this week in theater

LETTERS FROM MAX, a ritual

Letters from Max follows the epistolary relationship between a teacher and her student (photo by Joan Marcus)

LETTERS FROM MAX, a ritual
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 26, $49-$139
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

As you enter the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Signature to see Sarah Ruhl’s Letters from Max, a ritual, a quote from Max Ritvo in handwritten cursive is projected on the back wall of the stage: “Even present tense has some of the grace of past tense, what with all the present tense left to go.” Unfortunately, there was not a lot of present tense left in Ritvo’s too-short life, but his legacy is preserved in the moving play, which centers around the letters, texts, voicemails, and conversations the young, enthusiastic poet had with Ruhl, the award-winning writer of such plays as In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) and The Clean House.

In 2012, Ritvo was accepted into Ruhl’s playwriting class at Yale. That began a four-year friendship in which the two shared an intimate and emotional correspondence as Max faced a recurrence of his pediatric cancer, Ewing’s Sarcoma, but did so with charm, whimsy, and hope. They discuss poetry, soup (“Soup is your religion,” Max tells Sarah), Halloween, various medical treatments, Einstein on the Beach, the streets of New York City, the afterlife, the existence of the soul, and reading and writing, with an enchanting honesty and humor.

The story is not a traditional tale of a mentor and mentee; Sarah and Max bring out the best in each other, both learning as their closeness deepens. “You know, in some ways, you are my teacher, not the other way around,” Ruhl says early on.

Sarah Ruhl (Jessica Hecht) and Max Ritvo (Zane Pais) explore life and poetry in Signature play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Hecht is terrific as Sarah, who she knows well, having appeared in Ruhl’s Stage Kiss at Playwrights Horizons in 2014 and pandemic microplay What do you Want What do you Want What do you Want for the Homebound Project; she portrays Ruhl with a tender confidence and just the right amount of mothering. A tireless actor who starred with Mikhail Baryshnikov in Arlekin Players Theatre’s hybrid Chekhov reimagining The Orchard last June and will next appear in David Auburn’s Summer, 1976 with Laura Linney on Broadway beginning April 4, Hecht has a quirky and distinct singsong voice that fits the character, especially when she recites poetry.

Ritvo is alternately played by Ben Edelman and Zane Pais; at each performance, whoever is not playing Max appears as Tattoo Artist Angel — based on a short work Max wrote in Ruhl’s class — and plays Ritvo’s songs, Edelman on piano, Pais on guitar. The actors do not attempt to mimic the real-life Sarah and Max but concentrate on bringing their essence to the stage, as related through their correspondence.

Marsha Ginsberg’s set is centered by a large semicircular object that recalls a zoetrope onto which S Katy Tucker projects words and images and opens up to reveal Max in a hospital bed. In a far corner is a piano; the soft lighting is by Amith Chandrashaker, with sound by Sinan Refik Zafar and costumes by Anita Yavich, highlighted by the angel outfit.

Ben Edelman and Zane Pais switch roles every night in Letters from Max (photo by Joan Marcus)

Ruhl first collected the material in the 2018 epistolary book Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship, then adapted it for the play, which was not initially planned but developed after Ruhl gave several public readings of the book. Director Kate Whoriskey (Sweat, How I Learned to Drive), who helmed Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth, based on letters exchanged by poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, keeps the bells and whistles to a minimum; the show could use some trimming, however, as it gets repetitive and, at times, overly reverential. It would probably fare better at a streamlined ninety minutes instead of two hours with intermission.

In the lobby, the audience is encouraged to write a letter of their own to a loved one they think needs to hear from them. “I hope that this play can be an invitation into ritual or catharsis for whatever grief might be ailing you,” two-time Pulitzer finalist Ruhl explains. The Signature provides pen, paper, envelope, and even a haiku and will mail it for you.

Ultimately, the relationship between Max (Four Reincarnations, Aeons) and Sarah is summed up by these words from Max: “We’ll always know one another forever, however long ever is. And that’s all I want — is to know you forever.” Through these letters, the book, and now the play, Max gets his wish.

