twi-ny recommended events

JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING

Marie (Dominique Thorne, right) receives an unexpected visitor in Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (photo © Matthew Murphy, 2023)

JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 19, $74-$205.50
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

“I feel like I moved in for the day,” Jennifer (Rachel Christopher) says in Jocelyn Bioh’s Broadway debut, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. An aspiring journalist, Jennifer is a kind of doppelganger for the audience; she arrived just as Jaja’s hair salon on the corner of 125th St. and St. Nicholas Ave. in Harlem opened, asked for long micro braids, and has spent the entire morning and afternoon with Miriam (Brittany Adebumola), an optimistic stylist from Sierra Leone. It’s Jennifer’s first time in the shop, and she carefully watches from her chair to the side as people come and go and the stylists laugh, argue, gossip, and wonder what’s next for them. Just as Jennifer starts to feel part of this tight-knit community, so does the audience.

It’s an auspicious, and very hot, July day in 2019, and Senegalese owner Jaja (Somi Kakoma) is getting married that night. Her eighteen-year-old daughter, wannabe writer Marie (Dominique Thorne), is managing the shop and the stylists, who can be a handful: the Ghanaian Sista Bea (Zenzi Williams), a busybody who thinks she’s better than the others and is hoping to open her own salon; the Senegalese Aminata (Nana Mensah), who loves hanging around the shop, especially while she’s having issues with her husband; Miriam, a patient and agreeable young woman with a surprise secret; and the Nigerian Ndidi (Maechi Aharanwa), a fast, talented, fun-loving braider who the older Bea is jealous of.

Over the course of the day, a variety of customers come and go. The nasty and rude Vanessa (Lakisha May) complains about nearly everything, from the way the others look at her to the chair. Chrissy (Kalyne Coleman) is a cheerful young woman who wants to look like Beyoncé. Sheila (May) is a businesswoman who can’t stop talking on her phone. Laniece (Coleman) is a local DJ. And Michelle (Coleman) is a nervous mother who has made an appointment with Ndidi instead of her usual stylist, Bea, who is furious and feels betrayed.

Also stopping by are a series of men, including Franklin the Sock Man, Olu the Jewelry Man, and Eric the DVD Man, selling their wares, in addition to Aminata’s husband, James (all portrayed by Michael Oloyede).

Shortly after Jaja (Somi Kakoma) arrives, the narrative takes a sharp, unexpected turn, forcing everyone to face a hard dose of contemporary reality.

Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding takes place in a Harlem salon (photo © Matthew Murphy, 2023)

In School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, Bioh, who has appeared in such plays as Suzan-Lori Parks’s In the Blood, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Everybody and An Octoroon, and Jaclyn Backhaus’s Men on Boats, follows a group of young Ghanaian students seeking to be selected as a contestant for Miss Ghana, raising issues of jealousy, fairness, and colorism.

She expands on the concept of Black style in Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, celebrating individuality and woman entrepreneurship while also exploring immigration and the African diaspora in America. In a program note, Bioh explains, “To many people, they are just ‘hair braiding ladies,’ random women people pass by on the street, but to me, they are heroes, craftswomen and artists with beautiful, gifted and skilled hands.” Each character has her hopes and dreams, her fears and desires, that feel real, not cartoonish or pedagogic.

At the center is Marie, who, despite being the youngest, is both friend and mother to the other stylists while figuring out how she can afford to go to college and start up her own life. “You know, I really don’t wanna talk about ANY of this anymore, okay?! I don’t want to talk about school or my mother or her ‘connections’ or whatever you saw on the news!” she blurts out, succumbing to the pressure. “Trust me — this is already all I think about every single day. Every single second! For once, can I just have a day where I come here, do my work — in peace — and go home? Is that okay?!”

The show is lovingly directed by Obie winner Whitney White (soft, On Sugarland), balancing uproarious comedy and wit with sincerity and grace. The ensemble cast is outstanding, led by Thorne as Marie, who imbues her with an inner strength that is wise beyond her years yet existing on a knife’s edge. Adebumola is engaging as the warm and caring Miriam, Mensah is hilarious as Aminata, and Oloyede pulls off quite a feat in portraying all four male characters.

