this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

DAVID BYRNE AND JOHN WILSON — HOW WE LEARNED ABOUT NON-RATIONAL LOGIC: A CONVERSATION ON HUMOR AND BOOKMAKING

John Wilson talks with David Byrne about his latest Pace show and new book on February 7

Who: David Byrne, John Wilson
What: Live virtual discussion
Where: Pace Gallery, 540 West Twenty-Fifth St., Pace Gallery YouTube
When: Monday, February 7, free (online), 7:00
Why: In his endlessly creative and fun HBO docuseries How To with John Wilson, Astoria native John Wilson uses footage shot all around New York City to delve into such issues as small talk, scaffolding, memory improvement, finding a parking spot, and making the perfect risotto. In his endlessly creative and fun career, British-born musician, singer, playwright, and visual artist David Byrne has made albums (solo and with Talking Heads), given concerts, directed films, and had gallery shows; currently, his brilliant American Utopia continues on Broadway at the St. James Theatre through April 3, and his latest exhibition, “How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic,” is running at Pace’s Twenty-Fifth St. space through March 19. The show consists of several series of drawings Byrne has done over the last twenty years, including his unusual depictions of dingbats sketched during the pandemic. (He describes his fascination with dingbats here.)

Byrne and Wilson have previously collaborated on the 2015 true crime concert documentary Temporary Color; they now will sit down together for a discussion at Pace in conjunction with the publication of Byrne’s new book, A History of the World (in Dingbats) (Phaidon, March 9, $39.95). “How We Learned About Non-Rational Logic: A Conversation on Humor and Bookmaking” takes place in person at Pace, where attendees will receive a signed copy of the book; the event will also be streamed for free over YouTube. “This idea of non-rational logic was not something I made up, but I realized that it kind of resonated with both the fact that I make music and the fact that these drawings follow a kind of logic that isn’t kind of based on logical or rational thinking,” Byrne notes in the above behind-the-scenes video. There should be plenty of such non-rational logic in what promises to be a very funny and illuminating talk.

NYC’S MOVIE RENAISSANCE 1945 – 1955

New Yorkers should be flocking to see The Naked City and other Big Apple flicks at Film Forum

NYC’S MOVIE RENAISSANCE 1945 – 1955
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through February 10
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

In his July 2021 book “Keep ’Em in the East”: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Renaissance (Columbia University Press, $40), film historian Richard Koszarski details how New York City came to be a haven for making movies. “Fiorello La Guardia was the first New York mayor to realize the full significance of the motion picture industry to the city’s economic well-being. The few hundred jobs directly at stake in the late 1930s were not unimportant, but ever since the turn of the century, the movies — along with broadcasting and publishing — had also been doing something else for New Yorkers. Where the twentieth century had begun with a range of great American cities competing for world and national attention, it was now clear that modern America was no longer so flat a landscape. Now there was New York — and all those other places. Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco were all great cities, but New York was the city.”

Tony Curtis and Richard Jaeckel are two of the toughies in Maxwell Shane’s City Across the River

New York City native Koszarski will be at Film Forum to talk about a few of the films in “NYC’s Movie Renaissance 1945 – 1955,” a two-week series consisting of two dozen flicks that take place in and around Gotham, released in the ten years beginning around the end of WWII. The diverse selection ranges from noir and romcoms to musicals and courtroom dramas, psychological studies and cop stories with car chases. Among the many stars you’ll encounter are Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Sainte, Richard Conte, Judy Holliday, Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Coleen Gray, Richard Widmark, Thelma Ritter, Dana Andrews, Jane Wyatt, Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller, Vittorio Gassman, Gloria Grahame, John Garfield, Moms Mabely, and Victor Mature.

Earl McEvoy’s The Killer That Stalked New York is among the many surprises in Film Forum series

Familiar classics such as Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil, Henry Hathaway’s The House on 92nd St. and Kiss of Death, Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s On the Town, and William Dieterle’s Portrait of Jennie are joined by such lesser-known works as George Cukor’s The Marrying Kind, Maxwell Shane’s City Across the River, Earl McEvoy’s The Killer That Stalked New York, Maxwell Shane’s City Across the River, Josh Binney’s Boardinghouse Blues, cinematographer extraordinaire Ted Tetzlaff’s The Window, and Bernard Vorhaus’s incarcerated women tale So Young, So Bad with Rita Moreno and Anne Francis.

Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss is part of Film Forum series about the renaissance of NYC-set flicks

Koszarski writes about Fletcher Markle’s Jigsaw, “Interesting suggestions of widespread corruption involving the mafia, right wing vigilantes, and political power brokers who operate out of Manhattan penthouses. . . . Most of the cast consisted of unfamiliar New York faces, but Markle and [Franchot] Tone did convince quite a few of their friends to pop up in oddball cameos.” And he explains about Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, and Ray Ashley’s absolute gem Little Fugitive, in which a young boy goes on a Coney Island adventure, its “simplicity was itself a great part of its appeal: no pointed moral, no dramatic character arc, no allegorical references to corruption, intolerance, World War II, or nuclear disarmament. Instead the audience is led on by the film’s uncanny sense of observation — not just in terms of photographic imagery but in the way ordinary New Yorkers relate to one another, solve their little problems, and go about the mundane details of their everyday lives.”

Moms Mabely stars in Josh Binney’s Boardinghouse Blues

Koszarski will introduce Joseph Lerner’s awesomely titled Guilty Bystander, featuring Zachary Scott as an ex-cop house detective, on February 2 at 6:40. Master Film Forum programmer Bruce Goldstein will introduce Jules Dassin’s genre-defining The Naked City on February 5 at 7:50, accompanied by his short personal documentary, Uncovering The Naked City, and Susan Delson, author of Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time (Indiana University Press, December 2021, $35-$85), will present “Soundies: America for a Dime” on February 10 at 6:50, focusing on “movie jukebox” clips from Duke Ellington, Nat “King” Cole, Dorothy Dandridge, Fats Waller, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and others.

HENRIK LUNDQVIST’S RETIREMENT NIGHT

Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden
31st – 33rd Sts. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Friday, January 28, $30-$60, 6:30
www.nhl.com

Ed Giacomin (1), Brian Leetch (2), Harry Howell (3), Rod Gilbert (7), Adam Graves (9), Andy Bathgate (9), Mark Messier (11), Vic Hadfield (11), Jean Ratelle (19), Mike Richter (35). Since their inception in 1926, the New York Rangers, founded by Tex Rickard, have retired the jerseys of ten star players. They turn it up to eleven on Friday night when the number 30 worn by goaltender extraordinaire Henrik Lundqvist from 2005 to 2020 gets raised to the rafters.

Over the course of fifteen seasons, King Henrik amassed a regular season record of 459-310-96, with a 2.43 GA average and a save percentage of .918. The five-time all-star and five-time Vezina finalist — he won the coveted trophy in 2012 — took home a gold medal manning the pipes for Sweden at the 2006 Turin Olympics and led the Broadway Blueshirts to the Stanley Cup finals in 2014. The Rangers let Lundqvist go after the 2019-20 season, but before he could play a game with the Washington Capitals, who signed him to a one-year deal, he had to hang up the skates because of pericarditis that required open-heart surgery, forcing him to retire at the age of thirty-nine.

Henrik Lundqvist will be cheered yet again when his jersey is raised to the Garden rafters on January 28

Tickets are still available for the Rangers’ battle against the Minnesota Wild on January 28, but they currently start at a mere $350. So a better option might be spending thirty bucks and joining in the fun at a retirement watch party with Rangers alums at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden. Tex’s Rangers are on a roll this year, with 60 points in 43 games, while the Wild is enjoying a hot first half as well, with 53 points in 38 games, so it should be quite a game. It all gets going around 6:30, when a parade of Rangers greats will pay homage to the King, a fashion plate who is likely to look hotter than ever on the Garden ice. In conjunction with the special event, you can post your own Lundqvist story here and check out a month of Henrik highlights here. Net proceeds from the watch party will be split between the Garden of Dreams Foundation and the Henrik Lundqvist Foundation.

CAMERA MAN: DANA STEVENS ON BUSTER KEATON

Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton) mimics his father, Bill Campbell (Ernest Torrence), in silent film classic

Who: Dana Stevens, Imogen Sara Smith
What: Screening and discussion about Buster Keaton
Where: Film at Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West Sixty-Fifth St.
When: Thursday, January 27, $15, 7:00
Why: “Steamboat Bill, Jr. may be [Buster] Keaton’s most mature film, a fitting if too-early farewell to his period of peak creative independence,” Slate film critic Dana Stevens writes. “Its relationship to the rest of its creator’s work has been compared to that of Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest.” Stevens gets serious about the Great Stone Face, one of silent film’s best comics, in her brand-new book, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Atria, $29.99).

