this week in theater

ANOTHER MEDEA

Tom Hewitt gives an unforgettable performance in Aaron Mark’s mesmerizing ANOTHER MEDEA (photo by Aaron Mark)

The darkly mesmerizing ANOTHER MEDEA, starring Tom Hewitt, is back in New York City for a run at the Wild Project (photo by Aaron Mark)

Who: All for One Solo Theater
What: Another Medea
Where: The Wild Project, 195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B, 212-228-1195
When: January 14-31, $40-$60
Why: When this one-man show, written and directed by Aaron Mark and inspired by Euripides’ Medea myth, played the All for One Theater Festival in fall 2013, we were absolutely blown away by it, hoping it would soon return for a longer run; the play we called “as intense and gripping a show as you’re ever likely to see” is now scheduled for sixteen performances this month at the Wild Project, once again starring Broadway veteran Tom Hewitt (The Rocky Horror Show, Chicago, The Lion King, Jesus Christ Superstar), who we said in October 2013 “is nothing short of breathtaking, immersing himself in the role of an extremely complex and conflicted character whose crime is unfortunately all too familiar in these difficult times. His mastery of the material is stunning, poetically delivered without calling attention to itself.” You can read our full review of Another Medea, which deals with a man imprisoned for committing a horrific act, here.

COIL — ALEXANDRA BACHZETSIS: FROM A TO B VIA C

COIL

Swiss choreographer Alexandra Bachzetsis examines beauty and the act of viewing in free COIL presentation, FROM A TO B VIA C

Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art
18 Wooster St.
Performance: Wednesday, January 14, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
Installation: January 12-13, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
212-352-3101
www.ps122.org/from-a-to-b
www.swissinstitute.net

Swiss choreographer Alexandra Bachzetsis once again explores gender identity, body language, concepts of beauty, and the very nature of art and performance in today’s communication-obsessed world in her latest work, From A to B via C, inspired by the fascinating history of Diego Velázquez’s “The Toilet of Venus.” In that painting, which is also known as “Venus at Her Mirror” and “The Rokeby Venus,” Cupid holds up a reflecting glass so his nude, reclining mother, Venus, the goddess of love, can admire her visage. The controversial work, completed by the Spanish painter in 1651, stirred one viewer, Canadian suffragette Mary Richardson, to repeatedly slash it in March 1914; her attack was a very public response to the brutal treatment being given fellow feminist activist Emmeline Parkhurst. “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history, as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history,” Richardson wrote at the time. “Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas.” One hundred years after that attack, Bachzetsis’s multimedia performance installation From A to B via C, taking place this week at the Swiss Institute as part of PS122’s tenth annual COIL festival, investigates this strange conjunction of art, protest, and feminism. In the hour-long U.S. premiere, Bachzetsis and Gabriel Schenker, wearing Cosima Gadient’s costumes depicting the inner musculature of the human body, are joined by a naked Anne Pajunen, who holds up a monitor showing a live feed as Bachzetsis reclines on a couch and looks at herself. The Zurich-born Bachzetsis’s previous work includes The Stages of Staging, Bluff, and Mainstream; the installation From A to B via C can be seen January 12 & 13 from 12 noon to 6:00, while the final live performance is scheduled for January 14 at 7:00. Admission is free with advance RSVP.

DYING FOR IT

(photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) tells his wife (Jeanine Serralles) and mother-in-law (Mary Beth Peil) that he’s had enough in DYING FOR IT (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 18, $20-$86.50
866-811-4111
www.atlantictheater.org