Dede Ayite nails the costumes, giving identity, dignity, and humor to each of the women. The effective lighting is by Jiyoun Chang, with lively sound and original music by Justin Ellington. David Zinn’s phenomenal set, a remarkably detailed salon that essentially puts the audience right in Jaja’s shop (and receives its own well-deserved applause), and Nikiya Mathis, who is responsible for the spectacular hair and wigs, are stars in themselves.

You won’t mind spending a lot more time in Jaja’s, moving in for a day or more.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

WAITING FOR GODOT

Close friends Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks star in TFANA adaptation of Waiting for Godot (photo by Hollis King)

WAITING FOR GODOT
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 23, $97-$132
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org

On the 1985 Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere,” David Byrne sings, “Well, we know where we’re goin’ / But we don’t know where we’ve been / And we know what we’re knowin’ / But we can’t say what we’ve seen / And we’re not little children / And we know what we want / And the future is certain / Give us time to work it out.”

I was thinking about that song while watching Arin Arbus’s spirited adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist Waiting for Godot at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn. Riccardo Hernandez’s set is a long, narrow, dusty platform that bisects the seating from the back of the theater all the way to where the proscenium stage would have been, which now leads into a dark void. Two yellow traffic lines run down the middle, making the set a postapocalyptic road to nowhere.

The orchestra features three rows of seats on either side of the abandoned thoroughfare, while the mezzanine and balcony have chairs on three sides. As the crowd enters, Estragon, aka Gogo (Michael Shannon), is sitting on a rock, deep in thought, or as deep in thought as he can get. Opposite him is a bare tree. After several minutes, he tries to take off one of his boots, with no success. “Nothing to be done,” he says as Vladimir, aka Didi (Paul Sparks), joins him.

Through nearly the entire 145-minute show (including intermission), Didi doesn’t step on the yellow lines, nimbly leaping over them or walking or standing right next to them. Sparks is a marvel to watch as he avoids the lines often without looking down at them, as if via muscle memory or like they are emitting some kind of negative energy. Meanwhile, Gogo doesn’t even seem to notice the lines, dragging his feet, either bare or in wretched shoes (go-go boots?), striding on them as if they’re not there.

The yellow lines, and the two protagonists’ different interaction with them, amplify the duality inherent in the play in a way that I have to admit has never stood out to me before, offering fascinating nuance to a work I have now experienced five times in the last nine years, on and off Broadway and online, by Irish, English, American, and Yiddish companies.

Two yellow lines run down the center of the stage at TFANA’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center (photo by Hollis King)

Waiting for Godot unfurls in an unidentified time and place. A pair of disheveled men discuss food, feet, and suicide while waiting for a mysterious figure they’ve never met to arrive, as if he will bring meaning to their lives. “Time has stopped,” Didi says when Pozzo listens to his pocket watch. Pontificating on their situation, Didi says, “We wait. We are bored. [He throws up his hand.] No, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let’s go to work! In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!”

In each act a carnivalesque man named Pozzo (Ajay Naidu) and his servant, Lucky (Jeff Biehl), pass through, the former snapping his whip, the latter carrying a suitcase and a picnic basket and tied to a rope like a horse. In addition, a young boy (Toussaint Francois Battiste) shows up with important information at the end of each act.

There are two of nearly everything in the play: Vladimir’s and Estragon’s nicknames are doubled: Didi and Gogo. There are two yellow lines down the road, dividing it into two geographic sections. There are two acts over two days, with no past and no future. Didi and Gogo are two friends who seem to be unable to exist without each other, no matter how hard they might try. Pozzo and Lucky are physically connected by the rope. Lighting his second pipe, Pozzo enthuses, “The second is never so sweet . . . as the first I mean. But it’s sweet just the same.”

There are only two props, the rock and the tree. After intermission, there are two green leaves on the tree. The boy, who is solo, speaks of his abused brother, as if his sibling might be a doppelganger.

Even actors Shannon and Sparks are like their own duo; they are close personal friends who brought the show to TFANA as a unit. They have previously performed together onstage — including in The Killer at the Polonsky — and in movies and on television.