In celebration of the launch of the tome, Stevens will be at Lincoln Center’s Francesca Beale Theater on January 27 at 7:00 to screen a 4K restoration of the 1928 classic, directed by Charles Reisner, about a riverboat battle and true love, preceded by a 2K restoration of Keaton and Edward F. Cline’s twenty-five-minute masterpiece, One Week, about a pair of newlyweds (Keaton and Sybil Seely) and their unusual new home. (Both films feature orchestral scores by American composer Carl Davis.) Stevens will put Keaton’s life and work in sociocultural context with Criterion contributor Imogen Sara Smith, author of Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. If you’ve never seen Keaton on the big screen, now is the time, as no one could turn tragedy into comedy quite like Keaton.

ADDRESSLESS: A WALK IN OUR SHOES

Addressless presents complicated choices for three homeless New Yorkers over three winter months

ADDRESSLESS
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater online
Thursday – Tuesday through February 13, $1 – $30
www.rattlestick.org

Rattlestick’s virtual, participatory Addressless is an involving piece of activist theater that could only happen online, away from its home on Waverly Pl. The interactive show shines a light on housing insecurity, an issue that has grown during the coronavirus pandemic as New York City shuttles the homeless between hotels and congregate and noncongregate shelters.

Created and directed by Martin Boross of the Hungarian collective STEREO AKT and written by playwright and social worker Jonathan Payne, Addressless is a choose-your-own-adventure style production in which the audience is assigned to one of three teams, trying to help their designated character find safe haven in a harsh city. Louis (Joey Auzenne) is a thirty-three-year-old army vet who is having a difficult time getting a job and a place to sleep. Josie (Bianca Norwood) is a teenage runaway from Buffalo escaping from a drug-addicted mother and an alcoholic father. And Wallace (Shams DaBaron, aka “Da Homeless Hero”) is a fifty-two-year-old single father who’s been homeless on and off since he was ten. The show is hosted by real-life social worker Hope Beaver, who is originally from Texas and now works at a family shelter at Henry Street Settlement, caring for single mothers and their children eight and under.

Addressless is set up as a game, and team members vote on what their character should do over the course of three winter months. Each choice affects how much money the individual has and the state of their health as they attempt to accumulate $1500 to qualify for a housing lottery to live rent free for a year in a new development on the Lower East Side. They choose between sleeping on the streets, which requires the least amount of cash but has the most severe impact on their health, going to a shelter (a kind of middle road), or couch surfing (best for health but most expensive).

A social worker offers choices to military vet Louis (Joey Auzenne) in interactive virtual show from Rattlestick

The teams meet privately in breakout rooms to discuss the options, then vote on the final decision. It is suggested you keep your camera on, and you are encouraged to participate but don’t have to. Being able to see where everyone is zooming in from emphasizes the audience’s privilege: having somewhere to live, owning a computer, laptop, or handheld device, and being able to afford a ticket to the show. (General admission is $30, but there are pay-what-you-can nights beginning at $1.)

Although you’re supposed to comment and vote only on your specific team’s character, the night I went a few people spoke far too often about and voted for all three, which got a little annoying, so hopefully the rules have been clarified since then. I was on Team Wallace, and I found it invigorating to help him make his choices each month. The discussions are about where they will sleep as well as deciding, for example, whether to pose for a photographer for twenty bucks, go to an acquaintance’s work party or attend an AA meeting, or accept a shelter transfer from Manhattan to the Bronx. Depending on what the team decides, the vote is followed by a prerecorded scene depicting the results of the choice. Spoiler alert: There are not a whole lotta good outcomes.

The supporting cast in the prerecorded vignettes includes Faith Catlin as an AA facilitator, Alok Tewari as an ER doctor, Paten Hughes as a high school classmate of Josie’s, Keith Randolph Smith as the photographer, and Michael Laurence as a sales manager, in addition to Chima Chikazunga, Mahira Kakkar, Tara Khozein, Olivia Oguma, and Lisa Ramirez. The production design is by Johnny Moreno, with sets and props by Patricia Marjorie, costumes by Olivera Gajic, music by Tara Khozein, sound by Julian Evans, graphics and animation by Maiko Kikuchi, video editing by Matthew Russell, and integration design by Victoria A. Gelling. It’s not the flashiest online production, instead more DIY that fits in with the overall theme.

