this week in theater

CELLINO V. BARNES

Steve Barnes (Noah Weisberg) and Ross Cellino (Eric William Morris) have quite a bromance in hilarious satire (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

CELLINO V. BARNES
Asylum NYC
123 East Twenty-Fourth St. between Lexington & Park Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 30, $59 – $129
www.cellino-v-barnes.com
asylumnyc.com

“It’s funny, when I look back, it all feels like a dream. Hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t,” Steve Barnes (Noah Weisberg) says near the end of the hilarious farce Cellino V. Barnes.

Ross Cellino (Eric William Morris) adds, “But a lot of it was real. Like, if someone in the future looked us up on Wikipedia, they’d see a lot of this was pretty . . . dead on.”

Don’t bother checking Wikipedia, because I already have, and it turns out that only the barest of bones of Cellino V. Barnes corresponds with reality. But that actually makes it all even more ridiculous and entertaining.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Cellino and Barnes gained fame and fortune as a Buffalo law firm that advertised on television, the sides of buses, billboards, subways, and benches. They took unique, often highly questionable approaches to cases and became legal (or is that illegal?) loan sharks. Ross’s father had started Cellino and Likoudis in 1958; Barnes was a marine and military lawyer before hooking up with Cellino. Cellino had his healthy head of hair parted on the right side; Barnes was mostly bald except for hair behind and above his ears.

But most important, they had that jingle, which dramatically escalated their cultish popularity when they changed to a toll-free number:

“Cellino and Barnes / Injury attorneys / Call 800-888-8888.”

Running through January 26 at the Asylum NYC comedy club, the current iteration of the show — the play debuted at Union Hall in July 2018 and has undergone various changes over the years — is an intimate and fun experience. The walls leading to the theater are papered with advertisements for personal injury lawyers. Next to a urinal in the men’s room is an ad for Saul Goodman, the law-breaking lawyer character Bob Odenkirk played on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad.

Riw Rakkulchon’s small set features a desk with a laptop, a small filing cabinet, a phone with a cord, and high stacks of storage boxes. There are several rows of chairs for audience members on three sides of the stage in addition to traditional seats in the back. Cellino and Barnes are practically on top of each other throughout the show’s eighty minutes as their bromance blossoms, then falls apart.

Writers Mike B. Breen and David Rafieledes, who originated the roles back in 2018, have made Cellino a ne’er-do-well son who is not very bright when it comes to the law or life in general — he has a particular problem with fax machines — while Barnes is a know-it-all attorney with at least some kind of a conscience, until the money starts pouring in.

They first meet when Barnes is interviewing for a position at Cellino and Likoudis and Cellino catches him riffling through paperwork.

“Did you arrive to the interview twenty minutes early to infiltrate my office, steal my interview questions, and prepare answers ahead of time?” Cellino asks.

A humbled Barnes answers, “Umm. Yes. I can head out. I’m really sorry. Nice almost meeting you.”

But Cellino stops him, saying, “No. I love it. Stay. You don’t want to play by the rules? Let’s shake things up.”

That’s precisely what they do for more than twenty years as they grow rich, Cellino finds himself behind bars, and they have a very public breakup that ends up in court.

Cellino (Eric William Morris) gets serious with Barnes (Noah Weisberg) in comic romp at Asylum NYC (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Codirectors Wesley Taylor, who has starred in such Broadway musicals as Rock of Ages, The Addams Family, and SpongeBob SquarePants, and Alex Wyse, who has appeared in such Great White Way productions as Lysistrata Jones, Spring Awakening, and Good Night, Oscar, gleefully let the narrative go way over the top, occasionally too far, as the silliness reaches near-epic proportions. The show works best when the protagonists are in their suits and ties, scraping up the very bottom of the law for any money they can acquire. (The costumes are by Ricky Curie, with sound by UptownWorks, original music by Max Mueller, and lighting by Aiden Bezark.)

Morris (White Girl in Danger, The Perplexed) is terrific as Cellino, a buffoonish fraudster desperate to hear from his father, or Barnes, that he has done a “good legal job,” while Weisberg (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Elf) is quirky as Barnes, who you are sure must have more ethics and morals than he displays, but maybe not. They are like an absurdist Abbott and Costello or Holmes and Yoyo, getting laughs by letting their characters hold nothing back.

Regardless of how much of Cellino V. Barnes is true, it will leave you humming that jingle — and thinking twice the next time you or a loved one might need an injury attorney.

