this week in theater

“DADDY”

Franklin (Ronald Peet) has some slippery father issues in New Group / Vineyard Theatre world premiere (photo by Matt Saunders)

The New Group/Vineyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 31, $40-$135
www.thenewgroup.org
www.vineyardtheatre.org

Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy” is a monumental work of bold genius, a searing, audacious investigation into the creation and ownership of both art and people, constructed around the sins of the father. The play, a joint production of the New Group and the Vineyard that opened tonight at the Signature Center’s Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, takes place in and around an infinity pool in a Bel Air mansion; Matt Saunders’s delightful set prominently features several chaise longues on a deck and a gleaming blue pool in the front that was inspired by David Hockney paintings, particularly Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which sold at auction for more than ninety million dollars this past November, as well as A Bigger Splash, Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool, and Portrait of Nick Wilder. (In 1966-67, a twenty-nine-year-old Hockney lived with Wilder, an older art dealer, in the latter’s Hollywood home, although this is not their story.)

Ronald Peet stars as Franklin, a twentysomething black artist who has recently moved to Los Angeles. Following an opening at a hot new gallery, Franklin has come home with Andre (Alan Cumming), an absurdly wealthy fiftysomething white art collector. Andre worships Franklin’s lithe body, comparing his legs to Naomi Campbell’s, while a very high Franklin, who is preparing for his first gallery show, expounds on the intrinsic value of art, arguing that “art loses its worth the minute it can be bought. . . . It becomes worthless once its owned.” He’s not referring merely to Andre’s holdings — which includes works by Cy Twombly, Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, and Alexander Calder and a room of Basquiats — but also colonialism and slavery. Andre and Franklin debate the artistic value of Kara Walker’s A Subtlety installation of a giant white “mammy” figure in the old Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, and it’s no coincidence that Andre purchases Basquiats, a black artist who gained fame through his close association with the white Andy Warhol.

Franklin (Ronald Peet) explains his art to his gallerist, Alessia (Hari Nef), in “Daddy” at the Signature (photo by Monique Carboni)

Franklin is soon at home in Andre’s place, inviting over his crew: fashion-obsessed Bellamy (Kahyun Kim) and struggling white actor Max (Tommy Dorfman), who supply comic relief through their jealousy of Franklin; each of them would love to have a “sugar daddy” too, although Franklin bristles at the term. He believes his relationship with Andre is something other than a clichéd fling. Nevertheless, Franklin has taken to calling Andre “Daddy” during sex, which occurs often throughout the play — there is ample nudity and graphic simulations. Absent fathers are everywhere: While Franklin never met his father, which haunts him, Andre’s father got him started collecting art, giving him a Degas. Franklin’s gallerist, the young, white Alessia (Hari Nef), also hails from a wealthy family (she took over the gallery from her father) and believes Franklin’s upcoming show will help put her on the map; it’s yet another example of a rich white person “owning” a black person, made all the more clear when we see the tiny soft-sculpture dolls Franklin is making for the exhibition. When Franklin’s Bible-thumping mother, Zora (Charlayne Woodard), arrives, she is not exactly thrilled about her son’s living situation or artwork. As Franklin tries to find his place in this superficial Hollywood world, he is accompanied by a kind of Greek chorus in the form of a three-woman gospel choir (Carrie Compere, Denise Manning, and Onyie Nwachukwu) that represents his heart and soul, which are up for grabs.

Andre (Alan Cumming) looks on as Max (Tommy Dorfman) moves closer to Bellamy (Kahyun Kim) in Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy” (photo by Monique Carboni)

In the script, Harris (Xander Xyst, Dragon: 1, WATER SPORTS; or insignificant white boys) explains, “When lost look to melodrama for direction (see: [Peter] Brooks’s Melodramatic Imagination), because this play moves from melodrama’s dream to melodrama’s nightmare.” Director Danya Taymor (Familiar, Pass Over) has no such problem delivering the melodrama, from dream to nightmare; it’s a phenomenal staging, with vibrant, colorful costumes by Montana Levi Blanco, glistening lighting by Isabella Byrd (especially when the reflection of the pool’s waves dance across the walls), lovely original music adapted from a standard ring tone by Lee Kinney, and inspirational vocal music and arrangements by Darius Smith and Brett Macias. Peet (Spill, Kentucky) makes a major breakthrough as Franklin, giving a brave performance in which he lets it all hang out, emotionally and physically, combining sex appeal with an overt neediness and a major father complex. Tony and Olivier winner Cumming (Cabaret, The Good Wife) is utterly charming as Andre, a commanding, cultured man who loves collecting pretty things. “Beauty is beauty is beauty, Franklin. No matter whose eyes are seeing it,” he tells his lover. And two-time Obie winner and Tony nominee Woodard (Ain’t Misbehavin’, The Witch of Edmonton) ratchets it up as Zora, especially in the third act, when Kim and Dorfman get to strut their stuff while the masterful Cumming unfortunately has a lot less to do.

