this week in theater

David Mendizábal: eat me!

Who: David Mendizábal
What: Livestreamed presentation
Where: Soho Rep. YouTube
When: Thursday, June 17, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: During the pandemic, Soho Rep. started Project Number One, in which eight artists were paid as salaried staff members, earning $1,250 per week plus health insurance to develop new work while shining a light on the problems creators faced as theaters closed and Covid-19 spread around the world. Becca Blackwell, Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Stacey Derosier, David Mendizábal, Ife Olujobi, David Ryan Smith, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jillian Walker met regularly to discuss what comes next for theater makers. In May, Smith released The Story of a Circle, a personal tale in which he pulls no punches from Walkerspace, and Tropicana is posting her podcast That’s Not What Happened here.

On June 17, director and designer Mendizábal will begin streaming his contribution, eat me! Describing the show, he writes, “They say that every seven years we essentially become new people, because in that time, every old cell in our body has been replaced by a new cell through a process known as autophagy. Autophagy literally translates to ‘self-eating,’ which got me thinking: What are the parts of myself, or ideas I’ve held on to / that I would eat away if I could? / What would I replace those ideas with?” The film is inspired by an Ecuadorian ritual in which people share “guaguas de pan,” or bread babies, with their lost loved ones on November 2, Día de los Difuntos (Day of the Deceased). Mendizábal (On the Grounds of Belonging, Tell Hector I Miss Him) sees his film, which is edited by Yee Eun Nam, with music and sound by Mauricio Escamilla and animation by Jeromy Velasco, as “a release and a rebirth” as we return to life together.

BLOOMSDAY ON BROADWAY AT 40

Who: Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Chabon, Regina Porter, Colm Tóibín, Daphne Gaines, Maggie Hoffman, Vin Knight, April Matthis, Scott Shepherd
What: Fortieth anniversary celebration of “Bloomsday on Broadway”
Where: Symphony Space online
When: Wednesday, June 16, $15, 7:00
Why: Symphony Space’s fortieth annual salute to James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Bloomsday on Broadway,” will take place virtually on the 117th anniversary of the day the novel is set, June 16, 1904. The online presentation begins with a discussion and audience Q&A between Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Chabon, Regina Porter, and Colm Tóibín about the legacy of the work, followed by performances by Daphne Gaines, Maggie Hoffman, Vin Knight, April Matthis, and Scott Shepherd from experimental immersive theater experts Elevator Repair Service (Gatz, Measure for Measure). As a bonus, there will be a link to clips from last year’s virtual show, which featured a vast array of celebrities reading sections of the tome. Produced in cooperation with Irish Arts Center, the event is directed by John Collins and dedicated to Symphony Space cofounder Isaiah Sheffer, who passed away in 2012 at the age of seventy-six. Last week I bumped into Shepherd on the street and he was excited about what they were planning for this edition of “Bloomsday on Broadway,” which only got me more pumped. You should be too. Tickets are $15, and the recording will be available through June 30.

RED BULL THEATER: VOLPONE, or THE FOX

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Livestreamed benefit reading of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or The Fox
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, June 14, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30 (available on demand through June 18 at 7:00)
Why: In December 2012, Red Bull Theater presented a stellar version of Ben Jonson’s classic 1606 English Renaissance satire, Volpone, or The Fox, at the Lucille Lortel Theater, which I called “a deliriously entertaining streamlined version . . . a frenetic farce fraught with fanciful flourishes.” Red Bull is bringing the play back for a live benefit reading on June 14 at 7:30, starring Grammy, Emmy, and Tony winner André De Shields as the title character and Hamish Linklater as Mosca, with Peter Francis James, Roberta Maxwell, Kristine Nielsen, Mary Testa, Jordan Boatman, Sofia Cheyenne, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Clifton Duncan, Amy Jo Jackson, and Sam Morales. The reading, which will be available on demand through June 18 at 7:00, is directed by Jesse Berger, who explains, “Human greed and con artists appear to be timeless parts of human nature – damnable in life, but hilarious onstage! We had so much fun with this delicious satire in our 2012 production, and I am excited to share the material again in this new way with a wholly new stellar cast of great comic actors. Plus there’ll be fun new nips, tucks, and comic wrinkles by the brilliant Jeffrey Hatcher and some design surprises and delights from our terrific creative team. Oh – this and all of Red Bull’s online events are performed live. Nothing is prerecorded – And just like with live theater: Anything can happen. With this hilarious cast, I think that’s truer than ever.” The visual design is by John Arnone, with costumes by Rodrigo Muñoz (based on original designs by Clint Ramos), original music and sound by Scott Killian, and props by Faye Armon-Troncoso.

