twi-ny recommended events

GLASS CHIN

Former champ Bud “the Saint” Gordon (Corey Stoll) just wants a fighting chance in GLASS CHIN

GLASS CHIN (Noah Buschel, 2014)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, June 26
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com

Writer-director Noah Buschel’s Glass Chin is a gentle, understated boxing movie, an indie sleeper that eschews brutal uppercuts, damaging overhand rights, and heavy knockout blows in favor of steady jabs and clever bobbing and weaving that slowly build in effectiveness. Unlike most fight flicks, there’s not a whole lot of shouting and braggadocio, blood and guts, and melodramatic relationships, no montages set to classic rock songs or slow-motion fight scenes. Instead, Glass Chin is a quiet, deeply contemplative character study of a conflicted man who finds himself at a crossroads. Corey Stoll is sensational as Bud “the Saint” Gordon, a former boxing champ trying to make a life for himself outside the ring. Living in New Jersey with his devoted girlfriend, Ellen (Marin Ireland), he is offered two opportunities, one helping Lou Powell (John Douglas Thompson) train Kid Sunshine (Malcolm Xavier) for an upcoming championship bout at Madison Square Garden, the other working for JJ Cook (Billy Crudup), a crooked restaurateur and loan shark who sends Bud out with Roberto (Yul Vazquez) to collect money from deadbeats, luring the ex-boxer by promising to back Bud’s dream of owning a restaurant in Manhattan. Bud bounces between training at the gym and accompanying Roberto on visits to such clients as Stanley (David Johansen) and Colby (Michael Chermus), who owe JJ big bucks and are going to have to pay for it if they don’t pony up the money. Bud knows he’s getting in too deep, and soon he finds himself in a tough situation that sends his world into a dangerous tailspin.

Bud (Corey Stoll), JJ (Billy Crudup), and Roberto (Yul Vazquez) consider the future in GLASS CHIN

Employing a subtle confidence, Buschel (The Missing Person, Neal Cassady) plays with genre clichés right out of Rocky and other boxing flicks and redefines them, leading to unexpected twists and turns. He has assembled a terrific cast of stage veterans, including Crudup, Ireland, Thompson, Vázquez, Chernus, Katherine Waterston, Halley Feiffer, and Ron Cephas Jones, who give added depth to their relatively familiar characters. Crudup is particularly impressive as a soft-spoken, art-loving gangster who knows just how to get whatever he wants, never breaking his Zen-like demeanor. Evoking the way real boxing matches are filmed, Buschel sometimes cuts back and forth between characters speaking to each other, as if they are feeling each other out, and lets the camera remain still for a long period of time as they examine where they are and what should come next, like a boxer establishing himself in the ring. In fact, most of the action actually takes place offscreen, as Buschel focuses on how his protagonists react in the aftermath. He also ups the believability quotient by filming in real locations in New York City and New Jersey, often using natural sound and light and no musical score. (The incidental music includes songs by the New York Dolls, the Red Norvo Trio, the Cocteau Twins, and Laura Nyro.) Rising star Stoll (House of Cards, Ant-Man) is mesmerizing as Bud, a basically goodhearted soul who made some bad choices but is willing to face the consequences, his pensive eyes wondering where it all went wrong. Glass Chin pulls no punches, sneaking up on you and going the distance to win a hard-fought unanimous decision.

GHOST STORIES: THE SHAWL AND PRAIRIE DU CHIEN

Storyteller (Jordan Lage) shares quite a tale with Listener (Jason Ritter) in PRAIRIE DU CHIEN (photo © Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through June 28, $20-$55
atlantictheater.org

