twi-ny recommended events

A BRIGHT NEW BOISE

Will (Peter Mark Kendall) tries to make a connection with Alex (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) in Signature revival of Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (photo by Joan Marcus)

A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through March 19, $49-$139
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Samuel D. Hunter’s most recent play, one of the best of 2022, is called A Case for the Existence of God. The Signature revival of one of his first works, 2010’s A Bright New Boise, could be retitled A Case for the Nonexistence of God.

The Obie-winning show was originally presented at the Wild Project in September 2010, two years before Hobby Lobby sued the government to allow the privately owned arts and crafts chain to prevent its employee health care plan from covering contraception, on religious grounds. “The Green family’s religious beliefs forbid them from participating in, providing access to, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting abortion-causing drugs and devices,” the company said in a statement at the time.

A Bright New Boise takes place in a clean, windowless, nondescript Hobby Lobby break room in Boise, Idaho. Wilson Chin’s coolly efficient set features several tables and chairs, a refrigerator, vending machines, a microwave, a sink, a bulletin board with rules and regulations, and lockers. A television is mounted on the wall next to the door, playing either invasive, up-close medical procedures (a result of a problem with a satellite dish) or a never-ending Hobby Lobby TV program in which two men in white lab coats mutter on unintelligibly about corporate policy, their constant low drone suggesting a form of brainwashing.

Will (Peter Mark Kendall) is interviewing with store manager Pauline (Eva Kaminsky) for an open position, but she’s concerned about a specific period that’s missing from his resume; he tells her that he had an inconsequential second job as a bookkeeper for a church but is clearly uneasy talking about it. It won’t be long before she finds out why.

The main reason Will wants to work at Hobby Lobby, which he does not tell Pauline, is to reconnect with his seventeen-year-old son, Alex (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), who works summers there; Alex was given up for adoption shortly after birth, and he is not excited when Will blurts out that he’s his father. The next morning, Alex grills Will to make sure he’s not just some creepy stalker. Mentioning his adoptive parents, Alex says, “Yeah, well, they’re assholes. If you are my father, then fuck you, because you gave me to assholes.” Whenever Alex doesn’t like what Will says, he chimes in, “I’m gonna kill myself” but assures Will that it’s “nothing, it’s just something I say.”

A Bright New Boise takes place in the break room of a Hobby Lobby store in Idaho (photo by Joan Marcus)

Will tries to begin a relationship with Alex, but Alex’s older brother, Leroy (Angus O’Brien), is suspicious of Will. Leroy is a tough-talking artist who wears homemade T-shirts with threatening slogans intended to upset the soccer moms, grade school kids, and little old ladies who shop at Hobby Lobby. Because he is the only employee who actually knows anything about art supplies, he gets away with it.

Will soon develops a friendship with fellow employee Anna (Anna Baryshnikov); they surprise each other in the break room after hours on his first day, both having hid in the store after closing time. Will does it for the wi-fi so he can continue writing his blog about the rapture; Anna does it so she can read books at night, which she’s not allowed to do at home, where she lives with her parents.

Pauline, an F-bomb dropper who runs a tight ship, is proud of how she “brought order to chaos,” turning a failing store into a profit center, so she’s not about to let any kind of family dysfunction affect her success. But when the truth emerges about that gap in Will’s resume, Pauline battens down the hatches.

“So you still believe in God?” Pauline asks Will. “Yes,” he answers. “After all that?” she says. “Yes,” he repeats. “Why?” she prods. “You’ll see,” he promises.

Hunter (Greater Clements, The Whale) was inspired in part to write A Bright New Boise from his personal experience attending a nondenominational Christian school that taught fundamental evangelical dogma and working as a cashier at Walmart as well as a documentary he saw about Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps. The play takes on such issues as adoption (Hunter and his husband adopted a girl six years ago), unionization, rampant consumerism, and the separation between church and state without getting overtly political, but there’s an underlying theme of religion’s ever-growing role in modern society, from the government to the church to the individual as extremism seeks to become the norm. In 2010, when the show debuted, words such as Hobby Lobby and Westboro Baptist Church weren’t so immediately fraught with meaning, dividing people into opposing camps, so Hunter doesn’t need to add anything to the inherent controversies. Nor does he focus on the dichotomies of capitalism itself, which is its own religion, although lacking a supreme being.

