twi-ny recommended events

DAN CODY’S YACHT

Cara Russo (Kristen Bush) is unsure what to do when Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) offers her an unexpected opportunity in Dan Cody’s Yacht (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
Tuesday – Sunday through July 8, $90
212-581-1212
dancodysyacht.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Anthony Giardina’s Dan Cody’s Yacht has several gaping holes you could, well, pilot a luxury boat through. However, the Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere, which opened last night at City Center’s Stage I, still offers an intriguing ride despite the choppy waters it navigates through income and education inequality. The two-hour, two-act play begins in September 2014 in the suburbs of Boston, as smarmy financial wizard Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) tries to bribe high school English teacher Cara Russo (Kristen Bush) to change his son’s failing grade on a paper on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the book that altered the course of his own life. “Incorruptible Cara Russo. I’ve heard about it, now I’ve seen it for myself,” he says, clunkily establishing the core of the narrative. “Chosen by her peers to be the powerful voice of the teachers in our town’s current, ill-advised plunge into liberal American mediocrity. The proposal to meld the two school districts — depressed Patchett, thriving Stillwell. To join the drug addicted, poverty ridden, low achieving children of your little town to the drug addicted but still high achieving children of mine.”

Cara, a divorced single mother, lives in Patchett, where her teenage daughter, Angela (Casey Whyland), goes to school, but she teaches in Stillwell, where Kevin’s teenage son, Conor (John Kroft), is slacking off. Cara is an important member of the committee that will decide whether the merging of the two very different schools, one filled with the haves, the other the have-nots, will be put to a public vote. Cara’s friend Cathy Conz (Roxanna Hope Radja), a working mother whose daughter, Britney, has just made the Patchett debate team, is not so sure that the plan to combine the schools is a good one. “Our high school is our town. We lose that, what have we got?” she says. “We ship our kids over the river to become second class citizens, they come back, how do they respect anything here?” Kevin invites Cara to join his small investing group, where he and other Stillwell parents, Geoff and Pamela Hossmer (Jordan Lage and Meredith Forlenza) and Alice Tuan (Laura Kai Chen), meet monthly, pooling their money to play the market as they drink wine and eat sushi. Cara argues that she doesn’t have any excess cash to get involved in “financial chicanery,” but Kevin convinces her to give it a try, and it all goes well, until it doesn’t.

Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) heads an investment club with Geoff Hossmer (Jordan Lage), Pamela Hossmer (Meredith Forlenza), Cara Russo (Kristen Bush), and Alice Tuan (Laura Kai Chen) in MTC world premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)

Giardina (Living at Home) and Tony-winning director Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Father), who previously collaborated on the Drama Desk–nominated Lincoln Center production The City of Conversation, which also featured Bush, steer the ship through an extremely bumpy first act with several key flaws. The discussion about getting Angela into Stillwell seems moot, as it is way too late for her to switch schools in time to affect her chances to go to a better college. There is a serious ethical question about Kevin, who works professionally in private equity, running an investment club, even though the prospect of illegally sharing inside information is brought up. And it seems impossible for Cara to make enough money to afford to move out of Patchett as quickly as she plans to. But the second act is stronger than the first, delving deeper into the characters’ motivations and what they want out of life, which is more complicated than just more money and better education.

“Nobody told us to care about ourselves first,” Cara tells Cathy as she explains why she joined Kevin’s club. “Nobody told us that. And say what you will about that man, that is what he is saying to me.” Later, she adds, “Tell me. Go ahead, say it. You don’t want this. You want mediocrity. You’re happy with mediocrity. You’re happy with this,” referring to their dreary lives in Patchett. Kevin treats finance like sex; when he talks about the opportunities that can open up for Cara, he is practically seducing her. Kevin himself was inspired by the section of The Great Gatsby when the protagonist, then known as James Gatz, rows out to a yacht owned by the much older Dan Cody and becomes his personal assistant; Kevin believes that Gatsby and Cody had a sexual relationship, something that might have ultimately influenced his own life and career. Meanwhile, Angela is reading a worn copy of Leon Uris’s Exodus, more than hinting at the potential exodus of Patchett students across the river to Stillwell. It is small touches like these that rescue the play from drowning itself in murkiness.

