this week in theater

BURIED CHILD

Dodge (Ed Harris) and Tilden (Paul Sparks) have a complicated father-son relationship in New Group revival of Sam Shepard’s BURIED CHILD (photo by Monique Carboni)

The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 3, $30-$115
www.thenewgroup.org

At a talkback following a recent performance of the New Group’s powerful, involving revival of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child at the Pershing Square Signature Center, actor Paul Sparks, who plays Tilden, said, “This is a play you learn about as you do it,” and several of the other actors nodded in agreement. Shepard won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this deep-rooted exploration of the decline of the American dream, but he has not stopped tinkering with it, and he has never explicated its many intricacies, not even to the actors themselves. In the preface to the 2006 revised edition of the play, Shepard explained that he made major changes for the 1995 Steppenwolf production because “enough time had elapsed for me to clearly see the holes in the play. . . . Finally, the language began to settle in and take hold. There were fewer gaps between the actors, the characters, and the words.” Shepard has revisited the play — which was nominated for five Tony Awards for that Steppenwolf version, including nods for director Gary Sinise, actors Lois Smith and James Gammon, and Best Play — once again for this latest edition, helmed by New Group founding artistic director Scott Elliott. Shepard didn’t make any huge alterations this time around, but he has done some nipping and tucking here and there. Perhaps the most critical change is that the play, which has always had three acts and two intermissions, is now being performed in a smooth-flowing 110 minutes without break; in addition, Ed Harris, who plays dying alcoholic patriarch Dodge, is already onstage as the audience enters the cozy Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, spending upwards of a half hour drinking, dozing, and staring off into space as he sits uncomfortably on a ratty couch, an old baseball cap on his head. It’s a superbly effective introduction to Buried Child, a complex play about a dysfunctional family nonpareil, each member more wounded, physically and/or psychologically, than the next. Although their problems are primarily tied to a long-buried secret that has shattered them, it doesn’t appear that they had much happiness prior to that either. Dodge has given up on life, eking through a sickly, shriveled existence, trying to forget who he once was and what might have been. His wife, Halie (Amy Madigan), is in perpetual mourning for their dead son, Ansel, perhaps the family’s only hope at bettering its lot. Halie henpecks Dodge when she’s not out gallivanting around with Father Dewis (Larry Pine) and lording it over her husband. Meanwhile, son Bradley (Rich Sommer) stumbles on the periphery, a bear of a man who lost one of his legs in a chainsaw accident, and another son, Tilden, has returned after being thrown out of New Mexico for unspecified reasons. Tilden, an empty shell of a man, seems more ghost than human, making very little sense in those rare moments he speaks.

Family secrets threaten to implode a disillusioned clan in BURIED CHILD (photo by Monique Carboni)

Tilden keeps showing up with vegetables he has dug up in the backyard, even though Dodge and Halie insist that nothing has been planted in their dilapidated Illinois farm in decades. If things weren’t already crazy enough, Tilden’s college-age son, Vince (Nat Wolff), suddenly shows up with his girlfriend, Shelly (Taissa Farmiga), after disappearing for six years, and at first neither Dodge nor Tilden recognizes him, which makes Shelly want to leave. Vince is determined to become part of a family again, however, no matter how difficult and challenging that may be. But this is Shepard, so a happy ending may not exactly be on the horizon. It rains throughout much of the play, and occasional drops of water trickle down from the ceiling into a metal pail near the front of the stage, like a metronome interacting with the dialogue, or like a countdown clock ticking its way toward impending doom. Shepard injects lots of dark humor into the work, emphasizing the surreal nature of what is going on, even though the family is surrounded by a heavy shroud of death. As the play opens, Halie is unseen for several minutes as she screams down at Dodge from upstairs. “What’re you watching? You shouldn’t be watching anything that’ll get you excited!” she calls out, to which he responds, “Nothing gets me excited.” Dodge soon refers to himself as “the corpse” and “an invisible man,” claiming, “I don’t enjoy anything!” But he gets a little kick out of Shelly, who is not afraid to speak her mind. “It’s like a Norman Rockwell cover or something,” she says when she first enters, making fun of the house. “I thought it was going to be turkey dinners and apple pie and all that kinda stuff,” she adds once she’s sure that is not quite the case. (The wonderfully run-down living-room set is by Derek McLane.) Mysteries pervade, questions go unanswered, and subplots fade away even as revelations are made, all anchored by a mesmerizing performance by Oscar nominee Harris (Pollock, Wrecks), a Shepard veteran who won an Obie in 1984 for his portrayal of Eddie in the original off-Broadway production of Shepard’s Fool for Love and a 1995 Lucille Lortel Award for playing Carter in Shepard’s Simpatico. The decision to have Harris onstage from the time the doors open — and he never leaves — immediately bonds the audience to Dodge, as if he’s one of us, a bystander watching all the absurdity and chaos exploding around him. (It also gets rid of the dreaded entrance applause.) In fact, although he occasionally watches television, no glow or noise ever emanates from the TV, as if the actual show is what the rest of the characters are doing, which he is watching just as we are. Harris’s real-life wife, Oscar nominee Madigan (Twice in a Lifetime, Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind) — the couple costarred in the New Group’s production of Beth Henley’s underappreciated The Jacksonian in 2013 — is beautifully shrill as the nasty, deeply wounded Halie, playing her like a classic Tennessee Williams femme fatale. (Madigan played Stella opposite Alec Baldwin’s Stanley in Gregory Mosher’s 1992 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.)

