this week in theater

CORNELIA STREET

Norbert Leo Butz heads a strong cast in Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel’s Cornelia Street (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

CORNELIA STREET
Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 5
atlantictheater.org

It’s a problem we know all too well: beloved New York City restaurants closing because of financial issues, primarily rising rents. During the pandemic, dozens and dozens of dining establishments, from Beyoglu, Blue Smoke, the ‘21’ Club, and Feast to Jewel Bako, Lucky Strike, the Mermaid Inn, and Mission Chinese, shut their doors because of rent as well as food costs and supply chain issues.

But it doesn’t take a worldwide health crisis to affect a restaurant’s longevity. In January 2019, the Cornelia Street Café, a West Village treasure since 1977, closed over rent increases. “I am sad to say that I am losing my oldest child,” cofounder Robin Hirsch wrote. “Cornelia has brought me both joy and pain, and it is with a broken heart that I must bid her adieu.”

Tony and Olivier winner Simon Stephens was inspired by the Cornelia Street Café in writing Cornelia Street, a rousing yet intimately touching musical that opened last night at Atlantic Stage 2. It is not specifically about the restaurant and downstairs performance venue that was located on Cornelia St. between Bleecker and West Fourth Sts., but Stephens spent time at the café in 2018 doing research for the work, which features music and lyrics by American Music Club founder Mark Eitzel; the two have previously collaborated on Marine Parade and Song from Far Away.

The show is set in the present day inside Marty’s Café, a local haunt that has been on Cornelia St. in the West Village for decades. The building is about to be put up for sale, so Marty and his longtime chef, Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz), are preparing to convince the Realtors and investor Daniel McCourt (Jordan Lage) that their restaurant is worth keeping. While Marty is extremely concerned about the balance sheets, the Jersey City-born Jacob thinks that a menu revamp is the way to go, consisting of higher-end dishes with classier ingredients: venison ravioli, pizza with Spanish chorizo, omelets with porcini mushrooms.

Jacob has been working at Marty’s for twenty-eight years; he and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Patti (Lena Pepe), who is having trouble at school, live above the café. Philip (Esteban Andres Cruz) is the waiter/bartender, a struggling actor having difficulty getting auditions.

Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz) takes a closer look at his daughter, Patti (Lena Pepe), in world premiere at Atlantic Stage 2 (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Three regulars come to the café to eat and/or drink nearly every day: John (Ben Rosenfield), a sweet, innocent computer scientist in his late twenties; Sarah (Mary Beth Peil), a retired opera singer who might be able to see the future; and William (George Abud), a perpetually nasty taxi driver and dealer who is always looking over his shoulder.

Jacob is shocked by the unexpected arrival of Misty (Gizel Jiménez), the daughter of an old girlfriend who he helped raise for a time. Misty is broke, alone, and angry, so Jacob gives her a job and lets her sleep in Patti’s room.

When Jacob is offered an opportunity to make some fast cash, relationships grow more complicated and trouble looms. As Sarah says somewhat facetiously, “There is a patisserie on the corner of Carmine and Sixth that is selling Edie Sedgwick cupcakes. This is a city that has started to eat itself.”

Scott Pask’s welcoming set makes the audience feel right at home, as if we are sitting at our own tables at the café. The wooden bar is at stage left, a few round tables stage right, and a window at the back that reveals the dark, narrow street outside. Linda Cho’s costumes are basic café wear, comfortable outfits, although Jacob’s concerts tees (the Ramones, Ziggy Stardust) spark a contrast with William’s flashy $240 shirt.

As opposed to being an all-out musical, Cornelia Street is more of a play with songs. Stephens’s (Heisenberg, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) book is smart and thorough, although there are two key moments that very well could have gone the wrong way but he rights the ship in time. Eitzel’s music is based in pop with lovely orchestrations by John Clancy, featuring Alec Berlin on guitar, Kirsten Agresta-Copley on harp, Gina Benalcazar on trombone, Marcos Rojas on tuba, Emma Reinhart on reeds, and Michael Ramsey on percussion and triangle. Part of the band is visible onstage, while the rest is nearly hidden off to the sides.

John (Jordan Lage) looks on as Jacob (Norbert Leo Butz) and Misty (Gizel Jiménez) go at it in Cornelia Street (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

The choreography, by former Alvin Ailey standout dancer Hope Boykin (Beauty Size & Color), is playful and appropriate, helping define who the characters are and what they want out of life. Each actor moves to their own groove, from a sweet shuffle to an elegant twist. No one is trying to tear the roof off the house, which matches the tempo of the narrative; there is no excess, a meal served with just the right ingredients.

However, Eitzel’s lyrics are a letdown, too often getting caught up in clichés even when successfully developing the characters and their relationships with one another. “So I’m saying this with a loving heart / Don’t be clever just be smart / Get A’s in science get A’s in art / And you will own the world,” Jacob assures Patti. “Loving an angel is bad / For your liver / For them nothing gets old / But the love of an angel nothing is better / In their arms you don’t feel the cold,” Sarah declares. One of the only times I lost focus was when Jacob tells himself, “If there’s a chance / I’m gonna take it / And if there’s a chance / I’m gonna make it,” which made me think of the late Cindy Williams and the theme song from Laverne and Shirley.

