this week in theater

IVO VAN HOVE AND THE COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE: THE DAMNED

Ivo van Hove’s overwhelming theatrical version of The Damned runs at the Park Avenue Armory thorugh July 28 (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Ivo van Hove’s overwhelming theatrical version of The Damned runs at the Park Avenue Armory through July 28 (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
July 17-28, $35-$175, 7:30/8:00
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

When France’s legendary Comédie-Française invited innovative Belgian director Ivo van Hove to team up with the three-hundred-plus-year-old company for the prestigious Avignon Festival in 2016, he selected to adapt Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, the 1969 film about the demise of a wealthy steel clan during the rise of the Third Reich. The multimedia piece was presented prior to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States as well as before Brexit and much of the fascistic movement taking hold around the globe, but it feels like it could have been written yesterday, particularly given Trump’s recent stand on steel and other tariffs. The spectacular production has triumphantly moved into the Park Avenue Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, where it immerses, confuses, delights, intrigues, captivates, and perplexes the audience over the course of 130 unpredictable minutes. In fact, afterward, when we were waiting for the bus on Lexington Avenue, an older woman approached us and, explaining that her two friends could not go at the last minute so she was alone, was desperate to discuss what we all had just seen, as she wasn’t sure whether she liked it but was deeply affected by it. Then, on the bus, as my wife and I talked more about the show, a younger woman sitting in front of us, also by herself, requested to join our conversation because she too wanted to know what we thought in order to help her navigate her own experience. Such reactions are not uncommon following works by van Hove, which are almost always fascinating and inventive whether they’re disappointing (Antigone, The Crucible), breathtaking (A View from the Bridge, Kings of War, Cries and Whispers), or somewhere in between (Lazarus).

Makeup tables are incorporated into production of The Damned at Park Avenue Armory(photo by Stephanie Berger)

Makeup tables are incorporated into the staging of The Damned with the Comédie-Française (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The audience sits in rising rafters in front of the large, impressive set, designed by van Hove’s longtime partner and collaborator, Jan Versweyveld, who also did the bold, brash lighting. At stage left are makeup tables and ottomans where characters occasionally change costumes (by An D’Huys) and speak directly into a live camera that projects the scene onto a giant screen at the back. At stage right is a row of wooden coffins where characters are led after they are dead. Tal Yarden’s projections also include archival footage of steel plants and fascism on the rise in Germany. The cast features Didier Sandre as family patriarch Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, who is preparing to choose his successor to save his business in light of the Third Reich’s power grab. In the mix are Joachim’s second son, Konstantin (Denis Podalydés); Konstantin’s son, Gunther (Clément Hervieu-Léger); Sophie (Elsa Lepoivre), the widow of Joachim’s eldest son, who is having an affair with Friedrich Bruckmann (Guillaume Gallienne); Joachim’s youngest son, the unstable Martin (Christophe Montenez); Joachim’s youngest daughter, Elisabeth (Adeline d’Hermy), who is married to Social Democrat Herbert Thallman (Loïc Corbery), with whom she has two girls, Erika (Madison Cluzel) and Thilde (Gioia Benenati); and family cousin Wolf von Aschenbach (Eric Génovese), who has joined the SS. The story is based on the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, and Enrico Medioli; although the film was in English, the play is in French and German, with English surtitles for the former. Sound designer Eric Sleichim’s wide-ranging original soundtrack was influenced by Bach, Strauss, Schütz, Buxtehude, and Rammstein, with music by saxophone quartet Bl!ndman.

Ivo van Hove’s The Damned takes on fascism in Nazi Germany following the burning of the Reichstag (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Despite many dazzling scenes, The Damned ends up being rather confounding. So much of it is ingenious, but too much of it is repetitive within the show itself as well as within van Hove’s oeuvre, meaning that newcomers to his work might leave much more blown away than his regular attendees. It’s a wholly impressive production, with compelling acting, well-orchestrated blood and gore, curious metaphorical meanderings, and live cameras that evoke Mario Mancini’s original cinematography. But the complex narrative and bevy of characters can get overwhelming, as can some of the spectacle. There’s a coldness that, even if it matches the soul of the film, is lacking something onstage. But despite all that, it is still a must-see, as is everything that van Hove does, whether with the Comédie-Française or his stellar home troupe, Toneelgroep Amsterdam.