Sommer (The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, Harvey) provides fear and danger as Bradley, the ever-dependable Pine (Casa Valentina, A Public Reading of an Unpublished Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney) is effectively neutral as the priest, and Sparks (Boardwalk Empire, The Killer) creates a zombielike Tilden exuding a dread that you can practically cut with a knife. Both Farmiga (American Horror Story, The Bling Ring) and Wolff (Heartbeat to Baghdad, The Fault in Our Stars) appear to have shown up from the current day (except for Wolff’s porn stache), although the play takes place at an inexact time during 1970s and there are no specific cultural references. (And for those of you keeping score at home, Pee Wee Reese never played for the Chicago White Sox, but he did hit three home runs for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the Chicago Cubs in Wrigley Field.) Farmiga, in her stage debut, is a little too chipper as the perky Shelly, but Wolff is strong as a young man desperate to reconnect with his family, regardless of what they have become. Themes of disillusionment, ennui, aging, love, lies, and loss permeate Buried Child, a tense, bitterly funny, heartbreaking tragedy that has been reimagined for this must-see revival that feels right at home at the Signature, imbued with freshness and vitality by Elliott (Mercury Fur, Hurlyburly); Shepard was the playwright-in-residence in 1996-97 for the Signature Theatre (but not at this location) and more recently was part of the company’s legacy program, and his large-scale portrait is on the wall alongside that of so many other Signature Theatre playwrights (such as August Wilson, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, and Paula Vogel). Buried Child is a production of the New Group, not the Signature, but it’s an extremely satisfying sort of homecoming nonetheless, particularly for a show about home.

DE MATERIE

Heiner Goebbels’s multidisciplinary reimagining of Louis Andriessen’s DE MATERIE runs at the Park Avenue Armory March 22-30 (photo by Wonge Bergmann)

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
March 22–30, $85-$195
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s four-part magnum opus, De Materie, makes its North American stage debut this month at the Park Avenue Armory, in a wildly inventive production directed by Heiner Goebbels, whose Stifters Dinge had its U.S. premiere at the armory in December 2009. Andriessen’s visionary work weaves in dance, spoken text, choral singing, jazz, science, philosophy, poetry, Renaissance music, and more, with Goebbels adding, among other things, one hundred sheep. Among those being referenced in the piece, which explores the relationship between matter and spirit, are Madame Curie, Piet Mondrian, Hadewijch, David Gorlaeus, and the De Stijl art movement. The work will be performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), conducted by Peter Rundel, with the ChorWerk Ruhr, more than two dozen actors and dancers, and others; tenor Pascal Charbonneau is Gorlaeus, soprano Evgeniya Sotnikova is Hadewijch, and Catherine Milliken is Madame Curie. The stage and lighting design is by Klaus Grünberg, with costumes by Florence von Gerkan, sound by Norbert Ommer, and choreography by Florian Bilbao. “This highly imaginative collaboration asks us to appreciate the inherent connections between all manner of innovation throughout society — from the discovery of radioactivity to the creation of a work of art,” new Park Avenue Armory artistic director Pierre Audi said in a statement. In addition to the six performances, there will be four special programs to shed more light on this monumental undertaking. On March 23 at 8:00 ($60), Andriessen will team up with pianist Jason Moran for “Improvisations: Louis Andriessen and Jason Moran,” an exploration of how jazz is used in De Materie while discussing improvisation in general. On March 24 at 6:00 ($15), WNYC’s John Schaefer will host “De Materie: Matter & Spirit,” a conversation with Goebbels, Columbia music professor and musician and composer George E. Lewis, and composer Missy Mazzoli. On March 25 at 6:00 ($15), Schaefer will moderate “Four Different Ways: Celebrating Louis Andriessen,” with Bang on a Can cofounder Julia Wolfe, electronic experimental musician and composer Nathan Michel, and Princeton music professor Donnacha Dennehy. And finally, on March 26 at 6:00 ($15), Audi will lead an artist talk with Goebbels, Rundel, and Andriessen.

