twi-ny recommended events

GALLIM: STONE SKIPPING

Gallim Dance will engage in a performance conversation with the Temple of Dendur at the Met this weekend (photo by Nikki Theroux)

MetLiveArts
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gallery 131, the Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
October 28-29, $65 (includes same-day museum admission), 2:00
212-570-3949
www.metmuseum.org
www.gallimdance.com

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first-ever artist-in-residence choreographer, Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance, will debut her site-specific project, Stone Skipping, on October 28 and 29 at 2:00 at the Met Fifth Avenue, at the Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing. The Salt Lake City-born, New York City-based choreographer, a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow who formed Gallim in 2007, created the piece as a conversation with the popular historical artifact, a Roman Period Egyptian temple completed in 10 BCE, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, who is depicted on one of the outer walls as a pharaoh. “I am curious to understand the capacity of the body, its anatomy, its power, and its instinct to connect with the space and events around us. In my work, I look for texture, a quality of energy, or a psychological pitch that surfaces in the doing of things,” Miller, whose previous pieces include W H A L E, Fold Here, Wonderland, and Blush, has said. That mission should resonate beautifully with the Temple of Dendur, a favorite of Met visitors. Stone Skipping features ten members of the Gallim company, joined by six guest dancers from Juilliard, with an original composition by Phil Kline (Unsilent Night, John the Revelator), performed live by the viola quartet Firewood, consisting of Ralph Farris, Stephanie Griffin, Jessica Meyer, and Lev Zhurbin; the costumes are by fashion designer Jose Solis. Stone Skipping will also touch upon the journey the Aeolian sandstone structure made from Egypt, which, in conjunction with the White House, awarded the institution the temple in 1967. “I am convinced that the Metropolitan’s plans for the temple will protect it and make it available to millions of Americans in a setting appropriate to its character,” President Lyndon B. Johnson wrote to museum director Thomas Hoving in April 1967. Exploring such universal themes as loss, preservation, and survival, Miller’s Stone Skipping should only add to the special nature of this extraordinary artifact. Tickets are $65 and include museum admission; for an addition dollar, you can bring a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to the performance, up to three kids per adult. Back in 2011, we saw Shen Wei give a gorgeous presentation in the Met’s Charles Engelhard Court, so we can’t wait to see what Gallim has in store for us.

JESUS HOPPED THE ‘A’ TRAIN

Prison guard Valdez (Ricardo Chavira, center) calmly reads as Angel Cruz (Sean Carvajal, left) and Lucius Jenkins (Edi Gathegi, right) consider their fate in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train (photo © 2017 Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 19, $30 through November 12, $45 after
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

With the U.S. incarceration system under increasing scrutiny and as talk of closing down the infamous Rikers Island jail grows, the time is ripe for the first New York City revival of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s 2000 play, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, and a blistering version opened last night at the Irene Diamond Stage at the Signature Theatre. The play is not an activist exposé of the penal system as much as a searing journey into the battle for the soul of humanity, set in Rikers, pitting good vs. evil, light vs. dark, God vs. the Devil, and guard vs. inmate. Edi Gathegi is electrifying as Lucius Jenkins, a serial killer whom we see only during his one outdoor hour a day, caged in the prison yard, where the sun beats down on him as he madly exercises and spouts off like a man in heat, with an opinion about everything, from television to cookies to the surgeon general. But soon friendly, sympathetic guard Charlie D’Amico (Erick Betancourt) is replaced by the more vicious and condescending Valdez (Ricardo Chavira), and Lucius gets a new neighbor.

“People think everything is replaceable. Everything is not replaceable,” Valdez explains. “People believe they go through life accumulating things. That is incorrect. People go through life discarding things, tangible and intangible, replaceable and priceless. What people do not understand is that once they have discarded an irreplaceable item, it is lost forever.” Joining Lucius for the daily sixty minutes away from their twenty-three-hour lockdown is Angel Cruz (Sean Carvajal), a thirty-year-old man arrested for shooting the Reverend Kim in the butt; he believes the minister is a cult leader who kidnapped and brainwashed his best friend. Angel is not initially cool with his court-appointed public defender, Mary Jane Hanrahan (Stephanie DiMaggio), but she takes an interest in his case even after he admits to her that he did it, setting up a potential serious ethical violation. With Angel’s trial and Lucius’s extradition to execution-happy Florida looming, the characters discuss faith, the existence of God, the law, and time, which is running out on both of them.