Harris’s fierce, polarizing Slave Play recently ran at New York Theater Workshop, and the three-act, 165-minute “Daddy” (with two intermissions) deals with some of the same topics (race, sex, power) but takes them to a whole new level, exploring the concept of a father as reality and fantasy, metaphor and obsession, presence and absence: Andre spanks Franklin like he’s a child, Zora prays to the Lord for guidance, Franklin discusses the origin of his dolls, the choir sings, “Daddy won’t nothing but a ‘shhhhhhh,’” and several characters get in the pool and blast out a hysterically relevant George Michael song. The pool is more than a cool part of the set; it also serves as a baptismal font, making us all believe in the power of art and theater, which becomes even more palpable when the first few rows get splashed. Even though the ending is muddy, “Daddy” is an extraordinary piece of storytelling, a masterful work of art that demands to be seen.

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

Merrily We Roll Along goes backward to tell the story of three old friends bursting with dreams (photo by Joan Marcus)

Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 12, $109
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org
www.fiascotheater.com

Ever since it famously flopped on Broadway in 1981, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along has gone through numerous iterations; the show has a beloved score but a challenging narrative. As part of its Roundabout residency, New York–based Fiasco Theater, who delivered a gorgeous Into the Woods at the Laura Pels in 2015 — in addition to several unique takes on Shakespeare at Theater for a New Audience, Classic Stage, and the New Victory in the last few years — now tackles Merrily, but not even this extremely talented company can get past the fatal flaws of the plot. Working in elements from the 1981, 1987, and 1994 versions, including rehearsal drafts, along with the original 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart on which the musical is based, Fiasco has trimmed the play down to its essentials, but there’s still not much meat on the bones. The story begins in 1980, with the six-actor ensemble singing, “Yesterday is done, / See the pretty countryside / Merrily we roll along, roll along, / Bursting with dreams.” The action then travels back in time, through the 1970s, ’60s, and ’50s, following three main characters — Franklin Shepard (Ben Steinfeld), Mary Flynn (Jessie Austrian), and Charley Kringus (Manu Narayan) — as they reverse their development from jaded, unhappy adults to energetic teens “bursting with dreams.”

Fiasco Theater tries to wrap its arms around elusive Sondheim/Furth musical at the Laura Pels (photo by Joan Marcus)

The main problem is that none of the three characters in this tale of friendship, betrayal, and selling out is particularly likable, so their personal trials and tribulations are just not that interesting. Frank is a narcissistic movie producer and musical theater composer who has difficulty remaining faithful to his wives or Charley, his songwriting partner, while Mary burned herself out on her debut novel. Also making the scene are Frank and Charley’s producer, Joe (Paul L. Coffey), and his wife, Gussie (Emily Young); their early supporters the Spencers (again, Coffey and Young); Frank’s first wife, Beth (Brittany Bradford); and Meg (also played by Bradford), the star of Frank’s debut movie. Derek McLane’s set is meant to evoke the backstage area of the Alvin Theatre on Broadway, where the show opened on November 16, 1981, and closed on November 28, after forty-four previews and only sixteen performances. Merrily is very much insider theater, and the set makes that plain, with rows and rows of props, from masks and lamps to cameras and bottles, that reach up to the ceiling, while Paloma Young’s costumes are hung up at floor level, allowing the actors to make quick changes as necessary.

A Fiasco tradition, the cast members who are not involved in the action often sit on the side, watching the proceedings with the audience. The orchestrations and new arrangements by Alexander Gemignani — whose father, Paul Gemignani, was the music director for the show’s brief Broadway tenure — are rather basic and standard; songs such as “Old Friends,” “Not a Day Goes By,” “It’s a Hit,” and “Our Time” need much more nuance and oomph, especially since the vocal chops of the cast are inconsistent. Director Noah Brody (Into the Woods, Measure for Measure) can’t quite get it all to flow together, merrily or not. “Why can’t it be like it was? / I liked it the way that it was,” Mary sings early on. But looking back — and going into the past — is not always the best answer, in real life or in fiction.

