane, who responds to the audience, “If he’d told me that, I’m not sure what I would’ve said. TJ: “Then I wanted to tell her: I’ve lived in California for a year and till this morning I’ve never been north of San Diego.” Jane: “And then I probably would’ve said: Well, I’ve never been to San Diego.” TJ: “You should definitely go sometime. It’s totally weird.”

“I wanted to tell all of you: Obviously I’m nowhere near the person I intended to be,” Ed says. “But I’m the only person I can be under the circumstances. I know how shitty today was and I hold no illusions about tomorrow.”

These six diverse people are not having their best day, and they have no idea what the future has in store for them. They are lost souls contemplating what happens next, not necessarily looking forward to it. Worried that he’s going to be caught and brought back to face justice for military desertion, TJ says, “Then I remembered nobody could be looking for me because I wasn’t missing yet.”

A whirlwind conclusion brings it all into perspective, focusing on the concept of “What if?”

Arnulfo Maldonado’s set is a rotating platform with six movable train seats. Daniel Kluger’s sound, Lap Chi Chu’s lighting, and Ben Pearcy’s projections (for 59 Productions) makes the audience feel that they’re also on the train, motoring north through gorgeous scenery, although only flashes of light and color stream by. Ásta Bennie Hostetter’s everyday-dress costumes help give identity to the characters.

Directed by Tyne Rafaeli (Epiphany, I Was Most Alive with You), the play occasionally gets lost itself, the dialogue running off the rails; it’s not clear why the stage spins or why the actors continually rearrange their seats, and Kluger’s interstitial music is too standard.

Harrison (Daisy Jones and the Six) is affecting in his off Broadway debut, speaking in a manner that emphasizes how unanchored TJ is. Canó-Flaviá (Dance Nation, Mac Beth) is warm and gentle as Jane, Coiro (Dinner at Eight, Boy’s Life) is compelling as the unpredictable Noah, and Barron (Dying for It, Domesticated) nearly rips the roof off the Newhouse in her entrance scene, screaming into her cellphone as if no one else is around. Wilson (Confederates, Sweat) is touching as Anna, while Schneider (Once Upon a [korean] Time, Awake and Sing!) does his best with a character who is more tangential, not as deeply nuanced.

At one point Jane imagines telling TJ about James Turrell’s Dividing the Light Skyspace at Pomona College. She explains, “The artist who made it, he believes that the sky is way too enormous for us to really comprehend it. So he builds these little rooms all over the world with holes cut in their ceilings so you can look up at the sky like it’s a picture in a frame. It’s so much cooler than I’m making it sound. I promise you’ll never look at the sky the same way again.”

It’s an apt metaphor for the Coast Starlight, both the train and the play. (Notably, Pearcy was an assistant to Turrell for ten years.) I’ve been on long train rides, and I’ve sat several times in Turrell’s first US Skyspace, Meeting, which is on permanent view at MoMA PS1. I’m not sure that, having seen Bunin’s show, I will be more amenable to engage strangers in conversation, but I’m likely to wonder a whole lot more about who they might be.

WEATHERING

Humanity gets caught up in the maelstrom in Faye Driscoll’s Weathering (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

WEATHERING
New York Live Arts
219 West Nineteenth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
April 5-8, 12-15, $32-$50, 7:30
212-924-0077
newyorklivearts.org
www.fayedriscoll.com

Faye Driscoll’s latest work, Weathering, is, well, everything.

The seventy-minute piece, continuing at New York Live Arts through April 15, takes place on a squishy white movable platform raft designed by Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan. The audience sits on all four sides of the object. One by one, ten performers — James Barrett, Kara Brody, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Amy Gernux, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jennifer Nugent, Cory Seals, Eliza Tappan, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, and Jo Warren, in Karen Boyer’s costumes of everyday dress, some with backpacks, bags, and other accoutrements — step on and off the platform, eventually all standing in place and freezing, becoming what Driscoll calls a flesh sculpture.