BECOMES A WOMAN

Emma Pfitzer Price shines in the Mint’s world premiere of Becomes a Woman (photo by Todd Cerveris)

BECOMES A WOMAN
Mint Theater at New York City Center Stage II
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 18, $45-$90
minttheater.org
nycitycenter.org

There was something extra special about opening night at the Mint’s world premiere of Becomes a Woman, written by Betty Smith, the Williamsburg-born novelist and author most famous for the semiautobiographical 1943 bestseller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Smith’s hundred-year-old daughter, Nancy Jean, was in attendance, sitting in the first row at New York City Center Stage II.

Equally remarkable was that this excellent play, written in 1931, has never before been produced, anywhere. It is the Mint’s mission to resurrect long-lost plays, and this show, under Britt Berke’s loving, caring direction, is a sparkling gem that takes on feminist issues well ahead of its time, in intelligent, well-developed ways.

In her off-Broadway debut, Emma Pfitzer Price shines as nineteen-year-old Francie Nolan, who sings popular songs in Kress’s five-and-dime store on DeKalb Ave. Although the character shares the same name as the protagonist of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, there are few other similarities. (The store is also a fictionalized version of the actual Kress’s.) This Francie lives in an Irish neighborhood in Bushwick with her tough-talking father, a city cop (Jeb Brown); her old-fashioned mother (Antoinette Lavecchia), who spends most of her time cooking and cleaning; and her two teenage brothers, Frankie (Tim Webb) and Johnny (Jack Mastrianni), who are ready to quit school and start working, against their mother’s wishes.

“You’re going to keep on going to school. As long as your father has a good job and Francie keeps on working, my children are going to get a good education,” Ma Nolan tells them. “Now, Francie went to high school for two years. She wanted to go longer but two years is enough for a girl. She didn’t mind the scales. She practiced. That’s why she’s earning such good money as a musician today.”

Florry (Pearl Rhein), Francie (Emma Pfitzer Price), and Tessie (Gina Daniels) work together in a five and dime (photo by Todd Cerveris)

Wearing a sexy black nightclub dress, Francie sings popular tunes, accompanied by the sassy Florry (Pearl Rhein) on piano, in an effort to sell the sheet music. But it turns out that nearly all the men who ask to hear a song are more interested in going out with Francie, who refuses to date customers or “strange men.” She’s tired of hearing them say, one after another, “Are you doing anything tonight, baby?” To which she regularly answers, “Yes I am. And I’m busy every other night this week too. And next week.”

Among the songs Francie sings are “Left Alone,” “Me and My Family Blues,” “He’s My Man,” and “I Don’t Owe Nothing to Nobody,” titles that get to the heart of her character; dramaturg Amy Stoller created a music playlist that can be heard here.

Florry believes that Francie is a scared little mouse who should assert herself more and take chances to get a man. “She’s the kind that just tempts people to pick on her. She’s so afraid of everything,” Florry tells the older Tessie (Gina Daniels), who works the register and is in charge of the flowers. “She never fights for a seat in the trolley going home. I never have to stand.”

Francie is being wooed by taxi driver Jimmy O’Neill (Christopher Reed Brown), who fails to thrill her. But when the dashing and handsome Leonard Kress Jr. (Peterson Townsend), son of the chain owner (Duane Boutté), shows a liking for her, she starts dreaming of a better future.

Pa and Ma Nolan (Jeb Brown and Antoinette Lavecchia) have issues with their daughter in Betty Smith play (photo by Todd Cerveris)

“He’s different. I know he is. I know he’s not the doing-anything-tonight-baby kind. I’d hate him if he was like that,” Francie says. “What do you want a man to do? Worship you from a cloud?” Florry asks. “No, but I want a man to decide whether he likes me before he spends an evening with me and not after,” Francie explains. “Men ain’t made that way. A girl has to really like a man before she gets intimate with him but a man has to get really intimate with a girl before he likes her. Anybody will tell you that,” the cynical Florry says. “That’s not true. It can’t be true,” Francie insists.

Finally putting herself out there, Francie discovers that more of it is true than she ever imagined. But instead of wilting like a dying flower, she decides to take control of her situation, which presents a whole new set of challenges.

As with the best Mint shows, Becomes a Woman is exquisitely rendered, its two hours (with two intermissions) beautifully paced by Berke in her outstanding off-Broadway debut. Vicki R. Davis’s sets morph from the elegant Kress store to the plain and sensible Nolan home, which undergoes an important change after the second act. Emilee McVey-Lee’s effective period costumes range from the Kresses’s sharp suits to Ma Nolan’s frumpy house wear, Pa Nolan’s practical suspenders, and Florry’s long, flirty dresses. Mary Louise Geiger’s lighting and M. Florian Staab’s sound keep the audience immersed in the proceedings.