THE WILDNESS

Lauren Worsham is the pregnant ringleader of Sky-Pony’s delightful indie-rock fairy tale, THE WILDNESS (photo by Ben Arons)

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday – Saturday through March 26, $36
212-352-3101
arsnovanyc.com
www.sky-pony.com

Brooklyn-based eight-piece collective Sky-Pony presents a captivating treat for adventurous theatergoers with the DIY indie-rock opera The Wildness, which has been extended at Ars Nova through March 26. A collaboration with the Play Company, The Wildness is a multimedia fairy tale that filters such popular musicals as Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell through a Narnia-like aesthetic and video-game narrative that fantasy fans will go ga-ga over. The premise is that a group of “agnostic, generally apathetic millennials” is putting on its fifth annual ritual, known as the Wildness, in order to “purge out doubts and fears.” But their leader and founder, Michael, is missing, so they forge ahead without him. Everyone plays two characters, one a member of Sky-Pony, the other in the fable. Tony winner Lauren Worsham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) serves as the host and plays Zira, a villager who accompanies Ada, the messianic princess (Lilli Cooper), on her dangerous travels through the Wildness, where they discover a mysterious cabin, belonging to “the builder,” filled with strange objects. We are told that the role of Ada is usually performed by Michael, but Lilli, his sister, has stepped in at the last minute, starting off by delivering the invocation: “Here’s to the artists, freaks, and wanderers too, we dedicate tonight to you.” The cast also includes Katie Lee Hill and Sharone Sayegh as handmaidens and backup singers, David Blasher as the cellist and the Powerful But Aging Ruler, and Obie winner Kyle Jarrow as the keymaster and the Voice from the Boombox, with Jamie Mohamdein on bass, Kevin Wunderlich on guitar, and Jeff Fernandes, wearing a Mr. Tumnus headpiece, on drums and playing villagers as well. Over the course of ninety minutes, the story explores faith and doubt, fear of death, sin and forgiveness, temptation and salvation, the coming rapture, wandering blind, and adherence to the old ways, haunted by a prophecy: “The spring turns foul when our faith falters / only the blessed heir can make it pure again. / On sunrise of the second day of the third week of the fourth moon, / Ada will lead us into a rapturous new era.”

Sky-Pony struts its stuff in multimedia indie-rock opera at Ars Nova (photo by Ben Arons)

Religious references abound throughout The Wildness, which is divided into twelve sections, although it is no mere tent revival. Ada is identified as “the blessed heir with the facial hair”; Ada and Zira have names that evoke the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end; several characters and two audience members deliver “overshares,” public confessions with a decidedly twelve-step edge; and Ada and Zira find a book in the cabin that changes everything. The Wildness is also very much about the fear of growing up, of the millennial generation staring adulthood in the face. Tony-nominated director Sam Buntrock (Sunday in the Park with George, Turn of the Screw at BAM) lets Sky-Pony strut its stuff, keeping up a rollicking, frolicking pace. The musical numbers, some of which appear on Sky-Pony’s debut album, December 2015’s Beautiful Monsters, include “The Lost Ones,” “The Waltz of the Inevitable Triumph of Doubt,” “Dragon,” and “Everyone Will Die,” with videos appearing on the many monitors throughout the space, which has been transformed by Kris Stone; a long, narrow stage (reminiscent of a cross?) cuts the theater in two, with the audience seated on both sides, either on ottomans or comfy couches. Tilly Grimes’s costumes are steampunk hip, Chase Brock’s choreography is fun, Sara Morgan’s props are utterly charming (oh, that miniature cabin on the ceiling!), and the clever text, by husband-and-wife Jarrow and Worsham (who, in a neat twist, is pregnant), is playfully self-referential. “I’m doubting whether I can pull off these sequin panties,” Lilli opines at one point. In the fifth section, Lauren says, “Ada’s mind was filled with questions. Her father had taught her about the Wildness that trapped them in their troubled village. But no one had actually seen a dragon. Could it be they weren’t there at all?” Lilli responds, “Zira didn’t wonder this. She knew we believe in many things we don’t see.” It’s a statement that sums up what the Wildness, and life itself, is really all about.

