this week in theater

ASHITA NO MA-JOE: ROCKY MACBETH

Shakespeare meets manga in the boxing ring in Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth at Japan Society (photo © Takashi Ikemura)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
May 15-18, $28
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Theater Company Kaimaku Pennant Race founder Yu Murai transforms Japan Society into a boxing arena in Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, running May 15-18. The sixty-minute show is a seriocomic mash-up of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the late 1960s manga Ashita no Joe (“Tomorrow’s Joe”), written by Ikki Kajiwara (Asao Takamori) and illustrated by Tetsuya Chiba and which was turned into several anime series and anime and live-action films. The title translates roughly to “Tomorrow No Witch,” referencing the witches of Macbeth as well as one of the play’s most famous monologues. The protagonist is Joe Yabuki, aka Rocky Macbeth, an ambitious troubled teen who finds success in the ring — and there will be an actual boxing ring onstage, with an audience of only sixty people sitting around it. The boxers wear funky-weird head-to-toe costumes over five rounds of battles as Macbeth seeks the crown, as king and champion.

Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth moves reimagined Shakespeare tale to a boxing ring (photo © Takashi Ikemura)

“We also have been believing in a false sense of security / that is nothing more than a prophecy. / The Birnam Wood has already started to move. / What will the witches whisper to us, / the people who have been pretending not to notice? / What will we whisper to the future Macbeths to come?” Yu Murai writes, fusing themes of postwar Japan with the 1960s counterculture, one of his specialties. (At the 2009 Fringe Festival, the company had fun with Romeo and Toilet, complete with toilet paper rolls and bathroom humor.) The cast features Takuro Takasaki, G. K. Masayuki, and Kazuma Takeo, with video design and operation by Kazuki Watanabe; opening night will be followed by a Meet-the-Artists reception. The presentation is being held in conjunction with the Japan Society exhibition “Radicalism in the Wilderness: Japanese Artists in the Global 1960s,” which continues through May 31; Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth tickets get you half off gallery admission.

SOCRATES

Michael Stuhlbarg is riveting as the title character in Tim Blake Nelson’s Socrates at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through June 2, $85-$150
212-539-8500
www.publictheater.org

Michael Stuhlbarg is rousingly gallant and stout as the title character in Tim Blake Nelson’s cogent but irritatingly long Socrates, which has been extended at the Public Theater’s Martinson Hall through June 2. The tale of the fate of one of the world’s most famous philosophers — who never wrote anything down, so all we know about him has come from the writings of others — is told in flashback via a pedantic, unnecessary frame story in which Plato (Teagle F. Bougere), a student of Socrates’s, is deciding whether he should become a boy’s (Niall Cunningham) teacher. The tall, blond boy is angry at Plato and what has been done to Socrates. “You’re an Athenian. The Athenians killed him. My question therefore implicates you, especially in the context of a democracy where leaders and their actions are promulgated as representing the people’s will,” the boy says. Plato acknowledges his responsibility, explaining, “In a sense I betrayed him more profoundly and lastingly than Athens did.”

Crito (Robert Joy, center) is one of the writers whose dialogues form the basis of Socrates (photo by Joan Marcus)

Forget the bookended nonsense and instead revel in the bulk of the play, which really begins with a gathering in which Socrates, war hero Alcibiades (Austin Smith), playwright Aristophanes (Tom Nelis), doctor Eryximachus (David Aaron Baker), poet Agathon (Joe Tapper), writer Crito (Robert Joy), and others, dressed in period togas and robes designed by Catherine Zuber, are drinking heavily and regaling one another with tales of Socrates’s supposed love of good-looking boys and his general brilliance, both of which he adamantly denies. “You’ve taught an entire generation how to think!” Alcibiades exclaims, to which Socrates responds, “That’s simply not true!” Nelson soon jumps ahead to Socrates’s final days, as he’s arrested, facing a trial that could result in his execution. Like Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, Socrates refuses to bend his principles, spouting philosophy even as he denies his intelligence and ignores the pleas of his friends, colleagues, wife, Xanthippe (Miriam A. Hyman), and son to avoid the death penalty. “It would hardly become a man my age to resent his own end, don’t you think?” he says, arguing that there is only one outcome.

