twi-ny recommended events

THE ANTIPODES

A group of men and women gathers around a table telling stories in Annie Baker’s The Antipodes (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 11, $30 through May 14, $90 after
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Near the beginning of Annie Baker’s first play for her Residency Five program at the Signature Theatre, John, a character declares, “Tell me a story.” Baker takes that conceit to a whole new level in her follow-up, The Antipodes, which has been extended at the Signature through June 11. The set-up is essentially fairly simple: a group of coworkers sit in ergonomic chairs around a table in an office, where they spend their days sharing deeply personal tales that might or might not lead to the one that their boss, Sandy (Will Patton), needs as he seeks material for a successor to their biggest hit, Heathens. The audience, sitting on two sides of Laura Jellinek’s pristine set, never learns what kind of company the seven men and two women work for — but it’s apparently at least somewhat bureaucratic and corporate, as Josh (Josh Hamilton) has to fill out forms over and over in an ongoing effort to try to get his ID. The tale they seek involves monsters, but no dwarves, elves, or trolls; they could be making movies, video games, apps, or an animated television series, although it doesn’t really matter, because it’s all about the stories themselves. “There are seven types of stories in the world,” Dave (Josh Charles) says, while Danny M1 (Danny Mastrogiorgio) claims there are thirty-six, Josh ten, and Brian (Brian Miskell) eighteen. They share intimate sexual episodes, moments that shaped their lives, and random tales that go nowhere. Josh philosophizes about the nature of time, Eleanor (Emily Cass McDonnell) doesn’t understand why she can’t use her cell phone, Danny M2 (Danny McCarthy) is hesitant to contribute, and Adam (Phillip James Brannon) remembers being hit by lightning. Scenes often end in the middle of a discussion, then pick up in the midst of a new topic, with no clear delineation of the time change except when Sarah (Nicole Rodenburg), Sandy’s assistant — who knows more than she’s letting on — arrives to take lunch orders, wearing a different chic outfit each time, courtesy of costume designer Kaye Voyce. While it doesn’t appear that they are accomplishing anything, Sandy, a straight shooter who is having some issues at home, pushes them to keep going. “I just wanted to remind all of you that what you’re doing is important. We need stories. As a culture. It’s what we live for. These are dark times. Stories are a little bit of light that we can cup in our palms like votive candles to show us the way out of the forest.” Even Brian, the note-taker and researcher, gets in on the action. But the team starts getting nervous when Sandy suddenly doesn’t show up one day.

Dave (Josh Charles) and Adam (Phillip James Brannon) listen to others’ stories in latest exceptional work by Annie Baker (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Antipodes, which sounds like a mythical monster but actually means “contrary” or “the exact opposite,” has all the makings of a pretentious play about the art of playwrighting, a work about the writer’s struggle to come up with a good idea, but Pulitzer Prize winner Baker (The Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation), who wrote the two-hour show specifically for the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, proves that it’s not that obvious. Instead, it’s a carefully crafted existential take on everyday existence, on the things humans do to get by, from eating and drinking to having sex, from going to work and communicating with others to dealing with life’s little problems. “We can do anything,” Sandy points out, as if he’s speaking for Baker the playwright, who is firmly in control. The show is also about the concept of time, which in a play can be manipulated by the writer. “There are two kinds of time. Vertical and horizontal. And if something happens in horizontal time, it can be . . . it’s not permanent,” Josh explains. “You can reverse it. Like one of them is the time that we think of when we think of normal time that’s moving forward and you can’t go back. But then there’s another kind of time and if you do something in that kind of time you can . . . uh . . . it’s more flexible.” Director Lila Neugebauer, who has done an extraordinary job navigating through time and space in such complex multicharacter dramas as The Wayside Motor Inn, The Wolves, and Everybody, makes every movement count, never allowing the narrative flow to drag, whether by way of a bit of magic about where lunch comes from or Adam lying on the floor to tell “the first story ever told.” The actors form an utterly believable group, fellow employees with unique personalities, some of whom bond while others remain outsiders, just as in real life. “The stories we create teach people what it’s like to be someone else on a visceral level,” Sandy tells his crew. “As storytellers we know how to shift perspective and inhabit different viewpoints. Imagine what would happen if everyone in the world could do every once in a while what we already do on a daily basis. It would be revolutionary.” The Antipodes is another exceptional play from one of the theater’s finest minds, a writer who is never afraid of going for the revolutionary in her work.

