this week in theater

STEREOPHONIC

Engineers Grover (Eli Gelb) and Charlie (Andrew R. Butler) chew the fat as the band readies to record in David Adjmi’s Stereophonic (photo by Chelcie Parry)

STEREOPHONIC
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through December 17, sold out
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In many ways, the creation of David Adjmi’s Stereophonic mimics the record that the fictional band is making in the play. Following such well-received works as Elective Affinities, Stunning, The Evildoers, and Marie Antoinette, Adjmi announced to friends and colleagues in 2013 that he was leaving the theater, but he immediately started receiving offers of grants and residencies. A three-year residency at Soho Rep resulted in what would become the widely hailed Stereophonic, which went from a seventy-minute play to a two-act, then three-act, and ultimately four-act, three-hour epic whose premiere was delayed because of the pandemic.

In the play, a successful, unnamed rock band suddenly has an eighteen-month-old song called “Dark Night” rising on the charts and are working on a new one, titled “Bright,” echoing the up-and-down nature of personal and professional partnerships. The band is in a Sausalito recording studio in the summer of 1976 for what was expected to be quick, low-budget sessions that start turning into much more.

The band consists of British bass player Reg (Will Brill), British keyboard player and singer Holly (Juliana Canfield), British drummer Simon (Chris Stack), American guitarist and lead singer Peter (Tom Pecinka), and American singer and tambourine player Diana (Sarah Pidgeon). Reg is getting lost in a haze of booze and coke; Simon, who also serves as manager, is having trouble keeping the beat; Holly, who is married to Reg, is reevaluating her living situation; and the controlling Peter is jealous of his girlfriend, Diana, as she brings another potential hit to the group.

Grover (Eli Gelb), who lied on his resume to get the gig, is the recording engineer, assisted by Charlie (Andrew R. Butler); while Grover, a stoner, is nervous and fidgety, worried that he is in over his head, especially when the discord within the band grows, Charlie is gentle and quiet, preferring to remain in the background, their relationship somewhat recalling that between Jay and Silent Bob in Kevin Smith’s films.

Band and crew members take a much-needed break in three-hour Stereophonic (photo by Chelcie Parry)

The show unfolds like a cool double, or even triple, LP. Not every play scene / LP song works, but the cast/band are uniformly excellent, as are the engineers/crew (with studio set by David Zinn, costumes by Enver Chakartash, lighting by Jiyoun Chang, sound by Ryan Rumery, and music direction by Justin Craig). The songs, by former Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist and Grammy winner Will Butler, capture the essence of 1970s California rock as the angst increases among the members of the band and they attempt to balance professional and personal success. Director Daniel Aukin helms the play like a star album producer.

Sure, it’s too long at three hours in four parts, the equivalent of a quadruple album. At one point, concerned about the length of the record they’re making and one song in particular, Peter says, “We can’t fit everything. I know no one wants to cut anything and we’ve talked a whole lot about continuity. But I’m sorry. We need to have this conversation. We need to decide what we’re gonna do; we’re four minutes over and it’s not enough for a double album. . . . We need to cut stuff.” Reg asks, “Why can’t we do a double album?”

Younger audience members might not know that on cassettes and LPs, artists were limited to 22.5 minutes per side, and sometimes the songs on the cassette were in a different order than on the record, resulting in a loss of continuity. In addition, listeners had to flip the cassette or album to hear the other side; musicians couldn’t just make an album of any length that could stream online endlessly, complete with the ability to easily skip over songs they might not like.

You can’t do that in the theater. Thus, Stereophonic contains some fluff, repetition, and scenes that don’t seem to fit with the others, but for the most part it’s a fun and poignant behind-the-scenes look at artistic creation, collaboration, ego, and jealousy. We’re all the better with Adjmi deciding not to quit the band/theater; I’m looking forward to the several plays he has coming up, including an exploration, with Lila Neugebauer, of the making of Brian Wilson’s Smile album.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SPAIN

Helen (Marin Ireland) and Joris (Andrew Burnap) share their ideas about Spain in world premiere at Tony Kiser Theater (photo by Matthew Murphy)

SPAIN
Second Stage Theater — Tony Kiser Theater
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 17, $46-$106
2st.com/shows

“Spain! What’s not to love about Spain?” Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens (Andrew Burnap) says in the opening monologue of Jen Silverman’s new play, Spain. While there’s lots to love about the Iberian country, there’s not enough to love about the show, running at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater through December 17.

Spain is a fictionalized behind-the-scenes account of the development of Ivens’s 1937 film The Spanish Earth. Ivens, who had previously made such films as The Street, The Bridge, Rain, and Borinage, is hired by KGB agents — “They weren’t calling themselves that, obviously, it was the Office of the Branch of International Cultural Socialist Whatever Whatever but — the KGB,” he explains — to make a propaganda film about the Spanish Civil War to elicit the sympathy of the American public, and financial donations, in support of the common Russian. Reciting what his handler, Karl (Zachary James), has told him, Joris relates, “The War in Spain Is a War / Between the Rich and the Poor / The Noble Peasant Crushed by the Rich Fascist / See? / A Single-Sentence War / And Single-Sentence War Is a Perfect Opportunity for . . . / — and then he said: ART / but we both knew that wasn’t the word he meant.” Joris is also told to never reveal that the Russians are behind the movie.