Living in 1920s Russia was no walk in the park, as so cleverly depicted in Moira Buffini’s Dying for It, a rollicking good “free adaptation” of Nikolai Erdman’s long-banned 1928 play, The Suicide. Twenty-seven-year-old Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) is at the end of his rope. “I’m a parasite,” he tells his wife, Masha (Jeanine Serralles). “I’m a bloodsucking leech. I have no work in this worker’s paradise.” They have such little money, they live in the hallway of a miserable apartment building, their bed under the stairs. One of their upstairs neighbors, the hulking, recently widowed Alexander Petrovich Kalabushkin (C. J. Wilson), tries to convince him that “life is a miracle, full of wonder,” but Semyon is adamant that it’s too late to change his mind. “I have no dignity, no labor, no value at all,” he says. But shortly after he decides to off himself, he is bombarded by various members of Soviet society, each of whom wants to make him their martyr — one imploring him to write a suicide note crying out about what they believe is wrong with the social order, another protesting the revolution, the next a victim of Communism, et al. Too afraid to speak out themselves, they want the soon-to-be-dead Semyon to be their personal mouthpiece. Among those who want to turn Semyon’s last act into a heroic gesture are comrade Aristarkh Dominikovich Grand-Skubik (Robert Stanton), an intellectual who tells him, “You are in a position of great power. . . . Nowadays, only the dead may say what the living think”; Kleopatra “Kiki” Maximovna (Clea Lewis), a kittenish romantic who believes she has found a kindred soul in Semyon; Father Yelpidy (Peter Maloney), a priest who wants Semyon to consider the damnation he faces; and Viktor Viktorovich (Patch Darragh), “the people’s poet,” who sees this as an important career opportunity for himself. Also involved in the festivities are Masha’s mother, Serafima Ilyinichna (Mary Beth Peil), who can’t wait for Semyon to be out of her daughter’s life; Yegor Timoveivich (Ben Beckley), a postman who prefers to play by the very strict rules; and Margarita Ivanovna Peryesvetova (Mia Barron), a married, carefree vamp having an affair with Alexander. Semyon might have had no purpose in life, but he has suddenly found his true calling in death.

(photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Kleopatra “Kiki” Maximovna (Clea Lewis) and Alexander Petrovich Kalabushkin (C. J. Wilson) have an idea for Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) as his suicide approaches (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Dying for It gets off to a rocky start, with silly, lackluster slapstick that quickly grows tiresome. But once Semyon gets rid of the blood sausage and the tuba, the play, keenly helmed by Atlantic Theater artistic director Neil Pepe (3 Kinds of Exile, A Life in the Theatre), finds its groove on Walt Spangler’s appropriately dilapidated boarding-house set, evolving into an engaging farce about trying to find meaning in one’s life. The cast is a mixed bag: Slotnick (Boston Public, The Altruists ) is charming as the suicidal Semyon, Lewis (Ellen, Writer’s Block) is delightful as the spirited Kiki, Stanton (A Free Man of Color, All in the Timing) is stalwart as the determined Aristarkh, Barron (Domesticated, Knickerbocker) is fiery as the wild Margarita, and Wilson (The Lady from Dubuque, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man) proves once again that he is one of New York theater’s finest character actors as the bold and beefy Alexander, but Serralles (The Jammer, Stunning) is too brusque as Masha, the usually dependable Maloney (Outside Mullingar, Glengarry Glen Ross) falters with comedic timing as the priest, and Darragh (The Jammer, Appropriate) overdoes it as the poet. The Suicide was never staged in Erdman’s lifetime (he died in Moscow in 1970); it made a brief run on Broadway in 1980, with Derek Jacobi in the lead role. With Dying for It, Buffini (Gabriel, Handbagged) has thankfully brought it back from the dead, reinvigorating it for another time, when rampant surveillance, cyber-bullying, and terrorism have people around the world questioning what they say and do in public.

TICKET ALERT: BROADWAY WEEK WINTER 2015

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME is one of nearly two dozen Great White Way shows offering two-for-one tickets during Broadway Week

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME is one of nearly two dozen Great White Way shows offering two-for-one tickets during Broadway Week

January 20 – February 5, buy one ticket, get one free
Tickets go on sale Friday, January 9, 10:30 am
www.nycgo.com/broadwayweek

Tickets go on sale January 9 at 10:30 am for the winter edition of Broadway Week, which runs January 20 to February 5 and offers theater lovers a chance to get two-for-one tickets in advance to see new and long-running shows on the Great White Way. Twenty-two shows are participating, including most of the hottest shows from the current season: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, It’s Only a Play, Disgraced, You Can’t Take It with You, Honeymoon in Vegas, A Delicate Balance, On the Town, and The River. Also on the bill is such recent fare as Cabaret, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Kinky Boots, If/Then, the rebooted Les Misérables, Matilda the Musical, and The Lion King in addition to such longtime mainstays as Wicked, Jersey Boys, Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, and Mamma Mia! As usual, you can look all you want, but the two-for-one list does not include The Book of Mormon, unfortunately.

