this week in theater

SEXUAL ASSAULT ON THE MENU: OH, HONEY AT LITTLE EGG

Carmen Berkeley is a much better actor than her character is a waitress in immersive Oh, Honey (photo by Krystal Pagan)

OH, HONEY
Little Egg
657 Washington Ave., Brooklyn
October 16 – November 7, $28.52 – $87.21
uglyfacetheatre.com
www.eggrestaurant.com

I’m an immersive theater junkie. Just say those two words — immersive theater — and I’m in, no matter the place or the subject; add in site-specific and I start palpitating with excitement. Several of my colleagues would rather be tortured by a Bad Cinderella marathon than see site-specific immersive theater; they don’t know what they’re missing. (Or maybe they do.)

So I jumped at the chance to see Jeana Scotti’s Oh, Honey at the happening Little Egg community restaurant in Brooklyn.

When I arrived at the eatery, on Washington Ave. on the border of Crown Heights and Prospect Heights, I was led to a chair in a row that had been squeezed in between a table and the beginning of the L-shaped counter. Most of the audience is seated at tables or at the counter, as if they were regular diners, but a handful of chairs and stools fill in empty spaces, a reminder that we’re here to watch a play and not have dinner, marring the site-specific illusion.

I initially declined a (free) mug of homemade tomato soup and the menu; already squished in the cramped row, I had nowhere to put the soup or the slice of pie I wanted to order. I understand that they need to get as many paying customers in to see the play as possible, but I already had a bad taste in my mouth. I looked around and I seemed to be the only one dissatisfied, but still.

I asked a waitress if there was anywhere else I could sit; I usually don’t complain about these kinds of things, but my level of discomfort was so off the charts I was considering just leaving. Fortunately, they were able to move me to the end of a long table, where I enjoyed the tomato soup, a glass of water, and a fine piece of lemon meringue pie. My site line was less than desirable, but I settled in for the show.

Four mothers (Maia Karo, Dee Pelletier, Mara Stephens, and Jamie Ragusa) meet the first Monday of every month at diner (photo by Krystal Pagan)

The action takes place at a table by the window, where four women meet for lunch the first Monday of every month. Vicki (Maia Karo), Lu (Dee Pelletier), Bianca (Jamie Ragusa), and Sarah (Mara Stephens) all have sons who have been accused of sexual assault on college campuses. (The story was inspired by a 2017 New York Times article about four such mothers in a Minneapolis suburb.) The women come together as a kind of group therapy to discuss their lives and their legal situations. They are served by Mari, a waitress portrayed by Carmen Berkeley, the woman I’d spoken to earlier about my seat; it turns out that she’s one of the actors.

Berkeley also stands out in the show. When it’s just the four mothers talking, arguing, commiserating, and supporting one another (or not), the play, directed by Carsen Joenk, feels fussy; their conversations are not something other diners would necessarily want to eavesdrop on. But when Mari is involved, the energy bumps up and various narratives become more intriguing.

Berkeley is terrific as Mari, who takes center stage a few times, from a confrontation with a man (Brian McCarthy, Lucas Papaelias, Jesse Pennington, or Ean Sheehy) to a surprising and poignant monologue about herself.

I’m glad I stuck it out, even if the seating arrangement continued to befuddle me. Not every meal is a delight from appetizer to main course to dessert, and the same can be said for immersive, site-specific plays, including Oh, Honey. But in the end, it is satisfying fare.

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

BLOWING IT ALL UP: A LIVESTREAMED PHANTOM FROM AN EAST VILLAGE CLOSET

Theater in Quarantine’s Phantom of the Opera can be experienced multiple ways (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
NYU Skirball online
Through November 3, $22, 8:00
nyuskirball.org
www.theaterinquarantine.com

For Halloween 2023, Joshua William Gelb and his Theater in Quarantine (TiQ) company teamed up with NYU Skirball to present Nosferatu: A 3D Symphony of Horror, a livestreamed adaptation of the horror classic based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. The show took place in Gelb’s 2′ x 4′ x 8′ closet in his East Village apartment, which he had converted into a claustrophobic white space for virtual dance and drama during the pandemic.

