this week in theater

OUR CLASS

Our Class recounts a 1941 Polish pogrom and its aftermath (photo by Pavel Antonov)

UNDER THE RADAR: OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 11, $68-$139
www.bam.org
ourclassplay.com

“I’m going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us — more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh flight. See what I mean?” the stage manager says in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize–winning drama Our Town. “So — people a thousand years from now — this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. — This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.”

In Igor Golyak‘s potent new revival of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s 2008 play, Our Class, at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space through February 11 as part of the Under the Radar festival, the first and second acts start with the cast sitting in a semicircle, holding and reading from scripts, as if copies of the play have been recently unearthed from a cornerstone, revealing a terrifying story that is not as widely known as it should be, and all too relevant to what is happening in the world today.

Inspired by actual events that occurred in the small village of Jedwabne, Poland, Our Class follows a group of ten Polish students, five Jewish, five Catholic, all born in 1919–20, from childhood to young adulthood to old age, although several don’t make it through a 1941 pogrom.

The audience is shown immediately when each character dies; their birth and death dates are written in chalk on a large, multipurpose blackboard. I preferred not to look too closely, instead learning their fate over the course of the narrative, but Golyak and Słobodzianek clearly want you to know who is going to live and who is going to die in their early twenties, in awful ways.

Richard Topol plays Abram Piekarz, the only Polish Jew who got out in time (photo by Pavel Antonov)

Richard Topol portrays Abram Piekarz, who serves as a kind of stage manager. Topol has played similar roles in such important plays about antisemitism as Indecent and Prayer for the French Republic; here he introduces each scene, which are called “lessons,” shuffling props, directly addressing the audience, blowing harp, appearing all over the theater (including in the aisles and on top of the blackboard), and remaining in touch with his fellow classmates after he moves to America and studies to become a rabbi.

At the start of the show, the characters share their hopes and dreams: Dora (Gus Birney) wants to be a movie star, Rysiek (José Espinosa) a pilot, Zocha (Tess Goldwyn) a seamstress, Zygmunt (Elan Zafir) a soldier, Rachelka (Alexandra Silber) a doctor, Jakub Katz (Stephen Ochsner) a teacher. Very few get to achieve their goals.

The first crack in the friendship between the Jews and the Christians occurs in the wake of the death in 1935 of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who had encouraged minority cultures in the nation. While Jakub is honoring the marshal’s accomplishments, Heniek (Will Manning) mockingly declares, “The marshal’s a prick with a circumcised dick. / His power he loved to abuse. / He married three times and committed his crimes / And sold all us Poles to the Jews!”

Later, the Christian students hold a prayer service in school, which upsets Menachem (Andrey Burkovskiy), Jakub, and Rachelka, who chastises Władek (Ilia Volok) for throwing rocks at Jakub’s sister.

And then, during a party for the opening of a local cinema — made possible by the Soviet occupation of Poland — Rysiek shouts, “Death to the Commie-Jew Conspiracy. Long live Poland!” He leaves, but when a few of the Christians insist on dancing with Jews, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

It’s not long before blood is spilled and people are being brutally murdered.

“Classmates are like family. Better than family,” Zygmunt proclaims.

What happened was no way to treat family.

During the pandemic, Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke out of the pack with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, followed by The Orchard, a hybrid reimagining of The Cherry Orchard with Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Golyak (chekhovOS /an experimental game/, Witness) directs with a frenetic energy that is intoxicating; your eyes are always searching for the unusual, the unexpected. In Our Class, adapted by Norman Allen from a literal translation by Catherine Grovesnor, you won’t find characters just sitting and talking; there is constant motion and action throughout the space. Text is added to the blackboard. Victims are represented by balloons on which the actors draw faces. Two figures watch from overhead. Ladders are dragged across the set, used for multiple purposes. A soccer ball that previously brought the classmates together on their team is turned into a weapon.

Cameras and monitors are pushed onstage, projecting live recordings on the screen and the blackboard, then rolled back to the wings, where actors wait and watch intently when they’re not in the scene. At times there is too much happening all at once, complicated by anachronistic video usage, although it also firmly reminds us that this could happen again, as evidenced by the current rise of antisemitism around the world, particularly following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.

At three hours (with one intermission), the play is long, but any shorter and its lessons might be lost, and in any case, Golyak never lets it slow down. (Prayer for the French Republic is also three hours but doesn’t feel like it.)

Ten classmates learn more than they ever bargained for in New York premiere of Tadeusz Słobodzianek play (photo by Pavel Antonov)

The cast and crew, who hail from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US, are superb. The set is by Jan Pappelbaum of the Schaubühne, with realistic сostumes by Sasha Ageeva, stark lighting by Adam Silverman, original music by Anna Drubich, immersive sound by Ben Williams, choreography by Or Schraiber, and projections by Eric Dunlap.

