this week in theater

THE HALF-LIFE OF MARIE CURIE

Hertha Ayrton (Kate Mulgrew) and Marie Curie (Francesca Faridany) try to get away from the maelstrom in new Audible play at the Minetta Lane (photo by Joan Marcus)

Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and Macdougal St.
Tuesday – Saturday through December 22, $77-$87
thehalflifeofmariecurie.com

In 1911, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie was in the midst of a scandal. Despite all her accomplishments, she was being chastised by the press, the public, and her colleagues for being a “homewrecking harlot” because she was having an affair with married French physicist Paul Langevin. Her good friend Hertha Ayrton, an award-winning electromechanical engineer and fierce suffragist, came to her rescue, whisking her off to Ayrton’s beachfront house in Highcliffe-on-Sea in England where Curie could recollect herself and get away from the nasty maelstrom. That true story is told in Lauren Gunderson’s cogent and compelling two-woman play, The Half-Life of Marie Curie, which opened Tuesday night at the Minetta Lane. Commissioned by Audible, which will release the audio version on December 5, the show features Kate Mulgrew as the staunch Ayrton, born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Hampshire in 1854, and Francesca Faridany as the doubting and uneasy Curie, born Marie Skłodowska in Poland in 1867.

“You’re nothing but a pack of wolves. Do you know whose house this is? Do you have any idea who this great woman is?” Ayrton yells at a rabble outside Curie’s home in Sceaux, France, following two monologues that introduce the characters. “While you’re running as a herd of teethy rats, she’s changing the goddamn world. Also there are children in this house and if you frighten them any more than you already have I swear to a god I don’t believe in that I’ll come to each one of your houses and SHAKE THEIR FOUNDATIONS.” Curie, who believes her career is over, has practically locked herself inside, unable to face the uproar. “Don’t you see the severity of this,” she tells Ayrton. “This country hates me, they’ll take my funding, they’ll take my students, the Radium Institute will vanish, the Academy will never let me in.” Ayrton quickly responds, “Yes, but the Academy is full of men who were never going to let you in anyway.”

Marie Curie (Francesca Faridany) glows in the dark as Hertha Ayrton (Kate Mulgrew) watches in The Half-Life of Marie Curie (photo by Joan Marcus)

Once at Highcliffe-on-Sea, the two brilliant women, both widows with children, discuss love and sex, happiness, the male-dominated scientific community, nature, the secrets of the universe, the supportive Albert Einstein, poet Algernon Swinburne, and Curie’s constant pain, which concerns Ayrton. “I just need to be still for a moment. It passes. I don’t know what triggers it but it passes,” Curie explains. “Well, that’s a very general analysis for the foremost scientist in Europe,” Ayrton says. Curie: “Stress doesn’t help. That I know.” Ayrton: “Ah. Well. That’s what this summer is entirely about. Rest, my friend. You’re safe here. You’re free.” But Curie is having a difficult time with it all. “There is no wonder left in me, there’s nothing, I feel nothing because they’ve stripped me of myself to the point that I do not know who I am. I don’t know. I don’t know,” she says. She also doesn’t know that the vial of Radium she wears around her neck is not helping her ill health.

Obie winner and Emmy nominee Mulgrew (Tea at Five, Orange Is the New Black) and Faridany (Manifest, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) have a terrific, dare I say, chemistry, the former playing Ayrton with a bold determination and a wry sense of humor, the latter portraying Curie with a soft vulnerability and a surprising frailty. Ayrton, in a splendid high-necked dress by costumer Emilio Sosa, is just the friend Curie — or anyone — would be lucky to have. Riccardo Hernandez’s comfortable set, consisting of an elegant couch with chairs and small tables, doesn’t change between the two locations, lending a familiarity to the proceedings, while Lap Chi Chu’s lighting is particularly effective when the women deliver brief soliloquies. Meanwhile, Elisheba Ittoop’s sound design is highlighted by the offstage ticking of a Geiger counter, warning us of the true import of Curie’s discovery. Director Gaye Taylor Upchurch (The Year of Magical Thinking, Animal) and writer Gunderson (I and You, The Book of Will), one of the most-produced playwrights of the decade, won’t allow the show to slip into melodrama, instead focusing on Ayrton’s resolute bravado to lift Curie from her doldrums, then adding a brief coda that wraps it all up with a bittersweet touch.

WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL: RICHARD III

Aaron Monaghan is magnificent as a darkly comic Richard III in Druid production (photo by Richard Termine)

RICHARD III
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College
November 7-23, $40-$100
www.lincolncenter.org
www.druid.ie

Act I, Scene II of William Shakespeare’s Richard III is one of the most psychologically complex and critical scenes in the entire Western canon. Richard, the Duke of Gloucester of the House of York, woos Lady Anne of the House of Lancaster after having killed her husband, Edward of Westminster, the Prince of Wales, along with her father-in-law, King Edward IV. As she stands over the dead king’s body, he states his intentions, but she is having none of it. He has his work cut out for him; she calls him “hedgehog,” “beast,” “devil,” and “villain,” but he is determined to win her in his devious plot to become ruler. “And thou unfit for any place but hell,” she spits out at him. “Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it,” he says. “Some dungeon,” she declares. “Your bedchamber,” he boasts.

No matter how many times I see the play, I marvel at these moments. Richard is the embodiment of pure evil, a deformed creature with no soul. Yet we root for him to win Lady Anne’s heart, though we know how horrible that is; but the success of the rest of the play depends on Richard winning the audience as well. And I’m not sure I’ve ever been so in awe of the scene as in Druid’s current production at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater as part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, with a sensational Aaron Monaghan taking charge as the titular character. Tony-winning director Garry Hynes (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan) has Lady Anne (Siobhán Cullen) enter the stage wearing a long train on which she slowly, agonizingly drags the murdered king, wrapped tightly in white cloth. The Machiavellian Richard (Monaghan), dressed all in black, walking with two canes that make him move like a venomous six-limbed spider, admits to the killings and yet she still acquiesces to his romantic desires. It’s a thrilling scene that gets me every time, marveling at how the actor is going to pull it off. And Monaghan is magnificent, eliciting spontaneous applause at the end of the scene, which is as funny as it is frightening. “But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture, / Tell them that God bids us do good for evil: / And thus I clothe my naked villainy / With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; / And seem a saint, when most I play the devil,” he tells us later.

Lady Anne (Siobhán Cullen) drags in the corpse of the dead king in Druid’s Richard III (photo by Richard Termine)

Last year, Druid staged a very funny version of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Gerald Lynch, with Monaghan as Estragon and Marty Rea as Vladimir, directed by Hynes, who ratchets up the comedy in Richard III as well. (Druid also brought The History Plays to the Lincoln Center Festival in 2015, also with Monaghan and Rea.) Rea again is Monaghan’s right-hand man, this time as the ever-loyal Sir William Catesby, who serves as executioner, dispatching his victims using a nail gun with a ridiculously long and colorful extension cord. Francis O’Connor’s set is a vast, empty industrial space covered in soft dirt, with high louvered metal walls and barred windows, the only props the nail gun and a metal barrel. O’Connor also designed the majestic costumes, which get dragged through the dirt, probably resulting in a big-time cleaning bill. At the front of the stage is a rectangular hole in the shape of a cemetery plot where the deceased are tossed in to rot; it is also where Richard emerges from at the beginning, as if rising straight out of hell. Dangling from the ceiling throughout is a Perspex box containing a smiling skull (inevitably recalling Damien Hirst), the specter of death and ambition threatening all.