Pauline (Eva Kaminsky) has a chat with her new employee, Will (Peter Mark Kendall), in A Bright New Boise (photo by Joan Marcus)

But no matter their religious affiliation or lack thereof, all the characters are suffering from a kind of isolation, seeking connection to release them from their stagnation and boredom. The break room can be seen as a sort of purgatory where everyone is trying to figure out what comes next, whether they realize it or not.

Adroitly directed by Oliver Butler (What the Constitution Means to Me, GNIT), who effectively builds the expanding tension in the break room, the hundred-minute play features a strong cast led by Kendall (Blue Ridge, Mercury Fur), who splendidly portrays how awkward and squeamish Will is in his own skin; Kendall, who starred in Hunter’s solo microplay Brick in Theatre for One’s “Déjà Vu” at the Signature last year, makes it hard to like Will even as we root for him to find his place in life.

Kaminsky (Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, Hunter’s The Few) provides much-needed comic relief as the dedicated foul-mouthed manager, Baryshnikov (Time and the Conways, chekhovOS /an experimental game/) brings a warm innocence to Anna, and Diaz-Silverio (John Proctor Is the Villain) and O’Brien make superb off-Broadway debuts as two very different brothers. Jen Schriever’s lighting and Christopher Darbassie’s sound design spark each new scene with a jolt.

However, A Bright New Boise doesn’t know how to finish. I anticipated the lights going out for the last time twice before they actually did. Hunter raises important questions throughout this deeply compelling drama, but like the existence of God himself, he could have left a few more answers open-ended.

SCIENCE ON SCREEN: THE CONGRESS + WORLD OF TOMORROW

Robin Wright gets scanned for Hollywood posterity in The Congress

THE CONGRESS (Ari Folman,, 2013) + WORLD OF TOMORROW (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015)
Museum of the Moving Image, Redstone Theater
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, February 24, $9-$15, 7:00
movingimage.us

The Museum of the Moving Image’s ongoing “Science on Screen” series continues February 24 with an intriguing pair of films that offer unique insight into what might be next. The evening begins with the first episode of Don Hertzfeldt’s seventeen-minute Oscar-nominated animated short World of Tomorrow, a series that began in 2015 and deals with cloning, time travel, digital consciousness, and immortality, featuring stick figures amid bold colors; young Emily is voiced by Hertzfeld’s four-year-old niece, Winona Mae, whose dialogue was recorded while she was playing. “We mustn’t linger,” future Emily (Julia Pott) tells younger Emily. “It is easy to get lost in memories.”

World of Tomorrow is followed by writer-director Ari Folman’s underrated 2013 live action/animated hybrid, The Congress, in which Folman imagines a sad but visually dazzling future. Inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 short novel The Futurological Congress, the film focuses on Robin Wright as a fictionalized version of herself, an idealistic actress about to turn forty-five who has let her career come second to raising her two children, daughter Sarah (Sami Gayle) and, primarily, son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slowly losing the ability to see and hear. Wright’s longtime agent, Al (Harvey Keitel), has a last-chance opportunity for her: Jeff Green (Danny Huston), the head of Miramount, wants to scan her body and emotions so the studio can manipulate her digital likeness into any role while keeping her ageless. They don’t want the modern-day Robin Wright but the young, beautiful star of The Princess Bride, State of Grace, and Forrest Gump. The only catch is that in exchange for a substantial lump-sum payment, the real Wright will never be allowed to act again, in any capacity. With no other options, she reluctantly takes the deal. Twenty years later, invited to speak at the Futurological Congress, she enters a whole new realm, a fully animated world where men, women, and children live out their entertainment fantasies. Shocked by what she is experiencing, Wright meets up with Dylan Truliner (Jon Hamm), who has been animating her digital version for years, as a revolution threatens; meanwhile, Green has another offer for her, even more frightening than the first.