Joris enlists the aid of his personal and professional partner, Helen (Marin Ireland), based on real-life editor Helen van Dongen. They decide to hire Chicago-born novelist John Dos Passos (Erik Lochtefeld), whose best friend is Spanish author and activist José Robles, to write the script, primarily to lure in Ernest Hemingway (Danny Wolohan), Dos’s competitive colleague. It also helps that both Dos and Hemingway have been to Spain, which is not true of Joris and Helen, who write words on a blackboard to show what they know about the country, including “tapas,” “bulls,” and “cerveza.”

Although Joris has been sworn to secrecy about the Russian involvement, Helen seems more casual about the relationship, mentioning by name a man named Ivor, who was more than just a handler, arousing jealousy in Joris. “So you don’t love him. You do love him? You did love him but you don’t anymore? You did and you still do but you love me more?” Joris burbles. They also argue about their careers and what constitutes art, understanding they are at the beck and call of the Russians, who want Joris to make a film about Italy next. “Are you sure this is worth it?” Helen asks Joris.

Soon the testosterone-charged, philandering Hemingway and the more straightlaced Dos are tossing about ideas for the screenplay and needling each other. “You like to make things complicated. I like to keep them simple,” Hemingway tells Dos, who responds, “You want people to feel like they don’t need to be any smarter or better. You just want them to love you.” To which Hemingway replies, “Maybe they’re smart enough. There’s a reason nobody wants to read your books.” At the time, Dos had just completed the third book in his U.S.A. trilogy, while Hemingway had already published such books as The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms.

As the prep work continues, relationships unravel and storylines tangle. “What’s started to scare me lately is this feeling that I can’t remember what was the cover story and what was the real story / what’s the art and what’s the plan / and what’s the back-up plan,” Helen says. She warns Joris of potential danger from the back-room dealings.

Helen (Marin Ireland) gets caught between propaganda and art in Spain (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Early on, Karl tells Joris to make the film about Spain as metaphor; the word metaphor appears six more times in the play, but Silverman (Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, The Moors) and director Tyne Rafaeli (The Coast Starlight, Selling Kabul) can’t seem to decide if it’s a true story, a noir thriller, or a metaphor about politics and the creation of art.

Dane Laffrey’s dark set features such compelling touches as shadowy doorways where the Russians appear, threateningly, and a red phone lodged in a wall space, as well as an odd recording room where Hemingway expounds on life and art. The stage is dimly lit by Jen Schriever, with menacing music and sound by Daniel Kluger and costumes by Alejo Vietti, highlighted by Helen’s dramatic red blouse. Burnap (The Inheritance, Camelot) is bland and boring as Joris, Wolohan (Camelot, Assassins) is overly bombastic as Hemingway, James (The Addams Family, South Pacific) is mysterious as the hulking Karl, Lochtefeld (Stupid F***ing Bird, Small Mouth Sounds) is superb as Dos, and Ireland (Reasons to Be Pretty, Uncle Vanya) manages to overcome the inconsistencies written into her character.

Narrated in separate versions by Hemingway, Orson Welles, and Jean Renoir (in French), the fifty-two-minute The Spanish Earth was released in July 1937, a year after the war started and nearly two years before it would end with the Nationalist victory and Francisco Franco’s seizure of power. The war inspired classic works by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, George Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Guillermo del Toro, and others; sadly, the obtuse Spain does not make the cut.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO

Seven autistic actors portray seven autistic characters in Broadway premiere (photo © Curtis Brown)

HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO
Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 11, $74 – $518
howtodanceinohiomusical.com

“Will I be totally humiliated if I mess it up?” Remy (Desmond Luis Edwards) asks in the Broadway premiere of Rebekah Greer Melocik and Jacob Yandura’s How to Dance in Ohio, which opened last night at the Belasco. It’s a question that we’ve all asked ourselves, and it’s a central theme of the musical, which focuses on seven autistic young adults trying to make connections while preparing for a spring formal, dealing with the same types of emotions as neurotypical people but facing a world that was not built with them in mind.

The two-and-a-half-hour show (with intermission), which was developed and first presented at Syracuse Stage, was inspired by Alexandra Shiva’s Peabody Award–winning documentary about Amigo Family Counseling in Columbus, Ohio, which provides “Respons· ability Social Therapy” for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The film featured more than two dozen child and adult clients — they avoid such words as “patients,” “sufferers,” and “victims” — but the musical has trimmed it down to seven young adults, each with one particular disorder. Although some of the characters are based on specific clients, they are all amalgams; none is an exact representation, with various changes made for dramatic purposes.

