Lauren Halsey’s Met Roof Garden Commission will be activated by live performances and more this weekend (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Met Fifth Avenue
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
July 21-23, free with museum admission
Exhibit continues through October 22 (weather permitting)
Admission: $30 adults, children under twelve free (New York State residents pay-what-you-wish)
212-535-7710 www.metmuseum.org the eastside of south central slideshow
“I get to build the worlds I wish I lived in,” artist Lauren Halsey says in a promotional video about her Met Roof Garden Commission, the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I). “I collapse all of these worlds: street, pyramid, gorgeous nature, domestic worlds, into one composition to create new opportunities that are about uplift, that are about togetherness.” Wanting to build an Egyptian-style modern-day temple, Halsey studied works at the Met, including the Temple of Dendur, listened to PFunk, and constructed the eastside, which will be part of her community center Summereverything in South Central after the roof show is over.
This weekend Metlivearts will activate the sculpture, which features likenesses of Halsey’s loved ones and influences and carvings of local images and text she’s collected over the last fifteen years, with a series of special events, all free with museum admission and first come, first served. On Friday at 6:30 and 7:30 on the roof, California-born disabled choreographer, dancer, and sound artist Jerron Herman will perform the solo piece LAX, with an ornate costume by unsighted textile artist Sugandha Gupta, as part of Disability Pride Month. On July 22 at 6:00 and 7:15 on the roof, Moten/López/Cleaver will present a new work inspired by the eastside, with Fred Moten on vocals, Brandon López on double bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. And on Sunday from 11:00 to 2:00, “A Celebration — The Roof Garden Commission: Lauren Halsey” consists of interactive drop-in stations, a creative writing workshop in the Charles Engelhard Court, a Scent Lab and Architectural Art Making at the Temple of Dendur, and gallery chats on the roof and at the famed temple.
Lauren Halsey Met roof installation features carved text and imagery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“This work is aspirational,” Halsey continues in the video. “They’re images around community, transcendence, self-determination, and autonomy. . . . I hope when folks come to the Met and experience my piece, they walk away with a more holistic view about South Central that aren’t about the violence, they aren’t about dread, they’re very much about survival, vibrancy, love. And they also are just into me reinvisioning the hieroglyph as a form to tell stories.”
“NXTHVN: Reclamation” at Sean Kelly features curator tour, artist discussions, and live performance on July 19 (photo by Jason Wyche / courtesy Sean Kelly)
Who: Cornelia Stokes, Kiara Cristina Ventura, Athena Quispe, Ashanté Kindle, Donald Guevara, Edgar Serrano, Anindita Dutta What: Curator-led walkthrough, artist discussions, live performance Where:Sean Kelly Gallery, 475 Tenth Ave. at Thirty-Sixth St. When: Wednesday, July 19, free, 6:00 Why: In 2016, arts incubator NXTHVN was founded by American artist Titus Kaphar, private equity entrepreneur Jason Price, and Canadian artist Jonathan Brand. Based in two former manufacturing plants in New Haven, Connecticut, the nonprofit’s mission is “to build an alternative model of art mentorship and career advising through a specially designed curriculum, and to simultaneously set into motion significant opportunities for emerging local entrepreneurs.” Sean Kelly Gallery is currently hosting the two-floor exhibition “NXTHVN: Reclamation,” continuing through August 11, featuring painting, drawing, collage, video, sculpture, installation, and performance by six artists from NXTHVN’s Cohort 04 Fellowship Program: Anindita Dutta, Donald Guevara, Ashanté Kindle, Athena Quispe, Edgar Serrano, and Capt. James Stovall V.
On July 19, as part of ADAA Chelsea Gallery Walk, the gallery will present a walkthrough of the show at 6:00, led by NXTHVN curatorial fellows Cornelia Stokes and Kiara Cristina Ventura, joined by Quispe, Kindle, Guevara, and Serrano, who will discuss their contributions. “It is in this dance that the display of contradictory bodies and settings superimposed and cut together become a new whole; the cyborg of cultural mixture in a new virtualized arena where the procession of time can be known but not yet felt,” Guevara says of his work.
At 6:30, there will a live performance by Dutta, who uses such found materials as clothing, shoes, fabric, rawhide, chairs, and horns to take on gender conflict, sexual violence, and impermanence. “When victims and perpetrators remain silent about heinous crimes, the truth remains obscured and inaccessible,” she notes in her artist statement. “I wonder who holds the truth? Who is the witness to the events that transpired? Who is the knower of all thoughts and feelings, pain and suffering, stigma, and depression?”
