twi-ny recommended events

JULIAN SCHNABEL: SELF-PORTRAITS OF OTHERS

Julian Schnabel, Numbers 3, 2, 1 (Van Gogh Self-Portrait, Musee d’Orsay, Willem), oil, plates, and Bondo on wood, 2019 (photo courtesy the Brant Foundation)

JULIAN SCHNABEL: SELF-PORTRAITS OF OTHERS
The Brant Foundation
421 East Sixth St.
Through December 30, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 or 7:00 pm
www.pacegallery.com
www.brantfoundation.org

“I have always thought anything could be a model for a painting: someone else’s painting, your own painting, a smudge of dirt,” artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel explains about his current exhibition, “Self-Portraits of Others,” continuing at the Brant Foundation through December 30. The show was inspired by his discovery, while directing the 2018 Vincent van Gogh biopic At Eternity’s Gate, which starred Willem Dafoe as the Impressionist during the last years of his life in Arles, that van Gogh made different versions of his own works. “I thought I would be in concert with him if I turned the props I had made of Willem for the film into a real painting of mine. Once I embarked on that, I realized I needed to make not one painting of Willem as Vincent, but three, and then I needed in turn to make three of Vincent as Vincent. So, I made not only a painting of my painting but had to make a painting of Vincent’s painting too!” Schnabel adds.

The result is a collection of twenty-five works, made of oil paint, broken plates, and the adhesive Bondo, spread over several floors in which Schnabel depicts Dafoe as Vincent, Vincent as Vincent, Frida Kahlo as Frida Kahlo, his son Cy as Caravaggio as the head of Goliath (David with the Head of Goliath), actor Oscar Isaac as a self-portrait of Caravaggio, Cy as a self-portrait of Velazquez, and, finally, Cy as Titian’s portrait of Jesus.

While it is only possible to capture the overall impact of the painting from a distance, especially when viewed through a camera, up-close inspection reveals the remarkable lengths Schnabel went to in order to create the (self) portraits, meticulously and painstakingly painting over the broken plates, a process he has used since the late 1970s and includes a series of portraits of industrialist and magazine publisher Peter Brant and his children in 2011. The show combines art history with pop culture by a visual artist who has built a film career writing and directing works about other artists: painter and musician Jean-Michel Basquiat (Basquiat), author Reinaldo Arenas (Before Night Falls), French writer Jean-Dominique Bauby (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and musician Lou Reed (Lou Reed’s Berlin) in addition to van Gogh.

COMPANY

Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) is not exactly thrilled about turning thirty-five in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)

COMPANY
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 31, $59 – $299
companymusical.com

Originally slated to open on Broadway on March 22, 2020 — Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday — Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of composer and lyricist Sondheim and book writer George Furth’s beloved Company finally arrives at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, two weeks after Sondheim’s sad, sudden passing just as we all could use, er, a little company. Having never seen the iconic musical before — it debuted on Broadway in 1970 and was revived in 1995 and 2006 — I cannot compare it to any of those editions or focus on the well-publicized changes to this new version, primarily involving several gender switches, most importantly to the main character, who has gone from Bobby the man to Bobbie the woman. But what I can report is that Elliott’s inventive adaptation has a fine first act and an utterly spectacular second.

Bobbie, played with a nagging trepidation by Katrina Lenk, is turning thirty-five and none too happy about it. After receiving a flurry of birthday messages, she says, “How many times do you get to be thirty-five? Eleven? Okay, come on. Say it and get it over with. It’s embarrassing. Quick. I can’t stand it.”

Harry (Christopher Sieber) and Sarah (Jennifer Simard) battle as Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) and Joanne (Patti LuPone) look on in Sondheim-Furth revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Bobbie is tired of being the third wheel. She puts a mylar “35” balloon on her wall and it ticks like a biological clock. Her married and engaged friends, some with kids, attempt to entertain her but they have their own lives away from her. She is spending more and more time with bottles of Maker’s Mark to try to make her forget her loneliness. She’s attracted to a dimwitted flight attendant, Andy (Claybourne Elder), who doesn’t exactly fulfill her needs.

