this week in theater

TWO BY WALLACE SHAWN: GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS / THE DESIGNATED MOURNER

Who: Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Jennifer Tilly, Emily Cass McDonnell, Deborah Eisenberg, Larry Pine
What: Audio versions of Wallace Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors and The Designated Mourner
Where: Gideon Media
When: Available July 9
Why: Beloved New York City icon Wallace Shawn has kept himself very busy during the pandemic lockdown. He wonderfully reprised his role as the villainous Vizzini (“Inconceivable!”) in a Zoom benefit reunion reading of Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride to help support the Wisconsin Democratic party in the 2020 elections. The New GroupOffstage: Two by Wallace Shawn consisted of all-star Zoom reunion readings of his plays Aunt Dan and Lemon and Evening at the Talk House, the latter featuring his stellar turn as a bedraggled actor. And through July 25, you can catch him as Lucky in the New Group’s online adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with Ethan Hawke as Didi, John Leguizamo as Gogo, and Tarik Trotter as Pozzo.

The curmudgeonly Shawn continues visiting his past with audio versions of his two of his most intense shows, presented for free by Gideon Media and reuniting the casts from previous productions. In Grasses of a Thousand Colors, an erotic futuristic nightmare that had its world premiere in 2009 at the Royal Court Theatre in London and debuted in New York four years later at the Public, Shawn expands on Madame d’Aulnoy’s 1698 fairy tale The White Cat in a wild and unpredictable story about sex, humans, animals, sex, the food chain, and sex. “Oh, hello there!” Shawn begins as a doctor named Ben. “You know, I’m just so thrilled that you’ve made the rather wild decision to listen to the meaning of all people right at this very moment. I mean, I know you’re probably just as mixed up about everything as I am because since yesterday, well, things have obviously changed since yesterday, that’s totally clear. Things are definitely different in one way or another. I mean, it’s been quite a journey, my God. And the last part of it was so crazy.” The play brings back Julie Hagerty as Cerise, Ben’s wife; Jennifer Tilly as Robin, his mistress; and Emily Cass McDonnell as Rose, his girlfriend, along with director André Gregory, who starred with Shawn in Louis Malle’s brilliant 1981 film, My Dinner with André.

The play is divided into six sections, “Invitation,” “The Quest to Be Known,” “Affair,” “Revenge,” “Illness,” and “Party,” that are definitely not safe for work, for those who are back in the office. “So anyway,” Dr. Ben says, “You see, I’d always loved nudity, including nude performances, because what other pleasures can we get in life except from what is naked, or in other words from getting closer and closer to what we call nature.”

Also available is an audio version of Shawn’s The Designated Mourner, which premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 1996; this reading reunites Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg (Shawn’s real-life wife), and Larry Pine from the 2000 New York City production directed by Gregory in several small rooms in a building on William St. in the Financial District. Divided into “Resentment,” “Accommodation,” “Danger,” “Flight,” “Arrest,” and “Death,” the play delves into violence, authoritarianism, and injustice amid Shawn’s unrelenting trademark dark humor.

“It’s just remarkable that your father is allowed to exist!” Judy (Eisenberg) recalls being told about her father, Howard (Pine), a famous and well-respected poet. “And meanwhile your attention is entirely turned away from the human suffering that is going on all around you,” Howard tells Jack (Shawn), her husband. “You can sum me up in about ten words: a former student of English literature who — who went downhill from there!” Jack explains.

In Woody Allen’s 1987 comedy Radio Days, Shawn played the Masked Avenger, the hero of a popular radio serial, who says, “I wonder if future generations will ever even hear about us. It’s not likely. After enough time, everything passes. I don’t care how big we are or how important are our lives.” Through podcasts such as these of Shawn’s plays, future generations around the world will indeed get to hear about these seminal works.

