this week in theater

THE UNEXPECTED MAN

Revival of Yasmina Reza’s The Unexpected Man runs February 16-25 at IATI Theater (photo by Marina Levitskaya)

THE UNEXPECTED MAN
IATI Theater
64 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
February 16-25, $49.87
www.eventbrite.ca

“I’m prepared to risk any kind of adventure with you,” Martha imagines telling Paul in French playwright Yasmina Reza’s The Unexpected Man. Martha then imagines Paul responding, “Come on, Martha, life is short.”

STEPS Theatre and Art Against Humanity are presenting a unique revival of the show February 16-25 at IATI Theater in the East Village, starring Roman Freud as the man and Mickey Pantano as the woman. As the play opens, they are sitting in the same train compartment, going from Paris to Frankfurt; Martha recognizes Paul as the author of the novel she is reading, The Unexpected Man, but she hesitates to take it out of her purse and read it right in front of him, believing it would be insensitive. Over the course of ninety minutes, they deliver internal monologues about their lives.

“Can never sleep on a train. Hard enough in bed, let alone on a train. Strange this woman never reads anything,” he wonders to himself.

“I like traveling. As soon as I set foot in Frankfurt, I shall be another person: the one who arrives is always another person, And so it is that one progresses, from one person to another, until it’s all over,” she explains to herself.

Their “conversation” touches on a wide range of topics, from art and religion to friendship and ex-lax. As the train approaches its destination, so does their connection.

The Unexpected Man debuted in England in 1998, starring Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon. Two and a half years later, Christopher Hampton’s translation ran at the McGinn/Cazale Theater, with Atkins and Alan Bates, earning a slew of award nominations.

This new version is directed by Slava Stepnov (White on White; Enemies, A Love Story) and produced by Polina Belkina, with set and costumes by Arcady Kotler and Elina Kotler. Reza’s previous works include two Tony winners for Best Play, Art and God of Carnage.

“Today I was thinking about what The Unexpected Man and Yasmina Reza brought to my life,” Freud recently posted on social media. “One of the huge accomplishments of this play is that so many characters are left outside the main storyline — friends, lovers, spouses, critics, writers, kids. They are mentioned frequently throughout the play, which creates a crowded feeling, as if you’re in the presence of many people, some invented on the spot, some already dead. The play has a cast of probably twenty people, reflected by only two storytellers. All those offstage characters live and breathe in the play. Also, The Unexpected Man — the book in the heroine’s purse. After my first reading of the play, this imaginary book became a point of obsession for me.”

The play runs for ten performances; tickets are $49.87.

“Did I write what I wanted to write? No, never. I wrote what I was capable of writing, not what I wanted to,” Paul says, encapsulating the human experience. “All you ever do is what you’re capable of.”

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

IZZARD HAMLET NEW YORK

Eddie Izzard plays nearly two dozen characters in one-woman Hamlet (photo by Carol Rosegg)

IZZARD HAMLET NEW YORK
The Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Tuesday – Sunday through March 16, $81-$125
Orpheum Theatre
126 Second Ave. between Seventh & Eighth Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday, March 19 – April 14
www.eddieizzardhamlet.com

Eddie Izzard doesn’t make things easy for herself.

In winter 2022–23, she presented a one-woman version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations at the Greenwich House Theater. The wonderful two-hour, two-act show was adapted by Izzard’s brother Mark and directed by Selina Cadell. Now the trio is taking on William Shakespeare’s classic revenge tragedy, Hamlet, with the full crew from the previous play. The production more than lives up to its great expectations.

Izzard once again is dressed in a goth steampunk outfit, designed by Tom Piper and Libby DaCosta, this time consisting of black boots, tight black leather pants, and a silvery black-and-green long peplum blazer over a neckline-revealing top. Piper’s set is a long, rectangular space with three narrow, vertical windows, recalling a room in a tower where damsels in distress are imprisoned as well as a room in a psychiatric facility where someone having difficulty with reality is treated. Tyler Elich’s lighting shifts among several emotional colors that shine through the windows and a panel running along the underside of the set’s ceiling.

