twi-ny recommended events

TICKET ALERT: THE REDEMPTIVE POWER OF ANCIENT STORIES

Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, and Bryan Doerries team up for special event at the 92nd St. Y

Who: Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Bryan Doerries, Thane Rosenbaum
What: “The Redemptive Power of Ancient Stories”
Where: 92nd St. Y, Buttenwieser Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St., 212-415-5500
When: Saturday, April 16, $32 ($15 for ages thirty-five & under), 7:30
Why: “What do Greek tragedies have to say to us now? What timeless things do they show us about what it means to be human? What were these ancient plays originally designed to do? And can they still work for audiences and readers today?” writer, director, and translator Bryan Doerries asks in the prologue to his book The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today (Knopf, September 2015, $26.95). Doerries is the artistic director of Outside the Wire, a self-described “social impact company” that presents such projects as End of Life, Prometheus in Prison, and Theater of War, which consists of dramatic readings of Sophocles’s Ajax and Philoctetes performed for military and civilian communities in America and Europe, with a particular focus on the psychological and physical impact of war. On April 16, Doerries will be joined by Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated actors Paul Giamatti (Cinderella Man, John Adams) and David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck.; Temple Grandin) at the 92nd St. Y, where they will perform dramatic readings and participate in a discussion moderated by writer and law professor Thane Rosenbaum. The evening will conclude with Doerries signing copies of The Theater of War as well as his brand-new graphic novel, The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan (Pantheon, April 5, 2016, $19.95), which links Homer’s Odyssey to American soldiers returning home from Afghanistan.

STREB: SEA (SINGULAR EXTREME ACTIONS)

STREB SLAM
51 North First St. betweeen Kent & Wythe Aves.
Thursdays & Fridays at 7:30pm
Saturdays & Sundays at 3:00pm
March 31- April 24, $20-$25
866-811-4111
streb.org

“Throughout my career, my goal has always been to create a motion lexicon that all humans recognize,” Elizabeth Streb says on her company website. “I call it POP ACTION and it exists now, not only on stage as a fusion of dance, sports, gymnastics, and the American circus — but also in a place, SLAM, where an exchange of human acts takes place every day, enriching my vocabulary and hopefully expanding the lives of my company’s co-conspirators, the audience.” Streb has seen a rise in popularity in recent years, with the 2010 release of her book, Streb: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero, the popular Kiss the Air at the Park Avenue Armory in 2011, the 2014 documentary Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, and the 2015 doc OXD: One Extraordinary Day. The company’s thirtieth anniversary celebration continues with its latest daring show, SEA, which stands for Singular Extreme Actions. At its Williamsburg headquarters, Streb will present a “pure Action-Explosion,” as the company combines dance and acrobatics at SLAM, the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics. Led by Streb and associate artistic director Fabio Tavares, Action Heroes Leonardo Giron Torres, Cassandre Joseph, Jackie Carlson, Daniel Rysak, Samantha Jakus, Felix Hess, Jamarious Stewart, Justina Grayman, and Loganne Bond will perform on rotating ladders, trampolines, and various specially created objects to dazzle with their amazing skill. In addition, DJ/MC Zaire Baptiste will use an interactive live mix incorporating music contributed by the audience. Performances take place Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 and Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00 from March 31 through April 24; tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Prepare to be blown away by what this fearless company can do.

MONTHLY CLASSICS: STRAY DOG

Takashi Shimura and Toshirō Mifune team up as detectives tracking a stolen gun in Akira Kurosawa’s STRAY DOG

