twi-ny recommended events

GOTHAM HOLIDAY SWING

Buster Poindexter hosts third annual Gotham Holiday Swing at the Town Hall

Who: Henry Butler, Steven Bernstein & the Hot 9, Madeleine Peyroux, Raul Midon, Mercury Rev, Hal Willner, Carole Bufford, Basya Schechter, Terry Reid, Lee Fields, and Basya Schechter, hosted by Buster Poindexter
What: Third annual Gotham Holiday Swing variety show
Where: The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd St. between Sixth Ave. & Broadway, 212-997-6661
When: Friday, December 18, $45-$65, doors at 7:30
Why: Buster Poindexter hosts an evening of old and new holiday favorites melding the jazz-soul sounds of New York City and New Orleans at the Town Hall, where he will be joined by an impressive gathering of vocalists, producer extraordinaire Hal Willner, experimental band Mercury Rev, and house band Butler, Bernstein & the Hot 9, a new collaboration between Henry Butler and Steven Bernstein. The show is part of a food drive in which the Town Hall is partnering with City Harvest; attendees are encouraged to donate dried food and food in boxes, cans, and bottles the night of the performance.

INCIDENT AT VICHY

Von Berg (Richard Thomas) and Lebeau (Jonny Orisini) discuss their fate in Signature revival of rarely performed Arthur Miller play (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through December 20, $55-$85
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Arthur Miller’s 1964 play, Incident at Vichy, currently being staged in a stark, powerful production at the Signature Theatre, isn’t set in the Twilight Zone, but it shares that series’ atmosphere of postwar anxiety. In the classic 1961 Twilight Zone episode Five Characters in Search of an Exit, an existential drama that combines Luigi Pirandello with Jean-Paul Sartre, series creator and host Rod Serling announces in the beginning, “Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness, and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. In a moment, we’ll start collecting clues as to the whys, the whats, and the wheres. We will not end the nightmare; we’ll only explain it.” Adding a bit of Beckett and Kafka to that mix, Miller tells the story of nine men and one teenager who have been escorted off the streets of 1942 Paris and left to wait in a dank, dilapidated detention room (the set is by Jeff Cowie), where they contemplate who they are, why they have been brought there, and how — and if — they will get out. In the room are Lebeau (Jonny Orsini), an antsy, nervous artist who desperately wants to know what is going on; Bayard (Alex Morf), a Communist electrician who has heard frightening rumors; Marchand (John Procaccino), a businessman who wants this all over so he can attend an important meeting; a quiet, nervous teenage boy (Jonathan Gordon); Monceau (Derek Smith), an actor who refuses to believe that anything bad is going to happen to them; a waiter (David Abeles) who has served the Major (James Carpinello) in his restaurant and assures everyone that the German officer is a decent guy; a Gypsy (Evan Zes) laying on the floor and clutching a pot; an old Jewish man (Jonathan Hadary) holding tight to his ragged bundle; Leduc (Darren Pettie), a brave, bold psychoanalyst and army veteran who has faced the Major on the field of battle; and Von Berg (Richard Thomas), an effeminate prince from an Austrian royal family.

Why they have all been abducted remains a mystery for quite some time, as the nine men and the boy appear to have little in common, from age, status, and looks to wealth, education, and rank and, most important, religion. It takes until twenty minutes into the play for Von Berg to ask the question that has been on everyone’s mind, including the audience’s: “Have you all been arrested for being Jewish?” It’s a tribute to the skill of the writing and the strength of Michael Wilson’s direction that this line is so strong without being overly obvious; it also helps make the play that much more relevant in the twenty-first century. “You don’t get any . . . special flavor, huh?” Lebeau asks Marchand, who replies, “What flavor?” Lebeau says, “Well, like . . . some racial . . . implication?” To which Marchand states definitively, “I don’t see anything to fear if your papers are all right.” Incident at Vichy might ultimately be about Jews in occupied Paris, but it just as easily could have been about the communist witch hunt led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s; the exploits of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which resulted in the blacklisting of many Hollywood writers (Miller himself was called to testify in front of the commission in 1956 but refused to name names; perhaps not coincidentally, most of the character names are not used in the show itself but identified only in the program); as well as the current debate over how to treat Muslim immigrants and Syrian refugees.

