twi-ny recommended events

CABARET CINEMA — SCI FI CINE CLUB KOLKATA: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED

An English town has a bit of a kid problem in horror classic Village of the Damned

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (Wolf Rilla, 1960)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, November 9, $14, 9:30
Series continues Friday nights through April 28
212-620-5000
rubinmuseum.org

The Rubin Museum’s Cabaret Cinema series “Sci Fi Cine Club Kolkata” comes to a creepy close November 9 with the classic 1960 British sci-fi horror flick Village of the Damned. Based on John Wyndham’s 1957 novel, The Midwich Cuckoos — Wyndham also wrote The Day of the Triffids as John Harris, among other books and at least one other pseudonym — Village of the Damned was the first film shown by Indian master and self-described “science-fiction addict” Satyajit Ray at the Sci Fi Cine Club he started in Kolkata in January 1966. The story combines postwar paranoia with a fear of alien invasion — as well as the normal worries associated with childbirth. On what appeared to be a regular afternoon in the quiet little English rural town of Midwich, every living being passes out at the same exact time. When they awaken, no one’s sure what happened — but two months later, every woman able to carry a child is pregnant, including Anthea Zellaby (Barbara Shelley), who is married to Professor Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders), a much older man who did not think it possible he could become a father. When the babies are all born on the same day and on an accelerated schedule, everyone knows there is something strange — the infants’ eerie eyes are a pretty big giveaway — but they decide to raise the children nonetheless. Professor Zellaby sees this as a terrific opportunity for research — even involving the boy born to Anthea, David (Martin Stephens), who appears to be the leader of the blond-haired bunch — while military men Alan Bernard (Michael Gwynn) and General Leighton (John Phillips) are far more skeptical of the town’s, and the world’s, future.

Professor Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders) tries to soothe his wife, Anthea Zellaby (Barbara Shelley), in Village of the Damned

The German-born Rilla, who primarily made crime thrillers, wrote the screenplay with Ronald Kinnoch and Stirling Silliphant (who would win an Oscar for In the Heat of the Night). The story has clear Third Reich overtones, as the alien children show all the characteristics of the so-called Aryan superior race, while also falling firmly in the evil-children genre that later produced such famous films as The Bad Seed, The Omen, Children of the Corn, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Exorcist while also evoking The Day the Earth Stood Still. It pits the value of human life against the hunger for scientific knowledge, the safety of a community against a band of beautiful, if extremely dangerous, kids. (For those who can’t get enough, the young cohorts made their way into the title of the sequel, 1964’s Children of the Damned, written by John Briley, directed by Anton M. Leader, and starring Ian Hendry.) Village of the Damned is an intense psychological drama that leads to a furious finale. Many a mother has asked herself, “Am I carrying a monster?” In Village of the Damned, the answer is clear. The film is screening Friday night at 9:30 at the Rubin, which is open for free from 6:00 to 10:00, so you should also check out such exhibits as “The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room,” “Shrine Room Projects: Wishes and Offerings,” Shezad Dawood/The Otolith Group/Matti Braun: A Lost Future,” “Gateway to Himalayan Art,” “Masterworks of Himalayan Art,” “A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful,” and “The Second Buddha: Master of Time.”

ENCORE ENGAGEMENT: SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY

MCC’s School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play is back for an encore run at the Lucille Lortel (photo by Joan Marcus)

MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 9, $49-$115
212-352-3101
mcctheater.org

Following its initial run last fall, MCC’s School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play, which earned a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble, is back at the Lucille Lortel Theatre for an encore engagement running through December 9. Below is an update of twi-ny’s original review from November 2017, with the new dates and actors added.

