twi-ny recommended events

THOMAS COLE’S JOURNEY: ATLANTIC CROSSINGS

Thomas Cole, The Titan's Goblet, Oil on canvas, 1833 (Gift of Samuel P. Avery Jr., 1904)

Thomas Cole, “The Titan’s Goblet,” oil on canvas, 1833 (Gift of Samuel P. Avery Jr., 1904)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Daily through May 13, $12-$25 (New York residents pay-what-you-wish)
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

Thomas Cole’s five-part masterpiece, “The Course of Empire,” serves as a primer, or maybe more of a warning now, of the fall of a major power. It leads viewers down a dark path, beginning with “The Savage State” and continuing with “The Arcadian or Pastoral State,” “The Consummation of Empire,” “Destruction,” and “Desolation.” But the British-born Cole was more than just a chronicler of doom, as displayed in the Met Fifth Avenue exhibit “Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings,” which closes Sunday. In 1818, the teenage Cole traveled across the ocean, emigrating to America, later venturing back to England and Italy, honing his craft. Cole was an early leader of the Hudson River School with Thomas Doughty and Asher Brown Durand, painting magnificent landscapes in the Catskills and elsewhere. The Met exhibit, which honors the bicentennial of Cole’s arrival in America, includes dozens of his works and related paraphernalia, along with canvases by J. M. W. Turner, Claude Lorrain, John Martin, John Constable, Frederic Edwin Church, Durand, and others.

THE ICEMAN COMETH

(photo by Julieta Cervantes)

David Morse, Denzel Washington, and Colm Meaney star in George C. Wolfe’s Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 1, $79 – $209
icemanonbroadway.com

Two-time Oscar and Tony winner Denzel Washington is nothing short of majestic as traveling hardware salesman Theodore “Hickey” Hickman in George C. Wolfe’s powerful adaptation of Eugene’ O’Neill’s staggering masterpiece, The Iceman Cometh. Washington’s charm lights up the dark goings-on at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, where set designer Santo Loquasto has transformed the stage into the No Chance Saloon, the Bedrock Bar, the End of the Line Café, a dank, depressing Greenwich Village dive in 1912 owned by Harry Hope (Colm Meaney) that is populated by a gang of luckless losers intent on drinking themselves into oblivion. The only thing they have to look forward to is the twice-a-year arrival of Hickey, who cheers them up by filling them with free drinks and telling wild stories from the real world outside. He’s like Jesus turning water into whiskey for his apostles, who consist of Larry Slade (David Morse), a former activist who has turned his back on life and wants nothing to do with anyone; Ed Mosher (Bill Irwin), a former circus performer; Harvard Law School graduate Willie Oban (Neal Huff); Boer War nemeses Piet Wetjoen (Dakin Matthews) and Cecil Lewis (Frank Wood); nighttime bartender Rocky Pioggi (Danny McCarthy), who also is a pimp for Margie (Nina Grollman), Pearl (Carolyn Braver), and Cora (Tammy Blanchard); Chuck Morello (Danny Mastrogiorgio), the daytime bartender who is in love with Cora; disgraced NYPD detective Pat McGloin (Jack McGee); communist revolutionary Hugo Kalmar (Clark Middleton), who sleeps through much of the show; Joe Mott (Michael Potts), the only African American at the bar, who wants to open a black-only gambling house; and Jimmy Tomorrow (Reg Rogers), a former journalist who believes he will return to society “tomorrow.”

Larry is deeply disturbed when Don Parritt (Austin Butler) shows up, the teenage son of an old lover from Larry’s anarchist days. Don desperately wants Larry’s approval and acceptance, but Larry refuses to care about anyone or anything, choosing to drink till he dies even though he’s probably the only person in the bar who could actually still play a role in society. As the men and women bicker, argue, joke around, and prepare for Harry’s birthday party, Hickey finally arrives, bigger and better than ever, immediately injecting life into the motley group of drunks. But this time around, Hickey, in his trademark straw hat, has something more to offer besides free drinks and Champagne: He is determined to help each man find a reason to stop being a worthless drunk and instead pick himself off his barstool, return to the real world, and make his “pipe dreams” come true. He is also armed with a secret that he’s not quite ready to share.

(photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Harry Hope’s (Colm Meaney) birthday party is reminiscent of “The Last Supper” in The Iceman Cometh (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Four-time Pulitzer Prize winner O’Neill (Long Day’s Journey into Night, Strange Interlude) wrote The Iceman Cometh in 1939, but it was not staged until after WWII, in 1946, debuting at the Martin Beck Theatre. It deals with politics, racism, and the forgotten men of America, but O’Neill does not blame society, the economy, or war for their alcoholism and retreat from existence; these are men who would have given up no matter the era, lending the play a terrifying kind of timelessness. Hickey has never been their savior; ironically, he is the one who betrays them by suddenly trying to give meaning to their miserable lives. Wolfe even stages the party scene at a long table reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Wolfe has trimmed the show down to a slim three hours and fifty minutes, with two intermissions and a pause, pacing the drama well, like drinking a smooth glass of high-end whiskey and not a shot, or full bottle, or rotgut. The cast is exceptional, a team of pros giving it everything they’ve got. Meaney brings depth to Harry, Rogers plays Jimmy with just the right tease of hope, Potts adeptly handles the racism angle, and Butler, in his Broadway debut, is bright-eyed and determined as the young Don, a part previously played by such future stars as Jeff Bridges and Robert Redford.

(photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Hickey (Denzel Washington) has quite a story to tell in Eugene O’Neill revival at the Jacobs Theatre (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

But the key to the success of the show is the relationship between Hickey and Larry; over the years, the former has been portrayed by Jason Robards, Kevin Spacey, Brian Dennehy, James Earl Jones, Lee Marvin, and Nathan Lane, while the latter has been played by James Cromwell, Robert Ryan, Patrick Stewart, Conrad Bain, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Dennehy. Washington and Morse, who both starred as doctors in the groundbreaking, Emmy-winning 1980s series St. Elsewhere, are staunch and deeply affecting in their roles. Morse’s Larry is loud and angry, often walking to the sides of the stage to just watch the other losers, as if he is better than them, even if he won’t admit it. Washington’s Hickey throws knowing glances at Larry; he wants his friend to change but knows it’s unlikely. Washington commands the stage with his full body, gesturing with his arms and legs, at times hunching over just a bit and leaning his head forward as he spreads his new ideas. He delivers the final monologue — on a chair, not a cross — beautifully as his disciples gaze intently from behind. Both Washington and Morse have received Tony nominations for their performances; the show has also been nominated for Best Revival, Best Scenic Design, Best Costume Design (Ann Roth), Best Lighting (Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer), Best Sound (Dan Moses Schreier), and Best Director. The title comes from Hickey’s classic story about returning home one day to unexpectedly find the ice salesman with his wife in the hay, but it also refers to the specter of death haunting each one of these characters.

ONE OCTOBER

Clay Pigeon

Clay Pigeon interviews construction worker Mark Paris in One October

ONE OCTOBER (Rachel Shuman, 2017)
Maysles Documentary Center
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd., between 127th & 128th Sts.
May 11-17, 7:30
212-537-6843
oneoctoberfilm.com
www.maysles.org

In October 2008, in the midst of the Barack Obama / John McCain presidential election and the mortgage crisis, filmmaker Rachel Shuman took to the streets of New York City with Clay Pigeon, host of The Dusty Show on WFMU, interviewing people as they made their way across Manhattan and other boroughs. The Boston-born, Beacon-based Shuman intended to capture a moment in time and not release the film until after Obama’s second term ended to see how life in the city changed. The result is One October, a kind of love letter to who we were, are, and will be. Inspired by Chris Marker’s 1963 film Le Joli Mai, in which the French director interviewed people on the streets of Paris, Shuman follows Pigeon, Radio Shack mini tape recorder in hand, as he wanders through Central Park, Harlem, Washington Square Park, the Lower East Side, Madison Square Park, the Financial District, the Brooklyn Bridge, Willets Point, Tompkins Square Park, and other locations, approaching a series of men and women who share fascinating details about their personal and professional lives; the Iowa-born Pigeon has an innate knack for quickly understanding his subjects, asking intuitive questions that often surprise them. He speaks with a former freelance photographer who now works construction to make more money for his family, an ambitious lawyer who wants to work at the UN, a mixed-race couple sitting on a bench, a woman railing against the gentrification of Harlem, and a homeless man who turns the tables on the soft-spoken Pigeon. “It’s always interesting to see how the random collection of souls falls together and how the next chapter bears fruit or lies fallow,” he says on his radio show.