HUGHIE

Frank Wood and Forest Whitaker star in revival of Eugene O’Neill’s HUGHIE (photo by Marc Brenner)

Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday (and some Tuesday nights) through March 27, $25- $149
hughiebroadway.com

Written in 1941 but not staged until 1958, five years after his death, Eugene O’Neill’s one-act Hughie features a main character who seems to have walked right out of The Iceman Cometh. In the sixty-minute show’s fourth trip to Broadway, Forest Whitaker portrays Erie Smith, a role previously played by Jason Robards, Ben Gazzara, Brian Dennehy, Al Pacino, Richard Schiff, and Burgess Meredith, who originated the part in English in 1963. Erie is an alcoholic gambler who has returned to the ratty, formerly grand Broadway hotel where he lives following an extended bender, mourning the death of his beloved night clerk and sounding board, Hughie. As embodied by Whitaker, who is taking the stage for the first time since shortly after college, Erie is a hulking presence who speaks in fits and starts, sharing his hopes and dreams, failures and memories with the new clerk, Charlie Hughes (Frank Wood), who is not exactly thrilled at being bothered in the middle of the night. Erie rambles on about whatever comes into his head while Hughes barely says a word. Set in 1928 on the cusp of the Great Depression, Hughie is more a character study than a fully realized play; in fact, it was meant to be part of a cycle of one-acts, called By Way of Obit, that were essentially monologues about a dead person. In a letter to critic George Jean Nathan, O’Neill explained, “Via this monologue you get a complete picture of the person who died — his or her whole life story — but just as complete a picture of the life and character of the narrator.” O’Neill ultimately destroyed all of the other in-process one-acts but saved Hughie.

Forest Whitaker makes his return to the stage in HUGHIE (photo by Marc Brenner)

Oscar winner and UNESCO special envoy Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) was rumored to have had trouble remembering his lines during previews (which has also been said of other recent Hollywood stars on Broadway, including Pacino and Bruce Willis), but he has settled into the role, taking command of the lovable loser, who represents an America about to hit free fall. Tony winner Wood (Side Man, Clybourne Park) is a fine foil for Erie, already onstage when the theater doors open, staring emptily into an abyss. Costume and set designer Christopher Oram, who has won Tonys for Red and Wolf Hall: Parts One & Two, has created a sensational hotel lobby, huge and dim, creaky and musty, its former splendor, perhaps like Erie’s, hovering in the dankness, enhanced by Neil Austin’s lighting and Adam Cork’s original music. Tony-winning director Michael Grandage (The Cripple of Inishmaan, King Lear) keeps it all from becoming boring, although even at a mere sixty minutes it feels repetitive and a little too long. Hughie was scheduled to run into July but recently posted an early closing notice of March 27 because of low advance ticket sales. Perhaps theatergoers were expecting more fireworks, or they were turned off by the preview problems, or maybe they don’t want to spend upwards of $149 on an hour-long show. Of course, we don’t pay to see movies by the minute, nor do we buy art by the yard, to paraphrase Max von Sydow’s character in Hannah and Her Sisters.

