twi-ny recommended events

UNLOCKING THE CAGE

Steven Wise fights to bring personhood to chimpanzees in UNLOCKING THE CAGE

UNLOCKING THE CAGE (Chris Hegedus & D. A. Pennebaker, 2016)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, May 25
212-727-8110
www.unlockingthecagethefilm.com
filmforum.org

Award-winning husband-and-wife documentarians D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus have been collaborating for forty-five years, working on films about such subjects as Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign (The War Room), Carol Burnett (Moon over Broadway), soul music (Only the Strong Survive), pastry chefs (Kings of Pastry), and Elaine Stritch (Elaine Stritch at Liberty). For their latest film, Unlocking the Cage, they spent three years following animal rights lawyer Steven M. Wise, the president and founder of the Nonhuman Rights Project, as he sought to establish “personhood” for several chimpanzees in order to free them from their caged existence and move them to more acceptable animal sanctuaries. Wise and his team, Natalie Prosin and attorneys Elizabeth “Liddy” Stein and Monica Miller, scour the internet searching for chimpanzees to represent as well as sanctuaries where the animals can be released. (The Nonhuman Rights Project focuses on great apes, elephants, and such cetaceans as dolphins and whales because of their autonomy, intelligence, and emotional capacity.) The concept is fascinating, and the film hits its high points when Pennebaker and Hegedus show some of the chimpanzees interacting with humans in compelling ways, watching television or figuring something out on a computer. Unfortunately, far too much of Unlocking the Cage deals with often murky legal discussions and courtroom arguments that drag on and on.

While some people believe the animals must be freed, others think it’s a slippery slope and that the species are already protected by animal welfare laws. Also, although Wise certainly means well, he is so obsessed with finding clients (including Merlin, Kiko, Hercules, Leo, and Tommy) and changing their legal status via the writ of Habeas Corpus that he doesn’t necessarily fully consider the animals’ current situations and relationships with their owners, instead assuming that what he wants for the chimpanzees is the only option, which doesn’t always appear to be the case. Wise, who was inspired by Peter Singer’s 1975 book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, meets with primatologists, visits zoos and sanctuaries, gives talks and lectures, is interviewed by the media, and makes his stand in court, and while he raises some genuinely important questions, the answers are too often bogged down in legalese and repetition. A presentation of Pennebaker Hegedus Films, First Run Features, and HBO Documentary Films, Unlocking the Cage opens at Film Forum on May 25, with Hegedus, Pennebaker, and Wise on hand for Q&As following the 7:00 shows on May 25, 26, and 27 and the 4:40 show on May 28.

EVA HESSE

The too-brief life and career of artist Eva Hesse is explored in heartbreaking documentary

EVA HESSE (Marcie Begleiter, 2016)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, May 25, through Thursday, June 9, 3:15 & 8:35
212-727-8110
www.evahessedoc.com
filmforum.org

“All of my stakes are in my work. I have given up in all else. I do feel I am an artist, and one of the best. I do, deeply,” German artist Eva Hesse explains in Eva Hesse, the debut feature by Marcie Begleiter, which is being brought back by popular demand for two screenings per day from May 25 through June 9 at Film Forum, following runs there and at Cinema Village. Begleiter, who has previously written the play Meditations: Eva Hesse and directed the short film Eva Hesse, Walking the Edge, examines Hesse’s too-brief life and career, as she dealt with feelings of alienation and deep loss through her art. “The power of her purpose was more important than what was going on in her life,” fellow artist and friend Rosie Goldman points out. Born in Germany in 1936, Hesse was determined to be an artist from an early age, first turning to drawing and painting, then to sculpture. The film features narration taken from Hesse’s journals, interviews, and letters between her, her main confidant, Sol LeWitt, and her father, William; Eva is voiced by Selma Blair, LeWitt by Patrick Kennedy, and William by Bob Balaban. Begleiter speaks with such contemporaries of Hesse’s as Richard Serra, Carl Andre, Nancy Holt, Dan Graham, Mike Todd, Roberth Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Hesse’s husband, Tom Doyle, who seems a little too trite given how they eventually parted. She also meets with Whitney curator and Hesse scholar Elisabeth Sussman, photographer Barbara Brown, art writer Lucy Lippard, and Hesse’s sister, Helen Hesse Charash, who sheds light on her sibling’s difficult childhood. But at the center of it all is Hesse’s inspiring art, which challenged the status quo as Expressionism shifted into Minimalism. “I will paint against every rule,” Hesse wrote, and she took that approach with all of her creations, including sculptures made of latex, metal, fiberglass, wire, and other industrial materials. The film firmly sets Hesse within the framework of the tumultuous era in which she worked, the 1960s, a time of great social and artistic change, but she still comes off as a lonely woman who could express herself only through her art. It’s both a sad and exhilarating documentary, a paean to the critical role art can play in life.

