this week in theater

MEDIEVAL PLAY

Sir Ralph (Josh Hamilton) and Sir Alfred (Tate Donovan) discuss the socioeconomic conditions of fourteenth-century Europe in Kenneth Lonergan’s MEDIEVAL PLAY

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through June 24, $25
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

The Signature Theatre has had a thrilling inaugural season at its new Frank Gehry-designed Pershing Square Center on West 42nd St., with five strong productions in three spaces. But alas, at the end of its second cycle, it now has its first dud. Kenneth Lonergan’s Medieval Play is a silly little piffle about knights raping and pillaging across Europe as one poor soul suddenly gains a conscience. Set during the Hundred Years’ War and the Papal Schism of 1378, the play opens with Sir Alfred (Tate Donovan) and Sir Ralph (Josh Hamilton) having an anachronistic discussion about the political and economic conditions of contemporary society as they prepare to lay further siege to the countryside. But Ralph soon starts having second thoughts about the intrinsic value of brutally molesting nuns, much to the consternation of Alfred and fellow knights Sir Simon (Kevin Geer) and Sir Lionel (C. J. Wilson). With both Italy and France claiming the new pope, Urban VI (Anthony Arkin) and Clement VII (John Pankow), the battle is on, but the play lacks any kind of center as it meanders from scene to scene, throwing in a funny joke here and there but mostly coming off flat and repetitive, an uninspiring mix of 1066 and All That, Month Python and the Holy Grail, The Borgias, Game of Thrones, and your niece’s high school talent show. The cast, which also includes Heather Burns as Catherine of Siena and Halley Feiffer in a number of roles, sometimes addresses the audience directly and fools around with the purposely low-rent costumes and set design, self-referential conceits that only add to the flawed nature of the production. This time around, Lonergan, who has written and directed such films as You Can Count on Me and Margaret and written such highly praised shows as This Is Our Youth, The Waverley Gallery, and Lobby Hero, has come up with a play that is as generic as its title.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: THE BAD AND THE BETTER

The Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St.
June 14 – July 21, $49.95
www.thebadandthebetter.com
www.theamoralists.com

Last summer, the “rocking, rebellious, and raw” Amoralists theater company presented Derek Ahonen’s sexually charged Pink Knees on Pale Skin as part of the HotelMotel double feature set inside a makeshift room at the Gershwin Hotel. This summer the Amoralists are back with associate artistic director and cofounder Ahonen’s detective noir The Bad and the Better, running June 14 through July 21 at the more traditional Peter Jay Sharp Theater on West 42nd St. Featuring a cast of more than two dozen, the story follows two brothers who are caught up in internal and external battles with hypocrisy, injustice, corruption, and family loyalty. The show is directed by Daniel Aukin, who is also currently elming the multiple-Obie-winning 4000 Miles at the Mitzi E. Newhouse.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: We have a pair of tickets to give away for free for The Bad and the Better, good for any night in June. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite detective-noir story to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, June 14, at 3:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; one winner will be selected at random.

TITLE AND DEED

Conor Lovett asks the audience to join him on an unusual but rewarding journey in Will Eno’s TITLE AND DEED (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through June 17, $25
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Written specifically for actor Conor Lovett, Will Eno’s Title and Deed is an endearingly existential foray into language, communication, and humanity’s deep-seated need to be part of a greater whole. In a stunningly understated solo performance, Lovett stars as a soft-spoken man who has just arrived in America, either from another country or a different planet. Speaking directly to the audience, the unnamed character has trouble finishing sentences, and he allows his mind to wander away on the sound and meaning of words, gets caught up in tangential soliloquys, or just plain loses his train of thought. He bandies about ideas and then watches them float away as he mutters under his breath or mumbles asides that are not nearly as random as they might first appear. For seventy minutes, Lovett shuffles across the nearly bare stage on a journey to find a new home, and he welcomes — actually, a better word might be “needs” or even “requires” — the audience to help him find it. Award-winning Brooklyn-based playwright Eno (Middletown, Oh, the Humanity and other exclamations) has crafted an offbeat, involving little slice of theater that is heavily inspired by Beckett, primarily Waiting for Godot, and directed by Lovett’s wife, Judy Hegarty Lovett; the Lovetts have previously collaborated on such productions as Molloy, First Love, and, not surprisingly, The Beckett Trilogy. Running in the Signature’s cozy Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre through June 17, Title and Deed will have you taking a trip through your own mind, with plenty of strange yet calming detours.

