this week in theater

PROMETHEUS FIREBRINGER

Annie Dorsen pits herself against ChatGPT in Prometheus Firebringer (photo by Maria Baranova)

PROMETHEUS FIREBRINGER
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Through October 1, $50
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org

As the audience enters Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center for Annie Dorsen’s Prometheus Firebringer, text is being projected one letter at a time on a white screen above the stage. Below are five AI-generated mask faces on poles, while a more menacing mask hovers at the top of a wall at the center of the stage, perhaps suggesting the traditional comedy and tragedy masks that decorate so many prosceniums.

The text of the paragraph appears over and over again, each time with significant differences, but they all tell the same story, summarizing the plot of Aeschylus’s unfinished Prometheia trilogy, which began with Prometheus Bound and continued with Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-bringer; only eleven fragments of Unbound exist, and only one line of the finale.

The recaps are being generated live by ChatGPT-3.5, scanning the internet and regurgitating the tale of Prometheus’s battle with Zeus in language that repositions key words, plot points, and themes, reminding us how many ways there are to say the same thing.

Writer-director Dorsen enters stage left and sits at a plain wooden desk with paper, a water bottle, and a microphone. When GPT-3.5 is done, she begins a unique kind of lecture. “I am going to try to talk to you about the individual in the contemporary age,” she says. “I suppose this piece is an essay, maybe, a think piece. It doesn’t really matter what it is, I call it an ‘essay’ because it is not anything more.”

A Greek chorus of masks shares the story of Prometheus in TFANA production (photo by Maria Baranova)

From this point on, the lecture-performance alternates between Dorsen’s “essay” and the masks performing parts of Aeschylus’s conclusion to the Prometheus trilogy, in which the five masks — a chorus of orphaned children — sing and the larger mask narrates the tale. The fight between Zeus and Prometheus over power and control mimics that between AI and human writers and philosophers.

As with GPT-3.5, nothing Dorsen is saying is original; every single word and phrase has come from sources she carefully researched. As she speaks, those sources are cited via projections on a screen behind her. The sources range from Bernard Stiegler’s Symbolic Misery Vol. I: The Hyperindustrial Epoch, Ted Berrigan’s On the Level Everyday: Selected Talks on Poetry and the Art of Living, The Twilight Zone, Jakob Norberg’s Tragedy of the Commonplace, Gregg Lambert’s The Elements of Foucault, and Simon Critchley’s Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us to Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, Mark Grabowski and Eric P. Robinson’s Cyber Law and Ethics: Regulation of the Connected, E. A. Havelock’s The Crucifixion of Intellectual Man, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Ted Chiang’s “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web” in the New Yorker, and Noam Chomsky’s “The False Promise of ChatGPT” in the New York Times.

Whereas GPT-3.5 produces comprehensible strings of words by searching archives and databases for expected patterns, Dorsen works in the opposite direction; she knows what she wants to say and then finds the word strings through her research. She pulls both important phrases and more mundane thoughts and sentences from books and articles that don’t always have anything to do with her topic. For example, when she greets the audience, saying, “Hi. Thanks for coming,” she cites R. H. Wood’s Lightning Crashes. When she notes, “We are together in time,” her source is Christina Baldwin’s Our Turn Our Time: Women Truly Coming of Age. GPT-3.5 seems to act more randomly, while Dorsen is building a coherent argument.

Talking about language, Dorsen explains, “It is a shared resource, it belongs to us all, and words are never consumed, no matter how often we use them. I chose these words carefully. I chose these words carefully, because they resonate with my experiences. But what do I mean by experience? And whose??? Mine or theirs? In other words, who is speaking?”

Artificial intelligence investigates Aeschylus’s unfinished play in Prometheus Firebringer (photo by Maria Baranova)

Dorsen and the play-within-a-play explore tragedy, choices, coding, fate, recombining, and the past. The most effective section is when Dorsen describes how Irish artist Matt Loughrey used AI to colorize black-and-white photos of victims of the Khmer Rouge, but he also gave them all smiles. “If these photos are part of current AI models that’ll represent a total rewrite of history, in an absolutely frightening way,” Dorsen points out. “How can you change hell to happiness?”

