this week in (live)streaming

CLYDE’S

Clyde (Uzo Aduba) keeps a close watch on her employees in new Lynn Nottage play (photo by Joan Marcus)

CLYDE’S
Helen Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St.
Through January 16, $49-$149 (livestream January 4-16, $59)
2st.com/shows/clydes

If there’s a better living American playwright working today than Lynn Nottage, you’ll have to convince me.

The Brooklyn-born two-time Pulitzer Prize winner is back on Broadway with the delectable comedy Clyde’s, continuing at Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theater through January 16. The ninety-minute play is set in the kitchen of a roadside diner in Berks County, Pennsylvania, run by the fierce and dominating Clyde (Uzo Aduba), who spent time in jail and exclusively hires ex-cons. But Clyde is no saint, helping the downtrodden out of the goodness of her heart; instead, she abuses her staff with vicious delight, insulting them with zinging barbs, threatening their employment, and sexually harassing them.

The kitchen crew consists of Tish (Kara Young), a single mother with an unreliable ex; Rafael (Reza Salazar), a twentysomething who is enamored with Tish; and the wise sage Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones), a sandwich guru who avoids talking about his personal life. They are joined by Jason (Edmund Donovan), who is fresh out of the big house, complete with white supremacist gang tattoos on his face, neck, and arms.

“He tell you what happens if I catch any of you morons stealing? Breaking my rules?” Clyde tells Jason, referring to Rafael. “I don’t go to the police. I deal with it my way. Understand?” Later, Rafael warns Jason, “Bro, it’s real. Do not cross her. She’ll make you suffer.”

Montrellous is the Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Yoda, the Zen master of the kitchen. He raises sandwich making to an art. “You know why I love the sandwich?” Montrellous says. “’Cuz it’s a complete meal that you can hold between your fingers. It’s the most democratic of all foods. Two pieces of bread, and between, you can put anything you want. It invites invention and collaboration.” Rafael responds, “Jesus, I make a sandwich every day, but somehow your shit always tastes like the truth.” Montrellous adds, “It’s about order, baby. I’m interested in the composition, it’s not merely about flavor. Dig? I think about the balance of ingredients and the journey I want the consumer to take with each bite. Then finally how I can achieve oneness with the sandwich.” It’s also a metaphor for (re)building one’s life.

Rafael (Reza Salazar), Tish (Kara Young), Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones), and Jason (Edmund Donovan) search for the perfect sandwich in Clyde’s (photo by Joan Marcus)

Whenever Montrellous begins to wax poetic about potential combinations, the lights take on a sepia tone, as if sacred word is descending from the heavens. (The expert lighting is by Christopher Akerlind.) Tish and Rafael make offerings of their own unique flavor profiles, looking to Montrellous for his approval like students trying to please their teacher (or father). Jason, who at first doesn’t care about kitchen hygiene or carefully developed recipes, soon takes part as well, learning that the sandwich is much more than just a bunch of stuff between two slices of bread.

But no matter how hard they try to make the perfect sandwich, Clyde continually shoots them down, not giving a damn about quality but only that they fill orders as fast as they can. In one hysterical scene, she pops up over and over again in the cut-out window, from multiple angles, leaving order slip after order slip as Tish, Rafael, Jason, and Montrellous hustle to keep pace. She also occasionally brings in questionable ingredients that probably fell off a truck somewhere, insisting the staff use them no matter the expiration date or the stench. It all comes to a head when investors are scheduled to meet with Clyde to help her out of some financial problems.

Takeshi Kata’s functional kitchen set serves as a kind of way station, a limbo or purgatory where the characters exist between their prior incarceration and the freedom of the real world. Clyde is like the judge, jury, and executioner over what Nottage calls in a program note a “liminal space,” as she constantly reminds them where they’ve been while disparaging any hope they might have for a better future. As Montrellous says, “And you know what they say, ’cuz you left prison don’t mean you outta prison. But, remember everything we do here is to escape that mentality. This kitchen, these ingredients, these are our tools. We have what we need. So, let’s cook.” He later explains, “This sandwich is my strength. This sandwich is my victory. This sandwich is my freedom.”

As the fiery Clyde, three-time Emmy winner Aduba (Orange Is the New Black, Mrs. America), who has appeared in such stage works as Coram Boy, Godspell, and The Maids, might refuse to taste any of Montrellous’s sandwiches, but she devours the scenery. She storms into each scene in a different outrageously jaw-dropping costume by Jennifer Moeller, with dazzling colors and remarkable shoes. Aduba and Emmy winner Cephas Jones (This Is Us, Hurt Village) complement each other beautifully, Montrellous’s calmness balancing her fiery fury.

