this week in theater

EMPEROR SERIES: KWAIDAN — CALL OF SALVATION HEARD FROM THE DEPTHS OF FEAR

Shirō Sano and Kyoji Yamamoto team up at Japan Society for Kwaidan

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, October 24, $30, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society gears up for Halloween with the spooky presentation Kwaidan — Call of Salvation Heard from the Depths of Fear. On October 24 at 7:30, popular Japanese film and television actor Shirō Sano (Zutto Anata ga Suki data, Karaoke) will read five tales of the supernatural he selected by Lafcadio Hearn, aka Yakumo Koizumi (1850-1904), with live music played by guitarist Kyoji Yamamoto, of BOW WOW and VOW WOW fame. (Sano and Yamamoto both hail from Matsue City in Shimane Prefecture.) Japanese film fans will be familiar with Hearn’s oeuvre from Masaki Kobayashi’s 1965 horror anthology, Kwaidan, which consists of the Hearn tales “The Black Hair,” “The Woman of the Snow,” “Hoichi the Earless,” and “In a Cup of Tea.” The performance will be preceded by a short lecture by Hearn’s great-grandson, Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum director and folklorist Bon Koizumi, and a reception with the artists will follow the show, which is part of Japan Society’s Emperor Series, celebrating Emperor Naruhito’s ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1.

SLAVE PLAY

Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play has moved from New York Theatre Workshop to Broadway (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 19, $39-$159
slaveplaybroadway.com

Over the last several years, I’ve had the privilege of seeing four terrific shows first off Broadway and then on, then on the Great White Way. In each case, nothing was lost in the transition to the bigger stage; in fact, three of them received Tony nominations for Best Play — Indecent, Pulitzer Prize recipient Sweat, and The Humans — with The Humans winning the award. (Unfortunately, the sadly overlooked Significant Other had only a short stint on Broadway.)

So at first I was surprised to hear that Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, which initially ran at New York Theatre Workshop last season, was heading to the Golden Theatre for a Broadway engagement, not least because of its graphic sexual content as well as its central subject matter involving a trio of dangerous sexual interactions defined by race, gender, and power on a plantation in the Antebellum South as well as today: black slave Kaneisha (Joaquina Kalukango) and her white overseer, Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan); Alana MacGregor (Annie McNamara), the plantation owner’s wife, and her “mulatto” house servant, Phillip (Sullivan Jones); and Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer), a white indentured servant, and Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood), his black boss. Clint Ramos’s set has been expanded, with two levels of mirrored doors that open up to reveal characters and bring on and off various pieces of furniture; the MacGregor plantation is represented by a long horizontal image of the main house on the mezzanine facade that is reflected in the mirrors across the back of the stage so the audience can see itself. At NYTW, the mirrors made it feel like we were all on the plantation, making us complicit in America’s original sin of slavery.

Kaneisha (Joaquina Kalukango) and Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan) face issues of race, gender, and power in Slave Play (photo by Matthew Murphy)

But at the Golden, the mirrors feel more gimmicky, less insightful and condemnatory. The two-hour intermissionless play is divided into three sections, each of which now struck me as being too long and repetitive, continuing well past their expiration date. And the shock value of the brutal sex scenes and, especially, the second-act twist seemed much more tame. The cast, which is the same except for Kalukango replacing Parris — Irene Sofia Lucio and Chalia La Tour are also back as politically correct comic facilitators Patricia and Teá, respectively — is again uniformly strong, with Cusati-Moyer standing out as a white man claiming he’s not white. So what happened? Only small tweaks were made to the script and direction. Perhaps it’s the spate of works by black playwrights about the black experience in America; since Slave Play debuted at NYTW, I’ve seen Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer-winning Fairview, Thomas Bradshaw’s Southern Promises, Jordan E. Cooper’s 2019 Ain’t No Mo’, Suzan-Lori Parks’s White Noise, Tori Sampson’s If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, and Harris’s own “Daddy.”

