this week in theater

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Hunky version of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange is now playing at New World Stages (photo by Caitlin McNaney)

New World Stages
340 West 59th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through January 6, $59-$99
www.aclockworkorangeplay.com
newworldstages.com

Director Alexandra Spencer-Jones reimagines the stage version of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange as an energetic, hyperstylized gay fantasia with a cast of muscle boys but never quite achieves the rhythm that made the 1962 novel and Stanley Kubrick’s controversial 1971 film so involving. The London hit, which opened last night at New World Stages, features an all-male cast led by Jonno Davies as Alex deLarge, a juvenile delinquent who enjoys the old ultraviolence while defying all forms of authority. Alex speaks in Nadsat, Burgess’s brilliant invention, a subversive teen slang drawn from both Russian and English, but Davies’s delivery is more aggressive than poetic and is too often difficult to understand. Upon encountering one of his enemies, rival gang leader Billy Boy (Jimmy Brooks), Alex says, “Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billy bob Billy Boy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap grazzy chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou!” When Alex decides to make himself leader of his Droogs, Georgie (Matt Doyle), Dim (Sean Patrick Higgins), and Pete (Misha Osherovich) are none too happy and ultimately leave him to be caught by the police after a particularly vicious attack on an old woman (Ashley Robinson). In prison, Alex, known by his number, 6655321, volunteers for an experimental procedure, the Ludovico Technique, run by Dr. Brodsky (Brian Lee Huynh), who is attempting to erase the impulse to do evil from the minds of criminals (perhaps evoking gay conversion therapy). The Chaplain (Timothy Sekk) warns Alex, “When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man. . . . Is a man who chooses to be bad in some ways better than a man who is forced to be good?” But Alex decides that freedom is worth any cost.

Jonno Davies struts his stuff as Alex in A Clockwork Orange (photo by Caitlin McNaney)

While Davies portrays only Alex, the other eight actors play nearly three dozen roles, with Sekk standing out as the concerned Chaplain and the wonderfully smug Mr. Deltoid, Alex’s probation officer, who deliciously exaggerates certain words and isn’t afraid to tell Alex what he thinks of him, calling him “Villainy Incarnate. . . . Original Sin prowling the town.” The relatively spare set, which features three rows of seats on either side for audience members, is dark and black, with an occasional table brought to the center, a raised platform, and some oranges and glasses of milk on the back wall. The transitions between scenes and episodes of violence and rape are performed like 1980s dance videos, complete with cinematic slow motion; the soundtrack consists of original pulsating music by Glenn Gregory and Berenice Scott that incorporates Alex’s beloved Ludwig van and Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie” alongside such club anthems as Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax.” You might suddenly think you’re at a rather hot Pride party as Jennifer A. Jacob’s mostly black-and-white costumes come off and on the hunky dudes. The show also includes the much-debated twenty-first chapter of Burgess’s book — which was not available in America until 1986 and was not used by Kubrick in his Oscar-nominated film because of how it resolved Alex’s story — and it brings things to a confusing halt in the play, making us wonder what it was all about. Spencer-Jones (Dracula, Gobsmacked!) seems so intent on dazzling us with the hot dancing that Burgess’s message about adolescence and maturity, religion, government control, and behaviorism gets lost. But there are still lots of oohs and aahs from the crowd when the actors really let loose and get down and dirty.

