Documentary subject Eshete hunkers down in his makeshift Brooklyn home with his beloved cats
THE CAT MAN ESHETE (Laura Checkoway, 2025)
Brooklyn Film Festival
Windmill Studios
300 Kingsland Ave.
Wednesday, June 4, $18, 6:00
Festival runs May 30 – June 8 www.brooklynfilmfestival.org
“I admire myself for surviving all this,” Eshete says as he rides his bike over the Brooklyn Bridge at the end of Oscar winner Laura Checkoway’s sweet-natured, gently moving documentary The Cat Man Eshete, making its Brooklyn premiere June 4 at the Brooklyn Film Festival.
Eshete, which means harvest, was born and raised in Gondar, Ethiopia, in August 1960, part of a large and happy family. Following the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, he became a member of the underground Ethiopian Revolutionary Party but had to flee after being tortured. He spent five years in a refugee camp in Sudan before arriving in America. Trying to build a life for himself, he suffered a construction accident that put him on disability for twenty years, until his structured settlement ran out. He’s been living outside ever since, in a small spot on the side of a street, in front of a chainlink fence; behind the fence is an industrial area on the East River, with views of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.
“Homeless bum, that’s how they see me,” he says. “They don’t know what I’ve been through.”
But Eshete is not looking for sympathy or handouts; he seems to be okay existing how he does, surrounded by his beloved cats, which he has been taking care of for more than a dozen years.
His grizzled face and childlike eyes are nearly hidden by his overgrown, unkempt gray, white, and black beard and mustache. He sits and sleeps on a ratty red armchair with cardboard on which he has scrawled a manifesto about “racist madness.” His friends Robert and Diane, who live in the apartment building Eshete was evicted from, have been feeding him for two decades. People from the neighborhood stop by and say hello, wishing him well.
But all that matters to him are his kitties.
“I have tremendous love for them. So deep, you know?” he explains. “My cats are everything.”
His created family consists of Horizon, Gorgeous, George Washington, Doodles, Junior, Frank Sinatra, Jesse Jackson, Winston Churchill, Castro, Patrice Lumumba, Princess Diana, Albert Einstein, Oprah, Squirt, Nubia, Sheba, Piggy, Animation, Dragon Lady, Ms. Ethiopia the Rocket Girl, Damascus, and Rico. He has a fraught relationship with Jeneane, a married woman who likes to feed the cats and talk to them, but Eshete thinks she is only bothering them; it might be jealousy, as the cats are more than just stray animals to Eshete.
As the twenty-six-minute documentary continues, Eshete delves into grief and loss, mentions the plans he had for himself and his relatives. But those dreams turned into nightmares, as memories of home flood his mind.
“It look like heaven, like a fairy-tale land,” he remembers as shots of Gondar, taken by director of photography Greg Harriott, appear onscreen.
The story also resonates as the current administration seeks to deport legal and illegal immigrants and cuts the budgets for homeless services.
But none of that concerns Eshete, who admits, “I am a traumatized person. I don’t like medication, though. My grief — I listen to music, I love nature. You know, the cats . . . Cats are great. Out of darkness give you light.”
The Cat Man Eshete is screening at Windmill Studios on June 4 at 6:00 in the “Protecting the Family” section of the festival, along with Chris Peters’s It’s Expensive to Be Poor, Nicholas Stachurski’s Land of Lost Toys, and Jesse Samos Leaman and Maite Martin Samos’s Mother of Chooks.
In addition, it will begin streaming June 16 on the Al Jazeera English series Witness in conjunction with World Refugee Day, June 20.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
George Clooney stars as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck at the Winter Garden (photo by Emilio Madrid)
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
Winter Garden Theatre
1634 Broadway between 50th & 51st Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 8, $329-$849 goodnightgoodluckbroadway.com
In 2005, Good Night, and Good Luck., a film directed by George Clooney and written by Clooney and Grant Heslov, was a big hit, earning six Oscar nominations, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, and Best Actor, for David Strathairn’s portrayal of famed newsman Edward R. Murrow, focusing on his battles with Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his reckless search for communist sympathizers in politics and the entertainment industry. Clooney had a supporting role as Fred W. Friendly, coproducer of Murrow’s popular See It Now television program.
Heslov, Clooney, and Tony-winning director David Cromer have now adapted the film into a Broadway play — deleting the period at the end of the title — and for the most part it is an efficient, satisfying show, although it relies too heavily on the film rather than making the most of the opportunities live theater presents.
