this week in theater

HOWL! FESTIVAL 2012

Street artists will surround Tompkins Square Park with colorful murals during the Howl! Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tompkins Square Park
Ave. A to Ave. B between Seventh & Tenth Sts.
June 2-3, free
www.howlfestival.com

The Howl! Festival returned last night to Tompkins Square Park, where it continues this weekend with a flurry of music, poetry, dance, theater, art, and “madness.” Today, as 140 artists create murals on canvases that surround the park, such groups as the Disco Monkeys and the Bowery Tones will play on the south stag. On the north stage, Honeybee House, the TriBattery Pops, Tap City, and Lydon will perform for children. Also for little ones, the Great Howl! Out Loud Kids’ Carnival will feature carnival games, arts and crafts, storytelling, and other activities. At the basketball court area, Bandera Fever! celebrates Puerto Rican heritage with Dao Y El Grupo Cemi, BombaYo, Elani Rodriguez, John Acevedo AKA Chance, J. F. Seary, Dinamicas, Senior Bomba & Plena Dancers from Grand Street Settlement, and a domino tournament. Super DJ Johnny Dynell will lead the Hot Howl! Disco Tea Dance near the General Slocum Memorial from 2:00 to 5:00, the Vangeline Theatre will perform The Raft of the Medusa, and Derrick Pendavis Xtravaganza will lead the unpredictable “Men in Skirts” dance presentation at 5:30. On Sunday, Hip Hop Howl, the Deans of Discipline, the Sic Fucks, and Bear 54, will be on the main stage, Rosie’s Theater Kids, Danny Hartig, Honeybee House, and Jack Skuller will be on the kids’ north stage, Bandera Fever! will continue with a Cultural Rumba Jam, and the festival will conclude with “Low Life 6: East Village Others,” paying tribute to the Fugs song “Nova Slum Goddess (from the Lower East Side),” Jack Smith, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the Fillmore East, Allen Ginsberg, and other old standards from the East Village circa 1966-72.

POST PLASTICA

POST PLASTICA is a multimedia collaboration between PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio

El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
May 31 – June 3, $20, 7:30
212-352-3101
www.ps122.org

PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio have joined forces to present the multimedia performance Post Plastica, a virtual fantasy that imagines the future of art as well as the world itself. Created by sisters Ela Troyano and Alina Troyano, who is also known as Carmelita Tropicana, Post Plastica stars Tropicana as a woman who gets a Botox injection that puts her in a coma, sending her off on an adventure that includes a woman-bear scientist played by Becca Blackwell (Untitled Feminist Show) and the title character, played by Erin Markey (Green Eyes). A mix of video and live performance, Post Plastica features production design by Aliza Shvarts, costumes by Yail Romagoza, lighting by Chris Hudacs, and projections by Uzi Parnes. Each evening will be preceded by a special event at El Museo beginning at 6:00, including an exhibit of stereoscopic imagery by Richard Pell on May 31, the lecture/demonstration “Meet the Celebrity” with Fufurufu and Nao Bustamente on June 1, an “Urban Beekeeping” discussion with Guillermo Fernandez and Jennifer Monson on June 2, and the “Normal Is Good” interview between Shvars and Romagoza on June 3.

END OF THE RAINBOW

Peter Quilter’ss END OF THE RAINBOW tells the poignant story of Judy Garland’s last stand

Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through November 11, $31.50 – $126.50
www.endoftherainbowbroadway.com

