twi-ny recommended events

Harlem EatUp!

Chefs Marcus Samuelsson and JJ Johnson (left) return for the fifth annual Harlem EatUp! Festival (photo courtesy Harlem EatUp!)

Multiple locations in Harlem
May 13-19, free – $250
harlemeatup.com

The fifth annual Harlem EatUp! Festival takes place May 13-19, with dozens of chefs, restaurants, culinary organizations, mixmasters, and artists participating in tastings, dinners, concerts, and more celebrating Harlem culture, hosted by Bevy Smith. Below are only some of the special events happening uptown, with part of the proceeds benefiting Citymeals on Wheels, Historic Harlem Parks, and Harlem Park to Park.

Monday, May 13
Dine in Harlem: BLVD Bistro, hosted by owner Carlos Swepson and guest chef Leah Cohen, $135, 7:00

Tuesday, May 14
Dine in Harlem: FieldTrip, hosted by chef JJ Johnson and guest chef Marc Vetri, $85, 7:00

Wednesday, May 16
Dine in Harlem: Melba’s Restaurant, with owner Melba Wilson and guest chef Jerome Grant and DJ Nas Leber, $100, 7:00

Thursday, May 16
The Harlem EatUp! Annual Luminary Award Dinner, honoring Lana Turner and David N. Dinkins, hosted by chef Marcus Samuelsson and guest chefs Mashama Bailey of the Grey and Emma Bengtsson of Aquavit, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars, and Andre Mack of Maison Noir, with live music by the Rakiem Walker Project, Red Rooster Harlem, $250, 6:30

Saturday, May 18
The EatUp! Main Stage at the Harlem Stroll, with culinary demonstrations and live performances, Morningside Park, free, 12:30 – 5:30

Ultimate Grand Tasting at the Harlem Stroll, featuring participants Alvin Lee Smalls of Lee Lee’s Bakery, Alyah Horsford-Sidberr of Cove Lounge, Angel Grande of Nocciola Ristorante, Antonio Settepani of Settepani, Ashley Dikos and Andrew Martinez of Bo’s Bagels, Carlos Salazar of Rincón Mexicano, Carlos Swepson of BLVD Bistro, Cédric Durand of Tastings Social presents GAUDir, Cédric Durand of Charles’ Country Pan Fried Chicken, Drunken Fruit, Giannina Gutierrez, Harlem Haberdashery, Camaron Fagan of Harlem Tavern, Humberto Guallpa of Row House, Jake Timmons of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Jamaica Tourism Board, Norma Jean Darden of Miss Mamie’s Spoonbread, Jelena Pasic of Harlem Shake, Jessica Spaulding of Harlem Chocolate Factory, Juliet and Justine Masters of the Edge Harlem, Lara Land, Lexis Gonzalez and Dr. Sharon Gonzalez of Lady Lexis Sweets, Leticia “Skai” Young and Raymond Zamanta Mohan of LoLo’s Seafood Shack, Marcus Samuelsson of Red Rooster Harlem/Ginny’s Supper Club, Matthew Trebek & Nodar Mosiashvili of OSO Harlem, Milton Washington, Melba Wilson of Melba’s Restaurant, Nick Larsen and Petrushka Bazin Larsen of Sugar Hill Creamery, Nocciola, RanDe Rogers of Sisters Caribbean Cuisine, Raymond Weber of CUT by Wolfgang Puck, and Zach Sharaga and Samantha Phillips of Dear Mama, adults only, Morningside Park, $85, 12:30 – 5:30

Saturday, May 18
and
Sunday, May 19
The Marketplace at the Harlem Stroll, with more than two dozen food vendors, a kids’ zone, demonstrations, live performances, and more, Morningside Park, free, 12:30 – 5:30

Sunday, May 19
The EatUp! Main Stage at the Harlem Stroll, with DJ Stormin’ Norman, David Burtka, JJ Johnson of FieldTrip/Henry by JJ, Marcus Samuelsson, Neil Patrick Harris, Scott Conant of Cellaio Steak, Karl Franz Williams of Solomon & Kuff Rum Hall, Charles Gabriel of Charles’ Country Pan Fried Chicken, Johnny Mambo & Friends, Vy Higginson’s Sing Harlem Choir, and more, Morningside Park, free, 12:30 – 5:30

