this week in broadway

THE COLLABORATION

Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope) collaborate in new Broadway play (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

THE COLLABORATION
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 11, 474-$318
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

In the fall of 1985, gallerist Tony Shafrazi and art dealer Bruno Bischofberger presented “Warhol Basquiat: Paintings” on Mercer St., an exhibition of works made in tandem by Pop Art maestro Andy Warhol, looking to restore himself to relevance, and rising street-art superstar Jean-Michel Basquiat, who wanted to reach the next level of fame and fortune. The story of this unusual alliance is told in Anthony McCarten’s boldly titled The Collaboration, extended through February 11 at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

While Basquiat and Warhol’s teaming up might have been a lightning strike of an idea in the art world, it’s more than a bit presumptuous to declare that it was the collaboration; if you didn’t know what the play was about, the title wouldn’t make you first think of this unexpected partnership. That aside, it was a fascinating moment in art history, and just as the collaboration was not wholly successful, so goes The Collaboration on Broadway.

In September 1985, Vivian Raynor wrote about the exhibit in the New York Times, “It’s a version of the Oedipus story: Warhol, one of Pop’s pops, paints, say, General Electric’s logo, a New York Post headline, or his own image of dentures; his twenty-five-year-old protege adds to or subtracts from it with his more or less expressionistic imagery. The sixteen results — all ‘Untitleds,’ of course — are large, bright, messy, full of private jokes, and inconclusive.” The same can be said of the play itself.

Alternatively, artist Keith Haring wrote in “Painting the Third Man” in 1988, “Jean-Michel and Andy achieved a healthy balance. Jean respected Andy’s philosophy and was in awe of his accomplishments and mastery of color and images. Andy was amazed by the ease with which Jean composed and constructed his paintings and was constantly surprised by the never-ending flow of new ideas. Each one inspired the other to outdo the next. The collaborations were seemingly effortless. It was a physical conversation happening in paint instead of words. . . . For me, the paintings which resulted from this collaboration are the perfect testimony to the depth and importance of their friendship. The quality of the painting mirrors the quality of the relationship. The sense of humor which permeates all of the works recalls the laughter which surrounded them while they were being made.”

Meanwhile, poet, songwriter, and playwright Ishmael Reed offered little love for Warhol in his recent show, The Slave Who Loved Caviar, feeling that Warhol treated Basquiat like a mascot; Reed wrote, “As Basquiat, the Radiant Child of the downtown art scene of the 1980s, was sacrificed to sustain the dying career of a fading Super Star, Antonius was sacrificed so that Hadrian would recover from a mysterious illness.”

Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany) films Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope) in The Collaboration (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Part of McCarten’s Worship Trilogy, which also includes The Two Popes and Wednesday at Warren’s, Friday at Bill’s, The Collaboration takes place alternately in Bischofberger’s (Erik Jensen) Manhattan gallery, Warhol’s (Paul Bettany) studio near Union Square, and Basquiat’s (Jeremy Pope) loft apartment and studio on Great Jones St. At first both artists are hesitant to work together; being shown Basquiat’s paintings for the first time by Bischofberger, Warhol, referring to them as “art therapy things,” says, “They’re so . . . busy. Is it too much? Or am I getting old? And so much anger. All these skulls and gravestones everywhere. I thought I was bleak. And all these words and symbols, what’s it all mean? What’s he trying to say? Bruno? Do you know? And why do they have to be so ugly? Did he tell you? Does he talk about that? They’re so ugly and angry and yeah, well, they’re kinda violent. I’d be careful; he’s really in trouble, I think.”

Basquiat is also unsure of the potential partnership, telling Bischofberger, “I’m better than Andy. I don’t need this. . . . And how come he doesn’t paint anymore, you know? Just mechanically reproduces all these prints? There’s no soul. I’m Dizzy Gillespie, blowing a riff, he’s one of those pianos that plays all by itself. The same tune. Over and over. You seen those things? Pink, pink plonk, pinkety pinkety pink.”

Bischofberger, who represents both artists, promises Warhol, “It will be the greatest exhibition ever in the history of art.” Warhol says, “Please don’t exaggerate.” The dealer boasts, “Warhol versus Basquiat.” The Pop maestro wonders, “Oh, versus? Gee, you make it sound so macho, like a contest. I don’t know. I thought you said it would be a collaboration?” Bischofberger answers, “Painters are like boxers; both smear their blood on the canvas.” The promotional posters for the exhibition — which eventually will become more famous than the actual works (one of the original posters hangs in my apartment) — feature Warhol and Basquiat wearing boxing gloves, ready to do battle.

But soon the soft-spoken Warhol, who hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in more than twenty years but has amassed a fortune through his silkscreens, photography, films, and business savvy, is creating canvases with Basquiat, who is far more spontaneous and unpredictable, taking drugs, sleeping around (Krysta Rodriguez plays Maya, a fictionalized version of Basquiat’s girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk), and keeping his cash in the refrigerator.

Once the playwright finally gets Andy and Jean putting paint to canvas, their debates about the purpose of art sound a bit sanctimonious. No one knows what their conversation was really like: Within three years, they would both be dead, Basquiat in 1987 at the age of twenty-seven, Warhol in 1988 at the age of fifty-eight.

Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah (Things of Dry Hours, One Night in Miami), The Collaboration works best when Warhol and Basquiat get down to brass tacks, exploring what they might do together, each suspicious of the other’s motives and abilities. In roles previously played by David Bowie and Jeffrey Wright, respectively, in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film, Basquiat (Dennis Hopper was Bischofberger), Bettany (Love and Understanding, WandaVision) and Tony nominee Pope (Choir Boy, Ain’t Too Proud) are phenomenal. Pope embodies Basquiat’s untethered energy, his lust for life, and his social conscience, particularly when learning that his friend, graffiti artist Michael Stewart, is in the hospital after an altercation with the police. Bettany not only looks great in Warhol’s trademark white fright wig and black turtleneck and sneakers (the wigs are by Karicean “Karen” Dick and Carol Robinson, with sets and costumes by Anna Fleischle) but captures his awkward, strange public persona.