Tony-nominated director Neil Pepe, the Atlantic’s artistic director who has helmed such productions as Hands on a Hardbody, American Buffalo, and Stephens’s On the Shore of the Wide World, guides it all with expert precision; the characters don’t break out into song, stopping the play’s progression, but instead seamlessly continue the plot.

The excellent cast is led by two-time Tony winner Butz (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, My Fair Lady), who plays Jacob with a gruff, heartfelt soul; you can’t take your eyes off him when he’s onstage (which is virtually the entire 140-minute show, with intermission). Jiménez (Miss You Like Hell, Tick, Tick . . . Boom!) is appealing as the dark, mysterious Misty, Rosenfield (The Nether, Love, Love, Love) is adorable as the uncomplicated John, Tony nominee Peil (A Man of No Importance, Anastasia) is a delight as the lovely Sarah, and Lena Pepe, Neil’s daughter, is impressive in her off-Broadway debut.

On February 13 at 7:00, the Atlantic hosted the special event “Stories from the Cornelia Street Café,” an evening of songs and stories with Hirsch, Stephens, and Eitzel. We might not have the café itself anymore, or so many other cherished restaurants, but we do have this terrific show to satiate at least part of our thirst and hunger.

NYC INDIE THEATRE FILM FESTIVAL 2023

Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott’s Midday Black Midnight Blue kicks off New Ohio Theatre’s seventh and final NYCITFF

NYC INDIE THEATRE FILM FESTIVAL
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
February 16-19 in person, February 20-26 streaming, passes $35-$50, individual screenings $14-$20
newohiotheatre.org

There will be a melancholy cloud hovering over New Ohio Theatre’s seventh NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival (NYCITFF); this iteration will be its last, as founding artistic director Robert Lyons announced earlier this week that the company will cease operations at the end of the current season after thirty years of presenting experimental and cutting-edge theater and film.

“The decision is the result of a confluence of factors, including my intention to step down as artistic director, the shifting landscape and dynamics of the field, and increased financial pressures on the organization,” Lyons wrote in a statement. “The board and I believe theater organizations have their own natural life spans, and felt the time was right for New Ohio to step aside and make space for the next generation of theater-makers and producers. We believe this is an important moment for new ideas, new energy, and new models for the indie theater scene.”

The final NYCITFF takes place February 16-19 at New Ohio’s longtime home on Christopher St., with encore streamings of all films February 20-26. The festival consists of six features, thirty-four shorts in four programs (“Non-traditional Storytelling,” “Dating Drama,” “Everything Changes,” “Friendship Bonds”), two workshops (“Infinite Space: Making Theater in Virtual Reality” with Jocelyn Kuritsky, Alex Basco Koch, and Meghan Finn, and “Staging Film: Tricks of the Trade, Merging Stage and Film” with Kevin Laibson), and a reception and a happy hour.

The opening night selection on February 16 at 8:00 is Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott’s Midday Black Midnight Blue, a drama set on Whidbey Island where a man (Chris Stack) is haunted by a lost love (Soule); the cast includes two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, Godless) and off-Broadway favorite Dale Soules (I Remember Mama, The Capables). In-person screenings conclude February 19 at 4:00 with Rat Queen Theatre Co and Colt Coeur’s The Goddamn Looney Tunes, a multimedia musical about a teen punk band.

Director Reid Farrington gives instructions to Rafael Jordan on set of Mendacity (photo by Miguel Aviles)

The work that perhaps best encompasses the intersection of film and theater is Mendacity, which uses real political protests as a way into exploring lies through a production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Connelly Theater, starring Lindsey Graham as Maggie the Cat (Adam Patterson), the United States of America as Brick (Rafael Jordan), AOC as SisterWoman (Jennifer McClinton), Tr*mp as Big Daddy (Kevin R. Free), and Jared Kushner as Big Mama (assistant director Laura K Nicoll). When Brick tells Maggie, “I can’t be trusted anymore,” it takes on multiple meanings. Married director and editor Reid Farrington and writer Sara Farrington have been melding film and theater for more than fifteen years, in such original and complex shows as The Passion Project (Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc), Gin & “It” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope), and CasablancaBox (Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca), so Mendacity is a natural next step for them. (In addition, Sara Farrington’s Untitled Ukraine Project was part of New Ohio’s “Now in Process” earlier this month.)

NEW PLACE PLAYERS: OTHELLO

Desdemona (Alanah Allen) and Othello (Eliott Johnson) share an intimate moment in Bard tragedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

OTHELLO
Casa Clara
218 East Twenty-Fifth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through March 25, $29-$99
newplaceplayers.org

One of the myriad wonderful things about Shakespeare plays is how malleable they are, offering plenty of opporunity for productions to get creative by twisting, turning, and reshaping how the plot unfurls even when using the exact original dialogue. And it doesn’t have to be done in large venues with star-studded casts; smaller, more intimate versions by lesser-known companies can deliver new insights into narratives you thought you knew so well.

Such is the case with New Place Players’ splendid adaptation of Othello in Casa Clara, a former Kips Bay foundry built in 1848 that is now a four-story town house where photographer Clara Aich lives and works. The maximum audience size is only fifty, about half sitting in unmatched chairs on either side of the central, horizontal stage area, with the other half sitting in seats on both sides of the long, narrow entryway.

