twi-ny recommended events

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: BE RIGHT BACK

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: BE RIGHT BACK explores career of controversial Italian artist and provocateur

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: BE RIGHT BACK (Maura Axelrod, 2016)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, April 14
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.mauriziocattelanfilm.com

Italian artist and prankster extraordinaire Maurizio Cattelan has built his wildly successful career out of controversy, provocation, and mystery, taking on the very art world that has made him a superstar. Documentarian Maura Axelrod includes the same elements in her vastly entertaining film, Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back. The title refers to both the beginning of Cattelan’s career, a Milan solo show in which he locked the gallery door and hung a sign on it that said “Torno Subito” (Be Right Back) as well as what might or might not be the end, as he announced his retirement following the brilliant 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim, “All,” in which he hung all of his works from the Guggenheim ceiling, as if signaling their death. “His career is based on anecdotes and lies and imaginary stories,” Milan gallerist Massimo De Carlo says in the film. “Some people are suspicious that Maurizio is pulling the wool over their eyes and he is some kind of flamboyant artistic con man,” adds art historian Sarah Thornton. “I think he’s probably one of the greatest artists that we have today, but he could also be the worst. It’s gonna be one or the other; it’s not gonna fall in the middle,” cracks one of his collectors. Axelrod also speaks with former Guggenheim artistic director Nancy Spector, former Public Art Fund director Tom Eccles, Cattelan archive director Victoria Armutt, Guggenheim curator Katherine Brinson, gallerists Marian Goodman and Emmanuel Perrotin, art critics Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian, and Cattelan’s sister, Giada, former fiancée Victoria Cabello, and current girlfriend Victoria Yee Howe. They share stories about Cattelan’s working methods and proclivities, delving into such pieces as “Daddy Daddy,” a facedown Pinocchio in a pool of water that was inspired by Cattelan’s childhood; “La Nona Ora” (The Ninth Hour), a lifelike sculpture of the pope knocked down by a meteorite; “Another Fucking Readymade,” in which he stole the inventory of another artist’s show and claimed them as his own; “Him,” a rendering of a kneeling child who turns out to be Adolf Hitler; and “L.O.V.E.” (Libertà, Odio, Vendetta, Eternità), a marble sculpture of a giant middle finger in Milan’s financial district. He even staged his own pseudo–Caribbean Biennial, featuring such artists as Wolfgang Tillmans, Elizabeth Peyton, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, Chris Ofili, and Mariko Mori gathered together on the island of St. Kitts. (The critics were not amused.)

“Daddy Daddy” holds one of the keys to the mystery that is Maurizio Cattelan

Meanwhile, the artist speaks profusely on camera, sharing such insights as “I knew what was expected of me and I decided I was going to be something else” and “I’ve always been very good at faking things.” Indeed, about two-thirds of the way through the film, there is a fabulous twist that only art-world insiders are likely to have guessed, as Axelrod takes a page from Orson Welles’s magical F for Fake. Writer, producer, and director Axelrod incorporates home movies, family photographs, playful animation, and new and old footage to try to figure out just what makes Cattelan tick, what he’s really like, but she lets viewers in only so far, like his tiny elevator installation in which no one can fit. Among the many words used to describe the iconoclastic artist and his oeuvre are “tasteless,” “profound,” “funny,” “tragic,” “disrespectful,” “vulnerable,” and “uncanny beauty,” as people also point out that he is anxious, very demanding to live and work with, and, while seeing art as commodity, uses the vanity of collectors against themselves. Of course, all of those are true, in one way or another. His art can be as thrilling as it is offensive, as silly as it is prescient as he explores such themes as failure, alienation, mortality, and personal identity. “You need to go pretty far, otherwise the piece doesn’t exist,” he says. “You need to push your friends and enemies and collaborators further, and you have to be uncomfortable about it. The further you go, the more satisfaction is created by the level of discomfort in which all the participants were put.” The last section of the film details “All,” which a clearly uncomfortable Spector had her doubts about but insisted that “the risk had to be real,” worrying that it would cause the Guggenheim to collapse within itself but they had to proceed. And as far as Cattelan’s retirement is concerned, this past September he installed “America” at the Guggenheim, an eighteen-karat-gold fully functional toilet, the first new piece he has exhibited since “All.” Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back opens April 14 at the newly renovated Quad Cinema, with Axelrod participating in Q&As on April 14 (with Spector and New Museum artistic director Massimiliano Gioni) and April 15 at 7:45 and April 16 at 5:30.

