twi-ny recommended events

AUGGIE

Richard Kind faces unexpected loneliness as a retired architect in Auggie

AUGGIE (Matt Kane, 2019)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, September 20
212-529-6799
auggiemovie.com
www.cinemavillage.com

Character actor supreme Richard Kind has excelled at playing more than a few schlemiels during his four decades in showbiz, which has included more than 230 film and television roles in addition to plenty of live theater, from LA and Chicago to Broadway (The Producers, The Big Knife). The sixty-two-year-old Trenton native, who has had recurring parts in Mad about You, Gotham, Spin City, and Red Oaks and played key roles in such films as A Serious Man in addition to voices in the Cars and Toy Story franchises, takes center stage in the bittersweet indie film Auggie, which opened this weekend at Cinema Village.

Kind stars as Felix Greystone, a mensch who is forced into retirement by his architecture firm, which gives him a pair of augmented reality glasses as a going-away present. Felix immediately feels lonely and useless without a job; his daughter, Grace (Simone Policano), is moving in with her boyfriend, Ben (Steven Robertson); and his wife, Anne (Susan Blackwell), has been offered a promotion that will mean longer hours and more close contact with her boss, Jack (James C. Victor). Not knowing what to expect, Felix puts the glasses on and is shocked to find a virtual beautiful young woman who calls herself Auggie (Christen Harper) suddenly next to him. Since she came from his mind, she is seemingly everything he desires in a woman, everything he thinks he is missing in a companion now that he is by himself so much. But the more time he spends with his new imaginary friend, the more potential trouble awaits.

Debut feature director Matt Kane, a Ken Loach protégé who wrote the script with actor Marc Underhill, has made a poignant and insightful film about loneliness and losing one’s value in life, particularly as one ages. Felix is a good guy with an exemplary family, but when too much changes all at once, he doesn’t know where to turn, and the alluring fantasy projected by the glasses becomes addicting — on purpose. One of the most subtle and enjoyable aspects of the film is the way viewers glimpse just how addicting those glasses are built to be; how, like the games on our phones, they are programmed to take us just one step further, to just one purchase more. Kane walks a fine line between male wish fulfillment and outright misogyny; it is doubtful Auggie, a sort of suburban, subdued version of Spike Jonze’s her, could have been written and directed by a woman. But it’s Kind’s riveting, gentle performance that saves the film from devolving into Skinemax territory. He’s an everyman here, embodying the fears of so many people in their later years, when choices are scarcer and the wrong one can result in losing everything one’s constructed so carefully.

MARTA MINUJÍN: MENESUNDA RELOADED

Marta Minujín’s La Menesunda has a neon-heavy room evocative of Buenos Aires and Times Square (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Through September 29, $12-$18
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

If you missed Mika Rottenberg’s “Easypieces” at the New Museum, you still have a chance to catch Marta Minujín’s similarly immersive, astute, and funny “Menesunda Reloaded,” continuing through September 29. The Buenos Aires-born Minujín, collaborating with Rubén Santantonín, debuted the participatory installation La Menesunda in 1965 at the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in her home city to huge acclaim, with long lines of eager art lovers waiting for their chance to go inside the multimedia labyrinth and experience the unique happening, one at a time. “‘LA MENESUNDA’/is a caprice/a nonsense/way of creating difficult/strange/embarrassing ‘situations’/for those who are willing to accept them/INTENSIFYING EXISTENCE/beyond gods and ideas/feelings/mandates and desires,” the pamphlet at the opening described.

Visitors meet a masseuse or a makeup artist in “The Woman’s Head” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

You’ll have to wait in line at the New Museum as well, but it moves pretty quickly as people make their way up and down stairs and into a series of rooms Minujín, who was only in her early twenties when she made the piece, calls “The Woman’s Head,” “The TV Tunnel,” “The Intestines,” “The Swamp,” “The Rotating Basket,” and “The Forest of Forms and Textures,” among others. Each space offers different types of interactions as visitors can see themselves on an old television monitor, watch a couple in bed, get a schpritz from a makeup artist, and navigate through glowing neon, soft sculptures, and a mirrored area with confetti. The exhibition is supplemented with a black-and-white documentary of people going through the original installation, but avoid watching it until after you come out so it doesn’t ruin any of the surprises.