The walls are filled with drawings, empty frames, and ancient, classical-looking bas-reliefs Aich has collected on her travels around the world, giving the play a dramatic, old feeling, as it takes place during the Ottoman-Venetian Wars of the early 1570s. The atmosphere is enhanced by Shawn Lewis’s spare set, highlighted by a few rooms in balconies at the front and back of the “stage,” Jennifer Paar’s period costumes, and a chamber music score performed by Anna Bikales on harp, Daniel Keene on lute and gong, and music director, composer, and sound designer Flavio Gaete on viola, consisting of Renaissance consort music, including works by father-and-son Elizabethan court composers John and Robert Johnson, contemporaries of Shakespeare’s. The lighting is by Ethan Steimal, who incorporates two skylights.

Director Makenna Masenheimer and cultural competency consultant Ianne Fields Stewart waste no time establishing good vs. evil and exposing the racism of that era. Between 1596 and 1601, several Privy Council documents called for the expulsion and trading of “blackamoores.” In the opening scene, Iago (Conor Andrew Hall) appears wearing a black cape that evokes cartoon villain Snidely Whiplash, an animated mashup of wicked slavemaster Simon Legree and the dastardly Hollywood generic villain who ties damsels to train tracks. Roderigo (Nathan Krasner) is the wealthy white accomplice who does Iago’s bidding because he lusts after Desdemona (Alanah Allen), who is in love with Iago’s boss, military hero Othello (Eliott Johnson).

Bianca (Rose Kanj) and Cassio (Matthew Iannone) have at it in Othello at Casa Clara (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Iago pretends to be an honest and loyal man, but he is a deceiving master manipulator determined to take Othello down, at least in part because of rumors that Othello has slept with his wife, Emilia (Helen Herbert), who is Desdemona’s faithful attendant. “I follow him to serve my turn upon him,” Iago tells Roderigo. He also acknowledges, “I am not what I am.”

Roderigo and Iago alert Brabantio (Matthew Dudley), Desdemona’s rich politician father, that he must save his daughter from Iago’s arms at that very moment. “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe,” Iago advises Brabantio. “Awake the snoring citizens with the bell, or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.” What could be worse than having a grandchild who is part Black?

A showdown ensues in which Desdemona, a vision in a white gown, asserts her love for Othello, whose “otherness” is increased by his wearing a North African turban associated with Muslims. But Iago is not about to let a public declaration of love get in the way of his evil plans. He tricks Emilia into helping him foster the belief that Desdemona and Iago’s chief ensign, Cassio (Matthew Iannone), are having an affair. Cassio, meanwhile, is spending more and more time with Bianca (Rose Kanj), a courtesan who has fallen in love with him, but Cassio’s career comes first.

The players also include the forthright Lodovico (Topher Kielbasa), kin to Brabantio and Desdemona; the chief magistrate, the Duke of Venice (Ryan Joseph Swartz); Montano (Aaron McDaniel), the governor of Cyprus; Gratiano (Dudley), Brabantio’s brother; and various messengers, officers, senators, and townspeople. No matter what happens and what anyone says, Iago is determined to ruin Othello and Desdemona, doing whatever is necessary to keep his nefarious scheme intact.

New Place Players will perform Othello through February 25 at Casa Clara (photo by Carol Rosegg)

New Place Players have previously presented immersive versions of The Tempest at the 3 West Club in Midtown and the Players by Gramercy Park, Twelfth Night at the Casa Duse Supper Club in Park Slope, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Casa Duse, Villa Lewaro in Irvington, and the Players. Their Othello is worth seeing just for the environs; during the pandemic, I watched a stream of Group.BR’s 2018 Inside the Wild Heart, a live performance filmed at Casa Clara that you could now navigate through online using the interactive Gather Town platform, allowing you to experience different parts of Clarice Lispector’s play in different rooms at your own pace. It made me yearn to be in the actual space.

Othello is best enjoyed by sitting in the main staging area, where the actors make eye contact with audience members and come as close as possible physically without actually touching them. The cast got off to a slow start the afternoon I saw it; the production was delayed because two of the actors were out sick, leaving the company to scramble. Understudy Swartz took over the roles of Brabantio and Gratiano and was a standout; stage manager Kyra Bowie did extra duty by reading for the Duke of Venice on an iPad, her purple boots beautifully anachronistic.

The closeness between the actors, who are trained in the Lecoq movements, and the audience created an unspoken camaraderie, as if we were fellow citizens familiar with the characters and setting. The story unfolded with a clear, precise progression, the misogyny, classism, and racism unmistakable but not heavy-handed.

I’ve seen three productions of Othello since 2016: Shakespeare in the Park with Corey Stoll as Iago, Chukwudi Iwuji as Othello, and Heather Lind as Desdemona, Sam Gold’s adaptation at New York Theatre Workshop (Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo, Rachel Brosnahan), and a noh version at Japan Society, in addition to watching Orson Welles’s 1952 film (Micheál MacLiammóir, Welles, Suzanne Cloutier).

The show at Casa Clara was the first time I truly felt how terribly the women are treated, how they are assumed to be strumpets and whores who can’t make their own decisions and think for themselves. Iago, in full beard and mustache, repeats to Brabantio several times, “Put money in your purse,” as if women can be bought like chattel. Othello himself is all too quick to listen to Iago and distrust his devoted wife. We might have come a long way in four-hundred-plus years, but misogyny, classism, and racism are still all too real in 2023.

