this week in theater

CASA VALENTINA

Jonathon (Gabriel Ebert) contemplates becoming Miranda in front of other people in CASA VALENTINA (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 15, $67-$125
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.casavalentinabroadway.com

“Welcome to the Chevalier d’Eon Resort. Welcome to the world of self-made women,” Valentina (Patrick Page) announces in Harvey Fierstein’s sensitive and engaging, if occasionally didactic, new play, Casa Valentina. Fierstein’s first drama in more than a quarter century, following such hit musicals as Kinky Boots, Newsies, and La Cage aux Folles, Casa Valentina was inspired by the true story of a husband and wife who ran a Catskills bungalow in the 1960s where men would spends weekends cross-dressing and acting like women, a safe haven where they could celebrate their feminine side. The show takes place in June 1962 as Valentina, who spends her weekdays as George, and his wife, Rita (a wonderfully sensitive Mare Winningham), prepare for their latest arrivals. Among the attendees are Jonathon (Gabriel Ebert), a shy, nervous young man who will be making his first-ever appearance as Miranda; Bessie (Tom McGowan), a military veteran with a wife and kids who glories in the freedom Casa Valentina gives him; Gloria (Nick Westrate), a stylish woman who looks like she stepped out of an episode of Mad Men; Terry (John Cullum), a septuagenarian who tells Miranda, “You don’t get cleavage. You earn it”; and a respected judge (Larry Pine) who revels in becoming Amy away from his stressful regular life. The guest of honor for the weekend is Charlotte (Reed Birney), a radical cross-dresser who wants the others to join the Sorority, an organization that is attempting to change the public perception of and laws against transvestitism. “I firmly believe that once the world sees who we truly are, there will be no need for deception,” she says. However, membership includes signing an oath against homosexuality, something that makes the rest of the women more than a little uncomfortable.

Charlotte (Reed Birney) gets political at a Catskills bungalow in new Harvey Fierstein play (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Lovingly directed by two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello (Assassins, Take Me Out), Casa Valentina is at its best when it celebrates the joy these men experience by being accepted as women for a few treasured days. The show gets bogged down a bit when dealing with the oath, although it does bring up the critical point that the vast majority of cross-dressers — recent studies put the number around eighty percent — are heterosexual. Even with the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage in America, there are still gross misconceptions of homosexuality, transvestitism, and other so-called deviant or non-normative behavior, and Casa Valentina beautifully reveals how absurd it is for society to restrict and judge the predilections of others. The actors clearly have a blast in Rita Ryack’s lavish costumes and Jason P. Hayes’s glorious wigs and makeup (except for poor Winningham, allotted a frumpy pair of sensible pedal-pushers while the men get to wear fabulous dresses), while Scott Pask’s airy set immediately welcomes the audience into this little-known world. Cross-dressing might be somewhat de rigueur these days on Broadway (Kinky Boots, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Cabaret, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), but Fierstein, Mantello, and an extremely talented and beautiful cast offer a very different take on this misunderstood culture, treating it with humor, intelligence, honor, courage, and, perhaps most important, dignity.

KEEP YOUR ELECTRIC EYE ON ME

KEEP YOUR ELECTRIC EYE ON ME is a mind-numbing conceptual multimedia work running at HERE May 7-10 (photo by Paula Court)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
May 7-10, $20, 8:30
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Originally presented at CultureMart 2013 as part of HARP (the Here Artist Residency Program), Keep Your Electric Eye on Me is a mind-numbingly dull multimedia foray into the making of a tuna melt (or something like that). Conceived, created, and directed by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty, the seventy-minute, two-character show features Madeline Best as a woman who can’t keep her top on and Carlton Ward as a bald voyeur who assists her, collecting the meth-like green candies her body creates after drinking something like absinthe and cleaning up her white throw-up (or something like that). Brad Kisicki’s interesting set includes three large screens in the back, numerous monitors, and a table covered with Amy Mascena’s unusual props, a grouping of glass elements that evoke a lab. To the right of the audience, Irons and Petty mix live and prerecorded sounds and images, ranging from the beautiful (shots of the sea) to the confounding (just about everything else). The music is by the Chocolate Factory’s Brian Rogers, featuring such songs as “Moon (Sitting in the Room Every Day Like a Mustard)” and “I’m Sorry My Face.” According to an Artists’ Note in the program, Keep Your Electric Eye on Me is meant to “conjure notions of transformation, liminality, hysteria, and the desire for the unattainable.” Maybe the cast and crew can explain how in a talkback following the May 7 show, although we won’t be there to find out.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: THE ANTHEM

