this week in theater

FEMINIST FOIBLES: AN AMERICAN DAUGHTER AT THE SIGNATURE

An all-star cast cannot save thirtieth-anniversary revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter (photo by Joan Marcus)

AN AMERICAN DAUGHTER
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 20, $59-$149
lafemmetheatreproductions.org

With about ten minutes to go before intermission of La Femme Theatre Productions’ thirtieth-anniversary revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter, a group of about a half dozen people sitting behind me got up and left. I can’t say I didn’t want to join them, but it is my responsibility to stay through entire shows, which can certainly proceed to better — or worse — second acts.

At intermission, more people left and didn’t come back.

I can’t say I blamed them, as the two-and-half-hour play did not improve but instead devolved even further.

A timely topic, an excellent roster of actors, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, and a gorgeous set could not save the dull and lifeless narrative. The most excitement came during the second act, when a woman over my right shoulder let out a series of loud, poignant gasps that echoed throughout the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Irene Diamond Stage; much of the audience twittered, wondering what show she was watching.

An American Daughter followed Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles in 1988 and The Sisters Rosensweig in 1992; the original June 1996 Seattle production starred Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Penny Fuller, Adam Arkin, and Liev Schreiber and moved the next year to Lincoln Center with Kate Nelligan, Elizabeth Marvel, a Tony-winning Lynne Thigpen, Hal Holbrook, and Fuller. The play was inspired by something Hillary Clinton said while campaigning for her husband, Bill, who was on the presidential trail. Defending her career — and angering housewives across the country — she stated, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.”

In An American Daughter, Dr. Lyssa Dent Hughes (Jean Lichty), an avowed liberal, has been nominated for the position of surgeon general. The former president of Georgetown Hospital and a national advocate for women’s health issues, Dr. Hughes has a plan centered on education, information, and prevention to provide affordable health care to every American man, woman, and child. She is married to Georgetown sociology professor Walter Abrahmson (Robert Sean Leonard), author of the popular book Towards a Lesser Elite, who fully supports her. Her best friend since high school, Dr. Judith B. Kaufman (Montego Glover), is a Black and Jewish oncology professor at Georgetown Medical School who specializes in treating breast cancer.

Lyssa is perhaps most well known as the daughter of longtime powerful conservative Indiana senator Alan Hughes (Dakin Matthews), who is on his fourth wife, the elegant Charlotte, also known as Chubby (Mary Beth Peil). Lyssa and Alan might not agree politically but they have a strong, close relationship.

Always hovering around Walter and Lyssa’s lovely home is their good friend Morrow McCarthy (Ryan Spahn), a controversial, acerbic Washington Post columnist who is both gay and antichoice.

The media plays a key role in the attacks on a woman surgeon general nominee in An American Daughter (photo by Joan Marcus)

One of Walter’s prized former students, Quincy Quince (Carmen Zilles), drops by unannounced one afternoon; Quincy has become a celebrity since the publication of her book The Prisoner of Gender and is drawn to the limelight, especially when popular broadcaster Timber Tucker (Chris Ghaffari) and his cameraman kick off a series of interviews with Lyssa.

Lyssa’s nomination is immediately in jeopardy when Morrow lets it slip that Lyssa apparently ignored a jury duty notice and she remarks to Timber about her mother, “She was the kind of ordinary Indiana housewife who took pride in her icebox cakes and cheese pimento canapés.”

All hell breaks loose as people jockey for position, seek to protect or attack Lyssa, flirt with one another, and argue over a woman’s place in society. It all feels like much ado about nothing, whether it’s 1997 or 2026. Even if that’s part of the point — that it doesn’t take a lot to bring down brilliant women about to acquire some kind of power — the controversies inherent in the play ring false and are overly manufactured and manipulated.

The problems extend to the forced musical choices; the play begins with the hit song “You’re Sixteen,” a creepy tune about a man in love with a sixteen-year-old girl, while Walter is a big Beach Boys fan, which disappoints Quincy, who explains, “All that California crap is so limited in positive body imagery for women.” This play does not rely on subtlety in any way.

The revival was cobbled together from an unpublished second act and eight versions of the script, including from the 2000 Lifetime television movie featuring Christine Lahti, Tom Skerritt, Jay Thomas, Mark Feuerstein, and Thigpen. The result is an uneven pace and choppy transitions that director Sarna Lapine (Call Me Izzy, Little Women) is unable to smooth out. The impressive collection of award-winning pros seems lost, starting with Lichty, La Femme’s founding executive director, who is seriously miscast; nearly every performer is noticeably either too young or too old for their role. They wander aimlessly around Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s pristine Georgetown living room, the former home of general and president Ulysses S. Grant, as if it’s representative of the United States itself; in fact, Lyssa is named after her great-great-grandfather, and the family owns a treasured letter Grant sent to his wife, Julia, from Vicksburg, which is teased throughout the play.

