twi-ny recommended events

HENRIK LUNDQVIST’S RETIREMENT NIGHT

Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden
31st – 33rd Sts. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Friday, January 28, $30-$60, 6:30
www.nhl.com

Ed Giacomin (1), Brian Leetch (2), Harry Howell (3), Rod Gilbert (7), Adam Graves (9), Andy Bathgate (9), Mark Messier (11), Vic Hadfield (11), Jean Ratelle (19), Mike Richter (35). Since their inception in 1926, the New York Rangers, founded by Tex Rickard, have retired the jerseys of ten star players. They turn it up to eleven on Friday night when the number 30 worn by goaltender extraordinaire Henrik Lundqvist from 2005 to 2020 gets raised to the rafters.

Over the course of fifteen seasons, King Henrik amassed a regular season record of 459-310-96, with a 2.43 GA average and a save percentage of .918. The five-time all-star and five-time Vezina finalist — he won the coveted trophy in 2012 — took home a gold medal manning the pipes for Sweden at the 2006 Turin Olympics and led the Broadway Blueshirts to the Stanley Cup finals in 2014. The Rangers let Lundqvist go after the 2019-20 season, but before he could play a game with the Washington Capitals, who signed him to a one-year deal, he had to hang up the skates because of pericarditis that required open-heart surgery, forcing him to retire at the age of thirty-nine.

Henrik Lundqvist will be cheered yet again when his jersey is raised to the Garden rafters on January 28

Tickets are still available for the Rangers’ battle against the Minnesota Wild on January 28, but they currently start at a mere $350. So a better option might be spending thirty bucks and joining in the fun at a retirement watch party with Rangers alums at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden. Tex’s Rangers are on a roll this year, with 60 points in 43 games, while the Wild is enjoying a hot first half as well, with 53 points in 38 games, so it should be quite a game. It all gets going around 6:30, when a parade of Rangers greats will pay homage to the King, a fashion plate who is likely to look hotter than ever on the Garden ice. In conjunction with the special event, you can post your own Lundqvist story here and check out a month of Henrik highlights here. Net proceeds from the watch party will be split between the Garden of Dreams Foundation and the Henrik Lundqvist Foundation.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

The Tyrone family faces the coronavirus in new streamlined Audible production (photo by Joan Marcus)

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
Audible Theater’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Through February 20 (no shows Monday and Friday), $57-$97
www.audible.com
longdaysoffbroadway.com

Jonathan Miller’s 1986 Broadway revival of Long Day’s Journey into Night created an uproar because the characters spoke over one another rather than treating Eugene O’Neill’s dialogue like gospel. Purists may also be unhappy with Robert O’Hara’s modern-day streamlined adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about a dysfunctional family, but audiences at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, where O’Hara’s version opened tonight for a four-week run before being available on audio, may feel differently — or not.

As the crowd enters the theater, a large onstage monitor plays a loop of clips from CNN about the Covid-19 crisis and the 2020 presidential election. Clint Ramos’s multilevel set is strewn about with Fed Ex and Amazon boxes, a stack of masks, and a bar in the back. The coronavirus has come to the Tyrone family, who’ve been fast-forwarded into the twenty-first century.

O’Neill wrote the semiautobiographical play in 1941 and set it in 1912; O’Hara has moved it up more than a hundred years but hasn’t altered a single word. However, he has made significant cuts to the text, trimming the show down to a too-lean 110 intermissionless minutes; the play usually runs more than three hours and two breaks. Although much of the depth is lost, the production is still compelling, primarily because of excellent performances by real-life husband and wife Bill Camp as actor James Tyrone and Elizabeth Marvel as Mary Tyrone, a morphine addict who can’t face reality.

James Tyrone (Bill Camp) tries to take a break while his wife, Mary (Elizabeth Marvel), shoots up in off-Broadway O’Neill revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Tyrones’ older son, Jamie (Jason Bowen), was groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps but instead is a ne’er-do-well writer who spends all his money on booze and hookers. Younger son Edmund (Ato Blankson-Wood) is seriously ill, even if local Dr. Hardy says otherwise, thinking it might be a fever Edmund caught in the tropics. In O’Neill’s text, Jamie has tuberculosis — pretty much a death sentence in 1912 — but in this production it is clear that he has the coronavirus, and the family’s varying attitudes about his diagnosis are reminiscent of the start of the pandemic, before much was known about Covid-19.