Without getting pedantic or simplistic, Pulitzer Prize winner Guirgis (Between Riverside and Crazy, The Little Flower of East Orange) explores many basic dichotomies in Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, from the names of the two men in prison, Angel (a celestial being) and Lucius (the son of the devil), to a brief discussion of two kinds of Oreos, chocolate fudge and vanilla fudge. (Also, while Lucius worships the sun, Angel shot a man based on the Reverend Sun Myung Moon where the sun don’t shine.) Obie winner Mark Brokaw (Heisenberg, The Lyons) directs with a strong but understanding hand, giving room for the actors to intersect with Guirgis’s sharp language. Riccardo Hernandez’s set, boldly lit by Scott Zielinski, features a pair of cells a few feet apart, surrounded by concrete blocks, the cages open at the front not only to give the audience a clearer view inside but to imply that anyone can end up there. In his off-Broadway debut, Gathegi (Two Trains Running, Superior Donuts), stepping in for the originally announced Reg E. Cathey, is a whirlwind of energy as Lucius, constantly on the move, exercising, climbing up the cage, lifting his arms defiantly, and throwing matches and cigarettes over to Angel; he doesn’t just speak his lines but he lives every word. Carvajal (Seven Spots on the Sun, Tell Hector I Miss Him), who took over for Victor Rasuk just before previews began, still needs to find his sea legs as Angel, who spends much of his time sitting in a chair or on a bucket or kneeling in prayer; his emotional shifts from scared to brazen jump around too much, as if he is playing two different characters, but when he hits the right stride, he nails it.

Chavira (A Streetcar Named Desire, Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker with the Hat) portrays Valdez with just the right amount of high-minded privilege because he’s not the one behind bars. When Lucius starts talking about the vibe of these daily workout sessions, Valdez responds, “Oh . . . well, let me, if I may, tell you now about my vibe, my feel. My ‘vibe’ is: Step away from that cage before I come in there and club you to death.” Chavira delivers the lines in a way that makes everyone in the audience lean back in their seat and take notice. DiMaggio (A Free Man of Color, Exile) and Betancourt (Julius Caesar, Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot) each gets to deliver a soliloquy at opposite sides off the stage, their characters the only ones not tied down to Rikers. Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, which was originally directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2000 with a cast consisting of Elizabeth Canavan, Salvatore Inzerillo, Ron Cephas Jones, John Ortiz, and David Zayas, is an exciting beginning to Guirgis’s Signature Residency, which continues next May with his 2002 play, Our Lady of 121st Street, directed by Anne Kauffman, followed in 2018-19 by a new work.

CINEMATOGRAPHER CAROLINE CHAMPETIER: SHAPING THE LIGHT — THE INNOCENTS / HOLY MOTORS

A convent of nuns reexamine their faith following tragedy in Les Innocentes

Polish nuns reexamine their faith following unspeakable tragedy during WWII in Les Innocentes

CinéSalon: THE INNOCENTS (LES INNOCENTES) (AGNUS DEI) (Anne Fontaine, 2016)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 24, $14 ($23 for both films), 4:00
Series continues Tuesdays through October 31
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
www.musicboxfilms.com

FIAF’s CinéSalon series “Cinematographer Caroline Champetier: Shaping the Light” continues the celebration of the career of the César-winning French director of photography October 24 with two of her best films, Anne Fontaine’s Les Innocentes and Léos Carax’s Holy Motors, each of which will be followed by a Q&A and wine and beer reception with Champetier. Inspired by a true story, Les Innocentes is a haunting tale of a French WWII Red Cross doctor, Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Laâge), who is secretly summoned by Sister Maria (Agata Buzek) to help a nun give birth in a remote Polish convent. She soon discovers that several of the Benedictine nuns are pregnant, the result of brutal rapes by Soviet soldiers. The Mother Superior (Agata Kulesza) doesn’t want any outsiders to know what happened, out of both shame and fear, but the babies, and the nuns themselves, may not survive without obstetric care. Mathilde, a Communist, is stationed at a mobile surgical hospital in Warsaw, where she primarily assists Samuel (Vincent Macaigne), a Jewish doctor tending to wounded soldiers after the war, in December 1945; she gets into trouble with Samuel when she refuses to even hint at where she is disappearing to. As the due dates for the multiple births draw close, so does the danger surrounding Mathilde and the nuns.

