twi-ny recommended events

SIDE SHOW

Terry Connor (Ryan Silverman) and Buddy Foster (Matthew Hydzik) try to convince conjoined twins Daisy (Emily Padgett) and Violet (Erin Davie) to leave their Texas freak show for vaudeville stardom in SIDE SHOW (photo by Joan Marcus)

St. James Theatre
246 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 4, $49 – $145
www.sideshowbroadway.com

Oscar-winning writer-director Bill Condon makes a rousing Broadway debut with Side Show, a wonderful revival of the Tony-nominated 1997 musical about real-life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. In Depression-era Texas, the daring, outgoing Daisy (Emily Padgett) and the shy, reserved Violet (Erin Davie) are the stars of a freak show run by a controlling ringmaster they call Sir (Robert Joy), who considers them his daughters while also overseeing the rest of his wild menagerie, which includes the 3 Legged Man (Brandon Bieber), the Geek (Matthew Patrick Davis), Venus di Milo (Lauren Elder), Dog Boy (Javier Ignacio), Reptile Man (Don Richard), the Half Man/ Half Woman (Kelvin Moon Loh), the Bearded Lady (Blair Ross), the Fortune Teller (Charity Angel Dawson), and the small Cossack Male (Josh Walker) and Cossack Woman (Jordanna James). When talent agent Terry Connor (Ryan Silverman) sees the twins, who are joined at the hip, he instantly visualizes them becoming stars on the vaudeville circuit. He has his partner, Buddy Foster (Matthew Hydzik), teach them song-and-dance routines, but when they’re at last ready and willing to leave the side show, the dastardly Sir stands in their way, and a thrilling tabloid-tale court battle ensues, also involving Sir’s right-hand man, Jake (David St. Louis), who serves as the twins’ protector. After the court’s decision, Buddy is soon falling for Violet, who Jake also deeply admires, while Daisy sets her sights on Terry. The romantic pentagon comes to a climax at an extravagant New Year’s Eve celebration that has the talented twins wondering if they might just be better off living separately, risking all on a potentially deadly operation.

Jake (David St. Louis) tells Daisy (Emily Padgett) and Violet (Erin Davie) that the devil they know might be better than the devil they don’t in stirring revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

Padgett (Rock of Ages, Legally Blonde) and Davie (Grey Gardens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood) are terrific as Daisy and Violet, respectively, beautifully displaying the characters’ emotional hopes and fears as a new world opens up to them that threatens their unique relationship. Joy (The Nerd, Hay Fever) is deliciously dastardly as Sir, while Silverman (Passion) and Hydzik (West Side Story) make a fine duo, the former full of smooth-talking charm, the latter sweet melancholy. St. Louis (Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar) brings down the house early on with a powerful rendition of “The Devil You Know” that shakes the rafters. Bill Russell’s lyrics and Henry Krieger’s (Dreamgirls, The Tap Dance Kid) music flow nearly imperceptibly from the exemplary book, which was written by Russell with new material by Condon, wisely never overdoing the idea that’s it’s okay to be different. The score, which contains additions and subtractions from the original production, features such moving numbers as “Cut Them Apart / I Will Never Leave You,” “Stuck with You / Leave Me Alone,” and the gorgeous “Who Will Love Me as I Am?” while such words as “connected,” “ties,” “bind,” “join,” “glue,” etc., become sly nods to the conjoined-twins aspect of the tale. David Rockwell’s eye-catching set has a sweet Gothic touch, while Paul Tazewell’s costumes, from the Hilton sisters’ gowns to the freaks’ general appearance, are simply fab. Condon and choreographer Anthony Van Laast do a marvelous job of keeping the twins together through most of the show, except for one breathtaking, memorable moment. If you want to find out more about the Hilton sisters after seeing the show, seek out Leslie Zemeckis’s 2012 documentary, Bound by Flesh, which includes plenty of archival photographs and film footage.