TILT: THE YOUNG GIRL, THE DEVIL AND THE MILL

The Young Girl, the Devil and the Mill will make its English-language world premiere at the TILT festival this weekend (photo © Christophe Raynaud)

TILT Kids Festival
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
March 2-3, $25-$45, 2:00
Festival runs March 2-31
212-355-6100
tiltkidsfestival.org
www.fiaf.org

The fourth annual family-friendly TILT festival kicks off March 2-3 at FIAF with the English-language world premiere of Festival d’Avignon director Olivier Py’s The Young Girl, the Devil and the Mill, a musical fairy tale inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Girl without Hands.” Adapted from the original French production, La Jeune Fille, le Diable et le Moulin, the specially commissioned fifty-minute show explores such complex topics as memory, death, and faith as a father contemplates a deal with an unholy character. Alex Burnette plays the Prince, Nadia Duncan the Girl, Whit K. Lee the Devil, and Ben Rauch the Gardener; the music is by Stéphane Leach, with text and direction by Py. Presented by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Institute Alliance Française, the festival, cocurated for the first time by Laurent Clavel and Courtney Geraghty, focuses on diversity. “Today, in a world where everyone is discussing politics, it’s important to emphasize that this is where it all starts,” Geraghty said in a statement. “This year’s TILT provides mind-expanding content to children so that they can further develop their imagination and critical thinking about serious issues surrounding their daily lives. The arts can inspire a new generation of cultural thinkers, political leaders, and responsible citizens of the world.” TILT continues through March 31 with such other shows as Marc Boutavant’s The Dumpster Ball at the French Embassy (free with RSVP), Okwui Okpokwasili’s Adaku’s Revolt at Abrons Arts Center ($15-$20), and Guillaume Pigé and Theatre Re’s The Nature of Forgetting at the New Victory Theater ($17-$42).

HACHIOJI KURUMA NINGYO PUPPET THEATER

Hachioji Kuruma Ningyo Puppet Theater presents two programs at Japan Society this week

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
February 28 – March 2, $40, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Hachioji Kuruma Ningyo Puppet Theater rolls into Japan Society this week with its unique brand of storytelling, led by fifth grand master Koryu Nishikawa V. Moving large puppets on a three-wheeled dolly, the company will present two female-centric programs, one consisting of Yugao, Date Musume Koi Higanoko, and Tsuri On’na, the other Yugao, Date Musume Koi Higanoko, and Kuzunoha; Yugao is a new work by Nishikawa V based on a story from The Tale of Genji. Each show will be preceded by a lecture by Dr. Claudia Orenstein of Hunter College; opening night will be followed by a reception with the artists. The works will be performed by Ryuji Nishikawa V, Ryusha Nishikawa, Ryuki Nishikawa, Ryukei Nishikawa, and Yoshiteru Nishikawa, led by Nishikawa V, with gidayu chanter Koshiko Takemoto and live shamisen music by Sansuzu Tsuruzawa and Yaya Tsuruzawa. In addition, there will be a “Hachioji Kuruma Ningyo Performance and Workshop” for students on Friday and a “Master Class on Kuruma Ningyo Puppetry” on Saturday and Sunday. And on March 10, Nishikawa V will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Family Afternoon — Pens & Poems for children ages twelve and under with an adult.

TRUE WEST

Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano star in Roundabout revival of Sam Shepard’s True West on Broadway (photo by Joan Marcus)

American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 17, $59-$352
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer-nominated True West is an oft-produced star-driven 1980 vehicle that offers an epic sibling rivalry with a few parental complications as it deconstructs the American dream and the creation of film and theater itself. The two brothers, the younger Austin, a screenwriter with a wife and kids, and the older Lee, a ne’er-do-well thief and transient, have been played by such duos as Tommy Lee Jones and Peter Boyle, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich, Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid, Kit Harington and Johnny Flynn, Bruce Willis and Chad Smith, Bob Hoskins and Antony Sher, and, in its Broadway debut in 2000, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly, who occasionally switched roles. The black comedy is now back on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre in a ferociously funny Roundabout revival, directed by James Macdonald, with Paul Dano as Austin and Ethan Hawke as Lee. This new production benefits from close ties with Shepard, who died in 2017 at the age of seventy-three: Macdonald previously helmed such Shepard works as Fool for Love and Simpatico and directed Shepard in Caryl Churchill’s A Number, while Hawke has directed Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind and starred with Shepard in Michael Almereyda’s 2000 Hamlet, which featured Hawke as the title character and Shepard as the ghost of his father. Hawke also directed Dano in the New Group’s Things We Want in 2007.

