twi-ny recommended events

A CURE FOR WHAT AILS YOU: A POISONOUS GIULIA AT PAC NYC

Jennifer Nettles wrote the book, music and lyrics for Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo and stars as the title character (photo by Andy Henderson)

GIULIA: THE POISON QUEEN OF PALERMO
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 2, $88-$226
pacnyc.org

Jennifer Nettles’s Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo is a cleverly staged, rousing feminist fantasia about shame and sin, hypocrisy and justice, faith and grrl power. It’s a tasty concoction filled with fantastic period costumes and a beguiling set, playful choreography and soaring orchestrations, and far too many clichés and anachronisms; it will need significant work before achieving its Broadway aspirations, but in the meantime it is thrilling audiences at PAC NYC through August 2.

Nettles, a multiple Grammy and Country Music Association award winner, is a singer-songwriter, actress, and producer who has released such solo records as That Girl and a half-dozen albums as part of the duo Sugarland, starred on Broadway in Waitress and Chicago, and has appeared in such streaming series as The Righteous Gemstones and The Bondsman in addition to two Dolly Parton television biopics. Inspired by the story of seventeenth-century Italian apothecary and cosmetician Giulia Tofana, Nettles wrote the book, music, and lyrics for the show and takes on the title role. Not many details are known about the real-life Giulia, who might have been the world’s first female serial killer; regardless, she’s the center of a legitimate crowd pleaser.

It’s 1653, and Giulia runs an apothecary with her young daughter, Vitoria (Naomi Serrano), now that her former employee, Renata (Aubrey Matalon), is engaged to one of the Gambino twins. Giulia’s second husband, the wayward, unemployed drunkard Carlo (Matthew Amira), is incensed that Vitoria is now working and decides he has other plans for her, which sets Giulia in motion, prepared to do anything she can to protect her daughter.

Giulia caters to a wide range of women, including the pregnant Maria (Emily Fink), the Duchessa (Didi Romero), who always gets what she wants, and others who are experiencing various man troubles and marital oppression. They come to Giulia and beg, “Help me, sister.” With a potion brought to her by the mysterious conjurer La Capitana (Bre Jackson), Giulia knows how to cure what ails her customers, and herself.

“There’s a poor parade of women coming in my door / I can tell you what each of them is here for / Sophia comes on Tuesdays / She doesn’t have much time to waste / And it’s the first time Isabell’s been hit / I can tell by the sad look on her face / Angelina knows the hurting on both sides of birthing / And Theresa is so desperate for a baby / She’s just starting a journey,” Giulia sings. “They will come to heal their wounds / They will come to hear the stars / They will come to fill or empty their wombs / Cover their bruises / Mend their broken hearts / All of them come in an hour of need / Looking for a glimmer of hope / And I try but I know / It’s never enough.”

Meanwhile, there is a power struggle going on between the Cardinale (Quentin Earl Darrington), who follows the precepts of the church, and the slimy new Governatore (Christopher M. Ramirez), who is instantly attracted to Vitoria.

As the body count rises, so do Giulia’s chances of getting caught.

Men better watch out in world premiere musical inspired by a somewhat true story (photo by Andy Henderson)

Evoking such films as Kill Bill, Thelma & Louise, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and Black Widow, Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo feels fresh and relevant to what is happening today, particularly in the neverending saga of the Epstein Files. Giulia is a heroic figure, albeit one who wrestles with her conscience.

Daniel Ostling’s gorgeous set features a large staircase stage left and a wall of doors and windows stage right that open up to reveal changing scenery behind them, from the apothecary to a church to a nunnery. Ana Kuzmanić’s end-of-the-Renaissance costumes are a delight, swirling amid Austin McCormick’s appropriately unextravagant choreography. The unseen eight-piece band is conducted by arranger, music director, and keyboardist Adam Rothenberg.

Nettles is magnetic as Giulia; you just can’t get enough of her, even with a probably unnecessary encore number during the curtain call. She practically glows throughout the show, her eyes shining at the audience like she’s wrapping her arms around us. The entire cast is terrific, with a special nod to Sam Simahk as Father Paolo, the only male character with any sense of decency and fairness, up to a point.