This time around Clooney takes on the starring role of Murrow, a cigarette-smoking investigative journalist who prefers hard-hitting news stories to celebrity fluff pieces, although he’s told he needs to do the fluff for ratings and to keep the network heads happy; Glenn Fleshler is Friendly, who offers as much support and advice as he possibly can. The narrative is bookended by a speech Murrow gave at the October 1958 Radio-Television News Directors Association Convention in Chicago, where he posits, “This just might do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse, a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and you all may be accused of giving hospitality to heretical and even dangerous thoughts. It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to speak to you with some candor about what is happening in our mass media. You should know at the outset that I appear here voluntarily, by invitation, and that these remarks are strictly of a do-it-yourself nature.”
The play, about actual events that occurred more than seventy years ago, could not be more relevant today, as the current administration sues television and print media for stories they view as unfavorable and seeks to deport legal and illegal immigrants while eliminating habeas corpus. The production makes its points but can get heavy-handed; what works onscreen does not always work onstage, even one dominated by screens. The projections, by David Bengali, range from archival footage of McCarthy to live video feeds of Murrow’s program. There’s always a lot happening on Scott Pask’s expansive studio set, so, combined with the projections, it is often difficult to know where to look. The musical interludes with Ella (Georgia Heers) singing such jazzy numbers as “When I Fall in Love” and “I’ve Got My Eye on You” help create atmosphere but feel extraneous in a one-hundred-minute show. And the subplots involving anchorman Don Hollenbeck (Clark Gregg) and secret romantic partners Shirley (Ilana Glazer) and Joe (Carter Hudson) get lost.
In his Broadway debut, Clooney is stellar as Murrow, capturing the newsman’s serious demeanor and dedication to his responsibility of telling the truth to the American public. It’s his show, and he commands the stage with grace and elegance. Good Night, and Good Luck has so much to say about then and now that it sometimes overplays its hand, as with an unnecessary political video montage. But it’s solid entertainment and a clarion call for all of us to stand up to bigotry and hatred before it’s too late.
The June 7 performance will be streamed live on CNN for free. In the announcement, Clooney stated, “It doesn’t matter what political bend you are on — when you hear things like, you know, ‘We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and a conviction depends on evidence and due process of law, and we will not walk in fear of one another. We won’t be driven by fear into an age of unreason,’ I think those are extraordinarily powerful words for who we are at our best.”
As the play reveals, we’re going to need a lot more than good luck to get out of the mess we’re in.
Jeremy Jordan stars as the title character in Floyd Collins at Lincoln Center (photo by Joan Marcus)
FLOYD COLLINS
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 22, $58-$299 www.lct.org
On January 30, 1925, while spelunking to find a cave that could be turned into a tourist attraction, thirty-seven-year-old William Floyd Collins got wedged into a small space, his foot caught under a rock. As members of his family and the community tried to rescue him, Bee Doyle’s farm became a media circus. The tale served as part of the inspiration behind Billy Wilder’s underrated 1951 masterpiece, Ace in the Hole, aka The Big Carnival, starring Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling.
In February 1996, book writer and director Tina Landau and composer and lyricist Adam Guettel adapted the true story into the musical Floyd Collins, which had a short run at Playwrights Horizons. It is now dazzling audiences at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater in a thrilling production, again directed by Landau, that has been nominated for six Tonys, including Best Revival of a Musical.
Jeremy Jordan is sensational as Collins, spending most of the show in the front corner of the stage, immobile on a rock shaped like a chaise longue. His brother, Homer (Jason Gotay), and sister, Nellie (Lizzy McAlpine), are desperate to save him, while his father, Lee (Marc Kudisch), is angry that Floyd has gotten into this predicament and his stepmother, Miss Jane (Jessica Molaskey), is concerned but won’t argue with her husband, except when he offers money to Dr. Hazlett (Kevyn Morrow) to go inside the cave. Engineer H. T. Carmichael (Sean Allan Krill) decides that he and his company, Kentucky Rock Asphalt, will handle the rescue, incorporating shafting efforts that Homer believes will be too dangerous and take too long to save his brother, while Lee wants him to stay out of it. Documenting it all is Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Skeets Miller (Taylor Trensch), who becomes deeply involved in the story, even risking his safety by going into the cave to attempt to free Collins himself.
The stage design, by dots, begins as a kind of obstacle course as Floyd makes his way deeper and deeper into the cave, with dark rocklike formations popping up and down as he calls into the void, listening for the echoes to let him know if he’s close to what he’s looking for. The eerie sound is by Dan Moses Schreier, with shadowy lighting by Scott Zielinski and projections by Ruey Horng Sun on a rear screen that change colors as the sun rises and sets. Bruce Coughlin’s bluegrass orchestrations maintain a country feel, save for a few traditional ballads that slow the narrative dramatically, and Anita Yavich’s costumes have an appropriately earthy palette.