FREE SUMMER THEATER 2016

You can catch New York Classical rehearsing MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM in Central Park

It might be hard to top the naked version of The Tempest that was recently staged in Central Park by the Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, but New York Classical Theatre, Smith Street Stage, Hudson Warehouse, the Manhattan Shakespeare Project, Hip to Hip, the Public Theater, River to River, SummerStage, and others will be presenting clothed works in honor of the four hundredth anniversary of the death of the Bard. Don’t miss out on this city tradition or, as Will wrote in Sonnet 65: “O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out / Against the wreckful siege of batt’ring days, / When rocks impregnable are not so stout, / Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?” (Keep watching this space as more shows are announced.)

Daily through May 30
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, open rehearsals, Central Park, 103rd St. & Central Park West, 12 noon – 5:30 pm

Tuesday, May 24
through
Sunday, June 26
Shakespeare in the Park: The Taming of the Shrew, starring JCandy Buckley, Donna Lynne Champlin, Morgan Everitt, Rosa Gilmore, Judy Gold, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Cush Jumbo, Teresa Avia Lim, Janet McTeer, Adrienne C. Moore, Anne L. Nathan, Gayle Rankin, Pearl Rhein, Leenya Rideout, Jackie Sanders, Stacey Sargeant, and Natalie Woolams-Torres, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, Delacorte Theater, Central Park, 8:00

Tuesday, May 31
through
Sunday, June 5
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Central Park, 103rd St. & Central Park West, 7:00

Thursday, June 2
through
Sunday, June 5
Hudson Warehouse: Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Tuesday, June 7
through
Sunday, June 12
Manhattan Shakespeare Project: Al’ukhraa: A Study in Othello, directed by Sarah Eismann, Astoria Park, 6:00

Wednesday, June 8
through
Saturday, June 11
Inwood Shakespeare Festival: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Moose Hall Theatre Company, directed by Ted Minos, Inwood Hill Park Peninsula, 7:30

Wednesday, June 8
through
Sunday, June 12
Shakespeare in Carroll Park: The Tempest, Smith Street Stage, directed by Beth Ann Hopkins, bring your own seating, Carroll Park, 7:30

Thursday, June 9
through
Sunday, June 12
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Central Park, 103rd St. & Central Park West, 7:00

Thursday, June 9
through
Sunday, June 12
Hudson Warehouse: Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Wednesday, June 15
through
Saturday, June 18
Inwood Shakespeare Festival: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Moose Hall Theatre Company, directed by Ted Minos, Inwood Hill Park Peninsula, 7:30

Wednesday, June 15
through
Sunday, June 19
Shakespeare in Carroll Park: The Tempest, Smith Street Stage, directed by Beth Ann Hopkins, bring your own seating, Carroll Park, 7:30

Kaneza Schaal will GO FORTH on Governors Island in June (photo by Maria Baranova)

Thursday, June 16
through
Sunday, June 19
River to River Festival: Go Forth, by Kaneza Schaal, Arts Center, Governors Island, Building 110, advance RSVP required, 2:30 or 4:30

Thursday, June 16
through
Sunday, June 19
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Central Park, 103rd St. & Central Park West, 7:00

Thursday, June 16
through
Sunday, June 19
Hudson Warehouse: Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Wednesday, June 22
through
Saturday, June 25
Inwood Shakespeare Festival: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Moose Hall Theatre Company, directed by Ted Minos, Inwood Hill Park Peninsula, 7:30

Wednesday, June 22
through
Sunday, June 26
Shakespeare in Carroll Park: The Tempest, Smith Street Stage, directed by Beth Ann Hopkins, bring your own seating, Carroll Park, 7:30

Thursday, June 23
through
Friday, June 24
Manhattan Shakespeare Project: Al’ukhraa: A Study in Othello, directed by Sarah Eismann, Summit Rock, Central Park, 6:00

Thursday, June 23
through
Sunday, June 26
Hudson Warehouse: Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Thursday, June 23
through
Sunday, June 26
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Central Park, 103rd St. & Central Park West, 7:00

Saturday, June 25
River to River Festival: Open Studios with Kaneza Schaal, Arts Center, Governors Island, Building 110, advance RSVP required, 2:30