Clyde (Uzo Aduba) and Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones) have different ideas about the future in new Broadway play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Salazar (Richard II, Oedipus El Rey) and Young (All the Natalie Portmans, Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven) form a delicate but poignant duo, facing their own demons and dependencies. Donovan (Greater Clements, Lewiston/Clarkston) ably fits well right in the middle of it all, lending an intriguing unpredictability to Jason, who’s struggling to get through every day and avoid going back to prison.

Kate Whoriskey, who previously directed Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Sweat and Ruined, knows just what to do with Nottage’s words, bringing them to life with a scintillating intelligence, capturing the rhythm of her language and the depth of her characters. Clyde’s might be hilariously funny, but it is serious about the revolving door of the prison system, immigration, income inequality, sexism, racism, greed, and power, its own seven deadly sins.

In just the last dozen years or so, Nottage has given us Sweat, Ruined, Mlima’s Tale, The Secret Life of Bees, and revivals of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine, with the Michael Jackson musical MJ and an opera adaptation of her 2003 play, Intimate Apparel, up next. That’s quite a banquet. And as a bonus dessert, performances from the Hayes Theater will be simulcast live online January 4-16 ($59), filmed by five to seven cameras.

In his final appearance on The David Letterman Show in October 2002, musician Warren Zevon, discussing his terminal cancer, said about life, “Enjoy every sandwich.” With Lynn Nottage, that’s an easy order to fill.

AND WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON’T

The Cherry is back with the hybrid What Happens if I Don’t through December 12

AND WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON’T
Cherry Artspace and online
102 Cherry St., Ithaca
December 3-12, $25-$35 in person, $20 livestream
www.thecherry.org

The pandemic lockdown might have shuttered venues around the country, but it also offered theater lovers the opportunity to see innovative online productions from companies that are out of one’s geographic range. Since April 2020, I have enjoyed works from Baltimore Center Stage, San Francisco Playhouse, DC’s Studio Theatre and Woolly Mammoth, Steppenwolf in Chicago, Hartford Stage in Connecticut, Boston Court Pasadena and Barrington Stage in Massachusetts, and Chichester Festival Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic in England, among others, all while sitting at my computer.

One of the little gems has been Ithaca’s nonprofit Cherry Artists’ Collective, which has presented Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine), which interwove six stories dealing with isolation, A Day, a hybrid green-screened show that cleverly revealed its process between scenes, and the two-character onstage Hotel Good Luck, which looked at time, space, and loss in surprising ways.

The company’s latest work is its first indoor show in front of an audience since the coronavirus crisis closed everything down. Berlin-based Serbian playwright and screenwriter Iva Brdar’s And What Happens if I Don’t is being performed in the theater and streaming live through December 12 from the Cherry Artspace. I saw one of the streams, filmed with multiple cameras (including one overhead); the play begins with the small audience entering the intimate space, sitting on chairs and risers on three sides of the room, and ends with the crowd leaving, adding to the overall live experience for those at home. The sixty-minute narrative features eight actresses — Adara Alston, Barbara Geary, Naandi Jamison, Elizah Knight, RJ Lavine, Elizabeth Mozer, Jen Schilansky, and Amoreena Wade — portraying thirteen girls and women who, as they grow older, from birth to seventy-eight, share stories about life lessons, both good and bad, they learned from their mothers; each scene also involves a threatening male figure, from a father and a traffic officer to a creepy man at a public pool and a Customs agent.

What Happens if I Don’t explores outdated gender roles in a series of monologues

In “On Ears, age 0,” the only thing a father can say to his newborn daughter (Jamison) is that she has nice ears, which warps her view of the rest of her body. In “On Concrete, age 18,” a teenager (Alston) is told by her mother to avoid sitting on concrete or else she will become a “sterile, hysterical, unfulfilled woman.” In “On Toilet Seats, age 29,” a woman’s (Wade) mother insists she not sit directly on toilet seats unless she wants to get a disease. Other words of advice relate to urinating` in pools, people with dimples, eating fruit, and plucking out gray hairs.