FREE SUMMER EVENTS: JULY 22-29

Hal Willner’s Amarcord Nino Rota is part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on July 27

The free summer arts & culture season is under way, with dance, theater, music, art, film, and other special outdoor programs all across the city. Every week we will be recommending a handful of events. Keep watching twi-ny for more detailed highlights as well.

Sunday, July 22
SummerStage: Ginuwine, the Ladies of Pink Diamond, and DJ Stacks, Corporal Thompson Park, Staten Island, 5:00

Monday, July 23
The Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness: Intolerable Whiteness by Seung-Min Lee, the Kitchen, waitlist only, 7:00

Tuesday, July 24
Movies Under the Stars: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017), Wingate Park, Brooklyn, 8:45

Wednesday, July 25
Hudson RiverFlicks — Big Hit Wednesdays: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Jake Kasdan, 2017), Hudson River Park, Pier 63, 8:30

Thursday, July 26
Broadway in Bryant Park: songs from VITALY: An Evening of Wonders, Come from Away, Kinky Boots, The Band’s Visit, and Wicked, cohosted by Bob Bronson, Christine Nagy, and the cast of The Play That Goes Wrong, Bryant Park Lawn, 12:30

Friday, July 27
Lincoln Center Out of Doors: Hal Willner’s Amarcord Nino Rota, featuring music from the first two Godfather films and the tribute album Amarcord Nino Rota (I Remember Nino Rota), with multiple performers, Damrosch Park Bandshell, 7:30

Guelaguetza Festival New York City takes place at Socrates Sculpture Park on July 28

Guelaguetza Festival New York City takes place at Socrates Sculpture Park on July 29

Saturday, July 28
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival:Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Hayao Miyazaki, 1985), screening preceded by live performance by Kaki King featuring Treya Lam, Prospect Park Bandshell, 7:30

Sunday, July 29
Ballet Folklórico Mexicano de Nueva York’s Guelaguetza Festival, Socrates Sculpture Park, 2:00

CYPRUS AVENUE

Julie (Amy Molloy) can’t believe what her father (Stephen Rea) has done in Cyprus Avenue (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

The Public Theater, LuEsther Hall
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 29, $85
212-967-7555
www.publictheater.org

Stephen Rea is riveting as a bigot who snaps in David Ireland’s incendiary, darkest of dark comedies, Cyprus Avenue. A coproduction of the Abbey Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre running at the Public through July 29, the play is a difficult one to recommend; it’s a testament to the audience’s psychological pain threshold that, the night I saw it, no one left LuEsther Hall during the show’s brutal one hundred intermissionless minutes. Rea is Eric Miller, a Belfast Loyalist who is undergoing treatment with a counselor, Bridget (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo), in an unidentified facility. He is a prickly, uncomfortable, precise man who can no longer find his place in a society that has passed him by. “Everything is upside down. Nothing is what it claims to be,” he says. “Chaos is majesty. Love is degradation. And the world has become a travesty.” He calmly calls Bridget, who is black, the n-word, then gets supremely insulted when she assumes he is Irish. “The last thing I am is Irish,” he declares. “I am anything but Irish. I am British. I am exclusively and non-negotiably British. I am not nor never have been nor never will be Irish.”

Bridget (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo) tries to help Eric Miller (Stephen Rea) make sense of his actions in David Ireland play at the Public (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

As they continue their talk, the narrative cuts to flashbacks, revealing what Eric did that led to his current situation. It all started when his daughter, Julie (Amy Molloy), had a baby that he refused to say anything nice about. “What is wrong with you?” his wife, Bernie (Andrea Irvine), asks incredulously. He calls Julie the c-word, then complains about his sad past: “Resentments. Disappointments. Failed expectations. Ruined dreams. Entanglements. Despair. That which could have been. And that which is.” The trouble reaches a new level once Eric decides that the newborn not only looks like but actually is Gerry Adams, the longtime head of the Sinn Féin, the controversial left-wing Irish republican political party. He shares his dislike of Catholics, who comprise the Sinn Féin, with Bridget, referring to them in derogatory terms. But Eric really breaks when he hires a mysterious balaclava-clad man named Slim (Chris Corrigan) to carry out a heinous plot.