Earlier this year he took TiQ out of the closet, staging The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at New York Theatre Workshop’s Fourth Street Theatre and [untitled miniature] at HERE Arts Center, revealing the genius behind his complex process.

Joshua William Gelb works his magic again in livestreamed horror classic for Halloween (photo by Theater in Quarantine)

Gelb is now back in his apartment, in a slightly larger white closet, for his unique take on The Phantom of the Opera, another Halloween commission from Skirball. The sixty-five-minute production offers viewers a variety of options: There’s a live chat and reaction emojis, the audience is represented by little circles at the bottom of the screen so you can feel like you’re not alone, and picture-in-picture allows you to toggle between the show itself and a behind-the-scenes camera where you can see how the DIY magic happens, which I found illuminating. (One night the toggle wasn’t working, so the picture-in-picture was instead projected side by side.) Or you can pay no attention to any of the bells and whistles and just experience the chilling final product with no interruptions.

In his introduction, delivered while he is applying the Phantom makeup, Gelb explains, “Just like the Phantom, you choose between the artifice of the opera and the reality of the infrastructure.” He has a lot to say about art, luxury, wealth, and power. “Maybe the Phantom isn’t a man hiding behind a mask; maybe he’s the infrastructure itself. Which is why, in wrestling with the question of the Phantom’s face, we think of it not as disfigurement but as damage, the visible strain of keeping a collapsing system alive. The cracks are architectural, the rot is institutional, budgets shrink — maybe someone should blow it all up.” He then asks, “How can you possibly introduce convention so antiquated to a new audience? It will happen to theater like it happens to the opera, like it’ll happen to the cinema, anywhere real people congregate in real space and real time.” He answers that question with his version of The Phantom of the Opera, based on Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel and Rupert Julian’s 1925 film starring Lon Chaney.

Directed by Gelb with scenography by Normandy Sherwood and sound by Alex Hawthorn, the black-and-white show features old-fashioned silent-film-style title cards, purposefully exaggerated acting, cardboard cutouts (for the Paris Opera House and other interiors and exteriors, the famous chandelier, the character of Carlotta), and such cinematic transitions as irising in and irising out.

The story is boiled down to its essentials. The new management (Erin Amlicke and Jon Levin) of the opera house finds a clause in the contract that states that an artist in residence known as the Phantom (Gelb) lives in the subterranean chambers and must not be disturbed. Thinking it is a practical joke, they sign on the dotted line and are immediately sent a note telling them that Christine Daaé (Sophie Delphis) will replace opera star Carlotta as Marguerite for Wednesday night’s performance of Faust.

“No ghost will frighten Carlotta!” the diva declares, but the nervous Christine does indeed go on, anxiously watched by her true love, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Curtis Gillen). Despite Christine’s success, management wants Carlotta to return to the role, which does not make the Phantom happy. He is also jealous of Raoul, who plans to take Christine away from the opera.

The Phantom clearly expresses his displeasure, and all hell breaks loose.

Raoul has his work cut out for him if he is to save Christine (Sophie Delphis) from the Phantom (photo by Theater in Quarantine)

Phantom has existed in multiple forms over the years, from the 1925 silent film to the 1929 reissue with sound, from the 1974 rock opera Phantom of the Paradise to the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and subsequent 2004 film. In April 2023, the musical closed after more than thirty-five years at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway, but a reimagined immersive version, Masquerade, is now playing on West Fifty-Seventh St., where tickets start at over $200.

For a mere twenty-two bucks, you can experience Gelb’s Phantom of the Opera from the comfort of your own home, but be sure to keep the lights off and turn up the sound, as it’s a creepy, fun evening, immersive in its own way, putting a new spin on favorite scenes through virtuoso techniques that will surprise you, delight you, and, yes, scare you as it blows it all up.