The clinic was founded by Dr. Emilio Amigo (Caesar Samayoa), who, in the show, runs it with the help of his daughter, Ashley (Cristina Sastre), a ballerina at Juilliard who is recovering from a fractured leg and reconsidering her future as a dancer. (The actual clinic has a handful of therapists, specialists, and aides covering several different groups.) AFC has seven clients: Remy (Desmond Luis Edwards), who wants to be a stylish viral superstar; Caroline (Amelia Fei), who is starting college and has her first boyfriend; Jessica (Ashley Wool), a dragon lover who wants to move out of her mother’s house; Drew (Liam Pearce), an electrical engineering wiz choosing which university to attend; Mel (Imani Russell), who is seeking a promotion at the pet store where she works; Tommy (Conor Tague), who hates collared shirts and is getting ready to take his driving test, excited to get behind the wheel of his brother’s new truck; and the newest member of the group, Maredith (Madison Kopec), who is obsessed with facts.

“I am going places / There are places I need to be,” the group sings. “But, most of the spaces / that I want to get to / were not designed for me.” They explain, “That’s what we do in Ohio: / Doing the same thing over and over.” Jessica says self-referentially, “Like lines of a play, or a song’s refrain.”

Terry (Haven Burton) and Johanna (Darlesia Cearcy) go dress shopping with their daughters in How to Dance in Ohio (photo © Curtis Brown)

At Maredith’s first session, Dr. Amigo tells everyone to “circle up!,” passing around a long white rope as each client shares something personal, slowly connecting them all, even if they’re not necessarily comfortable with it. The fears and anxieties they face range from tying shoelaces and answering telephones to speaking with strangers and being touched. Some have trouble showing emotions and setting boundaries, and most have repetitive habits. “Repetition creates reality,” Mel notes.

Dr. Amigo decides to hold a spring formal at the Encore nightclub, a dance where the group can face their social awkwardness while practicing communication skills and experiencing a rite of passage. It sounds like a terrible idea — especially when he encourages them to bring dates, whether from within the group or outside it — but Dr. Amigo wants his clients to take that next step.

“Disaster is always a possibility / Real life is loud, confusing, fast / We shelter our children because we care / But how long can childhood last?” he tells Columbus Gazette reporter Shauna Parks (Melina Kalomas), adding, “Because victory is also a possibility / Your odds improve each time you try / Your skin gets thicker, failure stings a bit less / and maybe that’s worth all the worry and stress.” The doctor is also meeting with blogger Rick Jenkins (Carlos L Encinias), who wants to do a big piece on the dance.

As the event nears, Drew’s parents, Amy (Melina Kalomas) and Kurt (Encinias), are concerned about Dr. Amigo’s influence over their son; Jessica’s mother, Terry (Haven Burton), and Caroline’s mom, Johanna (Darlesia Cearcy), take their daughters dress shopping at Macy’s while Maredith’s widowed father, Michael (Nick Gaswirth), can only afford discounted clothing at Dress Barn; and the clients consider how they will pair up for the formal.

How to Dance in Ohio is dedicated to Hal Prince, who was originally going to direct the production before he died in 2019 at the age of ninety-one. His granddaughter Lucy Chaplin is autistic and served as inspiration to Shiva. Melocik, who wrote the book and lyrics, has Tourette’s syndrome, and Yandura, who composed the music, has an autistic sister.

Directed by Sammi Cannold in her Broadway debut, the show moves like clockwork, at a swift, even pace, with evocative, if unspectacular, songs (“Today Is,” “Under Control,” “Drift,” “Terminally Human,” “Building Momentum,” “Two Steps Backward”) and choreography by Mayte Natalio, lighting by Bradley King, and sound by Connor Wang that all take into consideration how movement, noise, and flashing lights can affect not only the seven autistic actors but audience members as well. There are cool-down spaces in the mezzanine and lower lounge for anyone who might need to take a break, in addition to sensory bags with fidget toys and glasses that are available for borrowing at the merch stand. Robert Brill’s set consists of LED letters arranged in grids in the back and on columns on either side, along with rectangles of numbered dance steps; location changes either descend calmly from above or from the wings as the narrative shifts from a room in the clinic to stores, a nightclub, a bus stop, and several characters’ homes.

Dr. Emilio Amigo (Caesar Samayoa) prepares his clients for a spring formal in How to Dance in Ohio (photo © Curtis Brown)

Unfortunately, the book is laden with problems, primarily when Melocik strays from the documentary and invents subplots involving the reporters, class difference, and Dr. Amigo’s battles with parents over his possible interference in their children’s lives. The additions seek to give voice to the seven young adults and educate theatergoers about the right words and approach when talking about or to people with autism, but it displays a lack of confidence in the audience to figure that out by the action that unfolds in front of them; instead, we’re hit over the head with teaching moments that don’t ring true.

None of that detracts from the production itself; the seven autistic actors, all Broadway newcomers, are terrific, and they seem to be having the time of their lives onstage. When Edwards, as Remy, looks into his ring light and says, “This is the ‘Many Faces of Me,’ with me, Remy: live! I see you, Tommy! — Our first topic is: Nothing about us without us,” he is speaking for the neurodivergent community as a whole, celebrating their multifaceted existence. When Drew offers to lend a book about Pangea to Marideth, it’s a subtle metaphor for the seven clients: Pangea was the single land formation that eventually broke into the seven continents, evoking how the clients are unique individuals who should not merely be seen as a group unto themselves.

