this week in theater

ASKING FOR TOO MUCH: THE ASK AT THEATER 555

Greta (Marilu Henner) and Tanner (Shannon Purser) discuss the ACLU and more in Matthew Freeman’s The Ask (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE ASK
Theater 555
555 West Forty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 22, $49-$149
theaskplay.com
theater555.com

When I saw the world premiere of Matthew Freeman’s The Ask at the wild project two years ago, I called it “stimulating . . . Freeman writes with a refreshing assuredness. . . . It expertly captures the changes that are evolving primarily on the left in today’s society. Greta and Tanner are battling each other instead of the other side, unwilling to compromise their values.”

The play is now running at Theater 555 in essentially the same production: Returning are director Jessi D. Hill, Craig Napoliello’s detailed set, costume designer Nicole Wee, lighting designer Venus Gulbranson, and sound
designer Ben Scheff. The script has been tweaked but has not been significantly altered, and Betsy Aidem (Greta) and Colleen Litchfield (Tanner) have been replaced by the talented duo of Marilu Henner and Shannon Purser, respectively. So what went wrong this time around?

It’s December 2022, and twentysomething American Civil Liberties Union gift planning officer Tanner arrives at the well-decorated Upper West Side apartment of Greta, a wealthy seventysomething photographer who has been a longtime donor to the ACLU. Tanner wants to know why Greta failed to donate this year and whether she can give more than usual now; they also discuss how Greta can leave the ACLU money in her will. Before making any decisions, Greta is concerned about the direction the ACLU is going in.

“I am upset. I’m disappointed. I did not give because I did not want to give,” Greta explains. “Yes, you send too many emails, but I do read them. And all I’m reading is how you want money for things that have nothing to do with your mission, nothing. I even read a story about how members of your staff were calling the Constitution a white supremacist document. So, of course, I think to myself: What the heck is going on over there? And then Dobbs, we lose Roe, and you’re over here playing around with trying to cancel student debt while fucking Alito is burning witches.”

Tanner is careful with her responses, trying to avoid offending Greta without commenting negatively on the organization.

“If you agree with the ACLU most of the time, you should be a member. If you agree with the ACLU half the time, you should be a board member,” Tanner jokes. Greta replies, “I think I have heard that one. I feel like that’s less a joke and more of a saying.”

As they continue their cat-and-mouse game, they reach a wall when Tanner is unable to speak the one word that is most important to Greta.

The Ask may be only two years old, but it already feels stale and outdated. The extremism, particularly on the left, has grown so divisive, tearing at the seams of the Democratic Party, that the debate between Greta and Tanner seems less critical in 2026 as Democratic Socialists win primaries and general elections.

In addition, while Aidem and Litchfield had an immediate chemistry, five-time Golden Globe nominee Henner (Madwomen of the West, Gettin’ the Band Back Together) and Emmy nominee Purser (Stranger Things, Riverdale), in her off-Broadway debut, lack electricity, failing to make a connection. At times it’s like they’re in two different shows, Henner overdoing her sexy vivaciousness and Purser underplaying her sensitivity and restraint.

The finale is still powerful, shining a light on where we are as a society and where organizations such as the ACLU are heading, but even at a mere seventy-five minutes, The Ask is too slow, asking too much of the audience.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SHAKESPEARE AS SAVIOR: JACOB MING-TRENT AT THE PUBLIC

Jacob Ming-Trent testifies to his audience-congregation in How Shakespeare Saved My Life (photo by HanJie Chow)

HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE
The Shiva Theater at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 25, $84
publictheater.org
redbulltheater.com

Jacob Ming-Trent refers to his one-man show, How Shakespeare Saved My Life, not as an autobiographical tale but as “testimony,” calling the audience his “congregation.” There are heavenly moments as he transforms from a homeless teenager caught up in danger to a successful Shakespearian actor, a shift that took years following his initial inspiration.

When the Boston-born Jacob was twelve in 1992, living in a lower-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, he accidentally walked into a class on the Bard taught by the football coach, who insisted Jacob read a passage from Henry V. Jacob explains to us, “An angel descended into the classroom, touches me on the nose, and tells me, ‘You will be one of the greatest classical actors of your generation!’ I’m just messin’ with you; that shit didn’t happen. Congregation, I’ll never forget that day. ’Cause when I woke up that morning, I was a superpredator. After that class, I was a Shakespeare prodigy! I was reborn. Play on!”