ANT FEST / soloNOVA ARTS FESTIVAL

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai’s FORMOSA is part of ANT Fest 2012 at Ars Nova

ANT Fest 2012, Ars Nova, 511 West 54th St., through June 28, $10
SoloNOVA Arts Festival, the New Ohio Theatre, 154 Christopher St., through June 17, $20

This month, it’s easy to get confused with a concurrent pair of theater festivals that offer fresh new work at low prices but boast similar names and unusual capitalization. At Ars Nova on West 54th St., the fifth annual ANT Fest continues through June 28, focusing on all-new talent (ANT) presenting genre-defying work, with all tickets a mere ten bucks. The festival includes such intriguing productions as Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai’s Formosa, which involves a 1960s Taiwanese Barbie doll factory; the historical musical Folk Wandering; Andrew Scoville’s Love Machine, Part 1 . . ., about a NASA-obsessed teenage girl; and the one-man show Oomphalos: Evening of Diagrams, Theories, and Preposterous Arcana from the Face Hole of Brendan Hughes. At terraNOVA, the ninth annual soloNOVA Arts Festival highlights one-person shows for twenty dollars. The series continues through June 17 with such productions as unFRAMED, in which Iyaba Ibo Mandingo combines storytelling with poetry and painting; the multimedia comedy I Light Up My Life: The Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography; Daniel Irizarry’s UBU, about the King of the Great Expanding Universe and his love of steak; Human Fruit Bowl, in which Harmony Stempel portrays a naked model preparing for a different kind of still-life; and the dark Convergence, with Avery Pearson facing some deep-seated fears.

SLEEP NO MORE

Sleep No More, starring Luke Murphy, is finally coming to the end of its long run at the McKittrick Hotel (photo by Thom Kaine)

SLEEP NO MORE
McKittrick Hotel
530 West 27th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday – Saturday through January 2, 2025, $80
866-811-4111
www.sleepnomorenyc.com

The less you know about Punchdrunk’s dazzling production, Sleep No More, the better, but one thing you do need to know about this runaway success is that tickets continue to sell fast. Sleep No More takes place at the long-abandoned McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea, where guests are given masks and then left to wander on their own through the myriad rooms of the mysterious warehouse space, a different story going on behind every door and down each hallway. Don’t look for a linear narrative, although there are elements of Shakespeare’s Macbeth scattered about. Many of the rooms contain notebooks, diaries, postcards, letters, medical texts, and other paraphernalia that point toward the McKittrick, which was built in 1939 but shut down shortly thereafter, having been the site for some very questionable scientific experimentation, but don’t get too lost in that either. There are several ways to proceed through this spectacularly immersive theatrical experience; while some visitors prefer to go from room to room and floor to floor more or less in order, others select a character and follow him or her as they meet up with other characters, pause in a room to offer more personal hints at what’s going on, or coax a guest behind closed doors.

Although we strongly suggest you get the early tickets and stay the entire three hours, you still won’t see everything, but don’t worry about that. Just catch what you can and let yourself get swept up in all the action, which includes contemporary dance, fighting, a bloody bath, detective work, interrogation, poisoning, nightclub performances, a fab dinner party, and virtually no dialogue. Punchdrunk artistic director Felix Barrett and choreographer Maxine Doyle’s lighting, Barrett, Livi Vaughan, and Beatrice Minns’s sets, and Stephen Dobbie’s sound design combine to create a dark, spooky mood that is exhilarating and intoxicating. And the more you put into it, the more you get out of it; be adventurous, wear comfortable shoes, and try not to bring a bag, backpack, or coat, because everything needs to be checked. Advance reservations are a must and are scheduled every fifteen minutes between 7:30 and 8:30 Monday through Thursday and 7:00 to 8:00 and 11:00 to midnight on Friday and Saturday. A collaboration between Punchrunk and Emursive, Sleep No More was a hit in London and Boston before becoming New York City’s must-see theatrical event.