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

someone spectacular

New play takes place at a grief counseling session (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

someone spectacular
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through September 7, $39 – $240
someonespectacularplay.com

Pardon me if I enter a theater and am instantly downtrodden upon seeing a bunch of folding chairs, a table with coffee and snacks, and characters slowly and quietly entering the room and taking their seat, apparently preparing to share.

In the past year, New York City been inundated with plays set at least partially in therapy sessions dealing with grief and trauma, both group and one-on-one. Immediately coming to mind are Emma Sheanshang’s The Fears, Those Guilty Creatures’ The Voices in Your Head, Ruby Thomas’s The Animal Kingdom, Marin Ireland’s Pre-Existing Condition, John J. Caswell Jr.’s Scene Partners, and Liza Birkenmeir’s Grief Hotel.

“This is a waste of time,” one character says near the beginning of Doménica Feraud’s someone spectacular.

“We’re not allowed to have fun?” another responds.

The ninety-minute play, continuing at the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre through September 7, has plenty of laughs amid the darkness. It takes place in a cold office space under industrial lighting (designed by the collective dots) where a small group of people meet every Thursday night to talk about “someone spectacular” they’ve recently lost. Fifty-six-year-old Thom’s (Damian Young) wife died of cancer. Forty-seven-year-old Nelle (Alison Cimmet) feels lost since her sister passed. Twenty-six-year-old Julian (Shakur Tolliver) is having trouble dealing with the death of his beloved aunt. Twenty-two-year-old Jude (Delia Cunningham) is new to the group, having suffered a miscarriage. And fifty-one-year-old Evelyn (Gamze Ceylan) is there because she doesn’t understand why she is so sad at the loss of her mother, with whom she did not have a good relationship, while thirty-year-old Lily (Ana Cruz Kayne) is suicidal over her mother’s death, having seemingly lost the only person in the world who cared about her.

When group facilitator Beth is late, the six characters are not sure what to do, whether to wait for Beth to arrive, start the meeting without her, or go home.

“I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” Evelyn says.

“Beth wouldn’t abandon us,” Julian adds.

“People leave you halfway through the wood a lot more often than you think,” Lily asserts.

As time goes on and Beth doesn’t even check in via text, they vote to go on with the session, leading to the breaking of numerous rules as they evaluate and compare one another’s pain and priorities in both comic and mean-spirited ways. Thom is cool and calm but won’t stop taking business calls. Evelyn is caring and understanding. Lily is angry and selfish. Julian is relaxed and easygoing. Jude is sad and defensive. And Nelle is nasty and condescending.

They discuss pasta, Joe Rogan, vaping, shoes, banana bread, plants, and cults as they contemplate their personal situations and who should be the replacement Beth.

“Do you think Beth’s dead? I think Beth’s dead,” Lily declares.

“That would be kind of funny,” Julian says.

“How would that be funny?” Thom asks.

“I don’t know. We lost people we weren’t supposed to lose. I just think it would be funny if our grief counselor up and died on us,” Julian responds.

Nelle (Alison Cimmet) often finds herself in the middle in Doménica Feraud’s someone spectacular (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The one-act play is adroitly directed by Tatiana Pandiani (Bodas; Field, Awakening), avoiding stasis and boredom as the characters’ movements, both subtle and overt, help define who they are, from Nelle’s quiet insistence of placing an empty chair next to her to Julian’s enjoyment of the banana bread and Lily’s disregard for what’s in her bag. Siena Zoë Allen’s naturalistic costumes further establish their identities, from Julian’s shorts and T-shirt to Evelyn’s high heels and Lily’s hoodie and sneakers.

Feraud’s (Rinse, Repeat) dialogue can be sharp and incisive but then go off on a tangent, like when the group engages in the adult game Fuck, Marry, Kill. There are also red herrings involving an occasional beeping and flickering lights. (The sound is by Mikaal Sulaiman, lighting by Oona Curley.)

The ensemble is compelling, led by Cimmet’s (Party Face, The Mystery of Edwin Drood) aggressive performance as the disagreeable Nelle, Ceylan’s (Noura; Field, Awakening) steadiness as the ever-practical Evelyn, and Young’s (Sacrilege, The Waiting Room) easygoing nature as the forward-thinking Thom, the only one ready to move on with his life.