Robin Wright enters the animated, hallucinogenic fantasy world of the future in The Congress

The Congress is a stunning examination of America’s obsession with celebrity culture and pharmaceutical release amid continuing technological advancements in which avatars can replace real people and computers can do all the work. The animated scenes, consisting of sixty thousand drawings made in eight countries, are mind-blowing, referencing the history of cartoons, from early Max Fleischer gems through Warner Bros. classics as well as nods to Disney, Pixar, Who’s Afraid of Roger Rabbit, and even Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped Waking Life; Folman also pays homage, directly and indirectly, to James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick. (The central part of the cartoon scenes were actually filmed live first, then animated based on the footage; be on the lookout for cameos by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Frida Kahlo, and dozens of other familiar faces.)

Wright gives one of her best performances playing a modified version of herself, maintaining a calm, cool demeanor even as things threaten to completely break down around her. Paul Giamatti does a fine turn as her son’s concerned doctor, and Huston has a ball chewing the colorful scenery as the greedy, nasty studio head (as well as numerous other authority figures). The film also plays off itself in wonderful ways; the fictionalized Wright is at first against being scanned and used in science-fiction films, but the real Wright, of course, has agreed to be turned into a cartoon character in a science-fiction film. The story does get confusing in the second half, threatening to lose its thread as it goes all over the place, but Folman, whose previous film was the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir, manages to bring it all together by the end, led by the stalwart Wright. Named Best European Animated Feature at the European Film Awards, The Congress is an eye-popping, soul-searching, hallucinogenic warning of what just might be awaiting all of us.

ANTHONY RAPP’S WITHOUT YOU

Anthony Rapp’s one-man show details the development of Rent (photo by Russ Rowland)

ANTHONY RAPP’S WITHOUT YOU
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through June 11, $110-$399
withoutyoumusical.com
newworldstages.com

Anthony Rapp’s Without You is a sweet-natured, heartfelt true story about life’s ups and downs, about love, exhilaration, and loss, told by an engaging entertainer, even if it doesn’t go quite as deep as we might want it to.

Actor and singer Rapp was born in October 1971 in Chicago and raised with his older brother and sister in Joliet, Illinois, by their mother; his parents divorced when he was two. He knew from an early age that he wanted to be a performer; his big break came when, in September 1994, he got an audition for a show described as “a new rock opera based on La Bohème about a group of friends in the East Village,” to be workshopped for four weeks at New York Theatre Workshop. The semiautobiographical musical was called Rent, by little-known composer and lyricist Jonathan Larson (Superbia, Tick, Tick . . . Boom!). Adapted from Rapp’s 2006 memoir, Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical “Rent,” and first presented in 2012, the ninety-minute Without You follows the development of Rent — which turned out to be one of the most popular musicals of all time — alongside the concurrent illness of Rapp’s beloved mother.

In 1994, Rapp was working at Starbucks and sharing an apartment in the East Village with his brother, Adam, who would go on to become a successful playwright, director, screenwriter, and novelist (The Sound Inside, Blackbird). Anthony checked in regularly with his mother, who had always been supportive of “Tonio” and his career. In Without You, Rapp discusses meeting Larson, “a young curly-haired guy, with ears that stuck out a bit” who believed he was “the future of musical theater.” He talks about hanging out and working with his Rent colleagues, which included actors Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega and director Michael Grief, and sings tunes from the show in addition to his audition song and several originals he wrote with David Matos and Joe Pisapia.

As the buzz around Rent and Larson’s tragic fate grows to deafening heights, Rapp, who plays Mark Cohen in the show, has to balance the success with his mother’s failing health. “I’ve known / All of my life / If I ever lost my way / She’d carry me home / She loved to / Carry me home,” he sings wistfully.

Anthony Rapp sings and shares personal stories in Without You at New World Stages (photo by Russ Rowland)

Set and lighting designer Eric Southern has transformed the stage into a cramped downtown New York apartment, complete with exposed brick walls and a fire escape. The five-piece band — cellist Clérida Eltime, bassist Paul Gil, drummer Jerry Marotta, guitarist Lee Moretti, and music director, orchestrator, and keyboardist Daniel A. Weiss — are situated in three separate places, including a few that seem to be under ever-present New York City scaffolding. David Bengali’s projections include photographs Rapp took during the Rent rehearsal process. The costumes are by Angela Vesco, with sound by Brian Ronan and additional arrangements by Tom Kitt.