Leduc and Von Berg (Richard Thomas) are at odds in INCIDENT AT VICHY (photo by Joan Marcus)

Leduc (Darren Pettie) and Von Berg (Richard Thomas) are at odds in INCIDENT AT VICHY (photo by Joan Marcus)

The second half of the intermissionless ninety-minute play does indeed get more didactic as the characters debate their fate, particularly Leduc and Von Berg, but the bulk of the play still holds up extremely well. The acting is exceptional throughout, with stand-out performances by Thomas (Race, The Waltons) as the gentle Von Berg, who finds Nazism to be “an outburst of vulgarity”; Morf (Of Mice and Men, War Horse) as the very serious Bayard; Carpinello (Rock of Ages, Xanadu) as the possibly conflicted Major; the always engaging Procaccino (Love and Information, Nikolai and the Others) as the self-centered, well-attired businessman; and Pettie (Strange Interlude; Detroit, This) as the heroic Leduc. Leduc delivers one of the most critical lines, explaining, “Jews are not a race, you know. They can look like anybody,” making us all potential victims of Fascism. AJ Cedeño is the police captain, while Brian Cross is Professor Hoffman, the mastermind behind the operation. The tale also serves as a microcosm of the Jewish response as Nazism took hold in Germany and spread through Eastern Europe. Wilson (The Old Friends, The Trip to Bountiful) guides it all with a firm yet respectful hand, adding occasional strobe flashes that signal it’s time for the next person to meet his fate. Miller, who died in 2005 at the age of eighty-nine, had considered reviving Incident at Vichy during his 1997–98 residency at the Signature, which has finally brought it back for the ongoing celebration of the centennial of Miller’s birth, with A View from the Bridge now on Broadway and The Crucible to follow in the spring. The play debuted on Broadway in 1964, was first performed in London in 1966 with Alec Guinness, Anthony Quayle, and Nigel Davenport, and was made into a 1973 TV movie directed by Stacy Keach. The play, which was never considered one of Miller’s best, was revived in 2009 by the Actors Company Theatre, but otherwise it has not been seen in New York City for fifty years, making the Signature revival not only a welcome revisiting of the work but a timely, relevant one as well. “Where are we? What are we? Who are we?” the Major asks in Five Characters in Search of an Exit. “None of us knows, Major,” the Ballerina answers. “We don’t know who we are. We don’t know where we are. Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.” These are questions and answers that are in serious need of discussion in order to try to shed light on what is going on in today’s world.

A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS 2015

Macy’s holiday window display celebrates fiftieth anniversary of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (photo byt twi-ny/mdr)

Macy’s holiday window display celebrates fiftieth anniversary of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Fifty years ago, on December 9, 1965, CBS broadcast what was to become an all-time holiday favorite, Charles M. Schulz’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. The twenty-five-minute animated program was directed by Walt Disney and Warner Bros. veteran Bill Melendez and featured a jazzy score by the Vince Guaraldi Trio that quickly became part of the national lexicon. The golden anniversary of the television show, which focuses on the noncommercial aspects of the Christmas season, is being celebrated with several special events this month, following the November release of the big-screen Peanuts Movie, in which Charlie Brown declares, “I just need to know the secret for doing something great.” A Brooklyn staple for seven years, A Charlie Brown Christmas Live is moving from the Lyceum to Redwood Studios in Gowanus, being performed December 11-13 and 18-20 ($12), with adults Justin Tyler as Charlie Brown, Gillian Smith-Esposito as Lucy, Susan Forman and Lauren Orkus as Snoopy, and Alden Ford, Doug Aho, and Sean Bradley as Linus; the show is directed by Mollie Vogt-Welch, with music by Stephanie Sanders on keyboards and Jon Shaw on bass. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can catch A Charlie Brown Christmas in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on December 19 & 20 ($45-$80), with the big-screen projection accompanied by an inventive live musical score by the Rob Schwimmer Trio, followed by an audience sing-along of holiday tunes. Tickets include museum admission, so you can also check out the Met’s Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche while you’re there.

Over at David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic Principal Brass Quintet and the Canadian Brass join together again for the twentieth annual Holiday Brass concert on December 13 ($49-$69), consisting of tunes from A Charlie Brown Christmas as well as a Chanukah medley, Bach’s Bells, “Penny Lane,” “Joy to the World,” and other holiday songs, performed with the New York Philharmonic Percussionists. The festivities continue December 20 at the Carnegie Hall Family Holiday Concert, as music director and conductor Steven Reineke and the New York Pops play A Charlie Brown Christmas and sing-along favorites with the TADA! Youth Theater, Essential Voices USA, and members of the New York Theatre Ballet. But you don’t need any tickets to see Macy’s Herald Square Christmas windows, which depict six scenes, designed by Roya Sullivan, from the classic Charlie Brown Christmas show, with interactive elements that allow visitors to play Schroeder’s piano and to add their own character to the celebration. The windows will remain on view through January 4; you can see all the windows here.

