twi-ny recommended events

ASCENSION: A LIFTING OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING’S LEGACY ON THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF HIS ASSASSINATION

The fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be honored at Harlem Gate on April 4

Who: Adepero Oduye, Amma Whatt, C. Kelly Wright, Kyle Marshall, Bertha Hope
What: An evening of live performances and tributes celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Where: Harlem Stage Gatehouse, 150 Convent Ave. at West 135th St., 212-281-9240 ext. 19
When: Wednesday, April 4, free with RSVP, 7:30 & 8:45
Why: On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, altering the course of America’s future. Harlem Stage is honoring Dr. King’s legacy with a special program on April 4, 2018, the fiftieth anniversary of his murder. At 7:30 and 8:45, singer-songwriter Amma Whatt, actress, singer, and dancer C. Kelly Wright, dancer and choreographer Kyle Marshall (a solo piece set to Dr. King’s “On the Mountaintop” speech), actress, writer, and director Adepero Oduye (an excerpt from “The Drum Major Instinct”), and jazz pianist Bertha Hope will perform a tribute to MLK and Harlem, built around one of MLK’s most famous quotes, putting it into contemporary context: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

JACK FERVER: EVERYTHING IS IMAGINABLE

Jack Ferver presents the world premiere of Everything Is Imaginable this week at New York Live Arts (photo by Jason Akira Somma)

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
April 4-7, $15-$35, 8:00 (bonus 10:00 show on April 6)
212-924-0077
newyorklivearts.org
www.jackferver.org

Nothing is unimaginable in the fabulous world of Jack Ferver, the creator of such unique and unpredictable multidisciplinary works as Rumble Ghost, Two Alike, Chambre, Night Light Bright Light, and I Want You to Want Me. So the name of his latest piece, Everything Is Imaginable, debuting April 4-7 at New York Live Arts, makes perfect sense in his oeuvre. The Wisconsin-born actor, writer, dancer, choreographer, teacher, and director delves deep into his psyche and love of pop culture to tell compelling, tragicomic stories, teaming up with talented collaborators. In Everything Is Imaginable, Ferver has brought together five queer performers to explore gender, sexuality, love, and loss through personal tales as well as those of five other public figures while paying homage to Martha Graham.

Ferver will be joined by Graham principal dancer Lloyd Knight, American Ballet Theater principal James Whiteside, dancer and actor Garen Scribner (An American in Paris, Nederlands Dans Theater), and dancer and costume designer and Ferver regular Reid Bartelme (of Reid and Harriet Design), each of whom will get a solo that relates to their childhood as well as their role models. The scenic and sound design is by visual artist Jeremy Jacob. “The queer ‘I’ is a shattered ‘I,’” Ferver said in a statement. “The queer is not only told they are unnatural but that they have chosen to be so. The result of this shattering creates a slipperiness of self, an ability to coalesce into a performance without a center. This fragmentation, this relentless brokenness that continuously seeks stability and fails, is very much inside my work.” Ferver has a rabid fan base, so get your tickets now. And for a peek at what else he is been up to of late, check out JbDubs’ very NSFW “Duck Hunt” video, which was choreographed by Ferver and Whiteside and stars Ferver. (The April 5 performance of Everything Is Imaginable will be followed by a Stay Late Conversation with the performers.)

WWII ON FILM: THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED

Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried is screening at inaugural WWII film festival

When Jerry Lewis died last August at the age of ninety-one, it was widely believed that his controversial, unreleased 1972 Holocaust drama, The Day the Clown Cried, would never see the light of day. It looks like he will not be getting his wish. Set in a Nazi concentration camp, the film features Lewis, who also wrote and directed the picture, as Helmut Doork, a German clown who dons his makeup in Auschwitz in order to entertain the imprisoned children. Over the years, trickles of information have come out about the film. In 1992, Harry Shearer, one of the few to see the whole movie, told Spy magazine, “With most of these kinds of things, you find that the anticipation, or the concept, is better than the thing itself. But seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. ‘Oh my God!’ — that’s all you can say.” At Cannes, Lewis explained, “It was all bad and it was bad because I lost the magic. You will never see it, no one will ever see it, because I am embarrassed at the poor work.”

