this week in (live)streaming

THIRD RAIL PROJECTS: RETURN THE MOON

Screenshots from Zoom presentation Return the Moon by Third Rail Projects

RETURN THE MOON
Third Rail Projects
Select nights on Zoom through December 11, $15, $42, $67, 8:00
thirdrailprojects.com

Brooklyn-based Third Rail Projects specializes in site-specific immersive productions in unique locations, from a Bushwick warehouse to a former parochial school to backstage at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater. That’s not feasible during a pandemic lockdown, so the company has devised an interactive piece for Zoom, Return the Moon. Presentations over the platform have been slowing down dramatically now that theaters are opening and Zoom fatigue has more than set in, but Third Rail is forging ahead with the seventy-five-minute show, a melding of celebratory toast, ritual, and folktale made for a maximum of sixty audience members at a time.

Conceived and directed by Zach Morris and created by Morris, Alberto Denis, Kristin Dwyer, Joshua Gonzales, Sean Hagerty, Justin Lynch, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, Tara O’Con, and Edward Rice, the live, online gathering is guided by a set of prompts that include being sent to a breakout room and sharing personal thoughts and memories in the chat. (Everyone renames themselves identically, ensuring anonymity.) The centerpiece is a tale about the New Moon told using a small shadowbox constructed of white paper. “Once upon a time, you, me, all of us, we found ourselves in a village,” the story begins. “Now, this was a long time ago. So long ago, in fact, that the sun hadn’t been born yet. And all we knew was night. And the Moon. Who back then didn’t wax and wane but instead always moved through the sky full and luminous. And the Moon shone on our village.”

As opposed to such previous Third Rail shows as Then She Fell, Ghost Light, and The Grand Paradise, this one takes place mostly in your mind, using your imagination to generate the shared space. It can get a bit twee and treacly, lacking the exciting cutting-edge twists and turns so prominent in Third Rail’s in-person stagings, but as the narrator says in the story, “For some of us, the village felt like a homeplace. For others, it did not. For some of us, it felt good and safe, but others longed to be somewhere else. Nonetheless, this is where we all were.” As a bonus, participants get a little package in the mail a few days after the show that lets them relive the tale as well as make their own, which is a lovely touch.

PHILADELPHIA FRINGE FESTIVAL: ADJUST THE PROCEDURE

Adam Files, Nicholas Miles Newton, Meagan Moses, and Ed Altman (clockwise from top left) get into a tense Zoom meeting in Adjust the Procedure

ADJUST THE PROCEDURE
Philadelphia Fringe Festival
Available on demand through October 4, $10
fringearts.com
spincyclenyc.com

Note: The following review was written in March 2021, when Adjust the Procedure debuted online. It is now back for an encore presentation during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

A new genre of theater has arisen during the pandemic lockdown: Zoom plays about Zoom gatherings, both personal and professional. I’m not talking about Zoom benefits with actors reading Shakespeare and Sophocles or Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Princess Bride but new works written for Zoom, performed on Zoom — and set on Zoom. For the Public, Richard Nelson’s What Do We Need to Talk About? reunited the familiar Apple family with the original cast — Jon DeVries (Benjamin Apple), Stephen Kunken (Tim Andrews), Sally Murphy (Jane Apple Halls), Maryann Plunkett (Barbara Apple), Laila Robins (Marian Apple Platt), and Jay O. Sanders (Richard Apple) — holding a Zoom family meeting. Rough & Ready Productions’ seven-minute Brown, an early entry from April 2020, imagines a Zoom brainstorming session about the color of cruise line swimwear, particularly prescient given the status of cruises over the last year. And Jordan E. Cooper’s Mama’s Got a Cough (with the wonderful Danielle Brooks) is fourteen of the funniest minutes you’ll ever spend on Zoom, as a family convenes an emergency online meeting to figure out what to do about their elderly matriarch.

Spin Cycle and JCS Theater Company take it to the next level with Adjust the Procedure, which delves deep into the psychological impact the coronavirus crisis is having on individuals as well as institutions, in this case a university. Written and directed by Jake Shore, the play is built around several Zoom meetings dealing with the school’s Counseling and Wellness center and what might have gone wrong in the case of student David De La Cruz. Director of academic development Kyle (Adam Files) first discusses the issue with assistant dean of student achievement Ben (Nicholas Miles Newton), relating a call he received from the suicidal undergraduate.