In 2005, British playwright Peter Quilter scored big with a pair of Olivier Award-nominated musical dramas based on real performers. Glorious! told the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, the worst singer in the world. The other, End of the Rainbow, delved into what essentially turned out to be Judy Garland’s last stand as she tried to regain her status as one of the best, most beloved entertainers on the planet. Tony and Drama Desk-nominated Tracie Bennett makes an electrifying Broadway debut as Garland, who arrives at the Ritz Hotel in London to prepare for a five-week engagement at the Talk of the Town in December 1968. She’s joined by her much younger manager and fiancé, Mickey Deans (Tom Pelphrey), and her pianist, Anthony (Tony nominee Michael Cumpsty), who makes reference to a previous disaster five years earlier in Sidney. As she battles her addictions to pills and alcohol, Garland refuses to see just how desperate her financial situation is, playing diva to the full as everything threatens to fall apart around her. Bennett is sensational as Garland, effortlessly shifting between poignant scenes in the hotel room and dazzling ― and purposefully not-so-dazzling ― performances of such standards as “The Man That Got Away,” “Come Rain or Shine,” “The Trolley Song,” “Just in Time,” and “When You’re Smiling.” The back wall of William Dudley’s elegant hotel room set occasionally rises, revealing a live band and converting the space into a nightclub, with Garland playing to the audience as she sings the classic tunes, sometimes grasping the microphone like it’s her lover, at other times getting tangled in it like it’s trying to strangle her. Although only forty-seven at the time, Garland looked twenty years older at the end of her life, ravaged by childhood stardom, a series of failed marriages she constantly refers to, and her various addictions, and the fifty-year-old Bennett embodies that telling discrepancy with both grace and humility. Quilter and director Terry Johnson (La Cage au Folles) explore whether Deans was a money-hungry enabler or a truly caring husband-to-be, while the fictional character of Anthony just might be Garland’s only true friend. End of the Rainbow is a deliciously dishy yet ultimately intimate and painful look at the end of an American legend.

THE FESTIVAL OF RUSSIAN ARTS

Yuri Kara’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA is part of Russian festival examining literature, film, and more

Multiple locations throughout Manhattan
Through June 6
Admission: free
causaartium.org

The inaugural Festival of Russian Arts is under way, comprising special events around the city through June 6. Officially subtitled “New York’s Entry into the Rich and Dynamic World of Russian Art and Culture,” the festival includes film screenings, literary readings, panel discussions, and receptions. On Saturday, May 26, at 4:00, playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich, translator John Freedman, and director Tamilla Woodard will participate in “I Won! A Staged Reading and Open Discussion” at the Little Times Square Theatre, featuring a pair of one-act, one-woman shows, I Won! and Natasha’s Dream. On May 29 at 5:30, Pulinovich will join Irina Bogatyreva, Polina Klyukina, and moderator Jenny Lyn Bader for the talk “Shattered Icons: The Demise of Heroes in America and Russia” at the New York Public Library’s Berger Forum. On May 31, Cathy Nepomnyashchy will lead the discussion “Writers at the Flashpoint: New Russian Writing & the Riddle of the Caucasus” at the Connor Room at the Mid-Manhattan Library with Arslan Khasavov, Alisa Ganieva, and Sergei Shargunov. From June 1 to June 6, “Diverging Perspectives: Filming Russian Literature in Russia and in the West” will screen various versions of such literary classics as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (by Richard Brooks, Petr Zelenka, and Ivan Pyryev), Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat (by Alberto Lattuada, Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, Aleksey Batalov, and Michael McCarthy), and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (by Yuri Kara, Paul Bryers, and Andrzej Wajda) at the Tribeca Grand Cinema and the NYU Cantor Film Center, with talks before and after most presentations. On June 2, Martin Amis and Olga Slavnikova will discuss “Side by Side: A Conversation with Writers from Different Worlds” in the NYPL’s South Court Auditorium, moderated by Leonard Lopate. All events are free and open to the public.

ADRIENNE WESTWOOD: RECORD

Adrienne Westwood’s RECORD uses the LP to explore time, space, and memory (photo by Seth Easter)

One Arm Red
10 Jay St., ninth floor
May 24-27, $15
718-222-1601
www.onearmred.com
www.adriennewestwood.com

Adrienne Westwood’s evening-length multimedia dance piece Record explores memory, much as the joy of listening to vinyl LPs is a memory to many (and a mystery to others). Collaborating with sound artist Jim Briggs III and designer Seth Easter, Westwood, the Brooklyn-based cofounder of VIA Dance Collaboration (Lullaby in Surrealism, Beside: Ourselves), says of Record, “When you enter the room with the record player, it is playing a song you have never heard. Yet, it sounds familiar. The tone of it tells you it is old. The scratchiness tells you of its history. And since none of us know the song, we know the record wasn’t ours. It never belonged to us. It has brought with it the traces of those we don’t know.” Conceived and choreographed by Westwood, the work, running May 24-27 at Brooklyn’s One Arm Red, incorporates live video, projected images, directional audio, childhood toys, and, yes, a record player; the show is performed by Jung-eun Kim, Lauren Bakst, Julia Kelly, Kathryn Logan, Helen Simoneau, Jacob Slominski, and Katie Swords. On Friday and Saturday, One Arm Red will also present 3 Sticks Theatre Company’s Paper Plane,, along with special performances by AH! HA! Physical Theater and the Iris Ensemble; admission is pay-what-you-can.

