twi-ny recommended events

AILEY ASCENDING 60th ANNIVERSARY

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be celebrating its sixtieth anniversary at City Center, which is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
November 28 – December 30, $29-$159
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

On March 30, 1958, a troupe of black dancers performed as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for the first time, at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA Dance Center, traveling around in station wagons. Now AAADT’s sixtieth anniversary tour pulls up to City Center for the company’s annual monthlong residence, this year running November 28 to December 30. The season, known as “Ailey Ascending,” features new and old works, looking back at the troupe’s glorious history and exciting future. Under the leadership of artistic director Robert Battle, thirty-two dancers, including longtime favorites Hope Boykin, Clifton Brown, Vernard J. Gilmore, Daniel Harder, Rachael McLaren, Akua Noni Parker, Jamar Roberts, and the incomparable Glen Allen Sims and Linda Celeste Sims, will be presenting the world premiere of Ronald K. Brown’s The Call, which Brown refers to as a “love letter to Mr. Ailey,” with music by Johann Sebastian Bach (performed by Chris Thile, Edgar Meyere, and Yo-Yo Ma), Mary Lou Williams, and Asase Yaa; Rennie Harris’s Lazarus, the first two-part AAADT ballet, by AAADT’s first artist-in-residence, dealing with racism and Ailey’s legacy from 1958 to today, set to music by Nina Simone, Terrence Trent D’Arby, Michael Kiwanuka, Odetta, and Darrin Ross, along with the voice of Alvin Ailey; and EN by Jessica Lang (who just announced that Jessica Lang Dance is in its final season, closing on April 30, 2019), her hundredth ballet, with original music by Jakub Ciupinski. There will also be the company premiere of Wayne McGregor’s Kairos, set to Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” reimagined by Max Richter and with set design by Idris Khan. New productions consist of Battle’s Juba and former artistic director Judith Jamison’s Divining and Forgotten Time.

Among the special programs are “All Ailey” (Memoria, Masekela Langage, Revelations; Night Creature, Cry, Masekela Langage, Revelations), “All Battle” (Juba, Ella, No Longer Silent, In/Side, Mass), “All New” (Kairos, Lazarus), “3 Visionaries” (Mass, Ella, Divining, Forgotten Time, Cry, Revelations), and “Timeless Ailey,” comprising excerpts from many well-known and rarely performed Ailey works, including Opus McShann, For “Bird” with Love, Mary Lou’s Mass, The Lark Ascending, Phases, Hidden Rites, and Pas de Duke. The opening-night gala will be chaired by Angela Bassett and Cicely Tyson and features special appearances by Ledisi, Norm Lewis, and Brandie Sutton, a new piece by Battle set to Nina Simone’s “Black Is the Color,” and the premiere of the multimedia Becoming Ailey, which will also kick off every performance except the December 11 celebration of New York City Center’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Also on the schedule are Jamar Roberts’s Members Don’t Get Weary (music by John Coltrane), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter (music by Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn), Talley Beatty’s Stack-Up (music by Earth, Wind & Fire, Grover Washington Jr., Fearless Four, and Alphonze Mouzon), and Twyla Tharp’s The Golden Section (music by David Byrne).

THE WAVERLY GALLERY

A family faces a matriarch experiencing dementia in Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 27, $49 – $149
thewaverlygalleryonbroadway.com

Elaine May gives a career-topping performance as an octogenarian suffering from dementia in the Broadway debut of Kenneth Lonergan’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, the sensitive, bittersweet memory play The Waverly Gallery. Running through January 27 at the Golden Theatre — the same venue where May and her longtime comedy partner, Mike Nichols, staged An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May in October 1960 — The Waverly Gallery takes place between 1989 and 1991 in a small, inconsequential Greenwich Village art gallery operated by eighty-five-year-old Gladys Green (May) and the Upper West Side apartment where Green’s daughter, Ellen Fine (Joan Allen), lives with her second husband, Howard Fine (David Cromer), and their dog. Ellen’s son, Daniel Reed (Lucas Hedges), often comes over for dinner, along with Gladys. “I want to tell you what happened to my grandmother, Gladys Green, near the end of her life,” Daniel tells the audience early on in the first of a series of direct addresses looking back at the past. “I lived in her building — where I still live — in Greenwich Village, during the last couple of years when she was there. . . . For twenty-eight years she ran a tiny gallery on Waverly Place, around the corner from where we lived. And without being too depressing about it, she didn’t always have the best stuff in there. But some of it was pretty good. . . . It’s not that I didn’t like her. I did. It’s just that once you went in there, it was kind of tough getting out again. So I was pretty stingy with the visits.”