Floyd Collins is an exemplary cautionary tale about capitalist greed and a predatory media as well as a tribute to American know-how and dedication, the importance of family, and how freedom can so often be just out of reach. It was a different time, but it still feels real as adults and children continue to get trapped in wells and caves, the world holding its collective breath as rescue is not always possible. It also serves as a potent metaphor for our ability to escape from certain situations we see no way out of, both individually and as a republic.
You can find out more about Collins by visiting the Sand Cave Trail in Kentucky, which leads you to Mammoth Cave National Park, where it all took place.
It’s Audra McDonald’s turn at an iconic role, and her performance is unforgettable (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
GYPSY
Majestic Theatre
247 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 17, $46-$421 gypsybway.com
Has there ever been more pressure on a performer taking on an iconic musical theater role? In George C. Wolfe’s splendid revival of Gypsy at the Majestic Theatre, six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald is not just following in the lauded footsteps of Ethel Merman, Betty Hutton, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Linda Lavin, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, Imelda Staunton, Betty Buckley, Tovah Feldshuh, Leslie Uggams, and Beth Leavel in portraying the stage-mother-from-hell — not to mention Rosalind Russell in the 1962 film and Bette Midler in a 1993 TV movie — but her name is essentially part of the title: The marquee and all marketing materials declare: Audra Gypsy. Perhaps not surprisingly, just about everything comes up roses.
Featuring a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Gypsy was “suggested” by the 1957 memoir by burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee, whose mother, Rose Evangeline Hovick, was obsessed with making her daughters, Rose Louise Hovick and June Havoc, show business superstars. The 1959 Broadway premiere and its numerous revivals have earned a multitude of Tony Awards, and this iteration has been nominated for five, including Best Revival of a Musical and Best Leading Actress for McDonald, the first Black woman to play the part in a major New York production. (Uggams portrayed Mama Rose in 2014 at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre.)
While the three most popular tunes from the show are “May We Entertain You,” “Together, Wherever We Go,” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” the narrative reaches its apex with “Rose’s Turn,” in which Mama Rose grabs center stage and states her raison d’être. “You either got it / or you ain’t. / And boys, I got it! / You like it?” she sings. “Well, someone tell me, when is it my turn? / Don’t I get a dream for myself?” At the end of the song, she repeats over and over again, “For me!,” then takes a series of bows, but it’s not McDonald accepting rapturous applause from the electrified crowd at the Majestic; it’s Mama Rose, basking in the glow of an audience that exists only in her head. The vulnerability of both the performer and the character is almost too much to bear as she reaches out her hands, nods her head, and looks out over an all-encompassing emptiness.
It’s not Mama Rose as monster; it’s every one of us, wondering what could have been, perhaps even what should have been. It’s an unforgettable moment that cements this revival as a unique and celebratory experience.
“I’m Jonathan. I’ll be your Bobby Darin tonight. How about these digs? Not bad for the basement of Wicked,” Jonathan Groff says after the opening medley of “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” and “Just in Time” that kicks off the electrifying biomusical Just in Time at Circle in the Square, underneath the Gershwin, where Wicked has been running for more than twenty years.
Developed and directed by two-time Tony winner and Emmy and Grammy nominee Alex Timbers, Just in Time tells Darin’s life story as if it’s a chronological nightclub act in a flashy, elegant space designed by Derek McLane. The band performs at one end, with a center section of audience members sitting at candlelit tables. Groff is spectacular as a version of himself, not impersonating Darin but embodying his spirit as he belts out such familiar songs as “Beyond the Sea,” “Splish Splash,” “Dream Lover,” and “Mack the Knife.” Andrew Resnick’s arrangements practically explode as the book, by Tony winner Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, follows Darin, born Walden Robert Cassotto in 1936 in East Harlem, from his childhood, to his earliest songwriting, and through his personal and professional ups and downs in a career that found him going from one of the most popular entertainers on the planet to living alone in the woods, recording folksongs no one wanted to hear.
Darin, who had a weak heart as a result of rheumatic fever as a child, partnered with Don Kirshner (Caesar Samayoa), made records for Ahmet Ertegun (Lance Roberts), fell in love with Connie Francis (Gracie Lawrence), married Sandra Dee (Erika Henningsen), had a son, released more than two dozen albums, appeared in twelve movies (including garnering an Oscar nomination for Captain Newman, M.D.), and never stopped writing and singing right up until his death in 1973 at the age of thirty-seven.
