this week in theater

SOUL DOCTOR: JOURNEY OF A ROCK STAR RABBI

Shlomo Carlebach (Eric Anderson) and Nina Simone (Amber Iman) develop an unusual friendship in SOUL DOCTOR (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 13, $39 – $135
www.souldoctorbroadway.com

The new Broadway musical Soul Doctor follows the unusual relationship between a gentle, soft-spoken Orthodox rabbi and a vivacious chanteuse who wind up having a lot more in common that either would ever think. Eric Anderson stars as Shlomo Carlebach, the real-life Singing Rabbi whose family left Nazi-occupied Vienna when he was a boy, making a new life in New York City. While trying to find his place in America, Carlebach meets singer and activist Nina Simone (Amber Iman), and the two develop a long-term friendship, becoming each other’s muse. As Simone goes on to become the High Priestess of Soul, Carlebach turns away from the rigid rules of his Orthodox background, which severely disappoints his rabbi father (Jamie Jackson), his worried mother (Jacqueline Antaramian), and his devout brother (Ryan Strand), who has fallen under the influence of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson (Jackson). But soon Carlebach, the King of Kosher Music, has a hit record, is playing in nightclubs, and forms his own, unique temple, the House of Love and Prayer, in hippie-era San Francisco. But he’s constantly trying to prove to himself and his family that what he is doing matters, that it is all part of the expansion of the Jewish faith.

The King of Kosher Music preaches love and peace in San Francisco temple (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Anderson, who left the Kinky Boots ensemble to reprise the role of Carlebach, which earned him a Drama Desk nomination for last year’s presentation at New York Theatre Workshop, brings a sweet innocence to the mild-mannered Rock Star Rabbi, displaying the kind of charm that established Carlebach’s success and reputation. And Iman is a force as Simone, dominating the stage with her bold, brash style. The book, by director Daniel S. Wise, glosses over too many details, including Carlebach’s relationship with follower Ruth (Zarah Mahler), and just skips over others, leaving too many unexplained holes, and Carlebach’s never-ending battle with his childhood teacher and later cantor, Reb Pinchas (Ron Orbach), who he calls the “holy heckler,” grows repetitive and tiresome. The script is filled with such platitudes as Carlebach telling Pinchas, “If I had two hearts, I could use one to love and one to hate. But I only have one heart, so . . . I use it to love!” Despite less-than-inspiring choreography by former Cedar Lake artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer, the musical numbers, from the Carlebach tunes (“Rosh Hashanah Rock,” “Ki Va Moed,” “Yerushalyim,” “Am Yisrael Chai”) to new songs with lyrics by David Schechter, are mostly a lot of fun, with the exuberant cast, dressed in Maggie Morgan’s period costumes, often running up and down the aisles. Mahler turns in a strong solo near the end, “I Was a Sparrow,” that will have audiences wondering why she wasn’t featured more. Although you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the show, those who attend High Holiday services will be thrilled to hear many familiar liturgical melodies that were written by Carlebach. But Soul Doctor does more than merely preach to the converted, instead exploring a fascinating figure in American folk music.

YOUNG JEAN LEE’S WE’RE GONNA DIE

Young Jean Lee faces her fear of performing and people’s fear of death in WE’RE GONNA DIE (photo by Blaine Davis)

Claire Tow Theater
LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St.
Through August 17, $20
www.lct.org
www.youngjeanlee.org

Seeking to comfort instead of confront the audience — a departure from her usual practice — experimental writer and director Young Jean Lee investigates such themes as loneliness, romance, family, aging, and death in her eloquent, sparkling musical show We’re Gonna Die. When challenged by avant-garde theater collective 13P to do the craziest thing she could think of, the Brooklyn-based Lee decided to star in a new play, facing her own deep-set fear of performing. The woman behind such innovative productions as Lear, The Shipment, and Untitled Feminist Show came up with We’re Gonna Die, a song cycle in which she presents a series of monologues followed by related musical numbers played with her band, Future Wife. Delivered plainly by Lee at the front and center of the stage, the stories are organized like a chronological narrative of her life, told in the first person, beginning with her childhood and moving through to the current day. Although the confessional tales, which cleverly explore terrible, painful, heartbreaking events and memories, are all true, the only one that actually happened to Lee directly is the long, powerful story about her father’s battle with cancer; the others were shared with her by friends.