THE ANTHEM
Culture Project, Lynn Redgrave Theater
49 Bleecker St. near Lafayette St.
Thursday – Tuesday, May 20 – July 5, $33-$99
866-811-4111
www.anthemthemusical.com

“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil,” begins Ayn Rand’s 1938 novella about a bleak dystopian future following the Great Rebirth. “It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws.” It’s hardly the stuff of musical theater, but who ever thought Les Misérables would keep packing them in on Broadway? Indeed, The Anthem is headed to the stage in a “radical new musical,” complete with circus acrobatics, at the Lynn Redgrave Theater. In a near future overrun with social media, Prometheus fights the system, headed by Tiberius, battling for individuality. The Anthem features a book by Gary Morgenstein (Right on Target, Ponzi Man), music by Jonnie Rockwell (Brave New World and grandson of Leoš Janáček), and lyrics by Erik Ransom (Coming: A Rock Musical of Biblical Proportions), with Rachel Klein (Symphony of Shadows, The Tragedy of Maria Macabre) serving as director, designer, and choreographer. Jason Gotay (Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark) stars as Prometheus, with the Village People’s Randy Jones playing Tiberius.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: The Anthem — not to be confused with Drew Robert Puzia and Katherine Toussaint’s Anthem the Musical, which was also inspired by Rand’s novella — begins previews May 20 at the Lynn Redgrave Theater at the Culture Project on Bleecker St. prior to a May 29 opening, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and favorite play or book about a dystopian future to contest@twi-ny.com by Friday, May 9, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

THE REALISTIC JONESES

John Jones (Michael C. Hall) says farewell to a dead squirrel as Jennifer (Toni Collette) and Bob Jones (Tracy Letts) look on (photo by Joan Marcus)

Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through July 13, $29- $135
www.therealisticjoneses.com

In his first Broadway play, The Realistic Joneses, Will Eno is as much choreographer as writer, his words twirling, spinning, lifting, throwing, bouncing, and ricocheting among the four characters, performing an intoxicating dance of language. As in his previous two works, Title and Deed and The Open House, a kind of existential absurdity hovers over the proceedings, which delve into the deeply psychological natures of home and family. The Joneses live a rather isolated life up in the mountains, Bob (Tracy Letts) a curmudgeon suffering from a mysterious disease, Jennifer (Toni Collette) taking care of him while trying to deal with his sudden mood shifts. Their peaceful tranquility is somewhat shattered when a cheerful, energetic couple also named the Joneses move into the house down the way, John (Michael C. Hall) a repairman, Pony (Marisa Tomei) a sort of ditzy ingénue. Over the course of a few days, the four characters interact in different groupings, sharing their views on love and marriage, home and health while debating the meaning of language and communication in general and certain words and phrases specifically. “Nature was definitely one of the big selling points of here. Plus, the school system’s supposed to be good,” Pony says. “Oh, do you have kids?” Jennifer asks. “No, it’s just that John hates stupid children,” Pony responds. “We communicate pretty well, even without words,” Jennifer says about Bob, then later tells John, “I think you have a nice way with words.”

Pony (Marisa Tomei) and John Jones (Michael C. Hall) are looking forward to a new life in the mountains, but little do they know what awaits them (photo by Joan Marcus)

Eno, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for 2004’s Thom Pain (based on nothing), stealthily riffs on the old saw “keeping up with the Joneses” by equating the two couples in clever, understated ways, tantalizingly making one wonder whether they are actually different manifestations or younger and older versions of the same people. (Even though John and Pony appear more youthful than Bob and Jennifer, all four actors are in their forties, Tomei eight years older than Collette, Letts five years senior to Hall.) “We’re not so different, you and me,” John says to Bob, who responds, “I think we’re probably very different,” to which John adds, “Yeah, me too, actually.” And later, Pony tells John, “I don’t want to turn into those guys, next door.” Director Sam Gold (Fun Home, Seminar, Picnic) maintains a quick pace throughout the play’s fast-moving ninety minutes, another Eno specialty, with most scenes working well, although a meeting between John and Jennifer at the local market feels unsure of itself and falls flat. Otherwise, The Realistic Joneses is a smart, engaging comedy boasting an outstanding cast having a whole lot of deliciously infectious fun with the crazy English language.