Photographs, clips of the film, which also stars Harriet Andersson, Jonas Bergström, Claude Bolling, and Pierre Étaix, and even a draft of the script have leaked out, spurring people’s interest even as fiercely Lewis protected it. “But who am I preserving it for?” Lewis told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. “No one’s ever gonna see it. But the preservation that I believe is that, when I die, I’m in total control of the material now. Nobody can touch it. After I’m gone, who knows what’s going to happen? I think I have the legalese necessary to keep it where it is. So I’m pretty sure that it won’t be seen. The only thing that I do feel, that I always get a giggle out of, some smart young guy like Chris [Nashawaty] is going to come up with an idea and he’s going to run the fucking thing. I would love that. Because he’s going to see a hell of a movie!” Lewis fans, film historians, and curious onlookers will finally get to see The Day the Clown Cried when it is revealed to the world on April 31, kicking off the inaugural “WWII on Film” festival, being held at the Documentary Institute of Manhattan. Tickets are going fast for what might very well be the film’s only public screening ever. As Lewis also said, “Don’t you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.” Yes, it’s all fools’ gold, especially on a day such as today.

THE GREAT SILENCE

Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as a mute antihero in Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence

THE GREAT SILENCE (IL GRANDE SILENZIO) (Sergio Corbucci, 1968)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
March 30 – April 10
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

After half a century, Sergio Corbucci’s underseen masterpiece, The Great Silence, is finally being released in the United States, in a gorgeous fiftieth anniversary restoration screening at Film Forum. Corbucci’s revisionist spaghetti Western was shot by Silvano Ippoliti in the Dolomites in northeastern Italy, where luxurious white snow (actually shaving cream) goes on forever until it is stained with so much blood. French star Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a variation of the quiet hero who lets his guns do his talking; Trintignant, who did not speak English, is Silence, who, as a young boy, witnessed the merciless murder of his parents by bounty killers and is rendered mute with a knife to prevent his testimony. Years later, now an adult, Silence, with his unusual Mauser C96, roams the land in search of bounty killers, getting them to draw first so he can then fire back in self-defense, shooting off their thumbs so they can never use a gun again. It’s 1898, and hard times have come to Snow Hill, leading many average citizens to break laws just to put food on the table. Greedy banker Henry Pollicut (Luigi Pistilli) puts a price on their heads, wanted dead or alive, attracting various bounty killers, including the notorious Loco (German star Klaus Kinski), aka Tigrero, who never brings his targets in breathing, no matter how minor their crimes. Relatively hapless sheriff Gideon Burnett (Frank Wolff) is caught somewhere in the middle, as it’s Loco who is on the right side of the law and Silence who is walking a fine line about what’s legal. After Loco kills James Middleton, his widow, Pauline (Vonetta McGee), hires Silence to gain revenge, setting the stage for one of the most brutal endings in the history of cinema.

Klaus Kinski is a vicious bounty killer on the right side of the law in Corbucci masterpiece

The pairing of Trintignant, who had gained international fame in Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, and Kinski, who had made such previous Westerns as Damiano Damiani’s A Bullet for the General and Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More, has a dark magic, particularly since their characters are not clear representations of good vs. evil. Each one uses their eyes to intense dramatic effect, with Trintignant particularly effective since he doesn’t speak a word — just wait till you see him scream. In her film debut, McGee (Blacula, Repo Man) brings a stark sensitivity to Pauline; her interracial love scene was shocking for the genre, especially with Corbucci (Django, Navajo Joe) handling it in such a gentle way. Meanwhile, composer Ennio Morricone (Once Upon a Time in the West; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) delivers one of his most emotional and wide-ranging scores. Fifty years on, The Great Silence can still be read as a parable attacking rampant injustice in society while also subverting the Western genre itself, a dark and bleak tale about the hopelessness of life. (If the ending is too much for you, you can watch the absurdly ridiculous alternate happy ending made for some foreign markets here.)

WHAT WILL WE BE LIKE WHEN WE GET THERE

Joanna Kotze explores space, time, connection, collaboration, and communication in What will we be like when we get there at New York Live Arts (photo by Carolyn Silverman)

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
March 28-31, $15-$25, 7:30
212-924-0077
newyorklivearts.org
www.joannakotze.com

