twi-ny recommended events

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL: ACT WITHOUT WORDS II

Dublin’s Company SJ is presenting free Beckett in a downtown alley as part of River to River Festival

Theatre Alley between Nassau and Centre Sts., enter at Ann St.
Nightly through June 29, free but advance reservations encouraged, 9:00
rivertorivernyc.com

Dublin-based theater troupe Company SJ, headed by artistic director Sarah Jane Scaife, specializes in presenting works by such Irish playwrights as J. M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, and contemporary writer Marina Carr. The company is in New York City this week at the River to River Festival, performing their unique thirty-minute version of Beckett’s Act Without Words II, a mime initially written in French in 1959 before Beckett translated it into English. A hit at the 2009 Dublin Fringe Festival and the 2012 Dublin Theatre Festival, the surreal, existential production features Raymond Keane and Bryan Burroughs as a pair of chaps who crawl out of sacks to face a mysterious world beset by drugs, homelessness, and other dramatic problems. Taking place in an outdoor alley between Nassau and Centre Sts. on a set designed by Aedín Cosgrove, Act Without Words II is being presented nightly through June 29 at 9:00. Admission is free, but advance reservations are strongly recommended.

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL: OLDBOY

Korean star Choi Min-sik will be honored with his own sidebar at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival

CHOI MIN-SIK: MR. VENGEANCE: OLDBOY (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Saturday, June 30, 1:00
Festival runs June 29 – July 12
212-875-5601
www.subwaycinema.com
www.filmlinc.com

The second in director Park Chan-wook’s revenge trilogy (in between Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and the 2005 New York Film Festival selection Sympathy For Lady Vengeance), Oldboy is a twisted, perverse psychological thriller that won the Grand Prix de Jury at Cannes, among many other international awards. Choi Min-sik (Chihwaseon) stars as Oh Dae-su, a man who has been imprisoned for fifteen years — but he doesn’t know why, or by whom. When he is finally released, his search for the truth becomes part of a conspiracy game, as he can seemingly trust no one. As he gets closer to finding everything out, the gore and terror continues to increase. Choi is outstanding as the wild-haired Dae-su in Park’s awesome rampage of a film, which is not for the faint of heart. On the DVD, the extras include audio commentary and deleted scenes in which Park discusses how embarrassing it is doing audio commentary and showing deleted scenes, but you can hear him discuss Oldboy in person on June 30 at 1:00 with costar Yoon Jin-seo at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where it is being screened at the special New York Asian Film Festival sidebar event “Choi Min-sik: Mr. Vengeance,” which looks at the fascinating career of the popular Korean actor and activist, who left the business for several years in protest over controversial screen quotas. The series also includes 2001’s Failan, 2005’s Crying Fist, and this year’s Nameless Gangster.

SOLITAIRE BLITZ CHARITY MARATHON

Kathleen Henkel goes for a world record in charity marathon (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Roger Smith Hotel Lab Gallery
501 Lexington Ave. at 47th St.
June 26-27, free
www.facebook.com/solitaireblitz
solitaire blitz charity marathon slideshow

Solitaire is usually a solitary game, but Kathleen Henkel and Laura Rich are playing PopCap’s online version of the game in a very public way. Simultaneously, Rich, in London, and New Jersey’s Henkel, in the Roger Smith Hotel Lab Gallery, are in the midst of a thirty-hour marathon to enter the Guinness World Book of Records. When we stopped by last night, Henkel was being entertained by friend Hasan Bakr, a percussionist who was playing the acoustic guitar, and PopCap social media director Jeff Green, who was hitting a bongo. Meanwhile, several witnesses were hanging around the nautical-themed, glassed-in room as people passed by on Lexington Ave., peeking in, curious about what was going on. In addition to potentially setting a world record for playing solitaire for thirty straight hours — Henkel and Rich earn ten-minute breaks for each hour played, and the time can be stockpiled — the event is raising funds for charity: water, an organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to developing nations. More than ninety thousand dollars was raised during the event.