Conor O’Neill (John Kroft) and Angela Russo (Casey Whyland) are caught in the middle of adult shenanigans in new play by Anthony Giardina (photo by Joan Marcus)

The main players, making their way across John Lee Beatty’s effective living-room, classroom, and kitchen sets, give solid performances, particularly Bush (The Common Pursuit, Taking Care of Baby), representing a middle class seeking to improve its lot in life against the odds. Holmes (Junk, Matilda) manages to avoid being a completely unlikable villain, although Kevin says some very hurtful things without regret. Whyland, a 2018 NYU graduate, and Kroft, in his New York debut, are both sympathetic as the teens caught in the middle, not fully understanding, or caring, about the towns’ battle over their future. It also brings to light another central focus of the play: fear. Various characters express being afraid they haven’t done enough for their children (or they’ve done too much), being afraid of change, being afraid of believing they deserve better, even being afraid of money itself. “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth,” Nick Carraway explains at the beginning of The Great Gatsby. In Dan Cody’s Yacht, Giardina attempts to explore that inequality specifically relating to the education gap in contemporary society, though emerging with decidedly mixed test results.

HUDSON RIVER DANCE FESTIVAL 2018

Limón Dance Company will perform Corvidae at free Hudson River Dance Festival this week (photo by Christopher Duggan)

Who: Jason Samuels Smith & Igmar Thomas, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Limón Dance Company, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the Chase Brock Experience
What: Hudson River Dance Festival
Where: Pier 63 at Chelsea Piers, Hudson River Park, 353 West St.
When: Thursday, June 7, and Friday, June 8, free, 7:00
Why: On June 7 and 8, the fourth annual Hudson River Dance Festival takes place at Pier 63 in Hudson River Park, a free evening of performances while the sun sets over the water. This year’s lineup features another wide array of dance, with Jason Samuels Smith & Igmar Thomas’s Lee Morgan tribute Most Like Lee, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company’s Le Jeune by New York City Ballet principal dancer Lauren Lovette, set to Eric Whitacre’s Equus, Limón Dance Company’s Corvidae by Colin Connor, set to the first movement of a violin concerto by Philip Glass, the pas de deux from Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo’s Tarantella, and the Chase Brock Experience’s Dancers Responding to AIDS commission The splendor we only partially imagined by Chase Brock, with music by Kishi Bashi. Note that blankets are allowed, but chairs are not. And make sure to bring sunglasses and a hat, because depending on how the stage is arranged, the sun might be right in your eyes as it sets beautifully over the Hudson.

SERENA KORDA: MISSING TIME

Serena Korda will present the immersive sound performance Missing Time on the High Line this week (photo by Chris Egon Searle)

Who: Serena Korda
What: Missing Time
Where: The High Line between Twenty-Fifth & Twenty-Seventh Sts.
When: June 5-7, free, 4:00 – 7:00
Why: London-born multidisciplinary artist Serena Korda makes her American debut this week with Missing Time, an immersive sound performance taking place at the Falcone Flyover on the High Line from 4:00 to 7:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. “I was interested in considering how to make invisible forces palpable and create an environment of care in a world that is turning on itself,” Korda explains on her website. “Inspired by different ways of listening, the potential healing power of sound, and their use as a way of communicating, I created a series of large ceramic dish-shaped portals that act as resonators and an accompanying sound work that explore communication with the infinite cosmos.” The site-specific commission explores the history of the High Line itself, which was formerly used as a commercial shipping railway. Missing Time features Mouthful, an a cappella group consisting of Dave Camlin, Sharon Durant, Bex Mather, and Katherine Zeserson, singing the “Music of the Spheres,” inspired by the planets, while carrying low-frequency receivers picking up radio waves that visitors can hear on headphones. “The trains, the industry, and the wilderness that once overran the space are all ghosts, and it is this paranormal activity of the High Line that I wish to explore,” Korda said in a statement. Admission is free, and no RSVP is required.

CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! OPENING NIGHT: COMMON

Common opens the Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival on June 5 at the Prospect Park Bandshell

Who: Common
What: BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Opening Night Concert
Where: Prospect Park Bandshell, Prospect Park West & Tenth St.
When: Tuesday, June 5, free, gates at 6:30, concert at 8:00
Why: Socially conscious rapper, actor, activist, and poet Common will open the annual BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! festival on June 5 with a free concert at the Prospect Park Bandshell. The Chicago-born Common, formerly known as Lonnie Corant Jaman Shuka Rashid Lynn Jr., has released such albums as One Day It’ll All Make Sense, Finding Forever, The Dreamer/The Believer, and Black America Again and has appeared in such movies and television series as Selma, The Tale, Hell on Wheels, The Chi, and The Hate U Give. The Oscar-winning songwriter (“Glory”) also raises money and awareness through his Common Ground Foundation, which he started “to empower high school students from underserved communities to become future leaders, [focusing] on character development, social impact, healthy living, technology, financial literacy, creative arts, and global leadership.” The concert will be preceded and followed by a sold-out gala, including an after-party with DJ Spinna. In addition, the evening will include the unveiling of the BRIC-commissioned “Hedera” light-sculpture installation by Grimanesa Amorós.

ANGELS IN AMERICA

Roy M. Cohn (Nathan Lane) is not ready to accept his diagnosis from his longtime doctor (Susan Brown) in Millennium Approaches (photo by Brinkhoff & Mögenburg)

Neil Simon Theater
250 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday through July 15, $49-$169
angelsbroadway.com

I remember sitting in the Walter Kerr Theatre nearly twenty-five years ago, on back-to-back nights, watching Tony Kushner’s landmark two-part Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, a shattering, eye-opening experience that destroyed and reconstructed the limits of the very art form itself. The Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations were over, but known deaths from AIDS in the United States were still rising — more than forty thousand in 1993 and more than thirty thousand in 1994 (to be followed by nearly fifty thousand in 1995 before a major corner in the treatment battle was turned). New York playwright Kushner brilliantly captured the wide-ranging horrors of the HIV/AIDS crisis from a sociopolitical, deeply personal angle in Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, nearly eight hours of intensely emotional theater, directed by George C. Wolfe. Angels is now back on Broadway, in a staggering, Olivier-winning Royal National Theatre production at the Neil Simon Theatre through July 15. Marianne Elliott, who won Tonys for her endlessly inventive direction of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and War Horse (the latter with codirector Tom Morris), has reimagined Angels for the modern age.

Millennium Approaches takes place in late 1985, with three interconnected stories moving between three changing, rotating sets cleverly designed by Ian MacNeil and beautifully lit by Paule Constable. Closeted attorney Roy M. Cohn (Nathan Lane), Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Army-McCarthy hearings, is a fast-paced, foul-mouthed wheeler dealer who, when told by his doctor (Susan Brown) that he has AIDS, insists, “No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer.” Cohn is pulling strings to get law clerk Joe Pitt (Lee Pace) an important position in the Justice Department in Washington, but Joe doesn’t think the move will be good for his agoraphobic, Valium-addicted wife, Harper (Denise Gough). Meanwhile, when Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) explains to his boyfriend, legal word processor Louis Ironson (James McArdle), that he has Kaposi’s sarcoma and is going to die, Louis can’t handle it and leaves him. The three plots intersect and weave together powerfully as Kushner and Elliott explore the characters’ unwillingness to face some difficult truths about themselves regarding sexual identity, honesty, and responsibility; the only one who accepts his fate is Prior, who begins hearing voices and then is visited by an angel (Amanda Lawrence, or Beth Malone on Wednesdays) who declares him to be a prophet.