It might be a game — Payne (The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d, The Briar Patch) is a self-proclaimed Dungeons & Dragons geek, so he knows about character and narrative — but it’s built to make you care deeply about the three homeless people, humanizing them, the way you probably wouldn’t if you simply passed them on the street; when I served as Wallace’s banker for December and raised him the smallest amount of money of the three of them, I was truly disappointed in myself, and that failure has stayed with me. Wallace was still upbeat, as that is first-time actor DaBaron’s general nature; during the pandemic, DaBaron, who is also a writer, filmmaker, and hip-hop artist, advocated for the homeless all around the city and particularly the men who were moved to the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side. Auzenne (Wu Tang: An American Saga, Our Lady of 121st Street) plays it much harder as Louis, while Norwood (Plano) gives Josie a distrustful edge.

Based on actual experiences and presented in partnership with Urban Pathways and Community Access, Addressless deals with unfairness and injustice in a way that will make you feel both helpless and furious. At the beginning of the presentation, Beaver says, “I am not an actor. Wish me luck; I’m gonna need it.” She avails herself well as our host, sharing important statistics about homelessness that are likely to surprise you. But like DaBaron, she believes changes can and will be made. As Wallace points out in one vignette, sometimes he just wants to feel “a part of the world again. Like I was fittin’ right in.” But all choices have consequences when you’re without an address.

[To find out more, you can join a virtual community conversation, “Addressing the Addressless,” on February 8 at 5:00; admission is free with advance RSVP.]

ASSASSINS

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Tavi Gevinson) and Sara Jane Moore (Judy Kuhn) share their distaste for President Ford and KFC in Assassins (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

ASSASSINS
Classic Stage Company
Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 30 [Ed. note: All performances have been canceled as of January 25]
www.classicstage.org

The late Stephen Sondheim, who passed away in November at the age of ninety-one, is currently represented in New York City by two musicals, Marianne Elliott’s stirring, gender-switching Broadway revival of the beloved Company at the Jacobs and John Doyle’s far less exciting adaptation of the much less worshiped Assassins at Classic Stage.

Kicking off his final year as artistic director at Classic Stage, Doyle, who began there in 2016, won a Tony for directing Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in 2005; he also staged a Tony-winning revival of Company in 2006 and helmed Merrily We Roll Along at Watermill in 2008. Despite his familiarity with Sondheim, his Assassins, which sold out almost instantly and has been extended through January 30, misses its mark. [Ed. note: All performances have been canceled because of a Covid outbreak in the company on January 25.]

The show was initially scheduled to open in March 2020, so anticipation only built higher during the pandemic lockdown before it eventually began its run in November 2021. Although no tickets are available, you might be able to grab a cancellation because of the omicron variant; the night I went, there were more than twenty vacant seats, a sign of the times.

Assassins brings together nine men and women who have tried to kill the president of the United States (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The musical, featuring a book by librettist and TV writer John Weidman, who also collaborated with Sondheim on Pacific Overtures and Road Show, gives nine men and women the opportunity to defend their attempts to assassinate the president of the United States. The carnival atmosphere is facilitated by the Proprietor (Eddie Cooper), on a stage jutting out with the audience on three sides. In addition to directing, Doyle designed the set, which boasts the American flag spread across the floor under a large monitor on which photos of the presidents are posted like targets.

“Hey, pal — feelin’ blue? / Don’t know what to do? / Hey, pal — / I mean you — / Yeah. C’mere and kill a president,” the Proprietor sings in “Everybody’s Got the Right,” continuing, “No job? Cupboard bare? / One room, no one there? / Hey, pal, don’t despair — / You wanna shoot a president? / C’mon and shoot a president . . . Some guys / think they can’t be winners. / First prize / often goes to rank beginners.”

A terrific cast can’t breathe enough life into the choppy narrative, which goes back and forth among the assassins, who are joined by an ensemble of backup singers and musicians. Ethan Slater stands out as the Balladeer, a kind of traveling troubadour, and is almost unrecognizable as Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed JFK. Judy Kuhn adds comic relief as Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at Gerald Ford in September 1975, a few weeks after Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Tavi Gevinson) botched her attempt at the Nixon pardoner. Steven Pasquale tries to steal the show as Lincoln killer John Wilkes Booth but is overly dominant while Adam Chanler-Berat is barely there as Ronald Reagan shooter John Hinckley Jr.

