this week in theater

HOTEL GOOD LUCK

Seth Soulstein plays a basement DJ facing loss and abandonment in the Cherry’s livestream of Hotel Good Luck

HOTEL GOOD LUCK
State Theatre, Ithaca, New York
February 12-20, $15-$45, 7:30
www.thecherry.org
newohiotheatre.org

One man’s obsession with death and fear of the end threaten to overwhelm his sanity in the Cherry Artists’ Collective’s offbeat, entertaining adaptation of Mexican playwright Alejandro Ricaño’s existential, seriocomic Hotel Good Luck, streaming live through February 20 from the historic State Theatre in Ithaca, where it is being performed without an audience, following all Covid-19 protocols. Although the Spanish-language original premiered in 2015 and Jacqueline Bixler’s astute translation dates from 2019, the play feels fresh and timely, dealing with the eternal themes of loss, loneliness, and disconnection that are so prominent in the current pandemic.

Seth Soulstein stars as Bobby, a grown man living in his father’s basement, where he broadcasts a radio show to four listeners. It’s November 5, and he shares with us on a slide projector screen how his four grandparents died of absurd circumstances, all on November 6 in successive years. Bobby opines that there are “four undeniable truths: 1. Everyone dies. Everyone. 2. Death can be fucking amusing. 3. The world is full of ridiculous coincidences. 4. I fucking hate the sixth of November.”

Terrified of what the next day may bring, Bobby enters what might be a dream or a nightmare, opening the refrigerator and floating into a parallel universe at the Hotel Good Luck where the dead are alive, including his beloved pet, Miller the melancholic dog, and maybe, just maybe, his ex-girlfriend, Lily, may take him back. He meets an alternate version of his best friend, Dr. Larry Torcino (musician and composer Desmond Bratton), his psychoanalyst who, when not at work, plays his double bass in the far corner. He tells Bobby what might be going on with him:

Larry: You don’t need a psychologist, Bobby. What you need is a physicist.
Bobby: A physicist?
Larry: A physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics.
Bobby: Where am I gonna find a physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics?
Larry: It just so happens that I’m a physicist and a specialist in quantum mechanics. It’s my night job. Do you mind if I change my jacket? . . .

A DJ (Seth Soulstein) gets caught up in multiple universes in Hotel Good Luck

Larry goes on to explain, “According to the principle of dimensional simultaneity, two or more realities can coexist in the same space and time. . . . Every little movement we make, Bobby, splits our universe into an infinite series of possibilities. Every little movement instantly opens up an adjacent universe that we can’t see, just an inch away. You’ve apparently discovered in your dreams, Bobby, a portal between one parallel universe and another.”

Soulstein has an irresistible charm as Bobby, a pathetic schlemiel who is not the most thoughtful and caring of men. He wanders across the stage, followed by cameraman Jules Holynski, searching for answers that may never come. However, some elements are within his grasp, such as letters from his mother and father that he magically plucks out of the air, offering new information about his parents’ relationship. Director Samuel Buggeln, who also designed the set — the bold lighting is by Chris Brusberg, with sound by Don Tindall and live video mixing by Noah Elman — takes us behind the scenes as Soulstein moves around the space.

Copresented by New Ohio Theatre, Hotel Good Luck is the second livestreamed, translated play the Cherry has done at the State Theatre, following Josephine George’s English-language adaptation of Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s A Day. While A Day was notable for how it revealed the technology behind the production, which involved Zoom boxes and green screens, Hotel Good Luck is a more standard presentation onstage, but with a more compelling narrative, particularly while we’re sheltering in place, hiding from a deadly virus.

It’s a comforting thought that, especially in these troubling times, we might be able to find what we’re looking for in the magical Narnia looming in the back of our fridge, but it’s not exactly practical in real life. It might not be quite what we need, either, as Bobby discovers. And when it comes right down to it, if you’re a schmuck in one universe, you’re probably a schmuck in another as well. “One has to keep believing, during this brief moment, that nothing is lost,” he says to Lily over the phone. If only.