At one point, discussing Grant’s failures and achievements, the senator says to Tucker, “We’re human, Timber, that’s what’s so timeless about Grant: His foibles are our foibles. He was a great American hero, imperfect like all of us.”

In 2015, I called Pam McKinnon’s Broadway revival of The Heidi Chronicles “a kind of tepid time-capsule experience that lacks energy and fervor.” Unfortunately, An American Daughter is much of the same, not timeless but certainly imperfect, overstuffed with foibles that feel dated and irrelevant today.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THEATER AS A HOLY SPACE: THE SAVIORS AT THE ATLANTIC

Paul (Julius Rinzel) and Michael (Ivan Howe) experience challenges as confirmation approaches in The Saviors (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

THE SAVIORS
Atlantic Theater Company, Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 15, $56.50-$111.50
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

“I didn’t know you could do that — that you could argue the content of a play in the form of it,” theater director Jack Serio told American Theatre magazine in June 2023 about his reaction to seeing Ivo van Hove’s 2014 Scenes from a Marriage at New York Theatre Workshop, an immersive rendering of the 1973 Ingmar Bergman miniseries.

Over the last five years, Serio has argued the content of a play in the form of it across more than half a dozen unique productions, leading up to his latest success, The Saviors, extended through August 15 at the Atlantic.

Unlike theater, film is a director’s discipline. A movie is almost never identified as belonging to the writer, or even the star, but to the director: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. In those cases, the directors are also the writers.

Quick: Who wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, or Ridley Scott’s Alien? Not the directors. Spike Lee hasn’t penned a solo screenplay in more than twenty-five years, Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa had cowriters on most of their projects, and David Fincher has never been credited as a screenwriter. That does not take away from their filmmaking prowess but merely points out that it is the director who is the guiding force.

The same cannot be said for the stage, where the author is king. A play or musical is almost never never identified as belonging to the director, or even the star, but to the writer: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire.

Quick: Who directed such Tony winners as Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, David Ajmi’s Stereophonic, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, or Bess Wohl’s Liberation?

Of course, one of the unique allures of theater is how a director can take an existing play or musical and reshape it, make it their own, whether it’s by William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Tom Stoppard, Noël Coward, or Rodgers & Hammerstein; screenplays are written with very specific action cues, while most plays, aside from those by Samuel Beckett and maybe a handful of others, include few if any stage directions. Awards are given out for best revivals of a play or musical but not for best movie remake.

And then comes Serio.

The NYU Tisch graduate is a master of intimacy and space. For Ken Urban’s Danger and Opportunity at East Village Basement, a limited audience was seated against the walls of a living room. Uncle Vanya took place in a private Flatiron loft for forty people at a time. For Joey Merlo’s On Set with Theda Bara at the Brick, thirty audience members sat around a long, rectangular wooden table surrounded by lamps and mirrors. For Ruby Thomas’s The Animal Kingdom at the Connelly Theater Upstairs, the small audience was packed in so tight it was hard to breathe.

Even with more traditional setups, Serio — and, of course, the scenic designers — creates visceral experiences that feel private and personal, from Rita Kalnejais’s This Beautiful Future at the Cherry Lane, with its curved walls and additional area at the back of the stage, to Samuel D. Hunter’s Grangeville at the Signature, where the two actors felt like they were miles apart when on opposite sides of the spare, dark set.

Last year, Serio teamed with actor Bubba Weiler for Weiler’s stunning debut as a playwright, Well, I’ll Let You Go, a tale of grief and community for ninety-nine people at a time, originally produced at the vast six-thousand-square-foot Space at Irondale, a former church Sunday school.

Julian (Stanley Simons), a troubled soul, seeks sanctuary in The Saviors (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Weiler and Serio are now back together for the world premiere of The Saviors at the Linda Gross Theater, housed in a nineteenth-century Gothic Revival building that was formerly the parish house of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Three-time Tony winner David Zinn has transformed the theater into a church, with a spare but pristine altar, stained-glass windows, iconographic statuary, an organ, and a hymn board.

Two altar boys in white cassocks run onto the stage, racing to extinguish the candles. Paul (Julius Rinzel), fourteen, and Michael (Ivan Howe), thirteen, are best friends. The names are meant to be biblical: The archangel Michael was a guardian and fierce defender of God, while the apostle Paul was a missionary who wrote between seven and fourteen books of the Bible.