THE HAIRY APE

Robert “Yank” Smith (Bobby Cannavale) asserts himself in Richard Jones’s fierce revival of Eugene O’Neill’s THE HAIRY APE (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 22, $60-$195
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

If it’s subtlety you’re looking for, you won’t find it in Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 play, The Hairy Ape, which continues through April 22 at the Park Avenue Armory in a grunting, ferocious production imported from the Old Vic. Written shortly after he won two Pulitzer Prizes (for Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christie), The Hairy Ape is O’Neill’s clarion call against capitalism, classism, socialism, slavery, and even ageism, focusing on the role of each unique person in contemporary American society. “I have tried to dig deep in it, to probe in the shadows of the soul of man bewildered by the disharmony of his primitive pride and individualism at war with the mechanistic development of society,” he said of his first draft of the play, which was partially inspired by the suicide of a friend of his, a stoker named Driscoll. Bobby Cannavale is fierce as Robert “Yank” Smith, a brute of a man who is the ersatz leader of a group of men working in the stokehole of an ocean liner, feeding coal to the fires to keep the vessel moving. Stewart Laing’s eye-opening conveyor-belt set rotates on a revolving, slightly elevated strip, half of which is in front of the audience, half of it behind. The men work in a long but not very high rectangular bright-yellow metal container that is open on one side, with two locked entrances at the end, one barred, as if they’re animals in a cage. Covered in black soot that looks like it will never come off, the men sing and play rough in drunken camaraderie, fully aware of their dank and dreary situation. “T’hell wit home. Where d’yuh get dat tripe? Dis is home, see?” Yank says in his tough New York City accent. A tipsy Long (Chris Bannow) rages, “Listen ’ere, Comrades! Yank ’ere is right. ’E says this ’ere stinkin’ ship is our ’ome. And ’e says as ’ome is ’ell. And ’e’s right! This is ’ell. We lives in ’ell, Comrades — and right enough we’ll die in it.” Old Paddy (David Costabile) remembers how things once were, when the men intertwined with nature, aboard clippers, working in the fresh air and sunshine. “’Twas them days men belonged to ships, not now,” he says. “’Twas them days a ship was part of the sea, and a man was part of a ship, and the sea joined all together and made it one.” But Yank is having none of that. “I belong and he don’t. He’s dead but I’m livin’,” he declares about Paddy. “Listen to me! Sure I’m part of de engines! Why de hell not!” Later, when the stokers are hard at work with their shovels, Mimi Jordan Sherin’s dazzling lighting, filled with ever-changing primary colors, turns the container red, as if the men are trapped in the fiery furnaces of hell itself.

Stewart Laing’s sculptural sets and Mimi Jordan Sherin’s colorful lighting look stunning in Park Avenue Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Rich kid Mildred Douglas (Catherine Combs) tells her aunt (Becky Ann Baker) that she’s planning on visiting the stokers working down below (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Meanwhile, Mildred Douglas (Catherine Combs), the twenty-year-old heiress to the steel company for whom the stokers toil down below, is on the promenade deck of the ship, with her aunt (Becky Ann Baker). Dressed in white, Mildred walks through the oversized sans serif logo of her father’s company as she tells her aunt that she has arranged to go meet the men. The rich Mildred believes she can help them, make their lives better, but she also sees them merely as animals. “When a leopard complains of its spots, it must sound rather grotesque,” she says in a mocking tone. “Purr, little leopard. Purr, scratch, tear, kill, gorge yourself and be happy — only stay in the jungle where your spots are camouflage. In a cage they make you conspicuous.” Her visit doesn’t go very well — Yank can’t tell if she’s an angel or a ghost — but she awakens something deep inside him; he starts considering who he really is and where he truly belongs, leading to a string of absurdist adventures in New York City.

