Des and Dre travel through time and space as they explore the past, present, and future of their relationship (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
SHIFTERS
Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 20, $69-$149 www.cherrylanetheatre.org
Ah, what might have been — or still could be?
Charity Bedu-Addo and Daniel Ezra are electrifying in British Congolese playwright Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, a sizzling two-character drama at the Cherry Lane that posits that destiny is a choice. It begins when Des (Bedu-Addo), short for Destiny, and Dre (Ezra), both thirty-two, meet up at the wake for Dre’s beloved Nana. They’ve known each other since high school, when they were sixteen, but haven’t been in touch for eight years, a period during which their lives changed significantly.
Over the next 105 minutes (with intermission), Lombe and director Lynette Linton take the audience back and forth from the past to the present as Des and Dre go from sixteen and seventeen to twenty-four and twenty-seven, their relationship shifting from classmates and friends to possible lovers; in the script, scenes are identified by such titles as “Allies,” “Fractures,” and “Fugitives.” Through the play, they each break out of the narrative to recite monologues and make brief points to the audience.
“This is the moment when I finally [see] that time is an illusion,” Dre explains to us after greeting Des. “Because the walls of the world we built, the walls where time is linear and finite — start to crumble. And in this moment, I — you — are both here and there and time is moving and standing still as memory is made skin — yesterday, today, tomorrow — all real, all happening, all at the same time. And suddenly — ”
Des is the new girl in school, and she is in philosophy class with Dre when they get into an argument about the decisions people constantly face as he tries to get her to join the debate club. “There are more than two sides and more than two choices,” Des says. Dre responds, “Still gotta be for something to know what you’re against though, innit?” When Des offers that decisions should not be the most important thing, Dre replies by asking how anything would get done if there were no decisions. “You’re asking the wrong question,” Des says.
The story shifts from the wake to key moments in their life together, when decisions had consequences that brought them together and tore them apart, including some choices that are still haunting them. While Dre sees him and Des as “two little Black kids destined to oppose each other push each other shift each other until they could be formed again,” Des doesn’t believe in destiny, telling us, “If destiny is the path laid out for you — you still have to walk it. Choose it.”
It’s the choices they made when they were younger that brought them to this moment, at the wake, where they continue to dance around asking, and answering, the right questions.
Benedict Lombe’s Shifters has been extended through September 20 at the Cherry Lane (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
Most of the choices made by the cast and crew work extremely well. Alex Berry’s compelling set is a dark, open rectangle with two added rows of seating on the far side of the stage, which is draped with narrow LED tubes of varying lengths and at different angles that change colors based on mood. (The lighting is by Neil Austin.) The characters, in Berry’s contemporary costumes, occasionally move around black storage boxes that they sit on and open to find pieces from their past, as if reaching into their memories and psyche. Tony Gayle’s sharp sound incorporates Xana’s entrancing, award-winning score and John Hiatt’s 1987 track “Have a Little Faith in Me,” heard on an old turntable. “When the road gets dark / And you can no longer see / Just let my love throw a spark / And have a little faith in me,” Hiatt sings.
Shifters evokes Nick Payne’s Constellations and Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries, two other outstanding plays in which a man and a woman revisit the past as they explore their relationship. Ezra (Twelfth Night) and Bedu-Addo (The Bolds,Stocking Fillers), replacing Heather Agyepong when the show was extended, as she did in the original London run, have an instant chemistry. Both of the characters are complex and unpredictable, and the two actors imbue them with a fresh, beguiling honesty that keeps the audience’s emotions swirling as Dre and Des seek out their crisscrossing paths.
The play is about ten or fifteen minutes too long, as it gets bogged down with a bevy of revelations of tragedy and trauma in the final scenes; Lombe (Lava, for which she won the 2022 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize) and Lynton (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,Not Your Superwoman) already have us invested in Dre and Des, so this added information is unnecessary and detracts from the proceedings. Otherwise, Shifters is a triumph.