SUNSHINE NOIR: IN A LONELY PLACE

Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in IN A LONELY PLACE

Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart encounter some difficulties in Beverly Hills in Nicholas Ray’s IN A LONELY PLACE

IN A LONELY PLACE (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, November 29, 2:00 & 7:00
Series runs November 26 – December 9
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Humphrey Bogart stars in Nicholas Ray’s powerful, intense film about a cynical Hollywood screenwriter with a violent side. Dixon Steele (Bogart, in one of his strongest performances) is asked to write a screenplay based on a pulpy romance he has little interest in, so he brings home a coat-check girl (Martha Stewart) who has read the book so she can tell him the story. The girl turns up dead, and Steele, known for his drunken forays and abuse of women, is the main suspect. Aspiring star Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), who has recently moved into the same Beverly Hills apartment complex, supplies an alibi for Steele, but she might have ulterior motives for doing so. Ray’s moody, introspective gem keeps you guessing until the very end. Ray (They Live by Night, Rebel Without a Cause) was briefly married to Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful, Oklahoma!); they divorced when she had an affair with Ray’s teenage son, whom she later wed and had two children with. In a Lonely Place is screening November 29 at 2:00 & 7:00 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Sunshine Noir,” a two-week festival being held in conjunction with the Next Wave Festival presentation of Gabriel Kahane’s The Ambassador, a visual and musical exploration of Los Angeles, directed by John Tiffany. The film series runs November 26 – December 9 and includes such other L.A.-set works as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, Brian De Palma’s Body Double, Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey, Joseph Losey’s remake of M, and Robert Mulligan’s The Nickel Ride.

THE RIVER

Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 8, $35 – $175
www.theriveronbroadway.com

British playwright Jez Butterworth has followed up his brilliant, Tony-nominated Broadway hit, Jerusalem, with The River, a perplexing, comparatively slight tale in both length and scope. Hugh Jackman is superb as the Man, who has brought the Woman (Cush Jumbo) to his family’s fishing cabin on a cliff above a river stuffed to the gills with trout. On ULTZ’s rustic set that cuts through the audience, the Man and the Woman discuss fishing, poetry, sunsets, and interior design. She sings W. B. Yeats’s “The Song of the Wandering Aengus” and he removes a splinter from her using a rather large knife. She disappears during a nighttime fishing excursion and he desperately calls the police until she finally shows up, this time as the Other Woman (Laura Donnelly), both she and the Man acting as if nothing has changed, picking up the narrative as easily as a stream progresses down a mountain. Over the course of a lean eighty-five minutes (Jerusalem clocked in at three hours), the Woman and the Other Woman keep replacing each other as they individually explore the meaning of their relationship with the Man, who may or may not be a true romantic. But there is no doubt that, above all else, he is indeed a man, proud of his fishing heritage, swilling whiskey, and having fun with sharp objects.

The Man (Hugh Jackman) and the Other Woman (Laura Donnelly) discuss life and love in THE RIVER (photo © 2014 Richard Termine)

Originally performed in London’s tiny Royal Court upstairs theater with Dominic West (The Wire, The Affair) as the Man, Miranda Raison as the Woman, and Donnelly as the Other Woman, The River is more like a Raymond Carver-esque short story filtered through the labyrinthine mind of Jorge Luis Borges than a fully realized theatrical production. That said, what there is of it is, for the most part, intimate and entertaining, until things get out of control in the last twenty minutes, resulting in too much obfuscation, confusion, and mystery in an attempt at philosophical grandeur. The Australian Jackman could barely be any more manly as the Man, waxing poetic over the art of fishing in long soliloquies while wearing thigh-high Wellingtons, a smartly nuanced performance worthy of his ever-growing stature. The English Jumbo (Josephine and I) and the Irish Donnelly (Judgment Day; Philadelphia, Here I Come!) are fine foils for Jackman, going head-to-head and toe-to-toe with him as various truths come out — or remain hidden. Butterworth, who has also written such plays as The Winterling and The Night Heron and is an in-demand screenwriter as well (Edge of Tomorrow, Get On Up), has cast his line far into the water, but he doesn’t reel in quite the catch he could have. The night we went, there was an extra bonus, as after the play, Jackman auctioned off his shirts and a trip to the backstage bedroom for Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS, raising more than ten thousand dollars as he thoroughly enraptured the adoring crowd with his natural elegance and charming sense of humor.

MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE AND GIANT BALLOON INFLATION 2014

77th St. & Central Park West to 34th St. & Seventh Ave.
Giant Balloon Inflation: Wednesday, November 26, free, 3:00 – 10:00 pm
Parade: Thursday, November 27, free, 9:00 am – 12 noon
212-494-4495
www.macys.com

In 1924, a bunch of Macy’s employees joined forces and held the first Macy’s Christmas Parade, as it was then known. This year Macy’s celebrates the eighty-seventh edition of this beloved American event. (For those of you going crazy trying to figure out how 1924 to 2014 makes 88, the parade was canceled from 1942 through 1944 because of World War II.) The 2014 lineup features sixteen giant balloons, including Hello Kitty, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Spider-Man, Pikachu, the Elf on the Shelf, Toothless, Eruptor, Finn & Jake, and Snoopy & Woodstock; twenty-seven floats, among them Treasure Hunt, the Beauty of Beijing, Cirque du Soleil’s the Dreamseeker, the Enchanting World of Lindt Chocolate, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Domino Sugar’s Stirrin’ Up Sweet Sensations, Pepperidge Farms’ Goldfish on Parade, Winter Wonderland in Central Park, the NHL’s Frozen Fall Fun, and Mount Rushmore’s American Pride; a dozen novelty balloons, from Wiggleworm, Red Candy Cane, and Pumpkins to Virginia, Baseball, and Beach Ball Clusters; and three balloonicles, highlighted by the AFLAC Duck, all making their way down Sixth Ave. from Central Park South to Herald Square. (However, heavy wind conditions could ground many of them.) The myriad clowns and marching bands will be joined by such performers as Renée Fleming, Idina Menzel, Cole Swindell, Nick Jonas, Meghan Trainor, Hilary Duff, the New Orleans Baby Doll Ladies, the Harlem Globetrotters, and KISS, headed by ringleader Amy Kule.

To get a start on the parade, head on over to Central Park West and Columbus Ave. between 77th & 81st Sts. the day before, November 26, from approximately 3:00 to 10:00 to check out the Giant Balloon Inflation. Watching the annual big blow-up of Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons is a growing tradition, with crowds getting bigger and bigger every year, but it’s still a thrill to see the giant characters raised from the ground, reborn every Thanksgiving to march in a parade viewed by millions and millions of people around the world. (For further information, you can get the official parade app here.)

KAYA NYC

Kaya delivers on its promise of bringing the passion of Asian street food to New York (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Greenwich St. and Park Pl., TriBeCa
Front & Adams St., DUMBO
Varick & King Sts., SoHo
929-421-9987
www.kayanyc28.com

One of our favorite new food carts is Kaya NYC, which we discovered on its very first day a few months back on Greenwich St. and Park Pl. Owner David, who hails from Hong Kong and earned a finance degree from Baruch a few years ago, had been helping his father at his restaurant in Brooklyn and eventually decided to start his own mobile place, working with his girlfriend, Kristy, a retail banker. “We always dreamed of having our own food-service establishment, and we always thought that there is no real authentic Asian food in the city that can really represent our cuisine. We are disappointed with the image of Chinese food in America,” he told us, explaining that there’s a whole lot more to Asian cuisine than “cheap” fried chicken wings, pork fried rice, and General Tso’s chicken. He and Kristy brainstormed and decided to serve extremely tasty steamed buns called gua baos, small, light, doughy fold-over circular sandwiches stuffed with shredded red curry chicken, crushed peanuts, and cilantro; pork belly, scallions, cucumbers, and hoisin sauce; stir-fried beef, onions, greens, and homemade barbecue sauce; Peking duck, scallions, cucumbers, and hoisin sauce; and fried tofu, pickled carrots, cilantro, crushed peanuts, and a sweet-and-spicy sauce. They also make terrific popcorn chicken that comes in a cone, vegetable spring rolls, and tea eggs, and they’ve just added a new fried bao with popcorn chicken that we can’t wait to try. Various combos range from eight to eleven dollars, a great deal for such unusual food. “Our goal is to serve New Yorkers with real, authentic Asian cuisine and change the perception of Asian food,” David added. The small cart changes locations daily, from TriBeCa to SoHo to DUMBO and now Williamsburg as well. All items are made fresh to order, and there are Taiwanese sodas and the yogurt-based Kaya Refresher to wash it all down.