SUMMER FOR THE CITY AT LINCOLN CENTER: ONE DANCE
David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
July 20-22, $24-$190 (use code KCCNYOD for 20% discount)
Korean Arts Week runs July 19-22, free www.davidhkochtheater.com www.lincolncenter.org
“All on the same line, in the same shape, with the same heart, it’s a heartfelt piece that brings us together,” Seoul Metropolitan Dance Theatre artistic director and choreographer Hyejin Jung says in a promotional video for One Dance (Il-mu), making its North American premiere at the David H. Koch Theater during Korean Arts Week, part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City program. The four-act, seventy-minute work, which melds traditional and contemporary Korean dance in stunning re-creations, debuted in May 2022 at the Sejong Grand Theater in Seoul.
One Dance is choreographed by Jung, Sung Hoon Kim, and Jae Duk Kim, with music by Jae Duk Kim and mise-en-scène by Ku-ho Jung, incorporating dazzling costumes and such props as bamboo sticks, swords, poles, and ritual objects. “I don’t think the beauty of Korea is an intricate technique but rather a symbolism of emptiness and abundance,” Ku-ho Jung explains in the video. “It’s really important to show the symbolism of the nuances. In fact, the process of staging One Dance was to show the Korean nuances by emptying out a lot of the material and focusing on the moves.”
One Dance is divided into four sections — “Munmu”/“Mumu,” “Chunaengmu,” “Jungmu,” and “New Ilmu” — with fifty-four dancers paying homage to courtly processions, ancient martial arts traditions, and contemporary styles through movement, music, and song. Ticket prices begin at $24; you can use code KCCNYOD for a 20% discount.
Korean Arts Week runs July 19-22 and also includes a bevy of free events: the digital artwork WAVE by d’strict, a K-Lit symposium, a family-friendly showcase by KTMDC Dance Company, Musical Theatre Storytime with KPOP composer Helen Park, silent discos with BIAS NYC and DJ Peach, a guided meditation set to Korean traditional music, a screening of Bong Joon Ho’s horror favorite The Host, and concerts by Crying Nut, Say Sue Me, Yerin Baek, Dongyang Gozupa, and Gray by Silver.
André De Shields, Odessa Young, and Meshell Ndegeocello will channel the thoughts of Bob Dylan at 92Y on July 17
Who:André De Shields, Odessa Young, Meshell Ndegeocello and Her Band What:Dramatic reading and musical performance Where: Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. at Ninety-Second St. When: Monday, July 17, $40, 7:30 Why: “The song of the lone wolf, the outsider, the alien, the foreigner, and night owl who’s wheeling and dealing, putting everything up for sale and surrendering his self-interest. On the move aimlessly through the dingy darkness — slicing up the pie of sentimental feelings, dividing it into pieces all the time, exchanging piercing penetrating looks with someone he hardly knows,” Bob Dylan writes about “Stranger in the Night” in his book The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster, $45, November 2022).
He continues, “Tramps and mavericks, the object of each other’s affection, enraptured with each other and creating an alliance — ignoring all the ages of man, the golden age, electronic age, age of anxiety, the jazz age. You’re here to tell a different story, a bird of another feather. You’ve got a tough persona, like a side of beef, and you’re aroused and stimulated, with an ear-to-ear grin, like a Cheshire cat, and you’re rethinking your entire formless life, your entire being is filled with a whiff of this heady ambrosia. Something in your vital spirit, your pulse, something that runs in the blood, tells you that you must have this tender feeling of love now and forever, this essence of devoted love held tightly in your grip — that it’s essential and necessary for staying alive and cheating death. Intruders, oddballs, kooks, and villains, in this gloomy lifeless dark, fight for space. Two rootless alienated people, withdrawn and isolated, opened the door to each other, said Aloha, Howdy, How you doing, and Good Evening. How could you have known that the smooching and petting, eros and adoration was just one break down mambo hustle away — one far sided google eyed look and a lusty leer — that ever since then, that moment of truth, you’ve been steamed up, head over heels, each other’s hearts’ desire. Sweethearts and honeys right from the beginning. Right from the inaugural sidelong sneak peek, the origin — the starting point. Now you’re yoked together, one flesh in perpetuity — into the vast eternity — immortalized.”