“In most circumstances I wouldn’t have pressed him on it at all, I would’ve just followed the procedure, but I felt I had a responsibility to deal with it on my own for some reason,” a concerned Kyle says.

Ben initially seems more interested in following the rules than facing the reality of the situation. He replies, “I would advise against intervening. . . .” That conversation ends with Ben’s advice:

“You need to know your role, Kyle, and it’s going to help a great deal in the long run. The life of this student is not on your back. It does not hang in the balance due to anything that you’ve done or will do. That’s just not the way it is. You talking to him, interfering, it’s just not going to matter that much in the grand scheme of things. It’s brutal, I’m sorry to say it, but it’s the truth. You don’t have that type of responsibility to him, or to any other student. It’s just not your job.”

On another call they are joined by director of enrollment management Aimee (Meagan Moses), who appears to only care about the numbers on her spreadsheet rather than the students themselves. She explains with robotic precision, “As you both know, for the most part, we weathered the storm caused by the international student problem, and in addition to that, we’ve made up for the additional students who either dropped out, transferred, or exited for reasons directly tied to the pandemic.” Those reasons include deportation.

Despite Ben’s pleas for Kyle to stop, the latter continues to press the issue as they discover more about Counseling and Wellness and where the De La Cruz case failed. Soon Kyle, Ben, and Aimee are on a Zoom call with executive dean Frank (Ed Altman), who is all about protecting the university’s reputation and avoiding any kind of legal trouble, no matter the truth. The four of them get into it, ascertaining things about themselves and their colleagues they might not like, leading to a surprise ending.

Available on demand through October 4 as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Adjust the Procedure gets off to a slow start, just talking heads Zooming in from wherever they are sheltering in place, but Shore (The Devil Is on the Loose with an Axe in Marshalltown, Down the Mountain and Across the Stream) picks up the pace as he brings up pertinent issues that address how the pandemic has been handled from multiple perspectives. Kyle represents the person who wants to do right but is thwarted by rules and procedures that need to be reevaluated. Ben is the earnest employee who might agree with Kyle but is not about to rock the boat. Aimee is the efficiency expert who can’t see the human component. And Frank claims that he is “worried about society unraveling,” but his beliefs about just what that society is don’t necessarily gel with the others’.

No one comes out unscathed in this trenchant Covid-19 parable; it might be specifically about a university, since education has been so hard hit during the pandemic, but it could also be about corporations and local, state, and federal governments as they face the reality of mounting death tolls and economic collapse and decide how they are going to proceed, choosing whose interests to put first amid the bureaucracy and numbers crunching.

At one point the four characters are discussing a new class at the school, “Free Will: The Big Lie.” Frank pounces on the subject, declaring, “Do you know what an immature adolescent is going to think when he finds out that free will doesn’t exist? He’ll misconstrue it. All of a sudden, there’s no accountability for one’s actions. If there’s no free will, then there’s no control.”

As has been made all too clear during this crisis, control is all about power — control of information, of the media, of statistics, of money, of scientific interpretation — primarily at the expense of the individual, the poor schnooks trying to do right by themselves, their family, their school district, and their community, attempting to assert whatever free will is supposed to exist in a representative democracy. And as we have learned, procedures need to be adjusted, and fast.

STREB EXTREME ACTION: MANHATTAN WEST / JACOB’S PILLOW

STREB’s August performance at Jacob’s Pillow is streaming for free through September 16 (photos by Christopher Duggan and Jamie Kraus, courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow)

STREB ONSTAGE
Digital on demand from Jacob’s Pillow, September 2-16, free with RSVP
Live at Manhattan West: September 17-19, free with advance RSVP
www.jacobspillow.org
streb.org

In July 2020, STREB Extreme Action shared Best Zoom Dance (with Martha Graham Dance Company) in twi-ny’s Pandemic Awards for Body Grammar, an inventive way to utilize dancers’ body parts to play with ideas of community and movement online, especially for a troupe used to working with unique action machines that often place the performers in physical danger. The Brooklyn-based company, founded in 1985 by Elizabeth Streb, maintained a continuous virtual presence during the lockdown, but you can now catch the troupe in person when they perform five outdoor shows September 17-19 at Manhattan West. (Admission is free with advance RSVP.)