INAUGURAL DRAMA BOOK SHOP IN-PERSON SIGNING — IN THE HEIGHTS: FINDING HOME

Who: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Jeremy McCarter
What: Book signing
Where: The Drama Book Shop, 266 West Thirty-Ninth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
When: Wednesday, July 21, 2:00 (tickets on sale Friday, July 16, 10:00 am)
Why: In 2002, a theater group started rehearsing a new musical in the tiny Arthur Seelen Theatre in the basement of the Drama Book Shop, which was founded in 1917 by the Drama League and was bought by Arthur and Rozanne Seelen in 1958. With the future of the beloved store in jeopardy, it was purchased in January 2019 by two of the primaries involved with that rehearsal, director Thomas Kail and writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, along with producer Jeffrey Seller and theater impresario James L. Nederlander. The production was In the Heights, cowritten by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Broadway smash that was nominated for thirteen Tonys and won four, including Best Musical. Delayed by the pandemic lockdown, the new store, designed by David Korins, opened June 10 on West Thirty-Ninth St., and it is celebrating with its first in-store book signing, a rather big one.

On July 21 at 2:00, composer-lyricist-star Miranda, librettist Hudes, and theater writer Jeremy McCarter will be signing copies of their new tome, In the Heights: Finding Home (Penguin Random House, June 2021, $40), following up on the virtual launch that took place last month. The book opens with an introduction by McCarter that begins, “The actors took their bows, the crowd finished cheering, and everybody headed for the doors. Spotting a friend, I cut across the lobby. I asked, Did you just see what I just saw? Or words to that effect. It’s been fourteen years, so I can’t remember exactly what I said that night. But I do remember exactly how In the Heights made me feel.” The show was turned into a major motion picture that was released on June 10, in theaters and on HBO Max, to wide acclaim and a casting controversy. Limited tickets for the bookstore event, in which the authors will not sign anything other than the books and no photos with them are allowed, go on sale July 16 at 10:00 am, and they’re likely to go fast, so don’t hesitate if you want to keep sharing that feeling.

ICE FACTORY 2021

ICE FACTORY
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
Through August 14, $18-$29
newohiotheatre.org

New Ohio Theatre’s twenty-eighth-annual Ice Factory Festival got under way June 30 – July 3 with The Extremely Grey Line from 23.5°, which could be experienced on bikes, as a walking tour, or in the theater, followed July 7-10 by Lisa Helmi Johanson and Kimberly Immanuel’s Kim Loo Gets a Redo, inspired by the real-life jazz quartet the Kim Loo Sisters. You might have missed those two, but there is plenty more to see; the Obie-winning festival runs through August 14. Al Límite Collective’s Liminal Archive (July 14-17) is a forty-five-minute multimedia immersive journey that takes you back to the beginnings of the pandemic, featuring works by such artists as Cypress Atlas, Arthur Ban, Toney Brown, Katya Chizhayeva, Caio D’aguilar, Jessica Daugherty, and Sissy Doutsiou, from across the United States as well as Greece, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and other countries.

Dow-Dance explores radical Black love and Sundown Towns in As the Sun Sets (July 21-24), performed by Imani Gaudin-County, Andy Guzmán, Jai Perez, and company founder and choreographer Caleb Dowden. Teatro Dallas’s A Grave Is Given Supper (July 28-31) is a one-person Narco-Acid Western set in a US-Mexico border town, written by Mike Soto, directed by Claudia Acosta, and performed by Elena Hurst. An inheritance brings together a pair of strangers (Laura Butler-Levitt and Heather Hollingsworth) in In Tandem Lab’s Herstory (August 4-7). Daniel Irizarry directs and stars in My Onliness (August 11-14) from One-Eighth Theatre, with text by Robert Lyons and music by Kamala Sankaram. Over the course of the festival, the solo interactive sound installation Endless Loop of Gratitude, created by Broken Chord, Steph Ferreira, Jackson Gay, Steven Padla, Riw Rakkulchon, and Ashley M. Thomas, invites visitors up to a microphone to answer the question: “What are you really grateful for?” We’re really grateful for the return of indoor theater and affordable summer festivals such as Ice Factory. (To enter the New Ohio, you have to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test from the past seventy-two hours, and the audience must wear masks.)