He loved his mother, Polly Walden (Tony winner Michele Pawk), and had a difficult relationship with his sister, Nina Cassotto (Emily Bergl), at least until he found out a shattering truth about them. He hired Nina’s husband, Charlie Maffia (Joe Barbara), to go on the road with him.
While the first act unfurls at a ravishing pace, the show slows down considerably in the second act, when Darin’s troubles mount; there’s not much Leight and Oliver can do, since it’s a true story. But Shannon Lewis’s choreography, Catherine Zuber’s costumes, Justin Townsend’s lighting, and Peter Hylenski’s sound ensures that it all still looks and sounds grand.
The staging is magnificent as Groff and his fantastic trio of sirens (Christine Cornish, Julia Grondin, Valeria Yamin), serving as both backup singers and Greek chorus, roll through Darin’s impressive songbook. “They’re with me everywhere I go — stage left, stage right . . . They’re gonna help me out tonight — and boy, do I need their help — and boy, are they gonna get spat on. And sweated on,” Groff explains. “I’m a wet man, I’m just generally extremely very wet when I do this, and I’m sorry in advance.” He ain’t kidding; folks at the tables might want to cover their drinks when he floats by.
Tony winner and Emmy and Grammy nominee Groff (Merrily We Roll Along,Hamilton) is the heart and soul of the show, and he is utterly mesmerizing every step of the way. It’s a dazzling performance that will take you sailin’ up a lazy river and beyond the sea, splishing and splashing as you hold on to your dream lover and inhale the scent of eighteen yellow roses because Bobby’s back in town.
A cast of five tells the remarkable story of a secret Allied WWII mission in Operation Mincemeat (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
OPERATION MINCEMEAT
Golden Theatre
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 15, $59-$499 operationbroadway.com
The people behind Operation Mincemeat must have given one of the most bizarre pitches in the history of theater: a musical comedy based on a WWII military operation involving a corpse, written and performed by a brand-new madcap troupe of little-known comic thespians known as SpitLip. But it has succeeded magnificently, from its 2019 origins to its two 2024 Oliviers — for Best New Musical and Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical, Jak Malone — and now its 2025 nominations for four Tonys, including Best Musical and Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical, again for Malone.
It’s 1943, and the Allies are desperate to stop the Axis Powers’ march through Europe. Col. Johnny Bevan tells his MI5 Military Deception team, “Now, as we’re all painfully aware, Hitler’s boys have taken control of mainland Europe, which means the only route back in is through the islands to the South. So the next Allied invasion target is Sicily. And the key to invading Sicily is not invading Sicily. . . . We’re going to convince the Nazis that we’re headed for somewhere else instead. Sardinia, to be exact.”
Intelligence officers Charles Cholmondeley, Ewen Montagu, John Masterman, Reggie Tar, and aspiring spy novelist Ian Fleming submit their ideas to Bevan, who ultimately chooses a plan devised by Cholmondeley and coopted by Montagu with the assistance of clerk Jean Leslie: They handcuff a briefcase to the body of a dead man and have him wash ashore in Spain, with detailed papers revealing that the Allies will be attacking Sardinia, not Sicily.
Joined by MI5 employee Hester Leggatt, the trio of Meryl, Beryl, and Cheryl, pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, submarine captain Bill Jewell, British vice consul Francis Haselden, pilot Willie Watkins, and others, the very strange Operation Mincemeat is underway, but it quickly becomes more complicated than they ever expected.
Boasting such songs as “Born to Lead,” “God That’s Brilliant,” and “Das Übermensch” — along with a glitzy finale titled, well, “A Glitzy Finale” — Operation Mincemeat is like Monty Python on speed, performed by an ultratalented company of only five playing all the roles: The book, music, and lyrics were written by David Cumming (Cholmondeley), Natasha Hodgson (Montagu), and Zoë Roberts (Bevan), and the cast also features Claire-Marie Hall (Leslie) and Malone (Leggatt). Director Robert Hastie somehow manages to have it all make sense amid Ben Stones’s fast-paced set and costume changes.
There have been numerous books written about the military operation, including Ben Macintyre’s 2010 Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, which was first made into a documentary, then adapted into a 2021 film starring Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, and Jason Isaacs. But none of those prepared anyone for this hilarious musical comedy, which the show references itself.