In a program note, Lombe writes, “Shifters was born from this intentionality and specificity — a universal love story between a British Congolese woman and a British Nigerian man — that shifts in and out of time and space and feeling, demanding nothing less than to shift the theatrical canon itself.” Lombe is clearly on the right path.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
RADICAL CHIAROSCURO: THE WORK OF DARIUS KHONDJI
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Begins September 4 metrograph.com
Eight years ago, Metrograph held a retrospective of the wide-ranging and diverse work of Iranian-born, Paris-raised cinematographer Darius Khondji, and now they’re bringing him back for “Radical Chiaroscuro,” as he continues to make films that capture the imagination of the public and the industry. The series begins September 4 and includes Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection (“a very different kind of Alien movie,” Khondji explains in a program note), Danny Boyle’s The Beach (“a very sharp movie, and I always felt the story was like a blade that cuts and causes you to bleed: There’s blood on the sand and sharks in the water, and the people themselves behave like sharks.”), Alan Parker’s Evita (“a very visual movie, and Alan Parker is probably one of the most exciting and visual directors I have ever worked with.”), Bong Joon-ho’s Okja (“represents a departure toward a different type of image, a different texture and look: Something very blue and metallic, with lots of compressed cityscapes and a bit of gold in the flesh tones.”), and F. J. Ossang’s The Treasure of the Bitch Islands (“The shoot was madness, and some of us risked our lives a few times, especially while doing a scene on the edge of this huge volcano. Ossang was really more like a rock star than a film director. . . . I shot the film completely inspired by him and his energy, even if I was sometimes terrified.”).
Also on the bill are David Fincher’s Se7en, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty, James Gray’s The Immigrant, and the below films. Khondji will be at Metrograph for Q&As following screenings of Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait on September 19 and Ari Aster’s underappreciated Eddington on September 26 (joined by Aster).
Butcher-landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) has a unique way of taking care of his tenant-customers in Delicatessen
DELICATESSEN (Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991)
Friday, September 4, 9:35
Monday, September 7, 4:20 metrograph.com
The Metrograph festival kicks off with Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s epic masterpiece, City of Lost Children, and their delicious debut, Delicatessen. In a bizarre, postapocalyptic future, one apartment complex is surviving via its ground-floor butcher shop, where landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) carefully wields his giant cleaver, hiring desperate, lonely men to do odd jobs for him before carving them up and selling their flesh and bones to his hungry customers. His latest potential victim is Louison (Dominique Pinon), a mild-mannered clown struggling to get by. But when Clapet’s shy daughter, Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac), takes a liking to Louison, the butcher has to decide whether someone else should be their next meal. Meanwhile, Aurore Interligator (Silvie Laguna) keeps devising Rube Goldberg-esque ways to kill herself, Marcel Tapioca (Ticky Holgado) tries to prevent Clapet from making mincemeat of his mother-in-law (Edith Kerr), Frog Man (Howard Vernon) has come up with his own curious menu, Clapet gives special treatment to sexpot Mademoiselle Plusse (Karin Viard), and an underground group of Troglodistes are preparing for revolution.
Louison (Dominique Pinon) clowns around in Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Genet’s brilliant audiovisual feast
Inspired by the work of Terry Gilliam, Delicatessen is a brilliant audiovisual feast, with every sound and image orchestrated for maximum absurdity, courtesy of cinematographer Darius Khondji (Seven, Stealing Beauty), longtime Marguerite Duras composer Carlos d’Alessio (India Song, The Children), and art director Miljen Kreka Klakovic (The Pillars of the Earth, The Order). Caro also did the gorgeous production design and makes a cameo as Fox. Several scenes turn into wildly inventive, hysterical musical numbers with a vaudevillian sensibility. Winner of four César Awards, the film is wickedly funny, taking place in a grim, fantastical, surreal vision of the future that is part Road Warrior, part Brazil, part Monty Python, where even methods of surveillance are downright strange. The cast is appropriately weird, none more so than Caro and Jeunet regular Pinon and his familiar, oddball face. The directors went on to collaborate on the stunning sci-fi gem The City of Lost Children (also screening September 4 and 7) before going their separate ways, Jeunet making such films as Alien: Resurrection, A Very Long Engagement, and Amélie and Caro writing and directing Dante 01.
Adam Sandler plays a diamond dealer in danger in Uncut Gems
UNCUT GEMS (Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie, 2018)
Friday, September 11, 10:45
Sunday, September 13, 9:00 metrograph.com a24films.com
“That was manic, pure mania,” the Safdie brothers narrate at the end of a trailer for Uncut Gems, which itself is a magic gem. The film is a furious, unrelenting movie that sucks you into its claustrophobic frenzy and never lets go. Adam Sandler is a force, reaching new heights as Howard Ratner, a Diamond District dealer with a gambling addiction. He’s deep in debt to Arno (Eric Bogosian), who has sent his two goons, Phil (Keith Williams Richards) and Nico (Tommy Kominik), to make sure Howard knows just how much trouble he is in. His wife, Dinah (Idina Menzel), is fed up with him, not in the least because he has an apartment with his mistress, the much younger Julia (Julia Fox), and is not the most reliable father to their children, Eddie (Jonathan Aranbayev, who was discovered on Forty-Seventh St. in front of his parents’ jewelry store), Beni (Jacob Igielski), and Marcel (Noa Fisher).