Ultimate Grand Tasting at the Harlem Stroll, featuring participants Aliyyah Baylor of Make My Cake, Amie Kiros of Piatto d’Oro, Andrew LoPresto of Bar314, Antonio Settepani of Settepani, Aromas Boutique Bakery, Camaron Fagan of Harlem Tavern, Carlos Salazar of Rincón Mexicano, Carlos Swepson of BLVD Bistro, Chris Pollok of Bier International, Davie Simmons of Uptown Veg & Juice Bar, Dear Mama, Drunken Fruit, Greedy Pot, Harlem Haberdashery, Humberto Guallpa of Row House, Jamaica Tourism Board, Jessica Spaulding of Harlem Chocolate Factory, Julian Medina of La Chula Harlem, Kenichi Tajima of Tastings Social presents Mountain Bird, Lara Land, Leon Johnson, Lexis Gonzalez and Dr. Sharon Gonzalez of Lady Lexis Sweets, Lloyd’s Carrot Cake, Betty Campbell-Adams of Maison Harlem, Marcus Samuelsson of Red Rooster Harlem/Ginny’s Supper Club, Mark Rosati of Shake Shack, Neca Bryan of Kingston Restaurant & Bar, Norma Jean Darden of Miss Mamie’s Spoonbread, RanDe Rogers of Sisters Caribbean Cuisine, Yohey Horishita, and Zachary Gelnaw-Rubin of Lion Lion, adults only, Morningside Park, $85, 12:30 – 5:30

ASHITA NO MA-JOE: ROCKY MACBETH

Shakespeare meets manga in the boxing ring in Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth at Japan Society (photo © Takashi Ikemura)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
May 15-18, $28
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Theater Company Kaimaku Pennant Race founder Yu Murai transforms Japan Society into a boxing arena in Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, running May 15-18. The sixty-minute show is a seriocomic mash-up of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the late 1960s manga Ashita no Joe (“Tomorrow’s Joe”), written by Ikki Kajiwara (Asao Takamori) and illustrated by Tetsuya Chiba and which was turned into several anime series and anime and live-action films. The title translates roughly to “Tomorrow No Witch,” referencing the witches of Macbeth as well as one of the play’s most famous monologues. The protagonist is Joe Yabuki, aka Rocky Macbeth, an ambitious troubled teen who finds success in the ring — and there will be an actual boxing ring onstage, with an audience of only sixty people sitting around it. The boxers wear funky-weird head-to-toe costumes over five rounds of battles as Macbeth seeks the crown, as king and champion.

Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth moves reimagined Shakespeare tale to a boxing ring (photo © Takashi Ikemura)

“We also have been believing in a false sense of security / that is nothing more than a prophecy. / The Birnam Wood has already started to move. / What will the witches whisper to us, / the people who have been pretending not to notice? / What will we whisper to the future Macbeths to come?” Yu Murai writes, fusing themes of postwar Japan with the 1960s counterculture, one of his specialties. (At the 2009 Fringe Festival, the company had fun with Romeo and Toilet, complete with toilet paper rolls and bathroom humor.) The cast features Takuro Takasaki, G. K. Masayuki, and Kazuma Takeo, with video design and operation by Kazuki Watanabe; opening night will be followed by a Meet-the-Artists reception. The presentation is being held in conjunction with the Japan Society exhibition “Radicalism in the Wilderness: Japanese Artists in the Global 1960s,” which continues through May 31; Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth tickets get you half off gallery admission.

COMPASSIONATE ACTION: THE HEALING POWER OF TELLING YOUR STORY

Jamia Wilson, Lisa Weinert, and Kate Johnson will come together for Compassionate Action at the Rubin on May 15 (photos by Aubrie Pick, Renee Choi, Filip Wolak)

Who: Kate Johnson, Jamia Wilson, Lisa Weinert
What: Thought Party (“mindfulness of thinking”) and Group Journaling
Where: Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave., 212-620-5000
When: Wednesday, May 15, $25 (use discount code CA20 to save $5), 7:00
Why: On May 15, Feminist Press executive director Jamia Wilson, Narrative Healing founder Lisa Weinert, and meditation teacher Kate Johnson will gather at the Rubin Museum for the latest installment of Compassionate Action, a series of interactive events with artists, healers, and others that will help guide participants in strengthening their skills and making a difference in the ever-more-challenging contemporary world. The evening’s theme is “Thought Party (‘mindfulness of thinking’) and Group Journaling” and will include a mindful contemplation meditation, a conversation about how stories can lead to healing, and an activity to find your voice and express it, as we all have stories to tell and to hear. Co-created and hosted by Johnson, Compassionate Action continues Wednesdays in May and June with such other programs as “Pleasure, Power, and Sexual Liberation” with Lama Rod Owens and Johnson, “The Power of Hope in a Changing Climate” with Ibrahim Abdul-Matin and Jungwon Kim, and “Joy, Rigor, and the Power of Wise Masculinity” with Bobbito Garcia and Johnson.