Izzard casts an impressive figure onstage, appearing much bigger than her five-foot-seven frame. In a mesmerizing tour de force, she portrays twenty-three characters, including Prince Hamlet; the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the recently murdered king; Claudius, the king’s brother and Hamlet’s uncle, who now wears the crown; Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother who married her former brother-in-law before her husband’s body was cold; Hamlet’s best friend, Horatio; Hamlet’s true love, Ophelia; Ophelia’s father, Polonius, Claudius’s most trusted councilor; Laertes, Ophelia’s brother; and Fortinbras, the prince of Norway; in addition to the leader of a traveling theater company, two gravediggers, various Danish soldiers and courtiers, and others.

Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet has been extended at Greenwich House Theater and will then move to the Orpheum (photo by Carol Rosegg)

There are no costume changes; when shifting between characters, Izzard slightly alters her voice and position onstage, running back and forth, twisting her body, or adjusting her posture. But she brings down the house with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for whom she uses her hands when they speak, the effect enhanced by the deep red polish on her fingernails. (Just wait till you see how she deals with a fencing duel; the movement direction is by Didi Hopkins.)

Izzard delivers all the famous monologues (“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,” “To be, or not to be,” “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” et al.) beautifully, lending each line its own nuance; it is never mere recitation. The few times Izzard, who is dyslexic, stumbled over a word or two, she quickly corrected it, displaying that she is in complete command of not only the text but what it means. The lack of props enhanced the power of the language and the intricacies of the plot. At one point, when a loud, distracting crinkling noise could be heard in the mezzanine, Izzard, in stride, directed a laserlike gaze at the perpetrator without missing a beat. She also occasionally ambles determinedly offstage, wandering through the aisles, making eye contact with the crowd as Hamlet shares his foibles.

The Aden-born Izzard is best known as a comedian, which might explain some of the inappropriate laughter intermittently coming from a handful of audience members the night I went. There are some very funny moments, but overall it’s a pretty serious drama.

In the last nine years, I’ve seen ten productions of and/or involving Hamlet, ranging from a German avant-garde version at BAM and an intense intellectual staging at Park Avenue Armory to a modern-day BIPOC update at the Public and on Broadway and a wildly unpredictable and flatulent interpretation at Japan Society.

Izzard Hamlet New York is another memorable adaptation to add to the ever-growing list.

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

THE FOLLOWING EVENING

Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet explore their relationship on- and offstage in The Following Evening (photo by Maria Baranova)

THE FOLLOWING EVENING
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 18, $69
pacnyc.org

The Following Evening is a touching love letter to independent theater creators and New York City. It also goes much deeper than a proverbial passing of the torch.

The seventy-five-minute work, making its world premiere through February 18 at PAC NYC, was written and directed by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone specifically for Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet. Browde, forty-two, and Silverstone, forty-three, started the experimental company 600 Highwaymen in 2009, the same year they got married. Maddow, seventy-five, and Zimet, eighty-one, cofounded the experimental company Talking Band, with Tina Shepard, in 1974 and got married in 1986. (Zimet and Shepard had been wed previously as well.)

Browde and Silverstone have a young child and are considering leaving New York. Maddow and Zimet have three grandchildren and can’t imagine living anywhere other than the city, especially with two more shows coming up, Existentialism at La MaMa later this month and Shimmer and Herringbone at Mabou Mines @122CC in May as part of their troupe’s fiftieth anniversary season.

In the play, the two couples portray somewhat fictionalized versions of themselves as they explore their lives and creative process. The line between fact and fantasy is further blurred by Jian Jung’s set, which features a piano on one side, a few chairs in the middle, and a pile of large canvases collected at the right, except for one painting of a window, taunting us about the world outside. In the back, large white sheetrock panels cover only some of the wall, a constant reminder that we are not in Ellen and Paul’s downtown loft but in a theater. In addition, Eric Southern’s lighting often keeps it bright, as if the characters are not actors but just people sharing their time with the audience.

The show opens with Paul delivering a long prologue, moving his hands and body in sharp, heavily mannered ways as he discusses being raised on the Upper West Side, riding his bike, dropping out of medical school, and performing around the globe. He talks about his family history going back to his great-grandmother, who was born in New York City in 1863, and continuing through Ellen and their children and grandchildren, setting up the multigenerational aspect of the narrative.