Art gallery owner Gladys (Elaine May) speaks with her daughter, Ellen (Joan Allen), as painter Don (Michael Cera) looks on in Broadway debut of Kenneth Lonergan play (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

One day a somewhat egotistical artist from Massachusetts, Don Bowman (Michael Cera), walks into the gallery, which is connected to a hotel undergoing renovations, with his portfolio, and Gladys decides not only to give him a show but also to let him sleep in the back room, as he claims to have no money. Ellen, who becomes easily exasperated with her mother, and Howard, who practically yells at Gladys when he talks to her, thinking she is deafer than she is, are suspicious of Don’s motives as he insinuates himself into Gladys’s life. But when the hotel owner tells the family that he is taking back the gallery to turn it into a breakfast café, Ellen, Howard, and Daniel have to figure out a way to tell Gladys, whose Alzheimer’s is getting worse.

The play opens with Gladys saying, “I never knew anything was the matter.” Although she was specifically referring to Ellen’s first marriage falling apart, she could just as well be talking about her own life. Her memory lapses, hearing problems, and inability to truly understand what is going on around her are harrowing to watch, yet Lonergan, the writer-director of such award-winning films as You Can Count on Me and Manchester by the Sea and such hit plays as This Is Our Youth and Lobby Hero, injects plenty of humor into the strife. “We’re liberal Upper West Side atheistic Jewish intellectuals — and we really like German choral music,” Daniel tells Don. A dinner scene in which Ellen and Howard futz with Gladys’s hearing aid has a slapstick touch. And Gladys’s forgetfulness can be charming and funny — until it’s not. The eighty-six-year-old May, a National Medal of Arts winner who wrote, directed, and starred in A New Leaf and worked with the likes of Nichols, Warren Beatty, and Neil Simon in such films as The Birdcage, The Heartbreak Kid, and, yes, Ishtar, imbues Gladys with such honesty and sincerity that it’s heart-wrenching watching her decline.

Lucas Hedges, Elaine May, Joan Allen, David Cromer, and Michael Cera star in The Waverly Gallery (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

In her first Broadway show, Drama Desk- and Obie-winning director Lila Neugebauer, who is building an impressive résumé with such works as Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo, Annie Baker’s The Antipodes, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Everybody, and Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, superbly balances the humor and heartbreak, never letting melodrama take over and instead including numerous moments in which the audience feels appropriately uncomfortable going from laughing to tearing up as David Zinn’s sets alternate between New York City apartments to the quaint belowground art gallery. Grammy winner and Oscar nominee May, Tony winner and Emmy and Oscar nominee Allen (Burn This, The Contender), Tony-winning actor and director Cromer (The Band’s Visit, Tribes), Oscar nominee Hedges (Manchester by the Sea, Yen), and Tony nominee Cera (Arrested Development, Juno), in his third consecutive Lonergan play on Broadway, form a stellar ensemble, capturing the essence of an extended family facing a tragic situation. (The 1999 original cast featured a widely hailed Eileen Heckart as Gladys, Maureen Anderman as Ellen, Mark Blum as Howard, Josh Hamilton as Daniel, and Anthony Arkin as Don; Anderman is now May’s understudy on Broadway.) “Honey? Do you think the Village has changed much in the last five years?” Gladys asks Daniel, who responds, “Yes! It’s been changing for a lot longer than that!” But what hasn’t changed nearly enough is the brutal impact of Alzheimer’s disease on sufferers and their families, so aptly on display in this perceptive and humane production.