The bill includes Molinette, in which three STREB action heroes have their feet affixed to a twenty-foot-high horizontal swivel pipe designed by Noe España, commissioned for the 2019 reopening of Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris; Add, a 1983 solo piece in which the dancer must stay within a cross taped to the floor; Plateshift, featuring six action heroes on a sprung floor that incorporates centrifugal force; and the world premiere of Kaleidoscope, in which eight action heroes are fastened to LERU (London Eye Rehearsal Unit), a solid steel circle that has them defying gravity, a STREB tradition.

To get in the mood, you must check out STREB’s return to Jacob’s Pillow last month after twenty years, streaming for free through September 16. The show consists of twelve repertory works from 1978 to 2006, performed on the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage in front of a matinee audience by Jackie Carlson, Daniel Rysak, Tyler DuBoys, Justin Ross, Kairis Daniels, Luciany Germán, Leonardo Girón Torres, and associate artistic director Cassandre Joseph, wearing tight-fitting blue superhero costumes. The technical direction is by company emcee and DJ Zaire Baptiste, who knows how to rile up a crowd.

Molinette will be part of STREB presentation at Manhattan West (photo © Dan Lubbers)

It shows the range of Streb’s choreography and her spirited use of existing and invented objects that often put the action heroes in danger, an astonishing melding of acrobatics, gymnastics, modern dance, and circuslike peril set to original music by technoaxe and compilations produced by Voodo Fé and Freshbeatz. Streb introduces each work with a quote from a review of the piece (from the Village Voice, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Examiner, and the New York Times) and a snippet about where the idea originated.

It begins with 2006’s Tip, in which seven dancers move precariously on a tipping machine, a twelve-feet-in-diameter wheel cut in half, able to achieve complete verticality. Carlson twirls a wooden dowel like a baton in 1978’s Pole Vaults, Rysak brandishes a rope in 1983’s Whiplash, Carlson, Rysak, Daniels, and Germán toss around a heavy twelve-foot-long, three-inch-wide dowel in 1990’s Log, Daniels is trapped in a box modeled for Streb’s size in 1985’s Little Ease, Germán plays with a hula hoop in 1983’s Target, Joseph and Ross turn a long dowel into a third dancer in 1992’s Link, the troupe pays homage to the Three Stooges and Buster Keaton with a long dowel and a ramp with a cut-out window in 2002’s Buster, and the company does miraculous things with a pair of rectangular doorlike plywood slabs in 1984’s Surface.

There are also two brief pieces with no props, Ross honoring Merce Cunningham in 1978’s 7′ 43″ and DuBoys re-creating Streb’s 1983 solo, Add, which she remembers as being “the most painful two minutes of my life.” The show concludes in a big way with 2003’s breathtaking Air, in which all eight action heroes jump off a trampoline, landing on a large mat over and over again. As with so many of Streb’s works, you can’t help but wait for disaster to occur, but it never does, at least not in the numerous times I’ve been fortunate to see the endlessly brave and talented troupe perform, at such diverse locations as Park Ave. Armory, Gansevoort Plaza, and the World Financial Center as well as in the documentaries Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity and One Extraordinary Day. Be sure to stick around for the postshow talk with Streb, Joseph, and Baptiste, moderated by Pillow scholar-in-residence Maura Keefe.

NI MI MADRE

Stephanie Osin-Cohen’s set design is a highlight of new play at Rattlestick (photo by Andrew Soria)

NI MI MADRE
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
224 Waverly Pl. between Eleventh & Perry Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 19, $40
866-811-4111
www.rattlestick.org

“Gender’s confusing in our family,” Bete (pronounced “BET-chi”) says in Arturo Luís Soria’s one-person show, Ni Mi Madre, performed live at Rattlestick and streaming online through September 19. In the sixty-minute play, writer-star Soria portrays his domineering Brazilian mother, zeroing in on their complicated relationship.