On June 17 at 7:30, Berger, members of the company, and scholar Jean E. Howard will participate in a live Bull Session discussion. “The play opens with the main character, Volpone, making a rapturous speech to his gold. Nearly every other character is also in thrall to this ‘dumb god,’ and to attain more and more wealth these Venetians are ready to prostitute their wives, disinherit their sons and defile their honor. The action of Volpone exposes and satirizes the actions of its avaricious characters, but it does so with dazzling ingenuity. The play is dominated by a magnificent con artist, Volpone, and his tricky servant Mosca. Together they dupe the well-off doctors, lawyers, and merchants of Venice into giving rich gifts to Volpone, who pretends to be near death, in the hope that one of them can become his heir,” Howard notes. “Volpone, more perhaps than any other Jonsonian comedy, takes risks in its concluding scenes, stretching comedy to its limit as the tricksters dangerously overreach themselves and slam up against the harsh strictures of Venetian law.”

BLOOMSDAY REVEL 2021

Who: Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, Sarah Street, Alan Gogarty
What: In-person and livestreamed Bloomsday celebration
Where: Blooms Tavern, 208 East 58th St., and online
When: Sunday, June 13, $45, 3:00
Why: For nearly one hundred years, people have been celebrating Bloomsday, when James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, June 16, 1904. Yes, the seven-hundred-plus-page novel about Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus is set during one day in Dublin. On Sunday, June 13, at 3:00, Origin Theatre Company is presenting its eighth annual “Bloomsday Revel,” happening both live at Blooms Tavern on East Fifty-Eighth St. as well as online. The socially distanced afternoon features dramatic readings by such New York-based Irish actors as Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, and Sarah Street, musical interludes from Alan Gogarty, and a juried costume contest. Tickets for the in-person show, cocurated by Paula Nance and Michael Mellamphy, are $45 and include Bloomsday-inspired hors d’oeuvres and an open bar. “Luckily we didn’t miss a year in 2020,” new Origin artistic director Mellamphy said in a statement. “We were fully virtual last year, in a program packed with great performances and heartfelt messages. But this year we are creating an all-new hybrid that celebrates the many ways we share experiences like this unique and important literary holiday. James Joyce after all was all about setting new rules in art. . . . We’re immensely pleased to continue that tradition in 2021.”

WORLDS FAIR INN

Worlds Fair Inn explores nuclear annihilation and serial killing with a vaudeville sensibility (photo by Regina Betancourt)

WORLDS FAIR INN
Axis Theatre
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Wednesday – Saturday through June 19, $20, 8:00
866-811-4111
www.axiscompany.org

On March 11, 2020, I was in Axis Theatre Company’s small, intimate downstairs space at One Sheridan Square, getting ready to watch artistic director Randy Sharp’s adaptation of Henry James’s Washington Square. Shortly before the show started, a few of us chuckled as a woman roamed the aisles, unable to choose a seat. (The venue is general admission.) When she was right behind me, I heard her mutter, “I’m not going to get sick. This virus is not going to get me.” A few of us looked at one another, thinking she had gone a bit overboard. Little did I know that Washington Square would be the last live theater with actors and an in-person audience I would experience for nearly fifteen months because of a virus that has killed more than six hundred thousand Americans and shuttered live entertainment venues around the globe.

On June 4, 2021, there I was, back at the Axis Theatre, to see my first indoor play with actors and an audience since the pandemic lockdown was lifted. It was the premiere of Sharp’s Worlds Fair Inn, performed by a cast of five to an audience of fifteen people in masks. Not only was it thrilling to be in the theater, but the hourlong work is a fab absurdist journey through madness and tragedy, a strange and enticing mix of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the Three Stooges.

Axis producing director Brian Barnhart stars as Frank, a creepy character right out of a low-budget Roger Corman horror-comedy, a composite of Victor Frankenstein, the fictional mad scientist who built a creature out of dead bodies; theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb”; and H. H. Holmes, a con artist and serial killer who owned the World’s Fair Hotel, aka the Murder Castle, near the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Two loony bowler-hatted fellows, Eric (George Demas) and Bill (Jon McCormick), arrive at the inn, seeking shelter and company. All three men wear dark clothing and giant Frankenstein-style shoes on a set littered with dozens of bottles of whiskey, a hotel front desk that doubles as a killing casket, and a neon sign advertising the name of the place. The set is designed by Sharp, with period costumes by Karl Ruckdeschel, fun props by Lynn Mancinelli, eerie lighting by David Zeffren, and playfully sinister sound and music by former Blondie member Paul Carbonara.