“What powers exist?” a supposed clairvoyant asks in David Mamet’s The Shawl, the second of two one-act revivals that are being presented in tandem at Atlantic Stage 2 as part of the double feature Ghost Stories. First paired for the 1985 reopening of the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, Prairie du Chien, which was written as a radio play in 1979, and The Shawl, which debuted in 1985 at the Goodman Theatre, explore the very nature of narrative and performance while posing philosophical questions about the existence of something beyond earthly reality. The evening begins with Prairie du Chien, set in a railroad parlor car (splendidly designed by Lauren Helpern) on its way to Wisconsin in 1910. It’s three in the morning, and on the left side of the stage, a man, simply identified as Storyteller (Jordan Lage), is in the midst of sharing a supernatural tale about ghosts and murder with Listener (Jason Ritter), whose young son (Henry Kelemen) is sleeping beside him. Meanwhile, next to them, two men are playing gin, the dealer (Nate Dendy) on a winning streak against an older gentleman (Jim Frangione). The tension builds concurrently in the overlapping vignettes as Storyteller approaches his fantastical finale and Gin Player suspects Card Dealer of cheating. The Shawl opens with psychic medium John (Arliss Howard) giving a reading to Miss A (Mary McCann), who is seeking information about whether she should contest her recently deceased mother’s will. In between sessions, John shares his secrets with his young apprentice/lover, Charles (Ritter), explaining precisely how he is defrauding Miss A to finance a more extravagant lifestyle for him and Charles. But every time John establishes himself as a phony, he does something that makes Charles and Miss A — and the audience — wonder whether he just might be legitimate after all.

John (Arliss Howard) attempts to relieve Miss A (Mary McCann) of much of her money in THE SHAWL (photo © Ahron R. Foster)

Written by Mamet and directed by Scott Zigler, two of the cofounders of the Atlantic (along with Lage), Ghost Stories is an appropriate conclusion to the company’s thirtieth anniversary season, celebrating the magic of theater. In each play, the main characters, Storyteller and John, speak in slow, calm, meditative tones that offer a stark counterpoint to the loud, aggressive, curse-filled dialogue Mamet is famous for in such works as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross. (Each play also contains a plot twist involving a red piece of clothing.) Mamet and Zigler are forcing the audience to pay close attention, to listen carefully to every word, just as Storyteller and John are doing to their respective listeners. Lage and Howard are mesmerizing in their roles, their determined, even-keeled speech reeling everyone in. Mamet, who has displayed his mastery of the con in such works as The Spanish Prisoner and House of Games, keeps the audience on edge in each play, balancing suspicion and skepticism with wonder and fascination, whether today or a hundred years ago, an otherworldly quest or a game of gin. Just as Miss A wants to believe in John, and Listener wants to believe in Storyteller, we want to believe in Mamet and Zigler, in the power of theater to transport us to another world, yet one that helps explain the one we’re in. Individually, The Shawl and Prairie du Chien might be lesser, though entertaining, genre exercises by Mamet, but seen together, they skillfully offer insight into why we’re all in this dark room in the first place.

TASTE ASIA: ASIAN FOOD FEST 2015

Times Square
Friday, June 26, 12 noon – 10:00, and Saturday, June 27, 11:50 am – 8:00 pm, free admission
tasteasia.org

The second annual Taste of Asia festival in Times Square celebrates the culture and cuisine of China, Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian nations with live music and dance, cooking and martial arts demonstrations, and lots of food. Performers on Friday include Sounds of Korea, Sirasdance, the Masayo Ishigure & Miyabi Koto Shamisen Ensemble, Saung Budaya, the Golden Rooster, Samurai Sword Soul, Behri, and Sharon Cheng, while cooking demonstrations will be led by chef ambassadors Zizhao Luo, Pitipong Bowornneeranart, Esther Choi, Brian Tsao, David Bouley, Yuji Wakiya, and many more. There will also be awards ceremonies for best restaurants, fashion shows, a dumpling making workshop, and, even better, a dumpling eating contest. On Saturday, the seventh NTD International Chinese Culinary Competition will honor the best in Cantonese, Northeastern, Shandong, Sichuan, and Huaiyang cuisines, with plenty to eat for everyone.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “BEATNIK WALKING” / “1952 VINCENT BLACK LIGHTNING” BY RICHARD THOMPSON