THE CONTENDERS 2014: MANAKAMANA

A mother and daughter eat ice cream in experimental documentary MANAKAMANA

MANAKAMANA (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, November 26, 7:30
Series runs through January 16
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.manakamanafilm.com

If you’re an adventurous filmgoer who likes to be challenged and surprised, the less you know about Pacho Velez and Stephanie Spray’s Manakamana, the better. But if you want to know more, here goes: Evoking such experimental films as Michael Snow’s Wavelength, Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma, and Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests as well as the more narrative works of such unique auteurs as Jim Jarmusch and Abbas Kiarostami, Manakamana is a beautiful, meditative journey that is sure to try your patience at first. The two-hour film, which requires a substantial investment on the part of the audience, takes place in a five-foot-by-five-foot cable car in Nepal that shuttles men, women, and children to and from the historic Manakamana temple, on a pilgrimage to worship a wish-fulfilling Hindu goddess. With Velez operating the stationary Aaton 7 LTR camera — the same one used by Robert Gardner for his 1986 documentary Forest of Bliss — and Spray recording the sound, the film follows a series of individuals and small groups as they either go to or return from the temple, traveling high over the lush green landscape that used to have to be traversed on foot before the cable car was built. A man and his son barely acknowledge each other; a woman carries a basket of flowers on her lap; an elderly mother and her middle-age daughter try to eat melting ice-cream bars; a pair of musicians play their instruments to pass the time.

A heavy metal band takes a picture of themselves in meditative documentary

Each trip has its own narrative, which must be partly filled in by the viewer as he or she studies the people in the cable car and the surroundings, getting continually jolted as the car glides over the joins. The film is a fascinating look into human nature and technological advances in this era of surveillance as the subjects attempt to act as normal as possible even though a camera and a microphone are practically in their faces. Produced at the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory at Harvard, Manakamana consists of eleven uncut shots of ten-to-eleven minutes filmed in 16mm, using rolls whose length roughly equals that of each one-way trip, creating a kind of organic symbiosis between the making and projecting of the work while adding a time-sensitive expectation on the part of the viewer. A film well worth sticking around for till the very end — and one that grows less and less claustrophobic with each scene — Manakamana is screening November 26 at 7:30 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of films the institution believes will stand the test of time. Among the other films in the series are Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (followed by a Q&A with writer-director Linklater and costar Ethan Hawke), and Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (followed by a discussion with star Tilda Swinton).

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: GENERATOR

Marina Abramovic, “Portrait with Blindfold,” framed fine art pigment print, 2014 (photo by Marco Anelli)

Marina Abramović, “Portrait with Blindfold,” framed fine art pigment print, 2014 (photo by Marco Anelli)

Sean Kelly Gallery
475 Tenth Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Saturday through December 6, 10:00/11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-239-1181
www.skny.com
www.immaterial.org

First, a word of warning: If you want to get all you can from “Generator,” Marina Abramović’s new show at Sean Kelly, just go and experience it with as little advance information as possible. Don’t go to the Tumblr site where you can see photos of people in the space. Don’t look at pictures on the Internet or the postcard at the gallery until after you’re done. Not having this knowledge will greatly enhance your involvement in this sensory-deprivation participatory event. All you need to know is that after putting all bags, jackets, and electronic devices in a locker, you will be blindfolded, and noise-canceling headphones will be placed over your ears by facilitators trained by artist Lynsey Peisinger. You will be led into a large, brightly lit room and told that it’s a slow-movement space and that you should raise your hand when you’re ready to be guided out. You can stay as long as you want; you can sit, you can lean against a wall, you can stand stock-still in the middle, or you can carefully wander around. You’ll be able to hear some sounds and see hints of light, but if you allow yourself to become immersed in the piece, you’ll soon find you are looking deep inside yourself, both frightened and exhilarated, feeling lost and lonely as you yearn for any kind of contact. Finding a wall is comforting, but brushing by another human, a complete stranger, is such a necessary relief that you’ll want to hug that person, although that’s probably not a great idea. However, occasionally Abramović herself will be in the gallery, giving out hugs of her own. I went on an afternoon in which there were very few other people there, so I had large swaths of space to myself, increasing my loneliness, but when there is a line to get in, you’re obviously far more likely to make much more contact while you slither your way through. (Capacity is sixty-eight.)

Abramović’s career took a giant leap forward during her 2010 MoMA retrospective, “The Artist Is Present,” which re-created many of her previous performance pieces (including one in which visitors walk through a narrow doorway “guarded” on each side by naked men and women) and, most famously, an interactive work in which individuals sit across from her at a table and engage in a unique kind of staring contest. So now, even though the artist is usually not present at Sean Kelly, she hovers on the edge of your mind as you delve into this stark world she has created. “It took me twenty-five years to have the courage, the concentration, and the knowledge to come to this, the idea that there would be art without any objects, solely an exchange between performer and public,” she writes about the exhibition. “I needed to go through all of the preparations that I did, I needed to make all the works that came before; they were leading to this point.” Nothingness has never quite felt like this before.