Songs such as “What Happens Next?,” “Next Time,” and “Fly Away” are too general; they could fit into many musicals without making any tweaks to the lyrics. “Happily Ever After” veers too close to Fiddler’s “Matchmaker.” Ramirez scores with “Bones,” Darrington’s baritone rattles the theater in “Original Sin,” and the women come together for a sparkling “Power.”

Water streams through the show as a metaphor for life, purification, resilience, and hope in a changing world. “You are the river / You are unstoppable / You’ll flow around every obstruction and break through / Every obstacle / You are as soft and humble as a single drop of rain / Or you can make canyons out of cliffs / With just the power of your rage / They don’t know you / Or the power that flows through. . . . Because water is the only / thing they cannot break,” Giulia sings in “The River,” a song that encapsulates what is both right and wrong about the lively and spirited production as a whole.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ZOUNDS! OTHELLO RECLAIMS HIS TITLE IN HARLEM

Iago (Nick Westrate) embroils Othello (James Udom) in a devious plot in stirring CTH production (photo by Richard Termine)

UPTOWN SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: OTHELLO
Classical Theatre of Harlem
Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Marcus Garvey Park
18 Mt. Morris Park W.
Through July 27, free (advance RSVP recommended), 8:30
www.cthnyc.org

The night I saw the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s stirring adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello, the projections weren’t working, but I found that to be a bonus, as this stripped-down version gave the audience the opportunity to investigate the misogyny and racism that’s inherent in the story, told here with a militaristic edge as well as some unexpected comic relief and sexiness.

Last year, Kenny Leon’s Broadway version of Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal gained more recognition for its ticket prices, which reached $921, than for its quality, earning mixed reviews and zero Tony nominations. However, over the last decade, I’ve seen five other Othellos, each of which shined new light on the classic tragedy of jealousy and deceit without breaking the bank: Sam Gold’s captivating and intense iteration at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, with Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo, and Rachel Brosnahan; Satoshi Miyagi’s hypnotic Mugen Noh Othello at Japan Society in 2018; Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s gripping, emotional Shakespeare in the Park production in 2018; the New Place Players’ immersive, clear, and concise show in 2023; and
Bedlam’s three-hour, four-actor sparer-than-spare work this past spring, celebrating every word.

Continuing at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park through July 27, CTH’s Othello, adroitly directed by Carl Cofield (Memnon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), is trimmed down to a lean 105 minutes on a gray set that resembles the inside of a castle; the characters wear contemporary clothing, linking the past and the present.

Distilled to its essence; the plot zeroes in on Othello (James Udom), a Moor and military hero who has secretly married Desdemona (Isabel Arraiza). Othello’s ensign, Iago (Nick Westrate), furious that he was not promoted to lieutenant, which went to the stalwart Cassio (Orlando Grant) instead, concocts a devious plan to ruin Othello by convincing him that the ever-faithful Desdemona has been cheating on him with Cassio. With Roderigo (Hiram Delgado), who loves Desdemona, in tow, Iago goes to extreme lengths to pull the wool over Othello’s eyes and heart, unwittingly involving his own wife, Emilia (Karen Lugo), Desdemona’s maid; Bianca (Rebecca Pena), Cassio’s lover; Desdemona’s father, Brabantio (Gilbert Cruz), a powerful senator; and others.

Desdemona (Isabel Arraiza) attempts to hold her ground and defend herself in Othello (photo by Richard Termine)

Race is central throughout the play. Speaking to Brabantio early on, Iago tells him, “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!” The Duke of Venice (Collin McConnell) says to Brabantio in Othello’s presence, “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.” While duping Cassio, Iago can’t help but refer to the Moor as “black Othello.” And near the conclusion, Emilia calls him “the blacker devil!” These lines pierced me more than they usually do, in part because they take a more prominent place in this significantly shortened adaptation.

There is also added pungency when Othello strikes Desdemona across the face in front of her cousin Lodovico (McConnell); she responds, “I have not deserved this,” standing tall, not about to back down and just take it. This is indeed a twenty-first-century Desdemona.