Les Innocentes was nominated for four Césars, Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay — even though it was based on the diaries of French Resistance doctor Madeleine Pauliac — and Best Cinematography, by Champetier (Of Gods and Men, Toute une nuit), who does an exquisite job with her camera throughout the film, which is beautifully directed by Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel, Gemma Bovery). In scene after scene, amid a palette dominated by black, white, and brownish gray, a light glows near the center of the screen, from candles, open doorways, windows, and snow to a fire, lamps, truck headlights, and even the white parts of the nuns’ habits, giving the film a chiaroscuro look reminiscent of canvases by Georges de la Tour. It’s like a flicker of hope at the center of tragedy, or birth coming out of death as the nuns and the doctors reexamine their faith, their basic belief system, and the concept of motherhood. De Laâge, who was nominated twice for the Most Promising Actress César, gives a heartfelt, honest performance as Mathilde, as she goes back and forth between her duties with the Red Cross and her deep-set desire to help the nuns. Champetier’s camera loves her face, which often melts into the shot like a figure in a classical painting. Les Innocentes is a powerful look at some of the many innocent victims of war and how far people will go to protect their secrets. Les Innocentes is screening October 24 at 4:00 at FIAF, followed by a Q&A and wine and beer reception with Champetier.

Léos Carax’s Holy Motors is a dazzling tribute to Paris, cinema, and the art of storytelling

CinéSalon: HOLY MOTORS (Léos Carax, 2012)
Tuesday, October 24, $14 ($23 for both films), 7:30
www.fiaf.org
www.holymotorsfilm.com

French writer-director Léos Carax (Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang) has made only five feature films in his thirty-plus-year career, a sadly low output for such an innovative, talented director, but in 2012 he gave birth to his masterpiece, the endlessly intriguing, confusing, and exhilarating Holy Motors. His first film since 1999’s POLA X, the work is a surreal tale of character and identity, spreading across multiple genres in a series of bizarre, entertaining, and often indecipherable set pieces. Holy Motors opens with Carax himself playing le Dormeur, a man who wakes up and walks through a hidden door in his room and into a movie theater where a packed house, watching King Vidor’s The Crowd, is fast asleep. The focus soon shifts to Carax alter ego Denis Lavant as Monsieur Oscar, a curious character who is being chauffeured around Paris in a white stretch limo driven by the elegant Céline (Édith Scob). Oscar has a list of assignments for the day that involve his putting on elaborate costumes — including revisiting his sewer character from Merde, Carax’s contribution to the 2009 omnibus Tokyo! that also included shorts by Michel Gondry and Bon Joon-ho — and becoming immersed in scenes that might or might not be staged, blurring the lines between fiction and reality within, of course, a completely fictional world to begin with. It is as if each scene is a separate little movie, and indeed, Carax, whose middle name is Oscar, has said that he made Holy Motors after several other projects fell through, so perhaps he has melded many of those ideas into this fabulously abstruse tale that constantly reinvents itself.

Stunningly photographed by Caroline Champetier, former president of the French Association of Cinematographers, the film is also a loving tribute to Paris, the cinema, and the art of storytelling, with direct and indirect references to Franz Kafka, E. T. A. Hoffman, Charlie Chaplin, Lon Chaney, Eadweard Muybridge, Georges Franju, and others. (Scob, who starred in Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, at one point even pulls out a mask similar to the one she wore in that classic thriller.) The outstanding cast also features Kylie Minogue, who does indeed get to sing; Eva Mendes as a robotic model; and Michel Piccoli as the mysterious Man with the Birthmark. Holy Motors is screening October 24 at 7:30 at FIAF, followed by a Q&A and wine and beer reception with Champetier. “Cinematographer Caroline Champetier: Shaping the Light” concludes October 31 with Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt and Jean-Luc Godard’s Grandeur et décadence d’un petit commerce de cinema.

A NITE TO DISMEMBER: THE HAUNTED LIBRARY

Tony Curtis dances with glee as he readies for Nitehawk’s “A Nite to Dismember,” which includes The Manitou

Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, October 28, $65, 12 midnight to 6:00 am
718-384-3980
nitehawkcinema.com