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARKING LOT: TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

The Drilling Company will be back in the Clemente parking lot and Bryant Park with free presentation of Two Noble Kinsmen (photo by Hamilton Clancy)

Who: The Drilling Company
What: Free summer Shakespeare
Where: Parking lot of the Clemente, 107 Suffolk St., and Bryant Park
When: July 15-30, free, 7:00 or 7:30
Why: Indoor theater is back after the pandemic lockdown, and so is outdoor theater, including free summer Shakespeare, a birthright of New Yorkers. Among the many entries this season is the beloved Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, which has been presented by the Drilling Company since 1995. This year the troupe is staging the rarely performed Two Noble Kinsmen, what might be William Shakespeare’s final work, a collaboration with John Fletcher based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales. Founding artistic director Hamilton Clancy has reimagined the play, which is set in the aftermath of a war between Athens and Thebes, as a contemporary drama involving Russian spies, Interpol, and corporate espionage. The two-hour show, which stars Brad Frost as Palemon, Jane Bradley as the Jailer’s Daughter, John Caliendo as Arsite, and Liz Livingston as Emilia, with Lucas Rafael, Mary Linehan, Jaqwan Turner, and Remy Souchon, will take place July 15-17 and 28-30 in the Clemente parking lot and July 19-21 in Bryant Park, with admission first come, first served.

STOP AAPI HATE: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER

Abridged online version of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder benefits Stop AAPI Hate

Who: Lea Salonga, Ali Ewoldt, Diana Phelan, Thom Sesma, Cindy Cheung, Karl Josef Co
What: All-Asian-American abridged online version of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
Where: Broadway on Demand
When: July 15-22, pay-what-you-wish (suggested donation $20.14 – $1,000)
Why: On May 19, the National Asian American Theatre Company held a one-time-only virtual benefit reading of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, featuring an all-Asian-American cast. Now CollaborAzian and Broadway on Demand are teaming up for an online version of Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak’s A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder that will benefit Stop AAPI Hate, which “tracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.” An abridged adaptation of the Broadway musical that was nominated for ten Tonys, winning three (Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Direction of a Musical), the show will be available July 15-22. The story, based on the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman and the 1949 British film Kind Hearts and Coronets, follows the exploits of a man ninth in the line of succession to his family’s dukedom who decides to get rid of the eight people above him and grab the crown for himself as revenge for how his mother was treated by them. Thom Sesma plays the endangered members of the D’Ysquith clan, with Cindy Cheung as Ms. Shingle and others, Ali Ewoldt as Phoebe D’Ysquith, producer Karl Josef Co as Monty Navarro, and producer Diane Phelan as Sibella Hallward; hosted by Tony winner Lea Salonga, the presentation is directed by Alan Muraoka, who has played Alan, the owner of Hooper’s Store on Sesame Street, for more than two decades, with music direction by Steven Cuevas, costumes by Carla Posada, props by Alesha Borbo Kilayko, and audio engineering by Jonathan Cuevas.

“Historically, Asian American artists have been marginalized in media and on stage, and productions like this help to spotlight the tremendous talent that has been overlooked. We’re here to show the world that we are here, and we are fantastic,” Salonga said in a statement. The event is being held in conjunction with the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, the Broadway Diversity Project, Unapologetically Asian, Leviathan Labs, Chinosity, and Tremendous Communications.

THE GARDEN

Caroline Stefanie Clay and Charlayne Woodard play a mother and daughter reconnecting in The Garden (photo by J Fannon)

THE GARDEN
Baltimore Center Stage
Through July 18, $15-$40
www.centerstage.org

This past April, Manhattan Theatre Club presented a virtual version of Charlayne Woodard’s solo play Neat as part of its Curtain Call series; the autobiographical work, written and performed by Woodard, had debuted on MTC’s stage in 1997. Recorded from her home for the online version, Neat tells the story of Woodard’s coming-of-age in Albany in the 1970s, when she was a teenager and her disabled aunt, Neat, came to live with her family. Woodard has also delved into her past and present in Flight, In Real Life, and Pretty Fire, while The Night Watcher was based on actual slave narratives.

Woodard returns to the stage in The Garden, a La Jolla Playhouse commission filmed live at Baltimore Center Stage and streaming through July 18. Woodard stars as Cassandra, a middle-aged woman who is visiting her mother, Claire Rose (Caroline Stefanie Clay), for the first time in three years. They are so estranged that Cassandra uses her mother’s given name, refusing to call her “mother” or any other similar appellation. Sneaking up on her as the play starts, Cassandra says, “Claire Rose, Claire Rose, Claire Rose, Claire Rose! I’m sorry! Oh my God! I didn’t mean to frighten you! I’m sorry! Please? It’s just me. Claire Rose, Claire Rose, please!!!” Her mother replies, “I was beginning to think I might never see you again.”

