this week in theater

HOT! FESTIVAL: HYPERBOLIC! (THE LAST SPECTACLE)

Friends party like it’s 2033 in Monstah Black’s HYPERBOLIC! (photo by Manchildblack)

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Friday, July 22, and Saturday, July 23, $15-$22, 7:30
212-219-0736
dixonplace.org

If you thought the world was going to end on an August day in 2033, what would you do the night before? Performance artist Monstah Black decides to throw a truly strange farewell party in the chaotic but fun Hyperbolic! (The Last Spectacle). The centerpiece of Dixon Place’s twenty-fifth annual Hot! Festival: The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture is a pre-apocalyptic nightmare, possibly taking place completely in the dreaming mind of the blond-wigged Tucker (Joey Cuellar). As the audience enters the downstairs theater, there are five bodies on the floor and one on a bed; it’s difficult to tell if they are real or mannequins. Something truly awful has happened, as furniture and other objects pin the figures to the floor, glittering red fabric oozing off their bodies like blood. Eventually they rise and slowly get up and start prepping for the festivities, choosing their outfits, putting on makeup, and getting the food and drink ready. For a little over an hour, Tucker, Decay (Alicia Dellimore), Geez Louise (Shiloh Hodges), Dezi and Trigger (Johnnie “Cruise” Mercer), Bubbles (Benedict Nguyen), Goddess #1 (Marilyn Louis), Goddess #2 (Yuko “Uko Snowbunny” Tanaka), and Holiday Tahdah (Monstah Black) create themselves and construct their personas, working on makeup, striking poses, and primping in mirrors while also considering what the end means. Sprightly anarchic vanity is on glorious display: Dezi, for example, spends much of the early part of the show making love to his selfie stick, while Holiday frets: “I’ve been spending the last three days trying to figure out how I’m going to fit my shoes into my suitcase. How am I going to fit my shoes into my suitcase, Tucker? How? I know that sounds crazy considering the chaos and disorder we live in, but I have priorities.”

Chaos and disorder abound as the utterly confusing non-narrative piece of unique dance theater rages on, celebrating bodies, desire, glam fashion, cocktails, hair, style to the max, and Madonna-style voguing while evoking Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning. And that’s all before the masks come out. Black is credited as conceptual designer, movement generator, costume designer, theatrical director and camera operator with Ashley Brockington, and music producer with his group, the Illustrious Blacks; his husband, Manchildblack, is musical consultant. (You can follow the couple’s adventures on their YouTube show, At Home with the Blacks.) Under his given name, Reginald Ellis Crump, Black wrote the script in addition to collaborating on the lyrics with Derek D. Gentry. In order to spread the word about Hyperbolic! Dixon Place encourages the audience to take photos and video and post them to social media; however, try not to film nearly the entire production, as the person sitting in front of me did, causing a major distraction, and don’t use your flash, as a man in the first row did. Instead, just let Black and his cast and crew lead you on one wild, unpredictable ride as doomsday approaches. The Hot! Festival continues through August 29 with such other works as Mike Nelson’s If You Want to See the Devil, Ry Szelong’s Interabang, and Dandy Darkly’s Myth Mouth!

YIDDISH THEATER’S LEGACY IN AMERICAN PERFORMANCE

Panelists will be at the Museum of the City of New York to discuss legacy of Yiddish theater in America

Who: Tovah Feldshuh, Adam Kantor, Michelle Slonim, Jackie Hoffman, David Chack
What: Panel discussion
Where: Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd St., 212-534-1672
When: Monday, July 18, $25, 6:30
Why: Yiddish theater is on the rise again, with the successful revival of The Golden Bride by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, which is back at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Drama Desk-nominated Death of a Salesman by the New Yiddish Rep. On July 18, Adam Kantor (Motel in the current revival of Fiddler on the Roof), stand-up comedian Michelle Slonim (Date Me!), Tovah Feldshuh (Golda’s Balcony), Jackie Hoffman (Once upon a Mattress), and moderator David Chack (past president of the Association for Jewish Theatre) will gather at the Museum of the City of New York to discuss “Yiddish Theater’s Legacy in American Performance,” being held in conjunction with the exhibition “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway,” which continues through August 14.