Young Jean Lee and Future Wife go nuts at the end of dazzling WE’RE GONNA DIE (photo by Blaine Davis)

Such songs as “Lullaby for the Miserable,” “Comfort for the Lonely,” and “When You Get Old” incorporate various indie-pop melodies, featuring Mike Hanf and Benedict Kupstas on guitars and keyboards, Andrew Hoepfner on bass, and Booker Stardrum on drums. One of Lee’s central themes is that bad things can happen to good people and that we are all basically the same. “Who do you think you are / to be immune from tragedy? / What makes you special / that you should go unscathed?” she sings in “Horrible Things.” The show, which debuted at Joe’s Pub in April 2011, opened the new Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center last year, and now is kicking off LCT3’s second season, comes to a rousing conclusion with “I’m Gonna Die,” as the band rocks out before performing a riotous dance number with Lee, choreographed by Faye Driscoll, and getting the audience to sing along, everyone staring death in the face together. “I’m gonna die / I’m gonna die someday / Then I’ll be gone / and it’ll be okay,” Lee repeats over and over. Directed by Big Dance Theater’s Paul Lazar, We’re Gonna Die is an absolutely thrilling and involving sixty minutes from an immensely creative and talented artist who is special indeed, no matter what she claims onstage. (Lee and Future Wife have also just released a CD of We’re Gonna Die that includes the songs from the show but with the monologues spoken by an all-star lineup of guests that includes David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Colin Stetson, Kathleen Hanna, Drew Daniel, Sarah Neufeld, and Martin Schmidt.)

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

The BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON team of Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers team up to reimagine Shakespeare’s LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Through August 18, free, 8:30
shakespeareinthepark.org

Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers give the Bard the Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson treatment in the Public Theater’s new Shakespeare in the Park production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. The anything and everything goes kitchen-sink musical is set in the modern day, as four college buds — the King (Daniel Breaker), Berowne (Colin Donnell), Longaville (Bryce Pinkham), and Dumaine (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe) — come together for their fifth reunion, agreeing to lock away their beer, bong, and condoms and dedicate the next three years to their studies. But their plan is sorely tested when a quartet of beautiful babes — Princess (Patti Murin), Rosaline (Maria Thayer), Maria (Kimiko Glenn), and Katherine (Audrey Lynn Weston) — shows up, with the Princess, who has had a previous fling with the King, claiming he owes her money. A wild and wacky battle of the sexes ensues as the men and women can’t seem to stay away from one another. Meanwhile, a bombastic Spanish royal, Armado (Caesar Samayoa), has the hots for barmaid Jaquenetta (Rebecca Naomi Jones); Costard (Charlie Pollock), a Matthew McConaughey-like surfer dude, misdelivers a pair of important messages; and professors Holofernes (Rachel Dratch) and Nathaniel (Jeff Hiller), along with Dull (Kevin del Aguila), a cop on a Segway, provide absurdist comic relief.

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST continues at the Delacorte through August 18 (photo by Joan Marcus)

Love’s Labour’s Lost is a whole lot of good-time fun, even if it gets overly repetitive and is all over the place. Friedman’s score, which ranges from straight-up Broadway-type standards to riotous riffs on A Chorus Line (in a nod to Joe Papp), boy-band ballads, Grease, and girl-group pop, are well crafted but too often self-referential, repeatedly mentioning the music and lyrics of the songs themselves and adding inside jokes over and over again. Director Timbers, who helmed the masterful Here Lies Love at the Public, also adapted the book, which occasionally gets a little shaky as he tries for too much; while some set pieces are triumphant, others fall flat, although he very cleverly works in some Shakespeare sonnets in the love letters the protagonists compose. Jones (Passing Strange) is dazzling as Jaquenetta, performing the show’s best song, the noir “Love’s a Gun,” with Murin (Lysistrata Jones), Thayer (Necessary Targets), and Donnell (Anything Goes) standing out among the rest of the cast, which also features Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson vets Near-Verbrugghe, Pinkham, bandleader Justin Levine, and Jeff Hiller as Nathaniel; the inspired choreography is by Jacksonian Danny Mefford. Despite its many missteps, Love’s Labour’s Lost goes a long way in further establishing Shakespeare in the Park returnee Friedman (Romeo and Juliet, The Seagull, Cymbeline) and Timbers (Peter and the Starcatcher, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant) as the future of American musical theater. Don’t forget that in addition to waiting on line at the Delacorte to get free tickets, you can also enter the daily virtual ticketing lottery online here. And to get in the mood, you can sample some of the songs here.

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.