Ni Mi Madre, which means “not (or “nor”) my mother,” begins with Soria, in a long white gown (by Haydee Zelideth) that bares his hirsute chest, walking onstage carrying a row of ritual candles and flowers. He puts the objects down carefully and pulls the top of the dress over his chest and voilà, he is now his mother. He spends the remainder of the show acting and speaking like her as she discusses life and love, family and children, with a particular focus on her queer Latino son, Arturo.

“You know, he had the right idea going gay,” she says. “I just don’t think he executed it properly, because when he came out . . . He. Came. Out! I mean, it was like the Fourth of July on New Year’s, okay. Then he tells me he’s not just gay, he’s bisexual. So I say, ‘Listen, bisexuals are greedy, okay. The world is gay and it’s straight; it’s black and it’s white; it’s in and it’s out, so figure it out.’”

Arturo Luís Soria portrays his mother in one-person show (photo by Andrew Soria)

Elegant and proud, Bete talks about her three marriages, to Inebriated Jew, Ecuadorian Commie, and Gay Dominican; how it’s okay for her to beat her children; her dedication to Meryl Streep; and her own difficult mother. “My mother never wanted to be a mother. Never,” she explains. “You only get one mom. And my mother didn’t want me.” However, she’s not seeking sympathy but instead defends her treatment of her children.

“My kids don’t know how lucky they are to have a mother like me. I am their inspiration and they don’t even know it and I went through a lot of trouble to raise them,” she says. “I was a good mother to them. And I never abandoned them nor shipped them off to boarding school. I thought about it. Arturo was such a maniac as a kid I used to pray to God that he would go to sleep and not wake up until college, but those were only empty prayers. Kind of. Arturo thinks I was a bad mother to him. I wasn’t bad. He was a fuckin’ lunatic.” She might be harshly critical of him, but she also loves and supports him. “He’s following his dreams,” she adds. “He’s doing what I always wanted but never could because I didn’t have a mother like me.’

The night I saw the show, it was followed by a talkback with Soria and director Danilo Gambini (The Swallow and the Tomcat, An Iliad), a native Brazilian who has been working with Soria on the play since their Yale days going back to 2017 (in addition to other collaborations); Soria began writing Ni Mi Madre in 2008, and it has gone through numerous iterations before opening in New York City on August 25, when Soria’s mother was present in the audience. The postshow discussion lent further insight into mother and son, especially how the latter came to better understand and humanize the former through forgiveness and love as the play developed and he grew in the role. (There will be a free Zoom community conversation with Soria, Gambini, and Sam Morreale on September 2 at 5:00, and if you bring your own mother to the play, you can use code HIMOM to get her in for free September 2-6.)

The show, which features songs by Cher, Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Estefan, and Maria Bethania, lip-synced in drag finery by Soria, takes place on Stephanie Osin-Cohen’s gorgeous stage, a kind of shrine room with ritual objects, including candles galore, a bedecked vanity, and a large depiction of Iemanjá, the Umbanda (Candomblé) goddess of the sea, protector of fishermen and pregnant women — and who looks suspiciously like Cher. The floor is patterned like an Ipanema sidewalk of twisting black-and-white designs in the style of Roberto Burle Marx, which was highlighted in 2019 at the New York Botanical Garden. The walls are “persuasive papaya,” as Bete believes that “you have to paint the colors of your walls something that has to do with suggestive foods.” Krista Smith’s lighting shines brightly on Soria and casts long shadows on either side of the stage in one scene when Bete confronts her own parents.

Bold and barefoot, Soria (The Inheritance, Hit the Wall) fully inhabits the character of his mother. Too many of the lines fall flat and it can feel a bit repetitive even at only an hour, but Ni Mi Madre is a potent and poignant observation of first-generation immigrants, queer Latinidad, and the importance of family, despite the headaches.

“No matter how hard I try / You keep pushing me aside / And I can’t break through / There’s no talking to you,” Cher sings in “Believe,” which Bete mistakenly thinks is by Madonna. With Ni Mi Madre, Soria has taken a very public platform and touching way to break through to his mother.