The Athenians make their case against Socrates in Tim Blake Nelson world premiere at the Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

His fellow philosophers attempt to convince him otherwise, resulting in fascinating debates about happiness, equality, knowledge, memory, and truth in which the Tony- and Obie-winning, bushy-bearded Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, The Pillowman), looking like a cross between Mandy Patinkin and the hirsute David Letterman, expounds on democracy with an intense fury that relates to the current situation in America and around the globe. After one particularly astute declaration, an audience member, a well-regarded thespian himself, shouted out, “Right on!”

Nelson, an actor (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; O Brother, Where Art Thou?), filmmaker (The Grey Zone, O), and playwright (Eye of God, Anadarko), and Tony-winning director Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Father) let things go on way too long; the play runs a mind-boggling 160 minutes (with intermission), and you might find yourself groaning during the coda as Plato and the boy can’t stop evaluating what we’ve just seen. But when Stuhlbarg is onstage, it is electrifying. Scott Pask’s immersive set features walls that extend throughout the theater covered in the hand-carved text of Pericles’s Funeral Oration in Ancient Greek: “We are unique in the way we regard anyone who takes no part in public affairs: We do not call that a quiet life, we call it a useless life.” (Pericles was the uncle of Alcibiades.) Socrates did not live a quiet, useless life, his legacy as relevant today as ever.

RICOCHET: ENTANGLED

The lives of Bradley (James Kautz) Greta (Naomi Lorrain) intersect after a tragedy in Entangled (photo by Travis Emery Hackett)

RICOCHET: AN AMORALISTS ANTHOLOGY ABOUT SURVIVING AN AMERICAN EPIDEMIC
Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre
A.R.T./New York Theatres
502 West 53rd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday – Saturday through May 11, $20-$30, 7:30
amoralists.com

The Amoralists, one of the city’s most adventurous and exciting theatrical troupes, concludes its 2018-19 ’Wright Club season with the gripping Entangled. The ’Wright Club program consists of four new plays built around “one unifying event. Three distinct perspectives. No right answers.” The fictional event is a mass shooting in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History; Entangled is the final installment of “Ricochet: An Amoralists Anthology about Surviving an American Epidemic,” which has previously been explored from different angles in Gabriel Jason Dean’s Triggered at the Cherry Lane Studio in August, directed by Kimille Howard; Charly Evon Simpson’s Stained at New Ohio Theatre in October, directed by Kate Moore Heaney; and James Anthony Tyler’s Armed at Teatro Latea at the Clemente in December, directed by Bianca LaVerne Jones. You do not have to have seen any of those plays, which all ran for three performances, to get caught up in the thrall of Entangled, a stellar collaboration between Simpson and Dean, directed by Moore Heaney, that plays for three weeks, through May 11 at A.R.T./New York Theatres.

Naomi Lorrain and James Kautz star in Amoralists’ conclusion to Ricochet (photo by Travis Emery Hackett)

In the two-character Entangled, Bradley (Amoralists founding artistic director James Kautz), a white man, is the older brother of the shooter, Little. Greta (Naomi Lorrain), a black woman, is the mother of one of the youngest victims, Astrid. The play unfolds in alternating monologues in which Bradley and Greta speak directly to the audience and dictate emails to each other, sent and unsent, as they search for answers, deal with the traumatic death of a loved one, and try to maintain relationships, although their situations are never made equal. “Dear Greta,” Bradley writes, “Although we’ve never met, we are forever linked by the senseless tragedy my little brother brought into our lives.” Greta, however, feels further violated by this additional unwanted intrusion. Wondering if Little is still connected to Astrid, she writes, “If he is haunting her in the afterlife / If your brother is haunting her in the afterlife / Are you haunting me in this life, Bradley? / Are you?” She later muses, “I wonder a lot about who thinks they must survive the trauma / And who thinks they must cause it in order to survive.” Greta’s dialogue is written by Simpson (Behind the Sheet, Jump), a black woman, and Bradley’s by Dean (Terminus, Qualities of Starlight), a white man. And yes, race does play a part in the proceedings, particularly when it comes to the media. (Dean has probed the aftermath of mass shootings before, including in Our New Town, a musical inspired by both the Newtown massacre and the classic American drama Our Town.)