THE PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY

John Heginbotham and Maira Kalman collaborate on the multimedia The Principles of Uncertainty at BAM this week (photo by Adrienne Bryant)

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
September 27-30, $25
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

“How can I tell you everything that is in my heart. Impossible to begin. Enough. No. Begin. With the hapless dodo,” Maira Kalman writes at the start of her 2006-7 online graphic diary, The Principles of Uncertainty, which ran on the New York Times website. The diary was later published in book form, with such chapters as “Sorry, the Rest Unkown,” “Celestial Harmony,” “Ich Habe Genug,” and “Completely.” Kalman, the author and/or illustrator of such other books as My Favorite Things, Looking at Lincoln, and Beloved Dog has also designed sets and costumes for the Mark Morris Dance Group, delivered a popular TED talk in 2007, and was the subject of a major retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 2011. The New York City–based Tel Aviv native will take the stage at BAM this week for the sixty-minute dance-theater piece The Principles of Uncertainty, a live staging of her blog in collaboration with choreographer John Heginbotham in which she will perform with Dance Heginbotham, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. While Kalman sits in a box reflecting on her memories, dancers will move around the stage as members of the chamber ensemble the Knights play live music composed, curated, and arranged by Colin Jacobsen. The piece is directed and choreographed by Heginbotham, with illustrations, costumes, and set design by Kalman. In the catalog of the Jewish Museum exhibition, “Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World),” Kalman explains, “There is a strong personal narrative aspect of what I do. What happens in my life is interpreted in my work. There is very little separation. My work is my journal of my life.” This multidisciplinary collaboration at the BAM Fisher, which runs September 27-30, is merely the latest chapter of her intimate story, engaging with the public in yet another new way. (The September 28 performance will be followed by a Champagne toast and dessert reception on the Fisher Rooftop Terrace for those who purchase a $200 Celebration Ticket in conjunction with Dance Heginbotham’s fifth anniversary.)

CROSSING THE LINE — ANNIE DORSEN: THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Annie Dorsen transforms FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall into a planetarium in The Great Outdoors

French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 21-23, $35
Festival continues through October 15
212-355-6160
crossingthelinefestival.org
www.fiaf.org

Obie-winning, New York–based algorithmic performance artist Annie Dorsen often uses appropriated text in her pieces, drawing meaning out of an endless supply of information, logic, and language, and she’ll be doing so yet again in her latest work, The Great Outdoors, part of FIAF’s 2017 Crossing the Line Festival. She’s asked audiences to take the mic and recite snippets of famous and not-so-famous speeches in Spokaoke (CTL 2013), had actors use Shakespeare’s Hamlet as data in A Piece of Work (BAM Next Wave Festival 2013), and in Magical (Coil 2013) repurposed words and movement by Martha Rosler, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramović, and Carolee Schneeman, with the help of choreographer Anne Juren. In The Great Outdoors, Dorsen, who also cocreated and directed Passing Strange, transforms FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall into an inflatable planetarium, where every star is like a human being currently online, a countless number of seemingly anonymous blips seeking and supplying content and making connections, primarily commenting on reddit. Of course, the title is more than ironic, as so many people experience the great outdoors from the comfort of their computers at home. Kaija Matiss will read text taken live off the internet by programmers Marcel Schwittlick and Miles Thompson; Sébastien Roux does the sound and music, while the video programming is by Ryan Holsopple, who designed the starshow with Dorsen. Dorsen has been building a rather impressive resume; her collaborators have also included DD Dorviller (Pièce Sans Paroles), Questlove (Shuffle Culture), Stew (Passing Strange), Laura Kaplan and Jessye Norman (Ask Your Mama), and ETHEL (Truckstop). The Great Outdoors runs September 21-23; CTL continues through October 15 with such other presentations as Faustin Linyekula / Studios Kabako’s In Search of Dinozord, Nora Chipaumire’s #PUNK, and Alessandro Sciarroni’s UNTITLED_I will be there when you die.