ARUNDHATI ROY: THE ARTHUR MILLER FREEDOM TO WRITE LECTURE

Arundhati Roy will deliver the Arthur Miller lecture at PEN America World Voices Festival (photo by Mayank Austen Soofi)

Who: Arundhati Roy, Siddhartha Deb
What: The Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, PEN America World Voices Festival
Where: Apollo Theater, 253 West 125th St.
When: Sunday, May 12, $30-$65, 6:00
Why: The fifteenth annual PEN World Voices Festival comes to a close in New York City on May 12 with Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy delivering the prestigious Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, the keynote event of the weeklong celebration of the written word, which seeks to “broaden channels of dialogue between the United States and the world.” The Indian screenwriter, essayist, novelist, and activist is the author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness; her collection of essays, My Seditious Heart, is coming out in June. She will be speaking about “the defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites”; the talk will be followed by a Q&A with Indian writer and professor Siddhartha Deb. Among the other events this weekend are “Secrets and Lives” with Boris Kachka, Dani Shapiro, and Bridgett M. Davis, “The Art of Violence” with Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Tommy Orange, and Mohammed Hanif, “Women Uninterrupted” with Jennifer Egan, Inês Pedrosa, and Elif Shafak, and the free debate “A Question of Justice” at the Center for Social Innovation.

SOCRATES

Michael Stuhlbarg is riveting as the title character in Tim Blake Nelson’s Socrates at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through June 2, $85-$150
212-539-8500
www.publictheater.org

Michael Stuhlbarg is rousingly gallant and stout as the title character in Tim Blake Nelson’s cogent but irritatingly long Socrates, which has been extended at the Public Theater’s Martinson Hall through June 2. The tale of the fate of one of the world’s most famous philosophers — who never wrote anything down, so all we know about him has come from the writings of others — is told in flashback via a pedantic, unnecessary frame story in which Plato (Teagle F. Bougere), a student of Socrates’s, is deciding whether he should become a boy’s (Niall Cunningham) teacher. The tall, blond boy is angry at Plato and what has been done to Socrates. “You’re an Athenian. The Athenians killed him. My question therefore implicates you, especially in the context of a democracy where leaders and their actions are promulgated as representing the people’s will,” the boy says. Plato acknowledges his responsibility, explaining, “In a sense I betrayed him more profoundly and lastingly than Athens did.”

Crito (Robert Joy, center) is one of the writers whose dialogues form the basis of Socrates (photo by Joan Marcus)

Forget the bookended nonsense and instead revel in the bulk of the play, which really begins with a gathering in which Socrates, war hero Alcibiades (Austin Smith), playwright Aristophanes (Tom Nelis), doctor Eryximachus (David Aaron Baker), poet Agathon (Joe Tapper), writer Crito (Robert Joy), and others, dressed in period togas and robes designed by Catherine Zuber, are drinking heavily and regaling one another with tales of Socrates’s supposed love of good-looking boys and his general brilliance, both of which he adamantly denies. “You’ve taught an entire generation how to think!” Alcibiades exclaims, to which Socrates responds, “That’s simply not true!” Nelson soon jumps ahead to Socrates’s final days, as he’s arrested, facing a trial that could result in his execution. Like Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, Socrates refuses to bend his principles, spouting philosophy even as he denies his intelligence and ignores the pleas of his friends, colleagues, wife, Xanthippe (Miriam A. Hyman), and son to avoid the death penalty. “It would hardly become a man my age to resent his own end, don’t you think?” he says, arguing that there is only one outcome.

The Athenians make their case against Socrates in Tim Blake Nelson world premiere at the Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

His fellow philosophers attempt to convince him otherwise, resulting in fascinating debates about happiness, equality, knowledge, memory, and truth in which the Tony- and Obie-winning, bushy-bearded Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, The Pillowman), looking like a cross between Mandy Patinkin and the hirsute David Letterman, expounds on democracy with an intense fury that relates to the current situation in America and around the globe. After one particularly astute declaration, an audience member, a well-regarded thespian himself, shouted out, “Right on!”

