John Marston’s THE MALCONTENT kicks off Reb Bull Theater Revelation Readings series at the Lucille Lortel Theater
Lucille Lortel Theater
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Select Mondays, November 16 – July 25, $42-$64, 7:30
212-352-3101 www.redbulltheater.com
The Red Bull Theater’s Obie-winning Revelation Readings series, in which the company brings back Jacobean treasures, is up and running November 16 at the Lucille Lortel Theater with John Marston’s early-seventeenth-century satire, The Malcontent. The all-star cast features Matthew Rauch, Marsha Mason, Kelley Curran, Christopher Innvar, and Christina Rouner, directed by Derek Smith. The series continues December 7 with Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy, starring Jeremy Bobb, Miriam Hyman, Whit Leyenberger, Bhavesh Patel, Raphael Nash Thompson, Alejandra Venancio, and Lisa Wolpe, with live music by Alexander Sovronsky, direction by Ben Prusiner, and a post-show discussion with Gail Kern Paster. On December 28, Carson Elrod and Jay O. Sanders are among the cast of Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour, directed by Elrod. The 2016 readings include Thomas Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One (directed by Craig Baldwin and starring Steven Boyer), Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor (with Patrick Page, directed by Louisa Proske), Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (starring Chukwudi Iwuji and directed by Michael Sexton), Frances Burney’s The Woman Hater (directed by Everett Quinton and featuring Arnie Burton, Auden Thornton, and Nick Westrate), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (directed by Tom Ridgely and featuring Arian Moayed), William Congreve’s The Way of the World, and the sixth annual Short New Play Festival.
The Blake family gathers in a Chinatown duplex for a Thanksgiving to remember in THE HUMANS (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 January 3, $99
212-719-1300 www.roundabouttheatre.org
Stephen Karam, a Pulitzer finalist for his widely hailed 2011 play, Sons of the Prophet, should be up for the prestigious prize again for his follow-up, the beautifully told drama The Humans, running at the Laura Pels through January 3, after which it will be transferring to Broadway. The Roundabout commission is a gorgeous, bittersweet portrait of the fears and anxieties that ripple through the average American family in the twenty-first century. On Thanksgiving Day, the Blake clan has gathered at the duplex apartment in Chinatown just rented by Brigid Blake (Sarah Steele), a twenty-six-year-old composer and musician trying to make ends meet as a bartender, and her thirty-eight-year-old boyfriend, Richard Saad (Arian Moayed), a grad student who is preparing the holiday feast. Brigid’s parents, Erik (Reed Birney), who’s worked at the local Catholic high school for twenty-eight years, and Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell), who has been the office manager at the same company for four decades, have driven into the city from their home in Scranton with Erik’s aged mother, Momo (Lauren Klein), who is suffering from severe dementia and is confined to a wheelchair. They are joined by Brigid’s older sister, Aimee (Cassie Beck), a Philadelphia lawyer who recently broke up with her longtime girlfriend and whose ulcerative colitis is acting up. Brigid and Richard are still in the process of moving in — the truck with most of their possessions is stuck in Queens — so there are some boxes on the floor, not much furniture, and no shades over the lone window, which looks out into a dark alley. But the members of the Blake family soldier on; they are a very close group that hide very few secrets as they talk about their lives, offer love and support, and take both playful and serious shots at one another, as one early exchange shows.
Stephen Karam’s follow-up to sonS OF THE PROPHET is a searing, and funny, portrait of the modern American family (photo by Joan Marcus)
Erik: “I hate that you moved a few blocks from where two towers got blown up and in a major flood zone. . . . I hate that.”
Brigid: “This area is safe —”
Erik: “Chinatown flooded during the last hurricane — it flooded —”
Brigid: “Yeah, that’s why I can afford to live here — it’s not like you gave me any money to help me out.”
Erik: “Wow . . .”
Brigid: “Hey, I’m — sorry, just . . . Chinatown is safe — you saw my block, Dad —”
Deirdre: “Of course it is . . .”
Brigid: “— no one’s going to steer a plane into a, a fish market on Grand Street —”
Aimee: “Brigid . . .”
Deidre: “Let it go . . .”
