this week in theater

TICKET GIVEAWAY: INNER VOICES

INNER VOICES consists of three poignant musical monologues featuring Hunter Foster, Alexandra Silber, and Arielle Jacobs

INNER VOICES: A MUSIC THEATER TRILOGY IN 90 MINUTES
30th Street Theater
259 West 30th St.
Through December 2, $20-$30
212-868-4444
www.premieresnyc.org
www.urbanstages.org

Billed as “Intimate explorations of courage, loss, and acceptance,” Inner Voices is a three-part musical theater journey featuring three poignant solo musical monologues. In Arlington, Alexandra Silber (Carousel, Master Class) plays a woman waiting for her husband to return home from war; the piece is directed by Jack Cummings III, with book and lyrics by Victor Lodato, music by Polly Pen, and music direction by Kenneth Gartman. In Nilo Cruz (book and lyrics) and Jim Bauer’s (music) Farhad or The Secret of Being, Arielle Jacobs (In the Heights) portrays a girl who was raised as a boy in Afghanistan and is now poised to become a girl again. And in Martin Moran (book and lyrics) and Joseph Thalken’s (music) Borrowed Dust, directed by Jonathan Butterell and with music direction by Paul Masse, Tony nominee Hunter Foster (Urinetown, Little Shop of Horrors) goes back to his childhood home following the death of his younger brother.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Inner Voices is running at the 30th St. Theater through December 2, and twi-ny has four pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite one-person musical show to contest@twi-ny.com by Monday, November 19, at 3:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; four winners will be selected at random.

TWI-NY TALK: ALICIA JO RABINS

Alicia Jo Rabins explores her personal fascination with the Bernie Madoff scandal in enticing one-woman show at Joe’s Pub (photo by Aaron Hartman)

A KADDISH FOR BERNIE MADOFF
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Thursday, November 15, $15-$20, 7:00 pm
212-539-8778
www.aliciajo.com
www.joespub.com

On November 8 at Joe’s Pub, multidisciplinary artist and Torah scholar Alicia Jo Rabins presented the world premiere of her one-woman show, the vastly entertaining A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff. After reading about Madoff when his Ponzi scheme fell apart and made all the papers in December 2008, Rabins became obsessed with the man and his story, spending the next several years poring over seventeen books about the case and meeting with people directly and indirectly impacted by the scandal. In the show, Rabins, backed by cellist and musical director Colette Alexander, percussionist David Freeman, and guitarist Lily Maase, sings, plays the violin, and shares personal anecdotes in a warm, involving, and funny way. She incorporates Buddhist sutra, an actual apology letter written by Madoff, and a Jewish prayer into the proceedings as she examines the situation from the points of view of an FBI agent, a credit-risk officer, a whistleblower, a happy investor, a therapist, a lawyer, and a monk. As she prepared for the second performance, taking place November 15, Rabins corresponded with twi-ny about mysticism, money, Madoff, her marriage to musical partner Aaron Hartman, and more.

twi-ny: The role of belief in things unseen (and often dimly understood) plays a large part in both finance and religion. Did you find anything in your background in Jewish studies useful as you explored the financial world and this story? What do you think it ultimately was that led to your fascination with Bernie Madoff?

Alicia Jo Rabins: I was fascinated to find that, as you said, there is this overlap between the bewilderment and allure of esoteric mysticism and esoteric finance. They both traffic in ultimate intangibles — the idea of energy and the idea of money. But more simply, I was fascinated by the simplicity of Madoff’s scheme, the fact that it wasn’t a complicated series of equations no one could have seen through but a simple lie that the SEC could have easily stopped at any point if they had checked to see if his hedge fund had ever actually executed any of the trades their records described. So it seemed to me that the whole story was more about the financial world’s desire to believe in Madoff than Madoff’s desire to deceive.

Alicia Jo Rabins will be back at Joe’s Pub on November 15 for an encore performance of A KADDISH FOR BERNIE MADOFF (photo by Jason Falchook)

twi-ny: Regarding that desire to deceive, in the show you explore whether Madoff is a villain or just someone who got caught up in a situation that spiraled out of control. What do you think is the truth?