LUCY

Ashling (Lynn Collins) and Mary (Brooke Bloom) share a fun moment in Lucy (photo by Joan Marcus)

LUCY
Audible Theater’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Monday – Saturday through February 25, $57-$97
www.audible.com

Writer-director Erica Schmidt’s latest work, Lucy, is one of the best plays of the season, a gorgeously rendered story about a single mother, a nanny, and a young girl. Her Mac Beth, a stirring adaptation of the Shakespeare classic reimagined with an all-female cast set at a girls school, was one of the best productions of 2019, and equally feminist. Schmidt now moves from the bloody battles of medieval Scotland to twenty-first-century upscale urban domesticity, but Lucy nevertheless references classic themes.

The nanny is a staple of literature, theater, and film, from Mary Poppins, Mrs. Doubtfire, Maria Reiner (The Sound of Music), and Becky Sharp to Nanny McPhee, Nanny Schuester (The Nanny Diaries), Anna Leonowens (The King and I), and Mrs. Baylock (The Omen). In the 1965 Hammer horror flick The Nanny, Bette Davis starred as the thoroughly wicked title character who remains unnamed; just calling her Nanny is frightening enough.

Lucy, which continues through February 25 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, opens with pregnant fortysomething Mary (Brooke Bloom) interviewing Ashling (Lynn Collins) to take care of Mary’s six-year-old daughter, Lucy (Charlotte Surak), and soon-to-be-born son, Max. Mary is desperate; she’s a radiologist with a complicated work schedule and is due to give birth in a week. Mary wants to find the right fit, but she overlooks a few possible warning signs during her meeting with Ashling. Both the character and the audience do a double take at several things Ashling says, but nothing seems too ominous.

“I get it. You need a coparent,” Ashling declares after Mary describes her hours. “Someone who is here when you’re at work.” Mary responds, “Who I pay to be here. A nanny,” asserting that she is the mother.

Mary hires Ashling — who is fifty-eight but looks at least two decades younger, and acts even younger than that — and at first everything appears to be great. The nanny goes above and beyond the call of duty, especially with Lucy, who immediately adores her. At one point Ashling is swinging Lucy around as they both sing to Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” belting out, “I should not be left to my own devices / They come with prices and vices / I end up in crisis (tale as old as time) / I wake up screaming from dreaming / One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving / ’Cause you got tired of my scheming / (For the last time) / It’s me, hi / I’m the problem, it’s me / At teatime, everybody agrees / I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror / It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.”

Mary (Brooke Bloom) watches as Ashling (Lynn Collins) and Lucy (Charlotte Surak) dance to Taylor Swift (photo by Joan Marcus)

As time passes, there are more cracks in the mirror as Mary begins noticing some curious behavior by Ashling, who has a feasible explanation for everything. Is Ashling gaslighting Mary? Is Mary so overworked and stressed that her imagination is getting the best of her? It all comes to a head, leading to an utterly thrilling finale.

Lucy takes place in Mary’s kitchen/dining room/living room, with shelves filled with books, cabinets with dishes and bottles of wine, and a comfy couch and chair. There is no television anywhere — “I don’t do screens,” Mary tells Ashling. Mary’s bedroom is off stage right, while a hallway at the center back leads to Lucy’s and Max’s rooms. (The clean, mostly white, instantly Instagrammable set is by Amy Rubin.) Mary primarily wears tastefully minimal but obviously expensive black and cream outfits, while the tattooed Ashling is draped in layers of swirly boho prints, every arm and finger sporting inexpensive arty silver jewelry, courtesy costume designer Kaye Voyce.

The creepier the plot gets, the more Cha See’s lighting casts long, eerie shadows, while Justin Ellington’s sound includes plenty of crying and screaming.

Mary (Brooke Bloom) and Ashling (Lynn Collins) face off in Audible production at the Minetta Lane (photo by Joan Marcus)

Schmidt (Cyrano, All the Fine Boys) has her finger on the pulse of the relationships between Ashling and Mary, Mary and Lucy, and Lucy and Ashling, letting each play out in its own way. The underlying fear Mary has about having hired the wrong nanny is palpable; at least at the start, most mothers are terrified of leaving their children with a complete stranger, references or not.

Bloom (Everybody, Cloud Nine) embodies that fear, evoking the young mother in Rosemary’s Baby, who thinks the devil is after her infant. Collins (Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice) exquisitely captures the many mysteries of Ashling, who harbors plenty of secrets. Schmidt exploits our misgivings by imbuing Ashling with some tantalizing witchlike tendencies. When Mary asks her what she likes most about child care, Ashling proclaims, “It keeps me young!” and it’s an easy leap to the age-old idea that she is somehow sucking the youth from her charges. (Mary responds, “That’s funny. My daughter is definitely making me old. Fast.”)

When Mary asks if she ever wanted her own kids, Ashling replies, “I have kids!” There’s also a perfume that could be a magic potion, a curious substance around Max’s crib, and other subtle touches that make us question whether Ashling is really up to something or if it’s Mary’s paranoia. Mary might be a radiologist who peers inside people’s bodies, but that doesn’t mean she can assess what’s going on in Ashling’s head.

