this week in theater

LAST MAN CLUB

Poverty, destitution, and an overriding strangeness rule the day in Axis Company production of LAST MAN CLUB (photo by Dixie Sheridan)

Axis Company
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Thursday – Sunday through October 28, $18
866-811-4111
www.axiscompany.org

The Grapes of Wrath meets The Road Warrior in the excellent Axis Company production of artistic director Randy Sharp’s Last Man Club. In a depression-era middle America Dust Bowl that could double as a barren postapocalyptic landscape, a small family of ragged men and women tries to survive as sandstorms swirl around their deteriorating farm. Friends and kin took off with all the money, leaving the overly practical and far-too-trusting Major (David Crabb) in charge of the mumbling, OCD-riddled Pogord (Spencer Aste), who is waiting for the tank truck to show so that his dried-out sheets can be wetted down; the quirky, ultra-strange Wishful Hi (Lynn Mancinelli), who wears crazy goggles and sees ghosts; and would-be singer Saromybride (Britt Genelin), who wonders whether they should have all headed out to California with the others. As the worst dust storm in modern history approaches, two drifters arrive one at a time: first Middle Pints (George Demas), who has an idea he wants to present to the town’s local Last Man Club, then Henry Taper (Brian Barnhart), who says he’s a scientist on his way to the city to help figure out how to stop the terrible drought. “I can’t take it no more. I really can’t,” Pogord says. “It’s the end of the world,” Wishful Hi proclaims.

Writer-director Sharp’s (Hospital) unpredictable dialogue and subtle plot shifts bring a compelling elegance to the proceedings while also making the play relevant to such twenty-first-century concerns as poverty, unemployment, climate change, the housing crisis, war, and a lack of faith in government. Karl Ruckdeschel’s costumes and the simple but effective set cast the production in browns and grays that emphasize the growing destitution, while solid acting all around gives the play an honesty despite the surreal craziness going on. Last Man Club might be set in the past and hint at the future, but it is, sadly, also firmly rooted in the here and now.

THE PUBLIC THEATER’S BLOCK PARTY AND OPEN HOUSE

Lafayette St. between Astor Pl. & East Fourth St.
Saturday, October 13, free, 12 noon – 5:00
www.publictheater.org

The Public Theater will show off its $40 million renovated home, which includes a restored facade, new terraced steps and glass canopy, an expanded lobby and balcony with a lounge (the Library at the Public), and more, on Saturday with a free block party. Outside there will be live performances by Jessy Carolina & the Hot Mess, Sasha Allen, banjo legend Tony Trischka, and Colombian band M.A.K.U. SoundSystem, while inside the Public will offer sneak peaks at several upcoming productions: the New York premiere of Giant, a musical by Sybille Pearson and Michael John LaChiusa based on the Edna Ferber novel; the world premiere of Fun Home, a musical by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron adapted from Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel; the world premiere of Here Lies Love, which features music by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim and choreography by Annie B-Parsons; and Stew and Heidi Rodewald’s The Total Bent. Inside, food will be available from their new menu designed by Andrew Carmellini, including pizza popcorn and kielbasa sandwiches on a soft pretzel roll, while seven food trucks will be outside, including Gorilla Cheese, Korilla BBQ, the Treats Truck, Solber Pupusas, Valducci’s Pizza, Rickshaw Dumplings, and Go Burger.

MOTHERBOARD

It’s man against machine in AntiMatter Collective’s sci-fi thriller MOTHERBOARD (photo by Jonathan Shaw)

The Secret Theatre
4402 23rd St., Long Island City
Thursday – Saturday through October 14, $18
1-800-838-3006
www.antimattercollective.org
www.secrettheatre.com/motherboard

