twi-ny recommended events

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

Evelyn (Estelle Parsons), Evvie (Judith Ivey), and Janice (Angelina Fiordellisi) don’t like what they see in OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Last performance July 6; closing announced July 14
212-989-2020
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

Four women gather in a Paris apartment to mourn the death of the hundred-year-old love of their lives in Israel Horovitz’s hilarious comedy Out of the Mouths of Babes. (The show’s very successful run had been extended at the Cherry Lane through July 31 but abruptly closed after one of its stars, Estelle Parsons, fell ill on July 6. Parsons was later declared to be in good health but was advised by her doctor not to continue in the show.) Eighty-eight-year-old Evelyn (Parsons), sixty-eight-year-old Evvie (Judith Ivey), and fifty-eight-year-old Janice (Angelina Fiordellisi) arrive one by one at the elegant Paris apartment where each used to live with the never-named Don Juan, a professor at the Sorbonne, and are soon joined by thirty-eight-year-old Marie-Belle (Francesca Choy-Kee), who was his current lover. As the funeral approaches, Evelyn and Evvie lace into each other in a skillful heavyweight verbal boxing match while the dour, depressed Janice considers jumping out the window again and the bright and cheery Marie-Belle claims that the deceased keeps visiting her, plying her with kisses and tickles. “Uh uh. Never got married,” the perpetually single Evvie says, to which Evelyn responds, “Nobody ever asked?” Evvie: “That’s kinda bitchy, don’t you think? Or did you mean it in a bitchy way?” Evelyn: “No, I meant it in a bitchy way.” The four women share various stories about their relationships with the dead man, which get a wee uncomfortable since Evvie had a long-term, on-and-off affair with him during his marriages to both Evelyn and Janice; meanwhile, his first wife, whom he called Snookie, his nickname for Evvie as well, committed suicide after finding out that he was cheating on her with Evelyn. Evelyn, Evvie, and Janice want to hate him, but they just can’t, especially with all of the positive energy emanating from Marie-Belle. “I’m getting zero sleep! What is this screaming match?” Evelyn cries out at one point. “I didn’t fly halfway around the world to die from no sleep before his funeral! This is a funeral I plan to enjoy!”

Marie-Belle (Francesca Choy-Kee) shares her stories of love and sex in OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Out of the Mouths of Babes was commissioned by Cherry Lane founding artistic director Fiordellisi and written specifically for Ivey (Hurlyburly, Steaming) and Parsons (Bonnie and Clyde, Miss Margarida’s Way), who have an absolute field day hurling biting insults at each other. (Two-time Tony winner Ivey was also nominated for her performance in Horovitz’s Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, while five-time Tony nominee and Oscar winner Parsons starred in Horovitz’s 2014 play My Old Lady, which with Babes forms the first two parts of a trilogy about Americans in Paris.) Longtime Horovitz director Barnet Kellman wisely just stands back and lets the two stars go at it, and it’s a joy to behold, which makes it even sadder that the production had to close early. Choy-Kee’s (Disgraced) and Fiordellisi’s (Zorba, Nunsense) characters tend to veer into caricature, not feeling quite as real as Evelyn and Evvie. Neil Patel’s Paris apartment set is filled with competent artwork by some relatively famous people, including Rosie O’Donnell, Joel Grey, Tina Louise, Billy Dee Williams, Clive Barker, Eve Plumb, and Patel himself (as well as two pieces by noted French artist Sonia Delaunay). A bit of physical comedy involving Evelyn and Evvie holding Marie-Belle out a window doesn’t quite work, but just about every other moment is utterly delightful, from Joseph G. Aulisi’s costumes to the loud French rap music that blasts out between scenes. The play also has an intriguing subtext about doubling, from character names and nicknames to subtle parallels (involving suicide, twins, and mirrors), as if everyone has another side that they keep hidden. It’s no coincidence that the first Snookie wrote a popular book called The Voice Inside. Now seventy-seven, Horovitz (The Indian Wants the Bronx, Sunshine), who lives in New York City but spends a lot of time in Paris, does not present many plays here anymore, preferring the less-hectic pace out of town, so it’s unfortunate that this fabulous world premiere, one of the best, and funniest, new plays of the year, had to cut short its run. “We love Estelle and want her to have the rest and peace of mind she needs,” Fiordellisi said in a statement about the closing. We couldn’t agree more.