They are preparing for their confirmation project in which they select a saint to honor; Michael is considering Saint George while also suggesting that Paul be Saint Michael and Michael be Saint Paul, but, as we are soon to find out, the two boys are not interchangeable. Michael fantasizes about being a martyr, telling Paul, “Martyrs go straight to heaven and like . . . that’s the whole point. And then maybe I’d even become a saint, which would be like, whoa. And then like fifty years from now some kid would pick me for their confirmation and that would just be. . . . I think about that all the time.” Paul does not.

Their conversation is suddenly interrupted by a loud noise; a ragged man with a backpack has entered the church, coming down the right side of the theater aisle, shocking the audience as well as the boys. About ten years older than Michael and Paul, Julian (Stanley Simons) is clearly distraught and in need of support, especially with a snowstorm about to strike at any minute. (He could be named for the apostate Julian, the fourth-century Roman emperor who rejected Christianity and fought a civil war against his cousin Emperor Constantius II.)

“I just want to pray,” he says. Michael wants him to leave immediately, mentioning that there are nearby Protestant and Presbyterian churches he can try, but Paul offers him shelter, and Julian gratefully accepts, upsetting Michael.

Meanwhile, Michael has chosen “church MVP” Judy (Crystal Finn) as his confirmation sponsor, telling her, “I want someone that could like actually really help me because like — Like I want to take it serious and I was just thinking that your son is like Jesus — and if he’s Jesus then that makes you Mary and Mary is like my favorite person of all time besides Jesus, and so like — who better to sponsor me than Mary?” In the Deuterocanon, Judith is the Jewish widow who saves Jerusalem.

As confirmation approaches, the characters reassess their connections to God, Christianity, and one another.

Judy (Crystal Finn) leads Michael (Ivan Howe) through a Christian meditation in world premiere at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Theater has long been compared to church. “The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart,” Pulitzer Prize–wining playwright Marsha Norman said. “The theatre is your pulpit, it is your church, and you want to be a priest in your church and that’s what I believe in,” actor, playwright, and director Steven Berkoff explained to the Telegraph in 2015. Actor Brian Cox told Variety in 2023 that he believes “theater is the one true church, because it’s the church of the human experience. Everything else is about belief systems that we bring in. . . . But the theater is about our relationship directly with something which is so personal, and so immediate, and it’s the effect that it has on the people watching.”

Weiler is a former altar boy who attended Catholic school and now considers himself an agnostic; he and Serio, who also went to Catholic school, met at NYU’s Playwrights Horizons Theater School, where Weiler was Serio’s TA in his freshman playwriting class. Together they have turned the Linda Gross Theater into a holy space that immerses the audience into its aura. Nearly every scene begins with either Michael or Paul changing the numbers on the board, as if what is to come has been crafted from hymns. The seats feel like pews when the characters move through the aisles. Serio makes expert use of every corner of the stage, while Weiler’s angelic dialogue echoes like the Word made flesh. There is a breathtaking twist that helps elevate the ninety-minute play to the next level, although there are a few conventional, dare I say preachy, plot developments that fail to resonate.

The script calls for the roles of Michael and Paul to be portrayed by “age-authentic actors,” and Howe (Eric, Oliver!) and Rinzel (The Antiquities, A Beautiful Voice), respectively, are indeed young teens who capture the nascent spiritual awakening of adolescent boys learning how to make decisions for themselves and whether they can trust adults and religion, from the sheer joy of horsing around to the more serious aspects of responsibility. Finn (Cold War Choir Practice, Birthday Candles) is effective as the church lady hiding a secret, and Simons (The Iron Claw, Mile End Kicks), whose Playbill bio says he has “crippling stage fright,” makes an impressive theater debut as Julian, that fear perhaps assisting him in displaying his character’s deeply felt unease.

Half a millennia ago, French theologian and pastor John Calvin wrote, “The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were — the most conspicuous part of it.”

Wherever Serio sets up his pulpit next, the faithful, including me, are sure to follow him and his orchestra.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE SINGULARITY APPROACHES: DISRUPTION AT THE SIGNATURE

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nick (John David Washington) offers “the opportunity of a lifetime” to a group of old friends in Disruption (photo by Emilio Madrid)

DISRUPTION
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 27, $99-$176
www.disruptionplay.com

“To this day, I remain convinced of this basic philosophy: no matter what quandaries we face — business problems, health issues, relationship difficulties, as well as the great scientific, social, and cultural challenges of our time — there is an idea that can enable us to prevail,” American computer scientist Ray Kurzweil wrote in his 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. “Furthermore, we can find that idea. And when we find it, we need to implement it.”

One of the great fears of this era is the implementation of artificial intelligence and our growing dependence on AI — in addition to grave concerns over the singularity, the potential for AI to develop beyond human control, take over our lives, and, perhaps, ultimately destroy us.