THE COEN BROTHERS GO WEST: THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

Tim Blake Nelson plays the title character, a singing gunslinger, in Coen brothers’ Western anthology

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2018)
Museum of the Moving Image, Redstone Theater
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Thursday, November 29, $15, 7:00
Costume exhibition continues through May 26
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

The Coen brothers honor and subvert the Western as only they can in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a six-part anthology film they made for Netflix. It also was shown in two theaters for a week — making it eligible for Oscars — and is having a special screening on November 29 at the Museum of the Moving Image. Over the course of the last quarter-century, Joel and Ethan Coen wrote a handful of short movies that they thought would never get made, but they eventually decided to put them together into one omnibus film. Each segment tackles a different subgenre, involves at least one death, and begins with the turning of pages in an illustrated book, as if these are old classic Western fables, although that’s just a cinematic conceit: Only “The Gal Who Got Rattled” and “All Gold Canyon” were inspired by real works, by Stewart Edward White and Jack London, respectively.

James Franco stars as a doomed bank robber in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The anthology opens with the title tale, about singing cowboy Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson), who casually takes on all challengers with his remarkable shooting prowess, speaking directly into the camera as he creatively disposes of one gunslinger after another. In “Near Algodones,” a cowboy (James Franco) thinks it will be easy pickings to rob a bank in the middle of nowhere, but then he runs into a teller (Stephen Root) who is not about to surrender any cash. In “Meal Ticket,” a traveling impresario makes money by putting a limbless man (Harry Melling) on a stage on the back of his wagon, reciting Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and other famous writings and speeches. Tom Waits is nearly unrecognizable as an old prospector in “All Gold Canyon,” panning for valuable nuggets until a young man (Sam Dillon) sneaks up on him. In “The Girl Who Got Rattled,” quiet Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) is on her way to meet a suitor chosen for her by her earnest brother, Gilbert (Jefferson Mays), accompanied by his noisy dog, President Pierce. They are part of a wagon train led by the handsome Billy Knapp (Bill Heck) and the tough-as-nails Mr. Arthur (Grainger Hines), but trouble awaits when Gilbert falls ill and an Indian appears in the distance. And finally, in “The Mortal Remains,” a grizzled old trapper (Chelcie Ross), erudite Frenchman (Saul Rubinek), and proper lady (Tyne Daly) are sharing a stage coach with a pair of bounty hunters, an Englishman (Jonjo O’Neill) and an Irishman (Brendan Gleeson), who are transporting their latest capture on the roof.

A nearly unrecognizable Tom Waits is a wily old prospector in “All Gold Canyon” segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Written, directed, edited, and produced by the Coens, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a fabulous journey through the Old West, as the brothers play with genre tropes and stereotypes while paying tribute to John Ford, John Wayne, William A. Wellman, Gene Autry, Howard Hawks, Walter Brennan, John Huston, and many other Western stalwarts. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel lovingly shoots the vast landscapes and blue skies using a digital camera, a first for a Coen brothers film, while the inimitable Carter Burwell provides the period soundtrack and Mary Zophres the historically accurate, mostly handmade outfits. Despite the six different stories, the film flows together quite naturally, with the last entry a sly commentary on everything that came before it; essentially, the characters played by Rubinek, Daly, and Ross represent the audience, as the Englishman mesmerizingly describes the art of storytelling itself, something the Coen brothers have mastered yet again. (Now, if only they could fix the typo on the first page of “Meal Ticket.”)

The Museum of the Moving Image screening will be followed by a Q&A with longtime Coen brothers costume designer Zophres, moderated by MoMI senior curator Barbara Miller; it is being held in conjunction with the new exhibition “The Coen Brothers Go West: Costume Design for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” The display, which consists of sixteen costumes (including the fab one worn by Nelson and the protective one donned by Root), ten costume boards, and several hairpieces, will be open after the MoMI screening. For more Coen magic, IFC Center’s “Weekend Classics” series continues on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings at eleven with The Big Lebowski (November 23-25), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (November 30 – December 2), No Country for Old Men (December 7-9), True Grit (December 14-16), The Hudsucker Proxy (December 21-23), and Inside Llewyn Davis (December 28-30).