THE MANIC MONOLOGUES: A VIRTUAL THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE

Who: Tessa Albertson, Anna Belknap, Ato Blankson-Wood, Mike Carlsen, Maddy Corman, Alexis Cruz, Mateo Ferro, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Sam Morales, Bi Jean Ngo, Armando Riesco, Jon Norman Schneider, Heather Alicia Simms, C. J. Wilson, Craig Bierko
What: Monologues about how real-life individuals are dealing with mental illness
Where: McCarter Theatre Center
When: Thursday, February 18, free, 7:00 am
Why: In May 2019, Zachary Burton and Elisa Hofmeister brought their show, The Manic Monologues, to Stanford University, an evening of true stories about people dealing with mental illness. The project was inspired by a psychotic breakdown Stanford University PhD geology student Zach suffered; he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The play has now been reimagined for online viewing by director Elena Araoz with multimedia designer Jared Mezzocchi; it will start streaming through McCarter Theatre Center on February 18 at 7:00 am, performed by an all-star cast and featuring interactive design and technology, including sound, writing, and doodling. “With this digital endeavor, McCarter hopes to reinforce its role as a cultural organization dedicated to innovative projects that spark timely dialogue and strengthen community,” McCarter resident producer Debbie Bisno said in a statement. “In pivoting to virtual creation in Covid, we’ve uncovered exciting ways of combining art and ideas. And, we are excited to make this work, and the conversation around mental health, accessible to a wider and more diverse audience than we would have in a traditional live staged-reading format. These are silver linings!”

Presented in association with Princeton University Health Services, the 24 Hour Plays, and Innovations in Socially Distant Performance at the Lewis Center for the Arts, The Manic Monologues, originally planned for a staged reading prior to the pandemic lockdown, consists of twenty-one real-life tales told by actors Tessa Albertson, Anna Belknap, Ato Blankson-Wood, Mike Carlsen, Maddy Corman, Alexis Cruz, Mateo Ferro, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Sam Morales, Bi Jean Ngo, Armando Riesco, Jon Norman Schneider, Heather Alicia Simms, C. J. Wilson, and Craig Bierko; in an effort to further reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness, there will also be links to a resource guide, video interviews with experts and advocates, the script, and other related material.

MTC CURTAIN CALL: THE PAST IS THE PAST

Who: Jovan Adepo, Ron Cephas Jones
What: New reading of previously produced MTC play
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club
When: February 18-28, free with RSVP
Why: Manhattan Theatre Club is inaugurating its “Curtain Call” series, in which the institution hosts new readings of older plays it previously presented onstage, with, appropriately enough, Richard Wesley’s The Past Is the Past. Originally produced in April/May 1975, the play, directed by Lloyd Richards, starred Earl Bill Cobbs and Eddie Robert Christian as a father and son, respectively, reconnecting after many years. MTC is bringing it back for a virtual reading February 18–28, featuring two-time Emmy winner Ron Cephas Jones (This Is Us, Truth Be Told) as father Earl Davis and Jovan Adepo (Fences, The Stand) as son Eddie Green, directed by Oz Scott (Bustin’ Loose, Mr. Boogedy). MTC would go on to work with Wesley, who wrote the screenplays for the comedies Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again, on such other shows as The Sirens, The Last Street Play, and The Talented Tenth. The free series continues in March with Richard Greenberg’s 1997 Pulitzer finalist and Obie-winning Three Days of Rain, directed by Evan Yionoulis and reuniting the original cast of Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery, and Bradley Whitford, followed by Charlayne Woodard’s 1997 one-woman show, Neat, and Nilo Cruz’s 2006 Beauty of the Father, directed by Michael Greif.

