twi-ny recommended events

DAYBREAKER NYC

Yoga ravers party it up early in the morning at Daybreaker event (photo by twi-ny/ees)

Space Ibiza NY
637 West 50th St. between Eleventh Ave. & the West Side Highway
Wednesday, February 3, $26.75 (dance party only) – $42.20 (yoga and dance), 6:00 – 9:00 am
www.eventbrite.com
www.spaceibizany.com

Getting home at 6am isn’t unusual in New York City. Getting up to go clubbing at that hour certainly is, but thanks to Daybreaker’s 6am to 9am raves, New Yorkers can do just that. Twice a month, a couple hundred to a thousand partygoers show up at a rotating series of clubs around New York for an hour of funky club-style yoga followed by a two-hour psychedelically lit, high-energy, super-positive dance party with DJs such as Claire Salvo, brass bands, drumlines, and changing themes. Then they head off to work. Founders Matthew Brimer and Radha Agrawal wanted an alternative to the often dark, exclusive nightlife vibe and founded Daybreaker in New York a year ago. The wildly popular parties exploded and have spread to Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and, this year, London and Paris, but at its heart, Daybreaker grew out of the city that never sleeps. The parties are sober, and each has a different suggested theme, but the vibe is pretty accepting of whatever you wear, since most of the twentysomething attendees are powering off to work at 9. The January 13 rave at Irving Plaza was all about wearing grown-up onesies; the next, on February 3 at West Side’s legendary Space Ibiza, calls for bright colors. Tickets come with lots of treats from partners, including Califia Cold Brew Coffee, green juice, coconut water, energy drinks, and more. Stoking the energy at that hour is key, and MC Elliott LaRue will orchestrate the music, with appearances by the Hudson Horns, the Club Casa Chamber Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Express Drumline popping up in the crowd at various intervals to keep the spirit high. Early bird dance tickets are sold out already, but tickets for the 6-7am yoga segment plus the party, as well as 7-9am party-only tickets, are still available. If you want to jump-start your day with possibly the best jolt of energy in the city, rave on with Daybreaker.

TONIGHT/JUNGLE: TWO PLAYS BY PHILIP RIDLEY

Donny Stixx (Harry Farmer) gets ready for a magical night in New York premiere of Philip Ridley play (photo by Hunter Canning)

TONIGHT WITH DONNY STIXX / DARK VANILLA JUNGLE
HERE SubletSeries
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
Through February 7, $25 each show, $40 for both
212-352-3101
www.here.org

Near the beginning of Tonight with Donny Stixx, one of two companion Philip Ridley one-person plays running in repertory at Here through February 7, Stixx (Harry Farmer) says to the audience, “I am here to entertain you. Expect to be surprised. Expect to be amazed. But most of all . . . expect the unexpected.” Tonight with Donny Stixx and Dark Vanilla Jungle, a pair of powerful, confrontational, poignant monologues, offer all that and more as they get right in your face and put you on edge. In Tonight with Donny Stixx, which premiered last August at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Farmer stars as the title character, a fifteen-year-old boy with dreams of becoming a famous magician. In Dark Vanilla Jungle, which premiered in August 2013 at the fringe, Robyn Kerr stars as Andrea, a fifteen-year-old girl with dreams of love and romance. Shifting between the past and the present, going from a hopeful, positive future to sudden, curse-filled outbursts, Donny and Andrea prance around Steven C. Kemp’s claustrophobic stage design, a cagelike set with one metallic chair, resembling either a jail cell or a police interrogation room. Neither actor ever ventures outside the fourteen-by-fourteen-square tiled floor, as if there are imaginary bars on the three sides where the audience sits; at the back is a grid of twenty-eight large, exposed lightbulbs, which designer Dante Olivia Smith uses to flash such shapes as a cross and shine sharply into the audience’s eyes. Donny and Andrea often address audience members directly, pointing at them and asking for their opinion or a reminder of what they were talking about, but while a nod or a shake of the head is okay, it’s best not to answer them verbally. “Where was all this heading?” Andrea asks. “Don’t tell me!”