Didi (Paul Sparks) and Gogo (Michael Shannon) juggle hats in Waiting for Godot (photo by Hollis King)

Fortunately, Arbus (Des Moines and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, both with Shannon) does not get bogged down by the doubling. This Godot (accent on the first syllable) is loud and aggressive, with less of the kind of vaudeville shtick that many productions revel in. The characters don’t wear the traditional bowlers; when Didi and Gogo swap their hats and Lucky’s, it is not merely a funny skit but refers to the interchangeability of people, as Didi suggests that he can take over for Pozzo and Gogo can be Lucky. In addition, just as the boy does not get beaten but his brother does, Gogo gets roughed up every night but Didi wakes up unharmed.

The dichotomy also relates to the two thieves who are crucified with Jesus; Didi points out how only one of the four evangelists wrote that one thief was saved, evoking Didi and Gogo’s potential fate while they wait for Godot. Perhaps the double yellow lines are a kind of cross, which could explain in part why Didi avoids touching it out of fear of damnation.

“The road is free to all,” Pozzo says. Didi responds, “That’s how we looked at it,” to which Pozzo replies, “It’s a disgrace. But there you are.” Gogo concludes, “Nothing we can do about it.”

Shannon’s (Grace, Long Day’s Journey into Night) Gogo is bleak and downtrodden, shoulders hunched, while Sparks’s (Grey House, Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo) Didi is mischievous and hopeful. Whenever Didi is asked what they’re doing, Sparks spits out “Waiting for Godot” like the words don’t matter. At one point they even sit together in the audience, fully enjoying themselves.

Naidu (The Master and Margarita, The Kid Stays in the Picture) is boisterous as Pozzo, while Biehl (The Merchant of Venice, Life Sucks.) beautifully morphs from his stiff, silent servant to deliver Lucky’s long, complex monologue about tennis, quaquaquaqua, the divine, and nothingness. Battiste (A Raisin in the Sun) does a fine job as the boy, who offers a promise that might never come to fruition.

Susan Hilferty’s costumes turn the raggedy Didi and Gogo into hobos, although there is no boxcar to come and whisk them away. Chris Akerlind’s lighting takes the scenes from night to day with a nearly blinding, heavenly blast, while Palmer Hefferan’s sound maintains the feeling of being lost. The choreography, primarily Lucky’s dance, is by Byron Easley. Beckett expert Bill Irwin, who has portrayed Didi and Lucky, serves as creative consultant.

“That passed the time,” Didi says at one point. Gogo quickly replies, “It would have passed in any case.” Didi responds, “Yes, but not so rapidly.”

And so goes another Godot, a lovely way to pass the time while asking, but never answering, two of life’s biggest questions: Who are we, and what are we waiting for?

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

KING OF THE JEWS

Volksdeutscher F. X. Wohltat (Daniel Oreskes) has strong words for Dr. I. C. Gotterman (Richard Topol) in King of the Jews (photo by Russ Rowland)

KING OF THE JEWS
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 18, $99
here.org

Leslie Epstein’s theatrical adaptation of his controversial 1979 novel, King of the Jews, arrives at a perilous moment in Jewish history, as Israel responds to the horrific October 7 Hamas attack that killed at least 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages. The current rise in antisemitism, specifically related to Israel’s bombing of Gaza and preparation for a ground incursion to destroy the terrorist organization, is palpable throughout the show, which takes place in occupied Poland in 1939. Director Alexandra Aron’s immersive staging is powerful and hard-hitting, but, alas, the narrative, despite a strong start, can’t quite live up to its promise.

Set designer Lauren Helpern has transformed HERE’s upstairs theater into the Astoria Café, the only Jewish nightclub allowed to remain open in pre-WWII Lodz, Poland. The audience sits at small tables and on benches, surrounded by a mirrored bar. On stage is music and comedy; several tables are reserved for the characters, who eat, drink, debate issues, and watch the entertainment.

