this week in theater

MOTOWN THE MUSICAL

Hitsville, U.S.A. comes to Broadway in new jukebox musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 West 46th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through December 30, $49-$159
www.motownthemusical.com

Motown: The Musical opens with a battle of the bands between the Temptations and the Four Tops from the 1983 Motown 25 television special, setting the too-fast pace for this watered-down ride through the history of the legendary record label and its founder, Berry Gordy. With a book by Gordy based on his 1994 autobiography, To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown, the jukebox musical features snippets from nearly sixty songs from the Detroit label’s stellar catalog, whipping past in sped-up fury, re-created by a talented cast of performers who, of course, “ain’t nothing like the real thing” (a tune that, by the way, is not in the show). Brandon Victor Dixon is solid as Gordy, a dreamer who goes from odd job to odd job until deciding to start his own music company. He puts together an amazing group of singers, from Marvin Gaye (Bryan Terrell Clark), Smokey Robinson (Charl Brown), Stevie Wonder (Raymond Luke Jr. and Ryan Shaw), and Mary Wells (N’Kenge) to the Marvelettes, Gladys Knight (Marva Hicks) and the Pips, and Martha Reeves (Saycon Sengbloh) and the Vandellas. But this by-the-numbers story of Hitsville, U.S.A., directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, focuses too much on the relationship between Gordy and Diana Ross (Valisia LeKae), feeling more like a public apology than a realistic depiction of their years together, both personally and professionally, particularly her solo debut in Las Vegas that involves forced audience interaction. Gordy also forces in set pieces related to the civil rights movement and such tragedies as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King that are driven by clichés.

Raymond Luke Jr. nearly steals the show as young Michael Jackson (played alternately by Jibreel Mawry), channeling the superstar on such Jackson 5 classics as “ABC,” “I Want You Back,” and “I’ll Be There,” but that also is a major problem with the production, which works so hard to impress the audience with its re-creations, resulting in truncated versions that come off more like a talent show, albeit a pretty darn good one. There are also a few new songs written by Gordy and Michael Lovesmith that are standard Broadway musical fare. Motown: The Musical is like an old record spinning on an even older turntable, going a little too fast, filled with skips and scratches as the needle follows the grooves, but in the end, the songs are so good that you just might not even care about all those hiccups.

BLUES FOR SMOKE

Rodney McMillian, “Asterisks in Dockery,” mixed-media installation, 2012 (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 28, $14-$18 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In 1960, jazz pianist and composer Jaki Byard released his solo debut, Blues for Smoke, an improvisatory record that features on its cover a train puffing out dark clouds as it makes its way down the tracks. The album lends its name to an exciting multimedia exhibit at the Whitney that examines the impact of the blues on the arts. The show is highlighted by David Hammons’s extraordinary 1989 installation, “Chasing the Blue Train,” which greets visitors on the third floor. A blue train makes its way across tracks that take it through a tunnel covered in coal and a landscape with upturned piano tops as John Coltrane’s 1957 Blue Train album plays from a boom box, the work riffing on Coltrane’s name (coal, train) while celebrating the blues. Zoe Leonard’s “1961, 2002-Ongoing” consists of a row of suitcases of different shades of blue, evoking impermanence and creating a mystery about what might be inside; nearby, Martin Kipperberger’s “Martin, into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself” is a life-size replica of the artist standing in the corner, suffering from a case of the blues. Specially commissioned for the show, Kori Newkirk’s “Yall” consists of a shopping cart nearly completing a circle of blue on the floor, calling to mind exclusion, homelessness, and failed capitalism. Kira Lynn Harris lines a stairwell and entrance with silver Mylar in “Blues for Breuer,” paying tribute to the architect of the Whitney building, which will be taken over by the Met in 2015 when the Whitney moves downtown.