PANORAMA NYC: ART

Who: Antfood, Dave and Gabe, Dirt Empire, Emilie Baltz and Philip Sierzega, Future Wife, Gabriel Pulecio, Invisible Light Network, Red Paper Heart, the Mountain Gods, VolvoxLabs, Zach Lieberman
What: Panorama: Music • Art • Technology
Where: Randall’s Island Park, the Lab
When: July 22-24, $125 per day ($230 VIP), $369 for three-day pass ($699 VIP), ferry $25 per day, shuttle $30 per day
Why: In addition to featuring such performers as Arcade Fire, Kendrick Lamar, LCD Soundsystem, Alabama Shakes, Sia, the National, FKA twigs, and Grace Potter and some big-time food vendors, the Panorama Music • Art • Technology festival, taking place this weekend on Randall’s Island, where the popular Frieze fair is held, will host the Lab, a collection of interactive and immersive art installations by New Yorkers that offers a respite from what should be large crowds fighting potential rain. Invisible Light Network, Dirt Empire, and Antfood have collaborated on a 70-foot dome with a 360-degree virtual reality theater. Dave & Gabe’s “Hyper Thread” is a 3D soundscape where you can create your own sounds using silk cocoons. Emilie Baltz and Philip Sierzega turn the making of cotton candy into an orchestral experience with “Cotton Candy Theremin.” Future Wife’s inflatable playground, “Visceral Recess,” allows festivalgoers to bring out their inner child. Gabriel Pulecio’s “Infinite Wall,” consisting of mirrors, lights, and sounds, reacts to visitors’ individual movements. Red Paper Heart’s “The Art of Pinball” reimagines the analog arcade game as a virtual digital wonderland. “Gigantic Gestures,” by the Mountain Gods (Charlie Whitney and Sierzega), invites people to tap and swipe a large-scale smartphone to investigate body language. Kamil Nawratil’s VolvoxLabs has created “The Façade,” which transforms the outside of the Lab into a projection screen. And hacker Zach Lieberman uses refraction and caustics in an interactive light table in “Reflection Study.”

DON’T THINK TWICE

A close-knit improv group dreams of bigger things in Mike Birbiglia’s DON’T THINK TWICE

DON’T THINK TWICE (Mike Birbiglia, 2016)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Opens Thursday, July 21
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
dontthinktwicemovie.com

Massachusetts-born, Brooklyn-based actor, comedian, writer, and director Mike Birbiglia turns to the improv scene in the bittersweet and very funny Don’t Think Twice. The follow-up to his 2012 indie hit Sleepwalk with Me, which was adapted from his one-man show of the same name, Don’t Think Twice focuses on a close-knit group of friends who have been performing together as the Commune for eleven years, always holding on to the dream that they will be discovered and asked to join the cast of Weekend Live, a Saturday Night Live-style network sketch comedy program. Miles (Birbiglia), who still sleeps in a bunk bed like he’s a college student, is the ersatz leader of the troupe, which also includes Sam (Gillian Jacobs) and Jack (Keegan-Michael Key), who are in love; Allison (Kate Micucci), who also wants to be a graphic novelist; Bill (Chris Gethard), who lives in the shadow of his tough-as-nails father (Seth Barrish); and Lindsay (Tami Sagher), the only one for whom money is not a problem, supported by her wealthy family. Just as the Commune finds out that it is losing its lease and will have to find a new home, talent scouts from Weekend Live watch a performance and ask two of the six members to audition for the show, creating friction within the group, which only gets worse when one actually gets the gig. Jealousy, ego, and envy threaten to end long-held friendships while the six comics reevaluate their lives and careers, trying to figure out what they really want and whether there’s a real chance to achieve those goals.

