this week in theater

TONIGHT/JUNGLE: TWO PLAYS BY PHILIP RIDLEY

Donny Stixx (Harry Farmer) gets ready for a magical night in New York premiere of Philip Ridley play (photo by Hunter Canning)

TONIGHT WITH DONNY STIXX / DARK VANILLA JUNGLE
HERE SubletSeries
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
Through February 7, $25 each show, $40 for both
212-352-3101
www.here.org

Near the beginning of Tonight with Donny Stixx, one of two companion Philip Ridley one-person plays running in repertory at Here through February 7, Stixx (Harry Farmer) says to the audience, “I am here to entertain you. Expect to be surprised. Expect to be amazed. But most of all . . . expect the unexpected.” Tonight with Donny Stixx and Dark Vanilla Jungle, a pair of powerful, confrontational, poignant monologues, offer all that and more as they get right in your face and put you on edge. In Tonight with Donny Stixx, which premiered last August at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Farmer stars as the title character, a fifteen-year-old boy with dreams of becoming a famous magician. In Dark Vanilla Jungle, which premiered in August 2013 at the fringe, Robyn Kerr stars as Andrea, a fifteen-year-old girl with dreams of love and romance. Shifting between the past and the present, going from a hopeful, positive future to sudden, curse-filled outbursts, Donny and Andrea prance around Steven C. Kemp’s claustrophobic stage design, a cagelike set with one metallic chair, resembling either a jail cell or a police interrogation room. Neither actor ever ventures outside the fourteen-by-fourteen-square tiled floor, as if there are imaginary bars on the three sides where the audience sits; at the back is a grid of twenty-eight large, exposed lightbulbs, which designer Dante Olivia Smith uses to flash such shapes as a cross and shine sharply into the audience’s eyes. Donny and Andrea often address audience members directly, pointing at them and asking for their opinion or a reminder of what they were talking about, but while a nod or a shake of the head is okay, it’s best not to answer them verbally. “Where was all this heading?” Andrea asks. “Don’t tell me!”

Andrea (Robyn Kerr) shares her mesmerizing tale in Philip Ridley’s DARK VANILLA JUNGLE (photo by Hunter Canning)

The similarities between the two New York premieres, being presented for the first time ever together — Donny Stixx is directed by Frances Loy for the Ferment Theatre, while Jungle is directed by Paul Takacs for the Shop — extend to both style and narrative substance. Both mentally troubled, disillusioned youths were raised in dysfunctional working-class families in the East End of London, where they go to the same mall, and each has apparently committed a terrible and shocking, ripped-from-the-headlines crime. Retreating ever deeper into their fantasy worlds, they both also have tentative relationships with the truth. “EVERYONE LIES! EVERYONE LIES! EVERYONE LIES!” Donny angrily repeats, while Andrea offers a more gentle, “But men lie, don’t they?” The two performances are absolutely electrifying; the twenty-three-year-old London-born, Los Angeles-based Farmer and the thirty-six-year-old Jamaican-born, Long Island City-based Kerr grab you from the start and never let go for eighty unnerving, exhilarating, unrelenting minutes. As is true with many of Ridley’s plays, the audience is essentially part of the show, trapped in the theater, with no easy route out while the play is going on — and yes, people have been known to want to head for the exits early because of the controversial playwright’s often violent subject matter. In the New Group’s 2015 revival of Mercury Fur at the Signature, there was no intermission despite the two-hour length, so in order to leave before the end of the show, which included the torture of a child, you had to basically walk across the set, right past the actors; the same was true of Takacs’s 2012 production of Tender Napalm at 59E59, which took place in a small, narrow space between two horizontal rows of people in a tiny theater. But Ridley, who is also a film director, screenwriter, poet, lyricist, and children’s book author, writes with such skill and intelligence, and the acting and direction is so impeccable, that you shouldn’t even entertain the possibility of leaving before the end of either of these incendiary works; in any case, you might be too scared to get up out of your seat anyway.