SORRY, WRONG NUMBER

Who: Marsha Mason, Heidi Armbruster, Chuck Cooper, Jasminn Johnson, Matt Saldivar, Lauren Molina, Marc delaCruz, Sarah Lynn Marion, Dan Domingues
What: All-star benefit reading of Sorry, Wrong Number
Where: Keen Company YouTube
When: Thursday, February 18, $25, 7:00 (available through February 21 at midnight)
Why: “Operator, I’ve been dialing Murray Hill four-oh-oh-nine-eight now for the last three quarters of an hour and the line is always busy. I don’t see how it could be busy that long. Will you try it for me, please?” Agnes asks at the beginning of Lucille Fletcher’s 1943 radio play, Sorry, Wrong Number. As the operator calls the number, Agnes adds, “I don’t see how it could be busy all this time. It’s my husband’s office; he’s working late tonight and I’m all alone here in the house. My health is very poor and I’ve been feeling so nervous all day.” But instead of getting her husband on the other end of the line, she overhears a murder plot, and she’s determined to do something about it, despite her condition. The noir thriller was adapted into a 1948 film by Fletcher, directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster; Agnes Moorehead had the lead role in the original May 1943 radio production.

The Drama Desk– and Obie-winning Keen Company is now adapting the play for an all-star benefit live presentation taking place February 18 at 7:00. (The link will be active through February 21 at midnight.) The cast features four-time Oscar, Grammy, and Emmy nominee Marsha Mason (The Goodbye Girl, Steel Magnolias), Tony winner Chuck Cooper (Choir Boy, The Life), Heidi Armbruster (Disgraced, Poor Behavior), Jasminn Johnson (Blues for an Alabama Sky, Seven Guitars), and Matthew Saldivar (Junk, Saint Joan). “Since the early days of the pandemic, I became increasingly fascinated with old-time radio and the ways these early pioneers inspired their audience to use their imagination in new ways,” company artistic director Jonathan Silverstein said in a statement. “One of the most popular of these dramas is Lucille Fletcher’s Sorry, Wrong Number, a taut thriller that set the bar for suspense on the radio. I look forward to welcoming patrons to this special fundraising event, which will make you think twice before making your next phone call.”

Fletcher was married to Bernard Herrmann, wrote the libretto for Herrmann’s opera Wuthering Heights, and penned the radio script for The Hitch-Hiker for Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre of the Air; it was later adapted by Rod Serling for a classic Twilight Zone episode with Inger Stevens. Welles considered Sorry, Wrong Number “the greatest radio script ever written.” The reading is directed by Silverstein and includes live foley effects by Nick Abeel; it will be preceded by a musical preshow with Lauren Molina, Marc delaCruz, and Sarah Lynn Marion performing American standards, hosted by Dan Domingues, and will be followed by a live talkback with members of the cast and crew. All proceeds benefit Keen’s Hear/Now audio theater season and the Keen Playwrights Lab.

XIValentine: A VIRTUAL VARIETY SHOW

Company XIV
Premieres Sunday, February 14, $125-$325, 8:00
companyxiv.com

For fifteen years, Brooklyn-based baroque burlesque troupe Company XIV has been dazzling audiences with sexy dance, music, and acrobatics in dramatic, fabulous costumes, re-creating fairy tales and other stories (Cinderella, Snow White, Queen of Hearts, Seven Sins) with an unabashed joy. During the presentation, the cast members make their way through the crowd, interacting with blissful guests who are sitting on lush couches, classy chairs, and intimate booths, eating and drinking as the performers spin from the ceiling, swirl on poles, reinterpret familiar standards, and dance in glittery, revealing outfits. It’s more of a happening than a mere show. So what to do during a pandemic lockdown, when Company XIV is unable to welcome audiences to its fashionable home on Troutman Ave. in Bushwick?

Founder and artistic director Austin McCormick has moved things online with XIValentine, a virtual holiday extravaganza premiering February 14 at 8:00 and available on demand for thirty days. Joining in on the raunchy reverie are aerialist, pole dancer, and soprano Marcy Richardson, aerialist, musician, and dancer Nolan McKew, powerhouse singer Storm Marrero, magician Matthew Holtzclaw, dancer and acrobat Nicholas Katen, actor and singer Brandon Looney, juggler Sam Urdang, dancer and choreographer Nicole von Arx, singer and specialty performer Syrena, and dancers Lilin, Scott Schneider, and Melissa Anderson, along with an appearance by canine cutie Macaron McCormick. The scenic design and costumes are by the amazing Zane Pihlström, who has never met a swath of red velvet and sequins he couldn’t turn into something fabulous.