Queen Margaret (Marie Mullen) curses Richard (Aaron Monaghan) in DruidShakespeare presentation at White Light Festival (photo by Richard Termine)

The rest of the cast is splendid, including Marie Mullen as the witchlike Queen Margaret, Jane Brennan as the regal Queen Elizabeth, Ingrid Craigie as the Duchess of York, Garrett Lombard as Hastings and Tyrrel, Rory Nolan as Buckingham, Peter Daly as Rivers (making a great bald joke) and Brakenbury, Bosco Hogan as King Edward IV, and Frank Blake as the Earl of Richmond. However, following Act III, Scene V, when Richard convinces the Lord Mayor (Mullen) that he is worthy of wearing the crown — while making one of the silliest gestures I’ve seen in a Shakespeare show — the play, of course, turns, as Richard becomes less funny and more deranged and purely evil, and he is not in as many scenes, affecting the pacing and the audience’s involvement. The less Richard addresses us directly, the more removed we are from the action. It’s a facet of the play itself, but you’ll just have to slag through it until the climactic battle scene at Bosworth Field. And then the three-hour production is over, and Monaghan emerges for his curtain call from Richard’s dirt grave, emerging from hell one last time, although we know manipulative, conniving, power-hungry rulers like him will continue to rise all around the world, over and over again, but with a lot fewer laughs.

FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF

Lady in Brown (Celia Chevalier) stands center stage in exhilarating revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through December 15, $85-$150
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

I remember as a kid being intrigued by a television commercial for an oddly named play — for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. I even recall the precise, rhythmic elocution used by the female announcer pronouncing the title, which included a word I didn’t think you could say anymore on television. I was further fascinated when my parents came home from the show at the Booth and gave me the Playbill, which listed a cast of seven women by color (Lady in Brown, Lady in Yellow, etc.), with Lady in Orange portrayed by the playwright herself, Ntozake Shange. More than forty years later, I finally understand what the hubbub was all about after seeing Leah C. Gardiner’s stirring revival at the Public Theater, where the original production moved in 1976 after earlier iterations at smaller venues in Berkeley and downtown New York (and shortly before moving to Broadway).

Seven women come together to share their stories and empower one another in Ntozake Shange’s brilliant choreopoem (photo by Joan Marcus)

Extended at the Public’s Martinson Theater through December 15, for colored girls is a breathtaking “choreopoem” with music, performed by seven women named for the colors of the rainbow, with the addition of one: Lady in Red (Jayme Lawson), Lady in Orange (Danaya Esperanza), Lady in Yellow (Adrienne C. Moore), Lady in Green (Okwui Okpokwasili), Lady in Blue (Sasha Allen), Lady in Purple (Alexandria Wailes), and Lady in Brown (Celia Chevalier). Over the course of ninety thrilling minutes, each actress takes center stage, sharing stories about the “dark phrases of womanhood,” including sex, racism, misogyny, gender bias, slavery, domestic violence, abortion, and rape. But these women refuse to view themselves as victims or even survivors. They each wear outfits that feature the face of their most beloved female relative (the dazzling costumes are by Toni-Leslie James), and they have taken their power back, controlling their personal narrative and identity as they openly support one another in an invigorating display of camaraderie and friendship through both good and bad times. Often the ensemble forms a semicircle of love and respect as they watch each other deliver their tales in turn. They are seven unique personalities with unique body types moving individually and in unison to choreography by Tony nominee Camille A. Brown and original music by Martha Redbone in addition to such familiar songs as Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Streets” and the Dells’ “Stay in My Corner.”

They hail from Nashville, Washington DC, Strasbourg, Harlem, Havana, Brooklyn, and Delaware but are from anywhere and everywhere. “Are we ghouls? / children of horror?/ the joke? / don’t tell nobody don’t tell a soul / are we animals? have we gone crazy?” Lady in Brown asks, adding, “This is for colored girls who have considered suicide / but moved to the ends of their own rainbows.” But as exhilarating and potent as it all is, the women understand the reality of their daily existence. “We gotta dance to keep from cryin,” Lady in Yellow says. “We gotta dance to keep from dyin,” Lady in Brown adds. “I come in at dusk / stay close to the curb / round midnite / praying wont no young man / think i’m pretty in a dark morning,” Lady in Blue admits.