Stewart Laing’s sculptural sets and Mimi Jordan Sherin’s colorful lighting look stunning in Park Avenue Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

O’Neill pulls no punches in the play, pitting rich vs. poor, heaven vs. hell, old vs. young, male vs. female, and the concept of “clean” vs. “dirty.” His stage notes compare the men’s camaraderie to “the bewildered, furious, baffled defiance of a beast in a cage” and calls them “chained gorillas.” Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire, The Motherfucker with the Hat) is explosive as Yank — a role previously played onstage by Paul Robeson and Willem Dafoe and on the silver screen by William Bendix — whether taking a moment and posing as Rodin’s “Thinker” or pounding his chest, expressing his mental and physical superiority. The container can’t contain him; when Yank does venture out, Laing’s objects disappear and instead Yank is faced with a large, dark, unknown space, as Olivier Award–winning theater and opera director Richard Jones (Too Clever by Half, The Illusion) takes full advantage of the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall while adding surreal elements. In addition, composer Sarah Angliss contributes an immersive sound design, making the audience feel as if it is trapped as well. Not everything works; for example, the face of Mildred’s father shows up in a few strange places, and it probably wasn’t necessary. Costabile excels as Paddy, waxing poetic as he drinks himself into oblivion. The cast also includes Cosmo Jarvis as a prisoner, Mark Junek as the second officer, Henry Stram as a socialist secretary, and Tommy Bracco, Emmanuel Brown, Nicholas Bruder, Jamar Williams, and Amos Wolf as stokers. (It would be unfair to give away who Phil Hill portrays.) The play features existential movement by choreographer Aletta Collins (Anna Nicole, La Traviata) and dance captain (and ensemble member) Isadora Wolfe, starts and stops that are curious but effective. The seats, arranged in rising rows against the east wall of the drill hall, are all bright yellow, matching the container, making the audience complicit in O’Neill’s marvelous manipulations. The word “yellow” is used several times in the play, primarily representing the fear that lies in the heart of humanity, particularly when it’s up against dehumanizing industrial progress; Yank calls both Long and Paddy yellow, as well as the unseen engineer blowing a whistle that means the men have to get back to work. “He ain’t got no noive. He’s yellow, get me?” Yanks says. “All de engineers is yellow. Dey got streaks a mile wide. Aw, to hell wit him!” The Hairy Ape might not be one of O’Neill’s most popular plays — although he thought it was his best — but it’s a treat to see it in such a dazzling, unpredictable version, powered by a bold and brutal lead performance.

MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA

Students have to fight for their future in Dash Shaw’s MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA

MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA (Dash Shaw, 2016)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens April 14
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.gkids.com

Daria and Scooby-Doo meet The Poseidon Adventure and Titanic in graphic novelist Dash Shaw’s first full-length feature animation, the awkwardly titled, awkwardly plotted, yet awkwardly entertaining My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea. In the somewhat semiautobiographical tale, Dash (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) runs the school newsletter with his best friend, Assaf (Reggie Watts); the two consider themselves investigative journalists, even if no one reads their stories. Dash is further frustrated when Assaf shows an interest in Verti (Maya Rudolph), who has different ideas for the newsletter. After publicly embarrassing Assaf, a stunt that disappoints the relatively cool Principal Grimm (Thomas Jay Ryan), Dash discovers that the high school’s new roof, which is under construction, is not up to code. Just as he starts telling everyone that, the school begins breaking apart and falling into the ocean. Dash soon finds himself with Assaf, lunch lady Lorraine (Susan Sarandon), and his archenemy, Mary (Lena Dunham), as they try to stay above water and survive the maelstrom that is swirling all around them. In order to make it, they’ll have to go from the freshman floor, the lowest one, up through the sophomore, junior, and senior floors to potential safety, a clever way of having them grow up fast. But their journey is a gory one as they encounter plenty of dead students and teachers along with lots of body parts.