Alicia Jo Rabins: I think the gray area between those two is the interesting part of the story. That, plus the shared responsibility of those who should have known better but didn’t (I’m not talking about ordinary investors but about fund managers, financial advisers, the SEC, and huge banks), and why exactly no one stopped him for decades, is the area this piece explores. I suppose the piece itself, with all its contradictory viewpoints, is my answer to that question!

twi-ny: The opening performance produced a rousing ovation, and you will be performing it again at Joe’s Pub on November 15. How do you think the first show went?

Alicia Jo Rabins: I loved performing that first show — it felt incredible, and somewhat surreal, to be in a room with an audience after two years of working on this piece!

twi-ny: What are the future plans for it? It deserves to be seen by a lot more people!

Alicia Jo Rabins: Well — thanks! I’m already talking to a few producers about bringing the show out west and to Europe, in both museums and theaters — so I feel like the production will have a touring life, which would be wonderful.

twi-ny: Over the last four years, in addition to your Madoff obsession, you’ve gotten married, had a child, and released a pair of Girls in Trouble records. Has it been hard balancing all of these elements?

Alicia Jo Rabins: Oh yes, the balance is a constant struggle, and if it weren’t for my friends, my families, and Aaron’s unflagging support, there’s no way I’d be able to do all this. (And many days I can’t.)

twi-ny: What does Aaron think of your Madoff fixation?

Alicia Jo Rabins: I’ll have to ask him and get back to you. I can say that he did find it quite amusing that at one point our bookshelf had a full shelf of pregnancy and childbirth books, above a full shelf of my Torah teaching books, above a full shelf of books about Bernie Madoff.

THE HEIRESS

Jessica Chastain and Dan Stevens make their Broadway debuts as Catherine and Morris in THE HEIRESS (photo by Joan Marcus)

Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through February 10, $50 – $225
www.theheiressonbroadway.com

A star vehicle onstage and on the silver screen, Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s The Heiress, an adaptation of Henry James’s slim 1880 novel Washington Square, is set in 1850 New York City, where prominent society member Dr. Austin Sloper lives with his daughter, Catherine, a shy, awkward plain Jane he blames for the death of his beloved wife, who died in childbirth. Dr. Sloper asks his wife’s sister, Lavinia, to help Catherine break out of her shell, but he worries when a poor suitor named Morris Townsend comes calling, concerned that he’s really after his daughter’s rather substantial financial future. Over the years, the potent period drama has been performed by several all-star casts, with Wendy Hiller, Jane Alexander, Tony winner Cherry Jones, and Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland as Catherine, Basil Rathbone, Richard Kiley, Philip Bosco, and Ralph Richardson as Dr. Sloper, Peter Cookson, David Selby, Jon Tenney, and Montgomery Clift as Morris, and Patricia Collinge, Jan Miner, Tony winner Frances Sternhagen, and Miriam Hopkins as Aunt Lavinia.

Judith Ivey (right) steals the show in new production of THE HEIRESS starring Jessica Chastain (photo by Joan Marcus)

The latest incarnation, directed by Moisés Kaufman (The Laramie Project, 33 Variations), ends up being a mixed bag, with another big-time cast led by Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life, The Help) making her Broadway debut as Catherine, Oscar nominee David Strathairn (Goodnight, and Good Luck.) as her father, Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) in his Broadway debut as Morris, and multiple Tony winner Judith Ivey stealing the show as Lavinia. Taking place on a lush, elegant set by Derek McLane, the play is overly long at two hours and forty-five minutes with intermission, and Chastain’s portrayal of the mousey Catherine, who prefers to embroider rather than go out on the town, is somewhat dry and flat until it finally picks up steam late in the second act, when she finally decides to take action for herself. Strathairn is excellent as Dr. Sloper, a straightforward man who speaks candidly of his disappointment in Catherine, continually crushing her spirit. Stevens is solid as Morris, who professes his love for Catherine even after walking out on her, although the chemistry between Chastain and him never quite ignites. The play is most alive when Ivey is onstage, chattering away as Lavinia, her every movement and vocal twist a work of art, wearing fabulous black dresses that complement her niece’s more colorful gowns. All these years later, The Heiress is showing its age, but this new version still contains just enough memorable moments to make it worth revisiting.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: 5 LESBIANS EATING A QUICHE