Most of Schmidt’s work has a strong feminist undercurrent, and Lucy is no exception, with Mary a doctor who cannot easily afford a nanny and who gets only four weeks’ maternity leave, which she has chosen not to fight in order to keep her job.

Finally, it’s intriguing that the play is named after the six-year-old girl, who is splendidly portrayed by Surak (Waitress) but has the least amount of stage time. It’s as if Schmidt is telling us that Lucy is the future while also hearkening back to the first fossil skeleton of a human ancestor ever discovered, which archaeologists named Lucy.

In the five years it has been producing plays at the Minetta Lane, Audible has concentrated primarily on one-person shows starring women, including Carey Mulligan in Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys, Lili Taylor in Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, Jade Anouka’s Heart, Faith Salie’s Approval Junkie, and DeLanna Studi’s And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears. (Men have been represented by Aasif Mandvi’s Sakina’s Restaurant and Billy Crudup in David Cale’s Harry Clarke.) In addition, Laurie Gunderson’s two-character The Half-Life of Marie Curie told the inspiring story of Madame Curie and her friendship with fellow physicist Hertha Ayrton.

Lucy, which passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, follows in that tradition while also reaching the next level. As Swift sings in “Midnights”: “Ladies always rise above.”

GABE MOLLICA — SOLO: A SHOW ABOUT FRIENDSHIP / COLIN QUINN: SMALL TALK

Gabe Mollica shares his difficulty in making friends in one-man show (photo by Mindy Tucker)

GABE MOLLICA: SOLO: A SHOW ABOUT FRIENDSHIP
Soho Playhouse
15 Vandam St. between Varick St. & Sixth Ave.
Wednesday – Saturday through February 25, $36, 9:00
Extension: Connelly Theater Upstairs
220 East Fourth St. between Aves. A & B
Tuesday – Saturday through November 18, $40
www.sohoplayhouse.com
www.gabemollica.com

Having earned multiple extensions since opening at Soho Playhouse on November 2, comedian Gabe Mollica and his one-man Solo: A Show About Friendship are hard not to love. Yet the night I went, there were fewer than twenty people in the audience, several of whom Mollica knew, referring to them by name as they nodded in agreement with something he said onstage. In his easygoing, not-quite-self-deprecating demeanor, Mollica started the sixty-minute confessional pointing out that he has performed Solo for three people at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — “the same three people that an hour earlier I had had dinner with” — and for a packed Soho Playhouse on a Saturday night, so he was not bothered by such a sparse turnout on a cold Thursday. In fact, it fit the theme of the evening, which he explains early on: “This is a show about how I don’t have friends.”

Mollica, who recently turned thirty, hails from Garden City, and lives in Astoria, spends an hour detailing his lifetime of seeking male companionship that goes beyond mere camaraderie. He provides a spot-on description of his “six bros,” complete with their going-out and staying-home rituals. One of the bros, Nick, makes ranked lists, from types of music and wood to Adam Sandler flicks. (Yo, Nick, how is Uncut Gems not in the top ten?). Mollica also reveals that his mother, who is named Joy, is sick. (“She’s feeling a lot better now. Thank you for asking.”)

Obsessed in high school with Stephen Sondheim and terrible at sports, Mollica found himself trapped in the middle, “too straight for the gay kids but too gay for the straight kids.” At college he meets Tom, and they hit it off right away, becoming inseparable. Mollica is thrilled beyond belief that he finally has someone he can say anything to, can receive unconditional support from, and is able to be completely honest with.

Gabe Mollica admits to being “too straight for the gay kids but too gay for the straight kids” in Solo (photo by Mindy Tucker)

Mollica relates his and Tom’s adventures and misadventures, but because he’s already told us that today he has no friends, there’s some well-executed narrative tension as we await the inevitable funny/not-funny punchline. Before he gets to that, Mollica discusses his origins as a stand-up comic, his relationships with a few women, and his job working at a summer camp, occasionally supplemented with photos projected on a screen at the back of the stage, which otherwise features only a small stool and a carpet.

Smoothly directed by comedian and monologist Greg Walloch (Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King, F**k the Disabled), Solo is an engaging and heartfelt look at male bonding and the need to have friends, regardless of gender. The show is smartly written, with a finale that circles back to the beginning and results in a poignant conclusion that makes you want to immediately get in touch with your best friend(s). Mollica has a natural charm that, well, will compel you to want to be his friend. After the show, he greeted audience members outside the theater, shaking hands, hugging, and posing for photos. We invited him to an upcoming tribute to Stephen Sondheim; we don’t know whether he’ll be coming solo.

Colin Quinn offers more than just small talk in Small Talk (photo by Monique Carboni)

COLIN QUINN: SMALL TALK
Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St.
Monday – Saturday through February 11, $49-$59
Greenwich House
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Tuesday, Saturday, Sunday, March 30 – May 6, $49-$79
www.colinquinnshow.com

There’s a fine line between thematic stand-up comedy and a one-person theatrical show. Recent presentations such as Mike Birbiglia’s The Old Man & the Pool, Alex Edelman’s Just for Us, and Ryan J. Haddad’s Hi, Are You Single? qualify as the latter, as does Gabe Mollica’s aptly titled Solo.

Brooklyn-born actor and comedian Colin Quinn is a master of the one-man show, having explored the history of New York, America, and the world in such highly praised works as Long Story Short, Unconstitutional, The New York Story, and Red State Blue State.

