this week in theater

BETTER RED THAN DEAD? COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE AT MCC THEATER

A three-person choir (Grace McLean, Suzzy Roche, and Nina Ross) has important information to share with Meek (Alana Raquel Bowers) and Smooch (Will Cobbs) in Cold War Choir Practice (photo by Maria Baranova)

COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE
Newman Mills Theater
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space
511 West Fifty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 5, $35-$85
mcctheater.org

Ro Reddick dreams up a red Christmas in her Susan Smith Blackburn Prize–winning fresh, delightfully dark comedy Cold War Choir Practice. Afsoon Pajoufar’s set, a Roll-a-Rama in Syracuse in December 1987, is bathed in red, Brenda Abbandandolo’s costumes of the three-person choir are red, the holiday lights and neon sign are red, the program is red, even the Christmas tree is red.

Better red than dead?

Meek (Alana Raquel Bowers) is a forward-thinking ten-year-old girl in a choir with three grown women (Grace McLean, Suzzy Roche, and Nina Ross) who sing such lyrics as “Reaganomics, / cold war, Soviets, supply-side, Wellspring, / nuclear war, eighty-seven, armageddon! / Merry merry merry merry merry merry! Ah!”

For Christmas, Meek, who helps her father, Smooch (Will Cobbs), at the roller disco he owns and operates, wants “a pound puppy, a Speak & Spell, and a nuclear radiation detector.” Smooch, struggling to keep the business out of the red, is not concerned with geopolitics as much as just getting by every day. He tells the audience, “You think I ain’t notice Meek the only one of us up in this little choir? PSSHHH up in here beggin’: ‘Mister president, please. Please, mister president’ — what kind of song is that? You need to be tellin that muhfuckr: ‘We want freedom. We want employment. We want education’ — That’s three lyrics right there, got seven more ready to go.”

Smooch’s mother, Puddin (Lizan Mitchell), hangs around the rink, sharing her thoughts with the choir about the state of the world while focusing on finances. “Y’all might wanna find something more positive to sing. And no. I do not have any money, so don’t even fix ya mouth to ask,” she says. “You gon’ be charging folks, you need to put a little more effort into them lyrics — and don’t fall on that ice! I know ya mama don’t got good insurance — I seen her car. Don’t nothin’ get past Puddin — see now you got me lettin’ all the heat out.”

Smooch’s estranged brother, Clay (Andy Lucien), a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who recently denigrated the family in the New York Times, calls unexpectedly, telling Puddin that is being ushered to Washington for an important meeting and needs to drop off his wife, Virgie (Crystal Finn), to stay with the family while he’s away. Virgie is in a kind of daze; Clay and Virgie believed she was at a Wellspring Women’s Optimization Workshop, but it turned out to be a Russian indoctrination camp, although neither of them knows that. Smooch doesn’t want to do any favors for Clay and Virgie, but Clay trumpets his importance at being needed at a secret treaty meeting, for which he is carrying critical classified documents in his briefcase that Virgie has been programmed to steal.

Meanwhile, Meek gets a Soviet pen pal through the choir leader (Ellen Winter, who is also the Roll-a-Rama DJ), who sends her a Speak & Spell that teaches her the Russian words for “revolution” and “government official” and apparently comes with a spy (Ross) who tells the girl, “I have a friend, a very good friend. She wants to meet you. She will tell you what it is you can do for Mother Russia. And if you agree, you will come and live in peace in Ural Mountains with your family.”

The plot unfurls with such choir songs as “Milkshake for Peace,” “Lay Down Your Arms,” and “One America,” interspersed with news reports and quotes from Ronald Reagan (“In the Communist world, we see failure.” “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”) as the choir prepares for a holiday concert — which will be exactly twenty-eight minutes, since it takes thirty minutes for a Soviet long-range ICBM to reach America — and the battle over the briefcase gets serious.

Meek (Alana Raquel Bowers) gets more than just a Speak & Spell for Christmas (photo by Maria Baranova)

A coproduction from MCC, Clubbed Thumb, and Page 73, Cold War Choir Practice was inspired by Reddick’s childhood, when she was in a children’s choir that sang about nuclear war and world peace. The play became her thesis at Brown and has been extended at the Newman Mills Theater through April 5.