Samayoa (Come from Away, Sister Act) is the glue that holds it all together, with solid support from Sastre, Burton, Cearcy, Encinias, Gaswirth, and Kalomas, although some minor characters are underwritten, there just to push through a small, forced story point.

In a 1980s public service announcement for United Cerebral Palsy that has stuck with me for decades, actor Tony Danza asks, “How do you treat a person with a disability?” After receiving a variety of comments from several random people in the street, Danza shares the answer: “Like a person.” That essentially is what How to Dance in Ohio is attempting to convey in regard to autism, and it does so with an abundance of charm, even though it occasionally goes astray. But it gets to the heart of so much of what makes us all human, as we progress from children to teenagers to young adults: learning to drive a car, going out on a first date, selecting a college, choosing a social media presence, and building momentum to be able to eventually live on one’s own.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SCENE PARTNERS

Meryl Kowalski (Dianne Wiest) is haunted by her father (Josh Hamilton) in Scene Partners (photo © Carol Rosegg)

SCENE PARTNERS
Vineyard Theatre
Gertrude and Irving Dimson Theatre
108 East 15th St. between Union Square East & Irving Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 17, $37.80-$160.92
www.vineyardtheatre.org

The confusion begins with Scene Partners at the Vineyard even before the show starts. The program says it’s set in 1985, and the script explains, “And make sure it really feels that way,” but one of the songs playing over the speakers as the audience enters is the theme to Charlie’s Angels, a TV series that ran from 1976 to 1981. A confounding puzzlement continues through the entire play, where plot, dialogue, projections, screens, sound, lighting, and acting are all over the place, never coming together as a solid whole.

And that’s a shame, because it wastes a terrific performance by the wonderful Dianne Wiest, who has won two Oscars and two Emmys and has been nominated for three Drama Desk Awards. Wiest’s lilting, ethereal voice is as intoxicating as ever, but the narrative is like a poorly chopped salad put through an unbalanced spinner, a little Beckett and Pinter here, too much van Hove there, with more than a sprinkling of silly sitcom / soap opera and a dose of Joseph Beuys. It’s nearly impossible to tell what is happening in real time — what are memories, what are fantasies, what are dreams or nightmares, and what are clips from rehearsals or films.

Wiest plays Meryl Kowalski, a seventy-five-year-old woman whose husband just passed away three days ago. The first time she appears in person, not onscreen, only part of her is visible; she’s sitting in a chair, stuck in a kind of elevator shaft / dumbwaiter in the center of the back wall, and we can only see her from the neck down. She starts speaking, and there’s an uncomfortable moment when the audience tries to figure out whether they should applaud Wiest’s entrance. Not being a fan of entrance applause, I was rather content with it; plus, I loved the visual of the character trapped in the middle of nowhere.

Meryl has just come from a grief meeting and has stumbled upon a group that deals with “a bevy of emotional, physical, and mental traumas, trials, and tribulations.” The counselor (Eric Berryman) encourages her to get out of the shaft before the cables supporting her break. He says, “I encourage you to receive those snapping cables as a natural sign!” She asks, “A natural sign of what?!” He replies, “That your mass exceeds the safety-load of your pulley system!” She says, “In other words I’m fat and I don’t stand a chance.” He offers, “Not without sure footing and solid ground, which we offer in spades. Come! Join us once and for all. It only requires a minor injurious leap.”

Meryl (Dianne Wiest) seeks safe shelter with her sister (Johanna Day) in Vineyard world premiere (photo © Carol Rosegg)

Thrilled that she has a new lease on life, Meryl tells her daughter, Flora (Kristen Sieh), that her father “was a monster who ruined our lives. But now with that motherfucker dead and gone, I’m free, I’m finally free!” She explains that she is going to Hollywood to become a movie star, a goal that her husband failed at. A grown woman without a job and on drugs, Flora doesn’t want her mother to go, mostly because she needs her to take care of her. “You’ll play nothing but diaper-shitters, you hear me? Retirement-home background work!” Flora cries out. Meryl boldly replies, “I will play queens and matriarchs. Lawyers and judges, powerful women with pockets full of benzedrine pills and deep dark secrets to boot.”

On her Hollywood journey seeking fame and fortune, Meryl meets a Marxist train conductor (Berryman) who might be the ghost of her dead husband; pulls a gun on high-powered agent Herman Wassermann (Josh Hamilton); joins an acting class taught by Australian director Hugo Lockerby (Hamilton), with snarky wannabe actors Cassie (Carmen M. Herlihy), Pauline (Sieh), Maxine (Sieh), and Chuck (Berryman), who tell Meryl that she must change her name, which she doesn’t want to do because she is finally establishing her own identity, even if it will be by portraying other people; visits Dr. Noah Drake (Berryman), who may or may not be the doctor from General Hospital; is haunted by her father, who appears as a floating hat and trench coat; and reconnects with her sister, Charlize (Johanna Day), whom she hasn’t seen in ten years and who was unable to make it as an actress herself. “I’m happy with life now. I volunteer, I sing at this little dive,” Charlize says. “I don’t miss the rejection. The constant judgment. There’s no harm in being ordinary.”

But Meryl is not about to give up on this second chance at life.