Stage managers Emily Vizina and Ryan Gamblin, in all black, go to opposite corners and gently push the platform so it spins around, extremely slowly at first. The dancers barely move a muscle, but as the platform rotates, you can start to tell that the performers have shifted ever so slightly, lowering a knee, reaching out a hand, turning a foot, almost imperceptibly; the effect is like you are watching a living, creeping flipbook. Soon they begin touching, the connections electrifying, as if the contact is life affirming, which is especially potent as we emerge from Covid restrictions that kept us physically apart from one another. As the bodies interweave, they close gaps, filling spaces of loss and absence.

Performers encounter all five senses while spinning around the New York Live Arts stage (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

Driscoll incorporates all five senses as she and the stage managers occasionally spray the performers (and the audience) with citrus-smelling water and some of the dancers let out small groans and grunts as they put their mouths on an arm, leg, or neck that approaches them, somewhere in between the hunger for sex and the hunger of zombies seeking sustenance.

As the score builds — the sound and music direction is by Sophia Brous, with live sound and sound design by Ryan Gamblin and composition, field recordings, and sound design by Guillaume Malaret — the raft is spun around faster and faster. Personal items fall haphazardly to the ground: keys, a wallet, cellphones. Clothes start coming off, revealing more of who these people are and challenging what we might have previously thought about them while harkening back to our primeval existence, equating the beginning and the end. Chaos ensues, as the audience tries to capture as much of the action as it possibly can, not wanting to miss a single thing, as if every little movement, every sound, every change could upset the balance of this mini-universe.

Driscoll is telling us to pay attention, letting us know that humanity is failing and we are destroying the planet. The raft, evoking Earth and its orbit, sometimes slides slightly out of control, nearly hitting the people in the first row.

Faye Driscoll’s Weathering continues at NYLA through April 15 (photo by Maria Baranova / courtesy New York Live Arts)

The faster the raft goes, the more the audience is overcome by an intoxicating joy mixed with impending doom; it is absolutely exhilarating to follow each of the performers’ journeys, ten individuals striving to survive on their own and as a group, just as we in the audience are.

The show is accompanied by the companion reader Durations of Short Detail, with short pieces by dramaturg Dages Juvelier Keates (“We Are So Close”), dancer and choreographer Jesse Zaritt (“To Hold and Be Held”), and Driscoll, whose poem “Chariots of Flesh” relates, “We’ve been trembling in the trench for / Days? / Weeks? / Years? / Lifetimes? / Despite thick fog / I am overcome / By the smell of your clean shaven skin / Face, eyes, gaze, nose, mouth, fear / I try to pound you out but you latch onto my arm, / wrap your leg around me and reverse position / You try to pound me out but I latch onto your arm, / wrap my leg around you and reverse position / We are desperate to know the outcome / Desperate to know the outcome / Desperate to know the outcome. . . .”

As she has in such previous pieces as the Thank You for Coming trilogy, You’re Me, and There is so much mad in me, Driscoll investigates the intrinsic relationship between performer and audience, the imperative bond, but there is a lot more at stake in Weathering, nothing less than the future of the human race.

I don’t know that we can save the world through art, but with creators such as Driscoll, we can have a hell of a lot of terrifying fun trying.

MOVEMENT AT THE STILL POINT: AN EVENING OF DANCE

Who: Mark Mann, Sara Mearns, Megan LeCrone, Georgina Pazcoguin, Lloyd Knight, Xin Ying, Terese Capucilli, Skye Mattox, Karla Garcia, David Guzman, Ricardo Zayas, Morgan Marcell, Ryan Vandenboom, Curtis Holland, Rena Butler, Amadeo “Remy” Mangano, Ousmane “Omari” Wiles, Dardo Galletto, Alonso Guzman, Evan Ruggiero, Jie-Hung Connie Shiau, Maleek Washington, Francesca Harper, Carmen de Lavallade, Gus Solomons Jr., more
What: Book launch with live performances
Where: The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
When: Monday, April 10, $81-$131, 7:30
Why: Photographer Mark Mann has assembled quite a group of all-stars to launch his coffee-table book, Still Point: An Ode to Dance (Rizzoli, March 2023, $60), at the Joyce on April 10. The book features photographs of more than 140 people in the dance world, several dozen of whom will be at the Joyce to celebrate with Mann, including New York City Ballet’s Sara Mearns, Martha Graham principals Lloyd Knight and Xin Ying, Broadway’s Skye Mattox and Ryan Vandenboom, voguers Amadeo “Remy” Mangano and Ousmane “Omari” Wiles, tango dancers Dardo Galletto and Alonso Guzman, tap dancer Evan Ruggiero, Ailey II artistic director Francesca Harper, and legends Carmen de Lavallade and Gus Solomons Jr. “Mark is one of a rare breed of photographers who understands dancers: how we move, the way we say things with our bodies that other people say in words, how much we love to perform for an audience — even an audience of one,” Chita Rivera writes in the foreword. “So I put on my top hat, white tie and tails, and we did our own little dance, and it shows in the images he made of me, and of all the dancers in this beautiful collection.”