There’s no denying that it’s a boon to the artform that so many diverse voices are now being heard onstage, both on and off Broadway, dealing with issues that must be faced in a society still teeming with institutional and systemic racism; what used to be the exception (August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy) is quickly becoming the norm (see also Lydia R. Diamond, Dominique Morriseau, Danai Gurira, Dael Orlandersmith, and Katori Hall, among others). But maybe the shock I experienced when I first saw Slave Play has worn off a bit as the subject matter becomes more commonplace in American theater. Maybe the Golden is too large a venue for the intimacy Harris is exploring in the show. Maybe the flaws in Slave Play are more evident in this bigger production, particularly when seen for the second time. Or maybe the novelty of the play has just dissipated as more nuanced ones come along. I’m not sure any of that matters from a critical standpoint, as the producers just announced that it’s off to a solid financial start, even extending the run two weeks.

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: THE SECOND WOMAN

The Second Woman repeats the same scene from John Cassavetes’s Opening Night one hundred times (photo by Heidrun Lohr)

THE SECOND WOMAN
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, 321 Ashland Pl.
October 18, 5:00 pm – October 19, 5:00 pm, $25
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/secondwoman

Last month, Cyril Teste’s multimedia adaptation of John Cassavetes’s 1977 film Opening Night kicked off FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, an immersive production highlighted by the US stage debut of French star Isabelle Adjani. Cassavetes’s film stars Gena Rowlands, his wife, as a theater actress getting lost between fiction and reality during out-of-town previews of a show called Second Woman; Cassavetes plays her leading man. Now BAM is presenting another unique exploration of the film in its Next Wave Festival. Beginning at 5:00 on the afternoon of October 18 and continuing for twenty-four consecutive hours, actress Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development, Blaze) will perform the same scene from Opening Night one hundred times, each with a different man playing opposite her. (There will be short breaks at 7:00 pm and then every two hours.) Created, written, and directed by Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, Second Man features video direction by EO Gill and Breckon (there are four cameras in use), lighting by Amber Silk and Kayla Burrett, sound by Nina Buchanan, and set design by Genevieve Murray/FUTURE METHOD STUDIO.

As opposed to theater, which is live every night, a movie scene can be done over and over again until everyone involved — particularly the director and the star — is happy with the result. However, in this case, Shawkat — who in Miguel Arteta’s Duck Butter played a character on a twenty-four-hour date with another woman, making love every sixty minutes — will be caught in an endless loop, a repetition that will be different every time as the other actor changes. “The Second Woman takes as its starting point the idea that emotions and identities are culturally and historically specific, and that gender identities are defined by, and produced through, emotional cultures and norms,” Randall and Breckon explain in a program note. “Taking gender, as a particular relation to cultural power and privilege, as its focus, The Second Woman explores the ways in which gender privilege and power expresses itself through feeling.” Advance timed tickets allow entry at 5:00 and midnight on Friday and 4:00 and 8:00 am on Saturday; otherwise, you can buy tickets at the venue, and you are allowed to leave and come back at any time as space permits.

WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL 2019

(photo copyright Hiroshi Sugimoto / courtesy Odawara Art Foundation)

Sugimoto Bunraku Sonezaki Shinju’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki kicks off Lincoln Center’s tenth annual White Light Festival (photo copyright Hiroshi Sugimoto / courtesy Odawara Art Foundation)

Multiple venues at Lincoln Center
October 19 – November 24, free – $165
212-721-6500
www.lincolncenter.org

Lincoln Center’s multidisciplinary White Light Festival turns ten this year, and it is celebrating with another wide-ranging program of dance, theater, music, and more, running October 19 through November 24 at such venues as the Rose Theater, the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, Alice Tully Hall, and the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. “The resonance of the White Light Festival has only deepened during its first decade, as we have moved into far more challenging times here and around the world,” Lincoln Center artistic director Jane Moss said in a statement. “The Festival’s central theme, namely the singular capacity of artistic expression to illuminate what is inside ourselves and connect us to others, is more relevant than ever. This tenth anniversary edition spanning disparate countries, cultures, disciplines, and genres emphasizes that the elevation of the spirit the arts inspires uniquely unites us and expands who we are.” Things get under way October 19-22 (Rose Theater, $35-$100) with Sugimoto Bunraku Sonezaki Shinju’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, a retelling of a long-banned tale by Chikamatsu Monzaemon using puppets, composed and directed by Seiji Tsurusawa, with choreography by Tomogoro Yamamura and video by Tabaimo and artistic director Hiroshi Sugimoto. That is followed October 23-25 by Australia ensemble Circa’s boundary-pushing En Masse (Gerald W. Lynch Theater, $25-$65), directed and designed by Yaron Lifschitz, combining acrobatics and contemporary dance with music by Klara Lewis along with Franz Schubert and Igor Stravinsky.