NOISES OFF

Riotous Roundabout revival of NOISES OFF goes behind the scenes of theater madness (photo by Joan Marcus)

American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 6, $67-$152
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

There’s a reason why so many critics consider Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce, Noises Off, one of the funniest plays ever written; it is a nonstop hilarious riff on the presentation of theater itself, and in its latest incarnation, a Roundabout revival at the American Airlines Theatre, it is performed with pinpoint precision timing that will have you gasping in admiration even as you nearly fall out of your chair laughing. The three-act romp begins as a small company is in its final tech rehearsal for the world premiere of Robin Housemonger’s sex comedy Nothing On before opening night at the Grand Theatre in Weston-super-Mare. (A fake program for the imaginary Nothing On is slipped inside the Noises Off Playbill to heighten the reality of the fictional play-within-a-play; Housemonger is credited with such previous works as Briefs Encounter and Socks Before Marriage.) Director Lloyd Dallas (Campbell Scott) has a lot on his plate: The actors can’t remember their lines, and his star, the aging doyenne Dotty Otley (Andrea Martin), is confused about where the sardines are. The fictional Nothing On itself is a wicked sendup of British country-house drama: Dotty is Mrs Clackett, elderly housekeeper for the Brent family’s country home, where dapper house agent Roger (David Furr as Garry Lejeune) is attempting a tryst on the sly with ditzy blonde bombshell Vicky (Megan Hilty as Brooke Ashton) while the owners, milquetoast nosebleeder Philip Brent (Jeremy Shamos as Frederick Fellowes) and his wife, the practical Flavia (Kate Jennings Grant as Belinda Blair), arrive for their own secret rendezvous (secret from Inland Revenue, that is; they are avoiding the scourge of the British upper class: income tax). Then a burglar (Daniel Davis as alcoholic has-been Selsdon Mowbray) arrives to add to the confusion. Doors are slammed, entrances are missed, doors are slammed, lines are botched, props are misused, and yet more doors are slammed. As evening turns into morning, the cast and crew — which also includes tense and nervous assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Tracee Chimo) and stage manager Tim Allgood (Rob McClure), who has a highly inappropriate last name — struggle to put it all together, for of course, the show must go on.

Megan Hilty nearly steals the show as pouty vixen Brooke Ashton at the American Airlines Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

The first act is set up as if the audience is watching the rehearsal of Nothing On; for the second act, the living room is flipped around so the audience sees it from the other side, revealing the backstage shenanigans one month later at the Theatre Royal in Ashton-under-Lyne. (The wonderful sets are by Emmy and Tony winner Derek McLane.) Frayn (Copenhagen, Benefactors) and director Jeremy Herrin (Wolf Hall Parts 1 & 2) now reveal the behind-the-scenes madness that goes on during the first act. The audience has already learned all of the cues, the entrances and exits, but witnessing it from this vantage point is utterly fascinating. The cast and crew’s secret liaisons slowly emerge, and the melodramatics escalate as they enter or leave the play-within-a-play, resulting in some riotous physical comedy while also getting a little too bogged down and repetitive. But all of that is necessary to make the third act one of the smartest and funniest you’ll ever have the pleasure to experience. The show is now concluding its tour at the Municipal Theatre in Stockton-on-Tees, where the company is once again performing the first act. Only this time, all of the actor’s quirks and failures, inside jokes and relationship problems from the first two acts collide in a delirious extravaganza of fun and nonsense worthy of John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers. Martin (Pippin, My Favorite Year), Davis (Wrong Mountain, Talking Heads), Furr (The Importance of Being Earnest, Accent on Youth), Jennings Grant (The Lyons, Proof), Hilty (Wicked, 9 to 5: The Musical), and Shamos (Clybourne Park, The Assembled Parties) do an exceptional job switching between their dual roles, with Martin in particular excelling and Hilty (who will not be performing February 12-14) nearly stealing the show with her squeaky voice and absurdly mannered body positions. (Noises Off debuted on Broadway in 1983 with Dorothy Loudon, Victor Garber, Brian Murray, Deborah Rush, Douglas Seale, and Amy Wright and was revived in 2001 with Patti LuPone, Peter Gallagher, Faith Prince, T. R. Knight, and Katie Finneran. The 1992 Peter Bogdanovich film starred Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, John Ritter, Nicollette Sheridan, Denholm Elliott, Julie Hagerty, Mark Linn-Baker, and Marilu Henner.) Herrin does a marvelous job of maintaining the frenetic pace while allowing the characters to develop their unique personalities; he has a ball playing with the audience’s expectations, keeping everyone on the edge of their seat, both gaping in wonder and trying not to fall over in laughter. And through it all are those doors.