BOY

Dr. Wendell Barnes (Paul Niebanck) bonds with Samantha (Bobby Steggert) in Anna Ziegler’s BOY (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 9, $62.50
www.keencompany.org
www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org

Award-winning playwright Anna Ziegler takes a unique and imaginative approach to the timely issue of gender identity in the expertly written, inventively staged drama Boy. A joint production of Keen Company and Ensemble Studio Theatre, Boy was inspired by the real-life case of David Reimer as well as the birth of Ziegler’s first child. Bobby Steggert stars as Adam/Samantha, a twin born in Iowa in 1967. Shortly after a botched, unnecessary circumcision accidentally sears off his penis when he is eight months old, his mother, Trudy (Heidi Armbruster), and father, Doug (Ted Koch), seek out the help of eminent physician Wendell Barnes (Paul Niebanck), a doctor in the relatively new field of gender reassignment. “Sam will never lead a normal life. He will never be a father. He will never be normal,” Doug opines in a letter to Dr. Barnes, while Trudy adds, “We saw you on that program and you said that we are blank slates at birth. You said we are shaped by society and not biology.” Dr. Barnes, who is eager to treat the boy, convinces the parents that it is best for the child to be raised as a girl, receiving hormone shots and ultimately an operation to give her a vagina, but he insists that she must never find out that she was born with male genitalia. The play shifts back and forth between various years from 1968 to 1989 as Samantha learns about great literature from Dr. Barnes and Adam falls for a single working mother, Jenny (Rebecca Rittenhouse). Delivering a lecture in 1977, Dr. Barnes explains, “How do we become who we are? Is it a process that takes place entirely within the dark mysteries of the womb, so we emerge fully formed, our character, our future set? Or do we build ourselves, brick by brick, ‘sufficient to have stood though free to fall’? Do we make our house or do we simply inhabit it?” But as Boy shows, there are no easy answers to those questions, whether it’s 1968, 1977, 1989, or today, when such topics as nature vs. nurture and being born a certain way are still rife with controversy.

Jenny (Rebecca Rittenhouse) and Adam (Bobby Steggert) consider a relationship in BOY (photo by Carol Rosegg)

No matter the age, Adam/Samantha wears the same outfit in every scene, reaffirming that what matters is on the inside. Steggert (Mothers & Sons, Ragtime) does a marvelous job of depicting how uncomfortable Adam/Samantha is in his/her own skin, displaying a jittery awkwardness that keeps the audience on edge. Ziegler (The Last Match, A Delicate Ship) fills the play with a wide array of literary and pop-culture references, but each one has a critical connection to the story, from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre to Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future 2 and Marlo Thomas’s Free to Be You and Me. Even when Adam imitates Elmer Fudd, saying, “Shh . . . Be vewwy, vewwy quiet . . . I’m hunting wabbits!,” it relates to Jenny’s first appearance onstage, in a bunny costume at a Halloween party, where Adam quite adamantly tells her that he is not Frankenstein but Frankenstein’s monster. “Frankenstein was the guy who made the monster. I’m just the monster,” he points out. The cast is uniformly excellent, with Armbruster (Time Stands Still, Disgraced) and Koch (The Pillowman, Abundance) bringing just the right confusion to the parents, while Niebanck (A Walk in the Woods, Blood and Gifts) is quietly effective as the doctor who befriends Samantha but also stands to gain fame from their association. And Rittenhouse (The Commons of Pensacola) makes Jenny a kind of onstage representative of the audience, not quite understanding all of what is happening but compelled to find out more about Adam. Evoking such works as John Cameron Mitchell’s Tony-winning Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Emily Bentley Solomon’s award-winning adaptation of Daphne Scholinski’s memoir The Last Time I Wore a Dress, Boy also investigates doctors and parents playing god, which continues as science makes leaps and bounds in genetics. Sandra Goldmark’s living-room set features a close-but-not-exact duplicate of the furniture upside down on the walls and ceiling, as if Adam/Samantha is caught between two worlds, unable to settle into his/her place. Director Linsay Firman (Lucas Hnath’s Isaac’s Eye, Ziegler’s Photograph 51) cleverly navigates through the years, dealing with complex issues concerning traditional gender roles in a gentle, tender manner that threatens to explode at any moment. About halfway through the play, Jenny worries that Adam, who named himself after the first man on earth, is just like all the other men she’s met in her life. “I’m not like them,” he insists. No, he most certainly isn’t.