She visits with Sarah (Jennifer Simard) and Harry (Christopher Sieber), who get into a riotous jiu-jitsu battle; Susan (Rashidra Scott) and Peter (Greg Hildreth), who, on their terrace, announce they’re getting divorced; Jenny (Nikki Renée Daniels) and David (Christopher Fitzgerald), who get high and discuss Bobbie’s possible fear of being hitched (“It’s not like I’m avoiding marriage. It’s avoiding me, if anything. I’m ready,” she insists); Jamie (Matt Doyle) and Paul (Etai Benson), who are getting married but Jamie is suddenly having doubts; her former lover Theo (Manu Narayan), who has made the kind of important decision Bobbie is unable to; her friend P.J. (Bobby Conte Thornton), who is in love with New York itself; and the older Joanne (Patti LuPone) and her third husband, Larry (Terence Archie), who party at a nightclub. “The phone is a phenomenon. Really. The best way for two people to be connected and detached at the same time,” Bobbie says. Joanne responds, “Second only to marriage.”

The story goes back and forth in time — the script explains, “The narrative is conveyed in a stream of consciousness technique and time moves both backwards and forwards, encompassing the past, present and future” — as Bobbie contemplates the state of her existence as she turns thirty-five, alone in the big city. “One’s impossible, two is dreary, / Three is company, safe and cheery,” she tries to convince herself. “Here is the church, / Here is the steeple, / Open the doors and / See all the crazy, married people!”

Friends gather to celebrate Bobbie’s (Katrina Lenk) birthday in Company (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Two-time Tony winner Elliott (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Angels in America) has reconceptualized Company in ways that go beyond mere gender switching and diverse casting; this Company emphasizes individuality, confinement, isolation, and fear through magnificent staging constructed around Bunny Christie’s ingenious set; much of the action takes place in and around claustrophobic rectangular spaces framed by fluorescent lights. (The lighting is by Neil Austin.) Bobbie, wearing a sensational sexy red pantsuit (Christie also designed the costumes), is trapped physically and psychologically in each scenario, from a tiny room in her apartment to the club to a street where every door is numbered “35.” Turning thirty-five and still being single is a nightmare that follows her wherever she goes.

Bobbie’s friends represent parts of herself as well as a potential companion. “Someone is waiting, / Sweet as David, / Funny and charming as Peter. Larry . . . / Someone is waiting, / Cute as Jamie, / Sassy as Harry / And tender as Paul,” she sings in “Being Alive,” adding, “Did I know him? Have I waited too long? / Maybe so, but maybe so has he.”

As portrayed by Tony winner Lenk (The Band’s Visit, Indecent), Bobbie is not after our sympathy or even our compassionate understanding; no mere old maid, she serves as a reminder of the uncertainty and isolation we all experience, whether coupled or not, regardless of how happy we might be. The scene in which Bobbie, in bed with Andy, sees one possible outcome of her life unfold before her is horrifyingly funny, whether you live alone or are married with kids; it’s a tour de force for both Elliott and the ensemble.

Joanne (Patti LuPone) has a bit of important advice for Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) in Broadway revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Two-time Tony winner LuPone (Evita, Gypsy) brings the house down just by saying, “I’d like to propose a toast,” prior to singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” The signature role of Joanne has previously been performed by Elaine Stritch, Debra Monk, Sheila Gish, Lynn Redgrave, and Barbara Walsh, while the roll call of male Bobbys includes Dean Jones, George Chakiris, Larry Kert, Boyd Gaines, Adrian Lester, Raúl Esparza, and Neil Patrick Harris.) The rest of the cast is exemplary as well, with shout-outs to Simard’s brownie-desiring Sarah, two-time Tony nominee Fitzgerald’s puppy-dog-eyed David, and Doyle’s breathlessly fast-paced rendition of “Getting Married Today.”

Liam Steel’s choreography is fun, as are illusions by Chris Fisher. One oddity is that characters often enter and exit the stage through the aisles, which are also frequented by theater staffers holding signs telling the audience to keep their masks on, momentarily diverting our attention while also reminding us of the situation we’re still in.