A living legend, Dylan himself has been immortalized as the ultimate iconoclastic, unpredictable singer-songwriter rock star over the course of his seven-decade career, during which there has also been an endless debate about the quality of his voice. Dylan himself reads the audiobook, joined by Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac, Helen Mirren, Rita Moreno, Sissy Spacek, Alfre Woodard, Jeffrey Wright, and Renée Zellweger. Like him or hate him, Dylan is still a master of vocal phrasing, as a singer and a narrator, in this case delving into sixty-six wide-ranging tunes.
There’s no argument about the mellifluous tones of Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winner André De Shields (Hadestown,Ain’t Misbehavin’), who will be at the 92nd St. Y on July 17 to present dramatic readings from The Philosophy of Modern Song and live musical performances of some of the songs Dylan waxes poetic about in the book; the special Unterberg Poetry Center event, directed by Michael Almereyda (Another Girl Another Planet,Hamlet,Paradise), also features Australian actress Odessa Young (The Daughter,High Life) and German-born American artist Meshell Ndegeocello and Her Band (Plantation Lullabies,Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape).
Writing about Tin Pan Alley themes, Dylan explains in the book, “It is important to remember that these words were written for the ear and not for the eye. And as in comedy, where a seemingly simple sentence can transform into a joke through the magic of performance, an inexplicable thing happens when words are set to music. The miracle is their union.” That union is what Almereyda, De Shields, Young, and Ndegeocello will be celebrating Monday night at the 92nd St. Y.
A vulture spies human feet under a wall of plants in bloodred pond in Ebony G. Patterson installation at NYBG (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
. . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . .
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Tuesday – Sunday through October 22, $15 children two to twelve, $31 students and seniors, $35 adults, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-817-8700 www.nybg.org ebonygpatterson.com online slide show
“I’m going to give you a show that you’ve not had before,” artist Ebony G. Patterson promised New York Botanical Garden curator Joanna L. Groarke upon preparing for the exhibition “. . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . . ,” which has just been extended at NYBG through October 22, 2023.
The Jamaica native has done just that, presenting a wide-ranging display that incorporates sculpture, installation, video, collage, and an interactive element, “Things to Be Remembered,” which asks visitors to answer the question “What have you . . . missed . . . felt . . . loved . . . learned . . . witnessed . . . needed . . . heard . . . that you never want to forget?”
“Ebony is the first visual artist to create art at the garden through an immersive residency,” NYBG CEO Jennifer Bernstein said at the preview in May. “This exhibition celebrates the allure of the beautiful while contemplating what lies beneath the enticing surface, the complex tensions of the natural world, and how they reflect the entanglements of race, gender, and colonialism.”
The exhibition features nearly five hundred black foam turkey vultures congregating around the lawn outside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and inside the massive greenhouse, as if they’re anticipating a kind of destruction, along with hand-cast glass sculptures of body parts and extinct plants, out in the open and hidden within the confines. You can also hear Patterson’s voice in the soundscape. In the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Building, there are works from Patterson’s “studies from a vocabulary of loss” series, consisting of framed collages with cut-paper flowers and reaching hands, plastic insects, feathered butterflies, and such words as liability,should,wreckage, and goodbye kiss.
The library rotunda is home to . . . fester . . . , a stunning ten-foot horizontal piece laden with woven jacquard fabrics, vertebrae, hand-blown black and white glass plants, and more than a thousand red gloves spreading out onto the floor; yet more vultures hover on ledges above floral patterned wallpaper. Visitors can walk inside the three-channel video installation The Observation: The Bush Cockerel Project, a Fictitious Historical Narrative, in which costumed characters wander through a primordial garden, climate change surrounding the proceedings like, well, vultures.
In putting together the show, Patterson, who lives and works in Kingston and Chicago, was concerned with loss, healing, and regeneration; the intersection of art, horticulture, and science; living and dead plants as ghosts and skeletons; and the materiality of objects, recognizing that both Jamaica and America are postcolonial societies facing problematic issues of income inequality and social injustice.
“What does it mean to think about the word gardens associated with places that are working-class spaces in contrast to a place that is a wealthy neighborhood?” she said. “What does it mean to think about a garden as a site of survival, as a site of social survival? What does it then also mean to think about gardens as it relates to communities that are given particular kinds of care in terms of what is thought of as a space of investment of possibility, and what does it also then mean to think about those gardens that are not given consideration for possibility of care but thrive regardless because that is what happens in nature? Things live on, irrespective of what one puts in nature’s way.”