Nitehawk Cinema’s fifth annual “A Nite to Dismember” is dedicated to horror films based on novels, including several bloody-strange choices that should get your blood flowing for Halloween. Running a mere 540 minutes, “A Nite to Dismember: The Haunted Library” begins at midnight with Roger Corman’s 1964 favorite The Masque of the Red Death, starring Vincent Price and Jane Asher, based on the Edgar Allan Poe book and the Poe short story “Hop Frog.” Batting second is James Whale’s seldom-screened The Old Dark House, based on J. B. Priestley’s Benighted and boasting the spectacular cast of Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Eva Moore, Gloria Stuart, Melvyn Douglas, and Raymond Massey. Next up is Hideo Nakata’s genuinely creepy and scary 1998 game changer, Ringu, based on the Kôji Suzuki book; the flick was followed by sequels and a decent Hollywood remake, but there’s nothing like the original. In the cleanup spot is Jennifer Kent’s 2014 sleeper hit, The Babadook, about a children’s pop-up book with some downright frightening elements. The all-night scares conclude with a very odd yet inspired selection, William Girdler’s 1978 The Manitou, based on Graham Masterton’s first novel and featuring Michael Ansara, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, and Tony Curtis in a supernatural tale about a neck tumor that turns out to be the rather unhappy title character. The evening will also include a new short film, a costume contest hosted by Jameson Caskmates, FG. Freaks candy from Eugene J., David Lynch Organic Coffee, a library of horror books curated by Sam Zimmerman, Kris King, and Caryn Coleman, trivia with prizes from Shudder and Out of Print, gift bags, and a free eggs-and-tater-tots breakfast if you make it all the way through.

A mother (Essie Davis) and her young son (Noah Wiseman) must get past terrible tragedy in The Babadook

THE BABADOOK (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
nitehawkcinema.com
www.thebabadook.com

A sleeper hit at Sundance that was named Best First Film of 2014 by the New York Film Critics Circle, The Babadook is a frightening tale of a mother and her young son — and a suspicious, scary character called the Babadook — trapped in a terrifying situation. Expanded from her 2005 ten-minute short, Monster, writer-director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature focuses on the relationship between single mom Amelia (Essie Davis), who works as a nursing home aide, and her seemingly uncontrollable six-year-old son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who is constantly getting into trouble because he’s more than just a little strange. Sam was born the same day his father, Oskar (Ben Winspear), died, killed in a car accident while rushing Amelia to the hospital to give birth, resulting in Amelia harboring a deep resentment toward the boy, one that she is afraid to acknowledge. Meanwhile, Sam walks around with home-made weapons to protect his mother from a presence he says haunts them. One night Amelia reads Sam a book that suddenly appeared on the shelf, an odd pop-up book called Mister Babadook that threatens her. She tries to throw it away, but as Sam and the book keep reminding her, “You can’t get rid of the Babadook.” Soon the Babadook appears to take physical form, and Amelia must face her deepest, darkest fears if she wants she and Sam to survive.

Writer-director Jennifer Kent brings out classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit THE BABADOOK

Writer-director Jennifer Kent explores classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit The Babadook

The Babadook began life as a demonic children’s book designed by illustrator Alex Juhasz specifically for the film — and one that was available in a limited edition, although you might want to think twice before inviting the twisted tome into your house. The gripping film, shot by Polish cinematographer Radek Ladczuk in subdued German expressionist tones of black, gray, and white with bursts of other colors, evokes such classic horror fare as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, where place plays such a key role in the terror. The Babadook itself is a kind of warped combination of the villains from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Hideo Nakata’s Ringu. Kent, a former actress who studied at Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art with Davis, lets further influences show in the late-night television Amelia is obsessed with, which includes films by early French wizard Georges Méliès. But the real fear comes from something that many parents experience but are too ashamed or embarrassed to admit: that they might not actually love their child, despite trying their best to do so. At its tender heart, The Babadook is a story of a mother and son who must go through a kind of hell if they are going to get past the awful way they were brought together.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

Shakespeare’s words fly by in a fury in Elevator Repair Service’s frenetic Measure for Measure (photo by Richard Termine)

The Public Theater, LuEsther Hall
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 12, $75
212-967-7555
www.publictheater.org

There’s a frenetic, anarchic pace to Elevator Repair Service’s Indy 500 version of Measure for Measure, running at the Public Theater’s LuEsther Hall through November 12. It’s like Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday on speed, the dialogue whizzing by, in sound and images, as the characters, in a bizarre array of costumes ranging from contemporary suits to hippy outfits to strange fake underpants worn over clothing, engage in corny but funny slapstick and often converse using antique Candlestick telephones even when they are sitting right across the H-shaped table from one another. The play includes every single word of Shakespeare’s script, which is occasionally projected in large letters all across the stage, but it still scrolls past so quickly there is not enough time to read it all. To maintain the verbal madness, which slows down only for one key scene, there is a Teleprompter behind the audience that guides the actors primarily for speed, employing software designed by ERS member Scott Shepherd, who also plays the Duke. (Shepherd and ERS founding artistic director John Collins, the director of Measure for Measure, are veterans of the Wooster Group, which also incorporates unique visuals using monitors in their shows.) You might not clearly understand everything everyone says, but you’ll be able to follow the general shenanigans as the Bard takes on sex, mortality, morality, fidelity, virtue, virginity, marriage, religion, pregnancy, prison, and capital punishment.