TURNER’S MODERN AND ANCIENT PORTS: PASSAGES THROUGH TIME

Joseph Mallord William Turner, “The Harbor of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile,” oil on canvas, exhibited 1825 but subsequently dated 1826 (© The Frick Collection)

The Frick Collection
1 East 70th St. at Fifth Ave.
Through May 14, $12-$22 (pay-what-you-wish Sundays 11:00 – 1:00)
212-288-0700
www.frick.org

There’s less than a week left to see the Frick’s splendid exhibition “Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time,” a two-part show that continues through May 14. The exhibit expands on two of the Frick’s finest monumental works by Joseph Mallord William Turner, “The Harbor of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile” from 1825 and “Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening” from 1826, which have been moved from the West Gallery into the Oval Room, where they are joined by four other lovely canvases, three from the Tate and one from the Met, all depicting port scenes. In her exhibition catalog essay “Liminal Spaces: Turner’s Paintings of Dieppe and Cologne,” Frick senior curator Susan Grace Galassi writes of “Dieppe,” “Cologne,” and “The Harbor of Brest: The Quayside and Château,” which is also in the Oval Room, “This trio of grand-scale paintings of the mid-1820s, which follow from ‘Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed’ exhibited in 1818, attests to the significance of the port in Turner’s work during the decade after the Continent had been newly reopened to British travelers at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Sea and river ports, whether of the present or past, exerted a powerful hold on Turner’s imagination as transitional spaces of arrival and departure, and as a country’s or city’s welcoming gateways or defensive barriers. While Turner drew upon various models of the past for his port scenes, he departed daringly from naturalism through his use of high-keyed color and effects of transparency and luminosity, provoking criticism and controversy when the works were first exhibited.”

Joseph Mallord William Turner, “Shields, on the River Tyne,” watercolor on paper, 1823 (© Tate, London 2016)

Seen together, the works are majestic in both skill and scope, with the golden light of the sun forging entrancing passageways that emanate from the paintings’ vanishing point until the glow seemingly permeates the room. Boats, logs, buildings, and people are brilliantly reflected in the shimmering water as everyday life goes on. Each work has its unique charms and special details, from the dog nipping at the water in “Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening” to the men and women huddled on the side of the mountain in the unfinished “The Harbor of Brest: The Quayside and Château” (which harkens to Turner’s later, abstract canvases), from the daytime moon in “Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus. The Triumphal Bridge and Palace of the Caesars Restored” to the shadow of a statue in “Ancient Italy — Ovid Banished from Rome.” And in “Regulus,” Turner takes a wicked shot at his critics, who had complained of the “blinding” nature of his use of light, here depicting Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus — he is not actually very easy to spot in the right side of the painting — who was blinded by the Carthaginians in a particularly nasty way: They either cut off his eyelids or sewed his eyes open, then forced him to stare into the sun as he was tortured to death. Turner’s revenge on his naysayers was to make them stare into the sun in his painting, although it is, of course, far from torturous to do so.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, “Sun-Rise: Whiting Fishing at Margate,” watercolor on paper, 1822 (private collection)

Working primarily from sketches, memory, and imagination, Turner also took advantage of the lifting of European travel bans, venturing to France and Germany in addition to various locations in England and Wales, making wonderful watercolors, more than two dozen of which line the Frick’s East Gallery, along with several prints. The seascapes include the rare vertical “On the Upper Rhine,” in which lumber is being transported on a rickety raft making its way through a narrow gorge; “Shields, on the River Tyne,” with the moon casting its glow on coal workers toiling away on a cargo ship; “Cologne: Colour Study,” in which Turner’s brushstrokes are clearly evident; and “Devonport and Dockyard, Devonshire,” with swirling clouds giving way to the sun as well-dressed women and soldiers rowing toward the shore at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Be sure to grab a magnifying glass to catch every exquisite detail. Making my way through the exhibit, I couldn’t help but think of Timothy Spall portraying the artist in the 2014 film Mr. Turner, the grunting iconoclast heading to his favorite seaside town where he would paint water scenes. If you can’t make it to the Frick, then you must check out its fantastic virtual exhibition, a 360-degree tour of the Oval Room and the East Gallery, featuring zooms as well as links to every piece in the show, with wall text and enlarged images of these illustrious works, which celebrate the natural world while also referencing the rise and fall of civilization. “Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful,” rival artist John Constable said after attending the 1828 Royal Academy Exhibition. “They are only visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures.”