Howard has a master plan to break free of all his problems by selling a chunk of Ethiopian black opals at an auction, with the help of one of his assistants, Demany (Lakeith Stanfield), who has lured in Boston Celtics center Kevin Garnett (terrific in his acting debut), who is fascinated by the rare, uncut gems, which sparkle with promise. The last half hour of the film is a brilliant, claustrophobic tour-de-force in which everyone onscreen is physically trapped, just like the audience is pinned to their seats, holding on for dear life. The Safdies, whose father worked in the Diamond District, use a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors as well as famous people playing themselves; the cast includes sports-radio legend Mike Francesa as a bookie, Garment District legend Wayne Diamond as a big-time gambler, Judd Hirsch as Howard’s father, Natasha Lyonne and Tilda Swinton as phone voices, and restaurant owner Nino Selimaj, writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman, actor John Amos, the Weeknd, and others as themselves.
Written by the Safdies (Daddy Longlegs, Heaven Knows What) with longtime collaborator Ronald Bronstein, Uncut Gems, which has been in process for ten years, is anchored by a career-redefining performance by Sandler, who previously revealed his significant acting chops in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 Punch-Drunk Love and Judd Apatow’s 2009 Funny People. In a performance that will make you forgive him for The Waterboy, Big Daddy, Little Nicky, and Mr. Deeds, among other silly effluvia, Sandler is a whirlwind throughout the film’s 135 minutes, which fly by. Darius Khondji’s camera is practically glued to him, Sandler’s unshaven, gruff face a character unto itself, Howard’s eyes always at least one step ahead of what’s happening in front of him. He’s a dreamer, and although you can’t not root for him, he is far from a likable hero. He is singlehandedly responsible for the dangerous mess he’s in, whether he admits it to himself or not. But he is also a kind of everyman, peering through the looking glass (in this case, the seductive, multicolored opals in the stone), trying to survive in a hectic, frenetic world that can be overwhelming and spin out of control at any moment. You can’t just sit back, relax, and enjoy Uncut Gems; instead, you can’t help but be fully immersed in its nonstop, feverish intensity. “It was completely unlike anything I’ve done. I would never have thought I would photograph one day a movie like this. But it ended up being my favorite work, probably,” Khondji says.
Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva play a married couple facing tragedy in Michael Haneke’s brilliant Amour
Legendary French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant puts an exclamation point on his long, distinguished career with Amour, one of the most beautiful love stories ever told. In his first film in nearly a decade, Trintignant, the star of such classics as Z, My Night at Maud’s, A Man and a Woman, and The Conformist, plays Georges, an octogenarian who is immediately concerned when his wife, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), suddenly freezes for a few moments, unable to speak, hear, move, or recognize anything. So begins a downward spiral in which Georges takes care of his ailing wife by himself, refusing help from his daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), as he faces the grim situation with grace and dignity. A genuine romance for the ages, Amour is brilliantly written and directed by Michael Haneke, earning the German filmmaker his second Palme d’Or, following 2009’s The White Ribbon. Haneke (Cache, The Piano Teacher) and cinematographer Darius Khondji allow the heartbreaking tale to unfold in long interior shots with very little camera movement, spread across more than two hours.
Despite its length, the film is far from torturous; instead, it is filled with quietly beautiful moments. Trintignant, who was eighty-two when the film was released, is magnificent as Georges, his every physical movement and eye glance rendered with powerful yet gentle emotions, whether he’s preparing food for Anne or trying to catch a bird that has flown into the apartment. It’s an unforgettable performance in an unforgettable film. “I’m actually the one who initially talked to Michael about shooting Amour on digital,” Khondji notes about the film in a Metrograph series note. “I tried to explain to him that for me, Amour was really like a recording, a recording of the lives of these two characters during their final six months together. . . . We could just keep recording with them until the very end.”
Writer Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) waits to mingle with the Lost Generation in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris
In 1979, Woody Allen and master cinematographer Gordon Willis made love to New York City architecture in gorgeous black and white in the stunning opening section of Manhattan set to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Allen’s Midnight in Paris begins with Allen and cinematographer Darius Khondji getting intimate with the City of Light in lush color, scanning familiar Parisian landmarks to Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love.” In this beautifully shot love letter to Paris, Owen Wilson stars as Gil Pender, a Hollywood hack screenwriter working on his first novel, about a nostalgia dealer. He and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), are vacationing in Paris with her parents, the wealthy, ultraconservative John (Kurt Fuller) and Helen (Mimi Kennedy), who think their daughter can do much better. Gil and Inez bump into their friends Carol (Nina Arianda) and Paul (Michael Sheen), the latter a pedantic know-it-all who begins many an observation with “If I’m not mistaken” and whom Gil can’t stand. Gil is hoping Paris will get his creative juices flowing, and that’s exactly what happens late one evening when he is walking the streets alone at midnight and is invited into an old-fashioned car and taken to what appears to be a throwback party — until he meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), and fashion designer and Picasso muse Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Suddenly he feels more at ease in the swinging ’20s than the 2010s, heading out each night to the same spot, hoping to hang out more with the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo), and, most importantly, Adriana.