Nolan McKew and Company XIV are preparing a special experience for Valentine’s Day

At its in-person productions, Company XIV offers different levels of ticketing; the more you pay, the more you get, including greater interaction with the cast and better food and drink. The troupe is attempting to recapture that feeling by offering four ways to experience the fifty-minute XIValentine. The thirty-day streaming pass is $125; the Be Mine package comes with chocolate truffles, The Male Nude or 1000 Pin-Up Girls book, and a canvas tote for $160; the Champagne Package features glasses, candles, bar soap, a bath bomb, and a quilted tote for $195; and the Lust Package consists of a rabbit mask, a gold riding crop, black nipple covers, a black beeswax corset candle, passionfruit CBD gummies, a chocolate fondue set, and both a quilted and canvas tote, for $325. Did we point out that things can get pretty kinky with Company XIV, both on- and offstage? In addition, if you live in New York City, you can get Champagne and cocktails delivered to your building. It’s always an expensive night out with Company XIV, and now it’s an expensive night in, but there’s nothing else like it.

If it’s all a bit much, you can go for the virtual edition of the seasonal favorite Nutcracker Rouge, where a $50 ticket provides you with a twenty-four-hour streaming pass to access eight acts (performed by Richardson, Lilin & LEXXE, Troy Lingelbach, Katen & McKew, Demi Remick, Christine Flores, Làszlò Major & Looney, and Jourdan Epstein, Pretty Lamé & Jacoby Pruitt), while $75 extends the pass to fourteen days and adds two weeks of bespoke cocktail lessons.

SMITHTOWN

Michael Urie, Ann Harada, Constance Shulman, and Colby Lewis deliver interconnected monologues in Drew Larimore’s Smithtown

SMITHTOWN
The Studios of Key West
February 13 – March 13, $20
tskw.org

Drew Larimore’s Smithtown is set not in the nearby North Shore municipality on Long Island but in a fictional midwestern college town in the aftermath of a terrible tragedy. The sixty-five-minute virtual play, presented by the Studios of Key West through March 13, explores the incident from four different perspectives, in a quartet of interlinked Zoom monologues that slowly reveal how it unfolded, through jealousy, thoughtlessness, ambition, and accident.

The show, directed by opera librettist Stephen Kitsakos, begins with the indefatigable, always charming Michael Urie (Torch Song, Buyer & Cellar) as Ian A. Bernstein, a grad student on the first day of teaching the new Smithtown College class Introduction to Ethics in Technology. Frazzled and uneasy, Bernstein explains that they will be examining how technology, and the cell phone in particular, can be used “as a tool, as a device, as a weapon.” He then begins to detail a specific event involving himself and his ex-girlfriend that went horribly wrong, revealing an alarming blindness to his own role in the event.

The action then shifts to Ann Harada (Avenue Q, Emojiland) as perky Bonnie, aka Text Angel, a former guidance counselor at Smithtown High School who now makes a living by sitting in front of a computer in her basement, sending uplifting messages to people in need of “digitized self-esteem.” She says of a new client, “I’ve got a seven-hundred-pound woman in Akron, Ohio, who’s got the bottomless kung pao chicken at Ling’s Chinatown Buffet eyeing her like a hooker. This time next year we’ll have you posing in the swimsuit edition, hotcakes.”

In the third scene, Colby Lewis (Hamilton, Five Guys Named Moe) plays Eugene Pinkerton, a jack-of-all-trades at the Smithtown Heritage Center who is making a YouTube video praising the cultural glories of the town. But a chip on his shoulder gets in the way: “Our nation’s finest artists live in small-town America; we should be looking there for our next great minds and hearts and not write folks like me off as folksy hacks,” he says. He then talks about his own art exhibit, which he calls “groundbreaking,” work “that will put those avant-garde folks in New York to shame,” defending the indefensible subject matter.