Erik: “I liked you livin’ in Queens, alright? I worry enough with Aimee on the top floor of the Cira Centre —”
Aimee: “Well, stop, Philly is more stable than New York —”
Brigid: “Aimee, don’t make him more —”
Aimee: “I’m just saying — it’s safer . . .”
Brigid: “Yeah, ’cause not even terrorists wanna spend time in Philly. Philly is awful —”
Aimee: “Oh, ha ha . . .”
Erik: “You think everything’s awful, you think Scranton is awful, but it’s the place that —”
Brigid: “We think it’s awful?!”
Aimee: “Dad, it is!”
Erik: “. . . yeah, well, what I think’s funny is how you guys, you move to big cities and trash Scranton, when Momo almost killed herself getting outta New York — she didn’t have a real toilet in this city, and now her granddaughter moves right back to the place she struggled to escape. . . .”
Brigid: “We know, yes . . . ‘return to the slums . . .’”
No topic is off limits as they discuss finance and economics, bowel movements, cockroaches, the correct pronunciation of Andrew Carnegie’s last name, texting, the odd noises coming from the apartment above, and general quality-of-life issues, but most of all they are searching for a sense of fairness in a world where that ideal is getting harder and harder to come by. Both men, Erik and Richard, are having trouble sleeping, experiencing weird dreams they can’t explain. Momo spits out supposed gibberish that contains such phrases as “You can never come back” and “Where do we go.” Meanwhile, Deirdre is volunteering to help Bhutanese immigrants in Scranton who are mired in poverty, having left a country that measures its success in Gross National Happiness. Scranton native Karam (Speech & Debate,Dark Sisters) is delving into the very nature of the modern-day human condition, which is not very pretty. “There’s enough going on in the real world to give me the creeps,” Deirdre says, leading Brigid to point out Richard’s obsession with a comic book called Quasar. “It’s about this species of, like, half-alien, half-demon creatures with teeth on their backs,” he explains. “On their planet, the scary stories they tell each other . . . they’re all about us. The horror stories for the monsters are all about humans.” Karam’s highly literate script was influenced by Federico García Lorca’s A Poet in New York, which deals with the city’s response to the 1929 economic crash, Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay, “The Uncanny,” about the strangely familiar, and Napoleon Hill’s six basic fears from his 1937 book, Think and Grow Rich — fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age, and death — and all six can be found in The Humans.
Two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello (Take Me Out, Assassins) seamlessly directs the real-time story, which takes place on David Zinn’s two-floor tear-away set, like a dollhouse ripped open for us to witness the actual life going on inside. The exquisite cast is just as seamless, each character authentic and believable, led by the always wonderful Houdyshell (Follies, Well) as the excitable, nervous mother, rising star Steele (Slowgirl,Speech and Debate) as the prodigal younger daughter trying to make it on her own, and, front and center at both the beginning and the end of the play, a heartfelt Birney (You Got Older, Circle Mirror Transformation) as the steadfast patriarch, desperate to hold it all together even as things threaten to fall apart, with just a touch of the supernatural hovering as well to complicate matters and to heighten the many terrors of everyday existence. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is heartbreakingly honest, The Humans offers up a Thanksgiving to remember, two spectacularly thought-provoking and entertaining hours that encapsulate the state of the American family in this tough, fearful post-9/11 world.
Who: Dylan Baker, Eric Bogosian, David Cale, Michael Chernus, Richard Kind, Anson Mount, Billy Crudup, Gaby Hoffmann, Danny Mastrogiorgio, Craig “muMs” Grant, Marin Ireland, Matthew Maher, and Jennifer Tilly What:Eric Bogosian’s 100 Monologues Where:The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South When: Monday, November 16, and Tuesday, November 17, $122-$222, 7:30 Why: In his 2014 book, 100 (Monologues), Eric Bogosian writes, “I did not set out to write monologues, but the more involved with the form I got, the more interesting it became to me. I liked the energy and excitement of speaking directly to an audience. I liked arranging the portraits of characters to create a larger whole. I liked the difficulty of writing and performing such complex stuff.” On November 16 & 17, a prestigious group of actors will join Bogosian at the Players to perform many of his monologues, in a two-night benefit supporting PS122’s “Give Performance Space” campaign, raising funds as the ultracool downtown institution prepares for the grand reopening of its renovated space at First Ave. and Ninth St. next summer. Among those performing hand-selected monologues are Dylan Baker, Jennifer Tilly, Billy Crudup, Gaby Hoffmann, Richard Kind, Anson Mount, Marin Ireland, and Bogosian, directed by longtime Bogosian collaborator Jo Bonney.