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Silvia Costa’s LA QUIESCENZA DEL SEME will examine birth and consciousness at the Queer New York International Arts Festival

Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement (and other locations)
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
June 7-15, $20
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.queerny.org

In March 2011, Zvonimir Dobrović, the curator and producer of the Eastern European Perforacije Festival, put together the inaugural American Perforations Festival at Club La MaMa, a collection of eclectic theatrical productions from Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Macedonia. Dobrović, who is also the artistic director of Queer Zagreb, has now teamed up with art historian and independent curator André von Ah to present the first Queer New York International Arts Festival. Taking place June 7-15 primarily at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side, QNYI features multidisciplinary projects that recontextualize and reconsider what constitutes queer art. The opening-night party, held June 7 at the Delancey, includes performances by Carol Pope, Carmelita Tropicana, Eyes Wild Drag, Sarah-Louise Young, Raul de Nieves, Justin Sayre, Kayvon Zand, and others, with DJ sets by JD Samson, DJ R!C, and DJ Malakai. The shows begin with Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte’s Macadamia Nut Brittle, which is inspired by writings by Dennis Cooper and focuses on four characters in search of their identity. In Tadaku Takamine’s Kimura-San installation, the artist documents how he cared for a paraplegic, including sexually. In Auto + Batterie, David Wampach uses dissonant music, live drumming, extreme choreography, and whipped cream to bring together sound and movement. In Guintche, a drawing by Marlene Monteiro Freitas explodes into life and becomes unstoppable. Silvia Costa of Plumes dans la tête examines birth and not-birth in La Quiescenza del seme. Igor Josifov’s 2-Dimensional reconfigures performer and audience, as people walk over the Macedonian artist, who is trapped under a plexiglass structure. Body parts figure significantly throughout the festival; François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea look deep into “a reflection of the denial of the anus in dance” in Paquerette at the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, while Biljana Kosmogina’s ‘P’ Campaign follows the exploits of the presidential candidate Vagina. And East Village Boys are hosting the art exhibit “For personal use” June 7-16 at the Impossible Project, with specially commissioned works by Mx Justin Vivian Bond, Jeff Hahn, Jayson Keeling, Josh McNey, and others.

MY CHILDREN! MY AFRICA!

Athol Fugard play looks at growing unrest in South Africa and the call for liberation over education (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through June 17, $25 through June 10, $75 after
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

The year of Athol Fugard, who will turn eighty on June 11, continues with the captivating My Children! My Africa! Following the Roundabout production of The Road to Mecca and the Signature revival of Blood Knot, the latter is now also staging the South African playwright’s 1989 work, set five years earlier in an Eastern Cape Karoo town soon to be under siege. A white teenager named Isabel (Allie Gallerani), who comes from a wealthy family, is debating Thami (Stephen Tyrone Williams), a black teen, about women’s rights, specifically regarding education. The battle takes place in a classroom run by the inspiring teacher Mr. M (James A. Williams). Impressed by each of their performances, Mr. M asks them to team up for a public contest on nineteenth-century English poetry, an idea to which they both heartily agree despite the rare mixing of the races. But their training sessions are soon interrupted by growing unrest in the Location, where black students are preparing to march for liberation over education, pitting Thami against both Mr. M and Isabel, although for different reasons, leading to a surprising and shocking climax. Echoing the simmering anti-Apartheid movement that would soon explode, My Children! My Africa! serves as a microcosm of that revolutionary moment in time, in which the younger generation fought with the older generation and whites and blacks were enemies. Directed by Tony Award-winning actor, writer, and director Ruben Santiago-Hudson and featuring interstitial music by Bobby McFerrin, the play gives each actor the opportunity to deliver a long soliloquy directly to the audience, explaining who they are and what they stand for, without being didactic and obvious; the show often teeters just on the edge of clichédom but only crosses the line in the very last, wholly unnecessary scene. Otherwise, My Children! My Africa! is a stirring, beautifully acted examination of fading tradition, racial and class tension, and the inherent value of a good education.