Siblings Lee (Ethan Hawke) and Austin (Paul Dano) go at each other in Sam Shepard revival at American Airlines Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

A quiet, focused man, Austin is house-sitting their mother’s (Marylouise Burke) suburban home in Southern California. She is off in Alaska — essentially the polar opposite of Cali — and he is taking care of her plants while writing a screenplay that independent producer Saul Kimmer (Gary Wilmes) is interested in. The gruff, uncouth Lee shows up unexpectedly, claiming to have spent years in the desert and visiting with their father. Austin does not want Lee around for an upcoming meeting with Saul, but Lee not only interferes but is soon pitching his own film project, a contemporary Western based on his adventures on the road, pitting the two brothers against one another while they also consider working together. Macdonald, Hawke, and Dano play up the physical slapstick in this raucous version. “You probably think that I’m not fully able to comprehend somethin’ like that, huh?” the less-educated Lee asks. “Like what?” Austin responds. “That stuff yer doin’. That art. You know. Whatever you call it,” Lee replies, as Shepard, who represented manliness and masculine achievement during his lifetime as an actor, writer, and rancher, questions the very notion of storytelling. When they’re trying to outline the narrative, which Austin thinks is bad, Lee says, “What? It’s too what? It’s too real! That what ya’ mean, isn’t it? It’s too much like real life!” Austin answers, “It’s not like real life! It’s not enough like real life. Things don’t happen like that.”

In the second half of the play, the brothers basically switch places in a riotous swap of psyches and body movement. Even Mimi Lien’s long horizontal set, meant to evoke a widescreen movie, is divided in two, one side a kitchen, the other an alcove with plants and a table with a typewriter. The pairs of cherries on the wallpaper are a particularly deft touch, evoking testicles as well as how brothers are naturally stuck with each other. “I always wondered what’d be like to be you,” Lee admits, to which Austin explains, “And I used to say to myself, ‘Lee’s got the right idea. He’s out there in the world and here I am. What am I doing?” In True West, Shepard, who had the public persona of a rugged man’s man, a shining example of the American male, delves into the dual nature of identity and art, separating who we are from who we want to be, what’s real from what’s fantasy. California is home to Hollywood, the ultimate myth maker, as well as the empty desert and vast landscapes where cowboys roam the land. While Austin writes about romance, we never learn anything about his relationship with his family; the only things that exist for him are written on pages. Lee is living a rough-and-tumble life but suddenly wants to slow down and set it down on paper. It is as if they are enacting the two sides of Shepard himself. All hell breaks loose at the conclusion, which is as hysterical as it is horrifying, leaving you both exhausted and exhilarated, exploring the mythology of your own identity and family bonds.

BOESMAN AND LENA

Boesman (Sahr Ngaujah) and Lena (Zainab Jah) arrive in the middle of nowhere in stark Fugard revival at the Signature (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 17, $35
www.signaturetheatre.org

For its fiftieth anniversary, South African playwright and director Yaël Farber reimagines Athol Fugard’s 1969 Boesman and Lena as an anti-Apartheid Waiting for Godot at the Signature, where it opens tonight and continues through March 17. Coincidentally, Farber’s fierce adaptation of Mies Julie, which transports August Strindberg’s Miss Julie to South Africa in 2012, is being performed at Classic Stage through March 10. At the Signature, the audience enters the Alice Griffin Jewel Box, where a large translucent plastic tarp flutters across the front of the stage like a sad, empty flag, blocking most of the set from view, except for the people in the center of the first row, who have to go under it to sit down. Boesman (Sahr Ngaujah) and Lena (Zainab Jah) come in through the aisles, laden with heavy bags that look like garbage, carrying their physical and metaphorical burdens with them. They are homeless, looking for a place to rest their weary, worn-out bodies. Boesman tears down the tarp, revealing a barren landscape in the middle of nowhere, the mud flats of the Swartkops River, save for one bare tree, echoing Samuel Beckett’s Godot. Susan Hilferty’s dark, drab set creates just the right atmosphere of dread; Hilferty also designed the appropriately ratty costumes for the play, which was inspired by an actual incident that Fugard experienced in 1965.

“Why did you walk so hard? In a hurry to get here? Jesus, Boesman! What’s here?” Lena asks as Boesman sets up a makeshift camp in the liminal space. “Look at us! Boesman and Lena with the sky for a roof again. What you waiting for?” While he tries to set up a place for them to sleep using the tarp and the tree, she rambles on about the sad circumstances of their life, which annoys him to no end. “‘When she puts down her bundle, she’ll start her rubbish.’ You did,” he says. “Rubbish?” she asks. “That long turd of nonsense that comes out when you open your mouth!” he replies. They bicker like George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, although she does most of the complaining. Lena: “This is a lonely place. Just us two. Talk to me.” Boesman: “I’ve got nothing left to say to you. Talk to yourself.” Lena: “I’ll go mad.” Boesman: “What do you mean ‘go’ mad?” But behind it all is the unspoken state of the nation, a South Africa mired in racism, where the white minority brutally rules over the dispossessed black majority.