Actress Jocelyn Bioh’s professional playwriting debut is a sharp, uproarious tale of a clique of young boarding school students in central Ghana who can be as nasty as they wanna be, able to go toe-to-toe with Cady, Regina, Gretchen, Janis, and Karen from Mark Waters’s 2004 hit movie, Mean Girls. Bioh, who has appeared in such plays as Suzan-Lori Parks’s In the Blood, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Everybody and An Octoroon, and Jaclyn Backhaus’s Men on Boats, even references the film, which was written by Tina Fey (and the musical adaptation of which has been extended on Broadway through July 7), in the title of her show, School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play, which is back for an encore engagement at the Lucille Lortel through December 9. It’s 1986, and the students at Aburi Girls Boarding School are getting ready to audition for the Miss Ghana beauty pageant. Paulina Sarpong (MaameYaa Boafo) is the egotistical, narcissistic leader of a group of girls, willing to say or do just about anything to remain in charge. She brags about her soccer-playing boyfriend and how she is a shoo-in to be named Miss Ghana while brazenly putting down the rest of her crew, which consists of the tall, bright Ama (originally Níkẹ Kadri, now Latoya Edwards), the innocent, overweight Nana (Abena Mensah-Bonsu), and the twinlike duo of Gifty (Paige Gilbert) and Mercy (Mirirai Sithole). The power dynamic immediately shifts when headmistress Francis (Myra Lucretia Taylor) introduces a new student, Ericka Boafo (previously Nabiyah Be, now Joanna A. Jones), a beautiful, talented, and bold young woman who quickly challenges Paulina’s authority. Of course, putting Paulina on the defensive is not something you want to do, unless you’re ready for the barrage that will follow. So when Miss Ghana 1966, Eloise Amponsah (originated by Zainab Jah, now Zenzi Williams), whom Francis knows all too well, arrives to select one of the girls to compete in the pageant, the gloves are off and sides are chosen in a no-holds-barred battle for supremacy. “Headmistress likes to make everyone feel like they have a fair chance,” Paulina declares, “but we all know I’m the best.”

School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play was inspired by the true story of Yayra Erica Nego, the 2009 Miss Minnesota who went on to be named Miss Ghana 2011, a controversial decision for several reasons, including her fair skin, as well as by Rosalind Wiseman’s nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes. In the seventy-five-minute play, Bioh, a first-generation Ghanaian American who went to boarding school in Hershey, Pennsylvania, explores such issues as body image and colorism, beauty and friendship, and race and class in this microcosmic Lord of the Flies scenario. Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design is simple but effective, a few tables in the school cafeteria, while Dede M. Ayite’s costumes change from the standard green-and-white school uniform to fancy dresses for the competition, giving each character a moment to shine. Tony-winning director Rebecca Taichman (Indecent, Familiar) keeps it all in check, never letting things get out of hand or become too clichéd. School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play is no mere African American version of Mean Girls; instead, it is as smart and entertaining, as sweet and honest, its characters as obnoxious and horrible and lovable and vulnerable, as teen girls themselves. The encore engagement will feature a series of special postshow events, including audience conversations on November 14 and 18 and a talkback on November 19.

DOC NYC: THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS

Three Identical Strangers tells the amazing story of adopted triplets who find one another only to learn horrible details of their separation

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (Tim Wardle, 2018)
Cinepolis Chelsea
260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Thursday, November 8, 6:15
Friday, November 9, 10:15 am
Festival runs November 8-15
www.docnyc.net
www.threeidenticalstrangers.com

At the beginning of Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers, screening November 8 and 9 at the ninth annual DOC NYC festival, Bobby Shafran says, “When I tell people my story, they don’t believe it. I guess I wouldn’t believe the story if someone else were telling it, but I’m telling it. And it’s true, every word of it.” He then discusses how, in 1980, through a series of coincidences, he discovered that he was an adopted triplet, and the three brothers, born on July 12, 1961, became the best of friends, going on a media blitz and taking New York City by storm. That in itself is a great story, but that’s only the first part of this gripping movie; what follows is a thriller-like investigation into the lives of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran involving why they were separated at birth by the Louise Wise Services adoption agency. It’s an utterly captivating film, as every time you think the story can’t get more bizarre, it does. Wardle speaks with many members of the three boys’ adopted families, journalists, and several people who were involved in the nature/nurture experiment that separated them; it’s absolutely heart-wrenching watching them learn what happened to them back in 1961 that changed their lives forever and ultimately resulted in tragedy — and the full truth is still not known. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance among awards at many other festivals, Three Identical Strangers is screening in the Short List section of DOC NYC, with Wardle present at both shows.