Saturday, June 25
and
Sunday, June 26
Manhattan Shakespeare Project: Al’ukhraa: A Study in Othello, directed by Sarah Eismann, Morningside Park, 6:00

Wednesday, June 29
through
Saturday, July 2
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Nelson A. Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City, 7:00

Wednesday, June 29
through
Sunday, July 17
New York Classical Theatre: The Winter’s Tale, open rehearsals, meet at Castle Clinton, Battery Park, 12 noon – 5:30 pm

Thursday, June 30
through
Sunday, July 3
Hudson Warehouse: Lysistrata: “Let’s Make America Great Again,” by Aristophanes, adapted and directed by Susane Lee, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

a study in othello

Wednesday, July 6
through
Sunday, July 10
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Prospect Park, 7:00

Thursday, July 7
Broadway in Bryant Park (Wicked, Stomp, The Color Purple, Matilda), Bryant Park lawn, 12:30

Thursday, July 7
through
Sunday, July 10
Manhattan Shakespeare Project: Al’ukhraa: A Study in Othello, directed by Sarah Eismann, Summit Rock, Central Park, 6:00

Thursday, July 7
through
Sunday, July 10
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Drilling Company, directed by Cathy Curtiss, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, 114 Norfolk St., 8:00

Thursday, July 7
through
Sunday, July 10
Hudson Warehouse: Lysistrata: “Let’s Make America Great Again,” by Aristophanes, adapted and directed by Susane Lee, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Friday, July 8
through
Sunday, July 31 (excluding Mondays)
SummerStage: The Classical Theatre of Harlem presents Macbeth, directed by Carl Cofield and starring Ty Jones, Marcus Garvey Park, 8:00 (Fridays 8:30)

Tuesday, July 12
Thursday, July 14
through
Sunday, July 17
New York Classical Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Carl Schurz Park, 7:00

Thursday, July 14
Broadway in Bryant Park (Chicago, The Fantastiks, Motown, Finding Neverland), Bryant Park lawn, 12:30

Thursday, July 14
through
Sunday, July 17
Manhattan Shakespeare Project: Al’ukhraa: A Study in Othello, directed by Sarah Eismann, Morningside Park, 6:00

Thursday, July 14
through
Sunday, July 17
Hudson Warehouse: Lysistrata: “Let’s Make America Great Again,” by Aristophanes, adapted and directed by Susane Lee, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Thursday, July 14
through
Sunday, July 17
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Drilling Company, directed by Cathy Curtiss, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, 114 Norfolk St., 8:00

Smith Street Stage will present THE TEMPEST in Carroll Park (photo by Chris Montgomery)

Monday, July 18
through
Sunday, August 7 (excluding Thursdays)
New York Classical Theatre: The Winter’s Tale, meet at Castle Clinton, Battery Park, 7:00

Tuesday, July 19
through
Sunday, August 14
Shakespeare in the Park: Troilus and Cressida, directed by Daniel Sullivan, Delacorte Theater, Central Park, 8:00

Thursday, July 21
Broadway in Bryant Park (Fiddler on the Roof, Les Miserables, Fuerza Bruta, The Marvelous Wonderettes, Paramour), Bryant Park lawn, 12:30

Thursday, July 21
through
Sunday, July 24
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Drilling Company, directed by Cathy Curtiss, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, 114 Norfolk St., 8:00

Thursday, July 21
through
Sunday, July 24
Hudson Warehouse: Lysistrata: “Let’s Make America Great Again,” by Aristophanes, adapted and directed by Susane Lee, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Wednesday, July 27
through
Sunday, August 28
Hip to Hip Theatre Company: As You Like It and Julius Caesar, performed in repertory in parks across the city, including Agawam Park, Crocheron Park, Cunningham Park, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Fort Greene Park, Gantry Plaza State Park, Harlem Meer, Socrates Sculpture Park, Sunnyside Gardens Park, and Van Cortlandt Park, preceded by Kids & the Classics, Wednesday – Sunday at different times

Thursday, July 28
Broadway in Bryant Park (Waitress, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, Kinky Boots, Fun Home, Himself & Nora), Bryant Park lawn, 12:30

Thursday, July 28
through
Sunday, July 31
Hudson Warehouse: Othello, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Thursday, July 28
through
Sunday, July 31
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: The Merchant of Venice, the Drilling Company, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, 114 Norfolk St., 8:00