Each scene starts with the character, dressed in modern-day casual clothing, attempting to jump rope held by two of the other actors, a constant reminder of the joys and fun associated with childhood that go away as one ages and discovers more about the not-so-carefree world. Each character is also joined at one point by three angels who remind her that she is “polite, kind, and very well behaved,” understanding what is expected of her as a girl and a woman. Places to sit (a chair, a small bench, a large wooden farm spool) are moved around to sharp sound effects for every vignette, under eighteen lightbulbs in lampshades hanging from the ceiling at different heights. (The sound and music is by Lesley Greene, with lighting by Chris Brusberg, costumes by Iris Estelle and Sasha Oliveau, and livestream design by Greg Levins and Karen Rodriguez.)

Director Susannah Berryman (Holy Ghosts, Daisy Pulls It Off) gives the cast an ample amount of freedom, resulting in a loose, natural feel despite the serious turns; it’s a show by women, about women, but the male need for power and control hovers over all of it as Brdar (Geraniums Can Survive Anything, Rule of Thumb) explores sexism, misogyny, and old-fashioned gender roles. And What Happens if I Don’t also asks the question “Is mother always right?” (The answer is decidedly no.) The show consists of a series of monologues, but the eight cast members stand together throughout, supporting one another as they battle systemic stereotypes that are still all too real in 2021.

ARLEKIN PLAYERS THEATRE: WITNESS

Lauren Elias, Anna Gottlieb, Nathan Malin, and Gene Ravvin on board the virtual MS St. Louis in Witness

Who: Arlekin Players Theatre
What: Interactive livestreamed show
Where: Zero Gravity (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab
When: December 10 – January 23, $25
Why: Perhaps no other theater company has taken to virtual, interactive productions like Arlekin Players Theatre. The Boston-based troupe first presented the powerful solo show State vs. Natasha Banina, followed by chekhovOS /an experimental game/, which featured Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jessica Hecht, and Darya Denisova, who had played Natasha Banina. Next up for the innovative, forward-thinking company, which incorporates aspects of gaming into its work, is Witness, conceived and directed by Arlekin founder Igor Golyak. The livestreamed, interactive show, developed through Arlekin’s Zero Gravity (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab, was inspired by the true story of the MS St. Louis, the German ship carrying nearly a thousand Jewish refugees in May 1939 escaping the approaching Holocaust, only to be turned away by Cuba, Canada, and the United States.

Camera operator Austin de Besche films some of the cast during the making of Witness

Golyak was born in Kiev, but his family moved to Boston when he was eleven to get away from rampant anti-Semitism. He later returned to Russia to study theater. Witness is written by Nana Grinstein with Blair Cadden and Golyak, with scenic design and costumes by Anna Fedorova, virtual design by Daniel Camino, and a live and filmed cast that includes Denisova as Lady Liberty, Gene Ravvin as the emcee, Lauren Elias as Leah, Anne Gottlieb as Rachel, Nathan Malin as Joseph, Polina Vikova as Gisela Klepl, Alex Petetsky as Fritz Buff, and others, along with voice actors. “Where do unwanted people go?” the play asks. It’s a question that is still critical today, given the ongoing immigration crisis. The interactive drama runs December 10 through January 23, with every performance followed by a talkback with members of the cast and creative team and/or experts on Jewish migration. Tickets are $25; several performances are already sold out, so get your tickets now to see the company I’ve called “The future of online productions.”

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING WITH Q&A

(Keir Dullea) comforts his sister (Carol Lynley) in BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

Stephen (Keir Dullea) tries to comfort his sister, Ann (Carol Lynley), in Bunny Lake Is Missing

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (Otto Preminger, 1965)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, December 7, $15, 7:00
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

“I had heard all the rumors about Preminger, but I felt he wouldn’t do that to me. I was wrong, oh so wrong,” Keir Dullea told Foster Hirsch in the 2007 biography Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King, referring to the making of the 1965 psychological noir thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing and Preminger’s notorious treatment of actors. “I was playing a crazy character and the director was driving me crazy. . . . About halfway through the shoot, I began to wonder, Who do you have to f&ck to get off this picture?” On December 7, Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey, David and Lisa) will talk with Hirsch over Zoom following a special screening at Film Forum of the fiftieth anniversary 4K digital restoration of the 1965 work. In the intensely creepy film, loosely based on the novel by Merriam Modell (under the pseudonym Evelyn Piper), Carol Lynley stars as Ann Lake, a young woman who has just moved to London from New York. She drops off her daughter, Bunny, for her first day of school, but when she returns later to pick her up, there is no evidence that the girl was ever there. When Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) and his right-hand man, Sergeant Andrews (Clive Revill), begin investigating the case, they are soon wondering whether Bunny really exists, more than hinting that she might be a figment of Ann’s imagination.

