this week in theater

COIL 2013

Multiple venues
January 3-19, $20-$30 per performance, $75 passport for five shows, $122 for ten
www.ps122.org

Every January, Performance Space 122 uncoils its COIL festival, several weeks of cutting-edge experimental dance, theater, art, and music. The 2013 winter celebration runs January 3-19 at multiple venues in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens but not at PS122 itself, which is undergoing a major renovation. COIL actually got an early start last month with Kristen Kosmas’s There There at the Chocolate Factory (through January 12), in which a woman has to suddenly replace Christopher Walken in a one-person show with the help of her Russian translator. Radiohole presents the world premiere of Inflatable Frankenstein at the Kitchen January 5-19, offering an unusual look at Mary Shelley’s book and James Whale’s film. In fall 2011, Emily Johnson brought her dazzlingly original The Thank-You Bar to New York Live Arts; now she and her Catalyst company is bringing Niicugni to the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a work that explores time and place. Annie Dorsen and Anne Juren examine femininity through a magic show with nudity in Magical, making its U.S. premiere January 15-19 at New York Live Arts. The BodyCartography Project follows up its 2011 COIL presentation, Symptom, with Super Nature, an ecological dance at Abrons Arts Center with live music by Zeena Parkins and scenic installation by Emmett Ramstad that is also part of the fourth annual American Realness festival. Other performances include the return of Pavel Zuštiak / Palissimo’s Amidst and Brian Rogers’s Hot Box. From January 15 to 18, COIL will host SPAN, a free noon dialogue with some of the artists, and the annual Red + White Party takes place January 13 at SPiN NYC with Ping-Pong, the Vintage DJ, and the National Theater of the United States of America. COIL offers a great opportunity to experience exciting new directions in the multidisciplinary arts, and with most tickets no more than twenty dollars and running times less than seventy minutes, you can’t give much of an excuse not to check a few things out.

PROJECT SHAW: MISALLIANCE

The Players Club
16 Gramercy Park South
Monday, January 28, $30, 7:00
www.projectshaw.com

“All this damned materialism: what good is it to anybody?” Tarleton says in George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance: A Debate in One Sitting. “Ive got a soul: dont tell me I havnt. Cut me up and you cant find it. Cut up a steam engine and you cant find the steam. But, by George, it makes the engine go. Say what you will, Summerhays, the divine spark is a fact.” The New York-based Gingold Theatrical Group has been keeping Shaw’s divine spark lit since January 2006, when founder and artistic director David Staller began Project Shaw with the mission “to carve a permanent niche for the work of George Bernard Shaw within the social and cultural life of New York — to bring his canon and humanist precepts to larger audiences and encourage people to practice these ideals in their daily lives.” By December 2009, Project Shaw had performed all sixty-five of Shaw’s plays, but that didn’t stop them, as they continue to present Shaw to the public at the Players Club on monthly Mondays. The 2013 season kicks off on January 28 with the sociopolitical comedy Misalliance, featuring Richard Easton as Lord Summerhays, Jay O. Sanders as John Tarleton, Maryann Plunkett as Mrs. Tarleton, Alison Fraser as Lina, Robert Creighton as Julius “Gunner” Baker, Wesley Taylor as Bentley, Hannah Cabell as Hypatia, Jon Fletcher as Johnny Tarleton, Zachary Spicer as Joey Percival, and Maggie Buchwald as the Narrator. The season continues with Caesar and Cleopatra on February 25, a St. Patrick’s Day Gala on March 17, Admirable Bashville on April 29, Mrs. Warren’s Profession on May 20, and Too True to Be Good on June 24. All tickets are $30 and should be reserved in advance. “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past but by the responsibility for our future,” Shaw once explained, and in many ways that is precisely what Project Shaw is all about.