In Zauberland (Magic Land) (October 29-30, Gerald W. Lynch, $35-$95), soprano Julia Bullock performs Schumann’s Romantic song cycle Dichterliebe while facing haunting memories; the text is by Heinrich Heine and Martin Crimp, with Cédric Tiberghien on piano. The set for Roysten Abel’s The Manganiyar Seduction (November 6–9, Rose Theater, $55-$110) is mind-blowing, consisting of more than two dozen Manganiyar musicians in their own lighted rectangular spaces in a giant red box. Last year, Irish company Druid and cofounder Garry Hynes brought a comic Waiting for Godot to the White Light Festival; this year they’re back with a dark take on Richard III (November 7-23, Gerald W. Lynch, $35-$110) starring Aaron Monaghan, who played Estragon in 2018. Wynton Marsalis will lead The Abyssinian Mass (November 21-23, Rose Theater, $45-$165) with Chorale Le Chateau, featuring a sermon by Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III. In addition to the above, there are also several one-time-only events, listed below.

DruidShakespeare will present Richard III at the White Light Festival November 7-23 (photo by Robbie Jack)

Thursday, October 24
Jordi Savall: Journey to the East, Alice Tully Hall, $35-$110, 7:30

Tuesday, October 29
Mahler Songs, recital by German baritone Christian Gerhahe with pianist Gerold Huber, Alice Tully Hall, $45-$90, 7:30

Thursday, November 7
Stabat Mater by James MacMillan, with Britten Sinfonia and the Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers, Alice Tully Hall, $50-$85, 7:30

Saturday, November 9
White Light Conversation: Let’s Talk About Religion, panel discussion with Kelly Brown Douglas, Marcelo Gleiser, James MacMillan, and Stephen Prothero, moderated by John Schaefer, Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio, free, 3:00

Sunday, November 10
Goldberg Variations, with pianist Kit Armstrong, Walter Reade Theater, $25, 11:00 am

Wednesday, November 13
Ensemble Basiani: Unifying Voices, Church of St. Mary the Virgin, $55, 7:30

Thursday, November 14
Attacca Quartet with Caroline Shaw: Words and Music, David Rubenstein Atrium, free, 7:30

Sunday, November 17
Tristan and Isolde, Act II, with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, featuring Stephen Gould as Tristan and Christine Goerke as Isolde, David Geffen Hall, $35-$105, 3:00

Thursday, November 21
Gloria, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its Choir, conducted by harpsichordist Jonathan Cohen, featuring soprano Katherine Watson, countertenor Iestyn Davies, and soprano Rowan Pierce, Alice Tully Hall, $100, 7:30

Sunday, November 24
Los Angeles Philharmonic: Cathedral of Sound, Bruckner’s “Romantic” Symphony, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, David Geffen Hall, $35-$105, 3:00

THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM

Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce play a happy couple dealing with death in The Height of the Storm (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 24, $79-$169
heightofthestorm.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce are more than reason enough to see Florian Zeller’s latest intricate family drama, The Height of the Storm, although the play doesn’t quite live up to its lofty ambitions. The follow-up to Zeller’s trilogy of The Father, The Mother, and The Son, this new work shares themes with its predecessors, particularly The Father; as in that story, an elderly man named André (Pryce) with two daughters, Anne (Amanda Drew) and Élise (Lisa O’Hare), is having trouble with his memory. But in this case, there has been a death, but it’s not clear whether it’s André, an extremely successful writer, or his wife, Madeleine (Atkins). References to a recent bereavement are many, yet the two elderly married characters appear in scenes together that do not seem to be flashbacks. “There’s nothing to understand. People who try to understand things are morons,” an ornery André says, which is good advice to the audience as well, who shouldn’t try to think too hard to figure out what’s happening, whether we’re watching the present, the past, or the meanderings of a man suffering from dementia.