Installation view, Blues for Smoke (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Works by Martin Wong, Martin Kipperberger, Zoe Leonard, and others form a blues aesthetic at the Whitney (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Curated by Bennett Simpson in consultation with Chrissie Iles, “Blues for Smoke” also features works by Romare Bearden, Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Liz Larner, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rachel Harrison, Mark Morrisroe, Alma Thomas, Beauford Delaney, Kara Walker, William Eggleston, and Lorraine O’Grady, all contributing to the overall examination of the blues aesthetic. A media room includes viewing stations where people can watch classic performances, while Stan Douglas’s “Hors-champs” plays continuously in its own space on the first floor, offering a unique view of a live recording on the front and back of a screen hanging from the ceiling. In addition, the Whitney is hosting a series of live events that continue through the end of the exhibition, which closes April 28, including “Blues for Smoke: Matana Roberts, Keiji Haino, and Loren Connors” on April 20 at 8:00 (featuring a solo performance by Roberts and a duo guitar improvisation by Haino and Connors), “Through the Lens of the Blues Aesthetic: An Evening of Short Films Selected by Kevin Jerome Everson” on April 25 at 7:00, the live concert “Blues for Smoke: Annette Peacock” on April 26 at 7:00, and the three-day “Blues for Smoke: Thomas Bradshaw,” in which the playwright will be creating a new piece that will be shown April 26-28.

LA RUTA

LA RUTA tells the story of illegal immigrants risking everything for a new life in America (photo by Lia Chang)

Multiple locations
Wednesday – Sunday through May 12, $25
212-244-3300
www.theworkingtheater.org

The controversial topic of illegal immigration takes center stage in the Working Theater’s timely and powerful La Ruta. Actually, “stage” is probably the wrong word, as the uniquely immersive production takes place primarily in a forty-eight-foot truck. Sharply written by Ed Cardona Jr. and skillfully directed by Tamilla Woodard, La Ruta begins as the audience, limited to thirty people per performance, gathers in a small tent, waiting to be hustled into a truck that will take them — along with a mysterious cargo — across the border into Texas. In charge of the journey is Raula (Sheila Tapia), a tough Hispanic woman who does not like being talked back to, leading to an immediate confrontation with Irma (Zoë Sophia Garcia), who has trouble keeping her mouth shut. The audience is soon pushed inside the truck, where they sit in darkness on big boxes. Raula relaxes in the front cab with the driver, Albert (Brian D. Coats), while Irma, Mabel (Annie Henk), and Francisco (Gerardo Rodriguez) are put in the back, where the unpredictable Juancho (Bobby Plasencia) is protecting the merchandise. Expert use of sound (Sam Kusnetz), light (Lucrecia Briceno), and projection (Dave Tennant and Kate Freer) makes it feel like the truck is actually moving as the story of each character unfolds, building to a shocking and unsettling climax.

Albert (Brian D. Coats) and Raula (Sheila Tapia) take a group of illegal immigrants into Texas in moving play (photo by Lia Chang)

La Ruta is adventure theater at its best, led by a strong, convincing performance by Tapia (CQ/CX), who has the primary responsibility of putting the audience on edge and keeping them there. Garcia, in her New York debut, is also excellent, her fear representative of the audience’s, constantly worrying about what is going to happen next. Since most of the play’s seventy-five minutes take place in close, dark quarters, claustrophobics should take note, but everyone else should rush to get the limited amount of tickets available for this smashing production. Of course, the audience gets only the tiniest taste of what it’s like for illegal immigrants who risk it all trying to make a new life in the supposed land of opportunity, able to return after the show to apartments that suddenly feel a whole lot more safe and comfortable. But if you really allow yourself to become lost in the tense drama, as if you’re also risking everything and not merely there as a theatrical spectator, you’re in for an unforgettable experience. La Ruta, which already played in the Bronx, continues alongside the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan through April 28, then traveling to IBEW Local 3 Headquarters in Flushing May 1-5 and Snug Harbor on Staten Island May 8-12. The play is accompanied by a small but informative multimedia exhibit about immigration put together by the Magnum Foundation.

