this week in theater

BENEATH THE GAVEL

BENEATH THE GAVEL takes audiences inside the fierce world of contemporary art auctions (photo by Will Gangi)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 9, $35
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org
www.batedbreaththeatre.org

In the interactive Beneath the Gavel, making its New York City debut at 59E59, there is a very good scene in which the cast gives the audience an auction lesson, complete with inside information about bidding and price manipulation by an auction house. (Former Christie’s and Sotheby’s employee Barbara Strongin served as consultant; in addition, the theater is on the site where Christie’s once housed its galleries.) Unfortunately, the rest of the two-hour show, presented by the Hartford-based Bated Breath Theatre Company and written and directed by troupe executive and artistic director Mara Lieberman, never reaches that level. The play goes back and forth between 1985, when elderly art collector Haddie Weisenberg (Debra Walsh) meets American painter Daniel Zeigler (Corey Finzel); 1990, when Zeigler is painting Weisenberg’s portrait; and 2016, when part of the now-deceased Weisenberg’s collection is being sold at auction, including works by Zeigler. For much of the show, auction house employees Tracey Allister (Missy Burmeister), Geoffrey Thompson (Gabriel Aprea), Stewart Felso (Sean Hinckle), and Charlotte McHenry (Moira O’Sullivan) and other characters (all played by the six-member cast) engage in boring, clichéd discussions about the art world and then start moving in bizarre interpretive dance straight out of the 1980s-era SNL skit Sprockets. Along the way, such real-life artists and gallerists as Andy Warhol, Larry Gagosian, Roy Lichtenstein, Leo Castelli, Wassily Kandinsky, and Damien Hirst are portrayed in annoying scenes that go nowhere.

Daniel Zeigler (Corey Finzel) is hard at work on his next painting in BENEATH THE GAVEL (photo by Will Gangi)

During the show, there are three auctions in which the audience participates, using fake money that can be reserved in advance and accumulated when a cash cannon shoots it out over the crowd. While some people scramble for the bills, others just ignore it all; several of those disinterested audience members did not return after intermission. The auctions are actually fun, but there’s also something inherently demeaning about them, starting with that you have to get on your hands and knees and pick up bills off the floor if you want to amass quite a wad. Perhaps that is the point, but when Geoff states, “We’ve billed this sale as a sale for the ‘everyman.’ We’ve invited more VOPs than ever before,” and the auction employees chime in, “Very Ordinary People,” it’s not too hard to take that as an insult, even if that’s not what was intended.

THE STRANGEST

Layali (Roxanna Hope Radja) shows off her charms to her shocked family in Betty Shamieh’s THE STRANGEST

Fourth Street Theatre
83 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Through April 1, $25-$45
www.brownpapertickets.com

Commissioned to write a theatrical adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1947 existential classic, The Stranger, playwright Betty Shamieh, the American-born daughter of Arab immigrants, chose instead to focus on what Camus didn’t write: the story of the nameless Arab man shot on the beach by the central character, Meursault, without reason or remorse. Continuing at the Fourth Street Theatre through April 1, The Strangest takes place in an Algerian storytelling café, where an audience of approximately forty to fifty people sit on cushions on benches or the floor, gathered around small tables where they can pour themselves cups of thick Turkish coffee. Umm (Jacqueline Antaramian), a woman in her early forties, has decided to share her personal tale, infiltrating the strictly all-male story competition. “I will show you three young men. You won’t know which son of Algeria would be shot until the end of the story. No magic carpets in the story either. Just an assassination of a child I bore, and the French man who shot him down will feel nothing before, during, or after. Strange, isn’t it?” she says. The tale Umm tells is a murder mystery with a sexy femme fatale, Layali (Roxanna Hope Radja), Umm’s niece, courted by Umm’s three sons: sensitive artist Nader (Juri Henley-Cohn), brutal thief Nemo (Andrew Guilarte), and meek shoemaker Nounu (Louis Sallan). Umm weaves many layers into her tale, including the fate of her village, her house, and her husband, Abu (Alok Tewari), a onetime master orator who is now a disabled mumbler; the flashback in which he tells a unique version of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and declares his love for Umm is captivating and romantic. But when Layali brings home her fiancé, literally a French smoking gun (Brendan Titley), the rest of the family is disconcerted and upset, setting into motion a fast-unfolding series of ferocious events.