GOLDBERG: IGOR LEVIT & MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ

Marina Abramović, Urs Schönebaum, and Igor Levit collaborate on a whole new way to experience live music (photo by James Ewing)

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
December 7-19, $65
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

In many ways, Marina Abramović’s latest work, “Goldberg,” is a combination and the culmination of the ideas explored in her past half-decade of shows, this time focusing on the creation of a bold new way to experience live music. In 2010, the Serbian-born, New York–based performance artist spent 736½ hours in MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium sitting in a chair and locking eyes with individual museumgoers for extended periods of time as the highlight of her widely hailed participatory career retrospective “The Artist Is Present.” In December 2013, she examined her life and death in Robert Wilson’s visual spectacle The Life and Death of Marina Abramović at the Park Avenue Armory. And in last fall’s “Generator,” Abramović had visitors wear blindfolds and noise-canceling headphones as they moved across an empty space at Sean Kelly Gallery, occasionally making contact with others as well as the artist, who was often present, taking part in the show. For “Goldberg,” ticket holders arrive at the Park Avenue Armory and are asked to place all electronic devices (and coats and bags) in a locker, then are given a pair of noise-canceling headphones as they enter the fifty-five-thousand-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall. At the center of the vast space are circular rows of white-cloth lounge chairs; people can sit anywhere, as it is general admission seating. The chairs are purposely set up a small distance away from one another to allow each person an individual, private experience. You are not meant to move your chairs together and chatter away (as the trio in front of me did) but instead relax, take in the atmosphere, and begin to focus on the performance at hand. Four screens have been set up on the four sides of the hall, blasting blazing white light, as if a visual white noise that is changing your perspective. Urs Schönebaum’s lighting design also includes a narrow band of light running around all four walls. At the far west end, pianist Igor Levit, who made his North American recital debut in March 2014 in the armory’s Board of Officers Room, sits at a Steinway grand piano. Soon a gong sounds, signaling everyone to put on their headphones. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes or so (exact time is not of the essence here), Levit and the piano slowly move to the center of the arrangement of chairs. Another gong sounds, the screens go blank, headphones are removed, and the Nizhny Novgorod–born pianist starts playing J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations as the piano makes one intensely slow revolution and he performs the gorgeous 1742 aria with thirty variations.

Igor Levit gives a performance for the ages at the Park Avenue Armory (photo by James Ewing)

In a 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Abramović said, “We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.” With “Goldberg,” she and Levit are practically forcing the audience to be present, to be in the moment. Removing nearly all distractions — without cell phones, watches, cameras, bags, or even a program (which are distributed on the way out) — Abramović and Schönebaum are making this experience all about the music, and what music it is, an absolutely dazzling performance by Levit, a rising star in the classical world. The twenty-eight-year-old plays the Goldberg Variations without sheet music, his hands making love to the keys, crossing each other and descending from above as he lifts his elbows with lovely flourishes. As he plays, his body sways in all directions, giving a physical quality to the music even as the three collaborators have conceived of this piece as a kind of celebration of immateriality. It’s also as if the concert is being performed just for you; when fully reclined in the chair, you cannot easily shift your body to look at the people next to you or, of course, behind you; instead, your head is positioned to face Levit only, and there is really no reason to look anywhere else. Aside from an occasional snore — the seats are rather cozy, and what would a classical concert be without at least some snoozing — the only thing to be heard is the glorious music, which has a palpable energy all its own. “To play this work, to love it and to listen to it is an experience second to none,” Levit says in the program. “Every aspect of human nature can be relived. At the end words cannot describe it. We shouldn’t discuss this work. We should and indeed can experience it. What a pleasure!” We can’t explain it any better than that. On opening night, Abramović was hanging out in the halls of the armory before the show, greeting friends and expressing her nervousness. At the end of the performance, Levit ran into the audience and gave Abramović a great big hug, filled with what appeared to be both relief and release. Thus, the artist was indeed present, and so was the audience. Now, if we can only apply Abramović’s method to film and theater…. (On December 13 at 5:00, Levit and Abramović will take part in a discussion moderated by outgoing armory artistic director Alex Poots. And you can listen to Levit’s performance of the Goldberg Variations at home on his latest album, Bach, Beethoven, Rzewski [Sony Classical, October 2015, $24.99], which also includes Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”)