Television veteran Lynley, who seemed on the verge of stardom after appearing in such films as Return to Peyton Place, Bunny Lake Is Missing, Shock Treatment, and The Poseidon Adventure but never quite reached that next level, gives one of her best performances as Ann, a tortured woman who is determined to stop her world from unraveling around her. Dullea is a model of efficiency as the cold, direct Stephen, a character invented by Preminger and screenwriters John and Penelope Mortimer. Shot in black-and-white by Denys N. Coop on location in London, the film also features cameos by longtime English actors Martita Hunt, Anna Massey, and Finlay Currie as well as the rock group the Zombies and Noël Coward, who plays Ann’s very kooky landlord, Horatio Wilson. Saul Bass’s titles, in which a hand tears paper as if the story is being ripped from the headlines, set the tense mood right from the start. The ending offers some neat twists but is far too abrupt. “No actor ever peaked with him. How could you?” Dullea added to Hirsch about Preminger (Laura, Stalag 17). “The subtlety that I felt I was able to give to my work in 2001, because Stanley Kubrick created a safe atmosphere where actors were not afraid to be foolish or wrong, was missing on Otto’s set. I don’t hate him; it’s too long ago. But the experience was the most unpleasant I ever had.” It should be quite fascinating to hear more from Dullea and Hirsch on December 7; Hirsch will be on hand to sign copies of his book as well.

THE ALCHEMIST

Manoel Felciano, Reg Rogers, and Jennifer Sánchez play a trio of swindlers in Red Bull revival of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE ALCHEMIST
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through December 19, $70
Available for streaming January 12-26
www.redbulltheater.com
newworldstages.com

Red Bull Theater was one of the most active companies during the pandemic, presenting livestreamed reunion readings of previous productions, the online interview series RemarkaBULL Podversations, and deep explorations into Othello and Pericles. So it’s disappointing that its return to live, in-person theater is an overbaked version of Ben Jonson’s 1610 Jacobean farce, The Alchemist.

Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Jesse Berger — the same team that gave us the superb 2017 revival of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector — The Alchemist is a hot mess, a frantic, unrelenting satire laden with anachronistic references and modern speech that bury what Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously referred to as one of the “three most perfect plots ever planned.” (The other two, in his opinion, were Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.)

The tale is set in 1606 in the Lovewit mansion in London as plague rips through the land; the wealthy master has left for the countryside, reminding us that the rich haven’t changed much, considering their response to the current coronavirus pandemic. A voiceover announces at the start, “Some wear masks, just like you do, that cover the nose and mouth and comply with CDC guidelines at all times, including during the show, except while actively drinking at your seat, so if you’re going to drink, drink actively.”

Lovewit’s manservant, the rogue Face (Manoel Felciano), has teamed up with the charlatan alchemist Subtle (Reg Rogers) and their bawdy colleague, Dol Common (Jennifer Sánchez), to con members of the local community out of their money. When the trio learns that Lovewit is unexpectedly returning in two hours, they ramp up their schemes as they attempt to defraud the tobacconist Abel Drugger (Nathan Christopher), the law clerk Dapper (Carson Elrod), the deacon Ananias (Stephen DeRosa), and the knight Sir Epicure Mammon (Jacob Ming-Trent) and his butler from Brooklyn, the surly skeptic known as Surly (Louis Mustillo).

Red Bull returns to in-person theater with The Alchemist at New World Stages (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Subtle might think he is in charge, but Face is quick to remind him, “Recollect, sir: you were not long past known to all the neighborhood as that scurvy beetle who nothing did but loiter at the corner in moldy rags so thin scarce covered they your buttocks. I took pity on you, gave you roof and a bed, replaced your tatters with well-cut cloth, and introduced you to that household item called the bathing tub.” Subtle responds, “Recollect, sir: you were not long past that lowly servant who nothing did but sit your master’s house with no one to converse with save your brooms and dustpans. Twas I took pity on you, raised you up to your potential, taught you to present yourself so convincingly as a captain with a beard so nautical it could fool a blind man who’s never been to sea. Twas I conceived the scheme, tis I should take the largest share!” Meanwhile, Dol points out about their Venture Tripartite, “Well, if we three do not this treasure equal share, you two shall not share mine.”

