twi-ny recommended events

BLACK HOLES: ESTRANGED SIBLINGS CAN’T CONNECT IN HUNTER’S LATEST GEM

Paul Sparks and Brian J. Smith play half brothers facing a family crisis in Samuel D. Hunter’s Grangeville (photo by Emilio Madrid)

GRANGEVILLE
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 23, $69-$144
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

In a short period of time, NYU grad Jack Serio has established himself as an exciting director of intimate dramas; since 2021, he has helmed Bernard Kops’s The Dark Outside at Theater for the New City, Rita Kalnejais’s This Beautiful Future at the Cherry Lane, Joey Merlo’s On Set with Theda Bara at the Brick, Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a Flatiron loft, and Ruby Thomas’s The Animal Kingdom in the Connelly’s tiny upstairs theater. His unique stagings foster particularly visceral connections with small audiences in these constrained spaces.

Since 2010, Idaho native Samuel D. Hunter has proved to be one of America’s most consistently thoughtful and intelligent playwrights, penning such poignant and involving works as A Bright New Boise, The Whale, Lewiston/Clarkston, Greater Clements, and A Case for the Existence of God, demonstrating an unfailing ear for dialogue while exploring the contemporary human condition.

The Signature has wisely teamed up Serio and Hunter for Grangeville, a moving and powerful story about a pair of estranged half brothers forced together when their mother becomes seriously ill.

The play opens in near darkness, with Jerry (Paul Sparks) sitting stage right, on a stoop in front of a door in the corner, and Arnold (Brian J. Smith) on a bench far away on the opposite side. The distance between them is palpable, and not only physically. Jerry, wearing a flannel shirt, vest, and baseball cap, looking like a down-on-his-luck farmer, is still living in Grangeville, the Idaho town the siblings — sired by different fathers — grew up in. Jerry and his wife are raising their two children there, and he’s also taken on the responsibility of caring for their ailing mother, who lives in a trailer park. (The costumes are by Ricky Reynoso, with lighting by Stacey Derosier and set design by dots.)

Jerry has called Arnold, a fashionably dressed queer artist living in Rotterdam with his husband, Bram, because their mother’s health bills are piling up and the money is running out. Rejected by the family because they would not accept his sexual orientation, Arnold has cut himself off from them, so he is surprised to get the call but even more shocked when he is told that their mother has named him executor in her will.

Arnold (Brian J. Smith) and Jerry (Paul Sparks) find themselves at a distance in gripping new play (photo by Emilio Madrid)

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Arnold argues. “I live in the Netherlands, we haven’t spoken in years! Why would she do this?!”

“Yeah, I mean when she had this drawn up she knew I was going through some — shit, so maybe she just figured you’d be better at this,” Jerry responds. “I mean you’re the smarter one! Maybe it’s a compliment!”

Jerry and their mother were counting on a supposed treasure she had bought on the cheap.

“She was convinced she found a long-lost piece of art by that famous artist — Jack something? Anyway, it’s this sculpture of a real tall skinny guy, all stretched out. Famous sculptor. Jack something,” Jerry explains.

“Wait — are you talking about Giacometti?” Arnold asks.

“That’s it. She was convinced that she found a long-lost Giacometti at this pawn shop in Burley,” Jerry answers.

“Okay, I — don’t know what to do with that,” Arnold says.

Over a brief period of time, the half brothers confront some of their personal failings and make unexpected admissions, but neither is anticipating any grand, sentimental rapprochements.

Serio expertly keeps the tension mounting without costume or set changes or dramatic narrative shifts, primarily only with dialogue. However, as the characters’ conversations switch from telephone to computer to in person — in one scene, Sparks becomes Bram, while in another, Smith is Stacey, his brother’s wife — the actors slowly get closer across the liminal space, eventually standing face-to-face, which packs a powerful punch. In addition, Chris Darbassie’s sound shifts with the changes in technology, at first high-pitched and squeaky, later clear and crisp.