A ROOM OF MY OWN

Little Carl (Nico Bustamente) and Adult Carl (Ralph Macchio) go over old times in A ROOM OF MY OWN (photo by Ben Strothmann)

June Havoc Theatre, Abingdon Theatre Company
Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 13, $65
212-868-2055
abingdontheatre.org

Playwright and director Charles Messina wishes everyone a merry frickin’ Christmas in the raucous and riotous, and poignant and bittersweet, A Room of My Own. Eight years in the making, the show, making its world premiere at the Abingdon Theatre Company through March 13, is based on Messina’s childhood, when he was a boy living with his family in a one-room tenement apartment on Thompson St. in Greenwich Village. Ralph Macchio stars as Carl Morelli, Messina’s alter ego, who serves as the play’s narrator and ostensible scribe, carrying around a MacBook Air along with the marble composition notebook he wrote in when he was a kid, referring to both as the play unfolds through his memory. It’s Christmas season in 1979, a time that Morelli describes as “after Stonewall but before AIDS. Post-Watergate and pre-Reagan. Our little corner of the world was still a staunch Italian American enclave, with the first wave of immigrants who had settled there around the turn of the century, now aging, and dying in the shadow of the church.” Morelli’s father, Peter (Johnny Tammaro), stays at home, collecting disability, while Morelli’s mother, Dotty (Joli Tribuzio), works at a local bakery and has a penchant for stealing things. At night, Peter shares the pull-out couch with ten-year-old Carl (Nico Bustamante), while Dotty sleeps on the sofa with teenage daughter Jeannie (Kendra Jain). Dotty’s gay brother, Jackie (Mario Cantone), lives upstairs with his beloved dog, Lil’ Pish. All six of the characters — including Little Carl — are about as foul-mouthed as they come. After Adult Carl’s introduction, the first words of the play he’s written flow like poetry from Dotty: “So I says, Go an’ f&*k yourself, ya guinea c*cksucka!” And that’s only the beginning, as everyone gets in on the action, even the kids. “Nobody knows how to f&*in’ talk in this family,” Jeannie says. The Morellis are experiencing tough times, as the church is after them for Little Carl’s past-due tuition, which they don’t have — for reasons that become clear later — but Dotty doesn’t hold back her wrath for the principal, who is a nun. “Not for nothin’ but she’s got some balls callin’ this house,” Dotty declares. “They’re supposed to take a vow of poverty or did she forget? Houndin’ workin’ people for a lousy $150.” Jackie soon enters the fray with a series of curse-laced rants, performed with breathless, showstopping glee by Cantone. With Christmas on the horizon, Little Carl asks Santa for a room of his own, but the Morellis are used to not getting what they want.

Joli Tribuzio, Mario Cantone, and Johnny Tammaro have a f&*kin’ field day in New York-set un-family-friendly comedy (photo by Ben Strothmann)

Set designer Brian Dudkiewicz places the Morellis’ drab, appropriately sloppy apartment within a picture frame, as if it’s a living snapshot of what once was. Macchio, the Karate Kid and My Cousin Vinny star — who still has those teen-idol good looks — is tender and charming as Adult Carl, who desperately tries to be cool, calm, and collected but usually ends up exasperated as the characters stray from the script or miss their cues. He sits on the edge of the stage, walks into the audience, and occasionally heads onto the set to talk to his family, but the only one who can see or hear him is his younger self. “Don’t do it,” Little Carl says. “Don’t do what?” Adult Carl asks. “Don’t write this,” Little Carl replies. “I have to write it,” Adult Carl answers. Messina then adds some real relish to the interaction between the two Carls, which gets to the heart of the story.

Little Carl: You’re gonna end up with a big problem on your hands. This is dangerous. Trust me.
Adult Carl: Trust you? Trust me.
Little Carl: Trust you? I am you.
Adult Carl: So then trust me.
Little Carl: Why should I trust you when you don’t trust me?
Adult Carl: I don’t trust you because I know me.
Little Carl: So what you’re saying is, you don’t trust yourself?
Adult Carl: That’s enough out of you. I’ll write you out of it.
Little Carl: Oh yeah, how ya gonna do that? I’m the main character, stupid!
Adult Carl: Oh, you think so, huh?
Little Carl: I know so!
Adult Carl: Just do this with me. Please. We need to go back, it’s the only way to go forward.
Little Carl: Lemme ask ya something. . . . Are you gonna tell the truth?
Adult Carl: I’m gonna tell my truth, yes.
Little Carl: Are you gonna tell the truth?!
Adult Carl: I’m gonna . . . fix . . . the truth. . . .
Little Carl: Fix my ass! You’re a liar!
Adult Carl: How am I a liar? Don’t ever call me a liar!
Little Carl: Only liars and writers say they’re gonna tell the truth, when deep down they know they’re gonnna change shit!
Adult Carl: Get back in there!
Little Carl: Are you ready?
Adult Carl: Am I ready for what?
Little Carl: Are you ready for the pain?
Adult Carl: I don’t know. . . .
Little Carl: You better be. You better be made outta steel, just like they were.
Adult Carl: Steel?
Little Carl: Steel. F&*kin’. Beams.
Adult Carl: That. F&*kin’. Mouth. Now would you just please go!
Little Carl: Oh, up yours!
Adult Carl: Up mine? Up yours!
Little Carl: Your mother!
Adult Carl: We have the same mother!
Little Carl: I gotta grow up to be this guy?