Eric Berryman, Kristen Sieh, and Carmen M. Herlihy play multiple characters in Dianne Wiest–led Scene Partners (photo © Carol Rosegg)

Wiest (Rasheeda Speaking, Happy Days) is marvelous as Meryl, a dreamer with an infectious smile and a tenuous grasp of reality. You can’t help but root for her, no matter how high the barriers are to her potential success. Two-time Tony nominee and Obie winner Day (Sweat, Des Moines) is in her usual excellent form as Charlize, who has come to grips with who she is and now wants to help her sister. Berryman (Primary Trust, Toni Stone), Hamilton (The Antipodes, Dead Accounts), Herlihy (Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie, A Delicate Balance), and Sieh (Dr. Ride’s American Beach House, The Band’s Visit) are all fine in multiple roles, although the merry-go-round of characters can get bewildering, even with set designer Riccardo Hernández’s costumes, which end up battling against David Bengali’s video and projections.

Tony-winning director Rachel Chavkin, who has successfully steered such shows as Hadestown, Small Mouth Sounds, and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, can’t seem to find her way into John J. Caswell Jr.’s (Wet Brain) meandering narrative, throwing too much at the wall, with not enough sticking. Every time I found myself just about ready to accept what was happening onstage, the presentation veered off track yet again.

I did, however, appreciate the music in the play, which includes Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherrie,” Corey Hart’s “Never Surrender,” and Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere,” the last of which ends up being a metaphor for the play.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SABBATH’S THEATER

Drenka Balich (Elizabeth Marvel) and Mickey Sabbath (John Turturro) are sexually linked in Sabbath’s Theater (photo by Monique Carboni)

SABBATH’S THEATER
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 17, $32-$112
212-244-7529
thenewgroup.org
www.signaturetheatre.org

John Turturro must have been Jewish in a previous life.

Born in Brooklyn to a mother whose parents were from Italy and a father who emigrated from Italy to America when he was six, Turturro has spent a significant part of his five-decade career portraying Jewish characters, from Bernie “the Shamata Kid” Bernbaum in Miller’s Crossing and Herb Stempel in Quiz Show to Primo Levi in The Truce, Moe Flatbush in Mo’ Better Blues, and writer Barton Fink. He’s also portrayed Egyptian pharaoh Seti I in Exodus: Gods and Kings and Palestinian militant Fatoush “The Phantom” Hakbarah in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan in addition to too many Italians to mention.

So it’s no surprise that Turturro is absolutely exhilarating as Mickey Sabbath in the New Group world premiere of Sabbath’s Theater, which has been extended at the Pershing Square Signature Center through December 17, making it an excellent Hanukkah present.

Turturro and New Yorker writer Ariel Levy adapted the script from Philip Roth’s 1994 novel, which won the National Book Award. Turturro was a good friend of Roth’s; they collaborated on a never-completed one-man show of Roth’s controversial 1969 novel, Portnoy’s Complaint — which lends itself to solo performance — and Turturro portrayed Lionel Bengelsdorf, the misguided, overly trusting rabbi, in the 2020 HBO miniseries The Plot Against America, an alternate history of the rise of antisemitism in America in the early 1940s, based on the 2004 book by Roth.

Mickey is a failed puppeteer — he ran the Indecent Theater — who has had two unsuccessful marriages and has a missing daughter. He’s haunted by the death of his beloved brother, Morty, during WWII and by the ghost of his mother, who seems to hover around him, occasionally whistling, “Don’t Fence Me In.” Mickey is also a sex fiend; the show opens with him making love to the married Drenka Balich (Elizabeth Marvel), the two speaking openly and vividly about copulation. “Coming is an industry with you — you’re a factory,” Mickey says when they’re done. She wants him to be loyal to her, demanding, “I don’t want anyone else. Either forswear fucking others or the affair is over.” He replies sarcastically, “You like monogamy so much with your husband you want it with me, too?”

A moment later they are discussing a potential threesome when, still basking in the glow of sex, Mickey admits to the audience, “I was pierced by the sharpest of longings for my late little mother! I wondered if she had somehow popped out of Drenka’s pussy the moment before I entered it…”

Women are always on Mickey’s mind; his last name, Sabbath, is the Jewish day of rest, which is embodied by a Shabbos Queen, fitting Mickey’s approach to life.

Norman (Jason Kravits) and Michelle (Elizabeth Marvel) try to help their friend Mickey (John Turturro) in world premiere production (photo by Monique Carboni)

Mickey often turns directly to the audience, sharing personal tidbits, deep, dark desires, and explanations for why he is the way he is. He is a man of few morals; he has no respect for Drenka’s husband, Matija (Jason Kravits); his best friends, Norman (Kravits) and Michelle Cowan (Marvel), and their teenage daughter; or his second wife, Roseanna (Marvel), who can’t stand him. “I hated his increasing girth, his drooping scrotum,” Roseanna says about Mickey, adding, “his apish hairy shoulders, his white, stupid, biblical beard.” She then relates how she considered going all Lorena Bobbitt on him. Mickey responds by citing scripture: “She couldn’t have stuck something unpleasant up his ass? A frying pan! A rectum for a rectum. Exodus 21:24.”