Replacing the originally announced Brendan Fraser — who won an Oscar for starring in The Whale, the 2022 film adaptation of Hunter’s 2012 off-Broadway play — Emmy nominee Sparks (At Home at the Zoo, Grey House, Waiting for Godot) is sensational as Jerry, the ne’er-do-well older brother whose life is falling apart while he has no idea how to stop the avalanche. Every minor gesture, every movement is so carefully choreographed that the audience understands who Jerry is, not some mere country bumpkin with no future.

Tony nominee Smith (The Glass Menagerie, The Columnist, Three Changes) holds his own as Arnold, a conflicted man who has been harboring inner pain since he was a child and is not quite as grounded as he initially appears to be. Both men need help, the kind they never received from their parents or, sadly, from each other.

Jerry (Paul Sparks) and Arnold (Brian J. Smith) face off in Samuel D. Hunter’s Grangeville at the Signature (photo by Emilio Madrid)

But at the center of it all is Hunter’s razor-sharp, laser-focused language. There is not a word out of place, not a sentence that languishes in mediocrity. The story takes place in Grangeville, a town of approximately three thousand people in Idaho County, but it’s about America, with its troubled health-care system, rampant homophobia, fast-moving technology that leaves so many behind, and endless political battles between red and blue geographical locations as well as escalating issues over how we communicate with one another.

The play has a brutal yet subtle honesty as it reveals the dark underbelly of the American dream, laid to waste in the complexities of one family that refuses to blame the system.

“So what happened?” Arnold asks when Jerry explains that his decades-long marriage is in trouble.

“I think Stacey just — realized she wasn’t happy,” Jerry answers.

“What about you?” Arnold responds.

“Oh, I’ve never been happy. Heh,” Jerry admits matter-of-factly.

Arnold has not found happiness either, later telling his brother, “It’s like no matter what memory it is, no matter how seemingly innocuous it is, it always leads straight to shit. It’s like being stuck in a maze and no matter what path you choose there’s just black holes everywhere that you keep falling into.”

In Grangeville, there’s no escaping those black holes, no matter how far you try to run from them.

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

LISTEN TO WHAT THE QUEEN SAID: ISABELLE HUPPERT AS MARY AT NYU SKIRBALL

Isabelle Huppert portrays Mary, Queen of Scots in third collaboration with Robert Wilson (photo by Lucie Jansch)

ROBERT WILSON & ISABELLE HUPPERT: MARY SAID WHAT SHE SAID
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
February 27 – March 2, $125
nyuskirball.org

In October 2005, French superstar Isabelle Huppert performed Sarah Kane’s blistering solo piece, 4.48 Psychose, at BAM’s Harvey Theater. For ninety-five minutes, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA, César, and Cannes–winning actress stood stock-still — except for occasionally scanning the audience or extending a finger — portraying a woman who had just suffered a mental breakdown.

In New York, Huppert has also appeared in Florian Zeller’s The Mother at the Atlantic in 2019 and, at BAM, in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Phaedra(s) in 2016 and Robert Wilson’s Quartett in 2009.

Always ready to take on artistic challenges, Huppert has teamed up with Wilson for the third time with Mary Said What She Said, in which Huppert, who has made more than 135 films, including The Lacemaker, Heaven’s Gate, The Piano Teacher, and Elle, gets inside the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, the sixteenth-century Scottish monarch. The show is divided into three parts consisting of eighty-six paragraphs, beginning with “Memory, open my heart.”

Wilson, who has dazzled the world with such wildly unpredictable and visually stunning productions as Einstein on the Beach, The Black Rider, and The Old Woman, is the director of the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris commission as well as the set and lighting designer. The text, which is performed in French with English surtitles, is by longtime Wilson collaborator, novelist, and essayist Darryl Pinckney, using Mary’s own letters and Stefan Zweig’s 1935 biography of the queen in his research. The music is by Ludovico Einaudi, who has worked with such experimental composers as Luciano Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The US premiere at NYU Skirball runs February 27 to March 2; all tickets are $125 to see one of the greatest actors of our era in a show by one of the most inventive creators of our time, promising to be something special. As a bonus, Huppert will participate in a talkback following the 7:30 show on March 1.