La Menesunda features hidden surprises around every corner and through mysterious peepholes (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Now seventy-six, Minujín counted among her friends and colleagues Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, Carolee Schneemann, Christo, and Andy Warhol and has constructed such other immersive environments as El Batacazo, The Academy of Failure, and Eróticos en Technicolor. She is quite a character, as she reveals in a catalog interview with Helga Christofferson and Massimiliano Gioni in which she touts her success and large ego, declares her work is not spectacle-driven, and explains why she hasn’t gone to a doctor since the birth of her daughter. When asked if La Menesunda was purposely designed so that it was possible for people to exit before seeing every room, she responds, “Yes. I always liked the idea that something is missing. For instance, I am very famous in Argentina, so I signed a dollar with the statement: ‘Take me, I am yours.’ People would then have to think about whether they wanted to sell the dollar with my signature on it, or use it. It’s like if you found a dollar bill signed by Andy Warhol in New York, would you sell it, keep it to sell it later, or spend it? I always want to create that kind of situation. That’s what I like about art: to wake up senses and ideas, to wake people up from their everyday lives, to wake up feelings they’ve never felt before.” Anticipating Instagram-friendly pop-up galleries and the need for publicly-announced instant gratification, La Menesunda accomplishes all that and more.

DINNERLAB: DELMONICO’S — RESTAURANT HISTORY REMIXED

MOFAD celebrates historic Delmonico’s restaurant with a special program on September 24

MOFAD Lab
62 Bayard St., Brooklyn
Thursday, September 19, $125, 7:00
718-387-2845
www.mofad.org

We have a special affection for Delmonico’s; we got married there and have been back for several milestone anniversaries. Opened in 1837 by the Delmonico brothers, purveyors of fine coffee, chocolate, liquor, and cigars, the historic New York City eatery at the corner of Beaver and William Sts. gained fame for its Delmonico steak and the invention of eggs Benedict, baked Alaska, lobster Newburg, the wedge salad, and chicken a la Keene as well as for its chic and powerful clientele, from celebrities to politicians, including Jenny Lind, Mark Twain, and Lillian Russell to Theodore Roosevelt, Jacob A. Riis, and Nikola Tesla. In what may have been the first restaurant review in the New York Times, on January 1, 1859, an unnamed critic wrote, “Once let Delmonico have your order, and you are safe. You may repose in peace up to the very moment when you sit down with your guests. No nobleman of England — no Marquis of the ancienne nobless — was ever better served or waited on in greater style that you will be in a private room at Delmonico’s. The lights will be brilliant, the waiters will be curled and perfumed and gloved, the dishes will be strictly en règle and the wines will come with precision of clock-work that has been duly wound up. If you ‘pay your money like a gentleman,’ you will be fed like a gentleman, and no mistake.”

On September 24, the Museum of Food and Drink is celebrating the first fine-dining establishment in the nation with its latest DinnerLab presentation, “Delmonico’s — Restaurant History Remixed.” The program is being held at the MOFAD Lab on Bayard St. in Brooklyn and is hosted by radio personality, lifestyle expert, motivational speaker, and author Max Tucci, the grandson of Oscar Tucci, who owned Delmonico’s from 1926 to 1987. Executive chef Billy Oliva, MOFAD executive chef Eric Kwan, and mixologist and cocktail historian David Wondrich will offer tastings and drinks, including samplings of chicken a la Keene chip & dip, crispy eggs Benedict, XO oysters Jim Brady, “Ladies Only” Newberg iceberg, and iced Alaska Kakigōri; there will also be old photographs, menus, and other rare items on view. Fortunately, you won’t have to be as careful as diners were advised back in the day, as the NYT critic also noted, “If you make the ordinary mistakes of a untraveled man, and call for dishes in unusual progression, the waiter will perhaps sneer almost imperceptibly, but he will go no further, if you don’t try his feelings too harshly, or put your knife into your mouth.”

CONQUEST: A POPE.L CRAWL

Pope.L. "The Great White Way, 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street" (2000-2009). Performance. ©POPE. L. COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS AND MITCHEL-INNES & NASH, NEW YORK.

Pope.L., “The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street,” 2000-2009 (©Pope.L, courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York)

Seravalli Playground, St. Vincent’s Triangle, Washington Square Park, Union Square Park
Saturday, September 21, free, 9:45 am – 3:30 pm
www.publicartfund.org
conquest slideshow