Despite already having a heavy chest brimming with ill-gotten gains and Lovewit’s arrival fast approaching, Face and Subtle can’t control their greed when they learn of a wealthy widow, Dame Pliant (Teresa Avia Lim), who has come to town with her protective brother, Kastril (Allen Tedder). So they set out to scam her as well, agreeing not to tell Dol. Their nefarious plans play out in real time, a grandfather clock ticking away throughout the nearly two-hour show as things grow more and more frenetic and overwrought.

Red Bull and founding artistic director Berger know their way around classic works, as evidenced by their stellar adaptations of John Ford’s 1630s drama, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1777 comedy of manners, The School for Scandal, and Jonson’s 1606 English Renaissance satire, Volpone. But they try too hard to make The Alchemist relevant to this moment in time, sacrificing story for slapstick. Alexis Distler’s two-floor set is filled with doorways, a staircase, and surprise entryways, but the timing of the various door slams is too often slightly off. At one point Rogers ad-libbed about having to run up and down the stairs again, and we feel his pain. As always with Red Bull, the costumes (by Tilly Grimes) are wonderfully extravagant, as is Tommy Kurzman’s wig and makeup design.

The show suffers from being in the 199-seat Stage 5 at New World Stages, which is too small and intimate for such a broadly played farce; you’re liable to get whiplash from swiveling your head back and forth and up and down so much, particularly as Subtle changes from “a mystic newly come from Rotterdam” to “a fortune teller late of Portugal” to “a Swedish hypnotist learned in financial planning.” Perhaps it will be easier to take when it is available for streaming January 12-26.

In a program note, Hatcher wryly admits, “Of course, I did screw around with the plot. Ours is a slimmed down version of the play, with fewer characters and one setting instead of four. So, apart from dumbing down the highbrow jokes, ruining the perfect plot, tossing in anachronisms, and adding a song very much like one sung by Shirley Bassey in 1964, the play is pretty much your grandmother’s The Alchemist.” The talented cast, led by Obie winner Rogers, does its best with this dumbing down, seeming to enjoy themselves immensely, as did much of the audience the night I went. I wish I felt the same.

FLASH FORWARD: DEBUT WORKS AND RECENT FILMS BY NOTABLE JAPANESE DIRECTORS

Masayuki Suo takes the audience on a wild ride in Talking the Pictures

FLASH FORWARD
Japan Society online and in-person
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
December 3-23, free – $10 online for three-day rental, $15 in person December 11 & 17, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society and the ACA Cinema Project (Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan) follow up their inaugural festival, “21st Century Japan: Films from 2001-2020,” with “Flash Forward: Debut Works and Recent Films by Notable Japanese Directors,” running December 3-23 online and in person.

The three-week series highlights the work of six established Japanese directors, pairing their debut with a more recent film. Available on demand as a three-day rental for ten dollars or fifteen dollars per bundle are Naomi Kawase’s 1997 Cannes Camera d’Or-winning Suzaku and 2018 Vision, Miwa Nishikawa’s 2003 Wild Berries and 2016 The Long Excuse, Shuichi Okita’s 2009 The Chef of South Polar and 2020 Ora, Ora Be Goin’ Alone, Junji Sakamoto’s 1989 Knockout and 2016 The Projects (see review below), and Masayuki Suo’s 1989 Fancy Dance and 2019 Talking the Pictures. Akihiko Shiota’s 1999 Moonlight Whispers was supposed to be teamed up with his 2019 Farewell Song but will not be shown because of music rights issues; it has been replaced by his fourth film, the 2002 drama Harmful Insect.

The “Filmmakers on the Rise” section comprises recent works by six directors who might be part of “Flash Forward” if it were held again in 2040: Masakazu Kaneko 2016 The Albino’s Trees, Yuko Hakota’s 2019 Blue Hour, Omoi Sasaki’s 2017 A Boy Sato, Eisuke Naito’s Forgiven Children, Kyoko Miyake’s 2013 My Atomic Aunt, and Hiroshi Okuyama’s 2019 Jesus. These films are available for free on demand. Also free are two online talks, “Conversations with the Filmmakers,” with Kawase, Nishikawa, Okita, Sakamoto, Shiota, and Suo, and the panel discussion “Debut Works and Beyond,” with Columbia assistant professor Takuya Tsunoda, UCLA assistant professor Junko Yamazaki, and writer, curator, and filmmaker Jasper Sharp, moderated by Yale professor Aaron Gerow.

