this week in theater

BEAT FESTIVAL

The crowd is part of the show in Noémie Lafrance’s CHOREOGRAPHY FOR AUDIENCES — TAKE ONE at the BEAT Festival

BROOKLYN EMERGING ARTISTS IN THEATER
Multiple venues in Brooklyn
September 12-23, $15-$35
www.beatbrooklyn.com

A celebration of community performance focusing on live music, dance, spoken word, and theater, the BEAT Festival gets under way September 12, kicking off twelve days of thirty-eight performances by thirteen acts in eight venues. Standing for Brooklyn Emerging Artists in Theater, BEAT will feature Lemon Andersen’s County of Kings, his one-man show about growing up in Brooklyn; American Opera Projects and Opera on Tap’s OPERAtion Brooklyn, featuring songs by One Ring Zero, Daniel Felsenfeld’s “A Genuine Willingness to Help (Book I),” and Sidney Marquez Boguiren and Daniel Neer’s “Stop and Frisk”; Kimberly Bartosik/daela’s You are my heart and glare, a trio of duets between dancers, designers, and vocalists; the Irondale Ensemble’s Color Between the Lines, which examines the Brooklyn abolitionist movement; Theatre Group Dzieci’s Fool’s Mass, Makbet, and Ragnarök; Noémie Lafrance’s Choreography for Audiences — Take One, in which audience members are active participants in the production; Marshall Davis Jr. & Friends, in an evening of tap; Ishmael “Ish” Islam’s BEAT Spoken Word, led by New York City’s nineteen-year-old poet laureate; a BEAT Sideshow hosted by Jessica Halem; Creative Outlet Dance Theatre’s Urban Roots and Courtney Giannone’s Protean Acts; Elevator Repair Service’s Shuffle, a mash-up of The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and The Sound and the Fury held in the stacks of the Brooklyn Public Library; and Radha Blank’s HappyFlowerNail, a one-woman show that takes place in a Bed-Stuy Korean nail salon. In addition, Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty’s video installation “Atmospheres & Accidental Ghosts” will be shown September 20-22 in the lobby of the Brooklyn Public Library, in conjunction with Shuffle. Tickets range from $15 to $35, with many of the performances taking place at multiple venues over the course of the festival, including the Irondale Center, the Flatbush Reformed Church, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and the Waterfront Museum in addition to the Coney Island Sideshow theater and MetroTech Commons, which will host two free shows. The closing party will be held September 23 at El Puente Earth Spirit Garden with BombaYo.

US: A PROGRESSIVE LOVE STORY

A couple in crisis remembers happier times in US (photo by Russ Rowland)

The Lion Theater at Theatre Row
410 West 4nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 29, $40
www.ustheplay.com

Actress and activist Michelle Clunie makes an inauspicious debut as a playwright in the political romantic comedy Us, which turns out to be a whole lot less fun than either the Republican or Democratic Convention, although it sometimes seems nearly as long. The title represents both the couple in the story and the country in the midst of the 2008 presidential campaign, with Clunie starring as an actress and activist who has just discovered that her boyfriend (Jeff LeBeau), who is about to accept his party’s nomination for senator, has been cheating on her. Right from the start, it is hard to feel any sympathy for either character, something the play never recovers from as it bounces back and forth between the present and the past, revealing how the two, who affectionately (and sickeningly) call each other Booboo, met and fell in love. Director Jennifer Gelfer (the internet series In Between Men) and Clunie, who played Melanie Marcus on Queer as Folk, make full use of the space, as Clunie’s character enters from behind the audience, walks on a platform above the rear of the stage, and threatens to leave through the main doors, but it comes off as art for art’s sake, desperate, inorganic attempts to create something, anything interesting and original. The best part of the show are the short black-and-white videos by Jendra Jarnagin that depict the couple in happier times as they explore a burgeoning love that is devoid of passion once the play returns to the characters onstage. Clunie spends too much time spouting her political views, using far-too-obvious pop music to further her points, and making too many self-referential comments about the writing of the play, resulting in a flat, uninspiring drama that offers nothing new to either the political discourse or the magic that is live theater.