The weight of the world comes crashing down on Eric Miller (Stephen Rea) in David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

Directed by Vicky Featherstone, who helmed the 2016 original — which also featured Rea, Molloy, and Corrigan — Cyprus Avenue is meant to shock, and it does. As Belfast native Van Morrison sings in his gorgeous 1968 song of the same name, “And my inside shakes just like a leaf on a tree.” The audience sits on either horizontal side of the stage, the action happening in between on Lizzie Clachan’s relatively spare set. So when something particularly frightful occurs, you can see people on the other side cover their mouths in horror just as you do the same. Ireland (Everything Between Us, What the Animals Say) and Featherstone (Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, Victory Condition) hold nothing back as Eric, seemingly in total control, calmly goes about his business in a way that is terrifying; Cyprus Avenue is not quite as farfetched as you might first imagine, particularly here in America, where hatred, misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, and harsh partisanship seem so commonplace today that individuals are snapping all the time. However, most of us don’t get to see that enacted, even if fictionally, at such close quarters. But what we do get to see right in front of us is a spectacular performance by Oscar and Tony nominee Rea (The Crying Game, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me), who has previously shown a fondness for blood and violence on the New York stage in Sam Shepard’s A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations) at the Signature in 2014. Rea moves slowly throughout, carefully monitoring each step and every breath, completely at a loss to thoroughly understand what he is doing. “I don’t know anything anymore,” he tells Bridget. And it’s meant to be scary that he’s not the only who feels that way.

THE POSSIBILITIES / THE AFTER-DINNER JOKE

Judith (Kathleen Wise) assures a woman (Eliza Renner) that she is fine as a servant (Marianne Tatum) looks on in Howard Barker play (photo by Stan Barouh)

PTP/NYC: Potomac Theatre Project
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through August 5, $22.50-$37.50
ptpnyc.org

The Potomac Theatre Project (PTP) continues its long association with the work of prolific contemporary British playwrights Howard Barker and Caryl Churchill with a fast-paced evening of unique tales continuing at Atlantic Stage 2 through August 5. First up are four parts of Barker’s 1986 decalogue, The Possibilities, prime examples of his self-described “Theatre of Catastrophe.” The quartet, set in different time periods in an almost alternate reality, explores the power and morality of the state and the state’s control of its citizenry. In The Unforeseen Consequences of a Patriotic Act, a well-dressed woman (Eliza Renner) wants Judith (Kathleen Wise) to return to the city and take a victory lap a year after cutting off the head of Holofernes and several months after giving birth to their child. In Reasons for the Fall of Emperors, Alexander of Russia (Jonathan Tindle) shudders at the cries of his soldiers being tortured and killed outside as he prepares for bed. After dismissing his loyal officer (Adam Milano), he engages in a complex conversation with a wise peasant (Christopher Marshall) who is shining his boots. “Do you not love the Emperor?” Alexander asks. “It is impossible not to love him!” the peasant responds, rather unconvincingly.

An old lady (Marianne Tatum) isn’t sure she wants to sell a book to a man (Adam Milano) in Only Some Can Take the Strain (photo by Stan Barouh)

In Only Some Can Take the Strain, a government functionary (Renner) tells a bedraggled homeless woman (Marianne Tatum) that she cannot sell books out of a grocery cart; meanwhile a man (Milano) lurks about, desperate to buy an important volume. “Our arteries are clogged with anxiety, our lungs are corroded with fumes,” the lady says. “What a conspiracy and nobody knows but me.” And in She Sees the Argument But, a female official (Wise) attempts to shame a young woman (Madeleine Russell) for wearing high heels and a dress that exposes her ankles. “I don’t ask you to admire my legs,” the confident woman says. “The party executives do that.” PTP co-artistic director Richard Romagnoli adds excerpts from three Barker poems, “Don’t Exaggerate,” “Plevna,” and “Refuse to Dance,” to link the four short plays, which are performed on Hallie Zieselman’s purposely cluttered set, the props for each section waiting in the back to be brought forward when it’s their turn.

Selby (Tara Giordano) wants to save the world, confusing Mr. Price (Jonathan Tindle) and her direct superior, Dent (Kathleen Wise) (photo by Stan Barouh)

After intermission, the company digs into Churchill’s 1978 television play, The After-Dinner Joke, which consists of sixty-six scenes whirling by in an hour. “I admired two extremes on TV, extreme naturalism and extreme non-naturalism — I went for the second,” Churchill wrote about the piece, and that’s just how PTP co-artistic director Cheryl Faraone lets it unfold on Zieselman’s ever-changing, low-budget set. A large roster of characters take on the politics of charity and the charity of politics, as well as big business and religion, centered by the story of a bright, ambitious woman named Selby (Tara Giordano) who has decided to resign from her job as a personal secretary to a sales manager at a bedding store because she is not helping society. The owner, Mr. Price (Tindle), a tycoon who also has launderettes, Chinese restaurants, and factories, tells Selby, “I give employment. I provide services. I pay taxes. I make profits,” to which Selby replies, “Children are dying, sir.” Price asks, “Are you a Christian?” to which Selby answers, “Not anymore. But I feel just as guilty as if I was. And so should you.” Price opts to keep Selby on as a campaign organizer for his five charities, and off she goes, meeting a wide variety of people as she seeks to rid the world of poverty and starvation.