In “A Glimpse of the Noumenal,” a fake condensed essay from Eros Untrousered — Studies in the Semantics of Bedroom Farce that appears in the Nothing On program, JG Stillwater writes, “A recurring and highly significant feature of the genre is a multiplicity of doors. If we regard the world on this side of the doors as the physical one in which mortal men are condemned to live, the world or worlds concealed behind them may be thought of as representing both the higher and more spiritual plane into which the postulants hope to escape, and the underworld from which at any moment demons may leap out to tempt or punish. When the doors do open, it is often with great suddenness and unexpectedness, highly suggestive of those epiphanic moments of insight and enlightenment which give access to the ‘other,’ and offer us a fleeting glimpse of the noumenal.” This second Broadway revival of Noises Off — the title refers to offstage sounds — is chock full of epiphanic moments that are as noumenal as they are phenomenal, in more than just the Kantian meaning. It gives the audience an inside look at the potential catastrophes that await live theater, yet performed to near perfection in a joyful tribute to the glory of the stage.

OUR MOTHER’S BRIEF AFFAIR

A park bench is the main setting in Richard Greenberg’s OUR MOTHER’S AFFAIR (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 6, $60-$140
ourmothersbriefaffairbroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Richard Greenberg’s eleventh collaboration with Manhattan Theatre Club, starts off promisingly enough, but a bizarrely bombastic reveal shortly before intermission derails the rest of this quiet family drama. Tony winner Linda Lavin stars as Anna, a variation of a character previously introduced in Greenberg’s Everett Beekin and played by Bebe Neuwirth in 2001 at Lincoln Center. On one of her many deathbeds yet again, the Burberry-loving Anna tells her son, Seth (Greg Keller), that she had an affair with a man (John Procaccino) back in 1973, when she took Seth to Juilliard for his weekly music class. Although Seth, an obituary writer used to examining people’s lives in death, thinks she’s just making up another story, his twin sister, Abby (Kate Arrington, in her seventh Greenberg work), confirms its truth. Anna’s confession becomes even more shocking when she tells them who the man is, a minor but real person in the Cold War and a figure of revulsion to New York’s Jewish intelligentsia. The name is less than well known enough to require a sort of extended live footnote, so the show comes to a screeching halt as Seth and Abby explain who he is and what he did. Greenberg’s choice of partner for Anna is so head-scratchingly strange that the play simply can’t get back on track.

Anna (Linda Lavin) and her lover (John Procaccino) recall the good old days in Richard Greenberg play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Lavin (The Lyons, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife), at seventy-eight, adds some sex appeal to her role as a mother with secrets of her own that are finally coming out, as she claims once again to be facing the end. Procaccino (Incident at Vichy, Nikolai and the Others), one of New York theater’s busiest, and most dependable, actors, is laden down with playing a historical figure that overwhelms his presence. Keller (The Who and the What, Of Good Stock) and Arrington (Grace, The Iceman Cometh), as dysfunctional gay twins, are expository characters who never quite develop their own personalities. Santo Loquasto’s easygoing set consists of a few chairs and a park bench, where Seth, Abby, Anna, her husband (also played by Procaccino), and her lover go back and forth between 1973, 2003, and 2006, with everyone watching what unfolds regardless of what time period they are from, which is occasionally unnerving. MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow never quite pulls together the time shifts and plot reveals; despite a fine lead performance by Lavin, Our Mother’s Brief Affair — which was originally staged as a slightly shorter one-act in 2009 by South Coast Rep, with Jenny O’Hara, Arye Gross, Marin Hinkle, and Matthew Arkin and directed by Pam MacKinnon — feels more like a short story, or a subplot from another play, unable to sustain itself, particularly because it just can’t support the major twist that pulls the rug out from under whatever possibilities it might have had.