STRAY DOG (野良犬) (NORA INU) (Akira Kurosawa, 1949)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, April 1, $12, 7:00
Series continues first Friday of every month
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling police procedural, Stray Dog, is one of the all-time-great film noirs. When newbie detective Murakami (Toshirō Mifune) gets his Colt lifted on a trolley, he fears he’ll be fired if he does not get it back. But as he searches for the weapon, he discovers that it is being used in a series of robberies and murders — for which he feels responsible. Teamed with seasoned veteran Sato (Takashi Shimura), Murakami risks his career — and his life — as he tries desperately to track down his gun before it is used again. Kurosawa makes audiences sweat, showing postwar Japan in the midst of a brutal heat wave, with Murakami, Sato, dancer Harumi Namiki (Keiko Awaji), and others constantly mopping their brows — the heat is so palpable, you can practically see it dripping off the screen. (You’ll find yourself feeling relieved when Sato hits a button on a desk fan, causing it to turn toward his face.) In his third of sixteen films made with Kurosawa, Mifune plays Murakami with a stalwart vulnerability, working beautifully with Shimura’s cool, calm cop who has seen it all and knows how to handle just about every situation. (Shimura was another Kurosawa favorite, appearing in twenty-one of his films.)

Rookie detective Murakami (Toshirō Mifune) often finds himself in the shadows in STRAY DOG

Mifune is often seen through horizontal or vertical gates, bars, curtains, shadows, window frames, and wire, as if he’s psychologically and physically caged in by his dilemma — and as time goes on, the similarities between him and the murderer grow until they’re almost one and the same person, dealing ever-so-slightly differently with the wake of the destruction wrought on Japan in WWII. Inspired by the novels of Georges Simenon and Jules Dassin’s The Naked City, Stray Dog is a dark, intense drama shot in creepy black and white by Asakazu Nakai and featuring a jazzy soundtrack by Fumio Hayasaka that unfortunately grows melodramatic in a few key moments — and oh, if only that final scene had been left on the cutting-room floor. It also includes an early look at Japanese professional baseball. Kurosawa would soon become the most famous Japanese auteur in the world, going on to make Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, The Lower Depths, and I Live in Fear in the next decade alone. Stray Dog will be screening on April 1 in Japan Society’s “Monthly Classics” series, and it well deserves its place there. The series continues May 6 with Yasujirō Ozu’s I Was Born, But . . . and June 3 with Sion Sono’s Love Exposure.

HOLD ON TO ME DARLING

Nancy (Jenn Lyon) dreams of a better life with Strings McCrane (Timothy Olyphant) in new Kenneth Lonergan play (photo by Doug Hamilton)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 17, $66.50-$96.50
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

Emmy-nominated Deadwood and Justified star Timothy Olyphant makes a welcome return to the New York stage for the first time in twenty years in the world premiere of Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold on to Me Darling, which continues at the Atlantic through April 17. In 1996, Olyphant appeared at the Atlantic in The Santaland Diaries, Joe Mantello’s adaptation of a Christmas-themed essay by David Sedaris. In 2000, Olyphant auditioned for Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me but didn’t get the part; however, this time around Lonergan went right to Olyphant for the role of Strings McCrane, a contemporary version of a massively popular Elvis Presley–like country singer and movie star. An extended investigation into the construction of self in our age of celebrity, the play opens in a hotel room, a way station where McCrane suddenly finds himself at a crossroads when his beloved mother dies. Reevaluating his life and career, he decides that he’s a fraud who never lived up to his mama’s expectations. “I’m thirty-nine years old, and I ain’t never met a woman yet who looks at me twice for myself. All they see is Strings McCrane. But he ain’t there no more, Jimmy. How can they grab hold of a man who isn’t there? How can you touch somethin’ you can’t feel?” he says to his long-suffering, dedicated assistant, Jimmy (Keith Nobbs), who has quite a man crush on his boss. AWOL from the science-fiction movie he’s shooting in Kansas City, Strings is preparing for his mother’s funeral in Tennessee while trying to avoid the press and paparazzi. He quickly falls for married masseuse Nancy (Jenn Lyon), a big fan who can’t wait to get her hands on him, in more ways than one.