Sasha Allen brings down the house as Lady in Blue in for colored girls revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

The cast is fantastic, highlighted by Allen (Hair, Ghetto Superstar) tearing down the house with a rousing number about satisfaction and an intimate solo dance by Okpokwasili (Poor People’s TV Room, Bronx Gothic), while Moore (Orange Is the New Black, The Taming of the Shrew) brings an infectious, unbridled enthusiasm to her role. Myung Hee Cho’s inclusive set features three rows of chairs along the back arch of the circular stage, in front of a large mirror, which reflects the audience so they appear right behind the cast, who enter and exit through three different doorways. Jiyoun Chang’s lighting is often very bright, so everyone in the theater is usually visible.

Obie winner Gardiner (If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka, born bad) and her all-female crew have crafted an emotionally involving and stimulating work, anchored by Obie-winning, Oscar-nominated poet, novelist, playwright, kids’ book author, activist, and essayist Shange’s (Mother Courage and Her Children, Whitewash) gorgeous words, which resonate with truth and beauty; it’s a shame that the Trenton-born Shange did not get to see this triumphant revival of her play (which she updated in 2010 and was inspired by her own life, which included four suicide attempts), as she passed away last year at the age of seventy, leaving behind a wide-ranging and deeply powerful legacy.

IS THIS A ROOM

FBI Special Agent Justin C. Garrick (Pete Simpson) confronts Reality Winner (Emily Davis) in Is This A Room (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Vineyard Theatre
Gertrude and Irving Dimson Theatre
108 East 15th St. between Union Square East & Irving Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 24, $45-$100
www.vineyardtheatre.org

In 2017, upon first reading the official FBI “Verbatim Transcription” of the initial interrogation of twenty-five-year-old linguist Reality Winner regarding leaked classified information, Half Straddle founder and artistic director Tina Satter knew she had her next play. She also knew she had her star, company member Emily Davis. The resulting show, Is This A Room, which debuted at the Kitchen before evolving into the production now running at the Vineyard through November 24, is a gripping re-creation of the event, a dramatic word-for-word account of the FBI’s fascinating methods of questioning and Winner’s uncertain answers, at least at the beginning.

Parker Lutz’s spare stage consists of a few raised platforms and posts that represent both the outside and the inside of Winner’s house in Augusta, Georgia. There is no furniture and no props other than stuffed versions of Winner’s dog and cat. (Amanda Villalobos designed the animal puppets.) There is also a row of twelve seats along the back of the stage where a dozen audience members sit, including me; I felt like part of a jury and a person under surveillance, watched by Winner, the FBI agents, and the crowd in the regular seats. Special Agents Justin C. Garrick (Pete Simpson) and R. Wallace Taylor (TL Thompson) arrive at Winner’s (Davis) house just as she has come home from shopping. The men are in plainclothes; Winner is wearing a white button-down shirt, cut-off jean shorts, and yellow high-top canvas sneakers without socks, her hair pulled back in a knot. (The costumes are by Enver Chakartash.) While Garrick is friendly with Winner, making conversation about pets, exercise, work, weapons, and perishables, Taylor is much more direct and in her face, engaging in a variant of the classic good-cop, bad-cop scenario. In addition, an unidentified male agent (Becca Blackwell) in battle fatigues, as if ready for any kind of possible trouble, keeps entering and leaving, helping out with the dog and cat and securing the interior and exterior spaces.

Special Agents R. Wallace Taylor (TL Thompson) and Justin C. Garrick (Pete Simpson) interrogate Reality Winner (Emily Davis) as an “unknown male agent” (Becca Blackwell) looks on (photo by Carol Rosegg)

“Okay, well, the reason we’re here today is that we have a search warrant for your house,” Garrick tells Winner, who responds innocently, “Okay.” Garrick: “All right. Uh, do you know what this might be about?” Winner: “I have no idea.” Garrick: “Okay. This is about, uh, the possible mishandling of classified information.” Winner: “Oh my goodness. Okay.” As the interrogation continues, everyone starts letting their hands show a little more as the truth slowly comes out in drips and drabs. However, even though we now know that the investigation dealt with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, at that point those elements were still classified, so a crash of sound and instant darkness detonates at each redaction, excitingly jolting the audience. (The lighting is by Thomas Dunn, with sound by Lee Kinney.)