JANUARY PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS

Who: COIL
What: Interdisciplinary festival featuring dance, theater, music, art, and discussion, organized by PS 122
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center, Chocolate Factory, Vineyard Theatre, Invisible Dog Art Center, the Swiss Institute, Asia Society, Parkside Lounge, New Ohio Theatre, Danspace Project, Times Square
When: January 2-17, free – $30
Why: Dancers and choreographers Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith in Rude World; Temporary Distortion’s durational multimedia live installation My Voice Has an Echo in It; Faye Driscoll’s extraordinary, interactive Thank You for Coming: Attendance; Alexandra Bachzetsis’s Diego Velázquez-inspired From A to B via C

Who: Under the Radar Festival and Incoming!
What: Interdisciplinary festival featuring dance, theater, music, and art, organized by the Public Theater
Where: The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., and La MaMa, 74 East Fourth St.
When: January 7-18, free – $40
Why: Daniel Fish’s A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again based on audio recordings of David Foster Wallace; Marie-Caroline Hominal’s The Triumph of Fame, a one-on-one performance inspired by Petrarch’s “I Trionfi”; Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1900-1950s; Toshi Reagon’s Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower: The Concert Version; Reggie Watts’s Audio Abramović, in which Watts will go eye-to-eye with individuals for five minutes

Who: American Realness
What: Interdisciplinary festival featuring dance, theater, music, art, conversation, discussion, readings, and a workshop, organized by Abrons Arts Center
Where: Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St.
When: January 8-18, $20
Why: World premiere of Jack Ferver’s Night Light Bright Light; Cynthia Hopkins’s A Living Documentary; Tere O’Connor’s Undersweet; Luciana Achugar’s Otro Teatro: The Pleasure Project; My Barbarian’s The Mother and Other Plays; Dynasty Handbag’s Soggy Glasses, a Homo’s Odyssey

Who: Prototype
What: Festival of opera, theater, music, and conversation
Where: HERE, St. Paul’s Chapel, La MaMa, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Park Ave. Armory, Joe’s Pub
When: January 8-17, $22-$75
Why: The Scarlet Ibis, inspired by James Hurst’s 1960 short story; Carmina Slovenica’s Toxic Psalms; Bora Yoon’s Sunken Cathedral; Ellen Reid and Amanda Jane Shark’s Winter’s Child

winter jazzfest

Who: Winter Jazzfest NYC
What: More than one hundred jazz groups playing multiple venues in and around Greenwich Village
Where: The Blue Note, (le) poisson rouge, Judson Church, the Bitter End, Subculture, Bowery Electric, others
When: January 8-10, $25-$145
Why: Catherine Russell, David Murray Infinity Quartet with Saul Williams, Jovan Alexandre & Collective Consciousness, Marc Ribot & the Young Philadelphians with Strings, So Percussion Feat. Man Forever, Theo Bleckmann Quartet with Ambrose Akinmusire, and David Murray Clarinet Summit with Don Byron, David Krakauer, and Hamiet Bluiett

IT’S ONLY A PLAY

(photo by Joan Marcus)

Producer Julia Budder (Megan Mullally) and Hollywood star James Wicker (Nathan Lane) are positively giddy at opening-night party for THE GOLDEN EGG (photo by Joan Marcus)

Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
236 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 7, $72-$147
www.itsonlyaplay.com