THE COLOR PURPLE

Sisters Celie (Cynthia Erivo) and Nettie (Joaquina Kalukango) enjoy a beautiful moment before being separated in THE COLOR PURPLE (photo by Matthew Murphy, 2015)

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 1, $75 – $195
colorpurple.com

The Color Purple achieves the extremely rare, elusive grand slam with its stirring new Broadway revival. Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for her 1982 novel about a horribly abused and mistreated girl in the Depression-era American South. Stephen Spielberg’s 1985 film, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Oprah Winfrey, was nominated for eleven Oscars (but won none). In 2005, the book and film were turned into a Broadway musical, earning ten Tony nominations and winning one (LaChanze for Best Performance by a Leading Actress). And now the revival is poised for yet more awards in a streamlined version at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. London native Cynthia Erivo makes a rousing Broadway debut as Celie, a fourteen-year-old Georgia girl whose pa (Kevyn Morrow) has gotten rid of her two children and is trying to pawn her off on a nasty farmer known as Mister (Isaiah Johnson), who would prefer to marry Celie’s younger sister, Nettie (Joaquina Kalukango). “She worse than I thought,” Mister complains. “Don’t even look like kin to Nettie. Maybe I —” Pa cuts him off by saying, “Maybe you’ll put Celie in charge of yo chirren fore they git big enough to kill you in the night.” Mister’s son, Harpo (Kyle Scatliffe), has married the bold, strong Sofia (Danielle Brooks), who isn’t going to tolerate any disrespect. “Wives is like chirren,” Mister tells his son. “Nothing better for ’em than a good sound beating,” to which Sofia responds with “Hell No!,” a defiant number delivered with power and grace by Brooks, singing out for women everywhere. “Why you so scared / I’ll never know / But if a man / raise his hand, / Hell no!” she declares. The town is soon sent into a furor when Shug Avery (Jennifer Hudson) returns, a popular singer whom all the men, including Mister, one of her many former lovers, melt over. “Drinkin’ all the gin / Lovin’ all the mens / Strumpet in a short skirt / Got no pride!” the women sing, while the men proclaim, “Oh Lord, let me cross / into her promised land.” Shug takes a liking to Celie while also still desiring Mister, setting up a conflict in which Celie must decide whether she can have a better life.

Director and set designer John Doyle turns the Jacobs Theatre into a juke joint in streamlined, intimate revival (photo by Matthew Murphy, 2015)

Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman (’night, Mother; The Secret Garden) and with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, The Color Purple is a beautifully rendered revival, evoking the book and film while also standing on its own. Two-time Tony-winning director John Doyle (Sweeney Todd, Company) keeps things relatively simple. His folksy set features ramshackle wooden walls on which dozens of chairs hang, essentially the only props used in the production; the characters take the chairs off the walls, sit on them, then put them back; the many extra chairs serve as a kind of invitation to the audience to be part of this close-knit community. Norman carefully navigates the characters’ religious faith, avoiding preachy moments; Celie tells Shug at one point, “I prayed to God my whole life and what he done. Nuthin’.” Shug replies, “Celie, you better hush. God might hear you,” to which Celie responds, “Let ’im hear me. If God ever listened to a poor colored woman, the world would be a different place.” Rising British star Erivo (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Sister Act) and Brooks (Taystee on Orange Is the New Black) are smashing in their Broadway debuts, the former bringing down the house with the legitimate showstopper “I’m Here,” the latter a force all her own as Sofia, who represents so much of the pain and suffering experienced by African Americans, as well as the determination to ultimately fight back. Carrie Compere, Bre Jackson, and Rema Webb are delightful as the three gossiping church ladies who form a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the proceedings with a clever sense of humor; Compere in particular has an impressive presence and theater-rattling voice that should lead to bigger roles. Surprisingly, the weakest part of the show are the songs given to Hudson (Dreamgirls, The Secret Life of Bees) in her Broadway debut; Hudson is laden with standard, syrupy ballads that don’t fit in with the rest of the Gospel and R&B numbers, although her costumes, by Ann Hould-Ward, are divine. The Color Purple has turned the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre into a thrilling, inspirational juke joint, bringing yet another life to Walker’s remarkable story.