David Cullen’s orchestrations honor Sondheim’s complex melodies, performed by a fourteen-piece band conducted by Joel Fram that hovers above the stage. The second act explodes with an electrifying “Side by Side by Side” and never lets up through Bobbie’s closing soliloquy, “Being Alive,” an able metaphor for what we all need right now. Winner of three Olivier Awards — for Set Design (Christie), Supporting Actress in a Musical (LuPone), and Musical Revival — Company is more than just grand company in these troubled times, when we can all benefit from being together once again.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS: THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Carrie Mae Weems’s “The Shape of Things” continues at the armory through December 31 (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography/Park Avenue Armory)

THE SHAPE OF THINGS
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 31, $18
www.armoryonpark.org
carriemaeweems.net

“How do we measure a life?” Carrie Mae Weems asks in her multichannel installation Cyclorama — Conditions, a Video in 7 Parts, the centerpiece of her Park Ave. Armory presentation “The Shape of Things.” Over footage of several women and one man, she asks, “Do we measure it by the forgotten / or by the remembered / by all the near misses and the exhaustion / or by the ability to endure / how / do we measure it by race / by class / by gender / by beauty / and by your lover’s love or your hater’s hate / or by pushing against the wind / against the tide / against family / against tradition / how / or do we measure it by the suffering of our friends and our enemies alike / or by the beginning / or by the end / by the way we confront life / or by the way we confront death?”

“The Shape of Things” is a masterful multidisciplinary examination of where we are today as a nation as we face systemic racism, health and income inequality, police brutality, and the perpetuation of the Big Lie. Through the seven sections of Cyclorama, organized in a large circle of screens, Weems mixes archival footage with new material shot in Syracuse, the Flea Theater, and the Watermill Center of such performers as Nona Hendryx, okwui okpokwasili, Vinson Fraley, Francesca Harper, Carl Hancock Rux, Basil Twist, and dozens of others, depicting modern times as a dangerous circus where Black and brown bodies are in constant threat. The final text is adapted from a commencement address Weems, a MacArthur Fellow, gave to the graduating class of SVA in May 2016 at Radio City Music Hall.

In front of Cyclorama is Seat or Stand and Speak, where attendees can sit in a chair or stand on a box and shout into megaphones. All Blue — A Contemplative Site is a dark space with a few steps leading to a door that opens to the moon and stars, a place of reflection, meditation, and hope. Across the way is Lincoln, Lonnie and Me, a 2012-14 work about presence and absence that is like a “Pepper’s Ghost” carnival sideshow with minstrel elements. Visitors enter an enclosed area bathed in red and stand behind a velvet rope, watching holographic-like projections of ghostly characters as we hear Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”; Weems reads a revised version of the Gettysburg Address; visual artist and activist Lonnie Graham speaks on social change; excerpts from Weems’s 2008 video Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment play, including a reenactment of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; and Weems dresses up as a Playboy bunny to Urge Overkill’s cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.”

The long side gallery features a row of several dioramas paying tribute to victims of racism, from It’s Over — A Diorama, consisting of a swan, candles, balloons, a globe, a fallen column, and photographs, to framed portraits from Weems’s “Missing Links” series from The Louisiana Project, in which she dresses up as various animals in suits, with such titles as “Happiness” and “Despair,” to The Weight, a diorama with three pink helium globes rising out of sculptures of African women’s heads, balancing the tenuous world. Also be on the lookout for a painting of Minerva, shown as a Black goddess, hanging in the hall among the portraits of white military heroes.

From December 9 to 11, dozens of performers activated the space, with live music and dance, film screenings, and panel discussions. But you don’t need others to help you activate the space for yourself as Weems places us firmly in the past, present, and future of an America that is getting more and more difficult to measure every day.

WITNESS

Lauren Elias, Anna Gottlieb, Gene Ravvin, and Nathan Malin discuss antisemitism while on board the virtual MS St. Louis in Witness

WITNESS
Arlekin Players Theatre
Livestreamed select days through January 23, $25
www.arlekinplayers.com/witness

It’s been three quarters of a century since the Holocaust ended, so there are fewer and fewer survivors and witnesses alive to tell the true stories of what happened in the camps of Eastern Europe during WWII. Meanwhile, antisemitism continues to surge around the world amid Holocaust deniers and politicians who misuse and abuse the horror for soundbites and social media memes. Arlekin Players Theatre investigates these issues in its latest interactive online show, Witness. An immersive work that explores antisemitism and desperate migration, the play relates the fate of the MS St. Louis, the German ship that carried more than nine hundred Jewish refugees in May 1939, to the problems of today.