Prometheus Firebringer concludes Dorsen’s algorithmic theater trilogy, which began with 2010’s Hello Hi There, followed by last year’s A Piece of Work. As clever as it is, there is also an overwhelming dryness to it. The interplay between the AI and Dorsen never, well, ignites. The excerpts “performed” by the masks, whose eyes are like video screens, are dull and lifeless; Dorsen’s lecture is much more fun and interesting, but there is not enough of it. The entire production, previously seen at the Chocolate Factory in Queens, is extremely slight at a mere forty-five minutes.

Earlier this month I saw Tjaša Ferme’s Bioadapted at CultureLab LIC, which was more successful in dramatizing a narrative involving AI and GPT-3. Of course, Dorsen (The Great Outdoors, Magical) is showing us that human activity is more viable and entertaining than that created by AI, but the proceedings lag too much. Prometheus needs to bring some fire.

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

JOHN CAGE’S JAPAN

John Cage’s unique relationship with Japan and Japanese culture will be celebrated in Japan Society series (photo by Yasuhiro Yoshioka / courtesy of Sogetsu Foundation)

JOHN CAGE’S JAPAN
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, September 28, and Friday, September 29, $28-$35, 7:30
Saturday, October 21, Thursday, November 16, Thursday, December 7, $32-$40
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

“If John Cage had not encountered Japanese culture, there would have been no John Cage!” Japan Society artistic director Yoko Shioya recently declared.

In 1989, experimental composer John Cage was awarded the Kyoto Prize in the category of Creative Arts and Moral Sciences; the citation, presented in Kyoto, Japan, noted that he was “a rebel against Western music. . . . His creative activities and philosophy of art have truly constituted a revolution in culture. . . . Mr. John Cage has stood in the vanguard of change in the postwar Western musical world, and has continually demonstrated his leadership among the most avant-garde group of composers.” Cage, who was born in Los Angeles in 1912, first visited Japan in 1962; he returned in 1964, 1976, and several times in the 1980s. Not only was Cage impacted by Japanese art and culture — he was particularly interested in Zen Buddhism — but he was a major influence on such Japanese composers as Tōru Takemitsu, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Yoko Ono, and Yuji Takahashi, in what was called “Jon Kēji shokku,” or John Cage Shock.

Japan Society pays tribute to the relationship between Cage and Japan in the series “John Cage’s Japan,” which kicks off September 28-29 with Paul Lazar’s Cage Shuffle. From 1958 to 1960, Cage wrote and recorded a series of sixty-second real-life anecdotes called Indeterminacy. At Japan Society, Lazar, the cofounder of Big Dance Theater, will perform pieces related to Japan and the East; using an iPhone — “a device that John Cage invented,” Lazar jokes in the above video — Lazar will have Cage’s recordings of the stories piped into his earbuds and will repeat them out loud, along with quotes from such Cage contemporaries as D. T. Suzuki, Isamu Noguchi, and Hidekazu Yoshida. Meanwhile, Lazar will be moving to choreography by BDT cofounder and Tony winner Annie-B Parson. The movement is fixed but the text is random, creating the kind of chance Cage was celebrated for. The September 29 show will be followed by an artist Q&A.

On October 21, “John Cage’s Ryoanji” features the composer’s 1983 work, inspired by the Zen rock garden at Kyoto’s Ryoanji Temple. Directed by Tomomi Adachi, it will be performed by International Contemporary Ensemble in New York City (with Michael Lormand on trombone, Lizzie Burns on double bass, and Clara Warnaar on percussion), joined virtually from a teahouse in Kanazawa City by Hitomi Nakamura on the ancient hichiriki woodwind and Maki Ota on vocals. The multimedia concert, with 3D projections by Dr. Tsutomu Fujinami, will be preceded by a lecture from Cage scholar James Pritchett at 7:30.