TWI-NY TALK: DONNA UCHIZONO — LIVE IDEAS: THE WORLDS OF OLIVER SACKS

Donna Uchizono will present two works during NYLA festival celebrating Oliver Sacks (photo by Mia}

LIVE IDEAS: THE WORLDS OF OLIVER SACKS — RE: AWAKENINGS (DANCE)
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St.
Thursday, April 18, 8:00, and Saturday, April 20, 4:00, $40
Festival runs April 17-21
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.ladonnadance.org

In the preface to the 1990 edition of his bestseller Awakenings, Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote, “It is now 21 years since my patients’ awakenings, and 17 years since this book was first published; yet, it seems to me, the subject is inexhaustible — medically, humanly, theoretically, dramatically. It is this which demands new additions and editions, and which keeps the subject for me — and, I trust, my readers — evergreen and alive.” In celebration of Sacks’s upcoming eightieth birthday (on July 9) and the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Awakenings, New York Live Arts is hosting its first Live Ideas festival, “The Worlds of Oliver Sacks,” five days of special programs that medically, humanly, theoretically, and dramatically examine and explore the good doctor’s inexhaustible contributions to the field of science and the arts. The festival includes the world premiere of Bill Morrison’s short film Re: Awakenings; a series of talks delving into Sacks’s work with people who have Tourette’s, Parkinson’s, and hearing loss; an evening of music and dance with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, choreographer Aletta Collins, dancer Daniel Hay-Gordon, and conductor Tobias Picker; back-to-back presentations of Harold Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska, the first with spoken words, the second in American Sign Language; and such panel discussions as “Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioception,” “Musicophilia & Music Therapy,” “Neurologists & Philosophers Consider Sacks at 80,” and “Minding the Dancing Body,” the latter bringing together NYLA executive artistic director Bill T. Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Colin McGinn, Alva Noë, and Gwen Welliver.

Sacks himself will participate in an Opening Keynote Conversation with Jones and will introduce a screening of the 1974 British television documentary Awakenings, followed by a Q&A. “Live Ideas” also features a pair of works by New York-based choreographer Donna Uchizono, performed by Levi Gonzalez, Hristoula Harakas, and Rebecca Serrell Cyr: a “Sacksian version” of Uchizono’s 1999 State of Heads and the newly commissioned Out of Frame. Earlier this week Uchizono discussed her involvement in this inaugural festival while preparing for the April 18 and 20 shows.

twi-ny: How did you get involved in “Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks” in the first place, and how familiar were you with his work prior to becoming part of the festival?

Donna Uchizono: I received a phone call from [NYLA artistic director] Carla Peterson asking me if I would be interested in creating a work about Awakenings based on Oliver Sacks’s work. I was, of course, completely honored and intrigued while simultaneously humbled by the offer. My father had his PhD in psychology and was interested in the workings of the brain. My father had a great love for books and had a huge library. Oliver Sacks’s books were among the many books my father owned. He gave me a copy of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat to read quite a long time ago. I had also seen the film Awakenings so was somewhat familiar with the horrible loneliness and “silent scream” of sleeping sickness. Heartbreaking. It’s quite a different challenge being commissioned to create a work about a specific topic other than a concept that is driven by oneself. The new work is turning out to be much more representational than work that I normally create, which I think is quite natural given the subject and the context in which it will be performed.

twi-ny: You’ll be presenting State of Heads, which premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in 1999. Why did you choose this to be part of your Sacks presentation?

Donna Uchizono: Coming out of a much larger discussion, the reasons for State of Heads being in the program are many and beyond the scope of this writing. But when the suggestion to move away from a program that included a play, music, and dance on one evening, to that of separate evenings of dance, music, and theater, State of Heads was discussed as a piece that may be included in the evening of dance because of its movement vocabulary. As I wrote in the choreographer’s notes, State of Heads explores the feeling of waiting and the passage of time in the state of hiatus where familiar time and scale are pushed. Using the separation of the head from the body as a point of departure, in an exploration of disjointedness and the sense of a will apart from the mind driving the movement, surprisingly created a world of endearingly odd characters. State of Heads reveals endearment in the awkward where the ordinary become extraordinary. The accounts of the patients that Oliver Sacks writes about in his book Awakenings are remarkable, where most definitely the ordinary become extraordinary and where profound “humanness” is found in the most unlikely places and time.