WAR PAINT

Elizabeth Arden (Christine Ebersole) and Helena Rubinstein (Patti LuPone) battle it out during the war effort in War Paint (photo by Joan Marcus)

Nederlander Theatre
208 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 3, $65-$179
877-250-2929
www.warpaintmusical.com

War Paint is everything it should be and more. Inspired by Lindy Woodhead’s 2004 book and Ann Carol Grossman and Arnie Reisman’s 2009 documentary, The Powder & the Glory, this knockout Broadway musical pits not only fashion doyenne Helena Rubinstein against Elizabeth Arden but Tony-winning divas Patti LuPone, as the former, against Christine Ebersole, as the latter. And everyone wins, especially the audience. Rubinstein (1872-1965) and Arden (1878-1966) were fierce rivals in the cosmetics industry, bringing a new conception of feminine beauty to America while also breaking barriers for women entrepreneurs. The show, which takes place between the late 1930s and the early 1960s, focuses on how sharply different each was from the other, although they both sought the same things: power in a man’s world, as a woman. Rubinstein was a tough, gruff Jewish immigrant from a Polish shtetl, while the blonde Arden hailed from an impoverished Canadian farm. While Rubinstein made such proclamations as “There are no ugly women; only lazy ones,” Arden made such demure statements as “Remember, girls! Every woman has a God-given right to loveliness!” In the show, they battle over new products, secret ingredients, location, Senate investigations, and even sales managers; at one point, Elizabeth’s husband, Tommy Lewis (John Dossett), feeling neglected, jumps ship to work with Helena, so Helena’s right-hand man, Harry Fleming (Douglas Sills), is quickly snatched up by Elizabeth. David Korins’s darkly bold changing sets include a wall of glowing cosmetic bottles, a movable red door representing Arden’s lush salon, portraits of Rubenstein done by famous artists, and a restaurant where both women dine and where they reveal many of their fears. Catherine Zuber’s costumes are exuberant, as are David Brian Brown’s wigs and Angelina Avallone’s makeup, while Christopher Gattelli’s choreography has ravishing moments of razzle-dazzle; all of those elements come together for a terrific number about Helena and Elizabeth’s involvement in the war effort (“Necessity Is the Mother of Invention”) as well as such other fun songs as “Behind the Red Door” and “Back on Top,” featuring the talented ensemble, who all play multiple roles, including such standouts as Mary Ernster as the Society Doyenne, Joanna Glushak as Magda, Barbara Marineau as the Grand Dame, Angel Reda as the Heiress, Mary Claire King as Miss Beam, and Erik Liberman as Charles Revson.

Elizabeth Arden (Christine Ebersole) and Helena Rubinstein (Patti LuPone) pause for a rare quiet moment in their lavish yet complex lives (photo by Joan Marcus)

The book, by Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife, Hands on a Hardbody), does an excellent job of condensing the story into a fast-paced two and a half hours, giving equal time to each side of the conflict. The music, by Scott Frankel, and lyrics, by Michael Korie, who previously collaborated on such shows as Far from Heaven, Doll, and Happiness and teamed up with Wright on Grey Gardens, are fanciful and exhilarating, propelling the story while allowing the stars to shine, and shine they do; LuPone (Gypsy, Evita), Ebersole (Grey Gardens, 42nd Street), Dossett (Gypsy, Giant), and Sills (The Scarlet Pimpernel, Little Shop of Horrors) are the fiercest foursome on Broadway today, chewing up the colorful scenery and spitting it out with verve and style, although the show, of course, belongs to the women. Early on, Harry suggests to Helena, “Perhaps this time you’ll drop by the Red Door and introduce yourself? Maybe even make nice?” to which Helena responds, “The Ford should meet the Studebaker? The Macy’s should take tea with the Gimbel’s?” In real life, Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden actually never met; thank goodness this show brings them together for posterity.