O’Hara turns most of the focus on Mary; less time is spent on the others and their concerns inside and outside the house, from careers to alcoholism. Usually, James, Jamie, and Edmund only talk about Mary heading into the spare room, where she takes her morphine, but here we clearly see her sitting at a small table and shooting up, visible through a cutout in the back brick wall. It’s a disturbing image, causing a different kind of visceral reaction; it also made me wonder why one of the characters doesn’t just go upstairs and take the syringe and drugs away from her, a thought that never occurred to me in other productions I’ve seen. (Those include the aforementioned 1986 adaptation with Jack Lemmon, Bethel Leslie, Peter Gallagher, and Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Kent’s 2016 Broadway revival with Gabriel Byrne and Jessica Lange, and Sir Richard Eyre’s 2018 presentation at BAM with Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville.)

Real-life husband-and-wife Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel get frisky in Long Day’s Journey into Night (photo by Joan Marcus)

The emotions between James and Mary are palpable, whether they’re flirting with each other or in a tense standoff; Camp (The Crucible, The Queen’s Gambit) and Marvel (Hedda Gabler, Homeland) display an instant chemistry that never lets up, enhanced by Yee Eun Nam’s abstract projections that reveal Mary’s inner turmoil. But the sons feel more distant and underdeveloped; there’s no longer the necessary back story to make us care about them, and neither Blankson-Wood (Slave Play, The Rolling Stone) nor Bowen (The Play That Goes Wrong, If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka) is given enough to do.

In a production note, O’Hara explains, “The O’Neill Estate has allowed us to imagine this glorious play into the future that we are currently living through. . . . In both its concept and its brevity, this version is not meant to be anything other than an exploration of living in the time of a pandemic through the story and language of one of our greatest playwrights.” In updating the work, Tony nominee and two-time Obie winner O’Hara (Slave Play, Bootycandy) has left the skeletal structure but has removed a large chunk of the soul. And it’s one thing to perform this adaptation live onstage, with a full set, but I can’t imagine how it would work as an audio piece, without the props that place the Tyrones firmly in the Covid era.

CAMERA MAN: DANA STEVENS ON BUSTER KEATON

Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton) mimics his father, Bill Campbell (Ernest Torrence), in silent film classic

Who: Dana Stevens, Imogen Sara Smith
What: Screening and discussion about Buster Keaton
Where: Film at Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West Sixty-Fifth St.
When: Thursday, January 27, $15, 7:00
Why: “Steamboat Bill, Jr. may be [Buster] Keaton’s most mature film, a fitting if too-early farewell to his period of peak creative independence,” Slate film critic Dana Stevens writes. “Its relationship to the rest of its creator’s work has been compared to that of Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest.” Stevens gets serious about the Great Stone Face, one of silent film’s best comics, in her brand-new book, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Atria, $29.99).

In celebration of the launch of the tome, Stevens will be at Lincoln Center’s Francesca Beale Theater on January 27 at 7:00 to screen a 4K restoration of the 1928 classic, directed by Charles Reisner, about a riverboat battle and true love, preceded by a 2K restoration of Keaton and Edward F. Cline’s twenty-five-minute masterpiece, One Week, about a pair of newlyweds (Keaton and Sybil Seely) and their unusual new home. (Both films feature orchestral scores by American composer Carl Davis.) Stevens will put Keaton’s life and work in sociocultural context with Criterion contributor Imogen Sara Smith, author of Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. If you’ve never seen Keaton on the big screen, now is the time, as no one could turn tragedy into comedy quite like Keaton.

NOW IN PROCESS

NOW IN PROCESS
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
January 26 – February 6, $15, 7:00
newohiotheatre.org

Previously known as the Producers Club, New Ohio Theatre’s annual Now in Process festival is back with a hybrid edition, consisting of four works in progress taking place at the troupe’s Christopher St. home in the West Village and online. “Now in Process is where artists try out their next great idea — in its earliest stages,” artistic director Robert Lyons said in a statement. “We like to be there at the beginning and watch projects grow. This year we have four very different groups with one thing in common — they are fearless.”

The series kicks off January 26-27 with Claire and Pierce Siebers’s The Forest at Night, a concert version of the tale of Hansel and Gretel, with the creators playing the siblings who go on a dangerous journey. In Who Gets to Be Egyptian? (January 29-30), poet, actor, class mixologist, dancer, salesman, activist, artist, pianist, and teacher Michael Gene Jacobs, aka MikeDriven and M1, directs Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Anna Wulfekuhle, Dylan Gervais, and Lomar Collins, using ancient stories to celebrate Blackness and Black power. On February 2-3, NYC-based performance collective Exiled Tongues presents Kept in the Dark, written by Dena Igusti and directed by Ray Jordan Achan, which follows a journalist exposing rape culture and Title IX abuses in high schools. Now in Process concludes February 5-6 with Sherry Lutken’s The Porch on Windy Hill, written by Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, David Lutken, and Morgan Morse, in which a couple escapes quarantine in Brooklyn and heads to western North Carolina seeking out the history of Appalachian music, encountering such songs as “Down in the Valley,” “Green Corn,” “Blackberry Blossom,” and “Sail Away Ladies.” The second performance of each show will be livestreamed.