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

WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND? VINNY DePONTO WILL TELL YOU AT GREENWICH HOUSE

Mentalist Vinny DePonto delves into people’s memories in Mindplay (photo by Chris Ruggiero)

MINDPLAY
Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Thursday – Tuesday through April 20, $49-$159
mindplaynyc.com

“What’s on your mind?” Vinny DePonto asks at the beginning of his latest show, Mindplay, quoting the prompt that appears when people open Facebook. There’s a lot on DePonto’s mind, clearly, including family history, grief, and the nature of memory. Although the New York City–based mentalist and magician performs dazzling tricks during the ninety-minute production, it doesn’t quite cohere into a solid, thoroughly composed play — but you may not care if you’re a fan of onstage magic.

When DePonto was six years old, his father discovered a dusty box of magic tricks belonging to his own father, and DePonto was hooked. Ever since, in such presentations as the Drama Desk–nominated Charlatan, Mysterious Delights, and the virtual Mental Amusements, DePonto has mesmerized audiences with his remarkable abilities, all fully evident in Mindplay, which continues at the Greenwich House Theater through April 20.

On the way in, everyone is invited to write a thought on a slip of paper, put it in an envelope, and drop it in a fishbowl. DePonto occasionally reaches in and pulls one out to begin a new segment, each of which brings the writer of the thought onstage to participate in multiple ways, including having their mind read. He also incorporates balloons, a Shakespeare compendium, a rotary phone, and other props to carry out tricks that will leave you scratching your head in wonder.

Vinny DePonto wants to know what’s on your mind at the Greenwich House Theater (photo by Chris Ruggiero)

But as a theater piece, Mindplay, written by DePonto and Josh Koenigsberg and directed by Andrew Neisler (The Elementary Spacetime Show, The Gray Man), fails to find a narrative flow; it feels more like a nightclub act, albeit an entertaining one. In the second half, when DePonto reveals what’s behind the curtain — the set is by Sibyl Wickersheimer — too many conceptual threads get in the way and the prestidigitation gets lost as DePonto talks about the possibilities of the brain, rummages through metal drawers, and uses a cassette tape deck to look into his past.

Geography is also on his mind, and it was difficult to figure out the night I went whether a few coincidences were accidental or planted, forcing us to think too much about the result instead of gasping at how the trick got there. (DePonto explains early on that there are absolutely no plants.) For comparison, in the spring of 2023 magician and corporate mentalist Asi Wind’s Inner Circle at Judson Theatre was able to create a compelling investigation into identity, individuality, and the human condition by letting the cards tell the story. In Mindplay, DePonto tries to share something bigger than just entertaining magic but just misses the mark.

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

ENGLISH FIRST: A TICKING TIME BOMB

Omid (Hadi Tabbal) and Marjan (Marjan Neshat) form an intimate bond in Sanaz Toossi’s English (photo by Joan Marcus)

ENGLISH
Todd Haimes Theatre
227 West Forty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 2, $72-$313
www.roundabouttheatre.org

It might be difficult for non-English speakers to learn the world’s most spoken language, but Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, English, has made a smooth transition from the Linda Gross Theater to Broadway. In fact, the Atlantic-Roundabout coproduction is even more powerful now given the current US administration’s war on illegal (and legal) immigration and America First policies.

According to the Oxford Digital Institute, English “is the language of international communication,” spoken in more than one hundred countries even though it “is a hard language to learn due to its complex grammar rules, pronunciation variations, and vast vocabulary . . . riddled with exceptions and irregularities, making it difficult to master. Additionally, English has a diverse range of accents and dialects, making it challenging for nonnative speakers to understand and communicate effectively.”

Everything I wrote in my review of the off-Broadway premiere in February 2022 still holds true: Concepts of home and personal identity lie at the heart of Toossi’s poignant and involving work, which continues at the Todd Haimes Theatre through March 2. The play is set in a small classroom in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, where Marjan (Marjan Neshat) is teaching basic English to four students who are planning on taking the TOEFL, the Test of English as a Foreign Language, for different reasons. Marjan insists that they speak only English in the class rather than Farsi, their native tongue.