Smithtown concludes with Constance Shulman (Orange Is the New Black, Steel Magnolias) as Cindy, a woman welcoming an unseen couple to the neighborhood. She’s in her kitchen, offering them lemon cookies and explaining that it’s been a rough year, separating from her husband and having trouble sleeping. “I’d like nothing more than to take an eraser to wipe away any trace. That way you never have to . . . ,” she says, her voice trailing off with sadness. She changes the discussion to her obsession with Facebook and also shows a picture on her phone of her estranged husband — an old photo of Shulman’s real-life spouse, actor Reed Birney. As the overall story comes full circle, it’s likely to hit you like a brick.

Larimore (The New Peggy, The Cannibals of McGower Country) wrote Smithtown before the pandemic, but it has been revamped for online viewing in a way that makes it feel like it’s very much about these current troubled times as it deals with loneliness and connection. The play is bookended by terrific performances by Urie and Shulman, two of New York’s finest actors. Urie, who has been very busy during the coronavirus crisis, participating in numerous benefit readings, conversations, and short plays, lends a complexity to the deeply disturbed Bernstein; just watch how he corrects himself each time he says “girlfriend,” following it up with “ex-girlfriend.” And Shulman is extraordinary as a woman trapped with her memories, desperate to reach out and not be alone, something we can all appreciate as we’re sheltering in place, so many of us unable to see our loved ones. Technology can bring us together, but as Smithtown demonstrates, by crowd-sourcing away our personal responsibility, it can also tear us apart.

LiveLabs — ONE ACTS: ON LOVE

Who: Tẹmídayọ Amay, Keith David, Antwayn Hopper, Chiké Johnson, Patrice Johnson, Zonya Love, Anastacia McCleskey
What: Seven short vignettes focusing on the eight different types of love
Where: MCC Theater
When: Thursday, February 11, $7, 6:30 (available on demand through February 13 at midnight); open mic night February 12, free with RSVP, 5:30
Why: MCC’s LiveLabs series of one-act virtual plays has included Talene Monohan’s Monty Python-esque farce Frankie & Will, directed by Jaki Bradley and starring real-life partners Ryan Spahn and Michael Urie, the latter a playwright attempting to write his own plague version of “King Leir”; Aziza Barnes’s Pues Nada, directed by Whitney White and starring Ito Aghayere, Alfie Fuller, Karen Pittman, and Kara Young, a very funny satire dealing with some strange goings-on at a bar in East LA (complete with puking and a brutal murder), inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies; Matthew Lopez’s poignant and honest The Sentinels, directed by Rebecca Taichman and starring Jane Alexander, Denee Benton, and Katrina Lenk as three 9/11 widows whose significant others all worked in the Twin Towers and who meet in a diner on the anniversary of the tragedy every year, the action moving backward in time, with Priscilla Lopez as the waitress and reading stage directions; and C. A. Johnson’s When, directed by Taylor Reynolds and starring Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and Kecia Lewis as a daughter going through a breakup and her Downton Abbey-obsessed mother on a long Zoom call that gets pretty personal. The plays run between twenty-five and forty-five minutes each, followed by a discussion facilitated by Ianne Fields Stewart.

The series continues February 11-13 with Mfoniso Udofia’s On Love, exploring eight types of love through seven short vignettes, poems, and songs, consisting of Philautia: Self Love, Ludus: Playful Love, Storge: Family Love, Eros: Erotic Love, Agape: Love within Community, Pragma: Enduring Love, Philia: Friendship Love, and Mania: Obsessive Love. The terrific cast features Tẹmídayọ Amay, Keith David, Antwayn Hopper, Chiké Johnson, Patrice Johnson, Zonya Love, and Anastacia McCleskey; Awoye Timpo (The Homecoming Queen, The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d) directs the play, Udofia’s online follow-up to such previous works as Sojourners, runboyrun, and Her Portmanteau. Tickets are only seven dollars. In addition, MCC is hosting a free On Love open mic Zoom night on February 12 at 5:30, where you can sit back and watch or share your own spoken word, poem, or song.