In between interviews, cinematographer David Sampliner beautifully photographs trees, buildings, storefronts, statues, the Halloween Parade, political rallies, the Columbus Day Parade, a housing protest, the Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, birds flying across blue skies, Muslims praying at the end of Ramadan, and Jews performing the ritual of Tashlich, casting away their sins by throwing pieces of bread into the East River. The shots, which include classic New York restaurants as well as institutions that have since closed, are accompanied by a bittersweet score by Paul Brill, featuring cellist Dave Eggar. Director, editor, and producer Shuman (Negotiations) has created a loving warning about the future of a city that has been undergoing major changes since October 2008. Executive produced by three-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton, the hour-long One October runs May 11-17 at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, where it will be shown with Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr.’s ten-minute short The Monolith, about artist Gwyneth Leech’s reaction when a new high-rise hotel threatens her view of the city skyline from her studio window. Most screenings will be followed by a special Q&A and/or panel discussion, including a behind-the-scenes interview with Pigeon and a Q&A with Shuman and Leech on May 11, a Q&A with Shuman and Pigeon on May 12, a Q&A with Shuman, Sampliner, and Monolith cinematographer Andy Bowley on May 13, an editing panel with Shuman and Monolith editor Rosie Walunas on May 15, and a hyper-gentrification panel with Michael Henry Adams and Nellie Hester Bailey on May 16.

FILMWORKER

Filmworker

Leon Vitali sits next to Stanley Kubrick doll while sharing stories of toiling for the master in Filmworker

FILMWORKER (Tony Zierra, 2017)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, May 11
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
filmworker.com

British actor Leon Vitali was already carving out a successful career for himself in the swinging London of the late 1960s and early ’70s when he landed a key role in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 epic, Barry Lyndon. Vitali was doing such a good job as Lord Bullingdon that Kubrick wrote additional scenes for him. But it turns out that what Vitali really wanted to do — ever since he first saw A Clockwork Orange — was work for Kubrick behind the scenes, to learn the art of filmmaking at the foot of the master. So Vitali gave up acting in 1977 and spent the next two decades as Kubrick’s right-hand man, doing whatever he was asked, whatever was needed. Documentarian Tony Zierra details Vitali’s long, strange journey in Filmworker, which opens May 11 at Metrograph; on opening weekend Zierra and Vitali will participate in several Q&As with special guests such as Alec Baldwin and The Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick coauthor Dr. Rodney Hill. “When someone would say to Stanley, I’d give my right arm to work for you, he would kind of smile, because I actually think he thought, ‘Well, why are you lowballing me? What, just the right arm?’” Vitali, who refers to his occupation as “filmworker,” says in the film. Over the years, Vitali became involved in casting, cutting, sound mixing, marketing, shipping, sales, dubbing, trailers, licensing, video transfers, color correcting, inventory, frame-by-frame restoration, and archiving, among myriad other responsibilities. “Leon did for Stanley what half a dozen executive producers and associate producers and production managers and drivers and tailors do on other movies for directors,” says former Warner Bros. SVP Julian Senior. “You have to understand Stanley Kubrick before you can even begin to understand what Leon Vitali did, does, went through, what’s imprinted on his soul and mind. It’s only when you understand that this remarkable man, a genius, a nightmare, warm, caring, distant, cold, expansive, funny, hugely intelligent, totally driven man would do to make his movies.”

Filmworker

Stanley Kubrick, flanked by Leon Vitali and Jack Nicholson, appears to like what he sees on the set of The Shining

Zierra (Carving Out Our Name, My Big Break) incorporates archival photographs, home movies, letters, notebooks, diaries, and original interviews with a vast array of men and women who have worked with Kubrick and Vitali, most of whom are in awe of what the latter did for the former. “What Leon did was a selfless act, a kind of crucifixion of himself,” Full Metal Jacket star Matthew Modine says. “This industry has been built on people like that,” technical services EVP Beverly Wood says of Vitali. Among the others singing Vitali’s praises are Barry Lyndon star Ryan O’Neal; Oscar-winning Full Metal Jacket gunnery sergeant R. Lee Ermey; Daniel Lloyd, who played Danny in The Shining; Stellan Skarsgård and Pernilla August, who worked with Vitali on Ingmar Bergman’s production of Hamlet; and Vitali’s siblings and three grown children. It took Zierra a year to convince Vitali, who also played Red Cloak in Eyes Wide Shut, to share his story, since he prefers being in the background. But once he opens up, there’s no stopping him as he describes the highs and lows of working for Kubrick while clarifying that he was not merely the master’s assistant or protector. “I never handled Stanley. I handled myself so I could exist in Stanley’s world,” he explains. The scenes of Vitali interacting with Kubrick, Lloyd, and others on sets make this a must-see for Kubrick fans as well as anyone who just loves the art of the movies. “I don’t have an obsession for creativity,” Vitali notes. “It just is a necessary requirement. You either love it so much you can’t help it, or you’re a fucking idiot, or you’re a mixture of both.” (In conjunction with Filmworker, Metrograph is presenting “Stanley Kubrick x 8” May 11-27, consisting of eight works by Kubrick, several of which are featured in the documentary.)