HARRISON, TX: THREE PLAYS BY HORTON FOOTE

BLIND DATE is the first of three intimate short dramas by Horton Foote set in Harrison, Texas

Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St, between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 15, $30-$70
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

Texas-born playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote, who died in 2009 at the age of ninety-two after a long, fruitful career, had an uncanny knack for capturing the inherent beauty and heartbreak of American life, putting realistic characters in believable situations, just going through their daily chores of merely existing. He is best known for such films as Tender Mercies and To Kill a Mockingbird (for which he won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay) and such plays as The Trip to Bountiful, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Young Man from Atlanta, and the three-part “Orphans’ Home Cycle.” His intoxicating slice-of-life Americana is currently on view in Harrison, TX, a compilation of three short works, ably directed by Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park), that have been brought together at Primary Stages. Blind Date is set in Harrison in 1928, on the cusp of the Great Depression, as pouty sourpuss Sarah Nancy (Andrea Lynn Green) has been sent to live with her aunt Dolores (Hallie Foote, one of Horton’s daughters) and uncle Robert (Devon Abner). Sarah Nancy is a mopey, bored young woman who’d rather hang out in her room than have to talk to anyone, especially young men, but Dolores is determined to get her a boyfriend and has thus set him up with Felix (Evan Jonigkeit), a local insurance salesman who is due to show up any minute. Dolores tries to coach Sarah Nancy on how to be a better conversationalist while also attempting to take care of her rather hapless husband, but when Felix arrives, things go a bit crazy.

Andrea Lynn Green and Jayne Houdyshell think of the good times in Horton Foote’s THE MIDNIGHT CALLER

In The One-Armed Man, also set in 1928, an angry former employee, McHenry (Alexander Cendese), is demanding to see his old boss, C. W. Rowe (Jeremy Bobb), so he can get back the arm he lost in an accident, but Rowe seems more intent on railing on about his personal success to his accountant, Pinkey (Abner). Rowe offers McHenry five dollars to go away, but it’s going to take a lot more than money to make things straight. The third play, The Midnight Caller, is set nearly a quarter-century later, but it feels like Harrison hasn’t changed a bit as a trio of gossipy women — judgmental chatterbox Alma Jean Jordan (Mary Bacon), “Cutie” Spencer (Green), and older teacher Miss Rowena Douglas (Jayne Houdyshell) — debate the upcoming arrival of Helen Crews (Jenny Dare Paulin), a woman with a reputation who is moving into their boarding house after being thrown out by her mother for her questionable activities. When a stranger, Ralph Johnston (Bobb), also shows up looking for a room, the situation gets a lot more complicated. Unfortunately, the eventual appearance of Helen’s former flame, Harvey Weems (Cendese), severely detracts from the play, which is otherwise sweet and engaging. In the first and third works, Foote’s snappy down-home dialogue is the centerpiece, adding beautiful, funny, poetic language to the relatively simple goings-on, with characters that are easy to warm to, especially Miss Rowena, who looks out the window, remembering what it was like as a child gazing out at the fireflies. The middle piece is far more abrupt and shocking, providing a strong counterpoint that would have felt significantly out of place had it started or finished the trio of plays. Taken together, the three pieces, running approximately one hundred minutes and performed without an intermission, offer a fascinating examination of an old-time America that might not be quite as far away as one might imagine. (Harrison, TX runs through September 15 and will be followed at Primary Stages by Him, a new play by another of Foote’s daughters, Daisy Foote.)

TENDER NAPALM

Blake Ellis and Amelia Workman give dazzling performances in the surreal TENDER NAPALM at 59E59 (photo by Carol Rosegg)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St, between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 9, $18
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

British writer Philip Ridley’s exhilarating Tender Napalm has made a magnificent transition to 59E59, where it is dazzling audiences in a tiny black box of a theater. It doesn’t get much more intimate than this oxymoronically titled show, as an unnamed man (Blake Ellis in his New York City debut) and woman (Amelia Workman) perform on a narrow strip of floor between two rows of people (approximately fifty in all), squeezing the performers into a ridiculously small space where they build on one another’s tales in a kind of exquisite corpse. They share their dreams and fantasies as if they’re shipwrecked on a desert island, talking about monkey kingdoms, bullets and grenades, genitals, serpents, a tsunami, and more in a mysterious and heated battle of the sexes. Whenever one of them asks, “Have you seen the view?” the narrative shifts, leading to another adventure. In short back-and-forth bursts and long soliloquies, the man and the woman play verbal games with each other, the audience never quite clear on what is real, what is imagined, and what is something in between, reminiscent of David Ives’s recent hit, Venus in Fur. The actors don’t make eye contact with the audience as they deliver their lines, instead looking out across their memory and into the future, coming together and running from one another in Yasmine Lee’s subtle but powerful choreography. Skillfully directed by Paul Takacs to maintain a breathtaking pace that avoids feeling the least bit claustrophobic during its intermissionless one hundred minutes, Tender Napalm features beautifully poetic moments that get interrupted by explosive bursts of passion, every new twist a thrilling surprise. “Have you seen the view?” the woman asks. The man responds, “I see auroras shimmering.” Woman: “I see trees with magical lights.” Man: “Asteroids near the sirens of Titan.” Woman: “Oh, smell of flowers!” Man: “Andromeda.” Woman: “Hyacinths.” Man: “‘You must be wondering why you’re here,’” leading to a long discourse on DNA, bombs, and unicorns. Ellis and Workman both deliver complex, inspiring performances, bringing to life Ridley’s (Vincent River, Shivered) razor-sharp, surreal dialogue in a rousing production that is not to be missed, especially with tickets costing a mere eighteen dollars.