It’s not exactly clear when Joanna Kotze’s What will we be like when we get there begins and ends — at a talkback moderated by Okwui Okpokwasili following the March 29 performance, one audience member said she wasn’t sure if the show was still going on. Such is the mystery, magic, madness, and mayhem of this world premiere, taking place at New York Live Arts through March 31. South Africa-born, Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer, and teacher Kotze kicks off the evening by pointing out the exits, telling the audience to turn off their cell phones, and describing the origins of this collaboration with visual artist Jonathan Allen, sound designer, composer, and musician Ryan Seaton, and dancer and choreographer Netta Yerushalmy. However, Kotze’s speech starts hesitating as she drifts toward the floor, holding the microphone stand in awkward positions. Yerushalmy comes out and lies down on her side at the front of the stage, facing the back. Seaton pushes a heavy piano back and forth, perhaps a reference to Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou. Allen lays orange gaffer’s tape from a ladder onto other objects as well as on the floor, creating new physical spaces in the air and on the ground. Seaton (Callers) plays electronic music from a laptop, then runs to a saxophone or grabs a clarinet and plays it. Allen (whose related paintings, “Knowing That Your House Is on Fire,” are on view in the lobby) gets continually knocked over by Yerushalmy (Paramodernities), who, after a long period hiding her face, finally reveals herself to the crowd but later teases it with potential nudity. Kotze jumps onto an empty chair in the audience and takes a breather on the steps. Allen collects nearly everything not bolted down — folding chairs, a cart, monitors, mechanical equipment — and moves it to the middle of the stage, as if a Wizard of Oz-like cyclone is scooping up whatever is in its path. For seventy-five minutes, with the house lights on, the four friends engage in a series of set pieces exploring connection and communication in a stormy world, incorporating large doses of absurdity and humor. Bessie winner Kotze (FIND YOURSELF HERE; It Happened It Had Happened It Is Happening It Will Happen) takes advantage of every part of the New York Live Arts Theater, immersing the audience in the vast unpredictability of life in the twenty-first century through an exhilarating controlled chaos. The quartet eventually stands together and bows, but a day later I’m still not sure it’s over, as Kotze alludes to in the title of this thrilling work.

PACINO’S WAY: SALOMÉ AND WILDE SALOMÉ

Al Pacino stars as an intense, leering King Herod in his adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé

Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, March 30
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com/film/salome
quadcinema.com/film/wilde-salome

In 2006, Oscar, Tony, and Emmy winner Al Pacino starred as the Tetrarch, King Herod, in a staged reading of Oscar Wilde’s controversial 1891 play, Salomé, at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles, directed by Oscar and Obie winner Estelle Parsons and featuring Kevin Anderson as Jokanaan (John the Baptist), Roxanne Hart as Herodias, and the little-known Jessica Chastain as the title character. During the limited run, Pacino was also working on two films, one a fuller version of the play with the actors performing without script in hand, the other a documentary of the making of it all. Both films, the 2011 Wilde Salomé and the 2013 Salomé, are opening March 30 in their first-ever dual New York City engagement (though not as a double feature), concluding the Quad series “Pacino’s Way.” (As a bonus, Pacino will introduce the 7:30 screening of Wilde Salomé on March 30.) Salomé is a dark interpretation of the Wilde tale, photographed with a large number of close-ups by Benoît Delhomme. Not surprisingly, the production is ruled by Pacino’s portrayal of King Herod, with all the requisite scenery chewing and camp, but Chastain, in her film debut, is mesmerizing as Salomé, Herod’s stepdaughter who, after dancing for the Tetrarch — Pacino’s intense gazing at Chastain’s burgeoning sexuality is more than a bit creepy as Herod’s wife stands firm next to him — demands the head of Jokonaan, who has been imprisoned in a watery dungeon. The milky white Chastain goes head-to-head with the grizzled Pacino, getting the best of him in the end. Aside from Salomé’s dance, the film is sedentary and visually repetitive; Herod is primarily seated on his throne, and most of the other characters, including Ralph Guzzo and Jack Stelin as the Nazarenes, Steve Roman as the Cappadocian, Joe Roseto as the Captain of the Guard, and Phillip Rhys as the Young Syrian, just hang around him. Only Anderson moves about, trapped below. Still, the film is ingrained with a powerful force, driven by Salomé’s yearnings.

Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain discuss a critical scene in Wilde Salomé

Curiously, Wilde Salomé, which at one time was called Salomaybe?, was released two years before the film of the play itself. It is modeled similarly to Pacino’s stellar 1996 directorial debut, Looking for Richard, in which the star explores the play, the character, and the Bard, with the help of such fellow actors as Sir John Gielgud, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Estelle Parsons, Winona Ryder, and Aidan Quinn. Wilde Salomé, which won the Queer Lion and the Glory to the Filmmaker Awards at the Venice Film Festival, is somewhat more audacious, if also not as satisfying as Richard. “This is about a journey I’m gonna take,” Pacino says. “I have an idea for a movie that intermixes the life of Wilde and the life of the play and the life of me trying to make the play. . . . So we went in search of the man who wrote something so personal as Salomé.” Not hiding from the camera, Pacino confesses, in a near fit of rage, “I got too much to do!” He is also seen agonizing over a difficult situation while wolfing down a white-bread sandwich. The documentary follows Pacino from the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles to Masada in Israel to Europe, where he visits places where Wilde lived and worked. He talks about Wilde’s destructive relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, better known as Bosie, as well as with his wife and children. Pacino freely admits his obsession with all things Wilde, wanting to know everything he possibly can about the poet and playwright’s spirituality, what drove him to write the way he did and make so many damaging life choices. Among those who discuss Wilde’s influence are Tom Stoppard, Gore Vidal, Tony Kushner, and Bono, who also provides the closing song with U2. Pacino is like a kid in a candy store whenever he discovers something new about Wilde; it’s too bad that there isn’t more of that in the film. Instead, there are far too many scenes taken directly from Salomé, which is particularly annoying if you are planning on seeing both films at the Quad. But it still is exciting watching the genius actor on a quest to understand the genius of Wilde.