Who: Richard Thompson
What: Richard Thompson Trio live
Where: The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd St.
When: Friday, June 26, $35-$75, 8:00
Why: On “Beatnik Walking” from his new album, Still (Fantasy, June 23), Richard Thompson sings, “Good things come in threes,” and so it will be this Friday, when the Richard Thompson Trio plays the Town Hall. The new record was produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who added sweet touches to another stellar collection of tunes from one of the world’s greatest guitarists and songwriters. The sixty-six-year-old Thompson has been at it since he was a teenager in Fairport Convention, hitting a peak with a series of albums with his then-wife, Linda, in the 1970s and early 1980s, then going it solo for the past three decades. Still finds Thompson in fine form, shifting smoothly between acoustic folk and electric blues, with gorgeous riffs and his trademark biting lyrics about the pain of love on such songs as “She Never Could Resist a Winding Road,” “Patty Don’t You Put Me Down,” “All Buttoned Up,” “Broken Doll,” and “Long John Silver.” Live, Thompson is a consummate performer, with a wickedly wry sense of humor and a playful rapport with the audience — but don’t call out songs you want to hear unless he asks. He makes fun of his own six-string virtuosity on the album’s final song, “Guitar Heroes,” in which he explains, “Oh, I can’t go out with my friends on a Saturday night / My guitar’s like a woman and you know I got to treat her right / I’ve got to practice all night and day / I’ve got to play the way my heroes play / I gotta learn how to do it” — and them namechecks, and plays like, such masters as Django Reinhardt, Les Paul, Chuck Berry, and James Burton. The Richard Thompson Trio, featuring Taras Prodaniuk on bass and Michael Jerome on drums, will be at the Town Hall with Doug Paisley opening; be sure to get there early, because at a recent gig, Paisley was ill, so Thompson went on in his place, performing an acoustic set before coming out with the trio.

THE SET UP: SAYA LEI

Wally Cardona collaborates with Mandalay-style dance master Saya Lei in latest Set Up (photo courtesy of the artist)

Who: Wally Cardona, Jennifer Lacey, and Jonathan Bepler
What: River to River Festival
Where: Cannon’s Walk, 206 Front St. between Beekman & Fulton Sts., South Street Seaport
When: Wednesday, June 24, 6:00, Thursday, June 25, 9:30, Friday, June 26, 8:30, free with advance RSVP
Why: Wally Cardona will be presenting the sixth installment of his eight-part series The Set Up, in which he collaborates with a specially selected dance artist as they explore the concept of mastery, along with choreographer Jennifer Lacey and composer Jonathan Bepler, this week at Cannon’s Walk. (This is not to be confused with his other series, in which he collaborates with an expert from outside the dance world.) Cardona first meets the artist, who teaches him about his or her specific discipline, followed by a response period as Cardona and Lacey work on the piece without the master. They then present the final, full-length dance to the public in a nontraditional space, which in the past has included an empty office space and empty storefront and the Board of Officers room at the Park Avenue Armory. For this LMCC commission for the River to River Festival, Cardona will be joined by seventy-three-year-old Burmese Mandalay-style dance master Saya Lei; Cardona recently studied with Saya Lei, whose name means “young teacher,” in Burma in preparation for the piece. Cardona has previously collaborated with Junko Fisher (traditional Okinawan), Proeung Chhieng (classical Cambodian), Jean-Christophe Paré (French baroque), Heni Winahyuningsih (Javanese refined), and Nyoman Catra (Balinese Topeng).

NEW COUNTRY

Sharon (Sarah Lemp) takes aim at Uncle Jim (Mark Roberts) in Roberts’s sharpshooting dark comedy (photo by Clay Anderson)

Cherry Lane Studio Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 27, $35
212-989-2020
www.rattlestick.org
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

As you enter the small, intimate Cherry Lane Studio Theatre to see New Country, a flat-screen in the hotel-room set is playing climactic clips from such classic Westerns as High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West, Pale Rider, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as well as the recent needless remake of 3:10 to Yuma. About two-thirds of the way through the viciously funny seventy-five-minute play, Uncle Jim (Roberts) says, “See, I like old country. Everything new is shit,” which just about sums up the world view of television veteran Roberts, a former stand-up comic who created, executive-produced, and wrote Mike and Molly for three seasons, was the head writer and executive producer for Two and a Half Men for seven years, was an executive consultant for The Big Bang Theory for three seasons, and has appeared on such shows as Friends and Seinfeld. He is now carving out quite a career for himself on the stage as a playwright and actor. Employing a sharp cynicism and wicked sense of humor from his years in Hollywood, Roberts went behind the scenes at a television network in The Gyre: Enter at Forest Lawn and examined the darker side of human nature in the brilliant black comedy Rantoul and Die, both for the adventurous Amoralists company and featuring the ultra-talented Sarah Lemp, who appeared in each of those productions, opposite Roberts in the former. In New Country, David Lind plays the aptly named Justin Spears, a self-obsessed country music superstar partying in Nashville on the eve of his wedding. He is being watched closely by his longtime handlers, the all-business Paul (Malcolm Madera) and his sidekick, the roly-poly Chuck (Jared Culverhouse), who are also dealing with the jealous and nervous fiancée via cell phone. Justin has let his fame go to his head, ordering around everyone, making them cater to his every whim, including Uncle Jim, a grizzled old coot who is the only relative Justin claims to care about. Meanwhile, Ollie (Stephen Sheffer), the hotel bellboy and wannabe country singer, is trying to get his demo to Justin. Things really kick into high gear when Sharon, Justin’s former fiancée, arrives like a house on fire, metaphorical six-guns blazing as she attempts to claim her just deserts. Evoking a screwball drawing-room comedy, albeit with quite a cynical bite, New Country skewers such high-falutin’ concepts as love, loyalty, and creativity as everyone states their case for why they matter — or why they don’t.