Anne is going through her father’s papers at the request of his editor to find more material to publish. Élise and her latest boyfriend, real estate agent Paul (James Hiller), are in from Paris, about to rush back for an important meeting. Madeleine is much calmer, walking through their vegetable garden and making her husband’s favorite mushroom dish. (The play takes place in Anthony Ward’s cozy, high-ceilinged kitchen set.) But when a woman (Lucy Coho) arrives claiming to be an old friend of André’s, his memory is tested yet again. “I had a life. I don’t deny it. But in the end, what’s left?” André opines. “A few faces? A few names lost in the fog? Here and there . . . Not much more. May as well forget everything.”

A family gathering is interrupted by an unexpected guest in Florian Zeller’s The Height of the Storm (photo by Joan Marcus)

Pryce (Comedians, Miss Saigon), who has won two Tonys and two Olivier Awards, and three-time Olivier Award winner Atkins (Honour, A Room of One’s Own) are impeccable, delivering meticulous performances anchored by the fear that after fifty years of marriage, either André or Madeleine must go first, leaving the other one alone. Drew (Three Days in the Country, Enron), who played Anne in James Macdonald’s production of The Father at the Duke of York’s Theatre in 2016, is staunchly resolute as the daughter trying to keep everything from falling apart. The ninety-minute play features profound lighting by Hugh Vanstone, particularly as it relates to Pryce, who is sometimes cast in darkness while the others remain lit and talking. But director Jonathan Kent (Plenty, Naked) and translator Christopher Hampton (who did the same for the previous three related works) don’t always maneuver fluidly through the narrative; part of the intent is to set the viewer off balance, but too much manipulative confusion is not ideal, especially when accompanied by a clichéd twist. “What is my position? What is my position here? What is my position? My position! What is my position here? My position. Here. What is it? My position . . . what is it?” André frantically demands at one point. The audience is often not sure, which can be both hypnotic and aggravating.

I CAN’T SEE

i cant see

133 Greenwich St.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 3, $45-$50
nightmarenyc.com

I loved the grand finale of I Can’t See, the latest immersive frightfest from Timothy Haskell and Paul Smithyman of Psycho Clan, the masterminds behind such other surreal events as Full Bunny Contact, Santastical, and This Is Real. Unfortunately, much of what came before left me uncomfortable and unimpressed. I Can’t See is a forty-five-minute guided journey in complete darkness; after signing in, visitors are double-blindfolded and given headphones through which they receive instructions and follow the narrative, which is based on “The Toll-House,” the classic 1909 British ghost story by W. W. Jacobs about a group of friends who decide to spend the night in a possibly haunted mansion. The setup is that you, identified as Sam, are taking part in an experiment by Optecs Corp about fear. “You’ve often mocked the poor decisions of others who are in situations of peril. Confident that you would do better,” a voice says. “Now you have that chance. You will be in peril. You will make decisions. Decisions that will reflect your character. . . . It is better that you know that you are not a hero than to think you could be one if only you had the chance. That is also freeing. Free to be the coward you have been too afraid to admit you are.”

But those instructions, which conclude with a demonic voice threatening, “You’re going to die,” are disingenuous. For most of the presentation, you are led around by hands and bodies that push, prod, jostle, and shift you as you make your way through various scenarios. You must follow the unseen path by holding on to “umbilicals,” either rope, a banister, or another material, to help position you. I found myself regularly bumping into what I believed to be one of the other two people I was going through with, detracting from my experience while, I hoped, not negatively affecting theirs. These regular occurrences also took me out of the story, which I was fully prepared to invest myself in.

I Can’t See offers a double-blindfolded trip through a classic ghost story (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

You might not be able to see, but you will get to use your senses of touch, smell, taste, and hearing, some of which is fun and some of which is not. There are also several mentions of a bright blue light, which made me think of the Tribute in Light that is projected every year on 9/11 where the Twin Towers once stood; I Can’t See takes place in a space on Greenwich St. in the shadows of the former World Trade Center.