CROSSING THE LINE 2012

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 14 – October 14, free- $45
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Tickets are now on sale for the sixth annual Crossing the Line festival, a month-long program of interdisciplinary performances and art sponsored by the French Institute Alliance Française at venues across the city. Running September 14 through October 14, the 2012 edition of CTL, curated by Gideon Lester, Lili Chopra, and Simon Dove, features a host of free events, with most ticketed shows twenty dollars and under. The festival opens on September 14 with the first of three concerts by innovative guitarist Bill Frisell, playing with two of his groups, the 858 Quartet and Beautiful Dreamers, in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall; he’ll then be at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn the next morning at 8:00 for the world premiere of his solo piece “Early (Not Too Late),” followed that night by the world premiere of the multimedia “Close Your Eyes” at the Invisible Dog, a collaboration with musician Eyvind Kang and visual artist Jim Woodring. Brian Rogers, cofounder and artistic director of the Chocolate Factory, will present Hot Box at the Long Island City institution, a chaotic look at mayhem, stillness, and disorder using a live video feed. Festival vet Gérald Kurdian returns with The Magic of Spectacular Theater at Abrons Arts Center, combining music and magic. DD Dorvillier / Human Future Dance Corps brings Danza Permanente to the Kitchen, reimagining a Beethoven score for four dancers, with acoustic design by Zeena Parkins. Choreographer Sarah Michelson will deliver Not a Lecture / Performance, while Jack Ferver will blend psychoanalysis with dance in the very personal Mon Ma Mes, both one-time-only presentations at FIAF. Joris Lacoste’s 4 Prepared Dreams uses hypnosis on April March, Annie Dorsen, Tony Conrad, and Jonathan Caouette. Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula, who dazzled CTL audiences last year with more more more . . . future, will participate in a discussion on September 17 with director Peter Sellars, followed by his solo work Le Cargo on September 18. Pascal Rambert’s Love’s End examines the disintegration of a relationship, with Kate Moran and Jim Fletcher at Abrons, while Raimund Hoghe teams up with Takashi Ueno at the Baryshnikov Arts Center for Pas de Deux, a playful look at the history of the classical duet. For Diário (através de um Olho Baiano), one of numerous free events, Bel Borba, collaborating with Burt Sun and André Costantini, will create a new piece of art every day somewhere in the city throughout the festival, with all coming together for a grand finale. Also free is David Levine’s Habit, a live ninety-minute-drama that loops for eight hours in the Essex Street Market, and OMSK / Lotte van den Berg’s Pleinvrees / Agoraphobia, in which the audience (advance RSVP required) wanders around Times Square listening on their cell phones to a man making his way through the area as well. In addition, Steven and William Ladd’s Shaboygen installation will be up at the Invisible Dog, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s audiovisual portraits will be on view at the FIAF Gallery. Once again, CTL has included a little something for everyone, from performance art and dance to video and photography, from theater and concerts to the unusual and the indefinable.

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Passions rage in Private Theatre reinterpretation of Strindberg's PLAYING WITH FIRE (photo by Allen Murabayashi)

The Box
189 Chrystie St. between Stanton & Rivington Sts.
August 23-24, $25-$500, 8:30
www.theprivatetheatre.org
www.theboxnyc.com

