this week in theater

THE THANKSGIVING PLAY

Greg Keller, Jennifer Bareilles, Jeffrey Bean, and Margo Seibert star in The Thanksgiving Play at Playwrights Horizon (photo by Joan Marcus)

Playwrights Horizons
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 2, $49-$89
www.playwrightshorizons.org

I am not a fan of Thanksgiving. But I am a fan of Larissa FastHorse’s extremely funny and spot-on The Thanksgiving Play, which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons. Not to sound holier than thou, but I’ve long given up stuffing my face with turkey and watching football while celebrating genocide on the fourth Thursday of November; my pescatarian wife and I try very hard to leave the country every Thanksgiving weekend just to avoid it all — and to not have to choose whose family we will be going to each year. But you don’t have to love or hate the holiday to get a huge kick out of the show. After years of being told that her plays were uncastable because theaters had no access to Native American actors, Sicangu Lakota playwright FastHorse came up with the rather simply titled The Thanksgiving Play, a wild and woolly farce that takes on important indigenous issues — in real life and on the stage — while featuring four characters played by white-presenting performers. The festivities begin with a preamble, as three members of the cast (Jennifer Bareilles, Margo Seibert, and Greg Keller), dressed in pilgrim costumes, and the fourth (Jeffrey Bean), in a giant, silly turkey outfit, stand in front of the curtain and sing “On the First Day of Thanksgiving” (sample verse: “On the third day of Thanksgiving the natives gave to me / three Native headdresses, two turkey gobblers, and a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch”). At the end of the song, the turkey explains, “Teacher’s note: This song can do more than teach counting. I divide my students into Indians and pilgrims so the Indians can practice sharing.”

Logan (Jennifer Bareilles) and Jaxton (Greg Keller) have a slight disagreement as they collaborate on school play about first Turkey Day (photo by Joan Marcus)

Ridiculously PC drama teacher Logan (Bareilles) is starting rehearsals for the annual school Thanksgiving play, which will star her boyfriend, Jaxton (Keller), a yoga practitioner and street performer; Caden (Bean), an elementary school history teacher and amateur actor and writer; and Alicia (Seibert), an ambitious, if not very bright, LA actress whose resume contains numerous Disney roles at theme parks and the like. Logan wants to make a devised piece about the first Thanksgiving, with all four of them participating in the show’s development. While Caden seeks to delve deep, deep, deep into the history of Thanksgiving and Alicia is looking forward to a lovely story with all the trimmings, Logan and Jaxton are absurdly careful about each word, each prop (the costumes and puppets are by Tilly Grimes), each plot point. “We start with this pile of jagged facts and misguided governmental policies and historical stereotypes about race, then turn all that into something beautiful and dramatic and educational for the kids,” Jaxton explains. Meanwhile, Logan, who is worried that she will lose her job if the play goes wrong, calls Thanksgiving “the holiday of death.” Logan and Jaxton keep painting themselves into a corner as they reject characters, dialogue, costumes, and situations that they believe are racist, ethnocentric, stereotypical, and/or insulting to indigenous peoples, especially since their play is being written and performed without any input at all from Native Americans. And the further into the corner they recede, the more unlikely it is they will ever be able to accomplish anything.

Caden (Jeffrey Bean) has trouble keeping his eyes off Alicia (Margo Seibert) in sociopolitical farce by Larissa FastHorse (photo by Joan Marcus)

Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God, Present Laughter) lets Bareilles, Bean, Seibert, and Keller run rampant on Wilson Chin’s schoolroom set, which includes posters of student productions of some rather adult shows. The farce gets out of hand at times, working better when it stays more grounded, since it is easy to believe that there are people like this who are so politically correct that they trap themselves in inaction and an innate inability to say anything, unaware of how to actually be an ally. One of the main reasons why The Thanksgiving Play, which runs until the day after the holiday [ed. note: it has now been extended through December 2], works so well, despite the occasional bumpiness, is because we recognize parts of ourselves in the four characters; of course, off-Broadway audiences tend to be significantly liberal — and often privileged — terrified of uttering or doing the wrong thing when it comes to people of color yet rather clueless about their own giant blind spots. Thus, there are moments in the show when you are likely to hesitate before laughing, wondering whether you are being insensitive by enjoying yourself too much.