Director Steven Maler (Suburbia, Starfuckers!) doesn’t add too much razzle-dazzle as Rapp walks across the stage sharing his story; he jumps on a table belting out one song and often talks to empty chairs that represent those people he has lost. He affects different accents for the various people in his life, from his mother to Jonathan to Jonathan’s parents. Understandably, he makes no mention of his sexual abuse allegations against Kevin Spacey, nor does he delve into other parts of his life (he is now engaged and has a child) and career, which comprises more than seventy-five appearances on film, television, and stage; most notably, he has been on Broadway in If/Then and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and, since 2017, has portrayed Lt. Paul Stamets on Star Trek: Discovery.

As likable and kindhearted as Rapp is, Without You lacks the necessary dramatic tension to lift it to the next level. While some of the tidbits he offers about Larson are appealing, most of them are not new, regardless of whether you’ve read Rapp’s book. The majority of the songs are well executed, but Rapp’s own “Wild Bill,” in which he dons a cowboy hat and stands in front of projections of the West, is too silly. And as touching as his relationship with his mother is, it’s not heavy enough to carry half the show.

As he sings in the title song from Rent, “How can you generate heat / When you can’t feel your feet? . . . / How do you leave the past behind / When it keep finding ways to get to your heart / It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out / ’Til you’re torn apart.” Without You is plenty heartfelt, but it won’t tear your insides out or generate heat the way Rent itself did.

ENDGAME

Clov (Bill Irwin) peers at Hamm (John Douglas Thompson) in Irish Rep adaptation of Beckett’s Endgame (photo by Carol Rosegg)

ENDGAME
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 9, $25-$95
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Queen’s Pawn Opening is one of the safest first moves in chess. But there’s not much that’s safe in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, which is named after the strategic maneuverings when there are only a few pieces left on the board and the match is approaching its conclusion.

The end is near from the very beginning of Endgame, as Clov (Bill Irwin) declares, “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.” That opening salvo leads to eighty-five minutes of thrilling confusion as four characters face the end of everything in a seemingly postapocalyptic world. “I can’t be punished any more,” Clov claims, since for him life is nothing but suffering.

Clov, who limps severely, is a servant toiling for the mysterious, blind Hamm (John Douglas Thompson), a regal, angry figure in a homemade wheelchair: a chair attached to a wooden platform with wheels on it. When we first see Hamm, his face is covered by a bloody handkerchief; beneath it, he wears steampunk goggles. A ratty blanket is wrapped around his lower half; he can’t see or walk.

To Hamm’s right is a pile of garbage and two metal trash cans, where his “accursed progenitors” reside, his father, Nagg (Joe Grifasi), and mother, Nell (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), who have no legs. Thus, three of the characters cannot move on their own, and the fourth has major difficulty getting around. Even Hamm’s dog, a stuffed toy, is missing an appendage.

“Oh, I am willing to believe they suffer as much as such creatures can suffer,” Hamm says. “But does that mean their sufferings equal mine? No doubt. No, all is a — [yawns] — bsolute, the bigger a man is the fuller he is. And the emptier. . . . Enough, it’s time it ended, in the shelter, too. And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to . . . to end. Yes, there it is, it’s time it ended and yet I hesitate to — [yawns] — to end.”

Hamm, Clov, Nell, and Negg are living in some kind of end times, in a dingy basement dungeon that resembles a dark corner alley. Occasionally, Hamm calls for Clov to look through two small windows behind a brick wall in the back. To do so, Clov has to get out a step ladder, struggle uncomfortably to the wall, go up the ladder dragging one of his legs, and then peer through the gaps with a small telescope. On one side is a dim landscape, the other the sea, with nary a human being anywhere.