THE CONTENDERS 2018: BLACKkKLANSMAN

Detectives Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) and Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) go undercover to infiltrate the KKK in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman

BLACKkKLANSMAN (Spike Lee, 2018)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 25, 2:00
Series runs through January 8
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.focusfeatures.com

BlacKkKlansman is Spike Lee’s best fiction film since 1989’s Do the Right Thing, a comic thriller inspired by the real-life story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), a Colorado cop who went undercover with the KKK. “Dis joint is based upon some fo’ real, fo’ real sh*t,” the movie announces at the start. Stallworth, wearing an impressive natural afro, is hired by Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) to diversify the force. When the police hear that Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael, now using the name Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), will be speaking at an event sponsored by the Colorado College Black Student Union, the chief and Sergeant Trapp (Ken Garito) send Stallworth in to scout out the situation. There he meets Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), a dedicated activist fighting the racist system, with a particular dislike for cops. Seeing an ad for the KKK in the local paper, Stallworth proposes to his bosses that he infiltrate the secretive organization, and they come up with a plan in which Stallworth will gain intelligence over the phone, speaking with local KKK leaders. The only problem is that Stallworth, in a major rookie mistake, used his real name when first talking to Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold), which complicates the operation. But they proceed, as Detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) insinuates himself into the group in person, applying for membership and trying to find out about any future marches, cross burnings, or other attacks, gaining the trust of the straightforward Breachway and the goofy Ivanhoe (Paul Walter Hauser), while the nasty Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Pääkkönen) quickly grows suspicious of him. In the meantime, Stallworth develops a phone friendship with Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) and begins dating Dumas, while Kendrickson’s wife, Connie (Ashlie Atkinson), desperately wants to prove her racism by participating in the KKK’s schemes — which are explicitly limited to “white Christian men.”

Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) fights for justice in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman

Written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Lee, BlacKkKlansman takes plenty of liberties with the facts — for example, Stallworth has never identified his white partner, Dumas is a fictional character (although based on Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver), and the time shifts a few years ahead — but the heart and soul of the story is true, and Lee captures it with gusto. The film is wickedly funny and frighteningly realistic, all too relevant to today’s rising racist hatred around the world. As Dumas teaches Stallworth about his responsibility to the black race, Stallworth does the same with Zimmerman about his Jewishness. “Why you acting like you don’t have skin in the game?” Stallworth asks him. Photographed by Chayse Irvin and edited by Barry Alexander Brown, BlacKkKlansman is also one of Lee’s best-looking, most-accomplished films, featuring a terrific score by Terence Blanchard along with songs by such diverse musicians as James Brown, Prince, the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Looking Glass, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Washington — who played a student in Lee’s Malcolm X, starring his father, Denzel Washington — and Driver have a great chemistry that propels the film, which was released on the first anniversary of the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

Several lines of dialogue specifically evoke what his happening in America today, and Lee seals the deal with a finale that includes footage of Duke and President Trump refusing to condemn what went down in Virginia on August 12, 2017. (He also has Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin play a not-too-bright white supremacist; actually, none of the racists is endowed with much intelligence.) As is his trademark, Lee pulls no punches; especially effective is how he switches between Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) relating the true story of the lynching of Jesse Washington and the Klansmen watching D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. Because, of course, we all have a skin in this game. BlacKkKlansman is screening November 25 at 2:00 in MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of works the museum believes will last the test of time, which continues through January 8 with such other 2018 films as Morgan Neville’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (followed by a discussion with Neville and producer Nicholas Ma), Paul Dano’s Wildlife (followed by a discussion with Dano, cowriter Zoe Kazan, and actors Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal), Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (followed by a discussion with Shrader and Ethan Hawke), and John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place (followed by a discussion with Krasinski).