FastHorse, a former television writer and ballet dancer, has dedicated her playwrighting career to establishing an authentic indigenous voice in American theater, as seen in such previous shows as Cherokee Family Reunion, Urban Rez, and What Would Crazy Horse Do? But she has met significant resistance; even her casting note for The Thanksgiving Play is controversial: “[People of color] who can pass as white should be considered for all characters.” She is attempting to level the playing field by increasing diversity and pushing an own-voices sensibility. The Thanksgiving Play, in which all participants, cast and crew, are new to Playwrights Horizons, is a big step in that direction. Be sure to get to the theater early so you can check out the exhibition on the third floor, a collection of works curated by Emily Johnson, who is of Yup’ik descent, from Johnson and Maggie Thompson’s “Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars” quilts and Shan Goshorn’s “The Value of Integrity” container to Maria Hupfield’s “Solidarity Acknowledgment Banner” and “Plays to Be: all the plays by Indigenous playwrights not yet produced and/or not yet written,” such as A Rez’n in the Sun, Lasting of the Mohegans, Six Degrees of Blood Quantum, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Colony? Even the bathrooms are involved, displaying such quotes as this one from Winona LaDuke in 2017: “It is possible to have an entire worldview that does not relate to empire.” Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

HUNTER THEATER PROJECT: UNCLE VANYA

Uncle Vanya is presented in new streamlined adaptation at Hunter’s Kaye Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Kaye Theater, Hunter College
East 68th St. between Lexington & Park Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 18, $37 ($15 for students)
www.huntertheaterproject.org

Tony- and Obie-winning playwright Richard Nelson gives Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya the Apple and Gabriel family treatment in the inaugural production from Gregory Mosher’s Hunter Theater Project, which has been extended several times at the Kaye Theater at Hunter College, now running through November 18. In such plays as That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad about the Apples and Hungry and Women of a Certain Age about the Gabriels, writer-director Nelson tells family stories often centered around important events, taking place in the kitchen as everyone comes together to eat. This new adaptation of Chekhov’s 1898 play, translated by Nelson with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is set in the kitchen of the Serebryakóv country estate. As the audience enters the small theater, where they sit on all four sides, chairs and tables are piled at the center of Jason Ardizzone-West’s intimate set. The characters enter and, before speaking, arrange the room; it’s almost as if we’re sitting with them as food is served and the plot unfolds. Ványa (Jay O. Sanders), who manages the estate, is preparing for the visit of elderly professor Alexánder Serebryakóv (Jon DeVries) and his much younger wife, Eléna (Celeste Arias). A soft-spoken man, Ványa has feelings for Eléna, as does Mikhaíl Ástrov (Jesse Pennington), a local doctor. Sónya Alexándrovna (Yvonne Woods), the professor’s daughter by a previous marriage, assists Ványa; she is interested in the doctor, who is taken with Eléna. The household is run by Sónya’s former nanny, Marína (Kate Kearney-Patch), who is watched over by Sónya’s grandmother, Márya (Alice Cannon), Ványa’s mother. They calmly discuss life and beauty, love and happiness as well as finances, which are not in good shape. And then it all explodes.