A charming and engaging performer, Jacob shares his story as his father goes to jail, young Jacob gets in trouble for reading The Merchant of Venice instead of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (he argues with his teacher that the latter is racist), his mother gets remarried and kicks him out of the house, he loses his virginity after reciting a soliloquy from The Two Gentlemen from Verona to a young lady at a party, and he joins a small gang in a local park. He calls up G-d, seeking advice. He auditions for acting school in New York City and is accepted but is soon told that he can only portray certain characters because “fat Black people cannot play heroes. I’m sorry, Mr. Jacob. But there are no roles in Shakespeare for you. If you must do Shakespeare, sound like me! White. Shakespeare was written by a white man for white people.”

Jacob Ming-Trent pays tribute to his heroes as he relives scenes from his life in one-man show (photo by HanJie Chow)

His own heroes, besides Shakespeare, are Biggie, Tupac, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, three prominent and influential Black artists who tragically died before their time, in their twenties.

Jacob continually tells people he is a Shakespearian actor despite never taking the stage professionally, maintaining his dream no matter what life throws at him. And it throws a lot.

Interestingly, the play stops before Jacob begins his prodigious career, which includes being a regular on such series as White Famous and Watchmen and appearing in such Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park productions as Merry Wives, Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, and The Tempest, in addition to many other shows.

Presented by Red Bull Theater at the Public, How Shakespeare Saved My Life is enthusiastically directed by Tony Taccone on Takeshi Kata’s set, consisting of movable walls and stanchions onto which Alexander V. Nichols projects photos and such images as a large rose and Will himself. Sound designer Jake Rodriguez, who also composed the original music, turns up the volume when Ming-Trent is on the run or dancing, with exuberant lighting by Alan C. Edwards.

Ming-Trent reimagines the Bard as a kind of urban poet, a man with a quill who understands the streets. A warm and inviting host, he seamlessly takes on multiple roles, but at ninety minutes the show is too long, with some vignettes tighter than others. For example, a scene where he watches Othello gets confusing quickly and goes on for several awkward minutes. But through it all, he looks like he is having a great time onstage, and that energy is infectious.

“As a Black man fighting injustice daily, my anger and need for revenge almost killed me. Shakespeare taught me how to forgive, and I’m thankful,” he writes in a program note. “I’m not here to share my story but to tell you parts of my tale in the hope that this might save a life as well!”

It’s a tale not told by an idiot, and it signifies a whole lot more than nothing.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

BEDLAM’S OTHELLO: RETURN ENGAGEMENT

Susannah Millonzi, Susannah Hoffman, Ryan Quinn, and Eric Tucker play all the roles in Bedlam’s stripped-down Othello (photo by Ashley Garrett)

OTHELLO
West End Theatre at St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church
263 West Eighty-Sixth St. between Broadway & West End Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday, November 7-29, $22.50-$86.50
bedlam.org

[This past spring, Bedlam’s Othello ran at the West End Theatre; it is now back for an encore engagement from November 7 to 29. Below is my original review; it is staged in a small theater with limited tickets, so grab yours as soon as you can.]

In Bedlam’s Othello, William Shakespeare’s words take center stage, for nearly three captivating hours; no cuts have been made to the text, and the presentation feels fresh and new.

A cast of four performs more than a dozen parts in a bare white space, with only a handful of small props: Susannah Hoffman is Desdemona and Cassio, Susannah Millonzi is Roderigo and Emilia, Ryan Quinn is Othello and Bianca, and director Eric Tucker is Iago.

Angry that Othello named Cassio his first lieutenant instead of him, Iago is intent on bringing Othello down, through trickery and deceit. He conspires with the Venetian gentleman Roderigo to convince everyone that the Moorish general Othello used evil witchcraft to force Senator Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona, into a secret marriage. “Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs,” Iago tells the powerful politician, using race as a sword.

When Othello and Desdemona publicly declare their love for each other, Iago concocts a diabolical plan to persuade Othello that his beloved is having an affair with Cassio, thus ruining the general and his lieutenant, lifting Iago’s station, and allowing Roderigo to pursue his own lust for Desdemona.

“O beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on,” Iago says to Othello. “That cuckold lives in bliss / Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; / But O, what damnèd minutes tells he o’er, / Who dotes yet doubts, suspects yet soundly loves!”