On September 21, Newark-born, Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Pope.L will lead “Conquest,” a crawl starting at Seravalli Playground at Hudson and Horatio Sts. at 9:45 am, continuing to NYC AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle around 11:00 and Washington Square Park at approximately 12:30, and then concluding at Union Square Park from 2:45 to 3:30. More than 140 volunteers will make their way on their bellies, becoming one with the New York City landscape. “The reason it’s called ‘Conquest’ is because that’s not what we’re gonna do at all!” (William) Pope.L explains in a Public Art Fund video. “We’re gonna give up stuff. And in giving up stuff, we’re gonna make more stuff for more people.” The one-day-only site-specific, 1.5-mile relay journey will offer up, according to the artist, humility, generosity, mirth, puzzlement, a guffaw, and maybe even some hectoring during these hard times, bringing a new perspective to how we all get by in this thoroughly amazing yet maddeningly frustrating city. Pope.L (eRacism: White Room, Thunderbird Immolation a.k.a. Meditation Square Piece) will be at the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at the Cooper Union on September 20 at 6:30 for a Public Art Fund talk (free with advance RSVP) about the project, which leads up to two concurrent New York museum exhibitions: “Choir” at the Whitney (beginning October 20) and “member” at MoMA (October 21), which with “Conquest” form “Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration.”

Pope.L helps “Conquest” participants in Washington Square Park find their way (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Follow-up: It was a beautiful, sunny day for “Conquest” as groups of five differently abled blindfolded volunteers, including pregnant women, the elderly, people with prosthetic limbs, the deaf and blind, the wheelchair-bound, and others, crawled on their bellies one block at a time to call attention to physical privilege. The crawlers were cheered on by well-wishers there to show their support; they were also stared at or ignored by passersby who had no idea what was going on, as if it were just another weird thing happening in the city. Pope.L was following along, either spritzing a perfumed mist in front of the participants to help guide them by sense of smell or, at my suggestion, bending down to feel how hot the sidewalk was. It was an inspirational event that, as with all of Pope.L’s pieces, had important social points to make. You can see photos and videos from “Conquest” here.

DON’T BE NICE

Bowery Poetry Slam prepare for national championships in Don’t Be Nice

DON’T BE NICE (Max Powers, 2018)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, September 20
212-924-7771
www.dontbenicemovie.com
www.ifccenter.com

“I’m writing as a form of activism,” Joel Francois says in Max Powers’s Don’t Be Nice, an intense and inspiring fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows the Bowery Slam poetry team over nine weeks as it prepares for the national finals in Atlanta. Representing Bowery Poetry Club, Francois, Ashley August, Noel Quiñones, Timothy DuWhite, and Sean MEGA DesVignes, are in it to win it, led by coaches Lauren Whitehead and Jon Sands, who work hard to get the most out of each of them. Sands is more of a cheerleader as Whitehead pressures the multiracial poets to reach deep within themselves to get to the root of who they are as they write about their often tenuous place in a dangerous and difficult world, sharing thoughts and feelings from their core. Filmed in the summer of 2016, Don’t Be Nice explores issues of race, class, sexual orientation, physical and emotional abuse, violence, and gender without apology as the members of the team bare their souls, particularly relating to racial injustice and the whitewashing of black culture as a stunning number of black men are killed by white police officers that year.

It’s not always easy to watch as they confront their demons in the name of their art — and in so doing challenge viewers to face their own biases with such works as “This Body,” “Octoniggas,” “Black Love,” “Black Ghosts,” and “Who Am I.” Powers also includes performances by rival teams from Brooklyn, Jersey City, San Diego, and Dallas, revealing the universality of these feelings and the desire to change things. “Don’t be nice; be necessary,” one of the poets says, while another asks, “What can I do with three minutes, a couple of mics, and a bare stage?” Don’t Be Nice opens September 20 at IFC and will feature a series of nightly postscreening Q&As through September 26 with Powers, producer Nikhil Melnechuk, editor David Lieberman, director of photography Peter Buntaine, casting director Caroline Sinclair, and others, moderated by Sarah Doneghy, John Buffalo Mailer, Randall Dottin, Otoja Abit, Michel Negroponte, and Randy Jones of the Village People. None of the Bowery Slam poets are scheduled to appear, perhaps because, according to a May 2018 New York Times article, they were upset at some of the creative decisions made by Powers involving offensive and misleading material regarding racial divide.