VIDEO OF THE DAY — STILL FLYIN’: “SPIRITS”

San Francisco collective Still Flyin’ makes synth-heavy indie dance pop that floats on a sea of ethereal grooviness. On their new album, On a Bedroom Wall (Ernest Jenning, May 2012), the follow-up to their 2009 debut full-length, Never Gonna Touch the Ground, founder Sean “SA” Rawls leads the large troupe through such lighthearted musical journeys as “Elsie Dormer,” “Travelin’ Man,” “Spirits,” and “Candlemaker.” “Ain’t nothing gonna hold me down / Ain’t nothing gonna torch my town,” a chorus sings on “Cleat Talking,” channeling a bit of Matthew Wilder, continuing, “I ain’t no Stephen Hawking / My cleats do all the talking.” Still Flyin’, which features a large cast of characters that includes Yoshi Nakamoto, Tater Moran, Bren Mead, Momo Niubo, Big Lord Saucedo, Gary Olson, Marky Monnone, Thrilla Horan, Izzo Knowles, Mookie Schweitzer-Rawls, Marjan Esfandiari, Jammy Knight, and more, will be headlining the early show at the Mercury Lounge on June 27 with Radical Dads.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL: CALL ME KUCHU

David Kato fights for justice for members of the LGBT community in powerful CALL ME KUCHU

CALL ME KUCHU (Katherine Fairfax Wright & Malike Zouhali-Worrall, 2012)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Thursday, June 28, 7:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.callmekuchu.com

Over this past weekend, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and other cities celebrated gay pride as millions of marchers and spectators came together in parades, marches, and other events in which no one had to hide their sexuality. Such is not the case in Uganda, where many believe that being gay should lead to being executed — and that not turning in a gay friend or relative should result in life in prison. In the heartbreaking yet stirring Call Me Kuchu, codirectors Katherine Fairfax Wright, who also served as editor and photographer, and Malike Zouhali-Worrall, who also produced the award-winning documentary, go deep inside the LGBT community in Kampala, meeting with such gay and lesbian LGBT activists as Naome Ruzindana, Stosh Mugisha, John “Longjones” Abdallah Wambere, and movement leader David Kato, the first openly gay man in Uganda, who risk their lives on a daily basis as they fight for freedom and battle against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, a draconian measure being strongly pushed by Member of Parliament David Bahati that threatens the lives of anyone and everyone involved in homosexual acts. As white American evangelicals come to Uganda to support the so-called Kill the Gays legislation, expelled Anglican Church bishop Senyonjo becomes a staunch defender of the LGBT community, the only religious leader to do so. Meanwhile, Giles Muhame, managing editor of Uganda’s popular Rolling Stone newspaper, proudly explains his mission of outing gays on the front cover of his publication, hoping that they get arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged by the government. But the activists won’t let that stop them. “If we keep on hiding,” Kato says, “they will say we are not here.” When tragedy strikes, everything is put into frightening perspective. Call Me Kuchu is a powerful examination of personal freedom and individual sexuality, a film that delves into the scary nature of repression, homophobia, and mob violence in an unforgiving, bigoted society. Call Me Kuchu is the closing-night selection of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center, where it will be screening on June 28 at 7:00, followed by a reception and Q&A with the directors and Longjones, moderated by Boris O. Dittrich.

MEL BROOKS ON FILM: THE SPOOF IS IN THE PUDDING

BLAZING SADDLES kicks off free Mel Brooks film series at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

Museum of Jewish Heritage
36 Battery Pl.
Wednesdays from June 27 through August 8 (except July 4), free, 6:30
646-437-4202
www.mjhnyc.org

Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, Jewish funnyman Mel Brooks has been spoofing television and movies for more than sixty years, beginning with the seminal Your Show of Shows in the 1950s and continuing through a series of films that have torn up various genres in hysterical ways. The Museum of Jewish Heritage pays tribute to the comedy legend with a free series of screenings on Wednesday nights at 6:30 from June 27 through August 8 (except for July 4), wisely including his better works while avoiding his duds. The festival begins with the outrageous laugh fest Blazing Saddles (1974), in which a black sheriff (Cleavon Little) comes to the racist western town of Rock Ridge and teams up with alcoholic sharpshooter the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) to teach everybody a valuable lesson. (The screening will be introduced by critic Leonard Quart.) On July 11, Brooks takes on the horror genre with the riotous Young Frankenstein, (1974), with Wilder starring as Frederick Frankenstein, a young doctor who has tried to avoid the family legacy but soon finds himself holed up in his Transylvanian castle bringing life to a monster (Peter Boyle) with the help of a dimwitted assistant (Marty Feldman) and a Scandinavian beauty (Teri Garr). On July 18, Mel Funn (Brooks), Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), and Marty Eggs (Feldman) try to recruit such stars as Burt Reynolds, James Caan, and Paul Newman to appear in their modern-day Silent Movie (1976). On July 25, Brooks incorporates such Hitchcock classics as The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Wrong Man, and Spellbound into the 1977 comic thriller High Anxiety, which also includes such Brooks regulars as Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Ron Carey, and Howard Morris. Brooks goes historical in the five-part History of the World: Part I (1981), parodying biblical epics, Roman sandal dramas, French Revolution tales, and more, with the help of narrator Orson Welles, John Hurt as Jesus Christ, and Brooks himself as Moses, Torquemada, and Louis XVI, giving himself the opportunity to say what would become one of his trademark lines, “It’s good to be the king.” The series concludes on August 8 with Brooks’s 1983 remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 classic To Be or Not to Be, about a Warsaw theater company trying to trick the Nazis, with Brooks and his wife, Anne Bancroft, re-creating the roles originally played by Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. These six films, made in a particularly fruitful nine-year period, cemented Brooks’s reputation as a comic genius, which was already well on its way with his earlier films, The Producers and The Twelve Chairs, and thankfully has not lost its luster with such later losers as Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, his last film, made in 1995, after which he headed to Broadway. Free tickets for the Museum of Jewish Heritage series can be picked up at the box office at 3:00 on the day of the show or can be reserved in advance with a minimum donation of $5.

THE BAD AND THE BETTER

Detective Lang (William Apps) and Miss Hollis (Sarah Lemp) get caught up in a dangerous conspiracy in THE BAD AND THE BETTER (photo by Monica Simoes)

The Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St.
Through July 21, $49.95
www.thebadandthebetter.com

Last summer the Amoralists squeezed twenty audience members into a small, makeshift bedroom in the Gershwin Hotel for a double feature of original plays by Adam Rapp (Animals and Plants) and company associate artistic director and cofounder Derek Ahonen (Pink Knees on Pale Skin). This year the innovative theater group is squeezing no fewer than 26 actors playing 33 characters onto the stage in the intimate 128-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theater for Ahonen’s delightfully gripping detective noir The Bad and the Better. David Nash stars as Venus, an earnest undercover cop posing as a playwright who embeds himself with a radical New York City anarchist group to supposedly study them for the sequel to his previous work, The Sad Singers on Stanton Street — a sly reference to Ahonen’s own downtown hit, The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side. Led by twins Justice (James Kautz) and Charity (Selene Beretta), the anarchists are causing some minor mayhem, but bigger plans await. Meanwhile, Venus’s brother, hero cop Ricky Lang (William Apps), has been exiled to a far-off part of Long Island with a secretary (Sarah Lemp) who has the hots for him, but he soon becomes suspicious when people in his usually calm district start killing themselves. And somewhere in the middle of all this, slimy developer Richard Zorn (Clyde Baldo) is manipulating candidate Eugene Moretti (David Lanson) into highlighting the war on terror in an important upcoming election. The multiple story lines weave in and out of one another before coming together for an explosive climax, all expertly directed by Obie winner Daniel Aukin, who keeps the continuous stream of characters moving around Alfred Schatz’s set in clever ways, as if imaginary borders exist as one scene morphs into the next. The pulpy play takes on such themes as loyalty, honesty, violence, corruption, courage, betrayal, and, most of all, family, with a liberal dose of humor and even a few tugs at the heartstrings. “It’ll really just be a story about love but it’ll be somewhat disguised as a cautionary tale about the hypocrisies of extreme principals,” Venus says to the radical anarchists at one point in a self-referential explanation that doubles for Ahonen talking about The Bad and the Better itself, an engaging production that once again shows off the many talents of the somewhat radical and anarchic Amoralists.