Directed with a sharp edge and incisive humor by Tony nominee Knud Adams (English), Cold War Choir Practice is an involving, intriguing, and thoroughly enjoyable ninety-five minutes that feel as relevant as ever, considering what is happening right now with the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, and other nations. The play is one of several current or recent shows staring down the face of communism from the 1980s to today, including Mother Russia, Chess, and Seagull: True Story.

Bowers (Chicken & Biscuits), who is in her early thirties, is a genuine delight as Meek, an intelligent, if innocent, young girl who is cheerful even as she worries about the future. When Virgie thinks that Meek is more concerned with nuclear proliferation than school, Meek says, “After armageddon there won’t be any schools. Our toys will be the bones of the dead, slick with blood and warm with radiation.”

Finn (Deep Blue Sound) has a field day as Virgie, an at-times catatonic woman who has lost control of her mind. Cobbs (Is This a Room) and Lucien (The Last Seder) excel as the very different battling brothers, Smooch ready, willing, and able to fight for his rights, Clay satisfied to be in the room where it happens.

McLean (Suffs), Roche (the Roches, the Wooster Group), and Ross (To Kill a Mockingbird) are fun and bouncy as the choir, which serves as a kind of Greek chorus, with a fine if underused Winter (The Beastiary) as their leader. And Mitchell (On Sugarland) takes over every scene she’s in as the lovable Puddin, who pulls no punches, saying whatever is on her mind.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin may not exactly be Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, but nuclear war is back in the discussion and it’s getting uglier by the day; thank goodness we have such shows as Cold War Choir Practice to let us see it through the eyes of a child.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LIVING FOREVER: SPARE PARTS AT THEATRE ROW

Assistant professor Chris Coffey (Rob McClure) swabs billionaire Zeit Smith (Michael Genet) as grad student Jeffrey Jordan (Matt Walker) watches and Smith assistant Ivan Shelley (Jonny-James Kajoba) checks his phone in Spare Parts (photo by Russ Rowland)

SPARE PARTS
Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 30, $39-$89
www.sparepartsplay.com
www.theatrerow.org

In January, Elon Musk told Peter Diamandis on the Moonshots podcast, “You’re preprogrammed to die. And so if you change the program, you will live longer.” A week later, at Davos, he said that aging is a “very solvable problem.”

That’s the concept behind David J. Glass’s gripping biotech thriller, Spare Parts, a true sleeper making its world premiere through April 30 at Theatre Row.

“I want to live,” self-made billionaire Zeit Smith (Michael Genet) tells his assistant, Ivan Shelley (Jonny-James Kajoba), about halfway through the show. “I feel mortality creeping up on me.” Zeit, who is in his early sixties, has dangerously high blood pressure and is at risk of a stroke, motivating him to do something before his time runs out.

Zeit and Ivan recruit Columbia professor Chris Coffey (Rob McClure) and his grad student, Jeffrey Jordan (Matt Walker), to try to make life extension a reality, at any cost. While Jeff is instantly interested, Chris is hesitant, insisting they follow ethical guidelines accepted by the university and scientific community and resist the whims of a rich tech bro, relying on government grants instead — money that is rapidly disappearing. Zeit is all about breaking the rules and doing whatever is necessary to get what he wants. But Chris reconsiders when Zeit offers them salaries of one million dollars apiece and a five-million-dollar budget.

Chris: The money doesn’t mean anything, Jeff, if it stops us from doing what we should be doing. All these great scientists have been taking cash from these guys, and then working on nonsense. Nonsense. I want to work on what really matters — so we’ll make progress.
Jeff: Chris, how can we make progress without any funding at all?
Chris: . . . This is why government funding exists — to keep big money out of things . . . so that scientists can just focus on figuring out the truth.
Jeff: Nice story. How is that working out?

Soon the four men are discussing a two-way plasma exchange in which Zeit would be connected to a younger person so they can exchange blood; the theory is that the younger blood would extend Zeit’s life, but they’re not sure what would happen to the donor — and Zeit doesn’t care.

“This is really the most psychotic thing I’ve ever heard,” Chris tells Jeff privately. But they proceed, attempting to find a match for Zeit and go ahead with the procedure.