“Does this all sound romantic? I really hope it doesn’t,” he says. “Nothing is going to happen in this play.” He then turns to Ellen, asks if she is ready, and welcomes the audience to The Following Evening.

Ellen brings up disappointment, memory, and variation as the couple dances, then sings a song for their neighbor, an ill painter named Katherine. “I imagine a play that takes place over a thousand years,” Ellen says, never wanting their life in the theater to end. Paul, ever hopeful, later adds, “I imagine a play about the end of the world. Where the world is crumbling. Civilization on fire. But it is a love story.”

The Following Evening brings together two theater couples at different stages of life (photo by Maria Baranova)

In the second section, Abby and Michael enter, directing Ellen and Paul. When Ellen is having trouble with a scene, she says resignedly, “I had it yesterday. This is the thing about getting older.” Paul immediately counters, “You don’t have any harder of a time than any other actor.” When Abby suggests they improvise, Ellen quickly points out, “No, I like the way you wrote it,” praising the ideas of the next theatrical standard-bearers even though the older couple is more confident about the future than the younger pair.

“Hmm. I just had this, uh. I just got incredibly jealous. You guys have so much life ahead of you,” Paul says, to which Abby replies, “Oh. Isn’t that funny? I don’t feel any of that.” Michael later opines, “I can see the two of you so clearly. I can sort of see you. But I can’t see myself. . . . You were pioneers and we are just — jerks.”

The third and final part focuses more on Abby and Michael as they examine the state of their existence, sometimes speaking in the third person, describing their actions to each other. “I feel like I could run / Like I could run really fast if I wanted to / That you would keep pace with me,” Michael says. “It wouldn’t be that hard / We could go on forever. We could do it.” Abby explains, “Here, hold this, you tell me as if we are the last people on earth.”

They are eventually joined by Ellen and Paul, and the last moments grow even more abstract than what came before.

The Following Evening is like a visual tone poem, a brutally honest look at aging and artistic creation. Things occur slowly, in movement and speech; the dialogue is spoken plainly, unadorned, carefully modulated but not dispassionate. Ellen and Paul are marvelous together; watching them slowly take off their shoes, sit on the floor, or dance together is aspirational.

Abby and Michael are compelling as the younger couple who fear they will never be like Ellen and Paul, either as a married couple, parents, grandparents, or theater makers. All four of them have their fair share of doubt and questions, but the play puts a defining emphasis on experience in a country where the elderly are not given the respect they deserve, something 600 Highwaymen (A Thousand Ways, The Fever) is rectifying, without being overly congratulatory or sentimental about Talking Band (Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless, Painted Snake in a Painted Chair), which collectively has won fifteen Obie Awards.

The title promises that life goes on; I can’t wait to see what each couple has in store for us next evening.

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

BRENDAN HUNT: THE MOVEMENT YOU NEED

Brendan Hunt returns to SoHo Playhouse for encore run of one-man show The Movement You Need

THE INTERNATIONAL FRINGE ENCORE SERIES: THE MOVEMENT YOU NEED
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St. between Sixth Ave. & Varick St.
February 7-10, $40
212-691-1555
sohoplayhouse.com
fringeencoreseries.com

Chicago native Brendan Hunt might be best known for his portrayal of Coach Willis Beard on Ted Lasso — in addition to writing several episodes and serving as producer, executive producer, and codeveloper — but he also has a deep affection for theater. The Emmy winner and Jeopardy! contestant has written and performed the solo works Five Years in Amsterdam: The True Story of How a Regular Guy from Chicago Became Absolute Eurotrash and Still Got It as well as the plays The Poe Show (where he was Edgar Allan Poe alongside Dracula, Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Gen. Custer, Charlotte Brontë, Dr. Frankenstein, and the Raven) and Absolutely Filthy (An Unauthorized Peanuts Parody) (in which he appears as the mess). And he won a 2010 LA Ovation Award for Lead Actor in a Musical for Sacred Fools’ Savin’ Up for Saturday Night.

