this week in theater

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Annaleigh Ashford steals the show as Helena in Shakespeare in the Park presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Tuesday-Sunday through August 13, free, 8:00
shakespeareinthepark.org

Since 2013, Public Works founder and resident director Lear deBessonet has presented special short-run summer productions of classic works at the Delacorte Theater consisting of professional and nonprofessional actors, with casts of more than two hundred men, women, and children, from community organizations from all five boroughs in addition to theater veterans. The Public Theater initiative has included musical adaptations of The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Twelfth Night, and The Odyssey. DeBessonet also directed Bertolt Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan indoors at the Public’s Martinson Hall. But now the thirty-something Baton Rouge native and longtime Brooklynite is moving to one of the Public Theatre’s largest and best-loved programs, making her Shakespeare in the Park directorial debut. She’s helming the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which would appear to be a terrific vehicle for her sensibilities but which turns out to be a mixed bag, though still fun. The romantic comedy is one of Shakespeare’s most delightful and well-structured plays, with four intersecting plots dealing with the notion of love in all its forms. Theseus, the Duke of Athens (Bhavesh Patel), is preparing to wed Hippolyta, queen of the Amazon (De’Adre Aziza). Hermia (Shalita Grant) is in love with Lysander (Kyle Beltran), but her father, Egeus (David Manis), insists that she marry Demetrius (Alex Hernandez) or face severe punishment. Helena (Annaleigh Ashford) is madly in love with Demetrius, who has no interest in her. Meanwhile, an acting troupe of artisans known as the Mechanicals — carpenter Peter Quince (Robert Joy), weaver Nick Bottom (Danny Burstein), bellows mender Francis Flute (Jeff Hiller), tinker Snout (Patrena Murray), joiner Snug (Austin Durant), and tailor Robin Starveling (Joe Tapper) — have come to Athens to put on a production of Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe, about a pair of Babylonian lovers, a wall, and a lion, but professionalism is not their forte. And deep in the forest are the Fairies, including King Oberon (Richard Poe) and Queen Titania (Phylicia Rashad), who are battling over a changeling boy (Benjamin Ye), along with Robin Goodfellow, better known as Puck (Kristine Nielsen), Peaseblossom (Vinie Burrows), Cobweb (Manis), and Mustardseed (Warren Wyss). Magical elixirs, mistaken identity, and animal transformation ensue. “The course of true love never did run smooth,” Lysander tells Hermia. And Puck declares, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Titania (Phylicia Rashad) finds a strange bedfellow in Nick Bottom (Danny Burstein) in Bard show at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream practically demands to be performed outside, and the Delacorte is a splendid home for it. Tony winner David Rockwell’s (She Loves Me) fairy-tale set features three lush green trees, a movable stone wall entranceway, a tree house where the band plays, and a playground slide amid the clouds, stars, flying insects, and backstage raccoons. The fab costumes, including a glamorous shout-out to Beyoncé, are by Tony winner Clint Ramos (Eclipsed). Tony winner Ashford (Kinky Boots, You Can’t Take It with You) steals the show as Helena, once again displaying her spectacular aptitude for physical comedy; her line deliveries, facial expressions, and wacky movements make the production worthwhile all on their own. Six-time Tony nominee Burstein (Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret) has a ball as Bottom, who is turned into a donkey, although the play-within-a-play drags on a bit too long. Casting senior citizens as the fairies, dressed in white night clothing, is cute at first but eventually slows things down, and not even the always outstanding Nielsen can turn it around. And there’s usually sexual tension surrounding the changeling, but deBessonet has made him a young boy searching for a home. Marcelle Davies-Lashley belts out some hot New Orleans–tinged R&B as a fairy singer in a glitzy gown, but her appearances are disruptive to the narrative, taking the audience out of Shakespeare’s fantasy world. (The band consists of music director Jon Spurney on keyboards and guitar, Jeremy Chatzky on bass, Christian Cassan on drums and percussion, Andrew Gutauskas on reeds, Freddy Hall on guitar, and Matt Owens on trumpet and flugabone.) Despite the production’s disjointedness, there is nary a better way to spend a night outdoors in New York City, especially for free. As Puck relates, “If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumbered here / While these visions did appear.”