Roya (Pooya Mohseni) wants to be able to speak with her new granddaughter, who lives in Canada with Roya’s son and his wife, who are not teaching the child Farsi. “I hope you not forget. Nate is not your name,” she tells her son, who used to be known as Nader.

Elham (Tala Ashe) has passed her MCATs but needs to learn English so she can study gastroenterology in Australia. “My accent is a war crime,” she angrily admits.

Omid (Hadi Tabbal) has an upcoming green card interview in Dubai, but his English is already excellent, nearly accentless. When asked why people learn language, he says, “To bring the inside to the outside.”

Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh) is an eighteen-year-old girl who believes Ricky Martin is a poet. “People like accent,” she says, not ashamed of who she is.

After a presentation by Goli doesn’t go particularly well, Marjan, a married woman who spent nine years in Manchester before moving back to Iran with her family, says, “Don’t be sorry! We were speaking English with each other. I think it’s one of the greatest things two people can do together.”

As Elham’s frustration with English builds — she repeatedly uses Farsi in class, accumulating negative points — she gets into disagreements with everyone else, speaking frankly, without apology. “Goli, people hear your accent and they go oh my god it is so funny you are so stupid. . . . Okay if I have accent, bad TOEFL score. Omid has accent, no green card. Roya’s accent? Disaster.” Some of them equate the attempted erasure of their Iranian accent when speaking English with the loss of their identity, as if they are surrendering their unique culture. “Don’t you think people can do us the courtesy of learning our names?” Elham says to Marjan, who went by “Mary” when she lived in England.

“English isn’t your enemy,” Marjan insists. “English is not to be conquered. Embrace it. You can be all the things you are in Farsi in English, too. I always liked myself better in English.” But Marjan won’t acknowledge to herself that that is exactly the problem. “I feel like I’m disappearing,” she says later to Omid.

Four students and a teacher learn about life and language in English (photo by Joan Marcus)

English is beautifully written by Toossi (Wish You Were Here) and gracefully directed by Knud Adams (I’m Revolting, Pulitzer Prize winner Primary Trust), giving each character room to develop. Although they go back and forth between English and Farsi, whenever they speak English, the actors use Iranian accents, but when they talk in Farsi, they lose the accent, sounding like plain old longtime Americans, a device that serves as a metaphor for colonialism, nation-building, and ethnocentrism.

One of the only changes from the Atlantic version is that the song Goli plays for show-and-tell has switched from Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever” to Martin’s “She Bangs,” in which the Puerto Rican heartthrob sings, “Talk to me. Tell me your name. / You blow me off like it is all the same. / You lit a fuse and now I’m ticking away like a bomb. / Yeah baby.”

Marsha Ginsberg’s revolving cube set is open on two sides, revealing the inside and the outside; the movement feels even stronger this time, more precarious. When the rotation stops so a scene can begin, a stanchion might block part of your view of a character, as if they are disappearing.

Enver Chakartash’s costumes meld traditional Iranian clothing, like head scarves, with American accents. The cast is exceptional, quickly forming a cohesive unit; it probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume they have each had to deal with the issue of making sacrifices to learn a new language and culture in some way, as all of them, in addition to the bilingual Toossi, were either born in Iran or Lebanon or their parents were. English was actually Toossi’s NYU thesis, written in response to Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and anti-immigration policies.

About halfway through the play, Marjan tells the class, “If you are here to learn English, I am going to ask you to agree that here in this room we are not Iranian. We are not even on this continent. Today I will ask you to feel any pull you have to your Iranian-ness and let it go. Keep it outside the wall of this classroom. In this room, we are native speakers. We think in English. We laugh in English. Our inhales, our exhales — we fill our lungs in English. No more Farsi. Can we agree to that?” Toossi understands the kind of sacrifices it takes to make a new life in a new country.