Fringe winner 5 LESBIANS EATING A QUICHE is a tasty treat at the SoHo Playhouse (photo by Christina Stradone)

5 LESBIANS EATING A QUICHE
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St.
Saturday – Tuesday through January 6, $40-$50
www.5lesbianseatingaquiche.com
www.sohoplayhouse.com

In the 1983 thriller 10 to Midnight, tough guy Charles Bronson plays a cop who grabs a slice of quiche in a hospital cafeteria. When his daughter asks him about it, he angrily says, “I thought it was pie!” There’s no telling what the Death Wish star would think of the New Colony’s 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, which is currently satisfying audiences at the SoHo Playhouse. One of the winners of Best Overall Production at this summer’s New York International Fringe Festival, the show, written by Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood and directed by Sarah Gitenstein, follows the madcap adventures of members of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein in 1956 as they prepare for their annual quiche breakfast but also have to deal with the cold war, as a communist nuclear strike might be on its way. “New York’s theatrical elite hoped this show would never see the light of day, but after the amazing response it received at the Fringe they had no luck trying to stick their finger in the dyke,” SoHo Playhouse artistic director Darren Lee Cole said when announcing the limited engagement. The playful show stars Caitlin Chuckta, Rachel Farmer, Megan Johns, Thea Lux, and Maari Suorsa as the hungry title characters.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: The run of 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche has been extended to January 6, and twi-ny has four pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite quiche flavor to contest@twi-ny.com by Monday, November 12, at 3:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; four winners will be selected at random. In addition, twenty free tickets are being given away every night to those displaced by Hurricane Sandy; just provide proof of identification that includes your ZIP code and use the code word “Sandy.”

ALICIA JO RABINS: A KADDISH FOR BERNIE MADOFF

Alicia Jo Rabins investigates a yearlong obsession with Bernie Madoff in one-woman show at Joe’s Pub (photo by Jason Falchook)

Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Thursday, November 8 & 15, $15-$20, 7:00 pm
212-539-8778
www.aliciajo.com
www.joespub.com

Brooklyn-based musician, composer, poet, and fiddler extraordinaire Alicia Jo Rabins is also a Torah and Kabbalah scholar whose duo, Girls in Trouble, writes and performs songs about overlooked women in the Old Testament. A former member of local Klezmer favorites Golem, with whom she still occasionally plays, Rabins is now turning her attention to a different kind of Jewish character: seventy-four-year-old imprisoned business fraud Bernard Lawrence Madoff, whose Ponzi-scheme scandal rocked the world and who became the new symbol of selfishness and greed as the economic crisis reached epic proportions. Rabins has turned the story into the one-woman show A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, taking place at Joe’s Pub on November 8 and 15 at 7:00. Violinist and vocalist Rabins, who is also a poet and has served as a cultural ambassador for the State Department, will be backed by cellist and musical director Colette Alexander, percussionist David Freeman, and guitarist Lily Maase. The show, which promises an evening of mysticism and finance, is directed by Jessi D. Hill, with lighting by Jon Harper. “Everyone likes to think of Madoff as a monster, an aberration — but are we really so different?” Rabins wonders. “Markets go up, markets go down. But Madoff’s returns went up, more or less. In a straight line. For forty years. Who wouldn’t want that kind of security — no downturns, just growth? No failure, no loss, no death. It’s beautiful. But it’s impossible.”

MARCH MADNESS

Office politics heat up over the NCAA pool in Mike Vogel’s MARCH MADNESS (photo by Kim T. Sharp)

Dorothy Strelsin Theatre
Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 18, $25
www.abingdontheatre.org