NAPOLI, BROOKLYN

Three sisters (Lilli Kay, Elise Kibler, and Jordyn DiNatale face unexpected tragedy in Napoli, Brooklyn (photo by Joan Marcus)

Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 3, $99
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Right before intermission in Meghan Kennedy’s Napoli, Brooklyn, director Gordon Edelstein stages a spectacular, shocking event, made all the more surprising because it’s based on a little-remembered occurrence that took place in Park Slope in 1960. What came before intermission is not nearly as exciting, and what comes after might not be as fascinating as it could have been, but the event itself and its revolutionary effect on the characters’ approach to life makes it worth a trip to the downstairs Laura Pels Theatre at the Roundabout, where the show is running through September 3. The Muscolino family is led by the emotionally and physically abusive Nic (Michael Rispoli) and his worried and frightened wife, Luda (Alyssa Bresnahan), who cuts up onions to induce the tears she can’t let flow: “Why does He not let me cry? He knows I need to,” she says about God as she chops away. One of their daughters, twenty-year-old Vita (Elise Kibler), has been sent to live in a convent. Another, sixteen-year-old Francesca (Jordyn DiNatale), wants to run away with her girlfriend, Connie Duffy (Juliet Brett). And the third, twenty-six-year-old Tina (Lilli Kay), works hard in a tile factory. “What’s it like, bein’ loved?” Tina asks one of her coworkers, Celia Williams (Shirine Babb). Meanwhile, Connie’s father, Albert (Erik Lochtefeld), can’t help but flirt with Luda whenever she comes into his butcher shop. As everyone except Nic considers some kind of change in their life, a tragedy befalls the neighborhood that has each person rethinking their future.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes turns into a brawl in new Meghan Kennedy play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Napoli, Brooklyn is, for the most part, a fairly standard family drama, with not enough twists and turns aside from the major one at the end of the first act. The relationship between Francesca and Connie doesn’t feel real, and Nic is too much of a caricature. Kennedy, whose Too Much, Too Much, Too Many ran at the Roundabout Underground in 2013, doesn’t give quite enough depth to the characters as they explore their lives and debate the existence of God in the second act when they come together for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Long Wharf artistic director Edelstein (Satchmo at the Waldorf, My Name Is Asher Lev) makes good use of Eugene Lee’s functional set, in which nearly all the locations are always onstage. But the first-set closer is a doozy, so you’re likely to forgive the syrupy, message-laden narrative and leave the theater wanting to find out more about that real-life devastating catastrophe in Brooklyn that, before this play, wasn’t even a historical footnote to the vast majority of us.

AMERIKE — THE GOLDEN LAND

National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene explores the Jewish immigration experience in Amerike — the Golden Land (photo © Victor Nechay)

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Tuesday-Wednesday and Thursday-Sunday through August 6, $35-$60
866-811-4111
nytf.org
mjhnyc.org