Satter (Straight White Men, House of Dance) casts no judgments on the characters, telling the story as it happened; your personal beliefs will help you decide if you think there are heroes or villains in the true story. Davis (Satter’s The Seagull [Thinking of You] and In the Pony Palace/Football) sublimely captures the essence of the nervous, jittery Winner, who spent six years in the Air Force, was employed by the military contractor Pluribus International Corporation, had NSA security clearance, speaks Farsi, Dari, and Pashto, and only wants to do what is right for her country; even though most of the audience knows the outcome, either by having followed the news or read the insert in the program, it is utterly compelling watching Davis as Winner is confronted with more and more evidence against her. The three actors portraying the FBI agents are all effective, with Simpson (Straight White Men, Gatz) standing out as Garrick, garnering sympathy despite his manipulative methods. Is This A Room is a riveting play that explodes with importance at a very specific moment in time when whistleblowers are harassed and threatened by people in power who are trying to cover up vital information.

SOFT POWER

Francis Jue stars as an alternate version of David Henry Hwang in Soft Power (photo by Joan Marcus)

Newman Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor P.
Through November 17, $100
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

This is the last weekend to see Soft Power, David Henry Hwang’s “play with a musical” at the Public’s Newman Theater. Hwang uses several real events as inspiration for this East meets West tale of politics, strange bedfellows, and culture clash: On November 29, 2015, the playwright was stabbed in the neck in a seemingly random attack that might have been racially motivated; on November 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald Trump; and Chinese producers approached the LA-born Hwang multiple times to write a big show for them. In Soft Power, Dragon Entertainment Group North American president Xūe Xíng (Conrad Ricamora) wants DHH (Francis Jue) to write a Broadway-style musical for its new theater in Shanghai, based on a popular Chinese romantic comedy called Stick with Your Mistake, in which an unhappy couple decides to stay together because that’s what Chinese people do to save face. DHH says he will consider it only if they change the ending and the husband and wife go their separate ways to try to find true love.

Alyse Alan Louis steals the “play with a musical” at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

On election night, DHH, Xūe Xíng, and his close friend, Zoe Samuels (Alyse Alan Louis), go to Lincoln Center to see a smash production of The King and I as part of a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton (Louis) that will be followed by a gathering at McDonald’s. The next day, Xūe criticizes an American system that can result in Trump’s victory and DHH is stabbed in the neck, perhaps by an anti-immigrant Trump lover. DHH goes ahead and writes the musical, with life imitating art imitating life, as Shanghai producer Xūe Xíng travels to New York City to convince DHH to write a musical for him as Xūe, a married father, falls in love with Hillary Clinton.

East meets West in takeoff of The King and I (photo by Joan Marcus)

Directed by Leigh Silverman (The Lifespan of a Fact, Hwang’s Chinglish and Golden Child), Soft Power has several terrific moments, including when the orchestra is revealed — the audience gasps in unison at the sight — and when Samuels tears the roof off the joint in a rousing solo as Clinton singing about her experiences on the campaign trail. Clint Ramos’s set also features a plane mimicking the ship from Lincoln Center’s The King and I. But as with many Hwang (M. Butterfly, Flower Drum Song) works, his political leanings come through too didactically, too one-sided. More subtlety would have helped. “Communism in China has raised hundreds of millions out of poverty,” Xūe tells DHH. “But here in America, you have too much freedom. You really believe your voting will force the rich to give up their money? Here, you cannot even force your mentally ill to give up their guns.” DHH asks himself, “Am I even gonna be able to live in this country anymore? Almost half the population just voted for a guy who thinks [Asians] don’t really belong here. That we should be nothing more than supporting characters in someone else’s story.”