Last November, he brought his autobiographical one-man show The Movement You Need to SoHo Playhouse as part of the International Fringe Encore Series: Comedy Festival, and it’s now back for a bonus encore run, February 7-10. For seventy-five minutes, Hunt explores his complex relationship with his late mother and the only thing they could both agree on: their shared love of the Beatles. When Hunt has the opportunity to talk about that with Sir Paul McCartney himself, it doesn’t go quite as planned. The show is named after a line in “Hey Jude” — “And don’t you know that it’s just you? / Hey Jude, you’ll do, / the movement you need is on your shoulder” — a song the very young Hunt thought was about him because his mother called him Na Na (“Na, na, na, na, na na, na”).

In his high school yearbook photo, Hunt, who is now fifty-one, wore a pin that featured the Fab Four’s infamous butcher cover for the Yesterday and Today album; I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes a detour this weekend to “The Fest for Beatles Fans,” taking place February 9-11 at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport.

In “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” the Beatles promise, “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.” For The Movement You Need, Hunt will only say, “A decent time is guaranteed for all.” He shouldn’t be so self-deprecating. As Sir Paul sings, “And anytime you feel the pain, / Hey Jude, refrain, / Don’t carry the world upon your shoulder.”

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising) is part of QNYIAF (photo by Silvija Dogan)

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
February 7 – 17, $25
212-945-2600
nyuskirball.org

After a six-year break, the Queer New York International Arts Festival returns to the city, taking place February 7-17 at NYU Skirball. Started by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović in 2012 at Abrons Arts Center, the fest consists of works that address queerness in today’s society, this year with presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany, including live performances, installations, and public talks.

The 2024 QNYIAF kicks off February 7 with Croatian artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih’s From5to95, a hybrid video installation and online project in which Croatian women from the ages of five to ninety-five share their personal stories about gender inequality. On February 7 and 8, Croatian artists Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising), which premiered in Argentina in 2019, is performed by sex workers Juan Ejemplo, Leandra Atenea Levine Hidalgo, Pichón Reyna, and Sofía Tramazaygues, exploring the relationship between client and sex worker.

Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar’s Kill B. reimagines the Bride from Quentin Tarantino films (photo by Hrvoje Zalukar)

Isaković collaborates with fellow choreographer and dancer Mia Zalukar on Kill B., inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Playing February 9 and 10, the piece focuses on the character of the Bride as well as artistic hierarchical structures and their own professional partnership. On February 13, Toronto-based performance artist Clayton Lee goes through his sexual history in The Goldberg Variations, which mashes up Johann Sebastian Bach with WCW and WWE wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg, host of the 2018-19 competition series Forged in Fire: Knife or Death and a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice. Some iterations have included smells and live snakes, so be ready.

On February 15, Argentinian interdisciplinary artist Tiziano Cruz will deliver the autobiographical performance lecture Conference, followed by a discussion. His piece Soliloquy — I woke up and hit my head against the wall was about his mother; in Conference he turns his attention to his ancestors and his late sister. On February 16, Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz’s performance lecture La Bête is an interactive solo in which he activates a plastic replica of one of Lygia Clark’s rearrangeable hinged metal sculptures known as bichos, or “beasts,” and then the audience does the same, except with Schwartz’s naked body.

QNYIAF concludes February 17 with Raimund Hoghe Company members Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte’s An Evening with Raimund, a tribute to German choreographer, dancer, and journalist Raimund Hoghe, who died in 2021 at the age of seventy-two; excerpts from his works will be performed by seven dancers. “To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important — not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects,” Hoghe said. “On the question of success: It is important to be able to work and to go your own way — with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.”

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

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

A family deals with a suicidal prodigal son in The Animal Kingdom (photo by Emilio Madrid)

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
Connelly Theater Upstairs
220 East Fourth St. between Aves. A & B
Tuesday – Sunday through February 17, $52.24-$83.74
www.animalkingdomplay.com
www.connellytheater.org

There is an internet meme that you can get on a T-shirt, mug, poster, or notebook: “Theater is therapy for the soul.” In the past few years, I’ve seen a handful of plays that take the quote extremely seriously: The entire show is set within the confines of a therapy session (or sessions).

In Dave Malloy’s Octet, eight people gather to face their obsessions with technology. In Emma Sheanshang’s The Fears, seven Buddhists share their traumas. In Those Guilty Creatures’ The Voices in Your Head, the audience sits in a large oval among actors portraying characters dealing with grief. And in Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job, a therapist has the responsibility of determining whether an employee who suffered a public meltdown is ready to return to work.