Rodriguez (Into the Woods, Seared) does what she can as the underwritten Maya, an amalgamation that stretches the truth of Basquiat’s relationships with women, and Jensen (Disgraced, How to Be a Rock Critic) provides a solid middle ground to highlight the disparity between his two artists.

Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany) watches Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope) paint in The Collaboration (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The narrative takes a sharp turn beginning at intermission, when large monitors just outside both sides of the stage show footage of Bettany’s Warhol and Pope’s Basquiat collaborating, painting on transparent glass, mimicking the style Warhol uses when filming Basquiat on his 16mm spring-wound Bolex movie camera. As they did prior to the beginning of the show, DJ theoretic spins thumping 1980s music from a booth on the stage as the prerecorded film plays.

During the second act, Kwei-Armah and McCarten, who has written such fact-based films as The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, and Bohemian Rhapsody and the book for the current Neil Diamond musical A Beautiful Noise, become obsessed with Warhol’s live footage of Basquiat (the projections are by Duncan McLean), so it’s hard to know where to look. (Oh, what Ivo van Hove has wrought.) A notoriously private person despite his fondness for late-night celebrity-studded parties, Warhol wants to capture the real Basquiat on film, but Basquiat doesn’t want to be seen as a commodity. This dichotomy further emphasizes the difference, and psychological distance, between Basquiat and Warhol, whose shows are still blockbusters today. (For example, Basquiat’s biographical “King Pleasure” in Chelsea last year and the Whitney’s 2018-19 “Andy Warhol — From A to Be and Back Again.”

None of Warhol’s footage exists today, so we don’t know what really happened, but what McCarten and Kwei-Armah depict grows more confusing and annoying by the second. We also don’t see enough of the artists’ collaboration itself, but that output is not considered among either one’s most well regarded works. Alas, the same can be said of the creators of the play. But as Warhol explains to Basquiat, “I don’t think there’s going to be a revolution, but if there is it will be televised, with commercial breaks, cause it’s all about brands now. Even us, we’re not painters, we’re brands. Jean. We’re brands. Well, you’re almost a giant brand, and after this exhibition with me you will be too. Then just watch the language change, Jean.”

The Collaboration concludes on the same note as Eduardo Kobra’s large-scale 2018 mural in Chelsea above the Empire Diner, a reimagined Mount Rushmore with the faces of Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, all of whom remain brands to this day.

BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY

Stephen McKinley Henderson is unforgettable as Pops in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Between Riverside and Crazy (photo by Joan Marcus 2022)

BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY
Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 19, $68-$210 (live simulcast $68)
2st.com/shows

At the 2015 Drama Desk Awards, I had the option of being seated in the audience with the cast and crew of any nominated show; without hesitation, I chose Stephen Adly Guirgis’s searing dark comedy Between Riverside and Crazy. The Atlantic Theater production had three nominations: Best Play, Outstanding Actor in a Play for the amazing Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Outstanding Director of a Play for legendary actor, teacher, and director Austin Pendleton. The show, which had just won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was up against such staunch competition as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Airline Highway, and Let the Right One In; among those competing for Best Musical were An American in Paris, Hamilton, and Something Rotten!

As the evening progressed, Pendleton slumped lower and lower into his chair as he, Henderson, and Guirgis failed to take home a trophy, losing each time to Curious Incident (Simon Stephens for Best Play, Alex Sharp for actor, and Marianne Elliott for director). In January 2015, Between Riverside and Crazy received an encore run at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, with nearly the full original cast. Last month, the show opened at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater on Broadway, where it has been extended through February 19. It still packs the same punch it did almost nine years ago at the Atlantic.

The extended family of Between Riverside and Crazy makes a toast (photo by Joan Marcus 2022)

The 130-minute show (with intermission) unfolds in a cramped rent-controlled apartment and rooftop on Riverside Drive (the rotating set is by Walt Spangler), where the recently widowed Walter “Pops” Washington (Henderson) lives with a motley crew of younger folks, including his ne’er-do-well son, Junior (Common), who is on parole; Junior’s scantily clad girlfriend, Lulu (Rosal Colón); and Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar), a tough-talking young man in recovery who Pops has taken in. All three call Walter either Pop, Pops, or Dad, even though he’s hardly the loving, nurturing type. Pops spends most of his time in the kitchen, eating pie, taking swigs of alcohol, and sitting in his wife’s wheelchair, pontificating on life.

His daily reflections don’t exactly reflect popular psychology. As Oswaldo discusses his health and why he no longer eats Ring Dings and baloney, which he ate because he didn’t feel safe or cared for by his parents, Oswaldo tells Pops, “I’m not trying to get all up in your business, but maybe that’s also the reason you always be eating pie — because of, like, you got emotionalisms — ya know?” Pops replies, “Emotionalisms.” Oswaldo continues, “I know — it sounded funny at first to me too — but emotionalisms is real, and pie — don’t take this wrong, but they say pie is like poison.” To which Pops concludes, “Pie ain’t like poison, Oswaldo — pie is like pie!”

A retired cop facing eviction, Pops is in a major fight with the city and the NYPD, demanding more cash in compensation for his shooting by a white rookie officer eight years earlier. One night his former partner, Det. Audrey O’Connor (Guirgis regular Elizabeth Canavan), and her fiancée, Lieutenant Caro (originally played by Michael Rispoli, though I saw understudy J. Anthony Crane, who was excellent; the role has now been taken over by Gary Perez), come over for dinner. They try to convince him to take the deal, as time is running out, but Pops stands by his principles while also understanding Caro’s motive in urging him to sign off. “An honorable man can’t be bought off,” he previously explained to Junior. “An honorable man doesn’t just settle a lawsuit ‘No Fault’ and lend his silence to hypocrisy and racism and the grievous violation of all our civil rights.”

Pops changes some of his views on life — and death — after a visit from the new church lady (Maria-Christina Oliveras) ends up sending him to the hospital.