Topol (King of the Jews, The Normal Heart) is exceptional as Abram, the only one who got out of Poland before the 1941 pogrom; he imbues Abram — who in many ways is a stand-in for America, which entered WWII only when Pearl Harbor was attacked — with a soft, affectionate tenderness. Both Topol and Abram are genuine mensches.

Birney (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, The Rose Tattoo) will break your heart over and over again as Dora, Espinosa (Take Me Out, Fuente Ovejuna) will infuriate you as the bigoted Rysiek, Silber (Fiddler on the Roof, Hello Again) will shock and annoy you as Rachelka, Goldwyn, in her off-Broadway debut, will charm you as Zocha, and Volok (Gemini Man, The Gaaga) will utterly confound you as Władek. Burkovskiy (Solar Line, The Flight), Zafir (Arcadia, Everybody), Manning (Breitwisch Farm, Just Tell No One), and Ochsner (The Maxims of Panteley Karmanov, Everything’s Fine) round out the excellent ensemble.

Perhaps the best thing about Our Class is that it doesn’t preach at the audience; it has a message and a point of view but is not teaching us about good and evil.

In Our Town, Emily asks the stage manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”

“No,” the stage manager replies.

And that’s a shame, because no one should have to go through such horrors again.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can find his personal essay on Our Class here.]

PROTOTYPE: TERCE — A PRACTICAL BREVIARY

Terce: A Practical Breviary is another gem from Heather Christian (photo by Maria Baranova)

TERCE: A PRACTICAL BREVIARY
The Space at Irondale
85 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn
Wednesday – Sunday through February 4, $50-$150
prototypefestival.org
here.org

Multidisciplinary artist Heather Christian doesn’t just make memorable shows; she creates unforgettable experiences.

Online and at the Bushwick Starr, Animal Wisdom was an intimate and rapturous confessional of music and storytelling, an ingenious journey into the personal and communal nature of ritual and superstition, of grief and loss, of ghosts and, most intently, the fear of death.

At Ars Nova at Greenwich House, Oratorio for Living Things was a gloriously exhilarating celebration of life, art, and nature, an immersive journey through the complex quantum, human, and cosmic time and space of our daily existence.

Christian is now back with the majestic Terce: A Practical Breviary, a reimagining of a monastic 9:00 morning mass as only she can present it, continuing at the Space at Irondale through February 4. “Terce” is the name of the third of the seven canonical hours of the divine office, while a breviary is an abridged liturgical tome of psalms, readings, and hymns.

Terce: A Practical Breviary takes place in a unique environment in the Space at Irondale (photo by Maria Baranova)

Part of the Prototype Festival and commissioned, developed, and produced by HERE, the show takes place in the former Sunday school home of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church on South Oxford St. in Brooklyn, which Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin have remade into a welcoming area with two rows of chairs surrounding a central carpeted oval on which there are musical instruments, a mound of dirt, and a complex web of laundry lines emanating from a vertical loom, holding up fabric and household objects that will later be lowered down and used by the performers. Two tables contain tea and cookies that the audience can sample, along with the cast and crew.

As the crowd enters, the thirty members of the community chorus of mothers and/or caregivers are on the upper level, putting on robes that have been individually designed for them by Brenda Abbandondolo; some have embroidery or ruffles, while others are distressed or torn. The band soon saunters onto the stage: Mona Seyed-Boloforosh on grand piano, Viva DeConcini on electric guitar, Mel Hsu on bass and cello, Maya Sharpe on acoustic guitar and violin, Rima Fand on violin, Jessica Lurie on wind, Christian on keyboards, vocal soloists Divya Maus and Kait Warner, and Terry Dame on saxophone and a percussion kit made of pots and pans. All of the performers identify as female; nearly all the props are items associated with what some still consider “women’s work.”

What follows is an exhilarating and powerful sixty-minute service that Christian, in a program note, explains “addresses the Holy Spirit through the lens of the Divine Feminine.” The words to each of the fifteen songs are projected onto large screens on either side of the space, accompanied by drawings by Alice Leora Briggs, Koomah, and Lovie Olivia. While singing, the chorus occasionally marches around the oval and through the audience, at one point breaking out into smaller groups, joining together for communal rituals.