Mikhaíl Ástrov (Jesse Pennington) and Ványa (Jay O. Sanders) share a passion in Chekhov classic (photo by Joan Marcus)

Shakespeare in the Park regular Sanders (The Sinner, Unexplored Interior), one of New York’s finest character actors and who played Richard Apple and George Gabriel in Nelson’s family plays, is a hulking, heartfelt, forthright, and decidedly American Vanya in this tender production; a bear of a man, he gently waits for his moment to erupt in a classic role previously played by such British royalty as Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Nicol Williamson, Tom Courtenay, Derek Jacobi, and Anthony Hopkins. And when he does finally let it out, his fury is something we can all identify with, the rage and anger we keep buried inside, desperate to release. Woods (Goodnight Children Everywhere, Franny’s Way) portrays Sónya with a haunting sadness, while Arias, who played Masha in Jaclyn Backhaus’s The Three Seagulls, or MASHAMASHAMASHA!, is a sweet-natured Eléna, who is not looking to stir up gossip or hurt anyone. The translation is direct and straightforward, streamlined to 110 minutes without intermission. Time and place are not essential here; Nelson instead focuses on the characters and the relationships, keeping it all right on point. With Uncle Vanya, the egalitarian Hunter Theater Project has gotten off to quite a start: There are no membership programs or VIP access; all tickets are $15 for students and $37 for everyone else. And don’t be misled by the affiliation with the college; the project is a fully professional venture, with students working the front of the house and ushering.

THE NAP

Dylan Spokes (Ben Schnetzer) is none too happy with what his mother (Johanna Day) has gotten him into in The Nap (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 11, $79-$199
thenapbroadway.com

You don’t have to know the slightest bit about snooker to have a jolly good time at The Nap, the rousing London transfer making its American premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 11. Written by Olivier Award nominee Richard Bean, who wrote the uproarious hit One Man, Two Guvnors, which exploded the career of a young James Corden, The Nap is a tense and very funny crime thriller built around the highly contested world of snooker, the nineteenth-century cue sport similar to pocket billiards and pool. Twenty-three-year-old Dylan Spokes (Ben Schnetzer) is on the rise, preparing for a big-time match. He’s practicing in the British Legion basement in Sheffield with his grumpy, not-too-bright father, the numbers-challenged and ersatz snooker historian Bobby (John Ellison Conlee). Dylan is an easygoing fellow who believes in self-actualization. “It’s the highest possible state of human happiness, when your mind and body come together in, like, a beautiful symphony,” he tells his father, a former amateur snooker player who doesn’t get it at all, responding, “Do you want an orange? Got a bag full.” They are unexpectedly visited by Mohammad Butt (Bhavesh Patel), who identifies himself as an integrity officer for the International Centre for Sport Security, and Eleanor Lavery (Heather Lind), of the National Crime Agency.

Dylan Spokes (Ben Schnetzer) gets a little too cozy with crime investigator Eleanor Lavery (Heather Lind) in Richard Bean’s The Nap (photo by Joan Marcus)

They claim that Dylan is involved in match fixing and global illegal betting, a charge he adamantly denies. “I am not vulnerable. I honour my game,” he declares. “Snooker is the result of a century of human negotiation. A celebration of cooperation and civilisation. It doesn’t exist other than in the hearts of players and fans.” After Mo and Eleanor leave, Dylan and Bobby are first joined by Dylan’s oh-so-stylish, fast-talking manager, Tony DanLino (Max Gordon Moore), then by Dylan’s wacky mother, Stella (Johanna Day), and her new boyfriend, Danny Killeen (Thomas Jay Ryan), a boring driving instructor. It turns out that Stella, Bobby’s ex, needs money, and she wants Dylan to get it for her — by going against his principles and throwing a frame. It turns out that Dylan has financial issues he wasn’t aware of; he’s in deeper than he ever realized, and the only way out is to listen to transgender gangster Waxy Bush (Alexandra Billings), who has a way with words. “Dylan, let me give you some advice,” she says. “Life, for us vertebrates, is a series of disappointments and appointments. The key to happiness is to forget your disappointments and remember your appointments; in fact, write them down, preferably in a dairy.” As Dylan’s matches with Abdul Fattah and Baghawi Quereshi (both played by former snooker champion Ahmed Aly Elsayed) approach, he has to decide where his loyalties lie and what he is willing to risk, and for whom.