CINCY IN NYC: CINCINNATI BALLET

HUMMINGBIRD is one of three pieces to be presented by Cincinnati Ballet in the company’s Joyce debut (photo by Peter Mueller)

Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
May 6-11, $10-$59
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.cballet.org

Usually when you talk about Cincinnati being in New York, it means that the Reds are taking on the Mets at CitiField or the Bengals are in town taking on the Jets or the Giants at the Meadowlands. But this week it refers to Cincy in NYC, seven days of art, music, dance, theater, and food celebrating the Queen of the West. The centerpiece is the Cincinnati Ballet, returning to New York City for the first time in thirty-five years as part of its fiftieth anniversary season. The company, which features six Cuban dancers, will be presenting three recent works at its Joyce debut from May 6 to 11. Resident choreographer Adam Hougland’s 2013 Hummingbird in a Box is a piece for eight dancers, set to seven specially commissioned songs by guitar god Peter Frampton and Gordon Kennedy; Frampton, who performed the music live at the Cincinnati premiere, will be on hand to introduce the work on opening night at the Joyce. Trey McIntyre’s 2004 Chasing Squirrel is a wildly energetic and fanciful piece for ten dancers in dazzling costumes by Sandra Woodall, with raucous Latino-infused music recorded by the Kronos Quartet. And Val Caniparoli’s 2013 Caprice is an elegant piece that brings together live musicians and ten dancers to Paganini’s “Violin Caprices.” Cincinnati Ballet artistic director Victoria Morgan will participate in a Joyce Dance Chat following the May 7 show.

Cincy in NYC also includes University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music jazz alums performing at Lincoln Center, “Music and Words with Ricky Ian Gordon” at the National Opera House, a Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park staged reading of Cincinnati native Theresa Rebeck’s new play, Fool, at Pearl Studios, the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, seven Cincy chefs preparing a special meal at the James Beard House, the CCM Ariel Quartet playing Haydn, Berg, and Beethoven at the 92nd St. Y’s downtown SubCulture, and, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the reunion of Rembrandt’s separate portraits of a husband and wife, the Taft Museum’s “Portrait of a Man Rising from His Chair” and the Met’s “Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan.”

TWI-NY TALK: JAY O. SANDERS

Jay O. Sanders will present UNEXPLORED INTERIOR at Museum of Jewish Heritage on May 11 as part of twentieth anniversary commemoration of Rwandan genocide

UNEXPLORED INTERIOR
Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Sunday, May 11, 12 noon, free with advance RSVP
www.mjhnyc.org
www.theflea.org

In 2004, struck by the world’s continued indifference to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, actor Jay O. Sanders attended the ten-year commemoration of the start of the mass killings in Kigali, the African nation’s capital. Moved by what he saw, Sanders, the Austin-born son of activist parents, decided to do something about it. A Shakespeare in the Park regular who has appeared in such films as JFK, The Day After Tomorrow, and Revolutionary Road and has played recurring characters on such series as True Detective, Person of Interest, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Sanders began writing Unexplored Interior, a fictionalized play that takes place immediately following the 1994 genocide, as a Hutu man and Tutsi woman fall in love, a Rwandan student in New York City sets out to make a film about what happened, and a UN peacekeeper contemplates his own life in the wake of the tragic events. The play will have its latest staged reading on May 11 at 12 noon at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (admission is free with advance RSVP) as part of the official Kwibuka20 events commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, calling for people to “remember — unite — renew.” An all-star cast will be directed by James Glossman (Trouble Is My Business; Smiling, the Boy Fell Dead), and the production in New York will be broadcast live at the new outdoor amphitheater at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center courtesy of Google+ Hangout on Air, followed by an international panel discussion and Q&A session.

twi-ny: What was the genesis of Unexplored Interior and your interest in Rwanda?

Jay O. Sanders: Let me give you the short answer. In April of 1994, my wife and I, both working actors, were cloistered in our West Village apartment with our five-week-old, first-and-only child, reflecting on what it meant to be the guardians of a life, when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in Kigali and the start of genocide hit. We watched the news as reports of this horrific event unfolded and repeatedly told us it was beyond our understanding. Stories began to flow of brutal, neighbor-on-neighbor mass killings and a Canadian U.N. peacekeeping commander who was calling for help but no one was being sent, and all without pictures, as no press was inside the country. Until they began to show video of hundreds and hundreds of bloated bodies floating down the rivers along the borders, caught on the rocks, going over falls. It was a mind-numbing, grotesque, and totally infuriating circus of ignorance and failure of the world to respond.