Nelson, an actor (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; O Brother, Where Art Thou?), filmmaker (The Grey Zone, O), and playwright (Eye of God, Anadarko), and Tony-winning director Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Father) let things go on way too long; the play runs a mind-boggling 160 minutes (with intermission), and you might find yourself groaning during the coda as Plato and the boy can’t stop evaluating what we’ve just seen. But when Stuhlbarg is onstage, it is electrifying. Scott Pask’s immersive set features walls that extend throughout the theater covered in the hand-carved text of Pericles’s Funeral Oration in Ancient Greek: “We are unique in the way we regard anyone who takes no part in public affairs: We do not call that a quiet life, we call it a useless life.” (Pericles was the uncle of Alcibiades.) Socrates did not live a quiet, useless life, his legacy as relevant today as ever.

JEAN-CLAUDE CARRIÈRE: YOYO / HEREUX ANNIVERSAIRE

All the wealth in the world can’t make a lonely millionaire (Pierre Étaix) happy in Yoyo

YOYO (Pierre Étaix, 1965) / HEREUX ANNIVERSAIRE (Pierre Étaix & Jean-Claude Carrière, 1962)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, May 9, 4:30, and Wednesday, May 15, 7:00
Series runs May 9 – June 16
www.moma.org

French auteur Pierre Étaix’s strange and beautiful films were long inaccessible, the subject of nearly two decades of legal wrangling, but on May 9 and 15, MoMA will be presenting his 1965 bittersweet black-and-white slapstick charmer, Yoyo, as part of its “Jean-Claude Carrière” series, celebrating the screenwriter and master collaborator who worked with such legends as Luis Buñuel, Louis Malle, Miloš Forman, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, Nagisa Oshima, and Peter Brook; the eighty-seven-year-old Carrière will introduce the May 9 screening. (In April 2010, Étaix was finally able to once again bring his films to the public, his entire output restored and making their New York debut at a festival at Film Forum in October 2012.) Étaix, who wrote Yoyo with Carrière, stars as a ridiculously wealthy but extremely bored man who lives alone in an ornately decorated, absurdly large chateau. It’s 1925, and he has servants for absolutely everything, as well as his own private band and flappers, but he pines for his lost love, Isolina (Claudine Auger). One day she arrives with a traveling circus, along with a young boy (Philippe Dionnet) who turns out to be his son. She at first rejects the multimillionaire, but when he loses it all on Black Tuesday, the three of them form their own traveling circus, with the boy ultimately turning into a popular clown named Yoyo (played as an adult by Étaix) and seeking to restore the chateau and his family.

French auteur Pierre Étaix takes clowning around very seriously in rediscovered classic

The first section of the film is a glorious homage to the silent film era and other cinematic comedians, with Étaix evoking his mentor, Jacques Tati; Charlie Chaplin; Buster Keaton; and, later, Jerry Lewis, with whom he’d appear as Gustav the Great in Lewis’s never-to-be-seen Holocaust film The Day the Clown Died. Nouvelle Vague cinematographer Jean Boffety (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; Je t’aime, je t’aime) shoots Yoyo in a sharp, gorgeous black-and-white, composing breathtaking shots that boast a dazzling symmetry that must make Wes Anderson giddy with delight, while Étaix fills the film with ingenious sight gags that would make Ernie Kovacs proud (just wait till you see the supposed still-life painting), all anchored by Jean Paillaud’s memorable musical theme. But once the stock market crashes and talkies take over, dialogue enters the picture, and the camera is often off balance, the perfect symmetry a thing of the past. With Yoyo, Étaix, who had previously made Le Soupirant and would go on to make The Great Love and En pleine forme, was influenced by the sudden, tragic death of his father, his love of the circus — he had already worked under the big tent, and he would leave films to become a clown in a traveling circus in the early 1970s — and his viewing of Fellini’s 8½ (look for the La Strada poster) resulting in a film that sometimes gets a little lost and too surreal, but he ultimately brings things back around as Yoyo grows into a star and the story travels through the arc of twentieth-century entertainment, from the silent era to talkies to television. Truffaut called it “a beautiful film in which I loved every shot and every idea, and which taught me many things about movies.”

Pierre Étaix and Jean-Claude Carrière’s Heureux Anniversaire kicks off Carrière festival at MoMA with Yoyo

It’s a real treat that Étaix’s work is undergoing this rediscovery; lovers of Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist will particularly enjoy Yoyo, which is being shown with Heureux Anniversaire, Étaix and Carrière’s deliriously funny black-and-white short that won the 1963 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Subject. As a woman (Laurence Lignières) prepares a special anniversary dinner at home, her husband (Étaix) gets trapped in all kinds of craziness as he desperately tries to make it home in time, but the traffic and parking gods are against him. Hysterical slapstick ensues virtually without dialogue, like a classic silent film with a wacky score. And you’ll never be able to look at Mr. Bean the same way again. “Jean-Claude Carrière” runs May 9 to June 16 and includes such other works Carrière wrote and/or directed as Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Godard’s Every Man for Himself, Buñuel’s The Phantom of Liberty, and Wajda’s Danton, with Carrière introducing several screenings.