Misty Copeland is among more than 140 dancers who posed for Mark Mann’s new book (photo courtesy Mark Mann / Rizzoli USA)

The Glasgow-born Mann, who had not photographed the dance community before, was inspired to do the project when commiserating with his sister-in-law, choreographer Loni Landon, about the pandemic lockdown, during which there were no live, in-person performances and Mann’s professional portraiture business had dried up. He accidentally discovered an empty warehouse space on the West Side, where he invited subjects to pose for him, with his beloved medium format Leica S that he calls Gretta. “When our first dancer, Rena Butler, came into the studio in February of 2021, I was speechless,” Mann explained in a statement. “I realized I was watching a performance tailored exclusively for my camera, and for the first few minutes I was so captivated that I actually forgot I was supposed to be taking photos. In that moment, as I began to photograph, my whole life as a photographer was turned upside down.”

In the book, many of the subjects contribute personal thoughts about their chosen discipline. “During the shoots, we spoke to the dancers about identity. The pandemic challenged a lot of us in terms of facing our true selves in a moment when we lost what had defined us,” Landon writes in the afterword. “Everyone figured out how to survive in their own way. It was astonishing to see perseverance paired with vulnerability — the resilience of these artists.” They now take the next step together on April 10 at the Joyce.

PARADE

Lucille (Micaela Diamond) and Leo Frank (Ben Platt) fight for justice in Parade (photo by Joan Marcus)

PARADE
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 6, $84-$288
paradebroadway.com

At intermission of the first Broadway revival of Parade, based on a true story of anti-Semitism, racism, and a terrible miscarriage of justice, several colleagues and I asked the same question: “Why is this a musical?” We found out in the far superior second act.

The show, directed by Harold Prince, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winner Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy), debuted at the Vivian Beaumont in 1998, running for thirty-nine previews and eighty-four regular performances, earning nine Tony nominations and winning for Best Book and Best Original Score. It is now playing at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, in a version directed by Tony winner Michael Arden that transferred from Encores! at City Center and uses the 2007 Donmar Warehouse production, which included a few different songs from the original.

Parade begins with a prologue set in Marietta, Georgia, in 1862, as a young Confederate soldier (Charlie Webb) sings goodbye to his love and prepares to fight “for these old hills behind me / these old red hills of home. . . . in the land where honor lives and breathes.” The action then shifts to Atlanta in 1913, where the soldier (Howard McGillin), who lost a leg in the Civil War, is determined to help the South rise again, “honor” be damned.

It’s Confederate Memorial Day, and Lucille Frank (Micaela Diamond) wants to go on a picnic with her husband, Leo (Ben Platt), but he instead decides to go to work at the National Pencil Company, her father’s factory where Leo is superintendent. Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle) arrives to collect her pay and is later found murdered in the basement. The police arrest Leo for the crime, but he doesn’t take them very seriously, since he is innocent — but when power-hungry district attorney Hugh Dorsey (Paul Alexander Nolan) starts building a strong case against him, constructed on a series of lies, Leo suddenly faces reality as Lucille seeks to uncover the truth and reveal the conspiracy to railroad her husband.

Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle) enjoys one final moment of life with Frankie Epps (Jake Pedersen) in based-on-fact musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Among those participating in the frame-up led by Dorsey are National Pencil night watchman Newt Lee (Eddie Cooper), janitor Jim Conley (Alex Joseph Grayson), and Frank family maid Minnie McKnight (Danielle Lee Greaves), all of whom are Black and manipulated because of the color of their skin; Governor Jack Slaton (Sean Allan Krill), who is more concerned with his upcoming reelection campaign than the fate of one perhaps innocent man; Mary’s friend Frankie Epps (Jake Pedersen), who wants to see the murderer “burn in the ragin’ fires of hell forevermore”; right-wing newspaper editor and publisher Tom Watson (Manoel Felciano), who calls out, “Who’s gonna stop the Jew from killin’? Who’s gonna swing that hammer?”; Judge Roan (McGillin), who’d rather be fishing than in court; and Britt Craig (Jay Armstrong Johnson), an ambitious reporter who declares, “Take this superstitious city / Add one little Jew from Brooklyn / Plus a college education and a mousy little wife / And big news! Real big news! / That poor sucker saved my life!” Mary’s distraught mother (Kelli Barrett) is the only one considering forgiveness.

The focus of the show shifts dramatically after intermission, during which Leo remains onstage, in his jail cell, contemplating his fate; while the first act was all over the place, squeezing in too much information alongside oversized production numbers, the second act zeroes in on the touching relationship between Lucille and Leo as they desperately try to prove his innocence. It’s a beautiful, romantic love story, highlighted by a prison picnic Lucille brings to Leo in which she first chastises him for not accepting her assistance. “Do it alone, Leo — do it all by yourself. / You’re the only one who matters after all. / Do it alone, Leo — why should it bother me? / I’m just good for standing in the shadows / And staring at the walls, Leo,” she sings. Later they duet on “This Is Not Over Yet,” as Leo proclaims, “Hail the resurrection of / the south’s least fav’rite son! / It means I made a vow for better! / Two is better than one! / It means the journey ahead might get shorter. / I might reach the end of my rope! / But suddenly, loud as a mortar, there is hope!”

Parade features archival projections throughout (photo by Joan Marcus)

Dane Laffrey’s set is centered by a large wooden platform on which most of the action takes place, evoking a gallows as well as a coffin. There are scattered chairs and pews on either side, where many of the characters sit when they’re not in the scene, which can get confusing, especially for actors who play multiple roles. Susan Hilferty’s period costumes put us right in the 1910s, while Sven Ortel’s projections feature archival photographs of the real people and locations involved in the story, along with newspaper articles and a memorial plaque, a constant, and effective, reminder that this really happened — along with a final shot providing one last shock. Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant’s choreography thankfully calms down in the second half. Heather Gilbert’s lighting and Jon Weston’s sound maintains the dark mood surrounding the events. Music director and conductor Tom Murray handles three-time Tony winner Brown’s (The Last Five Years, Mr. Saturday Night) compelling score with a rousing touch, while director Michael Arden (Spring Awakening, Once on This Island) ably navigates through Uhry’s (Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo) busy book. (Notably, Atlanta native Uhry’s great-uncle owned the National Pencil Company at the time of the killing.)

Tony winner Platt (Dear Evan Hansen, The Book of Mormon) and Diamond (The Cher Show, A Play Is a Poem) are wonderful together, portraying a Jewish couple in the Deep South facing bigotry; Platt captures Leo’s unrealistic belief that justice will triumph in the end, while Diamond embodies Lucille’s growth as she confronts what is happening in her beloved hometown. Grayson (Into the Woods, Girl from the North Country) brings down the house with “Feel the Rain Fall,” although, in 2023, it teeters on the edge of appropriation. Courtnee Carter (Once on This Island, Sing Street) as Angela and Douglas Lyons (Chicken & Biscuits, Beautiful) as Riley provide necessary perspective in their duet, “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’,” in which they assert, “I can tell you this, as a matter of fact, / that the local hotels wouldn’t be so packed / if a little black girl had gotten attacked.” Also providing strong support are Cooper (Assassins, The Cradle Will Rock), Tony nominee Krill (Jagged Little Pill, Honeymoon in Vegas), and Greaves (Hairspray, Rent).