Nostalgia for the past and the promise of the future collide as Gil searches deep inside himself, trying to discover just what it is that he wants and needs out of life. Combining elements of such previous films as The Purple Rose of Cairo, Alice, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex*, and Everyone Says I Love You with a rather standard Twilight Zone-esque setup and a nod to his mid-’60s Lost Generation joke — in which he hangs out with Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Picasso, and Stein talking about art and literature, with a series of punch lines involving Allen getting punched in the mouth — Midnight in Paris is a charming, if at times overwrought and just plain silly, romantic fantasy that evokes Allen’s own fondness for nostalgia and the past. As more and more famous artists keep showing up, it gets more than a tad ridiculous, although it is also kinda fun. Midnight in Paris, which opened the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, follows four Allen films set in London (Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger), one in Barcelona (Vicky Christina Barcelona), and only one in New York (Whatever Works) as Allen continues to travel the world after experiencing a dwindling audience and scandal back home. Wilson is excellent as the nostalgic writer, playing him with an edgy uncomfortablilty that makes him endearing, and Cotillard is sexy and alluring as the quintessential artistic muse. And in an inspired bit of casting, then–French first lady Carla Bruni plays a tour guide who butts heads with the smarmy Paul when discussing Rodin’s The Thinker.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Danielle Louise Bowen portrays the guest in site-specific immersive DUMBO dance journey The Circuit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
THE CIRCUIT
Begins at Superfine restaurant
126 Front St., Brooklyn
Through September 7, $39.62-$82.20 www.nytheatrecompany.com
So let me get this straight: New York Theatre Company’s The Circuit is a site-specific immersive journey through several of DUMBO’s most spectacular locales, inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s 1920 play, La Ronde, and Max Ophüls’s classic 1950 film? I’m in! And you should be too.
Ophüls’s French adaptation begins with a new character not in the play, a master of ceremonies elegantly portrayed by Anton Walbrook. In the famous five-minute opening scene, filmed in one continuous take, the emcee walks along the streets of Vienna, telling the audience, “You can tell from the scent in the air that love is just around the corner, can’t you?” Approaching a carousel he calls “the merry-go-round of love” while revealing he is on a movie set, he says, “Love comes calling, sudden and fleeting. And they all dance to love’s same tune.” La Ronde depicts a series of couples meeting up in the city, with one person from each pas-de-deux heading off and encountering another potential romantic partner.
The Circuit: An Immersive Silent Disco Ballet reimagines La Ronde for DUMBO, taking full advantage of the area’s cobblestone passages, iconic views, and unique landscape. Audience members put on silent disco headphones, through which they hear dialogue and EDM, and follow guides who lead them from site to site using multicolored LED batons, as characters find each other, dance while engaging in various aspects of hooking up — or not — and then go on their way.
The tale of bisexual love and loneliness, betrayal and ecstasy, written by Connor Wentworth, starts with the guest (a terrific Danielle Louise Bowen, who alternates with Manatsu Aminaga), who performs a solo in a plaza before joining dancers in the Archway (swing ensemble Kaitwan Jackson, Kurt Horney, dance captain Anna Nader, and Katie Baik). Soon she becomes involved with the doll (Luke Swaller), who harbors a secret; next, the doll chances upon the almighty (Tessa Fungo), who confronts the keeper (Gigi Hausman), who happens upon the gentleman (Fabricio Seraphin), who has a rendezvous with the lover (Arzu Salman). Each couple moves to an original score by Jacob Ryan Smith and choreography by Josh Zacher, who codirects with John Kroft.
It’s part walking tour, part silent disco, part flash mob as the group makes its way among tourists, random passersby, native New Yorkers, and others going about their business, snapping pictures in and around Brooklyn Bridge Park, walking their dog, pushing their baby in a stroller, knitting on a bench, or picking up dinner. Some immediately take videos of the proceedings, some completely ignore them, and others appear to think, well, this is just another night in the city with who-knows-what going on. At one point a young woman was grooving atop a small DOT orange-and-white traffic barricade; a few of us went toward her, believing she was the next character, but it turned out she was simply having fun with friends, perhaps dancing to love’s same tune. With darkness descending, the guides use handheld colored lights and the cast’s smartphones glow, as text messages are incorporated into the plot.