Andrea (Robyn Kerr) shares her mesmerizing tale in Philip Ridley’s DARK VANILLA JUNGLE (photo by Hunter Canning)

The similarities between the two New York premieres, being presented for the first time ever together — Donny Stixx is directed by Frances Loy for the Ferment Theatre, while Jungle is directed by Paul Takacs for the Shop — extend to both style and narrative substance. Both mentally troubled, disillusioned youths were raised in dysfunctional working-class families in the East End of London, where they go to the same mall, and each has apparently committed a terrible and shocking, ripped-from-the-headlines crime. Retreating ever deeper into their fantasy worlds, they both also have tentative relationships with the truth. “EVERYONE LIES! EVERYONE LIES! EVERYONE LIES!” Donny angrily repeats, while Andrea offers a more gentle, “But men lie, don’t they?” The two performances are absolutely electrifying; the twenty-three-year-old London-born, Los Angeles-based Farmer and the thirty-six-year-old Jamaican-born, Long Island City-based Kerr grab you from the start and never let go for eighty unnerving, exhilarating, unrelenting minutes. As is true with many of Ridley’s plays, the audience is essentially part of the show, trapped in the theater, with no easy route out while the play is going on — and yes, people have been known to want to head for the exits early because of the controversial playwright’s often violent subject matter. In the New Group’s 2015 revival of Mercury Fur at the Signature, there was no intermission despite the two-hour length, so in order to leave before the end of the show, which included the torture of a child, you had to basically walk across the set, right past the actors; the same was true of Takacs’s 2012 production of Tender Napalm at 59E59, which took place in a small, narrow space between two horizontal rows of people in a tiny theater. But Ridley, who is also a film director, screenwriter, poet, lyricist, and children’s book author, writes with such skill and intelligence, and the acting and direction is so impeccable, that you shouldn’t even entertain the possibility of leaving before the end of either of these incendiary works; in any case, you might be too scared to get up out of your seat anyway.

ARTS BROOKFIELD: STEPHEN PETRONIO COMPANY

Stephen Petronio will present “Locomotor / Non Locomotor” and Merce Cunningham’s “RainForest” at Brookfield Place on February 3

Who: Stephen Petronio Company
What: Free dance performances presented by Arts Brookfield
Where: Brookfield Place Winter Garden, 230 Vesey St.
When: Wednesday, February 3, free, 12:30 & 7:30
Why: On October 30, Stephen Petronio Company performed Luminous Mischief outdoors in Madison Square Park, interacting with the public under and around Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana” installation. On February 3, New Jersey–born, Manhattan-based dancer and choreographer Stephen Petronio will lead his company into the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place for two special performances that serve as a kind of appetizer for its upcoming March season at the Joyce. At 12:30, the company will present the 2015 piece Locomotor / Non Locomotor, featuring choreography by Petronio, an original score by Clams Casino, vocal elements by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, costumes by Narciso Rodriguez, and lighting by Ken Tabachnick. At 7:30, SPC will perform Merce Cunningham’s 1968 work RainForest, set to live electronic music by David Tudor, with costumes by Andy Warhol and lighting by Aaron Copp, part of Petronio’s five-year “Bloodlines” series, paying homage to his postmodern dance influences. The company consists of Davalois Fearon, Kyle Filley, Gino Grenek, Cori Kresge, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Nicholas Sciscione, Emily Stone, and Joshua Tuason. “What a wonderful opportunity to perform some of our favorite works in a setting that finds an audience we rarely reach in Manhattan,” Petronio explained in a statement. “We’re happy to offer audiences the chance to see the company perform Locomotor / Non Locomotor and RainForest in an unusual space, before we launch our second season of ‘Bloodlines’ at the Joyce Theater on March 8.” The Joyce run includes Trisha Brown’s 1979 Glacial Decoy and Petronio’s 1990 MiddleSexGorge and the world premiere of Big Daddy Deluxe.