ALMA BAYA

Edward Einhorn’s Alma Baya can be seen in person or online (photo by Arthur Cornelius)

ALMA BAYA
A.R.T./New York, Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre
502 West Fifty-Third St. at Tenth Ave.
August 13-28, $25 in person ($15 until August 25 with code UTC61); available on demand through September 19, $25
www.untitledtheater.com

Writer-director Edward Einhorn’s Alma Baya is a claustrophobic, vastly entertaining sci-fi parable for this moment in time, an absurdist look at what comes next. The play can be seen in person through August 28 at A.R.T./New York’s Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre, or two recordings can be accessed online; the August 14 and 15 performances, featuring different casts, were livestreamed for on-demand viewing. I saw the show with Ann Marie Yoo as Alma, Sheleah Harris as Baya, and Rivera Reese as a mysterious stranger; the second cast consists of Maggie Cino, Nina Man, and JaneAnne Halter.

In a not-too-distant future in an undefined part of the universe, the stern, ultraserious Alma and the wide-eyed, innocent Baya are living in a self-contained, highly sterile white pod, following instructions word-for-word as laid out in a series of white books. Alma is the alpha woman, in charge, while Baya is her obedient, willing assistant.

Like pushing the button at the underground swan site in the TV series Lost, Alma and Baya must twist and turn various handles and wheels when alarm bells sound, even though they don’t know what any of it means. Their controlled existence becomes threatened when a shadowy figure appears outside the pod and they debate whether to let it in. “It’s terrible. It’s helpless. Waiting. It thinks it’s being rescued,” Baya argues. “Don’t you dare,” Alma shoots back. “It’s either it or us. . . . If it gets in, it will kill us.”

Alma ultimately relents and they open the airlock, inviting in an unnamed naked, feral woman with a protective suit who needs food and water and promises she’s not dangerous. Alma insists she is a threat, but Baya wants to help her. The stranger also says she can help maintain their crops in return for being able to stay with them; Alma and Baya had thought the crops were dead — they have no working suit and haven’t been outside in months — and so are intrigued by the prospect of more sustenance. However, as the stranger tells stories about how her pod was so different from this one and begins questioning the many rules and the very purpose of it all, Alma grows more suspicious of her intentions, calling her a liar who is cleverly plotting against them. “I’m too hungry to be clever,” the stranger says. “That’s too bad. I thought you were too clever to be hungry,” Alma responds.

Two casts alternate in futuristic parable Alma and Baya

All the while, Alma and Baya expect the eventual arrival of the original Alma and Baya, as predicted in the books, evoking the New Testament and the return of Jesus as well as Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. “When?” the stranger asks. “Someday,” Baya answers. Alma explains, “That’s why we’re here. That’s the reason that we’re here. All of us. Even you.” A moment later, the stranger asks, “How do you know whether they’ll come or not?” Alma: “Why else are you here?” The stranger: “I don’t know if there is a reason.” Ultimately, they all might be right, or they all might be wrong.

Staged by Untitled Theater Company No. 61 — which playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and podcaster Einhorn (The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein, The Iron Heel) cofounded with his brother, David, who died of cancer during rehearsals — the seventy-five-minute Alma Baya adeptly tackles such topics as faith and religion, the refugee crisis, Covid-19, and others without ever mentioning them by name. The stranger could represent a manifestation of Jesus or the devil or a political refugee desperate for asylum; she even is a gardener, a profession that employs myriad people from other countries. There is also the much clearer comparison to the pods we all formed during the height of the coronavirus crisis, allowing only our live-in partner/families into our homes, afraid that anyone else could introduce Covid and kill us.

The fun, DIY set is by Mike Mroch, with flashy lighting by Federico Restrepo, effective sound by Mark Bruckner, and costumes by Ramona Ponce. The cast performs its job well, with Reese standing out as the stranger, a juicier role that keeps the audience guessing whether she’s good or bad. It’s an escapist play about how we are all trapped by something, including by ourselves, and that blind trust and faith are not always the best way out.

WALDEN

TheaterWorks Hartford adaptation of Amy Berryman’s Walden is set on edge of woods (photo by Christopher Capozziello)

WALDEN
TheaterWorks Hartford
RiverFront Recapture, 100 Meadow Road, Windsor, $95-$150
Livestream at Dunkin’ Donuts Stadium, Downtown Hartford, $15
Available on demand through August 29, $25
twhartford.org

One of the best new plays of the last eighteen months, Amy Berryman’s superb Walden is a cogent and timely exploration of loss, loneliness, and reconnection in an indeterminate near-future. Berryman started writing the play five years ago, concentrating on the devastating effects of climate change, and it debuted onstage at the Harold Pinter Theatre on London’s West End in May. It has now been ingeniously reimagined by TheaterWorks Hartford, taking place in a specially built wood-and-glass cabin on the edge of the woods by the Connecticut River at a location known as Riverfront Recapture in Windsor. The very small house has a sustainable vegetable garden on one side, a hammock on the other, and a cozy outdoor front porch.