Adachi’s “Noh-opera / Noh-tation: Decoding John Cage’s Unrealized Project” takes place on November 16 at 7:30, for which Adachi used AI to compose music and lyrics based on Buddhist koans for Cage’s unrealized Noh-opera: Or the Complete Musical Works of Marcel Duchamp. The work will be performed by vocalist Gelsey Bell, noh actor Wakako Matsuda, and Adachi with ICE’s Alice Teyssier on flute, James Austin Smith on oboe, Campbell MacDonald on clarinet, Rebekah Heller on bassoon, and Lormand on trombone and will be followed by an artist Q&A.

The series concludes on December 7 with “Cage Shock: Homage to His First Japan Visit,” consisting of a lecture by Dr. Pritchett, live performances of 1951’s Haiku, 1958’s Aria and Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix, and 1962’s 0’00” by Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi’s 1962 Sapporo, which Cage conducted, and soundscapes by Tania Caroline Chen and Victoria Shen, with ICE’s Kyle Armburst on viola, Wendy Richman on viola, and Katinka Kleijn and Michael Nicolason on cello.

“I must express my deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage,” Takemitsu wrote. “The reason for this is that in my own life, in my own development, for a long period I struggled to avoid being ‘Japanese,’ to avoid ‘Japanese’ qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition.” At Japan Society this fall, we can all express our deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage.

THEATER OF WAR: FDR FOUR FREEDOMS PARK

Who: Ato Blankson-Wood, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Ryan, Bill Camp, Marjolaine Goldsmith, Eduardo Jany, Latoya Lucas, Craig Manbauman, Bryan Doerries
What: Live dramatic reading and discussion from Theater of War Productions
Where: FDR Four Freedoms Park, Roosevelt Island
When: Wednesday, September 27, free with RSVP, 5:00
Why: On January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, in his annual speech to Congress, “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”

That quote is embedded in s block of marble in FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island. On September 27 at 5:00, Theater of War will present its latest production, performing scenes from Sophocles’s Ajax, a fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy about the warrior who played a key role in Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War. The event is free; audiences can watch the show in the park or virtually as a Zoom webinar. The impressive cast features actors Ato Blankson-Wood, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Ryan, and Bill Camp, company manager Marjolaine Goldsmith, and retired military veterans Eduardo Jany, Latoya Lucas, and Craig Manbauman, with Theater of War artistic director and translator Bryan Doerries serving as facilitator of a panel discussion and open dialogue exploring the physical and psychological wounds of war on individuals, families, and the community.

“I pity him in his misery for all that he is my foe, because he is bound fast to a dread doom,” Ajax says in the play. “I think of my own lot no less than his. For I see that we are phantoms, all we who live, or fleeting shadows.”

THE CREEPS

Catherine Waller plays multiple roles in creepy one-person off-Broadway show (photo by Andrew Patino)

THE CREEPS
Playhouse 46 at St. Luke’s
308 West Forty-Sixth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Thursday – Monday through November 5, $49-$79
thecreepsoffbroadway.com
playhouse46.org

It you’re going to name a show The Creeps, you better make sure it’s plenty creepy. Catherine Waller’s one-woman show, The Creeps, is indeed plenty creepy. It’s also intimate, funny, and welcoming.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Waller asks as Lizardman, one of four characters she portrays over eighty minutes. And Lizardman is not going to proceed until he gets an answer, eventually engaging in brief chats with several willing audience members.

Serving as a kind of host to the eerie proceedings, Lizardman moves awkwardly across the floor, more insect than amphibian. “We’re like a family in here, you understand me? We’re all connected,” he says. “Here for an experience, and we will not disappoint. But you gotta pay attention. . . . Pay attention. Coz the devil’s in the details.” Lizardman promises a good time while laying out the rules, which advises no photos after the introduction and encourages the audience, seated on all four sides of a fog-laden black space in the center, to talk — not so much amongst themselves but to the characters.

Waller, wearing a tight black bodysuit throughout, alternates as Lizardman; Bill, a hardworking blind man shoveling coal in this dark dungeon; Harley the Harlett, a pregnant prostitute and addict looking for her next fix; and Stumpy, a young girl who has had her hands and feet cut off.

Bill, in a black knit hat and squatting on the floor, engages with the audience in his working-man Cockney accent, interested in who they are and what they do. He discusses the love between a parent and a child and wonders whether life is random or preconceived. He might be resigned to his fate, but he also marvels at life’s possibilities.