NOISES OFF

Riotous Roundabout revival of NOISES OFF goes behind the scenes of theater madness (photo by Joan Marcus)

American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 6, $67-$152
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

There’s a reason why so many critics consider Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce, Noises Off, one of the funniest plays ever written; it is a nonstop hilarious riff on the presentation of theater itself, and in its latest incarnation, a Roundabout revival at the American Airlines Theatre, it is performed with pinpoint precision timing that will have you gasping in admiration even as you nearly fall out of your chair laughing. The three-act romp begins as a small company is in its final tech rehearsal for the world premiere of Robin Housemonger’s sex comedy Nothing On before opening night at the Grand Theatre in Weston-super-Mare. (A fake program for the imaginary Nothing On is slipped inside the Noises Off Playbill to heighten the reality of the fictional play-within-a-play; Housemonger is credited with such previous works as Briefs Encounter and Socks Before Marriage.) Director Lloyd Dallas (Campbell Scott) has a lot on his plate: The actors can’t remember their lines, and his star, the aging doyenne Dotty Otley (Andrea Martin), is confused about where the sardines are. The fictional Nothing On itself is a wicked sendup of British country-house drama: Dotty is Mrs Clackett, elderly housekeeper for the Brent family’s country home, where dapper house agent Roger (David Furr as Garry Lejeune) is attempting a tryst on the sly with ditzy blonde bombshell Vicky (Megan Hilty as Brooke Ashton) while the owners, milquetoast nosebleeder Philip Brent (Jeremy Shamos as Frederick Fellowes) and his wife, the practical Flavia (Kate Jennings Grant as Belinda Blair), arrive for their own secret rendezvous (secret from Inland Revenue, that is; they are avoiding the scourge of the British upper class: income tax). Then a burglar (Daniel Davis as alcoholic has-been Selsdon Mowbray) arrives to add to the confusion. Doors are slammed, entrances are missed, doors are slammed, lines are botched, props are misused, and yet more doors are slammed. As evening turns into morning, the cast and crew — which also includes tense and nervous assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Tracee Chimo) and stage manager Tim Allgood (Rob McClure), who has a highly inappropriate last name — struggle to put it all together, for of course, the show must go on.

Megan Hilty nearly steals the show as pouty vixen Brooke Ashton at the American Airlines Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

The first act is set up as if the audience is watching the rehearsal of Nothing On; for the second act, the living room is flipped around so the audience sees it from the other side, revealing the backstage shenanigans one month later at the Theatre Royal in Ashton-under-Lyne. (The wonderful sets are by Emmy and Tony winner Derek McLane.) Frayn (Copenhagen, Benefactors) and director Jeremy Herrin (Wolf Hall Parts 1 & 2) now reveal the behind-the-scenes madness that goes on during the first act. The audience has already learned all of the cues, the entrances and exits, but witnessing it from this vantage point is utterly fascinating. The cast and crew’s secret liaisons slowly emerge, and the melodramatics escalate as they enter or leave the play-within-a-play, resulting in some riotous physical comedy while also getting a little too bogged down and repetitive. But all of that is necessary to make the third act one of the smartest and funniest you’ll ever have the pleasure to experience. The show is now concluding its tour at the Municipal Theatre in Stockton-on-Tees, where the company is once again performing the first act. Only this time, all of the actor’s quirks and failures, inside jokes and relationship problems from the first two acts collide in a delirious extravaganza of fun and nonsense worthy of John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers. Martin (Pippin, My Favorite Year), Davis (Wrong Mountain, Talking Heads), Furr (The Importance of Being Earnest, Accent on Youth), Jennings Grant (The Lyons, Proof), Hilty (Wicked, 9 to 5: The Musical), and Shamos (Clybourne Park, The Assembled Parties) do an exceptional job switching between their dual roles, with Martin in particular excelling and Hilty (who will not be performing February 12-14) nearly stealing the show with her squeaky voice and absurdly mannered body positions. (Noises Off debuted on Broadway in 1983 with Dorothy Loudon, Victor Garber, Brian Murray, Deborah Rush, Douglas Seale, and Amy Wright and was revived in 2001 with Patti LuPone, Peter Gallagher, Faith Prince, T. R. Knight, and Katie Finneran. The 1992 Peter Bogdanovich film starred Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, John Ritter, Nicollette Sheridan, Denholm Elliott, Julie Hagerty, Mark Linn-Baker, and Marilu Henner.) Herrin does a marvelous job of maintaining the frenetic pace while allowing the characters to develop their unique personalities; he has a ball playing with the audience’s expectations, keeping everyone on the edge of their seat, both gaping in wonder and trying not to fall over in laughter. And through it all are those doors.

