Mikhail Baryshnikov will interpret the poetry of his longtime friend, Joseph Brodsky, in multimedia one-man show (photo by Janis Deinats)
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
March 9-19, $35-$40
646-731-3200
bacnyc.org
Legendary ballet dancer, actor, photographer, and artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov is a fixture at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, which he opened on West Thirty-Seventh St. in 2005. He can often be seen in the audience, watching the institution’s wide range of productions. But Misha, as he is affectionately known, will be assuming a different role March 9-19, taking the stage for the hotly anticipated U.S. premiere of Brodsky / Baryshnikov. Originally presented at the New Riga Theatre in Baryshnikov’s hometown of Riga, Latvia, in October, the show is part of the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation arts program TÊTE-À-TÊTE, which seeks to expand the art and culture available in the capital city. In Brodsky / Baryshnikov, the famed dancer will interpret the poems of Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky through text and movement. Baryshnikov and Brodsky, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, were friends for more than twenty years; the latter died in Brooklyn in 1996 at the age of fifty-five.
The ninety-minute one-man show is directed by Alvis Hermanis, with a fascinating set by Kristīne Jurjāne, lighting by Gleb Filshtinsky, and video by Ineta Sipunova, all of which delves into Brodsky’s mind; Baryshnikov will perform the works in their original Russian, with English surtitles by Jamey Gambrell. “This will be a departure from normal theatrical plays. Instead, it will be something more akin to a spiritual séance,” Hermanis said prior to the show’s debut. “We spend our everyday lives on a horizontal level or dimension. This form of theater offers you the chance to spend [ninety minutes] in an exclusively vertical dimension in which people are confronted with nothing other than the big issues.” Baryshnikov added, “This project is important to us. Alvis is venturing into unknown territory, which he invariably does; otherwise, why bother? We are both greatly looking forward to our encounter with the audience.” Although the run is sold out, there will be a wait list at the box office beginning one hour before each performance.
Cemetery of Splendor is another strange, magical tale from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a film that exists on the edge of sleep and wakefulness, like a dream you’ve just had but can’t quite remember all the details of, yet you know it has soothed your soul. In the jungles of Khon Kaen (Weerasethakul’s hometown) in Thailand, an elementary school has been turned into a makeshift hospital treating soldiers who have a mysterious sleeping ailment. (The story was inspired by an actual quarantine of members of the Royal Thai Army in 2012.) Built on the site of a long-ago palace and its cemetery of kings, the clinic uses light therapy to help the sleeping patients, each of whom has a curved fixture by their bed that emits neon lights that continually change color. Jen (Jenjira Pongpas, who also plays a woman named Jen in Weerasethakul’s Mekong Hotel), who attended the school as a child and walks with a pair of crutches because her legs are two different lengths, visits her old friend Nurse Tet (Petcharat Chaiburi), who runs the clinic with Dr. Prasan (Boonyarak Bodlakorn). “The soldiers just sleep,” Nurse Tet says. “The army doesn’t know what to do with them.” Jen develops a bond with one of the patients, Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), eventually communicating through a psychic medium, Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), who works with the police contacting the spirits of murder victims and helping find missing persons. At times, Itt wakes up, his sense of smell sharpened, able to “tell the temperature of the lights,” only to fall asleep again. Karma, meditation, past lives, and religious statues and spirits entering human bodies become part of the unusual narrative, all while a parcel of land is curiously being dug up with construction equipment nearby.
At the end of the closing credits of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mekong Hotel, a disclaimer reads, “All characters appearing in this work are actual persons. Any resemblance to other real beings, living or dead, is not coincidental.” As with so many of the Palme d’Or-winning director’s films, Mekong Hotel walks the fine line between fact and fiction, fantasy and reality. The slight work, a meditative tone poem that runs fifty-seven minutes, was shot at the Sam Oar Guesthouse and Resort in Nong Khai in northeast Thailand, near the Friendship Bridge that links Thailand and Laos. Weerasethakul (Blissfully Yours, Syndromes and a Century) plays himself in the film, a director auditioning a guitarist (real-life musician and composer Chai Bhatana), whose playing serves as the musical score for the elegiac tale. (Assistant director Chatchai Suban also makes a cameo.) Meanwhile, an otherworldly narrative is taking place, between Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), a banana plantation owner whose dog was just eaten, and Phon (Maiyatan Techaparn), a young woman who lives next door with her mother, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), a Pob ghost who has a hankering for entrails. (The relationship between the mother and daughter was inspired by one of Weerasethakul’s unrealized projects, Ecstasy Garden.) The slow, contemplative mood never changes as the characters discuss love, a coming flood, refugees, spirits, and jet skiing, often in abstract ways. Weerasethakul wrote, directed, produced, edited, and photographed the film, which features beautiful cinematography, the camera never moving as the characters walk in and out of the frame and the lovely views of the Mekong River linger. Unfortunately, the sum of the intriguing parts don’t make for a cohesive whole; Weerasethakul has been justly celebrated for his short films and full-length works, but Mekong Hotel falls somewhere in between, lost in a kind of no-man’s land. Still, there’s much to admire about this film, especially for the auteur’s longtime fans. Mekong Hotel is having its theatrical premiere at the IFC Center from March 4 to 10 in the series “Mysterious Splendors: The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul,” running alongside his latest film, Cemetery of Splendor.