DOC NYC: BEYOND THE BOLEX

Alyssa Bolsey’s Beyond the Bolex explores a family legacy and the history of early film

BEYOND THE BOLEX (Alyssa Bolsey, 2018)
Cinepolis Chelsea
260 West 23rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Thursday, November 8, 9:15
Festival runs November 8-15
www.docnyc.net
www.jacquesbolseyproject.com

The ninth annual DOC NYC festival, a celebration of nonfiction film, is bigger than ever, this year consisting of more than three hundred shorts and features and with an all-star collection of celebrity-driven works from November 8 to 15. But often it’s the small documentaries that offer the most surprises. One such film, screening at Cinepolis Chelsea on opening night, is Alyssa Bolsey’s Beyond the Bolex. Bolsey made her first movie when she was twelve, but following the death of her paternal grandfather, she found out that filmmaking was truly in her blood: Her great-grandfather was Jacques Bolsey, the inventor of the Bolex and an influential experimental filmmaker. “I had no idea that there was a long-lost family legacy waiting to be uncovered, a treasure trove going all the way back to the early days of film,” she says. But while speaking with such directors and cinematographers as Wim Wenders, Bruce Brown, Dave Alex Riddett, Jonas Mekas, and Barbara Hammer, she also discovers details about her family history she never knew during a twelve-year investigation into Jacques’s life and career. The world premiere screening will be followed by a Q&A with Alyssa Bolsey and producer Camilo Lara Jr.

WALLY CARDONA: GIVEN IN THE BLACK BOX

wally cardona given

The Black Box at Gibney 280 Broadway
280 Broadway between Chambers & Reade Sts.
November 8-10, $15-$20, 8:00
www.gibneydance.org
www.wcvismorphing.org

In 2011, Wally Cardona began his series of Interventions, followed the next year by The Set Up (with Jennifer Lacey), residencies and performances that explored the very nature of dance, narrative, and collaboration. After a public hiatus of nearly four years, Cardona, who was raised in California and Texas, lives in Brooklyn, and teaches at Juilliard and the New School, will present the world premiere of Given at Gibney 280 Broadway November 8-10. “After six years of travel (dancing on dirt, concrete, living room carpets, and pagoda tiles), a return to the dance studio. Time spent emptying, waiting, and doing what seemed like nothing . . . now an offering on the way, in the black box.” The show will feature Cardona with dancers Joanna Kotze and Molly Lieber and composer Jonathan Bepler. As is Cardona’s trademark, not much is known about the show, so you’ll just have to head over to Gibney to check out the latest from this always innovative creator — but it’s hard to go wrong with such outstanding artists as Kotze (What will be like when we get there, It Happened It Had Happened It Is Happening It Will Happen) and Lieber (Rude World with Eleanor Smith; Maria Hassabi: Staged).

THE THANKSGIVING PLAY

Greg Keller, Jennifer Bareilles, Jeffrey Bean, and Margo Seibert star in The Thanksgiving Play at Playwrights Horizon (photo by Joan Marcus)

Playwrights Horizons
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 2, $49-$89
www.playwrightshorizons.org