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Paul (Corey Hawkins) charms Ouisa (Allison Janney) and Flan (John Benjamin Hickey) in Broadway revival of Six Degrees of Separation (photo © Joan Marcus 2017)

Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 16, $49 – $149
sixdegreesbroadway.com

In 1983, David Hampton talked his way into several apartments owned by wealthy New Yorkers, claiming to be the son of Sidney Poitier. Award-winning playwright and screenwriter John Guare heard the story from friends of his, Inger McCabe Elliott and Osborn Elliott, who were among those who took in Hampton, and turned the true tale first into a 1990 play, which premiered at the Mitzi E. Newhouse at Lincoln Center and moved upstairs to the Vivian Beaumont for its Broadway debut, and then a 1993 film, directed by Fred Schepisi. It is now having its first Broadway revival, and it’s as sharp and delightful as ever, skewering white liberal guilt, societal racism, and the child-rearing of the wealthy with glee and wit to spare. Six Degrees of Separation is set in an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment, where private art dealer Flan (John Benjamin Hickey) and his chi-chi wife, Ouisa (Allison Janney), have just gone through a traumatic experience. They relate in flashback, often addressing the audience directly, precisely what happened to shake them up so much. Flan and Ouisa, who are both in their forties, were enjoying an evening with their friend Geoffrey (Michael Siberry), a wealthy South African businessman whom they plan to wine and dine into an art investment deal. When asked why he stays in South Africa, where apartheid is still in effect, Geoffrey, who employs seventy thousand black workers in one of his mines, explains, “One has to stay there to educate the black workers, and we’ll know we’ve been successful when they kill us.” When Geoffrey asks Flan and Ouisa to visit him in South Africa, she opines, “But we’d visit you and sit in your gorgeous house planning trips into the townships demanding to see the poorest of the poor. ‘Are you sure they’re the worst off? I mean, we’ve come all this way. We don’t want to see people just mildly victimized by apartheid. We demand shock.’ It doesn’t seem right sitting on the East Side talking about revolution.” Their evening is interrupted when the doorman (Tony Carlin) brings in a young man who bleeding from a recent attack in Central Park. Paul (Corey Hawkins) claims to be friends with Ouisa and Flan’s children (they have two kids at Harvard and one at Groton) as well as being the son of famed actor Poitier. The three white people see this as an excellent opportunity to help a black man, so they take him in, getting particularly excited when Paul promises that they can appear in the movie version of Cats, which his father is directing. But later that night they find out a whole lot more about Paul that is not quite so comforting.

John Guare revival is set in a luxurious Fifth Avenue living room (photo © Joan Marcus 2017)

Guare (The House of Blue Leaves, Atlantic City) does an expert job exploring the racial divide, one that hasn’t changed all that much in America since 1990. “I never knew I was black in that racist way till I was sixteen and came back here,” Paul explains about his return to the States after being raised in Switzerland. Although Guare didn’t come up with the Poitier reference — that was done by the real Hampton — it allows the playwright to subtly pontificate on the boundary-breaking actor so beloved by black and white audiences. “Your father means a great deal in South Africa,” Geoffrey points out, while Dr. Fine (Ned Eisenberg), who treated Paul at the hospital, calls Poitier “a matinee idol of my youth. Somebody who had really forged ahead and made new paths for blacks just by the strength of his own talent.” Also getting involved are Flan and Ouisa’s friends Kitty (Lisa Emery) and Larkin (Michael Countryman) and several of the adults’ less-than-happy children, including Woody (Keenan Jolliff), Doug (Cody Kostro), Tess (Colby Minifie), and Ben (Ned Riseley), who have some terse words to share with their parents. “There are two sides to every story,” Dr. Fine tells his son, Doug, a theme that also relates to the painting Flan and Ouisa have hanging in their living room, a two-sided Kandinsky described thusly by Guare: “One side is geometric and somber. The other side is wild and vivid.” There are plenty of both sides in the play.

Corey Hawkins takes on role previously played by James McDaniel, Courtney B. Vance, and Will Smith (photo © Joan Marcus 2017)

Seven-time Emmy winner and two-time Tony nominee Janney (The West Wing, A View from the Bridge) and Tony winner and Emmy nominee Hickey (The Normal Heart, The Big C) portray the quintessential East Side couple — previously played onstage by John Cunningham and Stockard Channing and on film by Channing and Donald Sutherland — with grace and skill, masterfully blending humor and irony. Hawkins (Hurt Village, 24: Legacy) is a worthy successor to previous Paul portrayers James McDaniel off Broadway, Courtney B. Vance on Broadway, and Will Smith on film; he keeps the audience guessing just as he does the gullible characters. The show is smoothly directed by Obie winner Trip Cullman (Significant Other, Punk Rock), moving back and forth between the past and the present, although the red scrim in the back of Mark Wendland’s set is confusing. “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people,” Ouisa says. “Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The President of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names. I find that A) tremendously comforting that we’re so close and B) like Chinese water torture that we’re so close. Because you have to find the right six people to make the connection.” This revival of Six Degrees of Separation, continuing at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre through July 16, makes quite a connection itself.

LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FANTASY: FRENCH POLITICS ON FILM — INTERNS NIGHT AT FIAF: STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

Marc Châtaigne (Vincent Macaigne) battle the law of the jungle in Struggle for Life

CinéSalon: STRUGGLE FOR LIFE (LA LOI DE LA JUNGLE) (Antonin Peretjatko, 2016)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, May 9, $14, 4:00 & 7:30 ($3 for interns at 7:30 with code INSIDE)
Series continues Tuesday nights through May 30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

“Vines . . . are like internships,” Ulrich (Pascal Tagnati) tells Marc Châtaigne (Vincent Macaigne) in Antonin Peretjatko’s madcap colonialist farce, Struggle for Life. “Don’t drop one till you got another.” Nothing ever goes right for middle-aged schlemiel Châtaigne, who has been assigned by Rosio (Jean-Luc Bideau) of the Ministry of Standards to oversee the construction of an indoor ski resort in the jungles of Guiana; Guia-Snow, Rosio explains, will show South America that France can export a coveted resource, cold weather. Châtaigne’s contact in Guiana is lunatic bureaucrat Galgaric (Mathieu Amalric), who assigns him a driver named Tarzan (Vimala Pons), a grown woman who is interning with the Department of Forestry and Water and is in charge of renovating gardens. Soon Châtaigne and Tarzan are lost in the jungle, encountering a variety of oddballs, including Christian Duplex (Pascal Légitimus), Georges (Thomas De Pourquery), and Damien (Rodolphe Pauly), each of whom is somehow involved in either tearing down or saving the Amazon. Meanwhile, Châtaigne is being hunted by strange and skillful tax minister Maître Friquelin (Fred Tousch). They also meet up with dangerous insects and animals, cannibals, and parking meters. Jerry Lewis’s The Patsy meets Woody Allen’s Bananas in this hit-or-miss satire of French colonialism and government programs, in which interns are given a tremendous amount of power and responsibility, with director-cowriter Peretjatko (La Fille du 14 juillet) leaving no sight gag unturned. Yes, a lot of them are just plain stupid, but a whole bunch are just plain funny as well.

Struggle for Life is screening on May 8 at 4:00 and 7:30 in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Liberté, Egalité, Fantasy: French Politics on Film”; both shows will be followed by a wine and beer reception. And in a nod to interns here in New York City, all current interns pay only three dollars (with the code INSIDE) for the 7:30 show, which will be introduced by journalist and WQXR host Annie Bergen and feature such prizes as an intern survival kit consisting of pastries, wine, a massage, and more. “Liberté, Egalité, Fantasy: French Politics on Film” continues Tuesdays through May 30 with Alain Cavalier’s Pater, Costa-Gavras’s Special Section, and Benoît Forgeard’s Gaz de France.

QUEER / ART / FILM — SUMMER OF RESISTANCE: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975

Angela Davis speaks out about the Black Power movement in compelling documentary that kicks off IFC Center Summer of Resistance series

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Monday, May 8, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.blackpowermixtape.com

From 1967 to 1975, a group of more than two dozen Swedish journalists came to America to document the civil rights movement. More than thirty years later, director and cinematographer Göran Hugo Olsson discovered hours and hours of unused 16mm footage — the material was turned into a program shown only once in Sweden and seen nowhere else — and developed it into The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, a remarkable visual and aural collage that focuses on the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, a critical part of American history that has been swept under the rug. Olsson and Hanna Lejonqvist have seamlessly edited together startlingly intimate footage of such seminal figures as Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, including a wonderfully personal scene in which Carmichael interviews his mother on her couch. But the star of the film is the controversial political activist Angela Davis, who allowed the journalists remarkable access, particularly in a jailhouse interview shot in color. (Most of the footage is in black-and-white.) Davis also adds contemporary audio commentary, sharing poignant insight about that tumultuous period, along with Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets, singer Erykah Badu, professor, poet, and playwright Sonia Sanchez, Roots drummer Ahmir Questlove Thompson (who also composed the film’s score with Om’Mas Keith), and rapper Talib Kweli, who discusses specific scenes in the film with a thoughtful grace and intelligence. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is an extraordinary look back at a crucial moment in time that has long been misunderstood, if not completely forgotten, and has taken on new relevance with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The film kicks off the IFC Center series “Queer/Art/Film: Summer of Resistance” on May 8 at 8:00 and will be followed by a discussion with fierce pussy, the New York City-based queer women artists collective. The monthly series, in which activists and political collectives select films to screen and discuss, continues on June 26 with Deborah Esquenazi’s Salem: the Story of the San Antonio Four, chosen by F2L, July 24 with Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparicio’s The Salt Mines & The Transformation, with Bianey Garcia, and August 14 with Niazi Mostafa’s A Glass and a Cigarette, with Tarab NYC.