Improv group struts its stuff in Mike Birbiglia’s sophomore film

Inspired by real-life events (but not a true story), Don’t Think Twice is an honest and poignant look at the fragility of love and friendship. Birbiglia transfers the playful feeling of the hysterical onstage improv comedy scenes — which were filmed at the Lynn Redgrave Theater, where his latest one-man show, Thank God for Jokes, recently completed a successful run — to the offstage drama as the remaining members of the aptly named Commune consider their future as individuals and as a unit. Jacobs (Community, Love), the only one of the protagonists who did not have previous improv experience (the others were part of either Second City or the Upright Citizens Brigade), takes to the comedic form with an intoxicating glee, fitting in exceptionally well with the veterans and particularly with Key (Key and Peele); they share a tender chemistry that propels the film. Birbiglia, who has toured with Gethard (The Chris Gethard Show), plays the schlumpy Miles with a natural ease that keeps it all real. Cinematographer Joe Anderson (Simon Killer, The Benefactor) weaves in and around the comedians as they perform (the improv scenes were filmed twice, once scripted, once not), putting viewers onstage instead of in the audience, resulting in a more cathartic experience. The film features several cameos, from Richard Masur and Richard Kline to — well, we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprises. Don’t think twice about seeing Don’t Think Twice, which is opening July 21 at the Landmark Sunshine, with Birbiglia and producer Ira Glass — Birbiglia is a regular contributor to Glass’s NPR show, This American Life — participating in Q&As after multiple screenings July 21-24, but they’re selling out quick.

JAPAN CUTS 2016: BURST CITY

Japanese punk culture explodes in Sogo Ishii’s mind-blowing BURST CITY

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: BURST CITY (BAKURETSU TOSHI) (爆裂都市) (Sogo Ishii, aka Gakuryū Ishii, 1982)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, July 23, 10:00
Series runs July 14-24
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

“These streets have calmed down quite a bit, sir,” a man tells his yakuza boss at the beginning of Sogo Ishii’s crazy, nonstop thrill ride, Burst City, which is screening July 23 at 10:00 in Japan Society’s tenth annual Japan Cuts Festival. Conceived as a platform to showcase several early 1980s Japanese punk bands, including the Battle Rockers, the Roosters, the Stalin, and Inu, the film is a fast-paced, psychotic journey through a postapocalyptic nightmare world where disenchanted youth gather for hard-driving music and car races while they protest the construction of a nuclear facility on the outskirts of what’s left of Tokyo. It’s a crazy conflagration of Mad Max, The Warriors, A Clockwork Orange, Quadrophenia, Koyaanisqatsi, Streets of Fire, Rebel without a Cause, Star Wars, and Rude Boy, with lots of screaming, violence, and singing and very little dialogue or plot. It’s essentially a two-hour free-for-all, an explosive release of urban angst where there are no rules, no winners, and no losers (save for one unfortunate couple). And the music, produced by Roosters leader Shozo Kashiwagi, kicks some serious ass.

The large, spectacularly costumed cast features such longtime character actors as Takanori Jinnai and Shigeru Muroi, but aside from a minor subplot about an unwilling prostitute, the film is not driven by narrative or Method acting. Art director Shigeru Izumiya, who also appears in the film, creates sinister sets that promise the coming destruction, photographed by Norimichi Kasamatsu (Face, Villain) in an ever-changing cycle of lurid color and grainy black-and-white and lunatic editing that makes MTV videos of the time look like home movies of boring families. The art/decoration is credited to Katsuro Ogami and Junji Sakamoto; Sakamoto went on to become a successful director in his own right, making such films as My House, Someday, Face, and Danchi; the latter two are being shown at the 2016 Japan Cuts festival as well. Sogo Ishii, who recently changed his name to Gakuryū Ishii, has also directed such works as Panic in High School, Electric Dragon 80.000V, and Isn’t Anyone Alive? Bursting with a high-powered energy that never lets up, Burst City is screening in the “Flash-Back / Flash-Forward” section of Japan Cuts, along with Ishii’s latest film, Bitter Honey, in which a young woman (Fumi Nikaido) embodies a human-size goldfish.