In the original production, Farsi was never actually spoken, but on Broadway, the final words are now in the Iranian tongue, a sharp parting shot at what’s happening in America and around the world.

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

NORDIC UTOPIA: BLACK ARTISTS FINDING FREEDOM IN SCANDINAVIA

William Henry Johnson paintings are a highlight of “Nordic Utopia?” show at Scandinavia House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

NORDIC UTOPIA? AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE 20th CENTURY
Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Tuesday – Saturday through March 8, free
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org

One of the best gallery shows right now in New York City is the small but revelatory “Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century” at Scandinavia House, which explores the surprising connection between African American jazz musicians and Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Continuing through March 8, “Nordic Utopia?” comprises painting, drawing, photography, ceramics, sculpture, music, and video by and about Black artists who left the United States for calmer pastures in Scandinavia.

“It was the first time in my life that I felt a real, free man,” visual artist and collector Howard Smith said in a 1976 interview about moving to Finland in 1984 after teaching at Scripps College in California. “So much so that one day I was walking down the street, I panicked because I suddenly realized that I had no further need for armor. I felt absolutely naked. In the United States you could not possibly walk down the street feeling free, spiritually unclothed, because you always felt that you are subject to attack. Well, here I am walking and I suddenly realize I have no armor whatsoever. I felt light as a feather — and it was frightening.” Smith, who died in 2021, has ten works on view, including several depictions of flowers, the small stoneware sculpture Female, the white porcelain Frida, and the 1986 Calligraphy Plate.

Sweet jazz floats in the air as visitors make their way through the three sections: “Creative Exploration & Cross Pollination,” “Lifelong Residency & Lasting Careers,” and “Travels & Sojourns,” encountering photos of Josephine Baker (including one by Helmer Lund-Hansen of the Black Venus in a white fur, cradling black and white baby dolls), Babs Gonzales, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins, and Dexter Gordon, who settled in Scandinavia from 1962 to 1976; “Since I’ve been over here, I felt that I could breathe, you know, and just be more or less a human being, without being white or black, green or yellow,” the LA-born saxophonist told DownBeat magazine.

Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmarte, silver gelatin print, 1964 (photo by / courtesy of Kirsten Malone)

In Hans Engberg’s 1970 two-part documentary Anden mands land, an ex-pat writer explains, “I’m in a new man’s land. Here, I’ve found friends, buddies, and allies.” Eight surrealist paintings by New York City native Ronald Burns take viewers on a fantastical journey involving floating women, complex grids, a carousel, “Mental Costumes,” and a pair of dizzying renderings of “The Triumph of Nature.” The highlight of the show are six oil paintings by William Henry Johnson, three portraits, two gorgeous landscapes (Sunset, Denmark and A View Down Akersgate, Oslo), and the captivating Boats in the Harbor, Kerte-minde.

As the exhibition approaches its final weeks, there are a handful of special programs happening. On February 22 at 3:00, cocurators Ethelene Whitmire and Leslie Anne Anderson and scholars Denise Murrell and Tamara J. Walker will gather for a free two-hour symposium. On February 25 at 2:00 ($5), Sámi author and journalist Elin Anna Labba will discuss her book The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow!, about the expulsion of the Sámi from northern Norway and Sweden, in a virtual talk with moderator Mathilde Magga. On February 26 at 6:30 ($13), Scandinavia House will screen Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 film about Dexter Gordon, ’Round Midnight, followed by a conversation with New Yorker film critic Richard Brody and Gordon’s widow, Maxine, author of Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon. And on March 5 at 5:30, ASF’s Emily Stoddart will lead a free guided tour of the show.

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

A BITCHIN’ MUSICAL JOURNEY AT THE WILD PROJECT

Karen Mould, aka Bitch, shares her intimate story in dazzling multimedia show (photo by Eric McNatt)

B*TCHCRAFT
the wild project
195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B
Through March 1, $36
thewildproject.com
bitchmusic.com

“I was a quiet child,” Karen Mould, aka Bitch, says numerous times in her not-quite-solo show, the scorching and endearing B*tchcraft: A Musical Play, continuing at the wild project through March 1. She whispers the phrase, sings it, and screams it, echoing her transition from a young girl resented by her parents to a fierce performer not afraid to stand up for what she believes in.