Juilliard graduate Price is a revelation as Francie, fully embodying the eminently likable character’s transformation from frightened wallflower doing whatever her parents tell her to into a strong young woman making her own decisions about her body and her life, not all of which end up the way she wants. Daniels (Network, All the Way) is wonderful as Tessie, Francie’s friend and mentor who has overcome her difficult past with the help of her charming boyfriend who always finds the goodness in situations, ambulance driver Max, played by a scene-stealing Jason O’Connell (Pride and Prejudice, The Dork Night).

The fancy Leonard Kress Jr. (Peterson Townsend) woos Francie (Emma Pfitzer Price) in Becomes a Woman (photo by Todd Cerveris)

Townsend (Chains, Fire Shut Up in My Bones) and Boutté (Parade, Carousel) excel as father and son, each offering surprises as Smith’s plot evolves. The fine cast also features Jillian Louis, Scott Redmond, Madeline Seidman, and Phillip Taratula.

Smith, who wrote such other plays as Sawdust Heart and So Gracious Is the Time and such other novels as Tomorrow Will Be Better and Joy in the Morning — as well as the book, with George Abbott, for the 1951 Broadway musical adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — died in 1972 at the age of seventy-five and never saw Becomes a Woman onstage. More than fifty years later, her daughter got to witness this splendid play, a prescient exploration of a young woman’s coming of age that is not dated in the least; sadly, much of it is all too relevant today.

In a program essay by scholar, teacher, and historian Maya Cantu, Smith is quoted as saying, “A hundred years after I’m dead, people will still be reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Hopefully, a hundred years from now, people will also still be going to the theater to experience Becomes a Woman.

DARK DISABLED STORIES

Dickie Hearts and Ryan J. Haddad both portray Ryan in Dark Disabled Stories (photo by Joan Marcus)

DARK DISABLED STORIES
The Shiva Theater at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 2, $60
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

In Thomas Bradshaw’s The Seagull/Woodstock, NY, a modern-day adaptation of the Chekhov classic for the New Group currently running at the Signature Center, wannabe playwright Kevin tells Samuel, “I’m developing a new type of theater. A theater that’ll be of interest to people under eighty. Mother wants everything neat and pretty. That’s not who I am.”

Disabled actor, playwright, and autobiographical performer Ryan J. Haddad delivers an exhilarating new type of theater with Dark Disabled Stories, which opened a nearly sold-out run at the Public’s small and intimate Shiva Theater last night. Produced with the Bushwick Starr, the seventy-five-minute show features a series of vignettes in which Haddad, who has cerebral palsy and uses a metallic, posterior walking frame, shares his real-life adventures seeking companionship and traversing the city, particularly on buses and subways, where he encounters difficulties specific to his disability. The tales range from hysterically funny and touching to heartbreaking and passionate, but he’s not angling for any sympathy.

“Now, if you’re gonna look at me as sad or pitiable . . . If you came here to pity me, you can leave. We’re only one story in, you can leave. And don’t ask for a refund. I am not here to be pitied and I am not a victim, is that clear?” he says early on. “I try to make disability funny so that nondisabled people can understand it and open themselves to it and realize that it’s not so scary, so dark. And make it more accessible for them. Not tonight. I don’t feel like it. I’m not saying I won’t make you laugh at all. I’ll probably make you laugh a lot. I’m a naturally comedic person, but . . . not everything is accessible to us, so why should we try to make our experiences accessible to you?”

I’ve seen several shows that use ASL interpreters and open captioning in clunky, distracting ways that detracted from the overall narrative, the exception being Deaf West Theatre’s 2015 Broadway revival of Spring Awakening. But Haddad and director Jordan Fein have ingeniously integrated multiple inclusive techniques that make Dark Disabled Stories that much more powerful and involving while remaining wholly organic.

Ryan (Ryan J. Haddad and Dickie Hearts) share personal, poignant stories in world premiere at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

Haddad wears a long crew-neck sweatshirt that says “Ryan” on it, as does Deaf actor Dickie Hearts, who signs everything Ryan speaks. Meanwhile, just offstage by a ramp, disabled actor Alejandra Ospina, who uses a motorized wheelchair, provides audio description of what is happening, detailing the Ryans’ movements, shifts in the set, and the projections on the back wall, which range from color changes — shocking pink is a favorite — to large words.