There are three unique ways of experiencing the hundred-minute show: You can watch it in person, wearing masks, in socially distanced chairs on the grass, listening on headphones; see it with other people streaming at Dunkin’ Donuts Stadium in downtown Hartford, home of the minor league baseball team the Yard Goats; or check it out online, where it is available on demand. Do choose one, because Walden is an absolute must-see.

Bryan (Gabriel Brown) and Stella (Diana Oh) are living together in this wilderness; he is a staunch EA (Earth Advocate), a radical movement that believes the government must exhaust all possibilities of saving the planet before considering establishing habitats on the moon or Mars. Stella is a former prominent NASA architect who is adapting to her more private life with Bryan; they have a solar car, a flush toilet, and electricity, and Stella follows the news on a portable device, but Bryan refuses to use any kind of screen, living a Henry David Thoreau–like existence. Recently engaged, they each suffered different kinds of losses a year ago and are still dealing with the effects.

Cassie (Jeena Yi), Bryan (Gabriel Brown), and Stella (Diana Oh) spend time in the garden in Walden (photo by Christopher Capozziello)

After spending the last twelve months on the moon, where she miraculously made something grow out of the ground, Stella’s twin sister, Cassie (Jeena Yi), is coming for a visit. Their fathers were astronauts who also taught them about Walden, often quoting Thoreau. They remember him repeating to them, from the Solitude chapter, “This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, are the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose distance cannot be measured by our instruments. Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?”

Over the course of an evening, Bryan, Stella, and Cassie drink wine, share secrets, argue over technology, and debate not only the future of the blue marble but their own individual destinies as they contemplate where they belong in the universe. “It’s too late to turn things around!” Cassie declares. She’s right in more ways than one.

TheaterWorks Hartford’s first outdoor production in its thirty-five-year history, Walden is a seductive and charming play, no matter which side of the climate crisis discussion you are on. The isolation the characters feel, whether living in the woods or on the moon, is even more palpable in this time of Covid. When Cassie first arrives, she has a mask on. “You know, you don’t have to wear that,” Bryan says. “I wasn’t sure,” Cassie responds. “Within a hundred miles the air is totally safe. You don’t need a mask,” Bryan assures her. That’s something we would all like to hear.

The future of the planet is hotly debated in powerful new play (photo by Christopher Capozziello)

Walden is beautifully directed by Mei Ann Teo (SKiNFoLK: An American Show, Where We Belong) with a relaxed, easygoing pace that befits its lovely surroundings. I watched it online, where the cameras take you inside the house, into the garden, and onto the grass, where you can see some members of the masked audience sitting in front of you, making you feel part of set designer You-Shin Chen’s stunningly real and inviting environment. Jeanette Oi-Suk-Yew’s lighting evolves organically as darkness falls, while Hao Bai’s sound design immerses you in the action.

Berryman, a playwright, filmmaker, and actor who has written such shows as The New Galileos and The Whole of You and appeared in such works as Jessica Dickey’s The Convent and Greg Kotis’s Lunchtime at the Brick — her coronavirus microplay Pigeons for Eden Theater Company’s “Bathroom Plays” Zoom trilogy earned star LeeAnne Hutchison twi-ny’s Best Actor in a Short Play award during the pandemic lockdown — has given us an extraordinary treat in these difficult times, a splendidly constructed, wholly believable tale about where we are as a species today, and where we might be tomorrow.

Oh ({my lingerie play}, The Infinite Love Party), Yi (Judgment Day, Network), and Brown (Bobbie Clearly, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone) form a terrific trio, their well-drawn characters expressing serious contemporary concerns without becoming preachy or didactic. When it’s over, you’ll feel exhilarated by the return of live theater — and sincerely worried for the future of humanity.