“What do you think it would take to make a living man out of a bunch of cut-up dead people? I mean if you cut them up and glued them together?” Frank, who boasts that he’s a scientist, a doctor, an American, and an architect, asks.

“Why wouldn’t you use whole dead people and bring them back to life?” Eric answers, pauses, then adds, “Oh! Maybe you need separate parts so you can see how to make them work? Then stick them back?”

“Right,” Frank responds. “Or maybe I would just use the whole person. I’m an architect. It’s scientific. I just want to see what happens.”

Eric and Bill jump at the chance to help Frank in his unnatural mission, displaying no hesitancy at the prospect of killing people, chopping them up, then assembling the pieces into a new whole. “We’re builders,” Bill offers. “Not scientists. Just to be sure. We can fix things! Hard workers! . . . We’re contractors!”

Frank’s first two victims are Machine (Edgar Oliver), an erudite oddball, and Lady (Britt Genelin), a coquettish factory worker; both fall for the men’s ruse, undone by their own pride in their willingness to embrace new ways.

Lady (Britt Genelin) brings light to the dark proceedings of Worlds Fair Inn (photo by Regina Betancourt)

Worlds Fair Inn feels like a uniquely charming, deranged vaudeville act with Moe/Shemp (Frank), Larry (Bill), and Curly (Eric) filtered through Corman’s Tales of Terror. The cast is wonderfully over the top, highlighted by the risible interplay between Demas (Maverick, Last Man Club) and McCormick (Dead End, Donkey Punch). Pay particular attention to McCormick even when he’s not talking; he moves in herky-jerky fits and starts, overcome by nerves and fear, often leaving his thoughts unfinished as his eyes dart about the stage.

Barnhart (High Noon, Dead End) channels Angus Scrimm from Phantasm and John Carradine in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) as he delivers his lines with great bombast. It’s fab to see Oliver, a solo specialist who has presented In the Park, East 10th St.: Self Portrait with Empty House, and Attorney Street at Axis, as part of an ensemble; he and Genelin (Washington Square, High Noon) are adorable as vaudeville versions of the Creature and the Bride of Frankenstein, trapped in a skit they don’t fully comprehend.

Writer-director Sharp (Strangers in the World, Seven in One Blow) adeptly maneuvers between high and low comedy as she takes on nuclear annihilation, a different kind of rather effective serial killing — Frank, Eric, and Bill bow every time Japan is mentioned — and melds Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, Oppenheimer’s Los Alamos, and Holmes’s murder hotel into a supremely funny and memorable show. As we finally emerge from this dark year, we may not have much hope for the future of humanity, but Axis gives us hope for the future of theater. (And I hope the woman I foolishly chuckled at in March 2020, before Washington Square at the Axis, is alive and well and gets to catch this terrific satire, as you should too.)

YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY DOLLAR: THE CLEVER CHEMIST MATTER

Who: Santino Fontana, George Abud, Ali Ewoldt, Ted Koch, Susan Malloy, John-Andrew Morrison, Steven Ratazzi, Jay Russell
What: Keen Company all-star benefit audio drama
Where: Keen Company website
When: Thursday, June 10, pay-what-you-can ($1-$21), 7:00 (available through June 14 at 7:00)
Why: Keen Company concludes its excellent twenty-first season, chock-full of outstanding livestreamed programs, with the audio play Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: The Clever Chemist Matter, one of 809 episodes starring insurance adjuster Johnny Dollar produced by CBS Radio from February 1942 to September 1962. Originally aired on March 17, 1957, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: The Clever Chemist Matter, written and directed by Jack Johnstone, involves murder and blinding after an insurance policy is changed. The title character was voiced by Bob Bailey; Dick Powell, Charles Russell, Edmond O’Brien, John Lund, Gerald Mohr, Bob Readick, and Mandel Kramer also played “the man with the action-packed expense account” in this popular series.