The main independent elements of The Circuit — the narrative, the music, and the choreography — might not necessarily stand out on their own, but they merge beautifully in the tremendously fun and thoroughly engaging show. The title relates to making connections, between people as well as electrical devices, which essentially are running our lives in 2026. A deep connection is also made between the audience, the performers, and DUMBO itself, with a gorgeous, contemplative finale occurring under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Yes, it’s a site-specific immersive silent disco ballet, but it also has a lot of heart as it explores coming together and breaking apart in a city that can be difficult to navigate when one is alone, although love could be waiting right around the corner.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Tina (Kate Miller), Connor (Evan Klein), and Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady) concoct a blackmail scheme in The Bathroom Attendant (photo by Scott Fetterman)
THE BATHROOM ATTENDANT
124 Bank Street Theater
124 Bank St.
Through August 30, $38.10 sparkplugproductions.com
I’ve previously written about my anxieties around public bathrooms and theatrical productions several times, from a show at SoHo Rep in which they waited for me to finish my business to being walked in on prior to a play in a hotel room in which one of the actors made actual use of the facilities, with the door open.
So I absolutely had to see a new play called The Bathroom Attendant, at 124 Bank Street Theater through August 30.
On line to check in, I decided to go to the bathroom; there was a sign saying “Private” on the door, so I asked other people if they knew if we could use this, and one woman said yes, she had just seen someone exit it. I slowly reached for the handle and, feeling that it was unlocked, opened the door — to find a young man sitting on the bowl, not exactly happy that everyone on line could see him.
I closed the door and apologized profusely, completely commiserating with him, and used a second bathroom instead, making sure to lock the door.
I was somewhat disappointed to learn that the play does not take place in a can, and the protagonist’s job is mentioned only a few times: He works part-time as an attendant in the Mob Museum rest room. (There really is such an institution in downtown Vegas.)
Written by Tom Kelly (Bleached Blonde Betty,The Gangster and the Busboy) and directed by Andrew Block (Small Engine Repair,Fat Cat Killers), The Bathroom Attendant is set in a ramshackle apartment in the Dean Martin Houses, not exactly the luxury condo tower known as the Martin on Dean Martin Dr. It’s a sad-sack room with a torn-up icky yellow couch, a microwave, a sorry excuse for a stove, a ridiculously old television playing an episode of the late 1970s series Vegas starring Robert Urich as a PI catching the bad guys in glittering Sin City, and a view of the Strip through dirty windows. Designed by Scott Fetterman, it’s a claustrophobic nightmare, about as lousy as it gets. On the back wall is a poster of Johnny “the Street Fighter” Knight from the 1984 Golden Gloves finals at Madison Square Garden, a constant reminder to the apartment’s resident of his long-ago glory days, of what might have been.
Bambi (Mari Blake) is not quite a femme fatale in gritty crime thriller (photo by Scott Fetterman)
It’s August 2018, but Johnny (Dan Patrick Brady) is still stuck in the past, unable to gain any kind of foothold; he’s three months behind on his rent, is in debt to a local mob, and swills Mike’s Hard Lemonade that he stole from another apartment. His only friend is Tina (Kate Miller), a former porno star who is now part of the evangelical community, focused on helping young women in trouble; she is currently trying to save a teenager named Jade who is being abused by her drunk junkie father. Johnny is shocked when a sixteen-year-old boy named Connor Donahue (Evan Klein) knocks on his door; Connor is the nephew of one of Johnny’s best friends from his Brooklyn days.
Decked out in Mets gear, Connor is in Vegas with his father but has brought along memorabilia for Johnny to sign; he has heard all the old stories from his father about Johnny’s prowess in the 1980s.
He also has an ulterior motive; the previous night, he videotaped Mets superstar Mickey Logan, potentially the first-ever $500 million player, viciously beating up a teenage girl, Bambi (Mari Blake). (The incident recalls Super Bowl winner Ray Rice, who was caught on video attacking his fiancée in 2014, and Sean “Puffy” Combs assaulting his girlfriend in 2016.) Connor, who learned about the underworld by bingeing The Sopranos, has already pitched the video to the National Enquirer and TMZ but believes he could make a much better score by blackmailing Logan, with Johnny’s assistance. Tina asks in as well and they set out to pull off the big haul, although Logan’s right-hand man, Marcus (Jon Krupp), has other ideas, ready to do whatever is necessary to protect Logan.
At more than two hours (including intermission), The Bathroom Attendant is too long and feels far out of time; it starts slowly, has a more gripping middle section, but then devolves into convoluted plot devices and huge plot holes. The acting is hit or miss, the staging gets confusing, and the sound effects (cellphones, barking dogs) are not only way too loud but seem to come from all over the theater, which makes no sense. I did care about a few of the characters, but others have inexplicable motives and are in need of heavy tweaking.