Despite the many cuts, the key lines are left intact: “I am not what I am.” “If after every tempest come such calms, / May the winds blow till they have wakened death.” “Reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!” “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.” “Farewell content!” “And think it no addition, nor my wish, / To have him see me womaned.”

However, Bard purists might not like some of the key changes Cofield has employed, including a different, more exciting ending. Zounds!

Westrate (The Wild Duck, A Delicate Ship) is a conniving Iago, filled with vitriol and venom. Arraiza (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar) is one of the strongest, most well defined Desdemonas I’ve ever seen. Recent NYU grad Grant (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, GIRLBOSS) is staunch as the brave but confused Cassio.

But the center of the play is Udom (The Rolling Stone, Mies Julie), who gives a complex, riveting performance. He commands the stage with a building fury; most productions are organized around Iago, but CTH shows why Shakespeare called it Othello, not Iago.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NO MORE KINGS? HUNGRY WOMEN AT SOHO PLAYHOUSE

Melissa Maney’s Hungry Women looks at what happens when all the males in a small town suddenly die (photo by Rebecca J Michelson)

HUNGRY WOMEN
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St. between Varick St. & Sixth Ave.
Thursday – Sunday through August 30, $50-$75.50
www.sohoplayhouse.com
hungrywomenplay.com

Melissa Maney’s Hungry Women makes no bones about where it’s heading well before it starts. First, there is the title, which on the program is accompanied by a grisly image of a woman’s fist squeezing a strawberry, red liquid dripping from the palm. And second, the entrance music includes Dove Cameron’s “Breakfast” (“I eat boys like you for breakfast”), Chloe Moriondo’s “I Eat Boys” (“Yeah, I eat boys and I get them bloody”), and Florence + the Machine’s “Just a Girl,” the theme from the cable series Yellowjackets, in which a high school girls soccer team makes some tough choices in order to survive a plane crash in the mountains and must eventually face the consequences decades later.

Unfortunately, the night I went, the Black Watch Theatre production, which opened this evening at SoHo Playhouse, had some lighting difficulties that became representative of the narrative as a whole.

Hungry Women begins in a small town in Massachusetts in 1890, shortly after all the males have dropped dead in their tracks. Initially, the ladies are hungry for food, as, without men, there are no butchers, no markets, no shops, only, it seems, potatoes. Ruth (Julia Lester), her sister, Mary (Zoe Dean), Eden (Mariyea), and her sister, Victoria (Sophie Zmorrod), have gathered to discuss their growing dilemma. Ruth is prim and proper, believing that women need men, who must be around somewhere else in the country. Mary feels lost, explaining that her husband was her entire world. The more independent-minded Eden is mourning the loss of her sons while trying to feed her daughters. And Victoria, who now wants to be known as Vic, donning some of her husband’s clothing, is ready to move on, apparently thrilled that her husband is now dead. It’s no coincidence that three of the women’s names refer to the Old Testament, while Vic’s comes from the mythical Roman goddess of victory.

“I’m not a sentimental person. Wearing George’s clothes doesn’t make me feel closer to him. They make me feel closer to me,” she tells the audience in a short monologue. “My late husband viewed life as a presentation. If there was a speck of dirt, a utensil askew, a hair astray, uproar would follow. So, when the maid told George I’d been wearing his clothes around the house, his punishment was unyielding. Each time she’d lace up my corset, he’d demand, ‘Tighter. Tighter. Tighter.’ Until my waist became as small as he wanted me to feel. But now, he’s gone. And I’m much more handsome than he ever was.”

When Vic serves the ladies sandwiches and, eventually, admits what they’re made of, the other women are not prepared at first to partake as each of them also gets their moment in the spotlight, delivering revealing mini-speeches addressed directly to the audience. “She may think she holds the power now, but the kings return. They always return,” Ruth says about Vic. Suddenly having sexual thoughts about Vic, Mary admits, “The danger of it all feels oh so delicious.” And Eden, recalling going hunting with her father, proclaims, “I despise motherhood.”