Selby (Tara Giordano) can’t believe what she sees in revival of Caryl Churchill play (photo by Stan Barouh)

She encounters a snake-obsessed mayor (Marshall) who tells her, “A charity is by definition nonpolitical. Politics is by definition uncharitable”; a trio of councilors who are getting hit with pies in the face to raise money; a mysterious thief (Christo Grabowski) in black who keeps popping up and stealing things; a rock star (Grabowski) who has found Jesus (and ten-year-olds); a recipe-loving local celebrity (Lucy Van Atta); a snooty country clubber (Milano) who wants to give charity only to himself; an oil sheik who considers buying Marks and Spencer; and a mother (Russell) who is forcing her son (Noah Liebmiller) to go on a fundraising walk. “If they want to give money, I don’t see why they can’t just give it,” the boy says. “I don’t see why I have to walk round and round the park all afternoon.” Some of the scenes are previously filmed and projected on a screen, which allows quick set changes to be made while channeling a little bit of Monty Pythonesque humor. The play, which is set in the 1970s, takes on added relevance just as the Institute of Economic Affairs in England is being investigated for possible abuse of the necessary separation between charity and politics. “Charity Commission rules state that ‘an organization will not be charitable if its purposes are political.’ How much more political can you get?” George Monbiot writes in the Guardian after exposing several questionable connections. Now in its thirty-second season, PTP, which in 2015 at Atlantic Stage 2 presented Barker’s Scenes from an Execution and Churchill’s Vinegar Tom in repertory, prefers to stage productions of challenging, unconventional, experimental plays, and they have come up with a pair of fine choices yet again.

TEVYE SERVED RAW: GARNISHED WITH JEWS

Shane Baker, Allen Lewis Rickman, and Yelena Shmulenson pay homage to Sholem Aleichem in Tevye Served Raw (photo by Jonathan Smith)

The Playroom Theater
151 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Sunday – Tuesday through August 14, $38, 7:00
800-838-3006
www.tevyeservedraw.com
www.theplayroomtheater.com

Tevye Served Raw is a sweet and savory side dish to accompany the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene’s rousing adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Subtitled Garnished with Jews, Tevye Served Raw is adapted and translated by Shane Baker and director Allen Lewis Rickman, who star in the show with Yelena Shmulenson. The evening brings together various writings by Sholem Aleichem, including stories that were not incorporated into Fiddler, and reveal what happened to Tevye and his family outside that narrative; the character was based on a real dairy man, also named Tevye, who Aleichem was friends with in Boyarke in Ukraine. The small, intimate stage at the Playroom Theater is mostly empty except for an occasional chair; the actors change costumes behind curtains on either side. Projections on a rear screen include English subtitles, photographs, and other information. In the opening tale, “What, Me Worthy?,” Tevye (Rickman) says to Sholem (Baker), “Honestly, I don’t know what you find so interesting about a little person like me.” But Tevye is a fascinating man, trying to hold on to tradition as modernity comes to Eastern Europe and anti-Semitism increases. In “Strange Jews on a Train,” a Russian Jew (Shmulenson) and a Galitsyaner (Baker) gossip about the rich Finkelstein family in Kolomey, with Allen standing between them, translating. “Tevye and Khave” and “Father Aleksii,” from Aleichem’s play Tevye the Dairyman, follow the relationship between Tevye and his third daughter, Khave (Shmulenson), after she falls in love with the non-Jewish Khvedke and takes refuge in Father Aleksii’s (Baker) church. “For every single thing you have a Bible verse, or a Medrash, or something!” Khave tells her father. “Do you have one that explains why — since God created such a big and beautiful world — why people can’t just share it?”