GOLDEN AGE

Sicilian composer Vincenzo Bellini (Lee Pace) and diva Maria Malibran (Bebe Neuwirth) discuss art and love in Terrence McNally’s GOLDEN AGE (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Through January 13, $85
www.goldenageplay.com

In It’s Only a Play, Terrence McNally took audiences behind the scenes of a Broadway production’s opening night. In The Lisbon Traviata and Master Class, McNally focused on opera star Maria Callas. He brings those two themes together in the light but charming Golden Age. Sicilian composer Vincenzo Bellini (Lee Pace) is presenting the world premiere of I puritani on January 24, 1835, at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, the first of his operas to open outside Italy. The composer of such previous triumphs as I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La sonnambula, and Norma is joined by a quartet of popular singers who just might be as famous as he is: baritone Antonio Tamburini (Lorenzo Pisoni), who continually stuffs vegetables down his pants to enhance his manhood; soprano Giulia Grisi (Dierdre Friel), who cannot decide how much jewelry to wear when she takes the stage; bass Luigi Lablache (Ethan Phillips), who laments the always minor roles given to those of his vocal range; and tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who is preparing to hit a high F-natural above high C that has never before been achieved. At Bellini’s side is his biographer and lover, Francesco Florimo (Will Rogers).

Luigi Lablache (Ethan Phillips) and Giulia Grisi (Dierdre Friel) get serious during premiere of Bellini’s I PURITANI (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tony-winning director Walter Bobbie (Venus in Fur, Chicago) has the four Puritans move from individual dressing rooms to backstage area (where Bellini makes use of a piano) and then up steps to the opera hall on Santo Loquasto’s dramatic set, their singing “voices” heard in the background as those still downstairs discuss the French versus the Italians (and the English), egotistically praise their own talents, debate whether the composer or singer is more important, and wonder about who is in the audience, from rival composers such as Donizetti and Rossini (George Morfogen) to such other opera stars as Giovanni Matteo Mario and Maria Malibran (Bebe Neuwirth). When the Malibran does indeed show up, the talk turns to love, romance, and heartbreak as well. Combining factual events with his vivid imagination, four-time Tony winner McNally (Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Love! Valour! Compassion!) investigates the nature of art and its very creation in Golden Age, exploring inspiration, influence, and truth. What is occurring backstage often mimics what is happening in the opera itself, especially as Grisi gets ready for her mad scene and various characters declare their love for others. The acting is exemplary throughout, ranging from appropriately bombastic to somewhat more subdued, with Neuwirth a standout as she poetically recites a song by Bellini. And McNally and Bobbie have crafted Golden Age in such a way that the audience doesn’t need to know anything about opera, or be an opera fan at all, in order to enjoy this inside look at a magical moment in time.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: THE HOLIDAY GUYS IN “HAPPY MERRY HANU-MAS!”

York Theatre Company at Saint Peter’s
619 Lexington Ave. at 54th St.
Through December 31, $59.50
212-935-5820
www.yorktheatre.org
www.theholidayguys.net

’Tis the season for holiday songs, and a pair of Broadway stars are taking a unique angle on traditional classics in The Holiday Guys in “Happy Merry Hanu-Mas.” Three-time Tony nominee Marc Kudisch (9 to 5, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Thoroughly Modern Millie) and multiple-award nominee Jeffry Denman (Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Yank!: A World War II Love Story) have teamed up for a seasonal show filled with holiday favorites from numerous denominations and musical genres. The Jewish Kudisch, who sings and plays the guitar, and the Christian Denman, who sings and taps and plays the ukulele and the djembe, perform such songs as “Jingle Bells,” “My Simple Christmas Wish,” South Park’s “Lonely Jew on Christmas,” “The Jazzy Nutcracker,” “Put One Foot in Front of the Other,” and “O Hanukkah O Christmas Tree” during eighty irreverent and playful minutes, part of their “mission to remind everyone what the holidays are really about.”

Marc Kudisch and Jeffry Denman take aim at the holidays in seasonal musical

TICKET GIVEAWAY: The Holiday Guys is currently running through December 31 at the York Theatre Company, and twi-ny has four pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite holiday song to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, December 19, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; four winners will be selected at random.