To achieve his revenge, Iago must also pull the wool over the eyes of his wife, Emilia, who is Desdemona’s maidservant; Bianca, Cassio’s lover; the Duke of Venice; Gratiano, Brabantio’s brother; Lodovico, Desdemona’s cousin; and Montano, the governor of Cyprus.

“Reputation, reputation, reputation!” Cassio declares.

That’s precisely what Iago seeks to destroy in anyone who gets in his way.

Othello (Ryan Quinn) and Desdemona (Susannah Hoffman) face doom and dread in Bedlam production (photo by Ashley Garrett)

The first act of Othello takes place with the actors performing on a dirty white floor in front of an unsteady white wall; initially, the only props are a bell and a black rope/noose, but a string of Christmas lights and a microphone are added for a karaoke scene. For the second act, the three rafters of seating are rearranged to form a circle closing in on the middle, where most of the action occurs, although the actors also stomp around behind the audience and up and down the aisles. Cheyenne Sykes’s lighting gets much darker, the characters at times using flashlights. The actors usually but not always make tiny adjustments to Sam Debell’s contemporary costumes to indicate when they are a different character, which can get a little awkward. The karaoke scene is awkward as well, straying from the simpler beauty of the rest of the show.

Hoffman and Millonzi excel in their multiple roles, and Quinn is an admirable, heart-wrenching Othello, but the key to the narrative lies in the hands of Iago, and Tucker, who also designed the tense sound, is a slyly devious master manipulator, his tongue often in his cheek as his plot unfolds; possessed of a rapier wit, he thinks quick on his feet, like an improv comic who’s not about to lose control of the upcoming punch line.

Bedlam’s first two productions, back in 2013, were four-actor versions of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan and Hamlet, so this Othello is a return to its roots following such other successful shows as Sense & Sensibility, Arcadia, The Good John Proctor, and Are the Bennet Girls OK? Because of the minimal staging, the words flow beautifully; you have to listen closely, resulting in picking up small elements you may have missed in bigger adaptations with famous stars.

Through it all, the words stand tall, even conquering a few scenes that linger too long or go a bit off-kilter.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE GREAT HUMAN UNIFIER: UNRAVELLED AT THE MILLER THEATRE

Andrew Borba and Lucy Davenport star as Robert and Anne Adams in Jake Broder’s UnRavelled (photo by Stan Evans)

UNRAVELLED
The Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Broadway at 116th St.
Friday, October 23, 7:30, and Saturday, October 24, 1:00, $12.50 – $49.75
millertheatre.com
www.gbhi.org/unravelled
unravelledplay.com

One of the most fascinating plays that I saw during the Zoom era came from an unlikely source: the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Jake Broder’s UnRavelled is a deeply affecting ninety-minute play that shares the true story of Canadian scientist Anne Adams, who, in 1994, at the age of fifty-three, became obsessed with Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” and made a remarkable painting based on the 1928 musical work, which Ravel composed for dancer Ida Rubenstein in 1928, when he was fifty-three. As it turns out, both Adams and Ravel had the same serious brain disease, Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), which affects memory while lighting a creative fuse.

The play has now been adapted into an in-person production that is on the road, arriving at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University On October 23 and 24.

“I always imagined UnRavelled onstage, but with the pandemic, we had to pivot and present it virtually. After the first Zoom reading, the audience really came out of the woodwork to tell us their stories, and we realized how powerful this piece could be,” Broder, whose other plays include Our American Hamlet and Sense of Decency, told twi-ny. “I truly had no idea when I first made it if UnRavelled was good or effective, but once we put it in front of people, we realized we had to keep presenting this story. The twi-ny Pandemic Award [for Best Scientific Play] helped drive traffic to that version, which allowed us to present it on the West Coast and get articles and reviews about the project in Ireland and England. This helped us realize UnRavelled’s extensive reach. Quite simply, the story is only relevant to two kinds of people: those with a brain or those who love someone who has one. Having a brain is a great human unifier.”

Directed by James Bonas, the ninety-five-minute UnRavelled stars Lucy Davenport as Anne, a mathematician, chemist, and biologist, and Andrew Borba as her husband, Robert, a traffic architectural engineer. They are trying to hold together following a serious accident involving their son, but when they continue to have trouble communicating and Anne starts spending more time by herself in her studio, listening to “Bolero” and painting, Robert begins to suspect something else is going on, and Dr. Bruce Miller (David Aaron Baker) ultimately confirms that.