Hester: And yes it was true, though they’d never believe it. Jean: They’ll say it’s all true, they’ll never believe it. Hester: We did all we could do, and if they’d never see it, Jean: We did what we do, and they’ll never see it. Hester: We worked and we prayed and it wasn’t in vain. Jean: And we’ll keep on going. Hester: We knew pain could be strength and that strength could be pain. Jean: Even though they’ll never know we . . . Hester and Jean: . . . forced all their forces to fly!
Believe it or not, Operation Mincemeat flies high.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
NYC CIVIC FAIR
Fabrik DUMBO
20 Jay St., Suite 218
Tuesday, June 3, free with advance registration (suggested donation $10), 6:00 nycpolitics101.substack.com
If posting about politics and critical local issues on social media is not doing it for you and you want to make more of a difference, the people behind NYC Primary Bootcamp are hosting a special event on June 3 at Fabrik DUMBO. The NYC Civic Fair will give attendees a chance to connect with a variety of organizations, and one or more might be just what you’re looking for to increase your community engagement, especially with primary day approaching on June 24. Among the participating groups are Abundance New York, Climate Club Friends, Indivisible BK, Maximum New York, New Kings Democrats, New Liberals, Open New York, Open Plans, Regional Plan Association, Riders Alliance, Sunrise Movement NYC, and Transportation Alternatives. Admission is free, but there is a suggested donation of ten bucks if you can afford it in order to cover the cost of food and drink.
The fair is part of the grander Primary Bootcamp, in which registrants accumulate points as they complete as many actions as they can, from signing up for a community board newsletter and following both their city council member and state assembly person on social media to planning a volunteer day and reminding five people to register to vote by June 14. The word “civic” is disappearing from our discourse and the subject is no longer being taught in schools, so there’s no better time than right now to work to keep it alive.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Sammy Davis Jr. (Daniel J. Watts) and Nat King Cole (Dulé Hill) form a unique partnership in Lights Out (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
LIGHTS OUT: NAT “KING” COLE
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 29, $49-$59 www.nytw.org
According to the Sleep Foundation, a fever dream can be “vivid and unpleasant,” involving feelings of “discomfort” that can be “unsettling.”
That’s precisely how I felt while watching the bio-jukebox musical Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole at New York Theatre Workshop.
“How is everybody doing tonight? Fine and dandy? Wonderful. Some of you thought you were going to get a nice and easy holiday show. No! Welcome to the fever dream,” Sammy Davis Jr. (Tony nominee Daniel J. Watts) tells the audience at one point. “My dear friend is wrapped up at the moment. Wrapped up in his mind. The mind is a terrible thing. Is that the way the saying goes? Anyway. When my friend is wrapped up, he does what any musician will do. He will try to work it out. Work it out in a song.”
Lights Out takes place on December 17, 1957, at NBC studios in New York City, as Cole (Emmy nominee Dulé Hill), the friend Davis is referring to, is preparing for the final episode of his television variety program. Despite its critical and popular success, the year-old show could not garner a single national sponsor, primarily because it was being hosted by a Black man. “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark,” Cole famously announced to the press.
Candy (Kathy Fitzgerald), the makeup designer, enters Cole’s dressing room, ready to apply the usual white powder that will make him look less Black, but he asks for a lighter touch this time; he’s determined to go out with his “head held high.” He walks onstage and is upset that someone has left the ghost light on, a sign of bad luck; according to theater superstition, it should only be on when the theater is empty overnight, for the spirits wandering around. As soon as he turns the light off, the narrative switches over to the fever dream, where anything can happen, from traveling into the past to speaking one’s innermost thoughts like never before.
Serving as the emcee of the dream is Davis, one of Cole’s closest friends, but in this case he is a devilish trickster, manipulating some of the action and regularly addressing the audience directly, advising Cole that they will be “taking it off the rails.” What follows is a haphazard mess of a story interspersed with classic Cole tunes from his remarkable songbook, which boasts eighty-six singles and seventeen albums in the top 40 between 1943 and 1964 and total sales of more than fifty million records.
Cole assures the stage manager (Elliott Mattox) that Peggy Lee (Ruby Lewis), who is late, will make it in time to perform the opener with him. When he gets too close to Betty Hutton (Lewis) during “Anything You Can Do,” a “Racial distance appropriateness” yardstick is thrust between them. Eartha Kitt (Krystal Joy Brown) purrs to the producer and stage manager, “Piss off!” after they tell Cole to “keep it clean.” Cole tells the eleven-year-old piano prodigy Billy Preston (Mekhi Richardson or Walter Russell III) that he could become president one day, although the cue cards use racist tropes involving sports and prison. The Randy Van Horne Singers join Cole for “It’s a Good Day,” which features the line “It’s a good day for shining your shoes / And it’s a good day for losin’ the blues,” as if Cole’s Blackness is being whitewashed.