Over the course of seventy-five minutes, mother and daughter bring up past wrongs, explore what tore them apart, and reveal deeply emotional secrets that might bring them back together. The show takes place in a large garden created by Tony-winning set designer Rachel Hauck, featuring pinkeye purple hull peas, crookneck squash, Swiss chard, mustard greens, and turnip greens in numerous floor boxes and a small greenhouse. Claire Rose might live by herself, but she does not consider herself lonely. Answering her phone, Claire Rose says to the person on the other end of the line, “I am not at all alone. I’m in my garden.” Later, she tells Cassandra, “All I can say is this particular morning, I need the peace my garden brings me.”

The garden is an apt metaphor for the lives Claire Rose and Cassandra are living and the concepts of “home” and being “uprooted,” representing elements they personally chose to grow as well as those that were forced upon them, out of their control, especially when it comes to race. “This day . . . I believe this day is different from all the rest,” Cassandra says. Claire Rose responds, “Different from all the rest. . . . I don’t know. But I turned on CNN, the BBC. I turned on Fox News, only to find out things are far worse today than they were yesterday! My big question is why are we going backwards in this country. Pretty soon Black folk will be back at the voting booth, guessing how many jelly beans are in the jar —” Cassandra cuts her off, declaring, “— Very true. These are frightening times. But I didn’t come three thousand miles to discuss . . . voter suppression. I suggest you stay away from the twenty-four-hour news cycle, anyway—” This time Claire Rose cuts her daughter off, proclaiming, “—Oh, no. We can’t afford to live in a bubble. They are coming for us, Cassandra! It’s time to be vigilant. You don’t want to find yourself living like Negroes had to live back in the ’40s and ’50s. This country was a misery back then. . . . Oh, yes. Good ole’ racism. It is and always has been alive and kicking.”

Charlayne Woodard wrote and stars in Baltimore Center Stage streaming production of The Garden (photo by J Fannon)

Claire Rose and Cassandra each share horrifying, tragic stories from their past, which get to the heart of their fractured relationship, in need of serious tending. Cassandra is defiant in explaining that she felt her mother cared more for the garden than for her children, imploring, “Claire Rose . . . you are so generous, so nurturing every step of the way with this garden. April to October. Whether there’s too much rain or freezing temperatures. This garden never gets on your nerves. Me, Rachel, Isaiah, even Pop-Pop — we’ve all been competing with this garden. I have always done the best I could to be a good daughter. But you left me out of it. My shrink says —” An adamant Claire Rose defends herself: “This garden is between me and my God. Competing with my garden? That’s as silly as me competing with your career. Who does that? If you choose to be jealous of some beets and some eggplant and my heirloom tomatoes, maybe that’s a topic to bring up with your shrink.” It all leads to a haunting, unforgettable finale.

Filmed by David Lee Roberts Jr. with camera operators Darius Moore and Taja Copeland, The Garden is directed with a compelling green thumb by Patricia McGregor (Hamlet, Hurt Village), who allows the actors, who occasionally break the fourth wall, time and room to grow as the narrative unfolds. Two-time Obie winner and Tony nominee Woodard (Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy,” Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine) and Clay (Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, Adrienne Kennedy’s Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side) cultivate a potent and powerful chemistry as a daughter and mother who have never quite understood each other but are more alike than they realize.

It’s a gripping story that blossoms at just the right moment in time, tackling issues of loss and isolation as we emerge from the pandemic lockdown and family and friends meet up in person for the first time in more than a year in a country dangerously polarized by social injustice, police brutality, and health and economic crises that disproportionately affect people of color. In her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker wrote, “Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength — in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” Those words ring as true as ever in 2021, embodied in Woodard’s moving, heartrending play.