When an old acquaintance, Lincoln Gelman, dies by suicide, Mickey starts having thoughts of killing himself too, but he might just love — or at least think he needs — sex too much. Then a visit with his father’s hundred-year-old cousin, Fish (Kravits), sends him careening again back into the past. “Was it good, life? Was it good to live, Fish?” Mickey asks. Fish replies, “Sure, better than being dead.”

Arnulfo Maldonado’s spare set features small pieces of furniture and a handful of props at the far left and right sides that are occasionally brought center stage by the actors or stage crew; Maldonado also designed the costumes, primarily modern-day dress save for a fab white sweater worn by Drenka and an American flag that Mickey wraps himself in. Alex Basco Koch’s projections, Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound, Jeff Croiter’s lighting, and Erik Sanko’s shadow puppet design help define the past from the present.

The story grows bumpier and bumpier in the second half as Mickey, an unreliable narrator, becomes more and more unlikable. But director Jo Bonney (Cost of Living, Fucking A) steers it back just in time before the character completely loses his way.

Turturro (Endgame, The Master Builder) is a powder keg as Mickey, a frenetic, mesmerizing whirlwind you cannot keep your eyes off of; onstage for nearly the full one hundred minutes, Turturro is relentless, relishing his acting job much how Mickey relishes sex. When, during an argument with Roseanna, she yells at him, “You cannot think straight if you’re shouting!” and he fires back, “Wrong! It’s only when I’m shouting that I begin to think straight! Shouting is how a Jew thinks things through!” it’s nearly impossible to believe that Turturro is not Jewish.

Marvel (Julius Caesar, Long Day’s Journey into Night) inhabits her characters so thoroughly that she is nearly unrecognizable as Drenka, Roseanna, Michelle, and cemetery superintendent A. B. Crawford, willing to go toe to toe with Turturro through thick and thin. And Kravits (The Drowsy Chaperone, A Play Is a Poem) sparkles as a series of schleppy men, culminating in his loving portrayal of Fish.

Developed earlier this year by New Jersey Performing Arts Center for “Philip Roth Unbound: Illuminating a Literary Legacy” in honor of what would have been Roth’s ninetieth birthday weekend — the Newark-born writer died in 2018 in Manhattan at the age of eighty-five — Sabbath’s Theater is an uneven but intriguing exploration of sex, love, and death with a heavy dose of filthy Jewish schmaltz.

Mickey might be a wholly indecent man, but underneath it all is a scared little boy. Reflecting on the many losses he’s experienced, he explains, “What’s the point of trying to find reason or meaning? By the time I was twenty-five I already knew there wasn’t any.” But just as Mickey is dishonest with others, he’s also dishonest with himself.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

POOR YELLA REDNECKS

The cast of Poor Yella Rednecks occasionally breaks out into hip-hop songs (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

POOR YELLA REDNECKS
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 3, $89-$109
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Arizona-born Vietnamese American playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen follows up his semiautobiographical Vietgone with Poor Yella Rednecks, making its New York premiere at MTC at New York City Center — Stage I through December 3.

In praising Vietgone, I wrote, “Passionately directed by [May] Adrales with a frenetic warmth, the hip-hop immigrant tale — with a sweet nod to Hamilton — is colorful and energetic.” I am happy to say the same thing about Poor Yella Rednecks, except it’s even better than its predecessor.

Once again, the play begins with Nguyen (Jon Norman Schneider), called the playwright, explaining that not everything we are about to see actually happened. “This story is based on true events. All heavily researched. All one hundred percent historically accurate. Well, at least according to my mom.”

It’s August 7, 2015, and Nguyen is sitting at a table, interviewing his mother, Tong (Maureen Sebastian), for a play about how she left Vietnam and began a new life in America. But she thinks it’s a terrible idea and the reason why he is poor. “No one want to hear story about old woman who speak bad English with bald son,” she says. She ultimately agrees to talk with him but with a few important rules: “I don’t want you to only tell happy thing. I see your other play. You like to write romantic and funny. But no life is all romance. And it is not all fun. Sometimes it is hard. We Vietnamese. We good at being hard. I want it to be true and hard.” Another rule relates to speech: “If this going to be my play, I want all the white people to sound like the way I hear them. Let them hear all the stupid stuff they say. . . . And finally, I want to talk good.”

Thus, when Vietnamese characters speak with each other, it is in perfect English, substituting for Vietnamese so the audience can understand what they’re saying. But when a Vietnamese character is actually speaking English, it is in broken English. For example, when the older Tong talks to her son in broken English, that is how she is pronouncing the language; however, when she speaks in perfect English, she is actually talking to him in Vietnamese. It’s handled beautifully by Adrales and the cast, a constant reminder of the immigrant experience.

Tong takes him back to Arkansas in 1975, when she met her future husband, Nguyen’s father, Quang, at a relocation camp named Fort Chaffee, then moved to El Dorado. When the playwright says that it must have been love at first sight, Tong replies, “Mm-hmm. And Santa Claus is real, as is the Easter Bunny, and capitalism works for everybody.”