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

WELCOME TO THE MACHINE: TIM BLAKE NELSON WORLD PREMIERE AT LA MAMA

A Lawyer (Elizabeth Marvel) attempts to defend her client in Kafka-esque And Then We Were No More (photo by Bronwen Sharp)

AND THEN WE WERE NO MORE
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
The Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Tuesday – Sunday through November 2, $49-$99
www.lamama.org

“‘It’s a remarkable piece of apparatus,’ said the officer to the explorer and surveyed with a certain air of admiration the apparatus which was after all quite familiar to him. The explorer seemed to have accepted merely out of politeness the Commandant’s invitation to witness the execution of a soldier condemned to death for disobedience and insulting behavior to a superior.”

So begins Franz Kafka’s 1918 short story, “In the Penal Colony,” which actor, director, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Tim Blake Nelson recently read with one of his sons. The existential tale serves as the inspiration for Nelson’s gripping new play, And Then We Were No More, continuing at La MaMa through November 2.

The two-hour show (plus intermission) takes place in the near future, in a privately owned prison in a large complex that has a new machine that apparently can painlessly and efficiently execute those convicted of capital crimes. It’s a Kafka-esque institution where no one has a name and everything has been decided in advance. An Official (Scott Shepherd) goes by the book but likes making an occasional joke, which floats away without a laugh. He has brought in a Lawyer (Elizabeth Marvel) to defend the Inmate (Elizabeth Yeoman), who has been convicted of killing her husband, their two children, and her mother. Often watching the proceedings from a distance is an Analyst (Jennifer Mogbock) representing the corporation’s financial interest in the machine. Meanwhile, the Machinist (Henry Stram) fiercely defends the system and his beloved execution device as he tracks statistics.

The Lawyer reluctantly accepts the job; selected by a computer algorithm she essentially has no choice. At the Lawyer’s first meeting with her client, the Inmate says to her in an irrational manner, “I am not no my name / by name name me by name / but you would say know me / by name / by my name / you would swim / in the muddy of no more name / rise up and see / vapor wickedness / bloom in white sky / rain retreat like lost / far flood / nameless name. . . . smell on you same air / breathe / anger / plague skin crawled / needs swarming / scratch self death.” The Lawyer soon learns that there is no option to delay or cancel the execution based on her client’s possible insanity.

During the trial, the case is made directly to the audience, which serves as a kind of jury; when the verdict is announced, the powerlessness of the individual envelops the room with Kafka-esque grandeur.

A Lawyer (Elizabeth Marvel) faces impossible odds with her client (Elizabeth Yeoman) in world premiere at La MaMa (photo by Bronwen Sharp)

And Then We Were No More is gorgeously staged by director Mark Wing-Davey (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mad Forest), as the tension, and strangeness, ratchet up scene after scene. David Meyer’s jaw-dropping set features a series of strikingly colored air ducts, bland chairs and tables, and the mysterious machine that supernumeraries move around like automatons. Marina Draghici’s costumes range from office chic to an odd, somewhat deranged outfit worn by those about to be executed. Henry Nelson (one of Tim’s children) and Will Curry’s sound design switches from compelling interstitial music to ominous machine drones to horrific screeches when the Lawyer says the Inmate’s name out loud, in defiance of the rules.

The cast, which also includes William Appiah, E. J. An, Kasey Connolly, and Craig Wesley Divino as the supernumeraries in multiple roles, capture the feeling of the Kafka-esque environment, where so much is not explained. Nelson, who has written two novels and such plays as Socrates, Eye of God, and The Grey Zone (he adapted the last two into films) and has appeared in such movies as The Thin Red Line, Captain America: Brave New World, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, has created a sinister, foreboding dystopian existence with And Then We Were No More, one that feels all too real given what is happening to the justice system under the current US administration.

Various scenarios are like warning signals, telling us what might be waiting for us right around the corner:

An Analyst: If the work is stymied, if we cannot demonstrate success . . .
An Official: I understand.
An Analyst: Everyone must understand.
An Official: We can do what we can do.
An Analyst: This is a sentiment no longer relevant in our time.
An Official: Or it’s the only relevant sentiment.

“Ready now!” the officer announces after preparing the machine to do its business in Kafka’s tale.