Live Ideas festival runs April 17-21 at New York Live Arts

twi-ny: You’re also debuting Out of Frame, incorporating text from Dr. Sacks’s work. What was it like transforming his scientific studies into dance?

Donna Uchizono: I rarely use text in my work, but Oliver Sacks is not only a neurologist of note, he is also a well-known writer, thus it seemed natural to use his words. It was Oliver Sacks’s words that conjured up the images and movement for Out of Frame. I made a conscious decision not to view Bill Morrison’s film that incorporates actual archival footage or revisit the film Awakenings while creating the new work. I did not want to imitate but rather to create the movement vocabulary and images from Sacks’s writings. I was deeply moved by Dr. Sacks’s humane understanding of the plight of his patients. It was the idea of compassion and the need for tenderness towards the individuals that drives the work, rather than his scientific studies. The short solo seems to float between three states — the physical torque of the disease, the human beneath the dress, and the dreamlike temporary state of L-DOPA.

twi-ny: This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of your choreographic debut. What are some of the key differences in being a New York City dancer-choreographer in 1988 as opposed to today?

Donna Uchizono: I feel quite lucky to be part of a generation that started to show their work during the late 1980s and early ’90s. At that time it seemed as if anything was possible. We could design spaces, design programs, and find places to create. We were not yet aware of the looming financial shutdown that was about to happen. We looked around at other choreographers and there seemed to be a possible linear path moving from individual and emerging choreographer to having a small dance company. By the mid-’90s the financial wall had crumbled. I think it is much harder to make work now. Well, it is for me anyway. Young choreographers today seem to be much more aware that there is no obvious financial path. What remains the same is the need to make work.

twi-ny: You’ve had a long relationship with Dance Theater Workshop, which recently morphed into New York Live Arts. What do you think of the new venue?

Donna Uchizono: I have had a long relationship with with the wonderful and dedicated Carla Peterson, who continues to champion experimental artists. I am quite thrilled and honored to be in this Live Ideas festival, and the staff at NYLA have treated me with openness and generosity.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: DIFFERENT ANIMALS

DIFFERENT ANIMALS
Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Wednesday – Sunday, April 20 – May 26, $41
866-811-4111
www.cherrylanetheatre.org
www.differentanimalsplay.com

Monogamy takes quite a hit in Different Animals, a new romantic comedy written by and starring Abby Rosebrock. Jessica Tarver (Cesa Pledger) is an unhappy Spartanburg, South Carolina, woman whose life has turned out to be not quite what she hoped for. While searching for spiritual contentment in a suburban landscape dominated by churches and chain restaurants, she cheats on her much older husband (Dirk Keysser), who is looking for his own kind of satisfaction and fulfillment, so he invites a coworker to join him and his wife in bed. But that coworker, Molly Gardner (South Carolina native Rosebrock), is not exactly a stable person herself, leading to all kinds of complex entanglements. The Wednesday Repertory Company production is produced and directed by Bruce Ornstein (Vamperifica, Jack and His Friends) and also features Brady Kirchberg, Sienna Sternick, and Maria Panoski.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Different Animals runs April 20 to May 26 at the Cherry Lane Theatre, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite ménage à trois movie or theater scene to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, April 18, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random. All responses will be kept confidential.

LIVING DEAD IN DENMARK

Ophelia (Krissy Garber) and Horatio (Elohim Pena) discuss strategy in horror comedy LIVING DEAD IN DENMARK (photo by Sue Nordstrom / courtesy John Capo Public Relations)

Gene Frankel Theatre
24 Bond St. at Lafayette St.
Through April 21, $25-$35
www.justkiddingtheatrecompanyinc.org

Buffy meets the Bard in Just Kidding Theatre Company’s playful mashup, Living Dead in Denmark. Riffing on Shakespeare and George Romero, Qui Nguyen’s low-budget romp pits Ophelia (Krissy Garber), Juliet (Kimberly Nordstrom), and Lady Macbeth (Jessica Randell) against Titania (Ivy Hong), Puck (Jesse Turits), and a mysterious masked figure (Matthew Mollenkopf) as the undead battle during the zombie apocalypse. Intestines get pulled out, brains are devoured, and blood splatters into the audience during the two-act show, running at the tiny Gene Frankel Theatre through April 21. There are also appearances by Fortinbras (Stephan Goldbach), the three witches (Hansen Wetsel, Jesse Turits, and Jesse Gabriel), Horatio and Laertes (both played by Elohim Peña), and Rosencrantz (Wetsel) and Guildenstern (Gabriel), who, indeed, are dead.