The Nap features a pair of very tense, live snooker matches with champion Ahmed Aly Elsayed (photo by Joan Marcus)

The title of the show is a snooker term referring to the smoothness of the table, which Dylan explains to Eleanor early on. “Playing with the nap, the ball will run straight with the natural line,” he says. “Playing against the nap, the ball can deviate and drift off line. I play straight. I honour the god of snooker, and he, or let’s be fair, she, looks after me.” Bean (The Heretic, Harvest) and Tony-winning director Daniel Sullivan (The Little Foxes, Proof) honour the god of the stage in this triumphant comedy while not being afraid to deviate and drift off line. Snooker might be an individual sport, but theater requires significant collaboration, and The Nap demonstrates that in all facets. The ensemble, which also includes Ethan Hova as Seth and a snooker referee, is terrific, with a particular shout-out to American actor Ryan (Dance Nation, The Amateurs), one of the city’s most underrated and understated treasures. David Rockwell’s sets rotate from the dank legion basement to a historic hotel room, from a country hideout to a championship snooker match, complete with riotously funny voice-over commentary that is partially improvised. The snooker matches themselves are tense and exciting, occurring live onstage. But once again, it doesn’t matter what you think about sports and gambling, as Bean has plenty to say about dysfunctional families, straight and LGBTQ romance, the criminal element, and vegetarianism. The Nap is a champion on all counts, clearing the table, knocking every ball into the right pocket.

TICKET GIVEAWAY — KENNEDY: BOBBY’S LAST CRUSADE

David Arrow plays Bobby Kennedy in one-man show he also wrote (photo by Russ Rowland)

KENNEDY: BOBBY’S LAST CRUSADE
Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West 46th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through December 9, $55-$85 (use code KNDYGEN for discount)
866-811-4111
www.kennedybobbyslastcrusade.com
www.stclementsnyc.org

On June 6, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles during a presidential campaign stop. This month Bobby, the former US attorney general and, at the time of his death, New York senator, would have turned ninety-three. The new one-man show Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade honors the legacy of the man known as RFK upon the fiftieth anniversary of his murder. The world premiere at the Theatre at St. Clement’s was written by and stars David Arrow as Kennedy; “The Kennedys are a political dynasty and have had a lasting effect on America, and fifty years later the words of Bobby Kennedy need to be repeated so that we as Americans can remember that politics used to be about ideas and ideals, not about us versus them,” Arrow notes in a statement. The story focuses on Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign and is drawn from his public speeches and lesser-known private events; Arrow previously portrayed Kennedy in Jack Holmes’s solo show RFK, winning the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for his performance, topping Anna Deavere Smith, Steven Abbott, and Geoff Sobelle. The play is directed by Eric Nightengale, with set design by Jim Morgan and lighting by Miriam Crowe.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade runs through December 9 (with a November 8 opening) at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and favorite play involving a real-life politician to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, November 7, 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.

WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL: WAITING FOR GODOT

Druid’s Waiting for Godot shows up at Lincoln Center November 2-13 (photo by Matthew Thompson)

WAITING FOR GODOT
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College
November 2-13, $55-$95
www.lincolncenter.org
www.druid.ie

In his delightful one-man show On Beckett at the Irish Rep, Bill Irwin spends a significant portion of time discussing Samuel Beckett’s most famous play, Waiting for Godot, including delving into the correct pronunciation of “Godot.” In addition to GOD-oh and guh-DOH, Irwin brings up a third version, suggested to him by Irish Rep producing director Ciaran O’Reilly: godjo. From November 2 to 13, you can see how Ireland’s Druid theater company says the name when its widely hailed slapstick version of Waiting for Godot is presented at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College as part of Lincoln Center’s annual White Light Festival. (The Druid was last at Lincoln Center with DruidShakespeare in 2015, an epic work that brings together Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, and Henry V.) The comic reimagining features Garrett Lombard as Lucky, Aaron Monaghan as Estragon, Rory Nolan as Pozzo, and Marty Rea as Vladimir, with Nathan Reid and Jaden Pace alternating as the boy.