Pops (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Lulu (Rosal Colón) share a moment in powerful New York play (photo by Joan Marcus 2022)

I called Between Riverside and Crazy one of the best plays of 2014, and currently it’s the best nonrevival on Broadway. (The best new musical on Broadway, Kimberly Akimbo, also got its start at the Atlantic.) Seventy-three-year-old Tony nominee Henderson (A Raisin in the Sun, Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot), a longtime staple in the work of August Wilson, is unforgettable as Pops, a character who’s hard not to love even as you learn some questionable things about him. Henderson has an endearingly round face, gentle eyes, and an infectious smile that makes you want to call him Pops too. The play is very much about fathers and sons: Pops’ relationship with Junior, Oswaldo’s troubles with his dad, and Pops’ feelings about his own father. Even Det. O’Connor tells Pops, “You’re like my father.”

The set includes a rooftop veranda where Henderson gets even closer to his adoring audience. The rest of the cast is terrific under Pendleton’s (Gidion’s Knot, Orson’s Shadow) expert direction. Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the “A” Train), who grew up on Riverside Drive, writes gritty, believable dialogue and creates hard-hitting situations that are quintessentially New York, mixing comedy and tragedy with subtle, and not-so-subtle, narrative shifts.

If I were going to the 2023 Tony Awards and had the choice of which show to sit with, I just might choose Between Riverside and Crazy again. In the meantime, get yourselves to the Hayes and become part of this beautiful extended family.

KIMBERLY AKIMBO

Kimberly (Victoria Clark) and Seth (Justin Cooley) become good friends in Kimberly Akimbo (photo © Joan Marcus)

KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 26, $84 – $419
kimberlyakimbothemusical.com

Broadway shows about death and dying tend to be serious affairs. Plays such as The Shadow Box, Marvin’s Room, Angels in America, ’night, Mother, and Whose Life Is It Anyway? are not lighthearted comedies; Wit is not exactly a laugh riot. (By the way, those six works have four Pulitzers between them.) But right now, Mike Birbiglia is facing his own mortality every night in his hilarious one-man show The Old Man & the Pool, at the Vivian Beaumont, while Kimberly Akimbo, an unusual, life-affirming musical about a high school girl with a terminal illness, is delighting audiences at the Booth.

Making a smooth transition from its fall 2021 debut at the Atlantic, Kimberly Akimbo is the must-see musical of the season. Adapted by Pulitzer winner David Lindsay-Abaire from his 2000 play of the same name, the show tackles how awkward kids can be during their teen years, as evidenced by the title. Kimberly Levaco (Victoria Clark), who is approaching her sixteenth birthday, becomes friends with super-nerd Seth (Justin Cooley), who is obsessed with anagrams; rearranging the letters in her name, he rechristens her Cleverly Akimbo. The show, the character, and Clark are all that and more.

Kimberly has an extremely rare genetic disorder, similar to progeria, in which she ages at four or five times the normal rate. Most girls look forward to turning sweet sixteen, but for Kimberly, she would be nearing the equivalent of eighty; she is magnificently portrayed by Tony winner Clark, who is sixty-three but infuses the part with a glorious enthusiasm and affection for life and what it offers, living every minute to its fullest, understanding it could — and will — all be over at any second.

Kimberly’s mother, Pattie (Alli Mauzey), is pregnant, stuck at home with carpal tunnel in both hands and making videos for her unborn child. “There’s a high probability that I might be dead soon. / So I won’t be around when you’re growing up, / and this video is the only way for you to know who I was. / And I want you to know who I was because / people are going to tell you things about me that just aren’t true,” she sings insensitively, bringing up her own potential death and focusing on her fetus instead of paying attention to Kimberly, who really is dying and might never get to meet her sibling.

Kimberly’s father, Buddy (Steven Boyer), is a low-level gambler and drinker who works at a gas station and does not know how to express love for his daughter; he’s still too much of a child himself. “I should be happy for her,” he sings when she makes a new friend, but he doesn’t know how. “I should be happy.” Later, he says, “I never pictured myself a father. I mean, I like kids, I just . . . I’m more of a bachelor uncle type.” He is more excited than Kimberly when he wins a Game Boy in a bet.

Kimberly (Victoria Clark, center) has issues with her parents (Alli Mauzey and Steven Boyer) in Broadway musical (photo © Joan Marcus)

Kimberly teams up with Seth for their sophomore bio class project, in which they have to explore a disease. Seth wants to use Kimberly’s condition, but she’s not so sure. Meanwhile, the quartet of Delia (Olivia Elease Hardy), Martin (Fernell Hogan), Aaron (Michael Iskander), and Teresa (Nina White) is pairing up for the project and preparing for Show Choir, a competition against other schools. In a fab subplot, they are also trying to figure out how to pair up relationship-wise, not quite knowing yet who’s gay or straight and who likes who.

They are planning on performing a medley from Dreamgirls.. It’s no accident that Lindsay-Abaire chose that particular musical, whose title song begins, “Every man has his own special dream / and your dream’s just about to come true / Life’s not as bad as it may seem if you / open your eyes to what’s in front of you.” High school kids are supposed to dream about the future, but Kimberly is running out of time. Meanwhile their main rival, West Orange, is doing Evita, a musical about Argentinian leader Eva Perón, whose life was cut short by cancer at the age of thirty-three.

Everything goes even more akimbo when Buddy’s sister, Debra (Bonnie Milligan), the black sheep of the family, arrives unexpectedly; the Levacos had escaped Lodi to get away from Debra, who has a penchant for breaking the law with a greedy selfishness and spending time in the hoosegow. She has a master plan involving bank fraud and a stolen US mailbox — itself a funny prop because the younger generations today mainly think of them as relics in the age of social media and texting, similar to pay phones — and attempts to get Kimberly, Seth, Delia, Martin, Aaron, and Teresa to help her with the scheme.

As Kimberly’s sixteenth birthday approaches, the cleverly askew storylines all come together for a poignant finale.