The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene has followed up its wonderful, ebullient hit, The Golden Bride, with Amerike — the Golden Land, a rather more clichéd historical pageant, a series of episodic set pieces about the American dream. The show began life as a special program honoring the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Jewish Daily Forward in 1982 and has gone through numerous iterations since then. The latest version, extended at NYTF’s new home at the Museum of Jewish Heritage through August 20, follows half a dozen emigrants from Eastern Europe who arrive in America expecting streets paved with riches. But the reality of making a new life on the Lower East Side is far more difficult for Oppenheimer (Glenn Seven Allen), Sadie (Alexandra Frohlinger), Joe (Daniel Kahn), Fannie (Dani Marcus), Gussie (Stephanie Lynne Mason), and Izzie (David Perlman). (The talented ensemble also includes Maya Jacobson, Alexander Kosmowski, Raquel Nobile, Isabel Nesti, Grant Richards, and Bobby Underwood.) Written by Moishe Rosenfeld and his cousin, NYTF artistic director Zalmen Mlotek, and directed by Bryna Wasserman, who helmed The Golden Bride and such other NYTF productions as The Dybbuk and Lies My Father Told Me, Amerike features a treasure trove of Yiddish songs performed by an outstanding band, with Katsumi Ferguson on violin, Jordan Hirsch on trumpet, Dmitry Ishenko on bass, Daniel Linden on trombone, Mlotek and Andrew Wheeler on piano, Sean Perham on percussion, and Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch on reeds. The story is told in eleven sections, from “Arrival,” “The New City,” and “Shabbos” to “Work,” “Citizenship,” and “The Depression,” with such numbers as “O Kumt Ir Farvoglte” (Oh Come You Who Are Displaced”), “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” and “Vi Nemt Men Parnuse?” (“How Do I Make a Living?”), by Joseph Rumshinsky, Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl, Solomon Shmulewitz, and other composers.

Despite its innate exuberance, the narrative is laden with overly familiar vignettes about immigrants first seeing the Statue of Liberty, having their names changed on Ellis Island, battling poverty, and trying to assimilate. It often feels more like a history lesson, teaching us about things we already know, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, although it is imbued with a relevance to what is happening today as President Trump continues to push his immigration and refugee restrictions. Amerike — the Golden Land does have some beautiful and heart-wrenching moments, including the story of a widower whose young children are not allowed to enter America with him and two immigrants who are fearful of falling in love. Izzy Fields’s costume design and Jason Lee Courson’s set and projections capture the feeling of late-nineteenth-century / early-twentieth-century New York City, and Merete Muenter’s choreography melds well with the music. The songs are mostly performed in Yiddish with English and Russian surtitles, although, curiously, there are a few English-language numbers that feel out of place. The cast, only one member of which knew Yiddish prior to rehearsals, is solid, and the musicians, who get the crowd dancing after the curtain call, are outstanding. But the lack of originality in the story — there’s even a multilingual version of Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” — dampens a lot of this terrific company’s freshness. (Be sure to arrive forty-five minutes early to get a free Yiddish lesson.)

1984

Citizens of Oceania prepare for the Two Minutes Hate (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Hudson Theatre
139-141 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 8, $35 – $274
www.thehudsonbroadway.com

Among the myriad virtues of George Orwell’s final novel, the 1949 groundbreaking, language-redefining 1984, is its continued relevance to changing times, as every generation finds its prescience remarkable. “It’s a vision of the future no matter when it’s being read,” Martin (Carl Hendrick Louis), an antiques dealer, tells protagonist Winston Smith (Tom Sturridge) in Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s confounding stage version, running at the Hudson Theatre through October 8. Martin was talking about both Winston’s secret diary and the masterful source material, Orwell’s clear-eyed view of a bleak future ruled by unseen totalitarian entities who keep the populace under constant suppression and surveillance. Later in the scene, Martin explains to Winston, “Every age sees itself reflected.” Neither of these lines is in the original text, but they get to the heart of this inconsistent theatrical adaptation. Orwell warned us that all this was coming, and now we’re virtually there, pun intended. It’s no coincidence that the book keeps appearing on the bestseller list as President Donald Trump and his associates speak out about “alternative facts” and “fake news” and cabinet members are confirmed to head departments responsible for policy they seem to be against. Icke and Macmillan have interlaced a confusing framing story that takes place well past 2050, inspired by the book’s appendix, looking back at how Winston attempted to navigate a world drowning in Newspeak, where Big Brother proclaims, “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Strength” and such words as “doublethink,” “thoughtcrime,” “telescreen,” and “unperson” have entered the lexicon. Romantic love is illegal, but Winston and Julia, who both work at the Ministry of Truth, where Winston erases people and events from history, decide to take a risk, finding themselves in each other’s arms while also plotting to bring down the party. But it’s not going to be easy, as they soon discover.