SHAKE & BAKE: LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST

Berowne (Matthew Goodrich) battles King Ferdinand of Navarre (Darren Ritchie) in culinary condensation of Love’s Labor’s Lost (photo © Chad Batka)

94 Gansevoort St.
Tuesday-Saturday through January 4, $75-$200
866-811-4111
www.shakeandbaketheatre.com

In William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, Moth tells Costard, “They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.” That line might have been cut from Shake & Bake Theatre’s tasty, streamlined adaptation of the Bard’s mid-1590s comedy, but it is an apt description of the festive experience to be had at 94 Gansevoort St. across the street from the Whitney. The two-hour presentation features music, dance, an eight-course menu with drinks, and a fine dose of Shakespeare, all stirred together for an appetizing evening. Shake & Bake boils things down to three men, King Ferdinand of Navarre (Darren Ritchie), Longaville (Oge Agulué), and Berowne (Matthew Goodrich), who have just taken a three-year vow of no women, spare eating and sleeping, and intense study when a trio of ladies suddenly arrives, the Princess of France (Victoria Rae Sook), Rosaline (Mary Glen Fredrick), and Maria (Rami Margron). The Princess has come to collect a hefty debt that King Ferdinand owes her father. The men’s will is tested as they pair off in potential love matches: the King with the Princess, Berowne with Rosaline, and Longaville with Maria. Meanwhile, the Chef (Joe Ventricelli) prepares food and drink, the Cheetos-loving Costard (Margron) misdelivers some crucial letters, Boyet (Charles Osborne) attends to the ladies, and Spanish nobleman Don Armado de Adriano confesses his love for the (unseen) country maid Jaquenetta. Mystery and mayhem ensue as the cast also serves a rather impressive dinner.

The Princess of France (Victoria Rae Sook) and King Ferdinand of Navarre (Darren Ritchie) try to make a deal in tasty Shakespeare adaptation (photo © Chad Batka)

Created and adapted by director Dan Swern, choreographer Sook, and executive chef David Goldman, Shake & Bake: Love’s Labor’s Lost is a sweet and savory treat, even for Shakespeare purists. The show takes place in a large space where the audience of no more than fifty sits in cool, comfy couches for two or four people, surrounding the action; Shawn Lewis’s production design also includes a small kitchen on one side and a culinary cart wheeled on- and offstage. The male and female protagonists are dressed like royal waitstaff, in different-hued button-down tops, while Armado is in a nutty and colorful chef’s outfit. The dishes they serve, which relate directly to what is happening in the play, include field greens with balsamic quinoa, Cheeto-dusted mac n’ cheese, smokey brisket tacos, and roasted beet gazpacho, along with red and white wine and a shot of Jagermeister. (Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and nonalcoholic options are available.) The soundtrack ranges from acoustic guitar played by Ritchie and accordion by Margron to Scott Bradlee and the Postmodern Jukebox’s covers of Meghan Trainor’s “All About the Bass” and Lorde’s “Royals,” along with snippets of songs by the Beatles, Hall & Oates, Whitney Houston, Outkast, New Kids on the Block, and Queen. Osborne provides wild and wacky over-the-top comic relief, playing up his character for all its worth, while Margron adds in her fair share as Costard.

Goodrich and Fredrick are a particularly attractive Berowne and Rosaline among an appealing cast — a member of which might rest a head on your shoulder, lick the bottom of your shoe, or, as one did with me, hand you a package to deliver, telling you not to worry because the entire plot rests on your correctly performing the task. Early on, Berowne proclaims, “Come on, then, I will swear to study so, / To know the thing I am forbid to know: / As thus — to study where I well may dine, / When I to feast expressly am forbid; / Or study where to meet some mistress fine / When mistresses from common sense are hid.” Fortunately, they break all oaths, and everyone benefits in this delightfully filling reimagination of dinner theater. (As a bonus, Shake & Bake is presenting “Beers and Bard” on November 26 [$10, 7:00], in which audience members can preselect a part to play in Twelfth Night [scripts are provided] or grab a drink from the bar and simply watch the proceedings.)