Debra (Bonnie Milligan) finds a crew to attempt a heist in Kimberly Akimbo (photo © Joan Marcus)

Kimberly Akimbo is about much more than a teen with a horrible disease; it’s a spectacularly insightful depiction of the joys and fears that teens experience, at school and at home, with friends and family, as they mature into young adults. Kimberly has an illness that strikes only one in fifty million people — meaning only seven people in the United States might have it — but she represents us all, children and grown-ups. Lindsay-Abaire’s (Rabbit Hole, Ripcord) book and lyrics capture the exhilarating highs and the devastating lows that are parts of everyday life, which is like an endless series of anagrams we try to unravel; when Pattie says, “I hate getting old,” she’s not just speaking for herself. And when she shares her anxiety over having another baby and Kimberly declares, “Scared it would be like me?,” it’s a feeling many can relate to. As Kimberly sings in “Anagram”: “With a change of perspective . . . ha-ha-ha-ha . . . / nothing’s defective / I wonder what you see / when you look at me.”

Tony winner Jeanine Tesori’s (Fun Home, Caroline, or Change) score matches the ups and downs of the plot, from the tender piano of “Anagram” to the jubilance of “Skater Planet” and “This Time,” with playful choreography by Danny Mefford (how do they ice skate like that?), realistic costumes by Sarah Laux, and terrific sets by David Zinn that range from a suburban skating rink to a high school hallway to the Levaco living room.

Mauzey (Wicked, Cry-Baby) and Boyer (Hand to God, Time and the Conways) are terrific as Kimberly’s parents, who attempt to navigate through what for them is also a traumatic situation, knowing their teenage daughter will not be with them much longer, while Jimmy Awards finalist Cooley excels as the awkward but determined and hopeful Seth, and Milligan (Head Over Heels, Gigantic), as a thief, essentially steals every scene she’s in.

But the centerpiece of the show is the unforgettable performance by Clark (Gigi, Sister Act), who won her Tony for The Light in the Piazza before most of the rest of the cast members were born, or were mere babes. Her every movement and gesture, her voice, and, most critically, her bright, searching eyes will have you convinced she is a fifteen-year-old high school student carrying all the requisite baggage — while also knowing that any day could be her last. But the show is not about aging and death; it’s an infectious celebration of life.

At one point, Martin says, “Who cares? It’s not like any of this counts.” Seth responds, “What do you mean?” Martin answers, “I mean, high school. This town. It’s not even real life. It’s just the crap you have to get through before you get to the good part.” Teresa chimes in, “And what’s the good part?” Martin answers, “Um, the rest of our lives?” Kimberly Akimbo makes it clear that right now is the good part, no matter how long the rest of your life is.

OHIO STATE MURDERS

Audra McDonald stars in Adrienne Kennedy’s long-in-coming Broadway debut, Ohio State Murders (photo by Richard Termine)

OHIO STATE MURDERS
James Earl Jones Theatre
138 West Forty-Eighth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $114-$244
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

One of my favorite virtual presentations during the pandemic lockdown was “The Work of Adrienne Kennedy: Inspiration & Influence,” a collaboration between DC’s Round House Theatre and Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center, a deep dive into the career of playwright Adrienne Kennedy, who was born in Pittsburgh in 1931 and has only recently become more well known for her outstanding oeuvre. The Round House and McCarter hosted panel discussions and staged excellent recorded productions of He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, which made its world premiere at TFANA in 2018; Kennedy’s very personal 1996 play, the Obie-winning Sleep Deprivation Chamber, which she wrote with her son, Adam P. Kennedy; the world premiere of Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side, adapted from a 1999 story; and 1992’s Ohio State Murders, one of Kennedy’s Alexander Plays, featuring her alter ego, writer Suzanne Alexander. (Chicago’s Goodman Theatre also put on an exemplary livestreamed version of Ohio State Murders.)

I was excited when I heard that Ohio State Murders would mark Kennedy’s Broadway debut, at the age of ninety-one, in a new production starring six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald and inaugurating the James Earl Jones Theatre (previously the Cort), named after the ninety-one-year-old award-winning actor. And then I was devastated to find out that the show would be closing about a month early, shutting down January 15 instead of February 12 (following a December 8 opening), despite mostly rave reviews, the latest in a series of notable Black plays posting early closing notices since the end of the lockdown, including Ain’t No Mo’, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Chicken & Biscuits, and Thoughts of a Colored Man. I was even more shocked after seeing Tony winner Kenny Leon’s splendid production.

As the audience enters the theater, a recording of a 2015 interview with Kennedy, conducted by her grandson, Canaan Kennedy, plays on a loop, with the playwright talking about her life and career, focusing on having a family and studying and teaching at universities. Beowulf Boritt’s intellectual set consists of more than a dozen bookshelves at multiple angles, on the floor and hanging from the ceiling, as if Alexander is surrounded by an education that will not be available to her or other Black people. A metaphoric chill is in the air from a tear on the back wall through which appears a video projection of falling snow.

Ohio State Murders takes place at Ohio State University in Columbus, where Kennedy earned her BA. The frame story is that Suzanne has returned to Ohio State to give a lecture. She begins: “I was asked to talk about the violent imagery in my work; bloodied heads, severed limbs, dead father, dead Nazis, dying Jesus. The chairman said, we do want to hear about your brief years here at Ohio State but we also want you to talk about violent imagery in your stories and plays. When I visited Ohio State last year it struck me as a series of disparate dark landscapes just as it had in 1949, the autumn of my freshman year.”

Audra McDonald shifts between past and present in Ohio State Murders at James Earl Jones Theatre (photo by Richard Termine)

Suzanne goes on to share a heartbreaking tale of what happened to her at the school, involving a white English professor, Robert Hampshire (Bryce Pinkham), her violin-playing roommate, Iris Ann (Abigail Stephenson), her landlady, Mrs. Tyler (Lizan Mitchell), dorm head Miss Dawson (Mitchell), Aunt Louise (Mitchell), close friend Val (Mister Fitzgerald), and law student David Alexander (Fitzgerald), who will become her husband. Hampshire has a particular fondness for Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which deals with a rape/seduction and a strong-willed woman, and King Arthur, about whom Hampshire reads, “‘Till the blood bespattered his stately beard. / As if he had been battering beasts to death. / Had not Sir Ewain and other great lords come up, / His brave heart would have burst then in bitter woe: / ‘Stop!’ these stern men said, ‘You are bloodying yourself!’ ” Meanwhile, Suzanne is deeply affected after seeing Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent classic, Battleship Potemkin, about the 1905 Russian Revolution. Tess, Arthur, and the film all relate to Suzanne’s personal experience at college and illuminate the sources of her violent imagery.