Be sure to get there several minutes before curtain and pay attention to the set; as the audience enters, so do the actors, one at a time, getting coffee, checking their phones, or staring into space. It’s almost as if they could take a seat in the audience and we could settle onstage, but while we watch them, the actors never make eye contact with the audience until their bows at the end. No one goes through life without suffering some kind of loss, some kind of tragedy, and we all have unique ways to deal with it, rules be damned. No one wants to feel abandoned, and no one wants to be judged.

Yes, someone spectacular is yet another show about grief counseling, but it also accomplishes what theater does best, bringing us all together, encouraging us to look at our own choices while watching those of others.

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

HOT TICKET ALERT: BASIL TWIST’S DOGUGAESHI

Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi returns to Japan Society for a twentieth-anniversary encore presentation (photo © Richard Termine)

DOGUGAESHI
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
September 11–19, $44-$58
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
basiltwist.com

Only seventy-five tickets are available to each of the twelve encore performances of Basil Twist’s Dogugaeshi at Japan Society; six shows are already sold out, so you better hurry if you want to see the special twentieth anniversary revival of the award-winning phenomenon.

Originally presented at Japan Society in 2004 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the US-Japan Treaty of Kanagawa, the sixty-minute work is part of the cultural institution’s fall 2024 series “Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry.” Dogugaeshi (“doh-goo-guy-ih-shee”) follows the tradition of a stage mechanic developed in Japan’s Awa region using multiple painted fusuma screens and tableaux. “When I heard from several sources of a legendary eighty-eight-screen dogugaeshi, I knew that I had to do this piece with at least eighty-eight screens to bridge this all but vanished art form into the twenty-first century,” Twist, a third-generation puppeteer from San Francisco, explained in a statement.

Performed by four puppeteers including Twist, Dogugaeshi features video projections by Peter Flaherty, lighting by Andrew Hill, and sound by Greg Duffin; the score, composed by shamisen master Yumiko Tanaka, will be played live by Tanaka at the evening shows and by Yoko Reikano Kimura at the matinees. In the narrative, a white fox guides the audience through a tale of Japan’s past and present.

In the above 2014 Japan Society promotional video, Twist says that he sees Dogugaeshi, which has traveled around the globe, as a “sort of meditation into into into into into into this Japanese world. . . . The piece was created for this stage and so it really looks the best on this stage.”

“Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry” continues October 3–5 with National Bunraku Theater, November 7–9 with “Shinnai Meets Puppetry: One Night in Winter & The Peony Lantern,” and December 12 and 13 with “The Benshi Tradition and the Silver Screen: A Japanese Puppetry Spin-off,” in which star movie talker Ichiro Kataoka and shamisen player Sumie Kaneko accompany screenings of two silent films, Daisuke Ito’s 1927 A Diary of Chuji’s Travels the first night and Shozo Makino’s 1910-17 Chushingura the second evening.

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

THE STORY OF LOT’S WIFE

The Story of Lot’s Wife celebrates a never-named but key biblical character (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE STORY OF LOT’S WIFE
The Cell Theatre
338 Twenty-Third St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through August 25, $10-$35, 11:00 am – 7:00 pm
www.thecelltheatre.org
www.ofotheater.com

Dan Daly reimagines a mysterious figure from the Bible in the immersive, performerless theater installation The Story of Lot’s Wife, extended at the Cell through August 25.

Described as “a recentering through text, object, and action,” the fifteen-minute ritualistic but not religious experience gives agency and identity to Lot’s wife, who is never named in the Bible, neither in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament, where Jesus declares as a warning, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

The narrative is divided into ten sections, beginning with a prologue that relates the tale of Lot, his wife, and their daughters as two angels descend from heaven to save them from the rampant sin occurring in Sodom and Gomorrah. As they leave the burning city, Lot’s wife looks back at the devastation and becomes a pillar of salt.

After reading the account, one audience member at a time then enters a small, narrow winding structure, walking through a beaded curtain and along a tiled path lined by fragile blue velvet, stopping at nine stations to read from a handout and examine a related object on a plinth. (Daly conceived the project during the pandemic, when theaters were closed and people were not interacting with one another.) Among the items are Himalayan salt, a bar napkin, a piece of brimstone, and a framed icon, accompanied in the booklet by a brief description and a photo of a related object from the real world. An atmospheric soundscape by Julian Singer-Corbin echoes through the space, which is dimly lit by Zoe Griffith.