About ten years ago, we toiled at a privately owned New York City publication not unlike the one portrayed by freelance journalist Mike Vogel in his very funny, highly incisive new play, March Madness — the similarities are so close, in fact, that we can’t help wondering whether he worked there as well at one time. In the eighty-minute Abington Theatre production, smoothly directed by Donald Brenner (The Most Ridiculous Thing You Ever Hoid), Tom Mardirosian (Oz, The Wire) stars as Maury Landers, a former New York Times reporter now writing advertiser-driven stories for the small trade rag Drug Store Times. Maury is a cynical, foul-mouthed sixty-six-year-old man who works in the same claustrophobic room with the much younger Kyle Rodgers (former Notre Dame defensive back AJ Cedeño), a husband and new father who politely does what he’s told, and Kim (Lucy McMichael), a mousey copy editor taking care of a seriously ill sister. Brad Bellamy is wonderfully herky-jerky as pathetic editorial director Herb, a spineless jellyfish who fretfully does the bidding of unseen owner Donald, a fiercely unreasonable boss who is only heard via cell phone. Mark Doherty (Blame It on Beckett) nails the ultra-slick Nick, the sharply dressed sales head who orders Maury and Kyle around, forcing them to include current and potential advertisers in pieces that end up being more like advertorials, which makes Maury crazy. Overworked and underpaid, Maury, who still dreams of getting that big investigative story, considers not organizing the annual NCAA college basketball March Madness office pool but soon decides instead to make it a winner-take-all, $5,000-per-person extravaganza, hoping the pot goes high enough for the winner to walk away from Drug Store Times forever, but not before telling off the appropriate people. As the tournament continues, office hijinks heat up, leading to a furious conclusion. March Madness is an engaging, insightful comedy that cleverly captures these difficult economic times. Although the plot takes a few twists and turns that border on the edge of believability, the talented cast overcomes them, led by Mardirosian, whose curmudgeonly but eminently likable Maury embodies the lost dream of the American worker, and Doherty, whose money- and power-hungry Nick symbolizes so much that is wrong in today’s selfish, capitalist society. The title might refer to the annual college basketball tournament, but it’s really about the ridiculous absurdities suffered by employees every day in offices around the country.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

Tracey Letts and Amy Morton go at it in Steppenwolf production of Edward Albee classic (photo by Michael Brosilow)

Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 24, $67 – $132
www.virginiawoolfbroadway.com

George and Martha might be “sad, sad, sad,” as half of the characters lament in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but it’s still electrifying to spend three hours with the supremely dysfunctional First (Fictional) Couple of American Theater. In the magnificent Steppenwolf production that opened at the Booth on October 13, exactly fifty years after Albee’s iconic work made its Broadway debut at the Billy Rose, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tracy Letts is a marvel onstage as George, an intensely cynical, beat-down history professor at a small, prestigious New England college. George is married to the deliciously wicked Martha (a terrific Amy Morton), whose father is the college president; six years older than her husband, she never misses an opportunity to shred him. One very late night after a campus party, new biology teacher Nick (a wonderfully smug and smirking Madison Dirks) and his wife, the ditzy Honey (a splendidly quirky Carrie Coon), are invited for a nightcap at George and Martha’s home, where things go from bad to worse as George lights into Martha and Nick, Martha lights into George and lights up to Nick, and Honey has trouble holding her liquor, plenty of which flows throughout. As Honey and Nick are caught up in George and Martha’s extremely nasty games — actually, they are given no choice — secrets both big and small come out, creating an intoxicating tension that threatens to explode at any moment, and finally does.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? is as alive as ever after fifty years (photo by Michael Brosilow)

Director Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park) gives every marvelous word the prominence it deserves as the four characters make their way around Todd Rosenthal’s appropriately messy set, as much in disarray as the lives of the protagonists. (There’s even a working clock in one corner that keeps time within the show.) Playing roles that have previously been performed by such pairs as Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen in the original Broadway production, Ben Gazzara and Colleen Dewhurst in 1977, Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner in the 2005 revival, and, most famously, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Mike Nichols’s 1966 film, Letts and Morton give the dueling couple a unique resonance all their own, perhaps because they have been working opposite each other very often at Steppenwolf since 1999. They are a justly celebrated pair: Letts earned a Pulitzer for writing August: Osage County, while Amy was nominated for a Tony for her performance in the play. In his Broadway acting debut, Letts is a revelation, dominating the stage with his eyes as well as his razor-sharp barbs, although Morton manages to go toe-to-toe with him. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is an intricately woven web of love and hate, of marriage and infidelity, of loyalty and betrayal, as past, present, and future collide over way too much bourbon and brandy. It is no mere accident that George is a history professor, stuck in the past, and Nick is in the biology department, where science is delving into genetic research. Albee’s play holds up remarkably well; it might be fifty years old, but it feels as fresh as ever, cementing its place in the past, present, and future of American theater.