These set pieces all pass through in a chaotic, confusing jumble, with Davis continually interrupting with an annoying demeanor. The most effective scene occurs when Cole’s long-deceased mother, Perlina (Kenita Miller), arrives to deliver love and support, singing “Orange Colored Sky” and reminding her son (played as a child by Richardson or Russell III), “Don’t let ’em get the best of you. Keep your head held high.” Another highlight is Cole and Davis tap-dancing to “Me and My Shadow” right after Cole fires his producer (Christopher Ryan Grant). “You can’t fire me. You don’t wield that kind of power!” the producer argues. Cole responds, “I absolutely-positively wield that kind of power.” Cole then kicks him out when the producer declares, “How dare you, after all I’ve done for you people.”
Cole took some heat from the Black community for not being more aggressive in fighting racism, and Lights Out posits that while he was well aware of that criticism, he opted to take a different path, by being successful and paving the way for other Black entertainers, on television and Madison Ave. During one fake commercial, Sammy and Perlina promote toothpaste, referencing the racist caricature of smiling Blacks. Sammy: “When you’re feeling down / And all you want to do is frown / Use this tube of magic / To avoid a life that’s tragic / Brush up and smile bright / Some things ain’t worth the fight.” Perlina: “I know deep down that you’re right.” Perlina and Sammy: “Next time I will try to smile bright.” Other ads are for beer and cigarettes.
Emmy nominee Dulé Hill star as Nat “King” Cole in biomusical at New York Theatre Workshop (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
Lights Out was written by Tony and Oscar nominee Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor with a nonstop ferocity, trying to squeeze too much into ninety minutes. McGregor (Hamlet,Hurt Village) directs at a feverish pace, making it hard for the audience to catch its breath as they attempt to figure out what is going on. Clint Ramos’s TV show set is effective, with Cole’s dressing room stage right and the band in the back, but the inclusion of an angled video screen for live projections by David Bengali feels unnecessary, further hampering the abstract narrative. Katie O’Neill’s costumes range from practical to lavish, with Cole always looking superbly elegant and pristine.
The orchestrations and arrangements by John McDaniel are lovely, evoking the time period while paying respect to composer and bandleader Nelson Riddle, although some songs are performed only in part and, curiously, the producer warbles “Mona Lisa.” Edgar Godineaux’s choreography has a keen sense of humor, while Jared Grimes’s tap choreography shines.
Like most biomusicals, the script plays hard and loose with some of the facts. While Cole’s final show was on December 17, 1957, the actual guests were the Cheerleaders and Billy Eckstine, and the opening song was “When You’re Smiling.” Davis, Hutton, Kitt, and Lee all appeared on one episode of the show, but not the last one. In addition, Davis makes a joke referencing the slogan of the United Negro College Fund, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” but that began in 1972, seven years after Cole died; even though Davis is an otherworldly figure in the dream, everything else relates to 1957.
The story of Nat “King” Cole, who died of lung cancer in 1965 at the age of forty-five — there is a whole lot of smoking in the show — is a crucially important one. In February 1958, Cole wrote in Ebony magazine, “For 13 months I was the Jackie Robinson of television. I was the pioneer, the test case, the Negro first. I didn’t plan it that way, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that I was the only Negro on network television with his own show. On my show rode the hopes and tears and dreams of millions of people. . . . Once a week for 54 consecutive weeks I went to bat for these people. I sacrificed and drove myself. I plowed part of my salary back into the show. I turned down $500,000 in dates in order to be on the scene. I did everything I could to make the show a success. And what happened? After a trailblazing year that shattered all the old bugaboos about Negroes on TV, I found myself standing there with the bat on my shoulder. The men who dictate what Americans see and hear didn’t want to play ball.”
At one point, Cole’s daughter Natalie (Brown) duets with her father, singing “Unforgettable.” It’s a touching moment, but it’s a shame that too much of the rest of the show is forgettable.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Charlotte Zwerin is being celebrated with three-film series at Metrograph (photo courtesy Warner Bros. / Everett)
CHARLOTTE ZWERIN — VÉRITÉ PIONEER: SALESMAN (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1969)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, May 31, 5:10, and Thursday, June 5, 4:40 metrograph.com
Fifty-six years ago, brothers Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin made the highly influential black-and-white documentary Salesman, an intimate portrait of four traveling door-to-door Bible salesmen: Jamie Baker, Raymond Martos, Charles McDevitt, and particularly Boston’s Paul Brennan. “Go out there and get ’em,” their boss, who doesn’t exactly follow the teachings of Jesus, declares as they prepare to spread the word of the Lord, although more to earn a living than as a religious calling. The shots of Brennan singing “If I Were a Rich Man” in the snow are priceless, but the end will haunt you. Without Salesman, there probably never would have been a Glengarry Glen Ross and so many other films. All these years later, this fascinating piece of Americana, which was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1992, still feels fresh and relevant in these hard times.