OFF-BROADWAY WEEK 2017

Hester Smith (Christine Lahti) cries out at her continuing misfortune in Signature revival of Suzan-Lori Parks play (photo © 2017 Joan Marcus)

September 25 – October 8
Tickets 2-for-1 with code OBWF2017
www.nycgo.com

Broadway Week just concluded, offering tickets to most Broadway shows available for half price, and now it’s time for Off-Broadway Week to get in on the two-for-one deals as the fall season begins. Three dozen plays and musicals are participating, from the tried and true to the new and untested, with several highly anticipated works by major playwrights. We highly recommend both of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Red Letter Plays at the Signature, In the Blood and Fucking A, which take off from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, as well as Simon Stephens’s exquisite On the Shore of the Wide World at the Atlantic. There are such old mainstays as Stomp, Blue Man Group, Perfect Crime, Avenue Q, and Gazillion Bubble Show as well as such newcomers as A Clockwork Orange at New World Stages, MCC’s Charm at the Lucille Lortel, Brian Friel’s The Home Place at the Irish Rep, Anna Ziegler’s The Last Match at the Roundabout, Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane at New York Theatre Workshop, and Torch Song at Second Stage with Michael Urie.

RHINOCEROS

Café denizens can’t believe what they see in New Yiddish Rep adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros (photo by Pedro Hernandez)

Castillo Theatre
543 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through October 8, $45
212-941-1234
www.castillo.org
www.newyiddishrep.org

With the recent success of its productions of Death of a Salesman, Waiting for Godot, and God of Vengeance, the New Yiddish Rep’s world premiere of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros in the rich, historical language promised a potential stampede. Unfortunately, Ionseco’s 1960 absurdist screed against the rise of Fascism creeps in more like a mouse in a surprisingly lackluster production. “Rhinoceros reminds me of the personal struggle of many of my current and former co-religionists who are trapped in their own skin,” translator and former Hasid Eli Rosen, who also stars as Jean, writes in a program note. He hopes the play “will penetrate the high walls of ghettos and sound the shofar of freedom to humans everywhere,” an apt metaphor as Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe approach, but the play falls well short of its admirable goals. Continuing at the Castillo Theatre through October 8, Rhinoceros takes place on director Moshe Yassur’s small, spare set, consisting of a few chairs and tables and walls from which further elements, such as a bed, emerge. The erudite Jean (Rosen) is waiting for Bérenger (Luzer Twersky) in a café run by a cheapskate proprietor (Amy Coleman) who regularly berates her waitress (Mira Kessler). Jean chastises Bérenger for his lack of dignity, decrying his penchant for alcohol, uncombed hair, and lack of a tie. But Berenger — Ionesco’s everyman who appears in several of his works — just wants to relax and take a break from what he considers his exhausting life. After a rhinoceros makes its way through the middle of town, the characters in the café — which also include the Logician (Alex Leyzer Burko), a housewife clutching her dear cat (Macha Fogel), the grocer (Sean Griffin), the grocer’s wife (Caraid O’Brien), a gentleman (Gera Sandler) with the hots for the housewife, and, eventually, Daisy (Malky Goldman), with whom Bérenger is smitten — start debating what they saw and what it means, even as the rhino, or perhaps a different one, marches back through town in the other direction. But when people begin actually turning into rhinos themselves, only Bérenger refuses to become part of the crash.

Jean (Eli Rosen) and Bérenger (Luzer Twersky) argue about logic, demeanor, and rhinos in Ionesco’s absurdist classic (photo by Pedro Hernandez)