A PRELUDE TO THE SHED — TINO SEHGAL: THIS VARIATION / WILLIAM FORSYTHE: PAS DE DEUX CENT DOUZE

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tino Sehgal’s This variation goes from dark to light to dark again (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Daily through Sunday, May 13, free with advance tickets, 1:00 to early evening
Tenth Ave. at West Thirty-First Sts. (entrance on West Thirty-First)
theshed.org
shed slideshow

Next spring, the new arts center known as the Shed will open by Hudson Yards. Through May 13 of this spring, Shed chairman Dan Doctoroff and artistic director and CEO Alex Poots are presenting “A Prelude to the Shed,” a wide-ranging amuse-bouche consisting of live dance and music, panel discussions, an architecture exhibit, and an experimental course for students, all held in and around a transformable venue in an undeveloped lot at Tenth Ave. and West Thirty-First St., designed by architect Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ Works and Berlin-based conceptual artist Tino Sehgal. Around the structure are tall, comfortable seats built into all four sides. The centerpiece of “Prelude” is Sehgal’s This variation, which interacts with choreographer William Forsythe’s Pas de Deux Cent Douze, a reimagining of the main duet from his 1987 ballet In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated. The show begins every afternoon at one o’clock and continues into the early evening. You enter the space into almost complete darkness, but don’t let that stop you from moving forward. Just shuffle slowly, hands out, reacting to the movement and sounds of Sehgal’s performers, who will be able to see you and avoid any collisions. There are tiny slits of light, and your eyes will eventually adjust, first picking out silhouetted figures, then recognizing them as flesh-and-blood people.

Roderick George performs to a surprised audience at Prelude to the Shed (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Roderick George performs to a surprised audience as part of “Prelude to the Shed” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The cast includes Margherita D’Adamo, Descha Daemgen, Sandhya Daemgen, Jule Flierl, Roderick George, Michael Helland, Louise Höjer, Nikima Jagudajev, Josh Johnson, Leah Katz, just in F. Kennedy, Stuart Meyers, Thomas Proksch, Claire Vivianne Sobottke, and Andros Zins-Brown, many of whom have performed This variation in one of its previous incarnations, dating back to Documenta 13 at Kassel in 2012. They sing familiar songs and emit various sounds and utterances as they jump and move across the room. The audience can sit on the floor, lean against a wall, or move about carefully. However, after a while, the east wall is pushed out and turned around, opening the area to the rest of the city, allowing light to come pouring in and giving prime views to the men, women, and children who had been seated on the big chairs outside (and who kept sitting on them as the walls were moved). George and Johnson then join together for the Forsythe duet on this new indoor-outdoor stage; however, the afternoon we were there, Johnson was absent, so George performed a lovely solo, improvising while maintaining Forsythe’s choreographic language for two dancers, followed by a gorgeous piece sung by D’Adamo as she and George interacted. The space is eventually closed up and it starts all over again, each performance unique. More free tickets have just been released, but walk-ins are welcome as long as there is room.

DANCE NATION

Dance Nation

Dance Teacher Pat (Thomas Jay Ryan) leads the team through rehearsal in Dance Nation (photo by Joan Marcus)

Playwrights Horizons
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 1, $59-$99
www.playwrightshorizons.org

Clare Barron’s Dance Nation is a brilliant, savvy comedy that moves and grooves to a magnetic beat that melds the present and the future in ingenious ways. The swiftly paced 105-minute play, which opened tonight at Playwrights Horizons, follows a Liverpool, Ohio, preteen dance team on the road to a potential championship in Tampa Bay. But the six girls and one boy, who are between eleven and fourteen, are played by grown-ups who range in age from their twenties to their sixties, imbuing the characters with the knowledge they have gained through experience. Barron considers it a “ghost play,” where the children haunt their adult selves and vice versa, as if the kids know what they will become. Through sharp, honest dialogue, tremendous humor, and more than a bit of anger and rage, Barron and Obie-winning director-choreographer Lee Sunday Evans employ stereotypes in order to reclaim and redefine them for the #MeToo generation. The team consists of star dancer Amina (Dina Shihabi), confidence-challenged Zuzu (Eboni Booth), practical Connie (Purva Bedi), not-as-talented Maeve (Obie winner Ellen Maddow), wise-beyond-her-years Sofia (Camila Canó-Flaviá), advanced, anarchic Ashlee (Lucy Taylor), and gentle, soft-spoken Luke (Ikechukwu Ufomadu), representing multiple races, ethnicities, classes, and body shapes. The tension between the intense bonds of an adolescent group and individual ambition is beautifully explored.