Tevye (Allen Lewis Rickman) and Khave (Yelena Shmulenson) have differing opinions on love and marriage in Tevye Served Raw (photo by Jonathan Smith)

“The Yiddish Sisyphus” is a scene from Menakehm-Mendl, an epistolary novel by Aleichem in which the title character (Baker) exchanges letters with his wife, Sheyne-Sheyndl (Shmulenson), about his risky monetary ventures, Allen going back and forth as he translates the Yiddish into English. “You have worshipped at every shrine to stupidity,” Sheyne-Sheyndl declares. As an interlude, Shmulenson sings the lovely lullaby “Shlof, Mayn Kind (“Sleep, My Child”). The show concludes with “Get Thee Gone,” in which Tevye, the constable (Baker), a local landowner (Baker), and Tevye’s eldest daughter, Tsaytl (Shmulenson), face the expulsion of the Jews from the shtetl. “Why, God, why do you pick on Tevye? Why not play these games with a Brodsky or a Rothschild?” Tevye asks. But don’t leave yet: There’s a riotously funny encore that celebrates the marvelous insults hurled by Sholem’s stepmother, shouted in Yiddish by Shmulenson and ferociously translated by Allen in a stupendous tour de force. Packed into eighty-five minutes, it’s all a great deal of fun, with the Belarus-born, Ukraine-raised Shmulenson (Orange Is the New Black, The Essence: A Yiddish Theater Dim Sum) — who appeared with Allen as husband and wife in the shtetl scene of the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man — standing out among the three, portraying a wide range of female characters with zest and flair. Baker (Waiting for Godot, God of Vengeance), an Episcopalian well-versed in Yiddish theater, and Rickman (Relatively Speaking, Boardwalk Empire), who in a program note draws parallels between his immigrant father and Tevye, make a fine comic duo with vaudevillian instincts. Tevye Served Raw is a tasty little treat — but watch out for those trayf jokes.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN YIDDISH (FIDLER AFN DAKH)

Steven Skybell leads a rousing adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof as Tevye (photo by Victor Nechay / ProperPix)

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Wednesday – Sunday through December 30, $70-$121
866-811-4111
nytf.org/fiddler-on-the-roof
mjhnyc.org

I only wish my mother were still alive to see the dazzling US premiere of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Shraga Friedman’s adaptation, Fidler Afn Dakh, debuted in Israel in 1965 and has finally made it to New York City, where it is being presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage through December 30. Directed with verve and style by Tony and Oscar winner Joel Grey, whose father was klezmer star Mickey Katz, the rousing three-hour production features musical staging and choreography by Staś Kmieć, inspired by Jerome Robbins’s original, with musical direction by conductor and NYTF artistic director Zalmen Mlotek. The show is the Fiddler we know and love, the tale of a shtetl on the eve of the 1905 Russian Revolution, complete with stirring nightmare, breathtaking bottle dance, and a sewing machine, with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein. But the Yiddish version, with Harnick and Harold Prince serving as consultants, offers neat little twists on the language; Friedman’s translation goes back to Sholem Aleichem’s original Tevye stories and reconfigures numerous lines to match the rhythm and meaning in Yiddish.

Thus, “Tradition” becomes “Traditsye,” “If I Were a Rich Man” turns into “Ven Ikh Bin a Rotshild” (“If I Were a Rothschild”), and “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” is sung as “Shadkhnte, Shadkhnte.” In “Sunrise, Sunset” (“Tog-Ayn, Tog-Oys”), “I don’t remember growing older / When did they?” becomes “Just give a look, how grown up / they’ve become,” while in “Do You Love Me?” (“Libst Mikh, Sertse?), “For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes, / cooked your meals, cleaned your house” turns into “For twenty-five years I’ve washed your wash, / I rub and polish pots of brass.” The lyrics are sung in Yiddish, with Russian and English surtitles. Tony winner Beowful Boritt’s spare set is backed with three long, hanging scrolls representing the parchment of the Torah; the word “Torah” is written on the middle section in Hebrew. The twelve-person orchestra plays behind the scrolls, partially visible.

Tevye and Golde’s five daughters look toward a new future in Fidler Afn Dakh (photo by Victor Nechay / ProperPix)