The centerpiece of the exhibit in the conservatory is an immersive structure topped by a white peacock, as if the rest of the installation bursts from its feathers, ending in a bloodred pond in another room where a wall of plants has seemingly fallen from the sky, a pair of white glass legs sticking out like the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy’s house crushes her in The Wizard of Us. Patterson, who had never before been to NYBG before beginning this project but is a regular at the Hope Botanical Gardens and the adjoining Hope Zoo Kingston in her hometown of Kingston, had only recently seen a rare white peacock there for the first time in her life.
“In seeing this peacock, the peacock was in molting, and it was in a dark enclosure, and the peacock just kind of hovered in the space, ebbing and flowing,” she explained at the preview. “It almost seemed like it was a haunt. And so thinking about what the peacock is — this incredibly beautiful bird with all of its pageantry — and to see it at its ugliest moment remained with me for a year. And so in thinking about that, I couldn’t help but think about the question of what does it mean to witness your ugliness. And so for me, unpacking the garden, in a moment of molting, in a moment of transformation, is about witnessing our collective ugliness, that even in the ugliness, beauty is possible, and in that possibility, we will always find new ways ahead.”
Ebony G. Patterson’s “studies from a vocabulary of loss” are framed collages containing words amid flowers, hands, insects, butterflies, and other elements (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Patterson was also inspired by her residency at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Arkansas, where she developed such works as . . . bugs, reptile, fruit, and bush . . . for those who bear/bare witness.
At the preview, I had a chance to speak with Patterson, whose other projects include “Gangstas for Life,” “Disciplez,” and “Invisible Presence: Bling Memories,” a performative piece with embellished coffins.
twi-ny: The first time you ever came to the New York Botanical Garden was in 2019. What were your first impressions walking the grounds?
egp: Yeah, I mean, the sense of sprawl, and there’s a particular kind of splendor that also exists here, as a place like this does because of its expanse. And then also too because part of its mandate is to create a space of beauty. But then I think the other thing that I was also struck by was the demographics. So I was also also very aware of, oh, who are the people that spend time here? Who are the people that spend a lot of time here? And then I had to say that in thinking about the project, I thought about those people a lot. I thought I would hear stories about women who would come during particular seasons, to see particular flowers, and fussing about the fact that a flower doesn’t grow the same way the next season.
But I think about those people. And also too in terms of how this is such a heightened visual experience. Not everybody goes to museums. For some people the garden is their ultimate visual experience. So what does it mean also to disrupt that for a person so that they also think about this place differently in the same way that one would think about an exhibition very differently when one goes to a museum? Each exhibition presents something different. And I sat with that a lot over the course of thinking through the ideas here.
twi-ny: And you were given pretty much carte blanche to go and do what you needed to do?
egp: Correct. Yes. And the gardens . . . I mean, there were some things that I had proposed that I wanted us to explore that were a little difficult to do, given the time. So there is carte blanche and there is carte blanche, right? But that being said, a lot of this is truly a collaboration because as much as I use plants and I think about using plants in relation to history, all of the knowledge about what it means to grow a plant at a particular time, what it is, how it lives with something else, is not something that I consider at all.
And I come from a place of thinking about things as a painter. So I rely very heavily then on the knowledge of the people who are here, in the same way that I would rely on the knowledge of somebody who works in glass. I love glass materially, but ask me, can I go and forge it, do what’s necessary to make it whole myself? No. Can I sew? It’s the same . . . We all rely on the knowledge base of other people to make things possible, and artists are no different in that history.
twi-ny: Mentioning museums, “Dead Treez” was at the Museum of Arts & Design in 2016. Do you see a direct link between the NYBG show and that one?
egp: Oh, absolutely. When MAD gave me that opportunity in the Tiffany Galleries to make a garden inside their galleries, that was such a huge shift in my own practice. But then also too for MAD, it was a new point of departure for them, for them to be inviting an artist to curate a selection of objects. But then I had the show that was also running concurrently [“. . . while the dew is still on the roses . . .” at Pérez Art Museum Miami], and I was like, “How do I make these two things speak to each other?”