(The lovely choir, which interacts with the audience, consists of Raquel Cion, Marisa Clementi, Ciera Cope, Nadine Daniels, Sandra Gamer, Audrey Hayes, Mercedes Hesselroth, Frances Higgins, Davina Honeghan, Beau Kadir, Rachel Karp, Sarah Lefebvre, Aris Louis, Teri Madonna, Grenetta Mason, Mickaila Perry, Eleanor Philips, Avery Richards, Kayleigh Rozwat, Amy Santos, Kayla Sklar, Sharyn Thomas, Shelley Thomas, Vanessa Truell, Grace Tyson, Madrid Vinarski, Jessie Winograd, and Allison Zhao.)

In the opening “Oratorio,” a singer declares, “You and me and both our mothers / opened up the bottle, / when we opened up our stories / carrying blood to somewhere else.” In “Gardener,” we are told that “the Mother is the garden and the gardener.” In “O Shepherdess,” an adaptation of three prayers by St. Hildegard of Bingen, we hear about “a wound of contrition / a wound of compassion / a wound of the earnest longing for someone.”

The “Psaltery” section is prefaced by the quote “To be divinely feminine is a beatified exhibition of multitasking,” followed by references to Gucci and the DMV; songs include “Poppyseed” and “Mercy Is a Work,” a response to Julian of Norwich. The final part, “Reckoning,” explores gravity, panic, and hurt. Christian sings, “Until we die longing for love / we’re here sensing the chaos / and we don’t know what we are. / When this confused / I submit to my mother / In the door crease of the backseat of the car. / I grasp it only for a moment and in bliss / I understand how everything is all at once / in mercy and in love / and then I lose it.”

Terce: A Practical Breviary is fluidly directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant (queen, Will You Come with Me?), who superbly manages the large cast and vast space, with lighting by Masha Tsimring (that battles with the sun pouring through the windows at certain times), enveloping sound by Nick Kourtides, and intricate movement by Heather Christian, Darlene Christian, and Oliphant. Heather Christian wrote the libretto, sings several songs, and composed the score, which ranges from pop and gospel to soul and medieval organum.

Christian, who keeps fascinating little trinkets on her piano, never loses anything in her work, pontificating on the fullness and mystery of human experience, from rolling pins and vacuums to lilting choral voices and the ineffable grace of the feminine divine. “I have no artistic restraint / every think I see, I paint / with the image of myself / I am the vine,” she proclaims late in the show, in a processional that is a response to John 15.5. I pray that nothing ever restrains her unforgettable art.

twi-ny talk: MAI KHÔI / BAD ACTIVIST

Mai Khôi returns February 1 to Joe’s Pub with the final iteration of Bad Activist (photo by Nate Guidry)

BAD ACTIVIST
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St.
Thursday, February 1, $15-$25 (plus two-drink or one-food-item minimum), 7:00
publictheater.org
mai-khoi.com

Back in September, I attended a friend’s wedding in rural Pennsylvania. Sitting at our table was a woman who was introduced to us as Mai Khôi, the Lady Gaga of Vietnam. We discovered later in the evening why, when, in full makeup and costume, she performed a song written especially for the occasion. The groom, Alex Lough, is an experimental musician and teacher, and the bride, Hanah Davenport, is a singer-songwriter and urban planner; at one point the party broke out into a Greenwich Village–style happening with a series of avant-garde presentations.

Born Đỗ Nguyễn Mai Khôi in 1983 in Cam Ranh, Vietnam, Mai Khôi was an award-winning pop star whose activism infuriated the government as she advocated for freedom of expression, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and the environment and against censorship, domestic violence, and Donald Trump. She also got into trouble by announcing that she did not want to have children.

She’s been playing music since she was six, in her father’s wedding band and later in clubs. She released her first album in 2004, and ten more solo records followed between 2008 and 2018; as her fame and fortune exploded, so did her concern for the welfare of the Vietnamese people. She challenged the police and the government, leading her to have to play secret shows for her fans. Shortly after the release of the 2019 documentary Mai Khôi and the Dissidents, which screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, she fled to America; she currently lives in Pittsburgh with her personal and professional partner, Mark Micchelli.

“Even though Mai Khôi primarily sings in Vietnamese, you can always understand the intention she’s trying to convey,” Lough, who is producing her upcoming album, explained to me. “Her band has a refreshing approach to protest music, like we haven’t heard since Rage Against the Machine. She has an incredible emotional range, from delicate sadness and vulnerability to screaming and extended vocal techniques. She is also able to freely move between her role as the frontwoman to blending in with everyone; it’s rare to see that kind of versatility in a vocalist with such a commanding stage presence.” The record will feature such tracks as “We Never Know,” “Innocent Deer,” and “The Overwhelming Feeling that We’re Already Dead.”