PANORAMA NYC VIDEO OF THE DAY: “I’M DONE” BY THE JULIE RUIN

Who: The Julie Ruin
What: Panorama festival
Where: Randall’s Island Park, the Pavilion
When: Saturday, July 23, $125, 2:50
Why: Former Bikini Kill and Le Tigre legend Kathleen Hanna might declare, “I’m done,” on the Julie Ruin’s second album, Hit Reset (July 8, Hardly Art), but the riot grrrl cofounder’s career is far from over. “I’m not here to please you or beg on my knees or be the villain on your show,” she sings on “I’m Done,” adding, “I’m sick of waiting around to be heard from six feet underground.” The track is one of thirteen new tunes on the record, the follow-up to 2013’s Run Fast; the album also features such songs as “Be Nice,” “Rather Not,” and “I Decide.” On the band’s official website, Hanna, whose intriguing life was documented in the 2013 documentary The Punk Singer, notes, “I’ve written about my personal bouts with illness, abuse, sexism, and how hard it is for me to walk away from people even when they are toxic Tasmanian Devils before, but not in this way. Some songs were so close to me I had to stop singing in practice and while recording because I was crying. It’s rare to work with a group of people you feel okay doing that with. But there was laughter too.” Hanna, Kathi Wilcox, Carmine Covelli, and Sara Landeau will be at the Panorama music, art, food, and technology festival on Saturday, playing the Pavilion at 2:50; that day’s bill also includes Flosstradamus, Blood Orange, the National, Sufjan Stevens, and Kendrick Lamar. You can find the full schedule and set times for all three days here.

HOT! FESTIVAL: HYPERBOLIC! (THE LAST SPECTACLE)

Friends party like it’s 2033 in Monstah Black’s HYPERBOLIC! (photo by Manchildblack)

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Friday, July 22, and Saturday, July 23, $15-$22, 7:30
212-219-0736
dixonplace.org

If you thought the world was going to end on an August day in 2033, what would you do the night before? Performance artist Monstah Black decides to throw a truly strange farewell party in the chaotic but fun Hyperbolic! (The Last Spectacle). The centerpiece of Dixon Place’s twenty-fifth annual Hot! Festival: The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture is a pre-apocalyptic nightmare, possibly taking place completely in the dreaming mind of the blond-wigged Tucker (Joey Cuellar). As the audience enters the downstairs theater, there are five bodies on the floor and one on a bed; it’s difficult to tell if they are real or mannequins. Something truly awful has happened, as furniture and other objects pin the figures to the floor, glittering red fabric oozing off their bodies like blood. Eventually they rise and slowly get up and start prepping for the festivities, choosing their outfits, putting on makeup, and getting the food and drink ready. For a little over an hour, Tucker, Decay (Alicia Dellimore), Geez Louise (Shiloh Hodges), Dezi and Trigger (Johnnie “Cruise” Mercer), Bubbles (Benedict Nguyen), Goddess #1 (Marilyn Louis), Goddess #2 (Yuko “Uko Snowbunny” Tanaka), and Holiday Tahdah (Monstah Black) create themselves and construct their personas, working on makeup, striking poses, and primping in mirrors while also considering what the end means. Sprightly anarchic vanity is on glorious display: Dezi, for example, spends much of the early part of the show making love to his selfie stick, while Holiday frets: “I’ve been spending the last three days trying to figure out how I’m going to fit my shoes into my suitcase. How am I going to fit my shoes into my suitcase, Tucker? How? I know that sounds crazy considering the chaos and disorder we live in, but I have priorities.”

Chaos and disorder abound as the utterly confusing non-narrative piece of unique dance theater rages on, celebrating bodies, desire, glam fashion, cocktails, hair, style to the max, and Madonna-style voguing while evoking Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning. And that’s all before the masks come out. Black is credited as conceptual designer, movement generator, costume designer, theatrical director and camera operator with Ashley Brockington, and music producer with his group, the Illustrious Blacks; his husband, Manchildblack, is musical consultant. (You can follow the couple’s adventures on their YouTube show, At Home with the Blacks.) Under his given name, Reginald Ellis Crump, Black wrote the script in addition to collaborating on the lyrics with Derek D. Gentry. In order to spread the word about Hyperbolic! Dixon Place encourages the audience to take photos and video and post them to social media; however, try not to film nearly the entire production, as the person sitting in front of me did, causing a major distraction, and don’t use your flash, as a man in the first row did. Instead, just let Black and his cast and crew lead you on one wild, unpredictable ride as doomsday approaches. The Hot! Festival continues through August 29 with such other works as Mike Nelson’s If You Want to See the Devil, Ry Szelong’s Interabang, and Dandy Darkly’s Myth Mouth!