Daly, who wrote the text and designed and constructed the installation, seizes on the word “became.” At the second stop, the narrative explains: “The story says, / ‘and she became a pillar of salt.’ / You were not turned, you became. / It follows that a choice was made to become, / To preserve, / To remember the people you love. / When you ‘become’ you have a will, / To become is not forced upon you, it is an action.”

Daly proposes that it was not divine intervention but her own tears that changed Lot’s wife’s body into salt. He also sees her as a gay icon, suggesting that what she was looking back at was, at least in part, a homosexual community that was not involved in debasement but in same-sex love; he acknowledges that queerness never factored specifically in the biblical tale, but he writes, “We welcome the name ‘Sodomites’ with honor.” As of late 2023, twelve states still had laws against consensual sodomy, or gay sex. The play concludes with a communal call for renewal.

The Story of Lot’s Wife is presented through the new company Other Forms of Theater (Ofo), which seeks to “create and support performances that do not fit neatly into the definition of ‘theatre’ and exist below what is deemed commercially viable. We experiment with the theatrical form and rethink what performance is, not just artistically but also structurally.”

Daly, who has designed such shows as the immersive Tammany Hall at SoHo Playhouse and Third Rail Project’s site-specific Oasis at Brookfield Place, has accomplished just that with The Story of Lot’s Wife, which is about a lot more than a biblical yarn. On your way out, be sure to say hello to the person behind the desk and share your thoughts; it’s likely to be Daly himself.

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

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS

Sutton Foster is an unstoppable force of nature in Once Upon a Mattress (photo by Joan Marcus)

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 30, $89-$389
onceuponamattressnyc.com

Sutton Foster makes an entrance for the ages in Lear deBessonet and Amy Sherman-Palladino’s delightful revival of Once Upon a Mattress, which opened tonight at the Hudson Theatre for a limited run through November 30.

In 2022, deBessonet made her Broadway directorial debut with a spectacular, streamlined adaptation of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s fairytale mashup, Into the Woods, which transferred from the popular “Encores!” series at City Center to the St. James. She should have another smash hit on her hands with her spectacular, streamlined adaptation of another fairytale classic, Once Upon a Mattress, the Tony-nominated 1959 show featuring music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer, and a book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer, adapted here by Sherman-Palladino, the six-time Emmy-winning creator, writer, and producer of such series as Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Bunheads, which starred Foster.

Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 story “The Princess and the Pea,” Mattress is set “many moons ago,” in a medieval castle where Prince Dauntless the Drab (Michael Urie) is seeking a bride to become princess of the land. However, his strict mother, Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer), has devised impossible tests for his suitors, as she doesn’t want her son to be betrothed. Meanwhile, his father, King Sextimus the Silent (David Patrick Kelly), has nothing to say on the matter, as he cannot speak because of a curse that can only be lifted when “the mouse devours the hawk.” Even if he could talk, it is unlikely he would be able to get a word in edgewise with his powerful, domineering wife.

The queen’s dismissal of princess after princess has a terrible impact on her subjects; no one else can marry until Prince Dauntless has been led to the altar. The law particularly hurts Lady Larken (Nikki Renée Daniels), who will be the new princess’s lady-in-waiting. Lady Larken is pregnant and is desperate to wed her true love, the handsome, brave, and not very bright Sir Harry (Will Chase), Chivalric Knight of the Herald, before she starts showing. Sir Harry — and his jangling spurs, which he is obsessed with — heads out to find a princess. And what a princess he brings back.

King Sextimus the Silent (David Patrick Kelly) and Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer) oversee the potential marriage of their son, Prince Dauntless the Drab (Michael Urie) (photo by Joan Marcus)

Princess Winnifred the Woebegone (Foster) is everything the queen despises. She’s dressed in muddy rags, her hair is a mess, she’s utterly uncouth, and she is covered in leeches and other surprising creatures, as she swam the moat and climbed the wall to enter the castle. “What on earth are you?” the disgusted queen says to Winnifred. The princess wriggles around as if something is on her body and asks the queen, “It feels weird. Is it weird?” Queen Aggravain responds, “For you? I’m going to say no.”