The playwright (Jon Norman Schneider) interviews his mother (Samantha Quan) in Poor Yella Rednecks (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The action then shifts to the past as Tong and Quang (Ben Levin) fall in love even though she is still dating Bobby (Paco Tolson) and he is still married to Thu (Samantha Quan), who is raising their two children in Vietnam. Five years later, Quang and Tong are living in a trailer with her mother, Huong (Quan), a foul-mouthed, cynical smoker who takes care of Quang and Tong’s son, Little Man, while Tong works at a local diner and Quang hangs out with his hapless friends, including his bestie, Nhan (Jon Hoche). In an ingenious move, Little Man is a puppet, designed by David Valentine, that is voiced and operated by Schneider as the playwright, essentially the adult son playing himself as a child. It works wonderfully, especially when Huong teaches Little Man how to defend himself.

When Nhan announces that he’s moving to Houston to find better opportunities and it turns out that Quang hasn’t quite settled things with Thu yet, Tong starts to reevaluate who she is and what she wants out of life.

Tim Mackabee’s set is structured around five large neon letters — Y, E, L, L, A — that occasionally light up in different colors and are moved around to expose smaller sets attached to them, from a living room and a bar to the diner and a fast-food joint. They were designed to evoke the letters in the fabled Hollywood sign; just as that sign beckons wannabe stars to California from all over the world, the Y-E-L-L-A letters represent the American dream that Asians have when they emigrate from their countries to the United States — and encounter hatred, bigotry, language barriers, and other elements that do not make their transition easy. Several scenes also occur in and around a pickup truck, revealing that the vehicle is a favorite not only for a certain stereotyped group of white men who like country music and beer.

The big letters, along with comic-book-like projections by Jared Mezzocchi, are also a nod to Nguyen’s success as a writer for Marvel Studios and founder of the New York–based Vampire Cowboys troupe; Nguyen even has Marvel legend Stan Lee (Tolson, who portrayed the playwright in Vietgone) show up once in a while and deliver statements about heroes. Valérie Thérèse Bart’s costumes hit their target, and Lap Chi Chu’s lighting ranges from bold to intimate.

As in Vietgone, the cast, nearly all of whom appeared in that show at South Coast Rep and/or MTC, displays their vast talents by often breaking out into exciting raps; the original music is by sound designer Shane Rettig, arranged by Kenny Seymour, choreographed by William Carlos Angulo, and with music direction by Cynthia Meng. “I know you think I’m joking — what the hell am I smoking? / But being next to you is what got my heart thumping / Our kiddies will be cuties, bring over that fine bootie / Nothing’s gonna stop us with our combined beauty,” Quang declares. “Let me reintroduce myself / I’m better known as that shorty that you up and left / I must be crazy, baby — thought you were dead / We threw a funeral to commemorate your death,” Thu announces. “Cuz I’m more than just pretty, my brain is damn witty / Gimme one hot second — Imma run this city / Yo, say that I shouldn’t — I’m my own woman / Stronger than any man and twice as good looking,” Tong proclaims. “Even if they mad at you, you gotta be true to you / Every scar you wear, you show the shit that you went through / Ya gotta stand strong, be strong, head strong, ya ain’t wrong / So come on listen close, this here’s our fight song,” Huong tells Little Man.

Jon Norman Schneider (left) portrays the playwright and his younger puppet self in New York premiere from MTC (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Nguyen (She Kills Monsters, Living Dead in Denmark) and Adrales (The Strangest, Golden Shield) are in total sync; nearly every minute rings true, and the pace never lags. Schneider (The Coast Starlight, Once Upon a (korean) Time) is warm and charming as the playwright, Hoche (King Kong, Life of Pi) is a hoot as Nhan and various rednecks, Levin is hunky as Quang, Quan is cute and lovable as Huong, Tolson (The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Children of Vonderly) gives Bobby an unexpected edge, but Sebastian (The Best We Could: A Family Tragedy, Soul Samurai) steals the show as Tong, who stares adversity right in the face but refuses to give up, in many ways representing the Asian diaspora in America.

Early on, right before the official interview begins, Tong tells her son, “Let me tell you what kind of story white people want to hear.” He asks, “Wait, why only ‘white people?’” She replies, “Because only white people like to watch a play.” He argues, “All sorts of people watch plays, Mom.” To which she counters, “Yes, all sorts of white people. It look like a Fleetwood Mac concert. It so white. . . . Maybe I don’t want to dig up old history just so you can make a few dollar on play white people won’t like.”

At the matinee I saw, the audience appeared to be at least half Vietnamese or Vietnamese American, both young and old, and they and the white people reacted in unison to the unconventional, important story taking place onstage. Eliciting a wide range of emotions, the show accomplishes what theater does best, bringing people of different backgrounds together to focus on the human condition, reaching into the past while giving us hope for the future.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MERRY ME

An Angel (Shaunette Renée Wilson), Lt. Shane Horne (Esco Jouléy), and Dr. Jess O’Nope (Marinda Anderson) seek out latest merryment from Hansol Jung (photo by Joan Marcus)

MERRY ME
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 19, $65-$75
www.nytw.org

Rising star Hansol Jung finishes a busy 2023 with her third production, Merry Me, continuing at New York Theatre Workshop through November 19. The year began with the exhilarating and unpredictable Wolf Play at MCC, followed by the confusing and overly self-referential Romeo and Juliet. Merry Me falls somewhere in between, but it is certainly worth catching before it closes.