THE HOLLYWOOD CLASSICS BEHIND WALKERS: MY WINNIPEG AND BRING ME THE HEAD OF TIM HORTON

Guy Maddin creates a unique and unusual docu-fantasia in MY WINNIPEG

MY WINNIPEG (Guy Maddin, 2007) & BRING ME THE HEAD OF TIM HORTON (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, 2015)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, December 12, $12, 2:00
Series runs through December 27
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

In 2007, Canadian auteur Guy Maddin presented his (maybe) semiautobiographical work My Winnipeg, an insanely brilliant homage to his native city, at the Tribeca Film Festival, where he had previously wowed crowds with his splendid cinematic installation Cowards Bend the Knee in 2003. This past September, Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World, Careful) was at the New York Film Festival, screening his latest feature, The Forbidden Room, along with the fabulously titled Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, a short he made with regular collaborators Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson and which was shown on a loop for free for two days in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater. My Winnipeg and Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton are being paired together December 12 at 2:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “The Hollywood Classics Behind Walkers,” held in conjunction with the exhibition “Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact,” which consists of painting, sculpture, photography, and video that incorporates the art form of cinema. In My Winnipeg, Maddin pays tribute to the long, bizarre history of the title Canadian province, which sits directly in the middle of North America, what Maddin refers to as the “heart of the heart of the continent.” Combining archival footage with re-created scenes, all of which look like faded newsreels and early, degraded prints, Maddin, in voice-over narration, tells of horses buried in ice with their heads sticking out, the Happyland amusement park, Ledge Man, the Hudson’s Bay Company, stampedes, spirit photography and seances, a beauty pageant for men, local scavenger hunts in which the winner gets a ticket out of town, and other strange elements; one of the many joys of the film is not knowing what is exactly true and what is invention, although there is more fact here than you might think. “Everything that happens in this city is a euphemism,” Maddin says, just to keep us guessing. He also gets personal in the film, which he calls a “docu-fantasia,” with many scenes focusing on his mother — or an actress playing his mother. A masterful meditation on memory, My Winnipeg is one of Maddin’s most accomplished, most accessible works, proving him to be the successor to such avant-garde filmmakers as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou), Stan Brakhage (Dog Star Man), and Orson Welles (F for Fake).

Meanwhile, Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, whose title references both Sam Peckinpah’s cult classic Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and hockey player and doughnut entrepreneur Tim Horton, who died in a drunk-driving car accident in 1974 while a member of the Buffalo Sabres, takes viewers behind the scenes of the making of Paul Gross’s 2015 Afghanistan war movie, Hyena Road. Of course, this is no standard DVD-extra documentary but instead an exploration of art, violence, money, hockey, and acting — Maddin gets to play a small role in Gross’s film — among other ideals, inspired by Evan Johnson’s “The Cuadecuc Manifesto,” which was derived from Pere Portabella’s Cuadecuc, vampir experimental film created from footage shot while Jess Franco was making his 1970 version of Count Dracula with Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, and Klaus Kinski. Got that? Well, it doesn’t really matter, because as with all of Maddin’s films, it’s all about the experience, a melding of sight and sound as only he can deliver. Following My Winnipeg and Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, the Museum of the Moving Image will be showing Maddin’s latest, The Forbidden Room; unfortunately, the director will not be able to attend that screening, as was originally announced. The series continues through December 27 with such major films as Chinatown, Psycho, The Wild Bunch, and The Last Picture Show, so Maddin is certainly in some pretty fine company.

THE CHANUKAH CONCERT: THE KLEZMER BRASS ALL-STARS WITH FRANK LONDON AND ELEANOR REISSA

Who: The Klezmer All-Stars with Frank London and Eleanor Reissa
What: Annual Hanukkah concert
Where: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., 212-294-8301
When: Sunday, December 13, $18, 3:00
Why: The American Jewish Historical Society and the American Society for Jewish Music are teaming up for their annual musical and literary celebration of the Festival of Lights with its annual Hanukkah party at the Center for Jewish History. The Sunday matinee features Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All-Stars — consisting of London on trumpet, Michael Winograd on clarinet, Brian Drye on trombone, Aaron Alexander on drums, Patrick Farrell on accordion, and Ron Caswell on tuba — with Tony-nominated director, singer, writer, and actor Eleanor Reissa, who performs in both English and Yiddish. The show is a follow-up to last Sunday’s On Stage at Kingsborough “Oy Chanukah!” show. The afternoon will include holiday songs, storytelling, a menorah lighting, refreshments, and more.