Two in-person screenings at Japan Society celebrate the late master Sadao Yamanaka, who made more than two dozen films in the 1930s, few of which survive, before dying in Manchuria in 1938 at the age of twenty-eight. On December 11 at 7:00, a new 4K restoration of Yamanaka’s 1935 Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo will have its North American premiere, followed December 17 at 7:00 by the international premiere of the 4K restoration of Yamanaka’s 1936 Priest of Darkness.

THE PROJECTS

Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji Yamashita’s (Ittoku Kishibe) lives change once again with the return of Shinjo (Takumi Saitoh) in The Projects

THE PROJECTS (DANCHI) (団地) (Junji Sakamoto, 2016)
film.japansociety.org

“Nothing is impossible in a housing project,” several people say in Junji Sakamoto’s delightfully absurdist and downright weird black comedy The Projects, which made its North American debut at Japan Society’s tenth annual Japan Cuts Festival in 2016. Elderly couple Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji Yamashita (Ittoku Kishibe) have moved to an inexpensive suburban Osaka housing project, known as a danchi, after closing their popular herbal remedies shop following the tragic death of their son, Naoya. The couple lives quietly, unable to process their grief or move forward, but they’re back in business when one of their strangest customers, the well-dressed, oddly speaking Shinjo (Takumi Saitoh), tracks them down and essentially demands, in his calm, direct manner, that they begin making his special remedy again. Meanwhile, Seiji, who would rather be left alone, is dragged into the race for head of the tenant association, running against Gyotoku (Renji Ishibashi), who is having an affair with a younger resident and is married to Kimiko (Michiyo Okusu), who is obsessed with properly separating the danchi’s garbage, and young upstart Yoshizumi (Takayuki Takuma), who is not afraid to discipline his son, Kitaro (Hiroaki Ogasawara), in full view of his neighbors. After Seiji loses, he decides to hide from everyone, retreating under the floorboards whenever someone stops by, which leads a gossiping group of ladies (Hikaru Horiguchi, Yukari Taki, Mayu Harada, Mari Hamada, and Miyako Takeuchi) to believe that Hinako has actually killed her husband and chopped up the body. As the media and police get involved, things get crazier and crazier as the totally bizarre conclusion approaches.

Fujiyama and Kishibe are absolutely charming as the Yamashitas, moving and talking with a sweetly warm, slow demeanor, asking little from a life that has let them down. Sakamoto wrote The Projects specifically for comedian and stage actress Fujiyama; the two last worked together on the award-winning 2000 film Face, Fujiyama’s first film, and the pairing is another marvel. Fujiyama is wonderful in the role, imbuing Hinako with a wry, very funny sense of humor that is splendidly complemented by Kishibe’s more serious Seiji. Lovingly shot by Ryo Ohtsuka and featuring a playful score by Gorô Yasukawa, The Projects is pure fun all the way through, with many laugh-out-loud moments even as it deals with some heavy subjects, right up to its out-of-this-world finale. Don’t let the title fool you; “projects” in Japan were much-desired apartment complexes originally built in the 1950s to supply suburban public housing for the growing post-WWII Japanese population. Although they are not as popular today, they are not the kind of projects associated with drugs and crime in America. The Projects is paired with Sakamoto’s 1989 debut, Knockout (Dotsuitarunen), in “Flash Forward: Debut Works and Recent Films by Notable Japanese Directors.”

JARED MEZZOCCHI: ON THE BEAUTY OF LOSS

Who: Jared Mezzocchi
What: Interactive virtual presentation
Where: Vineyard Theatre Zoom
When: Monday, December 6, $15, 8:00
Why: From November 11 to 21, the Vineyard Theatre presented Jared Mezzocchi’s interactive Zoom show On the Beauty of Loss, in which the Obie-winning director, actor, playwright, associate professor, and designer (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, How to Catch a Star) reflects on personal and communal grief, relating the 2004 death of his father to the 2020 passing of his grandfather. In the show, he re-creates the same road trip north that he made on both those occasions, putting them in context with the tragedies we’ve all endured during the coronavirus crisis, set to an original score by Lee Kinney.

In the above trailer, Mezzocchi, who codirected the virtual hit Russian Troll Farm, explains, “I was thinking to myself, it would be pretty cool to have a digital road trip where I invited a bunch of people in a car that was driving in real time and we worked together to figure out how to process grief while we are all still apart from one another. I’ve been writing this piece my whole life.” The Vineyard has added a special encore performance on December 6 at 8:00, the seventeenth anniversary of Mezzocchi’s father’s death; audience members can choose to either watch the livestream or participate over Zoom.