But then comes the exciting ending, in which you are by yourself. (I would have much preferred to go through the whole thing alone.) At last, you get to make your own decisions, and in my case, I survived. The two people who were with me, alas, suffered a far worse fate. Early on in I Can’t See, after an escape artist has serious difficulties, the MC announces, “Terribly sorry, folks. That did not go as planned. We will work out the kinks and bring you another show tomorrow.” The same might be said for I Can’t See itself.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Amanda Wingfield (Ginger Grace) embraces her daughter, Laura (Alexandra Rose), in dark adaptation of The Glass Menagerie (photo © Chris Loupos)

The Wild Project
195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B
Wednesday – Monday through October 20, $35
thewildproject.com
www.theglassmenagerieplay.com

The front of the program of Ruth Stage’s intimate, streamlined production of The Glass Menagerie, which opened last week for a woefully limited engagement at the Wild Project, is a film-noir-like image of the cast, with Wingfield matriarch Amanda (Ginger Grace), son Tom (Matt de Rogatis), and daughter Laura (Alexandra Rose) dressed in black, staring out at the viewer; Amanda stands far left, stern and tall over the others; kneeling in front of her is Tom, who looks like a cat burglar with a black knit hat pulled tight on his head. He holds a cigarette, at the very center of the photo, that points at Laura, far right, in a sexy shoulder-baring dress with a few sequins, looking as vulnerable as the small, fragile glass animal she is balancing in her hand. In between the siblings sits the gentleman caller (Spencer Scott), in a gray suit and white shirt, peering at Laura. It’s a compelling portrait, and one that gets to the heart of this dark adaptation even though it is fantasy; not only is the scene not in the play, but the three Wingfields never wear those costumes, and the smoking is done with imaginary cigarettes. It’s like a misconstructed memory, a skewed reality. “I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion,” Tom says directly to the audience in the opening monologue. “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic.” In the hands of codirectors Austin Pendleton and Peter Bloch, it is also bold, powerful, and exquisitely rendered.

Tom (Matt de Rogatis), Amanda (Ginger Grace), and Laura (Alexandra Rose) sit down for a minimalist dinner in The Glass Menagerie (photo © Chris Loupos)

Williams’s semiautobiographical 1944 play is about a domineering mother, a physically disabled daughter, and a desperate son who can’t find his place. But Pendleton and Block, who previously collaborated on Ruth Stage’s epic Wars of the Roses also with de Rogatis, offer a very different take in this intimate version of a dysfunctional family. Jessie Bonaventure’s set is cramped and claustrophobic, with a round kitchen table, a sofa, part of a fire escape, and an alley off to one side. Hovering over it all is a large photo of Amanda’s husband and Tom and Laura’s father, a telephone man who ran off years before and has not been heard from since, although his presence is felt in everything they do. Steve Wolf’s lighting, Jesse Meckl’s sound design, Sean Hagerty’s score, and Arlene’s costumes maintain the eerie mood.

The tale is narrated by Tom, with de Rogatis, in a homey southern accent, making eye contact with all eighty-nine members of the audience, as if each of us is getting our own private telling. Instead of portraying Amanda as strict and manipulative, Grace plays her with a soft tenderness that is heartbreaking, reminiscent of Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. And Rose, in her professional theater debut, is beguiling as Laura, who is not quite as fragile as usual; Rose uses no limp to depict her character’s physical impairment. This is Tom’s memory, after all, his remembrance of what happened once upon a time in 1939 St. Louis, and Pendleton and Bloch have replaced the homoerotic subtext that is often evident in the relationship between Tom and his work acquaintance, gentleman caller Jim O’Connor (sharply played by Scott), with incestuous undertones; when Tom lurks in the background, watching Jim and Laura, he appears jealous and unhappy, leaving when they kiss as if a spurned lover. He does not recall Laura as a physically damaged little girl but as a beautiful young woman who deserves more.

A gentleman caller (Spencer Scott) woos Laura (Alexandra Rose) in The Glass Menagerie at the Wild Project (photo © Chris Loupos)

There have been two major Broadway revivals of The Glass Menagerie in the last six years, first by John Tiffany, starring Cherry Jones, Zachary Quinto, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Brian J. Smith at the Booth in 2013, then by Sam Gold, with Sally Field, Joe Mantello, Madison Ferris, and Finn Wittrock at the Belasco in 2017. Pendleton and Bloch’s production might not have big names and a big budget, but its grim, haunting take is a must-see. Here’s hoping it gets extended past its October 20 closing date so more can partake of its ingenuity and inventiveness.