Sensitive artist Nader (Juri Henley-Cohn) makes a plea to his mother, Umm (Jacqueline Antaramian), in world premiere at Fourth Street Theatre

In researching Arab storytelling cafés, Shamieh (The Black Eyed, Roar, Fit for a Queen) went to Aleppo, Syria, in 2011, just as antigovernment protests were beginning there; sadly, the cafés she visited have since been destroyed, adding another sobering layer to the show, which already references racism, colonialism, rape, the current refugee crisis, and the shootings of black men, women, and children by white police officers. Director May Adrales (Vietgone, Luce) makes fine use of Daniel Zimmerman’s intimate, boxlike set; the actors, in Becky Bodurtha’s colorful costumes, enter and exit on two sides through wall curtains, the floor carpeted by numerous Oriental rugs. The uniformly strong cast is highlighted by the powerful acting of the three sons, particularly Henley-Cohn as Nader and Guilarte as Nemo, anchored by Tewari (The Band’s Visit, Awake and Sing!) and Antaramian (Dr. Zhivago, Mary Stuart) as the mourning mother; her pain is palpable as tears roll down her face. The play is filled with surprises, including a big-time, completely unexpected twist at the end. In the storytelling cafés, the audience votes on who tells the best story; with The Strangest, you won’t go wrong putting your money (a mere twenty-five dollars) on Shamieh and Adrales.

[An earlier version of this article misidentified Nemo as the shoemaker and Nounu as the thief; we regret the error.]

CHESS MATCH NO. 5

A man (Will Bond) and a woman (Ellen Lauren) play chess and discuss art and life in SITI Company world premiere (photo by Maria Baranova)

June Havoc Theatre, Abingdon Theatre Company
Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 2, $57
212-868-2055
abingdontheatre.org
siti.org

On March 5, 1968, revolutionary artist Marcel Duchamp and revolutionary composer and musician John Cage sat down for a game of chess for the performance Reunion at the SightSoundSystems festival in Toronto. As a bonus, each of the squares on the board was wired with a unique sound. Duchamp had previously said, “I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” Art and chess, as well as everyday life itself, blend together in unique ways in SITI’s world premiere of Chess Match No. 5, which opened Sunday at the Abingdon Theatre. In the ninety-minute work, conceived and directed by SITI Company cofounder Anne Bogart, He (Will Bond as a stand-in for Cage) and She (Ellen Lauren) meet in a relatively spare room to play a few games of chess. They also discuss art and life using text adapted from actual Cage conversations, adapted by Jocelyn Clarke. “I wouldn’t say that we are interested in destroying the barrier between art and life or even blurring it,” the man tells the woman early on. “I would say that we are interested in observing that there is no barrier between the two.” Through cleverly choreographed staging (there’s even a little dancing), the dialogue, so much of which is dry and didactic (as well as often being revelatory and very funny), never bogs things down; in fact, it all becomes rather playful. “I think life, when we have it, is the paying of attention,” the man opines, as if making sure the audience is listening closely. “Some people pay attention with their eyes and some pay attention with their ears. I enjoy paying attention with both my eyes and my ears, and I think that as a result my work has a theatrical quality – or ‘character’ is a better word – because theater is the use of both eyes and ears.” Brian H Scott’s lighting features several dozen hanging bare bulbs of different shapes and sizes; the man occasionally calls out a number and the lighting suddenly changes. Meanwhile, Tony, Obie, and Drama Desk Award winner Darron L West’s superb sound design is like a character unto itself.

A John Cage stand-in (Will Bond) contemplates his next move in CHESS MATCH NO. 5 (photo by Maria Baranova)

At the front of the stage is a large, old-fashioned Lloyd’s transistor radio, at the rear a table with bread, a toaster, and coffee. When the man uses the items, he makes a series of sounds that recalls Cage’s “Water Work,” which the composer performed with everyday household objects. Other participants in the sound landcape include a chess timer, a rotary phone, and traffic. As they play chess and wander around James Schuette’s set, the man and the woman talk about Erik Satie, the sound of silence, multiplicity, Zen, anarchy, Mozart, the role of the artist, and sleep and even tell a few existential jokes. They also are fully aware of the audience, occasionally addressing them directly. Bond’s fluid, sometimes tongue-in-cheek delivery and calm manner keep the dialogue from becoming boring (although he does note, “Boredom is not so bad and not really boring, you know.”) But if you’re looking to make sense of it all, you’re out of luck. “I’m on the side of keeping things mysterious, and I have never enjoyed understanding things,” the woman explains, offering guidance to potentially confused onlookers. “If I understand something, I have no further use for it.” Always innovative Obie and Bessie Award winner Bogart (Room, No Plays No Poetry But Philosophical Reflections Practical Instructions Provocative Opinions and Pointers from a Noted Critic and Playwright) directs with a sly smile, enjoying the play’s — and the characters’ — many idiosyncrasies. If you submerse yourself in the concepts and ideas being espoused by the man and the woman (as well as the outstanding sound and lighting), you’re likely to enjoy Chess Match No. 5, which is the anchor of a larger SITI project called Theater Piece #1; however, if you need your shows to have a more straightforward narrative in which traditional things actually happen, well, this just might not be your kind of game, which would be a shame. “This is an odd way to have a conversation,” the man says. It sure is. Check and mate.

THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

Henrietta Iscariot (JoAnna Rhinehart) watches her son, Judas (Gabriel Furman, left), play as a child in Stephen Adly Guirgis revival (photo by Shashwat Gupta)

Ellen Stewart Theatre, La MaMa
66 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Thursday – Saturday through March 26
lamama.org

In 2015, New York City native Stephen Adly Guirgis won the Pulitzer Prize for his off-Broadway hit Between Riverside and Crazy. In January, he was named a Residency One Playwright at the Signature Theatre, for which he will produce a series of old and new plays for the 2018-19 season. So the time is ripe for a look back at some of his earlier work, beginning with his time as coartistic director of the LAByrinth Theater Company. As part of its “Theatre and Social Justice” series, the Actors Studio, in conjunction with La MaMa, is presenting a rare revival of Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which debuted in 2005 at the Public Theater, where it was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and starred Eric Bogosian as Satan, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Pontius Pilate, John Ortiz as Jesus of Nazareth, Deborah Rush as Henrietta Iscariot, and Sam Rockwell as Judas. The cast of the revival, made up of members of the Actors Studio, might not be quite so well known, but Oscar winner Estelle Parsons directs this new version with a dynamic unpredictability and an intimate edge as Judas’s lawyer appeals his conviction for betraying Jesus and being sentenced to Hell.

Mary Magdalene (Burnadair Lipscomb-Hunt) makes her case in THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT (photo by Shashwat Gupta)

“No parent should have to bury a child . . . No mother should have to bury a son,” Henrietta Iscariot (JoAnna Rhinehart) says in the prologue, standing under an umbrella, the sound of rain cascading through the Ellen Stewart Theatre. “I buried my son. In a potter’s field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners,” she adds, immediately humanizing a figure who has been considered the worst of all villains through the centuries. The stage then becomes a makeshift courtroom (the set is by Peter Larkin) in a place called Hope in downtown Purgatory ruled over by cynical judge Frank Littlefield (Jay Johnston), who has little patience for his young bailiff, Julius of Outer Mongolia (Liana Jackson), or with the proceedings in general. Defense attorney Fabiana Aziza Cunningham (Suzanne DiDonna) seeks mercy and forgiveness for Judas (Gabriel Furman), who is catatonic, unable to speak for himself. The prosecutor is butt-kissing blowhard shyster Yusef Akbar Azziz Al-Nassar Gamel El-Fayoumy (Daniel Grimaldi), who, when given permission to approach the bench, declares, “It is a lovely bench! Splendid and sturdy like the great derriere that rests upon it!” Among the witnesses called to testify are Pontius Pilate (Leland Gantt), Caiaphas the Elder (Count Stovall), Simon the Zealot (Gabe Fazio), Mother Teresa (Bob Adrian), Sigmund Freud (Timothy Doyle), and Satan (Javier Molina) as the jury looks on, headed by foreman Butch Honeywell (Stephen Dexter). Saints such as Matthias of Galilee (Lash Dooley) and Peter (Con Horgan) chime in from the rafters, while Jesus (Michael Billingsley) wanders around seriously but quietly, carefully observing the trial.

Prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Daniel Grimaldi) grills Mother Teresa (Bob Adrian) as judge Frank Littlefield (Jay Johnston) looks on (photo by Shashwat Gupta)