Thursday, August 4
Broadway in Bryant Park (Beautiful, An American in Paris, Avenue Q, Holiday Inn), Bryant Park lawn, 12:30

Thursday, August 4
through
Sunday, August 7
Hudson Warehouse: Othello, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Thursday, August 4
through
Sunday, August 7
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: The Merchant of Venice, the Drilling Company, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, 114 Norfolk St., 8:00

Monday, August 8
through
Sunday, August 14 (excluding Thursdays)
New York Classical Theatre: The Winter’s Tale, meet at Bargemusic on Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 7:00

Thursday, August 11
Broadway in Bryant Park (Phantom of the Opera, Something Rotten!, Cagney, Ruthless!), Bryant Park lawn, 12:30

Thursday, August 11
through
Sunday, August 14
Hudson Warehouse: Othello, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Thursday, August 11
through
Sunday, August 14
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: The Merchant of Venice, the Drilling Company, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, 114 Norfolk St., 8:00

Thursday, August 18
through
Sunday, August 21
Hudson Warehouse: Othello, directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Riverside Park, 6:30

Wednesday, August 31
SummerStage: Chicago the Musical: 20th Anniversary Concert, Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, 8:0

SIGNATURE PLAYS

A muscleman (Ryan-James Hatanaka) shows off his wares to Grandma (Phyllis Somerville) in Edward Albee’s THE SANDBOX (photo by Monique Carboni)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 19, $25-$65
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

As part of its twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, the Signature Theatre has put together an evening of compellingly strange one-acts that were previously presented by the company as part of their authors’ Playwright-in-Residence seasons all of which involve unique looks at death. In Edward Albee’s 1959 The Sandbox, first mounted at the Signature in 1994 directed by Albee himself, a WASPy couple who refer to each other as Mommy (Alison Fraser) and Daddy (Frank Wood) relax on lounge chairs after having an impressively toned muscleman in a bathing suit (Ryan-James Hatanaka) deposit Grandma (Phyllis Somerville) in a child’s sandbox on a nearly blindingly yellow set (by Mimi Lien). While Melody Giron plays the cello, the man continues his calisthenics, slowly flapping his arms while standing firmly on the ground, Mommy and Daddy find that they have little to talk about it, and Grandma marvels at the young man’s body while expressing her dismay at her situation. “Honestly! What a way to treat an old woman! Drag her out of the house . . . stick her in a car . . . bring her out here from the city . . . dump her in a pile of sand . . . and leave her here to set. I’m eighty-six years old!” she tells the audience. All of the characters are aware that they are in a play, making comments about the music, the lighting, and the script, but only Grandma, who embodies the entire life cycle, from baby to sexual being to mother to old woman on her last legs, speaks like a real person; the others are more like clichéd stock characters reciting their lines with the sparest of genuine emotion. Director Lila Neugebauer keeps it all bright and cheery as the end nears, in more ways than one.

Roe (Sahr Ngaujah) teaches Pea (Mikéah Ernest Jennings) about life in María Irene Fornés’s DROWNING (photo by Monique Carboni)

María Irene Fornés’s 1986 Drowning, initially presented at the Signature in 1999, when John Simon declared in New York magazine that it was “the worst play I have seen all year,” was originally part of Orchards, in which seven contemporary playwrights (among them Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, and John Guare) wrote a one-act play inspired by a short story by Anton Chekhov. Cuban-American playwright Fornés chose “Drowning,” although her avant-garde approach was more than a little unusual. In a cafeteria, Pea (Mikéah Ernest Jennings) and Roe (Sahr Ngaujah), a pair of giant potato-like creatures (Kaye Voyce’s elaborate costumes are a certifiable riot), talk ever-so-slowly, almost like a Butoh dance, as the latter teaches the former about newspapers, snow, and flesh. Fornés evokes Beckett as Roe and Pea wait for Stephen (Wood), who actually does show up, and the immature, childlike Pea learns about love and pain. “He is very kind and he could not do harm to anyone,” Stephen says about Roe, who responds, “Yes. And I don’t want any harm to come to him either because he’s good.” Drowning is a bizarre yet captivating journey into what makes us human.