His latest solo foray is Colin Quinn: Small Talk, continuing at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through February 11 (and now extended March 30 to May 6 at Greenwich House). The seventy-five-minute show explores how strangers connect, or don’t, by taking part in brief, generally inconsequential face-to-face conversations in elevators, at stores, at work, or on the street, chatting about the weather, sports, what day of the week it is, and other minor tidbits. “Small talk is intimate. It’s an acknowledgment,” he explains. “It’s like two ships that signal each other in the ocean. . . . It’s how we unite by common experience in under a paragraph.”

He worries that the way kids today are being raised, the end of small talk, which began with cavemen and reached new levels with Socrates, is fast approaching, since it depends on one of humankind’s most important inventions, “citizen personality,” which we no longer teach or value. “Personality is who the people that know you think you are. Your reputation is who the people who don’t know you think you are. Your social media profile is who you think you are, and your browser history is who you are,” he says.

Colin Quinn discusses banter, personality, and the history of small talk in latest solo performance (photo by Monique Carboni)

Walking around the stage in a black tee, unbuttoned black shirt, black pants, and white sneakers, Quinn, in his familiar gravelly voice, fills the show with pop-culture references, controversial political issues, and the top five “last words.” Individual jokes can be incisive, immediately relatable, and very funny, but the show, directed by James Fauvell, feels at times like it’s still a work-in-progress. Several tangents and digressions don’t seem to arise naturally from the narrative.

Quinn, who had a heart attack on Valentine’s Day in 2018 when he was fifty-eight, scans the audience for reactions as if he’s testing out new material. After seeing him look up numerous times at a spot in the back of the theater, I turned around and noticed a monitor where the text was scrolling by. He also uses a handheld microphone, which is more associated with stand-up than theatrical productions. Zoë Hurvitz’s set consists of ten blackboards with chalk drawings on them, linking images of hands and faces with Ancient Greek words and modern emojis, but they are never incorporated into the show or identified, which left me scratching my head.

From his days on MTV’s Remote Control and Comedy Central’s Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn through his solo presentations and film and television appearances (Girls, Trainwreck), Quinn has demonstrated his unique personality along with his hilarious and all-too-real take on society at large. “Some people don’t like small talk,” Quinn says in the show. I liked Small Talk, but I wanted to love it. Quinn’s response might be, as he says about one friend’s thoughts on sausage and peppers, “Nobody gives a shit and nobody asked you.” To which I might respond, “Hey, how ’bout this weather?”

THE COLLABORATION

Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope) collaborate in new Broadway play (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

THE COLLABORATION
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 11, 474-$318
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

In the fall of 1985, gallerist Tony Shafrazi and art dealer Bruno Bischofberger presented “Warhol Basquiat: Paintings” on Mercer St., an exhibition of works made in tandem by Pop Art maestro Andy Warhol, looking to restore himself to relevance, and rising street-art superstar Jean-Michel Basquiat, who wanted to reach the next level of fame and fortune. The story of this unusual alliance is told in Anthony McCarten’s boldly titled The Collaboration, extended through February 11 at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

While Basquiat and Warhol’s teaming up might have been a lightning strike of an idea in the art world, it’s more than a bit presumptuous to declare that it was the collaboration; if you didn’t know what the play was about, the title wouldn’t make you first think of this unexpected partnership. That aside, it was a fascinating moment in art history, and just as the collaboration was not wholly successful, so goes The Collaboration on Broadway.

In September 1985, Vivian Raynor wrote about the exhibit in the New York Times, “It’s a version of the Oedipus story: Warhol, one of Pop’s pops, paints, say, General Electric’s logo, a New York Post headline, or his own image of dentures; his twenty-five-year-old protege adds to or subtracts from it with his more or less expressionistic imagery. The sixteen results — all ‘Untitleds,’ of course — are large, bright, messy, full of private jokes, and inconclusive.” The same can be said of the play itself.

Alternatively, artist Keith Haring wrote in “Painting the Third Man” in 1988, “Jean-Michel and Andy achieved a healthy balance. Jean respected Andy’s philosophy and was in awe of his accomplishments and mastery of color and images. Andy was amazed by the ease with which Jean composed and constructed his paintings and was constantly surprised by the never-ending flow of new ideas. Each one inspired the other to outdo the next. The collaborations were seemingly effortless. It was a physical conversation happening in paint instead of words. . . . For me, the paintings which resulted from this collaboration are the perfect testimony to the depth and importance of their friendship. The quality of the painting mirrors the quality of the relationship. The sense of humor which permeates all of the works recalls the laughter which surrounded them while they were being made.”

Meanwhile, poet, songwriter, and playwright Ishmael Reed offered little love for Warhol in his recent show, The Slave Who Loved Caviar, feeling that Warhol treated Basquiat like a mascot; Reed wrote, “As Basquiat, the Radiant Child of the downtown art scene of the 1980s, was sacrificed to sustain the dying career of a fading Super Star, Antonius was sacrificed so that Hadrian would recover from a mysterious illness.”

Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany) films Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope) in The Collaboration (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Part of McCarten’s Worship Trilogy, which also includes The Two Popes and Wednesday at Warren’s, Friday at Bill’s, The Collaboration takes place alternately in Bischofberger’s (Erik Jensen) Manhattan gallery, Warhol’s (Paul Bettany) studio near Union Square, and Basquiat’s (Jeremy Pope) loft apartment and studio on Great Jones St. At first both artists are hesitant to work together; being shown Basquiat’s paintings for the first time by Bischofberger, Warhol, referring to them as “art therapy things,” says, “They’re so . . . busy. Is it too much? Or am I getting old? And so much anger. All these skulls and gravestones everywhere. I thought I was bleak. And all these words and symbols, what’s it all mean? What’s he trying to say? Bruno? Do you know? And why do they have to be so ugly? Did he tell you? Does he talk about that? They’re so ugly and angry and yeah, well, they’re kinda violent. I’d be careful; he’s really in trouble, I think.”

Basquiat is also unsure of the potential partnership, telling Bischofberger, “I’m better than Andy. I don’t need this. . . . And how come he doesn’t paint anymore, you know? Just mechanically reproduces all these prints? There’s no soul. I’m Dizzy Gillespie, blowing a riff, he’s one of those pianos that plays all by itself. The same tune. Over and over. You seen those things? Pink, pink plonk, pinkety pinkety pink.”

Bischofberger, who represents both artists, promises Warhol, “It will be the greatest exhibition ever in the history of art.” Warhol says, “Please don’t exaggerate.” The dealer boasts, “Warhol versus Basquiat.” The Pop maestro wonders, “Oh, versus? Gee, you make it sound so macho, like a contest. I don’t know. I thought you said it would be a collaboration?” Bischofberger answers, “Painters are like boxers; both smear their blood on the canvas.” The promotional posters for the exhibition — which eventually will become more famous than the actual works (one of the original posters hangs in my apartment) — feature Warhol and Basquiat wearing boxing gloves, ready to do battle.

But soon the soft-spoken Warhol, who hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in more than twenty years but has amassed a fortune through his silkscreens, photography, films, and business savvy, is creating canvases with Basquiat, who is far more spontaneous and unpredictable, taking drugs, sleeping around (Krysta Rodriguez plays Maya, a fictionalized version of Basquiat’s girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk), and keeping his cash in the refrigerator.

Once the playwright finally gets Andy and Jean putting paint to canvas, their debates about the purpose of art sound a bit sanctimonious. No one knows what their conversation was really like: Within three years, they would both be dead, Basquiat in 1987 at the age of twenty-seven, Warhol in 1988 at the age of fifty-eight.

Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah (Things of Dry Hours, One Night in Miami), The Collaboration works best when Warhol and Basquiat get down to brass tacks, exploring what they might do together, each suspicious of the other’s motives and abilities. In roles previously played by David Bowie and Jeffrey Wright, respectively, in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film, Basquiat (Dennis Hopper was Bischofberger), Bettany (Love and Understanding, WandaVision) and Tony nominee Pope (Choir Boy, Ain’t Too Proud) are phenomenal. Pope embodies Basquiat’s untethered energy, his lust for life, and his social conscience, particularly when learning that his friend, graffiti artist Michael Stewart, is in the hospital after an altercation with the police. Bettany not only looks great in Warhol’s trademark white fright wig and black turtleneck and sneakers (the wigs are by Karicean “Karen” Dick and Carol Robinson, with sets and costumes by Anna Fleischle) but captures his awkward, strange public persona.

Rodriguez (Into the Woods, Seared) does what she can as the underwritten Maya, an amalgamation that stretches the truth of Basquiat’s relationships with women, and Jensen (Disgraced, How to Be a Rock Critic) provides a solid middle ground to highlight the disparity between his two artists.

Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany) watches Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope) paint in The Collaboration (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The narrative takes a sharp turn beginning at intermission, when large monitors just outside both sides of the stage show footage of Bettany’s Warhol and Pope’s Basquiat collaborating, painting on transparent glass, mimicking the style Warhol uses when filming Basquiat on his 16mm spring-wound Bolex movie camera. As they did prior to the beginning of the show, DJ theoretic spins thumping 1980s music from a booth on the stage as the prerecorded film plays.

During the second act, Kwei-Armah and McCarten, who has written such fact-based films as The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, and Bohemian Rhapsody and the book for the current Neil Diamond musical A Beautiful Noise, become obsessed with Warhol’s live footage of Basquiat (the projections are by Duncan McLean), so it’s hard to know where to look. (Oh, what Ivo van Hove has wrought.) A notoriously private person despite his fondness for late-night celebrity-studded parties, Warhol wants to capture the real Basquiat on film, but Basquiat doesn’t want to be seen as a commodity. This dichotomy further emphasizes the difference, and psychological distance, between Basquiat and Warhol, whose shows are still blockbusters today. (For example, Basquiat’s biographical “King Pleasure” in Chelsea last year and the Whitney’s 2018-19 “Andy Warhol — From A to Be and Back Again.”

None of Warhol’s footage exists today, so we don’t know what really happened, but what McCarten and Kwei-Armah depict grows more confusing and annoying by the second. We also don’t see enough of the artists’ collaboration itself, but that output is not considered among either one’s most well regarded works. Alas, the same can be said of the creators of the play. But as Warhol explains to Basquiat, “I don’t think there’s going to be a revolution, but if there is it will be televised, with commercial breaks, cause it’s all about brands now. Even us, we’re not painters, we’re brands. Jean. We’re brands. Well, you’re almost a giant brand, and after this exhibition with me you will be too. Then just watch the language change, Jean.”