In Vienna, the Duke is about to head out of town for a while, leaving his deputy, Angelo (Pete Simpson), in charge. However, the Duke hovers around, disguised as a friar, as the story unfolds, involving Juliet (Lindsay Hockaday), who is having a child with Claudio (Greig Sargeant); brothel manager Mistress Overdone (Susie Sokol); Claudio’s sister, Isabella (Rinne Groff), a religious novice; the nun Mariana (April Matthis); the young nobleman and lowlife Lucio (Mike Iveson); the Provost (Maggie Hoffman), who runs the prison; aged adviser Escalus (Vin Knight); constable Elbow (Gavin Price, who also is the sound designer); and various other characters of ill and not-so-ill repute. The plot centers on Angelo’s arrest of Claudio for impregnating Juliet out of wedlock and the deputy’s offer to release him from prison only if Isabella will sleep with him. It’s quite a moral dilemma — especially as more and more men in positions of power in America today are discovered to be sexual predators — and one that is not resolved very easily. “Death is a fearful thing,” Claudio tells Isabella, who responds, “And shamed life a hateful.”

Brothel manager Mistress Overdone (Susie Sokol) has something to say in ERS adaptation of Measure for Measure (photo by Richard Termine)

At a talkback following the October 18 performance, the audience was asked if it was anyone’s first time at the Public, and no hands went up. They were next asked if it was anyone’s first time seeing Shakespeare, and a few hands went up. They were then asked if it was anyone’s first time seeing Measure for Measure, and more than half the hands went up. It is also ERS’s first time doing the Bard, following well-received, original adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (Gatz), William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (The Select), among other presentations. Founded in 1991 by artistic director John Collins, ERS leans heavily toward the experimental over the traditional, and that is as evident as ever in this exciting version of one of Shakespeare’s seldom-performed problem plays.

Director Collins and ERS have chosen to make the ribald shenanigans take a backseat to the staging, which is filled with delightful contradictions and decisions that go from the sublime to the ridiculous. “I’ve come to appreciate that Shakespeare’s densely layered metaphors and dizzying grammatical constructions can’t possibly be thoroughly understood and processed in real-time by any but the Elizabethan scholar. But maybe that doesn’t matter,” Collins writes in a program note. It might have been very different if he had chosen to do a more familiar Shakespeare play, in which much of the audience might already know the main aspects of the plot, so selecting Measure for Measure, which zooms by in an intermissionless 135 minutes, is a curious decision. Of course, opera is not exactly plot-friendly to those who don’t know the story either. In preparing for the show, Collins had the cast and crew watch Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday along with Hands on a Hardbody and the Marx Brothers, elements of which help propel this version to another level that Shakespeare purists might wag a finger at but more adventurous theatergoers will end up clapping wildly at.

SIMONE FORTI, STEVE PAXTON, YVONNE RAINER: TEA FOR THREE

Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer will join forces for three special evenings at Danspace Project (photos by Ian Douglas)

Danspace Project
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
131 East Tenth St. between Second & Third Aves.
October 26-28, $22
866-811-4111
www.danspaceproject.org

Danspace Project is bringing together a sensational trio for “Tea for Three,” as experimental dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton, dancer, artist, and writer Simone Forti, and dancer, choreographer, writer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer come together for three nights of “performance, improvisation, and interaction.” The extraordinary threesome were part of Robert Dunn’s Judson Memorial Church workshops nearly sixty years ago, and these presentations are the first time Paxton, Forti, and Rainer have collaborated as a trio. “They each bring their doughty selves to the stage, making dance and performance conversation. No tea is served, but food for thought,” Paxton writes in a statement. Tickets are sold out, but there will be a wait list every night beginning at 7:15. Good luck!

