this week in theater

SUMMER SHORTS 2013

Kate (Gia Crovatin) and Paige (Elizabeth Masucci) are after the same plum part in Neil LaBute’s new one-act, GOOD LUCK (IN FARSI) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 31, $25
212-279-4200
www.summershortsfestival.com
www.59e59.org

One of the best theater deals of the season is the seventh annual Summer Shorts program at 59E59, two evenings of three one-acts each by award-winning writers, with tickets only $25 per night or $40 for both. Series A begins with Neil LaBute’s Good Luck (in Farsi), in which two actresses, the somewhat successful and well-put-together Paige (Elizabeth Masucci) and the more harried Kate (Gia Crovatin), are waiting to audition for the same role on a series. The two rivals discuss life, love, craft, and competition as they make subtle, and not so subtle, digs at each other while also seemingly helping each other out — or at least pretending to. Writer-director LaBute (The Shape of Things, reasons to be pretty) is able to take a clichéd setup and twist it just enough to turn it into an engaging little battle of wits that is not just about acting, with fine performances by Masucci and Crovatin.

The initial meeting between the McCains and the Palins is documented in a unique way in Lucas Hnath’s ABOUT A WOMAN NAMED SARAH (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Lucas Hnath’s About a Woman Named Sarah is a curious exercise in narrative, built around the first meeting between the Palins and the McCains at the latters’ Sedona ranch. The play is set up as a series of quickly paced one-on-one conversations among the four characters, with Sarah (Marisa Viola) first getting offered the vice presidency by John (Mark Elliot Wilson), then having a very different kind of talk with Cindy (Stephanie Cannon) before explaining things to her husband, Todd (Ben Vigus). Much of the dialogue consists of small fragments cut short by an annoyingly sharp offstage percussive bang, and Hnath (Red Speedo, Death Tax) and director Eric Hoff don’t bother with developing any kind of realistic setting or having the actors look anything like the characters they’re playing. The scene between Cindy and Sarah works the best, but otherwise the play feels lost in old news.

Poor Wretched Fool (Evan Shinners) and the king (Michael Countryman) fear the end is near in Tina Howe’s BREAKING THE SPELL (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The gem of the evening is Tina Howe’s Breaking the Spell, an engaging riff on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, directed by Birgitta Victorson. In “merrie olde England,” the king (Michael Countryman) has been waiting for his beloved daughter, Christabel (Crystal Finn), to rise from a hundred-year slumber. But time is running out; if she does not wake soon, the king and the princess and everyone else will die. So the ruler, who spends much of the show sitting in his less-than-impressive throne, fighting severe back pain, desperately implores his Poor Wretched Fool (Bach master Evan Shinners in his impressive, wide-ranging theatrical debut) to bring in a parade of musicians to try to stir Christabel out of her deep sleep. PWF, who can speak only gibberish, then introduces a series of men, all played by Shinners or musician Jesse Scheinin, who use various instruments in a last-ditch effort to save the kingdom. The musical interludes are highlighted by Shinners’s dazzling performance of a prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book Two; Shinners will actually play a different prelude at each show throughout the run. In fact, the play was specifically written for Shinners. Howe met the pianist backstage after a concert, and Shinners later e-mailed her, boldly asking the writer of such works as Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances to cast him and his friend Scheinin in a play, which she has done, to all our benefit. (Summer Shorts, Series B consists of Marian Fontana’s Falling Short, Paul Weitz’s Change, and Alan Zweibel’s Pine Cone Moment.)

NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL FRINGE FESTIVAL

Beckett fans and others are waiting to see WAITING FOR WAITING FOR GODOT at the Fringe Festival this month

Multiple downtown locations
FringeCENTRAL: 27 Second Ave. between First & Second Sts.
August 9-25, $15 in advance, $18 at the door (some events free)
www.fringenyc.org

The New York International Fringe Festival features theatrical works that are just that — offbeat, quirky, experimental, and unusual dramas, comedies, musicals, and solo performances that exist on the fringe of conventionality. The seventeenth annual event takes place in eighteen downtown venues from August 9 through 25, with myriad productions that look to the past, present, and future of theater, paying homage to such playwrights as Shakespeare, Beckett, and Williams as they offer strange, serious, and surreal takes on humanity. Below are ten of our favorites, listed alphabetically and based on such reliable reasons as title, pedigree, topic, logo, or just for the hell of it.