Director Kathleen Kelly, who helmed Just Kidding’s 2012 debut, Dog Sees God, keeps it all extremely tongue-in-cheek, as do fight choreographers Rick Sordelet (Kelly’s husband) and Christian Kelly-Sordelet (the couple’s son). If you get seats in the first two rows, appropriately called the Splash Zone, you’ll have to don ponchos to cover up, because, yes, there will be blood (although we could have used a bit more, if we do say so ourselves). There’s also free beer and pink whiskey punch, which turns out to be rather killer itself. The play was originally produced in May 2006 by the Obie-winning Vampire Cowboys, cofounded by Nguyen, who has written such other works as She Kills Monsters, Alice in Slasherland, and Aliens versus Cheerleaders, titles that, as with Living Dead in Denmark, pretty much tell you what you’re in store for. And what you’re in store with Just Kidding’s revival of the latter is a whole lot of silly, self-referential fun.

KINKY BOOTS

Al Hirschfeld Theatre
302 West 45th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 1, $57 – $137
www.kinkybootsthemusical.com

Adapted from the 2005 film that itself was inspired by a true story, Kinky Boots has marched onto Broadway looking fabulous while trying its best to balance itself on a pair of shaky, uneven, extremely high heels. It arrives with behind-the-scenes star power: Harvey Fierstein wrote the book, pop star Cyndi Lauper composed the music and lyrics, David Rockwell designed the set, and Jerry Mitchell, who will be awarded the “Mr. Abbott” Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre next month, directs and choreographs the splashy musical. Unfortunately, the problems start at the top, with underwhelming performances from Stark Sands (American Idiot, Journey’s End) as Charlie Price, who has been born into a shoemaking Northampton family but has bigger dreams than going into the family business, and Billy Porter (Miss Saigon, Grease, Dreamgirls) as Simon/Lola, a transvestite entertainer who teams up with Charlie to try to save the factory by designing sexy boots for men who dress up as women, exemplified by Lola’s sparkly — and, yes, definitely male — angels, played with plenty of panache by Paul Canaan, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, Kyle Taylor Parker, Kyle Post, Charlie Sutton, and Joey Taranto. But while Charlie plans to unveil the new line at a Milan fashion show, his fiancée, Nicola (Celina Carvajal), wants him to close the factory and move with her to London to start their new life together. Meanwhile, the factory workers, many of whom have followed in their parents’ footsteps, are caught in between, with tough, rugged Don (Daniel Stewart Sherman) representing the traditional, old-fashioned side of things and Lauren (Annaleigh Ashford) willing to do whatever it takes to keep Price & Son running.

Sands is rather vanilla as Charlie, never really inhabiting the role, and Porter, taking on the part that earned Chiwetel Ojiofor a much-deserved Golden Globe nomination, stumbles over some line deliveries and doesn’t quite hit the necessary high notes, but Rockwell’s exciting movable set and a dazzling turn by Ashford (Hair, Wicked, Legally Blonde), who virtually steals the show with her knockout solo “The History of Wrong Guys,” help keep things on track, along with Gregg Barnes’s appropriately glitzy/trashy costumes. The second act is stronger than the first, although a boxing match between Don and Simon goes too far as Fierstein begins to fall into the same trap Jarrold did with the film, trying too hard to make its point about individuality and acceptance. Lauper’s score, which often references 1980s hits, featuring such songs as “Sex Is in the Heel,” “I’m Not My Father’s Son,” and the first-act ender “Everybody Say Yeah,” is strong if not quite as Broadway redefining as one might hope. Even with its bumpy, sometimes lumbering gait, Kinky Boots is a glittery, sparkly extravaganza, loaded with fun for divas of all shapes and sizes.