ADDRESSLESS: A WALK IN OUR SHOES

Addressless presents complicated choices for three homeless New Yorkers over three winter months

ADDRESSLESS
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater online
Thursday – Tuesday through February 13, $1 – $30
www.rattlestick.org

Rattlestick’s virtual, participatory Addressless is an involving piece of activist theater that could only happen online, away from its home on Waverly Pl. The interactive show shines a light on housing insecurity, an issue that has grown during the coronavirus pandemic as New York City shuttles the homeless between hotels and congregate and noncongregate shelters.

Created and directed by Martin Boross of the Hungarian collective STEREO AKT and written by playwright and social worker Jonathan Payne, Addressless is a choose-your-own-adventure style production in which the audience is assigned to one of three teams, trying to help their designated character find safe haven in a harsh city. Louis (Joey Auzenne) is a thirty-three-year-old army vet who is having a difficult time getting a job and a place to sleep. Josie (Bianca Norwood) is a teenage runaway from Buffalo escaping from a drug-addicted mother and an alcoholic father. And Wallace (Shams DaBaron, aka “Da Homeless Hero”) is a fifty-two-year-old single father who’s been homeless on and off since he was ten. The show is hosted by real-life social worker Hope Beaver, who is originally from Texas and now works at a family shelter at Henry Street Settlement, caring for single mothers and their children eight and under.

Addressless is set up as a game, and team members vote on what their character should do over the course of three winter months. Each choice affects how much money the individual has and the state of their health as they attempt to accumulate $1500 to qualify for a housing lottery to live rent free for a year in a new development on the Lower East Side. They choose between sleeping on the streets, which requires the least amount of cash but has the most severe impact on their health, going to a shelter (a kind of middle road), or couch surfing (best for health but most expensive).

A social worker offers choices to military vet Louis (Joey Auzenne) in interactive virtual show from Rattlestick

The teams meet privately in breakout rooms to discuss the options, then vote on the final decision. It is suggested you keep your camera on, and you are encouraged to participate but don’t have to. Being able to see where everyone is zooming in from emphasizes the audience’s privilege: having somewhere to live, owning a computer, laptop, or handheld device, and being able to afford a ticket to the show. (General admission is $30, but there are pay-what-you-can nights beginning at $1.)

Although you’re supposed to comment and vote only on your specific team’s character, the night I went a few people spoke far too often about and voted for all three, which got a little annoying, so hopefully the rules have been clarified since then. I was on Team Wallace, and I found it invigorating to help him make his choices each month. The discussions are about where they will sleep as well as deciding, for example, whether to pose for a photographer for twenty bucks, go to an acquaintance’s work party or attend an AA meeting, or accept a shelter transfer from Manhattan to the Bronx. Depending on what the team decides, the vote is followed by a prerecorded scene depicting the results of the choice. Spoiler alert: There are not a whole lotta good outcomes.

The supporting cast in the prerecorded vignettes includes Faith Catlin as an AA facilitator, Alok Tewari as an ER doctor, Paten Hughes as a high school classmate of Josie’s, Keith Randolph Smith as the photographer, and Michael Laurence as a sales manager, in addition to Chima Chikazunga, Mahira Kakkar, Tara Khozein, Olivia Oguma, and Lisa Ramirez. The production design is by Johnny Moreno, with sets and props by Patricia Marjorie, costumes by Olivera Gajic, music by Tara Khozein, sound by Julian Evans, graphics and animation by Maiko Kikuchi, video editing by Matthew Russell, and integration design by Victoria A. Gelling. It’s not the flashiest online production, instead more DIY that fits in with the overall theme.

It might be a game — Payne (The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d, The Briar Patch) is a self-proclaimed Dungeons & Dragons geek, so he knows about character and narrative — but it’s built to make you care deeply about the three homeless people, humanizing them, the way you probably wouldn’t if you simply passed them on the street; when I served as Wallace’s banker for December and raised him the smallest amount of money of the three of them, I was truly disappointed in myself, and that failure has stayed with me. Wallace was still upbeat, as that is first-time actor DaBaron’s general nature; during the pandemic, DaBaron, who is also a writer, filmmaker, and hip-hop artist, advocated for the homeless all around the city and particularly the men who were moved to the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side. Auzenne (Wu Tang: An American Saga, Our Lady of 121st Street) plays it much harder as Louis, while Norwood (Plano) gives Josie a distrustful edge.