On February 1, she will return to Joe’s Pub with the biographical multimedia Bad Activist, which details her life and career through music, photographs, video, archival footage, and more. Directed by Cynthia Croot, the seventy-five-minute show features such songs as “Reeducation Camp,” “Just Be Patient,” and “Bitches Get Things Done,” with Mai Khôi joined by Alec Zander Redd on saxophones, Eli Namay on bass, PJ Roduta on drums, and music director Micchelli on keyboards, playing a mix of experimental jazz rock, folk, and deliberately cheesy pop; Aaron Henderson is the projection designer. Although the work has been performed and workshopped over the last four years at small venues and universities, this iteration is the debut of the full, finished production.

I recently spoke with Mai Khôi and Micchelli over Zoom, discussing music, repressive governments, cooking, and why she considers herself a bad activist.

twi-ny: The three of us were at the same table at Alex and Hanah’s wedding. How did you first meet Alex?

Mark Micchelli: Alex and I met in September of 2016; we were in the same cohort at the University of California, Irvine, where Alex finished his PhD and where I did my master’s. I moved out east, if you can call Pittsburgh east, first in 2019, and then he moved to South Jersey in 2020. And so we’ve been musical collaborators since 2016 and been around the world. We’ve done gigs throughout California and in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, and South Korea.

Mai Khôi: In 2020, I got a fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh and I was invited to work with Mark. We began with my project Bad Activist.

mm: I had actually gotten an email from the University of Pittsburgh that said there’s this Vietnamese singer-songwriter who’s looking for a pianist who knows something about jazz and Southeast Asian traditional music. And I said, Well, no one’s qualified for that job, so I may as well try. When I was told that I’d have to learn the music in three weeks, I knew I didn’t have time to learn it in that amount of time. I drafted an email to basically politely decline and say, find another pianist. And then I thought I should actually look up what this person’s music actually sounds like. And now we own a house together.

twi-ny: When was the last time you were in Vietnam to either see family members or play a secret show?

mk: Oh, when I moved to the US at the end of 2019. I have not been able to come back to Vietnam since.

twi-ny: What will happen if you try to go back? Would they arrest you?

mk: Yes, they could arrest me. They could detain me. That’s what happened with an activist friend of mine. So, yeah, it’s still dangerous for me to go back, so I’ve chosen not to. My friend had the same situation, like me. She left Vietnam for two years, and then when her mother got sick, she wanted to come home, but the police arrested her, and she is now in jail. They sentenced her to three years.

twi-ny: What family do you have in Vietnam?

mk: My mother, my father. And I have one brother who lives with them.

twi-ny: If they left the country, say, to visit you here, would they be allowed back in?

mk: They don’t have any plans to leave Vietnam.

twi-ny: But if they did, would the government let them return?

mk: If the police want to arrest you, they can arrest you any time. But I think my family will be safe because they’re not involved in activism at all. They did try to convince me to not get involved. From the beginning, the police came and investigated them. After many visits to my parents’ house, they realized my parents have nothing to do with activism, so they leave them alone.

twi-ny: Are you in contact with them either over the phone or via social media? I know you’ve accused Facebook of being in bed with the Vietnam government.

mk: My parents still use Facebook; that is the main thing we use to see each other every day. Of course, I know the police always follow my Instagram and my Facebook and try to hack into them. But it’s okay. I still know how to use Facebook to spread my word and deal with the situation. Someone like my parents or other friends that are not activists, they will not comment on any sensitive things I post on Facebook. They don’t like some of the posts about politics anyway.

twi-ny: You’ve said, “No one can stop me.” Has the government come to you and said, If you take back some of the things you’ve said, we’ll leave you alone?

mk: They did try that in 2016 [when I was applying to run for the National Assembly]. They sent a person to talk to me to give me that deal. Like if you withdraw your nomination campaign, the system will make you even more famous. That was the deal, but I didn’t take it.

I refuse to talk with them about those kinds of things. When the government detained me a couple of years after, they asked me some questions and I just gave them information that’s already public.

twi-ny: What are some of the main issues you are rallying against, in Vietnam and America?

mk: You will see this when you come to see Bad Activist. I am focusing on freedom of expression. And recently, I’m doing some advocacy work for climate activists. Because I’m here, it’s easy to lobby Congress and the State Department, to work with the US government. [ed. note: Mai Khôi met with members of Congress last summer, before President Biden traveled to Vietnam.]