INCOGNITO

Morgan Spector, Geneva Carr, Heather Lind, and Charlie Cox play multiple roles in Nick Payne’s ingenious INCOGNITO (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Extended through July 10, $105
212-581-1212
incognitoplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Some entertainments let us check our brains at the door when we enter a theater, seeking mindless, feel-good entertainment to take us away from the drudgery and complications of modern life. However, thirty-two-year-old British playwright Nick Payne not only forces audiences to use their noggins but uses the human brain as the catalyst and centerpiece of his ingenious play Incognito, which has been extended at City Center through July 10. In such previous works as Constellations, If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, and Elegy, science plays a major role as Payne examines such topics as climate change, time, death, string theory, and the multiverse. Loosely inspired by several real stories, Incognito features four actors playing twenty parts built around three intertwining scenarios. Dr. Thomas Harvey (Spector) has performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein, cutting out his brain and bringing it home with him for further study. (Yes, this is based on fact.) “I got the professor in fronta me, I already opened him up and I’m looking at this . . . brain, and I’m thinking to myself: this could be the biggest moment of my life. So I took it,” the pathologist tells his incredulous wife, Elouise (Carr). Meanwhile, Dr. Victor Milner (Spector) is meeting with his patient, pianist Henry Maison (Cox), an epileptic who, following a brain operation to try to stop his seizures, now suffers from short-term memory loss, essentially restarting every forty-five seconds. His devoted wife, Margaret Thomson (Lind), is attempting to use musical therapy to help him, but Henry seems to have forgotten how to play the piano as well. In the third arc, Dr. Martha Murphy (Carr) is a divorced clinical neuropsychologist going on her first date with a woman, the free-spirited Patricia Thorn (Lind). Over the course of eighty-five breathless minutes, the stories overlap and intertwine either directly or conceptually as Payne explores love, grief, memory, identity, and time-and-space relativity.

Morgan Spector and Geneva Carr face off while Charlie Cox and Heather Lind watch in dazzling play by Nick Payne (photo by Joan Marcus)

Divided into three sections — Encoding, Storing, and Retrieving — Incognito takes place on Scott Pask’s essentially simple set, a circular platform with four chairs. The characters and multiple plotlines change instantly, like the firing of neurons in the brain, often in the middle of a conversation or sentence, the actors, wearing the same clothes throughout, using different accents and manners of speaking to indicate the sudden shifts in time and place, along with lighting cues from Ben Stanton. In addition, there is occasional abstract movement set to music by David Van Tieghem. It’s all seamlessly directed by Tony winner Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Father) and expertly acted by Carr, Cox, Lind, and Spector, who effortlessly slide from one role to another as the stories weave together in this Manhattan Theatre Club production. “Our brains are constantly, exhaustively working overtime to deliver the illusion that we’re in control, but we’re not,” Martha tells Patricia. “The brain builds a narrative to steady us from moment to moment, but it’s ultimately an illusion. There is no me, there is no you, and there is certainly no self; we are divided and discontinuous and constantly being duped. The brain is a storytelling machine and it’s really, really good at fooling us.” The same can be said for Payne’s marvelously constructed play, which makes audiences’ brains work overtime, but it’s well worth it. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world,” one of Martha’s patients, Anthony (Spector), tells her, quoting Einstein. Incognito is riveting theater, with knowledge and imagination to spare.