The luxury liner was transporting men, women, and children fleeing the approaching Holocaust, but the ship was turned away by Cuba, Canada, and the United States. Conceived and directed by Arlekin founder and Russian Jewish immigrant Igor Golyak and written by Moscow-based Nana Grinstein with Blair Cadden and Golyak, Witness puts the audience on board the St. Louis, where it begins with a talent show that is based on actual events.

The emcee (Gene Ravvin) believes he is in the present, in a green-screen studio, as he introduces the parade of performers: Liesl Joseph (Esther Golyak) and Gisela Klepl (Elizabeth Sarytchev), who perform “Skating on Glass!” as older versions of themselves (Rimma Gluzman and Polina Vikova) recall Kristallnacht in voice-over; Fritz Buff (Alex Petetsky), who constructs a house of cards and anticipates “joyful days” ahead; Fira (Julia Shikh), who boils a book banned in the USSR; a magician named Marik (Misha Tyutyunik) and his assistant (Jenya Brodskaia); and superheroes Anna (Anna Furman), Olga (Olga Aronova), and Vika (Vika Kovalenko), who call themselves the Elusive Avengers. The audience at home votes on each performance and gains points as they participate.

During each skit, the audience can click on pop-ups to learn more about the contestants, all of whom were real, as well as the actors portraying them. Short biographical sketches include their immigration status and, in the case of the passengers, their fate after the ship was refused entry to America. News crawls onscreen range from the 1930s to the 1990s, which initially confuse the emcee until he figures out what is going on. “The good news is that not only those Jews who left Hamburg in 1939 are sailing with us but also all the Jews that left anywhere are also here,” he explains. “First wave, second wave, third wave. A whole ocean of waves. From USSR, from Germany, from Spain, from Hungary. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, and always. We are all together, ladies and gentlemen. We’re all together. If there is a place to leave, the Jews will find a way.”

After the talent show, the emcee walks through a long, narrow hallway on the ship, encountering people discussing antisemitism, assimilation, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, dual loyalty, and Israel’s right to exist and defend itself as well as frightening vignettes occurring in some of the cabins. Every word of dialogue is based on interviews Golyak conducted with nearly a hundred people; the narrative is smartly organized to avoid clichés, stereotypical rhetoric, and didactic moralizing.

“So basically what they are is Jews who think if we just bend over a little more, if we just assimilate a little bit better than we did in Germany, that somehow miraculously everything will be different than it was in Germany,” Leah (Lauren Elias) says. “And it’s not going to be. I mean, come on. It feels like the only acceptable party line for Israeli people and Jewish people right now is like, ‘Oh my god. We’re sorry we didn’t all die in World War Two. We know that would have been so much easier for you. We are so sorry for the inconvenience.’”

Joseph (Nathan Malin), talking with Leah and Rachel (Anne Gottlieb) about the public reaction to the real-life stabbing of an Orthodox rabbi in Brighton, admits, “Unless you want to tar yourself as unwanted and as a bad person, you keep your mouth shut and you just duck your head, you know?”

Camera operator Austin de Besche films some of the cast during the making of Witness

Lady Liberty (Darya Denisova) occasionally appears to share her thoughts as the emcee repeats, “This can’t happen here. This can’t happen here!” Leah responds, “No, no, no, it can. And it does.”

Arlekin, which has previously dazzled viewers with the one-woman State vs. Natasha Banina and the daring hybrid chekhovOS /an experimental game/ (featuring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov), a pair of livestreamed interactive shows that pushed the boundaries of online productions, again breaks new ground through its Zero Gravity (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab with Witness. Set designer and costumer Anna Fedorova, virtual designer Daniel Cormino, sound designer Viktor Semenov, and director of photography and editor Anton Nikolaev make it feel like it’s all taking place on board the St. Louis, with rolling waves and flying birds outside as the ocean liner heads toward its supposed destination.

During the talent show, the audience on the ship looks like ghosts, which in essence is what they are today. At one point, the screen goes dark for several minutes as binaural recordings play through your headphones, as if you’re a passenger, not knowing what’s coming next, or from where. It sent chills through my bones.