Survival is the name of the game in animated disaster epic set in high school

Shaw (Cosplayers, Bottomless Belly Buttons) wrote and directed the film, with his partner, Jane Samborski, serving as lead animator, creating much of the DIY-style art in his Brooklyn kitchen; the two previously collaborated on the online series The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D., based on Shaw’s 2009 graphic novel. The cartoon style is all over the place, from sketchy and purposely amateurish to hallucinogenic and surreal, incorporating images of real fire and water; at times it looks like the film is being projected by the iconic 1960s psychedelic Joshua Light Show. (In fact, one of the other animators was Curtis Godino, who has worked with JLS and founder Joshua White; Frank Santoro also contributed to the film.) A cool elevator sequence pays homage to early German animator Lotte Reiniger. The narrative contains ginormous plot holes; try to suspend disbelief and just let the tongue-in-cheek madness play out onscreen. Shaw and Samborski do a good job of capturing the general angst and ennui of high school life, although it does become repetitive during the too-long seventy-seven-minute running time. And a direct reference to Shaw’s publisher is completely gratuitous. The film also features the voices of Alex Karpovsky as slacker Drake, John Cameron Mitchell as jock Brent Daniels, and Louisa Krause as popular girl Gretchen, with music by Rani Sharone of the band Stolen Babes and the haunting solo project Thrillsville. A selection of the New York Film Festival, My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea opens April 14 at Metrograph, with Q&As with Shaw, Samborski, and producer Kyle Martin at the 7:00 shows April 14-16. (The April 14 Q&A will be moderated by Mitchell.)

TICKET ALERT: AN EVENING WITH GEORGE TAKEI

George Takei will be at BAM on May 1 to discuss social media, online activism, LGBTQ rights, and his life and career (photo courtesy George Takei)

Who: George Takei, Jay Kuo
What: “Where No Story Has Gone Before”: George Takei in conversation with Jay Kuo
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St., 718-636-4100
When: Monday, May 1, $28-$75, 7:30
Why: On April 1, social media sensation and Star Trek favorite George Takei announced that he was running for Congress, moving out of LA and to Visalia, California, with his husband to make a grab for embattled Republican representative Devin Nunes’s seat in 2018. It turned out that it was all an April Fools’ Day setup to endorse Jon Ossoff, who is a candidate in a special election in Georgia on April 18. But it’s no joke that Takei, who will turn eighty on April 20, will be at BAM on May 1 for the special presentation “Where No Story Has Gone Before,” where he will talk about his life and career with theater composer Jay Kuo, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Allegiance, the Broadway musical inspired by Takei’s experiences in a Japanese internment camp during WWII. Takei played Sam Kimura in the show; the portrayer of Hikaru Sulu is currently appearing as the Reciter in Classic Stage Company’s revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures. Takei and Kuo will also explore activism and the internet; with millions of followers, Takei is a major figure in the fight for social justice, marriage equality, and LGBTQ rights. Meanwhile, Kuo (Upwardly Mobile, Insignificant Others, Worlds Apart), the head of Team Takei and the chief creative officer at the Social Edge, recently tweeted, “The Ministry has fallen. Obamadore has left Hogwarts. Bellatrix Conway shrieks lies. Elizabeth McGonnowarren is holding back the Dementors.” As Takei has been known to say, “Oh my!”

SWEAT

A local bar serves as the main set in Broadway production of Lynn Nottage’s SWEAT

Studio 54
254 West 54th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 1, $59-$149
212-719-1300
sweatbroadway.com

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage at last makes her Broadway debut with the timely Sweat, as powerful and searing at Studio 54 as it was last year at the Public Theater. The two-act play takes place in 2000 and 2008 in Reading, Pennsylvania, where the futility of the American dream is on display. The play opens with a scene in 2008, as former best friends Chris (Khris Davis) and Jason (Will Pullen) have been released from prison after eight years behind bars for an undisclosed crime. Flashback to 2000, when factory workers Cynthia (Michelle Wilson), Chris’s mother, who’s married to the drug-addicted Brucie (John Earl Jelks); Tracey (Johanna Day), Jason’s mother; and Jessie (Alison Wright), a divorced drunkard, are celebrating a birthday in a bar run by former factory worker Stan (James Colby) and his bus boy, Oscar (Carlo Albán). When a front-office job at the factory becomes available, Cynthia shows an interest in getting off the floor, leading to dissension in the ranks, jealousy, envy, and, ultimately, violence.