In writing Rhinoceros, Romanian playwright Ionesco (Exit the King, The Chair) was inspired by the fascism that was building in Romania and across Eastern Europe in the 1930s. Rosen makes clear parallels to what is happening now in America, as antifa battles white supremacists and neo-Nazis and President Donald Trump shows dictatorial tendencies. Rosen even uses the phrase “fake news” when Botard (Burko) declares that the whole rhino story is a hoax, propaganda perpetrated by journalists and university elitists. “An example of collective psychosis,” he tells Dudard (Griffin), “just like religion — the opiate of the people!” However, the translation is too obvious in making connections to contemporary America, and the staging is static and uninvolving. What could have been intimate — the audience is seated on two sides of the catty-corner set — instead separates the two parts of the crowd and creates a distance from the actors, who are often only several feet away. The surtitles, projected on the two perpendicular walls, contain a handful of typos and sometimes can’t keep up with the spoken dialogue; in addition, when the actors spoke out of turn or missed a cue, it was hard to follow what was going on. The play has a long, distinguished history; Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright starred in Orson Welles’s original London version, and Zero Mostel won a Tony as Jean in the 1961 Broadway edition, with Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, and Jean Stapleton. (Mostel also starred with Gene Wilder and Karen Black in the 1974 film directed by Tom O’Horgan.) But it’s not a big-name cast that is missing from New Yiddish Rep’s version; in 2012, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Théâtre de la Ville brought their wildly inventive take to BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Yassur a Romanian who has previously directed Ionesco’s Jacques, or the Submission; The Bald Soprano, and The Future Is in Eggs, never finds the right balance between absurdity and reality, getting caught in the middle, as if blinded by the dust of the stampeding animals.

TWI-NY TALK: AMANDA SZEGLOWSKI / STAIRWAY TO STARDOM

Writer, director, choreographer, and performer Amanda Szeglowski dreams of fame and fortune in Stairway to Stardom (photo by Maria Baranova)

STAIRWAY TO STARDOM
HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
September 12-23, $18-$45, 8:30
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Before there was Star Search, American Idol, The Voice, and America’s Got Talent there was Stairway to Stardom, a no-budget New York City public access television show in which men, women, and children performed with big dreams in their heads, hoping to make it big. Writer, director, choreographer, performer, and “global paradigm architect” Amanda Szeglowski explores the American dream of reaching for fame and fortune in the vastly entertaining and ridiculously clever multimedia production Stairway to Stardom, which opened at HERE on September 12. The sixty-minute show features Szeglowski and her cakeface company, Ali Castro, Jade Daugherty, Ayesha Jordan, and Nola Sporn Smith, in glittery silver-sequined gowns and high heels singing, dancing, and sharing their successes and failures, their hopes and desires with a dry, wry mechanical delivery deliciously at odds with the spectacular longing for stardom that lies beneath.

The narrative follows the arc of a contemporary U.S. life in the arts, from what creative kids want to be when they grow up and what their parents expect of them to discovering their unique talent and then working odd jobs as they strive for artistic (and maybe even financial) success while also experiencing regrets. The performers are joined by Prism House — Brian Wenner and Matt O’Hare — who provide live video and music mixing, featuring excerpts from the original public access program. Szeglowski, who is also HERE’s marketing director, formed the all-female cakeface in 2008; their previous “linguistic performance art” projects include Don’t Call Me McNeill., Alpha Pups, and Harold, I Hate You. The new show continues through September 23; there will be a talkback following the September 20 performance, and September 15 and 19 are ’80s nights, in which the audience is encouraged to dress with their best retro flair. The show begins at 8:30, but HERE will be projecting clips from the original Stairway to Stardom in the lounge beginning at 7:00 every evening. Shortly after opening night, which kicked off HERE’s twenty-fifth anniversary season, Szeglowski found time to answer some questions about her own career trajectory.

twi-ny: As you were preparing for the opening of Stairway to Stardom, your native Florida — you went to high school in Tampa and college at USF — was being battered by Hurricane Irma. What was that experience like, balancing the two? Are your friends and family safe?

amanda szeglowski: Yes, thank you for asking. My family lives in West Tampa, so we were all watching the storm very closely. It was an incredibly stressful time to be in tech rehearsals all day and night approaching the culmination of a show I’ve been building for three years while this monster of a storm was creeping towards my family. I was checking in on them every chance I got and FaceTiming to see all the prep they were doing to their houses, going over the evacuation plans. . . . Being a part of that process helped me feel like I was with them. But growing up in Florida and having been through many hurricanes actually gave me some comfort as well. We know how to prepare and we take it seriously. That’s not to say that wine isn’t the first thing in the hurricane supply shopping cart — it is. But I felt better knowing this wasn’t my family’s first rodeo; they knew exactly what to do.