RICOCHET: ENTANGLED

The lives of Bradley (James Kautz) Greta (Naomi Lorrain) intersect after a tragedy in Entangled (photo by Travis Emery Hackett)

RICOCHET: AN AMORALISTS ANTHOLOGY ABOUT SURVIVING AN AMERICAN EPIDEMIC
Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre
A.R.T./New York Theatres
502 West 53rd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday – Saturday through May 11, $20-$30, 7:30
amoralists.com

The Amoralists, one of the city’s most adventurous and exciting theatrical troupes, concludes its 2018-19 ’Wright Club season with the gripping Entangled. The ’Wright Club program consists of four new plays built around “one unifying event. Three distinct perspectives. No right answers.” The fictional event is a mass shooting in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History; Entangled is the final installment of “Ricochet: An Amoralists Anthology about Surviving an American Epidemic,” which has previously been explored from different angles in Gabriel Jason Dean’s Triggered at the Cherry Lane Studio in August, directed by Kimille Howard; Charly Evon Simpson’s Stained at New Ohio Theatre in October, directed by Kate Moore Heaney; and James Anthony Tyler’s Armed at Teatro Latea at the Clemente in December, directed by Bianca LaVerne Jones. You do not have to have seen any of those plays, which all ran for three performances, to get caught up in the thrall of Entangled, a stellar collaboration between Simpson and Dean, directed by Moore Heaney, that plays for three weeks, through May 11 at A.R.T./New York Theatres.

Naomi Lorrain and James Kautz star in Amoralists’ conclusion to Ricochet (photo by Travis Emery Hackett)

In the two-character Entangled, Bradley (Amoralists founding artistic director James Kautz), a white man, is the older brother of the shooter, Little. Greta (Naomi Lorrain), a black woman, is the mother of one of the youngest victims, Astrid. The play unfolds in alternating monologues in which Bradley and Greta speak directly to the audience and dictate emails to each other, sent and unsent, as they search for answers, deal with the traumatic death of a loved one, and try to maintain relationships, although their situations are never made equal. “Dear Greta,” Bradley writes, “Although we’ve never met, we are forever linked by the senseless tragedy my little brother brought into our lives.” Greta, however, feels further violated by this additional unwanted intrusion. Wondering if Little is still connected to Astrid, she writes, “If he is haunting her in the afterlife / If your brother is haunting her in the afterlife / Are you haunting me in this life, Bradley? / Are you?” She later muses, “I wonder a lot about who thinks they must survive the trauma / And who thinks they must cause it in order to survive.” Greta’s dialogue is written by Simpson (Behind the Sheet, Jump), a black woman, and Bradley’s by Dean (Terminus, Qualities of Starlight), a white man. And yes, race does play a part in the proceedings, particularly when it comes to the media. (Dean has probed the aftermath of mass shootings before, including in Our New Town, a musical inspired by both the Newtown massacre and the classic American drama Our Town.)

The Amoralists’ Entangled immerses the audience in the cosmos (photo by Travis Emery Hackett)

Moore Heaney directs with a calm hand as the actors take turns center stage on a circular platform or pull up a chair on Andrew Diaz’s spare set, which also features a curved horizontal backdrop onto which Kate Freer projects images of the sky and clouds and the cosmos. The universe plays a central role in the play, from the planetarium where the shooting occurred to the name Astrid, as Simpson and Dean compare the Big Bang that created everything to the scourge of gun violence (perpetrated this time by a man known as Little), which wreaks destruction on individuals and society as a whole. It’s always a pleasure watching Kautz (Nibbler, Utility) onstage; he embodies a kind of everyman persona, and here he represents someone who could be any of us, desperate to find out what went so horribly wrong. Lorrain (Song for a Future Generation, Stained) is much more active and lively as she is suddenly thrust into the role of public figure. “After the first few days, people didn’t stop me in the street / I am not sure if that’s because they didn’t want to say anything to me / Didn’t want to intrude / Or maybe they just weren’t sure,” she says. “Just weren’t sure I was the one they saw on the news / I think it is more likely that they just forgot / Forgot how they knew me.” In today’s day and age, with so many mass shootings in America being detailed in the 24/7 news cycle and then disappearing into the maelstrom, it is much too easy to forget the names of the shooters, the victims, the heroes. But those with families involved are doomed to remember, reliving the horror over and over again.