When you first walk into the space, clarinetist and saxophonist Matt Darriau of the Klezmatics and pianist Raphael D’Lugoff are playing jazz tunes. (They start thirty minutes before showtime, so it’s worth coming early.) You can take a walk around the room and check out the stocked bar, a classic old telephone, and a Polish menu.

The Astoria is owned by the sycophantic Fried Rievesaltes (Dave Shalansky); his wife, vocalist Phelia Lubliver (Rachel Botchan), is the star attraction. The staff includes waiter Ferdinand Philosoff (John Little), who is not the best of philosophers; cook Herman Gutfreind (JP Sarro), who plays the trumpet and euphonium and spouts Marxism any chance he gets; and cellist and violinist Dorka Kleinweiss (Erica Spyres). The café regulars are Rabbi Martini (Allen Lewis Rickman) and Rabbi Verble (Robert Zukerman), who enjoy arguing and complaining; Schotter (David Deblinger), who tells awful jokes about the Jews and “Hamilton,” not wanting to say the name of the German führer; Hungarian amateur pianist M. M. Schpitalnik (Jonathan Spivey); and Dr. I. C. Gotterman (Richard Topol), who is infatuated with Phelia.

One evening, a young boy (Wesley Tiso) dives in through the window. It’s right around curfew, when the Death’s Headers of the SS patrol the streets. Volksdeutscher F. X. Wohltat (Daniel Oreskes) arrives, looking for the boy, but the people in the café have hidden him (rather poorly). A big bear of a man, Wohltat proclaims he is there to help the Jews.

“You see, I know our Jews! And perhaps some of you know me? I was brought up here, in these streets, the same as you,” he boasts. “I am not ashamed to say that even though the blood of the Reich flows in my veins, I played boyish games and swam in the blue Dolna with members of your community. This is my beloved city, too. I am your neighbor, your friend.”

Pretending not to see the boy, Wohltat orders the Jews to form a Judenrat, “a council of ministers to rule Jewish life. . . . Of course, during wartime, we might have to ask them to carry out this task or that task. Like turning over someone who runs away, or anyone who tries to hide him. But you must agree: better for you Jews to do things yourselves than have others — like our friend the Obersturmfuhrer — do them for you.”

The Jews in the café discuss whether they should give up the boy or agree to the Judenrat, a council of elders that would make them collaborators with the enemy, who they refer to as the Blond Ones. They ultimately decide to keep the boy, so soon they are choosing their officers and a president. The doctor is ultimately put in charge. Infighting, backstabbing, and doubt ensue as Wohltat asks them to pick a hundred Jews to be sent to work while promising that they will all eventually have a new homeland in Madagascar.
The nature of their bargain is clear: “If a Jew puts his head into the mouth of a leopard, is the leopard liable because it is his nature to chew?” Rabbi Martini asks.

Rabbi Martini (Allen Lewis Rickman) doesn’t like what he sees in King of the Jews (photo by Russ Rowland)

Epstein, who comes from an eminent family — his father, Philip G. Epstein, and uncle, Julius J. Epstein, cowrote such films as The Man Who Came to Dinner, Casablanca (with Howard Koch), and Arsenic and Old Lace, and his son, Theo, was the GM who helped guide the Boston Red Sox to their first World Series championship in more than eighty years in 2004 — does not make things easy for the audience. The title character, inspired by the real-life council elder Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski, is a deeply conflicted man and complicated figure; he brazenly and embarrassingly lusts after Phelia and is distressed that he appears to have lost his magic touch as a doctor. He is ably portrayed by Topol, who has become a go-to actor in Jewish dramas, playing Jewish men in Paula Vogel’s Indecent, Clifford Odets’s Awake & Sing!, and Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic, with Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class opening at BAM in January, about a 1941 Polish pogrom.

The rest of the cast is solid, with fine turns by Botchan (Indecent, The Sorceress) and Spyres (Once, Into the Woods), who must consider sacrifices only women can make, and the always excellent Oreskes (Oslo, The Seagull / Woodstock, NY), who lets Wohltat’s evil build scene by scene.