You don’t always know who to root for when you really start thinking about it, which is a good thing, and the show contains some excellent crime-thriller elements, but the finale goes off the deep end, throwing in too many new facts late in the game. It feels more like an episode from a 1970s television series, like Mannix,Cannon,Baretta, or, well, Vegas, where you can get away with various shortcomings, but that’s not the case with live theater.
In the meantime, please double check that you’ve locked the bathroom door.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The audience can sit on a central wooden platform or move about the space to experience Doug Aitken’s Lightscape (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
DOUG AITKEN: LIGHTSCAPE
The Shed
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 13, pay-what-you-wish (suggested $10) theshed.org www.lightscapeart.org
“All of this will never make sense,” one of the characters says in Doug Aitken’s Lightscape, a seven-screen immersive installation at the Shed that is an audiovisual tone poem about the old and the new, nature and technology, and America itself — where we were, where we are, and where we’re heading. Gorgeously photographed by Chris Hadland and Aitken, it’s beautiful to watch and listen to; it makes you want to stop and look and treasure what you have, what’s around you right now.
A cowboy (Christopher Duke Blassman) hovers on the periphery before riding to a gas station in the desert. Two dancers (Daphne Fernberger and Konkrete) subtly move about in an Amazon factory. A couple (Natasha Lyonne and Bryn Mooser) contemplate their relationship in a high-rise hotel. A man (Nikki Haas) keeps running, more toward something than away. Potentially dangerous animals lurk.
The cast also features Ray Braungart as the diving man, Megan Renee as the city driver, Benjamin Earl as the truck stop drifter, Victoria Martinez as the sleeping young woman, and Beck as the man in the donut shop. The images swirl across the screens, with shots reminiscent of the work of Robert Smithson, Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, and David Hockney, occasionally offering different angles of the same scene. Music by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Beck, LA LOM, and Aitken with Grant Gershon echoes throughout the room, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the LA Master Chorale.
Doug Aitken’s Lightscape continues at the Shed through September 13 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Characters rarely speak but when they do, they offer up such bons mots as “One day I’ll slip away,” “It just keeps going and going,” and “You can get lost in the blink of an eye.”
The audience can sit on the platform, facing any direction, or walk around the room; I advise checking out some of the film from behind the screens. It’s on a sixty-five-minute loop, and the abstract narrative has no obvious beginning, middle, and end, so you can enter at any time. As a woman tells us, “It’s all connected.”
A Redondo Beach native based in California and New York City, Aitken has previously presented such shows as Sleepwalkers, a multichannel video starring Donald Sutherland and Tilda Swinton created for MoMA’s sculpture garden and facade, 100 Yrs, which concluded with the destruction of 303 Gallery, New Horizon, involving a gondola and a hot air balloon rising into the night sky, and Station to Station, which took place on a moving transcontinental train.
With Lightscape, previously seen in unique iterations at Disney Hall and the Marciano Art Foundation, Aitken continues his investigation of art’s role in a changing world. The work doesn’t condemn the future, but it questions how we’re getting there, emphasizing how everything is connected but all of it will never make sense, able to slip away in the blink of an eye as it keeps going and going.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Phantom has been resurrected in Midtown in dazzling production (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)
MASQUERADE
218 West Fifty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 31, $1795-$395 masqueradenyc.com
You can’t keep Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber down.
Cats, the British composer’s beloved but much-maligned adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000, followed by a 2006–17 revival and a disastrous 2019 all-star-laden film. It was then reinvented in 2024 as Cats: The Jellicle Ball at PAC NYC, brilliantly setting it in the world of queer ballroom culture, breathing new life into the old kitty. The Broadway transfer lacked some of the key elements but closed early, on August 8, despite winning three Tonys.
Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical, Sunset Blvd., was revived on Broadway in 2016 and 2024–25, while 1976’s Evita is returning next spring.
Which brings us to The Phantom of the Opera. Based on the 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux, the show features music by Lloyd Webber, a book by Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe, and lyrics by Charles Hart (with additional lyrics by Stilgoe.) The original production, which earned seven Tonys, ran at the Majestic from 1988 to 2023 for an astonishing 13,981 performances. But just as Cats was resurrected and reinvented, so has Phantom, as the shrewdly clever, thoroughly entertaining, and fully immersive Masquerade.
Tony-winning director Diane Paulus (Pippin,Porgy and Bess) has transformed Phantom into a thrilling interactive production that moves audiences up, down, and across six floors of the old Lee’s Art Shop on West Fifty-Seventh St., by Carnegie Hall, performed by six casts. The audience is asked to dress in black, white, or silver and wear a mask; a black one will be provided if you don’t have one. Heels are verboten, all bags must be checked, and stickers reading “Let the spectacle astound you” will be placed over your phone’s camera.