“I’m not Ryan, I’m Dickie, and I’ll be playing ‘Ryan’ alongside Ryan, who will also be playing ‘Ryan,’” Dickie explains. “Ryan has cerebral palsy, CP, and I do not. I am Deaf and Ryan is not. I’m not an interpreter, I’m an actor.” His words are both described by Alejandra and projected on the screen. In addition, there is an open space off to the side where audience members can go if anything is making them uncomfortable, where they can still watch the show and touch a soft-sculpture wall hanging. A handout in the program advises, “We invite you to react as you need, make sounds, and move around in ways that feel comfortable to your body. People may have different reactions and ways of expressing themselves. This is exciting and welcome.”

The set, by dots, the collective that also designed the costumes, is a shallow rectangular pink box with three blue bus seats, a pair of metal columns wrapped in magenta sequin fabric, and the title of the play spelled out in pink pillowlike bubble letters at the top and bottom (where it is upside down). The lighting is by Oona Curley, with sound by Kathy Ruvuna and video by Kameron Neal, all meshing in a smooth harmony that allows the audience of about ninety-nine, in risers and expanded wheelchair and mobility disability seating, to experience the play as they need/want to. Andrew Morrill is the director of artistic sign language, with Alison Kopit serving as access dramaturg.

Haddad’s previous works include the solo show Hi, Are You Single?; a multimedia installation about swimming as part of Lynn Nottage and Miranda Haymon’s The Watering Hole at the Signature; and My Straighties, Noor and Hadi Go to Hogwarts, and Falling for Make Believe at such venues as Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, Dixon Place, and La MaMa. He presented a sneak peek of Dark Disabled Stories in August 2021 for Lincoln Center’s Restart Stages program.

He takes a giant leap forward with this full version of Dark Disabled Stories, a bold and daring play in which he is as funny as he is brutally honest. The first vignette deals with a sexual encounter in a gay bar with a stranger in Cleveland. Haddad holds nothing back, except the name of the man, a high school English teacher, as he gives extremely graphic details about what they fif together. Haddad is not doing this merely to shock the audience but to reveal, right from the start, that disabled people have the same fears and desires as everyone else. “I am not a victim, is that clear? That was a completely consensual encounter,” he says. “Hot. Passionate. With just the right hint of scandal. Only without the happy ending I would have hoped.”

Ryan J. Haddad, Dickie Hearts, and Alejandra Ospina rehearse Dark Disabled Stories (photo by Joan Marcus)

Haddad’s stories take place on public transportation, at an important business meeting, coming home from the grocery store, and crossing the street, as he faces situation after situation in which well-meaning samaritans, inaccessibility to certain locations, and his own pride thwart his everyday life.

As he’s being offered “a fuckton of money” by a man from a major university to present one of his solo plays there, he suddenly has to go to the bathroom but he sees that he won’t be able to fit his walker through the narrow space between tables at the restaurant they’re at. “I can’t possibly ask this handsome gentleman to help me. How on earth will he take me seriously if he sees me as a disabled person who needs help to get to the bathroom?” Haddad admits. “Even though he’s offering me money to do an autobiographical show about being disabled, I can’t let him see that I’m disabled. I’ll just pee on my own time.” It doesn’t end well.

Alejandra (Claire’s Broom Detective Agency: The Mystery of the Missing Violin, Emily Driver’s Great Race Through Time and Space!) and Dickie (The Deaf vs the Dead, Tamales de Puerco) each get to share a story of their own, which lends insight to who they are as individuals. Dickie’s tale is particularly chilling, as it involves his losing access to his hands temporarily. “My hands are how I communicate,” he explains with great worry.

Among the many appealing aspects of Dark Disabled Stories are how and what it communicates. Is it the future of theater? It certainly holds the promise of the future of a specific type of theater, one that would make The Seagull’s Kevin/Konstantin happy, if not necessarily his vainglorious actress mother.