Aron (A Night in the Old Marketplace, Naked Old Man) puts the audience right in the midst of it all, making the air of antisemitism stifling. Zach Blane’s lighting, Jane Shaw’s sound, and Oana Botez’s costumes — complete with big yellow Stars of David on the Jews’ clothing — add to the overall feeling of impending doom. The café denizens are faced with a nearly impossible situation, but their individual concerns, worries, fears, and hopes lack consistency; the characters are not quite fully drawn. In the second act — the audience has to exit the house after the first act, returning to a slightly changed layout — the characters’ reactions to Wohltat’s orders seem more random, not as believable, perhaps in part because Epstein had to trim the novel’s plot considerably for the play.

King of the Jews does raise critical issues, especially in light of what is happening in Israel right now and the response around the world, but it falls short of being the important play it could have been. Nevertheless, certain lines resonate deeply.

“Be brave, stand up, Jews,” the doctor says. “Who can say what a Jew is?” Philosoff asks. And Rabbi Verble sums it all up when he declares, “We two rabbis herby forbid the King of Heaven from punishing his people any longer. It’s enough! . . . We demand that the suffering stop!”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IVO DIMCHEV: IN HELL WITH JESUS / TOP 40

Get ready for the wildly unexpected in Ivo Dimchev’s In Hell with Jesus / Top 40 at La MaMa (photo by Krasimir Stoichkov)

Who: Ivo Dimchev and company
What: Interactive performance
Where: The Downstairs, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, 66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
When: November 16-26, $10-$30
Why: Bulgarian theater director, performance artist, activist, choreographer, singer-songwriter, and visual artist brings his unique talents to La MaMa with 2022’s In Hell with Jesus and the US premiere of 2023’s Top 40. The former is a musical, centered around an audition, that challenges political correctness in theater and beyond, conceived and directed by Dimchev and performed by him and Andrew Fremont-Smith, Cassondra James, Louis Schwadron, Xavier Smith, and Chris Tanner in madcap costumes; it asks the question, “Big dick, big house, or great sense of humor?” Dimchev, the founder and director of Bulgaria’s Humarts Foundation, wrote and choreographed the latter, which features songs from previous shows of his and a hefty amount of audience participation.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

DOC NYC 2023 CENTERPIECE: UNCROPPED

Photojournalist James Hamilton is the subject of fascinating documentary (photo by Jody Caravaglia)

UNCROPPED (D. W. Young, 2023)
Available online through November 26
Festival runs November 8-26 at IFC Center, SVA Theatre, Village East by Angelika, and Bar Veloce, $13-$30
www.docnyc.net
www.uncroppedfilm.com

Once upon a time, documentaries were primarily the purview of public television and a handful of small, independent theaters in big cities. But with the explosion of streaming services and technological improvements in camera phones, we now have the ability to see more nonfiction films than ever, taking us places we’ve never been before while introducing us to a wide range of sociopolitical issues and extraordinary, and nefarious, individuals. The fourteenth annual DOC NYC festival got underway November 8, kicking off nearly three weeks of more than two hundred films and special events, including thirty world premieres and twenty-six US debuts. It’s been exciting watching the growth of the festival itself, from its relatively humble beginnings in 2010.

The opening-night selection was Clair Titley’s The Contestant, about aspiring Japanese comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, who, unbeknownst to him, becomes a reality-show star; Sam Pollard and Llewellyn Smith’s South to Black Power is the closing-night film, a look at controversial New York Times columnist Charles Blow, with Pollard, Smith, and Blow participating in a Q&A.

The centerpiece is the world premiere of D. W. Young’s warm and lovely Uncropped, which is as gentle and unassuming as its subject, photographer James Hamilton, who should be a household name. But fame and fortune are clearly not the point for Hamilton, who grew up in Westport, Connecticut, and didn’t own his own camera until he was twenty. He’s lived in the same cramped Greenwich Village apartment since 1966 and has little online presence, especially when compared to several other photographers named James Hamilton.

“James’s work is refreshingly devoid of ego,” Sonic Youth cofounder Thurston Moore says in the film, letting out a laugh. “Let’s put it that way.”

The soft-spoken, easygoing Hamilton notes, “My whole career was all about having fun.”

And what fun it’s been.

Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine are among the many famous and not-so-famous people photographed by James Hamilton (photo by James Hamilton)

Hamilton got his start by forging a press pass to gain entry to the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969 and used the shots to get a staff job at Crawdaddy magazine. He later took pictures for the Herald, Harper’s Bazaar, the Village Voice, New York magazine, the London Times, and the New York Observer. He photographed rock stars and fashion icons; joined with print journalists to cover local, national, and international news events, including wars; shot unique behind-the-scene footage on such film sets as Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, Bill Paxton’s Frailty, and George A. Romero’s Knightriders; and captured life on the streets of New York City and elsewhere.

Among the people Young talks to are journalists Joe Conason, Alexandra Jacobs, Michael Daly, Thulani Davis, Richard Goldstein, Mark Jacobson, and Kathy Dobie, editors Eva Prinz and Susan Vermazen, and photographers David Lee and Sylvia Plachy. Young, who also edited the film and produced it with Judith Mizrachy, cuts in hundreds of Hamilton’s photos, which run the gamut from celebrities, politicians, and musicians to business leaders, kids playing, and brutal war scenes, accompanied by a jazzy score by David Ullmann, performed by Ullmann, Vincent Sperrazza, and others.

Hamilton, who has never been a fan of being interviewed, sits down and chats with Plachy, who shares fabulous stories of their time at the Voice; journalist and close friend Jacobson, who Hamilton took pictures for on numerous adventures; Conason, who discusses their transition from the Voice to the Observer; Dobie, who gets personal; and Prinz and Moore together. “We never crop James Hamilton’s photographs,” Prinz points out, raving about his remarkable eye for composition.

Uncropped, which will be available online through November 26, also serves as an insightful document of more than fifty years of New York City journalism, tracing the beginnings of underground coverage to today’s online culture where professional, highly qualified, experienced writers and photographers are having trouble getting published and paid. But through it all, Hamilton has persevered.

in his previous film, The Booksellers, Young focused on bibliophiles who treasure physical books as works of art even as the internet changes people’s relationships with books and how they read and purchase them. One of the experts Young meets with is Nancy Bass Wyden, owner of the Strand, an independent bookstore founded in 1927 and still hanging on against Amazon, B&N, and other chains and conglomerates.

Near the end of Uncropped, Young shows Hamilton and Dobie perusing the outdoor stacks of cheap books at the Strand, dinosaurs still relishing the perhaps-soon-to-be-gone days of print but always in search of more fun.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

GEOFF SOBELLE: FOOD

Geoff Sobelle enjoys quite a meal in Food (photo by Stephanie Berger)

FOOD
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 2-18, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.geoffsobelle.com

In his 1825 book Physiology of Taste or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, French lawyer and culinary expert Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are,” which eventually morphed into the simpler, more familiar phrase “You are what you eat.”

If that is true, I have genuine concerns for theater artist Geoff Sobelle.

The Brooklyn-based Sobelle is back at BAM’s appropriately named Fishman Space — yes, seafood is on the menu — with Food, his latest foray into magical storytelling that includes HOME and The Object Lesson. But getting a ticket might be harder than reserving a table at one of the city’s hottest restaurants.

The eighty-minute piece might feed your hunger for unique and unusual entertainment, but it won’t satisfy your stomach; no food or drink is served, although it will be seen, sniffed, and touched. But Sobelle will satiate your appetite for pure, unadulterated pleasure with the show, in which he reimagines the concept of “farm to table” as he explores humanity’s overconsumption and preference for capitalism at the expense of the natural environment.

Sobelle is an ingenious storyteller, incorporating unexpected props, analog technology, and audience participation into his presentations. Food unfurls around a large dinner table with fancy place settings, evoking both Judy Chicago and Luis Buñuel; ten audience members are seated on each of three sides, with several rows of traditional rafters behind them. Above the table is a large chandelier made of recycled plastic kitchen items, including bottles, cups, knives, spoons, and containers.

Geoff Sobelle pours wine in ingenious solo show Food (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Sobelle appears about fifteen minutes before the official start time, speaking with the ushers and scouting the crowd for potential contributors. He begins the evening with a meditative session asking the audience to close their eyes and imagine themselves back in the primordial ooze from which life emerged, all the way through to the current age, where human greed is on the verge of destroying the planet.