In a role originated by Carol Burnett and later played by such other comedic actors as Dody Goodman, Jo Anne Worley, Sarah Jessica Parker, Andrea Martin, Tracey Ullman, and Jackie Hoffman, Foster holds nothing back. She romps across the stage with infectious glee, singing, dancing, and telling jokes, a seeming free spirit who Dauntless is instantly smitten with, even as she claims, “Despite the impression I give, / I confess that I’m living a lie, / because I’m actually terribly timid, and horribly shy.” She continues her hilarious high jinks through to the adorable finale.

But before Fred, as she prefers to be called, can marry Dauntless, she has to pass the queen’s toughest test yet by proving she has the sensitivity of royalty. “Sensitivity, sensitivity, / I’m just loaded with that!” the queen tells her wizard (Brooks Ashmanskas). / “In this one word is / the epitome of the aristocrat / sensitive soul and sensitive stomach, / sensitive hands and feet. / This is the blessing, also the curse / of being the true elite. / Common people don’t know what / exquisite agony is / suffered by gentle people / like me!”

As the jester (Daniel Breaker), who serves as the narrator of the show, informed the audience at the beginning, the test will involve twenty down mattresses and a tiny pea.

Princess Winnifred the Woebegone (Sutton Foster) creates havoc after swimming a moat and climbing a castle wall (photo by Joan Marcus)

As with deBessonet’s Into the Woods, which was nominated for six Tonys, including Best Director and Best Revival of a Musical, Once Upon a Mattress is great fun, although the show lacks some of the serious edges that make Woods so special, instead concentrating on inspired goofiness. Two-time Tony winner Foster (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes) is a force of nature, a whirling dervish of id; every bone and muscle in her body gets in on the action — and you might never look at a bowl of grapes the same way again. Urie (The Government Inspector, Buyer & Cellar) could not be any more charming as the prince, a man-child who has not learned how to walk up steps yet and doesn’t know how to stand up for himself. Just watching Urie’s and Foster’s eyes are worth the price of admission.

SNL veteran Gasteyer (The Rocky Horror Show, Wicked) is phenomenal as the nasty Queen Aggravain, nailing the Mamalogue; Tony nominee Chase (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Nice Work If You Can Get It) has a ball portraying the dimwitted Sir Harry; Tony nominees Ashmanskas (Shuffle Along, Something Rotten!) and Breaker (Passing Strange, Shrek) form a fine duo as the wizard and the jester, who knows his secret; Kelly (An Enemy of the People, The Warriors) is wacky as the king, portrayed over the years by Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton, Milo O’Shea, Tom Smothers, and David Greenspan; and Daniels (Company, The Book of Mormon) is sweet and lovable as the endearing Lady Larken.

David Zinn keeps it simple with his set, consisting of vaguely medieval beribboned poles and family-crest-style banners slyly referenceing New York City; the orchestra plays in the back of the stage, performing Bruce Coughlin’s enchanting orchestrations. Lorin Lotarro’s playful choreography keeps up the often-frenetic pace, while Andrea Hood’s costumes add elegant color, all superbly lit by Justin Townsend, with expert sound by Kai Harada.

Sir Harry (Will Chase) and Lady Larken (Nikki Renée Daniels) share only part of their story with Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer) and Prince Dauntless the Drab (Michael Urie) (photo by Joan Marcus)

Not everything works. Several songs feel extraneous, a handful of comic moments are repeated, and a few bows are left untied — the show could probably be trimmed down to a tight hundred minutes without intermission instead of two hours and twenty minutes with a break. But who’s to complain when that means more time with Foster and Urie, delivering such lines as “Alas! A lass is what I lack. / I lack a lass; alas! Alack!??” and “In my soul is the beauty of the bog. / In my mem’ry the magic of the mud.”

Early on, the jester asks, “What is a genuine princess?” It’s a question that relates more than ever to the state of the world in the twenty-first century. And one deBessonet, Sherman-Palladino, and Foster go a long way toward redefining.

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

HARLEM WEEK 50: CELEBRATE THE JOURNEY

HARLEM WEEK
Multiple locations in Harlem
August 7-18, free
harlemweek.com

Fifty years ago, actor and activist Ossie Davis cut a ribbon at 138th St. and the newly renamed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. (formerly Seventh Ave.), opening what was supposed to be a one-day, one-time-only event known as Harlem Day; Davis called it “the beginning of the second Harlem Renaissance.” Among the cofounders were Davis, his wife, Ruby Dee, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Ornette Coleman, Lloyd E. Dickens, David Dinkins, Basil Paterson, Tito Puente, Charles Rangel, Max Roach, Vivian Robinson, “Sugar Ray” Robinson, Hope R. Stevens, Bill Tatum, Barbara Ann Teer, and Rev. Wyatt T. Walker.