It’s 2445, twenty years after humankind defeated an all-out attack by robots, who suddenly and inexplicably stopped fighting after having wiped out two-thirds of the earthlings in a ridiculously short amount of time. Scientist Gershwin Scott (James Rutherford) and war hero Captain Abraham Lennox (Casey Robinson) are experimenting on one of the supposedly deactivated machines (Rebecca Hirota) when the nannybot suddenly comes to life, exciting Scott, who wants to study it, and enraging Lennox, who wants to destroy it. Soon the robot, called C-12, is off on an adventure through a postapocalyptic world filled with scavenging survivors who are suspicious of strangers and understandably fearful of technology, save for Penelope (Elizabeth Bays), a young girl who illegally collects electronic gadgets. Staged by the Brooklyn-based AntiMatter Collective in the small Secret Theatre in Long Island City, Motherboard is a fun, if slight, sci-fi thriller wittily written by Adam Scott Mazer and playfully directed by Will Fulton. The company, whose previous shows include Gregory S. Moss’s sixsixsix (based on Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus), Mazer’s Death Valley, and Fulton’s adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Dreams in the Witch House, mix in elements of the Mad Max films, Star Trek, and other genre classics, along with some unexpected gore, in telling the age-old story of man versus machine. The best parts of the show are the relationships that develop in the beginning between C-12 and Scott (who, sadly, is not seen again) and in the end between C-12 and Penelope; unfortunately, much of what occurs in the long middle section, which centers around feral S&M couple Sweetums (Allison LaPlatney) and Maggot (Bryce Henry), is meandering and unnecessary. But even in this futuristic world, at the heart of society lies the bond between parent and child; it’s no accident that C-12 is a nannybot, responsible for the welfare of children, a theme that runs through all of the appropriately titled Motherboard.

(Note: The theater might want to rethink its policy of allowing people to bring drinks inside, as the night we went, bottles and cups kept getting kicked over, and two very drunk young women had to be told repeatedly to stop slurping their drinks and talking — which they eventually did, but then one of them got a bad case of the hiccups, and instead of leaving the theater she just kept on hiccupping, the sound echoing loudly throughout the space.)

TEN CHIMNEYS

Real-life couple Byron Jennings and Carolyn McCormick play real-life couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in exhilarating TEN CHIMNEYS (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West 46th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 27, $65
www.thepeccadillo.com

One of the best plays of the new season is taking place off Broadway, set in a Wisconsin country home but firmly entrenched on the Great White Way. Real-life husband-and-wife acting couple Byron Jennings and Carolyn McCormick do a splendid job starring as real-life husband-and-wife acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in the Pecadillo Theater Company’s rollicking Ten Chimneys. It’s 1937, and Alfred and Lynn are beginning rehearsals for their upcoming Broadway production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, with Lunt playing Trigorin, Fontanne playing Arkadina, Uta Hagen (Julia Bray) as Nina, and Sydney Greenstreet (Michael McCarty) as Sorin. Also joining them at the farmhouse are Alfred’s demanding mother, Hattie (Lucy Martin); his half-sister, Louise (Charlotte Booker), who does all the cooking and cleaning (and complaining); and his half-brother, Carl (John Wernke), a handyman who moonlights as a pool shark. As they delve into the play, as well as the play within a play, jealousy breaks out in many forms — between siblings, between lovers, between parents and children, between actors, and between fictional characters, resulting in a multilayered story that is simply exhilarating.

Jeffrey Hatcher’s razor-sharp dialogue is fanciful and whip smart, wonderfully playing with theatrical conventions and revealing tantalizing secrets. Dan Wackerman’s direction is breezy and inviting, while Harry Feiner’s rustic stage design provides just the right setting for the proceedings. Ten Chimneys is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Lunt and Fontanne’s working process, particularly when Greenstreet commandingly directs the couple through one scene and when Lunt and Hagen examine another run-through that ends in a kiss. The actors’ deconstruction of The Seagull stokes the fires of Ten Chimneys, a thrilling play about the theater that celebrates itself without becoming pedantic or melodramatic. Instead, it’s great fun, romantic and insightful, a must-see for lovers of theater. Don’t be surprised if after the show, which continues at the Theatre at St. Clement’s through October 27, you see Jennings and McCormick dashing down West 46th St. and jumping into a taxi together, just as Lunt and Fontanne must have done so many times during their long careers.

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

Richard Thomas and Boyd Gaines star as brothers at odds in Broadway revival of Ibsen’s AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 11, $67-$120
www.anenemyofthepeoplebroadway.com

When Dr. Thomas Stockmann (four-time Tony winner Boyd Gaines) discovers that the water in the baths of his spa town is dangerously contaminated, he thinks he will be celebrated as a hero, a supreme protector of the public health. But he is shocked when his brother, Peter (Emmy winner Richard Thomas), the mayor, decides to cover up the findings, more interested in ensuring the future financial success of the small Norwegian coastal town than in saving lives, setting off an all-too-familiar battle between the government and the individual, the public welfare versus corporate greed, the rich against the poor, and the role of the media in the controversy. Written in 1882 by Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People is now running at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in a streamlined, hackneyed adaptation by British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz (The Night Season) that attempts to be relevant to modern-day concerns but instead, after a somewhat promising first act, falls flat on its clichéd bottom. Gaines is strong as the determined yet conceited doctor, refusing to believe that the truth will get buried, but Thomas is far too weaselly as the mayor, strutting about like Snidely Whiplash in his top hat, cape, and cane. Doug Hughes’s flaccid direction turns the proceedings into a ridiculous series of overblown, pedantic scenes that culminates in a cringe-inducing town meeting in which everyone piles on the good doctor.