The final projection as the musical ends is a potent reminder that this country still has a long way to go when it comes to entrenched racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, in states such as Georgia and too many others that appear determined to continue a legacy of bigotry and hatred, although there is hope with such political stalwarts as Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, the reverend who tells us, before the show starts, to silence our cellphones but, implicitly, not our voices.

JAN TILLEY: EXCERPTS FROM JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR

EXCERPTS FROM JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
The Cutting Room
44 East 32nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Friday, April 7, $40.35, $25 food & beverage minimum per person, 7:30
212-691-1900
thecuttingroomnyc.com
www.jantilley.com

Right after the two Passover seders and before Easter Sunday, rock & roll guitarist and singer Jan Tilley offers a holiday spectacular on Good Friday, an evening of songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1971 Broadway smash, Jesus Christ Superstar. Tilley, the cofounder of the Rude Girls and an early portrayer of Krzysztof in Hedwig & the Angry Inch, has led several special concerts at the Cutting Room and will next revive her portrayal of Jesus from last year, with vocalist Lisa McQuade as Judas, singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Rachelle Garniez as Mary Magdalene, and singer and actor Joe Dettmore as Simon Zealotes, Pontius Pilate, and King Herod. The band consists of Tilley with Roger Lipson, Tim Brannigan, Paul Leschen, and Junior Pauls, ready to kick some ass on such songs as “What’s the Buzz/Strange Thing, Mystifying,” “Everything’s Alright,” “Heaven on Their Minds,” “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” and “King Herod’s Song.”

Jan Tilley brings their rock-and-roll take on Jesus Christ Superstar back to the Cutting Room on Good Friday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

If you haven’t seen Tilley rock out before at their Time Capsule 1970s/’80s shows and Heart tribute, you’re in for a treat. And with Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera closing on April 16 and his Bad Cinderella living up to its title, this is unquestionably the best Sir Andrew gig in town. (Even Ted Lasso is getting in on it all, making two Jesus Christ Superstar references in its first three episodes of season three.) Tickets are $40.35, with a $25 food and beverage minimum; the menu includes latkes in addition to burgers, salads, tacos, pizzas, and fish.

La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival ’23

Nela H. Kornetová and Lærke Grøntved star in T.I.T.S.’s US premiere of Forced Beauty (photo courtesy T.I.T.S.)

Who: Kari Hoaas Productions, Nela Kornetová and T.I.T.S., Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company, Nora Alami, Jadd Tank, Leyya Mona Tawil/Lime Rickey International, Baye & Asa, Wendy Perron and Morgan Griffin, Bobbi Jene Smith, Kayla Farrish, Kathryn Alter, Francesca Dominguez, Darvejon Jones, Cory “Supernova” Villegas/Soul Dance Co
What: Eighteenth annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
Where: La MaMa, 74A East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
When: April 6–30, free (with advance RSVP) – $30
Why: The eighteenth annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival runs April 6-30, consisting of ten programs featuring a dozen creators presenting a wide range of works exploring the theme “Research, Resilience, and Testimony.” Referring to the artists, curator Nicky Paraiso explains on the festival website, “They bear witness to the uncertain times we live in, with a deeply felt personal approach that our dance audiences will not easily forget. We are living, perhaps, in a not-yet-totally postpandemic world where emotional response continues to remain tender and raw.”

The festival opens with works by two Norwegian companies, beginning April 6-8 with the world premiere of Kari Hoaas Productions’ Shadowland, in which a group of soloists weave through a web of loss, and April 7-9 with the US premiere of T.I.T.S.’s Forced Beauty, in which choreographer Nela H. Kornetová and Lærke Grøntved, often topless, act out online hate and violence directed at women on the internet. The free panel discussion “Stop Calling Them Dangerous #5, Cinema Has Power” takes place April 8 at 2:00 at CRS (Center for Remembering and Sharing), with screenings of films by Yvonne Rainer and Charles Atlas, organized by Yoshiko Chuma and promising “surprise dance-filmmakers” in attendance.