David J. Glass’s Spare Parts is a gripping biotech thriller (photo by Russ Rowland)

Novels, movies, and television shows have long explored the issue of longevity and immortality, using science fiction and horror in such works as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the Twilight Zone episode “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross,” Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. (Perhaps that’s why Glass gives Ivan the last name “Shelley” in the script, although it is never mentioned in the play itself.) The 2025 Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever follows tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson as he spends millions of dollars fighting the aging process.

One of the scariest things about Spare Parts is that the science is real; plasmapheresis and plasma exchange are already happening, but not to make humans live forever — or at least not yet. Glass is a biomedical scientist who is vice president of research at a pharmaceutical company, a senior lecturer at Harvard, an adjunct professor of genetics and development at Columbia, and author of Experimental Design for Biologists. His previous play, Love + Science, was about two gay medical students during the AIDS crisis and also starred Walker, who trained at Juilliard before studying neurobiology at Harvard and pursuing his PhD at Columbia as a National Science Foundation fellow.

Superbly directed by Michael Herwitz (Job, Cold Water), Spare Parts has much in common with Data, Matthew Libby’s chilling play about the ethics surrounding AI. Both ask questions about money, power, government, and technology in an ever-more-precarious world. Just because humans are able to do something never before thought possible doesn’t mean we should.

Scott Penner’s impressive set features two small labs on either side of a central section that has oddly shaped small sculptural chairs, somewhat evoking chess pieces, on a thick white shag carpet in front of a large oval screen on the back wall that gently changes pastel colors, representing Zeit’s all-knowing AI named George; the expert sound, by Ryan Gamblin, includes interstitial techno-drone music; the lighting is by Zack Lobel, with costumes by Amanda Roberge, from casual wear to slapdash professor suits and white lab coats.

Two-time tony nominee McClure (Mrs. Doubtfire Chaplin) is touchingly understated representing the old guard not ready yet to break the mold, Kajoba (Oratorio for Living Things, Twelfth Night) brings a sweet charm to the extremely competent but underappreciated assistant, Genet (A Few Good Men, Choir Boy) is bold and magnetic as the billionaire who thinks the world is his to do with as he wishes, and Walker (The Play That Goes Wrong) is charismatic and engaging as a young man willing to push boundaries, personally and professionally.

Glass takes on current issues with a mix of solemnity and humor without becoming didactic, cleverly hitting his targets, although he can’t help but throw in this one-liner from Zeit, who, like a certain someone, is from Queens: “You hear a guy has some money, so you immediately think he wants to put his name on a building?”

In this case, the billionaire is seeking a very different kind of legacy.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THERE WILL BE BLOOD: RED BULL’S TITUS ANDRONICUS SPURTS AND SPLATTERS AT THE SIGNATURE

Patrick Page stars as the title war hero in Red Bull’s Titus Andronicus (photo by Carol Rosegg)

TITUS ANDRONICUS
The Pershing Square Signature Center
Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 3, $49-$129
www.redbulltheater.com

On my way into the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Signature Center to see Red Bull’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s rarely performed Roman play Titus Andronicus, I saw the company’s always-smiling founding artistic director, Jesse Berger, who was greeting ticket holders by the doors. I told him how much I had enjoyed the troupe’s 2016 production of Coriolanus at Barrow Street, a bloody and violent retelling of another of the Bard’s seldom-staged plays, and how terrific Patrick Page was in it, portraying the peace-seeking mediator Menenius Agrippa.

I pointed at the poster for Titus Andronicus, which depicts Page, who plays the title character, in a chef’s hat, surrounded by blood.

I said to Jesse, the director of the new show, “Looks like you’re promising sharp knives and lots of blood again.”

He responded, “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

I wasn’t.

The Goths seek revenge after an execution in bloody Shakespeare adaptation (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Red Bull’s Titus Andronicus is a glorious triumph, a bloody and violent — and hilarious — tale of power and revenge involving two warring sides, the Andronici and the Goths. A handy family tree is included in the program to help identify who’s who, although the narrative makes that clear as well.

The plot unfolds in an indeterminate time; the language is all Shakespeare’s, but there are guns, Budweiser tallboys, wristwatches, military and modern dress, sneakers, a paperback of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and a hardbound copy of Alexandre Dumas’s 1846 novel The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the most famous revenge tales ever written. Beowulf Boritt’s set features about a dozen rounded pillars; the actors occasionally bring chairs and tables on and off and wander through the aisles and in the balcony, and there is a small trapdoor that serves multiple purposes.