Harper (Denise Gough) and Joe Pitt (Lee Pace) face their demons in stunning revival of Tony Kushner epic (photo by Brinkhoff & Mögenburg)

At the beginning of Perestroika, the world’s oldest Bolshevik, Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov (Brown), is standing at a podium in the Kremlin, announcing, “The Great Question before us is: Are we doomed? The Great Question before us is: Will the Past release us? The Great Question before us is: Can we Change? In Time? And we all desire that Change will come.” Those theories are addressed as Joe’s Mormon mother (Lawrence/Malone) comes to New York to save him from sin; Prior’s ex-boyfriend, a nurse named Belize (Nathan Steward-Jarrett), is assigned to take care of the hospitalized Cohn, who is being haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Lawrence/Malone); Joe and Louis grow closer; and Prior’s health continues to worsen even as he believes he might very well be a prophet, ordered by the Angel to “Submit to the will of Heaven!” Perestroika is staged very differently from Millennium Approaches; the revolving sets are gone, replaced by an often empty space in which individual elements are either wheeled in by mysterious Angel Shadows (Rowan Ian Seamus Magee, Matty Oaks, Jane Pfitsch, Ron Todorowski, Silvia Vrskova, and Lucy York), rise from beneath, or descend from above. “Perhaps it can be said that Millennium is a play about security and certainty being blown apart, while Perestroika is about danger and possibility following the explosion,” Kushner explained in a note on an earlier version of the script. (He has revised Perestroika over the years for previous revivals.) “The plays benefit from a pared-down style of presentation, with scenery kept to an evocative and informative minimum. . . . I recommend rapid scene shifts (no blackouts!), employing the cast as well as stagehands in shifting the scene. This must be an actor-driven event.”

An angel (Amanda Lawrence) descends from Heaven to declare a new prophet in Angels in America (photo by Brinkhoff & Mögenburg)

Angels is indeed an actor-driven event, with sensational performances from the cast of eight, each playing multiple parts. Brown (Husbands & Sons, Playing with Fire), Lawrence/Malone (Here We Go, Tristan and Yseult / Fun Home, Ring of Fire), and Stewart-Jarrett (Wig Out, The History Boys) are particularly busy, taking on more than a dozen roles among them. Lane (The Iceman Cometh, It’s Only a Play) gobbles up Cohn, words flowing out in a fury. Gough (People, Places & Things, Desire under the Elms) brings an endearing tenderness to Harper, Pace (The Normal Heart, Small Tragedy) is strong and firm as Joe wrestles with his demons, and McArdle (Platonov, A Month in the Country) plays Louis with a sensitivity that belies his often-questionable actions. But Garfield (Death of a Salesman, The Amazing Spider-Man) soars above them all, fully embodying Prior, who is the show’s heart and soul. His physical and psychological ailing is palpable as he fights his disease while trying to find his place in a world that is getting away from him, his fears, though, somewhat offset by his unending hope. Elliott ably balances major dramatic scenes, such as when Prior gets into a fierce confrontation with the Angel, whose wings are operated by the Angel Shadows, with intimate moments like when Harper hallucinates, along with a large dose of comedy amid the heartbreak. Millennium might be three and a half hours and Perestroika four, each with two intermissions, but it doesn’t feel that long; they smoothly flow across time, and don’t be surprised if you make friends with those around you, especially if you’re seeing both shows the same day in the same seats. Kushner (Homebody/Kabul, Caroline, or Change) wrote, “I believe that, once engaged, audiences rediscover the rewards of patience and effort and the pleasures of an epic journey. An epic play should be a little fatiguing; a rich, heady, hard-earned fatigue is among a long journey’s pleasures and rewards.” Twenty-five years after their Broadway debut, on a planet where one million people die annually from AIDS and tens of thousands of Americans still contract HIV every year, this epic journey is more than worthy of rediscovery, in a stunning revival that hits just as hard today as it did a quarter century ago.