DEAD END

Local kids plot their next move in rare revival of Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End (photo by Pavel Antonov)

Axis Company
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Wednesday – Saturday through May 20, $15-$30, 8:00
866-811-4111
www.axiscompany.org

Axis Theatre Company artistic director Randy Sharp transports audiences back to depression-era New York to depict gentrification and income disparity in a dark and intimate revival of Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 Broadway hit, Dead End. The play, which ran at the Belasco for nearly two years, and the subsequent Oscar-nominated 1937 William Wyler film, starring Humphrey Bogart, Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, and Claire Trevor, focus on a group of poor adolescent ruffians, originally played by the Dead End Kids (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop, and Bernard Punsly, most of whom went on to become part of the Bowery Boys movie franchise), who hang out on dock pilings on the far east side of Manhattan. Virtually penniless, they goof around, making fun of one another in their thick accents (“Soich ’im,” “Hay’s fer hawses,” “What ah ya? A boy or a goil?”), and direct their scorn at just about anyone else who passes through their turf. When construction forces the wealthy people in a riverside luxury building to use the back door, where they come into contact with the tenement kids, a local hooker, and other undesirables, various conflicts ensue, illuminating the sharp contrast between the rich and the poor. “I’d rather see this from a distance,” the well-connected Griswald (Spencer Aste) tells his doorman, Jones (Brian Parks), upon seeing the “hoodlums.” Griswald’s prissy son, Phillip (Jake Murphy), then incites the boys. After Phillip brags to Jones that he spoke to his father in French, finishing with “Oui, oui,” Tommy (Jon McCormick) immediately jumps on that, declaring, “WEE WEE!!! He’s godda go wee wee!!” T.B. (Lynn Mancinelli), so-called because he has tuberculosis, challenges Phillip to swim in the East River, but Phillip refuses to go into the filthy water, preferring the indoor pool in his building. “Whassa mattah? Yuh scared yuh git a little doit on you?” Spit (Regina Betancourt) razzes him. They also pick on new kid Milty (Emily Kratter), a Jewish boy who wants to join their gang. Meanwhile, fellow resident Gimpty (George Demas), who went to college to become an architect but can’t find a job, recognizes an old fellow gang member, Baby Face Martin (Brian Barnhart), now a murderer on the run from the law who has returned home to visit his aging mother (Laurie Kilmartin) and his lost love, Francey (Katie Rose Summerfield). The only one with any sense, trying to do the right thing, is Tommy’s older sister, Drina (Shira Averbuch), who is raising Tommy by herself and wants to keep him out of trouble. But trouble knows how to find these unfortunate souls.

Angel, also known as T.B. (Lynn Mancinelli), makes a point in expressionistic drama at the Axis Theatre (photo by Pavel Antonov)

Lighting designer David Zeffren maintains a threatening darkness through most of the eighty-minute play, during which all of the actors congregate on Chad Yarborough’s spare set, which consists of pilings at stage left and a bed at the center back. Beat cop Mulligan (Phil Gillen), the doorman, and the Griswalds keep to stage right, attempting to stay away from the ruffians. Sharp (Last Man Club, Hospital) gives the production an expressionistic feel with elements of black humor while making it clear that not much has changed in the eighty-two years since the play debuted. The male and female actors playing the male gang members, all dressed in Karl Ruckdeschel’s black costumes with tight-fitting headpieces like an alternate version of nuns’ habits, have developed an infectious kinship, and Sharp effectively averts turning them into sympathetic victims or mere criminals. The heart of the story is the relationship between Gimpty, an architect unable to build anything (literally or metaphorically), and Kay (Britt Genelin), Phillip’s girlfriend, who has a soft spot for Gimpty and wants to help him, but rich and poor do not mix well in this world. “The place you live in is awfully important,” Gimpty tells Drina. “It can give you a chance to grow, or it can twist you. When I was in school, they used to teach us that evolution made men out of animals. They forgot to tell us it can also make animals out of men.” They also forgot to tell them that it’s not easy getting out of that dead end, in 1935 or 2017.