TRIBES

TRIBES examines language and communication in a severely dysfunctional family

Barrow Street Theatre
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Through September 2, $75-$95
barrowstreettheatre.com

Nominated for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Director by the Drama Desk, Nina Raine’s Tribes is an intimate examination of communication, language, and family. Originally presented at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2010, Tribes delves into the trials and tribulations of a wildly dysfunctional family that emerge when prodigal son Billy (Russell Harvard) suddenly returns home. Although Billy was born deaf, his parents, Christopher (Jeff Perry) and Beth (Mare Winningham), tried not to raise him differently, deciding not to have him learn sign language or be treated as if he has a handicap. Back home, Billy reconnects with his brother, Daniel (Will Brill), a bitter, ne’er-do-well wannabe writer, and his sister, Ruth (Gayle Rankin), who has dreams of becoming an opera singer, while his father spouts off against the establishment and his mother attempts to improbably keep the peace. But when Billy meets Sylvia (Susan Pourfar), a young woman who is slowly losing her hearing because of a genetic condition, he takes a closer look at his upbringing and doesn’t like what he sees. Tribes is a searing, poignant drama that takes place around a central table surrounded on all four sides by the audience, as if the crowd is part of the characters’ extended family. Director David Cromer (Orson’s Shadow, When the Rain Stops Falling) makes excellent use of the tiny space, which subtly references the claustrophobic nature of this rather unwelcoming, extremely selfish and self-absorbed family, then takes things to another level in a series of later scenes that ingeniously explore the world of the deaf. Tribes is a splendid achievement, one of the best plays of the year on or off Broadway.

SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK

SPIDER-MAN flies both high and low on Broadway

Foxwoods Theatre
213 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 4, $77.50 – $157.50
spidermanonbroadway.marvel.com

Forget about all the controversy, the delayed official openings, the injuries to performers from equipment problems, the departure of original director Julie Taymor, and all of the other bizarre elements that made Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark the talk of Broadway for months and months on end. What it all really comes down to is this: Is it any good? And the answer is a resounding: No, it’s not really very good at all. The big-budget musical about a teenage science geek who suddenly becomes a superhero is an overblown spectacle with forgettable music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge, a meandering book by Taymor, Glen Berger, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, and an uncomfortable mix of low-budget DIY staging and high-tech gadgetry. Reeve Carney stars as Peter Parker, a nerdy kid who is bitten by a spider while on a school trip to the lab of cutting-edge scientist Norman Osborn (Drama Desk-nominated Patrick Page). Peter quickly develops special powers that soon find him soaring over the Big Apple, protecting New York City from evil. Like every superhero, he needs an arch villain, who arrives in the form of the Green Goblin (Page), the result of one of Osborn’s experiments gone terribly wrong. As the Green Goblin and his Sinister Six ― Swarm (Drew Heflin), the Lizard (Julius C. Carter), Electro (Maxx Reed), Kraven the Hunter (Emmanuel Brown), Carnage (Adam Roberts), and Swiss Miss (Reed Kelly) ― terrorize the city, Spider-Man must choose between fighting crime or settling down with the love of his life, Mary Jane Watson (Rebecca Faulkenberry).

There are some dazzling moments ― director Philip Wm. McKinley and choreographers Daniel Ezralow and Chase Brock do a wonderful job introducing Arachne (Christina Sajous) and her small contingent, who magically descend from above on fabulously flapping fabric inspired by weaving techniques, and an unfolding Chrysler Building is breathtaking ― but most of the scenes are flat and uninspired. Even the justly celebrated flying gets played out and repetitive, and the supposed showstopping act two opener, “A Freak Like Me Needs Company,” in which the Green Goblin introduces his crew of baddies, insultingly breaks down the barrier between performer and audience, a mistake from which it never recovers. Nominated for two Tonys (for Best Scenic Design and Best Costume Design of a Musical), Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which recently welcomed its one millionth visitor, is unable to break free from a tangled web of its own making. (In honor of the show’s two Tony nominations, the first one hundred people with the name Anthony, Tony, Antoinette, Toni, Antonia, or Antonio who come to the Foxwoods Theatre box office on June 4 at 10:00 am will receive a coupon for a pair of free tickets to the Sunday matinee on June 10.)