Terrence McNally’s latest Broadway show might be titled It’s Only a Play, but oh, what a play it is. In 2012’s Golden Age, the four-time Tony winner (Master Class, Love! Valour! Compassion!) took us behind the scenes of the world premiere of Vincenzo Bellini’s I puritani, and in 2013’s And Away We Go he took us backstage at six different shows in six different time periods. And now, in the Broadway debut of this uproarious comic farce, the inside-joke-laden It’s Only a Play, McNally invites everyone to the opening-night party of The Golden Egg. The festivities take place in the bright and airy bedroom of first-time producer Julia Budder’s (Megan Mullally) luxurious Manhattan townhouse. Designer Scott Pask (The Book of Mormon, The Coast of Utopia) has put the door to the bedroom at the top center of the stage, allowing each character to make a grand entrance — and exit. A who’s who of the New York scene is at “the party of the year for the play of the season,” all ripe for skewering, which McNally and three-time Tony-winning director Jack O’Brien (Hairspray, Henry IV) handle with outrageous grace, leaving no one unscathed, including the audience itself. As the play opens, former Broadway actor and current television star James Wicker (Nathan Lane) enters the bedroom seeking privacy as he calls California to find out the status of his series, Out on a Limb. He encounters Gus P. Head (Micah Stock), a wannabe “actor-slash-singer-slash-dancer-slash-comedian-slash-performance artist-slash-mime” who is taking care of the coats for the evening, which are being collected on Julia’s bed. The endless stream of rapid-fire jokes rat-a-tat right from the start. “What did you think?” Gus asks James about the play. “Wonderful, just wonderful,” James responds, not really meaning it. Gus: “Too bad you’re not a critic.” James: “Tonight everyone’s a critic. You haven’t seen the play?” Gus: “I’m temporary help. This is a one-night stand.” James: “Tonight is a one-night stand for a lot of people.” They are soon joined by aging doyenne Virginia Noyes (Stockard Channing), the drug-addled star of The Golden Egg; Sir Frank Finger (Rupert Grint), its avant-garde director who is tiring of being called a genius; Julia, who is eagerly waiting for the good reviews to roll in so she can add big-time quotes to the marquee; smarmy theater critic Ira Drew (F. Murray Abraham), who has his own agenda; and anxious playwright Peter Austin (Matthew Broderick), who believes in the continuing legacy of the theater. “We have a lot to live up to tonight,” he says ever so earnestly. “It depends on us to remind this city that there is more to Broadway than guest appearances or special effects and revivals or another play from London or another Disney movie made live. We are an original American play. We must make that count for something.”

(photo by Joan Marcus)

Cast, crew, and friends anxiously await the opening-night reviews for new Broadway show, THE GOLDEN EGG (photo by Joan Marcus)

McNally, O’Brien, and the outstanding cast make that count for a lot in It’s Only a Play, a tongue-in-cheek, and out-of-cheek, riotous evening of theater about theater. The play has been seen in various off-Broadway productions since its 1982 Manhattan Theatre Club premiere, with all-star lineups that have included Christine Baranski, Dana Ivey, Joanna Gleason, and Eileen Brennan as Julia, James Coco and Charles Nelson Reilly as James, David Hyde Pierce and Paul Guilfoyle as Sir Frank, Paul Benedict as Ira, and Željko Ivanek and Mark Blum as Peter. McNally continues to tailor the dialogue to fit his brilliant actors, such as this stinger from the end of James’s early soliloquy: “What’s the word for a mercy killing? Euthanasia? They do it for people, why not plays? But what do I know? What do any of us old gypsies know? I liked The Addams Family.” Lane, of course, played Gomez in that show, a musical adaptation of the television hit, so McNally will likely change that line when Martin Short replaces Lane beginning January 7. (In addition, Katie Finneran will take over the role of Julia, and Maulik Pancholy will play Sir Frank.) It’s a blast to see Lane and Broderick together again, having last lit up the Great White Way as a duo as Bialystock and Bloom, respectively, back in 2001 in The Producers. (As an added bonus, even Lane’s Harvey Fierstein references relate to Broderick too, as Broderick appeared as Fierstein’s adopted son in Torch Song Trilogy.) Abraham (Teibele and Her Demon, A Life in the Theatre) is deliciously droll as the none-too-beloved critic, Mullally (Grease, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying) is charming as the ditzy, wide-eyed producer, Channing (Grease, Other Desert Cities) is a joy as the bitter former star, Grint (Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films) is a barrel of energy as the crazed director, Broderick (How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Brighton Beach Memoirs) is dryly effective as the serious playwright, up-and-comer Stock (The Capables, McNally’s And Away We Go) is appropriately quirky as the newbie on the scene, and Lane (The Nance, The Iceman Cometh at BAM next month) is, well, Lane as the Broadway actor who sold out to make it in Hollywood. “We need new faces in the theater. New voices, new visions,” Ira says. It’s Only a Play, which is rife with sensational double-takes at all the inside references and hysterical self-needling by its actors (it even pokes fun at The Elephant Man, which is at the Booth next door), might not exactly be filled with new faces and new voices, but its vision is more than welcome in its spectacular Broadway debut.