For those unfamiliar with the Gothic horror romance, Phantom is about a strange figure (Kyle Scatliffe) living under the Paris Opera House who is determined to have little-known soprano Christine Daaé (Eryn LeCroy) sing the role of Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s Faust instead of the company’s star, Carlotta Guidicelli (Stephanie Jae Park). The Phantom is jealous of Christine’s childhood friend and suitor, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Gregory Lee Rodriguez), and is critical of the opera house’s new owners, Firmin (Alex Ross) and André (Schyler Vargas). Meanwhile, the Phantom attempts to get opera employees Madame Giry (Marce Johnson) and her daughter, Meg (Haile Ferrier), on his side, although stagehand Buquet (Jacob Lacopo) has other ideas. Caught in the middle is egotistical tenor Piangi (Sean Seamus Thompson).
Audience and cast become one in fully immersive Masquerade (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)
Aside from a violinist who pops up occasionally (Nikita Yermak), the music for Masquerade is prerecorded and loud, but all the singing is live. While the songs and basic melodies are from the Broadway version, they have more oomph in these surroundings, in part because the actors are right there with you every step of the way. At one moment, I was tapped on the shoulder and turned around to see the Phantom seeking to get past me as he was singing in his resonant baritone. At another, I was handed a rose to toss at Christine, the Phantom’s object of desire. And later I was nearly hanged by the Ropes of Judgement.
Each room is spectacularly decorated, with lovely and frightening detail, from candles and mirrors to luxurious draping and hidden clues. There is limited seating in each space, so be prepared to do a lot of standing. Don’t worry; the classic Phantom elements have been accounted for, with new takes on the boat and chandelier, and the sideshow scene boasts a real blockhead (Anna Monoxide) and master of pyromancy (Joseph Kerr) in addition to a barker (Matthew Curiano), carny (Judah Frank), boy in a cage (Joshua Ike).
The creative team deserves a bevy of accolades, from production designer James Fluhr, art director Jessie Flynn, props designer Kathy Fabian, and hair, wig, and makeup designer J. J. Janas to costume designer Emilio Sosa, lighting designer Ben Stanton, sound designer Brett Jarvis, and magic and visual effects designer Skylar Fox. The intricate choreography, making sure the performers don’t get cornered by the audience, is by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Shai Baitel is in charge of the fine art, which is highlighted by specially commissioned ironwork gates by Bob Dylan. Among the other art collaborators are Marina Abramović, Barry X Ball, Z Behl, Paul Cummins MBE, Yigal Ozeri, and Kenny Scharf.
The narrative has been tinkered with, so some songs are out and others have been moved around, and there is more back story, delving into the mind of the Phantom as a child, who is told by his mother in a letter, “From now on, the carnival will be your home. You are a child of the devil. Among freaks and monsters you will find your kind. Forget you ever had a mother.” There are elements from various stage productions as well as the 2004 Joel Schumacher film, which starred Gerard Butler as the Phantom, Emmy Rossum as Christine, Patrick Wilson as Raoul, Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry, and Minnie Driver as Carlotta.
As with all immersive shows, you more you put into it, the more you will get out of it; to heighten that involvement, there are lots of mirrors where you can see yourself amid the action. In addition, after the grand finale, the audience is invited into a dark bar where you can sip cocktails and pose with some of the major props.
It’s a great deal of fun in which the score is only part of the enchantment, making it a must for Phantom fans, Phantom detractors, and everyone in between.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Sofonyas, Will Ingram, and Anastasia Locke serve as parks ambassadors in The Vessel (photo by Jacob Ruth)
THE VESSEL
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 30, $42 www.59e59.org
As a frequent visitor to the Shed and the High Line, I’ve been obsessed with the Vessel since it first started construction as the centerpiece of Hudson Yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan. Initially, there was little publicly known about the structure, which I considered a bit of a monstrosity as it proceeded toward the heavens. Ultimately, we learned that it would be a 150-foot-tall tourist attraction with 8 levels, 154 flights of stairs, and 2,500 interconnected steps, offering photogenic 360-degree views of the city to up to as many as 1,000 visitors at a time.
“Vessel is one of the most complex pieces of steelwork ever made . . . assembled ahead of schedule and with astonishing geometric accuracy,” Thomas Heatherwick, head of the studio that built it at a cost of approximately $200 million, said at the topping-out in December 2017. Vessel — officially, “the” is not part of its name — opened on March 15, 2019.
It closed in January 2021 after a third person jumped off it, dying by suicide.