THE BEST WE COULD (a family tragedy)

Ella (Aya Cash) considers her future as her parents (Frank Wood and Constance Shulman) worry about theirs in MTC world premiere (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

THE BEST WE COULD (a family tragedy)
Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through March 26, $79-$99
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Our Town meets Death of a Salesman in Emily Feldman’s potent and moving The Best We Could (a family tragedy), a Manhattan Theatre Club production running at New York City Center Stage 1 through March 26.

The ninety-minute show is narrated by Maps (Maureen Sebastian), who also occasionally plays different minor roles. “We’re about to get started here,” she says directly to the audience at the beginning. “Could we take some of these lights down a little bit, please?” she asks lighting designer Matt Frey, and he obliges. She sets the pace with an unhurried, relaxed monologue, then introduces the characters: Ella (Aya Cash), a thirty-six-year-old woman still trying to find herself, currently working as a chair yoga instructor at a rehab facility in Los Angeles; her father, Lou (Frank Wood), formerly a senior investigator at a biomedical research institute; her mother, Peg (Constance Shulman), a retired event planner who lives with Lou in New Jersey; and Marc (Brian D. Coats), Lou’s longtime friend and colleague who lives in Denver with his wife.

“Marc . . . You’re not really in the first part,” Maps says. “Sorry to make you wait.” Marc walks to a far corner of the stage, which is a large, empty central rug where all the action takes place. When a character is not in a scene, they watch from the sides or from the back, which resembles a garage.

Maureen Sebastian serves as the narrator and plays numerous small parts in The Best We Could (a family tragedy) (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

It’s Ella’s birthday, but she’s been stood up by her girlfriend. Maps directs her: “Wait thirty minutes. Wait an hour. Leave alone. . . . Tell Crystal it’s over. Your mother is calling. Answer the phone.”

After their dog dies, Peg sends Lou to California by plane to pick up a new rescue dog and drive back cross-country with Ella, who ostensibly has a meeting with a children’s book editor in New York City. On the way, Lou and Ella see various national monuments and stop to visit with Marc and his wife, Karen (Sebastian), in Colorado, where Lou discusses his pending job application in Marc’s department.

But the closer they get to home, the more uncomfortable both Ella and Lou seem with, as we eventually find out, good reason.

Feldman (Three Women in Four Chairs, My Lover Joan) and director Daniel Aukin (Fool for Love, Bad Jews) do a superb job conjuring a drive across America without any props other than chairs; when they stop at Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon, you feel you are there even though it is two characters sitting or standing on an empty stage. The spare set is by Lael Jellinek, with lighting by Matt Frey and sound by Kate Marvin. The cleverly outlined and believable story about an older man trying to hold his place in a world that that threatens to leave him behind, reminiscent of Willy Loman, gives way to one crucial late plot twist that jolts the narrative ahead toward its tragic conclusion but seems to have come out of nowhere except recent headlines, strangely ungrounded in the characters we’ve been watching for seventy minutes or so.

Peg (Constance Shulman), Ella (Aya Cash), and Lou (Frank Wood) face hard truths in Emily Feldman play (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Tony winner Wood (Sideman, In the Blood) is wonderfully deadpan throughout, portraying a man who’s living in his own alternate reality. The always terrific Shulman (SHHH, Orange Is the New Black) is very funny as the ever-worried Peg, while Cash (From Up Here, The Pain and the Itch) keeps the deeply troubled Ella appropriately on edge, not necessarily the heroic figure we want her to be; her description of what her book is about is telling: “the inner emptiness of being a person living in a warlike society that, on some level, believes it has no future.” Coats (On the Levee, La Ruta) provides solid support as Lou’s old buddy, who knows more than he admits.

Sebastian (Vietgone, Now Circa Then) is a lovely stage manager, giving direction to the characters, delivering interstitial notes to the audience, and inhabiting several roles, generally in a track suit. (The costumes are by Anita Yavich.) She’s not about to take any nonsense from any of them, nor is she going to let the show drift too far off course. Once Ella and Lou return to Peg, Maps tells Ella, “Get everything out in the open.” Ella hesitates, so Maps adds. “Go ahead.” Ella does, and it’s not pretty. “I’m sorry. But, this is the tragedy part,” Maps tells us.

Despite its major plot misstep, The Best We Could is an involving tale that follows a relatively average, if offbeat, family trying to do the best they can. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s the American way.