Alabama Bound
Earlier this year, we saw Southern Discomfort, an entertaining one-woman show in which Elisabeth Gray played six characters in seven vignettes about life in the south. Alabama Bound, in which writer, director, and producer Charlotte Higgins plays five Alabama women, is a presentation of Southern Discomfort Productions, which apparently has no direct connection whatsoever to Gray’s show. (White Box, August 14-18, 25)

cal and grey
We’re suckers for titles set in lowercase letters, so we’re looking forward to Becca Schlossberg’s tale of two men rebelling against the powerful state. (Teatro Circulo, August 10-11, 14, 22, 24)

En Avant! An Evening with Tennessee Williams
The works of Mississippi-born playwright Tennessee Williams never quite go out of style; in the past year or so, there have been major, and minor, versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, The Two-Character Play, Vieux Carré, and In Masks Outrageous and Austere. In En Avant! William Shuman embodies the enigmatic southerner who lived a rather dramatic life. (CSV Kabayitos, August 9, 16-17, 20, 23-24)

Free Desiree
Amontaine Aurore’s one-woman show about a pair of sistahs in the ’70s celebrating black pride boasts a “Seattle funk soundtrack,” which can never be a bad thing. (Jimmy’s No. 43, August 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 24)

Wei-Yi Lin stars in play about Japanese porn star Ai Iijima

I Am a Moon
The Japanese love their porn, and who doesn’t love Japanese porn? Zhu Yi’s play honors adult video idol Ai Iijima, who tried to put her sexual past behind her and enter more mainstream society. (Lynn Redgrave Theater, August 9, 12, 14-16)

Mercedes Benz Awkwardly
Yes, FringeNYC loves it some sex shows, and this Melbourne Fringe People’s Choice Award winner stars writer Hannah Williams as pole-dancing stripper Mercedes Benz. (Teatro Circulo, August 20-22, 24)

Mash-up of Shakespeare and Stoker should be a bloody good Fringe pick (photo by Neal J. Freeman)

The Nightmare ‘Dream’
We had a blast this past spring at Living Dead in Denmark, a mash-up of Hamlet and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Shakespeare heroines battled evil zombies. The Nightmare ‘Dream’ brings together the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, presented by the appropriately named Bloody Shakespeare company, which calls this “the original douche teen vampire drama.” (Theater at the 14th St. Y, August 11-12, 15-16, 18)

Rubble
This story of a comedy writer, played by Bruce Vilanch, who is trapped in an L.A. earthquake with a series pilot on the line comes from the great Mike Reiss, who wrote, produced, and/or cocreated such animated classics as The Simpsons, The Critic, and Queer Duck. (Players Theatre, August 10, 14, 22, 24-25)

Stranded on Motor Parkway
In 1986, we were fortunate enough to find ourselves at Shea Stadium on October 27, as our beloved Mets battled the hated Red Sox in Game Seven of the World Series. Dan Fingerman’s new drama is about a family that has been torn apart by death but just might be able to get back on track if the Mets can pull things out. (Teatro SEA, August 9-10, 13, 15-16)

Waiting for Waiting for Godot
Don’t tell us you don’t absolutely love this title. Chris Sullivan and Dave Hanson star as a pair of understudies discussing life, art, and more while awaiting their big moment in Hanson’s ingenious riff on the Beckett classic. (Kraine Theater, August 21-25)

TICKET GIVEAWAY: FINAL ANALYSIS

Gustav Mahler (Ezra Barnes) and his wife, Alma Maria (Elisabeth Jasicki), face a crisis in 1910 Vienna in Otho Eskin’s FINAL ANALYSIS (photo by Joan Marcus)

FINAL ANALYSIS
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
August 8 – October 5, $25-$95
212-279-4200
www.finalanalysistheplay.com