The play is helmed by Druid artistic director Garry Hynes, who won a Tony in 1998 for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, with sets and costumes by Francis O’Connor, lighting by James F. Ingalls, sound by Greg Clarke, and movement by Nick Winston. The 7:30 show on November 3 will be preceded by a 6:15 talk with Hynes and opera and theater producer, essayist, and consultant Robert Marx. The multidisciplinary White Light Festival continues through November 18 with such other productions as The Distant Light with the Latvian Radio Choir, conducted by Sigvards Kļava at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, The Creation with Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie at Alice Tully Hall, and Only the Sound Remains, composed by Kaija Saariaho and directed by Peter Sellars at the Rose Theater.

INDIA PALE ALE

Basminder “Boz” Batra (Shazi Raja) dreams of owning a bar in Madison, Wisconsin, in Jaclyn Backhaus’s India Pale Ale (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
Tuesday – Sunday through November 18, $69-$89
212-581-1212
indiapalealeplay.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Jaclyn Backhaus’s India Pale Ale takes on even greater meaning in the wake of the synagogue shooting that left eleven Jewish worshipers dead in Pittsburgh on October 27. Her follow-up to Men on Boats, which was about an 1869 expedition to the Grand Canyon, India Pale Ale, a Manhattan Theatre Club production that opened last week at City Center, shuttles between the current day in Raymond, Wisconsin, and a pirate ship traveling from Calcutta to England in 1823. Desperate to try something new, twenty-nine-year-old Basminder “Boz” Batra (Shazi Raja) is secretly planning on leaving her extremely close Punjabi community to open a bar in Madison, Wisconsin, near the college. She dreams of being like one of her ancestors, Brownbeard (Alok Tewari), a wild pirate and explorer who led a mutiny of an East India Company ship two centuries before. “His cargo was beer / as mine’ll be! / In my bar / in Madison, Wisconsin,” she declares in a pirate accent. “Aye, the lineage is full circle now. / Oim leaving home to see the world. / The world in this yar instance: / a bar that sells alcoholic drinks / in a place that is not here.” Boz, who recently broke off an engagement with Vishal Singh (Nik Sadhnani), has not yet told her rather traditional parents, Deepa (Purva Bedi) and Sunny (Tewari), or her younger brother, Iggy (Sathya Sridharan), who is engaged to Lovi (Lipica Shah), about the bar. Deepa actually finds out about Boz’s plans from her gossipy cousin, Simran Rayat (Angel Desai). Overseeing it all is the family matriarch, Sunny’s mother, Dadi Parminder (Sophia Mahmud), who imparts wisdom as necessary.

The Batra family prepares for langar following horrific tragedy in India Pale Ale (photo by Joan Marcus)

A year later, Boz is tending bar with only one patron, who she finds out is the lonely Tim (Nate Miller), described in the script as “just so white it’s honestly painful.” Tim is a stand-in for much of white society (and much of the City Center audience) when he assumes that Boz is an immigrant, not a second-generation American born and raised in Wisconsin, and she doesn’t make it easy for him to get out of the hole he keeps digging. “So like your family / what are they . . . like what are you / what are they / where are they from,” he says, stumbling over the words. She eventually decides to be friendly, as Tim seems to be harmless, not a dangerous bigot. It’s a powerful, critical scene that beautifully lays out what so much of the play is about. Their conversation is ultimately cut short when Vishal unexpectedly shows up to bring Boz back to Madison, as there’s been a terrible tragedy in their Sikh community. They return home, where the family is preparing langar, a traditional feast that will try to bring the community together following the awful event.