As the audience enters the theater, songs are blasting through the speakers, by Melissa Etheridge, Peaches, and Tegan & Sara, all longtime lesbian faves. “Do you like my playlist? You’re welcome,” says our host and narrator, the Angel (Shaunette Renée Wilson) from Angels in America, to open the show.

Merry Me mixes Tony Kushner, Greek tragedy (Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Homer’s Odyssey), William Wycherly’s seventeenth-century Restoration comedy The Country Wife, and Shakespeare into a frenetic tale about sex as power. It takes place on a naval base camp on a “Naval basecamp of A Nation’s most prestigious navy on an Island not far from Another Nation’s most vulnerable coast cities,” wonderfully depicted by set designer Rachel Hauck as a wall of tents as if seen from high above. A small door sits at stage right, a military foot locker stage left. Above are two white clouds amid a blue sky.

There’s a bit of a furor at the encampment, where an electric blackout is hampering the navy’s ability to defend itself. Curiously, the only devices that work are vibrators. Lt. Shane Horne (Esco Jouléy), known as “God’s gift to lady parts of all shapes, colors, and vintages,” is just out of the brig, having served time for bedding Gen. Aga Memnon’s (David Ryan Smith) wife, Clytemnestra (Cindy Cheung). The androgynous Horne, inspired by The Country Wife womanizer Harry Horner, looks fabulous in a camouflage tank top that reveals bulging muscles and tattoos. Horne and their therapist, Dr. Jess O’Nope (Marinda Anderson), who has trouble making decisions — her name is a riff on “yes or no” — concoct a plan in which the doctor will falsely report that “Lieutenant Shane Horne has been zapped, nuked, and lobotomized and returned to the world as Straight as a Road through Nevada!” Thus “converted,” Horne will be able to pursue, unabated, their “merries,” referring to orgasms.

Meanwhile, the general’s son, Pvt. Willy Iphigenia Memnon (Ryan Spahn), is trying to assert his military acumen with his father and his sexual prowess with his wife, Mrs. Sapph Memnon (Nicole Villamil). “I’m a woke white man,” he tells Dr. O’Nope. “I can come to pretend to understand extremities I do not fully comprehend by mansplaining and then apologizing. . . . What if I have been conditioned all my life to believe I am excellent above all other types of humans while not really being trained to work as hard? What if I am actually quite medium in talent, tenacity, and general interestingness and I know I have not developed a mental capacity to bridge the discrepancy between the genius I self-identify to be and the mediocre lump of ego that I actually am?”

As the apt-named Willy struggles with his conscience, Horne keeps up their search for pleasure, demanding, “I want my orgasm.”

Mrs. Sapph Memnon (Nicole Villamil) and Pvt. Willy Memnon (Ryan Spahn) are joined by a surprise guest (Shaunette Renée Wilson) in Merry Me (photo by Joan Marcus)

“The principal concern for women is not having an orgasm. But a woman has to take responsibility for her own orgasms,” Dr. Ruth said in 2010. Merry Me is, well, like an orgasm. Sometimes it explodes, sometimes it disappointingly falls flat, and other times it teases, tickles, and titillates.

The ninety-minute show can’t quite find its center, although it does occasionally locate its G-spot; Jung and director Leigh Silverman (Grand Horizons, On the Exhale), her regular collaborator, along with the cast, are having an absolute blast, which is infectious up to a point. Aficionados of Greek drama may enjoy the Homeric references sprinkled liberally throughout, but the narrative can get overwhelmed by repeated jokes, too many pop-culture references, and a nearly endless stream of double entendres — “It’s my fault, General. I have distracted your dear wife. I asked her to come,” Horne explains — while also having a lot to say about gender, sexuality, war, and the theater itself. Sometimes less is more, as with the navy’s small insignia, a slingshot, comparing sexual freedom to David’s battle with Goliath.

Lt. Shane Horne (Esco Jouléy) makes her case in wild and woolly Merry Me (photo by Joan Marcus)

Alejo Vietti’s costumes counter military fatigues with the blue-and-white outfit worn by Clytemnestra and the red dress adorning Sapph, a sly tip of the cap to America, along with the Angel’s fab getup, which is dazzling. Barbara Samuels’s lighting and Caroline Eng and Kate Marvin’s sound are bold and brash.

The excellent cast is led by Shaunette Renée Wilson (La Race, The Resident), who makes a spectacular appearance as the Angel, and Jouléy (Wolf Play), who is likely to turn you on as Horne no matter your orientation. Anderson (You Will Get Sick, Sandblasted), Cheung (Catch as Catch Can, Golden Child), Smith (Arden of Faversham, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of the Dead), Spahn (Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow; Jane Anger, or . . .), and Villamil (Wolf Play, Lessons in Survival) provide solid support, at the ready for whatever is to come.

Merry Me makes for some fine merriment, even if the ending is a bit, er, anticlimactic.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]