The emperor has died, and his eldest son, Saturninus (Matthew Amendt), declares to the people that he will assume the throne, but his younger brother, Bassianus (Howard W. Overshown), believes that there should be a free and fair election, and the tribune Marcia Andronicus (Enid Graham) makes a case for her brother, Titus, a returning war hero, to become emperor. Bassianus is engaged to Titus’s only daughter, Lavinia (Olivia Reis), and knows that his brother is a vain, childish man unlikely to be a worthy ruler.

Titus then arrives with his three remaining sons, who all fought bravely in the war: Lucius (Anthony Michael Lopez), Mutius Valentine (Anthony Michael Martinez), and Quintus (Zack Lopez Roa). They are followed by five chained prisoners: Tamora (Francesca Faridany), queen of the Goths; her three sons, Alarbus (Blair Baker), Chiron (Jesse Aaronson), and Demetrius (Adam Langdon); and her secret lover, Aaron (McKinley Belcher III), a Moor. Titus announces that Alarbus, the queen’s eldest son, will be sacrificed as punishment for the Goths’ treachery and the death of three of Titus’s sons.

Tamora begs for mercy with a heart-wrenching plea: “Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome, / To beautify thy triumphs and return / Captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke, / But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets / For valiant doings in their country’s cause? / O, if to fight for king and commonweal / Were piety in thine, it is in these. / Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? / Draw near them then in being merciful. / Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge. / Thrice noble Titus, spare my first-born son.”

Alarbus is then slain, his blood spurting on one of the pillars.

Titus surprises everyone by declining to seek the throne, throwing his support to Saturninus, who immediately accepts and proclaims that Lavinia will be his bride, even though she is betrothed to his brother. Titus agrees to give her to the new emperor, but Lavinia and Bassianus refuse, and Saturninus instead chooses Tamora for his bride, setting in motion a series of brutal, vengeful atrocities, each side trying to outdo the other in violent displays that splatter the pillars and floor with more and more blood.

Titus Andronicus (Patrick Page) leads a hunt for the Goths in Jesse Berger’s revelatory adaptation (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Titus Andronicus, which Shakespeare may have cowritten with George Peele and is not based on real history, has been adapted into a major film only once, the 1999 Titus, directed by Julie Taymor and starring Anthony Hopkins as Titus, Jessica Lange as Tamora, Alan Cumming as Saturninus, and Harry Lennix as Aaron. The Public has presented it at the Delacorte as part of its Shakespeare in the Park series only twice, in 1967 and 1989, the former with Jack Hollander, David Birney, Olympia Dukakis, Charles Durning, Moses Gunn, David Clennon, and Raul Julia, the latter with Donald Moffat, Bill Camp, Keith David, Kate Mulgrew, and Rainn Wilson.

Berger (The Government Inspector, Volpone) brings it back to life, directing with a sly hand while mixing a healthy dose of comedy into the fierce carnage, which involves rape and numerous body parts being disconnected from their owners. Amendt (Coriolanus, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore) plays Saturninus as a whiny fool; Belcher, who just starred in Coriolanus at TFANA, winks knowingly several times at the audience, eliciting much-needed and unexpected laughter; Page (All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, Hadestown) imbues Titus’s descent into madness with an occasional Looney Tunes glee; and the spurting of blood and chopped-off limbs are reminiscent of Monty Python’s “Salad Days” sketch, in which a garden party turns into a hilarious massacre as directed by Sam Peckinpah.

But that doesn’t mean that this Titus Andronicus is easy to watch; the rape scene is among the most savage and intense I have ever seen onstage, and no character emerges squeaky clean. Berger has trimmed it down to a lean two hours (plus intermission), and there are a couple of weak links in an otherwise exemplary cast led by the majestic Page, a true New York City treasure, a boldly ferocious Belcher, and a fine Overshown in two roles.

The full design crew deserves kudos, from Boritt’s set, Emily Rebholz’s costumes, and Jiyoun Chang’s lighting to Adam Wernick’s music, Wernick and Shannon Slaton’s sound, and Anya Kutner’s props.