So I think for me, the Museum of Arts & Design project that I did in those Tiffany cases is essentially the seed that’s continued to grow over these years. It’s the very thing that ended up also growing the Pérez show, which was centered on this notion of thinking about a night garden. And then what does it also then mean to pull that all out into the living space? But also, too, the garden isn’t an art institution, but then at the same time, doing this at an art institution just would not be possible, it just wouldn’t.
[For a more personal look at the arts in New York City, follow Mark Rifkin on Substack here.]
Oscar nominees Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman try to make it in the big city in John Schlesinger’s powerful Midnight Cowboy
MIDNIGHT COWBOY (John Schlesinger, 1969) DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY (Nancy Biurski, 2022)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, July 7
212-727-8110 filmforum.org
The only X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar, John Schlesinger’s masterful Midnight Cowboy follows the exploits of Joe Buck (Jon Voight), a friendly sort of chap who leaves his small Texas town, determined to make it as a male prostitute in Manhattan. Wearing his cowboy gear and clutching his beloved transistor radio, he trolls the streets with little success. Things take a turn when he meets up with Enrico Salvatore “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), an ill, hobbled con man living in a condemned building. The two loners soon develop an unusual relationship as Buck is haunted by nightmares, shown in black-and-white, about his childhood and a tragic event that happened to him and his girlfriend, Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt), while Rizzo dreams of a beautiful life, depicted in bright color, without sickness or limps on the beach in Miami.
Adapted by Waldo Salt (Serpico, The Day of the Locust) from the novel by James Leo Herlihy, Midnight Cowboy is essentially a string of fascinating and revealing set pieces in which Buck encounters unusual characters as he tries desperately to succeed in the big city; along the way he beds an older, wealthy Park Ave. matron (Sylvia Miles), is asked to get down on his knees by a Bible thumper (John McGiver), gets propositioned in a movie theater by a nerdy college student (Bob Balaban), has a disagreement with a confused older man (Barnard Hughes), and attends a Warholian party (thrown by Viva and Gastone Rosilli and featuring Ultra Violet, Paul Jabara, International Velvet, Taylor Mead, and Paul Morrissey) where he hooks up with an adventurous socialite (Brenda Vaccaro).
Photographed by first-time cinematographer Adam Holender (The Panic in Needle Park, Blue in the Face), the film captures the seedy, lurid environment that was Times Square in the late 1960s; when Buck looks out his hotel window, he sees the flashing neon, with a sign for Mutual of New York front and center, the letters “MONY” bouncing across his face with promise. The film is anchored by Harry Nilsson’s Grammy-winning version of “Everybody’s Talkin’,” along with John Barry’s memorable theme. Iconic shots are littered throughout, along with such classic lines as “I’m walkin’ here!”
Midnight Cowboy, which was nominated for seven Oscars and won three (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director), is screening at Film Forum in conjunction with the theatrical release of Nancy Buirski’s Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, which is not a typical making-of documentary; inspired by Glenn Frankel’s 2021 book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic, Buirski explores the social context in which Midnight Cowboy was created and brought to the public. The film opens with Voight telling a great story about the day shooting wrapped:
“That’s the last shot. . . . John [Schlesinger], he was like this, shaking. I said, ‘John, what’s the matter?’ He said, ‘What have we done? What have we done? We’ve made a movie about a dishwasher who goes and fucks a lot of women in New York. What’ll they say? What’ll they say about this picture?’ I said, and I knew he’s having a complete meltdown, right? I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I was his friend, I want to help him. I grabbed him by the shoulders and I said, ‘John,’ — I looked him in the eye — ‘we will live the rest of our artistic lives in the shadow of this great masterpiece.’ He looks up, ‘You think so?’ [Voight laughs] I said, ‘I’m absolutely certain of it.’ It was the only thing that could get him out of it. I said the most ridiculous thing I could think of but . . . turned out to be true.”