hold on to me darling

Strings soon decides that he is going to leave the high life and settle down and raise a family. “I don’t want to be a somethin’ anymore, Nancy. I want to be a person. The person my mama always wanted me to be. And that’s what I’m gonna dedicate my life to doin’, just as soon as I get done with this goddamn space movie,” he tells her. Back in Tennessee, he meets with his somewhat estranged brother, Duke (C. J. Wilson), a hearty and hardy working man with a wife and kids and lots of debt. Duke, who is prone to such phrases as “Jesus Christ in a downtown Memphis hair salon,” doesn’t believe that Strings can make such a drastic change, that he could say goodbye to stardom and instead get a job at Ernie’s feed store. “I’m dead serious, Duke,” Strings says. “I know it sounds crazy. But why not? I’m totally miserable, Duke. My life is a sham. I’m gonna say that again: My life is a sham. And if I don’t find some kind of peace inside myself I’m gonna put a shotgun in my mouth one of these days and paint the back of the tool shed with my brains.” Strings finds yet another reason to come back home when, at the funeral home, he reconnects with Essie (Adelaide Clemens), his second cousin, twice removed, who has blossomed into a beautiful young woman who recently lost her father and husband. Essie is honest and forthright, the salt of the earth, a person who, like Duke, is not afraid to speak the truth with Strings, whose life is otherwise filled with sycophants. “I guess maybe getting’ other people to think for him and make up excuses for him and invent a whole lot of reasons why the ordinary rules of human decency don’t apply to him is all part of who he is,” Essie says to Nancy, “and what we’ve all made him into. With his enthusiastic participation, I might add.”

Brothers Strings McCrane (Timothy Olyphant) and Duke (C. J. Wilson) try to reconnect in HOLD ON TO ME DARLING (photo by Doug Hamilton)

The first act is an outrageous tour de force of brilliant acting, writing, and directing, both funny and poignant, as Lonergan (This Is Our Youth, The Waverly Gallery) and Atlantic artistic director Neil Pepe (Hands on a Hardbody, Speed-the-Plow) delve into the psyche of a seemingly wildly successful man who reaches the conclusion that his entire life has been a waste. Unfortunately, Lonergan has written himself into a corner that he can’t quite get out of in the second act, when Strings goes back to his hometown and tries to make a go of it as just a regular guy. But Hold on to Me Darling, even without its direct-address comma, is a joy to experience, led by a terrific performance by Olyphant, whose southern twang and wide-eyed innocence are utterly engaging. Wilson (The Lady from Dubuque, Happy Now?), one of New York’s best actors, delivers a John Goodman–esque performance as Duke, who isn’t exactly thrilled with how his “normal” life has turned out either. In her off-Broadway debut, Clemens (Rectify, Parade’s End) is sweet and charming as the sweet and charming Essie, a serious young woman whose view of the world is not quite as realistic as she might think. Walt Spangler’s (Between Riverside and Crazy, Tuck Everlasting) revolving set offers a little big of magic as it goes from scene to scene as if shifting between compartments in Strings’s brain. Hold on to Me Darling is no mere tragicomic tale of fame and fortune but instead a complex story of love and loneliness, of family and legacy, exploring the trials and tribulations of a superstar who just wants to be treated like any other human being. And is that so much to ask?

BRING ME THE HEAD OF SAM PECKINPAH: THE WILD BUNCH

Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, William Holden, and Ernest Borgnine play friends to the bloody end in THE WILD BUNCH

THE WILD BUNCH (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, March 31, 8:30, and Friday, April 1, 1:30
Series runs March 31 – April 7
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Sam Peckinpah cemented his reputation for graphic violence and eclectic storytelling with the genre-redefining 1969 Western The Wild Bunch. When a robbery goes seriously wrong, Pike Bishop (William Holden), Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), Freddie Sykes (Edmond O’Brien), Angel (Jaime Sánchez), and brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorth (Ben Johnson) set out to get even, planning an even bigger score by going after a U.S. Army weapons shipment on a railroad protected by detective Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker) and his hired gun, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who is given nothing but “egg-suckin’, chicken-stealing gutter trash” to work with, including the hapless Coffer (Strother Martin) and T.C. (L. Q. Jones). The aging Pike, who sees this as his last score, is worried about being in cahoots with the unpredictable General Mapache (Emilio Fernández), a local warlord battling Pancho Villa’s freedom forces. But at the center of the film is the cat-and-mouse game between Pike and Thornton, the latter determined to capture his former partner, who left him to rot in jail years earlier. It all comes to a head in Agua Verde, which might translate to “Green Water” but will soon be bathed in red blood in one of the most violent shoot-outs ever depicted on celluloid.