“Jesus, this is hard to follow,” one character says early on in the Private Theatre’s inventive, bawdy transformation of August Strindberg’s 1893 one-act, Playing with Fire, and indeed, that’s part of the fun. The Private, which has previously performed such shows as Heiner Muller’s Philoctetes, Jean Genet’s The Maids, Stephen Adly Guirgus’s Jesus Hopped the A Train, and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (in an East Village townhouse), has unrepressed Strindberg’s tale of repressed love, sex, and seduction, creating an immersive experience at the Box, a burlesque theater on Chrystie St. With the audience hanging out at the bar in the back, on couches, in booths, on the balcony, and even on the stage itself, fourteen actors playing six roles make their way through the space, hooking up for some raunchy sex, watching others doing it, and wondering how big a man’s member is as he takes a leak. At the center of the story are married couple Newt and Kersten, who reexamine their desires when their friend Axel comes to stay with them. Axel has the hots for Kersten, while Newt has a thing for his cousin Adelle, whom Newt’s father pursues right under the nose of his wife. The actors weave in and out of the audience as their actions are filmed by four camera people and projected onto monitors, along with prerecorded footage; in addition, live and prerecorded dialogue is interwoven, so it is often difficult to tell what is live and what is Memorex. No matter where you sit, you won’t be able to see everything without checking the monitors, which enhances the idea of sex as some kind of game. Occasionally the cast breaks out into moments of interpretive dance (choreographed by Bronwen Carson), with bursts of strobe lights (courtesy of lighting designer Isabella F. Byrd) adding to the mystery, set to a score by Kwan-fai Lam and Sam Kidel. Interestingly, while the women’s Victorian-esque costumes, by Andreea Mincic, are robust and titillating, the men wear rather drab, plain clothing. Directed by John Gould Rubin based on Royce Coppenger’s unique adaptation, Playing with Fire, presented during the hundredth anniversary year of Strindberg’s death, is the kind of production in which adventurous theatergoers need to just go with the flow. It often turns the viewer into a voyeur; at one point, a man reaches into a woman’s genitals for several minutes, but just in case you can’t see it from your angle, it is broadcast in close-up on the monitors. And the positioning comes with a cost; tickets begin at $25 for a spot by the bar and reach up to $175 for a booth up front with free bottle service. There is also a lottery for free tickets, with two performances left, on August 23 & 24. Although the show begins at 8:30, everyone is encouraged to come to the Box as early as 7:00 to have cocktails and mingle as part of the overall experience.

OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES

So, Reuben, Nathan, and Bunny are stuck on a desert island . . . (photo by Joan Marcus)

Westside Theatre/Downstairs
407 West 43rd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 13, $80-$95
oldjewstellingjokesonstage.com

“A man goes to see his rabbi and he says, ‘Rabbi, I think my wife is poisoning me. I don’t know what to do.’ The rabbi says, “Well, give me a chance to talk to her and I’ll get back to you.’ So the next day the rabbi calls up the man and he says, ‘Well, I had a long, long talk with your wife. Three hours at least.’ And the man says, ‘Yeah? Yeah? So what’s your advice?’ ‘Take the poison.’” That is just one of the many hysterical jokes, both familiar and not, that populate the hit comedy Old Jews Telling Jokes. Created by writer-editors Peter Gethers (The Cat Who Went to Paris) and Daniel Okrent (inventor of Rotisserie Baseball), the one-hundred-minute show is based on the website Old Jews Telling Jokes, which was developed by Sam Hoffman to give just plain folks, who must be at least sixty years old, the opportunity to tell their favorite joke. On a relatively bare stage with a hanging flat-screen monitor that announces such chronological themes as birth, childhood, marriage, and death, five characters take their turns telling such jokes as “They Made a Talking Doll of My Mother,” “Why I’m Losing Weight,” “I Hate It When He Brings Me Flowers!” and “Daddy, Where Do Babies Come From?” by themselves and in various groupings. Nothing is off-limits as old-timers Morty (Lenny Wolpe), Bunny (Marilyn Sokol), and Nathan (Todd Susman) and youngsters Reuben (Bill Army) and Debbi (Audrey Lynn Weston) take on love and sex, doctors and health, friendship and religion, often getting dirtier and raunchier than one might expect. In addition, each character has a solo spot to talk about their own life, occasionally turning serious for a moment before going back to the jokes, along with a song or two accompanied by pianist Donald Corren.

Lenny Wolpe, Bill Army, and Todd Susman don cowboy hats to share a funny tale in OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES (photo by Joam Marcus)

Wolpe displays a soft, tender side as the ersatz leader of the gang, with TV veteran Susman lending an engaging subtlety to the proceedings, a necessary balance to Sokol’s awkward overemoting, while Weston and token goy Army chime in well under Marc Bruni’s direction. Expect the cast to crack one another up several times as they tell their jokes, clearly having a load of fun themselves. One of the many great little touches includes a few chairs that are occasionally brought onstage, covered in clear plastic just as our aunt Sylvia liked it. Don’t misinterpret the title — although there is lots of Yiddish to go around and a distinct Jewish sensibility, they are not all Jewish jokes. But be prepared to do plenty of kvelling and plotzing at the Westside Theatre, ironically a former German Baptist Church that still boasts a stone in the outside wall that declares “Christus der Eckstein 1855” (Christ’s Cornerstone).