Buirski (The Loving Story,Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq) speaks with Jennifer Salt, the daughter of Waldo Salt, who played Crazy Annie; Bob Balaban, who portrayed the college student in the movie theater; Brenda Vaccaro, who plays the socialite; cultural critic Lucy Sante; Schlesinger’s nephew, author Ian Buruma; film critic James Hoberman; Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis; photographer Michael Childers, Schlesinger’s longtime partner; and cinematographer Adam Holender, who contributes modern-day photos of New York City. Writer, director, and producer Buirski and editor Anthony Ripoli include a barrage of archival color and black-and-white footage of the Vietnam War, Times Square, the Chicago Seven, and the moon landing; clips from dozens and dozens of movies, from The Graduate,Easy Rider,The Sound of Music,Flaming Creatures,The Boys in the Band,Taxi Driver, and numerous Westerns and Andy Warhol works to such other Schlesinger films as A Kind of Loving,Billy Liar,Darling, and Sunday Bloody Sunday. There are also snippets of older interviews with Waldo Salt, James Leo Herlihy, and Dustin Hoffman; Voight’s original screen test with Salt; and home movies of Schlesinger, who died in 2003 at the age of seventy-seven.
Desperate Souls focuses on the changing postwar class system; homoeroticism, particularly as it relates to the macho image of cowboys, from John Wayne to the Marlboro Man; and the transformation of pop culture in the 1970s, with a soundtrack that includes songs by Don McLean, the Guess Who, Gerry & the Pacemakers, and Janis Ian. There’s a significant amount of information overload about the era and Midnight Cowboy’s legacy instead of more behind-the-scenes details, but you can find out more when Buirski and Holender take part in a Q&A following the 6:00 screening on July 7 at Film Forum.
Juliet Stevenson delivers a ferocious performance of intense precision in The Doctor (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)
THE DOCTOR
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Saturday through August 19, $54-$208 www.armoryonpark.org
“I’m a doctor,” neurosurgeon Ruth Wolff declares throughout Robert Icke’s The Doctor, while others keep categorizing her by her race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Identity politics and cancel culture collide in complicated ways with faith and medicine in the riveting play, which also takes on conscious and unconscious bias and the battle between science and religion, in a freely adapted update of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 Professor Bernhardi.
Wolff, portrayed by a fierce, unstoppable Juliet Stevenson with boundless energy, is the founding director of the Elizabeth Institute, a well-funded private facility that specializes in treating Alzheimer’s patients. Wolff is currently caring for Emily, a fourteen-year-old girl dying of sepsis after an unregulated abortion; when a priest, Father Jacob (John Mackay), arrives unannounced to deliver last rites, Wolff refuses him entry, stating that whether to receive his visit is Emily’s decision, not that of the priest or the girl’s parents, who are not immediately available.
“Let me make it clearer. Emily is gravely ill. Emily’s parents asked me to be here and to attend to her. Is that not obvious?” Father Jacob demands.
Wolff responds, “It’s obvious when the patient has requested religious assistance, because it’s written on her medical notes. In this instance, there’s nothing of the sort. . . . I have no way of knowing whether she last attended church in a Christening gown. The only thing of relevance is what she herself believes — and I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ve ever met her.”
As Father Jacob attempts to force his way into Emily’s room, Wolff blocks his way — there is some kind of physical confrontation, so cleverly staged that it is impossible to tell who might have struck whom. Emily then dies an awful death, and the characters choose sides based on their personal and professional beliefs, seeing what they want to see, as public pressure builds against Wolff.
The board of the Elizabeth Institute meet to decide the fate of their chair and director in Robert Icke’s The Doctor (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)
Senior consultant and deputy director Robert Hardiman (Naomi Wirthner) views the complex situation as a chance to seize power. Dr. Michael Copley (Chris Osikanlu Colquhoun) displays full confidence in Wolff, but Dr. Paul Murphy (Daniel Rabin), putting faith before medicine, is insulted by what Wolff has done, declaring, “This is a Christian country.” Roberts (Mariah Louca), the press liaison who is Jewish, is having trouble dealing with the media, particularly as the religious angle grows more volatile.
Minister for Health Jemima Flint (Preeya Kalidas) expresses support for Wolff and dangles critical government financing if she apologizes. The new junior staff member (Jaime Schwarz) is generally bewildered by the controversy, suddenly learning that being a doctor is more than just treating patients. Professor Cyprian (Doña Croll) endorses everything Wolff did regarding Emily. Meanwhile, the search for a new head of pharmacology becomes an object lesson in decisions based on identity instead of merit.
Whenever she’s at home, Wolff is visited by Sami (Matilda Tucker), a high school student who lives upstairs. The two talk about sex, witches, and death. “We’re all going to die, though,” Sami posits. “Like — a sell-by date for your soul. It’s a ‘when’ not an ‘if.’ Could be tomorrow. Or tonight. In here. Now.”