MY FAIR LADY

Lauren Ambrose excels in iconic role of Eliza Doolittle in Lincoln Center revival of My Fair Lady (photo by Joan Marcus)

Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 6, $97-$199
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Revivals don’t get much better than Bartlett Sher’s absolutely loverly version of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. Sher, who previously helmed widely acclaimed productions of South Pacific and The King and I at Lincoln Center, has created an inspiring My Fair Lady for the twenty-first century, honoring the original while bringing the female-empowerment aspect of the story to the fore. The musical adaptation of (George) Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, itself inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, had thwarted Rodgers and Hammerstein as well as Frank Loesser, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter until Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe reunited after a brief separation and took on the tale. Outside the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1912, Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Lauren Ambrose) is selling violets. Dirty and shabbily dressed, she is nearly knocked over by the fashionable Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Jordan Donica), and her flood of Cockney outrage earns her a harangue from Professor Henry Higgins (Harry Hadden-Paton), a linguistics expert who is so offended by the way she talks that he declares, “A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere — no right to live. . . . Your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible; don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.” The next day, Eliza arrives at Higgins’s fancy Wimpole St. home, demanding vocal lessons to make her “more genteel.” Higgins, who has been joined by Col. Pickering (Allan Corduner), treats Eliza harshly, referring to her as “baggage,” but when Pickering offers to pay for her lessons as part of a bet that Higgins can turn her into a lady in time for the Embassy Ball in six months, the professor agrees to take her on. “She’s so deliciously low — so horribly dirty!” Higgins proclaims right in front of her. “I’ll make a duchess of this draggle-tailed guttersnipe!”

Professor Henry Higgins (Harry Hadden-Paton) and Col. Pickering (Allan Corduner) celebrate with Eliza Doolittle (Lauren Ambrose) in My Fair Lady at the Vivian Beaumont (photo by Joan Marcus)

It seems like an impossible task for Higgins, a misogynist of the first order. “I’m an ordinary man; / who desires nothing more / than just the ordinary chance / to live exactly as he likes / and do precisely what he wants,” he sings. “But let a woman in your life / and you are plunging in a knife! / Let the others of my sex / tie the knot — around their necks; / I’d prefer a new edition / of the Spanish Inquisition / than to ever let a woman in my life!” Before she is making any real progress, her drunkard of a father, Alfred P. Doolittle (Norbert Leo Butz), shows up at Higgins’s home, asking for money in exchange for Eliza, assuming there is something more than just speech lessons going on. “Have you no morals, man?” Pickering asks. “No, I can’t afford ’em, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me,” Doolittle replies. They eventually come to an agreement, and Higgins gets back to work preparing Eliza for proper society. From the horse races at Ascot to the Embassy Ball and beyond, the relationship between Eliza and Henry further develops, taking both of them by surprise, especially the professor, who loses control over his creation. Meanwhile, Freddy begins courting Eliza, Alfred wants more money, and Higgins’s elegant mother (Diana Rigg) finds the whole thing rather funny.

Diana Rigg has earned her fourth Tony nomination (winning one) for playing Mrs. Higgins in Bartlett Sher’s outstanding production (photo by Joan Marcus)

My Fair Lady has featured such Eliza/Henry pairings as Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison (the 1956 Broadway original, directed by Moss Hart), Audrey Hepburn and Harrison (the 1964 film, which won eight Oscars), Christine Andreas and Ian Richardson (1978), Melissa Errico and Richard Chamberlain (1993), Martine McCutcheon and Jonathan Pryce (2001), and Errico and John Lithgow (2003), the difference in age between the man and the woman generally being twenty-five years or more. However, Ambrose (Six Feet Under, Exit the King) is actually three years older than Hadden-Paton (The Importance of Being Earnest, Downton Abbey), so Sher has them on more equal footing from the very start. Ambrose plays Eliza as a strong-willed, self-protective, astute woman who is determined to better herself, but on her own terms. Meanwhile, Hadden-Paton’s Henry has cracks in his armor that show up early, particularly as Eliza gains pride and power, right up through the gripping finale. Corduner is superb as the eminently likable Pickering (Titanic, Taken at Midnight), while Tony and Emmy winner Rigg (Medea, The Avengers) nearly steals the show as Mrs. Higgins, looking ever-so-chic in Catherine Zuber’s elaborate gowns and Tom Watson’s sophisticated coiffures. (How often does an actress who doesn’t sing a word get nominated for a Tony in a musical?)