GOLDEN BOY

Tom Moody (Danny Mastrogiorgio) doesn’t like the way Joe Bonaparte (Seth Numrich) talks to him but likes the way he fights in GOLDEN BOY (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through January 20, $37 – $122
www.lct.org

For its seventy-fifth anniversary, Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy has returned home, in a triumphant Lincoln Center production at the Belasco Theatre, where the show made its Broadway debut in November 1937. Seth Numrich (War Horse) comes on like a house on fire as Joe Bonaparte, a young classical violinist determined to make it in the fight game. He implores boxing promoter Tom Moody (Danny Mastrogiorgio) to put him in the ring against Chocolate Drop, sure that he has what it takes to become a champion. But in that first match, Joe is fearful of hurting his valuable hands, something that his trainer, Tokio (Boardwalk Empire’s Danny Burstein), has to cure him of if he is to become successful in the sweet science. The married Moody also involves his girlfriend, Lorna Moon (Dexter’s Yvonne Strahovski), a self-proclaimed floozy from Newark, in his plan to nurture Joe, but that strategy threatens to backfire when Joe and Lorna take a liking to each other. Meanwhile, Joe’s Italian immigrant father (Monk’s Tony Shalhoub) worries whether his son will ever play the violin again or make enough money as a fighter to support himself.

Joe risks a promising career as a violinist by putting on the gloves and getting in the ring in GOLDEN BOY (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Directed by Bartlett Sher, who also helmed Lincoln Center’s 2006 revival of Odets’s Awake and Sing!, Golden Boy still packs quite a wallop, performed by a talented ensemble, with creative period sets by Michael Yeargan (highlighted by vertical doors that come down from the ceiling). It tells the timeless story of the never-ending battle between artistic and financial success, as Joe understands he must give up the violin for good if he is to pursue a career in boxing. Odets was inspired to write Golden Boy after he headed to Hollywood and the company that he was part of, Lee Strasberg’s Group Theatre, disbanded, representing his own struggle between artistic integrity and wealth and fame. The original production of Golden Boy was directed by Harold Clurman and featured the legendary cast of Luther Adler (as Joe), Frances Farmer (as Lorna), Lee J. Cobb, Elia Kazan, Harry Morgan, Howard Da Silva, Karl Malden, and John Garfield. (Garfield, who played a troubled violinist in the 1946 film Humoresque, took on the role of Joe in a short-lived 1952 Broadway revival, while William Holden made his film debut in Rouben Mamoulian’s 1939 film.) The current cast also includes Ned Eisenberg as Roxy Gottlieb, Anthony Crivello as Eddie Fuseli, Jonathan Hadary as Mr. Carp, Michael Aronov as Joe’s brother-in-law, Siggie, and Dagmara Dominczyk as Joe’s sister, Anna. Golden Boy is like an old boxer getting back into the ring after a lengthy retirement but still showing there’s plenty of fight left in his game, ready to go twelve rounds with the best of them.

THE ANARCHIST

Cathy (Patti LuPone) and Ann (Debra Winger) play an intellectual game of cat-and-mouse in David Mamet’s THE ANARCHIST (photo by Joan Marcus)

Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through December 16, $70 – $134.50
www.theanarchistbroadway.com