He might be, but are we?

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

JUST ONE PUNCH: HARROWING PLAY EXITS BROADWAY RING

Will Harrison leads an excellent cast in harrowing true story (photo by Matthew Murphy)

PUNCH
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through November 2, $94-$235.50
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Will Harrison makes an electrifying Broadway debut as a young Nottingham man whose life changes forever on a wild night in James Graham’s Punch, continuing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 2 though deserving of a longer run. However, the final shows can be livestreamed with a twenty-four-hour replay for $75.

Harrison stars as Jacob in the true story, based on the memoir Right from Wrong by Jacob Dunne, which explores bullying, drugs, class, and restorative justice. One night, Jacob and his large gang of friends are out drinking and snorting as they barhop through Nottingham, Jacob in search of some action.

“This is the problem, no one likes to admit . . . Doing bad things . . . creates good feelings. It just does,” Jacob tells the audience. “Because there is no other high in the world, forget your fuckin’ skunk or spice or smack or scratch, none of it can beat the buzz that comes with beatin’ up a slippin’ bastard in defence of a mate. The look in their eyes when they’re impressed, grateful, respectful . . . and even a bit fuckin’ scared of you now too . . . Barrelling back to someone’s house, covered in blood and validation. . . . Being chased and chasing highs, rushing round, scoring drugs and doing deals, seeking out parties and pulling girls. People dancing, trance like, getting high, snogging. Problem for someone like me is that cause I’d lived on the outskirts, coz mum had kept our heads down . . . not a lot of people knew us. And thriving and surviving in this world is all about your reputation, who you are . . . Which means I . . . have to always go farther, drink faster, walk taller. And most importantly . . . fight. Fight harder. Harder than anyone else.”

Chasing those highs, nineteen-year-old Jacob unleashes a massive punch on a random stranger just for kicks, but when the young man, twenty-eight-year-old James Hodgkinson, dies as a result of the altercation, Jacob is sent to prison while James’s parents, David Hodgkinson (Sam Robards) and Joan Scourfield (Victoria Clark), deal with the tragic loss of their son and contemplate whether they should forgive Jacob.

The energetic, fast-paced first act shifts between the punch and its immediate aftermath and a group therapy session led by Sandra (Lucy Taylor, who also plays Jacob’s mother and a probation officer), where Jacob shares his story with others. Sandra describes it as a place for “talking and listening. Difficult conversations.” Those conversations center on restorative justice, as Jacob, Joan, and David decide if they are going to meet face-to-face.

Victoria Clark and Sam Robards star as parents facing a horrific tragedy in Punch (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The first half of Punch unfolds like a thrilling boxing match, with aggressive, breathtaking movement by Leanne Pinder as Jacob and his friends make their way across and under set and costume designer Anna Fleischle’s reimagining of Trent Bridge in Nottingham, propelled by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s scorching original music and sound design. Robbie Butler’s lighting is like a character unto itself, a large, nearly complete circle hovering above the stage, consisting of rows of chasing lights that change color; it made me think of a boxing ring even though it isn’t square.

Graham (Ink, Dear England) and first-time Broadway director Adam Penford slow things down after intermission, as if the fighters have tired out, their tanks running out. Yes, it’s based on what actually happened, but it involves a whole lot of sitting around and talking, falling short of the knockout blow. Two-time Tony winner Clark (Kimberly Akimbo, The Light in the Piazza) and Robards (The 39 Steps, Absurd Person Singular) are powerful as James’s parents, tenderly dealing with a situation that is every mother and father’s nightmare.

But the play belongs to Harrison, who was born in Ithaca and raised in Massachusetts. He fully inhabits the British Jacob, physically and psychologically; you can’t take your eyes off him. Harrison made an impressive off-Broadway debut in 2023 as a young navy medic in Keith Bunin’s The Coast Starlight at Lincoln Center and has followed that up with this Tony-worthy performance; he is a rising star with a bright future.