Despite its nearly three-hour length (with intermission), the play flies by, anchored by several stirring monologues, including a sensational bit by Delissa Reynolds as Saint Monica, speaking in hip-hop, who proclaims, “I was axed to look into the case of Judas Iscariot by this Irish gypsy lawyer bitch in Purgatory named Cunningham. She wanted me to do some naggin’ to God on Judas’ behalf, and, quite frankly, I was impressed by her nagging abilities — cuz that bitch nagged my ass day and night for forty days . . . But I don’t nag for juss anybody, and I definitely don’t nag for no mothafuckah I don’t know, so I went down to check out Judas for my own self — he looked fuckin’ retarded.” The night we saw the play, two of the main actors stumbled over too many lines, but in general the cast, which also features Burnadair Lipscomb-Hunt as Mary Magdalene, Richarda Abrams as Gloria, and Beth Manspeizer as Loretta, a young woman on life support, is strong; many of them will also appear in the next Guirgis revival, Our Lady of 121st Street, as the Actors Studio plans to remount most of his plays. In The Last Days, Guirgis explores blasphemy, faith, selling out, abortion, anti-Semitism, a New York City overrun by “violent devil-worshipping cannibals,” the crucifixion, justice, and personal responsibility that is addressed in a long, heartfelt, and melodramatic monologue by Honeywell about remorse and regret. The play examines why, at least in theory, Jesus offered forgiveness to everyone except Judas, his onetime bestie, while also holding out hope that he will indeed grant atonement to us all.

SAM AND DEDE, OR MY DINNER WITH ANDRE THE GIANT

A young Andre the Giant (Brendan Averett) is driven to school by Samuel Beckett (Dave Sikula) in absurdist bromance (photo by Jay Yamada)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 1, $25
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

In 1958, in a small town in France, fifty-two-year-old Samuel Beckett drove twelve-year-old André René Roussimoff to school in a truck as a favor for the boy’s father. It’s one of the most bizarre confluences of all time: The playwright who had already written such groundbreaking works asEndgame, Waiting for Godot, and Act without Words I & II meeting the rather large adolescent who would later become known as wrestling icon and Princess Bride star Andre the Giant. Gino DiIorio re-creates that fact-based scene and imagines several others in the delightfully odd Sam and Dede, or My Dinner with Andre the Giant, which opened last night at 59E59. “I don’t fit anywhere,” Andre (Brendan Averett), who asks to be called Dede (pronounced “day-day”), says to Sam (Dave Sikula), referring not only to his size — he’s already over six feet tall and nearly 250 pounds — but to his place in the world. The man and the boy discuss farming, teaching, cricket, bullying, and playwriting. Curious about one of Sam’s plays, Dede asks, “What’s it about?” Sam responds, “I’m not certain.” Dede: “You wrote the play and you don’t know what it’s about?” Sam: “Well, it’s hard to say.” Dede: “It has to be about something.” Sam: “No. A play isn’t about something. A play is something.” Five years later, Dede, who calls Sam “Boss,” attends a performance of Endgame in Paris, where Dede talks about the play and his new career in professional wrestling. “The trouble is, we don’t always finish the way we want to finish,” he says. “And we don’t know where the finish is!” Meanwhile, Sam self-effacingly admits, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” The men next meet in 1975, when Sam comes to see Dede in a wrestling match. They are drinking in Dede’s hotel room, Sam as elusive as ever, but Dede has grown into an intelligent adult with a lust for life, reevaluating his place in the world and offering to show Sam what a pile driver is. It’s a wonderful scene, as the two men realize they are not as different as they once were, both entertainers in their own way.

Sam (Dave Sikula) and Dede (Brendan Averett) meet as adults in entertaining play by Gino DiIorio (photo by Jay Yamada)

Erik Ladue’s somewhat claustrophobic set consists of stonelike blocks that Sam rearranges for each scene, creating car seats, chairs, a table, and carefully thought out abstract shapes. Occasionally he wistfully points up at one wall and a projection of the moon appears, an awkward reference to Waiting for Godot (“It’s about a tree and the moon,” Sam says) and a poem Dede makes up later in the play. Director Leah S. Abrams, cofounder and executive director of Custom Made Theatre Co., has helmed numerous Beckett shorts, and she brings that understanding of Beckett and his work to Sam and Dede, adding humor and occasional sweet moments of uncomfortability, along with an inspiringly staged conclusion. Shakespeare veteran Averett (The Killer, Massacre: Sing to Your Children) and Sikula (Grey Gardens, Superior Donuts) have an infectious camaraderie; neither actor attempts to do an impression of their characters — Sikula completely foregoes an Irish accent, and Averett speaks more clearly than Andre did in real life — but they lovingly capture the essence of each unique individual. Plays that imagine scenarios that never happened are often problematic and untrustworthy, but Abrams and DiIorio (Crib, The Jag) manage to avoid that dilemma, creating an entertaining and thoughtful absurdist bromance that one can only wish were really true.