In Taylor Mac’s fun, frenetic 2019 Broadway debut, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Santo Loquasto’s Tony-nominated set was highlighted by a tremendous mound of corpses and body parts. After seeing Red Bull’s Titus Andronicus at the Signature Center, you’ll understand that all the more — and might even be able to identify some of the dead bodies and detached limbs.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MARTHA CLARKE, BETH HENLEY, AND JOHN KELLY BRING HENRY DARGER TO LIFE: BUGHOUSE AT THE VINEYARD

John Kelly stars as Outsider artist Henry Darger in Bughouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)(photo by Carol Rosegg)

BUGHOUSE
Vineyard Theatre
Gertrude and Irving Dimson Theatre
108 East 15th St. between Union Square East & Irving Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 5, $63.72-$118.80
www.vineyardtheatre.org

“Just because there’s questions, that does not mean there are answers,” Kiyoko Lerner, Henry Darger’s last landlady and caretaker of his art, says in Jessica Yu’s 2004 documentary In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger.

The same can be said about Bughouse, an intriguing play about Darger (pronounced with a hard g) conceived and directed by Martha Clarke, written by Beth Henley, and starring solo specialist and downtown legend John Kelly.

An isolated, reclusive, hard-edged man, Darger died in a Chicago nursing home on April 13, 1973, at the age of eighty-one. He never married and had no children. His mother died when he was three after giving birth to a daughter who was put up for adoption. His disabled father, an easygoing tailor, was moved to a poorhouse when Henry was eight; the boy was first sent to an orphanage, then to the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children.

He later worked as a hospital janitor and seems to have had only one friend, an immigrant named William Schloeder.

But he left behind a remarkable legacy in his cramped Chicago apartment. Amid piles and piles of newspapers, magazines, books, religious icons, clippings, a crank record player, a radio, a handmade “No Smoking” sign, and art supplies, Kiyoko and her husband, Nathan, discovered large-scale watercolors, a five-thousand-page memoir, a six-volume weather journal, and the fifteen-thousand-page illustrated novel The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, an epic fantasy set on a different planet, where the Abbieannians, led by the seven Vivian Girls, battle the Glandelinians over their enslavement of children. It was in part inspired by the 1911 abduction of Elsie Paroubek, who Darger transforms into the heroic Annie Aronburg.

Two-time Obie winner Clarke (Angel Reapers, The Garden of Earthly Delights) and Pulitzer winner Henley (Crimes of the Heart, The Miss Firecracker Contest) incorporate those elements and more into Bughouse, which includes Darger sharing his story directly with the audience, typing out his autobiography to prerecorded dialogue, and talking to visions he sees in windows and mirrors. He trudges around his apartment with a slight limp, muttering to himself about history and the weather and relating tales from his past. “Why have you not answered my prayers?” he asks God at the very beginning.

The voices of the Vivian Girls often deliver quotes from Darger’s novel. “I have received warnings that I am in danger of assassination, but as horrible as it is to be murdered in cold blood, I defy my enemies before God to do it,” Annie says. One of the other girls tells him, “All Blengiglomenean Serpents are the greatest lovers of children of all nations, whether good or bad, and children of bad nations have been carried away by these enormous creatures so that their souls would not be ruined by the sinful ways of the government or their parents.”

When Darger talks about his life, black-and-white footage of the Chicago street outside are projected in the back windows. When the girls speak, animated depictions of them, based on Darger’s art, float around the set, their voices emanating from speakers placed throughout the theater. Storms occasionally rattle the space. The lighting is by Christopher Akerlind, with sound by Arthur Solari, projections by John Narun, cinematography by Fred Murphy, and animation by Ruth Lingford. The exquisite set and props are by Neil Patel and Faye Armon-Troncoso, re-creating the controlled chaos of Darger’s strange world.

Bughouse re-creates a day in the life of Henry Darger (John Kelly) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Kelly, a multimedia artist and performer who has portrayed Egon Schiele in Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte, Caravaggio in The Escape Artist, Joni Mitchell in Paved Paradise, Antonin Artaud in Life of Cruelty, and Samuel Steward in Underneath the Skin, embodies Darger with an air of creepy mystery and unsettling angst; Darger is not a man most people would want to spend a lot of time with, and mercifully the play is barely more than an hour.

