this week in theater

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).

TICKET ALERT: BAM FISHER NEXT WAVE

Tickets go on sale August 13 for inaugural Next Wave season in Fishman Space at new BAM Fisher center

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
All tickets $20; on sale Monday, August 13
Season runs September 5 – December 23
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Bigger isn’t necessarily better these days as BAM gets into the low-price, small-theater game for its thirtieth Next Wave festival. Earlier this year, the Signature Theatre opened its new Pershing Square Center on West 42nd St., comprising three venues that seat between 191 and 294 people and with all ticket prices for the initial run a mere $25. Then, in May, Lincoln Center raised the curtain on its new space, the Claire Tow Theater, which resides above the Mitzi E. Newhouse and has room for 112 customers, who pay only $20 per performance. And today, $20 tickets go on sale for BAM’s new venue, BAM Fisher on Ashland Pl., which features the 250-seat Fishman Space. Focusing on short-run experimental presentations, BAM Fisher will host dance, film, music, theater, talks, and more. The inaugural season opens with Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall’s site-specific Eclipse, an intimate four-character dance with the audience on all four sides, and continues with such works as The Shooting Gallery, a collaboration between video artist Bill Morrison and composer Richard Einhorn; Brooklyn Bred, consisting of performance art by Coco Fusco, Dread Scott, and Jennifer Miller, curated by Martha Wilson; Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Living Word Project’s sociopolitical red, black & GREEN: a blues, which promises something for all five senses; and dance pieces by Lucy Guerin (Untrained) and Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (And lose the name of action). Expect the phone lines to be jammed, because tickets ($28-$144) also go on sale today for a new production of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Childs’s four-and-a-half-hour Einstein on the Beach at the Howard Gilman Opera House.

SONDHEIM IN THE PARK: INTO THE WOODS

INTO THE WOODS is given dazzling new life at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Extended through September 1, free, 8:00
Family-friendly matinee August 22, 3:00
Tickets available day of show at the box office and online here
shakespeareinthepark.org

The Public Theater’s revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony-winning Into the Woods has made a marvelous transformation to the Delacorte, as if it were the place it was always meant to be performed. Adapted from the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production, the fairy-tale mosh-up, directed by Regent’s artistic director Timothy Sheader with codirection by Liam Steel, has been given a more adult touch, darker and sexier than previous versions. On John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour’s beautiful stage of multiple wooden ladders, walkways, and a tower constructed right into the actual woods of Central Park, a young boy (played alternately by Jack Broderick and Noah Radcliffe) creates the story of a childless couple, the Baker (Tony winner Denis O’Hare) and his wife (Oscar nominee Amy Adams), who are given a chance to have a baby if they collect four items for a wicked witch (Tony winner Donna Murphy): a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold. So off they go on an adventure into a magical land populated by such characters as Little Red Ridinghood (Sarah Stiles) and the Wolf (Ivan Hernandez), Cinderella (Tony nominee Jessie Mueller) and a prince (also Hernandez), Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) and her prince (Cooper Grodin), and Jack (Gideon Glick) and his mother (Kristine Zbornik), who are forced to sell their cow because they are in desperate need of money. There’s also a mysterious man (Chip Zien, who played the Baker in the original Broadway production) wandering through the woods, popping up now and again to offer advice. As they strive toward their goal, the Baker and his wife must decide just how far they’re willing to go to have a child, and at what cost.

The Witch (Donna Murphy) and Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) face some surprisingly hard truths in INTO THE WOODS (photo by Joan Marcus)

The first act is an utter delight, highlighted by Stiles’s raunchy turn as Little Red Ridinghood, dressed like a hip skater chick, O’Hare’s self-examination as he considers doing things he never would have imagined, Jack’s cow, a skeletal figure carried around by another actor, and Murphy’s star turn as the Witch, walking with canes in a frightening get-up courtesy of costume designer Emily Rebholz. But things reach another level in the second act, which reveals what happens when happily ever after is not necessarily the end of the story. Such songs as “Into the Woods,” “Hello, Little Girl,” “Stay with Me,” “Witch’s Lament,” and “Your Fault” are brought to life by a live orchestra playing in the back of the fanciful tree house and a stellar cast that is game for just about anything, making the three-hour show breeze by in, well, a breeze. Nominated for ten Tonys and winning three back in 1988 (including Best Score and Best Book), Sondheim and Lapine’s show, which is essentially about the art of storytelling itself, feels as clever and fresh as ever. Rechristened Sondheim in the Park, this wonderful Shakespeare in the Park presentation, part of the Delacorte’s fiftieth anniversary, is everything that free outdoor summer theater should be.

MY MIND IS LIKE AN OPEN MEADOW

Erin Leddy pays tribute to her grandmother in experimental solo show at 59E59 (photo by Kate Sanderson Holly)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park and Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 19, $25
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org
www.hand2mouththeatre.org

Built around recordings Erin Leddy made of her grandmother when they lived together for a year in 2001, Leddy’s debut solo piece, My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow, is an intriguing multidisciplinary show than can be as charming and fanciful as it is inscrutable and self-indulgent. A presentation of Portland’s Hand2Mouth theater ensemble, My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow explores aging and memory using dance, song, spoken word, and audience confrontation as Leddy has a conversation with her grandmother, actress Sarah Braveman, whose prerecorded voice emerges from a boombox in one corner of Christopher Kuhl’s claustrophobic set. The self-reflexive, hyper-aware work comments on itself as well as the audience of forty people in the small space at 59E59, creating an at times dreamlike atmosphere as Leddy sings Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” (“And a memory is all that’s left for you now”), draws varicose veins on her legs, rolls around on the floor, asks an unseen crew member for some Miles Davis music, and goes face-to-face with people in the front row, even spitting seeds at one empty chair. She occasionally slaps her body and dons an old woman’s wig, though it’s not always clear why. Kuhl’s inventive lighting and Casi Pacilio’s expressive sound design nearly steal the show, which features an original score by Portland band Ash Black Bufflo and songs cowritten by Leddy with Holcombe Waller. Directed by Hand2Mouth head Jonathan Walters, the sixty-five-minute production is a welcome, if frustrating, alternative to conventional theater, an unusual, intimate, confounding, offbeat, and touching tribute to a beloved relative. My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow continues at 59E59 through August 19, with special $10 tickets for Thursday’s show, which will be followed by a talk back with the company.