FERN HILL

Close friends gather to talk about their future together in (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Close friends gather to talk about their future together in Michael Tucker’s Fern Hill (photo by Carol Rosegg)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 27, $75.50
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

The Big Chill meets Cocoon and the Friends episode “The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break” in Michael Tucker’s wonderfully spry Fern Hill, which opened tonight at 59E59 in its New York City premiere. The play takes place at a farmhouse called Fern Hill, owned by Sunny (Jill Eikenberry) and Jer (Mark Blum). They have invited two other couples, longtime friends Billy (Mark Linn-Baker) and Michiko (Jodi Long) and Vincent (John Glover) and Darla (Ellen Parker), to celebrate the men’s milestone birthdays and also discuss the possibility of all six of them living together at the farmhouse, enjoying life and caring for one another as they face the inevitable: old age, sickness, and death. Jer, a philosopher and writer, is seventy that day; Billy, who is in a semi-successful classic rock band, will turn sixty the following week; and painter Vincent will hit the big eight-oh in a few months. The usually stoned Billy, always quick with a joke, refers to the three of them as “the father, the son, and the holy shit.” The six musketeers talk about wine, clam sauce, drugs, music, new hips, bourbon, art, and sex — they have a lot to say about sex, as the three couples are still getting busy in bed, apparently on a near-nightly basis. “What do you say, darling? Shall I bend you over the plow for a few minutes before we start dinner?” Jer asks Sunny.

One of the central questions is whether they will refer to their new living arrangements as an orphanage or a commune, almost as if they were children or young adults again. As Dylan Thomas wrote in his 1945 memory poem “Fern Hill,” which was published in his book Deaths and Entrances: “And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns / About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, / In the sun that is young once only, / Time let me play and be / Golden in the mercy of his means.” It’s all fun and games until an affair comes to light; the sexual betrayal has an immediate impact not only on that couple but on the future of all six of them. “How is it that we could be married for all these years and had sex — what? — fifty thousand times? — and still be so fucking dumb about it?” Sunny declares at the end of the first act.

A promising weekend turns sour for Jer (Mark Blum) and Sunny (Jill Eikenberry) in New York premiere at 59E59 (photo by Carol Rosegg)

It’s genuinely refreshing to watch six older, mature men and women discuss sex, sharing how often they get it and how good — or not so good — it can be. Not everyone is comfortable delving into the gory details, but these friends have long ago decided not to keep any secrets from one another, even about what’s going on under the covers, especially if they’re going to be spending their golden years together, living side-by-side-by-side. Jessica Parks’s kitchen set is charming and welcoming, and director Nadia Tass (Malcolm, e-baby) provides just the right gentle touches to Tucker’s (The M Spot, Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy) sharp dialogue. What could have been pompous and doctrinaire — listening to seemingly well-off drunk and high people theorize on how great their lives are — could have been torture, but instead it’s illuminating and insightful.

The chemistry among the stellar cast is superb, starting with Obie and Emmy winner Eikenberry (Lemon Sky, The Kid), Tucker’s wife and LA Law costar, whose vulnerability is the key to the drama, and she displays it beautifully, her youthful spirit intoxicating; a terrific Linn-Baker (Perfect Strangers, On the Twentieth Century) offers the comic relief, Obie winner Blum (Mozart in the Jungle, Gus and Al) is the dour naysayer, Long (Flower Drum Song, Long Story Short) is smart and alluring, Tony winner Glover (Smallville, Love! Valour! Compassion!) is as ineffable as ever, and Parker (The Heidi Chronicles, 20th Century Blues) is as steady as they come. It often feels like they’re six real friends hanging out, not six actors performing a fictional work to an audience. The ending is liable to lead to arguments about which characters are right, which are wrong, who gets off easy, and what will happen next; a few days after having seen the show, I’m still debating with the person I went with. And when theater can have that kind of an effect on you while also being vastly entertaining, it has more than done its job.

THE BIG CHOCOLATE SHOW

big chocolate

Resorts World Casino
110-00 Rockaway Blvd.
September 20-22, $15 – $188
www.thebigchocolateshow.com

Chocolate is king in Queens this weekend, as the Big Chocolate Show comes to Resorts World Casino for three days of tastings, demos, workshops, book signings, classes, and more. Among the participants are chef and author Kathryn Gordon, cake designer Kate Sullivan, chef/owner Zach Golper, chef and culinary historian Maricel Prescilla, pastry chefs Alexander Zecena, Samantha Benjamin, Gale Gand, and Lindsey Farr, Hugo Orozcooof La Slowteria, Peter Botros of the Stone House, Jonathan Pogash the Cocktail Guru, Penny Stankiewicz of Sugar Couture, and Michelle Tampakis of Whipped Pastry Boutique. Classes include Coffee & Chocolate – Understanding the Roast, Tequila and Truffles, Bourbon & Bon Bons, and Gluten Free Chocolate Brunch. Admission is $15-$30 for children and $75-$188 for adults and various packages, with part of the proceeds benefiting Cookies for Kids Cancer. The festivities begin Friday night with Legends of Chocolate and Decadent Evening of Chocolate & Cocktails, so come hungry.