Harley leans against a lamppost, whispering to her belly that everything’s going to be all right when clearly it isn’t.

The Creeps supplies plenty of creeps at Playhouse 46 (photo by Andrew Patino)

And Stumpy, as the comic relief, shares jokes amid the sound of crying babies. In fact, she insists that the audience tell jokes; the night I went, they came fast and furious, each more tasteless than the last but delighting Stumpy.

Hovering above it all is the Doctor, an unseen villain who appears to revel in dispensing pain.

The set is spare, but Scott Monnin’s lighting and Hidenori Nakajo’s sound are extraordinary, immersing the audience in the mysterious proceedings, from Monnin’s shifting colored spots to Nakajo’s haunting soundscape. Waller might rely a bit too much on the audience; at the show I was at, some people were getting overly involved, trying to impress their friends and Waller by asking questions that were better left for the talented performer to answer as part of the narrative; it occasionally felt like asking Orson Welles in the middle of Citizen Kane what Rosebud means.

Written and created by Waller (Hounds, The Luring), The Creeps is a beguiling exploration of the dark side, which is too often dangerously near the marginalized and the forgotten. Lizardman, Bill, and Harlett all talk about “good times,” but the meaning is different for each character. Bill, Harlett, and Stumpy might be in horrific situations, but they persevere, even if the Doctor, representing an uncaring social system, is not about to help them in any traditional or necessary way.

Another concept that comes up often is “fun” and its cost. Lizardman offers, “You can’t have too much fun for free, you know?” Harley begs, “Just for a small fee, I can show you all a real good time. Would you like some fun?” And Bill explains, “How’d you get down here, eh? Not many people come down here. Not many people find this place. The fun’s upstairs! I hear it.”

In this case, though, the fun’s downstairs.

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

DOPPELGANGER

Park Ave. Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall is transformed into a WWI military hospital in Doppelganger (photo by Monika Rittershaus / courtesy of Park Avenue Armory)

DOPPELGANGER
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
September 22-28, $54-$259
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Park Avenue Armory once again confirms that its Wade Thompson Drill Hall is the most sensational performance space in New York City with the world premiere of Claus Guth’s bold and breathtaking Doppelganger.

In 1828, ailing Austrian composer Franz Schubert wrote “13 Lieder nach Gedichten von Rellstab und Heine,” a baker’s dozen of songs set to text by German poet, pianist, and music critic Ludwig Rellstab (originally written for Beethoven) and German poet and literary critic Heinrich Heine. Schubert died of syphilis in November of that year at the age of thirty-one; the works were published in 1829 as a fourteen-song cycle, Schwanengesang (“Swan Song”), with the addition of a song with lyrics by Austrian archaeologist and poet Johann Gabriel Seidl.

Innovative German director Guth has adapted Schwanengesang into a riveting tale of love, war, and death, set inside a military field hospital; the armory itself was built for the Seventh Regiment during the Civil War, adding a layer of reality. Michael Levine’s stunning set consists of nine rows of seven white-sheeted beds, in austere alignment, with Helmut Deutsch’s piano at the center (where one of the beds would have been, but the pianist is in no need of any kind of assistance). At the front and back are six chairs and mobile IV units for nurses. The audience sits in rising rafters on either side of the beds.

When the doors open about fifteen minutes prior to the official start time, nearly two dozen of the beds are already occupied by barefoot men in WWI-era brown pants and jacket, white shirt, and suspenders (the costumes are by Constance Hoffman); they shift in restless sleep as the nurses proceed in unison through the rows of beds and Deutsch waits patiently at his grand piano.

A seriously injured soldier faces heartbreak in Doppelganger (photo by Monika Rittershaus / courtesy of Park Avenue Armory)

Schubert did not intend for the fourteen songs to form a continuous, complete narrative, but Guth transforms it into a seamless, deeply compelling, and powerful story. The doors close and the show begins, soon focusing on an unnamed solitary individual (German-Austrian tenor Jonas Kaufmann). “In deep repose my comrades in arms / lie in a circle around me; / my heart is so anxious and heavy, / so ardent with longing,” he sings in Rellstab’s “Warrior’s foreboding,” continuing, “How often I have dreamt sweetly / upon her warm breast! / How cheerful the fireside glow seemed / when she lay in my arms.”