The Maysles brothers and Zwerin went on to make other documentaries that redefined the nonfiction genre, including Gimme Shelter, and Zwerin scored a major solo success with the unforgettable Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser. Presented by ACE (the American Cinema Editors), Salesman is screening May 31 and June 5 in the Metrograph series “Charlotte Zwerin: Vérité Pioneer,” honoring the Direct Cinema leader, who died in 2004 at the age of seventy-two; the tribute also features Gimme Shelter and Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser. The May 31 showing of Salesman will be followed by a panel discussion with editor-directors Mirra Bank, Deborah Dickson, Susan Froemke, and Muffie Meyer, moderated by Michael Schulman.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Martin Scorsese will introduce Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds at New York Polish Film Festival
NEW YORK POLISH FILM FESTIVAL
Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Directors Guild Theater
110 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
May 27-31, all access pass $150 nypff.com
“I accept this great honor not as a personal tribute but as a tribute to all of Polish cinema,” Polish auteur Andrzej Wajda said upon accepting his honorary lifetime achievement Oscar from Jane Fonda in 2000. “The subject of many of our films was the war, the atrocities of Nazism, and the tragedies brought by communism. This is why today I thank the American friends of Poland and my compatriots for helping my country rejoin the family of democratic nations, rejoin the Western civilizations, its institutions and security structures. My fervent hope is that the only flames people will encounter will be the great passions of the heart — love, gratitude, and solidarity.”
That passion will be on view at the twentieth edition of the New York Polish Film Festival, which celebrates the life and career of the Suwałki-born director and resistance fighter who died in 2016 at the age of ninety — not many honorary Academy Award winners go on to live another sixteen years and make eight more films. Running May 27–31 at the Directors Guild Theater and Scandinavia House — no need to check your map; Scandinavia still consists only of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden — the festival will be screening eleven works, six by Wajda and five by contemporary filmmakers that reveal Wajda’s legacy.
NYPFF20 includes Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds,Kanał,The Promised Land,Everything for Sale, and the Oscar-nominated Man of Iron and Katyń. The fest kicks off with 1957’s Kanał, which will be preceded by a reception and followed by a panel discussion. Polish cinema fan Martin Scorsese will introduce Ashes and Diamonds at the May 28 gala; “It announced the arrival of a master filmmaker,” has said of the war movie, which completed a trilogy begun with A Generation and Kanał. The extraordinary Katyń examines a brutal WWII massacre; the film stars Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski, and Pawel Malaszynski, with a score by the great Krzysztof Penderecki.
Among the 2024 Polish selections are Xawery Żuławski’s Kulej: All That Glitters Isn’t Gold, about boxer Jerzy Kulej; Julie Rubio’s documentary The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival; and Magnus Von Horn’s crime drama The Girl with the Needle
Below is the full schedule.
Tuesday, May 27 Kanał (Canal) (Andrzej Wajda, 1957), preceded by a reception and followed by a panel discussion with professors Annette Insdorf and Rafal Syska, Scandinavia House, $30, 5:00
Under the Volcano (Pod wulkanem) (Damian Kocur, 2024), Scandinavia House, $25, 8:30
Wednesday, May 28
Opening night gala: Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament) (Andrzej Wajda, 1958), introduced by Martin Scorsese, Directors Guild Theatre, $50, 7:15
Thursday, May 29 Everything for Sale (Wszystko na sprzedaż) (Andrzej Wajda, 1969), with special guest Małgorzata Potocka, Scandinavia House, $25, 5:30
The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana) (Andrzej Wajda, 1975), introduced by Annette Insdorf, Scandinavia House, $25, 8:15
REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL: PERSEVERANCE
Bohemian National Hall (unless otherwise noted)
321 East 73rd St. between First & Second Aves.
May 26 – June 15, free – $15 rehearsalfortruth.org
Founded in 2017, Rehearsal for Truth is an annual festival that honors the legacy of Czech playwright, dissident, and president Václav Havel. Presented by the Václav Havel Center and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, This year’s iteration features theater, opera, music, poetry, and more from Czechia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and other nations.