Based on actual experiences and presented in partnership with Urban Pathways and Community Access, Addressless deals with unfairness and injustice in a way that will make you feel both helpless and furious. At the beginning of the presentation, Beaver says, “I am not an actor. Wish me luck; I’m gonna need it.” She avails herself well as our host, sharing important statistics about homelessness that are likely to surprise you. But like DaBaron, she believes changes can and will be made. As Wallace points out in one vignette, sometimes he just wants to feel “a part of the world again. Like I was fittin’ right in.” But all choices have consequences when you’re without an address.

[To find out more, you can join a virtual community conversation, “Addressing the Addressless,” on February 8 at 5:00; admission is free with advance RSVP.]

BALLETS WITH A TWIST: MIRAGE

Double Vision is one of several new works being previewed in Ballets with a Twist watch parties

Who: Ballets with a Twist
What: Virtual watch parties for short-film series
Where: Twist Theater online
When: Friday, January 21, 8:00 & 10:00; Saturday, January 22, 2:00, 8:00 & 10:00, free
Why: Tribeca-based Ballets with a Twist has been offering a unique twist on ballet for more than twenty-five years. The company’s short works are all named for and inspired by potent potables, performed together as Cocktail Hour: The Show. Among the pieces that combine drama, humor, mystery, and romance are Absinthe, Grappa, Martini, Zombie, Champagne, Boilermaker, Cuba Libre, and Hot Toddy.

Because of the pandemic lockdown and the continuing spread of various variants, the troupe, founded in 1996 by artistic director and choreographer Marilyn Klaus, has moved outdoors for its latest presentation, Mirage, a four-part suite being livestreamed for free on January 21-22 at 8:00 and 10:00, with an additional matinee viewing on Saturday at 2:00. The short film was directed, photographed, and edited by Emma Huibregtse, with choreography by Klaus, original music by Stephen Gaboury, and costumes by designer Catherine Zehr.

In Ranch Water, Dorothea Garland struts with a top hat on the troupe’s roof. In La Paloma, Garland glories across an old airstrip in Brooklyn, almost floating away in colorful costumes. In Smooth Criminal, Andres Neira channels Michael Jackson at the historic Queens Unisphere. And in Double Vision, real-life partners Claire Mazza and Alejandro Ulloa promenade at a masked ball on the steps of an abandoned castle in Harlem.

After the performances, members of the cast and crew in the studio discuss their process, including Klaus, Gaboury, Zehr, Jennifer Buonamia, Mackenzie Frey, Tori Hey, Margaret Hoshor, Amy Gilson, and Haley Neisser. Mirage is a mere aperitif for the upcoming stage version to be held later this year, which will also feature animated projections by Huibregtse and lighting by Dan Hansell. So grab your cocktail of choice, settle in, and join one of the watch parties taking place this weekend.

THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

Cecily Strong makes her New York stage debut in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (photo by Kate Glicksberg for the Shed)

THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
Griffin Theater at the Shed, the Bloomberg Building
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 6, $49-129
646-455-3494
theshed.org

Covid-19 has changed the way we experience live theater. Simply lining up to get in, theatergoers run into different rules at different venues, some more invasive and slow going than others.

So when I whisked right into the Shed’s Griffin Theater to see Cecily Strong in a revival of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, I was initially disappointed to see so many empty seats fairly close to curtain time. I couldn’t help but wonder if people were staying away because of the omicron variant, because they were waiting for the reviews to come out, because Strong was not a big enough theatrical name (which I doubted), or because there had been some kind of bad word of mouth that hadn’t made it my way.

Fortunately, I was wrong in all cases, as the crowd streamed in to nearly fill the place. The opening lines of the play recognize the integral relationship between performer and audience as Strong, as the unnamed star of the show, says, “Thank you all for coming tonight. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you here. There’s always the chance that you might not show up. I think most actors worry about playing to an empty house. I also worry about playing to a full house and leaving the audience empty.”

The audience is not left empty in the ninety-minute one-woman show, written by Jane Wagner specifically for her partner, Lily Tomlin. It was first seen on Broadway in 1985 at the Plymouth, earning Tomlin a Tony; it was turned into a film in 1991 and revived at the Booth in 2000. All along, Wagner has been tweaking the script; the 2022 edition features new quips about the climate crisis, cybersex, Elon Musk, and GPS, but its focus on fear, false hopes, and interconnectedness as humanity tries to find meaning in its everyday existence is still front and center.