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

TRAGIC AND COMIC HAPPENINGS: MARTHA@BAM — THE 1963 INTERVIEW AT BAM

Martha@BAM — The 1963 Interview re-creates classic conversation with Martha Graham (photo by By Peter Baiamonte)

MARTHA@BAM — THE 1963 INTERVIEW
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
October 28 – November 1, $55, 7:30
www.bam.org

On March 31, 1963, dance writer and educator Walter Terry interviewed legendary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham at the 92nd St. Y. Early in the seventy-seven-minute conversation, Terry asked Graham about her attraction to Greek history and mythology.

“There seems to be a way of going through in Greek literature and Greek history all of the anguish, all of the terror, all of the evil and arriving someplace. In other words, it is the instant that we all look for, or the catharsis, through the tragic happenings,” she responded. “Everyone in life has tragic happenings, everyone has been a Medea at some time. That doesn’t mean that you’ve killed your husband or that you’ve killed your children. But in some deep way, the impulse has been there to cast a spell — to use every ounce of your power, and that’s true of a man as well as a woman, for what one wants.”

It’s classic Graham; you can now catch a staged re-creation of the discussion in Martha@BAM — The 1963 Interview, running October 20 through November 1 at BAM’s intimate Fishman Space as part of the Next Wave Festival.

In 1996, dancer and choreographer Richard Move began the “Martha@” series, in which they portray Graham, combining text and movement. In 2003, they starred as Graham in the film portrait Ghostlight. In 2011, in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of Graham’s passing in 1991 at the age of ninety-six, Move presented Martha@ — The 1963 Interview at New York Live Arts, with Move as Graham, and Tony-winning actress and playwright Lisa Kron (Well, Fun Home) as Terry, accompanied by dancers Catherine Cabeen and Katherine Crockett. For the 2025 revival, Move, Kron, and Cabeen are reprising their roles, joined by Taiwanese dance maker PeiJu Chien-Pott, who, like Cabeen, is a former Martha Graham Dance Company member.

Move, who has collaborated with MGDC as a choreographer and performer, conceived and directed the sixty-minute production, which takes place on Gabriel Barcia-Colombo and Roberto Montenegro’s relatively spare set, centered by two chairs, a small table, and two microphones where Graham and Terry talk. Barcia-Colombo and Montenegro also designed the props the dancers use in their performance, as well as the lush, elegant costumes, immediately recognizable as part of Graham’s oeuvre. Among the other works that are brought to life are Clytemnestra, Errand into the Maze, and Appalachian Spring.

There is no video of the original interview, only audio, which you can stream here.

At the end of the interview, after bringing up comedy, Terry says, “The great characteristic of movement with Martha Graham is not only her fabulous gallery of heroines of the theater but also characteristic is the movement of one of the great dancers of all time, and I’m so glad she could be with us today. Thank you, Martha.”

To which I add, thank you, Richard Move, Lisa Kron, Catherine Cabeen, PeiJu Chien-Pott, and BAM.

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

WHAT’S GOING ON? GINGER TWINSIES AND HEATHERS THE MUSICAL

Ginger Twinsies is a parody of the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap (photo by Matthew Murphy)

GINGER TWINSIES
Orpheum Theatre
126 Second Ave. between Seventh & Eighth Sts.
Monday – Saturday through October 25, $49-$149
gingertwinsies.com

In Barry Levinson’s classic 1982 film Diner, Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) says to Boogie (Mickey Rourke), “Do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about?”

I get that feeling at times in theater, especially at shows based on books or movies. While you don’t need to have read E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime, or seen Miloš Forman’s 1981 film adaptation in order to enjoy the current Broadway revival at Lincoln Center, it doesn’t hurt. However, my knowledge of such films as Some Like It Hot and Sunset Blvd. did negatively impact my enjoyment of the stage musicals; while artistic license must be granted, certain changes from the original just seemed plain awful, altering motivations and important points.

At the curtain call for Sunset Blvd., as most of the audience stood and cheered with wild applause, I turned to my friend and said, “Did they see the same show we did?” She shrugged in agreement.

I had similar experiences at two recent shows, each of which I liked, but not nearly as much as my fellow theatergoers, who were watching them at a different level.