Adult Carl (Ralph Macchio) and Little Carl (Nico Bustamente) clutch their writing notebooks in Charles Messina’s raucous and touching memory play (photo by Ben Strothmann)

Messina’s (An Honest Woman, The Wanderer) sharp writing is evident throughout A Room of My Own, which he also directs with an electric, nonstop pace. The mostly Italian-American cast is exceptional, dressed in Catherine Siracusa’s fab period clothes (just wait till you see Jackie’s green shirt and Dotty’s brown velour pants). Bronx native Tribuzio and Brooklyn kid Tammaro, both veterans of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, clearly are having a great time as they lash out at each other with words you’re not likely to find in any dictionary, English or Italian, while getting every gesture and facial expression just right. Bustamente is a wonder in his stage debut, having acted before only in commercials; his interactions with Macchio could have been gimmicky but instead are gentle and heartfelt, even with the cursing, as they combine the past and the present with an eye to the future. And Cantone (Steve, Sex and the City), who, as it turns out, spent a lot of time when he was younger right across the street on Thompson St., visiting his sister (the building can be seen in the backdrop through a window), is a force of nature as Jackie, celebrating gay culture while fighting the loneliness of his closeted life. Much of the cast has been with the project since its inception, so the actors have developed a real feeling of family that translates beautifully to the stage. It’s a treat to be invited into the Morellis’ frantic world, which is sure at times to remind you of your own relatives, even if you’re not Italian and from New York City.

BRODSKY/BARYSHNIKOV

Mikhail Baryshnikov will interpret the poetry of his longtime friend, Joseph Brodsky, in multimedia one-man show (photo by Janis Deinats)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
March 9-19, $35-$40
646-731-3200
bacnyc.org

Legendary ballet dancer, actor, photographer, and artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov is a fixture at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, which he opened on West Thirty-Seventh St. in 2005. He can often be seen in the audience, watching the institution’s wide range of productions. But Misha, as he is affectionately known, will be assuming a different role March 9-19, taking the stage for the hotly anticipated U.S. premiere of Brodsky / Baryshnikov. Originally presented at the New Riga Theatre in Baryshnikov’s hometown of Riga, Latvia, in October, the show is part of the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation arts program TÊTE-À-TÊTE, which seeks to expand the art and culture available in the capital city. In Brodsky / Baryshnikov, the famed dancer will interpret the poems of Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky through text and movement. Baryshnikov and Brodsky, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, were friends for more than twenty years; the latter died in Brooklyn in 1996 at the age of fifty-five.

The ninety-minute one-man show is directed by Alvis Hermanis, with a fascinating set by Kristīne Jurjāne, lighting by Gleb Filshtinsky, and video by Ineta Sipunova, all of which delves into Brodsky’s mind; Baryshnikov will perform the works in their original Russian, with English surtitles by Jamey Gambrell. “This will be a departure from normal theatrical plays. Instead, it will be something more akin to a spiritual séance,” Hermanis said prior to the show’s debut. “We spend our everyday lives on a horizontal level or dimension. This form of theater offers you the chance to spend [ninety minutes] in an exclusively vertical dimension in which people are confronted with nothing other than the big issues.” Baryshnikov added, “This project is important to us. Alvis is venturing into unknown territory, which he invariably does; otherwise, why bother? We are both greatly looking forward to our encounter with the audience.” Although the run is sold out, there will be a wait list at the box office beginning one hour before each performance.