THE SEAGULL/ WOODSTOCK, NY

Thomas Bradshaw moves Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull to modern-day Woodstock in New Group world premiere (photo by Monique Carboni)

THE SEAGULL/ WOODSTOCK, NY
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 9, $38-$107
212-244-7529
thenewgroup.org
www.signaturetheatre.org

While sitting in the first row watching Thomas Bradshaw’s outrageously funny and psychologically insightful modern-day adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, called The Seagull/Woodstock, NY, I was reminded that I have never seen a traditional version of the play, one that uses the original dialogue and time period. And that’s just how the Russian playwright wanted it.

In John J. Desmond’s relatively serious and straightforward 1975 Williamstown production, which went straight from stage to film, Konstantin (Frank Langella), a young playwright whose mother, Irina (Lee Grant), is an aristocratic star, tells his uncle, landowner Sorin (William Swetland), about Irina, “She knows of course I haven’t got any use for the theater. She loves the theater. Seems to her she’s working for humanity and the sacred cause of art. But to me her theater today is nothing, nothing but a mass of routine and stale conventions.” Sorin responds, “Well, we can’t do without the theater, my dear boy.” A fanciful dreamer, Konstantin declares, “We need new forms, Uncle! New forms we must have. And if we can’t have those, we shall have nothing at all.”

Thus, Chekhov himself essentially demands new interpretations, and in New York City we have received them with such challenging works as Elevator Repair Service’s 2022 Seagull at Skirball and Aaron Posner’s 2016 Stupid Fucking Bird at the much-lamented Pearl.

Bradshaw tears down conventions in his 160-minute version (with intermission) for the New Group, in which the action has been moved from a late-nineteenth-century Russian country estate to a contemporary riverfront home in artsy Woodstock in Ulster County. The play begins with the actors warming up on a wooden proscenium platform, doing physical and vocal exercises; the audience sits on three sides of the stage as they get an advance glimpse of the cast and try to figure out who’s portraying who. After several minutes, everyone joins in a singalong of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 classic “Our House,” the lyrics of which will run counter to what we are about to experience: “Our house is a very, very, very fine house / With two cats in the yard / Life used to be so hard / Now everything is easy ’cause of you.” (CSNY appeared at the 1969 Woodstock festival but did not sing that song; the next year, however, they released the song “Woodstock,” written by Joni Mitchell, in which they proclaim, “Got to get back to the land / Set my soul free.”)

A close-knit, motley crew is gathering by the river on Darren (Daniel Oreskes) and Pauline’s (Amy Stiller) property to see a new play by Kevin (Nat Wolff), a twenty-six-year-old ne’er-do-well living in the shadow of his narcissistic mother, Irene (Parker Posey), a star of the stage. Before she says hello to her friends and relations, she is already loudly complaining that there is no soy milk for her coffee. Kevin has written the one-person, two-hour show for Nina (Aleyse Shannon), a twentysomething with no boundaries. Kevin is in love with Nina, who will soon take a liking to the older William (Ato Essandoh), a well-known writer who is Irene’s current partner. Meanwhile, Pauline and Darren’s daughter, Sasha (Hari Nef), pines away for Kevin. Also on hand are Sasha’s teacher husband, Mark (Patrick Foley), brain surgeon Dean (Bill Sage), and retired lawyer Samuel (David Cale), Irene’s best friend.

Mother (Parker Posey) and son (Nat Wolff) have an awkward relationship in The Seagull/Woodstock, NY (photo by Monique Carboni)

When Sasha ridicules Kevin’s set, which consists solely of a cast-iron bathtub and a curtain that goes around it, Mark needles her, saying, “Tonight their artistic souls will unite on this very stage.” Right before Kevin’s play starts, Samuel tells Nina, who lives nearby and whose banker father is not a fan of her interest in theater, “Woodstock nurtures the artistic soul. Bob Dylan and Van Morrison wrote some of their best music here. [Your father] should have bought a place in the Hamptons if he wanted you to be a banker.”

Bradshaw fills the show with contemporary references, from Dylan and Morrison to viagra, #metoo, Alec Baldwin, wokeness, the Wailers, Donald Trump, Bertrand Russell, Instagram, Stephen Colbert, Tracy Letts, dramadies, and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive. He also takes on race, class, sexual identity, and truth but in subtler ways than he has in such previous works as Southern Promises, Intimacy, and Burning, or at least more subtle for him.