Keen’s forty-minute show will feature Tony, Drama Desk, and Obie winner Santino Fontana as Dollar; the supporting cast consists of George Abud, Ali Ewoldt, Ted Koch, Susan Malloy, John-Andrew Morrison, Steven Ratazzi, and Jay Russell. The play is directed by Keen artistic director Jonathan Silverstein, with live foley effects by Nick Abeel, original music by Billy Recce, and audio engineering by Garrett Schultz. “Throughout the past year, we have been revisiting some of the most iconic titles from the Golden Age of Radio through starry benefit broadcasts. For our last fundraising event of the series, we are thrilled to present one of the most successful serial mystery programs, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar,” Silverstein said in a statement. “It’s been an utter pleasure and honor to delve into the fascinating history of radio drama while working alongside some of the best talents in the theater.” Keen’s previous “Hear/Now” audio broadcasts include Kate Cortesi’s Radio Nowhere, James Anthony Tyler’s All We Need Is Us, Pearl Cleage’s Digging in the Dark, Howard Koch’s War of the Worlds, and Lucille Fletcher’s Sorry, Wrong Number. The benefit reading will premiere June 10 at 7:00, followed by a live talkback with members of the cast and crew; the presentation will be available online through June 14 at 7:00.

HERDING CATS

Besties Justine (Sophie Melville) and Michael (Jassa Ahluwalia) experience a little calm before the storm in transcontinental Herding Cats (photo by Danny Kaan)

HERDING CATS
Soho Theatre / Stellar
June 7-21, $19
herdingcatsplay.com
sohotheatre.com

A battle over power and control is at the center of Soho Theatre’s two-continent production of Lucinda Coxon’s potent three-character play, Herding Cats. Originally performed in Bath in 2010, the work has been brought back during the pandemic in a stirring version that was presented live in London to a limited audience May 20–22, streamed around the world, and now made available as a recording June 7–21. The play features Jassa Ahluwalia and Drama Desk nominee Sophie Melville onstage in England, with Greg Germann in Los Angeles, projected on a large screen at the back. But it’s not just a gimmick; it makes sense within the context of the poignant story.

The talky Justine (Melville) and the quieter Michael (Ahluwalia) are friends and roommates, a pair of millennial besties trying to get by in difficult times. She is having #MeToo issues with her boss, while Michael is an online chat host who might be growing a little too close to one of his clients, an American businessman named Saddo (Germann) who prefers he speak to him like a little girl and call him “Daddy.” Hovering over Michael on the large screen, Saddo opines, “Oh, I miss you all the time. I miss you hard. I miss you so I ache all over, sweetheart, and I don’t know what I can do to feel better.” Michael responds, “Do you have the panties?”

Meanwhile, Justine cannot gain the footing she believes she has earned at work. “That’s all I do anyway these days, pander to fucking stupid weird men who can’t get it up on their own, even if it’s metaphorically speaking,” she complains. “Your way at least there’s some dignity to it. It’s out in the fucking open. I should do what you do.” All three characters’ situations threaten to run out of control as they seek different forms of companionship and dependency that might not be the best for any of them.

Michael (Jassa Ahluwalia) and Saddo (Greg Germann) have a unique relationship in Herding Cats (photo by Danny Kaan)

Produced by OHenry Productions and Stellar, Herding Cats is directed by Anthony Banks (The Girl on the Train, Raz), who helmed the original production eleven years ago. Banks makes it feel as if Coxon’s (The Danish Girl, The Shoemaker’s Wife) play was written during the Covid-19 crisis, organically incorporating aspects of social distancing and physical and psychological isolation. Be sure to log on early to watch as the play gets ready to start; you can see a few heads in the seats; it is performed in front of a limited audience, and the wait reminds you of what it is like to be in a theater, the excitement building before the actors take the stage. Also, beaming in Germann from California stresses the distance and disconnectedness that have been palpable since March 2020. Susan Kulkarni designed the costumes (Justine’s are a hoot), with lighting by Howard Hudson, video by Andrzej Goulding, sets by Grace Smart, and sound by Ben and Max Ringham.

Drama Desk nominee Melville (Pops, Iphigenia in Splott) is appealing as Justine, facing impending disaster as she cannot stop tumbling deeper down the rabbit hole. Ahluwalia (Unforgotten, Peaky Blinders) is touching as Michael, who is not as comfortable in his life as he might think he is. And Germann (Grey’s Anatomy, Assassins) is creepy good as Saddo, who is not necessarily the pervert he initially comes off as. This revival is of the moment, dealing with personal and professional ills that have plagued all of us in some way over the last fifteen months. “Dark when I leave in the fucking . . . still dark when I get home,” Justine tells Michael. “In between: herding cats. And there still isn’t time for anything. It’s still fucking mental all day. And then I get back here and I haven’t got time to do even the laundry. I haven’t even got any clean fucking clothes. I’ve run out of knickers completely — it’s like they just vanish.” You’ll know just what she means.