As always with Arlekin’s works, each presentation is followed by a talkback in which members of the cast and crew delve into the making of the work, although Golyak is careful not to give away too many secrets. Some of the discussions include experts on antisemitism and the Holocaust, and the audience is encouraged to share experiences in the lively chat. The night I saw Witness, numerous people (including me) described instances of antisemitism they have encountered. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, it is noted, “Bearing witness, so they will know, until the last generation.” A compelling and necessary piece of sociopolitical documentary theater, Witness reminds us all just how important that is.

CANDACE BUSHNELL: IS THERE STILL SEX IN THE CITY?

Candace Bushnell holds nothing back in charming journey through her life and career (photo by Joan Marcus)

IS THERE STILL SEX IN THE CITY?
Daryl Roth Theatre
101 East Fifteenth St. at Union Square
Tuesday – Sunday through February 6, $69 [ed. note: show closed December 19 due to Covid]
istherestillsexinthecity.com
www.darylroththeatre.com

“Good news only” is how Candace Bushnell always answers the phone in her one-woman show, Is There Still Sex in the City? Good news only it will be.

The ninety-minute play is an endearing, self-aware production in which Bushnell, now sixty-three, shares intimate details of her life and career, centering around the gargantuan success she has had with the creation of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), the fictional characters on the HBO smash Sex and the City, based on her series of columns and 1996 book of the same name. The play might be timed to capitalize on the return of Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda in the brand-new follow-up, And Just Like That . . . ,” but Is There Still Sex in the City? stands on its own as an entertaining, appropriately gossipy public confessional from a writer who changed the way the country looked at the lifestyles of women of all ages, sexual and otherwise.

Bushnell, who prefers to be known as Candi (“with a little circle where the dot goes”), leads us from her childhood in Connecticut, where her father pitied her because she was flat-chested — “I’m afraid no man is ever going to love you,” he warns — to her freshman-year flight to New York City when she was nineteen, determined to abandon college and become a writer and win the Pulitzer Prize.

At first she relates, “This New York is not my boyfriend. Pimps stalk Penn Station looking for runaways. Heroin addicts are nodding out on the streets. There’s three card monte, pickpockets, boomboxes, and Hare Krishna parades. It’s dirty. There’s no pooper scooper law, and there’s dog poop everywhere.” But it isn’t long before she is hanging out with the rich and famous, partying at Studio 54, jetting off to Europe, reveling in the abundant sex and drugs — and eventually telling everybody about it, first as Stripe Savage, writing such pieces as “How to Act in a Disco,” then under her real name in a must-read column for the New York Observer.

Candace Bushnell answers the question Is There Still Sex in the City? in one-woman show (photo by Joan Marcus)

“This New York is my boyfriend,” she says later. “Who needs a man when Manhattan itself is abuzz? Maybe it’s the cosmos. Maybe it’s the cocaine.” Her bestselling book, Sex and the City, becomes a hot HBO show, but that doesn’t necessarily result in personal fulfillment as her relationships with Melrose Place creator Darren Star, a much older famous writer, the unnamed actual Mr. Big, and others ultimately fizzle. But she learns to take matters into her own hands as she shares what she is doing today, which is a long jump from where she thought she would be — while still working toward that Pulitzer.

Directed by choreographer Lorin Lotarro (A Taste of Things to Come) with a spicy sweet sense of humor, Is There Still Sex in the City? answers many of the questions people have about Bushnell and her life. It features popular period songs by Sheryl Crow, Cyndi Lauper, Donna Summer, MC Hammer, and Right Said Fred, a parade of fantastic outfits courtesy of costume designer Lisa Zinni, an adorable set by Anna Louizos with an elegant royal couch, a monitor with projections (old photos, TV clips, animation) by Caite Hevner, and stacks of cubes with books, knickknacks, and shoes — lots and lots of shoes, all of which, Bushnell admits, are from her own closet — colorfully lit by Travis McHale.

Bushnell occasionally plays “Real or Not Real,” asking the audience to call out their responses to such questions as “Did I sleep with the hot Calvin Klein underwear model from episode 2?” She doesn’t mind receiving random hoots and hollers and shouts of support, particularly as she reveals her ten life lessons, the first of which is: “I’m a feminist. A mini Gloria Steinem. Have been ever since kindergarten, where I discovered women could only have four jobs: nurse, teacher, secretary, or librarian.”