But as creative as Clarke, Henley, and Kelly are, the play is likely to be difficult for those who don’t know much about Darger. In the lobby are cards that share information about the Vivian Girls and Darger’s life, which are recommended reading for audience members who know little or nothing about either. We never get to see the real images Darger drew, only animated versions, nor his handwriting, which lends insight into his character. The play also forces connections between Darger’s personal experiences and his art, but they are not as direct as Clarke and Henry posit.

I’ve been to several Darger exhibitions and saw the documentary when it came out, and they all left me feeling a combination of disgusted, confused, and blown away by Darger’s sheer talent; unfortunately, the play does not zero in enough on his extraordinary artistic abilities.

The show’s art history consultant, Michael Bonesteel, contributes a biographical program note in which he writes, “Henry Darger is viewed today as probably the greatest Outsider artist in the art brut canon. He was an autodidactic world-builder of the first order and the ultimate poster child for savant syndrome. He will be remembered as an indomitable creative genius who, single-handedly and against all odds, imaginatively transformed his tragic, impoverished life into a mythic wonderland within the confines of his one-and-a-half-room boardinghouse flat.”

You won’t learn much of that from the play itself, but spending an hour in the presence of Kelly is always worthwhile.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

KILLING AN EVENING WITH EDGAR ALLAN POE: JOHN KEVIN JONES RETURNS TO MERCHANT’S HOUSE WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

John Kevin Jones pays tribute to Edgar Allan Poe at historic Merchant’s House Museum (photo by Joey Stocks)

KILLING AN EVENING WITH EDGAR ALLAN POE
Merchant’s House Museum
29 East Fourth St. between Lafayette St. and the Bowery
March 25 – April 5, $65-$75
merchantshouse.org
summonersensemble.org

John Kevin Jones is back for his annual residency at the historic Merchant’s House Museum on East Fourth St. with Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe: Murder at the Merchant’s House. Jones has gained a kind of cult fan club for his unique one-man shows, which also include his unique version of A Christmas Carol at the historic museum, a home built in 1831-32 that was occupied continuously by the Tredwell family from 1835 to 1933. The nineteenth century feels very present in the house, which was one of the first twenty buildings to gain landmark status under the city’s 1965 law and functions as a museum, preserving the Tredwell family’s furnishings as they would have appeared when Poe, coincidentally, lived nearby for a time at 85 West Third St. and later in a cottage in the Bronx. Dressed in nineteenth-century-style jacket, vest, top hat, and ascot, Jones celebrates Edgar Allan Poe with three of his most popular writings, preceded by short introductions about each work and Poe’s career.

Forty people are squeezed into the Tredwells’ candlelit double parlor — with a coffin at one end and a dining table at the other — and Jones walks up and down the narrow space between, where the audience is seated on three sides, boldly delivering several classic Poe tales of treachery and murder, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Angel of the Odd,” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” from memory. His deep, theatrical voice resonates through the room as he catches the eye of audience members, adding yet more chills and thrills to the mystery in the air. He then sits down with a book for the long poem “The Raven,” evoking the great Poe actor Vincent Price. Jones, director Dr. Rhonda Dodd, and stage manager Dan Renkin, the leaders of Summoners Ensemble Theatre, keep the focus on Poe’s remarkable narrative technique; you might be watching one man, but you’ll feel like you’re seeing each of Poe’s characters in vivid detail.

Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe runs March 25 through April 5, and for select performances there will be a “Raise a Glass to Edgar” preshow reception option ($30) in which Jones will recite “Annabel Lee” and “Alone,” Natalia “Saw Lady” Paruz will perform, and the kitchen, family room, and garden will be open. In addition, medium Heather Carlucci will give psychic readings after both Sunday shows.

There is also a concerted public effort to save the Merchant’s House from construction next door that could negatively impact its structural future; find out how you can help here.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

INAUGURAL COFFEE HOUSE FRIDAY LUNCH AT THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB WITH RODD CYRUS AND CARL RAYMOND

Who: Rodd Cyrus, Carl Raymond
What: Inaugural Friday lunch conversation
Where: The Coffee House at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South
When: Friday, March 20, $85, 11:30 am
Why: Back in November, I wrote in a Substack post about meeting actor Rodd Cyrus after seeing Ragtime at Lincoln Center; I was there with a group of women from Wellesley organized by Rodd’s mother. Cyrus plays Harry Houdini, who enters by dangling on a wire and declaring, “He made his mother proud.”