Nell (Patrice Johnson Chevannes) and Nagg (Joe Grifasi) share a laugh in Endgame (photo by Carol Rosegg)

However, when Clov aims the glass at the audience, he says, “I see . . . a multitude . . . in transports . . . of joy.” It’s one of several moments when the characters acknowledge that they are in a play with people watching them. Later, Clov threatens to leave, asking Hamm, “What is there to keep me here?” Hamm responds, “The dialogue.”

Hamm also makes references to “asides” and a “soliloquy”; when he calls for his gaff, Clov brings him the spear with a hook (used for fishing, sailing, and impaling), which resembles the vaudeville hook that unceremoniously pulls performers offstage when their acts go sour. In England, “gaff” is slang for “home,” something the four characters don’t exactly have. Scanning his surroundings, Hamm tells Clov, “My house a home for you. . . . But for Hamm, no home.”

The characters are like chess pieces, unable to move well on their own. “Take me for a little turn,” Hamm commands Clov, who awkwardly pushes him slowly around the room until Hamm barks, “Back to my place! Is that my place? . . . Put me right in the center!” as if he is the king on a chessboard demanding to be returned to his noble space, where he rules over nothing, the end in view, and not necessarily unwelcome. “The whole place stinks of corpses,” Hamm says. “The whole universe,” Clov adds. “To hell with the universe,” Hamm spits out. A few beats later, Clov declares, “The end is terrific!”

The cast is also terrific in this solid if not-quite-spectacular adaptation, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly. Longtime Shakespeare and August Wilson stalwart Thompson (Jitney, The Merchant of Venice) is majestic as Hamm in his return to the Irish Rep, where in 2009 he portrayed the title character in O’Reilly’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, spending much of the time on an oversized, red-draped throne. When Hamm calls out, “My kingdom for a nightman!,” it feels like a nod to Thompson’s numerous Bard performances, which do not include playing Richard III. However, the whistle Hamm keeps blowing grows ever-more annoying.

Hamm (John Douglas Thompson) sits center stage throughout Beckett adaptation at Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Tony winner Irwin (Old Hats, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is sublime as the put-upon Clov, a role that fits him to a T; Irwin is a vaudeville-style clown who has played Vlad and Lucky in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Hamm in a 2012 revival of Endgame in San Francisco as well as starring in his one-man show On Beckett, which was staged at the Irish Rep in 2018 and again (online) during the pandemic lockdown.

Chevannes (runboyrun/In Old Age, I’m Revolting) and Grifasi (Dinner at Eight, The Boys Next Door) are hilarious as Hamm’s parents, whose bins are just far enough apart to prevent them from kissing, an apt metaphor for the lack of connection that comes with the end (and with pandemics).

Charlie Corcoran’s dingy set evokes the end times, along with Orla Long’s costumes, which seem to decay right on the characters’ bodies. Michael Gottlieb’s lighting and M. Florian Staab’s sound enhance the dread, with fun props by Deirdre Brennan that ratchet up the humor. The eighty-five-minute play, which Beckett claimed was his personal favorite, debuted at the Royal Court in London in 1957 and was previously presented at the Irish Rep in 2005, directed by Charlotte Moore and starring Tony Roberts as Hamm, Adam Heller as Clov, Kathryn Grody as Nell, and Alvin Epstein as Nagg. (Epstein portrayed Clov in the show’s 1958 New York debut at the Cherry Lane and was also Nagg in the 2008 BAM revival, with Elaine Stritch as Nell, Max Casella as Clov, and John Turturro as Hamm.)

After explaining, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,” one of the show’s most famous and enduring lines, Nell tells Nagg, “We laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it’s always the same thing. Yes, it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh any more.” There are plenty of laughs in this version of Endgame, even as we may be edging closer and closer to the apocalypse.

A CONVERSATION WITH F. MURRAY ABRAHAM

F. Murray Abraham will discuss his long career at National Arts Club virtual event (photo courtesy HBO)

Who: F. Murray Abraham, John F. Andrews
What: Virtual conversation
Where: The National Arts Club online
When: Tuesday, February 21, free with RSVP, 6:00
Why: At the 2010 National Arts Club gala, the Shakespeare Guild honored actor F. Murray Abraham with its Gielgud Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Arts, calling the Pittsburgh-born, El Paso–raised Syrian American actor “one of the most versatile artists of our time.” Among those celebrating him were Tom Hulce, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Oskar Eustis, and Michael Feingold.