Also, I was surprised by the brutality of the police here, so I want to fight against that. It’s very similar with the police in Vietnam. In New York, when the Black Lives Matter movement happened, I went to the protest every week. I really feel the brutality of the police everywhere is just the same.

twi-ny: On February 1, you’ll be at Joe’s Pub, where you performed two earlier versions of Bad Activist in 2021–22. What do you think of the venue?

mm: They treat you super well. They know how to work with performers.

mk: In 2020, they started to work with the SHIM:NYC team for artists like me, to give us a chance to perform in an iconic venue in New York like that. [ed. note: SHIM:NYC is “a creative and professional residency and mentorship program for international musicians who are persecuted or censored for their work; are threatened on the basis of their political or religious affiliations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity; have been forcibly displaced; need a respite from dangerous situations; or are from countries experiencing active, violent conflict.”]

mm: We do have City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, which does something similar.

twi-ny: What makes you a bad activist?

mk: There’s some moments that I realized maybe I’m a bad activist because I am first an artist, but because I was born in my country, a country that’s not safe for artists, I decided to become an activist to protect my right to be an artist. So that’s why I don’t have good training to become a good activist. Sometimes I upset people. And sometimes I organize some things that aren’t . . . I just think sometimes I feel I’m a bad activist.

mm: I’ve had a lot of conversations with Khôi about this, and I feel like everyone who sees the show has the opposite feeling of Khôi about her and her activism, but everything she says is genuine. And I think the broader point is that despite her activism and since she has fled to the States, the situation in Vietnam has only been getting worse. And so I think reflecting on that failure is something that the show tries to come to terms with and talk about and that’s why the name is framed that way.

mk: Yes. So the point is, whether you’re bad or you’re good, you at least try to be an activist, to contribute something.

Mai Khôi has been playing music since she was six years old (photo courtesy Mai Khôi)

twi-ny: Activism these days seems to be more dangerous than ever.

mk: I don’t know. I just do things that I feel are the right thing to do and I do them. I always believe that doing the right thing will lead you to something good, even when you have to pay a price for doing it.

twi-ny: What’s next after Bad Activist?

mk: We have some ideas for a new project. It will be based on the activism and culture that I carry from Vietnam to here.

twi-ny: What do you do when you’re not making music or fighting the power?

mk: I have a hobby: cooking.

mm: Khôi is as good a chef as she is a vocalist, which is really unfair.

twi-ny: What are your favorite dishes to make?

mk: Bún bò huế (spicy beef and pork noodle soup), cá kho (caramelized and braised fish), and mì quảng (Quảng noodles).

twi-ny: One final question: Will we ever hear the song you wrote for Alex and Hanah again? And does it have a name?

mk: “I Hear the River Calling.” I don’t perform that song. It was a gift to them. But it might go on an album in the future.

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

THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD

Gwen (Vanessa Kai) is the facilitator for an unusual group therapy meeting in The Voices in Your Head (photo by HanJie Chow)

THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD
St. Lydia’s Dinner Church
304 Bond St., Brooklyn
January 8-29, $31.72
stlydias.org/events
www.thoseguiltycreatures.com

Lately I’ve been thinking more than ever about grief and death. I’m not a support group kinda guy, but when I heard about The Voices in Your Head, I knew I had to go.

I found solace — and nearly nonstop laughter — in Those Guilty Creatures’ immersive, site-specific group therapy black comedy, which continues at St. Lydia’s storefront dinner church in Brooklyn through January 29.

The space has been renamed St. Lidwina’s, after the Dutch patron saint of chronic pain and ice skating. The church has a large front window and door, looking more like a cozy shop than a place of worship. When you arrive, you are asked to check off your name on a sign-in sheet; to protect your anonymity, there are no last names, although people passing by outside can peek in and see you.

In the center of the room are more than two dozen unmatched chairs arranged in a large oval. In the back is a working kitchen where the facilitator, Gwen (Vanessa Kai), greets everyone while making tea and cookies. Several attendees engage in friendly conversation and chitchat. Shortly after Gwen calls the meeting to order, it becomes apparent that a handful of the participants are in the cast.

“It’s funny, when I was at my lowest, I was going to all these different meetings; it felt like dating, trying to find the right match, and they were all so . . . maudlin? I thought, there has to be another way. So, I started this group,” Gwen says. “Evidently, there was a need. So, we’re all here, we’ve met the criteria, but, broadly, I like to think of this as a place to share a sensibility. Laughter comes easier for me in here than out there. Everyone has their own relationship to grief; I’ve been considering mine, but what about anti-grief? We seek that through shared stories, activities, and discussions. . . . We aim to hear three stories each week, which, hopefully, helps us exchange some weird-ass joy.”