Continuing at the Orpheum through October 25, Ginger Twinsies is a farcical love letter to Nancy Meyers’s 1998 film, The Parent Trap, in which Lindsay Lohan portrayed identical eleven-year-old twins Hallie Parker and Annie James, separated at birth and ignorant of each other’s existence until they meet at summer camp and decide to switch places. It’s a remake of David Swift’s 1961 original, which made a star of Hayley Mills and was based on Erich Kästner’s 1949 children’s book.

The play features a lot of satirical music, inside jokes, and Easter eggs for those in the know; for example, one of the actors portrays Jamie Lee Curtis, who played Lohan’s mother in the body-switching 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, which was based on Mary Rodgers’s 1972 novel. Also appearing as characters in Ginger Twinsies are Shirley Maclaine, who had some choice words about Lohan after the younger actress had to be pulled out of a film they were working on together; Julianne Moore, whose daughter looks like she could be Lohan’s twin; and Demi Moore, who spoke with Lohan at the 2025 Oscars. Whether you get the references or not, the connections are confusing.

Russell Daniels and Aneesa Folds are hilarious as Annie and Hallie, respectively, from the get-go, as they don’t look anything alike. The show works best when it concentrates on the relationship between the two girls; numerous subplots with minor characters are overused as writer-director Kevin Zak attempts to squeeze too much into eighty minutes. I did eventually get into the flow once I realized there was no way I was going to get all of the jokes, but it’s still dispiriting to watch large portions of the audience laughing when you and others are scratching their heads.

Veronica joins the Heathers in musical adaptation of 1980s cult favorite (photo by Evan Zimmerman)

HEATHERS THE MUSICAL
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 6, $72-$195
heathersthemusical.com
newworldstages.com

A different kind of cult fandom can be found at Heathers the Musical, a revival of the 2014 show based on Michael Lehmann’s 1988 teen romance-thriller. The iconic film featured Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer, a student at Westerburg High who joins the mean girls clique of Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty), Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) while falling for dangerous new guy J. D. Dean (Christian Slater, in his best Jack Nicholson impersonation).

I had seen the film some years back and was looking forward to the musical, which continues at New World Stages through January 25. But what I wasn’t expecting were the shrieks that rattled the theater for two and a half hours (with intermission). Huge screams accompanied the first appearance of many of the characters, and nearly every song, from “Beautiful” and “Candy Store” to “Veronica’s Chandler Nightmare” and “My Dead Gay Son,” turned into a sing-along, as all the young women around me blared the lyrics out loud, wearing huge smiles as they did.

Director Andy Fickman and choreographer Stephanie Klemons capture the essence of the film, although the book, by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe (they also wrote the music and lyrics), takes too many liberties with the plot, making changes that didn’t improve on the original, from altering who did what and combining multiple characters into one to commercializing the generic candy store and modifying the ending. However, thank goodness they corrected the spelling of the high school, which is named after Paul Westerberg of the Replacements.

The cast, which includes a terrific Lorna Courtney as Veronica, Casey Likes as J.D., Olivia Hardy as Heather Duke, Elizabeth Teeter as Heather McNamara, McKenzie Kurtz as Heather Chandler, Xavier McKinnon as Ram Sweeney, Erin Morton as Martha Dunnstock, and Tony nominee Kerry Butler as Ms. Fleming and Ms. Sawyer, is first rate, and the music is fun.

The story takes on added meaning in the wake of so many school shootings the past twenty years while also tackling the subject of teen suicide, but it doesn’t dive deep enough and takes off in directions that can drain certain scenes of their potency. But like Ginger Twinsies, despite its flaws, Heathers the Musical is worth seeing, at least in part for watching everyone else in the audience have an absolute ball even when there’s something going on that you don’t know about — a status of exclusion the mean girls of Heathers and cult theater insiders might actually relish.