In each of those cases, we do not see anything outside the session(s). The same is true of Ruby Thomas’s gripping but mystifying The Animal Kingdom, which continues through February 10 at the Connelly Theater Upstairs; downstairs is an encore run of Job.

An audience of no more than fifty sits on three sides of Wilson Chin’s tiny stage at a recovery center, consisting of five equally spaced plastic chairs in a circle on a green rug along with a small table with water, cups, and tissues. The far wall is a two-way mirror where experts can watch the proceedings — and we can see reflections of ourselves or other audience members, as if we’re part of the group. Above is a large rectangular light box that changes colors during scene changes to try to maintain a calming mood, accompanied by transitional music. (The lighting is by Stacey Derosier, with sound by Christopher Darbassie and contemporary costumes by Ricky Reynoso.) Otherwise, it is threateningly quiet; it never goes dark, so you can see and hear people scratch their leg, shift in their seat, or reach into their bag for a cough drop.

Sofia (Lily McInerny) doesn’t hold back in New York premiere of British play (photo by Emilio Madrid)

The patient is Sam (Uly Schlesinger), a college student who has recently tried to kill himself. His parents are divorced and not on friendly terms; Rita (Tasha Lawrence) is an overbearing yapper, and Tim (David Cromer) is a reticent businessman who would rather be anywhere else but there, nervously shaking one leg, speaking only when practically forced to. Tim’s younger sister, eighteen-year-old Sofia (Lily McInerny), has been essentially ignored by her parents for years while they deal with Tim. Facilitating the sessions is Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith), who is almost impossibly gentle and serene, especially when things heat up among the family members.

The details of the family’s dysfunction emerge from confessions, admissions, and accusations as we learn more about each person, some of which is almost too metaphorical. Tim runs a turnaround fund where he buys failing businesses and makes them profitable but has no idea how to turn around the pain his wife and kids are feeling. Rita is a doula who helps pregnant mothers but doesn’t understand her own children. Sam is obsessed with swifts, aerial birds that are unable to stand properly because of their small legs and whose migratory patterns are in chaos because of climate change, much like Sam’s life path has been disrupted by his mental health issues. And when Rita complains, “It’s a bit lonely in the house. Empty nest,” Sofia scoffs, “I still live there.”

Over the course of six sessions, they argue about abandonment, medication, education, sex drives, and the difference between gay and queer. Daniel offers such obvious guidance as “I know this might not always be easy. We might have to say difficult things, hear difficult things. But in my experience the family system, as we call it, is such an important one.”

During the first scene, I dreaded being stuck in this room for eighty minutes of therapeutic healing, but director Jack Serio, who previously helmed an intimate adaptation of Uncle Vanya in a Flatiron loft and This Beautiful Future at the Cherry Lane, keeps us engaged as characters change chairs for each meeting, giving the audience a different perspective on the family members and the therapist as they go through major, or minor, transformations of some kind.

Therapist Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith) tries to get to the root of Sam’s (Uly Schlesinger) issues in The Animal Kingdom (photo by Emilio Madrid)

The cast is excellent, beginning with Schlesinger, who made his New York stage debut in This Beautiful Future in 2022. The tortured Sam is wound up tight at the start, a ticking time bomb, but it’s McInerny who explodes as Sofia, who has had enough. Cromer, who played the title character in Serio’s Uncle Vanya and directed McInerny in Bess Wohl’s Camp Siegfried, portrays Tim with a calm control, while Lawrence regales with Rita’s inability to just shut up.

Obie winner Smith could not be more easygoing as Daniel, although I hope they change a line, one of the only jokes in the show: Expressing hopefulness amid his nerves, he says, “And the Knicks are playing later and it hasn’t been the best season. Or the best decade,” as if hope might be unattainable. Right now the Knicks are having their best season in years, so it would be better if they changed it to the Jets or another perennial punching bag sports team, at least while the play is in New York City. The British Thomas (Either, Linck & Mülhahn) might not be up on her hoops, but Daniel should be.