Born in 1973, Bitch was raised in suburban Michigan by an English father and mother who let her know that she kept them from living out their dreams. “My dad wanted to be a painter / But as an only child / Destined to take care of his parents / And then three daughters / He had to get a real job / So my job is to pour him the perfect beer,” she sings in the opening number. “My mom didn’t want to be a mom / She wanted to be a musical theater legend / But Michigan was as far off Broadway as you could get / Plus she had three girls to raise / And we all know whose job that is.”

“You’re bloody useless,” the voice of her father screams out.

“You’re a bull in a china shop,” the voice of her mother complains, referring to her daughter’s size and clumsiness.

“Up in my bedroom, I was NOT a quiet child,” Bitch tells the audience.

She imagines that the broom she uses to sweep the house can help her fly away. She writes heart-rending stories in her notebook that she reads to her bestie, a stuffed beaver named Beavy (Francesca) that comes to life. She falls in love with the violin. When she has her first period, dozens of tampons fall from the sky. She goes to college, takes theater and feminist courses, and meets Danny, with whom she forms a band, Bitch and Animal (Francesca). They build a following, but an incident at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival involving transphobia and TERFs alters her future dramatically.

B*tchcraft: A Musical Play continues at the wild project through March 1 (photo by Eric McNatt)

B*tchcraft was conceived by Bitch and director Margie Zohn, who wrote the impressive book together; the music and lyrics are by Bitch, with contributions from Faith Soloway, Melissa York, Jon Hyman, and Greg Prestopino. The intimate ninety-minute tale is accompanied by Bitch’s drawings, first black-and-white, then color, projected on the back and side walls (with framed works on paper in the lobby). The images change from her father’s angry eyes, swirling stairs, and a magical hillside to a tsunami of blood and such terms as “Male Gaze,” “Patriarchy,” “Misogyny,” and “Camp Twat: ‘Tenacious Women and Transfolk.’” The fun projection design is by Brian Pacelli, with lighting by Amina Alexander.

The immersive audio, by sound designer Sean Hagerty and engineer Gregory Kostroff, is virtually a character unto itself, from soft and tender to loud and aggressive, including a crackling fire, tinkling chimes, violin and guitar, a shower, a highway, crickets, and disembodied voices (by Seth Bodie, Ian Brownell, Amy Goldfarb, Ron Goldman, Jenna S. Hill, Mal Malme, Soloway, and Zohn). Samantha Tutasi’s set and props, which are brought on- and offstage and moved around by two crones (Cary Curran and Donovan Fowler), feature a wooden pentagonal covered box that morphs from a cauldron and bed to a sandbox and truck. Andrea Lauer’s costumes both contain and free Bitch as she goes from a little girl to a grown woman.

The musical numbers feature such powerful and engaging songs as “Pussy Manifesto,” “Hateful Thoughts,” and “Fallen Witch,” guiding us from her childhood to road trips to facing cancellation, with playful tap choreography by Michelle Dorrance. Through it all, Bitch stands tall; in “Be Bitch,” she declares, “I could be bitch / It rhymes with witch / I’ll wear the badass drag of it / Reclaim that word it sounds absurd / I’m gonna be bitch I’m gonna let it rip / You can call me bitch / This whole world can suck my tit.”

Bitch has released such solo albums as Make This Break This, In Us We Trust, and Blasted! and, with Animal, What’s That Smell and Eternally Hard, establishing herself as a queer music icon, including opening for Indigo Girls and Ani Difranco. In B*tchcraft, she stirs it all together in an exciting multimedia cauldron that should lift her career to a new level — although the specter of the Trump administration’s attack on the arts hovers over the production.

“At some point I had actually believed that coming out, we would be embraced into this big happy gay world utopia. But patriarchy was alive and well in most gay spaces because they were mostly run by men. If I had a nickel for every drag show we sat through at prides that ripped on women, or said hateful things about lesbians or our genitalia, I’d be richer than Oprah right now!” she says in the show, holding nothing back.