Boesman (Sahr Ngaujah) mock-threatens Lena (Zainab Jah) as the Old African (Thomas Silcott) sits quietly in Boesman and Lena (photo by Joan Marcus)

A third person arrives, a slow-moving, raggedy Old African (Thomas Silcott) who mumbles in his tribal Xhosa language, which neither Boesman nor Lena understands. (The script translates his dialogue; he essentially explains that he is looking for his relatives but got lost.) Boesman is not about to share what little they have with the old man, or Outa, as Boesman calls him (he also refers to him with the offensive slang term “kaffir”), but Lena has sympathy for his situation. “To hell! He doesn’t belong to us,” Boesman cries out. “There was plenty of times his sort gave us water on the road,” Lena says. The couple keep up their war of words, arguing about happiness, geography, names, and dogs as they soldier on with what little they have. Lena also shows the Old African the bruises she has from where Boesman hits her. “And now? What’s going to happen now?” Boesman asks. “Is something going to happen now?” Lena responds. It’s both a pure Beckett moment as well as a commentary on how their miserable lives, and the lives of all the black and brown people of South Africa, are not about to change for the better any time soon.

Three lost souls try to escape the darkness of their world in Signature revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

Ngaujah (Mlima’s Tale, Fugard’s The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek at the Signature) and Jah (School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play, Eclipsed) fully embody the desperation of their characters, a pair of lost souls with nowhere to go. The roles have previously been played onstage by Keith David and Lynne Thigpen in 1992 at City Center, on film by Danny Glover and Angela Bassett in 2000, and, in the original 1969 South African theatrical production, by Fugard and Yvonne Bryceland, both of whom are white; Glynn Day, who is also white, portrayed the Old African, reportedly in blackface. Silcott (Fugard’s Coming Home; Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk) is unrecognizable as the old man, beaten down to the point where he is practically invisible, fading into the darkness.

By having the characters wander through the aisles several times, Farber (Salomé, Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise) is implicating each one of us in their futility, as if Boesman and Lena are homeless and searching for a warm bed in an overcrowded New York City or refugees seeking a new life in an America that no longer welcomes them with open arms. Boesman treats the Old African much the same way. While there is hope and optimism in Godot, which has more than its fair share of comedic moments, the future is bleak for Boesman and Lena. “Now’s the time to laugh. This is also funny. Look at us!” Lena says, but their meager existence is no joke. This is the sixth Fugard play the Signature has produced as part of his ongoing residency since the company moved to its current building in 2012, including Blood Knot, The Train Driver, and Master Harold . . . and the Boys, and all those involved, from the cast and crew to the audience, have clearly benefited from so much time spent with Fugard.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: ACTUALLY, WE’RE F**KED

actually

ACTUALLY, WE’RE F**CKED
Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 7, $55-$95
212-989-2020
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

If you’ve been paying attention at all to what’s going on around the globe these days, you might very well think that the world has finally, truly gone to hell in a handbasket. That’s the theory behind Actually, We’re F**ked, debuting at the Cherry Lane this week. Mairin Lee, Keren Lugo, Ben Rappaport, and Gabriel Sloyer star as millennials who want to do something about it — until a surprise changes their future. The play is written by Emmy nominee Matt Williams (Bruce Lee Is Dead and I’m Not Feeling Too Good Either, Jason and the Nun) and directed by Obie winner John Pasquin (Moonchildren, Landscape of the Body); the two men have previously collaborated on the Tim Allen television series Home Improvement, with Williams one of the creators and Pasquin a producer and director on the first two seasons. Williams was also the creator of Roseanne and a writer and producer for The Cosby Show, while Pasquin’s working relationship with Allen continued on the movies The Santa Clause and Jungle 2 Jungle and the current series Last Man Standing. Williams is the secretary of the Cherry Lane, which is owned by his wife, artistic director Angelina Fiordellisi. The set is by Robin Vest, with costumes by Theresa Squire, lighting by Paul Miller, sound by ML Dogg/MuTTT, and projections by Brad Peterson.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Actually, We’re F**ked runs February 26 through April 7 (with a March 7 opening) at the Cherry Lane, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, phone number, and favorite play or movie with a curse in the title to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, February 28, at 3:00 pm to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.