He then pours wine for those sitting at the table and gives several people menus; he brings each a plate with a microphone on it and takes their orders. The menus contain prompts that kick off food-related shtick that is very funny while also making salient points about where our food comes from and how and where we eat it. For example, when the person next to me ordered a baked potato, Sobelle planted seed pieces in dirt and then pulled the potato from the mound, wrapped it in aluminum foil, held a lit match under it, and had our side of the table pass the “hot potato” to the expectant orderer.

Some of the prompts ask the audience member to describe a favorite meal and how to make it, leading to some exquisitely detailed recipes related off the cuff. As I hungrily listened to these descriptions, my mind raced, wondering what I would say if Sobelle brought the microphone to me.

A significant portion of the enjoyment of the show relies on the improvisatory skills of the audience, which will of course change every night. Judging from photos I’ve seen of what Sobelle has eaten at other performances — I don’t want to give anything away, but he does devour a rather unique meal, one that is beyond awe-inspiring and far from mouthwatering — his menu changes each evening as well, a commentary on gluttony of all sorts, not just comestibles.

Sobelle accomplishes various tricks and sleight-of-hand with frequent collaborator Steve Cuiffo, an illusionist who revealed his lifelong relationship with magic in Lucas Hnath’s A Simulacrum. Also contributing to the warm and intimate atmosphere of fun and fascination are lighting designer Isabella Byrd and sound designer Tei Blow. Sobelle codirects the show with Lee Sunday Evans, who has helmed such unique theater pieces as Dance Nation, Intractable Woman: A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya, and Sobelle’s HOME, in which dancers and designers build a house onstage and move in.

A chandelier of recycled plastic hangs over an immense dinner table in Food at BAM (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Once Sobelle is finished with his “meal,” he transforms the table into something else entirely and takes off on another narrative into the past, with a series of surprises that are simply dazzling and filled with amazement. Again, I don’t want to spoil it, but I do have to admit that one particular object, a well-known holiday toy, took me back to my childhood, as did a discussion of diners. Suddenly I was ten years old, ordering the twin-cheeseburger platter and asking my father if, like him, my “potato and vegetable” side dishes could be French fries and French fries. Sobelle’s show goes from the macro to the micro, revealing the who, what, where, when, and how behind the cultivation, acquisition, consumption, and cost of food and other items, making us question their impact on the health, and wealth, of our nation.

But a final word of caution: You are probably better off eating before the show than after, as the environmental cost of food will have a deep-seated effect on your appetite.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JUNGLE BOOK REIMAGINED

JUNGLE BOOK reimagined
Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall
Broadway at 60th St.
November 16-18, pay-what-you-wish (suggested price $35), 7:30
www.lincolncenter.org
www.akramkhancompany.net

“We are now living in unprecedented and uncertain times, not only for our species but for all species on this planet,” artistic director, dancer, and choreographer Akram Khan notes. “And the root cause of this conundrum is because we have forgotten our connection to our home, our planet. We all inhabit it, we all take from it, and we all build on it, but we have forgotten to return our respect for it.”

Khan takes a new look at The Jungle Book, which was first an 1894 collection by Rudyard Kipling and then a popular 1967 Disney animated musical film, in Jungle Book reimagined, a two-hour show that focuses on colonization, refugees, gender, and climate change. The story is written by Tariq Jordan, with music by Jocelyn Pook; Khan is the director and choreographer, with sound by Gareth Fry, lighting by Michael Hulls, visual stage design by Miriam Buether, art and animation direction by Adam Smith, and video design by Nick Hillel.

The work is performed by Maya Balam Meyong, Tom Davis-Dunn, Harry Theadora Foster, Filippo Franzese, Bianca Mikahil, Max Revell, Matthew Sandiford, Pui Yung Shum, Elpida Skourou, Holly Vallis, Jan Mikaela Villanueva, and Luke Watson.

Tickets are pay-what-you-wish, with a suggested price of $35, to see this multimedia production appropriate for children ten and up.