Anne is not necessarily alone; she is having imaginary conversations with Ravel (Leo Marks) about art, love, and science. Ravel also speaks with Rubenstein (Tracey A. Leigh), who has commissioned “Bolero,” which Ravel detests and can’t believe he actually wrote. Davenport and Marks reprise their roles from the online version. Keyboardist Aron Kallay serves as music director, with Randy Gloss on percussion, Rachel Iba on violin, Michelle Elliott Rearick on cello, and Nathaniel Edison on flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, and dizi.

The real Dr. Miller is the founding director of GBHI and the director of the Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center at UCSF; you can watch the online Zoom presentation of UnRavelled here, followed by a panel discussion with Broder, Dr. Miller, behavioral neurologists Bill Seeley and Adit Friedberg, and virtual director Nike Doukas, as well as a related dance choreographed by Magda Kaczmarska.

Of course, first check it out at the Miller Theatre, in person, how it was always meant to be seen.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

AXIS’S SPECIMEN: RELAUNCH

Mayhem ensues when a surprise being appears on board a corporate research vessel in Axis Theatre’s Specimen (photo by Regina Betancourt)

SPECIMEN
Axis Theatre Company
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Wednesday – Saturday, October 28 – November 21, $10-$40, 7:00
www.axiscompany.org

[This past spring, Axis Theatre’s Specimen ran at the company’s downstairs space on Sheridan Square; it is now back for an encore engagement from October 28 through November 21. Below is my original review.]

Randall Sharp’s Specimen is not a cautionary tale of where America is heading; instead, it’s a frenetic sci-fi satire warning us that it’s already too late to save the ship and its crew.

“We are dead in the water. We’re just floating. Communication is out,” Overholser (Britt Genelin), an engineer aboard the US VitaNavis Nomad, says early on in the seventy-five-minute play. “All we need is a little push to get to the earth-pull zone for home. I hope we don’t just smash into it! Plus I could use a decent med clinic. And a haircut. I feel sick. I feel tired.”

The corporate research vessel Nomad, named after people who move around from place to place — for example, undocumented immigrants and refugees — is on a mission to collect valuable living specimens more for their potential financial value rather than their scientific worth. The crew is a ragtag “bunch of morons,” as Lt. Commander Gordon (Julian Rozzell Jr.) refers to them. Gordon has annoyed his team because he has fudged critical reports. The ambitious and energetic Overholser has been beaten up by the severely ill King (Spencer Aste, only seen on video). Dr. Gardener (Andrew Dawson), the chief medical officer, says, “I know what I’m doing” without any evidence to support that. Medical assistant Longshore (Jon McCormick) asks a lot of questions but provides no answers. Louden’s (Jim Sterling) primary responsibility is to greet newcomers, but he can’t get anything to work. And Capt. Gonickeau (Lynn Mancinelli) is hiding in sick bay, not wanting to confront any kind of problem at all.

An endless stream of glitches plagues the Nomad: Ironic, familiar pop songs come and go on the speaker system. The monitors flash on and off with reckless abandon, broadcasting a bright, sunny commercial with the VitaNavis president (Robert Ierardi) that quickly goes bad, as well as private video diaries that are not meant to be seen by others, a melding of the captain’s log and social media posts. The food supply, from saltines to what they call “SUP,” is running dangerously low. And various odd smells are wafting about. Patience is wearing thin even with Earth so close.

The Nomad’s archnemesis, the stellar Jericho, is nearby, rumored to have a pair of prize specimens that are likely to make them win the battle once again. (In the lobby case is a previous trophy the Jericho won, along with a roster of its crew, featuring one member who becomes central to the plot.) It seems like the Jericho, whose name in Arabic means “fragrant” and the Bible calls “the City of Palms,” can do no wrong, the polar opposite of the Nomad, as if one is the dream of America, the other the current reality, one an oasis, the other a boiling inferno.

But when a mysterious being (Brian Barnhart) suddenly arrives in a pod, all hell breaks loose as the crew fights over whether the creature is a fabulous Andro-Primatus specimen worth millions or jokester Jay Marlin, a doctor from the Jericho who is in need of medical help. The doctor’s last name could be a sly reference to the large fish Santiago catches and struggles to bring back in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, believing it will turn his luck around. “It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers,” Santiago says to himself.