Tracey (Johanna Day), Cynthia (Michelle Wilson), and Jessie (Alison Wright) weigh their options over pints of beer in SWEAT

Sweat has transferred exceedingly well from the Public to Broadway, with only very minor tweaks to the script by Nottage (Intimate Apparel, Meet Vera Stark), while the direction by Kate Whoriskey (How I Learned to Drive, The Piano Teacher), who also helmed Nottage’s Ruined, is even sharper. The only cast change is Wright (The Americans), who adds more depth to the role of Jessie; Lance Coadie Williams also returns as a parole officer assigned to Chris and Jason, along with John Lee Beatty’s expertly designed rotating set. (All of the actors give strong performances, but Day stands out as a single mother who is willing to see only so far in front of her.) The play gets right to the heart of what has been happening in the United States during and after the recent presidential campaign, as Democrats and Republicans continue to argue over jobs, particularly in the Rust Belt. Nottage did a lot of firsthand research in Reading, the steel and textile town that was ranked as the most impoverished city in America in 2011 and has remained in the top ten ever since, with extremely high unemployment and low education leading to a poverty rate of more than forty percent. She met with many of the struggling people there, encountering feelings of desperation, sadness, and betrayal, and turned their poignant stories into Sweat, a fierce and fiery work with plenty of heart and soul, a brilliant microcosm of a deeply divided nation where hardworking people have to live with choices no one should be forced to make. [Ed. note: Sweat has just earned Nottage her second Pulitzer Prize, announced on April 10; she also won in 2009 for Ruined, making her the first female playwright to win multiple Pulitzers.]

JOHN WATERS: MAKE TROUBLE

Tuesday, April 11, Barnes & Noble Union Square, 33 East 17th St., 212-253-0810, free, 7:00
Thursday, April 13, Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn, 445 Albee Square West, 718-513-2547, 8:00
www.maketrouble.com

On May 30, 2015, filmmaker, writer, artist, and provocateur John Waters, aka the People’s Pervert and the Prince of Puke, gave the commencement speech at the Rhode Island School of Design, offering his unique advice about life after college, telling the graduating students, “Go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully.” That talk has now been adapted into the eighty-page book Make Trouble (Algonquin, April 11, $14.95), featuring line drawings by Eric Hanson. On April 11, Waters, who has made such films as Hairspray, Female Trouble, and Pink Flamingos, will be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble for a conversation with Christopher Bollen, editor at large at Interview magazine and author of Lightning People and Orient. After the conversation, Waters will sign copies of Make Trouble and just about anything else fans bring, and he will pose for photos as well. Wristbands will be given out beginning at 9:00 that morning to people who have purchased the new book at that B&N. Then, on Thursday, April 13, Waters will head to the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn for a screening of his 1970 cult classic, Multiple Maniacs, preceded by a Q&A with Waters; a copy of Make Trouble comes with every ticket.

STREB: SEA (AN HOUR OF ACTION)

The countdown is on until STREB: SEA returns to Brooklyn

SINGULAR EXTREME ACTIONS
SLAM (STREB Lab for Action Mechanics)
51 North First St. between Kent & Wythe Aves., Brooklyn, 718-384-6491
Thursday – Sunday, April 13 – May 7, $25 in advance, $29 at door (includes popcorn and one drink)
streb.org/seaanhrofaction

Elizabeth Streb and her impressive action heroes are daring performers who combine dance and acrobatics in dazzling ways. They’ve strutted their stuff in such venues as the Park Avenue Armory, Gansevoort Plaza, and the World Financial Center, as well as around the world, as documented in Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity and OXD: One Extraordinary Day. They are now bringing back Sea to their Williamsburg home, performing the “wild kaleidoscope” from April 13 through May 7. Led by associate artistic director Fabio Tavares and action heroes Leonardo Giron Torres, Cassandre Joseph, Jackie Carlson, Daniel Rysak, Felix Hess, Jamarious Stewart, Loganne Bond, and Matt McEwen, the sixty-minute work will feature DJs and an emcee, invented hardware, and breathtaking — and dangerous — site-specific action events. “In the past few years, it occurred to me that instruments in an orchestra don’t just compose one symphony. A guitar doesn’t just invent one riff or a single melody. Our ‘action machines’ have more than one dance in them,” Streb explains on the company website. Tickets are $25 in advance and include popcorn and one drink.