Rellstab’s words are beautiful and romantic as the man makes numerous references to nature while contemplating his bleak future. “Murmuring brook, so silver and bright, / do you hasten, so lively and swift, to my beloved?” he asks in “Love’s message.” In “Far away,” he speaks of “Whispering breezes, / gently ruffled waves, darting sunbeams, lingering nowhere.” Other stanzas refer to “snowy blossoms,” “slender treetops,” a “roaring forest,” “gardens so green.”

Heine’s lyrics cast the man as a lonely soul desperate for connection. “I, unhappy Atlas, must bear a world, / the whole world of sorrows. / I bear the unbearable, and my heart / would break within my body,” he proclaims. Tears figure prominently, appearing in four songs. “My tears, too, flowed / down my cheeks. / And oh – I cannot believe / that I have lost you!” he declares in “Her portrait.”

Kaufmann is in terrific voice; he wanders around the set seeking solace, looking for a reason to fight for a life that is draining from his body. He stops at a bedpost, lays out on the floor, and stands under falling rose petals. He makes sure to visit each part of the audience, sometimes coming within only a few feet. The other soldiers and the nurses weave in and out of the columns, sitting on beds or gathering together. (The movement is expertly choreographed by Sommer Ulrickson.)

Helmut Deutsch calmly plays at a center piano while action swirls around him (photo by Monika Rittershaus / courtesy of Park Avenue Armory)

Urs Schönebaum’s brilliant lighting is like a character unto itself; each bed has its own white spotlight, and occasionally a stand of lights bursts from one end, casting long shadows amid the nearly blinding brightness. The projections by rocafilm include bare trees and an abstract static on the floor, as if we’re inside the man’s disintegrating mind. Mathis Nitschke’s compositions feature sudden blasts of the noises of war, providing theatrical accompaniment to Deutsch’s gorgeous playing, all balanced by Mark Grey’s tantalizing sound design, which links songs that were not meant to mellifluously follow one after another to do exactly that, flowing like the brooks so often referenced in the lyrics.

Guth, who played Schubert’s Winterreise as a student and previously collaborated with Kaufmann on the composer’s Fierrabras, takes advantage of nearly everything the armory has to offer; it’s hard to imagine the ninety-minute Doppelganger being quite as successful anywhere else. Surtitles are projected in English and German above the seating. The cavernous fifty-five-thousand-square-foot hall has rarely felt so intimate despite its impressive length and vast, high ceiling. And the finale holds a powerful surprise that also explains the title of the work, and not just because the name of the song is “Der Doppelgänger.”

Incorporating dance, theater, music recital, art installation, and poetry, Doppelganger is a triumphant, site-specific marvel that is not just for classical music fans. It’s a timeless emotional treatise on the evils of war and the heartbreak of lost love as a man reflects on his life while staring death straight in the face.

It’s a harrowing and thoroughly astounding journey. Although it grew out of the European wars of the nineteenth century, it remains painfully relevant even as a twenty-first-century war rages on the borders of Eastern Europe today.

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

PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE

Nikki Calonge merges with the scenery in Normandy Sherwood’s Psychic Self Defense (photo by Maria Baranova)

PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 30, $10-$100
here.org

“We should never respond to attack by attack, thus bringing ourselves down to the moral level of our attackers, but rely upon more humane methods, which are, in reality, equally effectual and far less dangerous to handle,” British occultist and Society of the Inner Light founder Dion Fortune writes in her 1930 book Psychic Self-Defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack.

Writer, designer, director, and performer Normandy Sherwood appropriates that title for her unusual show, Psychic Self Defense, continuing at HERE Mainstage Theater through September 30.

The unique theatrical experience begins with ticket holders being divided into small groups and led by a mysterious figure in black at the outside stage door through short hallways done up in Victorian horror-splendor, with low-hanging chandeliers, glowing orbs, bell pulls, and various ornate fabrics decorating the walls. The audience is brought to a small space with four rows of rising seats, some featuring knitted, elaborate antimacassars. There’s a bar separating the crowd — limited to no more than forty-four people — from the stage, which is several feet below, making it difficult to see the action when it is up front.