Bushnell is so warm and gracious that you will forgive a missed line reading here and there, and the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square is far too big for such an intimate production. But Is There Still Sex in the City? is a fab treat, a funny and candid New York story that everyone can relate to in one way or another, whether you are a fan of Sex and the City or have never watched or read it. And before or after the show, you can enjoy a cosmo in the downstairs Candi Bar. Like Bushnell says, “Good news only!”

[ed. note: The good news only went so far, as the show had to close on December 19 after Bushnell contracted Covid-19. The plan is for it to eventually return to New York City when the tour gets up and running again.]

THE FIFTH SEASON

Fifth Ave. celebrates the season with holiday sculptures on midtown sidewalks (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Men Singing Carols
What: Free performance for National Caroling Day
Where: The Pulitzer Fountain, 764 Central Park South, across from the Plaza Hotel at Fifth Ave.
When: Monday, December 20, free, 4:00
Why: As part of the Fifth Avenue Association’s “Fifth Season” celebration, Men Singing Carols will perform for free in front of the Pulitzer Fountain by the Plaza Hotel at 4:00 on National Caroling Day, Monday, December 20.

Fifth Ave. sculptures accept donations for City Harvest (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Queens-based a cappella group, founded in 2013 by husband and wife Greg Kefalas and Jen Arvay Kefalas along with Doug Cordes, features bass Kefalas, tenor II Jeffrey Funaro, tenor II Nick Prior, bass Patrick Martini, and bass Seth Bleecker, singing jazz-inflected holiday favorites, nonstandards, and mashups.

A little girl prepares to go for a ride on Fifth Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The fountain, designed by Thomas Hastings in 1916 and topped by Karl Bitter’s Pomona, has been transformed into a winter oasis, featuring five thousand feet of lighting, thirty-two animal sculptures handcrafted in Brooklyn from Harlequin Designs, two dozen icebergs, and more, with polar bears, penguins, a snow monkey, a snow leopard, and other animals moving around to music by Paul Brill.

A dreidel spins along Fifth Ave. as part of holiday display (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Fifth Season” continues on Fifth Ave. with lit-up sculptures of toys, a Santa mailbox, a dreidel, a hot-air balloon, and a truck shuttling presents through which visitors are encourage to make donations to City Harvest.

THE STREETS OF NEW YORK

Irish Rep revival of The Streets of New York shines a light on greed, poverty, and the power of love (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE STREETS OF NEW YORK
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 30, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

As the pandemic lockdown lifted and the city opened back up, Irish Rep artistic director Charlotte Moore decided to revisit the company’s 2002 hit, The Streets of New York. “In this time of Covid, I was sure it would be appropriate to rewrite my original director’s note,” Moore explains in the program. “But upon rereading the original, so many things are exactly the same that I have changed my mind. There is still great poverty and hunger, and the heartbreak of lost love never changes. Add to that a worldwide pandemic and a masked society and Boucicault’s eighteenth-century world seems to fit right into our twenty-first with its darkness and restrictions.”

Moore adapted Dublin-born Dion Boucicault’s 1857 play The Poor of New York, itself based on Édouard Louis Alexandre Brisebarre’s Les Pauvres de Paris, adding more than a dozen songs to the Dickensian tale of greed and hardship. The result is a delightful, indelible tale that feels just right for this moment in time, one that I can envision becoming an annual holiday tradition.

The show begins on the eve of the Panic of 1837, which led to an economic depression. “The poor man’s home is a filthy street / You sell your shoes for a scrap of meat,” a man sings. An older couple adds, “The violence of poverty breeds everywhere / And a cloud of injustice hangs in the air/ And till it clears / It could be years / But till it clears / We must survive / And stay alive / On these unholy, shadowy, crime ridden, black hearted, / Blood sodden, filthy, mean / Streets of New York!”

Wealthy banker Gideon Bloodgood (David Hess) is preparing to abscond with his Nassau St. bank’s money when sea captain Patrick Fairweather (Daniel J. Maldonado) arrives after hours to entrust Bloodgood with his life savings before going on a voyage, seeking the banker’s protection of the financial security of his wife and two children. Fairweather departs but returns moments later, changing his mind and demanding his fortune back. But the greedy Bloodgood is not about to surrender his newfound gains, and when Fairweather suddenly drops dead, Bloodgood decides to dump the body and keep the money — but not before one of his clerks, Brendan Badger (Justin Keyes), grabs the signed deposit receipt, hiding it away for a rainy day.