SHOPLIFTERS

A unique family plays at the beach in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters

SHOPLIFTERS (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2018)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Francesca Beale Theater
144/165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, November 23
www.shopliftersfilm.com

For more than twenty years, Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda has been making marvelous, honest films about unique family situations; his latest, Shoplifters, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is yet another masterpiece in a sparkling career. In 1994’s Maborosi, a husband and father unexpectedly commits suicide. In 2004’s Nobody Knows,a twelve-year-old boy must take care of his three half-siblings when his mother disappears for long stretches of time. In 2008’s Still Walking, a family comes together once a year to honor the tragic death of an eldest son. In 2011’s I Wish, real-life brothers play fictional brothers separated when their parents divorce. And in 2013’s Like Father, Like Son, two families are affected when a hospital reports that their babies were accidentally switched at birth six years before. In Shoplifters, Kore-eda again explores the concept of family and what it means. Shibata Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo (Ando Sakura) run a household that includes aging Grandmother Hatsue (Kiko Kirin), oldest girl Aki (Matsuoka Mayu), and young boy Shota (Jyo Kairi).

Shibata Osamu (Lily Franky) teaches Shibata Shota (Jyo Kairi) how to steal in Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters

Hatsue gets a sweetheart rental deal on her small house, her landlord unaware of her extended family living in cramped quarters. To get food and supplies, part-time day worker Osamu and Shota shoplift in tandem, Aki toils in a sex shop, and Nobuyo steals from her laundry job. One night Osamu and Shota see a four-year-old girl, Juri (Sasaki Miyu), alone and hungry and decide to bring her home and feed her. When Osamu and Nobuyo later try to return the quiet little girl, Juri’s parents are fighting so viciously that Osamu and Nobuyo opt to keep her a little longer, a time that stretches out as they rename her and shower her with love and affection. “Sometimes, it’s better to choose your own family,” Nobuyo says to Hatsue, who replies, “If only not to have expectations.” But ultimately, the house of cards the Shibata clan has built comes tumbling down in heart-wrenching ways.

Shibata Nobuyo (Ando Sakura) and Shibata Osamu (Lily Franky) take in young Hojo Juri (Sasaki Miyu) in Shoplifters

Kore-eda started out as a documentarian, and he brings that realistic aesthetic to his fiction films, including Shoplifters, which he wrote, directed, and edited. It moves along at a slow, touching pace as life goes on for the well-drawn, complex characters. Like most families, they just want to be happy, even if that involves taking serious risks. Cinematographer Ryuto Kondo uses close-ups and creative shots in claustrophobic spaces (the wonderful production design is by Keiko Mitsumatsu, while the sweet, jazzy score is by Haruomi Hosono) to emphasize the tenderness of the family, which reaches a new level when they take the kids to the beach for the first time, a kind of calm before the storm. There is also a gorgeous shot of family members seen from above, gathering on their narrow porch to see fireworks, lined up on an angled strip of light amid the darkness. Shoplifting can be a hard crime to watch in films that are not celebrations of the con, as in The Grifters, for example, or even Paper Moon. It’s natural though uncomfortable to root for the stealers, especially when it’s an adult and a young boy just trying to put food on the table; you don’t want the children to get caught even as you are angry at the man or woman for involving kids. And in this case the “shoplifting” includes abducting a young girl, even if it might be the best thing for everyone. Kore-eda takes a gentle, authentic approach to the subject, lovingly depicting a close-knit family doing what it can to survive, living by its wits, knowing that it can all fall apart at any moment. Japan’s official Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film, Shoplifters is another subtle gem from one of the world’s premier filmmakers.

THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT

Author John D’Agata (Bobby Cannavale) gets more than a little frustrated with intern Jim Fingal (Daniel Radcliffe) in The Lifespan of a Fact (photo by Peter Cunningham)

Studio 54
254 West 54th St.
Through January 13, $49-$179
212-719-1300
www.lifespanofafact.com