The Amoralists’ Entangled immerses the audience in the cosmos (photo by Travis Emery Hackett)

Moore Heaney directs with a calm hand as the actors take turns center stage on a circular platform or pull up a chair on Andrew Diaz’s spare set, which also features a curved horizontal backdrop onto which Kate Freer projects images of the sky and clouds and the cosmos. The universe plays a central role in the play, from the planetarium where the shooting occurred to the name Astrid, as Simpson and Dean compare the Big Bang that created everything to the scourge of gun violence (perpetrated this time by a man known as Little), which wreaks destruction on individuals and society as a whole. It’s always a pleasure watching Kautz (Nibbler, Utility) onstage; he embodies a kind of everyman persona, and here he represents someone who could be any of us, desperate to find out what went so horribly wrong. Lorrain (Song for a Future Generation, Stained) is much more active and lively as she is suddenly thrust into the role of public figure. “After the first few days, people didn’t stop me in the street / I am not sure if that’s because they didn’t want to say anything to me / Didn’t want to intrude / Or maybe they just weren’t sure,” she says. “Just weren’t sure I was the one they saw on the news / I think it is more likely that they just forgot / Forgot how they knew me.” In today’s day and age, with so many mass shootings in America being detailed in the 24/7 news cycle and then disappearing into the maelstrom, it is much too easy to forget the names of the shooters, the victims, the heroes. But those with families involved are doomed to remember, reliving the horror over and over again.

INK

Editor Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) takes over Rupert Murdoch’s Sun in Ink (photo © Joan Marcus 2019)

Who: Bertie Carvel, Jonny Lee Miller, David Wilson Barnes, Bill Buell, Andrew Durand, Eden Marryshow, Colin McPhillamy, Erin Neufer, Kevin Pariseau, Rana Roy, Michael Siberry, Robert Stanton, and Tara Summers
What: Ink on Broadway
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
When: Tuesday – Sunday through July 7, $79-$189
Why: At the beginning of James Graham’s Tony-nominated Ink, which takes place on Fleet Street in 1969–70, soon-to-be international media mogul Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) asks newspaper editor Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) what makes a good story. “Well, it’s the five ‘W’s, isn’t it,” he says, listing the first four — Who, What, Where, When — then hesitating before getting to the last one. “So what’s the fifth? The fifth ‘W’?” Murdoch implores. “Fifth ‘W’ I used to think was the most important, now I think it’s the least. Fifth ‘W’ is Why,” Lamb responds. Murdoch: “You think the least important question is ‘why’; I would have said that was the most important question.” Lamb: “Once you know ‘why’ something happened, the story’s over, it’s dead. Don’t answer why, a story can run and run, can run forever. And the other reason, actually, honestly, I think, is that there is no ‘Why?’ Most times. ‘Why’ suggests there’s a plan, that there is a point to things, when they happen and there’s not, there’s just not. Sometimes shit — just —happens. Only thing worth asking isn’t ‘why,’ it’s . . . ‘What next?’”

Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) and Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) check their progress in MTC newspaper tale (photo © Joan Marcus 2019)

Graham (Labour of Love, Privacy) and director Rupert Goold (King Charles III, American Psycho) follow that advice in the sparkling Manhattan Theatre Club presentation of the award-winning Almeida Theatre production, running at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through July 7. The play dives right into the Who, What, Where, and When as Murdoch decides to buy the failing Sun newspaper from the company that publishes the Mirror and hires exiled editor Lamb to run it. It’s thrilling to watch Lamb put together a ragtag staff, including news editor Brian McConnell (David Wilson Barnes), chief sub Ray Mills (Eden Marryshow), sports editor Frank Nicklin (Bill Buell), woman’s editor Joyce Hopkirk (Tara Summers), persnickety deputy editor Bernard Shrimsley (Robert Stanton), and novice photographer Beverley Goodway (Andrew Durand), as they attempt to not only put out a newspaper immediately but, within one year, surpass the Mirror in circulation, a ridiculously absurd proposition — but one that drives Lamb, Murdoch, and his devoted deputy chairman, Sir Alick McKay (Colin McPhillamy), who are willing to do just about whatever it takes to make it happen, much to the consternation of Mirror chairman Hugh Cudlipp (Michael Siberry) and editor Lee Howard (Marryshow), who worry about the integrity of their industry.

Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) checks in on the Sun in Tony-nominated Ink (photo © Joan Marcus 2019)

Two-time Olivier winner Goold adds glitter and flash to the proceedings, with the sexy Stephanie Rahn (Rana Roy) occasionally breaking out into song and dance with various characters, turning Bunny Christie’s multilevel, dark-gray, crowded stage into a hopping nightclub, with fun choreography by Lynne Page. Tony nominee Carvel (Matilda the Musical, The Hairy Ape), employing a slight hunch and an overly affected interpretation of Murdoch’s voice, and Miller (Elementary, Frankenstein), bold and forthright as Lamb, make a dynamic duo; even though we know how it’s all going to turn out — particularly how tabloids would present so-called news to the public — we root for them to succeed against the stodgy old guys who actually care about truth and quality. Jon Driscoll’s projections add color to the proceedings, primarily the familiar red of the Sun logo. The serious proceedings, the repercussions of which are still being felt today, with Murdoch’s ownership of such papers as the New York Post and such television stations as Fox News, President Trump’s favorite channel, are infused with a wickedly dry sense of humor; even the insert telling audience members to turn off their cellphones is like the front page of the Sun, blaring the headline: “Cellphone Humiliates Playgoer.”

THE HEART (RÉPARER LES VIVANTS)

Emmanuel Noblet adapted, directed, and stars in Réparer les vivants at FIAF (photo © Aglaé Bory)

French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Wednesday, May 8, $40, 7:30
212-355-6160
fiaf.org

French actor Emmanuel Noblet will be at FIAF on May 8 for the US premiere of the one-night-only, three-hundredth performance of The Heart (Réparer les vivants), his solo show based on the 2013 novel by Maylis de Kerangal. Noblet, who has appeared in such films as The Conquest and Chic! and such series as Scalp and Act of Crime, adapted and directed the show, in collaboration with Benjamin Guillard. The story takes place over the course of one twenty-four-hour period as a nineteen-year-old surfer dies tragically and there’s a race against time to harvest his heart for an immediate organ donation. The ninety-minute Théâtre Montansier de Versailles coproduction features the voices of de Kerangal, Guillard, Alix Poisson, Vincent Garanger, Constance Dollé, Stéphane Facco, Évelyne Pelerin, Anthony Poupard, Olivier Saladin, and Hélène Viviès, with lighting and videography by Arno Veyrat, sound by Sébastien Trouvé, acoustics by Cristián Sotomayor, and medical imagery by Pierre-Yves Litzler.

WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL 2019

World Science Festival kicks off with theatrical production written by Brian Greene

Multiple venues
May 22 – June 2, free – $100
www.worldsciencefestival.com

Tickets are now on sale for the twelfth annual World Science Festival, as many of the globe’s finest minds gather at the NYU Skirball Center, John Jay College, Lincoln Center, Washington Square Park, and other venues to discuss the state of the planet, the universe, and ourselves, in lectures, panel discussions, workshops, multimedia presentations, and theatrical performances. This year, boasting the theme “Awaken Your Inner Genius,” features celebrations of the centennial of the confirmation of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing. Some of the events have already sold out, so you better act quick; below are a dozen highlights, including an evening science sail.

Wednesday, May 22
Light Falls: Space, Time, and an Obsession of Einstein, theatrical piece with Brian Greene, Francesca Faridany, Michael Winther, Joanna Kaczorowska, Brian Avers, and Drew Dollaz, written by Greene, designed by 59 Productions, and directed by Scott Faris, with music by Jeff Beal, Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, $45-$85, 7:00

Wednesday, May 29
Big Ideas — The Right Stuff: What It Takes to Boldly Go, with Miles O’Brien, Michael Collins, Scott Kelly, and Leland Melvin, NYU Skirball Center, $20-$100, 7:00

Big Ideas: We Will Be Martians, with Kim Binsted, Yvonne Cagle, and Ellen Stofan, NYU Skirball Center, $20-$100, 8:00

Thursday, May 30
Big Ideas — Revealing the Mind: The Promise of Psychedelics, with Alison Gopnik, Stephen Ross, and Anil Seth, Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, $20-$100, 8:00

Friday, May 31
Big Ideas — Making Room for Machines: Getting Ready for AGI, with Garry Kasparov, Yann LeCun, Hod Lipson, and Shannon Vallor, Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, $20-$100, 8:00

Astronauts Michael Collins, Scott Kelly, and Leland Melvin will discuss the Right Stuff at World Science Festival

Saturday, June 1
The Great Fish Count, multiple locations in all five boroughs, free (advance RSVP encouraged,) 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Women in Science: Lab Tours for Girls, with Chiye Aoki, Shara Bailey, Daniela Buccella, Catherine Hartley, Lara K. Mahal, Wendy Suzuki, and Alexandra Zidovska, NYU Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, free with advance registration, 1:00