Ean Sheehy takes an uncomfortable seat in unique work at HERE (photo by Maria Baranova)

Curtains have become a disappearing element of theater; more often than not these days, both on and off Broadway, there is no curtain when attendees enter the theater; the set is already open and visible, eliminating the thrill of revelation. But Psychic Self Defense has curtains galore, of all sizes, banks and banks of them in different colors, designs, and fabrics, a seemingly endless stream of lovingly designed and potentially menacing barriers.

Early on, Ean Sheehy and Nikki Calonge take the stage, both pointing out that they are practicing “psychic self-defense.” There is no other dialogue or traditional narrative. Over the course of about fifty minutes, the two characters are enveloped by the curtains, eerie creatures in black, and fanciful beings draped in bolts of shiny fabric — part Disney fantasy, part DIY entities that would feel right at home on Lost in Space, the animated Beauty and the Beast, or Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (only more elegant). As time passes, one group of beings form a kind of charming family unit, albeit perhaps with a taste for human blood. While Sheehy attempts to fight off all comers, Calonge, her enormous smile dominating the set, takes a different approach, considering assimilation, since resistance just might be futile.

Wickedly cool and creepy projections are beamed onto the curtains, interacting with Christina Tang’s coolly unpredictable lighting, while sound designer Craig Flanagin’s original score incorporates bangs, knocks, whistles, creaks, and other dissonant, sometimes disturbing electronic noises. (Sherwood and Flanagin are both members of the Drunkard’s Wife theater company and the no-wave postpunk band God Is My Co-Pilot.)

Psychic Self Defense needs a little time to warm up. It’s a delight watching Calonge, but Sheehy is not nearly as engaging. The set and costumes have a charming, homespun, handmade feel, but some of the magic is not quite Mummenschanz level; you can see hands pulling objects and faces hiding behind curtains when they’re supposed to be invisible. But the show — performed by Sheehy, Calonge, Flanagin, Sherwood, Daniel Allen Nelson, Kate Brehm, Adrienne Swan, and Elyse Durand — kicks into high gear just past the halfway point, as the curtains and creatures assume control.

Strange beings take over in Psychic Self Defense at HERE (photo by Maria Baranova)

The show, a presentation of HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry program, identifies itself as “part séance,” but it doesn’t ever turn in that direction. It was created by Sherwood (Madame Lynch, Tiny Hornets) during the pandemic, when people were unable to connect to one another in person, and it could benefit from more interactivity. It does offer plenty of surprises and unusual things to look at— fans of textiles and patterns will be well rewarded — but a lot of it is head-scratchingly perplexing and abstruse.

Although there is no need to dig deep to try to find a cohesive narrative, the play does seem to be hinting at the future state of independent theater, which is suffering greatly right now around the country. In Psychic Self Defense, the robotic props and curtains are swallowing the space and the human aspects of storytelling, as if AI is firmly in command of this piece of object theater.

Perhaps we’ll all need to read Robert Bruce’s 2011 book The Practical Psychic Self-Defense Handbook: A Survival Guide, in which the author writes about unseen environments, addicted and deranged ghosts, psychic interference, and other paranormal situations. However, he also notes in a legal disclaimer that “while spiritual and psychic protection and cleansing are the main focus of this book, there are no guarantees that you will experience or achieve anything whatsoever from following any of the instructions, procedures, and advice given within this book.”

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

NO GOOD THINGS DWELL IN THE FLESH

An Astoria tailor shop is the setting for Christina Masciotti’s No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh (photo by Maria Baranova)

NO GOOD THINGS DWELL IN THE FLESH
Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre
A.R.T./NY Theatres
502 West Fifty-Third St.
Wednesday – Sunday through September 23, $34.12
www.christinamasciotti.com

There’s a loose thread dangling through much of Christina Masciotti’s No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh, hanging in there until it’s finally pulled and the previously moving play comes undone.