I got it in my head that if I could just see out through the peacekeeper’s eyes, as a fellow Westerner, I might at least be able to understand. I thought, I need to play him (as actors do). I watched every report I could find, yielding reports of that same man refusing to order a full withdrawal and managing to save the lives of some tens of thousands of refugees while bearing witness to the 800,000 whom he couldn’t, and finally, on returning home, attempting suicide numerous times, unable to process what he’d been through. After ten years of germination and finding myself still as ignorant as before, I was overcome with the need to find an answer I could give my son. To arm him with an understanding of this genocide of his lifetime. I felt I owed him an answer.

twi-ny: You’re a well-respected actor, familiar for your work in numerous films and plays and on television. How did your acting experience inform your writing of the play?

JOS: I started out to write a one-man show for myself as [Roméo] Dallaire, the peacekeeper. It seemed like an obvious, straightforward way to enter the story and bring it to others. So I found him in Rwanda at the ten-year commemoration, flew myself over to see for myself where all this had happened and be among those who had experienced it. I had discovered that, fortunately, he was still alive and now the author of a book about his experiences, Shake Hands with the Devil.

Again, the short version: I met him there, then spent time with him later in Quebec, and proceeded to write that play. But I soon discovered, the more I knew about what had happened, that Dallaire was actually my White Rabbit who led me into the situation, and the larger story was among the people themselves. So, I continued to study and write and emerged with a twenty-six-character play for fourteen actors which weaves many stories together, including Dallaire’s, with crossing themes on a much larger canvas.

twi-ny: How did you hook up with Google+, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center?

JOS: My wife, Maryann Plunkett, and I had done a reading down at the museum several years ago and I had noted the beauty of both this center of record for not only the Holocaust but all related genocide, as well as the beauty of the theater [Edmond J. Safra Hall] itself. When I began to think about where my play began, this was perfect. When I flew over for the ten-year commemoration in 2004, I was recognized by members of the CNN team, who invited me to join them for the week, which I did, gladly, finding myself front and center at all the major official events, including the official opening of the Aegis trust Kigali Genocide Memorial. I was there as President Kagame, General Dallaire, and many, many others witnessed the lighting of the eternal flame, above a mass grave holding 250,000 victims of the genocide.

So, when I was thinking about where I wanted to connect with our event, that, again, was obvious. Then, one of my producers, my dear friend Daniel Neiden, introduced me to Paula Gil Rodriguez, who had, herself, produced several large Google+ Hangouts on Air and knew a number of people at Google. She loved the idea of the project and she and her husband, Nick Lopez, came on board. My friend James Glossman has been my director from the moment the idea hit me to write this. It all just grew and grew.

twi-ny: Who are some of the people who will be participating in the reading?

JOS: We have a brilliant family of actors — some well known to you, others who you should know. Michael McKean, presently in All the Way on Broadway, plays Dallaire; Sharon Washington, award nominated for Wild with Happy at the Public and on Broadway with The Scottsboro Boys; Arthur French, who has been in everything and most recently of The Trip to Bountiful on Broadway; Fritz Weaver, one of the most distinguished stage and film actors of his generation; Charles Parnell, whose TV series The Last Ship premieres soon; Owiso Odera, Marlyne Barrett, Clark Jackson, Craig Alan Edwards, Irungu Mutu, Matthew Murumba, Benjamin Thys, and our youngest at thirteen, Nile Bullock, lately also of The Scottsboro Boys — all fantastic, deeply dedicated to this project, and each one a reason to see the play.

twi-ny: Is a full production of the play in the works?

JOS: We are still looking for a production. I’m hoping this presentation grabs the imagination of some brave producer or producers!

twi-ny: As opposed to last year’s presentation, this one will use social media in a fascinating way. What’s your personal experience with social media? Are you a Facebook/Twitter/Google+ junkie?