Aside from the spotlights unable to properly shine on the actors during their monologues, which is distracting, the first act works beautifully, setting up an engaging and fascinating premise. But as the action moves to 1991 (“Curious Women”), which takes place in an AP class, and 2091 (“Scared Women”), the story runs off the rails as it explores the whitewashing of history (or herstory), holds an improbable séance, and turns to global surveillance and control.

Be careful what you wish for.

Melissa Maney’s Hungry Women moves from 1890 to 1991 and 2091 (photo by Rebecca J Michelson)

Directed by Daniella Caggiano, Hungry Women promises an exciting and unique feast but ends up serving unsatisfying grub. Jokes fall flat, and portraits of famous women(?) on either side of the stage are impossible to identify.

The always excellent, Tony-nominated Lester (Into the Woods, All Nighter) might have her name above the title, but Zmorrod (The Kite Runner, Odyssey) steals the show as Vic (1890), Valerie (1991), and Violet (2091), the three meatiest roles. Dean (The Trouble with Dead Boyfriends) and Mariyea (Miss Bushwig 2025, On Sugarland) offer strong support even as things descend into the maelstrom.

In one interstitial scene, Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” blasts through the space, reminding me in the end that what was missing was more of a sense of rebellion or revolution. Perhaps that was the point, that women have been too tamed and domesticated by men, unable to grab sex, power, individuality, and independence, but, if so, it makes for a much less tasty and insightful meal.

Maybe I just thought that a world without men would be a lot more fun, at least for a little while.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MELODRAMATIC MOLLUSKS: WET, SALTY CAMP AT THE TANK

Not Keith (Queen-Tiye Akamefula) and Not Charlotte (Annie Hoeg) hide in noirish shadows in What a World! What a World! (photo by Maria Baranova)

WHAT A WORLD! WHAT A WORLD!
The Tank
312 West Thirty-Sixth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through August 2, $28-$53
thetanknyc.org

“Oh, what a world! What a world!” the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) cries out after Dorothy (Judy Garland) accidentally throws water on her while trying to put out the burning scarecrow (Ray Bolger), whom the witch had just set on fire.

Inspired by the 2019 Met Gala, the theme of which was “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” The Wizard of Oz, which has its fair share of camp, and Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp,” playwright Eric Marlin wrote What a World! What a World!, making its world premiere at the Tank through August 2.

“As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated. The androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility,” Sontag writes in the highly influential piece. “What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. . . . Allied to the Camp taste for the androgynous is something that seems quite different but isn’t: a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms.”

What a World! What a World! is a deconstruction of 1940s melodrama — specifically, the fictional 1943 film The Pearl of My Oyster and its two leads, Keith and Charlotte — exploring issues of camp, parody, eroticism, romance, drag, and, mostly, gender and how things have changed, or haven’t, over the last eighty-plus years.

The majority of the sixty-five-minute play takes place on a gray, dank, empty stage where Not Keith (Queen-Tiye Akamefula) and Not Charlotte (Annie Hoeg) re-create scenes from the film using minimal set decoration, primarily microphones and film lights. Their costumes, by Megan Rutherford Murray, start out simple but morph into something more, well, campy, while Skye Mahaffie’s lighting incorporates elements of 1940s cinema, both romance and noir. The actors switch between four pairs of characters: Keith and Charlotte from The Pearl of My Oyster, a drag king and drag queen portraying Keith and Charlotte, a queer couple sitting on the floor commenting on the movie, and a queer couple watching a recording of the drag performance. It’s not always clear who they are at any given moment, resulting in some bumpy transitions.

“Don’t worry about keeping it all straight,” Marlin notes in the script. “Nothing about this should be straight.”

What a World! What a World! explores camp, parody, gender, and more at the Tank (photo by Maria Baranova)

Not Keith and Not Charlotte occasionally break out into experimental movement, discuss love and legacy, and talk about Hollywood stereotyping. “I want to be hideous. I want you to love me hideous. I don’t want you to love me beautiful. Loving me beautiful is easy,” Not Charlotte says. Not Keith channels Humphrey Bogart when he declares, “Now you listen here and you listen good. There are two kinds of dames in this godforsaken world. The kind who plays tricks and the kind who shoots straight. So tell me, which kinda dame are you gonna be?”