Some have made the case that The Animal Kingdom is not in fact a play but merely an exercise in fictional group therapy, taking advantage of a currently popular theatrical device. However, I would argue that in its character development, narrative flow, and unique staging, it is a poignant drama about a complicated family finally having to look at itself in the mirror and admitting they might not like what they see.

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

JONAH

Teens Ana (Gabby Beans) and Jonah (Hagan Oliveras) explore their burgeoning sexuality in Roundabout world premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)

JONAH
Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 10, $76-$138
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

“Why are you fixated on me?” Ana (Gabby Beans) asks two of three guys who are fixated on her in the world premiere of Rachel Bonds’s Jonah, continuing at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre through March 10. It’s easy to become fixated on Ana, and on Beans, in the meticulously rendered production, which follows a woman through approximately three decades as she faces tragedy and trauma and wrestles with her faith.

The hundred-minute play takes place in Ana’s bedroom at three distinct times in her life. Wilson Chin’s set features a bed to the left, a small table where Ana works to the right, and a door in the middle where the men come and go but Ana never goes through, as if she is trapped. All the characters are damaged, but the men find solace in their relationship with Ana, fiercely dedicated to survival and her own solace.

In the first scene, the sixteen-year-old Ana meets the seventeen-year-old Jonah (Hagan Oliveras), who has a major crush on her. They both go to the same boarding school, and they both are virgins, soon sharing their sexual fantasies with each other.

Like the biblical figure, Jonah is questioning the existence of a higher power. Jonah asks Ana if she still believes in God, but she’s not sure. They might not believe in God, but Ana, who is Catholic, and Jonah, who is not, pepper their speech with references to God and Jesus, in frustration, anger, and joy as they contend with different types of pain.

Step-siblings Ana (Gabby Beans) and Danny (Samuel Henry Levine) try to cope with an abusive father in Rachel Bonds’s Jonah (photo by Joan Marcus)

The next male who shows up in Ana’s room is her protective stepbrother, Danny (Samuel Henry Levine), who is being physically and psychologically abused by his father. Whereas Ana is studying hard and wants to become a writer, Danny is a gruff dude who has no interest in books or school. Ana tells him that her “American dream” is “getting into college and getting the fuck out of here,” but Danny is just trying to survive day to day and doesn’t want Ana to leave. “Don’t you want to stay together?” he says, then asks her to hold him to help calm him down, perhaps a little too close.

Years later, at a writer’s retreat, Ana meets Steven (John Zdrojeski), a former Mormon who brings her food and can’t stop talking about his various physical ailments. Like Jonah, he asks her, “Do you still believe in God?” Steven has a unique perspective on religion, as well as on sex. “Can you still fantasize?” she asks him, and he admits, “There’s definitely still shame lurking around some corners, but —.”

A twist at the end not only furthers the links between Jonah, Danny, and Steven but explains the name of the play.

Bonds (Five Mile Lake, Sundown, Yellow Moon) writes sharp, incisive dialogue that crackles, sparks, and surprises. Director Danya Taymor (Pass Over, “Daddy”) expertly guides the play through its multiple time periods despite the set and Kaye Voyce’s costumes never changing. Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting and Kate Marvin’s sound reverberate to announce narrative shifts.

Steven (John Zdrojeski) is one of three young men obsessed with Ana (Gabby Beans) in Jonah at the Laura Pels Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Zdrojeski (Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Before We’re Gone) channels Jimmy Stewart as the goofy Steven, Levine (The Inheritance, Kill Floor) gives just the right heft to Danny, and gamer and actor Oliveras is sweetly innocent as the tender-hearted Jonah.

But it’s Tony nominee Beans’s (I’m Revolting, Anatomy of a Suicide) show all the way. She’s extraordinary as Ana, onstage the entire show; you won’t be able to take your eyes off her as Ana deals with the lousy hand she’s been dealt.

Early on, she tells Jonah, “I don’t have to do anything. I do what I want,” and that’s the mantra she lives by. She’s not looking for sympathy, nor is she blaming anyone else for what has happened in her life. She keeps on fighting, even as she starts to realize that opening up and depending on someone else is not necessarily a bad thing. Beans captures these emotions with a powerful determination while also displaying the softer side that Ana hides.

Whether you believe in a supreme being or not, you’ll come away from Jonah believing in Ana, and in Beans.

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