the wild bunch

Peckinpah fills the film with plenty of drinking and whoring, and even torture, while exploring friendship and loyalty, embodied by Dutch’s selfless dedication to Pike. The Wild Bunch might be famous for its intense violence, much of it shot in slow motion, but it also has a lot more going for it, from its Oscar-nominated score by Jerry Fielding to its terrific cast and suspenseful twists and turns. (Western fans might get a kick out of knowing that Mapache’s right-hand man, Lt. Herrera, is portrayed by Mexican actor and director Alfonso Arau, who later played El Guapo in John Landis’s comic Western The Three Amigos.) The Wild Bunch is screening March 31 (introduced by Garner Simmons, author of Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage) and April 1 in the fabulously titled Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Bring Me the Head of Sam Peckinpah,” which includes all of the major movies made by the iconoclastic director, who died in 1984 at the age of fifty-nine. Also in the series, which continues through April 7, are The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Cross of Iron, The Deadly Companion, The Getaway, Junior Bonner, The Killer Elite, Convoy, Major Dundee, The Osterman Weekend, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Ride the High Country, and the unforgettable Straw Dogs, works that feature performances by such stars as Steve McQueen, Maureen O’Hara, Dustin Hoffman, Charlton Heston, Ali McGraw, Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Bob Dylan, James Coburn, Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, Kris Kristofferson, Warren Oates, Jason Robards, Susan George, James Caan, and Robert Duvall.

STUPID FUCKING BIRD

The Pearl Theatre tackles Aaron Posner’s “sort-of” adaptation of Chekhov’s THE SEAGULL, STUPID FUCKING BIRD (photo by Russ Rowland)

The Pearl Theatre
555 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 8, $60-$80
212-563-9261
www.pearltheatre.org

If the title of the current production at the Pearl didn’t already prepare you for something unusual at the theater that houses “New York’s only classical resident company,” then perhaps the flimsy wall of doors onstage painted with huge letters spelling out the name as well as a Warholesque-posterized photograph of Anton Chekhov would give you a hint. And if you’re still not sure, you’ll probably catch on once a young man comes out, looks at the audience, and says, “The play will begin when someone says: ‘Start the fucking play.’” As he’s hit with a barrage of shouts of “Start the fucking play” from a suddenly roused crowd, the play does indeed start. And the audience-actor barrages continue to fly for the next two hours, a raucous romp through the world created by Chekhov in his 1896 tragicomic favorite, The Seagull. Aaron Posner, a former actor and longtime Shakespeare director who has written reverent adaptations of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev and Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, is now in the midst of a quartet of irreverent Chekhov adaptations, or, as he warns, “sort of adapted.” Stupid Fucking Bird furiously breaks down the barriers between actor, character, and audience, between truth, reality, and fiction, as it investigates unrequited love, lust, and the value of art. Conrad Arkadina (Christopher Sears), known as Con, is putting on a show featuring his girlfriend, Nina (Marianna McClellan), in the lakefront backyard belonging to his mother, superstar actress Emma Arkadina (Bianca Amato). Emma is joined by her lover, famous writer Doyle Trigorin (Erik Lochtefeld), and her relatively plainspoken brother, Dr. Eugene Sorn (Dan Daily). Also on hand for the “site-specific performance event” are Con’s best friend, the well-meaning, very odd Dev (Joe Paulik), and the dark, brooding Mash (Joey Parsons). Dev loves Mash, Mash loves Con, Con loves Nina, his muse, but Nina is instantly attracted to Trigorin, setting in motion some fab relationship confrontations alternating between sad and pathetic and sexy and funny. The conceit is that not only is this a play-within-a-play, it’s a play-within-a-play by actors who understand that they are performing a play for an audience, as made clear when it all begins. “This is a play. There is simply more than one reality going on at a time,” Posner explains in a “Meta-Theatrics” stage note.