McDonald (Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune) is marvelous as Suzanne, a role usually performed by two actors, one in the present, one in the past. (The original had Ruby Dee and Bellary Darden, while Lisagay Hamilton and Cherise Boothe shared the part in the New York premiere from TFANA in 2007.) Despite the tragedies and disappointments that hover around Suzanne, McDonald portrays her as remarkably even-tempered, almost to the point of being detached from the horrific truth. She weaves between 1950 and today with a graceful ease and a mere adjustment to her costume (a button-down blouse and long skirt, designed by Dede Ayite). Tony nominee Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Love’s Labour’s Lost) is calm and steady as Hampshire, who hides a dark secret. It’s always a pleasure to see Mitchell (On Sugarland, Cullud Wattah), who switches between three roles.

Tony winner Leon (Topdog/Underdog, A Soldier’s Play) maintains a gentle, almost frustrating pace, giving room for Kennedy’s words to tell the story without melodramatic embellishment. Justin Ellington’s sound and Allen Lee Hughes’s lighting enhance the mysterious atmosphere that pervades the play, along with Jeff Sugg’s projections and Dwight Andrews’s original music.

Following the curtain call, which includes the cast honoring a large photograph of Kennedy, the interview starts again. As with the rediscovery of Alice Childress, the Charleston-born Black playwright who made her posthumous Broadway debut last season with 1955’s Trouble in Mind, followed shortly by TFANA’s production of her 1966 drama Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, Kennedy’s is a voice that deserves to be heard, must be heard; her plays, many of which are experimental and challenge traditional narrative techniques, shine a light on racial injustice in America over the last half century and more, up to today. See Ohio State Murders on Broadway while you still can and help celebrate Adrienne Kennedy while she is still with us.

SOME LIKE IT HOT

Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee star in Some Like It Hot on Broadway (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

SOME LIKE IT HOT
Shubert Theatre
225 West Forty-Fourth St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave
Tuesday – Sunday through September 3, $94-$278
somelikeithotmusical.com

Call it “Some Like a Plot.”

Fifty years ago, Tony-winning composer Jule Styne, five-time Tony-nominated lyricist Bob Merrill, and two-time Tony-winning book writer Peter Stone turned Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning 1959 comedy, Some Like It Hot, into the Broadway musical Sugar, which ran for more than a year and was nominated for four Tonys. In 2002, Tony Curtis, who played Joe in the film, portrayed Osgood Fielding III in a national road tour revival.

Lighting does not strike thrice with the latest Broadway adaptation, titled Some Like It Hot, a lukewarm show scheduled to run at the Shubert into September. Among other things, book writers Matthew López and Amber Ruffin fiddle with the original plot so much that it ends up insulting the film as well as the audience, updating the story to supposedly make it more palatable for modern times.

The basic narrative is still intact. It’s 1933, and saxophonist Joe (Christian Borle) and stand-up bassist Jerry (J. Harrison Ghee) are having a difficult time making ends meet in Depression-era Chicago. After witnessing a gangland killing, they need to get out of town fast, and they disguise themselves as women — Joe as Josephine, Jerry as Daphne — to get jobs with Sweet Sue’s all-woman Society Syncopators, who are on a train trip heading to a big gig. Spats Columbo (Mark Lotito) and his goons are on the two men’s trail, with Detective Mulligan (Adam Heller) not far behind, tracking down Spats for racketeering, loan sharking, bootlegging, and now murder. Meanwhile, Joe has fallen madly in love with the lead singer of the Society Syncopators, Sugar Kane (Adrianna Hicks), and creates a fake male character in order to win her affections, while an older millionaire, the goofy but charming Osgood Fielding III (Kevin del Aguila), has taken an immediate shine to Daphne. Mistaken identity, slapstick comedy, clever dialogue, and more than a touch of misogyny ensue in the film, but the musical shoehorns in themes of race and gender identity that are as inconsistent as they are disrespectful to the original and the themes themselves.

Auditioning for a nightclub manager, Joe is furious when the man rejects Jerry because he’s Black, leading into the song “You Can’t Have Me (If You Don’t Have Him),” in which Joe actually sings, “Yes, he’s my brother through and through / Like the Marx, the Wrights, the Grimm! / Yeah, you can’t have ‘tea’ without the ‘two’ / And you can’t have me if you don’t have him.” Jerry: “You can’t break up a winning team.” Joe: “Like that crutch and Tiny Tim.” Jerry: “And you can’t have ‘ah’ without the” — Joe: “‘choo!’” It’s not exactly Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier on the run, shackled together in The Defiant Ones. Meanwhile, most people won’t get the inside joke when the manager and Jerry refer to Jerry as Houdini, a role Curtis played in a 1953 biopic.

The big show that Sweet Sue believes will make or break the band is in California instead of Florida as in the film, perhaps because California is a more liberal state and Florida is no favorite of the LBGTQIA+ community and allies. The casting is not race-blind; sometimes it’s important that a character is Black, and sometimes it’s not, which left me scratching my head more than once. Meanwhile, instead of Joe impersonating an oil scion who sounds like Cary Grant in order to woo Sugar, as in the film, in the musical Joe pretends to be screenwriter Kiplinger Von Der Plotz, who speaks in an insensitive fake-German accent (referencing the Austrian Wilder), saying such things as “Ah! Break a leg! Or, as we say in Vienna, ‘Brekken . . . ein lekken . . . gedorf.’”

Classic Hollywood film is transformed into a lukewarm musical at the Shubert (photo by Matthew Murphy)

One major new twist does work, and that involves Jerry’s transformation into Daphne, a change that the character embraces, even if it does screw around with the finale, one of the most famous final lines in Hollywood history, delivered by Joe E. Brown.