The ramshackle set, by Sharp, McCormick, and Mancinelli, is like a bizarro-world merging of the starship Enterprise, the Discovery from 2001, and the Nostromo from Alien, with a nod to Tom Sachs’s DIY NASA installations. The white uniforms, designed by Karl Ruckdeschel, have fun touches, such as the character’s job stenciled on the back in big letters. David Zeffren’s lighting and Paul Carbonara’s sound and original music, along with Nicholas Guldner’s video design, maintain the low-tech atmosphere of impending doom.

The exemplary ensemble, consisting of Axis company members and returnees, somehow manages to keep straight faces despite all the absurdist mayhem taking place, led by Rozzell Jr. (Our Planet, Father Comes Home from the Wars) as the determined lieutenant and Genelin (Twelfth Night, Washington Square) as a kind of bruised and battered ingénue in an ill-fitting spacesuit. Each actor also sports fantabulous hair, riffing on the obvious wigs worn by the cast of the original Star Trek movies.

Sharp, who has previously adapted such classics as High Noon and Dead End and written and directed such new works as Worlds Fair Inn and Last Man Club, orchestrates a clever balance between farce and fright as the proceedings continue and the crew has to figure out who or what the specimen is and what to do with it.

It’s a subtle but ripe parody of a bumbling administration that prefers money over science, with little interest in aiding immigrants, giving their employees proper training or affordable health care, or fixing a spacecraft that is falling apart.

When the pod first pulls into the port, there is no sign of anyone there. “Hello!! Maybe . . . maybe it’s not American?” Dr. Gardener asks. Gordon replies, “Of course it’s American. What else would it be.”

Oh, this is America all right.

Over and out.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

INCELS AND IRL: DEGENERATES AT PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS

Miller (Zachary W. Desmond) and Target (Christopher Dylan White) are silo’d incels who consider meeting in real life in Degenerates (photo by Jackie Abbott)

DEGENERATES
Playwrights Horizons, Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 1, $125.50-$164.50
playwrightshorizons.org

Playwright Else Went and her partner, director Emma Rosa Went, follow up their groundbreaking five-plus-hour Initiative with the nearly three-hour, three-act Degenerates, another potent investigation into the lives of young people searching for love and meaning in a world growing ever-more dependent on technology. It zeroes in specifically on silo’d incels talking about their dissatisfaction with how women and society in general have turned their back on men.

Sharing their stories are twenty-eight-year-old Miller (Zachary W. Desmond), a white man who lives in his parents’ basement and is the ersatz intellectual ringleader of the virtual group; Kemp (Tyler Nowell Felix), twenty-one and Black, who starts the play by calling a suicide hotline and speaking with a woman while he fiddles with his gun; Serge (Juan Arturo), a brown thirty-three-year-old who is the elder statesman; and Target (Christopher Dylan White), nineteen and white, who is obsessed with Japanese anime. The script describes all four as “terribly alone,” and that at-least-partly self-imposed solitude is palpable.

Serge and Kemp are primarily only heard over the phone; for most of the play, Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s vivid set is divided in half: Stage right is Miller’s sad, sparsely decorated room, consisting of a plain desk and chair, a mini refrigerator and microwave, and a poster of the Smiths album The Queen Is Dead, which features such dark and dismal tunes as “I Know It’s Over” and “Never Had No One Ever.” Next to it is Target’s kawaii studio apartment, every inch of which is filled with plushies, posters of female anime characters, and colorful rugs and sheets; even his computer has cool stickers on it.

Issues of race and misogyny, as they try to find someone else to blame for their lack of success in any arena, are raised early in this telling exchange that also establishes the characters:

Miller: It is a well documented fact that if you’re brown in America, you’re fucked. Or unfucked, as the case may be. Do the research: google “tinder racial bias.” I mean, white roasties are still dtf Tyrone cause they got fantasies of the “Violent Negroid” but that’s a whole other thing.
Kemp: Black guys aren’t all violent.
Miller: I’m not saying they are; I’m saying the woke lefty shit wraps all the way around: deep down they want to be punished for being white, y’know? For being “privileged.” They fetishize this oppressed, exotic ~ it’s not even that the dick is dark, it’s that they think dark dick is dangerous. Oh shit say that five times fast. Dangerous dark / dick, dangerous dark dick, dangerous dirk dink ~ fuck!
Serge: Okay no but that is real though. The only females showed me any attention in school — I went to a white school on scholarship and all the Ralph Lauren motherfuckers always tried to hit me up for weed and coke, but the white bitches? The ugg boot barbie-dolls? Wanted to piss off daddy; I could tell that’s what it was: act a fool with the poor brown boy then run home to fuckin, Brayden, / Tanner whatever.
Target: Isn’t that basically like, reparations though?
Serge: Fuck no, that’s being a bitch’s colorway; I’m not letting a bitch wear me like that.
Kemp: I’d let a bitch wear me.
Miller: Genuinely! Genuinely that’s the real thing with race in fucking clown-world leftist America. Oppression is status and status is morality; ergo, fucking the Oppressed makes you a Good Person. It’s all optics it’s all performance. I don’t hate black people; I don’t have a problem with miscegenation but fuck, shouldn’t be a trend. Used to be chihuahua in the Gucci bag, remember that? Now it’s a whole-ass fucking, rapper on the arm, and we see what that does to a man: look what happened to Kanye.

Target (Christopher Dylan White) tries to find his place in a complex world in new play by writer Else Went and director Emma Rosa Went (photo by Jackie Abbott)

While Miller rages against everything, Target, who refers to himself as a mentalcel, has a private gig as a sexy internet cow clown performing for anyone willing to pay. But when Miller, who is attracted to Target’s online persona, suggests they meet in person, the dynamics shift and the plot takes a complex turn.

In the lobby at Playwrights Horizons, where the show has been extended through November 1, is a glossary of more than fifty words and phrases that are unique to this online culture, including “80/20,” “hikikomori,” “LDAR,” “redpill,” and “uwu.” The term “degenerates” itself is defined as “1. a hedonistic person or member of the political left. 2. the offspring of ‘sub-par’ mating, implying a hereditary cause of inceldom.” The Wents are not isolating the characters’ situations, not seeking sympathy for them, celebrating them, depicting them as hateful freaks, or pitying them; instead, they are asking the audience to consider the loneliness these disaffected men and boys are experiencing, since loneliness is something everyone feels at one time or another.

Degenerates is a marvelously unpredictable, moving, and surprising story that gives voice to those in need even as they reject, or are rejected by, so-called societal norms. The first two acts fly by, among the fastest 100+ minutes I can remember in recent theater. It’s as if we all went down the same internet rabbit hole and then were shaken out of it together at intermission, not realizing the time, ready to go back to real life. As in the Wents’ previous work, the story takes a late turn that feels forced, but otherwise the play hits hard and deep.

The Wents employ much of the same team as in Initiative, who again create a potent, involving experience: set by Suzuki MacAdams, costumes by Kindall Houston Almond, sound by Angela Baughman, and projections by S. Katy Tucker, along with actors Barresi and White. Lighting designer Jiyoun Chang fits right in with the electric atmosphere.

Miller (Zachary W. Desmond) spends most of his life online in his parents’ basement (photo by Jackie Abbott)

Desmond (Ivanov, Hooded, or, Being Black for Dummies) is a whirlwind as Miller, often in motion on his wireless microphone, unable to relax; he even burns his mouth when eating a Hot Pocket because he can’t ever just stop. White, who portrayed an unsure loner addicted to video games in Initiative, is gentle and heartbreaking as Target, whose name is, of course, not accidental. Felix (Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern) is touching as Kemp, Arturo (The Taming of the Shrew) adds perspective as Serge and Chad, while Olivia Rose Barresi (Initiative, Unresolved Rage Game) does a good job as all the women in the play as well as reading the stage directions, something that we cannot access IRL.

Perhaps the most important line in the play is expressed by Kemp when he is on the phone with the suicide hotline counselor: “Nobody cares about me.” When it comes down to it, all of us want to be seen, liked, and, more importantly, loved.

As Target tells his sister, “I feel like I don’t really exist. And I never have. Never, and that’s probably why it was so much easier to stay inside and live online, right? Where it doesn’t matter?”