I WANT YOU TO WANT ME

Jack Ferver’s deviously delicious I WANT YOU TO WANT ME continues at the Kitchen through July 2 (photo by Paula Court)

The Kitchen
519 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.,
June 30 – July 2, $25
855-263-2623
www.americandance.org
thekitchen.org

Jack Ferver’s I Want You to Want Me is a devastatingly funny and clever send-up of the classic Hollywood tale of a young woman chasing dreams of stardom — as if made by an Italian giallo master. A dancer who spends most of her time waitressing, Ann Erica Rose (Carling Talcott-Steenstra) is excited when she gets offered a chance to work with a prominent company (companie) in Europe, but her boyfriend (Ferver) doesn’t want her to go, spouting clichéd heterosexual platitudes that are all the more hysterical because Ferver, a local gay icon, plays the tough straight man with delicious relish. Ann Erica (from America) heads off to Paris, where she is taken under the wing of witchy dance legend Madame M (Ferver), who is assisted by the mysterious Reid (Reid Bartelme). Madame M guides Ann Erica, Reid, and another wide-eyed new dancer, Barth (Barton Cowperthwaite), who hails from Colorado, through a series of solos, duets, and trios that are consistently outrageous as Ferver plays with conventions of modern dance and classical ballet while the devious plot thickens, leading to a finale that would make fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 shriek in delight.

Jack Ferver, Barton Cowperthwaite, Carling Talcott-Steenstra and Reid Bartelme perform solos, duets, and trios in Ferver’s latest piece of absurdist hilarity (photo by Paula Court)

I Want You to Want Me is set in a dance rehearsal studio, with two side mirrors in the corner and large mirrors against the back wall that reflect the audience. Both Madame M and Reid are able to magically turn the lights and fog machine on and off with the flick of a finger, lending an otherworldly nature to the proceedings. Talcott-Steenstra and Cowperthwaite are a riot as the Disney-esque couple from an alternate universe, and longtime Ferver collaborator Bartelme is a scream as Reid, who deadpans beautifully during extended dance sequences that feature some crazy-ass moves. Channeling such divas as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Martha Graham, Ferver (Chambre; Mon, Ma Mes) feasts on his role as Madame M, gliding across the stage in an elegant dark costume, by Reid & Harriet Design (run by Bartelme and Harriet Jung), that can be rearranged for multiple purposes, from a devilish, hooded robe to a lovely off-the-shoulder gown to a sexy little frock. It’s no wonder Ferver spends much of the time looking at himself in one of the mirrors; he can’t take his eyes off himself, and we can’t either, especially as his thick makeup and ever-growing false eyelashes start to devolve. Part of the ADI/NYC Incubator residency program, I Want You to Want Me is another triumphant piece of thoroughly engaging dance theater as only Jack Ferver can create.

STET

Erika (Jocelyn Kuritsky) and Phil (Bruce McKenzie) tackle a complex story about campus rape culture in STET (photo © Ben Strothmann)

June Havoc Theatre, Abingdon Theatre Company
Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 10, $51-$76 (pay what you can $5-$20 July 8)
212-868-2055
abingdontheatre.org