Patti LuPone and Debra Winger might be extremely talented professionals, but it still has to be difficult to go on acting in a new Broadway play that announced, shortly after opening, that it would close early, after a mere twenty-three previews and seventeen regular performances. Written and directed by David Mamet (Race, Oleanna,) whose Glengarry Glen Ross is currently being revived down the street — and gives new meaning to its catchphrase, “Always be closing” — The Anarchist is essentially a seventy-minute intellectual debate between two very smart, edgy women. Mamet veteran LuPone (The Woods, State and Main) stars as Cathy, a former Weather Underground-type revolutionary who has converted to Christianity while serving a lengthy prison sentence and is now seeking to be released. Debra Winger (An Officer and a Gentleman, How I Learned to Drive), in her Broadway debut, plays Ann, a serious jailer who has thoroughly researched Cathy’s case and is not sure she is ready to be paroled. In a cold office setting, the convict and the bureaucrat battle it out in a war of words, discussing reason, revenge, religion, regret, revolution, and other topics as they play a tricky cat-and-mouse game that is overly clever for the Broadway stage. In addition, neither character is fully developed, and, more important, neither is very likable, making for a show that feels much longer than seventy minutes. Inspired by the post-9/11 world, the play has its fascinating moments, but it might have worked much better in a smaller theater without such a hefty ticket price ($70-$134.50), although it would still fail to be much of a story. “But the meaninglessness — let me be more precise — it was facing the meaninglessness which led me to faith,” Cathy says. “It led you to faith,” Ann responds. Cathy: “Because, do you see, they’re the same two choices.” Ann: “The same two as?” Cathy: “The bureaucrat and her make work files. To rebel. Or to submit. And each is unacceptable.” Ann: “Is there a third choice?” Cathy: “Thank you. And that is the essence of the book.” Ann: “That the third choice is Faith.” Cathy: “What else could it be? And to believe . . . in the possibility of another choice is to long for God. And to discover it is Faith.” Ann: “Faith without certainty.” Cathy: “If there were certainty, why would it be faith?” Mamet has a lot to say in The Anarchist, but far too much of it has to be taken on faith.

THE PIANO LESSON

August Wilson’s THE PIANO LESSON is back in a sparkling revival at the Signature Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through January 13, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Inspired by a 1983 painting by Romare Bearden, August Wilson brought the canvas to life in his masterful 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, The Piano Lesson, currently in the midst of a sparkling revival at the Signature Theatre through December 23. After three years away, Boy Willie (Brandon J. Dirden) returns to the home of his uncle, Doaker Charles (James A. Williams), and sister, Berniece (Roslyn Ruff), in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1936, bringing with him his best friend and cohort, Lymon (Jason Dirden), a flatbed loaded with watermelons, and a plan to buy back ancestral land by selling a treasured family piano. But the piano is more than just a valuable musical instrument; it represents the history of the Charles clan, in both how it came to be in their possession and the intricate carvings of their forebears that line the front and side. The already taut drama then kicks into high gear as generations and siblings clash, a ghost does or does not appear, and brash, fast-talking Boy Willie faces down hard-won traditions.

Brandon J. Dirden comes on like a speeding train in brilliant revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

The fourth play in Wilson’s ten-part Pittsburgh Cycle that features one work set in each decade of the twentieth century (and also includes Fences, Two Trains Running, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Seven Guitars), The Piano Lesson is stunning in its language, every line like an expertly crafted piece of music, the tempo rising and falling and rising again, a talking blues that examines the black experience in America in captivating ways. Brandon J. Dirden, taking on the iconic role previously performed by Samuel L. Jackson and, most famously, by a Tony-nominated Charles S. Dutton, is a whirlwind as Boy Willie, an explosive character unable to say or do anything in a small way, charging across the stage like a train speeding through a station, on an unstoppable path to somewhere better. His brother Jason is endearing as the much simpler Lymon, who seems happy enough with a cheap suit and night on the town. Williams, who earlier this year played Mr. M in the Signature revival of Athol Fugard’s My Children! My Africa!, provides the voice of reason as Doaker, along with Eric Lenox Abrams as Avery, a minister who would like to settle down with Berniece. Chuck Cooper adds plenty of humor as the big and blustery Wining Boy, an engaging gambler and bluesman who shows just what the piano can do. The story takes place in set designer Michael Carnahan’s tear-away house, which looks like a tornado tore through it, ripping it in half, like the lives of the characters, each of whom is searching for their own personal completeness. Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who has both acted in and directed other works by Wilson, winning a Tony in 1996 as Canewell in Seven Guitars, clearly understands the playwright’s brilliant skill, balancing the action and words with a steady hand. One of the best production of the year on or off Broadway, The Piano Lesson is a magical night of unforgettable theater by one of America’s true masters.