Wunderbaum makes its New York debut with work examining controversial public art project by Paul McCarthy (photo by Steven A. Gunther)
New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 11-14, $15-$35, 7:30
212-691-6500 www.newyorklivearts.org thenewforest.nl
In 2001, controversial Utah-born, California-based artist Paul McCarthy was commissioned by Rotterdam to make a public sculpture for Shouwburgplein, or Theater Square. However, the city ultimately rejected McCarthy’s work, a giant Santa Claus holding a rather phallic pine tree that soon became known as “Kabouter Buttplug,” or “Buttplug Gnome.” The sculpture was moved several times before finally parading into its new home in the Eendrachtsplein. The eco-conscious Dutch-Flemish collective Wunderbaum examines the controversy, and public art in general, in the multimedia Looking for Paul, which is having its New York premiere November 11-14 at New York Live Arts. In the piece, bookstore owner Inez van Dam has no appreciation for “Kabouter Buttplug,” so she decides to do something about it, going out to Los Angeles to confront McCarthy, who is rather familiar with confrontation. Looking for Paul features actors and creators Walter Bart, Inez van Dam, Matijs Jansen, Maartje Remmers, Marleen Scholten, and guest Daniel Frankl, with design by Maarten van Otterdijk.
Soomi Kim and Suzi Takahashi’s CHANG(E) examines the performance artist and political activist Kathy Change’s bizarre end
HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
November 4-22, $18
212-647-0202 here.org
Korean-born, New York-based movement artist Soomi Kim and director Suzi Takahashi complete their trilogy of multidisciplinary works about underrecognized Asian American figures with Chang(e), running November 4-22 at HERE, where it was previously part of the CultureMart festival. Dictee: bells fall a peal to sky explored the stories of such women as Joan of Arc and Yu Guan Soon, while Lee/gendary deconstructed martial arts icon Bruce Lee. In Chang(e), which was developed through the HERE Artist Residency Program, Kim and Takahashi examine what led Ohio-born performance artist and activist Kathleen Chang, also known as Kathy Change, to kill herself in a public act of self-immolation on the Penn campus in 1996. The multimedia docudrama, which combines dance, text, video, and live music, is performed by Kim, Ben Skalski, Kiyoko Kashiwagi, David Perez-Ribada, Criena House, Adriana Spencer, and Zeke Stewart, with music by Adam Rogers, set design by Bryce Cutler, video by Kevan Loney, lighting by Lucrecia Briceno, costumes by Machine Dazzle, and choreography by Alexandra Belle. To prepare for the HERE shows, Kim and Loney went to Philadelphia to visit some of the places where Kathy Change lived and performed and shoot video for the project. In putting the work together, Kim and Takahashi explain, “We discovered that Kathy was a passionate, marginalized woman, battling her own cultural and psychological demons, who aspired to save the world through political transformation. After two years of struggling to reconstruct these stories and fragments into a play, we realized that we were no closer to learning any absolute truths about Kathy. Instead, our show marks the canvas with a few brushstrokes to allow just enough form to emerge so the audience may fill in the details of Kathy’s life with their imaginations. By showing fragments, impressions, and fictions in response to her legacy, we seek to uncover a universal meaning to her life that is inspired by Kathy, but not the truth of her.” (You can find out more about Kathy’s life and legacy here.)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Wednesday, November 4, and Thursday, November 5, $50, 7:30
212-355-6100 www.fiaf.org
Acclaimed actor and director Mathieu Amalric has been rather busy in New York City, celebrating his fiftieth birthday with appearances at a pair of film festivals being held in his honor, “Mathieu Amalric: Renaissance Man,” at Anthology Film Archives and the French Institute Alliance Française. But most exciting, on November 4 and 5 he’ll be making his U.S. theatrical debut at FIAF, starring opposite Anne-Laure Tondu in the sixty-minute drama Fight or Flight (Le Moral des ménages). The play, about a forty-year-old musician facing a midlife crisis, is based on the 2002 novel by award-winning Parisian writer Eric Reinhardt and is adapted and directed by Stéphanie Cléau, Amalric’s wife, who was also his costar in his latest directorial effort, The Blue Room. (Amalric and Cléau will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 screening of the film at FIAF on November 3.) Amalric is an extraordinarily sensitive actor, as seen in such films as Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Olivier Assayas’s Late August, Early September, and Arnaud Desplechin’s Kings & Queen, while also displaying a mischievous sense of humor, as exemplified in the French version of Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, so this stage production should be a real treat.