Nominated for an unprecedented thirteen Midtown International Theatre Festival awards last year and winning seven — for Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Script (Otho Eskin), Outstanding Direction (Ludovica Villar-Hauser), Outstanding Costume Design (Jenny Green), Outstanding Lead Actor (Michael Goldsmith), Outstanding Supporting Actor (Stephen Bradbury), and the Producers’ Award — Final Analysis is moving off Broadway to the Pershing Square Signature Center after a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $50,000, running in repertory with Breakfast with Mugabe in the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre through early October. The play takes place in a single day in a coffee shop in 1910 Vienna, where a collection of influential intellectuals, artists, and leaders delve into art and science, corruption and morality, anti-Semitism and power, and the nature of evil, addressing the central question “Is hate love’s dark companion?” The play features Ezra Barnes as Gustav Mahler, Elisabeth Jasicki as Alma Maria, Gannon McHale as Sigmund Freud, Tony Naumovski as Joseph Stalin, Michael Satow as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stephen Bradbury as a waiter, and Ryan Garbayo as a mysterious young man, with Villar-Hauser once again directng. There will be postperformance discussions on August 28 about Mahler’s conducting of the first uncut version of Wagner’s The Ring in August 1910; on September 11 on hate and madness; and on September 25 focusing on Freud.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets for Final Analysis are $25-$95, but twi-ny has three pairs to give away for free to performances August 8-30. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite Viennese intellectual to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, August 8, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

SUMMER STREETS 2013

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive “Voice Tunnel” is a highlight of this year’s free Summer Streets programming

Park Ave. & 72nd St. to Foley Square
Saturday, August 3, 10, 17, free, 7:00 am – 1:00 pm
www.nyc.gov

Good luck trying to find one of those blue Citi Bikes for the next three Saturday mornings, as Summer Streets returns for the fourth year. On August 3, 10, and 17 from 7:00 am to 1:00 pm, Park Ave. will be closed to vehicular traffic from 72nd St. to Foley Square and the Brooklyn Bridge, encouraging people to walk, run, jog, blade, skate, and bike down the famous thoroughfare, getting exercise and enjoying the great outdoors without car exhaust, speeding taxis, and slow-moving buses. There are five rest stops along the route (Uptown at 52nd St., Midtown at 25th, Astor Pl. at Lafayette St., SoHo at Spring & Lafayette, and Foley Square at Duane & Centre), where people can stop for some food and drink, live performances, restorative yoga and meditation, fitness classes, bicycle and parkour workshops, ziplining, rock-wall climbing, and other activities, all of which are free. In addition, there are four site-specific art installations, including Risa Puno’s “The Course of Emotions: a mini-golf experience” at the Uptown Rest Stop, Chat Travieso’s “CoolStop” water mister at Foley Square, Bundith Phunsombatlert’s “Art within One Mile” self-guided adventure consisting of eighty signs from Central Park to the Brooklyn Bridge, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s “Voice Tunnel,” an interactive sound and light work that will allow pedestrians into the Park Ave. Tunnel for the first time ever. It’s quite a sight to see Park Ave. filled with only extremely happy men, women, children, and dogs; don’t miss it.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: BREAKFAST WITH MUGABE

Play examines real-life story of Robert Mugabe’s fear that he was being haunted by a former guerrilla leader (photo by Carl Wallnau)

BREAKFAST WITH MUGABE
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
August 7 – October 6, $25-$95
212-279-4200
www.breakfastwithmugabe.com

For more than thirty years, Robert Mugabe has been either prime minister or executive president of Zimbabwe, continually accused by the international community of multiple human rights violations. Currently in the midst of a campaign to remain president, he just publicly denounced homosexuality yet again, even bringing decapitation into the mix. “If you take men and lock them in a house for five years and tell them to come up with two children and they fail to do that, then we will chop off their heads,” he declared. A dozen years ago, the then-seventy-seven-year-old Mugabe started believing that former guerrilla leader Josiah Tongogara, who died in a car crash in 1980, was haunting him for turning his back on his beliefs. This strange but true tale forms the basis of Fraser Grace’s Breakfast with Mugabe, which examines Mugabe’s fear of Tongogara’s ghost. Originally produced at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Other Place in 2005, the play is making its New York debut August 7 – October 6 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, directed by David Shookhoff and starring Michael Rogers as Mugabe, Rosalyn Coleman as his second wife, Grace, Ezra Barnes as psychiatrist Andrew Peric, and Che Ayende as bodyguard Gabriel.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets for Breakfast with Mugabe are $25-$95, but twi-ny has three pairs to give away for free to performances August 7-31. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time most-hated international dictator to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, July 31, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