Now you can meet Cyrus as well when he is the special guest at the inaugural Coffee House Club lunch at the National Arts Club. He will be interviewed by writer, lecturer, tour guide, and social and culinary historian Carl Raymond, host of the Gilded Gentleman podcast.

Cyrus was born in Boston and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is of Iranian-English-Irish-Welsh-Italian-American heritage. In addition to starring in Ragtime, he is a regular on Elsbeth, has appeared in such plays as James Joyce’s Exiles and Maija García’s Valor and such films as Doctor, Doctor and 72 Hours, and portrayed Giuseppe Naccarelli in The Light in the Piazza at Encores!

“Rodd’s story is not only a great theatrical story; it’s a uniquely American story,” Raymond told twi-ny. “To be playing the role of immigrant superstar Harry Houdini in this revival along with his own personal story makes his portrayal unique and deeply important.”

The prix fixe lunch includes beet and mixed green salads, a choice of a turkey club sandwich, mushroom power bowl, rigatoni alla Bolognese, or chicken Marsala, and nostalgic sweets for dessert.

Only a few tickets remain to be part of this exciting event.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE PLUCK OF THE IRISH: THE US PREMIERE OF ULSTER AMERICAN

Director Leigh Carver (Max Baker), playwright Ruth Davenport (Geraldine Hughes), and actor Jay Conway (Matthew Broderick) meet for the first time in David Ireland’s Ulster American (photo by Carol Rosegg)

ULSTER AMERICAN
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 24, $55-$125
irishrep.org

Among the topics raised in the US premiere of David Ireland’s Ulster American are the n word, rape, murder, the Troubles, car crashes, religion, Brexit, alcoholism, and self-identity.

Oh, did I mention that it’s a comedy — and a hilarious one at that?

The eighty-minute play takes place in real time on a Sunday night in the cozy living room of British theater director Leigh Carver’s (Max Baker) London home, decorated by set designer supreme Charlie Corcoran, with two armchairs, a couch, several small tables, a writing desk, a window in a rear nook, theater posters for The Mousetrap, Camelot, London Assurance, Macbeth, and the National Theatre, and several bookcases filled with tomes about Noël Coward, Samuel Beckett, and other theater legends.

Leigh is meeting with Jay Conway (Matthew Broderick), an Oscar-winning American actor who is starring in a new work Leigh is directing, by Irish playwright Ruth Davenport (Geraldine Hughes). Rehearsals are set to begin the next day, and Leigh wants the three of them to get to know each other more first. Jay is on the couch, in the middle of a conversation with Leigh, telling him, “Is there homophobia in Hollywood? Of course. And misogyny? How can we deny it? It’s reflected in so much of our output. Narrative upon narrative centered around the abuse of women, the violent abuse of women. And racism? Only a fool could pretend otherwise.”

Leigh is surprised when Jay asks, “You ever use the n word?” After discussing James Baldwin, power dynamics, and the Bechdel test — a measure, proposed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, that judges a fictional work based on whether it includes scenes in which at least two women talk about something other than men — Jay adds, “Why should I, a man, dictate to Bechdel, a woman, what should or should not be part of her fucking theory? This is me, learning from my mistakes, learning to shut the fuck up. . . . And that’s what I’m saying, this is where we’re at. Guys like me and you taking a back seat. Allowing the Ruth Davenports of the world to have their say. Fucking white heteronormative, privileged fucking uh . . . cis . . . motherfuckers like you and I who have to stand aside now. We have a moral responsibility to . . . I mean not me. Obviously. I’m Irish Catholic, so I can’t . . . I’m not part of that – the equation of – . . . I have an intersectional exemption.”

Jay speaks in a calm manner but with an undercurrent of excitement as he attempts to show off what he believes to be his supreme knowledge of society and his allyship with women and people of color. Leigh gets bored quickly but jumps in every once in a while to agree with Jay or correct a mistake, but nothing is going to stop Jay from making his points. He’s clearly a superstar who is used to being coddled and listened to.

Leigh is then shocked when Jay determinedly asks, “Do you think there are any circumstances where it’s morally acceptable to rape someone?” The audience is shocked as well as Jay describes a situation, inspired by a movie plot, when it might actually benefit a certain kind of woman; he names the person he would rape, then forces Leigh to choose his victim. The director squirms in his chair as they debate the validity of the question, but Jay is not about to give up until Leigh finally gives him a name, trapped by his need to suck up to Jay, since a lot is riding on this play.