They argue over the quality of The Pearl of My Oyster itself, with Not Charlotte calling it “a dumb old movie” and Not Keith arguing that it’s “a fucking epistemology of fabulousness.”

Salt, a mineral used in many religious rituals, and water, which is to sustain life, figure prominently throughout the heart-tugging Oyster narrative, from salty Altoids and Keith’s being a fisherman (but not quite an old salt) to breathing in salty air and drinking salty water, evoking potential doom, though not necessarily like the Wicked Witch of the West faced as she screamed, “I’m melting! Melting!” right before “Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would’ve thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness.” (As a bonus side fact, several of the later books in the Oz series, written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, feature a pirate named Captain Salt.)

In addition, when Not Keith and Not Charlotte are fighting over what camp is, the latter explains, “Without camp the world is so serious, it is wickedly serious. . . . Only with true inanity is there a flicker of joy in the world. I need the flicker.”

What a World! What a World! evokes the work of Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland (A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First, And Then the Rodeo Burned Down) and Emma Horwitz and Bailey Williams (Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods), although it lacks some of the innate cleverness and sociopolitical depth, as well as camp. Not every melodrama can be Casablanca, Imitation of Life, or Magnificent Obsession.

Akamefula (Black Girl Magic Show) and Hoeg (Slow Field) have a playful chemistry, but even at sixty-five minutes, there are slow gaps, and the dialogue occasionally feels like it has been taken straight from a master’s thesis. Marlin (there will come a time for vengeance, bad things happen here), whose Brooklyn theater company is known as the Healthy Oyster Collective, and director Ilana Khanin (Shot List, I Was Unbecoming Then) do save some playful surprises for the latter part of the show, including one utterly delightful and hilarious scene involving a toy that is layered with meaning (but also just plain funny).

In “Notes on Camp,” Sontag writes, “True, the Camp eye has the power to transform experience. But not everything can be seen as Camp. It’s not all in the eye of the beholder.”

What a World! What a World! might not be the pearl in an oyster, but it’s worth its salt, more than just a mere flicker of joy.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ART BLACK: WALKING THROUGH HARLEM WITH JOHN T. REDDICK

Walking tour of Harlem is part of special exhibition programming at Poster House

POSTER HOUSE WALKING TOUR WITH HISTORIAN JOHN T. REDDICK
Poster House
119 West Twenty-Third St. (tour starting point given upon ticket purchase)
Saturday, July 18, $25, 11:00 am to 1:00 pm
Exhibition runs through September 6
posterhouse.org

In September 2024, longtime Harlem resident, preservationist, and Yale University School of Architecture graduate John T. Reddick gave me a tour of the exhibit “Illustrating Tin Pan Alley: From Ragtime to Jazz” at the Society of Illustrators, consisting of his remarkable collection of sheet music art from the Tin Pan Alley era, focusing on Black composers, musicians, and performers. He told me that while doing his research, “It was just shocking; as I bought sheet music or got to see the names, I realized they all lived in Harlem during the same time period.”

Reddick is now collaborating with Poster House on a walking tour of Harlem in conjunction with the institution’s “Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen,” comprising promotional posters for musical revues, theatrical presentations, and movies featuring Black performers from the 1870s to the 1940s (including from Cabin in the Sky, Zouzou, and Imitation of Life). The one-hour tour will visit Strivers’ Row, the Schomburg Center, and Harlem Hospital’s WPA murals, among other locations that played a role in the Harlem Renaissance.