The Collaboration concludes on the same note as Eduardo Kobra’s large-scale 2018 mural in Chelsea above the Empire Diner, a reimagined Mount Rushmore with the faces of Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, all of whom remain brands to this day.

BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY

Stephen McKinley Henderson is unforgettable as Pops in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Between Riverside and Crazy (photo by Joan Marcus 2022)

BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY
Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 19, $68-$210 (live simulcast $68)
2st.com/shows

At the 2015 Drama Desk Awards, I had the option of being seated in the audience with the cast and crew of any nominated show; without hesitation, I chose Stephen Adly Guirgis’s searing dark comedy Between Riverside and Crazy. The Atlantic Theater production had three nominations: Best Play, Outstanding Actor in a Play for the amazing Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Outstanding Director of a Play for legendary actor, teacher, and director Austin Pendleton. The show, which had just won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was up against such staunch competition as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Airline Highway, and Let the Right One In; among those competing for Best Musical were An American in Paris, Hamilton, and Something Rotten!

As the evening progressed, Pendleton slumped lower and lower into his chair as he, Henderson, and Guirgis failed to take home a trophy, losing each time to Curious Incident (Simon Stephens for Best Play, Alex Sharp for actor, and Marianne Elliott for director). In January 2015, Between Riverside and Crazy received an encore run at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, with nearly the full original cast. Last month, the show opened at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater on Broadway, where it has been extended through February 19. It still packs the same punch it did almost nine years ago at the Atlantic.

The extended family of Between Riverside and Crazy makes a toast (photo by Joan Marcus 2022)

The 130-minute show (with intermission) unfolds in a cramped rent-controlled apartment and rooftop on Riverside Drive (the rotating set is by Walt Spangler), where the recently widowed Walter “Pops” Washington (Henderson) lives with a motley crew of younger folks, including his ne’er-do-well son, Junior (Common), who is on parole; Junior’s scantily clad girlfriend, Lulu (Rosal Colón); and Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar), a tough-talking young man in recovery who Pops has taken in. All three call Walter either Pop, Pops, or Dad, even though he’s hardly the loving, nurturing type. Pops spends most of his time in the kitchen, eating pie, taking swigs of alcohol, and sitting in his wife’s wheelchair, pontificating on life.

His daily reflections don’t exactly reflect popular psychology. As Oswaldo discusses his health and why he no longer eats Ring Dings and baloney, which he ate because he didn’t feel safe or cared for by his parents, Oswaldo tells Pops, “I’m not trying to get all up in your business, but maybe that’s also the reason you always be eating pie — because of, like, you got emotionalisms — ya know?” Pops replies, “Emotionalisms.” Oswaldo continues, “I know — it sounded funny at first to me too — but emotionalisms is real, and pie — don’t take this wrong, but they say pie is like poison.” To which Pops concludes, “Pie ain’t like poison, Oswaldo — pie is like pie!”

A retired cop facing eviction, Pops is in a major fight with the city and the NYPD, demanding more cash in compensation for his shooting by a white rookie officer eight years earlier. One night his former partner, Det. Audrey O’Connor (Guirgis regular Elizabeth Canavan), and her fiancée, Lieutenant Caro (originally played by Michael Rispoli, though I saw understudy J. Anthony Crane, who was excellent; the role has now been taken over by Gary Perez), come over for dinner. They try to convince him to take the deal, as time is running out, but Pops stands by his principles while also understanding Caro’s motive in urging him to sign off. “An honorable man can’t be bought off,” he previously explained to Junior. “An honorable man doesn’t just settle a lawsuit ‘No Fault’ and lend his silence to hypocrisy and racism and the grievous violation of all our civil rights.”

Pops changes some of his views on life — and death — after a visit from the new church lady (Maria-Christina Oliveras) ends up sending him to the hospital.

Pops (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Lulu (Rosal Colón) share a moment in powerful New York play (photo by Joan Marcus 2022)

I called Between Riverside and Crazy one of the best plays of 2014, and currently it’s the best nonrevival on Broadway. (The best new musical on Broadway, Kimberly Akimbo, also got its start at the Atlantic.) Seventy-three-year-old Tony nominee Henderson (A Raisin in the Sun, Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot), a longtime staple in the work of August Wilson, is unforgettable as Pops, a character who’s hard not to love even as you learn some questionable things about him. Henderson has an endearingly round face, gentle eyes, and an infectious smile that makes you want to call him Pops too. The play is very much about fathers and sons: Pops’ relationship with Junior, Oswaldo’s troubles with his dad, and Pops’ feelings about his own father. Even Det. O’Connor tells Pops, “You’re like my father.”

The set includes a rooftop veranda where Henderson gets even closer to his adoring audience. The rest of the cast is terrific under Pendleton’s (Gidion’s Knot, Orson’s Shadow) expert direction. Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the “A” Train), who grew up on Riverside Drive, writes gritty, believable dialogue and creates hard-hitting situations that are quintessentially New York, mixing comedy and tragedy with subtle, and not-so-subtle, narrative shifts.

If I were going to the 2023 Tony Awards and had the choice of which show to sit with, I just might choose Between Riverside and Crazy again. In the meantime, get yourselves to the Hayes and become part of this beautiful extended family.