Following 1878’s A Doll’s House and 1881’s Ghosts, Ibsen continued his scathing indictment of various aspects of contemporary society in An Enemy of the People, but it is not one of his better plays, as evidenced by how infrequently it turns up in major productions onstage and onscreen; in 1950, Arthur Miller’s adaptation ran on Broadway with Fredric March and Morris Carnovsky, and a little-seen 1978 film starred Steve McQueen and Charles Durning. This 2012 version also features Kathleen McNenny as the doctor’s wife, Catherine; Maïté Alina as their idealistic daughter, Petra; John Procaccino as newspaper publisher Hovstad; and Gerry Bamman as Aslaksen the printer, whose constant calls for “restraint” grow as tiresome as the production’s overwrought political statements. Lenkiewicz’s An Enemy of the People can’t decide whether it’s an ironic black comedy or a serious treatise on power and corruption, winding up as neither.

JACK FERVER: MON MA MES

Jack Ferver will examine his life and his work in special Crossing the Line Festival presentation at FIAF (photo by Yaniv Schulman)

CROSSING THE LINE
Le Skyroom, French Institute Alliance Française
22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Saturday, October 6, $20-$25, 8:00
Festival runs through October 14, free- $45
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Back in May, New York City-based dancer, choreographer, and writer Jack Ferver told us, “The ego begins with ‘Me, not me.’ As an artist I make my work so that people donʼt feel as lonely as I have felt. Therefore my work expands into something more akin to ‘I am you.’” The man behind such well-received shows as Rumble Ghost, A Movie Star Needs a Movie, Swann!!!, I Am Trying to Hear Myself, and Two Alike will once again be looking at his life in Mon Ma Mes, which is being presented October 6 at the French Institute Alliance Française as part of the 2012 multidisciplinary Crossing the Line Festival. Ferver, who regularly crosses the line between fantasy and reality, fiction and nonfiction, will analyze himself while also performing and deconstructing one of his pieces. Ferver’s work always cleverly balances chaos, humor, introspection, movement, intelligence, and playful stagecraft in entertaining ways, so this promises to be another unique and memorable night in his growing ouevre.

IF THERE IS I HAVEN’T FOUND IT YET

Anna (Annie Funke) and her uncle George (Jake Gyllenhaal) try to make a connection in IF THERE IS I HAVEN’T FOUND IT YET (photo by Joan Marcus)

Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 25, $100
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal is making his New York theater debut in Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, but it’s director Michael Longhurst’s staging that dominates the proceedings, for both good and bad. A hirsute Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) stars as Terry, an Irish drifter who suddenly shows up at the home of his older brother, George (Tony winner and Emmy nominee Brían F. O’Byrne), an environmentalist writing a book called How Green Are Your Tomatoes? that is taking up most of his time. George’s wife, Fiona (Michelle Gomez), is alienated by his continuing absences while also having trouble dealing with their daughter, Anna (Annie Funke), a severely overweight fifteen-year-old who is being bullied at the school where Fiona teaches. Anna soon finds a friend in her uncle, a beer-guzzling, pot-smoking ne’er-do-well who has a very different idea of parenting. Although the play sets up some interesting relationships in the first act, the second act spirals downward in a mess of clichéd dialogue and trite plot twists, leading to an obvious climax audiences will pray won’t happen but does. Longhurst, in his New York debut, teams with Tony-winning set designer Beowulf Boritt (The Scottsboro Boys) to come up with an exciting way to change scenes. As the play begins, a mountain of furniture and odds and ends are piled in the center of the stage, which is claustrophobically closed in by walls on three sides. As each new scene starts, the actors pull a chair, table, or other element out of the pile to use. However, when the scene ends, the characters angrily push or kick the chairs, tables, and even a refrigerator into an encased moat filled with water at the edge of the stage. It’s a powerful conceit, but one that never really establishes a reason other than to allow the characters to display emotions that would be better served within the constructs of the play itself. Indeed, as the audience enters the Laura Pels Theatre, a spray of rain is filling the moat, and Anna walks up to the falling water and puts her hand out to touch it. Payne and Longhurst are using the life-giving nature of water to try to establish a connection between the family’s future and the melting of the polar ice caps that George is so obsessed with, an environmental calamity that could eventually flood the world, but it’s a staging tool that ultimately drowns in its own metaphor.