The Puffy family (Polly McKie, Richard Henry, and Jordan Tyson) find a way to smile amid their drudgery in The Streets of New York (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Twenty years later, Bloodgood, accompanied by his ever-faithful butler, Edwards (Price Waldman), is basking in his vast success, built on the cash he stole from Fairweather. While Bloodgood is looking for a suitable husband for his spoiled daughter, Alida (Amanda Jane Cooper), Fairweather’s children, Lucy (DeLaney Westfall) and Paul (Ryan Vona), and widow, Susan (Amy Bodnar), are living in abject poverty in the dangerous area of New York City known as Five Points. Their poor but goodhearted landlord, Dermot Puffy (Richard Henry), has fallen behind on his mortgage payments, so the heartless Bloodgood threatens to evict Puffy, his wife, Dolly (Polly McKie), and their daughter, Dixie (Jordan Tyson), which would leave the Fairweathers homeless as well.

The Fairweathers hope to be saved by Lucy’s childhood love, Mark Livingstone (Ben Jacoby), scion of a well-heeled, prosperous society family, while Alida plots to marry Mark herself to restore the Bloodgood name to respectability even as she fools around with the philandering Duke Vlad (Maldonado). Like her father, it’s only money and appearances that matter. “Isn’t it wonderful to be in control / Who cares if Daddy has to sell his soul / To keep me in accoutrements / To keep me in the things I want / To keep me happy,” Alida selfishly admits. “Allowed to be horrid and rude to everyone / A sense of entitlement is so much fun / I ride whilst poorer people walk, (with a frown) or run! / Oh! How I love being rich!”

As Christmas approaches, some are destined to be showered with yet more wealth while others seem bound for anonymity, struggling to survive day by day in the perilous gutters of an uncaring metropolis. The very best kind of mustache-twirling melodrama ensues as the plot leaps and twists to its conclusion.

Robber baron Gideon Bloodgood (David Hess) and his obnoxious daughter (Amanda Jane Cooper) boss around their butler (Price Waldman) in The Streets of New York (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Moore, who with Irish Rep producing director Ciarán O’Reilly created some of the most compelling and innovative online shows during the pandemic, goes back to the basics with The Streets of New York. Linda Fisher’s period costumes feel authentic, and Hugh Landwehr’s set, covered with giant bills and help wanted ads, is centered by a large wall that the actors and masked staff members move around, magically morphing into the Bloodgoods’ opulent home and office as well as doomed tenements in Five Points.

The five-piece orchestra is partially visible offstage right, consisting of Melanie Mason on cello, Jeremy Clayton on woodwinds, Karen Lindquist on harp, Sean Murphy on bass, and Joel Lambdin on violin, performing lovely orchestrations by music director Mark Hartman and associate conductor Yasuhiko Fukuoka.

Two-time Tony nominee Moore, who previously directed Boucicault’s London Assurance in addition to plays by O’Casey, Yeats, Friel, and Synge and such musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis and Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward, gives ample room for the material, which often evokes operetta, to breathe on the cramped stage, the two and a half hours (with intermission) never slowing down for a minute. Moore’s lyrics do what they’re supposed to, help develop the narrative and give depth to the characters; nary a word is extraneous. Barry McNabb’s choreography shines in the vaudevillian duet “Villains,” a riotous showstopper featuring Hess and Keyes. Cooper brings down the house in her engaging solo, “Oh, How I Love Being Rich,” her obnoxious coquettishness channeling Bernadette Peters and Kristen Chenoweth. (She’s worked onstage with Chenoweth several times.) Hess stands out as the scoundrel Bloodgood, reveling in his egomaniacal affairs, while Jacoby is heart-wrenching as a man who just wants to do the right thing but is thwarted at every turn.

Still caught up in a pandemic and social justice movement that have magnified the sorry state of income inequality in America, The Streets of New York doesn’t feel old-fashioned as much as fresh and prescient. We all want a “taste of the good life,” as the Puffys explain, but it’s not always within reach. However, the power of love — and a delightful musical — has the ability to transcend suffering and bring light to lead us out