Nina (Marianna McClellan) stars in her boyfriend’s play-within-a-play in STUPID FUCKING BIRD (photo by Russ Rowland)

Con’s supposedly cutting-edge performance piece with Nina is a pretentious piece of claptrap, even if Emma never gives it a fair chance, and Stupid Fucking Bird has every possibility of being a piece of pretentious claptrap as well. But it skillfully avoids such a fate over and over again through its clever dialogue, superb acting, and fearless direction by Davis McCallum (The Whale, Water by the Spoonful), a Shakespeare veteran who has recently helmed such rediscovered old treasures as Fashions for Men and London Wall at the Mint. Sears (London Wall, Third) is an aggressive whirlwind as Con, overcome with an endless supply of energy and rage that he can’t rein in. Paulik (A Feminine Ending, P.S. Jones and the Frozen City) is a hoot as Dev, a simple, soft-spoken young man who tries to find the good in life even though he is poor and unloved. Pearl veteran Parsons (The Rivals, The Misanthrope) is wonderfully gloomy as the dour goth Mash, who dresses in black and occasionally breaks out her ukulele and sings a sad song (“Life is a muddle / Life is a chore / Life is a burden / Life is a bore”). Daily (The Dining Room, Sin: A Cardinal Deposed) is downright amiable as the friendly Sorn, a combination of Sorin and Dorn from Chekhov’s original, while Lochtefeld (Small Mouth Sounds, February House) and McClellan (#liberated, Cherry Smoke) make a fine pair of potential cheating lovers. And Amato (Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia) does a grand star turn as the self-obsessed diva determined to maintain her career success — and her sexuality.

The actors go in and out of character as they explore love and death, art and sex in irreverent Chekhov adaptation (photo by Russ Rowland)

Stupid Fucking Bird is very much about making connections, among the actors, the characters, and the audience; at several points, members of the audience are asked to participate, although at other times the questions posed apparently to them are actually rhetorical. The physical space is broken down too; the first act takes place in front of the wall of doors, a space recognized as the front of the stage, but the second and third acts are set in the kitchen of the lake house as actions occur somewhat more conventionally from a theatrical perspective, although you should still expect the unexpected, particularly when the actors venture into the audience. (The stage design is by Derek Dickinson.) You don’t have to know anything about The Seagull to thoroughly enjoy this passionate, free-wheeling marvel of a production, chock-full of self-referential commentary on itself and the theater in general, with tongue in cheek as well as sticking out at everyone and everything with humor, cynicism, and sarcasm while staying true to the spirit of Chekhov’s original. (Posner’s second Chekov “irreverent variation” is Life Sucks, or the Present Ridiculous, based on Uncle Vanya.) “Life is disappointing,” Mash sings early on. “You try you die so why begin / It’s all a game you’ll never win.” When life includes such deliriously chaotic yet controlled rave-ups like Stupid Fucking Bird, there’s nothing disappointing about it at all.

FIRST SATURDAY: A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

Maya Azucena will perform for free at Brooklyn Museum First Saturday program on April 1

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum celebrates spring with the April edition of its free First Saturday multidisciplinary program. There will be live music by Falu, the Brown Rice Family, and Maya Azucena; a dance performance and workshop by Earl Mosley’s Diversity of Dance; poetry readings by Desiree Bailey and Laura Lamb Brown; screenings of Guy Reid’s Planetary, followed by a talkback, and Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon’s BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, followed by a talkback with Gordon and Imani Uzuri; an art workshop led by Steven and William Ladd for a community mural project in City Point; a dance break hosted by WNYC’s Death, Sex & Money podcast; and pop-up gallery talks. In addition, the galleries are open late so you can check out such exhibitions as “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull),’” “This Place,” and “Agitprop!”