In “A Glimpse of the Noumenal,” a fake condensed essay from Eros Untrousered — Studies in the Semantics of Bedroom Farce that appears in the Nothing On program, JG Stillwater writes, “A recurring and highly significant feature of the genre is a multiplicity of doors. If we regard the world on this side of the doors as the physical one in which mortal men are condemned to live, the world or worlds concealed behind them may be thought of as representing both the higher and more spiritual plane into which the postulants hope to escape, and the underworld from which at any moment demons may leap out to tempt or punish. When the doors do open, it is often with great suddenness and unexpectedness, highly suggestive of those epiphanic moments of insight and enlightenment which give access to the ‘other,’ and offer us a fleeting glimpse of the noumenal.” This second Broadway revival of Noises Off — the title refers to offstage sounds — is chock full of epiphanic moments that are as noumenal as they are phenomenal, in more than just the Kantian meaning. It gives the audience an inside look at the potential catastrophes that await live theater, yet performed to near perfection in a joyful tribute to the glory of the stage.

RABIN, THE LAST DAY

Amos Gitai digs deep behind the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in gripping docudrama

RABIN, THE LAST DAY (Amos Gitai, 2015)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema
1886 Broadway at 63rd St.
January 29 – February 4
212-757-2280
www.lincolnplazacinema.com
www.kinolorber.com

On November 4, 1995, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated at the conclusion of a major peace rally in Tel Aviv. Israeli auteur Amos Gitai explores what led to, and followed, the tragedy in the tense and gripping Rabin, the Last Day. Gitai and cowriter Marie-José Sanselme combine archival footage of news reports, press conferences, political rallies, and public speeches with extensively researched re-created scenes of the killer, Yigal Amir (Yogev Yefet), loading his gun and, afterward, being interrogated, showing no remorse; of the Shamgar Commission, which conducted hearings to find out what went wrong with security and whether there was some kind of conspiracy; and of a small group of Israelis establishing a tiny settlement in Gaza. The film plays out like a procedural thriller with flashbacks as a radical right-wing rabbi tells his congregation that Rabin, who had signed the Oslo Accords and was negotiating with Yasser Arafat and the PLO about ceding parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to the Palestinians, is subject to the Talmudic concept of din rodef (“the case of the pursuer”), marking the Nobel Peace Prize recipient for death; a psychiatrist (Dalia Shimko) declares that Rabin must be schizophrenic because of the decisions he is making; and a police officer (Gdalya Besser) gives information to a hungry press. Meanwhile, the Shamgar Commission chairman (Yitzhak Hiskiya) and two members (Pini Mittelman and Michael Warshaviak) question Rabin’s driver (Tomer Sisley) and bodyguard (Eldad Prywes), the director of the hospital (Tomer Russo) where Rabin was brought after the shooting, the intelligence officer (Shalom Shmuelov) in charge of security, and others as they attempt to uncover every detail of the horrific event to see if anything could have been done differently — and whether more people than just Amir were involved. However, when the name of GSS agent Avishai Raviv is raised, two commission lawyers (Ronen Keinan and Einat Weizman) suddenly stop the proceedings, declaring that anything relating to the secret operative is classified. Perhaps most frightening is the footage of rallies — led by then-Likud leader and now Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — in which participants chant “Death to Rabin!” and hold up signs depicting Rabin dressed as a Nazi and as Arafat.

Gitai, who served in a rescue unit during the Yom Kippur War and has made such other political, often controversial films as Kippur, Kadosh, Kedma, and the Border Trilogy (Promised Land, Free Zone, Disengagement), is not only seeking to uncover the truth of what led to the assassination but is also warning us that something like this can happen again, as all the elements are in place once more, and not only in Israel. It is almost impossible to watch the film without thinking about the growing hate speech in the United States in our national conversation about immigrants, Muslims, refugees, and building walls, all while more and more people, and small militias arm themselves and have less and less respect for the presidency. Gitai and cinematographer Eric Gautier (Into the Wild, The Motorcycle Diaries) move the camera very slowly, zooming in on the characters’ faces as they ask questions and give answers. The steady pace creates a tense atmosphere as scenes fade out to give viewers time to process what they’ve just witnessed. Editors Yuval Orr, Tahel Sofer, and Isabelle Ingold seamlessly weave the archival footage into the re-creations, making it difficult to sometimes know whether we are watching something real or restaged. But Gitai asserts that every single word spoken in the film is “completely factual,” that everything that is said has been taken directly from existing documentation. There is no omniscient third-person narration, no screen text or intertitles stating statistics. And to further the reality behind the film, Leah Rabin, the prime minister’s widow, and Shimon Peres, who was Rabin’s foreign minister in 1995 and won the Nobel Peace Prize along with the prime minister and Arafat (before becoming president of Israel in 2007), both speak with Gitai on camera. Could something like this indeed happen again in a democratic nation? Rabin, the Last Day essentially wonders why it hasn’t already.