Nola Sporn Smith, Jade Daugherty, Ayesha Jordan, Amanda Szeglowski, and Ali Castro reach for the stars in glittering show at HERE (photo by Maria Baranova)

twi-ny: Were you ever a fan of such programs as Star Search, American Idol, The Voice, or America’s Got Talent?

as: I loved watching Star Search as a kid. As I got older and the shows got more scripted I lost interest. I think Idol changed the game by making the auditions part of the show, and then it became a gimmick of who could be the most outrageous. But I will occasionally watch clips from these shows when my parents call me and insist that they just saw the greatest thing.

twi-ny: What is it about the public access show that spurred your creative juices? You treat it with respect without getting overly kitschy or mean-spirited.

as: The TV show was so raw — so vulnerable. These weren’t people trying to become a character on a reality show; these were people really trying to make it. I respect that. There wasn’t any competitive aspect to the TV show; they were just performing and hoping to be seen. Sure, when you see clips from the TV show there are moments that you want to laugh, but I spent hours and hours interviewing people about their lives for my script, and a lot of it was pretty damn sad. At least these people were out there trying. I wanted to honor that drive and explore what happens to all of us along the way, because I think that fire is there for almost everyone in the beginning.

twi-ny: What kind of talent does someone have to display to become a member of cakeface? When someone is auditioning for you, are you more like Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, Jennifer Lopez, Usher, or Miley Cyrus?

as: HAHAHA. I think I’m a Simon and Paula hybrid. I’m Simon because I have a crystal-clear vision of what I want, and if you don’t fit, I am not going to beat around the bush. I never want to waste anyone’s time. But Paula has a way of finding a spark in people and being respectful of their contributions, and I try to always do that. I’ve received many post-audition emails over the years from people that I didn’t hire saying the experience was really special. I’m proud of that.

twi-ny: Is anyone associated with the public access show still around? Did you have to go through any kind of permissions process to use some of the original footage?

as: The show was public access. But I did get the tapes directly from someone who was given them by the host of the show, Frank Masi, before he died. [Ed. note: Masi passed away in 2013 at the age of eighty-seven; you can watch a YouTube tribute to him and the show here.]

Amanda Szeglowski takes a well-deserved break from climbing the stairs to stardom (photo courtesy of Amanda Szeglowski)

twi-ny: How amazing was it to perform in such great costumes, as well as high heels?

as: The costumes, which are by Oana Botez, are absolutely fantastic. It’s such a blast being able to sparkle head to toe on a downtown stage — very atypical for the scene. The heels are challenging, but anything else with those costumes would be absurd, right? And the performers are all pros, so they make it work. I wanted an over-the-top glamorous look that I could juxtapose with the stark reality of our words. Oana definitely achieved that.

twi-ny: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

as: The opening text, which I call a monologue (even though it’s delivered by five voices), is basically a run-on sentence ticking off all of my childhood dreams. It includes a mermaid, grocery store checkout clerk, princess, trapeze artist, restaurateur, and movie star. Of course, I always wanted to be a dancer, but that’s obvious, and our unfulfilled dreams are so much more interesting.

twi-ny: What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

as: I’ve had a slew of them. The story in the show about working in the housewares department at Burdines was my life at age fifteen. I had no idea how to sell kitchen appliances and would literally walk away from customers and kick back in the stock room. That was pretty awful. There’s another story about a boss with revolting coffee breath; that was my first job in NYC. But another horrific experience was telemarketing. In high school I worked at a call center selling satellite broadcasting to elderly people in rural areas. I had to convince them they needed HBO. It was super sleazy, plus I got sexually harassed by my boss. I’d say fifteen was not a banner year for my career trajectory.

twi-ny: What would you like audiences to take away from the show?

as: I’d like them to be reminded of our often-naive notions of success and talent, reflect on the choices they’ve made, and leave with a glimmer of hope.