THE CAPABLES

Reality show producer David (Charles Browning) needs Jessy Capable (Katie Eisenberg) and her family to open up if they are going to solve her mother’s hoarding problem (photo by Hunter Canning)

The Gym at Judson
243 Thompson St. at Washington Square South
Through August 3, $18
www.judson.org

Jay Stull is having quite a summer. First he directed the Amoralists’ exceptional version of Mark Roberts’s Rantoul and Die at the Cherry Lane, and now he has made his very impressive debut as a playwright with the The Capables, an insightful, darkly comic show about family and hoarding that continues at the Gym at Judson through August 3. Twenty-something southerner Jessy Capable (Katie Eisenberg) has had it with the endless collection of toys, games, stuffed animals, and other oddball keepsakes stockpiled by her God-fearing mother, Anna (Dale Soules); hundreds and hundreds of these items have been turned into mountainous elements that dominate the creative set designed by George Hoffmann and Greg Kozatek. “Even weak people come to they breakin’ points, and I done warned you enough that I’m well past mine,” Jessy yells at her mom. Meanwhile, Jessy’s father, the nearly blind Jonah Capable (Hugh Sinclair), spends most of his time trying to find his way to the bathroom and pontificating about his desire for the McRib sandwich. To stop her mother’s hoarding, the sheltered Jessy has invited in a reality TV program, including therapist Jenny Bragg Marcus, MSW (Jessie Barr), soundman Mike (David J. Goldberg), cameraman Tommy (Micah Stock), and producer David (Charles Browning), who is determined to get a good story no matter the personal cost. As the film crew keeps on digging for details of the severely dysfunctional and private Capable family past, Jessy starts discovering that there might be a better future out there for her, but first some very hard truths are going to have to emerge, on camera for everyone to see. The Brooklyn-based Stull, who is the literary manager for the Amoralists, employs sharp dialogue and strong characterization to wonderfully capture the essence of this awkward family hiding a secret. Director Stefanie Abel Horowitz (1927, Walt Disney and the Invention of the Human) inventively uses the complex set, with the actors sitting in unique ways and weaving through narrow spaces that could symbolize neural pathways of the brain. Soules is excellent as the matriarch who refuses to see her hoarding as a problem, but the show’s heart and soul is embodied by Eisenberg’s honest depiction of Jessy and Stock’s tender take on Tommy, even if their second-act-opening scene goes on too long. The Capables is a splendid debut about the things one collects in life, both physical and psychological, performed by a fine cast and written by an emerging talent who is well worth keeping an eye on.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: HAMLET

New production of HAMLET gets right to the point in rehearsals prior to moving into Hudson Guild Theatre

Hudson Guild Theatre
441 West 26th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
July 16-28
www.hamletoffbroadway.com

A new production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is coming to the Hudson Guild Theatre, promising “no flash, all substance.” Stripping the tragedy of epic proportions down to its bare bones, the production gets right to the heart of the tale of the prince of Denmark as he contemplates his future at Elsinore with his true love, Ophelia, while being visited by the ghost of his dead father. Kyle Knauf (Fetes de la Nuit, Benten Kozo) takes on the title role, with Brittanie Bond as Ophelia, Justin R. G. Holcomb as Claudius, Kathryn Neville Browne as Gertrude, Ian Gould as Horatio, Daniel Levitt as Laertes, Kim Sullivan as Polonius, Donovan Christie Jr. as Fortinbras, Emily Gleeson as Rosencrantz, and Geoff Kanick as Guildenstern. The set design is by Jiin Choi, with costumes by Ilana Breitman.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend,” Polonius advises in act 1, scene 3, but you don’t have to worry about money, as twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free to Hamlet, which opens July 16 at the Hudson Guild Theatre. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite Hamlet portrayer to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, July 18, at 3:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.