THE COEN BROTHERS: A SERIOUS MAN

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is one serious man in underrated Coen brothers film

A SERIOUS MAN (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2009)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, February 1, 3:00 & 7:30
Series runs January 28 – February 4
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
focusfeatures.com

The Coen brothers take their unique brand of dry, black comedy to a whole new level with A Serious Man. Poor Larry Gopnik (a remarkably even-keeled Michael Stuhlbarg) just keeps getting dumped on: His wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), wants to leave him for, of all people, touchy-feely Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed); his brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), keeps hogging the bathroom so he can drain his cyst; his son, Danny (Aaron Wolf), won’t stop complaining that F-Troop isn’t coming in clearly and is constantly on the run from the school drug dealer (Jon Kaminsky Jr.); his daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), wants to get a nose job; one of his students (David Kang) has bribed him for a passing grade; his possible tenure appears to be in jeopardy; and he gets no help at all from a series of funnier and funnier rabbis. But Larry keeps on keepin’ on in the Jewish suburbs of Minnesota in 1967, trying to make a go of it as his woes pile higher and higher. Joel and Ethan Coen have crafted one of their best tales yet, nailing the look and feel of the era, from Hebrew school to Bar Mitzvah practice, from office jobs to parking lots, from the Columbia Record Club to transistor radios, from television antennas to the naked neighbor next door. The Coens get so many things right, you won’t mind the handful of mistakes in the film, and because it’s the Coens, who’s to say at least some of those errors weren’t intentional? A Serious Man is a seriously great film, made by a pair of seriously great filmmakers. And while you don’t have to be Jewish and from Minnesota to fall in love with it, it sure can’t hurt.

The Coen brothers will be at Film Forum to kick off retrospective

A Serious Man is screening at Film Forum on February 1 as part of a week-long tribute to Joel and Ethan, consisting of most of their older movies and a pair of film-related concert documentaries, leading up to a sneak preview of their latest, Hail, Caesar! For more than thirty years, the Coens have been capturing the American zeitgeist like no one else, penetrating deep into the psyche of the country, doing so in a wide variety of genres. The series skips over Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and Burn After Reading, but the rest of their oeuvre is present and accounted for, from the creepy, atmospheric Blood Simple and Barton Fink to the mad humor of The Hudsucker Proxy and Raising Arizona, from the brutal Westerns No Country for Old Men and True Grit to the gangster picture Miller’s Crossing, in addition to their cult masterpiece, The Big Lebowski. Things get going on January 28 with the beautifully elegant Fargo, followed by a Q&A with Joel and Ethan. D. A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Nick Doob will be at Film Forum on February 3 for a showing of their concert film Down from the Mountain, featuring the music from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

ARTISTS AT THE CROSSROADS

R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili will discuss their residencies at the first Artists at the Crossroads discussion

Who: R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili
What: Artists at the Crossroads
Where: TheStage at the TimesCenter, 242 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
When: Tuesday, February 1, free, 6:00
Why: New York City–based composer and interactive performance and installation artist R. Luke DuBois and Brooklyn-based writer, dancer, and Bessie-winning choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili will team up for the inaugural Residency Artist Talk, “Artists at the Crossroads,” being held February 1 at 6:00 at the TimesCenter. DuBois and Okpokwasili will discuss their three-month residencies, with a focus on creating public art for Times Square Arts, part of the Times Square Alliance. The free event will be moderated by Deep Lab member Kate Crawford; the next two residents, Brooklyn-based media artist and designer Joshue Ott and New Jersey–born composer Kenneth Kirschner, will be introduced at the end of the talk. The Residency at the Crossroads program “invites artists to experiment and engage with Times Square’s unique urban identity, history, and users. . . . They will be encouraged to invite multidisciplinary collaborators of their choice to create interventions, convenings, and experiments in Times Square’s public spaces, in open studios, and online.”