Brendan George’s finely tuned play, The Vessel, takes place around three critical days, December 22, 2020, and January 11 and July 29, 2021, in the Vessel’s history. Drake (Sofonyas) and Missy (Anastasia Locke) are two twentysomethings and good friends working as parks ambassadors on the installation; their nearly impossible job, Missy explains to new hire Vïggo (Will Ingram), is to “help anyone who needs it. We can’t go up to every person, so our task is to be a ‘supportive and accessible presence.’” Essentially, they have to look out for anyone who seems uncomfortable or appears to be in distress and might be thinking of killing themselves.
The suspicious Drake has a tendency to go down online rabbit holes that he insists are not conspiracy theories, spending a lot of time watching videos that depict real violence. Missy is a more fun-loving person whose spirit animal is a dolphin and who appreciates working outside. Giving background of the Vessel to Viggo, Drake shares a December 2016 quote from the Architect’s Newspaper in which journalist Audrey Wachs wrote, “When you build high, folks will jump.” Missy is not happy that Drake starts Viggo’s indoctrination that way, arguing, “We don’t need to talk about it! Unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. And now is not one of those times.”
Viggo, meanwhile, is curious why they stand around chatting with each other so much on the job, but Missy explains that it is necessary to keep them alert. Viggo tries to fit in but is often awkward, especially when enthusiastic, and he seems to be hiding something — but then he will come up with a fascinating statement.
At one point he compares the Vessel to a panopticon, which he describes as “a special prison where one person can see all the inmates. Because of the shape of the prison.” Drake replies, “But maybe we are the prisoners?” Viggo adds, “Actually, there wouldn’t even need to be a guard at all because each person would police themself thinking they’re being watched. That’s the irony, each person in a panopticon becomes both prison guard and prisoner unto themself.”
It’s an apt metaphor for any human being and the worlds each of us creates in our heads, our own unique vessels, as we contemplate the next steps.
Three twentysomething parks ambassadors are on the lookout for potential jumpers in The Vessel (photo by Jacob Ruth)
Over ninety minutes, Drake, Missy, and Viggo discuss life’s little and bigger issues, offer surprising personal details, and explore ideas about death; Viggo in particular spouts how people should be able to choose how they go, no matter how, where, or when.
Scenic designer Tony DiBernardo’s claustrophobic set is a small triangular central platform with lines and grooves that echo the shape of the Vessel, with the limited audience sitting on all four sides; occasionally the characters walk off the platform to speak with an unseen visitor they think may need help. It can be odd when they stand in the corner as the action continues on the platform, but there’s nowhere else for them to go in the tiny theater. It also feels strange when they talk so loudly that any visitors would be able to hear them — would these chatty ambassadors actually make anyone feel safe?
George and director Peter Charney, who previously collaborated on the Drama Desk–nominated A Eulogy for Roman, deal with some difficult subjects in the absorbing play, and they do so admirably, steering clear of clichés, although there is some repetition, and the narrative finds a few rabbit holes of its own. In their off-Broadway debuts, Sofonyas (Romeo and Juliet,The Pillowman), Ingram (World’s Greatest Lover,The Liar), and Locke (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; She Comes Home) form an appealing trio who will grow on you. At the heart of the show is how, in many ways, we are all guards and prisoners, unable to always recognize potential problems with friends, relatives, strangers, and ourselves who may be considering extreme actions.
“What a vulnerable vessel the human body makes for the human soul,” poet, novelist, and playwright Greer Macallister surmised in her 2020 novel, The Arctic Fury. After Drake defends his obsession with violent videos and online research of the government, Missy says, “I don’t think we need the footage. Personally. I really do not want to see it. None of us should. Because, look. Look at what it does to your eyes. And your soul.”
Following a fourth suicide, in the summer of 2021, this time a fourteen-year-old boy, the Vessel was closed for three years before reopening with additional safety measures, including steel-mesh nets and the top two levels off limits to visitors. Admission, which was initially free, is now ten to twenty dollars and is free for New York City residents on Thursdays; there is also a fifty-dollar Vessel Run training class. I am not planning on going anytime soon.
When I walk past it on my travels to the area, I can’t help but wonder if the people taking pictures of it know the full story as they smile and pose for the camera.
In Eric Levenson’s August 2021 CNN article “After latest suicide, the Vessel in New York City’s Hudson Yards ponders its future,” retired CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture lecturer Jacob Alspector posits, “The Vessel is like some MC Escher nightmare. It’s kind of relentless. It’s very gaudy, it’s very cold. It’s thrilling . . . It’s not the most friendly and life-affirming and inclusive kind of space or structure. It’s kind of empty. What’s the point of it? Just to walk up and walk down?”
You’re much better off seeing The Vessel at 59E59, which is far more friendly, life-affirming, and inclusive.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