Big Ideas — Rethinking Thinking: How Intelligent Are Other Animals?, with Faith Salie, Simon Garnier, Frank Grasso, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, and Denise Herzing, NYU Skirball Center, $20-$100, 4:00

Scientific Sails: Evening Sail, with Denise Herzing, aboard the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 5, $65, 7:00

Big Ideas: The Richness of Time, with Brian Greene, Lera Boroditsky, and Dean Buonomano, NYU Skirball Center, $20-$100, 8:00

Sunday, June 2
City of Science, Washington Square Park, free (advance RSVP encouraged), 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

Science and Storytime, with Jennifer Swanson, Rachel Dougherty, Brian Floca, Bruce Goldstone, Ruth Spiro, and Lily Xu, NYU Kimmel Center, Commuter Lounge, free (advance RSVP encouraged), 11:00 am – 4:30 pm

KING LEAR ON BROADWAY

Glenda Jackson wonders where it all went wrong in King Lear revival on Broadway (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Cort Theatre
138 West 48th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 9, $35-$129
www.kinglearonbroadway.com

Theater aficionados would likely pay good money to watch the inimitable Glenda Jackson read the phone book, as the proverbial platitude goes. But director Sam Gold challenges that now-outdated cliché with his misguided production of King Lear, which boasts the remarkable actress and former longtime British MP as Shakespeare’s declining ruler. On the night I attended, early in the show a valet bringing Lear the crown stumbled and dropped the prop. Jackson let out an angry howl that echoed throughout the Cort Theatre in what looked to be an ad-lib, but it summed up everyone’s frustration with Gold’s handling of the tragedy. The usually dependable and insightful Tony and Obie winner (Fun Home, Circle Mirror Transformation) seems to be going out of his way to unnecessarily complicate virtually every aspect of this consistently awkward staging.

King Lear (Glenda Jackson) has something to say to his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Ruth Wilson) (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

The story takes place in a gold-plated rectangular, horizontal space, with characters in relatively modern dress. (The set is by Miriam Buether, with costumes by Ann Roth.) Ruth Wilson is excellent as both Cordelia and the Fool, although it is sometimes hard to tell when she is one or the other. John Douglas Thompson is stalwart as Kent, his authoritative voice booming, but the rest of the cast seems lost, seeking Gold to guide them not unlike poor Tom (Sean Carvajal) leading his blinded father, Gloucester (Jayne Houdyshell), to the edge of a precipice. The Duke of Cornwall is portrayed by Russell Harvard, a deaf actor who is followed around by Michael Arden, who translates for him in American Sign Language. Philip Glass has composed a lovely score, performed by violinists Cenovia Cummins and Martin Agee, violist Chris Cardona, and cellist Stephanie Cummins; when they unobtrusively play in the far back corner, all is well, but later they come to the front and mingle with the actors, which is unnerving and off-putting. Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel) at first shows empathy for Cordelia, but that changes fast, leading to a sexual expression that made the audience gasp in horror. Pedro Pascal is ineffective as the devious Edmund, while Carvajal is too plain as his too-trusting half-brother, Edgar. The cast also includes Dion Johnstone as the Duke of Albany, Aisling O’Sullivan as a vicious Regan, Ian Lassiter as the King of France, and Matthew Maher as a creepy Oswald. Oh, and there are gunshots.

Ruth Wilson, Glenda Jackson, and John Douglas Thompson are the bright spots in Sam Gold’s revival of King Lear (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Fortunately, watching Jackson for nearly three and a half hours — she does take that long break at the beginning of the second act, and the play suffers even further in her absence — makes this Lear worth it; Jackson, now eighty-two, might be a wisp of a thing, but she radiates intense strength and greatness every step of the way. But be advised that this is not Deborah Warner’s 2016-17 version that took London by storm. I am no traditionalist by any means — for example, I adore what Daniel Fish has done with Oklahoma! — but Gold has deconstructed the play only to reconstruct it with, dare I say, a Lear-like madness that just too often is baffling if not downright annoying. New York has seen many a Lear over the last dozen years — Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Derek Jacobi, John Lithgow, Frank Langella, Sir Antony Sher, Michael Pennington, and Sam Waterston — and Jackson is a worthy addition to that list, but it is telling that she received neither a Tony nor a Drama Desk nomination for her performance, and the production also did not get nods for Best Revival. It’s like an imperfect storm, with Jackson at the center, trying to survive the downpour, along with the rest of us.