Faced with movie roles created by Curtis as Joe/Josephine, Jack Lemmon as Jerry/Daphne, Marilyn Monroe as Sugar, George Raft as Spats, Joan Shawlee as Sweet Sue, and Pat O’Brien as Agent Mulligan, the cast tries its best to make us forget about those actors, but it’s a mountainous task. Ghee (Mrs. Doubtfire, Kinky Boots) is wonderful as Jerry/Daphne, using his long, lithe body to challenge preconceptions and prejudices about race and gender. Unfortunately, Borle (Little Shop of Horrors, Something Rotten!) appears to be in a completely different show, lost in vaudeville shtick that even he doesn’t understand. In addition, while Ghee’s transformation into Daphne is both delightful and believable, Borle always looks like himself as Josephine, with nary an adjustment of voice or movement.

Hicks (Six) gives more agency to Sugar, famously played by Monroe as a dumb blond with a heart of gold, but she still has to sing such lines as “Tell the boys in the band Sugar’s giving up sax / I’m California bound / Cause I’m safer in the long run with an all-girl band / And it’s time to say adieu to every one night stand.” NaTasha Yvette Williams (Chicken & Biscuits, Porgy and Bess) nearly brings the house down whenever Sweet Sue McGinty belts one out, but a surprise revelation diminishes what was previously an intelligent, dedicated character. Lotito is hamstrung as Spats, but Del Aguila (Frozen, Rocky) has fun as Osgood.

Director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon, Mean Girls) cannot leave well enough alone, turning nearly part of Scott Pask’s set into a prop for a dance, no matter how improbable; a late scene with rows of doors drones on and on and on and was better done in Bugs Bunny cartoons. There’s also an inordinate amount of tap-dancing by Joe and Jerry as the Tip Tap Twins, which sent my tap-dancing-fan friends into paroxysms of joy but brought the narrative to a screeching halt every time for me. The music, by Marc Shaiman, and the lyrics, by Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who have previously collaborated on such Broadway musicals as Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, are unmemorable.

Turning movies into Broadway musicals is often problematic, especially when adapting a beloved, star-studded Hollywood classic. While changes and updates are often necessary and welcome, they are ideally done within the spirit of the original, or at least make sense and don’t feel haphazard. As Sue says in the musical, “Our entire future depends on this show being perfect.” But as we know from the film, “nobody’s perfect.”

BROADWAY REVIVALS: THE PIANO LESSON / DEATH OF A SALESMAN / 1776

John David Washington plays the role Samuel L. Jackson originated in Broadway revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE PIANO LESSON
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 29, $74–$318
pianolessonplay.com

“We live in a recycled culture,” Stephen Sondheim told Frank Rich of the New York Times in March 2000. Sondheim explained that there are “two kinds of shows on Broadway — revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles.”

Broadway revivals are a curious thing. They are often vehicles with built-in star power — Hugh Jackman in The Music Man, Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! — offering new takes on beloved, household-name shows, for better or worse, something that is unique to theater. In pop music, artists cover hit songs but also do deep dives into another musician’s catalog, resurrecting little-known gems. In cinema, directors remake successful movies — there’s not a whole lotta interest in redoing bad films — but how many remakes were at least equal to or better than the original? (I’ll wait.) And in literature, well, you can’t rewrite a book that has already been written. “It has to do with seeing what is familiar,” Sondheim said to Rich. That’s why so many movies are made into Broadway musicals, generally packing in the crowds despite less-than-enthusiastic reviews.

Right now on Broadway you can see seven revivals on the Great White Way, with several more coming. There are currently four revivals in the fall season, only two of which are exemplary, honoring the spirit of the original. I’ve already raved about Kenny Leon’s adaptation of Suzan-Lori Parks’s superb Topdog/Underdog at the Golden.

At the Ethel Barrymore, Tony nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson’s version of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is exquisite, a stirring adaptation of the fourth play in Wilson’s ten-part Pittsburgh Cycle, this one set in in 1936. (Each play takes place in a different decade of the twentieth century.) It’s a truly American story of race, colonialism, slavery, family, and the ghosts of a shameful history; the play premiered at Yale in 1987 and on Broadway three years later, earning five Tony nominations including Best Play.

At Yale, Samuel L. Jackson starred as Boy Willie, a dreamer with a plan to sell a truckload of watermelons and the family heirloom piano in order to buy a hundred acres of land where his forebears had toiled for the Sutters first as slaves, then as sharecroppers. Thirty-five years later, Jackson, who is married to LaTanya Richardson Jackson, is Doaker Charles, Boy Willie’s (John David Washington) sensible uncle, who lives with Boy Willie’s widowed sister, Berniece (Danielle Brooks), and her young daughter, Maretha (Nadia Daniel or Jurnee Swan). Berniece, whose husband, Crawley, died several years before, is not about to sell the piano, into which her great-grandfather, Willie Boy, carved powerful images of their ancestors and stories from their lives.

Boy Willie has unexpectedly arrived with his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher), a shy ladies’ man who takes a liking to Berniece, who is being courted by the local preacher, the boring Avery Brown (Trai Byers). It’s Avery who delivers one of the most important points of the play when he tells Berniece, who refuses to play the piano anymore, “You got to put all of that behind you, Berniece. That’s the same thing like Crawley. Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you. All you got to do is set them down by the side of the road. You ain’t got to carry them with you. You can walk over there right now and play that piano. You can walk over there right now and God will walk over there with you. Right now you can set that stack of stones down by the side of the road and walk away from it. You don’t have to carry it with you. You can do it right now. . . . You can walk over here right now and make it into a celebration.”

Another surprise arrival is Doaker’s older brother, Wining Boy (Michael Potts), who serves as the comic relief. Wining Boy is a gambler and former piano player who shows up only when he needs money. “That piano got so big and I’m carrying it around on my back. I don’t wish that on nobody,” he tells Boy Willie. “Now, there ain’t but so many places you can go. Only so many road wide enough for you and that piano. And that piano get heavier and heavier. . . . But that’s all you got. You can’t do nothing else. All you know how to do is play that piano. Now, who am I? Am I me? Or am I the piano player? Sometime it seem like the only thing to do is shoot the piano player cause he the cause of all the trouble I’m having.”