I am not a fan of Thanksgiving. But I am a fan of Larissa FastHorse’s extremely funny and spot-on The Thanksgiving Play, which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons. Not to sound holier than thou, but I’ve long given up stuffing my face with turkey and watching football while celebrating genocide on the fourth Thursday of November; my pescatarian wife and I try very hard to leave the country every Thanksgiving weekend just to avoid it all — and to not have to choose whose family we will be going to each year. But you don’t have to love or hate the holiday to get a huge kick out of the show. After years of being told that her plays were uncastable because theaters had no access to Native American actors, Sicangu Lakota playwright FastHorse came up with the rather simply titled The Thanksgiving Play, a wild and woolly farce that takes on important indigenous issues — in real life and on the stage — while featuring four characters played by white-presenting performers. The festivities begin with a preamble, as three members of the cast (Jennifer Bareilles, Margo Seibert, and Greg Keller), dressed in pilgrim costumes, and the fourth (Jeffrey Bean), in a giant, silly turkey outfit, stand in front of the curtain and sing “On the First Day of Thanksgiving” (sample verse: “On the third day of Thanksgiving the natives gave to me / three Native headdresses, two turkey gobblers, and a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch”). At the end of the song, the turkey explains, “Teacher’s note: This song can do more than teach counting. I divide my students into Indians and pilgrims so the Indians can practice sharing.”

Logan (Jennifer Bareilles) and Jaxton (Greg Keller) have a slight disagreement as they collaborate on school play about first Turkey Day (photo by Joan Marcus)

Ridiculously PC drama teacher Logan (Bareilles) is starting rehearsals for the annual school Thanksgiving play, which will star her boyfriend, Jaxton (Keller), a yoga practitioner and street performer; Caden (Bean), an elementary school history teacher and amateur actor and writer; and Alicia (Seibert), an ambitious, if not very bright, LA actress whose resume contains numerous Disney roles at theme parks and the like. Logan wants to make a devised piece about the first Thanksgiving, with all four of them participating in the show’s development. While Caden seeks to delve deep, deep, deep into the history of Thanksgiving and Alicia is looking forward to a lovely story with all the trimmings, Logan and Jaxton are absurdly careful about each word, each prop (the costumes and puppets are by Tilly Grimes), each plot point. “We start with this pile of jagged facts and misguided governmental policies and historical stereotypes about race, then turn all that into something beautiful and dramatic and educational for the kids,” Jaxton explains. Meanwhile, Logan, who is worried that she will lose her job if the play goes wrong, calls Thanksgiving “the holiday of death.” Logan and Jaxton keep painting themselves into a corner as they reject characters, dialogue, costumes, and situations that they believe are racist, ethnocentric, stereotypical, and/or insulting to indigenous peoples, especially since their play is being written and performed without any input at all from Native Americans. And the further into the corner they recede, the more unlikely it is they will ever be able to accomplish anything.

Caden (Jeffrey Bean) has trouble keeping his eyes off Alicia (Margo Seibert) in sociopolitical farce by Larissa FastHorse (photo by Joan Marcus)

Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God, Present Laughter) lets Bareilles, Bean, Seibert, and Keller run rampant on Wilson Chin’s schoolroom set, which includes posters of student productions of some rather adult shows. The farce gets out of hand at times, working better when it stays more grounded, since it is easy to believe that there are people like this who are so politically correct that they trap themselves in inaction and an innate inability to say anything, unaware of how to actually be an ally. One of the main reasons why The Thanksgiving Play, which runs until the day after the holiday [ed. note: it has now been extended through December 2], works so well, despite the occasional bumpiness, is because we recognize parts of ourselves in the four characters; of course, off-Broadway audiences tend to be significantly liberal — and often privileged — terrified of uttering or doing the wrong thing when it comes to people of color yet rather clueless about their own giant blind spots. Thus, there are moments in the show when you are likely to hesitate before laughing, wondering whether you are being insensitive by enjoying yourself too much.