In another part of my life, I have worked in book, newspaper, and magazine publishing, where I am regularly involved in fact checking, corresponding with freelancers, editors, and authors, trying to carefully balance artistic license and the absolute truth, if such a thing exists. So I have a particular interest in The Lifespan of a Fact, the new play by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell continuing at Studio 54 through January 13. Inspired by a true story, the eighty-five-minute show centers around an essay written by John D’Agata (Bobby Cannavale) for a magazine run by Emily Penrose (Cherry Jones), who has hired intern Jim Fingal (Daniel Radcliffe) to fact check the piece, which is about the suicide of sixteen-year-old Levi Presley in Las Vegas. A recent Harvard grad, Fingal is excited about showing Penrose what he can do, assuring her that he is the right person for the job, which is on a very tight deadline. “Check all the details, make sure they’re correct,” she tells him. “John’s been known to take his little liberties, so if there’s a place mentioned, make sure it’s spelled correctly. If there’s a person mentioned, confirm they exist. We need to make a good faith effort — confirm every detail.” She also tells him not to “be roughshod,” as D’Agata is a great writer and the piece is an extremely beautiful and important essay about humanity. But what begins as a small dispute between the nerdy Fingal and the tough D’Agata over how many strip clubs there are in Vegas turns into a major battle over language, journalism, and veracity.

Daniel Radcliffe is a nerdy intern trying to do his job in The Lifespan of a Fact (photo by Peter Cunningham)

Objecting to Fingal’s queries, D’Agata advises him, “I take liberties with things that deepen the central truth of the piece. Don’t get bogged down in the details, keep your eye on the big picture. Except don’t, because that’s my job.” But when Fingal does get bogged down on the details, questioning just about every single thing mentioned in the essay, he flies out to Vegas to perform what he believes to be due diligence. “If you say an event occurred, readers need to trust that it occurred,” Fingal insists to D’Agata. “This piece rests on the weight of a lot of details; it’s problematic for you to wash your hands of their accuracy.” D’Agata defends himself, explaining, “Things don’t rest on weights. Weights rest on things. I’m not washing my hands of anything. I’m saying there’s a world of facts to choose from. The wrong facts get in the way of the story.” To which Fingal snidely responds, “The ‘wrong’ facts?! And that means what exactly?” Soon Penrose becomes the referee in a furious fight between the two men, each of whom is making legitimate points as the deadline approaches.

Breezily directed by Tony nominee and Obie winner Leigh Silverman (Violet, Go Back to Where You Are), the play features dynamic performances by three-time Drama Desk nominee Radcliffe (Privacy, The Cripple of Inishmaan), two-time Tony winner Jones (The Glass Menagerie, Doubt), and two-time Tony nominee Cannavale (The Hairy Ape, The Motherf**ker with the Hat), an outstanding trio of actors who play off one another with endless charm even as the plot heats up and moves from Penrose’s office to D’Agata’s Vegas home. (The sets are by Tony winner Mimi Lien, with distracting projections by Lucy Mackinnon and original music by Palmer Hefferan.) Watching the annotation of the essay is fascinating; you can actually read the final, published article here, in the aptly titled Believer magazine.

Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones, and Bobby Cannavale star in new Broadway play about the importance of facts (photo by Peter Cunningham)

Over the years, I have often found myself between a copy editor and a line editor, the former catching a factual error, the latter stetting it (letting it stand as is) for one reason or another. The Lifespan of a Fact gets right to the heart of the matter with intelligence and wit, although it takes it to an extreme, complete with some very funny slapstick comedy. The play itself has taken many liberties with the story; Fingal and D’Agata are real, while Penrose is not, and many of the situations and the timeline have been altered for dramatic impact, which is okay with Fingal and D’Agata, who wrote about their experience in their 2012 book, The Lifespan of a Fact. The show arrives on Broadway at an opportune moment in American history, when facts are challenged on social media and the president screams about fake news when he doesn’t like what is written about him in the press. But The Lifespan of a Fact wisely avoids getting political, instead concentrating on how three very different people with distinct objectives approach the truth, understanding that what’s most critical in this case is trying to find out why a teenager jumped from the top of a hotel in a place called Sin City. “Readers care how events play out on a deeper level. They care about the meaning behind the confluence of the events,” John says. “But events didn’t conflue the way you said,” Jim replies. “Conflue is not a word,” John responds. In today’s day and age, does it even matter who among the three characters might be the most right and what qualifies as a necessary fact?