PTP/NYC: LUNCH / STANDING ON THE EDGE OF TIME / A SMALL HANDFUL

PTP/NYC’s tasty virtual free Lunch continues through July 13

Who: PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)
What: Virtual summer season
Where: PTP/NYC YouTube
When: July 9-13 (Lunch), July 23-27 (Standing on the Edge of Time), August 13-17 (A Small Handful), free with advance RSVP (donations accepted)
Why: Every summer, I look forward to seeing what unique plays Potomac Theatre Project, aka PTP/NYC, brings to the city. Founded in 1987 by co-artistic directors Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa at Middlebury College, the organization presents old and new works by such playwrights as Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter, Snoo Wilson, Tom Stoppard, C. P. Taylor, and, primarily, Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker. The company’s 2020 season ran online in the fall, with Churchill’s Far Away, Dan O’Brien’s The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, and Barker’s A Political Statement in the Form of Hysteria. The 2021 season is virtual as well, opening July 9-13 with a splendid production of Steven Berkoff’s Lunch.

“What do you want?” pushy salesman Tom (Bill Army) asks Mary (Jackie Sanders). “Nothing,” she replies. The two are sitting on the edge of a moving sea, their backs to the ocean as dark clouds emerge behind them. Refusing to give up, he later asks, “Don’t you ever want something else?” She responds again, “Nothing.” She tries to leave several times, but he insists she stay.

During the forty-minute absurdist play, the two strangers wonder about a romantic rendezvous as they defend their lives and the choices they’ve made while attacking the other’s, at times hitting hard and deep, although not much seems to stick. She calls him a “salesman of nothing, a canine groper . . . a dirty little man,” while he tells her, “Crawling words creep out like spiders from your ancient gob.” Occasionally they speak directly to the viewer, considering their situation, not sure what they should do next. It might not be love at first sight for both of them, but neither can they simply get up and walk away, allowing us to eavesdrop on their unusual conversation, with unique language that the closed captioning often has no idea how to transcribe.

“You sound like high-pressure hissing from cracked pipes,” Mary says as he waxes poetic about his job. “I’m no pressure,” he replies. “I dissolve into fat and slide under the door, staining the concrete stairs on the way down — those thousands of white — dirty — grey concrete stairs that have gnawed my feet away — choked on the dust — white dust that concrete secretes — salesman’s disease — bang-bang, up the stairs and then slither down in a visceral pool of grease dragging nerve endings, plasma, and intestines . . . re-form on the pavement — plunge the eyes back in — the shirt has dissolved into my flesh — become an outer skin . . . recoup in the ABC — salesman’s filling station — pump in the hot brown bird vomit — and the others are just sludging in, their faces slapped puce with rejection, the waitress, sliding around the dead pool of grease, slithers her knotted varicosity towards me and for a treat smashes some aerated bread down my throat which dissolves into dust, white dust that concrete secretes, atrophying delicate nasal membranes . . .” She asks, “Don’t you like your work?” He answers, “Love it! Every moment, every earth-shattering cosmological moment of it.”

Directed by Romagnoli, the prerecorded play was filmed with the actors in different locations, but Courtney Smith’s production design, lighting, and cinematography attempt to make it appear like they are in the same space. Army (The Band’s Visit, Scenes from an Execution) and Sanders (The Taming of the Shrew, Cowgirls) are lovely together — er, well, apart — in a work that premiered at the King’s Head in London in 1983, with Linda Marlowe and Ian Hastings starring. Berkoff, who has played villains in such films as Beverly Hills Cop, Octopussy, and Rambo: First Blood Part II, has also written and directed such plays as East, West, Decadence, Kvetch, Actor, and Massage, many of which he appeared in as well. Lunch, which runs about as long as it takes to eat lunch, is a tasty treat, a delicious morsel about two very different people who come together by chance and reevaluate their lives as they reaffirm their identities.

PTP/NYC’s free 34.5 season continues July 23-27 with the ninety-minute Standing on the Edge of Time, consisting of short works by David Auburn, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, Mac Wellman, Steven Dykes and others, directed by Faraone and featuring such company vets as Alex Draper, Tara Giordano, Stephanie Janssen, Christopher Marshall, and Aubrey Dube, followed August 13-17 with A Small Handful, a filmed thirty-minute piece directed and conceived by Petosa that uses text by Anne Sexton and songs by composer Gilda Lyons, spoken by Paula Langton and sung by Kayleigh Riess.