Dance Nation

The girls and Luke (Ikechukwu Ufomadu) prepare for their new piece in award-winning play by Clare Barron (photo by Joan Marcus)

The team is entering a group competition, but each dancer has his or her own dreams and goals; some want to stand out more than others, so when Vanessa (Christina Rouner) gets hurt at the end of a performance, blood oozing around a broken bone in her leg, her teammates run away or avoid her, knowing that such a fate could befall any of them. But their fearless leader, Dance Teacher Pat (Thomas Jay Ryan), readies them for the next competition, for which he has choreographed a dance drily hilarious in its topic and treatment: “an acro-lyrical” piece about a heroic male activist who brought about change in his country and around the world. The girls and Luke discuss who should play the lead, talk about masturbation, deal with their mothers, and celebrate the many strengths their discipline affords them. In unison they chant, “If I could dance and nobody would ever want to kill another person again / Or be racist again / Or feel alone at night again / Or abandon their pets without a home again / That’s what I would do / That’s what I would do / That’s what I want to do with my life.”

Dance Teacher Pat (Thomas Jay Ryan) talks strategy with Zuzu (photo by Joan Marcus)

Dance Teacher Pat (Thomas Jay Ryan) talks strategy with Zuzu (Eboni Booth) as competition nears (photo by Joan Marcus)

In one of the play’s most amazing moments, the brash and bold Ashlee delivers a scathing monologue that essentially screams in the face of the gender gap, recognizing the terrifying power of sex, desire, beauty, and youth along with her own ambition. Focusing on her face and body but with deeper meaning, she describes her “epic bottom” and how men like to stroke it, brags about her penchant for math, and wonders how to handle it all. “I’m a little afraid of what would happen if I really went for it,” she says. “Like if I tried. If I really, really tried. Like if I acknowledged it. Just embraced it. Like if I walked down the street and looked those men straight in the eyes and said: ‘Yes, I’m beautiful and I’m gonna get a perfect score on the SAT, Math, Reading and Writing, motherfucker, and yes I’m only thirteen years old now but just wait ten more years. . . . I am your god. I am your second coming. I am your mother and I’m smarter than you and more attractive than you and better than you at everything that you love and you’re going to get down on your knees and worship my mind, my mind and my body and I’m gonna be the motherfucking KING of your motherfucking world.’” Barron makes it clear that this is a woman-dominated world; Rouner plays several of the dancers’ mothers, with fathers nary mentioned. Even the town’s incoming priest is a woman.

Dance Nation (photo by Joan Marcus)

The dance team is ready for action in Dance Nation at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Joan Marcus)

Dance Nation has much in common with The Wolves, Sarah DeLappe’s dazzling play about a girls soccer team. In fact, the two works shared the inaugural Relentless Award, given in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman to plays that “are challenging,” “exhibit fearlessness,” “are not mainstream,” “exude passion,” and “are relentlessly truthful.” Dance Nation, which also won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded to an outstanding English-language work by a woman, is all that and more. The Washington-born Barron was inspired to write Dance Nation after seeing the “horrific” reality show Dance Moms and also being insulted by a male theater journalist because she is a woman, regretting that she let him get away with his demeaning treatment of her. She calls out everything she can in this thrilling production, deftly addressing hot-button issues in both daring and subtle ways. In one critical locker-room scene, most of the girls change in full view of the audience, revealing their very different bodies without pride or shame. Ryan (The Amateurs, Travels with My Aunt) has a blast as the team’s conductor, ably guiding them across Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, primarily a rehearsal studio that morphs into a grassy hill and other scenes. The six women and one man playing the dancers are all outstanding, forming a terrific team; Barron (You Got Older, I’ll Never Love Again) and Obie winner Evans (Home, [Porto]) give each their moment to shine, but it is as an ensemble that this corps glows brightest.