Later, DHH sings, “Xing, you’ve helped me see / I don’t have to play a role / I’m not two halves, I’m whole / Enough, just as I am / It’s something to be proud of / I guess that’s love.” Hwang wrote the play and the lyrics, with music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Caroline, or Change) — among the revealing song titles are “Dutiful,” “I’m with Her,” “Good Guy with a Gun,” and “Democracy.” Danny Troob’s orchestrations are fairly standard, as is Sam Pinkleton’s sometimes goofy choreography. Soft Power, which comes on too hard, is also at least the fourth recent play I’ve seen in which the narrative breaks away into a panel discussion / group therapy session that evaluates what we’ve been watching; I’ll be fine if that doesn’t come along again anytime soon.

BrandoCapote

BrandoCapote takes place in a Kyoto hotel that doubles as purgatory (photo by Miguel Aviles)

The Tank
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 24, $25
thetanknyc.org

In 1957, thirty-two-year-old writer and journalist Truman Capote was sent to Kyoto by the New Yorker to do a story on thirty-three-year-old actor Marlon Brando, who was in Japan making Sayonara, Joshua Logan’s movie based on James Michener’s novel about an air force pilot who falls in love with a Japanese dancer during the Korean War. Husband-and-wife team Reid and Sara Farrington use the resulting article, “The Duke in His Domain: Marlon Brando, on Location,” as the jumping-off point for the multimedia production BrandoCapote, continuing at the Tank through November 24. The seventy-minute show, set in the hotel where Capote is interviewing Brando, also incorporates elements of Capote’s 1965 nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, an investigation into the senseless murder of the Clutter family in Kansas by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, as well as the tragic circumstances surrounding Brando’s son Christian, daughter Cheyenne, and Cheyenne’s boyfriend, Drag Drollet.

As they have done in such previous dazzling works as The Passion Project, CasablancaBox, Gin & “It,” and A Christmas Carol, the Farringtons use film clips to propel the narrative, projected with pinpoint precision onto Japanese fans and umbrellas that the five-person cast open up and turn toward the audience. For example, a clip of Brando as Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now asking, “Are you an assassin?” is followed by Capote answering, “No no no, I’m a journalist!” The dialogue is a compelling, sometimes confusing patchwork, with some lines spoken live by the actors onstage — Rafael Jordan as Brando, Jennifer McClinton as Capote, Lynn R Guerra as Brando’s mother, Dodie, Laura K Nicoll as Cheyenne, and Cooper Howell as Christian — some from the film clips, and others prerecorded audio snippets (with Sara Farrington and Akiyo Komatsu delivering different vocal impressions of Capote), in which case it is sometimes lip-synced, causing a panoply of beguiling chaos. “He paused, seemed to listen, as though his statement had been tape-recorded and he were now playing it back,” Capote writes of Brando in the article.

Clips from Marlon Brando movies are projected onto such objects as umbrellas to propel the plot of multidisciplinary work at the Tank (photo by Miguel Aviles)

Dressed in colorful kimono designed by Andre Joyner and constructed by Kelvin Gordon-El, the actors move to intricate choreography by Nicoll based on Japanese noh, bunraku, and kabuki traditions that repeats continually throughout the show, as if the director is yelling “Cut!” and the scene is being done over. “Sorry, sorry. Lemme start over. I’m gonna get this right,” Brando says after re-creating a violent scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. There are also excerpts from On the Waterfront, Mutiny on the Bounty, Julius Caesar, Last Tango in Paris, The Missouri Breaks, Sayonara, The Godfather, and other Brando films, many of which deal with childhood and the relationship between parents and children. “The son becomes the father, and the father the son,” Brando as Kal-El says to his infant son in a clip from Superman. “You are all my children,” Brando as Dr. Moreau tells his hideous creations in The Island of Doctor Moreau. Meanwhile, Brando threatens to kill his father if he ever beats his mother, a wanna-be actress, again. And after being called a “sissy” by other kids, Capote says of the bullies, “Buttoned up, boring, faceless nobodies — the kind of son my mother always wanted.”