The utterly superb Steven Skybell, an Obie winner for Antigone in New York, joins a long line of actors portraying Tevye the milkman, from Zero Mostel, Topol, Theodore Bikel, Leonard Nimoy, and Herschel Bernardi to Alfred Molina, Harvey Fierstein, and Danny Burstein, but he’s the first one to do it in Yiddish in America. He shakes his body with vigor, slyly smiles as Tevye looks to G-d for answers, and playfully debates various incidents on one hand and the other. The narrative looks directly at modernity and change from two main perspectives; the personal and the communal. Tevye and his wife, Golde (Jill Abramovitz), are raising five daughters, Tsaytl (Rachel Zatcoff), Hodl (Stephanie Lynne Mason), Khave (Rosie Jo Neddy), Shprintze (Raquel Nobile), and Beylke (Samantha Hahn). Town gossip and matchmaker Yente (Jackie Hoffman) arrives one day to tell Golde that the wealthy, much older butcher, Leyzer-Volf (Bruce Sabath), wants to marry Tsaytl, but unbeknownst to either of them, Tsaytl is in love with the poor tailor, Motl Kamzoyl (Ben Liebert). Tsaytl and Motl’s determination to make their own match goes against tradition and the father’s power — and also leads to Hodl wanting to be with progressive teacher and political radical Pertshik (Daniel Kahn) and Khave falling for non-Jew Fyedka (Cameron Johnson), as women start making decisions for themselves. The excellent cast also includes Lauren Jeanne Thomas as Der Fiddler, Kirk Geritano as Avrom the bookseller, Jodi Snyder as Frume-Sore, Michael Yashinsky as Mordkhe the innkeeper, Der Rov as the rabbi, Jennifer Babiak as Grandma Tsaytl, and Evan Mayer and Nick Raynor as Fyedka’s friends, Sasha and Yussel.

Joel Grey directs Yiddish version of Fiddler with verve and panache (photo by Victor Nechay / ProperPix)

The other key plot point centers around anti-Semitism and the future of the shtetl. Der Gradavoy (the constable, played by Bobby Underwood) warns Tevye, whom he claims to like and respect, that there is going to be an unofficial demonstration by the police to rattle the village in order to assert their control. “Thank you, your excellency,” Tevye says. “You are a good person. It’s a shame you aren’t a Jew.” Anatevke is in danger, but the residents don’t want to leave the only home most of them have ever known. I’ve seen numerous Fiddlers over the years, but this Yiddish version, which could have felt dated and old-fashioned, instead is very much of the moment in the wake of the immigrant and refugee crisis currently going on in America and around the world. It’s chilling watching the final scenes in light of what is shown on the news night after night. The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene has been on quite a roll since celebrating its centennial in 2015, with a wonderful adaptation of The Golden Bride, the Drama Desk-nominated Amerike — the Golden Land, and a sensational work-in-progress preview of The Sorceress. This Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof should be another big hit for the talented troupe. And my mother would have loved it.

Note: There will be a series of preshow discussions ($5, 6:30) called “Fiddler Talks: From Anatevka to Broadway and Back Again,” consisting of “The Making of Fiddler on the Roof” on July 18, “Transforming Fiddler on the Roof into Fidler Afn Dakh” on July 25, “Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye and Fiddler’s, or ‘Was Tevye a Traditional Jew?’” on August 8, and “Shalom / Sholom the Yiddish Mark Twain” on August 22. In addition, Tevye Served Raw, which includes two Tevye tales not in Fiddler on the Roof as well as other Aleichem works, opens July 17 at the Playroom Theatre.

THE DAMNED

Ivo van Hove’s The Damned runs at the Park Avenue Armory July 17-28 (photo by Jan Versweyveld)

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
July 17-28, $35-$175, 7:30/8:00
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

Ivo van Hove has dazzled audiences with unique theatrical interpretations of such complex films as Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Persona, and Scenes from a Marriage, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, and John Cassavetes’s Opening Night and Faces. The Belgian director continues his affection for difficult cinema with his adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1969 The Damned, an exploration of power and decadence in 1930s Germany during the rise of the Third Reich. Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, and Enrico Medioli were nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay for the film, which stars Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Umberto Orsini, and Charlotte Rampling. Van Hove is directing the work not for his home company, Toneelgroep in Amsterdam, but for France’s legendary Comédie-Française, which was founded in 1680. “In my view, it is the celebration of evil,” van Hove, who has also directed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and A View from the Bridge on Broadway and is reviving West Side Story, says about the dark tale. The work features set and lighting design by van Hove’s longtime collaborator and partner, Jan Versweyveld, costumes by An D’Huys, video by Tal Yarden, and sound by Eric Sleichim. The North American premiere takes place at the Park Avenue Armory July 17-28; van Hove will be participating in an artist talk with Laurie Anderson on July 19 at 6:00. In addition, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is hosting “Visconti: A Retrospective,” consisting of more than a dozen films by the Italian director, continuing through July 19 with such gems as Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard, The Innocent, and, on closing night, The Damned.