Reddick, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project, is an engaging storyteller and a font of knowledge, so this should be a special adventure; tickets are $25, and the starting point will be given upon purchase.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THINGS WILL BE ALRIGHT: JIM ALLEN CELEBRATES THE OLD AND THE NEW IN PARK SLOPE

Jim Allen will be celebrating old and new music at special Brooklyn show on July 12 (photo by Therese Ragghianti)

JIM ALLEN ALBUM RELEASE AND 30TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Young Ethel’s
506 Fifth Ave., Park Slope
Sunday, July 12, 3:00
youngethels.com
jimallen.bandcamp.com

On his new record, Maybe Things Will Be Alright, singer-songwriter and music journalist extraordinaire Jim Allen delves into darkness, with such words as fear, scared, frightened, panic, and sorrow jumping out across a dozen wide-ranging tracks. But as he declares in the opening title tune, “Maybe I won’t crack up / Maybe I won’t break down / Maybe the worst is passed / and all of our dreams won’t drown / Maybe hope has got a way to hang on through the night / Who knows, maybe things will be alright.” With its bright, jangly guitar hook and lovely harmonies from dB’s cofounder Peter Holsapple, the song offers an optimistic mantra amid the world’s despair.

At last month’s twenty-fifth anniversary gala for This Week in New York, Allen reminded me that in April 2001, I was at the Ear Inn on Spring St. with him and drummer supreme Steve Goulding, mulling over my future after I had been laid off from the entertainment database company where we all were working. I described to them a plan to write about my experiences in New York City, and thus, twi-ny was born.

I’ll be returning the favor of party attendance on July 12 when you can find me at Young Ethel’s in Park Slope for an exciting doubleheader as Allen celebrates the release of Maybe Things Will Be Alright along with the thirtieth anniversary of his debut record, 1996’s Weeper’s Stomp. He’ll be playing both albums in their entirety, joined by Paul Foglino (5 Chinese Brothers), Matt Applebaum (Allen’s the Ramblin’ Kind), and Goulding (Mekons, the Rumour) on the former and guest singer Katie Curley and Applebaum on the latter. Foglino will open the afternoon with a solo set.

On the new album, anchored by the masterful Goulding, Allen explores multiple styles, from power pop, folk rock, and blues to alt country, prog rock, and even a murder ballad, resulting in a record that beautifully transcends genres. A rollicking piano, propulsive drumming, and a searing six-string solo drive “Panic Button” (“I’ve been under a doctor’s orders / Not to turn off my bedroom light”). “Let My People Go to Sleep” is a jaunty delight (“Karloff as the creature / Shock horror double feature / Only the monster in the mirror scares me / He’s locked in there forever / Unless I pull this lever / You wouldn’t want to be the one who dares me”). “In a Cave,” hoisted by a British Invasion–style organ and backing vocals by Bongos cofounder Richard Barone, needs to be the theme song for the next BritBox secret-agent series.

“Downpour Blue” (“One two downpour blue / Three feet deep in the morning dew / Four five I’m still alive / Six feet under is a dead man’s jive / There are seven ways to heaven through a poor man’s doorway”) recalls the swampy grit of the first song on Allen’s debut, “Inchworm Blues.” “Underground” begins with a nod to Supertramp. Nick Cave would be proud of the sizzling “They Get Up” (“Hard Hat Hank slips out from underneath a girder / Doing such a dizzy dance you might forget that he’d been murdered / The Lady of the Dunes lumbers madly through the sand / With a hammer in her skull and a dagger in her hand / They’d gone rotten and forgotten in their fatal plight / But they get up and walk around at night”). The twinkling “Where I Am,” with flourishes of Steve Earle as a medieval troubadour, boasts contributions by United States of America lead vocalist Dorothy Moskowitz and Lothar & the Hand People keyboardist Paul Conly. Also on the record are C. P. Roth, Rembert Block, Lizzie Edwards, Erica Smith, and Byron Isaacs.

The album concludes with the infectious “It’s Hard,” in which Allen assures us, “And it’s hard, yeah, it’s hard / I might be slightly past what you’d consider my prime / And the incline won’t diminish / Before the story’s finished / In fact it’s a perpetual climb.” The song hearkens back to the jazzy noir “Bottom Rung” from Weeper’s Stomp, in which Allen sings, “You know it really doesn’t matter / whose foot is on the ladder / when you’re living on the bottom rung.”