O’Brien (Reed Birney) explains the way things are to Winston (Tom Sturridge) and Julia (Olivia Wilde) (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The 101-minute intermissionless play features some very strong moments, particularly whenever party leader and possible Brotherhood agent O’Brien (Reed Birney) is onstage. The scenes change with a shocking blast of noise and blinding white lights, courtesy of sound designer Tom Gibbons and lighting designer Natasha Chivers, which is frighteningly effective. Later, the torture scenes are so graphic that the theater bars anyone under fourteen. (Originally there was no age limit, but too many families were exiting early with their scared youngsters in tow.) Playing off the concept of the telescreen watching people’s every movement, Icke (Oresteia, Mr. Burns, a post-electric playEvery Brilliant Thing, City of Glass) rely too much on live projections by video designer Tim Reid; at one point the audience is watching the screens at the top of Chloe Lamford’s set for an extended period of time as no live action takes place onstage but instead is being streamed from offstage. In addition, the fourth wall is broken twice, but it’s more of an off-putting device than it is an effective warning that this could happen to us if we’re not careful. “Words matter. Facts matter. The truth matters,” Winston says as the play references Trump and his fight with the media. There’s not much passion between Wilde, in her Broadway debut, and Tony nominee Sturridge (Orphans, Punk Rock), while Tony winner Birney (The Humans, Circle Mirror Transformation) brings just the right calm demeanor to O’Brien. The cast also features Michael Potts as Charrington, Nick Mills as Syme, Wayne Duvall as Parsons, and Cara Seymour as Mrs. Parsons, and the disappearance/erasure of one of the secondary characters is handled quite cleverly. But the narrative jumps around too much between the past, the present, and the future and strays too often from the central plot, creating confusion and annoyance. The story’s overall message — which Orwell arrived at in part as a response to the rise of Stalinism while also predicting the German Stasi — gets buried in too much stylistic stagecraft. However, its relevance is still terrifyingly apparent: Big Brother is indeed watching us, and we don’t seem to mind anymore what they see.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

midsummer nights dream delacorte

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
July 11 – August 13, free, 8:00
shakespeareinthepark.org

The Public Theater follows up its controversial staging of Julius Caesar, in which the title character was modeled directly on President Donald Trump, with its fourth presentation of the Bard’s enchanting fairy tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. James Lapine directed the 1982 edition, starring Christine Baranski, Ricky Jay, Deborah Rush, Kevin Conroy, and William Hurt; Cacá Rosset played Bottom and helmed the carnivalesque 1991 version from Brazil’s Teatro do Ornitorrinco; and in 2006, Daniel Sullivan directed Martha Plimpton, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Mireille Enos, Keith David, Tim Blake Nelson, George Morfogen, and Jay O. Sanders. Now Obie winner Lear deBessonet (Venus, Good Person of Szechwan), who directed the Public Works adaptations of The Winter’s Tale in 2014 and The Odyssey in 2015 at the Delacorte, has assembled a stellar cast for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, running from July 11 to August 13. The roster includes Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford as Helena, six-time Tony nominee Danny Burstein as Nick Bottom, Tony winner Phylicia Rashad as Titania, Kyle Beltran as Lysander, De’Adre Aziza as Hippolyta, Bhavesh Patel as Theseus, Shalita Grant as Hermia, Robert Joy as Peter Quince, Patrena Murray as Snout, Richard Poe as Oberon, and two-time Obie winner and Tony nominee Kristine Nielsen as Puck. The scenic design is by Tony winner David Rockwell, with costumes by Tony winner Clint Ramos, choreography by Chase Brock, and original music by Justin Levine. There are several ways to get the much-coveted free tickets: going to Central Park and waiting on line at the Delacorte for distribution at 12 noon; signing up for the lottery at the Public Theater at 11:00 am; picking up a voucher at a specific daily location in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island for a noon distribution; or trying the email and digital TodayTix lotteries. Good luck — as Lysander tells Hermia, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM VINTAGE BUS BASH, FULL MOON FESTIVAL, IT’S YOUR TERN! AND MORE ON GOVERNORS ISLAND