The audience becomes immersed in the grief of others in The Voices in Your Head (photo by HanJie Chow)

Sharing their sensibilities are the vivacious and outgoing Regina (Daphne Overbeck); Vivian (Marcia DeBonis), who believes in “Death, Embarrassment, Trauma”; Caleb (Christian Caro), who doesn’t want to be sad in college and can’t stop texting; the ultraserious Sandra (Erin Treadway); and the practical Hadiya (Jehan O. Young), who loves “the morbid stuff.”

They are eventually joined by first-timer Blake (Patrick Foley), who is determined to turn his story of loss into a Netflix special, and Ted (Tom Mezger), who actually attends the church and saw a flier.

Over the course of sixty fun, lively minutes, the group discusses Kelly Clarkson, hot cater waiters, self-care, vacuuming, exfoliating, sand, and other items and issues as they explore their personal misfortunes. A role-playing session that puts some of the group members in specific social situations doesn’t go quite as expected. During a break, the characters gossip, revealing more about who they are.

At the center of it all is the arbitrariness of death and Gwen’s assertion that we should “just approach the nature of the loss with a sense of humor. It helps us hold a certain space.”

The Voices in Your Head takes place in the storefront of a Brooklyn dinner church (photo by HanJie Chow)

The cast is uniformly excellent, led by Kai (The Pain of My Belligerence, KPOP) as the not-necessarily-so-stable Gwen, the always terrific DeBonis (Mary Page Marlowe, Small Mouth Sounds) as the chatty but caring Vivian, Treadway (Spaceman, War Dreamer) as the dour Sandra, Young (Speech, The Johnsons) as the purposeful Hadiya, Overbeck (Typed Out: A Princess Cabaret, Nightgowns) as the wonderfully over-the-top Regina, and Caro making his off-Broadway debut as the inattentive Caleb, but Foley (Circle Jerk, The Seagull/Woodstock, NY) nearly steals the show with his unforgettable Christmas story.

Created by Grier Mathiot and Billy McEntee and gleefully directed by Ryan Dobrin, The Voices in Your Head is as smart as it is hilarious. It’s not so much about how we deal with death than how we deal with life. Everyone reacts differently to tragedy and loss, but, as Gwen points out, “We need to hear each other’s laughter.”

The Voices in Your Head is not interactive — the audience should leave the talking to the actors — but feel free to mingle afterward and share your own thoughts about this engaging and involving experience.

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

THE FRIEL PROJECT: ARISTOCRATS

Uncle George (Colin Lane) goes for a stroll in Irish Rep revival of Brian Friel’s Aristocrats (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

ARISTOCRATS
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through March 3, $60-$125
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Irish Rep continues its 2023–24 Friel Project with what it does best, an exquisite revival of a superb Irish drama, in this case Brian Friel’s 1979 Aristocrats.

In 2005, when the company was in danger of losing the lease on its home on West Twenty-Second St., Friel, a native of Northern Ireland, praised the Irish Rep’s excellence, writing about cofounders Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly, “The ground they occupy has now been made sacred by them. They have made their space hallowed. It would be unthinkable if 132 West Twenty-Second St. were to slip from them and become secularized. It must remain under their wonderful guardianship.”

Friel passed away in 2015 at the age of eighty-six, coincidentally during a major renovation of the Irish Rep’s hallowed space.

Since its beginnings in 1988, the Irish Rep has staged ten of Friel’s works, including Making History, Molly Sweeney, Dancing at Lughnasa, The Freedom of the City, Afterplay, and The Home Place. The Friel Project kicked off with Translations last fall and continues in March with Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which the troupe previously presented in 1990 and 2005, before concluding with Molly Sweeney, seen at the Irish Rep in 2011 and online in 2020.

Moore first directed Aristocrats in 2009; fifteen years later, she is helming another exemplary production. The story, partially inspired by such classic Chekhov family tales as The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, takes place in Ballybeg Hall in County Donegal in the mid-1970s, as the fortunes of a Catholic family have turned. (Friel wrote adaptations of Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya and set several other plays in the fictional Ballybeg, which means “small town.”)

Alice (Sarah Street) is suspicious as Casimir (Tom Holcomb) shares more information with Tom (Roger Dominic Casey) in Aristocrats (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Charlie Corcoran, one of New York City’s finest scenic designers, has created a lovely indoor-outdoor set that features a flowered trellis and (fake) grass by an unseen tennis court, a porch swing, a desk in an old, dusty study raised a few steps, and a rear hallway with no front wall, so the audience can see people coming and going. The open set hints at the many secrets that will soon be revealed.