MARY JANE

Sherry (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Mary Jane (Carrie Coon) check Alex’s meds in moving, bittersweet drama (photo by Joan Marcus)

New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 29, $79
www.nytw.org

The audience never gets a good look at Alex, a seriously ill child, in Amy Herzog’s heart-wrenching and bittersweet Mary Jane. That’s because he’s more than just a chronically sick boy; in the beautifully rendered play, running at New York Theatre Workshop through October 29, he’s representative of the many fears, real and imagined, that haunt us all. Carrie Coon is extraordinary as Mary Jane, a thirtysomething single mother living in a small apartment in Queens with her two-and-a-half-year-old son, Alex, who was born prematurely and requires machines and full-time supervision to keep him alive. A former teacher, Mary Jane works as an administrative assistant for a real estate developer to get health insurance, but the demands of caring for Alex constantly jeopardize that job. As the play opens, the building super, Ruthie (Brenda Wehle), is trying to fix a clog in the sink when she notices that Mary Jane has removed the window guard, which is against the law. “It’s just that he loves looking out the windows, especially when he’s sick and I can’t take him outside?” Mary Jane says. “And it seems like such a small thing but the bars actually do bother him.” We don’t know whether they really bother Alex or not, or whether Mary Jane is projecting her feelings of entrapment in the immensely difficult situation. Alex has several at-home nurses, but the most dedicated is Sherry (Liza Colón-Zayas), who has practically become part of the family; one afternoon she brings over her niece, college student Amelia (Danaya Esperanza), who wants to meet Alex but is taken aback when he doesn’t even seem aware of her presence. A naturally upbeat and helpful person, Mary Jane is also guiding Brianne (Susan Pourfar), a friend of a friend who has a child with similar health issues as Alex. Mary Jane wants to keep Alex out of the hospital, but she has no choice after he suffers a bad seizure and deteriorates. At the hospital, she speaks with the abrupt and direct Dr. Toros (Colón-Zayas); Chaya (Pourfar), a Hasidic woman with a daughter in the same room as Alex; and Tenkei (Wehle), a former teacher and newly ordained Buddhist monk. Meanwhile, she’s on the lookout for Kat (Esperanza), the mysterious music therapist. “There is no more normal,” Sherry tells Mary Jane early on. No, nothing is normal, anywhere, in this brilliantly realized world created by Pulitzer Prize finalist Herzog and two-time Obie-winning director Anne Kauffman.

Amy Herzog and Anne Kaufman have teamed up on the beautiful, heart-wrenching Mary Jane at NYTW

Mary Jane is primarily about a single mother caring for her seriously ill child, yet it is also about so much more, particularly fear and faith. Alex spends nearly the entire play unseen by the audience while Laura Jellinek’s (The Nether, The Wolves) set magically morphs from apartment to hospital before our very eyes. The clever setup takes a cue from her recent Broadway design for Marvin’s Room, in which the aging, ill Marvin is onstage for much of the show but is also essentially unseen, in bed in the back, only occasionally visible in silhouette. It’s a key choice in Mary Jane, as Alex is more than just one specific sick boy; instead, he’s symbolic of the personal crises and potential disasters so many of us face every day. In fact, the word “disaster” is used numerous times throughout the show; Brianne works in disaster management, Mary Jane blames an indecipherable note on her phone as an “autocorrect disaster,” Chaya speaks of the need not to get too overwhelmed by disaster, and Amelia mentions having recently visited the 9/11 Museum with her aunt. Meanwhile, faith becomes a critical topic. “Does my faith make it easier?” Chaya, whose name means “life” in Hebrew, asks Mary Jane, continuing, “I don’t think having a sick child is less painful for me than for people without religion, I don’t think so.” Mary Jane is also very much about women in contemporary society and the problematic health-care system. It’s an all-female cast, and the crew is predominantly made up of women as well. Tony nominee Coon (The Leftovers, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) plays Mary Jane with an intoxicating warmth, an everywoman desperately trying to keep on a happy face in extremely difficult times, while the rest of the excellent actors each take on two roles that cleverly relate to each other: Wehle as the philosophical Queens super and the philosophical monk, Colón-Zayas as a nurse and a doctor, Esperanza as a college student and a music therapist, and Pourfar as two very different mothers. “Everybody has stuff,” Mary Jane tells Chaya, who replies, “That’s not true. Some people don’t have stuff. I know a lot of people, in fact, without any stuff at all.” In Mary Jane, there’s certainly a lot of “stuff”: the stuff of life, the stuff of death, and the pain in-between.