Thomas Jay Ryan, Daniel Jenkins, Rory Kulz, and Jay Russell all play Henry in Keen revival of TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT
The Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 14, $62.50 www.keencompany.org
“Never presume yours is a better morality,” Aunt Augusta says in Keen Company’s playful, imaginative, and frugally produced revival of Travels with My Aunt, adapted by Giles Havergal from Graham Greene’s hippie-era story about colonialism, drugs, free love, family, and, in its own way, flower power. Greene called the novel “the only book I have written for the fun of it,” and that is exactly how director Jonathan Silverstein approaches the two-act comedy of manners in which four actors take on some two dozen roles, ambitiously trading off some of the same parts, even within the same scene. It’s an inventive and, at times, confusing conceit that is introduced at the very start, when four men (Thomas Jay Ryan, Daniel Jenkins, Rory Kulz, and Jay Russell), identically dressed in black suits, white shirts, vests, ties, and bowlers, appear onstage. Three of them are sitting down, trading off lines from retired banker Henry Pulling’s first-person narration. “Everyone thought me lucky but I found it difficult to occupy my time,” Henry explains. “I had never married. I had always lived quietly, and, apart from my interest in dahlias, I had no hobby. For those reasons I found myself agreeably excited by my mother’s funeral.” At the funeral, he sees his aunt Augusta (Ryan) for the first time in more than fifty years. She surprises him with a family secret about his birth, and soon the two of them are traveling around the world, being interrogated by the police, meeting oddball characters, and getting caught up in international intrigue. Through it all, Henry (primarily portrayed by Russell) remains steadfast and droll, a boring sort who doesn’t quite understand the depth of what he has become involved in, but it’s too late to turn back now.
Thomas Jay Ryan and Jay Russell are looking for answers in low-budget adaptation of Graham Greene comic novel
Steven Kemp’s spare set is centered by what the cast and crew call “The Monster,” a movable rectangular block that contains windows and a door on one side and a gated entryway on the other. The blue-curtained backdrop eventually rises to reveal yet more fun, along with a few costume changes courtesy of Jennifer Paar. The actors are simply extraordinary, led by the always excellent Ryan (In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, In the Next Room), who divides his time between Henry and Aunt Augusta, and Russell (End of the Rainbow, The Play What I Wrote), who plays Henry as well as the young woman Tooley, her maybe-CIA father O’Toole (who is studying the lengths of his urination), Miss Keene, and Frau General Schmidt, among others. Jenkins (Big, Big River) is Henry, Mr. Visconti, Colonel Hakim, Detective Sgt. Sparrow, et al., but his main role is the now politically incorrect Wordsworth, Aunt Augusta’s immigrant lover who speaks in a stereotyped tongue. “Why, man, you not offended at Wordsworth?” he asks at one point. It’s hard not to be at least somewhat offended by this Greene character, a product of British imperialism and the British imperialist mind. Late cast addition Kulz (The Old Masters, Empire Travel Agency), in his off-Broadway debut, plays many of the more minor roles, such as a guard, a hotel receptionist, and a Turkish policeman. It’s all jolly good lighthearted fun that never takes itself too seriously, even as it deals with some important topics. “Perhaps a sense of morality is the sad compensation we learn to enjoy, like a remission for good conduct. In the vision there is no morality,” Henry says to Wordsworth. Travels with My Aunt, which was also made into a very different Oscar-winning film by George Cukor (with Maggie Smith as Aunt Augusta, Alec McCowen as Henry, and Louis Gossett Jr. as Wordsworth) offers a sly, sweet-natured look at morality in this lovely little Keen revival.