New York Transit Museum Vintage Bus Bash pulls into Governors Island on Saturday (photo by Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

Governors Island
Saturday, July 8, most events free
govisland.com/events

Tomorrow is a busy day on Governors Island, one of the city’s genuine summer treasures. The New York Transit Museum Vintage Bus Bash (11:00 am – 4:00 pm, free) pulls into Colonels Row, four classic old vehicles that used to shuttle passengers around the city. You’ll be able to check out 1956’s Bus 3100, 1958’s Bus 9098, 1959’s Bus 100, and 1971’s Bus 5227. The seventh annual Full Moon Festival takes place from 12 noon to 2:00 ($50-$61) on the Play Lawn, with Vic Mensa, Larry Heard a.k.a. Mr. Fingers, Kelela, DJ Harvey, Connan Mockasin, Abra, Jeremy Underground, Axel Boman, Tops, Awesome Tapes from Africa, Selvagem, Donna Leake, and Mass Meditation by the Big Quiet. The fourth annual It’s Your Tern! Festival (12 noon – 4:00, free) celebrates the threatened common tern, many of which have been nesting on Tango Pier. There will be games, arts and crafts, a scavenger hunt, a special spotting scope viewing, and bird tours led by Annie Barry and Kellie Quinones. The free Rite of Summer Music Festival in Nolan Park presents “Pamela Z — Works for Voice and Electronics” at 1:00 and 3:00, a live performance by the San Francisco-based composer and media artist. In addition, you can visit such free continuing exhibitions and programs as “The Public Works Department Presents: Sanctuary City,” “Christodora: Nature, Learning, Leadership,” “New York Electronic Art Festival,” “Art of Intuitive Photography,” a family-friendly literary party at “The Empire State Center for the Book,” the NYC Audubon Summer Residency, “Escaping Time: Art from U.S. Prisons,” “Billion Oyster Project Exhibit,” “Sculptors Guild Presents: Currently 80,” A.I.R. Gallery’s “Taken on Trust,” the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s Island Outpost, LMCC’s “A Supple Perimeter” by Kameela Janan Rasheed, the Woolgatherers’ “Genesis 22,” and the Dysfunctional Theatre Company’s “Dancing with Light.”

BROADWAY IN BRYANT PARK 2017

Groundhog Day is one of many musicals that will present stripped-down versions of production numbers in Bryant Park this summer (photo by Joan Marcus)

Bryant Park
40th to 42nd Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursdays, July 6 to August 10, free, 12:30
bryantpark.org

The annual summer Broadway in Bryant Park series features stripped-down performances Thursday afternoons at 12:30 from numerous current and upcoming Broadway and off-Broadway musicals, offering a free sneak peek at shows that are lighting up the Great White Way and elsewhere. Below is the full schedule.

Thursday, July 6
STOMP, Groundhog Day, Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera, with the winner of Steinway’s Rising Star on Broadway Contest, hosted by Christine Nagy

Thursday, July 13
Kinky Boots, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, School of Rock, Soulpepper on 42nd Street, with the Aruba Tourist Authority Carnival Dancers, hosted by Delilah

Thursday, July 20
Waitress, Chicago, Cats, Spamilton: An American Parody, hosted by Rich Kaminski

Thursday, July 27
A Bronx Tale, Anastasia: Home at Last, Avenue Q, The Imbible, hosted by Delilah

Thursday, August 3
Miss Saigon, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Broadway Dreams, with the Aruba Tourist Authority Carnival Dancers, hosted by Bob Bronson

Thursday, August 10
Come from Away, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Bandstand, Curvy Widow, with Brooke Shapiro, hosted by Helen Little