FastHorse, a former television writer and ballet dancer, has dedicated her playwrighting career to establishing an authentic indigenous voice in American theater, as seen in such previous shows as Cherokee Family Reunion, Urban Rez, and What Would Crazy Horse Do? But she has met significant resistance; even her casting note for The Thanksgiving Play is controversial: “[People of color] who can pass as white should be considered for all characters.” She is attempting to level the playing field by increasing diversity and pushing an own-voices sensibility. The Thanksgiving Play, in which all participants, cast and crew, are new to Playwrights Horizons, is a big step in that direction. Be sure to get to the theater early so you can check out the exhibition on the third floor, a collection of works curated by Emily Johnson, who is of Yup’ik descent, from Johnson and Maggie Thompson’s “Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars” quilts and Shan Goshorn’s “The Value of Integrity” container to Maria Hupfield’s “Solidarity Acknowledgment Banner” and “Plays to Be: all the plays by Indigenous playwrights not yet produced and/or not yet written,” such as A Rez’n in the Sun, Lasting of the Mohegans, Six Degrees of Blood Quantum, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Colony? Even the bathrooms are involved, displaying such quotes as this one from Winona LaDuke in 2017: “It is possible to have an entire worldview that does not relate to empire.” Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

HUNTER THEATER PROJECT: UNCLE VANYA

Uncle Vanya is presented in new streamlined adaptation at Hunter’s Kaye Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Kaye Theater, Hunter College
East 68th St. between Lexington & Park Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 18, $37 ($15 for students)
www.huntertheaterproject.org

Tony- and Obie-winning playwright Richard Nelson gives Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya the Apple and Gabriel family treatment in the inaugural production from Gregory Mosher’s Hunter Theater Project, which has been extended several times at the Kaye Theater at Hunter College, now running through November 18. In such plays as That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad about the Apples and Hungry and Women of a Certain Age about the Gabriels, writer-director Nelson tells family stories often centered around important events, taking place in the kitchen as everyone comes together to eat. This new adaptation of Chekhov’s 1898 play, translated by Nelson with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is set in the kitchen of the Serebryakóv country estate. As the audience enters the small theater, where they sit on all four sides, chairs and tables are piled at the center of Jason Ardizzone-West’s intimate set. The characters enter and, before speaking, arrange the room; it’s almost as if we’re sitting with them as food is served and the plot unfolds. Ványa (Jay O. Sanders), who manages the estate, is preparing for the visit of elderly professor Alexánder Serebryakóv (Jon DeVries) and his much younger wife, Eléna (Celeste Arias). A soft-spoken man, Ványa has feelings for Eléna, as does Mikhaíl Ástrov (Jesse Pennington), a local doctor. Sónya Alexándrovna (Yvonne Woods), the professor’s daughter by a previous marriage, assists Ványa; she is interested in the doctor, who is taken with Eléna. The household is run by Sónya’s former nanny, Marína (Kate Kearney-Patch), who is watched over by Sónya’s grandmother, Márya (Alice Cannon), Ványa’s mother. They calmly discuss life and beauty, love and happiness as well as finances, which are not in good shape. And then it all explodes.

Mikhaíl Ástrov (Jesse Pennington) and Ványa (Jay O. Sanders) share a passion in Chekhov classic (photo by Joan Marcus)

Shakespeare in the Park regular Sanders (The Sinner, Unexplored Interior), one of New York’s finest character actors and who played Richard Apple and George Gabriel in Nelson’s family plays, is a hulking, heartfelt, forthright, and decidedly American Vanya in this tender production; a bear of a man, he gently waits for his moment to erupt in a classic role previously played by such British royalty as Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Nicol Williamson, Tom Courtenay, Derek Jacobi, and Anthony Hopkins. And when he does finally let it out, his fury is something we can all identify with, the rage and anger we keep buried inside, desperate to release. Woods (Goodnight Children Everywhere, Franny’s Way) portrays Sónya with a haunting sadness, while Arias, who played Masha in Jaclyn Backhaus’s The Three Seagulls, or MASHAMASHAMASHA!, is a sweet-natured Eléna, who is not looking to stir up gossip or hurt anyone. The translation is direct and straightforward, streamlined to 110 minutes without intermission. Time and place are not essential here; Nelson instead focuses on the characters and the relationships, keeping it all right on point. With Uncle Vanya, the egalitarian Hunter Theater Project has gotten off to quite a start: There are no membership programs or VIP access; all tickets are $15 for students and $37 for everyone else. And don’t be misled by the affiliation with the college; the project is a fully professional venture, with students working the front of the house and ushering.