The price of fame and fortune in skewered in NEW COUNTRY (photo by Clay Anderson)

The centerpiece of New Country is a marvelous scene between Sharon, a bitter, leather-clad, motorcycle-riding cop, and Uncle Jim, a hippie Walter Brennan who mumbles hysterical asides while guzzling alcohol and hanging out with his companion, a blow-up doll named Wanda June Whitmore who “is up for anything and everything.” Lemp gives what might be her best performance yet as Sharon, a whirlwind of energy and bile, while Roberts has a ball as Uncle Jim, who’s never met a vice he isn’t willing to try. But neither of them is happy with the hands they’ve been dealt. “Live in your own little world, don’t you, pal?” Sharon says to him at one point. “Well. Beats the one they give us,” he responds, to which she adds, “True enough. Everything sure looked better in the catalogue.” Madera and Culverhouse are like a modern-day Abbott and Costello as Paul and Chuck, who are not about to let their golden goose flit away. Lind is excellent as the smug, oily Justin, hiding more than a few secrets that could ruin him, while Sheffer is sweetly likable as Ollie, who is no mere swishy bellboy. Director and set designer David Harwell sustains the craziness with just the right balance of anarchy and order, giving plenty of room for Roberts’s acidic, incisive dialogue to shine. There might not be a violent shootout à la Clint Eastwood and Gary Cooper at the end, but the sharpshooting Roberts hits his many targets over and over, leaving behind a metaphorical, and hilarious, bloodbath of winners and losers.

NEW MUSIC SEMINAR: DAY THREE

Summer Heart will be at DROM for the New Music Seminar

Summer Heart will be at Pianos for the New Music Seminar

Wyndham New Yorker Hotel and downtown music venues
481 Eighth Ave. between 34th & 35th Sts.
Through June 23, registration $499, individual concerts free – $12
www.newyorkerhotel.com
newmusicseminar.com

The New Music Seminar continues to offer industry panels and education programs through Tuesday — more than fifteen on Tuesday alone, including a morning A&R critique session and panels with COOs and CFOs from Warner, SiriusXM, Def Jam, and more talking about subscription music and new international markets — at the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel, but at night it’s time to hear the music. Four staple venues of the LES offer four different slates tonight, showcasing Artists on the Verge. On a steaming hot night one could do worse than drift into the cool, Swedish pop of Summer Heart at Pianos (hear their latest EP here) or dive into the heat and pump up New York’s own urban energy with DJ SANiTY from Queens at DROM.

Music Xray’s Live A&R Listening and Critique Sound Sessions, conducted by Mike McCready, with label managers and A&R scouts, Crystal Ballroom, 10:15 am

Label Heads: The Music, the Media, the Money, conducted by Ralph Simon, with Tom Corson, Avery Lipman, Craig Kallman, Steve Bartels, Dave Hansen, and Emmanuel de Buretel, Grand Ballroom, 12:30

The Developing World: Music Explosion, with Ralph Simon, Michael Abbattista, Julien Simon, Prashant Bahadur, Paramdeep Singh, Ed Peto, Ademola Ogundele, and Emmanuel Zuna, Sutton Place, 2:45

Frances Rose, Summer Heart, Chaos Chaos, Ayer, and HIGHS, Pianos, 158 Ludlow St., $8, 7:00

Frances Cone, ONWE, End of an Era, Phosphene, and Paper Fleet, Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St., $8, 8:15

Janita, the Collection, City of the Sun, DJ SANiTY, and AOV Class of 2015 winner, DROM, 85 Ave. A., free, 8:15

Beecher’s Fault, Lilly Wolf, Fort Lean, and Dinner and a Suit, the Delancey, $8, 8:15