“Rehearsal for Truth is a rare opportunity to hear artistic voices from Central and Eastern Europe,” festival artistic director Edward Einhorn explained in a statement. “The theme of the 2025 edition is Perseverance. The worldwide turn towards autocracy and war is both current and historically familiar for the artists from this region, and their responses have a deep resonance now for Americans, as we experience our own crises. My hope is that the work presented in the festival can connect our experiences and help us guide us as we all try to persevere through difficult times.”
The centerpiece is the US premiere of Blood, Sweat, and Queers, a seventy-five-minute piece about intersex Czech track star Zdenek Koubek (1913–86) and fascism, coproduced by Einhorn’s Untitled Theater Company No. 61. Other highlights include Belarus Free Theatre’s King Stakh’s Wild Hunt, Alexander Manuiloff’s interactive The Decision, and an evening of music and poetry with Marketa Foukalova, Jan Zábrana, and Martin Brunner.
Havel (1936–2011) wrote such plays as The Garden Party and The Memorandum and such books as Living in Truth and Toward a Civil Society; he also wrote and directed the 2011 film Leaving. In a 1968 letter to Alexander Dubček, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Havel explained, “Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance,” words to live by in today’s international maelstrom.
Tickets for most events are free (with a suggested donation of $10-$15) and require advance RSVP. Below is the full schedule.
Hura Collective’s Erben: Vlasy is part of Rehearsal for Truth festival honoring Václav Havel
Monday, May 26
through
Sunday, June 15 Blood, Sweat, and Queers, coproduced by Untitled Theater Company No. 61, by Tomas Dianiška, translated by Edward Einhorn and Katarina Vizina, directed by Edward Einhorn, starring Craig Anderson, Herschel Blatt, Jean Marie Keevins, Alyssa Simon, Katarina Vizina, and Hennessy Winkler, followed by a talk with Chris Harwood on May 26 and Michael Waters on May 30, $10-$20
Tuesday, May 27 Marketa Foukalova, featuring vocalist Markéta Foukalová, with poems by Jan Zábrana and music by Martin Brunner, followed by a discussion with Chris Harwood, free ($15 suggested donation), 7:00
Thursday, May 29 The Decision, interactive theater created by Alexander Manuiloff, directed by Irina Kruzhilina, Bohemian National Hall, followed by a discussion with the author, free ($15 suggested donation), 7:00
Sunday, June 1 King Stakh’s Wild Hunt, by Belarus Free Theatre, from the book by Uladzimir Karatkievich, adapted by Nicolai Khalezin, with music by Olga Podgaiskaya, directed by Natalia Kaliada, free ($10 suggested donation), 2:00
Connection, solo livestream from Salzburg, created and performed by Maryna Yakubovich, followed by a discussion and reception, free ($15 suggested donation), 5:00 – 9:30
Wednesday, June 4 The Pit, written by Matei Visneic, directed by Ana Margineanu, starring Owen Campbell, Vas Eli, and Perri Yaniv, followed by a discussion with the artists, free ($15 suggested donation), 7:00
Friday, June 6
Staged Reading: Show Trial, about Czech politician and resistance leader Milada Horáková, written by Laura Zlatos, directed by Tom Costello, followed by a discussion with the author, $15, 7:00
Saturday, June 7 Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble, created by Piotr Sikora, followed by a reception with the artist, free ($15 suggested donation), 7:00
Sunday, June 8 Erben: Vlasy, by Hura Collective, with direction, set, puppets, and music by Hza Bažant, starring Hza Bažant and Leona Bažant Telínová, followed by a demonstration of puppetry techniques and history, free ($15 suggested donation), 5:00 & 7:00
Stella Abel will perform Psyche June 12 & 13, in English then Hungarian
Wednesday, June 11 The Amateurs, written by Lenka Garajová, directed by Šimon Ferstl, starring Šimon Ferstl, Jakub Jablonský, Lenka Libjaková, Martin ISO Krajčír, Kriss Krimm, and Tomáš Pokorný, followed by a discussion with the artists, free ($15 suggested donation), 7:00
Thursday, June 12, in English, 7:00 & 9:00
and
Friday, June 13, in Hungarian, 7:00 Psyché: Writings of an Erstwhile Poetess, from poems by Sándor Weöres, translated by David Cseh, directed by Mark Tarnoki, performed by Stella Abel, the Hungarian House, 213 East 82nd St., free (donations encouraged)
Friday, June 13 Kafka’s Ape, adapted by Phala Ookeditse, performed by Tony Miyambo, Bohemian National Hall, followed by a discussion with the artists, free ($15 suggested donation), 7:00
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