A few minutes later, Ruth arrives, and things get really bizarre. She apologizes for being late, explaining that her mother had just gotten into an accident and is in the hospital. Her mother was driving Ruth to the airport and they were arguing about a friend of Ruth’s who was killed in the Troubles. Ruth tells the men, “I just lost it with her and — I don’t know what came over me, I just said, ‘Mummy — why do you always have to be such a cold-souled, blackhearted thoughtless fucking bitch?’” That was followed by the crash.

Initially, the three of them heap praise on one another. Ruth gushes that she’s Jay’s biggest fan and feels like she already knows him. Jay thanks her for writing him the role of a lifetime, saying, “Your script. Your fucking script, Ruth. Is the single best script I’ve read for ten fucking years.” Leigh believes that, given the quality of the script and the beloved star, they are critic-proof. “Hey, fuck the critics, I don’t give a fuck about the critics,” Jay declares. “They’re fucking animals, Leigh. They’re animals, Ruth. And we should do with them what we do with animals. Kill them and eat them. And the good ones keep as pets.”

But when Ruth says that, although she is from Northern Ireland, she considers herself British and that the protagonist of her play is the same, both Jay and Leigh are infuriated, and the real fireworks begin.

Jay: Are you British because Britain used to own Ireland? So they used to own you, like a slave, so you’re British?
Leigh: Exactly!
Ruth: They never owned me. I was never a slave!
Jay: It’s confusing because to me you sound Irish.

The confusion only increases as the battle lines are drawn.

History and identity collide in superb dark comedy at Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Ulster American debuted at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe and had a highly touted 2023 London revival starring Woody Harrelson, Louisa Harland, and Andy Serkis. Director Ciarán O’Reilly’s (The Weir, The Emperor Jones) adaptation is a sizzling slow build, balancing humor with pathos and bravado until all hell breaks loose. Leigh, Ruth, and Jay dig deep into their personal sense of identity while also judging the others’. “You don’t get to decide who’s British and who isn’t,” Ruth says to Leigh, who replies, “Well, we sort of do. That’s the point.” A bewildered Jay chimes in, “This is more complicated than I thought.”

The argument relates to what is happening in the United States right now, as liberals and conservatives, both in the government and private citizens, feud over the status of legal and illegal immigrants.

The three characters also all bring up the subject of history, as if that will provide the answers they are seeking. “History is so important to this. For this play, I feel like I need to know the history of Ireland like I know my own ball sack,” Jay says. But even history is subjective these days.

Tony winner and New York City native Broderick (Shining City, Evening at the Talk House) is brilliant as Jay; his singsong delivery and stiff posture imbue the Hollywood icon with a sense of invulnerability, but in this case he is on his own, not surrounded by a sycophantic entourage he is probably used to. He glories in stating his opinions and flaunting his progressive ideals, but they are essentially only lip service, with curses casually thrown in not for emphasis but just because.

The Belfast-born Hughes (Molly Sweeney, Jerusalem) is a powder keg as Ruth, who is beyond thrilled to be working with Leigh and Jay until she starts learning more about them and some of their views; she’s not about to just sit back and let them run all over her, instead going toe-to-toe.

And Baker (Continuity, The Low Road), who hails from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is completely convincing as the British Leigh, who has to walk the fine line between Jay and Ruth but is more conniving than he likes to admit, unable to remain neutral even as he attempts to befriend and care about each of them.

Ireland (What The Animals Say, Most Favoured) and O’Reilly (The Weir, The Emperor Jones) know what of they speak; both are from the north of Ireland, but the former is from Belfast and Ballybeen in Northern Ireland, while the latter is from Cavan, in the Republic of Ireland. In one of his previous, plays, the darkest of dark comedies Cyprus Avenue, Ireland also examines the issue when the protagonist insists, after calling another character the n word, “The last thing I am is Irish. I am anything but Irish. I am British. I am exclusively and non-negotiably British. I am not nor never have been nor never will be Irish.”

Ireland and O’Reilly take that to the next level in Ulster American, along with a sensational cast, critics be damned.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]