ROCKTOPIA

Rocktopia blends classic rock and classical music on Broadway (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The Broadway Theatre
1681 Broadway at 53rd St.
Through April 29, $39 – $187
rocktopia.com

Much of Rocktopia, which opened Tuesday night at the Broadway Theatre, is a curiosity, a blending of classic rock and classical music that in theory might be a cool idea but in execution could be problematic. Rocktopia is a different kind of jukebox musical, with no narrative, consisting of overly familiar songs performed by pop, rock, theater, reality show, and opera singers, a five-piece rock band, the thirty-person New York Contemporary Choir, and the twenty-piece New York Contemporary Symphony Orchestra. Conceived by Trans-Siberian Orchestra member and Broadway veteran Rob Evan (Jekyll and Hyde, Les Misérables) and American conductor Randall Craig Fleischer, the traveling project is an up-and-down affair, as vocal histrionics get carried away, the setlist is about as standard as it comes, and amateurish, seemingly unrelated visuals are projected onto fifteen large, vertical piano keys at the top rear of the stage. But then something magical happens, where it all suddenly comes together for an absolutely smashing last few numbers that brought the crowd to its feet, everyone singing and dancing with an intoxicating fervor.

Celtic violinist Máiréad Nesbit and vocalist Rob Evan rock out at the Broadway Theatre (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The show opens with the pairing of Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” and the Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” sung by Evan and Tony Vincent (American Idiot, Jesus Christ Superstar), followed by Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” with Styx’s “Come Sail Away,” performed by Evan, Vincent (The Voice), Chloe Lowery (Trans-Siberian Orchestra), and Kimberly Nichole (The Voice). The double shot gets the point across but without any fireworks, as the melding of the two genres felt too obvious and separate. Special guest Pat Monahan of Train, who will be part of the show through April 6 (Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider is the guest April 9-15, followed by Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander April 23-29), takes center stage to get the Led out (first with Beethoven, then Puccini), but Stravinsky/Hendrix is out of place, as is Mussorgsky/U2, the latter accompanied by documentary footage of poor communities. However, it’s a thrill to see diva Alyson Cambridge, who has performed at the Met and the Washington National Opera, lend class to the festivities by singing Handel’s “Lascia ch’io pianga” and Lucio Dalla’s “Caruso” and also duetting with Evan. On nearly every song, Celtic violinist Máiréad Nesbitt sparkles, playing her fiddle as she flits about the stage like a mad fairy or sprite. There actually is a rhyme and reason for the visuals; in the online Rocktopia study guide, the evening moves from “Creation/Birth,” “Adolescence,” and “Experimentation” through “Dreams,” “Oppression/Rebellion,” and other aspects of the human condition, not that you would know that from what’s happening onstage. And we’re still trying to figure out the inclusion of John Denver in a video tribute to such dead rock stars as Jimi, Janis, Jerry, Jim, George, John, Prince, and Bowie, as well as photos of Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, and, yes, Anne Frank during the theme from Schindler’s List. Meanwhile, the woman vocalists and Nesbitt look like they just stepped out of a Mad Max movie, wearing postapocalyptic gowns designed by Cynthia Nordstrom, and Vincent appears to be doubling for Robin Lord Taylor’s Penguin on Gotham.

Rob Monahan of Train is Rocktopia’s special guest through April 6 (photo by Matthew Murphy)

And then it happens. Samuel Barber meets Queen, Beethoven takes on Journey, and Gershwin intertwines with Queen in all the ways Evan and Fleischer intended, the classical music and the classic rock coming together, weaving in and out of each other, sending electricity across a room that suddenly comes alive as one. Guitarist Tony Bruno, bassist Mat Fieldes, drummer Alex Alexander, pianist and music director Henry Aronson (Rock of Ages, Grease), Nesbitt, the choir, the orchestra, and the singers — if still not the projections — bring down the house, leaving no one in their seat. Sure, it’s cheesy and extremely safe, but it’s also tons of fun if you just let yourself go. It might not be quite the revolution Evan and Fleischer intended, and it’s far more likely to attract fans of American Idol and The Voice and baby boomers who go to Jones Beach to see 1970s retreads rather than classical music lovers who go to the Met and Lincoln Center for opera and the symphony, but you can’t have everything. And what’s wrong with a little mindless entertainment in these hard times?