CULTUREMART 2017

Purva Bedi and Mariana Newhard perform a duet in ASSEMBLED IDENTITY (photo by Benjamin Heller)

Mariana Newhard and Purva Bedi perform a duet in ASSEMBLED IDENTITY at HERE (photo by Benjamin Heller)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 15-25, $15
212-647-0202
here.org

HERE’s annual multidisciplinary festival, CultureMart, starts tonight, featuring workshop performances that often defy easy categorization. Things kick off March 15-16 with Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s Assembled Identity, a multimedia duet between Bedi and Newhard that explores just what makes us human, on a shared bill with Trey Lyford’s kinetic solo show The Accountant, about how we can lose our humanity at the office. On March 18-19, Gisela Cardenas + Milica Paranosic and InTandem Lab’s Hybrid Suite No. 2: The Carmen Variations tells the story of fictional archaeologist Elizabeth Sherman, paired with Leah Coloff’s autobiographical song cycle ThisTree. The double bill for March 21-22 consists of Rob Roth’s cinematic hybrid Soundstage, linking the screen goddess with the adoring gay male fan, and Chris Green’s American Weather, an interactive piece performed by Quince Marcum, Katie Melby, and Yasmin Reshamwala. On March 25-26, Zoey Martinson and Smoke & Mirrors Collaborative lead audiences into The Black History Museum . . . According to the United States of America, examining the criminal justice system, while a birthday party turns into much more in Jeremy Bloom and Brian Rady’s Ding Dong It’s the Ocean. CultureMart concludes March 26 with a reading of HERE playwright in residence and downtown legend Taylor Mac’s The Bourgeois Oligarch, the third section of his four-part Dionysia Festival, this one involving a ballet and a philanthropist. With tickets only $15, CultureMart is always a great way to check out new and up-and-coming talent presenting works in progress at one of our favorite spaces.

WAKEY, WAKEY

Two-time Emmy winner Michael Emerson returns to the New York stage in WAKEY, WAKEY (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 2, $30-$75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Will Eno completes his three-play Residency Five program at the Signature Theatre with Wakey, Wakey, a very funny, deeply touching, and unique exploration of humanity and the life cycle. Partially inspired by his friendship with Signature founder James Houghton, who passed away in August 2016 at the age of fifty-seven from stomach cancer, Wakey, Wakey is about all the little pieces of basic daily existence that make us who we are, from birth to death. Michael Emerson returns to the stage as a character referred to in the script only as Guy, who as the play opens is lying on the floor, facedown. “Is it now?” he asks. “I thought I had more time.” For the next seventy minutes, Guy shares details from his life, plays word games, philosophizes about the world, shows home movies and YouTube videos, and is cared for by home health worker Lisa (a gentle and sweet January LaVoy). He also self-reflexively critiques what is happening in the theater. “Sorry, I don’t know exactly what to say to you,” he admits. “I wonder how you hear that, how that strikes you? What do you make of the fact that this event, painstakingly scripted, rehearsed, designed, and directed, features someone saying, ‘I don’t know exactly what to say to you.’ I hope you’ll receive that in the humble and hopeful spirit it was offered in.” Writer-director Eno, whose previous Signature works were Title and Deed and The Open House and who was represented on Broadway by The Realistic Joneses in 2014, has fun with the very clever staging; for example, noises that initially seem to be coming from the street or the audience are actually part of the sound design, and he uses physical objects in creative ways as well.

Lisa (January LaVoy) arrives to help Guy (Michael Emerson) in Will Eno world premiere at Signature (photo by Joan Marcus)

Following a video of screaming wildlife, Guy delves into the nature of pleasure and enjoyment, questioning where such feelings go once the moment is past. He also discusses how one’s life can be divided into two parts, one before watching the video, and one after it ends, in much the same way the play itself can serve as a dividing line, especially as it deals so intimately with life and death and how things don’t always go quite as planned. Christine Jones’s set consists of a free-standing door, a large wall with a calendar on it, and packing boxes, as if someone is moving in — or moving out. David Lander’s lighting, Nevin Steinberg’s sound, and Peter Nigrini’s projections all contribute to the play’s inventive originality. Two-time Emmy winner Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest), whose previous stage credits include playing Oscar Wilde in 1997–98’s Gross Indecency at the Minetta Lane as well as three Broadway roles, gives a rousing performance, tender and humane, mostly from a wheelchair, making the most of his expressive puppy-dog eyes and small body movements, the slightest pause or glance filled with charm and humble mischief, then pain as Guy takes a turn for the worse. The play certainly has a message, but it’s not quite as syrupy and sentimental as it could have been. “Yes, we’re here to say good-bye and maybe hopefully also get better at saying hello,” Guy explains. “To celebrate Life, if that doesn’t sound too passive-aggressive.” But even when you think it’s over, Eno has yet more surprises in store, both inside the theater and outside in the lobby, as you kick off the next phase of your life.