But Bradshaw and director Scott Elliott’s central target is art itself. “Hi, I’m Nina. I’m not a character in Kevin’s play. I’m me,” Nina says as the play-within-a-play kicks off. “Kevin hates artifice. So do I. I am myself, or I am no one. Who are you? Are you, you? Or are you hiding from yourself?” She adds, “The fourth wall tonight is broken. So that means I can see you just as clearly as you can see me. I can see everything about you. I can see things even you can’t see.” The fourth wall of Bradshaw’s play was broken immediately as well, when the actors got onstage and we all sang, and the lights stay at a level that allows us to see everyone in the audience.

Nina, who is biracial, then discusses “the N word,” actually saying it in full several times, which confronts her audience as well as Bradshaw’s, a writer who often strives to make his audience squirm in their seats. “I get that the historical legacy of the word is offensive. But does the word itself have any power?” she asks. Then, in true Bradshaw fashion, she switches to one of his favorite topics. “We recently went through a long period of isolation. Everyone in our society did. It was a period of intense loneliness for me. And for many of you, I bet. And what were we all doing during that time? Masturbating. Why can’t we talk about it? We all do it. I’d rather discuss masturbating than the weather.” Bradshaw understands that theater itself can be a kind of masturbation; in fact, in Intimacy, a character not only pleasures himself (using a prosthetic) in view of the audience but launches a sticky white substance into the crowd, some of which landed on the head of a major critic, who was none too happy. (One friend joked to me that Anton’s last name should be “Jackhov,” pronounced “jackoff.”)

Irene (Parker Posey) gets in the middle of Pauline (Amy Stiller) and Darren (Daniel Oreskes) in New Group world premiere at the Signature (photo by Monique Carboni)

After Kevin’s play ends, Irene tells Nina, “You were very good, in spite of my son exploiting you.” Nina replies, “Oh no. It was my choice. And he totally respected me, as an actress, and as a woman of color.” Irene says, “So you didn’t feel the least bit weird pretending to, uh, touch yourself, onstage?” Nina explains, “Oh, I wasn’t pretending. I had to really do it, in order to crack the artifice of normal theatrical conventions. There’s nothing real about realism. That’s Kevin’s philosophy. He believes in hiding nothing.” That is Bradshaw’s philosophy as well.

Throughout the show, the actors and stage crew bring chairs and tables on and off Derek McLane’s intimate set, which includes a narrow lower level around the platform where people in the first row can get comfy and put up their feet — until some of the actors walk across it. At times Elliott choreographs the play like it’s a dance, expertly guiding the cast of ten in the small space, who enter and exit through the aisles.

The cast seems to be having a lot of fun, and that feeling is infectious; the play moves at such an intoxicating pace that you might be disappointed when it’s over, wanting to spend more time with these well-developed, endearing, annoying, and frustrating people. “I think my character would feel more authentic if we knew more of her backstory. Right now the play feels abrupt,” Nina tells Kevin, who argues, “It is abrupt. That’s the point. We’re subverting typical American Theater. We’re getting right to the heart of the matter instead of making our audience suffer through an hour of incredibly dull backstory.”

Posey (Hurlyburly, Fifth of July) is a burst of summer sunshine as Irene, in flowery dresses, bobbed hairdo, and gloriously fake smiles. (The costumes are by Qween Jean, with lighting by Cha See and sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen that keep the audience immersed in the show.) Wolff (Buried Child, The Naked Brothers Band) wonderfully captures the constant nervous wreck that is Kevin, while Shannon (Charmed, Black Christmas) glistens as a strong young woman ready to take charge of her life, especially sexually, and Nef (Des Moines, “Daddy”) is a bundle of fear as the disillusioned Sasha. Cale, Essandoh, Foley, Nef, Oreskes, Sage, and Stiller round out the uniformly solid cast.

Bradshaw (Thomas & Sally, Fulfillment) and New Group artistic director Elliott (Mercury Fur, Sticks & Bones) also take a hard look at aging, not just in theater but in life. Irene is well aware that it is getting more difficult for her to find roles because she is in her fifties, and Samuel is facing serious health issues that affect the elderly.

“Is there anything new anymore? Are there any new stories? New forms? Or is everything just a new spin on something old? A reinvention of the comfortable and familiar?,” Kevin asks William. The Seagull/Woodstock, NY provides just the right answers to those questions.