A scene between Tim (Nate Miller) and Basminder “Boz” Batra (Shazi Raja) plays a central role in Jaclyn Backhaus drama (photo by Joan Marcus)

Backhaus was inspired to write the play by the Muslim travel ban executive order Donald Trump signed as well as a real tragedy that took place in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in 2012. The contemporary scenes are poignant, funny, and heartfelt, but Backhaus and director Will Davis spend too much time on Brownbeard and his dancing pirates. Neil Patel’s set switches from the spare langar hall, with chairs and tables brought in and out, to the dark bar Boz runs, to a disco-like stage for the pirates; Arnulfo Maldonado has fun with the costumes, ranging from traditional Punjabi clothing to wild pirate apparel. Raja (Milk Like Sugar) excels as Boz, avoiding the stereotypical transitional figure that is found in so many plays involving a clash between the old and the new. She and Bedi (Dance Nation, An Ordinary Muslim) develop a wonderful rapport as the daughter-mother characters. The play is dragged down by late pedantic speeches by Deepa and Sunny that are wholly unnecessary, merely explaining what we’ve already seen. Otherwise, India Pale Ale is a compelling drama that offers new ways to look at shocking, all-too-real events that continue the hatred overwhelming America.

FIREFLIES

Reverend Charles Emmanuel Grace (Khris Davis) and his wife, Olivia (DeWanda Wise), take a hard look at their life in Fireflies (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 11, $45-$65
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

Donja R. Love’s Fireflies is a heartbreaking, eerily relevant drama about bigotry and hate, desire and passion. The second in the Afro-Queer playwright’s trilogy of the black experience in America — Sugar in Our Wounds dealt with slavery, while the forthcoming In the Middle takes place during the Black Lives Matter movement — Fireflies is set in the fall of 1963, at the rise of the civil rights movement. Reverend Charles Emmanuel Grace (Khris Davis) has just given a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, about the four black girls who were killed in the 16th St. Baptist Church bombing. (The preacher’s name, but not the character itself, was inspired by Harlem evangelist Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace, who died in 1960.) A big, bold man, Charles comes home to his wife, Olivia Grace (DeWanda Wise), who was just sneaking a smoke. Olivia is deeply troubled by what’s happening in the world, her body suddenly shuddering at certain moments. “You still seeing fire and hearing bombs in your head?” Charles asks, and she answers yes. It’s as if she can feel every tragedy as it happens. Meanwhile, the sky, which hovers in the background throughout the play, behind Arnulfo Maldonaldo’s note-perfect 1960s kitchen set, does indeed often become overcast in a bloodred color. And slowly, what appears to be a beautiful, natural love between husband and wife becomes something else as they talk about having a child and each reveals a dark secret, threatening their supposedly idyllic life.

A bloodred sky hovers over Donja R. Love’s Fireflies at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Fireflies features terrific performances from Davis (The Royale, Sweat) and Wise (She’s Gotta Have It, Sunset Baby) as a couple struggling to preserve their family in times of crisis, troubles that Olivia can’t shake. “Last night I had a dream the sky wasn’t on fire anymore,” she says. “The sky was filled with . . . fireflies. . . . So I start to pray. I ask, what does it all mean? And I hear him. I hear God. His voice is real faint. I was struggling to hear Him. But I do. He says, ‘Each firefly is one of my colored kids flying home.’ That scare me even more because it was so many. I would much rather have fire. I’m used to that. I’m used to the bombings, and crosses burning, and all of that. I’m not used to seeing God’s children fly home.” That brief monologue captures the immense fear still felt by so many people of color and minorities, especially in light of the neverending shootings in churches, schools, and synagogues across America in the twenty-first century. Directed by Saheem Ali (Sugar in Our Wounds, Kill Move Paradise), the play, which continues at the Atlantic through November 11, features a final monologue that is far too preachy and melodramatic, laying things out too simply, and the scenes in the porch can be physically awkward and jarring. But throughout it all the blue sky keeps turning red, which it still seems to do more than fifty years later.