The story is far from finished for the Bronx born-and-raised Allen, who is perhaps just hitting his prime. In addition to making music, he writes liner notes for many reissues, posts regularly for “Rock and Roll Globe,” and pens the Bandcamp column “Prog Is a State of Mind.”

Perhaps it’s time for Allen to reconsider the title of his new album and lose that “maybe.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SIZE MATTERS: ROBERT MONTANO’S SMALL AT THE SIGNATURE

Robert Montano shares his compelling story of working as a teenager at Belmont in Small(photo by Valerie Terranova)

SMALL
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through July 25, $49-$119
smalltheplay.com

In the one-man 1963 Twilight Zone episode “The Last Night of a Jockey,” Mickey Rooney stars as Michael Grady, a failed jockey who, given one final chance, declares, “I wanna be big!”

In classic Rod Serling style, be careful what you wish for.

In the Drama Desk–nominated one-man show Small, Robert Montano expertly relates his real-life teenage desire to become a jockey, but, as a growing adolescent, he prays to remain small.

The fourteen-year-old Montano, known as Bobby, is only four-foot-six, the smallest kid in his class in Hempstead, Long Island. He is tired of being pushed around and dreams of something better. One day he goes to the racetrack with his mother, Gloria, a God-fearing Puerto Rican woman who sells jewelry at Fortunoffs and likes to gamble a bit, much to the consternation of her husband, Salvatore, an Italian American art professor who is prone to the drink. A client of Gloria’s, Roberto A. Pineda, is racing at Belmont Park, and she takes her son with her to place a little bet and to meet the jockey. Bobby is instantly smitten with Pineda and the Sport of Kings and begs his parents and Pineda to let him work there.

They agree, organizing his schedule around school. At the track, he meets a bigoted trainer, a bloated owner, an attractive stable hand, and other characters as he learns the ropes and pays his dues. He wants to get on a horse and race, but by the time that becomes a possibility, he has grown several inches and put on a few pounds, so his struggle to maintain the weight qualifications become a fierce battle, especially as he finds out about dangerous ways to do so.

“I was ready to put a coffee table on my head, bind my feet, whatever I had to do to stay small,” he says.

Robert Montano’s Small is back for a well-deserved encore run (photo by Valerie Terranova)

Written by Montano and directed by Jessi D. Hill (Surely Goodness and Mercy, Vanishing Point) and previously presented by Penguin Rep at 59E59 in 2023, Small unfolds like an exciting horse race all its own. Upon first seeing Christopher and Justin Swader’s set, a wooden stable with real props of the trade (by Buffy Cardoza), I was reminded of visiting the paddock before a race — I’ve been to Belmont numerous times, including several times for the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown. The training scenes mirror the cadence of the horses parading in the paddock before they enter the starting gate. And when Bobby does begin getting on the horses, the pace quickens like a race, as Bobby jockeys for position, speeds up, slows down, and seizes the moment to forge ahead. As much as he wants to win, he also learns there are prices to pay and choices you can’t take back.

Montano gives a tour-de-force performance, seamlessly embodying more than a dozen wide-ranging characters as he gets the opportunity to live out his dream. Montano is an engaging performer, generous and brave, not shying away from his faults as he commands our attention with his charming demeanor. It’s dynamic storytelling even for those audience members who know the outcome. Jamie Roderick’s lighting and Brian Ronan’s sound enhance the action, whether Bobby is at the track, home with his parents, trying to make the weight — he refers to the scale, depicted as a bright white light on the floor, as “the monster” — or partying at a disco, where he discovers there may be something very different in his future.

Right outside the theater is a large board with information about Montano’s career, including archival photographs and his actual jockey uniform; if you want to be surprised by his life story, don’t check it out until after the play, when you can enjoy it with a newfound perspective.

With most tickets only $49–$69, Small is one of the best bets around. Or, as Serling said in the closing narration for “The Last Night of a Jockey”: “You can make a parimutuel bet on this, win, place, or show, in or out — of the Twilight Zone.”

I can assure you that this one is a big winner.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]