THE CHANGELING

Red Bull Theater has revived Middleton and Crowley’s THE CHANGELING at the Lucille Lortel (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Red Bull Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theater
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 24, $60-$80
212-352-3101
www.redbulltheater.com

A whole bunch of characters go to a whole lot of trouble to get laid in Red Bull Theater’s adaptation of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s 1622 Jacobean tragedy, The Changeling, but despite all the lust and violence, it ends up being a rather tepid affair. The classic play is set in Alicante, Spain, where the wealthy Vermandero (Sam Tsoutsouvas) has arranged for his daughter, Beatrice-Joanna (Sara Topham), to marry Alonzo de Piracquo (John Skelley). Instead, the strong-willed, fickle young woman has fallen in love with the dapper nobleman Alsemero (Christian Coulson), while Alsemero’s friend, Jasperino (Justin Blanchard), has the hots for Beatrice’s maid, Diaphanta (Kimiye Corwin). One of Vermandero’s servants, the disfigured De Flores (Manoel Felciano), harbors a secret affection for Beatrice. In the local asylum, guard Lollio (Andrew Weems), supposed madman Antonio (Bill Army), and apparent fool Franciscus (Philippe Bowgen) covet Isabella (Michelle Beck), the much younger wife of asylum doctor Alibius (Christopher McCann). As the wedding approaches, dangerous passions lead to subterfuge, mistaken identity, and murder, as blood spills and the body count rises.

Beatrice (Sara Topham) and De Flores (Manoel Felciano) battle lust and passion in Jacobean tragedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Part of Red Bull Theater’s “Season of Scandal,” The Changeling never seems to grab hold of the audience, unspooling more like a series of vignettes than a fully realized play. The company, which has had great success with recent productions of such other seventeenth-century works as Volpone and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, has previously staged Middleton’s Women Beware Women and The Revenger’s Tragedy, also with founding artistic director Jesse Berger at the helm, but this time around there is not enough life in the revival. The dark, black set, by Marion Williams, features several platforms at the center, a mysterious closet where Alsemero keeps potions that, among other things, can tell if a woman is a virgin, and doors and mirrors behind which the asylum residents, dressed like strange animals, sometimes hover. The play, which has been turned into a 1974 BBC broadcast starring Helen Mirren, Tony Selby, Brian Cox, and Susan Penhaligon and a 1994 television presentation with Elizabeth McGovern, Bob Hoskins, Hugh Grant, and Sean Pertwee, explores the nature of sin, but ’tis a pity that this revival doesn’t take full advantage of all of the immorality, unable to balance the comic aspects with the tragic, the heartfelt with the absurd. (On January 18, Red Bull Theater will hold its next Revelation Reading, of Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One, directed by Craig Baldwin and with a cast that includes Bill Buell, Grant Chapman, Stephanie DiMaggio, David Greenspan, Christina Pumariega, Mirirai Sithole, David Ryan Smith, and Stephen Spinella.)

BROADWAYCON

Lin-Manuel Miranda and other members of the cast and crew of HAMILTON will take part in the first annual BroadwayCon (photo by Joan Marcus)

New York Hilton Midtown
1335 Sixth Ave. between 53rd & 54th Sts.
January 22-24, $50 Explorer Pass, $95 Day Pass
www.broadwaycon.com
www3.hilton.com

The first-ever BroadwayCon is being held January 22-24 at the Hilton in Midtown, with dozens of Great White Way stars participating in panels, workshops, autograph and Q&A sessions, meet and greets, and live performances. Weekend passes are sold out, but you can still get single-day tickets to see cast and crew members from such shows as Fun Home, Hamilton, Spring Awakening, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Les Misérables, Rent, Wicked, School of Rock, and many others. Below are only some of the highlights.

Friday, January 22
Something Wonderful: A Look Behind The King and I, with Christopher Gattelli, Donald Holder, Scott Lehrer, Bartlett Sher, Michael Yeargan, and Catherine Zuber, moderated by Ted Chapin, Beekman, 2:00

The BroadwayCon 2016 Opening, with surprise guests, MainStage, 3:30

History Is Happening in Manhattan: The Hamilton Panel, with Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff, Christopher Jackson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., and Phillipa Soo, moderated by Blake Ross, MainStage, 5:00

Autograph Session: Rent, Nassau, 9:00

The BroadwayCon Jukebox, with Kerry Butler, Jenn Colella, Anthony Rapp, Ryann Redmond, Stark Sands, and Alysha Umphress, moderated by Ben Cameron, MainStage, 9:30