In the second act, a partying Boy Willie brings home Grace (April Matthis), who might be the most perceptive of the group. “Something ain’t right here,” she tells Boy Willie and Lymon.

Beowulf Boritt’s set features the kitchen and living room, with the upstairs open, without doors or walls, hinting that secrets are going to be exposed. The cast is outstanding, led by the confident and self-assured Jackson. I’ve seen several other productions, with Brandon J. Dirden as Boy Willie at the Signature in 2012, directed by Wilson mainstay Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and with a Tony-nominated Charles S. Dutton as Boy Willie at the Walter Kerr in 1990, directed by Wilson’s longtime cohort Lloyd Richards; it’s a testament to the writing that all three productions were excellent, staying true to Wilson’s words and story, which were inspired by onetime Pittsburgh resident Romare Bearden’s 1983 painting, which itself was inspired by Henri Matisse’s 1916 The Piano Lesson and 1917 The Music Lesson. The play might take place in 1936, but it has a timeless quality that still hits hard in 2022.

Wendell Pierce and Sharon D Clarke star in reimagined Death of a Salesman (photo by Joan Marcus

DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $58-$297
salesmanonbroadway.com

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Miranda Cromwell’s reimagining of Arthur Miller’s 1949 classic, Death of a Salesman, running at the Hudson Theatre through January 15. What seemed like a slam dunk turns out to be a forced, disjointed narrative despite the timelessness of the original.

The play still is set in Brooklyn in 1949, but the Loman family is Black: patriarch Willy (Wendell Pierce), his devoted wife, Linda (Sharon D Clarke), and their ne’er-do-well sons, former high school football star Biff (Khris Davis) and Happy (McKinley Belcher III), a womanizing dreamer not unlike Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson. The sixty-three-year-old Willy has been having difficulty on the road, losing customers and experiencing driving issues. We never learn exactly what it is he’s selling, but it’s not important; he represents hardworking Americans who toil down to the bone, rarely able to catch a break or get ahead in life.

As Willie slowly starts to realize that he’s not vital anywhere, his neighbor, Charley (Delaney Williams), keeps offering him a job closer to home, but Willy turns him down, instead relying on his boss, Howard (Blake DeLong), to honor his loyalty, but Howard has his eyes set to the future, one that does not include men like Willy.

Willy tries to find hope and solace in the words and wisdom of his late brother, Ben (the fabulously attired André De Shields), now only a ghost, and his despairing family starts to suspect something is seriously wrong.

One of the great characters in the American canon, Willy has been played onstage and -screen by Lee J. Cobb, Fredric March, George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Pierce is far too loud as Willy, nearly always shouting, bringing no nuance to the role. Clarke is terrific as his long-suffering wife, but Davis and Belcher III never firmly take control of their parts.

Crowell adds a strolling bluesman (Femi Temowo) who occasionally shows up to serenade the audience, but it feels too random. The dinner scene between Willy, Biff, and Happy is moved to a jazz club that seems out of place. Anna Fleischle’s set, primarily the interior of the Loman household, gets confusing with all its imaginary barriers. To me it was like everyone was trying too hard to put their own stamp on the tale, not trusting that the switch to making the family African American gave the play a new depth all by itself.

A casting gimmick tries to put 1776 into a different perspective (photo by Evan Zimmerman)

1776
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 8, $56-$250
www.roundabouttheatre.org

When it comes to reinterpreting a hit, 1776 takes the cake — and hits the nadir. The 1969 Tony-winning Best Musical focuses on the debates leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence at the second Continental Congress, in Philadelphia. For this Roundabout revival at the American Airlines Theatre, directors Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus have chosen a cast of women, transgender, and nonbinary actors portraying the Founding Fathers (and two of their wives). However, this is no Hamilton.

The show features music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone. It begins cleverly enough with a row of men’s shoes at the front of the stage, which the characters step into with a kind of feminist glee; it’s a lovely moment, but it’s all downhill from there as the casting becomes the point of the revival. Oh, look, Thomas Jefferson is played by a pregnant woman (Elizabeth A. Davis). Ben Franklin is portrayed by an actor who looks nothing like him (Patrena Murray). The casting feels like a gimmick that dominates everything else when it could have been so much more. It’s not that I’m averse to change; I loved Daniel Fish’s reinvention of Oklahoma! a few years ago. But the changes have to be pertinent, not just made for the sake of change.

At first, it’s engaging and relevant to what’s happening in the sociopolitical spectrum in 2022, as evidenced by John Adams’s (Crystal Lucas-Perry, later replaced by Kristolyn Lloyd) all-too-believable speech: “If you don’t want to see us hanging / On some far off British hill; / If you don’t want the voice of independency / Forever still, / Then, god, sir, get thee to it! / For Congress never will! / You see, we Congress / Piddle, twiddle, and resolve. Eh . . . / Not one damned thing do we solve. . . . Piddle, twiddle, and resolve, . . . / Nothing’s ever solved in Congress.”

Leading the fight against independence are the conservative John Dickinson of Pennsylvania (Carolee Carmello), George Read of Delaware (Nancy Anderson), and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina (Sara Porkalob). They argue about the rules of the vote, a clause involving slavery, and other elements, some of which are based on fact, others unverifiable, and others just plain inaccurate. The only two female characters, Abigail Adams (Allyson Kaye Daniel) and Martha Jefferson (Eryn LeCroy), were most likely not in Philadelphia at the time, although Adams’s “Compliments” is a standout, having more power than the more well known showstopper “Molasses to Rum,” performed by Rutledge.

There are also unnecessary projections that compare 1776 to today, particularly with regard to women in politics, something that did not need to be said but was clear from the rest of the show, which mostly falls flat. The televised January 6 Committee hearings were more interesting than this revival, which highlights the original’s many faults. The 1969 edition was nominated for five Tonys, winning three, while the 1997 revival earned three nominations, taking home none. I can’t imagine this one could top either of those come 2023 awards time.