CFT AT HOME: SOUTH PACIFIC

Nellie Forbush (Gina Beck) and Emile de Becque (Julian Ovenden) have a complicated relationship in South Pacific (photo by Johan Persson)

SOUTH PACIFIC
Chichester Festival THeatre
Through September 3, £20 – £30
www.cft.org.uk

Beloved Broadway musicals, just like other art forms, are undergoing a reckoning when it comes to such issues as racism, slavery, gender, class, sexuality, cultural appropriation, and colonialism. In recent years, revivals of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, The King and I, and Oklahoma! as well as Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady (a show Rodgers and Hammerstein attempted) have all been seen through a new lens, with tweaks that have annoyed purists but delighted those seeking equality and consciousness in all walks of life.

Traditionalists and progressives alike should be in agreement on Chichester Festival Theatre’s rousing revival of South Pacific, being performed in London through September 5 but also available to stream, recorded live onstage with an audience, on select days through September 3. Featuring music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan adapted from James A. Michener’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the show takes place in 1943 on an archipelago in the South Pacific, where US troops have not been called on to fight yet. As they wait to enter the war and do their duty, they mix with the local people, which doesn’t necessarily please the higher-ups.

Ensign Nellie Forbush (Gina Beck), the head nurse, falls for French ex-pat Emile de Becque (Julian Ovenden). Bloody Mary (Joanna Ampil) will sell just about anything to GIs, including shrunken human heads, in order to make a better life for her beautiful young daughter, Liat (Sera Maehara), whom steadfast Lt. Joseph Cable (Rob Houchen) takes a shine to. Fast-talking Seabee Luther Billis (Keir Charles) provides comic relief while also initiating several key plot twists. The central love story between Nellie and Emile is at the heart of the show, but it’s not a standard romance. Rather, it is one that challenges the viewer, as Nellie reveals her surprising underlying racism, while Emile, who owns a plantation, is haunted by having killed a man back home. They are not your typical hero couple.

CFT artistic director Daniel Evans (This Is My Family, Quiz) directs a cast of more than thirty on the circular stage, which occasionally rotates slowly. The production looks and sounds phenomenal, with sets and costumes by Peter McKintosh, who nails scene after scene, from Billis’s laundry business to a USO show (with drag) to the nurses at a beach. Howard Harrison’s lighting is superb, particularly during Liat’s expressive and poignant solo dance. (Ann Yee is the choreographer and movement director, with sound by Paul Groothius.) New orchestrations by David Cullen, with musical supervision by Nigel Lilley and musical direction by Cat Beveridge, inject new life into old favorites, including “Some Enchanted Evening,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair,” “Honey Bun,” “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame,” and “Bali Ha’i.” There are a lot of reprises, which get, well, too repetitive for me, but why limit a good song?

CFT revival of Sout Pacific is chock-full of wonderful set pieces (photo by Johan Persson)

Beck, who is pregnant (she shares the role with Alex Young live at CFT but is on the stream), is lovely as Nellie; we root for her even when she makes the racist statement that shocks us, while Ovenden is beguiling as Emile, his booming, operatic voice dominating the stage. The characters were originated on Broadway by Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza and have also been portrayed onstage by Florence Henderson and Giorgio Tozzi in 1967 and Kelli O’Hara and Paulo Szot in 2008 and on the big screen by Mitzi Gaynor and Rossano Brazzi in 1958 and Glenn Close and Rade Sherbedgia in 2001. Without their chemistry, the show would be a series of set pieces and subplots, some better than others. The romance between Cable and Liat has always been troublesome, and Billis’s overenthusiasm can be grating.

But Rodgers and Hammerstein knew what they were doing from the very start, not afraid to take on difficult issues. “You’ve got to be taught / Before it’s too late / Before you are six / Or seven / Or eight / To hate all the people / Your relatives hate,” Cable sings in a controversial song that was occasionally removed from some presentations. Emile responds, “This is just the kind of ugliness I was running away from / It has followed me all this way / All these years / And now it has found me.”

In “A Cockeyed Optimist,” Nellie sings, “I hear the human race is falling on its face / And hasn’t very far to go.” That might be true, especially these days, but with productions such as CFT’s South Pacific, there’s reason to be hopeful and optimistic about the future.