The set is continually destroyed and resurrrected in Reid and Sara Farrington’s BrandoCapote (photo by Miguel Aviles)

Chairs and tables are overturned, carried offstage, then brought back on as the characters fold up and then ritualistically unfurl long black-and-white or red obi sashes, placing them carefully across the floor. Someone calls out, “Let’s get back to the interview,” and a sound glitch takes the action back to Capote in the hotel, which doubles as purgatory. It all comes off like clockwork, which is fascinating to experience. It is also repetitive in an abstract way, which can be both titillating and aggravating. But it’s always stimulating, both aurally and visually. “I’m not an actor,” Brando says self-effacingly. “I’m a mimic. Everyone is. And I’m not successful.” However, BrandoCapote is, in part by not merely mimicking its two famous celebrities but taking their story to another level.

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: USER NOT FOUND

Terry O’Donovan plays a man experiencing grief in public in intimate User Not Found (photo by Rebecca Smeyne)

Greene Grape Annex
753 Fulton St.
November 9-16, $65
www.bam.org
danteordie.com

BAM’s Next Wave festival of debuts under new artistic director David Binder has another first, a show taking place not in the Harvey, the Howard Gilman Opera House, or the Fisher but up Fulton St. at a nearby café. London-based site-specific-performance purveyors Dante or Die is staging its poignant User Not Found in the cozy Greene Grape Annex, where the small audience sits at shared tables or on benches or stools. It’s an intimate and clever exploration of grief and one’s digital legacy in the age of social media that will have you thinking about your own online footprint.

Each audience member is given a headset and a cellphone. After some Norah Jones music concludes, a man starts talking; it takes a minute or so to realize he is sitting at one of the tables, getting ready to share his tale as it unfolds in real time. We see and hear exactly what he sees and hears on his phone, from text messages and relaxing apps to photos and videos that bring up memories. (The music and sound design is by Yaniv Fridel, with video design by Preference Studio and creative technology by Marmelo.) Identifying himself as Terry (Terry O’Donovan), he is just finding out that his ex-lover Luka has died and that he is the executor of his digital profile via a company called Fidelis, which means “always faithful”: It is his responsibility to determine whether to keep or delete Luka’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tinder, etc., pages. Having been unceremoniously dumped by Luka in a brutal breakup, he has no interest in the job, yet he begins searching through Luka’s data to see what he has been doing since he left him as well as remembering some of the good times. Terry walks all around the café (the lighting and set design is by Zia Bergin-Holly), seeking out eye contact and making connections, and at one point he does an interpretive dance across the floor. (The production is copresented with BAM neighbor the Mark Morris Dance Group.)

User Not Found takes place in Greene Grape Annex café near BAM (photo by Rebecca Smeyne)

Written by Chris Goode and created by O’Donovan and Daphna Attias and inspired by a 2015 Guardian article by Caroline Twigg entitled “What happens to my late husband’s digital life now he’s gone?,” User Not Found is a very human and deeply cathartic look at grief and how it’s shared in our current world of continual contact through technology. The point is, of course, that Terry could be any of us; as you glance around at the other people in the audience, you might wonder if they’ve been through anything like Terry has, since each one of us has our stories that we choose to share or not. Director Attias carefully balances our communal and individual experiences as Terry reaches into his heart while mourning right in front of us, going through some of the five stages of loss in a swiftly moving ninety minutes. Once you leave the café, it’s highly unlikely that you won’t be considering who you would make your digital executor while also pondering what is still on your MySpace page.

(User Not Found runs through November 16; in addition, Dante or Die will host the artist workshop “Site-Specific Theater-Making” at the Mark Morris Dance Center on November 13 at 2:00 as part of BAM’s Artist Lab program.)