Numerous recent plays have considered where that can lead us, including Matthew Libby’s Data, Olivia Haller’s Loneliness Was a Pandemic, and Tjaša Ferme’s Bioadapted, none of which are comedies with particularly happy endings.

The latest to offer its take on the future of AI technology is Andrew Stein’s engrossing Disruption, making its American premiere at the Pershing Square Signature Center following its 2023 debut in London. But Stein and director Hersh Ellis don’t focus so much on the tech behind AI as on the entrepreneurs and computer scientists who keep expanding it — and the humans who use it. In many ways, it’s a contemporary domestic drama disguised as a high-tech thriller.

Successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nick (John David Washington) has gathered his three best friends and their wives for a dinner in a private room in an upscale Tribeca restaurant. Ben (Conrad Ricamora) is a Columbia professor married to Suzie (Shaunette Renée Wilson), a therapist on the Upper West Side; they have no children by choice and are deciding whether their next vacation should be to the Galápagos or Machu Picchu. Barry (Jason Ralph) is a surgeon married to Mia (Irene Sofia Lucio), a photographer; they also have no children and are contemplating buying a brownstone in Park Slope but he is not sure they can afford it. And Paul (Joe Tippett) is an art director at a print magazine married to Jill (Elizabeth Stanley), who believes she sold out by becoming a corporate lawyer; they have two young children they are hoping to get into Fieldston but are also short on funds.

The three women are worried that Nick has come for their husbands, seeking investments in whatever his latest venture is; the three men promise that they just want to see their old friend and hear him out, nothing more.

“Let’s not get seduced by Nick,” Mia says to Barry.

But seduction is the key part of Nick’s charm. And to up the ante, he has brought with him his gorgeous and brilliant new business partner, the younger Raven (Emma Kikue); she is twenty-seven while the others are in their late thirties and early forties.

Nick explains to his friends that he’s not after their money but is instead offering them “the opportunity of a lifetime.” He believes that their involvement will lead to easier, happier lives with fewer challenges. “The world is changing at a rate most people can’t comprehend. Computing capacity doubles every two years, you know what that means?” Nick asks. Raven responds, “People are fucked.” To which Nick adds, “Unless . . . they embrace technology.”

Suzie is having none of it, leading to an exchange with Ben that gets to the heart of the narrative.

Suzie: I hate how technology has made us so connected to everything except ourselves. This obsession with making everything faster and easier. As if that’s inherently better.
Ben: It’s called progress.
Suzie: No. It’s not. It’s not progress. It’s something else. Something insidious.
Ben: It’s life’s speeding up. That’s all.
Suzie: The new shiny object that replaces something tried and true isn’t necessarily better. Disruption for the sake of disruption can’t be the goal.
Ben: When you improve one thing, you eliminate another. That’s life. The herd gets trimmed. . . .
Suzie: Our souls are being gutted. Which isn’t progress. It’s programming. And I know I keep saying this, but no one seems to notice. Or give a shit.
Ben: Except you.
Suzie: I don’t think we have any idea how much we’re being manipulated.

Disruption takes place in a dark, high-tech oblong space with the audience on two sides (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Faust meets The Big Chill in Disruption, a kind of newfangled couples drama in which men and women contemplate their future — personal and professional, individual and as pairs — only this time through the lens of an AI algorithm that may be able to help guide them, or control them. But it deals with more than what Suzie refers to as Nick’s “God Machine” and free will; it’s about how each of us faces the daily trials and tribulations of life and how we go about trying to solve our problems, ignore them, blame them on others, or look for the easy way out. The algorithm is not just a technological advance but a metaphor for how everyone attempts to get a leg up at one time or another, sometimes compromising our ethics and ideals.

Zoë Hurwitz’s set is a dark oblong open on its two long sides, where the audience sits, making us feel complicit in what is happening onstage, as if we’re part of the algorithm. In between scenes, the actors wheel in chairs, tables, and other furniture items while electronic music softly drones and the floor of the oblong lights up with numbers, letters, circles that glow red, and synapses connecting like constellations. The lighting, by Reza Behjat, occasionally reveals a glass-fronted room where Raven operates the algorithm; the sound, which at one point includes creepy echoes, is by Caroline Eng, with contemporary costumes by Hurwitz, with one big surprise at the end.

The ensemble is terrific; each upper-middle-class couple is believable if not wholly unique, with Washington (The Piano Lesson) and Kikue (God Said This, Fruiting Bodies) as their advisers who may or may not have their best interest in mind.

About halfway through the show, Barry tells Nick how his shoelace broke in between patients and, as he was fixing it, he received an ad on his phone for a shoe repair store a block away. “I didn’t say anything. Didn’t search anything . . . it was like someone knew exactly what had happened.” Nick responds, “They probably did.”