FOUR MORE YEARS — AN ELECTION SPECIAL: THE CANDIDATE

Political newcomer Bill McKay (Robert Redford) runs for the Senate in THE CANDIDATE

THE CANDIDATE (Michael Ritchie, 1972)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, July 23, 2:00, 7:00, 9:30
Series runs July 15 – August 3
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Four years before playing real-life Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) blew the lid off the Watergate cover-up, in the Oscar-nominated All the President’s Men, Robert Redford found himself portraying the other side of the political spectrum, starring as a progressive legal aid lawyer who is chosen to run for the Senate in Michael Ritchie’s savvy, documentary-style film The Candidate. The Democratic Party needs someone to run against incumbent Republican Senator Crocker Jarmon (Gidget’s Don Porter), so political operative Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) approaches McKay, an attractive, well-respected, and popular community activist whose father, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas), was California governor. At first the younger McKay has no interest in running for office, but when Lucas tells him he can say whatever he wants to get his message out — because he’ll have no chance to win — McKay signs on. He hits the streets shaking hands and spreading his philosophy, closely followed by media man Howard Klein (Allen Garfield), who is amassing footage for television advertisements promoting “the better way” with Bill McKay. (McKay’s ads are narrated by Barry Sullivan, who appeared with Redford in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Jarmon’s commercials by Broderick Crawford, who won an Oscar for playing the Huey Long–like Louisiana governor Willie Stark in All the King’s Men in 1949.) It’s clear from the start that McKay is a political newbie while Jarmon is a seasoned pro who knows all the right things to say and do, but McKay’s grass-roots approach soon begins taking hold, and as the race heats up, the challenger is suddenly faced with tough decisions about taking power, compromising his principles, and falling in line with the party machine instead of fighting the good fight as he has done all his life.

Ritchie (Smile, The Bad News Bears) and Redford, who previously collaborated on the director’s first film, Downhill Racer, shoot The Candidate in a cinéma vérité style, blending fiction and reality with cameos by television newsmen Howard K. Smith and Rollin Post, reporter Mike Barnicle, actress Natalie Wood (who starred with Redford in This Property Is Condemned), and such politicians as Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Alan Cranston, and John Tunney, whom McKay is loosely based on (along with Jerry Brown). Ritchie had worked on Tunney’s 1970 Senate campaign, which was run by Candidate associate producer Nelson Rising. In addition, screenwriter Jeremy Larner, who won an Oscar for his script, had been the principal speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid. (And as a bonus, Douglas’s wife, Helen Gahagan, was the first California Democratic woman to be elected to Congress and ran against Richard M. Nixon for Senate in 1950, losing while coining the nickname “Tricky Dick.”) The excellent cast also features Michael Lerner, Quinn Redeker, Morgan Upton, Kenneth Tobey as a union man, and Karen Carlson as McKay’s wife, Nancy. Photographed by Victor J. Kemper (Husbands, Dog Day Afternoon) and with a score by actor-musician John Rubinstein (son of concert pianist Artur Rubinstein), the film gets right to the heart of the faults of the two-party political system and the manipulation of the media, feeling as relevant as ever despite all the major changes in technology, the 24/7 news cycle, and the advent of social media over the ensuing forty-plus years. There have been many McKay-like candidates over the years, from Dan Quayle to John Edwards to even Barack Obama, with varying degrees of success. But especially with the 2016 Republican National Convention under way, The Candidate seems as fresh and alive, as believable and engaging as ever. “He’s got the name, the looks, and the power,” Nancy McKay says in the film, which concludes with one of the great lines in cinema history. The Candidate is screening July 23 in the BAMcinématek series “Four More Years: An Election Special,” which continues through August 3 with such other politically tinged works as Robert Altman’s Nashville, Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’s The War Room, and Mike Nichols’s Primary Colors.