THE TREES

Sheila (Crystal Dickinson) and David (Jess Barbagallo) are stuck in a rut in The Trees (photo by Chelcie Parry)

THE TREES
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 19, $46-$76
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In L. Frank Baum’s 1919 book The Magic of Oz, the thirteenth and next-to-last of the illustrated Oz novels, a little girl named Trot and grizzled former sailor Cap’n Bill suddenly get stuck in the ground, and their feet start growing roots. As Baum writes: “This is hard luck,” [Cap’n Bill] declared, in a voice that showed he was uneasy at the discovery. “We’re pris’ners, Trot, on this funny island, an’ I’d like to know how we’re ever goin’ to get loose, so’s we can get home again.”

That’s precisely what happens to Sheila (Crystal Dickinson) and her older brother, David (Jess Barbagallo), near the beginning of Agnes Borinsky’s The Trees, making its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons (coproduced by Page 73) through March 19. It’s also what happens to the play itself, which is stuck in the mud from the get-go.

Sheila and David are both drunk, returning from a party. Instead of going into their house, they gleefully run around the forest until their feet get trapped in large circles and their toes start growing roots. “There’s still so much to do,” David says. “Will anyone notice?” Sheila asks.

People will notice, but there appears to be nothing much they can do about it as life goes on around the siblings, including visits from their Polish grandmother (Danusia Trevino); their longtime friend Charlotte (Becky Yamamoto); David’s boyfriend, Jared (Sean Donovan); Norman (Ray Anthony Thomas), who is caught in some nearby bushes; Saul (Max Gordon Moore), a rabbi from Cleveland; Sheryl (Marcia DeBonis), from the Cleveland congregation Sisterhood; twinks Julian (Nile Harris) and Tavish (Pauli Pontrelli); street vendor Terry (Sam Breslin Wright), who immediately senses opportunity; and, later, a child named Ezra (Xander Fenyes).

Agnes Borinsky’s The Trees takes place in a candy-colored forest (photo by Chelcie Parry)

Among the topics of conversation are capitalism, religion, romance, and loneliness, with hints at environmentalism.

“I think there’s a certain threshold of love one needs to feel in one’s life,” Norman says. “And if you never meet that threshold you continue to be filled with longing. You can keep on — but you’re hungry. And that is me. Slightly hungry. To the bitter end.”

The rabbi admits, “I’ve felt a great sliding in the world. Like we’re all sliding off this planet into somewhere . . . dark and ugly and dead. It seems a little bit like it’s all on autopilot. Like God is off . . . somewhere . . . else. And the plane of the world is off, somehow, and we’re just sliding. . . . And so when I read about you two, it seemed to me like God might have returned. And that this was the hand of God, that rooted you here. That life isn’t the miracle, but staying put. Because if the world were to tilt and the rest of us were to slide, you’d still be right here.”

David and Sheila remain right there as life plods forward, evoking Didi and Gogo in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, but Borinsky (A Song of Songs, Ding Dong It’s the Ocean) is never able to establish much of a story aside from the central idea of two characters in search of an exit. In a “Playwright’s Perspective” program note, she admits, “I’m not great at writing plot. I end up writing logistics. . . . Plots are a bit ridiculous.” Unfortunately, a plot is precisely what The Trees needs, something to be nurtured, that can grow over the course of, in this case, a striking-looking but ultimately aimless 105 minutes. (The fun lighting is by Thomas Dunn, with sound by Tei Blow and puppets by Amanda Villalobos.)

Parker Lutz’s pristine white set is a glistening fairy-tale world with Greek columns, but the narrative is choppy and random. Enver Chakartash’s costumes can get wildly colorful, at times conjuring the rainbow Pride flag, but it’s primarily all for show, with not enough substance. Too often characters come and go without adding much, anecdotes that might be cute but are not critical. Director Tina Satter (Is This a Room, Ghost Rings) can only do so much with her two stars essentially cemented in place, and I’m still trying to figure out why David and Sheila occasionally go down into the ground and then come back up again; it’s a cool effect that does not have any apparent reason, fitting in with the rest of the play.

In Baum’s The Magic of Oz, the Kalidah reflects, “Our own Kalidah King has certain magical powers of his own. Perhaps he knows how to fill up these two holes in my body.” Perhaps he also knows how to fill up the two bodies in holes in The Trees.