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

Don’t be surprised if, after reading this review, you get an ad on your phone or on social media for the play, guiding you to get tickets.

Kurzweil also wrote in The Singularity Is Near, “The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality. If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations.”

Be careful what you wish for, especially when it comes to AI.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FLY, ROBIN, FLY: THE LOVED ONES AT THE IRISH REP

Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones explores loss, grief, betrayal, and rebirth (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE LOVED ONES
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through August 2, $55-$125
irishrep.org

Erica Murray’s The Loved Ones, making its New York City premiere at the Irish Rep through August 2, has a terrific setup. It takes place in an open-plan kitchen/living room in a farmhouse in the Irish countryside, where Nell (Maryann Plunkett) lives alone following the tragic loss of her son, Robin. Although she values her privacy, Nell is in for a crowded, complicated weekend. A young, pregnant Englishwoman, Gabby (Alana Raquel Bowers), has shown up with a suitcase and a backpack, claiming she is having Robin’s baby, explaining that she was one of his students at university. Nell doesn’t believe her son would have done such a thing.

“Well, I don’t know you, do I? You just landed in here and could be a psychopath for all I know. You could be someone who does this all the time, tricking vulnerable mothers with dead sons into giving you money,” Nell says. Gabby, who has not told her family about the baby, responds, “I’m sorry to be ruining your perfect memory of him, really I am, but it’s not like I had a lot of other options. This is his mess as much as it is mine, and since he’s not around to deal with it . . .”

Nell tries to convince Gabby to stay somewhere else, as Robin’s widow, Orla (Clare O’Malley), is on her way to spend a few days at the house, bringing the urn with her late husband’s ashes so they can honor the six-month anniversary of his death. But before Nell can get rid of Gabby, Orla arrives, and Nell and Gabby decide not to tell Orla anything about Gabby’s connection to Robin.

Also, in order to make some extra money, Nell has converted part of the house into an Airbnb, currently occupied by a chatty American tourist, Cheryl-Ann (Donna Lynne Champlin), who keeps notes for her online review and has a penchant for insinuating herself into situations.

But as the melodrama unfurled across two hours and fifteen minutes (with intermission), I found myself predicting far too many lines of dialogue and plot twists; the show began feeling more like a Lifetime movie than a classic Irish tale with dark humor, secrets, and mystery. Directed by Nicola Murphy Dubey (Irishtown, Belfast Girls), the play felt tired and uninvolving, the acting inconsistent.

There were a few unexpected turns that I relished, but in the end it was too little too late. Murray (The Cat’s Mother, All Mod Cons) uses birds as metaphors throughout the show. “Birds can do what we all wish we could do:fly. Nine point nine times out of ten, when you ask someone what they’d like to be reincarnated as, they say a bird so they can fly,” avian enthusiast Cheryl-Ann tells Gabby.

Unfortunately, The Loved Ones never takes off.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NAMING NAMES: STIRRING REVIVAL TO CLOSE EARLY

Jason Babinsky, Michael McKean, and Adam Kantor play three HUAC committee members trying to root out communism in Hollywood in gripping docudrama (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN
New York City Center Stage I
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 2, $199
areyounowplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

An unexpectedly timely subject. An all-star cast. Few other major plays opening at the same time. A superb, well-reviewed production.

So what went wrong?

Anna D. Shapiro’s sparkling revival of Eric Bentley’s 1972 Are You Now or Have You Ever Been began previews at New York City Center Stage I on June 2 and was scheduled to run until September 11, but it recently announced it was closing early, on August 2. And that’s too bad, because it’s a gripping show that deserves a large audience. Maybe it never had a chance, billing itself as “An American Docudrama,” which sounds like something one would see on the History Channel. It could be that it attracted only older folks who are more familiar with the figures involved in serious events that shook the country in the late 1940s and 1950s. Maybe some people were turned off because the dialogue is taken verbatim from actual transcripts.

The play, the original full title of which is Are You Now or Have You Ever Been: The Investigations of Show-Business by the Un-American Activities Committee 1947–1958, takes place between 1947 and 1956, as the House Committee on Un-American Activities interviews Hollywood writers, actors, directors, and producers, grilling them on their ties to communism and the Soviet Union during the second Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism. The chairman (Michael McKean) and two aides (Jason Babinsky and Adam Kantor) famously ask each of them, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” and insist that they name names. Some were only too happy to turn in colleagues, either because they were trying to save their careers or were loyal to the cause — Sam G. Wood (Frederick Weller), Elia Kazan (Weller), and, in his follow-up appearance, Martin Berkeley (Brooks Ashmanskas, though I saw understudy Bill Timoney) — while others stood tall in the face of the questioning, defending their rights as American citizens to not succumb to the threats, some ridiculing the proceedings themselves.