As in Initiative, the Wents make us care, and they show us what matters.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HAUNTED THEATER ON MacDOUGAL: spit&vigor’s ECTOPLASM

Sara Béraud Conlan (Sara Fellini) and her husband, Kal (Steve Gamble), conjure mystery and mayhem in spit&vigor’s Ectoplasm (photo by Giancarlo Osaben)

ECTOPLASM
spit&vigor tiny baby blackbox theatre
115 MacDougal St.
Thursday – Saturday through October 31, $20-$50
spitnvigor.com

Do you believe in ghosts? That is the question at the heart of Sara Fellini’s spooky Ectoplasm, being remounted by spit&vigor in its upstairs tiny baby blackbox theatre on MacDougal St., above its 2022 venue, the more standard and conventional Players Theatre.

The setup is a classic of the horror genre, evoking such films as Robert Wise’s 1959 The Haunting (based on the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House), William Castle’s 1959 chiller House on Haunted Hill, and John Hough’s 1973 thriller The Legend of Hell House. It’s 1914, and the Byronesque Madame Francine Montfort (Laurel Creighton) has invited into her elegant home the medium Sara Béraud Conlan (Fellini) and her ultraserious husband, Kal Conlan (Steve Gamble); parapsychologist George Crookes (Jesse Metz) and his blood-ritualist wife, Mizka Itō Crookes (Yurika Ohno); Mizka’s suffragist sister, Annette Itō (Azumi Tsutsui); and magician Ira Orinthall (Fedrico Mosttert), who is looking forward to debunking a séance Sara will be conducting (when not trying to fondle the women). Also present is Madame Montfort’s butler, Callum Holes (George Walsh), who has his own secrets.

Sara is prepared to use some of the tricks of the trade in order to convince everyone that her abilities are real, but Kal strongly disagrees. “They always need something tangible, Kal. They never believe it if they can’t touch it,” she explains. She dispenses of a few of them but insists on hiding ectoplasm — a piece of muslin dipped in mayonnaise — under her corset.

Prior to the séance, everyone has drinks and engages in social banter that inevitably turns to science, blood, mysticism, and death as such objects as a dagger and a skull are presented. Both Madame Montfort and the Itō sisters are hoping that Sara will be able to conjure specific souls in the afterlife, even though Sara tells Madame that that’s not necessarily how it works.

This part of the play is a slow build; the story meanders, with some curious decisions and digressions, and the acting is inconsistent in its over-theatricality, but once the characters gather around a table for the actual séance, spit&vigor gets down to what it does best: create creepy, involving productions that depict the darker side of humanity, as in such previous plays as The Wake of Dorcas Kelly, Luna Eclipse, and Nec Spe.

What happens at the séance — well, not even Sara and Kal are quite sure.

A séance goes better than expected in Ectoplasm (photo by Giancarlo Osaben)

In his article “The Charted Coast V: The Absolute Proof” in the November 1920 issue of The Strand magazine, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a noted defender of Spiritualism who believed that the living could contact the dead, wrote, “Apart from the frauds, however, discriminating observers were aware that there was a large residuum of cases which were undoubtedly genuine. In examining and reporting these cases, the witnesses averred that certain people, whom they called ‘materializing mediums,’ had the strange physical gift that they could put forth from their bodies a viscous, gelatinous substance which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes, and yet could be reabsorbed, leaving absolutely no trace even upon the clothes which it had traversed in leaving the body. This substance was actually touched by some enterprising investigators, who reported that it was elastic and appeared to be sensitive, as though it was really an organic extrusion from the medium’s body. These views were naturally much ridiculed by scientific men, who disposed of them easily upon anatomical and also on general physical grounds. Later investigation has, however, shown, as I hope to demonstrate in this article, that in this as in other matters the early Spiritualists were the pioneers of truth, and that they had come upon the most singular manifestation of matter with which we have any acquaintance.”

Fellini, who makes sure you know that she and her character do not spell her first name with an “h,” uses ectoplasm as a kind of bridge between what people believe and what they don’t, as if it’s the substance that helps bring together audiences and performers in small spaces to engage in these follies of fiction. When Callum welcomes us at the beginning, he refers to the audience — approximately eighteen people in chairs placed against the walls, as if part of the set — as “spirits.” He continues, “Some of you may be surprised that you are dead. I’m so sorry. Please keep your lamentations to a low volume so we can all enjoy the performance.”

Soon Sara walks across the room, her hands outstretched, approaching each audience member as if she can feel their ghostly presence. I was sucked in immediately.

Fellini, the artistic director and cofounder of spit&vigor, is magnetic as the medium; you can’t take your eyes off her in scene after scene. She had me believing she could conjure just about anything she wanted, real or imagined, except that dread final “h.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]