Over a six-decade career onstage and small and big screen, Abraham has accumulated one Oscar, two Obies, one Grammy nod, three Emmy nominations, and other accolades with stellar performances in Amadeus, Homeland, The White Lotus, Uncle Vanya, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and so many more productions. On February 21 at 6:00, the eighty-three-year-old Abraham, who lost his wife of sixty years, Kate Hannan, this past November, will discuss his long, wide-ranging career, in conversation with Shakespeare Guild president John F. Andrews. The special National Arts Club virtual event is free with advance RSVP here.

THE WANDERERS

Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Sophie (Sarah Cooper) share a rare fun moment in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE WANDERERS
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 2, $91-$174
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

“There’s no remaking reality,” Nancy remembers her father saying to her in Philip Roth’s Everyman. “Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.”

Roth’s career and writings about Jewish parents and children are pivotal in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers, which opened last night at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre. The play is almost too literary for its own good: Marion Williams’s set consists of about a dozen piles of books on the floor, a long library-style table, and several back walls completely covered in open books, their pages pleading to be read; some of the characters enter and leave through gaps in the walls, as if they’re walking in and out of novels. Kenneth Posner’s lighting often casts the books on the wall and the floor in heavenly glows, including a neon blue. The scenes unfold in chapters with such titles as “Marriage,” “Children,” “Boredom,” “Destruction,” and “Fiction.”

The Wanderers, a name that evokes the forty years the Jews spent in the desert searching for the Promised Land after escaping slavery in Egypt, goes back and forth between 1973–82 and 2015–17, primarily in Brooklyn. Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is a dour but extremely successful and self-absorbed writer, having won two National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prize (as did Roth); among his popular tomes are The Theory of Milk (as in a mother’s nurturing?) and Orphan. His wife, Sophie (Sarah Cooper), is considering writing a second novel but she’s tentative because her first book, published ten years earlier, was poorly reviewed. Abe’s parents, Esther (Lucy Freyer) and Schmuli (Dave Klasko), were Satmar Jews living in Williamsburg; Sophie is biracial and half Jewish (on her father’s side).

After giving a book reading at which Hollywood superstar Julia Cheever (Katie Holmes) — a nod to Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Cheever — sat rapt with attention right up front, Abe is contacted by the glamorous actress over email; she’s starring in an adaptation of Roth’s Everyman, and the two kick off a flirtatious online friendship. Initially, Abe reads the emails out loud off his laptop by himself (or to Sophie), but soon he and Julia are both onstage, as if involved in face-to-face conversations. The more time he spends with Julia, the less time he has for Sophie and their two (unseen) kids.

Esther (Lucy Freyer) and Schmuli (Dave Klasko) prepare to comsummate their arranged marriage in Roundabout production (photo by Joan Marcus)

Meanwhile, some forty years before, Esther and Schmuli are commencing their life together through an arranged marriage; as the babies begin coming, Esther imagines a life where she has more choice, where she is not restricted by the draconian Hasidic rules, which are particularly fierce and limiting on women. As a child, Esther would sneak off with her best friend to read books in the library, and as a mother she wants her children to read books other than the Torah, but it is forbidden.

The parallels between Esther and Schmuli’s marriage and Abe and Sophie’s increase as The Wanderers heads to its final chapters, even if we are well aware of certain conclusions. “I was seventeen when I realized I was going to marry Abe,” Sophie explains in her opening monologue. “I was almost forty when I realized I would leave him.”

Listening to characters pontificate about art and the creative process, whether writing or acting, can get didactic and pretentious, and Ziegler (Boy, Actually) is guilty of that while also recognizing it. “Okay, I know you hate hearing my dreams —” Sophie divulges. “When did I say that?” Abe responds. “It’s the look on your face when I start to tell one,” she says, the same look audience members get when a show becomes preachy. But Ziegler is able to work her way around that with other dialogue that is subtly powerful. After telling Abe her dream, Sophie admits, “And when I woke up, you were gone.” He explains, “I couldn’t sleep so I went for a run.” She says softly, “No . . . that’s not what I meant.”