When the chairman asks Abe Burrows (Norbert Leo Butz), “Would you call yourself a Communist?,” the playwright, director, and lyricist responds, “Not in my own heart, sir. But I’m here to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and there’s an element of truth in the statement that I was a Communist. There’s also an element of untruth.” The answer cost him the Pulitzer Prize for Guys and Dolls.

Lionel Stander (Bob Odenkirk) has some sharp words for HUAC in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

“My conscience will not permit me to use the name of another person,” Arthur Miller (Weller) tells the committee in no uncertain terms, while Jerome Robbins (Steven Boyer), when asked why he risked being a Hollywood outcast by naming names, explains, “I did it according to my conscience.”

Lionel Stander (Bob Odenkirk) rejects the existence of the committee, arguing, “I have knowledge of subversive action! I know of a group of fanatics who are trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without due process of law! I can cite instances! I can tell names. I am one of the first victims, if you are interested. A group of ex-Bundists, America Firsters, and anti-Semites, people who hate everybody, Negroes, minority groups, and most likely themselves —”

The sergeant-at-arms has to be called to remove Ring Lardner Jr. (Boyer) from the proceedings after he mocks the committee’s purpose. Smoking a cigarette, Lillian Hellman (Molly Ringwald) reads a brilliant statement on why she will talk to HUAC but not name names.

Paul Robeson (Harry Lennix) declares, “In 1946 I testified under oath I was not a member of the Communist Party. Since then I have refused to give testimony to that fact. There is no mystery in this. I have made it a matter of principle to refuse to comply with any demand that infringes upon the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

The most moving part of the show is the interrogation of Larry Parks (T. R. Knight), who was famous for having played Al Jolson in two films but whose career essentially ended after his testimony first in 1951, then in 1953. Emmy nominee Knight portrays Parks with a heartbreaking sincerity, squirming in his chair as he desperately tries to not name names, his voice and body trembling in fear. He believes that his flirtation with communism when he was younger was brief and irrelevant, skirting questions as the chairman attempts to break him.

“On naming names, it is my opinion that the few people I could name, these names would not be of service to the committee: I am sure you know who they are. These people are like myself, and I have done nothing wrong,” Parks insists. “I also feel that to be asked to name names like this is not American justice. We as Americans have all been brought up to believe it’s a bad thing to force a man to do this.”

Parks could be any one of us, in the 1950s or today.

In the past month, President Donald Trump has brought back the Red Scare, accusing many of those whose views deviate from his, especially but not limited to Democratic Socialists, of being communists.

“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” Trump said in a July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11. Uh, we’re not gonna let this happen to us. Believe me, we’re not letting it happen. Because communism is the enemy of free people everywhere, everywhere in the world. Never works. It’s the enemy of the Constitution.”

One of Trump’s mentors was Roy Cohn, the lawyer who sat beside Joseph McCarthy as the Wisconsin senator went after communists and homosexuals in a series of public hearings on Capitol Hill.

“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump asked during his first term when he was dissatisfied with several of his administration officials.

Lillian Hellman (Molly Ringwald) shares her thoughts on HUAC in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Skillfully directed by Anna D. Shapiro (Eureka Day, This Is Our Youth) as if it’s a political thriller with the very future of America at stake, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been makes the audience feel like they are in the chair, facing invasive and accusatory questions about their loyalty to a nation that is supposedly built on freedom. As each figure takes the stand, images of newspaper headlines are projected on a scrim, emphasizing the seriousness and immediacy of the situation. The three interlocutors sit stage left at an angle, while the subjects, once finished with their testimony, sit behind the scrim, as if reduced to shadows. The set is by Andrew Boyce, with sharp costumes by Johanna Pan, noirish lighting by Donald Holder, threatening sound by Milbo Music, and important projections by Brittany Bland.

The cast is outstanding, with Babinsky, Boyer, Kantor, Weller, and McKean in the regular ensemble and Butz, Knight, Lennix, Odenkirk, and Ringwald rotating in for the previous lineups of Billy Eugene Jones, David Krumholtz, Andrew McCarthy, Sally Murphy, and Jay O. Sanders and Jones, Scott Adsit, Sally Murphy, Ben Rappaport, and Thomas Sadoski. Unfortunately, Santino Fontana, Steven Pasquale, and others won’t get the chance to testify.

Winner of an Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, Bentley (The Red, White, and Black; Good Woman of Setzuan), a British-born longtime New Yorker who was a theater critic for The New Republic, taught at Harvard, extensively translated works by Bertolt Brecht, and died in 2020 at the age of 103, captured the zeitgeist of the time in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, a question that could now end with more than just “a member of the Communist Party.” The powerful play puts you in the chair, wondering what you would do if asked, under oath by an out-of-control administration, about your political beliefs.