But more than anything else, B*tchcraft is a clarion call for everyone to keep writing, to keep singing, to keep sharing, and, hopefully, to keep making shows like this.

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

ROMEO + JULIET ON BROADWAY CONQUERS KING LEAR AT THE SHED

Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet is made for Gen Z but can be enjoyed by all (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

ROMEO + JULIET
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 16, $159-$1002
romeoandjulietnyc.com

Last fall, when I saw Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet at Circle in the Square and Kenneth Branagh’s King Lear at the Shed, I was not anticipating being charmed by the former and disappointed in the latter.

Tony and Obie winner Gold has had decidedly mixed results with controversial and often confusing star-driven adaptations of such Shakespeare plays as Macbeth and King Lear on Broadway, Othello at New York Theatre Workshop, and Hamlet at the Public.

Meanwhile, Branagh is widely considered the finest interpreter of the Bard since Laurence Olivier, both onstage, such as his immersive version of Macbeth at Park Ave. Armory and his 1987 and 2016 takes on Romeo and Juliet, and his well-received cinematic adaptations of Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing.

Lear is a personal favorite of mine; Branagh’s is the eighth major production I’ve seen in the last twenty years. I have not had as much luck with R&J, from David Leveaux’s flat 2013 Broadway revival to Hansol Jung’s profoundly perplexing 2023 effort at the Lynn Angelson, although I adored Michael Mayer’s & Juliet, a musical imagining of what might have happened if Juliet had survived.

Closing February 16, Gold’s Romeo + Juliet is a plush and lively, radical AMSR presentation tailored for Gen Z, complete with an Insta-friendly plethora of stuffed teddy bears onstage and in the lobby. When the audience enters the theater in the round, the actors are already hanging out, talking, dancing, and dissing with each other, pushing around a shopping cart of stuffed animals, skateboarding, and lounging on plastic furniture. They wear sneakers, hoodies, and a Hello Kitty backpack. On one side, a giant pink teddy bear watches in silence while across the space a DJ spins Jack Antonoff’s thumping music.

The youthful cast features the hot Rachel Zegler as Juliet and the even hotter Kit Connor as Romeo, with Tony nominee Gabby Beans as Mercutio and the friar, Sola Fadiran as both Capulet and Lady Capulet, Taheen Modak as Benvolio, Tommy Dorfman as the nurse and Tybalt, and Gían Pérez as Samson, Paris, and Peter. The doubling and tripling often makes it hard to know who is who, and some actors do better with the tweaked dialogue than others. Two songs are completely unnecessary, and the use of a handheld microphone is baffling, as is the handling of a poison jug.

But much of the staging is dazzling, from Juliet’s bed, which drops slowly from the rafters, to a colorful expanse of flowers that emerges from the floor. Yes, the F-bomb appears twice, but surprises await those who fully invest themselves in this contemporary tale made for this moment in time.

Kenneth Branagh’s ritualistic King Lear goes astray early (photo by Marc J. Franklin / courtesy the Shed)

Unfortunately, Branagh, codirecting with Rob Ashford and Lucy Skilbeck, struggles with his streamlined adaptation, which, at a rushed two hours without intermission, has cut several key scenes and famous lines, and without the proper character development it’s often hard to differentiate among the minor characters, who are played by recent graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and look like survivors from Game of Thrones. Branagh, who is sixty-four, does not portray Lear as an aged, failing man but as a younger warrior, which alters the plot’s narrative center.

Like Gold’s R+J, Branagh’s staging involves a large sphere, in this case an imposing UFO-like disc that hovers over the action, occasionally moving and tilting, onto which ominous weather patterns are projected. (The script identifies the setting as “outer space.”) It also leaves in one of the songs, which feels extraneous given the show’s shortened length.

Thus, my initial thoughts that Gold would pale in comparison to Branagh were misbegotten.

“O teach me how I should forget to think!” Romeo tells Benvolio.

Who woulda thunk it?

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