ALLEGIANCE

Kei Kimura (Lea Salonga), her grandfather, Ojii-chan (George Takei), and brother, Sammy Kimura (Telly Leung), are relocated to an interment camp in ALLEGIANCE (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 14, $45-$149
allegiancemusical.com
www.shubert.nyc

Seventy-four years ago today, Japan staged a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, leading to America’s entry into WWII. It also led to one of the most shameful acts in U.S. history, as more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcefully removed from their homes and imprisoned in internment camps. The fictionalized story of one such family is told in the Broadway musical Allegiance, a timely, overly earnest, yet involving tale running at the Longacre Theatre. Allegiance tells the story of the Kimura clan, whose farm is seized by the U.S. government while they are marched to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where they live behind barbed wire, under strict rules — all because of their Japanese last name and ancestry. The family consists of elderly patriarch Ojii-chan (George Takei), single father Tatsuo Kimura (Christòpheren Nomura), daughter Kei Kimura (Lea Salonga), and son Sammy Kimura (Telly Leung). Sammy wants to join the U.S. Army, fighting for the right to defend the country in which he was born; meanwhile, his father, a Japanese native, refuses to sign a loyalty oath to America after the family’s internment, and Frankie Suzuki (Michael K. Lee), who also lives in the camp and has struck up a friendship with Kei, leads a protest when Japanese Americans suddenly become eligible for the draft. Caught in the middle is Mike Masaoka (Greg Watanabe), the real-life California-born national secretary of the Japanese American Citizens League, who is collaborating, in good faith, with the U.S. government over the treatment of the people in the camps.

Sam Kimura (George Takei) remembers where it all went wrong with his sister (Lea Salonga) (photo by Matthew Murphy)

As has been well documented, Allegiance was inspired by the true story of Star Trek veteran and social media sensation Takei, who was five years old when his family was forced at gunpoint to leave their Los Angeles home in 1942 and move first to a horse stable, then to the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas. The character of Sam Kimura, whom Takei plays as an old man at the beginning and the end — the main events are told in flashback — is based on not only Takei but also his father, Norman Takei, and war hero Ben Kuroki. The book, by composer and lyricist Jay Kuo (Insignificant Others), co-lead producer Lorenzo Thione, and Marc Acito (Birds of a Feather), is both passionate and predictable, trite and treacly, with underdeveloped subplots (primarily Sammy’s relationship with nurse Hannah Campbell, played by Katie Rose Clarke), and the songs are cliché-ridden and overzealous, featuring such giveaway titles as “Do Not Fight the Storm,” “What Makes a Man,” “Our Time Now,” and “Stronger than Before.” The cast is accomplished, led by Tony winner Salonga (Miss Saigon, Les Misérables), but Stafford Arima’s (Altar Boyz, Carrie) direction is fairly static and Andrew Palermo’s (The Other Josh Cohen) choreography lacks imagination. One wonders if the very urgent story would have been served better as a straight play instead of an overwrought, melodramatic musical. But the main reason the show exists is because of the tireless dedication of Takei, in his Broadway debut. Over the last several years, Takei, who played Lt. Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek for three years on television and then in six big-screen adventures, has become a leading figure in the battle over same-sex marriage (he married his longtime partner, Brad Altman, in September 2008) as well as other social causes (he has more than 9 million likes on Facebook and nearly 1.8 million followers on Twitter), and he was the subject of the 2014 documentary To Be Takei. Takei almost single-handedly has kept alive the truths behind the Japanese American internment camps, an issue that relates directly to the current controversy over Syrian refugees and possible databases of Muslim Americans. “These worrisome developments only strengthen my resolve to keep telling our story and remembering the past so we do not repeat it,” he notes on a handout that comes with the Playbill. Takei, with his big, welcoming smile, riotous sense of humor, and fearlessness in standing up for what he believes in, is an inspiring American, and it is heartwarming watching him in such an important, if not completely successful, Broadway production, one that will very likely have you teary as you leave the theater. For more on the show and Takei, you can follow his online “Trek to Broadway” here.