You might expect Kim Davies’s STET, a play about campus rape and how it’s reported in the media, to be a didactic, pedagogic, and preachy piece of well-meaning, issue-driven propaganda. It was developed by Davies, new Abingdon Theatre artistic director Tony Speciale, and star Jocelyn Kuritsky, founder of the Muse Project, which calls for “a paradigm shift for female actors.” It has partnered with Take Back the Night, a nonprofit organization that “seeks to end sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse, and all other forms of sexual violence.” Several of the performances are being followed by discussions with journalists and survivors of sexual assault. And one of the characters in the play is spreading the word of One in Four, the all-male sexual assault peer education group at colleges and universities around the country that takes its name from various studies that show that approximately twenty-five percent of female undergraduates are victims of sexual assault. But it turns out that STET is a compelling, thought-provoking work that pulls no punches as it explores complex situations with intelligence and finesse. STET was inspired by the controversial Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus,” which led to a retraction that shook the world of journalism. Kuritsky stars as Erika, a reporter at a national magazine looking to get her first cover story. Her editor, Phil (Bruce McKenzie), suggests that she take a new angle on the topic, focusing on what it’s like for survivors long after the assault, whether they are able to get back to a more normal life in the aftermath, but Erika says, “I’m just — you know, I’m just kind of raped out? That’s all.” But she ultimately accepts the assignment and tracks down a college student named Ashley Young (Lexi Lapp), who describes in detail how she was raped at a fraternity party by seven pledges. However, she is terrified of using any real names or giving away any specifics that could lead to retaliation, so she is unsure if she wants to be part of the story. Erika also meets with Christina Torres (Déa Julien), a graduate of Ashley’s school who now works as project coordinator for the university’s sexual misconduct response and prevention initiative. “I’m here for people who are in pain, who are suffering, who need someone to help them be okay,” Christina says, “because literally everything else is about the perpetrator of the assault and that is just not my job.” Christina refers Erika to Connor (Jack Fellows), a current student who is cofounder of the school’s One in Four chapter and the vice president of the fraternity where Ashley was allegedly attacked. As Erika investigates further, she gets a better picture of the culture that has grown around campus rape. “I think Ashley has a very . . . um . . . it’s a very clear story for a reader to follow,” she tells Christina, who replies, “Yeah, it’s very easy to understand as rape.” Erika: “Yeah.” Christina: “But a lot of stories aren’t. But that doesn’t mean, you know, that they’re not, um, rape.” Despite telling Phil that she’s “not a sympathetic person,” Erika starts getting more personally involved in the story while trying to maintain her journalistic ethics.

Erika (Jocelyn Kuritsky) tries to comfort Ashley Young (Lexi Lapp) while investigating a difficult story (photo © Ben Strothmann)

STET, named for the term used to tell a typesetter to ignore a suggested change, takes place in Jo Winiarski’s conference-room set, surrounded by opaque walls through which shadows can occasionally be seen. The walls also serve as a backdrop for Katherine Freer’s projections, which include Skyping, text messages, a television interview, and a shower of words as the story takes off. Davies (Smoke) handles the tense subject with great care, avoiding platitudes for the most part while still making her point. “I just don’t see women as victims waiting to happen,” Connor says. Erika responds, “I don’t see women as victims. But don’t you think — isn’t it possible that someone could, you know, get pressured into doing something she doesn’t want to do?” to which Connor replies, “But she’s still choosing to do it, right?” It’s not an easy play to watch, and it does have its occasional lapses, but it’s very effective in its specific exploration of rape culture examined from multiple angles. Don’t be surprised if it has you reevaluating your thoughts on rape and the media long after the play is over. STET has been extended through July 10; the June 30 performance will be followed by a discussion with writers Amanda Duarte and Eliza Bent and activist Kathy Moran.

FIRST SATURDAY: VISUALIZE INDEPENDENCE

Dread Scott (American, born 1965). Performance still from On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, 2014. Pigment print, 22 × 30 in. (55.9 × 76.2 cm). Project produced by More Art. Collection of the artist, Brooklyn. © Dread Scott. (Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott

Dread Scott, performance still from “On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide,” pigment print, 2014 (Project produced by More Art. Collection of the artist, Brooklyn. © Dread Scott. Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, July 2, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum honors America’s 240th birthday with an evening of free programs dedicated to free speech and social change on July 2. The monthly First Saturday events will feature live performances by Pablo Helguera’s project El Club de Protesta (the Protest Club), Bread and Puppet Theater (Underneath the Above Show #1), Dennis Redmoon Darkeem (smudging ritual, interactive Good Trade), and DJ Chela; a screening of Judd Ehrlich’s Keepers of the Game (followed by a talkback with cast members Louise and Tsieboo Herne); highlights from the “LGBTQ New Americans” oral history project (followed by a talkback); storytelling with percussionist Sanga of the Valley; a pop-up gallery talk for “Agitprop!”; a curator tour of the American art collection with Connie Choi; a hands-on workshop in which participants can make their own personal flag using cloth collages; and interactive “Legislative Theatre” with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Disguise: Masks and Global African Art,” “Tom Sachs: Boombox Retrospective, 1999–2016,” and “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull).”