Adrienne Kennedy’s FUNNYHOUSE OF A NEGRO takes place inside of the mind of young woman facing a harsh reality (photo by Monique Carboni)

The Legacy Program evening concludes with Adrienne Kennedy’s Obie-winning 1964 Funnyhouse of a Negro, which was staged at the Signature in 1995. A complex exploration of slavery, racism, colonialism, and heritage, the entire story takes place inside the mind of Negro-Sarah (Crystal Dickinson) as she encounters Queen Victoria Regina (April Matthis), the Duchess of Hapsburg (January LaVoy), Patrice Lumumba (Ngaujah), and Jesus (Jennings) in addition to her roommate, Raymond (Nicholas Bruder), her landlady (Fraser), and the Mother (Pia Glenn). “My mother was the light. She was the lightest one. She looked like a white woman,” Victoria says. “Black man, black man, I never should have let a black man put his hands on me. The wild black beast raped me and now my skull is shining,” the Mother states. Negro (Sarah) adds, “As for myself I long to become even a more pallid Negro than I am now; pallid like Negroes on the covers of American Negro magazines; soulless, educated, and irreligious. I want to possess no moral value, particularly value as to my being. I want not to be. I ask nothing except anonymity.” And Sarah explains, “The rooms are my rooms; a Hapsburg chamber, a chamber in a Victorian castle, the hotel where I killed my father, the jungle. These are the places myselves exist in. I know no places. That is, I cannot believe in places. To believe in places is to know hope and to know the emotion of hope is to know beauty. It links us across a horizon and connects us to the world. I find there are no places only my funnyhouse.” Each scene takes place in a different, exquisitely designed set by Lien amid darkness and Voyce’s extravagant costumes. Like The Sandbox and Drowning, Funnyhouse of a Negro is a highly stylized, absurdist drama about death, and the death of the American dream, only this time with more overt targets and explicit, at times shocking action. It’s unfortunately still relevant a half century after its debut during the civil rights movement. It’s also a fitting finale to this Signature hat trick that looks back while also peering into the future.

CALLY SPOONER: A LECTURE ON FALSE TEARS AND OUTSOURCING

Cally Spooner will deliver a performance lecture on her site-specific installation at the New Museum on May 25 (photo courtesy the New Museum)

Who: Cally Spooner
What: Performance lecture
Where: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery at Prince St., 212-219-1222
When: Wednesday, May 25, $15, 7:00
Why: In her New Museum Lobby Gallery installation “On False Tears and Outsourcing,” her first solo institutional presentation in the United States, British multidisciplinary artist Cally Spooner explores issues of communication, power, and the human body, inspired by the scene in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in which Emma receives a farewell letter from Rodolphe signed with a fake tear. The site-specific piece is choreographed with and performed by Holly Curran, Maja Ho, Emily McDaniel, Ashton Muniz, José Rivera Jr., Maggie Segale, and Jennifer Tchiakpe in different configurations. Spooner, who has previously staged “He’s in a Great Place! (A film trailer for And You Were Wonderful, On Stage)” at the Tate Modern, “And You Were Wonderful, On Stage” at the National Academy, and “It’s About You” on the High Line, will be at the New Museum on May 25 to deliver a performance lecture in conjunction with the installation.

ON BROADWAY: FROM RENT TO REVOLUTION

on broadway

Rizzoli Bookstore
1133 Broadway at 26th St.
Monday, May 23, RSVP only, 6:30
212-759-2424
rizzolibookstore.com
www.broadwaycares.org

Before word of mouth, before the reviews, before the public sees the cast and sets and hears the dialogue and music, a Broadway show attempts to define itself — and sell tickets — by establishing a look, a unique brand, via posters, billboards, and advertisements. For the last twenty years, SpotCo, originally known as Spot Design, has been at the forefront of this business, working on campaigns for more than three hundred clients, including eight Pulitzer Prize winners and the last eight winners of the Tony for Best Musical. The company’s history is celebrated in the new coffee-table book On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution (Rizzoli, April 2016, $45), which explores SpotCo’s branding of such shows as Rent, Chicago, The Vagina Monologues, Doubt, Avenue Q, Hair, Once, Kinky Boots, Fun Home, and Hamilton. “What separates SpotCo’s oeuvre from what has come before and makes it so astounding is that as a whole it has no recognizable visual style, in a business that was long thought to rely on exactly that, no matter how hackneyed and clichéd,” author and graphic designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd writes in his foreword. “The only thing that unites them all is an unwavering sense of intelligence and the apparent belief that their audience is comprised of people who can think, intuit, and take a chance on something they haven’t quite experienced before.” The book also features text by SpotCo founder Drew Hodges and producers, composers, illustrators, playwrights, artistic directors, photographers, and actors (Harvey Fierstein, Cherry Jones, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Patrick Stewart, Sting) detailing the various campaigns, in addition to an introduction by former company maid David Sedaris. On May 23, the Rizzoli Bookstore will host the annual Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS charity event while also celebrating On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution; the evening will include a red carpet entrance for numerous stars of the Great White Way, an auction of original art, and more.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