Steven Pasquale plays John Wilkes Booth in Sondheim-Weidman revival at Classic Stage (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Will Swenson is well-educated James A. Garfield murderer Charles Guiteau; Wesley Taylor is naturalized citizen Giuseppe Zangara, who fired at FDR but killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak instead; Andy Grotelueschen (now replaced by Danny Wolohan) is Samuel Byck, who tried to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon; and Brandon Uranowitz is anarchist Leon Czolgosz, who shot and killed William McKinley in 1901. The show perhaps works best as an argument for stronger gun control laws.

The assassins are all in period costumes except for Byck, who wears a Santa suit; the ensemble of singers and musicians (Brad Giovanine, Bianca Horn, Whit K. Lee, Rob Morrison, and Katrina Yaukey) wear red, white, or blue jumpsuits. (The effective costumes are by Ann Hould-Ward, with wigs by Charles G. LaPointe.) Some of the cast also have American flag masks that they whisk off when they sing.

Presidential assassins make their case in off-Broadway musical (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The musical numbers, which range from “Gun Song” and “Unworthy of Your Love” to “Another National Anthem” and “Something Just Broke” and have unconventional orchestrations, don’t stick with you; they simply come and go. The idea itself is a grand one; watching these assassins mix and mingle is at times fascinating, but there is little flow to the book, which too often wilts or becomes confusing as it tries to neither celebrate nor revile the characters, who chose a dangerous path to change the country and their own place in it.

“So many people confuse the right to happiness with the right to the pursuit of happiness,” Sondheim said in Classic Stage’s 2021 “Tell the Story” virtual gala, in which he and Weidman relate the show to the January 6 insurrection, during which the lives of the vice president and the Speaker of the House were under threat. Even given the newfound relevance, though, the show feels dated.

To find out more about Assassins, you can check out Classic Stage’s ongoing Classic Conversations series, which during the lockdown featured members of the cast and crew discussing the revival.

BALLETS WITH A TWIST: MIRAGE

Double Vision is one of several new works being previewed in Ballets with a Twist watch parties

Who: Ballets with a Twist
What: Virtual watch parties for short-film series
Where: Twist Theater online
When: Friday, January 21, 8:00 & 10:00; Saturday, January 22, 2:00, 8:00 & 10:00, free
Why: Tribeca-based Ballets with a Twist has been offering a unique twist on ballet for more than twenty-five years. The company’s short works are all named for and inspired by potent potables, performed together as Cocktail Hour: The Show. Among the pieces that combine drama, humor, mystery, and romance are Absinthe, Grappa, Martini, Zombie, Champagne, Boilermaker, Cuba Libre, and Hot Toddy.

Because of the pandemic lockdown and the continuing spread of various variants, the troupe, founded in 1996 by artistic director and choreographer Marilyn Klaus, has moved outdoors for its latest presentation, Mirage, a four-part suite being livestreamed for free on January 21-22 at 8:00 and 10:00, with an additional matinee viewing on Saturday at 2:00. The short film was directed, photographed, and edited by Emma Huibregtse, with choreography by Klaus, original music by Stephen Gaboury, and costumes by designer Catherine Zehr.

In Ranch Water, Dorothea Garland struts with a top hat on the troupe’s roof. In La Paloma, Garland glories across an old airstrip in Brooklyn, almost floating away in colorful costumes. In Smooth Criminal, Andres Neira channels Michael Jackson at the historic Queens Unisphere. And in Double Vision, real-life partners Claire Mazza and Alejandro Ulloa promenade at a masked ball on the steps of an abandoned castle in Harlem.

After the performances, members of the cast and crew in the studio discuss their process, including Klaus, Gaboury, Zehr, Jennifer Buonamia, Mackenzie Frey, Tori Hey, Margaret Hoshor, Amy Gilson, and Haley Neisser. Mirage is a mere aperitif for the upcoming stage version to be held later this year, which will also feature animated projections by Huibregtse and lighting by Dan Hansell. So grab your cocktail of choice, settle in, and join one of the watch parties taking place this weekend.