JOS: My personal experience is everyday. I use Facebook regularly as an international bulletin board and have just recently ventured over to Google+ as well, because of this project. I have a Twitter account but am not very fluent with it yet. These online forums have afforded me connections beyond anything I might have come upon otherwise — people out of my past, which included a lot of traveling, so that reaches a very long way, and those I’m just now meeting with common friends and/or common interests. Also, I regularly give master classes out at my alma mater, SUNY Purchase, and social media is a place we can all stay in touch for mutual news, project updates, and personal encouragement. It has been a godsend.

twi-ny: At any given moment, there is some kind of brutal civil war or genocide going on somewhere in the world, and more often than not, the U.S. government opts not to get involved. What can we as individual, peace-loving Americans do to try to change things?

JOS: Learn. Understand as much as you can. It’s always evolving — it requires regular effort — but there are ways to make a difference through awareness, voting, challenging the machine, humanizing world issues, applying compassion in your own life. Kindness begins with each one of us, at home, at work, in our communities, with the homeless, in our voices lifted against apathy — it ripples out and grows from those seeds into and across the world.

NOW: IN THE WINGS ON A WORLD STAGE

Documentary goes around the world, following Kevin Spacey and company as they stage contemporary version of RICHARD III

NOW: IN THE WINGS ON A WORLD STAGE (Jeremy Whelehan, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
May 2-8
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.kevinspacey.com

Now: In the Wings on a World Stage, the marvelous new documentary that follows a transatlantic company as it performs Richard III around the globe, did not get its name only because it’s the first word of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy — “Now is the winter of our discontent” — nor simply because it takes place in modern times in modern dress with nods to modern technology, but also because it’s a spine-tingling celebration of the immediacy of live theater. In 2009, Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, the Old Vic under the leadership of Kevin Spacey, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, led by Joseph Melillo, formed a partnership in which British and American actors would present five classic plays over three years. Dubbed the Bridge Project, the wildly successful venture concluded in 2012 with Spacey, an American living and working in London, starring in Richard III, directed by Mendes, a Brit living and working in America. It was the first time they had teamed up since 1999’s American Beauty, the Best Picture Oscar winner that also nabbed Academy Awards for Mendes (Best Director) and Spacey (Best Actor). Spacey hired first-time feature filmmaker Jeremy Whelehan, an assistant director at the Old Vic, to go behind the scenes of Richard III, following the cast and crew as they rehearse, then travel to such locations as Doha, Beijing, Istanbul, Sydney, Epidaurus, Naples, and Hong Kong before wrapping things up in Brooklyn.

Kevin Spacey gets ready to take the stage as Shakespeare’s most treacherous villain

Whelehan and editor Will Znidaric let the plot of the play unfold in chronological order over the course of the epic tour, which ranges from the Epidaurus Amphitheatre, the fourth-century BCE architectural wonder that seats fourteen thousand and has breathtaking acoustics, to dazzlingly modern venues in Qatar and China. In each city, the participants — which also include Gemma Jones as Queen Margaret, Haydn Gwynne as Queen Elizabeth, Chuk Iwuji as Buckingham, Jeremy Bobb as Sir William Catesby and the second murderer, Simon Lee Phillips as Norfolk, Jack Ellis as Hastings, and Annabel Scholey as Lady Anne — discuss their approach to their roles, how audiences react differently in different countries, and what it’s like to be on this theatrical journey. Whelehan shows them experimenting with different methods, applying their own makeup, joking around backstage, and enjoying some of the local culture: boating in Italy, walking along the Great Wall of China, and rolling down sand dunes in the desert. But what shines through it all is their intense love of theater, of taking this splendid production around the world, growing richer as actors and as people, forming a unique kind of special family, with Spacey as the central father figure. Spacey, who played Buckingham in Al Pacino’s 1996 documentary, Looking for Richard — and employs Richard’s style of directly addressing the audience in his hit Netflix show, House of Cards — is clearly having a blast, and his insurmountable joy and dedication are infectious. Theater is notoriously difficult to bring to the big screen, but Whelehan captures the moment, with no discontent, making viewers feel like they are onstage with the actors yet also jealous of the deep bonds they have formed. Now, which had its world premiere last month at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens at the IFC Center on May 2, will have you salivating to see — or perhaps even get involved in — live theater, which ultimately is Spacey’s goal, one that he majestically achieves. Spacey, who also is the executive producer of the film, will be at the IFC Center opening night for Q&As after the 7:00 and 7:30 shows and to introduce the 9:15 screening.