Saturday, January 23
Autograph Session: Fiddler on the Roof, Americas Hall I, 10:20 am

Master Class: Anthony Rapp, Gramercy West, 11:00 am

A Conversation with Sheldon Harnick, MainStage, 12:30

Dance, Ten: Broadway’s Choreographers, with Christopher Gattelli, Lorin Latarro, and Kathleen Marshall, moderated by Michael Gioia, Nassau, 3:00

Divas, Darlings, and Dames: Women in Broadway Musicals of the 1960s, with Stacy Wolf, Beekman, 4:00

Sunday, January 24
Audition Q&A with Bernie Telsey, Gramercy West, 9:00 am

Obsessed! Live: Disaster! Edition, with Roger Bart, Kerry Butler, Kevin Chamberlin, Max Crumm, Lacretta Nicole, Adam Pascal, Faith Prince, Jennifer Simard, and Rachel York, moderated by Seth Rudetsky, MainStage, 11:00 am

I Can Do That! Broadway Siblings, with Karmine Alers, Yassmin Alers, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Maggie Keenan-Bolger, Sutton, 12 noon

The “Pippins and Wickeds and Kinkies, Matildas, and Mormonses” Singalong, Sutton, 3:00

The First Annual BroadwayCon Cabaret, with Nick Adams, Alex Brightman, Jeremy Jordan, Lesli Margherita, and Krysta Rodriguez, moderated by Rob McClure, MainStage, 11:00 pm

UNDER THE RADAR — DOROTHÉE MUNYANEZA / COMPAGNIE KADIDI: SAMEDI DÉTENTE

Dorothée Munyaneza recalls personal horrors of the Rwandan genocide in SAMEDI DÉTENTE (photo by Laura Fouqueré)

LuEsther Hall at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 14-17, $25
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com
anahi-spectacle-vivant.fr

Rwandan-born, French-based singer, actress, writer, and dancer Dorothée Munyaneza is mesmerizing in Samedi Détente, as she recalls the fateful month of April 1994 in her native country, when she was twelve years old and genocide was about to be unleashed as Hutu sought to eradicate Tutsi. Munyaneza, barefoot and dressed in multiple colorful layers, speaks starkly to the audience, sings, dances atop a table that she later balances on her head, and holds a knife that drips blood through a hospital tube. With a haunted yet determined look in her eyes, she remembers the death of President Habyarimana, of men with guns arriving at their home and separating her family, of how the rest of the world turned their backs on Rwanda. “They all left us in deep shit and blood,” she says. Her harsh, compelling narrative is accompanied by Ivory Coast dancer Nadia Beugré, who at first stands to Munyaneza’s right, covered in a hood as if she is being held hostage, while on the other side French musician Alain Mahé adds music and sound effects and sharpens knives. But the show, running at the Public Theater’s LuEsther Hall through January 17 as part of the Under the Radar Festival, takes a baffling turn in a vignette in which Beugré performs zouglou, a popular dance style from the Ivory Coast celebrating the joy of life while commenting on current affairs.

Munyaneza, who wrote and directed Samedi Détente for her troupe, Compagnie Kadidi, might be using Beugré’s interlude to contrast the horrors of genocide with the feel-good partying that went on around the globe, and particularly in France and Africa, during those harsh months, but instead it disappointingly dilutes what was a compelling narrative. Munyaneza is able to right things before the finale, but one can’t help but wonder how much more powerful Samedi Détente, which was named after a Rwandan radio show that translates as “Saturday Relief,” would have been if it just focused on its central raison d’être. “How to tell the unspeakable? How to speak about leaving a beloved place? About the circumstances in which you had to flee the cradle of childhood, one day, hiding, on roads scattered with bodies, blood, and silence?” Munyaneza, who had a song on the Hotel Rwanda soundtrack and released her debut solo album in 2010, asks in her artist statement, continuing, “I want to speak though the eyes of those who have seen. I want to share the words of those who were there.” For much of Samedi Détente, she accomplishes just that, not needing the additional artifice. (The January 17 performance will be followed by a discussion with members of the cast and crew.)