So, again, what went wrong?

Brecht famously wrote, “The one tribute we can pay the audience is to treat it as thoroughly intelligent.”

Perhaps, in this case, it all hits too close to home, and it’s all too real for a swift summer entertainment.

And that’s a genuine shame.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

A CURE FOR WHAT AILS YOU: A POISONOUS GIULIA AT PAC NYC

Jennifer Nettles wrote the book, music and lyrics for Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo and stars as the title character (photo by Andy Henderson)

GIULIA: THE POISON QUEEN OF PALERMO
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 2, $88-$226
pacnyc.org

Jennifer Nettles’s Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo is a cleverly staged, rousing feminist fantasia about shame and sin, hypocrisy and justice, faith and grrl power. It’s a tasty concoction filled with fantastic period costumes and a beguiling set, playful choreography and soaring orchestrations, and far too many clichés and anachronisms; it will need significant work before achieving its Broadway aspirations, but in the meantime it is thrilling audiences at PAC NYC through August 2.

Nettles, a multiple Grammy and Country Music Association award winner, is a singer-songwriter, actress, and producer who has released such solo records as That Girl and a half-dozen albums as part of the duo Sugarland, starred on Broadway in Waitress and Chicago, and has appeared in such streaming series as The Righteous Gemstones and The Bondsman in addition to two Dolly Parton television biopics. Inspired by the story of seventeenth-century Italian apothecary and cosmetician Giulia Tofana, Nettles wrote the book, music, and lyrics for the show and takes on the title role. Not many details are known about the real-life Giulia, who might have been the world’s first female serial killer; regardless, she’s the center of a legitimate crowd pleaser.

It’s 1653, and Giulia runs an apothecary with her young daughter, Vitoria (Naomi Serrano), now that her former employee, Renata (Aubrey Matalon), is engaged to one of the Gambino twins. Giulia’s second husband, the wayward, unemployed drunkard Carlo (Matthew Amira), is incensed that Vitoria is now working and decides he has other plans for her, which sets Giulia in motion, prepared to do anything she can to protect her daughter.

Giulia caters to a wide range of women, including the pregnant Maria (Emily Fink), the Duchessa (Didi Romero), who always gets what she wants, and others who are experiencing various man troubles and marital oppression. They come to Giulia and beg, “Help me, sister.” With a potion brought to her by the mysterious conjurer La Capitana (Bre Jackson), Giulia knows how to cure what ails her customers, and herself.

“There’s a poor parade of women coming in my door / I can tell you what each of them is here for / Sophia comes on Tuesdays / She doesn’t have much time to waste / And it’s the first time Isabell’s been hit / I can tell by the sad look on her face / Angelina knows the hurting on both sides of birthing / And Theresa is so desperate for a baby / She’s just starting a journey,” Giulia sings. “They will come to heal their wounds / They will come to hear the stars / They will come to fill or empty their wombs / Cover their bruises / Mend their broken hearts / All of them come in an hour of need / Looking for a glimmer of hope / And I try but I know / It’s never enough.”

Meanwhile, there is a power struggle going on between the Cardinale (Quentin Earl Darrington), who follows the precepts of the church, and the slimy new Governatore (Christopher M. Ramirez), who is instantly attracted to Vitoria.

As the body count rises, so do Giulia’s chances of getting caught.

Men better watch out in world premiere musical inspired by a somewhat true story (photo by Andy Henderson)

Evoking such films as Kill Bill, Thelma & Louise, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and Black Widow, Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo feels fresh and relevant to what is happening today, particularly in the neverending saga of the Epstein Files. Giulia is a heroic figure, albeit one who wrestles with her conscience.

Daniel Ostling’s gorgeous set features a large staircase stage left and a wall of doors and windows stage right that open up to reveal changing scenery behind them, from the apothecary to a church to a nunnery. Ana Kuzmanić’s end-of-the-Renaissance costumes are a delight, swirling amid Austin McCormick’s appropriately unextravagant choreography. The unseen eight-piece band is conducted by arranger, music director, and keyboardist Adam Rothenberg.

Nettles is magnetic as Giulia; you just can’t get enough of her, even with a probably unnecessary encore number during the curtain call. She practically glows throughout the show, her eyes shining at the audience like she’s wrapping her arms around us. The entire cast is terrific, with a special nod to Sam Simahk as Father Paolo, the only male character with any sense of decency and fairness, up to a point.

Songs such as “What Happens Next?,” “Next Time,” and “Fly Away” are too general; they could fit into many musicals without making any tweaks to the lyrics. “Happily Ever After” veers too close to Fiddler’s “Matchmaker.” Ramirez scores with “Bones,” Darrington’s baritone rattles the theater in “Original Sin,” and the women come together for a sparkling “Power.”