The Tyrone family battles its inner and outer demons in Roundabout revival of Eugene O’Neill masterpiece (photo by Joan Marcus)

American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 26, $67-$147
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

As the audience enters the American Airlines Theatre to see the Roundabout revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Long Day’s Journey into Night, a white curtain billows ominously from the right side of the set, blown by the wind from an offstage shore. It’s as if we’re being warned that what we’re about to see is a kind of ghost story, and that’s precisely what we witness over the next three hours and forty-five minutes, an intense tale told as if the dysfunctional Tyrone family must relive their personal horrors over and over again, continually hiding from the truths that overwhelm them. Sixty-five-year-old patriarch James Tyrone (Gabriel Byrne) is a miserly, well-known actor who is fond of the bottle and the small tract of land that he owns. He is still in love with his wife, the fifty-four-year-old Mary (Jessica Lange), a morphine addict who has been in and out of sanatoriums and is struggling to deal with reality. Their older son, thirty-three-year-old Jamie (Michael Shannon), is a brash, ne’er-do-well philanderer and would-be actor always at odds with his father. And the younger son, twenty-three-year-old Edmund (John Gallagher Jr.), is a more sensitive soul who is suffering from an illness that might be consumption. It’s August 1912, and the Tyrones are at their summer home on the beach. “I can’t tell you the deep happiness it gives me, darling, to see you as you’ve been since you came back to us, your dear old self again,” James tells Mary, who has recently returned from her latest rehab stint. James and Jamie are trying to keep the severity of Edmund’s illness from Mary, fearful that the truth will send her back to her drug of choice. “It’s a relief to hear Edmund laugh. He’s been so down in the mouth lately,” she says early on, which James ignores resentfully. Soon James and Jamie are having one of their regular arguments, which upsets Edmund and Mary. “What’s all the fuss about? Let’s forget it,” Jamie says. “Yes, forget! Forget everything and face nothing!” James shouts back, summarizing the general Tyrone philosophy. Meanwhile, Mary compares James’s snoring to the foghorn that keeps her awake at night, as if the harsh sound is a wake-up call, warning of dire things to come that all ignore. As they await the verdict from Doc Hardy regarding Edmund’s illness, the ghosts continue to hover over this doomed family, unable to save themselves from their sad destiny.

James Tyrone (Gabriel Byrne) and wife Mary (Jessica Lange) hold on to each other for dear life in LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (photo by Joan Marcus)

Completed in 1942 but not published and performed until 1956, three years after O’Neill’s death at sixty-five, Long Day’s Journey into Night is a semiautobiographical look at the playwright’s own family over the course of one very long day, from 8:30 in the morning to midnight. It takes a while to get used to accepting the cast as the Tyrone family; while Byrne is around the right age for James, Mary is supposed to be eleven years younger but Lange is actually a year older than Byrne, and Shannon and Gallagher at first seem completely miscast, but they both eventually settle into their roles. Director Jonathan Kent (Hamlet, Man of La Mancha) makes the most of Tom Pye’s (The Testament of Mary, Fiddler on the Roof) inviting yet haunting set, Natasha Katz’s (An American in Paris, Aida) appropriately moody lighting, and Clive Goodwin’s (The Glass Menagerie, Once) menacing sound design, keeping the audience on edge as the intense drama unfolds. Byrne (A Moon for the Misbegotten, A Touch of the Poet) and Lange (A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie) ultimately form a stirring James and Mary, their love complicated by suspicion and doubt, in parts previously played by such pairs as Robert Ryan and Geraldine Fitzgerald, Laurence Olivier and Constance Cummings, Jason Robards and Zoe Caldwell, Robards and Colleen Dewhurst, Jack Lemmon and Bethel Leslie, Brian Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave, and, in 2000, Charles Dance and Lange. The cast also includes Colby Minifie (The Pillowman, Punk Rock) as Cathleen, the Tyrones’ young maid who speaks her mind when she has the chance. “A drop now and then is no harm when you’re in low spirits, or have a bad cold,” she says to Edmund as the two steal a drink from one of James’s closely watched bottles. Of course, drinking can actually do a lot of harm, as the Tyrones, and O’Neill himself, are well aware. This Roundabout revival is a powerful production of one of America’s signature plays, once again justifying its position in the pantheon alongside such other towering achievements as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?