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

TIME AND MEMORY: JEN TULLOCK DIGS DEEP IN SOLO SHOW

Jen Tullock cowrote and stars in one-person show at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Maria Baranova)

NOTHING CAN TAKE YOU FROM THE HAND OF GOD
Playwrights Horizons, the Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through November 16, $63.50 – $118.50
www.playwrightshorizons.org

“Do you remember the first time you saw her, or I mean, has writing about it changed your memory of her?” a voice asks author Kristin Frances Reinhardt in Jen Tullock and Frank Winters’s Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God. Frances doesn’t answer the question in this intense solo show about first love, childhood trauma, forgiveness, and what and how we remember our past, filtered through family and religious dynamics and time.

Tullock performs all eleven roles in the seventy-minute multimedia production, from Frances’s brother, Eli, and mother, Raelynn, to her animated literary agent, Aubrey, and Kenny Weaver, the pastor of the Northeast Missions Church in her hometown. The play begins at a literary event launching Frances’s latest memoir, Never the Twain Shall Meet: Losing God and Finding Myself, the follow-up to Sorry I’m Late, about queer dating in Los Angeles. The new book explores Frances’s battles with her parents and the church over her sexual orientation as they go to extremes to try to force the gay out of her.

The action starts when agent Aubrey informs Frances that an organization discussed in the book, the Northeast Christian Church, got hold of an advance copy and is threatening to sue unless the author removes sections the church deems libelous for “wrongful likeness.” Frances decides to return home, believing she can straighten things out with the people she wrote about, primarily one specific young Polish woman with whom she fell in love, now a single mother who does not want to speak to her.

The narrative weaves in and out of the past and the present as the plot moves to Eli’s Backyard Bible Study class, a talent show audition, a coffee shop, a popular creek, a barbecue at Raelynn’s house, and the church, all the while intercutting discussions between Frances and Aubrey and readings and questions at the book event. For example, at one point the play switches back and forth between the book launch, with the host and audience heard in voiceover, and Pastor Jeremy Young at the church, with Tullock seamlessly shifting from Frances to Jeremy, making it feel like it’s all one conversation:

Jeremy: You know what my dream is? With this place? I want to make it so nobody has to write a book like you did. Not ever again. That’s the work that we’re trying to do.
Host: Wow.
Jeremy: Would you agree with that?
Host: Oh, gosh. That’s beautiful.
Jeremy: Well, I am so glad to hear you say that; I’m relieved, frankly. That means the world to me. Now let me ask you a question. Do you ever worry if you made any of it up?
Frances: Sorry, excuse me?
Host: Do you ever think about who your work is reaching?
Jeremy: Now, I’m not a lawyer — this may come as a shock to you, but I do know that even by the standards of Kentucky Common Law there is something called — let me see if I can get this right — Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. I know, it’s wordy.

Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God is a technical whirlwind (photo by Maria Baranova)

Tullock gives a tour-de-force performance, quickly changing accents and body language while also adjusting several onstage looping stations and small cameras that record real-time visuals of her that are projected onto screens around her, as if each character contains their own multitudes, going beyond stereotypes. The claustrophobic set, featuring two chairs, a small table, and the tech equipment, is by Emmie Finckel, with almost dizzying projections by Stefania Bulbarella, sharp lighting by Amith Chandrashaker, and expertly rendered sound by Evdoxia Ragkou.

The play is furiously directed by Jared Mezzocchi (Russian Troll Farm, On the Beauty of Loss), who previously collaborated with Tullock (On the Head of a Pin, You Shall Inherit the Earth!) on the marvelous site-specific Red Hook show The Wind and the Rain; there is so much going on at any one time that it takes a while to pick up its unique structure, which can get overwhelming and confusing at certain moments.

Inspired by events from her own life and her family’s involvement in the evangelical church, Tullock and cowriter Winters (On the Head of a Pin, Student Body) don’t sugarcoat the story by creating heroes and villains; each character in the play is complicated and well developed, flaws and all. In the book and the show itself, Frances is an unreliable narrator, one who is able to make the audience take a long, hard look at their own past and wonder how many of their memories might have wandered from the truth over the years.

“Do you still believe in anything?” an audience member asks Frances at the book event.

It’s a question many of us should be asking ourselves in these dark, troubled times.

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