The decaying estate is run by Judith (Danielle Ryan), who lives there with her youngest sister, Claire (Meg Hennessy), who is getting married to a middle-aged widower with four young children; their father, former District Justice O’Donnell (Colin Lane), who has dementia; and their uncle George (Lane), a dapper old gent who rarely speaks. Their brother, Casimir (Tom Holcomb), has traveled from Hamburg for the wedding festivities, arriving without his wife, Helga, and their two children. The fourth sibling, the cynical Alice (Sarah Street), and her husband, the brash bully Eamon (Tim Ruddy), have also come, but it seems that they would prefer to be anywhere else.

As the play opens, family friend and handyman Willie Diver (Shane McNaughton) is installing a baby alarm on the top of a bookcase so the family can hear any noises coming from their father’s room, alerting them if there are any problems. An American scholar, Tom Hoffnung (Roger Dominic Casey), is at the estate researching a book he’s writing on “the life and the life-style of the Roman Catholic big house — by no means as thick on the ground but still there; what we might call a Roman Catholic aristocracy — for want of a better term. . . . And the task I’ve set myself is to explore its political, cultural, and economic influence both on the ascendancy ruling class and on the native peasant tradition.”

Casimir is only too happy to share the estate’s history with Tom, telling stories about such regular literary visitors as Sean O’Casey, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and W. B. Yeats. But Eamon has a different perspective, advising Tom that the book should be “a great big blockbuster of a gothic novel called Ballybeg Hall — From Supreme Court to Sausage Factory.”

Casimir, who can’t get through on the phone to his wife in Germany, continually plays a game with Claire, a trained classical pianist who suffers from anxiety, guessing the pieces she is playing from an offstage room; they also challenge each other to an invisible game of croquet, representing their vanishing lifestyle. Alice, who has a suspiciously bruised face, drinks too much. Judith, who participated in the Battle of the Bogside, smokes too much. The O’Donnells are a family on the decline, existing in their own world, refusing, or unable, to confront the reality that’s staring down at them.

Judith (Danielle Ryan) and Eamon (Tim Ruddy) can’t forget the past in Friel revival at Irish Rep (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Moore has a firm grasp on the proceedings, having previously directed five other Friel plays at the Irish Rep; the narrative flows smoothly, then hits hard when revelations come. The sound and original music by Ryan Rumery and M. Florian Staab immerse the audience in the elegiac world the O’Donnells are trying to hold on to, representative of an evolving Ireland as the Troubles pit the Catholics against the Protestants. Birds chirp and Claire’s piano emits beautiful melodies, but that is just background noise that can’t hide the truth. David Toser’s costumes range from casual to elegant to old-fashioned, further evoking the family’s loose relationship with time and change.

The expert cast is highlighted by Holcomb, who portrayed Chekhovian dreamer Conrad Arkadina in Woolly Mammoth’s adaptation of Aaron Posner’s reimagining of The Seagull, the fabulous Stupid Fucking Bird. The tall, thin Holcomb glides through the play, an unreliable narrator who is lost in a snow-globe fantasy.

Street, Hennessy, and Ryan are lovely as the three very different sisters; one of the most tender moments is when Alice and Claire are entwined on the swing, the former more mother than sibling to the latter. McNaughton is warm and friendly as Willie, Casey is stalwart as the observant Tom, and Lane makes the most of his short appearances as Uncle George and the father. Ruddy is strong as Eamon, a tough man who sees through much of the charade. “Between ourselves, it’s a very dangerous house, professor,” he tells Tom. He also refers to the lack of discussion of his mother-in-law as “the great silence.”

In addition to the four plays, the Irish Rep will also be paying tribute to Friel with several special events. On February 26, violinist Gregory Harrington, joined by pianist Simon Mulligan, will perform “Melodies for Friel: Echoing through the Landscape of Ballyweg,” and the Friel Project Reading Series continues through May 2 with readings of eleven Friel plays, anchored around a March 26 benefit presentation of the Tony-winning Dancing at Lughnasa.

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

ENCORE: JOB

A therapist (Peter Friedman) and his new patient (Sydney Lemmon) fight for survival in Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job (photo by Danielle Perelman)

JOB
Connelly Theater
220 East Fourth St. between Aves. A & B
Wednesday – Monday through March 3, $32-$127
jobtheplay.com
connellytheater.org

Last fall, Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job became one of the hottest tickets in town, spurred not only by the quality of the production but by a TikTok rave from moschinodorito, aka actor Connor Boyd.

The show, with the same cast and crew, is now having an encore run through March 3, moving from SoHo Playhouse to the Connelly Theater on the Lower East Side.

Below is my original review from last October; tickets are likely to go fast, so get your resumes in now. . . .