Hollywood superstar Julia Cheever (Katie Holmes) checks her phone while Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) pines for her (photo by Joan Marcus)

Barry Edelstein’s (The Underpants, The Misanthrope) direction tends toward the languid as actors walk onstage, talk, then walk offstage, except for Thomas (Golden Age, The Submission), who when not in a scene is watching it from the sides, taking notes for his next book. Unfortunately, Abe is such an unpleasant character that being in his presence is a downer; when he declares, “People hate me. . . . They’re offended by my very existence,” we understand why. Cooper, an author (100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, How to Be Successful without Hurting Men’s Feelings) and stand-up comic who gained notoriety for her TikTok videos in which she lip synced to statements by Donald Trump, is strong in her off-Broadway debut; the show would have benefited from more of her and her character, who is more intriguing than the others.

Holmes (All My Sons, Dead Accounts) brings a sweet innocence to her portrayal of the captivating Hollywood star, wearing fashionable white outfits that make Julia an angelic figure. (The costumes are by David Israel Reynoso.) Freyer (Romeo & Juliet, Malefactions) and Klasko (Gordy Crashes, King Lear) are effective in roles that are becoming all too familiar (and are all too real), a Hasidic wife who wants more out of life but is trapped by the suffocating intolerance of her husband and community.

Ultimately, The Wanderers is an homage to Roth, almost to a fault, as Ziegler features quotes from his books, right from the opening dialogue, when Sophie tells the audience, “Abe loved to read to me. Mostly his own writing, but also passages from his favorite novels; once, at a Foot Locker, he recited the last lines of Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth over and over. ‘And he couldn’t do it. He could not fucking die. How could he leave? Everything he hated was here.’” It’s hard to compete with that.

CORNELIA STREET

Norbert Leo Butz heads a strong cast in Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel’s Cornelia Street (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

CORNELIA STREET
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 5
atlantictheater.org

It’s a problem we know all too well: beloved New York City restaurants closing because of financial issues, primarily rising rents. During the pandemic, dozens and dozens of dining establishments, from Beyoglu, Blue Smoke, the ‘21’ Club, and Feast to Jewel Bako, Lucky Strike, the Mermaid Inn, and Mission Chinese, shut their doors because of rent as well as food costs and supply chain issues.

But it doesn’t take a worldwide health crisis to affect a restaurant’s longevity. In January 2019, the Cornelia Street Café, a West Village treasure since 1977, closed over rent increases. “I am sad to say that I am losing my oldest child,” cofounder Robin Hirsch wrote. “Cornelia has brought me both joy and pain, and it is with a broken heart that I must bid her adieu.”

Tony and Olivier winner Simon Stephens was inspired by the Cornelia Street Café in writing Cornelia Street, a rousing yet intimately touching musical that opened last night at Atlantic Stage 2. It is not specifically about the restaurant and downstairs performance venue that was located on Cornelia St. between Bleecker and West Fourth Sts., but Stephens spent time at the café in 2018 doing research for the work, which features music and lyrics by American Music Club founder Mark Eitzel; the two have previously collaborated on Marine Parade and Song from Far Away.

The show is set in the present day inside Marty’s Café, a local haunt that has been on Cornelia St. in the West Village for decades. The building is about to be put up for sale, so Marty and his longtime chef, Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz), are preparing to convince the Realtors and investor Daniel McCourt (Jordan Lage) that their restaurant is worth keeping. While Marty is extremely concerned about the balance sheets, the Jersey City-born Jacob thinks that a menu revamp is the way to go, consisting of higher-end dishes with classier ingredients: venison ravioli, pizza with Spanish chorizo, omelets with porcini mushrooms.

Jacob has been working at Marty’s for twenty-eight years; he and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Patti (Lena Pepe), who is having trouble at school, live above the café. Philip (Esteban Andres Cruz) is the waiter/bartender, a struggling actor having difficulty getting auditions.

Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz) takes a closer look at his daughter, Patti (Lena Pepe), in world premiere at Atlantic Stage 2 (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Three regulars come to the café to eat and/or drink nearly every day: John (Ben Rosenfield), a sweet, innocent computer scientist in his late twenties; Sarah (Mary Beth Peil), a retired opera singer who might be able to see the future; and William (George Abud), a perpetually nasty taxi driver and dealer who is always looking over his shoulder.

Jacob is shocked by the unexpected arrival of Misty (Gizel Jiménez), the daughter of an old girlfriend who he helped raise for a time. Misty is broke, alone, and angry, so Jacob gives her a job and lets her sleep in Patti’s room.

When Jacob is offered an opportunity to make some fast cash, relationships grow more complicated and trouble looms. As Sarah says somewhat facetiously, “There is a patisserie on the corner of Carmine and Sixth that is selling Edie Sedgwick cupcakes. This is a city that has started to eat itself.”

Scott Pask’s welcoming set makes the audience feel right at home, as if we are sitting at our own tables at the café. The wooden bar is at stage left, a few round tables stage right, and a window at the back that reveals the dark, narrow street outside. Linda Cho’s costumes are basic café wear, comfortable outfits, although Jacob’s concerts tees (the Ramones, Ziggy Stardust) spark a contrast with William’s flashy $240 shirt.

As opposed to being an all-out musical, Cornelia Street is more of a play with songs. Stephens’s (Heisenberg, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) book is smart and thorough, although there are two key moments that very well could have gone the wrong way but he rights the ship in time. Eitzel’s music is based in pop with lovely orchestrations by John Clancy, featuring Alec Berlin on guitar, Kirsten Agresta-Copley on harp, Gina Benalcazar on trombone, Marcos Rojas on tuba, Emma Reinhart on reeds, and Michael Ramsey on percussion and triangle. Part of the band is visible onstage, while the rest is nearly hidden off to the sides.

John (Jordan Lage) looks on as Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz) and Misty (Gizel Jiménez) go at it in Cornelia Street (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

The choreography, by former Alvin Ailey standout dancer Hope Boykin (Beauty Size & Color), is playful and appropriate, helping define who the characters are and what they want out of life. Each actor moves to their own groove, from a sweet shuffle to an elegant twist. No one is trying to tear the roof off the house, which matches the tempo of the narrative; there is no excess, a meal served with just the right ingredients.

However, Eitzel’s lyrics are a letdown, too often getting caught up in clichés even when successfully developing the characters and their relationships with one another. “So I’m saying this with a loving heart / Don’t be clever just be smart / Get A’s in science get A’s in art / And you will own the world,” Jacob assures Patti. “Loving an angel is bad / For your liver / For them nothing gets old / But the love of an angel nothing is better / In their arms you don’t feel the cold,” Sarah declares. One of the only times I lost focus was when Jacob tells himself, “If there’s a chance / I’m gonna take it / And if there’s a chance / I’m gonna make it,” which made me think of the late Cindy Williams and the theme song from Laverne and Shirley.

Tony-nominated director Neil Pepe, the Atlantic’s artistic director who has helmed such productions as Hands on a Hardbody, American Buffalo, and Stephens’s On the Shore of the Wide World, guides it all with expert precision; the characters don’t break out into song, stopping the play’s progression, but instead seamlessly continue the plot.

The excellent cast is led by two-time Tony winner Butz (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, My Fair Lady), who plays Jacob with a gruff, heartfelt soul; you can’t take your eyes off him when he’s onstage (which is virtually the entire 140-minute show, with intermission). Jiménez (Miss You Like Hell, Tick, Tick . . . Boom!) is appealing as the dark, mysterious Misty, Rosenfield (The Nether, Love, Love, Love) is adorable as the uncomplicated John, Tony nominee Peil (A Man of No Importance, Anastasia) is a delight as the lovely Sarah, and Lena Pepe, Neil’s daughter, is impressive in her off-Broadway debut.

On February 13 at 7:00, the Atlantic hosted the special event “Stories from the Cornelia Street Café,” an evening of songs and stories with Hirsch, Stephens, and Eitzel. We might not have the café itself anymore, or so many other cherished restaurants, but we do have this terrific show to satiate at least part of our thirst and hunger.