The show is set in 2019 in a tailor shop in Astoria run by Agata Priechev (Kellie Overbey), a straightforward Soviet immigrant. She has hired Janice (Carmen Zilles), one of her students at FIT, as her apprentice. Janice, from a family of Brazilian descent, is approaching thirty, and while Agata is teaching her how to be an expert seamstress, Janice is getting advice that translates as life lessons as well.

Agata’s devotion to and love of her craft makes tailoring a vocation, more than a job, and she does her best to call Janice to that as well. “Everybody knows dying profession. It’s dying because it’s hard way to learn and you have to be creative. People doesn’t wanna learn. It’s time taking. Again, again until perfection,” Agata says in her broken English. “You never see young people working in alterations. You can be lawyer or doctor in ten years. Can’t be alterations in ten years. Now click on internet, make a lot of money. With this you can’t just click, you have to work a hundred years. I prefer this but. Last week, I was stitching so many things, I fell asleep on my couch. Tomorrow will be third, I have to do jacket, two things will go home with me. At home I don’t have that spare of a moment. I can’t continue like this. All of a suddenly, I realized in twelve years I had one vacation. I’m sixty-four. Life will be over soon. I need a vacation.”

Agata, who has a daughter living in London, has decided to take more than just a vacation; she wants to retire and give the shop to Janice, who isn’t sure she’s up to the responsibility and the commitment. Janice has trouble putting down her cell phone and is busy trying to find the right man to settle down with. While she starts dating an old high school friend, Agata is being harassed by Vlad (T. Ryder Smith), a Romanian man from Venezuela who has been obsessed with her since they met at Bloomingdale’s twelve years earlier. Vlad, who could be an Eastern European spy, a sexual predator, or an immigrant with mental health issues, shows up at odd times, asking for strange alterations and making unfounded accusations. Agata remains steadfast, as if Vlad is part of the unhappy old days that she has put behind her. “The past is dead body in basement,” Agata tells Janice.

As Janice weighs her future with Eddie, Agata fights off Vlad, grumpily refuses to take on jobs she doesn’t want to do, and attempts to prepare Janice to take over the business.

Vlad (T. Ryder Smith) is obsessed with Agata Priechev (Kellie Overbey) in No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh (photo by Maria Baranova)

The title of Masciotti’s 105-minute play (without intermission) was inspired by a quote from the apostle Paul about law and sin: “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” The three central characters — Jeffrey Brabant, Annie Fang, and Megan Lomax appear in multiple minor roles, portraying various customers and police officers — all desire to do what is right, but various factors make them unable to, preventing them from flourishing.

Director Rory McGregor (Buggy Baby, Interior) can’t quite weave all the materials together into a satisfying whole. Brendan Gonzales Boston’s set is open on several sides, making it difficult to understand the geography surrounding the tailor shop, especially near the end, when characters start walking through areas that previously seemed to be invisible walls.

A rack of clothes hanging from above in the back is a deft touch, as if representing Agata’s achievement over the years. Given the setting, Johanna Pan’s costumes are not exemplary, although I’m still a bit creeped out by Vlad’s preference for mandals no matter what else he’s wearing. The steady lighting is by Stacey Derosier, with sound by Brian Hickey.

The next line of the Bible quote, from Romans 7:19, reads, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” The title and the biblical quotes that relate to it are both compelling, but the narrative doesn’t live up to that promise. No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh is not a tale of good and evil as much as it is a story of characters in search of a happiness they’re not sure they deserve. Masciotti (Raw Bacon from Poland, Social Security) leaves too many threads untied, too much unused cloth on the cutting-room floor.

Overbey (Love and Information, Mary Page Marlowe) is firm and direct as Agata, a woman who doesn’t know how to be happy. “Tailor are special people,” she tells Janice. “You know it’s dying profession.” Zilles (Epiphany, Fefu and Her Friends) imbues Janice with a kind of wide-eyed wonder, not yet ready for what the world can offer her. Smith (The White Devil, Oslo) plays Vlad with a nervous jitteriness that will make you uncomfortable in your seat.

No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh start off with a good pattern but, in the end, could have used more custom tailoring and alterations.

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