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The title of Max Wolf Friedlich’s intense generational thriller, Job, can be pronounced either with a soft o, meaning the type of work someone does, or with a hard o, referring to the biblical figure. Both characters in the world premiere at SoHo Playhouse will have to display patience and an innate understanding of their employment if they are going to survive this intense tale.

The show takes place in January 2020 in the San Francisco office of a therapist named Loyd (Peter Friedman), a sort of 1960s throwback who has to determine whether Jane (Sydney Lemmon) can return to her position in the tech world after having suffered a terrible psychological meltdown that went viral. As the play opens, Jane is holding a gun on Loyd.

“Thanks for squeezing me in,” she says plaintively, sitting down. “My pleasure. In general, do Wednesdays at this time work?” he asks, trying to ignore that his life appears to be in grave danger. For the next eighty minutes, Jane and Loyd play a kind of verbal cat-and-mouse game as facts slowly emerge explaining how it came to this.

Jane insists she is not a gun person but that her mental state is on the edge. She tells him, “I can’t imagine how scary that was for you — it was scary for me too — but I promise, I swear like . . . I will do whatever you need me to do just . . . I can’t be outside right now, I — I haven’t slept in a couple days, I haven’t — I can’t be outside, I just need to get back to work.”

Jane (Sydney Lemmon) believes she desperately needs to get back to work in Job (photo by Danielle Perelman)

Meanwhile, Loyd, responding to the shame Jane says she feels for having the gun, explains, “I’m not an especially spiritual person — at least not in the traditional sense — but I will contend that the people who wrote the Bible down were some very very clever people. We’re told that Adam and Eve eat the sort of magical wisdom apple, right? They eat the apple, realize they’re naked, and then . . . they feel shame. So shame is the very first feeling mentioned in the Bible — wisdom and shame are connected.”

Those two elements also arise in the Book of Job. “But where can wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its value, nor is it found in the land of the living,“ Job says to his friends. Shortly after, God says to Job, “Your enemies will be clothed in shame, and the tents of the wicked will be no more.”

As the two protagonists continue to battle it out, an underlying theme begins to emerge, one of the young fighting against the old. Jane is in her twenties, working in the tech profession in a role that didn’t exist a mere ten years before, while Loyd, in his sixties, is a laid-back Berkeley grad with outdated sensibilities.

“It’s the field that’s the problem,” Jane tells him. “Because people with your job come into work wanting to connect trauma A to trauma D, so they always do — it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy or whatever.” When Jane explains how a creepy guy on a train both hit on her and insulted her at the same time, Loyd defends it as “a misguided attempt at being friendly — generational miscommunication.” She also asks Loyd, “Like why are you so terrified of progress?”

Loyd delves into Jane’s upbringing, looking for clues regarding her meltdown, but keeps coming up empty. “It was a perfectly nice granola middle class existence — nothing to cry about,” she insists. Jane, however, often turns the tables on Loyd, asking him personal questions that he does answer, perhaps out of fear knowing that there’s still that gun in her bag. But once he’s said enough, a major twist leads to an intense finale.

Loyd (Peter Friedman) is the arbiter of Jane’s fate in world premiere at SoHo Playhouse (photo by Danielle Perelman)

No matter how you pronounce it, Job is a nail-biter about patience, wisdom, and, primarily, responsibility, about people being accountable for their actions and living up to their obligations. Both Jane, who works in “user care,” and Loyd have jobs in which they help people, though in different ways, through a kind of protection.

In his off-Broadway debut, director Michael Herwitz keeps the drama at high-boil, making good use of Scott Penner’s basic set, a few chairs facing each other atop a rectangular, carpeted platform, with two small tables, an ottoman, and a lamp. Mextly Couzin’s lighting features several eerie blackouts, accompanied by Jessie Char and Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s effective sound. The costumes by Michelle Li consist of casual pants and an unbuttoned shirt for Loyd and green pants and a belly-revealing striped shirt for Jane.

Ever-reliable Tony nominee Friedman (The Nether, Ragtime) is phenomenal as an easygoing therapist who suddenly find his life on the line, while Lemmon (Tár, Helstrom) — the daughter of Chris Lemmon and granddaughter of Jack Lemmon — is exceptional in her off-Broadway debut, stretching her long body, clasping her hands, and holding tight to her gun as she slowly reveals some hidden truths. (Friedman played series regular Frank on Succession, while Lemmon appeared in three episodes as Jennifer, who’s starring in Willa’s play.)

The twist is a biggie and will turn some people off, as will the open-ended finale. But everything up to those points is taut and nerve-racking. It’s not going to hurt any of the participants to have this Job on their resume.

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