The festival has blossomed over the last half century into the annual favorite Harlem Week, a summer gathering packed full of live performances, film screenings, local vendors, panel discussions, a job fair, fashion shows, health screenings, exhibits, and more. This year’s theme is “Celebrate the Journey”; among the highlights are the Uptown Night Market, the Percy Sutton Harlem 5K Run & Health Walk, Great Jazz on the Great Hill, Harlem on My Mind Conversations, a Jobs & Career Fair, the Children’s Festival, the Concert Under the Stars, and the centerpiece, “A Great Day in Harlem.” Below is the full schedule; everything is free.

Wednesday, August 7
Climate Change Conference, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, West 125th St., 6:00

Thursday, August 8
Uptown Night Market, 133rd St. & 12th Ave., 4:00 – 10:00

Harlem Summerstage, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, 5:30

HW 50 Indoor/Outdoor Film Festival, 7:00

Friday, August 9
Senior Citizens Day, with health demonstrations and testing, live performances, exhibits, panel discussions, the Senior Hat Fashion Show, and more, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Saturday, August 10
NYC Summer Streets Celebrating Harlem Week’s 50th Anniversary, 7:00 am – 3:00 pm

The Percy Sutton Harlem 5K Run & Health Walk, West 135th St., 8:00 am

Choose Healthy Life Service of Renewal and Healing, noon

Great Jazz on the Great Hill, Central Park Great Hill, 4:00

Harlem Week/Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival: Black Nativity (Kasi Lemmons, 2013), 7:00

Sunday, August 11
A Great Day in Harlem, with Artz, Rootz & Rhythm, the Gospel Caravan, AFRIBEMBE, and Concert Under the Stars featuring the Harlem Music Festival All-Star Band, music director to the stars Ray Chew, and special guests, General Grant National Memorial, Riverside Dr., noon – 7:00

Monday, August 12
Youth Conference & Hackathon, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Children’s Corner — Books on the Move: “Mommy Moment,” 10:00 am

Tuesday, August 13
Economic Development Day, noon – 3:00

Arts & Culture/Broadway Summit, 3:00

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 7:30

Wednesday, August 14
NYC Jobs & Career Fair, CCNY, 160 Convent Ave., 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 7:00

Thursday, August 15
Black Health Matters/HARLEM WEEK Summer Health Summit & Expo, with free health screenings, prizes, breakfast, and lunch, the Alhambra Ballroom, 2116 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 9:00 am – 3:00 pm

Harlem Summerstage, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building Plaza, 5:00

Banking & Finance for Small Business & Entrepreneurs, Chase Community Banking Center, 55 West 125th St., 6:00 – 9:45

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 8:45

Saturday, August 17
NYC Summer Streets Celebrating HARLEM WEEK’s 50th Anniversary, 109th St. & Park Ave. – 125th St. & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 7:00 am – 3:00 pm

NYC Children’s Festival, with storytelling, live performances, dance, hip hop, theater, poetry, arts & crafts, double dutch competitions, face painting, technology information, health services, and more, Howard Bennett Playground, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

Summer in the City, with live performances, fashion shows, and more, West 135th St., 1:00 – 6:00

Alex Trebek Harlem Children’s Spelling Bee, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., 2:00

Harlem Week/Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival, Great Lawn at St. Nicholas Park, West 135th St. 6:00

Sunday, August 18
NYC Health Fair, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

Harlem Day, with live performances, food vendors, arts & crafts, jewelry, hats, sculptors, corporate exhibitors, games, a tribute to Harry Belafonte, and more, West 135th St., 1:00 – 7:00

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

THE MEETING: THE INTERPRETER

Frank Wood and Kelley Curran appear onstage and onscreen in The Meeting: The Interpreter (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE MEETING: THE INTERPRETER
Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West 46th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through August 25, $39-$135
meetinginterpreterplay.com
www.stclementsnyc.org

Frank Wood and Kelley Curran are terrific in the world premiere of The Meeting: The Interpreter. However, I’m completely flummoxed by the play, which explores the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting from multiple angles, literally and figuratively.

On that day, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, publicist Rob Goldstone, and Russian-American businessman Ike Kaveladze met at the Fifth Ave. building to discuss the Magnitsky Act, gathering dirt on Hillary Clinton, and/or the adoption of Russian children by Americans; the meeting figured prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on possible Russian interference and collusion in the 2016 presidential election.