Water streams through the show as a metaphor for life, purification, resilience, and hope in a changing world. “You are the river / You are unstoppable / You’ll flow around every obstruction and break through / Every obstacle / You are as soft and humble as a single drop of rain / Or you can make canyons out of cliffs / With just the power of your rage / They don’t know you / Or the power that flows through. . . . Because water is the only / thing they cannot break,” Giulia sings in “The River,” a song that encapsulates what is both right and wrong about the lively and spirited production as a whole.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ZOUNDS! OTHELLO RECLAIMS HIS TITLE IN HARLEM

Iago (Nick Westrate) embroils Othello (James Udom) in a devious plot in stirring CTH production (photo by Richard Termine)

UPTOWN SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: OTHELLO
Classical Theatre of Harlem
Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Marcus Garvey Park
18 Mt. Morris Park W.
Through July 27, free (advance RSVP recommended), 8:30
www.cthnyc.org

The night I saw the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s stirring adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello, the projections weren’t working, but I found that to be a bonus, as this stripped-down version gave the audience the opportunity to investigate the misogyny and racism that’s inherent in the story, told here with a militaristic edge as well as some unexpected comic relief and sexiness.

Last year, Kenny Leon’s Broadway version of Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal gained more recognition for its ticket prices, which reached $921, than for its quality, earning mixed reviews and zero Tony nominations. However, over the last decade, I’ve seen five other Othellos, each of which shined new light on the classic tragedy of jealousy and deceit without breaking the bank: Sam Gold’s captivating and intense iteration at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, with Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo, and Rachel Brosnahan; Satoshi Miyagi’s hypnotic Mugen Noh Othello at Japan Society in 2018; Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s gripping, emotional Shakespeare in the Park production in 2018; the New Place Players’ immersive, clear, and concise show in 2023; and
Bedlam’s three-hour, four-actor sparer-than-spare work this past spring, celebrating every word.

Continuing at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park through July 27, CTH’s Othello, adroitly directed by Carl Cofield (Memnon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), is trimmed down to a lean 105 minutes on a gray set that resembles the inside of a castle; the characters wear contemporary clothing, linking the past and the present.

Distilled to its essence; the plot zeroes in on Othello (James Udom), a Moor and military hero who has secretly married Desdemona (Isabel Arraiza). Othello’s ensign, Iago (Nick Westrate), furious that he was not promoted to lieutenant, which went to the stalwart Cassio (Orlando Grant) instead, concocts a devious plan to ruin Othello by convincing him that the ever-faithful Desdemona has been cheating on him with Cassio. With Roderigo (Hiram Delgado), who loves Desdemona, in tow, Iago goes to extreme lengths to pull the wool over Othello’s eyes and heart, unwittingly involving his own wife, Emilia (Karen Lugo), Desdemona’s maid; Bianca (Rebecca Pena), Cassio’s lover; Desdemona’s father, Brabantio (Gilbert Cruz), a powerful senator; and others.

Desdemona (Isabel Arraiza) attempts to hold her ground and defend herself in Othello (photo by Richard Termine)

Race is central throughout the play. Speaking to Brabantio early on, Iago tells him, “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!” The Duke of Venice (Collin McConnell) says to Brabantio in Othello’s presence, “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.” While duping Cassio, Iago can’t help but refer to the Moor as “black Othello.” And near the conclusion, Emilia calls him “the blacker devil!” These lines pierced me more than they usually do, in part because they take a more prominent place in this significantly shortened adaptation.

There is also added pungency when Othello strikes Desdemona across the face in front of her cousin Lodovico (McConnell); she responds, “I have not deserved this,” standing tall, not about to back down and just take it. This is indeed a twenty-first-century Desdemona.

Despite the many cuts, the key lines are left intact: “I am not what I am.” “If after every tempest come such calms, / May the winds blow till they have wakened death.” “Reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!” “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.” “Farewell content!” “And think it no addition, nor my wish, / To have him see me womaned.”

However, Bard purists might not like some of the key changes Cofield has employed, including a different, more exciting ending. Zounds!

Westrate (The Wild Duck, A Delicate Ship) is a conniving Iago, filled with vitriol and venom. Arraiza (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar) is one of the strongest, most well defined Desdemonas I’ve ever seen. Recent NYU grad Grant (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, GIRLBOSS) is staunch as the brave but confused Cassio.

But the center of the play is Udom (The Rolling Stone, Mies Julie), who gives a complex, riveting performance. He commands the stage with a building fury; most productions are organized around Iago, but CTH shows why Shakespeare called it Othello, not Iago.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]