The second week kicks off with Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company’s Lunch with Sonia (April 12-16), followed by a pair of shared programs: Nora Alami and Jadd Tank’s 3rd Body, inspired by VR technology, and Leyya Mona Tawil/Lime Rickey International’s Malayeen Voices, a futuristic look at folk songs and dance (April 13-16); and Baye & Asa’s duet Suck it Up, which delves into commercial imagery, with Wendy Perron and Morgan Griffin’s The Daily Mirror 1976/2022, in which teacher Perron revisits a 1976 work, now joined by one of her students, featuring film and photography by Babette Mangolte (April 14-16).

The third week is highlighted by the New York premiere of Bobbi Jene Smith’s multimedia dance-theater piece Broken Theater with AMOC* (April 20-30). Kayla Farrish’s Put Away the Fire, dear, pt.2 explores the relationship between live performance and cinema, with Farrish, Jessica Alexander, Tatiana Barber, James Barret, Alexander Diaz, Kerime Konur, and Curtis Thomas (April 21-23). The final program is Hunter College’s Emerging Choreographers Showcase with works by Kathryn Alter, Francesca Dominguez, Darvejon Jones, and Cory “Supernova” Villegas/Soul Dance Co.

ASI WIND’S INNER CIRCLE

Asi Wind’s Inner Circle continues dazzling audiences at Judson Theatre through May 28

ASI WIND’S INNER CIRCLE
Judson Theatre
243 Thompson St.
Thursday – Sunday through September 3, $59.14 – $265.35
www.asiwind.com

“My goal is to create a moment that has no explanation,” magician and corporate mentalist Asi Wind told Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller in a 2019 episode of Penn & Teller: Fool Us. The Israeli-born, New York-based Wind creates seventy-five minutes that have no explanation in his masterful Inner Circle, which is wowing audiences at the Judson Theatre by Washington Square Park.

Wind might be a magician’s magician, but Inner Circle is more than just a magic show; it’s an investigation into identity and individuality, exploring multiple aspects of the human condition in unique and entertaining ways. And don’t bother trying to figure out how he does what he does; instead, just go with the flow.

Asi Wind uses a special deck for card tricks in magic show

“I’m going to lie to you . . . a lot,” the engaging Wind says near the beginning of his seventy-five-minute performance, centering around a deck of original, red- or black-bordered cards on which each of the one hundred audience members has written their name and initials. Wind and the thirteen people sitting around the table with him cut, shuffle, and examine the cards as Wind makes them (the cards, not the people) appear and disappear in surprising places and gets into personal conversations with several of the men and women whose cards were selected. We learn about their jobs, their families, their romantic partners, but they represent the audience as a whole; we are not anonymous in the semidark theater, which was constructed specifically for this event, nearly full circle except for a small curtained area behind Wind. (The set is by Adam Blumenthal.)

We also find out a bit about Wind himself, including a section devoted to some of his heroes and mentors, whose portraits, painted by Wind, hang in the lobby, from Juan Tamariz, Cardini, and Tommy Wonder to Ricky Jay, Harry Houdini, and David Blaine, who is presenting Inner Circle. Wind, who was born Asi Betesh in Tel Aviv, served as chief consultant for Blaine for ten years.

Wind, whose Concert of the Mind: Exceeding Human Limits played at the Axis Theatre in 2013, is an expert at drawing out the mystery; just when you think the trick is over, he adds another element or two. “We do need to build up the drama,” he says. The night I went, just about everything clicked, with every participant doing their part, leading to gasping, laughing, and even a few tears.

Asi Wind performs his jaw-dropping magic from central round table

Director John Lovick maintains an easygoing approach, keeping everyone involved whether their name is called or not. The set, consisting of four rising rows, is a little steep at the top, and if you’re sitting in a corner it might be hard to see some of the action. Occasionally a camera projects the cards onto the table so they are magnified but not always in focus, so you may still have to strain to see what is happening. But those are minor quibbles in what is otherwise a fun night of magic and observation.

“It’s about connecting people,” Wind, who knows how to play his audience, says at one point.

And that’s the best magic trick of all.