Tony-winning choreographer Christopher Gattelli and Tony-winning music director Ted Sperling, who both collaborated on Sher’s South Pacific and The King and I, do fabulous jobs here too, particularly in the “Ascot Gavotte” and “Embassy Waltz” scenes but also during wonderful interpretations of “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “You Did It,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “The Rain in Spain.” Michael Yeargan’s dramatic sets further the class division prevalent in 1912 London as well as today. Higgins’s ornate yet refined home slides toward the audience from backstage, revolving from the elegant study to the front hall to the bath and other rooms. When Wimpole St. recedes backstage, the ensemble wheels in rickety DIY-style fences, light poles, and storefront facades. In 1908, Oscar Straus adapted Shaw’s Arms and the Man into The Chocolate Soldier; in 1939, when Shaw was asked about letting Kurt Weill adapt The Devil’s Disciple, he responded, “Nothing will ever induce me to allow any other play of mine to be degraded into an operetta or set to any music except its own.” Shaw died in 1950 at the age of ninety-four; My Fair Lady, with book and lyrics by Lerner and music by Loewe, premiered six years later. We’ll never know what Shaw would have thought of it, but the rest of us can now delight in Sher’s magical 2018 production, which is a smashing success, a classic musical with a fresh, bright take on class and gender issues that is just right for these crazy times.

70 AND SABABA! CELEBRATE ISRAEL PARADE

celebrate israel

CELEBRATE ISRAEL PARADE
57th to 74th St. up Fifth Ave.
Sunday, June 4, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
celebrateisraelny.org

On May 14, 1948, “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” proclaimed, “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Israel’s existence has been fraught with controversy since the very beginning, and there have been recent issues involving President Trump and the move of the embassy to Jerusalem, but the nation perseveres, and on June 3 its seventieth birthday will be honored with the annual Celebrate Israel Parade. This year’s theme is “70 and Sababa!” As the official parade website explains, “When Israelis say something is Sababa, they mean it’s awesome, fantastic, super! In just seventy years, this tiny, arid country with few natural resources has grown, developed, and prospered beyond belief and expectation. With incredible landscapes and seascapes, gigantic skyscrapers and beautiful cities, amazing technological, medical, and agricultural advancements, Israelis have been at the forefront of it all, and the whole world has benefited. Israel: You are Sababa!”

On Sunday, tens of thousands of marchers are expected to make their way from Fifty-Seventh to Seventy-Fourth St. up Fifth Ave. Among the performers will be Ninet Tayeb, Omri Anghel, Paparim Ensemble Dancers from the Israeli Dance Institute, Kosha Dillz, Mitzvah Clowns, Milk & Honeys, Yarden Klayman, Six13, Lipa Schmeltzer, SOULFARM, Yakov Yavno, and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene playing excerpts from its upcoming production of Fiddler on the Roof. The grand marshals are Dina and Jonathan Leader, with honorary grand marshals Jonathan Lipnicki, Siggy Flicker, Eyal Shani, Lipa Schmeltzer, and Liel Leibovitz. Special guests include members of the Israeli Knesset and numerous American public officials. In addition, the unaffiliated Israel Day Concert in Central Park is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with a free show in Rumsey Playfield (2:30–7:00) that this year pays tribute to the seventieth birthday of the State of Israel. There will be live performances and speeches by Izzy Kiefe, Marcos Molinaro. Rita Cosby, Jules Wainstein, Chele Farley, Siggy Flicker, Chaim Kiss, Mordechai Shapiro, Ken Abramowitz, Helen Freedman, Aaron Klein, David Weprin, Rory Lancman, Stacy Kessler, Morton Davis, Martin Oliner, Mort Klein, Pete Hegseth, Danny Danon, Dani Dayan, Yehuda Glick, Tal Vaknin, Shuali Muallem, Oded Forer, Yoel Hasson, Avraham Fried, Shlomie Dachs, and more.