Strong portrays eleven characters, going through small wardrobe changes — Anita Yavich’s costumes include a rainbow umbrella hat, an overcoat laden inside with post-it notes, and various other minor touches — as she moves back and forth on a ratty stage occupied by a cart of neverending acquired objects. (The set is by Christine Jones and Mary Hamrick, with lighting by Stacey Derosier, sound and music by Elisheba Ittoop, and choreography by James Alsop.)

Cecily Strong embodies eleven characters in one-woman show (photo by Kate Glicksberg for the Shed)

Our guide is Trudy, a homeless woman, now squatting in the theater — Strong wears a black Shed T-shirt under all her outfits — who formerly was a successful corporate designer and creative consultant but now wanders the streets of New York City conversing with alien creatures, helping them collect data.

“Those shock treatments seemed to give me new electrical circuitry,” Trudy explains. “I get like these time-space continuum shifts. My brain is so far beyond, it’s staggering. Suddenly it was like my central nervous system had a patio addition out back. Not only do I have a linkup to extraterrestrial channels, I also got a hookup to humanity as a whole.” These shifts, in which Strong becomes other characters, are accompanied by a flash of light and crash of sound.

Agnus Angst is a fourteen-year-old punk performance artist and “new bio-form” with a negative attitude whose parents have locked her out of the house. (“We are all micro-SPECKS on SPECK-ship Earth.”) Chrissy is a seminar hopper looking for a job and self-awareness while thinking about suicide. (“Whooo! I got fired from that telemarketing place. No, they gave me no notice at all . . . just . . . warnings.”)

Kate is a gossipy, bored woman who has uneven hair and has lost the tip of a finger in a cooking class accident. (“I am sick of being the victim of trends I reflect but don’t even understand.”) Paul is a divorced father and sperm donor who is feeling burned out. (“What’s the point of being a hedonist if you’re not having a good time?”)

Brandy and Tina are street prostitutes who get picked up by a writer who wants to talk to them for research. (“You’re the second guy this month wants to take out trade in this fashion. Last one ended up wanting my life history and a blowjob,” Brandy says. Tina adds: “I got news, what’s between her legs is her life history.”)

Lyn, Marge, and Edie are suburban friends evaluating their status, particularly as women. (Lyn: “I worry sometimes, maybe Bob has gotten too much in touch with his feminine side. Last night, I’m pretty sure he faked an orgasm.” Edie: “I look at myself . . . I don’t see any flaws.” Marge: “I’ve discovered a great medical cure for sobriety — alcoholism!”)

The homeless, endearing Trudy leads the search for signs of intelligent life with the help of unseen aliens (photo by Kate Glicksberg for the Shed)

In her New York theatrical debut, Strong, the ten-year SNL vet who also starred in the Apple TV musical parody series Schmigadoon!, eases right into the role made famous by Tomlin. Having seen the original Broadway production, I at first couldn’t stop thinking about whether two-time Emmy nominee Strong, whose August 2021 memoir, This Will All Be Over Soon, dealt with personal loss and the pandemic, was living up to Tomlin’s legend, but it wasn’t long before I was sucked into the characters, forgetting about both Strong and Tomlin. Strong makes the role her own, which is the strongest kind of praise one could give; she’s immensely likable, warm and friendly, and, very, very funny.

It was director Leigh Silverman’s idea to revive the work at the Shed as the lockdown was lifted, and she chose Strong after watching her portray Fox News host Jeanine Pirro jumping into a glass box of wine on Weekend Update last May. Silverman has helmed such Broadway plays as Grand Horizons and The Lifespan of a Fact in addition to the off-Broadway solo shows Harry Clarke and On the Exhale, and that experience keeps Signs energetic and exciting.

Whenever suicide was mentioned, I found it hard not to think about the Vessel, the twisting structure outside the Shed from which four people have jumped to their death since February 2020. Harsh reality is always right around the corner. Some of the New Agey feminist banter feels a bit dusty, but it always picks itself up in the hands of Strong, an improv specialist who just might be having even more fun than we are. What might feel like randomness at times all comes together by the end in surprising ways, emphasizing the interdependence of humanity. Wagner (Appearing Nitely, J.T.) and Tony, Grammy, and Emmy winner Tomlin (Nashville, Grace and Frankie) have given their blessing to this revival — they are serving as executive producers — and their faith has been rewarded, as has ours. As Trudy tells us, giving each of our lives meaning, “The good news is: In the future, they are still making plans for the future.”