TURN ME LOOSE

Dick Gregory (Joe Morton) has been pointing his finger at America’s ailments for more than fifty years (photo by Monique Carboni)

Westside Theatre
407 West 43rd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 17, $79-$89
www.turnmelooseplay.com

“Now, I know that many of you folks out there do read the paper. But I wish you would read all the papers. You just read some of the papers — where they callin’ me the Negro Lenny Bruce. You gotta’ read those Congo papers where they callin’ Lenny Bruce — the white Dick Gregory!” Dick Gregory (Joe Morton) declares near the beginning of Turn Me Loose, Gretchen Law’s smart, essential play about the life and career of the comedian, activist, and self-described wellness guru born Richard Claxton Gregory in St. Louis in 1932. The Emmy-winning, Tony-nominated Morton is riveting as Gregory, going back and forth between club gigs and interviews from the 1960s to the present day, when he addresses the audience directly as an old man, looking back at his failures and accomplishments. (Fortunately, the play avoids his numerous forays into conspiracy theories.) Gregory talks about his life with his wife and children, his goals for financial success and social change, and his friendships with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Medgar Evers. In fact, the title is taken from Evers’s final words: “Turn me loose.” As Morton ambles across Chris Barreca’s stripped-down set, consisting of a microphone, table, stool and phone, the play gets to the heart of what Gregory was and is about. “I’m out to find the truth. Expose the tricks,” he says. Discussing the ongoing battles between black and white, Muslims and Christians, Jews and Palestinians, and liberals and conservatives, he admonishes, “When you accept injustice, you become injustice. When you coexist with filth? You become filth. It’s all of those myths you’re buyin’ into.” Other gems include “Bein’ white ain’t got nothin’ to do with color,” “My tongue . . . was my switchblade. My humor was my sword,” “I believe that information is salvation,” and “When I grew up in St. Louis, I thought that poverty was the worst disease on the earth. I soon learned that racism is the worst disease on the face of the earth.”

Joe Morton is riveting as comedian, activist, and wellness guru Dick Gregory (photo by Monique Carboni)

Law (The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of Her God, Al Sharpton for President) and director John Gould Rubin (Hedda Gabler, Playing with Fire) zero in on the key moments of Gregory’s career: being invited by Hugh Hefner to perform at the Playboy Club in Chicago in 1961, where he faced a harsh crowd of white southerners, and demanding that if Jack Paar wanted him to do stand-up on the Tonight show, he had to be allowed to sit on the couch and speak with Paar afterward, something no black entertainer had done before. He also makes brilliant use of the word “n-gger.” He celebrates the way Mark Twain employed it (“Mark Twain was so brilliant! He gave a n-gger a name! ‘N-gger Jim.’ And then white folks had to read about a black man with a name. A person.”) and confronts the audience with it. After being heckled at the Playboy Club, he turns to the Westside Theatre audience and says, “How about you all out there? Anyone out there care to stand up and call me a n-gger? Come on now. Don’t miss out on a great opportunity. Stand up! Come on. Stand up! Go ahead. Get on up. Get on up and call me — a n-gger! It’s only a word.” Of course, at that moment you could hear a pin drop, aside from some nervous laughter. (The night I went, the crowd was about half white and half black.) Morton, who has starred in such films as The Brother from Another Planet and Lone Star, such television series as Scandal and Eureka, and the Broadway plays Hair, Art, and Raisin, does not go into full impersonation mode but effectively captures Gregory’s unique spirit in his every movement. However, Turn Me Loose is not quite a one-man show; John Carlin, who is white, also appears in bit parts as various hecklers and a comic. In addition, coproducer John Legend contributes an original song. At one point, Gregory declares, “Nobody makes it out alive when they make a real change that has to do with race. Nobody!” As he often has done over the course of his life, Gregory defies convention yet again.