Also present was a Russian-born interpreter (Wood) who had worked for the UN, the US government, and private individuals for more than twenty years and had what is known as public trust clearance. The name of the interpreter is never revealed in the play and critics have been asked not to use it in any articles about the show, even though it is listed in the Wikipedia entry about the meeting and the interpreter has his own LinkedIn page.

In the program, it points out, “This is a work of dramatic interpretation, and any resemblance to actual people and events is strictly coincidental”; however, nearly every other character is mentioned by name, including Congressman Mike Quigley, Congressman Eric Swalwell, Congressman Mike Conaway, Sen. Charles Grassley aide Samantha Brennan, Sen. Dianne Feinstein general counsel Heather Sawyer, and the interpreter’s lawyer, Larry H. Krantz, who take part in a Senate Judiciary Committee interview of the interpreter on November 8, 2017, with dialogue taken directly from the transcripts. In a tour de force with numerous comic moments, Curran plays every role other than the interpreter.

Writer Catherine Gropper, who met the interpreter by chance in the winter of 2020, and director Brian Mertes seem to go out of their way to make every scene unnecessarily complicated; although some work, most are head-scratchingly bizarre. The play begins with the credits rolling on a screen at the front of the stage, as if we are watching a movie, followed by a shot of Wood and Curran sitting at a long desk like newscasters. Brennan begins the November 8 hearing, but after a few minutes, the screen shifts over to stage left — where it remains the entire time — and the two actors, seated with their backs to us, look behind them, acknowledging the audience as the cluttered desk they are sitting at is turned around.

Throughout the ninety-minute show, a camera operated by three people slowly circles the stage. Live projections from that camera appear on the screen, giving the audience different perspectives on the actors, each wearing a white shirt, dark pants, and a blazer. One of the camera operators wears an Awolnation T-shirt, for the LA band that has released such albums as Back from Earth, Megalithic Symphony, and The Phantom Five and whose name refers to a country that has gone “absent without leave.” There’s confusion about where to look as the actors move from the main table, to small seats, to a recording booth, and to a makeup cabinet. Wood sifts through a bucket of sand. Curran staples a tie to a box. The actors break out into a dance. They snap their fingers and drum on the table. The video feed turns to abstract animation. Wood peels a plastic sheet off the studio glass. Part of the meeting is re-created with creepy dolls. (The cramped set is by Jim Findlay, with costumes by Olivera Gajic, lighting by Barbara Samuels, sound and music by Dan Baker & Co., projections by Yana Biryukova, puppets and animation by Julian Crouch, and camera by Tatiana Stolporskaya.)

World premiere production uses unique ways to tell its story (photo by Carol Rosegg)

It’s as if Gropper (Embers, Miss Crandall’s Classes) and Mertes (The Myopia, Massacre) approached each scene with the question: What can we do to complicate the action and confuse the audience this time? If that were their intention, they have succeeded marvelously.

The Meeting: The Interpreter might have worked much better at a small, experimental theater like La MaMa, the Wooster Group’s Performing Garage, or BAM’s Fishman Space. It gets lost at Theatre at St. Clement’s, where it is playing to a more traditional crowd. For me, it’s a cursed venue; of the dozen or so shows I’ve seen there, I’ve only been able to recommend two.

Tony winner Wood (Toros, The Red Letter Plays: In the Blood, The Iceman Cometh) once again reveals himself to be New York City’s best deadpan actor; he commits to his underwritten character in a way that makes the interpreter endearing even when doing something utterly nonsensical. Curran (Mother of the Maid, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, BAD NEWS! I was there . . .) delivers another fine performance, fully investing herself in her responsibilities as a political shape shifter. It’s a shame there isn’t more cohesiveness to the narrative; the plot doesn’t have to be spelled out to the letter, but then it is, in a text-only finale that tells us what we already knew about the Trump Tower meeting, the Mueller Report, and the presidential election of 2016 before we entered the theater.

“I left part of myself there, at Trump Tower. Normally, I wouldn’t care. Unless something shakes me to my core,” the interpreter says in a rare moment of poignant insight. “I don’t open up so easily. Maybe it’s why I interpret for others. Actually, I’m a private man.”

The play itself could use an interpreter, but maybe that’s the point?

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