There’s a reason why Sondheim won eight Tonys (as well as an Oscar, eight Grammys, a Pulitzer, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom) and so many of his shows are revived, on and off Broadway. As he told Rich in 2000, “‘Less is more’ is a lesson learned with difficulty. . . . Reduction releases power.” Just look at the current smash Broadway revival of Sondheim’s Into the Woods at the St. James.

MIKE BIRBIGLIA: THE OLD MAN & THE POOL

Mike Birbiglia discusses mortality with a smile in The Old Man & the Pool (photo by Emilio Madrid)

MIKE BIRBIGLIA: THE OLD MAN AND THE POOL
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 15, $104-$268
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

I remember being home sick one day in fourth grade, when I was ten, grabbing a relatively short book from my parents’ library, and reading it straight through in bed. It was the first real novel I ever picked up, called The Old Man and the Sea, by a man named Ernest Hemingway, about a fisherman facing his own mortality as he desperately tries to reel in a marlin in a life-or-death struggle, for both him and his catch. I can still feel myself turning the pages, the excitement building moment to moment.

The title, and the theme of mortality, is the jumping-off point of Mike Birbiglia’s latest one-man show, the deeply personal and extremely funny The Old Man & the Pool, continuing at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater through January 15. In such past solo works as The New One, Thank God for Jokes, and Sleepwalk with Me, the Massachusetts-born, Brooklyn-based comedian and This American Life contributor has documented his REM sleep behavior disorder, his sex life, trying to conceive, and the power of jokes themselves. “There are details in my life that are both setups and punchlines,” he explained in his Broadway debut, The New One, and the same is true once again in The Old Man & the Pool, in which mortality is front and center for seventy-five hysterical, moving minutes.

The show begins with Birbiglia describing his 2017 annual physical, “which I always dread because I have a lot of preexisting conditions, which I call ‘conditions’ because everything is existing if it does and everything is ‘pre’ unless it happened on the way to the appointment. When I see that checklist I circle the whole thing and cross out ‘pregnant.’” When he has trouble blowing into a tube for a pulmonary test, his doctor tells him that based on those results, he might be having a heart attack right then and there. “I call it ‘the birthday cake test,’” Birbiglia tells the audience, “because it sort of tells you how many birthday cakes . . . you have left.” Shortly after that, the doctor tells Birbiglia that he has type two diabetes.

At the time, Birbiglia was forty-four, married to Jenny (who he calls Chlo for no apparent reason), and raising their three-year-old daughter, Oona. Both his father and his paternal grandfather had heart attacks at fifty-six. “I’ve always thought I should just set aside that whole year when I turn fifty-six and get an airbnb by the hospital and keep a flexible schedule,” he says. I understand exactly where he’s coming from; my father died of a heart attack at forty-seven, his father at fifty-seven. Those kinds of facts tend to weigh heavily on your mind.

Mike Birbiglia surfs through a serious diagnosis in latest Broadway solo show (photo by Emilio Madrid)

It’s one of the many reasons why Birbiglia’s shows work so well. He’s a kind of everyman, sharing his foibles with a genuine self-deprecation and easygoing relatability. It pains him that he was raised in a family that would say “Take care” instead of “I love you.” He also tends to come down with extreme medical conditions that are fascinating to hear about. He has to sleep in a special sleeping bag and wear mittens so his sleepwalking doesn’t result in accidentally causing harm to himself, his wife, or his daughter. In The New One, he details undergoing a varicocele repair that makes every male in the audience wince and cringe. He survived bladder cancer. And now, he’s fighting off diabetes and a potential heart attack.

He’s told that he has to start doing cardio five days a week. “I don’t think anybody does cardio five days a week,” he tells his doctor, who replies, “A lot of people do cardio five days a week.” The doctor suggests he swims at the YMCA, which brings up a poignant and profound memory for Birbiglia in which, at the age of seven, he decided he would never again go to a YMCA pool. But the thought of leaving Oona fatherless overwhelms him, and the exercise regime begins as he strives to improve his health, even if it involves changing his diet and swimming laps five days a week. It evokes Santiago, the old man in Hemingway’s story, thinking to himself, “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” Similarly, Birbiglia asks, “Why do we not do the thing we know we should be doing?”

Mike Birbiglia takes it easy while considering death in The Old Man & the Pool (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Birbiglia, who also wrote, directed, and starred in the films Don’t Think Twice and Sleepwalk with Me, is immensely personable and self-effacing, telling his tale in a laid-back, even-tempered manner. He picks up the sole prop, a stool, and walks around the stage with it, occasionally sitting on it. He relaxes on the floor, lays down, and works off the energy of the audience. The night I went, a handful of people came in late, including a woman in the front row. Birbiglia, who was laying on his side at the time, welcomed them and decided to get them up to speed by giving them a quick, unscripted summary of what they missed. It was a brilliant moment, and one that quickly sealed the bond between us and him.

Beowulf Boritt’s set is sparse but effective: a concave board that mimics both a giant wave in its shape and a swimming pool in its gridlike design of blue squares. At times Birbiglia appears to surf under it, while at other times it looks like it is going to envelop him, drowning him. He wears jeans, comfy shoes, and an untucked blue-and-white button-down shirt that echoes the backdrop; the costume is by Toni-Leslie James, with lighting by Aaron Copp, projections by Hana S. Kim, and sound by Kai Harada, all helping develop a warm intimacy. Birbiglia’s longtime director, Seth Barrish, knows just how to keep it all moving forward as Birbiglia heads off on hilarious digressions about wrestling, mold, sugar fries, and signs such as “Slippery When Wet” and “No Breath Holding.”

The show begins and ends with the propulsive song “Red Hearse” by the LA band Red Hearse, in which Jack Antonoff, Sam Dew, and Sounwave promise, “I’ll be better than I was before / A natural, all of the past out the door / I never let you go, was all at our knees before / It’s gettin’ deeper, we’re caught up in the undertow / So come on / And if you can’t hold me / I’ll dive in it headfirst / I’ll die ridin’ in a red hearse.” In The Old Man & the Pool, master storyteller Birbiglia guides the audience through the undertow, emerging safely, and happily, from the abyss.