ON THE SHORE OF THE WIDE WORLD

A British family tries to cope following tragedy in Atlantic production of On the Shore of the Wide World (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 8, $65-$85
866-811-4111
www.atlantictheater.org

British playwright Simon Stephens has been making quite an impact on the world of New York theater recently, with the MCC production of Punk Rock, the Atlantic Theater Company’s stagings of Bluebird and Harper Regan, and the Broadway versions of Heisenberg and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, all since 2011. He’s now back at the Atlantic with his 2005 Olivier Award winner, On the Shore of the Wide World, a tightly wound, exquisitely written story of family and fidelity involving three generations of couples in Stephens’s hometown of Stockport, a working-class suburb of Manchester. Ellen (Blair Brown) and Charlie Holmes (Peter Maloney) are the old-timers, living out their golden years, but Ellen suddenly wants more. “We could buy something. Do something unusual. . . . Sell up and go somewhere we’ve never been to before,” she says. “Why?” an incredulous Charlie asks. “Just because we can,” Ellen replies. Their son, Peter (C. J. Wilson), a house restorer, is married to Alice (Mary McCann), who appears ready for a change now that their children, Alex (Ben Rosenfield) and Christopher (Wesley Zurick), are getting older. Alex, who is eighteen, is bringing home his new girlfriend, Sarah (Tedra Millan), whom the younger Christopher, who might be on the autism spectrum, instantly falls in love with. “Is he a little bit mentally ill?” Sarah, who does not have much of a filter, asks Peter, who is taken aback by the question. When tragedy strikes, the characters — which also include Paul Danzinger (Odiseas Georgiadis), Alex’s drug-dealing friend; Susan Reynolds (Amelia Workman), a pregnant woman who hires Peter to restore her house; and John Robinson (LeRoy McClain), a married man who pays an unexpected visit to Alice — reevaluate what they desire out of life as all three main couples face new crises, whether they want to or not. “You have no right to call me a coward. Nobody has any right to call another person a coward,” Charlie tells Alex. “We’re all of us cowards. All of us.”

Ellen (Blair Brown) and Alice (Mary McCann) have some harsh words for each other in Simon Stephens’s Olivier Award winner (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Originally called Helsinki as a tribute to the bleak films of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, On the Shore of the Wide World — named for a quote from a Keats sonnet that is cited in the play — is intricately directed by Atlantic Theater artistic director Neil Pepe (Speed-the-Plow, Celebration). Christopher Akerlind’s lighting alerts the audience as to which part of Scott Pask’s all-in-one set, comprising an abandoned hotel, Peter and Alice’s kitchen, and Charlie and Ellen’s living room, the action will be taking place next. The excellent cast of American actors all speak in Mancunian accents that only seldom feel a bit strained. Wilson (Hold on to Me Darling, The Lady from Dubuque), one of our best, most dependable actors, excels as Peter, the house restorer who suddenly loses control of his own home. Rising star Millan (Present Laughter, The Wolves) is quirkily compelling as Sarah, who calls them as she sees them, while McCann (Ghost Stories: The Shawl, Harper Regan), who is Pepe’s wife, brings a soft vulnerability to Alice. Old pros Brown (Copenhagen, Orange Is the New Black) and Maloney (Dying for It, Outside Mullingar) rise above a few awkward moments in the script. And Workman (Tender Napalm, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World) is tantalizingly sexy and flirtatious as the pregnant Susan; it’s no accident that the story occurs over the course of nine months. At its core, On the Shore of the Wide World, is very much about the concept of marriage and monogamy, the idea that two people dedicate themselves to each other as they grow old together. “I think it’s repressive. I think it fucks people up,” Sarah says of wedlock. “I think it stops people doing what they want to do. Shouldn’t let it. Should just live, I think.” In the end, the characters all do exactly that, on the shores of the wide world, looking out from within the house of marriage and family.