Meanwhile, Wolff’s partner, Charlie (Juliet Garricks), mysteriously shows up at the institute, introducing each scene. “It might be the moment to bring me up,” Charlie offers. “At work? They don’t get my life. They don’t get to be involved,” Ruth responds. Charlie: “They don’t get to know about me.” Wolff: “What?” Charlie: “You know.” Wolff: “And why would I not talk about you?” Charlie: “Because you are ashamed of the way it makes you seem.” Wolff: “I go in tomorrow and start talking about you, now it’s going to seem like — like I’m asking for my ‘I’m a human too’ badge — some get me off the hook scheme. No. Not doing it.”
In the shorter second act, Wolff must defend herself on television, facing a panel of presumed experts spouting off about religion, abortion and medical ethics, Jewish history and culture, race and privilege, and bias. Wolff sits in a chair with her back to the audience as she is grilled, her face projected on two large screens, looming behind the pontificating blowhards in front of her. “My identity isn’t the issue,” she argues again and again, but no one is listening. Wolff refuses to see herself as a hero or a villain, but there are certain truths that she’s not listening to either.
Hildegard Bechtler’s set is a semicircular wooden wall that serves as a kind of protective barrier, keeping the characters trapped in rooms the way they are trapped by their minds, locked in judging others, with a turntable that rotates agonizingly slowly, unlike the wheels of justice in the court of public opinion; tables and chairs are moved around and Natasha Chivers’s lighting shifts intensity to signify changing from the institute’s bright conference room to Wolff’s much darker apartment. Bechtler also designed the costumes, primarily doctors’ white coats over everyday wear that tends toward black. Tom Gibbons’s sound design flows from board arguments to television show debate to intimate personal discussions, with Hannah Ledwidge adding drums and percussion from an open cube perched over the stage in the back.
Icke (Judas,Animal Farm) knows the Wade Thompson Drill Hall well, having previously presented Hamlet/Oresteia and Enemy of the People there in just the last two years, making fine use of the grand space. The show is extremely talky, with lots of explication and more than enough didacticism, particularly in the second act, and a late scene between Wolff and Father Jacob is sentimental overkill. In addition, during the TV segment, Wolff uses a racist word that ignites further altercation, but it feels forced to add unnecessary verbal fisticuffs.
The excellent cast challenges stereotypes and categorization by portraying characters that don’t look like them (except for Ruth and Flint); for example, whites play Blacks and women play men, although it is not immediately apparent. (Tucker is a standout as the unpredictable Sami.) In the script, Ickes notes, “Actors should be cast with and against the identity of the characters . . . other than in the debate section, where ideally the actors play with their identity. The design is that the audience have to reconsider characters once an aspect of their identity is revealed by the play.” It can get confusing, but that is part of the point, as Ickes lays the groundwork for people to stop classifying, and demonizing, people by race, gender, religion, et al.
But the show belongs to Emmy nominee and Olivier winner Stevenson (Truly, Madly, Deeply; Death and the Maiden), a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court Theatre, and the National Theatre whose only previous North American stage appearance was as Desiree in a 2003 New York City Opera production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music with Jeremy Irons, Claire Bloom, and Anna Kendrick. (Her extraordinary voice narrated Blindness through special headphones at the Daryl Roth two years ago.) Stevenson — Icke wrote the play with her in mind to be the star — is electrifying as Wolff, whether staring someone down, stating her case to doubters, or running around the room in a whirlwind of furious, uncontrollable energy. She stomps across the stage, firmly entrenched in Wolff’s repeated assertions that she is a doctor, justifying her decisions over and over again by adding, “I’m crystal clear.”
The Viennese Schnitzler (Liebelei,Reigen,Das weite Land) wrote dozens of plays, short stories, and novels that were ahead of their time, exploring sexual awareness, social convention, and anti-Semitism in ways that were controversial in his era but relate to what is happening in the twenty-first century. About midway through the first act, when Wolff explains to Copley and Murphy that she is not a practicing Jew, Murphy says, “But you would have been thought of as Jewish — in the 1940s.” She responds by getting to the heart of the story: “Maybe there might be more sensitive ways to reflect on the Jewish identity than the ones pioneered by the Nazis. Thank you, Michael, yes, you and I lost family in that war, and they had stars sewn onto their lapels, but their legacy is this: We now get to choose what defines us — so can we please get on with our lives.”
As we learn in The Doctor, that prescription is not so easy to fill.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
